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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 LINCOLN A member of the Nebraska State Board of Education wants to push back against the Obama administrations guidance on how schools should accommodate transgender students. Pat McPherson wants the board to adopt a resolution declaring the guidance on the use of restrooms and other facilities as federal overreach. His resolution would urge school district officials to get input from teachers and parents and use their best discretion before deciding whether to comply. The resolution, which is drawing criticism from the ACLU of Nebraska, is scheduled for a vote Friday at the boards 9 a.m. meeting. Im going to ask them to take a vote on it, McPherson said. If they dont like it, they can vote me down. Board President Rachel Wise said she would rather see the resolution sent to a committee for further study. The board should do our own due diligence and examine the legal issues before adopting the resolution, she said. I think its important we dont overreact or overreach as weve seen on the federal level, Wise said. Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson, making a rare appearance before the state board Thursday, said he believes that the federal guidance is unlawful because it changes federal rules without prior notice or allowing public comment. Education Commissioner Matt Blomstedt invited him to speak about the guidance. The guidance contends that the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination, also encompasses discrimination based on gender identity. Under the guidance, issued jointly May 13 by the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice, schools are advised to accommodate students based on their gender identity. Gender identity, according to the guidance, refers to a persons internal sense of gender. The guidance also says that students do not need a medical diagnosis or treatment to prove their gender identity. A school may provide separate restrooms and locker rooms for boys and girls, the guidance says, but schools must allow transgender students access to such facilities consistent with their gender identity. The administration made it clear that schools that fail to comply could lose federal funding. Blomstedt said he did not have a dollar estimate of the potential loss of funding statewide if districts did not comply. A board member estimated that it could be $400 million. Typically, the federal government would get involved if a discrimination complaint were filed against a school district, but the federal government could also initiate its own investigation, Blomstedt said. Peterson stopped short of calling on schools to reject the federal guidance. He said his office cant give districts legal advice. He said the guidance, by not requiring students to provide medical evidence of transitioning to the opposite sex, puts school districts in a very difficult position. Peterson said his office has not made a final determination on whether Nebraska would join other states in a Texas lawsuit challenging the guidance or whether Nebraska would file a legal challenge of its own. On May 25, 11 states or state officials, including Texas and Oklahoma, sued the U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Secretary of Education John King, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other federal offices and officials over the guidance. In the lawsuit, the states contend that the federal government has a duty to enforce the law of the land, and not rewrite it by administrative fiat. Peterson said the guidance doesnt consider the effect that the policy could have on children whove been victims of sexual assault. Amy Miller, attorney for the ACLU of Nebraska, urged the board to reject McPhersons resolution. She dismissed as meritless the arguments that preventing transgender peoples access to restrooms and locker rooms corresponding with their gender identity is about safety. In a letter to be submitted to the board, Miller described the resolution as a cavalier effort to make local taxpayers pay the price tag for a state officials political agenda, and should be squarely rejected. The Departments of Justice and Education have made it a priority to intervene in school districts that fail to treat transgender students appropriately, she wrote. The risk of losing federal funding, she wrote, is not an idle threat. Contact the writer: 402-444-1077, joe.dejka@owh.com Mass leave protest by Karnataka constables a success even if it is not held Bengaluru oi-Vicky Bengaluru, June 3: The mass leave protest planned the constables of the Karnataka could well be a success even if it is not held. An organisation which claimed to have 15,000 constables as part of it had threatened to go on mass leave protesting against difficult working conditions and a low pay scale. This led to an immediate response from the top brass of the police. First the state police chief issued a statement saying that there was nothing to worry, the grievances would be looked into and also they were all one big family. This had even led to one journalist at the press conference asking the police chief if he realised that they were one family only now. Sources both the in the police force of Karnataka as well as the state intelligence unit tell OneIndia that most of the constables may not take part in the protest. There are two reasons for this- one the fear of ESMA being slapped on them and secondly there has been a certain amount of action taken by the top brass to look into their problems. Fear coupled with pacifying: Yesterday a circular had been issued to all the Deputy Commissioners of Police to compulsorily give the constables their weekly off. Further many DCPs have already started visiting the homes of the constables and speaking with their families. This drive undertaken appears to have satisfied most of the constables. The DCPs has been asking questions about their living style etc. The complaints have been general in nature such as lack of facilities, a broken tap etc. The DCPs have assured them all issues would be looked into in the next two days. The other issue is of course the fear factor. Yesterday a self styled leader of the constables' association was booked both under sedition and ESMA. A constable earning a meagre Rs 16,000 a month cannot afford such charges. There is a fear that there will be none to support his family if he is sent to jail. Another assurance that the constables have been given is to look into their pay scales. This however, may take some time since it will have to be vetted by the Chief Minister and the finance department. There is however a proposal to increase their pay scale. Families could protest: While it is not assured that the statements by the top brass may have entirely quelled the protest, there is also a good chance of the families taking part in it. While the police constables may not come out and protest, there is a chance that they may send their families out. There have been some rumours which suggest that the families may take on the mantle. This is largely because the provisions of ESMA cannot be slapped on the family members. Many constables are not ready to face charges under ESMA since it will do more damage than good for them. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, June 3, 2016, 12:55 [IST] On PMs guidance how Devbhoomi Uttarakhands Temples will be developed India always views war as last resort, but... : PM Modi to armed forces in Kargil Features of India's First Ever National Disaster Management Plan Feature oi-Lisa By Lisa Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the National Disaster Management Plan (NDMP) on the 1st of June. This is the first ever national plan prepared in the country. The NDMP has been aligned broadly with the goals and priorities set out in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. The Vision of the Plan is to "Make India disaster resilient, achieve substantial disaster risk reduction, and significantly decrease the losses of life, livelihoods, and assets - economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental - by maximising the ability to cope with disasters at all levels of administration as well as among communities". There are numerous features of the plan that makes it really special. Following are the highlights of the NDMP: National Disaster Management Plan (NDMP) provides horizontal & vertical integration of all agencies & government departments. Narendra Modi (@narendramcdi) June 1, 2016 For each hazard, the approach used in this national plan incorporates the four priorities enunciated in the Sendai Framework into the planning framework for Disaster Risk Reduction under the five Thematic Areas for Actions: 1. Understanding Risk 2. Inter-Agency Coordination 3. Investing in DRR - Structural Measures 4. Investing in DRR - Non-Structural Measures 5. Capacity Development The Response part of the Plan has identified eighteen broad activities which have been arranged into a matrix to be served as a ready reckoner: Released National Disaster Management Plan. It focuses on disaster resilience & reducing damage during disasters. pic.twitter.com/vVtA5oUwNA Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 1, 2016 1. Early Warning, Maps, Satellite inputs, Information Dissemination 2. Evacuation of People and Animals 3. Search and Rescue of People and Animals 4. Medical Care 5. Drinking Water, Dewatering Pumps, Sanitation Facilities, Public Health 6. Food and Essential Supplies 7. Communication 8. Housing and Temporary Shelters 9. Power 10. Fuel 11. Transportation 12. Relief Logistics and Supply Chain Management 13. Disposal of Animal Carcasses 14. Fodder for livestock in scarcity-hit areas 15. Rehabilitation and Ensuring Safety of Livestock and other Animals, Veterinary Care 16. Data Collection and Management 17. Relief Employment 18. Media Relations The Plan has also incorporated a Chapter on Strengthening Disaster Risk Governance. The generalised responsibility matrix given in this section summarises the themes for strengthening Disaster Risk Governance and specifies agencies at the Centre and State with their respective roles. The matrix has six thematic areas in which Central and State Governments have to take actions to strengthen disaster risk governance: 1. Mainstream and integrate DRR and Institutional Strengthening 2. Capacity Development 3. Promote Participatory Approaches 4. Work with Elected Representatives 5. Grievance Redress Mechanism 6. Promote Quality Standards, Certifications, and Awards for Disaster Risk Management The National Disaster Management Plan (NDMP) provides a framework and direction to the government agencies for all phases of disaster management cycle. The NDMP is a dynamic document in the sense that it will be periodically improved keeping up with the emerging global best practices and knowledge bases in disaster management. Globally, the approach towards post-disaster restoration and rehabilitation has shifted to one of betterment reconstruction. The NDMP provides a generalised framework for recovery since it is not possible to anticipate all the possible elements of betterment reconstruction. The Plan also highlights that the disaster risk reduction will be achieved by mainstreaming the requirements into the developmental plans. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, June 3, 2016, 15:37 [IST] Modi in Nepal again in December: Hindutva, strategic reasons on agenda Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas slogan is baseless, says BJP MLA from UP UP: Moustache allowance for cops see hike by 400% Know constituencies of UP Assembly polls 2017: GANGOH (GEN) Feature oi-Shubham By Shubham Uttar Pradesh will go to Assembly elections early in 2017. The state has an Assembly comprising 403 seats and a party/alliance has to win 202 seats to form the government. In 2012, when the last state election was held in UP, the Samajwadi Party had won 224 seats to get a decisive majority. -------->Next seat: KAIRANA (8)" title="-------->Next seat: KAIRANA (8)" />-------->Next seat: KAIRANA (8) We, at Oneindia, will take one Assembly constituency a day and have a look at electoral information related to it: Constituency Name: Gangoh [Comprises KCs 2-Ambehta, 5-Gangoh, Chilkana Sultanpur NP, Ambehta NP, Titron NP & Gangoh NPP of 3-Nakur Tehsil; KC 6-Nanauta & Nanauta NP of 4-Deoband Tehsil.] Constituency No. 7 District: Saharanpur (Gangoh is an Assembly segment under Kairana Lok Sabha constituency) Area of district: 3,689 square kilometres (rural 3,582 sq km) District population: 34,66,382 (78% general caste; 22% SC; 0% ST) District literacy: 60% District urbanisation: 30% 2012 Assembly election result in Gangoh Winner: Pradeep Kumar (Congress) Votes received: 65,149 Vote percentage: 28.44 Nearest rival: Ruder Sain (SP) Votes: 61,126 Percentage: 26.68 Difference: 4,023 Margin %: -2.24 Total voters: 3,17,224 Turnout: 72.2% Party which has won Gangoh most number of times: This constituency came into existence in 2008 following delimitation (Congress has won it once) 2014 Lok Sabha result in Kairana Hukum Singh (BJP) defeated Nahid Hasan (SP) by 2,36,828 votes (margin% - 21.05) About Saharanpur district: Saharanpur is famous for exporting handicraft and woodcraft of which moorhas come from Behat. However, because of the middleman problem, the local craftsmen do not gain much. Issues: Lack of development in infrastructure, lack of higher education centres Shortage of facilities for traders of fruits and furniture business. Electricity shortage is also a major problem in Saharanpur. Communal clashes have also been a problem in this district. Will make roads in MP like 'Hema Malini's cheeks': Minister P C Sharma 'Rapists should be kept in jail permanently," says Hema Malini Dont want to be Hema Malini: RLDs Jayant Chaudhary kicks up row Not only on Mathura, Hema Malini has shown her insensitive behaviour earlier too Feature oi-Preeti Bollywood actress Hema Malini, also known as "dream girl" joined Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2004 and in 2014 she was elected as the party's MP from Mathura parliamentary consituency. 67-year-old Hema had defeated RLD MP Jayant Chaudhary by a margin of 3,30,743 votes. Immediately after being sworn-in as Mathura MP, Hema, like other politicians, had made tall promises to the people. Today, the birthplace of Lord Krishna- Mathura is burning as atleast 24 people including two police personnel died during an anti-encroachment drive protest on Thursday, June 2. But the busy elite MP, Hema Malini has sadly no time to visit her constituency and to meet people who elected her to share their grief and irreparable loss. The dancer and actress who appears in various advertisements did a formality by tweeting what happened in Mathura, instead of personally visiting there. Shockingly, she went on to say that she will visit Mathura if required or if such a situation arises. Unfortunately, this is not the first time when Hema Malini has shown such insensitive behaviour. Earlier also, she has shown her starry tantrums. Let's have a glance on them. Tantrums during 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign In March 2014, Hema Malini had arrived late at the venue of campaigning on the first day, that annoyed the party workers who were patiently waiting for her since 5 am. Hema was scheduled to reach Govardhan early morning as party wanted that a "puja" should be performed before starting the auspicious work of campaigning. But, much to the dismay, she reached five hours late at around 10 am. "Go back to the movies, Basanti! You are not meant for politics", disappointed BJP workers had shouted at Hema! [Even the God was left "waiting" for Hema Malini in Mathura!] Insensitive tweet after she met an accident in Dausa On July 8, 2015, Hema who had met with a road accident in which 4-year-old Sonam was killed, tweeted, "My heart goes out to the child who unnecessarily lost her life and the family members who have been injured in the accident." "How I wish the girl's father had followed the traffic rules - thn this accident could have been averted & the lil one's life safe!" The actress had accused the little girl's father, Hanuman Mahajan of violating traffic rules, Mahajan had claimed that his child could have been saved if she was taken to hospital along with the actress. [Hema Malini never enquired about our child, my daughter died in her mother's lap: Father] Even BJP MP from Asansol, West Bengal Babul Supriyo had reacted on Hema's tweet, calling it a "brutal mistake". 'Senseless' tweet on Pratyusha Banerjee's suicide On April 1, Televsion actress Pratyusha Banerjee had hanged herself from the ceiling fan of her apartment in Mumbai, due to personal reasons. Multi-talented actress Hema had again reacted on the sensitive matter, by tweeting, "All these senseless suicides which achieve nothing! Life is God's gift for us to live not for us to take at will. We have no right to do that." "One must learn to overcome all odds and emerge successful, not succumb under pressure and give up easily. The world admires a fighter not a loser." Just becomes food for the hungry media who chew on news like celebrity suicides until the next sensational news happens.Then it is forgotten." [Hema Malini calls Pratyusha's death a 'senseless suicide'] Here are some Twitter reactions on Hema Malini's reaction on Mathura: Mathura is burning, but local BJP MP Smt Hema Malini chooses to tweet about her shoot instead of her constituents pic.twitter.com/hrkw68c5dw INC India (@INCIndia) June 3, 2016 Hema Malini and #Mathura, perfect example of why one should never get carried away with glamour during elections. Kartik Dayanand (@KartikDayanand) June 3, 2016 Goons did what they are good at :Violence Akhilesh did what is good at:Act clueless Hema Malini did what she is good at :Act dumb.#Mathura Cryptic Mind (@Vishj05) June 3, 2016 HemaMalini should have cancelled her personal commitments. After all she is responsible for the law & order of #Mathura India_First (@Sujoy_vns) June 3, 2016 Hema Malini is a liabity now on @BJP4India ! Only embarrasses party . Insensitive !! Time to say aap mahan ho ab vilupt ho jaao! Jai Hind (@rokul59) June 3, 2016 Is BJP preparing for 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls? Next year, Uttar Pradesh is all set to hold assembly elections. It will be a big test for the BJP, as it had won a stupendous victory in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Under BJP National president Amit Shah, the BJP had won 72 seats out of 80 seats. During assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the entire focus will be on local issues of each and every assembly constituency. The ruling-Samajwadi Party and Mayawati-led Bahajan Samaj Party have already started groundwork for the next year's battle. To prove Modi's magic, the BJP needs to start campaign now and to tighten the noose around defaulters, to get the required figures in the hindi-heartland. After Muzaffarnagar 2013 clashes, it is Mathura protests in 2016 and the BJP needs to fasten its belt to ensure a smooth journey ahead. It's high time for the BJP to show doors to those party lawmakers, who throw starry tantrums and issue dumb statements on sensitive matters. For the BJP, stakes are high for 2017 UP assembly polls, as it got an unexpected shock from the neighbour state Bihar in 2015 assembly polls. Pathankot attack symbolises impunity awarded by Pak to "Good Jihadis" Feature oi-Vicky Statement by the NIA chief that the Pakistan establishment was not behind the Pathankot attack came as quite a surprise. While it is now being said in some quarters that the NIA chief was misquoted, let us understand that the Jaish-e-Mohammad can never operate without the blessings of the Pakistan establishment. For Pakistan the Jaish-e-Mohammad has always been the good jihadi group. In fact after the horrific Peshawar school attack, terror groups were unofficially categorised as good and bad jihadis. While groups such as the Tehrik-e-Taliban fell under the category of the good jihadis, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Tayiba were classified under the good jihadi group. Pathankot was a reward for Jaish-e-Mohammad: An Pathankot like attack could not have taken place without the blessings of the Pakistan establishment (ISI and military). A report by the International Crisis Group states that the background and the aftermath of the Pathankot attack symbolises the impunity accorded to the good jihadists. The report further mentions that the likely motive behind the attack was to most possibly derail the peace process between the two countries. Terror groups tend to get edgy in Pakistan when they do not carry out a major strike. When the Lashkar-e-Tayiba was getting edgy, the 26/11 Mumbai attack was planned. This helped keep the group united. The Jaish-e-Mohammad too was on the downside and in order to boost its morale, the Pathankot attack was allowed by the establishment as a reward for being the good jihadist group. Proximity with the establishment. For Pakistan after the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, it is the Jaish-e-Mohammad which is most important. There are a host of events that have taken place in the past which would clearly indicate the relationship shared by the group's head, Maulana Masood Azhar and the Pakistan establishment. It was the ISI which approved of a Khandahar hijack to ensure the release of Azhar who was arrested in India. When India protested, the then president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharaff assured that he would be arrested once he landed in Pakistan. However, upon his return, he was not arrested, but allowed to address a gathering of 10,000 people in which he said the only intention should be to destroy India and America. This meeting led to the formation of the Jaish-e-Mohammad which a year later carried out the Parliament attack. A couple of years later, the Jaish made an attempt to kill Musharaff. While a few persons were arrested, the establishment never too action against the top brass of the outfit. The big question is would two lowly operatives of the Jaish-e-Mohammad plotted an attack on the President of Pakistan without the blessings of Maulana Azhar? This would summarise the proximity the Jaish has with the establishment. Zia-ul-Haque, Mukul Dwivedi: Killings of top cops show UP's growing goon culture Feature oi-Shubham By Shubham The horrific violence which broke out between policemen and encroachers in Mathura in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday evening resulting in the death of two police officers, including a superintendent of police (SP) has proved that the northern state's administrative machinery has come to a standstill. If policemen aren't safe, one can well imagine what's the safety of common man If the lives of the law-keepers are not safe, one can well imagine the safety and security arrangements that the state can provide for its common citizens. The issue has led to the routine probe order by the government of Akhilesh Yadav while the BJP has attacked the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) but these are things that politics in India witnesses regularly. [Mathura MP Hema Malini found tweeting film photos even as her constituency saw violence] The point is that under the SP, the entire law-keeping machinery has collapsed and this has happened more than once. In 2013, Kunda DSP Zia-ul-Haque was killed by a mob In March 2013, Kunda DSP Zia-ul-Haque was killed while a sub-inspector was seriously injured by a mob in the state's Pratapgarh district. Haque was killed after he had gone to control a protest against the murder of a village head and his brother in Ballipur village of Pratapgarh. The killing of three persons in the village within a gap of a few hours had led to a major tension and Haque met a tragic end when he led a police team to tackle the protesters. The killing took place in the turf of Raja Bhaiya, an influential politician of the state and five-time MLA from Kunda, and Haque's kin had accused him of having a hand in the murder. Besides these two murders of policemen, UP also saw humiliation of an IAS officer who took on the sand mafia The killings of two ranked police officers (Haq and Mukul Dwivedi on Thursday) in three years reflect on a sorry state of affairs in Uttar Pradesh. In the meantime, we also had the disappointing story of Durga Shakti Nagpal, an IAS officer who faced wrath for taking on the powerful sand mafia as the SDM of Gautam Budh Nagar. These episodes point out the fact that the administrative machinery of the state which is supported by civil and police officers have shown serious signs of fracture within it, allowing the goon culture to expand its tentacles at an alarming rate. If the goon culture is not checked now, future governments of UP will have tough times If the culprits are not brought to the law fast, then there is no guarantee that such tragedies will not be repeated and the future governments of the state will also find it extremely difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. After Iran's Chabahar, govt eyeing Paira port in Bangladesh India oi-PTI Mumbai, Jun 3: After bagging the strategically important Chabahar Port in Iran, the government is looking eastwards and is in discussions with Bangladesh to develop a similar facility in Paira. India Ports Global, the joint venture between state-run JNPT and Kandla Port for overseas ports, is interested in the expressions of interest which have been invited for construction of Paira/Payra port in Bangladesh, the Shipping Ministry said in a release today. "...talks are on between our Foreign Ministry and them (Bangladesh). Dhaka also wants us. We have sent a team there for studies," Union Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari told reporters, but did not disclose the port's location. A media report in February had said China had evinced keen interest in building the Paira port. In what was taken as a reflection of the growing Indo-Bangladeshi ties, Dhaka had cancelled the deal and was about to award it to New Delhi. The Narendra Modi government has been talking about an 'Act East' policy, as against the previous regime's 'Look East' policy, and the moves to build maritime infrastructure in Iran in the West and Bangladesh in the East seem to be part of that approach. Chabahar versus Gwadar: It's about geopolitics of ports today The move can also be construed as a reply to the aggressive play by China, which is developing a port in Colombo and Gwadar in Pakistan. "The Shipping Ministry is closely following the developments in regard to the Paira port so as to secure our national and strategic interests," the release added. It can be noted that China has embarked on what is referred to as 'string of pearls' strategy, under which it is creating such assets across the circumference of the Indian Peninsula in the Indian Ocean Rim region. Gadkari's comments come days after New Delhi secured a deal to build the strategic Chabahar port in Iran with an initial capex commitment of USD 500 million, which will help serve our interests in the Gulf country coming out of sanctions, and in the broader region as well. The minister today said an immediate benefit of developing the Chabahar port will be cheaper gas availability, which can help reduce the urea subsidy bill by Rs 45,000 crore. PTI Art of Living controversy: Time to get facts right India oi-Oneindia By Nandhini Sundar New Delhi, June 3: The verdict was clear. The Art of Living Foundation would have to pay up the remaining Rs 4.75 crore as compensation for the damage caused to the Yamuna riverbed during the three day World Culture Festival hosted in the month of March. The National Green Tribunal in a recent hearing rejected AOL's appeal to form a fresh panel to inspect the site to offer an 'unbiased' report and arrive at the final environment compensation fee. The tribunal also rejected AOL's plea to pay the balance amount of the interim compensation in the form of a bank guarantee. AOL has all along claimed that no damage was done to the flood plains as a result of the three day festival; that the impact assessment done by the appointed committee is not scientific and hence requires a fresh fair assessment of damage if any. If the whole episode is seen objectively, there is a strong ground for AOL's contention that the assessment done currently is biased. Let us for starters take the manner in which the damage has been assessed by the NGT. The expert committee from NGT made a cursory one hour visual inspection of the land allotted for the festival to assess the damage and compensation was fixed based on this assessment. No qualitative or quantitative assessment of the actual impact or damage was carried; no samples were taken, no scientific analysis done. Any scientific analysis takes a specific amount of time. It requires, besides many grades of analysis, sampling of existing data, collating it with historical data along with various rounds of screening. Such an analysis would also need to be correlated with the actual facts of what the organisation had done on the flood plains, along with what actually prevailed before they took over the land to host the festival. None of this happened. When scientific scrutiny and analysis have been missing in the entire assessment and compensation demanded, it is only fair for the organisation to demand such an assessment be done before slapping a huge amount as compensation package. AOL is also accused of releasing organic enzymes into the Yamuna and polluting the river. If the river was really polluted by releasing enzymes, is there data to prove that? Was the BOD value measured before such release and compared with the values after the release of the enzymes to prove this contention scientifically? Incidentally the Barapullah drain, with great liberty, empties untreated waste water into the Yamuna. Does this not amount to pollution and if so, the same environmentalists battling against the enzymes should have long back taken up this issue and made noise. Why has that not happened? Interestingly, the same flood plains house many colonies on one side while construction for three hospitals is currently underway in another section. Besides, permanent structures such as the DND flyway, Batla House, unauthorised housing along the Kalindi Bypass, the Commonwealth Games village as well as the Nafees road coming from Jamia Millia Islamia have stood on the flood plains for years. No objections, no environmental damage, no compensation has been slapped on those responsible for these. But the three day event which involved no permanent construction, even the huge stage being a floating one without a foundation, invited so much flak as well as claims of irreparable environmental damage. A couple of weeks back, reports of a contempt notice being served to AOL founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar made the rounds when none such had actually been served. This was an offshoot of a petition filed based on unverified newspaper reports of Sri Sri's comments on NGT which were later found to be baseless. Reacting to the recent NGT's rejection of AOL's appeal, Sri Sri tweeted, "Since the Art of Living has not created any air, water or soil pollution, we will fight till the end for justice." If indeed damage has been done, let that be proved beyond doubt through a scientific analysis. If environment damage is truly the bone of contention, let the permanent structures occupying the rest of the flood plains along with the issue of Nalas emptying untreated waste into the Yamuna be taken up with the same seriousness and commitment. Such a commitment would demonstrate the seriousness of the petitioners in safeguarding truly our rivers and environment. Factual reports on such would again display sincere commitment by media where there can be no case of wilful bias or hounding of any particular organisation. It is certainly time to get the facts right. (The author is a freelance journalist and editor of a design magazine) Bihar's 'prodigal' Class XII toppers skip review exam India oi-Mukul Patna, June 3: Three Class XII toppers of Bihar School Examination Board(BSEB) on Friday skipped the review examination. Reportedly, Arts topper Ruby Rai who pronounced 'Political Science' as 'Prodigal Science' failed to appear before the committee that conducted a retest exam on Friday morning. Along with Ruby, other two toppers Saurabh Shreshtha and Rahul also skipped the exam. As per media reports, Ruby had informed the board office about her absence. Arts topper Ruby, who had described political science as a subject related to cooking had told board official that she was unwell and hence unable to attend the examination. Earlier, the BSEB had put on hold the results of the toppers of Arts and Science streams of class XII examination and called the first seven rank holders of the two streams for test following media expose on some of their purported inability to answer basic questions. "A total of 14 toppers, first seven rank holders each of Arts and Science streams have been called for a written exam as well as interview by a team of experts on June 3 to verify the truth of the results. Their results were also put on hold," BSEB Secretary Harihar Nath Jha said on Thursday. Some news channels had earlier shown the girl who topped the state government's plus two examination in Humanities had purportedly pronouncing 'Political Science' as 'Prodigal Science' and describing it as a subject related to cooking. Similarly, the boy who topped in Science was purportedly unaware of electron and proton. Both toppers hailed from the Bishun Rai college in Bhagwanpur in Vaishali district. The institution had courted controversy last year as well when the then Education Minister P K Shahi had ordered withholding its results following complaints of large-scale irregularities. OneIndia News (With inputs from PTI) Cash for Vote sting: JDS MLA G T Devegowda says not demanded money to vote India oi-Shreyas Bengaluru, June 3: A sting operation by a private channel on Karnataka MLAs at the outset of Rajya Sabha elections scheduled to be held on June 11 has sparked ripples in state's political circles, particularly former Prime Minister H D Devegowda's party Janata Dal (Secular). Four MLAs, Varthur Prakash (Independent- Kolar), G T Devegowda (JDS- Chamundeshwari), Mallikarjun Khuba (JDS- Basavkalyan), B R Patil (KJP- Aland) were secretly filmed by India Today news channel. Reacting to the operation by the channel, G T Devegowda told OneIndia he has not demanded money from the people he was approached by. "I have not floated any cash demand with them (India Today representatives) in exchange for vote." Four time MLA of JDS, G T Devegowda narrated the day he met representatives of India Today. He said, "initially when I met them in Bengaluru, they introduced as representatives of a national news channel." They wanted to deliberate on who are the candidates from JDS for RS polls. Devegowda further said, he informed the press persons that there will be a meeting on same and names would be declared after the meet. At present, he has no knowledge on candidates. After that, G T divulged, he went to a saloon. "Later, again I received a phone call from same people asking the names of candidates. I reiterated the same." For a meeting with H D Devegowda, G T continued, he went to Hotel Lalit Ashok, city's one of the upscale hotels. There again, private channel asked a same question, to which G T answered- final list will be out after meeting with former Prime Minister. This was shown in the sting operation. Three is no footage of him in the whole sting demanding money, he clarified. "After I left, G T conveyed, the representatives of the media caught hold of my son-in-law Ram." The press persons told Ram, they are not actually press persons, but middlemen in disguise. They told Ram that they have come on behalf of Congress RS nominee K C Ramamurthy to buy vote. Ram and press persons had little chat, in which, they offered some money. However Ram by himself did not demand any money to sell vote. "Post departure of press persons, Ram conveyed the conversation to me, to which I advised him to stay away". I had put a word with Kumaraswamy too on the same," G T said. OneIndia News Hurry! Limited period offer: IndiGo offers flight tickets starting Rs 829 for domestic flyers India oi-Reetu New Delhi, June 3: After IndiGo offered tickets at an all-inclusive fare of Rs 806 on certain domestic routes few days back, now it has rolled out yet another offer. If you want to travel between July 1 and September 30, Indigo is offering you tickets with fares starting at just Rs 829 all inclusive. IndiGo's earlier offer which was open till May 19 was applicable on travel between July 4 and September 30. Before that SpiceJet had also announced a discount sale to mark its 11th anniversary with fares at Rs 511 for domestic and Rs 2111 for international routes. Hurry! Limited period offer: SpiceJet offers flight tickets at Rs 511 for domestic flyers Budget carrier AirAsia India also had announced 50 percent discount in fare on return flights till May 18, for travel from August 1 to November 30, to mark the airline flying 2.5 million passengers since launching its operations in June 2014. IndiGo's latest offer starting from Rs 829 is named 'Here2there' and it says, "This summer, fly at fares starting as low as Rs 829." OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, June 3, 2016, 15:46 [IST] Will make roads in MP like 'Hema Malini's cheeks': Minister P C Sharma 'Rapists should be kept in jail permanently," says Hema Malini Dont want to be Hema Malini: RLDs Jayant Chaudhary kicks up row Media should focus on current situation of UP: Sambit Patra on Hema Malini row India oi-Shalini Mathura, June 3: Spokesperson of BJP, Sambit Patra on Friday, (June 3) Christianised Chief Minister of Utttar Pradesh Akhilesh Yadav over failure of government to control the law and order in the state. Patra, even requested media to focus on the state current issue over Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Hema Malini who was trolled on social media (Twitter) for posting picture of her shooting of the film 'Ek Thi Rani' at Madh Island in Mumbai while her constituency, Mathura was burning due to violence. In a press conference, Patra even assured people by saying that " I am sure Hema Malini will go to Mathura, she has expressed her grief over what has happened. Let's not divert from the issue." While questioning Akhilesh Yadav government over failure to control the situation and police safety issue Patra said " why has UP CM not reached the site of violence as yet?," [Hema Malini deletes tweets on film shooting, posts new ones on Mathura violence] Meanwhile, Akhilesh Yadav assured victims family and said that " I will ensure the strictest action under law against the perpetrators in the Mathura incident. Speedy prosecution of the accused." Here are some Tweets: Im sure Hema Malini ji will go to Mathura, she has expressed her grief over what has happened. Let's not divert from the issue: Sambit Patra ANI (@ANI_news) June 3, 2016 Maybe Hema Malini would have gone running, leaving her film shoot,if Kent company was on fire! Vinita Deshmukh (@VinitaDeshmukh) June 3, 2016 Instead of questioning Akhilesh Yadav over repeated failure of law & order in UP, some people outraging about @dreamgirlhema's tweet!! Priti Gandhi (@MrsGandhi) June 3, 2016 OneIndia News India and Qatar to ink Three MoUs News oi-Lisa By Lisa The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given its approval for signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between India and Qatar for cooperation in Skill Develop-ment and Recognition of qualifications, for strengthening cooperation in the field of Tourism and for Co-operation and Mutual Assistance in Customs Matters. The MoU for cooperation in Skill Development and Recognition of qualifications will facilitate work-force mobility, skill development and placement of youth in overseas jobs in Qatar. Qatar is an emerging tourism source markets for India (India received approximately 6313 tourists from Qatar in 2015). Qatar is a potential market for India in terms of Medical tourism and provides vast opportunity for India in this field. The signing of MoU with Qatar will be instrumental in increasing arrival from this emerging source market. The MoU for strengthening cooperation in the field of Tourism is being signed for attaining following objectives: 1. To create favourable conditions for long-term co-operation in the field of tourism for the mutual benefits. 2. To exchange expertise, publications, information, data and statistics related to tourism. 3. To encourage cooperation through the exchange of programmes, propaganda and advertis-ing materials, publications, films, promotion and marketing of their tourism products via media etc. 4. To exchange visits of Tour Operators or Media or Opinion Makers for promotion of two-way tourism. 5. To encourage co-operation between tourism sectors, tour operators, travel agents and oth-er tourism private sector's firms and bureaus in the two countries. 6. To encourage public and the private sectors to invest in tourism. The Union Cabinet has also given its approval for signing and ratifying of an Agreement between India and Qatar on Co-operation and Mutual Assistance in Customs Matters. The Agreement aims to entering into a bilateral Agreement on co-operation Customs matters between India and Qatar. The Agreement will help in the availability of relevant information for the prevention and investiga-tion of Customs offences. The Agreement is also expected to facilitate trade and ensure efficient clearance of goods traded between the countries. Qatar is an important trading partner of India. Trade between the two countries has been expanding over the years. In view of the steady growth in bilateral trade, it was felt imperative to provide a legal framework for sharing of information and intelligence between the Customs authorities of the two countries to help in proper application of Customs laws, prevention and investigation of Customs offences and to facilitate legitimate trade. A draft text of the Agreement has been finalised after mutual discussions. It takes care of Indian Customs' concerns and requirements, particularly in the area of exchange of information on cor-rectness of the Customs value declared, the authenticity of certificates of origin of goods and the description of the goods traded between the two countries. Maneka Gandhis Q&A Facebook Chat News oi-Lisa By Lisa As part of Vikas Parv to mark two years of Narendra Modi government all the ministers are trying to connect with the citizens and bring to them the major achievements of their respective ministries. The Union Minister of Women & Child Development, Maneka Sanjay Gandhi too held a live Q&A session on Facebook. The interaction was aimed to get a one-on-one feedback on citizens' perspective of Good Governance and suggestions on the way forward for Transforming India. The live chat, which began at 9 AM, received an overwhelming response with questions ranging from women's security to child health to the policies and schemes of the Ministry of Women and Child Development. Nearly 1,500 questions were received and 1,00,000 people were reached during the session. The main questions that were answered were on various topics ranging from the recently released Draft National Policy for Women to Adoption, Violence against women, Harassment against elderly women to Child rights, Foster care, Gender sensitisation, among others. The WCD Minister shed light on the various initiatives of the Ministry like digitisation of Anganwadis, One-stop centres to help women in distress, Training of women sarpanches, Panic buttons in phones, 33% reservation in police, Women volunteers in every village and several similar efforts for women and children of the country. She added that these initiatives have already started showing positive results and others would be apparent as time goes by. The success of the chat be measured by the fact that it had to be extended due to the heavy stream of questions. More Facebook Chats: The great response from the citizens encouraged the minister who said that, "Facebook Live Chat will be a regular feature as it is one of the finest ways to connect with people in the tech-savvy world". Maneka Gandhi had held the first Q & A session on Facebook India last year in September, in which she highlighted the new initiatives being taken up by the Government for women and children and also received valuable suggestions from the people. Important announcement by the minister: As a pioneering initiative to connect with people, Maneka Sanjay Gandhi invited women journalists from across India to a common platform. This will be the first time that journalists from various corners of the country will be brought together with others from larger media houses on June 7, 2016 in New Delhi. This will provide them a platform to interact among themselves, as well as with the Minister and Ministry's officials. They will get an insight into the Government's initiatives for women and children which it is hoped will empower them to write constructively about the same. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, June 3, 2016, 18:19 [IST] Mathura on edge as violence claims 24 lives India oi-PTI Mathura, Jun 3: The temple town of Mathura was today on edge after massive violence claimed 24 lives, including an SP and SHO, as police clashed with about 3,000 members of a little-known sect whose leaders have fled while 368 people have been arrested. An uneasy calm prevailed today as forces from other parts of Uttar Pradesh were rushed to bring normalcy to the town where a large cache of ammunition was recovered from the members of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi", an outfit claiming to owe allegience to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, in Jawahar Bagh area. The clashes took place when police went to evict the members of the sect, which has made outlandish demands for the removal of the President and Prime Minister and replacing of the Indian currency, from a 260-acre government land encroached by them. The police action followed Allahabad High Court orders. Mukul Dwivedi, Superintendent of Police and Santosh Yadav, Station House officer, Farah, were killed in the violence that also claimed the lives of 22 members of the sect. Among the 24 killed, the two policemen were shot dead and 11 were burnt to death due to cylinder blasts. Mathura clashes: SP City succumbs to his injuries; death toll rises to two The encroachers had set on fire the huts where bombs, explosives and gas cylinders were stored, before retreating from the site, he said. In all, 22 rioters including a woman were killed. Ahmed said there was "unprovoked" firing by the encroachers who pelted stones and attacked the policemen with lathis as they arrived at the site for a recce to carry out the eviction, leading to the death of two police officials. The violence led to political sparring with BJP, Congress and others attacking the government headed by Samajwadi Party while Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav ordered a probe by Divisional Commissioner of Mathura into the violence. The Centre sought a report from the state governemnt while Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke to Yadav and extended all support. However, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju attacked the state government saying there were some lapse. "The leaders of the sect Ram Vraksha Yadav, Chandan Gaur, Rakesh Gupta and others will be booked under the NSA Act," UP DGP Javed Ahmed told a press conference here. PTI This Diwali, UP CM Yogi asks govt employees to celebrate festival with needy, deprived families Mathura protesters were 'outsiders', says Samajwadi Party India oi-IANS By Ians English Lucknow, June 3: In an attempt to downplay the Mathura incident, the ruling Samajwadi Party on Friday asserted that the rioters involved in the violence were "outsiders" who had gathered at a park on the state government land for a protest. "They were not local people. They had come from neighbouring states of Bihar and Madhya Pradesh and had gathered at the park belonging to the state government. They were given permission to hold a peaceful protest for just two days," Uttar Pradesh Public Works Department Minister Shivpal Yadav said at a press conference. Political slugfest over Mathura violence He asserted that the protesters had refused to vacate state government land, despite repeated pleas and warnings from the administration for three years. Yadav asserted that the administration had cut off the water and power supply to the Jawaharbagh park in order to uproot the protesters. "If anyone from the police or the local administration is found guilty of not discharging his duty, he will be held accountable and will be punished," Yadav said. Thursday's violence saw 22 protesters and two police officers killed in the clash. Police has recovered a hoard of ammunition and weaponry from the protest site. IANS Prosecutions story may be attractive but should be backed by evidence My son took the wrong path: When a father turned in his ISIS recruit son India oi-Vicky New Delhi, JUne 3: The NIA which has registered six cases against the ISIS will file a chargesheet today against Mohammad Naseer, the computer engineer from Tamil Nadu who was deported to India from Sudan. The NIA is basing its entire case on the digital trail alleged to have been left by him. The 23 year old computer engineer from Tanjore was deported from Sudan to India on December 10 last year. The NIA chargesheet will have the name of his father too who incidentally is the witness in the case. The father had told the NIA about the message his son had sent him which read, " I have reached Sudan and joining the ISIS." Strong charges NIA officials say that the chargesheet is a strong one based on digital evidence. His chat transcripts on the social media sites apart from his mobile communication are all part of the chargesheet. The NIA in this case had sought information from the US on the exchanges between the accused and others. Naseer used pmohamednaserjobs@hotmail.com to communicate with his father. This was certified by the father who had told the NIA about his son's tryst with the ISIS. The statement of the father has been recorded under Section 164 of the Cr PC. The NIA will state in its chargesheet that Naseer had reached Sudan and was attempting to reach Syria through Libya. However he was stopped and later deported. The father's statement is crucial in the case. The father in his statement had said that his son had chosen the wrong path and his behaviour had increasingly become suspicious. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, June 3, 2016, 14:00 [IST] 'Kantara' box office collection: Rishab's flick to join $1-million club in US; check day-wise collection Solar eclipse to be sighted in Bengaluru for 45 minutes: Report News Flash: Ambika Soni, and Union Minister Suresh Prabhu elected to RS India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer Bengaluru, June 3: Fourteen persons including two police personnel and twelve encroachers died in Thursday night's clashes in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh. Get more latest national and international news updates of Friday, June 3. 11.55 pm: Leander Paes-Hingis beat Mirza-Dodig 4-6 6-4 10-8 to win mixed-doubles title at French Open 10.30 pm: Heart felt condolences to the families who have lost their dear ones in Mathura: VK Singh 10.20 pm: Maharashtra CM paid tribute to late union minister Gopinath Munde on his second death anniversary. 9.15 pm: Locals hold candlelight march for victims of Anti encroachment drive violence in violence. 8.47 pm: Pakistan says it loves Kashmir. What sort of love is this? Attacks on our jawans? Citizens also get caught in crossfire : JK CM Mehbooba Mufti 8.30 pm: Mathura clashes: He used to call himself a member of Azad Hind Fauj and follower of Netaji: Neigbour of Ramvriksh Yadav 8.20 pm:Any group can take name of Subhash Bose but one has to see activities they are undertaking, says Chandra Bose on Mathura clashes. 8.10 pm: Heavy rain causes water logging in Bhubaneswar, Odisha 8.00 pm: I am in touch with UP CM and the culprits need to be punished.Situation now under control in Mathura, says HM Rajnath Singh 7.40 pm: Union home minister Rajnath conveyed condolences to the families of the jawans martyred in Bijbehara 6.58 pm: SP Govt has to take care of the law and order in UP, says Hema Malini. 6.57 pm: It happened at 5 in the evening yesterday, but lot of things keeps happening, it wasnt that big yesterday, says Hema Malini. 6.56 pm: I am an artist, I had already been given dates for the shooting. Yesterday's incident wasnt expected, Hema Malini. 6.50 pm: 13 companies of BSF/CISF/CRPF and ITBP and 7,000 homeguards will be deployed tomorrow in the state ahead of the mass leave protest by police constables says Karnataka Home Minister. 6.42 pm: I am going to Mathura, I found out in the morning about the incident, says Hema Malini. 6.31 pm: 17 dead and 39 injured in the accident, says Krishnagiri District Collector. 6.31 pm: Accident in Melamalai (between Krishnagiri and Hosur, Tamil Nadu), private bus collides with a lorry and two cars. 6.09 pm: Sharad Yadav, Ram Jethmalani, and Misa Bharti also elected to Rajya Sabha. 6.05 pm: Congress' Ambika Soni, and Union Minister Suresh Prabhu elected to Rajya Sabha. 6.00 pm: 2 BSF jawans succumb to injuries in attack on security forces convoy by terrorists in J&K's Bijbehara. 4.52 pm: Security forces convoy fired upon by terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir's Bijbehara(Anantnag). 4.44 pm: On 8th will be a community reception. In afternoon PM will leave for Mexico. Same night he will leave for India reaching here on 9th, says MEA. 4.43 pm: That evening he will meet the business leaders in the US, says MEA. 4.32 pm: The enforcement directorate conducts raids at the residence of Suraj Prakash Sharma in connection with the AgustaWestland probe. 4.10 pm: PM arrives in Washington on the 6th. On the 7th he will meet President Obama followed by a lunch: MEA 3.46 pm: DGCA finds safety violations in Bengaluru based regional carrier Air Peagasus, five pilots suspended: DGCA. 3.30 pm: Delhi Mercedes hit & run case: Juvenile Justice Board reserves order for Saturday on police plea seeking transfer of case to trial court: ANI. 3.03 pm: Unabated violence is a stark reminder of the deteriorating law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh: Rahul Gandhi. 2.53 pm: Deepest condolences to the family members of police officers and others killed in the violence in Mathura: Rahul Gandhi. 2.37 pm: NIA files its first charge sheet against an alleged ISIS operative arrested in December last year (PTI). 2.23 pm: Involvement of Pak nationals in the Pathankot Air Base attack is an accepted fact & investigation in the case is underway: MEA. 2.10 pm: NHRC issues notices to the Union Telecom and Health Ministries over hazardous radiations from mobile phone towers. 1:58 pm: Akhilesh Yadav has failed on the grounds of development, maintenance of law & order: Randeep Surjewala, Cong on Mathura violence. 1:32 pm: The National Investigation Agency has filed a chargesheet against six persons who were arrested in a nation wide raid for allegedly promoting an ISIS module. 1:27 pm: Patna/ Toppers Re-Examination: Total 8 out of 14 toppers who were called for re-examination have come for the test. 1:21 pm: Hema Malini ji is extremely sensitive towards the issue, says Sambit Patra, BJP. 1:20 pm: Let's not divert the issue. The law & order is a state issue. Why has UP CM not reached the site yet?: BJP on Hema Malini. 1.07 pm: The fishermen went for deep sea fishing in two boats from Kochi. 1.00 pm: 13 toppers from Bihar School Exam Board (BSEB) from all streams sit for re-examination after objections were raised over their results. 12.35 pm: 7 locally made 'katta' pistols, 6 rifles and 178 live cartridges were seized, says UP DGP on Mathura incident. 12.15 pm: Court asked chief Secretary & DGP to file report within 4 weeks, asked authorities to ensure well being of the concerned people. 12.00 pm: BJP MP (Mathura) Hema Malini uploads shoot pictures on her Twitter even as death toll from Mathura incident rises. 11.38 am: Huge cache of arms and ammunition recovered from encroachers after yesterday's anti-encroachment drive in Mathura. 11.07 am: Wreath laying ceremony of 2 policemen who were killed in firing during Mathura incident. 10.30 am: SC expresses displeasure to MP Govt for illegally arresting two women under IT act, directs state to pay compensation of Rs 5 lakh to them. 10.00 am: LDF candidate P Sreeramakrishnan has been elected as Kerala Assembly speaker. 9.54 am: All patients stable and being given medical assistance. A medical team has also been sent to village, says Dr Hari Singh, Medical Officer. 9.30 am: Over 250 being treated for food poisoning after they consumed food at a wedding reception in Sikar, Rajasthan. 9.15 am: Rajnath Singh speaks to UP CM on phone regarding Mathura incident, expresses condolences to families of deceased police officials. 8.30 am: UP CM Akhilesh Yadav instructs PS Home and DGP to personally inspect in Mathura at the earliest and take stock of the situation. 8.25 am: Six people killed in a road accident on GT Karnal Road near Alipur in Delhi. 8.15 am: Prima facie it seems car rammed into a stationary vehicle, matter being investigated, says Pankaj Kumar. Additional DCP 8.05 am: Country-made guns, rifles, pistols & cartridges recovered from spot, search op underway, says DG (Law & Order) Mathura. 8.00 am: Six people killed in a road accident on GT Karnal Road near Alipur in Delhi. OneIndia News PM expected to push for India's NSG membership India oi-PTI New Delhi, Jun 3: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to strongly push for India's membership at the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) during his visit to Switzerland, Mexico and the US -- countries that are part of the elite group that looks after critical issues relating to the atomic sector. India has been pushing for membership of the 48-nation bloc for last few years and had formally moved its application on May 12. "This has been the objective we pursued for many many years. I think we have made lot of progress and that has led us to formally apply for the NSG membership some days ago. We are engaged with all NSG members," Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said. He said India was looking at a very major domestic expansion in nuclear power sector besides at a "very large" international collaboration with different countries and its entry into the NSG would help its objective of having clean energy. Insisting India not signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty should not be linked to its bid for NSG membership, he said India fulfilled all its commitments relating to atomic sector. "We have a very solid record with which much of the world is comfortable. India's NSG membership is not about arms: US to Pak The NSG has already made one exception for us. In a sense, our credentials have been examined, a judgement was arrived at in 2008. "In 2008, we gave some commitments, we gave commitments on separation of our nuclear programme, between civil and the strategic side. We agreed to accept and implement additional protocol... we faithfully followed up," he said. The Foreign Secretary said granting NSG membership to India is a "logical next step". During his talks with the leadership of Mexico, Switzerland and the US, Modi is likely to seek support for India's membership bid at the NSG. PTI PM Modi to interact with participants of Smart India Hackathon finale on August 25: MoE UK PM Liz Truss resigns after 45 days in office, successor to be elected next week PM Modi will embark on 5-nation trip Saturday India oi-PTI New Delhi, June 3: Prime Minister Narendra Modi sets off tomorrow on a five-nation visit to Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland, the US and Mexico during which the focus will be to broaden bilateral trade, energy and security cooperation and push for India's bid to become a member of Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). Modi is likely to seek support of Switzerland and Mexico for India's membership of the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group as both these countries are key members of the elite grouping. The issue is likely to figure during Modi's meeting with Obama in Washington on June 7. India has formally applied for membership of the NSG on May 12. During his talks with the Swiss President Schneider- Ammann the Prime Minister is also likely to raise the issue of black money stashed by Indians in Swiss banks. The Prime Minister will first travel to Afghanistan where he will inaugurate the Afghan-India Friendship Dam, earlier known as Salma Dam, in Herat province, along with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Both the leaders will also hold talks on a range of issues including current situation in Afghanistan. "Looking forward to my visit to Afghanistan tomorrow. I will join President Ashraf Ghani to inaugurate Afghanistan- India Friendship Dam in Herat. It is symbol of our friendship and would usher in hope, light up homes, nourish the fertile fields of Herat and bring prosperity to the people of the region," said the Prime Minister. Modi said he will exchange notes with "friend" Ghani on regional situation and "setting agenda" for bilateral cooperation in the coming period. From Afghanistan, Modi will travel to energy-rich Qatar tomorrow itself and from there he will leave for a two day visit to Switzerland on Sunday. PM expected to push for India's NSG membership About the Qatar visit, Modi said, "This visit will nourish the historical bonds of friendship deeply rooted in people to people contacts, energy, trade and investment partnership." "I will interact with the Indian workers at the Workers' Camp and some of the members of over 6 lakh Indians who have nurtured our relations through their sweat and toil." The Prime Minister will also interact with business leaders in Qatar with an aim seek investment and realise the full potential of trade and investment cooperation between the two countries. In Qatar, the Prime Minister will hold talks with his counterpart Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani and Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani on a host of issues which may include trade and security. My visit to Mexico, a privileged partner in the Latin American region, will give an impetus to India-Mexico ties. https://t.co/5ZpL6OZOgw Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 3, 2016 The programmes in USA include talks with @POTUS & address to a Joint Meeting of the US Congress. https://t.co/hT0AqA1RcS Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 3, 2016 My visit to USA is aimed at building upon the progress achieved in India-USA ties & adding new vigour to our strategic partnership. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 3, 2016 My Qatar visit is aimed at strengthening economic & people-to-people ties between India & Qatar. https://t.co/RmgmJ96ho1 Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 3, 2016 Looking forward to meeting President @ashrafghani & discussing India-Afghanistan ties, during my Afghanistan visit. @ARG_AFG Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 3, 2016 Tomorrow I will visit Afghanistan, where I will join the inauguration of Afghanistan-India Friendship Dam in Herat. https://t.co/4RN2JfcTjk Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 3, 2016 My Qatar visit is aimed at strengthening economic & people-to-people ties between India & Qatar. https://t.co/RmgmJ96ho1 Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 3, 2016 PTI In UP 166 criminals killed in encounters in past five years: Yogi This UP village lights up on Diwali, for the first time ever! RS, Vidhan Parishad polls: Stage set for contest in UP India oi-PTI Lucknow, Jun 3: Stage is set for contest in 11 Rajya Sabha seats from Uttar Pradesh and 13 seats for Legislative Council with two extra candidates remaining in the fray as deadline for withdrawal of nominations ended today, prompting major parties to work overtime to keep their flock together. Returning Officer and Principal Secretary (Assembly) Pradeep Kumar Dubey said none of the 12 candidates for Rajya Sabha and 14 candidates for the Legislative Council withdrew their papers. The contest for Rajya Sabha became interesting after Independent candidate Preeti Mahapatra, a social worker, filed her papers at the last moment as the 12th candidate for the 11 seats going to polls next week, thereby forcing voting. Several BJP MLAs and members of smaller parties besides some Independents have signed Preeti's two sets of nominations making chances of cross-voting a possibility. Congress has accused her of being a BJP candidate who could encourage horse-trading as her entry might queer the pitch of former Union minister and noted lawyer Kapil Sibal, who needs five extra votes for victory. Congress has 29 MLAs and each candidate needs 34 votes for Rajya Sabha win. Sibal is expecting help from BSP that had recently backed Congress in the Uttarakhand Assembly floor test to defeat "communal forces". Mayawati is yet to clarify which way her 12 surplus BSP lawmakers will go as after getting both its nominees elected. Ruling Samajwadi Party has fielded seven candidates for the RS, but the seventh candidate of the party is short of nine first-preference votes for victory. In the 403-member Assembly, ruling SP has 229 MLAs, BSP 80, BJP 41 and Congress 29. The rest belong to small parties or are Independents who hold the key. In this scenario, Rashtriya Lok Dal with eight MLAs has gained sudden importance. Despite being an open election, anti-defection law does not apply here. Therefore, even if an MLA violates party whip, he or she would not lose membership of the House. PTI Samajwadi Party downplays Mathura violence, BJP demands explanation India oi-IANS By Ians English Lucknow, June 3: A day after violence in Mathura left two police officers and 22 others killed, the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) and the BJP on Friday engaged in a war of words over the incident. While the ruling Samajwadi Party tried to downplay the violence, one of the most audacious in recent times in the state, and alleged that the protesters who fired on the police and killed the Mathura Superintendent of Police (City) and a station house officer were outsiders, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state president Keshav Maurya slammed Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav for the "lawlessness" and demanded he "reveal the reasons behind the violence". Maurya sought an explanation from the state government on why and how the situation was allowed to simmer for about two years and then to spin out of control when encroachments were to be cleared by police in Jawaharbagh in Mathura. "If you (CM) have the moral courage, expose the people who patronised the elements who led to this barbaric incident," Maurya said. The chief minister has since ordered a probe and said in a tweet that the guilty will be brought to justice. The opposition has alleged that Public Works Department Minister Shivpal Singh, the younger brother of Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, was patronising the Jai Gurudev organisation, an affiliate of which was behind the violence. The BJP also demanded action against the Mathura district magistrate and the senior superintendent of police for what it said was "intelligence failure and shoddy planning" to clear the area of encroachments after court orders, leading to huge loss of lives. The Samajwadi Party claimed that the encroachers were from Madhya Pradesh and other places and resorted to violence due to "unknown" reasons. IANS SC asks Rajasthan to ensure 'well being' of tribals of village India oi-PTI New Delhi, Jun 3: The Supreme Court today came to the rescue of some tribal families, whose dwellings in a village in Rajasthan's Kota district have allegedly been demolished by some mine owners, by asking the Director General of Police and the Chief Secretary of Rajashtan to ensure their "well being". A vacation bench comprising Justices P C Ghose and Amitava Roy also directed the DGP and the Chief Secretary to conduct an inquiry into the alleged incident and file their respective reports within four weeks. "The Director General of Police and the Chief Secretary are required to ensure the well being of villagers," the bench said when a counsel, appearing for a tribal woman, sought a direction to authorities to ensure that no more dwellings are demolished. The court was hearing a plea filed by Rekha, a tribal who hails from Julmi village of Kherahad in Kota district. She alleged that some mine owners treat the tribal villagers as their bonded labourers and have demolished about 42, out of 60 houses, in the village without even paying them in a bid to usurp their land. The plea also claimed that some unidentified persons have abducted Raniya, husband of petitioner Rekha, on December 4, last year. Besides seeking a direction for state police and others to produce Raniya, the plea has also sought an order for registration of an FIR under the SC/ST Act and other relevant provisions against the mine owners for allegedly demolishing the houses of the tribals. It has also sought an "order directing the respondents to re-construct demolished dwellings and the community temples of the petitioners and to compensate then with sufficient damage for the cutting and destruction of trees and also for their mental harassment". Not only the houses, the community temples have also been damaged by the mine owners, the plea said, adding that several trees have also been felled. PTI Want to lend helping hand to poor patients? Here is an initiative by AIIMS India oi-Mukul New Delhi, June 3: All India Institute of Medical Science(AIIMS), premier hospital of the country, has decided to take a good initiative, which may prove to be a big boon for the poor patients. Reportedly, AIIMS will launch 'adopt a patient' policy soon to provide a helping hand to patients who can't bear the burden of costly medical equipments. Under this policy, the hospital will officially urge people to come forward and help these patients. Hospital administration will garmer public fund through this policy and later it will be used for the treatment of selected patients whose economic condition will be pitiable. When asked about the initiative, Dr Deepak Agrawal, who heads the IT division at AIIMS was quoted by TOI as saying, "We admit about two lakh patients every year at AIIMS.Of this, 30%-40% are poor who cannot even pay for implants. In case of spinal injury, there have been cases where the families abandoned patients because they did not have the means to continue treatment or rehabilitate the patient at home. Such people will benefit from the policy". AIIMS director M C Misra will officially launch this donation policy on Saturday. According to hospital officials, since Wednesday when the trail process for the policy started, Rs 14,000 has been received. Currently, AIIMS help these patients who can't afford costly medical equipments with the help of the relief funds of the President and the Prime Minister. According to hospital staff these funds are not enough and at times patients are being told to arrange money for the treatment of their relatives. It has been found that on the name of helping these patients, various NGOs garner fund but maximum times money is being misused. This 'adopt a patient' policy will end such things by giving public a verified platform for donations. "Though surgery and consultation are free, most public hospitals charge for implants and other equipment needed post-surgery. Poor patients who come from states such as Bihar or Jharkhand do not have money to travel even nor do they have documents or wherewithal to seek funds from various agencies. Many die without treatment", Agrawal further quoted by TOI. OneIndia News In TN, 5 arrested for destroying food joint named after Periyar TN orphanage death: Officer placed under suspension for negligence & poor management 22-year-old duped of over Rs 7 lakh while using dating site Why a terror angle should not be ruled out in the Coimbatore cylinder blast case Tamil Nadu car explosion: 5 arrested in connection with the case Tamil actor-director Balu Anand dies of heart attack India oi-Reetu New Delhi, June 3: Tamil actor and director Balu Anand died in his house in Coimbatore on Friday. He died following a massive heart attack, family sources said. The 62-year-old actor complained of chest pain at his house in Kalampalayam and was immediately rushed to a nearby private hospital. However, he died on the way. Sathyaraj-starrrer 'Annanagar First street' and Vijayakant-starrer 'Nane Raja Naane Mantri,' were some of his hit films. The actor has appeared in several films like Pistha, Anbe Sivam, Anna Nagar Mudhal Theru among others. He is survived by his wife, son and a daughter. Balu has acted in some 100 films and directed a few Tamil movies. His mortal remains have been kept for public and others to pay their last homage at his home in Kalampalayam, Coimbatore. The funeral will take place around 3 PM today, according to reports. OneIndia News (With inputs from agencies) Three Indians illegally detained in Italy, freed India oi-IANS By Ians English New Delhi, June 3: Three Indian tourists carrying valid documents were illegally detained by the Italian police and were later freed only after intervention by the Indian embassy in Rome, a senior government official said on Thursday. "Our mission in Rome has reported that they received a distress call on May 30 from one Miss Apoorva, who informed that her brother Akshit Goel along with two of his friends -- all Indian nationals -- had been illegally detained by the Italian police in the town of Ventimiglia in north Italy," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said at his weekly media briefing here. "All the three Indian nationals were visiting Italy for tourism purposes and were carrying valid passports with valid Schengen visas," he said. Following this, Swarup said, the embassy assured the family of all possible help and contacted the Italian police authorities in Ventimiglia and the country's interior ministry in Rome. "The embassy was also able to establish contact with Akshit. He told our mission that he and his friends had been detained by the Italian police in the Ventimiglia railway station during a checking for illegal immigrants," the spokesperson said. "Later, they were flown along with other detainees to Bari, a town almost 1,000 km away in the south of Italy," he said. "Our embassy immediately contacted the police authorities of Ventimiglia and Bari as well as the ministry of interior affairs in Rome and apprised them of the problem." Swarup said that after checking, it was found that the Italian authorities had made a mistake and they promised to release the three Indians. "Finally, at around 9.30 p.m. on May 30, they were released from police custody," he said. "The embassy coordinated with the authorities to ensure proper arrangements and safe transportation of the Indian nationals from Bari to premises of the Indian embassy in Rome." Stating that the three reached the Indian mission on May 31 around 9 a.m., the spokesperson said that all three Indian nationals were lodged at the Indian embassy premises and provided adequate care. "The embassy made arrangements for their onward journey to Nice in France on the same day where they are enrolled for an internship programme at a French university," Swarup said. "Their families were informed of their safe release and the embassy assured them of all necessary assistance in getting them back safely to the university in France," he said, adding that the three reached the university on June 1. Swarup also said that India "strongly raised the issue" with the Italian authorities and was in touch with them to ensure adequate steps were taken so that such unfortunate incidents involving Indian nationals did not recur in the future. IANS Triple talaq being misused, reforms needed: Khan India oi-PTI Hyderabad, Jun 3: Amid a debate over triple talaq, State Minorities Commission chairman Abid Rasool Khan today said the practice has been "misused" to discriminate against women and harass them as he then appealed to 'Ulemas' to initiate reforms to protect rights of women. He also favoured a debate on the uniform civil code, focussing not only on the religious practices in Islam but across all religions, including child marriages and 'Sati among Hindus. The Commission serves the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Khan said the Commission has received about 30-40 complaints in the last three years pertaining to desertions after marriage. The complaints include desertions without giving "talaq" or "khulla" thus leaving the women to fend for themselves, not maintaining them or taking care of children, and harassing women when they go out for a job or try to earn their own livelihood. In some cases, triple talaq has been pronounced, and then the women have been left without any maintenance or any sort of support, he said. 50,000 Muslims sign petition against triple talaq "Earlier, we had held discussions with all stake-holders, including Ulemas (the body of Mullahs -Muslim scholars trained in Islam and Islamic law) and we were told that the matter is being dealt with by the All India Muslim Personal Law Board and shortly some decisions would be coming. But that has not come. "My opinion is that definitely there is discrimination against women by misuse of this provision under the Islamic act," he told PTI here. Khan said that as per Quran, "triple talaq" cannot be pronounced until and unless there is "mediation" and "time gap" (there is a process of dialogue, reconciliation and mediation) before the divorce takes place. "But subsequently it was amended or it was reformed in such a way (oral/unilateral divorce) that at that time the social requirements were met. But those reforms are today being utilised for harassing women", Khan said. He said in this context the Ulemas have to "open up" their "minds". "So, I think Ulemas also have to open up their minds, talk about this with stake-holders, try to speak to all the commissions and governments...how many women are being persecuted like this, and then reform the laws in such a way that it will also not hinder the Islamic Act as well as give due protection to women because the fact remains that Islam definitely provides equality to and protection for women. "Only by this issue (triple talaq), the whole tenets of Islam should not be questioned", he added. PTI 6 dead in 'militant attack' in Nigeria's south: army International oi-PTI Lagos, June 3: Six people were killed when militants attacked a boat belonging to Nigeria's state-run oil firm, the army has said, in the latest violence to hit the country's increasingly restive oil-producing region. The Niger Delta Avengers group, which has been attacking pipelines and facilities since early this year, denied involvement but claimed a separate strike and vowed to bring crude output to a halt. The deadly attack on the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) boat happened at about 5:50 pm (local time) on Wednesday in the Warri area of Delta state, which has seen a spate of attacks recently. "During the deliberate attack two soldiers were killed, one wounded, one soldier missing while four civilian staff attached to the house boat were shot dead," army spokesman Captain Jonah Unuakhalu said in a statement yesterday. No specific group was mentioned as being responsible and Unuakhalu said only "suspected militants... disguised as ordinary commuters" in five speedboats carried out the attack. But the Niger Delta Avengers quickly said it was not involved. "Killing of sleeping soldiers is not our style," it said in an email. "We promise the world that in this process of liberating our people, not a single blood of Nigeria soldiers will be wasted despite the provocation... "Our war is on oil installations not to take innocent lives," it said. The group earlier this week, however, warned it would step up its campaign with violence against facilities and personnel. "To the international oil companies and indigenous oil companies, it's going to be bloody this time around," it said in an email and a statement on its website on Monday. The group, whose targets have included oil majors such as Shell, Chevron, Eni and the NNPC, earlier claimed another attack. "At about 2:00 am today @NDAvengers blew up the Ogboinbiri to Tebidaba and Clough Creek to Tebidaba Crude Oil pipelines in Bayelsa State," according to its Twitter account. "This is in line with our promise to all international oil companies and indigenous oil companies that Nigeria oil production will be zero," it added. Nigeria's defence spokesman Rabe Abubakar confirmed the attack without giving further details, but said they were aware of those behind the group. "We know what they are doing," he said , indicating that several arrests made last month had led to fresh intelligence. 7-year-old boy missing in Japan forest found alive: Officials International oi-PTI Tokyo, Jun 3: A seven-year-old boy missing since being abandoned in a bear-inhabited forest in northern Japan as a punishment nearly a week ago was found alive today and reunited with his parents, officials said. The boy, apparently unharmed and in good health, was discovered at a military base. Reports said he had taken shelter in a hut and found a tap to drink from but was hungry and immediately asked for food when he was discovered. "A Self-Defence Force official who was on a drill found a boy whose age appeared to be seven," said Tomohito Tamura, spokesman for police in northern Hokkaido island. "There was no conspicuous external injury, and the boy introduced himself as Yamato Tanooka," he told AFP, adding that the boy's parents were reunited with him and confirmed he was their son. The child's sobbing father related the emotional reunion in a television interview. "I apologised to Yamato," his father said in a phone interview aired on TV Asahi, adding that his son nodded in response. "First of all, it's really great he is safe," the father said through his tears. "I can't find words. It's good." Self-Defense Forces spokesman Manabu Takehara told AFP that the boy "looked in good health" but was taken to hospital by helicopter for a check-up as a precaution. He had been missing since Saturday after his parents said they made him get out of their car on a mountain road as punishment for misbehaving -- actions that have seen them severely criticised. The parents originally told police their son had got lost while they were out hiking to gather wild vegetables, but later admitted they became angry and ordered him onto the road because he had thrown stones at cars and people. The local Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper said the boy had told police that on Saturday night he walked some distance to the corrugated metal hut on the military base -- located some 5.5 kilometres northeast of where he went missing. An unidentified Self-Defence Force official told national broadcaster NHK that there were two buildings on the perimeter of an exercise field, and that when the soldier opened the door of one of them he found the boy inside. "When the official asked 'are you Yamato?' the boy said 'Yes, I am'," he said. Another military official told NHK that the boy was hungry so the soldier who found him gave him something to eat. Nippon TV said there was a tap outside the hut and that the boy had been drinking water from it while he sheltered there. Japanese media interrupted regular programmes to broadcast news of the stunning development in the case which has drawn huge media attention -- and criticism of the parents' actions. AFP Donald Trump unfit to become President: Clinton International oi-PTI Washington, June 3: Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton launched a searing attack on Donald Trump, saying his foreign policy ideas were "reckless and irresponsible" and terming him "unfit" to become President. "Like many across our country and around the world, I believe the person the Republicans have nominated for President cannot do the job. Donald Trump's ideas aren't just different they are dangerously incoherent. "They're not even really ideas just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies," Clinton said yesterday in San Diego, California. During the speech, which was being billed as a major foreign policy and national security address, Clinton minced no words in going after the presumptive Republican nominee on various issues -- from his past statements on international affairs to his temperament for the job. "He is not just unprepared - he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility. "This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes because it's not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin," she said. "We cannot put the security of our children and grandchildren in Donald Trump's hands," she said. "We cannot let him roll the dice with America. This is a man who said that more countries should have nuclear weapons, including Saudi Arabia." "This is someone who has threatened to abandon our allies in NATO the countries that work with us to root out terrorists abroad before they strike us at home," Clinton said. She took a dig at Trump's past business dealings as well. "He believes we can treat the US economy like one of his casinos and default on our debts to the rest of the world, which would cause an economic catastrophe far worse than anything we experienced in 2008," she said. Referring to some of Trump's recent foreign policy remarks, Clinton said the billionaire does not deserve to be the President of the United States. "Unlike him, I have some experience with the tough calls and the hard work of statecraft. I wrestled with the Chinese over a climate deal in Copenhagen, brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, negotiated the reduction of nuclear weapons with Russia, twisted arms to bring the world together in global sanctions against Iran, and stood up for the rights of women, religious minorities and LGBT people around the world," Clinton claimed. "And I have sat in the Situation Room and advised the President on some of the toughest choices he faced. So I'm not new to this work. And I'm proud to run on my record, because I think the choice before the American people in this election is clear," she said. PTI Same town, same time: Idol for Durga Puja celebrations vandalised in Bangladesh again Protests at Donald Trump rally in California International oi-PTI Los Angeles, June 3: Protesters gathered outside a rally for Donald Trump in California, as police braced for violence that has erupted at similar events for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The protesters chanted "No hate in our state" and carried signs that read "Dump Trump" as they marched near the San Jose Convention Center in northern California. Police were out in force, at one point forming a line to allow Trump supporters access to the rally and prevent clashes that have erupted at a number of the real estate magnate's events in recent weeks. One Trump supporter was egged while others were spit on. A protester was seen burning an American flag. Several fistfights erupted but were quickly broken up. Trump was last in the San Jose area in April, when he spoke at the California Republican Party convention where protesters blocked access to the venue, forcing him to use the back door. San Jose police chief Eddie Garcia said in a statement earlier that he expected 12,000 to 15,000 people at the rally yesterday and that his officers would do their utmost to respect people's right to protest. Union members, community activists and religious leaders had pledged to protest Trump's event. Last week, dozens of protesters were arrested in San Diego after a campaign appearance by Trump, who has angered many with his rhetoric against Hispanics, women, Muslims and others. Protests at a Trump rally in New Mexico last month also turned violent as demonstrators overran barricades and clashed with police in riot gear. PTI Thai temple: Truck carrying two tiger skins and other animal parts held International oi-Pallavi Bangkok, June 3: On Thursday, Thai police stopped a truck carrying two Tiger skins and other animal parts as it was leaving the temple. The temple has been the centre of controversy as wildlife activists alleged that illegal animal smuggling were happening here. Soon after, a raid was conducted where the authorities found 20 jars containing preserved young Tigers at the temple. This happened just a day after 40 dead Tiger cubs were found in a freezer at the temple. The discoveries came after authorities were transferring 137 live Tigers mostly adults, from the temple to animal shelters after obtaining a court order. Located in Kanchanaburi province, in western Thailand, the temple is one of the most popular tourist attractions here. Tourists are charged for spending time with Tigers here, feeding or bathing them. Animal Rights activist, meanwhile said that the temple and the surrounding park are not properly set up to care for the animals and flouted regulations restricting the trade of Tigers. wo men carrying the Tiger skin were arrested and charged with the possession of illegal wildlife. Police col. Bandith Meungsukhum said that a monk travelling with the truck will soon be arrested once he is defrocked. The truck was also holding 700 vials of Tiger skin and many Tiger teeth hidden in a suitcase. Such vials are considered good luck charms. The young Tigers preserved in the jars were found in the vet's office at the temple, said an official from the Department of National Parks who has been overseeing the transfer of the temple's tigers to shelters. An adult Tiger can fetch between $6,000 to $10,000, as per Steve Galster, who is the director of Freeland, the organization that fights wildlife trafficking. The monks resisted the taking away of Tigers, but relented this week when a court order was produced. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, June 3, 2016, 14:28 [IST] UCLA shooter Mainak Sarkar had a kill list; Shot wife dead before killing professor International oi-Pallavi Los Angeles, June 3: Mainak Sarkar, the UCLA PhD student, who shot a former professor dead has a 'kill list'. Apparently, he was going according to that, which included his wife- Ashley Hasti-in Minnesota before embarking into a 2,000 mile drive to Los Angeles to kill his former professor William Klug. Officials in Hennepin County said that Sarkar and Ashley were married on June 14, 2011. However, it was unclear whether they were still married or not as they were living separately. Klug 39, a father of 2 was killed in his office in th euniversity campus, before Mainak turned the gun on himself. Klug taught mechanical and aerospace engineering. There was another professor in his list, however Sarkar could not trace him in the campus. Los Angeles police chief- Charlie Beck- said that in a note in his pocket, it was mentioned that his cat be looked after and also led police to his home in Minessota where the 'kill list' was found. Hasti was found dead of gunshots at her home. Police said that she was killed before Sarkar went on a killing rampage in Los Angeles. Police said, "We believe he went there to kill two faculty of UCLA," Beck said. "He was only able to locate one. The second member was off campus." Beck further added. "He arrived at the UCLA campus heavily armed. He was certainly prepared to engage multiple victims with the ordnance he had at his disposal." Sarkar was convinced that Klug had stolen his computer code and given it to someone else. He was therefore helbent on revenge. Beck said, "That appears to be his motive. We have discussed this with UCLA (which) says there is no truth to it. This was a making of his own imagination." [Read: 2 killed in murder-suicide shooting at UCLA campus ] OneIndia News While Mathura burned, local MP Hema Malini was busy tweeting about her new film Lucknow oi-Shubham By Shubham Lucknow, June 3: It's not even a year to go for the next Assembly election in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh and all parties, including the hapless Congress which could win just two of the 80 seats in the state in the last Lok Sabha election, are preparing for the show which could indicate the way ahead for Indian politics in the next decade. But strangely, none of the big leaders have addressed the violence which broke out in Mathura on Thursday, resulting in the death of over 20 people, including the superintendent of police. Except the state's chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav, who is fighting a strong anti-incumbency and Home Minister Rajnath Singh who condoled the deaths, none of PM Narendra Modi, AAP convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal or Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi were seen making any remark on Twitter. Something which they or their office do on almost every second issue. [Hema Malini leaves BJP left red-faced] Even BJP MP from Mathura Hema Malini was seen posting photos of her ongoing shooting of the film Ek Thi Rani at Madh Island in Mumbai on Twitter. Not a single minute was available for the Dream Girl to say anything on the violence in her constituency? She of course tweeted on Mathura violence later after deleting the earlier tweets but by then, the social media was already abuzz. [Hema Malini deletes tweets on film shooting, posts new ones on Mathura] The BJP MP didn't feel to tweet anything about Mathura violence? The PM of the country might be too busy (though it is difficult to accept the fact that Modi did not tweet on this issue for he doesn't even forget the birth date of the Afghanistan president) but why didn't the local MP turn up after Mathura witnessed such a horrific incident? Was it too local for her or is she more interested in issues that give her an opportunity for photo-ops with high-profile leaders like Modi? Celebrity MPs: They seem to have neither time nor will It is infortunate that the celebrities who become public representatives by buying their trust ahead of the election do little to stand by them at the time of need. Hema Malini's husband Dharmenda, another veteran actor who had become an MP from Bikaner in Rajasthan of 2004, was also accused of neglecting it. It seems politics doesn't suit the family. But why didn't BJP or Congress rise to the occasion? Are they waiting for anti-incumbency against SP to get stronger? But as a political party, why didn't the BJP capitalise on the issue before the elections? Did it decide to wait and see the ruling Samajwadi Party face the flak (since law and order is a state subject) so that it gains from the anti-incumbency next year? The same question can be put before the Congress. If negative verdict is the only cause that the parties of the day live for to defeat the rivals, then Indian politics is set for gloomy days ahead. Oneindia News Fire breaks out at industrial estate in Mumbai, no one hurt HC relief to 3 Thane corporators from disqualification Mumbai oi-PTI Mumbai, June 3: The Bombay High Court on Friday, June 3 stayed the disqualification of three corporators from Thane who are facing charges of abetting suicide of builder Suraj Parmar. Hanumant Jagdale (NCP), Vikrant Chavan (Congress) and Sudhakar Chavan (MNS-turned-Independent) were granted relief by vacation Judge B R Gavai on the ground that Najeeb Mulla, NCP corporator from Thane and co-accused in this case, had been given similar relief earlier. The three corporators had been disqualified by the Thane Municipal Corporation on the orders of Urban Development department of Maharashtra Government. Jagdale, Vikrant and Sudhakar had moved the High Court challenging their disqualification on the ground that the BJP-Sena government in the state had disqualified them due to political vendetta. Earlier, all the four Corporators were granted bail by Thane sessions court. Parmar had shot himself dead on October 7, 2015. He had left behind a suicide note blaming some politicians for mental harassment and demanding payoffs. After forensic tests on the builders note in which he had struck out the names of politicians after mentioning them, police had named corporators, Najib, Jagdale, Vikrant and Sudhakar as accused in the case. The four corporators were then charged with abetment of suicide, criminal misconduct and bribery under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act. Action was taken to disqualify the Corporators under the provisions under Section 13 of Maharashtra Municipal Corporation Act, 1949, which allows the government to remove a corporator found guilty of any misconduct. The matter would now come up for hearing and admission before a regular bench after the summer vacation. PTI Ola cab driver held for molesting Delhi judge New Delhi oi-IANS By Ians English New Delhi, June 3: An Ola cab driver has been arrested for molesting a judge, police said on Thursday. Driver Sandeep was arrested from Gurgaon following the complaint from the additional city judge, at the Tis Hazari court. The case was filed at Roop Nagar police station in north Delhi under sections 354 (making sexual remarks), 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult modesty of a woman) and 427 (mischief causing damage to the amount of fifty rupees) of Indian Penal Code. The judge alleged in her complaint that she had booked an Ola cab and told the driver to stop at a market place for sometime but he started shouting at her after waiting for just two minutes. "The driver threw the judge's bag out from his cab and made sexual remarks against her," a police officer said, citing the complaint. --IANS rak/vd For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, June 3, 2016, 9:55 [IST] Sharing terror data with the US: How effective is this move? New Delhi oi-Vicky New Delhi, June 3: India and the United States of America both have agreed to share data on terrorists. First and foremost this is an arrangement and not an agreement. It was Rajiv Mehrshi, the union home secretary who signed this arrangement with US Ambassador Richard Verma. Such an arrangement would help both countries on the war against terror. This was in fact proposed first by the United States of America in 2012, but it never moved forward owing to reservations from security agencies. However this time around things have moved and India is confident that it would benefit a lot especially when it comes to terrorists using the social media. Reservations at first It was in 2012 when the US first proposed such an arrangement. The intelligence bureau had expressed reservations at that time. The IB had said that it would only benefit the US. The IB felt that it would only India which would be sharing the data which ideally would mean the whole exercise would revolve round protecting US interests alone. However this time around the modalities were worked out. It is a quid pro quo arrangement which would involve both nations sharing information. For India the benefit from such an arrangement would be to counter terrorists on the web space. The US is better equipped in fighting cyber terrorism. Moreover the US also tracks terrorists faster on the internet and if there is suspicious activity then they could share the information with India. An Intelligence Bureau official says that they did have reservations at first. However now it is a quid pro quo arrangement which would mean information sharing would be a two way street. The US too would benefit from us since we keep a close watch on terrorism in this region, the officer also said. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, June 3, 2016, 11:21 [IST] 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. 2008-2022 One News Page Ltd. All rights reserved. One News is a registered trademark of One News Page Ltd. Rumble 01 Sep 2022 Decided to visit the 1st CAV memorial wall on Fort Hood, TX. I havent been here since it was built. Seeing my battle buddies.. Daily Record 16 Oct 2022 Ahead of a meeting between Biden and Truss in New York last month he hit out at "trickle down" economic policies, associated in the.. bizjournals 25 Oct 2022 Airline traffic at Mineta San Jose International Airport dipped for a second month in a row as the summer travel season came to a.. 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ABC15 Arizona 23 Jul 2019 PAPUA New Guinea has been encouraged to set up a permanent representation in Geneva so that it can be involved in talks on global policies regarding trade and investment.United Nations Conference on Trade and Development secretary-general Dr Mukhisa Kituyi passed on this message to Trade, Commerce, and Industry minister Richard Maru during a bilateral meeting on the margins of the African, Caribbean and Pacific leaders summit in Port Moresby this week.Kituyi told Maru that Geneva was the centre of trade policy and trade negotiations at the global level.The World Trade Organisation, United Nation Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and International Trade Centre headquarters are there.Kituyi said Papua New Guinea was a member of these organisations but was not being adequately represented as a result of weak and disjointed participation in discussions on a daily basis in Geneva.He said strategic and focused participation in international debate and negotiations on global policy making was no longer a luxury but a prerequisite for all countries both big and small.Kituyi encouraged Papua New Guinea to consider the urgent establishment of a mission in Geneva.This requires permanent and consistent presence in Geneva. The stakes are not just timely for the present but also for the future, he said.UNCTAD is the principal organ of the United Nations General Assembly dealing with trade, investment, and development issues.The organizations goals are to maximize the trade, investment and development opportunities of developing countries and assist them in their efforts. Reprinted from Mike Malloy Website First fatal major media shooting of June. Probably not the first actual shooting, that probably occurred in some poor neighborhood shortly after midnight. But the first one that garnered camera time was the murder suicide at UCLA on Wednesday. President Obama -- and VEEP Joe Biden -- tried to pass meaningful gun reform legislation after the horrendous Sandy Hook tragedy, to no avail. Obama's subsequent executive order to tighten background checks had little effect -- if any -- on the number of needless gun deaths over the last few years. Given the (presumed) choice between a president Clinton or Trump in 2016, you can be sure nothing will change. And in Trump's case, his Supreme Court picks could assure teachers in elementary schools were armed to the teeth. Cuddling up to smelly Ted Nugent, Trump said he'd like to see guns in every school and would end "gun free zones," even though his hotels and casinos are gun-free. Go figure. As Greg Palast said, we live in an armed madhouse. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are in a statistical dead heat in California for next Tuesday's primary, where a whopping 475 delegates are up for grabs, which is why the Hillary surrogates are beating the bushes arguing that Bernie is "hurting the party" with his continued campaign. Uh -- how does that work again? If Sanders has energized a new democratic voting populace to register to vote, how does that hurt the party? Oh, it hurts YOUR bastardized version of the party -- I get it. The one where Hillary is to get the nod, regardless of what the people actually want. Got it. The only thing Bernie's campaign hurts is the optics for Hillary if she loses California, and therefore the entire west coast. That would be "bad optics" as the pundits like to say. One thing that might help Bernie at this point is if he started giving a damn about her damn email! As Huffington Post explains, (and as we have at length), the scandal could be her downfall. Why hide from it now? "Bernie Sanders must go on the offensive politically regarding the FBI's investigation of Clinton's emails and address the serious national security implications of this controversy. The current spin regarding the latest State Department report, from the Clinton campaign and supporters, focuses solely upon record-keeping. The mounds of paper Hillary Clinton would have needed to print (in order to abide by existing guidelines), or the archaic technology at the State Department have been integral to creating the narrative this story is simply about 'emails.' On the cusp of securing the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton has a problem: a lot of Democrats are unhappy with her campaign. They have three reasons to be unhappy. First, Clinton's approval ratings continue to be abysmal. Second, Clinton's handling of the State Department email flap has left even her most loyal advocates scratching their heads in dismay. And third, most sensible Americans are scared to death of Donald Trump and, therefore, appalled that many recent polls show Clinton and Trump in a statistical dead heat. Clinton detractors typically cite her low approval ratings, but they haven't always been low. Hillary was a popular Secretary of State. However, since leaving office her approval ratings have lost sixteen points -- from 56 percent to 40 percent. (It's small consolation to Democrats that, at the moment, Trump is viewed even more unfavorably than Clinton.) The bulk of Hillary's unfavorable rating hinges on the issue of trust. A recent Washington Post poll found that only 37 percent of respondents found Clinton honest and trustworthy. The fact that a lot of voters don't trust Hillary is partially the fault of Republicans and partially her fault. Once Clinton ceased being Secretary of State (where she had high approval ratings), Republicans attacked her on two fronts. First, Republicans accused Clinton of malfeasance in the Benghazi affair. Their three-year witch-hunt culminated in an 11-hour hearing before a House Select Committee. Clinton got positive reviews for her deportment and refuted all charges. Unfortunately, the protracted Benghazi investigation dragged down her approval ratings and opened up an email controversy. During the summer of 2014, the Benghazi investigation revealed that while Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton handled email via her private server. While this was not illegal, per se, it was a violation of State Department rules. Many Republicans believe that Clinton will inevitably be indicted; as do some Bernie Sanders supporters, who hope this indictment will lead to his winning the Democratic presidential nomination. The indictment won't happen. Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, and others, have concluded that it is unlikely Hillary Clinton will be indicted over her use of a private email server. Law professor Richard Lempert observed: "Based on what has been revealed so far, there is no reason to think that Clinton committed any crimes with respect to the use of her email server, including her handling of classified information." Nonetheless, the State Department Inspector General's report indicated that Hillary, like some of her predecessors, "flouted department regulations on the use of private email." As summarized by New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza: "The real trouble, at least so far, is not anything Hillary Clinton actually did while in office, but how Clinton responded to the initial accusations. Clinton repeatedly maintained that the use of her private e-mail system was normal and approved by the relevant officials at the State Department. The inspector general says that's not the case" [In addition] Clinton did not fully cooperate with the I.G. investigation." At a time when many voters do not regard Hillary as trustworthy, her handling of the email controversy is unforgiveable. Finally, many Democrats are unhappy with Hillary's presidential campaign. Some of their concern is situational: Trump secured the Republican nomination on May 26th and, at this writing, Hillary is still battling Bernie. Of course, Trump got a "polls bounce" from his victory and probably looks stronger now than he actually is. (The latest Huffington Post Poll of Polls finds Clinton ahead of Trump by 2 percentage points.) Nonetheless, Hillary is not as exciting a candidate as either Trump or Bernie Sanders. During a February interview Hillary admitted, "I am not a natural politician, like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama." It's likely the case that Hillary is an introvert who would much rather be reading a book or in the company of a few friends than addressing an arena full of yelling fans. Add to this a dislike of the press and it's no wonder that Clinton appears to many to be furtive. Hillary is intelligent and experienced -- the most qualified presidential nominee in decades. But she's not charismatic. To win the presidency Hillary has to do two things: First, she must do nothing else to make voters not trust her. And she needs testimonials. Recently, the Mother Jones' political correspondent, Kevin Drum wrote an important article about Hillary. He quoted another correspondent, Jill Abramson, who has covered Clinton for 20 years, who observed. "There are no instances I know of where Clinton was doing the bidding of a donor or benefactor." Drum concluded: "The truth is that regardless of how [Clinton] sometimes sounds, her record is pretty clear: Hillary Clinton really is fundamentally honest and trustworthy." Second, Hillary has to emphasize her experience and temperament. There are five months before the presidential election and Clinton has more than enough time to remedy her deficits and play to her strengths. Country United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe Given that US military forces killed hundreds of civilians in the same city back in 2004 and bequeathed a deadly radioactive legacy to the population from depleted uranium munitions, such belated American concern for civilian life in Fallujah does not sound credible. Could there be another agenda, such as preventing Iraqi forces from delivering a knock-out blow to the IS militants (also known as Daesh) holed up inside the city? Although the US is officially waging a war to defeat these jihadists, the terrorists are, at the same time, documented to function covertly as Pentagon assets for regime change in neighboring Syria. This week, US government-owned news outlet Voice of America ran this headline on Monday: "Concerns over civilian suffering as Iraqi forces surround Fallujah." The headline's wording was subsequently changed in later VOA editions after Iraqi forces actually began their offensive on the Daesh stronghold. Other Western news media outlets also expressed alarm that some 50,000 civilians trapped in the battleground city might come to harm from the intense fighting, or be used as human shields by its terrorist defenders. Daesh militants first occupied Fallujah in early 2014, and along with the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and eastern Syria's Raqqa, it formed part of the cross-border triangular axis of the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Retaking Fallujah would thus be a crucial strategic victory for the Iraqi government forces against the extremist group. It is believed that Fallujah, which is only 50 km from Baghdad, has been a major source of suicide bombers who have killed hundreds of civilians in the Iraqi capital over the past two years. Three suicide attacks earlier this week reportedly killed at least 20 people in greater Baghdad. The Iraqi military had surrounded Fallujah over the past week before launching their offensive. The delay was intended to give civilians as much chance as possible to evacuate. What seems curious is the apparent concern for civilian safety in Fallujah as expressed in the US and Western media. This is the same city that was almost razed to the ground by American and British forces during two major battles in 2004 -- one year after the US-led invasion of Iraq and the fall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The Fallujah resistance was then made up mainly of Sunni militia. During the US-British assaults on Fallujah, it is estimated that more than 1,000 civilians were killed -- a disturbingly high casualty toll, similar to that incurred by the armed militants. The Americans spared no effort to crush the resistance -- deploying over 10,000 troops, warplanes, 2,000-pound aerial bombs, helicopter gunships, howitzers and snipers in what was reckoned to have been the fiercest fighting by US forces since the Vietnam War. The US military even blared rock music at deafening levels in order to draw out protesters who would then be cut down by sniper fire. But the killing of civilians did not stop when those battles ended. Years after the artillery smoke cleared, the people of Fallujah have been battling alarming cancer rates and horrific birth defects as a result of the depleted uranium munitions that the American forces bombarded the city with in 2004. Millions of rounds of this highly toxic metal are believed to have been fired by US forces during their assaults on Fallujah. Several scientific studies, conducted by Iraqi and foreign medics, have since reported that the rate of cancer, childhood leukemia and fatal birth deformities have increased several-fold in Fallujah since the US-British military offensives against the city in 2004. In one study, it was found that the incidence of birth defects in Fallujah were higher than those recorded in Hiroshima or Nagasaki -- the Japanese cities hit by US atomic bombs in 1945. In addition to toxic uranium, US forces also indiscriminately used massive quantities of White Phosphorus as incendiary weapon against the city. One investigative Italian television documentary, The Hidden Massacre, confirmed numerous local reports that people had died from grotesque skin burns inflicted by the White Phosphorus. At the time of the offensives, the US military claimed that the phosphorus was being used as illuminating flares in order to target combatants. A year later, in November 2005, the Pentagon finally admitted that the chemical was actually used as an "incendiary weapon." US troops on the ground callously referred to the White Phosphorus bombardments in Fallujah as "shake and bake" operations, because of the twin-effect of inciting terror in the target population and burning victims down to the bone. A victim's head could be completely incinerated while the rest of the body remained unscathed. When the Americans and British were torching Fallujah and indiscriminately mowing down women and children, there was scarcely any expression of concern in the Western media about civilian casualties. It was justified as "collateral damage" in a "necessary war." The question is: is this duplicitous Western focus on Fallujah, then and now a reflection of mere hypocrisy or double-think? Or is there a more nuanced agenda? Gas Insulated Substation Market Driven by Need for High Efficiency in Power Distribution, to Reach US$35.8 bn by 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=2974 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Transparency Market Research (TMR) has announced the release of a new market report. The report deals with the global gas-insulated substation market and presents comprehensive analysis and accurate forecasts for the markets development in the forecast period from 2016 to 2024. The report is titled Gas Insulated Substation Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024 and is available for sale on TMRs official website.Substations are a crucial part of electricity distribution infrastructure, as they control distribution as well as transmission of electricity. Substations perform many important tasks in an electricity distribution system, such as converting a high-voltage current to one with a lower voltage value, and vice versa. The higher efficiency of a gas-insulated substations has driven their demand in the global scenario in recent years. According to TMR analysts, the global gas-insulated substations market is expected to more than double in valuation from 2015 to 2024. The market was valued at US$14.7 bn in 2015; exhibiting a robust 10.31% CAGR from 2016 to 2024, the market is expected to rise to a valuation of US$35.8 bn.Gas-insulated substations utilize sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) for insulation, which enables them to be much smaller than air-insulated substations, since less gas is needed for insulation. Gas-insulated substations can be up to a tenth of the size of normal substations. Sulfur hexafluoride is not only highly dielectric, which makes it an excellent insulating material, but it is also quite stable and doesnt degrade or deplete over time. This brings down the costs of gas-insulated substations significantly.The compact nature of gas insulated substations is particularly important in regions where there is a significant risk of natural disasters Japan, where these substations were developed, is a prime example. The rising urbanization in Japan and other Asia Pacific countries has also been a major driver for the global gas insulated substations market, since they can be installed in urban areas, causing little inconvenience to citizens living near it. Gas insulated substations can also easily be installed in harsh terrain, where their compact size and increased efficiency over air-insulated substations are a major benefit.View exclusive Global strategic Business report :According to geography, TMR analysts have segmented the global gas insulated substations market into Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, and Rest of the World. The report looks into the performance of the market for gas-insulated substations in each of these regions. Within North America, the U.S. and Canada are the major regional markets for gas-insulated substations. In Europe, Germany, the U.K., and France lead the demand along with the CIS countries. The Asia Pacific market for gas-insulated substations is led by India and China, whereas Brazil and the GCC countries are the major regional markets in the rest of the world.With an aim of explaining the competitive dynamics of the market, the report profiles major players in the global gas insulated substations market such as ABB Ltd., Hitachi, Ltd., Schneider Electric SE, GE, Fuji Electric Co., Ltd., Siemens AG, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Toshiba Corporation, Eaton Corporation plc, and Crompton Greaves Ltd. A financial overview and SWOT analysis is provided for each of these key players, along with an analysis of their business strategies and recent developments.The global gas-insulated substations market is segmented as follows:Gas Insulated Substation Market: By RegionNorth AmericaEuropeAsia PacificRest of WorldGas Insulated Substation Market: By VoltageMedium ( 72.5 KV)High (> 72.5 KV)About UsTransparency 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.Mr. Sudip. S90 State Street Suite 700Albany NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: datango reloaded: PARIS GmbH re-launches E-Learning and Performance Support solution Markus Rosskothen, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at PARIS GmbH www.datango.com Kaarst, Germany, 3rd June 2016 datangos performance suite (dps) one of the market leading content authoring solutions for enterprises globally was launched in 1999 and achieved tremendous growth and success until the acquisition by SAP, Germanys largest software company, in 2011. Since then, SAP has been marketing the software successfully under its own brand. Recently PARIS acquired certain assets from datango AG including versions of the dps not sold to SAP. Building on proven technology and success combined with its own new developments, PARIS is now aiming for new growth paths across B2B and B2C innovations.The datango performance suite EPSS and e-learning solution was launched by datango AG in 1999 and established in the market as a premium stand-alone product. In 2011, the solution was acquired by SAP and integrated into its portfolio. Effective 1st April 2016 PARIS GmbH started go-to-market activities incl. marketing, support and development of a new dps under the datango brand as a division of PARIS GmbH, building on the software versions acquired from datango AG. Markus Rosskothen, Chief Executive Officer at PARIS GmbH and former datango employee, explains: Knowing the ins and outs of the datango performance suite from the very start, we have the passion and necessary business expertise to build on its success.Functionalities as featured in the dps are an integral component of business applications in many companies. The e-learning and electronic performance support system supports rollouts and migrations of enterprise solutions such as SAP ERP, accompanying users throughout the entire software lifecycle. The solution provides a navigation aid in the live system, and facilitates the automatic generation and translation of process documentation, training manuals, software simulations, and real-world e-learning environments. This increases user acceptance which is a crucial factor especially when introducing new business applications, while simultaneously reducing input errors and support costs.As a division of PARIS GmbH Process Automation Robotics Information Systems datango provides leading technologies for process navigation, automation, documentation, and e-learning. Among other things, the datango solutions support businesses in the specific qualification of their employees for the rapid rollout and smooth operation of enterprise applications. The software solutions feature a navigation aid in the live system and automatic generation of documentation and training records, software simulations, and real-world e-learning environments. As a result, datango helps reduce input errors and support costs and thus increase user acceptance. The new datango performance suite is designed to become once again an integral component of business applications in companies from various sectors all around the world.datangoA division ofPARIS GmbHDaimlerstrasse 8a41564 KaarstGermanyContact person:Markus Rosskothen-Chief Executive Officer-Tel.: +49 (0)1522-2661930Email: m.rosskothen@datango.com Hydrocolloids Technology Market : Global Industry Size, Growth, Share, Outlook and Forecast 2022 - Brisk Insights http://www.briskinsights.com/report/hydrocolloids-market-forecast-2015-2022 http://www.briskinsights.com/sample-request/86 http://www.pdfdevices.com/global-hydrocolloids-market-is-expected-to-grow-at-the-cagr-of-6-1-during-2015-2022-brisk-insights/ http://www.briskinsights.com/ According to a recently published report, the Global Hydrocolloids Technology Market is expected to grow at the CAGR of 6.1% during 2015-2022. The global Hydrocolloids technology market is segmented on the basis of source, type, application, function and geography. The report on global Hydrocolloids technology market forecast 2015-2022 provides detailed overview and predictive analysis of the market.The major factors driving the market are rising demand of natural hydrocolloids due to the increasing health conscious consumers, Multi functionality of hydrocolloids leads to the wide application of hydrocolloids, Continuous R&D and innovation in the field is leading to production of better and advanced products and this in turn is boosting the market. Another major reason for the growth of the market are emerging market in various geographic locations. The rising use of hydrocolloids in food applications is increasing since it has an ability to modify the viscosity of the substances depending on the quantity utilized.Browse Full Report with Toc :Some of the factors acting as the restraint for the market hydrocolloids technology market are Gap created in the demand and supply of resources due to their shortage in the market. Also the regulations in the market for food stabilizers are hindering the growth of the market also an uncertainty in the market is created by fluctuating prices of the raw materials.Some of the companies of the industries are E.I. Dupont De Nemours and Company, Kerry Group PLC, TIC GUMs Incorporation etc.Scope of the report1. Global Hydrocolloids technology market by source 2012 - 2022 ($ billion)1.1. Plant Hydrocolloids1.2. Microbial Hydrocolloids1.3. Animal Hydrocolloids1.4. Seaweed Hydrocolloids1.5. Synthetic Hydrocolloids2. Global Hydrocolloids technology market by type 2012 - 2022 ($ billion)2.1. Gelatin2.2. Xanthun GUM2.3. Carrageenan2.4. Alginates2.5. Agar2.6. Pectin2.7. Guar GUM2.8. Locust Bean GUM2.9. GUM Arabic2.10. Carboxymethyl Cellulose (CMC)2.11. Others3. Global Hydrocolloids technology market by application 2012 - 2022 ($ billion)3.1. Bakery3.2. Confectionery3.3. Meat & Poultry Products3.4. Sauces & Dressings3.5. Beverages3.6. Dairy Products3.7. Others4. Global Hydrocolloids technology market by function 2012 - 2022 ($ billion)4.1.4.2. Thickener4.3. Stabilizer4.4. Gelling Agent4.5. FAT Replacer4.6. Coating Material4.7. OthersRequest Free Sample :5. Global Hydrocolloids technology market, regional outlook 2012-2022($ billion)5.1. North America5.2. Europe5.3. Asia Pacific5.4. Middle East & Africa5.5. Central & South America5.6. Central & South AmericaBlog :Contact Us :Jennifer SmithOffice 1094109 Vernon HouseFriar LaneNottinghamNG1 6DQPhone : +448081890034 (UK)Website :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 SAGlobal recognized as finalist for 2016 Microsoft Partner of the Year www.SAGlobal.com SEATTLE, WA., USA May 31, 2016 SAGlobal today announced it has been named a finalist in the 2016 Microsoft Dynamics Industry Partner of the Year Award. The company was honored among a global field of top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology.Being named as a finalist for the 2016 Microsoft Dynamics Industry Partner of the Year award is a great honor, explains Oli Gunnarsson, US CEO for SAGlobal. This recognition further validates our industry strategy, and highlights our commitment to delivering value to our clients through industry-focused ERP and CRM solutions, our SAGlobal IP, and our documented industry best practices. As Microsoft Dynamics AX continues to evolve into the cloud, our laser focus around delivering pre-built industry solutions will continue to be a major component of our go-to-market strategy.Awards were presented in several categories, with winners chosen from a set of more than 2,500 entrants from 119 countries worldwide. SAGlobal was recognized for providing outstanding solutions and services in Microsoft Dynamics Industry Partner of the Year Award.The Microsoft Dynamics Industry Partner of the Year Award is a Microsoft Partner's opportunity to showcase the solutions they've built on Microsoft technologies to benefit our mutual customers and win recognition for successes. Receiving an award positions partners for new business opportunities, differentiates their solutions from the competition, generates positive press coverage and can lead to even greater market recognition. We are honored to recognize SAGlobal as this years FINALIST of the 2016 Microsoft Dynamics Industry Partner of the Year Award, said Gavriella Schuster, general manager, Worldwide Partner Group, Microsoft Corp. SAGlobal is a prime example of the excellent talent we see in our Microsoft partner community to deliver innovative and transformative solutions to our mutual customers.The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards recognize Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered exceptional Microsoft-based solutions during the past year. This year, Microsoft acknowledged partners in 37 categories celebrating each of the core partner competencies, including cloud technology and newly added Cloud Customer Relationship Manager (CRM).SAGlobal has established itself as the leading global provider of Microsoft Dynamics AX ERP & Dynamics CRM solutions for Professional Services firms and other project-driven organizations. The organization has won multiple Microsoft Dynamics Industry Partner of the Year awards, including the 2012 and 2015 Microsoft Dynamics Service Industries Partner of the Year, and strives to be a recognized thought leader in this space. In addition to its traditional Microsoft Dynamics AX Service Industries ERP business, SAGlobal has also built a practice around the new Dynamics CRM Project Service Automation solution. To learn more about SAGlobal please visit:For additional information:Brenda Kubistek, (303) 596-6746, BrendaK@SAGlobal.comProduct or service names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.About SAGlobal:SAGlobal is a leading global provider of Microsofts Dynamics AX ERP and Dynamics CRM solutions and services to professional services organizations and other project-based businesses around the world. Established in 1990, SAGlobal has grown to become the largest specialist Microsoft Dynamics AX consultancy in the world, with roughly 500 employees worldwide. SAGlobal provides a complete set of Microsoft Dynamics evaluation, implementation, and support services. For more information, please visit Our WebsiteSAGlobal 1191 Second Avenue, Floor 1800, Seattle, WA 98101, USA Geriatric Care Services Market Size to exceed $1,101 Billion by 2023: Global Market Insights, Inc. https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/geriatric-care-services-market https://www.gminsights.com/request-sample/detail/433 www.gminsights.com Geriatric care services market size is projected to see revenue of USD 1,101.8 Billion by 2023; as reported by the latest study from Global Market Insights, Inc.Increasing geriatric population base coupled with growing disposable income levels is expected to boost care service usage rate in the coming years. Home care services dominate the global geriatric care services market share, and are poised to cross USD 468 Billion in revenue by 2023, at 6.7% CAGR.Browse Full Research Report with charts and figures:Along with this, favorable reimbursement policies across U.S., EU and other developed regions, along with the presence of untapped opportunities in the emerging regions of Asia Pacific and Latin America will drive growth. The number of geriatricians in the U.S in 2012 was recorded to be 8,512 and is projected to reach to 60,397 in 2022.Get sample pages from our latest research report @Institutional care centers dominate the industry, at over USD 279 Billion revenue for 2015. Medicaid, administered by states as per federal requirements, provides health coverage to American population including elderly adults.The industry is also positively impacted by rapid technological advances such as robotic technology for assisting elderly population, and growing usage of nurse call equipment. This has led to increasing demand for assistive services among the geriatric population living independently, thus driving the market growth.Economic development in the countries such as South Korea, China, India, Malaysia, and Brazil coupled with increasing aging population in these regions should present the geriatric care services market with untapped opportunities in the coming years.Lack of reimbursement policies, economically non-stable elderly population in emerging economies and unfavorable government initiatives are expected to impede industry growth.Key insights from the report include: Global geriatric care services market size estimate was USD 684 Billion in 2015, and looks poised to exceed USD 1,100 Billion by 2023. North America is the largest regional avenue for industry participants, accounting for close to 44% of sales in 2015, followed by Europe, Asia Pacific, LATAM and MEA. Presence of various long-term care centers throughout the U.S. is one of the most critical success factors for the growth of the U.S. geriatric care services market, with revenue being over USD 258 Billion in 2015. Key advantages associated with elder home care services include extra and dedicated time provided by the caregiver to the patients, maintenance of a good social life for elderly population, and providing facilities to the elderly to maintain their older lifestyles. Adult day care centers include services such as health, nutritional, social support, and daily living needs by professionally trained staff. Presence of underdeveloped geriatric care services infrastructure in Argentina and other Latin American nations is expected to present geriatric care services providers an opportunity to enter and tap these regions. India geriatric care market is set to gain at 9% CAGR up to 2023, from USD 13.8 Billion in revenue for 2015. Industry rivalry in the geriatric care services market share is expected to be moderately high, with industry moving towards consolidation. There are frequent mergers, acquisitions, and strategic alliances to enhance product portfolio and market presence.Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Global Market Insights Inc.29L Atlantic Avenue, Suite L 105,Ocean View, Delaware, United StatesWeb: Event About Donation Of $20,000 To James W. Wilson Elementary School By Builders Of New Park Releasing Date: 05-06-2016Location : 9430 Park Crossing,Montgomery, AL 36117Jim Willson and Associates donates $20,000 to the James W. Wilson Elementary School. Jim Willson and Associates has thrown a challenge to James W.Wilson Elementary School and Park Crossing High School for fundraising of $20,000 and James W.Wilson Elementary School got successful to collect $ 35000 from fundraising programs and events.As per the commitment Jim Willson and Associates representatives hand over a signed check of $ 20,000 to the Principal Meredith Bishop. As per the telling of Principal Meredith Bishop, received donation amount will be used in the development work of school and students. The donation will be used in upgrading of technology, library, electronic language translators and physical education equipment.About New ParkNew Park is a master-planned residential development in one of the montgomerys fastest-growing neighborhoods for latest homes. located near the citys newest schools and YMCA facility, new park offers a family-friendly design with beautiful sparkling lakes, landscaping and neighborhood pool.New Park is a master planned community that is providing the service of latest homes for sale. They also provide YMCA facility and family-friendly design with beautiful sparkling lakes etc.9430 Park Crossing, Montgomery, AL 36117 Vietnam Agricultural Mechanization Market Outlook to 2020 - Government Initiatives to Increase Mechanization and Enhancing Credit Availability to Drive Future Growth The 2025 projection for GDP of Vietnam is estimated to be USD 413.5 billion while the GDP (PPP) of the country is expected to reach USD 1,209.4 billion The future estimates indicate the contribution of the agriculture sector to decline in 2016 to 17.9% and by 2020; the sector is estimated to contribute 18.7% to overall GDP The revenues from the overall agriculture equipments market increased from USD 201.4 million in 2010 to USD 279.5 million in 2015, accounting for a CAGR of 6.8% Changes in labour force pattern, improving credit environment, government support for agricultural mechanization and a strong replacement demand are expected to drive the growth of agricultural equipments in VietnamKen Research announced its latest publication on Vietnam Agricultural Mechanization Market Outlook to 2020 - Government Initiatives to Increase Mechanization and Enhancing Credit Availability to Drive Future Growth provides a comprehensive analysis of the agricultural machinery market in Vietnam. The report covers aspects such as the market size on the basis of sales volume and revenue for Tractors, Combine Harvesters, Rice Transplanters and Tractor Implements. The segmentation for Tractors, Combine Harvesters and Rice Transplanters has been created on the basis of Horsepower while the segmentation for Tractor Implements has been showcased by products. The report also covers the market share, competitive landscape and working business model of major manufacturers, along with warranty policies and distribution channels of agricultural equipments. In addition to this, the report also covers the country overview, government regulation and agricultural overview of Vietnam. GDP, Per Capita Income and Population Demographics are analyzed in country overview. Land under cultivation, Changes in cropping patterns, farm holding structure and scale of mechanization are covered in agricultural overview. Regulatory policies, the import duty structure, certification and emission standard, subsidies and financing options are covered in government regulation. This report will help industry consultants, agricultural machinery manufacturers and dealers, retail chains, potential entrants and other stakeholders to align their market centric strategies according to the ongoing and expected trends in the future.The revenues from the overall agriculture equipments market increased from USD ~ million in 2010 to USD ~ million in 2015, accounting for a CAGR of ~% during the same period. The contribution by the tractor market to the overall market stood at ~% in 2015. Harvesters and Rice Transplanters contributed ~% and ~% respectively, to the overall revenues of the agriculture equipment market. In addition to this, the tractor implements market contributed approximately ~ % to the overall agriculture equipment market. The revenue from the tractor market in Vietnam increased from USD ~ million in 2010 to USD ~ million in 2015, achieving a CAGR of ~% during the same period. The market revenue for Rice Transplanters increased from USD ~ million in 2010 to USD ~ million in 2015, accounting for a CAGR of ~% from 2010-2015. The market revenue from combine harvesters increased from USD ~ million in 2010 to USD ~ million in 2015, accounting for a CAGR of ~% during the same period. The revenues from the tractor implement market augmented from USD ~ million in 2010 to USD ~ million in 2015, accounting for a CAGR of ~% during the same period.According to Research Analyst at Ken Research- A numbers of leading players in the market are importing products from other Asian countries such as China and Japan as import tariff has been reduced to 0%. These players should focus on manufacturing the products locally as the scenario of domestic manufacturing of agricultural machinery is poor in Vietnam. Additionally, since imports are not controlled, it leads to unfair competition between the domestic and foreign manufacturers. The government should provide more support to local manufacturers in order to enhance domestic production of agricultural machinery in the country.Key Topics Covered in the Report:Country Overview-Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Vietnam-Key Factors Driving Growth in GDP-Contribution to GDP: Agriculture, Manufacturing and Service Sector-Population Demographics Rural to Urban Population Agriculture and Non-Agriculture Population-GDP Per Capita of Vietnam-Logistics CostAgricultural Overview-Total Land under Cultivation-Distribution by Major Crops - Rice, Sugarcane, Cassava and Rubber-Changing Cropping Patterns in Vietnam and Factors Driving Change-Farm Holding Structure in Vietnam Number of Farms and Farm Holding Size Nature of Ownership-Regulatory Policies Impacting Farm Holding Structure-Agricultural Practices Extensive and Intensive Farming Scale of Mechanization-Irrigated and Non-Irrigated LandGovernment Policy Impacting the Agricultural Equipment Market-Regulatory Domestic Vs Importer Farmer National Economic and Social Development Plan-Import Duty Structure Agricultural Tractors Rice Transplanter Combine Harvesters Tractor Implements-Certification Emission Standards-Subsidies-Government Taxes-Finance Options Manufacturer Supported Finance Private FinanceMarket for Tractor and Agricultural Implements-Vietnam Agricultural Equipment Market-Tractor Market-Rice Tranplanter Market-Combine Harvester Market-Tractor Implements Market-Key Factors Driving Growth of Agricultural Equipment Market-Market Share and Competitive Landscape of Leading Manufacturers in Vietnam Agricultural Equipments Market-Competitive Landscape of Leading Manufacturers in Vietnam Agricultural Equipments Market-Price Range for Agricultural Equipments Retail Customer Price and Dealer Price- Geographical Distribution of Category Wise Sale of Tractors and Combine Harvesters- Business Model of Major OEMs in Vietnam Agriculture Equipment Market-Rental and Custom Hiring Market- Region Wise OEM Distribution Channel Points- Tractor and Implements Channel Strategies- After Sales Warranty And Support Policies- Export-Import of Agricultural Equipments in VietnamCustomer Insight- Decision Making Process for Procurement of Agricultural Equipments- Usage Pattern for Major Agricultural Equipments in VietnamAnalyst RecommendationsKey Products Mentioned in the ReportTractorsCombine HarvestersRice TransplantersTractor ImplementsCompanies Covered in the ReportKubota VietnamYanmar VietnamVEAMVikyno and Vinappro (SVEAM)Phan Tan Agricultural Machinery Company LtdRelated Reports:CHINA AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENT INDUSTRY OUTLOOK TO 2018 - PROMOTED BY FAVORABLE GOVERNMENT POLICIESINDIA AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENT INDUSTRY OUTLOOK TO 2018 - GROWING POTENTIAL OF RICE TRANSPLANTERS MARKETASIA PACIFIC AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENT INDUSTRY OUTLOOK TO 2018 - EXPANDING MARKET FOR LARGE SIZED TRACTORSContact:Ken ResearchAnkur Gupta, Head Marketing & CommunicationsAnkur@kenresearch.com+91-9015378249Ken Research is a Global aggregator and publisher of Market intelligence research reports, equity reports, data base directories and economy reports. The company is engaged in data analytics and aids clients in due-diligence, product expansion, plant setup, acquisition intelligence to all the other gamut of objectives through our research focus.27A, Tower B-2, Spaze I Tech Business Park, Sohna Road, sector 49 Gurgaon, Haryana - 122001, India Global Optical Network Terminal Equipment Market 2016, Size, Trend, Share, Analysis, growth, Forecast 2020 Optical Network Terminal http://www.qymarketresearch.com/market-analysis/global-optical-network-terminal-ont-equipment-market-2016.html Market Research Report on the Optical Network Terminal Equipment Market 2016 is a detailed report that presents a unique amalgamation of expert industry knowledge. The report presents the market trends and the market size of each individual sector. This report on the Optical Network Terminal Equipment market commences with a market overview and highlights the historical data pertaining to the Optical Network Terminal Equipment industry, coupled with information about the present scenario.The report further covers the market drivers and market restraints acting upon the industry. These drivers and the restraints are presented along with an explanation of their respective effect on the growth of the market in the forecast horizon. Moving further, the report elaborates the opportunities prevalent in the Optical Network Terminal Equipment industry and their affect on the prime players operating in the Optical Network Terminal Equipment market. The detailed segmentation of the market comes as the next part of this market research report.Request For Free Report Sample @The report comprises insightful information on the major segments of the Optical Network Terminal Equipment industry, coupled with the sub-sectors. Size of the key segments along with their revenue share with insightful forecasts is presented via this report. The other substantial sub-segments are also elaborated via this report. The report ponders upon the current key findings related to the Optical Network Terminal Equipment market, which act as an asset for the emerging industry participants. Towards the end of the report, a detailed evaluation on the competitive landscape of the market is presented. The top players along with their business overview have also been featured in this research study.The report also features contributions from various key industry participants prevalent in the Optical Network Terminal Equipment market. The major players top strategies, collaborations, market revenue, innovations, and various other developments have been covered in detail via this report. The insights related to the major companies prevalent in the Optical Network Terminal Equipment market will enable businessmen to gain knowledge on the market opportunities they can tap into, along with getting acquainted with the best of strategic decisions.Finally, "Worldwide Optical Network Terminal Equipment market" Analysis- feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.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.oel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803 Global Respiratory Monitoring Devices Market to Benefit from Increasing Prevalence of Respiratory Diseases http://bit.ly/1XnB8Sx http://bit.ly/1U1Fb42 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Respiratory disease is a serious public health concern due to rapidly growing number of smokers worldwide. Governments are implementing various health schemes to reduce the death rate caused due to respiratory disease and disorders. Respiratory disease is a medical condition that affects the structure and organs (respiratory system) associated with respiration or breathing.Rise in respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, asthma, and lung cancer has triggered the growth of the respiratory monitoring devices market. Moreover, there has been a paradigm shift from hospital care to home health care. This is due to high hospital expenditure, decline in medical reimbursement due to cost containment issues, and rise in the geriatric population. These factors have contributed to the growth of the respiratory monitoring devices market.Avail a Free Sample Research Report:In this blog post, TMR analysts answer three important questions about the global respiratory monitoring devices market:What are the major factors influencing the respiratory monitoring devices market worldwide?The global rise in the incidence of respiratory diseases, heavily boosted by the increase in the geriatric population, is the key factor fueling the demand for respiratory monitoring devices across the world. Apart from this, technical advancements are also propelling the worldwide market for respiratory monitoring devices significantly.On the other hand, the high cost of respiratory devices is impeding their adoption among individuals, thereby limiting the growth of this market considerably. However, the increasing focus of market players on expanding their businesses in emerging countries of Asia Pacific is expected to drive the market in the coming years.How will Asia Pacific prove to be beneficial for market participants?The high prevalence of unmet needs in the developing economies of Asia Pacific are likely to present lucrative opportunities to market players looking to venture into this region. The huge base of the population, various government initiatives to increase awareness pertaining to healthcare, and strengthening economies are expected to fuel the demand for respiratory monitoring devices in this region in the near future.In addition to this, the improvement in healthcare infrastructure and better disease management are projected to increase the adoption of expensive respiratory monitoring devices in hospitals and nursing homes in Asia Pacific, driving the market over the next few years.Which are the leading companies operational in the global respiratory monitoring devices market?ResMed, Smiths Medical, Masimo, GE Healthcare, MGC Diagnostic, COSMED, ndd Medical, and CareFusion are the leading participants in the global respiratory monitoring devices market. CareFusion emerged as the market leader in 2014 on account of its widespread presence and extensive product portfolio.At the American Association for Respiratory Care (AARC) Congress 2015, the company introduced its newest range of respiratory solutions including the CareFusion ventilation system, AirLife Respiratory Products, Infant Flow SiPAP system, Respiratory Diagnostics Pulmonary Function Testing (PFT) and Exercise, Transport and Emergency Preparedness Ventilators, Respiratory Diagnostics EMR connectivity, Respiratory Diagnostics Sleep, and several other solutions.CareFusion expects to strengthen its position in developing economies with this portfolio expansion.Browse Full Research Report:About UsTransparency 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.Contact UsTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Suma Soft IT & Technical Support Services USA http://www.sumasoft.com/it-technical-support/it-help-desk-services-usa/ Texas (USA), Canada (Toronto) & India (Business Network):One of the industry leaders in IT & Technical support services in USA, Suma Soft Pvt. 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Research study on Global Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Market Professional Survey Report market also discusses the opportunity areas for investors.View Full Report With Complete TOC, List Of Figure and Table:With 153 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.Download Sample this Report:8 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS)8.1 Core Informatics8.1.1 Company Profile8.1.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.1.3 Core Informatics 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.1.4 Core Informatics 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.2 LabWare8.2.1 Company Profile8.2.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.2.3 LabWare 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.2.4 LabWare 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.3 LabVantage Solutions8.3.1 Company Profile8.3.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.3.3 LabVantage Solutions 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.3.4 LabVantage Solutions 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.4 STARLIMS Corporation8.4.1 Company Profile8.4.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.4.3 STARLIMS Corporation 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.4.4 STARLIMS Corporation 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.5 Thermo Fisher Scientific8.5.1 Company Profile8.5.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.5.3 Thermo Fisher Scientific 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.5.4 Thermo Fisher Scientific 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.6 Autoscribe Informatics8.6.1 Company Profile8.6.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.6.3 Autoscribe Informatics 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.6.4 Autoscribe Informatics 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.7 Computing Solutions8.7.1 Company Profile8.7.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.7.3 Computing Solutions 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.7.4 Computing Solutions 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.8 Genologics?8.8.1 Company Profile8.8.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.8.3 Genologics? 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.8.4 Genologics? 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.9 LabLynx8.9.1 Company Profile8.9.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.9.3 LabLynx 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.9.4 LabLynx 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.10 PerkinElmer8.10.1 Company Profile8.10.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.10.3 PerkinElmer 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.10.4 PerkinElmer 2015 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Business Region Distribution AnalysisTo Purchase this premium Report atGlobal QY Research is the one spot destination for all your research needs. Global QY Research holds the repository of quality research reports from numerous publishers across the globe. Our inventory of research reports caters to various industry verticals including Healthcare, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Technology and Media, Chemicals, Materials, Energy, Heavy Industry, etc. With the complete information about the publishers and the industries they cater to for developing market research reports, we help our clients in making purchase decision by understanding their requirements and suggesting best possible collection matching their needs.Unit1, 26 Cleveland Road, South Woodford, London, E182AN, United KingdomEmail: sales@globalqyresearch.comFollow us: Europe Nucleic Acid Extraction Apparatus Industry Report 2016 Global QY Research http://globalqyresearch.com/europe-nucleic-acid-extraction-apparatus-industry-2016-market-research-report http://globalqyresearch.com/download-sample/55322 http://globalqyresearch.com/checkout-form/0/55322 https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-qy-research The recently published report titled Europe Nucleic Acid Extraction Apparatus Industry 2016 Market Research Report is an in depth study providing complete analysis of the industry for the period 2016 2021. 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Research study on Europe Nucleic Acid Extraction Apparatus market also discusses the opportunity areas for investors.View Full Report With Complete TOC, List Of Figure and Table:With 153 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.Download Sample this Report:7 Analysis of Nucleic Acid Extraction Apparatus Industry Key Manufacturers7.1 Roche7.1.1 Company Profile7.1.2 Product Picture and Specifications7.1.2.1 Type I7.1.2.2 Type II7.1.2.3 Type III7.1.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue7.1.4 Contact Information7.2 FORMOSA BIOMEDICAL7.2.1 Company Profile7.2.2 Product Picture and Specifications7.2.2.1 Type I7.2.2.2 Type II7.2.2.3 Type III7.2.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue7.2.4 Contact Information7.3 Geneinn7.3.1 Company Profile7.3.2 Product Picture and Specifications7.3.2.1 Type I7.3.2.2 Type II7.3.2.3 Type III7.3.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue7.3.4 Contact Information7.4 ABI7.4.1 Company Profile7.4.2 Product Picture and Specifications7.4.2.1 Type I7.4.2.2 Type II7.4.2.3 Type III7.4.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue7.4.4 Contact Information7.5 ALLSHENG7.5.1 Company Profile7.5.2 Product Picture and Specifications7.5.2.1 Type I7.5.2.2 Type II7.5.2.3 Type III7.5.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue7.5.4 Contact Information7.6 BioTeke7.6.1 Company Profile7.6.2 Product Picture and Specifications7.6.2.1 Type I7.6.2.2 Type II7.6.2.3 Type III7.6.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue7.6.4 Contact Information7.7 BIONEER7.7.1 Company Profile7.7.2 Product Picture and Specifications7.7.2.1 Type I7.7.2.2 Type II7.7.2.3 Type III7.7.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue7.7.4 Contact Information7.8 Hamilton7.8.1 Company Profile7.8.2 Product Picture and Specifications7.8.2.1 Type I7.8.2.2 Type II7.8.2.3 Type III7.8.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue7.8.4 Contact Information7.9 Bio-V7.9.1 Company Profile7.9.2 Product Picture and Specifications7.9.2.1 Type I7.9.2.2 Type II7.9.2.3 Type III7.9.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue7.9.4 Contact InformationTo Purchase this premium Report atGlobal QY Research is the one spot destination for all your research needs. Global QY Research holds the repository of quality research reports from numerous publishers across the globe. Our inventory of research reports caters to various industry verticals including Healthcare, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Technology and Media, Chemicals, Materials, Energy, Heavy Industry, etc. With the complete information about the publishers and the industries they cater to for developing market research reports, we help our clients in making purchase decision by understanding their requirements and suggesting best possible collection matching their needs.Unit1, 26 Cleveland Road, South Woodford, London, E182AN, United KingdomEmail: sales@globalqyresearch.comFollow us: United States Solar Thermal Power System Industry Report 2016 Global QY Research http://globalqyresearch.com/united-states-solar-thermal-power-system-industry-2016 http://globalqyresearch.com/download-sample/57127 http://globalqyresearch.com/checkout-form/0/57127 https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-qy-research The recently published report titled United States Solar Thermal Power System Industry 2016 Market Research Report is an in depth study providing complete analysis of the industry for the period 2016 2021. It provides complete overview of United States Solar Thermal Power System market considering all the major industry trends, market dynamics and competitive scenario.The United States Solar Thermal Power System Industry Report 2016 is an in depth study analyzing the current state of the United States Solar Thermal Power System market. It provides brief overview of the market focusing on definitions, market segmentation, end-use applications and industry chain analysis. The study on United States Solar Thermal Power System market provides analysis of market covering the industry trends, recent developments in the market and competitive landscape. Competitive analysis includes competitive information of leading players in market, their company profiles, product portfolio, capacity, production, and company financials. In addition, report also provides upstream raw material analysis and downstream demand analysis along with the key development trends and sales channel analysis. Research study on United States Solar Thermal Power System market also discusses the opportunity areas for investors.View Full Report With Complete TOC, List Of Figure and Table:With 153 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.Download Sample this Report:7 Analysis of Solar Thermal Power System Industry Key Manufacturers7.1 Abengoa Solar7.1.1 Company Profile7.1.2 Product Picture and Specification7.1.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross, and Revenue7.1.4 Abengoa Solar SWOT Analysis7.2 Ascent Solar7.2.1 Company Profile7.2.2 Product Picture and Specification7.2.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross, and Revenue7.2.4 Ascent Solar SWOT Analysis7.3 Areva Solar7.3.1 Company Profile7.3.2 Product Picture and Specification7.3.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross, and Revenue7.3.4 Areva Solar SWOT Analysis7.4 ESolar7.4.1 Company Profile7.4.2 Product Picture and Specification7.4.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross, and Revenue7.4.4 ESolar SWOT Analysis7.5 EnviroMission7.5.1 Company Profile7.5.2 Product Picture and Specification7.5.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross, and Revenue7.5.4 EnviroMission SWOT Analysis7.6 SkyFuel7.6.1 Company Profile7.6.2 Product Picture and Specification7.6.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross, and Revenue7.6.4 SkyFuel SWOT Analysis7.7 SolarReserve7.7.1 Company Profile7.7.2 Product Picture and Specification7.7.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross, and Revenue7.7.4 SolarReserve SWOT Analysis7.8 NextEra Energy7.8.1 Company Profile7.8.2 Product Picture and Specification7.8.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross, and Revenue7.8.4 NextEra Energy SWOT Analysis7.9 Torresol Energy7.9.1 Company Profile7.9.2 Product Picture and Specification7.9.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross, and Revenue7.9.4 Torresol Energy SWOT AnalysisTo Purchase this premium Report atGlobal QY Research is the one spot destination for all your research needs. Global QY Research holds the repository of quality research reports from numerous publishers across the globe. Our inventory of research reports caters to various industry verticals including Healthcare, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Technology and Media, Chemicals, Materials, Energy, Heavy Industry, etc. With the complete information about the publishers and the industries they cater to for developing market research reports, we help our clients in making purchase decision by understanding their requirements and suggesting best possible collection matching their needs.Unit1, 26 Cleveland Road, South Woodford, London, E182AN, United KingdomEmail: sales@globalqyresearch.comFollow us: Global Bacterial Disease Diagnostics Market 2016 Industry report http://www.syndicatemarketresearch.com/market-analysis/bacterial-disease-diagnostics-market-global-industry-perspective-comprehensive.html http://www.syndicatemarketresearch.com/request-for-sample.html?flag=S&repid=67200 http://www.syndicatemarketresearch.com/ Bacterial Disease Diagnostics Market - Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis and Forecast, 2015 2021Bacteria are type of microorganism that can cause disease and such harmful bacteria are called as a pathogen. Accurate identification of bacteria and pathogen detection is essential for correct diagnostics and treatment of diseases. Diagnostics of causative organism has always been difficult to identify as some organism shows analogous symptoms like fever, and lethargy.The rapid identification of the causative organism is necessary for the determination of effective treatment options. Traditional methods of bacterial identification have some major drawbacks. These old methods include culturing of sample on media, gram staining, and biochemical methods. These old methods are time consuming, and they can be used to organism that can be only cultivated in vitro.Read More @Molecular techniques are beneficial in overcoming some limitations of traditional methods. Currently, PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and other nucleic acid amplification test are the most commonly used techniques. PCR is efficient and cost effective method for amplifying the bacterial genome. PCR is the most sensitive among the existing rapid methods to detect microbial pathogens in clinical specimens. PCR assays are most useful for pathogens that are difficult to culture. The increasing use of PCR and real-time PCR equipment is likely to further enhance market growth.The report covers forecast and analysis for the bacterial disease diagnostics Market on a global and regional level. The study provides historic data of 2014 along with a forecast from 2015 to 2021 based on revenue (USD Million). The report also offers detailed competitive landscape of the global bacterial disease diagnostics market. It includes company market share analysis, product portfolio of the major industry participants. The report provides detailed segmentation of the bacterial disease diagnostics market based on type, technique, and region.The high incidence of infectious diseases, growing adoption of advanced molecular techniques, advancement in technology and new product development is expected to drive the bacterial diagnostics market. However, lack of awareness of new rapid techniques in the market, inferior laboratory conditions, and high cost would affect the growth of the market.Bacterial disease diagnostics market is segmented based on test type, techniques, application, and end users. Based on test type bacterial disease market classified into laboratory test, imaging tests and Biopsies. On the basis of techniques market is categorized into conventional techniques, biochemical techniques and molecular techniques. Molecular technique is widely used technique.For Free Sample Report @Major regional segments of the market include North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, rest of world. Geographically, bacterial diagnostics market was dominated by North America followed by Europe due to test availability and high incidence of bacterial diseases. Countries in the Asia Pacific have the largest market for bacterial diagnostics due to high prevalence of diseases in this region.Key players in this market are Abbott Laboratories, Auto Genomics, Biocartis, Bio-Rad, Genetics, Cepheid, Diagnostics, EKF Diagnostics, Eli Tech Group, Integra Gen Clinical, Interpace Diagnostics, Myriad Genetics, PerkinElmer Genomics, Qiagen, Quest Diagnostics, Roche Diagnostics, and Wafergen Biosystems among others.Syndicate Market Research provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Syndicate Market Research cover more than 30 industries includsing energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with one-stop solution for all the research requirements.Contact US:Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@syndicatemarketresearch.comWebsite: E-prescribing Market to Reach US$887.8 Million by 2019 owing to Enhanced Healthcare Infrastructure http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/e-prescribing-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=929 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ A new report has been published by Transparency Market Research, titled E-prescribing Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2013 - 2019. TMR, a market intelligence company based in the U.S., states that the global e-prescribing market was estimated at US$250.2 million in 2013 and is predicted to expand at a CAGR of 23.5% between 2013 and 2019, to reach US$887.8 million by 2019.Browse the full E-Prescribing Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2013 - 2019 report atThere can be a huge cut in costs with the utilization of electronic prescription or e-prescriptions, because these systems enhance the efficiency as well as quality of healthcare, along with promoting accurate drug utilization, presenting dispensers and providers with facts on drug coverage, with co-pay information and formulary alternatives. A majority of healthcare systems in emerging countries do not possess well-connected and integrated networks, which in turn affects their ability to utilize advanced features such as those offered by e-prescription systems effectively, hampering the markets growth.The global market for e-prescribing is experiencing substantial development due to a number of programs initiated by the government for the implementation of e-prescribing systems for reducing medication errors. The system of e-prescribing is utilized in numerous applications such as preparation of a complete medication list, patient and formulary historical data, and data security checks. All of these features related to e-prescribing act as drivers for the development of the market for e-prescribing. Enhanced healthcare infrastructure is also responsible for increasing the demand for e-prescribing systems. In addition, the implementation of electronic data storage in conjunction with e-prescribing systems holds enormous potential for the development of the market for e-prescribing. However, the soaring costs of e-prescribing systems and absence of patient security and privacy restrain the growth of the market for e-prescribing systems. To add to this, absence of high-speed broadband facilities and competent IT professionals in underdeveloped areas also impedes the growth of this market.Download Brochure:As per this TMR research report, the e-prescribing market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World (RoW). Europe constituted the biggest share in the global e-prescribing market. In Europe, the major role has been played by various eHealth projects in the implementation of e-prescribing system, such as Schleswig-Holstein Health Initiative and European Patient Smart Open Services (epSOS). Nonetheless, the most swiftly developing regional market for e-prescribing systems is North America. In North America, the rising adoption of e-prescribing systems as well as the enhanced healthcare infrastructure are the key drivers stimulating the demand for e-prescribing systems. Additionally, various initiatives by governments, such as the Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, and the National Council for Prescription Drugs Program, are also accelerating the utilization of e-prescribing systems.In Asia, the utilization of e-prescribing systems is rising owing to the development of the medical infrastructure as well as government initiatives. Developing medical infrastructure has resulted in improvement of rural clinics, urban healthcare centers, and primary healthcare services, via the implementation of healthcare IT technologies.The key players in the market include Cerner Corporation, Henry Schein, Inc., Athenahealth, Inc., HealthFusion, Inc., Practice Fusion, Inc., and ., DrFirst, eClinicalWorks.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a U.S.-based provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.Contact us:Mr. Sudip STransparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: M-Beads Direct - Magnetic Beads to Couple the Biological Molecule of Your Choice! M-Beads Direct ready-to-use coupling kit http://www.mobitec.com/cms/products/bio/03_proteomics/M-Beads-Direct.html Magnetize your molecule of interest, e.g., protein, peptide, or lectin, to unleash the power of magnetic bead technology in your research or project.M-Beads Direct includes easy-to-use magnetic silica beads and coating solutions enabling the immobilization of a specific biological molecule to a magnetic support.Many magnetic bead-based assays and specific capture beads are prepared by immobilization of biological molecules with expensive reagents like carbodiimide (EDC/NHS coupling). M-Beads Direct includes easy-to-use magnetic M-Beads and coating solutions enabling the immobilization of your specific biological molecule to a magnetic support. M-Beads Direct offers shorter and easier preparation processes and reduces the risk of errors.The coating of M-Beads Direct acts as a nanoglue, using non-specific electron donation from electron-rich groups of the target biomolecule, including -COOH, -CONH-, -NH2, -NHR-, -NR2, -OH, -SH, or -X.As a result, M-Beads Direct allows coupling of a wide variety of medium to large biological molecules, ranging from proteins such as antibodies, cell receptor proteins, lectins, peptide aptamers, and enzymes to non-protein molecules.With M-Beads Direct it is possible to turn ANY molecule that interacts with a specific partner into a powerful new biomagnetic reagent. Just magnetize the target molecule to unleash the power of magnetic bead technology in your research or project.M-Beads Direct can be used in many applications:Diagnostics Capture or purify any analyte using magnetic beads Develop quantative magnetic affinity assaysCell Therapy Research Use your own cell-specific ligands to isolate cells of interest Isolate or concentrate minority cell populations gently and efficientlyFlow Cytometry Remove interfering cell populations prior to flow analysis Attach your cell-specific ligand to M-Beads Direct and use it to pull out the interfering cells with a magnet Enhance FACS capabilities - add magnetic cell depletion or concentration steps before or after running a sortProtein Chemistry Purify delicate proteins or complexes with ease Avoid complex chromatographic separationsProduct Variants:M-Beads Direct 1.0 With a mean diameter of 1.0 m, M-Beads Direct 1.0 is especially suitable for immunoassays and capture reactions in volumes 1000 l.M-Beads Direct 3.0 With a mean diameter of 3.0 m, M-Beads Direct 3.0 is especially suitable for cell capture applications and capture reactions in high volumes or viscous samples.For details please see:About MoBiTec GmbHMoBiTec GmbH (Goettingen, Germany) is a privately held company (founded in 1987) that offers research tools for molecular and cell biology. Products include DNA vectors for cloning and expression, cell transfection reagents and cell culture tools, immobilized and soluble enzymes, products for genomics and proteomics research, numerous antibodies and recombinant proteins, superior fluorescence reagents and kits, affinity chromatography products, as well as general laboratory equipment.In parallel to its own product lines, MoBiTec distributes products from international companies in Germany. MoBiTec products are distributed worldwide, in Germany from their home office, in other countries by distributors.MoBiTec GmbHArne SchulzLotzestr. 22a, 37083 GoettingenGermany Automotive Elastomers Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth Trends and Forecast 2016 2023 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=11090 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ http://globalresearchanalysis.blogspot.in/ Elastomers are unstructured polymers prevailing beyond their glass transition temperatures such that significant motion is possible. Elastomers have very low intermolecular strength, low modulus of elasticity, and high strain of failure as compared to other materials. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and silicon monomers link to form the polymer, which eventually forms elastomers. There are two major elastomers used in automotive applications: synthetic and thermoplastic. Automotive elastomers are used in the production of components that need to withstand extreme temperatures such as hoses, insulators, seals, bushes, engine mounts, and gaskets. On the basis of the type of elastomer, the market is segmented into ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM), nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR), chloroprene rubber (CR), styrene butadiene rubber (SBR), fluoroelastomers, and silicone rubber under synthetic automotive elastomers. On the other hand, thermoplastic polyolefin (TPO), thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU), styrene block co-polymer (SBC), thermoplastic vulcanizates (TPV), co-polyester ether (COPE), and polyether block amide (PEBA) are segmented under thermoplastic automotive elastomers. On the basis of their applications in automobiles, the market is segmented into interior applications, exterior applications, under the hood applications, weather sealing applications, and molded parts applications.Get Free PDF Brochure for more Professional and Technical insights :Thermoplastic automotive elastomers have dominated the automotive elastomers market in the past few years. A similar trend is expected to continue during the forecast period due to its chemical geometry, which provides it the flexibility of desired customization. Automotive parts made of thermoplastic automotive elastomers are lighter as compared to parts made of synthetic automotive elastomers. This is likely to drive the thermoplastic automotive elastomers market during the forecast period. Several key players have introduced specialty grades for synthetic automotive elastomers. This is expected to propel growth of the automotive elastomers market during the forecast period. Interior applications such as air bags is expected to be the fastest-growing application of automotive elastomers due to recent sanctions levied on automotive manufacturers, which made airbags compulsory for all cars across the globe. Automotive elastomers being lightweight aid manufacturers in reducing the overall weight of the vehicle. Introduction of stringent emission norms and growing preferences toward high-efficiency automobiles are expected to primarily boost the automotive elastomers market.Asia Pacific is expected to be the leading regional market during the next few years on account of growing population in emerging economies such as China and India. Growth in the automobile industry in China and India due to rising disposable income is expected to be a key factor propelling the automotive elastomers market in the region. Europe is anticipated to witness a similar growth trend owing to presence of well-established automotive industry in the region. Stringent emission norms in Eurozone are anticipated to boost the market in Europe. Similarly, the automotive elastomers market in North America is expected to be driven by emission norms and growing preferences toward high-efficiency automobiles. Latin America is projected to witness steady growth during the next few years due to growth in automotive and textile industries in economies such as Brazil. Middle East and Africa is estimated to be a highly lucrative regional segment of the automotive elastomers market due to presence of growing automotive industry and high disposable income in countries in GCC and South Africa during the forecast period.Some of the major players in the automotive elastomers market include BASF SE, LANXESS, The Dow Chemical Company, Exxon Mobil Corporation, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC), 3M, Huntsman International LLC, LyondellBasell Industries N.V., Bayer AG, China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec), Kraton Performance Polymers Inc., PJSC "Nizhnekamskneftekhim", SIBUR, Versalis S.p.A., Momentive, Mitsui Chemicals, Inc., KURARAY CO., LTD., Asahi Kasei Corporation, TSRC Corporation, and Sumitomo Corporation.The report has been compiled through extensive primary research (through interviews, surveys, and observations of seasoned analysts) and secondary research (which entails reputable paid sources, trade journals, and industry body databases). The report also features a complete qualitative and quantitative assessment by analyzing data gathered from industry analysts and market participants across key points in the industrys value chain.A separate analysis of prevailing trends in the parent market, macro- and micro-economic indicators, and regulations and mandates is included under the purview of the study. By doing so, the report projects the attractiveness of each major segment over the forecast period.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactMr. Sudip. STransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit : What Does the Future of Mobility Devices and Aids Hold in Store? A new report on the global personal mobility devices market for published by Transparency Market Research (TMR) estimates the market to increase from US$6.7 bn in 2014 to US$12.7 bn by 2023. The research study, titled Personal Mobility Devices Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023, projects the market to report a CAGR of 7.30% during the period from 2015 to 2023. Get Free Sample Research Report: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=6715 Personal mobility devices assist individuals with mobility-related disabilities or neurological disorders or other diseases. These conditions could affect their mobility, circulation, or respiration and impede their day-to-day movements. The increasing incidence of arthritis and osteoporosis, together with the rising cases of accidents and bone injuries, is fuelling the demand for these devices significantly across the world. In this study, the global market for personal mobility devices has been evaluated on the basis of the type of device and the region. By the type of device, the market has been broadly classified into medical furniture and bathroom safety products and medical mobility aids and ambulatory devices. Wheelchairs led the medical mobility aids and ambulatory devices segment in 2014 with a share of 52.7% and the segment is likely to maintain its position over the forecast period. In the medical furniture and bathroom safety products segment, medical beds acquired the leading position with a share of 53% in 2014, states the report. Regionally, the report segments the worldwide personal mobility devices market into Latin America, North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East and Africa. North America dominated the overall market in 2014 with a share of 41.4%. The presence of a well-established medical and healthcare infrastructure and a favorable environment for reimbursement in this region have been the key driving forces behind the growth of this regional market over the past few years. The high demand for technically advanced devices, propelled by the growing geriatric population as well as the increasing pool of disabled patients, has also driven the North America personal mobility devices market significantly in the recent times, reports the study. Asia Pacific, on the other hand, is likely to experience the fastest growth among all the regions throughout the forecast period. The improving economy and healthcare infrastructure in Asian nations such as South Korea, Japan, and Singapore are expected to aid the growth of this market in the coming years. Apart for this, the availability of raw materials and skilled workers at low wages is prompting companies to venture into this region, owing to which the Asia Pacific personal mobility devices market is projected to register a significant rise over the forecast period, notes the research study. The market report also reviews the profiles of the leading companies in the personal mobility devices market in order to present the prevalent market hierarchy. In 2014, Invacare Corp. accounted for the highest share in the overall revenue generated in this market. Hill-Rom holdings Inc. emerged second in the market that year. Other prominent market participants mentioned in this study are Sunrise Medical LLC, Stryker Corp., Pride Mobility Products Corp., Permobil AB, Patterson Medical Holdings Inc., Otto Bock Healthcare Deutschland GmbH, Invacare Corp., Hill-Rom Holdings Inc., GF Health Products Inc., Drive Medical, ArjoHuntleigh, Argo Medical, and Amigo Mobility International Inc. Innovations and technical advancements in products are the major trends among market players, states the report. Full Research Report on Global Personal Mobility Devices Market: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/personal-mobility-devices-market.html Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge. 90 State Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY 12207 This release was published on openPR. Permanent link to this press release: Copy Please set a link in the press area of your homepage to this press release on openPR. openPR disclaims liability for any content contained in this release. New Player in an Open Access Publishing Market http://www.exeley.com/ Exeley Inc., a New York based, newly incorporated publishing company for scientific journals, announces its official launch as of the 1st of June 2016. The start-up combines expertise and best practices with the most advanced technological solutions currently available on the market. In cooperation with the biggest players in the publishing industry MPS Technologies and Aries Systems - Exeley aims to offer innovative solutions that will transform the way scholarly content is brought to the world.Exeley specializes in publishing using an Open Access model, and targets its offer to scientific societies and their journals. Working closely with MPS Technologies, the company offers its clients unique software solutions and a professional publishing platform, making the digital delivery processes more efficient and content easily available. Among the technological solutions delivered, societies can use functionalities such as responsive webpage design, social media integration, and performance metrics. These metrics are available for each article page and record citations and as well as the amount of Internet attention that the papers receive.We believe that when it comes to online publication of scientific content todays market expects something more than only high quality papers. Users, both readers and journal editors, expect accessible websites that present the content in a functional and aesthetic way, said Dawid Cecula, CEO of Exeley. Therefore, we deliver technology-driven solutions that are capable of addressing the specific requirements and needs of our clients.In addition to providing technology that enhances the readers experience, Exeley enables editors to track the development of their publication to ensure its increasing visibility. In cooperation with Aries Systems, the company provides online systems that allow editors to monitor the whole production process - from manuscript submission and peer-review, to production tracking.Exeley offers journals and their owners an innovative range of services that integrate publications with online content, social media, databases and libraries. The launch of the company was supported by a number of society publications, including journals indexed by Thomson Reuters.Contact Information:Exeley Inc.347 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1402-308New York - US 10016Phone: (+1) 347 854 3245Exeley is newly incorporated publishing company for Open Access scientific journals, that provides to its customers the most advanced technology currently availableExeley Inc.347 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1402-308New York - US 10016 ALISON Reaches 1 Million Learners in India Following Founder and CEO Mike Feericks visit to India this month, ALISON has announced it has passed the one million learner milestone in India.During his 10-day visit, Mr Feerick met with officials from the Ministry of Skills and the National Skills Development Council and also announced a new initiative with one of Indias largest training organisation AISECT.My trip to India was an inspiring experience and I was delighted by the warm welcome I received in both New Delhi and Mumbai. We are excited by the vast opportunities and potential we see for free online learning in India. Indian learners are exceptionally motivated, hardworking and with a real drive to succeed, commented Mr Feerick.In addition, Mr Feerick met with several ALISON graduates. Of the six graduates we met in New Delhi, four had flown in from locations throughout India, and one gentleman, a teacher from Ahmadabad on the West Coast travelled 16 hours by bus. He said he had to come to thank ALISON, which has been central to the operation of his private school for many years, and also to encourage us to become involved in Prime Minister Modis Skill India programme.ALISON graduates had varying stories to tell. One was an engineering student who was excelling in college as he was complimenting his classroom study with free study on ALISON; another was a cyber-security expert who took a free Diploma in Project Management which gained him a promotion. There was was also a student of manufacturing and supply management who used his ALISON learning in his familys manufacturing business in the North of India.Meeting ALISON graduates in India was a humbling experience, commented Mr Feerick, with learners giving credit to the team at ALISON HQ who are driving free learning opportunity for so many worldwide.With the milestone of one million learners in India now reached, Mr Feerick said that the opportunities opened in India this May will be quickly followed up on a second visit in July for Indias National Skills Day is already being planned. Prime Minister Modi wants to upskill 500million youths by 2020. We believe this can be achieved embracing the highly scalable learning solutions such as ALISON is providing.About ALISONALISON is the global leader in free online certified skills training for the workplace with 7 million registered learners, 800,000 graduates worldwide and a further 250,000 signing up each month to learn for free on the platform. Pioneering the MOOC (Massive Open Online Courseware) movement in 2007, ALISON provides 750+ free online courses at diploma and certificate level. ALISON is changing how the world learns through its free learning ecology. The company has received a number of awards for its pioneering work, including a UNESCO Award for Innovation in ICT for Education in 2011 and the World Innovation Summit for Education Award (WISE) in 2013.ALISON is the first free online learning platform that has been able to develop a scalable sustainable self-funding model. The ALISON free learning ecology is supported by a combination of advertising revenue and income from parchment sales and innovative learning products such as ALISON Study Groups a free learning management system developed by ALISON.Headquartered in Galway, Ireland, ALISON is a for-profit social enterprise founded by Mike Feerick.The majority of our learners in India are aged between 18-34 years with the highest concentration in the larger urban and internet connected population centres including New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. Other areas such as Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Utter Pradesh are also reporting strong growth.Level 1, Galway Technology ParkParkmore 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. Oregon's economy, buoyed by across-the-board increases in jobs and wages, is going "full-throttle," a panel of legislators learned Friday in Salem. And while concerns remain about how the state's lack of affordable housing might affect the economy, the bottom-line financial figures give Oregon one of the strongest state economies in the country, according to a new economic and revenue forecast. "It's all good news from an economic perspective," said Josh Lehner, an Office of Economic Analysis economist. "The economy is doing really well in Oregon today." Lehner, along with fellow state economist Mark McMullen, walked legislators through the new forecast, which looks at particulars such as employment trends and long-term growth projections. Current gains in some sectors are so robust, Lehner and McMullen said, that they aren't considered sustainable. Over the past two years, for instance, Oregon has added about 5,000 new jobs per month. That's far more than the 2,000 jobs needed to keep pace with population growth. "That means we are growing by an unsustainably fast rate," McMullen said. "At some point, once that slacks gets taken out, we will transition into more sustainable long-term growth." Revenue forecasts are issued four times a year and are intended to give legislators, employers and the public an idea of what to expect in terms of economic indicators. Friday's forecast was delivered to a joint meeting of the Senate Interim Committee on Finance and Revenue and the House Interim Committee on Revenue. Not surprisingly, Republicans and Democrats had very different reactions to the report. Republicans took particular aim at the forecast's projection that the ending fund balance for the state's 2015-17 budget is expected to fall short of earlier projections. That shift came after budget adjustments in the 2016 session, several approved with bipartisan votes. "With today's revenue forecast we learned that Oregon's economy is not keeping up with current spending levels," read a statement from House Republican Leader Mike McLane, R-Powell Butte, and Senate Republican Leader Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day. "Even with record revenues, our ending fund balance is expected to be $57.1 million below previous projections, largely due to overspending by Democrats during the 2016 session." Senate Majority Leader Ginny Burdick, D-Portland, didn't agree. "Today's economic and revenue forecast speaks for itself," she said in a statement. "Jobs growth is going strong, with 5,000 jobs added to the economy every month. State revenue projections continue to grow." Friday's forecast comes just as the 2015 tax-filing season has concluded. As of May 1, overall collections were down 30 percent over what had been expected, McMullen said. But a sudden rush of filings, sometimes totaling as much as $13 million per day, put overall collections on track to meet expectations. The minimum-wage increase passed by the 2016 Legislature also came under scrutiny, with the forecast predicting that 40,000 jobs will not be created between now and 2025 as employers adjust and adapt to the mandated increase. "There will be a near-term wage boost for workers, but over time, employers will respond to that," Lehner said. He added that the bulk of the economic sectors affected by slowing job growth among minimum-wage workers will include food processing, leisure and temp agencies. In response to a question from Rep. Phil Barnhart, D-Eugene, Lehner acknowledged that 40,000 jobs over 10 years represents just a fraction of the state's total workforce. General fund revenues for the 2015-17 biennium are expected to reach $18.02 billion. That represents an increase of 0.1 percent, or $17 million, from the state's previous forecast, and an increase of $1.9 billion relative to the 2013-15 budget year. A note of concern focused on the lack of not only affordable housing, but also total housing supply, both in Portland and across the state. "We have 1 million more people in Oregon now than we did during the 1980s," McMullen said, "but we are building the same number of new houses per year now than we were 25 years ago." He added that housing affordability -- one of Oregon's big draws compared to other West Coast states -- quickly erodes if an insufficient supply of new housing isn't being added. "The problem today that makes it a crisis," he said, "is that we're not building anything." -- Dana Tims 503-294-7647; @DanaTims GOP 2016 Trump A woman holds up a sign for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as she is escorted out during a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) (Jae C. Hong) Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, hosted a rally in San Jose, California on Thursday. People showed up to support him. Others to protest. Chaos ensued. It's an increasingly common scene as the primary season winds down. When Trump visited Eugene in early May, police there reported a few assaults as demonstrations took place outside the Lane Events Center. Then, weeks later, police in Albuquerque put the convention center where Trump spoke under lockdown when things got ugly outside. Some protesters in San Jose told CNN's Sara Murray that those acting violently "are embarrassed by their counterparts. They say throwing cones/eggs/cornering Trump supporters defeats their message," she tweeted. In one encounter, a woman taunted protesters, who in turn threw eggs at her. Protesters cornering Trump supporters as they leave. This woman taunted them. They cornered her & threw eggs at her pic.twitter.com/MiDGDBkKIo Sara Murray (@SaraMurray) June 3, 2016 In another, a Trump supporter was sucker-punched as he walked outside the venue. I called 911 but no one answered. Donald trump protest in San Jose, CA pic.twitter.com/LwaWyeYZfq Marcus DiPaola (@marcusdipaola) June 3, 2016 And in yet another, a rally attendee was left bleeding by another protester. NOW: #Trump supporter attacked and left bleeding in San Jose pic.twitter.com/kC2GVz9JcZ Tim Pool (@Timcast) June 3, 2016 Even a "Make America Great Again Hat" found itself the ire of protesters. Protesters set a Make America Great Again hat on fire pic.twitter.com/8Bss1GBfTH Sara Murray (@SaraMurray) June 3, 2016 Cursory searches for these sorts of incidents bring up one credible result: An altercation between supporters and protesters at a rally for Mitt Romney in 2012. Yet, in 2016, violence during rallies for Trump are practically expected. The Associated Press reported that approximately 300 protested, but that number "thinned significantly" afterward. Those who remained, per wire reports, were "rowdy and angry." --Eder Campuzano 503.221.4344 @edercampuzano ecampuzano@oregonian.com "I got involved from the day I heard that Kyron was missing," says Stacey Green. "If it was my kid I'd want someone to help me, no matter how long it took to get them home and justice served," says Green, a mother of three from Longview, Washington. Saturday will mark the sixth anniversary of the disappearance of Kyron Horman from Portland's Skyline School. His stepmother, Terri Horman, had brought the second-grader to school to attend a science fair. He never made it to his regular class and wasn't reported missing until later that afternoon when he didn't arrive home on the school bus. The 7-year-old's disappearance sparked the state's largest search-and-rescue operation but he has yet to be located. No arrests have been made. Green has volunteered countless hours trying to spread the message about Kyron Horman in hope that someone will hear his story who might have some information. She's particularly active on the Facebook page Kyron Horman's World Soldiers which she says she began after the boy's disappearance. She regularly posts photos of Kyron, fundraising information and other notes to volunteers. "I just don't want people to forget about him. I feel like he's slipping from people's memories." On Thursday morning, Green spent about an hour putting up decorations and signs at the "Wall of Hope" in Beaverton. Four sections of fence are adorned with faded notes, stuffed animals and photos of Kyron. She was joined by two other volunteers, who came to add new items and brighten up the wall in preparation for a public remembrance to be held there at 5 p.m. Saturday. The wall is at Xtreme Edge Gym, 16365 N.W. Twin Oaks Drive. People can add items to the wall then in support of the search for the boy and his family. "We'll let Kyron know and his family know that we haven't forgotten about him," said Green. "It doesn't matter how long it takes for justice to be served and for Kyron to be found. I 100 percent believe in my heart that he's going to be found. People just need to stick with us and hold out. It's coming close, I feel it is. I feel every year that it's coming closer." --Kristyna Wentz-Graff @kwgphoto Screen Shot 2016-06-02 at 3.30.38 PM.png A Multnomah County Circuit Court jury in May 2016 awarded $3.72 million to Kristine Haveman, who suffered a stroke in 2012 but wasn't diagnosed for about eight hours after arriving at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center. The verdict was against an emergency room doctor and his employer, Oregon Emergency Physicians -- not the hospital. (Photo by Mimi Burkholder) A 38-year-old stroke victim who claims doctors thought she was having an emotional crisis and let precious hours slip by without giving her clot-busting medications won a $3.7 million jury verdict last week against an emergency room doctor at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center. Kristine Haveman's attorney argued during an 11-day trial that even though Haveman was younger than most stroke victims, medical staff should have recognized her telltale symptoms: her initial collapse, confusion, non-responsiveness and inability to walk and talk. A radiologist at St. Vincent's in Northwest Portland also misread a CT scan, which showed a clot in her brain, according to Haveman's lawsuit. Most strokes occur in people over age 65, but they can happen at any age, said Jane Paulson, Haveman's Portland attorney. Paulson also pointed to statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention that say strokes kill twice as many women as breast cancer. Strokes are the fifth-leading cause of death in the nation, the agency says. About 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 25, 2012, Haveman collapsed in front of her children, ages 7 and 9, in the living room of their Portland-area home. The children called their grandmother and summoned help from a neighbor. Haveman arrived at St. Vincent's at 9:17 a.m., according to her lawsuit. Staff members acted fast, giving her a CT scan 20 minutes later. Paulson said the hospital was on track for swiftly getting her clot-busting medications. But in court papers, she said Dr. John Roll, a neuro-radiologist at The Radiology Group at St. Vincent's, misinterpreted the CT scan as normal and shared his interpretation with Dr. Kenneth Dirk. From there, Dirk and a resident from Oregon Health & Science University diagnosed Haveman as having a psychiatric episode over stress because she recently learned a relative was terminally ill, states a summary of the case written by Paulson and submitted to the court. About 10:30 a.m., doctors directed medical staff to give Ativan to Haveman. The drug is meant to reduce anxiety. By 4 p.m., friends who visited Haveman in the hospital realized she was having a stroke, Paulson's summary states. One of those visitors was a physical therapist who noticed that half of Haveman's face was drooping when she smiled, Paulson said. Haveman's friends told medical staff that she needed to see a neurologist immediately, Paulson said. By the time a neurologist agreed that Haveman likely had a stroke, it was after 5 p.m., according to the lawsuit. By then, it was too late to give Haveman clot-busting medications because the 3- to 4 1/2-hour window for administering the drugs had passed, the suit states. Paulson said surgeons also couldn't remove the clot because an eight-hour window had passed. Dirk told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Thursday that he couldn't comment. But in a court memo, his attorneys contended that he wasn't negligent, had met the "standard of care" expected of emergency room doctors and didn't cause Haveman's life-altering injuries. "Healthcare is not an exact science," the memo states. Jurors found Dirk and his employer, Oregon Emergency Physicians, negligent and responsible for Haveman's injuries. The jury awarded Haveman $1 million in economic damages and $2.72 million for her pain and suffering. Dirk still works at St. Vincent's, although he's not employed by the hospital. Paulson said Haveman was a high school teacher before giving birth to her children. Since her stroke, she has been able to work only as an elementary school substitute. Haveman now talks more slowly than she used to, has trouble articulating words, asked a friend how to spell the word "can" and isn't able to manage a classroom full-time, Paulson said. The suit also had listed as defendants: St. Vincent's, OHSU and Dr. John Roll and his employer, The Radiology Group. Roll has retired and couldn't be reached for comment. After trial started all of those defendants were dismissed. Paulson said she couldn't respond to a question about whether a settlement was reached. -- Aimee Green 503-294-5119 Across sixteen Portland-area school districts educating nearly 225,000 students, only one confirmed Thursday that it systematically tests lead levels in drinking water. For most school districts, spot testing hasn't occurred in years - if at all. Now, Portland's unfolding public-relations crisis over newly disclosed lead levels is pushing many other districts to promise sweeping lead testing this summer. The push follows efforts nationally to better track lead in the wake of excessively high levels found last year throughout Flint, Michigan. From Hillsboro to Oregon City to Reynolds in Troutdale, district officials said Thursday they will conduct testing to confirm local schools provide safe drinking water. If high lead levels are found, officials say, they'll make necessary improvements, although some districts are worried that growing demand could cause testing delays. "In light of what's happening... we are moving ahead with having all of our buildings tested as soon as possible, just as a precaution," said Connie Potter, chief of staff for the Forest Grove School District, which hasn't conducted testing since 2009. The scale of testing will vary by district, with some planning to check every faucet and fountain, while others expect more modest sampling. Lake Oswego was among the first to act, collecting water samples Thursday morning from at least two sinks and two water fountains in each of the district's 10 schools. Officials had good reason to act. "We cannot find any records for past testing," spokeswoman Nancy Duin said. Although no amount of lead is considered safe, federal drinking-water standards set an "action level" of 15 parts per billion. In Portland Public Schools, water samples from more than 50 schools tested above that level according to spot checks in recent years. But officials didn't immediately disclose the findings and have no evidence they made fixes in at least seven schools. Portland - Oregon's largest district, with more than 48,000 students - is now promising system-wide testing this summer for the first time since 2001. So is the Beaverton School District. Last week, just days before Portland's firestorm erupted, Beaverton school officials disclosed two high tests from Highland Park Middle School. In response, the district provided bottled water and shut off drinking fountains, but officials said they couldn't move forward on a $1.5 million re-piping project until 2017. It wasn't until Thursday, however, that the district publicly disclosed it would move to test every school - something that apparently has never happened, spokeswoman Maureen Wheeler said. "To my knowledge, it's been kind of a case-by-case basis," she said. "There's no systemwide testing that's been done." Testing was authorized May 13 and a contract, estimated to run $150,000, should be in place by Friday, she said. Beaverton is the state's third-largest district, with nearly 41,000 students across 51 schools. "And we're talking about every drinking fountain and faucet," Wheeler said of the testing. Likewise, the North Clackamas School District also promised sweeping testing. Officials on Thursday could find no records of past analysis since 2002, when no tests exceeded 15 parts per billion, spokesman Joe Krumm said. "We're going to test again, go through everything again," Krumm said. Asked why the district would do so, he said: "In response to the issue getting raised." Other districts have completed more recent rounds of testing but haven't always followed up. Hillsboro last did testing in 2010 and found no water with levels above 15 parts per billion, spokeswoman Beth Graser said. The district, which has enrollment of nearly 21,000, will retest schools this summer. At David Douglas, testing in 2013 found high lead levels in 11 buildings, according to information provided by the district Thursday. Officials shut off water and provided bottled water, later re-piping some of the impacted facilities. But now, three years later, the district still provides bottled water at Gilbert Park Elementary School and North Powellhurst School, which is used as a childcare facility. Officials said they've done some testing over the past two years, but the scope wasn't immediately available. "Our intent is to continue a testing program going forward," spokesman Dan McCue said. "What that looks like - do we do every school every year, or some kind of rotating basis - I don't know." Update: On Friday, Jesuit High School officials said they last tested for lead in March 2014 and did not find high levels. The private school, which has enrollment of about 1,300, said in a statement that it will continue "regular" testing. Officials for Reynolds and Oregon City said Thursday they haven't conducted districtwide testing before but plan to this summer. "This is new to a lot of us," said Michael Clark, an Oregon City spokesman. Separately, officials for Gresham-Barlow and Gladstone could offer no details Thursday about past testing, saying they'd need to review records. But Gresham-Barlow is currently conducting lead testing in all district schools, with results expected next week, spokeswoman Athena Vadnais said in an email. Gladstone hopes to test its four schools as soon as possible "The waiting list just got longer," spokeswoman Leslie Robinette said, noting the growing interest in testing across the region. Officials for West Linn-Wilsonville, Sherwood and Parkrose school districts did not respond to inquiries Thursday. UPDATE: Parkrose issued a statement Friday saying it hasn't had past problems but will conduct tests. West-Linn Wilsonville said in a statement Friday that it hasn't performed testing in the past but will begin this summer. Among large districts in the Portland area, only Tigard-Tualatin performs annual testing. Officials began reviewing water at James Templeton Elementary in 2010 prompted by complaints about quality. When tests from 2013 came back showing high lead levels, officials decided to test each district school built through 1985, when lead solder was banned from plumbing. That meant checking water from as many as 27 rooms in a given school. Since then, officials have tested one or two rooms at each school each year. The district adopted the random sampling program to help reassure students, parents and staff that officials were committed to testing. "We wanted to follow up," spokeswoman Susan Stark Haydon said, "and do what we needed to do to make sure the water was safe." The Centennial School District doesn't do regular testing. Officials checked schools in 2010 and more recently completed testing in March, thanks to the foresight of Rick Larson, the district's director of business and operations. Larson said he read the national news about Flint, Michigan, and tests involving some Salem-Keizer facilities with high lead levels. He saw the writing on the wall. School employees took two samples from each elementary school and four from each secondary school. Testing, which cost $750, uncovered no problems. "I figured it was going to become a crisis in 2016," said Larson, who next month will celebrate his 21st anniversary with Centennial. "And lo and behold, it is." -- Brad Schmidt 503-294-7628 @cityhallwatch A 65-year-old Beaverton man who is dying of asbestos-related cancer -- four decades after he was exposed to the material on Portland-area construction sites -- was awarded $8.75 million by a Multnomah County Circuit Court jury. The verdict for David Hoff and his wife came after 31/2 weeks of trial showing that Kaiser Gypsum, the manufacturer of a spackle-like product used on wallboard, exposed Hoff to asbestos in the 1970s even though evidence presented at trial showed the company was aware of the hazards as early as 1965. Hoff was a carpenter and was in his 20s when he worked construction sites where the Kaiser Gypsum product was applied by drywall workers, then sanded, releasing the tiny cancerous fibers into the air he breathed, Hoff's attorneys contended during trial. The verdict is believed to the the largest in Oregon for an asbestos-related disease contracted from a worksite, said Brian Ladenburg, the Seattle attorney who represented Hoff with attorneys Craig Sims and Kaitlin Wright. Their firm specializes in asbestos litigation in Oregon and Washington. Ladenburg said it typically takes 20 to 50 years for someone exposed to asbestos to develop the type of cancer Hoff contracted: mesothelioma, which affects the lining of the lungs. Kaiser Gypsum said it stopped making the spackle-like compound referenced in the suit in 1975, on its own volition, Ladenburg said. Around that time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had begun issuing warnings and passing regulations banning asbestos in some products, including pipe insulation and spray-on insulation. Although asbestos is almost entirely banned in the U.S. today, people are still exposed to it mostly when they're remodeling old homes or trying to remove it from old structures, experts say. Last year, a Lake Oswego real estate agent who investigators say tried to save money -- by hiring untrained day laborers to improperly remove asbestos from a 1908 Southeast Portland home he was flipping -- was convicted of a crime. An investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive last September found that hundreds of Portland-area homes are being demolished with asbestos inside. Experts say some people can acquire mesothelioma after a single exposure. But 90 to 98 percent of people -- including those who were exposed to asbestos for years -- won't get the disease despite past exposure, according to The Mesothelioma Center. Roughly 2,000 to 3,000 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma per year in the U.S. -- and by far, most people who sue are at least in their 60s. Ladenburg has handled cases with people as young as a woman in her 30s and a man in his 20s, who were exposed by parents who had worked around asbestos or in projects removing it from structures, and brought the fibers home to them on their clothes. None of the dozens of other construction workers with whom Hoff has worked is known to have come down with mesothelioma, Ladenburg said. "It was commercial stuff -- they weren't selling it to do-it-yourselfers," Ladenburg said. "The testimony was they used dozens if not hundreds of these buckets because they were building commercial office buildings, ...strip malls and shopping centers." Ladenburg said doctors caught Hoff's cancer early. It showed up in an imaging scan to try to ferret out the source of an unrelated problem with his kidneys. The scan showed a small fluid buildup near Hoff's lungs -- even before Hoff began to exhibit the typical symptoms of shortness of breath and pain. In August 2015, he was diagnosed. "He retired a couple years ago and was going to enjoy his retirement, and then got this," Ladenburg said. "It is universally fatal. People always die from it. There is no cure for it." Last October, Hoff had surgery to remove one of his lungs. "It's not expected to cure him, but it's supposed to give him more time," Ladenburg said. Hoff has been told he can expect to live another one to 11/2 years. Judge Judith Matarazzo instructed jurors that if Hoff hadn't contracted mesotheiloma, he could have expected to live another 17 years. He is the father to three daughters, and has several grandchildren. He also is a volunteer in his church and a Royal Rosarian. Hoff attended the first day or two of trial in May, but then became too ill to attend and was hospitalized. Hoff's original suit listed two other companies as defendants: Union Carbide, which was the supplier of the asbestos used in the spackle-like product, and Georgia Pacific, which had a similar spackle-like product. Ladenburg said both companies reached a confidential settlement with Hoff during trial. The jury awarded Hoff $750,000 for medical expenses and $4 million for pain and suffering. It also awarded $4 million to his wife, Patricia Hoff, for the suffering she has endured and will endure after the loss of her husband. -- Aimee Green 503-294-5119 The Portland police internal affairs captain should be transferred for not following bureau protocol and initiating an investigation of Chief Larry O'Dea's off-duty shooting of a friend, the presidents of the two Portland police unions said in a joint statement Thursday. Portland Police Officer Daryl Turner, president of the rank-and-file union called the Portland Police Association, and Lt. Craig Morgan, president of the Portland Police Commanding Officers Association, said they shared "grave concerns'' that Capt. Derek Rodrigues "was notified of a very serious incident involving Chief O'Dea, yet failed to follow basic procedures that were specifically put in place to ensure accountability and integrity.'' Rodrigues, who remained supervisor of internal affairs late Thursday, declined to comment. The memo doesn't mention any of the four assistant police chiefs, who also were aware of O'Dea's April 21 off-duty shooting and didn't ensure an investigation was started, or Mayor Charlie Hales, who serves as police commissioner and also never called for an administrative investigation of the chief. The city's Independent Police Review Division, having learned about O'Dea's shooting from media reports on May 20, is now investigating why no one in the Police Bureau or mayor's office told the division to start an investigation. The division handles all internal investigations of high-ranking Portland police supervisors holding the rank of captain and above. O'Dea was placed on paid leave on May 24, and is under criminal investigation by the state police and Oregon Department of Justice. He smelled of alcohol when he told a Harney County sheriff's deputy after the shooting that his friend appeared to have shot himself in the lower back accidentally, according to the deputy's report. But O'Dea sometime later apologized to the wounded friend for having shot him with his .22-caliber rifle, and told the mayor that he had accidentally shot his friend. Yet O'Dea never told Harney County Sheriff's Office that he had been responsible for the shooting. O'Dea was with six others camping outside of Fields, Oregon, drinking and shooting ground squirrels, according to the deputy sheriff's report. Portland police union members aren't the biggest fans of Rodrigues, the police internal affairs captain who has on occasion reversed police commanders' rulings that exonerated officers for alleged misconduct. The most recent example involved a case before the Citizen Review Committee, in which Rodrigues disagreed with Capt. Mark Kruger who had exonerated Officer Scott Groshong of wrongdoing, following a complaint that Groshong acted unprofessionally by grabbing a man's video camera as the man, Robert Lee West, was filming him outside of Central Precinct. Rodrigues told the committee he believed the complaint should be sustained. The Portland Police Association represents officers, detectives and sergeants. The Portland Police Commanding Officers Association represents captains. Here's the unions' full statement: The Portland Police Association and the Portland Police Commanding Officers Association share grave concerns about the integrity of internal administrative investigations in light of actions taken in the aftermath of Chief Larry O'Dea's incident in Harney County. At a minimum, it appears that the Captain of the Police Bureau's Professional Standards Division did not follow fundamental procedural requirements when he failed to notify Independent Police Review upon learning of Chief O'Dea's incident. The integrity of the internal review process and those charged with overseeing it are vital to maintaining public trust in the Police Bureau. We recognize that Professional Standards investigations into other allegations of misconduct by Bureau members must continue while IPR investigates Chief O'Dea's matter. However, we have significant concerns about the due process rights of our members in investigations that are supervised by Professional Standards personnel, especially given that the Professional Standards Captain was notified of a very serious incident involving Chief O'Dea, yet failed to follow basic procedures that were specifically put in place to ensure accountability and integrity. We believe the responsibility for the supervision and oversight of PSD internal investigations should be transferred to other Police Bureau command staff until Chief O'Dea's incident is fully investigated. Daryl Turner, President Portland Police Association Craig Morgan, President Portland Police Commanding Officers' Association -- Maxine Bernstein mbernstein@oregonian.com 503-221-8212 @maxoregonian TreasureHunt-Clue-6.jpg (Oregonian/OregonLive Staff) The Rose Festival Treasure Hunt -- where people follow daily clues to find a hidden medallion for prizes -- is back again this year. The clues appear by 6 a.m. daily on Oregonlive.com/rosefest for 14 days. Readers can also sign up for a daily Treasure Hunt newsletter at Oregonlive.com/hunt. --------------------------------------------- Clue 6 Friday, June 3 Two homages he did promote for war and peace. They were of note. ----------------------------------------------- The clues lead to a metal box that holds a 2.5 inch by 3 inch block of Lucite with a special Rose Festival medallion embedded in it. The medallion is hidden somewhere in the Portland metro area on public property and within easy reach. Treasure hunters need not dig or move any objects to find it. The medallion may be hidden in Multnomah, Clackamas, Clark, Washington or Yamhill counties. If you are the clever finder of the medallion, return it right away to the Portland Rose Festival office, 1020 S.W. Naito Parkway, Portland. The winner gets a certificate for two round trip airline tickets valid for travel to any Alaska Airlines destination, one night's stay in a single hotel room for two people and one buffet dinner for two people at Spirit Mountain Casino, and a ride in the Grand Floral Parade (you can find additional prize details here). Roger Federer didn't show up for the French Open, thanks to a balky back. Rafael Nadal, dealing with a wrist injury, was forced to pull out of the event after the second round. The Fates, it seems, have finally decided to give Novak Djokovic a boost at the one Grand Slam tournament he has yet to win. Nadal has topped Djokovic six times at the French Open; Federer famously ended Nole's 43-match win streak by beating him in the 2011 Roland Garros semifinals. Not that Djokovic needed the assistance. The Serb, an 11-time major champion, is having a career year again. He's as dominant on the professional tour right now as Federer or Nadal ever were. He won the Australian Open in January and has followed it up with trophies at three Masters 1000 tournaments. "He's like Superman," said retired three-time Roland Garros champion Gustavo Kuerten. And being Superman is what it's all about in Paris. The clay surface rewards endurance, patience, metronomic focus, physical and mental strength. These are Djokovic's greatest attributes. A win at Roland Garros for Djokovic would be truly historic, giving him a career Grand Slam and four major titles in a row. It would put him right smack in the heart of the endless "greatest of all time" debate. The absence of 17-time major champion Federer, and the early injury retirements of 14-time major champion Nadal and World No. 7 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, opened the door for second-tier players at the clay-court major. "We have more opportunity, you know. We have more opportunity," Ernests Gulbis said last week. The Latvian, ranked 80th in the world, ultimately fell to David Goffin in the fourth round. In the end, however, that additional opportunity didn't amount to much. Three of the very best players in the world are in the semifinals: Djokovic; defending champion Stan Wawrinka, who has a 4-19 career record against Djokovic but unexpectedly beat him in last year's final; and second-seeded Andy Murray, who has a 10-23 career record against the Serb but bested him last month in the Rome Masters final. But that one exception, Dominic Thiem, coming out of the busted-open quarter of the draw that had Nadal and Tsonga in it, will be the man facing Nole in the Final Four on Friday. This potentially will give Djokovic an easy warm-up match for the final. (Or maybe not: the young Austrian has yet to show true Grand Slam chops, but he's up to number 15 in the world rankings and is believed by many observers to be the next great clay-court champion.) Djokovic, for his part, recognizes that his time is now. He just turned 29 and knows the next generation is starting to make a serious push. And though he's clearly the best player in the world, there will be pressure, so much pressure. "Our people see only first place and nothing else, so when Nole losses in the semifinal or final, that becomes a day of mourning in Serbia," fellow Serb player Viktor Troicki said this week. "People think achieving that is such a failure. It's incredible." Djokovic has fallen three times in the French Open final, four other times in the semifinals. The Fates have done their part to get Djokovic that little bit farther this year. The rest is up to him. -- Douglas Perry 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. Jennifer Burns, a 2013 graduate of H.H. Dow High School, has graduated cum laude with honors from Ohio State University. Burns graduated from the honors psychology program through the College of Arts and Sciences, and was one of 11,231 graduates receiving degrees during spring semester commencement 2016. She will continue her education at Ohio State this fall, having been accepted into the Fisher College of Business master of human resource management program. Burns was also selected for a graduate assistantship and will be working as an undergraduate career consultant in the Office of Career Management. She is the daughter of Tom and Lynn Burns of Midland. You might soon see traffic moving faster on Midland Countys 109 miles of state highways. Under bills the state House approved this week, speed limits could be upped to 75 mph on 600 miles of state rural freeways, while drivers could lawfully move the needle from 55 to 65 mph on trunk lines like M-20, provided the roads meet engineering and safety requirements. House lawmakers approved the package of bills by a 56-53 vote. It heads to the Senate, which is scheduled to meet next week. Reps. Gary Glenn, R-Midland, and House Speaker Kevin Cotter, R-Mount Pleasant, were among those in support. Most people drive in the mid-70s now, Glenn said. Just because theres an increase doesnt mean theyll drive in the mid-80s. Glenn says his key point in voting yes involved a promise he made to Auburn City Administrator Patricia Rayl that the measure would allow city officials to retain the right to set speed limits within city boundaries. The state trunk line M-20 stretches about 18 miles in Midland County. Raising the current 55 mph limit to 65 mph would be a good thing, according to Glenn, who said he sees no safety concerns and that it would get people to Mount Pleasant more quickly. I would think it would ease traffic flow or not change it at all, Glenn said. The state proposals also sit well with Midland County Road Commission Manager Terry Palmer. I wouldnt have any issue with it, Palmer said, adding he doesnt see any issue or safety concerns. People are already driving that fast anyway. House Bill 4424 would lessen the time that school zone speed limits on a highway segment would be in effect, to not more than 30 minutes before or after school starts. Palmer says the road commission is working with Bullock Creek High School, where the speed limit is 55 before drivers enter the school zone. The limit drops to 25 mph for the hour before school starts and adjourns, which causes crashes because its too much of a drop, he said. The goal is to set the limit at 45 mph instead of 25. Limits in other states The majority of states have speed limits set at either 65 or 70 mph. At least 12 states have a 75 mph limit, most of which are out west. Half that many have roads on which drivers may break 80 mph, and on State Highway 130 in south central Texas, drivers are allowed to move the needle to 85 mph. From April 2011 to January 2014, at least 14 states have either increased maximum speed limits or are proposing to do so, according to a 2015 Michigan Department of Transportation report, Evaluating Outcomes of Raising Speed Limits on High Speed Non-Freeways. Speed as a factor in Michigan crashes Michigan State Police crash statistics for 2015 show speed too fast as at least one factor in 29,896 crashes, resulting in 195 fatalities. Nationwide, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration tallied 32,719 traffic fatalities in 2013, 29 percent of which were speeding-related crashes. However, NHTSA says speeding-related fatalities were down 7 percent from 2012. But Michigan State Police say lowering speed limits does not necessarily improve safety. The more uniform the speeds of vehicles in a traffic stream, MSP says, the less chance there is for conflict and crashes. Setting limits lower than the speed at or below which 85 percent of drivers are driving known as the 85th percentile may create more crash potential due to speed differences that can trigger tailgating, improper passing, reckless driving and weaving, MSP says. Traffic counts for the Midland area The bills would make a portion of I-75 north of Bay City a candidate for speed increases. A stretch between Bay City and Pinconning sees 22,000 to 26,000 daily drivers, according to an MDOT map of traffic volumes. For east and west routes, the map shows over 30,000 drivers using US-10 between Bay City and Auburn, increasing to 37,500 on average on a stretch near the Midland County line. That amount decreases to about 21,000 as the route traces the north end of town, near Eastman and Jefferson avenues, and tapers off to near 18,000 near Sanford and half that amount or less near Coleman. Over 20,000 drivers use a portion of M-20 crossing the Tittabawassee River to Currie Parkway. That amount decreases to about 15,000 nearing the western edge of the county. A break for speeders Currently, two points may be tacked onto your driving record for going 10 mph over the speed limit, three points for going 11 to 15 mph over and four for 16 mph or more. House Bill 4426 would change that: driving less than 6 mph over the limit would cost drivers one point and exceeding by 15 mph would mean two points. Midland is beginning to become a frequent stop for former Congressman Rick Santorum. Last week, for the second time in 18 months, Santorum opined his conservative views at Living Word Church. In a questioning format, Santorum spoke on the topic of American religious liberty. The two-time presidential candidate Santorum challenged his audience by opening with the question, What is truth? That is the central question of our time, Santorum said with emphasis in his voice. If there is no truth its impossible to tell a lie. Santorum denounced the agenda of liberals. The left has accomplished what they have set out from the very beginning, that is to silence the truth and silence the truth tellers, he said. Not only did Santorum attack liberals, he found fault with a segment of truth tellers: the clergy. Ill tell you what could not be more pleasing (to liberals) is when the clergy, when confronted with those lies, sheepishly, quietly consent, he said. Theyre afraid to speak out against them. It is not just popular to do so. You will be condemned in social media and your friends and neighbors. Prior to running an unsuccessful campaign as a Republican candidate for president in 2012, Santorum represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1991 to 1995, and served in the U.S. Senate from 1995 to 2007. He also announced his candidacy for president in 2015 before pulling out after the 2016 Iowa caucus. Thats the great problem in this country. Far too many of Gods people do nothing. ... Theyre afraid to pay the price, Santorum said. That attack is coming from the left, said Santorum. They are out to destroy you, Santorum said to the congregation. You are a bully if you tell them you are wrong. You are a hater if you tell them they are wrong. You cant say that because it offends me. It offends my right to do what I want to do. If you tell me what I do is wrong, you are a mean person. The battle for truth in America is also based on the questions, What is America? and Who are we? Santorum said, as he went back to the 1700s and the American Revolution (1775-1783) and French Revolution (1789-1799). Are we a country that descended from the American Revolution? Or, are we a country that descended from the principles of the other revolution that occurred at that time? That is the other competing ethos in the Western world. Thats the French Revolution, he said. Citing the Declaration of Independence, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, Santorum stated his belief that the birth certificate of the U.S. is founded on those principles. We came here not because of an ethnic identification, but because of a set of values and principles that made America the greatest country in the world, Santorum said. It laid out that God created America. There is a God, which we have to be accountable to. That is unique in the world. Santorum defined the very similar, but competing beliefs of the two revolutions with three words each: the purpose of the French Revolution was equality, liberty and fraternity. It means that rights come from each other, he said. It was a secular revolution as opposed to the United States where we have equality, liberty and paternity; rights coming from God. Our country is a great country. And it can be a great country. It will not be a great country if our people do not make it great. What country do we want to be? Santorum wrapped up his 40-minute talk not with a challenge, but a promise. So understand that we are going to win back America. You will get beat up. You may lose a lot of things, but you wont lose your soul and that matters the most. America is losing its soul, he said. Andersen receives additional B52 Stratofortress A B-52 Stratofortress from Minot Air Force Base, ND, prepares to touchdown June 2, 2016, at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. The aircraft is deployed in support of U.S. Pacific Commands Continuous Bomber Presence operations. This forward deployed presence demonstrates continuing U.S. commitment to stability and security in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. These aircraft and the men and women who fly and support them provide a significant capability that enables U.S. readiness and commitment to deterrence, provides assurances to allies, and strengthens regional security and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Alexa Ann Henderson/Released) More than 100 participants, service members and civilians alike, participated in a ribbon-cutting ceremony in commemoration of a completion of an engineer civic action program for a local school in Zuunmod, Mongolia, as part of the annual, multinational peacekeeping operations exercise, Khaan Quest 2016. The dormitory project started in March as a joint effort with the multinational team assisting with laying a foundation, and installing windows, electrical wiring and plumbing. After a month of working together, the project finally reached its completion. In construction, foundation means the base or groundwork that supports everything built above it, such as the dormitory here, said Maj. Gen. Gregory Bilton, deputy commanding general for operations of U.S. Army Pacific. It is appropriate that a school like 04 be selected for this project as education represents the foundation of a countrys prosperity. This is a great investment in Mongolias future. The ribbon-cutting ceremony officially opened the dormitorys doors and its attendance was filled with high-ranking military officers from participating countries and local Mongolian officials to honor the joint efforts of the engineers. The event also allowed Mongolian leaders to show appreciation to the efforts of the service members by presenting certificates to their respective leaders. The students, who will ultimately benefit from the project, also showed their appreciation by performing a popular Mongolian pop song and a traditional Mongolian dance with a modern twist. The students in and around the Tuv province travel a great distance to come to school, said U.S. Army Capt. Matt Wright, from the 411th Engineer Battalion. The dormitory serves as a safe place to stay overnight for the students to eat, sleep and bathe during the week. U.S. Marines from the 9th Engineer Support Battalion, U.S. Soldiers from the 871st Engineer Company, 411th Engineer Battalion and U.S. Sailors from the Naval Mobile Construction Battalion (NMCB) 4, along with Mongolian, Singaporean and Indian Armed Forces efforts made it possible to complete the 4th School Dormitory project. As Khaan Quest concludes, the service members who participated here leave feeling a sense of accomplishment. It was a great experience, working with the different armed forces, said U.S. Marine Sgt. Thomas Gatton, with the 9th Engineer Support Battalion. We had a lot of fun. We learned from the kids, the teachers and just participating in all of the events they had for us. Khaan Quest, in its 14th iteration, is the capstone exercise for this years Global Peace Operations Initiative program. The exercise focuses on training activities to enhance international interoperability, develop peacekeeping capabilities, build to mil-to-mil relationships, and enhance military readiness. PEARL HARBOR - A Japan Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF) training squadron (JTS) composed of three ships began a three-day port visit at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam June 1 as part of an around the world deployment to 16 ports in 13 countries. During the port visit, Adm. Scott Swift, commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, toured the JTS flagship JS Kashima (TV 3508), reviewed sailors in formation and spoke to newly-commissioned Japanese ensigns about the strong and lasting U.S.-Japan partnership at sea. All of you embody this shared heritage, which is based on the past 70 years of the rule-based order that was forged in war and sustained in peace, and allowed our nations and many others in this region to achieve incredible levels of prosperity, said Swift. Maritime forces play a crucial role in guarding and sustaining this prosperity by preserving access for the broadest possible base of maritime nations in accordance with international law. More than 750 Japanese sailors and 200 newly commissioned ensigns are on the first leg of the 168-day cruise that will take them around the world while developing seamanship and leadership skills. The squadron also includes the training vessel JS Setoyuki (TV 3518) and the Asagiri-class destroyer JS Asagiri (DD 151). While in Hawaii, members of the squadron laid wreaths at the USS Arizona Memorial, Makiki Japanese Naval Graveyard, National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (Punchbowl Cemetery), and Ehime Maru Memorial. The JTS band also teamed up with the Pacific Fleet band for a joint engagement at the Ala Moana Shopping Center. Additionally, JTS Commander Rear Adm. Hidetoshi Iwasaki, along with the three ships commanding officers, met with Swift and Hawaii Gov. David Ige on a goodwill visit aimed at promoting international friendship. Later this month, JMSDF ships will participate in the biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise scheduled June 30 to Aug. 4, in and around the Hawaiian Islands. Japans participation in the 2016 iteration marks the 19th time the country has participated in the exercise. BLOOMINGTON Area lawmakers and Gov. Bruce Rauner expressed a commitment Thursday to keep working for an agreement to persuade Exelon to keep open its nuclear plants near Clinton and the Quad Cities. There's still time to do this, state Rep. Dan Brady, R-Bloomington, said Thursday after Exelon's announcement that it would close the Clinton plant June 1, 2017. State Sen. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, and state Rep. Bill Mitchell, R-Forsyth, in whose districts the Clinton plant is located, expressed similar sentiments during a news conference Thursday. Rauner, speaking during a visit to the East Moline Correctional Center, expressed hope that a solution can be found. I'm trying to work with Exelon to keep these plants open, he said. We need to protect those jobs. About 700 people work at the Clinton nuclear plant. Legislation sought by Exelon that would provide subsidies for the plants has not been brought to a vote. Exelon has said the plants lose money and need to share in alternative-energy subsidies as it competes with other forms of power generation. But Brady seemed to question whether the subsidies would work. I don't know if we can level the playing field in the arena of power enough, said Brady, in reference to the competition nuclear power faces, especially from wind, solar and natural gas sources. That's something that's driven by the market. Nevertheless, Brady said, I will do everything I can. Rauner placed the blame on an unwillingness by Illinois Democrats to act on tough votes, and Brady said, The speaker of the House (Democrat Mike Madigan of Chicago) decides the flow of legislation. But a Democrat from the Quad Cities area, state Rep. Mike Smiddy of Hillsdale, called Rauner's comment disingenuous and told the Lee News Service that he was willing to work for a compromise to make sure we do have a vote to keep that plant viable. Although this is primarily a state issue, federal lawmakers expressed concern and called on their state counterparts to act. U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Channahon, said he was deeply saddened by Exelon's announcement. In a statement issued Thursday, he urged quick action on a solution to ensure the rest of our nuclear fleet does not meet the same fate as that of the Quad Cities and Clinton plants. U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, a Republican from Taylorville, said in a statement, It's time to set politics aside and find a solution that recognizes the benefits of nuclear energy and the economic opportunities it provides to our state. Exelon's announcement came two days after the final shift of workers left the Mitsubishi Motors North America auto assembly plant in Normal. BLOOMINGTON Bloomington is getting a Sunshine Award from the Illinois Policy Institute for achieving a 100 percent transparency score for its website. Bloomington is one of only 11 governmental entities in Illinois to achieve a perfect score. "Achieving a 100 percent score from the IPI reflects the citys strong commitment to transparency and the work of many individuals and departments, said City Manager David Hales. "We are very proud of this accomplishment. The city previously received a score of 97 percent in 2015. "Obviously, I'm extremely proud of our city and how far we've come in openness and transparency over the last several years," said Mayor Tari Renner. Transparency was one of Renner's top campaign themes when running for the office in 2013, "and I think we've done a great job of delivering on that promise," he said. "When I was sworn in we had an 'F' from the Policy Institute with 50.7 percent." The Chicago-based organization describes itself on its website as a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization whose "mission is to transform liberty principles into marketable policies that become law." The IPI's conservative nature is not lost on Renner, a Democrat. "Nobody can say, 'OK, this is a group of Renner's buddies who are just rubber-stamping some kind of recognition,'" he said. "We're getting verification that we're as open and transparent as we could possibly be from a very, very conservative organization. From my perspective, that's all the more reason we should be proud." The organization is looking at "very objective criteria and in terms of what kind of information you can get on the websites; to what extent governments are putting things out and making it easier for citizens to find out," Renner added. "We grade all government entities based on the 10-point transparency checklist," said IPI spokeswoman Kayla Weems, IPIs transparency audit evaluates information posted on a municipalitys website related to topics such as public meetings, budgets, compensation, contracts and more. "We audit a government agency's website at the request of citizens, or when local elected officials ask for an audit," Weems said. "Many of these local governments are seeking advice on how to improve their transparency." Over the past few years, 77 local governments have earned the Sunshine Award with scores of 80 percent or higher on the transparency checklist. In 2011, IPI audited the websites of local governments in McLean County. According to its records, Normal received a score of 75 percent, while the city of Bloomington received a score of 65 percent. "I don't have anything more current and I have not been notified of anything," said Normal City Manager Mark Peterson. "I think we have (on our website) just about everything they suggest: budget information, expenditures, salaries, meetings, contact information, all of those things," he added. Peterson said the town is in the process of overhauling its website. Normal also contracts with a national website development company that specializes in municipal websites and provides guidance to the town about what information is important, said Peterson. "I'm not sure what makes the Illinois Policy Institute the authority or why we should care," added Peterson. CLINTON On his way to a 7 a.m. meeting in the Nuclear Support Annex, a big conference room with seating for all of the 700 employees of the Clinton Power Station, Christian Small knew what was coming. At that meeting, Brian Hanson, the president and chief nuclear officer at Exelon Nuclear Partners, a subsidiary of Exelon Corp., announced the news that the employees had been preparing for over the past year: The Clinton Power Station would move forward with plans to shut down on June 1, 2017, given the lack of progress on energy-subsidy legislation in Springfield. We tried to hold onto hope that there would be some hope for us, but we all knew the closure was inevitable, said Small, the manager of the plant's reactor engineering group. The news sent shock waves through the county of about 15,000 people. Residents and officials worried about how to pay for police officers and schoolteachers after the loss of the county's No. 1 employer and its main source of property taxes. The Clinton Power Station pays about $15 million a year in property taxes. For taxing bodies, their share of that can be 40 percent or more of their property tax revenue. This is devastating news to us, said Clinton Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Marian Brisard. We knew it was inevitable, but when I got a call this morning at about 7 a.m., it was like a punch in the gut. Plant employees would be offered jobs at other Exelon nuclear sites, but that offered little consolation Thursday morning. I went to the University of Illinois and had two internships at the plant before I was hired, Small said. The people that work here took me under their wing 15 years ago. "The staff has been so supportive and this plant has really been accepted by the community. Its a somber feeling. Small lives in Champaign, but 143 employees, or about 21 percent of the plant's workforce, live in Clinton. I was not surprised, but I was mad, said DeWitt County Board Chairman Dave Newberg of the news. As we move forward, it will be very difficult. "We are going to lose jobs in this county. Good county employees. Our citizens are going to see reduced services from everything, including sheriff patrols. What type of effect is this going to have on the safety of our people? "Business people will be hurt," he said. "Property values will drop. The loss of 700 jobs is terrible, but when you take a county of 15,000 people and start totaling the jobs up that are affected by this, its massive and it will not be good. Clinton Mayor Roger Cyrulik expressed sympathy "for the families that have to suffer through the job loss." "The city of Clinton will get by, but its going to be hard, he said. Clinton Public Safety Commissioner Dan Ballenger said he has concerns about police and fire protection in the city with the loss of that many jobs from the community. With this type of a cut coming to us, we will have to cut our police staff, he said. They pay a sum to the fire department and that helps keep our equipment up, but with that said, we have one of the oldest fire stations probably in the state. "Just to cut peoples safety, I am concerned about that. When you take $14 million out of economy, we are going to suffer. The Clinton school district currently receives $8.3 million, or about 53 percent of the districts budget, from the plant's tax bill. As of now, we dont rely much on state aid, however, we are going to have to more in the future, and that is scary, said Clinton school Superintendent Curt Nettles. We are extremely worried. "Our community will have to determine what kind of tax rate they are comfortable with and what services they are comfortable with having cut at the schools. There will be big-time cuts. Resident Joe Alexander said he is worried about the ripple effect of losing so many jobs in a town of about 7,000 people. The power plant has been good for the economy of Clinton and DeWitt County, and there is going to be a long-lasting, trickle-down effect which is going to be very tough on this community, he said. The immediate loss of jobs is troubling, but so are the long-term problems, such as what happens to that 5,000-acre lake, he added, referring to Clinton Lake, which was created to supply water to the plant. 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 "Teen Mom 2" features the stories of parenting, divorce and relationships. Among the families' featured in the reality show is Leah Messer's. Fans who have been following the show knows how complicated her family set up and relationship are. Just recently, the mom of three slammed her baby daddy for not prioritizing their daughter. Leah Messer Furious On Jeremy Calvert For Not Prioritizing Their Daughter In "Teen Mom 2" Season 7 finale, Leah Messer did not like Jeremy Calvert's decision of leaving their daughter Addie to his mom, while he attended his girlfriend's child. Messer believed that it was a poor choice and a bad parenting. "I'm gonna f**king flip," Leah Messer told her sister Victoria per Inquisitr. "Jeremy had to leave, go get Brooke's, his girlfriend's, daughter, and just left Addie with his mom." "I guess I'm going to have to figure out something with his mom to get Addie and it's already 4 o'clock. I mean, she doesn't get to see her sisters again until Thursday. So, that's not fair. He needs to stop worrying about someone else's child and worry about his own," the celebrity mom explained. Leah Messer suggested that Jeremy and Brooke should make arrangements about their parenting duties. Jeremy should take care of Addie and Brooke should take care of her daughter. Jeremy Calvert Responds To Leah Messer's Complain, Meanwhile, it seemed that the celebrity dad felt guilty about Messer's complained or he just wants to make her mad, even more. According to Enstarz, Calvert posted a photo of a girl with the words "The PIPELINE has my Daddy but I have his heart." He captioned it with, "I miss my baby girl...can't wait to be home." I miss my baby girl.. can't wait to be home!!!! A photo posted by Jeremy Calvert (@jeremylcalvert505) on May 30, 2016 at 7:25pm PDT Many believe that the post was meant to address Leah Messer for complaining about his lack of involvement with their daughter. Calvert is still working in the pipeline, which made his post a meme of his current predicament to his daughter Addie. Do you agree with Leah Messer that Calvert should have prioritized their daughter Addie? Is it wrong for Calvert to have her mom take care of his daughter while he attends his girlfriend's daughter? Share your thoughts in the comment section below. Wear Orange campaign, launched early this year, asks participants to wear orange to raise awareness against gun violence. The organizers of the National Gun Awareness Day are planning to flood pedestrian mall with orange. The event which will take place in Iowa will happen on Thursday, 11:30 a.m. According to CNN, the organizers choose the color orange as it easily attracts attention and can be seen from a distance. The Wear Orange campaign organizers urged everybody to make a noise on social media as they'd post photos with the hashtag #WearingOrange. The participant is also encouraged to caption the photo with a reason as to why they support the Wear Orange campaign. The Wear Orange campaign was started in commemoration of Hadiya Pendleton, 15, who was shot by a gang. Hadiya's friends then came up with Project Orange Tree wherein they made a plea to raise awareness and urged people to wear orange on Tuesday, which is Hadiya's 18th birthday. Every Town Org highlighted the people behind Wear Orange campaign as their campaign against gun violence rapidly spread. Their gun violence awareness call was heard by several celebrities including Julianne Moore who posted her own photo with the hashtag #WearingOrange. Im #wearingorange because we can do more to stop gun violence. Go to http://t.co/6RKGqNxwwT to get involved. pic.twitter.com/2gNQB2FaTZ Julianne Moore (@_juliannemoore) June 2, 2015 Aside from Julianne Moore, celebrities including Sarah Silverman, Russell Simmons and the rest of New York Mets also participated in the campaign. The gun violence project which was started by Hadiya's friends rapidly spread and became an awareness phenomenon. Wear Orange Campaign rapidly grew and reached millions of supporters worldwide. Press Citizen noted that 220 million people were able to hear about the Wear Orange awareness within 24 hours. The people who participated in the campaign included the US President Barack Obama. Millions of people die from accidental firing each year and guns are one of the most used suicide weapons. Wear Orange campaign is a step forward in raising awareness on gun-related death causes and gun safety. Many divorced or separated parents, celebrities and non-government organizations have long been advocating for shared parenting laws. In fact, almost 70 percent of the public is reportedly supporting shared parenting and the proposed law that goes with it. Why Florida Is Against To Shared Parenting Laws Uh-oh! It seems that Florida is not an ideal paradise for divorced or separated couples who wanted to practice shared parenting approaches. In fact, Daniel Forrest of Lawyers.com revealed a governor did not support the newly proposed Florida law advocating shared parenting. Forrest also added the latest shared parenting bill proposal aimed to give children equal time to spend with both parents as much as possible. Unfortunately, Florida laws were reportedly not protecting dads out there since the state makes child custody provisions depending on equal or close-to-equal custodial standard. "Despite the fact that it has a heavy backing, the way the laws work in Florida don't support shared parenting and encourage the courts to break up child custody in whatever way is best suited in the situation, even if that limits a child's time with one parent," Forrest wrote. Shared Parenting To End The Pain Inflicted On Broken Families If Florida is against to shared parenting, Missouri is joining the national campaign that urged lawmakers to legislate shared parenting laws. As previously reported, almost 20 states across the United States have already proposed bills advocating shared parenting, with three states namely: Utah, Minnesota and South Dakota enacted shared parenting laws in recent years. Speaking of shared parenting bills and laws, Missouri is reportedly urging its governor, Jay Nixon, to sign the shared parenting bill known as, House Bill 1550, which was placed on his desk on May 25. According to Missourian, the bill aims to end the pain that Missouri's family court systems bring on broken families. National Parents Organization member Linda Reutzel also wrote that shared parenting is not only a solution for 21st century families. She said it is also a "common sense solution" that will resolve the issues of all involved individuals such as parents and judges. The House Bill 1550 Missouri's House Bill 1550 has passed the Senate and the House 154-2. It encourages the family courts to award shared parenting as a post-divorce or post-separation custody arrangement, which allows children to spend equal time with both parents as long as parents are fit and there is no domestic violence history. Since Missouri Governor has signed the House Bill 1550, broken families' children will not anymore be traumatized by the tense and often acrimonious process of divorce of separation. With the shared parenting laws, children will no longer endure the mental, physical and emotional burden of choosing between his or her parents. Do you support the shared parenting laws? Sound off below and follow Parent Herald for more news and updates. JK Rowling is once again bringing 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' to life in a play. The setting unravels 19 years after where the epilogue of Harry Potter: Deathly Hollows left off. For fans of Harry Potter series, we all have been wondering what the wizarding family would look like after incidents at Hogwarts. Here's our chance. Jamie Parker, Poppy Miller and Sam Clemmett portray the roles of Harry, Ginny and Albus respectively. Paul Thornley, Noma Dumezweni and Cherrelle Skeete for Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger and Rose Granger-Weasley - JK Rowling's magical website, Pottermore revealed. The play will never be complete without the Malfoy's. DNA India reports Alex Price and Anthony Boyle will play the roles of Draco and his son Scorpius. As formidable and dashing as they may seem, the Malfoy's will always be the Potter's arch enemy. The grown-up Harry will be seen wearing suits as his character has evolved in becoming a ministry man still with his signature glasses and lightning bolt scar. Miller expressed her excitement on her sleek 'Ginny' hair and also wearing a jumper. Albus will seem uncomfortable because of the hand-me-down Hogwarts robe from his older brother. Still the funny Ron, won't be so different from his teenage years except that his feet would hurt a lot in the play since he will already be in his forties. Hermione will be portrayed wearing a deep blue attire. Rose Granger-Weasley follows after the character of her mum: ambitious, puts pressure on herself, always does the right thing, a bit bossy but loveable. As always the stylish Draco had his son Scorpius inherit the charm. You'll be surprised at how he will be popularand suave with the ladies at Hogwarts and always makes it a point to show off all the time. Michelle Obama's art program, Turnaround Arts, is going to continue and even expand with more schools even though she is no longer the first lady. After Turnaround Arts secured new funding, the program is assured to still exist. Its headquarters will move to the Kennedy Center from the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities when President Barack Obama ends his term. Established over five years ago, Turnaround Arts improves on arts education around the country. The program sponsors underperforming schools in boosting its arts classes and currently, 49 schools in America are benefiting from the funding, per The Washington Post. The organization first started with just eight schools. The schools are provided funds for hiring art teachers, supplies and tools, or for inviting famous mentors, celebrities and patrons of the arts to speak with the kids. With funding assured to continue from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Turnaround Projects is projected to be supporting 68 schools during the school opening in the fall. RT @DMschools: Harding Breakerz are in the house, er, at the White House getting ready for tomorrow's talent show! pic.twitter.com/uQA4Q0pSYO Turnaround Arts (@TurnaroundArts) May 24, 2016 The first lady believes that arts education should be emphasized in schools, apart from science subjects, test scores and college applications. She also notes it would be impossible for the students to achieve these goals without the help of arts education. "Arts education isn't something we add on after we've achieved other priorities," Michelle Obama said, per Turnaround Arts. Arts education helps children develop into well-balanced and well-rounded individuals. It also drives motivation, inspiration and creativity, while other subjects require analysis and comprehension. Observers believe that this is one of the greatest legacies of the Obama administration, which have benefitted low-income and minority families. Last May 25, students from the Turnaround Arts program presented their talent show at the White House, where Michelle Obama is host. She told the audience that while she's sad it will be the last talent show there, she's thrilled that the commitment to Turnaround Arts will continue nationwide for many years. All of Scotland's pregnant women will be receiving free vitamins from the government by spring, its First Minister has announced. Some pregnant women are already receiving the free supply as of writing. "Every child deserves a fair and equal chance and offering all pregnant women vitamins sends a strong signal that, right from the very start of life, we are doing all we can to help," said First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, as per the Scotsman. Sturgeon said that this is supported by healthcare professionals. Inews reported that all pregnant women will be receiving vitamin C, vitamin D and folic acid from the government. These free vitamins for all pregnant women will correspond to an estimated 300,000 to pay for taxpayers annually. Pregnant women in Scotland will be receiving free vitamins and supplements through a new government program https://t.co/PYkayD0JMz YWCA Toronto (@YWCAToronto) June 1, 2016 Free Vitamin Provision Supported "We understand the long-term positive effects that good nutrition can have for pregnant women and offering these essential vitamins will help to improve the health of mothers, babies and children in Scotland," said Chief Medical Officer Catherine Calderwood, as per BBC. Calderwood said that giving pregnant women vitamins indicates that the government is out to help children at the start of life. Jackie Tollund from the Parents Network of Scotland also approved of the government's new policy. "Anything that we can do to give children the best start in life can only reap benefits in the years to come," said Tollund. Free Vitamins One Of Child-Centered Policies Besides free vitamins for pregnant Scottish women, the government has also set out to give more benefits geared towards improving the health of children. Scottish families with a newborn will also receive baby boxes contain essential items for babies. The government will also be getting an additional 500 health visitors for Scottish children. For three and four-year-old children, free childcare will be doubled to 30 hours a week. Do you think all governments should follow the Scottish government's lead? Share your thoughts below. An Alabama middle school teacher was suspended for distributing a math test paper that cited gangs, shootings, and prostitution as well as names of people racially-linked such as Tyrone, Ramon, and Leroy. In a report by Cleveland.com, the test paper was distributed by a language arts teacher and is said to be a female educator. Her race and her name were not released by the school. The teacher is said to be from Burns Middle School in Mobile, Alabama and a photo showing the test paper was posted online by one of the students. The test has since then been known was the "L.A. Math Proficiency Test." In it, word problems and characters that are racially charged were seen. Some questions referred to drive-by shootings, murder-for-hire, and drug dealings. The student said that the test was given to them on Friday. The student reportedly took a photo of the test using his cell phone. He then showed it to his mother, identified as Erica Hall. Hall and her husband went to the school to complain about the exam. The school officials investigated the matter resulting to the teacher being suspended. The teacher was placed on administrative leave for the remainder of the school year. The teacher is said to be planning to retire by the end of this year. A spokeswoman for Mobile County Public School System, Rena Phillips, said in a statement that they regret such incident happened. She added, "We have 7,500 employees in Mobile County public schools, and the vast majority of them are doing phenomenal work in our classrooms." Phillips also noted that Hall and her husband are the only parents to complain about the given math exam. One of the questions on the math exam reads: "Tyrone knocked up 4 girls in the gang. There are 20 girls in his gang. What is the exact percentage of girls Tyrone knocked up?" Another math problem says that a character named Dwayne "pimps 3 ho's" and that the price is $85 per trick. The question continued, "How many tricks per day must each ho turn to support Dwayne's $800 per day crack habit?" Accordingly, the exam has been around for decades and the teacher recently suspended is not the first to be reprimanded for giving out such exam. It is unclear if this is true. The school has not yet commented on the matter. The recent turn of events following a UCLA shooting is like watching a meticulously written crime plot unfolding. A note found at the crime scene not only instructed its finder to look for the murderer's cat but also included a Minnesota home address where a "kill list" and a dead woman's body were found. Mainak Sarkar, the identified gunman, turned a normal Wednesday school day at UCLA into a seemingly zombie apocalypse as students and staff heard gun shots fired at the Engineering Building. Photos on Twitter showed students stranded on their rooms, shielding doors with printers, tables and whatever article at their disposal, out of fear that a massive shooting will happen next (via CNN). Fortunately, the last gun shot was the end of the threat in UCLA. Police soon roamed around the campus instructing students and staff alike to evacuate the premises as they investigate where the gun shots came from. It led the police to a small room at the 4th Floor of the Engineering Building where Professor William Klug held office (via CNN). The 39-year old professor was found dead along with a 38-year old man who was later identified as an alumnus of UCLA who completed his doctorate degree in mechanical engineering on 2013. There were two semi-automatic pistols and ammunition found as well as a note written with a reminder, "check on my cat," and a home address. (via Los Angeles Times). Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) were first uneasy of the note because an easy trail like that could be indicative of another danger the murderer might have left. True enough, another crime scene was found at the Minessota home with a woman, identified as Ashley Hasti, dead from a gun shot. Kitty, the cat who Sarkar might have referred to, was the only breath of life left in the now abandoned home (via Los Angeles Times). Hasti and Sarkar were married in 2011 but it is unknown whether the two are still married at the time of the crime, and if she was killed prior to the UCLA shooting. Since 2012, Ashley Hasti has been a medical student at University of Minnesotta Medical School. She met Sarkar in California from 2009 to 2010 (via Star Tribune). Upon further inspection of the house, a "kill list" emerged and in it were written three names: Ashley Hasti, William Klug, and another professor at UCLA. The other professor was contacted and is reported to be safe after fortunately being on leave when Sarkar visited the halls of UCLA for one last time. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck told reporters that upon contact, the unnamed professor seemed to be aware that he and Sarkar had issues. Beck still maintained that the two professors did not expect a homicide coming (via ABC News). The murder-suicide is speculated to be linked to a rift on intellectual property. According to Beck, a deleted social media post of Mainak Sarkar used "harsh language" accusing William Klug of lending his computer code to another student (via ABC News). As per CNN, Beck said that the incident might have been caused by Sarkar's mental health. It was only in the man's mind that intellectual property theft was committed. "Everybody tries to look for a reason for this. Well, first of all, there is no good reason for this. This is a mental issue, mental derangement, but it was tied to a dispute over intellectual property," Beck told KTLA-TV as per CNN. UCLA expressed grief over William Klug's death. The professor is a husband and a father of two children. He has been teaching at the university since 2003 and is said to be popular among students because of his kindness and intelligence. "Everytime I went to his office hours, there's no way he would let me leave his office hours without him fixing my code. Even if it was past his office hours. Great person, great profesor," Jizhai Cui, a former student of William said as per Los Angeles Times. Classes on UCLA resumed Thursday except for Engineering students. Classes will resume at the Engineering Building on Monday (via CNN). Many are looking forward to Saitama's return in "One Punch Man" Season 2. According to reports, the new season will premiere before the year-ends and the main protagonist will have to face Lord Boros and two other major villains. It looks like, there will be more action and riot in the upcoming season. Lord Boros Returns In 'One Punch Man' Season 2 "One Punch Man" finale featured Saitama and Lord Boros in action. The villain was heavily injured during the fight that he conceded to Saitama and admitted that his strength is a no match to the "One Punch Man." However, despite the said scene in the finale, it seems that the war between the two is not over yet. According to the Bitbag, Lord Boros will return in "One Punch Man" Season 2 and the pair will have another round of riot and fighting. But this time, the favor will be with Lord Boros as he returns with more strength, abilities and confidence that match Saitama's per Movie News Guide. There fighting scene will be more explosive as Lord Boros avenge his defeat in the first season. Two More Villains In 'One Punch Man' Aside from Lord Boros, two other villains are expected to challenge Saitama in "One Punch Man" Season 2. Previous reports already claimed that Saitama would also come face to face with Garou and Amai Mask. Parent Herald previously reported that these two characters would be among the bad guys that Saitama has to defeat in "One Punch Man" Season 2. Garou is the most powerful villain in the series. He will be featured when "One Punch Man" Season 2 revolves in the Hero Hunter Arc. Meanwhile, Amai Mask is an old character who already has a brewing conflict with Saitama in the first "One Punch Man" season. Are you excited for "One Punch Man" Season 2? What do you think about the three villains in the new season? Who among them would be the most challenging villain to Saitama? Share your thoughts in the comment section below. Same-sex couples' legal standing as parents is still muddled. At the moment, only heterosexual couples can be defined as parents in accordance with the law. The government of Ontario, Canada, however, is working on measures to change that. Legislation is posed to be introduced this fall allowing birth registration services to all families regardless of the parents' genders. MPP Cheri Di Novo said restricting the description of parenting to one man and one woman is a form of discrimination. Heterosexual parents also aren't required to prove their child is their own, which is the opposite of what same-sex parents experience, CBC News reported. For gay and lesbian couples, there's a huge chance that a surviving parent wouldn't get custody of his/her own child if the other parent dies. In Ontario's law, a sperm donor's right over a child is honored more than the non-birth mother's. Same-sex couples also face missing out on employment insurance because of their unequal legal standing. Some resort to adoption process, while others go to court to declare parentage. Both processes are tedious methods that require lawyers, plenty of money and red tape. Florida Making Progress In Marriage Equality In Florida, married same-sex couples who gave birth to a baby can now be listed as mother and father on the birth certificate, according to a report from Equality Florida. The amended law for birth certificates also covers same-sex couples who already had a child during their marriage. This latest development comes 16 months after Florida legalized marriage equality, WEAR TV took note. It also comes 10 months after the Department of Health was sued by three couples and Equality Florida, who demanded a precise and detailed birth certificate that includes the names of both same-sex parents. Oppositions Those who oppose the expansion of parental rights for same-sex couples argued that it would only present complications. Without biology and the declaration of adoption, they said all people who contributed to a child's rearing -- such as friends and nannies -- could claim parental rights over a kid. According to the opponents, those scenarios would only lead to troubled custody battles that could harm a child in many ways, the Wall Street Journal reported. A 2013 research found that 15 percent of unmarried and same-sex couples are raising children. The states of Colorado, Delaware, New Jersey and Texas have already proposed methods to widen parental rights. But Florida, Utah and New York are still falling behind and are only relying on formal adoption for the rights of non-birth parents. An elite prep school in New Hampshire is being sued by parents of a student who claims she was sexually harassed while participating in a school activity. This report made rounds online on June 1 saying that the school involves their male students in a sexual conquest. Fox News reported that St. Paul School in New Hampshire is the one responsible for the said charges after not putting a stop on a school tradition that is sexual in nature. Apparently, school officials of the said institution allow their senior students to get with as many girls in lower batch as they can. Hence, they called this tradition the "Senior Salute." This is not the first time that the school had this issue, as back on August 19, 2015, CNN reported about the same tradition that this school is known for. It involved a 19-year-old student named Owen Labrie who was accused of raping a 15-year-old student a few days before he graduated. Labrie's way in luring his victim involves Facebook. He would even brag to his friends about his accomplishment whenever a girl falls for his tactic. He was eventually convicted on all the sex assault charges given to him. Remaining friends even though we'll be rivals A photo posted by Alexandra Sharpe (@alesharpe) on Jun 1, 2016 at 5:27pm PDT The said tradition was also said to have uplifted the pride of girls since they consider it an honor to be kissed or be involved with a senior male in their school. Parents were not fond of this idea, which is why they are finally taking it to court. One of the lawyers of the parents charging the elite prep school said that institution has encouraged misogyny and has even made the place unsafe for students who are girls. St. Paul School in New Hampshire refused to comment when the press asked about their side. Would you enroll your child in a school like this? Share us your thoughts in the comments section below. Just when the whole family thought that there is no end to the celebration, a tragedy fell when the mother of the triplets died several days after she gave birth. She was only given the chance to see her two older daughters left at home before she took her final breath. Sharp Pain In Chest Yahoo reported that Kansas mom Casi Rott woke up at around 4 a.m. experiencing a sharp pain in her chest, accompanied with a heartbeat that was way faster than the normal. This happened just two days after she gave birth to her triplets. When this happened, Casi was immediately rushed by her husband to the hospital. Despite the findings that she had a blood clot in her lungs, which caused the pain, Casi went home with her husband two days after to see their two older children 6-year-old Chloe and 2-year-old Tenley. Joey, Casi's husband, said during an interview that when the couple left the hospital, they didn't expect that death would come knocking at their door. He said they thought it was already behind them as Casi was not expressing any sign of pain or something similar. Held Newborn Triplets Before Dying Joey said that Casi had the chance to hold their newborn babies before she went back to their farmhouse, which is a 2 hours drive from the hospital. They even planned to go back to the hospital after checking on their two older daughters. When Casi has seen and embraced her two daughters again, her chest pain returned. She sat down believing that it will just go away, however, it did not. It was then that they decided to return to the hospital. People said that as Joey was driving towards the hospital, Casi already lost consciousness. Despite efforts of waking her up, Casi did not open her eyes again. Reports also have it that the doctors did their best to bring her back but cannot do anything anymore. The parents of Joey had been very supportive of him. They would drive seven miles every day just to assist Joey in his struggle as he takes care of their five children. This service applies to you if your subscription has not yet expired on our old site. You will have continued access until your subscription expires; then you will need to purchase an ongoing subscription through our new system. Please contact the Parsons Sun office at (620) 421-2000 if you have any questions Thinking way ahead of the curve, as Apple often does, they filed for a patent that would place a biometric sensor underneath a MacBook's trackpad as far back as 2009. They were granted a patent for such an idea just last year. Then the rumor surfaced that Touch ID would finally make it to this year's MacBook Pro refresh. It now appears that biometric sensors under a trackpad will be an industry trend. According to Engadget, Both LG Innotek and Synaptics will likely have their products for PC notebooks soon and that it will work with Microsoft's Windows Hello biometric feature. Synaptics will be launching a gaming mouse this year with a fingerprint sensor as well. According to Vice President of Marketing Godfrey Cheng, Synaptics has been bolstering its fingerprint anti-spoofing technology to stay ahead of the curve. So will this be the year that Touch ID / biometrics come to notebooks? While only time will tell, Apple's CEO Tim Cook made an introductory speech at an Apple Event earlier this year about their fight with the FBI over unlocking an iPhone once owned by one of the San Bernardino terrorists. Cook noted that "we believe strongly that we have a responsibility to help you protect your data and protect your privacy. We owe it to our customers and we owe it to our country. This is an issue that impacts all of us and we will not shrink from this responsibility." If Apple is consistent, then protecting our data most certainly should extend through to our notebooks and as soon as possible. If need be, Apple could shoot for an alternative methodology that they revealed in a patent filing in March. About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Over at Get Religion, Terry Mattingly wonders why journalists have basically ignored the possibility that the HHS Department has language in their Final Rule Implementing Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act that indicates all recipients of monies from HHS must perform gender reassignment surgeries, no religious exceptions allowed. Like, if you wanted that kind of surgery, youd want the folks least experienced in providing it to start honing their skills by learning on you. The folks over at The Federalist sounded the alarm with a pretty ominous suggestion that, The final rule states that, under Title IX, any hospital receiving funding from HHS must treat individuals consistent with their gender identity. The rule provides no religious exemption. In other words, religious hospitals that receive taxpayer dollars via Medicaid or Medicare will be required to perform sex-change operations or get cut off financially. Maybe that was just click bait. Or, maybe most journalists dont really care enough to do the (not very) heavy lifting that would be required of them to figure out that just because the Administration finalizes something doesnt mean that the thing finalized will actually go into effect? I dont know. Maybe theres not much sizzle there. Rest assured, though, that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and other religious groups with a stake in the healthcare delivery system, are way ahead of any journalists hoping scary headlines will sell some papers, and gather some eyeballs on web pages. You see, back in November of 2015 the USCCB, the Christian Medical Association, the National Association of Evangelicals, et al, jointly scrutinized this proposed rule, commented on it during the period when the Administration opened the rule to feedback, and found that they believe it is untenable, and likely to die a quick death in the courts. In other words, this aint no unhittable knuckle ball coming in hot from the Administrations ace pitching staff. Nope. Instead, they are lined up on this totally telegraphed fat pitch, ready to hammer it right over the outfield wall. Need an example? Here are five reasons regarding the question of Gender Identity discrimination where this rule doesnt have enough pixie dust on it to tip the balance on the courts clear reasoning weighing machine. II. Gender Identity The proposed regulations define discrimination on the basis of sex to include discrimination on the basis of gender identity. 80 Fed. Reg. at 54216 [ 92.4]. The regulations define gender identity, in turn, to mean an individuals internal sense of gender, which may be different from that individuals sex assigned at birth. Id. For several reasons, the inclusion of gender identity in the definition of sex discrimination is an erroneous interpretation of the law. First, Title IX says nothing about gender identity. Instead, it uses the term sex. The ordinary dictionary definition of sex is the character of being male or female. Websters New World Dictionary (3d College ed.). Because Title IX says nothing about gender identity, there is no basis for including it in regulations implementing Section 1557. Second, the legislative history of Title IX does not support the inclusion of gender identity in the definition of sex discrimination. Title IX was intended to provide equal educational opportunities for both sexes. Lothes v. Butler County Juvenile Rehabilitation Center, 243 Fed. Appx 950, 955 (6th Cir. 2007). There is no basis for concluding that Congress intended, in Title IX, to protect an individuals internal sense of gender (80 Fed. Reg. at 54216) as opposed to his or her biological sex. The phrase gender identity was never used in congressional debate over Title IX. Third, case law does not support the governments interpretation. We are aware of only one Title IX case that takes up the issue, and it rejects the claim that Title IX forbids discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Johnston v. Univ. of Pittsburgh, No. 3:13-213, 2015 WL 1497753, at *12 (W.D. Pa. Mar. 31, 2015). Fourth, though OCR claims that its interpretation of on the basis of sex to include gender identity discrimination is well accepted (80 Fed. Reg. at 54176), the authority it cites for this interpretation is weak. OCR cites: (a) settlement agreements and court filings by the Department of Justice; (b) statements by OCR and other federal agencies; and (c) a handful of court cases. Id. Settlement agreements and court filings by a party provide no authority for any legal proposition. The agency decisions and policies upon which OCR relies did not involve Title IX. In any event, such decisions and policies receive judicial deference only insofar as they are persuasive. OCRs interpretation of Title IX to include a prohibition on gender identity discrimination is unpersuasive for reasons given here. Only one of the court decisions cited by OCR arose under Title IX, and that decision, as noted above, rejects the claim that sex discrimination includes gender identity. Johnston, supra, 2015 WL 1497753, at *12. Three other cases cited by OCR arose under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But Section 1557 says nothing about Title VII. If Congress had intended to track Title VII, it would have mentioned that title instead of, or in addition to, Title IX. To be sure, courts sometimes rely on interpretations of Title VIIs prohibition of sex discrimination in the workplace in construing Section 901 of Title IX. But any reliance on Title VII runs headlong into the fact that most courts have rejected the claim that gender identity is a protected class under that title. Title VIIs prohibition of sex discrimination, for example, does not make transsexual individuals a protected class, does not preclude reasonable workplace rules requiring different dress and grooming standards for men and women, and does not preclude the reservation of restrooms and locker rooms based on biological sex. Use of the term gender identity is therefore over-inclusive because it goes beyond what Title VII proscribes by way of sex discrimination. On the other hand, if OCR intends merely to follow Price Waterhouse, see n.5, supra, then the use of the term gender identity is under-inclusive because claims of sex stereotyping, as courts have construed that term, do not require a showing of discrimination based on gender identity. For these reasons, the term gender identity is a poor fit with Title VIIs ban on sex discrimination. For the same reasons, it is a poor fit with Title IX and Section 1557. Fifth, if ACA prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity, as OCR claims, then efforts in the current Congress to enact the Equality Act, a bill that would, among other things, forbid discrimination on the basis of gender identity by health care providers and in health care programs funded by the federal government, would be inexplicable. There would be no proposal in the current Congress to prohibit gender identity discrimination in federally-funded health care programs if federal law already prohibited it. For these reasons, the final regulations should not define sex discrimination to include discrimination on the basis of gender identity. This is not to suggest that any person should be excluded from health services. An orthopedic practice group, for example, would be acting unprofessionally if it refused to treat a persons fractured limb because of his or her political affiliation, marital status, family size, matriculation, intellectual interests, sexual practices, gender identity, or any number of other reasons. The point of the regulations, however, is not to create a code of professional ethics but to implement a particular provision of ACA, and that provision says nothing about any of these categories. Read their entire analysis on all the other provisions of Section 1557 right here. If youre pressed for time, let me skip you right to their conclusion. When the regulations were first proposed, they were hailed as groundbreaking. That is a strike against them. OCRs task is not to break new ground, but to carry out an Act of Congress. As discussed here, the proposed regulations fail to do that. We respectfully submit that in the final regulations, OCR: (a) must make clear that Section 1557 does not require the provision of, referral or coverage for, abortion; (b) must not define sex discrimination to include gender identity discrimination; (c) must not require coverage of gender transition services; (d) must revise its overly broad interpretation of sex stereotypes; (e) must clarify that Section 1557 does not forbid discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation; and (f) must include a religious exemption that is at least as broad as the one in Title IX (but without restriction to an educational setting). The exemption, at a minimum, should state that the prohibition on sex discrimination shall not apply to a religious organization if such application would not be consistent with the religious tenets of such organization. Without these changes, the regulations, for the reasons stated in this letter, are unlikely to survive scrutiny in the courts. Thank you in advance for your careful consideration of these comments. That was their opinion before the rule was finalized, which was, ironically, 3 days before the recent victory of the Little Sisters of the Poor at the SCOTUS. If the USSCBs, and their partners, opinion is correct, the Administration might be facing a whole nother fait accompli, all over again. Donald Verrelli probably hopes hes retired from the ballpark before he has to defend this thing. Maybe the journalists will care then? Stay tuned. Armenia OKs abolishing Iran visa regime 06/03/16 Source: Press TV Armenia has announced that it has approved signing an agreement with Iran to abolish the visa regime between the two countries. Armenia Armenia's media have quoted the country's Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan as saying that the agreement will help develop relations between Iran and Armenia. Kocharyan added that the move could also "strengthen the mutually beneficial economic, trade and other ties" between the two countries. "The agreement aims to settle the regime of mutual visits between the Armenia and Iranian citizens. It defines that the citizens of the two states can travel with citizens and diplomatic passports to Armenia and Iran without visa, can leave and stay in Armenia and Iran for a maximum of 90 days within 180 days," the official said. The signing of the agreement will boost the development of tourism between the two states and will create favorable conditions for mutual visits of citizens of Armenia and Iran, Kocharyan added. Earlier, Russia's media had quoted Armenia's Foreign Ministry officials as saying that the issue had been on the agenda of the two countries for a long time. "We saw significant progress in Iranian-Armenian relations in the past few months. This decision is a result of lengthy consultations between the two countries," the media quoted an unnamed official as saying, adding Iran had similar waivers in the pipeline for Russians. It was earlier reported that Armenia's Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian will travel to Iran next week to sign an agreement with Iran to cancel the visa regime between the two countries. Khomeini Grandson Defends Decades-Old Mass Political Executions 06/03/16 By Golnaz Esfandiari, RFE/RL Ali Khomeini, a grandson of revolutionary leader and Islamic Republic of Iran founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, has defended thousands of summary executions of political prisoners in 1988 following a fatwa by his grandfather. Ali Khomeini (L), an Iranian cleric who is the grandson of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (R) Some sources claim that more than 5,000 members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) and further leftist groups, students, and others were executed in the span of a few months. The prisoners were said to have been executed after brief interrogations by three-member committees -- dubbed "death commissions" -- about their political and religious beliefs. Speaking at a June 1 event in Qom marking the anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini's death, Ali Khomeini, a cleric, suggested that the executions of political opponents, particularly MKO members, was a wise move. "Today, some people feel sorry for the hypocrites" -- a term used by Iranian authorities to refer to MKO members -- "and say, 'Why did you execute them?' These were people who stood against the establishment and committed crimes that [militant Islamist group Islamic State] would not commit," the younger Khomeini was quoted as saying by Iranian media. "They assassinated the president, the prime minister, and many other senior figures," Khomeini, who teaches at the Qom seminary, said in reference to a series of bombings by the MKO in the 1980s. Known in Iran as "The Little Ali," Khomeini added that if his grandfather had shown flexibility toward them, "the country would not experience any peace even after 30 years." He also claimed that Khomeini's "management" of the crisis -- he was the country's first supreme leader under Iran's postrevolutionary theocracy -- that Iran faced following the 1979 revolution brought peace to the country. "Maybe several years ago, it wasn't as easy as today to speak about the management of The Imam," he said of the elder Khomeini in an allusion to the "Arab spring" uprisings for social justice that swept some states in the Middle East and northern Africa in 2010-11 but many critics say were reversed in what some dub an "Arab winter." "It's easier to speak about it today." "Who today has a clear idea of the fate of those revolutions? Beside it, we have to look at why Iran's Islamic revolution was successful." He said, according to the text of his speech published by the hard-line, semiofficial Fars news agency. The 1988 executions are rarely discussed publicly in Iran, where families of the victims have faced state pressure and harassment for attempting to hold commemorations for their lost loved ones. Amnesty International has called on Iran "to uphold the right to truth, justice and reparation of the families of those killed" in the 1988 executions, which the rights group said will remain known to Iranians as The Prison Massacre. Copyright (c) 2016 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org Conference Call: Post Sanctions Iran Market Review 06/03/16 Source: Turquoise Partners Turquoise Partners Conference Call Friday, 17th June 2016 10am UK Time Turquoise Partners will be hosting a conference call on the current opportunities in the Iranian market post sanctions. The call will be led by Rouzbeh Pirouz, Executive Chairman, Ramin Rabii, Chief Executive Officer, Shervin Shahriari, Chief Investment Officer and Cyrus Molavi, Director of Asset Management. Email to reserve your place CALL AGENDA 10:00 am Introduction: How the Iranian market and foreign investment flows have developed since the implementation of the JCPOA - Rouzbeh Pirouz, Chairman, Turquoise Partners 10:10 am The current investment environment: opportunities, obstacles, and solutions - Ramin Rabii, Chief Executive Officer, Turquoise Partners 10:20 am Fund Performance Review, Investment Strategy: Preferred Sectors and Companies - Shervin Shahriari, Chief Investment Officer, Turquoise Partners 10:45 am Pre-selected questions - Cyrus Molavi, Director of Asset Management, Turquoise Partners The best 2-in-1 laptop 2022: our picks of the best convertible laptops These are the best 2-in-1 laptops you can buy right now Comixology, the digital comic book arm of the almighty Amazon, is a standout service that brings titles from a wide array of publishers, including DC, Image, and Marvel, to web browsers and Android and iOS mobile apps. Comixology has an excellent Guided View mode that makes reading a pleasure on small devices, digital comics that release on the same day as print editions, high-definition comic book files that render stunningly on HD displays, and an Unlimited reading plan that could potentially save you a lot of dough. Simply put, Comixology is a near-perfect combination of digital comic book store and reader. An Intro to Digital Comics You begin by creating a dedicated Comixology account or logging in with your existing Amazon credentials. Purchased digital comics are tied to your account, so you can access the books via your PC's web browser or one of Comixology's Android or iOS mobile apps. Comixology is free to download, but you must pay for individual issues or the $5.99 per month subscription plan (more on those options in a bit). The reader works cross-platform, too. When I stopped reading Savage Sword of Conan #1 on Comixology.com, the Android app asked if I wanted to continue where I'd left off in the browser when I opened the same issue on my phone. Those who read on multiple devices will really appreciate this feature, as it saves you from having to flip through books to find your place. If you have diverse reading tastes, Comixology has you covered. It features titles from a wide array of major and indie publishers, includingamong many othersAntarctic Press, Archie, Boom, Dark Horse, DC, Dynamite, IDW, Image, Lion Forge, Marvel, Top Shelf, Valiant, and Weekly Shonen Jump. The company even has its own publishing label, Comixology Originals, that features creator-owned miniseries. In a smart move that recalls how Netflix releases content, these titles drop all of their issues at once. Comixology also provides a print-on-demand service for Originals books, too, just in case you want them in physical form. Comixology's Android and iOS Apps As mentioned, Comixology is also available for Android and iOS. The apps bring the Comixology experience to mobile devices, with a panel-by-panel Guided View format that makes reading books on small screens surprisingly enjoyable. Both versions let you browse the Comixology store, add items to your wishlist, and read books; but the shopping and checkout experiences are the biggest differences between the Android and iOS apps. The Android version lets you make purchases from within the app, while the iOS version demands you make purchases through your smartphone's mobile browser. From a business standpoint, I can understand why Comixology decided to go this route with the iOS app; giving Apple a cut of each purchase is a lot of lost revenue. However, as a frequent Comixology user, I find that the lack of an integrated store hinders the browse-and-buy simplicity. Navigating Pages Comixology's home screen contains a slider that highlights hot new releases, digital sales, and company-related announcements. Below that are sections that showcase titles exclusive to the platform, as well as themed sales (for example, Comixology slashed the price of various Captain Marvel(Opens in a new window) titles to coincide with Carol Danvers' cinematic debut). In a column on the right side of the interface are links to free books, graphic novels, Top 10 Bestsellers, and other areas of interest. Comixology's menus give you numerous ways to browse books: By series, story arcs, ratings, publisher, genre, creators, and other criteria. You can, of course, also search for titles or artists using a built-in search function. Books are available for purchase on the same day that print issues hit brick-and-mortar stores in most cases, so you don't have to worry about waiting to read Man and Superman because you decided to go digital. Buying Digital Comics When you find a book that interests you, click an issue icon to see its synopsis, creator credits, pricing, rating, and sample pages you can try before buying. Building a digital comic book collection is as simple as clicking price icons to place the comics into the shopping cart, and then clicking the Purchase icon. You can also add titles to a wishlist to buy them at a later time. The potent combination of accessibility and ease of use means that comics-heads may have to show some restraint in order to not drain their wallets. On the other hand, pricing may deter rampant spending. New digital comics are priced exactly the same as their paper-and-ink counterparts, which from a consumer's point of view is a tad ludicrous. For example, Black Lightning: Cold Dead Hands #1 is $3.99the same as its physical counterpart. There are numerous freebies and 99-cent issues in Comixology's catalog, but $2.99 to $3.99 pricing appears to be the norm (collections, naturally, cost more, but you get more bang for the buck). Unfortunately, many pre-1980s books are missing in action. The large holes in the Spitfire and the Troubleshooters series, for example, are disappointing. The rival Marvel Unlimited all-you-can-read subscription service has many books that haven't yet appeared in Comixology, so that's worth checking out if you're looking for back issues. That said, Comixology is working on digitizing many old-school comics. In fact, Comixology sells many books from the pre-superhero era, such as Tales from the Crypt, Two-Fisted Tales, and Weird Love. So, in a way, Comixology has become an incredible comics archive, with titles spanning many eras. Comixology Unlimited If buying individual comics and collections isn't exactly your bag, Comixology Unlimited may prove enticing. The all-you-can-eat subscription service lets you read more than 20,000 select comics from a variety of publishers, including Archie, DC, Dark Horse, Fantagraphics, and Marvel. Comixology Unlimited is a tremendous value to US readers (it's set to roll out to other regions in the future), as the service lets you explore new titles at zero financial risk beyond the monthly service charge. Unfortunately, Comixology Unlimited only includes a fraction of Comixology's total library. Of course, once you end your subscription, you lose access to the comics that you didn't purchase. That said, the titles you buy as a Comixology Unlimited subscriber receive at least a 10-percent discount (and the discount stacks with any other sales that Comixology has at the moment). The company offers a 30-day free trial to Comixology Unlimited, so you can try before you subscribe. Comixology also lets you purchase curated bundles, buy gift cards for others, and subscribe to seriessomething that you can't do on the mobile side. The Comixology Reading Experience Comixology gives you several ways to read your titles. You can scroll through an issue page by page, fire up a double-page view, or use Comixology's patented Guided View technology. Activated by clicking the GV icon, Guided View simulates the flow of reading by guiding you from one panel to another when you click the on-screen navigation arrows (or tap your keyboard's left/right arrow keys). The Fit to Width (found in the Settings option) and Zoom modes also let you control the camera for a more pleasurable viewing experience. Comixology's multiple viewing options let me enjoy my comics regardless of my device's screen size. Comixology's Smart Lists aren't revolutionary, but they give you handy, at-a-glance information about your digital comics collection. They let you quickly track what you've been reading with the In Progress and Unread lists, show what you've bought with the Recently Purchased list, and offer a new way to maintain your Wish List. Another addition is the Recommended for You list, which gives you personalized recommendations based on comic books you've purchased. For example, the Recommended for You list prompted me to check out issues in a series that I had yet to purchase (Superb #3), as well as books related to others I already owned (EC Archives: Crime SuspenStories #2). DRM-Free Comics By visiting Comixology.com, you can download comics to your PC's desktop in the DRM-free CBZ and PDF formats. This means you can read books purchased from Comixology in digital comic book apps, such as Perfect Viewer and YACReader once you transfer the files from your PC to your mobile device. Sadly, you cannot download DRM-free comics via Comixology's mobile apps. Unfortunately, and not entirely unexpectedly, DC and Marvel haven't joined the DRM-free digital comics movement. However, Action Lab, Aspen, Blind Ferret, Caliber, Creative Impulse, Dynamite, GT Labs, IDW, Image, Kingstone, Monkeybrains, Oni, Fantagraphics, Th3d World, Thrillbent, Top Cow, Valiant, and Zenescope have kicked DRM to the curb. If you download the DRM-free comics, you can still leverage Comixology's DRM to sync books across multiple devicesit's the best of both worlds. Despite Amazon owning Comixology, you can't lend comics to others as you can with Amazon's Kindle books. I hope that changes in the near future. Digital Comics Dominance Comic book fans who want to buy and read their digital comics on a desktop or laptop rather than on a smartphone or tablet will love Comixology. There are back catalog gaps, but if you prefer reading Transmetropolitan without worrying about mylar bags and backing boards, Editors' Choice Comixology is an excellent way to read digital comics on a computer, smartphone, or tablet. If you're ready to begin using the service, check out these useful Comixology tips, as well as our monthly digital comic book recommendations. Comixology 4.5 Editors' Choice (Opens in a new window) Check Price (Opens in a new window) Pros Most new books are available the same day as print issues Syncs content across PCs and mobile devices Gift cards, subscriptions, and bundles are available Many DRM-free titles Unlimited reading service available View More Cons Holes in the back catalog You can't let friends borrow issues in your library No purchasing comics directly from the iOS app The Bottom Line If you're into comic books but you don't want to deal with stacks of back issues or the hassle of going to your local comic shop, Amazon's Comixology is the way to go. The European Commission has signed a landmark agreement with the U.S. in its quest to legitimize the transatlantic flow of European Union citizens personal information. No, its not the embattled Privacy Shield, which the Commission hopes to conclude later this month, but the rather flimsier-sounding umbrella agreement or, more formally, the U.S.-EU agreement on the protection of personal information relating to the prevention, investigation, detection, and prosecution of criminal offenses. It covers the exchange between EU and U.S. law enforcers, during the course of their investigations of personal data including names, addresses and criminal records. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, European Commissioner for Justice Vera Jourova and Dutch Minister for Security and Justice Ard van der Steur signed the agreement in Amsterdam on Thursday. One benefit of the agreement for EU citizens caught up in such investigations is that they will benefit from the same rights to judicial redress as US citizens if a privacy breach occurs, thanks to the recently passed Judicial Redress Act. A stumbling block on the way to the agreement was U.S. senators delay in approving the act after its approval by the House of Representatives. The agreement wont become part of international law until the European Parliament, noticeably critical of the Commissions data protection plans in recent weeks, has given its approval. Some of you out there may hope to play Minecraft and other games on the HoloLens, and one day you might! But Microsofts focus with its augmented reality platform is still all about the workplace. On Friday, Microsofts Outlook team announced the roll out of Outlook Mail and Calendar to HoloLens. The new apps are available now in the Windows Store for anyone with a HoloLens Development Edition. Like other HoloLens apps, the Outlook programs are built on the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) making them very similar to the Windows Store apps available for PCs. In the images Microsoft posted online the two apps look very similar to the Windows 10 PC versions when in Snap modeWindows split-screen view for seeing two apps at once. Speaking of which, Microsoft plans to add HoloLens support for running three flat apps like these side-by-side simultaneously. Microsoft You now can pin multiple 2D apps in virtual space, and Microsofts HoloLens will remember where they are. The apps have the same sidebar as they do on Windows, including the same basic views for calendar and your inbox. The title bar is a little different as it has interface elements that are specific to HoloLens. Other than that they appear to be the same. Microsoft says you can even choose accent colors for the apps to match your surroundings, much like you can on a PC based on your desktop wallpaper. Its not clear if HoloLens is smart enough to choose the accent colors for you, but that would be a neat trick. Why this matters: Since Microsoft hopes to see HoloLens as a productivity tool it helps to have key apps like email and calendar inside the device. That way users can receive upcoming appointment and new mail alerts inside the mixed reality device. If something important comes up, you can answer an email and continue designing that next-generation widget without missing a beat. Other Office apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote are already available for HoloLens. Perris City Councilwoman Tonya Burke was instrumental in getting Hillary Clinton to her city, where the Democratic presidential candidate is to meet with leaders later today, Thursday, June 2. I just made a request and it looks like its coming to fruition, Burke said Thursday afternoon as she waited for a plane at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. She was taking a break from a family vacation to fly home and meet with Clinton. Burke said she met Congresswoman Maxine Waters, a Los Angeles Democrat, at the state Democratic Convention in San Jose in February. Burke said Waters spoke about being a leader outside of her district and that elected officials have to pay attention to cities that are sometimes overlooked and give smaller cities, such as Perris, a seat at the table. Burke said she told Waters she would hold her to that promise and the congresswoman later invited the councilwoman to a Clinton appearance in Los Angeles, where Burke met the candidate. I asked her to come to Perris, Burke said. Not Paris, France or Paris, Texas, but Perris, California. That got the ball rolling on a visit that came as a surprise to even city leaders. Joe Vargo, the citys public information officer, said he got a call Wednesday afternoon from someone who heard about Clintons visit on television and got confirmation when he read about the visit on pressenterprise.com. He said he received an invitation to the event late Wednesday night and is expected to attend with Burke, City Manager Richard Belmudez and Mayor Pro Tem Rita Rogers. City Councilman Mark Yarbrough said neither he nor Mayor Daryl Busch were invited, but said their city makes sense for such a visit. Our demographics are very unique, he said. If you were to look at us on a map, were the nucleus of Southern California. Yarbrough pointed out that the city of almost 75,000 residents along the 215 in southwestern Riverside County, is about a one-hour drive from Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange County. I think its a good choice, he said. We have a large Latino population. The fact that she picked Perris kind of makes sense. Hispanics make up 74 percent of Perris population. Whites account for 11 percent and blacks are 10 percent. Howard Katz, chairman of the Riverside County Democratic Party, said he was not invited, but Michael Vargas, president of the Perris Valley Democratic Club, will be there. Weve been asking for an invitation, but havent got one, Katz said. I would very much have enjoyed going, especially with the position I hold, but I understand they only had room for 40. Yarbrough said the visit will be a boost for Perris. It continues to solidify who we are as a community, he said. Any opportunity to bring attention to the community in a positive way, Im in. RELATED SAN DIEGO: Hillary Clinton calls Donald Trump temperamentally unfit to be president DECISION 2016:Hillary Clinton plans private Perris meeting DECISION 2016: Inland Democrats in Congress all back Hillary Clinton DECISION 2016: Inland Democrats in Congress all back Hillary Clinton DECISION 2016: What people were saying about Hillary Clinton rally TEMECULA: Trump supporters target Clinton at Duck Pond rally DECISION 2016: Dispatches from Clintons visit to UC Riverside Hillary Clinton will be on campus at Cal State San Bernardino on Friday evening to spend some time with San Bernardino-area residents. The former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential primary candidate will be speaking on campus during her second visit to the Inland Empire in as many days. Its the latest iteration of a phenomenon Californians are unused to: having a presidential primary that matters. Clinton was at an evening meeting Thursday at Casa Jimenez Mexican restaurant in Perris. She spoke at UC Riverside on May 24, hours after Democratic rival Bernie Sanders had done so as well. Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, spoke in Pomona the weekend before, and Sanders spoke there at the same high school, on May 26. This is all symptomatic of a Democratic presidential primary process continuing on to practically the very last primaries on June 7, when California and five other states cast their votes. (The District of Columbia actually holds the very last Democratic Party primary on June 14.) Clinton has 1,770 pledged delegates to Sanders 1,500. Clinton also has many more superdelegates party officials and elected officials like Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-San Bernardino. Clinton has 543 superdelegates, while Sanders has 43. Democratic primary candidates need a total of 2,293 delegates to win the nomination. Clinton leads Sanders by about 2.9 million votes cast during the 2016 primary season so far. Clinton is scheduled to speak at 6 p.m. at CSUSBs Coyote Den Gymnasium, 5500 University Parkway. Doors open to the public at 4 p.m. RELATED LIVE COVERAGE: Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton visits Perris DECISION 2016: Heres why Hillary Clinton returned to the Inland Empire tonight DECISION 2016: In San Diego Clinton calls Trump temperamentally unfit to be president DECISION 2016: Councilwoman key in Clinton visit DECISION 2016: Hillary Clinton plans private Perris meeting DECISION 2016: Inland Democrats in Congress all back Hillary Clinton DECISION 2016: What people were saying about Hillary Clinton rally TEMECULA: Trump supporters target Clinton at Duck Pond rally DECISION 2016: Dispatches from Clintons visit to UC Riverside Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stopped at a Mexican restaurant in the struggling city of Perris late Thursday, June 2, to meet with locals and discuss economic growth, education and immigration reform. The former first lady and secretary of state arrived to cheers at Casa Jimenez shortly after 6 p.m. when her motorcade pulled off Interstate 215 and into the restaurant parking lot. Rep. Mark Takano, D-Riverside, whose district includes Perris, introduced Clinton, praising her for coming to the city, one of the smaller and less well-off communities of the Inland Empire. RELATED DECISION 2016: Clinton visit praised for putting Perris on the map SAN BERNARDINO: Clinton coming to CSUSB on Friday DECISION 2016: In San Diego Clinton calls Trump temperamentally unfit to be president DECISION 2016: Councilwoman key in Clinton visit DECISION 2016: Hillary Clinton plans private Perris meeting DECISION 2016: Inland Democrats in Congress all back Hillary Clinton TEMECULA: Trump supporters target Clinton at Duck Pond rally At the start, Clinton told the 80 or so people in the restaurant: I am here in Perris to have a conversation, saying she wants to be a president who listens as much as she talks. Perris Councilwoman Tonya Burke told Clinton about the citys high unemployment and poverty. Communities like Perris are often left out, Burke said, asking Clinton, How do we get Perris on the map? Clinton agreed with Burke that places like Perris are often overlooked. Federal funding formulas need to be adjusted so that communities in need like Perris get more federal dollars, Clinton said. Encouraging Latino voter turnout will be key for Clinton in Tuesdays primary and the November general election. With that in mind, Perris, where seven in 10 residents are Latino, provided an appropriate backdrop. Clinton reaffirmed her support for comprehensive immigration reform. I really want to end this negative debate about people who are working, paying taxes and sending heir kids to school, she said. She showed that she was familiar with the Inland Empire, praising the soon-to-start Perris Valley Metrolink Line. That is great, she said in voicing her support for more mass transit. The project received millions in federal funding. She also said she saw a lot of warehouses when she was driving into town. Warehouses look big, but they dont employ a lot of people, Clinton said. Her remarks were light on mentions of her rival for the Democratic nomination, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, or presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, whose foreign policy ideas she lambasted at a speech in San Diego earlier in the day. She did take what could be seen as a veiled swipe against Sanders when she said, its not enough to to say whats wrong about the economy. Later, she noted she voted for an immigration bill as New Yorks senator in 2007 while Sanders did not. She also suggested that Trump lacks the proper appreciation for history when discussing the need for schools to teach students the history of all Americans. Clinton praised President Barack Obamas handling of the economy and criticized GOP economic ideas as benefiting only the very rich. Republicans were asleep at the wheel and allowed Wall Street to wreck the economy in 2008, she said. As president, Clinton said she would have the best possible economic adviser in her husband, former President Bill Clinton. And she said diverse education offerings and extending more capital to small businesses are key to improving the economy. Early childhood education, Clinton said, would be a top priority in her administration. Reading, talking, singing to your baby doesnt cost anything and build young minds so theyre better prepared for school, she said. Its Clintons second trip to the Inland Empire this election cycle. On May 24, she held a rally at UC Riverside, the same day that Sanders held rallies at Riverside Municipal Auditorium and the National Orange Show Events Center in San Bernardino. Clinton attended an event in El Centro before arriving in Perris and she plans to campaign at Cal State San Bernardino on Friday night. With Californias primary Tuesday, June 7, polls show a tightening race between Clinton and Sanders. A Field Poll released Thursday showed Clinton with just a two percentage point lead over Sanders, within the polls margin of error and a sharp contrast from earlier polls showing Clinton with a double-digit lead. Even if she loses California, Clinton is on track to win the nomination. But a loss in the state would be embarrassing to her campaign and provide more momentum for Sanders bid to win the nomination or at the very least, keep the Democratic Party on a liberal path. As a result, the Clinton campaign has intensified its focus on the state. Meanwhile, Sanders has been from one end of California to the other to encourage his supporters, especially millennials and no-party-preference voters, to turn out on primary day. Takano noted the growing importance of the Inland area. The fact that Clinton has repeatedly come to the Inland Empire confirms what Ive always believed. This district is ripe with voters that will support Hillary Clinton, said Takano, who plans to vote for Clinton as a superdelegate. And as the event ended, he seemed to answer Burkes earlier question. Perris is on the map! Takano proclaimed after Clinton spoke. Contact the writer: 951-368-9547 or jhorseman@pressenterprise.com951-368-9698 or aclaverie@pressenterprise.com HEAT DOESNT STOP LETTER WRITER One of Librada Murrillos daughters is in community college and another is enrolled at a Cal State school. The 46-year-old from Moreno Valley has seen first-hand how a good education can lift up a family and help young people achieve their dreams. Youth need someone to believe in them, said Murrillo, who visited Casa Jimenez in Perris on Thursday evening to deliver a handwritten letter to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. The letter asks Clinton to boost funding for schools and provide more aid for people from low-income families who are striving for college. Standing in the restaurants parking lot, on a day when the high cracked 100 degrees, Murrillo said she believes Clinton can make a positive difference because of her partys historic support for the needy. They dont judge us. They look at us as an equal, she said. WAVING TO THE PERRIS CROWD A large crowd pressed against yellow police tape to get a glimpse of Clinton as her motorcade exited Interstate 215 and dropped her off at the back door to the Casa Jimenez Mexican restaurant. Clinton didnt get out and interact with the crowd, but her SUV did stop for a bit so she could wave to supporters and area residents who were drawn to the flame of a rare-for-Perris spectacle. I think its beautiful that shes reaching out to the Latino people, said Maria Pacheco, 62, of Sun City. Pacheco brought a Hillary Clinton action figure with the hopes of getting an autograph but she didnt get a chance to meet her real-life hero. Johana Rivas, 35, said it was exciting when Clinton waved to the crowd. Although shes an undecided Democratic Party voter shes wavering between Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders Rivas, a longtime Perris resident said she appreciated Clinton taking time during her campaign to include her hometown. She could be our next president, she said BIG FAREWELL FOR HISTORIC VISIT Keneisha Stanley jumped up and down, the phone with the precious image held firmly in her hand. She waved at us! she exclaimed, sharing the news with anyone within ear shot. Stanley, 28, of Perris, was one of hundreds of area residents who ventured to the area near the restaurant to get a glimpse of Clinton as her motorcade left. The crowd for Clintons departure was larger than for her arrival, fed by people who heard from a friend of a friend or a TV news report that Clinton was in town. Stanley, and the friends she recruited to join her, said Clinton is a lock to win the state now because she reached out to a city that rarely gets the spotlight. If you visit Perris CLINTON RETURNING AGAIN FRIDAY Seems like Hillary Clinton just cant get enough of the Inland Empire. The Democratic presidential front-runner will be on campus at Cal State San Bernardino at 6 p.m. Friday, June 3, for whats billed as a get-out-the-vote rally. Shes been to UC Riverside and was at an evening meeting Thursday at Casa Jimenez Mexican restaurant in Perris. Clinton is scheduled to speak at CSUSBs Coyote Den Gymnasium, 5500 University Parkway. Doors open to the public at 4 p.m. Staff Writer Beau Yarbrough contributed to this report. Eastvale residents will get a chance to talk things over with members of the Eastvale Police Department at the June 16 Coffee with a Copevent at Farmer Boys restaurant. Coffee with a Cop provides residents with the opportunity to ask quesions and learn more about the Eastvale Police Department and to meet deputies who patrol the city. Coffee with a Cop will take place from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. at Farmer Boys, 12545 Limonite Ave., Eastvale The coffee is on the house. Information: 951-955-2600. Contact the writer: 951-368-9647 or sstokley@pressenterprise.com Just south of Temecula in northern San Diego County, crews finishined digging fire lines around 85 percent of a three-day-old wildfire that blackened 45 acres near Pala. The fire started about 1:50 p.m. on Tuesday at a home in the 38800 block of Pala Temecula way and spread into dense brush. About 100 residents from 20 nearby homes were asked to evacuate briefly, but were let back in on Tuesday. The fire was at 85 percent contained by 6 p.m. Thursday. Updates with comments from students. A threat of gunfire at Temeculas Great Oak High School prompted extra precautions on the part of school officials June 3, but the threat quickly vanished and the day ended normally students finished their final exams and went home. Temecula Valley Unified School District Spokeswoman Laura Boss said the shooting threat, written on a bathroom wall in the schools 600 building, did prompt school district officials to take some precautions. In addition to the schools regular resource officer, she said, the Riverside County Sheriffs Department had provided at least four other officers to watch over the campus as school began. Students also reported that teachers were not letting students out of class unless they really needed to go to the bathroom.They said students who walked around school without a hall pass were quickly approached by officers or security guards and escorted back to their classes. Boss said finals proceeded at the school Friday, but parents who felt uncomfortable about sending their children to school were being encouraged to make other arrangements with their childrens teachers. We werent going to penalize anyone if they felt they were uncomfortable with sending their child to school, she said. And many chose not to. Boss said there was a noticeable drop in attendance from the threat, but she didnt have exact numbers Friday for how many students didnt show up. Around 12:30 p.m. Friday, many students were leaving the school because of a modified school schedule. Those students, for the most part, said they hadnt really worried about the the threat. I thought it was just somebody pulling a senior prank at the end of the year, joking around, said Sejin Frueh, 16, a junior at the school. And today, I saw all the cops in the front of the school and the back. Then I took it as more of a serious threat. Freshman Kailey Perez, 15, also felt that the message wasnt legitimate. I had a feeling nothing was going to happen, she said. If you were going to do something like that, why would you say it? On June 1, school officials emailed parents to let them know that about the threatening message on the bathroom wall. Im going to shoot up the school, Friday, June 3, it read. Many parents on social media said they would not be sending their children to school. The message is not the first threatening message to be scrawled on a bathroom wall in the Temecula Valley Unified School District. Two threats were written within a day of each other on bathroom walls at Temecula Valley High School in November, but school officials and law enforcement were quickly able to determine the threats were not valid. But school officials had a tougher time with this one. Though they suspected the message was a prank, they couldnt say so with certainty, she said. This one we have not been able to make that determination, she said midday. Boss did say, though, that if the message was written as a practical joke, it wasnt very well-received. While we believe this is a prank, this is very disruptive and very disappointing because it affects a lot of people, she said. The heat arrived in Inland Southern California briefly on Thursday but was expected to rise further today and Saturday. Riversides high temperature on Thursday was 97 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. A temperature as high as 108 is expected today and 106 on Saturday, according to the weather service. The high-pressure system responsible for the excessive heat is expected to leave on Sunday, dropping temperatures into the 90s. By Monday, the area will be back in the 80s. The weather service and the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health have issued heat advisories for the Inland area. The weather service advised people to postpone outdoor work if possible, or wear lightweight clothing and have plenty of water on hand if time will be spent outdoors. FAMILY: 8 Inland Empire area water parks where you can beat the heat The health department said in a news release that those most vulnerable to the heat are the elderly, children and infants, those with chronic health conditions and those who work outside. Just south of Temecula in northern San Diego County, crews finished the hot job of digging fire lines around 85 percent of a 3-day-old wildfire that blackened 45 acres near Pala. The fire had started at about 1:50 p.m. Tuesday at a home in the 38800 block of Pala Temecula way and spread into dense brush. Inland residents arent strangers to hundred-degree temperatures, but the forecast is for temperatures 15 to 20 degrees above the average for early June, weather service meteorologists said. Western re-enactment performers Abigail Hawks and her fiance, Luke Short, are going up to Oro Grande, east of Adelanto in the High Desert, for an event over the weekend. Back in the 1800s, people tried to protect themselves from the sun with conservative clothing to maintain their pale skin. Avoiding a tan might not be Hawks priority this weekend, though. I dont know, I might be going with a little shorter-sleeved outfit, she said. Short might avoid the petticoat that makes up part of his costume. The two have lived in the area all their lives and said that temperatures didnt typically get much higher than what is predicted for the weekend. Still, they said, it could be worse. At least we get a breeze here, Hawkins said. Arizona is much worse. Kami Acosta and Kathy Wilder were out walking in downtown Riverside on Thursday. The two take morning and afternoon walks outside the building where they work. For the most part, warm weather doesnt get to them, but Upland resident Wilder said she might skip the afternoon walk to avoid the extreme heat. Its a dry heat. It doesnt appear to be humid, she said. And so its bearable, Acosta added. The high temperatures will contrast with nighttime lows in the high 50s and low 60s, according to the weather service. Coastal regions are protected by the marine layer and wont have it so hot. Contact the writer: amillerbernd@pressenterprise.com, 951-368-9567 A hiker was found dead along a trail during a sweltering afternoon in Palm Springs, authorities say. Another hiker reported the mans body at 4:12 p.m. Thursday, June 2, in the hills overlooking Rimrock Shopping Center, 4721 E. Palm Canyon Drive, near the border with Cathedral City. The victims name was not released. Police said they found no evidence of foul play or any crime. Temperatures in the city hit a daytime high of 109 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. Hillary Clinton gave a speech on national security in San Diego Thursday, but it just as easily could have been a verbal declaration of war on Donald Trump. I believe the person the Republicans have nominated for president cannot do the job, Clinton said. Donald Trumps ideas arent just different, they are dangerously incoherent. Theyre not even really ideas. Just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies. Donald Trump isnt just unprepared, he is temperamentally unfit. The Democratic presidential front-runner, who is still locked in a fight for delegates with Bernie Sanders, didnt mention her rival for the partys nomination in her 35-minute speech at San Diegos The Prado in Balboa Park. Trump, however, got a shellacking. This is not a man who should ever have the nuclear codes, she said, adding, Because its not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin. As Clinton rattled off her credentials and her foreign policy experience, sprinkling in Trumps name in a mocking way time after time, she suggested the real estate mogul and reality television star was likely tweeting during her speech. He was. Bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton! Trump tweeted. Reading poorly from the Teleprompter! She doesnt even look presidential! Trump wasnt finished. He added in another tweet, Crooked Hillary no longer has credibility too much failure in office. People will not allow another four years of incompetence! Clinton who also has scheduled stops in El Centro and Perris today is settling into California for five straight days ahead of the states primary on Tuesday. As the Democratic primary has been heating up in the state, Sanders has been here for weeks holding rallies as part of an ambitious plan to reach 200,000 voters through live events. The Vermont senator remains a long shot to win the nomination, however, as he trails Clinton by 767 delegates, according to the political tracking website Real Clear Politics. Even if only pledged delegates are counted, he still trails by 268. Jack Pitney, political science professor at Claremont McKenna College, said Clinton is trying to frame the election as between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, not Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. He said by using a speech on foreign policy and national security to kick off the end of the primary season, Clinton is seeking to show she believes Trump shouldnt be given the nuclear launch codes. Clinton said as much during the speech, which generated three standing ovations, among the crowd of about 200 supporters. Do we want his finger anywhere near the button? she asked. Pitney said it will likely be a long narrative driven by Clinton to paint Trump as dangerous and reckless. Say what you want about John McCain and Mitt Romney, but she will try to make a case that they at least had a firm grasp of foreign policy, Pitney said. Clinton will try to make the case hes uniquely unfit. But Clinton hasnt secured the nomination as the general election candidate yet. With major contests in New Jersey and California being held on Tuesday, she remains fewer than 100 delegates from securing the number needed for the nomination. Sanders has stops scheduled in Modesto and Chico on Thursday before hitting Fairfield Friday. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Wednesday showed Clinton with just a two-point lead over Sanders. But that came after a Stanford-based Hoover Institution Poll released Tuesday showed Clinton with a 13-point lead over Sanders. Trump will be in San Jose Thursday evening for a rally at the San Jose Convention Center part of a multi-day swing through California. It gave the California Legislature a black eye. Three indicted state senators, suspended from their positions, not only continued to collect paychecks but got a raise in 2014. Fellow lawmakers whined that their hands were tied, that the state Constitution didnt allow them to cut off the pay and benefits of Sens. Leland Yee, Ron Calderon and Rod Wright. To be sure, it was an unusual year never before had a California state senator been suspended. Still, the Capitols reaction to the trio of scandals exposed a weakness in the law: a small provision in some 1990 anti-corruption reforms came back to haunt the Legislature just as it experienced its worst ethical crisis in a century. All this sat badly with taxpayers, who saw lawbreaking legislators being punished by their colleagues with, essentially, paid vacations. So we have Proposition 50, the only statewide ballot measure being put to voters in the June 7 primary. Put on the ballot by lawmakers themselves, the proposition would amend the state Constitution to give the Senate and Assembly the power to suspend a lawmaker without pay, if two-thirds of its members approve. Currently, the options are to suspend a lawmaker with pay on a simple majority vote, or expel him or her altogether by simple majority. Unfortunately, Prop. 50 isnt necessarily the answer Californians seek to improve the ethics of state politics. The initiative has a little good in it, but not enough for this Editorial Board to endorse it. We recommend a No vote on Prop. 50. Prop. 50 is vague. Any such constitutional initiative should lay out actual rules. For instance, it could call for automatic expulsion from the Legislature upon conviction of any crime, or, perhaps, when appeals are exhausted, to ensure nobody plays politics with these rules. Prop. 50 doesnt do that. This feel-good measure does nothing to prevent personal politics and caprice from continuing to play a role in how suspensions are or arent handed down, as they did in 2014. Darrell Steinberg, Senate leader at the time, initially prevented votes to suspend the indicted Sen. Calderon, D-Montebello, and Sen. Wright, D-Los Angeles, whom he liked, and only relented after the arrest of Yee, D-San Francisco, whom Steinberg saw as an adversary. When Sen. Wright was convicted of living outside his district and lying about it, Sen. Steinberg didnt have the guts to hold an expulsion vote. Prop. 50 sounds like a good idea, but its not worth further cluttering the state Constitution. It wouldnt ensure that our legislators adhere to the highest ethical standards. It merely plays into a notion that an ethical legislature is always one good rule change away. As before, that would prove false. Vote No on Prop. 50. A mothers frantic, international six-month search for her son was so close to a happy ending Thursday morning: Police officers had discovered him camping behind a Palm Springs church. But once again, it didnt end well for mom. Ryan Robichaud, 24, of Ontario, Canada, was reported missing on Jan. 15. In recent months, the search had zeroed in on Orange County as sightings had popped up in Huntington Beach and Westminster. In Palm Springs, officers responded at 6:30 a.m. to a complaint that someone had set up a tent in the parking lot of Our Saviors Lutheran Church, Sgt. William Hutchinson of the Palm Springs Police Department said. When approached, Robichaud volunteered his Ontario, B.C. drivers license. He told officers he was resting en route to a bus that would take him to visit friends in Arizona. A search for Robichaud in the officers computer database revealed a missing persons report. A good Samaritan showed up and let Robichaud use his phone to talk to his mother, Tracy Beeso-Robichaud. The conversation was brief and strange, said Jeanene Jones, a family friend in Huntington Beach. It ended abruptly when the Samaritan interrupted to say that he was going to get a good meal in Robichaud and that they would call back and the pair walked off. Officers had no cause to detain the man reported missing. Back on Dec. 31, Robichaud wrapped his Dodge Dart around a tree, two weeks before his disappearance in Canada, Beeso-Robichaud told the Register in April. The mother said she believes he suffered a traumatic brain injury and had post-traumatic stress disorder when he fled home. Since his disappearance, the potential reunification of Robichaud and his mother has been a series of near-misses. He called her from Boston Jan. 19. On Jan. 25, he called again, this time from a Staples store in Los Angeles. He sounded confused in Los Angeles. She said he didnt know how he got there. A detective with the Los Angeles Police Department was able to find Robichaud and dropped him off at Los Angeles International Airport, where he was to board a flight back home on a ticket purchased by his mom. He never made the flight. On Feb. 20, Robichaud was baptized at First Christian Church in Huntington Beach, with his mom receiving a baptismal certificate in the mail a week later. The next month she flew out to Orange County but had no luck finding her son. On Thursday, after the phone call, Beeso-Robichaud alerted an Orange County private investigator who drove to Palm Springs and searched the neighborhood where officers had encountered Robichaud, Jones said. Still, no luck. Contact the writer: 714-796-7802 or jsudock@ocregister.com The marriage fraud trial for family members with ties to one of the slain shooters in the San Bernardino terrorist massacre has been postponed for almost five months by U.S. District Court Judge Jesus G. Bernal on Thursday, June 2. The judge granted a request filed by the U.S. Attorneys Office, with agreement of defense counsel, on Wednesday, June 1. The prosecution cited thousands of pages of reports of investigation and other documents, and hundreds of hours of audio and/or video recordings constituting at least 4 terabytes of data that must be reviewed. The defense sought more time to conduct an independent investigation of the evidence and prepare for trial. Syed Raheel Farook and his wife, Tatiana Farook, of Corona, and her sister, Mariya Chernykh, of Ontario, were charged in April with conspiracy and setting up a sham marriage aimed at keeping Chernykh in the United States. Chernykh also is accused of perjury, filing a false document and making a false statement to a federal agent in an immigration fraud case. All three pleaded not guilty to the charges. The trial date has been changed from June 21 to Nov. 8, according to court records. Chernykh is married to Enrique Marquez Jr., a Riverside family friend of the Farooks accused of supplying guns and explosives used in the San Bernardino attack to Raheels brother, Syed Rizwan Farook.Marquez also is charged with two counts in the marriage fraud case. Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on a gathering of Rizwans co-workers at the Inland Regional Center on Dec. 2, killing 14 and wounding 22. They were killed the same day in a shootout with police. Hundreds of walkers are expected to take part in the Redlands Hunger Walk set for 8 a.m. Saturday at the University of Redlands, 1200 E. Colton Ave. The 5K benefits Family Service Association of Redlands food pantry and summer nutrition program, according to a news release. About 200 participants joined the inaugural walk in 2015 and raised between $23,000 and $24,000, Jo Jones, the associations director of fund development, said by phone Wednesday. This years goal is $40,000. Saturdays walk, Jones said, is super important because so many families who are living day to day depend on their children being in school, and when they are not, theres additional stress. So, were trying to help that. The free summer nutrition program runs from noon to 1:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays June 10 through Aug. 5. Registration is required and will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. today at FSAs main office, 612 W. Lawton St. The association served almost 400 meals to school-age children last summer. According to a recent report from the California Department of Education, 30 percent of students in San Bernardino County qualify for free school lunches. That is an increase of 33,102 from last year. According to FSAs website, the increase takes into account addresses and the transient nature of homeless or near homeless families and is an indication of a growing problem. Those interested in participating in the walk can register at redlandsfamilyservice.org/redlands-hunger-walk. Registration is $35 for adults and $5 for children 12 and younger. Children also can participate free with a canned food donation. Late registration and check-in on Saturday opens at 6:30 a.m. at the Memorial Chapel. Teams are welcome, but registration rates differ. In addition to the walk, the Noon Kiwanis Club of Redlands will host a free pancake breakfast for walkers, and organizations from FSA to San Bernardino Valley College will offer resources about their programs. To learn more, visit redlandsfamilyservice.org or call Jones at 909-793-2673. Contact the writer: kristina.hernandez@langnews.com; @TheFactsKris An excessive heat advisory issued by the National Weather Service will take effect about 10 a.m. on Friday, June 3, when temperatures in Inland Southern California will reach triple digits. Temperatures will top out between 100 and 105, depending on location in the Inland area, the weather service reports. The advisory was issued early in the week in anticipation of temperatures just as warm on Saturday and only slightly lower on Sunday. The heat advisory cautions folks to keep indoors if possible and to wear lightweight clothing with lots of water nearby if outdoor time is unavoidable. It ends on Sunday night. San Bernardino Countys Public Health Department issued a similar warning on Thursday, letting folks know if they are in need of air conditioning they may dial 211 to find the nearest cooling center. Highs will reach between 99 and 105 on Saturday, according to the weather service, but will only reach into the high 90s on Sunday. The projected temperatrues are a good 15 to 20 degrees above normal for the area this time of year, meteorologists with the NWS say. The high pressure system responsible for the heat is expected to leave us on Sunday and by Monday high temperatures will dip back down to a reasonable 94, the weather service reports. Ghana is poised to be part of the global health and wellness market that is expected to hit a record high of $1 trillion by 2017 following the recent successful awareness campaign in the UK of the nutrient-dense super fruit that comes from the countrys baobab tree. Some 1,000 women in the Upper East Region are already benefiting from being part of a supply chain that has seen their earnings leap from GHS50 to GHS700 a year. On the whole, the baobab tree can provide sustainable incomes for 800,000 women in Ghana and 10 million across Africa. According to National Geographic magazine, the rural communities in the 32 African countries in which the baobab tree grows stand to earn $1 billion a year from its produce. Spearheading this new approach to giving Africans the opportunity to add value to their natural resources for export is London-based Aduna, which the founders say is an Africa-inspired health and beauty brand and social business. Speaking to the GNA in Adunas South London office, co-founder and Managing Director Andrew Hunt was upbeat about the prospects for Aduna Baobab Superfruit Powder, which the company says is a 100 per cent organic raw wholefood that is rich in vitamin C, fibre and antioxidants. Introduced to the UK public some three years ago, Aduna Baobab received a huge boost in sales in February when the company launched a five-week #MakeBaobabFamous campaign that was funded by a 100,000 prize provided by Virgin, a UK-based media company. All 750 stores belonging to Holland & Barrett, a major UK health food store chain, had a baobab makeover for five weeks with 400 stores getting a full #MBF window takeover. This was backed by a mass-sharing campaign online, which was supported by influencers, brands, bloggers, media, vloggers and customers all over the world. In total, our #MakeBaobabFamous hashtag had an incredible 20 million impressions on Twitter & Instagram alone, says Sophie Capron, Adunas Communications Director. One hundred million people walked past our baobab shop windows. We managed to reach 129 million people in five weeks not bad for a small start-up social business. What all of these activities have added up to is to provide massive interest in Aduna Baobab. According to Mr Hunt, Adunas strategy is to first create a demand for Africas under-utilised natural products through sustained investment in consumer marketing. By creating the demand first we have a better perspective on what the market needs. Then the company moves on to the next step: directing that demand to baobab smallholders in rural communities in Ghana. This is what NGOs [non-governmental organisations] trying to create social enterprises have overlooked, Mr Hunter told the GNA. There has been a failure of the aid model in rural Africa through a myopic approach. He said this approach was invariably to pour in millions of dollars on projects focussing, say, on helping women to grow cash crops with highly paid foreign consultants in air conditioned offices. At the end of the day there is no buyer for the produce and everything comes to a standstill. When we first went to Ghana in 2014 we discovered there were no buyers for the baobab fruit, no local demand and no opportunities for export. But by working with local community groups in the Upper East Region Aduna has been able to succeed where other social enterprise actors have failed. Unlike other fruits, baobab dries on the branch and it is simply harvested by the 1,000 women in the supply chain who remove the seeds that are then sieved by another group of 50 women at the local Aduna processing centre to create a 100 per cent pure and natural powder that is free from additives, preservatives and added sugar. The powder is sent to the UK where Aduna has outsourced a packaging company to package the powder for general sale in the UK and international markets. The ultimate aim, though, is to have the packaging done in Ghana, thus creating further jobs, Mr Hunter told the GNA, adding that the company was looking for investors who would abide by Adunas social enterprise ethos not the get-rich-entrepreneur who has no interest in the communities that do all the hard work. Weniamo Kwarayire, 34, from the Pindaa Community in the Upper East Region who is part of the baobab supply chain, attests to Adunas excellent business model. On the companys website, she said that before working as a supplier she harvested shea nuts and tamarind during the wet season, with poor financial yields. During the dry season she sold baobab in the market across the border in Burkina Faso for low returns. She would augment this by selling fuel wood, earning maybe GHS50 enough to buy a few ingredients and soap. But after joining the Aduna network, Kwarayires fortunes have changed because she can sell her baobab fruits directly to the company and work in the processing centre. I dont have to pay transport cost to sell my fruit or chop and sell fire wood. I spend more time at home and I get paid more, she says. Last season, I earned GHS700 [and] I have used the money to pay for my daughters school fees and to buy a bicycle for the two youngest children to travel 7km to attend primary school. If not for the baobab project, my children would not be able to go to school beyond primary level. Now my children are staying in school and I have resources to provide food for the family, Kwarayire added. During the dry season in 2015, Aduna harvested 50 tons of baobab fruits, with the figure rising to 150 tons this year. Mr Hunter is quite positive about the all-round financial success of the project; earnings of 650,000 are expected to be doubled this year and rise annually. For Aduna, the aim is to run a sustainable business that helps local communities in Ghana. It has branched out into marketing Aduna Super Cacao and Aduna Moringa Green Superleaf Powder using the same business methods for the baobab project. The future appears to augur well for Aduna, given the support in the UK for the creation of a sustainable market for a fruit that could transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Northern Ghana far more than what aid can achieve. Then there is the phenomenal growth in the global health food industry, which Euromonitor International notes is being fuelled by developments in China and Brazil that alone contributed $15 billion in new sales in 2011, with a steady real term growth of 7.2 per cent continuing until 2017 when the magical figure of $1 trillion in sales is achieved. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Accra mayor, Alfred Oko Vanderpuije has noted that some bodies retrieved from Ghanas heartbreaking twin disaster at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra are yet to be identified by their families. Ghana was thrown into a state of mourning after a tragic flood and fire disaster which claimed the lives of over 152 people following an explosion on that eventful Wednesday. The Goil Filling Station at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra became the site of a cruel catastrophe after a gas explosion left charred remains of persons who had sought refuge from the floods in the area. Speaking at the memorial service held at the Ernest Bruce Memorial Methodist Church in Accra to remember the victims, the Mayor pleaded to relatives or loved ones to come out and help identify the bodies. We still have bodies to be identified. And we must all work and act together. If there are any families that have lost some individuals in the last one year and they cannot find them, they should come so we can work together and identify everybody so we can give them a befitting lasting rest, he said. It is believed some 5O bodies are still being kept at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital and 37 Military Hospital morgues. As the incident happened in the night, the dead bodies could only be found and carted away on the morning of the following day to the Police, 37 Military and Korle Bu Teaching Hospitals mortuary. The gory incident resulted in hundreds of family members trooping to the named mortuaries to find out if their missing relatives had died in the event. The AMA boss further revealed that some 108 families who were affected by the incident have been taken care of. He urged families of victims to turn to God and give Him praise regardless of the situation. "Those who wait upon the Lord we are told will always renew strength they shall mount up with wings as ealgles...On this occasion like many others the question more often than not is who shall we turn to? And the answer always will be we must turn to the Lord," he quoted. The memorial service was followed by a wreath laying ceremony at the scene of the disaster. Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/Peacefmonline.com/ Twitter: @Washman5/ Instagram: Washman007 Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Accra is better prepared to deal with floods than the days prior to the June 3, 2015 disaster, the Metropolitan Chief Executive, Mr Alfred Okoe Vanderpuije has said. According to him, the ongoing dredging of the Korle Lagoon and the Odaw River would help stem a recurrence of the disaster which claimed over 150 lives. Mr Vanderpuije made these observations at a press conference in Accra to announce a series of activities to commemorate the first anniversary of the disaster. On June 3, 2015, the Odaw River was overflown and caused floods after heavy rains. Storm drains at Nima and Odawna were also full to the brim causing intense flooding at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle. Some pedestrians, who sought shelter at a GOIL Fuel Station at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle during the rains lost their lives when fire broke out at the station. Other businesses and houses located around the fuel station were also destroyed by the fire. Speaking at the press conference, Mr Vanderpuije said, The commitment to make sure that we remove all obstacles, de-silt and dredge the Korle and the Odaw to ensure free water flow will continue unabated. That is my assurance to the people of Accra and indeed the whole nation that the peoples capital is ever safe than before Last week we had three or four days of severe rains and the city was able to withstand the circumstances and the aftermath of the rains we will be very steadfast in our monitoring of the environment to ensure that we do not allow people to build in our waterways, he noted. One year anniversary As part of activities to commemorate the first anniversary of the disaster, a non-denominational remembrance church service has been planned to be held at the Ernest Bruce Methodist Church at Adabraka on Friday, June 3. It will be followed by Muslim prayers at the Central Mosque in Accra, a wreath laying and unveiling of a statue at the GOIL fuel station where the accident occurred. On Saturday June 4, 2016, members of the Seventh Day Adventist Church would take their turn to pray for the victims and the event would be climaxed on Sunday with a prayer service with support from the Christian Council of Ghana, the National Catholic Secretariat, and the Pentecostal and Charismatic Council. Source: graphic.com.gh/ Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Ghana ranked 9th out of 38 countries measured in a new Prosperity Report on Africa, with the country doing so well in security and safety. Ghana also performs highly in the categories of Entrepreneurship & Opportunity(9th), Governance(5th), Education(7th), and Health(5th). The Economy was her only blight where she is ranked 30th, a rank better only than 8 other countries in the rankings- Djibouti, Sudan, Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Burundi, Guinea and Liberia. The London-based Legatum Institutes 2016 Africa Prosperity Report, which ranks the most prosperous states in Africa on indicators such as Economy; Entrepreneurship & Opportunity; Governance; Education; Health; Safety & Security; Personal Freedom; and Social Capital, puts South Africa as number one overall. Only 10 countries make the list of high ranking prosperity, 18 in the middle ranking and 10 in the low ranking, bottomed by the Central African Republic. The first 10 most prosperous African countries South Africa Botswana Morocco Namibia Algeria Tunisia Senegal Rwanda Ghana Burkina Faso Source: graphic.com.gh/ Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Audio Attachment: Listen to a report by Emmanuel Aggrey Fire has gutted a three-bedroom self-contained house at Asante Mampong in the Ashanti Region. According to a report by an eyewitness, Emmanuel Aggrey who spoke to Peace FM's 6am News Bulletin Friday morning, the fire started at around 12 midnight Thursday, and has killed a man and his four children who were asleep then. He added that two family members who were on a visit in the same house also lost their lives. Meanwhile, the Ghana Fire Service has been able to put out the fire but the cause is not yet known. Source: Peacefmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Ghana has called on the international community to ensure that all children were protected and given the necessary care and attention needed to enable them to grow to a promising future. Ghana believes that children are the foundation of sustainable development in every country, therefore, considerable effort must be made to provide the range of services that promote the survival, growth, development and protection of children. Ghana has, through its legal and policy environment, established strong systems and structures available to protect children and ensure their growth and development, Nana Oye Lithur, the Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, said in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Nana Oye Lithur was speaking at the Permata International Conference high level Forum on Quality Education to shape a nations future on behalf of Mrs Lordina Mahama, Ghanas First Lady which was monitored by the Ghana News Agency. The forum was hosted by Mrs Datin Paduka Seri Hjh Rosmah Mansor, Wife of the Prime Minister of Malaysia, and attended by other first ladies across the world and representatives of heads of states and civil society organisations. It was to discuss different efforts by various countries to ensure children had quality education that would in turn shape the future of the nation for the better. Nana Oye Lithur said Ghana, as the first country to sign the Convention on the Rights of the Child on January 29, 1990, and ratified it in February, 1990, had set up the legal and policy environment for childrens protection. She said the country affirmed through the inclusion of specific provisions of the Convention in Ghanas 1992 Constitution for protecting the rights of childrenThe Constitution mandates Parliament to enact such laws as are necessary to ensure the realisation of certain rights of the child. Chapter Six of the Constitution provides for what are described as the Directive Principles of State Policy, which require, inter alia, that the State enacts appropriate laws to assure the protection and promotion of all basic human rights and freedoms, including the rights of the disabled, the aged, children, and other vulnerable groups in the development process. The Gender Minister noted that in 1998 Parliament enacted the Childrens Act (Act 560) which provides for the rights and responsibilities of children. She explained that the Act defined various avenues to ensure the protection of the Ghanaian Child. Ghana has also signed the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child in 1997 and ratified it in 2005. The Parliament of Ghana passed the Juvenile Justice Act in 2003. The Act provides a juvenile justice system, to protect the rights of juveniles, ensure an appropriate and individuals response to juvenile offenders, provide for young offenders and for connected purposes. Nana Oye Lithur noted that in 2004, Ghana adopted the Early Childhood Care and Development Policy which provides a broad policy goal, to promote the survival, growth and development of all children (0-8 years) in Ghana. Another important policy is the Child and Family Welfare Policy which was launched by the Vice President of Ghana, Paa Kwesi Ammisah Arthur in December last year. The Child and Family Welfare Policy seek to establish a well-structured and coordinated Child and Family Welfare system that promotes the wellbeing of children, prevents abuse and protect children from harm. Sharing Ghanas structures available to protect children, Nana Oye Lithur explained that the country has set up a Department of Children which is currently under the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection to enhance the survival, development, protection and increased participation of children in the development process. She said the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit of the Ghana Police Service also support the protection of children. Children who have been abused are able to report to friendly and welcoming police officers who assist in the prosecution and protection of the child. The Gender Minister said the government has also launched various programme that provide opportunities for children, especially those from poor homes, to have access to education, protection and health care. The Ghana School Feeding Programme is currently providing one hot and adequately nutritious meal to 1,728,681 pupils in over 5,000 schools in 216 districts in Ghana. The Gender Minister said to encourage girls to stay in school, 55,000 girls in 75 deprived districts have been provided with scholarship package under the Girls Participatory Approach to Student Success (Girls PASS). The Permata International Conference, on the theme: Children Beyond Tomorrow, aims to create greater awareness and understanding on the development of young individuals and their optimal growth through sharing. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video President John Dramani Mahama has given the assurance that government will take effective measures to correct mistakes that led to the June 3, 2015 flood and fire disaster, which killed 152 people a year ago. The disaster devastated many Ghanaians, some of whom lost relatives and friends in the disaster, which has been described as one of the saddest in Ghanas history. Commemorating the unfortunate incident on Twitter, the President said government will continue to correct developments that led to the disaster. May the souls of those who departed on June 3, 2015 rest in perfect peace. Well continue to correct developments that led to the disaster. John Dramani Mahama (@JDMahama) June 3, 2016 NADMO still under-resourced The Presidents comment comes days after the National Disaster Management Organisation of Ghana (NADMO) said it is still under-resourced to respond to national emergencies like the June 3 disaster. NADMO had challenges in its quest to assist some survivors of the disaster on time due to lack of funds and logistics. A year after the incident, the Head of Hydro Meteorological Department of NADMO, Sarah Adenko, has told Citi News their challenges still persist. According to her, NADMO officials have on several occasions been compelled to foot bills for most of the logistics needed to carry out their duties effectively from their pockets. 3rd June came and we didnt have the relief items and people were expecting us to respond immediately, she lamented. For example, we have identified Accra, Western Region and Volta Region as disaster prone and we should by this time be going out to be talking to MMDAs to look at their plans. How would you respond? We should be having simulation exercises but we have not moved out yet. We dont have fuel, and sometimes we have to go and credit. You have to go to the field and work and sometimes you have to use your own vehicle, buy your own fuel because there is no money for the fuel and you want to go out and work. The logistics are not there and this is a big challenge for us. Source: citifmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Minority in Parliament has said it supports efforts to revamp the Komenda Sugar Factory. It, however, said there were challenges that could militate against the smooth running of the company which the government, in its bid to score political points, had failed to keep in mind. Problems Presenting a tall list of problems that, in the Minoritys opinion would negatively affect operations of the company, the MP for Wenchi, Prof. George Gyan-Baffour, said the siting of the factory close to the sea could lead to expensive maintenance cost on the iron and steel components of the plant due to the salty sea breeze. This happened to the old plant and maintenance exacted a huge toll on the profitability of the factory. In those times, the plant had to be shut down every year to allow for the extraction of corroded matter from steel pipes. The factory ought to have been located a bit further from the coastline, he said. Another issue, in his view, was the diversion of farm lands from the production of multi crop to the mono crop of sugarcane. That, he said, presented the possibility of insecurity in the area, especially given the fact that the new factory was 25 per cent bigger than the old. President Mahama, at the inauguration of the revamped factory, said the government was in the process of developing a new national sugar policy. It is a typical John Mahama-led government case of placing the cart before the horse, he said. Polluted rivers According to Prof Gyan-Baffour, sugarcane farming, as well as the process of producing sugar, was water dependent, adding that reliance on the galamsey-polluted Pra and Offin rivers would challenge the survival of the factory, as the mercury-poisoned water might contaminate the end product. Again, he said, adequate irrigation of outgrower farms would determine the yield per acre, the sustenance of the interest of the farmers and hence the profitability and life of the factory. The primary canal to feed the farms with irrigation water from the Pra River has long collapsed. It has not yet been rehabilitated. How are the farms going to be irrigated? If the yield should fall or if world sugar price should fall, farmers would require financial protection to keep the industry working. In this regard, the start-off offer price of GH60 per tonne is too low to sustain the interest of farmers in the business. These are early days yet but we need to get the basics right at this early outset, he added. Prof Gyan-Baffour said insufficient or irregular supply of sugarcane from the outgrower farms could jeopardise the capacity of the factory to engage in uninterrupted production. Harvesting cane Turning the spotlight on sugarcane harvesting, he said the industry practice was to burn the cane on site before cutting and transporting to the factory. In these days of rampant destructive bushfires, he said, it was important to take steps to protect the communities from the overspill of bushfire and also from toxic smoke that might blow towards the settlements. "In this regard, there is the need to provide fire tenders in the communities of production. These have not been done or perhaps not even thought of, yet it was found worthy to rush and inaugurate the project, he said. Management The Wenchi MP noted that one of the reasons which led to the collapse of the Asutsuare and the Komenda factories in the past was bad management and wondered what efforts had been put in place to ensure that that did not happen again. He said the government needed to clarify the situation and ensure that good management was in place by, if possible, bringing in private sector partners to manage the entity. Power He said although the plan was that the factory should produce about 80 per cent of its own power, currently it was going to rely on the national grid. He noted that at this time of acute shortage of power and high electricity bills, tariffs will soon bite unless some arrangement on subsidy is made to cushion the factory. Prof. Gyan-Baffour acknowledged the fact that the factory would provide excellent employment for Ghanaians but wondered whether Ghanaians should be happy about it when, 48 hours after the inauguration, it had emerged that the factory would shut down for six months and resume operations after that. "When the euphoria for reviving the Komenda factory has died down, when the political blitz has abated, when the razzle-dazzle of the Komenda Sugar Factory has departed, Ghanaians will realise that it is not yet time to celebrate; it is not yet Uhuru. President John Dramani Mahama ought to have given serious thought to these matters before doing what he did last Monday," he added. Source: Daily Graphic Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Poet Nana Asaase has said a benevolent dictator could help turn Ghanas fortunes around. We need some benevolent dictatorship, somebody who would come in, very endearing to the people; our leaders could be like that yet would tell us as a nation: This is where we are going, he told Prince Minkah on the Executive Breakfast Show on Class91.3FM on Friday June 3 during a discussion in remembrance of the June 3 flood and fire disasters which killed about 150 people at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra. A GOIL fuel station located within the enclave exploded during a heavy downpour that fateful Wednesday night in 2015 killing most of the people who had sought shelter at that place and surrounding areas from the rains. In Nana Asaases view, apart from citizens needing a change in attitude towards their environment and sanitation, there was also the need for strong leadership in dealing with problems of the sort. Citing Lee Kuan Yew to buttress his point, Nana Asaase said a leader cast in the mould of the late Singaporean leader could do Ghana a lot of good. My grandpa keeps referring to Lee Kuan Yewyes, people like that; look at what theyve done to Singapore, or look at what theyve done to Malaysia. It took revolutionary leadership like that; someone, not a dictator (dictatorship is not essentially negative, but the way it is held, this why I call it benevolent dictatorship). Somebody who is firm and says: We have a national agenda; this is what we are pushing as a people, and then in a very short space of time. So, you see from Third World to First World, thats Lee Kuan Yews book; how they had to transform their nation to First World. But what do we have today? he asked. Lee, (born Harry Lee Kuan Yew, 16 September 1923 23 March, 2015), informally known by his initials LKY, was the first Prime Minister of Singapore. He led the country for three decades. Lee is celebrated as the nation's founding father, with the country described as transitioning from the "Third World to First World in a single generation" under his leadership. Source: Classfmonline Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Secret bookshelf room, cozy beach bungalows, glam kitchen space and whiskey bar in the bathroom: as far as office spaces go, Airbnbs Sydney spot takes the cake. After touring the vast and epic Google HQ, complete with rock-climbing walls and sleeping pods, we were inspired us to delve deeper into the world of cool office spaces, and who better to include in our mission to find Sydneys most fascinating office than the frontier of hospitality and technology: Airbnb Sydney, which was opened this past February. Firstly, to keep up to date with our adventures behind the scenes of kewl places, events and people, add us on Snapchat (PEDESTRIAN.TV): Founded in San Francisco in 2008 by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk (who converted their loft into a bed and breakfast to afford rent, genius), Airbnb now has over 60 million users in 192 countries. Every office of the online accommodation rental site is carefully designed with purpose and creativity, and the Sydney office is no exception. Designed by Sydney interior designers The Bold Collective, its fkn amazin. Walking into the office is a true Aussie experience as you are greeted with a mini AFL footy pitch as soon as you step out of the elevator: Every meeting room is modelled off an actual Airbnb listing somewhere in the world and the intricate detail put into each space is incredible. Heres a look at the first meeting room, Kangaroo Valley: Designed to look like a listing in Upper Kangaroo River, NSW, this meeting room contains locally-sourced materials and is a fkn cool mix of urban buzz and rustic outback life. The next meeting room, the Havana room, is HIDDEN behind a (wait for it) secret friggin bookshelf door. IS THIS HARRY POTTER/ALL MY CHILDHOOD FANTASIES IRL??? Its bright, cheery interior is inspired by a listing in Cuba: Frikkin amazeballs. Heres another little escape room that makes you feel like youve walked straight into a fancyass beach cabana: This room is entitled Betso and is modelled after an Airbnb beach cottage in Sweden. Its the perfect lil place to get some important work shit done in peace or, as you can see on the PEDESTRIAN.TV Snapchat story, the ideal spot for a snooze: In addition to awesome themed meeting rooms, Airbnb Sydney has tiny cubbies and hideaways to snuggle up into. It truly feels like youre on vacation. The textures on the wall in the cubby above are so cool, its like being inside a sea anemone: These little roomies are sewwwwwwwww CA-UTE, and we havent even gotten to the best bit: the motherfriggin epic fantasy kitchen. Designed to look like Sydneys Coogee Pavilion, the kitchen is aligned with Airbnbs core belief in ultimate hospitality and that the kitchen is the heart of the home. Airbnb hosts frequent breakfasts and events in this kitchen, and its equipped with endless snacks and a fancy themed espresso machine. Next to the main section of desks, there is a designated work/chill-out/collab area, which is intended for staff to be able to move around the office and work in comfort. The space is adorned with pineapples, which we were told are the international symbol for hospitality: Last but not least, we cant forget the bathrooms. No part of Airbnbs office goes undesigned, and the bathrooms are no exception. There are bright flamingo & Mardi-Gras themed showers (to show Airbnbs partnership with Sydney Mardi Gras): And the mens and womens bathrooms are themed as a whisky bar and gin lounge respectively. Classy AF. *Sneaks into Airbnb office and lives there forever* Seriously a dream workspace. P.S., the official Airbnb Snapchat is @airbnb. Watch the full tour here, and add us on Snapchat (PEDESTRIAN.TV) for more! Photos: Supplied. HOLY BLOODY HELL. A Japanese boy feared dead after being left alone by his folks in the mountains of Hokkaido to punish him for bad behaviour has allegedly been found alive after more than 6 days, according to local authorities. Rescuers apparently found Yamato Tanooka, whos only 7, in a disused military building, and local news outlet NHK WORLD reports hes in relatively good health. There were grave concerns for the boys well being, after his folks harsh lesson backfired when left him on a mountain roadside after growing fed up at him throwing rocks at other vehicles and people, only to find hed disappeared when they returned to get him a short time later. The odds of finding him alive were particularly slim, as he was wearing only light clothing and was without food or water in a forest known for its bears. Tanookas father expressed deep regret over their actions: We have done an unforgivable thing to our child, and we have caused a lot of trouble for everyone. I just hope he is safe. But this story, at least, has a happy ending and Yamato will no doubt be one incredibly spoilt child from this day forth. Source: NHK WORLD. Photo: ANN News. PEDESTRIAN.TV has partnered with Melbourne Polytechnic to echo the sentiment that Biggie Smalls once shared with the masses: Its all good baby, baby. If youre dissatisfied, bored or having doubts about your degree, then feel free to swap it / drop it like its hot. Why not enter another degree youre feeling, travel, work full-time or test the waters with a shorter course? Melbourne Polytechnic have a great range of certificates, diplomas, degrees and masters programs on offer feel free to check em out HERE. Firstly, it should be made clear that this articles intention isnt to bash degrees like Charlie Sheen would drunkenly accost a pinata having one under your belt is still the most secure way to land a job, not to mention it being a entry requirement for several industries (law, medicine and their bedfellows). Instead, were hoping to quell any fears yall might have about changing from one degree to another, or dropping it entirely. We spoke to three people whore, not only #KillingIt in their respective fields, but have had a pretty sketchy path when it comes to figuring out what course is best for them. Marketing Consultant Alison Balch deferred her studies three times, beginning with a Bachelor of Health Science with a double major in Nutrition & Psychology before landing in a Bachelor of Business with a double major in Marketing & Public Relations. Her time at uni was interrupted firstly by realising Health Science wasnt her cuppa tea, then by work and travel. What has all of Alisons flip-flopping resulted in? Oh, yknow, her owning/operating a multi-national marketing agency Halo Communications. Based on her own hit-and-miss experience, Alison has a great perspective on figuring out whats best for ya. My advice would be to go with your gut you may not know exactly what you want to do at the end of your degree, but your gut will tell you if youre on the wrong path, she says. As an employer, I hire people based on their work ethic, passion and enthusiasm. While this isnt viable in all fields, I think that many progressive businesses are placing more emphasis on the value of human connection. If youre still keen on having a degree to your name but have reservations about the one youre currently studying, then channel Alison. Shes living proof that youll likely land in the right place if you try your hand at (with well thought out judgement) different degrees that interest you. Also, be sure to question your environment. It might be the toll that works taking on you, your classmates or even the institution which youre studying thats impacting your interest in your degree. Eddie Cranswick has tapped into the booming virtual reality market, having set up his own business Now VR. Now VR envisions and deploys life improving virtual reality experiences and use cases in the health and wellness space, he says. Our first app, Relaxation VR, enables anyone, anywhere to rest and meditate in some of the worlds most beautiful locations using virtual reality technology. Relaxation VR has ranked in the Top 50 Health and Fitness apps in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. Its one of the top VR apps outside of gaming. His path to where he is now, however, was harder to navigate than it is to understand what the hell Stings lyrics are. Within 3 weeks I knew [university] wasnt right, even though all my friends were extremely into it, he says. Eddie was studying the go-to, I dont know what I want to do with my life Commerce degree a decision many make straight out of high school that sees them doing generic fall-back courses and ending up a statistic. According to the good guys at The Department of Education, up to 13,000 students change courses or institutions within the first year. So, if youre feeling any guilt about changing course or institutions, remember that youre one of a huge number thats doing the same thing. Anyway, our mate Eddie quickly changed to a shorter, and immediately more profitable course in Construction Surveying. After making hella bank, and recognising that he didnt need a degree, Eddie did an eight week course in Human Centred Design the catalyst for establishing his VR company. If you are at all unsure about why youre doing your uni course 100% defer and go discover who you are. Self awareness is an incredibly undervalued skill and its very hard to master. Travel, work various jobs, hang around different people, volunteer, meditate, experiment do anything you possibly can to get out of your comfort zone, discover who you actually are and what you want from life. Once you can answer these questions, you can begin engineering the perfect life for yourself that may or may not involve uni, but its a better way to figure that out BEFORE locking yourself into a 3-4 year degree. I highly recommend short courses, both in face and online, as ways to gain extra knowledge and experience around a specific interest or industry. A lot of the worlds biggest universities such as Stanford in the US are offering short courses online to people who dont want to commit to a 3-4 year study pathway. I would never suggest doing any degree or course that you arent very interested in. Alison echoes Eddies support for this alternate pathway saying, A short course can provide you with the skills and knowledge to get your foot in the door in an industry. I know a lot of employers value industry experience as highly as a formal degree, as they know students can hit the ground running. If youve got a publicist working for you, then obviously youre doing SOMETHING right oh, and co-founding one of Europes fastest growing company doesnt hurt either. Davis Barons is the co-founder of Creamfinance and another member of the uni-wasnt-for-me squad. He was accepted to university [but] instead of that, he and his best friend decided to start a business, says Viktorija Gorcakovaite, Davis PR rep. They tried to secure financing for their concept but were knocked back. So, as any reasonable person whos been knocked back by a monetary institution, they came up with the idea to create a personal finance company, providing short-term loans. As the business began growing, Davis recognised some pitfalls in his knowledge. He did a short course on raising capital and scaling business which was hugely beneficial. If youve found yourself reading this, either you or someone close to you is probably having their doubts about proceeding with their degree. Theres no definitive answer, test or measurement to guarantee if changing your degree is going to be the right choice, but our advice as well as those whove given comment is to trust your gut. Go travelling with mates, get a full-time gig, secure an internship or just piss-fart around if youre in need of some R&R. Honestly, it doesnt matter, just do whats right for you because: Good luck out there, young padawans. If you think studying your degree/masters at a different institution, or are opting for a shorter course tickles your fancy, consider Melbourne Polytechnic. Their certificates, diplomas, degrees and masters programs could be just what the doctor ordered. You can check out Melbourne Polytechnics course range by heading to their website HERE. Photo: YouTube. If youre flying to or out of Melbourne this morning, you might wanna check that your flight is going ahead. The mystical fog thats currently settled over the Melbourne CBD is very demonic and scary-looking, firstly. AND, its also grounded a bunch of flights in and out of Melbourne this morning. Heavy fog disrupting travel plans of hundreds heading to and from Melbourne, number of flights grounded. #9News https://t.co/SeUEnF4OmR Nine News Melbourne (@9NewsMelb) June 2, 2016 Virgin Australia was cancelling flights last night in preparation as the fog began to roll in, and cancelled four more out of Melbourne this morning. Jetstar have cancelled three flights out of Melbourne this morning to Adelaide, Hobart and the Gold Coast. Qantas have cancelled a total of eight flights, both into the city, and from Melb to Sydney. Melbourne Airport has restricted the number of flights allowed to land in the foggy conditions, which explains why some flights are affected while others are able to go ahead. And customers at airports the country over are gettin reeeeeeeal impatient: Adelaide Airport @VirginAustralia Bag Dropoff takes 40min due to technical difficulties. Now flight to Melbourne delayed 1hr due to fog ?? Paul Koutsouliotas (@PaulAdelaide) June 2, 2016 Like, a pilot who cant land a plane in 2016 cause of fog what is even that. Staiain (@Staiain) June 1, 2016 Either the fog needs to clear in Melbourne, or the bar needs to open at @BrisbaneAirport.@T_rese70 and I are thirsty. #delayed #???? Ash Lamb (@ashjlamb) June 2, 2016 ^^^ mad s/o to Ash Lamb for wanting a bevvo at 6am, what a legend. Alex Ellinghausen managed to take this dope-ass Vine of his flight leaving Melbourne Airport: Luckily, according to the Bureau of Meteorology, the fog is clearing: But not before it takes you all alive, Victoria: Stay safe, Melburnians! Source: Twitter / 9 News. Photo: Twitter / @ChristieCooper7. Holy mudblood, Harry! Earlier this week, the first family portrait of Harry Potter, Ginny Weasley and their son Albus emerged, for the upcoming opening of theatre production Harry Potter & The Cursed Child. A few days later, photos of Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, and their daughter Rose Granger-Weasley came out too: The Granger-Weasleys: Ron, Hermione and Rose. #HarryPotterPlay #CursedChild. First public preview in 6 days! pic.twitter.com/yf8YBBsfFT Harry Potter Play (@HPPlayLDN) June 1, 2016 And now, to complete the fam trifecta, we present Draco Malfoy and his son Scorpius. Scorpius Malfoy (@antoboyle), 1st year student, Hogwarts. #HarryPotterPlay#CursedChild previews start in 5 days! pic.twitter.com/xhMmplKmqg Harry Potter Play (@HPPlayLDN) June 2, 2016 The kid looks absolutely fuckin terrified, so well wager something terrible is gonna happen to him, OR Malfoy actually didnt learn that much in the terrible, heart wrenching Battle of Hogwarts and is still a giant douchepot. Anyway, The Cursed Child hits stages with previews in just 5 days at the Palace Theatre in London. But if, like us, you are unable to indulge in your Potter obsession via the medium of theatre because you live in Australia rather than London, heres a cute little behind-the-scenes video of the family photoshoots to keep you going: See behind the scenes of our #HarryPotterPlay character photo shoot in this exclusive video. #CursedChildhttps://t.co/t4ek7kKKdW Harry Potter Play (@HPPlayLDN) June 2, 2016 You can see more deets here: harrypottertheplay.com/ Source: Twitter / @HPPlayLDN. My name is Angelo Gomez and I have something very clear to say to the liberal media and Hillary Clinton: Yes, Im an American Latino who supports Donald Trump, says the first man featured in the video. Yes, I come from a family rooted in immigrants and I support Donald J. Trump to be the next president of the United States, he continues. I support Donald Trump with every ounce of my being for the very reasons that this country, that the Constitution, that this flag behind me was founded upon and thats putting the American people first. Thats putting this country first. From there, the video shows Latino voters at Trump rallies throughout the nation in addition to personal messages of support from Hispanic Trump supporters. Many of the people featured in the video cite Trumps America first policy as the main reason for their support. We all support Donald Trump because he understands that the most patriotic Americans are immigrants who came here not for what they could get here, but who they could be here, one woman explains. Trumps tough immigration talk isnt just endearing him to immigrants who took the proper steps to attain U.S. citizenship. The GOP candidate is also reportedly encouraging a growing number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. to become citizens. beach6photo1.JPG Erie, Pennsylvania, is a great summer destination for the whole family (Visit Erie) When you think "summer vacation destinations," it's likely you think of places along the shores of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, or other destinations further south. However, if you're looking for a unique summer destination that combines beautiful beaches, with amazing wine, history, and family fun, you might want to head west to Erie, Pennsylvania. Located in the northwestern corner of the state, a 4 1/2-hour drive from Harrisburg, Erie is often overlooked by vacationers from the eastern half of Pennsylvania. However, Pa.'s fourth largest city has a lot to offer summer vacationers, including Pennsylvania's only surf beaches, which are located along the shores of Lake Erie. All told, Pennsylvania is home to more than 40 miles of shoreline along Lake Erie. And, while much of that land is private property, beach lovers flock each year to Presque Isle State Park. This 3,100-acre sand spit forms a peninsula that encircles downtown Erie and forms Presque Isle Bay and is the most visited state park in Pennsylvania. It's home to 13 sandy beaches, each catering to different interests and perfect for a dip in the beautiful lake waters. Inland, Presque Isle is home to miles of hiking and biking trails, shore fishing, and even Segway tours. Kayaking along the shores of Presque Isle. Those wanting to get on the water can use one of the public boat launches or rent a kayak or canoe from Presque Isle Canoe and Boat Livery, which is located right in the park. Renting from here allows visitors to explore the shores of Presque Isle on the bay or lake side. Those looking for a quieter and easier boating experience can explore the lagoons in the heart of Presque Isle. These natural areas are often overlooked by visitors and provide calm water and beautiful scenery. Fishing is also popular in the waters surrounding Presque Isle. Common species include walleye, trout, steelheads, bass, and many more species. The park features two inland lakes that are stocked with trout each year, or you can try your hand at fishing from a boat in Lake Erie and Presque Isle Bay. Fishing boat operators leave from the piers near downtown Erie and offer a variety of fishing opportunities in the waters around the city. Presque Isle State Park is also one of the region's best destinations for birders. Over 300 species of birds have been documented on Presque Isle. The park office keeps a running list of all the birds spotted at the park and is especially active during bird migrations in the spring and fall. Guided fishing tours offer a great opportunity to fish Lake Erie. If you want to get away from the water for a while, Erie has a lot to offer the entire family. The shores of Lake Erie produce more wine than any other region in the country, outside of California. The Lake Erie Wine Country is home to two dozen wineries in both Pennsylvania and New York. Heading east of Erie towards the New York border will quickly put you into wine country, and many of the wineries up here have stores for wine tasting and purchasing. Those looking for family fun won't want to miss Waldameer Park and Water World, an amusement park located at the entrance to Presque Isle State Park. This free-admission park is the 10th oldest amusement park in the country and offers rides for kids of all ages. If that's not enough, less than an hour south is Conneaut Lake Park, another free admission amusement park near Meadville. Those wanting to learn more about the history of the region on their vacation should head to the Erie Maritime Museum, which is home to Pennsylvania's state ship, the Flagship Niagara. This recreated ship was responsible for the American victory in the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812. The museum does an excellent job covering the area's maritime history from the 18th century through the present day. Without a doubt, Erie is one of the most unique destinations for a summer vacation in the region thanks to the combination of family-friendly activities and beautiful beaches. So, if you're looking for something different this summer, it's not too late to start planning your summer vacation to Erie, Pennsylvania. Jim Cheney is the writer behind UncoveringPA, Pennsylvania's most read travel blog. He has traveled to every county in Pennsylvania, and to many countries in North America, Europe, and Asia. He lives in Harrisburg, Pa. BP explosion and spill AP file photo: BP will pay a $175 million settlement to investors on claims the company lied about the size of an oil spill after the 2010 rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. (Associated Press) BP will pay a $175 million settlement to investors on claims the company lied about the size of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico explosion and oil spill to boost its stock price, according to a Bloomberg report. In a lawsuit, the public employee pension funds of New York and Ohio said they suffered massive losses and asked for $2.5 billion. They settled for less shortly after a federal judge limited the statements that investors could claim affected the stock price - a decision that would have benefited BP during a July trial that's now canceled by the settlement. "Company officials repeatedly estimated that 1,000 to 5,000 barrels of oil were gushing from the well daily, when internal calculations pegged the flow rate at more than 10 times higher," Bloomberg reported. The investors' lawsuit was the last to stem from the April 2010 spill when more than 4 million barrels of oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico. BP's stock dropped more than 40 percent in the following weeks, according to Bloomberg. The company has reserved more than $56 billion to settle claims and clean up pollution, Bloomberg reported. More from Bloomberg: washer thief Police are seeking this man in connection with the theft of a washer/dryer in Manheim Township. (Provided photo) Police in Manheim Township on Friday issued a plea for the public's help in finding a man who stole a washing/dryer machine. The agitating crime was caught on a surveillance camera. Police said the theft occurred at 3:15 p.m. Monday as the machine, which bore a for sale sign, was sitting outside the Station House Tavern in the 1300 block of Fruitville Pike. The culprit loaded it in a silver Mazda MPV minivan. Anyone with information can call police at 717-569-6401. Interstate 83 north near York has reopened after a multi-vehicle accident shut down all lanes earlier Thursday night. The accident occurred between Exit 18 to Route 124/Mt. Rose Avenue and Exit 19 to Route 462/Market Street, according to a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation traffic alert. Crews remove vehicles involved in a crash on I-83 northbound near York. There were residual traffic delays in the area at about 7:15 p.m., PennDOT said. For more traffic information, follow live traffic updates, accident reports and road closures below from PennDOT, Total Traffic Network and other Twitter sources. Get a look at conditions on local roads -- via PennDOT traffic cameras -- anytime here on PennLive. For Pennsylvania Turnpike updates and possible travel delays visit the Turnpike website here. Tweet us at @pennlive with any incidents you see on your commute or send a submission to submissions@pennlive.com. prince.jpg FILE - In this Nov. 22, 2015 file photo, Prince presents the award for favorite album - soul/R&B at the American Music Awards in Los Angeles. A law-enforcement official says that tests show the music superstar died of an opioid overdose. Prince was found dead at his home on April 21, 2016, in suburban Minneapolis. He was 57. (Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision/AP, File) (AP file photo) It's supposed to be used for the most hurt among us: the late-stage cancer patients who are trying to ease into death as pain-free as possible. As an anesthetic for heart surgery. It's 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine and mimics the high of heroin. One Los Angeles doctor to dubbed it "heroin on steroids." The drug is fentanyl, and it has killed dozens and dozens of people in recent years -- including musician Prince -- and is becoming more and more widespread. Fentanyl was initially introduced as an intravenous anesthetic in the 1960s, according to the Los Angeles Times. It's a synthetic opioid that actually changes the way the brain responds to pain. Because it's so powerful doctors are required to have special training before prescribing it, according to the LA Times. As a painkiller, fentanyl can come in the form of lozenges or patches to make it easier for patients to use. It's become more and more available on the black market, and is often cut with heroin and other drugs. On the street, it's referred to by a number of names: Apache, China girl, China white, dance fever, friend, goodfella, jackpot, murder 8, TNT or Tango and Cash. It's a little cheaper than heroin and it's often deadly. "When talking about fentanyl, it is so quick, we sometimes see the needle still in the arm - that's how quick it can be," Dauphin County coroner Graham Hetrick said last month. The drug has been linked to several deaths in the area in recent months. In the midstate, four people died in 2007 after using heroin laced with fentanyl. Another six died in 2013 of fentanyl overdoses. In 2013, a heroin/fentanyl mixture was linked to 22 overdose deaths in Pittsburgh. Nationwide, there were more than 700 deaths related to fentanyl in 2013 and 2014. In 2015, the Drug Enforcement Administration called fentanyl a public health threat. The National Forensic Laboratory Information System, a part of the DEA, noted that the mentions of fentanyl reports spiked in 2014, particularly in the Northeastern U.S. In 2009, Pennsylvania reported between 20 and 49 instances of fentanyl. By 2014, that spiked to more than 100 reports. We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form The idiot mayor of San Jose, a Democrat, has blamed Trump and his campaign for this violence against Trump supporters. Have we heard the MSM call on the Clinton and Sanders campaigns to renounce this violence? Crickets. In the lawsuit states have against Obama's amnesty the DoJ has lied to the judge, and are ignoring the orders and the injunction the judge has put in place. The judge needs to disbar, and ask why they ought not be held in contempt of court. He needs to stop pussyfooting around with this lawless bunch. The Democrats, lead by Obama, have been and are lawless. This photo taken on Feb. 7, 2006, and made available by Florida State University shows law school professor Daniel Markel. Markel was shot in the head at his home in Tallahassee, Fla., on Friday, July 18, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP/Florida State University FILE - In this Jan. 27, 2016, file photo, an Aedes aegypti mosquito is photographed through a microscope at the Fiocruz institute in Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil. The World Health Organizations chief said, Friday, June 3, 2016, she has convened an expert committee to consider whether the Rio De Janeiro Olympics should proceed as planned, given recent concerns raised about the threat of the Zika virus. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana, File) An oil train burns near the Oregon town of Mosier after derailing Friday, June 3, 2016. (Alan Berner(/The Seattle Times via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT TO BOTH THE SEATTLE TIMES AND THE PHOTOGRAPHER FILE - In this file photo dated July 20, 2015, fake banknotes are symbolically thrown by British comedian Simon Brodkin, at former FIFA president Sepp Blatter during a media conference following the extraordinary FIFA Executive Committee at the headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland. The office of Michael Lauber Swiss attorney general, confirms new raids on FIFA offices Friday June 3, 21016, during ongoing investigations of former FIFA president Sepp Blatter and former FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke. Blatter and Valcke both deny wrongdoing. (Ennio Leanza/Keystone via AP, FILE) Israels Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and the Indian Reliance Defence company have signed today at Defexpo 2016 a joint venture (JV) that will provide the local content of major defense programs Rafael is already involved with and intends to compete in. The JV, one of the biggest joint ventures between an Indian company with a foreign OEM, addresses current and future programs, with potential value of more than US$10 billion (Rs 65,000 Crore) over the next ten year. Among the areas of activity for the new JV are air/air and surface/air missile systems, in which Rafael is among the worlds leaders. Rafael is already involved in several Indian air-defense programs, including Barak-1, Barak-8 and Spyder. The company is also offering the Indian Navy the new C-DOME, a navalized version of the Iron Dome system, for shipborne air defense. Another area of activity for the JV will be large aerostats, for which Rafael provides a range of combat-proven solutions. Rafael has already provided large aerostat systems to the Indian Air Force, meeting its surveillance, reconnaissance, communication and intelligence needs. The JV is positioned to compete for follow-on sales of such systems, required to tighten air surveillance and wide area coverage along the northern territory. Private sector company Reliance Defence Ltd. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. Rafael Advanced Defence Systems Ltd is an Israeli company owned by the Israeli government. Reliance will have 51% holding in the JV with Rafael holding the remaining 49%, per the current guidelines of Government of India. The Joint Venture will be located at Dhirubhai Ambani Land Systems Park, Pithampur, Indore in the state of Madhya Pradesh and will generate more than 3,000 highly skilled jobs. The project will have an initial capital outlay of more than Rs 1,300 Crore, ($200 million) excluding the cost of technology. The two companies, through the Joint Venture will offer the entire range of products in these fields to the Indian Armed Forces. Rafael is also willing to offer solutions through the Joint Venture even for the ongoing Buy Global programs where it is currently competing, in line with Make in India initiatives of the Indian Government. This is a 365 word excerpt of the 565 word article Subscribe to get more insight Michigan's tightest statewide race: What to know The battle to become Michigan's next top law enforcement officer, featuring incumbent Dana Nessel and GOP challenger Matthew DePerno, is a close one. OPEC to maintain oil output, Saudis to smooth market, Iran for more production AP/Ronald Zak Tensions were less acute on Thursday as Saudi Arabia's new energy minister, Khalid al-Falih, showed Riyadh wanted to be more conciliatory. VIENNA Petroleumworld.com 06 03 2016 Saudi Arabia promised on Thursday not to flood the oil market with extra barrels even as OPEC failed to agree on output policy, with Iran insisting on the right to raise production steeply. Tensions between the Sunni-led kingdom and the Shi'ite Islamic Republic have been the highlights of several previous OPEC meetings, including in December 2015 when the group failed to agree on a formal output target for the first time in years. Tensions were less acute on Thursday as Saudi Arabia's new energy minister, Khalid al-Falih, showed Riyadh wanted to be more conciliatory and OPEC decided unanimously to appoint Nigeria's Mohammed Barkindo as the group's new secretary-general. Several OPEC sources said Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies had tried to propose a new collective ceiling in an attempt to repair OPEC's waning importance and end a market-share battle that has sapped prices and cut investment. But OPEC sources said the organisation had failed to agree on output policy and set a new ceiling. Despite the setback, Saudi Arabia moved to soothe market fears that failure to reach any deal would prompt OPEC's largest producer, already pumping near record highs, to raise production further to punish rivals and gain additional market share. "We will be very gentle in our approach and make sure we don't shock the market in any way," Falih told reporters. "There is no reason to expect that Saudi Arabia is going to go on a flooding campaign," Falih said when asked whether Saudi Arabia could add more barrels to the market. The market has grown increasingly used to OPEC clashes over the past two years as political foes Riyadh and Tehran fight proxy wars in Syria and Yemen. Saudi Arabia effectively scuppered plans for a global production freeze - aimed at stabilising oil markets - in April. It said then that it would join the deal, which would also have involved non-OPEC Russia, only if Iran agreed to freeze output. Tehran has been the main stumbling block for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to agree on output policy over the past year as the country boosted supplies despite calls from other members for a production freeze. Tehran argues it should be allowed to raise production to levels seen before the imposition of now-ended Western sanctions over Iran's nuclear programme. Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said Tehran would not support any new collective output ceiling and wanted the debate to focus on individual country production quotas. "Without country quotas, OPEC cannot control anything," Zanganeh told reporters. He insisted Tehran deserved a quota - based on historic output levels - of 14.5 percent of OPEC's overall production. OPEC is pumping 32.5 million barrels per day (bpd), which would give Iran a quota of 4.7 million bpd - well above its current output of 3.8 million, according to Tehran's estimates, and 3.5 million, based on market estimates. POLITICAL TENSIONS That "OPEC could not agree on a relatively benign deal which would have been constructive for price is a sign that political differences are undermining the organisation", said Gary Ross, founder of U.S.-based PIRA consultancy. "It is bearish short-term for oil prices. But what is also important is that Saudis are not planning to flood the market and want higher prices," he added. Falih was the first OPEC minister to arrive in Vienna this week, signalling he takes the organisation seriously despite fears among fellow members that Riyadh is no longer keen to have OPEC set output. "There could be shorter-term situations in which, in our view, OPEC might intervene and yet other situations such as long-term growth of marginal barrels in which case it should not," Falih told Argus Media ahead of the meeting. At its previous meeting in December 2015, OPEC effectively allowed its 13 members to pump at will. As a result, prices crashed to $27 per barrel in January, their lowest in over a decade, but have since recovered to around $50 due to global supply outages. Until December 2015, OPEC had a ceiling of 30 million bpd - in place since December 2011, although it effectively abandoned individual production quotas years ago. Exxon to invest $10 billion in Argentina shale Exxon CEO: company will start pilot project in the coming months BUENOS AIRES/CHICAGO Petroleumworld.com 06 03 2016 Exxon Mobil Corp. may invest more than $10 billion in Argentina's Vaca Muerta shale formation in the next decades, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson said Thursday. The oil giant has so far invested $200 million in the world's second largest shale gas deposit, Tillerson said after meeting with Argentine President Mauricio Macri in Buenos Aires. Exxon has received approval to invest $250 million more for a pilot project in the coming months. If the pilot project is successful, the company will start full development during a period of 20 to 30 years that could involve additional investment that would be well in excess of $10 billion, he said. For Tillerson, Argentina's vast Vaca Muerta shale region represents an opportunity to reverse production losses and add reserves after a $35 billion wrong-way bet on U.S. natural gas and a Russian exploration venture that was derailed by international sanctions. Exxon, the world's largest oil explorer by market value, has designated Vaca Muerta as one of nine key activity areas in the Western Hemisphere and one of just four in South America, according to company data. New Government Macri has been courting international corporations from Total SA to Dow Chemical Co. to Coca-Cola Co. to invest in Argentina since taking office in December. Exxon, whose annual sales dwarf the economic output of all but about 45 of the world's nations, is building a plant to strip impurities out of natural gas as well as a pipeline network to handle the output from its Vaca Muerta wells. I am very encouraged by the changes that have occurred here in Argentina, with the change in government, Tillerson said, according to a statement from the Argentine government. Exxon's worldwide oil and gas output is lower than it was when Tillerson began his tenure as CEO a decade ago. Last year, the company that traces its roots to the 1880s and John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust failed to replace all the crude and gas it pumped with new discoveries for the first time in 22 years. In April, S&P Global Ratings stripped Exxon of the gold-plated credit rating it had held since the Great Depression. Tillerson will reach Exxon's mandatory retirement age of 65 in March. In a May 25 meeting with reporters after the company's annual meeting in Dallas, he declined to say whether he would seek an extension of his tenure from the board. Vaca Muerta, Spanish for Dead Cow, is one of the world's top shale plays, covering an area the size of Belgium and considered key to restoring energy self-sufficiency in Argentina. Thousands of mid-valley residents will head to Lebanon this weekend to enjoy the communitys annual Strawberry Festival events. If you're among them, be prepared for unusually warm temperatures possibly reaching triple digits. Much of the state is bracing for potentially record-setting temperatures 99 degrees on Saturday and possibly 100 on Sunday nearly 25 degrees above average. Temperatures are expected to drop into the 80s by Monday and continue downward for several days. This is one of the earliest heat waves of this magnitude, the National Weather Service noted in an excessive-heat advisory. Several record-high temperatures will be broken this weekend. This could be the earliest, reaching 100 degrees at some locations. The hot weather is expected to cover southwest Washington, northwest Oregon and from the coastal mountains to the Cascades, blanketing the mid-valley. Frank Moore, director of the Linn County Public Health Department, sent an advisory message to his employees Thursday afternoon. Many individuals may seek relief from the heat in water, including area rivers and lakes. River temperatures are slightly above normal for this time of year, so while cold water hazards are not of elevated concern, it is important that individuals follow water safety practices, Moore said. The exception to this will be at the coast, where ocean temperatures are cold. Moore added, At this time we are not aware of any cooling centers that may be opening. If some did open, contacting 211 would be a good way to find out more information. He also advised individuals to regularly check on their neighbors, family and friends, especially those over age 65 and those living with a chronic illness. Officials remind the public to swim in areas protected by lifeguards; never leave a child unattended; have inexperienced swimmers wear approved flotation devices; and avoid alcohol consumption. The Strawberry Festival grand parade will be in full swing Saturday morning and local health officials advise wearing sunscreen and a wide-brimmed cap, and drinking lots of water. Avoid alcohol or drinks with excessive amounts of sugar, which will add to dehydration. Especially vulnerable to heat-related issues are infants and young children; persons over age 65; individuals with a mental illness; persons with other health issues, especially heart disease or high blood pressure. The Centers for Disease Control offers the following tips for preventing heat-related illness: Drink more nonalcoholic fluids and reduce your activity level. Dont wait until you are thirsty to drink. Stay indoors in an air conditioned area if possible, or if you dont have air conditioning, go to a mall or public area that does. Take a cool shower or bath to reduce your body temperature. Wear lightweight, light-colored clothing. Never leave anyone or pets in a parked, enclosed vehicle. Electric fans only push hot air around, so be cautious about relying on them to cool down. If you must be outdoors, reduce activity and exercise levels and try to remain in shady areas as much as possible. A York County woman was sentenced to 9 to 23 months in prison Thursday for a mass art theft from the award-winning Chester County photographer who snapped National Geographic's famous Afghan Girl portrait. Bree DeStephano, 33, of York, pleaded guilty in April to three felony charges related to theft and conspiracy for stealing more than $650,000 worth of prints and books by Steve McCurry. "This defendant engaged in a calculated, systemic theft from her trusted employer," said Chester County First Assistant District Attorney Michael Noone. "Her actions affected Steve McCurry's hard-earned reputation around the world as a premier photographer and artist." DeStephano also was ordered to pay nearly $215,000 in restitution, which will go to McCurry's charity ImagineAsia, and was sentenced to 10 years of probation following her prison time. She may serve her jail sentence in York County, where she lives and works, and will be eligible for work release. She is an office manager at a law firm in York County, said Dan Bush, her attorney. "From the beginning of this matter, Ms. DeStephano admitted to her actions and was apologetic for them," Bush said. "While harsh, the Court's sentence acknowledges both of those [things] and permits her to maintain the career that she has fought hard to develop since admitting her wrongdoings." DeStephano was accused in June 2015 of working with a Colorado art dealer to sell McCurry's prints and split the profits while she was a manager at the photographer's Exton studio. The thefts included nine or 10 stolen prints of Afghan Girl, most of them valued at $12,500; one $50,000 print, and more than 200 books of McCurry's work. Afghan Girl, which appeared on the cover of National Geographic in June 1985, was an iconic portrait of a young, green-eyed refugee in Pakistan. Authorities last year said DeStephano and her accomplice made somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000 by reselling the stolen work. She claimed she made $34,000, Noone said. McCurry's photos from across the globe are regularly printed in National Geographic and other major magazines around the world. jmcdaniel@philly.com 610-313-8205 @McDanielJustine Weve reached another green-letter day in the state of Oregons continuing experiment with legalizing recreational marijuana: Beginning Thursday, edible pot products are available for retail sale in registered medical marijuana dispensaries across the state. Not in Linn County, though: At this writing, no medical marijuana dispensary in the county legally can sell recreational marijuana, and that includes edibles intended for recreational users. Local governments throughout the county (including Linn County) have barred medical dispensaries from selling recreational pot. Voters in each of those jurisdictions will get a chance in November to decide the fate of those restrictions. But these edibles potentially are troublesome enough that we dont mind letting other counties take the lead. Washington and Colorado, two states ahead of Oregon in legalizing marijuana, have had experiences with people (and, in some cases, children) ingesting much more tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana) than they had intended. Sometimes, the results are hilarious. Sometimes, theyre deadly serious, especially with children. Marijuana can make children very sick, as the state reminded us this week. All of that helps to explain why Oregon regulators have been careful as they develop and roll out the states standards for edibles. But those standards arent yet completely in place: For example, the state intends to cap individual edible products at 5 milligrams of THC each; thats half of whats allowed in Colorado and Washington, and this is a case where its best to err on the side of caution. But that 5-milligram limit doesnt apply to the states medical marijuana dispensaries that are participating in early sales of recreational pot; those stores can sell edibles with up to 15 milligrams of THC. Folks who are curious about these early edibles will want to pay particular attention to the label: All edible retail marijuana products in Oregon must have a clear THC serving size indicated on them. Pay attention to serving size as well: A package such as a chocolate bar or a cookie may not be intended just for consumption by a single person and can contain as many as 50 milligrams of THC total. So what appears to be a single-serving chocolate bar could in fact be intended as 10 single servings. Thats why even the people who are hoping to carve out a market niche with pot edibles are urging adult consumers to go slow at first. Heres an important thing to remember as you pry open the lid on that tub of pot rocky road: Edible marijuana doesnt affect the system as quickly as smoked marijuana. So people gobble down a chocolate bar or brownie and dont immediately feel the effect. So they gobble down another edible or two. Then the pot kicks in. The results arent always pretty. The advice from experts is to wait at least 90 minutes and up to four hours before consuming more edibles. And, if you have children, consider following this additional advice from the Oregon Health Authority: Keep all your marijuana products in a locked area that your children cannot see or reach. If your child eats or drinks marijuana edibles, call the Poison Center Hotline at 1-800-222-1222. If symptoms seem bad, call 911 or go to the emergency room. Symptoms can include your child having trouble walking or sitting up, starting to be sleepy or having a hard time breathing. Heres a case where Linn County residents might well learn something by carefully monitoring the experiences elsewhere. And that could be valuable information as the elections on pot restrictions draw closer. (mm) Im very pleased to announce Planetary Radio Extra: Space Policy Edition (PRE:SPE for short), a new spinoff of Planetary Radio that will delve into the weeds of space policy and politics. This will add a whole new dimension to our popular Space Advocate video series on Planetary TV, which walks space supporters through how-tos of the political process. Todays policy decisions are critical to our future successes in space exploration, and The Planetary Society welcomes space advocates around the world to join us in advancing this process that will shape a robust future. Planetary Society Director of Space Policy Casey Dreier; his colleague, the Societys Space Policy Adviser Jason Callahan; and I will take you to strange new worlds with behind-the-scenes stories of how NASA missions actually get madethe stories behind the amazing pictures, adventures, and science that thrill us every day. https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/267276482&color=ff5500&auto_play=false The phenomenal success of several past discussions with Casey and Jason on Planetary Radio has convinced us that an eager audience across the US and the globe will welcome this new, monthly series. The inaugural program is already posted at http://planetary.org/radio and The Planetary Society's SoundCloud account. Everyone who already subscribes to Planetary Radio on iTunes or elsewhere will automatically receive new episodes on the first Friday of every month. You can also subscribe to the Space Policy Edition exclusively via this RSS feed. As Emily Lakdawalla says, we live in a golden age of space exploration. But will it continue? Will humans go to Mars? How will they get there? Will we look for life on Europa and Enceladus? The answers to these questions arent high above us in the cosmos. They are evolving in the halls of U.S. Congress, within offices of the White House, in NASA, and through the tireless work policy wonks and space advocates. While The Planetary Societys space policy advocacy work is currently primarily focused in North America, it will take a global community effort - not the work of one nation - to achieve future great discoveries in space. We thus invite the world community to join us in our space policy deep-dives and calls to action that will shape the future. Space activists under the U.S. Capitol dome are pushing their agendas even as competition for federal dollars increases. A new Administration will surely bring its own approach to the exploration of our solar system and beyond. NASA is building new hardware that can take astronauts beyond Earth orbit for the first time since the 1970s. And a whole new breed of commercial space companies are aggressively pursuing their vision for space. The Planetary Society has demonstrated that an informed and involved public can help stay the course, or change it when the need arises. The key is understanding the often byzantine machinery of policymaking, politics and the budget. Its not an easy task, even for beltway insiders. I hope youll listen, and that youll join the conversation! Well need your feedback about the topics we take on and how we can improve their presentation. And I know youll enjoy the ride. Even the wonkiest policy discussion can be engaging and fun. Join us as we throw the light of a thousand suns on the inner workings of Washington DC, and illuminate our pathway to the stars. Inside Gaming: MGM Resorts Acquires Borgata; Sands Settles With Fired CEO June 03, 2016 Martin Harris In this week's installment of Inside Gaming, a big acquisition was announced this week as MGM Resorts International acquires the Borgata, and a six-year long legal battle between the Las Vegas Sands and its ex-Sands China CEO finally ends with a big cash settlement. MGM Resorts Acquires Borgata, To Expand East Coast Footprint There was big industry news this week with the announcement that MGM Resorts International has acquired the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa. As Forbes reports, the price tag for the acquisition totaled $900 million to be paid to Boyd Gaming Corp. who owns 50% of the Borgata. Minus the payment of current debts, Boyd "estimates that it will gain $600 million by way of the transaction." Once the deal is complete, MGM Resorts International will be selling the Borgata to MGM Growth Properties for a reported $1.175 billion, with the latter then planning to lease the Borgata to MGM Resorts for $100 million annually. Boyd Gaming CEO Kevin Smith told Forbes that while the company have been "pleased with the performance" of the Borgata, "this transaction is an attractive opportunity to immediately unlock significant value for our shareholders." The move comes less than two months after Boyd Gaming acquired the Aliante Casino and Hotel in North Las Vegas for $380 million. At the time there was much speculation regarding Boyd's intention also to acquire another Las Vegas property, Cannery Casino Resorts LLC, and indeed that purchase was made as well shortly afterwards for $230 million. As Forbes explains, MGM Resorts, currently the largest operator on the Las Vegas strip, now also owns the best performing casino on the Atlantic City boardwalk. The deal also has significance in the online realm, giving MGM a chance to take advantage of Borgata's license to operate online in New Jersey. Connections are also being made between the timing of this deal and the recent bailout of Atlantic City by New Jersey lawmakers. Last week in this space we discussed how legislators had voted in favor of a rescue bill with Governor Chris Christie's signature needed for it to take effect. Christie did sign, thereby granting the city temporary loans to avoid facing default. Bloomberg characterizes the deal as "a big bet by MGM on the future of Atlantic City," noting how the city's gaming revenue has fallen by in half since 2006. However, speaking to Bloomberg, MGM Resorts Chief Executive Officer Jim Murren was sanguine regarding the Borgata adding to the company's growing presence on the east coast. "We viewed Borgata as what it is, a high-quality, high-performing property that's bucked the trend in a very rough market," said Murren. For more on the deal and its implications for MGM, Boyd, and the Borgata going forward, head over to Forbes. Las Vegas Sands Settles With Fired Sands China CEO for More Than $75M Almost six years' worth of lawsuits between the Las Vegas Sands Corp. and the former chief executive officer of Sands China Ltd. came to a conclusion this week when the company agreed on a settlement requiring them to pay "between $75 million and $100 million" to Steve Jacobs in order to resolve all legal claims against the company, reports The Wall Street Journal. Jacobs first filed a lawsuit for wrongful termination after being fired as CEO of the Sands China Unit in 2010. The exact terms of the settlement were confidential; however, a "person familiar with the matter" shared the $75M-$100M range with the WSJ. In his lawsuits, Jacobs claimed Las Vegas Sands president and CEO and Sands China chairman Sheldon Adelson had ordered him to pressure Macau government authorities improperly as well as to extort other officials, and that his firing resulted from his refusal to comply with such orders. Edward Tracy succeeded Jacobs as Sands China CEO and served for four-and-a-half years before retiring in early 2015, at which point Adelson himself moved into the position. As the WSJ explains, the lawsuits prompted investigations by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice to see if the company "had violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars U.S. companies from bribing officials of foreign governments." In April of this year, the Sands paid more than $9 million as a civil settlement to end that probe. Then last month the Sands paid another $2 million fine levied by the Nevada Gaming Control Board following allegations the company had violated state gaming law, a finding in part resulting from federal-level allegations of accounting violations in China (as well as anti-money-laundering practices in Las Vegas). It was just about a year ago we were sharing the latest regarding the wrongful termination case and how it had led to allegations regarding ties between the Sands and "high-ranking members of Chinese triads" or organized crime. At the time the British newspaper The Guardian along with a nonprofit watchdog group called the Campaign for Accountability had filed motions to have records in the case be unsealed, in particular asking for reports compiled by a Hong Kong-based investigator concerning the alleged organized crime ties. However District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez ruled in July 2015 the reports would not be unsealed because they contained sensitive commercial and gaming information. In a 2012 interview with the WSJ Adelson said "he wished he had settled Mr. Jacobs's suit early on but couldn't give in to what he believed were improper accusations." For more on the settlement, visit the WSJ. Want to stay atop all the latest in the poker world? If so, make sure to get PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us on both Facebook and Google+! A 47-year-old man has been charged with wounding a West Covina, CA, police officer in a shooting last month, officials said Thursday. Jose Luis Chavez is expected to be arraigned Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Officials say Chavez was stopped by the officer while walking with a bicycle with a woman on May 20 on Badillo Street. Officer Kenny Benitez approached the two for what he believed to be suspicious behavior, reports KABC. Chavez fled and then shot at the officer with a handgun, officials said. The officer was hit in the chest, and was treated at a local hospital and then sent home to recover. Chavez was arrested a week after the shooting, and a day after a $20,000 reward was announced. If convicted, he faces up to life in state prison, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. Related: Bicyclist Shoots California Officer in Torso, Suspect at Large Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Bernie Sanders continues to fight for the Democratic nomination, even as it appears that Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and both political parties have moved on to the general election. In a statement, Sen. Sanders said: I agree with Secretary Clinton that Donald Trumps foreign policy ideas are incredibly reckless and irresponsible. But when it comes to foreign policy, we cannot forget that Secretary Clinton voted for the war in Iraq, the worst foreign policy blunder in modern American history and that she has been a proponent of regime change, as in Libya, without thinking through the consequences. We need a foreign policy based on building coalitions and making certain that the brave American men and women in our military do not get bogged down in perpetual warfare in the Middle East. Thats what I will fight for as president. Bernie Sanders is still continuing to fight for the Democratic nomination, even though it is clear that Democrats have largely moved on. Sanders has vowed to keep fighting until the superdelegates get their say, but the reality is that the only chance that Bernie Sanders has is to hope that superdelegates overturn the will of the majority of Democratic voters and hand him the nomination. The reality is that Sanders is asking the superdelegates to do exactly what he has been arguing against. Sanders has argued that the Democratic nominating process needs to be more open, which it does, but he is also arguing that the same process should give him the Democratic nomination. Sen. Sanders continues to fight for delegates, as he should, but the reality is that the Iraq war vote card seems to have expired. Democrats have moved on, and while Sanders has some very valid foreign policy points, the majority of voters and delegates have chosen Hillary Clinton. Sanders deserves credit for his campaign, but he is fighting a battle that most view as already lost. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Hillary Clinton delivered what was probably the best speech of her campaign on Thursday, calling Donald Trump temperamentally unfit to be president and pointing out just how dangerously incoherent the presumptive Republican nominee is. Imagine Donald Trump sitting in the Situation Room, making life-or-death decisions on behalf of the United States, the former Secretary of State said. Do we want him making those calls someone thin-skinned and quick to anger, who lashes out at the smallest criticism? Clinton said Trump hasnt offered Americans anything but a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies. It was a smackdown that rallied Democrats and likely appealed to moderate voters who are appropriately nervous about a potential Trump presidency. Trump, always quick to throw temper tantrums, stomped his feet to Twitter to take a defensive swipe at the likely Democratic nominee as she delivered her speech: Bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton! Reading poorly from the telepromter! She doesnt even look presidential! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 2, 2016 Not only did Trump misspell the word teleprompter in his haste to respond to Hillary Clintons rousing speech sad! but the former Secretary of States campaign quickly shot back with a tweet of their own: Imagine if he had not just his Twitter account at his disposal when hes angry, but Americas entire arsenal. https://t.co/e7M2CV3sj6 Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 2, 2016 Ouch. If the rest of the campaign resembles today, something tells me Donald Trump is going to regret ever running for president. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Even Mitch McConnell, who supports Donald Trump for president, thinks the presumptive Republican nominee could be the GOPs next Barry Goldwater. In an interview with CNNs Jake Tapper, the Senate majority leader said he was worried that Trump could alienate Latino voters the same way conservative Goldwater did with African-American voters in the 1964 presidential election. Lyndon Johnson was able to carry 44 states (and D.C.) in a landslide victory against Goldwater that year. McConnell also criticized the presumptive GOP nominee for throwing mud at fellow Republicans even after he has effectively secured his partys nomination. I think the attacks that hes routinely engaged in, for example, going after Susana Martinez, the Republican governor of New Mexico, the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, I think, was a big mistake, McConnell said. Video: McConnells comments reflect the broader fear of many Republicans that Trumps inflammatory rhetoric particularly his comments about Mexican immigrants being rapists and criminals will doom them with an increasingly diverse national electorate. A recent Fox News poll showed Hillary Clinton crushing Donald Trump among Latino voters by 40 points a number that would likely guarantee the White House to the Democratic candidate. McConnell seems to be going through the motions that most establishment figures are when it comes to Trump. They arent thrilled about supporting him and even frequently criticize his outlandish and dangerous proposals but they publicly support him because hes the GOP nominee and they want to salvage at least some down-ballot races. Republicans know that Trumps candidacy is a ticking time bomb. The fact that Mitch McConnell is even willing to draw a comparison between his partys presumptive nominee and Barry Goldwater tells us all we need to know about what the GOP expects to happen in November. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Donald Trump went on The Savage Nation Wednesday and told Michael Savage that all bets are off were talking about the entire defense apparatus that has existed since establishment of NATO. If theyre attacked, he said, theyre on their own. Unless they pay. Thats right: We wont honor any of our commitments unless they pay up. Look, there are legitimate criticisms to be made of NATO, but it fills an important role in the defense of the West. Perhaps his hero Vladimir Putin has offered Trump a better deal. So his first day in office, President Trump is going to hold our commitment to our allies up for ransom. Hes going to jump right on the phone and lay down the demands of his New World Order: If you want Americas help, show us the money. The two men first set the stage by talking about the Arabizing of Europe with Muslims from the Middle East. Take a listen courtesy of Right Wing Watch (If you can handle more, you can watch the full interview here): Youre gonna destroy Europe. Germanys going down, theyre all going down. Its unbelievable. Unbelievable whats happening in Europe. Savage asked, What would your first priority be as president? Trumps answer was that, Number one would be knock out some of the executive orders from Obama. He said he would start Keystone right away because we need jobs, regardless of the fact that Keystone XL wont create any jobs, as has been well-documented. Talking points know no facts, however. Thats when Trump launched into his plan to turn the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into a pay-for-protection racket: Id contact countries and Id say, folks, we love protecting you, we want to continue to protect you, but theyre not living up to their bargain. You know, youre talking about billions and billions of dollars, Michael, numbers that you wouldnt even believe. But theyre not living up to their bargain and you know we cannot continue to be the policeman for the world. Now, I dont mind, but they have to pay, they have to pay. If you look at the NATO countries 28 countries theyre not living up to what theyre supposed to be living up to. Theyre not paying what theyre supposed to be paying, which is very little by the way. So what are we supposed to get into World War III over a country that doesnt respect us enough to even pay what theyre supposed to be paying? This alienating our allies, Trump assured Savage, will make America a very strong country again. Thats right: Trumps Whats in it for me? approach to life directed at foreign policy. At our allies. Nations with which we share a long mutual interest in security and a stable global economy. Republicans have long said the country should be run like a corporation, and Donald Trump intends to do just that. The only problem is that he is such a rotten businessman. It is typical of the GOP that they could not have found somebody who actually knows what theyre doing to put their plans in effect. He wants to run not only the United States, but our allies, into the ground like he has his own past business ventures. No doubt this parochial for profit approach to international relations will meet with the approval of conservatives. Last year, the Associated Press reported that, A 2013 survey by Rasmussen Reports found that only 20 percent of respondents felt that the Navys primary mission should be as a global force for good, while 70 percent said it should it primarily be to protect and defend the United States. Our allies have never meant less than to Donald Trump, who seems to be the mass at the bottom of the gravity well down which all American ideals slide. Conservatives have claimed that it is liberals who have always been weak on defense, but they hadnt met Trump, who cant see past a dollar sign. If the reality star would actually crack open that Bible he likes to wave around, he might find the words used by the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, when he said on June 16, 1858 in his acceptance speech as United States senator, A house divided against itself cannot stand. Those words come from the Gospel of Mark 3:25: If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. That house, in the 21st century, is more than just the United States. Its not the 19th century anymore. We live in an international community, a global community, however much conservatives might hate that fact. Ours is just a part of a web of alliances grown out of mutual interests. It is a community fostered, in large part, by the United States over a span of seventy years. The time for isolationism, for pretending we can be alone in the world and forget everything outside our borders is past. Donald Trump seems intent on putting up walls real and metaphorical between nations. Walls we cannot afford, again, either metaphorically or physically. As Hillary Clinton said Thursday, We cannot put the security of our children and grandchildren in Donald Trumps hands. Donald Trumps first phone call will destroy NATO, and with it, the United States. In a Donald Trump administration, American support wont be based on ideals but on dollars, and will go to the highest bidder. Let the buyer beware. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Hillary Clinton has made it known that she is not going to let the media get away with their biased coverage of Donald Trump. Top Clinton strategist, Joel Benenson told the Huffington Post: Trump, he noted, had a unique ability to drive media coverage in ways that present practical challenges for the competition. There is no question that the free media plays a big role in presidential elections, and we are going to be very aggressive day in and day out, Benenson said. I think the media is going to be, they are going to be very fair about making sure that people get the time they deserve. And they are going to have to be held accountable on that. They have an obligation because of the free airwaves that they get access to in America, to cover this in a way the American people want it covered. Democrats have already gotten a taste of the Clinton strategy to deal with the medias Trump obsession. After Joe Scarborough had allowed Trump to lie during an interview on MSNBCs Morning Joe, the Clinton campaign forced the host to correct the false statement on the air by contacting the show while it was still on and not allowing Trumps lie to stand unchallenged. Hillary Clinton did two phone interviews with CNN and MSNBC after Trumps press conference disaster on Tuesday, and the Democrat understands that they are going to have to push the media to cover their her campaign on an equal basis with the Trump media machine. The Clinton campaign seems to get it. The media is not going to give the Democratic nominee equal treatment based on the fact that she is on the ballot in November. If they want fair coverage, they are going to have to fight for it. Hearing a top member of the Clinton camp say that they will hold the media accountable should be music to the ears of Democrats. Hillary Clinton isnt going to be steamrolled regarding media coverage, and if the media does keep up their Trump coverage bias, Clinton appears ready to make them pay. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Just when Republicans thought that it couldnt get worse, First Lady Michelle Obama spoke out against everything Donald Trump represents while addressing graduates at the CCNY commencement ceremony. Video: https://youtu.be/xB1eGI8Gqcg?t=11m47s While speaking at the CCNY commencement ceremony, First Lady Obama said: Some folks out there today seem to have a very different perspective. They seem to view our diversity as a threat to be contained rather than as a resource to be tapped. They tell us to be afraid of those who are different, to be suspicious of those with whom we disagree. They act as if name-calling is an acceptable substitute for thoughtful debate. As if anger and intolerance should be our default state rather than optimism and openness that have always been the engine of our progress. But graduates, I can tell you that as First Lady, I have had the privilege of traveling around the world, and visiting dozens of different countries, and I have seen what happens when ideas like these take hold. I have seen how leaders rule by intimidation, leaders who demonize and dehumanize entire groups of people often do so because they have nothing else to offer. And I have seen how places that stifle the voices and dismiss the potential of their citizens are diminished, how they are less vital, less hopeful, less free. Graduates that is not who we are. That is not what this country stands for. No, no, here in America, we dont let our differences tear us apart. Not here. Because we know that our greatness comes from when we appreciate each others strengths, when we learn from each other, when we lean on each other, because in this country, its never been each person for themselves, no were all in this together. We always have been. And here in America, we dont give in to our fears. We dont up walls to keep people out because we know that our greatness has always depended on contributions from people who were born elsewhere. First Lady Obamas remarks are the biggest sign yet that all of the White House is ready to join the fight to defeat Donald Trump. Michelle Obamas strong remarks added to the growing woes of the Republican Party. The GOP now has a nominee that has attacked the judicial system while facing fraud suits in the two biggest states in the country. As if this wasnt enough to keep Republicans awake at night, the popular President and First Lady have signaled that they are gearing up to join the 2016 fight. The argument that Obama made against Trump was devastating because it wasnt political. The argument that the First Lady made was a moral argument about who we are as a country. The question that First Lady Obamas remarks asked the country is, does Donald Trump accurately represent who we are? If this election is contested on moral terms, Donald Trump has no chance of winning. Trump and his angry Twitter account cant match the power and popularity of President and First Lady Obama. Michelle Obama is speaking out, and the Republican Partys bad week just got a whole lot worse. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print * The following is an opinion column by R Muse * Anyone remotely familiar with how Republicans operate is aware that if there is a successful government program that works well, people like and one that is beneficial economically, conservatives of all stripes work to kill it. It doesnt matter what program or agency it is, whether Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, healthcare insurance reform, or environmental protections, Republicans want them eliminated to benefit their corporate donors. No matter what Republicans or their Koch masters claim, renewable energy is beneficial to all Americans in providing clean power, clean air and water, improved health, economic benefits and jobs. This is something that Marylands Democratic-controlled legislature fully appreciates and they recently passed legislation increasing the renewable portfolio standard (RPS) to create thousands of new jobs, fill the states coffers, grow Marylands economy, and combat anthropogenic climate change, a serious threat to the state. However, despite being owners of a highly successful 12-year program that requires utility companies to use more renewable energy that has created thousands of jobs, and created billions of dollars in economic activity, Marylands Republican governor wants to take the state in a different direction. It is a direction that, no surprise here, the Koch brothers American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is hailing as the right one and deserving of hearty congratulations for helping the fossil fuel industry thwart state Democrats attempt to create more jobs, grow the economy, and protect the environment. Governor Larry Hogan vetoed the latest bill to increase the RPS after signing the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Act last month and despite his own Department of Environment telling him the current RPS had already created thousands of jobs and added billions of dollars in economic activity. The new bills augmented standard would have increased all the economic and environmental benefits the state is currently experiencing and guaranteed that Maryland would reach its greenhouse emissions goals ahead of schedule. It is another sign that Republicans love their greenhouse gas emissions nearly as much as they love their fossil fuel donors. The Maryland legislator who sponsored the Clean Energy Jobs bill, Bill Frick said that Hogans veto was infuriating. The bill would have increased the RPS from 20 percent by 2022 to 25 percent by 2020 and in spite of clean energy being touted as remarkably popular among voters, Hogan wont have it. In fact, a poll conducted last month revealed that nearly three-quarters of Maryland voters supported the Clean Energy Jobs bill despite it might eventually add an average of about 50-cents a month to their utility bill. Mr. Frick said that Maryland is a state that is particularly susceptible to the effects of sea level rise. Its a state that understands the risk of climate change, and its a state that is seeing the benefits of clean jobs. Setting aside the global risk of climate change, Maryland voters have seen the economic benefits of producing power that also gives them cleaner air and water and addresses the real threat of climate change. Even though renewable energy, including solar, wind and hydro only accounted for 7 percent of the states electricity generation in 2014, the growth in solar power generation has been remarkably noteworthy. According to the national Solar Energy Industries Association, there are 4,300 people working in solar in Maryland, which was 11th in installed capacity in 2015. The expanded RPS would have increased those numbers significantly and put the state in line to surpass its greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals. Advocates for clean energy warned that the governors veto would hurt the solar industry and send a loud message to investors that Maryland is not committed to solar, or any kind of renewable, energy. The Policy Director of the group MDV-SEIA, Omar Terrie, said This veto puts thousands of solar jobs and hundreds of local companies at risk. Moreover, this veto endangers the livelihood of thousands of Marylanders and will stall millions in economic investment. Despite endangering thousands of Marylanders livelihoods and health, as well as crushing economic investment and growth, the Koch brothers ALEC congratulated the Republican governor for doing the right thing for his constituents. The legislations sponsor Frick said the governors veto was about partisanship and pointing fingers, which is the only thing Larry Hogan knows how to do. The guy has no vision, no leadership. Its just attack Democrats, retreat, and repeat. And thats all he does. Except in this case, Hogan attacked Maryland residents health and safety, economic growth and thousands of jobs, and he came up with an excuse that belies common sense as well as the will of the voters. Hogan said in a letter to the legislature that in his conservative mind RPS is a tax and he will not allow it; he is an anti-tax Republican. The typically-Republican governor wrote, This legislation is a tax increase that will be levied upon every single electricity ratepayer in Maryland and, for that reason alone, I cannot allow it to become law. According to Frick, Hogan never engaged with the legislature about the bill being a tax hike and in fact he just came with the veto pen and after-the-fact criticism. As far as RPS being a tax, the Executive Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Mike Tidwell, said Thats absurd. Mr. Tidwell pointed out that the first RPS legislation was enacted by a Republican governor twelve years ago and rhetorically asked, Did Hogan think (Republican governor) Bob Ehrlich unleashed a tax on Maryland? The Regional Economic Studies Institute did an analysis on the RPS that Hogans own administration regularly cites and said Marylands version will support at least 3,500 new jobs within four years and contribute $6.5 billion in new economic output in addition to the current benefits, jobs, and economic growth. And the new bill would have added about 8 cents a month to electricity bills in 2017, or about 96-cents a year. It would eventually level off to somewhere around $1/month at the most from 2022 onward that amounts to $12 dollars annually. Tidwell continued that, We have 12 years of data on how well the RPS works. Because it works so well is exactly why no Republican alive today will allow the program to go forward: the people love it, it helps the economy, combats climate change, protects the environment and peoples health, and it creates thousands of sustainable jobs. It was little surprise that a Republican governor vetoed legislation expanding RPS, or that the American Legislative Exchange Council celebrated an act killing jobs and economic growth. In every Republican-controlled state, and many that are not, the Koch brothers tasked ALEC and Heritage Action to stop them in their tracks and abolish those already in place as part of their substantial war on clean and renewable energy, the environment, jobs, and economic growth that is not enriching the fossil fuel industry. Governor Hogans excuse that he vetoed the Clean Energy Jobs bill because it is a tax is sheer bovine excrement and a filthy lie. Apparently the Maryland legislatures bill garnered enough support to overturn the governors veto, but because the legislature will not be in session until early 2017, the bill will languish for at least seven months. Subsequently, the thousands of new jobs and billions in economic activity and growth will have to wait until then. However, clean energy advocates should beware that the Koch brothers will not rest easy with what might be a temporary veto victory and are likely working diligently to find a way to abolish Marylands RPS completely because it protects the people, creates jobs, grows the economy, and combats climate change; but most of all they will attempt to eliminate it because it is a success and the people love it. The Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers has issued a staement saying that the mass fish deaths that occurred in central provinces will not affect supplies or quality of Vietnam's seafood exports. The statement was made in response to a warning sent by the European Union to its members on May 24, which mentioned Vietnams fish deaths and asked for strict supervision of Vietnamese seafood exports. The association said that supplies of Vietnamese seafood mainly come from southern coastal provinces, which were not affected by the disaster. In early April, large quantities of fish washed up dead near the Vung Ang Economic Zone in Ha Tinh Province. The phenomenon spread south along a 200-kilometer stretch of coast and four central provinces, resulting in more than 100 tons of dead fish. The Department of Agro-Forestry-Fisheries Quality Assurance has instructed seafood processors not to buy dead fish and trace the origins of seafood they plan to export. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development also took sample tests and confirmed that fish caught offshore (more than 35 meters from land) the affected provinces are safe. Last year, Vietnam collected $6.5 billion from seafood exports, down 16 percent on-year. The association expects export value to grow in 2016 due to high demand on the global market. 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. MASON CITY, Iowa Prestage Farms has told Mason City and Cerro Gordo County officials that the company will no longer consider the city as a site for a new pork plant. Early last month the City Council voted 3-3 on a motion and thus failed to approve an agreement with the Clinton, North Carolina-based company to build the $240 million plant in Mason City. Prestage expressed its gratitude to supporters of its proposal and lamented in a statement Thursday that it "did not adequately address the misinformation campaign that our opponents effectively used to influence public opinion." Prestage has said the plant would have employed around 1,800 people. Plant opponents raised environmental issues and expressed concern about possible harm to property values. About three weeks ago, my husband and I entered a line of work neither of us had any experience in -- that of a caregiver to an aging parent. In 2007, my husband's mother had an aneurysm burst, but with surgery and a lengthy recovery time, she returned to good health. Last fall, little changes and mannerisms began to emerge, and she returned to the doctor. That trip to the doctor resulted in surgery, which unfortunately was not a success. Sadly, the aneurysm continues to swell at a slow pace, accompanied by a slow decline in her health. Currently, she is confined to a wheelchair with little left of her balancing capabilities. After much thought, it was decided she should move in with us. Thankfully, my job has allowed me to be part time as well as work from home most days. My husband's job also has flexibility, so he also is able to help in the mornings before he leaves. Can you imagine a morning routine caring for three school-age children, a toddler and an aging parent while trying to get oneself ready for work? Needless to say, that first week definitely was an adjustment period, but we muddled through it while attending to everyone's needs. Did you know that more 60 million families in the United States are caring for an aging or disabled person at home? Or that at least 80 percent to 90 percent of caregivers are women? Although this is not my case personally, fewer than half of those women who are caregivers manage to keep their jobs during this period of caregiving. In other words, more than half of those women either had to quit their jobs altogether, retire early, reduce their hours or take a leave of absence. Women who have young children at home, the "sandwich generation," are greatly affected at work as they had to leave work early, arrive late or miss days entirely due to their caregiving responsibilities. ADVERTISEMENT I would like to share a few suggestions to those who are faced with caring for an aging parent while attempting to juggle work as well. First, do not go to work every day and pretend nothing is going on at home. Do not try to sneak out early, come in late or leave in the middle of the day and think it will go unnoticed. I recommend telling your manager about your situation. It will help them understand the challenges you are facing while seeing you want to remain a productive, valued employee. After discussing your situation, being allowed to have a flexible work schedule would be the greatest outcome. If that isn't possible, perhaps reducing your hours will have to happen. If you primarily provide care in the morning, perhaps you could work in the afternoons and evenings. If you have medical appointments in the middle of the day, could you work a split shift? If working full time and having a flexible schedule is not an option, perhaps scaling back to part time would be the next step? Not all companies are able to move beyond a fixed schedule for many reasons, so some may have to quit altogether or take a leave of absence. If you are lucky, as in my case, you will have an employer who allows you to telecommute, which enables caregivers to be at home for those they are caring for while still being quite productive from a home office. Not all options are feasible for businesses, and bottom line, not all businesses can allow flexibility, telecommuting or flexible schedules. It is easy to see why more than half of women in a caregiving situation ultimately have to quit their jobs. Businesses have to look at what their business needs are. Caring for one's aging parent or parents is the highest calling there is, and most people will not abandon the people who raised them. My heart and applause go out to all the women and men in this situation who rise to the needs and take them seriously, just like it is your job. Police have launched an investigation into a soft drinks company after conflicting reports were released regarding excess lead content in its products that prompted accusations it had paid off the National Institute for Food Control. At the beginning of May, test results of C2 green tea and the Red Dragon energy drink, produced by URC Hanoi, were leaked on Facebook. Some of the results showed excess lead content. Shortly afterwards, the National Institute for Food Control published a new set of results saying that the lead content in C2 and Red Dragon was within the permitted limit. This prompted suspicion that a $45,000 bribe was handed to the national institute to fix the test results, forcing the police to launch an investigation on May 12. To date, no official result of the inquiry has been announced. C2 green tea and Red Dragon energy drink. In response to the case, on May 10, both the Vietnam Food Administration and the Ministry of Health's Inspectorate jumped in to collect sample tests of the two drinks. While the former said its samples contained the permitted levels of lead, the latter delivered the opposite result. It was not until May 20 that the inspectorate decided to suspend the circulation of three batches of C2 and Red Dragon and instructed the company to recall its products. However, two of the batches worth $170,000 had already been sold. The company itself claimed to had stopped the circulation of two other batches on May 23. At the end of May, the ministry fined the company VND5.8 billion ($260,000) for selling products with excess lead content, and destroyed 10,000 tons of contaminated drinks. Authorities supervise the disposal of C2 and Red Dragon products. In a press release published on June 1, URC Philippines, the parent, claimed that only two batches, not five, marginally exceeded the limits of Vietnam's product safety standards - some of the strictest in the world - versus what was initially reported that these products exceeded those limits by 10 times. The company's Vietnamese subsidiary has yet to comment. The question of whether Vietnamese consumers will be compensated or not remains unanswered. Pham Thanh Binh, a lawyer at Bao Ngoc Company, told VnExpress that under Vietnamese Law, the company must compensate customers. However, in reality, it would be very difficult for customers to sue the company as they dont have any proof and the damage caused by lead in drinks would need to be verified by a doctor. Associate professor and pedatrician Nguyen Tien Dung said that consumers will show no signs of lead poisoning if they drink C2 and Red Dragon over a short period. However, in the long run, lead content will accumulate in the body and people should seek medical help. Universal Robina Corporation (URC) is one of the largest food and beverage companies in the Philippines. After launching URC Hanoi in 2003, the company has gradually become one of Vietnams leading beverage companies. This isnt the first time Vietnamese authorities have fined the company. Last year, URC Hanoi faced a penalty of $12,500 for violating environmental regulations. Heather Cherry's vision was fairly good, but the stay-at-home mom in rural Nevada was tired of reaching for her glasses when she wanted to see into the distance during a hike or fully enjoy the sight of wild horses grazing at the side of the road. Lasik vision correction surgery offered the hope of 20-20 vision, and when she went to an eye surgery center in January, she was told she was an excellent candidate. Then came the consent form, with warnings about possible side effects such as diminished night vision and eye irritation. Cherry went online, found the patient website Lasik Complications and saw complaints of chronic eye pain and severely impaired vision. "I don't feel good about this," she said when she canceled her surgery. "I don't feel like this is the right choice for me." 50 percent drop ADVERTISEMENT Potential patients are less likely to opt for Lasik than in the procedure's heyday of 2000-07, when ads flooded the airwaves and more than a million of the outpatient surgeries were performed each year. The number of laser vision correction surgeries per year a category including Lasik and the closely related PRK procedure has dropped more than 50 percent, from about 1.5 million surgeries in 2007 to 604,000 in 2015, according to the eye care data source Market Scope. Explanations for the decline in volume vary widely, with eye surgeons blaming the economic downturn and noting some practices have seen increases in the last few years. "I can't tell you exactly why Lasik volumes are down, but there are some ideas and theories" said Dr. Kerry Solomon, president of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery. "One is that the economy hasn't fully recovered. Two, we're dealing with a different generation, millennials, and millennials make decisions differently; maybe they have different priorities. Maybe the millennial generation won't adopt Lasik to the same extent the baby boomers did. Maybe they will, and we have to reach out to them differently." There's also less marketing going on than there was in 2006 and 2007, Solomon says, and not as many doctors are doing Lasik. Sharing stories Anti-Lasik patient advocates say potential patients are finding websites such as Lasik Complications and reading sobering stories about patients who endure debilitating side effects. Word of mouth also may be having an effect, said Paula Cofer, an administrator of the Lasik Complications Facebook Group. Interest in Lasik, in which a surgeon uses a laser to reshape your cornea, exploded in the late '90s. ADVERTISEMENT "Back in the cowboy days, as I call them, people were doing this (surgery) in the mall, with people watching," recalled Dr. Daniel Durrie, a clinical professor of ophthalmology at the University of Kansas Medical Center who said he's very happy that's no longer happening. "We used to have an entity that rolled a truck into the Hy-Vee (grocery) store, and people would walk in one area and get their Lasik and walk out the other, like they were at the state fair." Cofer, who had Lasik 15 years ago, said she began experiencing disturbing side effects within days. At night, ordinary lights transformed into massive starbursts, with rays radiating outward from a bright center. The visual distortions continue, she said, swallowing large portions of her field of vision and making night driving impossible. "I can see eight moons in the sky at night all smeared and overlapping," said Cofer, who lives near Tampa, Fla. She also experiences daily eye pain, which she describes as a burning sensation similar to having soap in your eyes. What's the frequency? There's little question that Lasik complications occur, but the magnitude of the problem is a matter of debate, with anti-Lasik advocates saying serious complications are common, and eye surgeons, who cite patient satisfaction rates of 95 percent and higher, saying serious complications are rare. The FDA is taking steps to address the complication-rate issue with its Lasik Quality of Life Collaboration Project, the results of which haven't yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. In a presentation of preliminary findings, available at the FDA website, the FDA's director of the Division of Ophthalmic and Ear, Nose and Throat Devices, Malvina B. Eydelman, reported on more than 400 patients who had Lasik and filled out questionnaires at three months post-Lasik. ADVERTISEMENT Up to 4 percent of Lasik patients in the study experienced "very" or "extremely" bothersome visual symptoms at three months post-Lasik (without visual correction), according to Eydelman's presentation. Up to 45 percent of patients who had no visual symptoms before Lasik had developed new visual symptoms at three months post-Lasik, she reported. Durrie, a clinical investigator for the FDA study, said that, according to his calculations, presented at the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery annual meeting earlier this month, only 1 out of 551 patients in the study reported visual symptoms that caused them difficulty in performing their usual activities at the three-month mark. That's 0.2 percent. Durrie also said only 1.4 percent to 2.3 percent of patients said they were dissatisfied with Lasik at the three-month mark, and 64 percent of patients who had visual symptoms before Lasik had no visual symptoms at the three-month mark. By his calculations, 23 percent of patients who reported no visual symptoms before Lasik had at least one visual symptom at three months post-Lasik. Asked about the discrepancy between that figure and the FDA's, Durrie said his figures are more up-to-date than Eydelman's. An FDA spokesperson said Eyedelman's 45 percent figure is correct but applied to only part of the study. Ho Chi Minh City has invested near $1.3 billion to deal with the flooding issue. Photo by VnExpress/An Nhon Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) has signed a contract with a construction company aimed at protecting the city from flooding with total funding of $446 million. The project, which aims to control tidal flooding and respond to climate change, is expected to be finished within 36 months. It will cover 750 square kilometers in an area that is home to 6.5 million people near the Saigon River and downtown HCMC. The project will help to reduce water levels in the city's canals in order to improve the drainage system and environmental landscape. The project involves building a number of sewers and pumping stations. In addition, a 7.8-kilometer dike will be constructed along the Saigon River with a supervisory control and data acquisition system that automatically monitors and controls the water level. The project has already started in several districts in downtown HCMC. According to the contract, the city will pay 16 percent of the contract through land use rights and 84 percent in cash. What is a summer kitchen? It's a place that could've been the back porch or a separate building from the house used as the kitchen in the pre-1940s. As the kitchen is the hub of the house, and before air conditioning, the kitchen became very hot, which was fine in the winter but not during the hot summer. If you were wealthy, the summer kitchen may have had a ceiling fan. What you'd find there In the summer kitchen, you could find laundry being done using the the old wringer washing machine with the galvanized tubs, or the scrubboard in the tubs, or even a galvanized double tub sink. Some had pumped water or possibly running water. On a rainy day, it wasn't unusual to find laundry hanging in this kitchen, or a wooden drying rack in a corner. Sometimes, even an old treadle sewing machine was found, where aprons, curtains, clothes and even a clothespin bag all might have been made from feed sack fabric. Women did their cooking and canning in this kitchen using a simple wood stove and just a cast-iron grill. Enamelware was used, from the coffee pot to a cake pan and more. Soon, the old wooden Hoosier style cupboard was found in these kitchens, not to just store dishes, but canning goods as well as baking essentials. A kitchen table with benches, not only for eating but socializing and listening to an evening radio show. ADVERTISEMENT On a nice cool summer day, a picnic table under a big old tree was the eating spot. Today we still cook on the grill and eat out on a porch, deck or under the tree. We still find folks hanging clothes out on the clothesline if possible for that fresh, clean cotton smell. Advertisers of various products even boast this sort of living all year around with their own version of the outdoor summer kitchen. Collectibles for the summer kitchen Debra Olson, owner of Uncommonplace, Hokah, said, "I have several laundry items the wooden clothes fork (for moving the wet clothes around in the tub), a clothes plunger (for agitation), an old clothesline reel with the original clothesline, the old wooden clothespins, laundry soap tins, containers and more! Of course I have the old wringer washing machine, but did turn it into a yard planter today." Marlin Miner, owner of the Coffee Street Peddler Antiques, Lanesboro, said, "My wife Ardella's family has a summer kitchen, her mom had a wood stove out there and they cooked all their meals out in their summer kitchen to keep the house cool. Yes, I have a variety of enamelware, priced from $3 to $25 in many colors, and a ton of kitchenware." Chris Rand Kujath, owner of Old River Valley Antique Mall, Stewartville, said, "We do have some old washboards, tubs and old primitive drying racks." Joan Thilges, owner of New Generations of Harmony, said, "We don't have a cook stove or a wringer washing machine, but we do have a couple washtubs and washboards. We have a LOT of Griswold, and we even have a couple miniature cook stoves for kids. "We were surprised how many items we had related to doing laundry," Thilges said. "Also, irons, clothespin bags, copper boilers, even the starch and soap are scattered throughout the mall. Whether you use the tubs for planters and the clothespins to hang cards, you will find many useful items from earlier eras." Vintage laundry bags ADVERTISEMENT Most laundry bags were made using feed sack fabric. Later came laundry bags that were pretty enough to be considered attractive, as some ladies made bags that were shaped like a child's dress. Mary Nelson, a professional quilter from Winona, has a clothespin bag that her mother made using reproduction '30s fabric. "It is designed by Darlene Zimmerman, who calls herself the feed sack lady," Nelson said. "She is a quilt designer from Belle Plaine. I added a wooden hanger and have used them for showers and other gifts. I use mine to hold all those plastic bags from shopping trips, and not just clothes pins." Sara Kujak, owner of Not Your Mother's Apron, LaCrosse, Wis., said, "My vintage clothespin bags are so helpful used on your clothesline or in your laundry room to hold your clothespins. My fabric of choice is by Riley Blake Designs they have beautiful quilting fabric that I use for all of my projects. "My clothespin bag pattern is a tweak on one I found from Moda bake shop with some additional reinforcements on stress points and blending it with a bag that I saw at a local antique shop," Kujak said. Check out her website: http://notyourmothersapron.com/product/clothespin-bags-assorted . As you may have noticed, there is a trend to recapture this primitive time. Just walk into any flea market or antique mall or go to a country auction and an occasional garage sale. Here's to a happy summer in your indoor/outdoor summer kitchen. Last month in Starwatch I featured the Big Dipper, which according to modern protocol is not considered an actual constellation but rather just the rear end and tail of Ursa Major, the Big Bear. Currently the Big Dipper is hanging diagonally in the northwestern evening sky. The four stars that outline the pot also outline the hind end of Ursa Major, and the Big Dipper's handle is the stretched out tail of the bear. How the tail got stretched is a big part of the classic tale of the heavenly bears. Ursa Major's head is made up of three dimmer stars that form a skinny triangle just below the pot of the Big Dipper. These stars aren't as bright as the seven stars of the Big Dipper, but you should be able to spot them unless you're really plagued by heavy pollution. Extending to the left of the head and derriere of the bear are his front and rear legs, respectively. Both the front and back paws are marked by two closely knit pairs of stars. The stars that make up the Little Dipper are the same stars that make up Ursa Minor, the Little Bear, also with a stretched-out tail. At the end of the tail of the Little Bear, or the end of the handle of the Little Dipper, is Polaris, the North Star. It's certainly not the brightest star in the night sky, but it's a pivotal star. (Awful pun!) Polaris shines directly above the Earth's North Pole, so as the Earth rotates on its axis, once every 24 hours we'll see a reflection of that rotation in the heavens as all the stars revolve around Polaris. It's as if the celestial bears are constantly circling their den! The bear facts ADVERTISEMENT This is the myth of how the Big and Little Bear wound up in the night sky with stretched-out tails. Zeus, the king of the gods, fell in love with Callisto, a widow who lost her husband in a war some years back. It would have been just fine, but Zeus was already married to Hera, the queen of gods. Worse yet, Hera caught Zeus and Callisto together and promptly changed Callisto into a bear, and she ran away on all fours off into the forest. Not only did Zeus lose his girlfriend, but Arcus, Callisto's only child, lost his mother. The poor kid had no idea what happened to his mom. All he knew was she was gone. Arcus grew up living with relatives into a fine young man who fancied hunting and wouldn't you know he loved hunting bears! Sure enough, one day from his perch on Mount Olympus Zeus spotted Arcus aiming at arrow at a big mama bear. Thinking there was chance that this bear was actually Callisto, Zeus tore down to the scene with lightning speed. The bear was indeed Callisto. Zeus tried in vain to convince Arcus not to shoot his mother, but the young man thought Zeus was nuts. Just before the arrow flew from Arcus's bow, Zeus did the only thing he could and turned Arcus into a little bear. Once Arcus became a bear, he recognized his mom and there were huge bear hugs. Paranoid that Hera would catch him with the bears and pulverize his godliness, he grabbed both bears and flung them into the heavens by their tails, greatly stretching them out in the process. Two more tales There are other stories about the stars we call the Big Bear, but in just about all of them, all there is to the Big Bear is the Big Dipper. One of my favorites comes from the Zunis, a native American tribe in western New Mexico. They see our Big Dipper as a great heavenly bear that patrols the night skies, preventing the frozen gods from the north hauling in their cold icy winds. During the winter months, though, the bear heads below the horizon and the cold gods are free to have their way, blowing in bone-chilling cold, snowstorms and ice. By spring, though, the bear reappears in the evening sky and the cold gods quickly retreat northward and the land becomes warm and sunny again. Another piece of Ursa Major lore comes from the Basque region of Spain, but in this case the Big Dipper isn't a bear at all, or even part of a bear. The story goes like this: Two thieves broke into a farmer's barn and stole a pair of oxen. The extremely upset farmer dispatched his housekeeper and a servant after the thieves. He also sent along his errant bulldog, who was supposed to be in charge of security. ADVERTISEMENT After a few hours, the highly irritated and impatient farmer also joined the chase. This whole scene is graphically portrayed every night when you see the Big Dipper. The two stars on the right side of the pot section of the dipper are the two oxen. The two stars on the left side of the pot are the thieves. The next star to the left in the dipper's handle is the servant followed by the housekeeper represented by the middle star of the handle. The last star in the handle is the furious farmer. What about the dog? The pooch is a faint star you can barely see right next to the housekeeper star in the middle of the handle. Incidentally, we know the brighter housekeeper star as Mizar and the faint watchdog star as Alcor. See if you can spot the little doggie! Celestial hugging Mars and Saturn are still holding court together in the low southeast sky in the early evening. They're both pretty close to their minimum distance from the Earth for this year. MINNEAPOLIS Three Minnesota men accused of plotting to go to Syria to join the Islamic State group have been convicted of conspiracy to commit murder overseas. Twenty-one-year-old Guled Ali Omar, 22-year-old Abdirahman Yasin Daud and 22-year-old Mohamed Abdihamid Farah were convicted of the most serious charges today. Conspiracy to commit murder overseas carries the possibility of life in prison. The three are among 10 young men accused in the conspiracy. Six have pleaded guilty and a seventh is believed to be in Syria. Prosecutors built their case largely on recordings made by a friend of the men who became a paid informant. Defense attorneys argued that comments on the records were youthful bluster, and family and friends have protested what they call entrapment. Thailands Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha is making a keynote address to open Asia's largest annual security forum, Shangri-la Dialogue, which will take place in Singapore from June 3-5 this year. At least 20 defense ministers, including U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, will attend the forum, with territorial disputes in the South China Sea (Vietnams East Sea) being part of the agenda, according to AFP. Vietnams delegation is led by Vice Defense Minister, Senior Lieutenant General, Nguyen Chi Vinh. He is expected to present Vietnams resolute and clear point of view about the East Sea at the dialogue. Four children and a man died on June 2 in Bac Ninh Province after hitting a power line with an iron gangway. The incident happened by the Cau River in Dong Xuyen Village, Dong Tien Ward, according to local authorities. Deputy Chairman of Dong Tien's People's Committee Nguyen Duc Toan told VnExpress that the man was the owner of fish cages in the river. The man, 37, had asked four children, aged from 11 to 16, to help him carry the iron gangway across to one of his cages. Unfortunately the gangway hit an electrical cable and all five died from a massive electric shock, Toan said. Two of the children were related, he added. Police in Bac Ninh are treating the fatal incident as a particularly serious case. They have cordoned off the scene, conducted autopsies and handed the bodies over to the families for burial. The funerals were held by the victims relatives on the same night. A village resident said many people have been swimming in the river during the recent heat wave. Now the whole village is focusing on arranging a funeral for them. Everyone is stunned and mourning over their coffins. Follow VnExpress International on Facebook and Twitter The Civil War on the western frontier will be the topic of the next meeting of the Rochester Civil War Roundtable at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the History Center of Olmsted County , 1195 W. Circle Drive SW, Rochester. The speaker is Paul Bartlett, a 2016 graduate of Mayo High School. His talk, The Confederacy of the South West, will look at how the war was conducted in the western states and territories. This is the final program of the 2015-16 season of the Rochester Civil War Round Table. The programs will resume in September. Local law enforcement agencies are reviewing policies and considering adding new equipment after Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton on Tuesday signed into law legislation governing use of mobile video recorders or body cameras and classifies the data captured by those cameras. The law classified most video data captured by law enforcement officers as private or nonpublic data. It was a move that both Rochester Police Chief Roger Peterson and Olmsted County Sheriff Kevin Torgerson supported. The Rochester Police Department has had its patrol officers wearing body cameras since March . The department will have to review its policy for mobile video recorder use in light of the new state law, Peterson said. "The major change is the data classification issue and of course that does override any local policy, which I think in this case is a good thing, a very good thing," Peterson said. Rochester police officers, operating under the policy the department created with the Police Policy Oversight Commission, are currently responsible for deciding whether or not to use their cameras in certain situations. The state law removes that burden from officers. ADVERTISEMENT "What we have is every officer on every call is trying to make that data privacy decision. That's not what they should be thinking about that's not a good way to do business," Peterson said. "The change allows that camera to be on. "If that data shouldn't be shared, it won't be. If the data should be shared, for whatever reason, it's available to be shared. We can collect more data, we can protect it a lot better and officers are not put in the position that they have to try to make that decision." The new clarity in data classification might also clear the way for the Olmsted County Sheriff's Office to implement mobile video camera use for its officers. Torgerson had asked the Olmsted County Board of Commissioners to consider purchasing the equipment for his office in November but the board was hesitant to move forward without clear direction from the state. "We've been watching it (lawmaking) very closely and hoping things would line up the way we were asking for," Torgerson said. "That would, in part, be protecting victims so that in a situation where victims were on body camera or squad camera that their video doesn't automatically show up on YouTube or somewhere because the public has access to it," Torgerson added. The state's decision to restrict body camera video access to certain persons and in certain situations provided the protection Torgerson had hoped for. It also returns body cameras to the top of his priority list, he said. Several statewide organizations, including the NAACP of Minnesota and the Dakotas and the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, had asked Dayton not to sign the legislation for fear that the higher class of privacy protection would lead to limited accountability and transparency from law enforcement agencies. W.C. Jordan, president of the Minnesota and Dakotas NAACP and a member of Rochester's Police Policy Oversight Commission, said this week he still felt the state law failed to provide adequate transparency. ADVERTISEMENT "I understand both sides of the issue. Do I agree with the policy the way that it's written? No, I don't," Jordan said. "This particular bill was written basically by police officers, for police officers and pretty much to protect police officers." It is a continuing situation, Jordan said. The Rochester Police Department and Police Policy Oversight Commission will meet to discuss how the new data classification will change the local body camera policy. The state's new law takes effect in August. STEWARTVILLE A new city ordinance meant to keep sex offenders from living near areas where children congregate might actually end up banning those individuals from the entire town. Stewartville's Designated Predatory Offender Residency Restrictions ordinance prohibits Level 3 sex offenders and those who have committed a crime and are defined by the state as a "predator" from establishing a temporary or permanent residence within 1,500 feet of certain public locations within city limits. The ordinance was prompted by a report that Level 3 offender Jerry Vandenhemel intended to move from a halfway house in Rochester to a residence on South Main Street in Stewartville. The state assigns every sexual offender one of three levels based on the offender's risk of re-offending. Level three offenders are considered most likely to re-offend. Vandenhemel, 31, was first sent to prison in 2012 for having sexual contact with female victims between the ages of 14 and 15. Released as a Level 2 offender, he returned to prison two more times after violating his probation conditions. Vandenhemel was released in April of this year, now as a Level 3 offender. ADVERTISEMENT Although there are 12 Level 1 and Level 3 offenders in the Stewartville area, Olmsted County Sheriff Kevin Torgerson said that this is the first time the town has had to deal with a Level 3 offender. Stewartville Mayor Jimmie-John King said the ordinance was largely influenced by public opinion once community members were notified of Vandenhemel's possible residence in the small town. He said on that there is a lot of foot traffic on Main Street, with children crossing the street to go to the school and the public pool. "It's a scary thought for anyone who's got children or grandchildren or nieces or nephews," said King. "It didn't seem like a logical location for this fellow to live." The ordinance will be enforced by the Olmsted County Sheriff's Office. Violation of the ordinance is a misdemeanor and could result in a ticket to the individual and possibly the landowner renting the place. The offender would also be required to a location that complies with the ordinance. The city of Stewartville has eight churches, four school buildings, four public parks, one public pool, one public library and several miles of public trails, all of which fall under the ordinance. With offenders required to live more than 1,500 feet from all of these public locations, there have been questions of whether offenders would be allowed to live within the city limits at all. "It pretty much blocks out the entire city of Stewartville," Olmsted County Sheriff Kevin Torgerson said. "Now where does a guy live?" Torgerson said that whether or not the city's ordinance is constitutional is still up in the air, and would have to be decided in court. ADVERTISEMENT "The only way to find out if this is constitutionally fair is if somebody challenges it and we see where it goes." King said that he never drew out a map to determine how the ordinance would affect the ability of offenders to live within city limits. "I came up with the number and saw these places and thought, these are the places that need to be safe," King said. Upon learning about the ordinance, Vandenhemel will not be moving to Stewartville as he previously planned. Torgerson said that he agrees with the ordinance, but he is worried where Level Three sex offenders and those defined by the state as "predators" will be able to live if other cities within Olmsted County follow Stewartville's lead. "These guys and gals have to live somewhere. We can't lock them up forever," Torgerson said. "They served their time and now they have a right, according to our laws, to be out and to try to be productive people." Level 3 offender meeting planned in Stewartville The University of Minnesota Rochester named its first tenured faculty member this week. Molly Dingel, part of the first cohort of faculty at UMR, helped construct the school's bachelor of science in health sciences curriculum and establish faculty governance. Her tenure was approved during the May 12 Board of Regents meeting, and she was promoted to associate professor. "Dr. Dingel's tenure and promotion to associate professor is an individual accomplishment that occurs once in a lifetime," said Dr. Lori Carrell, vice chancellor for academic affairs and student development. Dingel holds a doctoral degree in sociology from the University of Kansas and is a "passionate teacher, a dedicated researcher and a leader to her faculty colleagues," according to a news release from UMR. "I'm extremely gratified to be recognized in this way by the University. I'm very proud to be part of such a great system, and I'm also very proud of what we at UMR have been able to build," she said. ADVERTISEMENT Tenure-track faculty are eligible to receive tenure in their eighth year at UMR. Tenured faculty hold responsibilities in three areas: teaching, research and service, according to the news release. Faculty members build a portfolio, or tenure dossier, of their time at the university to be reviewed by committees and individuals, the University of Minnesota Provost and Board of Regents. Tenure at UMR is unique, said Carrell, because it's related to research on student learning first and disciplinary research second. "Her research is making unique contributions to the literature; her teaching and course construction have been vital to the quality of students' education at UMR; and her extraordinary service has been pivotal to establishing faculty governance at UMR," Carrell said. "Her achievement of tenure is also a validation for the UMR community's unique model, emanating from our commitment to learning innovation research." Dingel's research focuses on students' group work. Her discipline-specific research focuses on the sociological and bioethical questions of addiction genomics and genetics research. "I'm looking forward to continuing to develop what we have started at UMR, because the people I work with are so amazing," she said. "I hope I can be a strong advocate for the faculty as we continue our journey." Vietnam's Vice Defense Minister Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Chi Vinh is attending Asia's largest annual security forum that opens today in Singapore with territorial disputes in the South China Sea (Vietnam's East Sea) on the agenda. Vietnam's resolute and clear point of view about the East Sea will be presented at the Shangri-la Dialogue, which will take place from June 3-5, Vietnamese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Le Hai Binh said on June 2. Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Chi Vinh. Photo by VnExpress/Nhat Quang The situation on the Korean Peninsula and Islamist extremism are also expected to dominate discussions at the forum, which will be attended by at least 20 defense ministers, according to AFP. Thailand's Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha, a former army chief who seized power two years ago, will open the dialogue with an evening keynote address. U.S. to criticize China at the meeting U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter is preparing to give a speech in Shangri-la which analysts believe will anger China, AFP reported. U.S. officials have repeatedly accused China of causing regional tensions in Vietnam's East Sea, but Beijing has accused Washington of militarizing the area with its "freedom of navigation" patrols. "There is much speculation about China's next steps in the South China Sea (Vietnam's East Sea)," forum organizer Tim Huxley of the International Institute for Strategic Studies wrote in a pre-conference blog. "Particularly in the context of an apparently imminent ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on a Philippine submission that challenges important aspects of China's claims and activities there." Influential U.S. Senator John McCain said on Friday he feared for the consequences if China rejected an impending U.N. court ruling on the South China Sea (Vietnam's East Sea) dispute, and urged Asian nations to back U.S. statements that the outcome should be binding, according to Reuters. In a speech in Singapore ahead of the key regional security forum, McCain, who chairs the U.S. Senate's Armed Services Committee, said enforcement of the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague would be a major test for the region. The Philippines has gone to the court to contest China's claim to an area of the sea stretching deep into the maritime heart of Southeast Asia, covering hundreds of disputed islands and reefs. Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also claim parts of the sea. China refuses to recognize the case. McCain urged China to shift from what he called coercion and intimidation of neighbors to co-operation. "China can choose to disrupt the rules-based order. Or it can choose to become a vital partner in maintaining it," he said on the sidelines of the annual Shangri-la Dialogue. "I fear the consequences if China chooses the path of disruption," McCain added, later saying it could force the wider region to cooperate more closely militarily and economically. The Arizona senator urged Southeast Asian nations to restate their support for a rules-based order. McCain said China "would be facing severe criticism from the world" if it opted to ignore the ruling of the court in The Hague, which is expected to rule in the coming weeks. Son Doong: the world's largest cave has photographer in awe By Minh Khang June 2, 2016 | 11:53 pm PT Every 'Alice' who has a chance to behold this wonderland and capture a moment to take home agrees on its splendour. Swiss photographer Urs Zihlmann is no exception. Relations between the United States and the Lao Peoples Democratic Republic was the focus of the seventh annual Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue conducted recently in Vientiane. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel led the U.S delegation, which included officials from the U.S. Departments of State and Defense and the United States Agency for International Development. During their discussions, Assistant Secretary Russel and Lao Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Sengphet Houngboungnuang agreed that the U.S.-Lao relationship is stronger than ever. Both officials discussed the importance of the upcoming visit to Laos of President Barrack Obama in September, which will be the first ever visit by a U.S. President. In addition, they discussed Laos current role as chair of ASEAN and the opportunities the country will have when it welcomes world leaders for the ASEAN Regional Forum and East Asia Summit this year. Assistant Secretary Russel reconfirmed U.S. commitment to work with Laos on sensitive issues rooted in the past, including the clearance and disposal of unexploded ordnance (UXO). He noted that unexploded ordnance removal is critical both to the lives and livelihoods of Lao citizens as well as the countrys economic development, and the United States will continue to support Laos in addressing this issue. U.S. and Lao officials also reviewed progress towards locating the remains of personnel missing from the Indochina conflict period. U.S. and Lao officials agreed on goals for a comprehensive U.S. development assistance program in Laos, valued at nearly $50 million. Vice Minister Sengphet thanked the United States for its support of Laos Sustainable Development Goals, particularly in nutrition, health, education, trade, and justice. He also discussed the benefits of U.S. assistance for Laos ASEAN Chairmanship year, which includes training of officials in policy related issues, summit logistics, and English language. U.S. and Lao officials also reviewed broader regional and global developments.Assistant Secretary Russel emphasized the commitment of the United States to constructive and beneficial relations with Laos and ASEAN, indications of the importance the United States places on the broader Asia Pacific region. The Minnesota Legislative session is over, and no one is happier than Sen. Jeremy Miller. It's no longer where Miller wants to be. Based on his attendance record over the last two sessions, that's what you've got to think. And who can blame him. He has a young family that needs him home in the evenings to tell them stories and read books to them. That's not something you get to push the button on the remote to record and play back later when you have the time. Sen. Miller cast some really unfortunate votes in this last session. For one, he voted against helping college students with their student debt, and for another, he voted against family leave. Why? These are things that would have been a big help to the college students and struggling young families in his district. Perhaps it's because he is privileged. He probably has no college debt. All he needed to get a good paying job in the family business was to take a few business courses at the local community college. A job that pays well enough that his wife can afford to stay home and take care of the kids. No need here for debt relief or family leave. Dennis DeKeyrel ADVERTISEMENT Harmony Henry Heimlich used the lifesaving technique that bears his name to rescue a fellow senior last month. Depending upon whether you believe some of the current press accounts or his Wikipedia page, it was either the first or second time the 96-year-old surgeon was thus called to action. The event occurred in a Cincinnati assisted-living home, where Heimlich saved 87-year-old Patty Ris. "God put me in this seat next to you," she wrote him in a thank-you note. That's quite a storybook ending, but the saga reminded me of my own close encounter with the good doctor. In 1993, I left a federal position to which I'd been appointed by the administration of George H.W. Bush to join the legendary James E. Beasley in the practice of trial law. Our introduction came when I sought his legal advice after Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Steve Lopez wrote about me, questioning whether I'd ever "find honest work." I thought he was calling me dishonest, and contacted Beasley, who'd earned quite a reputation handling defamation actions. Beasley said he'd take the case and he also hired me. (No lawsuit was ever filed, though. Months after I'd joined him in practice Beasley said to me: "You walk down the street thinking about that column. Nobody else does.") One day soon after my arrival at the firm, he handed me a case. The matter concerned a Philadelphia man who'd choked to death at an all-you-can-eat buffet in the city. Beasley had accepted the case more to create case law than to earn any fee. His success had enabled him that type of case selection. ADVERTISEMENT Beasley was angered that a restaurant employee who witnessed the death was reportedly not permitted by a manager to perform the Heimlich maneuver. Beasley wanted to establish a duty on Pennsylvania restaurants similar to one in New York to perform the maneuver. But when the restaurant owner turned out to be a Florida corporation and the case was moved to federal court (where no state law could be created), Beasley lost his appetite for the file and handed it to the new guy. This case about a man's tragic passing in a public place had more than its share of characters and drama and was my initiation into the practice of law. I struggled to find the critical witness the cashier but local celebrity sleuth Russell Kolins did in prison. My concerns about her credibility were offset by the discovery that she was CPR-trained and carried a certification (including Heimlich) in her wallet. There was also the fact that the decedent had been eating corned beef in the men's room, apparently so as not to be seen by his dining partner, a girlfriend who was vigilant about his weight. The mention of her presence didn't sit well with his adult children. Neither did my reluctance to assert a lost earnings claim for their father's estate, as his business had been under federal investigation at the time of his demise. To top things off, the District Court was involved in a pilot program experimenting with cameras in the courtroom. Rookie lawyer or not, I knew that at trial I'd need to introduce one of the ubiquitous posters showing how the Heimlich maneuver is performed. Having tracked one down, I noted that its disclaimer included a reference to the Heimlich Institute and an Ohio telephone number. I called in the hope of obtaining additional materials to explain the method to a jury. I'll never forget when, after explaining my purpose to the female voice at the end of the line, she replied: "Oh, Dr. Heimlich would be most interested in this." Dr. Heimlich? I was a complete knucklehead. It never occurred to me that the procedure was named for an American physician, much less that he was alive. Up until this point, the very able Philadelphia defense attorney representing the buffet, James Bodell, had been a gentleman but outwardly dismissive of my case. Now, after the resources of the Beasley firm enabled me to retain Heimlich as a plaintiff's expert who would explain his method to the jury, his guffaws abated. Heimlich's expert report was attached to the pretrial memo I filed with Judge Jan E. "Bud" DuBois. When we met in chambers, DuBois informed Bodell and me that Court TV had requested to televise Heimlich's testimony. Soon thereafter, the matter resolved. And where Heimlich's witness fee had been paid but his Philadelphia appearance was not necessary, I was able to cajole him to appear on my radio show, where he explained his discovery of the method in 1974. The audience seemed appreciative of his good work, except for one man who wrote to me challenging the authenticity of Heimlich's discovery. Strangely, the "skeptic" was his son. ADVERTISEMENT Not long thereafter, I became engaged to my wife. Bodell was kind to write, in jest, and offer a discount on the use of the buffet for our reception. We passed. Michael Smerconish writes for The Philadelphia Inquirer and is host of "Smerconish" on CNN. This week, we've highlighted three issues left unresolved during the recent legislative session. Each had supporters heading into the session, but 11 weeks later, they remained unchanged and largely unaddressed. It leaves many throughout the state including us questioning the process. Even in recent days as Gov. Mark Dayton and legislative leaders maneuver toward a possible special session, finger pointing and political motivation seem to outweigh actual progress. Still, there's a final issue we wish would have been more openly addressed during the regular session. It's not something that likely will ever get a committee hearing or receive a vote on the House or Senate floor. It's not likely to be specifically written about within the hundreds of pages of bills generated in St. Paul. Yet, it's an issue that seems to impact nearly every decision made at the Capitol lately. It's the growing divide or at least perceived divide between rural and urban areas in the state. The divide was perhaps most seen as efforts to pass a transportation bill failed. ADVERTISEMENT An effort to make way for transit funding a topic often portrayed as metrocentric created a roadblock jeopardizing efforts to repair and maintain roads and bridges throughout the state. Rep. Kim Norton, a member of the House Transportation and Finance Committee, said the transit divide often centers around who's benefiting and who appears to be paying. "As I listen to the dialogue, they are very upset that it's subsidized, and it is not making money," the Rochester DFLer told us during a recent visit. Yet, she notes a variety of amenities funded by state and other tax dollars benefit communities without 100 percent payback. It seems to be spun for political benefit. The rural-urban divide benefits lawmakers who can convince their constituents the other side is receiving special favors. Transit has become a wedge to widen the divide. Oddly, the transit amendment offered in the final moments of the session shouldn't have been a divide. It didn't seek to specifically spend state dollars. Rather, it sought to put control in local government's hands. "The amendment itself largely took the state out of funding light rail," House Minority Leader Paul Thissen said. At the same time, much of the successful legislation being touted as lawmakers gear up re-election campaigns has a decidedly rural flavor, benefiting Greater Minnesota. They include a modest $20 million increase to Local Government Aid, millions in tax relief for farmers and a $35 million increase to grants to expand broadband statewide. Additionally, while the tax bill failed to end the automatic inflator for business property taxes, it does include $146 million to exempt the first $100,000 of commercial property value, a measure offering the greatest impact for rural businesses, which frequently have lower property values. There are always going to be bills that address needs in one part of the state more than another, but we need to remember that we are all residents of the same state. What benefits one district can benefit the state. ADVERTISEMENT Lower taxes for farmers should help keep grocery prices down, and reliable transportation options will keep roads and streets safe as we travel our great state. Anything that has economic value in Minnesota, should be valued by all. Anything that lifts our state, should be supported by its residents. We've said it before, but it deserves repeating: Life in our state is a cooperative venture. We need to make sure it works for everyone involved. At the Washington Times Stephen Dinan has a timely scoop that highlights the national security implications of our porous border with Mexico. Dinan reports: A smuggling network has managed to sneak illegal immigrants from Middle Eastern terrorism hotbeds straight to the doorstep of the U.S., including helping one Afghan who authorities say was part of an attack plot in North America. Immigration officials have identified at least a dozen Middle Eastern men smuggled into the Western Hemisphere by a Brazilian-based network that connected them with Mexicans who guided them to the U.S. border, according to internal government documents reviewed by The Washington Times. Those smuggled included Palestinians, Pakistanis and the Afghan man who Homeland Security officials said had family ties to the Taliban and was involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. and/or Canada. He is in custody, but The Times is withholding his name at the request of law enforcement to protect investigations. Some of the men handled by the smuggling network were nabbed before they reached the U.S., but others made it into the country. The Afghan man was part of a group of six from special-interest countries. Rep. Duncan Hunter appears to have given Dinan a hand with his story: The group, guided by two Mexicans employed by the smuggling network, crawled under the border fence in Arizona late last year and made it about 15 miles north before being detected by border surveillance, according to the documents, which were obtained by Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican. As the Obama administration imports a wave of immigrants from Syria and forces them down our throats at locations unknown around the country, Dinan also adds this timely note: [T]he documents obtained by Mr. Hunter confirm fears of a pipeline that can get would-be illegal immigrants from terrorist hotbeds to the threshold of the U.S. Just as troubling, the Border Patrol didnt immediately spot the Afghan mans terrorist ties because the database that agents first checked didnt list him. It wasnt until agents checked an FBI database that they learned the Afghan may be a danger, the documents say. Dinans current scoop follows up on his December 2015 story Agents nab Pakistanis with terrorist connections crossing U.S. border. At Politifact (!), Joshua Gillin has a useful roundup of such stories. Do you suppose that others fitting the profile Dinan sketches have made it across the border undetected? I do. And that porous border with Mexico President Obama means for us to keep it that way. I received an email notification today about the new editorial team for the American Political Science Review, the premier academic journal for the field: After an intensive search for the next editorial team, APSA selected a team led by Thomas Konig of the University of Mannheim who will be supported by six associate editors from the University of Mannheim, the University of Bremen, and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Notice anything odd about this? Yeah, me too: I would have thought that the American Political Science Review would have an editorial team that had some, like, Americans on it. Why not just rename it Amerikanische Politikwissenschaft Uberprufung and get it over with? I guess maybe we can look forward to the reconstituted Trump University starting the Murican Political Science Review. One of my favorite historians is the quirky and idiosyncratic John Lukacs. Back in 1970, he wrote the following in his very interesting collection The Passing of the Modern Age: Toward the end of an age more and more people lose their faith in their institutions: and finally they abandon their belief that these institutions might still be reformed from within. Over to you, Donald Trump. Speaking of Trump, am I the only one who finds it ironic that the same kind of media people who said character doesnt matter when Bill Clinton was president (coughJoe Kleincough) are now appalled at the prospect of President Trump? (On the other hand, to be completely fair, many of the people who said character matters back when Clinton was misbehaving have become Trump apologists. You know who you are out there!) At 1:30 this afternoon the jury delivered its verdict in the case of the three Minnesota men charged with conspiracy to provide material support to ISIS and conspiracy to commit murder overseas. The jury found the three men guilty on all counts with the exception of one perjury charge against Abdirahman Daud. (Daud gave a Clintonian response to an inartfully asked question before the grand jury. The Clintonian approach earned him an acquittal on that count.) Congratulations are due to United States Attorney for Minnesota Andrew Luger and to Assistant United States Attorneys Andrew Winter, John Docherty and Julie Allyn, who did the hard work of prosecuting the case. They did a good job. Congratulations and thanks are due as well to the law enforcement officers who investigated the case. These are mostly FBI special agents who worked with the assistance of local members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. FBI Special Agents Carson Green and Daniel Higgins attended trial every day to help the prosecutors. Many other law enforcement officers who worked on the case also attended the trial out of uniform. There wont be any demonstrations outside the courthouse in support of law enforcement, but there should be. Judge Michael Davis presided at the trial. Thats Judge Davis in the photo at the right. I have known him professionally for a long time, going back to his days as a state court judge. I have always liked and respected him, but I grew to admire him greatly through this trial. He made sufficient room for media in the courtroom and set generous ground rules allowing us to work inside it. Together with the United States Marshals on hand, he maintained order in and around the courtroom. He kept the trial on track. He treated all parties with respect. He brooked no nonsense. He assured defendants a fair trial. Consistent with the evidence before it, the jury returned a true verdict. The three defendants were proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the offenses charged, with the exception of the perjury count against Daud. Defendant Guled Omar testified on his own behalf and showed that he couldnt talk his way out of this fix. Defendants Abdirahman Daud and Mohamaed Farah proved that silence was unavailing as well. The evidence against them was overwhelming. It has been my goal in this series to note the evidence of interest in an important terrorism case raising issues of general concern and to allow readers who have followed along to understand the outcome. I hope those of you who have taken the long ride with me found it worth your time. UPDATE: Star Tribune reporter Stephen Montemayor has a good account of events today here. House Speaker Paul Ryan says he will vote for Donald Trump in November. Ryan says he will do so because he feel[s] confident [Trump] would help us turn the ideas in [the Republican House] agenda into laws to help improve peoples lives. This is an endorsement. Ryan isnt going to vote for Trump merely because hes the GOP nominee or because he is marginally less bad than Hillary Clinton. No. Having talked with Trump, Ryan is convinced that Trump would implement Ryans (mostly conservative) agenda, whereas Hillary would not. Ryan acknowledges that he has differences with Trump, but doesnt bother to identify them. Nor does he criticize Trumps temperament or question his fitness for high office. Ryan concludes: For me, its a question of how to move ahead on the ideas that Iand my House colleagueshave invested so much in through the years. Its not just a choice of two people, but of two visions for America. Im not where Ryan is on this. I am not persuaded that Trumps vision for America is a conservative one (but then, unlike Ryan, I havent discussed the issues with the tycoon) and I am alarmed by Trumps temperament, as manifested by many of his statements and some of his behavior. However, I respect Ryans decision to endorse Trump. He is being pragmatic, based presumably on representations Trump has made to him. As I suggested here, there is a case to be made that a political leader like Ryan should hold his nose, try to figure out which candidate is the lesser of the evils, and back that candidate. With Ryan now in Trumps corner, its fair to say that the GOP political establishment (by which I mean its high level elected officials) has come around. There are still holdouts, most notably Sens. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Ben Sasse and Govs. Susana Martinez, Rick Snyder and Charlie Baker. However, the primary season isnt even over yet, and Hillary Clinton is still struggling with Bernie Sanders. Its still early days. This is one of those days where parody and satire are impossible. From the Washington Post: Researchers at the University of Illinois and Arizona State University examined six decades of hurricane death rates according to gender, spanning 1950 and 2012. Of the 47 most damaging hurricanes, the female-named hurricanes produced an average of 45 deaths compared to 23 deaths in male-named storms, or almost double the number of fatalities. Female-named storms have historically killed more because people neither consider them as risky nor take the same precautions, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes. People dont take hurricanes as seriously if they have a feminine name and the consequences are deadly, finds a new groundbreaking study. I thought maybe the Washington Post was tarting this up. But no. Heres the headline and abstract of the actual study: Do people judge hurricane risks in the context of gender-based expectations? We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents preparedness to take protective action. This finding indicates an unfortunate and unintended consequence of the gendered naming of hurricanes, with important implications for policymakers, media practitioners, and the general public concerning hurricane communication and preparedness. First, I cant believe they got away with this plainly sexist headline. Second: the obvious public health move will be to name all future hurricanes after men. Long live the Patriarchal Low-Pressure Weather System! Surely someone will find a way to blame this on cl ch-. JOHN adds: Wow, this is reallystupid. The authors say they studied more than six decades of hurricane data. That means they went back to the early to mid-1950s. The practice of giving hurricanes female names began in 1953, so Im guessing that is when they started. But guess whatmale names werent used until 1978 or 1979 (1979 for Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico hurricanes). And hurricanes, in general, used to kill more people than they do now, probably because of improved warnings and communications. If you look at NOAAs list of the 52 deadliest US hurricanes, you can see that eleven were between 1953 and 1978, all with female names, and only seven subsequent to 1978. Of these seven, three had female names, and four had male names. Of these recent hurricanes, one stands outHurricane Katrina, which killed around 1,200 people. The other six combined killed 204. So Katrina was responsible for around 86% of all fatalities during the 37 years when the weather service has used both male and female names. If Hurricane Katrina had been Hurricane Ken, one could say that male-named hurricanes are far more lethal than female-named hurricanes. No doubt that finding could have been squeezed into some liberal narrative, too. As for the laboratory experiments that ostensibly prove people dont take female hurricanes seriously, I would love to see videos of what these bozos did in the lab. We could all use a good laugh. Today is National Gun Violence Awareness Day. To show opposition to gun violence, some people, including a few celebrities, are wearing orangethe color that hunters wear to avoid being shot accidentally. Cute. Various landmarks, including the Empire State Building, are also being illuminated with orange light. I certainly am opposed to violence, including but not limited to gun violence. The problem is that the antidote to gun violence inevitably turns out to be nothing but more gun control laws. Which means that the usual bad arguments and misleading statistics are being trotted out today. This Chicago Tribune column is sadly typical: Each year,more than 30,000 die from gun violence. Actually, over 60% of those 30,000 are suicides. Suicide is a serious problem, but it is not a problem of gun violence. If a person hangs himself, is that rope violence? Ill speak out in support of measures to address the epidemic of gun violence, because I think its the right thing to do. By adding my voice to the chorus saying its time to adopt common-sense measures like a ban on assault weapons and requiring universal background checks, I hope to make a difference. Sorry, but youre not going to make a difference with those tired old proposals. Assault weapons dont exist, but if the writer means semiautomatic rifles, they are almost never used as murder weapons. Knives are used far more often than rifles of all types, not just semiautomatics, and both blunt objects and bare hands are more commonly murder weapons than rifles. And making background checks universali.e., if my friend and I want to trade guns, we have to pay someone to run background checks on one another firstwould have essentially zero impact on the homicide rate. Criminals dont buy their guns legally in the first place, and background checks are useless with regard to lunatics because the lunatics are never on the list. Mainak Sardar, the engineer from Minnesota who murdered his wife and a professor at UCLA, is typical. He reportedly obtained his firearms legally in Minnesota, presumably by passing a background check. There is no point in running more checks against a useless list. It is odd, too, that ever more hysterical demands for gun control have come during an era of declining violence. The homicide rate today is little more than half what it was for a time in the 1990s. Still, if celebrities, columnists and politicians are serious about trying to reduce gun violence, there is something they can do. After years of decline, the homicide rate rose in 2015. The upward trend seems to be continuing, as many cities are experiencing far more shootings than they did a few years ago. The only plausible explanation for the current spike in homicides is the war against the police being waged by Black Lives Matter and, generally speaking, the Democratic Party. Therefore, the most tangible step a columnist, celebrity or politician could take to fight gun violence would be to encourage respect for the law, and for law enforcement. Given the dishonorable role of the Democratic Party in the war on cops, a second constructive step would be to vote for Republican politicians. But that isnt the message that the sponsors of National Gun Violence Awareness Day are trying to promote. Niger Delta Avengers, the new militant group that has claimed responsibility for a string of attacks on oil and gas installations in the Niger Delta, continued its disruption of Nigerias oil production with the bombing of more crude oil pipelines Thursday. The group announced the latest attack via its Twitter handle on Thursday evening, saying it blew up Ogboinbiri to Tebidaba and Clough Creek to Tebidaba crude oil pipelines in Bayelsa State. At about 2:00am today @NDAvengers blew up the Ogboinbiri to Tebidaba and Clough Creek to Tebidaba crude oil pipelines in Bayelsa State. The Avengers added that the latest disruption is in line with our promise to all international oil companies and indigenous oil companies that Nigeria oil production will be zero. The group did not say which oil company is operating the pipelines. The groups operation had become more audacious in recent weeks as it continued to cripple Nigerias oil production, demanding a sovereign nation of the Niger Delta people. The Avengers had rejected a meeting recently convened in Abuja by the federal government, warning of its readiness to carry out an attack that will shock the whole world. The Niger Delta stakeholders meeting is an insult to the people of Niger Delta. What we need is a Sovereign State not pipeline Contracts. To the IOCs, Indigenous Oil Companies and Nigeria Military. Watch out something big is about to happen and it will shock the whole world, the group tweeted on Friday. Last Thursday, it claimed responsibility for an attack on a gas pipeline belonging to Chevron in Delta state. We warned Chevron, but they didnt listen. NDA just blew up the Escravos tank farm main electricity feed pipeline, it said. The militants said the oil facilities were sabotaged following attempts by Chevron to carry out repairs of main Escravos crude oil pipeline it blew up earlier. A spokesperson for the group, Mudoch Agbinibo, had last month warned the Nigerian government of further attacks if their demands were not met. Two weeks ago, Chevrons Makaraba crude oil line was attacked on the offshore Okan manifold in the region. The attack followed previous ones on NNPC, Agip, Shell and other major oil corporations facilities across the delta states and it has resulted in the loss of over 40,000 barrels of crude oil per day. The National Assembly joint Committee on Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) on Tuesday issued bench warrant on seven oil companies operating for failing to appear at its public hearing. The committee had invited all oil companies operating in the Niger Delta region to defend themselves over alleged non-remittance of statutory funds to NDDC for development of the region. The Chairman of Senate Committee on NDDC, Peter Nwaoboshi, gave the directive for the issuance of the bench warrant when the companies failed to attend the committees interactive meeting. The affected companies are Continental Oil and Gas Ltd, Conoil Oil Producing Limited, Niger Delta Petroleum Resources and Allied Energy Plc. Others are Sheba Petroleum Exploration and Production, Newcross E& P, Pan-ocean Oil Corporation and Atlas Petroleum Development Company. Mr. Nwaoboshi said the committee was carrying out its patriotic duty for the country. He and other members of the committee, however, accused the management of NDDC of not keeping accurate financial records of remittances from oil companies. They exonerated the acting Managing Director of the commission, Ibim Semenitari, on grounds that she was still new on the job. The joint committee expressed displeasure at the commissions negligence of its responsibilities, especially with failure to meet willing oil companies for reconciliation of accounts and records. They said the money was required for development of the area. Representatives of some of the oil companies present at the meeting claimed they made efforts to reach the management of the commission to reconcile their accounts and settle outstanding commitments, to no avail. The representative of Oriental Energy Resources specifically told the committee that it made several efforts to meet with the NDDC since December, 2015. The Chief Technical Adviser of the company, Goni Sheikh, said his company wrote to the commission in the past six months, informing it of its readiness to pay one million dollars to it. NDDC has not given the company the opportunity to do so, he said, adding that the company paid 18 million dollars to the commission in 2014 but had an outstanding of one million dollars. Mr. Shiekh pleaded with the committee to intervene by making NDDC to schedule a meeting to enable them to reconcile the records. In his remark, a member of the committee, Rep. Uzoma Nkem-Abonta, suggested that the committee should carry out forensic auditing of NDDCs account. He said that there were discrepancies in the financial records provided by NDDC and that the commission should be made to account for all the remittances from the oil companies. We need to do proper reconciliation of NDDC account. There could be secret account in which oil companies paid money to NDDC and they go into private pockets. The impression is that the companies are not paying; I am not even sure that the ones paid by oil companies are in safe hands. Before now the impression is that the companies were not paying, but today, we have seen that the reverse is the case. We should discontinue the revenue collection for NDDC and investigate their account, he said. (NAN) The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said diplomatic shuttles by the Minister of state for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, helped in the appointment of Mohammed Barkindo as the new Secretary General of OPEC. This is contained in a statement signed by Garba Deen Muhammad, the Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, NNPC, on Friday in Abuja. After months of shuttle diplomacy anchored by Dr Ibe Kachikwu, Nigerias quest to clinch the top job at OPEC, yielded dividend on Thursday with the appointment of Mohammed Sanusi Barkindo as the Secretary General of the Organisation, it said. It also commended the effort and support of President Muhammadu Buhari for his support in ensuring that Nigeria got the position. The statement said Mr. Barkindo was expected to occupy the position for three years in the first instance with effect from Aug. 1. It appreciated the outgoing Secretary General, Abdalla Salem El-Badri, for his leadership of the secretariat and the organisation during his tenure. It added that Mr. Barkindo was coming to the position with a 23-year career in the NNPC, and the oil and gas industry. Barkindo was a one-time Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). He actually served as Acting Secretary General of OPEC in 2006 and handed over to his predecessor where he served with distinction, it said. According to the statement, other positions Mr. Barkind held includes Deputy Managing Director and Chief Executive Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas, Managing Director/Chief Executive, HYSON/CALSON, an international trading arm of NNPC. It added that he was a General Manager, NNPC London Office; and Head, International Trade, NNPC London Office. It said that as a former NNPC GMD, he served for a record of 15 years on the OPEC Economic Commission Board as Nigerias National Representative. Apart from chairing the OPEC Economic Commission Board, he also chaired the Strategic Production Quota Committee of OPEC. Barkindo is an advocate of Climate Change Initiative and has led Nigerias technical delegation to the climate change negotiations, it said. This, he said helped to produce the United Nations framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto protocol to the UNFCCC during which he served on the Bureau of the UNFCC at various times. On his academic qualifications, it said Mr. Barkindo obtained a BSc degree in Political Science in 1981 from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, a Post-Graduate Diploma in Petroleum Economics in 1988 from College of Petroleum Studies, Oxford University, UK. He obtained a Masters Degree in Business Administration from the South Eastern University, Washington, DC. (NAN) President Muhammadu Buhari failed to visit Ogoniland for that much-publicised flag-off of the implementation of the UNEP Report on the cleaning up of Ogoniland and the Niger Delta. Honestly, it was a shocking and depressing development and it calls to question again the kind of advice President Buhari is receiving in Aso Rock. He may have the best of reasons or excuses for not going, but perception is reality in politics! Cancelling that visit is the last thing he should have contemplated today. Here are 10 reasons why its bad: (1) The Niger Delta Avengers have threatened that he shouldnt come; not going there, despite the whole show of military force by the Nigerian Armed Forces for the visit of the Commander-in-Chief, hands the initiative to the Niger Delta Avengers. They have showed they control the agenda of his government and his own movement within the nation. Of course, the truth is nothing would have happened to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in Ogoniland; but, again, perception is reality. (2) The Minister of Environment, Amina Mohammed talked up Buharis impending visit thus: Buhari would return to Ogoniland where he inaugurated a fish pond in 1984 where the once flourishing pond regrettably had been destroyed by oil pollution. The Federal Government is coming back to restore the ecosystem to what it used to be and as such restore the peoples source of livelihood. Obviously, mentioning that the president was going to Ogoniland again after his 1984 visit as a military Head of State in the circumstances of both visits was a way of making the case that between then and now life has been snuffed out of the environment there and Buhari is now returning life to the people and that environment with his visit. The symbolism would have been nice. But what have we now? The president is after all not coming! (3) Buharis visit would have been the most significant thing in Ogoniland since the judicial murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa and for Buhari, it would have been a personal victory and a personal exorcism of some sort as well. Remember that Buhari was General Sani Abachas head of the PTF that was spending the oil money at the time Saro-Wiwa was killed. Buhari supported that killing as part of that government and Nigerians and the world condemned it strongly. As the world knows, Saro-Wiwas main message was not the political aspect of the Ogoni case, but the environmental aspect. Saro-Wiwa was essentially killed because he drew attention to the environmental destruction oil exploration brought to the Niger Delta. As president, Buhari would have used this opportunity to show with his presence his genuine commitment to cleaning up Ogoniland particularly and the Niger Delta generally. With that he would have come a full circle from his Abacha days. He would have used his presence to call for the unity of the Ogoni and the Niger-Delta with the rest of Nigeria, so we all find solutions to the problems of lack of development and environmental degradation ravaging the area. (4) One of the worst perceptions created by Buharis non-appearance is that it has sent more shockwaves through the Nigeria-related international business community involved in the oil business. True, everyone has been hearing of the Niger Delta Avengers and all theyve been up to, but there would have been no better opportunity to pooh-pooh their claim than landing at the epicentre of oil production and carrying on government and international business as if they do not exist. This is what gives international investors confidence in the real sense. Not going there is simply a huge advertisement for the viability of the Niger Delta Avengers insurgency. Buhari has just inadvertently made them seem stronger than they are in the eyes of the international business community. (5) Of course, as with the cancelled Lagos visit, the real loss for Rivers and Nigeria will be economic. Lagos is the business capital of the country and in a situation where the country is going through tough economic times and where the singular most important figure in government should be projecting the country as open for business, Buhari staying away did not help the Lagos and the national business community to make the case to the international community that Lagos is open for business. In a way, the same thing is happening with this cancelled visit to the oil capital of the country. Buhari is simply telling the international press thats been full of negative stories about the state of our oil business that its as bad or worse than theyre claiming. A visit would have sent out a more positive message with regard to the state of the oil industry in Nigeria. But, no matter what gets published, the feeling cannot be shaken off amongst some that once again at a time the oil industry needed the biggest political support on the ground, Buhari backed away. (6) Even if Buhari does not know it, his advisers must know that his stock in the South-South and the South-East is really, really down. His political allies from these areas might want to give him a different impression, but this is just the plain truth. After Buharis ill-advised rejection of the 2014 National Conference Report, here was an opportunity to show Nigerians and the Niger Delta that he was still committed to the Nigerian project based on fairness, equity and good governance, but he simply blew it by not coming. The political symbolism of Buharis visit to Ogoniland, which was the first community to prepare their own Bill of Rights under the military pursuant to a National Conference would have been immense! In fact, he was bound to gain politically from it throughout the South-South. (7) Now, theres also the problem of what passes for news in the circumstances of this type of impromptu cancellations. Every action of the president must have an explanation and where none is provided, people will find something, because news abhors vacuum. Call it rumour if you like, but it would serve. The president has cancelled a visit which up till this morning everyone thought he was prepared for. No matter what reason anyone gives now, alternative narratives will make more sense to some huge sections of the worried public. For instance, when he cancelled his Lagos visit, it was interpreted in some quarters as a chastisement of Bola Tinubu for going to the Ayuba Waba faction of the NLC without clearance from the government, especially when the same president was seen welcoming Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State to Aso Rock at the time he was supposed to be in Lagos for the visit. This alternative narrative made the president appear petty against the background that everybody knows Amosun is the closest person to the president politically in the South-West from their days in the ANPP and it didnt help that Amosun is viewed as some sort of rival with Bola Tinubu for Aso Rocks ear. While Im not sure who the president would be welcoming today at Aso Rock, this alternative narrative is even worse in relation to this Ogoni cancelled visit. Everyone has been witnessing how Governor Nyesom Wike has been out there robustly ensuring that this visit goes hitch-free, despite the report of a directive a few days ago targeting him and Governor Ayodele Fayose over foreign travel. Wike has risen to the occasion and hasnt allowed politics to blind him in preparing for this visit. He warned politicians from all sides not to politicise the visit, he enhanced security in areas the president is visiting by banning motorcycles and was generally making sure the president gets a proper welcome. He declared: Mr Presidents visit to the state is both historic and significant. It is historic because it marks his first official visit to the state since assuming office as the president of this great nation. It is most significant because Mr President is not on a political mission, but to kickstart the largest environmental clean-up in our nations history, for which Rivers people and, indeed, the Niger Delta will remain grateful. But by cancelling the visit, its the president that would be seen now as politicising this, because people would think that he is indirectly backing his Transport Minister, Rotimi Amaechi in his fight against Wike by ensuring that he is not seen standing with Wike in Rivers State as his guest. That is pure pettiness; but it would be the story. (8) Buhari by not going to Ogoniland is letting the impression stick that he is not interested in domestic visits to states, but only to foreign climes. As funny as that might sound, many people take this view seriously when they claim he has made more than thirty foreign trips since his election a year ago, while he has only visited Cross Rivers State on a state visit domestically. The implication is that he is a leader not interested in his own people. (9) Clearly, the non-appearance has totally diminished the importance of the exercise he was supposed to come for, which is to flag-off the UNEP Report to clean Ogoni and the Niger Delta. From now on, over the time of implementation, every hitch would be viewed from the prism of the presidents absence. That cannot be good. (10) The President had everything to gain by the optics of this visit. The national mood needed it. A no-show is simply not going to give the president any plus, no matter what excuse he ultimately comes up with, that is if he actually comes up with one. Gradually, hes giving the impression that hes being overwhelmed by the demands of being president. CULLED FROM: www.chidoonumah.com The United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, has called for increased action to stop the illegal trade in wildlife. The call was the highlight of his message on World Environment Day 2016, which was read by Oluseyi Soremekun, the national information officer of the United Nations Information Centre, at an event organised by the Nigerian Environmental Society at the Kanu Ndubuisi Park, Alausa, Lagos. The World Environmental Day is celebrated every June 5th but the organisers of event had decided to hold the event Friday because June 5th falls on a Sunday. Speaking on the significance of the theme of this years celebration: Go Wild for Life, Mr. Ki-Moon said more attention needed to be paid on the illegal trade in Wildlife. There is grave cause for alarm. Elephants are being slaughtered for their ivory, rhinos for their horns, and pangolins for their scales. From sea turtles to tigers to rosewood, thousands of species of wild animals and plants are being driven ever closer to extinction, he said. The Secretary-General explained that those involved in this illegal trade are solely motivated by illicit financial gain at the expense the greater of the environment. The business and individuals involved are motivated solely by short-term gain at the expense of long-term benefit to communities and habitats. In many instances, they act in collusion with the transnational organised crime networks and groups actively involved in destabilising nations, he said. He therefore called on all to join the fight by the United Nation to stop the illicit trade and trafficking in wildlife. The campaign asks everyone to pledge to end the illegal trade in wildlife, from ordinary citizens, who can ensure they do not buy prohibited products, to governments, who can pursue change through implementing effective policies to protect species and ecosystems, he said. He said other countries should emulate Angola, which has pledged to ban illegal wildlife products, strengthen legislation and increase border control as part of a drive to restore elephant populations which were depleted during the countrys 27-year civil war. On this World Environmental Day, I urge people and government everywhere to overcome indifference, combat greed and act to preserve out natural heritage for the benefit of this and the future generations. Also speaking at the event attended by pupils of selected primary and secondary schools in the state, Iyabo Philips, the representative of the Lagos State Commissioner for Environment, Babatunde Adejare, advised people not to cut trees but instead plant trees. She said the Lagosians should not forget the directive of the government that 30 per cent of land area should be dedicated to the planting of trees. Addressing the pupils, she said: Children are the future of and children should protect wildlife. You should also tell your friends in school what you have learned here today. You should teach them to protect animals, and plants. She added that the State government has earmarked 14th July as the states Tree Planting Day. She said the state is four million short of the governments 10 million tree target. She therefore called on Lagosians to plant more tress as it leads to better life with a supply of better air. The Nigerian Army says its troops killed three Boko Haram terrorists, and arrested one in an ambush at Sabsawa-Boarding Road, and Bocobs-Ngurusoye Road, Borno State. The operation, led by troops from 202 Battalion of 21 Brigade, took place between Wednesday and Thursday, according to a statement issued on Thursday by acting Director Army Public Relations, Sani Usman. Mr. Usman said the Boko Haram terrorist, Umar Mustapha, who claimed to have come from Sabsawa, has been handed over to the Brigade Headquarters for further interrogation. The troops have continued with their clearance operations of the remnants of Boko Haram terrorists within the Sambisa forest, Mr. Usman said. Mr. Usman said another set of troops, from 112 Battalion, who were on patrol from Mafa to Dikwa, were ambushed on Thursday morning at Ajiri village by Boko Haram terrorists. Although they (troops) successfully cleared the ambush, one soldier died in the process, an officer and 3 soldiers sustained various degrees of injury, Usman said. A civilian JTF that accompanied the patrol team was said to have also been injured. The army said it killed eight Boko Haram terrorists, discovered and safely defused three Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) concealed by the edge of the road. The recovered items include, one Rocket Propel Grenade (RPG), AK-47 Rifles, two Rocket Propel Grenade bomb, three AK-47 Rifle Magazine and 120 rounds of 7.62mm ammunition. The body of the late soldier and the injured have since been evacuated to 7 Division Medical Services and Hospital, Maiduguri, the statement said. If one considers the more obvious indices of the rising costs of food, energy and transportation; alongside the largely receded minimum wage, huge unemployment figures in the country, the increasing immiseration of the people, and an environment still basically unfriendly to businesses leading to the continuous shut down of small and medium scale enterprises then it would be easy to assume that in its first year, the Buhari administration has performed way below the bar it set for itself in seeking office. Also, in contemplating an economy in a tailspin, rapidly contracting and inspiring further grim forecasts on the continued decline of national productivity, and the ongoing direct march towards a recession, it would equally not be difficult to declare the first anniversary of the Buhari administration as having run contrary to the promise of change it committed to delivering in its manifesto and at the inception of the regime. There are however other indicators and an alternative perspective that provides a justification for the complex state of affairs the country is in. The current fiscal crises and massive decline in revenue in the country is due to the dual challenges of the fall of the price of oil and dramatic decline in quantity available for export due to the recent escalation of the Niger Delta militancy. The resources available for social provisioning are simply not available. The Buhari regime also met an empty treasury and the legacy of mega looting of available resources. Yet, a more realistic depiction of the administrations fortunes lies somewhere in between these polar perspectives. This heavily nuanced space, however, resonates with the administrations failure to articulate a structured and coherent economic recovery and development strategy, involving policies and programmes seeking to take Nigeria out of its present quagmire and movement towards economic revival. We cannot accept the bandying around of platitudes. The government has spoken repeatedly about the imperative of diversifying the economy following the boom and bust of the commodity cycle. There is however no clear road map and convincing strategy document that is available to demonstrate that it knows how to handle the economy. Of course the unfortunate and sudden resurgence of militancy and sabotage of oil and gas pipelines in the Niger Delta is a real problem. Nevertheless, it has been an eventful 12 months since the Buhari administration took on the reins of government. The regime was welcomed with a significantly high level of confidence in government and an expectation of a return to genuine and purposeful public service. Nigerians remain convinced that there have been significant gains over the last year in the war against corruption and in combatting the Boko Haram insurgency. The result appears to be a gradual restoration of public trust in government and governance. In the past, the erosion of confidence in the governance team had created apathy and/or revolt. Now, there is a newer inclination not to see government (mainly the federal executive) as a deliberate buccaneer of the common wealth, despite lingering outrage at the appetite of members of the National Assembly for obscene luxury and emoluments in a lean time, and also the malfeasance of budget padding on the part of civil servants. No doubt, gains have been made in the reformation of public sector finances, through the Treasury Single Account (TSA), which has restrained the usual fritter of government resources, and the efforts at ghost-busting in the work force, cleaning up the federal payroll of ghost workers, leading to considerable savings of up to N185 billion. Attestation to a growing climate of public trust was recently manifested in the lukewarm response of Nigerians to the call for strike over the increase in petrol price by organised labour. Also, notable in this wise was the general tepidness of reactions following the quiet official devaluation of the Naira and adoption of a flexible regime of foreign exchange rates, which otherwise could have signaled protests within certain sections of the public. Beyond the deeply divided ratings of the federal governments performance across sections of the Nigerian society, it is without doubt that there are noteworthy concerns pervading the country. Electricity has dropped to possibly its lowest generation of about 1,580 MW in decades from an all-time high of 5,000 MW in the weeks before the presidents inauguration making for massive energy shortages. And the persistence and national character of conflicts between nomadic pastoralists and farmers, inter-communal violence and destruction, and armed banditry certainly complicate Nigerias fragile security situation. These have led to attack on what many see as the administrations brazenly rationalised cop out on its campaign promises, with only one of these out of 222 pertaining to President Buharis public declaration of personal assets being kept to an extent. According to Buharimeter, a civil society effort tracking the presidents performance, 184 of these promises are yet to be kept, and 37 are in different stages of being kept. This makes several people consider the economic justification for the cancellation of electoral promises as earning the administration serious credibility deficits, particularly in relation to its promises to completely overhaul government and its finances. While its scorecard appears a tad grim, the government had, prior to its first anniversary in office, engaged in a feat of chest thumping, declaring 107 achievements, with President Buhari subsequently commending his team for reconstructing the spine of the Nigerian state. Still, crucial issues subsist from the unnecessary delays in the setting up of a cabinet, and hence deferral in the proper taking off of government; the lateness in the passing of the 2016 Budget; and the lack of a solid economic team, which could have influenced a more positive set of outcomes. Even at this point in the life of the administration, what Nigerians keep clamouring for include the articulation of a virile economic strategy that can truly diversify and turn the fortunes of the economy around, secure livelihoods and protect the vulnerable, while offering a leeway to defusing the potential crises evolving with the countrys restless and enlarging youth bulge. Also, there is need for better policy coherence, and vastly improved communication between government and the public, to make the administration truly people-oriented and responsive. Going forward, some of the essential paradoxes haunting the administration would start to resolve more positively if the administration can pull its economic act together, while quickly and diligently executing the presidents proclaimed anniversary inauguration of programmes including a N500 billion social protection fund for the vulnerable. In addition to this, there is need for a more resolute tackling of the IDP problems arising from the Boko Haram insurgency in North-East Nigeria, fast-tracking the repair of the countrys refineries to ensure fuel availability at more competitive prices. Also, the reduction of the countrys food import bill through more aggressive agricultural interventions in the local cultivation of rice, wheat and sugar. Equally, the genuine implementation of the long overdue cleaning up of the Niger Delta, in line with the recommendation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report on the environmental restoration of Ogoniland. And, further saving of government costs through the rationalisations of MDAs for a leaner and more efficient civil service. Importantly, with the presidents anniversary acknowledgment of the positive and mostly undervalued roles of women in the development of the country this far, the time seems perfect for proper mainstreaming of womens concerns in national development planning, in ways that are more significant. Timothy Jack Oldfield Timothy Jack Oldfield, 63 of Elko, NV passed away on Friday the 20th of May in Salt Lake City. Tim was born in Herkimer NY on April 11th 1953. He was raised in Little Falls NY and attended Little Falls High. He moved to Frankfort NY where he had his son Timothy Patrick Oldfield who resides in Italy TX. Tim joined the Navy and served his country and was honorably discharged in San Diego. He then moved to Rosamond CA, where he met his wife Priscilla Armstrong. They were married in Carson City NV. Throughout his time in NV as a heavy equipment operator he was blessed with three beautiful children. Cristie Lee, Opal Marie, Cody James and 10 grandchildren. Shantay, Derek, Hope, Brittany, Tycin, Peirce, Kyry, Andrew, Tristin, Caitlin. Our dad will be greatly missed, he is such a big part of our life. He has always had such a big heart and always helped everyone. Our dad taught us what unconditional love is and that is something we all will carry on. We love you Papa. Service is being held at the Church of Nazarene at 740 West Sage St. Wednesday the 8th at 4:00 pm where we will celebrate his life. Contact Cristie at 385- 0041 A former commander of Guards Brigade and commander of the Joint Military Task Force, OPERATION PULO SHIELD, Emmanuel Atewe, a major general, was Friday arraigned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission before Justice Saliu Saidu of the Federal High Court, Ikoyi on an 11-count charge bordering on conspiracy, abuse of office and money laundering. The officer who is currently serving with the armys Training and Doctrine Command in Minna, Niger State, was charged alongside a former Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NMASA, Patrick Akpobolokemi; Kime Engozu and Josephine Otuaga. The accused persons allegedly conspired among themselves to divert over N8billion paid into the account of the Joint Military Task Force by NIMASA during the tenure of Mr. Akpobolokemi, a statement by EFCCs spokesperson, Wilson Uwujaren, said. The statement said the money was converted into foreign exchange and the proceeds shared by the defendants. Specifically, payments to the tune of N8, 537,586,798.58 were allegedly made to the JTFs account with a new generation bank by NIMASA. A substantial part of the money, about N6, 038,350,741 was converted into United States Dollars by Atewe and Akpobolokemi, through various Bureau De Change operators, and handed over to Enzogu and Otuaga who were business partners to Akpobokelemi and thereafter shared by the defendants. Part of the money was allegedly used in the acquisition of choice properties in Port Harcourt and Abuja, as well as shares in blue chip companies, the statement said. One of the charges read, That you Mr. Patrick Ziadeke Akpobolokemi, Major General Emmanuel Atewe, Kime Engozu and Josphine Otuaga, sometime in 2014, in Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this court with intent to defraud conspired amongst yourselves to commit an offence to wit; Conversion of the sum of N8,537,586,798.58 (Eight billion, five hundred and thirty seven million, five hundred and eighty six thousand, seven hundred and ninety eight Naira, fifty eight kobo), property of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 18(a) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition)(Amendment)Act, 2012 and punishable under Section 15(3) of the same Act . All the accused persons pleaded not guilty to the charges. Prosecution counsel, Rotimi Oyedepo, told the court that he was ready for trial with his witnesses and pleaded for accelerated hearing. Counsel to the first accused, Mathew Bukar, however prayed the court to grant his client (Mr. Akpobolokemi) bail, as he had earlier been granted bail by judges in the other cases where he is currently standing trial. Counsel to the third and fourth accused, U.B.E Innaji also urged the court to exercise its discretion to grant bail in the favour of his clients. However, the court rejected Mike Ozekhome, counsel to General Atewes prayer to grant his client bail based on self-recognition. After considering the bail applications, Justice Saidu granted bail to the first accused (Mr. Akpobokelemi) on the terms earlier given by courts where he is currently standing trial on corruption charges. The second, third and fourth accused were also granted bail in the sum of N100 million each, two sureties, one of whom must be a senior civil servant of the rank of Deputy Director. The other must be a relative who must have a property in Victoria Island, Ikoyi, or Lekki areas of Lagos, judge. The accused were remanded pending when they perfect the terms of their bail. Justice Saidu adjourned the case to June 24, 2016 for commencement of trial. The Shell Petroleum Development Company Limited, the Nigerian subsidiary of Dutch oil giant, Royal Dutch Shell, on Friday confirmed militants claims that a major damage was done to its oil installations in Delta State in the early hours of Friday, saying the attack had forced it to shut down crude exports indefinitely. The statement corroborates earlier statements by the Niger Delta Avengers, a new militant group that has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on oil installations, in renewed hostilities across the oil-rich region. The Avengers had shortly after 5 a.m. on Tuesday announced the bombing of a 48 export pipeline owned by Shell in the Forcados on Twitter. At 3:00 a.m. today, @NDAvengers blow (sic) up the SPDC forcados 48 export line. We warned SPDC not to go ahead with repair works but they refuse, the group tweeted. Responding to news of the attack, Shells spokesman, Bamidele Odugbesan, said the incident happened between a shoreline and the Forcados Export Terminal which impacted seriously on its export capabilities. The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited, operator of the SPDC JV, has confirmed signs of a leak on the 48 inch Forcados export pipeline at a location between shoreline and the Forcados terminal in the western Niger Delta, coming on the heels of a reported attack on the pipeline in the early hours of Friday, June 3, the statement said. Mr. Odugbesan said the company was assessing the impact of the damage and had mobilised appropriate oil spill response measures. We are yet to fully evaluate the potential impact and damage to the pipeline resulting from this latest incident. We have however mobilised appropriate oil spill response measures and will be conducting a joint investigation visit to the leak site with relevant stakeholders. We are currently focused on securing the pipeline to protect the environment. Given this latest incident and the wider security situation in the Niger Delta, we are unable to determine probable timing of resumption of exports from the Forcados terminal, Mr. Odugbesan said. Shell Nigeria is the operator of the export line on behalf of the joint venture partners comprising the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC (55%), SPDC (30%), Total E&P Nigeria Ltd (10%) and Nigerian Agip Oil Company (5%), the statement said. The latest damage to Shell installations followed a series of bombings that rocked Chevron, Agip, and NNPC oil and gas installations across the Niger Delta in the last few days, including other Shell-operated facilities. On Thursday night, the group made a similar claims on its Twitter account, saying it blew up Ogboinbiri to Tebidaba and Clough Creek to Tebidaba crude oil pipelines in Bayelsa State, as part of its campaign to bring Nigerias oil production output to zero. On Wednesday, the Avengers said it was responsible for the destruction of Chevron oil wells RMP 23 and RMP 24, and mocked Nigerias military for being only good in harassing innocent civilians. Nigerian military on Wednesday denied the militants claims that it had become helpless in the circumstance, saying it would not be negligent in its obligations to Nigerians. The Defence Headquarters wishes to emphasize that the Nigerian Armed Forces will not relent in their efforts to flush out economic saboteurs masquerading under whatever guise to perpetuate evils in the Niger Delta, Rabe Abubakar, the Acting Director of Defence Information, said in a statement. The Avengers is demanding a sovereign nation of the Niger Delta people. Last month, the group rejected a meeting convened in Abuja by the federal government, warning of its readiness to carry out an attack that will shock the whole world. The Niger Delta stakeholders meeting is an insult to the people of Niger Delta. What we need is a Sovereign State not pipeline Contracts, the militants said. Niger Delta Avengers, the militant group responsible for renewed hostilities in the Niger-Delta region, on Thursday condemned the killing of military personnel in the area, promising the victims families that those responsible for the heinous act would be brought to book. The condemnation followed accusations that the group was responsible for attacks on a military houseboat in Ejere, a creek in Warri South Local Government Area of Delta State, which left at least two soldiers dead. In a statement signed by Mudoch Agbinibo, the Avengers condemned all acts of violence against military and civilians, declaring the days of killing and kidnapping over. Killing of sleeping soldiers is not our style, the Avengers said in an update posted on its website. We promise the world that in this process of liberating our people, not a single blood of Nigeria soldiers will be wasted despite the provocation. Our war is on oil installations not to take innocent lives. Mr. Agbinibo assured the families of the affected soldiers that we will bring the culprits to book. The Avengers, therefore, issued a stern warning to other freedom fighters in the region to emulate its style of ensuring that no innocent person would be killed in the course of its agitation. This message is going to all groups parading themselves as freedom fighters. You can fight for your people without killing innocent souls NDA have (sic) proved it. We were able to drop Nigeria oil production from 2 million barrels (per day) to just 800,000 barrels without killing a soul. We are warning every group to follow our footsteps. The group claimed responsibility for a series of bombings that rocked Chevron, Agip and NNPC oil and gas installations across the Niger Delta in the last few days. Last night, it claimed on its favourite communication platform, Twitter, that it blew up Ogboinbiri to Tebidaba and Clough Creek to Tebidaba crude oil pipelines in Bayelsa State, as part of its campaign to bring Nigerias oil production output to zero. On Wednesday, the Avengers said it was responsible for the destruction of Chevron oil wells RMP 23 and RMP 24, and mocked Nigerias military for being only good in harassing innocent civilians. Nigerian military pushed back against the militants claims that it had become helpless in the circumstance, saying it would not be negligent in its obligations to Nigerians. The Defence Headquarters wishes to emphasize that the Nigerian Armed Forces will not relent in their efforts to flush out economic saboteurs masquerading under whatever guise to perpetuate evils in the Niger Delta, Rabe Abubakar, the Acting Director of Defence Information, said in a statement. Last month, the group rejected a meeting convened in Abuja by the federal government, warning of its readiness to carry out an attack that will shock the whole world The Niger Delta stakeholders meeting is an insult to the people of Niger Delta. What we need is a Sovereign State not pipeline Contracts, the group said. President Muhammadu Buhari said Friday in Abuja that while the rescue and safe return of the remaining Chibok girls remains a top priority of his administration, he will not fall for the antics of fraudsters who have been asking the Federal Government for money to negotiate the release the girls. Receiving the Primate and Archbishops of the Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion, at the State House, Mr. Buhari said his administration will continue to insist on a thorough authentication of the identities and bona fides of any persons or groups claiming to have custody of the girls before entering into negotiations with them. The president however assured the Anglican Bishops of his commitment to the rescue of the Chibok Girls, saying that their safe return will be one of his greatest fulfillments in office as President. President Buhari also assured the clerics that the Federal Government will give maximum attention to the clean-up of Ogoniland which was launched on Thursday. We inherited the United Nations Environmental Project report from the previous administration. We decided it needed urgent attention, in spite of the economic crunch because of our concern for the welfare and environmental comfort of the people of Ogoniland, he said. Earlier in his remarks, the Primate of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Most Rev Nicholas Okoh, pledged the support of the church in helping the Federal Government achieve its objectives of improving security and the welfare of Nigerians. The Niger Delta Avengers in the early hours of Friday claimed responsibility for another catastrophic attack on an oil facility owned by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SDPC) in Delta State, saying it had issued a prior warning to the oil giant to desist from carrying out any repair activities in the area. At 3:00 am today @NDAvengers blow (sic) up the SPDC Forcados 48 export line. We warned SPDC not to go ahead with repair works but they refused. The attack followed a series of bombings that rocked Chevron, Agip and NNPC oil and gas installations across the Niger Delta in the last few days. Last night, the group made a similar claim on its favourite communication platform, Twitter, saying it blew up Ogboinbiri to Tebidaba and Clough Creek to Tebidaba crude oil pipelines in Bayelsa State, as part of its campaign to bring Nigerias oil production output to zero. On Wednesday, the Avengers said it was responsible for the destruction of Chevron oil wells RMP 23 and RMP 24, and mocked Nigerias military for being only good in harassing innocent civilians. Nigerian military on Wednesday pushed back against the militants claims that it had become helpless in the circumstance, saying it would not be negligent in its obligations to Nigerians. The Defence Headquarters wishes to emphasize that the Nigerian Armed Forces will not relent in their efforts to flush out economic saboteurs masquerading under whatever guise to perpetuate evils in the Niger Delta, Rabe Abubakar, the Acting Director of Defence Information, said in a statement. PREMIUM TIMES repeated calls to Shell Nigeria offices at 6:00 a.m. on Friday were unanswered. The Avengers is demanding a sovereign nation of the Niger Delta people. Last month, the group rejected a meeting convened in Abuja by the federal government, warning of its readiness to carry out an attack that will shock the whole world. The Niger Delta stakeholders meeting is an insult to the people of Niger Delta. What we need is a Sovereign State not pipeline Contracts, the militants said. Kaduna senator, Shehu Sani, and other key members of the ruling All Progressives Congress in Kaduna State, have announced the formation of a new group within the party. The group is named APC Akida. Akida, an Hausa word, means our Interest. Kaduna APC has been dogged by internal strife for months, resulting from a row between Mr. Sani and Governor Nasir El-Rufai. Mr. Sani accuses the governor of hijacking the party, while supporters of Mr. El-Rufai say the senator has been involved in anti-party activities. At a press conference on Thursday, a leading member of the APC in the state, Tom Maiyashi, said the new group will soon announce its leaders at all levels in the state. Mr. Maiyashi said the APC Akida will serve as a platform for members of the APC to work for the progress of the party in the state. We believe in playing responsible and constructive roles because the government appears to have shut out basic involvement of citizens in governance, he said, referring to the administration of Mr. El-Rufai. We came on board because our party structures do not exist or function in a manner prescribed by our partys constitution. It does not protect the interests of our members, and one of our key goals is to help reestablish party structure at all levels. He also said the APC Akida is not a faction of the APC but an alternative platform for members of the party to play their part in building a true APC in the Kaduna state. Present at the meeting were Mr. Sani, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, Isa Ashiru among others. Mr. Maiyashi said in the coming weeks, APC Akida would intensify its campaign to mobilise members to protect their legitimate interests. The Benin Traditional Council has directed all residents of the city not to cook with fire or any other process that generates heat on Sunday. The directive is part of the funeral rites scheduled to mark the transition of the Oba of Benin, Omo NOba NEdo, Uku Akpolokpolo Erediauwa, as well as one of the activities leading to the coronation of a new monarch. A palace press release to journalists on Friday in Benin City, Edo State, signed by the Secretary of Benin Traditional Council, Frank Irabor, advised Benin residents not to cook with fire. The release stated, This is to inform the general public, that in continuation of the Royal Funeral Rites and in accordance with Benin Customs and Tradition, there shall be no cooking with fire in the every household in Benin Kingdom on Sunday, 5th June, 2016. This is the day of Edenagberen-Mwiwu in the Royal Funeral Rites Programme. All Benins as well as non-indigenes are expected to observe this rite. Anxious residents have questioned how they will feed without cooking on Sunday. They also asked questions about what would happen to anyone that breaks the rule. Clarifying the directive in a telephone interview with PREMIUM TIMES, the Esogban of Benin Kingdom, Chief David Edebiri, urged non-indigenes not be too disturbed by the rule or directive especially as it is made for the sons and daughters of Benin Kingdom. Chief Edebiri, who is popularly called The Oracle of Benin Kingdom said, The non-indigenes should not be worried. It is a tradition. It is meant for those who adhere to the tradition. But if you are a stranger and you mistakenly break the tradition that day by making fire, you have no cause or reason to fear. The police in Kano state have pledged to fish out and arrest the killers of a woman trader who was alleged to have blasphemed the Prophet Muhammad. A police spokesperson, Magaji Majiya, told PREMIUM TIMES on Friday that Bridget Agbahwe was killed and beheaded on Thursday by a mob after an argument with some customers in Kanos Wambai market who accused her of blasphemy. At about 4: 30 pm, there was a disagreement between the murdered woman and some traders bordering on religion. The woman was said to have blasphemed Prophet Mohammed, which did not go down well with the people and they decided to take the law into their hands, he said. The police spokesperson said the body of the victim had been deposited at a hospital mortuary and that a special squad of the command had since swung into action with a view to arresting the killers. The victim, a trader in domestic plastic wares at the market, was in the company of her husband when she was attacked by the angry mob with machetes. Mr. Majiya said police intervention prevented the mob from also killing her husband. The police spokesperson assured that the force were on the trail of the killers and would get them soon. The Ohaneze Ndigbo, a socio cultural organization of Igbo people, Kano state chapter, led by Chris Azuka, condemned the killing and called for a thorough investigation to arrest the perpetrators. He appealed for calm saying both Islam and Christianity do not support barbaric killing of innocent lives. The Kaduna State chapter of All Progressives Congress, APC, on Friday said the party had no faction, and that it stood with Governor Nasir el-Rufai, in a reaction to the formation of a new group by some of its leaders. Some APC leaders, including Shehu Sani, a senator, and Hakeem Baba Ahmed, a former minister, had on Thursday announced the formation of APC Akida. Akida, an Hausa word, means our Interest. Kaduna APC has been dogged by internal strife for months, resulting from a row between with Mr. Sani and Governor Nasir El-Rufai. Mr. Sani accuses the governor of hijacking the party, while supporters of Mr. El-Rufai say the senator has been involved in anti-party activities. At a press conference on Thursday, a leading member of the APC in the state, Tom Maiyashi, said the new group will soon announce its leaders at all levels in the state. Mr. Maiyashi said the APC Akida will serve as a platform for members of the APC to work for the progress of the party in the state. We believe in playing responsible and constructive roles because the government appears to have shut out basic involvement of citizens in governance, he said, referring to the administration of Mr. El-Rufai. We came on board because our party structures do not exist or function in a manner prescribed by our partys constitution. It does not protect the interests of our members, and one of our key goals is to help reestablish party structure at all levels. He also said the APC Akida was not a faction of the APC but an alternative platform for members of the party to play their part in building a true APC in the Kaduna state. Present at the meeting were Mr. Sani, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, Isa Ashiru, a former secretary of the Independent National Electoral Commission, among others. But addressing a news conference on Friday in Kaduna, to mark the first year of APC-led government, the partys acting publicity secretary, Salisu Wusono, warned disloyal party members to desist from operating an illegal and unrecognized group or face sanctions. He said the party was proud of the achievements of Mr. El-Rufai, which include free school feeding of 1.5 million pupils every day. He said the ruling party was looking forward to the commissioning of 255 modernised primary health centres, one in each ward of the state. The party also commended Mr. El Rufai for employing 2,503 youths into Kaduna State Traffic and Environmental Law Enforcement Agency. As a party, the Kaduna State APC stands united behind governor Nasir El-Rufai, in delivering service for our people. Our party was elected to lead change and bring development, not to pander to the ego of people. Those who think that nothing can be right if they are not the drivers and condemn laudable initiatives just because they are not treated as masters should reconsider their conduct, he said. Mr. Wusono continued, The APC Kaduna State cannot be factionalised. We will not tolerate indiscipline. We have given people enough time to adjust to the reality that they are not in a position to hold the party or the process of change to ransom just because of their personal interests. Some people lost their bid to occupy the office of chairman; others were soundly defeated in the gubernatorial primaries. Despite this, the party tried to carry them along. But they stood aloof during the campaigns, some even went as far as cooperating with the PDP. We heard that a group of persons sat with a suspended senator to announce an illegal and unrecognized group. They are hereby warned to desist. Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, has praised President Muhammadu Buhari for launching the clean-up of oil spill in Ogoniland and other areas in the Niger Delta region. Mr. Wike, during the flag-off of the exercise by Mr. Buhari on Thursday in Bodo, Ogoni, said, We commend Mr. Presidents determination to close this ugly chapter in our countrys history. The president was represented by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. The governor said, Although this has taken long in coming, it is never too late when it comes to environment. Mr. Wikes speech, which he read from a prepared address, drew applause from Mr. Osinbajo, as well as the crowd. For us as a people and the victims of the most abusive form of environmental abuse, today is a watershed in our collective struggles for environmental justice from the Nigerian nation and the world community, Mr. Wike said. We therefore welcome this initiative wholeheartedly. We believe that only environmental justice will restore sustainable peace and economic progress in the Niger Delta. The governor appealed to the people to embrace and support the federal governments effort in cleaning up Ogoniland and other parts of the Niger Delta. The Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, who also spoke at the ceremony, seized the opportunity to tell how former president Godluck Jonathan refused to clean up Ogoniland. We did everything possible as a sitting government to get our brother and our leader, the former president, to implement the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) report, said Mr. Amaechi, a former governor of Rivers and an arch political rival of Mr. Wike and Mr. Jonathan. We did everything necessary, including going to church to pray. The UNEP report was not implemented. Mr. Amaechi said it took only an unscheduled meeting between Mr. Buhari and the Ogoni elders, at the height of the 2015 campaign, for Mr. Buhari, then as a presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, to make a promise that he was going to clean up Ogoniland if voted into power. The former governors claim was confirmed by Mr. Buhari, when the presidents address was presented by Mr. Osinbajo. We are gathered here today, in keeping with that promise, Mr. Amaechi said. The crowd applauded him. In keeping with that promise, the economy of Ogoni will change. There is no way they would spend a billion dollar here without creating employment. The President, Supreme Council of Ogoni Traditional Rulers, Godwin Gininwa, in similar manner like Mr. Amaechi, spoke of Mr. Jonathans failure to clean up Ogoniland. Mr. Gininwa said, I have nothing against Jonathan, he is my son, he is a very quiet boy. I love him very much. But in this case, he made a mistake. He couldnt do what he promised Ogoni people. I want to advise Nigerian leaders, when they make promises, they should be able to keep it. President Buhari, in his address, said, We are determined to put right the wrong of the past, where the people Ogoni were treated unfairly, and their environment unduly degraded. He said he had already given approval for the constitution of the necessary frame-work that will drive a hitch-free implementation of UNEP report. Such framework, according to the Minister of Environment, Amina Mohammed, would include setting up a governing council and a board of trustees that will handle the funds to be invested in the clean-up. It is estimated that it would take between 25 to 30 years for the environment of Ogoniland and other parts of the Niger Delta to be fully restored. A journalist with the Ogun State Council of Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, Nofisat Oshin, and her 15-year-old daughter have been kidnapped by gunmen in Ijebu-Ode town of the state. A statement by NUJ, signed by the acting chairman, Soji Amosu, on Friday said the victims were abducted at gun point at about 8.00pm on Thursday. The abducted journalist is the director of information with Odogbolu local government area of the state, and wife of a former Deputy Speaker of Ogun State House of Assembly, Tokunbo Oshin. The woman was said to be driving with her daughter, Afolabi, when they were accosted along Akobi street in Ijebu-Ode. Their whereabouts remained unknown at the time of filing this report. The union described the abduction as barbaric and called on security agencies and state government to help fish out the perpetrators. The NUJs acting chairman said a report had been made to the police by the family of the kidnapped victims. People have a strong interest in information about crime and with good reason: It helps them understand possible risks, the safety of communities, trends in society and more. When the media report about a crime, people can consider what happened, who was involved and other details to get a sense of what it means for them. Does it fit existing patterns or does the crime possibly represent something new and more worrisome? If violent, was it random or did the victim probably know the perpetrator? Are certain kinds of people being victimized more than others? These and many other considerations are important to people, allowing them to maintain a sense of security about where they live. Last week, the state Assembly approved a bill that would prevent the public from knowing the identity of victims of violent crimes. The bill also would bar the release of identifying information about witnesses to crimes, and since witnesses are crucial to fighting crime and often threatened, additional protections under New Jersey law may be needed. But the needs of victims are already balanced with the public's need for this information under the state's Open Public Records Act. For example, the act requires consideration for the safety of the victim and victim's family in decisions to release information. And prohibitions against releasing victim telephone numbers, Social Security numbers and email or social media addresses are already included in OPRA. But the Assembly bill would withhold from the public the identity of every possible or actual victim of a violent crime, whether necessary or not. Police would provide the name of someone charged with assault, for example, but couldn't provide the name of the person accusing them of assault. The New Jersey Press Association says the proposed law would not only restrict public access and damage OPRA, but would make it unworkable. Under the bill's sweeping language, every request for public information would require the records keeper to consider whether anyone in the documents had ever in their life been a victim of or witness to a violent crime - in other words, any crime involving force or the threat of force. Since that would be impossible, the bill puts into jeopardy all access to public records. The proposal also would make New Jersey the restrictive oddball among the states regarding the release of information about crime victims. The state-by-state access guide by the nonprofit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press shows that seven other states join New Jersey in explicitly preventing the release of information that would impair the safety of victims or their families. Another 12 specify restrictions on information if sexual assault was involved (also possible in New Jersey). And 20 states don't specify any limits on releasing victim information at all, leaving it to discretion under other sections of law. All states withhold information if releasing it would compromise a criminal investigation. The N.J. Press Association says, "The blanket exemption in the bill, however, raises more problems than it solves and, as described, is completely unworkable." We agree, and join the NJPA in calling for the bill to be rejected or at least reworked to make it respectful of the public's need for information on crime. Our view ITC - Paperboards and Specialty Papers Division has been part of the PrintWeek Awards in the previous editions and will continue to be so. T... 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. ELKO County commissioners have been struggling with how to budget for two positions created by the new Elko Justice Court department, and Elko Justice of the Peace Mason Simons helped them come to a creative solution. The commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the base salary for the judge at $129,408. Commissioner Glen Guttry was not at Wednesdays meeting. However, the portion of the budget set aside for the new bailiff a total of about $65,000 in salary and benefits was removed and the justice court will find a way to pay for that position. Simons told the commission in October that a second judge would be needed. According to Nevada law, when a judicial township exceeds 34,000 people, a second justice of the peace is required unless the sitting judge does not think another judge is warranted. Because of the way the law is written, commissioners dont have any authority to stop the new position from being formed. However, the County does set the judges salary. Commissioner Rex Steninger requested the judges salary be on Wednesdays agenda because this would be the last meeting before the June 14 Primary Election. Its my feeling we owe it to the candidates to tell them what were thinking, he said. All of the commissioners have questioned if the salary for the new judge was justified to be the same as the current justice. During Wednesdays meeting and previous meetings the commissioners stated the Elko courts caseload has decreased, but Simons and Carlin Justice of the Peace Teri Feasel said the number of cases doesnt fully reflect the amount of time a judge spends doing his or her job. I know that were talking about statistics, were talking about caseload and were talking about number of cases, but a lot of times thats not reflective on the time that a judge spends on a case, Feasel said. She told the commissioners she recently handled a civil case in Elko and the trial lasted more than five hours, then she reviewed the evidence for two more hours. This led to other hearings and she spent two weeks preparing her order in the case. So you can see that sometimes a case takes a lot of time from a judge, she said. That was just one case. Feasel said the other justice courts do not have bailiffs and her court only recently has had a bailiff part-time for the last two years. Simons said the second judge and bailiff are needed. After Commissioner Delmo Andreozzi asked if there was any way to reduce the fiscal impact to the County, Simons suggested the court could pay for the bailiff. On Thursday, Simons told the Free Press he attended the meeting because he understood the fiscal restraints the County was under and he wanted to help come up with a creative way to a resolution. Simons said he has a staff member working as a clerk who is POST-certified and he might change this position to a bailiff if the employee was willing to become a bailiff. He said the commissioners were fair and open minded. Simons said theres more to the analysis than just those numbers. There are things that arent in the numbers, such as reopened cases, he said. Many times in the Elko Justice Court, Simons is handling cases that were opened in previous years because the defendant was caught later on or has violated probation. He also said caseloads do not take into account the amount of marriages the judge performs or the warrants that are processed. Related to this issue, in January the commissioners unanimously voted to request an opinion from the Attorney General regarding options for the adjustment of the justice of the peace salaries for both of the Elko Justice Court Judge positions. The county still hopes to receive an opinion from the AG in case the issue comes up in the future. One candidate stands above the rest in his qualifications for justice of the peace, but two candidates will advance to the general election and it is possible that the second one may not be an attorney. Elko residents who did not attend last weeks Chamber-sponsored forum on the justice of the peace race missed a lively discussion about issues vital to the local court system. Half of the candidates in the race are not attorneys, so there was a mix of viewpoints that highlighted controversies over how our local courts are run. Court Master Andrew Mierins is the most qualified candidate, as he already serves in the position on an as-needed basis and he is most familiar with its operations. Attorney David Loreman also has served in a judicial role, while the third attorney in the race Anthony Leiker has essentially pulled out and endorsed Mierins. The three non-attorneys are businessman Dennis Parker, state trooper Elias Choch Goicoechea, and former radiologist and police captain Will Lehmann. Department B is coming into existence after Justice of the Peace Mason Simons lifted a longstanding waiver against its creation, based on population and other factors. County commissioners struggled to find revenue to cover the new position, and they recently terminated the Jackpot justice of the peace to help free up funds. The dispute spilled over into the forum, in which Parker expressed doubts about the need for the position he is seeking. Loreman said he understood the countys skepticism because statistics show a declining workload in the court, but he sees the creation of Department B as a chance to launch specialty courts such as mental health and drunken driving. Just seven months before Simons called for the new judges position, he argued unsuccessfully for county commissioners to create an alternative sentencing department, which he said was need to ensure that misdemeanor defendants obey the orders of the court. Indeed, the daily postings in our newspapers police log indicate that many offenders violate their terms of release some of them repeatedly blowing off our courts as if they didnt exist. Lehmann was particularly vocal at the forum about the issue of repeat offenders, suggesting their bail be set much higher. He also criticized the countys drug court, saying Law enforcement feels that the most effective thing about drug court is it gets new dopers to meet other dopers, so that they have a better networking system. Such opinions obviously run counter to the status quo. Those who arrest offenders on the streets have a much different viewpoint than those who mete out justice in the courts. Obviously, the candidates disagreed about whether a law degree should be required to serve. However, both this question and the one about whether a second judge is needed are moot. State law already affirms the legitimacy of adding a second judge, and state law clearly says that a law degree is not required for justices of the peace in counties the size of Elko. Still, the questions drew attention to the unusual mix of candidates in this election, and the possibility that an attorney vs. non-attorney race could be in the making for November. NEW YORK, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Marketing content is an important aspect of your small business' branding strategy as it helps to build expertise and positions you as an authority in your industry. However, continuing to produce quality content shouldn't become a chore. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110831/NY59180LOGO To assist businesses in becoming a content marketing machine, the latest article posted to PR Newswire's Small Business PR Toolkit offers three strategies for creating content that customers love. Conversational. Structure your content in a conversational way so that it's easy to absorb and retain for the average reader. Use casual language that reads as if you are speaking to your audience in person or talking to a friend. Calls-to-action. Ensure your CTAs inspire interest in your readers and are not treated solely as a sales tactic. Implement CTAs once or twice within the piece of content and don't place them solely at the end of the message. For discussion on the remaining content creation strategy, read contributing author Steve Lazuka's post here: http://bit.ly/1X2DwgZ. PR Newswire's Small Business PR Toolkit is a comprehensive resource that provides small businesses and entrepreneurs the tools to develop an affordable public relations and marketing plan that helps generate interest from potential customers, engage with key audiences and grow their businesses. The toolkit features relevant content such as informative white papers, interactive webinars and how-to articles and premium access to educational resources, as well as the opportunity to take advantage of special offers designed specifically for small businesses. To request information on how PR Newswire can help your small business, click here. You can receive updates on new Small Business PR Toolkit content by following @prnsmallbiz on Twitter. About PR Newswire PR Newswire (www.prnewswire.com) is the premier global provider of multimedia platforms that enable marketers, corporate communicators, sustainability officers, public affairs and investor relations officers to leverage content to engage with all their key audiences. Having pioneered the commercial news distribution industry over 60 years ago, PR Newswire today provides end-to-end solutions to produce, optimize and target content -- from rich media to online video to multimedia -- and then distribute content and measure results across traditional, digital, mobile and social channels. Combining the world's largest multi-channel, multi-cultural content distribution and optimization network with comprehensive workflow tools and platforms, PR Newswire enables the world's enterprises to engage opportunity everywhere it exists. PR Newswire serves tens of thousands of clients from offices in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, and is a UBM plc company. Contact: Amanda Eldridge Director, Strategic Channels 201-360-6906 Amanda.eldridge@prnewswire.com Related Links http://www.prnewswire.com SOURCE PR Newswire Association LLC GENEVA, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In association with the leading financial group SYZ, ACE & Company, the international private equity firm headquartered in Geneva, held its second annual "Global Investment Forum" on June 2nd and June 3rd. This year's edition was animated around the theme of "Navigating the Challenges of Today, Finding the Opportunities of Tomorrow" and featured a remarkable list of speakers and panelists such as former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, Garrett Camp, co-founder of UBER, Eric Syz, the majority shareholder and CEO of SYZ Group, Anil Srivastava, CEO of global energy solutions leader Leclanche and Jean-Pierre Roth, the former Chairman of the Swiss National Bank. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375243LOGO ) (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375246 ) An hour before kicking off the forum, the breakfast hall of the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva was buzzing with anticipation and chatter on the latest Private Equity insights from around the world, as asset managers, private equity visionaries and world-class entrepreneurs sipped their coffee and introduced themselves. ACE & Company Chairman David Huyette opened the event with his take on the importance of sharing information with peers and the value of giving oneself the means to have sufficient foresight. The essence of every wise decision is based on the pursuit of knowledge, he explained before giving the floor to a proud and enthusiastic Adam Said, founder and Executive Director of ACE & Company. Adam Said repeated his determination to bring Private Equity to Geneva , in the midst of a changing $2 trillion private banking industry that is undergoing profound change. He went on to explain how private equity players could capitalize on the real economy despite higher volatility, and smaller values for individual deals given the current generalized risk aversion. ACE & Company has made it clear it intends to become a key player of the global private equity scene. With this determined and optimistic outlook on the future growth of the company, they have compiled a dynamic and growing portfolio and have become a key player in new markets such as Myanmar, for instance. The ten year-old company has set its mind on becoming a leading provider of direct investment solutions for private investors. Former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin proceeded with an inspiring keynote speech about the importance of creativity, mobility and diversity, in a world economy undergoing fundamental changes. Disruption and crisis should be taken into account in everything we do, he explained to an attentive crowd. He elaborated on the growing tensions between the elites and the working classes, as well as the conflictual relationship between businesses who strive to adapt to a new paradigm of liberal individualism and governments who are struggling to respond to modern challenges in policy-making and need to answer to the public who has become weary of paying the price of a troubled world economy and geopolitical chaos. He concluded his analysis with the assertion that the world is inevitably moving towards greater governmental control and that regulation will be back as a result of public demand. De Villepin closed his keynote speech by highlighting one of the central questions that will determine much of the future global dynamics; how will the US-China rivalry evolve? Will it move on to become a relationship of confrontation or cooperation? A number of other panelists and speakers also discussed some of the driving forces in direct investment such as Iran's growing role in its region, the future of energy or the sought-after tech unicorns. The ACE & Company Global Investment Forum, which was meant to be a one-time meeting in 2015 has known great success and has therefore become an annual event and an important date in the global Private Equity industry. About ACE & Company: ACE & Company, co-founded in 2005 by Adam Said and Sherif El Halwagy, is a global private equity group specialized in co-investments. By combining the in-house team capabilities with those of our partners, ACE is able to source, diligence, and execute on superior investment opportunities. This collaborative vision allows for a more efficient diversification across the different investment stages of private companies globally. Within this broader set of opportunities the company strives to facilitate the efficient allocation of capital to the most attractive industries and markets on a risk adjusted basis. ACE aims to actively improve investment returns by adding strategic value to both its portfolio companies and sourcing partners by leveraging its broad investment knowledge. At the core of its philosophy, ACE strives to ensure alignment of interest of all parties by being involved in every transaction it undertakes. More Information: Sherif Mamdouh ACE & Company SA Rue du Rhone 42 1204 Geneva Switzerland +41-79-317-61-90 press@aceandcompany.com SOURCE ACE & Company LONDON, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Alea Global Group executives were celebrating this week after winning two prestigious titles in the Business Worldwide Magazine (BWM) Awards. Mohammad Al Duaij picked up awards for Most Innovative CEO of the Year - Kuwait and Outstanding Contribution to Business CEO 2016. Both awards were created in order to recognise outstanding achievement and leadership at senior level. Al Duaij thanked the magazine for the accolades, particularly for the fact it would highlight the need for a mediator in business relationships between European nations or those in the Americas and Asia and the Middle East. "Any company looking to make inroads into the valuable Middle Eastern economy obviously needs to know how our economy, society and culture work. And this is something we are embedded in here at Alea ," he said. "We will help ensure that each side understands one other in order to prevent any unintended misunderstandings." Family firm Alea Global Group helps companies both work and invest successfully together in the Middle East by facilitating meetings and acting as a representative. The sectors the company focuses on are primarily real estate and private equity. Its primary aim is to locate opportunities for western investors, research them and carry out due diligence, then deliver when the time is right. Established in 1998, Alea Global Group is a highly regarded brand within Kuwait and further afield. "When we consider any new business activities, we look at the added value in terms of building relationships, more than the financial returns," said Al Duaij, who graduated from Leeds University with a BSc (Hons) in Accounting and Finance more than a decade ago. He has also worked for the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development and as an investment manager forming global real estate fund at Global Investment House - Kuwait He believes in creating opportunities rather than waiting for them to come to him - which fits in perfectly with his extra-curricular activities as a mountain climber and surfer. On that note he is currently helping a number of western and Asian companies to establish and enhance their presence in the Middle East. More information on Al Duaij and Alea Global Group can be found on the company website at www.aleaglobalgroup.com An interview with Mohammad Al Duaij, CEO of Alea Global Group, is available here: http://www.bwmonline.com/2016/05/interview-mohammad-al-duaij-ceo-alea-global-group/ An article on the company can also be found on BWM website http://www.bwmonline.com/2016/05/alea-global-group-business-middle-east/ For more details on Business Worldwide Magazine Awards 2016, go to http://www.bwmonline.com/awards/ About Business Worldwide Magazine Business Worldwide Magazine is the leading source of business and dealmaker intelligence throughout the world. Our quarterly magazine and online news portal enables an established audience of corporate dealmakers to track the latest news, stories and developments affecting the international markets, corporate finance, business strategy and changes in legislation. This readership includes of CEO/CFO - Banks, Corporate Lawyers and Venture Capital/Private Equity Companies to name a few. http://www.bwmonline.com Contact David Jones Awards Department E: david.jones@bwmonline.com W: http://www.bwmonline.com SOURCE Business Worldwide Magazine DUBLIN, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Australia and New Zealand Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Market - Forecast & Analysis, 2016 - 2022" report to their offering. The Australia HVAC market value is expected to reach approximately $3 billion by 2022 growing at a CAGR of 9% from 2016 to 2022. The overall demand for HVAC products in the Australia and New Zealand region are estimated to remain high for various applications including commercial, residential, industrial, and institutional segments, among others. Various government initiatives, emerging green/smart building and growing consumer concerns are driving HVAC manufacturers, developers and system integrators to build and provide energy efficient and technologically advanced HVAC units for major commercial, residential, institutional and industrial applications, among others. The Australia and New Zealand HVAC markets have been covered by both value and volume. The market by value is growing at a CAGR of 9.82% from 2016 to 2022, while the market by volume is growing at a CAGR of 7.33% from 2016 to 2022 in which Australia is a dominant player. The report has been further classified on the basis of different types of HVAC products including window & portable air conditioners, split air conditioners, single packaged units, chillers and fan coil unit (FCU) & air handling unit (AHU). The Australia HVAC product market by volume is witnessing a gradual emergence of new cost-effective and energy efficient technologies that meet the required standards and regulations, as well as attempts to fulfill growing customer concerns. Major products that have widespread usages across different end-use applications include window, portable and split units for residential purposes. Chillers are growing at a very high growth rate followed by VRFs. The market for Australia HVAC is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 6.99% from 2016 to 2022. However, the New Zealand HVAC market volume is expected to reach a volume of 271.40 thousand units by 2022. The demand for HVAC products in the Australia market is mainly driven by factors such as rising population, developments in the residential markets, and growing commercial and industrial units. Many leading HVAC manufacturers, including global as well as regional players are increasing their product presence in the region by expanding distribution outlets in the region and launching products specifically designed for local population. Key Topics Covered: 1 Report Scope 2 Methodology 3 Executive Summary 4 Market Dynamics 5 Competitive Insights 6 Australia HVAC Market By Product 7 New Zealand HVAC Market By Product 8 Company Profiles 9 Appendix Companies Mentioned - Daikin Industries Ltd. - Fujitsu - Johnson Controls - LG Corporation - Mitsubishi Electric - Panasonic Corporation - Samsung Electronics - Toshiba - Trane - United Technologies Corporation (Carrier) For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/6fc7ck/australia_and_new 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 Related Links http://www.researchandmarkets.com SOURCE Research and Markets PEORIA, Illinois, June 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT/Euronext: CATR) informs its stockholders that on June 2, 2016, in accordance with Section 16(a) of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, six Forms 4 (the report on Form 4 being a statement of beneficial ownership of its officers, directors and 10% owners) were filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). Caterpillar files electronically with the SEC required reports on Form 8-K, Form 10-Q, Form 10-K and Form 11-K; proxy materials; ownership reports for insiders as required by Section 16(a) of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended; and registration statements on Forms S-3 and S-8, as necessary; and other forms or reports, as required. All of the forms and reports filed electronically with the SEC are available on the SEC Internet site (www.sec.gov). Caterpillar also maintains an Internet site (www.Caterpillar.com) and copies of its annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K and any amendments to these reports filed or furnished with the SEC are available free of charge through Caterpillar's Internet site (www.Caterpillar.com/secfilings) as soon as reasonably practicable after the relevant document has been filed with the SEC. CONTACT: Rachel Potts, Corporate Public Affairs, +1-309-675-6892 This is a disclosure announcement from PR Newswire. SOURCE Caterpillar Inc. LONDON, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Cindy Crawford joined Orbis, the international eye care charity that fights blindness around the world, to unveil its new Flying Eye Hospital at a press conference at Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday. The third-generation Flying Eye Hospital is the world's only mobile ophthalmic teaching hospital aboard an aircraft. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375168 ) Hundreds of experts have combined their avionics, hospital engineering, technology and clinical expertise to make the new Flying Eye Hospital a reality. It features a modular design, 3D technology and live broadcast capabilities, enabling Orbis and its team of 400+ medical volunteers, to train more doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals across Africa, Asia and Latin America. There are 39 million blind people globally; with 90% living in developing countries with limited access to sight-saving treatments, yet 80% of blindness is preventable and treatable. For over 30 years, Orbis has helped countries build the skills and resources required to deliver quality eye care to those in need. In September 2014, Cindy Crawford, Omega Brand Ambassador, witnessed a sight-saving programme first hand with the previous Flying Eye Hospital, in Peru. Omega has supported Orbis since 2011. "Our mission at Orbis is to bring the world together to fight blindness, as we believe that no one should go blind from conditions that are treatable or preventable," said Bob Ranck, President & CEO, Orbis International. "The Flying Eye Hospital helps us do that. It is in equal parts teacher, envoy and advocate. We harness this powerful tool for change to support long-term programmes around the world." The new plane is equipped with everything needed to provide hands-on training to local ophthalmic professionals. The 3D filming and broadcast capabilities will enable programme participants to experience and learn from live surgeries with a view similar to the surgeon's microscope lens. "We are not here to show off, we are here to show how," explains Dr. Daniel Neely, Orbis volunteer pediatric ophthalmic surgeon and Medical Advisor. "The new technologies on the Flying Eye Hospital allow us as teachers to share, train and interact with more of our colleagues in the developing world, giving a deeper and richer learning environment to transfer the skills to their practice. Most exciting, we are able to continue the mentorship relationships long after the plane has moved on, via Cybersight-our telemedicine portal." The Flying Eye Hospital includes: a 46-seat classroom, state-of-the-art AV/IT room patient care/laser treatment room operating room sterilization room pre and post-operative care room. The MD-10 aircraft housing the new Flying Eye Hospital, has been donated by Orbis's longtime partner FedEx, and has been custom designed to bring the best medical technology and training direct to areas of need. It is the only non-land-based hospital globally that is accredited by the AAAASFI (American Association for Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgery Facilities International.) The Flying Eye Hospital will conduct its inaugural program in Shenyang, China this September, before heading to Indonesia in November. SOURCE Orbis UK MEXICO CITY, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A new scientific statement - "The Heart of 25 by 25: achieving the goal of reducing global and regional premature deaths from cardiovascular diseases and stroke"- has warned that premature deaths from cardiovascular disease (CVD), already the number one cause of death around the world with a global cost of nearly US $863bn, could rise by up to 30% in women and 34% in men in the next decade if risk factors are not "aggressively addressed" by health practitioners and policymakers worldwide. The joint statement from the American Heart Association and World Heart Federation studied global data on premature deaths from CVD in 30-70 year olds. It found that CVD is responsible for almost 6 million premature deaths per year, but this could rise to nearly 8 million by 2025. Regionally: Latin America and the Caribbean - 22% increase in women and 24% increase in men and the - 22% increase in women and 24% increase in men South Asia - 43% increase in women and 56% increase in men - 43% increase in women and 56% increase in men Sub-Saharan Africa - 48% increase in women and 52% increase in men Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia - 26% increase in women and 16% increase in men and - 26% increase in women and 16% increase in men Middle East and North Africa - 32% increase in women and 35% increase in men. However, the research found that global rates of premature CVD deaths could be slowed and even reversed in some regions if the WHO '25 by 25' risk factor targets for blood pressure, smoking, obesity and diabetes are achieved. To help health leaders enact practices to meet these targets and protect their populations from premature cardiovascular deaths the study makes several recommendations, including smoke free laws, higher tobacco product taxes and stricter advertising rules, decreasing sodium levels in packaged foods, more public awareness campaigns and funding drug therapy and counselling for people who have previously had, or are at high risk of having, a heart attack or stroke. This study is published in the AHA's journal Circulation ahead of the World Heart Federation's biannual World Congress of Cardiology and Cardiovascular Health in Mexico City, 4-7 June. Professor David Wood, President-Elect of the World Heart Federation and co-author of the study, said: "The conclusions of this study are clear: to stop people dying prematurely from cardiovascular disease we need both the political will and a firm commitment from health leaders to put in place progressive strategies right now." SOURCE World Heart Federation JAKARTA, Indonesia, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- GE Healthcare and Frost & Sullivan, on May 19 hosted the first Indonesia Thought Leadership Next Generation Imaging IT forum at the Grand Senyiur Hotel, Balikpapan to discuss innovative IT solutions in imaging workflow in Indonesian hospitals. More than 80 representatives from Indonesian hospitals attended the forum. Marc Foo, General Manager of GE Healthcare IT, ASEAN, Australia & New Zealand said that diagnostic imaging radiologists are beginning to play a critical role in surgery and emergency care. "Therefore, diagnostic imaging radiologists need comprehensive, real-time patient data, as well as collaboration and consultation with peers to ensure reliable and timely diagnosis," he added. "Radiologists need flexible imaging IT solutions that help address their day-to-day issues, such as the delay in image loading, need to move between workstations, image quality and frequent IT downtime," Foo added. While imaging IT has advanced significantly in the last three decades, there is still room for further technological innovation that empowers radiologists with the right information at the right time, he said. "Frost & Sullivan is delighted to jointly host the Indonesia Thought Leadership Next Generation Imaging IT forum with GE Healthcare to discuss about medical imaging transformation and innovative IT solutions in imaging workflow in Indonesian hospitals," said Rathanesh Ramasundram, Senior Consultant, Transformational Health, Asia Pacific at Frost & Sullivan. In her 'Medical Imaging Transformation in Indonesia' presentation, Ramasundram noted that demand for diagnostic testing in Indonesia's public hospitals increased after the launch of Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional (JKN), a national health insurance system introduced by the Government. She added that in line with the demand for healthcare services, medical imaging procedure volumes have also increased multi-fold. "Rising incidence of chronic conditions has increased disease complexity and co-morbidity, requiring radiologists to have access to and make sense out of far more complex patient information than before. With only 2,240 radiologists, the acute workforce shortage in Indonesia has led to a huge increase in clinicians' daily workload," she said. Ramasundram also said that in response to the increasing demand on care pathway workflow, Indonesian hospitals are moving towards digital imaging solutions including Radiology Information Systems (RIS) and Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS). She added that Indonesia needs to leverage on IT for radiology diagnostics to improve the quality and efficiency of health services. Ramasundram also said that IT solutions can help to address isolated and rural health facilities for diagnostic radiology services and facilitate clinical real-time collaboration for faster diagnostic turnaround times for referring physicians and their patients. At the panel discussion 'An In-Depth Look Into the Digital Imaging IT Footprint for Indonesia', Dr. Aziza Ghanie Ickson, Chairman of Indonesian College of Radiology said that without digital solutions, she would have to wait a few hours before getting the imaging files due to the manual system. At the same time, she needs to look for old images, medical records and research for other clinical findings in order to prepare a more detailed reading. Dr. Raditya Utomo, General Diagnostic Radiologist, Premier Bintaro Hospital said that it will be very helpful if private hospitals and government hospitals can share data easily with the use of technology. "Hopefully, in future, imaging reports can be shared electronically between hospitals easily," he added. Dr. Jacub Pandelaki, Secretary General Perhimpunan Dokter Spesialis Radiologi Indonesia (The Indonesian Society of Radiology) said that the total number of radiologists in Indonesia cannot support the growth of hospitals in Indonesia. He noted that geographically, Indonesia also has many islands and traffic congestion is a common problem in big cities such as Jakarta. Therefore, he added that there is an increasing need for technology to allow for remote access of images anywhere in case of emergency. He added that with today's more complex medical cases, radiologists need to have historical data of all the patients' records for better diagnostic. About GE Healthcare GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems. Our 'healthymagination' vision for the future invites the world to join us on our journey as we continuously develop innovations focused on reducing costs, increasing access and improving quality and efficiency around the world. Headquartered in the United States, GE Healthcare is a $16 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. Our "Growth Partnership" supports clients by addressing these opportunities and incorporating two key elements driving visionary innovation: The Integrated Value Proposition and The Partnership Infrastructure. The Integrated Value Proposition provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation. provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation. The Partnership Infrastructure is entirely unique as it constructs the foundation upon which visionary innovation becomes possible. This includes our 360 degree research, comprehensive industry coverage, career best practices as well as our global footprint of more than 40 offices. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organization prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies? Contact Us : Start the discussion Join Us : Join our community Subscribe : Newsletter on "the next big thing" Register : Gain access to visionary innovation Media Contact Shena Agusta Corporate Communications Indonesia Frost & Sullivan Phone : +6221 5710838 Fax : +6221 5713246 Email : shena.agusta@frost.com Related Links http://www.frost.com SOURCE Frost & Sullivan VALLEY COTTAGE, New York, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Global demand for fertility and pregnancy rapid test kits market will reach US$ 1,068.4 Mn in 2016, up from US$ 1,029.1 Mn in 2015, witnessing 3.8% growth in 2016 over 2015. Increasing prevalence of gynaecological diseases and infertility will continue to drive demand in 2016, with dual-capability test kits gaining traction among consumers. Pregnancy rapid test kits will continue to witness higher demand than fertility kits, representing US$ 600 Mn in market value in 2016. Line-indicator kits will continue to outsell digital devices, with the latter generating only one-third revenues of the former. Mid-stream and cassettes line indicator pregnancy rapid test kits will witness strong growth rates than strips/dip sticks, however, strips/dip sticks will continue to account for the highest market value, representing US$ 197 Mn in revenues in 2016. Request a Sample Report: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-607 Line indicators will remain the preferred product type in fertility rapid test landscape as well, representing market value worth US$ 329.2 Mn in 2016, up from US$ 317.7 Mn in 2015. hCG urine test will account for the highest market share on the basis of test type, representing nearly 43% revenue share in 2016. Apart from hCG, other test types - FSH urine test, hCG blood test, and LH urine test will witness a decline in their market share, suggesting increasing preference for conventional laboratory tests. Drugstores and pharmacies will remain the largest distribution channels for both fertility and pregnancy rapid test kits. Drugstores will sell US$ 286.4 Mn worth of fertility and pregnancy rapid tests kits in 2016, representing nearly 27% revenue share of the market by distribution channel. Free Analysis by Key Regions: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/fertility-and-pregnancy-rapid-tests-market North America will remain the largest market for fertility and rapid test kits in 2016, accounting for over half of global revenues. Demand for rapid kits will continue to grow in the developing countries of Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa. While APEJ fertility and rapid test kits market will reach US$ 267.2 Mn in revenues in 2016, MEA market will be worth US$ 7.5 Mn. Church & Dwight Co., Inc., Alere Inc., bioMerieux SA, and Quidel Corporation are the market leaders in the global fertility and pregnancy rapid test kits landscape. Collaboration with distribution partners and strengthening market position through acquisitions remains the key strategy of these players. Request for TOC: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-607 Long-term Outlook: Future Market Insights projects a moderate 4.1% CAGR for fertility and pregnancy rapid test kits market during the forecast period 2016-2026. Note to Editors and Journalists: Analysts who have compiled this report are available for interviews and quotes at press@futuremarketinsights.com FMI Latest Insights: India Thyroid Function Test Market: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/india-thyroid-function-testing-market http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/india-thyroid-function-testing-market Digital Pathology Market: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/Global-digital-pathology-market http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/Global-digital-pathology-market Infusion Pumps Market: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/infusion-pumps-market About Us Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights and an aerial view of the competitive framework and future market trends. Contact Us 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States T: +1-347-918-3531 F: +1-845-579-5705 T (UK): + 44 (0) 20 7692 8790 Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.com Website: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com Press Release: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/press-release SOURCE Future Market Insights New capacity brings potential for production to outpace demand BOSTON, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Global demand for fluff pulp is growing steadily, but disruptive shifts on the supply side could upset the balance of costs, prices and profitability worldwide. Upcoming capacity expansion projects, along with the recent sale of Weyerhaeuser's fluff pulp assets to International Paper, suggest a shifting competitive landscape. These and other trends are explored in detail by the Outlook for the World Fluff Pulp Market, a new report from RISI the leading source of business intelligence for the global forest products industry. "Emerging markets are driving demand growth for fluff pulp, which is used in diapers and other hygiene products. The industry is responding with capacity expansion worldwide, but there's a real risk of supply outpacing demand. In this study we explore the impact this could have on prices and profitability throughout the global fluff pulp market," said Ben Sirois, RISI Economist and lead author of the Outlook. The study explores drivers of disruption among fluff pulp suppliers, including: Potential for further mergers and acquisitions , in the wake of the recent Weyerhaeuser/International Paper deal , in the wake of the recent Weyerhaeuser/International Paper deal Possible over-capacity , as new plants come online faster than the market is growing , as new plants come online faster than the market is growing Development of fluff pulp made from hardwood, to potentially challenge the dominance of US southern softwood in fluff pulp production The study also includes supply, demand, cost, and pricing history and forecasts for the entire world fluff pulp sector. To get access to the report, visit www.risi.com/fluffpulp16. Companies with historical fluff pulp data included in the study: Current Fluff Pulp Producers: Arauco, Domtar, Fujian Tengrongda, Georgia-Pacific, International Paper, Klabin, Rayonier, Resolute Forest Products, SCA, Stora, Suzano, UPM, WestRock, Weyerhaeuser Past Fluff Pulp Producers: Celulosa Cambara, CHH Pulp & Paper, CMPC, Kimberly-Clark, Korsnas, Lwarcel, M-real, Paper Excellence, Skogall, Tembec About RISI (www.risi.com) RISI is the leading information provider for the global forest products industry. The company works with clients in the pulp and paper, packaging, wood products, timber, biomass, tissue and nonwovens industries to help them make better decisions. Headquartered in Boston, MA, RISI operates additional offices throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia. For Press Inquiries, please contact: Alan Petrillo Communications Associate O: +1.781.778.7592 E: apetrillo@risi.com Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20080521/NEW122LOGO Related Links http://www.risiinfo.com SOURCE RISI NORTHAMPTON, England, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ID Card Centre has answered a plea for help from many of their customers within the education sector to help them with the busy and stressful enrolment period. Each autumn universities and colleges have a new influx of 1000s of students arriving on campus, merely days after enrolment has closed and courses assigned. This generally allows just a matter of hours to print every single student ID card ready for collection on the first day of term. Recognising that universities did not want to invest in purchasing lots of additional printers for just a few days a year, ID Card Centre have added to their rental offering to meet these needs. Now stocking a wide range of ID Card printers covering different print and encoding processes to meet the unique needs of the user. MD Ben O'Brien comments "Each year we are getting more and more requests for our rental printers as budgets are squeezed and our customers cannot afford to invest in their own equipment. This year we have heavily invested in our rental stock, tripling what we had previously, so that we can meet our customer's needs. We also run a bureau service whereby we design and print the background of the ID cards ahead of time, this just leaves them to print the actual student data as soon as they have it, which saves them an incredible amount of time and also money. Of course if they want us to manage the entire print operation then we can of course help with that too!" Each printer is fully checked and cleaned before a rental and the firmware is upgraded ensuring that the customer simply needs to plug in, set up and start printing. Consumables are offered on a use or return basis so any unopened printer ribbons and blank cards can be returned for a full refund. ID Card Centre are currently taking bookings for the new term so contact them today for details. http://www.idcardcentre.co.uk +44-01604-422-422 sales@idcardcentre.co.uk Press contact: Ben O'Brien ID Card Centre b.obrien@idcardcentre.co.uk +44-01604-422422 SOURCE ID Card Centre Ltd THUWAL, Saudi Arabia, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- KAUST-based startup NOMADD (NO-water Mechanical Automated Dusting Device) recently closed a Series A funding round from the KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) Innovation Fund totaling USD 1,000,000. NOMADD is a smart and ecological desert solar panel cleaning system developed at KAUST by Georg Eitelhuber, NOMADD's founder and current chief technology officer. NOMADD obtained its initial seed funding and IP protection from KAUST and this latest financial boost will allow it to continue to establish a strong footprint in Saudi Arabia, hire key staff and carry out testing activities with potential customers. "NOMADD's dust mitigation technology will help make solar energy viable in the GCC region - one of the major global markets for solar energy in the coming decades. We are grateful for the vote of confidence that this funding represents and look forward to further commercialization," said NOMADD's CEO Jos van der Hyden. "With its strategically connected array of programs, top-notch facilities and staff, and funding opportunities for startups, KAUST's innovation ecosystem nurtures startups to accelerate their game-changing technologies," added Mark Crowell, KAUST vice president of Innovation and Economic Development. "We are pleased to provide this financing round for NOMADD and further develop the overall venture capital scene in Saudi Arabia." "This investment is a first in a series of technology-based investments that demonstrates our ongoing commitment to build and support the local early-stage startup community," said Nicola Bettio, manager of the KAUST Innovation Fund. "We want to become long-term partners of the startups in which we invest: we are not just acquiring minority shareholdings, but also supporting the development of these companies through strategic guidance and constant operational support." About the KAUST Innovation Fund KAUST Innovation & Economic Development helps maximize KAUST's contribution to the economic diversification of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its transformation to a knowledge-based economy. One of its main activities, the KAUST Innovation Fund, supports technology-based startups from seed to early-stage and invests in high-profile international technology companies willing to establish their operations in Saudi Arabia and benefit from KAUST research. About KAUST King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is an international, graduate-level research university located in Saudi Arabia. KAUST advances science and technology through interdisciplinary research, education and innovation. http://www.kaust.edu.sa SOURCE KAUST RICHMOND, Virginia, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Liqui-Box announced today they have hired Simon Waller to serve as General Manager, Europe/Middle East/Africa ("EMEA"). Simon's 25 years of leadership experience in the industry, combined with his business development and operations expertise, are ideally suited to lead the strategic expansion of the Liqui-Box brand in the EMEA markets, with particular focus on Europe. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151208/294263LOGO "We are excited to have Simon join our executive team at Liqui-Box. He will be instrumental in executing our strategy to further expand our business in the EMEA regions," commented Ken Swanson, President and CEO of Liqui-Box. Prior to joining Liqui-Box, Simon held executive positions with Scholle IPN and Supreme Corq. He will be based in Breda, The Netherlands. For more information on products and services from Liqui-Box please visit www.liquibox.com. About Liqui-Box: Liqui-Box is the leading innovator of sustainable packaging solutions for quick, fresh and cost efficient delivery of liquid and semi-liquid products. The company manufactures bag-in-box flexible packaging and pouches to serve a wide variety of global industries, including dairy, beverage, food and non-food markets. Applications include fountain beverage syrup, milkshake mix, coffee drinks, pump-able liquid foods such as concentrates and sauces, as well as non-food products like oils and paints. Liqui-Box offers the fastest filling equipment in the industry, along with consumable packaging, including film substrates, bags with fitments, and pouches. Liqui-Box is a portfolio company of Olympus Partners, a Stamford based middle market private equity firm with over 25 years of experience improving and growing packaging and other businesses. Contact: Paul Kase VP, Marketing & Strategy 804.433.3834 Related Links http://www.liquibox.com SOURCE Liqui-Box PUNE, India, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The organic acids market growth is led by domination of China which is the leading country for manufacturing organic acids along with rising F&B sector; R&D investments and technological innovations such as micro-encapsulation that will help the industry hit a CAGR of 6% to 2021. Complete report on global organic acids market spread across 135 pages, profiling 10 companies and supported with 104 tables and 38 figures is now available at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/organic-acids-market-by-type-acetic-acid-citric-acid-formic-acid-lactic-acid-propionic-acid-fumaric-acid-others-source-biomass-molasses-starch-chemical-synthesis-application-industrial-food-feed-st-to-2021-market-report.html . The organic acids market is projected to reach USD 9.29 billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 6.0% from 2016 to 2021. The market is driven by factors such as wide areas of application across various industries, especially the growing F&B sector and R&D investments & technological innovations such as micro-encapsulation. The high growth potential in the Asian countries and untapped regions of the Latin American and African regions provide new growth opportunities for market players. On the basis of type, the organic acids market was led by the acetic acid, followed by citric acid, formic acid, lactic acid, and others, in 2015.Acetic acid is used in wide areas of applications such as production of synthetic fibers and polymeric materials. It is largely used in food & beverage processing in the form of vinegar. The acid is largely consumed in China, the U.S., and most Western European countries. China is the largest country to manufacture the organic acids in the world. The growth is driven by the less stringent regulations on manufacturing and trade in this country. The country also maintains a very large livestock population which requires high nutrition additives in feed. Moreover, in order to continue their lucrative trade ties with the European region, Chinese manufacturers of food and feed ingredients are increasingly using organic acids in their products. China is also estimated to be the leading market for acetic acid with many new facilities being set up for production, as the acid is an integral part in the manufacturing of vinyl, polyesters, and engineering plastics. The increased per-capita income and growth of many small and medium scale industries have been driving the Indian market. Hence, India is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. The leading players for the organic acids industry are Cargill, Incorporated (U.S.), BASF SE (Germany), the Dow Chemical Company (U.S.), Tate & Lyle Plc (U.K.), E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (U.S.), Eastman Chemical Company (U.S.), Archer Daniels Midland Company (U.S.), Myriant Corporation (U.S.), Calanese Corporation (U.S.), and Henan Jindan Lactic Acid Technology Co. Ltd (China). Order a copy of Organic Acids Market by Type (Acetic Acid, Citric Acid, Formic Acid, Lactic Acid, Propionic Acid, Fumaric Acid & Others), Source (Biomass, Molasses, Starch & Chemical synthesis), Application (Industrial, Food & Feed), & by Region - Global Trend & Forecast to 2021 research report at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/contacts/purchase?rname=605460 . To determine the market size of various segments and sub-segments of the PIM market, extensive secondary research is done. In the process of determining and verifying, the market size for several segments and sub segments gathered through secondary research, extensive primary interviews were conducted with key people. In Tier 1 (20%), Tier 2 (35%) and Tier 3 (45%) companies were contacted for primary interviews. The interviews were conducted with various key people such as C-level Executives (35%), Directors Level (25%) and others (40%) from various key organizations operating in the global organic acids market. The primary interviews were conducted worldwide covering regions such as North America (30%), Europe (20%), APAC (45%) and Row (5%). On related note, another research on Peracetic Acid Market Global Forecast to 2020 says, the global peracetic acid market size is estimated to reach USD 783.3 million by 2020, at a CAGR of 8.33% between 2015 and 2020. Food industry is the largest application of peracetic acid. Rising demand in Asia-Pacific is the major driver for growth of peracetic acid market. This report will help stakeholders to understand the pulse of the market and provides them with information on key market drivers, restraints, challenges, and opportunities. Companies like Solvay AG, Ecolab, Kemira Ojy, Evonik Industries AG, Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Company, PeroxyChem Llc., Airedale Chemical, Enviro Tech Chemical Services Inc. and SEITZ GmbH have been profiled in this 112 pages research report available at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/peracetic-acid-market-by-type-disinfectant-sanitizer-sterilant-others-by-application-healthcare-food-water-treatment-pulp-paper-others-by-geography-north-america-europe-asia-paci-market-report.html . Explore more reports on Materials & Chemicals market at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/reports/materials-chemicals . About Us: RnRMarketResearch.com is your single source for all market research needs. Our database includes 500,000+ market research reports from over 100+ leading global publishers & in-depth market research studies of over 5000 micro markets. With comprehensive information about the publishers and the industries for which they publish market research reports, we help you in your purchase decision by mapping your information needs with our huge collection of reports. Connect with Us: G+ / Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/104156468549256253075/posts Twitter: https://twitter.com/RnRMR Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/RnR-Market-Research/413488545356345 RSS / Feeds: http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/feed Contact: Ritesh Tiwari UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ Magarpatta city, Hadapsar Pune - 411013 Maharashtra, India. Tel: +1-888-391-5441 sales@rnrmarketresearch.com SOURCE RnR Market Research MANCHESTER, England, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The combined totescoop6 pools are expected to swell to 3m on Saturday after the win fund rolled over at Haydock last week. A victory for Zebedaios in leg five triggered a rollover of 863,974 in the win pool, which has now eluded punters for six weeks. The bonus pool - last raided almost a year ago in July 2015 - was not played for and stands at 1,660,442. The total prize fund of 2,524,416 ranks at number nine in the all-time list of Scoop6 rollovers, but will climb three places to number six should the combined pools hit 3m. Interest in the millionaire-making bet has taken off over the past two weeks, with players investing more than 600,000 on each occasion. This figure is expected to rise again tomorrow and could hit 1m, giving a win fund of 1.2m and a bonus fund of 1.8m ahead of the opening leg. To claim the win fund, players will need to solve races split between Epsom and Musselburgh. With 100 entries spread across the six legs, Betfred make it 11/8 that the win fund will be scooped, while a rollover is odds-on at 4/7. totepool spokesman Andrew Griffiths said: "This weekend's Scoop6 is going to be colossal. "Turnover could easily pass the magic million mark and give Derby day punters an incredible 3m prize fund to aim at." Saturday's totejackpot will be in operation across the first six races at Epsom, with the Investec Derby (4:30 Epsom) selected as the totetrifecta rollover race. Looking ahead to Royal Ascot, totepool are excited to announce the totescoop6 will be in operation on every day of the Royal meeting. Any rollovers from next weekend's bet (June 11) will carry over to the opening day of the meeting on Tuesday 14 June. totescoop6 to be won - Betfred bet: 4/7 No; 11/8 Yes totescoop6 races - 04/06/2016 Leg 1: 2:00 Epsom Leg 2: 3:25 Musselburgh Leg 3: 3:45 Epsom Leg 4: 4:30 Epsom Leg 5: 5:15 Epsom Leg 6: 5:50 Epsom totescoop6 rollovers - 04/06/2016 Win: 863,974 Bonus: 1,660,442 Combined: 2,524,416 totejackpot - 04/06/2016 Leg 1: 2:00 Epsom Leg 2: 2:35 Epsom Leg 3: 3:10 Epsom Leg 4: 3:45 Epsom Leg 5: 4:30 Epsom Leg 6: 5:15 Epsom totetrifecta rollover race - 04/06/2016 4:30 Epsom totejackpot - 05/06/2016 Leg 1: 1:50 Goodwood Leg 2: 2:20 Goodwood Leg 3: 2:55 Goodwood Leg 4: 3:30 Goodwood Leg 5: 4:00 Goodwood Leg 6: 4:35 Goodwood SOURCE Betfred PUNE, India, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The report "Suspension Market by System (Passive & Semi-Active/Active), Damping (Hydraulic/Pneumatic, Electromagnetic), Architecture (Dependent & Semi-Independent/Independent), Leaf Spring & Air Suspension Markets, Component, Vehicle Type, & by Region - Forecast to 2021", published by MarketsandMarkets, is projected to grow at a CAGR of 5.11% by value, and reach USD 67.22 Billion by 2021. Factors such as increasing vehicle production, demand for comfort, luxury and rising demand for commercial vehicles is driving the market for suspension systems. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 ) Browse 99 market data tables with 76 figures spread through 260 pages and in-depth TOC on "Suspension Market - Forecast to 2021" http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/automobile-suspension-systems-market-939.html Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report. Asia-Oceania: Highest Growing Market for Suspension System Market Asia-Oceania, comprising countries such as China, Japan, India, and South Korea, is witnessing huge population growth. The increasing per capita income of the middle class population and cost advantages for OEMs is driving the market for high priced cars which in turn drives the market for advanced suspension systems. The increasing concern about quality and safety has ensured that suspension system manufacturers have developed advanced suspension systems which would cater to the customers demand. Moreover, stringent emission norms in Japan compel suspension system manufacturers to develop technologically advanced lightweight systems. These systems increase the fuel efficiency of the vehicle, while reducing its emissions. South Korea's automotive industry is changing with technology, market, and competition. New players are entering the South Korean market to build on the existing potential and are replacing the traditional automobile companies. There is a paradigm shift in South Korea's automotive industry with changing trends in technology, market, and competition. This change and growth is attributed to the collaborative measures of the government and OEMs to promote exports and global expansion. Make an Inquiry: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=939 Semi-active/active Suspension System: Promising system in Automotive Suspension The semi-active/active Suspension System Market is the highest growing system type in the Automotive Suspension System Market. It is projected to grow at a promising CAGR from 2016 to 2021. Semi-active/active suspension systems achieve better ride comfort with superior vibration control. Unlike passive suspension systems, semi-active/active suspension systems have the potential to provide both improved ride quality and handling performance, and helps improve braking and cornering performance. Leaf Spring Market: One of the major markets for Automotive Suspension System The leaf spring suspension system is one of the oldest suspension technologies used in automobiles. Leaf spring suspension is considered the simplest and subsequently the most suitable suspension technology for commercial vehicles. The emergence of coil spring independent suspension has led to a decline in the demand for leaf spring suspension in the passenger car segment. Global commercial vehicles production has been increased by 0.66 % from 2013 to 2014 according to the OICA (Organisation Internationale des Constructers Automobiles) which lead to increased demand for leaf springs suspensions. The emission standards in Europe and North America are very stringent which forces OEMs as well as leaf spring manufacturers in these regions to conduct extensive R&D. Some leaf spring manufacturers have developed composite leaf springs that are lighter and offer structural strength equal to that of steel. Leading players in the Automotive Suspension System Market are ZF Friedrichshafen AG (Germany), Tenneco Inc. (U.S.), KYB Corporation (Japan), Continental AG (Germany), Magneti Marelli S.p.A (Italy), and others. Study Coverage: The report covers the Automotive Suspension System Market, in terms of volume ('000 units) and value (USD million). It explains the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the Automotive Suspension System Market on the basis of system type, damping, architecture, components, vehicle type, and region, air Suspension Market by region and leaf spring market by region from 2016 to 2021. Browse related reports: Steering Market by System (EPS, EHPS & HPS), EPS Type (C-EPS, R-EPS & P-EPS), Component (Hydraulic Pump, Power Steering Column, Steering Wheel Speed Sensor, Electric Motor), Vehicle Type (PC, LCV, HCV & Agriculture Tractors), & by Region - Forecast to 2020 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/automobile-steering-systems-market-940.html Brake System Market by Application (PC, LCV, HCV, Off-Highway, Wagon, Locomotive, and RTV), Type (Disc and Drum), Technology (ABS, TCS, ESC, and EBD), Rolling Stock and Locomotive (Air, EP, ECP, and others), and Region - Global Forecast to 2020 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/automotive-brake-system-market-1070.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. Subscribe Reports from Automotive Domain @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Subscription.html Contact: Mr. Rohan Markets and Markets UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ Magarpatta city, Hadapsar Pune, Maharashtra 411013, India 1-888-600-6441 Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.com Visit MarketsandMarkets Blog @ http://mnmblog.org/market-research/automotive-transportation Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets SOURCE MarketsandMarkets The convention was sponsored by Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, Korea Communications Commission, Seoul Metropolitan Government, KBS, MBC, SBS, EBS, OBS, CBS, Arirang TV, tbs, Acoustical Society of Korea, Korea Association of Sound Artists, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, and many other companies and broadcasting stations in the industry. As the broadcasting and communication industry grows in Korea, propelling the growth of the future, KOBA is accredited by Association of Korea Exhibition Industry as an International Exhibition. The main displays of KOBA were the cutting-edge technology in categories of broadcasting and video industry: 4K/8K, UHD, 3D, Smart TV, Mobile TV, Digital Content, camera, VTR, editing system, distributor and receiver equipment, video editing equipment, character generator, CATV System, Internet and satellite broadcasting equipment, display, LED, Pro Audio, microphone, headphone, console, mixer, and instruments. There were about 10,000 devices on display, with 700 unique ones. Meanwhile, KOBA 2016 is hosted by KOREA E & EX and The Korea Broadcasting Engineers & Technicians Association, aiming to advance and improve Korean broadcasting culture, video, audio and light industry. World Media Forum, International Conference and Technology Seminar, and other various broadcasting equipment events will also take place at the same time. SOURCE KOBA According to the organization committee office, some 260 companies will join the expo, displaying their products at 282 booths in the conference center's No. 1 Pavilion. Exhibited products include spirits and wines, dairy products (milk and cheese), cosmetics and food (ingredients and leisure foods). Among the list, plenty are specialties of each country, such as dairy products from Lithuania, amber beeswax from Poland, crystal products and beers from Czech, red wines from Hungary, Romania and Macedonia, and rose-based cosmetic products from Bulgaria. "Exhibitors have showed great passion for presenting their products at China-CEEC expo this year," said Danhua Yu, director of CCEEC organization committee office. "We finished the business seeking procedure 20 days earlier than last year and there are 50 more companies coming to the expo this year compared with last." The high-tech show will be held at the No.6 Pavilion in the conference center. Leading high-tech companies in China will present their latest breakthroughs together with the Slovenia Pavilion -- the only foreign country pavilion. The 18 Chinese companies at the event include State Power Investment Corporation, China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC) and local companies in Zhejiang Province. High-tech projects on show cover a wide range of sectors, including nuclear power technology, medical equipment, clean energy, electric vehicles, glasses-free 3D technology and intelligent city management systems. In addition to products and technology exhibitions, China-CEEC expo also features business matching activities where exhibitors, retail dealers and importers can seek business opportunities after attending the exhibition. The municipal government of Ningbo has introduced policies to encourage more deals to be made during the expo, with Chinese business groups being offered financial incentives if they sign deals worth more than $20,000 with exhibitors from China and CEE countries during the expo. About China-CEEC Investment and Trade Expo China-CEEC (Central & Eastern European countries) Investment and Trade Expo is a major project declared in the Belgrade Guidelines and Suzhou Guidelines for Cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries. It is also the first expo on trade and investment between China and CEE countries. The first edition of the expo was held in Ningbo from June 8-12, 2015. It is hosted jointly by the Ministry of Commerce and the provincial government of Zhejiang, and organized by related sectors of the Ministry of Commerce, Ningbo municipal government and Department of Commerce of Zhejiang Province. SOURCE CCEEC Organization Committee Office English customers at Jack's Bar, at the Marina de San Fulgencio. Pepe Olivares (EL PAIS) London Street in San Fulgencio, a small municipality in the Mediterranean province of Alicante, opens up into a small square where street cafes encourage British retirees to sit in the sun and toast themselves lobster red. The pints of beer served at Jacks Bar also contribute to the skin hue of many residents here starting with Miller, a 67-year-old from York who adores karaoke and fears a Brexit vote. If the British decide to pull out of the European Union his modest pension wouldn't pay for his health costs, which at present, under a reciprocal EU treaty, are covered by the Spanish Social Security system, but that might end if out wins on June 23. Then Miller would have to pay for his own medication. An exit from the EU might also affect the value of the semi-detached home he has bought here. There are all kinds of properties in La Marina, from 30,000 apartments to villas going for a cool million There are many other retirees here in the same situation. In this sprawling residential development known as La Marina, Spanish is barely spoken. Located 40 kilometers from Alicante, and five kilometers inland from the resort of Torrevieja, La Marina de San Fulgencio is home to 56 nationalities mostly British citizens, but also many from Germany, Norway and Russia. They have their own radio stations and their own newspapers, and speak their own language with local bank clerks and vets. The decision to hold a referendum on Britains exit from the EU has seen a 30% drop in sales, explains Ascension Duarte, sitting inside her office at the Smart real estate agency. Theres a state of uncertainty that puts many contracts at risk. Transactions have been placed on hold until the result is announced. If Brexit happens, many English pensioners are going to find themselves in a very delicate situation. They are people with limited resources. Here in San Fulgencio, the health center is open 13 hours a day, but to curb a growing tide of health tourism, it only treats foreigners who are on the local resident register, the padron. Life here is leisurely, just like peoples daily routines: a stroll, a stop at the plaza, a bus ride to the beach, a beer at the pub, and a visit to the doctors. Healthcare is the key issue R. A. Although there are probably a lot more, the official number of British nationals living in Spain is around 300,000. And a third of them reside in the Valencian region for the weather, the quality of life, the real estate advantages and the health coverage. Everyone who registers on the local rolls has a right to use the public health system, and to subsidized prescription drugs that only require a small co-payment. Spain bills Britain an annual 300 million for its nationals health expenses eight times less than what Britain collects from Spain for Spaniards health coverage in the UK. Leaving the EU makes no sense to me, says Toby Kichenside, originally from London. And I dont say that just because its bad for me, but because its counter-intuitive to the idea of sharing a common space. It would mean economic disaster. It's a xenophobic and arrogant view. Things are just about even, but I hope that supporters of Brexit will reconsider. There are all sorts of properties in La Marina, from a 30,000 apartment to villas going for a cool million. There are retirees getting by on pensions, as well as high-income owners of mansions that wouldn't be out of place in Marbella. The truth is that the middle-class market has shrunk and the upper-class market has grown, says real estate agent Ascension Duarte. A lot of foreigners are arriving here who do not depend on the national health service and who will not be affected by a Brexit. Its a way to ensure that a very consolidated area remains dynamic. With an official registered population of 10,000, San Fulgencio tops the list of Spanish municipalities with the largest foreign population. Whats more, it always had global aspirations: during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) it fell under control of the republicans, who renamed it Ukraine-on-the-Segura. The Soviet tribute did not last long, but it does illustrate San Fulgencios exceptionally outward-looking status. Sign up for our newsletter EL PAIS English Edition has launched 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. As Miller puts it: I cant return to York. Life is more expensive, cigarettes are more expensive, beer is more expensive. I dont know what will become of my health if I stay in San Fulgencio, but I do know what will happen if I leave. English version by Susana Urra. -Young Living continues its global expansion in Europe, adding second market to Scandinavia- LEHI, Utah, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Young Living Essential Oils, LC, the world leader in essential oils, announced its continued global expansion with sales officially opening in Finland on May 28. Including Sweden, it is the second open market for Young Living in Scandinavia. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160118/323110LOGO "We are excited to establish our presence in Finland and to provide opportunities for the people in this region," said Jared Turner, Young Living Chief Operating Officer. "Opening sales in Finland enables us to move closer to fulfilling Founder Gary Young's vision of getting Young Living essential oils into every home in the world." Finland marks Young Living's fifteenth open market. In addition to Finland, Young Living has open markets in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Ecuador, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Sweden, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Australia. Young Living has plans to open two additional markets later in 2016. "Our members here have already embraced our products and love Young Living," said Joey Nanto, Young Living Vice President, United Kingdom. "We look forward to continued expansion and increasing our footprint in Europe." About Young Living Essential Oils Young Living Essential Oils, LC, is the world leader in essential oils with a strict Seed to Seal process to produce pure essential oil products for every individual, family, and lifestyle. This process ensures that all products are genuine, free of synthetic chemicals, and pure. This commitment stems from the company's 20 years of stewardship toward the earth and its people. For more information, visit YoungLiving.com. Media Contact: Jamie Kaneko Sr. Public Relations Manager 801.221.7128 jkaneko@youngliving.com Related Links http://YoungLiving.com SOURCE Young Living Essential Oils TALLINN, Estonia, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- From the battlespace to cyberspace, Russia's aggression, instability to Europe's south and rapidly evolving cyberthreats have contributed to the need for a new strategic reality for Euro-Atlantic security. This strategy must include not only collaboration among nations but also cooperation among governments and industry. Facilitating the conversation will be participants in the NATO Communications and Information (NCI) Agency/AFCEA International conference June 7-9 in Tallinn, Estonia, who will focus on building resilience through secure command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR). Known as NITEC, the 2016 event will begin with an opening address by Toomas Hendrick Ilves, president of Estonia, followed by Adm. Michael S. Rogers, USN, commander, U.S. Cyber Command, director, National Security Agency/Chief, Central Security Service. Adm. Rogers also will take part in the first panel session of the event with Ambassador Sorin D. Ducaru, assistant secretary general, Emerging Security Challenges, NATO. Panelists will discuss the context of the next NATO Summit, which takes place in Warsaw in July. At the summit, allies will decide on the balance between a forward presence and the alliance's ability to reinforce. The first day's activities will wrap up with an NCI panel discussion about new ways to work with industry partners both to network and to defend the networks. Paul Smith, the agency's chief strategy officer, will moderate the panel. Terry Halvorsen, chief information officer, U.S. Defense Department, will open NITEC's second day of activities, speaking about how to improve cyber basics through leadership, accountability and transparency. Cyber also will be the key topic of several of the day's panel discussions, including a presentation by Peter Scaruppe, director of acquisition, NCI Agency, about business opportunities. Commercial sector opportunities also will be the focus on day three. In addition to members of the NCI Agency conversing about best practices and common mistakes in bid proposals, Patrick Fesquet, director of procurement, NATO Support and Procurement Agency and Liviu Lazar, industry relations coordinator, strategy directorate, NATO Defence Investment Division, will describe business opportunities with NATO. Additional information about NITEC'16 is available online. About the NATO Communications and Information Agency The agency is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. It has more than 30 locations in Europe, North America and Southeast Asia in support of its customers and NATO operations. About AFCEA International The association, established in 1946, is a non-profit, non-lobbying membership association serving the military, government, industry and academia. Join online. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130410/DC92618LOGO SOURCE AFCEA International Related Links www.afcea.org BILOXI, Miss., June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Officials from the Agriculture Department, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Magnolia Health and the Mississippi Department of Education Office of Healthy Schools today launched a statewide summer food service program to provide nearly 3 million healthy meals to impoverished areas across the state. Beginning in 2013, The Agriculture Department targeted Mississippi and 21 other states to boost the program. Other states include: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. "Children need good nutrition all year long. When school lets out, millions of low-income children no longer have access to a healthy school breakfast or lunch," said USDA Food and Nutrition Service Regional Administrator Robin Bailey. "USDA's summer meal programs help fill the gap for children who depend on free and reduced-price meals when they are in school." The Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) will provide more than 40,939 meals a day in Mississippi up to two meals a day per child in some locations for a total of 2.78 million meals throughout the summer of 2016. That's an increase of 10 percent over the 2.5 million meals (37,218 per day) provided last year. Meals will be provided at schools, HUD multi-family housing complexes, recreation centers, low-income housing units, religious institutions, and more. "This is a vital, life-saving initiative. Our children are our future, and we must provide them with a healthy lifestyle so they can reach for their dreams," said Aaron Sisk, chief operating officer of Magnolia Health. "We are committed to delivering good, nutritious food throughout the summer to children across the state, while improving healthy outcomes. It starts with one child and one family at a time." The food program was announced at Feeding the Gulf Coast in Biloxi by officials from the Agriculture Department, HUD, Magnolia Health, MDE OHS and other local, state and national organizations. "There is no reason for a child in America to go hungry, but it is a sad reality for many kids in Mississippi. We can change it, one feeding site at a time," said HUD Mississippi field office director Jerrie G. Magruder. "It is a network of nutrition that we can grow organically, relentlessly. Our combined efforts make a difference; the Mississippi Regional Housing Authority No. VI just added six new feeding sites. We can do this." An added feature to this year's program is a user-friendly site locater, a convenient tool for children, parents, and community leaders to find their nearest summer meal sites. The Summer Meal Site Finder is a free, web-based application that features an easily-searchable map to help locate sites serving summer meals. You can also call 1-866-348-6479 (English) or 1-877-842-6273 (Spanish) to find a site near you. Or text FOOD (English) or COMIDA (Spanish) to 877-877, operated by a USDA partner, to find your nearest site. Also, families can call 2-1-1 to find nearby sites. To boost awareness of the program, additional Summer Food Service Program launch events are slated over the next two months across the state in Jackson, Miss., and other locations. The SFSP is a USDA Food and Nutrition (USDA FNS) initiative to reduce food scarcity for children living in districts where 50 percent or more of the child population qualifies for free or reduced lunch. One-third of Mississippi's children live in homes where access to good, nutritious food on a regular basis is limited, according to the USDA. Last year, nearly 500 sites across Mississippi served about 2.5 million meals to children living in poverty stricken areas. Magnolia Health will continue to work with the Mississippi Department of Education Office of Healthy Schools, USDA FNS and HUD to sponsor regional events to provide free meals to school-aged children across the state. About Magnolia Health Magnolia Health is a long-term solution to help the state of Mississippi enhance care for Medicaid and CHIP recipients, while most effectively managing taxpayer dollars. A physician-driven, Mississippi-based Coordinated Care Organization (CCO), Magnolia is backed by its parent company, Centene Corporation (Centene). Centene has more than 30 years of experience in Medicaid, CHIP and other government-funded programs such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and long-term care. For more information about Magnolia, visit www.magnoliahealthplan.com. SOURCE Magnolia Health Related Links http://www.magnoliahealthplan.com LONDON, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Alea Global Group executives were celebrating this week after winning two prestigious titles in the Business Worldwide Magazine (BWM) Awards. Mohammad Al Duaij picked up awards for Most Innovative CEO of the Year - Kuwait and Outstanding Contribution to Business CEO 2016. Both awards were created in order to recognise outstanding achievement and leadership at senior level. Al Duaij thanked the magazine for the accolades, particularly for the fact it would highlight the need for a mediator in business relationships between European nations or those in the Americas and Asia and the Middle East. "Any company looking to make inroads into the valuable Middle Eastern economy obviously needs to know how our economy, society and culture work. And this is something we are embedded in here at Alea ," he said. "We will help ensure that each side understands one other in order to prevent any unintended misunderstandings." Family firm Alea Global Group helps companies both work and invest successfully together in the Middle East by facilitating meetings and acting as a representative. The sectors the company focuses on are primarily real estate and private equity. Its primary aim is to locate opportunities for western investors, research them and carry out due diligence, then deliver when the time is right. Established in 1998, Alea Global Group is a highly regarded brand within Kuwait and further afield. "When we consider any new business activities, we look at the added value in terms of building relationships, more than the financial returns," said Al Duaij, who graduated from Leeds University with a BSc (Hons) in Accounting and Finance more than a decade ago. He has also worked for the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development and as an investment manager forming global real estate fund at Global Investment House - Kuwait He believes in creating opportunities rather than waiting for them to come to him - which fits in perfectly with his extra-curricular activities as a mountain climber and surfer. On that note he is currently helping a number of western and Asian companies to establish and enhance their presence in the Middle East. More information on Al Duaij and Alea Global Group can be found on the company website at www.aleaglobalgroup.com An interview with Mohammad Al Duaij, CEO of Alea Global Group, is available here: http://www.bwmonline.com/2016/05/interview-mohammad-al-duaij-ceo-alea-global-group/ An article on the company can also be found on BWM website http://www.bwmonline.com/2016/05/alea-global-group-business-middle-east/ For more details on Business Worldwide Magazine Awards 2016, go to http://www.bwmonline.com/awards/ About Business Worldwide Magazine Business Worldwide Magazine is the leading source of business and dealmaker intelligence throughout the world. Our quarterly magazine and online news portal enables an established audience of corporate dealmakers to track the latest news, stories and developments affecting the international markets, corporate finance, business strategy and changes in legislation. This readership includes of CEO/CFO - Banks, Corporate Lawyers and Venture Capital/Private Equity Companies to name a few. http://www.bwmonline.com Contact David Jones Awards Department E: [email protected] W: http://www.bwmonline.com SOURCE Business Worldwide Magazine ARLINGTON, Va., June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, American Trucking Associations President and CEO Bill Graves extended an invitation to the trucking industry to attend the 2016 ATA Management Conference & Exhibition, being held from October 1-4 in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. American Trucking Associations is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. Through a federation of 50 affiliated state trucking associations and industry-related conferences and councils, ATA is the voice of the industry America depends on most to move our nation's freight.Trucking Moves America Forward. "MCE is the most important meeting for trucking executives this year," said ATA President and CEO Bill Graves. "Our agenda is dedicated to helping you find the answers you need to run your company safely, efficiently and profitably. MCE will deliver a one-of-a-kind opportunity to share common experiences, concerns and solutions with colleagues from across the country." MCE attendees will hear from industry experts and leading trucking executives on topics ranging from electronic logging devices and the future of truck safety technology to federal regulations and safety benchmarking. "This event is the preeminent, must-see industry conferences each year, and because it is geared towards high-level executives, MCE brings extensive value to each attendee," said ATA Chairman Pat Thomas, senior vice president of state government affairs at UPS. The conference features an exhibit hall showcasing the latest products from industry suppliers, policy committee meetings and education sessions on trending transportation topics. In addition to the educational and networking opportunities, a highlight of the meeting will be Graves' final "State of the Industry" address where he will look back on his decade-plus as the head of ATA. To register for the 2016 ATA Management Conference & Exhibition, presented by premier sponsor ACT 1, visit mce.trucking.org. ACT 1 member companies are dedicated to enhancing the business environment of the transportation industry. For a full recap of ATA's 2015 MCE, check out ATA's YouTube playlist covering each day of the event. American Trucking Associations is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. Through a federation of 50 affiliated state trucking associations and industry-related conferences and councils, ATA is the voice of the industry America depends on most to move our nation's freight. Follow ATA on Twitter or on Facebook. Trucking Moves America Forward Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140523/90962 SOURCE American Trucking Associations Related Links http://www.trucking.org CHICAGO, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- AVANT's portfolio of leading edge technology providers just got a little bigger today. The addition of Effortless signals not only a new partnership for the two companies, but also shows AVANT's readiness to fuel the rapidly increasing demand that small and mid-sized business (SMBs) have to offload the IT department's routine tasks, such as adding new users, upgrading software, and making changes to the individual users in the company. The private all-in-the-cloud model Effortless provides is one businesses claim not only saves them money on staffing, but adds additional security and freedoms they never thought possible. Avant Partners With Effortless to Support Explosive Demand for Cloud Computing Services Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375305 Ian Kieninger, CEO of Avant, says, "Effortless brings the quadruple play to the table, meaning they are experts in Security, IaaS, DRaaS and DaaS." Kieninger went on to say, "They also offer great migration services which makes Effortless a very unique and important partner in our portfolio and an easy choice for our channel partners and their customers." The growth seen in the hosted desktop market is anticipated to continue its sharp rise as forecasted by IDC's projection of more than a 40% growth rate by 2018. As cloud desktops become the norm for SMBs, it is now more important than ever for the cloud providers to go the extra mile to win and keep clients. Kieninger is enthusiastic that Effortless does just that. He says, "Effortless is extremely flexible, creative, and does what it takes to help our partners be successful." "The success of our clients and partners is our number one goal," said Benjamin Gayheart, Founder and President of Effortless, the cloud computing and security firm headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada. "Clients love that we take care of the support with our 24-hour USA-based team standing by and our non-stop proactive monitoring of the entire business network. We got our start in one of the most regulated industries out there - the casino gaming industry. Even before it was mandatory, we were delivering our PCI, HIPAA, and HITECH compliant solutions to casinos up and down the strip. It was natural for us to expand to healthcare and legal with the compliance practices we have in place." And expand they have. As the demand for highly secure private clouds has grown, so has Effortless. The firm now serves clients across the United States and reaches industries not just in gaming, healthcare and legal, but also in retail, insurance, hospitality, construction, and manufacturing, just to name a few. Their rapid growth, however, is not at the cost of their clients. Says longtime customer and famed Vegas CIO Richard Faircloth, "I am thrilled to say that Effortless is vital to our all-new resort and remains a part of the new Tropicana Las Vegas family." Effortless also offers a Security-as-a-Service product called Effortless Defense. This product provides an added layer of security that goes beyond the expected firewall, SPAM filter, and antivirus. Effortless Defense is included with every Effortless Desktop and is also available as a standalone Security-as-a-Service offering. Kieninger stated that, "As a leader in the security space, we retain the best technology by bringing on next-gen security providers that will give our partners the edge. We believe Effortless is one of those top providers, and we are excited to partner with them as they become a leading player in the market." This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com SOURCE Effortless LA JOLLA and SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Bank of the West today announced the addition of its new business banking branch located at 4180 La Jolla Village Drive, Suite 150, La Jolla, California 92037. Bank of the West is expanding in La Jolla to meet the growing demand of businesses in the community. This new location is staffed by experienced business bankers, retail bankers, and wealth management professionals. This diversity of expertise fosters a collaborative approach to helping Bank of the West's customers with their business, personal, and wealth management needs. "San Diego and La Jolla are some of the fastest-growing areas in the United States, and we're looking forward to expanding our presence to help the wide variety of small and mid-sized businesses in the area thrive," said Michelle Di Gangi, executive vice president of small and medium-size enterprise banking at Bank of the West. "Our new branch is home to business banking experts with deep knowledge and experience within the local La Jolla market. Bank of the West examines each business's needs with a holistic approach, offering customers an array of guidance and solutions." The new La Jolla branch provides a full spectrum of financial solutions and has experts on site to help business owners address important issues, such as managing cash flow, planning for growth, and preparing for retirement, among others. As the nation's 14th largest small business lender and one of the top small business association (SBA) lenders in the country, the bank is well positioned to help business owners with their credit needs. Bank of the West is known for cultivating experienced business bankers and convening the right team of experts to service customers' individual needs. While helping businesses with banking needs is the new branch's primary focus, Bank of the West will also provide personal and wealth management services for business owners and wealthy individuals and families. "We've heard from our business customers that they appreciate having access to a full spectrum of products and services that address their multi-dimensional financial needs," said Di Gangi. "As a result, we've brought together an integrated team at our La Jolla branch to help customers address their business and personal finances in a way that makes sense for them." In addition to providing business and wealth management specialists in La Jolla, Bank of the West serves larger corporate clients through its Commercial Banking Group (CBG). Embedded in communities across the U.S. CBG's local banker's deliver specialized sector expertise and global banking solutions including international cash management and trade solutions to help businesses gain a competitive edge and accelerate growth in their home market and abroad. Bank of the West, the fastest growing small business bank in the U.S., is committed to providing resources to help small- and medium-sized businesses succeed - such as spotlighting industry trends, sharing insights from other business owners, and offering wealth management expertise. Additional information is available for Business owners by visiting Bank of the West's The Blog "Your Business" tab featured on blog.bankofthewest.com. Business owners may download the latest papers related to topics such as fraud prevention; strategic growth strategies; and wealth management strategies for business owners. About Bank of the West: Bank of the West is a regional financial services company chartered in California and headquartered in San Francisco with $77.2 billion in assets as of March 31, 2016. 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 23 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. Bank of the West Wealth Management Group offers products and services through Bank of the West and its various affiliates and subsidiaries. BancWest Holding Inc. is the holding company for Bank of the West. BancWest Holding Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of BNP Paribas. Investment and Insurance Products: NOT FDIC INSURED NOT BANK GUARANTEED MAY LOSE VALUE NOT A DEPOSIT NOT INSURED BY ANY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENCY Deposit and loan products offered by Bank of the West, Member FDIC. Member FDIC and Equal Housing Lender Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150226/178001LOGO SOURCE Bank of the West Related Links http://www.bankofthewest.com MADISON HEIGHTS, Mich., June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Editorial Advisory and Securities Review Committee of BetterInvesting Magazine today announced LKQ Corporation (NDQ: LKQ) as its August 2016 "Stock to Study" and Gilead Sciences, Inc. (NDQ: GILD) as its August 2016 "Undervalued Stock" for investors' informational and educational use. "The committee selected LKQ for its consistent historical growth, continued opportunities for growth in providing replacement auto parts and reasonable current valuation," said Adam Ritt, editor of BetterInvesting Magazine. "For the Undervalued selection, the committee believes that Gilead Sciences could benefit from recent developments in HIV and hepatitis C treatments and that the current valuation is extremely reasonable." Check BetterInvesting's August issue for more details about these selections. Go to the trial version of BetterInvesting's online tools to study the investment potential of LKQ and Gilead Sciences by viewing their fundamental data and applying judgments. Committee members are Kenneth M. Bernard, CFA; Robert M. Bilkie, Jr., CFA; Daniel J. Boyle, CFA; Marisa Bradbury, CFA; Philip S. Dano, CFA; Donald E. Danko, CFA; Maury Elvekrog, CFA; and Walter J. Kirchberger, CFA. As stated, the BetterInvesting committee's Stock to Study and Undervalued Stock choices are for the informational and educational uses of investors and are not intended as investment recommendations. BetterInvesting urges investors to educate themselves about the stock market so they can make informed decisions about stock purchases. About BetterInvesting BetterInvesting is a national nonprofit organization that has been empowering individual investors since 1951. Founded in Detroit, the association (formerly known as National Association of Investors Corporation) was borne out of the conviction that anyone can become a successful long-term investor by following commonsense investing practices. BetterInvesting has helped more than 5 million people become better, more informed investors by providing webinars, in-person events, easy-to-use online tools for analyzing stocks, a monthly magazine and a community of volunteers and like-minded investors. For more information about BetterInvesting, visit its website at www.betterinvesting.org or call toll free (877) 275-6242. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook. SOURCE BetterInvesting Related Links http://www.betterinvesting.org SAN DIEGO, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The highly anticipated 2016 Biocom Purchasing Group Lab Supply contract was awarded to the Fisher Scientific channel after an eighteen-month, member-driven RFP process that was the first deep open market dive in over eighteen years. Biocom Purchasing Group, the world-class group purchasing organization servicing Biocom, California's leading life science trade association, will be able to offer Biocom members an unparalleled breadth of laboratory products, services and globally competitive pricing through the Fisher Scientific channel. This multimillion dollar contract was awarded after a selection process that sought to ensure Biocom members would have access to unprecedented industry-leading life science solutions. Biocom Purchasing Group Announces 2016 Lab Supply Distribution RFP Winner - Fisher Scientific Channel "This was the most robust and carefully managed RFP process the industry has ever seen," said Joseph Panetta, president and chief executive officer of Biocom. Biocom leveraged the purchasing power of nearly 800 members and leaned on them to assemble a multi-disciplinary team of scientists, lab managers, supply chain specialists, financial advisors and executive leaders to collaborate in a vetting process that involved over 5,000,000 data points and 35,000 pages of information. Panetta added, "We listened to our members, and the end result is an extraordinary contract and offering that will deliver a competitive advantage for our members on a global stage. As our industry evolves, partnering with the leader in scientific technology and innovation is critical to accelerating life science success." Fisher Scientific, one of Thermo Fisher Scientific's premier brands, represents the industry-leading customer channel, bringing together the collective strength of its life sciences portfolio of leading brands, world-class e-commerce platform and comprehensive support. This all-encompassing contract is exclusive to Biocom members and far surpassed the offers from all other participants; a testament to the company's commitment to this industry and specifically to the Biocom member base. "We are pleased to offer Biocom members the industry-leading offering of products and services available through our Fisher Scientific channel, enhanced by the unique depth of capabilities of our overall company," said Greg Herrema, president of Thermo Fisher Scientific's customer channel business. "Our company's mission is to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer, which complements Biocom's mission to help life science companies and their employees fulfill their business goals and improve life through advancements in health, energy and agriculture. California's leading statewide life sciences association and its members now have unparalleled access to the leader in laboratory support and life sciences tools to help them accelerate innovation and enhance productivity, whether they're working in a research lab, a clinic or on a production line." To find out how your company can start taking advantage of highly competitive pricing and category discounts, the most extensive offering of products and services under one umbrella, a dedicated team of sales and customer service professionals and the lowest total cost of acquisition, visit www.biocom.org/wechangedthegame today, or visit us next week in San Francisco at our 'Power Up' Party at the exclusive AWS Loft. About Biocom: Biocom is a member driven organization providing unmatched opportunities and resources to help life science companies and their employees fulfill their business goals and improve life through advancements in health, energy and agriculture. Biocom offers member companies meaningful access to the influential drivers propelling the industry forward across all major life science sectors, including biotechnology, pharmaceutical, diagnostic, medical device, connected health, agriculture and bio-renewable energy. About Thermo Fisher Scientific Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is the world leader in serving science, with revenues of $17 billion and more than 50,000 employees in 50 countries. Our mission is to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. We help our customers accelerate life sciences research, solve complex analytical challenges, improve patient diagnostics and increase laboratory productivity. Through our premier brands Thermo Scientific, Applied Biosystems, Invitrogen, Fisher Scientific and Unity Lab Services we offer an unmatched combination of innovative technologies, purchasing convenience and comprehensive support. For more information, please visit www.thermofisher.com. Contact: Biocom Media Contact Information: Julie Ames, 858-455-0300 x127 New Business Contact Information: George Bonaros, 858-455-0300 x107 Contact: Biocom Media Contact Information: Julie Ames, 858-455-0300 x127 [email protected] New Business Contact Information: George Bonaros, 858-455-0300 x107 [email protected] Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375440 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130228/LA69104LOGO SOURCE Biocom Related Links http://www.biocom.org Demonstrators face up against riot police. Joan Sanchez Around 200 people staged a noisy demonstration on Thursday afternoon outside the Barcelona offices of the owner of a former bank-turned-community center in the citys Gracia neighborhood, where police recently evicted squatters, sparking violent protests over several nights. Many in the crowd concealed their identity by wearing masks featuring the face of the owner of the repossessed property, Manuel Bravo Solano, while others bore signs reading Bravo Solano get out of our neighborhood. The squatters who lived for five years at a former bank refuse to talk to Barcelona City Hall, which has offered them alternative, municipally-owned properties As shoppers and office workers looked on, the protesters began pasting posters and spray-painting the windows of upmarket stores of the Paseo de Gracia, one of the Catalan capitals main thoroughfares. But when the demonstrators arrived at an office building owned by Bravo Solano, they were met by a line of riot police. After hurling insults at the police and reporters covering the event, the protesters then handed out leaflets to passersby. After a few minutes, escorted by the police, the group returned to the nearby Gracia neighborhood, making their way to the former bank where the organizers said they would organize a bigger march for Saturday. Barcelona has seen similar incidents over recent years: efforts to evict squatters from the Can Vies former labor union headquarters two years ago resulted in a negotiated settlement that allowed occupiers to remain. This time round, the building is privately owned and the squatters are not prepared to negotiate. The squatters who lived for five years at the former bank have refused to talk to Barcelona City Hall, which has offered them alternative, municipally owned properties. English version by Nick Lyne. ATLANTA, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Viking prince Rurik is credited with the founding of the Russian nation and a large monument was erected in the city of Novgorod to honor him. Rurik's wife Princess Efanda was not included in the monument and author Judith Martin has a problem with this. Ms. Martin believes that the princess is an equal founder of the Russian state and wants Russian president Vladimir Putin to build a separate monument in Novgorod to honor Princess Efanda. Saga of a Princess book cover Judith Martin Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160602/374742 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160602/374743 Ms. Martin's new children's picture book "Saga of a Princess" is dedicated to the memory of this forgotten Viking princess. Prince Rurik is offered and accepts the throne of Novgorod, a city across the sea, but wants his wife Princess Efanda to stay behind in Scandinavia. Efanda sneaks off and leaves for Novgorod. While on his way to Novgorod, Rurik runs into his wife and is shocked to know that she made the journey that he thought was too dangerous for her. Princess Efanda proved that she is just as brave and adventurous as her husband Prince Rurik. Saga of a Princess is the second book in Ms. Martin's Pantheon of Beauty series on beautiful and inspiring women from across the globe. Ms. Martin's love for fashion, geography and global cultures is what led her to write her books. "I want to empower all the women and young girls of the world with each book. My books are a reflection of the diversity among all the beautiful women of the world. It's time women start defining beauty for themselves," said Judith. Contact: Judith Martin 404-6443431 Email www.sagaofaprincess.com www.facebook.com/sagaofaprincess https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBIndRFB2UQ SOURCE Judith Martin Related Links http://www.sagaofaprincess.com "These new honors are an awe-inspiring reflection of the high-caliber of our students," said Paul Moda, Coordinator of Student Activities at BHCC and Advisor to Alpha Kappa Mu (AKM). At PTK International, which took place April 7-9 in National Harbor, Maryland, AKM won in competition with than 1,200 chapters nationwide and scored in the top 50 in the country to win its first International Hallmark Award. Hallmark Awards are based on overall chapter performance, the completion of an Honors in Action Project and College Project, as well as performance by individual and executive board members. At the PTK regional event, which took place March 18-19 at the Community College of Rhode Island, AKM won first place overall, beating 56 chapters, for its Honors in Action Project "Power of the Heart." The Honors in Action Project Award recognizes top chapters whose project entries demonstrate excellence in academic research in the Honors Study Topic, leadership roles and leadership development activities, service learning and collaboration. AKM member Tori Joyce, a graphic design major, earned second place as a Distinguished Chapter Member. AKM members Lavell Wesley and Sondos Alnamos were singled out for honors in the 2016 Phi Theta Kappa Regional Arts Awards Competition. Wesley took home First Place in the Fine Arts Competition for his picture "Hidden" and Sondos Alnamos, who serves as Student Trustee on BHCC's Board of Trustees, won Third Place in the Fine Arts Competition for her drawing "Vision by Heart." Wesley is part of BHCC's Engineering Transfer Program. Recently BHCC student Tung Doan was honored as a 2016 Coca-Cola New Century Scholar. Sondos Alnamos was named a 2016 Coca-Cola Community College Academic Team Bronze Scholar in March. AKM is BHCC's chapter of the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society. Membership qualifies students for transfer scholarships at colleges and universities throughout the country. Headquartered in Jackson, Mississippi, PTK is the largest honor society in higher education with 1,285 chapters on college campuses in all 50 of the United States, U.S. territorial possessions and eight sovereign nations. More than three million students have been inducted since its founding in 1918, with approximately 134,000 students inducted annually. Media Contact: Karen M. Norton, Executive Director of Integrated Marketing and Communications Bunker Hill Community College, Boston, MA 02129 Phone: 617-228-2177; Email: [email protected] Bunker Hill Community College is the largest community college in Massachusetts. The College enrolls more than 14,000 students on two campuses and at three satellite locations. BHCC is one of the most diverse institutions of higher education in Massachusetts. Sixty-four percent of the students are people of color and more than half of BHCC's students are women. The College also enrolls more than 900 international students who come from approximately 100 countries and speak more than 75 languages. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375434 SOURCE Bunker Hill Community College Related Links http://www.bhcc.mass.edu NEW YORK, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Toronto based beauty brand Jirano announced today the launch of its Jirano Beauty Affiliate Program. Targeting beauty bloggers who focus specifically on curly hair, regardless of ethnicity and their loyal customers, the Affiliate Program builds on Jirano's message of a global neighborhood. "By allowing affiliates to earn commission on any item purchased via their personal banner link, we give a kind of ownership to our consumer. In Swahili, Jirani means neighborhood. We look at the curly hair community as such and want to encourage the relationship to flourish through this program," notes founder Jane Nyachiro. The Jirano Beauty Affiliate Program boasts a 10% commission on every item sold and has partners covered with pre sized, hi resolution banner images that link directly to the affiliate's unique shopping cart, crediting the affiliate account immediately at the time of purchase. In addition, notes Rob Wyers, VP of Brand Operations, "Affiliate partners qualify for special discounts and sales created specifically for their readers creating a uniquely tailored beauty experience each for each visitor." As coconut oil continues to create a beauty frenzy with its seemingly unlimited uses, Jirano captures the essence of the oil by including coconut extracts in each of its products. The company responsibly harvests the highest quality clean rated, natural coconut and other ingredients used in their hair formulations with the greatest of care. The full range of hair cleansing and styling products include Coconut Shampoo free of silicone, sulfates and parabens, Silky Coconut and Coconut Leave-In conditioners, Coconut Curl Definer and its latest multi use product, the Bombay Hair Growth Serum. For more information on becoming a Jirano Beauty Affiliate, log onto http://www.affiliatly.com/af-10933/affiliate.panel Jirano Beauty provides Simply Beautiful Hair to women with curls of all ethnicities and origins. The full range of cleansing and styling products anchored by Coconut Oil can be found online at www.jirano.com. Media Contact: Tristina Amabile 877.841.7244 Email SOURCE Jirano Related Links http://www.jirano.com NEW YORK, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Charles Griffin Intelligence is pleased to announce the publication of Philip Segal's "The Art of Fact Investigation: Creative Thinking in the Age of Information Overload" (Ignaz Press). The founder of New York-based Charles Griffin Intelligence, Segal has spoken and written widely on the topic of fact gathering both for attorneys and general audiences. He appears frequently on Fox Business News, CNN and Bloomberg News. His blog The Ethical Investigator has been consulted by attorneys nationwide. Now, his book "The Art of Fact Investigation" has been hailed as a tool "for the ultra-inquisitive reader" by Publishers Weekly, and "engaging" and "never dull" by Kirkus Reviews. Segal argues that investigation is as much an art as it is science. His book is of interest not only to lawyers eager to cut search costs and improve results, but to journalists, corporate officers or any member of the general public who after some Google searching asks, "Where do I look next?" "While the Internet has made searching for facts quicker, it has also made investigation more complicated. Within the vast sea of information, facts about a person could be anywhere," said Segal. "This is not just a 'how-to' book when it comes to investigation, but a 'why investigation can be so difficult' book as well. Answering the 'why' question helps people become better at fact finding," Segal added. The Art of Fact Investigation is an essential read for those needing to know: Why Google and all the most expensive databases may help, they are only a starting point for the most sophisticated inquiries. Why in high stakes matters, "Big Data" and artificial intelligence don't get the job done. Thinking creatively does. Why lawyers can waste hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars searching for facts the wrong way. One reason is that law schools spend no time on the subject. How the best interviewers prepare for and conduct interviews before depositions or to gather background information. Available on Amazon.com in hardcover or ebook, or from Ignaz Press. (www.artoffactinvestigation.com). To contact the author for background information or interviews, please email the firm at: [email protected] or call 212-332-2845. www.charlesgriffinllc.com For review copies, please email [email protected] or call 646-861-8382. SOURCE Charles Griffin Intelligence Related Links http://www.charlesgriffinllc.com GLENVIEW, Ill., June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Combined Insurance, a leading provider of individual supplemental accident, disability, health, and life insurance products, and a Chubb company, served as one of Casa Central's Week of Hope sponsors and co-hosted a special family resource festival for the community last week. Started in 1980, Week of Hope is a cornerstone of Casa Central. After more than 30 years of celebrations, the goals remain the same: advocate for the needs of Chicago Latino families, raise awareness about the increasing challenges facing older adults, and build better and stronger relationships with the Chicago community and business partners. Combined Insurance hosted a booth during Week of Hope aimed at raising awareness around the protection that supplemental insurance provides, as well as career opportunities at the company. Employee volunteers from Combined Insurance also coordinated carnival games for attending children. "Week of Hope presents a wonderful opportunity to help support Latinos in our community and for them to see first-hand how Casa Central positively impacts their lives," said Melanie Lundberg, Assistant Vice President, Talent Management and Corporate Communications, at Combined Insurance. "We are so proud to work with the largest Latino social service agency in the Midwest, and to offer career opportunities to the growing population of Latinos in Chicago. We aim to continue building our corporate presence with the Latino community here in Chicago and our partnership with Casa Central." Since 1954, Casa Central has delivered evidenced-based, award-winning programming in response to the needs of the Hispanic community. In addition to supporting Week of Hope, 70 Combined Insurance employee volunteers completed five painting projects at Casa Central's La Posada Interim Housing Program last October, as part of their parent company's Global Day of Service. "Through the generous support of our community sponsors, such as Combined Insurance, we are able to provide hope for hundreds of families now and in the future by helping them achieve a sustainable life," said Nilda La Luz Interim President and CEO at Casa Central. "I have seen the difference that our supporters have made in the lives of our Casa Central families for more than 25 years, and I am grateful to build partnerships with those organizations who value our mission and the integral work we do in the Hispanic community." Combined Insurance has a tradition of success in the insurance industry dating back more than 90 years. Founded in 1922 by W. Clement Stone, the company honors his commitment of giving back with volunteer efforts and donations to charitable organizations throughout the year with a special focus on veteran, Latino, and health-focused charities. This year, the company announced its commitment to hire more than 300 bilingual sales agents to expand its presence across the largest Spanish speaking areas in the nation. Combined Insurance was named to Hispanic Network Magazine's 2015 Best of the Best Lists recognized as one of the top diversity employers in the nation. The Best of the Best Lists represent organizations that embrace a wide range of perspectives, attract the very best talent, and understand the demographics of the market place and its needs. For more information about Combined Insurance products, career opportunities, or to contact a local sales agent, call 1-800-490-1322 or visit www.combinedinsurance.com. About Combined Insurance Combined Insurance Company of America (Chicago, IL) is a leading provider of individual supplemental accident, disability, health and life insurance products and a Chubb company. With a tradition of more than 90 years of success, Combined Insurance is one of Ward's Top 50 Performing Life-Health Insurance Companies and was named the number one Military Friendly Employer by G.I. Jobs magazine in 2015 and 2016. Combined Insurance is committed to making the world of supplemental insurance easy to understand. Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CombinedIns Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/CombinedInsuranceUnitedStates Connect with us on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/combined-insurance View our videos on YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/CombinedInsuranceUSA Follow us on Instagram: www.instagram.com/combinedinsurance Read more on our blog, Supplementally Speaking: www.combinedinsurance.com/blog About the New Chubb Chubb is the world's largest publicly traded property and casualty insurance company. With operations in 54 countries, Chubb provides commercial and personal property and casualty insurance, personal accident and supplemental health insurance, reinsurance and life insurance to a diverse group of clients. The company is distinguished by its extensive product and service offerings, broad distribution capabilities, exceptional financial strength, underwriting excellence, superior claims handling expertise and local operations globally. Parent company Chubb Limited is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: CB) and is a component of the S&P 500 index. Chubb maintains executive offices in Zurich, New York, London and other locations, and employs approximately 31,000 people worldwide. Additional information can be found at: www.new.chubb.com. Logo- http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160126/325926LOGO SOURCE Combined Insurance WASHINGTON, June 2, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Top international researchers as well as visitors from around the United States, will converge at the 50th Anniversary of Cued Speech Conference, which celebrates the enormous success at increasing literacy among students who are deaf/hard of hearing since Cued Speech was invented a half century ago. The conference is from July 8-10, 2016 at the Westin Tysons Corner in Falls Church, VA and is hosted by the National Cued Speech Association. Lead conference sponsors are Nuby (children's baby products), Gallaudet University and hearing aid manufacturer Oticon. Cued Speech is a mode of communication that visually represents the sounds of language. Today, deaf adult cuers are graduates from top American universities such as Brown, Harvard, Yale, Syracuse, MIT, NYU, Baylor and Berkeley, to name a few. The conference features an International Symposium where cuers from around the world will present on how Cued Speech is used in their countries. The program includes thought provoking seminars on subjects such as cochlear implants, lifestyle issues for native cuers, bilingual education with ASL, early intervention, cued language transliteration and discussions of various applications for cueing. A Gala Awards Dinner will honor those who have made significant contributions to furthering Cued Speech. There will also be programs for children and teens. Professionals attending may receive continuing education units for attendance. An expert on Literacy Intervention, Dr. Beverley Trezek, the keynote speaker, is the lead author of Early Literacy Development in Deaf Children (Mayer & Trezek, 2015) and completed research on the use of Cued Speech as compared to Visual Phonics. She was instrumental in the decision by Illinois School for the Deaf to begin using Cued Speech. Native cuer Dr. Michael Argenyi will speak during a luncheon about his federal court case advocating for a Cued Language Transliterator in medical school. Special education attorney and parent Lisa Weiss will provide an overview of Special Education law, as well as ADA rights. The expected record breaking attendance reflects peaked professional interest in using Cued Speech to meet tougher state educational standards. With states demanding higher levels of educational achievement, the idea that deaf children can achieve the same literacy levels as hearing children is attractive. The conference will provide a forum at which experts, educators, and families can come together and share their experiences and expertise for the first time in a decade. Groundbreaking new applications of Cued Speech are proving to be beneficial not only to the deaf and hard-of hearing, but also in helping children with special learning needs communicate effectively with their families and within society. Representatives attending the conference come from almost every state as well as the Philippines, Ethiopia, Iran, Switzerland, Belgium, France, and Poland. Research from Gallaudet University shows that deaf cueing children are capable of basic pre-reading skills, such as rhyming, which are excellent predictors for future reading abilities (LaSasso, Crain, & Leybeart, 2003; Leblanc, 2005). Cued Speech was invented in 1966 by Dr. R. Orin Cornett, a physicist who was surprised by the low literacy rates for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. He became Vice President for Long Range Planning at Gallaudet, where he focused his attention to resolving the literacy issue. His solution was Cued Speech, a system of eight handshapes (representing groups of consonant sounds) in four positions around the face (representing groups of vowel sounds) in combination with natural mouth movements. The simple but revolutionary concept caught on across the country, especially among hearing parents of deaf children (over 90 percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents). Since its invention 50 years ago, researchers have documented that Cued Speech holds the keys to language growth, phonemic awareness, increased communication and inclusion in the family, literacy, higher level thinking skills and a college education. The National Cued Speech Association was formed in 1982 and is the oldest cueing advocacy organization in the world. The NCSA champions effective communication, increased language, and literacy through the use of Cued Speech. CONTACT: SARINA ROFFE 800.459.3529 [email protected] www.cuedspeech50.org SOURCE National Cued Speech Association Related Links http://cuedspeech.org "Beal Bank was the lender for a senior loan that refinances debt on Panda Power Funds' Sherman, Texas, power plant. The $360 million transaction, representing 100% senior secured debt, was facilitated and arranged by Jefferies LLC and closed May 20, with White & Case as lender counsel," said Jacob Cherner, President of CSG Investments, Inc. (investment consultant to Beal Bank). " We were pleased to be able to meet Panda Power Funds' requirements because the transaction further affirms our commitment to the energy and power sector. We expect refinancing needs in the sector to continue, and we expect to be an active player for the foreseeable future." CSG Investments, Inc. is a global buy-and-hold institution headquartered in Dallas, Texas. We provide flexible and creative capital solutions for all types of commercial and industrial customers. CSG Investments, Inc. is an affiliate of Beal Bank and Beal Bank USA, both strongly capitalized financial institutions. CSG Investments, Inc. is a direct, one-stop source of capital for up to $550 million per transaction. For additional information, please contact Steve Harvey ([email protected]) or James Donahoe ([email protected]). About Panda Power Funds, LP Founded in 2010, Panda Power Funds is a private equity firm headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that develops, owns, operates and manages investments in clean energy. Panda has three combined-cycle power plants in operation in Temple and Sherman, Texas, and four combined-cycle power plants currently under construction in Pennsylvania and Virginia with a combined capacity of more than 5,800 megawatts. Panda Power Funds also has a 990-megawatt power project in Southern Maryland in advanced development. The fund built a 20-megawatt solar farm in southwest New Jersey that is one of the largest solar facilities in the Northeast United States. Additional information on Panda Power Funds can be found at www.pandafunds.com. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160602/374970 SOURCE CSG Investments, Inc. Related Links http://www.csginvestments.com Measles is a highly contagious disease that spreads through the air when an infected person coughs or sneezes. The most common symptoms of measles include fever (101 F or higher), cough, runny nose, and red, watery eyes, followed by a rash that is red, raised and blotchy. Symptoms can appear seven to 12 days after exposure but may take up to 21 days. An infected person can spread measles to others even before knowing he/she has the diseasefrom four days before developing the measles rash through four days afterward. Vaccination is the most effective way to protect people from measles and CVS Pharmacy and MinuteClinic is offering the MMR vaccine at more than 140 locations in Maricopa and Pinal Counties.1 The MMR vaccine may be effective if given within the first three days (72 hours) after exposure to measles. It is important for anyone who has not been vaccinated to receive the MMR vaccine to ensure protection from future measles exposure. "Immunizations are an important part of preventive care and a critical way to prevent the spread of serious diseases, like measles," said Dr. Andrew Sussman, Executive Vice President and Associate Chief Medical Officer of CVS Health, and President of MinuteClinic. "Our CVS pharmacists and MinuteClinic nurse practitioners are ready to provide measles vaccinations to people living in Maricopa and Pinal Counties, and can help ensure that patients stay up to date on vaccinations in the future." Patients ages nine and older can receive the MMR vaccine at CVS Pharmacy locations. At MinuteClinic, nurse practitioners provide the recommended second vaccination to children 4-6 years old. The first dose, usually given at 12 months, is not available at CVS Pharmacy or MinuteClinic. People are considered immune to measles if they have received two MMR vaccines or were born before 1957 and have received one MMR vaccine. Pharmacy and medical clinic staff can assist patients in determining whether the vaccine is covered by their insurance plan. Measles was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000 thanks to a highly effective vaccination program. Eliminated means that the disease is no longer constantly present in this country. However, measles is still common in many parts of the world, including some countries in Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa. Worldwide, an estimated 20 million people get measles and 146,000 people, mostly children, die from the disease each year. Every year, measles is brought into the United States by unvaccinated travelers (Americans or foreign visitors) who get measles while they are in other countries. Anyone who is not protected against measles is at risk. About CVS Health CVS Health is a pharmacy innovation company helping people on their path to better health. Through its more than 9,600 retail pharmacies, more than 1,100 walk-in medical clinics, a leading pharmacy benefits manager with nearly 80 million plan members, a dedicated senior pharmacy care business serving more than one million patients per year, and expanding specialty pharmacy services, the Company enables people, businesses and communities to manage health in more affordable and effective ways. This unique integrated model increases access to quality care, delivers better health outcomes and lowers overall health care costs. Find more information about how CVS Health is shaping the future of health at https://www.cvshealth.com. Contacts CVS Health Amy Lanctot (401) 770-2931 [email protected] TBC (for MinuteClinic) Brent Burkhardt (410) 986-1303 [email protected] 1 Vaccines are available when an immunizing pharmacist or MinuteClinic nurse practitioner is on duty, while supplies last. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140905/143585 SOURCE CVS Health Related Links http://www.cvshealth.com BELOEIL, QC, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Demers Ambulances is proud to announce it has signed Danko as their new dealer for the states of Iowa & Nebraska. "This is another great step forward in our continued efforts to increase the quality of our distribution network," said Benoit Lafortune, Executive Vice-President for Demers Ambulances. "With Danko's forty plus years of experience in the industry, we know that the Demers products will be very well represented in Iowa & Nebraska. The key values at Danko, quality customer service and sustainability, really reflect those of Demers and we are confident that this is the beginning of a long-lasting, successful partnership." "The sales team at Danko Emergency Equipment Company is excited to announce the addition of the exceptional line of Demers Ambulances to our customers in both Nebraska and Iowa" said Mark Kreikemeier, president of Danko Emergency Equipment. "The Demers Company is well established with a great history and is highly respected in the ambulance manufacturing industry. The engineering and structural design of their ambulances including their state of the art multiplex electrical system and wide variety of options is superior in meeting the needs of Emergency Medical Services around the world" Danko Emergency Equipment is a family owned business manufacturing and selling high quality firefighting and emergency vehicles to fire departments, rural fire districts and governmental entities. They manufacture many types of vehicles including: Tankers, Tanker/Pumpers, Quick Attacks, Rescue Trucks, Brush Trucks, Slip-in Units, Wildland Vehicles, Airport Units, and other Specialty Vehicles. They service what they sell and they're aware of customer needs in keeping emergency equipment ready for use. Currently, Danko employs over 70 personnel, with their corporate office located in Snyder, Nebraska. Their courteous sales force is knowledgeable not only in the mechanics of the equipment but also in the ever changing needs of the fire service itself. For additional information on Danko, visit them on line at http://www.danko.net. Demers Ambulances is a North American leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of ambulances, and one of the largest firms of its kind in North America. Over the past 55 years, Demers Ambulances has sold more than 18,000 ambulances to customers in over 20 countries. Demers Ambulances is accredited ISO 9001:2008 and certified by Transport Canada and the USA DOT, by the National Truck Equipment Association (NTEA) in the USA within their "MEMBER VERIFICATION PROGRAM" and recognized as a "QUALIFIED VEHICLES MODIFIER" (QVM) by the Ford Motor Company and, approved up fitter for Mercedes Benz Sprinter Customer Assurance Program. Demers Ambulances meets the highest standards in the industry. To learn more about Demers Ambulances, visit www.demers-ambulances.com SOURCE Demers-Ambulances inc. Related Links www.demers-ambulances.com 3,031.95 carats sold for US$386,992.89 in tender completed in April 4,789.18 carats sold for US$564,639.06 in tender completed in May 5,615.08 carats delivered for third tender to be completed in June 13,436.21 carats in total delivered to tender for first fiscal quarter Shares Issued and Outstanding: 44,311,169 TSXV: DMI OTCQX: DMIFF KELOWNA, BC, June 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Diamcor Mining Inc. (TSX-V.DMI / OTCQX-DMIFF), (the "Company") is pleased to announce the results of rough diamonds delivered, tendered, and sold to date in the Company's current fiscal quarter ending June 30, 2016 from its Krone-Endora at Venetia project in South Africa (the "Project"). In an initial tender and sale completed on April 15, 2016, the Company sold 3,031.95 carats of rough diamonds, for gross proceeds of US $386,992.89, resulting in an average price of US $127.64 per carat. In a second tender and sales completed in May 2016, the Company sold 4,789.18 carats of rough diamonds, for gross proceeds of US $564,639.06, resulting in an average price of US $117.90 per carat. An additional 646.56 carats of rough diamonds, which included 148.29 carats of higher quality goods, were withdrawn from the second tender and sale held in May, and will be included in a third tender scheduled for June of 2016. This brings the combined rough diamonds tendered and sold to date during the current fiscal quarter to 7,821.13 carats, generating gross proceeds of US $951,631.95, resulting in an average price of US $121.67 per carat. In addition to the above rough diamonds tendered and sold to date during the current quarter, the Company has delivered an additional 4,968.52 carats, which combined with the previously mentioned 646.56 carats withdrawn from the May tender, will form a third and final tender for the quarter of 5,615.08 carats planned for June of 2016. This will bring the combined total rough diamonds delivered for tender and sale in the quarter to 13,436.21 carats. The price per carat realized during the tenders completed to date during the period were consistent with Company expectations for the goods being offered, and reflect the continued price weaknesses in certain categories of rough diamonds. Rough diamonds delivered, tendered and sold to date in the current period were the result of rough diamonds recovered prior to May 29th, 2016. Rough diamonds recovered after May 29th and until June 30, 2016 will be recorded as rough diamond inventory on-hand for the first fiscal quarter ending June 30, 2016. The total of 13,436.21 carats of rough diamonds delivered to tender in the Company's current first fiscal quarter represent a ~470% increase when compared to 2,856.24 carats tendered and sold in the Company's first fiscal quarter ending June 30, 2015. Rough diamonds tendered were the result of the continued processing of material in the +1.0mm to -26mm size fractions, along with initial limited processing of material from various larger size fractions during the period. The combined efforts currently underway are designed to support the continued advancement of objectives consistent with the recommendations of the updated NI 43-101 Technical Report ("Updated Technical Report") filed by the Company on April 28, 2015, and to aid the Company in arriving at initial production decisions for the Project. The recovery of all rough diamonds to date are incidental to the ongoing commissioning and testing exercises performed at the Project. The above-noted testing exercises and incidental recoveries do not form part of the Updated Technical Report and therefore no general grade, price, or quality determination is intended by the Company at this time due to the nature and purpose of the processing of this material. Warrant Extension The Company has determined to extend the expiry date of 793,892 share purchase warrants ("Warrants") which are exercisable to purchase up to 793,892 common shares in the authorized share capital of the Company at an exercise price of $1.75 per share, from June 17, 2016 to June 17, 2017, with all other terms of the Warrants remaining unchanged. The extension of the expiry date of the Warrants to June 17, 2017 is subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval. About Diamcor Mining Inc. Diamcor Mining Inc. is a fully reporting publically traded junior diamond mining company which is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol V.DMI, and on the OTC QX International under the symbol DMIFF. The Company has a well-established operational and production history in South Africa and extensive prior experience supplying rough diamonds to the world market. About the Tiffany & Co. Alliance The Company has established a long-term strategic alliance and first right of refusal with Tiffany & Co. Canada, a subsidiary of world famous New York based Tiffany & Co., to purchase up to 100% of the future production of rough diamonds from the Krone-Endora at Venetia Project at then current prices to be determined by the parties on an ongoing basis. In conjunction with this first right of refusal, Tiffany & Co. Canada also provided the Company with financing to advance the Project. Tiffany & Co. is a publically traded company which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TIF. For additional information on Tiffany & Co., please visit their website at www.tiffany.com. About Krone-Endora at Venetia In February 2011, Diamcor acquired the Krone-Endora at Venetia Project from De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited, consisting of the prospecting rights over the farms Krone 104 and Endora 66, which represent a combined surface area of approximately 5,888 hectares directly adjacent to De Beers' flagship Venetia Diamond Mine in South Africa. On September 11, 2014, the Company announced that the South African Department of Mineral Resources had granted a Mining Right for the Krone-Endora at Venetia Project encompassing 657.71 hectares of the Project's total area of 5,888 hectares. The Company has also submitted an application for a mining right over the remaining areas of the Project. The deposits which occur on the properties of Krone and Endora have been identified as a higher-grade "Alluvial" basal deposit which is covered by a lower-grade upper "Eluvial" deposit. The deposits are proposed to be the result of the direct-shift (in respect to the "Eluvial" deposit) and erosion (in respect to the "Alluvial" deposit) of material from the higher grounds of the adjacent Venetia Kimberlite areas. The deposits on Krone-Endora occur in two layers with an average total depth of less than 15.0 metres from surface to bedrock, allowing for a very low-cost mining operation to be employed with the potential for near-term diamond production from a known high-quality source. Krone-Endora also benefits from the significant development of infrastructure and services already in place due to its location directly adjacent to the Venetia Mine. Qualified Person Statement: Mr. James P. Hawkins (B.Sc., P.Geo.), is Manager of Exploration & Special Projects for Diamcor Mining Inc., and the Qualified Person in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 responsible for overseeing the execution of Diamcor's exploration programmes and a Member of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta ("APEGA"). Mr. Hawkins has reviewed this press release and approved of its contents. On behalf of the Board of Directors Mr. Dean H. Taylor President & CEO Diamcor Mining Inc. [email protected] Tel (250) 864-3326 www.diamcormining.com This press release contains certain forward-looking statements. While these forward-looking statements represent our best current judgement, they are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that are beyond the Company's ability to control or predict and which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements. Further, the Company expressly disclaims any obligation to update any forward looking statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. WE SEEK SAFE HARBOUR Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE Diamcor Mining Inc. Related Links http://www.diamcormining.com Women pay homage to the victims of male violence. Ricardo Ceppi A year on from unprecedented protests throughout the country to protest violence against women, little has changed in Argentina, where 275 gender-violence-related deaths have been reported over the last 12 months, a figure similar to previous years, say womens rights groups. To highlight the problem, demonstrations have again been organized in the main towns and cities of the South American country on Friday under the slogan Ni una menos (Not one less). Campaigners want to see a law approved in Congress that would automatically deprive men convicted of violence against their partners of custody of their children A march organized on June 3, 2015 marked a turning point in raising awareness of Argentinas high rate of female killings. Each day brings dozens of beatings, along with a murder every 30 hours, according to Fabiana Tunez, the president of the National Womens Council. Gender-specific violence has not declined, that is the first analysis, she says. There are no official figures in Argentina, which has a population of 43 million people, covering violence committed against women. In Spain, which has a population of 46 million, 57 women were murdered by their partners in 2015; in Argentina the figure is 286. In Spain, gender-specific killings are tallied by the police, but in Argentina, the task falls to civic associations that scour newspaper reports and agencies. The Argentinean government has promised to begin a register of such deaths, but the first figures will not be released until 2017. In the meantime, says Tunez, measures to protect women are underway: 25 refuges are being built to add to the existing national network of 94. At the same time, more resources are to be provided to follow up reports of violence on the 144 emergency telephone line. Whats more, men who have been convicted of violence against their wives and partners and have been issued with restraining orders will now have to wear electronic tags. This changes the paradigm: it is now about monitoring the aggressor to keep him away, rather than the woman having to guarantee her own safety, says Tunez. The measures are part of a national plan to eradicate gender-specific violence that will be unveiled next month. Ada Beatriz Rico, who runs womens rights group La Casa del Encuentro, says that things are moving in the right direction, but that Argentina still has a long way to go. She wants to see a law approved in Congress that would automatically deprive men convicted of violence against their partners of custody of their children. At the moment, they are excused for psychological reasons and then the aggressor uses that in court to regain custody, says Rico. The majority of the demands we made a year ago have still not been addressed Journalist Ingrid Beck But the female journalists and writers of Ni Una Menos that organized last years protests are pessimistic. The majority of the demands we made a year ago have still not been addressed, says journalist Ingrid Beck. The murders of women are just the final link in the chain, the most tragic moment in a process of violence, most of which is just accepted. That said, she believes that the protests of 2015 at least marked a turning point: What we see now for example is that some guy whos going to say something disgusting to you in the street will at least think twice. The organizers of the protests all say it will take time to change mens attitudes in a society where sexism is deeply rooted. But thanks to last years campaign, they add, gender-specific violence not only made it on to the political agenda, but is now more widely reported in the media, and discussed in homes and schools. English version by Nick Lyne. SAN FRANCISCO, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Does your Magento store experience slow checkouts and delayed pageview loads under heavy site traffic? Do you lose sales thanks to downtime caused by catalog updates? It's a common tale, but it doesn't have to be your story any more. Magento Certified Developer Kevin Bortnick will explain why companies don't have to settle for poor performance in a webinar airing on June 8 at 10:00 AM PDT. To learn how ClustrixDB for Magento demonstrated 100 percent store uptime and zero errors under extreme workloads, and while re-indexing, register now at: http://www.clustrix.com/webinar-achieve-new-levels-of-performance-for-magento-e-commerce-sites/ Shedding the Magento status quo: no performance hiccups Bortnick will explain the results of the recent live demo of the ClustrixDB for Magento bundle that took place at this year's Magento Imagine Conference, in which: The Magento store ran for 50 hours during which it processed 2.6 million orders, averaging 14.6 checkouts per second A catalog update triggered reindexing every 12 minutes The site delivered 147 million page views (816 per second) The results: Clustrix achieved an average response time of 267 milliseconds, with 0% error rate and 100% checkout uptime under these conditions. In this webinar, Bortnick will explain how fast-growing businesses can achieve similar performance. With ClustrixDB for Magento, your Magento site will deliver a superior customer experience even on the biggest selling days of the year. And you can perform catalog updates without affecting normal site operations or impacting the user experience. Flexing database power: how to pay for exactly what you need, not a penny more Additionally Bortnick, who has architected large scale e-commerce modules and installations for Mophie, Saudi Aramco, Home Depot and Stanford University, will discuss how ClustrixDBthe Magento-approved drop-in database replacement for MySQLscales performance up or down as you add or subtract commodity server nodes, with only a few clicks. Without defaulting to the highly problematic techniques for scaling MySQL (such as read slaves, replication lag or sharding), this "scale out" ability allows ClustrixDB to flex up and down to deliver exactly the right amount of performance, at minimum cost, every month of the year. Who should attend? Magento partners who build or support large e-commerce sites Business owners or technical leads running high growth Magento merchant sites Database administrators (DBAs) who work with Magento and MySQL About Clustrix Clustrix provides the leading scale-out relational database engineered for the cloud or data center. ClustrixDB is a drop-in replacement for MySQL and an ideal solution for high-transaction, high-value workloads typically found in businesses such as ad tech, e-commerce, gaming and large web and mobile businesses. Our customers use ClustrixDB for critical business applications that support massive transactional volume and real-time reporting of business performance metrics. ClustrixDB delivers more than 25 trillion transactions per month for customers including AOL, Flipkart, MakeMyTrip, Choxi, Photobox, Rakuten and Symantec. Headquartered in San Francisco, visit www.clustrix.com to learn more. Clustrix is trademarked in the U.S. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Other product or company names mentioned may be trademarks or trade names of their respective companies. Media contact: [email protected] or 415-989-9000 SOURCE Clustrix Related Links http://www.clustrix.com "We're looking to fill positions practically from top to bottom," said Fred Zicard, vice president of Ficosa North America. "From production and project managers, technicians and engineers, to human resource specialists and assembly and warehouse workers. There are a lot of opportunities for anyone who has the skills and desire to be a part of building the car of the future. Some of our more successful employees even get the opportunity to live and work in other countries." The plant, which will produce rear view systems for automotive manufacturers such as Nissan, Ford, Volkswagen, Fiat Chrysler, and General Motors, will increase production capacity and help provide much needed manufacturing jobs in the U.S. and Tennessee. "We've got a lot of talented, qualified individuals in the Cookeville and Putnam County area who will be an integral part of the success of this plant," said Cookeville Mayor Ricky Shelton. "From recent grads at Tennessee Tech to some of the up and coming young men and women in our advanced manufacturing high school programs. We're excited to be able to offer them, and anyone else who is interested in moving to our beautiful city, an opportunity to live and work here in Cookeville." To help fill positions, Ficosa North America is working with AtWork Group, KellyOCG, Manpower, ResourceMFG and Wise Staffing Group. Those who are interested in applying for a job should send their resumes to [email protected]. About Ficosa North America Ficosa International began operating in the United States in 1995, through a technical-commercial office in Michigan. Since then, the company has expanded its capacities for the development of projects for the North American area, with the creation of a test laboratory in 1996, a CAD department in 1997, and a prototype laboratory in 1998. In 2000, Ficosa North America consolidated its engineering center with a new headquarters in Madison Heights, Michigan. About Ficosa International Ficosa is a global company devoted to the creation of high-technology vision, safety, efficiency and connectivity solutions for the industry, with the desire to contribute to society through our commitment to technological innovation, human values and energy efficiency. Founded in 1949 and based in Barcelona, Ficosa currently has more than 9,700 employees in 18 countries worldwide in Europe, North and South America and Asia, with consolidated sales of more than one billion dollars in December 2014. The rear view system (interior/side mirror) is Ficosa's main business, known worldwide and recognized by top global OEMs. For more information, visit www.ficosa.com. MEDIA CONTACT: Heather Ripley Ripley PR 865-977-1973 [email protected] Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160602/375053 SOURCE Ficosa North America Related Links http://www.ficosa.com TEMECULA, Calif., June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ItsPayd was the recipient of three prestigious awards this past week at the ICX Summit held in Dallas, Texas and at the CardNotPresent (CNP) Expo, held in Orlando, Florida. The cloud-based software company won the 2016 Elevate Award for Best ICX Deployment Financial Services at the ICX Summit and the Customer's' Choice Award for Best Mobile Solution and the Judge's Choice Award for Best Alternative Payment Solution at the CNP Expo. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375195LOGO ICX is an association whose mission is to "help brands apply technology to the goal of creating transcendent customer experiences". At the ICX Summit, companies are awarded based on their ability to do just such: improve the customer experience. ICX values and rewards developments in technology to better customer-merchant relationships, which is also what is celebrated at the CNP Expo. The CNP Expo is a celebration of innovations in the 'card-not-present' industry. At the expo, banks, merchants, alternative payment providers, and many more come together to network and work together in order to make a better world for safe, easy, and convenient payment options. This year marked the largest event yet, which reflects the growing interest in and need for alternative banking solutions. Earning awards at both the ICX Summit and the CNP Expo stands to highlight ItsPayd's value in this technology renaissance. The startup's service is a cloud-based software application that allows its users to offer several custom payment plans to settle past due accounts. Customers select a payment plan that best meets their current cash flow, all of which can be accessed on a mobile device. With ItsPayd, companies experience a level of control that was never possible before. And every account is handled by the company with the same level of care, no matter how large or how small. For a full list of all Judges and Customer Choice winners in 2016, plus category descriptions, visit cardnotpresent.com/cnpawards and icxa.org/icx-summit. About ItsPayd: ItsPayd is a web based online billing toolkit that gives control back to vendors and end-users by providing a simple, automated payment platform for multiple industries. Not only does the web based platform allow for quick solutions to payments plans, ItsPayd also gives customers a friendly, secure, and private option for billing obligations. To learn more about ItsPayd's service and offerings, including a free subscription for monitoring 5 statements or less, visit itspayd.com Connect with ItsPayd directly: Ken Green, CEO and Founder: [email protected] (760) 717-5897 Connect with ItsPayd on social media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ItsPayd Twitter: https://twitter.com/ItsPayd LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/itspayd This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com SOURCE ItsPayd As the new Vice President for Policy and Strategy, Pattillo Brownson will be responsible for strengthening First 5 LA's profile and influence on local and statewide early childhood education public policy, legislative and advocacy efforts. In addition to oversight of First 5 LA's relationships with local, county, state and federal policy makers, Pattillo Brownson also will ensure First 5 LA's external strategic partnerships, public policy and government affairs, and communications and marketing efforts are integrated to maximize impact for the highest number of children and families in L.A. County. "Kim has a proven ability to build partnerships and engage stakeholders to raise awareness and influence decision makers to make young children and their families a priority in policy decisions," said Kim Belshe, Executive Director of First 5 LA. "We are delighted that Kim will be using her wealth of experience and expertise in law, public policy and advocacy in service of First 5 LA's efforts to contribute to making a greater impact for children in L.A. County." Pattillo Brownson previously served as the Managing Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization engaged in policy and systems change to foster upward mobility in communities most impacted by economic and racial injustice. In this capacity, she led the Advancement Project's policy and advocacy staff across Sacramento, Los Angeles and the Bay Area and provided strategic direction to their work on early education, school funding, and school facilities, public budgeting transparency, governmental relations, and state and local campaign advocacy. Prior to joining the Advancement Project, Kim was an education attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, where she focused on educational equity issues in California schools. Previously, she worked in private sector litigation at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Kim began her legal career as a law clerk to the Honorable Dolores Sloviter on the Third Circuit Court of Appeal, and the Honorable Louis H. Pollak in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Prior to law school, Kim worked at the Boston Consulting Group, where she provided financial and strategic planning services to Fortune 500 companies. "I am excited to join the First 5 LA team as we drive to make greater impact for kids through partnerships and policy," said Pattillo Brownson. "We know the early years are vital and I look forward to building upon First 5 LA's important advocacy work to help all of our children thrive and succeed." Pattillo Brownson earned a Doctor of Law degree from Yale Law School and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts in Social Studies. Pattillo Brownson will begin work at First 5 LA on June 30, 2016. First 5 LA recently named Christina Altmayer as Vice President of Programs and Carl Gayden as Senior Director of Administration. These Executive Team roles are a result of a process undertaken by First 5 LA to strengthen the organization's ability to effectively execute its 2015-2020 Strategic Plan and to help it become a higher performing, higher impact organization for children prenatal to age 5, and their parents and caregivers. ABOUT FIRST 5 LA First 5 LA is a leading public grantmaker early childhood advocacy organization created by California voters to invest Proposition 10 tobacco tax revenues in Los Angeles County. In partnership with others, First 5 LA strengthens families, communities, and systems of services and supports so that all children in L.A. County enter kindergarten ready to succeed in school and life. Please visit www.first5la.org for more information. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160602/375039 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160408/353126LOGO SOURCE First 5 LA Related Links http://www.first5la.org LONDON, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Global Committee of EdTech experts select candidates from Coursera, edX, IBM, Khan Academy, littleBits, Raspberry Pi to join inaugural ranking of 50 international innovators In association with WISE, the World Innovation Summit for Education, EdTechXGlobal, the organisers of leading education technology-focused conferences EdTechXEurope and EdTechXAsia, have launched the Makers and Shakers of Education Technology Index - the first comprehensive global listing of ground-breaking innovators in the EdTech field. The international index celebrates 50 of the most innovative EdTech thought leaders, organised by four geographical regions (Europe, Americas, MENA and Asia). The 2016 Index honours these luminaries who through digital and physical technologies, have introduced innovative new ways of learning to the market through play, construction or interactive design. The list was curated by EdTechXGlobal and WISE and then selected by 15 members of the global advisory committee; comprised of industry leaders from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google for Education, IDEO, IBIS Capital, Kaizen Private Equity, Learn Capital, LinkedIN, Times Higher Education and TES Global. The 2016 international media partners, including Business Week MENA, l'Etudiant, JMDedu, LinkedIN and TES also aided the selection process and will help showcase these innovators to their worldwide communities. The advisory committee scored each proposed candidate against criteria including; individual vision, disruptive innovation and impact and contribution. The "Makers" were defined as rising stars of education technology, innovating and pushing boundaries for future success, and "Shakers", as established leaders in their region, inspiring worldwide EdTech change. "This Index seeks to recognise thinkers and doers who have pioneered innovative approaches to addressing challenges in education", said Stavros N. Yiannouka, the CEO of WISE. "The Makers & Shakers of Education Technology is a global index that elevates Education innovators and thought leaders as 21st Century social rock stars. The index rewards talent, creativity, impact and influence in education," added Benjamin Vedrenne-Cloquet, Co-Founder of EdTechXGlobal. The selected global candidates will be invited to an exclusive networking and celebratory dinner due to take place in London on the evening of 15th of June, as well as having the opportunity to participate in the EdTechXEurope conference programme, when the fourth annual summit kicks off 15th-16th June, at Kings Place. The full ranking of global candidates is available here: http://makersxshakers.com Notes to editors: About EdTechXGlobal: EdTechXGlobal connects the global EdTech community though an insight, investment and annual thought leadership event series, EdTechXEurope in London and EdTechXAsia in Singapore. The EdTechXGlobal summits bring together executive level investors, innovators, and industry influencers from worldwide education technology companies. Through extensive networking opportunities, the conferences in London and Singapore also aim to connect leading foundations, higher-education institutions, policy makers, and thought leaders from the industry as well. Now in its fourth year, EdTechXEurope 2016 is scheduled to take place at Kings Place in London, UK on 15-16 June, hosting 800+ global attendees and over 130 global speakers, in partnership with leading education events SXSWedu and WISE. The inaugural EdTechXAsia conference will invite 1200+ global thought leaders from the Asia region and the international EdTech industry for a two-day summit and expo event. About the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE): Qatar Foundation, under the leadership of its Chairperson, Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser launched the World Innovation Summit for Education in 2009. WISE is an international, multi-sectoral platform for creative thinking, debate and purposeful action. Through the Summit and a range of ongoing programs, WISE has established itself as a global reference in new approaches to education, promoting innovation and partnership. About the Makers and Shakers Education Technology Index: The WISE and EdTechXGlobal teams preselected 25 names per region for the "Makers of Education and Technology" and the "Shakers of Education and Technology" categories. The role of the Advisory Committee was to score each proposed name based on the below criteria. A ranking was then generated to list final 50 the "Makers" and "Shakers" per region and you were selected as one of the 2016 Makers & Shakers. Each criterion was scored from 1 to 4, with 4 being the highest score - these were: Individual vision The individual demonstrates a powerful and unique vision for the role of technology in education. The individual demonstrates a powerful and unique vision for the role of technology in education. Disruptive innovation The initiative(s) launched by the individual is a creative and disruptive solution to an education challenge, showing innovation in its use of technology, design, methodology and/or practice. The actor is offering new ways of learning and distinguishes himself/herself from other actors in similar fields. The initiative(s) launched by the individual is a creative and disruptive solution to an education challenge, showing innovation in its use of technology, design, methodology and/or practice. The actor is offering new ways of learning and distinguishes himself/herself from other actors in similar fields. Impact and contribution to education The impact of the individual in the field of EdTech has been recognized and documented as having a positive impact on its beneficiaries and society at large. The advisory panel, selecting the Makers and Shakers for the Index were as follows: Americas Ms Sandy Speicher, Managing Director of the Education Practice, IDEO (USA) Mr. Henry Hipps, Senior Programe Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (USA) Mr. Luis Pinto, Global Operations Partner, Learn Capital (USA) Europe Mrs. Liz Sproat, Head of Education, EMEA, Google for Education (UK) Ms. Brigitte Ricou-Bellan, Managing Director, Digital, TES Global (UK) Mr. Benjamin Vedrenne Cloquet, Co-Founder, EdTechXGlobal (France) Mr. Charles McIntyre, CEO, IBIS Capital (UK) Mr. Ross Hall, Director of Education Strategy, Ashoka (UK) Mr. Charles Hardy, Education Engagement Lead, EMEA, LinkedIN (UK) Mr. John Gill, Editor, Times Higher Education (UK) MENA Mr. Stavros N. Yiannouka, CEO, World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), Qatar Foundation (Cyprus) Mr. Ravi Raman, Vice President and Associate Publisher, Business Week MENA (UAE) Asia Dr. Xuening Liu, CEO, JMDedu (China) Mr. Sandeep Aneja, Managing Director, Kaizen Private Equity (India) Mr. Takashi Onogawa, Deputy Manager, Mitsui & Co. (Japan) SOURCE EdTechXGlobal IPSWICH, Mass., June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Anna-Sophia Boguraev's winning Genes in Space experiment was sent to the International Space Station (ISS) on April 8th from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The goal of her experiment was to determine whether or not epigenetic changes to DNA contribute to the weakened immune system observed in astronauts over time. The initial proof of concept experiment involved a technique known as polymerase chain reaction (PCR), by which multiple copies of a target DNA are generated. In this case, bisulfite-treated DNA, which is commonly used to study epigenetic changes, was amplified with a modified version of Q5 High-Fidelity DNA Polymerase from NEB. Enabling these experiments was a thermocycler called miniPCR, a Kickstarter-funded instrument from co-founders Sebastian Kraves and Ezequiel Alvarez-Saavedra. The miniPCR is portable and can be controlled by a laptop or cell phone making it perfect for teaching labs, field work, and now, the ISS. The experiment was conducted on board the space station on April 19th, and samples were returned from space on May 11th. Boguraev analyzed the samples during a recent visit to NEB's campus in Ipswich, MA. The proof of concept experiment was successful, making this the first PCR experiment performed in space. Boguraev will be presenting her results at the 2016 ISS R&D conference being held in San Diego, CA on July 12-14, 2016. "We are very excited that the first PCR experiment in space was a success and that NEB was able to play a small role in the experimental optimization and flight-worthiness of the reagents used in Anna-Sophia's experiment," stated Nicole Nichols, Group Leader, Amplification Product Development at NEB and 2016 Genes in Space judge. "Our curiosity and passion for science starts when we're young. Being involved in helping the next-generation of young scientists reach for the stars has been an immensely fun and rewarding endeavor." "The ability for scientists to conduct research in a zero gravity environment opens up enormous possibilities in being able to understand the effects of space travel on human health," added Sebastian Kraves from miniPCR and Co-investigator in the first Genes in Space experiment. "We are excited to play a role in bringing DNA analysis capabilities to new places around the globe, and now beyond Earth." The Genes in Space competition is a national STEM competition that challenges students in grades 7 through 12 to propose DNA experiments to solve a space exploration problem. Boguraev was the winner of the first competition. Finalists were recently announced for the 2016 competition, with the winner being chosen at the upcoming ISS R&D conference. The annual competition is a partnership between Boeing, Math for America (MA), miniPCR, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), New England Biolabs, Inc. (NEB). To learn more about the Genes in Space Competition, visit www.genesinspace.org. New England Biolabs, NEB and Q5 are registered trademarks of New England Biolabs, Inc. miniPCR is a trademark of Amplyus Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090921/NE79207LOGO-b SOURCE New England Biolabs Related Links http://www.neb.com JAKARTA, Indonesia, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- GE Healthcare and Frost & Sullivan, on May 19 hosted the first Indonesia Thought Leadership Next Generation Imaging IT forum at the Grand Senyiur Hotel, Balikpapan to discuss innovative IT solutions in imaging workflow in Indonesian hospitals. More than 80 representatives from Indonesian hospitals attended the forum. Marc Foo, General Manager of GE Healthcare IT, ASEAN, Australia & New Zealand said that diagnostic imaging radiologists are beginning to play a critical role in surgery and emergency care. "Therefore, diagnostic imaging radiologists need comprehensive, real-time patient data, as well as collaboration and consultation with peers to ensure reliable and timely diagnosis," he added. "Radiologists need flexible imaging IT solutions that help address their day-to-day issues, such as the delay in image loading, need to move between workstations, image quality and frequent IT downtime," Foo added. While imaging IT has advanced significantly in the last three decades, there is still room for further technological innovation that empowers radiologists with the right information at the right time, he said. "Frost & Sullivan is delighted to jointly host the Indonesia Thought Leadership Next Generation Imaging IT forum with GE Healthcare to discuss about medical imaging transformation and innovative IT solutions in imaging workflow in Indonesian hospitals," said Rathanesh Ramasundram, Senior Consultant, Transformational Health, Asia Pacific at Frost & Sullivan. In her 'Medical Imaging Transformation in Indonesia' presentation, Ramasundram noted that demand for diagnostic testing in Indonesia's public hospitals increased after the launch of Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional (JKN), a national health insurance system introduced by the Government. She added that in line with the demand for healthcare services, medical imaging procedure volumes have also increased multi-fold. "Rising incidence of chronic conditions has increased disease complexity and co-morbidity, requiring radiologists to have access to and make sense out of far more complex patient information than before. With only 2,240 radiologists, the acute workforce shortage in Indonesia has led to a huge increase in clinicians' daily workload," she said. Ramasundram also said that in response to the increasing demand on care pathway workflow, Indonesian hospitals are moving towards digital imaging solutions including Radiology Information Systems (RIS) and Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS). She added that Indonesia needs to leverage on IT for radiology diagnostics to improve the quality and efficiency of health services. Ramasundram also said that IT solutions can help to address isolated and rural health facilities for diagnostic radiology services and facilitate clinical real-time collaboration for faster diagnostic turnaround times for referring physicians and their patients. At the panel discussion 'An In-Depth Look Into the Digital Imaging IT Footprint for Indonesia', Dr. Aziza Ghanie Ickson, Chairman of Indonesian College of Radiology said that without digital solutions, she would have to wait a few hours before getting the imaging files due to the manual system. At the same time, she needs to look for old images, medical records and research for other clinical findings in order to prepare a more detailed reading. Dr. Raditya Utomo, General Diagnostic Radiologist, Premier Bintaro Hospital said that it will be very helpful if private hospitals and government hospitals can share data easily with the use of technology. "Hopefully, in future, imaging reports can be shared electronically between hospitals easily," he added. Dr. Jacub Pandelaki, Secretary General Perhimpunan Dokter Spesialis Radiologi Indonesia (The Indonesian Society of Radiology) said that the total number of radiologists in Indonesia cannot support the growth of hospitals in Indonesia. He noted that geographically, Indonesia also has many islands and traffic congestion is a common problem in big cities such as Jakarta. Therefore, he added that there is an increasing need for technology to allow for remote access of images anywhere in case of emergency. He added that with today's more complex medical cases, radiologists need to have historical data of all the patients' records for better diagnostic. About GE Healthcare GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems. Our 'healthymagination' vision for the future invites the world to join us on our journey as we continuously develop innovations focused on reducing costs, increasing access and improving quality and efficiency around the world. Headquartered in the United States, GE Healthcare is a $16 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. Our "Growth Partnership" supports clients by addressing these opportunities and incorporating two key elements driving visionary innovation: The Integrated Value Proposition and The Partnership Infrastructure. The Integrated Value Proposition provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation. provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation. The Partnership Infrastructure is entirely unique as it constructs the foundation upon which visionary innovation becomes possible. This includes our 360 degree research, comprehensive industry coverage, career best practices as well as our global footprint of more than 40 offices. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organization prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies? Contact Us : Start the discussion Join Us : Join our community Subscribe : Newsletter on "the next big thing" Register : Gain access to visionary innovation Media Contact Shena Agusta Corporate Communications Indonesia Frost & Sullivan Phone : +6221 5710838 Fax : +6221 5713246 Email : [email protected] SOURCE Frost & Sullivan Related Links http://www.frost.com "A consistent focus on energy efficiency in facility improvements, even minor adjustments, can yield substantial savings for large customers," said Michele Wagner, energy efficiency director for Georgia Power. "The Commercial Energy Efficiency program has been so successful in just a short period because of its thoughtful combination of resources and rebates as well as customized programs with personalized service." Organizations and companies which have engaged in the Commercial Energy Efficiency program are broad and diverse. Customers enjoying energy savings through the program include AT&T, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Delta, Kroger, the University of Georgia and Walmart. Some of the most popular energy efficiency upgrades include new construction lighting and lighting retrofits, energy efficient HVAC systems and upgrading to LED refrigerated case lighting. Georgia Power's Commercial Energy Efficiency program offers educational resources and rebates to all commercial customers including school systems, universities, hospitals, museums and many more. To learn more about saving energy and money with Georgia Power, visit www.georgiapower.com/commercialsavings. 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/20160603/375302 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375303 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20050216/CLW066LOGO SOURCE Georgia Power Related Links http://www.georgiapower.com NEW YORK, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- New Age TechSci Research Logo (PRNewsFoto/New Age TechSci Research) Tire industry is highly raw material intensive as more than 100 raw materials are incorporated during the production of a typical tire. The raw materials of a tire include tire chemicals and steel cord. Majority of these chemicals are derived from petroleum products, owing to which, construction of raw materials is dependent on crude oil prices. Raw materials account for around 72% of the manufacturing cost of a tire. As a result, tire chemicals form an integral part of the automotive sector. Tire chemicals covered in the report include: Natural Rubber, Synthetic Rubber, Synthetic Textile, Carbon Black, Fillers, Sulphur, Zinc Oxide, Stearic Acid, Accelerators, Antioxidants and Plasticizers. Natural Rubber and Synthetic Rubber, which forms the elastomer part of the tire, govern the largest share in the global tire chemicals market owing to their ability to support the weight of the tire, withstand external damage and provide the necessary elasticity to absorb road shocks. Reinforcing fillers, such as Carbon Black and Silica, control the second largest share in the global tire chemicals market and offer improved longevity of the automotive tire. Other compounding ingredients, including Sulphur, Zinc Oxide, Stearic Acid, Accelerators, etc. are incorporated into the tire at different stages of production to provide different properties to the final product. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140117/663730 ) Global Tire Chemicals Market: Drivers and Restraints Plunging crude oil prices have led to drastic contraction in the prices of natural and synthetic rubber. As a result of low rubber prices, which form the largest constituents of an automotive tire, the tire manufacturers have benefited greatly owing to improved operating income and enhanced profit margins. Additionally, expanding automobile production coupled with growing demand from the replacement sector is expected to generate increased demand for OEM as well as replacement tires segment, thereby steering the global tire chemicals market. However, the global tire chemicals industry is witnessing a situation of production overcapacity, wherein, the output of tire chemicals across the globe is significantly greater than the actual demand for these chemicals. For instance, Natural Rubber, Synthetic Rubber and Carbon Black industries are undergoing overcapacity at a global scale. Global Tire Chemicals Market: Segmentation The global tire chemicals market is segmented on the basis of type, tire category, and region. Based on type of tire chemicals, the global tire chemicals market is segmented into the following: Natural Rubber Synthetic Rubber Synthetic Textile Carbon Black Fillers Sulphur Zinc Oxide Stearic Acid Accelerators Antioxidants Plasticizers Based on tire category, the global tire chemicals market is segmented into the following: Passenger Cars Medium and Heavy Commercial Vehicles Light Commercial Vehicles Two Wheelers OTR Vehicles Global Tire Chemicals Market: Overview Global Tire Chemicals Market is forecast to exhibit steady growth over the next five years on account of expanding tire industry across the globe. Rising automobile production across the globe has resulted in recuperated demand for OEM tires, thereby propelling the demand for tire chemicals globally. Additionally, growing demand for replacement tires has reinforced the demand for tire chemicals. Improved demand for natural rubber from the commercial tires sector coupled with steady requirement for synthetic rubber from the passenger car sector is forecast to steer the global tire chemicals market. Furthermore, increasing penetration of passenger cars in the emerging economies of Asia-Pacific is projected to be a major contributor to the growth of the global tire chemicals market through 2021. Global Tire Chemicals Market: Region-wise Outlook Asia-Pacific region controls the largest share in the global tire chemicals market owing to the dominance of the region in the global automobile industry and automobile tire production. Majority of the leading tire manufacturers have established production base or have plans to set up a manufacturing facility in the region. As a result, the region commands a majority share in the global tire chemicals market and is expected to remain the largest market for tire chemicals through 2021. Europe and North America also control significant share in the global tire chemicals market. However, South America and Middle East & Africa region control a limited share in the global tire chemicals market owing to limited tire production facilities in these regions. Global Tire Chemicals Market: Key Players Key players in the Global Tire Chemicals Market include Von Bundit Co., Ltd., China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, Cabot Corporation and Others The report covers exhaustive analysis on: Market Size Market Segmentation Pricing Analysis Innovations and Technological Advancements Market Dynamics (Market Drivers, Challenges & their Impact Analysis) Market Trends Opportunities Competition & Companies involved "Global Tire Chemicals Market Forecast & Opportunities, 2021" has analyzed the potential of the global tire chemicals market and provides statistics and information on market sizes, shares and trends. The report will suffice in providing the intending clients with cutting-edge market intelligence and help them in taking sound investment decisions. Besides, the report also identifies and analyzes the emerging trends along with essential drivers and key challenges faced by the industry. Report Highlights: Global Tire Chemicals Market Size, Share & Forecast Segmental Analysis - By Type, Tire Category, Region & Company Market Dynamics & Impact Analysis Market Attractiveness Index BPS Analysis Changing Market Trends & Emerging Opportunities Competitive Landscape & Strategic Recommendations 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 The Crowne Plaza Accelerate plan, which will run for a three-year period, will help ensure that the brand remains at the forefront of the new way of doing business with design-led, culturally-relevant, technology-enabled solutions to genuinely empower, energize and inspire the modern business traveler to Make Business Travel Work. The plan will help enhance brand performance while also creating a guest experience with modern swagger, innovative technology, responsive service and flexible spaces that put the modern business traveler in control as they strive to integrate work and life, socialize and recharge. IHG's investment will focus on increased sales and marketing efforts and continuous improvement of the guest experience. In addition, IHG will continue to selectively invest to secure high quality Crowne Plaza hotels in key markets throughout the region that showcase the future of business travel. Elie Maalouf, CEO, The Americas, IHG said: "Our growth strategy for IHG in the Americas is building great momentum and the Crowne Plaza brand plays an important role in continuing this success. The brand is a global powerhouse and this plan will accelerate its growth and performance in the Americas, extending its leadership and guest satisfaction performance in the upscale hotel segment for today's business travelers." The Crowne Plaza Accelerate plan includes: A significant investment behind sales and marketing, including the launch of a new marketing campaign in early 2017 to enrich business traveler's hearts and minds about how the Crowne Plaza brand can meet their holistic needs. High impact, distinctive and meaningful innovations that deliver sophisticated design and modern amenities. This includes the guest room of the future the WorkLife Room that turns the traditional guest room on its head by creating more space to work, socialize and rest. Additionally, a revolutionary approach to the "meetings between the meetings" includes technology-enabled public spaces designed for solo work and small group meetings with on-demand services such as an iPad installed in the space to order a caffeine hit or a bite to eat while you work. A continued commitment to brand excellence by providing additional teams and tools to hotels. The Crowne Plaza brand has grown overall guest satisfaction twice as fast as the Upscale segment and will maintain this focus by providing additional resources to ensure every Crowne Plaza hotel delivers at the highest levels over the next 18 months. Eric Lent, VP, Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza, The Americas added: "The Crowne Plaza brand is redefining what it means to deliver an unrivaled guest experience for the modern business traveler. Whether it is working, moving between the intersection of work and relaxation or powering down for day, the brand's plan is meeting the evolving expectations of the modern business traveler in a new way." About Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts Part of the IHG global portfolio, the Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts brand is a dynamic upscale hotel brand located in nearly 65 countries around the world in major urban centers, gateway cities and resort destinations. As the fourth largest upscale full-service hotel brand in the world and one of the fastest growing, the Crowne Plaza brand has a solid foundation for future growth. The portfolio has doubled since 2003 to more than 400 hotels, and the global pipeline has increased fourfold to more than 80 hotels. At Crowne Plaza hotels, we help our guests feel energized and productive, and our Sleep Advantage program ensures our guests get a great night's sleep to power through their day. For reservations at Crowne Plaza properties, visit www.ihg.com/crowneplaza or call 1-877-2CROWNE. Connect with us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/crowneplaza or Facebook: www.Facebook.com/crowneplaza. Notes to Editors: IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) [LON:IHG, NYSE:IHG (ADRs)] is a global organisation with a broad portfolio of hotel brands, including InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, HUALUXE Hotels and Resorts, Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts, Hotel Indigo, EVEN Hotels, Holiday Inn Hotels & Resorts, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites. IHG franchises, leases, manages or owns more than 5,000 hotels and 742,000 guest rooms in almost 100 countries, with nearly 1,400 hotels in its development pipeline. IHG also manages IHG Rewards Club, the world's first and largest hotel loyalty programme with nearly 94 million members worldwide. InterContinental Hotels Group PLC is the Group's holding company and is incorporated in Great Britain and registered in England and Wales. More than 350,000 people work across IHG's hotels and corporate offices globally. Visit www.ihg.com for hotel information and reservations and www.ihgrewardsclub.com for more on IHG Rewards Club. For our latest news, visit: www.ihg.com/media and follow us on social media at: www.twitter.com/ihg, www.facebook.com/ihg and www.youtube.com/ihgplc. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375239 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375240 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150310/180702LOGO SOURCE IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) Related Links http://www.ihg.com More information Fallece El Pana, el torero tetraplejico que pidio que le dejasen morir Rodolfo El Pana Rodriguez has died. The bullfighter drew his last breath at 6.45pm on the eighth floor of the Hospital Civil in Guadalajara, surrounded by his family and medical staff. He was 64 years old. According to the hospital, his pneumonia worsened, before he suffered a fatal heart attack. El Pana had been left tetraplegic after sustaining a severe bullfighting injury in May. He could not move or breathe by himself. His last and most intimate wish was to leave this world. El Pana met his fate in a bullfighting ring in Durango on May 1, when the second bull charged at him Dying was his victory. El Pana met his fate in a bullfighting ring in Durango on May 1, when the second bull, Pan Frances, or French Bread, charged at him. The attack put an end to his 37-year career. He suffered a severe neck injury and had three broken vertebrae. Doctors performed a tracheotomy, among other procedures, but were unsuccessful. El Pana was left paralyzed. Aware of his condition, he communicated his desire to die to his doctors and relatives through gestures and whispers. The medical staff, knowing that his life was hanging by a thread, decided to avoid any aggressive therapies. A few days later, when they noticed an improvement, they moved him out of the intensive care unit. He remained stable for a week but this morning his health suddenly deteriorated, Francisco Martin Preciado Figueroa, the director of the hospital, told EL PAIS. El Panas death closes a unique chapter in the history of Mexican bullfighting. He was extravagant and a scoundrel. El Pana was the bullfighter of the slums. He liked to arrive at the ring in a pink buggy, wearing a 19th-century-style ponytail and smoking huge Havana cigars. He did not like rituals or genuflection. He had known the pains of hunger, prison life and the clutch of alcohol. Before he became a matador, he was a gravedigger, a jelly-O vendor and baker. Hence his nickname, El Pana, taken from the Spanish word for baker, panadero. The erudite turned their backs to him; the elegant crowd rejected him. He was a sad figure, an almost comical character in a country thats impossible to explain. He liked to arrive at the ring in a pink buggy, wearing a 19th-century-style ponytail and smoking huge Havana cigars El Pana had a theatrical style but glory always eluded him. The closest he got to it was when he decided to raise some money by organizing a farewell performance. On January 7, 2007, he entered the ring at the Monumental Plaza de Toros in Mexico City and in front of thousands of open-mouthed aficionados, he broke the protocol he so hated and saluted the whores, the women of golden heels and red lips. He asked God to bless them. They satiated my hunger and they gave me protection in their chests and thighs. They accompanied me in my loneliness, he said during the televised event. The bulls did not matter anymore. El Pana was now famous. Still, his notoriety quickly faded even though he kept working and had the longest career among Mexican bullfighters. Fame did not visit him again until May 1 in that ring in Durango where, black and twisting, she launched at him. This week El Pana died at dusk in Mexico. It was what he wanted. His final goodbye. English version by Dyane Jean Francois. CHICAGO, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Kangmei Healthcare Cloud Service Co., Ltd today announced the addition of cancer therapy management services to its existing products in senior care services and smart healthcare delivery at 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago. John Peng, General Manager and President of Kangmei Healthcare Cloud Service Co., commented, "Every year, more than 4 million new cancer patients are diagnosed in China, and around 60% of these new patients are over 60 years old. Moving into cancer services is a natural extension of our services. Through internet and mobile deployed tools, we help to allocate scarce quality medical resources, and to facilitate communication between doctors and patients." Mr. Peng led Microsoft Cloud Services in Greater China and directed Microsoft global on-line services. He was also responsible for Microsoft HealthVault services. Kangmei Healthcare Cloud has built its core capabilities around providing integrated solutions for the healthcare and senior services industry. The company's cloud-based platforms let doctors manage their patients more efficiently and reach into more communities. The mobile tools empower the patients to seek care and advices from experts around the globe. Cloud based data analyses enables virtual care coordination and chronic disease management. Kangmei Healthcare Cloud's cancer therapy management platform provides expert-curated knowledge base on cancer treatments in Chinese to enlighten and empower patients. These patients can easily update their records and side-effects through smart phones. The structured records are stored securely and monitored by dedicated case management teams. A doctor would have access to the full medical history of a patient and tailor the treatment plan based on advices provided through systemic analysis of the patient's clinical and genomic profile. Cancer patients would make more educated decisions, and stay compliant during their treatments. Dr. Tingting Zhang, Ph.D., Vice President leading cancer therapy management services at Kangmei Healthcare Cloud, added, "Our services are not limited by geographic borders and time zones. We aim to bridge the gaps faced by Chinese speaking cancer patients worldwide. A patient in mainland China can opt to seek consultation from a pathologist in Taiwan, and a client in New Zealand may book an in-person appointment with an experience oncologist in another country within a week. We have signed up top cancer doctors in mainland China, Taiwan, and the United States. We are now looking for collaborators to bring our services to more patients." Dr. Zhang, an oncology and immunology expert specialized in translational and personalized medicine, joined the company in June 2015. She held analytical positions at Eli Lilly and Roche before moving into personalized healthcare and global healthcare delivery. About Kangmei Healthcare Cloud Service Co Kangmei Healthcare Cloud Service Co., Ltd is a company focused on delivering and coordinating healthcare through internet, mobile, and wearable technologies. It is a subsidiary of Kangmei Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd (SHA: 600518) which is primarily engaged in the manufacture and sale of pharmaceutical products including Chinese herbal medicine and chemical drugs, as well as medical devices. www.anticancer365.com SOURCE Kangmei Healthcare Cloud Service PASADENA, Calif., June 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Kelly L. White, M.A., LMFT, is recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Pinnacle Professional in the field of Non-Profit Management as a result of her role as Chief Executive Officer of Villa Esperanza Services. Serving individuals with disabilities and their families since 1961, Villa Esperanza, translated to "House of Hope" assists individuals with an array of developmental/intellectual disabilities including autism, Down syndrome and cerebral palsy. Dedicated to the care and education of children, adults and seniors, Villa Esperanza Services offers nine programs including a school for children up to the age of 22 years; a Speech and Language Center and Occupational Therapy Clinic providing children, adults and seniors with comprehensive therapies; employment services; day programs for adults and adult residences in Pasadena and Thousand Oaks. Now, over fifty years later, Villa Esperanza provides services to more than 600 individuals throughout Los Angeles and Ventura Counties. As Chief Executive Officer, Kelly is an esteemed mental health professional specializing in the following: forecasting, program development and evaluation, leadership development, organizational development, community outreach, strategic planning, social services and more. In this position, Kelly ensures both her staff and volunteers have the knowledge and passion to help build independence and confidence in each individual that passes through their doors. Recognized by the National Association of Professional Women as a VIP Woman of The Year, Kelly maintains affiliation with the Alliance for Non-Profit Management as well as the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. A graduate of the Phillips Graduate Institute, Kelly attained her Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy in addition to her undergraduate degree in Psychology from St. Cloud State University. Kelly also received her Certificate of Leadership from the Claremont Graduate University- Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management. For more information, please visit www.villaesperanzaservices.org Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, [email protected] SOURCE Continental Who's Who Related Links http://www.continentalwhoswho.com DALLAS, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Kimberly-Clark Corporation was awarded two Effie Awards at the 48th annual North American Effie Awards last night in New York, including a Silver Effie for the Kleenex brand in the Home Supplies and Services category, and a Bronze Effie for Huggies in the Personal Care category. In addition, the company's Cottonelle and Depend brands were recognized at the event for Bronze Effies received earlier this year in the Shopper Marketing competition. "We are particularly proud of the Effie Awards as they are given to recognize the commercial effectiveness of a program. So we are grateful that these legendary brands are being acknowledged by the industry for their outstanding work," said Tony Palmer, President of Global Brands and Innovation for Kimberly-Clark. "These campaigns represent the real power of the trust and emotional bond that brands can build with their consumers." The Effie Awards, which have honored marketing effectiveness since 1968, have come to represent one of the highest honors in the field of marketing and advertising. This year's North American Effie Awards encompass 57 categories. Kimberly-Clark and its agency partners won North American Effie Awards in the following categories: Home Supplies and Services: Silver Effie Award for Kleenex brand's "Someone Needs One" commercial program, focused on proving that no matter how big or small the moment, the act of giving a Kleenex Facial Tissue to someone who needs one can equalize, connect and uplift us all. Agency partners included Geometry Global; Ketchum; Mindshare; VIMBY; VML; and VSA Partners. Personal Care: Bronze Effie Award for Huggies "Prepare for the Second Hug" commercial program, focused on emotionally connecting with moms to prepare for the first time her baby leaves her arms and a Huggies Little Snugglers Diaper is put on him the second hug. Agency partners included Edelman: Geometry Global; Mindshare; Ogilvy & Mather; and OgilvyOne. Kimberly-Clark and its agency partners were also nominated as North American Effie Award finalists in the following category: Engaged Community: U by Kotex "Carmilla" commercial program. Agency partners included Geometry Global; Organic, Inc.; and Shift2. Earlier this year, Kimberly-Clark was awarded two Bronze Effies at the Shopper Marketing Effie Awards for the Cottonelle "Go Commando" program in the Awareness/Trial category (with agency partners Geometry Global, Ketchum, Mindshare, Trisect and VML), as well as the Depend brand for its "Real Women of Depend" program in the Single Retailer Program Mass Merchants category (with agency partners Geometry Global, Marina Maher Communications, Mindshare and Organic). About Kimberly-Clark Kimberly-Clark (NYSE: KMB) and its well-known global brands are an indispensable part of life for people in more than 175 countries. Every day, nearly a quarter of the world's population trust Kimberly-Clark's brands and the solutions they provide to enhance their health, hygiene and well-being. With brands such as Kleenex, Scott, Huggies, Pull-Ups, Kotex and Depend, Kimberly-Clark holds the No. 1 or No. 2 share position in 80 countries. To keep up with the latest news and to learn more about the company's 144-year history of innovation, visit www.kimberly-clark.com or follow us on Facebook or Twitter. About The Effie Awards The Effie Awards are known by advertisers and agencies globally as the pre-eminent award in the industry, and recognize any and all forms of marketing communication that contribute to a brand's success. Since 1968, winning an Effie has become a global symbol of achievement. Today, Effie celebrates effectiveness worldwide with the Global Effie, the Euro Effie, the Middle East / North Africa Effie and more than 40 national Effie programs. For more details, visit www.effie.org. [KMB-B] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110928/DA76879LOGO SOURCE Kimberly-Clark Corporation Related Links http://www.kimberly-clark.com FAIRFAX, Va., June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- MainStreet Bank (OTCQB: MNSB) in the truest sense of community banking has become a founding partner of Arlington's community radio station WERA 96.7 FM. The radio station can also be heard over the internet and is the only Arlington community radio station with programming created by and for the members of the local community. WERA is part of Arlington Independent Media (AIM). The station originates from the AIM facility in Clarendon with programming gathered from many sources all over the County. Middle school and high school students and teachers; senior citizens and business leaders; non-profit and service agency boards; staffs and volunteers; artists, performers and critics; journalists and documentarians these are just a few of the members of the Arlington community who will be producing programs for WERA. "We are excited for the chance to support such an impactful initiative," said Chairman, CEO and President Jeff W. Dick. "MainStreet has had a relationship with Arlington Independent Media for several years, and we look forward to the long and continued success of WERA 96.7 FM." ABOUT MAINSTREET BANK: MainStreet was recently named to the 2016 OTCQX Best 50, a ranking of top performing companies traded on the OTCQX Best Market last year. Within that list, MainStreet was named the OTCQX Top Performing Bank. MainStreet operates five branches in Herndon, Fairfax, Fairfax City, McLean and Clarendon. In addition, MainStreet has 55,000 free ATMs and a fully integrated online banking solution. The Bank is not restricted by a conventional branching system, as it offers business customers the ability to Put Our Bank in Your Office. With robust and easy-to-use online business banking technology, MainStreet has literally "put our bank" in well over 750 businesses in the Metropolitan area. MainStreet Bank is always looking for ways to improve its customer experience, and now has the ability to instantly issue new and replacement Debit Cards which is especially important for customers if their Cards are compromised or lost. MainStreet Bank also continues to refine and improve its mobile banking App for iPads, iPhones and Androids. Additionally, MainStreet Bank released Aircharity in 2012. Aircharity is a unique solution that empowers people and organizations to raise money via email, websites and social media. The product allows a customer to open an account and accept donations from debit cards, credit cards and electronic checks. MainStreet Bank was the first community bank in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area to offer a full online business banking solution. MainStreet Bank was also the first bank headquartered in the Commonwealth of Virginia to offer CDARS a solution that provides multi-million-dollar FDIC insurance. Further information on the Bank can be obtained by visiting its website at mstreetbank.com. Contact: Jeff W. Dick (703) 481-4567 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160216/333889LOGO SOURCE MainStreet Bank Related Links http://www.mstreetbank.com McLEAN, Virginia, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- To Sponsor the First Keynote Session at the IBA Annual Conference Newgen Software Inc., a leading global provider of Business Process Management (BPM), Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Customer Communication Management (CCM) and Case Management solutions, today announced its participation at the 2016 edition of Illinois Bankers Association (IBA) Annual Conference which will mark IBA's 125 years of serving the Illinois banking community. The anniversary event will take place from June 12 to 15 at Grand Geneva Resort, Wisconsin. The associate members of the IBA, Newgen, will be the Silver Sponsor for the event. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130912/638839 ) Newgen, with an award winning Banking platform developed 'By the Bankers for the Bankers', is co-sponsoring the first keynote session of the conference titled 'Economic Update' on Monday, June 13 - 8:15 AM - 9:15 AM. This keynote presentation will discuss and analyze the direction and impact of global economic trends on financial markets. Speaking on the occasion, Anand Raman, Vice President of Newgen Software Inc. said, "Global economic landscape is witnessing a rapid shift in terms of new determinants that are driving productivity outputs and business outcomes across industries. Like in other verticals, technology has become the key game changer for banking and financial industry also. To keep up with this technology-driven economic environment, banks will have to explore digital methods for improving customer experience and profitability". He added, "Our solution accelerators for commercial lending, trade finance, online account opening and other banking processes are built over an intelligent Business Process Management suite (iBPMS) that takes care of the customer experience and revenue growth for a bank." Meet Newgen experts Ashish Deshmukh, Head - Banking and Financial Services and Heather Knight, Regional Sales Manager, for an exclusive one-to-one session at the Button Bay Boardroom, Grand Geneva Resort, to discuss your bank's digital transformation journey. Newgen has been providing software solutions to the banking industry for more than 20 years now and has developed solution accelerators that expedite processing with minimized risks for customer onboarding, consumer and commercial lending, trade finance, payments etc. About Newgen Software Inc. Newgen Software Inc. is a Mclean Virginia headquartered leading global provider of Business Process Management, Enterprise Content management, Customer Communication Management and Case Management. Newgen has over 200+ banking and financial institutions using its solutions to work smarter and drive better profitability. http://www.newgensoft.com Media Contact: Asif Khan [email protected] SOURCE Newgen Software Inc. EAST HANOVER, N.J., June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Novartis today announced data from a randomized, prospective, Phase IV, open-label study that demonstrated patient retention rate with Gilenya (fingolimod) was significantly higher at 12 months than with injectable disease-modifying therapies in patients with early relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS), 81% vs. 29% respectively1. Compared to injectable disease-modifying therapies, Gilenya also improved clinical and MRI outcomes and was associated with greater patient satisfaction1. The findings were presented for the first time in the US at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers (CMSC) in National Harbor, MD, June 1-4, 2016. While injectable disease-modifying therapies typically are used as first-line therapies for RRMS, research suggests the requirement for injections may reduce patient adherence2,3. The Prospective, Randomized, active-controlled, open-label study to Evaluate patient retention of Fingolimod versus approved first-line disease-modifying therapies in adults with Relapsing-remitting Multiple Sclerosis (PREFERMS) was the first large randomized study of treatment retention comparing fingolimod 0.5 mg with injectable disease-modifying therapies (interferon or glatiramer acetate) over a period of 12-months1. Safety outcomes for all treatments were consistent with the respective US Prescribing Information. "Encouraging patients to stay on treatment is particularly important in relapsing MS, given lack of active management can lead to disability progression," said PREFERMS lead investigator Bruce Cree, MD, Associate Professor, University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. "Our findings suggest that use of fingolimod may improve therapeutic retention compared to injectable disease-modifying treatments that are often times used as first-line therapies." Study Design1 PREFERMS was a 12-month, Phase IV, open-label, active-controlled, randomized, multicenter study conducted at 117 sites in the US. At enrollment, patients with RRMS were treatment-naive or had received only one injectable disease-modifying therapy class (IFN-1a, IFN-1b or glatiramer acetate). A total of 875 patients were randomized (1:1) to Gilenya 0.5 mg or to a pre-selected injectable disease-modifying therapy, and followed up quarterly for 12 months. After a minimum of 3 months of treatment, a single on-study treatment switch was allowed, however, switches due to efficacy or safety were allowed at any month following randomization. The primary endpoint was to compare the patient retention on randomized treatment over 12 months. Efficacy Findings Of the 861 patients (98.4%) who completed the study (full analysis set), 477 (55.4%) completed the study while still receiving the randomized treatment1. At the primary endpoint, patient retention with Gilenya was 81.3% (352 of 433 Gilenya patients) versus 29.2% (125 of 428 injectable disease-modifying therapy patients) with injectable disease-modifying therapy (p<0.0001) at 12 months1. Safety Findings During the randomized open-label treatment phase, the overall rate of adverse events (AEs) per patient-year were higher with injectable disease-modifying therapies (7.001) versus Gilenya (4.008) and the rate of AEs per patient-year leading to treatment discontinuation were 0.540 with injectable disease-modifying therapies versus 0.112 with Gilenya1. Most adverse events were mild or moderate in severity1. The rates of serious AEs per patient-year were 0.083 for Gilenya and 0.076 for injectable disease-modifying therapies1. There were 3 deaths in the study, including one patient from each the Gilenya and injectable disease-modifying therapy groups and one patient who entered the screening process but not the randomization phase. None of the deaths were attributed to the study medications4. Higher rates of treatment discontinuation in the injectable disease-modifying therapy group than in the Gilenya group were mainly attributable to higher rates of injection-site conditions, influenza-like symptoms and fatigue1. These data were also presented in April 2016 at the 68th Congress of the American Academy of Neurology in Vancouver, Canada. About Multiple Sclerosis Multiple sclerosis, a chronic disease of the central nervous system, affects around 400,000 people in the US4. Approximately 85 percent of people with MS have relapsing-remitting MS, where the immune system attacks healthy tissue5. This form of MS is a potentially debilitating condition characterized by relapses with worsening neurological function, followed by periods of remission where patients partially or fully recover, during which the disease remains stable6. About Gilenya Gilenya is the first once-a-day pill approved to treat relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis (RRMS). Approved for first-line use, Gilenya is a Disease Modifying Therapy (DMT) that offers freedom from injections, which may fit many patients' lifestyles. Gilenya helps slow down the physical problems caused by RRMS and decreases the frequency of MS flare-ups (relapses). Gilenya is the most prescribed oral once-daily DMT. In the US, more than 64,000 patients have been exposed to Gilenya. Worldwide, more than 148,000 patients have been treated with Gilenya in clinical trials and the post-marketing setting, with more than 316,000 years of real-world experience7. Indication Gilenya is a prescription medicine used to treat relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis (MS) in adults. Gilenya can decrease the number of MS flare-ups (relapses). Gilenya does not cure MS, but it can help slow down the physical problems that MS causes. Important Safety Information You should not take Gilenya if in the last 6 months you experienced heart attack, unstable angina, stroke or warning stroke, or certain types of heart failure. Do not take Gilenya if you have an irregular or abnormal heartbeat (arrhythmia), including a heart finding called prolonged QT as seen on an ECG, or if you take medicines that change your heart rhythm. Do not take Gilenya if you are allergic to fingolimod or any of the other ingredients. Gilenya may cause serious side effects such as: Slow heart rate, especially after first dose. You will be monitored by a health care professional for at least 6 hours after your first dose. Your pulse and blood pressure will be checked hourly. You'll get an ECG before and 6 hours after your first dose. If any heart problems arise or your heart rate is still low, you'll continue to be monitored. If you have any serious side effects, especially those that require treatment with other medicines, or if you have certain types of heart problems, or if you're taking medicines that can affect your heart, you'll be watched overnight. If you experience slow heart rate, it will usually return to normal within 1 month. Call your doctor, or seek immediate medical attention if you have any symptoms of slow heart rate, such as feeling dizzy or tired or feeling like your heart is beating slowly or skipping beats. Symptoms can happen up to 24 hours after the first dose. Do not stop taking Gilenya without consulting with your doctor. Call your doctor if you miss 1 or more doses of Gilenyayou may need to repeat the 6-hour monitoring. Increased risk of serious infections. Gilenya lowers the number of white blood cells (lymphocytes) in your blood. This will usually go back to normal within 2 months of stopping Gilenya. Your doctor may do a blood test before you start Gilenya. Gilenya may decrease the way vaccines work in your body, especially the chicken pox vaccine. Increased risk of infection was seen with doses higher than the approved dose (0.5 mg). Two patients died who took higher-dose Gilenya (1.25 mg) combined with high-dose steroids. Call your doctor right away if you have fever, tiredness, body aches, chills, nausea, vomiting, or headache accompanied by fever, neck stiffness, sensitivity to light, nausea, and/or confusion. These may be symptoms of meningitis. Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML). PML is a rare brain infection that usually leads to death or severe disability. If PML happens, it usually happens in people with weakened immune systems. It is important that you call your doctor right away if you have any new or worsening medical problems that have lasted several days, including problems with thinking, eyesight, strength, balance, weakness on 1 side of your body, or using your arms and legs. Macular edema, a vision problem that can cause some of the same vision symptoms as an MS attack (optic neuritis), or no symptoms. If it happens, macular edema usually starts in the first 3 to 4 months after starting Gilenya. Your doctor should test your vision before you start Gilenya; 3 to 4 months after you start Gilenya; and any time you notice vision changes. Vision problems may continue after macular edema has gone away. Your risk of macular edema may be higher if you have diabetes or have had an inflammation of your eye (uveitis). Call your doctor right away if you have blurriness, shadows, or a blind spot in the center of your vision; sensitivity to light; or unusually colored vision. Swelling and narrowing of the blood vessels in your brain. A condition called PRES (Posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome) has occurred rarely in patients taking Gilenya. Symptoms of PRES usually get better when you stop taking Gilenya. However, if left untreated, it may lead to a stroke. Call your doctor right away if you experience any symptoms, such as sudden headache, confusion, seizures, loss of vision, or weakness. Breathing problems. Some patients have shortness of breath. Call your doctor right away if you have trouble breathing. Liver problems. Your doctor should do blood tests to check your liver before you start Gilenya. Call your doctor right away if you have nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, loss of appetite, tiredness, dark urine, or if your skin or the whites of your eyes turn yellow. Increases in blood pressure (BP). BP should be monitored during treatment. A type of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma (BCC). Talk to your doctor if you notice any skin nodules (shiny, pearly nodules), patches or open sores that do not heal within weeks. These may be signs of BCC. Gilenya may harm your unborn baby. Talk to your doctor if you are pregnant or planning to become pregnant. Women who can become pregnant should use effective birth control while on Gilenya, and for at least 2 months after stopping. If you become pregnant while taking Gilenya, or within 2 months after stopping, tell your doctor right away. Women who take Gilenya should not breastfeed, as it is not known if Gilenya passes into breast milk. A pregnancy registry is available for women who become pregnant during Gilenya treatment. For more information, contact the Gilenya Pregnancy Registry by calling Quintiles at 1-877-598-7237, by e-mailing [email protected], or by going to www.gilenyapregnancyregistry.com. Tell your doctor about all your medical conditions, including if you had or now have an irregular or abnormal heartbeat; heart problems; a history of repeated fainting; a fever or infection, or if you are unable to fight infections due to a disease or are taking medicines that lower your immune system, including corticosteroids, or have taken them in the past; eye problems; diabetes; breathing or liver problems; or uncontrolled high blood pressure. Also tell your doctor if you have had chicken pox or have received the chicken pox vaccine. Your doctor may test for the chicken pox virus, and you may need to get the full course of the chicken pox vaccine and wait 1 month before starting Gilenya. If you take too much Gilenya, call your doctor or go to the nearest hospital emergency room right away. Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take or have recently taken, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. Tell your doctor if you have been vaccinated within 1 month before you start taking Gilenya. You should not get certain vaccines, called live attenuated vaccines, while taking Gilenya and for at least 2 months after stopping Gilenya treatment. The most common side effects with Gilenya were headache, abnormal liver tests, diarrhea, cough, flu, sinusitis, back pain, abdominal pain, and pain in arms or legs. You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088. Disclaimer The foregoing release contains forward-looking statements that can be identified by words such as "suggests," "can," "suggest," "may," "potentially," "will," or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding potential new indications or labeling for Gilenya, or regarding potential future revenues from Gilenya. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on the current beliefs and expectations of management regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee that Gilenya will be submitted or approved for any additional indications or labeling in any market, or at any particular time. Nor can there be any guarantee that Gilenya will be commercially successful in the future. In particular, management's expectations regarding Gilenya could be affected by, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including unexpected clinical trial results and additional analysis of existing clinical data; unexpected regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; the company's ability to obtain or maintain proprietary intellectual property protection; general economic and industry conditions; global trends toward health care cost containment, including ongoing pricing pressures; unexpected safety, quality or manufacturing issues, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AG's current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. About Novartis Located in East Hanover, New Jersey, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation is an affiliate of Novartis AG, which provides innovative healthcare solutions that address the evolving needs of patients and societies. Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Novartis offers a diversified portfolio to best meet these needs: innovative medicines, eye care and cost-saving generic pharmaceuticals. Novartis is the only global company with leading positions in these areas. In 2015, the Group achieved net sales of USD 49.4 billion, while R&D throughout the Group amounted to approximately USD 8.9 billion (USD 8.7 billion excluding impairment and amortization charges). Novartis Group companies employ approximately 118,000 full-time-equivalent associates. Novartis products are available in more than 180 countries around the world. For more information, please visit http://www.novartis.com. Novartis is on Twitter. Sign up to follow @Novartis at http://twitter.com/novartis. References Cascione M, Cree B, Wynn D, et al., on behalf of the PREFERMS investigators, Key Results from PREFERMS: real-world patient retention and outcomes on fingolimod versus platform injectable disease-modifying therapies in early relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis; Abstract [4148]; Poster [DX47] presentation at 2016 Annual Meeting of the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis (CMSC) in National Harbor, Md., June 1-4, 2016 . Cohen BA, Rieckmann P. Emerging oral therapies for multiple sclerosis. Int J Clin Pract. 2007;61:19221930. Wong J, Gomes T, Mamdani M et al. Adherence to multiple sclerosis disease-modifying therapies in Ontario is low. Can J Neurol Sci. 2011;38:429433. Tullman M. Overview of the epidemiology, diagnosis and disease progression associated with multiple sclerosis. Am J Managed Care. 2013 Feb;19(2 Suppl):S15-20. Noseworthy J, Lucchinetti C, Rodriguez M et al. Medical Progress: Mutliple Sclerosis. N Engl J Med 2000; 343:938-952. National Multiple Sclerosis Society (NMSS) web site. Relapsing-Remitting MS (RRMS). http://www.nationalmssociety.org/What-is-MS/Types-of-MS/Relapsing-remitting-MS. Visited May 13, 2016 . Novartis data on file. Novartis Media Relations For Novartis multimedia content, please visit www.thenewsmarket.com/Novartis. For questions about the site or required registration, please contact: [email protected]. SOURCE Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation Related Links http://www.novartis.com By Sara Bowman, Senior Staff Writer, Online Media Group, Inc. BATON ROUGE, LA, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Everyone knows clinical trials can be long, expensive and onerous, so finding any expedited pathway is a bonus for a company and its shareholders. For OncBioMune Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (OTCQB: OBMP), a partnership with Vitel Laboratorios in Mexico could be a valuable shortcut towards seeing if its prostate cancer vaccine can be commercialized in an abbreviated fashion. The two companies struck a deal to enter a joint venture, being coined "OncBioMune Mexico S.A. de C.V.," only six weeks ago for the purpose of developing OncBioMune's vaccine, ProscaVax, in Mexico and throughout Latin America. Per the latest press, the JV will also hold commercialization rights in Europe, China and the rest of the world outside the U.S. as well. ProscaVax is already patented in about 50 countries worldwide. Vitel has a well-established presence in the Mexican pharmaceutical space and overseas ties and has used their experience to move quickly with signing principal investigators for a Phase 2 trial and set up key meetings with regulatory authorities, similar to the FDA process in the U.S. For the protocol, OncBioMune was able to leverage an ongoing Phase 1 trial in California evaluating ProscaVax in recurrent prostate cancer patients and preparatory work being done for a separate Phase 2 trial planned to be hosted at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and its hospital network on early-stage prostate cancer patients. The principal investigators for the Phase 2 Mexican trial, which will evaluate ProscaVax in PSA recurrent prostate cancer in hormone-naive and hormone-independent patients, have green lighted the protocol with the final document expected to be submitted to IMSS, the national public health care system in Mexico, in the next few weeks. The company says that it is receiving tremendous support from Mexican officials with respect to developing ProscaVax, which dovetails with prior statements about potentially hastening the commercialization process if the trial produces positive outcomes. Manuel Cosme Odabachian, CEO of Vitel, has stated that Mexico is aiming to become a global leader in drug development, something that it has typically trailed the world in doing. Prostate cancer, the most frequently diagnosed cancer in men of 50 in the country, is a growing concern in Mexico with its aging population and more than 300,000 new diagnoses each year. Cosme Odabachian has offered guidance that with parallel commercialization efforts during the trial, ProscaVax could be available in Mexico in as little as 24 months via a Preliminary Marketing Authorization. Simply put, this means that if trial data shows a safe and meaningful therapeutic benefit in prostate cancer patients, regulators could elect to allow the drug to be marketed while the trial is ongoing. In a phone interview, Andrew Kucharchuk, President and CFO at OncBioMune, focused on the accelerated pathway and said he is extremely encouraged by the interest and support of COFERPRIS, which is akin to the U.S. FDA, and the Mexican Ministry of Health. "Everything is, of course, contingent on the clinical data, but what we've seen so far in human studies of our vaccines has us very optimistic," he said. Kucharchuk explained that he sees this opportunity as a gateway to globalization of a vaccine that has the potential to help "tens of millions" of patients that normally have to face horrible co-morbidities associated with current prostate cancer treatments. "As professionals, we always must temper expectations and remain sanguine about trial data until it arrives, but this could be a tremendous catalyst for us and we're thrilled with the opportunity," he concluded. The trial is expected to begin in the third quarter of 2016. Interested parties can learn more about OncBioMune Pharmaceuticals and their technologies by visiting the company's website (www.oncbiomune.com) and by reading Thursday's press release below. Mexican Regulatory Authorities Supportive of OncBioMune's Phase 2 of ProscaVax for Prostate Cancer BATON ROUGE, LA--(June 02, 2016) - OncBioMune Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (OTCQB: OBMP) ("OncBioMune" or the "Company"), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in the development of novel cancer products and a proprietary vaccine technology, is pleased to provide shareholders information on the Joint Venture in Mexico with Vitel Laboratorios S.A. de C.V. ("Vitel") for the development of the Company's novel cancer vaccine, ProscaVax, for the treatment of prostate cancer. A Phase 2 trial of ProscaVax is being prepared with expectations for commencement in the third quarter this year in PSA recurrent prostate cancer in hormone-naive and hormone-independent patients. OncBioMune executives recently traveled to Mexico City for several days of meetings with Vitel, the upcoming Phase 2 trial's Principal Investigators, COFEPRIS (similar to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration) and the Mexican Ministry of Health (Secreataria de Salud - SSA). Several key developments resulted from the meetings. It was confirmed that submission of the final trial protocol to IMSS, the national public health care system in Mexico, is targeted before June 27, 2016. It was also determined that OncBioMune Mexico S.A. de C.V., the official name of the Joint Venture with Vitel, will include provisions for commercialization of ProscaVax in China, Europe and the rest of the world outside of the United States. Importantly, COFERPRIS expressed extreme interest in the development of ProscaVax, with the agency providing guidance on best practices to "fast track" the registration process in parallel with the clinical study. "The support that COFERPRIS offered and the interest from the Ministry of Health, was beyond our expectations," commented Dr. Jonathan Head, Chief Executive Officer at OncBioMune. "The meetings crystalized the country's priority to address the growing concern of prostate cancer in Mexico. We feel we are exactly in the right place at the right time. We were thoroughly impressed with the supportive nature of all the parties involved and see a tremendous opportunity to utilize expedited pathways to commercialization should ProscaVax demonstrate efficacy in lowering PSA levels to provide a meaningful clinical benefit to patients in the upcoming trial." Andrew Kucharchuk, President and Chief Financial Officer at OncBioMune, added, "Things are progressing smoothly towards commencing the trial in Mexico, while we work at requirements for the Phase 2 trial of ProscaVax for early-stage prostate cancer patients in the U.S. Vitel is proving to be an invaluable partner immediately, using its years' of experience to organize the meetings with Mexican agencies, stimulate interest in our Company from venture capital funds and explore potential overseas opportunities, for which it has established relationships." Sign up for OncBioMune email alerts at: http://oncbiomune.com/email-alerts/ About OncBioMune Pharmaceuticals, Inc. OncBioMune Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in the development of novel cancer immunotherapy products, with a proprietary Vaccine Technology that is designed to stimulate the immune system to attack its own cancer while not hurting the patient. Our lead product, ProscaVax is scheduled to commence a Phase 2 clinical study in early 2016. OncBioMune also has a portfolio of targeted therapies, some of which are biosimilars to blockbuster drugs. OncBioMune is headquartered in Baton Rouge, LA. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy the securities in this offering, nor there be any sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer solicitation or sale are unlawful prior to registration or qualification under securities laws of any such jurisdiction. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause OncBioMune Pharmaceutical's actual results and experience to differ materially from anticipated results and expectations expressed in these forward looking statements. OncBioMune Pharmaceuticals has in some cases identified forward-looking statements by using words such as "anticipates," "believes," "hopes," "estimates," "looks," "expects," "plans," "intends," "goal," "potential," "may," "suggest," and similar expressions. Among other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements are OncBioMune Pharmaceuticals' need for, and the availability of, substantial capital in the future to fund its operations and research and development; the fact that OncBioMune Pharmaceutical's vaccines and therapeutics may not successfully complete pre-clinical or clinical testing, or be granted regulatory approval to be sold and marketed in the United States or elsewhere. A more complete description of these risk factors is included in OncBioMune Pharmaceutical's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. OncBioMune Pharmaceuticals undertakes no obligation to release publicly the results of any revisions to any such forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this press release or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by applicable law or regulation. Online Media Group, Inc. is a strategic holding company. Through our brands, Online Media Group is a leading publisher of market news, commentary, proprietary research and videos from seasoned journalists, analysts and contributors covering the financial markets, specific industries and global economies. Leveraging our extensive distribution network and social media presence, we have cultivated a valuable audience of engaged market enthusiasts interested in all segments, which in turn delivers a variety of unique opportunities for industry partnerships, corporate communications and market exposure. Legal Disclaimer: Online Media Group, Inc. is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority and does not provide, nor claims to provide, investment advice or recommendations to readers of this release to buy, sell or hold any securities. Investing intrinsically involves substantial risk and readers are reminded to consult an investment professional and complete their own due diligence, including SEC filings, when researching any companies mentioned in this release. This release is based upon publicly available information and, while vetted, is not considered to be all-inclusive or guaranteed to be free from errors. With respect to Section 17(B) of the Securities Act of 1933 and in the interest of full disclosure, we call the reader's attention to the fact that Online Media Group, Inc. has received compensation from the company(ies) mentioned in this release. SOURCE OncBioMune Pharmaceuticals, Inc. "While we have made our indelible mark in the frozen yogurt space, Pinkberry is thrilled to be able to bring another great option to our guests," said Kate Unger, senior vice president of marketing for Kahala Brands, parent company of Pinkberry. "Pinkbee's is a deliciously rich and creamy treat with such a craveable taste. It's the perfect indulgence, and the inclusion of honeycomb is right on trend with what consumers are looking for right now." As with all Pinkberry products, Pinkbee's was handcrafted with quality and nutritional goodness in mind. Pinkberry also crafts one-of-a-kind combinations using fresh, never frozen, fruit that is hand-cut in stores daily, along with premium granolas and nuts, specialty chocolates, and a variety of additional toppings. Pinkbee's will be available all summer long from June 3 through September 2, 2016. For more information on Pinkberry's newest innovations, visit www.Pinkberry.com. About Pinkberry Pinkberry launched in Los Angeles in 2005 as the original brand that reinvented frozen yogurt and over a decade later has more than 260 stores around the globe. Today, Pinkberry continues to create great tasting treats with fresh ingredients in an experience comprised of distinctive product, outstanding service and inspirational design. At Pinkberry you can taste the difference of an uncompromising commitment to quality and freshness. Most recently, Pinkberry was acquired by Scottsdale, Arizona-based Kahala Brands, one of the fastest growing franchising companies in the world with a portfolio of 18 quick-service restaurant brands with approximately 2800 locations in 25 countries. For more information about Pinkberry, visit www.Pinkberry.com. For more information about Kahala Brands, visit www.KahalaBrands.com. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375378 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375402LOGO SOURCE Pinkberry Related Links http://www.Pinkberry.com SAN FRANCISCO, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A significant pastel painting by Adolph Menzel, one of Germany's most famous 19th Century painters, has been auctioned in Berlin for 850,000 euro -- more than twice the estimated auction price -- marking the latest successful artwork recovered by the Mosse Art Restitution Project, an investigation and recovery effort run by the Investigative Unit of San Francisco law firm Bartko Zankel Bunzel & Miller. The painting, "Emilie in Red Blouse," is a portrait of the artist's sister dating to 1850. It was sold to an unknown buyer on June 1. The painting was part of a collection of art originally owned by Jewish newspaper publisher Rudolf Mosse. The art collection was looted from the Mosse family by the Nazis in 1933. His sole heir, Erma Felicia Lachmann-Mosse and her husband, Hans Lachmann-Mosse, managed to flee Germany, first to France and later to the United States. A second painting from the Mosse Collection, "Portrait of Appellation Council Stenglein," by Wilhelm Leibl, was sold at the same auction for 120,000 euro. A third painting, "Spring Storm" by Ludwig von Hoffmann, was withdrawn shortly before the auction and purchased by a benefactor for permanent loan to the Darmstadt Museum Mathildenhohe, where it had hung for 70 years until recently. In 2012, Bartko Zankel Bunzel & Miller was approached by the Mosse Foundation to organize a search for the hundreds of artifacts from the Mosse Art Collection, which had been confiscated and then auctioned by the Nazis shortly after Adolf Hitler was named chancellor. The Mosse Collection was considered an important art collection in Germany at the time. In 2014, after an intensive initial investigation that located enough items to warrant further investment, letters were sent to museums and universities in Germany and Switzerland that had been identified as having obtained items from the Mosse Art Collection. Until being notified, the curators were largely unaware that they were in possession of items confiscated by the Nazis. Many of the items have since been fully restituted. The success of the effort to date stands in marked contrast to earlier attempts by Mosse heirs to locate items from the family art collection. J. Eric Bartko, who manages the Mosse Art Restitution Project and is the Director of Investigations at BZBM, believes this is in large part due to Germany's adoption of the 1998 Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art. Despite the pact being written as non-binding, Germany has chosen to bind its public institutions to these principles. BZBM is a boutique high-end law firm specializing in national and international complex litigation and investigations, as well as real estate transactions. Media Contact: Law Firm of Bartko Zankel Bunzel & Miller J. Eric Bartko Phone:415-956-1900 Email:[email protected] SOURCE Bartko Zankel Bunzel & Miller Related Links http://www.bzbm.com "I was honored to be one of three guest speakers at this event and share tips with entrepreneurs who have a solid product idea, but aren't quite sure what the process is for bringing that idea from concept to a final product that is ready to be sold to consumers," said Matthew Bordy, Co-Founder of Prototype House. Throughout the event attendees asked various questions about the product development process ranging from patent filing, to the manufacturing process and when is the right time to contact a product development professional. "At Prototype House our role is to lead our clients through every step of the product development process," said Bordy. "We offer comprehensive packages or a la carte services. All we really need to get started is your initial product idea or simple sketch of your concept." With more than 30 patents of their own, Prototype House Co-Founders Matthew Bordy and Francisco Molina have more than a decade of retail manufacturing experience. "Patents are always a hot topic," said Body. "The ideas we develop or improve on are owned by our clients. We do not require to be listed as an inventor unless the client would like to include us for legal reasons. We provide our clients with patent drawings and recommend all of our clients protect their product." Launched in 2013, Prototype House is a full service product development firm based in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Prototype House provides entrepreneurs and inventors with industrial design, patent drafting, prototyping, 3D printing, packaging, mechanical engineering and contract manufacturing services. If you would like to invite Matthew Bordy and the Prototype House team to speak at your next event, please send an email to [email protected] or call (561) 922-9931. To connect with Prototype House or to request a quote visit http://www.prototypehouse.com. About Prototype House Inc. Prototype House Inc. is a full service product development firm based in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale metro area. Offering a full range of services including industrial design, mechanical engineering, prototyping, patent drafting, packaging design, brand development, and manufacturing. Prototype House Inc. helps inventors, entrepreneurs, and large brands bring their product ideas to life and ready for manufacturing. Visit http://www.prototypehouse.com or call (561) 922-9931 to request a free consultation. Like what Prototype House is doing? Show it by connecting with the Prototype House team on Facebook. MEDIA RELEASE CONTACT Laurie Menekou Ernest-Jones (954) 732-0754 (or) [email protected] Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375173 SOURCE Prototype House Related Links http://www.prototypehouse.com 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 TEWKSBURY, Mass., June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) has been awarded a $365,848,801 fixed-price-incentive, cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for the production of Aegis Weapon System AN/SPY-1D(V) Radar Transmitter Group, Missile Fire Control System MK 99 equipment, and associated engineering services. This contract includes options which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to $423,056,873. This contract combines purchases for the U.S. Navy and the governments of the Republic of Korea and Japan under the Foreign Military Sales program. This contract was previously announced by the Department of Defense on May 27, 2016. Work will be performed in Andover, Massachusetts (78.3 percent); Marlborough, Massachusetts (19.3 percent); Waterloo, Ontario, Canada (1 percent); Moorestown, New Jersey (0.9 percent); and Chesapeake, Virginia (0.5 percent), and is expected to be completed by October 2022. Raytheon Co., Integrated Defense Systems, Marlborough, Massachusetts, Fiscal 2016 shipbuilding and conversion (Navy); and foreign military sales funding in the amount of $365,848,801 will be obligated at the time of award and contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured in accordance with 10 U.S. Code 2304 (c)(4). The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, District of Columbia, is the contracting activity (N00024-16-C-5144). About Raytheon Raytheon Company, with 2015 sales of $23 billion and 61,000 employees, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, civil government and cybersecurity solutions. With a history of innovation spanning 94 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration, C5I products and services, sensing, effects, and mission support for customers in more than 80 countries. Raytheon is headquartered in Waltham, Mass. Visit us at www.raytheon.com and follow us on Twitter @Raytheon. Media Contact Carolyn Beaudry +1.401.842.3550 [email protected] SOURCE Raytheon Company Related Links http://www.raytheon.com WALTHAM, Mass., June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) awarded $300,000 in scholarships and grants to middle school students and their schools as part of its MathMovesU program, an initiative designed to engage middle school students in math and science. Each of the 150 middle school students from across the United States will receive a $1,000 MathMovesU Middle School Scholarship to be used for a math, science or technology camp or program, or saved for the first year of college. Additionally, each recipient's school will receive a matching grant from Raytheon. The 150 scholarship recipients were selected from a pool of 6th, 7th and 8th grade student applicants who created multimedia presentations that illustrate the importance of math in the world around them. Student submissions were evaluated on creativity, originality, time commitment and the use of math equations to demonstrate an enthusiasm for the subject. The MathMovesU Middle School Scholarships are just one way Raytheon highlights the importance of math to the 21st century workforce. Raytheon engages with the MathMovesU community of educators, parents, non-profit partners, policy-makers and students to explore the different efforts under way to improve STEM education and inspire the next generation of innovators. About Raytheon Raytheon Company, with 2015 sales of $23 billion and 61,000 employees, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, civil government and cybersecurity solutions. With a history of innovation spanning 94 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration, C5I products and services, sensing, effects, and mission support for customers in more than 80 countries. Raytheon is headquartered in Waltham, Mass. Visit us at www.raytheon.com and follow us on Twitter @Raytheon. This document does not contain technology or Technical Data controlled under either the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations or the U.S. Export Administration Regulations. Media Contact Raytheon Company Mike Doble +1.703.284.4345 [email protected] SOURCE Raytheon Company Related Links http://www.raytheon.com LONDON, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- SACEM receives international mandate from music rights organization, SOCAN, to manage rights in Europe SACEM will be representing the European licensing and processing sales of a North American music rights organization SOCAN is the first North American MRO to mandate a European collective society French DJ, record producer and remixer David Guetta has been a member of The Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music (Sacem) since 1996. Sacem has 157,270 members, including 19,100 creators from outside France (4,080 new members in 2015) and represents over 100 million works from the global repertoire. In 2015, Sacem distributed royalties to 293,000 authors, composers and publishers worldwide for more than 2 million works. (PRNewsFoto/SACEM) Sacem, the French authors' rights society, and SOCAN, the Society of Composers Authors & Music Publishers of Canada, announce today the signature of an agreement entrusting Sacem to administer and collect towards multi territorial DSPs in Europe the performing rights of the more than 135,000 member creators and music publishers of the Canadian Society. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160602/375009 ) The deal is a first, as Sacem will be the first society in Europe assigned to represent the digital rights of a North American music rights organization in pan-European licences, adding to the scale of the repertoire Sacem already represents with its 157,000 creators and publishers or through pre-existing mandates such as UMPI or Wixen Publishing. This agreement will have immediate benefits for SOCAN members as it will provide one unique point of collection and therefore transparency, velocity and efficiency in the management of their rights. Sacem is a founder member of Armonia, the first European online music licensing hub, and the SOCAN/Sacem mandate will be handled through the Armonia platform. In that framework, SOCAN will join the Armonia community and directly benefit from the simplicity to negotiate with one voice with digital service providers and the processing services which provide automated data cleansing and enrichment, leading to more accurate identification of works and BI tools. Jean-Noel Tronc, CEO of Sacem, comments: "We are very happy with SOCAN's decision, which illustrates our commitment to improve efficiency in the digital environment for fair and transparent online revenues to songwriters, composers and music publishers. The Sacem/SOCAN agreement will enhance the Armonia community, for the first time extending beyond Europe." Eric Baptiste, CEO of SOCAN, comments: "This agreement means that SOCAN's more than 135,000 members will benefit greatly from further improved tracking of royalties in the burgeoning European music market. Thanks to this partnership, we look forward to bringing even better returns for Canada's songwriters, composers and music publishers, allowing us to participate even more deeply in the emerging global marketplace." About Sacem http://www.sacem.fr/en The Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music (Sacem) aims to represent and defend its members' interests in view of promoting musical creation in all its forms.Its key mission is to collect royalties and distribute them to authors, composers and publishers whose works are disseminated or reproduced. In 2015, Sacem distributed royalties to 293,000 authors, composers and publishers worldwide for more than 2 million works. About SOCAN http://www.socan.ca SOCAN is a member-based organization that represents the Canadian performing rights of more than four-million Canadian and international music creators and publishers Contacts SACEM Sandra Valerii Mob : +337-84-37-65-75 [email protected] Anna Younger Instinctif Partners Tel : +44(0)207-457-2020 SOCAN Andrew Berthoff +1-416-442-3836 [email protected] SOURCE SACEM DALLAS, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Securus Technologies, a leading provider of civil and criminal justice technology solutions for public safety, investigation, corrections and monitoring, announced today that it has filed an additional four (4) patents in a new patent infringement lawsuit against former industry leader Global Tel Link (GTL). The following four (4) Securus patents were filed against GTL in an additional suit filed on May 13, 2016, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas Dallas Division (Case 3:16-cv-01338-D): U.S. Patent No. 7,529,357 (Inmate Management and Call Processing Systems and Methods); U.S. Patent No. 8,340,260 (Inmate Management and Call Processing Systems and Methods); U.S. Patent No. 7,916,845 (Unauthorized call activity detection and prevention systems and methods for a Voice over Internet Protocol environment); and U.S. Patent No. 8,180,028 (System and method for called party controlled message delivery) The first two patents listed above, 7,529,357 and 8,340,260, have survived Inter-Partes Review (IPR). Both of these patents relate to technology for sharing data access across multiple facilities. The data includes inmate records such as inmate biometric data and third-party contact information. The third patent listed above, 7,916,845, embodies technology for detecting three-way call activity in a VoIP-based call processing system through analysis of out-of-band signals. The fourth patent listed above, 8,180,028, relates to inmate voicemail messaging. The invention includes elements of recording, delivery, party identification, and payment of the message. "After extensive work by multiple industry experts, over a period of several months, we believe that GTL infringes all four (4) patents listed above," said Richard A. ("Rick") Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Securus Technologies. "We are presently reviewing another 70 to 90 patents in our extensive portfolio that GTL may also be infringing, so we expect others to be filed. Our patent related metrics are superior to those of GTL and are summarized in the chart below." Patent Related Metrics Securus versus GTL Securus GTL Advantage Ratio Issued Patents 148 48 Securus 3.1X Pending Patents 89 191 Securus 4.5X (Significant Future Advantage) Issued + Pending Patents 237 67 Securus 3.50X In-Force Patents 120 48 Securus 2.5X Patent Infringement Win-Loss Record 19 0 0 2 Securus Infinity Years Filing Patents 27 16 Securus 69% Longer License Dollars Collected $60M $0 Securus Infinity 1Published filings; non-published filings are not available at this time. "My estimate based on our licensing agreements with other carriers is that GTL will owe us approximately $115 million in license fees and I expect to collect that, and we have sought a permanent injunction, that if granted, will prohibit them making, using, selling, or offering for sale, any of their products and/or services that fall within the scope of the claims in these 4 asserted patents. This will in all likelihood involve key products and features that they presently are offering. The facts and numbers are on our side this is intuitively obvious to the casual observer. The $115 million in license fees requested in a paid in full license for GTL and is reflective of the actual license metrics that Securus has negotiated with other competitors so I have called it an estimate but it is based on our actual recent market settlements where significant cash has exchanged hands. It includes factors of: Patents infringed Relative sizes of patent portfolios Revenue Profitability Patent peace forever Licenses for all existing and new/yet to be filed patents Extended payment plans Ability of a licensee to pay. "The United States Patent and Trademark Office has put a new 'invalidation process' in place that allows litigants in patent infringement cases to attempt to invalidate patents. GTL has used this process to their advantage in having some pieces (claims) of Securus patents invalidated and we have done the same to GTL. Based on recent IPR rulings, we expect the invalidation process to eliminate approximately 50% of Securus and GTL previously approved patents. If that occurs, GTL will likely spend approximately $120 million and Securus will likely spend approximately $40 million in outside legal fees a foolish use of money on both sides. BUT , GTL will also have the added burden of trying to invalidate an additional 20 to 30 new patents Securus is getting approved each year or likely approximately $30 million to $45 million per year in additional legal costs to them. This is an interesting/high-cost strategy that will not allow GTL to reinvest in their business, and should advantage Securus in the long term. "They executed license agreements with us twice in the past, so we were surprised when they did not extend their license agreement with Securus in 2013. I expect that this now will be a multi-year legal effort but we are up to that task. Our previous success rate in similar case negotiations is a win-loss record of 19-0, so I would not bet against us prevailing. We have and our investors have the patience to work through a long litigation process. We have done that in the past and expect to do that with GTL. Justice will ultimately prevail here leave no doubt," concluded Smith. ABOUT SECURUS TECHNOLOGIES Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and serving more than 3,450 public safety, law enforcement and corrections agencies and over 1,200,000 inmates across North America, Securus Technologies is committed to serve and connect by providing emergency response, incident management, public information, investigation, biometric analysis, communication, information management, inmate self-service, and monitoring products and services in order to make our world a safer place to live. Securus Technologies focuses on connecting what matters. To learn more about our full suite of civil and criminal justice technology solutions, please visit SecurusTechnologies.com. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100831/DA57799LOGO SOURCE Securus Technologies Related Links http://www.securustechnologies.com AVENTURA, Fla., June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- MINGO AFFILIATES SERVICES INC./ MINGO GOLD, a leading provider of RAW & refined gold, precious metals, stones and other minerals, today announced that they are opening a new Gold Mine in Kedougou, Senegal, in order to expand the company's gold production and increase its gold reserves which will better meet the supply for increase gold demands. Plans to expand operations in Kedougou, Senegal were initiated by market demands and the company's strategic plan designed to increase and expand the company's gold production and reserves over the next five years. The new Gold Mine (Bencoutou Gold Mine) which also includes the Benkanto Seekoto Mine and the Sining Kang Mine will be the company's third of seven Gold Mining operations in the region. "The opening of Mingo Affiliates Services Inc. / Mingo Gold's Bencoutou Gold Mine is an important step towards realizing the company's expansion goals, the new Gold Mine will be the third of seven important acquisitions for the company in relating to market conditions and how company is responding to them." The price of gold has risen more than 18% since the turn of the year. Gold produces have a new spring in their step. Gold has been one of the best preforming commodities this year as investors have sought a safe haven amid equity market volatility," states Aaron Jenkins, Business Development Administrator- Mingo Gold. Anthem Blanchard founder & CEO of Anthem Vaults states,"$1500 an oz. is not out of the rim of possibility. According to World Gold Council the demand for gold has shot up 21% in the first quarter." The new Bencoutou Gold Mine is expected to generate sales of approximately 10 Billion dollars over the next 35 years. This figure is in addition to the 21 Billion dollars in reserves from its Benkanto Seekoto and Sining Kang Mining operation. The Company intends to hire additional mining professionals, technicians, laborers and other human resource personnel to facilitate the company's continued growth. They intend to form partnerships and joint venture relationships to effectively capitalize on expansion, growth and productivity. Interested parties may visit their website to learn about the opportunities available to join their team and participate in the company's expansion efforts. Once on the site, the first step would be to take the Investor Credit Survey. The survey information gathered will be used to contact interested parties via a follow-up meeting to discuss specific opportunities with company. About MINGO AFFILIATES SERVICES INC./ MINGO GOLD The company was founded in 2003 and was incorporated in the state of Florida, USA. The company has a subsidiary company (Mingo Gold) formed under Senegalese Law and located in Dakar, Senegal with offices in Kedougou, Senegal. Mingo Gold's strategic vision with respect to doing business in Senegal, consists of developing a partnership with local chartered community organizations and the government, incorporating their staff of experts, managers, technicians and financial professionals into the business relationship and in essence become one unified entity operating under legal governance of the two countries. The social and humanitarian impact of this project will have a significant positive economic effect upon the company's joint venture partners and the surrounding community. The Company will initially create 50 permanent jobs and 20 temporary jobs in the first months of operation. The company intends to add an additional 30 permanent jobs per year as its operation expands and the business grows. The company will purchase materials, supplies, lubricants, gas and food locally, financially stimulating the local community. The Democratic Republic of Senegal is a close ally of America, and has been politically stable since the country gained its independence from the French. America has a large Embassy in Senegal and assists in the promotion of trade and commerce between the two countries. From a geopolitical perspective this model works very well. This module significantly lowers the risk associated with investing in foreign markets, since the locals have a vested interest in the success of the company. Visit MINGO AFFILIATES SERVICES INC./ MINGO GOLD, visit website at www.mingogold.com For more additional information, please contact: Aaron Jenkins / Director of Business Development USA Headquarters 2090 N.E. 30th Ave 8TH Floor Aventura, Florida 33180 Phone: 800-234-8098 Ext: 102. Fax: 888-788-2643. Email: [email protected] This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com SOURCE Mingo Affiliates Services, Inc./ Mingo Gold Related Links http://www.mingogold.com HARRISBURG, Pa., June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- State officials are urging the public to pay close attention to local weather forecasts in anticipation of severe weather that is possible across Pennsylvania over the weekend. The most significant storms could hit southern and eastern Pennsylvania on Sunday afternoon and evening. "This storm system could bring anything from damaging winds and hail, to dangerous lightning, flooding and even tornadoes," said Richard D. Flinn Jr., director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. "Conditions can change quickly, so it's important for people to stay alert to the weather where they work and live, particularly if they're planning any outdoor activities." It's important for people to understand the difference between a weather watch and a weather warning: A watch means conditions are favorable for dangerous weather to develop A warning means dangerous weather is imminent or currently happening. Make sure you have more than one method to receive severe weather alerts, which can include text messages, smart phone apps, television, and a weather radio, which sounds an alarm like a smoke detector when severe weather is in your county. "We're in the heart of our severe weather season and Pennsylvanians should be prepared to take action," said Flinn. Flinn also encourages citizens to be aware of the types of severe weather they've vulnerable to in their communities. For example, some parts of the state are more likely to see flash flooding than others. Before severe weather, take a few minutes to: Write down, print or save toll-free "outage reporting hotlines" to your cell phone that's the number you need to call if you lose power. Save the Internet address for your utility's outage reporting system, which can provide an interactive picture of ongoing repair efforts. Charge your cell phone. Should you lose power during a storm, the PUC offers the following tips: Call your utility. Do not assume that the utility already knows about your outage or that others in your neighborhood have already called. Use a phone that does not require electricity to work. A cellular phone or corded phone will work. Remember a cordless phone won't work without electricity. Do NOT call 9-1-1 to report power outages. Those calls take dispatchers away from other emergencies and can also slow a storm response because you're not talking directly to the utility. Turn off lights and electrical appliances except for the refrigerator and freezer. When power comes back on, it may come back with momentary "surges" or "spikes" that can damage equipment. After you turn the lights off, turn one lamp on so you will know when power is restored. Wait at least 15 minutes after power is restored before turning on other appliances. Only use a flashlight or battery-operated lanterns for emergency lighting. Do not use candles or other potential fire hazards. If you are going to use a generator, do not run it inside a home or garage. Also, connect the equipment you want to power directly to the outlets on the generator, not your home's electrical system, which could shock or injure utility crews working on nearly power lines. Do NOT touch or get near any fallen lines, and stay away from objects or puddles in contact with downed power lines. If you have a downed power line or another hazardous situation, call 9-1-1 and contact your utility. Do NOT try to remove trees or limbs from power lines. Check on elderly neighbors and those with special needs who might need additional assistance. No matter what you may face in your community, Flinn said everyone should have disaster supplies on hand at home, including: flashlights and extra batteries; portable, battery-operated radio and extra batteries; first aid kit and manual; bottled water and non-perishable food; manual can opener; essential medicines/prescriptions; and cash, credit cards and important legal documents. Flinn also recommended that families develop an emergency communication plan in the event that family members are separated from one another during severe weather - a real possibility during the day when adults are at work and children are at school - and have a plan for getting back together. Free emergency preparedness information, including templates for family emergency plans and checklists for emergency kit supplies, is available at www.ReadyPA.org. Follow @ReadyPA on Twitter and like ReadyPA on www.facebook.com/BeReadyPA for more emergency preparedness information. The free ReadyPA app is also available for both Apple and Android devices. MEDIA CONTACT: Ruth Miller (PEMA) 717-651-2009 or [email protected] Nils Hagen-Frederiksen (PUC) 717-787-5722 SOURCE Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency Related Links http://www.state.pa.us/ Silex Technology's strategic technology partnerships also have contributed to the company's success. Silex is one of 15 Qualcomm Atheros Authorized Design Centers and an NXP proven partner for Wi-Fi connectivity. In addition to these long-standing relationships, Silex announced two new partnerships in 2015. The company signed a global distribution agreement with Arrow Electronics and worked with Renesas Electronics to integrate a highly reliable Wi-Fi connectivity option for the Renesas Starter Kit for RZ/A1. "We are pleased with our success last year and are well positioned for continued growth in 2016 and beyond," said David Smith, president and CEO of Silex Technology America. "As wireless connectivity is a requirement in every industry, we remain intensely focused on developing solutions that provide the reliability, security and stability necessary for customers' applications, today and in the future." Silex Technology invests heavily in research and development to meet the connectivity needs of this growing customer base and ensure continued growth. More than 55 percent of Silex Technology employees are dedicated to R&D, which yields a steady stream of new products, leading technology and innovations into the market. The latest product releases include SX-ULPGN, a low-cost, ultra low-power single-stream Wi-Fi IoT module and SX-SDMAC and SX-SDPAC, the industry's first IEEE 802.11ac SDIO Wi-Fi modules to deliver enterprise-grade, dual-band 802.11 ac Wi-Fi connectivity with link rates as high as 430Mbps. Over the next three years, Silex Technology is targeting additional revenue growth of 60 percent. The company expects this growth to come from all four of its product categories: embedded wireless, device networking, wireless infrastructure and display connectivity. Silex will continue to focus on high-growth vertical markets including document imaging, medical and telematics and will expand into new areas such as education and industrial automation. About Silex Technology America, Inc. Silex Technology builds on more than 40 years of hardware and software connectivity know-how and IP, custom design development experience, and in-house manufacturing capabilities, bringing value to customers with a foundation of technical expertise. With relentless attention to quality, exclusive access to Qualcomm Atheros expertise, and strategic partnerships with leading semiconductor providers, Silex Technology is the global leader in reliable Wi-Fi connectivity for products ranging from a medical device to a document imaging product to a video or digital display. With Silex Technology, customers get a single vendor that provides hardware and software support from design through manufacturing for successful product after successful product. For more information, please visit www.silexamerica.com. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160602/374902 SOURCE Silex Technology America, Inc. Related Links http://www.silexamerica.com OTTAWA, Quebec, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Purple Forge will be showcasing our advanced and economical smart city solutions for municipalities at the Smart Cities Innovation Summit being held June 13 to June 15 in Austin, Texas. Purple Forge will be on hand to discuss experiences in deploying Smart City solutions in US and Canada. Purple Forge will share insights on current live municipal deployments, including deployments incorporating IBM Watson cognitive computing. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160602/375102 Start Your Smart City Journey at the Smart Cities Innovation Summit in Austin, Texas Purple Forge is an award-winning Software as a Service (SaaS) provider of mobile-first community engagement and self service solutions. Our Smart City solutions can provide your city with a cost effective solution to begin your Smart City journey and help you meet your municipal goals: Offer up-to-the minute services and information Become the go-to channel for critical communications Connect tourists to local events, attractions and information Boost citizen input and engagement Help to reduce operational costs Connect residents with local businesses Spur economic growth Improve transparency with citizens Foster self-service and technology use in your community Purple Forge's Smart Service Solutions platform delivers a wide range of prepackaged solutions with optional features and customization including: Citizen Self-Service, Fraud and Waste Reporting, Elections, Pet Shelters and Adoption, 311/Report a Problem, 511/Road Conditions, Tourism, Economic Development, Healthcare, Emergency Preparedness and Crisis Communications. Our Smart Service Solutions platform offers advanced and comprehensive features that span: Web, Mobile, Wearables, Social, Location Based Services (LBS), Proximity Based Services (iBeacons), Internet of Things, Cognitive Computing and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Purple Forge has deployed hundreds of solutions for a wide range of customers, including the cities of Denver, Long Beach, Pittsburgh, Miami-Dade, Edmonton, Surrey, Mississauga, Oakville, and Ottawa. Other customers include federal, county and provincial governments such as: Union County NJ, Sonoma County CA, Province of Manitoba and Government of Canada. Purple Forge is an IBM Watson Ecosystem Partner and the Purple Forge Smart Service Solutions platform includes Watson cognitive computing and natural language processing capabilities. Purple Forge is partnered with TELUS who offer TELUS Smart City apps based on Purple Forge services. For more information and to book a one-on-one meeting at the Smart Cities Innovation Summit please visit http://purpleforge.com/austin. About Purple Forge Purple Forge is an award-winning Software as a Service (SaaS) provider of mobile-first community engagement and self service solutions. Our customers include: Governments, Venues, Telecommunications Service Providers, Financial Institutions, Healthcare and Membership-based Organizations. Purple Forge's platform and applications offer a wide range of features that span web, mobile, wearables, social, location based services, iBeacons and the Internet of Things. Our solutions increase customer engagement, provide insights into unmet customer needs and reduce service delivery costs. Purple Forge is an IBM Watson Ecosystem Partner. Purple Forge is partnered with TELUS for Smart City solutions. For more information about Purple Forge, please visit http://www.purpleforge.com. Related Files telus-smart-city-app-brochure-april-2016.pdf This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com SOURCE Purple Forge Related Links https://purpleforge.com PUNE, India, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The report "Suspension Market by System (Passive & Semi-Active/Active), Damping (Hydraulic/Pneumatic, Electromagnetic), Architecture (Dependent & Semi-Independent/Independent), Leaf Spring & Air Suspension Markets, Component, Vehicle Type, & by Region - Forecast to 2021", published by MarketsandMarkets, is projected to grow at a CAGR of 5.11% by value, and reach USD 67.22 Billion by 2021. Factors such as increasing vehicle production, demand for comfort, luxury and rising demand for commercial vehicles is driving the market for suspension systems. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 ) Browse 99 market data tables with 76 figures spread through 260 pages and in-depth TOC on "Suspension Market - Forecast to 2021" http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/automobile-suspension-systems-market-939.html Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report. Asia-Oceania: Highest Growing Market for Suspension System Market Asia-Oceania, comprising countries such as China, Japan, India, and South Korea, is witnessing huge population growth. The increasing per capita income of the middle class population and cost advantages for OEMs is driving the market for high priced cars which in turn drives the market for advanced suspension systems. The increasing concern about quality and safety has ensured that suspension system manufacturers have developed advanced suspension systems which would cater to the customers demand. Moreover, stringent emission norms in Japan compel suspension system manufacturers to develop technologically advanced lightweight systems. These systems increase the fuel efficiency of the vehicle, while reducing its emissions. South Korea's automotive industry is changing with technology, market, and competition. New players are entering the South Korean market to build on the existing potential and are replacing the traditional automobile companies. There is a paradigm shift in South Korea's automotive industry with changing trends in technology, market, and competition. This change and growth is attributed to the collaborative measures of the government and OEMs to promote exports and global expansion. Make an Inquiry: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=939 Semi-active/active Suspension System: Promising system in Automotive Suspension The semi-active/active Suspension System Market is the highest growing system type in the Automotive Suspension System Market. It is projected to grow at a promising CAGR from 2016 to 2021. Semi-active/active suspension systems achieve better ride comfort with superior vibration control. Unlike passive suspension systems, semi-active/active suspension systems have the potential to provide both improved ride quality and handling performance, and helps improve braking and cornering performance. Leaf Spring Market: One of the major markets for Automotive Suspension System The leaf spring suspension system is one of the oldest suspension technologies used in automobiles. Leaf spring suspension is considered the simplest and subsequently the most suitable suspension technology for commercial vehicles. The emergence of coil spring independent suspension has led to a decline in the demand for leaf spring suspension in the passenger car segment. Global commercial vehicles production has been increased by 0.66 % from 2013 to 2014 according to the OICA (Organisation Internationale des Constructers Automobiles) which lead to increased demand for leaf springs suspensions. The emission standards in Europe and North America are very stringent which forces OEMs as well as leaf spring manufacturers in these regions to conduct extensive R&D. Some leaf spring manufacturers have developed composite leaf springs that are lighter and offer structural strength equal to that of steel. Leading players in the Automotive Suspension System Market are ZF Friedrichshafen AG (Germany), Tenneco Inc. (U.S.), KYB Corporation (Japan), Continental AG (Germany), Magneti Marelli S.p.A (Italy), and others. Study Coverage: The report covers the Automotive Suspension System Market, in terms of volume ('000 units) and value (USD million). It explains the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the Automotive Suspension System Market on the basis of system type, damping, architecture, components, vehicle type, and region, air Suspension Market by region and leaf spring market by region from 2016 to 2021. Browse related reports: Steering Market by System (EPS, EHPS & HPS), EPS Type (C-EPS, R-EPS & P-EPS), Component (Hydraulic Pump, Power Steering Column, Steering Wheel Speed Sensor, Electric Motor), Vehicle Type (PC, LCV, HCV & Agriculture Tractors), & by Region - Forecast to 2020 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/automobile-steering-systems-market-940.html Brake System Market by Application (PC, LCV, HCV, Off-Highway, Wagon, Locomotive, and RTV), Type (Disc and Drum), Technology (ABS, TCS, ESC, and EBD), Rolling Stock and Locomotive (Air, EP, ECP, and others), and Region - Global Forecast to 2020 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/automotive-brake-system-market-1070.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. Subscribe Reports from Automotive Domain @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Subscription.html 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 ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Despite the U.S. Department of State's recent travel alert for Europe, Americans are still making plans to visit the destination, according to Squaremouth, America's fastest growing travel insurance comparison site. Additionally, more travelers are opting to insure trips to alternative destinations this summer. The five most popular European destinations Italy, France, UK, Germany and Spain account for nearly a quarter of Squaremouth customers traveling this summer, consistent with last year. Additional European destinations are gaining popularity among the website's customers, including Norway and Denmark, compared to last summer. Squaremouth has also seen more Americans choosing to travel closer to home this summer, with Canada rising to the second most popular international destination overall, a significant increase compared to last summer. The current travel alert follows a previous Europe Travel Alert issued by the State Department on March 22, following the Brussels terrorist attacks. In the months since the initial advisory, Squaremouth has not seen a decrease in the number of travelers insuring trips to popular European destinations. The only exception is France, which has dropped slightly compared to Squaremouth sales for the same time period last year. "The travel alert hasn't stopped people from visiting Europe," said Squaremouth spokesperson Rachael Taft. "We've seen that travelers are opting to insure their trips rather than avoid Europe altogether." Squaremouth launched the Europe Travel Alert and Travel Insurance Information Center to explain coverage related to the travel alert for Europe. This resource is regularly updated with frequently asked questions, provider position statements, and relevant notices related to the Europe Travel Alert. Key Travel Insurance Facts About the Europe Travel Alert You cannot cancel your trip because of the Europe Travel Alert A travel alert is not a covered reason to cancel a trip on standard travel insurance. Only travelers with the Cancel For Any Reason upgrade would be covered to cancel their trip due to a travel alert or fear of a potential terrorist attack. You can cancel your trip if there is a terrorist attack at your destination Most policies include Terrorism coverage, which typically covers travelers to cancel their trip if a terrorist attack occurs in or near a city on their itinerary within 7-30 days of their departure date, as long as the attack has been declared an act of terrorism by the State Department. The Europe Travel Alert does not affect travel insurance coverage Travelers can still purchase travel insurance, including terrorism coverage, for an upcoming trip to Europe despite the travel alert. ABOUT SQUAREMOUTH Squaremouth is an online company that compares travel insurance products from virtually every major travel insurance provider in the United States. Using Squaremouth's comparison engine and third party customer reviews, travelers can research and compare insurance products side-by-side. More information can be found at www.squaremouth.com. Available Topic Expert: Rachael Taft [email protected] (727) 264-5174 SOURCE Squaremouth Related Links http://www.squaremouth.com XUZHOU, China, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- XCMG announced on May 7 that it will partner with Aliyun, the cloud computing service provider of Alibaba Group Holding Limited, to build the XCMG-Cloud, a highly inclusive industrial cloud platform based on XCMG's complete data and information systems in the Industry 4.0 revolution. The XCMG-Cloud will be used to share massive data and support further global convergence. "The internet way of thinking can break down barriers between individuals, companies, industries and countries, and coordinate more resources to establish an 'ecosystem' that benefits everyone along the sustainable development path," said Wang Min, chairman and president of XCMG. "It's XCMG's responsibility to take the first step." XCMG launched integral projects in 2009 to upgrade the company's information system, linking research and development, production and supply chain as well as gathering 150 terabytes of industrial big data. The system has now been applied to multiple areas such as intelligent manufacturing, remote diagnosis and after-sales service, and will become the solid foundation to support building the preliminary basic cloud platform of XCMG-Cloud. XCMG will then construct a sharing service center together with Aliyun, which will include divisions for user, algorithm, trade, assessment and logistics to achieve modular development and management. All groups on the industrial chain will be able to take advantage of the open applications brought by XCMG-Cloud including cloud, e-commerce, intelligent supply chain, intelligent factory and social service. "Cloud computing has greater market potential in China," commented Jin Jie, general manager of Aliyun Nanjing branch. "It takes time for enterprises to understand and accept new technology, but XCMG share our ideas and goals of forging China's Predix platform." With XCMG-Cloud, XCMG is establishing a new model for future development of the manufacturing industry that merges internet technologies and a platform-based company, revolutionizing the traditional product and market models that rely heavily on core technologies. "By creating an unprecedented cloud computing platform in Chinese industrialized application and forming the first innovative cloud 'ecosystem', XCMG will lead the transition and upgrading of China's manufacturing enterprises," remarked Wang. About XCMG XCMG is a multinational heavy machinery manufacturing company with a history of 73 years. It currently ranks fifth in the world's construction machinery industry. The company exports to more than 170 countries and regions around the world. For more information, please visit: www.xcmg.com, or follow XCMG Group on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Instagram. SOURCE XCMG Related Links http://www.xcmg.com Name : php Product : Fedora 22 Version : 5.6.22 Release : 1.fc22 URL : http://www.php.net/ Summary : PHP scripting language for creating dynamic web sites Description : PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language. PHP attempts to make it easy for developers to write dynamically generated web pages. PHP also offers built-in database integration for several commercial and non-commercial database management systems, so writing a database-enabled webpage with PHP is fairly simple. The most common use of PHP coding is probably as a replacement for CGI scripts. The php package contains the module (often referred to as mod_php) which adds support for the PHP language to Apache HTTP Server. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Update Information: 26 May 2016, **PHP 5.6.22** **Core:** * Fixed bug #72172 (zend_hex_strtod should not use strlen). (bwitz at hotmail dot com ) * Fixed bug #72114 (Integer underflow / arbitrary null write in fread/gzread). (Stas) * Fixed bug #72135 (Integer Overflow in php_html_entities). (Stas) **GD:** * Fixed bug #72227 (imagescale out-of-bounds read). (Stas) **Intl:** * Fixed bug #64524 (Add intl.use_exceptions to php.ini-*). (Anatol) * Fixed bug #72241 (get_icu_value_internal out-of-bounds read). (Stas) **Postgres:** * Fixed bug #72151 (mysqli_fetch_object changed behaviour). (Anatol) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - References: [ 1 ] Bug #1339949 - CVE-2016-5096 php: Integer underflow causing arbitrary null write in fread/gzread https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1339949 [ 2 ] Bug #1339590 - CVE-2016-5093 php: Out-of-bounds heap read in get_icu_value_internal https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1339590 [ 3 ] Bug #1340742 - CVE-2016-5095 php: Integer overflow in php_filter_full_special_chars https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1340742 [ 4 ] Bug #1340738 - CVE-2016-5094 php: Integer overflow in php_html_entities() https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1340738 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - This update can be installed with the "yum" update program. Use su -c 'yum update php' at the command line. For more information, refer to "Managing Software with yum", available at https://docs.fedoraproject.org/yum/. All packages are signed with the Fedora Project GPG key. More details on the GPG keys used by the Fedora Project can be found at https://fedoraproject.org/keys ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - _______________________________________________ package-announce mailing list package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org https://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol Armenia and Azerbaijan to do so without delay An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan". UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022 Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully Google Ad The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces LEVEL UP ONLY FOR STUDENTS: UCOM OFFERS X2 AND X3 MORE INTERNET STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh USA Embassy Message for U.S. Citizens ANCA Issues National Call to Action to Stop Taxpayer Funding of Aliyevs Aggression Chennai, May 30 : Filmmaker Sekhar Kammula is considering actress Sai Pallavi for his upcoming yet-untitled Telugu film with Varun Tej, if sources are anything to go by. "Pallavi has been approached but she's yet to officially sign on the dotted line. Having recently graduated as a doctor, Pallavi is ready to take up acting full-time. Hence, offers have started pouring in," a source from the film's unit told IANS. Kammula's project, which is about an NRI falling in love with a girl from Telangana, is expected to go on the floors from August or September. Having made her cinematic debut with Malayalam blockbuster "Premam" last year, Pallavi has also worked in Malayalam film "Kali". If Pallavi signs the project, it will mark her Telugu debut. Dil Raju will bankroll the film. Agartala, May 31 : The quality of discussions in parliament has been deteriorating and the lawmakers' viewpoint and participation must be improved, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan said here on Tuesday. "Quality of deliberation of parliamentarians has been deteriorating, and their viewpoint and participation must be enhanced," Mahajan said after inaugurating the two-day conference of North East Region Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (NERCPA). She said: "To improve the ideas of the parliamentarians and for a better understanding of the contemporary issues, they can take the support of the Speaker's Research Initiative (SRI), set up on July 23 last year". "The SRI has been looking after the strategic policy aspects of core areas and issues of India for the betterment of the people on a long-term basis. For high-quality deliberations in the legislative bodies, the SRI has also been holding numerous workshops for the lawmakers and other stake holders." The Lok Sabha Speaker also stressed on the need for holding quality debates to strengthen people's faith in the legislative institutions. "The MPs must be trained to put their views appropriately," she said. "Most of the times during their discussions in Parliament the MPs concentrate their views only on their constituency. In their speeches in Parliament they must reflect the entire picture of the country. They must keep in their mind that the parliamentarians are policy-makers," she added. Mahajan said that legislators in a parliamentary democracy represent the hopes and aspirations of the people. Therefore, they need to periodically introspect their roles and responsibilities. Highlighting various issues of northeastern states, she said that India cannot be developed without the development of the northeast region. "The present central government is also attaching high importance for an all-round development of northeast India," Mahajan said. "On the political spectrum, northeastern states have two dynamic and experienced chief ministers -- Tripura's Manik Sarkar and Sikkim's Pawan Kumar Chamling. Recently, a young and dynamic leader has taken charge as Assam's Chief Minister (Sarbananda Sonowal). You have dynamic leaders in the northeast and have dynamic young generation," she added. "I am sure that the leaders from the northeast with their energy, experience, vision and sense of purpose will write a glorious chapter in the development of the region". "Northeast is considered as a place of sanctity and the most auspicious direction where most powerful, positive and progressive energies are generated. So peace, harmony and development in the region are very important," Mahajan said. "Rs30,000 crore has been earmarked for the northeastern region in the current (2016-17) Union budget and most of this would go for development of rail, road, waterways and telecom connectivity in the region," the Lok Sabha Speaker said. "India is working with Thailand and Mayanmar on a 1,400-km-long highway that would link India with South-East Asia by land, giving a boost to trade and cultural exchanges besides economic integration. The Railways Ministry is giving massive push to railway infrastructure in the northeast, and now Manipur and Mizoram are also on the broad gauge rail map," Mahajan said. She said the northeast region is blessed with favourable gender equation, rich natural resources and high percentage of literate young rural population. "This youthful workforce can be harnessed as a national asset for nation-building," Mahajan said. She said the northeast has been represented by 39 members in Parliament (Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha), and they along with the close to 500 members of state legislative assemblies and other local representatives could collectively play an important role in the socio-economic development of the region. NERCPA is currently chaired by Meghalaya Assembly Speaker Abu Taher Mondal. The participants in the two-day NERCPA conference include Speakers, Deputy Speakers of seven of the eight northeastern states excluding Assam, some legislators and parliamentarians, Tripura Governor, Chief Minister and Parliamentary Affairs Minister. The Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the new Assam Assembly are yet to be elected. Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar said that to maintain transparencies, expenditure of elections should be met by the governments. "Use of money power during elections must be checked," he said. Sarkar said the Representation of People Act should be amended for equitable representations of all caste, creed and religion in Parliament and legislative bodies. New Delhi, May 31 : India on Tuesday signed a $9.2-million grant agreement with the World Bank for the 'Efficient and Sustainable City Bus Service Project' aimed at improving the efficiency of the transport and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. "An agreement for Global Environmental Facility (GEF) grant of $9.20 million with the World Bank for 'Efficient and Sustainable City Bus Service Project' was signed here on Tuesday," Finance Ministry said in a statement. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) will be the implementing agency of the GEF for the project. The total cost of the programme is $113 million, out of which $9.2 million will come as a grant from the World Bank and $103.07 million will be funded by the Centre, state and city governments for the funding of buses and ancillary infrastructure, the statement said. The project's objective is to improve the efficiency and attractiveness of city bus transport and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the demonstration cities of Bhopal, Chandigarh, Jaipur and Mira Bhayandar municipality in the Thane district of Maharashtra, it added. Kabul, May 31 : The turmoil in Afghanistan has got impetus since Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada has been appointed as the Taliban group's supreme leader. "Kidnapping innocent passengers and barbaric killing over a dozen of them is clear indication of increase in violence committed by Taliban insurgents," Xinhua quoted Kabul resident Farakh Shah as saying. A group of armed Taliban militants intercepted three passenger buses and kidnapped 185 travellers, said the police. "Like his predecessors, Haibatullah is in favour of war and would continue violent insurgency," another Afghan Mahmoud Khan said. Abducting passengers and killing over a dozen of them in Kunduz province took place amid ongoing fierce battle between government forces and Taliban militants in Helmand province that has left more than 200 militants and security personnel dead or injured over the past three days. "A total of 118 Taliban rebels have been killed, 73 injured and 11 made captive," a government official said on Tuesday. Fierce fighting has been going on in Nahr-e-Saraj, Nad Ali and Gereshk districts, the official admitted, saying reinforcements would soon be deployed in sensitive areas to dislodge militants. The official, however, did not mention the number of casualties the security forces suffered. Meantime, an official said nearly 90 security personnel were killed and injured elsewhere in Helmand province since Sunday. Taliban has confirmed the clash in Helmand province and claimed inflicting casualties on government forces in parts of the restive province. Fighting between security forces and Taliban militants has also claimed over a dozen lives in the northern Faryab and Baghlan province over the past 24 hours. Security forces captured a teenage would-be suicide bomber in Baghlan province; while bicycle bomb killed one person and injured 11 others in the eastern Ghazni province on Tuesday. Afghans, generally believe Taliban under Akhundzada would intensify militancy as the new leader during his service as deputy to his predecessor Mullah Akhtar Mansour had never advocated for peace talks with government. Akhunzada was appointed Taliban supreme leader on May 25, four days after former Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a US drone strike in Balochistan province of Pakistan on May 21. Galust Sahakyan addresses message to President of German Bundestag Speaker of the Armenian National Assembly, Galust Sahakyan, has sent a message to President of German Bundestag Norbert Lammert. Your Excellency, In the name of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia and personally me I express my deep gratitude to you and our colleagues of the Bundestag of the Federal Republic of Germany for truthfully and with dignity looking at one of the gravest crimes occurred against humanity, the Armenian Genocide perpetrated in the Ottoman Empire in 1915, and adopting the Resolution recognizing and condemning it. That document is not only a tribute to the memory of the Armenian Genocide innocent victims, but also a weighty contribution to the international processes in the restoration of the historical truth and prevention of the repetition of similar crimes in the world. Germany once again proved that it is faithful to the all-human values, truth and morality, which are of prior condition for the peoples peaceful co-existence. The adopted Resolution will be a serious impetus for Turkey to have courage facing its own past. Your Excellency, accept, please, assurances of my highest consideration, Galust Sahakyan said in his message. Rae Bareli/New Delhi, May 31 : Accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of behaving like a "Shehenshah", Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday backed her son-in-law Robert Vadra over the allegation that he owns a 'benami' property in London and termed the charge a political conspiracy. She also dared the government to probe the allegation against Vadra 'unbiasedly'. Sonia Gandhi, who was visiting her constituency Rae Bareli, said: "This is also a political conspiracy. What do you mean by Congress-mukt Bharat? Everyday they give excuses and level wrong allegations." "If this (allegation) is true, then they should conduct an unbiased probe. Everything will become clear," said an angry Sonia Gandhi. Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Kirit Somaiya on Monday sought detailed inquiry by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) into alleged involvement of Robert Vadra in the 2009 purchase of a 'benami' or proxy-owned mansion in London. On the celebrations by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on completion of two years in office, Gandhi said: "I have never seen anything like this, Modi ji is the PM, and not a Shehenshah (King)." "Our nation is facing drought, poverty, farmers are in pain. At these times, such a 'show' is not appropriate," she said of the gala event held in New Delhi on Saturday night by the government. The BJP hit back and said the Congress President's defence of her son-in-law vindicates the party's old charge that whatever Vadra does has the backing of the Gandhi family. "Vadra has the blessings of 10 Janpath...That is why he has earned so much money. He can't be dubbed as a private citizen. Whatever he has done has the backing of Sonia Gandhi and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi," BJP National Secretary Srikant Sharma told IANS. "You can't separate Vadra from the Gandhi family. Sonia Gandhi coming out in support of Vadra has established our charges," he added. The BJP's national media convenor said that the Congress President has been trying to "threaten" the BJP whenever there is a corruption charge against them. "Congress has looted the nation and now they are coming out. Whenever there are corruption charges against the Congress and its family, they try to threaten us. We are not scared," he said. On Sonia Gandhi's jibe at Prime Minister Modi that "he is the PM, and not a Shehenshah (emperor)", Sharma said, "Modi ji is a 'jan sewak'. Those who were Shehenshah are nowhere today. They were sent packing by voters in 2014. Those emperors are now on bail in the National Herald case involving corruption of over Rs 5,000 crore. They are in panic and in frustration," referring to the Gandhi family. New Delhi, May 31 : As many as 22 boys working in restaurants and other eateries of South Delhi were rescued on Tuesday during a daylong operation and these nine business establishments were sealed, NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) said. The non-governmental organisation run by Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi said it not only rescued the boys but also sealed nine restaurants and other eateries, where the boys were working as "unpaid labourers", with the help of Delhi Police, labour department officials and the Mehrauli sub-divisional magistrate. "All nine eateries, which included several high-end and popular ones, have been shut and sealed. FIRs will be lodged against their owners under relevant laws," the BBA said. "Of the 22 children rescued, two were from Bhaktapur and Rupandehi districts of Nepal, two regions severely affected by the May 2015 earthquake," the NGO said. The others hail from Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar. As per the BBA, the youngest rescued child was aged 10. The children were presented before a child welfare committee. A few of the rescued children were sent to BBA's short-term rehabilitation home Mukti Ashram in Burari, New Delhi, while some were shifted to a government shelter home. New Delhi, June 2 : In yet another example of India's developmental aid to Afghanistan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Saturday jointly with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani inaugurate a dam reconstructed with India's assistance. "Prime Minister will visit Afghanistan on Saturday, June 4, where he will jointly inaugurate the Afghan-India Friendship Dam, earlier known as Salma Dam, with President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani in Herat province in western Afghanistan," external affairs ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said in his weekly media briefing here on Thursday. "The completion of the dam project represents culmination of years of hard work by about 1,500 Indian and Afghan engineers and other professionals in very difficult conditions," Swarup said. "It also highlights India's continued commitment to Afghanistan's reconstruction and development." Originally constructed in 1976 on the Hari river basin, the Salma Dam suffered extensive damage during the civil war in Afghanistan. On December 25 last year, Modi and Ghani jointly inaugurated a new building of the Afghan parliament in Kabul built with India's aid. Last month, India, Iran and Afghanistan signed a trilateral agreement for the development of the Chabahar port in Iran for transport and transit corridor. During his meeting with Ghani on Saturday, Modi will also take stock of the situation in Afghanistan. "The forthcoming meeting between the prime minister and President Ghani will also provide an opportunity to discuss the situation in Afghanistan and how the two countries can cooperate further for promoting peace and stability in that country," Swarup. Modi will stop over in Herat for the dam inauguration on his way to Doha, Qatar, on the first day of his five-nation tour that will also take him to Switzerland, the US and Mexico. Modi was last in Afghanistan in December when he inaugurated the Afghan parliament built with India's aid. New Delhi, June 2 : In a move to further boost counter-terrorism cooperation between the two countries, India and the United States on Thursday signed an agreement to facilitate exchange of terrorist screening information. "The arrangement was signed by union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi and US Ambassador to India Richard Verma," an official communique said. It said both sides shall provide each other with access to terrorism screening information through designated contact points, subject to domestic laws and regulations. India and the US face serious threats from terror outfits like the Islamic State, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and have been collaborating in the fight against global terror. On May 20, US Ambassador Verma met union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and discussed the India-US Homeland Security Dialogue. The dialogue was drawn up as a "major mechanism" to enhance security cooperation and discuss building capacity in cyber security between the two countries, especially after the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, home ministry sources said. Both countries, through the US Homeland Security Department and India's Ministry of Home Affairs, have close cooperation and share intelligence on terrorists and terror outfits operating in the Indian sub-continent. Both sides also exchange information related to critical infrastructure protection and matters on countering illicit finance, global supply chain security, mega-city policing, and science and technology, official sources said. Berlin/Ankara, June 2 : The German parliament, ignoring pressure from the Turkish government, on Thursday approved a symbolic resolution declaring the 1915 massacre of Christian Armenians during World War I by Ottoman Turkish forces a "genocide". Turkey reacted furiously, terming the resolution a "historic mistake" and recalled its envoy to Germany in protest. The Germany parliamentary vote was almost unanimous, with just one MP voting against and another abstaining. The resolution was largely expected and was supported by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. However, she had to skip the vote due to prior commitments. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara will take retaliatory measures. Turkish Ambassador Huseyin Avni Karslioglu was to fly back to Turkey on Thursday, according to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. Turkey also decided to summon Germany's charge d'affaires to the Foreign Ministry in Ankara. Turkey's new Prime Minister Binali Yildirim condemned the German vote and said that a "racist Armenian lobby" was responsible for the decision. The ruling AK Party in Turkey responded to the "genocide" slur by saying the move had seriously damaged relations between the two countries, while Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus was equally scathing, calling the resolution a "historic mistake". In Istanbul, armed riot police were deployed outside the German consulate, near Taksim square, to guard against likely protests. German Chancellor Merkel, in an effort to assuage the ruffled diplomatic ties, said that Berlin's relationship with Ankara was broad and strong. "There is a lot that binds Germany to Turkey and even if we have a difference of opinion on an individual matter, the breadth of our links, our friendship, our strategic ties, is great," Merkel said. Turkey accepts the fact that many Armenians died in the fighting in 1915, during the First World War. However, it disputes that up to 1.5 million were killed and that this constituted an act of genocide by Turkish Ottoman forces. Gregor Gysi, a politician from the German Left Party who was critical of Turkey's treatment of the Kurds, said that "Germany was a historical accessory" and has a duty to recognise the mass killings of Armenians in the First World War. "We need to call this what it was -- a genocide," he told the German Parliament. "The Bundestag should not allow itself to be blackmailed by Turkey's threats." The news of the parliamentary resolution was greeted with delight by dozens of Armenian supporters who had gathered outside the Bundestag building carrying banners commemorating the genocide. According to the ruling Christian Democratic Union's Albert Weiler, Germany had a "historical duty" to recognise the mass killings of Armenians. "Without this admission, there cannot be forgiveness and reconciliation. Suffering does not know temporary boundaries. Genocide will never remain in the past. By recognising the genocide, it will force the Turkish government to take a brave step and look into its own history," he said. Representatives from the Turkish and Armenian embassies were present in the German parliament when the vote took place. Turkey had made a strong bid on Thursday to try and sway German opinion. Turkish Prime Minister Yildirim had said it would be "irrational" for the German Parliament to approve such a resolution and would "test" the friendship between the two countries. Ankara launched a high-profile campaign of intimidation in the build-up to the vote, which even included the Turkish community sending out thousands of emails to German MPs. However, some emails crossed the line, intimidating politicians and threatening the lives of journalists. Sections of the German media were worried about what impact the decision by the parliament could have on the migrant deal between Turkey and the EU, which has been championed by Merkel. The parliamentary vote was originally scheduled to take place a year ago to mark the centenary of the genocide, but due to concerns over the fallout with Turkey, Merkel's allies postponed the move. The mass killings began on April 24, 1915, when 250 Armenian intellectuals were detained by Ottoman authorities and later executed in their capital, Constantinople, present-day Istanbul. Most of the Ottoman Empire's Armenians were subsequently displaced, deported or placed in concentration camps, ostensibly for rebelling against the Ottomans and for siding with Russia during World War I. This affected up to 1.5 million Armenians. Turkey -- the successor of the Ottoman Empire -- concedes that many Armenians were mistreated at the time, but maintains that the number of victims has been grossly exaggerated and that there was no "genocide". New Delhi : Nury Vittachi Asia contains literally four billion people. So it's kind of weird that every time I visit the West, people say: "You're from Asia? I met a guy from there once; I wonder if you know him?" The really weird thing is that I always do. Talking of East-West issues, at a writers' festival in Singapore recently, the authors' panel and audience were given five minutes to answer a question: What topics should never be covered in children's books? The Westerners in the room gave identical answers: Nothing should be banned! All censorship is evil! The Easterners in the room wrote long lists of unmentionables including cannibalism, violence, politics, religion, sex, kissing, underpants, democracy, feelings, and so on. I asked for a second sheet of paper to list individuals and inappropriate vegetables. East and West are so different. A couple of days later, a reader sent me a viral Instagram video of a man in Sydney who spontaneously tried to run up an escalator which was moving down at a high speed. The crowd, most members of which were using the escalator at the time, raucously cheered him on as he risked their safety. In Asia, he would have been severely tut-tutted by observers and arrested by the authorities, possibly even facing the death penalty for incitement to commit emotions. Further evidence of an East-West divide came from the announcement that the US national spelling contest was won by two boys, Nihar and Jairam, whose names are added to the winners' list: Gokul, Vanya, Ansun, Sriram, Arvind, Snigdha, Sukanya, Anamika and the like. Families with Indian roots make up less than one percent of the US population but win the spelling contests every year. As a South Asian, I can reveal that we're good at spelling because of our unspellable names. Our version of Scrabble says that if your tiles don't make a word, you can still get 50 bonus points if you use them to name your child. At the same time, Google revealed that the most searched for "how to spell" request in the US state of Massachusetts was Massachusetts. Internet conversations must go something like this: Asian: "Hi, where are you from?" Massachusetts Resident: "Hang on, let me just Google that." Not that Westerners aren't smart: they are far ahead of Easterners in cultural mores. A hot new difference concerns gender. Asians have to use the toilets that match their biological gender, whereas my Western friends think that's an outrageous demand. Four-year-olds at a school in the British city of Brighton are told that they are not boys or girls but can choose their gender. This strikes me as risky, as small children change their minds all the time. 9:00:05 "Do you need to use the toilet?" "No." 9:00: 25 (dancing as we get on the bus) "DAD! I need to wee! Now!" But I quite like the idea of being "gender-fluid". For example, it's well known that lightning kills six times as many males as females. If all guys wore dresses on rainy days, many lives would be saved. I might write a children's book about it: The Day Mr Lightning Found No One to Fry. ( is an Asia-based frequent traveller. Send ideas and comments via his Facebook page) Islamabad, June 3 : Pakistan's former Federal Minister for Religious Affairs Hamid Saeed Kazmi was on Friday sentenced to 16 years in prison over a Haj corruption case. Judge Malik Nazir Ahmad from special court central, a lower court, also sentenced Rao Shakeel, Director General (DG) of Haj, to 40 years in prison and jailed Joint secretary for Religious Affairs Aftab Aslam for 16 years, Dawn online reported. The verdict was announced after cross-examination of 60 witnesses presented by the prosecution which was concluded last week. Those sentenced have the right to appeal the decision in Islamabad High Court. Between 2010 and 2012, the Haj corruption scandal rocked the national political scene and led to the exit of both Hamid Saeed Kazmi and Azam Swati from the federal cabinet. The former Religious Affairs minister was slapped with allegations of involvement in the Haj corruption scandal and inflicting huge losses to the national coffers two years ago. After this, a case was registered leading to Kazmi's arrest on March 15, 2011. Kazmi was subsequently indicted on charges of corruption in the case on May 30, 2012, to which he pleaded not guilty. They were accused of hiring a substandard building on exorbitant rent (for housing the pilgrims in Makkah) and receiving kickbacks in the process. A total of 35,000 Pakistani pilgrims were affected due to the high charges. Mumbai, June 3 : At a time when Mathura is engulfed by tension following a violent confrontation between the police and encroachers, veteran actress and BJP MP Hema Malini tweeted away about her experience of shooting a film in Mumbai. She later deleted the tweets and expressed empathy with victims in her Lok Sabha constituency. In tweets that she deleted after her indifference to the Mathura incident was being highlighted, Hema had posted about how convenient it has become to commute from mainland Mumbai to Madh Island -- a hotspot for shooting. She even posted photographs from her journey to Madh Island via a motorboat, and expressed hope for an early release of the movie "Ek Thi Rani", which she is busy shooting for. After social media users commented on her nonchalance towards the situation in Mathura, she deleted the tweets and instead shared: "I just came back from Mathura and got the news of the violence that has taken place there in which policemen have lost their lives." "So so upset by ths news from a place which is so dear to me, Will go there again if my presence is required. My heart goes out to the bereaved," she added. Hema also sent out her "heartfelt condolences" to families, "who laid down their lives in the line of duty." The actress also appealed to the people of Mathura to "maintain calm" and not get "misguided by violent elements". On Thursday, a mob went on rampage after police took action against them for encroaching upon a major part of a government land. The toll in the Mathura violence rose to 24 on Friday as Superintendent of Police Mukul Dwivedi and others injured in Thursday's clash between police and encroachers during an anti-encroachment drive, succumbed to their injuries, officials said. While 250 people have been detained for their involvement in the incident, the city continues to be tense even as heavy police reinforcements have been deployed in the violence hit region. New Delhi, June 3 : Ankur and Priyanka Modi's journey in the fashion world along with their brand AM:PM has a history of 12 years. Over the years, they have noticed that fashion nowadays is sought, bought and worn more to express oneself as compared to the days when Indian women were dictated by an "implicit convention". "Until a few years back, Indian women were dictated by an implicit convention. They were dressing according to society's expectation of them. "Women today, on the other hand, are out there working, travelling and consuming the newest trends off international runways on their phones. Thanks to the world becoming flatter, fashion is now so much more democratic," Ankur, son of ace designer Anju Modi, told IANS in an email interview. The biggest change, he said, is the mind-shift. "The modern Indian woman is dressing her personality. Thus, the fashion industry has become more dynamic, and we as designers have to constantly evolve to keep up with the same," Ankur added. His wife Priyanka, who is one-half of their widely popular AM:PM brand -- which specialises in luxury pret -- also feels that Indian textile is getting the right attention. However, she feels there is a lot more that needs to be done. "Designers are always looking to innovate and evolve. Doing that with indigenous textiles or crafts is always a great idea. This drive of modernising Indian handicrafts will surely benefit weavers and craftsmen around the country, though impact on designers who are doing this to attract international attention, according to us, will be minimal. "This is not to say that it won't peek any interest, but we shouldn't mistake interest with any intent of doing significant business. It's an exotic product for them (foreigners) and hence, will likely only appeal to that very small niche," Priyanka said. At the same time, she also feels it only makes sense for fashion industry players and leaders to "introspect" why the talent does not translate into promising and encouraging numbers in terms of business. "Of course, with all the positives, also come the negative," Priyanka said, and added: "We feel there is a lot still to be desired in terms of how we approach the business as an industry. Everyday, we see new labels being launched, new designers becoming entrepreneurs, but the total size of the fashion design industry is roughly Rs 1,200 crore. "We must collectively introspect and understand why it is when we have all the talent, we have no real bearing on the retail market? These are pertinent questions which need to be answered and urgently." As a dynamic team, Ankur and Priyanka Modi work together in a way that they complement each other's skills and areas of expertise. Their AM:PM brand has grown steadily, with the headquarters in New Delhi, and retailing out of a total of 25 stores across 15 major cities in India. Internationally, AM:PM can be found at select stores in the US, Britain, Russia, Brazil, and the Middle-East. Now they're eyeing major expansion as they "realise the expandability quotient of the brand and the fact that it can venture into so many more verticals of fashion and lifestyle". "Going forward, it would probably be the most crucial asset we possess," said Ankur. "We are slated to open 20 more exclusive-AM:PM stores within the next three years in India, Dubai, Singapore, US and Britain. Apart from this, we retail from 15 of the most exclusive multi-designer boutiques nationally and internationally and are also available on premium online portals," said Priyanka. For young aspirants in the fashion world, they have a word of advice. "It is very important for a designer to believe in creating their own language and remaining true to that." (Nivedita can be contacted at nivedita.s@ians.in) Los Angeles, June 3 : Indian-American Mainak Sarkar had killed his wife in Minnesota before driving over 3,000 km to the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) where he shot dead a professor and then turned the gun on himself. Both the victims were on his "kill list", officials said. Sarkar, 38, an IIT Kharagpur graduate, had killed his wife Ashley Hasti, who was found dead in Brooklyn Park, in Minnesota, police said on Thursday. Sarkar later fatally shot engineering professor William Klug, 39, in his office at the UCLA on Wednesday. Klug had refused to give him a passing grade. Hasti and Sarkar married on June 14, 2011, Hennepin county Communications Officer Carolyn Marinan said. However, it was unclear if they were still married at the time of their deaths. Police who searched Sarkar's Minnesota home found a note with an ominous title "Kill list". It had the names of three people including Klug and Hasti, according Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck. Hasti had a gunshot wound and was apparently been killed before the UCLA shooting, Deputy Police Chief Mark Bruley said. Sarkar had apparently driven 3,220 km from Minnesota to Los Angeles in his car to shoot Klug. The third person Sarkar intended to target was another professor at UCLA, Beck said. That faculty member was off-campus on Wednesday and was unharmed, the police chief said. Beck said that "a dispute over intellectual property" was tied to the UCLA shooting, which put the campus on lockdown for hours on Wednesday. Sarkar felt that Klug had released information "that harmed him", the police chief said, adding "UCLA says this is absolutely not true. This is the workings of his imagination." Sarkar was listed on a website for Klug's research group at UCLA, and an online abstract of his dissertation listed Klug as his adviser. Police are searching for the grey 2003 Nissan Sentra Sarkar drove from Minnesota to California. Klug was an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and had been the target of Sarkar's anger on social media for months. In a blog post uploaded on March 10 under his name, Sarkar wrote that the professor "stole all my code and gave it another student". Sarkar branded him a "sick man". Before enrolling at UCLA, Sarkar earned a Master's degree at Stanford University following an under-graduate degree in aerospace engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, according to his LinkedIn page. In the US, he also had a stint as a research assistant at the University of Texas and worked as a software developer. UCLA's engineering building is located in the middle of a densely populated part of Los Angeles. Armenian legislature discusses bill proposing to suspend EEU membership (video) The Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Armenian National Assembly today discussed a bill submitted by lawmaker Khachatur Kokobelyan who proposes to terminate Armenias membership to the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). The lawmaker thinks that by choosing to join the EEU Armenians have deprived themselves of alternatives. We are treated as outcasts and minority everywhere. We cannot deny this bitter truth, but we persistently try to convince ourselves that the membership was a positive move. On the other hand, after the membership we have been gradually losing international investments, therefore, I propose that we suspend the membership.The sooner we do it, the better for us. May in our society realize and object to the membership saying we have gained nothing from the EEU or the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization). We did not see the military equipment worth around 200 million that we were supposed to receive from Russia. I think that this was one of the main reasons [for Azerbaijan] to start the four-day war in April, Mr Kokobelyan stressed. He expected the Committee to reach an agreement on the measure. I do not want to know who is for or against the proposal. I want everyone to understand that the EEU was a challenge rather than an opportunity for us. Also, I disagree with the opinion that Armenia was obliged to join the EEC and had no other option. I do not want us to become advocates of Russia, I just want everyone here to defend the interests of our country. Mr Kokobelyan added that as a CSTO member country, Armenia was unable to prevent Russia from selling arms to Azerbaijan. Our enemy gets 80 percent of its weapons from Russia.. Artak Zakaryan, Chairman of the NA Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, said he would vote against the bill as he saw disputable provisions in it. The other Republican MPs urged to postpone the discussion of the draft. In the long run, Khachatur Kokobelyan accepted the proposal of his Republican colleagues to postpone the discussion for one year. Bhopal, June 3 : The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has signed an agreement with Rewa Ultra Mega Solar Ltd (RUMSL) of Madhya Pradesh to purchase solar power in a contract to last 25 years. A proposed 750 Mega Watt solar power plant -- with three units of 250 Mega Watt each -- is being set up in Rewa, Madhya Pradesh, a press statement said. The state's New and Renewable Energy Department Principal Secretary Manu Shrivastava signed the purchase agreement with Managing Director of DMRC Mangu Singh. As per the agreement, the DMRC is committed to receive at least 121 million units of electricity every year from each factory of the solar power plant. In this way, DMRC is likely to purchase at least 363 million units of electricity per year. New Delhi, June 3 : The Supreme Court on Friday directed the Madhya Pradesh government to pay Rs 10 lakh compensation to an NRI doctor and her septuagenarian mother, a practising lawyer in Pune, Maharashtra, for unlawfully arresting them. The court ordered the Madhya Pradesh government to pay the compensation of Rs 5 lakh each to Rini Johar and her mother Gulshan Johar in three months' time. Rini is a doctor pursuing higher studies in the US and attached to a company in the US. Her mother Gulshan is a lawyer, practising in Pune district court for the last 36 years. Their saga began when one person, Vikram Rajput, purchased an imaging instrument and a laptop computer from Rini. He made a payment of Rs 250,000 for this. However, Vikram later alleged that the gadgets were defective. He subsequently filed a complaint with the police in Bhopal. The Cyber Cell of the Madhya Pradesh police then went to Pune and arrested Rini and her mother. Directing compensation to the victims, an apex court bench of Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Shiva Kirti in their judgement said "the investigating officers in no circumstances can flout the law with brazen proclivity and in such a situation a constitutional court taking note of suffering and humiliation (of the petitioners) are entitled to grant compensation." The court said: "On a perusal of the FIR, it is clear to us that the dispute is purely of a civil nature, but a maladroit effort has been made to give it a criminal colour." Pointing out that the officers of the state police had played with the liberty of mother and daughter, the Supreme Court bench said: "There has been violation of Article 21 and the petitioners (Johars) were compelled to face humiliation. They have been treated with an attitude of insensibility." The court said that not only there was violation of the guidelines issued by the apex court on handling of such matters by the police, but "there was also flagrant violation of mandate of law enshrined under Section 41 and Section 41-A of the CrPC". An inquiry was held after both mother and daughter in a complaint to the Lokayukta Police (Madhya Pradesh Special Police Establishment) alleged that they paid Rs 5 lakh in two instalments of Rs 250,000 each as demanded by the Deputy Superintendent of Police, Cyber Cell, for their release. Referring to the report of inquiry by the state which pointed to the illegalities in the arrest of the Johars, the court said: "In such a situation, we are inclined to think that the dignity of the petitioners, a doctor and a practising advocate, has been seriously jeopardised." The court said: "It is clear that liberty of the petitioners was curtailed in violation of the law. The freedom of an individual has its sanctity." For curtailment of liberty, requisite norms are to be followed, the court said, underlining that "fidelity to statutory safeguards instil faith of the collective in the system". The court said: "It does not require wisdom of a seer to visualise that for some invisible reason an attempt has been made to corrode the procedural safeguards which are meant to sustain the sanguinity of liberty." Kolkata, June 3 : Shocked at the shooting incident in the prestigious University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA), some Indian researchers in the US have said they were "discomfited" to learn Indian doctoral student Mainak Sarkar was identified as the killer of a professor and his own wife. Researcher Sohini Ray who was in "lockdown" for around two hours along with her lab mates in a UCLA building said taking someone's life was not justifiable. "It's a very sad affair. We do not know what transpired internally but taking someone's life is not justifiable and whether the person had tried to solve the problem through another method before taking the drastic step is not clear. Not just as a Bengali but as an Indian, I feel sad," Ray told a local TV channel. According to Sriparna Gangopadhyay, a scientist at the University of California, the report sent shock waves through the academic community. "It was shocking to learn that something of that sort had happened in an educational institution. I felt a bit discomfited to learn he was an Indian," Gangopadhyay said. Sarkar, 38, an IIT - Kharagpur graduate, fatally shot engineering professor William Klug, 39, in his office at the UCLA campus on Wednesday. Klug had refused to give him a passing grade. Before killing Klug, Sarkar killed his wife Ashley Hasti, who was found dead in Brooklyn Park, in Minnesota. Chennai, June 3 : The Heavy Vehicles Factory (HVF) that rolls out battle tanks for India is in the process of developing new vendors while hoping to close this fiscal with a revenue of around Rs 2,400 crore, a top official said on Friday. "We are in the process of developing new vendors for the components where there was only one vendor. We are developing Lucas TVS as a second vendor for one of the battle tank systems," Hari Mohan, Senior General Manager, told reporters on the side lines of a conference here. According to Mohan, the HVF logged a turnover of Rs 1,500 crore last fiscal and the current year target is around Rs 2,400 crore. "The next year revenue will be around Rs 3,000 crore and our order book position is full till the year 2035," he said. Speaking at the conference earlier on 'Defence Manufacturing Technologies - Defence Indigenisation - Window of Opportunities', organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Mohan said the HVF procures components worth Rs 600 crore in all and of that around Rs 350 crore-worth is sourced from domestic industry partners. HVF has around 300 industry partners of which over 100 are located in Tamil Nadu, Mohan said. A battle tank is not an easy vehicle to make -- while the vehicle control is at the bottom, the entire gun control is on the rotating turret. The safety (thickness of the body steel plate), speed and the firing power are mutually exclusive, he added. "The battle tank speed will be less if its body plates are thick... but a thick armour plate increases the safety of the battle tank," he said. Agartala, June 3 : The Trinamool Congress (TMC) will defeat the ruling Left Front in Tripura in the 2018 assembly polls and form the government, party Vice President Mukul Roy said here on Friday after meeting seven disgruntled Congress MLAs. Roy arrived here on Friday morning as an emissary of TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee and held a series of meetings with seven Congress legislators led by suspended leader Sudip Roy Barman and top leaders of the tribal-based Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT). "Trinamool Congress would come to power in the next assembly polls in Tripura in 2018. Ending of Left Front's misrule is a matter of time. TMC would be a major opposition group in the state assembly soon," Roy told reporters before leaving for Kolkata. Currently, Congress is the main opposition group in the state assembly with 10 legislators. Sudip Roy Barman, who was the opposition leader as head of the Congress legislator party (CLP), recently resigned from the post, protesting against Congress-Left electoral alliance in the recently held West Bengal assembly elections. Following Barman's resignation, state Congress working president Ashish Saha, Youth Congress' state chief Sushanta Chowdhury, women's front state head Kalyani Roy and scheduled caste front chief Prakash Chandra Das and many party leaders and workers quit their posts on the same issue. The party high command last month suspended Barman and Youth Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Brar took similar action against 14 Youth Congress leaders including Chowdhury for an indefinite period. Barman, Saha and Chowdhury recently went to Kolkata and met both Mamata Banerjee and Mukul Roy and discussed the possibility of joining TMC. Mukul Roy, who also met INPT leaders, said: "If we voted out the Left Front in West Bengal, we would be successful in Tripura too. Anti-Left alliance would be stronger in Tripura soon to oust the ruling Left parties." Senior Congress leader Gopal Roy, who was recently appointed as the CLP leader by the party's central leadership, said: "Trinamool Congress instead of ideology based politics has been doing politics of splitting of other political parties." The TMC retained power in West Bengal in the recent assembly elections, drubbing Congress-Left alliance. New Delhi, June 3 : Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday expressed deep anguish over the death of three BSF personnel in an ambush in Jammu and Kashmir. "He (Singh) has also prayed for the recovery of the injured," a tweet from the Home Ministry's official Twitter handle 'HMO India' said. The minister also spoke to Border Security Force (BSF) Director General K.K. Sharma in the wake of attack on a BSF convoy in Bijbehara area. The minister instructed the DG to rush to the spot to review the situation, the official tweet said. Three BSF troopers were killed and 10 others, including three civilians, were injured on Friday in an attack by Hizb-ul-Mujhadeen on a security forces convoy in south Kashmir's Bijbehara town. Mathura, June 3 : The radical group of squatters behind the deadly violence in Mathura on Thursday claims loyalty to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and wants to alter the political and economic landscape of India. But deep down, its ambition primarily was to grab government-owned prime real estate in this Hindu holy city and create an empire of their own in the growing market-mix of politics and sprituality. The ragtag army of the little known Swadheen Bharat Subhas Sena, allegedly led by Ram Vriksha Singh Yadav, a disciple of Mathura-based Tulsidas Maharaj also known as "Jai Gurudev", had been occupying Mathura's sprawling 300-acre Jawaharbagh since January 2014. The group, which calls itself "satyagrahis" or revolutionaries, began staying in the park on the pretext of staging demonstrations. The protests had started as part of a rally from Madhya Pradesh that was supposed to terminate at Delhi. The rallyists were denied permission to move on to the capital but were allowed to hold the demonstration at the park -- which once had thousands of mango, gooseberry, and berry trees -- but only for two days. The rallyists, however, stayed on and encroached the park for two years, during which they felled the trees to facilitate the shanty town of thousands of protesters from eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh. According to police, there were 3,000 of them living inside the park where their leader Ram Vriksha Singh Yadav, who is now untraceable, ran a "parallel government", amassing a huge cache of arms and ammunition. Police claimed to have recovered some 47 country-made pistols, six rifles and 178 live cartridges from the park after the bloodshed on Thursday saw 24 persons, including a superintendent of police and 22 encroachers, killed. A police officer told IANS on condition of anonymity that the squatters had also managed illegal electricity and water connections and had built toilets by destroying pavements. They would pick fights with any outsider trying to enter the park. All this was happening right under the nose of the authorities. The district magistrate's office and the police line complex are at a stone's throw from the park. Ram Vriksha Singh Yadav, the cult leader on the run, is a known disciple of "Jai Gurudev" who was said to have left behind a Rs 12,000-crore empire after his death. This sparked a leadership tussle between three claimants -- Ram Vriksha Singh Yadav, Pankaj Yadav and Umakant Tiwari. The empire included land worth Rs 4,000 crore, a school, a petrol pump in Mathura - all in the name of the "Jai Gurudev Trust". His fleet of luxury cars included Plymouths, Mercedes Benz, Skodas and BMWs. Pankaj Yadav won the battle, and Ram Vriksha Singh Yadav fell apart with him and led his own faction of Gurudev followers to create another empire on the grabbed government land. In the last two years, he became so powerful that even the administration could not touch him and get the park vacated. He even allegedly held hostage a government officer who had gone to inquire about the group inside the cluster of slums and semi-permanent structures. The group had been raising demands like no prime minister elections and establishment of an "Azad Hind government", a kind of dictatorial set. They also demanded the rule book of Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army to be treated as the law of the land and used for governance in the country. They wanted the currency notes used by Azad Hind Fauj, or the Indian National Army which fought the British Empire with the Japanese help, to be printed again with Bose's name and brought back into circulation. They wanted petrol and diesel to be priced at one rupee a litre, and above all the park to be handed over to them permanently. None of that happened. But curtains came down violently on the 30-month old "revolution" after police stormed the park on Thursday and were showered with bullets by squatters. Some 250 of them have been arrested, and the rest have run away. (Sarwar Kashani can be contacted at sarwar.k@ians.in) New Delhi, June 3 : When Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits the US on June 7-8 in the course of his five-nation tour starting on Saturday, he will be among the few close world leaders that President Barack Obama is inviting in the last year of his presidency. "President Obama spoke to the Prime Minister and mentioned to him that this year he was inviting some leaders with whom he had a very close and productive working relationship to visit him in the United States," Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar said at a pre-departure media briefing here on Friday. This will be Modi's second bilateral visit to the US after his visit in September 2014. Jaishankar said that in many ways it would be a sort of "consolidation visit" after Obama and Modi working on the US-India relationship in the last two years. After departing on Saturday morning, Modi will stop over in Herat in Afghanistan where he will, jointly with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, inaugurate the India-Afghan Friendship Dam, earlier known as Salma Dam, that has been rebuilt with Indian aid. Originally constructed in 1976 on the Hari river basin, the Salma Dam suffered extensive damage during the civil war in Afghanistan. "It was built at a cost of approximately Rs 1,700 crore," Jaishankar said. He said that three turbines on the dam will 42 MW of electricity and the water will irrigate around 75,000 hectares of land. After attending a lunch to be hosted in his honour by Ghani, Modi will leave for Doha, Qatar, where he will meet Qatari Prime Minister Abdullah Bin Nasser Bin Khalifa Al Thani on Saturday evening. He will also visit a camp of Indian workers. Qatar is home to around 630,000 expatriate Indians, many of whom are blue collar workers. Modi will become the first Indian prime minister to visit four Gulf countries after having visited the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Iran. On Sunday, he will begin his engagements in Qatar with a meeting with business leaders following which he will hold a restricted meeting with Emir of Qatar Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani. Jaishankar pointed out that trade between India and the Gulf region stood at $112 billion and two-thirds of India's energy supplies come from that region. Bilateral trade between India and Qatar stands at $10 billion. "It (Qatar) can also be a large economic partner as it has a large sovereign wealth fund," the foreign secretary said. After signing of bilateral agreements and an interaction with the Indian community, Modi will leave for Geneva, Switzerland, on Sunday evening. On June 6, the prime minister will hold a meeting with President of the Swiss Confederation Johann Schneider-Ammann and also interact with business leaders. Jaishankar said that Switzerland was India's fifth largest trade partner and the 11th largest investor in India. The country is strong in the areas of renewable energy and vocational education. After concluding his engagements in Switzerland, Modi will leave for Washington on June 6 where he will meet heads of think tanks. On June 7, he will be hosted for lunch by President Obama at the White House after which he will attend a business meeting. The highlight of Modi's US visit will be his address to a joint sitting of the US Congress on June 8. "Today, the Congress is very much at the heart of our relationship with the United States," Jaishankar said. "It has been very supportive of India," he said. After attending a lunch and a reception at the US Congress and an Indian community reception, Modi will depart for Mexico City on June 8 afternoon where he will hold a meeting with President Enrique Pena Nieto. This will be the first prime ministerial bilateral visit from India to Mexico in 30 years after then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's visit in 1986. Manmohan Singh visited Mexico in 2012 to attend the G20 Summit. Jaishankar said that two-way trade between India and Mexico stood at $6 around billion. Within Asia, India is the largest importer of crude oil from Mexico. India exports pharmaceutical products and automobile parts to Mexico. "We expect the focus of the discussions will be on bilateral cooperation, specially bilateral economic cooperation," Jaishankar said. After attending a dinner that will be hosted for him by President Pena Nieto, Modi will leave for India on June 8. Pinjore (Haryana), June 3 : Union Environment and Forests Minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday released in the wild two captive Himalayan griffon vultures after tagging them. The griffons have been in captivity at the Bombay National History Society (BNHS) centre near here for over 10 years where the critically endangered oriental white-backed, long-billed and slender-billed Gyps vultures have been bred under the Saving Asia's Vultures from Extinction (SAVE) programme. Before the release of the Himalayan griffons, closely related to the critically endangered Gyps species of vultures but not endangered, SAVE has focused on creating "safe zones" for them to survive in nature, an official involved in the breeding programme told IANS. Lauding the vulture breeding and conservation programme being run by the BNHS in association with the Haryana government, Javadekar said: "With the success of the programme, I believe we would manage to increase the number of vultures in the wild in the next 10 years." He was speaking after launching Asia's first 'Gyps vulture reintroduction programme' under which the captive-bred Gyps vultures would also be later introduced in the wild. While releasing the vultures in pre-release aviaries close to the Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre at Bir Shikar Gah, Javadekar gave one bird the name 'Jodh Singh'. Both the birds were wing-tagged and were leg-ringed for identification. The union minister also handed over 10 captive bred vultures, which have siblings at the centre to Field Director A.K. Srivastava of the Van Vihar National Park in Madhya Pradesh as part of the genetic management of captive vulture numbers. Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar described the breeding and conservation of vultures as a significant step in the direction of saving the species. He said the state government is formulating a scheme to conserve forests in the state. Besides various programmes in the Shivalik hills, the 500-metre area around Mangar Bani has been declared 'no construction zone' by the state. The government is also formulating a scheme to develop a herbal park in 500 acres of land in Morni area. Studies attribute the massive decline of three Gyps species across South Asia to the extensive use of the diclofenac veterinary drug. The vultures that consumed the carcasses of animals treated with diclofenac died with symptoms of kidney failure. The link was firmly established in 2004. In 2006, the drug was banned by the Indian government following a demand by ornithologists. The Britain-based charitable organisation Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is funding three vulture breeding centres in India -- Pinjore in Haryana, Rajabhatkhawa in West Bengal and Rani in Assam -- and one in Nepal. The BNHS breeding centres, including the Pinjore centre, hold the majority of the world's captive stock of the three threatened vulture species. New Delhi, June 3 : Two employees of city-based Apollo hospital have been arrested along with three touts on charges of alluring needy people to donate their kidneys in exchange of money, police said on Friday. Shailesh Saxena, 31, Aditya Singh, 24, both Apollo hospital employees, were arrested along with the touts Aseem Sikdar, 37, Satya Prakash, 30, and Devashish Moulik, 30, on Thursday, Deputy Commissioner of Police Mandeep Singh Randhawa said. "Saxena has been working as PS (personal secretary) to a doctor at Apollo hospital for three years while Singh was working as a PS to another doctor of the hospital for four years," Randhawa said. The Delhi Police on Monday got the information about the illegal trade of human organs at Apollo hospital but conducted raids on Thursday after getting a tip off about two such victims being taken to Delhi for their kidney donation. "The members of the gang allured needy people from various parts of the country to donate their kidney in exchange of money. They also prepared forged papers including the identity proofs to establish the relationship between the donors and the recipients," Randhawa said. The officer said that Apollo hospital staff was also involved in this racket. "The recipients were highly charged whereas a small amount was paid to the donors. People falling prey come from various parts of the country like West Bengal, Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Chennai in Tamil Nadu," the officer said. Investigators found that the gang members have their local contacts in different states who bring donors to Delhi. "The accused used to convince the needy to donate kidney in lieu of Rs 3-4 lakh. The donor once convinced he was brought to Delhi and made to stay in hotels. Medical tests of recipient and donor are conducted and once the compatibility match is done, operations are conducted in Apollo hospital," the officer said. The officer further said that they have so far detected five such cases and seized a large number of original files, CDs and documents. "Investigation is in progress." Sikdar, resident of West Bengal, used to organise boarding lodging of the donor, laboratory tests, meeting and negotiations, while Prakash, who joined the gang after donating his own kidney in 2014, used to identify the targets and brings them to Delhi from his home town in Kanpur. Mauli, who also came in contact with the gang since 2014, targeted donors and brought them to Delhi from his hometown in West Bengal. He even made his wife Maumita donate a kidney a month back. Germany rejects Turkish threats, affirms Armenian Genocide WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly) welcomes today's near unanimous vote in the Bundestag, Germany's National Parliament, affirming the Armenian Genocide. The resolution titled "Remembrance and commemoration of the genocide of Armenians and other Christian minorities in the years 1915 and 1916" was overwhelmingly approved despite threats emanating from Turkey. Prior to the vote, Turkey's President Recep Erdogan warned that bilateral diplomatic, economic, trade, political, and military ties between Germany and Turkey will be damaged. In addition, Members of the German Parliament and journalists writing about the resolution have been receiving threats such as: "You will be eliminated," or "Your end will be like that of Hrant Dink," who was a Turkish-Armenian journalist murdered in broad daylight in January 2007 for speaking the truth. Christian Democratic Union (CDU) member and president of the Bundestag, Norbert Lammert condemned what he described as threats, including death threats against German parliamentary deputies of Turkish origin if they voted for the resolution. "We will not be intimidated," he said. Lammert spoke eloquently about the Armenian Genocide on the occasion of the centennial. "What happened in the midst of the First World War in the Ottoman Empire, before the eyes of the world, was a genocide," Lammert said. "We Germans are in no position to lecture anyone about how they should deal with their past. Yet due to our own experiences, we can encourage others to face their history, even when it is painful: self-critical commitment to the truth is essential for reconciliation." In an unofficial translation, the resolution text includes that: "The Bundestag regrets the inglorious role of the German Reich, which as military ally of the Ottoman Empire did nothing to stop these crimes against humanity despite receiving clear information from German missionaries and diplomats about the organized deportation and annihilation of Armenians. This commemoration by the German Bundestag also serves as an expression of particular respect for the oldest Christian nation on earth." German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed that the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks should be acknowledged as genocide. Through her spokeswoman, Christiane Wirtz, Merkel told journalists yesterday morning that she "sided with her parliamentary group" in favor of the Armenian Genocide Resolution. Noting that there is never a good time to speak about something so heinous as genocide, Green party co-chairman, Cem Ozedmir (a German of Turkish origin) read statements by German officials from 1915 showing that they knew that up to 90 percent of deported Armenians had been killed. The resolution states that the fate of the Armenians "exemplifies the history of mass exterminations, ethnic cleansing, forced migrations, the genocides that have atrociously scarred the 20th century." "The vote by the German parliament follows other European countries in acknowledging this painful chapter in history as well as the resolutions adopted by the European Parliament conditioning Turkey's EU admission to coming to terms with its genocidal past," stated Armenian Assembly Executive Director Bryan Ardouny. "The Assembly applauds the Bundestag's principled stand, especially as Turkey continues to blockade Armenia - the last closed border in Europe - refuses to normalize relations with Armenia and unconditionally supported Azerbaijan's recent attempt to once again wipe Armenians off the map in Nagorno Karabakh," Ardouny continued. 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. New Delhi, June 3 : India's close neighbours, Maldives and Sri Lanka have eliminated Lymphatic Filariasis (LF), a disease commonly known as elephantiasis that has been crippling people for decades, the World Health Organisation's (WHO) South-East Asia Region office said in a statement on Friday. However, India is still far away from achieving the target of total elimination, with around six million people still suffering from the disease, spread through mosquito bites. "The achievement by Maldives and Sri Lanka demonstrates the resolve of these countries and the region as a whole to eliminate all neglected tropical diseases," Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia Region, said. Commonly known as elephantiasis, LF occurs when filarial parasites are transmitted to humans through mosquito bites. Infection is usually acquired in childhood which often causes permanent disability later in life. In India, the disease was endemic in 15 States and five Union territories with approximately 600 million populations at risk, according to India's Health Ministry data. Indigenous LF cases were reported from Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Puducherry, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Lakshadweep. From these States/UTs, a total of 250 districts have been identified by the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme to be endemic for filariasis. The WHO has targeted LF elimination by 2020. "The success in Maldives and Sri Lanka follows intensified mosquito control efforts; treatment of the infected population, disability prevention and control; strengthening of surveillance and closely monitoring and evaluating these efforts," the WHO said. "LF is believed to have been endemic in Maldives since the 12th century AD and is traced back to much earlier in Sri Lanka, with mosquitoes transmitting the bug found in abundance across the two countries," it said. New Delhi, June 3 : Notwithstanding the denial by the NIA chief that he made any statement giving a clean chit to Pakistan on the Pathankot airbase attack, the Congress on Friday accused the government of deliberating weakening the war against terrorism by such remarks. The opposition party also accused National Investigating Agency (NIA) chief Sharad Kumar of making a "preposturous statement" vis-a-vis Pakistan. "The latest government statement giving a clean chit to Pakistan establishment, its Inter-Services Intelligence and military for the Pathankot terror attack has deliberately weakened the fight against terror that India has waged both nationally and internationally for many decades now," said Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala. According to a TV channel, Sharad Kumar gave a clean chit to the Pakistan government but later denied making any such statement. The Ministry of External Affairs on Friday asserted that the "involvement of Pakistan's nationals in the Pathankot air base attack is an accepted fact". The government said "enough information" on the involvement of Pakistanis has been provided to Islamabad. "Pakistan has sponsored terrorism and terror activities against India for decades now. This is a fact that is well known in the international community and various governments, including the previous one led by the Congress, have placed plausible evidence on record, shared with Pakistan and at various international fora multiple times," said Surjewala. The Congress leader said: "Post 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, the international pressure put (on Pakistan) at India's instance now stands weakened by the successive statements made by the Modi Government and BJP - first Modi ji went on an impromptu visit to Pakistan to attend the birthday and marriage celebrations (in Nawaz Sharif's family) -- and the net consequence was the loss of seven lives of our army jawans and attack on the Pathankot airbase." "Modi ji then committed a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) of Pakistanis led by the infamous ISI to visit India, including the airbase. Despite caution from the Congress and other opposition parties as also security experts from time to time, the same JIT went back to Pakistan and instead of punishing the JeM accused India and the Indian government," Surjewala said. "Having not learnt its lessons, now NIA chief Sharad Kumar has made a preposterous statement and claim that the Pakistan government or military establishment or ISI was not responsible in any way or involved with Jaish-e-Mohammad or Maulana Masood Azhar in the Pathankot terror attack," he added. New Delhi, June 3 : Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday recommended convening of a session of the Delhi assembly on June 9 and 10, to discuss urgent public issues. The session will discuss current unsatisfactory state of cleanliness in Delhi due to lax functioning of the three municipal corporations of the city. "Delhi assembly session next week to discuss how BJP's MCD has made whole of Delhi into a garbage bin due to its corruption n mismanagement," Kejriwal tweeted after the decision was taken in a cabinet meeting. "Delhi government has done commendable job in preventing dengue so far. MCD needs to improve its functioning," he said in a series of tweets. Islamabad, June 3 : Four persons died and seven others were injured in a firing incident in Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province during Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party's meeting on Friday, media reported. Condition of some of the injured, who were transferred to a nearby hospital in Mardaan area of the province, was termed criticial. Kolkata, June 3 : The Congress and the Left Front on Friday expressed disappointment over the first state level administrative meeting of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in her second term, and accused her of remaining silent over the burning issues of post-poll violence in the state and price hike. Leader of Opposition in the Bengal assembly Abdul Mannan said Banerjee's silence over post-poll violence has exposed her "dual stance". "We thought that the chief minister in her first administrative meeting will order the state administration to take strong steps to stop the post-poll violence and arrest the miscreants, without taking into account their political affinity, so that nobody's democratic rights are infringed upon. But she remained silent", said Mannan. Mannan also accused Banerjee of not raising her voice against price hike. "Mamata Banerjee takes pride in distributing rice at Rs 2 per kg, which is actually a central government project under Food Security Act, but she remains indifferent despite potato price going up to Rs 26 per kg." Terming as a "gimmick" the West Bengal government's recently announced plans to offer special "Roza" food packets at a subsidised rate during Ramadan, Mannan said, "In the month of Ramadan earlier too Muslims used to get sugar, flour and other food items at subsidised rates. This is nothing new." Sujan Chakraborty, Left Front's leader of legislature party, said it seemed Banerjee was "trying to pretend" whatever she is doing is new. Bangalore, June 3 : India Post on Friday released the "My Stamp" with Amazon India to signify three years of its relationship with the e-commerce marketplace. Usha Chandrashekar, India Post's Chief Post Master General of Karnataka Circle, handed over the stamp to e-commerce marketplace's Vice President and Country Manager Amit Agarwal. "India Post has been a valuable partner to us and we look forward to our continued association as we endeavour to transform the way India buys and sells," said Agarwal. E-commerce marketplace was celebrating its third anniversary in the country. Singapore, June 3 : India and Singapore on Friday expressed commitment to cooperate in the fight against terrorism. The two countries reiterated their position during a meeting between Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and Singapore Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen. "Both ministers strongly condemned terrorism in all its forms, and renewed their commitment to cooperate in counter-terrorism efforts," said a statement issued after the two ministers met to co-chair the inaugural Singapore-India Defence Ministers' Dialogue. The two sides agreed on the need to evolve protocols and norms of behaviour in the air and maritime domains aimed at building confidence, defusing tensions and reducing the risks of miscalculations. Ng thanked Parrikar for India's support for the Information Fusion Centre and the Changi Regional Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Coordination Centre. Parrikar also extended an invitation to Ng to visit India on mutually convenient dates to continue the bilateral ministerial dialogue. "The invitation was accepted with pleasure," the statement read. Parrikar was on a three-day visit to Singapore from June 3 to attend the 15th Shangri-La Dialogue. Ng and Parrikar also commended the "long-standing defence ties between Singapore and India, and noted the DMD (Defence Ministers' Dialogue) would take the relationship to new heights". Both Ministers welcomed the growth in the defence relationship since the signing of the Defence Cooperation Agreement in 2003 and the revised agreement in 2015. Defence cooperation was identified as a key sector under the India-Singapore Joint Declaration on Strategic Partnership signed during the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Singapore in November 2015. Amritsar, June 3 : Radical Sikh organisation Dal Khalsa on Friday took out a march in some parts of the Sikh holy city of Amritsar to mark the 32nd anniversary of the army's 'Operation Blue Star' to flush out militants from the Golden Temple complex here. What the radicals called 'Genocide Remembrance Parade' began from near the Amritsar railway station and concluded at the Akal Takht inside the Harmandar Saheb complex, popularly called Golden Temple, on Friday evening. The Sikh organisation's supporters carried placards and posters denouncing the army operation. Dal Khalsa president Harpal Singh Cheema addressed the activists. Dal Khalsa spokesperson Kanwar Pal Singh said it has given a call for an Amritsar bandh (shut-down) on June 6 to protest the army action at the holiest of the Sikh shrines. The army launched the operation to flush out heavily armed militants from inside the complex on June 3, 1984. Kolkata, June 3 : Praising the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government, union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari on Friday said a lot of work in the road sector has been done in the state and a lot of problems solved. "There are problems in West Bengal. A lot of work has been done in the state in the road sector and a lot of problems solved. The problems are with bankers and contractors," Gadkari said when asked about the state's problems with land acquisition for the development of national highways. Asked how the Centre will engage the state government to acquire land, he said: "I had a good discussion with her when I met her the last time. We have a good cooperation with didi (Mamata Banerjee) and the state government. I have no grievances against her." Land acquisition has been considered a major hindrance for developing of national highways. Gadkari's praise of Banerjee came on a day the state's opposition Left Front accused the chief minister of silence over diesel price hike as she did not want to antagonise the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre. "Rise in diesel price will affect the public as prices of both goods and services will rise. But the state government haS maintained silence since the chief minister does not want to antagonise the central government." With a number of BJP ministers at the Centre praising Banerjee over the past couple of years, the LF and the Congress tried to make the alleged bonhomie between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Banerjee an assembly poll issue. However, the union government maintained it believed in upholding the federal spirit wherein there is cooperation between the Centre and the states on issues of governance, irrrespective of political differences. Panaji, June 3 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah should ensure the prosecution of the Congress president's son-in-law Robert Vadra instead of just levelling allegations if they have the guts, Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh said on Friday. "The fact remains -- has he violated any law? The BJP can institute any enquiry, any commission, any investigation if he has violated any law. If you (Modi, Shah) have guts, why don't you prosecute him?" Singh said. Vadra faces charges regarding a land scam in Haryana, and also benami ownership of a residential property in London. Singh said that despite being in power at the Centre for two years, the BJP had not been able to come up with a credible charge against Vadra. "It is very funny or rather amusing. The BJP has been in power for the last two years... They have made allegations without proof. I just want to ask one question from the BJP: What law has Robert Vadra violated? If he has violated any law, let the law of the land deal with it," the Congress leader said. "The new controversy over a flat in London is about a property belonging to someone else. It doesn't belong to Vadra. They say it belongs to him. You can make an allegation against anyone. But what proof do they have that this property belongs to Vadra," Singh said. AGBU Europe: Vote in German Parliament is uniquely significant The Armenian General Benevolent Union Europe congratulates the German Bundestag for Thursday's vote, in which it adopted a resolution dedicated to the memory and commemoration of the genocide of the Armenians and of other Christian minorities. In the text of the resolution, the German Parliament also laments the acts of the Young Turk government of the time, which led to the almost total annihilation of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. The vote in the German Parliament is uniquely significant, said Nadia Gortzounian, President of AGBU Europe. Germany has questioned its own history as few other countries have done. Its society and establishment understand the lasting impact of past crimes if they are not exposed and remembered. In addition to commemorating the Armenian genocide, the Bundestags resolution also condemns Germanys own involvement in the event, as Turkeys main ally during World War I. We must direct our gratitude in particular to one member of Parliament, Cem Ozdemir, says Sahak Artazyan, President of AGBUs affiliate in Germany. Cem fulfilled the promise he made to us last April 24. That a member of Turkish origin should be the one to drive this resolution through Parliament is of enormous significance for all of us in Europe. A number of Parliaments around the world have recognized the Armenian genocide, including the European Parliament. AGBU Europe actively works with civil society in Turkey and with political leaders around Europe to address the legacy of the genocide, which includes continued victimization of minorities in Turkey and hostility towards the neighbouring republic of Armenia. AGBU Europe coordinates and develops the pan-European activities of the Armenian General Benevolent Union. Established in 1906, AGBU is the worlds largest non-profit Armenian organization. AGBU Europe runs numerous programmes in fields relating to academic research, the preservation and promotion of heritage, education and culture as well as awareness raising, advocacy and leadership training. AGBU Europe can provide more details and is available for comments. New Delhi, June 4 : Ahead of embarking on a five-nation tour on Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday that he is looking forward to his visit to Afghanistan where he, along with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, will inaugurate the India-Afghan Friendship Dam, earlier known as Salma Dam, that has been rebuilt with India's aid. "Looking forward to my visit to Afghanistan tomorrow," he said in a series of posts on his Facebook account. "I will join President Ashraf Ghani to inaugurate Afghanistan-India Friendship Dam in Herat. It is a symbol of our friendship and would usher in hope, light up homes, nourish the fertile fields of Herat and bring prosperity to the people of the region," Modi said. "Look forward to meet my friend President Ashraf Ghani and exchange notes on regional situation and setting agenda for bilateral cooperation in the coming period." After inaugurating the dam in Afghanistan, the prime minister will proceed yo Qatar, Switzerland, the US and Mexico. Modi said he would be visiting Qatar at the invitation of the Emir of Qatar. "Look forward to meeting His Highness Sheikh Tamim whose landmark visit to India last year had ushered in a new momentum in our relations," Modi said. "I will have the honour to meet Father Emir who personally guided our relations for nearly two decades." The prime minister said his visit to Qatar would nourish the historical bonds of friendship deeply rooted in people-to-people contacts, energy, trade and investment partnership. Qatar is home to around 630,000 expatriate Indians, many of whom are blue collar workers. "I will interact with the Indian workers at the Workers' Camp and some of the members of over six lakh Indians who have nurtured our relations through their sweat and toil. Will also speak to Qatar business leaders to realise the full potential of our trade and investment cooperation," Modi said. He said, after Qatar, he would he would reach Geneva in the evening of June 5 on a bilateral visit to Switzerland, "our key partner in Europe". "I will hold talks with President (Johann) Schneider-Ammann to deepen our bilateral and multilateral cooperation," he stated. "In Geneva, I will meet prominent businesspersons. Our agenda will be to expand economic and investment ties. I will meet Indian scientists working at CERN. India takes pride in their contribution to exploring new frontiers of science in the service of humanity." The prime minister said he would be reaching Washington DC on a bilateral visit in the evening of June 6 at the invitation of US President Barack Obama. "In my meeting with the President on June 7, we will seek to build upon the progress achieved in providing new vigour and momentum to our strategic partnership in diverse areas," he said. "Am looking forward to address the 40th AGM of the USIBC (US-India Business Council) and meet US business leaders who have, over the past two years, shown renewed confidence in the India." Modi said he would exchange views with US think tanks and attend a ceremony marking the return of Indian antiques. He said would also lay wreaths at the Arlington Memorial. "During my visit to Arlington Cemetery I will lay wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider and Space Shuttle Columbia Memorial, in which we lost an Indian origin astronaut, Kalpana Chawla," he stated. On June 8, he said, he would address a joint meeting of the US Congress. "I thank Speaker Paul Ryan (of the US House of Representatives) for inviting me to speak to Congressmen and Senators," the prime minister said. "During my visit to the US Capitol, I will also interact with members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, many of whom have been valued friends of India and a strong votaries of deepening India-USA ties." He said India and USA were natural partners, "two vibrant democracies that celebrate their diversity and pluralism". "Strong India-USA ties benefit not only our two nations but also the entire world," he said. He also said that he looked forward to meeting Mexiacn President Enrique PeAa Nieto on June 8 during his visit to Mexico, "a privileged partner in the Latin American region". "President PeAa Nieto has ushered in far reaching reforms. I look forward to sharing our experiences... Though short, the visit has a substantial agenda to take our partnership to new heights," Modi added. Families in the UK are having to pay a price premium of almost 44,000 to buy a property near the best performing primary schools, new research has found. Many parents want their offspring to get the best start in life and they are prepared to move home to make sure they are in the catchment area for those first crucial years at school. According to the research by online estate agents HouseSimple, the average premium paid is 43,773 to be in the catchment areas for the top 50 state funded primary schools across England that received the highest rating by Ofsted in its latest report. The research revealed that average property prices in streets that are close to these best schools are 18% higher than average property prices for the area postcode. Of the primary schools commanding the biggest premiums to live near to, more than half are in the South of England. The schools adding the biggest premium to local property prices are St Lukes Primary School in Brighton and Hove and Crowland Primary School in Haringey, adding 45% or 151,121 and 44% or 193,816 respectively. But according to HouseSimple figures, there are some areas offering better value to live close to outstanding schools. Properties surrounding The Mayflower Primary School in Essex, Henry Cavendish Primary School in Lambeth and Highfields Primary School in Leicester have recently sold without buyers having to pay a hefty premium. Many parents will go to great lengths to get their children a place at the best local state funded primary school. But there is a price to pay for the best free schooling, said the firms chief executive officer Alex Gosling. Private education is out of reach for many families, which is why there is high demand for places at top rated state primary schools. But there arent enough places to go around, which has led property prices in the catchment areas of popular primary schools to rocket in recent years, he explained. Attending an outstanding state school can offer an education as good as, if not better, than paying to go private, but with property prices close to the best state schools commanding average premiums of 18%, paying the price to live close by certainly doesnt equate to a free education, he added. With industry trends moving heavily to empowering (or enabling) our B2B customers to D.I.Y. auction purchasing, value has been created for not only our loyal customers but also for SWF... Schaefer Wholesale Florist (SWFlorist.com) is excited to announce the expansion of its online ecommerce presence with the addition of the NEW Dutch-Direct Online Ecommerce Auction site, SWFs DBR Dutch Direct, and the NEW California-Direct Online Ecommerce Auction site, each adding its own special blend of greater variety to online sourcing for clients. Schaefer Wholesale Florist (SWF) increased Dutch product sales by 85 percent in 2015 due to the successful deployment of the SWF HLX Dutch-Direct site, which allows clients and customers access to more than 20,000 floral products from bulk fresh cut flowers to special event accessories and supplies. The addition of SWFs DBR Dutch Direct functions differently than the HLX site, allowing floral clients and customers expanded access to a myriad of choices in purchasing with the bonus of value and savings. This new site is user friendly, allowing floral clients and customers the convenience of adding and changing order statuses up until 10 P.M. Photo listings allow for easy selection from the immense stem assortments available as well as the opportunity to completely customize orders. Schaefer Wholesale is also excited for the addition of the California Direct Online Auction site, which promises enhanced variety to floral clients and customers online sourcing options and extends cost savings along to them. Schaefer Wholesale Florist is pleased with the latest expansion which allows the continuation of its impressive tradition, carried on since 1958, of serving the Mid-Atlantic regions leading floral designers, retail florists, wedding and special event planners, and wholesale floral merchants with the freshest, most beautiful, premium quality flowers, foliage, and plants available. Schaefer Wholesale Florist knows their clients and customers trust Schaefer for the highest quality flowers delivered on-time every time, allowing them to set themselves well ahead of the competition. Understanding that fact, Schaefer Wholesale believes their latest online ecommerce offerings will better serve each and every client with heightened levels of service as well as increased selections. Schaefer Wholesale Florist increased our Dutch purchasing by over 85 percent in 2015 with the great help from our SWFs HLX Dutch-Direct site. With industry trends moving heavily to empowering (or enabling) our B2B customers to D.I.Y. auction purchasing, value has been created for not only our loyal customers but also for SWF in having the opportunity to reduce labor costs and therefore passing on cost savings to Dutch-Direct customers. Don Sprenkle, Business Development, Schaefer Wholesale Florist. At Schaefer Wholesale Florist, the mission is to meet and exceed the clients needs, always delivering premium quality, with exceptional passion and an unmatched commitment to excellence. The latest online ecommerce expansion is designed to do just that promising superlative flowers and plants delivered on time and with outstanding value. Visit Schaefer Wholesale Florist (http://www.SWFlorist.com) today and explore the latest options in online ecommerce offerings shipped from around the world and delivered daily. Bio: Schaefer Wholesale Florist (http://www.SWFlorist.com) began providing stunning fresh cut flowers in 1958 to florists, wedding and floral designers, retail and wholesale merchants, and special events planners. Their business has grown successfully due to guaranteed on-time delivery of premium fresh flowers and foliage to customers throughout the Mid-Atlantic. Today, their service continues to expand with Holland Fresh Cut Direct Program, Quick Buy online ordering, Dutch-Direct Online/Ecommerce Auction and California-Direct Online/Ecommerce Auction as Schaefer Wholesale Florist continues to meet their goal of delivering the freshest fresh cut flowers anywhere along with foliage, plants, supplies and accessories. Grantham University, a 65-year-old institution delivering accredited online degree programs and certificates to working adults, active-duty military and veterans around the world, and YRC Worldwide Inc., one of the largest transportation service providers in North America, have entered into an agreement that will help YRC employees gain the advanced education they need to achieve their career goals. Through the agreement, YRC employees benefit from reduced tuition rates ($252 per semester hour for Granthams undergraduate degree programs; $309 per semester hour for graduate programs), and the ability to have corporate training and other experience evaluated for transfer credit at Grantham. Customizing Prior Learning Assessment or PLA programs for corporations is just one way Grantham helps enable the success of companies and their employees, noted Brad Gibbs, Grantham University chief development officer. Our accredited degrees and certificates align perfectly with the career paths of corporate employees like YRCs as well as other adult learners, said Gibbs. Through the agreement with YRC, we will have the great fortune of working with the companys staff members in taking their next step with education. They can maximize corporate training hours that they already have and benefit from our flexible online course environment in earning a degree while still maintaining their work responsibilities. At the same time, Grantham gains the type of quality, dedicated and determined students we are proud to call family. With 50 online degree and certificate programs, Grantham boasts eight-week classes, most of which start on a weekly basis. We are looking forward to the partnership with Grantham University and expanding learning opportunities for our hard-working employees, said Stephanie Fisher, YRC Worldwide vice president and controller. This agreement will help stimulate a culture of motivation and self-improvement completely in line with YRCs focus on fostering an environment for productive, successful employees. For more information YRC employees may visit: http://rmi.grantham.edu/yrc. More information about Grantham Universitys Corporate Partner Program can be found at: http://www.grantham.edu/corporate-programs/. About Grantham University: With 2016 marking the Universitys 65th birthday, Grantham University was established in 1951 and today offers 50 online undergraduate and graduate degree programs and certificates. With a mission to provide quality, accessible, affordable, professionally relevant programs in a continuously changing global society, Granthams courses are 100 percent online, allowing students to study at home, at work, on Temporary Duty or from almost anywhere in the world. Continuously accredited since 1961 by the Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC), Grantham University has earned a distinguished record as a respected and accredited distance learning university spanning more than six decades of service. http://www.grantham.edu About YRC Worldwide: YRC Worldwide Inc. headquartered in Overland Park, Kan., is the holding company for a portfolio of less-than-truckload (LTL) companies including YRC Freight, YRC Reimer, Holland, Reddaway, and New Penn. Collectively, YRC Worldwide companies have one of the largest, most comprehensive LTL networks in North America with local, regional, national, and international capabilities. Through their teams of experienced service professionals, YRC Worldwide companies offer industry-leading expertise in flexible supply chain solutions, ensuring customers can ship industrial, commercial, and retail goods with confidence. Please visit http://www.yrcw.com for more information. 18-20 October 2016, Amsterdam, The Netherlands "IEC 61850 Europe helped me understand all the elements of 61850 across the board. The workshop was extremely useful on a technical level with the conference filling in the gaps on how to use it." Andy Ward,Technology Projects Manager - Northern Power Placing Edition 2 at the heart of discussions, this years agenda provides a clear plan for optimising the system design, engineering, testing, operation and maintenance procedures of next generation systems. There has been tremendous progress in the take-up of IEC 61850 enabled systems in the last 3 years since the conference first launched says Mandana White, Programme Director of IEC 61850 Europe 2016, organised by Phoenix Forums. With utility commitment to IEC 61850 at an all-time high, IEC 61850 workforces expanding at a rapid rate, and the application of the standard going beyond the substation, the opportunities and challenges facing the IEC 61850 end-user community are now significant. And it is with these important shifts in mind that we have shaped this years agenda. The event kicks off with a one-day workshop on the Fundamentals of IEC 61850 led by Christoph Brunner, Convenor of the IEC TC57 WG10 on Tuesday 18th October 2016. The workshop brings all participants up to speed on the essential building blocks of the standard, the implications of Edition 2 for legacy systems, and its application beyond the substation. The main conference takes place on days two and three and will show case 14 utility implementation case-studies, 2 technology panel sessions, a series of intimate round table discussions, and an evening networking reception. Alongside the main conference runs a solution zone displaying the latest IEC 61850 enabled products, and a live demo lab providing hands on experience of the latest IEC 61850 tools. Confirmed speakers include IEC 61850 representatives of: Elia, TenneT, Swissgrid, Fingrid, Red Electrica de Espana, RTE, KEPCO, Eskom, Alliander, Iberdrola, Eandis, Joulz, R&D Nester, DNV GL, COPA-DATA, OMICRON, SISCO, Schneider Electric, Siemens, and ABB. Discussion topics include: Standardisation Activity understanding the latest developments with Edition 2, 2.1 and 3 for application in the substation and across the wider smart grid Edition 2 Architectures how to optimise the specification, design and implementation of multi-vendor multi-edition IEC 61850 systems Engineering Process how to ensure a robust and cost-efficient engineering and testing procedure with minimal reliance on external support Operations & Maintenance how to effectively document, operate and maintain a multi-vendor multi-edition system to maximise its lifecycle Multi-Vendor Tools how to assess and utilise the full potential of innovative utility and supplier 3rd party engineering and testing tools Future Applications how to apply IEC 61850 inter-substation, from substation to control room, in the renewable energy arena and across the wider smart grid Speakers include: Christoph Brunner, President of it4power & Convenor - IEC TC57 WG10 Gregory Huon, Head of Engineering Methods & Group IEC 61850 Convenor ENTSO-E Elia Ernst Wierenga, Technologist, Protection, Control & Telecommunication TenneT Michael Knuchel, Project Manager, SAS Swissgrid Jari Tiusanen, Expert, Substation Automation Fingrid Carlos Rodriguez del Castillo, Technical Project Manager for IEC 61850 Substation Automation System R&D Projects - Red Electrica de Espana Bastien Ilas, R&D Engineer, Digital Substation Automation RTE Byung Tae Jang, Principal Researcher KEPCO Rishi Hariram, Chief Engineer Eskom Frans Campfens, Senior Policy & Standardisation Manager Alliander Javier Castellanos, Senior Engineer Iberdrola Anders Johnsson, Power System Specialist - Vattenfall Distribution Nordic Dieter Binon, Team Leader Substation Automation Eandis Jelle Sieswerda, Consultant Joulz Bruno Soares, Research Engineer - R&D Nester Alex Apostolov, Principal Engineer, OMICRON & Editor-in-Chief - Pacworld Magazine Bas Mulder, Senior Consultant - DNV GL Klaus-Peter Brand, Senior SA and IEC 61850 Expert ABB Cedric Harispuru, Product Manager Siemens Michael Haecker, IEC 61850 Product Manager - Schneider Electric Jurgen Resch, Industry Manager Energy - COPA-DATA Fred Steinhauser, Business Development Power Utility Communication OMICRON Herb Falk, Senior Solutions Architect - SISCO Event dates and location: Conference: 18-20 October 2016 Location: Radisson Blu Hotel Amsterdam Airport, The Netherlands Event website: http://www.iec61850-europe.com For more information, interviews and media accreditation: Mandana White, Programme Director, Phoenix Forums Ltd Email: mandana(at)phoenix-forums(dot)com Tel: +44 (0)20 8349 6360 Phoenix Forums is an independent conference producer specialised in the smart grid sector. We work hand in hand with engineering professionals to create innovative event concepts and high quality programmes that inform technical decision makers and enable them to deliver exceptional results. Our approach is entirely market led. We stay exceptionally close to industry developments. Through our regular, rigorous and unbiased process of depth interviews with TSOs, DSOs, power generators, engineering consultancies, and technology innovators, we stay one step ahead of industry developments and provide live event platforms that act as a catalyst for new ideas, new directions, and new approaches to achieving future energy security. Mandana White Phoenix Forums Ltd Winston House 2 Dollis Park London, N3 1HF United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)20 8349 6360 ShowMeCon, St. Louis premier hacking and information security conference, addresses real-world InfoSec issues as industry-leaders and hackers share their knowledge, experiences and expertise through presentations, demonstrations and hacks, June 13 & 14, 2016. One of two keynote speakers, Kevin Johnson, CEO, Secure Ideas, will address the current state of InfoSec. Johnson will explore the ramifications of modern bug bounties and security research as well as the impact on businesses and their future on the Internet. According to Johnson, information security is in immediate need of attention and with this mindset will discuss various standards and guidelines regarding ethics within security testing. Plus, hell offer ways to encourage and experience growth while improving safety, security and privacy for everyone. Improved information security also stems from a solid security program, implemented and followed by organizations. Tim Fowler, Ethical Hacker for Parameter Security, will address what it takes to have an effective security program from a hackers perspective. He will expose security holes as well as reveal the careful planning, building and execution of an effective organizational security program. Additionally, industry-wide security systems and their efficacy will be presented. Johnson and Fowler are two of twenty-three information security experts slated to present at ShowMeCon. Others include: Benjamin Brown who conducts darknet research, threat intelligence, incident response, and adversarial resilience for Akamai Technologies; Adrian Crenshaw, owner of the information security website, Irongeek.com, which specializes in videos and articles that illustrate how to use various pen-testing and security tools; Valerie Thomas, an Executive Information Security Consultant for Securicon LLC, specializes in social engineering and physical penetration testing; along with many other industry-recognized leaders and hackers. Preceding ShowMeCon is pre-conference training hosted by Hacker University. Courses include: Hands-On Hacking taught by course creator and renown hacker, Dave Chronister; plus, Secure Routing & Switching also instructed by course creator and practitioner, Paul Coggin. Hands-On Hacking runs June 9 12 while Secure Routing & Switching runs June 11 & 12, 2016. ShowMeCon will be held at Ameristar Casino in St. Charles, Missouri. For more information on presentations, schedule and classes please visit the website at http://www.ShowMeCon.com. You can also find additional information about the conference and sponsorships at the website. About ShowMeCon This highly technical forum showcases eye-opening presentations from world-renown ethical hackers and security experts that will leave you amazed and frightened at the same time. By giving you access into the mind of a hacker, you will better understand how to protect your networks and critical data. ShowMeCon pulls back the curtain and exposes how hackers are winning the war on physical and cyber security. Whether youre a large corporation or a small business, you should attend this mind-blowing event as you witness the cream of the crop unveil the latest attacks, techniques, tactics and practices of todays hackers. Plus, gain insight and understanding into ways to effectively protect yourself and your business. About Parameter Security & Hacker University Hosting and sponsoring ShowMeCon is St. Louis-based, ethical hacking firm Parameter Security and its training counterpart Hacker University. Parameter Security is comprised of Certified Ethical Hackers who emulate the minds and behaviors of malicious hackers to test the security of your systems and employees. Parameter Security offers IT compliance audits, penetration testing, vulnerability assessments, social engineering, wireless security audits, secure code reviews, computer forensics and more. Parameter Securitys subsidiary, Hacker University, offers a variety of courses from end-user security awareness training to IT security professional certifications such as Hands-On Hacking, Security+, CISSP and more. For more information about Parameter Security and/or Hacker University visit http://www.parametersecurity.com. The National Trial Lawyers Top 40 Under 40 It Just Makes Sense The fact that Matthew J. Hansen was named as one of the Top 40 (lawyers) Under (age) 40 makes sense; Mr. Hansen is a hard-working individual who has shown his dedication to his clients and demonstrated his perseverance when things get tough time and time again. Graduating in the top 20 percent of his class from John Marshall law School in Atlanta, Georgia, he has used his legal acumen to help countless personal injury victims recover the compensation that they need to move forward with their lives. Today, he not only takes pride in his work, but also his family - Matthew has three young children with his wife, Ashley. What the Top 40 Under 40 Recognition Means Membership into the Top 40 Under 40 association is not only an invite-only honor, but is one that is offered exclusively to attorneys who exemplify superior qualifications, trial results, and leadership. Only the top attorneys from each state are offered Top 40 Under 40 membership. Representing Individuals Who Need Help the Most Matthew J. Hansens work with individuals throughout the state of Idaho in civil matters has been executed with compassion and diligence. A family man himself, Mr. Hansen realizes how important the outcome of a personal injury case can be, and the effect that it can have on those closest to you. If you have questions about Matthew Hansens experience, or would like to schedule a free case consultation, contact Hansen Injury Law today. Hansen Injury Law Firm 2484 N Stokesberry Pl #150 Meridian, ID 83646 (208) 577-5300 Dubrovnik is a Highlight of Any Adriatic Cruise This Adriatic cruise offers a greatest hits of the region, but also allowed passengers the flexibility to customize their cruise with Freedom of Choice activities. Goway Travel is offering globetrotters a saving of up to $8000 per couple on one of its finest this summer. Passengers on the Adriatic and Aegean Odyssey visit five of Europes most impressive coastal countries, with flexible land excursion options to help them get the most out of each port. Departing from Istanbul, this exclusive cruise vacation pulls into some of the east Mediterraneans most famous destinations, including the ancient city of Troy, the island of Lesbos, Ephesus, Mykonos, and Athens. It then turns up the Adriatic Coast, exploring the fjords of Kotor, the walled city of Dubrovnik, Korcula, and Split, before disembarking in Venice. Visiting Turkey, Greece, Montenegro, Croatia, and Italy, this Adriatic cruise offers a greatest hits of the region, but also allowed passengers the flexibility to customize their cruise with Freedom of Choice activities. Dubrovnik, for instance, offers the option of a guided tour of the citys walls, or a cable car ride to the top of Srd Mountain to take in the view. At Canakkale, war history enthusiasts may choose to visit the Gallipoli Peninsula instead of visiting Troy. This exclusive itinerary departs Istanbul on July 10, 2016. Passengers who book by June 15 will save up to $8000 per couple. Pricing varies according to cabin class, but includes the 14-day cruise, fine dining onboard, complimentary drinks, the expert advice of both a Cruise Director and local guides throughout the trip, land excursions, airport transfers, and all tipping. Places on this small ship cruise are strictly limited, ensuring an unforgettable journey for all passengers. Since 1970, Goway has been providing unforgettable travel experiences to Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, polar and idyllic island destinations, Europe and South America. Today, Goway is recognized as one of North America's leading travel companies for individuals, families and groups to select exotic destinations around the globe. Goway has offices in Los Angeles, Vancouver, Toronto, Manila, and Sydney (Australia). For reservations and information, visit http://www.goway.com, or call 1-800-387-8850. Chaz on the Plaza Executive Chef, Sean Leventhal I want to have a culinary conversation with our guests and explore possibilities. Newly appointed executive chef Sean Leventhal aims to transform The Raphael's Chaz on the Plaza into one of the most exemplary restaurants Kansas City, Missouri has to offer. He envisions a celebrated steak and seafood house that brings in world influences. Maryland Eastern shore meets Pacific Rim with a stopover in Spain, says Leventhal. The emphasis is on well-done, perfectly executed food. His first menu, targeted to debut July 13, will be a collaborative effort with his culinary team and Chaz patrons. I want to have a culinary conversation with our guests and explore the endless possibilities. Chaz diners are invited to participate in the conversation by sampling menu specials nightly through June and providing feedback through an online survey. Participants receive a complimentary appetizer and are eligible for a prize drawing for an overnight stay with dinner. Chef Leventhal began his culinary journey during prep boarding school summer breaks, working in restaurants on the East coast. After graduating from Culinary Institute of America in New York, he began his professional career at LAuberge, a fine dining French restaurant in Baltimore under the tutelage of Parisian chef George Chaubron. His culinary career is defined by experiences in Pierpont, restaurant of James Beard Award winner Nancy Longo, noted for her modern Chesapeake Eastern Shore cooking; Celilo Restaurant in the famed Governor Hotel in Portland; Andaluca in the historic Mayflower Hotel in Seattle where he was chef d cuisine under another James Beard Award winner and Iron Chef contestant, Wayne Johnson; and Bluefin Grille in the Marriott Providence Downtown in Rhode Island; and in Kansas City where he was executive chef at Cafe Verona. Chef Leventhals cooking style is modern American, and paradoxically, serendipitous. He cooks what his fresh in the market and strikes his fancy, yet takes a precise, disciplined route to how food is prepared and presented. I try to bring the science the gastro techniques and reverence for the animals and plants used in the dishes we serve, says Leventhal. He emphasizes a harmony of color and art on the plate and of the flavors that are the centerpiece. Among his specialties are coffee rubbed pork loin, black grouper, handmade pastas, Maryland Eastern Shore-style crab cakes and smoked meats. About Chaz on the Plaza: Chaz on the Plaza is the signature restaurant of the historic Raphael Hotel located at 325 Ward Parkway in Kansas City, MO. Chaz is a 2015 recipient of TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence, Wine Spectator Award of Excellence and PitchWeeklys Best Hotel Restaurant. Chaz Lounge presents live music nightly and features half-price appetizers and drink specials at Happy Hour from 4 6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Information, menus, regular and sommelier wine lists, and reservations are available @ Chaz online or by calling 816.802.2152. About The Raphael Hotel: Readers of Travel+Leisure magazine voted The Raphael to the prestigious 2015 T+L 500 Worlds Best Hotels list. The Raphael is the original boutique concept among historic Kansas City Plaza hotels. The nine-story, Italian Renaissance Revival structure is a member of National Trust Historic Hotels of America and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. TripAdvisor reviewers named The Raphael to its Hall of Fame following five consecutive years of being ranked as Kansas Citys top hotel. The landmark hotel is affiliated with the Autograph Collection, a portfolio of independent hotels selected by Marriott International for their distinctiveness. Having contributed to the chapter in various roles for 14 years, Steve was unanimously selected for this position by the nominating committee. In his commencement speech, he shared that his motto this year is to encourage members to become active in the internal audit community. He explained how volunteering is also about taking and not just giving back. In Steves words volunteering provides: Excellent opportunities to network; work with leaders in the internal audit profession and meet the rising superstars. Opportunities for career development; which comes first, a job or experience. You need a job to gain experience, but you need experience to get a job. The IIA allows ample opportunity for volunteers to gain real life experience. It gives a sense of personal pride and fulfillment in giving back to the community and profession. Vonya Global team congratulates Steve on his new role and wishes him the very best. About Your Company: Vonya Global is an international consulting firm specialized in enhancing corporate governance by providing internal audit, internal control and risk assurance services to a wide range of companies. The firm is focused on providing Knowledge Leadership in internal control and superior Client Service. There is a better way, Vonya Global will show you. Health and Wellness Partners (HWP), a global medical communications company, is celebrating 9 years as a certified Womens Business Enterprise. This world-class designation, conferred by the Womens Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC), validates that a company is 51% owned, managed, and controlled by a woman or women. The fulfillment and success of women is the bedrock on which HWP was founded in 2005 by partners Jani Hegarty, Bonnie Welsch, and Audrey Pezzuti. This commitment was formalized in 2007 with the firms initial certification by the WBENC. Inspired by their own experiences as working women and mothers, the partners set out to build a company that harnesses the value of women at every stage of their professional and personal journeys, with the goal of maximizing their contributions to the organization, the industry, the medical community, and their own households. Notes Jani Hegarty, president of HWP, We knew from the beginning, when we started the company, that we had an opportunity to distinguish ourselvesnot just because we are women leaders, but because we truly are committed to helping other women succeed. We are grateful to continue to earn recertification from WBENC. This prestigious certification validates that HWP meets the strict criteria including financial, administrative, and organizational review, as well as a successful site inspection. Not only does HWP meet WBENCs rigorous standards of excellence, the company has initiatives in place that support its largely female (90%) staff, including flexible work schedules, remote working arrangements, tuition reimbursement, and a comprehensive benefits package, among others. In addition to WBENC certification and the numerous awards HWP has received for its work on behalf of clients, the company has been acknowledged for its empowerment of women in the workplace. HWP was recognized by the Healthcare Businesswomens Association (HBA) for its internal corporate initiatives in support of women, and by the national magazine Working Mother as one of the top 25 best small companies for women. Supporting diversity and supporting women are the core foundational pillars of HWP. About WBENC The Womens Business Enterprise National Council is the nations largest third-party certifier of businesses owned and operated by women in the United States. WBENC is a resource for the more than 700 US companies and government agencies that rely on WBENCs certification as an integral part of their supplier diversity programs. About HWP Health and Wellness Partners is a global medical communications company unlike any other, committed to making a difference for its clients as well as its employees, patients, and the larger community. More information about the company can be found at http://www.hwpnj.com/ I am excited to be a part of Worldwide Facilities continued growth, says Moulder, and look forward to joining this tremendous team of professionals. Moulder offers a combined 13 years of transportation and logistics experience in claims, underwriting, risk management, and brokerage. His expertise includes an array of industries within the supply chain, from initial product manufacturing to the final delivery of product. As part of the Worldwide Facilities team, Moulder will broaden the companys commercial auto fleet capabilities and expertise, adding several important markets for transportation insurance on an admitted and non-admitted basis. Worldwide Facilities will now offer nationwide A+ market access for all-radius trucking classes, distributors, manufacturers, and hazardous materials haulers, as well as commercial auto contracting and sales fleets. The new markets available to Worldwide Facilities clients will serve commercial and specialty auto, livery, and trucking, and offer coverage for monoline vehicle physical damage and motor truck cargo. New ventures are eligible. Worldwide Facilities remains committed to building out classes of business underserved in the wholesale brokerage space, says Jordan Connelly, Branch Manager at the Atlanta office. Were always expanding our niche areas of focus, and transportation is no exception. I am excited to be a part of Worldwide Facilities continued growth, says Moulder, and look forward to joining this tremendous team of professionals. About Worldwide Facilities Worldwide Facilities, LLC is a national wholesale insurance broker and managing general agent that has been in business since 1970. Our seasoned brokers and underwriters are industry leaders in providing expertise in a wide range of specialty lines, and offer extensive contacts with carriers domestically and overseas. "I experienced the powerful rhythmic breathing process called 'Sudarshan Kriya' in 2003 and it transformed my life completely. Within minutes of practicing this technique I felt a sense of deep inner peace, sustaining joy and clarity throughout the day. Minnesota has the opportunity to meet one of the Seven Most Powerful People in India whose only goal is to see smile on everyones face. Participants get a unique opportunity to meet the Guru of Joy, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and experience the power of Sudarshan Kriya For over 35 years, the Art of Living Foundation (AOLF) has helped more than 370 million people achieve inner happiness through self-development programs based on meditation and yoga. This summer, AOLF will launch its newest offering, 'Get Happy' to discover the how of lasting happiness through Sudarshan Kriya a simple yet powerful breathing technique that effortlessly draws an individual into a deep state of meditation. 'Get Happy' is developed under the direction of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, a global humanitarian and Guru of Joy, to make the ancient practices of meditation accessible and relevant in todays fast paced life. Expert instructors from the Foundation will host the two-day immersive experience where Sri Sri Ravi Shankar himself will lead a special session in Minneapolis. The workshop will be held on Wednesday, June 29th, and Thursday, June 30th, at the Minneapolis Convention Center from 6 pm to 9 30 pm. My mission is to put a smile on the face of every person I meet, said Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Founder of the Art of Living Foundation. A disease-free body, quiver-free breath, stress-free mind, inhibition-free intellect, obsession-free memory, ego that includes all, and sorrow free soul is the birthright of every human being. More than ever, an individuals complete happiness is considered to be the proper measure of social progress and the goal of public policy. In fact, the United Nations has argued that happiness, as measured by life evaluations, provides a broader indicator of human welfare than do measures of income, poverty, health, education, and good government. In the recently released, the 2016 World Happiness Report Update, ranked the United States at number 13 in terms of the happiest countries in the world. The centerpiece to the 'Get Happy' program is the Sudarshan Kriya a rhythmic breathing technique that harmonizes the body, breath and mind; enabling the deepest connection with oneself. Professionals from different walks of life such as doctors, scientists, professors, business executives, veterans, students and prisoners have benefited from this technique. More than 60 independent studies published in peer review journal across four continents have demonstrated the benefits including a reduction in stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD and addictive behaviors. AOLF is a non-profit, educational and humanitarian organization with its presence in 152 countries. It offers educational and self-development programs that facilitate the elimination of stress and foster deep inner peace, happiness and well-being. Contact for Media Interview and more details Abhay Ladhey Local MN AOL teacher, Email: abhay.ladhe(at)artofliving(dot)org Phone 859 684 5359 Sathya Bharadwaj Local MN AOL teacher, Email: sathya.bharadwaj(at)artofliving(dot)org Phone 480 297 2956 Event Location: Minneapolis converntion center With the 4.10.0 release, ITK became an unprecedented, solid foundation for multidimensional image analysis. On behalf of the Insight Segmentation and Registration Toolkit (ITK) community, Kitware released ITK 4.10.0. ITK is a freely available, open-source toolkit that thousands of research projects and commercial products employ to analyze medical images. The 4.10.0 release enhanced the ability of ITK to align images of a patient from different points in time such as from the course of a minimally invasive procedure. This ability has applications in interventional radiology and radiation therapy. With the 4.10.0 release, ITK became an unprecedented, solid foundation for multidimensional image analysis, said Matt McCormick, Ph.D, the lead developer of ITK at Kitware. The release not only bolstered the registration capabilities of the toolkit, but it improved our abilities to conduct in-depth testing on ITK and to use the toolkit with Python. The testing framework of ITK consists of thousands of tests. ITK employs the CMake/CTest system that Kitware developed to declare, organize, and invoke these tests. With the 4.10.0 release, ITK expanded the number and completeness of tests in its framework. Now, tests verify nearly every aspect of the toolkit on a nightly basis to ensure that the performance of ITK remains consistent. The Python functionality of ITK also improved with the 4.10.0 release. The release increased the flexibility and compilation speed of the toolkit to allow developers to more easily and quickly add new methods to ITK for use with Python. Additionally, to help users to take full advantage of ITK, the development team expanded the documentation for the toolkit. The ITK documentation now explains how to convert image data in ITK to and from images in the Visualization Toolkit (VTK). This documentation provides a comprehensive and streamlined pathway to aid ITK users as they create interactive two-dimensional, three-dimensional, and four-dimensional visualizations of medical images. The ITK development team would like to thank everyone who participated in the 4.10.0 release and tested the release candidates, McCormick said. We had several community members take part in the release cycle for the first time. Their contributions helped to simplify the configuration and implementation of the procedures that ITK uses to produce Python code. ITK offers developers from around the world with an extensive suite of software tools. It follows the principles of generic programming, implements advanced design patterns, and supports development in multiple languages. The origins of ITK trace back to 1999. Today, researchers and medical professionals use ITK in academic and commercial settings to process multidimensional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), ultrasound, positron emission tomography (PET), fluoroscopy, and microscopy data. To download ITK 4.10.0, please go to https://www.itk.org. To learn how to leverage ITK and expertise in medical computing at Kitware, please contact McCormick at kitware(at)kitware(dot)com. While the material discussed here is part of a community effort, at Kitware, this material is based upon work funded, in whole, by a $781,998 award from the National Library of Medicine. About Kitware Kitware is an advanced technology, research, and open-source solutions provider for research facilities, government institutions, and corporations worldwide. Founded in 1998, Kitware specializes in research and development in the areas of HPC and visualization, medical imaging, computer vision, data and analytics, and quality software process. Among its services, Kitware offers consulting and support for high-quality software solutions. Kitware is headquartered in Clifton Park, NY, with offices in Carrboro, NC; Santa Fe, NM; and Lyon, France. More information can be found on http://www.kitware.com. Our Tech Arcade offers a chance to see some of those innovations in person, and interact with them in a hands-on way. GCN, an 1105 Media brand, is pleased to announce that the call for nominations for the 2016 dig IT Tech Arcade is now open. For 28 years, the GCN Awards have showcased general excellence in government IT. This year, with the GCN dig IT Awards, we are sharpening the focus to showcase what matters most: transformative tech that is truly reinventing government. New this year is the Tech Arcade, an exhibit area open to event attendees that will feature hands-on demonstrations of government agencies' most innovative and leading-edge technologies from robots to interactive visualizations to augmented and virtual reality. Most of us are familiar with the Mars rover and DARPA robots, but theres remarkably cool tech being used in almost every corner of the public sector, GCN Editor-in-Chief Troy K. Schneider said. Our Tech Arcade offers a chance to see some of those innovations in person, and interact with them in a hands-on way. Technologies in the Tech Arcade should have compelling interactive qualities such as wearable tech, robots, UAVs, and 3D printers to encourage attendee interaction. If you think your technology fits this description; submit your nominations at http://gcn.com/techarcade. Nominations are open until August 31st and anyone may nominate a technology. About GCN GCN delivers technology assessments, recommendations and case studies to support public sector IT managers who are responsible for the specification, evaluation and selection of technology solutions. http://www.gcn.com About 1105 Public Sector Media Group 1105 Public Sector Media Group, a division of 1105 Media, Inc., provides information, insight and analysis to the Government IT and Education IT (FED/SLED) sectors. Our content platforms include print, digital, online, events and a broad spectrum of marketing services. http://1105publicsector.com ### We're excited to be a part of Appalachian Harley-Davidson's 15th anniversary event and with this raffle, one lucky entrant will get a brand new trailer, which has a value well over $1,500. All Pro Trailer Superstore, a dealership that sells trailers nationwide, is hosting a raffle where entrants will have a chance to win a brand new customized motorcycle utility trailer. The brand new trailer is a Carry-On 5x10 landscape utility trailer that is customized to haul (1) motorcycle. The trailer features a wood floor with a removable bike chock and a fold-down landscape ramp that's accompanied by (4) floor D-ring tie downs and (2) ratchet straps. For a chance to win the customized motorcycle trailer from All Pro Trailer Superstore, entrants must stop by the Appalachian Harley-Davidson dealership located at 6695 Carlisle Pike, Mechanicsburg, PA, 17050, to enter the raffle. The winner of the raffle will be announced on October 15, 2016 at a tailgate party. However, time to enter the raffle is limited, so entrants are encouraged to enter soon. Additionally, the Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealership will be hosting a two-day 15th Anniversary Birthday Bash party starting on Friday, June 10 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. and will feature the cover band Green Eggs on their pavilion; the special anniversary event will continue the following day from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. While the customized motorcycle utility trailer will only be awarded to one lucky winner, customers can still get their hands on a great deal at All Pro Trailer Superstore. The trailer dealership is located less than one mile from Harley-Davidson and customers can browse the extensive inventory of new and used trailers for sale that start at $399. "We're excited to be a part of Appalachian Harley-Davidson's 15th anniversary event and with this raffle, one lucky entrant will get a brand new trailer, which has a value well over $1,500," said owner of All Pro Trailer Superstore Scott Smith. "When local businesses work together in the community, great things happen and it really benefits everyone. We really look forward to meeting the lucky winner!" All Pro Trailer Superstore is located at 6799 Carlisle Pike, Mechanicsburg, PA, 17050, and features a wide variety of motorcycle trailers, utility trailers, enclosed trailers and more, which can all be customized to meet your specific needs. About All Pro Trailer Superstore: All Pro Trailer Superstore, located in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, has been selling and servicing new and used trailers since 1985. Family owned and operated, All Pro Trailer Superstore provides customers with high quality trailers at low prices throughout the Continental US, Hawaii, Alaska, Europe, South America and the Caribbean Islands. With the wide variety of trailers and services available, All Pro can also design custom trailers, provide trailer accessories, offer financing and more. Please call All Pro Trailer Superstore for more information about the trailer raffle at (800)622-7003. Besttoolbars is pleased to announce the launch of extensions development for Microsoft Edge. Great news for all Microsoft Edge users; now they will have more options as the first browser extensions are launched. Personalization and new feature addition are enabled through amazing extensions. Developers all over the world can now work on Microsoft Edge extensions. And Besttoolbars offers the best tools for it. Either looking for cashback, coupons, charity industry or any other extension development, Besttoolbars has the solution. As Timofey Krischenko, COO at Besttoolbars, explains Our team has been working worldwide with an array of global brands, from startups to high-profile Fortune 500 corporations including Amazon, Skype, IBM, DHL, TNT and Intel. More than 7,000 companies are currently using solutions created on the Besttoolbars platform. Besttoolbars is ready to provide a business with a line of Microsoft Edge extensions including, but not limited to: media extensions, Social Network add-ons, phone number extensions and crypto add-ons. At the same time, the company enables its clients to reduce project timelines and Total Cost of Ownership of browser extension through the use of Add-ons Framework. For further information and to start developing extension visit besttoolbar.net today. About Besttoolbars, founded in 1998 and based in Novosibirsk, Russia, is the worlds leading browser add-ons development house having 15 years of experience and more than 700 successful projects. besttoolbars.net Metro Storage LLC today announced the opening of a brand new, state of the art storage facility in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Located at 2727 Knapp Street in Brooklyn, this ground up development is Metros fourth New York store. This is a superb store in an exceptional location. said Metro Storage LLC Chairman Matt Nagel. The addition of this property to our portfolio reflects our strategy of growth and expands the Metro brand in the greater New York area. The location and design of this facility is optimized to meet the varied storage needs of the surrounding community. The new, four-story building has 1357 climate controlled storage units encompassing over 80,000 rentable square feet and features multiple drive up access points, 4 interior loading bays, state of the art security, and several elevators conveniently located throughout. It includes a broad range of unit sizes from small 5x5 lockers for individuals needing a little more space to large 10x30 units that are great for business storage, with all sizes in between. We travelled a long road over five years to get to the point where we welcomed in our first tenants at the Knapp St. facility this month. said Marty Gallagher, President and COO of Metro Storage LLC Working closely with local and municipal groups and agencies, Metro overcame numerous challenges to build this state of the art facility in the Sheepshead Bay/Gerritsen Beach area of Brooklyn. Our biggest challenge was to modify a long-standing restrictive covenant over the land which limited any development on the land to only a retail site with a marina component. explained Gallagher. This restriction resulted in this site being vacant for nearly 30 years. In addition, Metro worked with the local Community Board to address nearby resident concerns, the State Department of Environmental Conservation on considerations of having a facility adjacent to a public waterway, as well as the various City departments involved in the design, permitting and construction oversight of the project. We received fantastic support from the local residents, the Community Board #15, the 46th District Councilman, as well as ongoing encouragement from the City Planning Commission to stay the course and see the project through to completion. said Gallagher. In the end, Metro Self Storage has raised the bar on the quality of the self storage product offerings and customer service in the Sheepshead Bay/Gerritsen Beach neighborhoods and surrounding communities for years to come with this facility. The ownership group includes Metro Storage LLC, Clark Investment Group of Wichita, Kansas, and Post Management in New York City. About Metro Storage LLC Metro Storage LLC is a privately owned, fully integrated, international self-storage operating company specializing in the development, construction, acquisition, and management of self-storage facilities in the USA and Brazil. Metro operates under the trademark Metro Self Storage in the US, being one of the top 10 largest owner/operators of self-storage facilities in the United States with over 100 stores covering 12 states. Metro operates in Brazil under the trade name MetroFit which is one of the fastest growing self-storage companies in Brazil. More information about the firm is available at http://www.metrostoragecorporate.com Trevor J. Chaplick and Daniel I.A. Smulian, shareholders with global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP, will speak at DeviceTalks Minnesota, June 6, 2016, at the Science Museum of Minnesota in Saint Paul. From 4:45 p.m. to 6:15 p.m., Chaplick, a shareholder in Greenberg Traurigs Corporate & Securities Group in Washington, D.C., will moderate the panel discussion, Hot topics: M&A, IP, and Products Liability Trends Impacting MedTech Companies. He will be joined by Smulian, New York shareholder in the firms Litigation Practice and a member of the firm's Pharmaceutical, Medical Device & Health Care Litigation Group, as well as Ryan Kaeding, Vice President, Investment Banking, Piper Jaffray & Co., and John Burtis, patent attorney. Specific topics include: M&A trends from the perspective of both acquirer and seller; Financing best practices from early stage to exit; Why IP protection is key to a successful exit; and Recent developments in products liability litigation the good, the bad, and the ugly. Hosted by online journal MassDevice.com, DeviceTalks is a conversation among leaders. Its an evening for an exchange of ideas, insight, and contacts among the pioneers of the medical technology industry. Formerly known as the Big 100, this event is held annually in Boston, Orange County, Raleigh, and the Twin Cities. About Greenberg Traurigs Life Sciences & Medical Technology Group Greenberg Traurigs Life Sciences & Medical Technology Group advises clients ranging from startups to large multinational public companies to leading research institutions. The groups attorneys work closely with clients, providing innovative legal counsel to help them achieve their objectives from discovery through commercialization and product marketing. About Greenberg Traurig, LLP Greenberg Traurig, LLP is an international, multi-practice law firm with approximately 1,900 attorneys serving clients from 38 offices in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The firm is No. 1 on the 2015 Law360 Most Charitable Firms list, third largest in the U.S. on the 2015 Law360 400, Top 20 on the 2015 Am Law Global 100, and among the 2015 BTI Brand Elite. More information at: http://www.gtlaw.com. This new technology, combining videotrichoscopy with powerful software, allows us to document and quantify diffuse hair loss digitally with extreme accuracy, Dr. Ryan Goerig, MD, FAAD RC by Ryan Christopher, MD, the first and only dermatology practice to focus exclusively on the non-surgical treatment of womens thinning hair, is proud to announce the addition of Trichovision, becoming the first hair loss center in the United States with the technology. Trichovision is a hair growth monitoring device that can accurately determine how well hair is responding to hair loss treatments. Before this technology, hair growth was difficult to determine because it grows very slowly and in cycles. Trichovision provides the only way to objectively measure hair growth in a minimally invasive way, without requiring surgery or scalp biopsies. RC by Ryan Christopher, MD, founded by an elite board certified dermatologist, specializes in minimally-invasive hair rejuvenation procedures for female pattern hair loss, alopecia universalis, and other hair disorders. Unique in the industry, RC by Ryan Christopher, MDs combines cutting edge technology with innovative treatments to stop the thinning process in women and help grow new hair. In a recent interview, the company revealed how it has been able to differentiate itself by focusing on cutting-edge technology. Board-certified Newport Beach, CA dermatologist and founder, Dr. Ryan Goerig, MD, FAAD, explained that until now, the assessment of hair growth in response to treatment has been a visual examination and other subjective analyses by the dermatologist. First used in academic medical centers in Europe, Trichovision technology obtains objective data that we are able to use to truly personalize appropriate hair loss therapy. Research reviewed by RC by Ryan Christopher, MDs founder has also revealed that many women are averse to invasive diagnostic procedures, like scalp biopsies. This new technology, combining videotrichoscopy with powerful software, allows us to document and quantify diffuse hair loss digitally with extreme accuracy, states Dr. Goerig. All of the principle parameters of hair growth and hair loss are calculated seamlessly, quickly, painlessly, and with unimaginable accuracy. The new all-female hair loss center is located at 520 Superior Avenue, Suite 315, in Newport Beach, California. The office will be open Mondays through Fridays from 8am to 2pm. Visit http://www.hairlossbyRC.com for more information. About RC by Ryan Christopher, MD: RC by Ryan Christopher, MD is a Newport Beach boutique dermatology company that exclusively focuses on the treatment of womens hair loss and hair thinning. Founded by a board-certified dermatologist, RC by Ryan Christopher, MD specializes in minimally invasive cosmetic procedures for the treatment of womens hair loss. Contact Name: Ryan C. Goerig, M.D., F.A.A.D Phone: (949) 449-7850 Website: http://www.hairlossbyRC.com ### Giants of Cancer Care advisory board chairman Dr. Maurie Markman from Cancer Treatment Centers of America announces finalists for 2016 Giants of Cancer Care Awards. The Giants of Cancer Care recognition program celebrates the achievements of leading physicians and researchers who have devoted their time, talent and resources to improving the care for the many patients and their families affected by cancer. Past News Releases RSS OncLive, a leading provider of news, resources and information to oncology professionals, today announced that an elite panel of oncology specialists has chosen finalists for the 2016 Giants of Cancer Care Awards, which recognize and celebrate pioneers, innovators and future generations of leaders for their remarkable achievements in oncology research and clinical practice. Now in its fourth year, the Giants of Cancer Care recognition program celebrates the achievements of leading physicians and researchers who have devoted their time, talent and resources to improving the care for the many patients and their families affected by cancer. Their discoveries have propelled the field forward and established the building blocks for future advances. Recipients demonstrate the qualities that distinguish this award from others: unlimited selflessness, compassion for their patients, and a desire to understand and develop life-changing treatments against a disease that affects so many. Nominated by the oncology community, a total of 46 finalists were named in 10 categories, including breast cancer, gastrointestinal cancer, genitourinary cancer, hematologic cancer, lung cancer, melanoma, radiation oncology, scientific advances, surgical oncology, and community outreach. This years winners will be chosen by an exclusive selection committee of eminent oncologists, educators, clinicians and researchers, who will consider each finalists body of work, including clinical impact, significant contributions, and overall accomplishments. The entire program is overseen by the Giants of Cancer Care advisory board, which is comprised of chairman Dr. Maurie Markman from Cancer Treatment Centers of America; Dr. Patrick Borgen from Maimonides Hospital; Dr. George D. Demetri from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Cancer Center; Dr. Hope S. Rugo from University of California, San Francisco/Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center; and Dr. Heather Wakelee from Stanford University Medical Center. Unlike many other recognition programs, the Giants of Cancer Care honors oncology specialists who are nominated by their peers, said Dr. Markman. Previous winners include a diverse, esteemed group of groundbreaking individuals united by their passion to transform cancer from a deadly disease into a story of hope, survivorship and ultimately, a cure. Michael Hennessy Jr., president of Michael J. Hennessy Associates Inc., which produces OncLive, added, The Giants of Cancer Care acknowledges the tireless efforts of physicians and researchers who improve patient care, develop groundbreaking treatments, and prolong the lives of those with cancer. In recognizing and honoring individuals who have achieved landmark success within the field of oncology, this dynamic program celebrates the oncology trailblazers of today while inspiring the next generation of potential Giants of Cancer Care award winners. The winners will be announced at the 34th Annual Chemotherapy Foundation Symposium: Innovative Cancer Therapy for Tomorrow from November 9-11 at the New York Marriott Marquis. About OncLive A digital platform of resources for practicing oncologists, OncLive.com offers oncology professionals information they can utilize to help provide the best patient care. OncLive is the official website for Michael J. Hennessy Associates Inc.s Oncology Specialty Group, which publishes OncologyLive, Oncology Nursing News, Oncology Business Management and more. Michael J. Hennessy Associates Inc. is a full-service health care communications company offering education, research, medical media, curetoday.com and CURE magazine, the largest U.S. consumer publication focused entirely on cancer. Combining science and humanity to make cancer understandable, CURE reaches patients, cancer centers and advocacy groups. # # # CARCHEX co-founder and CEO Jason Goldsmith received the 2016 Deans Recognition Award for the College of Liberal Arts from Towson University My education and the relationships I formed at Towson laid the foundation for the success Ive experienced in my career. CARCHEX, the industry-leading provider of direct-to-consumer Vehicle Protection Plans, is pleased to announce that its co-founder and CEO Jason Goldsmith received the 2016 Deans Recognition Award for the College of Liberal Arts from Towson University. This award is the highest honor bestowed each year by the Towson University Alumni Association. Goldsmith received the award at a reception on May 12, held on the campus of Towson University. The Deans Recognition Award recognizes alumni for their outstanding professional growth and accomplishments. This competitive program honors those alumni who have attained notable achievements or made a lasting contribution in his or her field. It is a deep and heart-felt honor to receive this award from my alma mater, said Goldsmith. Towson is where I first uncovered by entrepreneurial spirit and passion. During my junior year I started my first e-commerce site, selling of all things South Park t-shirts. My education and the relationships I formed at Towson laid the foundation for the success Ive experienced in my career. Before co-founding CARCHEX, Goldsmith created and sold two companies: TheLoanPage.com and GoldNet Marketing. At CARCHEX, he has grown the business from $20,000 in revenue in 2003 to an expected $100 million in 2016. The company has been listed in the Baltimore Suns Top Workplaces for five consecutive years and named to the Inc. 5000 list of Americas fastest growing companies five times. Goldsmith is also dedicated to giving back to the community. He serves on the Board of the Greater Maryland Better Business Bureau. He has focused CARCHEX corporate philanthropy on helping eliminate drunk and distracted driving through major partnerships with Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). About CARCHEX CARCHEX is the industry-leading provider of direct-to-consumer Vehicle Protection Plans. Protecting automotive consumers for more than 16 years and providing exceptional customer service has translated into an A+ Rating with the Better Business Bureau. For more information about CARCHEXCare Vehicle Protection Plans, visit http://www.CARCHEX.com. Weve been proud to have one of the most visited and successful real estate websites in Chicago and now, with this enhancement, I am confident that consumers will come to us when they are conducting initial research and ultimately when they are ready. Helaine Cohen, a leading Chicago residential real estate broker with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices KoenigRubloff Realty Group, who specializes in condominium sales, is proud to announce an enhanced mobile-friendly version of her popular website, ChicagoCondoFinder.com. The website can be found at http://www.chicagocondofinder.com/ and focuses on condominiums for sale in Chicago. Ms. Cohen launched the initial version of the site in 2012 and consistently made upgrades to improve the user experience for individuals who were interested in condominiums in Chicago, Illinois. While her year to date 2016 statistics were very strong with 116,473 visitors and 1,200,000 page views, Ms. Cohen wanted to enhance the site, especially for the mobile user. I wanted my site to have a simplified look with improved search functionality and optimization for mobile devices so that customers and clients have a truly great mobile experience, said Cohen. She continued, Every step of the way, we considered and anticipated what our customers wanted and needed. Weve been proud to have one of the most visited and successful real estate websites in Chicago and now, with this enhancement, I am confident that consumers will come to us when they are conducting initial research and ultimately when they are ready to purchase. Im pleased with the results and am confident our audience will agree. The site features the latest real estate search technology with rich online condo content and easy navigation. ChicagoCondoFinder.com has been a leading source of information on condos for sale in Chicago and offers extensive building information and a directory to facilitate the research process for buyers. On the site, its easy to view all active and sold MLS condominium listings. One can register to receive alerts when new listings come on market that meet specific criteria. New construction and pre-construction insight is available as well as a real estate and lifestyle blog. Owners will appreciate recent building sales data and current market stats to gauge the value of their own condominium and marketing tips are available to help sellers achieve top value. A good starting point is the featured listings page at http://www.chicagocondofinder.com/featured-listings.php. Helaine Cohen is founder of the Chicago Condo Finders team, a successful group of agents at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices KoenigRubloff Realty Group who specialize in the Chicago condominium real estate market. Ms. Cohen was named among the top 1% of brokers in the Chicago Association of Realtors. She was also named to the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices esteemed Chairmans Circle Platinum in 2015, an award presented to the top 1% of the networks sales professionals. Interested parties can learn more about Helaine Cohen at http://www.chicagocondofinder.com/agents/helaine-cohen/. About Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices KoenigRubloff Realty Group Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices KoenigRubloff Realty Group is a full-service real estate firm with nearly 1,500 real estate professionals and staff in 23 offices serving customers throughout the Chicago metropolitan area, the North Shore, Western Suburban communities and Harbor Country, Michigan. Deep local roots are complemented by the extensive global reach of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, the top real estate brand in the nation. Affiliated and ancillary services in the form of HomeServices Lending, Fort Dearborn Title, and Fort Dearborn Insurance complete the comprehensive services offered to clients. This special promotion reduces the cost of the book to zero until June 6, 2016. Jason McDonald, a San Francisco Bay Area expert consultant in SEO and social media marketing, is proud to announce a special zero cost promotion for his latest book, the 2016 Job Search and Career-building Workbook. Available on Amazon.com at no cost until June 6, 2016, the book has garnered the coveted number one new release designation on Amazon in the job hunting category. This new job search and career-building book grew out of my Stanford class on personal branding, explained Dr. McDonald, Director of the Jason McDonald SEO Consulting Agency. As part of a promotion for the beginning of Summer, 2016, I am releasing it at no cost on Amazon Kindle for a very limited time. It can also be purchased in hard copy for just $11.25, and persons interested in a no cost review copy should email me directly. To learn more about the Job Search and Career-building Workbook, visit http://bitly.com/jobhunting2016. There, one can purchase it in the Amazon Kindle format for zero dollars, or click over to the print format for the discounted price of $11.25. JOB SEARCH AND CAREER-BUILDING IN THE NEW INTERNET AGE OF SEO AND SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING Job search today is no longer the province of paper resumes and physical career offices on campus. Whether a person is a young face just out of college, or a more seasoned professional seeking to advance his or her career in this new Internet economy, the new Job Search and Career-building Workbook is a must-have addition to any job seekers library. The workbook-style format overviews how to think about building an online personal brand image using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as well as Social Media Marketing. It has in-depth coverage of LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter the three primary social networks for job hunting, job searching, and career-building today. In addition, it explains how to set up a personal website and blog and how to use SEO or Search Engine Optimization to propel that website to the top of Google. The workbook has links to worksheets, which are step-by-step guides to each chapter as well as a companion Job Search Resource Book, with links to literally hundreds of zero cost tools for job search. ABOUT JASON MCDONALD Jason McDonald is director of The JM Internet Group, a leading online training company. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1992, and now both teaches and consults to San Francisco Bay Area businesses in SEO, Social Media Marketing, and AdWords. In addition to those services, he has been recognized as an expert witness in litigation on Internet marketing. He has several popular books on Amazon on the topic of Internet marketing. Dr. McDonald, who works as an SEO expert, Social Media Marketing expert and expert witness in both areas, can be found online at https://www.jasonmcdonald.org/. Media Relations, Tel. 800-298-4065 News From Bulgaria Bulgarian Energy regulator Vows for Gradual Imbalances Reduction NEK proposes its hydropower plants to be taken out of the regulated market mix, along with industrial TPPs AUTHOR: Atanas Georgiev publics.bg Bulgarian energy companies reported that there has been an improvement on the regulated and liberalised electricity market, as some imbalances have been eliminated. Some issues from past regulatory periods, however, still remain, it became clear during a public discussion of the regulated power prices and energy availability for the regulated market on Thursday. The state-owned National Electricity Company (NEK), which is also the countrys single buyer, is still to buy 50 percent more electricity at regulated prices than it could sell on the regulated market, while having its price per MWh decreased, NEK CEO Peter Iliev said. Iliev stressed that the energy surpluses have not been distributed in time, creating excess bulk in the likes of 800 MWh/h at times. NEK proposes its hydropower plants to be taken out of the regulated market mix, along with industrial TPPs. Dimitar Angelov, CEO of Bulgarias Kozloduy NPP, explained that the power plant is finding it harder to compensate for low regulated prices, as exports and liberalized market prices have dropped. Distribution companies also evoked cross-subsidising issues. EVN Bulgaria repeated its suggestion to split the price at which NEK sells electricity to distribution utilities in two parts one for households and one for the business. Prof. Ivan Ivanov, chairman of the energy watchdog stated that there will be gradual reduction in these imbalances. Max Porter. Graywolf, $14 trade paper (128p) ISBN 978-1-55597-741-2 Porters first novel is a heartbreaking and life-affirming meditation on the dislocating power of grief. Events are presented from the viewpoint of three characters: a recently widowed dad, his two young boys, and a talking crow who, like Poes raven, roosts in their house as a tangible symbol of the familys need to come to terms with their loss. The husband has been recently contracted to write a study of Ted Hughess Crow (written after the death of Sylvia Plath, who is also referenced here), and like the Hughess trickster Crow, this Crow shifts shape and personality to address the changing needs of the different family members. Porters characters express their feelings through observations that are profound and simply phrased. The dad recalls the harmonious feeling of lives shared early in his marriage, when our love was settling into the shape of our lives like cake mixture reaching the corners of the tin as it swells and bakes. The boys, dismayed at how protectively adults coddle them against the reality of their mothers death, wonder, Where are the fire engines? Where is the noise and clamour of an event like this? The powerful emotions evoked in this novel will resonate with anyone who has experienced love, loss, and mourning. Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. A convicted Illinois sex offender living in Silvis has been charged with sexually abusing a teenager. David Chad Ash, 41, was charged Wednesday with aggravated criminal sexual abuse, a Class 2 felony punishable by up to seven years in prison if convicted. He is accused of committing an act of sexual conduct with a girl between the ages of 13 and 17 years old, according to police. The case was investigated by the Mercer County Sheriffs Department and the East Moline Police Department. In early May, the sheriff's office received a complaint about "suspicious text messages" and learned Mr. Ash allegedly had contact with the teen in East Moline. After a police investigation, a warrant was obtained Wednesday for Mr. Ash's arrest. He was arrested Thursday and, on Friday, was held in the Rock Island County Jail on a $100,000 bond. Mr. Ash pleaded guilty to aggravated criminal sexual abuse in two prior Rock Island County cases stemming from 1995 and 2000. In the oldest case, he received a three-year probation sentence, was ordered to serve 60 days in jail and had to complete "perpetrators counseling," according to court records. In the more recent case, he was sentenced to serve up to eight years in prison. Due to his prior convictions, Mr. Ash is considered a "sexual predator," according to the state's sex offender registry. Henry County Circuit Court Judge William McNeal sentenced a Chicago man to 42 months in prison Thursday for striking a correctional officer in the head in July 2014 while he was an inmate at the Illinois Youth Center-Kewanee. Edward Abrams, 21, already is in custody of the Department of Corrections for an aggravated robbery charge in Cook County but could be paroled on that charge in September. His attorney, public defender James Cosby, said Mr. Abrams had been shot twice, stabbed once, seen his brother die and been subjected to about every kind of abuse out there. In some respects I have a lot of respect for Mr. Abrams because I can't imagine what it's like to grow up like that, Mr. Cosby said. The judge said Mr. Abrams' acknowledgement of his problems shows the possibility for rehabilitation. It takes awhile to figure things out. Sometimes, people never figure things out. They go through life in and out of jail. I do appreciate the life you were brought up in. It's tough. Mr. Abrams will be jailed at least until February, with credit for time served since bond was set in 2015. The charge did not allege actual bodily harm, but the victim later told court services about a concussion, separated shoulder and loss of work for nine months. The judge said he was considering only contact of an insulting and provoking nature as charged, since actual harm had not been proven. Mr. Abrams also was in Henry County Circuit Court in April for a second battery incident at IYC-Kewanee in March of 2015. He is slated for an August bench trial on that charge. IYC-Kewanee is in the midst of transition to an adult facility. PEORIA, Ill. (AP) When their daughter Annie Grace was stillborn in March 2014, Aaron and Terra Lange knew they wanted to find a way to honor her short life. They collected a few thousand dollars by asking friends and family members to donate to an endowment in lieu of flowers after little Annie's passing, and started researching ways to use the money befitting of the circumstances. "Just nothing was making sense. Nothing felt right," Terra said. "Nothing was feeling like the right thing to do until I found this online." The Metamora couple were on hand May 9, along with their four other children Weston, 8, Kyler, 6, Dean, 4 and 1-year-old Quinton to unveil the CuddleCot they donated to the OSF Saint Francis Medical Center Family Birthing Center. The CuddleCot, a specialized cooling device fitted for use in a bassinet, can allow families to spend more time with a baby who is stillborn or dies shortly after birth. Without such a device, deceased babies tend to quickly deteriorate, and seeing the changes brought on by those natural processes can be distressing to families already confronted with a great loss. "She was changing very rapidly after birth, so we were not able to spend much time with her at all, maybe an hour or two," Terra said. "If we had had something like this available to us, we would have been able to be with her the next day." The situation severely limited the time they had to interact with the child. Terra and Aaron had hoped to have Annie baptized and wanted some pictures taken by a professional photographer, but that was impossible. Since Annie was born in the late evening hours, only her oldest brother was able to see her. At the time of Annie's birth at UnityPoint-Heath Proctor, CuddleCots weren't even available in the United States. Now a growing number of hospitals offer the made-in-England product to families experiencing the loss of an infant, including Pekin Hospital, Graham Hospital in Canton, and, thanks to the donation by the Lange family, OSF. UnityPoint-Health Methodist is in the process of acquiring one. Almost always hospitals acquire them through a donation, as each costs about $3,000. Without a CuddleCot, parents usually have just a few hours with a stillborn baby, but with one families could expect to spend 24 hours or even longer with the child, giving more family members a chance to see or hold the baby and parents more time with him or her. "We don't want parents to feel rushed with the time they have with their baby," said Sarah Greer, a perinatal supportive care coordinator at OSF. "We never put a time limit on the families, but this does just help slow the natural processes." Greer said already the CuddleCot has been used by two families at OSF. As a high-risk perinatal center, OSF serves about 70 families per year that experience stillbirth or perinatal loss. The (Quincy) Herald-Whig reports that Curtis Lovelace's attorneys filed a motion Tuesday asking for his bond to be lowered from $5 million to $3.5 million. A previous request to lower Lovelace's bond to $1 million was denied last month. The attorneys hope to get a hearing with the judge on the latest bond reduction request before the next scheduled hearing on June 17. Lovelace, a former assistant Adams County state's attorney, is charged with first-degree murder in the 2006 Valentine's Day death of his wife, Cory. Lovelace's first trial earlier this year ended in a mistrial. His second trial is set to begin July 25. G'day! It's Murray here. I've put together a little quiz to test your musical knowledge. Think you can score top marks in Murray's Magic Music Quiz? Give it a go now! The services will be operated using the SBB-owned, Alstom-built ETR610/RABe 503 Pendolino EMU fleet. The northbound services will be routed via Lotschberg Base Tunnel and Bern, returning south via Lucerne and the Gotthard Base tunnel. The new service will begin in December 2017 with only one train per day in each direction for the first three years. Frequencies may increase from December 2020 following the opening of the Ceneri Base Tunnel, which will reduce travel time on the Switzerland - Italy route by a further 30 minutes. The ETR610 trains were tested in Germany in 2012 but do not have formal safety case approval although this is anticipated later this year. SBB has contracted Alstom to undertake a SFr 80m ($US 81m) programme of work to upgrade the seven ETR610 trains it inherited from the Cisalpino joint venture with Trenitalia. The extensive work to get the trains "fit for the Gotthard Base Tunnel" involves over 90 modifications to bring them up to the specification of SBB's more recent RABe 503 sets. 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 In February, a radiological source went missing in Iraq. There was concern that ISIS might have gained control of the radioactive material and planned to create a Radiological Dispersal Device (RDD, commonly referred to as a dirty bomb) by using explosives to scatter the material over some target area. Fortunately, the radiological source was recovered, abandoned in Iraq, a few days later. Thousands of radiological sources are used in the United States for various medical and industrial purposes. Many more are used overseas. In the past, a number of these sources have been misplaced, and in a small number of the foreign cases, this has led to serious contamination, including a few deaths. Efforts have been made to better control these radiological sources, but since at least 2001, there has been increased concern that terrorists might use them to create an RDD. Calculations have shown that an attack would be unlikely to produce radioactive contamination sufficient to kill or even injure anyone. The only direct medical effect from such an attack would be an increased long-term cancer risk. The immediate impact, therefore, would be mainly psychological and economic. Governmental authorities would declare the more heavily contaminated areas off-limits. Some people might avoid any area where contamination was detected, no matter how slight. If an RDD were used in a major urban area, the economic losses could be in the billions or even tens of billions of dollars. Given the widespread use of these sources both in the United States and overseas, it is unlikely that all of them can be protected sufficiently to prevent a terrorist from obtaining one. Fortunately most radiological sources are not very suitable for producing an RDD. Many have too little radioactivity to cause much contamination, and some are so radioactive that anyone who stole them would be dead before they could make an RDD. There have been proposals to phase out those radiological sources that represent the highest risk, but the users have resisted, and thus far the sources are still being manufactured. Clear U.S. government radiation standards for dealing with an RDD attack might help reduce the psychological impact of an attack. However, the decision-making process has been ponderous. Fifteen years after the 9/11 attacks raised terrorism concerns, the Environmental Protection Agency has issued only draft-interim standards. Further, these are only guidelines and do not have the force of a regulation or law. And these guidelines might be overruled by the current conflicting regulations and laws, which were not written with an RDD attack in mind. What is worse, these guidelines fail to take into account the adverse effects of evacuating people from the contaminated areas. Some Japanese studies have indicated that up to 1,600 (mostly elderly) people died as a result of the Fukushima evacuation. Any radiation standards, while minimizing radiation health effects, should also recognize that societal goals include minimizing economic and social disruptions. The public needs to maintain perspective when it comes to radiation exposure. Though it is possible to detect very small amounts of radioactivity, it is not necessary (or possible) to avoid all radiation exposure. We live in a world full of radiation. Every day we are exposed to radiation that originates from outer space, the soil, and our own bodies. This background radiation is not uniform across the United States but is significantly higher in the mountainous west than in the coastal cities. Though an RDD may contaminate some areas with high levels of radioactivity, much larger areas will have relatively small increased radiation levels. Some may be tempted to flee any increased radiation level, but it makes little sense to abandon one's home to avoid a radiation dose smaller than one would receive simply by moving from New York to Denver. Thus far, there has not been a terrorist attack using an RDD, but ISIS activity in Belgium suggests that terrorists have an interest in trying. It is important to phase out the most dangerous types of radiation sources. The United States should also update its laws and regulations to set clear and reasonable standards for dealing with an RDD attack. Otherwise, the current conflicting standards could create confusion and undermine public trust, resulting in far higher economic losses than necessary. Gregory S. Jones is an adjunct senior defense policy analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and a member of the Pardee RAND Graduate School faculty. This commentary originally appeared on The Cipher Brief on June 3, 2016. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis. Commentary If the United States wants to avoid a long-term worker shortage, it should look to what policy canbut has failed tofully address. We have a long history using carrots and sticks, but this is a problem we may not be able to cajole or punish our way out of. Finding workers can be as simple as giving more people a chance to work. SES Platform Services has inked a contract extension with Fox Networks Group (FNG) Germany to deliver playout and content management services for all four of the broadcasters pay-TV channels in the country. The services division of the leading satellite operator already provides playout services for Fox and Nat Geo People, and under the terms of the new contract it will deliver additional playout services for the two other pay-TV channels, National Geographic Channel and Nat Geo Wild. The existing contract to provide content management services for the other four channels remains in place.FNG Germany is using SES Platform Services cloud-based Fluid MAM to deliver content management and content delivery services to linear and non-linear platforms. The media management and logistics solution allows FNG Germany to monitor and control the processes via an interactive dashboard.We have worked with SES Platform Services since 2009 and are pleased to be able to extend our partnership, commented Mauro Panella, VP broadcast operations at FNG Italy, Germany and UK. This agreement is significant not only for our German-speaking market, but also for the whole of Europe, and marks the beginning of what we are confident will be a long and fruitful relationship. Delivering content in consistently high quality is a top priority for us, making SES Platform Services the ideal choice of partner. The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority, PEMRA, has approved the process of Pakistan's first direct-to-home (DTH) licensing. It is hoped that the process will spark the creation of a new generation of technology and services for the viewers, and that it will also bring investment to media industry and generate employment. The licensing procedure was approved on the recommendations of an in-house committee, legal due diligence report and the finding of an online public consultation processPEMRA says that it will ensure a transparent mechanism to complete the DTH process by inviting local media, representatives of NAB, FIA and intelligence agencies to be part of the process from the very beginning. The PEMRA chairman has already written letters to the heads of the state organisations to nominate their representatives to be part of PEMRA team overseeing this process.At its meeting regarding DTH, the regulator also approved the suspension of the licence of M/s Fortune Marketing, known as Din News, for non-payment of its annual dues. Din News was also fined and issued warnings and show cause notices for casting aspersions on judiciary which was said to be a violation of the constitution and PEMRA laws. The Hispanic Information and Telecommunications Network (HITN) and the Puerto Rico Public Broadcasting Corporation (WIPR) will simulcast of the made-for-TV movie La Llamarada in early June. The initiative will specifically target Spanish-speaking audiences in the United States and Puerto Rico. La Llamarada is a film inspired by the classic literature of Puerto Rican writer Enrique Laguerre. It is widely considered the best representation in 20th century literature of the struggles of sugarcane workers in Puerto Rico in the 1930s. Playwright Roberto Ramos-Perea adapted the screenplay for the production, which was filmed in HD format and features a cast of well known actors and local talent.We are proud to present US audiences with the screen version of the classic Puerto Rican novel La Llamarada, said Florentina Almonte, director of programming at HITN-TV La Llamaradais the latest original production by the Puerto Rico Public Broadcasting Corporation (WIPR)s Programa Dramatico para Television Lucy Boscana, a programme that encourages cultural productions that highlight Puerto Rican history.With this production WIPR strengthens its educational and cultural mission as a public broadcaster, said Cecille Blondet, president of the Puerto Rico Public Broadcasting Corporation. The quality of our content is a priority in all we do, and La Llamarada is an excellent example. We are excited to share this production with Spanish-speaking audiences in Puerto Rico and beyond.HITN-TV and WIPR will present the world premiere of this historical epic on 6 June during prime time.According to Rentrak figures, HITN has enjoyed continued momentum , with up 23% in primetime and late fringe viewing in Q1. HispanoPost and the American Spanish-language affiliate EFE News have signed a partnership in which the agency reporters will be able to produce stories on video as part of HispanoPost's B2B content service provision. The videos will include original content, exclusives, in-depth and investigative journalism, produced for mobile devices."We have a golden opportunity to demonstrate the value for future that cell phones have as a tool for journalism, said Manuel Aguilera, CEO of HispanoPost . To support this challenge we have partnered with the best associate, the network of correspondents of EFE News in the United States. Their experience and rigorousness when reporting news is the perfect complement to our abilities to tell stories with mobile devices. We will both be served from the knowledge of our areas of specialization to maximise synergies and increase the added value of our products and services."This collaboration will initially include the main markets in the United States, but is expected to gradually be expanded to other countries around the world. The videos will be destined for distribution to the various digital and television media that access the service portfolio of HispanoPost."We participate on the development of this project with HispanoPost with the purpose of widening our presence in the world with information launched in Spanish and in order to increase visibility for the great work our reporters do in the United States," said Laureano Garcia, vice president of EFE News. I am sure that HispanoPost will have a long journey not only because is a new perspective and a different way of telling stories but also because they will be soon established as a suggestive window to contemplate reality." Convict in Defense Ministry fraud case seeks parole MOSCOW, June 3 (RAPSI) - Irina Yegorova, one of the convicted defendants in the Oboronservis embezzlement case, has filed a parole application with a court in the Vladimir Region, her lawyer Yuri Gervis told RAPSI on Friday. She had already served over half of her sentence. The colony administration gave an upbeat assessment of Yegorova, the attorney said. Yegorova has been sentenced to 48 months in prison. Later the Moscow City Court reduced her prison term to 46 months. The Oboronservis criminal case was opened in 2012 after a major embezzlement scheme inside the Defense Ministry was revealed. This resulted in the dismissal of Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov. Under the scheme, the accomplices, led by former Defense Ministry official Yevgeniya Vasilyeva, allegedly sold facilities owned by the Defense Ministry at undervalued prices through Oboronservis companies and several other private companies. The embezzled funds amounted to 3 billion rubles ($45 mln). The deals were closed as part of a major Defense Ministry reform program that was to close unnecessary facilities and functions. However, over the trial, the damage was reduced by two-thirds to 1 billion rubles ($15 mln). The judge ruled that investigators submitted questionable expert opinions. Vasilyeva was sentenced on May 8 to five years in prison for fraud, money laundering and abuse of office. Four of her accomplices were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 36 to 51 months. In late August 2015, a court in the Vladimir Region released Vasilyeva on parole. Russia asks ECHR to dismiss opposition activist Udaltsovs complaint MOSCOW, June 3 (RAPSI, Diana Gutsul) The Russian Government has asked the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to dismiss an application filed by Russian opposition activist Sergei Udaltsov over his detention and sentence, lawyer Dmitry Agranovsky told RAPSI on Friday. Russia has given answers to the ECHR questions over the case against Sergei Udaltsov. According to the attorney, the Government is seeking full dismissal of the complaint and will not come to amicable agreement. We have to submit our case comments to the Government Memorandum until June 23, Agranovsky added. Udaltsov has been sentenced to 4.5 years in prison for organizing the Bolotnaya Square protests in central Moscow in May 2012. On March 11, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) gave top priority to the application claiming that Udaltsovs rights to fair trial, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly were violated. Over 400 people were arrested and scores injured in the Bolotnaya Square protest that turned violent in May 2012. Dozens were later charged with inciting mass riots and using violence against law enforcement officers. The case against Udaltsov and another opposition activist Leonid Razvozzhayev along with other opposition figures was initiated after the "Anatomy of Protest 2" film was shown on the NTV broadcasting network. The film claimed that the opposition was organizing a coup using funds from abroad. It showed Udaltsov and his companions allegedly talking with Georgian politician Givi Targamadze, who at the time headed Georgia's Parliamentary Defense and Security Committee, and is said to have been involved in masterminding revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine and mass riots in Belarus. Udaltsov and Razvozzhayev were charged with organizing mass protests, convicted and sentenced in July 2014. Management company of Russian restaurants declared bankrupt MOSCOW, June 3 (RAPSI) The Moscow Commercial Court has declared Yaposhka City company, the operator of Yaposha restaurants, bankrupt, RAPSI reported from the courtroom on Friday. On January 29, the court introduced a monitoring procedure at the company upon the request of Trust Bank. Yaposhka City owes over 1.6 billion rubles ($24 million) to the bank. The court entered this debt in a register of creditors' claims. On December 22, the Moscow Commercial Court ordered NRT Holdings Limited, the founder of Yaposhka City operator of Yaposha restaurants, to pay 710.3 million rubles ($10.6 million) in debt to Trust Bank. According to business media, NRT Holdings Limited (Cyprus) is the sole owner of Yaposhka City. National Bank Trust owns 19 percent of the Cypriot company, about 62 percent belongs to Yaposha Investments Limited, and the rest is divided among several offshore minority holders. Defendant in Defense Ministry bribery case pleads guilty, gets 4 years in jail MOSCOW, June 3 (RAPSI) The Moscow Presnensky Court sentenced Sergey Drobysh, the former CEO of an Oboronservis structures, to four years imprisonment and a 150 million rubles ($2,250,000) fine for mediation in bribery, RAPSI learnt in the courtroom on Friday. Earlier in the day Drobysh pleaded guilty and in his final statement told the court that he repented all what he had done. As the court has established, the defendant, who was the director of the production and maintenance division of Oboronservis, had acted as a middleman as he handed a bribe to Alexander Gorshkolepov, at that time a deputy head of the property department at the Russian Defense Ministry and already sentenced to 8 years in correctional colony and a 310 million rubles ($4,700,000) fine. In 2013, Drobysh received 30 million rubles ($450,000) from businessman Andrey Knyazev aimed at bribing officials who in return should have helped to assign right people to desired positions within the Defense Ministry. However, because of a conflict Knyazev reported this case to law enforcers and was exempted from criminal liability as established by the Russias Criminal Code. The court found out that Gorshkolepov had received about 14 million rubles ($210,000) via Drobysh. FSB demands $7,200 in compensation from eccentric artist Pavlensky MOSCOW, June 3 (RAPSI, Lyudmila Klenko) Moscows Meshchansky District Court has attacked a civil lawsuit filed by the Federal Security Service (FSB) demanding 481,000 rubles ($7,200) in compensation from Russian performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky to the case over setting fire to the Moscow headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB), RAPSI reported from the courtroom on Friday. Defense of Pavlensky resisted the motion. According to lawyer Olga Dinze, caused damage has yet to be assessed. She insisted that the door restoration would be priced lower than amount demanded. During the interrogation on Friday, an expert said that the door of the Moscow headquarters of the Federal Security Service was renovated in 2008 and it could not be considered as historical value. Eccentric artist Pavlensky was arrested on November 9, 2015, along with several other people who claim to be journalists that were invited to the artists performance. The next day Pavlensky was detained under a court decision. Initially Pavlensky was accused of vandalism but later investigators reclassified charges against him to destruction of cultural heritage sites. Pavlensky is known for a number of controversial performances. In July 2012, he sewed up his mouth and stood at the Kazan Cathedral with a poster in support of Pussy Riot. In May 2013, Pavlensky lay down on the ground in front of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly naked with barbed wire around his body. In November 2013, also naked, Pavlensky nailed his scrotum to the Red Square pavement near the Lenin Mausoleum. In October 2014, he staged an eccentric stunt on the roof of the Serbsky Mental Institution in Moscow by cutting off one of his earlobes. In February 2015, Pavlensky and his accomplices burned car tyres, waved Ukrainian flags and banged sheet metal with sticks in a show of solidarity with the anti-government protesters in Ukraine. The performance was held near the Church of the Savior on Blood in St. Petersburg. Owner of MIEL Group arrested in Latvia on request of Russian prosecutors - report MOSCOW, June 3 (RAPSI) The board chairman and main owner of the MIEL Group Grigoriy Kulikov, charged in Russia with large scale fraud, has been arrested in Latvia by request of the Russian General Prosecutors Office, Vedomosti newspaper reported on Friday. Kulikov faces extradition to Russia. According to Vedomosti, Russian investigators allege that Kulikov is responsible for large scale embezzlement of funds from the investors of elite settlement Barvikha-Village. The cost of the settlement, according to MIEL Group, is estimated at 4.17 billion rubles ($63.1 million). Main investigative Directorate of Moscow police charged Kulikov in absentia. Later Kulikov was arrested in absentia. Newspapers source said that Kulikov is charged with embezzling over 85 million rubles ($1.28 million) from several people and legal entities in 2007-2008. In November 2014 Kulikov was put on the Federal wanted list; in September 2015 he was put on the Interpol international wanted list. Representative of the General Prosecutors Office told Vedomosti that in December Interpol cell in Latvia found Kulikov and shared the information with Russian authorities. In January the General Prosecutors Office filed an extradition request. Representatives of the MIEL Group claim that Kulikov is a victim of unfair competition, and that he used money from investors only for business purposes. The Intercept, June 1, 2016 By Jeremy Scahill An internal Defense Department investigation into one of the most notorious night raids conducted by special operations forces in Afghanistan in which seven civilians were killed, including two pregnant women determined that all the U.S. soldiers involved had followed the rules of engagement. As a result, the soldiers faced no disciplinary measures, according to hundreds of pages of Defense Department documents obtained by The Intercept through the Freedom of Information Act. In the aftermath of the raid, Adm. William McRaven, at the time the commander of the elite Joint Special Operations Command, took responsibility for the operation. The documents made no unredacted mention of JSOC. Although two children were shot during the raid and multiple witnesses and Afghan investigators alleged that U.S. soldiers dug bullets out of the body of at least one of the dead pregnant women, Defense Department investigators concluded that the amount of force utilized was necessary, proportional and applied at appropriate time. The investigation did acknowledge that tactical mistakes were made. The Defense Departments conclusions bear a resemblance to U.S. Central Commands findings in the aftermath of the horrifying attack on a Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, last October in which 42 patients and medical workers were killed in a sustained barrage of strikes by an AC-130. The Pentagon has announced that no criminal charges will be brought against any members of the military for the Kunduz strike. CENTCOMs Kunduz investigation concluded that the incident resulted from a combination of unintentional human errors, process errors, and equipment failures. CENTCOM denied the attack constituted a war crime, a claim challenged by international law experts and MSF. A photograph taken by military investigators in the room where members of an Afghan family were killed near Gardez in Afghanistan's Paktia province, Feb. 12, 2010. A photograph taken by military investigators in the room where members of an Afghan family were killed near Gardez in Afghanistan's Paktia province, Feb. 12, 2010. The February 2010 night raid, which took place in a village near Gardez in Paktia province, was described by the U.S. military at the time as a heroic attack against Taliban militants. A press release published by NATO in Afghanistan soon after the raid asserted that a joint Afghan-international operation had made a gruesome discovery. According to NATO, the force entered a compound near the village of Khataba after intelligence had confirmed it to be the site of militant activity. As the team approached, they were engaged in a fire fight by several insurgents. The Americans killed the insurgents and were securing the area when they made their discovery: three women who had been bound and gagged and then executed inside the compound. The U.S. force, the press release alleged, found the women hidden in an adjacent room. The story was picked up and spread throughout the media. A senior U.S. military official told CNN that the bodies had the earmarks of a traditional honor killing. But the raid quickly gained international infamy after survivors and local Afghan investigators began offering a completely different narrative of the deadly events that night to a British reporter, Jerome Starkey, who began a serious investigation of the Gardez killings. When I visited Starkey in Kabul, he told me that at first he saw no reason to discount the official story. I thought it was worth investigating because if that press release was true a mass honor killing, three women killed by Taliban who were then killed by Special Forces that in itself would have made an extraordinary and intriguing story. But when he traveled to Gardez and began assembling witnesses to meet him in the area, he immediately realized NATOs story was likely false. Starkeys reporting, which first uncovered the horrifying details of what happened that night, forced NATO and the U.S. military to abandon the honor killings cover story. A half-hearted official investigation ensued. Witnesses and survivors described an unprovoked assault on the family compound of Mohammed Daoud Sharabuddin, a police officer who had just received an important promotion. Daoud and his family had gathered to celebrate the naming of a newborn son, a ritual that takes place on the sixth day of a childs life. Unlike the predominantly Pashtun Taliban, the Sharabuddin family were ethnic Tajiks, and their main language was Dari. Many of the men in the family were clean-shaven or wore only mustaches, and they had long opposed the Taliban. Daoud, the police commander, had gone through dozens of U.S. training programs, and his home was filled with photos of himself with American soldiers. Another family member was a prosecutor for the U.S.-backed local government, and a third was the vice chancellor at the local university. At about 3:30 a.m., when the family heard noises outside their compound, Daoud and his 15-year-old son Sediqullah, fearing a Taliban attack, went outside to investigate. Both were immediately hit with sniper fire. All the children were shouting, Daoud is shot! Daoud is shot! Daouds brother-in-law Tahir recalled when I visited the family compound in 2010. Daouds eldest son was behind his father and younger brother when they were hit. When my father went down, I screamed, he told me. Everybody my uncles, the women, everybody came out of the home and ran to the corridors of the house. I sprinted to them and warned them not to come out as there were Americans attacking and they would kill them. Within a matter of minutes, a family celebration had become a massacre. Seven people died, including three women and two people who later succumbed to their injuries. Two of the women had been pregnant. Sixteen children lost their mothers. The Americans were still present when survivors prepared burial shrouds for those who had died. The Afghan custom involves binding the feet and head. A scarf secured around the bottom of the chin is meant to keep the mouth of the deceased from hanging open. They managed to do this before the Americans began handcuffing them and dividing the surviving men and women into separate areas. Several of the male family members told me that it was around this time that they witnessed a horrifying scene: U.S. soldiers digging the bullets out of the womens bodies. They were putting knives into their injuries to take out the bullets, Sabir told me. I asked him bluntly, You saw the Americans digging the bullets out of the womens bodies? Without hesitation, he said, Yes. Tahir told me he saw the Americans with knives standing over the bodies. They were taking out the bullets from their bodies to remove the proof of their crime. The U.S. militarys internal investigation into the raid, which was described in detail in the documents obtained by The Intercept, was ordered by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, who at the time of the raid was the commander of all international forces in Afghanistan. The lead investigator, whose identity was redacted, noted at the beginning of the report that he did not visit the scene of the raid, saying that the risks of re-awakening emotional and political turmoil would not have been worth the cost. Instead, family members of the victims were asked to travel to a U.S. base to be interviewed. The documents redactions and omissions are perhaps more interesting than the conclusions of the investigation. U.S. Central Command released 535 pages, including more than 100 photographs taken at the scene, but withheld nearly 400 additional pages, stating that they are exempt from FOIA for national security reasons. Photographs of bodies and wounds were redacted. The documents include NATO press releases and talking points claiming that the victims of the U.S. attack were Taliban militants and offering the standard assurances that Coalition Forces take every precaution to ensure non-combatant civilians are protected from possible hostilities during the course of every operation. An error-laden questions and answers document stated that during the operation, two militants [were] killed and one wounded, and one women and two children were protected. A list of talking points titled Post Operation IO and Mitigation characterized the Area Tribe in the following terms: One Ph.D described them as great robbers and utter savages and that their country was formerly a refuge for bad characters. While the investigation asserted that the soldiers did not dig any bullets out of the bodies of the dead, the sections of the investigation addressing this allegation were almost entirely redacted. The investigation found that the survivors interviewed in the raids aftermath, referred to as detainees, provided credible testimony. The report also noted consistency in all eight detainees statements that would be impossible to pre-plan without prior knowledge of specifics of the operation, adding that the detainee reports corroborate that the women died when they tried to stop Zahir [one of the men killed] from exiting the building. Despite this assessment of the credibility of the survivors testimony, the Pentagon investigation dismissed outright the statements from multiple witnesses, including the husband of one of the dead women, that the Americans dug bullets from the womens bodies. This investigation found no attempt to hide or cover up the circumstances of the local national womens deaths, the executive summary of the investigation concluded. The investigators were instructed by the main U.S. command at Bagram to determine: Did anyone alter, clean or otherwise tamper with the scene in any way following the operation, and if so, why? The answer to that question was completely redacted. The investigation did note, however, that the Afghan investigation conducted immediately after the raid reports that an American bullet was found in the body of one of the dead women, but it does not say how that bullet was found or who removed it from the woman. Citing statements from the members of the strike force that conducted the raid, the investigators asserted, There is no evidence to support that bullets were removed from the bodies by anyone associated with U.S. forces. The initial press release on the raid contained erroneous information about the women being bound and gagged, according to the investigation, because the ground force was confused by the unfamiliar sight of the women prepared so quickly for burial and firmly believed that they did not kill the three women. The investigation concluded that the assumption that the women had been killed by Afghans and placed on the scene was an honest assessment and the result of a lack of cultural awareness, not an attempt to mislead higher headquarters. According to the instructions provided to investigators, the U.S. forces claimed the women had been killed as many as two days before the raid occurred, but the report observed that their remains were collocated with EKIA, enemies killed in action, and photos taken in the immediate aftermath showed the women with wounds indicating they had been killed during the raid. Was this an attempt to deceive? That question was not answered in the documents provided by the Pentagon, at least not in an unredacted format. The report also noted a curious contradiction. One of the men killed by American forces had been prepared for burial just as the dead women were with a cloth wrap tied around his head so his jaw would remain closed. Yet when the U.S. forces first reported on the raid, they described only the women as having their heads bound and suggested their deaths were the result of a cultural custom. Mohammed Daoud Sharabuddin in his police uniform. (Photo: Rick Rowley/Dirty Wars) Mohammed Daoud Sharabuddin in his police uniform. (Photo: Rick Rowley/Dirty Wars) The cause of death listed for the men was gunshot wounds to the chest. For the three women, the cause of death was wounds. The most credible theory, according to the final report, was that the women were killed in a shoot through once the raid had begun, and that their deaths were unintentional and unknown to the shooters. It is undeniable that five innocent people were killed and two innocent men were wounded in the conduct of this operation, the report stated. To simply call this regrettable would be callous; it is much more than that. However, the unique chain of events that led to their deaths is explicable. According to the report, the university official who was at the party inside the compound called the police headquarters in Paktia as the raid was beginning because he believed the house was coming under attack from the Taliban. All the witnesses interviewed stated that Mohammed Daoud, the Afghan police commander, left the party and entered the courtyard, believing he was confronting a Taliban attack. Still, the investigation concluded that the U.S. forces were justified in shooting him, as well as his cousin Mohammed Saranwal Zahir, the local prosecutor. The investigators found that the men had showed hostile intent because they were armed with rifles. In the end, the investigation determined that American forces had followed the rules of engagement and standard operating procedures during the raid, concluding only that there were tactical mistakes made. The investigation recommended that the coalition forces make an appropriate condolence payment to the family as a sign of good faith in our sincerity at the seriousness of the incident. Because of excessive redactions, these documents fail to answer many questions. While the report referenced Special Forces, the specific unit was redacted. The report also seemed to indicate that the strike force came from a base in another province, rather than the local base in Paktia, yet offered no explanation. The letter accompanying the documents provided to The Intercept stated that some documents could not be released because they would expose inter-agency and intra-agency memorandum. What other agencies were involved in this raid and subsequent management of the fallout and investigation? Who provided the Americans with the intelligence that led to the raid, which claimed that a Taliban facilitator was present? No explanation was given for why the documents, which were requested from SOCOM, the parent command of JSOC, under the Freedom of Information Act in March 2011, were only now released, after being reviewed by another unnamed agency. A U.S. soldier takes photographs inside a room where members of an Afghan family were killed near Gardez in Afghanistan's Paktia province, Feb. 12, 2010. (Photo: AP) A U.S. soldier takes photographs inside a room where members of an Afghan family were killed near Gardez in Afghanistan's Paktia province, Feb. 12, 2010. (Photo: AP) The report noted that there are considerable questions about the cause of the females deaths and males injuries as well as multiple inconsistencies between what was observed and what has since been reported by local nationals. If the women were killed by U.S. forces, even in a shoot through, what happened to the bullets? The report stated that the throat of one of the women had been slit with a knife and that another dead body contained knife marks on the chest. Where did these lacerations come from? One investigator observed a blood splatter pattern that appeared to be more consistent with blunt force trauma and suggested someone had possibly slipped on the ice and split open his or her head on the hard concrete. If that is truly what the splatter indicated, then which person received those injuries? If the investigators determined the surviving witnesses of the raid were convincing and credible, why then was their testimony about Americans digging bullets out of the womens dead bodies discarded? Mohammed Sabir was one of the men singled out for further interrogation after the raid. With his clothes still caked with the blood of his loved ones, Sabir and seven other men were hooded and shackled. They tied our hands and blindfolded us, he recalled. Two people grabbed us and pushed us, one by one, into the helicopter. They were flown to a different Afghan province, Paktika, where the Americans held them for days. My senses werent working at all, he recalled. I couldnt cry, I was numb. I didnt eat for three days and nights. They didnt give us water to wash the blood away. The Americans ran biometric tests on the men, photographed their irises, and took their fingerprints. Sabir described to me how teams of interrogators, including both Americans and Afghans, questioned him about his familys connections to the Taliban. Sabir told them that his family was against the Taliban, had fought the Taliban, and that some relatives had been kidnapped by the Taliban. The interrogators had short beards and didnt wear uniforms. They had big muscles and would fly into sudden rages, Sabir recalled, adding that they shook him violently at times. We told them truthfully that there were not Taliban in our home. One of the Americans, he said, told him they had intelligence that a suicide bomber had hidden in your house and that he was planning an operation. Sabir told them, If we would have had a suicide bomber at home, then would we be playing music in our house? Almost all guests were government employees. By the time Mohammed Sabir returned home after being held in American custody, he had missed the burial of his wife and other family members. The Pentagon investigation stands in stark contrast to an independent investigation conducted by a United Nations team, which determined that the survivors of the raid suffered from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by being physically assaulted by U.S. and Afghan forces, restrained and forced to stand bare feet for several hours outside in the cold. The U.N. investigation added that witnesses alleged that U.S. and Afghan forces refused to provide adequate and timely medical support to two people who sustained serious bullet injuries, resulting in their death hours later. The Pentagon investigation did note that three of the survivors detained stated they had been tortured by Special Forces, but that allegation was buried below statements attributed to other survivors who said being held by the American forces felt like home not like prisoner and they were treated very well. In the end, the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, Vice Adm. William McRaven, visited the compound in Gardez accompanied by a phalanx of Afghan and U.S. soldiers. He made an offer to the family to sacrifice a sheep, which his force had brought with them on a truck, to ask forgiveness. Months later, when I sat with the family elder, Hajji Sharabuddin, at his home, his anger seemed only to have hardened. I dont accept their apology. I would not trade my sons for the whole kingdom of the United States, he told me, holding up a picture of his sons. Initially, we were thinking that Americans were the friends of Afghans, but now we think that Americans themselves are terrorists. Americans are our enemy. They bring terror and destruction. Americans not only destroyed my house, they destroyed my family. The Americans unleashed the Special Forces on us. These Special Forces, with the long beards, did cruel, criminal things. We call them the American Taliban, added Mohammed Tahir, the father of Gulalai, one of the slain women. The internal investigation ordered by Gen. McChrystal into the Gardez raid is an incomplete accounting of this horrifying incident. It is also based on the word of the force that carried out the killings, whose personnel could have faced serious charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice if investigators had taken seriously the survivors allegations. Portions of this article were adapted from Scahills 2014 book, Dirty Wars. Khaama Press, June 2, 2016 At least 64 schoolgirls were poisoned in central Maidan Wardak province of Afghanistan on Wednesday, the education officials said. An official in the Ministry of Education Kabir Haqmal said the incident took place in a girls school in Behsud district. He said the students were immediately taken to hospital for treatment and the health condition of them has been reported satisfactory. According to Haqmal, similar symptoms were seen as the other girls were poisoned in other provinces which include reduced blood pressure, nausea and headache. He also added that an investigation is underway regarding the cause of the incident and further information will be released later. This is not the first time the school girls have been poisoned during the school hours but numerous incidents have taken place in the past, specifically in Northern provinces of the country. Over 100 school girls have been poisoned in western Farah province of Afghanistan late in the month of April. According to the local officials, the incident took place in the central city of Farah in a girls school. Reprinted with permission from Geopolitical Futures. The director of North Koreas International Department, Ri Su Yong, is in China and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday. It is said that Ri is close to North Koreas ruling family, meaning that at the meeting he represented the views of Kim Jong Un and those around him. According to media reports, the North Koreans refused to reduce their emphasis on nuclear weapon development, as the Chinese asked of them. Nevertheless, it was agreed that good relations between the two countries are essential. In effect, the Chinese accepted that North Korea could violate Chinas wishes on nuclear weapons without harming bilateral relations. China clearly sees real value in North Korea. It likely has nothing to do with ideology. Even with the increasing autocracy of Xis regime, China and North Korea have very different ideological perspectives. North Korea is utterly centralized and has sacrificed economic development in order to maintain rigid control of all aspects of society. China takes a much less centralized approach, even under Xi. They are both considered communists, but they are very different regimes. Amicable bilateral relations with North Korea are essential for China. One reason comes simply from geography. China is a difficult place to invade. To the south are hills and jungles, from Myanmar to Vietnam; to the southwest run the Himalayas. In the northwest, vast expanses of grasslands and desert separate Chinas population from Central Asia, and to the north is Siberia. Attacking China poses fantastic problems of distance, terrain and logistics not to mention population. But one of the few places where China might be vulnerable is along the Yalu River, which creates the border between North Korea and China. During the Korean War, when U.S. forces moved close to the Yalu, the Chinese intervened, risking a nuclear counterstrike from the United States at a time when the communist world didnt have a credible counter. Still, China could not risk American forces moving across the Yalu. Geopolitical Futures For China, the Korean Peninsula poses a substantial threat, particularly with U.S. troops deployed there. Therefore, North Korea is a critical buffer state for China. Its survival as an independent state with a substantial military and hostile to the United States and South Korea is important to protect Chinas periphery. From this perspective, China wants to preserve North Korea exactly as it is. So regardless of how strange and unpredictable North Korea is, the Chinese will do what they can to prevent Korean unification and maintain the current character of the regime. The possibility of a U.S.-South Korean invasion northward is remote, to say the least. But from the Chinese point of view, the consequences of miscalculation are high. Maintaining the status quo makes sense. There is, however, a more immediate value in maintaining relations with the North Koreans. North Korea deflects the United States attention and increases U.S. dependence on China. The U.S. has a fixation with nuclear programs, especially programs developed by unpredictable countries like North Korea. The North Koreans periodically explode a test device, sink a South Korean ship or engage in some other apparently irrational behavior. This triggers a crisis with the United States. Having no diplomatic leverage in North Korea, the Americans approach the Chinese to intercede with the North Koreans. North Korea desists. The United States must be grateful to China. Therefore, the U.S. must put aside some bilateral issues with the Chinese for the time being, given Chinas willingness to use its influence in North Korea to avoid a crisis. North Korea is perceived as an uncontrollable threat. China is perceived as the only agent that can control North Korea. The United States wants to avoid exacerbating a crisis. China solves the problem. In this way, North Korea is an important tool for China in managing its relations with the United States. Managing Pyongyang is the one thing the Chinese can do for the Americans that they really care about, and it costs China very little. From Chinas point of view, North Koreas escapades give China leverage with the United States. To proceed along these lines into the land of pure speculation, it would make sense for China to order up an outrageous action at particular moments. Whether they do or whether they just take advantage of North Korean moments or whether the entire process is less conscious is an interesting subject. But it is clear that the dynamic is there. From Chinas perspective, North Korea is not an unpredictable danger. It is a diplomatic asset. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale Buy real estate. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale in US and Canada. Search Real Estate Property details: Excellent buildable lot in Charlotte County Florida - The address is 29464 Peace River Shores Blvd - Lot # 25. This is a nice clean lot on a divided paved residential road. The lot is high and dry. The pictures are of the actual lot. Tank advantage of our financing and lock in the discounted price to allow for the increase in the future value in the coming years. A Google Map search is the best way to view this area. 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Price: $ 64 State/Province: Florida Zip/Postal Code: 34747 Seller State of Residence: Texas Location: 347**, Kissimmee, Florida You will be redirected to eBay Nearby Texas Kenya Moore and boyfriend Matt Jordan have broken up and called it quits. ADVERTISEMENT The 45-year-old "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" star confirmed she and Jordan are on the outs after TMZ reported Thursday the couple had "a blowout argument" over Memorial Day weekend. "Matt and I are having some issues but there is no question we have love for each other," Moore wrote on Instagram. "Respectfully, please allow me to go through my own process. We appreciate some privacy at this time." Moore and Jordan were vacationing in Mexico when they allegedly got in "a huge dispute." Sources said Jordan kicked down Moore's hotel room door after she locked herself in, and repeatedly called her a number of curse words. "Love is never aggressive, hurtful, threatening, vindictive or accusatory, nor distrustful," Moore wrote in a since-deleted post. "Love is never a [expletive] or a [expletive]. Love is never demeaning or degrading. My love is real." Jordan addressed the breakup on his own account, which he made private after news of the split broke. The personal trainer denied "infidelity or cheating" was ever a problem but admitted he and Moore had trust issues. "Looking back I blame myself totally. I learned very late in the relationship that a woman will not trust a man fully if he seems irresponsible or not up to standard in areas of a relationship," he wrote. "Causing her to go inward emotionally." FOLLOW REALITY TV WORLD ON THE ALL-NEW GOOGLE NEWS! Reality TV World is now available on the all-new Google News app and website. Click here to visit our Google News page, and then click FOLLOW to add us as a news source! "It causes me to feel untrusting in her because I did not feel like I had her full love and attention. I didn't realize that I created my own circumstances. It's crazy how life has a way of showing you your own flaws," Jordan added. Moore and Jordan gave fans a glimpse into their relationship in "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" Season 8. The reality star joined the Bravo series in Season 5. Posted by Dustin on at 10:55 AM CST The MECCANO TRILOGO Collector's Handbook is a 5x7" pocket size book featuring 220 color pages of awesome MeccanoA new book from Stephane Faucourt, author of "Meccano to Trilogo" (2006) and "La French Touch - the Definitive Guide to Star Wars French vintage collectibles (2015), co-authored with Yann Leroux.It goes back to the BASICS with content strictly focused on KEY information: LARGE individual pictures of EACH blister card, chosen among the best condition available, card FRONT/BACKS combinations, collectors checklist and an update RARITY index.It is the perfect companion to your journey intovintage Meccano & Trilogo action figure collecting. It can be used and enjoyed everywhere, anytime. It helps managing efficiently the collection at home and can be carried on a hunt.Read more and discuss about it here in the Rebelscum Forums In case you missed Stephane's "French Touch" book, you can find it here on Amazon The book can now be ordered from the authors for a delivery at CELEBRATION EUROPE 3 London from July 15th to 17th.The book will be signed, hand numbered, with the exclusive 2006 Meccano to Trilogo ink stamp, at the special price of 23 gbp (or 30 euros or 34 usd).A complimentary giveaway will be available each day at the pickup location, and one exclusive with the offer.Fill the online form and wait checkout instructions: http://goo.gl/forms/55YbKipd4BVKJbH32 Stephane Faucourt and Yann Leroux will redeem the books personally each day from the Vintage Rebellion and Mintinbox.net fan booths.If you miss the offer or can't make it to CE3, the book will be online on Amazon later in June! In this Friday, April 22, 2016 photo, a mural adorns a wall in the art and design zone OCT Loft in Shenzhen, China. For business travelers to the southern Chinese manufacturing megacity of Shenzhen, a visit to OCT Loft can provide a welcome antidote to Shenzhen's fast-paced hyper-urban intensity. (AP Photo/Kelvin Chan) SHARE SHENZHEN, China (AP) With its anonymous sprawl of skyscrapers and factories linked by busy highways, the southern Chinese manufacturing megacity of Shenzhen might not appear at first to be the best place to do some sightseeing during a business trip. Yes, the city is a magnet for foreign business travelers, many of whom come expressly to visit factories and meet suppliers, but it's still far off the beaten tourist path. And that makes any effort to discover local attractions more rewarding than prowling the cliched and overpriced nightspots of neighboring Hong Kong or jostling with the crowds at the shopping malls and historical sites of Beijing and Shanghai. On a recent trip to Shenzhen from my base in Hong Kong, I discovered the tranquil charm of OCT Loft, a cluster of old factory buildings that's been converted into an art and design zone. A visit to OCT Loft, located in the Nanshan neighborhood, was a welcome antidote to Shenzhen's hyper-urban intensity. I took a cab from downtown and 20 minutes later, as we left the wide main road, high-rise tower blocks gave way to narrow streets lined with leafy trees and bicycle paths. The district's low-rise buildings are filled with design studios, architects' offices, art galleries, bars and restaurants. There's a Starbucks, but thankfully that was the only multinational franchise around. Finding your way around is easy thanks to metal maps set into the walkways. Buildings are helpfully denoted by simple combinations of letters and numbers: A4, B3. Disused pieces of factory equipment painted bright red were set up on the pathways as a reminder of the area's recent industrial past. An oversized machine press stood on a walkway paved with skinny red bricks. Nearby were two rustic cafes, their outdoor seats hidden by an array of potted plants and shaded by mature trees, and I stopped at one of them for a glass of iced lemon tea. The district is also a great place to see contemporary art. Murals adorn walls and the sides of buildings; paintings and sculptures are on display at galleries; and big exhibitions are held at OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, or OCAT. (The current show, "Digging a Hole in China," runs until June 26 and features video and other multimedia works by 12 Chinese artists on the concept of land.) It was almost time to head back to Hong Kong. But first, I treated myself to a slice of a slice of cheesecake (20 yuan; $3) at SE Artspace, a minimalist space in white and gray, where a lounge version of "Every Breath You Take" by The Police playing in the background. Art and photo books lined shelves on the wall and were piled on top of a Chinese cabinet by the front door. OCT Loft itself is part of a wider tourist district that includes theme parks and hotels known as Overseas Chinese Town. The state-owned company that runs it also operates an ecotourism resort called OCT East on the other side of the city. There's also a shopping district called OCT Bay. ___ If You Go... OCT LOFT: By subway, the closest station is Qiaocheng East but you'll still have to walk about half a kilometer (a third of a mile). By cab, point your driver to the map at the Guide section at www.octloft.cn . OCAT: ocat.org.cn/index.php/home?lang=en Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight People wearing their support for Clinton wait to get in to Bill Clinton's event at Shasta College on Thursday in Redding. SHARE By Alayna Shulman There was plenty of "Ready for Hillary," "Bill for First Lady" and "Vote HRC" scrawled across T-shirts, stickers and cardboard signs - with just a splash of the "Hill's bad judgment" and "I (heart) Bernie" you'd expect from this contentious election. It was former President Bill Clinton's campaign stop in Redding on behalf of wife Hillary, running against Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination. While the bulk of the potential first-husband's speech touched on Hillary Clinton's general policies and credentials as would-be commander-in-chief, Bill Clinton also catered his message to the rural audience. That's something that registered with Michael Worley, of Chico, who drove up to Redding to see Clinton in spite of Sanders' stop in his town the same evening. "Bill Clinton really understands rural areas. He remembers what it's like to be, you know, small-town," Worley said of the Arkansas native. "In a way that a guy like (Republican presumptive nominee Donald) Trump just flies over. He has no clue." Fellow Chico resident Jane Martin said Bill Clinton's presentation, to her, was symbolic of the spirit of the Democratic party. "He's so personable, and you understand that the Democratic party is really for the people," she said. Clinton evidently charmed several others at the event, including one woman who cried out, "I love you, Bill!" and another who excitedly told her friend, "I touched his hand!" after the talk ended. When it comes down to the issues, though, Martin said she supports Clinton over Sanders because of her "experience, electability and knowledge." Worley agreed, saying Sanders' ideas wouldn't mesh as well with the conservative local legislators who represent the area. "Bernie Sanders, in another year, maybe," Worley said. Still, there were several protesters outside the rally who apparently felt the time for Sanders is now, including one man whose sign read, "Join the revolution" and a woman who questioned "Hill's bad judgment." While the Democratics' divide between Sanders and Clinton is typecast largely as a generational one that only sees older Democrats favoring the former first lady, 15-year-old Rose Miller came up from Chico to show that's not always true. "There are, in fact, young people who support her," said Miller, who is the president of the High School Democrats of Chico. Miller said she favors Clinton's policies more than any other candidate's, particularly when it comes to women's and children's issues. Meanwhile, Belinda Sidwell, of Cottonwood, said she hopes anyone who was on the fence over the election will have fallen for Clinton after Thursday's rally. "To get (a Clinton) back in the White House would be amazing," she said. (Bill's) just a great guy, and his wife follows right behind." But pretty soon, Sidwell said, Hillary Clinton will be the one "right in front." Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight President Bill Clinton addresses a packed student union at Shasta College Thursday night. He is campaigning in support of his wife, Hillary. SHARE Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight People wearing their support for Clinton wait to get in to Bill Clinton's event at Shasta College on Thursday in Redding. Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight A person waits to get in to the Bill Clinton Get Out the Vote event for his wife, Hillary, at Shasta College on Thursday. Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight People show their support for Bill Clinton to become the "First Husband" while waiting to hear him speak on Thursday at Shasta College in Redding. UPDATED 7:40: Bill Clinton wraps up his speech: "If you want to get the nation moving again, vote for Hillary." He exits to the song, "Happy." Updated 7 p.m.: Bill Clinton has taken the podium and greets the crowd. "Thank you Shasta, thank you Redding," he said. "Thank you for coming and thank you for supporting Hillary." Clinton noted how he and Garamendi helped set aside more land for preservation in California than any other president. Clinton said we need to acknowledge the anger of the electorate, noting that most Americans have not received a pay raise in past several years. He said all over world people are screaming about reduction of middle class, declining wages and refugee crises. "All over the world, people are fighting these battles," he said. "I want to say not as Hillary's husband but as a former president, you need to consider how this election will affect you, your family, your state, and the rest of the world." Addressing' Trump's motto, he said: "Make America great again means making America like it was," he said. "And it wasn't so great for about half of us." "Are we going to choose a future that's great for the 21st century? A future built of bridges not walls?" "Here's my pitch, I come here as a biased but highly well informed person. I'm the only person who has known my candidate since spring of 1971. I also know what it takes to do this job and bring prosperity and share prosperity," he said. Clinton said Hillary Clinton is the candidate who knows the role of government, and that includes investing in infrastructure and making sure every American drinks water through clean pipes. He also said we need to bring manufacturing back to the United States, but it won't be like it used to be. Instead, it needs to be a mix of technology and products. He said Hillary wants to invest in ways to make products in a more smart, economically efficient way to create more good-paying jobs. Clinton talked about how a university in Florida helped spin off 100 businesses that create simulators used at Disneyworld and NASA. He said such a successful outcome could be done in California and everywhere. "You have to believe in a tomorrow economy, and you can't turn people away from the door because you don't like their religion or race," he said. Part of creating that economy is to get those who have a hard time finding work get into jobs. He said the government must create ways to get veterans hired, as well as those who have served time in jails and prisons. "In last three months' period, U.S. finally showed enough hiring that wages finally started to go up. But our growth went down a half point because of all the turmoil in the rest of the world," she said. He added that the world will continue to drag us down unless we help and care about bringing up the rest of the world. Hillary is the only candidate who has a plan for that, he said. Clinton expressed a bit of surprise why the Republicans are now going after his wife because they liked her when she got the Iran sanctions in place, when she helped farmers hold onto their farms, when she brokered deal with Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and stopped the fighting between it and Israel. He also told a touching story about how Hillary Clinton encouraged Tom DeLay to work with her to increase adoptions of children out of foster care by offering families tax cuts if they did so. He said voters must think about the world their grandchildren will grow up in. "I cannot overstate the importance of this election," he said. "We just have to remember this election is about you, your children, your grandchildren, your country." He again said he understands why white Americans in particular are so angry, they've seen the Democratic party concentrate on so many other populations. But he said that Hillary sees everyone, even those who feel left out. And whether they vote or her or not, "we are coming back to take you along into the future, and that's what we got to say to everybody," he said. Clinton said he appreciated Gov. Jerry Brown endorsing Hillary, but when they called Brown to thank him, they brought up the minimum wage hike to $15. Bill Clinton said he should have set it up to stagger that in different areas of the state, otherwise "you put a lot of small businesses out of business." Updated 7 p.m.: Congressman John Garamendi is introducing Bill Clinton, asking everyone if they're ready to hear from the 42nd president of the United States. Updated 6:50 p.m.: Former President Bill Clinton has landed and is on his way to Shasta College where he will stump for his wife, Hillary, this evening. Shasta County Democratic Committee Chairman and state Senate candidate Rob Rowen addressed the packed, standing-room only crowd in the college's student union a few minutes ago, calling on those gathered to make history again by electing the nation's first female president. More people than expected turned out, and organizers set up speakers outside so those who could not fit into the building can still hear the speakers. Rowen remarked on the size of the crowd, saying that "I can honestly say this is the largest gathering of Democrats I've seen in redding in my lifetime." Original story: Former President Bill Clinton will visit Redding Thursday on behalf of his wife, Hillary, who is running for president and is on the June 7 ballot for the Democratic nomination. Bill Clinton will be speaking at the Shasta College Student Union on Thursday. Doors will open at 6:15 p.m. and the former president will speak at 7:15 to 8:15 p.m. Parking for the Clinton rally will be in the college's north parking lot. The Clinton campaign checked different places before settling on Shasta College. Frank Treadway, serving as a point of contact for the Hillary Clinton campaign, said the North State is in play in the Democratic presidential primary. Anyone attending the rally is encouraged to use the hashtag #ClintonRedding when sharing posts, photos and video on Twitter and Facebook so their posts show up in the Record Searchlights live coverage on Redding.com. Those at home can also add comments after entering a display name in the platform below. Bill Clinton What: Bill Clinton holds campaign rally on behalf of wife and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton Where: Shasta Colleges Student Union When: Thursday evening. Doors open at 6:15 p.m. Clinton expected to talk from 7:15 to 8:15 p.m. Details: It will be standing only. Park in the north parking lot. Its first-come, first in. Follow live team coverage on Redding.com starting at 6 p.m. Thursday. Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight A woman takes a picture with President Bill Clinton as Redding City Council members Brent Weaver, center, and Kristen Schreder, right, also take pictures of Clinton after he spoke Thursday at Shasta College, campaigning for his wife for the upcoming primary election. SHARE Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight President Bill Clinton speaks Thursday at Shasta College, campaigning for his wife for the upcoming primary election. People cheer President Bill Clinton as he speaks Thursday, June 2, 2016, at Shasta College in Redding, Calif. Bill Clinton was campaigning for his wife, Hillary, for the upcoming California Primary Election. (Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight) People cheer President Bill Clinton as he speaks Thursdaym June 2, 2016, at Shasta College in Redding, Calif. He was campaigning for his wife, Hillary, for the upcoming primary election. (Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight) People wait to get in to see President Bill Clinton speak Thursday, June 2, 2016, at Shasta College in Redding, Calif. Bill Clinton was campaigning for his wife, Hillary, for the upcoming primary election. (Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight) By Jenny Espino and Alayna Shulman, Record Searchlight Uttering his name only once, President Bill Clinton came out swinging against Donald Trump and his policies during a speech Thursday at Shasta College in Redding. The former president spoke to a crowd about 800 who had turned out for a get-out-the-vote rally for his wife, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton acknowledged the voter anger in the Democratic and Republican parties and their feelings that the political and economic system have failed them, noting how 80 percent of the American people have received no pay raises since the economic crash eight years and that median family income is lower than when he left office in January 2001. He invoked the Irish poet W.B. Yeats' words that too much sacrifice can harden a person's heart. He told the crowd, all over the world people are screaming because of declining middle class, rising inequality, reduced social mobility and the feeling their borders are not protected. But he asked them to rise above and look to a future that prefers bridges over walls, a reference to Trump's call to build a wall along the Mexican border. "You gotta believe in a tomorrow economy and you gotta believe in cooperation, not conflict, and you can't turn people away at the door because you don't like their religion or their race or their whatever," he told them at one point. Unlike past elections, Clinton said this presidential election asks every American citizen to not only think how it will affect them and their children but also how it will affect the rest of the world. He slammed Trump's slogan "Make America Great Again" as nothing more than an imagined past and a way to keep the fight for an increasingly shrinking pie. "For half of Americans, it wasn't so great," he said. Rather, the country had to think about making "America great in the terms of the 21st century." Clinton held up Hillary Clinton as someone with the right values to "work together" and grow the economy. He talked about investing in modern infrastructure to have clean water, become a clean energy super power and bring broadband to rural areas in particular. He called for more spending in science and technology so more students, such as those from Shasta College, can get jobs. He urged for immigration reform. The way the GOP has handled the issue is good politics that help Democrats but it's not good for the country. "I come here, as a biased but highly well informed observer," Clinton said of his wife. "I'm the only person here who has known my candidate since spring of 1971, 45 years ago. I would never recommend anything that I thought would hurt my country." While the bulk of the potential first-husband's speech touched on Hillary Clinton's general policies and credentials as would-be commander-in-chief, Bill Clinton also catered his message to the rural audience. That's something that registered with Michael Worley, of Chico, who drove up to Redding to see Clinton in spite of Sanders' stop in his town the same evening. "Bill Clinton really understands rural areas. He remembers what it's like to be, you know, small-town," Worley said of the Arkansas native. "In a way that a guy like (Republican presumptive nominee Donald) Trump just flies over. He has no clue." Fellow Chico resident Jane Martin said Bill Clinton's presentation, to her, was symbolic of the spirit of the Democratic party. "He's so personable, and you understand that the Democratic party is really for the people," she said. Clinton evidently charmed several others at the event, including one woman who cried out, "I love you, Bill!" and another who excitedly told her friend, "I touched his hand!" after the talk ended. When it comes down to the issues, though, Martin said she supports Clinton over Sanders because of her "experience, electability and knowledge." Worley agreed, saying Sanders' ideas wouldn't mesh as well with the conservative local legislators who represent the area. "Bernie Sanders, in another year, maybe," Worley said. Still, there were several protesters outside the rally who apparently felt the time for Sanders is now, including one man whose sign read, "Join the revolution" and a woman who questioned "Hill's bad judgment." While the Democratics' divide between Sanders and Clinton is typecast largely as a generational one that only sees older Democrats favoring the former first lady, 15-year-old Rose Miller came up from Chico to show that's not always true. "There are, in fact, young people who support her," said Miller, who is the president of the High School Democrats of Chico. Miller said she favors Clinton's policies more than any other candidate's, particularly when it comes to women's and children's issues. Meanwhile, Belinda Sidwell, of Cottonwood, said she hopes anyone who was on the fence over the election will have fallen for Clinton after Thursday's rally. "To get (a Clinton) back in the White House would be amazing," she said. (Bill's) just a great guy, and his wife follows right behind." But pretty soon, Sidwell said, Hillary Clinton will be the one "right in front." Bill Husa/Chico Enterprise-Record Actress Susan Sarandon introduces Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders before he talked to 6,000 people at Chico State University on Thursday evening. SHARE Bill Husa/Chico Enterprise-Record A crowd estimated at 6,000 people listen to Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders when he spoke at Chico State University. Bill Husa/Chico Enterprise-Record Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders talks to a crowd of about 6,000 people at Chico State University on Thursday evening. By Risa Johnson, Chico Enterprise-Record CHICO Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders announced to a sweaty crowd of nearly 6,000 people at a Chico State University rally that as of Thursday, California polls put him above Hillary Clinton by 1 percentage point. During his speech in front of the boisterous crowd, Sanders said he is confident that if he wins the California primary Tuesday, he will win the presidential nomination despite the fact that Clinton currently holds the sweeping majority of votes from Democratic superdelegates. Sanders has won 20 state primaries and is traveling up an down the state in an attempt to make California the 21st. People waited in line starting as early at 8 a.m. to see the senator from Vermont as temperatures hit the high 90s midday. Sanders was introduced by actress Susan Sarandon and took the stage at 7:30 p.m. He spoke for about an hour. Sanders' campaign said the crowd numbered 5,804. Sanders called for investment in rural areas and inner cities, as opposed to Afghanistan, as well as the need for equal representation of people in the LGBT community and Native Americans, for African-American people and Latinos and Latinas. He stood by women's rights to equal pay and abortion. "Women want the whole damn dollar and they're right," he said. He also called for a $15 minimum wage, which California has pledged to enact. He declared health care a human right and shared his plans to increase Social Security benefits, which he told the crowd that President Barack Obama supports as well. Candidates should be able to run a campaign without big-money interests controlling them, Sanders said. "The current campaign finance system is corrupt and undermining American democracy," he said. "It is time for us to tell corporate America that they are no longer going to get it all." Sanders is optimistic about winning several other states and defeating Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in November. "It is extremely difficult to keep up with 'the Donald' because every day he makes a statement more absurd than the statement he made the day before," Sanders said. "He came to California to tell the people of California that there is no drought. He cannot become president after all of the pain this country has gone through since its inception, all of the racism. We do not want a president who insults Mexicans and Latinos, insults Muslims, every day insults women, who insults veterans and who insults the African-American community." Sanders estimated those in the crowd were likely from over 100 countries. "The American people understand that our strength is in our diversity," he said, "And that our strength is bringing people together, not dividing us up. This campaign is extraordinarily proud that we have won in state after state, even in states we have lost, the overwhelming support of young people." Sanders says he owes his constant drive to young people, who understand the vision of the United States to be one of social justice, racial justice and environmental justice. "Our campaign is going to win because we are doing something that most politicians today do not do, which is telling the truth, whether in our personal or political lives. The truth is not always pleasant but if we want to go forward, we must confront reality." Almost every supporter interviewed before the rally spoke of Sanders' honesty as a key reason in their support, including Lynn Roof, 59, of Oroville, who was sporting some Bernie silhouette earrings. She said she has been a supporter of his campaign since the beginning. "I don't think we will see another candidate in our lifetime with his conviction. Like Bernie said, it's not about him it's about all of us," Roof said. "He is the only candidate who has stated that the environment is the No. 1 issue." People were also surprised by Sanders' rising popularity, like Wyatt Culbert, 34, of Chico, who has been a fan of the senator since the '90s. "I never thought he would become popular because I mean, he declared himself a socialist," Culbert said. On whether Sanders would be able to enact his policies with a majority Republican Congress, Culbert said he wasn't sure. "You know, Obama didn't succeed in all he wanted to but if anything, he made people want to be more socially Democratic and that's something." WASHINGTON Part of Bernie Sanders' charm is that for all of his arm-waving jeremiads, he appears unthreatening. He's the weird old uncle in the attic, Larry David's crazy Bernie. It's almost a matter of style. Who can be afraid of a candidate so irascible, grumpy, old-fashioned and unfashionable? After all, he's not going to win the nomination, so what harm can he do? A major address at the party convention? A say in the vice presidential selection? And who reads party platforms anyway? Well, platforms may not immediately affect a particular campaign. But they do express, quite literally, the party line, a written record of its ideological trajectory. Which is why two of Sanders' appointments to the 15-member platform committee are so stunning. Professor Cornel West not only has called the Israeli prime minister a war criminal but openly supports the BDS movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions), the most important attempt in the world to ostracize and delegitimize Israel. West is joined on the committee by the longtime pro-Palestinian activist James Zogby. Together, reported The New York Times, they "vowed to upend what they see as the party's lopsided support of Israel." This seems a gratuitous provocation. Sanders hardly made Israel central to his campaign. He did call Israel's response in the 2014 Gaza war "disproportionate" and said "we cannot continue to be one-sided." But now Sanders seeks to permanently alter i.e. weaken the relationship between the Democratic Party and Israel, which has been close and supportive since Harry Truman recognized the world's only Jewish state when it declared independence in May 1948. West doesn't even pretend, as do some left-wing "peace" groups, to be opposing Israeli policy to save it from itself. He makes the simpler case that occupation is unconscionable oppression and that until Israel abandons it, Israel deserves to be treated like apartheid South Africa anathematized, cut off, made to bleed morally and economically. The Sanders appointees wish to bend the Democratic platform to encourage such diminishment unless Israel redeems itself by liberating Palestine. This is an unusual argument for a Democratic platform committee, largely because it is logically and morally perverse. Israel did in fact follow such high-minded advice in 2005: It terminated its occupation and evacuated Gaza. That earned it (temporary) praise from the West. And from the Palestinians? Not peace, not reconciliation, not normal relations but a decade of unrelenting terrorism and war. Israel is now being asked pressured to repeat that same disaster on the West Bank. That would bring the terror war, quite fatally, to the very heart of Israel Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ben Gurion Airport. Israel is now excoriated for declining that invitation to national suicide. It is ironic that the most successful Jewish presidential candidate ever should be pushing the anti-Israel case. But perhaps not surprising considering Sanders' ideological roots. He is old left not the post-1960s, countercultural New Left. Why, the man honeymooned in the Soviet Union not such fashionably cool communist paradises as Sandinista Nicaragua where Bill de Blasio went to work for the cause or Castro's Cuba where de Blasio honeymooned. (Do lefties all use the same wedding planner?) For the old left, Israel was simply an outpost of Western imperialism, Middle East division. To this day, the leftist consensus, most powerful in Europe (which remains Sanders' ideological lodestar), holds that Israeli perfidy demands purification by Western chastisement. Chastisement there will be at the Democratic platform committee. To be sure, Sanders didn't create the Democrats' drift away from Israel. It was already visible at the 2012 convention with the loud resistance to recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. But Sanders is consciously abetting it. The millennials who worship him and pack his rallies haven't lived through and don't know the history of Israel's half-century of peace offers. They don't know of the multiple times Israel has offered to divide the land with an independent Palestinian state and been rebuffed. Charles Krauthammer's email address is letterscharleskrauthammer.com. SHARE For the first time since 1992, presidential candidates are including the North State on their campaign trails. There's nothing normal about this year's presidential campaign, to be sure, and the peculiarities of the 2016 race mean that for the first time in a very long time, California's voters mean enough that we are getting the attention much smaller states see every four years. Bernie Sanders spoke Thursday evening at California State University, Chico. Turns out he had wanted to speak in Redding, but the timing and lack of availability of large enough venues that night led his team to turn to Chico. Bill Clinton, stumping for his wife, Hillary, pulled in a crowd at Shasta College Thursday evening. His team, too, scrambled to find a location large enough. They reportedly looked into the Civic Auditorium, where Central Valley High School already had it booked for its graduation. They even asked Moseley Family Cellars in north Redding, according to Mimi Moseley, but that venue was too small. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is expected to land at Redding Municipal Airport for a rally there at 1 p.m. It's the only place big enough in the county to hold the expected 7,000 people. We haven't had this much political action here since 1992, when Hillary Clinton appeared in support of her husband. In 1988, George H.W. Bush stopped in Redding in his successful campaign for the White House. The recent whirlwind campaign stops are leading up to the June 7 primary next Tuesday. California isn't likely to change who will be the nominees Trump has clinched his nomination and Sanders can't catch up to Clinton in the delegate race but what the state's voters decide could influence how the campaigns go forward. Sanders has been pulling Clinton to the left, and as the Democratic convention in Philadelphia nears, he has made it clear he has no plans to quietly accept defeat. His rallies around California have pulled in thousands of young people who like his socialist messages of free education and the dismantling of big banks. While those ideas may sound nice to some, they are impractical and unrealistic. Trump has the GOP nomination sealed, but being such an unconventional candidate who has not solidified support from his own party, he needs to reach as many people as possible to try to pull in independents and Democrats who may want a choice other than Hillary Clinton. As pundits and political leaders scratch their heads wondering why and how Trump got this far, his supporters will gladly tell you why they back him. He's not the same meal the political parties have served up to voters for decades. He channels their anger at a government that failed to account for the economic wastelands in places left behind when their main industries of mining, manufacturing and logging disappeared amid regulations and international trade agreements. As they lost their homes and jobs during the Great Recession, the very banks whose practices helped send the real estate marketing into a dive and took their homes got billion-dollar taxpayer-funded bailouts. They watched as their paychecks dwindled while those on the top got richer. Ironically, Trump is in the top of the 1 percent who benefited, but they apparently don't hold that and his lack of specific policies, his flipping on issues and lack of understanding of how government works against him. They're angry, and they aren't going to take it anymore. And the North State finally can get a front-row seat to witness this unusual political conversation. Each event draws its own crowds, with Sanders gathering together hopeful youths, Bill Clinton drawing in those who support his wife and remember his presidency for good or ill, and Trump pulling in his supporters, protesters and those who just want to be part of a Trump rally. For two days, the North State is in the national spotlight. It's our chance to be consummate hosts to the many who come to hear the candidates. It's hard to say whether the two presidential nominees or their representatives will return to our area for the November election, but wouldn't it be great if they recognized that California and our corner of it counts? SHARE Question: How do you solve a problem like The Donald? Answer: You don't. Trump isn't the problem; he's the solution. The problem is the increasing calcification of a failing political system. Trump is the earthquake shattering the strata of self-serving complacency. There's a whole lot of shaking going on finally! On the right, the GOP establishment doesn't know what hit it. Politicians who have been in power too long have forgotten they are representatives, not rulers. Comfortably ensconced above the problems they dump on the rest of us, they have not only disappointed and failed us, they have betrayed us, as well as the honor we bestowed on them. It became "business as usual" in the insiders' club. Maintaining club membership became their primary purpose and the people became an afterthought. On their watch, things have deteriorated, and they simply cannot believe that their day of reckoning has arrived. On the left, things are no better. Bernie Sanders is leading his own revolution against the Democrats' version of a corrupt and out-of-touch establishment. Bernie may be a socialist fringe figure, but to many progressives, he is preferable to the leading candidate, Hillary Clinton, who seems to have problems with greed, poor judgment and telling the truth. And Democrats in general are totally befuddled by The Donald's willingness to come down to their level in the gutter and throw the muck back in their faces. They are not used to this and have no answer other than to double down on the tactics that have turned off so many voters in the first place. Trump's message? No more Mr. Nice Republican Guy! But Trump is the big story. To establishment Republicans, he is a threat to their various apple carts. They actually think it's all about nominating the most "authentic" conservative, while clearly GOP voters want someone who will be a driving force and an effective president on behalf of the country. Establishment stalwarts like Paul Ryan and others have forgotten that they are not the party; they are the hired help, whose job it is to reflect the will of the voters. There is no split in the GOP. The people and their chosen point man, Donald Trump, are united. It is the shrinking (in both size and influence) GOP establishment that has set itself apart. If they truly value unity, all they have to do is accept their rebuke by Republican voters and get on board. Trump is a threat to both friend and foe alike, but that's a good thing. Our friends, who have let us do all the heavy (and expensive) lifting for too long, are going to have to do more in their own defense. Our enemies, who have run wild and made hay while the sun shines under a weak and vacillating president, are worried about the prospect of a strong American leader. And trade deals may be changed for our benefit. At home, the entire open border lobby is apoplectic at the possibility that the U.S. may start behaving like a sovereign nation again. That will upset many special interests, from greed-head employers, American ethnics whose loyalty seems to be to foreign nationals in the country illegally, incumbent Republican politicians who just want more of the Hispanic vote, the entire Democratic Party, which is pushing amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, in hopes of getting legions of new customers for a failing party and movement, and to the illegal immigrants themselves, who don't care what we want. Keep waving those Mexican flags, rioters that just means more votes for Trump. This is not about Donald Trump. It is about a (thus far) peaceful American political revolution. The establishment should realize that Trump is not the problem, and doesn't need to be "solved." We, the people, are their problem. Let them try and "solve" us! Trump is just the highly visible symbol. Every now and then a little revolution is a good thing no? Alex Landi lives Redding. IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the Ek Nayi Subah event on the completion of two years of his government at India Gate in New Delhi, May 28, 2016. Photograph: PTI/Press Information Bureau With the government claiming that the economy has been growing robustly and the Opposition refuting these claims, the common man is none the wiser, says Rajeev Sharma. 'Words, words, words.' Hamlet's philosophical observations is so relevant in today's times of murky politics. The Modi government insists that the economy is growing at the rate of 7.9 per cent. The Congress party says it is not showing in terms of jobs generated or the common man's income. Former finance minister P Chidambaram told a press conference last week that there is a growing dichotomy between the GDP numbers and other economic indicators and if the GDP was calculated under the methodology of the old series, the growth estimate for 2015-2016 would be about 5 per cent. Chidambaram twisted the knife with this jibe: 'The average citizens need jobs and incomes. They do not consume GDP numbers.' At the Modi government's India Gate bash last Saturday, Union ministers made a series of tall promises. Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti declared that the Ganga will be among the country's 10 cleanest rivers by 2018, part of an ambitious river cleaning project for which the Modi government has pledged Rs 20,000 crore (Rs 200 billion). Since the Modi government took over in May 2014, the Supreme Court has made scathing remarks on the government's performance in this area at least twice. In September 2014, the apex court said the Centre's action plan may not help clean the Ganga 'even after 200 years.' In January 2015, a three Supreme Court judges headed by Justice T S Thakur observed that the cleaning of the Ganga had been on for the last 30 years and around Rs 2,000 crore (Rs 20 billion) have been spent so far and remarked, 'Do you want to complete it this term or the next term?' Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh talked about initiatives that have changed the plight of farmers in the country and said: 'Farmers in the country are now backed by our government's schemes like soil health card, 'neem' coated urea, crop insurance scheme and irrigation facilities.' Only recently, the Supreme Court chastised the Modi government for its negligence in managing the consequences of two years of drought and passing the buck in providing drought relief. Chidambaram described the Modi government's record in agriculture as 'dismal' and said agricultural growth was negative at -0.2 per cent in 2014-2015 and a meagre 1.1 per cent in 2015-2016. 'The government failed to anticipate and tackle the acute distress in rural India,' Chidambaram charged. Yet another minister Nirmala Sitharaman felt, 'We are able to draw a lot more foreign investment. PM Modi's trips are helping a lot to do that.' Modi's pet 'Make in India' scheme was eulogised at the India Gate event. The Congress says investor confidence in India is down and the forecast is gloomy. Chidambaram in this context: 'Make in India is, at the present stage, a non-starter. There is a study which shows that the bulk of the FDI inflows have come into the services sector and not into manufacturing.' '893 projects were classified as stalled projects in March 2016,' the former finance mionister said. 'According to the Centre for Monitoring of Indian Economy, 1,137 projects slipped into the categories of stalled/shelved/abandoned in the last two years. There is no evidence of private investment in greenfield manufacturing industries.' India's common man has been bombarded with claims and counterclaims on development as the Modi government entered its third year in office. It is natural in a fiercely democratic country that the government makes tall claims about its achievements and the Opposition debunks these claims. It is left to the man on the street to sift the truth from this maze of words. After all, ain't these words, words, words? Rajeev Sharma, an independent journalist and strategic analyst, tweets @Kishkindha Tata Groups CLiQ is the latest to join the e-commerce club, to compete with the likes of Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal. The recent valuation markdowns of e-commerce poster boy Flipkart, prominent internet companies deferring joining dates for IIT/IIM graduates, hardly any eye-popping fund-raising, dismissals and office closures all seem to be signs that add to tell a story gone quite wrong. Not so, argue not only stakeholders of the e-commerce universe but also those safeguarding the interests of traditional retailing. Retailers Association of India (RAI), which recently demanded government action against online entities flouting rules, believes the dream run in e-commerce continues. Says RAI chief executive Kumar Rajagopalan: "Now, the e-commerce dream run will become more relevant without the mayhem of deep discounting." As easy funding is a thing of the past, e-commerce companies will have to provide real value to customers, making the sector stronger, he said. The Association, claiming to speak for the $650-billion retailing sector, cannot overlook the big businesses which have started to seriously experiment with online play. Tata Groups CLiQ is the latest to join the e-commerce club, to compete with the likes of Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal. Reliance Industries and Aditya Birla Group are among the other big businesses with online ambition. Sreedhar Prasad, e-commerce partner at consultancy KPMG, said: "Whether its a dream run or not needs to be evaluated from the perspective of companies, investors, customers, employment market and government/regulators separately." It would, he felt, get increasingly difficult for 'me, too' companies to raise funds and sustain the discounting bleed. "The larger players would continue to grow, considering the consumer adoption of e-commerce in India, as well as the increasing smartphone penetration, he added. In India, e-commerce is only 1.6 per cent of the total retail pie. Organised brick and mortar takes up about eight per cent of the $650 bn, estimates show. In comparison, eight per cent is online of a total $3.5 trillion retailing sector in the US. In China, e-commerce is 25 per cent of a $1.5-trillion retail market. In that backdrop, Sandeep Aggarwal, co-founder of Shopclues and Droom, believes, "E-commerce in India has the potential to touch 20 per cent of the total retail pie. Also, according to a latest study by international real estate consultant CBRE, e-commerce has emerged as one of the main drivers for warehouse realty demand. At two million sq ft of warehousing space taken up by e-commerce entities in 2015, the sectors share rose from two per cent of the total warehousing demand in 2012 to around 22 per cent. Even office space demand from e-commerce companies saw 170 per cent annual growth, from 0.7 mn sq ft in 2014 to two mn sq ft in 2015. However, an India Ratings and Research analysis says online retailers are exposed to funding risks as their access to easily available private equity (PE) funds gets tighter. "E-tailers which were flush with PE funds up till 2015 have had lesser fortune this year, with muted deals during January-April 2016. However, another analyst tracking the sector said the funds hadn't dried. Rather, investors had become selective while giving money -- they look for uniqueness of ideas and strong business models. On companies benching campus recruits, another observer says it is not necessarily a sign of bleaker times. The same thing happened in information technology in 2002-2003, he said, with big companies deferring the joining dates due to rupee-dollar benchmarking. The campus issue should not be seen as a big concern. However, compensation in e-commerce, which has been 20-25 per cent higher than at consulting companies, might get more realistic. Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and head of One97 Communications that runs Paytm, is upbeat as his e-commerce platform has already seen the first profit. "This is the time for the e-commerce dream run to start. True, alarm signs are there but for companies in the middle layer, rather than in the top league. According to Prasad of KPMG, "We would see consolidation in the industry, with those mid-tier players who are unable to raise funds or manage bleed getting acquired by larger companies. The latter could be existing e-commerce entities or large business houses venturing into this space, wanting to tap on the technology and experience of the team, he added. So, who would emerge winner of the three sets -- international players like Amazon and Alibaba; pure-play Indian start-ups such as Flipkart, Snapdeal or Paytm; or big businesses, including Tatas and Reliance? Rajagopalan laughs and says, "It's never a winner-takes-all game in retail. " His his bet is on omni channel players, which have both brick & mortar stores, as well as e-commerce. WHY THE ALARM BELLS RANG Gautam Adani's plan to build one of the world's biggest coal mines in Australia has been hampered time and again. There is no public funding for Adani's $21.7 billion coal mine project, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said as he sought to assure a protester dressed in a fish costume that he took climate change "as seriously as you". Turnbull made these remarks during an election campaign in South Australia. An environmental protester dressed as the clown fish from animated movie 'Finding Nemo' asked him to commit to no public funding for Indian mining giant Adani's controversial project. "There's no public funding in Adani's coal mine," Turnbull said. He told the protester that he took climate change "as seriously as you". Adani's plan to build one of the world's biggest coal mines in Australia has been hampered time and again. A federal court in August last year had revoked the original approval due to environmental concerns. In October last year, the project got a new lease of life after the Australian government gave its re-approval. Reacting to Turnbull's remark, Director of energy finance studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) Tim Buckley said, "With the permanent decline in seaborne thermal coal markets causing a meltdown in the Australian thermal coal industry, it is hard to imagine a more inopportune moment to attempt to open a multi-billion dollar new mine." Echoing similar sentiments, Greenpeace Australia Pacific reef campaigner Shani Tager said, "While this off-the-cuff comment is welcome, the prime minister still needs to announce a credible environmental policy to protect the reef from the dangers of coal for future generations." "Carmichael would be a complete disaster for the climate and the Great Barrier Reef and we welcome this position from the prime minister. Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten are right to rule out throwing taxpayers money at this disastrous project." "The Carmichael mine would mean more dredging in the Great Barrier Reef, more ships through its waters and more carbon emissions at a time when the reef is suffering from its worst ever bleaching," Tager said. Photograph: Reuters US taxi-hailing firm raises the money from Saudi Public Investment Fund to support global expansion. A substantial portion of the $3.5 billion raised by taxi aggregator Uber from Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia would be spent to fund its race against Ola in India. Indias taxi aggregator market is estimated between $1 billion to $1.2 billion (about Rs 6,600 crore to Rs 7,900 crore) in terms of annualised gross booking value (GBV), according to a February report by RedSeer Management Consulting, a research and advisory firm that tracks online businesses in India. Ola, the early mover that mirrored Ubers model in India, has 60-65 per cent share, while Uber, a late entrant, has captured a market share 35-40 per cent according to the report. Now, it is trying to get a greater share of the pie. This investment is part of global fund and we are incredibly excited to use this capital is globally strategic markets such as India. Having grown exponentially over the past two years, we are bullish on the Indian market and this investment will support the remarkable growth of Uber in India, Uber said. Uber, which entered India in April 2013 by introducing luxury cars to woo users, is aggressive in offering cheap rides to consumers and compensating drivers with incentives across 22 cities in the country. The company is also wooing the central government, while taking on local governments in Delhi and Karnataka, legally, against policies that restrict their operations. It has committed investments of $1.5 billion (Rs 10,050 crore) in India. Ola has raised $1.3 billion (Rs 8,700 crore) so far to expand its market. Analysis of data between January 1 and April 17 this year reveals that Ola is twice as large as Uber, according to report by Truecaller. The data shows that 102 million calls were made between Ola and its users, against 39 million calls for Uber. The latest round of fund raising by Uber would it the required ammunition to expand market share in India. This would put pressure on Ola, backed by Softbank and Tiger Global, to raise fresh funds to match the push of its global rival. An Ola spokesperson declined comment. To be fair, SoftBank, the common investors in Ola, Chinese app-hailing platform Didi Kuaidi, Lyft, the distant second player in the US after Uber, GrabTaxi, the Southeast Asian taxi-hailing app, has stitched a global alliance and built them as a common enemy against Uber in these markets. These players share resources, data and best practices while enabling users to book on each other's platform in their respective geographies. Last month, Didi got $one billion investment from Apple. India is one of the largest markets for global technology firms as the country does not have policies to shield local players from intense competition unlike China. 'The Gita was propounded on a battlefield and regards the use of force to establish Dharma or righteousness, as not only legitimate but one's highest duty,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd). With a new broom (no pun intended) wielding Manohar Parrikar, a technocrat by inclination, the hardy perennial of 'defence reforms' is again in the news. The current fashion seems to be 'cutting the teeth to tail ratio.' We have had a similar exercise done in the early 1970s under the late General K V Krishna Rao. Then there was the Arun Singh Committee in the late 1980s and the Kargil Report after the 1999 war. Let us also not forget the Henderson Brooks inquiry report. Essentially the Indian approach to defence/security reforms is episodic and narrow focussed. This is more a band aid approach rather than a holistic diagnosis and treatment. Some basic understanding as to why we Indians are 'like that only' is necessary. Writing on security issues is a thankless job in India. If one points at the emerging threats, one is labelled a 'scare monger.' Traditionally Indians have woken up to the threat of advancing armies only when they reached Panipat -- a stone throw from Delhi -- but never when they crossed the Khyber Pass. It is only in India that one is called a war monger if one merely says that till some countries in the world keep the threat of nuclear weapons alive, India must not close its options. In this, one is not referring to the honourable men (and women) with 'pens for hire' but well meaning citizens. As a symptom of this malaise it is a national shame that there is no national level memorial where the names of more than 15,000 soldiers who gave their lives in defending our freedom, can be found engraved. What we have instead is an apology at India Gate, hastily constructed in 1972. Lest we forget, India Gate is already a war memorial dedicated to the memory of those who gave their lives in the First World War. Many explanations, with logic of their own, are offered to explain the situation. The blame for Indian 'pacifism' is put on Mahatma Gandhi. But as the Mahatma himself quite candidly put in his autobiography, 'I have not invented non-violence. It is as old as the hills.' Veteran Gandhian and industrialist, the late Navalmal Firodia, argued with me that Indians do not value the freedom as we got our freedom relatively 'cheap.' Going even deeper, India's geography that isolates us from the Asian landmass gave us a false sense of security for over a thousand years and therefore most Indians do tend to take it for granted. Indian civilisation and culture that was nurtured in these geographic settings developed an approach that regards the use of force as Apat Dharma. Thus, the use of force is reserved only for Apat-kal or calamity, and is strictly an Apawad or an exception. This was most vividly seen in times of crisis. While researching and writing the history of the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict for the ministry of defence, the mass upsurge that this war saw was truly remarkable. It was again seen in 1965 and 1971 and the brief Kargil conflict. Indians indeed rise to the occasion. But no sooner the danger has passed, we wiped it from our collective memory. The major preoccupation of the Brahminical order has been to control the Kshtriyas. Even in Indian fairy tales, the Senapati (chief of the army) is most frequently the villain, who usurps the fair princess and the kingdom. This is indeed surprising if one is to remember that the Bhagawad Gita, widely accepted as the essence of philosophical moorings of Indians (not Hindus alone, as at that time the other modern religions were not yet born). The Gita was propounded on a battlefield and regards the use of force to establish Dharma or righteousness, as not only legitimate but one's highest duty. Somewhere along the way and definitely after the rise of Rajputs, war became either a sport or was fought for the sake of individual honour. Bhishma Niti as opposed to Krishna Niti became the dominant creed. Even the methods of fighting became an issue and Krishna Niti was forgotten. In most languages, Krishna Krutya (Krishna's deeds) became synonymous with dark deeds. Means became as important as ends. As opposed to this, the Judaic-Christian civilisation follows the doctrine of necessity. The Gandhian counter to the Biblical dictum 'an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth' was that we may then end up with a world that is full of only the blind and the toothless, is only partially correct. If the whole world is to adopt the Indian approach, it would lead to peace. But a poser to this is that should only India adopt the peace and non-violence, it is only India that will end up both blind and toothless. The Mahatma was very clear on this issue. His non-violence was to be practised 'only from a position of strength.' Unfortunately his followers failed to grasp this very crucial point of Gandhian philosophy. The fact is, in less than two-and-a-half months after getting Independence, on October 27, 1947 to be precise, the armed forces of newly independent India had to battle the tribal invasion of Kashmir. In less than 15 years, in December 1961, the non-violent 'satyagraha' approach failed in face of the obdurate Portuguese and India had to send in its army to liberate the last colonial pocket of Goa. Our peaceful disposition and lack of territorial ambition did not stop the Chinese from attacking us in 1962. Pakistan, even after losing half its country, still nurses dreams of annexing Kashmir and in wilder imagination even thinks of unfurling its flag on the Red Fort in Delhi. Indians ought to ponder over why and how we lost our freedom in the first place. What were the 'real' compulsions that led to the British withdrawal from India? And finally must we not value the people who defend our freedom? We owe it to posterity to find a truthful answer to these questions and clear the ideological fog that seems to have settled over the thinking faculties of Indian intellectuals. The essence of Indianess is the acceptance of plurality, of thought, creed, race and behaviour. This has been wrongly construed as the celebrated 'Indian tolerance.' Nothing could be further from the truth. Indians are as violent as any other people. But to preserve our plurality and the essence of Indian civilisation, it is necessary to fight creeds that propagate a single path and are intolerant of plurality. These ideologies could be religious fundamentalists (saffron or green) or economic dogma or hegemonistic nations intent on imposing their way of life. Running away from this essential duty is not tolerance, it is cowardice. Colonel Anil A Athale (retd) is a military historian. She warned that Trump is not fit to have his finger on Americas nuclear trigger. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton launched a searing attack on Donald Trump, saying his foreign policy ideas were reckless and irresponsible and terming him unfit to become president. Like many across our country and around the world, I believe the person the Republicans have nominated for president cannot do the job. Donald Trumps ideas arent just different -- they are dangerously incoherent. Theyre not even really ideas - just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies, Clinton said yesterday in San Diego, California. During the speech, which was being billed as a major foreign policy and national security address, Clinton minced no words in going after the presumptive Republican nominee on various issues -- from his past statements on international affairs to his temperament for the job. He is not just unprepared -- he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility. This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes -- because its not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin, she said. We cannot put the security of our children and grandchildren in Donald Trumps hands, she said. We cannot let him roll the dice with America. This is a man who said that more countries should have nuclear weapons, including Saudi Arabia. This is someone who has threatened to abandon our allies in NATO -- the countries that work with us to root out terrorists abroad before they strike us at home, Clinton said. She took a dig at Trumps past business dealings as well. He believes we can treat the US economy like one of his casinos and default on our debts to the rest of the world, which would cause an economic catastrophe far worse than anything we experienced in 2008, she said. Referring to some of Trumps recent foreign policy remarks, Clinton said the billionaire does not deserve to be the president of the United States. Unlike him, I have some experience with the tough calls and the hard work of statecraft. I wrestled with the Chinese over a climate deal in Copenhagen, brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, negotiated the reduction of nuclear weapons with Russia, twisted arms to bring the world together in global sanctions against Iran, and stood up for the rights of women, religious minorities and LGBT people around the world, Clinton claimed. And I have sat in the Situation Room and advised the president on some of the toughest choices he faced. So Im not new to this work. And Im proud to run on my record, because I think the choice before the American people in this election is clear, she said. Outlining her stance, Clinton said she believes in strong alliances, clarity in dealing with rivals, as well as a rock-solid commitment to the values that have always made America great. And I believe with all my heart that America is an exceptional country - that were still, in Lincolns words, the last, best hope of earth. We are not a country that cowers behind walls. We lead with purpose, and we prevail, she said. And if America doesnt lead, we leave a vacuum -- and that will either cause chaos, or other countries will rush in to fill the void. Then theyll be the ones making the decisions about your lives and jobs and safety - and trust me, the choices they make will not be to our benefit. That is not an outcome we can live with, she said. Trump soon took to Twitter to respond to Clinton. Bad performance by crooked Hillary Clinton! Reading poorly from the teleprompter! She doesnt even look presidential! he said. Crooked Hillary no longer has credibility -- too much failure in office. People will not allow another four years of incompetence!, Trump said. Crooked Hillary Clinton has zero natural talent -- she should not be president. Her temperament is bad and her decision making ability-zilch! he wrote in another tweet. In a statement, Clintons democratic rival Bernie Sanders said he agrees with her that Trumps foreign policy ideas are incredibly reckless and irresponsible. But when it comes to foreign policy, we cannot forget that Secretary Clinton voted for the war in Iraq, the worst foreign policy blunder in modern American history, and that she has been a proponent of regime change, as in Libya, without thinking through the consequences, the Vermont senator said. We need a foreign policy based on building coalitions and making certain that the brave American men and women in our military do not get bogged down in perpetual warfare in the Middle East. Thats what I will fight for as president, Sanders said. Meanwhile, in a major boost to Republican party unity ahead of the November polls, House Speaker Paul Ryan has endorsed presumptive nominee Donald Trump, saying that they have more common ground than disagreement. I feel confident he would help us turn the ideas in this agenda into laws to help improve peoples lives. Thats why Ill be voting for him this fall, Ryan said in an op-ed published in Gazette Xtra. Ryan, citing major policy differences, had refused to endorse Trump after he emerged as the presumptive presidential nominee following his win in the Indiana primary elections in May. Thereafter, the two had a series of meetings and phone calls. The Speaker has now insisted that despite differences between the two men, they have more common ground than divergence. Its no secret that he and I have our differences. I wont pretend otherwise. And when I feel the need to, Ill continue to speak my mind. But the reality is, on the issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground than disagreement, he said. Ill be voting for @realDonaldTrump this fall. Im confident he will help turn the House GOPs agenda into laws, he tweeted. His goal from the start, Ryan said, was to unite the Republican party so they could win in the fall. The arts topper Rubi Rai conveyed to the board that she was unwell. M I Khan reports The Bihar topper of prodical science who believed that political science was about food did not appear for the re-examination on Friday afternoon. Rubi Rai, the class XII topper from the state of Bihar, informed the board office through her college -- VishnuRaiCollege in Vaishali district -- that she was unwell and hence unable to attend the examination. The Bihar School Examination Board ordered toppers to reappear for their exams and also be interviewed after a video emerged showing Rubi, who topped the Arts examination, saying political science was concerned with cooking and also pronounced it as prodical science. Additionally, Saurabh Sresth, who topped the Intermediate exams in science, did not have basic knowledge about the subject. He said that aluminium is the most reactive element of the Periodic Table. When asked about sodium and its electronic configuration, he failed to reply. All the toppers, except Rubi, appeared for the re-examination at the board office, board official Hariharnath Jha said. According to board officials, all 13 toppers, including four from the arts stream and nine of science have appeared before a panel of experts and anti-corruption wing of the board to assess their merit and quality of education. It is up to experts to examine them, interview them or take their written exam to test their merit, an official said. Now, all eyes are set on the results by the experts. Image: Rubi Rai also said she had obtained 444 marks out of 600, while the exam was for 500 marks only. Five countries including India, Pakistan and Afghanistan accounted for more than half of the terror attacks that took place across the globe in 2015, a US official has said. "More than 55 percent of all attacks took place in five countries, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Nigeria," Acting US Coordinator for Counterterrorism Justin Siberell told media persons in a news conference in Washington. "And 74 percent of all deaths due to terrorist attacks took place in five countries, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Syria," he said, adding the figures are based on the data compiled by the University of Maryland. Although terror attacks took place in 92 countries in 2015, they were heavily concentrated geographically, as they have been for the past several years, Siberell said. The total number of terrorist attacks in 2015 decreased by 13 percent as compared to 2014, he said while releasing the annual Country Reports on Terrorism. "Total fatalities due to terrorist attacks decreased by 14 per cent, principally as a result of fewer attacks and deaths in Iraq, Pakistan, and Nigeria. This represents the first decline in total terrorist attacks and resulting fatalities worldwide since 2012," the official said. "At the same time, there were several countries, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey, where terrorist attacks and total deaths increased in 2015," he added. The United States and its partners around the world face a significant challenge as they seek to contend with the return of foreign terror fighting forces from Iraq and Syria, the risk of terrorist groups exploiting migratory movements, and new technology and communications platforms that enable terrorist groups to more easily recruit adherents and inspire attacks. "ISIL (ISIS) remains the greatest terrorism threat globally. Despite the losses it sustained last year. ISIL continued to occupy large areas of Iraq and Syria," Siberell said. ISIL's territorial control in Iraq and Syria reached a high point in spring 2015 and began to diminish thereafter, he said, adding, it is worth noting that they did not have a significant battlefield victory in Iraq after May last year year and by the end of 2015, 40 percent of their territory in Iraq had been liberated. This number has continued to increase in 2016, he said. Responding to a question, Siberell said the number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan decreased in 2015 as compared to 2014, which was a particularly violent year in Pakistan. "The Pakistani government undertook a robust response against a number of militant groups and throughout that end of 2014 into 2015," he said. "Pakistan is a key counterterrorism partner and we have an ongoing conversation with the Pakistani government for the need to address militant activities in Pakistan and it will remain a key partner in confronting terrorism in the South Asia region," Siberell said. Distribution of sweets, welfare assistance and blood donation by party workers were among the highlights of celebrations of the 93rd birthday of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam patriarch M Karunanidhi on Friday. On the occasion, Karunanidhi, who was state chief minister five times, paid floral tributes at the memorials of DMK founder leader C N Annadurai and rationalist leader E V Ramasamy Periyar in Chennai. Karunanidhi planted a sapling at his CIT colony residence and later a cake was cut in the presence of his family members, including his son and DMK Treasurer M K Stalin. His daughter and Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi greeted him on the occassion. Party leaders like Duraimurugan and T R Baalu also went to his residence and wished him. The DMK has announced a mega public meeting to be held at the YMCA grounds in Chennai later in the evening which will be addressed by Karunanidhi. Karunanidhi, in his birthday message, urged party cadres to continue to work for the welfare of Tamil Nadu. Recalling the "sacrifices" of his party for Tamil language, culture and the people, he said, "Let us work untiringly, I invite you with love." Karunanidhi was Tamil Nadu chief minister five times between 1969-71, 1971-76, 1989-91, 1996-2001 and 2006-11. Even though DMK lost the recent state assembly polls, it has emerged as a strong opposition, winning 89 seats. Karunanidhi himself won from his native Tiruvarur, defeating AIADMK candidate R Pannerselvam by clocking the highest victory margin of 68,366 votes. Party headquarters 'Anna Arivalayam' was decked up for the event and has been glittering with decorative lamps since Wednesday night. DMK treasurer M K Stalin had appealed to party functionaries on Thursday to engage themselves in welfare activities like organising blood donation camps and planting saplings. DMK district units celebrated his birthday by giving away sweets, welfare assistance like text and notebooks to school students and food and clothes to the poor. The recent spate of attacks on Africans -- starting with the murder on May 20 of a 29-year-old Congolese teacher, Masonda Ketada Olivier, who was beaten to death by three drunk men in a dispute about hiring an auto-rickshaw, followed by uncoordinated assaults on at least six other African men -- shows that all is not well in the land that believes in Atithi Devo Bhava (the guest is God). For the last one week, the Union government has been trying to contain the potential damage to India-Africa relations, with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday posting on Twitter, I appeal to fellow Indians. Next time you meet an African citizen, please shake hands and say India loves you. So, we ask you, dear readers, to extend your hand to the African community in the country. Show them the love, spread the word of tolerance and help India get rid of its racist tag. Follow Mrs Swarajs advice. Next time you meet an African, say India loves you, take a selfie and share it with us! School teachers and friends of Mainak Sarkar, the Indian-American gunman, who shot dead his wife and his former professor at the University of California, Los Angeles before turning the gun on himself, described him as a reserved but friendly person. I had good relations with him. He was friendly but his life was limited to studies, said Goutam Biswas, who used to teach him in Durgapur till Class 10. He said he was shocked to hear the news in the media and still cant believe that it was his student who got involved in such a violent act. I dont recall any negative attitude of him, Biswas said. Another teacher Lily Chowdhury, who taught him at St Michaels School, said he was reserved but an introvert type of person. The incident is very shocking. We never had any issues with him, she said. One of Sarkars childhood friends Mithun described him as a good boy who was always busy with his studies. Sarkar later on studied aerospace engineering from IIT-Kharagpur before shifting to the US. We are extremely sad at this senseless loss of life and our hearts go out to the families who lost their loved ones, IIT-Kgp director Partha Pratim Chakraborty said. Sarkar, 38, killed his wife Ashley Hasti at her Minnesota home, before driving to UCLA to shoot his former professor William Klug and taking his own life two days ago. Sarkar had accused Klug of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else. IMAGE: UP DGP Javed Ahmed look at the arms recovered from the Jawarhar Bagh encroachers, in Mathura on Friday. Photograph: PTI Photo The members of a sect who had encroached on government land at Jawahar Bag area in Mathura and indulged in violent clashes with police will be booked under the stringent National Security Act, Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police Javed Ahmad said on Friday. "The leaders of the sect Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi -- Ram Vraksha Yadav, Chandan Gaur, Rakesh Gupta and others will be booked under the NSA, he told a press conference. A total of 24 people, including the city superintendent of police and a station house officer, were killed in clashes between police and members of the sect who had encroached on government land on Thursday. Tension prevailed in the area with police seizing a large cache of ammunition from the site and arresting 320 people. Among the 24 killed, two policemen were shot dead and 11 were burnt to death due to cylinder blasts. The encroachers had set on fire the huts where bombs, explosives and gas cylinders were stored, before retreating from the site, Ahmed said. After the blast, few encroachers were hurt and finally succumbed to their injuries. Since people of neighbouring area were fed up with the activities of the encroachers, they were severely beaten by the residents of the area when they were retreating, he said. The UP DGP said efforts were on to arrest the absconding encroachers. He said the identity and other important data about the encroachers can be determined from their registration certificates. While 124 people have been arrested for the clashes under relevant Sections of the Indian Penal Code, 80 men and 116 women were booked under Code of Criminal Procedure Section 151 (arrest to prevent the commission of cognisable offences), he said. The DGP said 47 country-made pistols, six rifles, 178 live cartridges, 15 four wheelers and six two-wheelers were recovered from the site of the clashes. Ahmad said the police party had gone to the site on a recee but the encroachers, who were climbing on the trees, started indiscriminate firing, brickbatting and lathi-charging on the police party. The encroachers have been dispossessed from Jawahar Bag, he said. Principal Secretary Home Debashish Panda, special secretary Mani Shankar, Additional Director General Law and order Daljeet Chaudhary and Senior Superintendent of Police Mathura Rakesh Singh were also present in the press conference. The UP DGP said all help will be provided to the bereaved families. Prime Minister Narendra Modi sets off on Saturday on a five-nation visit to Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland, the United States and Mexico during which the focus will be to broaden Indias trade, energy and security cooperation with them and inject a new momentum in ties. Modi is likely to seek support of Switzerland and Mexico for Indias membership of the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group as both these countries are key members of the elite group. The issue is likely to figure during Modis meeting with Obama in Washington. During his talks with the leadership of Switzerland, the prime minister is also likely to raise the issue of black money stashed by Indians in Swiss banks. The prime minister will first travel to Afghanistan where he will inaugurate the Afghan-India Friendship Dam, earlier known as Salma Dam, in Herat province, along with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Both the leaders will also hold talks on a range of issues including current situation in Afghanistan. From Afghanistan, Modi will travel to energy-rich Qatar on Saturday itself and from there he will leave for a two day visit to Switzerland on Sunday. Asked at a press briefing on the PMs visit whether the issue of black money will be raised by Modi during his talks with Swiss leaders, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said both the countries are in touch on the issue. We are in touch with the Swiss government under the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement mandate and we have had some discussions on this and we have a few planned in the near future. We have received support from the Swiss authorities on exchange of information on tax data between the two countries. We do hope to engage as early as possible in the automatic exchange of information with Switzerland and this has been conveyed to Swiss tax authorities, he said. On Indias bid for NSG membership, Jaishankar said India has been eyeing membership of the premier group for many, many years and that it has made lot of progress on that. I think we have made lot of progress and that has led us to formally apply for the NSG membership some days ago. We are engaged with all NSG members regarding this issue and Switzerland is definitely an important member and definitely, I would expect it to come up, he said. India has formally applied for membership of the NSG on May 12. From Switzerland, the PM travels to Washington on June 6 where he will have a packed schedule including an address to a joint session of the US Congress. He will be the fifth Indian prime minister to do so. Modi will begin his US visit on June 6 by paying tributes at the Arlington National Cemetery. He will then meet heads of a number of American think tanks and will attend an event to repatriate Indian antiquity by the US. On June 7, the prime minister will hold wide-ranging talks with US President Obama on the entire gamut of bilateral ties. The meeting will be followed by a launch to be hosted by Obama for Modi. In the afternoon, Modi will meet business leaders and address the US-India Business Council during which he is expected to highlight measures taken by his government to ensure ease of doing business. On June 8, Modi will address the a joint meeting of the US Congress which will be followed by a lunch to be hosted by the speaker. A reception is also being organised for Modi by the House and Senate Committees on foreign relations and the India Caucus. The Prime Minister will attend a community reception as well. The prime minister will be staying at Blair House, the presidents guesthouse. The US visit is sort of a consolidation visit...They (Modi and Obama) have work together to take forward the relationship, said the foreign secretary while highlighting progress of bilateral ties in the last two years including in areas of trade and defence. The two countries will come out with a joint statement. Asked whether PMs visit to Mexico and Switzerland was added at the last minute, the foreign secretary said the idea of visit to Switzerland arose from a meeting the PM had with Swiss president on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit earlier this year. He said visit to Mexico was being considered since September last year. On Modis visit to Afghanistan, Jaishankar said the dam built at a cost of over Rs 1,700 crore will irrigate nearly 75,000 hectares of land in Herat province. The dam was first conceived by Afghanistan in 1976. Jaishankar said completion of the dam project is monumental and the priority for India now is to complete all pending projects in Afghanistan. Issues relating to security cooperation are also likely to figure during talks between Modi and Ghani. About the Qatar visit, the strategically important Gulf region was key for Indias energy security and that the country supplies 60 per cent of Indias total LNG. In Qatar, the PM will hold talks with his counterpart Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani and Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani on a host of issues which may include trade and security. The PM will also visit a workers camp in Doha. On Sunday, he will meet business leaders before holding talks with the Emir. He will also interact with the Indian community. The size of annual bilateral trade between India and Qatar is around $10 billion (Rs 67,000 crores) and both the countries would like to expand it significantly. Qatar has a major sovereign wealth fund and India was eyeing to attract investment from it. During his visit to Switzerland, the PM will hold talks with President of the Swiss Confederation Johann Schneider-Ammann on bilateral, regional and multilateral issues of mutual interest. Switzerland is Indias fifth largest trading partner of India. The European country is also the 11th largest foreign investor in India. Jaishankar said a raft of issues to bolster trade partnership will be discussed by the PM with the Swiss leadership. The PM will arrive in Mexico from the US on June 8. He will have extensive talks with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on key bilateral issues including Indias membership bid at the NSG. This will be the first bilateral visit by an Indian PM after 1986 when then PM Rajiv Gandhi had visited that country. Then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had visited Mexico in 2012 to attend G 20 summit. The PM will leave for India on the evening of June 8. The father who abandoned his son as punishment apologises after the child is found alive and well. IMAGE: Yamato Tanooka was rushed to the hospital after he was found. Doctors say he is doing well. A seven-year-old boy who went missing after his parents left him in a Japanese forest as punishment has been found alive and unharmed. Seven-year-old Yamato Tanooka was found in military barracks near Shikabe in northern Hokkaido, around four kilometres from where he was left. His parents initially said he had got lost, but eventually admitted briefly abandoning him for being naughty. His father has apologised to his son and rescuers, saying, we went too far. An apologetic Takayuki Tanooka, the father, said to a news briefing outside Hakodate hospital, where the boy was taken for checks, My excessive act forced my son to have a painful time. IMAGE: The building where the 7-year-old boy, who went missing ,was found alive. Photograph: Kyodo/Reuters I deeply apologise to people at his school, people in the rescue operation, and everybody for causing them trouble, he was quoted as saying. I have poured all my love into my son, but from now on, I would want to do more, together with him. I would like to protect him while he grows up. Thank you very much. On May 28, Yamato was left in a forest on Hokkaido, Japans most northerly main island, on May 28 by his parents as punishment for throwing stones at cars and other people during a family day out. Later, on June 3, a week later, three soldiers from the Japanese Ground Self-Defence Force found the boy in a cabin on the remote wooded military base. The soldiers had ducked into the cabin to avoid a rain shower, Hiroki Komori, a spokesman for the 11th Brigade of the Northern Army said. IMAGE: Takayuki Tanooka, father of Yamato, apologises to the media after his son was found alive. Photograph: Kyodo/Reuters The soldiers gave the boy rice balls and tea from a canteen, Komori said. He was taken to Hakodate Municipal Hospital by ambulance. NHK said he had told rescuers he walked through the mountains until he found the shelter. More than 200 rescue workers, mounted police and local civilians have been scouring the forests for the last six days, with the military also joining the search. IMAGE: A search operation had been launched to find the seven-year-old, with hopes of the boy surviving fading after temperatures had dropped and the area had experienced heavy rain. Photograph: Kyodo/Reuters Temperatures had dropped to just six degrees at night and the area experienced heavy rain over the last few days, with hopes that the boy -- last seen wearing only a T-shirt and jeans -- would be found alive fading. Japan has been transfixed with the story since it broke, with people taking to social media to criticise the boys parents for taking such extreme measures to discipline him. Mainak Sarkar, the Indian American gunman who shot dead his former college professor in California before turning the gun on himself, drove over 3,200 km to kill his mentor after murdering his wife and had another faculty member on his hit list, police said. Sarkar, 38, killed his wife Ashley Hasti at her Minnesota home, before driving to the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) to shoot his former professor William Klug. The former doctoral student left a list at his home in Minnesota that included the names of the woman, UCLA professor Klug and a second professor who is safe, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said. Sarkar shot Klug multiple times in a small office in the Engineering Building of the UCLA on Wednesday before taking his own life, authorities said. Hasti was found dead of a gunshot wound at her home in the small Minnesota town of Brooklyn Park. Hennepin County Vital Records confirmed that Hasti was married to Sarkar on June 14, 2011. It was unclear if they remained married at the time of the shooting, the Los Angeles Times reported. Beck said Sarkar had plans to kill another UCLA faculty member, but could not do so as he was not able to find him. The faculty member, whose name was not revealed by police, is safe. "We believe that he went to kill two faculty from UCLA. He was only able to locate one," Beck said on Thursday. He said police found an extra box of ammunition in his Minnesota home. According to the LAPD chief, Sarkar arrived at the UCLA campus "heavily armed". "He had a backpack, two semiautomatic pistols and extra magazines. It looks like he was certainly prepared to engage multiple victims," Beck told reporters. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is assisting the Los Angeles Police Department in its investigation. In a blog post, Sarkar, an IIT Kharagpur graduate, had accused Klug of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else. "William Klug, UCLA professor is not the kind of person when you think of a professor. He is a very sick person," Sarkar wrote. "I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy. He made me really sick. Your enemy is your enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust," he wrote. Local media quoted several university officials and students as saying that Sarkar's allegation was not true. "UCLA says there is no truth to this," Beck told reporters in response to a question. Klug graduated from Westmont in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science in engineering physics, completed a master's degree at UCLA and a doctorate at CalTech. He was an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA. Image: The gunman, Mainak Sarkar. Photograph courtesy Facebook The elections in two eastern Indian states were keenly observed in Bangladesh for two major contentious issues, writes Prakash Bhandari from Dhaka. IMAGE: Mamata Banerjee with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, JD-U leader K C Tyagi and other TMC leaders at her swearing in ceremony. Photograph: Abhiroop Dey Sarkar People of Bangladesh took keen interest in the assembly elections in Assam and West Bengal. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina even sent a member of her cabinet, Amir Hossain Amu to attend the swearing in ceremony of Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata. The event was watched far and wide in the country on various television channels. There is linguistic and cultural affinities to both the states. In Bangladesh, people largely speak Bengali and in some pockets people speak Bengali with an Assamese dialect. "We cannot forget that Lord Radcliffe, who while settling the boundary issues related to partition of India excluded Assam from East Bengal that forced Mohammed Ali Jinnah to accept a complex East Pakistan. Post 1947, the Assamese set themselves against the Bengalis that resulted in agitation and bloodbath. The issue of immigration is far from settled and the Assam Accord is only on papers. The issue remains unresolved and now, the new government in Assam would play communal cards," said Paresh Chakma, a Dhaka University PhD student. The people of Bangladesh were particularly following the trends in Assam where history was being made with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance bidding for power. While the result in West Bengal was a foregone conclusion with Mamata Banerjee returning to power, the people in Bangladesh feared that her return would only create fresh deadlocks and the issue of water sharing will remain unresolved. They feel that she would stick to her old stand of not letting even a drop of Teesta river water flow into Bangladesh. But what is debated on the streets of Dhaka and other major cities of Bangladesh is the emergence of the BJP as a major player in Assam. The people of Bangladesh have been keenly watching the election pledges of the BJP and its election partners that have been anti-immigrants. In its manifesto, the BJP promised the people of Assam that it would prohibit the employment of the 'infiltrators' in factories and in farms. The BJP manifesto also promised to set up special border police to check infiltration from the Bangladesh side. The BJP is trying to overthrow the vote bank policy of the Congress government which liberally disbursed election identity cards to illegal Bangladeshis, on the basis of which they acquired citizenship. The leadership in Bangladesh feel that with a strong bilateral relationship, the BJP government will not be able to push back all those who have all the documents to prove that they are Indian citizens. The 1993 agreement between India and Bangladesh comprehensively deals with the issue of push-backs of illegal immigrants. Only people or group of people who are found crossing the border illegally would be pushed back. "The BJP have been telling people in Assam that once it comes to power it would seal the border and send back all Bengali-speaking settlers whom they consider illegal. The BJP had said that they would welcome Hindus willing to cross over to India, but Muslims will be pushed back," said Enam Ahmed Choudhry, a political observer. Bangladesh hope that the BJP would appreciate the ground realities and not try to disturb the good friendly relationship between two Asian countries. Bangladesh also feel that once the borders are sealed, it would lead to connectivity problems and if the BJP government initiate actions to push back Bangladeshis it would lead to a refugee problem. "The problem of migrants from Bangladesh to Assam is nothing new. When the issue of enclaves were not solved and the borders were almost porous, people from Bangladesh side have been going to Assam and Mizoram. "The problem of borders particularly the enclaves were sorted out amicably and now only it has to be implemented. This could be achieved because of very cordial bilateral relationship two countries. The people of East Bengal never wanted to go with Pakistan and wanted a united Bengal which could not happen. The new government in Assam led by Sarbananda Sonowal should take a practical view and try to sort out the problem amicably and not think in terms of religion," said Abul Naseer of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. But the BJP has a promise to keep with the political mandate given by the people of Assam. There was polarisation and the election results proved that the BJP, who had won only 11 seats in the 2011 assembly elections, won as many as 60 seats in 2016. This change was occurred largely due to the overwhelming support it received from Hindu voters. "The people of Bangladesh were happy with the Tarun Gogoi government which ruled Assam for 15 years. Gogoi failed to understand the undercurrent and did not join the alliance with Badruddin Ajmal's All India United Democratic Front. Gogoi, now have to pay a heavy price by ignoring the AIUDF. Had the Congress forged an alliance with the AIUDF, the results would have been different. Now, Assam will be ruled by a government that would never be secular and this would mean that the immigrants from Bangladesh will always live in fear," said Mohammed Bilal, an Awami League activist. In Bangladesh, Mamata Banerjee is considered as a thorn in the flesh in Indo-Bangla relationship. In 2012, when Manmohan Singh visited Dhaka to discuss various bilateral issues including the Teesta water sharing problem, Banerjee refused to share the water. During the last visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Dhaka, the Trinamool Congress chief also went. This gave hope for a solution to the Teesta problem. But apart from exchange of words and promises of friendly and cooperative ties between the two neighbours, nothing moved and the water sharing deal has still to be resolved. Bangladesh's Minister of State for Water Resources Muhammed Nazrul Islam said as India moves on to divert its river water to its number of water starved states, India must think of the people of Bangladesh. Islam said Modi has promises to keep and should redress Bangladesh's problem. He said the international rules protect the rights of people living downstream of transboundary rivers. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (fomer Bangladesh prime minister) had signed the Ganges Treaty with India, but the treaty was never executed in true letter and spirit. The water diplomacy weakened because Bangladesh trusted India's promise and then Banerjee threw spanner in the wheel by raising regional issues. Banerjee was under great pressure when she came to Dhaka along with Modi as the election in Bengal was only a year away. Any decision on her part to allow the Teesta river water flow into Bangladesh would have affected her party's election prospects. Now, with resounding victory to her credit, would she show some concern for the people of Bangladesh and allow the promised Teestas share of water flow into Bangladesh, is a question that is being debated. The stand that Mamata takes will be full of caution as she was given a overwhelming support by the minority in the recent assembly election. The percentage of Muslim population in West Bengal is staggering 29 per cent which the Trinamool Congress would not like to lose. The Bengali Muslims have sympathy with their brethren in Bangladesh and they would not want Mamata to thrive on her success and deny Bangladesh their share in the Teesta water. Moreover, the issue of Teesta is an international issue where Mamata's stand will have to be viewed in perspective of the agreement between the two countries. But as Mamata holds the valve of the barrages that release river water to Bangladesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will have to take a balance view and will have to rely on Mamata to take the bilateral relations forward. All of V R College's 1,007 students secured a first class in the Class 12 exam! 222 of them got identical marks! M I Khan reports from Patna on the stark reality of Bihar's education system. Rubi Rai and Saurabh Sresth, who topped the Bihar Board Class 12 exams in science and arts respectively but failed to answer basic questions about their subjects on camera, have exposed the stark reality of Bihar's education system. Rubi and Saurabh were students at the Vishnu Rai College in Bihar's Vaishali district. Rubi's father Avadesh Rai, a retired armyman, was surprised his daughter topped the exam. "We never expected her to be a topper," he said. "She got a second division in the Class 10 exams." The Vishnu Rai College, known locally as the V R College, has a 100 per cent result in the Class 12 exams every year. Students from neighbouring districts, mostly from rural areas and from lower middle class backgrounds, seek admission to the college. V R College is managed by Baccha Rai, a Rashtriya Janata Dal leader who is said to be close to RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav. According to Bihar School Examination Board officials, all of V R College's 1,007 students secured a first class in the Class 12 exam! 222 of them got identical marks! "Last year, the BSEB was forced to review the results of the college following an uproar after around 200 Class 12 science students wrote identical answers. It was alleged that the students were provided with photocopies of solutions to the question paper. No action was taken against the college after the inquiry committee reported that there were no irregularities, a BSEB official said. Former BSEB chairman A K P Yadav said the results of V R College students were stayed five to six years ago after questions were raised in the Bihar assembly over its students' high scores. The Board then deducted 10 per cent marks of all V R College students. After this year's controversy, Bihar Education Minister Ashok Choudhary admitted to the presence of an 'education mafia' in the state. Last year, 459 of 463 students of the SNNR College in Begusarai district and 582 of 601 students of the BRS Mahila College in Samastipur district got a first class. All 127 students of the Iraki Girls Intermediate School in Nawada district and 63 students of the St Teresa Balika High School in Bettiah district scored a first class. "Unaided private colleges mushrooming across the state are experts in ensuring high scores for their students," a BSEB official said. Many times, the same college produces state toppers in all subjects. Most of the private colleges are managed by powerful leaders from different political parties. Former minister and strongman RJD MLA Surender Yadav owns two colleges in Gaya district. Another former RJD MLA Mahesh Singh Yadav runs an unaided private college in Gaya. "Several BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), JD-U (Janata Dal-United), RJD, Congress and LJP (Lok Janshakti Party) leaders own unaided private colleges in the state," the BSEB official said. The numbers of students with high scores from these colleges saw a steep hike after 2008 when the Bihar government linked students' performance to funding. It was a part of the government's decision to provide incentives to unaided schools and colleges, but the scheme was misused. Under the government's policy, an unaided private college gets Rs 4,000 annually for every candidate securing a first class, Rs 3,500 for every second class result and Rs 3,000 for third class results. "This," a BSEB official said, "has become an easy source of income for these colleges as they produce high-scoring students by ensuring mass cheating and providing impersonators for weak candidates." Last year, photographs and videos of mass cheating in Bihar board exams went viral all over the world. This year, cheating during exams in the state was said to be under control. "Strict measures against cheating, like installation of CCTV cameras and prohibitory orders during the board exams conducted in February, resulted in a corresponding fall in the pass percentage," a BSEB official said. The controversy over the merit of this year's toppers indicates that there are still loopholes which the education mafia exploits. Image published only for representational purposes. Title Security Council resolution 2290 (2016) [on the extension the the mandate of the Panel of Experts until 1 July 2017] Publisher UN Security Council Publication Date 31 May 2016 Country South Sudan Citation / Document Symbol S/RES/2290 (2016) Reference 71st Year Other Languages / Attachments Arabic | Chinese | French | German | Russian | Spanish Cite as UN Security Council, Security Council resolution 2290 (2016) [on the extension the the mandate of the Panel of Experts until 1 July 2017], 31 May 2016, S/RES/2290 (2016), available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575122634.html [accessed 26 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. Top relief official says UN and partners doing 'everything they can' for people in Fallujah Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Top relief official says UN and partners doing 'everything they can' for people in Fallujah, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57512c2340c.html [accessed 26 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. 2 June 2016 - Expressing his deep concern at the plight of civilians trapped in the besieged Iraqi city of Fallujah in Iraq, the most senior United Nations relief official today underlined that the Organization and its partners are doing everything they can to scale up humanitarian assistance. "In the past two weeks close to 5,000 people have managed to leave, hundreds of them enduring risky and harrowing escapes on foot, in soaring temperatures, to reach safety," Stephen O'Brien, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said in a statement. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which Mr. O'Brien heads, an estimated 50,000 civilians, including at least 20,000 children, are unable to leave Fallujah, where a major military operation against ISIL is under way. They reportedly face grim conditions, including shortages of food, clean drinking water and medicines. "We and our partners continue to hear alarming reports of civilian casualties in Fallujah due to heavy shelling, of several hundred families being used as human shields by ISIL, and of children at risk of forced recruitment by fighting parties or of being separated from their families," he warned. "Civilians must be allowed to freely move to safer areas and all who flee must be granted aid and protection. Those detained for security screening must be treated lawfully and their rights upheld. All parties to this conflict are obliged to abide by international humanitarian and human rights law and do everything possible to protect civilians," he added. The UN official indicated that the Government of Iraq and humanitarian partners have set up camps in the Ameriyat al-Falluja district, where the authorities are helping to transport families escaping the city and providing information for people wanting to leave. Meanwhile, the humanitarian community continues to provide people fleeing the city with water, health care, food, shelter and other emergency assistance. "We and our partners are doing everything we can to scale up our assistance. It is vital that aid workers are guaranteed safe, secure and unhampered access in this fluid and dangerous environment," he insisted. Across Iraq, 10 million people need some form of humanitarian assistance, and a further three million are thought to be living in areas under ISIL control. "As the Muslim world prepares to mark the holy month of Ramadan, we must show the children, women and men of Iraq that the world is committed to helping them at their most desperate time," Mr. O'Brien concluded. Security Council condemns Al-Shabaab attack on hotel in Mogadishu Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Security Council condemns Al-Shabaab attack on hotel in Mogadishu, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57512eba40b.html [accessed 26 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. 2 June 2016 - The United Nations Security Council today strongly condemned the deadly attack on 1 June 2016 perpetrated by Al-Shabaab militants on the Ambassador Hotel, Mogadishu. In a statement to the press, the 15-nation Council reaffirmed that terrorism in all its forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security, stressing those responsible for these killings should be held accountable. The Council further stressed the need to take measures to prevent and suppress the financing of Al-Shabaab, and any other terrorist group in Somalia. The Council reiterated their determination to support the peace and reconciliation process in Somalia, underlining that neither this nor any other terrorist attack would weaken that determination. Iraq: despite hundreds killed in May, UN says will of civilians 'remains unshaken' Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 June 2016 Related Document(s) UN Casualty Figures for Iraq for the Month of May 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Iraq: despite hundreds killed in May, UN says will of civilians 'remains unshaken', 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57512ee240c.html [accessed 26 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. 2 June 2016 - A total of 867 Iraqis were killed and another 1,459 were injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in Iraq in May 2016, according to casualty figures recorded by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI). "Iraqi civilians going about their daily life have been the target of terrorist suicide bombers and car bombs. In some of these attacks, pilgrims have been singled out. Residential neighbourhoods have sustained heavy damage. Armed clashes have spared no one," said the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Iraq, Jan Kubis. "But the will of the Iraqi people, despite all the carnage, remains unshaken and this gives hope for the future," he added, urging the Government of Iraq to "make every effort to prevent the occurrence of such outrages." The number of civilians killed in May was 468, including 19 federal police, Sahwa civil defence, Personal Security Details, facilities protection police and fire department, while the number of civilians injured was 1,041, including 96 federal police, Sahwa civil defence, Personal Security Details, facilities protection police and fire department. A total of 399 members of the Iraqi Security Forces (including Peshmerga, SWAT and militias fighting alongside the Iraqi Army, but excluding Anbar Operations) were killed and 418 were injured, UNAMI said. The overall casualty figures rose from the previous month of April, where a total of 741 were killed and 1,374 were injured. The figures for May are likely to increase because they do not include the casualties from Anbar Governorate, a scene of heavy combat in recent days and where the ongoing conflict has made any kind of verification extremely difficult, UNAMI said. According to the casualties recorded for May, Baghdad was the worst-affected governorate, with 1,007 civilian casualties, including 267 killed and 740 injured. UNAMI noted that, in general, it has been hindered in effectively verifying casualties in conflict areas. In some cases, it could only partially verify certain incidents. UN Casualty Figures for Iraq for the Month of May 2016 Publisher UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) Publication Date 1 June 2016 Cite as UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), UN Casualty Figures for Iraq for the Month of May 2016, 1 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57512f9b4.html [accessed 26 October 2022] A total of 867 Iraqis were killed and another 1,459 were injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in Iraq in May 2016*, according to casualty figures recorded by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI). The number of civilians killed in May was 468 (including 19 federal police, Sahwa civil defence, Personal Security Details, facilities protection police, fire department), and the number of civilians injured was 1,041 (including 96 federal police, Sahwa civil defence, Personal Security Details, facilities protection police, fire department). A total of 399 members of the Iraqi Security Forces (including Peshmerga, SWAT and militias fighting alongside the Iraqi Army but excluding Anbar Operations) were killed and 418 were injured. The overall casualty figures have risen over the previous month of April, where a total of 741 were killed and 1,374 were injured. The figures for May are likely to increase because they do not include the casualties from Anbar Governorate, scene of heavy combat in recent days and where the ongoing conflict has made any kind of verification extremely difficult. The Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General (SRSG) for Iraq, Mr. Jan Kubis, lamented the continuing loss of life, particularly among the peaceful civilians, as a result of terrorist attacks, and praised the population's resilience. He urged the Government of Iraq to take the necessary and more effective measures to protect civilians from such terrorist attacks. "Iraqi civilians going about their daily life have been the target of terrorist suicide bombers and car bombs. In some of these attacks, pilgrims have been singled out. Residential neighbourhoods have sustained heavy damage. Armed clashes have spared no one. But the will of the Iraqi people, despite all the carnage, remains unshaken and this gives hope for the future. Joining the people of Iraq, in particular the residents of Baghdad where a number of attacks took place, I urge the Government to make every effort to prevent the occurrence of such outrages". Mr. Kubis noted the increase in the number of civilian casualties over the previous month and the likelihood of more civilian casualties owing to the ongoing fighting in Anbar Governorate, particularly in the city of Fallujah. The SRSG reiterated his call on the parties to undertake every effort to protect the lives of civilians and preserve Fallujah's infrastructure in accordance with the relevant principles of international human rights and humanitarian law. "Innocent civilians should not pay the price for the crimes of Daesh", he said. According to the casualties recorded for May, Baghdad was the worst affected Governorate with 1,007 civilian casualties (267 killed and 740 injured. Ninewa 56 killed, Diyala 49 killed and 93 injured, Muthana 41 killed and 75 injured, Salahadin 35 killed and 55 injured, while Kirkuk had 7 killed and 62 injured. * CAVEATS: In general, UNAMI has been hindered in effectively verifying casualties in conflict areas. In some cases, UNAMI could only partially verify certain incidents. UNAMI has also received, without being able to verify, reports of large numbers of casualties along with unknown numbers of persons who have died from secondary effects of violence after having fled their homes due to exposure to the elements, lack of water, food, medicines and health care. For these reasons, the figures reported have to be considered as the absolute minimum. UN advisor foresees more humanitarian deliveries this month to besieged areas in Syria Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as UN News Service, UN advisor foresees more humanitarian deliveries this month to besieged areas in Syria, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5751300940b.html [accessed 26 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. 2 June 2016 - United Nations Senior Advisor Jan Egeland said today there are plans to go to 11 besieged areas in Syria in the next few days, following the delivery yesterday of humanitarian supplies in the city of Darayya for the first time since it was besieged in 2012. Speaking to the press in Geneva at the conclusion of a meeting of the humanitarian task force set up by the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) comprised of the UN, the Arab League, the European Union and 18 countries that have been working on a way forward since late last year Mr. Egeland said that while May had been a very bad month for the humanitarian task force, June seems to be much better. We reached many fewer places and many fewer people [in May] than we did in March and April, said Mr. Egeland, who is the Senior Advisor to UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura. June can be [] much better. The task force plans to return to Darayya with food, Moadameyah, again with food, five places in the east Ghouta area, Kafr Batna, and three areas Zabadin, Arbin and Zamalka where it hasn't been yet. Mr. Egeland said that, thus far, 14 out of the 19 besieged areas on the Task Force's list had been reached since the beginning of the year. In addition, another three areas could be reached for the first time in the next few days. He added that the task force has full hopes that a full convoy to follow up on the supplies delivered to Darayya will be able to be delivered very soon. Noting that one more besieged area Al'Wae'r had been added to the list since the last meeting, Mr. Egeland said the area has 75,000 people and is possibly the place with the worst nutritional situation of all the besieged areas. He said attempts had been made to reach Al-Wae'r in the next few days, and that the Red Crescent had been able to deliver some items over the past 48 hours. Altogether, 592,000 people are now in besieged areas, and it is not a good sign that we have to add people to that list. But one of the reasons we are adding people to the list is that we are now getting access and we have better assessment of the situation in these areas, Mr. Egeland noted. Also speaking to the press was Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy, UN Deputy Special Envoy for Syria, who highlighted that the latest meeting of the humanitarian task force was important and useful. It comes against the backdrop of two developments, as you are aware. There has been some positive movement in terms of humanitarian access yesterday and the expectations there will be some more positive developments in the next few days, but of course we have to wait and see, he said. A family from Darayya, Syria, receiving food rations. Photo: WFP/Hussam Alsaleh The other development the deadline for the air drops of 1 June had been discussed in detail by the humanitarian task force. He said that the World Food Programme (WFP) had studied the issue and is in the process of finalizing its plans. Noting that air delivery is certainly not a substitute for land delivery, Mr. Ramzy stressed that air delivery remains an option if land deliveries do not go through. Clearly, in spite of these positive developments, it is not enough, he said. Ultimately, what we are seeking is the removal of all sieges. I think this is absolutely necessary if we are able to have humanitarian access at the level that we want, he added. Separately, WFP said that in response to the request of the ISSG, it has developed a plan to provide humanitarian aid deliveries by air to besieged areas inside Syria. The plan considers the various modes of delivery that would be possible to the 19 besieged areas identified by the UN. In 15 of the areas assessed, if land access is not granted, helicopter operations are the only viable option. This includes all urban or semi-urban areas such as Madaya, Darayya, Moadamiya and Duma, the agency said, noting that high-altitude airdrops to those locations are not possible owing to the risk of harming people on the ground along the path between actual release of the cargo from the airplane and the actual landing zone. This path can be up to 5 kilometres. At least 11 helicopters will be required to meet the monthly needs of those trapped in these besieged areas, WFP said. High altitude airdrops may be possible to Foah and Kafraya (Idlib Governorate), where an estimated 20,000 people are trapped, and will also be continued to Deir Ez-Zour. On the basis of the ISSG assessment of the situation as of 1 June, WFP said it is now activating the plan. This includes preparing a clearance request for submission to the Syrian authorities. In order to implement the plan, it will be necessary to have both funding and all necessary clearances in place, the agency said. The Security Council will meet tomorrow on the issue of humanitarian access, and will be briefed by the special envoy together with the UN Under-Secretary-General of Humanitarian Affairs, Stephen O'Brien. Cyprus: cultural rights are not 'bargaining chip,' UN expert warns Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Cyprus: cultural rights are not 'bargaining chip,' UN expert warns, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57513044cc.html [accessed 26 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. 2 June 2016 - The political division between Greek and Turkish communities in Cyprus creates many obstacles to the exercise of cultural rights, which should not be considered as a bargaining chip, a United Nations human rights expert said today at the end of her first fact-finding mission to the island nation. Karima Bennoune, UN Special Rapporteur on cultural rights, visited the country from 24 May to 2 June to assess efforts to enhance the enjoyment of cultural rights by all people. Expressing concern about the administrative obstacles posed by the division of Cyprus, she condemned unjustified restrictions on access to cultural heritage for religious ceremonies, including those that were announced by the Turkish Cypriot authorities during her visit. "The attempt to increase restrictions has been harmful," Ms. Bennoune said, calling for any unfounded restrictions to be lifted and urging the Cyprus government to abstain from any retaliatory measure. "Cultural rights, including the right to enjoy and access cultural heritage shall not be considered as a bargaining chip," the independent expert stressed. The Special Rapporteur stressed that there are issues of access to cultural sites in the south of the country, although there is a tendency to consider that such issues only happen in the north. "The Government should make every effort to end de facto limitations on accessing cultural sites, including through clarifying opening hours, simplifying processes for accessing particular sites, and providing for essential facilities such as water and washrooms at some sites," she said. "Cyprus is making a great deal of efforts to ensure that cultural heritage, which is at the centre of great tensions and could potentially undermine reconciliation, contributes to the solution", the expert highlighted. Thanks to the opening of the crossings, the expert noted, people visited their old villages and neighbourhoods, their old churches, mosques and cemeteries. "They started talking to each other again, to recognize and re-humanize each other," she added. "In this way, cultural heritage can promote human rights." The Special Rapporteur regretted that an application to include the Hala Sultan Tekke Mosque on the UNESCO World Heritage List was made "without involving the people having a particular link with the site, when such project may carry significant implications for them in terms of access and maintenance of the site." The expert noted that Cyprus's society currently includes not only Greek and Turkish Cypriots, but also a mosaic of historic minorities and more newly arrived persons, people of mixed identities, and those who chose to identify in some other fashion altogether. "Each person should have a right to self-identify," she underscored. She noted that different people may have diverse historic relationships with the island of Cyprus, which must be acknowledged and respected, but all must enjoy their cultural rights without discrimination. The Special Rapporteur will present a comprehensive report on her visit to Cyprus to the UN Human Rights Council in March 2017. Independent experts or special rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work. Looking beyond 'quick-fix' solutions, UN agencies help South Sudan refugees become self-sufficient Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Looking beyond 'quick-fix' solutions, UN agencies help South Sudan refugees become self-sufficient, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5751306440d.html [accessed 26 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. 2 June 2016 - Two United Nations agencies have joined forces to distribute seeds and agricultural tools to 200,000 refugees and their host communities across South Sudan, helping them become more self-sufficient in a country facing a serious food crisis. This year, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have jointly contributed 186 tons of crop seeds, assorted vegetable seeds, hand tools and fishing kits for refugees and local communities in Unity, Upper Nile, Jonglei, Central Equatoria and Western Equatoria. "We are pleased to announce that these interventions are working well, but we are also looking beyond quick-fix solutions that help refugees become more self-reliant and less dependent on humanitarian assistance in the long run," said UNHCR Representative Ahmed Warsame. "This is the essence of the UNHCR-FAO partnership." "People here lack the resources to buy the things they need to start planting and need support to be able to produce their own food," said FAO Representative Serge Tissot. "These distributions have been very timely since the planting season has just started." Assessments have shown that the food and nutrition security situation is worrying in many parts of the country, including in Upper Nile - a region hosting four refugee camps and South Sudan's largest refugee population of 134,000 Sudanese refugees. A nutrition survey, conducted in late 2015, found that Upper Nile's Maban refugee camps registered higher levels of malnutrition compared to 2014. This was particularly the case in Doro camp, where the rates of Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) and Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) were respectively 15.5 per cent and 2.6 per cent - above UNHCR standards of 10 per cent and 2 per cent. "Without seed distributions we cannot survive. Not all of us are able to keep seeds for next year, some people do, but because of lack of food, sometimes we are forced to eat the seeds kept for planting," said a Sudanese refugee from Blue Nile state. "We hope for peace so that we can return home, where we can be free." she added. 'Justice may be delayed, but not denied,' Security Council told at debate on sexual violence in conflict Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as UN News Service, 'Justice may be delayed, but not denied,' Security Council told at debate on sexual violence in conflict, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5751307d40d.html [accessed 26 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. 2 June 2016 - At a Security Council debate today on sexual violence in conflict, senior United Nations officials stressed that in the past decade, the world has witnessed a fundamental shift in the way the issue is understood and addressed as a peace and security concern. "Over the past decade, I have sought to do whatever I can to end sexual violence in conflict and uphold the rights of women and girls everywhere," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the 15-member body as he briefed them on his annual report, which covers 19 situations of concern and lists dozens of parties who systematically commit these crimes. Sexual violence as 'tactic of terrorism' "One extremely disturbing aspect is the use of sexual violence as a tactic of terrorism. Da'esh (also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL), Boko Haram and other extremist groups are using sexual violence as a means of attracting and retaining fighters, and to generate revenue," the UN chief said. He warned that sexual violence is widely recognized as a deliberate strategy used to shred the fabric of society; to control and intimidate communities and to force people from their homes: "It is rightly seen as a threat to international peace and security, a serious violation of international humanitarian and human rights law, and a major impediment to post-conflict reconciliation and economic development," he underlined. Mr. Ban noted that the Security Council has played a significant role in ushering in this change, in particular through several landmark resolutions that confirm sexual violence as a war crime, a crime against humanity, and a constituent act of genocide. Among several initiatives put into place by the Secretary-General during his tenure to counter these crimes was the creation of the post of Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, currently held by Zainab Bangura. 'New and previously unseen threats' require new approaches Taking the floor, she told the Council that the report before them was the eighth dedicated account of conflict-related sexual violence: "Cumulatively, these reports build a historical record for a crime that has long been omitted from official accounts of war and peace," she stressed. "As this report outlines in harrowing detail, we are confronting new and previously unforeseen threats. Just as we make inroads with national security forces, the problem of sexual violence by non-State actors acquires ever-more difficult and disturbing dimensions," Ms. Bangura continued. Wide view of the Security Council during its meeting on conflict-related sexual violence. UN Photo/Loey Felipe She called for new tools and approaches to enforce compliance of these actors, who she said often vary dramatically in character, composition, motivations, capacity and modus oparandi. Quoting the report, she noted that "counter-terrorism strategies can no longer be decoupled from efforts to protect and empower women and girls and to combat conflict-related sexual violence," while highlighting the following steps to be taken: Through our sanctions infrastructure, we must raise the cost of these crimes, because the human costs defy calculation; Through strategic communication, a counter-narrative must ring out loud, clear and consistent: that the human, sexual and reproductive rights of women and girls are non-negotiable; Traditional and religious leaders must use their moral authority to negate any attempt to legitimize rape on religious grounds; Our response must recognize and address the nexus of conflict-related sexual violence with cross-border trafficking to fund conflict and terrorism; and Our normative framework, including the resolutions of this Council, must keep pace with the changing global security context and this new dimension of sexual violence deployed as a tactic of terrorism. Finally, Ms. Bangura asked the Council to continue deliberations in the coming weeks, and to consider a new resolution that will give the global community the tools for a "comprehensive and multi-dimensional response" that takes into account the rapidly shifting international peace and security landscape. "To the victims and perpetrators alike, I would send a simple but unequivocal message - that justice may be delayed, but it will not be denied. And that the international community is steadfast and committed to live up to its sacred duty to prevent these crimes and care for survivors," she concluded. Crimes continuing to go underreported The Council was also briefed by Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, the UN Human Rights Council's Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children. "Trafficking in persons is for sure underreported in the context of recent conflict," she stressed, lamenting that the international community at large has failed to address the issue of trafficking across the Mediterranean, which involves many women who are pregnant due to rape, as well as children. She also spoke about the sexual abuse and exploitation by UN peacekeepers within field operations, noting that these as well continue to go unreported, but that the United Nations is actively enforcing solutions. Meanwhile, Lisa Davis spoke on behalf of the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) working Group on Women, Peace and Security, as the civil society briefer. "UN Member States must fulfil their obligations to those fleeing conflict related violence. There is much talk today about strengthening international collaboration, on protection strategies and accountability mechanisms," she said. "But at the same time, Member States are closing their borders to those fleeing violence. These contradictory actions cannot stand." Afghanistan: UN mission concerned by civilian abductions and hostage-taking Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Afghanistan: UN mission concerned by civilian abductions and hostage-taking, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5751309740c.html [accessed 26 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. 2 June 2016 - The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) today said it is deeply concerned by the spate of abductions, hostage-taking and summary executions carried out in recent days against passengers travelling in civilian vehicles. "Taking civilians hostage is indefensible," said Nicholas Haysom, the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Afghanistan and head of UNAMA. "I call for the immediate and unconditional release of all civilians detained and a halt to this horrible practice," he stressed. UNAMA said that armed Taliban personnel executed at least 10 men from a group of nearly 200 men, women and children that they forcibly removed from three civilian buses on 30 May in the Ali Abad district of Kunduz province. Many passengers were mistreated by the assailants in order for them to identify those with connections to the Government or security forces. In addition to 10 men who were subsequently murdered, the fate of a further 10 passengers remains unknown, UNAMA said. In a separate incident on 1 June, armed attackers abducted 25 civilian men and women who were travelling in two vehicles in the Balkh Ab district of the northern province of Saripul. All passengers were reported to be from the Hazara community. While four women and one elderly man were subsequently released, the fate of the 20 others remains unknown, according to UNAMA. UN chief: Haiti can 'ill afford' prolonged period of transitional governance Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as UN News Service, UN chief: Haiti can 'ill afford' prolonged period of transitional governance, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575130d140b.html [accessed 26 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. 2 June 2016 - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, taking note of the release of the report on the verification of the electoral process in Haiti, has underlined that Haiti can ill afford a prolonged period of transitional governance. He is concerned that this situation has the potential to adversely affect international support to Haiti, a statement issued by the Secretary-General's spokesperson said. Mr. Ban also reiterated the need for a democratically elected leadership to take on the growing socio-economic and humanitarian challenges the country faces. In the statement, the Secretary-General recalled the responsibility of the provisional presidency, the Government and the Provisional Electoral Council to identify a way forward that guarantees the peaceful completion of the 2015 elections, urging all stakeholders to ensure a return to constitutional order as an urgent priority. Reaffirming the unwavering commitment of the UN to support the democratic aspirations of the Haitian people, Mr. Ban also called on all parties to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in the country and actively discourage violence during this challenging period. On 14 February, the Haitian National Assembly elected Jocelerme Privert as the island nation's interim President, one week after former President Michel Martelly departed without a successor. On 25 April, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was deeply concerned that the agreed-upon date for holding elections in Haiti 24 April had not been met. That date had been set following an agreement known as the 5 February Agreement between Haitian stakeholders to preserve institutional continuity and further the electoral process. Syria: UN experts urge protection of civilians amid ISIL offensives in country's north Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 1 June 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Syria: UN experts urge protection of civilians amid ISIL offensives in country's north, 1 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575130e940b.html [accessed 26 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. 1 June 2016 - Two United Nations human rights experts today urged immediate protection for thousands of civilians caught up in offensives by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da'esh) in the Aleppo region of northern Syria. The experts voiced their concern at the prospect of massive new displacement of populations in the region and the targeting of trapped and vulnerable civilians including those already internally displaced and highly vulnerable due to the conflict. According to the UN in Syria, ISIL has rapidly seized a number of villages and advanced to within two kilometres of Azaz town in recent days, putting at risk those internally displaced living in camps near the Turkish border and other vulnerable communities. An estimated 9,500 people were also encircled by fighting around Mare'a city as ISIL advanced into areas held by other non-state armed groups on 27 May. ISIL's swift takeover of Kiljibrin and Kafr Kalbein left some 6,000 civilians stranded in the two towns and unable to access safety. "Despite some reported action to clear routes and allow blockaded civilians safe passage, this situation is deteriorating and urgent responses are needed to save lives," said Chaloka Beyani, UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons. "That means ensuring immediate and unhindered passage of all civilians out of the conflict areas and their protection until they are able to return as well as rapid, safe and unimpeded access of humanitarian aid to all those in need," he stressed. Mr. Beyani noted that some 165,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) remain stranded at the Turkish border in settlements hit by shelling and airstrikes which have killed and injured dozens of civilians since the beginning of the year. "If safety cannot be secured for IDPs inside Syria it is incumbent on neighbouring countries to open their borders and offer safe passage as well as the right to seek asylum," the expert urged. Humanitarian agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have evacuated some staff, restricting essential assistance and humanitarian programmes for IDPs and other civilians, including medical care. Hospital staff have been evacuated and at least three humanitarian workers were reportedly critically wounded in areas close to the conflict. "Unconfirmed yet disturbing reports indicate that ISIL militants have executed families, including women and children, with alleged links to Free Syrian Army affiliated groups in the town of Kiljibrin," said Christof Heyns, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. "If verified any such actions would constitute arbitrary executions and could amount to war crimes." The experts noted that IDPs and others in the conflict area are also allegedly being arrested and they face an uncertain fate, suspected of belonging to opposition groups. Disregard for the rights and the lives of civilians has regrettably become the norm in this conflict, the experts said, stressing that it is imperative for all parties to return to the rule of law and protect civilians as required under international humanitarian and human rights law and standards. The experts called for the cessation of violence to allow trapped civilians to leave conflict areas as quickly and safely as possible. Independent experts or special rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work. Iran: Wrongfully imprisoned Kurdish human rights defender's life hangs in the balance Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Iran: Wrongfully imprisoned Kurdish human rights defender's life hangs in the balance, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5751383a4.html [accessed 26 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 life of a wrongfully imprisoned Iranian Kurdish human rights defender and journalist rests in the Iranian authorities' hands, said Amnesty International. He is gravely ill in hospital nearly a month into an ongoing hunger strike. The 54-year old prisoner of conscience Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand, who is approaching the end of a decade-long prison sentence on fabricated charges, has been on hunger strike since 8 May. He is protesting against the authorities' efforts to condemn him to a further prison sentence on a spurious charge of 'spreading propaganda against the system' from inside the prison. "Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand has already spent close to a decade in prison simply for doing his legitimate human rights work and journalism. The fact that the authorities are building a fresh case against him so close to his release date suggests they are plumbing new depths in their efforts to keep this resolute defender of human rights behind bars," said James Lynch, Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director. Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand's health - already marred by heart and kidney problems for which his family says he rarely received adequate treatment while in prison - has deteriorated drastically during his hunger strike. Doctors have warned that he is at imminent risk of a heart attack. An informed source told Amnesty International that he is experiencing severe drops in blood pressure, as well as digestive complications and internal bleeding in his stomach and prostate. He was transferred from Evin Prison in Tehran to a hospital on 22 May - 13 days into his hunger strike - after he lost consciousness. However, Amnesty International understands that he asked to be returned to prison after hospital personnel tried to force-feed him intravenously. Three days later he was transferred to another hospital where he remains. "The Iranian authorities must stop toying with Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand's life. As a first step toward rectifying this abhorrent situation, the Iranian authorities must drop all charges against him and release him immediately and unconditionally," said James Lynch. Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand has been in prison since July 2007 serving a 10-year sentence imposed for his human rights work as the founder and Chair of the Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan, and a six-month sentence imposed for his work as editor of the weekly newspaper Payam-e Mardom-e Kurdistan. Amnesty International has repeatedly called the Iranian authorities to ensure that these unjust convictions, which exemplify Iran's utter disdain for the rights to freedom of expression and association, are quashed. The fabrication of a new charge against Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand began in March 2016 when he was taken to the Office of the Prosecutor in Evin Prison three times for interrogations. He was subsequently informed that he was being charged with 'spreading propaganda against the system'. The basis of this new charge, which is regularly used by the Iranian authorities to criminalize peaceful expression, remains unclear. Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand has said he was questioned about a letter he wrote to Selahattin Demirtas, co-leader of the Kurdish-rooted, left-wing Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey urging HDP to promote peace between Kurdish groups and the Turkish government. He also was questioned about his doctoral dissertation, which his interrogators mistakenly believed to be about prisoner rights in Iran but which actually focuses on minorities in Turkey. He said he was also questioned about a statement he wrote from inside prison, in which he expressed concern about the atrocities carried out by the armed group calling itself Islamic State (IS) against the Kurdish people in Kobani, Syria. On 24 May 2016, he was put on trial before a Revolutionary Court in Tehran in relation to these accusations. The session apparently lasted no longer than 30 minutes. He was only told about the court appearance the day before it happened and was not represented by a lawyer. The court has not yet issued its verdict. "The Iranian authorities must put an end to this catalogue of injustices before it culminates in a tragedy for Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand, his family and the wider human rights community in Iran and around the world. He should never have been behind bars in the first place, and the Iranian authorities must release him now," said James Lynch. Background Amnesty International considers Mohammed Sadiq Kabudvand a prisoner of conscience and has campaigned extensively for his release, including through its flagship annual Write for Rights campaign in 2011. Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand has been on several hunger strikes in the past including one that lasted 63 days in 2012 and which contributed to his health problems. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Time for Papua New Guinea To End Abuses Against Sex Workers Publisher Amnesty International Author Kate Schuetze Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Time for Papua New Guinea To End Abuses Against Sex Workers, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575138834.html [accessed 26 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 2012, in a public park in Papua New Guinea's capital city Port Moresby, a mother in her late 30s was gang raped by six assailants, armed with guns. The woman - Mona - has never reported the alleged crime, and her attackers may never face justice. "It was so painful to me, but then I let it go. If I go to the law, they cannot help me," she says. Mona's lack of faith in the Papua New Guinea legal system is due to the fact that she is a sex worker - and because those alleged to have carried out the brutal attack were police officers. An isolated case? Far from it. As Amnesty International details in its report, sex workers are amongst some of the most marginalized and vulnerable citizens in this Pacific island nation experiencing high levels of sexual and gender-based violence, and gender inequality. Sex workers that we spoke to, and sex worker organizations, told us that women, transgender people and men often enter sex work as a means of survival or to support their families. Once they do, they are likely to face extraordinarily high levels of violence, stigma and discrimination - including from their own families, the police, clients and others. In some cases they are raped and even killed. Our research highlights that a key factor fueling this situation is the criminalization of sex work. Laws that make it illegal to live off the earnings of sex work and to organize commercial sex mean that police, amongst others, can abuse sex workers with impunity. Laws criminalizing sex work are rarely enforced through prosecutions before a court of law. However, according to sex workers and sex worker advocates that we spoke with, police officers use these criminal laws to abuse their authority by arbitrarily detaining people or using the threat of prosecution to extort money and sexual services from sex workers. The police also use the criminalization of sex workers to justify subjecting them to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, in some cases amounting to torture. This includes rape and sexual abuse while in custody. We heard reports of sex workers being forced to chew and swallow condoms. One sex worker, Elizabeth, told us that police officers tried to force her and a client to have sex while the officers watched. When she refused, she was kicked hard in the back, leaving her needing medical care. Another sex worker, Tuki, said six policemen raped a woman who had been taken to a police station with her. Yet another, Sakuri, described how a police officer beat her and others with a stick, with some sexually abused in detention. But although human rights violations by police against sex workers are common in Papua New Guinea, police officers are rarely dismissed or prosecuted for criminal acts. The law turns a blind eye to these police abuses - but at the same time fails to ensure justice or protection for sex workers. The illegal nature of sex work makes it difficult for sex workers to report crimes committed against them and to seek equal protection under the law. One woman said that she reported abuse by a client to the police, only to be told that they did not want to "waste time" on her. Such failures in justice, combined with a toxic mix of widespread stigma and discrimination against sex workers, is creating an environment in which others in society feel able to commit crimes against them with impunity. We received several consistent reports of two sex workers who had recently been killed by clients. One was murdered outside Mt Hagen police station in 2013. Another was raped and killed in Port Moresby in January 2015, just days before Amnesty International visited the city. Ongoing criminalization of sex work also impacts on an individual's health rights. Sex workers are widely stigmatized - including by the media - as allegedly being "spreaders" of HIV. This discourages sex workers from seeking sexual and reproductive health services and information, and leaves some too afraid to go to HIV clinics. A bad situation is made worse by the police using condoms as evidence against sex workers - leaving many reluctant to carry and use condoms. These abuses demonstrate why recognizing and promoting sex workers' human rights is a basic building block of sound HIV prevention. Alongside our new research, Amnesty International has also published a global policy focused on protecting sex workers around the world from human rights violations. Internationally, we want laws that make sex workers' lives safer. This includes tighter criminal laws to tackle violence, human trafficking, and gender inequality as well as to prevent the involvement of children in commercial sex. Our policy includes a range of calls on governments to ensure better protection of sex workers from violence and injustice. Much more can be done, and - as the appalling situation in Papua New Guinea powerfully illustrates - decriminalization of consensual adult sex work is one crucial step. While such decriminalization alone will not end all human rights abuses against sex workers, it can make a strong contribution to reducing the vulnerability and prejudice they face. It will help remove current legal and moral justifications of abuses and grant sex workers equal recognition under the law. Violence against women is never acceptable, and it is never inevitable. This applies equally to sex workers in Papua New Guinea, who are mostly women. Instead of condemning those who sell sex, the country's authorities must protect them from violence and address the underlying factors that lead people to take up sex work -including gender inequality, poverty and lack of employment. A fundamental shift in government policy towards protecting sex workers' human rights is urgently needed. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International EU's reckless refugee returns to Turkey illegal Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 3 June 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, EU's reckless refugee returns to Turkey illegal, 3 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575138fb4.html [accessed 26 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 European Union (EU) must immediately halt plans to return asylum-seekers to Turkey on the false pretence that it is a "safe country" for refugees, said Amnesty International in a briefing published today. The briefing, No safe refuge: Asylum-seekers and refugees denied effective protection in Turkey, details the short-comings in Turkey's asylum system and the hardships refugees face there that would render their return under the EU-Turkey Agreement of 18 March illegal and unconscionable. The briefing shows that Turkey's asylum system is struggling to cope with more than three million asylum-seekers and refugees. As a result, asylum-seekers face years waiting for their cases to be dealt with, during which time they receive little or no support to find shelter and sustenance for themselves and their families, with children as young as nine working to support families. "The EU-Turkey deal is reckless and illegal. Amnesty International's findings expose as a fiction the idea that Turkey is able to respect the rights and meet the needs of over three million asylum-seekers and refugees," said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International's Director for Europe and Central Asia. "In its relentless efforts to prevent irregular arrivals to Europe, the EU has wilfully misrepresented what is actually happening on the ground in Turkey. It is to be expected that a new asylum system, in a country hosting the largest number of refugees in the world, would struggle. While there is value in supporting and encouraging Turkey to develop a fully functioning asylum system, the EU cannot act as if it already exists." Turkey failing to protect refugees Despite its broadly welcoming attitude towards refugees, the large numbers of people about 2.75 million Syrian refugees and 400,000 asylum-seekers and refugees from other countries (primarily Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran) have inevitably placed a considerable strain both on Turkey's new asylum system and its capacity to meet people's basic needs. The report shows how the Turkish asylum system fails three crucial tests required under international law for the return of asylum seekers to Turkey to be lawful: status, durable solutions and subsistence. 1. Status Turkey lacks the capacity to process asylum applications, meaning that hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers and refugees languish in legal limbo for years at a time. The Turkish authorities have refused to provide Amnesty International with asylum statistics. In April, however, they reported having processed around 4,000 applications, or 1.5% of the 266,000 applications registered with the UN Refugee Agency, in 2015. 2. Durable Solutions Refugees should either be integrated in the country, resettled to another country or, if safe, repatriated to their country of origin. However, Turkey denies full refugee status, and with it integration, to all non-European refugees, while the international community is failing to provide anywhere close to sufficient resettlement options/places. This leaves refugees in a double-bind, where they cannot build a new life in Turkey but they have little hope of being offered the option to resettle to another country in the coming years, if at all. Faiza, (whose name has been changed) and her sister, both Afghans, fled forced marriages in Iran and were recognized as refugees in Turkey. For three years, they waited in vain for an interview at a resettlement country's embassy. In the end they did not see any option but to risk their lives in a smuggler's boat to Greece. Faiza told Amnesty International that had there been any reasonable prospect of leaving Turkey safely and regularly, and some support while waiting for the process to conclude, she and her sister would have waited. She explained: "If there was any hope of resettlement, we would have waited. We were really scared of the journey to Europe because we knew it was dangerous. Butwe were so desperate. We said to ourselves: 'Maybe we will die, maybe we won't arrive but it doesn't matter because we can't stay in Turkey anymore.'" 3. Subsistence The vast majority of Syrian and other refugees are forced to seek shelter without government support. Although the Turkish authorities are accommodating more than 264,000 Syrian refugees in camps in the southern border provinces, they cannot realistically provide shelter for the remaining 90% (2.48 million) from Syria. Meanwhile, it has only made social housing available for 100 of the 400,000 (0.025%) asylum-seekers and refugees from other countries. This means that approximately three million asylum-seekers and refugees are being left to meet their own shelter needs as best they can. Amnesty International researchers interviewed 57 refugees in Turkey between March and May 2016. All described the struggle to survive with almost no financial support from the authorities, with the vast majority relying on charity from family members, fellow asylum-seekers, or religious communities. Refugees told Amnesty International how they live in shoddy or make-shift accommodation, sometimes sleeping in mosques, parks and metro stations because they cannot afford the rent. Two Afghan families were sleeping under a bridge in Istanbul after three of their children drowned in a failed sea-crossing. "Turkey has been a generous host of refugees, but its promises to EU leaders are simply not reflected in the situation on the ground. Asylum seekers and refugees are stuck for years in Turkey and, while they're waiting, are given neither support nor the right to support themselves," said John Dalhuisen. "This is a reality check for Europe's leaders. It may be politically expedient to outsource their legal duty to help people fleeing conflict, but if they think they can do this either lawfully or without inflicting additional misery on people already fleeing terrible suffering, they are tragically and quite obviously mistaken." Child refugees working to make ends meet The briefing also warns that child labour is common among refugees in Turkey as families struggle to meet basic needs. A Syrian mother of three boys told Amnesty International that her entire family of seven survives on the 5-10 Turkish Lira a day (about US$1.75 to $3.50) that her nine-year old son earns working at a grocery store. The shrapnel injuries her husband sustained in Syria prevent him from working. EU must share, not outsource, responsibility Rather than off-loading its responsibilities on Turkey, the EU should be looking to kick-start an ambitious resettlement programme for refugees currently in the country. While Turkey hosts more than three million asylum-seekers and refugees, more than any other country in the world, EU member states collectively resettled only 8,155 refugees from around the world in 2015. "The European Union has responded to one of the darkest humanitarian catastrophes of our time by putting up fences, deploying more border guards, and striking dodgy deals with neighbouring countries to keep people out. The result is misery and suffering, and more deaths at sea," said John Dalhuisen. Background: EU-Turkey deal already undermined by forcible returns from Turkey to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria On 18 March 2016, the EU and Turkey agreed to a far-reaching migration control deal - formally a statement. In exchange for up to 6 billion as well as political concessions from the EU, Turkey agreed to take back all "irregular migrants" who cross into the Greek islands after 20 March. The justification for the EU-Turkey deal is the assumption that Turkey is a safe place to which asylum-seekers and refugees can be returned. Beyond not respecting refugee rights within Turkey (the subject of this report), another way in which a country might not be "safe" is if it sends people to other countries where they face a risk of serious human rights violations. Previous Amnesty International research has already shown that in late 2015 and early 2016, asylum-seekers and refugees in Turkey were sent back to precisely such a risk in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Ethiopia: End use of counter-terrorism law to persecute dissenters and opposition members Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Ethiopia: End use of counter-terrorism law to persecute dissenters and opposition members, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575139504.html [accessed 26 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 Ethiopian Government must end its escalating crackdown on human rights defenders, independent media, peaceful protesters as well as members and leaders of the political opposition through the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation (ATP) says a group of civil society organisations (CSOs). "The government's repression of independent voices has significantly worsened as the Oromo protest movement has grown," said Yared Hailemariam, Director of the Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia (AHRE). "The international community should demand the end of this state-orchestrated clampdown and the immediate release of peaceful critics to prevent the situation from deteriorating further." The recent escalation in the use of the ATP to prosecute peaceful protesters, journalists, bloggers, human rights defenders, and opposition leaders and members is indicative of the Ethiopian Government's growing intolerance of dissent. Largely peaceful protests began in November 2015 against the dispossession of land without adequate compensation in the Oromia region. In response to the protests, the Ethiopian authorities have arbitrarily arrested thousands of people and several hundred people have been summarily killed by the security services while participating in the protests. While the bulk of those arrested since February 2016 have not been charged, several are currently being prosecuted under the ATP. These include Getachew Shiferaw (Editor-in-Chief of the online newspaper Negere Ethiopia), Yonathan Tesfaye Regassa (former head of public relations for the opposition Semayawi Party), Bekele Gerba (Deputy Chair, Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC)) and Dejene Tufa (Deputy General Secretary, OFC) and Gurmesa Ayana (secretary, OFC). Fikadu Mirkana, (news editor and a reporter with the public Oromia Radio and TV), was arrested on 19 December 2015, charged under the ATP and released five months later in April 2016. Getachew was held in Maekelawi Detention Centre after his arrest on 25 December 2015. On 22 April 2016, upon reaching the four-month limit for investigations permissible under the ATP, the court ordered the Federal Police to close the investigation. Yet Getachew remained in police custody and on 23 May was charged under the ATP. He has since been moved to the Kilinto detention centre. "The Ethiopian government is using laws and judicial processes that fail to meet international human rights standards to harass and stifle dissent, targeting activists, human rights defenders, opposition party leaders and journalists, " said Haben Fecadu, Campaigner at Amnesty International. Despite repeated calls from CSOs, independent UN experts, the European Parliament, and numerous governments, including the United States, the Ethiopian authorities continue to arbitrarily detain and prosecute scores of peaceful protestors for exercising their rights, using the broad provisions of the ATP to criminalise peaceful expressions of dissent. Since the enactment of the ATP in 2009, human rights defenders, journalists, bloggers and peaceful protestors have been prosecuted and convicted under its provisions. "The international community including the United Nations should unconditionally condemn the arbitrary arrest and detention of human rights defenders in Ethiopia," said Hassan Shire, Executive Director of DefendDefenders (East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project). "The Ethiopian government's use of counter-terrorism as a smokescreen to target the peaceful work of human rights defenders is an affront to its regional and international obligations." Most recently, on 10 May 2016, blogger Zelalem Workagenehu was sentenced to five years and four months in prison under the ATP. Zelalem, who works for the independent diaspora blog, De Birhan, was convicted under charges of conspiring to overthrow the government and supporting terrorism under the ATP. The activities on which these charges were based included organising a digital security training course and reporting on the peaceful protest movements in the country. Though the Federal High Court acquitted some of his co-defendants on 15 April 2016, the police re-arrested two of them only hours after they were released from Kilinto Prison on 17 April 2016 and detained them at Maekelawi Prison for a night. Yonathan Wolde and Bahiru Degu were charged with applying to participate in the same training, described by the government as "training to terrorise the country," and of being members of Ginbot 7, a banned Ethiopian opposition party, which they deny. Zelalem and Bahiru described for the trial court their conditions of and treatment in detention. Zelalem said he was detained in "Siberia" in the central Maekelawi Prison in Addis Ababa and was tortured by interrogators. "Independent civil society and media is being quashed out of existence in Ethiopia," said Tor Hodenfield, Policy and Advocacy Officer at CIVICUS. "The international community must call for more than tokenistic releases of human rights defenders and encourage the Ethiopian government to support avenues of peaceful dissent." Several members and leaders of opposition political parties have also been targeted under the ATP. Bekele Gerba and 21 other individuals were arrested on 23 December 2016, and charged under the ATP. They were then held for a four-month long investigation without access to their lawyer. Authorities transferred them to Kilinto Detention Centre on 22 April 2016. On 11 May 2016, the Prison Administration declined to bring the defendants to Lideta Federal High Court since all the defendants wore black suits, in expression of their mourning for the people killed during the protests. On 4 May 2016, former Spokesperson of the opposition Semayawi (Blue) Party, Yonathan Tesfaye Regassa, was charged with "incitement, planning, preparation, conspiracy and attempt" to commit a terrorism related act under the ATP. On 25 April 2016, the Federal High Court sentenced the former Governor of Gambella Region, Okello Akway Ochalla, to nine years imprisonment under the ATP. Okello fled Ethiopia after the 2003 massacre in the region, and obtained Norwegian citizenship. He was arbitrarily arrested in South Sudan in March 2014 and handed over to Ethiopian security forces. He was originally charged under the ATP. The trial of Okello and his co-defendants was marred by violations of fair trial guarantees and including the use of witness testimonies in exchange for non-prosecution under the ATP. The undersigned CSOs demand the competent Ethiopian authorities to take the necessary steps to bring the ATP in line with its international, regional and constitutional human rights obligations and immediately and unconditionally release all human rights defenders, journalists, bloggers and opposition party leaders and members imprisoned for peacefully exercising their rights. Amnesty International Article 19 Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia (AHRE) CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation Civil Rights Defenders Defend Defenders (East and Horn of Africa Human Right Defenders Project) Ethiopia Human Rights Project (EHRP) Front Line Defenders International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Bahrain: 9-Year Sentence for Opposition Leader Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Bahrain: 9-Year Sentence for Opposition Leader, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57513a6f4.html [accessed 26 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. Bahrain's First High Court of Appeal more than doubled the prison sentence of the country's most prominent opposition leader, Sheikh Ali Salman, from four years to 9 years, on May 30, 2016. Sheikh Ali Salman is secretary general of Al Wifaq, by far the country's largest legally recognized opposition political society. The appeal court overturned a trial court's decision to acquit him of advocating the overthrow of the government by force. It increased the sentence despite strong evidence his initial trial was unfair and the fact that two of the charges on which he had been convicted violated his right to freedom of expression. "Sheikh Salman is the latest casualty of Bahrain's war on dissent, but he won't be the last unless Bahrain's allies in London and Washington loudly protest this travesty of justice," said Joe Stork deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "This level of repression will not create stability for Bahrain, but quite the opposite." In the speeches that formed the basis of Salman's convictions, which were available in full through video evidence, he explicitly repudiated the use of force and stressed his commitment to nonviolence. The appeal court appeared to rely on an Interior Ministry report that may have misrepresented the content of these speeches instead of the video evidence. It also ignored the trial court's rejection of defense efforts to enter the video recordings into evidence. The authorities should quash Salman's convictions on charges that violate his right to freedom of expression, to a fair trial, or other basic rights. On June 16, 2015, Bahrain's Fourth Superior Criminal Court convicted Salman of three speech-related charges and sentenced him to four years in prison. Two of his three two-year sentences were to run concurrently. One was the maximum sentence for insulting the Interior Ministry, under article 216 of the penal code. The second was for "public incitement to disobedience of the law" under article 173 for calling for Bahrainis to exercise their right to free assembly, in opposition to a law that arbitrarily restricts that right. Both of these charges inherently violate Salman's right to freedom of expression. The court also convicted Salman of "inciting hatred" of naturalized Bahrainis, in violation of article 172. Regarding the fourth charge of advocating the overthrow of the government by force, the court had concluded that the prosecution provided "no certain proof of the advocacy of the use of force, threat, or unlawful means to change the political system." A Bahrain News Agency statement on May 30 said that Sheikh Salman had been found guilty of "promoting forceful regime change and threatening to use unlawful means." Article 160 of the penal code provides for sentences of up to 10 years for advocating the overthrow of the government's political system by force. The report said that Salman "justified acts of violence and sabotage" and "repeatedly threatened to use military force, and publicly expressed that the military option was still open." Sheikh Salman's lawyer, Jalila al-Sayed, told Human Rights Watch that the appeal court's decision relied largely on the characterization of Salman's speeches by Khalid al-Sa'idi, an Interior Ministry officer, in the Directorate of Crime Detention report that formed the basis of the prosecution's case against Salman. Al-Sa'idi's descriptions may have misrepresented the content of Salman's speeches. Al-Sa'idi claimed that during a sermon on October 10, 2014, Salman said, "The people have bigger and bigger force in them. All that you need to do is call forth this force. I'm talking now about military force." The recording of the entire speech, which can be viewed on the internet, shows that Salman actually said "I am not talking about military force." In a December 4, 2014 speech that also figured in the prosecution's case and is also available in full on the internet, Salman stated that Al Wifaq's spiritual leader, Sheikh Isa Qassim, had clarified the importance of "peaceful action, the repudiation of violence, and a turn away from the military option, which was and remains on the table." Salman added that under Qassim's leadership, "there was a stress on the peaceful option, a repudiation of violence, and a move away from the military option." On December 26, 2014 Salman, addressing an Al Wifaq general conference, said "the Bahraini opposition has been encouraged to become like the Syrian opposition and transform the country into a military battleground, but it has remained steadfast in its peaceful [protest] and this clarity of vision is what has prevented Bahrain from being drawn into violence." A State Department spokesperson said the US was "deeply concerned" by the decision and urged the Bahraini authorities to release Sheikh Salman. The EU said in a statement on May 31 that the verdict "verdict risks undermining chances of lasting and inclusive national reconciliation in Bahrain." The UK foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, was in Bahrain on the day of the appeal court's decision. Hammond said on social media that he had "raised" the issue with Bahraini authorities and that he would "follow [the] case closely." In a separate comment that day Hammond said that he welcomed Bahrain's "commitment to continuing reforms." "Foreign Secretary Hammond's ability to speak with a straight face about Bahrain's commitment to reforms on the same day it jails its main opposition leader for nine years suggests that the UK's assessment of the rights situation in Bahrain is crafted to please its allies," Stork said. Copyright notice: Copyright, Human Rights Watch Yemen: Free Captive Children Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Yemen: Free Captive Children, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57513ae54.html [accessed 26 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 parties to the conflict in Yemen should release captured children and make a commitment to not re-enlist child soldiers, Human Rights Watch said today. Parties on all sides of the conflict have used child soldiers, who are an estimated one-third of the fighters in Yemen. In mid-May 2016, pro-government forces and opposing Houthi forces agreed to exchange half of all prisoners in early June, before the holy month of Ramadan, as part of ongoing peace talks. "All parties should ensure that children, who never should have been on the battlefield in the first place, are released during this prisoner exchange and demobilized," said Bill Van Esveld, senior children's rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Both sides should stop recruiting and placing children in danger and return them immediately to their families." UNICEF has verified that more than 900 children were killed and 1,300 injured during 2015, a rate of six children killed or maimed each day since the escalation of hostilities in March 2015. On May 30, the United Nations special envoy to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, announced on Twitter that he had received lists of prisoners from both sides, later reported to include 2,630 on the government side and 3,760 on the Houthi side. However, the sides differed as to the number of prisoners to be released, with Houthis saying 1,000 and government sources saying all detainees, according to reports citing sources close to the negotiations. Separately, Houthi and anti-Houthi forces in Taiz exchanged 35 prisoners on June 2. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition, militarily supported by the United States and the United Kingdom, has waged an aerial and ground campaign against Houthi forces and forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh since March 2015, in support of the government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The parties declared a cessation of hostilities on April 10, and began peace talks in Kuwait later that month, but airstrikes and fighting on the ground have continued. Houthi and Saudi forces conducted two prisoner exchanges in March. Human Rights Watch has documented that parties to the conflict have detained children suspected of loyalty to enemy forces, and that they have abused prisoners and held them in poor conditions. In August 2015, Human Rights Watch observed that southern armed groups were detaining 140 suspected Houthi forces, including at least 25 children who appeared to be under age 15, at a school they had taken control of in Aden. In July and August, extremist armed groups carried out multiple summary executions of captured Houthi forces in Aden whose ages were not known. Human Rights Watch has also documented Houthi forces arbitrarily detaining civilians and holding prisoners in harsh conditions. The Paris Principles on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups (2007) states: "The unlawful recruitment or use of children is a violation of their rights The release, protection and reintegration of children unlawfully recruited or used must be sought at all times, without condition and must not be dependent on any parallel release or demobilization process for adults." Human Rights Watch is not aware of the total number of children in detention by parties to the conflict. Some children have been released in previous prisoner exchanges. Pro-government Popular Committees detained scores of children and released about a third of them, apparently during a December 2015 prisoner exchange of 360 Houthi fighters for 265 civilians and members of pro-government forces. The UN documented nearly 850 cases of child recruitment in 2015, a five-fold increase over 2014. Houthi forces recruited a majority of these children, but Popular Committees and the extremist group Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which at times reportedly fought alongside pro-government forces, also recruited children. In 2013, the UN secretary-general cited reports of young boys being recruited by Al-Qaeda, also called Ansar al-Sharia, for sexual exploitation. Impoverished families have enlisted their children with Houthi or pro-government forces in exchange for 1,000 to 2,000 Yemeni Riyal per day (US$7-15), Al Jazeera reported in January 2016. In some cases children are not paid but given food and qat, a mild stimulant. In March 2014, Human Rights Watch interviewed seven boys, the youngest aged 14, who said they had volunteered for the Houthis. They said they had fought or performed other military tasks including carrying ammunition to the front-line and retrieving the bodies of fighters killed in battle. In November 2012, the Houthi leader, Abdul Malik Badr al-Deen al-Houthi, pledged to work toward stopping his group's use of child soldiers. But Human Rights Watch has observed the Houthis using children as uniformed soldiers and at checkpoints as recently as March 2016. Government forces have used child soldiers for years in some cases, army commanders who recruited child soldiers brought these child recruits with them when they defected to the opposition even though Yemeni law sets 18 as the minimum age for official military service. On May 14, 2014, the Yemeni government signed an action plan with the UN to end recruitment of children by state forces, intended to achieve the withdrawal of all children from government security forces, their reintegration into their local communities, and an end to further recruitment. The outbreak of major hostilities put the action plan on hold. Authorities on the ground, with donor support, should work to reintegrate released children based on the Paris Principles, which call for steps including family reunification, psychosocial support, access to education, and ensuring the children's families and communities can care for and protect them. The recruitment or use of children under 15 by parties to a conflict is a war crime under international law. Commanders who knew or should have known of such abuses and took no effective action can be held criminally liable as a matter of command responsibility. The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, to which Yemen is a party, sets 18 as the minimum age for any participation in armed conflict by armed forces or non-state armed groups. It obliges governments and armed groups to demobilize children in their forces and provide assistance for their physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration, which can include access to education and psychosocial mental health support. Saudi Arabia and the US, who are parties to the conflict, are also parties to the protocol, which calls on states parties to cooperate in carrying it out, preventing unlawful activity, and rehabilitating and reintegrating child soldiers. All US military aid to Yemen was suspended in 2015, but President Barack Obama gave Secretary of State John Kerry authority to restart aid that would otherwise be prohibited by the US Child Soldiers Prevention Act. The act prohibits several categories of US military assistance to governments that use children in armed conflict or support paramilitaries or militias that use child soldiers. "The parties to the conflict in Yemen could send a message that they want to do what's right by releasing captured children before Ramadan and implementing long-broken promises to end the use of child soldiers," Van Esveld said. Copyright notice: Copyright, Human Rights Watch All at sea: Libyan detention centres at crisis point Publisher IRIN Author Tom Westcott Publication Date 1 June 2016 Cite as IRIN, All at sea: Libyan detention centres at crisis point, 1 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57513b9f4.html [accessed 26 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. "Yesterday, we received 203 new migrants, today it was 585, and tomorrow there will be more, and the next day, and the day after." Khalid al-Tumi runs the Zawiya migrant detention centre, 23 kilometres east of Sabrata in northwestern Libya. The coast around Sabrata has become one of the main departure points used by people-smugglers following a crackdown on their former hub of Zuwarah. All of the migrants he is referring to have been apprehended from boats and returned. Zawiya houses 1,727 detainees, far above its official maximum capacity of 1,200. Food and water supplies are already inadequate and al-Tumi said he has no additional resources for the new arrivals. "Next week, we will face a really major problem and I don't know how I will manage. We have no more blankets or mattresses," he told IRIN. "Everything I have is already being used." Libyan authorities have apprehended some 3,500 migrants trying to take boats to Europe just in the last week, according to the International Organization for Migration (another 880 migrants are thought to have died in a string of shipwrecks). EU policy seen as added pull factor Ayoub Ghassem, a spokesman for the Libyan Navy, claimed that more migrants are attempting the crossing to Europe than in previous years. He blamed the increase on Operation Sophia: the European Union's naval mission launched last May to counter migrant smuggling in the Mediterranean. "Since the start of Operation Sophia, we have had much greater numbers of migrants trying to go to Europe because they know that the boats are operating in the sea, so they don't have to make it all the way to Italy," Ghassem explained. "All migrants' boats have satellite phones and GPS. Before, they had to wait until they reached Italian waters to make a distress call, but now they start making SOS calls as soon as they leave Libyan territorial waters." Tom Westcott/IRIN Young Somali migrants who were transferred to Al Khoms detention centre after being rescued from a foundering vessel According to the IOM, migrant arrivals to Italy during the first five months of this year are in fact at similar levels to last year [https://www.iom.int/news/mediterranean-migrant-arrivals-2016-204311-deaths-2443]. However, the number of boats being intercepted in Libyan waters could soon increase if the EU makes good on its recent promise to provide training and equipment to Libya's coastguard as part of plans "to enhance the capacity of Operation Sophia to disrupt the business model of human smugglers and trafficking networks". The EU announcement last week was greeted with derision by Ghassem, who described it as little more than a publicity stunt. "We have enough experience and we can train ourselves," he said. "We need logistics support and equipment. We are working with almost nothing, and we need everything you can think of: boats, radar, radios, uniforms literally everything." Patrol boats to monitor the coastline are in particularly short supply. The coastguard often relies on local fishermen to tell them when they spot overcrowded dinghies or decrepit wooden fishing boats. The few vessels the coastguard has are smaller and less powerful than some of the smugglers' boats, making pursuit difficult and rescue operations even harder, Ghassem said. No follow-up The EU's offer of support also fails to address the issue of what happens to the migrants after they are caught and returned to Libya, where they face incarceration in one of the country's 30 functioning migrant detention centres, many of which are under the control of militias. Up until 2014, when Libya started its descent into civil war, the EU and Italy were providing funding to the detention centres, according to the Global Detention Project. But last year, the deputy head of the Department for Combatting Illegal Immigration (DCII), Colonel Mohamed Abu Breda, told IRIN that since 2011 the EU had basically left Libya to deal with the migrant problem alone. "The EU and Italians made a lot of visits and pledged assistance to Libya but unfortunately all we have received is empty promises and words, and no actions," he said. "We can't be sure that assistance was not given but it never reached us. This administration has not received any assistance." The formation of a UN-backed government at the end of March (now one of three rival governments) has prompted speculation that the EU will seek to partner with the fledgling administration to stem the flow of migrants to Europe. Der Spiegel reported recently that a leaked internal EU document revealed a proposal to work with Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj's new government to build "temporary detention centres for migrants and refugees". The DCII has remained one of Libya's better-functioning institutions as the country has descended into chaos. But, for its overworked staff, some of whom have not been paid for over a year, the situation is at breaking point. "We have [returned] 1,097 people so far this year, but more are coming all the time and we make new arrests every day," said Tripoli's DCII manager for migrant repatriation, Mohammed al-Bougar. "We desperately need help because we need to look after these people and feed them. Our prisons are too small for the numbers and we have shortages of everything, including food." Poor conditions Martin Kobler, Head of the UN Support Mission in Libya, visited Tripoli's Abu Sleem migrant detention centre earlier this month and talked to painfully thin detainees. He said he was horrified by their living conditions. "There are two toilets for 100 people, and this is by far not enough," he told IRIN. "The medical situation is substandard. So it is really important that these people are not here, but that they are going back to their countries where they are taken care of." IOM has organised voluntary repatriation for several hundred detained migrants from Senegal, Niger, Mali, and Nigeria since the beginning of the year, but many of the migrants are likely to reattempt the journey to Europe. It took 35-year-old Kalu from Nigeria two years to reach Italy, during which time he was incarcerated three times, abducted twice and repeatedly beaten, both in detention and whilst trying to find work in Libya's main cities. He was deported back to Nigeria after just three weeks in Italy, and immediately started borrowing money to make the journey again. "There is nothing in my country, no future at all, so I have to try again," he told IRIN, shortly after arriving back in Tripoli. Tom Westcott/IRIN The UN's Martin Kobler talks to migrants at Abu Sleem detention centre in Tripoli During Kobler's visit, journalists were forbidden to talk to the migrant detainees. One young Sudanese man whispered a plea for help, saying the situation at the centre was "very, very bad" and many of the detainees were unwell, until a guard silenced him. Before being ushered away in an armoured vehicle, Kobler said the UN was strongly opposed to human trafficking and that reaching a political settlement in Libya was the only way to prevent it. "These crimes can flourish only if there is a political vacuum and I'm working on filling the political vacuum - to have police, to have army, who are putting an end to human trafficking and to these crimes happening in this country." Impunity for smugglers People-smugglers who spoke to IRIN estimate that as many as 2,000 migrants from sub-Saharan African countries cross into Libya each week via the Tumo border crossing with Niger, just one of three main entry points. Al-Bougar said that arresting the smugglers was much more difficult than arresting the migrants. "Many times we have tried to intervene in smuggling operations, but they shoot at us. It has become a very dangerous job," he said. "Last week we tried to catch one smuggler, but my men only have old rusty guns and these were no match for the smugglers' weapons. When they opened fire on us, we had to withdraw." Another DCII official, who works in Sabrata, and who spoke to IRIN on condition of anonymity, estimated that as many as 30,000 migrants were being housed by smugglers in warehouses and rural properties near the town, waiting to set sail. "Every year we have seen this problem increasing but this is the worst year yet," he said. "Sometimes I watch them at night loading the people onto boats five or six boats at a time but I can do nothing. If I try to intervene, the smugglers will kill me, and probably my family too." Azerbaijan: Birthday protest highlights that many activists remain detained Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 27 May 2016 Cite as Article 19, Azerbaijan: Birthday protest highlights that many activists remain detained, 27 May 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57513c214.html [accessed 26 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, ARTICLE 19, as part of the Sport for Rights campaign, is participating in a rally outside the Azerbaijani Embassy in London to celebrate the recent release of Khadija Ismayilova. Khadija is a leading Azerbaijani investigative journalist and together we call for her full acquittal, and the release of all other political prisoners. On Wednesday, Khadija, was released on probation from prison after spending a year and half behind bars. While excellent news, she is still subject to unwarranted restrictions based on unfounded charges, as her conviction has not been quashed. Moreover, dozens of other political prisoners remain behind bars. Today is also Khadija's 40th birthday. The protest provides an opportunity to celebrate her inspiring work, tirelessly exposing corruption among the elite in Azerbaijan. 39 other protests are also taking place across the world, making a total of 40 protests in honour of this remarkable woman. The protest is a timely reminder to the Azerbaijani government that the world is watching them, and that we demand the release of all of those imprisoned unjustly. Here are just some of the people who remain behind bars, for whose freedom we must continue to fight: Ilkin Rustemzade, a youth activist and member of Azad Genchlik (Free Youth Organisation), was arrested on charges of hooliganism in May 2013, due to his alleged involvement in a 'Harlem Shake' video filmed in Baku. Despite the fact that the video has seemingly no political content and Rustemzade is not featured on-screen, he was held in pre-trial detention for a year, and sentenced on 6 May 2014 to eight years' imprisonment. Ilgar Mammadov, chairman of the opposition Republican Alternative (REAL) party, potential presidential candidate, and the main opposition to President Aliyev, was sentenced to 7 years in prison in March 2014 for allegedly organising mass disorder and resisting arrest. Between Mammadov's arrest on 4 February 2013 and his conviction over a year later, he was held for more than nine months at a pre-trial detention centre, despite the lack of evidence against him. He has been subject to violent and degrading treatment while in jail. Seymour Hezi, journalist and columnist for Azadliq, the main opposition newspaper in Azerbaijan, and news presenter for pro-opposition TV channel Azerbaycan Saati (Azerbaijan Hour), was sentenced to five years imprisonment on 29 January 2015. In August 2014, while waiting for a bus, Hezi was attacked by a man he did not know. In self-defence, he struck the man with a bottle he was holding at the time. Hezi remains in prison and on 15 April 2016 Azerbaijan's Supreme Court refused his appeal against his conviction. In June, Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, will host the Formula 1 Grand Prix. The lead-up to this high-profile event provides a chance to increase international awareness of the dire human rights situation in Azerbaijan. International pressure must continue on the government to meaningfully improve its human rights record, rather than rewarding it for token improvements that can easily be reversed. Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19 Waiting to Die Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Reem al-Hasan Publication Date 1 June 2016 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Waiting to Die, 1 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575144134.html [accessed 26 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 terrifying sound of an explosion woke us up on July 21, 2012. It was the first day of Ramadan. Our flat shook as if hit by an earthquake and dust filled the rooms. It was our first close encounter with a mortar shell. My parents, siblings and I gathered together. My mother broke down in tears, fearing for the safety of my brother and uncle. Both had slept on our building's rooftop that night. She was worried they had been injured or worse, but moments later they walked through our door, bewildered but unharmed. We heard our neighbours screaming and my father rushed out to see what was wrong. It turned out a mortar had hit our neighbour Abu Rashid's flat, destroying a wall and turning his kitchen into a pile of rubble. Thankfully, the missile had not exploded and no one was hurt. "This is what caused all this havoc," said Abu Rashid, picking up the unexploded mortar shell. "Thank God we are all alive and well." The shell was passed from one person to another. When I picked it up, it was so hot I couldn't bear to hold it. Our neighbours began discussing what had just happened. One mused over how much more damage it would have caused if it had exploded. Another theorised that it had hit our neighbourhood of al-Sabeena, in the Damascus countryside, by mistake. I didn't want to hear what they were saying, so I tried to ignore them. I watched Abu Rashid try to salvage some clothes and belongings from underneath the rubble. The day passed slowly as we waited for sunset and the call for prayer so that we could break our fast. Moments after we had begun eating, another explosion rang out nearby. I had been terribly hungry, but suddenly lost my appetite. My brother went out to find out the source of the explosion. A landmine had detonated, killing an opposition fighter and four civilians. That was the worst day I had ever experienced in my life. Its events left me scarred and terrified of what tomorrow might bring. We spent the whole month of Ramadan living in fear. Military aircraft circled over Damascus countryside, launching barrages of missiles on residential areas. Whenever I heard a shell being launched, I thought that this time it was coming for us. We waited for our turn to die. As time passed, matters became worse when basic services such as water and electricity were cut off. Bread became scarce, so on many occasions we went without. Our neighbourhood gradually turned into a ghost town. All you could hear was the sound of bullets and missiles, drowning out the call to prayer. It was a very difficult time, and we finally decided to flee. But the bloodshed didn't end in the Damascus countryside. A few days after we arrived in the city Kfar Nabel, the regime carried out a massacre that claimed many lives. I am still waiting for my turn to die. I do not know whether I will be killed by a barrel bomb or by a Russian missile. But what I fear most is losing a member of my family. Each time I hear a shell or missile being launched, my heart skips a beat. Then I realise that I have survived but somewhere nearby others are now lying dead amongst the rubble. Reem al-Hassan is the pseudonym of a Damascus Bureau contributor from Idlib. The 19-year-old was forced to abandon her studies when the revolution started. She now works as a newsreader at the Radio Fresh station in Kfar Nabel. Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Fleeing the Islamic State Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Mona al-Mohammad Publication Date 1 June 2016 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Fleeing the Islamic State, 1 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5751443f4.html [accessed 26 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 night the Islamic State (IS) decided to invade the city of Hassakah to "cleanse it of infidels" had started out like any other. My flatmates and I had dinner at our usual restaurant in the city centre, then went back home. Each one of us came from a different city so we had rented a flat together until the end of our university exams. We were still awake a little after midnight on June 14, 2014, when we heard a large explosion. We rushed out to find out what had happened. Our street was suddenly alive with people, but nobody had any information on the source of the blast. I went back inside, terrified that another explosion would follow. I thought of my father; he had tried his best to persuade me not to travel to Hassakah, but I had ignored his appeals because I wanted to complete my studies. I walked into my room and found my friend Baraa throwing her clothes into her suitcase. "Are you mad? What are you doing?" I asked her. "Where would you go at this hour?" Baraa burst into tears. "You're the mad one if you stay here," she wept. "They will slaughter half the youths of the city, and if they catch me I will be enslaved for being Christian." I didn't know how to calm my friend down. I myself was panicking and needed someone to comfort me. Both of us flinched when we heard a loud knock on our door, but I plucked up my courage and went to open it. It was my classmate Saeed, who rushed in and slammed the door behind him. "IS have stormed the city," he exclaimed. "They blew up that restaurant you usually have dinner in, and they are trying to get to the main square. "They'll be here soon. Our worst fears have come true," he continued. My flatmates began bombarding him with questions, but he had no answers or ideas of what to do next. We sat there discussing our options. By three in the morning, we had formulated a plan. Saeed would go and gather our male friends and come back at six o'clock. We would then leave the city together and travel to Raqqa. That had also fallen under IS control, so we would stay in two separate farmhouses on the outskirts, one for the men and one for the women. We believed it would be better to go there than stay in Hassakah waiting for the unknown. We would think of our next step once we were safe. The girls and I spent the next few hours gathering our belongings. When we were finished, the flat seemed as if we had never lived there. Six o'clock came and went, but Saeed didn't come for us. We could hear movement outside on the street - it seemed that most of our neighbours had decided to flee too. Unable to leave the house without the protection of our male friends, we felt powerless and alone. As we sat there anxiously waiting I thought of my family; my parents would die of grief if something happened to me. I wondered if I would ever set foot in my family home again. I had hated living there because it was so far away from my university, but now I longed for its familiarity and comfort. Our flatmate Sarab suddenly stood up. "I'm going out to find a car so we can leave," she said, walking out before we could stop her. Around 30 minutes later, someone knocked at our door. We opened it and found two men carrying Sarab, who was unconscious. One of the men was a taxi driver. He told us what had happened. "Your friend was walking in the middle of the street when an exchange of fire erupted around her. She's lucky she wasn't shot. "She ran towards my taxi and got in. She barely had time to give me directions to your flat before she passed out," he continued. Sarab was pale and felt cold. None of us knew what to do so we sought the help of our neighbour who was a doctor. She told us that Sarab had suffered a panic attack, and quickly brought her round. Three hours later, my flatmates and I finally managed to contact Saeed. He had hired a minibus to take us to Raqqa along with his friends. The driver came to collect us soon after, but we were delayed for a further hour while we haggled with him over the inflated fee he demanded. When we finally began our journey, the driver wound his way through a maze of small streets, avoiding all the city's main roads. My friends and I sat in silence, barely daring to breath. We were all petrified. Would we make it? Or would we die? If we died, how would that happen? The driver suddenly broke the silence. "Congratulations. You are all very lucky. We are now outside Hassakah and on our way to Raqqa," he said. We still had a long way to go, so he decided to stop for a short rest. He pulled over on the side of the road and stepped out of the vehicle to stretch his legs. Saeed and his friends joined him. Moments later, we saw a truck speeding in our direction. The vehicle stopped and two armed men disembarked. "IS militants!" one of the girls whispered. I quickly pulled up the brown scarf I had around my neck and covered my head, praying I wouldn't be killed for not wearing a proper hijab. The militants approached the group of men and began talking to them. We were amazed when a few minutes later they smiled and went back to their vehicle. The driver and our friends got back into the bus. I could tell that one of them was suppressing the urge to laugh. "What happened?" I asked him. "How come we're still alive?" At that he burst out laughing. "We're alive because those militants are from Chechnya! They couldn't understand what we were saying, and therefore they couldn't question us about Islam. They simply couldn't find a reason to kill us," he said. "It's ironic," he added bitterly, "The government didn't kill us, and the fighters who claim to be devout Muslims are shedding our blood." We continued our journey to Raqqa feeling a little safer. We knew that any IS militants we might run into would most probably be foreigners who did not speak Arabic, and knew nothing about the religion they were supposedly fighting for. We had a chance of talking our way out of danger. Mona al-Mohammad is the pseudonym of a Damascus Bureau contributor from Tabaqa. The 20-year-old was forced to abandon her Arabic literature university course and flee to Idlib's countryside where she and her family are now displaced. Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Azerbaijan: Happy Slaves' Day Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Publication Date 24 May 2016 Citation / Document Symbol CRS 815 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Azerbaijan: Happy Slaves' Day, 24 May 2016, CRS 815, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5751447b4.html [accessed 26 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. Experts say that the arrest and ill treatment of two activists who defaced a statue of former president Heydar Aliyev has highlighted a growing cult of personality in an increasingly repressive Azerbaijan. Bayram Mamedov and Giyasaddin Ibrahim, members of the pro-democracy NIDA youth movement, were detained in Baku on May 10 on drug possession charges. Hours earlier, the two men had painted "Fuck the System" in English and "Congratulations on Slaves Day" in Azeri on the monument before posting photos of the graffiti on social media. May 10, the birthday of the former president and father of current leader Ilham Aliyev, has been celebrated every year since 2004 as the Festival of Flowers. However, a play on words means that it is popularly known as Slaves' Day. Gul in Azeri means flower, while qul means slave. Prosecutions with the apparent intent of smearing activists' reputations are common in Azerbaijan. Financial misdemeanours are often used as a pretext. (See also "No Surprise" at Jail Terms for Leading Rights Defenders in Azerbaijan). The ministry of interior said that a search of Mamedov and Ibrahim's flats on May 10 had led to the discovery of two kilogrammes of heroin. A Baku district court sent the men to four months of pretrial detention, which was appealed by their lawyer, Elchin Sadigov. But the appeal was rejected on May 20, after which Mamedov went on hunger strike. The activists could face up to 12 years in prison if found guilty "The authorities of Azerbaijan have created a national cult and punish all those who touch on it," NIDA board member Ulvi Hasanli told IWPR. The political situation in Azerbaijan, he continued, meant that "people do not have the possibility to express their protest the traditional way. Therefore it is necessary to use such non-standard forms of protests". Hundreds of thousands of people viewed the men's social media post and tens of thousands shared it, he claimed. "That is why the regime reacted so aggressively and hysterically," Hasanli concluded. Fariz Namazli, a lawyer, said that the activists were accused of drug trafficking because defacing a monument is not a punishable criminal act. "The monument of Heydar Aliyev is not counted as a cultural heritage. This is an ordinary monument and has no particular importance for the countrys population," he told IWPR, adding that it was also not damaged beyond repair. "The paint was just washed off and that was it. At most, one can speak about an administrative offence." Sadigov used his Facebook page to publish a statement by Mamedov in which he described his mistreatment. "Three men in civilian clothes forcibly pushed me into a car, a white jeep, and took me to the 12th police department, brought me to the chiefs office, where there were eight people in civilian clothes," Mamedov wrote. "They started to beat me with their hands, fists and kicks. They asked me for what purpose I had photographed the monument." The men then continued to hit him. Mamedov and Ibrahim were subsequently moved to a different location, where they were also tortured. Mamedov said his hands and feet were handcuffed and he was severely beaten. Police officers threatened to rape him with truncheons and demanded they admit to the charge of drug trafficking. He was knocked out by blows to his head and only regained consciousness when doused with water. "Then I was taken to a general and said that if I lay flowers at the monument, give an interview to [state TV station] AzTV, apologise at the monument, they will let me go. When I refused, I was taken away and beaten again," Mamedov wrote. The ministry of interiors spokesman Ehsan Zahidov rejected these claims, the Azerbaijan News Network reported. But Yadigar Sadigov, the deputy chairman of the opposition Musavat Party and a former political prisoner said it was clear that the drugs charges had been an act of vengeance. "A case of a personality cult is obvious," he said. "In spite of several changes in power, the team of Heydar Aliyev, which widely developed the personality cult in the country, remains. The regime's character does not change," he told IWPR. (See also Azerbaijan: Presidential Parent Larger Than Life). CRACKDOWN ON CIVIL SOCIETY Some Azeris said that the authorities' response to the vandalism was even harsher than in Soviet times. One Baku resident, 44-year-old Sultan Gasimov, recalled how a classmate of his disfigured a bust of Lenin and as a result was expelled from the Communist Partys youth organisation Komsomol. The boy was also reprimanded and his parents had to buy a new statue. "That was all the punishment," Gasimov said. "But now the situation is much more complicated, since a personality cult was built around the father of the current president. "Everything against this cult is perceived as a personal insult and is punished very severely." Heydar Aliyev's image is ubiquitous in Azerbaijan, and no expense is spared on the annual Flower Festival. Cities are lavishly decorated with flowers and concerts held in public squares. "Every year, they hold an incomprehensible flowers day or 'slaves day' on the birthday of a long-dead president. They are spending a lot of money, when the majority of the people live in poverty," Baku resident Isa Yusifov told IWPR. The event's cost is not known, but various official statements give a general idea. In 2007, the mayors office indicated that 15 million US dollars had been spent on the holiday. In 2009 Gular Ahamdova, a former deputy from the New Azerbaijan Party, also said that the event had cost 14 to 15 million dollars. According to the Baku mayors office, 150 tonnes of flowers were imported just for the city's festival in 2013 and 116 tonnes in 2014 However, the festival was cancelled this year due to the four-day-war around Nagorny Karabakh in early April. May 10 was the 40th day of mourning for the dozens of soldiers and civilians killed, which was marked in accordance with Muslim tradition. Yusifov said the authorities had been afraid there might be protests this year because of the war dead, which is why the holiday was cancelled. "These kids expressed their protest against the inscription on the statue. If you did an anonymous survey among the population, you would not find a single person who disagreed with what they wrote. But not everyone is as brave as these guys," Yusifov said. Amnesty International has condemned the arrests and urged the authorities to conduct an impartial investigation into the allegations and maltreatment. Sports for Rights, a coalition of international NGOs, has called on the Azerbaijani government to release the activists as well as jailed journalists ahead of the Formula One European Grand Prix race to be held in Baku on June 17-19. "The leadership of Formula 1 has a crucial opportunity to press the Azerbaijani government to make concrete steps to improve its human rights record ahead of the Baku Grand Prix," said Jane Buchanan, vice president of Human Rights Watch for Europe and Central Asia. In March, Azerbaijan released over a dozen political prisoners ahead of a visit to the United States by Aliyev. (See also Explaining Azerbaijan's Surprise Prisoner Amnesty). "After releasing 24 political and religious prisoners, Azerbaijani authorities seem eager to fill the empty cells with more freedom defenders," said Robert Herman, vice president for emergency assistance programs and multilateral advocacy at Freedom House. "None of Azerbaijan's repressive laws have been repealed. Democratic countries should demand that Azerbaijan respect fundamental freedoms and permit civil society to operate freely." Samira Ahmedbeyli is IWPRs editor for Azerbaijan. Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Participants at the seminar. (Photo: VNA) The function was held by the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics and the Swedish Embassy on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Olof Palmes passing, and 47 years of bilateral ties. Mr Nguyen Tat Giap, Deputy Director of the academy, said Vietnamese - Swedish relations were established by the countries prominent leaders and diplomats and are full of peace-loving spirit, solidarity, cooperation and mutual support. Sweden was the first western nation to set up diplomatic ties with Vietnam, and their cooperation has been increasingly expanded in all aspects, from economy, politics and security to education and culture, he noted. He added that not only was late PM Olof Palme a great friend of Vietnam, but he also fought tirelessly for peace, national independence and equal cooperation among nations in the world. At the seminar, participants analysed the life, ideology and career of Olof Palme (1927- 1986), who served as Swedish PM from 1969 - 1976 and again from 1982 - 1986. He was strongly opposed to injustice around the globe and was beloved by people in Sweden as well as from other countries, including Vietnam. Olof Palme was assassinated on Sveavagen street in central Stockholm in 1986. His death was a big loss to peace lovers around the world. Vietnamese former Deputy PM Vu Khoan said Sweden was the first western country to provide non-refundable aid for Vietnam. That support was invaluable since it was given amidst the peak of the resistance war in Vietnam. Swedens assistance for Vietnam is not only through money, according to economist Pham Chi Lan, former Vice Chairwoman of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry. While Vietnam is transitioning to a market economy, specialists from the European nation have offered advice on mindset changing, market access, and economic reform and restructuring. Sweden is truly the biggest friend of Vietnam. The images of Olof Palme and his country are always in the heart of the Vietnamese people, Lan added. Pierre Schori, special envoy of the Swedish PM, said Olof Palme laid a solid foundation for the unique relationship between the two countries. Some outstanding facilities that his nation has helped Vietnam build include the National Hospital of Pediatrics, the Vietnam - Sweden hospital (Quang Ninh province) and the Bai Bang paper factory (Phu Tho province). Sweden will foster all-faceted cooperation with Vietnam in line with local peoples demand and global development, he noted./. Kazak State Cracks Down on Dissent Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Gaziza Baituova Publication Date 26 May 2016 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Kazak State Cracks Down on Dissent, 26 May 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575144b84.html [accessed 26 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. Kazakstan has seen the worst social unrest in years over proposed land legislation that many citizens see as threatening their national sovereignty. The authorities reacted harshly to a series of protests in cities around Kazakstan, with reports of mass arrests and intimidation. Such protests are rare in relatively prosperous Kazakstan. The last serious unrest was in 2011, when oil workers in Zhanaozen protested over work conditions. (See also Simmering Tensions Boil Over in Kazakstan and Strikes Take Toll on Kazak Oil Town). The current strife was sparked by proposed legislation to significantly relax laws on non-Kazaks renting or owing agricultural land. Until amendments in 2011, only Kazak citizens could lease or buy farmlands. Since then, foreigners have been able to rent agricultural land for up to ten years. The new provisions would have extended this to 25 years. The proposals touched sensitivities about Chinese appropriation of Kazak natural resources; over the past decade China has become one of the leading investors in Central Asia. But it also fed into public disquiet over last year's devaluation of the national tenge currency and the country's economic downturn. HARSH RESPONSE Kazakstan already has strict laws on public assembly. Unauthorised gatherings are banned under civil law and the "breach of public order" is a criminal offence. After scattered protests by some 1,000 people around the country in late April, activists in several cities requested permission to hold further rallies to protest the proposed change in the land law. These were all refused, meaning that any gatherings would by default be unauthorised. Organisers were then called to their local state prosecutor offices, where they were warned they faced criminal and civil charges if they took part in such protests. Nonetheless, the first round of protests in April seemed to spur the government into attempted action to assuage public fears over the new legislation. National economy minister Erbolat Dosaev and his deputy Kairbek Uskenbaev resigned and on May 5, President Nursultan Nazarbaev said the bill would now be delayed until 2017. A special 75-member commission on land reform was also created to craft possible amendments. However, this failed to satisfy the public mood, with protestors continuing to insist that the new legislation be abandoned entirely. Experts warned that the government was not addressing the real causes of unrest. "The authorities are backtracking: the president declared a moratorium on the land amendments, and a commission on the issues of land was established," said Andrei Grishin, staff member at the Kazakstan International Bureau of Human Rights and Rule of Law. "But that doesn't solve the problem." The underlying cause was a wider dissatisfaction, he said, adding that "the land issue was just a way to express discontent over the economic situation and Nazarbaev's politics. The authorities find this particularly intimidating, that is why unprecedented measures were put in place ahead of the May 21 protests". UNSANCTIONED DISSENT The interior ministry announced on May 20 that police had found arms caches near the Almaty central squares of Respublika and Astana, widely disseminating footage of the petrol bombs, metal rods and gas containers these stashes reportedly contained. On the day itself, the internet was shut down across the country and police cordoned off the main squares in all cities where protests were due to be held. Although some people managed to access the squares, the protests in Almaty and Astana - as well as the cities of Pavlodar, Kostanay and Uralsk - were short-lived as police quickly moved in to arrest and remove participants. According to the interior ministry, 40 activists were arrested and detained for taking part in unsanctioned rallies across the country. Some 20 media workers covering the events were also detained for a few hours. Human rights groups said that the real number of arrests was likely to be much higher. Grishin, who attended the Almaty protest on May 21 as an observer, agreed that only a relatively small number turned up, between 500-1,000 people. Nonetheless, the police spent the first hour-and-a-half of the rally picking out the most active participants and putting them into police vans. "Over the next half hour the police arrested the rest of the protestors, including senior citizens and journalists. Then they were taken to different police stations, and within three hours, after gathering explanatory reports, were released," Grishin continued. Igor Lepeha, who heads Interior Ministry's Department of Administrative Offences told reporters that "there had been no protests in Kazakstan" on May 21. The journalists, he said, had been arrested "by mistake". Zhanna Baitelova, who heads the Guild of Court Reporters NGO, was also present at the Almaty protest as an observer. "The interior ministry said there were no protests. Some TV channels showed footage of empty squares to support these statements. [The internet was blocked] to prevent the truth getting out that the square was not empty because there was no dissatisfaction, but rather because the police blocked all approaches to the square and arrested peaceful people," she said. She told IWPR that she had been unable to post developments on social media during the protests. "One couldn't upload photo and video on Facebook around 12 pm. That's why my posts were two or three hours late. YouTube wasn't accessible either," she said, adding, "It's clear that blocking the internet was meant to stop information spreading about the people who went out to express their opinion." Gaziza Baituova is an IWPR contributor in Almaty. This publication was produced under IWPR project Strengthening Capacities, Bridging Divides in Central Asia, funded by the Foreign Ministry of Norway. Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Armenia: Orphans Struggle to Overcome Stigma Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Publication Date 27 May 2016 Citation / Document Symbol CRS 815 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Armenia: Orphans Struggle to Overcome Stigma, 27 May 2016, CRS 815, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575145134.html [accessed 26 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. Christine Koshkaryan was abandoned as a child and grew up in an orphanage. The effects, she said, will stay with her all her life. Graduates of children's homes in Armenia face a double burden, the 33-year-old explained. As well as the emotional effects of such an upbringing, Armenias traditionally family-oriented society treats orphans with suspicion. Young women from such a background are seen as little more than potential sex workers and young men as latent criminals. This doomed them to a life at the margins of society, said Koshkarya, who now lives in Yerevan. "You either have to be beautiful to be someones mistress, or you have to work as a cleaner. Sixty per cent of the graduates of childrens homes work as cleaners," Koshkaryan explained. After she left the orphanage in the city of Gavar in northeastern Armenia, the young woman took whatever menial work came her way. One of her first jobs was cleaning windshields at a petrol station, for which she received around 3,000 drams (seven US dollars) per day. According to UNICEF, around 4,000 children live in Armenias 42 state and private orphanages, boarding and special schools. About 80 percent either still have one parent or come from socially disadvantaged families. In the past, as soon as they turned 18, they had to leave their care homes and fend for themselves. Some found themselves literally out on the streets. Since 2003, they remain in state care until they are 23 and are provided with lodging. Some 30 young people graduate from this system each year. But housing remains a problem, and dozens of orphanage graduates are currently on a waiting list to receive lodging. NGOs have tried to fill this gap by setting up transition homes and a handful of these, spread through the country, host orphanage graduates from 18 to 23. Anna Mnatsakanyan, a consultant for the Akunk Centre for Ethnosociological Studies NGO, agreed that a childhood spent in care homes often left young people stigmatised. "Whenever there is an incident with a graduate of a childrens home, the same label is attached to the others," Mnatsakanyan said, adding that potential employers have preconceived ideas about people who grew up in orphanages. In reality, she continued, her research showed that barely one per cent of female orphans ended up in sex work. Mnatsakanyan explained that the numbers of orphans in Armenia were relatively small because local tradition usually meant that children were adopted by a family member. This only increased the stigma on those who ended up in care. Many employers either avoid employing young people from childrens homes altogether or refuse to legally register them as employees once they learn about their status. According to a study by the Armenian Relief Society, only 15 out of 151 young adults who left orphanages and received state housing between 2003 and 2012 found permanent work. Out of this number, 66 were unemployed and another 64 had irregular work. It is hard to hide a past spent in an orphanage. Passports issued until 2012 and still in common use as a form of identification include the holder's home address. Given out at age 16 and valid for 10 years, these documents mean that many former residents are in effect still registered at orphanages or at hostels after they come of age. "Employers know we have no one to lean on and no one who defends us," Koshkaryan said. This attitude extended to other parts of society. Koshkaryan recounted the tale of a friend, another graduate from a children's home, who called the police after her flat was burgled. "The police told her that someone like her could not expect any help from the police. So she poured petrol over herself and set herself on fire. But who wrote about it or talked about it no one remembers us no matter what happens." Anahit Sahakyan, deputy dean of the faculty of sociology at Yerevan State University, said that orphans lacked the social capital to help them to succeed in life. "Others have fathers, mothers, relatives, friends, but the graduates of orphanages in this regard have very meagre capital, limited to the circle of graduates from the same orphanage, who also have limited opportunities," she said. A NEW CHANCE Armenia has been making efforts to reform the system for the last ten years. In 2006, the Yerevan government began, with the encouragement of United Nations Childrens Emergency Fund (UNICEF), to de-institutionalise state-run orphanages and return children given up for reasons of poverty to their biological parents or to foster parents. According to the ministry of labour and social affairs, 88 orphans were adopted last year, 52 of them by foreign citizens. Also last year, an EU-funded programme was launched to help orphanage graduates cope with their newly-found independence and develop work skills. The 400,000 euro two-year programme is being implemented by the Centre for Socio-Economic Research and Analysis, with the participation of the ministry of labour and social affairs. Sixty young people aged 16 to 23 were selected to undergo six months of training on how to run a small business. They also study English, learn about their constitutional rights and acquire IT skills. The 20 most promising graduates will receive internships in Armenian companies and small grants to support on their own business plans. "We have to advise the beneficiaries in the course of the year as well as create practical opportunities for employment in various organisations. This will give them the opportunity to get a job in the same organisation [in the future]," said programme head Paytsar Hovhannisyan. Some people do manage to rise above the stigma and prejudice of a childhood in care homes. Armine Hambardzumyan, 32, is among the few care home graduates who has managed to find steady work. Now married with three children, she lives in the city of Echmiadzin, south of Yerevan in a small apartment that is part of a state complex of flats for graduates of childrens homes, who can live there for a period of 10 years. Over the years, Hambardzumyan has worked in a clothes factory, on a cattle farm and as a cleaning lady in private homes. Her last job was as a cleaner in a state kindergarten, a rare position for a former resident of care as jobs in the public sector are usually unattainable for graduates of orphanages. Hambardzumyan said she was treated well at the kindergarten but was not legally registered as an employee. This was at her own request as otherwise she would lose her family allowance, a small but stable source of income. Mnatsakanyan said that orphanage graduates generally lived with their partners without getting married. If they have a child, the woman is registered as a single mother to receive social benefits. A single mother with children receives 35,000 drams (73 US dollars) in benefits per month. The minimum wage in Armenia is 55,000 drams (115 dollars). As for Koshkaryan, she also has new hope for the future. Recently, she teamed up with ten other graduates of children's homes to create Chistim-Blistim (We clean - We shine), a cleaning firm. Their main customers are tourists who find out about their services online. That way, Koshkaryan said, they didn't have to face discrimination from local Armenian employers. Anna Muradyan is an independent journalist in Armenia Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Afghan Women Excluded From Public Life Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Publication Date 26 May 2016 Citation / Document Symbol ARR 544 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Afghan Women Excluded From Public Life, 26 May 2016, ARR 544, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/575145614.html [accessed 26 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. Women need to actively demand their rights so as to play a part in Afghanistan's social and political life, according to speakers at an IWPR debate in the eastern province of Logar. Around 100 women took part in the April 30 event at the provincial department of information and culture. Participants heard that women played little part in public life, excluded by conservative traditions and widespread discrimination. "Women could play an active and central role in the country's political and social affairs," said Logar director of women's affairs, Shaima Zargar. "But some are victims of domestic violence, cruelty and threats, and cannot even leave the house if they want to." Zargar argued that women needed to stand up for their rights, adding, "Women have remained silent for too long about some of the negative customs in the society. They do not come out to fight and just continue to live with their current problems." Civil society activist Mir Samiulhaq Rashid said that there was a need for public awareness "to encourage husband and wife to cooperate with each other". Shafiq Popal, a religious scholar, added that women were given much more independence under Islamic law than in Afghan society. "Families in some villages, particularly in Logar province, deny their daughters the right to education - but Islam has given them this right," he continued. Anahita Alamyar, the director of information and culture in Logar, agreed that if women understood their rights according to Islam, they would be much better able to contribute to their communities. "It is women who build society with their husbands and families, who provide a new generation of children who will decide the future of the country," she said. Debate participant Jaweda Fazli asked Alamyar about the role civil society could play in raising awareness among women. "Civil institutions have organised various workshops in cooperation with other NGOs about women's rights and for the purposes of training women," she replied. "The programmes have been effective, but they are not sufficient and more needs to be done." Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Mali Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Mali, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518da313.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: The Government of Mali remained a willing U.S. counterterrorism partner despite serious challenges. Continued terrorist activity spread beyond Mali's largely ungoverned northern regions, and lackluster implementation of the June peace accord between the Malian government and two coalitions of armed groups hampered the return of public services and security to the north. Mali continued to rely heavily on the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) and French forces to provide a measure of stability and security to the northern regions. As the government and northern armed political movements slowly began to implement the peace accord from October to December, terrorist groups increased their attacks on all parties to the accord, including former rebel groups with which they had briefly allied. There was also a growing concern about terrorist activities in the central and southern regions. The French military continued its integrated counterterrorism mission for the Sahel region under Operation Barkhane, based out of Chad. In cooperation with Malian forces, Barkhane launched numerous operations to degrade the remaining violent extremist elements operating in northern Mali, including al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), al-Murabitoun (AMB), the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), the Macina Liberation Front (MLF), and Ansar al-Dine (AAD). Domestic and international security forces believed most, if not all of these groups, were coordinating their efforts. Other significant counterterrorism efforts included Operation Seno, which the Malian military launched in October to combat terrorism and banditry in the Mopti Region. MINUSMA consolidated its northern presence in 2015, particularly in the Kidal region, and continued its work with the Malian government and signatory armed groups to facilitate the redeployment of Malian administrators and security forces to the north. Despite significant security improvements in some parts of the northern region, terrorist groups remained active, exploiting the lack of effective governmental control. Troop drawdowns linked to the reconfiguration of French military operations added to the lack of security. IEDs and land mines were used for the majority of attacks against UN peacekeepers. MINUSMA noted an approximate 42 percent increase in such attacks from January to November, compared to the same period in 2014. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: AQIM, MUJAO, AMB, and AAD continued to conduct terrorist attacks in 2015, primarily targeting international and Malian military forces. In January, attacks by violent Islamist extremist groups began moving beyond the traditional conflict zone in the north to the center and south of the country. Terrorist incidents included: On March 6, an attack later claimed by AMB killed five civilians at La Terrasse nightclub in Bamako. A July 2 attack claimed by AQIM on the Goundam Road near Timbuktu killed six Burkinabe soldiers with the MINUSMA peacekeeping mission and injured five others. AMB and MLF claimed responsibility for an assault on the Byblos Hotel in Sevare near the Mopti airport that took place August 7-8. The attack resulted in the deaths of five civilians and four Malian soldiers. AQIM, AMB, AAD, and MLF all claimed responsibility for a November 20 attack on the Radisson Hotel in Bamako that resulted in the deaths of 19 civilians, including one U.S. citizen. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Implementation of Mali's new penal code of 2013, intended to help counter terrorism and transnational organized crime, continued during 2015. The judiciary prosecuted one terrorism-related case during the year. The National Assembly passed a law on November 9 that defined the composition, structure, and functions of a special judicial unit focused on the fight against terrorism and transnational crime. Created in 2013 and staffed since 2014, the now fully-established unit took the lead in the investigation into the November 20 attack on the Radisson hotel. Malian security forces and law enforcement responsible for counterterrorism efforts participated in the Department of State's Antiterrorism Assistance Program and DoD-facilitated trainings that included but were not limited to border security, crisis management, and police reform and effectiveness. The Malian Ministry of Justice (MOJ) and police agencies worked directly with the United States on efficient practices and counterterrorism-related training. More than 100 members of the National Police and Gendarmerie participated in a February IED recognition course that was held in Bamako and Mopti. The courses were sponsored by the Department of Justice's International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program and funded by the Department of State. The international team of instructors included officials from the FBI, UN, and the EU. Select Malian counterterrorism officials also participated in trainings conducted under the auspices of the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law. Training topics included preventing and denying the benefits of kidnapping for ransom, enhancing the role of parliamentarians in building effective counterterrorism systems, and countering foreign terrorist fighters. The Malian Armed Forces and Air Force under the Ministry of Defense (MOD) remained the primary entities responsible for securing Mali against terrorist threats. The General Directorate of State Security under the Ministry of Security had the authority to investigate and detain persons for terrorism offenses. There were no specialized law enforcement units to conduct investigations, respond to crises, or ensure border security. Missions between law enforcement and military units that have a counterterrorism mission lacked delineation and coordination. Law enforcement units had a poor record on accountability and respect for human rights. Although Mali has basic border security enforcement mechanisms, law enforcement units lacked capacity, training, and the necessary equipment to secure Mali's porous borders. The United States worked with the Malian security forces at the Senou International Airport to expand the U.S.-funded Personal Identification Secure Comparison and Evaluation System (PISCES) program to the newly installed VIP terminal. The gendarmerie, which reports to both the MOD and the Ministry of the Interior (MOI), and the national border police, which reports to the MOI, both provide paramilitary support to prevent and deter criminal activity at borders. Customs officials under the Ministry of Economy and Finance monitor the flow of goods and enforce customs laws at borders and ports of entry. Mali receives INTERPOL notices, but the INTERPOL database is unavailable at some points of entry into Mali. Customs officials use travel forms to collect biographical information from travelers at airports and manifests for information on goods transiting borders. When conducting investigations, customs officials and border police compare the biographic data on these forms against travel documents and the manifests against goods possessed. The exit and entry stamps used by border officials are inconsistent in size and shape, undermining efforts to authenticate travel documents. In May 2012, Mali introduced an updated machine-readable passport linked to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Mali's passports, including the diplomatic and official versions, now incorporate additional security measures, including micro-printing, UV features, and a full-color digital photo. Unfortunately, many of the relatively sophisticated anti-fraud characteristics of the new Malian passport are rendered moot by the relative ease with which imposters can obtain fraudulent documents, such as birth and marriage certificates (which are still chiefly handwritten or typed on carbon paper, then tracked via municipal ledgers that are also handwritten). Over the course of the year, the government opened 69 terrorism-related cases and detained 30 people for terrorism-related crimes. On June 15, the Malian courts sentenced Boubacar Abdou Maiga to two years in prison for his association with MUJAO and for killing one person. As in 2014, resource constraints, a lack of training in investigative techniques, and inexperience with trying terrorism cases continued to plague a weak judicial system. Mali was very cooperative in working with the United States to prevent acts of terrorism against U.S. citizens in the country. The Malian judicial system welcomed the cooperation of U.S. law enforcement agencies in the investigation into the November 20 attack on the Radisson Hotel in which one U.S. citizen was killed. An Antiterrorism Assistance/Special Program for Embassy Augmentation and Response team of 24 National Guard members were activated in October as a Quick Reaction Force for Embassy Bamako in the event of another crisis. The Malian military continued to struggle with command-and-control capacity. It remained insufficiently resourced and lacked personnel trained in effective law enforcement, counterterrorism investigative techniques, and enhanced border security operations. An interagency working group, within the Ministry of Internal Security and Civilian Protection, first conceived in 2013 and designed to reform the security sector, had not moved beyond the discussion phase at the end of 2015. MINUSMA continued to work with the government throughout 2015 to move this initiative from discussion to action. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Mali is a member of the Inter-Governmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa, a Financial Action Task Force-style regional body. Mali's financial intelligence unit, the Cellule Nationale de Traitement des Informations Financieres (CENTIF-Mali), is a member of the Egmont Group. Seizure of assets must first be authorized by a judge within the judicial unit focused on the fight against terrorism and trans-border crime. Assets can be frozen indefinitely during the investigation period. Coordination between investigative agencies is poor, however, and not all suspected cases make it to court. The majority of transactions in Mali are cash-based and difficult to regulate given resource constraints. Non-financial businesses and professions are not subject to customer due diligence requirements. Significant challenges to the CENTIF-Mali include a lack of training especially for investigators who handle terrorism financing cases as well as a lack of resources to adequately publicize regulations and provide training for bank and public sector employees outside of Bamako. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: While Mali has no official countering violent extremism (CVE) strategy in place, the Ministry of National Reconciliation developed a National Reconciliation Policy in 2014 that references the need to delegitimize violent extremist ideologies and promote social cohesion between communities. CVE considerations were also integrated into Mali's "Program for Accelerated Development in the Northern Regions," as well as a draft decentralization policy. The Ministry of Religious Affairs is responsible for working with the High Islamic Council and other religious associations to promote moderate Islam and maintain a secular state. Conversely, efforts to prevent increased radicalism and recruitment by violent extremist groups were hindered by the absence of Malian government control in much of the north. International and Regional Cooperation: Mali remained active in regional organizations and international bodies including the Economic Community of West African States, the UN, and the AU. Mali remained active in the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP) and also participated in Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) events. In an effort to implement the GCTF good practices on foreign terrorist fighters, Mali self-selected to serve as an initial pilot country for a Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF) funding mechanism that emphasizes sustainability for local organizations, while supporting national Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) strategies and convening multiple stakeholders to provide relevant expertise and enable communities to develop localized CVE responses. At a November 20 meeting in Chad, the heads of state of the G-5 Sahel countries (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger) announced plans to create a joint regional force and military school. The Malian military participated in multinational counterterrorism operations in 2015, including with Operation Barkhane and the Mauritanian military. The AU created a follow-up and support group for the political and security situation in Mali and has held six meetings in Mali with international partners on enhancing international cooperation to bring political stability and security in Mali. In his address to the 2015 UN General Assembly, President Keita called on the international community to help rid the Sahel region of terrorism. He also expressed concern about the spread of terrorist organizations, including ISIL, saying such challenges called attention to the urgent need to reform the UN's peacekeeping doctrine. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Maldives Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Maldives, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518da423.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Since 2010, concerns about a small number of local extremists, who support violence and are involved with transnational terrorist groups, have increased. Young Maldivians, especially those within the penal system and otherwise marginalized members of society, are at risk of becoming radicalized and some have already joined violent extremist groups. Media reports from January 2015 cited then Maldivian Police Service (MPS) Chief Hussein Waheed, who estimated that at least 50 Maldivians had opted to become foreign terrorist fighters, while the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party placed the figure as high as 200. Waheed's comments followed reports in early January of at least 13 Maldivians traveling abroad with the intent of becoming foreign terrorist fighters. In late January, four Maldivians reputed to be members of Male's Kuda Henveiru gang were arrested in Malaysia under suspicion of attempting to travel to Syria to fight with terrorist groups. The incident illustrated a pattern of Maldivian nationals having the intent of becoming foreign terrorist fighters transiting through third countries. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: President Yameen Abdul Gayoom signed a new "Prevention of Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism Act" (PMLFT), which repealed the Anti-terrorism Act of 1990, on October 28. The PMLFT defined acts of terrorism and set forth penalties of between seven to 25 years imprisonment for those convicted of these acts or inciting others to do so. The Act's other provisions extended the state's writ to hold accountable those who may have perpetrated such acts outside Maldivian territory; called upon the president to publish a list of proscribed terrorist organizations or persons; granted the government permission to suspend certain constitutionally guaranteed rights for persons detained or arrested on suspicion of committing acts of terrorism; established legal procedures for handling terrorism-related cases; and granted permission for the issuance of a monitoring and control order by court order upon reasonable suspicion, which was defined as the Minister's belief based on logical or reasonable evidence or reasoning that one or many of the acts transpire or may occur. A monitoring and control order would permit the government to determine a suspect's place of residence; search him/her and his/her residence; disclose, inspect, and seize a suspect's assets; monitor his or her telecommunications; and impose a travel ban. As of the end of the year, President Yameen had not yet published the mandatory list of terrorist entities, as required by the legislation. The government also used the PMLFT to arrest political opponents and restrict political and media activity unrelated to terrorism. The government's Human Rights Commission issued a statement on October 29 calling for the PMLFT to be reviewed due to its narrowing constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights. The Maldivian Parliament (Majlis) passed a new penal code in April 2014, which was implemented in April 2015. Neither Maldivian law nor the penal code permitted restrictions on the travel of would-be foreign terrorist fighters or the detention of those who have been turned back on suspicion that they were headed to a war zone, both of which were gaps the PMLFT was designed to address. Maldives uses the Terrorist Interdiction Program's Personal Identification Secure Comparison and Evaluation System (PISCES) to provide traveler screening and screening list capability. Maldives continued to participate in the Department of State's Antiterrorism Assistance program, which provided training to the MPS, Maldivian Coast Guard, and port and border control officers. The Department of State also supported capacity building for Maldivian investigators and prosecutors, improving their understanding of techniques to handle counterterrorism cases. Training in all aspects of police work related to counterterrorism was also provided to officers by numerous other Western countries. The leadership of the MPS recognized the need for improvement and continuously sought assistance to bring its abilities up to international standards. Responsibility for Maldivian counterterrorism efforts is divided among the MPS and National Defense Force (MNDF), the latter of which has Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard branches. Information sharing among the agencies is limited. In April, the MPS began randomly questioning Maldivian citizens traveling by air to Turkey as to their reasons for flying and planned dates of return. This effort represented the government's attempt to stem the number of citizens traveling to Iraq and Syria with the goal of joining violent extremist groups to fight. Maldives participated in a regional conference (May 26-29) in New Delhi, co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Prosecutorial Development, Assistance and Training (OPDAT); the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and the Department of State in cooperation with the Government of India's National Investigation Agency. The program invited police, prosecutors, members of the judiciary and civil society to share expertise and experience on how best to address issues generated by foreign terrorist fighters including on the effectiveness of terrorism and border security legislation. Personnel from the Financial Intelligence Unit, MNDF, MPS, and the Prosecutor General's Office participated in a series of trainings led by DOJ/OPDAT from May 31 to June 4. Topics included the effective investigation and prosecution of terrorism cases, terrorism financing, and money laundering. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Maldives is a member of the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering, a Financial Action Task Force-style regional body. Maldivian authorities believe funds were being raised in Maldives to support terrorism abroad, but lacked reliable information regarding amounts involved. The Maldivian Central Bank believes criminal proceeds mainly come from domestic sources, since a large percentage of suspicious transaction reports the Central Bank receives are connected to Maldivians. The Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) reported informal money transfer networks (hawala) are used to transfer funds between the islands, although the extent to which these systems are employed to launder money is unclear. While the new PMLFT legislation passed in October did not contain provisions specifically targeting terrorism financing, the Maldivian Prosecutor General's Office was confident it would enable police and prosecutors to better identify links between suspected extremists and their finance networks based upon the very wide investigatory powers authorized by the PMLFT. The Maldivian government monitors banks, the insurance sector, money remittance institutions, and finance companies, and requires the collection of data for wire transfers. Financial institutions other than banks and intermediaries in the securities sector, however, are not subject to current anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) obligations. Insurance companies and intermediaries, finance companies, money remittance service providers, foreign exchange businesses, and credit card companies therefore operate outside the AML/CFT framework. The MMA had earlier established an FIU, which lacked the technical capacity to analyze vast amounts of new data flowing in on financial transactions. The FIU's director position was vacant as of June; it is operating under an interim director deputed by the MMA until a new one is appointed. For the period of October 2014 to April 2015, the FIU reported receiving six STRs, of which five were analyzed and closed. Insurance companies and intermediaries, finance companies, money remittance service providers, foreign exchange businesses, and credit card companies therefore operate outside the AML/CFT framework. The Maldivian government implements relevant UN Security Council Resolutions, and monitors and regulates alternative remittance services, despite the fact that they lie outside the AML/CFT framework. The Maldivian government did not report any efforts to seize terrorist assets in 2015. According to the Maldivian government, capacity building of relevant supervisory and regulatory authorities such as the MMA and the Capital Market Development Authority, the MMA's FIU, law enforcement authorities (the Anti-Corruption Commission, Department of Immigration and Emigration, Maldives Customs Service, and MPS), and the judiciary is needed to properly counter money laundering and terrorism financing. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The Maldivian government continued to recognize that counter-radicalization efforts are a critical component to long-term success against violent extremism. Since 2011, the government has sought to counter the influence of extremist ideology by actively intervening in religious life. These interventions include mandating persons wanting to serve as mosque leaders (imams) to undergo a six-month state-approved training, as well as disseminating government-approved sermons, which the imams are required to use for Friday prayers. A government-sponsored Islamic university in the capital city of Male opened in the last quarter of 2015. The university's key objective will be to promote the academic study of religion and "moderate Islam" as a counterweight to extremist discourses and messaging. The Fiqh Academy, a group of religious scholars under the government's Ministry of Islamic Affairs, issued a fatwa on August 25 which proclaimed participation in foreign wars is not a religious obligation for all adult Muslims. International and Regional Cooperation: Maldives is a member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), and is a party of the SAARC regional convention on the suppression of terrorism. Topics discussed included security force capacity building and increasing cooperation in maritime domain awareness. The MNDF and Indian military completed an annual joint training exercise in August and September designed to improve cooperation and inter-operability between the two countries' armed forces. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Malaysia Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Malaysia, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518da610.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Malaysia's counterterrorism efforts in 2015 continued to focus on mitigating the threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and foreign terrorist fighters, including by passing and implementing new legislation and continued law enforcement activity. Prime Minister Najib announced at the September Leader's Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism hosted by President Obama in New York that Malaysia was part of the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL. Malaysian authorities arrested approximately 90 suspected ISIL supporters and other terrorists in 2015 and convicted at least 13 in court. The Malaysian government identified 72 Malaysians, including 14 women, who have joined ISIL, 51 of whom were armed fighters. By the end of the year, Malaysian authorities had identified a total of 14 Malaysians killed fighting with ISIL, and seven of whom had returned to Malaysia. Malaysia continued to strengthen its counterterrorism cooperation with the United States. President Obama returned to Malaysia in November for the East Asia Summit and related meetings. During his visit, President Obama committed the United States to support the Malaysian government in developing a regional messaging center to counter terrorist propaganda. Deputy Prime Minister/Home Minister Zahid visited Washington in October, when he and Secretary of State Kerry signed a terrorist watchlist-sharing arrangement, pursuant to Homeland Security Presidential Directive-6. The agreement provides a foundation for a long-term, comprehensive, and systematic exchange of information on known and suspected terrorists, and will allow Malaysian authorities to screen individuals against U.S. watchlists. A team from the U.S. Terrorist Screening Center visited Kuala Lumpur in December to establish with Malaysian authorities technical steps for implementing the agreement. In November, Malaysia and the United States signed a similar information sharing agreement focused on serious crime, called the Preventing and Combatting Serious Crime (PCSC) Agreement. The PCSC agreement provides for automated checks and exchanges of biometric information on serious criminals. Malaysia sometimes used national security and counterterrorism arguments to delegitimize some social groups and political activities. For example, high-level officials from the ruling coalition have publicly stated that ISIL and G25, a pro-reform Islamic NGO composed of retired senior civil servants, were the two most pressing threats to Malaysian security. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: In May, Militants allegedly from the Philippines and linked to the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) kidnapped two Malaysians from a restaurant in Sandakan, eastern Sabah, Malaysia. ASG terrorists on the southern Philippine island of Jolo reportedly released one of the victims in November following a ransom payment. Several days later, however, the other victim was beheaded, reportedly due to a dispute between the kidnappers over the ransom payment. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: In April, Malaysia's Parliament passed two new counterterrorism laws and amended previous legislation, providing authorities with greater legal tools against foreign terrorist fighters and other terrorist supporters. The Special Measures Against Terrorism in Foreign Countries Bill enables authorities to suspend or revoke Malaysian travel documents for individuals suspected of planning to leave the country to engage in terrorist acts. The new laws passed with limited public debate granting broad new powers to the Prime Minister. Amendments to the Penal Code criminalized the receipt of terrorist training, the preparation of terrorist acts, and possession of items (such as books and promotional materials) associated with terrorist groups. The amendments also ban travel to, through, or from Malaysia to engage in terrorism, criminalize the use of social media to promote terrorism, and expand the definition of "support to terrorist groups." While most of the legislative changes passed in 2015 are consistent with a rule-of-law approach to counterterrorism, the U.S. government and other observers, including the Malaysian Bar Council, raised concerns that the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) and amendments to the Prevention of Crime Act (POCA) reinstate preventive detention without trial and could be used against political opponents of the government. POTA covers the commission or support of terrorist acts outside of Malaysia, whereas the POCA amendments expand preventive detention authority to broader criminal activity. Fueling these concerns, in September, Malaysian authorities detained under the Security Offenses (Special Measures) Act (SOSMA) authority a former ruling party politician who had been critical of the government. In early October, police detained his lawyer, also under SOSMA authority. Both were detained for the maximum 28 days allowed by the law, and were subsequently charged under Chapter VI, Section 124L for "attempt to commit sabotage." In early December, the Malaysian Parliament passed the National Security Council Act, which gives the Prime Minister unchecked authority to wield martial-law-like powers in any part of the country designated by the Prime Minister as a "security area." Similar powers are defined by the Malaysian constitution, but were previously reserved to the king. The Royal Malaysian Police Special Branch Counterterrorism Unit has the lead counterterrorism law enforcement role. Malaysian authorities continued to improve interagency cooperation and information sharing, including participation in regional meetings, Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) events, and training conducted through Malaysia's Southeast Asia Regional Centre for Counter-Terrorism (SEARCCT), which is part of Malaysia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Most of Malaysia's terrorism-related arrests in 2015 were under SOSMA and penal code chapters VI (Offenses Against the State) and VIa (Offenses Relating to Terrorism). Malaysia convicted at least 13 ISIL supporters in 2015, all of whom pled guilty in return for reduced sentences. Those convicted included a father and son sentenced to 18 years and 12 years respectively for plotting attacks in Malaysia; several individuals sentenced to two years following their arrest at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on their way to join ISIL in Syria, including a woman who planned to marry an ISIL fighter she had met online; a 55-year-old mother of a deceased ISIL fighter sentenced to two years for using Facebook to promote terrorism; and two military personnel sentenced to seven and nine months in prison for possessing an image of an ISIL flag on their cell phones. In October, at the request of the U.S. government, Malaysian police arrested Ardit Ferizi, a 20-year-old computer hacker from Kosovo who had provided ISIL with personal information of more than 1,300 U.S. government employees. Ferizi's extradition to the United States was pending as of early December. In April, the trial began for al-Qa'ida operative Yazid Sufaat and accomplice Muhammad Hilmi Hasim, and remained underway at year's end. Sufaat and Hasim were arrested in 2013 for recruiting Malaysians to fight in Syria and are charged with inciting or promoting the commission of terrorist acts under Malaysia's penal code, and membership of a terrorist organization. Sufaat's other accomplice, Halimah Hussein, remained at large at year's end. The trial of 30 suspects 27 Philippine nationals and three Malaysians involved in the February 2013 Lahad Datu incursion, began in January 2014 and remained ongoing at the end of 2015. The suspects were on trial under SOSMA for harboring terrorists, membership of a terrorist group, recruiting terrorists, and waging war against the king. Iranian citizen, and suspected member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, Masoud Sedaghatzadeh, arrested in Malaysia in February 2012 after failed attempted bombings in Bangkok, remained in Malaysian custody. A Malaysian court had ordered Sedaghatzadeh's extradition to Thailand in 2012, but his appeal remained pending at year's end. With U.S. assistance, the Royal Malaysian Police and Immigration Department took steps to provide immigration authorities with direct access to INTERPOL databases. Also with assistance from the United States, Malaysia began near-daily reporting to INTERPOL of stolen and lost travel documents. Malaysia has a no-fly list, but passengers are compared to that list by the immigration officer at the port of entry and the decision to deny entry is made at the airport. In 2015, Malaysia made notable progress implementing UN Security Council Resolution 2178 by passing new legislation, increasing information sharing with international partners, strengthening efforts to halt the flow of foreign terrorist fighters, engaging with civil society and local communities, and promoting non-violent avenues for conflict prevention, such as the creation of MyCorps, a Malaysian version of the Peace Corps. The Malaysian government enforced a maritime curfew along the eastern coast of Sabah, in response to the continued threat of kidnapping for ransom and other transnational threats. In September, Malaysia's Deputy Prime Minister/Home Minister announced plans to establish a new Border Security Agency, which would include police, customs, and immigration officials. As of year's end, that agency had not yet been created. Malaysia continued to participate in the Department of State's Antiterrorism Assistance program, with programs focused on strengthening law enforcement capacity to secure Malaysia's borders from terrorist transit. In 2015, the U.S. Department of State launched in Malaysia a regional maritime law enforcement initiative, which includes Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. The Department of State's Export Controls and Related Border Security Program conducted capacity-building activities for customs, police, immigration, the Attorney General's Chamber, coast guard, and strategic trade officials. Malaysia participated in the Container Security and Megaports Initiatives, as well as the UN Office on Drugs and Crime's Container Control Program. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Malaysia became a member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in 2015, and is a member of the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering, a FATF-style regional body. Malaysia's financial intelligence unit (the Unit Perisikan Kewangan, Bank Negara Malaysia) is a member of the Egmont Group. In September 2015, FATF published its Mutual Evaluation Report on Malaysia's anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) measures. The report praised Malaysia's robust policy framework, strong political commitment and well-functioning coordination structures for AML/CFT, although it underscored the need for Malaysia to improve its understanding of terrorist finance risk. Malaysia has a well-developed AML/CFT framework, and a capable Financial Intelligence and Enforcement Unit within the Bank Negara Malaysia, the central bank of Malaysia. While terrorism financing was not considered a high risk in Malaysia's most recent National Risk Assessment (NRA), the continued influence of ISIL suggests that threat may be increasing: in particular, a small but growing number of "self-financed" terrorists have sought to raise funds through family, friends, and the internet to support their travel to fight with ISIL. Understanding of ISIL-related financing risks evolved in 2015, and Malaysia plans to update its most recent NRA to include further assessment of terrorist finance risks. Malaysia has not prosecuted any terrorist finance cases to date, although it has commenced 40 terrorist finance investigations since 2010, with 22 ongoing at year's end. All 12 of the cases opened since 2014 related to ISIL. Malaysia has implemented sanctions in accordance with relevant UNSCRs, including designating domestic and foreign entities under UNSCR 1373 and co-sponsoring designations and freezing assets of individuals and entities on the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida sanctions regime. The 2014 amendments to the Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act provide for automatic translation of UN designations into designations under Malaysian law and direct reference to the lists maintained by the UN. Malaysia routinely distributed lists of terrorist designations and freezing obligations to financial institutions. The use of informal remittances created vulnerability for abuse by terrorist financiers. Malaysia has undertaken strong regulatory and enforcement action against unauthorized money services businesses that operate in the informal economy. Strengthened controls, enforcement and other supervisory measures have boosted the use of formal remittance channels, although risks from unauthorized money services businesses remain. Malaysia requires Know Your Customer (KYC) data for a wide range of entities, and requires financial institutions to promptly report transactions suspected to involve proceeds of any unlawful activity via Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs). Malaysia does not oblige non-profit organizations to file STRs, but they are required to file annual financial reports to the Registrar of Societies (ROS), which may file such reports. Law enforcement works with the ROS and other charity regulators to prevent misuse and terrorism financing in the NPO sector, especially in vulnerable areas like religious or charitable NPOs. The ROS also conducts an annual conference for its members on the risks of terrorism financing. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm Countering Violent Extremism: Senior Malaysian officials actively participated in the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) in February and related events held throughout the year. Prime Minister Najib announced Malaysia's plans to develop a counterterrorism messaging center at the September Leader's Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism hosted by President Obama in New York. Following that announcement, the U.S. Department of State worked closely with the government to develop a concept for the center. The Home Affairs Minister also actively engaged in CVE efforts, including through his participation at the CVE Summit held in Sydney, Australia, in June. SEARCCT conducted several regional programs on countering violent extremism. The Global Movement of Moderates (GMM), a Malaysian-based organization founded by Prime Minister Najib, conducted several CVE programs, including a public forum on youth and terrorism. In May, with support from the U.S. Department of Justice Resident Legal Advisor, GMM organized a workshop in partnership with Google to develop the capacity of civil society, including bloggers, academics, students, journalists, and community activists to develop credible online campaigns to counter terrorist propaganda. International and Regional Cooperation: As the 2015 chair of ASEAN, Malaysia convened multiple multilateral events focused on strengthening international cooperation on counterterrorism and CVE. In March, the Minister of Defense hosted the ASEAN Defense Ministers Ministerial in Langkawi, resulting in a joint declaration committing to greater regional cooperation to counter the ISIL threat. Also in March, SEARCCT hosted an ASEAN Regional Forum workshop on counter-radicalization. Deputy Prime Minister Zahid participated in the UNSC Ministerial Meeting on Foreign Terrorist Fighters in May. In September, the Deputy Prime Minister hosted in Kuala Lumpur a Special ASEAN Meeting on the Rise of Radicalization and Violent Extremism. At the East Asia Summit held in Kuala Lumpur in November, Malaysia co-sponsored with Australia a statement on CVE and sponsored a statement on the Global Movement of Moderates. SEARCCT hosted 18 training events in 2015, including seminars on crisis management, terrorist finance, and transportation security. Malaysian officials participated in several Global Counterterrorism Forum events, including a workshop on border security and a plenary session on the detention and reintegration of terrorist prisoners. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Macedonia Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Macedonia, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518da8b.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Macedonia recognizes the threat of global terrorism and is a solid U.S. counterterrorism ally. In 2015, Macedonia's major counterterrorism efforts included a counterterrorism operation that resulted in the indictment of 37 and the arrest of 13 individuals under the recently-passed law on foreign terrorist fighters. Dozens of Macedonian citizens have traveled to the Middle East as foreign terrorist fighters, although there are indications that the recent arrests have had a deterrent effect. Macedonia has shown a strong commitment to the Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Macedonia is a member of the foreign terrorist fighter working group within the Coalition, and Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski attended the White House's Leaders' Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism in September in New York. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: On April 21 an armed group of approximately 40 people seized weapons, ammunition, and radio communication supplies from a border police station in Goshince near the border with Kosovo. On May 9-10, the Macedonian police authorities carried out a police action in Kumanovo, ostensibly to recover the stolen equipment. This action resulted in the deaths of eight Macedonian police officers and 10 members of the armed group. Although the motives of the armed group remain unclear, the Public Prosecutor's Office classified the incident as an act of terrorism and charged three suspects with leading a terrorist organization and 26 with participating in a terrorist organization. In addition, there were several minor incidents that could be classified as terrorist acts: On February 18, unknown perpetrators placed an IED at a government building housing the main court on February 18. The device failed to detonate properly and caused minimal property damage. Small explosions caused minor property damage next to the Macedonian government headquarters building in Skopje (April), near ethnic Albanian political party DUI's headquarters in Tetovo (May), in a parking garage in Kumanovo (July), at the Skopje City Police Station (July), and in a residential neighborhood of Skopje (October). The police have not identified suspects for any of these incidents, which remained under investigation at the end of 2015. In a letter released to the media signed by "Commander Kushtrimi," the National Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the April explosion that occurred outside of the Macedonian government headquarters building in Skopje. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Macedonia's criminal code, criminal procedure code, and law on prevention of money laundering and terrorism finance contain comprehensive counterterrorism provisions. Domestic and international acts of terrorism are proscribed, and in September 2014, the country's counterterrorism law was modified to include a provision criminalizing participation as a foreign terrorist fighter. During an August 6 operation, dubbed "Operation Cell," the Ministry of Interior (MOI) carried out simultaneous search warrants at 26 sites in five municipalities and arrested nine individuals, charging them under the revised counterterrorism laws. Authorities arrested additional individuals in later months, bringing the total number arrested under the operation to 13. Macedonia participated in capacity-building programs to strengthen criminal justice institutions and promote the rule of law, which included 12 training sessions on strategic planning, leadership, and management skills for the MOI Public Security Bureau. The United States donated 20 computers to the police to be used in support of the Criminal Intelligence Analysis Sector; trained 163 students about the principles of Intelligence-Led Policing; delivered two crime analysis training classes; sponsored multiple events promoting more effective relationships between the Balkans national law enforcement agencies; provided 14 customs- and border control-related training events for 140 government officials as well as equipment valued at more than US $148,000, including surveillance, inspection, and detection equipment. The Department of State supported Macedonian participation in a variety of bilateral and regional trainings for law enforcement officials, investigators, prosecutors, and judges to increase capacity to address foreign terrorist fighter-related cases and threats. Macedonia's security sector is equipped and disposed to deal effectively with terrorism within its borders. The police action in Kumanovo revealed command and control, tactical, casualty care, and messaging as areas for improvement. Primary responsibility for detecting and investigating terrorism falls to the Department for Security and Counterintelligence (UBK) within the MOI. Interdiction and arrest capabilities lie primarily with the Special Units, namely the Rapid Deployment Unit and the Special Task Unit, also within the MOI. The "Alpha" units of the Skopje Police Department (also MOI) respond to kinetic activity within Skopje (approximately half of Macedonia's citizens live in Skopje); however, this unit is also deployed outside of Skopje. Macedonia is taking steps to improve its counterterrorism-related law enforcement capacity. It recently nominated a counterterrorism coordinator who is responsible for developing a counterterrorism action plan. Additionally, the government is establishing an interagency coordinative body that will address counterterrorism issues. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Macedonia is a member of the Council of Europe's Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism (MONEYVAL), a Financial Action Task Force-style regional body. MONEYVAL completed its fourth evaluation of Macedonia and issued recommendations for improving its terrorism financing laws. In line with MONEYVAL's recommendations, the government submitted to Parliament draft amendments to the Criminal Code's terrorism and terrorism financing laws, which underwent a second reading in Parliament on December 10, and were pending final adoption at year's end. In 2015, the Macedonian financial intelligence unit received 15 suspicious transaction reports for terrorism financing, which were adequately processed and were under investigation. In 2015, there were no criminal charges for terrorism financing. Banks and money-transfer agents were well regulated and supervised and there were no indications that they were used for terrorism-financing activities. Banks do not allow opening of anonymous bank accounts, and bearer shares are not permitted. All financial institutions in the country have programs in place that comply with anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regulations. Exchange offices and money transfer agents who operate outside of the banking sector as well as other reporting entities such as notaries, lawyers, and casinos need further improvements in their AML/CFT programs, practices, and training. An overly-complicated confiscation regime that remains conviction-based hindered effective freezing and confiscation of terrorist assets. Macedonia has an agency for the management of seized and forfeited assets, but the agency has limited capacity and requires additional training. With the latest changes to the AML/CFT law from September 2014, non-profit organizations were taken out of the list of obliged reporting entities. Previously, when they were on the list, none of them had filed reports on suspicious transactions. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The Government of Macedonia has appointed a national coordinator to focus on CVE. Existing ethnic and religious tensions between ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians complicated effective CVE programming. There were no significant efforts by the government to create strategic communication or counter narratives, and there were no programs to rehabilitate and reintegrate terrorists into mainstream society. Macedonia participated in regional and international discussions on these issues, and the government has a good understanding of the issue. Both the United States and OSCE coordinated efforts in 2015 to start CVE programs in Macedonia. The Islamic Community of Macedonia has spoken out against radicalization and violent extremism. Regional and Internal Cooperation: Macedonia is an enthusiastic partner both regionally and internationally on counterterrorism, although Greece's unwillingness to recognize Macedonia's name sometimes limits Macedonia's ability to fully participate in multilateral fora. Macedonia is a NATO- and EU-candidate country; disagreements over the constitutional name of the country have prohibited its entry. On December 30, 2014, Kosovo's and Macedonia's state prosecutors signed a memorandum of understanding in Pristina to coordinate activities against transnational organized crime and terrorism. In January, Macedonia and Kosovo formally opened a Common Center for Police Cooperation, located at the Blace/Hani I Elezit border crossing point, which serves as an information-sharing center and will manage the flow of information and intelligence between the respective police agencies. In April, the Public Prosecutors of Macedonia and Bulgaria signed a cooperation agreement that will allow them to work together better to counter organized crime, corruption, human trafficking, and illegal trade of weapons and narcotics. Macedonia is a member of the OSCE and hosted an OSCE-implemented workshop for criminal justice that focused on several of the good practices showcased in the GCTF's Rabat Memorandum Good Practices for Effective Counterterrorism Practices in the Criminal Justice Sector. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Libya Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Libya, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518da913.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: In 2015, the continued conflict between the then internationally-recognized government in Tobruk and the Tripoli-based faction allowed violent extremist groups to expand their foothold in Libya. Although all sides in the conflict claimed to reject terrorism, security forces and armed groups affiliated with both sides were more focused on their opponents in the internal conflict than on combatting violent extremist groups. Libya's porous borders, vast uncontrolled weapons stockpiles, and critically weak law enforcement institutions continued to make it a permissive environment for terrorist groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Ansar al-Sharia, and other groups. There were reports of infighting between ISIL and other Libyan violent extremist groups and conservative militias, including the expulsion of ISIL from the eastern city of Darnah by a coalition of competing extremist groups. As the internal conflict between the rival factions continued in 2015, terrorist groups were able to exploit the lack of effective state institutions to increase greatly their influence in Libya. ISIL expanded its control of the area around the coastal city of Sirte, which it initially seized in 2014. ISIL imposed its strict form of sharia law and instituted public punishment and executions. Following an attempted uprising against ISIL in Sirte in August, ISIL reportedly crucified four men; according to media, others have been executed since then for failing to adhere to ISIL rules or for being "spies" or "sorcerers." Additionally, ISIL is believed to be responsible for a series of killings in Ajdabiya targeting military and religious leaders opposed to ISIL. A coalition of conservative militia and some violent Islamist extremists remained in control of the eastern city of Darnah, which has lacked virtually any state presence since the 2011 revolution. ISIL, which had previously controlled the city, was expelled in June by the Shura Council of Mujahideen in Darnah, an umbrella organization consisting of conservative militias and Salafist groups opposed to ISIL, including the U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization Ansar al-Shari'a in Darnah. In 2015, violent extremist groups in Darnah reportedly employed summary executions and public floggings to enforce their interpretation of sharia law, and carried out assassinations and beheadings of civil society activists, judges, and security officials. Conflict in Benghazi continued between General Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) and the Benghazi Revolutionaries Shura Council, an umbrella organization of extremist groups and anti-Haftar militia. The LNA has been unsuccessful in its stated goal of removing violent extremist organizations from Benghazi. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: The following list of terrorist incidents is designed to highlight major attacks believed to be perpetrated by violent extremist groups against western, diplomatic, Libyan government, and civil society targets. It is not exhaustive and does not encompass the numerous acts of violence perpetrated by the parties to the current political conflict, which have each accused their opponents of conducting kidnappings, assassinations, and attacks on civilian infrastructure such as airports and seaports. The list of incidents in Ajdabiya, Benghazi, Darnah, and Sirte should not be considered comprehensive. Frequently, there were no claims of responsibility for assassinations or other attacks. In January, ISIL declared the city of Sirte part of the group's caliphate and seized the local radio station, a hospital, and other government buildings. On January 27, gunmen attacked the Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli, killing 10. ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack. On February 15, a video published on social media depicted the beheading of 21 Coptic Christian migrant workers, all but one of them Egyptian. ISIL's "Tripoli Province" claimed responsibility for the killings. On February 22, two bombs exploded at the residence of the Iranian ambassador to Libya. The residence was unoccupied and no one was injured. ISIL claimed responsibility for the bombing. On April 13, a gunman opened fire outside the South Korean Embassy in Tripoli, killing two and wounding one. On the same day, a bomb exploded outside the Moroccan Embassy in Tripoli. There were no casualties. On April 19, a video published on social media depicted the execution by beheading and gunshot of approximately 30 Ethiopian Christians. ISIL claimed responsibility for the killings. On April 20, there was an explosion outside the Spanish Embassy in Tripoli; there were no casualties. On August 12, members of ISIL killed Sheikh Khalid Ben Rajah, a local imam in Sirte, after he refused to relinquish control of his mosque. An uprising against ISIL in Sirte resulted, which led to ISIL killing at least twenty members of the uprising and hanging some of their corpses from street lights. In late August, ISIL conducted multiple public beheadings and crucifixions in Sirte. On October 16, ISIL beheaded two Libyan men in Sirte accused of sorcery. On October 18, a video was published depicting the killing of a Christian man from South Sudan, for which ISIL claimed responsibility. On October 23, a political demonstration against the UN-led Political Dialogue was shelled; the attack killed 12 and injured 39. No group claimed responsibility for the attack. On October 29, Salafist preacher Sheikh Suleiman Kabylie was killed when a car bomb exploded beneath his vehicle. He had been an outspoken critic of ISIL and had denounced terrorism on social media. ISIL claimed responsibility for his killing. On November 6, a Salafist preacher opposed to ISIL, Faraj al-Oraibi, was killed when exiting his mosque in Ajdabiya. On November 26, four men with Salafist ties were killed in Ajdabiya, purportedly for their perceived opposition to ISIL and Ansar al-Sharia. The Libyan Foreign Minister claimed on December 1 that ISIL had killed 37 people in Ajdabiya as of that date. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Libya lacks a comprehensive counterterrorism law, although the Libyan penal code criminalizes offenses prejudicial to state security, including terrorism, the promotion of terrorist acts, and the handling of money in support of such acts. In 2013, the General National Congress (GNC) at that time Libya's official legislature adopted laws outlining a plan to disband non-state militias and integrate them into state security forces; however, neither law has been implemented. Libya has ratified the AU's Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism, which requires states to criminalize terrorist acts under their national laws. The Libyan government, in the midst of a protracted internal conflict, proved incapable of confronting the rapid expansion of terrorist groups in Libya. Neither the then internationally-recognized government in Tobruk nor the rival faction in Tripoli produced a strategy to combat the growing terrorist threat. Nor was there any new legislation passed to confront the growing threat of terrorism in Libya. Even prior to the outbreak of large-scale violence in July 2014, Libyan law enforcement personnel lacked the capacity to detect, deter, respond to, or investigate terrorist incidents. There were no reported terrorism-related prosecutions in 2015. In many parts of Libya, security and law enforcement functions were provided by armed militias rather than state institutions. National police and security forces were fragmented, inadequately trained and equipped, and lacked clear reporting chains and coordination mechanisms. Security and law enforcement officials, including prosecutors and judges, have been targeted in kidnappings and assassinations, resulting in the continued suspension of court operations in Benghazi and Darnah. ISIL declared its own police presence in Sirte in December. Libya's military was similarly weak, with units often breaking down along local, tribal, or factional lines. Formal security structures were often overmatched by non-state armed groups. Counterterrorism operations conducted by Libyan Special Operations Forces have failed to significantly reduce the level of terrorist violence, bombings, assassinations, or kidnappings in Benghazi. The Libyan government lacked a comprehensive border management strategy and was unable to secure the country's thousands of miles of land and maritime borders, enabling the illicit flow of goods, weapons, migrants, and foreign terrorist fighters that pose serious security challenges to the region. Libyan border security forces were generally poorly trained and underequipped, and frequently participated in illicit cross-border trade. Border security infrastructure damaged and looted during the 2011 revolution has not been repaired or replaced, and the ongoing conflict has affected border security infrastructure along Libya's border with Tunisia. The gunmen in the March 18 attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis and the June 26 attack on the Riu Imperial Marhaba Hotel in Sousse were Tunisian nationals, but reportedly trained in Libya before the attacks. Security at Libya's airports was minimal, with limited document screening and no utilization of Passenger Name Record systems or biometric technology. Libya also lacked the resources, manpower, and training to conduct sufficient maritime patrols to interdict or dissuade illicit maritime trafficking and irregular migration. According to Italian officials, more than 100,000 migrants arrived in Italy in 2015, many transiting through Libya. Existing legislation outlining the responsibilities of various government agencies in the area of border management was vague and often contradictory, resulting in ad hoc and poorly coordinated efforts. Previous international border security efforts, particularly the EU Border Assistance Mission to Libya (EUBAM), remained on hold, with staff relocated to Tunisia and a considerable reduction in personnel. EUBAM remained in contact with Libyan border officials, primarily those from the Libyan Coast Guard and the Department for Combatting Illegal Migration. Libya has historically expressed desire to cooperate in the investigation of terrorist attacks against U.S. citizens and interests, including the September 2012 killing of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans at U.S. government facilities in Benghazi. However, Libyan support to these investigations has been limited given the overall weak capacity in Libya's law enforcement institutions and complications from the country's political conflict. In 2013, the Libyan Ministry of Justice signed a Declaration of Intent to facilitate law enforcement cooperation with the United States on investigations, including that of the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 bombing. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Libya is a member of the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force, a Financial Action Task Force-style regional body. There was little reliable data on Libya's 2015 anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing progress or efforts, and Libyan government and financial institutions generally lacked the ability to identify and interdict illicit financial flows. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The Libyan government has not adopted a comprehensive strategy for countering violent extremism. Continuing online threats, kidnappings, and assassinations of activists who speak out against violent extremists contributed to a culture of intimidation and self-censorship. International and Regional Cooperation: Since the outbreak of large-scale violence in July 2014, nearly all diplomatic missions in Libya withdrew from the country, including the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL). The political conflict and lack of an international presence in Libya severely limited cooperation on counterterrorism activities. Previous bilateral programs, which sought to increase the capacity of Libya's law enforcement and defense institutions, have been on hold since 2014. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Lebanon Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Lebanon, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518daa2a.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Lebanon grappled with significant terrorist threats in 2015, both internally and on its borders as a result of worsening spillover from Syria. Hizballah, which fully mobilized in support of the Asad regime, and to a lesser extent individual Lebanese who supported various opposition forces, made Lebanon a magnet for violent retribution. After nearly a year of relative internal calm, the November 12 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) suicide bombings in Beirut's southern suburbs marked the capital's deadliest terrorist attack in more than a decade and were reminiscent of the wave of Sunni terrorist attacks against Shia population centers and Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) targets in 2013-2014. Lebanon also faced a terrorist threat from hundreds of ISIL and al-Nusrah Front terrorists who operated along the porous, undemarcated eastern border with Syria and carried out guerrilla-like attacks against the LAF on a regular basis. The continued presence of these Syria-origin Sunni extremists in Lebanese territory underscored both the centrality of border security to Lebanon's stability and the importance of enabling the Lebanese government to exercise its full sovereignty, as mandated by UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1701. Despite the paralysis of the political decision-making apparatus, various institutions of the Lebanese state, including the LAF, Internal Security Forces (ISF), and Central Bank, continued to cooperate with international partners in combating terrorism and have scored some notable successes in the disruption of terrorist networks and in combating terrorist forces. The United States remained Lebanon's closest counterterrorism partner, and the bilateral relationship is robust and growing. U.S. assistance focused on strengthening Lebanon's security institutions so they can better exert sovereign authority and maintain border security in accordance with UNSCR 1701, and counter terrorist threats. Ongoing internal political deadlock prevented the election of a new Lebanese president and weakened state function. In the absence of a president, the 24-member cabinet, which includes members of Hizballah, is paralyzed in political deadlock and has not met regularly since mid-2015. Lebanon's enormous refugee crisis has also complicated efforts to maintain stability. A country of approximately four million, Lebanon hosted nearly 1.1 million registered refugees from Syria as of the end of 2015. Lebanese authorities were challenged not only by the significant burden the refugees placed on its financial and natural resources, infrastructure, and host communities, but also by fears of potential militant recruiting among the refugee population. ISIL and Nusrah Front's use of informal refugee settlements near the northeastern town of Aarsal in the Beqaa Valley further hardened Lebanese attitudes towards Syrian refugees. Hizballah, with considerable support from Iran, remained the most capable terrorist group in Lebanon, enjoying popular support among many Lebanese Shia and allied Christians. Hizballah continued to operate as an armed militia beyond the control of the state and as a powerful political actor that can hobble or topple the government. Hizballah justified its stockpile of arms for its "resistance" to any potential conflict with Israel. The government did not take significant action to disarm Hizballah or eliminate its safe havens in Lebanese territory. Despite Lebanon's official dissociation policy regarding the Syrian conflict, Hizballah accelerated its military role in support of the Syrian regime in 2015 and has proved to be a necessary force in propping up the regime. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has had a presence in Lebanon since the early 1980s and coordinated closely with Hizballah on military operations and training. Hizballah engaged in terrorist activity against Israel on January 28 when it attacked an Israeli military convoy near the Shebaa Farms area, killing two Israeli soldiers and wounding several others. The attack was the most severe eruption of violence between Israel and Hizballah in the area since 2006. Other designated terrorist groups, including Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command, Asbat al-Ansar, Fatah al-Islam, Fatah al-Intifada, Jund al-Sham, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, and several other splinter groups, continued to operate within Lebanon's borders, although primarily out of Lebanon's 12 Palestinian refugee camps. ISIL and Nusrah Front also had a limited, but growing presence in the camps. The LAF did not maintain a presence in the camps, but it conducted limited operations and patrols near the camps and across Lebanon to counter terrorist threats. Lebanon is a member of the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL and the Foreign Minister has attended several counter-ISIL Coalition ministerial meetings. The Lebanese security forces seek to limit the ISIL threat at home, including the flow of foreign terrorist fighters both to and from Syria, by working to secure the porous, ungoverned border with Syria and conducting counterterrorism operations within Lebanon. The LAF and other security services also were actively engaged in monitoring potential ISIL elements in Lebanon, disrupting their activities and networks, and arresting those suspected of plotting terrorist attacks. The government expanded its efforts to counter ISIL messaging, but these efforts were not coordinated among different government agencies. In accordance with UNSCR 2178, the Lebanese government increased security measures at airports and border crossings to prevent the flow of ISIL and Nusrah Front fighters to Syria and Iraq. However, the Lebanese government has not taken significant action to prevent Hizballah from sending its fighters to Syria and Iraq. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: On January 10, two suicide bombers attacked a cafe in the Tripoli neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen, killing nine people and wounding more than 30. Al-Nusrah Front claimed responsibility for the attack. On January 28, Hizballah fired two laser-guided, anti-tank missiles from Lebanese territory at an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) convoy near the Shebaa Farms area south of the Blue Line, killing two IDF soldiers and wounding several others. On November 5, at least five people were killed and several others wounded after a suicide bomber detonated his suicide vest at a religious center in Aarsal. Lebanese authorities believed that ISIL carried out the attack, which targeted a group of Syrian Sunni clerics with close ties to the Nusrah Front. On November 12, two suicide bombers attacked a crowded street in Burj al-Barajneh, a neighborhood closely associated with Hizballah in the southern suburbs of Beirut, killing at least 45 civilians and wounding nearly 250 more. ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack, which was the deadliest in Beirut in more than a decade. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Lebanon does not have a comprehensive counterterrorism law, but several articles of Lebanon's criminal code (1943) are used to prosecute acts of terrorism. Implementation of these articles has at times been hindered by Lebanon's complex confessional political system, however, and also by Hizballah restricting access to attack sites that were within areas under its control. The cabinet did not consider legislative initiatives that could potentially threaten Hizballah's operations, as the presence of Hizballah and its political allies in the government make the requisite consensus on such actions impossible. State security agencies remained functional in combating non-Hizballah terrorism, but would benefit from stronger political support. The LAF, ISF, Directorate of General Security (DGS), and Directorate of State Security (DGSS) are the primary agencies responsible for combating terrorism. Despite notable counterterrorism successes in 2015, the law enforcement capacity of these agencies was overstretched due to the magnitude of the country's terrorism-related threats. Although cooperation among the services was inconsistent, all services have taken steps to improve information sharing and are receptive to additional training to expand capacity. Lebanon has been a participant in the Department of State's Antiterrorism Assistance program since 2006; this assistance has focused on border security as well as building law enforcement's investigative and leadership capabilities. The Department of State has provided assistance to improve the capabilities of the ISF through a multi-year program that includes construction of training facilities and establishment of a secure radio communications system, provision of vehicles, protective gear, and other types of equipment, and a wide range of training and mentoring activities. The Department of State also provided corrections training to bolster the ISF's limited capacity to manage its overcrowded prisons. The ISF has worked to prevent terrorist recruitment and the direction of terrorist activities by prison inmates who, in many cases, have access to cell phones and the internet. The LAF has primary responsibility for securing Lebanon's borders, but worked collaboratively with other agencies to prevent the infiltration of terrorists and illicit goods. The services have increased security measures at airports, border crossings, and ports to prevent the flow of ISIL and Nusrah Front fighters to Syria and Iraq, with a special emphasis on detecting counterfeit passports. The DGS, under the Interior Ministry, controls immigration and passport services, and it uses an electronic database to collect biographic data for travelers at all points of entry. Lebanon collects and disseminates Passenger Name Records (PNR) on commercial flights, but does not collect advance passenger information (API). The Lebanese security services disrupted multiple terrorist networks and made several high-profile arrests in 2015. On August 15, the DGS arrested Sheikh Ahmed al-Assir, a radical Salafist cleric who was one of Lebanon's most wanted fugitives since June 2013, when Assir and his supporters killed 18 soldiers during clashes with the LAF near Sidon. Information obtained during Assir's interrogation led to arrests of more than a dozen other suspected terrorists. In mid-November, the Lebanese security services unraveled terrorist networks in Beirut and Tripoli connected with ISIL's November 12 suicide attacks in Burj al-Barajneh. One ISF raid yielded 150 kilograms of explosives and three suicide vests. On May 13, the Lebanese Military Court sentenced former Lebanese Information Minister Michel Samaha to four and a half years in prison for "transporting explosives from Syria to Lebanon in an attempt to assassinate Lebanese political and religious leaders" in 2012. Procedural errors and public outcry over the relatively light sentence prompted a retrial, which began in July but did not produce a new verdict by the end of 2015. The United States maintains close ties with the Lebanese security services and could expect significant investigative support in a terrorism case affecting U.S. citizens or interests. Lebanese authorities maintained that amnesty for Lebanese involved in acts of violence during the 1975-90 civil wars prevented terrorism prosecutions of concern to the United States. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Lebanon is a member of the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force, a Financial Action Task Force-style regional body; and its financial intelligence unit, the Special Investigation Commission (SIC), is a member of the Egmont Group. It also participates in the Counter-ISIL Finance Group co-chaired by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Italy. Lebanese government officials and financial leaders have also met repeatedly with the U.S. government regarding the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Act of 2015, and said that they would fully comply with the new regulations. Lebanon's Central Bank, the Banque du Liban (BdL), issued Intermediate Circular No. 393 on June 30, amending Basic Circular No. 69, strengthening anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) controls on money remitters. On November 13, Parliament endorsed three laws intended to strengthen Lebanon's AML/CFT regime, which were published in the Official Gazette on November 24. These included: Law No.44 amending AML/CFT Law 318/2001 to further widen categories of reporting entities and increase the list of predicate crimes; it also allows confiscation of assets and sharing of confiscated assets with concerned countries; Law No. 42 requiring the declaration of cross-border transportation of cash; and Law No. 43 on the exchange of tax information, which would authorize the Ministry of Finance to join bilateral and multilateral agreements to exchange information related to tax evasion and tax fraud. In 2015, the ISF received two requests for assistance with terrorism cases from INTERPOL; the ISF investigated the two cases and forwarded them to the Public Prosecutor. The ISF did not receive any allegations of suspicious financial transactions that led to terrorism finance cases in 2015. The SIC is an independent legal entity empowered to investigate suspicious financial transactions and to freeze assets, reporting that it had received three cases in 2015 regarding individuals with alleged terrorism ties and alleged terrorism financing transactions. The SIC froze the individuals' financial assets (amounts undisclosed) in Lebanon's banking sector and forwarded the cases to the public prosecutor for further investigation. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: Several government institutions have programs that seek to counter violent extremism (CVE), but there was no overall national strategy in place. The Foreign Minister attended the Leaders' Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism hosted by President Obama in September 2015 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, and MFA representatives have attended U.S.-hosted working level meetings on counter-ISIL messaging. The LAF is developing a comprehensive counter-messaging strategy that amplifies moderate voices and uses TV spots, social media, billboards, and SMS texts to counter extremist narratives. There were no programs to rehabilitate and/or reintegrate terrorists into mainstream society. International and Regional Cooperation: The LAF partnered with several nations on a bilateral basis to receive training programs that focused on strengthening its counterterrorism capabilities. Lebanon is a member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Arab League, and attended Global Counterterrorism Forum meetings on counter-ISIL efforts. Lebanon continued to voice its commitment to fulfilling other relevant UNSCRs, including 1559 (2004), 1680 (2006), and 1701 (2006). The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, an international body investigating the 2005 assassination of former PM Rafiq Hariri, received Lebanon's annual contribution of approximately US $37.5 million on September 21. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Kuwait Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Kuwait, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dad13.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: During 2015, the Government of Kuwait continued to build and augment its capacity for counterterrorism and countering violent extremism (CVE). In June, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) conducted its first successful attack in Kuwait by bombing the Imam Sadeq Mosque (one of the country's most prominent Shia mosques), killing 27 worshippers and injuring 227 others. Fifteen suspects of different nationalities received death and jail sentences in connection with the bombing. ISIL also sought to inspire sympathizers to support, finance, or engage in conflicts outside of Kuwait. In response, the Government of Kuwait increased its emphasis on international counterterrorism cooperation and on internal CVE efforts, maintaining a robust counterterrorism relationship with the United States. Kuwait took several measures to improve the oversight and regulation of charitable fundraising, including monitoring transfers to international beneficiaries and regulating online donations. Kuwait joined the Small Group of the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, reflecting its contributions to several lines of effort of the counter-ISIL campaign. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: Despite efforts to detect and disrupt terrorist activities, June saw the most violent terrorist attack in recent memory when a Saudi ISIL suicide bomber attacked the Imam Sadeq Mosque during Friday prayers in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, killing 27 individuals (18 Kuwaitis, three Iranians, two Indians, one Saudi, one Pakistani and one stateless Arab [bidoon]), and wounding 227. In August, Kuwait authorities disrupted a terrorist cell composed of 26 Kuwaitis (all Shia), who had reportedly hidden a large amount of weapons, ammunition, and explosives at a farm near the al-Abdali border crossing with Iraq. The public prosecutor issued a media gag order on the ongoing investigation and trial following media speculation about links to Hizballah and Iran. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: The Kuwaiti government lacked a clear legal framework for prosecuting terrorism-related crimes, often having to resort to other legal statutes to try suspected terrorists, which hampered enforcement efforts. In February, the parliament passed a law that ordered citizens to surrender all unlicensed weapons and explosives by June 22, penalizing would-be violators with fines and jail sentences. In April, it passed a law that prescribed compulsory military service for all Kuwaiti males reaching 18 years of age. In June, it passed a law that regulated installment and operation of security cameras and other surveillance devices in public areas. In July, it passed a law mandating collection of DNA samples from all residents, in order to facilitate comparison to samples collected from terrorist attack scenes. Following the June bombing of the Imam Sadeq Mosque, the parliament passed a law that prescribed stiff penalties for counterterrorism-related cybercrimes. In September, a criminal court sentenced to death eight of the 29 suspects accused of plotting the Imam Sadeq Mosque attack. It sentenced seven others to jail sentences of varying length and acquitted the remaining suspects. Those indicted included Kuwaiti, Pakistani, and Saudi nationals, in addition to several bidoon. This case remained in the appeals process at the end of 2015. In November, local media announced the conviction of five residents of Kuwait on terrorism finance charges. Later that month, an additional six individuals were arrested on charges of providing financial and material support to ISIL. The court of appeals in December upheld the conviction and sentencing of two Kuwaiti citizens for joining and financially supporting ISIL. Law enforcement units were able to detect, deter, and respond to terrorist incidents. Their effectiveness could be made greater by better interagency and inter-ministry information sharing. Kuwaiti command and control structures were often stove-piped. Kuwait's primary counterterrorism organizations, the Ministry of Interior (MOI) and Kuwait National Guard (KNG), were well-resourced, receptive to suggestions, and actively engaged in training opportunities. Under the Joint Combined Educational Training program, the Embassy's Office of Military Cooperation engaged with local counterterrorism units for both training and bilateral exercises in an effort to match capabilities with resources. Because the MOI also includes the country's criminal investigative apparatus and border protection mission, it has broad latitude with respect to investigations and border security. The MOI is also generally considered the single point of contact for incident response, but some terrorist-related matters do fall under the prerogative of the Kuwait State Security Service, a semi-autonomous arm of the MOI. The Government of Kuwait continued its programs to improve physical border security through the employment of biometric systems, aerial reconnaissance, and border sensors. The means by which ISIL carried out the Imam Sadeq Mosque attack with the Saudi suicide bomber and his explosive device entering through the international airport and a land border crossing, respectively highlighted deficiencies in aviation security and border control. In March, the Government of Kuwait imposed travel bans on two foreign national residents previously designated by the United States for support of terrorism. The Kuwaiti government subsequently froze the individuals' assets in accordance with UNSCR 1373, but had not taken action in 2015 against a third individual (a Kuwaiti national), who was listed on the UN sanctions lists as a financier of al-Nusrah Front. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Kuwait is a member of the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force (MENAFATF), a Financial Action Task Force-style regional body. In recognition of the Kuwaiti government's efforts to address previously-identified counterterrorism finance deficiencies, MENAFATF in February removed Kuwait from the International Cooperation Review Group process, recognizing the jurisdiction as one that had accomplished all of the targets on its Action Plan; it was also noted for having the means and will to continue to sustain the reforms. A ministerial-level counterterrorism committee consisting of 16 governmental bodies and chaired by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs met regularly to execute Kuwait's AML/CFT obligations under UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs) and domestic regulations. However, entities and individuals within Kuwait continue to remain a funding source for terrorist and extremist groups. In June, the parliament passed a cybercrime law that criminalized online fundraising for terrorist purposes. The law closed a counterterrorism finance loophole that allowed online extremist fundraising and facilitation. The Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor (MOSAL) took several steps to regulate and monitor charitable fund-raising, and in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs assure the legitimacy of foreign beneficiaries. In 2015, MOSAL detected 80 violations of illegal fundraising, leading to the dissolution of two licensed and a number of unlicensed charities. New regulations required individuals and organizations to register and apply for permits. MOSAL curtailed fundraising via social media, with staff assigned to search for illegal online solicitations. In cooperation with the MOI, MOSAL took action against illegal fundraising by individuals, by unregistered groups, and in mosques during Ramadan. For additional information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INSCR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The Government of Kuwait has a number of local counter-messaging campaigns often focused on religion that it supports, reportedly on radio, television, and billboards. Media reported that the Minister of Interior issued a November Executive Order transferring the Center for Counseling and Rehabilitation from its current location within Kuwait City's Central Prison to a new facility with an expanded faculty and a broadened mandate, in order to emulate the scope of the Muhammad bin Naif's Center for Counselling and Rehabilitation in Saudi Arabia. International and Regional Cooperation: Kuwait cooperated regionally and internationally on counterterrorism issues, including in the Global Counterterrorism Forum. Kuwait is a member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism. Kuwaiti officials issued statements encouraging enhanced cooperation among Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Arab League states on counterterrorism issues, and the Kuwaiti government hosted international meetings on subjects ranging from countering extremist ideology to combating terrorism financing. Kuwait participated in the August U.S.-GCC Counterterrorism and Border Security Working Group meeting in Riyadh. In addition to bilateral cooperation with the United States, Kuwaiti security officials also worked with other international counterparts to conduct missions and exchange information. Kuwait was the sole GCC member state that did not ratify the Gulf Security Pact, which would enhance regional counterterrorism cooperation potential. Photo: VNA During the reception, the host remarked that the Vietnamese NA and Government always support and create the most favourable conditions for the justice ministries of Vietnam and Laos to enhance cooperation and mutual support, thus boosting links between the two nations. He highlighted the enhanced relations between Vietnam and Laos, saying that this contributes practically to implementing joint statements and high-level agreements signed by the two countries. Vietnam will do its utmost to deepen bilateral relations, he stressed. For his part, Xaysy Santivong reported on the outcomes of talks between the two ministries to his host, expressing his hope that Vietnam will continue sharing experience in the judicial field with Laos./. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Kosovo Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Kosovo, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dae1e.html [accessed 26 October 2022] Comments All reference to Kosovo should be understood in full compliance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244. 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. Overview: The threat of violent Islamist extremism has been slowly growing in Kosovo since its 1999 conflict, assisted in part by funding from foreign organizations that preach extremist ideologies. Approximately 250 to 300 foreign terrorist fighters from Kosovo have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or al-Nusrah Front, of which approximately 50 have been killed. Violent extremist groups actively used social media to spread propaganda and recruit followers. No terrorist incidents took place inside Kosovo in 2015, although police have arrested suspects for planning such attacks. In September, the Government of Kosovo approved a comprehensive strategy and action plan for countering violent extremism (CVE). The CVE strategy and action plan provide a five-year roadmap for stemming the growing threat of violent extremism through a whole-of-government approach, emphasizing the critical role of local stakeholders and civil society. While relevant governmental and nongovernmental stakeholders have expressed the willingness and commitment to implement their respective action items, lack of capacity and sufficient budget remained challenges. CVE funding made available through Kosovo's recent designation as a pilot country for the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF) could significantly bolster the government's capacity to implement its CVE action plan, but the process will require close U.S. engagement to ensure the government meets the strict deadlines and standards required to maximize its allotment of available GCERF funds. The Kosovo Police (KP) Counterterrorism Directorate is enhancing its investigative capacities by increasing personnel and developing a cyber-counterterrorism unit. The Kosovo government continued counterterrorism cooperation with the United States. The United States has mentored and assisted law enforcement and judicial institutions on active counterterrorism cases. Through the Export Control and Related Border Security program (EXBS), International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), Overseas Prosecutorial Development Assistance and Training program (OPDAT), and Office of Defense Cooperation (ODC), the United States has provided training opportunities on various aspects of counterterrorism and CVE. Because the security and political situation in northern Kosovo continued to limit the government's ability to exercise its authority in that region, the NATO Kosovo Force (KFOR) and EU Rule of Law Mission (EULEX) worked with the KP to maintain a safe and secure environment and strengthen the rule of law, including at the borders. Kosovo's ability to exercise its authority in the north has improved since the signing of the 2013 Brussels Agreement to normalize relations with Serbia, but the two countries have yet to fully implement the agreement. Although Kosovo and neighboring Serbia do not usually cooperate on counterterrorism issues, the governments have had an Integrated Border Management (IBM) plan since 2013 and have participated in joint U.S.-sponsored training. Kosovo is a member of the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL and has taken steps to support the various lines of effort within the limits of its capabilities. It has primarily focused on stemming the flow of foreign terrorist fighters, as well as tracking and restricting financing for terrorist groups. Kosovo is not a member of the UN; however, the Government of Kosovo has pledged to implement UNSCRs 2170 and 2178 unilaterally. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: The KP arrested five Kosovo-Albanians on July 11 for attempting to poison Pristina's primary water source, Lake Badovc. Police arrested three of the men after officers patrolling the reservoir spotted them behaving suspiciously at the banks of the lake. The KP subsequently arrested two additional suspects. Two of the suspects had fought for ISIL in Syria. All five were charged with terrorism offenses.\ Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Kosovo's legislative framework is sufficient to prosecute individuals suspected of committing or supporting terrorist activities, but prosecutors lack experience in trying such cases. Kosovo officials recognize the need to improve interagency cooperation. Kosovo has a comprehensive legal framework that covers all criminal aspects related to terrorism. The Criminal Code of Kosovo preserves the UN model on counterterrorism criminal legislation and criminalizes all forms of terrorism, including commission, assistance, facilitation, recruitment, training, and incitement to commit terrorism. It also criminalizes concealment or failure to report terrorists or terrorist groups, organization and participation in terrorist groups, and preparation of terrorist offenses against the constitutional order and the security of the state of Kosovo. It defines a terrorist group as a structured group of more than two persons, established over a period of time and acting in concert to commit terrorism. In addition, the Criminal Procedure Code provides authorities with all the necessary powers to investigate and prosecute such cases, including sanctioning the use of covert measures such as wiretapping, undercover agents, disclosure of financial data, and interception of computer communications. It further gives authorities flexibility to investigate criminal activity during the planning stage to prevent crimes and terrorist acts. The Procedural Code also allows Kosovo courts to admit evidence from other countries, thus allowing prosecution of international terrorism in Kosovo. This framework provides the relevant authorities with the tools necessary to fight any form of terrorism. Kosovo law also criminalizes joining a foreign army, police, or paramilitary formation in armed conflicts outside the territory of Kosovo and related propaganda. A conviction on these charges carries a penalty of up to 15 years imprisonment. The Kosovo Assembly adopted the Law on the Prohibition on Joining Foreign Conflicts March 12, and it became effective April 18. No arrests had been made under the statute at year's end. Authorities were inexperienced in dealing with terrorism cases, and communications and information sharing across agencies remained a challenge. The KP Counterterrorism Directorate, which is responsible for counterterrorism investigations, has resource constraints that inhibit its ability to track suspects. The law provides the Special Prosecution Office (SPRK), which is composed of local and international staff, with exclusive jurisdiction over terrorism cases. Prosecutors have made considerable improvements in the past year in dealing with terrorism-related cases. The Department of State supported programs with the Department of Justice to mentor Kosovo law enforcement and prosecutors. Kosovo is a member of the Regional Arms Control Verification and Implementation Assistance Centre (RACVIAC), a South Eastern European organization that focuses on security-related issues, including terrorism. Representatives from Kosovo attended training activities and conferences on counterterrorism-related topics sponsored by the EU and the United States. Kosovo has issued biometric travel and identity documents since 2013. All major border crossing points, including Pristina International Airport, are equipped with computerized fraudulent/altered document identification equipment, for which a database is updated regularly with information from other countries. The Kosovo Border Police's (KBP) regularly-updated STOP/WATCH list of persons suspected of connections to terrorism or criminal activities had more than 1,700 hits in 2015. However, the electronic Border Management System does not interface with INTERPOL and does not always function properly. Kosovo is not a member of the UN, INTERPOL or EUROPOL; the UN Mission in Kosovo and EULEX serve as Kosovo's intermediaries with these organizations, slowing down cooperation and preventing Kosovo from having access to their watchlists. Kosovo has applied for INTERPOL membership, but faces opposition from Serbia and other non-recognizing states. The KBP and Directorate against Terrorism use biometric equipment to enroll suspicious foreigners entering or applying for benefits in Kosovo, as well as locals who may be affiliated with terrorism. The Law on Border Control obliges airlines to submit Advance Passenger Information Airline Passenger Name Record data to Kosovo; the KBP has been using this information. The KBP applies specific profiling techniques to identify persons attempting to travel to Syria and Iraq to join ISIL. In 2015, the KBP, in cooperation with regional countries and Turkey, identified and blocked at least 10 such persons from leaving Kosovo and turned them over to the KP Counterterrorism Directorate. With U.S. assistance, KBP is revising its curricula used to train border officers to focus more on early identification of persons affiliated with terrorism. The Department of State's Antiterrorism Assistance program supported Kosovo participation in a series of border security-related courses aimed at addressing foreign terrorist fighter travel. Trials are ongoing for several of the 59 suspects arrested in August 2014 during the government of Kosovo's largest counterterrorism operation to date. Three indictments against 33 individuals have been filed. Many of the defendants pled guilty to the charges. Kosovo prosecutors indicted six other individuals in 2015 who were arrested by EULEX in June 2014 in connection with a separate case. Investigations are ongoing against a dozen other individuals, including several imams. During 2015, Kosovo authorities opened 20 new cases against 45 suspects. Police arrested 14 of these suspects. On July 11, 2015, the KP arrested five individuals near Pristina on terrorism-related charges. On December 1, Italian Police arrested and extradited two Kosovo Albanians and the KP arrested a third individual in Kosovo suspected of being members of a terrorist cell that had threatened the Pope and the former U.S. Ambassador to Kosovo. In October 2015, Kosovo's Minister of Internal Affairs issued an executive order revoking the licenses of 16 NGOs on suspicion of recruiting for ISIL and disseminating extremist propaganda. Kosovo demonstrated political will to address threats related to terrorism, and the state possesses the legal framework to do so. However, national institutions including investigative and prosecutorial elements have limited capacity, resources, and experience to handle terrorism cases effectively. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Kosovo is not a member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The Kosovo financial intelligence unit (FIU) worked towards becoming a member of the Egmont Group. Kosovo has a Law on the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorism financing, which allows it to comply with international anti-money laundering and counterterrorism finance standards. This law also established enforcement mechanisms for the examination of reporting entities and narrowly defines terrorism financing. However, it lacks an appropriate registration and monitoring system to track NGOs that receive funding from suspicious entities. Other legislation, amendments, and directives are pending on counterterrorism financing, and its indicators. Kosovo has not yet successfully prosecuted a terrorism financing case or identified and frozen assets of sanctioned individuals and organizations. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: One of the four strategic objectives in the government's CVE strategy is the prevention of violent extremism and radicalism, which the government began implementing in November. This includes raising awareness of radicalization among community stakeholders and building their capacity to fight it, increasing support for young people, counter-messaging, incorporating CVE into existing community initiatives, undertaking regional CVE activities, and establishing a strategic communications plan. Kosovo's CVE strategy also includes the preparation and promotion of counter-narratives to weaken the legitimacy of violent extremist messages. Kosovo's CVE strategy includes a section on de-radicalization and the reintegration of radicalized persons. The goals include helping radicalized individuals abandon violent extremist ideology, assessing risks posed by individuals returning from foreign conflicts (to include alternatives to detention when appropriate and psychological support), raising awareness within the correctional system on the risks posed by imprisoned terrorists, and building capacities for their rehabilitation. The government began work on this objective in November. International and Regional Cooperation: The OSCE and the Terrorism Prevention Branch of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime provided training to Kosovo law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges on terrorism-related topics. Kosovo's membership in many regional and international organizations, including the UN, has been blocked by countries that do not recognize its independence. Lack of membership and non-recognition impedes cooperation on many issues, including counterterrorism. Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina's non-recognition of Kosovo hinders participation in many regional counterterrorism initiatives. Several Kosovo officials attended the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism in February, and the Leader's Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism hosted by President Obama in New York in September, and a regional CVE summit in Tirana, Albania, in May. Kosovo was selected as a beneficiary country for the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF), which will fund community-level initiatives aimed at reducing the risk of radicalization to violence. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Kenya Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Kenya, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518daf29.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Kenya is a strong partner of the United States in the fight against terrorism throughout East Africa. Kenya faced an ongoing terrorist threat from the Somalia-based terrorist group al-Shabaab, against which the Kenya Defense Forces have engaged in military operations in Somalia since 2011 as part of the African Union Forces in Somalia (AMISOM). Kenya continued to face serious terrorism challenges within its own borders in 2015. Most notably, the April al-Shabaab attack on Garissa University College killed at least 147, mostly students, and there were other fatal attacks, particularly in Mandera, Garissa, and Lamu counties near the border with Somalia. There were no major terrorist incidents in Kenya's two largest cities, Nairobi and Mombasa. Reports of violations of human rights by Kenya's police and military forces during counterterrorism operations continued, including allegations of extra-judicial killings, disappearances, and torture. Kenyan officials cooperated closely with the United States and other partner nations on counterterrorism issues, including investigating and prosecuting terrorism cases. Kenya is one of six countries participating in the President's Security Governance Initiative (SGI) announced at the 2014 U.S.-Africa Leaders' Summit. SGI focuses on the management, oversight, and accountability of the security sector at the institutional level. In Kenya, SGI program priorities include border security and management, administration of justice, and police human resource management. The Kenyan government focused increased attention on preventing the flow of foreign terrorist fighters, including Kenyans and other nationals, to join al-Shabaab in Somalia, as well as on Kenyan national fighters returning from abroad. Kenyan officials and civil society representatives participated in global events focusing on countering violent extremism and stemming the flow of foreign terrorist fighters, including the February White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism and the Leaders' Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism that took place on the margins of the UN General Assembly in September; both events were hosted by President Obama. The Kenyan government also fulfilled its pledge to host a regional CVE conference, which took place in June. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: The April al-Shabaab attack on Garissa University College left at least 147 people dead, most of them students, more than twice the death toll of the 2013 al-Shabaab attack on the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi. The attack in Garissa was the worst single terrorist incident in Kenya since the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. Mandera, Garissa, and Lamu counties near the border with Somalia all experienced multiple terrorist incidents during 2015. In July, presumed al-Shabaab attacks killed 14 people near a military camp and 11 quarry workers in Mandera County, and five people in a firebomb attack on a vehicle in Lamu County. In other incidents, al-Shabaab fighters temporarily took over small villages in Kenya near the Somali border and threatened villagers. There were no major terrorist incidents in Nairobi or Mombasa. This was significant given a number of very high profile international events that took place in Kenya over the year, including the visits of President Obama and Pope Francis, as well as Kenya's hosting of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit and the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in Nairobi. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Kenya's 2012 Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2011 Proceeds of Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Act, and 2010 Prevention of Organized Crime Act together provide a strong legal framework under which to prosecute acts of terrorism. In late 2014, President Uhuru Kenyatta signed into law the Security Laws (Amendment) Act of 2014 (SLAA), a set of provisions that altered 20 existing laws to further strengthen Kenya's legislative framework to fight terrorism. Positive steps contained in the SLAA include the criminalization of participating in terrorist training, laying out the foundation for a coordinated border control agency, strengthening the mandate of Kenya's National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC), and broadening evidentiary standards to allow greater use of electronic evidence and recorded testimony in terrorism prosecutions. Civil society groups, the political opposition, and the Commission on Human Rights contested several provisions of the SLAA, including those that affected freedom of speech, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the rights of the accused and refugees, arguing they violated constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties and contravened Kenya's international obligations. In February 2015, the High Court struck down eight provisions of the SLAA as unconstitutional. The Kenyan judiciary demonstrated independence, exemplified by the actions of the High Court in relation to the SLAA, and competence in cases related to terrorism. However, the judiciary remained hampered by a lack of sufficient procedures to allow the effective use of plea agreements, cooperation agreements, electronic evidence, and other undercover investigative tools. Allegations of corruption in the judiciary, including in the High Court, have persisted. In April, in the aftermath of the Garissa University College attack, the Inspector General of National Police Service released via the official Kenya Gazette a list naming 87 individuals and organizations, including financial institutions and NGOs, suspected of associating with terrorist organizations. Following the Gazette notice, the Central Bank issued orders to freeze the funds of those organizations and individuals and the NGO Coordination Board took steps to cancel the licenses of three NGOs: human rights groups Muslims for Human Rights (MUHURI) and Haki Africa, as well as the Agency for Peace and Development (APD). All three organizations challenged the deregistration decisions in court. In June, 13 money transfer organizations mainly serving the Somali community included in the Gazette Notice were reinstated by presidential decree. In September, authorities re-registered APD. In November, Haki Africa and MUHURI succeeded in a legal challenge to their inclusion in the list and the Kenyan High Court ruled that their funds should be unfrozen. In line with the security sector reorganization outlined in the 2010 Kenyan Constitution, the Government of Kenya divided counterterrorism functions among the three branches of the National Police Service the Kenya Police [including the paramilitary General Service Unit (GSU)], the Directorate of Criminal Investigations [including the investigative Anti-Terrorism Police Unit], and the Administration Police [including the Rural Border Patrol Unit] as well as non-police agencies such as the National Intelligence Service and elements of the Kenya Defense Forces. Operational effectiveness remained impeded by limited interagency coordination, resources, and training, as well as corruption among some personnel and unclear command and control. The response to the attack at Garissa University College, while slowed by command, control, and logistics support issues, exhibited better interagency coordination between police and military elements than the 2013 Westgate attack, and police tactical units resolved the situation swiftly once deployed. Kenyan security and justice sector officials participated in a range of U.S. government-sponsored capacity-building programs funded and implemented by the U.S. Departments of State, Homeland Security, Justice, and Defense. These programs included training in crisis response, border operations, investigations, and prosecutions. Notable among these was the Department of State's second annual East Africa Joint Operations Capstone exercise, a month-long crisis response training series hosted in Kenya for Kenyan, Ugandan, and Tanzanian law enforcement personnel; the exercise culminated in a large-scale simulation of a response to a terrorist incident, including a cross-border pursuit that also featured community engagement and human rights-related issues. Border security remained a challenge for Kenya due to its vast, sparsely populated border regions and largely uncontrolled borders. This was exacerbated by security agency and other government resource gaps and corruption at multiple levels. However, there were signs of improved interagency cooperation, exemplified by the successful joint police-military-intelligence operation to rescue a kidnapped aid worker 30 km inside Somalia in October. Kenyan officials emphasized the importance and challenges of border security in their ongoing discussions with U.S. counterparts, particularly in the context of the SGI, which has included successful exchange visits with U.S. border security officials that helped increase Kenyan government interagency cooperation on border security, leading to the development of a draft Kenyan government border-control strategy. A lack of capacity on border security and inadequate systems of national identification hampered law enforcement agencies' ability to identify and detain potential terrorists entering and leaving Kenya. Terrorist screening watchlists, biographic and biometric screening, and other measures were largely in place at major Kenyan ports of entry, but screening procedures were sometimes inconsistently or minimally applied, particularly at smaller border posts. Large stretches of the Kenya's land borders are relatively uncontrolled. Kenya continued its partnership with the United States to strengthen Personal Identification Secure Comparison and Evaluation System (PISCES) border controls at major ports of entry. The Kenyan government focused increased attention on preventing the transit of foreign terrorist fighters, including Kenyan nationals attempting to join al-Shabaab in Somalia, as well as Kenyan national fighters returning to the country from abroad. A high-level Kenyan government delegation and civil society representatives participated in the September Leader's Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism hosted by President Obama in New York on the margins of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), as well as participated in other UNGA side events regarding foreign terrorist fighters. Kenyan security services detected and deterred terrorist plots during 2015 and responded to dozens of claimed, or presumed, terrorism-related incidents. Kenyan law enforcement did not repeat the widely-criticized large-scale security operations of 2014 that appeared to target communities. Nonetheless, Kenyan military, paramilitary, and police forces were accused of serious abuses. A draft report by the government-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights implicated Kenyan security forces in 25 extrajudicial killings and the disappearances of 81 civilians. The government took limited steps to address cases of alleged unlawful killings by security force members. Kenya's Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) continued to make progress in fulfilling its mandate by investigating multiple cases of police misconduct and referring more than 20 of these to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. At the end of 2015, several major terrorism cases remained ongoing, including the trial of four Kenyans and one Tanzanian charged in June in connection with the Garissa University College attack. That trial was postponed in August for administrative reasons, and had not resumed by year's end. In December, the Mombasa High Court sentenced British terrorist suspect Jermaine Grant to nine years on charges related to trying to obtain Kenyan citizenship illegally. At the end of the year, Grant still faced separate explosives-related charges in a second, ongoing trial. Kenyan law enforcement agencies worked with regional organizations and the broader international community, including the United States, to increase its counterterrorism capacity and to secure land, sea, and air borders. Kenyan law enforcement has benefited from U.S.-funded trainings including, for example, those to increase its capacity to respond to incidents of terrorism and improve the capacity of airport security staff to better recognize man portable air defense systems (MANPADs). Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Kenya is a member of the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group, a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body. The Kenyan government is working to implement relevant UN Security Council Resolutions to restrict terrorism financing. Kenya made further progress in implementing its anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism regime in 2015 following its 2014 removal from the FATF's continuing monitoring process. Kenya's Financial Reporting Center (FRC) made progress in becoming fully operational and continued to build its capacity to monitor the formal financial system. The organization has not yet appointed a permanent director. The FRC remained hampered by a lack of essential resources and faced challenges meeting minimum staffing, physical security, and information technology requirements. The FRC also lacks an electronic reporting system for suspicious transactions. The Central Bank of Kenya continued to encourage Kenyan citizens and residents to use the formal financial sector, which is subject to regulatory oversight and would increase overall financial transaction integrity, though use of unregulated informal financial mechanisms, including hawalas, continued. Kenya's NGO Coordination Board came under fire in October for announcing the de-registration of more than 900 civil society organizations for allegedly failing to comply with mandated NGO financial reporting requirements. Following intense criticism from NGOs and others, including prominent politicians, the government reversed its decision and gave the groups more time to comply. The Kenyan government made a similar move to deregister more than 500 NGOS in 2014, which also was reversed following strong civil and political opposition. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: During 2015, the Kenyan government improved its engagement with civil society, particularly communities at risk of radicalization in the northeast of the country. It also increased its efforts and coordination with international partners to advance CVE efforts, including prevention of radicalization, counter-messaging, and the reintegration of foreign terrorist fighter returnees. The government made some gains in CVE efforts, including the large-scale redeployment of ethnic Somali police officers to their home counties in Northeast Kenya to improve public confidence in the police with communities at risk of radicalization. The government also undertook some small-scale efforts to rehabilitate and reintegrate former al-Shabaab fighters, facilitators and sympathizers, but efforts were constrained by the lack of a defined strategy, clear legal framework, or supportive public messaging. Senior Kenyan officials and civil society representatives participated in the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism in February and the Kenyan government hosted a regional CVE conference in June. Kenyan civil society organizations worked to address the drivers of radicalization and violent extremism in Kenya, often with assistance from the United States and other international partners. International and Regional Cooperation: Kenya is an active member of the Partnership for Regional East Africa Counterterrorism and the AU, including on the Peace and Security Committee, and as a troop-contributing country to the African Union Mission in Somalia. Kenya remains engaged with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and hosted an IGAD Security Sector Program validation workshop on a countering violent extremism study in October. Although not a member of the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF), Kenya is an active participant in GCTF activities, agreed to serve as a pilot country for the GCTF-endorsed International CT/CVE Clearinghouse Mechanism, and hosted a GCTF Border Security Initiative workshop for the Horn of Africa in December. Kenya also organized and hosted a regional CVE conference as a follow-up to the White House February CVE Summit. These events were Kenya's major contribution to regional capacity building. In December, Kenya was selected as a beneficiary of the Global Community Engagement and Resiliency Fund. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Kazakhstan Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Kazakhstan, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518db032.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: The Government of Kazakhstan remained eager to increase counterterrorism cooperation with the United States, particularly in the areas of law enforcement and countering violent extremism (CVE). The Kazakhstani government is concerned about the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and by insecurity in Afghanistan. In June, Kazakhstan hosted a regional CVE conference in Astana and President Nursultan Nazarbayev spoke at the Leader's Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism hosted by President Obama in New York in September. The Government of Kazakhstan views ISIL as a dangerous terrorist organization and appreciates Global Coalition to Counter ISIL efforts, but has not joined the Coalition. The Kazakhstani government does not have an official estimate of the number of Kazakhstanis that are fighting alongside ISIL. Media reports suggest that Kazakhstanis in Syria may fight with a host of armed groups, not just ISIL. Kazakhstani Security Council Secretary Nurlan Yermekbayev stated in July that 400 Kazakhstanis are fighting abroad, including in Afghanistan and Pakistan. National Security Committee (KNB) Chair Nurtai Abykaev publicly estimated in April that 350 Kazakhstanis are in Syria, but only 150 are fighting; the other 200 are family members. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Kazakhstan has a comprehensive counterterrorism legal framework which includes laws on countering extremism and terrorism, and relevant bylaws and chapters in the Criminal Code, Procedural Code, and the Law on National Security. It is illegal for Kazakhstani citizens to fight in foreign wars. The government has taken a two-pronged approach to the few returning ISIL fighters, pursuing a rehabilitation program while arresting and prosecuting others. President Nazarbayev approved amendments to several laws on local policing aimed at creating a local police service more accountable to the local representative bodies and communities. Kazakhstani courts designated ISIL as a terrorist organization on October 15. Kazakhstan's legal counterterrorism framework came under criticism in 2015 due to the arrest and prosecution of individuals and groups for committing offenses that would not be considered terrorism by international standards. For example, authorities arrested members of locally-banned religious groups, such as Tablighi Jamaat, which eschews violence. The government's counterterrorism plan allows for enhanced domestic interagency cooperation, coordination, and information-sharing, but the extent to which this occurred in 2015 is unclear. In the past, law enforcement bodies were criticized for killing rather than capturing members of suspected terrorist groups, but during the years leading up to and including 2015, they showed a greater tendency to arrest, detain, and question these suspects. There are four special counterterrorism detachments under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and one under the KNB. Law enforcement units demonstrated an increased capacity to detect, deter, and respond to terrorist incidents, and Kazakhstani security forces continued to participate in the Department of State's Antiterrorism Assistance program. Kazakhstan's Border Guard Service (BGS) uses specialized passport control equipment at each passport control station, allowing officers to check for fraudulent documents. Every officer working at border crossing points must be a graduate of the BGS Academy's four-year program, where they study passport control using passport samples from around the world. BGS officers receive regular instructions and refresher training, including additional training by the Department of State's Export Control and Related Border Security (EXBS) Program. Additionally, the Department of State provided behavioral profiling training to identify traffickers and terrorists and K-9 training for counterterrorism operations. In recent years, Kazakhstan has strengthened security on its southern border by adding radar systems, inspection equipment and vehicles, and specialized mobile inspection groups. To combat nuclear smuggling, EXBS supported training programs for Central Asian border guard cadets on how to prevent nuclear trafficking and terrorism, and initiated construction on a border crossing training facility for the Border Guard Service Academy in June. Kazakhstani courts delivered numerous sentences in 2015 for promotion of extremism and terrorism, terrorist activities in Syria, and recruitment and plotting terrorist acts. The Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) announced 280 cases involving extremism and terrorism in Kazakhstan in 2015. Most of those arrested were recruiters. Very few cases addressed intent to commit terrorist acts or depart for foreign conflict zones. In 2015, 71 people were convicted in terrorism-related cases, 13 were charged with participating in foreign armed conflicts. Media reports on detainment or conviction on such charges appeared more frequently in 2015. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Kazakhstan belongs to the Eurasian Group; a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body. Kazakhstan's unregulated financial sector is relatively small. In 2015, Kazakhstan passed amendments to its laws on countering the financing of terrorism to comply with international standards. The amendments seek to ensure conformity with updated FATF money laundering requirements and the legal assessment made by the Eurasian Group for Countering Legalization of Criminal Proceeds and Terrorism Financing. With these amendments, Kazakhstan is now in compliance with more than half of the FATF requirements, and Parliament is working toward greater compliance. Despite these efforts, in November the Eurasian Group downgraded Kazakhstan to "enhanced monitoring procedures" for its non-compliance with criminalization of money laundering, requiring Kazakhstan to report biannually on its progress in improving procedures for anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The Government of Kazakhstan's countering violent extremism (CVE) efforts focused on preventing radicalization, with efforts to educate and provide alternatives to youth through social programs and economic opportunities. Building on the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism in February, Kazakhstan hosted a regional CVE Summit in Astana in June, where regional and international officials and subject matter experts discussed regional CVE challenges and opportunities for cooperation. The Government of Kazakhstan focused its prevention efforts on detainment and prosecution of recruiters and proselytizers deemed by the government as sharing extremist ideas. Most convicted recruiters are placed in general regime penal colonies for three to six years. Human rights groups say the government exercises excessive vigilance in some cases. For example, one convict challenged his prison sentence claiming he was only discussing general religious topics online and sharing publicly available videos. The courts have blocked more than 700 websites for sharing extremist materials. In October, the website Vimeo was blocked by court order until the site removed videos that showed ISIL atrocities. Critics say Kazakhstan's anti-radicalization efforts are unnecessarily heavy-handed, and could actually encourage radicalization of members of otherwise peaceful religious groups. Kazakhstan's Ministry of Culture and Sport conducted outreach to youth who studied abroad at religious schools suspected of indoctrinating youth in extremist ideology. Religious experts from the Committee for Religious Affairs reached out to at-risk youth via websites such as E-Islam, which was created to increase religious literacy and to counter radical ideas. Religious experts created groups on social networks such as Facebook and VKontakte, where they posted information and answered users'questions about religious extremism. Officials from the Committee for Religious Affairs provided training and awareness events for local imams, NGOs and media. The government and NGOs continued rehabilitation and reintegration work with convicts and their relatives. The PGO claimed to have made progress in persuading convicted radicals to take less radical views. International and Regional Cooperation: Kazakhstan participates in counterterrorism and CVE activities through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which has established a joint task force for preventing the propagation of terrorist and extremist ideas via the internet. Kazakhstan is a member of the Community of Independent States' (CIS) Anti-Terrorism Center that hosts a data bank of terrorist and extremist organizations banned in CIS that is made accessible to law enforcement and financial intelligence bodies of the member-states. The PGO cooperates with the OSCE on countering violent extremism and terrorism through joint workshops. Kazakhstan is a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which has a limited counterterrorism role. From September 2015 to September 2016, Kazakhstan chaired the SCO's Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure for coordination of joint antiterrorist exercises for its member states. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Jordan Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Jordan, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518db2b.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Jordan remained a key U.S. ally in countering terrorism and violent extremist ideology in 2015. Jordan's location in a tumultuous region made it vulnerable to a variety of threats, yet also facilitated its regional leadership in confronting them. Jordan continued to take part in all key aspects of the Global Coalition to Counter Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The Royal Jordanian Air Force (RJAF) participated in coalition military operations, and the Jordan Armed Forces (JAF) continued to bolster defenses against terrorist incursions in the northern and eastern border regions. Jordan continued to host U.S. and other coalition partners' military units for Counter ISIL operations and joint counterterrorism exercises and training. Jordan worked to prevent flows of foreign terrorist fighters headed to Syria and Iraq and restricted terrorism financing. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: In February, ISIL released a video of the group burning alive a Jordanian pilot captured in Syria. In November, a Jordanian police officer killed two U.S. citizen trainers and wounded two others in a shooting at the Jordan International Police Training Center (JIPTC) outside Amman. He also killed a South African trainer and two Jordanian interpreters. All five personnel killed were working on U.S.-supported programs at the facility. The shooter, who was killed in the incident, had recently submitted his resignation from the police. An investigation into the attack by the Government of Jordan was ongoing at the end of 2015. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: The State Security Court (SSC) is the primary legal apparatus for trying and convicting alleged terrorists. The SSC oversees the prosecution of civilians charged with crimes effecting national security. The Counterterrorism Law, as amended in 2014, limits the court's jurisdiction to five crimes: treason, espionage, terrorism, drug-related offenses, and currency forgery. The Government of Jordan used the SSC to prosecute crimes associated with terrorist activity. However, the Counterterrorism Law has a broad definition of terrorism, including: harming relations with a foreign state, exposing Jordan to hostile acts, using the internet to facilitate terrorist acts or promote terrorist ideas, forming a group with the intention of committing terrorist acts, and attacks on the life or liberty of members of the royal family. The penal code also provides a broad definition of terrorism to include acts intended to "contravene the public order." Jordan has advanced capabilities to detect, deter, and prevent terrorism within its territory. The General Intelligence Directorate (GID) has the authority to investigate terrorism. The Public Security Directorate (PSD) has authority over non-terrorism related crimes, but frequently supports GID counterterrorism activities through PSD Special Branch, which includes a criminal intelligence function. The GID also coordinates with the JAF and its intelligence branch, particularly on cases involving border security, which the JAF oversees. Prosecutors typically are not consulted until the later stages of investigations, when terrorism cases are referred to the SSC. Jordan's security and intelligence services do not coordinate with one another in all situations, including in terrorism incident response. Jordan remained committed to securing its borders and denying safe haven to terrorists, and continued to develop its border security infrastructure, largely through the Jordan Border Security Program (JBSP), which began in 2009. JBSP consists of a sophisticated package of sensors to improve situational awareness along the border and prevent infiltrations into, and unauthorized departures, from Jordan. Phases II and III were completed in 2015, covering most of the Syrian border and the border with Iraq. Jordan monitored airports and border crossings for potential foreign terrorist fighters. Jordan maintained a terrorist watchlist, used biographic and biometric screening, and actively engaged in passenger information sharing. During 2015, Jordanian authorities arrested and began prosecuting men accused of seeking to join al-Nusrah Front and ISIL; recruiting for or otherwise supporting ISIL, including on the internet; and attempting to travel to or return from Syria to fight with violent extremist groups. In July, authorities arrested an Iraqi man found in Jordan with 45kg of explosives. Jordanian officials believed him to be a member of Iranian-supported Bayt al-Maqdis, and charged him with plotting to attack a JAF installation. In December, the SSC sentenced three unnamed defendants to 10 years in prison with hard labor for planning to attack a GID building in Ar Rusayfah with explosives, and to kill or incapacitate RJAF pilots. Jordanian officials believed the three were ISIL supporters. Security officials regularly arrested scores of ISIL supporters, many for posting pro-ISIL videos or statements on social media sites. The government charged them before the SSC for using the internet to propagate terrorist ideology. Security forces regularly arrested departing or returning Jordanian foreign terrorist fighters, charging them with joining armed groups, including al-Nusrah Front and ISIL. The Government of Jordan's investigation into the November attacks targeting U.S. citizens at JIPTC was ongoing at year's end. Aside from the shooter who died in the attack, no other suspects have been named or arrested in connection with this incident. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Jordan is a member of the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force, a Financial Action Task Force-style regional body. Jordan's financial intelligence unit, the Anti-Money Laundering Unit (AMLU), is a member of the Egmont Group. Jordan has continued to develop its capacity to address money laundering and terrorism financing throughout 2015, which included amending the 2007 Anti-Money Laundering and Counterterrorism Financing Law, bringing Jordan more in line with international standards. However, the Anti-Money Laundering Law does not oblige non-profit organizations to file suspicious transaction reports (STRs). Although the number of STRs increased by 48 percent in 2015 compared with 2014, officials prosecuted no money laundering cases in 2015. Officials attributed the rise in STR filings to extra caution taken by the financial sector. For additional information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INSCR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: Jordan has sought to confront and weaken the violent ideology that underpins ISIL and other violent extremist organizations. The Prime Minister's interagency anti-extremist strategy, announced in fall 2014, remained under-resourced and unstaffed, however, and Jordan's leaders are reticent to acknowledge domestic radicalization, including self-radicalization. Jordan continued efforts to improve counter-radicalization in schools and mosques, but these efforts were rarely well-coordinated across government agencies. King Abdullah II continued to promote his "Amman Declaration" of 2004, calling for tolerance and peace within the Islamic community, and rejecting "wanton aggression and terrorism." The Government of Jordan has also created two counter-extremist messaging entities and has become more involved in Coalition messaging efforts. The Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs conducted outreach to imams and waedat (female preachers) across the country, encouraging them to refute radical extremist ideology in their sermons. Civil society organizations conducted activities at schools, universities, youth organizations, community centers, and religious centers to promote moderation and encourage the rejection of violence and community engagement in anti-radicalization efforts. Jordanian prisons have a religiously-based de-radicalization program that seeks to re-engage violent extremist inmates into the non-violent mainstream of their faith. International and Regional Cooperation: Jordan is a founding member of the Global Counterterrorism Forum and the GCTF-inspired Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law; and is a member of the Arab League, the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, and the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism. In April, Jordan held the presidency of the UN Security Council (UNSC), and led an open debate on the role of youth in countering violent extremism and promoting peace. In December, the UNSC adopted a Jordanian-sponsored resolution on youth, peace, and security, which focuses on the role of young men and women in peacebuilding and countering violent extremism. Jordan continued to assist Palestinian Authority law enforcement institutions through training at JIPTC. In 2015, Palestinian law enforcement officers received both advanced-level and refresher courses, in addition to basic-level courses. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Italy Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Italy, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518db313.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Italy aggressively investigated terrorist suspects, dismantled suspected terrorist-related cells within its borders, and maintained a high level of professional cooperation with U.S. and international partners in all areas, including Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) efforts. Terrorist and criminal activity by domestic anarchists and other violent extremists remained a threat. On February 20, Italy adopted new counterterrorism legislation, implementing its obligations under UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2178 to identify, decrease, and disrupt the flow of foreign terrorist fighters. The law criminalized participation in a conflict in a foreign territory in support of a terrorist organization, and allows the government to seize suspects' passports. The law also gave the government the authority to instruct internet service providers to block access to websites identified by authorities as being used for terrorist recruitment activities, increased government authority to collect personal data related to the perpetration of terrorist crimes, and extended the scope of power of the National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor renamed the National Anti-Mafia and Corruption Prosecutor to also pursue anti-terrorism prosecutions. Italy has remained a leading partner in the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, contributing to coalition military support, humanitarian assistance to the crises in Iraq and Syria, continuous official statements and engagement with foreign leaders including Middle East partners in support of the coalition, and enhanced efforts to identify, decrease, and disrupt the flow of foreign terrorist fighters. Italy leads the Iraqi police training mission within the Counter ISIL Coalition and co-leads, with UAE, the Coalition Finance Working Group. Italy is the leading non-U.S. Counter ISIL troop contributor of trainers and advisors on the ground inside Iraq, and leads the international effort to train Iraqi police. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: The Italian government continued to make use of reinforced counterterrorism legislation enacted in 2005 that facilitates detention of suspects, mandates arrest for crimes involving terrorism, and expedites procedures for expelling persons suspected of terrorist activities. On February 20, new legislation came into force that amended the Criminal Code with respect to fighting terrorism. On April 17, Parliament subsequently upheld the law, officially known as, Decree Law No. 7 of February 18, 2015, "Urgent Measures for the Fight against Terrorism, Including International Terrorism." The new law's purposes are described in its preamble, which notes the urgency, in light of recent incidents abroad, to improve the existing legislative and regulatory instruments available to the Italian police and armed forces for anticipating, preventing, and combating acts of terrorism. It states that a key aspect of the new legislation is strengthening police surveillance powers and the handling of personal data. Persons recruited by others to commit acts of terrorism are subject to an increased prison term of a minimum of three and a maximum of six years upon conviction. The legislation punishes those who organize, finance, or promote travel for the purpose of performing acts of terrorism. It also imposes punishment on lone offenders persons found guilty of training themselves in terrorist methods on their own and carrying out terrorist acts. Penalties are increased when the acts are performed through digital or telecommunications instruments. The law punishes those who, without legal authority, introduce or provide within the national territory substances or mixtures that serve as precursors of explosives. The failure to provide notice to the authorities about the theft or disappearance of such substances or mixtures is also punishable. The bill also authorized the government to make members of the Italian armed forces qualify as agents of public security to enable them to exercise preventative police functions in connection with acts of terrorism. The law makes it a crime to take part in a conflict in a foreign territory in support of a terrorist organization, implementing in part UNSCR 2178. During criminal proceedings, prosecuting authorities are now granted the power to temporarily withdraw suspects' passports. Such action must be communicated immediately to the General Attorney of the Republic, who must obtain validation of the measure by the president of the provincial court in the jurisdiction where the accused resides. The law also authorizes the President of the Council of Ministers, through the General Director of the Department for Security Information, to permit the directors of Italian security agencies to interview detainees for the sole purpose of acquiring information to prevent terrorist crimes of an international character. The Ministry of the Interior is empowered under the law to maintain a list of websites that are used for terrorist recruiting activities; authorities may instruct internet service providers to immediately block access to such websites identified by the authorities. The new legislation amends the current Code for the Protection of Personal Data by extending the scope of police powers to gather personal data that is directly related to preventing the perpetration of terrorist crimes. Italy's long history of combating both organized crime and radicalized ideological movements has given it a strong legacy in fighting internal threats to security, and authorities are leveraging those capabilities to combat terrorist recruitment, radicalization, and networking. The Police, ROS Carabinieri (gendarmerie), Guardia di Finanza, other specialized law enforcement agencies, and the intelligence services coordinate their counterterrorism efforts and meet on a regular and systematic basis. The Ministry of Interior has the authority to swiftly expel non-citizens for "seriously disturbing public order, endangering national security, or religious discrimination," even if insufficient evidence exists to prosecute the individual. The Government of Italy used this authority more than 60 times in 2015. The Italian Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) continued to implement a Memorandum of Cooperation with the United States, allowing the Transportation Security Administration to conduct aviation security assessments at Italian commercial airports. EU data privacy concerns prevented the United States and Italy from sharing biometric data, though Italy strongly supports the passage of an EU Passenger Name Records Directive that includes sharing data for internal EU flights. Significant law enforcement actions included: On March 18, Carabinieri arrested a Pakistani, Ahmed Riaz, accused of having ties with terrorist networks in Brescia. The Minister of Interior ordered Riaz to be expelled, which followed the Interior Ministry's previous expulsion order against Riaz in February due to a Carabinieri request. On March 27, Abdel Mounime Halda, a 33-year-old Moroccan citizen, resident in Italy, who was an Imam in Capannori, a small town near Lucca, was expelled for using radical and contemptuous speech against the West in his sermons at a local prayer center. Although the Imam's home was searched, and nothing deemed relevant to any ongoing investigation was found, the Interior Ministry maintained that the Imam constituted a threat to the security of the state. On April 4, Khalid Smina, a Moroccan citizen resident in Imola, in the province of Bologna, was expelled from Italy on charges of having allegedly joined the network of Jarraya Khalil, a Tunisian national arrested in 2008 in Bologna for affiliation with Islamic terrorist networks. On April 21, Yahar Ahmed, a 27-year-old Pakistani resident in Prato, was expelled from Italy. He worked as a porter for a shipping company in Calenzano, in the Florence area. The expulsion order referred to suspicious activities and having acquaintances linked to Islamic terrorism. On April 22, police detained Noussair Louati, a Tunisian national living in Ravenna, who had been under investigation. Louati planned to move to Syria after a first failed attempt to reach the Middle East to join ISIL. Louati also posted messages in favor of jihad on his Facebook profile and claimed that he had been thrown out of a Milan mosque by the local Imam because he asked him for help in obtaining a flight ticket to reach Syria and join ISIL. On April 30, the Court of Cassation upheld the conviction of Alfredo Cospito and Nicola Gai for the 2012 domestic terrorist attack against Roberto Adinolfi, chief executive officer of the nuclear engineering company, Ansaldo, who had been knee-capped. The sentences were reduced, respectively, to nine years, five months, and 10 days and eight years, six months, and 20 days in prison. The Informal Anarchist Federation (IAF) claimed responsibility for the incident. On October 4, Italian authorities caught Ben Nasr Mehdi, a Tunisian who was first arrested in Italy in 2007 and sentenced to seven years in prison for plotting terrorist attacks with an Islamic State-linked group, trying to re-enter the country in Sicily (Lampedusa) on a migrant vessel. He was expelled from Italy 10 days later. He was identified by a biometric match after he filed for refugee status using a false identity. On October 8, the Court of Cassation confirmed the conviction of an Egyptian, Abu Omar, in absentia to six years in prison for international terrorism. Abu Omar was Imam of a Milan mosque in 2000 when he established a terrorist organization with the aim to conduct terrorist attacks in Italy and abroad. On October 27, a Bari Court of Appeal sentenced Hosni Hachemi Ben Hassem, former imam of Andria, along with Faez Elkhaldey, Ifauoi Nour, Khairredine Romdhane, Ben Chedli, and Chamari Hamdi to prison terms of between five years, two months and two years, eight months for having founded a subversive association supporting Islamic international terrorism. On November 16, Milan prosecutors requested the indictment of 11 persons charged with international terrorism and the organization of travel to join fighters abroad. Among them there was an Italian woman, Maria Giulia Sergio, who moved to Syria; her Albanian husband, Aldo Said Kobuzi; her parents, Sergio and Assunta Buonfiglio; her sister, Marianna Sergio; her mother in law, Donika Coku; and two uncles of her husband. Investigators believe that she received training to conduct suicide attacks. On November 23, the Ministry of Interior expelled four Moroccans, long-term residents of Bologna suspected of promoting jihadism. They had been found sharing messages and files regarding the training of foreign terrorist fighters, radical ideology, and use of weapons. On November 24, authorities announced the expulsion of a Tunisian man living in Brianza. The man was wiretapped expressing hatred against the West and possibly intended to carry out a terrorist attack. On December 1, police disrupted a cell of terrorists from Kosovo in Brescia, arresting three of them in Lombardy (a fourth was arrested in Kosovo). The group had posted photos of themselves with weapons and videos containing terrorist propaganda and threats against the Pope. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Italy is a member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Council of Europe's Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism, a FATF-style regional body (FSRB). Italy also holds observer status within the Eurasian Group on Combating Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing, an FSRB. Italy's financial intelligence unit is a member of the Egmont Group. Italy also implemented the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida sanctions regime in 2015. Decree Law No. 7 of February 18, 2015, discussed above, provides for a sentence of five to eight years for those found guilty of organizing, financing, or advocating travel abroad for the purposes of carrying out terrorist acts. It also seeks to ensure greater communication on such cases between financial institutions, law enforcement, and the judicial system. The Italian judiciary and financial police (Guardia di Finanza) continued to identify and freeze the assets of sanctioned individuals and organizations and to prosecute terrorism financing cases. In addition, Italy carried out several counterterrorism operations and prevented international money transfers to terrorist groups. Italy co-leads, with the United States and Saudi Arabia, the Counter-ISIL Coalition Finance Working Group. Judicial and law enforcement efforts to combat terrorism financing include monitoring financial transactions (including financial services companies specializing in wire transfers), bank transfers, pre-paid electronic cards, payments on fraudulent invoices, and cash-in-transit. In the first three quarters of 2015, a total of 74 suspicious transaction reports (STRs) were filed due to concerns that the funds would be used to finance terrorism (compared to 93 STRs for all of 2014). In 2015, Italy was among the first countries to undergo a mutual evaluation of the level of effectiveness of its AML/CFT system and its level of compliance with the FATF Recommendations. This evaluation was conducted by the IMF and had not been published by the end of 2015. Italy does not require that non-profit organizations send suspicious transaction reports. However, reporting entities are required to consider the specific money laundering and terrorism financing risks when entering in a relationship or carrying out transactions that involve non-profit organizations. The Italian financial intelligence unit at the Bank of Italy publishes the UN, EU, and OFAC designations lists and any subsequent amendments on its website. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: Italy has a long history of countering organized crime and radical ideological movements. Italy's toolkit includes an anti-radicalization program in its prison system. The Ministry of Justice reported the establishment of informal places of worship in 52 prisons where approximately 190 imams were active. Monitoring of detainees at risk of radicalization was enhanced after the November 13 Paris attacks. Twenty cultural mediators and 60 volunteers conducted de-radicalization initiatives within prisons. To the extent domestic recruitment of violent Islamist extremists occurred, it appeared largely concentrated in the more industrialized North and Tuscany, though there were unconfirmed media reports of some alleged foreign terrorist fighters emerging from Rome and Naples. The government has sought to address this vulnerability with its recent announcement that every euro of increased defense spending to protect Italy from terrorism would be matched by a euro of "cultural" spending, primarily focused on improving education and social conditions in underdeveloped areas and peripheral neighborhoods. The government has been a committed participant in the White House Initiative to Combat Violent Extremism, which included hosting a CVE senior officials' meeting in Rome in July. International and Regional Cooperation: Italy is a founding member of the Global Counterterrorism Forum, and actively participates in the GCTF's work. It is also a founding member of the Institute for International Justice and the Rule of Law and is a member of its governing board. Italy supported counterterrorism efforts through the G-7 Roma-Lyon Group, the OSCE, NATO, the UN, the Council of Europe, and the EU. As noted, Italy supports the swift passage of the EU Passenger Name Record Directive. Italy also promoted EUROPOL as a venue for EU-level coordination of law enforcement and intelligence cooperation across national borders. Italy is particularly active in international efforts to prevent and to condemn the destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq and Syria by ISIL, whether such destruction is incidental or deliberate, including targeted destruction of religious sites and objects. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Israel, The West Bank and Gaza, and Jerusalem Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Israel, The West Bank and Gaza, and Jerusalem, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518db41b.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Israel was a committed counterterrorism partner in 2015. Israel again faced terrorist threats from Palestinian violent extremists including Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), particularly from Gaza but also from the West Bank. Other threats included Hizballah in Lebanon and Syria; al-Qa'ida (AQ) and its affiliates, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and its affiliates in the country and along its borders, such as ISIL Sinai Province (ISIL-SP) and al-Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade in the Golan Heights. In addition, since October 1, Israel has faced a wave of terrorist attacks committed by individuals with no clear organizational affiliation. Israeli officials argued that the spike in violence has its roots in part in Palestinian fears that the Government of Israel intends to alter the status quo at the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount and is fanned by incitement by senior figures in the Palestinian Authority, while representatives of the Palestinian Authority argued that the attackers were largely motivated by frustration over the occupation and the lack of a political horizon. Gaza-based Palestinian terrorist organizations continued rocket and mortar attacks into Israeli territory, and multiple terrorist attacks were launched along Israel's security barrier with Gaza. Most of these were initiated by the Omar Hadid-Bayt Almaqdis Brigades, a Salafi organization based in Gaza and inspired by ISIL. Israel saw an increase in the number of launches in 2015, totaling 24 for the year, and a maximum of seven launches during the month of October. The Gaza-based Palestinian organization "Al-Sabirin", which is supported by Iran and identifies with Lebanese Hizballah, has claimed responsibility for launching rockets into Israel as well. Militants continued efforts to smuggle arms and dual-use materials through the Sinai into Gaza via tunnels. Israeli officials welcomed significant efforts by the Government of Egypt to prevent such smuggling. Israeli counterterrorism officials said Hamas and other Gaza terrorists made quantitative and qualitative advances in their military capabilities. Israel assessed that Hamas and PIJ have regained most of the military capabilities that were severely damaged during operation "Protective Edge" (July 7 to August 26, 2014), and have, in some cases, expanded their capabilities, including by constructing new offensive tunnels and acquiring other advanced capabilities such as an arsenal of medium-to-long range rockets and unmanned aerial vehicles. Hamas continued to develop its terrorist infrastructures and activities in the West Bank, specifically in order to attack Israelis. During 2015, Israel's Security Agency, IDF, and Police exposed and foiled several cells of Hamas operating in the West Bank, which were planning to execute terrorist attacks in Israel. Since October 2015, Israeli and Palestinian security services continued coordination to address a wave of terrorist attacks committed by individuals with no clear affiliation to terrorist organizations. These attacks consisted mostly of stabbings of soldiers and civilians, as well as shootings or rammings by vehicles. The attacks occurred in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and in Israeli cities. Israeli officials estimated that the level of threat from global terrorist organizations such as ISIL and AQ and its affiliates increased in 2015. Attacks from ISIL-SP continued as the organization launched rockets toward Israel in July. In addition, ISIL released several audio and video recordings, in Arabic, English, and Hebrew, stating its ambition to attack and destroy Israel and the Jewish people. ISIL leader Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi released an audio recording in late December (his first since being wounded in May), calling on Muslims to attack Israel. One group claiming affiliation with ISIL, the Al-Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade, controlled areas inside Syria close to the Israel-Syria border. Israel was also concerned with potential attacks by terrorists against Israeli targets abroad. For example, in December, German media reported that two ISIL activists were arrested while trying to assemble an IED. The two planned to plant explosives at the Israeli Embassy in Berlin. Israeli government officials estimated that about 55 Israeli citizens and residents left Israel to join the fighting in Syria and Iraq. Several of those have died in battle and seventeen have returned, of whom 11 were prosecuted and sentenced. Israeli security officials and politicians remained concerned about the terrorist threat posed to Israel from Hizballah and Iran, highlighting that Iran, primarily through the efforts of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF), continued to transfer arms to Hizballah. Israeli experts believed that Iran has transferred to Hizballah advanced weapons systems such as anti-aircraft and anti-ship cruise missile systems, and was continuing to transfer long-range rockets into Lebanon. Also, Israeli officials were concerned about the proliferation of conventional and non-conventional weapons from Syria to terrorist organizations. According to the Government of Israel, Hizballah has stockpiled more than 100,000 rockets and missiles in Lebanon since the 2006 Lebanon War. Hizballah continued to act against Israel and Israeli targets around the world. In January, Hizballah launched mortar shells toward Israeli cities in the north and fired anti-tank missiles at an IDF patrol, killing two Israeli soldiers and wounding several others. Hizballah also continued to operate proxy groups based in the Syrian Golan Heights against Israel. One of these groups was headed by Samir Kuntar who publicly announced that he was operating from the Golan Heights with support from Hizballah against Israel. Several attacks by Kuntar's group were foiled. In December 2015, Hizballah officials alleged that Kuntar had been killed in an airstrike in Syria, attributing this attack to the Israeli government. Iran and Hizballah reportedly continued to prepare for attacks against Israeli targets outside the country. In late November, Kenyan security agencies announced that they had arrested two Iranian citizens, allegedly sent by the Iranian IRGC/Quds force to execute a terrorist attack against Israeli targets in Nairobi. In May, Cypriot police arrested a Lebanese-Canadian national, Hussain Abdallah, who later admitted he was working for Hizballah's External Security Organization. Abdallah possessed about 8.5 tons of chemicals used for manufacturing explosives. Abdallah acknowledged to Cypriot investigators that that the explosive pre-cursors interrogation showed the explosives were supposed to be used against Israeli targets in Cyprus and other places in Europe. Iran has stated publicly that it armed Hizballah with advanced long-range Iranian-manufactured missiles, in violation of UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs) 1701 and 1747. While Israel is not involved in the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, it shares information to help track and stem the flow of foreign terrorist fighters through information exchanges on counterterrorism issues with numerous governments. In support of the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida sanctions regime, Israel regularly updates the list of foreign terrorist organizations and individuals involved in terrorism to better align with UNSC sanctions lists. Additionally, in November 2015 the Israeli interagency team appointed by the Israeli government submitted its report about the need and methods of requiring and collecting advance passenger information and Passenger Name Record data from airlines operating in its territory, to achieve better safety measures and as part of Israel's implementation of UNSCR 2178. Attacks by Jewish Israelis against Arab citizens of Israel many of whom self-identify as Palestinian and Palestinian residents, property, and places of worship in Israel, Jerusalem, and the West Bank continued. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin spoke out against extremist violence and "price tag" attacks (property crimes and violent acts by extremist Jewish individuals and groups in retaliation for activity they deemed to be anti-settlement) on multiple occasions, as did Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other elected officials. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: The Israel Security Agency (ISA) reported 22 rocket attacks from Gaza in 2015. On July 3, ISIL-SP claimed responsibility for launching two rockets towards Israeli communities in the northern Negev. There were no reported injuries or property damage from the attack. Notable terrorist attacks from the northern border included: On January 28, in two incidents, Hizballah launched anti-tank missiles at an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) patrol on the Israel-Lebanon border, killing two soldiers and wounding seven. On April 26, Israel foiled an attempt by four terrorists from the Syrian Golan heights to plant IEDs along the Israeli-Syrian border. The four were members of a proxy terrorist cell of Hizballah, headed by Samir Kuntar. On December 20, the same day that Hizballah terrorist Samir Kuntar's death was announced, three rockets were fired at northern Israel from Lebanese territory near the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidiya. The rockets landed in unpopulated areas, causing no injuries. Lone offender attacks included: On January 21, a Palestinian national who entered Israel illegally boarded a municipal bus in Tel Aviv and began stabbing other passengers with a sharp object, injuring 12, some seriously, before police apprehended him. Hamas praised this attack as a "bold and heroic act." On April 20, in the Tel Aviv suburb Herzliya, an Arab Israeli male was stabbed by a man who shouted "Death to Arabs" in a Russian accent before fleeing. Police treated this incident as a terrorist attack. In July, an Israeli ultra-Orthodox violent extremist stabbed to death one Israeli and injured six others during the Jerusalem LGBT Pride March. Israeli security forces apprehended the attacker. On October 8 an off-duty uniformed IDF soldier and others were stabbed near the Israel Defense Headquarters in Tel Aviv. One victim was seriously wounded. The perpetrator was killed trying to flee the scene. On October 13 in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ra'anana, there were two separate stabbing attacks at public bus stops, leaving five wounded. Both perpetrators were apprehended. On October 18, an attack at the Be'er Sheva bus terminal resulted in one dead and 10 wounded. Police killed the perpetrator. This was followed by mob violence against an innocent Eritrean bystander who had been shot by security forces in the melee and mistakenly was thought by the mob to be a second attacker; he later succumbed to his wounds. On October 22, there was a stabbing and shooting incident in Beit Shemesh. This was followed by calls for a "Day of Rage" for the following day. On November 2, there were stabbing attacks in the Tel Aviv suburb of Rishon LeZion and in Netanya. On November 19, a stabbing attack in a synagogue in the Panorama Building in Tel Kabir (south of Tel Aviv and east of Jaffa) resulted in one dead and three injured. On December 19 in Ra'anana, a Palestinian man stabbed three individuals and severely injured one of them. He subsequently tried to enter a synagogue, but was caught by the police. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Israel has a robust legal framework to combat terrorism and promote international legal assistance in the investigation and prosecution of terrorists. Israel regularly adopts the UNSC designations of the AQ-ISIL list in its list of terrorist entities and other sanction lists according to Israel's Prohibition of Terror Financing Law (2005), which allows the Israeli Security Cabinet to declare a foreign association to be a foreign terrorist organization on the basis of the relevant determination by a foreign country or by the UNSC. On the law enforcement front, the ISA and Israel National Police (INP) continued to cooperate with U.S. law enforcement agencies on cases involving U.S. citizens killed in terrorist attacks, as well as other counterterrorism initiatives of mutual interest. In recent years the ISA exposed and arrested several cells of Israeli nationals who vowed allegiance to ISIL or AQ and who were planning to execute a terrorist attack inside Israel. In June, several men, some of whom worked as high school teachers, were arrested in the Bedouin village of al-Hurra for recruiting support for ISIL and planning to travel to Syria and Iraq. In August, a cell of the organization was exposed in Yafi'a. Its members were planning to acquire weapons and attack Israeli soldiers or policemen. In November, two Israelis from the Nazareth area were arrested and accused of supporting the organization and planning an attack inside Israel. Counterterrorism raids also targeted, among others, the alleged local Hamas commander, who worked to renew the organization's activity in the Qalqilya region and in surrounding villages. The activities included "preparing the ground for terrorist activities," the ISA said. Security forces seized more than NIS 35,000 (US $8,950) during the operation. The Israeli Ministry of Interior maintains a voluntary biometric passport control system at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport, which is available for Israeli passport holders over the age of 18. The system facilitates both entry into and exit from Israel via an automatic kiosk for Israeli citizens who successfully pass a background check and provide a scan of the back of their hand. Israel maintains a border fence along the length of its border with the Sinai Peninsula to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into Israel, augmented by cameras and sensors to similarly reduce the threat of terrorism. Israel does not collect advance Passenger Name Records on commercial flights. However, an Israeli interagency team appointed by the Israeli government in 2014 submitted a report in November 2015 about the need and methods of requiring and collecting advance passenger information and Passenger Name Record data from airlines operating in its territory, to achieve better safety measures, and as part of Israel's implementation of UNSCR 2178. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Israel is a member of the Council of Europe's Select Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures, a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body. The Israeli financial intelligence unit, the Israeli Money Laundering and Terror Finance Prohibition Authority (IMPA), is a member of the Egmont Group. In June 2014, the FATF decided to expand its membership and identified Israel as a candidate for FATF observer status, and in November 2015, a high-level delegation from the FATF visited Israel to review the state for possible observer status. Senior officials in the Israeli government (the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Finance, the State's Attorney, and the Governor of the Bank of Israel) reiterated Israel's commitment to becoming a member of the organization, as well as its efforts to advance standards regarding combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism to bring the country in line with international standards. Israel's counterterrorism finance regime continued to be enhanced through enforcement operations and the inclusion of new groups under national terrorism finance laws. The well-regulated Israeli banking industry worked to address suspected terrorist activity. Israeli experts and officials continued to raise concerns about the issue of state-sponsored funding of Hamas. Hamas is reportedly funding terrorists in the West Bank preparing to perpetrate terrorist attacks against Israel, Israelis, or Israeli interests. For example, 24 Hamas-funded operatives were arrested throughout the West Bank on November 19 in a joint ISA, IDF, and INP operation. Financing of Hamas through charitable organizations also remained a concern for Israeli authorities, as did the funding of Hizballah through charities and criminal organizations. Israel regularly updates the list of foreign terrorist organizations and individuals involved in terrorism, in order to align with the UN sanctions lists. The UN sanctions lists are registered in the formal government registry. Every designation is published in three languages (Hebrew, Arabic, English), and run in three different newspapers, as required by law. In addition, designations are published on the website of the IMPA and distributed by email to the IMPA's mailing list, which includes banks, lawyers, and finance professionals. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. International and Regional Cooperation: Israel continued its counterterrorism cooperation with a range of regional and international institutions, including the UN, the OAS, and the OSCE. From November 9-11, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted an international conference on "Countering Radicalization and Violent Extremism Leading to Terrorism: The Challenge of Terrorists Acting Alone or in Small Cells" with delegates from 42 countries and 10 international organizations. The conference was hosted in partnership with the Terrorism Prevention Branch of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the OSCE, and in consultation with the UNSC Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate. The conference examined critical issues and challenges faced by many governments in their efforts to counter violent extremism, such as prevention, detection, and intervention; the use of the internet for incitement and radicalization; legal frameworks in the fight against terrorism; and rehabilitation and reintegration of violent extremist offenders. Israel continued to cooperate with numerous countries regarding efforts to thwart terrorist attacks and plots against Israelis or Israeli interests abroad. In July, Israel and the United States held an interagency counterterrorism dialogue to discuss the broad range of threats in the region and to determine areas of collaboration to address these challenges. Additionally, during 2015, Israel conducted talks on counterterrorism issues with several countries and organizations including Bulgaria, China, France, Germany, Greece, India, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Thailand, the UK, the EU, and NATO. The West Bank and Gaza, and Jerusalem The Palestinian Authority (PA) continued its counterterrorism efforts in the West Bank where Hamas, Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) remained present. The PA Security Forces (PASF) constrained those organizations' ability to conduct attacks, including the November and December arrests of PIJ members in the West Bank who were planning to carry out attacks against Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and other Israeli targets. The PA exercised varying degrees of authority over the West Bank due to the IDF's continuing presence in certain areas, per Oslo-era agreements. The IDF and ISA arrested members of suspected terrorist organizations operating in the West Bank, including the March arrest of Hamas members who were planning to carry out attacks against Israeli targets during the Jewish holiday of Purim. The PASF, IDF, and ISA thwarted scores of lone offender attacks, particularly during the period of heightened violence that began October 1. Violent extremist Palestinians continued to conduct acts of violence in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Since early October and through December, the West Bank and Jerusalem witnessed the highest number of Palestinian attacks against Israelis since the Second Intifada, which resulted in the deaths of 16 Israelis, including two dual U.S.-Israeli citizens, and one U.S. citizen. Most attacks were lone offender stabbing attacks, while others were shooting and vehicular attacks. The majority of the perpetrators did not have any organizational affiliation. Violent extremist Israelis, including settlers, continued to conduct acts of violence as well as "price tag" attacks (property crimes and violent acts by extremist Jewish individuals and groups in retaliation for activity they deemed to be anti-settlement) in the West Bank and Jerusalem. In the deadliest attack against Palestinians since the Second Intifada, in July, it is suspected that two settlers set fire to a home in the West Bank and killed two adults and one infant, and critically injured a five-year-old. In apparent "price tag" attacks in February, Israeli extremists wrote Hebrew graffiti "redemption of Zion" and set fire to a Greek orthodox seminary in Jerusalem, and in a separate incident, wrote Hebrew graffiti "we want the redemption of Zion" and set fire to a mosque in the West Bank. In October, a Jewish violent extremist attacked and injured the head of an Israeli human rights organization. The UN Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs reported 224 attacks in 2015 by violent extremist Israeli settlers that resulted in Palestinian injuries or property damage, compared to 324 in 2014. Hamas continued to maintain control of security forces in Gaza. Several Gaza-based terrorist groups launched attacks against Israel from Gaza. The Government of Egypt's latest efforts to destroy smuggling tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, including by pumping large volumes of sea water into that buffer zone to force the collapse of tunnels, further hampered the ability of Hamas and other armed groups to smuggle weapons, cash, and other contraband into Gaza. Gaza remained a base of operations for several Salafist splinter groups, such as Jaysh al-Islam, and clan-based terrorist groups that engaged in or facilitated terrorist attacks. Membership in these groups reportedly increased and new groups emerged after the 2014 Israel-Hamas conflict, as disillusioned members of Hamas and other terrorist groups reportedly defected to more extremist elements. A new Salafist group called the Omar Hadid Brigades took responsibility for most of the rockets fired toward Israel since June 2015. Hamas confronted the growing Salafist threat in Gaza by arresting and detaining a number of Salafists this year, but has since released the majority of the detainees. Despite claims of responsibility from individuals purporting affiliation with the ISIL, there was no definitive link confirming membership on a large scale. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: In June, a Palestinian assailant shot and killed one Israeli civilian and injured another while they were driving near the West Bank settlement of Dolev. Israeli security forces apprehended the attacker and four suspected accomplices. In July, suspected settlers attacked and destroyed by fire two homes in the Palestinian village of Douma in the West Bank, killing an 18-month-old infant, the two parents, and critically injuring a five-year-old. Israeli authorities found Hebrew graffiti with the words "Revenge" and "Long Live King Messiah" painted on the homes. Israeli authorities indicted two Jewish Israelis for the attack on January 3, 2016. In October, Palestinian members of a Hamas cell shot and killed two Israeli civilians, one of whom was an American citizen, while they were driving near the West Bank settlement of Itamar. Israeli security forces arrested the individuals responsible. In October, two Palestinian assailants stabbed and shot Israelis aboard a bus in Jerusalem, killing two Israelis, mortally wounding an Israeli-American who died two weeks later, and injuring at least 15. Israeli security forces shot and killed one attacker and arrested the other. In November, a Palestinian assailant shot and killed two Israelis and injured at least five others, including minors, while they were driving in the West Bank. The United States continued to assist the PA's counterterrorism efforts through programs that strengthened the capacity of the PASF, primarily through training, equipping, and the provision of infrastructure to PASF personnel in the West Bank. The United States is also assisting the PASF to institutionalize the security gains of the previous decade by helping it to become self-sustaining. U.S.-funded training of PASF primarily took place at the Jordan International Police Training Center, the Academy for Civil Protection, the King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Center, and the PA's Central Training Institute in Jericho. Concurrently, the United States continued to assist the larger PA criminal justice system to conduct more thorough investigations and prosecutions of terrorist-related activity, among other criminal acts, and to ensure safe incarceration of those held for trial or after conviction of such crimes. PA President Mahmoud Abbas reiterated his commitment to nonviolence and recognition of the State of Israel. He also continued to express his commitment to pursue an independent Palestinian state through peaceful means. Abbas continued to support a security program involving disarmament of fugitive terrorists, arresting members of terrorist organizations, and gradually dismantling armed groups in the West Bank. The PASF arrested members of Hamas, PIJ, and PFLP when it suspected them of involvement in terrorist or other criminal acts. For example, the PASF arrested five members of a Hamas cell in Hebron in May that was planning terrorist attacks in Israel, according to media. In mid-October, the PASF arrested 19 Hamas members and other individuals suspected of planning stabbing attacks. Israeli authorities, among others, continued to note improvements in the capacity and performance of PASF as a leading contributor to the improved security environment in the West Bank. Most notable was the relative lack of organized or large-scale disturbances in the West Bank since the heightened period of violence began in early October. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: The PA continued to lack legislation specifically tailored to counterterrorism, although existing Palestinian laws criminalize actions that constitute terrorist acts. The PA continued to arrest terrorists in the West Bank, and the PASF and public prosecutors received training to enable better investigations of terrorism-related crimes. Despite on-again, off-again factional reconciliation talks between Hamas and Fatah, PASF personnel continued to conduct operations against and detain Hamas elements, which Hamas officials protested. The PA continued to develop its civilian justice institutions (e.g. judiciary, police, prosecutors) to improve both investigative and prosecutorial functions. The United States and other donors provided material and developmental assistance to enable the PA to reduce case backlogs, improve warrant executions, and upgrade forensic services. The key PA institution by mandate and law that works to prevent internal terrorist events and investigate security-related criminal conduct is the Preventive Security Organization (PSO). In practice, the General Intelligence Organization and the Military Intelligence Organization also play a critical role in this effort. The PSO conducts investigations in coordination with public prosecutors, but this cooperation could improve, especially in terms of the PSO's ability to conduct criminal investigations and gather admissible evidence. During 2015, the United States continued assistance to the PSO, as well as the Security Justice Commission, to help the PA move the prosecution of all civilian cases, including those involving terrorism and security-related offenses, to the exclusive jurisdiction of the civilian courts, and enhance cooperation between security service investigators and civilian prosecutors. The PA Security Forces have a mixed although improving record of accountability and respect for human rights. Per the Oslo-era Accords, Israel controls border security in the West Bank. The primary limitation on PA counterterrorism efforts in Gaza remained Hamas' control of the area and the resulting inability of PASF to operate there. Limitations on PA counterterrorism efforts in the West Bank included restrictions on the movement and activities of PASF in and through areas of the West Bank for which the Israeli government retained responsibility for security under the terms of Oslo-era agreements. While the PA continued to lack modern forensic capability, the multi-year assistance efforts that the Canadian International Development Agency started in late 2012 through the UN Office on Drugs and Crime continued. The forensic science laboratory is fully equipped and training in firearm and tool mark evidence, document examination, and drug analysis was ongoing. The PA already has a basic ability to examine and compare unknown prints to known prints. PA justice and security leaders continued to participate in regional conferences and meetings to counter terrorism. PASF personnel attended a variety of international counterterrorism training courses at training facilities in Jordan, Europe, and the United States. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: In 2015, the PA became a full member of the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force, a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body, and later the same year became a member of the MENAFATF's mutual evaluation working group. Effective December 30, 2015, President Abbas issued Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Decree #20. Among the many improvements it made over the inadequate 2007 AML law (the Anti-Money Laundering Decree Law #9) was to make terrorism financing a criminal offense and to define terrorists, terrorist acts, terrorist organizations, foreign terrorist fighters, and terrorism financing. It also makes terrorism and terrorist acts predicate money laundering offenses, although the decree does not fully meet international standards as it does not criminalize all forms of material support or the financing of an individual terrorist in the absence of a link to a specific terrorist act. The legislature has not convened since 2007 and prospects are dim that one will be seated in the foreseeable future. Consequently, the PA remained unable to make legislative improvements (without decree) that were required to bring it up to international standards. The Palestinian Financial Follow-Up Unit (FFU) is a fully functional financial intelligence unit with 12 employees and a computer system linking it with all 16 banks licensed to operate in the West Bank. Seven banks are local and nine are foreign, operating through a network of 274 branches in the West Bank and Gaza. There are also 306 money changers. The banks file both suspicious transaction reports (STRs) and currency transaction reports electronically through this system. In 2015, banks filed 108 STRs, compared to 54 in 2014. Although the FFU has adequate staffing, authority, and equipment, it has been unable to realize its full operational effectiveness due, in part, to restrictions in the law. The 2007 law restricted information sharing between the FFU and any law enforcement agency, with the exception of the Attorney General's Office (AGO). While the FFU may pass information, including analysis, to any requesting competent authority according to the 2015 Decree, the AGO is still the recipient for case dissemination. Moreover, the PA has no effective control outside of Area A in the West Bank. The absence of PA law enforcement and regulatory power in Areas B and C increased vulnerability. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2014/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The PA has taken significant steps to ensure that official institutions in the West Bank that fall under its control do not create or disseminate content that incites violence. While some PA leaders have made provocative and inflammatory comments, the PA has made progress in reducing official rhetoric that could be considered incitement to violence. There has been a noteworthy decline in the worst forms of PA official or media incitement to violence for most of President Abbas' tenure (2005 to date), as compared with the previous period under President Arafat, leading up to and through the Second Intifada (1999-2004). Explicit calls for violence against Israelis, direct exhortations against Jews, and categorical denials by the PA of the possibility of peace with Israel are rare and are generally not tolerated by the leadership. For example, in July 2015, President Abbas instructed Foreign Minister Riad Malki to recall Palestinian Ambassador to Chile, Imad Jamil Jadaa, for making anti-Semitic comments at a conference, quoting from the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." According to the PA's Palestinian Broadcasting Company's code of conduct, no programming is allowed that encourages "violence against any person or institution on the basis of race, religion, political beliefs, or sex." In practice, this code of conduct is not always observed, with some instances of incitement taking place via official media. The PA maintains control over the content of Friday sermons delivered in more than 1800 West Bank mosques to ensure that they do not endorse incitement to violence. Weekly, the PA Minister of Awqaf and Religious Affairs distributes approved themes and prohibits incitement to violence. The PA's ability to enforce these guidelines varies depending upon its location, and it has limited authority to control the context of sermons in Israeli-controlled Area C. While the PA also monitored official social media websites to ensure that no inciting materials were present, there have been instances where inciting materials have appeared, including the posting of political cartoons glorifying stabbing attacks on one of the official Fatah Facebook pages in October. As part of a policy codified in 2003, the PA provided significant financial packages to Palestinian security prisoners released from Israeli prisons in 2014 in an effort to reintegrate them into society and prevent recruitment by hostile political factions. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Ireland Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Ireland, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518db522.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: The United States and Ireland worked reasonably well in bilateral and regional counterterrorism, law enforcement, and information sharing efforts. An Garda Siochana (the local and national police service of Ireland, referred to as Garda in this report) has comprehensive law enforcement, immigration, investigative, intelligence, and counterterrorism responsibilities. In 2015, there were incidents carried out in Ireland by dissident republican groups (sometimes referred to as criminal terrorist groups by the Irish Department of Justice). Some violent actions committed in neighboring Northern Ireland by members of dissident groups were traced back to support provided by persons living in Ireland. Attacks were often directed at Northern Ireland's law enforcement personnel and security structures to disrupt ongoing post-peace process community rehabilitation efforts. Irish authorities worked to address these legacy issues stemming from "The Troubles," and were actively involved in dealing with transnational terrorism issues. The targets for other attacks by dissident republican groups in Ireland have been other republican factions, and the incidents often involved organized criminal activity. Major Garda successes in disrupting the activities of such groups and infighting between dissident factions appeared to have lessened the threat of terrorism. In 2015, the Irish government committed with the UK government and the Northern Ireland Executive to reinforce efforts to tackle organized crime associated with the legacy of para-militarism. A Joint Agency Task Force was established in December to identify strategic priorities for combating cross-border organized crime and to oversee operational law enforcement coordination, after a trilateral cross-border Ministerial meeting between the Irish Minister for Justice and Equality, Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, and counterparts in the UK government and the Northern Ireland Executive. Ireland is a member of the Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Enacted June 1, 2015, the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offenses) (Amendment) Act 2015 created three new offenses relating to preparatory terrorist activities: public provocation to commit a terrorist offense, recruitment for terrorism, and training for terrorism. The bill transposed into Irish law an EU Council Framework Decision on counterterrorism. The Act specifically recognizes that terrorist-linked activities may be committed by electronic means. The new offenses would carry sentences of up to 10 years imprisonment upon conviction. Law enforcement units have effectively demonstrated their capacity to detect, deter, and respond to terrorist incidents. The Garda Special Branch provides specialized law enforcement capability and has primary responsibility for counterterrorism response, with the military performing specific functions when requested by the civil authorities. The Irish Defense Ministry launched the 2015 "White Paper on Defence" in August outlining Ireland's defense policy framework for the next decade, aimed at addressing increased security challenges. It featured a streamlined response to terrorism with the Government Taskforce on Emergency Planning reviewing terrorism threat assessments received from Garda. In October, the Minister for Justice announced plans to establish a second Special Criminal Court (SCC) with seven judges to try terrorist and criminal gang offenses. In 2004, the Irish government established a second non-jury Special Criminal Court (SCC); nearly 11 years later, in October 2015, the government appointed seven serving judges to its bench. Through those appointments, the second SCC officially came into existence. [Irish law provides for a non-jury SCC when the director of public prosecutions certifies a case to be beyond the capabilities of an ordinary court. The Irish Council on Civil Liberties, Amnesty International, and the UN Human Rights Committee have expressed concern that, inter alia, SCCs use a lowered evidence admissibility standard.] While no significant terrorist attacks occurred in 2015, the bomb squad mobilized 141 times due to possible IED incidents, 40 of which involved viable IEDs that Irish Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) technicians rendered safe. The list below details terrorism-related law enforcement actions reported in the public domain. In March, police found firearms, ammunition, and IEDs while investigating dissident republican activity in Ireland. Police made the discovery during a planned search in County Louth. In a similar operation in the Raskeagh and Kilcurry area, close to the border with Northern Ireland, police found firearms and firearm components that were stored underground. In May, Army EOD technicians rendered safe four IEDs during a major investigation into dissident republican activity. Police conducted a total of 20 searches throughout Counties Dublin, Louth, and Wexford, arresting six men and seizing pipe bombs, explosives, a firearm, and ammunition. In County Louth, EOD technicians conducted a controlled detonation. In County Wexford, EOD technicians rendered safe component parts of bomb-making equipment. Separately, in County Leitrim, EOD technicians rendered safe two viable IEDs. Beyond that, police found a suspicious device while conducting a vehicle search. In June, Garda in County Longford arrested four men they suspected of dissident republican activity after suspicious activity and the discovery of a suspect explosive device. The Army Bomb Disposal Team attended the scene and rendered the device safe. Ireland worked closely with the UK on border security, including sharing biographic and biometric information. The Irish Naturalization and Immigration Services recently commenced a six-month trial of automated border control gates for some flights at Dublin Airport. These electronic gates allow certain categories of arriving passengers holding a passport with an electronic chip, which contains the holder's facial image, to clear immigration controls through electronic self-service means. The trial results will be evaluated before determining whether the method provides a more secure and efficient means to clear immigration controls. The Government of Ireland was active in highlighting the need for the sharing of Passenger Name Records on flights in the EU. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Ireland is a member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), and its financial intelligence unit, the Bureau of Fraud Investigation, is a member of the Egmont Group. In 2014, the Criminal Justice Act 2013 (CJA) went into effect, amending the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorism financing) Act 2010 by providing for the cessation of mobile communications services where necessary for the aversion of terrorist threats. Additionally, the CJA consolidated all of Ireland's existing anti-money laundering and terrorism financing laws. Ireland has yet to transpose the fourth EU Money Laundering Directive into Irish law. Law enforcement authorities monitor non-profit organizations for purposes of monitoring breaches of criminal law, but Ireland has yet to fully implement the Charities Act of 2009, which regulates the activities of charities and non-profit organizations in Ireland. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The Government of Ireland's efforts to counter violent extremism focused on integrating minority groups into Irish society. These measures included providing social benefits, language training, health care, and the proactive advocacy work of an Ombudsman's office in the affairs of immigrants. The Garda Racial Intercultural and Diversity Office coordinates, monitors, and advises on all aspects of policing in the area of ethnic and cultural diversity with a view towards building trust with communities. Through this office, police officers are provided with special training to assist at-risk populations. The Irish government pursued its CVE strategy primarily through the Ethnic Liaison Officer program of the Garda. These officers liaise with representatives of the various minority communities in an area, and establish communication links with each of these communities. They support integration by involving members of ethnic minority communities in Garda and community social events. International and Regional Cooperation: Ireland works closely with the UK in securing the Common Travel Area (CTA). The introduction of the British-Irish visa required the sharing of biometric and other information. The net result was a more integrated system for checking travelers. Ireland actively participates in a range of meetings and actions at the EU to address counterterrorism. In addition to counterterrorism capacity building overseas, Ireland also cooperated on counterterrorism efforts with Northern Ireland. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Iraq Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Iraq, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518db615.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Iraq witnessed a continued surge of terrorist activity in 2015, primarily as a result of the actions of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which has occupied large areas of the country since early 2014. ISIL had no strategic victories after its capture of Ramadi in May 2015, however, and lost more than 40 percent of the Iraqi territory it once controlled. A series of successive ISIL defeats shifted the momentum in favor of the Iraqi government and the Coalition by year's end. In April, an Iraqi-led military effort retook the city of Tikrit, the symbolically-important hometown of Saddam Hussein. The subsequent return of 80 percent of internally displaced persons to the city by the end of the year was a major milestone in the effort against ISIL, and the Iraqi government coordinated closely with the international community to stabilize the city. In November, Peshmerga forces retook the town of Sinjar, a city that came to the world's attention with brutal attacks by ISIL against the Yezidi community in the summer of 2014. At the end of the year, newly-empowered Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) units, accompanied by local Sunni fighters, liberated large parts of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province and a strategically important hub. Although the Government of Iraq supported by the 66-member Global Coalition to Counter ISIL made significant progress in its campaign to retake occupied territory from ISIL, there remained a security vacuum in parts of Iraq. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: Terrorist groups continued to mount a large number of attacks throughout the country. Most notably, ISIL's use of military equipment captured in the course of fighting gave it greater capabilities in line with a more conventional military force, including the reported use of eastern bloc tanks, artillery, and self-developed unmanned aerial drones. According to estimates from the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), acts of terrorism and violence killed more than 7,500 civilians and injured more than 13,800 in 2015. Iranian-backed groups, including Kata'ib Hizballah (KH), continued to operate in Iraq during 2015, which exacerbated sectarian tensions in Iraq and contributed to human rights abuses against primarily Sunni civilians. KH and other Iraqi Shia militias associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been brought into the Iraqi government's Popular Mobilization Forces. The inclusion of KH, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, in the Popular Mobilization Forces enlisted by the Iraqi Government in the effort against ISIL, threatens to undermine counterterrorism objectives. The following is an illustrative sample that highlights only a small number of the most egregious terrorist attacks conducted in 2015: On January 1, 15 members of the Jamilat tribe in Ninewa Province were executed after refusing to join ISIL. On February 7, three separate bombings in Baghdad, including one suicide bomber, killed 36 people and injured 70. On April 17, ISIL claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack that killed three and wounded five outside the U.S. Consulate in Erbil. On April 22, eight pilgrims returning from a Shia shrine in Samarra were killed in a suicide bombing; 16 others were injured. On May 8, three suicide bombers attacked the al-Zahraa mosque and the Imam Hussein mosque, killing at least 22 people in total, including a senior police officer. On May 12, a suicide bomber and two mortar attacks that were launched during a Shia march in Baghdad killed six and injured 16. On June 25, five separate bombings and a shooting incident in Baghdad killed eight and injured more than 20. On July 17, a suicide car bombing using an ice cream truck in Khan Bani Saad (Diyala Province) targeted a local marketplace. Approximately 130 people were killed with a similar number injured. Several others were killed by buildings that collapsed as a result of the explosion. On July 25, two suicide bombers attacked a crowded swimming pool in Tuz Khurmatu causing at least 12 deaths and 45 injured. On August 13, a truck bomb targeted a food market in a predominantly Shia neighborhood in Sadr City killing two and injuring 10. On October 3, twin suicide bombings in Baghdad killed 18 and wounded more than 60. On November 30, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at a checkpoint along a route used by Shia pilgrims in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of al-Shaab, killing nine and wounding 21. The victims were taking part in the annual Arba'een ceremony. On December 9, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in the doorway of a Shia mosque at the end of prayer in Baghdad killing 11 and wounding 20. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: ISIL offensives in 2014 and early 2015 significantly degraded ISF capabilities, manpower, and equipment. The Government of Iraq suffered losses across its national security apparatus, especially in the Iraqi Army and federal and local police. However, with substantial assistance received from the Coalition to address training and equipping shortfalls, the Government of Iraq worked to redress those losses. Iraq adopted the Terrorist Interdiction Program's Personal Identification Secure Comparison and Evaluation System (PISCES) in an effort to secure its borders and identify fraudulent travel documents. The Government of Iraq has the capability to conduct biographic and biometric screening at multiple land and air ports of entry. Iraq also continued to participate in the Department of State's Antiterrorism Assistance (ATA) program; ATA training for the Emergency Response Brigades contributed to the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Since 2005, Iraq has been a member of the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force (MENAFATF), a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body. Iraq is also under review by the FATF, due to a number of strategic deficiencies in its anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regime. In December, the Iraqi government adopted a new AML/CFT law, which will require extensive implementing regulations to ensure its compliance with international (FATF) standards. Although that law represented significant progress in strengthening Iraq's AML/CFT regime, in and of itself it did not fulfill all of the country's commitments to the FATF. In December, as part of its Action Plan with the FATF, the Iraqi government adopted a new AML/CFT law, which will require extensive implementing regulations to ensure it is compliant with international standards. In 2015, the Central Bank of Iraq took a number of steps to disrupt ISIL's financial activity, including: issuing a national directive to prohibit financial transactions with banks and financial companies located in ISIL-controlled areas; cutting off salary payments to government employees located in ISIL-controlled areas to prevent those salaries from being "taxed" by ISIL and so used to fund ISIL operations; and publishing a list of exchange houses and transfer companies prohibited from accessing U.S. currency auctions. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2014/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The Government of Iraq recognizes that to defeat ISIL it must use soft power along with hard power. The Iraqis took a good first step when the Iraqi National Security Council, in conjunction with Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, hosted an International Military Conference on Psychological Operations to Counter Da'esh Media on December 16-17 in Baghdad. The conference brought together representatives from 17 nations in an effort to increase the effectiveness of combined operations to degrade ISIL propaganda and to aid the Iraqi government and Security Forces in communicating a more viable narrative than that offered by ISIL. The conference received extensive media coverage and the public acknowledgement by many prominent Iraqis of the divisiveness caused by sectarianism was an encouraging development. International and Regional Cooperation: Iraq is a member of multilateral and regional organizations including the UN, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and the Arab League. The U.S.-led Global Coalition to Counter ISIL focused on training, equipping, advising, and assisting the ISF, including Kurdish forces. Seventeen Coalition members joined the United States in deploying military personnel to assist the Iraqi government in training, along with "advise and assist" missions. Coalition partners trained more than 30,000 ISF, while 12 Coalition members conducted more than 6,000 air strikes in Iraq, including 630 in support of the Ramadi liberation. In addition, more than a dozen Coalition partners contributed $50 million to the Funding Facility for Iraq Stabilization. There were a number of global events meant to focus the international community on supporting counter-ISIL efforts as well as the many post-conflict stabilization needs in Iraq. In January, the Small Group Ministerial met in London to assess the counter-ISIL campaign and reconvened in Brussels in June again to assess progress. The Global Coalition convened the Stabilization Working Group in March in Berlin followed by a subsequent meeting in May in Abu Dhabi. In July, the political directors of the Coalition Small Group met in Quebec City following a meeting of the Lines of Effort leads and the one-year anniversary of the Counter-ISIL Coalition on September 28. On November 4, the Small Group of the Counter-ISIL Coalition met in Brussels to take stock of developments on the ground and continue expanding efforts to degrade and defeat ISIL. Later that same month, the Ambassadors of the Global Coalition met at the Department of State where the Vice President called on the Coalition to intensify its efforts against ISIL. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Indonesia Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Indonesia, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518db7e.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Indonesia uses a civilian law enforcement-led, rule-of-law-based approach in its domestic counterterrorism operations. Since the 2002 Bali bombings, Indonesia has applied sustained pressure to successfully degrade the capabilities of terrorists and their networks operating within Indonesia's borders. There was no major attack against Western interests in Indonesia in 2015. There is growing concern that foreign terrorist fighters returning from Iraq and Syria with new training, skills, and experience could conduct attacks against Indonesian government personnel or facilities, Western targets, or other soft targets. As of December, Indonesian officials estimate that there are approximately 800 Indonesian foreign terrorist fighters in Iraq and Syria, though official estimates fluctuate between agencies and services. Indonesian officials say they have identified 284 Indonesian citizens actively involved in fighting in Iraq and Syria and are investigating an additional 516. They also believe that 52 Indonesian foreign terrorist fighters have died in Syria and estimate that another 60 to 100 have returned to Indonesia. The bulk of this number of estimated returnees includes those Indonesians and their families who have been detained and deported by authorities in transit countries while en route to Syria and Iraq. Fighters may also return undetected by exploiting vulnerabilities in the land and sea borders of this vast archipelagic nation. Abu Wardah (also known as Santoso) is the leader of Mujahidin Indonesia Timur (MIT) and is Indonesia's most-wanted terrorist. He remained at large in the remote jungle area near Poso, Central Sulawesi. In July 2014, Santoso publicly pledged allegiance to ISIL. Several terrorist convicts were paroled in 2015 after completing their prison terms, including senior leaders of Jemaah Islamiya; these senior leaders are counter-ISIL. There is a growing government- and civil society-led effort to promote Indonesian Islam as a peaceful and moderate alternative to violent extremist teachings elsewhere in the world. Indonesia does not provide a safe haven for terrorists. However, members of the terrorist group MIT meet and train in the isolated area near Poso, Central Sulawesi. Indonesian officials are committed to eliminating this threat. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: In 2015, MIT was blamed for the murders of three civilians. In August, a member of the Police Mobile Brigade (Brimob) was killed in a shootout with a suspected MIT terrorist. In late November, a member of the Indonesian military (TNI) was shot and killed by an MIT member in another confrontation. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Indonesia follows a strong rule-of-law-based counterterrorism approach. After investigation by the police, terrorist suspects' dossiers are sent to the Task Force on Counterterrorism and Transnational Crimes (SATGAS), which is part of the Attorney General's Office, for prosecution. Relevant legislation includes the Law on Combating Criminal Acts of Terrorism (15/2003), the Law on Prevention and Eradication of Anti-Terrorist Financing (9/2013), the 1951 Emergency Law, and Indonesia's Criminal Code. Counterterrorism efforts are police-led, with Detachment 88 the elite counterterrorism unit of the police leading operations and investigations. Counterterrorism units from the Indonesian military may be called upon to support domestic counterterrorism operations and responses on an as-needed basis. Law enforcement units are increasingly able to detect, and in some cases prevent, attacks before they are carried out. Law enforcement personnel participated in a range of training and professional development activities, including through the Department of State's Antiterrorism Assistance (ATA) program, with training focused on building sustainable police capacity in tactical crisis response and investigative skills. Indonesia recognizes the threat posed by foreign terrorist fighters and was a co-sponsor of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2178. The government has repeatedly and forcefully denounced ISIL, but it has yet to pass laws explicitly criminalizing material support, travel to join foreign terrorist organizations, or commission of extraterritorial offenses related to counterterrorism. Since mid-2014, officials have been considering amending Law 15/2003 or issuing a Presidential Decree in Lieu of Law to more effectively prosecute Indonesians traveling to join terrorist groups abroad or providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations. Indonesian prosecutors stated that they prosecuted 56 terrorism-related cases between January and October 2015. Of those, 16 cases are related to ISIL activity and five have resulted in convictions, with the remaining cases ongoing. For example, charges were filed against Afif Abdul Majid, former Central Java branch head of Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT), not only for his role in providing funding for a JAT training camp in Aceh in 2010, but for joining and participating in exercises with ISIL while in Syria. He was convicted in June for the former charge and sentenced to four years in prison, but the judge could not convict Majid for ISIL-related activities due to insufficient evidence under Indonesia's current counterterrorism law. On March 21, six individuals were arrested by Detachment 88 for allegedly funding or recruiting for ISIL. Two of those arrested, Amin Mude and Tuah Febriwansyah, aka Muhammad Fachry, acted as key facilitators sending Indonesians to Syria to join ISIL. In November, Amin Mude was successfully convicted under 15/2003 and 9/2013 and sentenced to five years and six months in prison. Despite some domestic convictions, Indonesian law lacked the provisions to criminalize and prosecute acts of, and support for, terrorism committed abroad. Frequent personnel rotation at various agencies including the police, legal cadres, and the judiciary represents a challenge to building long-term institutional expertise. The National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) is responsible for coordinating terrorism-related intelligence and information among stakeholder agencies, and comprises detailees from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the TNI, and the Indonesian National Police (POLRI). In September, President Joko Widodo (known as Jokowi) called for concrete steps to strengthen the BNPT's interagency coordination role. Violent extremist groups exploited social media and mobile phone applications to spread propaganda and recruit people to their cause. In March, the Minister of Communications and Information declared the government had blocked 70 ISIL-related blogs and websites at the request of the BNPT. On occasion, the BNPT will also request that specific social media accounts be suspended. The BNPT maintains multiple websites and social media accounts, publishes books, and organizes public discussion forums to counter extremist narratives. While legislative reform to tackle foreign terrorist fighters is still pending, some of Indonesia's efforts dovetailed with obligations outlined in UNSCR 2178. For example, Indonesia condemned ISIL and sought to prevent the movement of terrorists, including through enhanced controls related to the issuance of identity papers. Indonesia also implemented several of the Global Counterterrorism Forum's (GCTF's) good practices for a more effective response against foreign terrorist fighters. In early 2015 POLRI launched Operation Camar Maleo, a significant and sustained police operation in Poso, Central Sulawesi, in an effort to root out members of MIT. The operations have involved a thousand personnel from the Brimob, Detachment 88, and members of the Indonesian military. At least 10 alleged terrorists have been arrested in the province and two were killed. MIT is reported to have approximately 20-40 members left in Poso. In December, MIT leader Santoso issued a message online calling for Indonesians to join ISIL in Iraq or Syria and to execute attacks on Indonesian authorities. Santoso also threatened to destroy the Jakarta Metropolitan Police. On September 13, 2014, police in Central Sulawesi arrested seven people, including one Turkish national and three ethnic Uighurs from China's Xinjiang Province, for alleged links to MIT. In July 2015, the Turkish national and Uighurs were convicted of conspiring to join MIT and sentenced to six years in prison. Also in July, police arrested three people deemed a threat to public safety in East Nusa Tenggara province for alleged involvement in ISIL and on suspicion of spreading ISIL ideology. On August 12, three suspects were arrested by Detachment 88 for suspected involvement in a plot involving improvised explosive devices in Solo, Central Java. The ringleader, Ibadurahman, allegedly received assistance from other Indonesians in Syria. On December 18 and 19, Detachment 88 conducted raids in East and Central Java, arrested several suspected terrorists, and seized bomb-making equipment. As of early November, there were 230 terrorist prisoners held in 26 prisons throughout Indonesia, overseen by the Directorate General of Corrections under the Ministry of Law and Human Rights. Some of Indonesia's most hardened terrorists and ideologues are incarcerated in several prisons on the island of Nusakambangan, off the southern coast of Java. Authorities remained concerned about the potential recidivism of released terrorist prisoners. In addition, terrorists convicted on non-terrorism charges are not always counted or tracked through the justice system as convicted terrorists, creating a potential loophole in disengagement and de-radicalization efforts. Immigration officials at major ports of entry, especially larger international air and seaports, have access to biographic and biometric domestic-only databases. Military and police personnel are often posted at major ports of entry to ensure security. Police maintained a watchlist of suspected terrorists, but there are not always clear lines of coordination among stakeholder agencies. Indonesia shares information through INTERPOL but does not regularly screen through INTERPOL at immigration checkpoints. Information sharing with countries in the region is often on an ad hoc basis, and there is no centralized database or platform for the sharing of information with countries in the region or internationally. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Indonesia is a member of the Asia/Pacific Group (APG) on Money Laundering, a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body. The Indonesian Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center is a member of the Egmont Group. In June, Indonesia achieved milestone progress by being removed from FATF's International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG) after five years of being named on the Public Statement. This determination was based on Indonesia's passage of key legislation criminalizing money laundering and terrorism financing, and by implementing terrorist asset freezing pursuant to UNSCR 1373 and the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida sanctions regime. Implementation of asset freezes is known to take some time and Indonesia needs to find a way to expedite the implementation of asset freeze provisions. Indonesia adopted a joint resolution to further implement asset freezing as required under UNSCR 1373 and 2253. Indonesia continued to issue orders to freeze the assets of all UNSCR 2253 (ISIL and al-Qa'ida)-sanctioned individuals and entities and is working to implement an electronic process to ensure that its freezing process is "without delay." Santoso was put on Indonesia's list of domestic terrorists in 2015. The passage of the terrorism financing law was an important step forward, and Indonesia has filed cases under this new legislation. In 2015, Indonesia brought 13 cases and obtained nine convictions. Indonesia must continue to develop investigative resources and intelligence to counter international organizations engaging in money laundering and terrorist finance. Although non-profit organizations such as religious and charitable organizations are licensed and required to file suspicious transaction reports, the terrorism financing law does not require monitoring or the regulation of such organizations to prevent misuse, including terrorism financing. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: Indonesian officials recognize the importance of addressing radicalization to violence and countering violent extremism (CVE). Vice-President Jusuf Kalla led the Indonesian delegation to the Leader's Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism hosted by President Obama in New York in September. In his address, he stressed that military intervention alone cannot defeat violent extremism and instead highlighted an approach that focuses on improving social welfare and equity, strengthening legal frameworks, and de-radicalization and counter-radicalization efforts. He said that Indonesia will continue to promote the spirit of tolerance by empowering moderates through dialogue and actively engaging civil society, including the two largest Islamic organizations Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, to provide counter-narratives to terrorist ideology. CVE programs are included in counterterrorism efforts, but because of limited resources and the vast amount of territory of the Indonesian archipelago, CVE efforts are not yet comprehensive. Government efforts are augmented by contributions from various civil society organizations. Some of the groups offered positive alternatives, such as sports, film-making, camps, and rallies, for populations vulnerable to violent extremism, especially youth. However, civil society efforts suffered from similar challenges of scale in reaching at-risk populations across the archipelago. The BNPT has expanded the Terrorism Prevention Coordination Forum (FKPT) to 32 of Indonesia's 34 provinces, and leverages these groups to broaden community engagement. Forum members are usually civic and religious leaders who coordinate CVE-related programming and activities within their communities. The level of engagement and activities of each FKPT varies by region and available resources. For example, the BNPT collaborated with FKPTs in Mataram, Semarang, and Yogyakarta, to organize workshops to help young student leaders develop counter-narratives and amplify these messages using social media platforms. Through presentations from former terrorists, survivors of terrorist attacks, law enforcement personnel, and religious leaders, the BNPT encouraged discussion of religious tolerance and CVE. With respect to ISIL, Indonesian government efforts to develop a counter-messaging strategy are nascent. In addition to the BNPT, the Indonesian National Police are training officers in the Public Relations Division on effective counter-messaging approaches. The Jokowi administration is promoting the concept of Indonesian Islam as a positive and tolerant form of Islam practiced by the majority of Indonesia's Muslims and an alternative to violent extremist ideologies. The two largest Islamic civil society organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, are at the forefront of this effort. In November, NU released a 90-minute film titled the "The Divine Grace of Islam Nusantara" (Rahmat Islam Nusantara) which directly challenges and denounces ISIL interpretations of the Quran and the Hadith. A de-radicalization blueprint for terrorist prisoners issued by the BNPT in late 2013 has yet to be fully implemented. Counterterrorism officials, in coordination with the Directorate General of Corrections and other relevant law enforcement agencies, planned to open a de-radicalization center in Sentul, south of Jakarta, but it was not operational at the end of 2015. There was ongoing debate about how to handle the most hardcore violent extremists, but the evolving consensus is to confine these prisoners in one of Indonesia's maximum security detention centers. International and Regional Cooperation: Indonesia participated in counterterrorism efforts through several international, multilateral, and regional fora including: the UN, the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF), ASEAN, APEC, and others. Indonesia expanded regional and international cooperation, especially in response to the foreign terrorist fighter issue. With Australia, Indonesia co-chaired the GCTF Working Group on Detention and Reintegration, and it participated in a range of GCTF workshops. Indonesia remained active in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) Inter-Sessional Meetings on Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) and the APEC Counter-Terrorism Working Group. In November, Indonesia and Australia co-hosted a Counterterrorism Financing Summit in Sydney, Australia. Indonesia continued to use the Jakarta Center for Law Enforcement Cooperation (JCLEC) as a regional resource in the fight against transnational crime with a focus on counterterrorism. The United States and other foreign partners routinely offered counterterrorism training courses at JCLEC. Since its inception in 2004 as a joint Australian and Indonesian initiative, JCLEC has trained more than 18,000 police officers from 70 countries. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - India Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - India, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518db815.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Indian counterterrorism cooperation with the United States continued to increase in 2015. In January 2015, President Obama and Prime Minister Modi committed to deepening bilateral cooperation on the full spectrum of terrorism threats. Both leaders reaffirmed concerns over threats posed by groups such as al-Qa'ida and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and called for the United States and India to work together to eliminate terrorist safe havens and infrastructure, disrupt terrorist networks and their financing, and stop cross-border movement of terrorists. They also noted the need for joint and concerted efforts to disrupt entities operating in South Asia, including LeT, Jaish-e-Mohammad, and the Haqqani Network, and called for Pakistan to bring perpetrators of the November 2008 Mumbai attack to justice. In January 2015, the U.S. Department of Treasury and India's Ministry of Finance signed a Memorandum of Understanding to enhance cooperation against money laundering and terrorism financing via the U.S.-India anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) Dialogue. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security agreed with Indian counterparts to enhance cooperation in countering IED threats pursuant to a Joint Work Plan. Indian officials participated in the February White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), the June Central and South Asia Regional CVE Summit, and the September Leader's Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism hosted by President Obama in New York. In June, U.S. and Indian police officials held a community policing consultation. The U.S.-India Megacity Policing Exchange continued to deepen collaboration on training and community policing between local and state law enforcement. In July, interagency officials participated in the inaugural U.S.-India Terrorist Designations Exchange, to strengthen cooperation on domestic terrorist designations, including implementation of UNSCR 1373 (2001), and on international designations pursuant to the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida sanctions regime. In August, officials participating in the U.S-India Cyber Dialogue agreed to continue close cooperation on cyber security and information sharing. The September U.S.-India Joint Declaration on Combatting Terrorism reaffirmed U.S. and Indian commitments to combat terrorism in all its forms and to uphold shared values of democracy, justice, and rule of law. The declaration condemned the July 27 terrorist attack in Gurdaspur, Punjab, and the August 5 attack in Udhampur, Jammu and Kashmir, described below. While India did not join the U.S.-led coalition against ISIL in 2015, the Joint Declaration recognized the serious threat posed by ISIL to global security and affirmed efforts to degrade and defeat this threat in accordance with the provisions of UNSCRs 2170, 2178, and 2199. Indian officials emphasized that the government takes threats posed by ISIL seriously, even though media reported that less than 30 Indians have been recruited into the organization and less than 200 have considered joining. In some instances, clerics and family members supported de-radicalization efforts by government officials, although sympathy for ISIL appeared to increase online. On December 18, Prime Minister Modi attended a senior-level police conference on de-radicalization and countering ISIL propaganda. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: The following representative incidents occurred: On January 10, CPI-Maoists in Chhattisgarh killed a constable and seriously injured three others. On June 4, tribal guerrillas in Manipur used rocket-propelled grenade IEDs to attack a military convoy headed for Imphal, killing twenty Indian soldiers and injuring 11. On July 27, three LeT terrorists in army fatigues fired on a bus and attacked a police station in Gurdaspur, Punjab, killing four police officers and three civilians, and injuring 15. Five bombs were found on the Amritsar-Pathankot railway line bridge, five kilometers from the site of the attack, the first major strike in Punjab since Sikh militants were active there in the 1980s and 1990s. On August 5, two LeT terrorists attacked a Border Security Force (BSF) convoy in Udhampur, Jammu and Kashmir, killing two. One of the two attackers, both identified as Pakistani nationals, was captured alive and the other was killed. National Investigation Agency efforts led to the arrest of six additional LeT and Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists. The alleged planner behind the attack, Abdul Qasim, was subsequently killed during an October police encounter in Kashmir. In November, an Indian Army colonel was killed in a firefight with terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: In December 2014, India banned ISIL under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) (1967). During 2015, it also undertook efforts to implement UNSCRs 2178 and 2199, and sanctions under the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida sanctions regime. India continued to address terrorism-related activities through existing statutes, including the UAPA, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Convention on Suppression of Terrorism Act (1993), and various state-level laws. The UAPA presumes the accused to be guilty if the prosecution can produce certain incriminating evidence indicating the possession of arms or explosives or the presence of fingerprints at a crime scene, regardless of whether criminal intent is demonstrated. State governments held persons without bail for extended periods before filing formal charges under the UAPA. Other state-level counterterrorism laws reduce evidentiary standards for certain charges and increase police powers to detain a person and his or her associates without charges and without bail for extended periods. Since the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, India has sought to enhance its counterterrorism capabilities. Interagency coordination and information sharing remained challenging, and local police forces suffered from poor training and equipment. India launched initiatives to address some of these challenges, including through a Multi-Agency Centre for enhancing intelligence gathering and sharing. Indian officials participated in U.S.-sponsored law enforcement and security training at the central government and state levels to enhance India's capabilities in critical incident management, infrastructure security, community-oriented policing, crime scene investigations, explosive ordnance detection and countermeasures, forensics, cyber security, mega city policing, and other areas. Indian police and security officials at both the state and federal levels received training under the Department of State's Antiterrorism Assistance program in technical areas related to counterterrorism and law enforcement. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security, through the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Attache office, and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, conducted training programs and exchanges with Indian law enforcement personnel. On September 10, police in Assam killed two Dima Halam Daogah (DHD-A) militant leaders. On December 17, media reported that Indian officials identified former Uttar Pradesh resident Sanaul Haq (aka Maulana Asim Umar) as the head of al-Qa'ida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). Haq, who reportedly lives in Pakistan, had been appointed to his position by Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2014. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: In January 2015, the inaugural U.S.-India Anti-Money Laundering/Counterterrorism Finance (AML/CFT) dialogue was held. India is a member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and two FATF-style regional bodies, the Eurasian Group on Combating Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism and the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering. India's Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU-IND) is also a member of the Egmont Group. Indian officials monitored and regulated money transfers, required the collection of data for wire transfers, obliged non-profit organizations to file suspicious transaction reports, and regulated and monitored these entities to prevent misuse and terrorism financing. Although the Government of India aligned its domestic AML/CFT laws with international standards by enacting amendments to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act in November 2012, the government has yet to implement the legislation effectively, especially with regard to criminal convictions. Law enforcement agencies typically open criminal investigations reactively and seldom initiate proactive analysis and long-term investigations. While the Indian government has taken action against certain hawala financing activities, prosecutions have generally focused on non-financial businesses that conduct hawala transactions as a secondary activity. Additionally, the government has not taken adequate steps to ensure all relevant industries are complying with AML/CFT regulations. The reporting of suspicious transaction Reports (STRs) relating specifically to terrorism financing increased significantly. From July 2014 to April 2015, FIU-IND received 76,149 STRs and disseminated 52,485 STRs to various intelligence and law enforcement authorities. The degree of training and expertise in financial investigations involving transnational crime or terrorism-affiliated groups varied widely among the federal, state, and local levels and depends on the financial resources and individual policies of various jurisdictions. More than 300 personnel from various zonal/sub-zonal offices of India's Enforcement Directorate participated in training programs on financial investigation, money laundering, foreign exchange contraventions, effective prosecutions, and cybercrimes as part of an effort to build capacity. U.S. investigators have had limited success in coordinating the seizure of illicit proceeds with their Indian counterparts. While intelligence and investigative information supplied by U.S. law enforcement authorities led to numerous seizures of terrorism-related funds, a lack of follow-through on investigational leads has prevented a more comprehensive approach. The Government of India took steps to increase financial inclusion through expanding access to the banking sector and issuing biometric-enabled universal identification numbers. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: During 2015, India's central government expanded its role in global efforts to counter radicalization and violent extremism. Indian officials participated in the February 2015 White House CVE Summit and in follow-on meetings. Mumbai participated in the Strong Cities Network, a forum to build sub-national resiliency against violent extremism. In June, the Government of India appointed a Special Envoy for Counterterrorism and Extremism. India has taken steps to implement UNSCR 2178 related to foreign terrorist fighters and to advance efforts on CVE. In August, the Ministry of Home Affairs reportedly convened a meeting to discuss steps for countering radicalization and recruitment with officials representing 12 states and union territories. The government implemented new initiatives to provide "quality and modern education" in madrassas. In addition, the government continued to operate programs to rehabilitate and reintegrate former terrorists and insurgents into mainstream society. These programs target disaffected sectors of Indian society that have been sources of separatism and violent insurgency. Indian government officials have raised concerns over the use of social media and the internet to recruit, radicalize, and foment inter-religious tensions. In particular, officials expressed concern about the ability of ISIL to recruit online, following prominent incidents in which Indians were attracted to join or support the group. International and Regional Cooperation: India is a founding member of the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) and participated in GCTF and other UN forums on counterterrorism in 2015. In May 2015, India's National Investigative Agency (NIA) hosted a U.S.-sponsored regional dialogue predicated upon the GCTF Marrakech Memorandum on Foreign Terrorist Fighters, which focused on best practices for countering the foreign terrorist fighter phenomenon. In addition, India's counterterrorism cooperation with neighbors continued to develop. The October 2014 blasts in the Burdwan district of West Bengal generated counterterrorism cooperation between India and Bangladesh, including visits by Indian officials to Dhaka. During 2015, the Indian and Bangladeshi governments continued their cooperation under their bilateral Coordinated Border Management Plan to control illegal cross-border activities and announced the strengthening of bilateral cooperation in the field of security and border management. Also during 2015, India and Nepal continued counterterrorism cooperation along their shared border. India is a member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. Photo: VNA Meeting with Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons Eleanor Laing and Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) George Howard on June 1st as part of her working visit to the UK, Phong appealed to the UK to help Vietnam improve parliamentary skills for young Vietnamese legislators. Vietnam wishes that the two countries will support each other at multilateral forums like the Asia-Europe Meeting and the Inter-parliamentary Union (IPU), she said. The guest used the occasion to thank the UK Government for providing official development assistance (ODA) for Vietnam over the past years, and called for more aid from the country via the Commonwealth Fund in a bid to improve the local business environment, cope with climate change and develop infrastructure. She also highlighted substantial potential for cooperation between the two countries in trade, culture, tourism and education. Regarding the East Sea situation which is of the APPGss concern, Phong affirmed Vietnams consistent policy of respecting the status quo in the sea, not using or threatening to use force and handling disputes through peaceful negotiations, on the basis of respecting independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity and in conformity with international law, particularly the 1982 Convention of the Law of the Sea and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea. Vietnam considers the combat against saltwater intrusion a national priority, she said, stressing the support of many countries, including the UK, for the countrys efforts in this field. For her part, Eleanor Laing underscored the significance of legislative ties between the two countries to bilateral relations and pledged more assistance for Vietnam. Later in the day, Phong met with the staff of the Vietnamese Embassy and overseas Vietnamese in the UK. During her visit to the UK from May 29th-June 3rd, the NA Vice Chairwoman is scheduled to meet with Duke of York Prince Andrew./. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Greece Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Greece, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518db913.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: In 2015, Greece experienced intermittent small-scale attacks such as targeted package bombs or IED detonations by domestic anarchist groups, although slightly fewer than in 2014. Generally, these attacks did not appear aimed to inflict bodily harm but rather sought to make a political statement. Greek government cooperation with the United States on counterterrorism remained strong. Senior Greek government leaders have emphasized that counterterrorism is one of their top priorities. The MFA quickly condemned foreign acts of terrorism, has strongly condemned the actions of ISIL as abhorrent, and has called on all states to actively and effectively confront this threat. Greece is a member of the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL and is implementing UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2178, 2199, and the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida sanctions regime. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: Greece's two largest cities, Athens and Thessaloniki, experienced occasional, relatively small-scale anarchist attacks that used inexpensive and unsophisticated incendiary devices against the properties of political figures, party offices, private bank ATMs, ministries and tax offices, and privately-owned vehicles. On October 26, Hellenic Police charged five members of the right-wing group "Epsilon Greek Fighters' Faction" with planting IEDs outside the Bank of Greece in Kalamata and at the statue of Byzantine Emperor Constantine Palaiologos in Mystras on October 23. The suspects reportedly told police that they believe in Zeus and are against Christianity. On November 24, a three-kilogram gelatin dynamite IED exploded outside the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises' (SEV) downtown Athens headquarters, situated approximately three blocks from the Greek Parliament in the heart of the popular tourist area of Syntagma Square, and across the street from the Cypriot embassy, which sustained significant damage. Media reported that SEV has been targeted multiple times since 1976, as some in the anarchist community view it as a symbol of globalization. Advance warning was given and there were no injuries. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Article 187A of the Greek Penal Code codifies the terrorism statute. In addition, Article 28 (1) of the Greek Constitution subjects Greek citizens to applicable international laws, to include those related to terrorism. Article 28 (2) and (3) subjects Greek citizens to applicable EU Laws, including the EU law against terrorism. The Police Directorate for Countering Special Violent Crimes (DAEEV) is responsible for counterterrorism in Greece. DAEEV attracts highly motivated and educated young police officers. This unit has demonstrated a high capacity to collect information, but it lacks capacity to use the volume of data it collects and to share with other services within the Greek police and Coast Guard. Greece's national ID card is extremely vulnerable to alteration and photo substitution, and it has not incorporated any new security features such as digitized photo and biometrics. To mitigate this vulnerability, police authorities instituted a system for conducting electronic checks of civil registry databases to confirm documents submitted as part of the application for ID issuance, and checks of national ID databases for passport issuance. The government has further committed to address this vulnerability through the eventual introduction of a biometric national ID. Christodoulos Xiros, a Specially Designated Global Terrorist and hit-man for the radical leftist group Revolutionary Organization 17 November, was recaptured in January 2015 after he disappeared in January 2014 while on furlough from prison. Hellenic Police uncovered evidence at the time of his arrest that he was plotting an attack on Korydallos Prison to release imprisoned members of terrorist group Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei. Xiros was put on trial on November 16 along with 27 other individuals, many of whom are alleged or known members of Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei. Nikolaos Maziotis, a lead member of the terrorist organization Revolutionary Struggle, was put on trial October 16, 2015 for terrorist acts committed before his recapture in July 2014. In May, Hellenic Police arrested Spyros Christodoulou and Grigoris Tsironis, known associates of Maziotis. Georgios Petrakakos, another known associate of Maziotis, was arrested in late September and charged with membership in a terrorist organization. At the time of Petrakakos' arrest, police discovered weapons and evidence of kidnapping plots. While the Hellenic Police DAEEV directorate arrested 16 suspected members of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C), including senior leader Hussein Tekin, in two raids in summer 2013 and February 2014, 13 of the suspects were tried in January 2015. Charges were dropped against two of the suspects while 11 were given prison sentences ranging from three to seven years. Six of the 11 sentences were commuted to monetary fines. The porous nature of Greece's borders remained of serious concern. To help address vulnerabilities, in June, the Hellenic Coast Guard, with U.S. support, sponsored a regional conference on Transnational Maritime Security Threats to enhance capabilities and coordination between maritime security organizations across the Mediterranean through an exchange of best practices. More than 70 participants from 15 countries around the Mediterranean and the Balkans attended. This was followed by a senior-level seminar in September that the U.S. Embassy in Athens helped coordinate at the NATO Maritime Interdiction Operations Training Center in Crete. The three-day executive seminar included more than 60 maritime law enforcement, defense, and other security service officials, as well as representatives and experts from more than 17 countries and organizations. Also in September, more than 60 law enforcement officials from DHS and the Hellenic Customs Authority (HCA) participated in a program to enhance HCA's border interdictions and anti-smuggling investigations. Training included instruction on developing successful investigations against transnational criminal organizations that play key roles in narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and human smuggling, all potentially supporting terrorism. In November, the Department of State supported a DHS-led Maritime and Land Border Security Training for operational units from the Hellenic Police and Coast Guard designed to improve interdiction and investigative measures to enhance counterterrorism operations. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Greece is a member of the Financial Action Task Force, and its financial intelligence unit, the Hellenic Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Financing Commission (HAMLC), is a member of the Egmont Group. The Foreign Ministry's Sanctions Monitoring Unit is tasked with ensuring that Greece meets its commitments to enforce international sanctions, including terrorism-related sanctions. The HAMLC, which is essentially an autonomous institution, although nominally under the oversight of the Ministry of Finance, inspected 5,198 suspicious transactions through November 11, 2015, but did not report evidence of terrorism financing in Greece. Terrorist assets remain frozen until the completion of judicial proceedings when a court decision is rendered. Non-profit organizations are not obliged to file suspicious transaction reports. However, all banks through which these organizations conduct transactions are legally obliged to report suspicious transactions of any kind, regardless of the type of entity (for- or not-for-profit), and the government may directly monitor such entities if necessary. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: Greek Foreign Minister Kotzias has steadily and publicly voiced support for countering ISIL and condemned its actions. Greece is sensitive to the dangers of radicalization and engages regional partners on the matter. In October, Kotzias hosted a widely-attended International Conference in Athens on "Religious and Cultural Pluralism and Peaceful Coexistence in the Middle East." International and Regional Cooperation: Greece engaged constructively on counterterrorism initiatives in international fora and regularly participated in regional information exchange and seminars through such bodies as the UN, the EU, the OSCE, the Southeast European Law Enforcement Center for Combating Trans-Border Crime, and the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation. Greece participated in international and regional trainings geared to bolster criminal justice efforts to prevent and respond to terrorism. For example, Greece hosted a week-long training conducted by OSCE that was centered on several of the criminal justice good practices contained in the GCTF's Rabat Memorandum Good Practices for Effective Counterterrorism in the Criminal Justice Sector. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Germany Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Germany, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dba2d.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: The threat from violent extremism increased in 2015 in connection with the threat posed by domestic radical groups as well as foreign terrorist fighters. Germany investigated, arrested, and prosecuted a sharply increased number of terrorist suspects and disrupted terrorist-related groups within its borders, many of whom were connected to al-Qa'ida (AQ), the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), other violent Islamist extremists, Kurdish nationalists, and neo-Nazi terrorist organizations. Security officials estimated more than 760 residents of Germany have departed the country to participate in the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, the majority of which joined violent Islamist extremist groups in the fighting there. One hundred are estimated to have died there. A third of the group, roughly 250, has returned to Germany. German officials actively investigated these returnees for any terrorist threat resulting from their experience abroad and possible desire to continue to support violent extremist causes. Bilateral counterterrorism cooperation with the United States remained excellent. Germany is a member of the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL and has provided arms, material support, and training to Kurdish security forces; reconnaissance aircraft, satellite data, and refueling aircraft to support Coalition air operations; and a frigate to defend a French aircraft carrier from which Coalition air operations are launched. Germany implemented UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs) 2178 and 2199, and obligations under the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida sanctions regime, through legislative amendments to specifically criminalize terrorism finance and foreign terrorist fighter travel, sharpening previous antiterrorism legislation. Germany is a founding member of the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) and supported the GCTF good practices on foreign terrorist fighters. Domestically, the German government has increased enforcement efforts to prevent, interdict, and counter foreign terrorist fighter travel and has voiced support for strengthening EU and Schengen measures to do so. German security officials actively made use of existing provisions allowing them to seize passports of those deemed to pose a security risk and implemented similar legislation for national identification cards. In November, the Bundestag (parliament) approved a 2015 budget that included increased spending on law enforcement and domestic intelligence efforts in counterterrorism, including new counterterrorism police response units and increased investigative, prosecutorial, and analytical resources. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: The German government continued to apply its comprehensive counterterrorism legislation, which criminalizes membership in or support for domestic and foreign terrorist organizations. The Criminal Code also makes a range of terrorism-related preparatory actions illegal, such as participating in terrorist training or acquiring weapons or explosives with the intent to commit attacks that endanger the German state. In June, legislation entered into force amending the Criminal Code in two areas to implement UNSCR 2178: (1) Departing (or attempting to do so) from Germany with the intention to commit grave acts of violence abroad or to seek training for such acts is now a criminal offense; and (2) The Criminal Code now contains a new separate section specifically criminalizing terrorism financing. In October, a man was arrested on suspicion of planning to travel to the Syrian-Turkish border to attend a terrorist training camp. This was the first arrest of its kind under the new revisions to the Criminal Code. An additional new law to allow authorities to revoke the national identification (ID) cards of suspected terrorists entered into force on June 30. The amendments to the national ID card law allow cards to be denied or revoked, and substitute ID documents are issued for a maximum of three years that does not permit foreign travel. In December, a new law entered into force requiring telecommunications providers to retain data for the purpose of investigating terrorism and other serious crimes. Germany generally does not collect entry/exit data and is working towards systematic border checks of arriving and departing EU citizens. Non-EU citizens are systematically checked. At the end of 2015, all arriving/departing passengers' passports will be checked manually against the INTERPOL Lost and Stolen Data Base. Biometric data is not screened at entry, although Germany participates in the EU Smart Border entry/exit and biometric data collection pilot. Data on suspected terrorists is shared between federal and state law enforcement agencies. The German passport and other identity documents incorporate strong security features. Collection and retention of Advance Passenger Information for traveler screening is limited and Passenger Name Record (PNR) analysis is not used. Following the approval of a new EU-wide PNR Directive, Germany began development of a PNR system. Concerns over data privacy played a role in limiting German willingness to expand travel analysis systems. There were numerous arrests, prosecutions, and trials throughout 2015; the Federal Ministry of Justice estimated at year's end that there were 300 terrorist suspects under active investigation or prosecution. The most prominent cases included: In March, the Federal Ministry of the Interior (MOI) announced that it had banned the organization "Tawhid Germany" and the associated "Team Tawhid Media" as extremist anti-constitutional organizations. Police and security services in the states of Bavaria, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Schleswig-Holstein carried out a number of raids and investigative operations on the night of March 25-26 to implement the order. Also in March, the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court sentenced Ismail Issa to four years, six months imprisonment for membership in a foreign terrorist organization "Jaish al-Muhajarin wal-Ansar" (JAMWA). Co-defendants Ezzedine Issa (Ismail's brother) and Mohammad Sobhan A. were sentenced to three years and two years, nine months imprisonment, respectively, for supporting a terrorist group. The court found Ismail Issa guilty of traveling to Syria and participating in combat action in 2013. In June, the Dusseldorf Higher Regional Court sentenced German-Polish dual national Karolina Rafalska to three years and nine months in prison and German Ahmed-Sadiq Munye to one year and nine months parole for providing monetary and material support to ISIL. Rafalska raised a total of US $5,580 to help her husband Fared Saal, a prominent member of ISIL in Syria and a close associate of German-born ISIL fighter Dennis Cuspert. She also sent him video equipment which was used to produce propaganda videos. Munye was sentenced for transferring US $2,400 to Saal. In July, the Berlin Superior Court sentenced Fatih I. (28) to three years and six months imprisonment on two counts of supporting a foreign terrorist organization as well as fraud. The court found he was guilty of having defrauded a bank of US $27,350, of which he transferred US $7,650 to Junud Al Sham in Syria and supplied the group with a four-wheel drive vehicle in 2013. In March 2014, he transferred US $41.695 to ISIK, an ISIL-predecessor organization. In September, the Berlin Superior Court sentenced German citizen Fatih K. to six years imprisonment for membership in the terrorist group "Junud al-Sham." The court found him guilty of traveling to Syria for training and preparing propaganda videos. The court found no evidence that he had participated in combat. He had previously been incarcerated for 22 months for membership in the German Taliban Mujahedin. In October, the trial against eight violent Islamist extremists accused of stealing US $20,758 in a wave of robberies to finance terrorist groups in Syria began in Cologne. The men were arrested in November 2014 after having been active from 2011 to 2014. The men were believed to have received training with ISIL. In October, the Frankfurt Prosecutor's Office indicted an unnamed 35-year-old Turkish-German citizen for planning a bomb attack on charges of preparing an act of violence, forging documents, and violating weapons and explosives laws. He was arrested in April together with his wife, who has since been released, on suspicion they were plotting to carry out an attack at a large scale public event. The couple had bought three liters of hydrogen-peroxide at a hardware store under false identities on March 30. The man also kept a ready-assembled pipe bomb and other weapons and ammunitions in his basement. In December, two returned ISIL fighters Ayoub B. (27) and Ebrahim H. B. (26) were sentenced by the Higher Regional Court of Celle, Lower Saxony, to four years and three months and three years in prison, respectively for membership in a terrorist organization. According to the court, Ayoub and Ebrahim were members of ISIL in Syria between June and August 2014. Ayoub and Ebrahim were able to convince the court that they broke with ISIL, thus receiving a lower sentence. In July 2015, Ebrahim participated in an investigative TV documentary, warning people against joining ISIL. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Germany is a member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), and is an observer to the Eurasian Group on Combating Money Laundering and Terrorism financing, the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering, and the Financial Action Task Force of Latin America, all of which are FATF-style regional bodies. Germany's financial intelligence unit (FIU) is a member of the Egmont Group. In June, based on improvements reflected in the most recent FATF Mutual Evaluation Follow-Up Report, the FATF removed Germany from the Follow-Up process. German agencies filed 25,054 (compared to 19,095 in 2013) suspicious transaction reports in 2014 (the latest figures available). This was the largest annual increase in suspicious transaction reports since 2002, when Germany's FIU was created. Agencies designated 323 entities for suspected terrorism financing, a significant decrease as a share of reports. Germany remained a strong advocate of the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida sanctions regime. The June amendments to the German Criminal Code implementing UNSCR 2178 also explicitly outlaw terrorism finance in all forms, including the financing of terrorist travel, per the FATF Recommendations. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: Germany has numerous programs to counter violent extremism at the state and federal levels. The Federal Ministries of Interior and Family Affairs, as well as their state-level counterparts, have formed a working group to ensure coordination and more effective support for efforts to analyze and counter the appeal of violent extremism, which meets regularly to compile and disseminate information and best practices. In November, the Federal Family Ministry increased funding for its "Live Democracy" project, which sponsors a wide range of CVE-related projects at state and local governments as well as via NGOs. Funding from 2015-2018 will total US $54.6 million, of which US $21.8 million is earmarked for CVE projects. The Federal Ministry of the Interior continued its counter-radicalization assistance center for concerned parents and friends of violent extremists, operated by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bundesamt fur Migration und Fluchtlinge, or BAMF). The center was established in January 2012 and has expanded to include a nationwide telephone hotline with clients referred to a region-specific advising partner. In June, the fifth BAMF-funded local anti-radicalization counseling center opened in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia. The center, offering counseling for parents and friends of young people who are feared to be radicalizing, is operated by the organization Hayat, which has been a BAMF implementing partner since the program's launch in 2012. The Federal States of Hesse, Bavaria, and Berlin operated state-level counseling and de-radicalization programs implemented by the NGO "Violence Prevention Network," focused on counseling to families of radicalizing or radicalized individuals and to the individuals themselves. Violence Prevention Network also implemented CVE programs in prisons in these states. In August, Federal Family Minister Manuela Schwesig and Dilek Kolat, Berlin Senator for Integration, Labor and Women opened a new counseling center "BAHIRA", a cooperative project of the NGO "Violence Prevention Network," the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, and the DITIB-Sehitlik Turkish-Islam Community in Berlin-Neukolln. The center is located at the Sehitlik mosque and aims to carry out events in the mosque to sensitize community members on the issue of violent Islamist extremism, and training employees and community members on how to deal with radicalized persons. In July, a new de-radicalization program for religious extremism began in Hamburg. The program plans to confront religiously motivated extremism and Salafism in Hamburg, and is aimed at teenagers and young adults who are already religiously radicalized or who may be undergoing radicalization. The Hamburg project is part of a broader, multi-authority initiative to fight the spread of religious extremism in Germany. The Hamburg Ministry for Social Affairs will provide up to US $ 328,000 per year through the end of May 2017. International and Regional Cooperation: Germany is a founding member of the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF), supported GCTF capacity-building projects, and continued to participate in various multilateral counterterrorism initiatives. German cooperation with regional and international organizations on counterterrorism includes the UN and UN Security Council, EU, OECD, OSCE, NATO, Council of Europe, G-7, the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, and INTERPOL. Germany is a founding member of the GCTF-inspired International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law. Germany advocated strongly within the EU for improved counterterrorism and border security efforts. During its G-7 Presidency in 2015, Germany supported coordinated counterterrorism efforts through the Roma-Lyon Group and at the Foreign Ministerial and Leaders' Summit, with a particular focus on the foreign terrorist fighter problem. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Georgia Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Georgia, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dbce.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: In 2015, Georgia, a member of the Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), continued its strong engagement with the United States across a range of counterterrorism-related issues and remained a solid U.S. security partner. Following the passage of strengthened counterterrorism legislation in June, the Georgian authorities carried out multiple arrests of individuals on terrorism-related charges, including an alleged ISIL facilitator. In addition, Georgia took steps to improve border security and counter the financing of terrorism. Georgia participated in the Leaders' Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism, hosted by President Obama in New York in September. The Georgian government estimates 50 to 100 Georgian nationals from the Muslim-majority regions of Adjara and the Pankisi Gorge are fighting in Syria and Iraq for either al-Qa'ida affiliates or ISIL. Violent extremists in Georgia increased their use of social media in 2015. In a November 2015 video, Georgians fighting in Syria called on Georgian Muslims to attack "infidels" in their homeland, a shift from previous appeals to either join the fight in Syria and Iraq or attack Russia. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Georgia continued to strengthen its counterterrorism legislation in 2015, and has a substantial legal framework for prosecuting terrorism-related offenses. In line with UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2178, the Georgian government in June changed its Criminal Code and other relevant legislation to criminalize foreign terrorist fighters and the incitement of terrorist acts. These amendments built on the 2014 changes to the Criminal Code that criminalized participation in international terrorism, recruitment for membership in a terrorist organization, and failing to hinder a terrorist incident. Counterterrorism units within Georgia's State Security Service (SSG) have the lead in handling terrorism-related incidents, and are generally well equipped and well trained. Overall, the Georgian government is largely capable of detecting, deterring, and responding to terrorism incidents, despite challenges to cooperation, communication, and information sharing posed by the split between the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the SSG in August. Georgia has improved its overall border security, in part due to its goal of attaining visa-free travel to the EU. However, Tbilisi's lack of control over its Russian-occupied territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia limits the country's ability to secure the administrative boundary lines with its breakaway regions. Georgia has taken steps to strengthen document security, and Georgian law enforcement uses cameras, terrorist watchlists, and Advance Passenger Information and Passenger Name Records to help detect potential terrorist movement at ports of entry. However, more comprehensive screening and the implementation of standard operating procedures would enhance this capability. With significant U.S. support, the Georgian Coast Guard is better equipped to patrol the country's maritime borders, with the exception of the Russian-occupied Abkhazia's coastline. Georgia shares cross-border terrorism-related information with its southern neighbors Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey through police attaches and working-level interaction at border crossings. In June, Georgian authorities arrested suspected ISIL facilitator Ayub Borchashvili of the Pankisi Gorge, along with three individuals who were en route to Syria via Turkey. Another Pankisi native, Davit Borchashvili, was arrested in November for fighting with ISIL after returning from Syria. In late November, the SSG arrested four individuals in the Adjara and Guria regions of western Georgia on suspicion of links with ISIL. Weapons, explosive devices, and ISIL flags were found in their homes, according to press reports. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Georgia is a member of the Council of Europe's Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism (MONEYVAL), a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body. Georgia's amendments to terrorism financing legislation to address shortcomings highlighted in MONEYVAL's 2012 evaluation came into force in 2015, and the Georgian government was in the process of implementing an action plan for combating money laundering and terrorism financing to further improve regulations and build capacity. In response to recommendations from MONEYVAL and the FATF, the government established the Interagency Commission on Implementation of UNSC Resolutions to coordinate the government's immediate compliance with UNSCR 1373 and obligations under the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida sanctions regime. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: In 2015, the Georgian government primarily directed its efforts at youth in the Pankisi Gorge. The Ministry of Education worked with local schools to improve Georgian language instruction, civic education, and science classes; and the Ministry of Sport has improved gym facilities and set up after-school programs. The Ministry of Internal Affairs is reviewing international best practices to determine those that Georgia could adopt for implementation. International and Regional Cooperation: In addition to its close cooperation with the United States, Georgia is engaged on counterterrorism issues at the international, regional, and bilateral levels. The country also participates in regional organizations such as the Council of Europe Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism and its amending protocol, the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation, and the GUAM (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine) Organization for Democracy and Economic Development. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - France Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - France, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dbd13.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: France confronted serious terrorism threats in 2015, including the mounting challenge of foreign terrorist fighters. France worked closely with the United States on counterterrorism efforts. French government agencies collaborated with their U.S. counterparts to exchange and evaluate terrorist-related information and strove to foster closer regional and international security cooperation. France's security apparatus and legislation provide broad authorities to security services to prevent terrorist attacks. France's military leads or participates in counterterrorism operations worldwide, such as Operation Barkhane (headquartered in Chad), with special emphasis on the Francophone countries in the Sahel and their neighbors, most notably Mali. France experienced multiple attacks in 2015, the most serious being the coordinated November 13 attacks in and around Paris that killed 130 victims and injured 413, according to official accounts. Earlier in the year, the January 7 to 9 attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine and the Hyper Cacher (Jewish kosher grocery), and related murder of a policewoman, killed 17 victims. The Government of France remained on high alert during 2015 for attacks against its interests in France and worldwide, and has taken steps to counter the potential threat posed by its nationals traveling abroad to engage in terrorist activity. The return of French nationals who joined groups fighting in Syria and Iraq is a major and increasing threat. On December 15, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve estimated that 1,800 French citizens or French residents were linked to fighting among violent extremist groups in Syria and Iraq. Of them, Cazeneuve estimated 600 were in Iraq and Syria, 144 had died, 250 returned to France, more than 500 were preparing to depart, and the remainder were in transit. France is a leading member of the Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL); participates fully in multilateral counterterrorism fora; and has taken decisive domestic action to restrict terrorism financing and to limit the flow of foreign terrorist fighters. France has also conducted Counter ISIL air strikes in Iraq and in Syria, and has provided training and capacity-building assistance to security forces in Iraq. France deployed its lone aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean and Persian Gulf to conduct Counter ISIL operations air strikes. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: France experienced multiple attacks in 2015: On January 7-9, three French attackers killed a total of 17 people in three attacks in and around Paris. On January 7, brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi killed 12 people at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper. On January 8, Amedy Coulibaly killed a traffic policewoman in the Parisian suburb of Montrouge. On January 9, Coulibaly took hostages at Hyper Cacher, a kosher supermarket on the eastern edge of Paris, killing four before being killed by French police. After a nationwide manhunt, French police killed the Kouachi brothers in a standoff in a factory in Dammartin-en-Goele, north of Paris, on January 9. On April 19, Algerian student Sid Ahmed Glam, known to French security services for radical views, was plotting to attack a church in Villejuif, a Paris suburb. He shot and wounded himself before executing his plan. Glam is accused of having killed another person around this time. On June 26, Frenchman Yassin Salhi beheaded his supervisor in what French prosecutors said was an ISIL-inspired attack at an industrial site in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, near Lyon. Salhi committed suicide in his prison cell December 22, according to a French deputy prosecutor. On August 21, heavily armed Moroccan national Ayoub el-Khazzani opened fire on the carriage of a Thalys train from Amsterdam to Paris. Passengers on board the train foiled his attack. Two American citizens (one a dual French-American citizen) were seriously injured during the incident. On November 13, French and Belgian nationals launched a series of attacks that killed 130 victims in and around Paris. Terrorists working in three coordinated teams attacked the Bataclan concert hall, the Stade de France, and restaurant terraces in four locations in the 10th and 11th arrondissements of Paris. Seven of the attackers died in clashes with police or by detonating suicide vests during the attacks. On November 18, police stormed a safe house in Saint-Denis, killing three, including the alleged attack planner Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian citizen. Salah Abdeslam, a French citizen and brother of November 13 suicide bomber Brahim Abdeslam, remained at large at the end of 2015; he was apprehended in March 2016. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: France has a system of non-jury courts for terrorism trials and a broad definition of what is considered a terrorist offense the so-called "association of wrongdoers" offense which allows it to cast a wide net and imprison a broad range of suspects. Under French law, foreigners can be deported if they are believed to pose a serious threat to public order. After the November 13 attacks, the French Parliament voted to extend a national state of emergency (including, among other measures, reducing judicial and procedural restraints on arrests and other police actions for counterterrorism purposes). A law enacted on July 24, 2015, codified and expanded government surveillance measures aimed at terrorism and other criminal offenses. A 2014 law took steps to counter the threat of foreign terrorist fighters with three key objectives: to prevent people from leaving the territory when there are reasons to believe that they intend to engage in illicit terrorist activities abroad; to counter online propaganda by blocking websites advocating terrorism (the law calls that blocking be carried out under judicial supervision to avoid infringement on the freedom of speech); and to criminalize individual preparation of acts of terrorism. France's main counterterrorism apparatus is its Direction Generale de la Securite Interieure (DGSI) tasked with counter-espionage, counterterrorism, and the surveillance of potential threats on French territory, along with economic protection issues including organized crime and corporate espionage. France has two national security forces: the General Directorate of National Police (DGPN) and the Directorate General of the National Gendarmerie (DGGN), both subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior. (The DGGN is part of the Defense Ministry but the Interior Ministry manages its policing functions.) The DGPN is responsible for civil law enforcement and criminal investigations in cities and large towns and is staffed with approximately 150,000 personnel. The DGSI combines law enforcement capabilities with domestic intelligence gathering. In general, France has advanced law enforcement capacity to combat terrorism and sufficient information sharing at the domestic level. In the aftermath of the November 13 attacks, Interior Minister Cazeneuve renewed French commitments to push for establishment of French and European Passenger Name Record databases for travelers, to facilitate better EU-wide information sharing and Schengen-wide border security, and to combat arms trafficking in the Balkans. On December 1, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the government had foiled or disrupted "five or six" other terrorist attacks during the year: for example, in early June French police disrupted a four-person cell of French individuals with links to Syria plotting to attack military installations in southern France. On December 15, Interior Minister Cazeneuve said police had carried out 2,700 counterterrorism raids across the country under emergency powers following the November 13 attacks. A total of 334 people were arrested, of whom 287 were placed in custody for questioning. The raids led to the seizure of 431 weapons, including 41 heavy weapons. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: France is a member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). France also participates as a Cooperating and Supporting Nation (COSUN) to the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force, and an Observer to the Financial Action Task Force of Latin America, the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering, the Eurasian Group on Combating Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism, and the Middle East and North Africa Financial Task Force, all of which are FATF-style regional bodies. France's financial intelligence unit is a member of the Egmont Group and member of the Anti-Money Laundering Liaison Committee of the Franc Zone. Following the January 2015 attacks in Paris, the French government announced eight new measures to combat terrorism financing, some of which have since been implemented (a limit on cash payments went into effect on September 1) and others go into effect in early 2016. Some of the measures transpose into French law the Fourth European Directive on Anti-Money Laundering (e.g., tighter regulations on prepaid cards). The objectives of the measures are to improve domestic information sharing, limit the size and availability of anonymous transactions, improve the tracking of suspicious transactions, enhance due diligence checks on certain transactions, and bolster the capacity to freeze assets (e.g., by extending covered assets to include vehicles). For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The French Council of Ministers promulgated a four-point plan to counter violent extremism and a national action plan on "de-radicalization" in 2014. A national-level appointed official, a prefect, is charged with managing national efforts to counter violent extremism. France considers its integration programs for all French citizens and residents a major tool in countering radicalization and violent extremism. Many of these programs target disenfranchised communities and new immigrants. The Ministry of Education works to instill "universal values" in all French pupils, regardless of ethnic origin or country of birth. Ministry regulations mandate that all French public schools teach civic education, and that all students attend school until age 16. On January 22, the Education Ministry announced a new effort to improve civic education and integrative efforts in the wake of the January 7-9 terrorist attacks. The government also offers adult vocational training for older immigrants and minorities who have never attended French schools. The Interior Ministry plays a significant role in countering radicalization to violence by increased police presence in disenfranchised areas, neighborhoods, and regions with high criminality and juvenile delinquency rates. The Prime Minister's office managed an anti-violent extremism counter-messaging campaign. In September, the French and Moroccan governments announced that as many as 50 French imams per year would study the "values of openness and tolerance' at the King Mohammed VI Institute in Rabat. The Ministry of Justice implements rehabilitation and reintegration programs for former criminals. Prison radicalization was a major concern and subject of independent and state-sponsored research and reporting in 2015, with many calls to increase the number of Muslim chaplains employed by the French penitentiary system, currently around 195, according to civic leaders. According to the Interior Ministry, a toll-free hotline implemented in 2014 for families of radicalized citizens has received more than 3,000 calls since its inception. International and Regional Cooperation: France is a founding member of the Global Counterterrorism Forum, and a founding member of the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law, which is a GCTF-inspired institution devoted to rule of law-based training. Sworn in in 2013, France's Jean Paul Laborde remained the Executive Director of the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate. France played a strong role on the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida Sanctions Committee. In an effort to increase its engagement on CVE issues, France provided funding to the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund, a public-private partnership to provide community-based organizations with grants to implement CVE projects at the local level. In regional organizations, France participated in the drafting of the European Council's Counterterrorism Strategy action plan, and helped create and implement NATO's new Strategic Concept and the Lisbon Summit Declaration, both of which include major counterterrorism measures for member states. Through the OSCE, France engaged in new measures to counter transnational threats, including terrorism. France participated in the G-7's Roma-Lyon Group, and pursued practical projects in counterterrorism and other areas. The Government of France undertook joint counterterrorism operations with countries including the Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK. France also played an active role in both bilateral and EU efforts to support counterterrorism capacity building in other countries. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Ethiopia Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Ethiopia, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dbfa.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: The continuing threat of al-Shabaab emanating from Somalia dominated the Government of Ethiopia's security posture and the Ethiopia National Defense Force's (ENDF's) counterterrorism efforts in Somalia. Therefore, the Government of Ethiopia's counterterrorism efforts focused on fighting al-Shabaab in Somalia and pursuing potential threats in Ethiopia. In 2015, the Government of Ethiopia collaborated with the United States on regional security issues and participated in capacity building trainings. In April, the Government of Ethiopia denounced the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in response to a video released by ISIL in Libya that showed the beheading of 30 Ethiopian migrants. In October, the Government of Ethiopia arrested 20 Ethiopians alleged to support ISIL, which marked the first time the Ethiopian government arrested alleged ISIL supporters. On December 11, an unknown attacker threw a hand grenade at a crowd that injured about 10 outside the Anwar Mosque in Addis Ababa. The motive and other details of the attack were unclear. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: The Government of Ethiopia uses the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation (ATP), implemented in 2009, to prosecute crimes associated with terrorist activity. It also continued to use the ATP, however, to detain and prosecute journalists, opposition figures, and activists including Muslim activists, releasing some but also making new arrests during the year. However, prosecutors are increasingly focusing on evidence-based prosecutions. Prior to the court reaching a decision, the prosecution examined its evidence against five Zone 9 bloggers and dismissed the cases for lack of sufficient evidence in July. The ENDF, the Ethiopian Federal Police (EFP), Ethiopian intelligence, and regional special police worked successfully to block al-Shabaab attacks in Ethiopia. The National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS), which had broad authority for intelligence, border security, and criminal investigation, was responsible for overall counterterrorism management in coordination with the ENDF and EFP. The three security organizations comprise the Ethiopian Task Force for Counterterrorism, a federal-level committee to coordinate counterterrorism efforts. NISS facilitated some coordination with the United States. Border security was a persistent concern for the Government of Ethiopia, and the government worked to tighten border controls with Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, and South Sudan. Ethiopia employed the Terrorist Interdiction Program's Personal Identification Secure Comparison and Evaluation System (PISCES) to conduct traveler screening and watchlisting at airports and other points of entry. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Ethiopia is a member of the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG), a Financial Action Task Force-style regional body, and its mutual evaluation was adopted by that body in March 2015. Ethiopia has yet to finalize its National Risk Assessment for money laundering and terrorism finance. The Government of Ethiopia's poor recordkeeping system in general, and lack of centralized law enforcement records in particular, hindered the country's ability to identify and investigate trends in money laundering and terrorism financing. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The Government of Ethiopia prioritized countering violent extremism initiatives in 2015, which included participating in the September Leader's Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism hosted by President Obama in New York. The Government of Ethiopia adopted strategies and programs to counter violent extremism, the most noteworthy of which was the Growth and Transformation Plan II, a five-year plan that seeks to address the socio-economic factors that terrorists exploit for recruitment. The Government of Ethiopia planned to support the CVE Center for Excellence in Djibouti to discuss prevention and counter-messaging strategies. At the same time, the Government of Ethiopia's continued restrictions on funding to civil society and NGOs under the Charities and Societies Proclamation limited NGO activity including countering violent extremism programming targeting at-risk youth and engaging communities and credible leaders. International and Regional Cooperation: The Government of Ethiopia participated in AU-led counterterrorism efforts as part of AMISOM forces in Somalia. At the AU, Ethiopia participated in counterterrorism-related efforts. Ethiopia is chair member of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), and participated in its counterterrorism programs and trainings; and the IGAD Security Sector Program, which builds the capacity of criminal justice officials in the region to implement rule of law-based approaches to preventing and responding to terrorism. The Government of Ethiopia also supported counterterrorism efforts in Somalia with the Somali National Army (SNA) and other regional security initiatives. In multilateral efforts against terrorism, the Government of Ethiopia generally supported international directives that sought to stem terrorism, including IGAD's efforts to encourage the dissemination of information concerning cross-border terrorist activity. Ethiopia participated in the inaugural meeting of the Border Security Initiative, which was held in Morocco under the auspices of the Global Counterterrorism Forum. Ethiopia is an active member of the Partnership for Regional East Africa Counterterrorism. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Eritrea Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Eritrea, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dc013.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: The Government of Eritrea continued to make regular public statements about its commitment to fighting terrorism. Additionally, it participated in the Countering Violent Extremism Conference in Kenya in June and the UN Global Counterterrorism Forum Conference in Morocco in July, making strong statements at both international gatherings. Also, on December 21, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a press statement expressing its support for the Saudi initiative to form an alliance against terrorism. In May, the United States re-certified Eritrea as "not cooperating fully" with U.S. counterterrorism efforts under Section 40A of the Arms Export and Control Act, as amended. In considering this annual determination, the Department of State reviewed Eritrea's overall level of cooperation with U.S. efforts to combat terrorism, taking into account U.S. counterterrorism objectives and a realistic assessment of Eritrean capabilities. The Government of Eritrea has been under UNSC sanctions since December 2009 as a result of past evidence of support for al-Shabaab and regional destabilization. UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1907 (2009) and 2013 (2011) continued an arms embargo on Eritrea and a travel ban and asset freeze on some military and political leaders, calling on the nation to "cease arming, training, and equipping armed groups and their members, including al-Shabaab, that aim to destabilize the region." The Somalia-Eritrea Monitoring Group's 2014 and 2015 reports found no evidence that Eritrea is supporting al-Shabaab. Lack of transparency on how governing structures function means that there is not a clear picture of the methods the Government of Eritrea uses to track terrorists or maintain safeguards for its citizens. For a number of years, members of the police have refused to meet with security officials from western nations to discuss policy matters, although the U.S. government had informal contact with law enforcement counterparts in 2015. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Articles 259-264, 269-270, and 282 of the Eritrean Penal Code, grandfathered into present-day law from Ethiopia's 1957 code, criminalize terrorist methods; measures of intimidation or terrorism; acts of conspiracy carried out by organized armed bands; offenses that make use of arms, means, or support from foreign organizations; use of bombs, dynamite, explosives, or other methods constituting a public danger; genocide; and war crimes against the civilian population. Other sections of Eritrean law could also be used to prosecute terrorism, including acts related to offenses against public safety; offenses against property; offenses against the state; offenses against the national interest; offenses against international interests; attacks on the independence of the state; impairment of the defensive power of the state; high treason; economic treason; collaboration; and provocation and preparation. The Government of Eritrea does not share information about its ports of entry, law enforcement actions, arrests or disruptions of terrorist's activities or prosecutions. Entities including the Eritrean Defense Forces (EDF), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Police, and Immigration and Customs authorities all potentially have counterterrorism responsibilities. There are special units of the NSA that monitor fundamentalism or extremism. Chain of command may work effectively within some security and law enforcement elements, but there are rivalries and responsibilities that overlap between and among the various forces. Whether information sharing occurs depends on personal relationships between and among particular unit commanders. Many soldiers, police officers, and immigration and customs agents, are young national service recruits or assignees, performing their jobs without adequate training. The Eritrean government closely monitors passenger manifests for any flights coming into Asmara, and scrutinizes travel documents of visitors, but does not collect biometric data. Government officials lack the training and technology to recognize fraudulent documents. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Eritrea is not a member of a Financial Action Task Force-style regional body. This gap impedes any overall assessment of the risks the country faces in regards to terrorism financing. Eritrea's general lack of transparency on banking, financial, and economic matters makes the gathering of definitive information difficult. There is no available information to indicate that Eritrea has identified any terrorist assets or prosecuted any terrorism financing cases. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: In June, Eritrea participated in the regional Countering Violent Extremism conference hosted by Kenya in Nairobi. While Eritrea's laws and the public statements of Eritrean officials stressed the importance of preventing violent extremism in Eritrea, the lack of transparency from the government made it impossible to assess whether they have implemented initiatives aimed at prevention, counter-messaging, or rehabilitation and reintegration. International and Regional Cooperation: Eritrea is a member of the AU. In 2015, Eritrea increased its military cooperation with the Gulf States and increased its political support for the Saudi Arabia-led military campaign in Yemen. Eritrea would like to reactivate its membership in the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD); however, Eritrea's return to IGAD is opposed by Ethiopia and Djibouti, both of whom had military conflicts and have ongoing border disputes with Eritrea. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Egypt Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Egypt, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dc210.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: In 2015, the Egyptian government continued to confront active terrorist groups, which conducted deadly attacks on government, military, and civilian targets throughout the country. During the latter half of the year, the number of reported IEDs, anti-government demonstrations, and attacks on security forces declined considerably, particularly after the Egyptian Economic Development Conference held in Sharm El-Sheikh in March 2015. However, terrorist groups have succeeded in launching several large-scale attacks in Cairo and other urban areas. Recent attacks and social media propaganda suggest that terrorist groups are increasingly seeking to expand the geographic scope of attacks outside the restive areas of northeast Sinai. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)-Sinai Province (ISIL-SP) remained a significant threat; however, a new group calling itself "Islamic State Egypt," distinct from ISIL Sinai, has begun to claim responsibility for terrorist attacks outside of Sinai. While these organizations receive some external financial and logistical support as a result of their affiliation with ISIL, there is no evidence of a significant presence of non-Egyptian "foreign terrorist fighters" in Egypt. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi continued to focus on counterterrorism in Egypt. In the wake of the assassination of Egyptian Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat, the Egyptian government approved a new counterterrorism law, increasing the state's legal authorities to counter terrorism. The law provides a broad definition of terrorism, to include "any act harming national unity or social peace." The Egyptian Armed Forces (EAF) had limited success in combatting terrorist groups. The EAF launched a stepped-up counterterrorism campaign (known as Operation "Right of the Martyr") against ISIL-SP on September 7. The EAF also continued to seize and destroy numerous tunnels used for smuggling between Egypt and Gaza. On November 9, security forces killed senior ISIL-SP member Ashraf Gharabli, whom security officials alleged orchestrated several large-scale terrorist attacks. The EAF also undertook actions to counter the movement of ISIL personnel in western Egypt; however, an errant Egyptian counterterrorism operation on September 14, 2015 killed 12 Mexican tourists mistaken for terrorists. The Government of Egypt has taken responsibility for the action and is compensating the victims' families. Egypt is a member in the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL and the Counter-ISIL Finance Group. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: Groups claiming to be affiliated with ISIL and other terrorist groups carried out numerous attacks throughout Egypt. Methods included vehicle-borne IEDs (VBIEDs), ambushes, kidnappings, and targeted assassinations. The following list details only a small fraction of the incidents that occurred. On June 29, an explosive device targeted Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat's motorcade shortly after Barakat departed his home in Heliopolis. Barakat succumbed to his wounds later that afternoon and nine other people were injured. A claim of responsibility by a group that calls itself Giza Popular Resistance could not be confirmed. On July 1, as many as 70 ISIL-SP operatives simultaneously attacked several police and security installations in the Sinai's Sheiykh Zuweid region. The multifaceted attack resulted in the deaths of 35 people. On July 11, a bomb heavily damaged the Italian Consulate in downtown Cairo and killed one civilian. Islamic State-Egypt claimed responsibility for the attack on social media. On July 16, a missile was launched from the shore in Sinai and hit an Egyptian naval vessel and set it ablaze. ISIL-SP claimed responsibility. On July 22, Croatian citizen Tomislav Salopek, who worked as a topographer for a French energy company, was kidnapped in the Western Desert, west of the Cairo suburb of 6th of October City. On August 5, in a video posted on a Twitter account associated with ISIL-SP, the group claimed responsibility for the abduction and demanded the release of all female Muslims in Egyptian prisons within 48 hours in exchange for Salopek. Salopek was ultimately beheaded; ISIL-SP claimed responsibility for the killing. On August 20, a VBIED attack occurred adjacent to a National Security Sector (NSS) building in Cairo's Shubra El Kheima neighborhood. The explosion resulted in substantial damage to the exterior of the building and injured 30. Islamic State-Egypt claimed responsibility via social media. On October 31, an A-321 Airbus operated by the Russian charter company Kogalymavia crashed 23 minutes after taking off from Sharm El-Sheikh International Airport, killing all 224 people on board. While the official investigation remained ongoing at year's end, ISIL-SP claimed responsibility. Russian and other international investigators have claimed that an explosive device was responsible for the crash. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Egypt adopted two significant new counterterrorism laws by Presidential decree in 2015. The "Terrorist Entities Law," adopted on February 24, establishes a mechanism for designating organizations or individuals as terrorist entities, a procedure which had previously been ad hoc. On August 15, spurred in part by the assassination of Prosecutor General Barakat, the government issued a sweeping new counterterrorism law, after several years of discussion. The government says the law consolidates existing legislation addressing terrorism-related crimes and closes legal gaps. The law expands the definition of terrorism to encompass acts committed outside of Egypt and also establishes penalties for those who travel in order to commit acts of terrorism, as well as those who support and recruit for them. The law also imposes a steep fine, equal to many times the average annual salary of most local journalists, for publishing "false news" that contradicts official government reports on terrorism, which some civil society organizations worry could be used to stifle dissent and could lead to under-reporting on acts of terrorism. The NSS is primarily responsible for counterterrorism functions in Egypt, but also works with other elements of the Ministry of Interior (MOI), the Egyptian General Intelligence Service, and the EAF. There was interagency cooperation and information sharing among the various counterterrorism elements within the Egyptian government in 2015. Egypt continued to take actions to improve its border security measures. At border crossings and airports, Egyptian authorities checked for the presence of known security features within travel documents, such as micro-printing, UV features, and digital schemes. They also scanned and cross referenced documents with criminal databases that alert them when there is derogatory information present. Egypt maintains a terrorist watchlist with a simple listing provided to Egyptian immigration officials at the ports of entry and detailed information maintained within the NSS. Egypt's primary physical border security concerns are along the borders with Gaza and Libya. The EAF aggressively sought to destroy underground tunnels that connect Gaza and Sinai. The EAF also established and de-populated a buffer-zone along the border with Gaza, which extended to 1.5 kilometers from the border at the end of the year. Egypt increased its military presence along the Libya border; the government installed cargo and passenger vehicle x-ray scanning devices at the Libyan border crossing to inspect traffic traveling both into and out of Egypt. The EAF was also working to procure a suite of mobile surveillance technologies to improve its situational awareness along the border with Libya. In an effort to prevent the travel of foreign terrorist fighters to areas of conflict, the government increased the number of countries for which citizens between the ages of 18 and 40 must first obtain permission prior to travel, and expanded this requirement to include women. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Egypt is a member of the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force, a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body. Egypt's financial intelligence unit, the Egyptian Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Combating Unit, is a member of the Egmont Group. Egypt is not considered a regional financial center or a major hub for money laundering. The Government of Egypt has shown increased willingness to tackle money laundering, but Egypt remained vulnerable by virtue of its large informal, cash-based economy. In 2015, the Central Bank, Ministry of Finance, and other government entities strengthened efforts to promote financial inclusion by incentivizing individuals and small and medium enterprises to enter the formal financial sector. Recent measures included digitization of government payments, introduction of smartcards, and increased banking services with mini-branches and more ATMs. Sources of illegal proceeds reportedly included the smuggling of antiquities and trafficking in narcotics and/or arms. However, some organizations have used new technologies and social media to raise funds. For example, ISIL-SP solicited funds using Twitter to finance terrorist activities in Egypt, relying on anonymous prepaid value cards. Authorities also noted increased interception of illicit cross-border fund transfers by customs agents in recent years. For additional information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INSCR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The Ministry of Islamic Endowments (Awqaf) is legally responsible for issuing guidance to which all imams throughout Egypt are required to adhere, including weekly instructions on a provided theme that aims to prevent extremist language in sermons. The Ministry is also required to license all mosques in Egypt; however, many continued to operate without licenses. The government has the authority to appoint and monitor the imams who lead prayers in licensed mosques, and the government pays their salaries. Egypt's Dar Al-Iftaa (Egypt's official body for drafting religious edicts) has increased its efforts to counter violent extremism and extremist religious rhetoric, particularly online, where it has millions of followers on social media. Dar Al-Iftaa's countering violent extremism activities included sending scholars to remote areas of the country to engage communities considered vulnerable to violent extremist messaging; organizing international outreach and speaking tours throughout Muslim majority countries and the West; publishing books and pamphlets to undermine the alleged religious foundations of violent extremist ideology; running rehabilitation sessions for former violent extremists; and confronting violent extremists in cyber space. International and Regional Cooperation: Egypt continued to participate in the Global Counterterrorism Forum, co-chairing (along with the United States) the Criminal Justice and Rule of Law Working Group. Egypt was elected in October to a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for a two-year term, beginning in 2016. In December, Egypt was selected to preside over the UNSC Counter Terrorism Committee. It is also a member of the AU. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Djibouti Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Djibouti, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dc32d.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Djibouti remained an active and supportive counterterrorism partner in 2015. Djibouti hosts Camp Lemonnier, which serves as headquarters to the U.S. Africa Command's Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa. Djibouti's notable counterterrorism activities in 2015 included increased training through the Department of State's Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance program and the deployment of a second battalion of soldiers to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). As a result of the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris and Bamako, Djibouti implemented enhanced security measures throughout Djibouti City. Separately, more than 30,000 people fled from Yemen to Djibouti from March to December as a result of the conflict in Yemen. This influx of people taxed government resources and revealed vulnerabilities in port and immigration security procedures. The United States provided Djibouti with significant capacity-building assistance through counterterrorism training and equipment from a variety of courses and programs sponsored by the Departments of State, Defense, and Justice. Djibouti publicly condemned Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) acts such as beheadings, as well as ISIL's focus on recruiting vulnerable youth and its misuse of Islam to advance its goals. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Counterterrorism remained a high priority for all Djiboutian law enforcement entities due to Djibouti's geographic location, porous borders, and an al-Shabaab attack in Djibouti City in May 2014. Djibouti has a legal framework for prosecuting terrorism-related crimes and can try terrorists in criminal courts using its penal code. However, Djibouti had not prosecuted any terrorism-related cases by the end of 2015. Djiboutian officials arrested and detained individuals connected to the 2014 terrorist attack, but no dates had been set for their prosecution by the end of 2015. Djibouti's most visible counterterrorism efforts were checkpoints and cordon-and-search operations within the capital city. There was also an increased emphasis at border control points to screen for potential security threats. The Government of Djibouti maintained enhanced protection of soft targets, including hotels and grocery stores, which it first implemented after the May 2014 attack. After the Paris and Bamako attacks in November 2015, Djibouti declared a two-month State of Emergency and implemented additional security measures throughout Djibouti City, including enhanced protection of popular hotels. Djibouti law enforcement extended vehicle searches throughout the city in an effort coordinated through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Djibouti also conducted various counterterrorism exercises at various sites in the capital in the wake of the Paris and Bamako attacks. Djibouti's law enforcement organization is composed of the Djiboutian National Police (DNP), the Djiboutian National Gendarmerie, the National Security Judiciary Police (NSJP), and the Djiboutian Coast Guard. In 2015, the DNP, National Gendarmerie, and the NSJP received training through the Department of State's Antiterrorism Assistance (ATA) Program as well as the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in Gaborone. ATA assistance focused primarily on building technical capacity for improved crisis response and border security capabilities. The DNP, National Gendarmerie, and the NSJP also received training through the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's Legal Attache office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Djibouti's law enforcement organizations routinely interacted with U.S. government counterparts and frequently sought U.S. input to identify potential terrorist suspects. Separately, the Combined Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), headquartered at Camp Lemonnier, provided the Djiboutian Armed Forces (DAF) with two counter-IED training programs, intended to instruct Djiboutian military personnel on how to recognize, find and counter, or avoid an IED. Djibouti continued to process travelers on entry and departure at its international airport and seaport with the Personal Identification Secure Comparison Evaluation System (PISCES). While the airport and seaport are important entry points, the vast majority of travelers cross into Djibouti by land at one of three land border points, one of which is the Loyada border crossing at the Somali border. In 2015, the United States assisted in the successful implementation of PISCES at both the Loyada border crossing and the Obock Port where Yemeni refugees are processed. Djiboutian law enforcement personnel acknowledged the difficulty of securing their land borders as well as the coast. The DNP controls border checkpoints, and the DAF has responsibility for patrolling the border, with support from the Gendarme patrolling between border posts. In 2015, the DNP did not hesitate to close the southern border with Somalia based on the evaluation of credible threat information. The DAF also increased patrols during the year in response to threats. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Djibouti is not a member of a Financial Action Task Force-style regional body. The Central Bank of Djibouti houses a financial intelligence unit known as the Fraud Investigation Unit (FIU). Given its limited financial and human resources, the FIU has been unable to perform its core functions and instead focuses on banking supervision. The FIU made no referrals of cases to law enforcement involving suspected terrorism financing in 2015. Djibouti's Central Bank places the responsibility for staying updated on sanctions lists with the financial institutions themselves. Many of the financial institutions operating in Djibouti have software packages that include links to the UN sanctions lists and the lists of designated terrorists or terrorist entities from the Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control and the EU. The Djiboutian Central Bank monitors compliance with these lists through routine supervision and audits of the financial institutions. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, we refer you to the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The Government of Djibouti participated in the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) in February, as well as all subsequent ministerial-level CVE meetings. The Djiboutian government also agreed to host an East Africa CVE Center of Excellence and Counter-Messaging hub that will serve as a platform to allow the development and exchange of ideas, best practices, and solutions to help counter extremist ideology and narratives throughout the Horn of Africa. Separately, the Government of Djibouti, via the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, continued to implement a law on state control of mosques to address political activity from mosques and counter the potential for violent radicalization. The law required the conversion of imams into civil service employees and transferred mosque property and assets to the government. International and Regional Cooperation: Djibouti is a member of the AU and deployed its second battalion of troops to AMISOM in January 2015. Djibouti is also a member of the Partnership for Regional East Africa Counterterrorism. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Denmark Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Denmark, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dc513.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: The Kingdom of Denmark (Denmark, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands) devotes significant assets to counterterrorism programs and initiatives to counter violent extremism domestically and abroad. Denmark cooperates closely with the United States, the United Nations (UN), and the EU on specific counterterrorism initiatives, including the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF). On February 14-15, terrorist attacks on a free speech forum and synagogue in Copenhagen demonstrated that Denmark remains a prominent target for terrorists. The 2005 publication (and reprinting in 2010) of political cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, and the country's continued involvement in the Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), make Denmark a target for violent Islamist extremists. According to the Danish Police Intelligence Service (PET), at least 125 Danish citizens and residents have voluntarily left Denmark to fight in Syria and Iraq. A significant number have likely fought on behalf of ISIL and other violent extremist groups. Danish security services monitor individuals who have left and track those who return to Denmark. PET remains concerned that Danish fighters returning to Denmark with terrorist training will seek to radicalize others. Danish security agencies worked together to counter ISIL's attempts to recruit foreign terrorist fighters and prevent terrorist attacks in Denmark. Denmark has contributed strike and support aircraft, support personnel, and military trainers to the Counter-ISIL Coalition. Also, Denmark authorized the deployment of further combat support assets and 30 uniformed personnel during 2015. 2015 Terrorist Attacks: On February 14 and 15, 2015, Omar Abdel Hamid opened fire at a public event called "Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression," which featured debate over images of the Prophet Mohammed. One person was killed and three police officers were wounded. Later, Hamid shot and killed a security guard outside Copenhagen's Main Synagogue during a bat mitzvah celebration and wounded two police officers at the same site. Hamid was killed a few hours later in a shoot-out with police in the Nrrebro community. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Denmark continued to use its 2006 terrorism legislation that allows enhanced information sharing between Denmark's two intelligence services, PET and the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (DDIS). The legislation also permits official surveillance and wiretapping of terrorist suspects with a valid warrant. Danish security and law enforcement organizations engage in information sharing through the Center for Terror Analysis (CTA), the Danish government's intelligence fusion center, which merges reporting from PET, DDIS, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Danish Emergency Management Agency. The Danish National Police and the Police Intelligence Service are responsible for the country's counterterrorism mission. These two divisions of the MOJ coordinate their response with the Ministry of Defense's (MOD) Defense Intelligence Service (DDIS) and the Danish Commission on Counterterrorism and Foreign Terrorist Fighters. Denmark's national police force is organized into 12 districts. During 2015, the government increased its focus on improving police capabilities, particularly their ability to protect Danish citizens. The February 14-15 terrorist attacks in Copenhagen led to the introduction of a new policing bill that increased the funding for the Danish national police force by US $286 million. The bill also reallocated staffing throughout Denmark and increased class sizes at the Danish national police academy. Denmark instituted heightened border security protocols via document checks for travel to countries outside the Schengen area. Denmark revokes passports, but not citizenship, of individuals found attempting to travel to Syria and Iraq. Individuals who participate in terrorist activities may be stripped of Danish citizenship if the loss of nationality does not render the individual stateless. Denmark possesses biographic and biometric screening capabilities at ports of entry and readily shares information within its own government and with other countries, as appropriate. Security forces patrol and control Denmark's land and maritime borders. Denmark is a member of the Schengen Agreement. However, as a consequence of the ongoing refugee and humanitarian crisis in Europe, in late 2015, officials began discussions on imposing temporary border controls with Germany. There were no passport controls at land borders or airport terminals servicing Schengen area flights in 2015. Counterterrorism-related law enforcement actions included: Omar Abdel Hamid opened fire at public events on February 14-15, and was subsequently killed a few hours later in a shoot-out with police in the Nrrebro community. In November, Danish police and the Danish Emergency Management Agency hosted a counterterrorism simulation; 36 government ministries were tested in a real-time crisis management simulation. The exercise focused on the police response to an armed terrorist attack in the capital. The live exercise was conducted to improve police performance and readiness in case of further terrorist attacks. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Denmark is a member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Its Money Laundering Secretariat is a member of the Egmont Group, and cooperates closely with other Nordic financial intelligence units. Danish authorities can freeze assets within hours or days with a valid court order, however, the confiscation process requires a full trial which may take months to years depending on the appeals process. The Danish government continued an initiative focused on combating money laundering and terrorism financing in East Africa and Yemen. Denmark continued its efforts to build partnerships that teach anti-money laundering and counterterrorism finance techniques to the governments of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Yemen. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: In January 2015, the Danish Parliament agreed to implement the national CVE action plan, a $10 million program that includes increased funding for prevention efforts, a de-radicalization exit program, mentoring for at-risk youth, and increased monitoring of internet-based messages and propaganda by groups that advocate terrorism or violent extremism. The Danish CVE action plan focuses on early prevention, with a network of trained mentors and youth-to-youth dialogues, as well as preventing online radicalization by educating youth to identify terrorist propaganda on the internet. Denmark has allocated law enforcement resources to monitor the internet for propaganda messaging by groups that espouse terrorism or violent extremism. The action plan created a national rapid response team to prevent Danish youth from traveling abroad to join armed conflicts. It also funds a new facility that will house a de-radicalization center. The plan expands local officials' authority to use social services for helping de-radicalized young adults between the age of 18 and 25, a change that is expected to improve cooperation between social workers, law enforcement, schools, and national counterterrorism agencies. Finally, the plan funds training for municipal-level employees on how to spot and counter radicalization. Following the February 14 and 15 terrorist attacks, the Danish government initiated efforts to prevent radicalization and extremism in the country's prisons (Omar Abdel Hamid, the attacker in the February attacks in Copenhagen, is believed to have become radicalized while serving one of his prison sentences prior to the attack). The reforms allocated additional funds for training of staff on radicalization, and the development of a mentoring program that focused on inmates convicted of terrorism or deemed to be vulnerable to radicalization. In November, the Danish city of Aarhus hosted the 2015 European Forum for Urban Security. The location was chosen for the city's exemplary efforts in countering violent extremism and radicalization. The "Aarhus model" focuses on preventing radicalization by working with at-risk citizens to improve their possibilities for inclusion in society helping them to develop better life skills and thus counter the marginalization often experienced by immigrants in Denmark. The conference was broadly attended by security and development experts from Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. Also in November, Aarhus hosted an international conference entitled "Building Resilience to Radicalization and Violent Extremism," which attracted more than 300 people from 36 countries. The conference was co-branded as a Strong Cities Network event. The Danish government launched a new counter-radicalization initiative in 2015, led by the NGO ActionAid Denmark. The initiative trains Jordanian imams to spot and counter radicalization within their communities. The imams are taught strategies to make their community members more resilient against radicalization and to raise awareness of the dangers of radicalization. The Danish government allocated US $54 million in support of this program. International and Regional Cooperation: The Danish government is committed to working within the UN framework, through the EU, and with other international and regional organizations. Denmark actively participates in the UN, GCTF, EU, the Council of Europe, the OSCE, NATO, INTERPOL, Europol, the Bern Club, and the EU Counterterrorism Group. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Democratic People's Republic of Korea Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Democratic People's Republic of Korea, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dc7d.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987. In October 2008, the United States rescinded the designation of the DPRK as a state sponsor of terrorism in accordance with criteria set forth in U.S. law, including a certification that the DPRK had not provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding six-month period and the provision by the DPRK of assurances that it would not support acts of international terrorism in the future. Four Japanese Red Army members who participated in a 1970 jet hijacking continued to live in the DPRK. The Japanese government continued to seek a full accounting of the fate of 12 Japanese nationals believed to have been abducted by DPRK state entities in the 1970s and 1980s. In May 2014, the DPRK agreed to re-open its investigation into the abductions, but as of the end of 2015 had not yet provided the results of this investigation to Japan. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: In May, the United States re-certified North Korea as a country "not cooperating fully" with U.S. counterterrorism efforts pursuant to Section 40A of the Arms Export and Control Act, as amended. In making this annual determination, the Department of State reviewed the DPRK's overall level of cooperation with U.S. efforts to counter terrorism, taking into account U.S. counterterrorism objectives with the DPRK and a realistic assessment of DPRK capabilities. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: The DPRK is not a member of any FATF-style regional body. In July 2014, it was admitted as an observer, but not a full member, of the Asia-Pacific Group (APG) on Money Laundering, a FATF-style regional body. Nevertheless, the DPRK failed to demonstrate meaningful progress in strengthening its anti-money laundering/ combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) infrastructure. While encouraging the DPRK's continued engagement with FATF and APG, the FATF highlighted continuing concerns about North Korea's "failure to address the significant deficiencies in its [AML/CFT] regime and the serious threat this poses to the integrity of the international financial system." For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. The bust, 20 centimeters in width and 40 centimeters in height, was made by the famous sculptor Thomas Qvarsebo. The bust of the late PM was placed at the National Hospital of Pediatrics. (Photo: Minh Van) The bust and the furnishing of the playroom have been funded by the Olof Palme International Centre, the Olof Palme Memorial Fund, the Swedish Committee for Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and the Social Democratic Party of Sweden, as well as by individual contributions of these organizations. Not only to be considered as a great friend of the Vietnamese people in the fight for independence, late PM Olof Palme was also supporting Vietnam in the reconstruction of the country after the war. In his opening at the ceremony, Mr. Pierre Schori said Sweden was the first Western country to establish diplomatic ties with Vietnam and will continue to maintain a strong relationship in the coming years. Late PM Olof Palme laid a solid foundation for the unique and special relationship between our two countries. One of the most effective fields throughout the history of the bilateral relations is the health sector. Many large health projects supported by Sweden such as National Hospital of Paediatrics, Uong Bi hospital and rebuilding of Bach Mai general hospital are still maintained. Prof. Dr Le Thanh Hai, Director of the National Hospital of Pediatrics noted that the Sweden-Vietnam health cooperation achieved very good results in the health sector, from construction of hospitals, training of staff, maternal and child health care, providing health services to the most disadvantaged areas to supporting health policies or fighting pandemic. The program is part of an official visit to Vietnam by Mr. Pierre Schori, Special Representative of Swedish PM Stefan Lofven to Hanoi from June 1st to 4th. His visit also involved a seminar on the Legacy of Olof Palme and the Sweden-Vietnam relations, held at the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics in the morning of June 2nd. Olof Palme (1927-1986) was Prime Minister of Sweden in 1969-1976 and 1982-1986. When he was alive, he made significant contributions to the cause of Vietnam national reconstruction and helped the country build many key projects such as the National Hospital of Pediatrics and the Vietnam-Sweden hospital in Quang Ninh./. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Cyprus Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Cyprus, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dc813.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: The Republic of Cyprus collaborated closely with the United States, the EU, and other countries bilaterally and multilaterally in international counterterrorism efforts in 2015. Cyprus' counterterrorism partnership with the United States included participation in the Department of State's Regional Strategic Initiative programs and Department of Justice's Regional Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance, and Training program, which strengthened the government's capacity to counter terrorism. Since 1974, Cyprus has been divided de facto into the Republic of Cyprus government-controlled area, composed of the southern two-thirds of the island, and a northern third, administered by the Turkish Cypriots. In 1983, the Turkish Cypriots declared the northern part to be the independent "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC)." The United States does not recognize the "TRNC," nor does any country other than Turkey. The Republic of Cyprus government does not exercise effective control over the area administered by the Turkish Cypriots. The UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus patrols the buffer zone separating the two sides, which is largely open to civilian traffic and remains a significant route for the illicit transit of people, narcotics, and other illicit goods. The division of the island between the Republic of Cyprus government-controlled area and the northern area administered by the Turkish Cypriots has impeded counterterrorism cooperation between the two communities and between the Republic of Cyprus and Turkey, which do not have diplomatic relations. Turkish Cypriots lack the legal and institutional framework necessary to counter the financing of terrorism effectively. Despite these limitations, Turkish Cypriots cooperated in pursuing specific counterterrorism objectives. In 2015, the United States and the Republic of Cyprus finalized arrangements to exchange biographic and biometric information of suspected terrorists with the goal of improving traveler screening and deterring terrorist travel. Cyprus is a partner in the Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: The Republic of Cyprus enacted a National Law on Combating Terrorism in 2010 that incorporates EU Council Framework Decisions. Cypriot authorities continued to develop capabilities under the supervision of the National Counterterrorism Coordinator and a specialized counterterrorist squad in the Cypriot National Police's (CNP) Emergency Response Unit. In May, the CNP arrested Hussein Bassam Abdallah, a dual Lebanese-Canadian national, after Cypriot authorities found 8.2 tons of liquid ammonium nitrate in the basement of his residence in Larnaca. Abdallah admitted to Cypriot authorities he was a member of Hizballah. The Republic of Cyprus charged Abdallah with five offenses, including participation in a terrorist organization and providing support to a terrorist organization. After pleading guilty to all charges, he was sentenced to six years in prison on June 29. The Abdallah case marked the first time the 2010 counterterrorism law was used to prosecute a terrorism case. A prior Hizballah-related arrest in 2012 was tried under standard criminal laws. In response to multiple terrorist attacks in Europe, Cyprus enhanced its security cooperation and law enforcement measures. These activities included increased patrols around critical infrastructure and soft targets, strengthened passport control at airports and seaports, and increased security measures and surveillance at border crossing points and along the "Green Line" and Cypriot coast. Cyprus continued to participate in regional and international workshops on Hizballah, aimed at improving the use of law enforcement tools to counter terrorist threats. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: The Republic of Cyprus is a member of the Council of Europe's Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism (MONEYVAL), a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body. Cyprus' financial intelligence unit, the Unit for Combating Money Laundering (MOKAS), is a member of the Egmont Group. In 2015, Cypriot authorities were currently conducting a national risk assessment on money laundering and terrorism financing, covering the entire anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) system, including charities. This document will build on a set of AML/CFT reforms, focussing on financial sector transparency that Cyprus implemented in 2013-2015 in accordance with its IMF assistance program. In calendar year 2015, Cyprus did not identify or freeze any assets pursuant to relevant UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs), including 1373 (2001) or the 1267/1989/2253 ISIL and al-Qa'ida sanctions. Cyprus has implemented the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida sanctions regime and informally tracked individuals and entities listed under U.S. Executive Orders, including E.O. 13224. The Combating of Terrorism Law of 2010 provides a comprehensive legal framework on terrorism including adequate provisions regarding terrorism financing. In particular, Section 8 of the 2010 law criminalizes support and financing to any terrorist group, associated parties, and entities designated by EU and UN authorities. Additionally, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs circulates updates of UN and EU lists to competent authorities, including MOKAS, Central Bank of Cyprus, Chief of Police, various ministries, Central Intelligence Service, Cyprus Ports Authority, Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission, the Cyprus Bar Association, and the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Cyprus. However, the December 2015 FATF Terrorist Finance Fact Finding Initiative identified Cyprus for not having legal powers in place to apply targeted financial sanctions pursuant to UNSCR 1373 to EU internals. The Central Bank of Cyprus is the supervisory authority for the banking sector including cooperative societies, electronic money institutions and payment institutions. Cyprus does not have a significant unregulated informal banking and money transfer system. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: Cyprus attended the September Leader's Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism hosted by President Obama in New York and continued its participation in the European Commission's Radicalization Awareness Network. The government exchanged best practices with partners on addressing terrorists' internet recruitment efforts. Police and prison officers also received training on countering radicalization to violence by the CNP's Counterterrorism Office. International and Regional Cooperation: Members of the CNP's Counterterrorism Office participate in the Working Group on Terrorism (CWP) at the Council of the EU. Cyprus regularly participates on the Police Working Group on Terrorism, the "Dumas" Working Group, and the European Expert Network on Terrorism, as well as meetings convened under Europol and INTERPOL. Cyprus has contributed to the Council of Europe's efforts to establish and adopt the Additional Protocol to the Council of Europe Convention on Combating Terrorism, which addresses foreign terrorist fighters within the framework of UNSCR 2178 (2014). Cyprus also participated in regional and international conferences on foreign terrorist fighters and countering Hizballah. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Cuba Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Cuba, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dc915.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: The United States rescinded Cuba's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism on May 29, 2015. The governments agreed to establish a bilateral law enforcement dialogue with technical working groups that would address cooperation regarding various law enforcement matters including counterterrorism, counter-narcotics, human smuggling, border control, and financial crime issues in the wake of re-establishing diplomatic relations on July 20. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Cuban law specifically criminalizes terrorism. There is not a comprehensive counterterrorism framework, but the criminal code does address terrorism. Law enforcement and border security have a strong presence and effectively deter and respond to security threats. Cuban officials also have a strong search and rescue/disaster response capacity, which could prove particularly useful in responding to an attack. Cuban border security, screening, and tracking of travelers are strong. The United States and Cuba held the first round of expanded law enforcement discussions in November. Senior law enforcement officials from across the interagency met with their Cuban counterparts to discuss a broad range of issues, including the recently approved information sharing protocol via INTERPOL and the creation of a number of technical working groups including a group that will address counterterrorism issues. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Cuba is a member of the Financial Action Task on Latin America (GAFILAT), a FATF-style regional body. Its financial intelligence unit, Direccion General de Investigacion de Operaciones Financieras, is a member of the Egmont Group. Cuba's last mutual evaluation took place in late 2014. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. International and Regional Cooperation: Cuba is not an active member of the OAS, nor a member of NATO, or the OSCE. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Colombia Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Colombia, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dca2d.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: In 2015, Colombia experienced overall decreased terrorist activity according to Defense Ministry statistics, due in large part to a unilateral ceasefire declared by Colombia's largest terrorist organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Although the government and the FARC reached tentative, partial agreements on land reform, political participation, drug trafficking, and victims' rights (including transitional justice), no overall bilateral peace agreement had been concluded by the end of the year. The government continued exploratory talks with the other major terrorist organization in Colombia, the National Liberation Army (ELN), although formal peace negotiations had not started by year's end. U.S.-Colombian counterterrorism cooperation remained strong. The Colombian government continued its military pressure against insurgents in 2015, although it gradually reduced military actions over the course of the year, including certain periods when it suspended aerial bombardments against FARC targets. That suspension remained in place at year's end. In response to the FARC observation of a unilateral ceasefire starting on December 20, 2014, President Santos announced on March 10 that the armed forces would refrain from bombing FARC guerrilla camps. However, following a FARC attack in Cauca department on April 15 that killed 11 soldiers and wounded 20 others, Santos ordered the military to resume aerial strikes against the FARC. The FARC lifted its self-imposed unilateral ceasefire on May 22 and initiated a wave of attacks against security forces and infrastructure for the next two months. The FARC then resumed its unilateral ceasefire on July 20, and it remained in place through the end of the year. On July 25, Santos again suspended aerial bombardments of FARC camps as a de-escalation measure. On September 23, the government and the FARC jointly announced their intention to sign a peace agreement by March 23, 2016. Meanwhile, Santos ordered the military to intensify strikes against the ELN in response to an October 26 ELN attack on a military foot patrol escorting election workers and ballots, which resulted in the death of 11 soldiers and one police officer and the capture of two soldiers (who were released several weeks later). In 2015, the number of members of Foreign Terrorist Organizations including the FARC and ELN killed in combat, captured, and demobilized, decreased compared to the previous year. In 2015, the number of civilian deaths from conflicts with guerilla organizations decreased compared to the previous year. While Colombia has openly condemned ISIL and its objectives, Colombia is not a member of the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: The FARC and ELN focused on low-cost, high-impact asymmetric attacks, as they did in 2014. The most common forms of terrorist activity were the launching of mortars at police stations or the military, explosive devices placed near roads and paths, sniper attacks, roadblocks, and ambushes. In 2015, Colombian government statistics showed a decrease in attacks from 2014. Terrorist attacks on infrastructure including oil pipelines and energy towers also decreased in 2015 compared to 2014, according to Defense Ministry statistics. Security forces and government buildings were the most common terrorist targets, although civilian casualties also occurred throughout the year. Attacks were most common along the Venezuelan border in the departments of Arauca, Norte de Santander, and La Guajira; in the southwestern departments of Narino and Cauca; and in the northwestern department of Antioquia. Among the terrorist attacks recorded in 2015, several were notable for their severity or significant press coverage: Throughout the year, the ELN continued to place bombs throughout the country, including in Bogota. From February 2 through March 12, the ELN planted IEDs around Bogota, two targeting the police and one targeting a political party headquarters. Police arrested the Bogota-based criminal gang members the ELN had contracted to plant the devices, who admitted that planning was underway for additional attacks against police targets. On July 2-3, ELN pamphlets were found at the scenes of IEDs and pamphlet bomb explosions during evening rush hour at several locations in downtown Bogota, which caused minor injuries. Police arrested 15 ELN members/supporters, including two captured with bombs and pamphlets, although they were released by the court weeks later. Throughout the year, the ELN continued its kidnapping activities. Among others, the ELN kidnapped a Dutch citizen in Norte de Santander department in January (released in February), seized two hostages at a road checkpoint for ransom in Choco department on February 11, and kidnapped four geologists preparing to carry out studies on mining for the Colombian Geological Service in Norte de Santander department on February 24. Throughout May and June, FARC bombings of electricity towers and police stations in Norte de Santander, Valle del Cauca, and Narino departments left almost a million people without power for several days. These attacks included a June 1 FARC attack on electrical infrastructure in the poverty-stricken city of Buenaventura on the Pacific coast that left approximately 400,000 Colombians without power, a June 2 FARC attack on electrical pylons in the southwestern city of Tumaco that left approximately 200,000 people without electricity, followed by another attack on Tumaco on June 20 affecting 260,000 people. On June 7, the FARC forced 19 oil tankers to dump their contents (estimated at 222,000 gallons of crude oil) on a roadway near Puerto Asis, Putumayo department, which caused a massive oil spill and a significant environmental hazard. Beginning June 8, FARC guerrillas conducted strikes against oil pipelines, hitting the Transandino Pipeline five times and bombing the Cano Limon-Covenas Pipeline on June 17 and July 1. Environment Minister Gabriel Vallejo characterized the spills caused by the Transandino attack as "the worst oil spill in Colombia in the last 10 years." On October 26 in Boyaca department, an ELN attack on a military foot patrol escorting election workers and ballots resulted in the death of 11 soldiers and one police officer and the capture of two soldiers. The captured soldiers were released on November 16. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: The investigation and prosecution of terrorism cases in Colombia is governed by Section 906 of Colombia's Criminal Code. The purpose of Section 906 is to develop an evidence-based system of justice where cases are tried before a judge based on testimonial, physical, or documentary evidence with a "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of proof. Most terrorism cases are prosecuted under traditional legal statutes that are used for narcotics trafficking and organized crime, such as conspiracy and illegal possession of firearms authorized for exclusive use of the security forces. There are some specialized statutes that the Attorney General Office's specialized Counterterrorism Unit uses, such as "rebellion" under Section 467 of Colombia's Criminal Code, which criminalize "those who, through armed conflict, seek to overthrow the Constitutionally-enacted government of Colombia." Other specialized statutes in the Criminal Code covering terrorism and related crimes include Articles 144, 340, and 343 which criminalize terrorism, acts of terrorism, and participation in a terrorist organization; terrorism financing is a crime under Article 345. The Attorney General Office's specialized Counterterrorism Unit has prosecutors assigned at the national level in Bogota, and in regions of conflict throughout the country. The unit has developed a great deal of expertise in investigating and prosecuting acts of terrorism and insurgency with the Attorney General's own Technical Criminal Investigative Body, Colombia's National Police (CNP), and the country's military forces. The Attorney General's Office also has specialized prosecutors embedded with CNP anti-kidnapping and anti-extortion "GAULA" units throughout the country to handle kidnapping-for-ransom and extortion cases in real-time. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) assisted the National Judicial Police Council presided over by the Attorney General and including members of the CNP and other agencies with investigative authority in establishing a Standards and Training Commission to develop minimum standards for investigators, forensic experts, and criminal analysts. Colombia also worked on securing international accreditation for its forensic laboratories. The CNP has specialized counterterrorism units in the Intelligence, Anti-Kidnapping, and Judicial Police Directorates, all with advanced investigation techniques and crisis response capabilities. Law enforcement units display clear and effective command and control within each organization. These specialized law enforcement units are properly equipped and supported with relevant training. Counterterrorism missions are demarcated to a limited extent between law enforcement and military units. Colombia's contemporary military and law enforcement units have an improved record of accountability and respect for human rights. There is room for improvement in interagency cooperation and sharing of terrorism-related information. No single agency has jurisdiction over all terrorism-related investigations and post-incident response, sometimes resulting in poor information sharing and cooperation. In 2015, Colombian authorities continued to operate military task forces to enhance coordination in combating terrorism. The CNP managed fusion centers to ensure all operational missions coordinate intelligence, investigations, and operations under the command of regional police commanders. Additionally, the National Police Intelligence Directorate continued to operate a 24-hour Citizen Security Center tasked with detecting, deterring, and responding to terrorist attacks, among other crimes. Colombian border security remained an area of vulnerability. Law enforcement officers faced the challenge of working in areas with porous borders and difficult topography plagued by the presence of illegal armed groups and illicit drug cultivation and trafficking. The CNP lacked the manpower to enforce uniform policies for vehicle or passenger inspections at land border crossings. Biometric and biographic screening was conducted only at international airports. The Colombian government does not use advance Passenger Name Records. Of a total force of 180,000 officers, the CNP has only 1,500 officers assigned to Customs Enforcement (air, land, and seaports and borders) duties. Colombia remained a key transit point for the smuggling of third-country nationals who may seek to enter the United States illegally. Porous borders with Ecuador and Venezuela facilitate the movements of third-country nationals through Colombia, and existing maritime narcotics smuggling routes facilitate their onward movement to Central America. While Colombian Immigration regularly detains third-country nationals who have entered the country illegally, the entity lacks both the personnel and enforcement authority to adequately respond to this threat, and the financial resources to repatriate citizens to their home countries via air. The Attorney General's Office is currently investigating corruption by airport officials suspected of letting criminals travel with forged documents. At the end of 2015, five Colombian Immigration officials were facing corruption charges. Colombia continued cooperation and information sharing with the Panamanian National Border Service, while improved relations with neighboring Ecuador led to some increased cooperation on law enforcement issues. However, starting in August, Venezuela closed the majority of its border with Colombia, deported more than 1,900 Colombians and deployed extra troops in the border region. In addition, more than 20,000 Colombians "self-deported" from Venezuela. Colombia and Venezuela have since agreed to improve coordinated security and law enforcement efforts, including expanding the Bi-National Joint Command and Control Center to include a Bi-National Center for Fighting Transnational Organized Crime, increasing troops along the border, and considering proposals for maritime and fluvial cooperation. However, the border closures remained in place at the end of the year. Colombian authorities captured, killed, or arrested several high-profile perpetrators of terrorist acts in 2015: In January, the military captured Carlos Andres Bustos Cortez (alias Richard), the second in command of the FARC's Teofilo Forero mobile column in central-southwest Colombia, accused of engineering terrorist attacks against police stations, buses, shops, and electrical infrastructure. In March, the CNP worked with the Attorney General's Office and military to capture five members of a criminal organization the ELN had reportedly hired to place and detonate explosives in Bogota. On May 21, a Colombian military aerial bombardment targeting the FARC's 29 th Front killed 26 FARC fighters in Cauca department, the biggest blow to the FARC in a single attack in several years. In October, Colombian authorities arrested Jairo Alirio Puerta Pena (alias Omar or Cunado), a FARC member allegedly linked to massacres in Bojaya, Choco department in 2002 and Pueblo Bello, Antioquia department that left hundreds of civilians dead, as well as an attack on a helicopter that killed a number of soldiers in 2000. In December, Colombia's Supreme Court approved the extradition to the United States of FARC member Octavio Orrego (alias Sebastian) for kidnapping the three Americans in 2003 and killing another American five years later. President Santos denied the extradition, however, based on the ongoing peace negotiations with the FARC. While kidnappings have declined in recent years, they remained a threat, especially in rural and insurgent-affected portions of Colombia. Organized extortion networks inhibited economic growth, displaced civilians, and subverted the rule of law where they were active, and the alleged failure of victims to accede to extortion demands was regularly cited as the cause for terrorist attacks. The CNP Anti-Kidnapping and Anti-Extortion Directorate have an international kidnapping unit to address kidnappings involving foreign nationals. Law enforcement cooperation between Colombia and the United States remained strong. Evidence sharing and joint law enforcement operations occurred in a fluid and efficient manner. Colombia continued to participate in the Department's Antiterrorism Assistance program. The program provided instruction and resources to assist Colombia in building advanced, self-sustaining CNP capabilities to secure borders from terrorist transit, to investigate terrorists and terrorist incidents, and to protect critical infrastructure. Colombia continued to establish itself as a regional provider of law enforcement and counterterrorism training, particularly with regard to anti-kidnapping efforts and dignitary protection. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Colombia is a member of the Financial Action Task Force of Latin America, a FATF-style regional body. Colombia stands out as a regional leader in the fight against terrorism financing, and has become a key part of a regional financial intelligence unit initiative aimed at strengthening information sharing among Latin American countries. Colombia's financial intelligence unit, Unidad de Informacion y Analisis Financiero, is a member of the Egmont Group, a global association of financial intelligence units. On April 15-16, more than 90 prosecutors and investigators from the Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Panama, Paraguay, and the United States met in Cartagena for the first U.S. Department of Justice Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance, and Training (OPDAT) Regional Counterterrorism Workshop focused on safeguarding the financial system in Latin America from abuse by terrorist organizations, including Hizballah, FARC, and ELN. A second OPDAT Regional Counterterrorism Workshop focusing on Terrorism Financing in Free Trade Zones in Latin America took place in Panama City, Panama in late October, with participation from seven countries, including Colombia. On November 13, OPDAT hosted a one-day seminar on Terrorism Financing and Terrorism-Related Money Laundering in Barranquilla, attended by approximately 42 Colombian prosecutors and investigators. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: Colombia employed a strong and modern multi-agency approach to countering radicalization to violence and violent extremism, with a focus on encouraging individual members and entire units of the FARC and ELN to demobilize and reintegrate into society. In 2015, the number of FARC and ELN members who demobilized decreased slightly. The demobilization and reintegration programs provide medical care, psychological counseling, education benefits, technical training, and job placement assistance for demobilized combatants. In order to receive benefits, demobilized combatants must check in monthly with program managers. Recidivism rates were estimated at between seven and 20 percent. The Colombian armed forces and police employed a number of fixed and mobile radio transmitters to broadcast strategic messaging to individuals considering leaving the FARC or ELN. Such messaging was also seen in print, television, and alternative media. The Colombian military and police employed the same media forms to counter FARC and ELN recruitment efforts. Additionally, the Ministry of Defense organized highly publicized festivals and social events with celebrity participation to discourage the recruitment of vulnerable youth. Moreover, with international community support, the government's Inter-Institutional Committee for the Prevention of Recruitment of Children supported numerous recruitment prevention initiatives all over the country reaching more than 500,000 children at high risk. The Committee also worked with mayors to include prevention of recruitment activities in their development plans. International and Regional Cooperation: Colombia is a founding member of the Global Counterterrorism Forum and is actively involved in the UN, OAS and its Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism, the Pacific Alliance, and the Union of South American Nations. The CNP operates an INTERPOL office of approximately 70 analysts, agents, and support staff. Colombia also led the creation of the American Police Community (Ameripol) in 2007, and helped found the Latin American and Caribbean Community of Police Intelligence in 2005, whose Technical Secretariat is based in Bogota. Colombia is becoming a leader in providing security training and assistance to other countries in the region. The CNP and military continued to operate schools that train security personnel from around the region. In 2015, Colombia conducted 118 security trainings for more than 2,864 non-Colombian individuals a significant increase over 2014 on citizen security, crime prevention and monitoring, military and police capacity building, anti-kidnapping, anti-extortion, hostage negotiation, and cybersecurity training. Colombia also provided judicial training to regional judges and prosecutors handling drug trafficking and terrorism cases, offered basic and advanced helicopter training to pilots from countries throughout Latin America, and maintained its elite Lancero and Jungla Special Forces courses open to students from other countries. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - China (Hong Kong and Macau) Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - China (Hong Kong and Macau), 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dcb2c.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: China's attention to terrorism in 2015 intensified as the country reacted to several incidents that it characterized as domestic terrorism. China continued to escalate its security and surveillance in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region to prevent additional unrest, including the implementation of stricter controls and curbs on religious practice. The primary focus of China's international counterterrorism efforts remained on the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an organization that China alleges is behind violent incidents in Xinjiang. Government officials often characterized China's restrictive policies in Xinjiang as an effort to prevent additional acts of terrorism and violent extremism. The Chinese government reported that Chinese citizens operated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the Middle East, and has taken action to prevent its citizens from traveling to Syria and Iraq. In November, ISIL claimed to have executed Chinese citizen Fan Jinghui, which prompted strong condemnation from President Xi Jinping. Two weeks later, ISIL posted a song online in Mandarin calling for Chinese Muslims to take up arms against their country. Counterterrorism cooperation between the United States and China remained limited. The two countries initiated a technical workshop on countering the spread of IEDs and increased consultations aimed at stemming the transnational flow of foreign terrorist fighters, countering terrorist funding networks, increasing information sharing on terrorist threats, and sharing evidentiary best practices. China held bilateral dialogues on counterterrorism with five countries in 2015, including with the United States in August. China remained engaged in counterterrorism efforts in the Asia-Pacific region and Central Asia. It conducted bilateral and multilateral joint exercises with regional neighbors and through other frameworks, such as the Shanghai Cooperative Organization. Chinese authorities criticized the United States when it did not follow China's example in characterizing some incidents of violence in China as terrorism. As in previous years, China accused Uighur activists abroad including in the United States of complicity in supporting terrorist activity, but has not provided credible evidence to support the claims. China also appeared to apply inconsistent labels to incidents of mass violence involving Han Chinese suspects. For example, and in contrast to the examples discussed below, China designated a series of 17 explosions in September that damaged government buildings and neighborhoods in the Guangxi Autonomous Region, killing seven people and injuring more than 50, a criminal rather than a terrorist act and arrested a suspect surnamed Wei. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: The lack of transparency and information provided by China about violent incidents in China that the government characterized as terrorism greatly complicated efforts to verify details of those and other violent acts. In many of the domestic incidents that China characterized as terrorism, China alleged that ETIM influenced or directed the violence through its online propaganda. China often prevented foreign journalists and international observers from independently verifying official media accounts, which are often the only source of reporting on violent incidents in its territory. Government authorities heavily restricted foreign and non-state media access to information about 2015 incidents and often limited reporting to official accounts that were not timely and typically lacked detailed information. The following incidents are examples of incidents the central government considered to be terrorism: On March 6, three knife-wielding assailants stabbed and injured nine people at a Guangzhou Railway Station before police fatally shot one of the suspects and captured a second. According to a leaked Guangdong Provincial Public Security document obtained by the media, the attack was likely reprisal for an alleged anti-terrorism raid on an apartment in Shenyang by 200 police officers that left four dead and captured 16 Uighur terrorism suspects. On June 24, local police attributed an attack that left 18 people dead (including 15 attackers) to purported ethnic Uighur terrorists. Suspects allegedly attacked police with knives and bombs at a security checkpoint in Kashgar's Tahtakoruk district in Xinjiang. Assailants armed with knives attacked the Sogan coal mine in Xinjiang's Aksu Prefecture on September 18, killing approximately 50 people (most of Han Chinese ethnicity), according to official media, which did not report on the attack until November, when reports appeared that a Special Forces unit had conducted a raid and killed 28 suspects from the mine attack. Official accounts eventually described the attackers as part of an alleged terrorist gang who had been radicalized by online overseas propaganda and had been directed by unspecified overseas extremist groups. An official statement from the Ministry of Public Security lauding the raid as a victory in the fight against terrorism was deleted without explanation hours after being posted online. On December 16, the Chinese government posted details and photos of the November raid online. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: In May, the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and China's State Council issued new measures designed to intensify surveillance and security throughout the country. In addition to increased inspections at all main transportation hubs, including bus and train stations, railways, airports and ports, police would patrol key public sites such as schools, shopping malls, and banks. The measures included an enhanced and vastly expanded video and data surveillance network. More surveillance cameras would be installed and a national population database would be established with citizen identification and credit information. In December 2015, the National People's Congress Standing Committee approved the country's first comprehensive counterterrorism law to "provide legal support for counterterrorism activities as well as collaboration with the international community." The law broadened China's definition of terrorism and the scope of its counterterrorism measures, and made provisions to establish a counterterrorism intelligence center to better coordinate terrorism response and information sharing across different Chinese government agencies. The law also required foreign firms to provide technical and decryption assistance to Chinese authorities as part of terrorism-related investigations. The legislation stipulated measures on tightening internet security management, inspection of dangerous materials, prevention of terrorism financing, and border controls. The law's broad definition of terrorism and its new technology-related requirements for foreign telecommunications firms and internet service providers elicited concerns from human rights organizations and business interest groups. Under the new law, the Central Military Commission may authorize the People's Liberation Army to perform counterterrorism operations abroad. The law also provided for punishing news media that reports counterterrorism operations without approval from government authorities. According to state media, law enforcement authorities in Xinjiang had disrupted 181 "terrorist gangs" since the launch of the 2014 "strike hard" campaign. Extended through 2015, the campaign was an amalgamation of enhanced cultural restrictions and security measures. Meng Jianzhu, Secretary of the Communist Party's Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, stated at a December 2015 counterterrorism conference in Urumqi that 98 percent of terrorist plots in Xinjiang had been stopped at the planning stage. Due to restrictions on independent reporting, it was difficult to corroborate this as well as other counterterrorism-related claims. At the same conference, Meng announced several new guidelines regulating Chinese government activities in the fight against terrorism, including several on the use of internet and social media. The new guidelines called for greater cooperation with international counterterrorism bodies; maximum protection for overseas Chinese citizens; destruction of terrorism-related audio and video material; prevention of the dissemination of terrorist information via social media and other online methods; strengthened border controls to prevent terrorists entering China; elimination of religious extremism; and the "education and transformation" of terrorist offenders using "authentic" religious teachings. Government authorities continued to act against what it alleged were suspected Uighur militants traveling through Southeast Asia. According to international media reports, Thailand repatriated more than 100 Uighur refugees to China after receiving pressure from Chinese authorities. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees criticized Thailand's decision as a violation of international law, and human rights groups voiced concerns that the repatriated group could face harsh treatment once returned to China. State media reported that 13 of those repatriated were involved in terrorist activities, but did not provide evidence to support those claims. According to foreign press reports, some of the refugees were featured in a subsequent media campaign discouraging illegal emigration from Xinjiang. China continued to stress the importance of counterterrorism cooperation with the United States, but Chinese law enforcement agencies generally remained reluctant to conduct joint investigations or share specific threat information with U.S. law enforcement partners. Despite multiple requests to Chinese law enforcement officials for more detailed background information on Chinese media-reported arrests and operations, U.S. law enforcement agencies received little new information. Overall, China's counterterrorism cooperation with the United States remained limited and was further constrained by China's conflation of religious expression with violent extremism. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: China is a member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), as well as the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering and the Eurasian Group on Combating Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing, both of which are FATF-style regional bodies. China and the United States have met at least once a year (for the last four years) to engage in a technical discussion related to anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT). This meeting is known as the AML/CFT Working Group under the Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED). At the December 2015 meeting, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the U.S. financial intelligence unit (FIU), signed a memorandum of understanding with the China Anti-Money Laundering Monitoring and Analysis Center (CAMLMAC), China's FIU, to support its efforts to combat money laundering, related crimes, and terrorism financing. China's CAMLMAC is not a member of the Egmont Group. The Chinese government has strengthened its preventive measures to counter terrorism financing, with an emphasis on requiring financial institutions to collect and maintain beneficial ownership information, and making suspicious transaction reports more comprehensive. Additional issues remain to be addressed, including guidance for designated non-financial businesses and professions; procedures for individuals and groups who seek to be delisted; and defining the rights of bona fide third parties in seizure/confiscation actions. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2015/ Countering Violent Extremism: Although China does not have an official strategy or program in place to counter violent extremism, the government implemented a number of programs aimed at countering radicalization and violent extremism, concentrating much of its efforts in Xinjiang. Local counterterrorism working groups have been established at the county, municipal, and provincial levels across China to coordinate "stability maintenance," law enforcement, ethnic and religious affairs. Xinjiang government officials required imams to take political education classes as a means of persuading them to discourage extremism and condemn violence. In Xinjiang, authorities placed restrictions on religious expression, banning the burqa in public spaces in Urumqi and criminalizing unspecified "extremist garments" clothes or symbols the government associates with terrorism and extremism. Many Chinese government policies may have exacerbated ethnic tension in Xinjiang and could contribute to increased violent extremism. For further information, please see the Department of State's 2015 Report on International Religious Freedom: http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/index.htm and the 2015 Report on Human Rights: http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/ International and Regional Cooperation: China continued to promote its commitment to working with the international community on UN Security Council (UNSC) counterterrorism issues. In May 2015 in Nanning, China hosted the 13th ASEAN Regional Forum Inter-Sessional Meeting on Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime. China also regularly participated in other multilateral fora that address counterterrorism issues such as the Global Counterterrorism Forum and the APEC Counter-Terrorism Working Group. China also held bilateral counterterrorism dialogues with the Egypt, India, Indonesia, Russia, and the United States. China cooperated with other nations on counterterrorism efforts through military exercises and assistance. China conducted joint military training with several nations that focused on improving counterterrorism capabilities. In September, China and Pakistan staged "Joint Field Exercise Warrior III," an annual counterterrorism exercise. In October, China and India held "Hand-in-Hand 2015," the fifth counterterrorism drill of its kind since 2007. That same month China hosted members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization for "Xiamen 2015," an online counterterrorism exercise. In August, China and Russia held their largest-ever joint maritime drill in the Sea of Japan, "Joint Sea II," that included a joint counterterrorism amphibious assault component. Hong Kong Hong Kong continued its effective security and law enforcement partnership with the United States through the Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department's successful joint operation of the Container Security Initiative; through participation in U.S. government-sponsored training in related topics; and through engagement with U.S. counterterrorism agencies. Counterterrorism remained an operational priority for the Hong Kong Police Force, as demonstrated by existing policies on prevention, protection, and preparedness. The Police Security Wing shares potential terrorist threat information with relevant counterterrorism units. The Police Counterterrorism Response Unit provides a strong deterrent presence, assisting police districts with counterterrorism strategy implementation, and complementing the tactical and professional support of existing police specialist units such as the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Bureau, Special Duties Unit, Airport Security Unit, and VIP Protection Unit. The Security Bureau in November 2015 conducted a large-scale, inter-departmental counterterrorism exercise to test and enhance city-wide counterterrorism coordination and response capabilities. This exercise was the first of its kind in terms of scale and scope. Hong Kong is a member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering, a FATF-style regional body. Its Joint Financial Intelligence Unit is a member of the Egmont Group. Terrorism financing is a criminal offense in Hong Kong, and financial institutions are required to continuously search for terrorism financing networks and screen accounts using designations lists provided by the United States under relevant authorities, as well as the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida and1988 (Taliban) sanctions regime. Filing suspicious transactions reports irrespective of transaction amounts is obligatory, but Hong Kong does not require mandatory reporting requirements for cross-border currency movements. Hong Kong's strategic trade regime buttresses U.S. efforts to restrict commodities, software, and technology to terrorist organizations or individuals. Hong Kong law enforcement officers attended U.S. government-sponsored capacity building training at the International Law Enforcement Academy on advanced post-blast investigations, personnel and facility security, law enforcement techniques to counter terrorism, and financial investigations. Select Hong Kong Police officers also attended Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS) courses, DoD sponsored conferences, and conducted subject matter exchanges and training with U.S. Military units. Macau The Police Intervention Tactical Unit (UTIP), which falls under the Macau Public Security Police Force, is responsible for protecting important installations and dignitaries, and for conducting high-risk missions such as deactivation of IEDs. UTIP's Special Operations Group's mission is counterterrorism operations. Macau law enforcement officers attended U.S. government-sponsored capacity building training at the International Law Enforcement Academy on personnel and facility security, financial and crime scene investigations, countering terrorism, computer investigations, and evidence protection. U.S. Consulate law enforcement personnel also provided training in fraudulent document recognition to Macau border security authorities. Macau is a member of the Asia/Pacific Group (APG) on Money Laundering, a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body, and its Financial Intelligence Office is a member of the Egmont Group. Terrorism financing is a criminal offense in Macau, and banks and other financial institutions are required to continuously search for terrorism financing networks and screen accounts using designations lists provided by the United States under relevant authorities, as well as the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida and the 1988 (Taliban) sanctions regime. Filing suspicious transactions reports irrespective of transaction amounts is obligatory, but Macau does not currently require mandatory reporting requirements for cross-border currency movements. Macau cooperated internationally on counterterrorism efforts through INTERPOL and other security-focused organizations, including through FATF and APG. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Chad Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Chad, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dcc2d.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: The Government of Chad made countering potential terrorist attacks and threats from across the Sahel region a priority at the highest level. By engaging in the fight against Boko Haram in northern Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria; supporting the French-led mission in northern Mali; and passing counterterrorism legislation; Chad's counterterrorism strategy focused on promoting internal and regional stability. Chad provided combat forces to the Lake Chad Basin Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) that also includes Benin, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria, and continued to take an active role in that coalition and fighting violent extremists in the Lake Chad region, Nigeria, and neighboring states. This follows Chad's important contribution in 2013 to the French intervention in northern Mali, Operation Sabre, and its contribution to the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). 2015 Terrorist Attacks: Boko Haram attacked Chad in retribution for Chad's role in the MNJTF and for countering Boko Haram in Nigeria and elsewhere in the region. Boko Haram's attacks on villages, internally displaced persons camps, and military installations in the Lake Chad region represented a significant increase above and beyond the attacks on villages that were perpetrated in 2014. Attacks included: On three days immediately before and during Ramadan, several attacks struck Chad's capital N'Djamena: On June 15, three suicide attacks against two police targets killed 33; On June 27, five policemen and six terrorists were killed during a police raid; and On July 11, a suicide bomber killed 15 in N'Djamena's main market. On November 8, suicide bombings killed two and injured 14 in Ngouboua, Lake Chad Region, following the withdrawal of Chadian troops. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Throughout the year, Chadian security forces executed several cordon and search operations in the Lake Chad region in an effort to prevent spillover from ongoing security operations in Niger, Nigeria, and Cameroon that effectively squeezed Boko Haram further into Chadian territory. Following twin attacks in N'Djamena in June, the Government of Chad found and arrested the leadership of the Boko Haram cell in N'Djamena, leading to the discovery of a Boko Haram safe house in June and a large weapons cache in early July. The Government of Chad passed counterterrorism legislation on August 5. Law 034/PR/2015 explicitly criminalizes terrorism and provides penalties for those convicted of terrorist acts. The law imposes the death penalty on any person who commits, finances, recruits, and/or trains people for participation in acts of terrorism, regardless of where the act was intended to be carried out. The law extended the pre-trial detention period to 30 days, renewable twice on authorization from the public prosecutor. Penalties for lesser terrorist offenses were increased to life imprisonment. On January 16, the Government of Chad received parliament's approval to send troops to the northern regions of Cameroon near the Nigerian border. This decision, which received broad popular support, came amid rising concerns about the economic impact of the siege on the Chadian economy, as Chad depends heavily on the importation of goods that transit through Nigeria and northern Cameroon. On July 12, Prime Minister Pahimi Kalzeube Deubet addressed representatives of political parties and civil society leaders regarding terrorist threats as well as measures taken by the Government of Chad, and called for collaboration to increase vigilance and awareness to root out suspicious persons and accomplices. He praised the crucial role played by the entire political class and civil society in the fight against terrorism. He reiterated the measures taken in the context of the fight against Boko Haram, such as the ban on burqas and vehicles with tinted windows, and the cantonment of refugees from Nigeria in Baga Sola and specific camps. On August 29, the Government of Chad tried, convicted, and executed 10 members of Boko Haram found guilty of planning the June 15 and July 11 suicide bombings that killed more than 48 people and wounded hundreds in N'Djamena. The alleged Boko Haram members were tried by Chad's highest criminal court magistrates in a three-day Special Criminal Session that began on August 26. The trial was open to the press on its first day, but then moved to an undisclosed location and was closed to the media and public due to concerns that Boko Haram might attack the court or attempt to free the defendants. The accused were prosecuted by Chad's Procurer General and represented by assigned lawyers. As the attacks took place before the August 5 passage of new counterterrorism legislation, the suspects were tried under non-terrorism related charges, including murder, causing destruction using an explosive device, fraud, illegal possession of firearms, and abuse of psychotropic drugs. The defendants were convicted based on a public admission of guilt by some members before the court and no physical evidence against them was reportedly presented. While Chadian law enforcement units displayed basic command and control capacity, the Director-General of the Chadian National Police has requested more training in investigation, crisis response, and border security capacity. All 22 police brigades performed counterterrorism functions. Law enforcement leadership professed publicly the requirement for all law enforcement officers to respect human rights. The Director-General of the police has shown dedication to the improvement of the Chadian National Police, including through information sharing within the various police units, new uniforms, new weapons, and a pay raise. The Government of Chad increased screenings at border-crossings to try to prevent infiltration by members of Boko Haram and Central African militias, and the transit of illegal arms, drugs, weapons, and other contraband into the country. Border patrol was provided by a combination of border security officials, gendarmes, police, and military. Border officials, particularly police at the Ngueli bridge border crossing between N'Djamena and Kousseri, Cameroon; took security measures that included controlling of taxi and motorcycle traffic; searching cars, trucks, and pedestrians at points-of-entry to screen for weapons, drugs, explosives, and other contraband; and continuing the use of the Personal Identification Secure Comparison and Evaluation System (PISCES) biometric screening system that was adopted in 2013. Chad has the capability to conduct biographic screening at multiple land and air ports of entry. Chadian security forces executed several cordon and search operations in the Lake Chad region in an effort to prevent spillover from ongoing security operations in Niger, Nigeria, and Cameroon. Chad continued its participation in the Department of State's Antiterrorism Assistance (ATA) program. In 2015, the Government of Chad signed an accord with the U.S. Embassy for the designation of a police response unit to U.S. facilities and personnel under the Special Program for Embassy Augmentation and Response (SPEAR). This multi-year U.S.-funded program directly supports the Chadian National Police with the necessary training and equipment to respond to a terrorist incident, particularly targeting U.S. facilities. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Chad is a member of the Task Force on Money Laundering in Central Africa (GABAC), a Financial Action Task Force-style regional body. Chad's financial intelligence unit, the National Agency for Financial Investigation (ANIF), is a member of the Egmont Group. Chad's underdeveloped financial sector is primarily cash-based and lacks sufficient capacity to enforce banking security. ANIF continued to face serious resource constraints rendering financial intelligence reporting and analysis limited. Additionally, law enforcement and customs officials require further training in financial crimes enforcement. Several banks reported suspicious transactions. The government lacked equipment to monitor transactions and did not track money transactions through wire transfer services (i.e. Western Union), hawala remittance systems, or SMS mobile money transfers. In September, the Bank of the Central African States (BEAC) took measures to strengthen information technology resources vigilance, to improve detection, automated alerts, and tracking to identify sensitive or suspicious transactions. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: On July 17, Prime Minister Kalzeube informed national religious leaders of the measures the government took following the terrorist attacks in N'Djamena and asked them to educate their followers on the government's security measures. The next day, in Amdjarass, Region Ennedi-East, President Deby Itno received religious, administrative, and traditional authorities. Ten members of the Higher Council of Islamic Affairs attended the meeting. Members of the Islamic Committee of Ennedi-East reaffirmed their determination to encourage compliance with the law. On September 24, during Eid celebrations in N'Djamena, the imam of the grand mosque welcomed Government of Chad efforts against Boko Haram and urged Muslims to show solidarity and unity. As a member of the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP), Chad continued to participate in targeted projects to counter violent extremism. Activities included youth empowerment, amplification of moderate voices, capacity building of national civil society organizations, and promotion of community governance. Two new community radio stations were added to the media landscape and two training centers were created to provide Muslim youth with marketable skills. International and Regional Cooperation: Chad participated in the Global Counterterrorism Forum's Sahel Region Capacity Building Working Group in March in Dakar, Senegal. Chad is a member of the TSCTP, the Lake Chad Basin Commission, and the AU. Chad participated in the Lake Chad Basin Commission's effort to establish the MNJTF, and deployed a contingent of 700 troops along Chad's Lake Chad border to prevent infiltration by Boko Haram. It has also cooperated actively with Cameroon and Nigeria in operations to counter the threat of Boko Haram in its border regions, and continued to work with Sudan on the joint border commission the two countries had established in 2012 to better control the Chad-Sudan eastern border. It also began talks with Niger and Libya to form a tripartite border commission. At an August 3 meeting held in Libreville, the heads of intelligence and security in the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) developed measures against terrorism that include creation of specialized units, a regional institutional platform for information exchange, and improved cooperation and collaboration among security services and information. In 2015, Chad hosted the multinational Special Operations-focused FLINTLOCK exercise. The exercise united more than 1,000 military and security sector personnel from more than 20 countries. The exercise focused on developing interoperable security capacity, building professionalism, and strengthening multinational bonds. The G-5 Sahel was created in February 2014 to enable region-wide collaboration on the Trans-Sahara region's political and security situation, and Chad participated in G-5 Sahel meetings held among the five member countries: Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, along with representatives of the AU, UN, the Economic Community of West African States, the EU, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Chad continued to host the French government's Operation Barkhane, a successor to Operations Serval and Epervier, formerly based in Chad and Mali, respectively. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Canada Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Canada, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dce37.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Canada played a significant role in international efforts to detect, disrupt, prevent, and punish acts of terrorism in 2015. Canada and the United States maintained a close, cooperative counterterrorism partnership, and worked together on key bilateral homeland security programs such as the Beyond the Border initiative and the Cross Border Crime Forum. Canada made major contributions to the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) and the Global Initiative to Counter Nuclear Terrorism (GICNT), and Canadian diplomacy supported global efforts to prevent and counter violent extremism, and promote the rule of law overseas. Canada implemented UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs) 2178 and 2199; the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida (AQ) sanctions regime; monitored financial flows to counter terrorism financing; and implemented GCTF good practices on foreign terrorist fighters. Traveling abroad to commit acts of terrorism is a violation of Canadian federal law. Current enforcement measures to prevent this include the denial of passport applications or the revocation of valid passports of Canadian citizens who are suspected of either traveling abroad or aspiring to travel abroad in order to commit acts of terrorism and also the maintenance of a watchlist of individuals (both citizens and non-citizen residents) flagged for potential involvement with extremist organizations. Canada has made important contributions to the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL in 2015, including the assignment of combat and surveillance aircrafts, an aerial tanker, support personnel to the region, as well as Canadian Special Forces advisers to advise and train the Peshmerga in Iraq. Canada has also provided significant humanitarian assistance to communities impacted by ISIL atrocities, and is a member of the Counter ISIL Finance Group. Although the new government has withdrawn its fighter aircraft from the counter-ISIL combat mission, it will increase its support to the Coalition in other ways. Canadian law enforcement and security services are additionally working to prevent the flow of foreign terrorist fighters to Iraq and Syria. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Canada's legal system is well-suited to adjudicate counterterrorism cases. The legal framework includes significant penalties for committing terrorist acts, conspiring to commit terrorist acts, financing terrorism, and traveling abroad to engage in terrorism. In April, the government passed Bill C-44, Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act, which went into effect on April 23. The bill amends the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act to enable the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to investigate threats to the security of Canada more effectively; clarify the CSIS mandate; confirm CSIS authority to conduct investigations abroad and to obtain Federal Court warrants to carry out those investigations; protect the identity of CSIS human sources from disclosure; protect the identity of CSIS employees engaging in covert activities; and expedite implementation of citizenship revocation measures to strip citizenship from dual nationals convicted of terrorist offenses. Also in April, the government passed Bill C-32, Victims' Bill of Rights Act, to create statutory rights for victims of crime. These include: the ability to access information about the status of investigations, criminal proceedings, and reviews of offenders subject to the corrections process; the protection of victims from intimidation, retaliation, and identity disclosure; the enablement of victims' participation in the judicial process; and the provision of financial restitution to victims. Bill C-32 went into effect in July. In June, the government passed Bill C-51, Anti-terrorism Act, 2015, which amends the criminal code for offenses related to terrorism. The Bill enacts the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act, which authorizes federal government departments and institutions to share personal data of individuals in the context of activities related to national security; enacts the Secure Air Travel Act to establish a no-fly list of persons who may pose a threat to transportation security or who may travel by air for the purpose of committing a terrorism offense; authorizes air carriers to deny boarding to persons so listed; establishes rules for the collection, use and disclosure of information to administer and enforce the list; and provides recourse and appeal procedures for persons denied travel. Bill C-51 authorizes judges to issue peace bonds (orders from a criminal court that require a person to keep the peace and be on good behavior for a period of time), revoke passports, and prohibit personal travel in specified geographic areas in order to disrupt suspected terrorist activity. The bill creates the new offense of knowingly advocating or promoting the commission of terrorism, allows judges to order the seizure or deletion of terrorist propaganda, and provides enhanced protection for witnesses, particularly in the context of security or criminal intelligence. The bill expands CSIS authority to operate outside Canada (subject to judicial warrant) and creates new accountability and reporting requirements. Bill C-51 went into effect in August. The Trudeau government has pledged to modify Bill C-51 in line with Liberal Party campaign promises and unsuccessful attempts to amend the original bill that would more precisely define the government's expanded authority and introduce more safeguards against possible abuses of that authority. In June, the government also passed Bill S-4, Digital Privacy Act, which establishes rules for how private sector businesses collect, use, and disclose the personal information of clients and permits internet service providers to share subscriber data with third parties and law enforcement. Canada has advanced law enforcement capabilities. While Canadian law enforcement and homeland security entities share legally available terrorism-related information with the United States and other investigative counterparts in a timely, proactive fashion, the United States continues to engage with Canada on methods to facilitate the sharing of additional information that is not covered by our current agreements. Prosecutors work in close cooperation with specialized law enforcement units that maintain advanced investigative techniques, crisis response capabilities, and border security capacity. Canadian federal law enforcement entities such as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have clearly demarcated counterterrorism missions and have effective working relationships with their provincial and municipal counterparts as well as with those elements of the Canadian Armed Forces that have counterterrorism roles. Canada has an extensive border security network and uses travel document security technology, terrorist-screening watchlists, biographic and biometric screening capabilities at ports of entry, information sharing between host government entities and other countries, and collection of advance Passenger Name Record (PNR) information on commercial flights to safeguard its borders. Canada and the United States enjoy extensive border security collaboration under the auspices of the Beyond the Border initiative as well as within the framework of the Cross Border Crime Forum and other ongoing law enforcement exchanges. Canadian security forces are very capable and effectively patrol the country's land and maritime borders. Significant law enforcement actions against terrorists and terrorist groups are as follows: On January 9, police charged Canadian citizens Carlos Larmond and Ashton Larmond with participating in the activity of a terrorist group and conspiracy to participate in terrorist activity. Police also charged Carlos Larmond with planning to leave the country to participate in terrorist activity. On January 23, authorities extradited Iraqi-born Canadian citizen Sayfildin (Sayf) Tahir Sharif (also known as Faruq Khalil Muhammad Isa) to the United States after the Canadian Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal. Sharif faces charges of conspiracy to murder Americans abroad, of aiding and abetting the murder of U.S. nationals abroad, and provision of material support to terrorist conduct. On February 3, police charged Awso Peshdary with participation in a terrorist group and facilitating terrorist activity by funding the travel of individuals for the purpose of terrorism. Peshdary is the first individual charged in Canada for terrorist recruitment. On April 20, police charged Sabrine Djermane and El Mahdi Jamali with building or possessing an explosive substance, facilitating terrorist activity, and attempting to leave the country for the purposes of participating in terrorist activity. On May 7, an Edmonton judge ordered that Omar Khadr (a Canadian citizen who pled guilty in 2010 before a United States military tribunal to various offenses, including murder in violation of the law of war and received an eight year sentence) be freed on bail. Khadr was repatriated to Canada from Guantanamo Bay in September 2012. Khadr continued to appeal his U.S. conviction. On June 2, a British Columbia court found Canadian citizens John Stewart Nuttall and Amanda Marie Korody guilty of conspiring to explode pressure-cooker explosive devices among crowds on the grounds of the British Columbia Legislature in 2013. Police alleged the pair were self-radicalized and inspired by AQ ideology on the Internet, but acted independently with no support from outside the country. The court stayed registration of the convictions and sentencing pending the outcome of a judicial hearing of a claim of police entrapment and abuse of process. The hearing continued as of December. On June 11, police arrested Somali-born Ali Omar Ader upon his arrival in Canada for participation in the hostage-taking and confinement in Somalia of Canadian freelance journalist Amanda Lindhout in 2008. On July 13, police charged Jordanian-born Othman Hamdan with six counts of counselling acts of violence on behalf of a terrorist organization. Hamdan arrived in Canada from the United States in 2002 and obtained refugee status. In August, the Canada Border Services Agency began proceedings to deport Algerian national Mohamed Harkat after the Supreme Court accepted evidence in 2014 that he was an al-AQ sleeper agent and upheld an immigration security certificate against him. Harkat remained under supervision in the community, subject to conditions. On September 23, an Ontario court sentenced Chiheb Esseghaier, a Tunisian national, and Raed Jaser, a Palestinian national, to life in prison for conspiracy to commit murder and participation in a terrorist group for plotting to derail a VIA Rail passenger train between Toronto and New York City. They received additional sentences for lesser charges and will be eligible for parole after 10 years. Both have stated their intention to appeal the convictions. In September, authorities deported Pakistani nationals Jahanzeb Malik and Mohammed Aqeeq Ansari to Pakistan. Both men were permanent residents of Canada, but lost that status when the Immigration and Refugee Board ruled they had engaged in alleged terrorist activity in separate incidents and constituted a danger to public security. Malik allegedly had considered the United States Consulate in Toronto as a potential target. In September, the government revoked the citizenship of Zakaria Amar, a dual Canadian/Jordanian citizen serving a life sentence for planning terrorist attacks in Ontario in 2006 as part of the "Toronto 18" group. On December 17, a Montreal teenager was found guilty of committing a robbery in association with a terrorist organization and planning to leave Canada to participate in the activities of a terrorist group abroad. The teen had engaged in Twitter conversations with violent extremist sympathizer Martin Coutoure-Rouleau, who fatally rammed a Canadian Armed Forces official in October 2014. At various times throughout the year, police charged a number of individuals including Farah Shirdon, Khadar Khalib, and John Maguire in absentia with offenses related to participation in terrorism activity outside the country. Also during the year in a series of incidents, police issued peace bonds to individuals they suspected of planning to engage in terrorist activity or intending to leave the country for the purposes of terrorist activity. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Canada is a member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering, and is a supporting nation of the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force. Its financial intelligence unit, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), is a member of the Egmont Group. Canada is also an observer in the Council of Europe's Select Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financial Action Task Force of Latin America. Canada has rigorous detection and monitoring processes in place to identify money laundering and terrorism financing activities. FINTRAC is responsible for detecting, preventing and deterring money laundering and the financing of terrorist activities. Canada implements UNSCR 1373 and the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida sanctions regime; criminalizes terrorism financing in accordance with international standards; freezes and confiscates terrorist assets without delay; monitors and regulates money/value transfer and other remittance services; requires collection of data for wire transfers; obligates non-profits to file suspicious transaction reports and monitors them to prevent either misuse or terrorism financing; and routinely distributes UN sanctions lists to financial institutions. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The RCMP National Security Community Outreach program promotes interaction and relationship-building with at-risk communities. The Department of Public Safety's Cross-Cultural Roundtable on Security fosters dialogue on national security issues between the government and community leaders, including diaspora groups. Both of these initiatives are part of Canada's national Counterterrorism Strategy, which seeks specifically to reduce the risk of individuals succumbing to violent extremism and radicalization. All levels of government federal, provincial, and municipal continued to work with non-governmental partners and concerned communities to counter violent extremism through preventative programming and community outreach. International and Regional Cooperation: Canada prioritizes collaboration with international partners to counter terrorism and regularly seeks opportunities to lead. Canada is a founding member of the GCTF and is active in numerous international fora dealing with counterterrorism, including the OSCE, the UN, the G-7, APEC, ASEAN and the ASEAN Regional Forum, the Commonwealth, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the International Maritime Organization, and the OAS. Canada makes major contributions to the GCTF and the GICNT, while Canadian diplomacy supports global efforts to prevent radicalization to violence, counter violent extremism, and promote the rule of law overseas. As part of the GCTF, Canada co-chairs the Sahel Capacity-Building Working Group with Algeria. Global Affairs Canada maintains a Counterterrorism Capacity Building Program which provides training, funding, equipment, and technical and legal assistance to partner nations to enable them to prevent and respond to a broad spectrum of terrorist activity. Examples of activities supported by Canadian counterterrorism assistance include: border security; transportation security; legislative, regulatory and legal policy development; human rights training; law enforcement, security, military and intelligence training; chemical/biological/radiological/nuclear and explosives terrorism prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery; detection and prevention of terrorism financing; cyber security; and the protection of critical infrastructure. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Cameroon Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Cameroon, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dcf7.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Cameroon became a member of the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP) in 2014. Countering terrorist threats remained a top security priority for the Government of Cameroon in 2015, and it continued to work with the United States to improve the capacity of its security forces. Boko Haram took advantage of weaknesses in Cameroon's border security to conduct a number of terrorist attacks in the country's Far North Region in 2015, including targeted killings and kidnappings of Cameroonians, and raids on villages, fields, and livestock. On July 12, Boko Haram launched the first-ever suicide bombing campaign on Cameroonian soil in the Far North Region that continued throughout the remainder of the year. Cameroon responded to the attacks with a significantly increased security presence in the Far North Region. Boko Haram's bombing campaign had a fundamental impact on the Cameroonian people, government, and security forces, ultimately leading to a drive to professionalize security force and government operations. Cameroon shifted security and financial resources from the restive eastern border with the Central African Republic to the North and Far North Regions. This bolstered its counter-Boko Haram efforts, but left a vacuum in the east that was exploited by criminal groups, wildlife traffickers, and smugglers. Cameroon also created a system of Vigilance Committees (VC), officially sanctioned and registered neighborhood watch groups that have successfully thwarted or limited the damage caused by suicide attacks. In addition to combat deaths among security forces, several VC members were killed by Boko Haram. In 2015, the United States continued to provide an expanding number of training programs on terrorism and security to help Cameroon address the Boko Haram threat in the Far North Region. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: Boko Haram was responsible for suicide bombings, raids and targeted killings of Cameroonians in the Mayo-Sava, Mayo-Tsanaga, and the Logone and Chari Divisions of the Far North Region including the villages of Amchide, Blabline, Bia, Fotokol, Kolofata, Waza, and other localities at the border with Nigeria. Although their precise citizenship has been difficult to ascertain, evidence suggested that most Boko Haram assailants and suicide bombers to date have been Nigerian and Nigeria-based. However, the Government of Cameroon acknowledged there were Cameroonian members of the group in both Cameroon and Nigeria. From July 12 until December 31, there were 37 known suicide bombing attacks which resulted in an official count of 131 civilian casualties. The actual number of casualties is likely to be higher as many victims died of their wounds days and weeks after the attacks, but were not counted in the official tally. Throughout the year, Boko Haram conducted almost daily raids that resulted in as many as 1300 casualties, although conclusive figures were difficult to obtain. Specific terrorist incidents included: In mid-January 2015, Boko Haram kidnapped 80 people in Mayo Tsanaga and killed four villagers. On April 9, Boko Haram fighters wearing Nigerian Army uniforms infiltrated the village of Guoues, located nine kilometers from the Dabanga border post. The attackers killed eight people including Issa Sale, the village chief. On April 16, a large Boko Haram force attacked the villages of Blabline and Bia, in the Kolofata district. They killed 24 civilians, set fire to houses, and stole a large number of cattle. In early May, Boko Haram killed 19 people in Tchebe-Tchebe and Ldaoutsaf, burned 76 market stands, and killed two members of the security forces in Zelevet. On July 12, two suicide bombers wearing niqabs blew themselves up in Fotokol, on the border with Nigeria, killing 10 civilians and a soldier from neighboring Chad. On July 22, two bombers detonated themselves near the central market in Maroua and its adjoining Hausa neighborhood, killing 21 persons and wounding 85 others, according to official figures. These were the first two suicide attacks in Cameroon. On July 19, Boko Haram killed 24 civilians, including multiple children in Kamouna, Far North Region. More than 80 assailants stormed and set fire to the village, located near Lake Chad in the northern strip of Cameroon. On July 26, in Afade, in the Logone and Chari division of the Far North Region, Boko Haram set the gendarmerie post on fire, killing four people who were in the station's detention cells, including a suspected Boko Haram member who was being held by the gendarmes. On July 25, in Maroua, a suicide attack killed 23 civilians and wounded more than 80. On September 3, a double suicide attack hit the locality of Kerawa, some 10 kilometers from Kolofata district in the Far North Region, killing at least 40 people and injuring more than 150 others. On December 28, in Bodo, Far North Region, two female attackers self-detonated, but did not cause any civilian casualties. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: The December 2014 law on terrorism and certain provisions of the Penal Code, the Criminal Procedure Code, and the Military Justice Code were used to prosecute acts of terrorism. The 2014 Law for the Fight Against Terrorism confers the death penalty for those found guilty of carrying out, abetting, or sponsoring acts of terrorism, including any activity likely to incite revolt in the population or disturb the normal functioning of state institutions. The bill was controversial, and members of the political opposition claimed that the definition of terrorism was too broad and could be used as a tool for political repression. Such criticisms have continued but have become more muted in the face of increased terrorist attacks in the Far North. Faced with Boko Haram's shift towards suicide bombings, and security challenges at its borders with Nigeria and the Central African Republic, the Cameroonian government increased coordination and information sharing among law enforcement, military, and intelligence entities, including the Directorate General for External Research, the National Army, the Rapid Intervention Unit (BIR), and the National Gendarmerie. During the year, the Government of Cameroon continued to receive U.S. capacity building training to improve its counterterrorism and law enforcement efforts, including programs on the civil-military response to terrorism, border security, and information-led policing. The United States sent military personnel to conduct airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations as part of the fight against Boko Haram. These measures supported improvements in Cameroon's ability to detect and respond to Boko Haram in general, and terrorist attacks specifically, although further efforts are needed for the country to become more effective in deterring terrorist incidents, to improve interagency coordination, and to become more professional in its response to terrorism. Cameroon continued to issue regional biometric passports aimed at providing enhanced security for residents of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central African States zone. In response to terrorist incidents, Cameroon reinforced its border security by establishing more control posts and deploying additional military units, including the BIR, to the Far North. The government also increased screening efforts at ports of entry and highways, using terrorist screening watchlists as well as biographic information and biometric technology. The capacity of security forces to patrol and control all land and maritime borders remained limited, however, due to inadequate staffing and resources, leading to some uncontrolled border crossings. In many cases, residents of the Cameroon-Nigeria border area did not carry identification documents, making it difficult for officials to determine the identity of those seeking to cross the border. Cameroonian military and police units proactively confronted and disrupted the activities of suspected Boko Haram members. Several significant arrests were made. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Cameroon is a member of the Task Force on Money Laundering in Central Africa (GABAC), which became a Financial Action Task Force-style regional body in October 2015 and is a body of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa. Cameroon has adopted a legislative architecture to implement anti-money laundering and financial supervision actions. It established a financial intelligence unit, the National Financial Investigation Agency, which processes suspicious transaction reports and initiates investigations and is a member of the Egmont Group. Cameroon has undergone a mutual evaluation by GABAC. There were no reports of prosecutions or convictions for money laundering during the year. Under the newly adopted legislation, any person convicted of financing or using financial proceeds from terrorist activities would be sentenced to death. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, we refer you to the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The Government of Cameroon participated in the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) in February as well as subsequent CVE meetings. Cameroonian authorities have taken a series of measures to counter violent extremism, including forming partnerships with local, traditional, and religious leaders to monitor preaching in mosques. The Government of Cameroon partnered with faith-based organizations such as the Council of Imams and Religious Dignitaries of Cameroon (CIDIMUC) to educate citizens on the dangers caused by radicalization to violence and violent extremism, promote religious tolerance, and present religion as a factor for peace. This objective was furthered through targeted messaging in mosques, special prayer sessions, press releases, and through roundtable discussions and conferences bringing together people from various religious backgrounds. One of CIDIMUC's strategies has been to work to improve the living conditions of imams. International and Regional Cooperation: Cameroon actively participated in AU and UN peacekeeping operations, and its military schools trained soldiers and gendarmes from neighboring countries. Cameroon contributed forces to regional efforts to fight Boko Haram via the Lake Chad Basin Multinational Joint Task Force. The UN Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) visited Cameroon from March 16 to 18 to assess Cameroon's implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions 1373 and 1624; and to assess what type of technical assistance might be beneficial to Cameroon. In addition, Cameroon participates in regional trainings for criminal justice actors on a range of counterterrorism topics hosted by the IIJ. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Burundi Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Burundi, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dd015.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Burundi continued to deploy six battalions to the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). Of serious concern, Burundian security forces, in particular the Burundian National Police, were increasingly credibly implicated in widespread human rights abuses in 2015 as a result of the Government of Burundi's determination to crack down on political opponents. Burundi demonstrated its continued commitment to addressing international terrorism in 2015 primarily through its six battalion contribution to the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). However, the Burundian National Police (BNP) was hampered by a lack of training, resources, and infrastructure. In addition, the BNP focused its investigative efforts on political opposition in Burundi. Burundi's porous land and water borders posed significant border security challenges. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Burundi has provisions in its penal code defining forms of terrorism. Sentences for acts of terrorism range from 10 to 20 years in prison to life imprisonment if the act results in the death of a person. The Judicial Police was responsible for terrorism investigations. A counterterrorism unit, formed in 2010, consists of elements of the BNP, the military, and the Burundi National Intelligence Service. Burundi's participation in the Department of State's Antiterrorism Assistance program and the International Law Enforcement Academy was suspended in mid-2015 due to the lack of accountability for human rights abuses perpetrated in Cibitoke Province in January. Burundi used laws related to threats to internal and external state security to suppress dissent during the electoral cycle. Several journalists, human rights defenders, and opposition politicians including Bob Rugurika of African Public Radio and Pierre Claver Mbonimpa of the Association for the Protection of Human Rights and Prisoners denounced government activities and consequently faced jail time and repeated court hearings, and were forced to flee the country due to credible threats to themselves and their families, or were severely injured or killed. Burundi's judicial system was characterized by corruption, incompetence, and an overwhelming backlog of cases. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Burundi is not a member of a Financial Action Task Force-style regional body; however, it is an observer of the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group. While the government has created counterterrorist financing laws, it has yet to commit funding, provide training, or implement policies. Burundi has laws that criminalize terrorist financing, but it does not implement these laws consistently. No terrorist assets were frozen in 2015. Burundi's anti-money laundering/counterterrorism finance regime is incomplete. It does not include regulatory requirements or supervision of money/value transfer services, precious metal and jewelry dealers, real estate agents, exchange houses, non-profit organizations, the informal financial sector, and money service businesses, but Know Your Customer practices are implemented regularly in the formal financial sector. In addition, very few people in the country have access to the formal banking sector. Each local commercial bank operation is recorded within the bank's system and the banks exchange information with their foreign correspondent banks through their compliance officers. Banks are not asked to share this information with the Government of Burundi's financial intelligence unit, however. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The Burundian government does not have any formal programs to counter violent extremism. Due to concerns about abuses allegedly perpetrated by Burundian security forces, several of Burundi's partners, including international organizations, reduced funding for vocational training and economic development programs designed to provide positive alternatives for populations vulnerable to radicalization and recruitment into terrorist organizations. International and Regional Cooperation: Burundi is a member of the Partnership for Regional East Africa Counterterrorism, although the United States did not provide assistance in 2015 because of its failure to hold police and military personnel accountable for human rights abuses. Burundi contributed six battalions to AMISOM. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Burkina Faso Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Burkina Faso, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dd132.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: After a year of political transition following the 2014 popular uprising that pushed Burkina Faso's longtime president Blaise Compaore from power, Burkina Faso held presidential and legislative elections on November 29, 2015. The new president, Roch Marc Christian Kabore, sworn in on December 29, stated that security and counterterrorism were top priorities for his government. Burkina Faso faced four terrorist attacks in 2015, including kidnapping for ransom. This was a marked departure from previous years when Burkina Faso experienced no terrorist incidents. These cases remained under investigation at the end of the year. Burkina Faso's willingness to engage in regional counterterrorism and stability operations was facilitated by assistance provided to its security forces through the Department of State's Africa Peacekeeping Program (AFRICAP) II, Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) contracts, the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP), and National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Section 2282 funding initiatives. Bilateral and regional counterterrorism cooperation increased. The United States supported USAFRICOM's FY 2015 proposals to augment and build upon Burkina Faso's Gendarmerie Border Security and Counterterrorism Company capabilities. U.S. support worked to directly develop Burkina Faso's counterterrorism capabilities to contain, disrupt, degrade, and defeat terrorist organizations. The long-term sustainability and effectiveness of all counterterrorism units was severely hampered by logistical and professional shortfalls in the Burkinabe military. In 2015, U.S. funding supported the establishment of a 150-person counterterrorism logistics company. The company helped to address maintenance shortfalls within the country's counterterrorism forces. Elements of the Presidential Security Regiment, which launched an attempted coup d'etat in September and was immediately dissolved after, reportedly abused civilians. The most significant of these reported abuses included killing civilians and violently harassing journalists and members of civil society. Burkina Faso relies on the Terrorist Interdiction Program's Personal Identification Secure Comparison and Evaluation System (PISCES) to conduct traveler screening and watchlisting. The country is also engaged with the International Organization of Migration to provide limited traveler screening at select border control points. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: According to local police sources, Burkina Faso endured four significant incidents believed to be terrorist-related or perpetrated: A Romanian national was kidnapped near the Tambao manganese mining site in April, reportedly by the terrorist group al Murabitoun. Two cross-border attacks on gendarmerie outposts, one in Oursi in August, that resulted in one death, and one in Samorogouan in October, which resulted in three deaths. A complex attack in November on a gold convoy, near Djibo, involving IEDs, rocket-propelled grenades, and small arms. The attack resulted in one death. Investigations of these incidents were ongoing at year's end. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Burkina Faso's counterterrorism strategy involves deploying the counterterrorist task force to the north of the country, establishing new police and military counterterrorism units, strengthening intelligence collection, building new border control stations, and increasing the size of the gendarmerie and police force. In accordance with the strategy, the government deployed a joint Army-Gendarmerie counterterrorism task force known as the Groupement des Forces Anti-Terroristes (GFAT) to the north in January 2013. Due to multiple peacekeeping operation deployments, this force, originally projected to possess 1,000 troops, had 500 troops in 2015. Burkinabe security and law enforcement officials continued to cite border security as a major area of concern. Due to political unrest, some Department of State Antiterrorism Assistance (ATA) programming was delayed in 2015. Burkina Faso law enforcement officials actively sought training from the United States and other countries. Recent U.S. assistance included workshops on cross-border security, criminal investigation techniques, and prosecutorial skills training, often under the auspices of the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) and the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law (IIJ). For example, representatives from Burkina Faso participated in two courses developed by the Global Center for Cooperative Security and conducted at the IIJ focusing on non-coercive interviewing and interrogation techniques and the use and protection of intelligence-derived information in rule of law-based investigations and prosecutions. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Burkina Faso is a member of the Inter-Governmental Action Group Against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA), a Financial Action Task Force-style body that is part of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Its financial intelligence unit, Cellule Nationale de Traitement des Informations Financieres, (CENTIF), is composed of magistrates, police, gendarmerie, and financial experts under the Ministry of Economy and Finance, and is a member of the Egmont Group. The Government of Burkina Faso has a three-year (2014-2016) strategy for fighting financial crime, but due to recent political uncertainty, much of this strategy has not been implemented. Furthermore, although Burkinabe law enforcement had the will to improve its ability to counter terrorism financing, it lacked the necessary resources and experience. In 2015, Burkina Faso worked on developing a special court for terrorism financing. CENTIF reported that between January 1 and November 26, a total of 68 Suspicious Transaction Reports were filed, and 17 individuals were being prosecuted for money laundering or other financial crimes, including three new cases in 2015. It can take years for criminal cases in Burkina Faso to reach a conclusion, however, and there were no convictions in 2015. While Burkina Faso has many of the laws and regulations required for an anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism regime, other laws and customs make implementing these difficult. For example, Burkina Faso is a cash society, making money difficult to track. Also, an agreement between West African countries for the free movement of people and goods allows individuals uninhibited entry to and exit from Burkina Faso with any amount of money. There were no reports of inappropriate use of regulations to target political appointments. However, in late September 2015, the government froze the assets of 14 individuals and four political parties suspected of involvement in the failed coup, which took place earlier that same month. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, we refer you to the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The Government of Burkina Faso did not have any formal programs to counter violent extremism. However, several international organizations funded vocational training and economic development programs designed to provide positive alternatives for populations vulnerable to radicalization and recruitment into terrorist organizations. International and Regional Cooperation: Burkina Faso was active in regional organizations and international bodies, as demonstrated by increased collaboration with the UN on counterterrorism matters and its active participation in international fora, such as the Global Counterterrorism Forum's Sahel Working Group. During an event of this working group, Burkina Faso's Ministry of Territorial Administration and Security presented the country's strategic counterterrorism plan. Burkina Faso was a member of the TSCTP, was active in ECOWAS, and is a member of the G-5 Sahel group that was created in February 2014. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Bulgaria Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Bulgaria, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dd232.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: The Government of Bulgaria continued to deport people it considered national security risks, and increased extradition of suspected foreign terrorist fighters from Bulgaria. The Bulgarian government has worked to enhance its terrorism prevention and enforcement tools by criminalizing foreign terrorist fighters, developing a new counterterrorism strategy, enhancing operations of its National Counterterrorism Center, and announcing plans to draft a comprehensive law on measures against terrorism. The United States and Bulgaria launched a new Bilateral Counterterrorism Working Group to bolster bilateral cooperation. The group members represented different agencies in the Bulgarian government and include the Deputy Minister of Interior, who co-chairs the group, as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Counterterrorism Coordinator and representatives of the information services. Bulgaria is a member of the Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and has repeatedly responded to requests for assistance, including in March, when the Ministry of Defense provided weapons and munitions to the Iraqi Kurdistan Region's Peshmerga. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Bulgaria prosecutes terrorism under several general provisions of the Penal Code, which has been amended multiple times since it was first enacted in 1968. In 2015, the National Assembly adopted amendments to the Penal Code that provide for the prosecution of individuals, including foreign terrorist fighters, who support, plan, and facilitate the commission of terrorist acts in Bulgaria and abroad. The Ministry of the Interior (MOI) has operational units responsible for deterring, detecting, and responding to terrorist incidents, including the Specialized Unit for Combating Terrorism, Security Police, and Special Police Forces. The State Agency for National Security (DANS) has intelligence-gathering units responsible for counterterrorism. DANS also houses the National Counterterrorism Center, an interagency coordination body responsible for building a common operating picture of terrorist threats. Specialized law enforcement units are generally well-equipped and supported with relevant training, but the focus has been primarily in Sofia, and they lack resources in other regional centers. As of July, the specialized court for organized crime and its prosecutors' office received jurisdiction to prosecute and try all terrorist cases in the country. The court personnel do not have expertise in handling these types of cases, however. After the November terrorist attacks in Paris, Bulgaria tightened its border control rules and screened all travelers at the border crossings. Within the EU, Bulgaria shares Advanced Passenger Information appearing on the biographical data page of passports. Based on bilateral police cooperation agreements, Bulgaria also shares this type of information with non-EU countries for law enforcement purposes on an as-needed basis. Bulgaria was in the process of establishing a Passenger Information Unit (PIU) that will collect and share the data an airline receives from a traveler to book and manage travel. At year's end, legislation was pending in the National Assembly that would require air carriers to provide data to the PIU. The Department of State's Antiterrorism Assistance program supported Bulgarian participation in a series of border security-related courses aimed at addressing foreign terrorist fighter travel. Law enforcement cooperation between U.S. agencies and their Bulgarian counterparts has been historically strong. However, consecutive structural changes and reorganization of key police units, and the resulting reassignment of personnel and imposition of new rules, slowed joint casework and harmed law enforcement morale. U.S. government agencies continued to work closely with Bulgarian counterparts through a variety of counterterrorism programs aimed at enhancing Bulgaria's capacity and capabilities. The Department of State partnered with Bulgaria to implement key programs in the areas of border security, aviation security, and interagency cooperation. In October and December, Bulgarian legal and investigative experts participated in workshops on countering Hizballah's terrorist and criminal activities. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Bulgaria belongs to the Council of Europe's Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism, a Financial Task Force-style regional body. Bulgaria's Financial Intelligence Directorate (FID) of DANS has primary responsibility for anti-money laundering measures for all reporting entities and is a member of the Egmont Group. The Bulgarian National Bank also has a Special Supervision Directorate to investigate banks for compliance with money laundering and terrorism financing requirements. The government did not freeze, seize, or forfeit any terrorism-related assets in 2015. However, it did identify some funds as potentially terrorism-related and further investigation is underway. Bulgaria criminalizes terrorism financing in accordance with international standards. Since there is no publicly available information on terrorist-related assets frozen or seized, it is hard to assess the effectiveness of Bulgaria's process. Thirty-one reporting entities, including banks, real estate brokers, and financial and exchange houses, are required to file regularly with FID currency transaction reports for all transactions valued at more than US $17,000. There are penalties for non-compliance (administrative sanctions), and enforcement is generally good. Bulgaria requires the collection of Know Your Customer data for wire transfers. All NGOs are obliged to report suspicious transactions. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: On December 30, a new government strategy and action plan on countering radicalization to violence and terrorism were approved by the Council of Ministers. The strategy aims to strengthen existing government counterterrorism efforts by involving all possible agencies and by optimizing interagency coordination. The strategy spells out mechanisms for improved cooperation with civil society, business organizations, local communities, and religious leaders. The Grand Mufti of Bulgaria issued a statement with the National Council of Religious Communities in Bulgaria condemning the Paris attacks in January and November. The Grand Mufti has been a voice of tolerance and moderation, and has stressed that government efforts must complement community CVE efforts. According to Bulgaria's draft action plan on the strategy on countering radicalization and terrorism, the government will have a national program by 2020 for members of violent extremist groups to disengage, de-radicalize, and be rehabilitated. International and Regional Cooperation: Bulgaria is a member of and active contributor to counterterrorism initiatives at the UN, EU, NATO, Council of Europe, OSCE, and Organization for Black Sea Economic Cooperation. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Brazil Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Brazil, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dd5a.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: The Brazilian government continued to support counterterrorism activities, which included third-country technical assistance for controlling sensitive technologies, assessing and mitigating potential terrorist threats in advance of major events, and investigating fraudulent travel documents. Operationally, Brazilian security forces worked with U.S. officials to pursue investigative leads provided by United States and other intelligence services, law enforcement, and financial agencies regarding terrorist suspects. The Brazilian Federal Police (DPF) Brazil's lead counterterrorism agency worked closely with the U.S. government and other nations' law enforcement entities to assess and mitigate potential terrorist threats, especially leading up to the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Cooperation was strong and continuous, particularly dealing with crisis management, emergency response, and planning exercises to build response capacity in case of a terrorist attack. The DPF Anti-Terrorism Division was created specifically to address threats of radicalization and to counter violent extremism. Brazil continued to implement its 2013 policy on provision of humanitarian assistance for Syria, including the issuance of more refugee visas to Syrians than any other country in Latin America. President Dilma Rousseff strongly condemned the November 13 attacks in Paris, calling for "coordinated action" by the international community against ISIL. Some commentators contrasted this pronouncement with her 2014 U.N. General Assembly speech criticizing the approach in Iraq and Syria. Asked about the potential terrorist threat posed to the 2016 Summer Olympics, Rousseff reiterated that Brazil is an unlikely target but called for comprehensive counterterrorism legislation, then pending before Congress, to be passed quickly. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Brazil's 1980 National Security Law criminalizes "terrorist acts" but does not clearly define terrorism, which hinders prosecution of potential terrorists and other counterterrorism efforts. On February 24, Congress passed a bill (PLC 101/2015) that will criminalize both terrorism and terrorism financing. The bill has the President's support. Brazil has three law enforcement agencies with counterterrorism responsibilities, ranging from the investigation of terrorism to interdiction and response. The lead counterterrorism agency, with responsibility for investigating any terrorist-related threats or groups, is the Brazilian Federal Police's Anti-Terrorism Division (DPF DAT). In addition, the state-level Military Police Departments, through their respective Police Special Operations Battalions (BOPE), and the state-level Civil Police Departments, through their respective Divisions of Special Operations (DOE), also work on counterterrorism issues. Brazil's Intelligence Agency (ABIN) also monitors terrorist threats. Coordination between civilian security and law enforcement agencies and the Brazilian military is hindered by inter-service rivalries; interagency cooperation and coordination would benefit from consolidated and automatic information sharing. All of Brazil's law enforcement agencies with counterterrorism responsibilities have benefitted from U.S. capacity-building training. In 2015, the U.S. Department of State's Antiterrorism Assistance (ATA) program delivered courses to security and law enforcement personnel covering topics such as Critical Incident Management, Airport Security Management, and Fraudulent Document Recognition all with the goal of enhancing investigative capabilities, building border security capabilities, and supporting Brazil's efforts to prevent terrorist attacks at the 2016 Summer Olympics. Training courses had the added benefit of bringing together disparate agencies, which enhanced Brazilian interagency communication. Brazilian authorities continued to work with other concerned nations particularly the United States in combating document fraud. Since 2009, multiple regional and international joint operations successfully disrupted a number of document vendors and facilitators, as well as related human-smuggling networks. The Department of State provided comprehensive and ongoing anti-fraud training to airline and border police units through its Investigations Program (ARSO-I). Since program inception in 2008, ARSO-I has trained thousands of airline personnel and Brazilian Immigration officials at virtually every international port of entry. In addition, since 2008 DHS Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have trained Brazilian airline employees on identifying fraudulent documents. The U.S.-Brazil Container Security Initiative (CSI) in Santos, which began in 2005, continued to operate throughout 2015. The CSI promotes secure containerized cargo shipped to the United States by co-locating DHS CBP personnel overseas with Brazilian customs administrators, to target, detect, and inspect high-risk cargo while facilitating the movement of legitimate trade. CBP's International Affairs and Field Operations Offices conduct joint workshops with Brazil to bolster supply chain security and port security. Similarly, the National Civil Aviation Agency, DPF, and Brazilian Customs (RFB) continued to work with DHS' Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to make modifications to Brazil's National Cargo Security Program (NCSP) to gain TSA recognition of commensurability for cargo security procedures, training, and operations at Brazil's international airports. Brazil shares vast international borders with 10 different countries. Many of its borders especially those with Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela are porous. Illegal immigration to Brazil is a growing problem, with Brazil often serving as a country-of-transit for final destination in the United States. Brazilian states maintain individual criminal records databases, and information sharing is unwieldy. Biometric information is not collected from visitors. A 2013 law requires the collection of Passenger Name Record data, and it is being gradually implemented. Brazil does not maintain its own terrorist watchlist, though it collaborates with other nations. In a high-profile December case, Rio de Janeiro's Civil Police unit uncovered a fraudulent document ring that had provided authentic Brazilian birth certificates to 70 Syrian nationals, at least 20 of whom subsequently obtained Brazilian passports. U.S. Mission Brazil is cooperating with the Brazilian authorities in its investigation. The Brazilian Army continues to implement an Integrated Border Monitoring System to monitor the country's borders using a combination of soldiers, cameras, sensors, and satellites. The strategic initiative is underway in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul as a preliminary pilot project, with intention to cover the entire Brazilian border by 2021. Pending comprehensive counterterrorism legislation is intended to help Brazil address the threat posed by foreign terrorist fighters, through implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs) 2170, 2178, 2199 and the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida sanctions regime. In September 2015, the DPF's Operation Mendacity arrested members of a money laundering group accused of illegally moving more than $10 million in the last five years. Press reports state the group had social media ties to the Islamic State and were potentially financing terrorist activities. The DPF and the justice system face resource constraints when enforcing immigration law and supervising airport security. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Brazil is a member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Financial Action Task Force of Latin America, a FATF-style regional body (FSRB). Its financial intelligence unit, the Council for Financial Activities Control (COAF), is a member of the Egmont Group. Brazil monitors domestic financial operations and uses the COAF to identify possible funding sources for terrorist groups. On October 16, President Rousseff signed Law #13.170, which provides procedures for freezing assets relating to UNSCRs and for information provided through bilateral cooperation, closing a longstanding gap in Brazil's ability to confront terrorism financing. Legislation (PLC 101/2015) to criminalize terrorism financing in a manner consistent with international standards, established by the FATF, has passed Congress and awaited President Rousseff's signature at the end of 2015. Through the COAF, which is a largely independent entity within the Finance Ministry, Brazil has implemented the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida sanctions regime, but it has not reported any assets, accounts, or property in the names of persons or entities. The Government of Brazil has generally responded to U.S. efforts to identify and block terrorist-related funds. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. International and Regional Cooperation: Brazil participates in regional counterterrorism fora, including the OAS and its Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism (CICTE); the Union of South American Nations (Unasul); and the working group on terrorism and sub-working group on financial issues in the Southern Common Market (Mercosul). Brazil is working with a range of international law enforcement partners in its security plan for the 2016 Summer Olympics, through two Centers for International Police Cooperation (CCPI) that will be stood up for the event. In Brasilia, the CCPI will include three foreign law enforcement officials for each of the 55 invited countries. The Brazilian government continued to invest in border and law enforcement infrastructure and has undertaken initiatives with its neighboring countries to control the flow of goods legal and illegal through the Tri-Border Area of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Bosnia and Herzegovina Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dd615.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) remained a cooperative counterterrorism partner and continued to make progress in increasing its counterterrorism capacity in 2015. BiH law enforcement agencies generally keep close track of foreign terrorist fighter suspects in BiH and carried out several operations against them. BiH's ministerial-level Joint Terrorism Task Force, tasked with improving coordination between BiH's many security and police agencies, continued to falter, and there were calls to restore a former operations-level counterterrorism task force that ceased operations three years ago due to funding constraints. Islamist extremist ideology and regional nationalist extremist groups both remained potential sources of violent extremism in BiH. A significant number of Bosnians have traveled to Syria and Iraq to support ISIL and other terrorist groups. Legal and societal efforts to prevent violent extremism were credited with having reduced the outflow of foreign terrorist fighters compared to previous years. BiH officials and media sources estimate that since 2013, approximately 300 BiH citizens have left for Iraq and Syria to become foreign terrorist fighters. Fifty of these people have returned to the country. BiH sent a representative to the September Leader's Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism hosted by President Obama in New York on the margins of the 2015 UN General Assembly, during which the Chairman of the BiH Presidency stressed BiH support for full implementation of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: Two terrorism-related incidents occurred in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2015. In April, a 24-year-old Bosnian man from the Republika Srpska (RS) attacked a police station in Zvornik, killing one and injuring two police officers. The assailant was killed in a subsequent firefight with the police, who recovered two assault rifles, a pistol, and ammunition. In November, a reportedly radicalized 34-year-old male with a history of drug abuse and petty crime shot and killed two uniformed members of the BiH Armed Forces in a betting parlor in Rajlovac, a suburb of Sarajevo. The attacker then fired his assault rifle at another uniformed solider in a passing bus while fleeing the scene, injuring several more people. He was cornered by police at home soon after, where he committed suicide by detonating a hand grenade. In both instances, the lone offenders were suspected of having been radicalized in the months prior by individuals with known connections to violent Islamist extremists. Police claimed to have found ISIL propaganda in the home of the deceased Rajlovac assailant, including a crudely fashioned ISIL flag. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: In 2015, BiH produced the Balkan region's first comprehensive Strategy for Preventing and Combating Terrorism (2015-2020). The strategy augments its "foreign terrorist fighter" law passed in July 2014 and discourages BiH citizens from participating in foreign paramilitary groups by imposing both imprisonment and monetary fines. It also places special emphasis on addressing challenges posed by "new dynamics of terrorism and terrorism-related phenomena," including foreign terrorist fighters, violent extremism and hate speech, and use of the internet for terrorist purposes. The majority of BiH's coordination and cooperation problems are caused by overlapping law enforcement jurisdictions. The problems are also the result of personal, political, and institutional rivalries that exist among most police agencies and the BiH Prosecutor's Office and BiH Court. Many of these rivalries are deeply ingrained and difficult to overcome. In February, BiH authorities completed the last of three counterterrorism operations initiated in November 2014, which targeted BiH citizens who traveled to fight in Syria and Iraq, and those who supported or aided them in their efforts. As a result of these operations, 34 BiH citizens have been arrested, of which 18 were prosecuted. On November 5, BiH courts convicted and sentenced Bilal Bosnic to seven years in prison for his role in recruiting and funding foreign terrorist fighters. In addition to Bosnic, four other BiH citizens were tried and convicted in 2015 for their roles in either recruiting or facilitating foreign terrorist fighters. To track traveler entries into BiH, the BiH Border Police (BP) uses a computerized database and software system to support immigration and passenger information collection. The system links all 55 border crossings and all four airport locations (Banja Luka, Mostar, Sarajevo, and Tuzla) via the State Police Information Network (SPIN), a network developed and donated by the Department of State via the Department of Justice's International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP). Both the BP and the Foreigners Affairs Service (FAS) field offices are connected to this system that was first implemented in 2005 and completed in 2012. To address connectivity problems, the Department of State via ICITAP is funding a maintenance program to ensure all field offices are fully operational. SPIN provides the BP and FAS with immediate access to other supporting databases (including INTERPOL) to run appropriate checks and cross-checks. All law enforcement agencies in BiH have the capability to add data into this system. Separately, ICITAP is working with the FAS to establish a biometrics system that will permit more effective monitoring of individuals entering and leaving BiH. The BiH biometrics program is fully compatible with EU systems. Embassy Sarajevo's Export Control and Related Border Security (EXBS) program is also actively engaged in conducting training courses and equipment donations for BiH Customs and Border Police to address border security. EXBS donated 55 computers and a computer server to BiH Border Police to support ICITAP's donation of software for the border security database mentioned above. Additionally, EXBS recently donated "Secure Video Link" technology to the BiH, Serbian, and Croatian Customs and Border Police. In the event of a terrorist incident, or other emergency, this electronic networking platform facilitates immediate communication among each agency's operations centers. BIH participated in multiple regional and bilateral programs aimed at building investigative and prosecutorial capacity to successfully address terrorism-related cases. The Department of State's Antiterrorism Assistance program supported BiH participation in a series of border security-related courses aimed at countering foreign terrorist fighter travel. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: BiH belongs to the Council of Europe's Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism (MONEYVAL), a Financial Action Task Force-style regional body. Its financial intelligence unit is a member of the Egmont Group. In April, MONEYVAL referred Bosnia to the FATF International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG) process citing lack of progress rectifying core anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) deficiencies, including the criminalization of terrorist financing, thereby placing BiH on its "grey list." ICRG review has accelerated BiH efforts to amend its criminal code according to international AML/CFT standards. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The main religious communities in BiH (Catholic, Islamic, Jewish, and Orthodox) continued to work together through the Interreligious Council to promote tolerance and confront acts of bigotry or violent extremism directed at any of the communities. Among public figures, the leader of the Islamic Community in BiH, Reis Kavazovic, continued to speak out against "misinterpretations of Islam" that lead to violent extremism. On December 4, more than 37 political, religious, and cultural representatives of the Bosniak people attended a meeting with Kavazovic in Sarajevo to condemn violent radicalism and terrorism worldwide. The attendees issued a joint statement calling on Bosniak Muslims to follow "a middle way in Islam" and to confront radical Islamism and terrorism. International and Regional Cooperation: BiH's criminal code and related legal framework are generally harmonized with UN and EU counterterrorism standards. The BiH government participated in the Leaders' Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism in September on the margins of the UNGA, and sent representatives to the Regional Summit on Countering Violent Extremism organized by the Department of State in Albania in May. BiH law enforcement agencies regularly interacted with their U.S. and European counterparts on counterterrorism investigations. INTERPOL has a Sarajevo branch office that has good cooperation with all law enforcement agencies throughout the country, all of which have direct access to INTERPOL's databases. Regional cooperation amongst professional law enforcement with Croatia and Serbia improved in 2015. BiH participated in a range of counterterrorism and CVE programs sponsored by UN entities and regional organizations, including the OSCE. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Belgium Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Belgium, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dd726.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Belgium's counterterrorism apparatus was overseen by the Ministries of Interior and Justice. Belgian officials continued to investigate, arrest, and prosecute terrorism suspects and worked closely with U.S. authorities on counterterrorism matters. The Belgian government formed a task force in 2015 focused on countering radicalization and developed a national strategy to address the issue. Major terrorist attacks in Brussels in March 2016 have further galvanized the Belgian government's efforts to address counterterrorism shortfalls. The coalition government, which assumed power in 2014, announced a number of new measures aimed at disrupting the significant number of Belgian foreign terrorist fighters who have traveled to Iraq and Syria. These include strengthening and enforcing legislation that would prohibit traveling abroad to participate in armed groups, and stripping naturalized dual nationals of their Belgian citizenship if they are convicted of violating these or other terrorism laws. Belgian officials announced they intend to more strictly enforce regulations revoking or prohibiting the issuance of passports to suspected foreign terrorist fighters to prohibit travel. Countering violent extremism (CVE) remained a high priority for the Belgian government, at both the national and sub-national levels. Following the January 2015 police raids in Verviers and the participation of several Belgian citizens in the November 13 attacks in Paris, the government established two plans to help combat violent extremism: a 12-point action plan in January and an 18-point action plan in November. Belgium is an active Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) partner, contributing six F-16 aircraft and 120 support personnel to the Counter ISIL campaign in Iraq. Belgium also contributed approximately 30 military trainers near Baghdad Airport. In 2015, Belgium allocated US $56 million in humanitarian support for Iraq and Syria. As one of the leading countries of origin for foreign terrorist fighters in Europe, Belgium has focused efforts on identifying, disrupting, and decreasing the flow of foreign terrorist fighters. According to the Minister of Interior, 272 individuals have left to fight with ISIL, 80 of those are presumed dead, and 134 have returned to Belgium. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: In January 2015, the Belgian federal government announced a 12-item action plan against terrorism. On June 29, the government released a report about the full implementation of the first tranche of the plan which included the creation of a new National Security Council chaired by the Prime Minister, the domestic deployment of the army when the threat level is raised, and the development of better de-radicalization programs in prisons. An additional five points were addressed by legislation passed by the federal parliament in July to strengthen the existing legal framework against foreign fighters. The legislation expanded the list of offenses that can be considered terrorism, made traveling abroad for terrorist purposes a crime, and expanded the ability of security services to use wiretaps to collect information. The new laws also allow the government to temporarily withdraw the identity cards or seize the passports of potential foreign terrorist fighters seeking to travel to Syria or Iraq and to revoke the citizenship of naturalized Belgian citizens convicted of terrorist offenses. The government is in the process of finalizing the remaining four points, which include mechanisms to identify providers of terrorism financing; improving information exchange between security, police and judicial authorities; revision of the Foreign Fighters Circular (concerns information management and monitoring measures for foreign terrorist fighters resident in Belgium); and revision of Belgium's counter-radicalization strategy. The government has been working to implement the necessary legislative changes to complete these measures. After the November 13 Paris attacks, the federal government announced an additional set of 18 preventive and counterterrorism measures. Promising additional funds to counterterrorism efforts, and creating a new ad-hoc parliamentary committee, the Belgian government renewed its commitment to European counter-radicalization efforts. This new counterterrorism strategy rests on four pillars: addressing hate speech, minimizing the threat of potentially dangerous individuals, augmenting security services, and encouraging international action. Measures that did not require legislative changes (the reinforcement of police controls at the borders, the deployment of additional troops to reinforce security) were implemented in 2015. The government continued its ongoing efforts to eliminate hate speech, targeting websites that incite hate, expelling hate preachers, and closing unsanctioned radical mosques. The primary actors in Belgian law enforcement are the Belgian Federal Police and its multiple counterterrorism units, the Civilian and Military Intelligence Services, Office of the Federal Prosecutor, and the Crisis Unit. The inter-ministerial Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis plays a coordinating role, particularly with regard to the foreign terrorist fighter issue. As noted previously, the National Security Council now plays a significant role in the intelligence and security structure. In 2015, Belgium worked closely with other Schengen zone states and Turkey to improve efforts to share information and interdict prospective foreign fighters traveling to Syria, including increasing border checks aimed at disrupting and decreasing the flow of foreign terrorist fighters. All new Belgian passports now contain biometric data. Belgian officials remain concerned that Brussels Airport is used by French, Dutch, and German foreign terrorist fighters to conceal their travel. Belgium has advocated for more systematic screening by partners at Schengen borders. Following the Paris attacks, the Minister of Interior strengthened the controls at the French border. He also announced the installation of additional Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras throughout Belgium. In August, commenting on the failed attack on a Thalys train from Amsterdam to Paris, Prime Minister Michel claimed that, "we will have to, more and more, seek a new balance between freedom of movement and rights to privacy, but at the same time it will be necessary to accept some constraints." Belgian law enforcement and justice authorities have arrested and prosecuted numerous individuals suspected of recruiting fighters to go to Syria and Iraq. On November 19, media reported that federal prosecutors launched 275 terrorist cases in 2015; there were 84 such cases in 2011. On November 9, prosecutors opened a new terrorism case in the Brussels Court against 15 suspects accused of inciting youth to go fight in Syria. The defendants in the case include Jean-Louis Denis, aka "the submissive," Mohamed Khemir, Mickael Devredt, and Khalid Zerkani. On February 11, the Antwerp Court handed down a ruling in the largest counterterrorism court case in Belgian history; the case involved 46 suspects, including 45 members of the now-disbanded extremist Salafist organization Sharia4Belgium. The Court ruled that Sharia4Belgium was indeed a terrorist organization that played an active role in the recruitment of would-be terrorists to fight in Syria and Iraq. Former leader Fouad Belkacem, also known as Abu Imran, was sentenced to 12 years in prison, while other leaders in the organization received 15-year sentences. Of the 46 suspects, only eight were present in the court; the remaining were reportedly missing, in Syria, or dead, and were convicted in absentia, including Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was the ringleader of the November 13 Paris attacks. The 45 Sharia4Belgium members were all found guilty of membership in a terrorist organization and of playing an active role in its terrorist activities; they received sentences ranging from three to 15 years. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Belgium is a member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Belgium's financial intelligence unit, the Cellule de Traitement des Informations Financieres (CTIF), is tasked with tracking and investigating reports of financial crimes, including money laundering and terrorism financing, and has broad authorities under Belgian legislation to conduct inquiries and refer criminal cases to federal prosecutors. The unit is a member of the Egmont Group. According to the latest 2015 CTIF annual report (which covers 2014), of the 1,131 financial crimes cases that CTIF referred to prosecutors, 37 (3.27 percent) were connected to possible terrorist and/or proliferation financing, a slight increase from the previous year (2.14 percent). For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: In 2015, both the Ministry of the Interior and the Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (OCAM) continued their implementation of new CVE strategies to address the foreign terrorist fighter problem. The number of foreign terrorist fighters leaving Belgium decreased in 2015, but the government remained concerned about and engaged on this issue. In addition to its ongoing CVE programs, the federal government identified 10 pilot cities facing particular radicalization threats, and funded specific countering violent extremism initiatives. Four of those cities are located in the Brussels Capital Region (Anderlecht, the City of Brussels, Molenbeek, and Schaerbeek), four in Flanders (Antwerp, Maaseik, Mechelen, Vilvoorde), and two in Wallonia (Liege, Verviers). The government originally allocated US $435,000 (later increased to US $ 650,000), to fund these counter-radicalization programs. In November, the government added a one-time US $1,089,055 grant to share between these 10 cities to strengthen their CVE efforts. Also in November, the federal government granted US $462,850 to be spread amongst five cities to fund local CVE efforts; the five cities are Charleroi, Genk, Kortrijk, Menen, and Saint-Gilles (Brussels region). In 2014, the Belgian government also supported a city pair project between Vilvoorde and Columbus, Ohio that is designed to facilitate positive community engagement between the government, the police force, and the Muslim community. Among the components of the government's strategy on preventing radicalization is an effort to counter extremist messaging on the internet. The Ministry of Interior is working to increase cooperation with the internet industry in Belgium, working with the big five providers to suppress violent extremist content. The government reiterated its dedication to combating online hate messages in its November counterterrorism measures. The government's counter-radicalization strategy includes an interagency effort to support local government actors who work with returnees from Syria to monitor their reintegration into society and provide them with guidance and support. In light of Belgian foreign terrorist fighter involvement in ISIL's November 13 attack on Paris, the Belgian government has proposed imprisoning Belgian foreign terrorist fighters upon their return to Belgium, prior to implementing rehabilitation efforts. International and Regional Cooperation: Belgium participates in EU, NATO, OSCE, and Council of Europe counterterrorism efforts, and is a member of the advisory board of the UN Counterterrorism Center. As an EU member state, Belgium has contributed trainers and capacity building expertise to EU counterterrorism assistance programs in Sahel countries, including the College Sahelien de Securite; and the Belgian Federal Police have provided training to counterparts in the Maghreb. Belgium has participated in GCTF workshops. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Bangladesh Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Bangladesh, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dd9e.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: The Government of Bangladesh has articulated a "zero-tolerance" policy towards terrorism and remained committed to counterterrorism cooperation. Bangladesh experienced a significant increase in violent extremist activity in 2015 compared to 2014. Notably, attacks in 2015 were claimed both in the names of al-Qa'ida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), whereas in past years violent extremist activity was associated with local groups. Despite these claims, the Government of Bangladesh attributed recent extremist violence to the political opposition and local terrorists. Terrorist organizations used social media to spread their radical ideologies and solicit followers from Bangladesh. An article titled "The Revival of Jihad in Bengal" appeared in the November 2015 edition of the ISIL online magazine Dabiq, outlining ISIL activities in Bangladesh and plans for future attacks. Bangladesh participated in the White House Summit to Counter Violent Extremism in February and follow-on summits. It also joined the Saudi-led Islamic counterterrorism alliance announced in December. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: In 2015, Bangladesh experienced an increase in terrorist attacks against religious minorities and government installations and for the first time, transnational groups have claimed responsibility for these attacks. AQIS claimed attacks on February 26, March 30, May 12, August 7, and October 31 that resulted in the murders of four bloggers and a publisher, including an American citizen. ISIL also claimed nine attacks, including the murder of an Italian NGO worker (September 28): a Japanese aid worker (October 3), and an attack on an Italian priest (November 18). ISIL reportedly was behind an attack on a Shia Ashura procession (October 24) that killed one person and injured nearly 100; an attack on a police checkpoint (November 4) killing a police officer; and a December 25 suicide attack on an Ahmadiyya Muslim Community mosque. The attacker died in the December 25 attack and the press reported 10 to 12 injuries. The Government of Bangladesh insisted that ISIL did not have an operational presence in the country and attributed the ISIL-claimed attacks to domestic elements. Additionally, there was an unclaimed December 18 attack using crude explosives at two mosques on a naval base in Chittagong (injuring between six and 25 according to press reports), as well as threats and small scale attacks against Christians, Hindus, and minority Muslim groups. In each of the terrorist incidents claimed by AQIS, attackers used machetes. The attacks claimed in the name of ISIL involved a variety of weapons: machetes, pistols, and crude explosives. In the case of the attack on the Ahmadiyya mosque, a suicide vest was used. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Bangladesh's criminal justice system continued to make progress in fully implementing the Antiterrorism Act of 2009 (ATA) as amended in 2012 and 2013. Although Bangladesh's ATA does not outlaw recruitment and travel in furtherance of terrorism, the broad language of the law provides several mechanisms by which Bangladesh can implement UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2178 (2014), related to addressing the foreign terrorist fighter threat. Government forces reportedly arrested numerous members of ISIL and of domestic terrorist groups, including suspected supporters of Jamaat ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT). On December 24, police arrested three suspected JMB terrorists in a raid, recovering crude explosive devices and a suicide vest. Bangladesh cooperated with the United States to further strengthen control of its borders and land, sea, and air ports of entry. Bangladesh continued to participate in the Department of State's Antiterrorism Assistance program and received counterterrorism training for law enforcement officers in such areas as crisis response, explosive ordnance disposal, and aviation security. Bangladesh also received Department of State-funded prosecutorial skills training and community oriented-policing training in targeted areas of the country. U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific (SOCPAC) continued security and stability training with a number of Bangladesh security forces including the Bangladesh Coast Guard, Bangladesh Navy Special Warfare and Diving Salvage unit, and the Bangladesh Army 1st Para Commando Battalion. Although the Bangladesh military does not have a clear counterterrorism mandate, SOCPAC will continue to maintain strong partnerships with these forces to develop their special operations capabilities. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Bangladesh is a member of the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG), a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body. The Bangladesh Bank (the central bank) and its financial intelligence unit/anti-money laundering section, Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU), lead the government's efforts to comply with international standards on countering the financing of terrorism. The BFIU is a member of the Egmont Group. The APG Mutual Evaluation Team conducted a country assessment in October 2015. In addition to signing 10 Memorandums of Understanding with financial intelligence unit counterparts in other countries, the BFIU has continued its effort to increase capacity with various training programs for its own officials and of officials of other stakeholders. The terrorism finance provisions of Bangladesh's anti-terrorism act (ATA) prohibit the provision, receipt, and collection of money, services, and material support where "there are reasonable grounds to believe that the same has been used or may be used for any purpose by a terrorist entity." The Act prohibits membership in and support of prohibited organizations, i.e., organizations engaged or involved in terrorist activities, including the organizations listed in the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida sanctions regime. The ATA includes a broad provision authorizing mutual legal cooperation on terrorism matters with other nations and a comprehensive forfeiture provision for assets involved in terrorism activities. However, at year's end, successful implementation of existing laws remained a significant issue. From July 2014 to June 2015, charges were filed in 64 money laundering cases with one conviction recorded. A Banking Dialogue was held in London sponsored by the Department of Justice in the fall of 2015 for members of the Bangladesh Bank, BFIU, and senior local bank officials, and the Department of State continued to support technical training and mentorship for Bangladeshi investigators and prosecutors in handling counterterrorism finance and anti-money laundering cases. The Dialogue included discussion on counterterrorism finance and money laundering. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: In 2015, Bangladesh formed the Community Support Mechanism (CSM) under the Global Fund for Community Engagement and Resilience (GCERF), a public-private global fund to support local, grassroots efforts to counter violent extremism. The CSM identified five local organizations to be potential recipients of GCERF funds, and submitted a national application to the GCERF Board of Directors which was approved with Independent Review Panel recommendations in December. The Ministry of Religious Affairs and the National Committee on Militancy Resistance and Prevention worked with imams and religious scholars to build public awareness against terrorism. In 2015, the police began developing a plan to engage religious leaders in the fight against violent extremism by helping to counter terrorist propaganda with appropriate scripture-based messages. International and Regional Cooperation: Bangladesh is active in several international fora. Bangladesh is party to various counterterrorism protocols under the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and is bringing the country's counterterrorism efforts in line with the four pillars of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy. In 2015, the government demonstrated strong interest in cooperating with India on counterterrorism. It has signed memoranda of understanding with a number of countries to share evidence regarding criminal investigations, including investigations related to financial crimes and terrorism financing. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Bahrain Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Bahrain, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dda1a.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: During 2015, the Bahraini government continued to make gains in detecting, neutralizing, and containing terrorist threats from violent Shia militant groups and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) sympathizers. Those groups' use of real and fake IEDs remained a key threat to security services, resulting in the death of three police officers. The government also began to implement new counterterrorism laws the legislature approved in 2014, including revoking the citizenship of suspected and convicted terrorists. By year's end, the Bahraini government had interdicted several smuggling operations and seized sizeable caches of military-grade explosives, shaped charges, and sophisticated detonators. These raids ensnared several militant cells and significantly eroded militant attacks on police. The Bahraini government supported the international Global Coalition to Counter ISIL and in December joined the Saudi-led 34-country Islamic counterterrorism alliance. The Bahraini government often did not publicize details about the arrests or convictions of Sunni terrorists, complicating efforts to track its progress against the domestic ISIL threat. Nevertheless, Bahraini leaders publicly condemned ISIL's worldwide activities, ideology, and recruitment, while the government worked to detect, counter, and discourage domestic ISIL recruitment and extremist messaging. In October, the government announced it had charged 24 individuals seven of whom were in detention and the rest of whom remained at large in Iraq and Syria with forming an ISIL cell that plotted suicide attacks in Bahrain and recruited fighters for the organization. In December, however, the Public Prosecutor released four of the detained suspects for lack of evidence. Security services also arrested another Sunni man and charged him with purchasing arms for the terrorist group. On several occasions in 2015, ISIL-affiliated social media accounts claimed the group would carry out attacks in Bahrain, but these failed to materialize. Bahrain participated in Global Coalition to Counter ISIL Political Directors meetings in Amman, Quebec, and Brussels; and the Minister of Foreign Affairs participated in the June 2 Coalition Group Ministerial Meeting in Paris. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: Bahrain continued to experience periodic bomb attacks from Shia militants throughout the year with targeting focused exclusively on Bahraini security forces. In previous years, the attacks mostly involved homemade devices, but in 2015 the militants began to use military-grade explosive materials, such as C-4 and RDX. On March 19, a bomb injured two policemen in the predominantly Shia village of Karranah. On July 15, the Ministry of Interior (MOI) reported a man accidentally blew himself up when attempting to plant a bomb that targeted police in the Shia village of Eker. On July 28, a bomb killed two policemen and injured six policemen outside a girls' school on the Shia majority island of Sitra. On August 28, a blast killed one policeman in Karranah and seven civilians were injured in collateral damage. On September 10, a bomb targeted a police station in the town of Bilad Al-Qadim but caused no casualties. Suspected Shia militants targeted security services with Molotov cocktails and other homemade devices throughout 2015 and other blasts occurred with fewer or no casualties. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Throughout 2015, Bahrain moved to bolster existing counterterrorism laws and criminal penalties. In March, the Shura Council Bahrain's appointed, upper legislative chamber approved a draft law increasing sentences for those who "promote or glorify" terrorists acts to 10 years and/or a fine of US $13,350, which the Cabinet approved in September and referred to the elected lower house. In December, the Council of Representatives Bahrain's elected, lower chamber approved a royal decree amending provisions of the 2006 terrorism law, allowing security forces to detain suspects for longer periods of time without charging them, and to take other measures, such as shutting off electricity in a given city block where a suspected terrorist incident occurred, when searching for suspects. Terrorism-related acts, a broadly-defined category, are treated as criminal cases, with prescribed penalties spelled out in the Anti-Terrorism Law of 2006 and Articles 155 and 168 of the Penal Code. While many of the terrorism cases in 2015 involved criminals who engaged in violent acts against security services, there were concerns that the government sometimes used counterterrorism laws specifically citizenship revocations to prosecute or harass individuals for their criticism of the government. Throughout 2015, security services were able to detect, deter, and respond to terrorist incidents. The MOI is the lead government agency charged with detecting and preventing acts of terrorism and arresting suspects in terrorist-related acts, with the Bahrain National Security Agency providing intelligence support. The Bahraini Coast Guard also contributes to the counterterrorism mission by monitoring and interdicting the seaborne movement of weapons and terrorists into and out of the country. The major deterrents to more effective law enforcement and border security remain the lack of interagency coordination and limited training opportunities to develop requisite law enforcement skills. Bahrain has participated in the Department of State's Antiterrorism Assistance (ATA) program since 1987. One Combatting Domestic and Transnational Terrorism ATA course took place in 2015 that graduated approximately 20 officers. Bahrain's ability to detect transnational plots remains limited due to capacity, detection, and information-sharing deficiencies. Every year, millions of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nationals transit the King Fahad Causeway connecting Bahrain to Saudi Arabia with relatively little screening. The Saudi citizen who killed 27 worshippers in a Kuwaiti mosque in June transited Bahrain via the airport, highlighting the country's vulnerability to threats from violent extremists residing in neighboring countries. Security forces reported they thwarted several plots through arrests and the discovery of at least two large weapons caches. In March, police and customs officials intercepted a bus containing bomb-making materials attempting to enter Bahrain from Saudi Arabia across the King Fahad Causeway. In June, the government uncovered a warehouse in the Dar Kulaib village containing explosives and bomb-making materials. In September, security forces discovered a facility that contained bomb-making equipment and 1.4 tons of explosives. In November, the Bahraini government announced it had conducted a major counterterrorism operation resulting in the arrest of 47 individuals, the confiscation of bomb-making materials, and the disruption of several terrorist plots. In 2015, Bahrain initiated dozens of cases for terrorism-related crimes and secured 11 convictions. Sentences varied but included the death penalty and revocation of citizenship for those accused of more serious crimes. However, the government has not carried out an execution of a foreign national since 2010 and has not executed a Bahraini national since 1996. In January, the government cited the 2006 terrorism law when it revoked the citizenship of 72 citizens, many of whom were out of the country at the time. In March, the High Criminal Court sentenced three Bahrainis to death and seven others to life in prison while revoking the citizenship of eight of them for a 2014 bombing that killed three policemen. In April, the same court sentenced a man to death and gave varying sentences to 11 others, ranging from 10 years to life for another 2014 bombing that killed a policeman. In June, a court sentenced two men who previously had their citizenships revoked to life in prison for terrorism-related charges. In November, a lower court convicted five Bahrainis of plotting terrorist attacks, revoked their citizenship, and sentenced them to life in prison. Also in November, a court sentenced 12 Bahrainis to life in prison and revoked their citizenships for terrorist acts and targeting police. Various other suspects received sentences ranging from a few years to life in prison for other planned or executed attacks against the security services. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Bahrain is a member of the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force, a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body. Its financial intelligence unit, the Anti-Money Laundering Unit, is a member of the Egmont Group. Bahrain is an important regional financial hub, which makes it vulnerable to large amounts of money flowing through the Gulf region to support various terrorist groups. In 2015, Bahrain organized or participated in several meetings focused on disrupting the financial support systems for terrorist entities. The government sent a delegation with representatives from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Finance, and Interior to the three initial meetings for the Counter-ISIL Finance Group in Rome, Jeddah, and Washington, DC. In April, Bahrain hosted the 8th EU-GCC Workshop on Combatting Terrorist Financing. In November, Bahrain hosted the "Good Giving Conference," a workshop focused on combating the financing of terrorism through preventing abuse of the charitable sector. The program focused on international good practices used to ensure charitable donations are not used or diverted for nefarious purposes. Throughout 2015, the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) continued its efforts to upgrade the country's AML/CFT regulatory framework via an entity known as the Policy Committee, which formulates AML/CFT policies and is in charge of implementing FATF recommendations. The CBB periodically reviewed financial institutions' licenses to ensure compliance with CBB regulations. In April, the CBB took organizational control of the Iran Future Bank, which the U.S. government had previously sanctioned for aiding in Iran's nuclear proliferation and missile acquisition activities, and the Iran Insurance Company in order to "protect the rights of depositors," but declined to provide further details. In August, the government detained former opposition parliamentarian Hassan Isa on terrorism finance-related charges, although opposition groups and activists complained the detention was politically motivated. The Ministry of Labor and Social Development's (MOLSD) Directorate of Civil Societies monitors and administers civil society and NGOs, including charitable institutions that could be used to finance terrorists or terrorist groups. When a group petitions the MOLSD to form a new civil society group, the Ministry's Financial and Legal Departments scrutinize the potential new group's finances in coordination with the CBB and MOI. The CBB also works with the MOLSD to prepare a report regarding the groups' internal and external fund transactions. The Directorate of Civil Societies submit an annual financial report issued by an accredited auditing firm, which is reviewed by the Ministry's Financial and Administrative departments, and is subject to inspection visits throughout the year by the MOLSD's Registration and Public Relations Departments. For additional information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INSCR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The Ministry of Justice and Islamic Affairs (MOJIA) heads Bahrain's efforts to counter radicalization to violence and violent extremism, in part by organizing regular workshops for clerics and speakers from both the Sunni and Shia sects. The MOJIA also undertakes an annual review of schools' Islamic Studies curricula to evaluate interpretations of religious texts. International and Regional Cooperation: Bahrain worked closely and cooperatively with international, multilateral, and regional partners. It is a member of the GCC and participated in the August U.S.-GCC Counterterrorism and Border Security Working Group meeting in Riyadh. Since formally endorsing the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism in March 2008, Bahrain has proactively worked to expand air, sea, and causeway border control points, although its data collection and information-sharing capabilities remain limited. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Azerbaijan Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Azerbaijan, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518ddc6.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Azerbaijan maintained its strong counterterrorism cooperation with the United States and actively opposed terrorist organizations seeking to move people, money, and materiel through the Caucasus. The country remained focused on counterterrorism efforts that included prosecuting numerous individuals under statutes related to terrorism; confiscating sizeable quantities of illegal arms and munitions; and arresting foreign terrorist fighters returning to Azerbaijan from conflicts abroad. Azerbaijan indicated its strong willingness to counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) by sharing information, working to disrupt the flow of foreign terrorist fighters to Iraq and Syria, and countering illicit funding of terrorist groups there. Senior leaders, including the heads of the Caucasus Muslim Board and the State Committee for Work with Religious Associations, took steps to counter ISIL and al-Qa'ida ideology publicly. In mid-December, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Azerbaijan was considering joining the Saudi Arabia-led Islamic Coalition Against Terror. Azerbaijan participated in the September President's Summit on Violent Extremism, which the White House organized on the margins of the 2015 UN General Assembly. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Azerbaijan continued to use counterterrorism legislation, first adopted in 1999, that governs the investigation and prosecution of individuals who have committed or plan to commit terrorist acts. The Ministry of National Security (MNS) leads counterterrorism efforts, working closely with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor General's Office. Among its various duties, MNS is charged with the task of identifying and preventing the criminal activities of terrorist groups, and combatting international terrorism and transnational crimes. MNS underwent major personnel and organizational changes in 2015. In mid-December, the President of Azerbaijan signed a decree splitting MNS into two organizations the State Security Service and Foreign Intelligence Service. At the end of 2015, it was unclear how the counterterrorism roles of the new services would be defined and how their efforts would be integrated. As the country's primary law enforcement agency, the Ministry of Internal Affairs has key responsibilities for fighting terrorism. Specific counterterrorism actions are taken through the Ministry's Organized Crime Unit. The Prosecutor General's Office maintains responsibility for prosecuting individuals for terrorism, conspiracy to commit terrorism, conspiracy to aid terrorism, and other terrorism-related crimes. The Azerbaijani government has effectively demonstrated the ability to detect and deter terrorist activities, as well as prosecute foreign terrorist fighters returning to Azerbaijan. Authorities effectively use terrorist and criminal watchlists and biographic/biometric information to screen travelers at ports of entry. Information sharing within the host government and with other countries was strong. Collection of Advance Passenger Information and Passenger Name Records on commercial flights occurred on some flights. On December 4, the parliament adopted a Law on Fighting Religious Extremism. The 15-provision law clarifies the legal bases for identifying and prosecuting cases of religious extremism and fanaticism that lead to terrorism, and links criminal, administrative, and civil responsibilities for violations. At the same time, a new amendment to the Criminal Code was introduced, which triggered harsher punishments for violating procedures for Islamic religious ceremonies, particularly by citizens who received religious education abroad, with up to one year imprisonment or fines from US $600 up to US $3,000. In cases of "religious propaganda" by foreigners and stateless persons, the punishment was newly set at one to two years in prison. On December 5, the president signed into law new amendments to the Law on Religious Freedom. The new amendments expanded restrictions on the use of religious symbols and slogans, which may only be used inside places of worship. A new amendment introduced on December 5, 2015, to the Law on Citizenship, first adopted in 1998, specifies new grounds of losing citizenships, including: participating in terrorist actions, participating in religious extremist actions or military trainings abroad under the guise of receiving religious education, proselytizing religious doctrines on grounds of animosity, and participating in religious conflicts in a foreign country under the guise of religious rituals. Throughout the year, there were reports of terrorist acts being prevented in Azerbaijan. However, it is unclear whether some of these preventative actions were taken against bona fide terrorist threats or were designed to curb the activities of heretofore non-violent independent religious activists. In November, for example, the Prosecutor General's Office issued a statement that Taleh Bagirov (Bagirzade), a former political prisoner and religious activist, was planning, with his followers, to overthrow the government. The government alleged he had stored ammunition and explosives in the village of Nardaran, about 24 km north of the capital. The Ministry of Interior and the Prosecutor General's Office conducted special operations in the area during which authorities arrested more than a dozen people and claimed to find significant caches of weapons and ammunition. During the operation, five people suspected of violent religious extremism were killed, along with two police officers. Criminal cases were opened against the detained suspects, which were ongoing at the end of 2015. Some democracy and human rights advocates believe the charges were fabricated. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Azerbaijan is a member of the Council of Europe's Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism (MONEYVAL), a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body. Its Financial Monitoring Service is a member of the Egmont Group. Azerbaijan has increased its professionalism in anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) efforts since 2009, when it adopted AML/CFT legislation. This legislation created a financial intelligence unit, the Financial Monitoring Service (FMS), under Azerbaijan's Central Bank, and imposed requirements on financial institutions to conduct customer due diligence and report suspicious transactions to the FMS. Monetary Institutions operating outside the formal financial sector are often not required to report transactions, which is a vulnerability in the system. In 2015, in a decree signed by the President regarding terrorism financing, the Cabinet of Ministers was charged with making suggestions for changes to the Civil Procedure Code. Changes may include expanding existing laws for use in the fight against terrorism and the financing of terrorism. The Cabinet was also charged with developing additional regulations to freeze the assets of both physical and legal entities. To bring Azerbaijan's legislation into conformity with international standards, including those of the UN, the EU, and the FATF, Azerbaijan continued to implement MONEYVAL recommendations to address AML/CFT issues. The U.S. government has been one of the FMS' leading partners since its formation, and currently works through Treasury and the FDIC to provide technical assistance and training to the Azerbaijani prosecutors to improve enforcement capabilities. USAID has also supported these efforts. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations, together with the Azerbaijan-based Caucasus Muslims Office, took steps to monitor religious sermons in some mosques in order to counter any calls to violence. International and Regional Cooperation: Azerbaijan remained an active member of the OSCE, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and other regional organizations. Azerbaijan also continued to work with NATO on counterterrorism initiatives. In December, Azerbaijan indicated it was considering joining the new Saudi Arabia-led Islamic Coalition Against Terror. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Austria Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Austria, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518ddd12.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Austria was vigilant in its counterterrorism efforts, and U.S.-Austrian law enforcement cooperation was generally strong. Austria's Office for State Protection and Counterterrorism (BVT), the key counterterrorism agency within the Ministry of the Interior, reported that while no specific climate for fostering terrorist attacks existed within Austria, radicalization within violent Islamist extremist groups increased in 2015. The country's traditional, broad perception that Austria is safe from terrorist attacks was challenged by the number of foreign terrorist fighters from Austria headed to Syria and Iraq. The BVT charged or monitored those returning from Syria, as well as other potentially violent radicalized individuals. Continued concerns over data privacy protection, amplified by public debate about suspected U.S. NSA activities in Austria, slowed the implementation of counterterrorism agreements, in some cases. Austria is a member of the Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), as well as the Counter-ISIL Working Groups on Foreign Terrorist Fighters and Stabilization. Throughout the year, the Ministries of Interior, Justice, and Foreign Affairs increased enforcement and engagement to counter incitement of terrorist acts motivated by extremism and combat the problem of foreign terrorist fighters, with law enforcement agencies focusing on intelligence gathering and investigations, and integration officials (within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) focusing on public outreach and engagement to prevent radicalization to violence. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Austria has a broad legal framework to combat terrorism. Relevant statutes criminalize training in terrorist camps abroad. The Austrian Parliament passed additional counterterrorism legislation in December 2014 (effective January 1, 2015) to enhance existing counterterrorism laws. The counterterrorism legislation amended an existing law on the use of symbols and prohibits the use and distribution of symbols attributable to ISIL, al-Qa'ida, and any organization linked to these groups. Limited exemptions from these restrictions apply to media coverage, films, theater, and exhibits, provided that they do not serve to propagate the ideology of a terrorist organization. As part of the same legislative package, an amendment to the border control law allowed border authorities to confirm that minors have received parental permission to leave Austria when there is a suspicion that the minors are traveling to participate in fighting activities abroad. Border authorities are empowered to deny departure to a minor and withhold his or her passport until an investigation is complete. An amendment to the Austrian citizenship law allowed authorities to withdraw citizenship from an Austrian who voluntarily and actively participates in fighting in an armed conflict if the individual holds a second citizenship. In November, Austria's governing coalition parties agreed on a draft State Protection Law to provide enhanced legal tools against terrorist and extremist threats, espionage, cyber-attacks, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and to provide a firm legal basis for counterterrorism, counter-espionage, and related law enforcement actions by the BVT. Austrian law enforcement and BVT officials routinely cooperated in investigative areas with U.S. law enforcement, from the informal sharing of preliminary investigative information to joint, multilateral investigative projects and enforcement operations. Border security forces make effective use of security measures, including biographic and biometric screening capabilities at airport ports of entry; Austria does not maintain ports of entry on its land borders as Austria is surrounded by Schengen zone member states; however, Austria has established facilities at several border crossings to manage and assist refugees. Border security forces also share information internally and with other EU countries. Border security officials at ports of entry have discretion when determining those documents and passengers subject to screening on arrival. Austria has taken a whole-of-government approach to implement UN Security Council Resolutions 2170, 2178, and 2199, as well as the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF)'s Hague-Marrakech Good Practices for a More Effective Response to the Foreign Terrorist Fighters phenomenon. The BVT estimated the number of Austrians fighting in Syria and Iraq at approximately 260, predominantly of Chechen, Turkish, and Balkan origin. Forty are suspected to have been killed in Syria, while an estimated 70 have returned to Austria. Law enforcement officials have arrested violent extremists and suspected terrorists and prosecuted and sentenced ISIL sympathizers and would-be foreign terrorist fighters. Formal criminal investigations have been launched against 192 suspects, resulting in 50 criminal charges and 27 convictions. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Austria is an active member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and has developed comprehensive anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) legislation, including the enactment of a new Sanctions Act; undertaken reforms of the financial intelligence unit operational procedures and supervisory framework; and developed and published secondary legislation (regulations), thematic and sectorial guidelines, and explanatory notes. Austria's financial intelligence unit (the Bundeskriminalamt) is a member of the Egmont Group. Financing of terrorism is criminalised in Article 278d of the Austrian Penal Code in line with Article 2 of the Terrorism Financing Convention and other international standards. Austria has successfully prosecuted terrorism financing cases, including sentencing a Chechen terrorism suspect to a four-year prison term in October on charges of terrorism financing and participation in a terrorist organization. The defendant was charged with collecting US $438,200 for the Caucasus Emirate. Austria implements the collection of Know Your Customer-data for wire transfers through EU Regulation 1781/2006/EC. This EU Regulation does not include requirements regarding information on the beneficiary of a wire transfer, and there is no respective national law in place. Austria and the United States implemented the 2014 bilateral agreement on the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). Under the agreement, Austrian banks require U.S. citizens resident in Austria to waive bank secrecy and allow the exchange of account information with the United States. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: Austria continued efforts to counter violent extremism, largely in response to the foreign terrorist fighter phenomenon. In addition, the Austrian government undertook or continued several other initiatives. In cooperation with the Islamic Faith Community, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs continued an information campaign in mosques, Islamic organizations, and community centers that included education outreach to the majority population to differentiate between Islam and violent extremism. In an effort to improve integration in the newly arrived refugee population, the Integration Office within the Foreign Ministry has developed an educational program that focuses on German language acquisition and education on Austrian 'values' such as gender equality and democratic principles. The Austrian government maintains a counseling center and a de-radicalization hotline, aimed at friends and family members of potential violent extremists. The Austrian government passed a new Law on Islam, updating the previous 1912 Law on Islam. This law updated the rights and responsibilities of Islamic communities and further formalized Islam's place within Austria. It contains provisions related to religious education, pastoral care in hospitals and prisons, recognizes Islamic holidays, and formalizes some Islamic traditions. The law also limits financing of mosques and imams from foreign sources, in an effort to constrain foreign influence. International and Regional Cooperation: Austria is a member of various regional platforms, including the OSCE, the Salzburg Forum, and the Central European Initiative. Austria regularly leads law enforcement training programs with Salzburg Forum countries and the Balkan states. In March, Austria hosted a regional conference on foreign terrorist fighters, entitled "Tackling Jihadism Together: Shaping, Preventing, Reacting." The conference was attended by Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Italy, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia, and included discussions on enhanced border security training and increased cooperation among Europol, the EU border protection agency Frontex, and the western Balkan states. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Australia Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Australia, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518dde13.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Australia is a key partner in the global fight against terrorism, and leads regional efforts to counter radicalization and violent extremism. In 2015, Australian authorities conducted 10 domestic counterterrorism operations, resulting in 25 people being charged. The Australian Attorney General estimated there were 110 Australian foreign terrorist fighters in Syria and Iraq, approximately 190 persons in Australia providing support to individuals and groups in the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, and 400 high-priority counterterrorism investigations. In the 2014-2015 fiscal year, there were also 536 suspected terrorism financing cases in Australia. The Australian government took significant actions to counter terrorism by: providing additional funding to intelligence agencies and enhancing their ability to access communications data; creating the roles of the National Counterterrorism Coordinator and the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Counterterrorism; attending the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism in February; hosting a Regional Countering Violent Extremism Summit; co-hosting the first Southeast Asian Counter-Terrorism Financing Summit; developing a Combating Terrorist Propaganda initiative to monitor and contest online terrorist messages; and developing a revised National Terrorism Threat Advisory System. On October 15, the Prime Minister convened a National Meeting on Countering Violent Extremism that included policy and law enforcement officials from federal, state, and territory agencies. In July, the federal and state governments released "Australia's Counter-Terrorism Strategy." In 2015, Australia was a major contributor of military assistance to the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL. Since May, Australia deployed 300 military personnel to contribute to the international Building Partner Capacity (BPC) mission in Iraq, following the September 2014 announcement of sending 200 personnel to "advise and assist" Iraqi forces and about 400 personnel to support Australian air operations against ISIL. Australia began air strikes against ISIL targets in Iraq in October 2014 and extended strikes into Syria in September 2015 using six FA-18s. Australia and the United States regularly discussed counterterrorism cooperation, including at the annual AUSMIN Foreign and Defense Ministers' meeting. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: On October 2, 15-year-old Farhad Jabar (Australian) killed New South Wales police employee Curtis Cheng outside a police station in the Sydney district of Parramatta. Australian authorities believe this was a terrorist incident and Jabar was subsequently killed in a shoot-out with police. Three men were also arrested on terrorism and criminal offenses related to the incident. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Australia's legal framework to counter terrorism includes significant penalties for the following: committing terrorist acts; recruiting for and supporting terrorist organizations; financing terrorism; urging violence and advocating terrorism; and traveling abroad to commit terrorist acts and recruitment offenses. Authorities are authorized to detain individuals under "preventative detention orders" for a maximum of 48 hours, and to restrict activities and movement of individuals under "control orders." Since mid-2014, five tranches of national security legislation have been enacted. In October 2014, parliament passed legislation targeting returning foreign terrorist fighters which includes granting additional powers to security agencies, strengthening border security measures, and cancelling welfare payments for persons involved in terrorism. In May 2015, parliament passed legislation requiring telecommunications providers to retain and to secure data for two years, and the government appointed the first Commonwealth Counterterrorism Coordinator. On July 1, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service were merged into a single Department of Immigration and Border Protection. On August 13, parliament passed legislation strengthening the combined agency's biometric program into a single updated framework used by border agents to collect biometric identity information. In December, parliament passed legislation allowing for the revocation of citizenship for dual nationals involved in terrorism, established the crime of advocacy of genocide, and lowered the minimum age for which control orders can be imposed from 16 to 14. (A control order is issued by a court [at the request of the Australian Federal Police] to allow obligations, prohibitions and restrictions to be imposed on a person, for the purpose of protecting the public from a terrorist act.) Since the terrorism alert level was raised to "High" in 2014, security and law enforcement agencies have foiled six attacks, and police conducted 10 counterterrorism operations in Australia resulting in 26 people being charged with terrorism-related offenses. Australian Border Force Counter-Terrorism Units, established in August 2014, offloaded 336 passengers from commercial flights through June 2015, which according to an ABF press release, prevented a number of minors from travelling to the conflict areas in Syria and Iraq. The number of high priority targets investigated by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) doubled to more than 400. From September 2014 to the end of 2015, the number of Australian foreign terrorist fighters in Iraq and Syria identified by Australian security services grew from 70 to 110; the number of suspected Australians killed in the conflict rose from 15 to at least 41; the number of people suspected in Australia of providing support to individuals and groups in the conflict grew from 110 to 190; and the number of passports cancelled to prevent travel to the conflict expanded from 60 to 146. In July 2015, the Council of Australian Governments (the Prime Minister, state and territory Premiers and Chief Ministers, and the President of the Australian Local Government Association), agreed to develop a new threat advisory system, which was unveiled in November. The new five-tiered threat system provides ASIO with greater flexibility to make terrorist threats clearer to the public. At the end of 2015, the level was set at "Probable," the third highest tier. Arrests included: On February 10, police arrested and charged Omar Al-Kutobi (Iraqi born, naturalized Australian citizen) and Mohammad Kiad (Kuwaiti citizen with Australian spousal visa) in Sydney with planning to carry out an imminent terrorist attack against a civilian. On April 18, five teenage Australian boys were arrested in Melbourne following a counterterrorism operation in relation to a planned terrorist act, which included targeting police officers. One was charged with terrorism offenses; one was charged with weapons offenses; and one had terrorism charges dropped and pleaded guilty to weapons offenses. The other two were released without charges. On May 8, police raided a Melbourne home and arrested a 17-year-old Australian man after finding three IEDs. Australian law enforcement entities, such as the Australian Federal Police (AFP), have clearly demarcated counterterrorism units, as well as effective working relationships with provincial and municipal law enforcement. In September, the State of Victoria Police Department established a Counterterrorism Command, and in November, counterterrorism funding to the Victorian police almost doubled when the State of Victoria allocated $49.4 million for hiring additional intelligence experts and analysts. Australia has an extensive border security network and makes excellent use of travel document security technology, biographic and biometric screening capabilities at ports of entry, information sharing with other countries, and collection of advance Passenger Name Record information on commercial flights. Australian security forces effectively patrolled and controlled land and maritime borders. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Australia is a member of the Financial Action Task Force. Australia served as the organization's President from July 1, 2014 until June 30, 2015. Australia is a founding member and co-chair of the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering, a FATF-style regional body. In 2015 Australia's mutual evaluation, executed jointly by FATF and APG, was adopted. The assessment concluded that Australia has strong legal, law enforcement and operational measures for combating money laundering and terrorism financing. Australia faces a range of terrorism financing risks, largely motivated by international tensions and conflicts, and counters the risks with a comprehensive legal and administrative framework. Australia can automatically freeze UN-designated terrorism-related assets and has made numerous domestic designations as well. As a founding member of the Egmont Group, AUSTRAC, Australia's financial intelligence unit, assisted the Southeast Asian region to develop a regional profile of financial characteristics of foreign terrorist fighters. Australia implements its obligations to restrict terrorism financing, including funding to violent extremist groups operating in Syria and Iraq, as well as freezing assets and economic resources in accordance with UNSCRs 1373 (2001) and 2253 (2015; which updates UNSCRs 1267 and 1989), as well as UNSCRs 2178 (2014), 2170 (2014), and 2199 (2015). AUSTRAC detects, prevents, and deters money laundering and financing of terrorist activities. In addition, AUSTRAC regulates money transfers and remittance services, however, charities are not a regulated sector for the purposes of suspicious matter reports (SMRs). Using its rigorous detection and monitoring processes, AUSTRAC referred 536 SMRs in the 2014-2015 fiscal year to the AFP and the ASIO on suspicion of terror financing links, a 300 percent increase from the year before. Amounting to more than $37.6 million, the 536 reports were linked primarily to Australians traveling to join terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq. As of June 30, 2015, AUSTRAC stated that it was monitoring more than 100 persons of interest. AUSTRAC is also a core member of a multilateral information-sharing project on the financing of foreign terrorist fighters in Syria and Iraq. In November in Sydney, Australia and Indonesia co-hosted the first Counterterrorism Financing Summit in the Asia-Pacific Region, attended by more than 150 people from 19 countries. Australia is also a member of the Counter-ISIL Finance Working Group and co-chairs its Foreign Terrorist Fighter sub-group. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The Australian Attorney-General's Department leads the implementation of the government's four main goals to counter violent extremism (CVE): building strength in diversity and social participation; targeted work with vulnerable communities and institutions; addressing terrorist propaganda online; and diversion and de-radicalization. The Australian Government created the Living Safe Together website (http://www.livingsafetogether.gov.au/), which offers multiple resources and perspectives on building community resilience to violent extremism. In February, the Australian Attorney-General attended the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) and announced the $12.8 million Combatting Terrorist Propaganda in Australia initiative focused on the internet and social media. In June, Australia hosted the Regional Summit to Counter Violent Extremism to further goals outlined at the White House CVE Summit and to build on UNSCR 2178 and the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy. Following the October shooting in Parramatta, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull convened an urgent meeting of officials from Federal, State, and Territory agencies and Muslim leaders to discuss Australia's approach to countering violent extremism. On November 2, the New South Wales Premier announced a $33.4 million CVE package to stop radicalization of young people focused primarily on schools and community organizations. In December, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull stated that the government would provide $1.78 million over five years to the Commonwealth Secretariat dedicated to countering extremism and radicalization. Building on its experience partnering with the UAE through the Sawab counter-messaging center in 2015, Australia is supporting Malaysia in the development of its regional counter-messaging center in Kuala Lumpur. International and Regional Cooperation: Australia is a regional leader in the fight against terrorism, and worked to strengthen the Asia-Pacific region's counterterrorism capacity through a range of bilateral and regional initiatives in organizations such as ASEAN, the ASEAN Regional Forum, and the Pacific Island Forum. Australia participated in the APEC Counter-Terrorism Task Force, the Global Initiative to Counter Nuclear Terrorism, and worked closely with NATO, including in the NATO-led Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan. Australia is a member of the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, a member of the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) and co-chair of the Forum's Detention and Reintegration Working Group (DRWG), which grew out of the former Southeast Asia Working Group. In April, Australia and the EU agreed to intensify counterterrorism cooperation, building on the launch of the first EU-Australian Counterterrorism Dialogue in November 2014. Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop attended the GCTF Ministerial in September. Australia's Ambassador for Counterterrorism played a key role in coordinating policy cooperation, capacity building, and operational collaboration between Australian agencies and international counterterrorism partners. Australia signed 19 counterterrorism memorandums of understanding with partners around the world. Australia increasingly collaborates with India on counter-messaging and counterterrorism legal reforms. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Argentina Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Argentina, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518ddf23.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Argentina maintained capabilities for confronting terrorism at the federal level, and directed efforts to address border security challenges along its remote northern and northeastern borders, which include the Tri-Border Area where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet, an area where terrorism financing occurs. Senior Argentine officials made statements condemning violence wrought by ISIL and urging action to alleviate humanitarian suffering in Syria and Iraq. It is possible small numbers of Argentine citizens may have sought to travel to Syria and Iraq to join ISIL. U.S. law enforcement and security cooperation with Argentina focused on information sharing as well as some training funded by the Antiterrorism Assistance program. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Argentina's Antiterrorism Law of 2007, modified in 2011, serves as a supplement to the criminal code for the prosecution of terrorism cases. Multiple security agencies maintained specialized law enforcement units that have substantial capabilities to respond to terrorist incidents. One of those agencies underwent a wide-scale replacement of personnel and reorganization in the first part of the year that degraded its counterterrorism capabilities. The Argentine government's Security Ministry chaired meetings of the Internal Security Council to coordinate between federal and provincial security institutions. The outgoing administration took steps to implement the transition of the criminal justice system from an inquisitorial to an accusatorial model. The investigation into the 1994 terrorist bombing of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people encountered difficulties. Outgoing President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner defended a "truth commission" agreed on between Argentina and Iran in January 2013 against a prosecutor's legal filing claiming the president had in fact subverted the investigation. The prosecutor was discovered dead in his apartment in January, and his filing was later dismissed by a judge. The outgoing president maintained that the talks with Iran were intended to clarify Iran's alleged role in the bombing, for which several former Iranian cabinet-level officials have outstanding INTERPOL Red Notices. On December 10, Mauricio Macri assumed the presidency of Argentina. The Macri administration issued a press release stating that the Argentine government was "firmly determined" to maintain INTERPOL Red Notices issued against the one Lebanese and five Iranian suspects in the case. An Argentine court declared the agreement between Iran and Argentina unconstitutional in May 2014. As a superior court reviewed the decision in June, the outgoing government used a controversial new law to remove a judge from the panel and appoint a temporary judge in his place. The Argentine-Jewish community and the U.S. government expressed skepticism regarding the Argentina-Iran dialogue, and indeed it failed to advance the investigation. In December, the incoming Macri administration announced it would cease the executive's challenge of judicial decisions against the pact. The same month, the administration appointed a state secretary with Cabinet rank to carry forward the investigation of the 1994 attack. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Argentina is a member of the Financial Action Task Force of Latin America (GAFILAT), a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body. Its financial intelligence unit, Unidad de Informacion Financiera (UIF), is a member of the Egmont Group. During 2014, the last period for which data is available, the UIF identified seven possible instances of terrorism financing. Two were submitted to the Attorney General's Office, and the remaining five were under investigation. These cases involve the capture of 11 terrorist fugitives, all from the last military dictatorship, and eight resolutions to freeze assets. At the close of 2015, the Federal Prosecutor in charge of Economic Crimes identified a new potential terrorism-financing case regarding a Syrian national involved in a number of suspicious transactions in the Tri-Border Area (with Brazil and Paraguay). That case was proceeding through the justice system at year's end. While the Government of Argentina has established the legal authorities and structures necessary to identify and pursue terrorism financing, results in the form of targets identified, assets seized, and cases prosecuted have been minimal. In December, the new administration appointed a new head of the UIF and considered proposals to create a special counsel reporting directly to the government to combat money laundering and terrorism financing, establish an inter-agency anti-money laundering/counterterrorism financing task force, and develop a new national risk-based strategy founded on a revised national risk analysis. Such measures, if implemented effectively, could help the country move closer to international standards and improve program effectiveness. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. International and Regional Cooperation: Argentina participated in the OAS Inter-American Committee against Terrorism and the Southern Common Market Special Forum on Terrorism. Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay coordinated law enforcement efforts in the Tri-Border Area via their Trilateral Tri-Border Area Command. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Algeria Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Algeria, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518de1a.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Algeria remained an important counterterrorism partner. The Government of Algeria has a long history of fighting terrorism and has devoted considerable resources to advancing its security agenda. Military forces and multiple law enforcement, intelligence, and security services with delineated responsibilities addressed counterterrorism, counter-intelligence, investigations, border security, and crisis response. These included the various branches of the Joint Staff; the army; National Gendarmerie (GN); the Border Guards; the Department of Intelligence and Security (DRS) under the Ministry of National Defense (MND); and the national police, or General Directorate of National Security (DGSN), under the Ministry of Interior. Al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Mali-based Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), al-Murabitoun, and Jund al-Khilafah in Algeria (JAK-A, Soldiers of the Caliphate in Algeria), were active terrorist threats within Algeria and along its borders. These groups aspired to establish their interpretations of Islamic law in the region and to attack Algerian security services, local government targets, and Western interests. AQIM continued attacks using IEDs, bombings, false roadblocks, and ambushes. Although criminal groups engaged in kidnapping, there were no reports of kidnappings executed by terrorist groups in 2015. The Algerian government maintained a strict "no concessions" policy with regard to individuals or groups holding its citizens hostage. JAK-A, which has sworn allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), claimed responsibility for a few, sporadic attacks, although efforts by the Algerian government appeared to have significantly limited the group's ability to operate in 2015. During large-scale operations in May, the Algerian military reportedly killed at least 21 JAK-A fighters in the Boumerdes region. Four other Algerian factions have issued statements claiming allegiance to ISIL, but there was little indication that these groups contained more than a small number of fighters. Algeria continued an aggressive campaign to eliminate all terrorist activity, and sustained its policing efforts to thwart terrorist activity in the capital and other major urban centers. Military forces and security services, primarily the GN under the MND, conducted regular search operations for terrorists in the mountainous Kabylie area east of Algiers, and in the expansive desert regions in the south. Rising regional political and security instability contributed to the terrorist threat to Algeria. Violent extremist groups and criminal networks in the Sahel attempted to operate around Algeria's nearly 4,000 miles of borders. Continuing instability in Libya, terrorist groups operating in Tunisia, fragile peace accord implementation in Mali, as well as human and narcotics trafficking, were significant external threats that made regional coordination on border security a necessity. The Algerian government frequently cited links between terrorist activity, organized crime, and narco-traffickers in the Maghreb and the Sahel. In part in response to concerns regarding online radicalization, the President published a decree on October 8, establishing an anti-cybercrime agency, the National Preventative Organ for the Fight against Infractions Linked to Information and Communication Technology. This entity, with members across the law enforcement and national defense establishment over which the Minister of Justice presides, is responsible for monitoring electronic communication to detect terrorist violations of the law, subversive acts, and breaches of national security. It has not been operating long enough to determine its effectiveness. Algerian government officials and Muslim religious and political leaders publicly condemned ISIL and criticized acts of violence committed in the name of Islam. Algerian government officials have declined to join the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, citing its "cardinal principle" of non-intervention in sovereign nations' affairs. Nevertheless, Algeria actively supported the effort to counter ISIL in other ways, such as intelligence sharing, imam training, capacity-building programs with neighboring states, and participation in the White House Countering Violent Extremism Summit process. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: Open sources reported more than 62 terrorist acts in 2015. Attacks included: On June 20, an IED killed an Algerian colonel and two soldiers near Beni Fedala in the Batna province. On July 6, at least two policemen were injured in a shootout in downtown Bouira that started when a patrol of the Mobile Brigade of the Judicial Police was attacked by a terrorist group. On July 17, AQIM ambushed Algerian soldiers while on patrol in the province of Ain Defla. AQIM claimed on July 18 to have killed 14 soldiers in the attack, but a press statement from the Algerian Ministry of Defense on July 19 indicated nine soldiers were killed and two others wounded. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: In November, Algeria's Minister of Justice presented to Parliament a bill to add provisions to the criminal code to prohibit traveling to other countries to take part in armed conflict, and providing financing or organizing travel operations to other countries for the purpose of committing or inciting terrorist acts, including by using information and communication technologies, or by any other means. This law is intended to implement UN Security Council Resolutions 2178 (2014) and 2199 (2015), and the UN 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qa'ida sanctions regime. The Algerian government continued its decade-long push to increase the strength of its military and security forces and to professionalize and modernize them. The 130,000 members of the Gendarmerie, which performs police functions outside of urban areas under the auspices of the Ministry of National Defense, and the approximately 210,000 members of the DGSN, or national police, organized under the Ministry of Interior, share general responsibility for maintaining law and order. During 2015, the government restructured the Departement du Renseignement et de la Securite (DRS), the Algerian intelligence service. As a result, the Algerian Central Service for Anti-Terrorism (SCAAT), formerly known as the Service for Operational Coordination and Antiterrorist Intelligence (SCORAT), was placed directly under the control of the Vice Minister of Defense. Public information announcements from the MND provided timely reporting on incidents during which MND forces captured or eliminated terrorists and seized equipment, arms, ammunition caches, and drugs. MND reported it captured or killed 157 terrorists in 2015 as a result of operations. The Government of Algeria underscored that border security remained a top priority to guard against the infiltration of terrorists from neighboring countries. Official and private media outlets reported on measures to increase border security, including closed military border areas, new observer posts in the east, reinforced protection of energy installations, additional permanent facilities for border control management, new aerial-based surveillance technologies, upgrades to communication systems, and additional troops deployed on the borders with Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. Since the start of the Arab Spring, Algeria has reportedly deployed at least 75,000 security forces to monitor the country's southern and eastern borders, including at least 50,000 reportedly along the Libyan border. Algerian officials reported that they have provided training and equipment to border security officials in Tunisia to ensure effective cross-border communication. Border security measures included new joint checkpoints and patrols along the frontiers, information sharing, and training and equipment programs. The Government of Algeria closely monitored passenger manifests for inbound and outbound flights and scrutinizes travel documents of visitors, but does not collect biometric information. Algeria uses a computerized fingerprint identification system, undertakes training, and is equipped to recognize fraudulent documents. The Government of Algeria used INTERPOL channels, alerts, and diffusion notices to stay informed on suspicious travelers at land, air, and maritime borders. Human rights organizations asserted there has been overuse of pretrial detention by judges and magistrates. On December 6, Parliament approved changes to the Algerian Code of Criminal Procedure limiting the use of police custody and pretrial detention and allowing persons in police custody to receive a visit from a lawyer. To enhance its capacity to deal effectively with security challenges within its borders and defend against threats to regional stability, Algerian law enforcement agencies participated in the Antiterrorism Assistance (ATA) Program and other training offered by third countries as well as by the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law (IIJ). Algerian participants attended and hosted numerous workshops conducted under the aegis of the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF). Algerian law-enforcement personnel participated in ATA, GCTF, and IIJ programs that were designed to enhance investigative and screening capacities, improve border security, prevent terrorist transit or operations, and build response capacity to critical incidents. The U.S. Department of Justice's International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program concentrated on capacity-focused consultations and mentoring in forensics, border security, criminal investigation, and evidence collection at crime scenes. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Algeria is a member of the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force, a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body. Its financial intelligence unit, known as the Financial Intelligence Processing Unit (CTRF), is a member of the Egmont Group. The banking system in Algeria is underdeveloped and tightly monitored by Algerian authorities. Processes within the banking system are bureaucratic and require several checks at various points of the money transfer process. Given an over-regulated business environment, an informal cash-based economy with an annual value of roughly US $30 to 40 billion has developed. In recent years, Government of Algeria authorities have increased efforts to close down illegal markets and reopen them legally, although these illegal markets often open in a different location after a few weeks. The large scale of the informal market makes its eradication extremely difficult. A network of informants and Algerian undercover officers monitored significant unregulated cash transactions, but given the informal nature of the system, it was difficult to adequately police. During the year, Algeria enacted reforms to establish an anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regime that provides for the freezing and seizure of terrorist assets without delay, which the government was in the process of implementing at year's end. In February, the CTRF and the Bank of Algeria promulgated mandatory guidelines on customer due diligence. Also in February, Parliament passed and the President signed a statute broadening the criminal offense of terrorism financing and providing a framework for the seizure of terrorist funds. In May, the Prime Minister issued an executive decree addressing the seizure of terrorist funds. Later in May, the Minister of Finance issued ministerial orders providing further detail for such seizures. In September, the CTRF and the Bank of Algeria each issued further guidelines that closed potential loopholes and provided more details and procedural protections in connection with seizure mechanisms. On October 23, the FATF removed Algeria from its Public Statement, and moved it to the list denoting a jurisdiction that is improving its compliance with international standards on AML/CFT. The FATF noted that Algeria had established the necessary legal and regulatory framework to meet the commitments established in the action plan to address deficiencies in its CFT regime. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The Government of Algeria underscored the value of state oversight for religious education, including the training of imams, the content of prayers, and credentialing imams in a way that promotes tolerance and sensitizes the religious leaders to the risks of using religion for political objectives. The Algerian government appoints, trains, and pays the salaries of imams. The penal code outlines punishments, including fines and prison sentences, for anyone other than a government-designated imam who preaches in a mosque. The Algerian government monitors mosques for possible security-related offenses and prohibits the use of mosques as public meeting places outside of regular prayer hours. Government officials publicly affirm Algeria's Sunni Maliki tradition of Islam, which upholds the values of tolerance, brotherhood, and acceptance of others. The Ministry of Religious Affairs (MRA) warns Algerians against foreign violent extremist trends (ISIL, Wahhabism) and heeding fatwas (judicial rulings) that originate outside Algeria. In 2015, Algeria continued working to create an Academy of Fatwas in Algeria. The MRA identified 50 imams from different parts of the country to receive advanced training. In November, the MRA announced plans to establish an "observatory" in 2016, to guard against untrained imams, importation of values "alien" to Algeria's religious tradition, and the promotion of sectarianism and terrorism. Viewing broad-based socioeconomic opportunity as a way to prevent radicalization to violence, Algerian government programs targeted youth and the unemployed by providing tuition, job placements, and paid internships to university students. The Algerian government recruited repentant terrorists to become voices in the community to prevent a drift toward radicalism. The Government of Algeria aired content through Radio Quran aimed at countering religious extremism, specifically violent forms of Salafism. Mini lectures to "defuse" radical religious discourse aired regularly, and the most relevant lectures were broadcast two to three times per week. The MND released communiques from its website on terrorists captured or eliminated, indicating where the operation occurred and where arms were recovered, with no further commentary or analysis. The MND excluded group affiliation to deny terrorists publicity. Algerian leaders publicly condemned terrorism in televised addresses and statements to the press. Posting photographs and videos of terrorist acts on the internet is prohibited. MND officials and the MND website reminded citizens to verify their sources and statistics related to security matters with the MND communications office. Under the 2006 Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, Algeria offers amnesty to former terrorists who laid down their weapons and disavowed violence. Exceptions are made for perpetrators of particularly egregious acts, such as rape, murder, and bombings. The Charter works through offices located nationwide to extend judicial assistance and social and job reintegration measures to repentant terrorists, victims of terrorism, and families of terrorists. Some 9,000 terrorists have been pardoned under the Charter since its inception. International and Regional Cooperation: In 2015, Algeria continued strong diplomatic and mediation efforts to promote regional peace and security. On the diplomatic front, it facilitated an inclusive national dialogue for Malian groups and regional partners that resulted in the signing of a Mali peace accord. In coordination with the UN, Algeria hosted talks among Libyan groups and stakeholders to help reach a political solution. Algeria also participated in various Sahel-Saharan fora to discuss development and security policies, the evolution of regional terrorism, and donor coordination; these included the Nouakchott Process on the Enhancement of Security Cooperation, the Operationalization of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), and the EU Strategy for Security and Development in the Sahel. However, Algeria and Morocco's political disagreement over the Western Sahara remained an impediment to bilateral and regional counterterrorism cooperation. Algeria is an active member and participant in the AU, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the Arab League. It is a delegate for the Africa region on the INTERPOL Executive Board and is a founding member of the IIJ. Additionally, Algeria participated in the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism in February, and as a follow-on event hosted a regional de-radicalization conference, which produced 58 recommendations. Algeria participated in critical counterterrorism-related projects implemented by the UN Office on Drug and Crime's Terrorism Prevention Branch; participated in CEMOC (Comite d'Etat-Major Operationnel Conjoint) meetings with Mali, Mauritania, and Niger that were designed to promote security cooperation in the region; and hosted CEMOC's Liaison and Fusion Center for information sharing. In a leadership role, Algeria sits on the UN Counter-Terrorism Center's Advisory Board and hosts the headquarters of AFRIPOL, a pan-African organization that fosters police training and cooperation in response to security threats such as terrorism, drug trafficking, and cybercrime. Algeria actively participates in the 5+5 Defense Initiative, which brings together five European and five North African countries to address security issues in the western Mediterranean. As a founding member of the GCTF and co-chair of its Sahel Region Capacity Building Working Group, Algeria continued to champion the implementation and development of the Algiers Memorandum on Good Practices on Preventing and Denying the Benefits of Kidnapping for Ransom by Terrorists. Algeria also provided capacity-building assistance to some neighbors. The Tunisian Defense Minister stated to Tunisian media that Algeria is providing training for Tunisian Special Forces on border security pursuant to a bilateral agreement. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Albania Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Albania, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518de213.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: Albania was a strong supporter of counterterrorism efforts in 2015 and continued its participation in the Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), making significant donations of weapons and ammunition for Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Albania criminalizes terrorist acts; financing of terrorism; collection, transfer and concealment of funds that finance terrorism; conducting transactions with persons on the UN sanctions lists; recruiting and training people to commit terrorist acts; incitement of terrorist acts; and establishing, leading and participating in terrorist organizations. In 2014, Parliament added three statutes to Albania's Criminal Code aimed primarily at strengthening the government's ability to address the problem of Albanian nationals who travel to fight in the Syrian conflict. The changes made it illegal to participate in; organize the participation of; or call for participation in military action in a foreign country. While Albanian law enforcement actively detects and deters illicit activities related to drugs and smuggling, it also increased efforts to counter potential terrorist threats. With concern about terrorism increasing in connection with foreign terrorist fighters, the Albanian State Police expanded its Anti-Terrorism Unit from seven to 76 and, in collaboration with Albania's international partners, is developing plans and programs for the equipping, training, and further development of this unit. Significant efforts will be necessary before the ATU develops capacity to counter terrorism effectively. Albania lacks the capacity to collect biometric data other than that contained on biometric identity cards and passports presented at border crossing points. DOJ's International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), funded by the Department of State, provided information technology training to the Albanian government to help it incorporate online fingerprint identification functions, and fingerprint scanning equipment for all 26 border crossing points. This initiative will improve Albania's ability to collect entry and exit information of international travelers. The Department of State's Antiterrorism Assistance program supported Albanian participation in a series of border security-related courses aimed at addressing foreign terrorist fighter travel. The Department of Justice's (DOJ's) Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development Assistance and Training Program (OPDAT), funded by the Department of State, also provided mentorship, assistance, and training to prosecutors, law enforcement officials, and judges from Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia, that work on foreign terrorist fighter and terrorism-related cases through its Balkan Regional Counterterrorism program located in Tirana. Corruption, combined with a poorly functioning judicial system, continued to hinder Albania's law enforcement efforts at all levels. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Albania is a member of the Council of Europe's Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism (MONEYVAL), a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body. The General Directorate for the Prevention on Money Laundering, Albanian's financial intelligence unit, is a member of the Egmont Group. In February, the FATF removed Albania from its list of High Risk and Non-Cooperative Jurisdictions. Since June 2012, Albania has been working with the FATF and MONEYVAL to address the identified weaknesses in its anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regime. In 2013, Albania adopted a new law against financing terrorism to comply with the FATF and MONEYVAL recommendations and focused on implementation in 2015. Albania has established a preventive AML/CFT system that includes extended due diligence and the obligation to file suspicious transaction reports and currency transaction reports. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The Government of Albania provided financial support to the Albanian Islamic Community, the official administrative body of the Albanian Sunni Muslim community, and actively engaged it to develop strategies and programs to address radicalization to violence and terrorist recruitment. The government also drafted and officially adopted a national strategy to combat violent extremism (CVE), and has been a committed participant in the White House Initiative to Combat Violent Extremism, which included hosting a regional CVE conference in May in Tirana. Prime Minister Rama spoke at the September Leader's Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism hosted by President Obama in New York; during his speech, Rama announced plans for a Regional Center Against Violent Extremism. International and Regional Cooperation: Albania is a member of the UN, OSCE, NATO, Council of Europe, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Albanian criminal justice actors participated regularly in various regional associations, conferences, and other counterterrorism information-sharing exchanges. For example, Albania sent representatives to a U.S.-funded program on the role of the criminal justice system in the implementation of preventive and repressive strategies against foreign terrorist fighters, which was executed by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime's Terrorism Prevention Branch. Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Afghanistan Publisher United States Department of State Publication Date 2 June 2016 Cite as United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 - Afghanistan, 2 June 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57518de329.html [accessed 26 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. Overview: With the conclusion of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission on December 31, 2014, Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) assumed full responsibility for the security and defense of Afghanistan. The United States remained committed to sustained political, diplomatic, and economic engagement in Afghanistan and retained the capacity to conduct counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan; however, the majority of these operations were carried out in conjunction with, or solely by, Afghan units. The United States also continued to support the professionalization and modernization of the ANDSF. The military component of U.S. assistance to the ANDSF transitioned to NATO's non-combat Resolute Support Mission (RSM) and U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A) on January 1, 2015. RSM focused on building the capabilities of the Afghan forces at the regional (Corps) level and above through its train, advise, and assist mission and USFOR-A retained U.S. counterterrorism functions, as outlined in the Security and Defense Cooperation Agreement between the Governments of Afghanistan and the United States, also known as the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA). In 2015, the ANDSF faced a challenging first year of fighting without the support of internationally-led combat operations. ANDSF operations centered on the provinces of Kunduz, Badakhshan, Zabul, Ghazni, and Helmand. Taliban insurgents amassed in larger numbers and attacked multiple district centers throughout the country, particularly in the provinces of Nangarhar, Helmand, and Kunduz. Several districts remained contested at year's end although all major population centers and critical infrastructure remained under government control. The Haqqani Network (HQN), a semi-autonomous faction of the Taliban, continued to plan and conduct high profile attacks and assassinations against U.S., Coalition, and Afghan interests, particularly in Kabul and other key government centers. While al-Qa'ida (AQ) has been severely degraded in the region, its regional affiliate, al-Qa'ida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), continued to operate in Afghanistan. Notably, AQIS members were active at a large training camp in a remote area of Kandahar Province. On October 11, U.S. and Afghan forces conducted a coordinated joint operation that successfully destroyed the AQIS training camp and a related facility, and killed dozens of AQ-linked trainees. President Ghani identified establishing a peace process as a top priority of his administration and pursued engagement with the Taliban. The Afghan government had its first direct meeting with the Taliban on July 7 in Murree, Pakistan; however, these talks were suspended shortly after the revelation in late July that Taliban leader Mullah Omar had died in 2013. On December 9, following meetings on the sidelines of the Heart of Asia summit, Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, and the United States committed to seeking the resumption of talks as soon as possible. On January 26, 2015, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) publicly announced the establishment of an affiliate, ISIL-Khorasan (ISIL-K), in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since its inception, ISIL-K has been mostly active in the eastern parts of Afghanistan. By the end of 2015, the group had established a foothold in the southern districts of Nangarhar Province, where ISIL-K fighters had reportedly shut down schools. In 2015, the ANDSF conducted several successful operations against ISIL-K bases in southern Nangarhar. Repeated heavy fighting between the Taliban and ISIL-K was reported in the province as well. In early December 2015, local media reported that a new ISIL-K radio station, "Voice of the Caliphate," began operating out of Nangarhar Province, making evening broadcasts in the Pashto language via a mobile transmitter. The Afghan government shut down the radio station on December 23, taking action under the Afghan Law on Fighting Crimes Against Internal and External Threats. On December 26, however, local media reported that ISIL-K radio was back on the air after changing frequencies. At the close of the year, the Afghan government was considering a range of options to shut down the station's operations. ISIL-K's Salafist ideology may resonate with fringe elements of terrorist groups in Afghanistan, but the majority of Afghanistan-based terrorists resisted fully aligning themselves with the group and the Taliban were overtly hostile to the ISIL affiliate. One exception was the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which publicly announced termination of its long-time alliance with the Taliban to align with ISIL-K. Based on Afghan media commentary, it appears that the Afghan people have developed a deep disdain for ISIL-K's extreme violence. Some Afghans have responded to ISIL-K atrocities through grassroots, civilian-organized militias that have emerged to combat ISIL-K. At times, these militias have partnered with Afghan security forces. 2015 Terrorist Incidents: In 2015, Afghanistan remained an area of active hostilities, and various groups used terrorist tactics to pursue their goals. Methods used included suicide bombers, vehicle-born improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs), ambushes, kidnappings, beheadings, and targeted assassinations. Anti-government groups across Afghanistan aimed to expand their territorial influence, disrupt civil governance, and create a public perception of instability, as ISAF combat operations ended and Afghan forces assumed full responsibility for the security of their country. Attacks diverged from the historic seasonal pattern of higher activity in the spring and summer as terrorist groups the Taliban in particular conducted attacks on the ANDSF throughout the fall and early winter of 2015, especially in the less weather-affected southern province of Helmand. Attackers continued to use large VBIEDs and complex attacks involving multiple attackers laden with suicide vests working in teams. These incidents increasingly targeted ANDSF, Afghan government buildings, and soft foreign civilian targets, as the overall number of potential foreign military targets decreased due to a drawdown in the international military presence. Terrorist activity expanded from areas in the south and east of Afghanistan to areas in the north; Helmand and Kunduz were the main focus of attacks at the end of 2015. Helmand, Kandahar, Nangarhar, Ghazni, Kunar, and Kunduz represented the most violent provinces for ANDSF and civilians. The following list details only a small fraction of the hundreds of incidents that occurred during 2015: On March 19, the Taliban carried out a suicide attack targeting and killing the provincial chief of police (PCoP) of Uruzgan Province. The suicide bomber was wearing a burqa and detonated his vest as he approached the PCoP on the streets of Kabul. On June 9, in an insider attack, five Afghan policemen were shot and killed by fellow policemen in southern Kandahar Province. The incident took place at a security check point in Khakriz District. The provincial governor's spokesperson confirmed the insider attack. On June 22, a Taliban suicide bomber and six gunmen attacked the Parliament building in Kabul as lawmakers met to consider the appointment of a new defense minister. A Taliban fighter detonated a car loaded with explosives outside the Parliament gates, and six gunmen attempted to enter the building. One civilian was killed and approximately 30 civilians were wounded in the attack. On July 22, a suicide motorcyclist detonated his explosives in the middle of a market in the Alamar District of Faryab Province. Twenty people were killed in the attack, including an Afghan National Army soldier, and more than 30 people, including two ANDSF personnel, were injured. On August 7, terrorists launched three attacks in Kabul. In the first attack at 1:00 a.m., a massive VBIED in a truck driven by a suicide attacker detonated in the center of Kabul, killing 15 people and wounding more than 240 civilians. In the second attack, a Taliban suicide bomber killed 26 police cadets and wounded another 27 when he blew himself up outside the gates of a police academy. The bomber was dressed in police uniform and detonated his explosive vest after approaching a group of cadets who were standing outside the academy. In a separate Taliban attack, one RSM service member and eight Afghan contractors were killed. On August 8, at least 22 members of a reportedly pro-government militia were killed in an explosion in northern Kunduz Province. On August 10, ISIL-K released a video of the executions of 10 village elders in Nangarhar Province. ISIL-K forced the men to sit on IEDs and detonated them. On September 28, in a complex coordinated attack, Taliban insurgents captured Kunduz City, Afghanistan's sixth largest city. Following several days of fighting, the ANDSF recaptured the city. As a result of the attacks, an estimated 50 individuals were killed and 600 were injured. On December 8, a Taliban assault near Kandahar Airfield resulted in the deaths of 36 civilians and 15 Afghan soldiers. Another 35 were injured, including 21 ANDSF personnel and 14 civilians. During the attack, Taliban fighters temporarily occupied a neighborhood bazaar, school, and an apartment complex. Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: The Afghan Attorney General's Office (AGO) investigates and prosecutes violations of the laws on Crimes against the Internal and External Security of the State (1976 and 1987), the Law on Combat Against Terrorist Offenses (2008), and the Law of Firearms, Ammunition, and Explosives (2005). The AGO also investigates and prosecutes violations of laws that prohibit membership in terrorist or insurgent groups, as well as laws that forbid violent acts committed against the state, hostage-taking, murder, and the use of explosives against military forces and state infrastructure. The Law on the Structure and Jurisdiction of the Attorney General's Office, enacted in October 2013, codified the structure and funding of the existing Anti-Terrorism Protection Directorate (ATPD) in the AGO. The ATPD permits the investigation and prosecution of terrorist and national security cases in accordance with internationally accepted methods and evidentiary rules. The Justice Center in Parwan (JCIP), adjacent to Bagram Air Field, continued to adjudicate cases of individuals detained by Afghan security forces and accused of terrorism and other national security threat crimes. In July, the Office of the National Security Council issued a directive ordering any person detained on one of seven specified criteria be sent to the JCIP for prosecution. Those seven criteria include suspects captured on the field of battle; individuals accused of terrorist crimes; influential and prominent members of the Taliban; and commanders of terrorist groups. In September, President Ghani issued by presidential decree Annex 1 to the Afghan Criminal Procedure Code that expanded the AGO's authority to investigate and prosecute terrorist crimes; prohibited persons sentenced for terrorist crimes from receiving a parole or pardon; and designated the JCIP as the country's counterterrorism court with nationwide jurisdiction. Its docket regularly includes cases against those implicated in terrorist attacks on U.S. military personnel and U.S. military and civilian installations in Afghanistan. Between January and October of 2015, the JCIP adjudicated 214 primary court cases (compared to 533 in 2014), and 451 appellate court cases (compared to 1,153 in 2014). Because of its operational structure and the continuous support and assistance it received from the international community, the ANDSF demonstrated the capacity to conduct counterterrorism operations in 2015. The Afghan and U.S. governments investigated a variety of criminal acts, including kidnappings and conspiracies to commit terrorist acts. Occasionally, U.S. law enforcement bodies assisted the Ministry of Interior, the National Directorate of Security, and other Afghan authorities to take action to disrupt and dismantle terrorist operations and prosecute terrorist suspects. The ANDSF continued to receive train, advise, and assist (TAA) support from the international community in 2015. The Department of State continued to deliver Antiterrorism Assistance (ATA) training to Afghan security forces in 2015, with a focus on building security force capacity to engage in effective tactical counterterrorism operations. Afghanistan continued to process traveler arrivals and departures at major points of entry using the Personal Identification Secure Comparison and Evaluation System (PISCES). In 2015, the PISCES program was expanded to new Points of Entry to meet Afghanistan's border security requirements. Moreover, Afghan Border Police (ABP) officers completed more in-depth training on developing and maintaining a national screening list and efforts were under way at year's end to leverage PISCES reporting capabilities for use in counterterrorism and criminal investigations. Despite advances in capability, the ANDSF continued to face significant challenges in successfully securing the country's porous land borders, particularly those with Pakistan and Iran. The ABP, part of the policing wing of the ANDSF, numbers more than 23,000 officers and has the lead on border security. Its numbers and weaponry are insufficient to successfully execute its mission, particularly in the border areas where border police face difficult terrain, resupply, and coordination issues with the Afghan National Army, and heavily armed anti-government groups that attack them in force. The Afghan government faces several significant obstacles to more effective law enforcement and border security. After decades of war and poor or fragmented governance in many rural areas, the ANDSF is working with international actors to build capacity. While Afghanistan has made progress since 2001, complex organizational structures, weak inter-ministerial coordination, rampant corruption, lack of territorial control (particularly in the border regions with Pakistan), and de facto safe havens for terrorist groups operating on its soil remained ongoing challenges. Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Since April 2006, Afghanistan has been a member of the Asia/Pacific Group (APG) on Money Laundering, a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body. Its financial intelligence unit, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center of Afghanistan (FinTRACA), is a member of the Egmont Group. In June 2014, the FATF strongly warned Afghanistan to comply with the government's June 2012 commitment to implement an action plan agreed upon with FATF to address identified deficiencies by October 2014, or run the risk of being placed on the list of "high-risk and non-cooperative jurisdictions." The FATF action plan outlined a number of areas that the government needed to address to bring Afghanistan into compliance with international standards, including enactment of amended anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) legislation. In 2014, the Afghan government took initial steps to address deficiencies in its AML/CFT regime, including publishing its since-enacted AML and CFT statutes. In March 2015, Afghanistan amended its AML and CFT laws to become more compliant with the FATF recommendations. Since June, Afghanistan has taken further steps towards improving its AML/CFT regime, which included issuing an appropriate regulation for the financial sector and cross-border declaration regulations for the physical transportation of cash and of negotiable instruments. However, questions persist regarding UNSCR implementation and the FATF has determined that certain strategic deficiencies remain and recommended that Afghanistan address its remaining deficiencies and continue the process of implementing its action plan. Afghan officials indicated that because AQ, the Taliban, and terrorist organizations related to the Central Asian Republics transfer their assets from person to person or through informal banking systems, it is very difficult to track, freeze, and confiscate their assets. When transactions have come to the Afghan government's attention, either via FinTRACA or reports from the Afghan security agencies, the government has reportedly acted promptly not only to freeze but also to confiscate those assets. Money Service Providers (MSP) in Afghanistan are required to register with and provide currency transaction reports to FinTRACA. These reports include monthly data on volumes and numbers of transactions, detailing whether transactions are inbound or outbound, foreign or domestic, and in local or foreign currency. Oversight is weak but improving, with the period between 2014 and April 2015 seeing an increase in the number of on-site inspections of money service providers; a total of 149 MSPs were fined approximately $51,724 for non-compliance during that time period. Capacity issues at the FIU due to personnel shortages and lack of training continued to hamper full oversight of this sector. The amended CFT law considers non-profit organizations as legal entities and requires them to file suspicious transaction reports. The Afghan government distributed UN sanctions lists to financial institutions via secure e-mail. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm. Countering Violent Extremism: The Afghan government does not have a comprehensive formal national countering violent extremism (CVE) strategy, but has begun the process to develop one. The Office of the National Security Council has designated a team to take the lead in coordinating the government's CVE engagement. Various ministries and offices have CVE issues incorporated in their portfolios. The government continued to support activities designed to prevent radicalization, including through curricula development, messaging through registered mosques, and support of the Moderation Center of Afghanistan. Through engagement with religious communities, Afghan government officials promoted religious moderation, encouraged tolerance, and condemned violence. There are approximately 120,000 mosques in Afghanistan, of which 3,700 are registered with the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs (MoHRA) and the Ministry of Education. Registration is not compulsory, and unregistered mosques, many of which have associated madrassas, operated independently of government oversight. Some religious leaders at unregistered mosques and madrassas promoted violent extremism. The National Ulema Council is a quasi-governmental body of religious scholars established by former President Karzai in 2002. Since taking office in September 2014, President Ghani has engaged actively on CVE efforts, requesting that the Ulema Council condemn insurgent attacks and issue a call for peace in mosques throughout the country. In the second half of 2015, the Presidential Palace boosted efforts to coordinate messaging on security and other issues, including strategic messaging to weaken the appeal of violent extremism. During that period, the Presidential Palace was in the process of conducting a strategic review under the auspices of a strategic communications advisor to enhance the Afghan government's strategic communications efforts. Under the plan, the Government Media and Information Center (GMIC) would be used as the hub for proactive governmental messaging and communication within the Office of the Presidential Spokesperson. Government spokespersons regularly participated in coordination meetings at GMIC and exchanged views on how to defuse the negative rhetoric promoted by terrorist groups. In media appearances, Afghan political leaders often emphasized the important role of the Ulema Council (religious leaders) in preaching peace and denouncing terrorist attacks perpetrated by the Taliban, ISIL, HQN, and others. The Council issued media statements to condemn violence by anti-government groups on only a few occasions. In 2015, mainstream Afghan media continued to play the lead role in reflecting the public anger at and condemnation of terrorist attacks. Media played a major role in countering extremist messaging, which remains critical for the marginalization of these anti-government elements in the minds of the public. During the fall and subsequent recapture of Kunduz City in September, Afghanistan's two leading TV stations (Tolo News and 1TV) covered extrajudicial killings of civilians and other human rights abuses by the Taliban, including reporting that university students had been raped. The Taliban subsequently threatened to target Tolo News and 1TV after the public outcry against the atrocities. The Afghan government, however, at times criticized Afghan media as serving the interests of the Taliban and other terrorist and opposition groups by broadcasting their claims and statements. On the other hand, some of these media outlets and journalists were threatened by the Taliban for their pro-government coverage. Media outlets, such as Tolo, devoted considerable resources to public service messages calling for national unity, respect for human rights, and other themes related to countering violent extremism. Afghan religious leaders, civil society members, and government officials attended conferences at the Hedayah Center (an international center headquartered in Abu Dhabi focused on countering violent extremism), the February 2015 White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism, regional CVE summits, and UNGA side events where they participated in discussions about approaches to countering violent extremism. Afghan religious leaders received training on tolerance programming in the United Arab Emirates and scholars from other countries visited Afghanistan to speak on issues of tolerance and peace. The High Peace Council oversees the Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Program (APRP) program, which pays for and provides the institutional mechanism to implement the Afghan government's peace activities including the reintegration of former militants at the local level, provincial-level peace outreach, and Ulema engagement on countering violent extremism. The APRP maintained a field presence in 33 provinces. Individual fighters who join the program make the commitment to renounce violence and sever all ties with AQ, and to abide by the Constitution of Afghanistan. Since its inception in 2010, the APRP has successfully reintegrated more than 10,700 former combatants across Afghanistan. International and Regional Cooperation: Afghanistan consistently emphasized the need to strengthen joint cooperation to fight terrorism and violent extremism in a variety of bilateral and multilateral fora. Notable among such meetings were the Heart of Asia/Istanbul Process, the UN Regional Center for Preventative Diplomacy for Central Asia (UNRCCA), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Afghanistan shares the lead on the Counterterrorism Confidence Building Measures (CT-CBM) of the Istanbul Process, working closely with Turkey and the UAE. Under the CT-CBM framework, Afghanistan participated in a regional technical group meeting in Ankara, Turkey, to discuss CT-CBM implementation. In December, Afghanistan participated in a Heart of Asia Conference in Islamabad, Pakistan, and hosted the 31st Tripartite (United States, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) Counter-IED Working Group meeting in Kabul. In collaboration with Tajikistan and the UN Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force, Afghanistan organized a workshop entitled "Sharing of Experiences on Implementing the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy in Central Asia for Heart of Asia Countries" in May 2015. In August-September, the ABP participated in a "Border Security and Management for Countering Terrorism" Regional Workshop in Tajikistan. See what to expect in coming months along I-69 Finish Line corridor As the leaves begin to fall and air temperatures begin to cool, the 2022 road construction season will soon slow down. There's no need to wait for the 2016 Children's Art & Literacy Festival to buy merchandise touting Abilene's Storybook Capital status and CALF. The Storybook Store now is open in the west end of the T&P Depot, 1101 N. First St. There are items for just about anyone, including one-pieces for babies and long-sleeve shirts for chilly days. Prices range from $5 for shirts featuring the logos of previous festivals to $25 for the new Storybook Capital of Texas shirts. Those shirts feature the official Storybook Capital logo featuring Bob the Dinosaur, Duck on a Bike and Stuart Little. There already are sculptures of the first two in Abilene, and the Stuart Little sculpture will arrive during the 2017 CALF, when illustrator Garth Williams will be honored. Also for sale are totes ($5); water bottle holders with carabiners to clip onto a belt or bag ($5); button packets ($5); and all sorts of glowing products, such as light-up fairy wings ($8) and mohawks ($5), perfect for the Glow Dance Party that begins at 8 p.m. Thursday as part of the CALF celebration. Buy an 'I heart Wilbur' button for $1 and help bring the Garth Williams sculptures to Abilene. If you go: What: The Abilene Cultural Affairs Council presents the 2016 Children's Art & Literacy Festival When: 4-10 p.m. Thursday; 8:30 a.m. to 8:45 p.m. June 10 and June 11; see the schedule for more details Where: Downtown Abilene Admission: Festival passes:$15 for ages 13 and older; $10 for children ages 3-12; children 2 and younger get in free Movie at the library A showing of a 2004 movie based on a best-selling book will begin at 10 a.m. Monday at the Abilene Public Library, 202 Cedar St. Popcorn will be served. Admission is free. Puppet show A puppet show for children ages 6 and up will begin at 3 p.m. Tuesday at the Abilene Public Library, 202 Cedar St. Admission is free. Culinary arts bake sale The annual Culinary Arts Bake Sale, featuring food made by Texas State Technical College in Abilene students, will be open from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday at the T&P Building, 901 N. First St. Proceeds will go to the school's Culinary Arts program. ArtWalk fun The June ArtWalk, 'Some Enchanted Evening,' will take place during the opening night of the Children's Art & Literacy Festival, from 5-8 p.m. Thursday. Activities include a costume contest, parade and children's art activities at The Center for Contemporary Arts, 220 Cypress St. All activities are free. Movie at the library A showing of a G-rated 1993 animated movie will begin at 10:45 a.m. June 11 at the South Branch of the Abilene Public Library, 1401 S. Danville. Popcorn and drinks will be served. Participants are encouraged to bring a sack lunch and a pillow. Admission is free. Beatles Fest The sixth annual Beatles Fest will begin at 6 p.m. June 11 at Play Faire Park, 2300 N. Second St. Fraid Knot, Happy Fat, Jonathan Hester and others will perform, and a Beetle car show will be presented. Participants are encouraged to bring lawn chairs. Admission is $10, with a $5 cooler fee. Cooper reunion The Cooper High School Class of 1976 40-year reunion will begin at 6:30 p.m. June 11 at the Fairway Oaks Country Club, 34 Fairway Oaks Blvd. Registration is $60. For reservations, contact ggalbraith@sbcglobal.net, mgem@suddenlink.net and 325-864-3902. As some of the Big Country slowly dried out Thursday, several counties worked toward disaster declarations, while others counted their blessings. Still others, such as residents near Lake Cisco, faced new challenges. Cisco Mayor James King issued a mandatory evacuation notice at 1:30 p.m. Thursday for residents of North Shore Drive at Lake Cisco and for people in low-lying areas of South Shore Drive. North Shore Drive was closed because of high water and city personnel were helping people leave the area. An estimated 150 people live on the north side of the lake and another 50 on the south side. An emergency shelter was set up in the Myrtle Wilks Community Center, said City Secretary Tammy Osborne. Lake Cisco was about two feet over its spillway. Overflow from the lake washed out State Highway 6 just east of the dam. The highway, which links Cisco and Albany, is closed until repairs can be made. In addition, all Cisco water customers were asked to conserve city water because the city's flooded water treatment plant cannot pump water. Water should be boiled before usage. The city is working to find alternative supplies of water to supply to customers if the city's water towers run dry. Taylor County Judge Downing Bolls said that while there was some high water Thursday morning, everything in the county 'seems to be working OK.' A flash flood warning had been issued for the county early Thursday. 'A lot of high water that came in overnight has subsided to the point that the creeks are able to move,' he said. 'The stuff we had early (Thursday) morning was what we typically have when we have a cloudburst. What we've really been watching is the area around Lake Abilene.' County Commissioner Stan Egger said that so far, Lake Abilene could still hold more water. But the lake could easily fill if a heavy rain happened around Coronado's Camp, he said The good news, as such, is that it takes on average six to nine hours before floodwaters would get to Buffalo Gap, and fully 24 hours before it would reach Abilene. 'So if everybody doesn't panic, we have plenty of time to notify people,' he said. County Road 131 east of Tuscola was closed, he said, because a large culvert there had material wash out around it. If current conditions held, Egger estimated it would take around two to three weeks to repair damage from the storms once things dry up. 'But we've been lucky compared to so much of the state,' he said. 'I feel like we need to count our blessings.' Several counties in the Big Country planned to file disaster declarations due to the recent storms. Coleman and Erath counties have already been approved by the governor's office, while Callahan, Brown, Jones and Stephens were either starting the process or waiting for word. Taylor County will not likely seek such aid, Bolls said Thursday, while Shackelford County is examining its damage, said County Judge Ross Montgomery. 'We're talking about it, but everybody I've talked to doesn't know that we've had enough damage,' Montgomery said Thursday. 'We've already declared disaster,' said Brownwood emergency coordinator Mechail Cox said on Thursday. ' We have so many roads that are washed away and damaged in the lake area.' Breckenridge City Manager Andy McCuistion said that Stephens County and the city of Breckenridge would seek disaster help, with necessary information being collected. McCuistion worried that flooding conditions were not over. Gunsolus Creek had dropped 8-10 feet, but more rain loomed in the forecast. Breckenridge lifted boil water restrictions for most of the city Thursday, though the northeast portion of the community is still required to boil water until Friday, if all goes as planned. 'Our quadrant point begins at the Intersection of (Highways) 180 and 183,' said City Secretary Heather Robertson-Caraway 'We have flushed the line again and taken more samples to Abilene today (Thursday) and hopefully we'll be able to rescind the northeast quadrant tomorrow.' Stage 4 water restrictions had been in effect, but that restriction had been lifted citywide Thursday afternoon, she said. Jones County Judge Dale Spurgin said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had been in his county doing preliminary disaster examinations Wednesday. 'We had three FEMA representatives that went out with the commissioners and viewed sites and also two individuals from the Texas Division of Emergency Management attended that tour,' he said. 'They are scheduling a field team to come back and start doing the actual site evaluations and start (drawing) up the work plans.' The declaration will be the county's third in 12 months, Spurgin said. Callahan County Judge Roger Corn said his county had declared the latest in a string of its disaster declarations on Tuesday. Roads and bridges in the county had been damaged, Corn said. Around Cross Plains in the county's Precinct 4, for example, Corn said he'd been told around 40 miles of road were washed out. 'We've (also) had several homes in Baird, a few in Clyde and some in Cross Plains with water in them,' he said, though exact numbers affected weren't immediately available. The county had a disaster declaration approved in August that it is still working on, Corn said. 'And then we've had three disasters declared probably in the last two months,' he said. Like just about everyone else, Corn said he was grateful for the rain, but a bit tired of some of the side effects it brings. 'Our lakes are full, and that's been a problem for a good time,' he said. 'Something like this, you have to take the bad with the good.' The city of Abilene and its Emergency Operations Center were monitoring flood potential for the city Thursday, but said that creeks locally were in good condition. ''Lake Abilene has capacity for more runoff before presenting a threat to Abilene, and the creeks are being monitored by County and City crews,' says Jim Bryan, city of Abilene Emergency Management Coordinator, in a statement. Abilene firefighters rescued an adult and five children from a vehicle stalled in water in the Mockingbird underpass early Thursday. During the 10-minute rescue, the water rose two feet in the underpass, according to a news release from the fire department. Overnight rains dumped up to 3.5 inches of rain on parts of Abilene. Officially, at the airport, the National Weather Service measured 0.17 of an inch of rain from midnight Wednesday to 8 p.m. Thursday. Abilene remains under a flash flood watch until 7 a.m. Friday. There is a 40 percent chance of thunderstorms Friday, dropping to 20 percent Friday night. Seven day forecast: Friday: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Cloudy, with a high near 77. North northeast wind around 10 mph. Friday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 63. North northeast wind 5 to 10 mph. Saturday: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 82. North wind 5 to 15 mph. Saturday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 64. Northeast wind 5 to 10 mph becoming north northwest after midnight. Sunday: Sunny, with a high near 85. North northeast wind 5 to 15 mph. Sunday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 60. Northeast wind 5 to 10 mph becoming light and variable after midnight. Monday: Sunny, with a high near 85. West northwest wind around 5 mph becoming east northeast in the afternoon. Monday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 62. East southeast wind around 5 mph. Tuesday: Sunny, with a high near 87. Tuesday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 66. Wednesday: Sunny, with a high near 88. Wednesday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 68. Thursday: Sunny, with a high near 88. Friday: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Cloudy, with a high near 77. North northeast wind around 10 mph. Friday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 63. North northeast wind 5 to 10 mph. Saturday: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 82. North wind 5 to 15 mph. Saturday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 64. Northeast wind 5 to 10 mph becoming north northwest after midnight. Sunday: Sunny, with a high near 85. North northeast wind 5 to 15 mph. Sunday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 60. Northeast wind 5 to 10 mph becoming light and variable after midnight. Monday: Sunny, with a high near 85. West northwest wind around 5 mph becoming east northeast in the afternoon. Monday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 62. East southeast wind around 5 mph. Tuesday: Sunny, with a high near 87. Tuesday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 66. Wednesday: Sunny, with a high near 88. Wednesday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 68. Thursday: Sunny, with a high near 88. A week after leaving Abilene, a group of Hardin-Simmons and McMurry university students arrived in Abilene. They weren't traveling in a circle. Instead, they pedaled their bicycles to Abilene, Kansas, the midway point to their final destination Canada's border with Minnesota. The bikers, students and former students in the Leadership Studies Program taught by HSU's Coleman Patterson, left Abilene, Texas, on May 25. They hauled their bicycles to Del Rio, then officially began their border-to-border bike ride May 27. The entire trip, about 1,800 miles, is expected to take 14 biking days over a 16-day period. The entourage arrived in Abilene, Kansas, on Thursday and headed straight for that city's convention and visitors bureau, where members were greeted by city officials. 'We're delighted to have the cyclists with us here,' said Mayor Dee Marshall. 'We were waiting for them.' The 10-member Texas group presented the Kansas officials with a plaque bearing a proclamation from Mayor Norm Archibald and a cowboy hat filled with gifts from Texas' Abilene Convention and Visitors Bureau. In return, the Texas cyclists were presented with a 'wheat weave,' a framed design made by weaving strands of Kansas' best-known product. 'It's really cool,' said Chris Carl, a Hardin-Simmons student on the bike ride. After the gift exchange, the group was taken on a tour of the historic town, which has a population of about 7,000. 'We learned all kinds of history,' Carl said. Of course, Abilene, Texas, is named for Abilene, Kansas, which was a railhead in the mid-1800s. It was made famous when Joseph McCoy, 'The Real McCoy,' saw an opportunity to drive cattle from South Texas to Abilene, Kansas, load them onto rail cars and ship them to eastern markets. Abilene, Texas, hoped to become a noted cattle town, too. Abilene, Kansas, still bears reminders of those days, with a Texas Street and the Alamo Saloon. Those and other 'Texas' namesakes came courtesy of McCoy, said Michael Player, executive director of the Abilene (Kansas) Convention and Visitors Bureau. 'He named everything after Texas,' Player said. At one time, Texas Street was home to 11 saloons, said Player, who is from Dallas and has visited Abilene, Texas. Today, Abilene, Kansas, features more historic sites and museums than saloons. The Abilene visitors found it to be as hospitable as their own city, with interesting sites and friendly hosts. 'It's a really nice town,' Carl said. The cyclists later Thursday headed for Clay Center, Kansas, where they planned to spend the night. The group has enjoyed mostly good weather so far. They are expected to arrive at their destination June 10. Once there, they will load their bikes into two support vehicles and begin the two-day drive home. If everything goes as smoothly the rest of the trip as it has thus far, they could arrive at the Canadian border sooner than expected. 'We've made really good time,' Carl said. 'Today, we've been flying down these roads.' ABILENE, KANSAS Incorporated: 1869 2010 U.S. Census population: 6,844 Location: On Interstate 70 Tidbits: Home of the Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum & Boyhood Home, honoring Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was born in Denison, Texas, and moved to Abilene, Kansas, with his family at age 2 Joseph McCoy, The Real McCoy, saw an opportunity when the Kansas Pacific Railroad was built to drive cattle from South Texas to Abilene, Kansas, and then ship them to eastern markets. Features Five Star Museum District and historic sites Home of The Worlds Largest Spur, a 27-foot, 2,000-pound steel spur designed by Larry Houston ABILENE, TEXAS Incorporated: 1881 2010 U.S. Census population: 117,063 Located: On Interstate 20 Tidbits: Named for Abilene, Kansas Home of three four-year universities and two two-year colleges Home of Dyess Air Force Base Storybook Capital of Texas Attractions include the Abilene Zoo, downtown museums, the National Center for Childrens Illustrated Literature, downtown storybook sculptures, the Childrens Art & Literacy Festival and the Western Heritage Classic Staff report Tammy Osborne, city secretary in Cisco, said the community's flooding situation was about the same Friday morning. 'We are still under a boil water notice, we're still under Stage 3 water restrictions,' she said. 'The water plant is not operational, so whatever water we have in our storage tanks, we're not going to be able to provide treated water to the city. We have engineers out there looking at what's damaged and what's salvageable, but we don't have a report in from them yet.' Individuals evacuated from North Shore Drive are still not able to return, Osborne said. 'Not everyone chose to evacuate, I don't think,' she said. 'But North Shore Drive is still closed, so you can't get in or out. We still have the lake closed so we're not taking anyone out there.' Osborne said that there was some flood damage in town, but the majority of the problems were out at the lake and the city's water plant. 'That's kind of our main concern right now: trying to figure out what the next step is to provide treated water to our citizens,' she said. Some potable water has been delivered to the Myrtle Wilks Community Center, which functions as Cisco's Red Cross center, Osborne said. 'We've got lots of people bringing in bottled water and stuff like that,' she said. Engineers with the Texas Department of Transportation were evaluating State Highway 6 near Lake Cisco following the washout of 200 to 300 feet of the roadway Thursday. The road had been closed about two hours before the washout, according to TxDOT. TxDOT will procure an emergency contract to rebuild the section of roadway, but the cost and how long it take is not known, according to a TxDOT news release. Meanwhile, about 30 miles north of Cisco, in Breckenridge, which also has had flooding, City Manager Andy McCuistion said that his community was still waiting for approval to remove a boil water notice for the citys northeast quadrant. The remaining three-quarters of the city came back clean. We sent those tests in yesterday, he said, McCuistion hoping to get results back by 3-4 pm. Friday. No roads were closed Friday afternoon, but officials in Breckenridge were watching area waterways closely, he said. Gunsolus Creek has been rising, he said. There was some more rain in the water shed this morning, and its risen about 10 feet or more. The city sent out another Code RED alert Friday, he said, to let residents in low-lying areas know water was rising. In addition to the creek, this whole Lake Cisco issue is affecting us, he said, sending water down Sandy Creek into Hubbard Creek Lake. We keep monitoring that, McCuistion said. They may well leave the gates open longer, but at this point, they have more water going in than they have going out. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below This just in... At the start of North Koreas summer fishing season, most of the countrys smaller fishing vessels remain anchored at dockside because of new regulations forbidding boats without wireless equipment from going to sea, North Korean sources say. The tightened rules appear aimed both at preventing sinkings in bad weather and at reducing defections by crews of the smaller craft, one source in North Hamgyong province, bordering China, told RFAs North Korean Service. The rules have been tightened since last March, with authorities exercising strict control over fishermens licenses and their possession of small radios, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Wireless equipment is being installed only on medium and large-size fishing vessels so that State Security Department officers can travel with their crews and monitor the communications networks, he said. The authorities are refusing permission for this equipment to be given to ordinary fishermen and their small boats, he said. Because wireless communications devices that receive weather alerts also operate like radios, people are able to listen to broadcasts from South Korea and the outside world when they are far out at sea, another source from North Hamgyong said. [Security] officers sailing with the bigger vessels keep a tight rein on their crews so that they have no access to the equipment, he said. Ghost ships Storms and engine failure kept many smaller craft, some of whose captains paid bribes to be allowed to sail, from returning safely to port last year, the source said. Many people die at sea because of high winds and waves or due to engine malfunction, with some boats left drifting in the coastal waters of Japan. Scores of so-called ghost ships carrying the decomposed remains of fishermen have been found floating off Japans west coast in recent years. North Koreas refusal to allow small fishing boats to leave port has resulted in widespread and severe hunger among the countrys poorer fishermen, with growing numbers now trying to escape the country by sea, the sources said. Reported by Jieun Kim for RFAs Korean Service. Translated by Dohyun Gwon. Written in English by Richard Finney. Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith this week appointed an ad hoc committee to enforce a nationwide ban on illegal logging within 60 days and block and prevent timber from leaving the country after some provinces were found to have violated a logging ban. The committee consists of high-ranking officials from government inspection agencies and anti-corruption organizations, along with the ministries of agriculture and forestry, natural resources and the environment, national defense, public security, industry and commerce, and finance, according to an announcement posted on social media. The committee will cooperate with relevant ministries, governors and mayors to implement the ban on timber exports issued on May 13, the announcement said. It also will support, inspect and monitor ministers, mayors and governors in implementing the ban on timber exports. The committee must report to the prime minister in all relevant sectors and local organizations refusing to implement the ban, it said. The committee must thoroughly inspect and identify areas of reserved and protected forests and production forests in each province, the announcement said. It will also monitor log smuggling in red zones along border areas. Thongloun said he issued the latest order based on public complaints on social media, especially Facebook, according to a Vientiane resident who has been following the issue online. Thongloun, who assumed office on April 20, issued a moratorium on May 13 requiring all ministries, provincial governors and mayors to implement strict measures to control and inspect the felling of trees, log transportation, and logging businesses to reduce rampant and widespread illegal shipments to neighboring countries. The moratorium forbids the export of logs, timber, processed wood, roots, branches and trees from natural forests as well as logs the previous government had recently approved for export. It also specifies that all types of wood must be turned into finished products before they are exported, according to standards set by the countrys Ministry of Industry and Commerce. Under cover of night The formation of the committee came on the heels of the explosion on Thursday of a passenger bus loaded with lumber in the Boualapha district of central Laos Khammouane province. Nine Vietnamese nationals who were working in Laos died, and three others were injured, according to local officials. Eight workers were killed on the spot and one died in the hospital, a witness who declined to be named told RFAs Laos Service. The explosion took place around 5 a.m., he said. I assume that the smugglers were taking advantage of the early morning hours to transport the timber, hoping to escape arrest by officials. Most timber smugglers load and transport trucks at night when there is less chance that police or other officials will detect their activities. The day of the bus explosion, several vehicles transporting logs passed through Saybouathong district in Khammouane, according to the person who witnessed the accident. Many trucks carrying huge logs traveled along Route 12 close to the Namphao border checkpoint in Boualapha district that leads into Vietnam, said another source who declined to be named. Laos has long suffered from the rampant smuggling of logs and timber to neighbors such as China and Vietnam where they are used to make furniture. The government previously issued moratoriums and notices of suspension of logging activities and bans on timber exports to deal with the problem, but to little avail. A report by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) leaked online last October revealed huge increases in illegal logging in Laos and suggested that government collusion had prompted some officials to take action to examine discrepancies in timber export and import figures with China and Vietnam. Reported by RFAs Lao Service. Translated by Ounkeo Souksavanh. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith on Wednesday ordered the countrys Ministry of Energy and Mines to investigate and address recent public complaints about skyrocketing electricity rates and ensure that consumers who have been overcharged receive compensation. The notice ordered the ministry, which owns and operates the countrys main generation, transmission and distribution assets, to cooperate with relevant agencies to inspect technical standards and address public complaints about a recent surge in electricity rates. Thongloun also told the ministry to investigate the causes of the rate hikes, correct erroneous charges, and reimburse households that were overcharged because of any fraudulent acts or errors by Electricite du Laos employees. The Ministry of Energy and Mines is assigned to explain and confirm the governments correct and transparent policy on energy development and use in order to ensure that peoples livelihoods are The ministry also must lead Electricite du Laosthe state corporation that operates the former French colonys power generation, transmission, and distribution systemin inspections of the companys staff performance to ensure employees are assigned appropriate duties that will prevent wrongful rate increases in the future and punish any wrongdoers, the presidents order said. Electricite du Laos is assigned to establish a center for public complaints on electricity issues and to send officials to clearly inspect each case with a high commitment to guarantee fairness and transparency for consumers, it said. The Ministry of Energy and Mines is assigned to study and adjust the electricity rates in accordance with economic standards and national development and submit them to the government for consideration, it added. Billing mistakes On the same day, Sisavath Thiravong, director general of Electricite du Laos, publicly apologized to consumers for some of the companys employees making mistakes in the calculation of electricity rates and amounts consumed. We are committed to providing better services and safe standards and quality to you [consumers], he said. Electricite du Laos has informed its staff throughout the country to address the problems in the areas where people have complained, which is expected to be completed within six months. Electricity prices began jumping in May following a regional heat wave that saw temperatures reaching unprecedented levels the month before, causing prices in some areas to more than triple. Though record heat often pushes up electricity rates as demand increases, consumers in the impoverished nation have complained heavily about rates being exorbitantly higher than usual and raised questions via social media about possible price gouging. Many also questioned the rate spikes at a time when Laos continues to build hydropower dams to generate power. Local media have run several reports about people who received excessively high electricity bills in May from Electricite du Laos. One report said that a consumer received a monthly electricity bill for as much as 66 million kip (U.S. $8,140) in May, although he normally pays about 200,000 kip (U.S. $25). Initial inspections by electricity authorities have found that nearly 50 electricity bills charging such high amounts were printed incorrectly, according to a report in the Vientiane Times. Three levels of electricity rates have been found to be inappropriate, and they resulted in negative impacts on standards of living for those who have low and mid-level incomes, Sisavath said. As part of the remedy, Electricite du Laos will create five rate levels, instead of using the current three to ensure consumers are fairly charged based on their living conditions and economic circumstances, he said. [The plan] is being reviewed by the Ministry of Energy and Mines, he said. Reported by RFAs Lao Service. Translated by Ounkeo Souksavanh. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. Chinas ambassador to Myanmar met on Friday with residents forced to relocate for the construction of the controversial China-backed Myitsone Dam project in Kachin state in a bid to gain local support for the restart of the project, a local resident and state official said. China wants to resume construction of the U.S. $3.6-billion hydropower project, which was temporarily halted by former President Thein Sein in 2011, Ambassador Hong Liang told Kachin Chief Minister Khent Aung and his cabinet during his first visit to the state. Work on the project, which was first approved under the previous military-backed government, was stopped amid fervent opposition because of the environmental destruction it was predicted to cause, as well as the huge flooding area it would create. Opponents also cited the dislocation of people living nearby, proximity to a geographical fault line, and unequal share of electricity output for Myanmar. Under the investment deal, about 90 percent of the electricity produced by the dam would go to southern Chinas Yunnan province. China Power Investment Corporation (CPI), which is building the dam, has provided new homes for the roughly 3,000 villagers who were forcibly relocated because of the dam project, although some have returned to their old dwellings after reporting leaks in the new structures when it rained. Hong and members of CPI visited displaced residents some of whom bore placards reading No Myitsone Damto talk to them about the hydropower construction project. Still against it We heard the Chinese ambassador and about 40 CPI officials were coming to visit us, protestor Ja Gang told RFAs Myanmar Service. We know they are about to resume the project. Now they are saying this is for the development of the area. We are very afraid of [those words]. We know theyve come about the project, she said. We were and still are against it. Chinas official Xinhua news agency, however, ran a report in Burmese saying the purpose of the visit was to observe the development of areas in Kachin state, a region important in Sino-Myanmar relations. Earlier on Friday, Hong and the delegation addressed the Kachin state legislature about plans to continue the project. He said he wants to resume the project if the people agree to it, said state environment minister H La Aung. We replied that we would ask the people what they want before we resume it, since we are a democratic country. We think our government will answer after a careful survey of public opinion on the project. Important cooperation project Myanmars new National League for Democracy (NLD) government has yet to decide whether to let CPI, one of Chinas largest state-owned electricity producers, continue building the 6,000-megawatt dam along the Irrawaddy River. In March, Chinas Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told a news conference that the dam is an important cooperation project and that its contract terms are still in force, Reuters reported. But State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi has been one of the Myitsone Dam projects most vocal opponents. Last November around the time of national elections which her NLD party won, she assured the Chinese that she wanted to continued friendly relations between the two nations and welcomed Chinese investment in Myanmar, as long as investors won the trust of the Myanmar people. Chinese-backed companies are the largest foreign investors in Myanmar, but their heavy-handed tactics in exploiting Myanmars natural resources and building large infrastructure projects have sparked vehement public opposition. Reported by Kyaw Myo Min and Zin Mar Win for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Kyaw Min Htun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi has nominated her personal physician Tin Myo Win, shown here on Oct. 25, 2014, as the government's new peace envoy. A Myanmar government peace delegation met on Friday with a new group formed by an alliance of armed ethnic groups that did not sign last years nationwide cease-fire agreement, the administrations peace envoy said. The meeting was held in the run-up to a national peace conference the government has scheduled for July. The Union Peace Conference Preparation Committee, led by Tin Myo Win, held a two-hour meeting with the United Nationalities Federal Councils (UNFC) Delegation for Political Negotiation (DPN) in Chiang Mai, Thailand, to invite its members to participate a political dialogue framework meeting scheduled for next week, he said. The rebel groups comprising the UNFC did not sign the governments nationwide cease-fire agreement (NCA) last October because they objected to the exclusion of certain armed ethnic groups and disagreed with the political dialogue framework drafted by the signatories. The ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) government, however, sees their participation in its upcoming Panglong Conference as vital. It wants to get them on board by first getting them to collaborate on a political dialogue framework, and then having them sign the NCA, he said. The outcome of the meeting was much better than was expected, with the rebel leaders agreeing to meet Aung San Suu Kyi soon, Tin Myo Win said. The good news is that Ive got an answer that all will cooperate and attend the conference, he said. Thats the important point. Our invitation is for all to review the framework terms and the NCA. Then we will move on to signing the cease-fire pact. Before the next step Aung San Suu Kyi intends to include all rebel groups in what she says will be a 21st-century Panglong Conference before the next step in political dialogue, he said. Aung San Suu Kyis father, General Aung San, held talks known as the Panglong Conference in February 1947 to grant autonomy to the Shan, Kachin and Chin ethnic minorities. But his assassination five months later prevented the agreements from reaching fruition, and many ethnic groups took up arms against the central government in wars that then went on for decades. The armed ethnic leaders who attended Fridays meeting all expressed good faith in Aung San Suu Kyis commitment to peace, Tin Myo Win said. Major General Gwan Maw, the DPNs deputy leader and a high-ranking officer in the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), asked the government team about its stand on three specific rebel groupsthe Arakan Army (AA), Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA), and Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA)excluded from the NCA by the previous government. Tin Myo Win replied that the government peace team would try to include all the groups at the conference, even if they did not want to sign the NCA. They can attend and review the meeting without signing the NCA, and we will try to be flexible later on so they can sign it if they agree to do so, he said. Under Thein Sein, the NCA non-signatories were invited as observers to the previous government-initiated peace conference, but were not allowed to participate in discussions. Separate meetings Tin Myo Wins peace team is also arranging a separate meeting next week with the MNDAA and the United Wa State Army (UWSA), which control semi-independent zones along Myanmars border with China, the Myanmar Times reported. Under the previous government, the two rebel groups, who are not UNFC members, called for separate autonomous states. Ongoing conflict between the Myanmar military and various armed ethnic groups is seen as hindering economic development in the impoverished country. But the national army has insisted that the rebels disarm as a precondition for their participation in the peace process. Reported by Aung Moe Myint and Khin Maung Soe for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Kyaw Min Htun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. A campaign this week to demolish unapproved structures along a stretch of scenic Qinghai Lake has resulted so far in the destruction of over 600 homes and shops, with not only Tibetan but also Muslim and Han Chinese property owners affected, sources say. The assault beginning June 1 on Tanakma (in Chinese, Heimahe) township in Chabcha (Gonghe) county in the Tsolho (Hainan) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture was carried out by hundreds of police officers led by a county official and accompanied by heavy machinery, sources in the region told RFAs Tibetan Service. More than 600 structures, mostly shops and restaurants but including private dwellings, have been torn down so far, with demolition expected to continue after a weekend break, a local resident told RFA. A third of these belonged to Tibetans, with the rest belonging to Muslims and [Han] Chinese, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The reason given for the buildings destruction was they were illegal structures, the source said. However, the owners said that they had applied to officials for permits to build but had failed to pay them bribes, and that authorities had then turned down their applications, he said. Shackled, detained Five property ownersthree Tibetans and two Muslimshad protested the destruction of their properties and were put in shackles by police, but were released after being detained for a day, he said. We fear that neighboring areas like Chang Shikhuk, Hodon Yangtrang, and Chik Nga Chik may be the next targets of the government demolition plan, he added. Tibetan landowners in Chabcha are often forced to sell their properties to wealthy businessmen who pay bribes to local authorities to force the sale, one source said in an earlier report. And when Tibetans try to resist the taking of their land, county officials crack down on them. It is extremely rare to find even one county leader who is fair and reasonable in his dealings with Tibetans, he said. Both officials and business owners exploit the land owned by the nomadic community. Tibetans living in China frequently complain of political, economic, and religious discrimination as well as human rights abuses, and sporadic demonstrations challenging rule by Beijing have continued in Tibetan-populated areas since widespread protests swept the region in 2008. Reported by Kunsang Tenzin for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney. The Taliban spring offensive is well under way in northern Afghanistan. Barely three years ago, northern Afghanistan was a relatively peaceful part of the country. It was a welcome situation for the governments of the Central Asian states, who fear Afghanistan's problems could create instability among its neighbors. This year there is fighting in all eight of the Afghan provinces that border Central Asia. It's been close to two decades since there was such widespread violence along Central Asia's southern border. RFE/RL's Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk, spoke with officials in Faryab Province, one the Afghan provinces bordering Turkmenistan, to try to get a picture of the situation there. Colonel Reza Rezai is the spokesman for the Afghan National Army's 209th Brigade, which is stationed in northern Afghanistan. "As of June 1, there is heavy fighting in the Gormach district, several militants were killed and security forces had casualties also," Rezai said. "The districts of Qaysar, Dowlatebad, and Khoja Sebiz Posh came under attack and traffic on the Ankhoi-Maymana highway is suspended." The Gormach and Dowlatebad districts border Turkmenistan. Ankhoi is where the planned Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan railway is supposed to enter Afghanistan from Turkmenistan. Rezai said that "the security post in Khoja Sebiz Posh has been overrun by militants," as have two villages in the district. "Eighteen villages in Qaysar district are currently under the control of militants, and the Taliban also has an overwhelming presence in the Pashtun Kot district." The chief of the Faryab provincial council, Tahir Rahmani, echoed Rezai's assessment. Rahmani said there was "fierce fighting" going on in Pashtun Kot district and also that militants were getting closer to the provincial capital, Maymana. Jawid Bedar, the spokesman for the Faryab governor, said fighting was nearing Maymana and that without reinforcements the city could fall. Bedar said the militants had blocked the highway leading east from Maymana to Sheberghan, capital of Jowzjan Province. Local officials told Azatlyk that most of the militants in Faryab are from Central Asia -- Turkmen, Uzbeks, and some Tajiks. These officials also said the militants had control of some areas adjacent to the Turkmen border. The security problems in northwest Afghanistan continue despite several trips to the region by Afghan Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum, a former general who comes from the region. Dostum has led at last four offensives against militants in northwest Afghanistan since the summer of 2015. His forces have chased the militants from many regions, but when Dostum departs the militants return. Azatlyk director Muhammad Tahir contributed to this report Bosnia-Herzegovina's debt-ridden public broadcaster, BHRT, has announced it will go off the air at the end of June unless the government and parliament can solve its funding problems. In a statement on June 3, it urged the Bosnian authorities to urgently take measures to prevent their country from becoming the only European state without an active national public-service broadcaster. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which counts BHRT as a member, voiced "deep concern" over the situation. The BHRT is funded by license fees collected as part of telephone bills. However, the collection has been in decline for years as Bosnians increasingly cancel fixed phone lines and switch to mobile phones. The BHRT owes the EBU some 5.5 million euros ($6.2 million). Parliament is due to debate a new law on the collection of license fees for the public broadcaster on June 15. Based on reporting by AP Attackers have shot dead a police officer in Russia's North Caucasus region of Daghestan in his home in front of his wife and two children. Daghestani officials said on June 3 that at least two intruders had broken into the police officer's house in the village of Ashaga-Stal overnight and shot the man. The police officer died on the spot, while the attackers managed to flee the scene. Local law enforcement authorities have launched a security operation to catch the attackers. Daghestan has been at the epicenter of a wave of violence by armed criminal groups and militants seeking to establish an Islamic state in the North Caucasus. Police, journalists, and government officials are regularly targeted in attacks. Based on reporting by Interfax and TASS One has to wonder why there is any question or any debate about the European Union renewing sanctions against Russia when EU leaders meet in Brussels later this month. Russia's aggression in the Donbas has not stopped. In fact, in recent weeks it's only intensified. At least 37 Ukrainian soldiers were killed by Moscow-backed separatists in May alone. The Ukrainian military claims that there were 51 attacks on their positions in the past day. Moscow has made no moves whatsoever to return Ukraine's border to Kyiv's control. Russia is blocking the introduction of armed peacekeepers in the Donbas. Dozens of Ukrainian citizens remain unjustly incarcerated in Russia. And reports emerged this week that Russia may be garnering its forces for a fresh offensive to push south to secure a land bridge to the annexed Crimean Peninsula. All this, one would think, suggests that sanctions should be intensified, not eased. And yet German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said last week that sanctions should not be seen as an end in themselves and that an all-or-nothing approach has failed. Several EU states, including Austria, Greece, Hungary, and Italy, are wavering. And the authoritative German weekly Der Spiegel has reported that EU leaders were considering a step-by-step easing of sanctions. If that happens, it would send an unmistakable message to Vladimir Putin: Might makes right, aggression pays, and rules do not matter. The Daily Vertical and all Power Vertical products will take a brief break and will not appear from June 6-10. But we'll be back in action on June 13. So until then, keep telling me what you think on The Power Vertical's Twitter feed and on our Facebook page. Former Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili says the South Caucasus nation "must absolutely" join NATO and the European Union, but cautioned that it will first have to overcome Russia's disapproval. "We must patiently strengthen our democratic institutions, we must make our economy flourish and wait for the right time, when Russia realizes, and when our allies see that it's time for Georgia to become a member of NATO and the EU," Ivanishvili said in a televised interview for RFE/RL and the Georgian Public Broadcaster on June 2. "We must patiently wait for all of this." He said that Georgia's Western ambitions "do not contradict Russia's interests, although Russia's current leadership considers that this is dangerous for their state." Ivanishvili, Georgia's richest man, is seen as wielding vast political influence in Georgia despite stepping down as prime minister in November 2013. He is the founder and figurehead of Georgian Dream, the leading party in the former Soviet republic's ruling coalition, and is widely believed to exert control over current Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili. His $5.5 billion fortune is equal to half of the country's gross domestic product. Russian Veto? His remarks about Georgia's NATO and EU aspirations were striking because they seem to suggest Russia has a veto on its small southern neighbor's entry into the transatlantic institutions something Western officials say is not and must never be the case. Russia strongly opposes NATO membership for Georgia. Analysts say one of Moscow's main motives in its five-day war with Tbilisi in 2008 was to keep the nation out of the Western military alliance. Unlike former President Mikheil Saakashvili, a staunchly pro-Western figure whose party was ousted from control of parliament by Georgian Dream in 2012, Ivanishvili has maintained a conciliatory tone toward Russia over the years. The interview came weeks ahead of the next NATO summit, which will be held in Warsaw on July 8-9, and months before Georgian parliamentary elections in October. Georgian Defense Minister Tinatin Khidasheli has voiced hope that the Warsaw summit will put Georgia on a firm path to joining the alliance and that Georgia's bid will be "judged on its own merits" -- meaning that Russia's views on the matter should not be a factor. At its 2008 summit in Bucharest, NATO said that Georgia would eventually become a member, but that appears unlikely to happen any time soon. In December 2015, NATO dealt a blow to Georgia's membership aspirations by requiring that the country complete a Membership Action Plan (MAP) -- a stage of accession that Tbilisi had actively lobbied to skip. The alliance, however, has yet to offer Georgia a MAP. One stumbling block on the path to Georgian accession to NATO is the Russian troop presence in its breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia recognized both of them as independent countries after the war in 2008. In his interview with InterVIEW, a weekly talk show run jointly by RFE/RL's Georgian Service and the Georgian Public Broadcaster, Ivanishvili said that Moscow's actions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia "run against the strategic interests" of Georgia. While noting what he described as "positive steps" in bilateral relations, he said the conflict prevented both countries from restoring ties. Diplomatic relations between Russia and Georgia were severed shortly after the 2008 war. Written by Claire Bigg, based on reporting by RFE/RL Georgian Service correspondent Salome Asatiani. A wealthy gold trader charged with helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions asked a U.S. judge on June 2 to let him hire armed guards so he can stay in New York under house arrest while awaiting trial. An attorney for Reza Zarrab, 32, said an apartment already has been outfitted for home detention, with video cameras and security alarms to guard against an escape. He said the Turkish-Iranian businessman was ready to provide $10 million in cash to secure a $50 million bail package, and he even agreed that guards should be authorized to shoot him if he tries to escape. There is precedent in Manhattan for letting wealthy defendants remain on bail when they pay for security. Ponzi king Bernard Madoff remained under guard in his apartment for several months after his December 2008 arrest for cheating thousands of investors out of billions of dollars. He is now serving a 150-year prison sentence. The U.S. government said Zarrab, who was arrested in March, should remain jailed until trial because a makeshift private prison cannot guarantee he won't flee. Based on reporting by AP and Reuters ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- Police in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, have detained opposition activists who planned to hold a rally to challenge next month's early presidential election. Bibigul Imanghalieva, a member of the unregistered Algha, Qazaqstan (Kazakhstan, Forward) party, told RFE/RL by phone that she and several of her colleagues were detained for several hours early in the morning in different parts of the city before they could hold the demonstration, which was to fall on October 25, Republic Day, which commemorates Kazakhstan's declaration of state sovereignty in 1990. According to Imanghalieva, leading activists, Aset Abishev, Aidar Syzdyqov, and Qanatkhan Amrenov, were among those detained. She added that she and other activists were released three hours later. Imanghalieva says she and other members of the unregistered party had officially filed a request with the Almaty city administration last week asking for permission to hold a rally on October 25. Other activists told RFE/RL that the chairwoman of an independent group of election observers, Arailym Nazarova, was also detained by police. Her mobile phone has been switched off since the morning of October 25. In the capital, Astana, police cordoned off a square near Zhengis (Victory) Avenue where activists had planned to gather, not allowing anyone to enter the site. At least two activists were detained there. Opposition activist Amangeldy Zhakhin said on Facebook on October 25 that police did not allow him to leave the village of Shortandy on October 25 as they tried to prevent his trip to Astana, the capital, where he planned to organize a rally to question the election, scheduled for November 20, at which incumbent President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev will face off against five relatively unknown candidates. Activists in the cities of Aqsai, Pavlodar, and Oskemen also said they were blocked from travelling to Astana to take part in a rally. Toqaev, who has tried to position himself as a reformer, called the early presidential election on September 1 while also proposing to change the presidential term to seven years from five years. Under the new system, future presidents will be barred from seeking more than one term. Critics say Toqaev's initiatives have been mainly cosmetic and do not change the nature of the autocratic system in a country that has been plagued for years by rampant corruption and nepotism. Toqaev's predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbaev, who had run the tightly controlled former Soviet republic with an iron fist for almost three decades, chose Toqaev as his successor when he stepped down in 2019. Though he was no longer president, Nazarbaev retained sweeping powers as the head of the Security Council. He also enjoyed substantial powers by holding the title of elbasy or leader of the nation. Many citizens, however, remained upset by the oppression felt during Nazarbaev's reign. Those feelings came to a head in January when unprecedented anti-government nationwide protests started over a fuel price hike, and then exploded into countrywide deadly unrest over perceived corruption under the Nazarbaev regime and the cronyism that allowed his family and close friends to enrich themselves while ordinary citizens failed to share in the oil-rich Central Asian nation's wealth. Toqaev subsequently stripped Nazarbaev of his Security Council role, taking it over himself. Since then, several of Nazarbaevs relatives and allies have been pushed out of their positions or resigned. Some have been arrested on corruption charges. In June, a Toqaev-initiated referendum removed Nazarbaev's name from the constitution and annulled his status as elbasy. Poland says it will start recruiting in September for a new 35,000-strong paramilitary force amid tensions with Russia. Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said on June 2 that the force's command structure and senior appointments had already been decided. Priority in deployment will be given to eastern provinces deemed to be the most exposed to Russian pressure. Comprising civilian volunteers trained in military skills, officials said the force is aimed at countering "hybrid warfare of the kind that Western officials say Russia used to seize Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and support separatists in the country's east. In April, Macierewicz said the new paramilitary force was needed because Poland "is threatened by the actions of our neighbor Russia, which makes no secret of its aggressive intentions. Based on reporting by AFP and dpa WASHINGTON -- RFE/RL welcomed the publication this week of an online, fully searchable database of audio programs produced over decades by its Russian Service, known as Radio Svoboda. RFE/RL Editor in Chief Nenad Pejic called the initiative a shining example of cooperation and commitment among RFE/RL and its partners, the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (OSA) and the Hoover Institution Library & Archives. Citing the extensive efforts of OSA to organize, preserve and afford public access to these historical materials, Pejic said, Today, when Russians are again relying on RFE/RL and Radio Svoboda for credible news, these archived programs take on a new meaning. The archive includes more than 26,000 audio clips broadcast into the Soviet Union and Russian Federation by Radio Svoboda from 1953, the year the service was established in Munich, West Germany, to 1995, when RFE/RL moved from Munich to Prague, Czech Republic. Highlights of the collection include news and political programs about the U.S.S.R. and the world as reported by distinguished emigre journalists, writers and historians, on-air readings of banned literary works and poetry recitals; and unique radio plays authored by such luminaries of Russian letters as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Viktor Nekrasov, Joseph Brodsky, Vladimir Voinovich, Alexander Ginzburg, and Eugenia Ginzburg. The archive also includes Radio Svobodas collection of samizdat, or clandestinely published materials that provided news about trials, imprisonments, and forbidden expressions of life behind the Iron Curtain; and talk shows that connected Soviet audiences with Russian exile culture. Cooperation on the project started in 2014 with the intent, expressed by OSA, that providing free and unlimited on-line access to this collection of more than 10,000 hours of broadcasts would facilitate free and critical thinking, and encourage expanded research into Soviet era culture and politics. The Hoover Institution Archives provided support to Radio Svoboda journalists who digitized and described the contents of the Russian audio archive. The Hoover Archives then authorized OSA to complete the creation of metadata for the digitized audio and prepare the archive for publication online. Public access to RFE/RLs broadcast and corporate archives at the Hoover Institution has expanded significantly in recent years, with updated finding aids for both the broadcast and corporate archives now available in the Online Archive of California. Several parts of RFE/RLs vast research archives, which are deposited at OSA, are now available for online research, including collections of RFE Information Items, RFE/RL Situation Reports, RFE/RL Background Reports, RFE/RL Polish Underground Press, and Soviet and Russian Television Monitoring. OSA has also made available online parts of the pre-1971 corporate records of the Free Europe Committee (FEC), the legal predecessor of RFE/RL), including digital copies of encrypted Telex messages between FECs office in New York and RFE headquarters in Munich from 1960 to 1964. # # # About RFE/RL RFE/RL is a private, independent international news organization whose programs -- radio, Internet, television, and mobile -- reach influential audiences in 23 countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus. It is funded by the U.S. Congress through the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). About the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives Established in 1995, the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (OSA) at Central European University (CEU) is both a repository of important collections, primarily related to the history of the Cold War and grave international human rights violations, and a laboratory of archival experiments on new ways of assessing, contextualizing, presenting, and making use of archival documents. About the Hoover Institution Library & Archives Founded by Herbert Hoover in 1919, the Hoover Institution Library & Archives are dedicated to documenting war, revolution, and peace in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. With nearly one million volumes and more than six thousand archival collections from 171 countries, the Hoover Institution supports a vibrant community of scholars and a broad public interested in the meaning and role of history. Standing before a classical Greek frieze at a press conference in Athens last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin presented his visit in terms suggesting a thinly disguised quid pro quo. He promised to expand Russian investment in Greece's hard-hit economy and asked for Athens' support in lifting EU sanctions on Moscow. "Greece can affect [Russia's] relationships with the European Union," he said, before adding with a verbal wink, "even if we don't expect the Labors of Hercules in the courtyard of the European bureaucracy." The Russian leader got the response he wanted. Standing beside him, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said, "Everyone recognizes that there cannot exist a future for the European continent with the European Union and Russia at loggerheads." The exchange was notable for its timing. It came just weeks ahead of an EU heads-of-state summit where the bloc's leaders will consider whether to renew the trade and financing sanctions they slapped on Moscow in 2014 over its actions in Ukraine, where it seized Crimea and has allegedly lent military support to separatist fighters. There is slim hope for Moscow that the EU leaders meeting in Brussels on June 28 and 29 will opt not to renew the sanctions, which expire in July. Diplomats in Brussels tell RFE/RL privately that EU leaders are so confident that their countries will agree beforehand to do so that they've scheduled only a very brief time for discussing the sanctions at the summit itself. That is so attendees can devote most of the summit to discussing the fallout from Britain's June 23 Brexit poll instead. But torpedoing the renewal of the sanctions this month is not what Moscow is asking Athens or anyone else to do. Instead, Moscow is reaching out to EU states to undermine the bloc's unity in hopes of encouraging them to use their power of veto to ultimately end or dilute the sanctions regime, which requires unanimous renewal every six months. "It's a way of over time slicing into the Western unity that has held so relatively strongly vis-a-vis Russia over the last two years and to create a dynamic whereby, one by one, countries will be returning to what seems to be business as usual with Russia," says Joerg Forbrig, a Berlin-based Russia expert with the German Marshall Fund of the United States. "Even if the Russia sanctions are being extended by the EU now, they will be up for renewal again at the end of the year," he says. "And then against the backdrop of this dynamic it will probably be much harder to do this." Putin's trip was part of a flurry of recent Russian diplomacy that also saw Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visit Budapest a day earlier. As Lavrov promised increased trade, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto suggested Budapest could respond by pushing for greater debate over the sanctions in the future. "We are against using an automatic procedure [for extending sanctions]," Szijjarto said, "We want discussions [in Brussels] on a high political level." Divide And Conquer? Moscow's strategy seeks to persuade Europeans that as the sanctions move through their third year, it is not only Russia that is suffering. For Russia, the sanctions, coupled with low oil prices, caused its gross domestic product to drop by 3.7 percent in 2015, with the World Bank forecasting a further drop of 1.9 percent this year. The EU, like the United States, has cut off Russian state enterprises from access to Western financial markets, making it ever harder for them to get the capital they need to grow. But the EU is also hit by shrinking business with Russia, its third-largest trade partner. A study by the independent Austrian Institute of Economic Research in Vienna in June 2015 estimated that Europe's economy stands to lose 100 billion euros ($111 billion) due to the Russia sanctions, putting around 2 million jobs at risk. Russia has tried to add to the pain by slapping its own sanctions on the EU in the form of import bans, most of them affecting agricultural products. Whether this means EU resolve over the sanctions can be cracked, however, is another question. Several countries, including Greece, Hungary, Italy, Cyprus, and Slovakia, have been vocal in complaining about the economic pain they feel. But so far, none of the grumbling has translated into signs of open revolt. "It is quite unlikely to have just one or two countries deciding to veto the prolongation of the sanctions, because they would really isolate themselves inside the EU and would face a lot of pressure from the other EU member states," says Paul Ivan of the European Policy Center in Brussels. Any revolt would put the mostly Eastern European and Balkan states that were once closely tied to the Russian market up against the sanctions' strongest backers: Germany, France, Britain, Sweden, Poland, and the Baltic states. That is a battle few of the states Russia is courting are in a position to wage. Greece, for example, is heavily dependent on Germany and France as the main creditors of its eurozone bailout. And Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is already under fire in Brussels over his unilateral actions at the height of Europe's migrant crisis last year. Germany and France are committed to the sanctions because lifting them is tied to full implementation of the Minsk II accords negotiated between Kyiv, Paris, Berlin, and Moscow in February 2015 to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine -- something that looks unlikely at this point. The EU imposed sanctions on Russia after Moscow occupied and annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014, then stepped them up later that year over Russia-backed separatists challenging Kyiv's authority in eastern Ukraine, where more than 9,300 people have been killed. Third Way? But if no EU states are currently demanding the lifting of sanctions, Russia can hope that increased grumbling will make it difficult for EU leaders to avoid opening the subject to debate as the sanctions come up regularly for review. And that raises the possibility that even if sanctions remain in place, they may gradually be softened. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier hinted at such a path in Tallinn on May 27, when he suggested the EU might gradually reduce sanctions if Moscow takes steps to fulfill its obligations under the Minsk accords. It was unclear whether he was expressing the views of the German government or his own impressions as a leader of the junior coalition Social Democrats. Bloomberg View columnist Leonid Bershidsky wrote that Germany's Social Democrats have long favored a softening of Russia sanctions and that "both the Kremlin and influential European figures are looking for ways to start defusing the standoff without losing face." He predicted a weakening of the sanctions' restrictions in the coming months. But other analysts say that while debate of the sanctions may increase, EU policy will not change unless Moscow takes steps to begin implementing the Minsk II agreement. The accords call for pulling out all foreign armed groups, withdrawing heavy weaponry from the conflict zone, returning control of Ukraine's border to Kyiv, and ensuring local elections in separatist-held parts of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions. "If a country in the EU would come out with the statement that they will block the consensus for prolonging the sanctions, they would have to have very strong arguments," says Kalev Stoicescu of the International Center for Defense and Security in Tallinn. "The immediate question would be: What has Russia done in this respect, have there been any initiatives to show Russia really wants to change its course?" He says the dilemma for the EU is that it cannot afford to lift or ease the sanctions regime if that appears to reward Russia for aggression. Doing so would reawaken memories of 2008, when the EU considered -- but stopped short of -- imposing sanctions on Moscow over its war with Georgia. At the time, Lavrov heaped scorn on then-French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner for saying he would consider sanctions. "My friend Kouchner has also said we will soon attack Moldova and Ukraine and the Crimea...but that is a sick imagination and probably that applies to sanctions as well," Lavrov said in Dushanbe in August 2008. Six years later, the West looked on with dread as Russia annexed Crimea and Russia-backed separatists launched a war against Kyiv in eastern Ukraine, moves that some observers regard as a frontal assault on the post-Cold War order. RFE/RL's Brussels correspondent Rikard Jozwiak contributed to this report WASHINGTON -- U.S. authorities have arrested a Russian woman in an apparent child custody battle, drawing a public protest from the Kremlin's top child welfare official. Olga Pimanova, 30, was detained by sheriffs in Cook County, Illinois -- where Chicago is located -- and booked May 20 a charge of indirect civil contempt, according to police records. She told the Russian tabloid Life News in a June 3 interview that she was arrested as she stepped off a plane and is currently under house arrest on charges of unlawfully taking her daughter out of the United States in a dispute with her ex-husband. Her arrest drew an angry response from Russian President Vladimir Putin's official children's rights ombudsman, Pavel Astakhov, who accused U.S. authorities of detaining Pimanova on a "contrived pretext." He said on Twitter that the woman is being "held as a hostage." Astakhov, a high-profile advocate for a Russian law banning U.S. citizens from adopting Russian children that was widely criticized by Western governments and rights activists, said that Pimanova had taken her daughter from the United States to Russia two years ago. "We are categorically against and deem such demand as unlawful," Astakhov said. The dispute appears to stem from her divorce from Jorge Castillo, which was filed in December 2104, according to Cook County court records. A phone message left with Castillo's lawyers was not immediately returned. Yury Melnik, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington, said the embassy learned of the case from Pimamova's relatives. "We requested from U.S. authorities official documentation explaining the circumstances of her arrest and the charges she is facing," Melnik told RFE/RL in an email, adding that they had yet to receive a reply. U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said at a June 3 news briefing in Washington that he did not have any details about the case but that "obviously consular visitation would be expected" for a foreign citizen under arrest in the United States. Russia has long voiced anger over cases involving alleged abuse of adopted Russian children in the United States. It has also vehemently defended Russian parents involved in custody battles in Western countries. In 2012, Russia passed a law banning adoptions of Russian children by Americans. Officials said the law was prompted by the case of a boy who died in 2008 three months after being adopted from Russia when his American father left him in a sweltering hot car for nine hours. But critics of the law said it was passed in response to sanctions imposed by the U.S. government related to a brazen tax fraud case and the death of whistleblowing tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. In an interview with Life News, Pimanova said she was jailed on what she described as child abduction charges. She said her ex-husband had sought custody of the girl after their divorce, even though, she said, there is no evidence that he is the child's biological father. A hearing in the case is scheduled for June 6. DUSHANBE -- Another son of a Tajik lawyer, who is representing a prominent opposition figure, has been jailed. A court in the western city of Vahdat on June 2 sentenced Daler Tabarov to six months in prison for failure to report an unspecified crime. Tabarov's brother, Firuz Tabarov, was sentenced to 13 1/2 years in prison in February for promoting antistate propaganda. Their father, lawyer Ishok Tabarov, told RFE/RL earlier that the charges against his sons were politically motivated. Tabarov is a lawyer for opposition businessman Zayd Saidov, the leader of the unregistered New Tajikistan opposition party. Saidov has been serving a 29-year prison term since 2013. He was found guilty of financial fraud, polygamy, and sexual relations with a minor. Saidov and his supporters deny the charges, saying they are politically motivated. The key expectations of the European Commission towards Ukraine are linked to the quick reform of the energy market and the adoption of laws on the electricity market and the national regulator, as well as the continuation of the gas market reform, DTEK CEO Maksym Tymchenko said after a meeting with Vice-President of the European Commission Maros Sefcovic this week in Brussels. "Now one of the key priorities of the European Commission is designing and introducing a new electricity market model. The commission also is keeping a close eye to the fate of the measure on the regulator," he told Interfax-Ukraine, commenting on the recent talks. Tymchenko recalled that the energy market reform is the condition for providing two macro-financial assistance tranches of EUR 600 million each to Ukraine. "If the draft laws are passed by the end of June, I am sure that we would be able to see large progress in the electricity market and the gas market by the end of the year," he said. He added that the issue of reliable operation of heat generating facilities in the coming autumn and winter period and stability of anthracite supplies from the territories that are not under control of Ukraine were discussed. "Unfortunately, today the situation is complicated by the absence of mechanisms for paying salaries to Ukrzaliznytsia's employees who work in the uncontrolled territory," Tymchenko said. He said that if the issue of railways operation is settled, Ukraine's heat generating facilities would have enough anthracite stocks. The DTEK chief said that European partners are concerned with the traditional issue of gas and Ukraine's energy security. He said that their position is unchanged: Ukraine would be able to satisfy its needs in gas in five years using Ukrainian-produced gas and transparent rules on the gas market. Tymchenko said that DTEK was able to triple gas production in the past two and a half years and seeks to produce over 1.5 billion cubic meters by the end of this year. "My feeling is that for colleagues from Brussels it is important to understand and be sure that the reform process is irreversible and would not slow down Steeling the phrase of Sefcovic "We need good stories coming from Ukraine," Tymchenko said. He also noted that the work on the new memorandum of understanding in the energy sphere is underway. It would reaffirm the status of energy cooperation and five key directions laid to the strategy of the Energy Community: energy security, integrated electricity market, energy efficiency, environment protection and research and innovations. ON MY MIND For all of Russia's bluster about the United States and NATO, Moscow's real problem is actually with Europe and the European Union. It is the EU that presents a model of governance close to Russia's borders that directly challenges the kleptocracy in the Kremlin. It is the EU that creates a magnetic pull on Moscow's former Soviet vassals. As Yale University professor Timothy Snyder recently put it, "Europe is fundamentally a domestic problem for Russia" and "as long as Putin is in power, they are not going to stop trying to undo the European Union." This is something for EU leaders to consider as they debate extending sanctions later this month. Russia's conflict with Europe will be the subject of today's Power Vertical Podcast, which will feature Mark Galeotti of New York University and Andrew Wilson or the European Council on Foreign Relations. IN THE NEWS A senior adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel says it is too early to discuss easing sanctions on Russia. The Ukrainian parliament has adopted a series of judicial reforms backed by the West. After days of leaks and vaguely sourced reports, Vladivostok Mayor Igor Pushkaryov has finally been formally charged with corruption and abuse of office. But the Vladivostok branch of United Russia has failed to strip Pushkaryov of his party membership. The situation in eastern Ukraine after two years of conflict "remains volatile and continues to have a severe impact on human rights," according to a new United Nations report. The European Parliament has decided to reestablish contacts with Russias lower house of parliament, the State Duma. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said the military alliance is not seeking confrontation with Russia by bolstering its battalions in Eastern Europe. WHAT I'M READING The Failed Revolution Why did Russia's popular uprising of 2011-12 fail? This is a question Marc Bennett addresses in his book I'm Going To Ruin Their Lives: Inside Putins War On Russia's Opposition. In a review in OpenDemocracy this week, Moscow-based journalist James Kovpak argues that Bennett pulls off the task. "I'm Going To Ruin Their Lives serves as an excellent primer for anyone trying to get a handle on Russian politics not just from the Putin era, but from the very beginning in 1991," Kovpak writes. "How else can you hope to explain all the contradictions and Phillip K. Dick-level twists and turns of Russian politics so someone with no background in Russian politics can accept the idea that 'liberals' who are at the same time xenophobic nationalists are indeed a real thing?" Explaining The War In Ukraine Also in OpenDemocracy, Mary Kaldor, a professor at the London School of Economics, reviews two books that offer starkly different assessments of the underlying causes of the Russian intervention in Ukraine: Richard Sakwas Frontline Ukraine: Crisis In The Borderlands and Andrew Wilsons Ukraine Crisis: What It Means For The West "But they put forward two starkly opposed narratives. Richard Sakwas book is the geopolitical reading favoured by Putin that Russia was reacting to the westwards expansion of NATO. The other, from Andrew Wilson, is what I call the 'political marketplace' reading that Russia could not accept a democratic revolution in Ukraine, which would expose the dealings of both Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs," Kaldor writes. For the record, I'm with Wilson on this one. Looking Ahead To The NATO Summit The European Leadership Network has just released three commentaries looking ahead to the NATO summit in Warsaw on July 8-9. Klaus Naumann, the former chief of staff of the German armed forces, looks at three crucial decisions that will be made at the summit. Former French Defense Minister Paul Quiles argues that while a major policy shift will not be solidified until a new U.S. president is in office, the alliance must make some important changes in Warsaw. And former deputy NATO commander John McColl argues that a key challenge for the alliance will be prioritizing the multiple threats it faces. Gorbachev In Winter Neil MacFarquhar of The New York Times spoke to former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev about his legacy and Vladimir Putin's Russia. "In his twilight years, Mr. Gorbachev has become an isolated figure. Most of his contemporaries are dead. He is just critical enough about the lack of democracy under Mr. Putin that state-run television channels avoid him. His death has been announced more than once," MacFarquhar writes. Russia's Islamic State In a piece in The Wall Street Journal, Yaroslav Trofimov shows how Chechnya became "Russia's Islamic State." "In theory, Chechnya -- though overwhelmingly Muslim -- is an integral part of the secular Russian Federation, governed by the same laws as Moscow. In practice, however, this North Caucasus republic of 1.4 million people, ravaged by two wars of secession, lives under very different rules," Trofimov writes. The Paradoxes Of Lviv On the latest installment of the SRB Podcast, Sean Guillory of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies looks at the tumultuous history of the Ukrainian city of Lviv. Sean's guest is Tarik Cyril Amar, an associate professor of history at Columbia University PROGRAMMING NOTE: The Morning Vertical, and all Power Vertical Products, will take a short break from June 6-10. The regular schedule for all products will resume on Monday, June 13. Dutch prosecutors say an international joint probe into the downing of Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine is "at a very advanced stage" and that the investigators will present their first results "after this summer." That part of the investigation, which was initially due to be concluded before the second half of the year, concerns "the weapon which was used to shoot down" the Malaysia Airlines plane and "the exact launch site of the weapon." The airliner crashed in territory held by Russia-backed separatists on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people onboard. Two thirds of them were Dutch. The Dutch Safety Board concluded last year that the plane, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down by a Russian-made surface-to-air Buk missile. In a June 3 statement, the Dutch Public Prosecutor's Office said the joint investigation team is "still waiting for information from the Russian Federation about Buk installations." It said the investigators won't publish their results in a report, but will eventually include them "in a criminal file, which is intended for the hearing of the case in a court or a tribunal." The investigators are from the Netherlands, Australia, Malaysia, Belgium, and Ukraine. Their governments have pledged to bring those responsible for the crash to justice. President Petro Poroshenko has urged journalists not to publish "negative articles" about Ukraine while condemning the leak of personal data about thousands of reporters that has triggered international concerns about press freedoms in the country. In a wide-ranging news conference in Kyiv on June 3, Poroshenko condemned the website Myrotvorets for publishing the data about more than 4,000 journalists that it said were illegally accredited by Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine's eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. But he added that "unfortunately, I have the information that some of these journalists have prepared negative comments or negative articles about Ukraine." "I kindly ask you: please, do not do that," Poroshenko said. His comments come amid mounting criticism of the treatment of news media in Ukraine. A day earlier, ambassadors to Ukraine from the Group of Seven (G7) countries voiced concern about the Myrotvorets leak, saying it violates "the spirit and the letter of Ukrainian law" on personal data, as well as Kyivs "international commitments." "We acknowledge the investigations launched by the Government of Ukraine on this matter and hope the results will be shared with the public," the G7 ambassadors said, adding that they are "particularly concerned that threats are being made against individuals as a result" of the leak. Myrotvorets, which claims to target those it considers enemies of the Ukrainian state under the country's constitution, said they felt it was necessary to publish the list "because these journalists collaborate with fighters from terrorist organizations." Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, subsequently published the list on his public page. The G7 ambassadors said that the characterization of all listed journalists as "collaborators with terrorists" endangers the personal security of those affected and Ukraines hard-won media freedom. Poroshenko went out of his way to distinguish some Russian journalists whose contact information was revealed by the website from others who were targeted in the leak. "If you are talking about Russian journalists, some of them [have been] making criminal things," he said in an apparent reference to Russia media outlets backing the Kremlin's messaging in the conflict. Kyiv's efforts to restrict journalists it considers instruments of Russian propaganda have drawn fire from rights watchdogs as well. New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) this week criticized Poroshenko's May 27 decree banning 17 Russian journalists and media executives from entering Ukraine through the end of 2017. "Ukraine is legitimately concerned about the effects of Russian propaganda, but cracking down on media freedom is a misguided, inappropriate response to whatever disagreement the Ukrainian government may have with Russias media coverage about Ukraine," HRW researcher Tanya Cooper said. Panama Papers Addressing journalists at the June 3 press conference, Poroshenko also defended himself in the massive leak of records on offshore accounts known as the Panama Papers. Poroshenko has previously said that an offshore holding company revealed in the Panama Papers was set up for his candy business as a necessary step to put his assets into a blind trust when he became president in 2014. Commentators say the leaks have raised suspicion that such offshore entities were set up to avoid taxes. "I want to underline that the information about accounts being opened and money being transferred -- which has dominated the media coverage -- is not true," Poroshenko told the news conference. He added that "every kopiyka has been and will be taxed because the [financial] structure was set up with a single goal: to transfer [Poroshenko's former possessions] to the ownership of the trust. "A sale of assets has not been planned to be conducted and will not be conducted in [a tax haven]," Poroshenko said. "It will be done from Ukraine and the taxes will be paid in Ukraine." With reporting by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service and AP A United Nations report says the Islamic State extremist group (IS) has entered a new phase that emphasizes attacking and killing civilians outside territory it controls in Iraq and Syria. In the last six months, IS has sponsored or inspired attacks that have killed more than 500 people in 11 countries: Russia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Belgium, Egypt, France, Germany, Indonesia, Lebanon, Turkey, and the United States. The report, which was circulated to the UN Security Council on June 2, said UN members are reporting a marked increase in the number of foreign fighters returning from Syria and Iraq, where IS has suffered military setbacks and lost significant chunks of territory. The Paris attacks in November and Brussels assaults in March demonstrated the militant group's "ability to mount complex, multiwave attacks" that were coordinated by foreign fighters returning from Syria, with some direction from IS leaders. Several hundred foreign fighters have "relocated back to Libya" while other returnees are seeking to establish new affiliates as part of the IS strategy to expand its global footprint, the report said. Based on reporting by AP and AFP The Russian Investigative Committee said it has charged Vladivostok Mayor Igor Pushkaryov with abuse of office and corrupt business practices. The mayor's alleged accomplice, Andrei Lushnikov, director of the enterprise Dorogi Vladivostoka, was also charged with corrupt business practices. Pushkaryov pleaded not guilty before a Moscow court on June 2, which ordered he be detained through July 31. Lushnikov pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Pushkaryov. Pushkaryov is suspected of arranging a criminal scheme in which the road-building enterprise Roads of Vladivostok purchased building materials from the Vostoktsement group of companies, controlled by the mayor's relatives, between 2009 and 2014. The building materials allegedly were acquired at grossly overcharged prices. As a result, Pushkaryov embezzled 45 million rubles ($670,000), while the Roads of Vladivostok suffered damages of 158 million rubles ($2.3 million) and liabilities exceeding 800 million rubles ($12 million). Pushkaryov also is charged with paying a 1.4 million ruble bribe to Lushnikov in exchange for Lushnikov acting against the interests of the enterprise and in the interests of Pushkaryov and the Vostoktsement group by ensuring their selection as providers of building materials under municipal contracts for road repairs in Vladivostok. Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Ukraine since early 2015/16 agricultural year (July 2015 June 2016) has exported 1.637 million tonnes of wheat to the European Union (EU), Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade, Trade Representative of Ukraine Natalia Mykolska has wrote on her Facebook page. "According to data from our partners in the general Directorate of the European Commission, this agricultural year started on July 1, 2015 and will last until June 30, 2016. Ukraine is the largest exporter of wheat to the EU. A total of 1.637 tonnes or 49% of total imports to the EU was shipped, and we are ahead of the United States, Canada and Russia put together," she wrote. She said that the Commission Implementing Regulation(EU) 2016/876 was published in official Journal. The coefficients will be applied to the quantities covered by the applications for Ukrainian wheat import licenses. She said that this means that Ukraine has used its quota for exports of wheat to the EU in the amount of 950,000 tonnes. "It is very important that this does not mean that our grain exports to the EU halts. Supplies will continue as part of the global EU grain quota and beyond the quotas," she wrote. Ukraine's government has asked the Verkhovna Rada to consider the possibility of authoring public agencies to more quickly react to the case of price collusion similar to the increase of fuel price, as investigations of Ukraine's Antimonopoly Committee last too long. "We will prove that there was collusion [on the retail fuel market] The problem is that the reaction of the committee would be in four or six months," Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said in parliament on Friday. The Antimonopoly Committee in early February 2016 said that the committee launched a case against collusion on the retail fuel market. "The price policy of the market players is not completely correlates with the changes of factors influencing prices," the authority said. The committee said that the investigation was finished on May 20. The agency sent the preliminary conclusions to the market players. The authority said that fines of up to 10% of annual income (revenue) of a company implicated in economic competition violation infringement could be imposed. The committee did not specify the concrete market players in its press release. Gov. Terry McAuliffe called his sweeping order restoring rights for felons a work in progress Friday after Republican leaders called attention to several examples of imprisoned, violent criminals mistakenly listed as having regained the right to vote and serve on juries. The GOP pounced after prosecutors in Northern Virginia discovered that a murderer serving a life sentence, two sex offenders still in prison and a sex offender deported to his native Peru were included on the governors list of roughly 206,000 felons meeting the criteria to regain the right to vote, sit on juries, run for office and notarize documents. More errors emerged late Friday. Three members of a Roanoke-area gang serving time in federal prisons for violent home invasions also appeared in the database as having their rights restored. The order was intended to apply only to felons who have completed their sentence and supervised release. Republicans said the errors show the McAuliffe administration acted carelessly. The governor said problems were to be expected given the magnitude of the order and suggested his critics were seizing on technical difficulties to impede progress. Lets not politicize this. Lets not demagogue this issue. This is the right thing to do morally, McAuliffe said. With 206,000 names and 17 million bits of information, theres going to be data entry problems. Republicans have accused McAuliffe, a Democrat, of trying to add thousands of new voters to the rolls to help his friend Hillary Clinton win Virginia in Novembers presidential election. House of Delegates Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, and Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr., R-James City, who are suing to stop the governors order, said the data issues validate the need for an individualized, case-by-case review process. Overall, this is just a stunning level of incompetence and recklessness, Howell said. It just is another validation that this governor and his administration did not think this process through at all, said Norment, who referred to McAuliffe as the silver-tongued devil of a governor. Republicans said state employees responsible for the list, developed by the Secretary of the Commonwealths office, should be fired. The extent of the data problems, first reported by The Washington Post, is unclear. Commonwealths attorneys from Loudoun and Fauquier counties said they found multiple errors in the span of a few hours by checking past cases against a state database listing felons whose rights had been restored. When you magnify this across the commonwealth of Virginia, I think youre going to have profound consequences, said Fauquier Commonwealths Attorney Jim Fisher. Registrars across Virginia have used the database to check the status of ex-offenders applying to vote after the governors order. As of Wednesday, 5,816 people had registered to vote as a result of the order. McAuliffe said the list will be continuously updated as errors are fixed and the data are refined. Were talking right now about a handful of folks out of 206,000, McAuliffe said. In a later statement, the governor said anyone who attempts to vote without meeting his criteria could face a new felony charge, even if the state list wrongly shows their rights as being restored. More errors emerge More errors emerged after the governors remarks Friday. Three members of a Roanoke-area gang, the Goonz, were shown as having their rights restored, according to Botetourt County Commonwealths Attorney Joel Branscom, despite receiving lengthy federal prison sentences in 2011 for their involvement in a string of 40 violent home invasions. The three Goonz members George Theodore Fitzgerald, 38; Warren Edward Lemons, 44; and Kevin Wayne Ferguson, 39 are still serving time out of state, federal prison records show. Among the violent offenders wrongly included on the list is Ronald R. Cloud, 68, who pleaded guilty in 2014 to a cold-case murder in Fauquier while already serving a life sentence in West Virginia for a sexual assault, according to Fisher. The list included two sex offenders: 77-year-old Virgil Dantic and 53-year-old Frank P. Ferrara, both of whom are still incarcerated in Virginia. Carlos Cerda Maquin, 60, who was deported to Peru after pleading guilty in 2008 to aggravated sexual battery, was listed as having his rights restored on April 22. Who compiled this list? Was it the governors office or some high school intern? said Del. Robert B. Bell, R-Albemarle, who is running for attorney general. They take more care when they take an order at McDonalds than he did when he put these felons on juries. Sen. Ryan T. McDougle, R-Hanover, said the responsibility lies with former Secretary of the Commonwealth Levar Stoney, who resigned from his state post one week before the governors rights restoration order to run for Richmond mayor. His office was the one that provided this list and clearly these errors were made under his watch, McDougle said. This was a large administrative undertaking, but restoring the rights of disenfranchised individuals was the right thing to do, said Stoney campaign spokesman Matt Corridoni. Its unfortunate that Sen. McDougle is choosing to stand on the wrong side of history and use this as an opportunity to make political attacks. Republicans said the lists release would allow prosecutors, the media and citizens to check the administrations work, but the governors office has said the list is being withheld as a working paper because it is constantly being refined. A full list will be released next year, according to McAuliffes office, as part of the governors annual clemency report to the General Assembly. Republicans have asked the Supreme Court of Virginia to halt the order and cancel the registrations of those who have signed up to vote. They argue that the governor overstepped his authority by restoring rights en masse, but McAuliffe says the state constitution clearly grants him that power. The high court is scheduled to hear the case July 19. McAuliffe has said he is bringing Virginia more in line with other states by effectively ending the states constitutional policy of lifetime disenfranchisement for felons, which McAuliffe has said disproportionately suppresses African-American votes. Though past governors have eased the path for rehabilitated felons to apply to regain their rights, none has gone so far as to restore rights for an entire class of offenders with one pen stroke. Kaine counsels warning An aide to then-Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, a Democrat who supports McAuliffes order, hinted at the potential for data problems in a 2010 memo explaining why Kaine would not grant a blanket restoration of voting rights. In a letter to the ACLU of Virginia, Kaine counsel Mark E. Rubin said the practical details of implementing such an order raise significant problems. Without having this information available in centralized databases, a blanket restoration of rights for those who have completed their sentences would place an unprecedented burden on local registrars to determine whether a felon is actually qualified to register, Rubin wrote. It could also lead to significant confusion in the election process with disputes about an individuals actual voting status. To develop the list of 206,000, the McAuliffe administration cross-referenced the states list of individuals barred from voting due to a felony conviction with criminal justice data. That process was intended to exclude anyone still on supervised release such as probation or parole or those still in prison. Data entry issues The governors office has identified problems with mistyped data, zeroes dropped from the beginning of Social Security numbers and incarcerated felons missed because they are serving time in other states. McAuliffe said he could have restored felons rights with no limitations. I certainly had the legal authority to do that, McAuliffe said. Some states allow people to vote while theyre still in prison. McAuliffe praised the work of staffers who developed the list, saying its a hard, complicated process. Ukraine' Verkhovna Rada has banned privatization of joint-stock company Ukrzaliznytsia created as part of the reformation of the railway sector. A total of 250 lawmakers passed the measure amending the law on the list of state-run facilities ineligible for privatization late on June 2. Ukrzaliznytsia has been placed to this list. The Virginia Supreme Court has done the commonwealth a favor by deciding to weigh in quickly on the question of felons voting rights. Republicans have challenged Gov. Terry McAuliffes April order restoring such rights to more than 200,000 of them as unconstitutional. Democrats, naturally, say it isnt. A ruling from the states highest court wont settle the matter entirely. Federal Supreme Court decisions from Roe v. Wade to Citizens United have made it plain that a judicial ruling is hardly the last word on a topic. But it is better to have the courts opinion before the election rather than after it, especially if it rules against the governor. Imagine the rancor that would result if Hillary Clinton were to win Virginia, a battleground state, by a margin smaller than the number of felons who registered to vote because of McAuliffes order only to have the court decide later that the order was invalid. Would the court do that? Democrats have appealed to the authority of University of Virginias A.E. Dick Howard, one of the foremost experts on the states Constitution. He says the governor is well within his authority. The Republicans have marshaled arguments to the contrary, arguing that longstanding practice means he isnt and besides, there is no limiting principle behind McAuliffes action. If he can restore voting rights en masse, what is to stop a future governor from, say, issuing a blanket pardon for all convicted felons? Whatever the legal merits of its argument, the GOP stands on shakier political ground. Republicans hold no statewide office and enjoy legislative majorities that have been artificially inflated by gerrymandering. Rather than try to strengthen their own position by adapting to changing circumstances, the GOP has tried to weaken the Democrats position by impeding voting among likely Democratic constituencies. A political party confident of winning on the merits would not have to resort to such tricks. (Republicans might well say the same about McAuliffes order.) 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. The next tranche from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under the EFF program will be received as scheduled, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has said. "Has the IMF tranche been postponed? No, and it will be obtained. Period!" the president said at a press conference in Kyiv. According to him, the memorandum on economic and financial policy within the EFF program is now being discussed. Poroshenko said the information of "some irresponsible politicians" about the memorandum allegedly signed by Ukraine is untrue. An informed source close to the negotiations with the IMF told Interfax-Ukraine after the fund mission's work in Kyiv the middle of May within the second review of the EFF program, Washington sent its version of the draft memorandum to Kyiv late last week, afterwards Ukraine started working on it. It is assumed both sides will discuss the document in the course of a meeting of the regional groups of IMF member states and the World Bank (WB) that started in Kyiv on June 3 and will last until June 5. First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF David Lipton has arrived at the meeting. According to him, if the talks are successful, Ukraine will be able to sign the draft memorandum next week and send it to the fund. The current schedule of arrangements suggests if Kyiv fulfils all of the preliminary conditions the IMF Executive Board will approve the second revision of the EFF program for Ukraine in early July and will issue the third tranche of $1.7 billion. On Sundays and Wednesdays, when the Rev. David Jones unlocked the doors to Williams Memorial Baptist Church, he would find 11-year-old Khalil Abdullah Lavon Burt waiting to pepper him with questions. He wanted to know why Jones wore a robe when he delivered his sermon, and how Jones was called to the ministry. Mostly, he wanted to know how old he had to be before he was baptized a rite the pastor performed when the boy was 8. The name Khalil means my friend, Jones said during Khalils funeral Friday at the Carroll Avenue church. His voice choked with emotion. And Khalil was my friend. Relatives and church members packed the pews during Fridays service, which came about a week after Khalil was fatally shot. Many wore T-shirts to the service bearing a picture of Khalil standing outdoors in a button-up shirt and slacks, his tie askew and his smile wide. All throughout the church, bright red ribbons dotted lapels a reminder of Khalils favorite color. Police say Khalil was shot by a 10-year-old relative while the two boys played with a gun in Khalils home just across the street from the church. The incident happened not long after Khalil graduated from Westside Elementary School. Roanoke Commonwealths Attorney Donald Caldwell said Tuesday that the gun belonged to a relative, who did not live in the home. No charges are expected against the 10-year-old boy. In the world, you will have tribulation, Jones said. This is tribulation. Born in Essex, Maryland, Khalil was an enthusiastic musician who learned to play violin before moving to Virginia, according to his obituary. Later, he learned to play guitar and drums. He loved drawing, especially abstract pictures, and he played video games avidly. But at Williams Memorial, he was known for his devotion to the church. He often would attend with his little sister, but only if she was ready to go by the time he was, according to his obituary. Fourteen-year-old Dontrell Clary said Khalil first started coming to Williams Memorial when Dontrell invited him about a year after Khalils family moved to Roanoke. Khalil was about 6 years old. He just was an outgoing, awesome kid, Dontrell said during the service. Khalil wasnt like some kids. He was just loving. During Fridays service, Jones compared Khalils faith with the New Testament story in which Jesus parents find him, as a 12-year-old boy, asking questions of teachers in the temple in Jerusalem . The story, Jones said, demonstrated not only the faith children can have, but also the worry and stress parents face in moments when they cannot be assured of their childrens safety. When Jesus parents saw him, they said, Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety, Jones said. Let us consider that on Thursday, May 26, Isha Welch went frantically looking for her son. She thought he was home with family and friends, but she could not find him. My friend will no longer be waiting for me at the door of Williams Memorial, Jones said, his voice choking. But he will be waiting for me when I get home. Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has written letters thanking Germany's president, chancellor and Bundestag chief, for the passage of a resolution on the Armenian genocide, the president's press office said. "The passage of the resolution is an historic step not only for the Armenian people and Germany, but also for the entire civilized world. This step symbolizes the supremacy of democracy, common human values, and underscores Germany's consistent role in the cause of safeguarding these values. It is a message to the whole world that not only are the crimes against humanity committed even 100 years ago not forgotten, but they are also being explicitly condemned," the president said in the letter. Bundestag (Germany's parliament) on Thursday approved almost unanimously the resolution recognizing the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide. There was only one vote against the resolution and one abstention. Bundestag consists of 630 members. Obituaries 10-21-22 Advisory: Obituary information will only be accepted if sent through a funeral home or cemetery. The Wave does not assume responsibility for any incorrect information that is printed in the obituary section John E. Hynes... Obituaries 10-7-22 Advisory: Obituary information will only be accepted if sent through a funeral home or cemetery. The Wave does not assume responsibility for any incorrect information that is printed in the obituary section John F. Keane... Local residents have told observers of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) that armed people in Donetsk were using the roofs of their houses as a firing points, OSCE SMM Principal Deputy Chief Monitor Alexander Hug said. "On Monday night our monitors recorded 105 undermined explosions west and north-west of their position in Donetsk city centre. Many of those explosions happened in Kuibysheve district. Just two days before our monitors actually went there and saw damage to residential buildings. They were also told by residents that armed men were using the roofs of their buildings to fire weapons," Hug said at a briefing in Kyiv on Thursday. He said that they found this to be common practice. "Let me remind the sides that using densely populated residential areas as firing positions or even locating military hardware in such areas is banned," Hug said. On Sunday night an SMM unmanned aerial vehicle spotted exchange of fire in so-called 'DPR'-controlled Mineralne, ten kilometers north-east of Donetsk, which is the violation of the Minsk agreements. The SMM monitors registered surge in violence in the area of Kyiv-controlled Avdiyivka. On Tuesday, for example, the monitors recorded in Avdiyivka 227 explosions from 152mm artillery, 120mm and 82mm mortar. On the same day, other SMM monitors in Yasynuvata heard 113 undetermined explosions and 46 single shots of small-arms fire. "The Yasynuvata-Avdiyivka flashpoint has been with us for some time now. It is a clear example of how once-relatively quiet areas turn violent when the sides position themselves closer to one another," the deputy chief monitor said. He also said that repair works were required near government-controlled Berezove to fix electricity lines downed by shelling, but this was impossible because the area was heavily mined. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has fired Oleh Havashi from the post of Ukraine's ambassador to Slovakia. Poroshenko signed relevant decree No. 232/2016 on Friday, June 3, the president's official website said. The State Fiscal Service branch in Zakarpattia region reported earlier that on May 21, 2016, a Volkswagen Transporter van driven by a citizen of Ukraine entered the "green corridor" of the checkpoint. At the customs control, he presented a diplomatic pass of a citizen of Ukraine, a certificate of registration of the vehicle, and a letter of one of Ukraine's embassies that the car is carrying diplomatic cargo, which, in accordance with the law, is not subject to control. On Monday, May 23, Head of Zakarpattia Regional State Administration Hennadiy Moskal said that they detained a Volkswagen Transporter minibus with a cargo of smuggled cigarettes belongs to the Embassy of Ukraine in Slovakia, and its driver is "a resident of Kyiv, Serhiy Lischyshyn, who is the husband of the first secretary of the Ukrainian Embassy in Slovakia." When customs officers suspecting that the van was carrying contraband, began to insist on the inspection, Lischyshyn expressed his outrage and started threatening to call the consul. "Customs officers contacted the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and after obtaining a permit the inspection of the minibus revealed 5,685 cartons of cigarettes worth UAH 620,000," Moskal's press office quoted him as saying. Moskal said the smuggler presented the customs and border guards "a diplomatic passport and a letter signed by his wife", according to which the minibus was transporting diplomatic cargo on May 21-24 and was not subject to control. " Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Vadym Prystaiko said that the Foreign Ministry did not issue any permit for shipment of diplomatic cargo or mail to the husband of the first secretary of the Ukrainian Embassy in Slovakia, Oksana Lischyshyn. The deputy minister said that the Foreign Ministry expected to receive a copy of the letter signed by the first secretary of the Ukrainian Embassy in Slovakia, the existence of which was earlier reported by Head of Zakarpattia Regional State Administration Hennadiy Moskal. According to Prystaiko, the ambassador of Ukraine to Slovakia was aware of the incident on the border, but as of Saturday he knew nothing about the existence of the letter. On May 24, the Foreign Ministry confirmed that they recalled the first secretary of the Ukrainian Embassy in Slovakia Oksana Lischyshyn. On May 25, the investigation department of the prosecutor's office of Zakarpattia region said it launched criminal proceedings into the abuse of office and forgery of document by employees of the Ukrainian Embassy in Slovakia. Havashi, born in 1958, headed Zakarpattia Regional State Administration from October 2005 to March 2010. He was member of Zakarpattia Regional Council of the fourth convocation. Fro September 2010, he served as ambassador of Ukraine to Slovakia. Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada has passed a bill that redirects funds of local budgets of towns that are temporarily not under control of Ukrainian authorities to special funds of regional budgets of Luhansk and Donetsk regions. An Interfax-Ukraine correspondent has reported that some 256 parliamentarians gave bill No. 4623 amending the final and transition provisions of the Budget Code the up votes at second reading. The bill says that temporarily, until the towns are returned to control of Ukraine, ending stocks of local budgets of these towns will be redirected to the special fund of regional budgets of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The funds will be sent to restore social and transport infrastructure facilities, housing stock and utilities networks. In addition, Donetsk region is to pay the local debt of the Donetsk City Council to Ukreximbank. A RIGHT wing march in Rotherham town centre will go ahead on Saturday despite concerns from businesses, politicians and campaigners because police have no powers to stop it. Muslim leaders drew up a petition to South Yorkshire Polices interim Chief Constable Dave Jones which was signed by more than 60 men and women, including charity bosses, councillors and business owners. They want to keep anti-Islam group Pegida UK led by EDL founder Tommy Robinson out of town. But Assistant Chief Con Jason Harwin said the march will go ahead as criteria required to prevent a procession are not met. Pegida UKs deputy leader Anne Marie Waters said it plans to make a silent protest in the town centre against Islamic misogyny and anti-white hatred. But the petitions signatories point to 14 past CSE protests in the town, at which EDL and Britain First have merely used the grooming scandal to spread their racism, hate and bigotry. Shopkeepers have reported a 90 per cent fall in Saturday trading each time right wing groups come to Rotherham, while police have highlighted an increase in racist street attacks. The three-page letter says: This protest, like all others before it, will contribute little to the ongoing work to move on, address the past issues and rebuild community cohesion. It adds: We need the Pegida march to be stopped. Its very mention is causing disgust, anxiety and fear." Mr Harwin, said: The matter is under constant review. This will include, if necessary, the need to invoke powers under the Public Order Act 1986. At this stage the criteria required to prevent a procession is not met, but other restrictions may apply including limits on the number of people that can attend, the time and location of the event. We will continue to work with all groups and communities to ensure we comply with the law, respecting the rights of all to peaceful protest, balanced against the rights of those affected. He added: Minimising any disruption, potential disorder and increased tensions remains a key focus of the planning. We fully appreciate the context Rotherham and its communities face, with repeated protest from different groups. We will continue to work with the Home Office to consider the need for potential changes in the legislation. Reacting to news that the march will go ahead, British Muslim Youth founder Muhbeen Hussain said: To not ban Pegida UK is to ban local people from the town centre, because they will not be willing to go there on Saturday. Petition signatories include Cllrs Taiba Yaseen, Tajamal Hussain and Rose McNeely, Apna Haq charity founder Zlakha Ahmed, Ramadhan Foundation founder Mohammed Shafiq and Tell MAMA founder Fiyaz Mughal. THE fire service is calling on South Yorkshires Muslim communities to take extra care ahead of one of the most important periods in the Islamic calendar. South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue (SYFR) said it feared people were more likely to be at risk of fire during Ramadan, which begins on June 7. Ramadan lasts for 30 days and is observed by fasting during daylight hours, with cooking taking place before sunrise or after sunset. SYFR's head of community safety Trevor Bernard, said: We recognise this is a really important time in the Islamic calendar, but want to make sure people observe it safely. In particular, people should take extra care to keep an eye on their cooking, as fasting could leave you feeling tired and more likely to become distracted or have an accident. Smoke alarms are the best way of making sure that if a fire does occur, you have the vital extra minutes to escape. So make sure smoke alarms are fitted on every level of your home and test them regularly. Its also vital that if the smoke alarms do sound, everyone in the house knows what to do and knows how to escape, so talk this through with your family and loved ones. Top tips for staying safe during Ramadan include: - Half of all house fires start in the kitchen, so take extra care when cooking, particularly with hot oil it sets alight easily. Never throw water on a burning pan in the event of a fire get out, stay out and call 999. Take extra care with clothing make sure hijaabs, shalwar kameez and saris are kept well away from the hob Practise escape routes and make sure every member of your family knows it well. Have a working smoke alarm on every floor of your home, test them weekly to make sure they work. For more fire safety information visit www.syfire.gov.uk ALROSA is in talks to increase the share of direct sales to customers in Southeast Asia 03 june 2016 News (FINMARKET.RU) - ALROSA is holding negotiations to increase the share of direct sales of rough diamonds to clients in Southeast Asia, according to what was told to reporters by Yury Trutnev, Deputy Prime Minister and Presidential Envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District. He said that this possibility was discussed with customers by Andrey Zharkov, President of ALROSA during a recent trip to Hong Kong. "He asked if they were interested in buying not along the curve through Europe, but directly. The more direct relationship, the more transparency, the better," the deputy prime minister said. Currently, ALROSA sells about 5% of its production to China. Chow Tai Fook, the largest jewelry retailer is a long-term customer of the Russian diamond miner and Luk Fook buys ALROSAs rough on the spot market. "We produce diamonds in Yakutia, sell them through Antwerp and then they go to South-East Asia. Such a strange knight's move. It is clear that if the chain is so long and if prices are determined by the mediator, there are always doubts about how much transparent and correct this system is. So now we are starting to work on the creation of an online platform. It will provide selling price indicators for goods sold directly," Yury Trutnev said. On May 31, 2016, Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-IL-17), a member of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, joined representatives from Rail Construction Equipment (RCE) to tour the manufacturing facility, learn about various rail construction products and discuss public policy priorities for the business and rail communities in northwest Illinois. The Railway Engineering-Maintenance and Suppliers Association (REMSA) coordinated the event and RCEs President and Owner Steve Benck led the tour. A strong railroad industry, which continues to invest billions into its rail system, is critical to our business and supporting manufacturing jobs in Rockford, said Benck. We are honored to be joined by Rep. Bustos and appreciate her willingness to learn about our commitment to the community and the critical role rail plays in supporting Illinois jobs. RCE adapts conventional John Deere construction equipment, such as excavators, wheel loaders and motor graders to specific railroad maintenance tasks, such as tie-tamping or right-of-way clearing. They maintain a 90,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility that is shared with RCEs sister company, West Side Tractor. It was a pleasure to participate in the tour and to learn more about the work RCE is doing here in Rockford, said Rep. Bustos. I look forward to continuing to engage with all stakeholders so we can create jobs, grow our local economy and ensure our communities are safely and efficiently served by freight and passenger rail service alike. British drug maker AstraZeneca plc (AZN.L,AZN) announced Friday that it has completed the licensing agreement with Ironwood Pharmaceuticals for the exclusive US rights to Zurampic (lesinurad) and the fixed-dose combination of lesinurad and allopurinol. Zurampic is approved in the US, in combination with a xanthine oxidase inhibitor, for the treatment of hyperuricemia associated with uncontrolled gout. The company said the fixed-dose combination will be submitted for regulatory review in the second half of 2016. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has expressed its outrage at the decision of the Russian Supreme Court to deny sending an appeal by Ukrainian citizens Oleh Sentsov and Oleksandr Kolchenko to the court of appeals, and demands the Ukrainians be released. "Ukraine once again points out lawlessness and political bias of the North Caucasian District Military Court judgment dated August 25, 2015 concerning the illegal imprisonment of Oleksandr Sentsov and Oleh Kolchenko for 20 years and 10 years imprisonment in a high-security penal colony, respectively... We consider such decision of the supreme judicial body of Russia not only as a deprivation of illegally convicted Ukrainians of their right to a impartial conduct of the proceeding in the supreme court, but as further evidence of the political agenda in this case. The decision discredits the Russian judiciary as an independent branch of power," the Foreign Ministry commented on Thursday. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry also demands Russia "immediately stop the cynical violation of the rights of our fellow citizens. Set them free and let them return to Ukraine." As reported, the North Caucasian District Military Court in August 2015 found Sentsov and Kolchenko guilty of establishing a Crimean terrorist group, committing two acts of terror, the preparation of another act, and an attempt to purchase explosive devices and illegal weapons keeping. Sentsov was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment, Kolchenko to ten years imprisonment. In early May of the current year Sentsov and Kolchenko filled in documents for their extradition to Ukraine. On June 1 the Russian Supreme Court refused to consider the appeal against the verdict of Sentsov and Kolchenko. Malaysia's exports grew less than expected in April, while imports declined unexpectedly, figures from the Department of Statistics revealed Friday. Exports climbed 1.6 percent year-on-year in April, slower than the 2 percent increase forecast by economists. Nonetheless, it was much faster than the March's 0.2 percent rise. At the same time, imports decreased 2.3 percent from last year, while economists expected it to remain flat. On a monthly basis, exports decreased 7.9 percent and imports slid 5.6 percent in April. Consequently, the trade surplus increased 31.9 percent from last year to MYR 9.1 billion in April. The expected level of surplus was MYR 8.62 billion. However, the surplus decreased from MYR 11.2 billion in March. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Economic News What parts of the world are seeing the best (and worst) economic performances lately? Click here to check out our Econ Scorecard and find out! See up-to-the-moment rankings for the best and worst performers in GDP, unemployment rate, inflation and much more. Canadian stocks looked to forge ahead Friday amid increased risk appetite. The S&P/TSX Composite Index starts the day on the verge of a new 9-month high. A diappointing jobs report raised doubts about whether the U.S. Federal Reserve will raise interst rates this summer. Also, a pivotal OPEC meeting failed to produce a deal on capping output. Iran refused to cooperate with requests to limit production as it attempts to make up for years of harsh sanctions. OPEC officials expressed optimism that the crude oil market would continue self-adjust without a production freeze. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Market Analysis The US State Department said in its Country Reports on Terrorism that the total number of terrorist attacks in 2015 decreased by 13 percent when compared to 2014. Total fatalities due to terrorist attacks decreased by 14 percent, principally as a result of fewer attacks and deaths in Iraq, Pakistan, and Nigeria. This represents the first decline in total terrorist attacks and resulting fatalities worldwide since 2012. At the same time, there were several countries, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey, where terrorist attacks and total deaths increased in 2015. Acting Coordinator for Counterterrorism Justin Siberell, who provided an overview of key aspects of the 2015 Country Reports on Terrorism, said that in 2015, the United States faced a dynamic and evolving terrorist threat environment. The international community made important progress in degrading terrorist safe havens - in particular, a sizeable reduction in the amount of territory held by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, as well as the finances and foreign terrorist fighters available to it. According to the statistical annex prepared by the University of Maryland and appended to the report, more than 55 percent of all attacks last year took place in five countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nigeria. And 74 percent of all deaths due to terrorist attacks took place in five countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Syria, and Pakistan. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Political News Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) said Friday that it will test its grocery delivery service with ride-sharing services Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. within the next two weeks in Denver and Phoenix. The move is part of the retailer's efforts to better compete with online retail giant Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN). This is in addition to a quiet pilot program that the company started in March for its warehouse chain Sam's Club with Deliv Inc., involving delivery of general merchandise and grocery for members in Miami. At the company's annual shareholders meeting, Wal-Mart CEO Doug McMillon will announce its newest pilot program - a last-mile delivery test through services like Uber, Lyft and Deliv. Wal-Mart provided further details of the grocery delivery pilot program with Uber and Lyft. A customer in one of the test locations can place their grocery order online and select a delivery window. Wal-Mart's personal shoppers will select and prepare the customer's order and the team may request a driver from one of these services to come to the store, pick up the customer's order, and take it directly to the customer's location. Customers can pay Wal-Mart the normal $7 to $10 delivery charge online, and need not make any payment to the driver. The company will inform customers that their order is being delivered by a driver from Uber or Lyft. Michael Bender, EVP and chief operating officer of Walmart Global eCommerce said, "We'll start small and let our customers guide us, but testing new things like last-mile delivery allows us to better evaluate the various ways we can best serve our customers how, when and where they need us." For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News The Museum of Natural History in Cleveland has named a new species of praying mantis in honor of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States The museum identified the new species by creating a classification system based on characteristics of its females. Researchers Sydney Brannoch and Dr. Gavin Svenson said they named the new species of leaf-dwelling mantis from Madagascar Ilomantis ginsburgae to honor 83-year-old Ginsburg for her relentless fight for gender equality. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Political News The fifth generation Honda CRV SUV has been launched in India today. Unlike previously, when the SUV was only offered with a petrol engine, this time India gets petrol as well as diesel engine option. New Honda CRV petrol is priced from Rs 28.15 lakhs, while the CRV diesel is priced from Rs 30.65 lakhs. Top end diesel is priced at Rs 32.75 lakhs. All prices are ex-showroom Delhi. First showcased at the 2018 Auto Expo, the new Honda CRV is a premium luxury SUV which is offered as a five seater with petrol variant and as a 7 seater with diesel variant. It receives new comfort and convenience features, many of which are first time being offered in the segment. New Honda CRV dimensions will stand at 4,571 mm length 1,885 mm width and 1,667mm height. Wheelbase is increased by 41mm at 2,662 mm while interior leg room is increased by 53mm. Boot space is also larger. Overall, the car looks much bigger than before. It also looks a lot more attractive and imposing. Though not as imposing as similarly priced other SUVs in the segment. Interior features include a new 7 touchscreen infotainment system with satellite navigation, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto and voice controls. Seats get wrapped in leather while there is a premium touch all across the interiors (wood, leather and metal accents throughout). Features include two zone climate control, USB charging ports at the rear. Second row seating will get reclining seatbacks with dedicated AC vents while driver seat will be way power adjustable. To be offered for the first time with a diesel engine, the 2018 Honda CR-V will be powered by a new 1.6 liter diesel engine offering 120 PS power at 4,000 rpm and 300 Nm torque at 2,000 rpm mated to a new ZF 9 speed automatic gearbox. It will also get a 2.0 liter i-VTEC petrol engine mated to a CVT automatic transmission. There is no manual transmission on offer. Diesel engine claims 14.4 kmpl. The new CR-V will be offered in two wheel and four wheel drive options (only diesel). The new Honda CR-V will compete against the likes of Toyota Fortuner and the upcoming Mahindra XUV700. Renault has revealed the new generation 2020 Kwid electric, called City K-ZE electric compact crossover at the 2019 Shanghai Motor Show. Set to go on sale first in China from later this year, the City K-ZE was also earlier showcased in concept format at the 2018 Paris Motor Show as a part of the companys plan to increase sales in China. Renault City K-ZE is the companys smallest EV and is positioned below the Zoe. It follows similar dimensions as seen on the conventionally powered Twingo with a wheelbase of 2,423mm and boot space of 300 liters. It will be produced in China by eGT New Energy Automotive, a joint venture between Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance and Chinese manufacturer Dongfeng. 2020 Renault Kwid electric is slated to offer a range of 250 kms. It receives styling similar to that seen on the Kwid and will also be based on the same CMF-A platform from the Kwid, though modified to accommodate batteries and electric engine. The new City K-ZE can be charged via a regular 220V domestic charger or public charging system with fast charging of batteries upto 80 percent in 50 minutes. In slow charging mode, this is accomplished in 4 hours upto full capacity. Boasting of similar features as seen on the Renault Kwid, the City K-ZE also gets a new front grille, new headlamps and some design changes to the rear to set it apart. It sees the same 300 liter boot capacity as seen on the Kwid on sale in India while ground clearance is reduced from 180mm as seen on the Kwid in India to 150mm on the China spec K-ZE. The interiors are almost identical to the new Kwid with an 8 touchscreen with infotainment, sat nav, 4G internet and voice control feature. The drive selector is moved closer to the handbrake as against that which is positioned on the dash of India spec Kwid. It is also expected to be launched in India next year, where it will rival the likes of Maruti WagonR electric. The K-ZE also gets PM2.5 sensors and air quality control system enhancing quality of cabin air and switching automatically between interior and exterior air circulation. It also gets a rear camera and tyre pressure monitoring system. Renault confirms that the new City K-ZE will be best suited for urban environments. No pricing has been announced as on date and could be revealed closer to launch. UN official calls for humanitarian organizations to be granted access to Donbas The Human Rights Mission in Ukraine calls on the unlawful military units that are active in the eastern part of the country to grant humanitarian organizations access to the region, Ivan Simonovic, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, told a press conference in Kyiv. Simonovic called on those in charge in Donetsk to register humanitarian organizations and stop depriving the population of humanitarian assistance, which becomes available and ready to be handed out from time to time. He also said he wanted to visit Luhansk, but had been denied entry there. The new Ukrainian An-178 transport aircraft with carrying capacity of 18 tons has made its debut in the summer program of ILA Berlin Air Show 2016 in Germany. The new Ukrainian aircraft performed aerobatic elements in extremely adverse weather conditions, the press service of the Antonov State Enterprise reported. "Because of the bad weather, the demonstration flights were allowed only to the European Airbus A400M and Ukrainian Antonov An-178, which made its debut in the flight program of the international exhibition," the press service said. The new An-178 aircraft is created to replace An-12 planes and is designed for the effective fulfillment of its tasks as a transport aircraft, including logistics and transportation of equipment. Some experts say the An-178 aircraft can serve as a modern replacement of the C-160. The aircraft has a modified form of fuselage, a ramp for loading and unloading of bulky cargo and can lift up to 18 tons of cargo, including heavy maritime containers. The industrial cooperation program for the An-178 involves about 200 companies from fifteen countries. The Antonov Enterprise is promoting the aircraft in the Middle East and Central Asia. The United Arab Emirates, China and Azerbaijan expressed interest in the new Ukrainian transport aircraft. The An-178 aircraft premiered at Le Bourget 2015 outside Paris, where it was one of the major events. It was also showcased at Dubai Air Show 2015 in the UAE. ILA Berlin Air Show, which takes place in Berlin on June 1-4 is one of Europe's largest specialized exhibitions. According to the organizers, this year the air show is attended by 1,200 companies from 40 countries. In addition to the An-178, Ukraine presents the An-132 new multipurpose aircraft, the An-148/158 special purpose aircraft and the An-70 transport aircraft at ILA Berlin Air Show 2016. Total of eight Ukrainian servicemen injured in Donbas in past 24 hours Hostile attacks in Donbas inflicted injuries on eight Ukrainian servicemen over the past day, Ukrainian Presidential Administration spokesman Andriy Lysenko said. "No Ukrainian servicemen were killed in the hostilities in the past 24 hours, but eight suffered injuries," Lysenko said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Friday. He said the soldiers were wounded in shelling incidents in the Donetsk sector. A serviceman injured in Zaitseve in the earlier period died, Lysenko said. 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 ... By SA Commercial Prop News Standard and Poors (S&P) credit rating agency has kept its assessment of the South Africas sovereign credit rating unchanged but with an outlook on negative. Ratings agency Standard and Poors (S&P) has kept its assessment of the South Africas sovereign credit rating unchanged but with an outlook on negative. S&P released their results on Friday evening, keeping SAs long- and short-term foreign and local currency bond ratings at BBB-/A-3 and BBB+/A-2 respectively. It had been feared the agency would cut South Africa to so-called "junk status", making it more expensive to borrow. The foreign currency bond rating remains one notch above sub-investment grade whereas the domestic currency bond rating remains three notches above subinvestment grade. The Treasury said in a statement that government had noted and welcomed S&Ps decision. The benefit of this decision is that SA is given more time to demonstrate further concrete implementation of reforms that are underway aimed at achieving higher levels of inclusive growth and place public finances on a sustainable path, it said. It said that the rating outcome demonstrated that South Africans could unite, especially during difficult times, to achieve a common mission. S&P maintained the negative outlook on the rating, citing concern about economic growth and warned it could lower the rating by year-end or next year if policy measures did not turn the economy around. A downgrade to BB+, or junk would have put SA on a par with Russia, Indonesia, Turkey and Azerbaijan, among others. Ratings agency Fitch, which also rates the countrys debt at one notch higher than junk, is expected to announce its verdict on June 8, although it may advance this date. A cut to "junk" status would have made borrowing more expensive for South Africa, making it harder to plug a budget deficit estimated at 3.2% of GDP for the 2016-17 financial year. Last month Moody's made the unexpected decision to upgrade South Africa's rating to a position two notches above "junk". However, the agency also maintained a negative outlook, meaning that a cut could come when it next reviewed the situation. Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said S&P and Fitch met the Treasury two weeks ago, with S&P also visiting businesses and other stakeholders. Trading on the countrys markets had been volatile ahead of the announcement. Last month, the International Monetary Fund cut its 2016 forecast for South Africa to 0.6%, from 0.7%. The economy expanded by 1.3% in 2015. Rand Strengthened The Rand strengthened substantially against the dollar in late trade on Friday after ratings agency Standard and Poors affirmed SAs credit rating at BBB- with the outlook remaining negative. At 5.51pm the rand was trading at R15.1392 to the dollar from R15.5739 at the previous close. It was at R17.1305 against the euro from R17.3675 previously and at R21.9643 against the pound from R22.4708 previously. 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 There is a high risk of escalation of large-scale military actions in eastern Ukraine if heavy equipment is not withdrawn, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic said. Since mid-April, OSCE monitors have registered an increase in the amount of heavy military equipment near the contact line, where the sides have become close to each other, and there is a high risk of escalation of large-scale actions here if urgent actions to draw the sides apart and withdraw heavy military equipment are not taken, he told a press conference in Kyiv. Simonovic said the established ceasefire was failing due to the fighting near the cities of Avdiyivka and Yasynuvata. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has welcomed the singing of the $1 billion loan guarantee agreement with the United States. He expressed hope that the signing of the memorandum of cooperation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will follow.. "It [the signing of the agreement] is the evidence of the fact that the U.S. is a reliable strategic partner of Ukraine," he said after the signing of the document, the president's press service reported. Poroshenko expressed confidence that the singing of the agreement on allocation of $1 billion assistance to Ukraine will be followed by the signing of the document on Ukraine's cooperation with the IMF, other financial institutions, as well as provision of macrofinancial aid by the EU. It will facilitate economic development of Ukraine, he said. "I am very grateful to the United States for such a timely and important aid for our state. I am sure that we will rebuild our state with the support of the global coalition," the Ukrainian president said. According to Poroshenko, as soon as the signature of the agreement on macro-financial aid was announced, the world-famous international ratings agency Moodys has immediately revised its forecast for the exchange rate of the Ukrainian hryvnia. Ukrainian stocks have improved their position on the European market, which is a "symbol of investors belief in Ukraine." "Our todays agreement is a common front of countering the aggression of Russia against Ukraine. They do not want and fear our success," the president said. In turn, Ambassador of the United States to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt called the signing of the agreement an important step of the president and new Ukraine on the path to stability and economic growth, an additional incentive for reforms that are already being implemented and an evidence of fulfillment of commitments of the United States to the people of Ukraine. "Signing of the agreement on loan guarantees is an evidence of noticeable and substantial progress of reforms in Ukraine that you, Mr. President, and the Ukrainian government have managed to achieve," the Ambassador said. Pyatt also noted that the given agreement, just as the previous loan guarantees, would contribute to the implementation of the IMF programs. KWU's Pioneer Hall set for National Historic place nomination Pioneer Hall, the centerpiece of the Kansas Wesleyan University campus in Salina, is a step closer to being nominated as a national historic site. Russia continues to supply weapons to the uncontrolled by Ukrainian government territory of Donbas, so to de-escalate the situation in eastern Ukraine the most important issue is to control the uncontrollable part of the Russian-Ukrainian border, the head of the Ukrainian delegation at the negotiations within the OSCE Forum, Ihor Prokopchuk, has said. "The uncontrolled border still requires improvements for de-escalation, as Russia continues to supply its weapons to Donbas," the Ukrainian OSCE mission quotes Prokopchuk as saying on his social media Twitter microblog on Thursday. According to him, militants continue to fire from residential areas at positions of ATO forces on the territories under their control. "We condemn the cynical practice of Russian separatist forces firing from residential areas, as Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) of the OSCE reports," Prokopchuk said. Prokopchuk added that during May, 28 Ukrainian soldiers were killed, 96 soldiers wounded because of Russia's failure to comply with its obligations. Besides, civilians living in the conflict zone suffer because of militants' actions. According to him, a stable cease-fire in eastern Ukraine remains a key requirement in the implementation of the Minsk agreements. The head of the Ukrainian delegation said that Russia "deprives Donbas from establishing peace" interpreting the Minsk agreements in its own manner and putting forward their conditions for the suspension of fire attacks. As reported in February, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko signed a decree providing for a delegation from Ukraine to participate in negotiations within the framework of the OSCE Forum on cooperation in the security sphere, the Joint Consultative Group and the Advisory Commission on open skies. He also appointed Permanent Representative of Ukraine to International Organizations in Vienna Ihor Prokopchuk as its head. This week is one of celebration. And for students taking part in the Classmates of 1981 Reunion 2016 being held this week, Wednesday night was a very special evening. They recognised this with a ball of a different type held at Sails Restaurant Mulinuu where they honoured all the teachers who helped get them to where they are today. The group is made up of different college graduates who all began together at a small school called Apia Infant but took different paths as they went into their college years. (full story Bonds that last a lifetime). The night began with each student giving a brief sentence of where they are now in life followed by a moment of silence for those teachers and students who have passed on. Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi was present and he presented the awards to the teachers honoured. For one retired 90-year-old teacher, he felt honored by the gesture and expressed how proud he is of each and every one of his students. Dick Bishop, who had taught the majority of the group at Leififi Intermediate, said the event was an emotional tribute by the group. This event has taken me back many, many years and the thrill of it all as there are so many people here; teachers and ex students that I have met throughout the years, he said. We have Mary Bartley here who was one of the original students in the first ever class I have taught as well as Margret Hunter who was a student of mine for three years before leaving on scholarship. They are the people who are responsible for bringing me back to Samoa because if I hadnt then its like losing a family. Mr. Bishop expressed his appreciation towards his former students as well as his love for Samoa. So for me tonight is definitely about rolling back the years; thinking back, being appreciative, and knowing that it was such a pleasure and privilege to meet all of these people again, he said. I have so many friends here. There is definitely no place like Samoa, just like the song says we are Samoa, people of the sun; many people come up to me and say Oh wow! You are still here? and I reply Well can you name any better place than here? Because I certainly cant. Samoa is my home, I am going to live here for the rest of my life and I will die here. He also used the opportunity to encourage the young people of Samoa. One message I have for all the young people is that whatever you do with your life, you must enjoy it, he said. Confucius said, get a job that you enjoy then you will feel like you have never worked a day in your life. I feel that I have never worked my whole life because I have had such a great time, and thats Samoa. But nothing made Mr. Bishop happier than to see his students succeed in life. When my students finished school they had a clear mandate, he said. We were finite and we understood that we will not last forever; we were not predicated on anything else but the job we had to do for two years. We had these students for two years and our job was to prepare them for a successful secondary schooling, that was our mandate and it was very clear and simple. We had children from all over the country, they all got on; I was talking the other evening to an ex student and she now has a doctorate in Philosophy, you see these people rising up. The only tragedy is that you see the contribution that people like these make towards the New Zealand community; it will never be fully understood or appreciated. Our highly intelligent people working for the community of another country; we hear everything that is going wrong but we dont hear how these people are putting things right. I am very, very proud of my students especially for what they put together tonight to honor us, their old teachers. According to Mr. Bishop, teachers and all those involved in the educational system hold vital roles for the future of the country. I think that yes if I look back over the years, I wonder whether I see the remarkable change within the community, he said. I wonder whether our education system is going to keep up with the speed and development of this community. The purpose of the educational system is to serve and to ensure that the young people of the community will grow up as productive and well adjusted social citizens. The world is changing so rapidly, Samoa is changing so rapidly with it; so we must have a system that is flexible and is able to adapt to change. Otherwise its all pointless. This week has been an eventful one for the Samoa Cancer Society. The group has been at the heart of national efforts to fight tobacco consumption on these shores to improve the health of our people. On Monday, the Society was part of one of Ministry of Healths official World No Tobacco Day (W.N.T.D )activities. The day emphasised the importance of the W.N.T.Ds theme of get ready for plain packaging and was also used to launch the much anticipated mCessation pilot project with the Auckland University Faculty of Medical and Health Science. Minister of Health, Tuitama Dr. Talalelei Tuitama embraced the plain packaging measures as part of a comprehensive approach to tobacco control. He revealed that Samoa is considering its current tobacco regulations for the preparation for plain packaging. With our own outreaches and advocacy messages on tobacco use and control, the Samoa Cancer Society fully supports M.O.H with the ongoing advertising campaign on the benefits of quitting smoking and is happy to help it work towards the fulfillment of its obligations as a member state to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Treaty and also the Pacific Health Ministers aim towards a Tobacco Free Islands 2025, a statement from the Society says. Dr. Judith McCool from the School of Population Health, Auckland University spoke on the mCessation pilot project in partnership M.O.H. She named the Samoa Cancer Society and Bluesky Samoa as two of the key collaborative partners who have helped get this pilot project to this point. The mCessation project is a developing tool for smokers to quit and is a text messaging programme to give support for cessation (quit smoking). There were many enjoyable and entertaining highlights during the launch, one of them being the Lepea Womens committee performing a skit on pushing tobacco out of their lives and ending with an entertaining siva. The favorites of the day were the two college students who were invited by M.O.H to present and recite a speech and poem on plain packaging and tobacco use. Simone Pua from St Josephs College presented his speech on Get ready for plain packaging and made some very pertinent and valid remarks of his own. The annual cost of one person smoking can amount to the same as an annual salary, he said. That money could be well spent on a childs education, more food on the table. I suggest that the government of Samoa raises the price of cigarettes to $40 so that it becomes unaffordableplain packaging must make a change. Another poem was written and beautifully recited by Raphay Posini from Avele College, where she spoke on behalf of all the children in the hospital due to being exposed to secondhand smoking. Enriching the great bonds and renewing friendships are the main objectives for the reunion of the St. Marys College class of 1972, which started yesterday. Twenty out of the forty girls who graduated from the College 44 years ago are gathering in Samoa this week where the activities include a trip to the big island of Savaii. A thanksgiving mass at the St. Marys College school Hall at Vaimoso kicked started the formalities. The mass was conducted by Fr. Mosese Vitolio Tui who highlighted the importance of friendship and sisterhood. He congratulated representatives of the Class of 1972 for the initiative and for not forgetting about St. Marys College. He also challenged the senior class of 2016 to learn from the class of 1972. They were once students like you guys as well, he told the Seniors of St. Marys College. And look at all of them now, they have achieved so much in life and after all these years, they never forget their roots and their presence here today can be a great motivation for all of you. Sheree Stanley Stehlin, who was selected to be the Head Girl of the group, said the idea to have a reunion was born when they all gathered for the 150 years of S.M.S.M last year. When we came for the 150th Anniversary, we realised that we needed to come together not only as a class but as sisters, she said. And that idea was stuck at the back of our heads until we all gathered again for the funeral of one of our very old teachers, who passed away last year, Ms. Gillian from America. She was a very influential teacher and she taught us a lot of things and when we gathered together for her funeral, we started to actually plan to have this reunion. They only had one year of planning, said Ms. Stehlin. Ten of them started the plan and it was not hard to get the others on board. Everyone agreed to have the reunion and it was so fun planning out everything for the reunion, like the good old days. They created a Facebook page called the St. Marys Class of 1972 Babes and from there, the rest as they say, is history. We were all excited and looking forward to this day, she said. And now that we are here, even though some of our sisters couldnt make it, we know for sure that their hearts and spirits are here with us. Being back to where their friendship started was emotional for most of them. We wanted to have the mass here to begin our reunion because our bond started here. This school has built us to become the people we are today and we are here to pay tribute to all the teachers who moulded and nurtured us when we were students here. The sisters back in our days taught us to live quality lives, not just academically, but also spiritually. They shaped us and taught us to carry ourselves well as young women. And we didnt know what they meant until we became older and became mothers. The reunion provides an opportunity for the ladies to reminisce about the past, share their experiences in life and renew the bond and friendship. Some of them travelled from afar just for the reunion. They have representatives from the United States of America, Australia, New Zealand, China and American Samoa. Silverina Chan-Mow Toomata a lawyer by profession, who came all the way from China for the reunion, said she was thrilled to be reunited with her sisters. I was already excited for this reunion even before I arrived, she said. And now that it is happening, I couldnt stop smiling. Its so wonderful that I get emotional sometimes because I never thought that after 44 years, we would all come together again and have the same bond we had back then. Reflecting back to her College days, Mrs. Toomata said she learnt a lot of great things from the Sisters who taught them back in College. Things that helped make me the person I am today. And although some of them are not around anymore, we are here to pay tribute to all the memories we had of them and talk about all the things theyve done for us when we were here. As for Rosaline Vaeau Fuatai, a barrister from Auckland, she said being here for the reunion brings back all the memories they shared in college. I was suspended one time and was in detention a lot of times when I was here, she said. But that taught me a very great lesson and In have helped build up my character. The Sisters taught us not only to become successful in school, but they also taught us to become good mothers and good wives. And we are forever grateful to them for all the lessons they have taught us. Sister Emanuela, who was one of the teachers for the Class of 1972 was also present yesterday and the group presented her with a gift for her 80th Birthday, as their way of thanking her for all the things they taught them. Sister Emanuela was a Geography and History teacher at St. Marys College. The Class of 1972 also presented gifts for the Sisters and Teachers of the College. They donated a lounge suite, a boiler and a cooler. Ms. Stehlin presented the gift on behalf of the Class of 1972 to the teachers and Sisters yesterday. She said they asked the teachers if there was anything they wanted for the school, and the teachers gave them a list of all the things they wanted. But we chose to buy a lounge suit and other things for the staffroom for the teachers and Sisters. The class had a welcome dinner last night at the Kokobanana Restaurant. And today, they will be leaving for Savaii where they will stay at the Lauiula Beach Fales, which is owned by one of the classmates, Rosemary Ah Chong. The group will return to Upolu on Monday where they will have a farewell dinner and aiava at the Royalty Lodge and Restaurant at Faatoia. The Police are investigating the death of a young man from Taufusi who was reportedly stabbed senseless after a night out in town turned out terribly wrong. A Police Officer who spoke to the Weekend Observer on the condition of anonymity yesterday confirmed the incident, saying it happened last Friday. All public servants were on a commissioned holiday for the Independence Day celebrations and it was not possible to obtain an official comment from the Police Spokesperson, Maotaoalii Kaioneta Kitiona. But the Police source said the deceased man was beaten by three young men who have since been arrested and are held in custody awaiting their day in Court. The investigation is underway, the Weekend Observer was told. The investigation is looking at the possibility of other people being involved. From what the Police have found out so far, the Taufusi man had gone into a local nightclub where a dispute started. Booted from the nightclub, the men continued the fight onto the road where the deceased man was allegedly stabbed several times. The deceased man reached the hospital but he died right away because of the serious injuries he received from the incident, said the source. He was beaten quite badly and he was stabbed several times. He had lost a lot of blood. His family is devastated. The death last Friday is the second such serious incident reported to have started from a nightclub. Earlier this year, two young Samoan men, Barry Mafi and Ashley Wilson, were jailed for four years for beating a Fijian student and leaving him lying unconscious after a fight outside a local nightclub. According to the Police Summary of Facts, the victim went out with his friends at a nightclub in Apia on the night in question. When the victim came outside, Wilson and Mafi started exchanging words with him and the victim ended up being punched on the mouth. The Fijian student went back inside the night club and around midnight, he and his friends walked outside and were about to go home. Wilson and Mafi together with their friends then again attacked him and his friends. The victims friends managed to escape but the victim was caught up by the accused and he was brutally beaten. The accused did not stop until they saw that the victim was unconscious which was when they ran away. Think a minute...Years ago on the night of 14 April, the ship named Californian had come within 1500 miles of its destination of Boston Harbor in the U.S. It was midnight and Second Officer Herbert Stone reported for his watch. He found his apprentice looking through binoculars at another ship in the dark distance. He could see some lights, so Stone told the apprentice to try to communicate using the Morse Code light. But the other ship did not answer. Then five more white flashes came from the other ship, followed by another four white flashes, so Stone called his captain. The captain ordered more light signals to be sent, but still no answer came. They noticed the other ships cabin lights were disappearing, so it appeared to be sailing away. At 1:40 AM Stone saw the eighth and last white flash in the night sky. It was not until 4 AM that they learned the truth about the other ship. Second Officer Stone and his captain had not understood that the lights and flashes from the other ship were alarm signals. That night of 14 April, the Californian had stopped in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean since there was a dangerous field of ice in the water. It was while they were stopped and waiting that they saw the lights from the other ship in the distance. The other ship had sent those light flares as distress signals, and the Californian that was only nine miles away would have rushed to help save it except for one thing. The other ship had been sending distress signals both by lights and by radio, but the Californians new young radio operator was sleeping. So that night, Second Officer Stone and his captain did not know the light flashes were desperate calls for help from the sinkingTitanic. Jesus Himself said that by far the greatest tragedy is to watch yourself and the people you love sink into eternity, separated from God and lost forever in the worst pain, agony, and aloneness there is. Those are the words and warnings from Jesus Himself! The most important question is: Will you read and follow the signs to safety? He has made them so clear and easy to understand that we have no excuse. Once and for all, you can ask Him to forgive you for your wrong heart and sinful living? Then ask Him to take full charge and start changing you and your daily way of life. Jesus said it is the only way you can have total security that if your ship goes down tonight, you are fully ready to face Him: your Maker, Judge, and Savior. Just think a minute The Steering Committee for the implementation of the Action Plan of the European Council for Ukraine for 2015-2017 has discussed the state of cooperation between Ukraine and the Council of Europe (CoE) in the framework of the CoE's Action Plan for Ukraine for 2015-2017 at a meeting in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine on Thursday. "In general, the participants of the meeting noted the successful cooperation within the framework of the Action Plan," the press centre of the Foreign Ministry said. The meeting was opened by Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, Deputy of Foreign Minister Serhiy Kyslytsya and Director of the Office of the Council of Europe Directorate General of Programs Verena Taylor. Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine thanked the representatives of the CoE for the contribution of the European partners in the promotion and protection of independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and also expressed gratitude for the help and support "in the large-scale reform process that is underway in Ukraine." According to the report, both the achievements and the problematic issues that arise during the Action Plan implementation were discussed during the debate. They also spoke of the urgent needs that must be considered while shaping future project activities. Special attention was paid to the contribution of the CoE in the development of the National Human Rights Strategy and Action Plan for its implementation. The issue of monitoring the implementation of these strategic documents on the part of the CoE has also been given special attention. Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said he would not support pressure on journalists, but the government would respond if materials indicating attempts to undermine the state's sovereignty were found in their work. "It is understandable that if it is steps to undermine our state, undermine our territorial integrity, we will firmly respond, but there will be no pressure on freedom of speech," Groysman said during a government Q&A session on Friday, after being asked by People's Front faction MP Andriy Teteruk whether the authorities' actions with regard to the Mirotvorets website were unfair. Teteruk said that, in his opinion, the deputy minister of information policy had rallied Ukrainian journalists and international media against the Mirotvorets website and had bad-mouthed its work. Freedom of speech is a fundamental value in Ukraine, Groysman said. "I think that we ought to maintain it," he said. For his part, Ukrainian Minister of Information Policy Yuriy Stets said that from Monday a working group would start to tackle the situation surrounding the Mirotvorets website. "A working group will start work from Monday. If violations of the law are found, it means that the deputy minister will be dismissed," the minister said. In May the Mirotvorets website published lists of more than 4,000 journalists who have been accredited in the self-proclaimed Donbas republics. The list includes the names of Ukrainian and foreign journalists, their mobile contact details and duration of their stay in the territories of the DPR and the LPR. President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has noted the importance of implementation by Russia of all the security components of the Minsk agreements and declared the start of discussions in the context of the possible deployment of the OSCE police mission in Donbas. The head of state said this at a meeting with the representative of Ukraine in the political subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group, Head of OPORA Civic Network Olha Aivazovska, the presidential website reported on Thursday. The parties discussed the results of the meeting of the political subgroup held in Minsk shortly before. Aivazovska informed the president about the problematic issues and proposals on the elections in certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions which had been discussed at the meeting. Poroshenko and Aivazovska discussed the issue of submission of new candidatures to the Central Election Commission for consideration by the parliament. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said there has been no progress in the settlement of the armed conflict in Donbas since the start of 2016. "Regrettably, so far this year, and in the recent two weeks in particular, the progress on Donbas is almost zero-point. To the contrary, there has been an escalation of the operational situation," Poroshenko told a press conference in Kyiv on Friday, when asked about the situation in Donbas and prospects of the local elections. The mysterious circumstances around a fathers disappearance are catalogued by his child, with only token postcards, an abandoned suitcase, and a collection of miniature giraffe statues for guidance. Weekly Newsletter The best of The Saturday Evening Post in your inbox! Join 1 My father disappeared at 6:30 p.m. on a Sunday in November. Since then, Ive been fascinated by disappearances. 2 Subscribe and get unlimited access to our online magazine archive. Subscribe Today No one else I know has ever disappeared. People have sometimes gone missing. People have sometimes died. But no one else has vanished into thin air. 3 I once read a newspaper article about a hotel where small items started vanishing one by one. At first it was thought to be the work of thieves, but gradually the items starting reappearing in strange places staplers were found in guest room showers, a large selection of bathrobes on the roof. My favorite incident involved a giant swordfish disappearing from the restaurants walk-in freezer. A live one was found in the swimming pool three days later. The working theory is that the disappearances were part of an elaborate prank, but I think thats a boring answer. Mysterious things happen every day. 4 My father had told us he was going on a business trip to Akron, but he came home a day early to surprise us. My sister opened the door for him. He walked up the stairs and into his bedroom to change and never came out. When we opened the door, all that was left was an open suitcase beneath the window. A white button-down was strewn across the bed; a faucet in the bathroom was still running. 5 My father worked for a factory that made tiny giraffe sculptures. He was fond of saying that they were only 10 years from being able to build real ones. He made a lot of bad giraffe jokes when he was still around. He liked to call them giraffe gaffes. 6 The contents of my fathers suitcase: Three pairs of argyle socks Two polo shirts, orange One toiletry pouch containing a toothbrush, razor, and travel canister of shaving cream One pair of khakis, pleated Fourteen individually wrapped wintergreen Lifesavers One United States Passport, expiration date June 5, 2017 A Peruvian cookbook, wrapped as a gift I still wonder who the cookbook was for. No one in our household has ever liked to cook. 7 I was 18 when my father disappeared. My sister was 15. Our mother was digging wells in Botswana. Once in a while we receive a letter from Africa. The contents tend to be the same: My mother describes a harrowing experience undergone by someone she has met in Botswana; she describes a terrible marriage or a terrible disease, and tells us how sad she is that she cant solve all the problems she is seeing. She tells us that she might come home next month. She usually includes a photo of herself. In the photos, she is always smiling among the villagers she has most recently saved. Her teeth are always very white. We are also sad about the things my mother writes about in her letters. We understand, but we miss her anyway. We are probably bad people. 8 After my father disappeared, I moved from part-time to full-time at the grocery store down the road. Most of my work involves the unloading and rearranging of produce. Once in a while, I take something small an orange, an onion just to see if someone will notice that its missing. No one ever does. Most of the people who come into a grocery store dont consider the possibility that their produce could disappear. 9 I think my sister took the disappearance the hardest. In the weeks after my father vanished, she rarely ate. She rarely slept. Some nights I would walk to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and I would see her in the living room. She would be sitting on the couch in the dark. Her eyes would be fixed on an empty part of the wall. It was as though she could see something that I couldnt. There are a lot of things, I know, that Im incapable of seeing. 10 At our local zoo, a magician once made a tiger disappear. He worked the whole town into a frenzy over the act. It was, he insisted, going to be something Earth-shattering. Those of us who were lucky enough to see it would never feel the same way about the world again. Flyers were posted everywhere. THE VANISHMENT OF THE TIGER was printed on top in bold capital letters. When we finally watched the act, all that happened was that the tiger was moved from one part of the cage to another with a whirl of his cape. There were many plausible explanations for this fact. Everyone forgot about the trick shortly afterward. I sometimes wonder how the tiger felt about the whole thing. When I visit him now, he mostly looks bored. 11 When my sister was 6, she asked my mother to send her a picture of a tiger from Africa. There arent any tigers in Africa, I tried to explain, and she started crying. She thought that Africa was filled with all sorts of dangerous animals, so of course our mother could take a picture of a tiger for her. My sister didnt speak to me for a week after that. I cant remember if my sister saw the magic act with the tiger, but if she did, Im certain she doesnt remember much of it either. My sister asked my mother about it when she was home for Christmas one year. My mother said no, no there arent any tigers in Africa. But there are giraffes, my father said, beaming. 12 Throughout our house there are a large number of tiny giraffe sculptures made of plaster. My father had always been proud of what he did, so I suppose it makes sense that he would have wanted to show them off to guests. All of the giraffes are in exactly the same pose. The only difference is the name of the zoo written at the bottom of the sculpture. I havent gotten rid of any of them yet. 13 I did, however, manage to break the statue from our local zoo shortly after my father disappeared. I went to the gift shop to try to replace it, but they no longer carried statues of giraffes. Now my desk has a tiny statue of a tiger on it instead. When she turned 16, my sister asked if I thought our mother would ever remarry. I said that I didnt know. You cant replace people the way you can replace objects. 14 My sister has asked me many questions that I dont know the answers to. Other favorites include will it rain today? and what happened to the cat? What happened to the cat is probably this: It ran away from home. Like all cats do sometimes. He might come back, and he also might not. He was an orange cat and we cared about him a lot. When my sister was six, she tried to paint black stripes on him so hed look like a tiger. Whether its a tiger or a giraffe, its always sad when something you love disappears. 15 I tried to talk to my sister several times after our father vanished. I explained that the universe is mysterious, that we cant control these things, and that its all we can do to learn to live with them. She said I was crazy for being okay with everything. All I could say was that I wasnt. 16 One night, while my sister was asleep, I tried reenacting my fathers disappearance. I walked in the door with his suitcase, slipped off my shoes, and carried his things up the stairs. I closed the door, took off my shirt, and turned on the faucet in the bathroom. I stood in the middle of the bedroom and stared out the window. The sky was covered by clouds and stained a quiet amber from the light pollution. Everything was dark. I closed my eyes and waited. 17 I waited forever. 18 I have a lot of ideas about how my fathers disappearance must have looked. There was probably a glowing portal, or a puff of smoke, or at the very least a mysterious humming. My father must have stepped though the portal, fallen through to another side in another universe. Or else it was like a blink. One second he was there, and the next he wasnt. 19 We received a letter from my mother recently. It said she would be home for the holidays and might stick around a month or two longer than usual. She included a Polaroid photo of herself with a lion plodding along in the background. Pretend that its a tiger was written on the back. 20 I suspect my sister worries that one day my mother and I will disappear too. This is probably inevitable; there are many things that can drag a person away from the people they love. But with our mother so far away, its all I can do to say, Ill be here. And I will be. Even when a person disappears, they always leave something behind. 21 Last Sunday, I discovered that the tiger statue had disappeared from my desk. I asked my sister if she knew anything, but she said that she hadnt had anything to do with it. I tore my room apart looking for the statue, made and unmade my bed, even pulled the books off the shelves. No matter how much I tore the room apart, the statue was nowhere to be seen. 22 This morning I found a small giraffe statue on my desk, where the tiger used to be. On the bottom, where the name of a zoo is usually written, our family name is scrawled in capital letters instead. Ive decided not to question where it came from. Mysterious things happen every day. Salt Lake City, UT -- (SBWIRE) -- 06/03/2016 -- Warehouse Mobile Solutions, the leader in logistics solutions, has installed the newest release of its Tablet Directed, Barcode/Order Fulfillment Solution, WarehouseOS, at CampSaver retail stores in Nibley, UT. It will be the first application utilizing the latest version of WarehouseOS, Version 2.0, fully integrated with Monsoon Stone Edge Ecommerce Order Management Software. Due to CampSaver's rapid sales growth and product expansion it became critical to increase inventory capacities. The option was to expand to an outside facility or find a software product enabling them to maximize storage by combining different items in the same bin location. The implementation of WarehouseOS made this possible as items can now be stored in any location by warehouse personnel, even if there is already a different item in the bin. In addition, actual images of each product are displayed on the tablet screen so pickers can clearly identify the correct product. The need to quickly manage inbound purchase orders and inventory for the on premise retail store with a simple and affordable software solution forced them to move from their current barcode tracking system. CampSaver.com began in 2003 as a small startup headquartered out of a Utah State University apartment in Logan, UT. The original goal was to create an online destination for outdoor enthusiasts who want to find the best gear at the right price quickly and easily. Today, CampSaver.com employs over 75 people and has grown into a leading online retailer of fine outdoor merchandise. To read more, go to: http://bit.ly/1U7SKO7 About WarehouseOS The RF gun, constant verifications, small keypads, and hard to read screens are quickly becoming yesterday's technology. Tablets are replacing the RF gun. WarehouseOS, a new tablet-based Warehouse Operations System brings warehouses into the future today. Warehouse management systems have been around for a long time with too many companies still using the RF gun to conduct inventory management, scan in new items, and pick orders. The RF gun solutions typically cost double what modern solutions offer. WarehouseOS and associated apps have been developed to make everything about the warehouse easier and better. Apps allow small or large companies to receive products, manage inventory, perform cycle counting, conduct single picks or do batch picking, verify items picked and pack them into boxes. An easy to navigate user interface means warehouse personnel need almost no training before performing warehouse tasks. Receiving, put-away, picking, and packaging quickly become the easiest jobs on the floor. A team of experts in material handling equipment and solutions developed WarehouseOS to maximize the throughput of warehousing and distributing facilities. From small eCommerce, to high volume SKU facilities, from omni-channel companies to FMCG (fast moving consumer goods), WarehouseOS is equipped to handle everything. From small startups with simple needs to complex, large distribution centers, WarehouseOS is the table solution which enables manufacturers and distribution centers to be a step ahead of the competition. Learn more at http://www.warehousemobilesolutions.com and follow on Twitter @WarehouseOS. Philadelphia, PA -- (SBWIRE) -- 06/03/2016 -- Capsicum Group, LLC, a technology consulting firm specializing in digital forensics, cybersecurity, and e-discovery is pleased to announce their participation at the 18th Annual International Techno Security and Forensics Investigations Conference. The Conference shall be held in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and takes place from June 5th to June 8th, 2016. The Techno Security and Forensics Investigations Conference is a highly esteemed security training and networking event, with IT security professionals, law enforcement, and C-Suiters attending from around the world. The Conference features expert speakers to educate attendees on cutting edge and significant security and forensics issues. This year, speakers will cover topics such as overcoming anti-forensics tactics, ransomware, social media discovery, and an interactive-walkthrough of a POS breach. The conference will also host a presentation by Capsicum Group's Leeza Garber, Esq., corporate counsel and director of business development. She is an attorney with background in cybersecurity and privacy, and has spoken for a variety of conferences, summits, and CLEs on technology, forensics, cybersecurity and privacy issues. At the Techno Security and Forensics Investigations Conference, Ms. Garber shall be presenting "A 2016 Perspective on Bring Your Own Device: A Dynamic Landscape." This session will be held on Monday June 6th, 2016, at 10:30AM, and will review the opportunities and challenges presented by the increasing use of personal devices in the workplace, as well as cybersecurity and legal implications of the Bring Your Own Device movement. Capsicum Group's team of professionals are equipped to take on the most complex projects, from devising cybersecurity procedures in Philadelphia to performing digital forensics investigations in NYC. Learn more at http://www.capsicumgroup.com. About Capsicum Group, LLC Capsicum Group, LLC, is a Philadelphia, PA-based consulting company that assists law firms and in-house counsel as well as companies in the technology, manufacturing, healthcare, financial, retail and educational fields succeed in legal, regulatory, and technology projects. Since 2000, they have helped clients with digital forensics, cybersecurity, e-discovery, data recovery, restoration, and compliance cases. In addition to their Philadelphia headquarters, Capsicum has offices in New York, Florida and soon in the Washington, D.C. area. For details on cybersecurity, digital forensics, technology consulting and e-discovery services available from Capsicum Group, visit the Capsicum Group website at http://www.capsicumgroup.com or call 888-220-3101. London, England -- (SBWIRE) -- 06/03/2016 -- The move comes as utilities are set to ramp up the mandated roll out of Smart Meters across the UK. With over 53 Million Smart Meters to fit in the next four years, companies such as Access Install LTD see this as a perfect opportunity to increase the employment rate across the UK, whilst up-skilling gas engineers into the sector. Access Install has made a significant investment in the development of gas engineers into the smart meter installation sector, with the average cost of courses ranging from 5000-7000 per engineer. Speaking to Access Install Managing Director Christopher Fagan, this is what he had to say about the current investment made by the company; " Having a large framework of engineers like Access Install currently has across the UK, means that up-skilling the engineers would be no small task, we began to quickly realise that the cost of the smart meter courses was the biggest barrier to entry. We made the decision as a company, to take this barrier away for gas engineers and invest our own money into the training of our smart meter engineers. This allows us to focus on comprehensive, customer experience driven training for all our engineers, whilst guaranteeing a job at the end of each course, we're very excited for what this venture has in store." The Access Install Academy will be based predominantly in the North West, to express interest in the course; please can you email enquiries@accessinstall.co.uk About Access Install LTD Access Install LTD is a fully accredited Meter Operator Provider (MoP) in the smart meter sector. From finance, logistics of smart meter assets to the installation of the smart meters, Access Install LTD has the client covered. Contact: Access Install LTD Email: enquiries@accessinstall.co.uk Tel: +44 (0) 113 251 5124 http://www.accessinstall.co.uk/ According to a team of scientists from the United Kingdom and Greece, the underwater archaeological remains of a long-lost Greek city were in fact created by a naturally occurring phenomenon. When divers discovered what looked like paved floors, courtyards and colonnades, they thought they had found the ruins of an ancient Greek city that perished when tidal waves hit the shores of the island of Zakynthos. But new research, published in the journal Marine and Petroleum Geology, reveals that the site was created by a natural geological phenomenon that took place in the Pliocene era up to 5 million years ago. The site was discovered by snorkelers and first thought to be an ancient city port, lost to the sea, said lead author Prof. Julian Andrews, from the University of East Anglia. There were what superficially looked like circular column bases, and paved floors. But mysteriously no other signs of life such as pottery. The discovery was carefully examined in situ by the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of Greece. Archaeologist Magda Athanasoula and diver Petros Tsampourakis studied the site, together with Prof. Michael Stamatakis from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. After the preliminary analyses, a research team was formed. The scientists went on to investigate in detail the mineral content and texture of the underwater formation in minute detail, using microscopy, X-ray and stable isotope techniques. We investigated the site, which is 6.5 16.4 feet (2 5 m) under water, and found that it is actually a natural geologically occurring phenomenon, Prof. Andrews said. The disk and doughnut morphology, which looked a bit like circular column bases, is typical of mineralization at hydrocarbon seeps seen both in modern seafloor and paleo settings. The research team found that the linear distribution of these doughnut shaped concretions is likely the result of a sub-surface fault which has not fully ruptured the surface of the sea bed. The fault allowed gases, particularly methane, to escape from depth. Prof. Andrews explained: microbes in the sediment use the carbon in methane as fuel. Microbe-driven oxidation of the methane then changes the chemistry of the sediment forming a kind of natural cement, known to geologists as concretion. In this case the cement was an unusual mineral called dolomite which rarely forms in seawater, but can be quite common in microbe-rich sediments. These concretions were then exhumed by erosion to be exposed on the seabed today. According to the team, this kind of phenomenon is quite rare in shallow waters. Most similar discoveries tend to be many hundreds and often thousands of meters deep underwater, Prof. Andrews said. These features are proof of natural methane seeping out of rock from hydrocarbon reservoirs. The same thing happens in the North Sea, and it is also similar to the effects of fracking, when humans essentially speed up or enhance the phenomena. _____ Andrews, J.E. et al. 2016. Exhumed hydrocarbon-seep authigenic carbonates from Zakynthos island (Greece): Concretions not archaeological remains. Marine and Petroleum Geology, vol. 76, pp. 16-25; doi: 10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2016.05.022 A Petaluma fisherman reeled in a pacu fish at the Lucchesi Park pond near the Petaluma Community Center, its large teeth cutting the line as it was lifted out of water. The fisherman, Juan Gallo told Press Democrat, "It landed on the dirt and you could tell it wasn't anything we had seen before." Did you know? The pacu fish has been known to be attracted to feeding on male testicles.. pic.twitter.com/ReLOxenNBZ Nulea9n10do (@Nuclear9n10do) April 29, 2016 The Amazonian freshwater fish, according to the Washington Times, is a relative of the piranha, and despite being sold in pet shops around the United States, it is considered illegal to own one in California. The pacu, unlike any other fish you'd like to reel in for dinner, is known to have human-like teeth, and Gallo said that by the time he pulled it out of the water, the unusual species managed to chew through his line. Matthew Gimlen, a freshwater fish expert from the Sacramento retailer Exotic Aquarium told The Independent that these fish are usually found in local ponds because they were released by those who brought them but could no longer take care of them. They are dirty fish," Gimlen said. "They can acclimate to the water this time of year, especially because its warm outside. But they usually die off by winter. The fisherman, meanwhile, said that he will turn his pacu over to the California Department of Fish & Wildlife (CDFW), but that he will keep it and have it stuffed if they don't want it. The CDFW does have protocol for these invasive species -- they advice fishermen not to release the fish caught in lakes and ponds, and instead, they should freeze it and contact authorities immediately. Police have found bodies of 40 newborn tiger cubs inside freezers at the controversial "Tiger Temple," in Kanchanaburi Province, west of Bangkok. They have also intercepted a monk trying to leave the temple in a truck filled with tiger fangs and skins. The Wildlife Conservation Office (WCO) is doing an investigation on the motives why the temple was storing the bodies of dead tiger cubs inside the temple freezer. They are also considering the possibility that it is part of smuggling tiger parts, the organization's director, Teunjai Noochdumrong told CNN. Wildlife officials said they will file new criminal charges after what they have discovered. They also said that the cubs were only one or two days old when they died. Police Colonel Bandith Meungsukhum said they still don't have any lead on how long the cubs had been dead. The dead cubs "must be of some value for the temple", Adisorn Nuchdamrong, from Thailand's Department of National Parks, told Reuters news agency. "But for what is beyond me." According to BBC News, tiger bones and body parts are used usually used in Chinese medicine. At the time of the interview, monks at the temple were not available for comment, but they have previously denied trafficking allegations. However, the temple has released a statement on its Facebook page saying that the survival rate of tiger cubs in the temple was comparatively low and that when these cubs die, the temple used to cremate them. However, a veterinarian changed the policy in 2010 to "probably keep as proof against the allegations of selling cubs". The discovery of the cubs' bodies is further evidence that the facility broke an agreement that they would inform the WCO if new cubs were born at the temple, said Teunjai Noochdumrong. The organization believes the temple's license to keep tigers should be revoked. "We are determining if we will file a legal suit against the temple," Noochdumrong said. She also said that if they are found attempting to smuggle the tiger cub remains, temple officials could face up to four years in jail and or be fined up to $1,121 (THB40,000). Elwha River is located on the Olympic Peninsula in the U.S. state of Washington. It is about 45-mile (72 km) river and flows generally north to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The river was revived after the removal of the Glines Canyon Dam on the Elwha River in northwestern Washington State in August 2014. The U.S. National Park Service, which administers the surroundings of Olympic National Park allowed the removal of the dams to restore the natural river system that was presumed benefits for fish and other wildlife. The Elwha River is a habitat for varieties of salmon and trout. On the other hand, they were diminished for about century. Today, the salmon returns and the fish and other marine creatures are flourishing, according to National Geographic. Anne Shaffer, a marine biologist with the nonprofit Coastal Watershed Institute in Port Angeles, Washington said that the place is an ecological zone of aquatic habitat along the shoreline that tenders refuge and feeding areas for fish and other organisms that help them transition from freshwater to the marine habitat. She has been working on the Elwha system and focusing on what she called "nearshore environment" since 1990. This includes the deltas and estuary systems near the mouths of the rivers and the seagrass beds in shallow water. Ms. Shaffer spoke about the changes of the Elwha River since the removal of the dams. She said that they have seen an increase in good habitat by about a hundred acres (40 hectares) and an instant response in the fish community. They found new species that are coming to the area. The seafloor near the mouth of the river has increased by 10 meters (33 feet). This makes a whole new delta and the estuary has returned. She was also asked what she has learned from the Elwha that might be applied to other potential restoration projects and dam removal. She replied that they hope to inform others so people know how to do dam removals to optimize the nearshore environment. They must need to let the sediment come to the shore and let restoration happen. A new study has pinpointed one more reason for the world to get serious about climate change and global warming. It has been claimed that food crops are producing more of chemical compounds to protect themselves from extreme weather conditions, enough to make them toxic for human and animal consumption. According to a new United Nations Environment Program report, extreme weather is causing crops such as wheat and maize to generate more potential toxins as a reaction to protect themselves. The chemical compounds produced by the crops can turn out to be harmful for humans and animals if consumed over a long period of time. "Crops are responding to drought conditions and increases in temperature just like humans do when faced with a stressful situation," said Jacqueline McGlade, chief scientist and director of the Division of Early Warning and Assessment at UNEP, reported Tech Times. In normal weather conditions, plants turn nitrates they absorb into nutritious amino acids and proteins. However, during extreme weather conditions like high temperature and prolonged drought, the conversion process slows down which leads to more potentially problematic nitrate accumulating in the plant, the report said. Too much consumption of nitrate can disrupt the transportation of oxygen by red blood cells in the human body, the report said. Maize, wheat, barley, soybeans, millet and sorghum are some of the crops which are susceptible to accumulating too much nitrate in times of stress. In fact, heavy rains after an extended drought can also lead to a harmful accumulation of hydrogen cyanide or prussic acid in flax, maize, arrow grass, sorghum, apples, cherries and other crops. Prussic acid interferes with oxygen flow in humans. Aflatoxins are another cause for concern. These fungal toxins, which can lead to cancer and hamper fetal growth, are a worry in maize. The contamination is increasing due to shifting weather patterns as a result of climate change. Approximately 4.5 billion people in developing countries are exposed to aflatoxins annually and this number continues to rise, said McGlade, according to HNGN. According to the International Livestock Research Institute, outbreak of aflatoxin poisoning affected more than 300 people and killed more than 100 following a prolonged drought in Kenya in 2004. "We are just beginning to recognize the magnitude of toxin- related issues confronting farmers in developing countries of the tropics and sub-tropics," the report reads. "As warmer climate zones expand towards the poles, countries in more temperate regions are facing new threats." The report proposes a list of eight ideas farmers and agricultural experts can adopt to try to limit damage from more crop toxins, such as mapping contamination hotspots and building better evidence about what is happening now with the toxins in their area. In order to control the poisoning of crops, scientists suggest developing crop varieties designed to cope with extreme weather conditions. "Research centers with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research are developing seeds that are suitable in various regions that have been hit by climate change," McGlade said. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is convinced Ukraine will receive a visa-free regime with Europe by the end of this year. "We are doing everything possible for the Parliament and the Council of the EU to consider this issue by summer. Unfortunately, this may occur in September. But I am optimistic and believe Ukraine will get a visa-free regime in 2016," Poroshenko said at a press conference in Kyiv. The head of state stressed "there are no negative signals with regard to the issue." The president said now the EU is deciding on providing the European Commission with the right to suspend a visa-free regime, but this does not concern the decision of the European Parliament and the Council of Interior Ministers on granting Ukraine, which has met all the necessary criteria, with a visa-free regime. Poroshenko said he was certain the EU would grant a visa-free regime to Ukraine, but could not say exactly when. Jupiter's Great Red Spot and other surface features that extend 30 to 100 kilometers below the enigmatic surface has been revealed to have patterns of swirling ammonia, suggesting that the stormy weather captured by the 1979 Voyager encounter was due to the swirls located just beneath the clouds. To get a more in-depth study of the planet, Space.com noted that researchers started building a new map to observe the different radiowaves emitted by Jupiter's atmosphere over time. With visible-light telescopes that can get the images back to the surface quickly, the VLA radio telescope, and other upgraded features, the images can be combined with the Hubble Space Telescope's visible views of the planet to show a better view of its environment. Beneath Jupiter's colorful bands, giant spots and swirling clouds lay giant waves of ammonia >> https://t.co/6vef0VKQMK Discovery (@Discovery) June 2, 2016 The Australian Broadcasting Corporation said that the ammonia discovered by the Galileo probe in 1995 was found in large amounts on the planet - but new data revealed that there was more of it than expected, as radio waves emitted by the large body was shown to have been absorbed by ammonia, which they used to calculate the amount present in different parts of the atmosphere. The recent map showed hotspots that appear bright in radio and thermal images, while the ammonia-poor regions encircle the planet like a belt just north of the equator. Also beneath the hotspots are ammonia-rich upwellings that bring the ammonia from the deeper part of the planet. NASA's Juno spacecraft, which will begin orbiting Jupiter next month, will look into the makeup of the planet in a mission that will hopefully give insight on Jupiter's origin and evolution. Scott Bolton, the chief investigator for the aircraft told The Guardian, "The point of Juno is we go there with telescopes like the VLA, but [measuring] longer wavelengths." He also shared that the technique will allow scientists to look deeper into the planet's atmosphere, adding, "I expect that when Juno gets there we will see lots of things associated with the dynamics of the deep atmosphere - much deeper that [this], and much higher resolution." Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said he condemns the publication of the personal information of foreign journalists accredited in the self-proclaimed Donbas republics on the Mirotvorets (Peacemaker) center's website. "I condemn the publication of the personal information of a total of 4,000 journalists on the Mirotvorets website," he said at a press conference in Kyiv on Friday. The "Normandy Four" countries have reached an agreement on the issue of sending an OSCE police mission to Donbas, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said. "Today we have a serious diplomatic success because we have reached an agreement on sending this mission not only in the "Normandy format," on the top level, but our German partners began a discussion on the issue of sending a police mission [to eastern Ukraine] already in Vienna under German chairmanship [in the OSCE]," Poroshenko told a press conference in Kyiv on Friday. The president emphasized that these events give him reason to be cautiously optimistic, "and that became a basis for me to say that we may complete this process in 2016." "Unfortunately, we lost three months after that statement, but the process is going on very actively,' he said. In the meantime, the Kremlin has denied Ukraine's allegations that Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his consent to the deployment in Donbas of some armed police mission of the OSCE in "Normandy Four" contacts. The NATO-Ukraine Joint Working Group on Defense-Technical Cooperation endorsed this group's statute and an updated version of the NATO-Ukraine roadmap on defense-technical cooperation at a meeting in Lviv. "The participants in the meeting adopted a statute of Joint Working Group's activities and an updated version of the NATO-Ukraine roadmap on military-technical cooperation, which should be signed at the NATO summit in Warsaw," the Ukrainian mission to NATO reported on its website on Friday. The parties also discussed the statute of the state defense program for armaments and military hardware development for the period of up to 2020, the implementation of projects under NATO's trust fund for Ukraine, and national defense industry reform. High-ranking U.S. advisors, who are due to arrive in Ukraine in one month's time, will act as guarantors of the depoliticizing of prosecution [of crimes] in Ukraine, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said. "I stress: with [Yuriy] Lutsenko's arrival, the process of de-politicization is also taking place within the Prosecutor General's Office," the president said at a press conference in Kyiv on Friday. He said he was happy when amid signing the $1 billion loan guarantees agreement, U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt stressed that the U.S. is very content with the de-politicization of the Prosecutor General's Office and the level of cooperation. "Several high-ranking U.S. advisors, who are arriving at the end of June, will act as guarantors of these processes," the president said. The newly-created General Inspectorate in the Prosecutor General's Office will ensure an efficient fight against corruption within its ranks, he said. "Its precondition was the signing of the loan guarantees," Poroshenko said. There are plenty of shipowners for whom little change might just be the agreeable trend of the summer because with this many ships even a brighter cargo picture is keeping them on the back foot Freight rates for capesizes on key Asian routes are likely to hold around current levels or move slightly higher next week on better cargo volumes with support from a raft of off-market charters. That mixed picture is playing out on the paper market too and this week failed to demonstrate an encouraging trend. Despite plenty of activity in the physical market, rates moved little on paper which as a consequence remained in a very tight range and the suspicion is that the off-market fixing was making paper jittery and harder to price. After a number of directional changes in a relatively tight range Cape paper ended Thursday, for the most part, up on the day. Reports of Tubarao/Qingdao fixing at $9.00 helped keep prompt periods well bid as the afternoon drew to a close with anticipation of further gains on Fridays indices. Panamaxes saw fronthaul and T/A levels easier and with limited Pacific activity, the market sold off across the curve. Prompt contracts came under most pressure with June and Q3 sold off in decent volume while buyers scaled back their ideas. The market opened weaker again on Thursday before finding a level post index with limited trading and the curve finding some renewed support at the close. But with the physical outlook still cautious we could see this closing support tested again before weeks end. And supramaxes? Would you surprised to hear Thursday was a flat and uneventful day with rates static on June and Q4. A slightly negative index failed to spark the afternoon into any action. Of course you would not. Contact FIS: http://freightinvestorservices.com/freight-derivatives/ffas/ Poulsson was elected chairman at the ICS annual general meeting in Tokyo on Thursday and succeeds Masamichi Morooka who steps from the post after four years. I am very honoured to have been elected by the ICS member national shipowner associations. Being Chairman is a big responsibility and my primary task will be to ensure that ICS continues to represent the considered views of the entire industry, Poulsson said. This means reflecting and reconciling the opinions of different ship types and trades, different national viewpoints, and the interests of shipping companies big and small. He noted the two major challenges facing ICS this year to make further progress on addressing CO2 emmissions from international shipping and the being ready for the Ballast Water Management Convention when it comes into force. More generally, ICS will continue to fight for the maintenance of global rules for our global industry, and continuous improvement with respect to our safety record and environmental performance. Poulsson will remain as president of SSA a post he took up last year. Speaking to journalists in Hamburg three months prior to this years SMM 2016 exhibition staged in the German port city, the Clarkson Research non-executive President said that many of the closed yards were relatively small and still left 423 facilities with annual building capacity of about 100m dwt compared with typical demand of 65m dwt. Shipyards havent done enough yet, he declared. However, at long last, shipowners had reined in new contracting. Contracts placed so far this year were running at levels not seen since the 1980s. Only 71 new ships were signed in the first quarter, according to industry statistics. Stopford believes that despite weak shipping demand resulting from Chinas slowdown and the generally poor performance of the global economy, shipping is poised on the edge of a technological breakthrough in which a digital revolution will transform traditional shipping operations. Likening the business to Formula One in which computers control many aspects of vehicle operation, Stopford said that smart technology will enable more cargo to be shipped more efficient and more safely. Citing six elements in smart shippings toolbox, Stopford said new technology would enable the streamlining of maritime distribution systems and likened possible progress to that which is evident at companies including Uber (in which Saudi Arabias wealth fund has just invested $3.5bn), Amazon and UPS. Tools in the box, he said, included new satcoms such as Inmarsats high-throughput Ka-band services, telematics sensors, data storage, smart-phone apps, information systems and automation. Stopford will be speaking at the gmec conference at SMM 2016 in September on Big data smart shipping and the environment. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is planning to attend a NATO summit due to be held in the Polish capital of Warsaw, at the beginning of July. "I am grateful to our Polish partners for their efforts to make Ukraine one of the leading topics on the summit's agenda. Also, the NATO-Ukraine commission will meet at a high level, and there will be an intensive schedule of bilateral and multilateral meetings," he said at a press conference in Kyiv on Friday. The Ukrainian delegation is not going there "empty-handed," he said. "We have adopted a strategic defense bulletin [a defense road map], and these are the commitments that we have undertaken in cooperation with NATO, and I can say now that the new NATO commander in Europe is very pleased with this cooperation ... it is the president who is in charge of the defense sector and I can assure you: reforms there have been proceeding normally," he said. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has asked the General Staff to publish information on the number of foreigners who are fighting on the side of the Ukrainian army in Donbas. "As for the thousands of foreign citizens who are fighting on the side of Ukraine, because this information was stated in my presence, I cannot confirm it, and I will ask the General Staff to publish its official position on this matter," Poroshenko said at a press conference in Kyiv on Friday, responding to a question from a journalist who said, citing the General Staff, that one thousand foreigners are fighting on the side of Ukraine. Security Council Elections 2016 This is Security Council Reports annual Research Report on Security Council Elections. To view the full report, please download the PDF here. Introduction The 70th session of the UN General Assembly is scheduled to hold elections on 28 June for non-permanent members of the Security Council for 2017-2018. This is the first time that elections are being held six months ahead of the beginning of the term of office. Except for the Council elections in 1946, which took place in January, the earliest that they have been held in the last 70 years has been late September. Five of the ten non-permanent seats on the Security Council will be filled and they will be distributed regionally as follows: one seat for the African Group (currently held by Angola); one seat for the Group of Asia and the Pacific Small Island Developing States (the Asia-Pacific Group, currently held by Malaysia); one seat for the Group of Latin American and Caribbean States (GRULAC, currently held by Venezuela); and two seats for the Western European and Others Group (WEOG, currently held by New Zealand and Spain). The Eastern European Group is not contesting any seat this year as its seat (held by Ukraine through 2017) is up for election every other year. The five new members elected this year will take up their seats on 1 January 2017 and will serve through 31 December 2018. The procedures governing elections to the Security Council are described in detail in Annex 1. Ethiopia and Bolivia are running unopposed, having been each nominated by their regional groups, the African Group and GRULAC, respectively. Both countries have previously served on the Council on two occasions: Ethiopia in 1967-1968 and 1989-1990, and Bolivia in 1964-1965 and 1978-1979. Races for the Asia-Pacific Group and WEOG seats are being contested this year. Kazakhstan and Thailand are competing for one seat from the Asia-Pacific Group, while Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden are competing for two WEOG seats. With the exception of Kazakhstan, all candidates have served on the Council in the past: Thailand on one occasion (1985-1986); Italy on six (1959-1960, 1971-1972, 1975-1976, 1987-1988, 1995-1996 and 2007-2008); the Netherlands on five (1946, 1951-1952, 1965-1966, 1983-1984 and 1999-2000); and Sweden on three (1957-1958, 1975-1976 and 1997-1998). Of all the 2016 candidates, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden have the most prior Security Council experience. Kazakhstan is one of 68 UN member states that has never served on the Council (accounting for approximately 35 percent of the membership). A country must obtain votes from two-thirds of the member states present and voting at the General Assembly session in order to secure a seat on the Council, regardless of whether the election is contested. This means at least 129 votes are required to win a seat if all 193 UN member states vote. (A member state can be prohibited from voting as a result of arrears in payment of financial contributions, in accordance with Article 19 of the UN Charter.) Elections to the Council, as with other principal organs of the UN, require formal balloting, even if candidates have been endorsed by their regional group and are running unopposed. If no candidate obtains the required number of votes in the first round, voting in the next round is restricted to the candidates that received the most votes. In this restricted ballot, the number of countries included is limited to twice the number of vacant seats; for example, if one seat is available, only the two countries that received the most votes in the first round could contest the next round. (Any votes for other candidates during this restricted voting round are considered void.) This restricted voting process can continue for up to three rounds of voting. If, at that point, a candidate still fails to garner the minimum number of votes, unrestricted voting is reopened for up to three rounds. This pattern of restricted and unrestricted voting continues until a candidate is successful in securing the required two-thirds of the votes. In theory, it is possible, although unlikely, that a country running unopposed might not garner the requisite votes of those present and eligible to vote in the General Assembly in the first round of voting. Such a country may then be challenged in subsequent rounds and ultimately not obtain a seat. Historically, there have been a number of instances in which extended rounds of voting were required to fill a contested seat. This was more common before the Councils enlargement from 11 to 15 members in 1966, and it resulted in a number of agreements on split terms. Despite the enlargement, extended voting has occurred a few times more recently. Such situations have been solved by the withdrawal of one of the contenders or the election of a compromise candidate, rather than by agreement on a split term. As mentioned above, this will be the first time that elections are held in the month of June. Following concerns that elected Council members did not have enough time to prepare for their terms, and to have enough time and flexibility in the event of any unforeseen circumstances, the General Assembly decided to hold the elections about six months before the members elected assume their responsibilities. Photo: Pristimantis yanezi is one of three new rain frog species recently found in the Andes. Credit: Santiago Ron It's a tale of three rain frogs in the Andes, as two studies have just described new species in that mountain range in Ecuador and Peru. Researchers from the Museo de Zoologia at Catholic University of Ecuador explored a little-investigated region of the Ecuadorian Andes and found two new frogs in the highly diverse genus Pristimantis. Meanwhile, South American and North American scientists teamed up on the discovery of another frog in that genus Pristimantis pluvialis. RELATED: 5 Fun Frogs: Photos The pair of species from Ecuador, P. llanganati and P. yanezi, were found in the Llanganates National Park, which has vast swaths of land that can only be accessed on foot. For that reason, it holds great promise for new animal discoveries. Like other frog species inhabiting the park's forests, P. llanganati and P. yanezi have a "spiky" look and develop directly into frogs, without any tadpole stage and metamorphosis. The researchers say that with so few frogs cataloged in the region, it's likely there are yet more Pristimantis species to be found. WATCH VIDEO: "This Frog Hears with Its Mouth" Interfax-Ukraine to host press conference 'Privatbank Not Complying with Court Rulings: Who Is Helping Them?' On Monday, June 6, at 12.00, the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency's press centre will host a press conference entitled "Privatbank Not Complying with Court Rulings: Who Is Helping Them?" Participants will include lawyer Vadym Chunzhyn, and Director of Briver LLC Dmytro Mendis (8/5a Reitarska Street). Admission requires press accreditation. More information by phone: (095) 010 0172. US authorities announced a near-total ban on the trade of African elephant ivory Thursday, finalizing a years-long push to protect the endangered animals. "Today's bold action underscores the United States' leadership and commitment to ending the scourge of elephant poaching and the tragic impact it's having on wild populations," Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell said. The new rule "substantially limits" imports, exports and sales of such ivory across state lines, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) said. RELATED: Legendary Elephant 'Satao' Killed by Poachers However, it does make exceptions for some "pre-existing manufactured" items, such as musical instruments, furniture and firearms that contain less than 200 grams of ivory and meet other specific criteria, according to the FWS. Antiques, as defined under the Endangered Species Act, are also exempt. The new measures fulfill restrictions in an executive order on combating wildlife trafficking issued by President Barack Obama in 2013, the FWS said in its statement announcing the ban. WATCH VIDEO: "Could China Stop Illegal Wildlife Tracking?" What if robots could evolve? It's the question asked by a group of scientists in Amsterdam, whose radical new project aims to create smarter, more advanced robots through a process similar to sexual reproduction. While the idea may sound far-fetched, they've already demonstrated a proof of concept in February, two robot parents came together to 'mate,' and the first 'robot baby' was born. What if robots could evolve? It's the question asked by a group of scientists in Amsterdam, whose radical new project aims to create smarter, more advanced robots through a process similar to sexual reproduction. On the right, the two parent robots can be seen near their 'baby,' which is pictured left In the Robot Baby Project at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, scientists have developed a way for robots to have 'sex' and pass on their DNA to offspring. Doing this can allow them to 'develop their bodies through evolution,' making for successive generations that have more advanced physical and behavioural capabilities. As the process continues, the researchers say robots can become more suitable for use in unknown environments that could be hazardous to humans, like deep sea mines or even other planets. 'We have two robots that meet and mate, and just as in the animal kingdom, this results in a baby,' says Guszti Eiben, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at VU, in a video explaining the concept. The robots live, work, and reproduce in an 'Arena,' where they are able to select a suitable mating partner. They learn through motivation, the researchers explain, and in this case, they are motivated to walk toward a red light. When the two robots come together, they are then able to communicate and even mate. 'When they evaluate each other favourably, they send their genomes through the Wi-Fi network,' says Milan Jelisavcic, a PhD student at the university. 'A sexual reproduction mechanism then creates the new genome. Code of this genome is sent to the 3D printer then, for printing new components.' During a year-and-a-half development period, the researchers were able to achieve the implementation of a full life cycle. When the parent robots 'reproduce,' their features are randomly recombined. This includes the brain software and the hardware. Scientists have developed a way for robots to have 'sex' and pass on their DNA to offspring. Doing this can allow them to 'develop their bodies through evolution,' making for successive generations that have more advanced physical and behavioural capabilities. Parent robots are pictured above 'With evolutionary techniques, we evolve the neural networks of the robots,' explains Jacqueline Heinerman, PhD student at VU, in the video. These neural networks are responsible for their behaviours. The lab also contains a 'Birth Clinic' and a 'Nursery' for the robotic child, and once born, each must undergo a learning process. If it is deemed satisfactory, the child then becomes an adult, and potentially, a parent. Researchers say this marks the start of a new era the Industrial Evolution. In this state, machines could autonomously operate and reproduce. A sexual reproduction mechanism then creates the genome for the offspring, randomly combining the features from the parents, including software (the brain) and hardware. This can be seen in the 'robot baby' above, which has both blue and green parts The robots live, work, and reproduce in an 'Arena,' where they are able to select a suitable mating partner. The lab also contains a 'Birth Clinic' and a 'Nursery' for the robotic child, and once born, each must undergo a learning process. If it is deemed satisfactory, the child then becomes an adult, and potentially, a parent 'Evolution is a great designer,' says Eiben. 'The Evolution of Things is an emerging new technology that exploits the power of selection and reproduction to breed robot designs that are hard to obtain by traditional approaches. Robots that evolve can adapt to their environment and cope with unforeseen situations. 'The bodies, brains, and behaviours are continually tested by the environment and the useful traits are amplified in future generations. This technology opens new perspectives for robotics, artificial intelligence, space research, and even biology.' The researchers unveiled the first robot baby on May 26 at Campus Party in the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht, demonstrating their novel method of 'robot mating.' One day, they say, this new form of evolution could even play a critical role in the colonization of Mars. 'What does it all mean? It means a proof of concept,' Eiben explains in the video. 'And the concept we prove is the evolution of robots and physical hardware. For science this means that artificial evolution can break out of computer simulations and enter the real world.' While the idea may sound far-fetched, they've already demonstrated a proof of concept in February, two robot parents came together to 'mate,' and the first 'robot baby' was born. Robot parent can be seen interacting in the photo above The annual Center Street Jam military appreciation night was held in downtown Goldsboro, North Carolina, June 2, to recognize Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C. Airmen. Col. Mark Slocum, 4th Fighter Wing commander, and Col. Craig Shenkenberg, 916th Air Refueling Wing commander, shared their appreciation for the town of Goldsboro during their opening remarks. I just want to say thank you on behalf of myself and Chief Master Sgt. [Shane] Wagner (4th FW command chief) and all the men and women of the 4th Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, said Slocum. Whats amazing about this community is how much you accept our families and our Airmen into your community. I want to thank all of you for the support, this is just another night, another example of why Goldsboro and Wayne County is one of the top ten defense support communities in the entire United States. More than 500 members of the base and local community attended the event which featured a live band, local food trucks, and activities for kids. It is a small gesture from our community to say thanks for the outstanding service and commitment to our great nation, said Chief Master Sgt. Anthony Duplechain, 4th Operations Group command chief. The festivities were definitely enjoyable and much appreciated from the community, and it was a great event. The Goldsboro and Wayne County communities hold several events throughout the year such as Memorial Day events and a Veterans Day parade to honor the Airmen of Seymour Johnson AFB. The sun was shining in the small neighborhood park in San Franciscos Western Addition when I walked by this week, and I got a friendly greeting from a group of gentlemen who were holding court on one of the benches. But I felt a little lost. The big log, carved in the shape of a human figure and rumored to be the work of famed San Francisco artist Sargent Johnson, was gone. I wrote about the log in September 2015, following up on a tip that the piece might be more than it seemed. At the time it had been in the small park, at the corner of Golden Gate Avenue and Webster Street, for many years. No one seemed to remember where it had come from or who put it there. Neighbors and local workers described its long neglect: It was damaged by vandals, used by homeless people in search of firewood, stomped on by children. The problem was, the log might have been and might still be priceless. The dramatic face and torso that had been carved out of the log echoed the work of Johnson, whose work is held by such major institutions as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian. His work regularly sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Johnson frequented the Western Addition. While his most famous San Francisco pieces are the slate carvings and tile mosaics at Aquatic Park along with the 1933 Forever Free mother-and-child sculpture at SFMOMA he also developed 3-foot-long animal sculptures for housing projects and community centers in San Francisco. Those sculptures, as he described them in an oral history for the Archives of American Art, were stone. They have pretty much gone to pieces, Johnson said in the 1964 interview. Kids break them up. Ominous. Yet its also proof that Johnson made the kinds of public pieces that this log appeared to be. Some scholars have told me that the log may very well be Johnsons work. I remember Melvin Holmes, whos now deceased, telling me that in the 1960s, hed see Sargent Claude Johnson carving an image into the log as he rode the bus each day, said the curator and art historian Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins. Holmes was a very significant collector of African American art including many Johnson pieces. Because the Bay Area doesnt have the greatest track record when it comes to taking care of Johnsons work UC Berkeley accidentally sold one of his redwood carvings, valued at more than $1 million, to an art and furniture dealer for $164.63 what I wrote in September was that the city of San Francisco needed to take steps to preserve and authenticate the log. It has sort of. I contacted San Franciscos Real Estate Division this week to track down the whereabouts of the log. Lesley Giovannelli wrote me back: On (Nov. 5, 2015) our contractor, ShipArt International, relocated the piece from the property at 1050 McAllister to their warehouse, she wrote. It was cleaned of excessive termites and bacteria, prepped, wrapped and placed on a wooden pallet. It was delivered to Brooks Hall (under the Civic Center plaza) on 4/7/16 for safe storage where it remains off the floor resting on a large pallet, wrapped and locked in a secure area of the building as of today. So far, so good. And the authentication? I wrote back. We are still trying to identify resources to support research associated with authenticating the piece, Giovannelli wrote. In other words, the city hasnt come up with the money. I kind of understand why if it turns out that the log is Johnsons, then San Francisco would have to explain why it allowed it to deteriorate. It could also be on the hook to pay for restoration. Thats one possibility. Another possibility is that the log isnt Johnsons at all. After my piece about the log last fall, Bill Van Niekerken, our archivist at The Chronicle, came across an article from Aug. 28, 1973, called A Different Summer Job. The article describes the efforts of a 41-year-old public health department controlman, Edward Brooks, to create a small park in the Western Addition. The park, named after a retired Army technical sergeant by the name of Ned Henderson who oversaw the efforts of the Western Addition young people who built it, was complemented by a 5-ton eucalyptus log. It has since become the start of a wood sculpture by a friend of Brooks who wants anonymity, the article says. Johnson died in 1967. So who was the sculptor? We wont know until the log is authenticated. Unfortunately, it could be sitting under Civic Center Plaza for a very long time. Caille Millner is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cmillner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: caillemillner The Planning Commission approved the largest housing development in the history of the Mission District Thursday night, despite over four hours of passionate commentary from residents and artists who said the project would continue to squeeze working families and artists out of the neighborhood. Over the past year, the so-called Beast On Bryant at 2000-2070 Bryant St. has become a flash point for what most San Franciscans agree has become a crisis, the impact that an extreme influx of wealth and speculative investment is having on a neighborhood famous for its arts and working-class Latino community. The plan, by developer Nick Podell, calls for two brick-clad buildings separated by a public alleyway. On the north side of the block would be 196 market-rate rental units, plus three affordable units to replace rent-controlled units that are being removed. On the other side would be a 139-unit, 100 percent affordable development, for which Podell has offered to donate the land, valued at $22 million. The city, not Podells company, would fund the construction of the affordable housing. On Thursday, Kate Hartley, deputy director of the Mayors Office Of Housing, said that the city has the money set aside to build the affordable units, which is likely to cost $30 million. She said that if the city were to go out and acquire a different site in the Mission District, rather than have one dedicated by a private developer, that $30 million would generate only about 50 units. We have an additional benefit in that the land will be delivered ready-to-go cleared of any environmental hazards and ready for construction, said Hartley. The property at 18th and Bryant has become symbolic not only because of the size of the housing development, but because it was home to one of the neighborhoods most beloved arts community, a sprawling 50,000 square foot network of spaces that was home to hundreds of dancers, painters, actors, sewers, composers, and circus performers. The loss of the arts space became the crux of the 11th-hour negotiations Thursday night, after an 11-hour hearing, with Planning Commissioners convincing the developer to agree to include 19,000 square feet of space that would be set aside for artists and so called PDR, which stands for production, distribution, and repair. Some of the arts and PDR space will take up square footage that had previously been set aside for so-called flex units, which are similar to the live-work lofts constructed in the neighborhood during the dot-com boom. A coalition of artists, residents, and building trades representatives opposed the development. Those groups wanted the amount of affordable housing to be increased to 50 percent and for 100 percent of the work to be done by union sub-contractors. That group they called themselves A Better Beast On Bryant tried to negotiate a deal where $10 million of private and union money would be put into the deal in order to increase affordable housing and arts. But in the end the groups offering to invest were looking for a market rate return similar to the financing Podell already had lined up. Podell said that any more concessions would make the development un-financable. I showed my books to the city, as demanded, said Podell. Im at the edge of what I can do. Several Mission District residents urged the commission not to approve any major projects before a new plan under development, Mission Action Plan 2020, is completed. If you pass the projects in the pipeline (the Mission 2020 plan is) not going to make much of a difference, said Lou Dematteis, a resident and filmmaker working on the plan. What good is it for us to come here if we feel you are not listening to us? Everyone that I know in the Mission is opposed (to the Beast On Bryant) in its current form. Erick Arguello, Calle 24 Co-Founder/President, said that even the PDR and arts spaces would be too expensive for most Mission groups. Whats necessary is 100 percent affordable housing, he said. The project divided a community that usually stands together: the San Francisco Building Trades Council, with the carpenters supporting it and plumbers and sheet-metal workers opposed. Commissioners Katherin Moore and Cindy Wu voted against the project. After listening to powerful community comment I think this project is still too far apart on too many fronts, said Moore. For me, it is shocking to see the trade unions are not supporting it. This is the first time in my 12 years on this commission hearing this. Commissioner Rich Hillis said he sympathized with the criticisms, but that stopping the development would not slow the rate of change. If I thought if we stopped Nick Podell, it would preserve the Mission, I would do it, he said. We have to find solutions and solutions are more complicated than stopping a Google bus or stopping Nick Podell. The Bryant Street project could be a bellwether for three other market-rate Mission District housing projects in the pipeline: the so-called Monster in the Mission at the 16th Street BART Station, which has been stalled by litigation between the property owner and the developer; the 157-unit project Lennar is proposing at 1515 South Van Ness; and Axis Developments proposed 117-unit project at 2675 Folsom St. J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: sfjkdineen This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The fatal crash of a Blue Angels jet during a practice run in Tennessee prompted a San Francisco supervisor to say Friday that the Navys aerial stunt team should be barred from flying over the city when it performs here during Fleet Week in October. Supervisor John Avalos said he plans to introduce a nonbinding resolution by August that would demand that the team of six F/A-18 fighter jets fly only over the bay during its practices and air shows. Its about them crashing and hitting a building a place where people live, Avalos said. Its about the terror that they cause in people when they strafe neighborhoods. Thats something I hear about all the time when Blue Angels fly overhead. He added, Flying over sailboats that choose to be about in the bay when the Blue Angels are flying I dont really have a problem with that. Avalos conceded, however, that his resolution probably wouldnt pass the board. In 2007, as a staffer for then-Supervisor Chris Daly, he crafted a similar resolution for his boss after a fatal Blue Angels crash at an air show in South Carolina. The resolution failed to make it out of committee. More for you Supervisor's tweets bashed by Blue Angels enthusiasts It seems like there is a lot of support for the Blue Angels every year despite the obvious risk of flying over the city, Avalos said. The crash Thursday occurred during a practice for a Blue Angels air show at the Smyrna, Tenn., airport outside Nashville. The pilot, Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss, was killed. No one on the ground was hurt. The Navy is taking the lead in the crash investigation. Lt. Clinton Beaird said the show scheduled for this weekend has been canceled, and that the Navy will make a decision next week about whether to cancel future shows. The crash was the Blue Angels first since the South Carolina accident. The team briefly stopped flying after that incident, but resumed its regular schedule within two months. A Navy investigation found that the pilot in the 2007 crash had attempted a sharp turn too close to the ground. Supervisor Eric Mar said he would support Avalos proposed resolution. He said he recognized that many people enjoy the Blue Angels shows thousands crowd onto the waterfront for the Fleet Week performances but that the potential dangers, the question of how much it really brings into the city, outweigh the benefits. 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. Also, said Mar, the spectacle goes against the values of peace that San Francisco stands for. ... They promote militarism, and I dont think a city like ours should be promoting that. Supervisor Aaron Peskin voted against the 2007 measure and said he would vote against this one as well. I am the District Three supervisor, he said. Its a huge economic boon to District Three every year and the majority of my constituents like it. Board President London Breed said she would wait for the results of the investigation into the Tennessee crash before deciding how to vote. Emily Green is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: egreen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: emilytgreen Steven Weber wants you to envision a future in which Facebook, Twitter, even Google have just gone bankrupt a future in which a tech failure makes the financial collapse of the last decade seem small. Think: A memo goes from Mark Zuckerberg to the president of the United States, that mimics a memo that went from GM to the president, said Weber, a professor at UC Berkeleys School of Information, at a recent event in Washington. It says: My company is responsible for 2 million jobs. My company is in financial distress. The only way I can keep those things going is to sell those data assets. That data, in Facebooks case, would include users names, birthdays, social connections even the shapes of their faces, collected every time friends tag one another in photos. The scenario, aptly named Bubble 2.0, is one of five recently released by Berkeleys Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity. The center explores potential Internet security threats that far eclipse the data breaches at Target, Home Depot and the like. Our center is founded on the proposition that cybersecurity will become the master problem of the Internet era, the centers executive director, Betsy Cooper, said at the event. Soon cybersecurity will just be security. This month, the center will host the White Houses Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity, a group of a dozen leaders creating cybersecurity recommendations for the president that can be enacted over the next decade. The center opened in early 2015 after the university received a $15 million grant from the Hewlett Foundation the previous year. Stanford and MIT received similar amounts. Stanfords research is focusing on how cybersecurity affects cyber-social systems, such as education and health care. In May 2015, the Berkeley center gathered together roughly 40 executives, academics and government officials at the Marconi Conference Center in Marin County to lay the groundwork for the scenarios that the center recently published. In January, the center doled out roughly $900,000 to fund assorted projects trying to answer questions about how cybersecurity might evolve. In an example of how far out some of these concepts may appear, one project focuses on bio-sensing, the interaction between technology and the body. Weber, the centers faculty director, led a group of professors that wrote the initial grant request to Hewlett. And its not as if such research is new. From the 1960s to the 90s, for example, Royal Dutch Shell used scenario planning to anticipate and react to major discontinuities in energy markets, such as the oil embargoes of the 1970s, according to the Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis, the CIAs training school in Reston, Va. The point is that even thinking about possible futures makes companies and even U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the CIA more resilient. Even if the predictions turn out to be wrong, the effort to anticipate is worth a lot, because it gives you the ability to react quickly, said Herb Lin, a senior cyberpolicy scholar at Stanfords Center for International Security and Cooperation. And if you can react quickly, youll be less screwed. Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes Few, if any, academics have been applying long-term planning to the cybersecurity problem, explains Weber. I really wanted (the Berkeley center) to look over the horizon and not focus on catching up with todays issues and chasing battles around in a reactionary sense, he said. In order to prepare for the near future, governments, corporations and individuals have to consider all the possibilities, said Cooper, who joined the center last year from the Department of Homeland Security, where she was an attorney in the office of the general counsel. In September, the center plans to hold a meeting to discuss lessons learned from the initial scenarios and set its future research agenda. Sean Sposito is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ssposito@sfchronicle.com Twitter: seansposito RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Los Angeles County Elon Musk was late. Musk is always late. Or maybe thats the wrong way to think of it. When you live in the future, its more that youre always waiting for the rest of us to arrive. The CEO of Tesla Motors, already scheduled for a post-dinner session at the Code Conference Wednesday night, was delayed by mechanical problems: His plane flew with the landing gear down, Musk said as he took the stage shortly before 9 p.m. Musk, whose ambitious projects have repeatedly missed deadlines, often finds himself stymied by such prosaic obstacles. It may be delusional, Musk said of his timetables, but it is never some knowingly fake deadline. In his talk, Musk, who is also CEO of rocket company SpaceX, set a timeline for getting to Mars. Mars and Earths orbits will converge again in a manner felicitous for interplanetary travel in 2018, so hes looking at that year for a first mission. And in 2024, he hopes to send people up in space for an arrival on the Red Planet in 2025. Eventually, he hopes to get Earth-Mars transit time down to three months. (Think of a Hyperloop, but for Mars.) Peter Bull Dorling Kindersley / Getty Images/Dorling Kindersley Which raises the question: What, precisely, will people do there? Musk had a few ideas for careers, like working in an iron-ore foundry or running a pizza joint. He thinks those are more worthy endeavors than yet more Internet startups. We at The Chronicle have our own ideas for filling out the Martian economy: NotVeryMuchAirbnb: The Martian atmosphere may be thin, but someone still has to inflate those mattresses. Housing will be tight in the early years of colonization, and a liquid market for spare space is a clear need. Bonus: No pesky regulations about property tax yet! Bank of Mars: The Panama Papers leak proved that we cant rely on the terrestrial banking and legal systems to provide the confidentiality that well-heeled space-goers will need. With its own political system Musk suggested some version of direct democracy the Red Planet will be the ultimate tax shelter. The Interplanet: The Mars Telecommunications Orbiter was canceled in 2005, leaving a void that savvy entrepreneurs can fill. Depending on the positions of the planets, data take 3 to 22 minutes to travel between Earth and Mars at the speed of light, which is probably a nonstarter for low-latency applications like virtual reality and video games. Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes But dont think new Martians will go without their social media. Expect a boom in Earthside hiring for JavaScript engineers who can develop locally cached versions of popular Web apps. Smartwatches: The Martian day is pretty close to the Earths 24-hour cycle. But staying in close touch with the Mother Planet will introduce all kinds of timekeeping problems. Maybe we didnt really need smartwatches on Earth, but converting between Coordinated Mars Time and Greenwich Mean Time will definitely require a computer on your wrist. Marsburgers: Without some heavy terraforming, its hard to imagine a Kobe steak a la Martienne. Synthetic proteins will find a home in hungry Red Planeteers bellies. Redwood Citys Impossible Foods, whose CEO also spoke at the Code conference, is creating a plant-based burger that requires far less land, water and energy to produce. Far less land, water and energy? Perfect for Mars. Owen Thomas is the business editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: othomas@sfchronicle.com Twitter: owenthomas This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Honda and Contra Costa County officials on Wednesday previewed a not-too-distant future of self-driving cars on a dusty, mothballed Navy bomb storage facility in north Concord. Honda is using a site named GoMentum Station, on a portion of the decommissioned Concord Naval Weapons Station, to test its autonomous Acura RLX Sport Hybrids. The sites grid of roads, closed to the public, serves as an ideal test track, free of pedestrians and traffic. We can stage and set scenarios that are just not possible to experience in normal driving, said Jim Keller, senior manager and chief engineer of Hondas North American research and development efforts. The old weapons station opened in 1942 to supply military ships docked at nearby Port Chicago during World War II. The Navy decommissioned the depot in 2007 and the the city of Concord is in the process of assuming control. The navy left behind 19.6 miles of paved roads, including a segment laid out in a grid between rows of grass-covered bunkers and other areas that can be used to replicate average city streets. On Wednesday, Honda showed reporters how an Acura using slightly older self-driving technology equipped with radar, Lidar, cameras and GPS sensors can navigate those streets by itself. The car, which had a rooftop dish array of sensors, stopped at existing stop signs, avoided three live pedestrians at crosswalks, and completing right-hand turns. A driver, there for safety purposes, didnt touch the wheel. Honda also showed off another Acura, with the protruding dish array replaced by sleeker sensors and cameras, which represents the companys next generation of experimental self-driving cars. Many restrictions Honda and other major carmakers, along with tech companies like Google, are already testing autonomous cars on public roads under tight restrictions imposed by various states, including California. But Keller said the GoMentum Station is needed because it is closed to the public and allows repetitive testing under different conditions. On public roads, If we drive 99 percent of the time, theres no issue, but that 1 percent of the time, theres a unique scenario, Keller said. So we need an area thats exclusive, secure and large enough to stage any situation we want. Other than the lower-speed driving situations Honda demonstrated for reporters, the carmaker wouldnt specifically say what it is testing. But, Keller said, You can imagine where balls will come out, kids would come out running, someone would dart out across the road. Were doing all of that. At the moment, Honda is the only carmaker using GoMentum Station even though all the major carmakers have opened research and development facilities in Silicon Valley. In September 2014, Mercedes-Benz announced it was leasing the site to test self-driving vehicles. But the German automaker stopped using the facility about nine months ago, after a disagreement over how much it would pay, said Guy Bjerke, Concords director of reuse planning for the naval center. The county has licensed about 2,100 acres for testing and is set to bring in an autonomous shuttle bus company later this year, said Randell Iwasaki, executive director of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority, which administers GoMentum Station. The county used the press demonstration day to show off how the stations existing network of older roads, buildings, crosswalks, bridges, overpasses, 1,400-foot tunnels and stop signs create a ready-made facility for other carmakers and autonomous-vehicle firms. The existing grid, for example, can be used to create custom zones that replicate left-hand and right-hand driving conditions in other countries. Developing site Last month, the Concord City Council voted to hire developer Lennar Urban for the first phase of an ambitious project to redevelop the old weapons station. Lennar Urban won the right to redevelop 500 acres for a planned $6 billion housing, commercial and recreational project. The countys plans to redevelop the naval station should leave the testing area untouched for several years, enough time for self-driving car technology to develop, This is where innovation and commercialization converge, Iwasaki said. However, he said, The idea is not to bring Silicon Valley to Contra Costa County. The idea is to bring some of the jobs to the Concord area. Keller laid out Hondas own ambitious but long-term goal of creating a cooperative car society of completely self-driving, connected vehicles by 2050. The company hopes to put automated highway merging, lane changing and exiting into practical use in cars as soon as 2020, creating on-ramp to off-ramp automation. I firmly believe that while we tend overestimate what we can achieve in three years, we tend to underestimate what we could achieve in 10 to 20 years, Keller said. Benny Evangelista is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: bevangelista@sfchronicle.com Twitter: ChronicleBenny A federal judge denied a new trial Thursday to Raymond Shrimp Boy Chow, the leader of a Chinatown community organization, who was convicted in January of racketeering and murder. A jury found Chow guilty of running the century-old Ghee Kung Tong as a racketeering enterprise and ordering the 2006 murder of its former leader. He faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison. The charges arose from a five-year undercover FBI investigation that also snared former state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, convicted of accepting bribes. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who presided over the trial, turned down defense arguments for a new trial Thursday that included a claim that the judge had unfairly limited the number of witnesses testifying on Chows behalf. The defense called Chow and eight supporting witnesses to the stand, compared with 46 for the prosecution. In his ruling, Breyer said Chows lawyers had initially proposed 70 witnesses and later reduced the number to 49, but failed to specify why most of the witnesses proposed testimony would be admissible in court or would not duplicate the testimony of others. Breyer said he allowed only a single defense witness on each of a series of topics, such as Chows good deeds and alleged FBI misconduct, but approved 17 witnesses whom the defense decided not to call. Defense lawyers also argued that Breyer had wrongly allowed prosecutors to cross-examine Chow about his alleged involvement in the 1991 murder of a man named Danny Wong, which he had described to federal agents in 2002 as part of a plea agreement. That agreement barred prosecutors from using his statements against him, as long as he spoke truthfully. But Breyer said Chows lawyer had opened the door by telling jurors Chow was not the kind of person who would order a murder. When a prosecutor then questioned him about the Wong murder, he denied having ordered it, contradicting his 2002 statement and thus inviting further questioning, Breyer said. 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. In response, defense lawyer Tyler Smith said Breyers ruling on the Danny Wong issue was flat wrong and he was confident an appeals court would overturn it. Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: egelko SAN FRANCISCO, June 2 -- China will constantly boost green and low-carbon development in an effort to promote harmony between human and nature, according to a congratulatory letter sent by President Xi Jinping to the 7th Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) and inaugural Mission Innovation Ministerial on Thursday. In the message read by Yin Hejun, Chinese vice minister of science and technology, Xi called the meetings crucial high-level forums in the area of clean energy held after the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris. The meetings show the international community's common concern about the development and application of clean energy, Xi said. Going forward, China's growth philosophy will be driven by innovation, coordination, green development, openness and sharing, Xi said. While implementing a series of policies and measures, China will gear up clean energy development with major efforts, optimize its industrial structure, set up low-carbon energy system, promote green buildings and low-carbon transport and establish national carbon emission trading market, said the president. The meetings, held by the U.S. Department of Energy on Wednesday and Thursday, have drawn the participation of delegates from 23 countries and relevant international organizations. U.S. President Barack Obamasent a video message to the attendees. Xi also extended a warm invitation to all attendees to visit China next year for the 8th CEM, where they can exchange their understanding and experience on the development and popularization of clean energy and jointly push forward global sustainable development. Jazz is a music of multiplicity, a tradition rooted in African American culture thats spread rhizome-like around the globe, absorbing countless new sounds and influences. With a century of relentless evolution, jazz now encompasses such a vast continuum of divergent musical directions that some players reject the word altogether as a distorting historical artifact. While offering very different settings and vibes, the Bay Areas five major jazz festivals, in Healdsburg, Monterey, Palo Alto, San Jose and San Francisco, embrace the term and a core sensibility that honors the musics progressive aesthetic impulse and black roots. Its no coincidence that this year four of the five presenters feature drummer Billy Hart, who played on seminal albums by Miles Davis, Pharoah Sanders, Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner. Hart is doing some of his best work right now at 75 years old. With the summer jazz season rapidly approaching, whichever way your jazz taste runs, the choices provide bountiful sounds. Heres a guide to the highlights: The Healdsburg Jazz Festival opened Friday, June 3, with a whole weekend devoted to Harts music, and it runs through June 12 at venues around the small town with an array of free and ticketed events. Upcoming concerts include baritone saxophonist Claire Dalys quintet with Berkeley guitarist John Schott playing her hard-swinging arrangements of Motown tunes at the Paul Mahder Gallery (June 9); a duo pairing piano maestro Fred Hersch and tenor saxophonist/clarinetist Anat Cohen at the Raven Performing Arts Theater (June 11); and a concluding New Orleans-themed concert featuring clarinetist Michael White, MJs Brass Boppers Brass Band and the Russian River Ramblers at the Dry Creek Vineyard (June 12). For more information, go to www.healdsburgjazzfestival.org. Franklin Reyes/Associated Press SFJ azz s 34th Annual San Francisco Jazz Festival runs from Tuesday, June 7, to June 19, presenting some two dozen concerts at the SFJazz Center, Herbst Theatre and Davies Symphony Hall. In a departure from SFJazzs usual programing, the festival focuses on music tangential to the jazz tradition, almost serving as a reset between SFJazz seasons. Among the highlights are the storied Cuban timba band Los Van Van at Herbst (Friday, June 10); saxophonist Ravi Coltranes sextet the Void, with trumpeter Ralph Alessi and trombonist Robin Eubanks (June 12); and Galactic drummer Stanton Moores tribute to Allen Toussaint, with trumpeter/keyboardist Nicholas Payton and percussionist/vocalist Cyrille Neville (June 19). The festival closes June 19 with a celebration of magisterial pianist/composer McCoy Tyner, whose ties to the Bay Area run deep. He made his San Francisco debut in 1959 during a six-week run at the Jazz Workshop with the Art Farmer/Benny Golson Jazztet, and returned numerous times in the 1960s with tenor sax titan John Coltrane. Once Tyner became a bandleader in his own right, he was a steady presence in the Bay Area, performing frequently at Keystone Korner and later at Yoshis, where his two-week fall residency was an annual highlight through the aughts. Now in frail health, Tyner will be on hand at Davies, where hell be honored by saxophonist Joe Lovano and half a dozen pianists, including his contemporaries and fellow NEA Jazz Masters Chick Corea and Kenny Barron, Geri Allen, Benny Green, Marcus Roberts and Taylor Eigsti. For details, go to www.sfjazz.org/events/festival/2016. While the glitzy San Francisco Jazz Festival tends to get the lions share of attention, the Stanford Jazz Festival quietly goes about its business, presenting master improvisers whether or not theyve attained marquee status. Part of what gives Stanford gigs youthful frisson is that the audience always contains a large contingent of students from the Stanford Jazz Workshop, which produces the concert series. Vocalist Dianne Reeves kicks off the proceedings in style at Bing Concert Hall on June 18 with Strings Attached, her project featuring guitarists Russell Malone and Romero Lubambo. Bobby McFerrin of Dont Worry, Be Happy fame closes the festival on Aug. 6, improvising with a core of young players who met and bonded as teens at the Stanford Jazz Workshop, including guitarist Julian Lage, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and pianist Taylor Eigsti. In between those two concerts are nearly a dozen only-in-Stanford shows, including altoist Yosvany Terrys Cuba Si! on July 23, with founding bassist of the great Cuban band Irakere, Carlos dl Puerto; and a showcase for two rising New York guitarists Israeli-born Gilad Hekselman and Chilean Camila Meza backed by Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson, drum master Billy Hart and bassist Linda Oh on Aug. 3. For a full lineup, visit https://stanfordjazz.org. Rather than stretching out the musical action over the course of several weeks, San Jose Jazzs Summer Fest creates a celebratory street party by packing dozens of acts into one weekend, Aug. 12 to 14. Taking over several downtown blocks surrounding Plaza de Cesar Chavez, the event has long distinguished itself by prominently featuring jazzs Afro-Caribbean kin. In addition to a stage featuring top local salsa bands, headliners include incandescent Puerto Rican altoist Miguel Zenon; Cuban pianist Alfredo Rodriguezs trio, with special guest vocalist Ganavya Doraiswamy; and Canadian soprano saxophonist Jane Bunnett, who leads the stellar all-women Cuban combo Maqueque. For information, go to https://summerfest.sanjosejazz.org. Its fitting that the summer season closes with the worlds longest-running jazz event: the Monterey Jazz Festival. Celebrating its 59th season from Sept. 16 to 18 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds, the event artfully balances the demands of art and commerce. A grounds ticket provides access to four stages with festival seating, featuring brilliant but underappreciated veterans (pianist Stanley Cowell, guitarist Dave Stryker and tenor saxophonist/flutist Lew Tabackin) and rising young artists (flutist/vocalist Elena Pinderhughes, pianist Joey Alexander and drummer Jamison Ross). A pricier ticket offers access to the grounds and a reserved seat in the arena, where bona fide stars like 2015s breakout tenor saxophonist Kamasi Washington, guitarist Pat Metheny and saxophonist/composer Wayne Shorter hold forth. Check out all the options at www.montereyjazzfestival.org. Andrew Gilbert is a freelance writer. The government meddled in the steel industrys labor talks, but the highest court in the land had the final say. The Chronicles front page from June 3, 1952, covers the end of the federal seizure of the steel industry after the Supreme Courts decision in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, prompting another walkout. Phillip Murray, president of the United Steelworkers (CIO), ordered his men out on strike once more. At the same time he called on the steel companies to resume negotiations, the story by Chronicle Washington correspondent Vance Johnson read. They replied they were willing to start talks without delay. About two months before President Harry S. Truman had nationalized the U.S. steel industry because of a strike threat. That work stoppage would resume after the Supreme Court decision, which affected regions around the country. In the San Francisco Bay Area, some 8,000 steelworkers started walking off their jobs in seven plants at 10:30 a.m., the story read. Strikers were tapping furnaces in an orderly shutdown, company spokesmen said, and all plants were expected to be closed this morning. The strike would last 53 days, and the labor unions would achieve most of the concessions they had sought before the government seizure. The Chronicle recommends: This was a primary Election Day, and The Chronicle editors put their picks on the front page. Their choice for the Republican presidential nomination? California Gov. Earl Warren over the next leader of the free world, Dwight D. Eisenhower. 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, producer s Kimberly Chua and 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) Ric Francis/AP Napa County will supply polling-place translators for Spanish-speaking voters and print all its ballots in both English and Spanish under an agreement with the Obama administration, which had threatened a lawsuit. Several Bay Area counties, including San Francisco and Alameda, already issue ballots in multiple languages, reflecting their diverse populations and legal obligations under the Voting Rights Act. But Napa County will be the first in the North Bay with bilingual ballots, said John Tuteur, the countys registrar of voters. Some Chronicle readers no doubt have noticed that we have not made an endorsement in the Republican or Democratic presidential primaries. Its not an oversight, and its certainly not for lack of interest in two of the more intriguing primaries in recent American history. In each case, there are compelling reasons we are not making a recommendation. As a practical matter, the Republican primary has been settled, and an endorsement in the California primary would have no effect on the outcome. Donald Trump has secured the delegates necessary to claim the GOP nomination in Cleveland, whether party leaders like it or not and many do not. Neither do we. Our editorial board has made plain its distaste for Trumps low-substance, high-insult candidacy on numerous occasions. His campaign has been reckless, coarse and oozing with overtures to racial, national, class and religious resentments and has continued even after he secured the Republican Party nomination. He instantly signaled that juvenile nicknames and irrelevant references to a spouses philandering would be on the table in the general election. Clinton keeps her distance Trump would not be in consideration for our endorsement if one of the Republicans with a modicum of qualification, dignity and serious purpose think John Kasich, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio was still in contention. Yet the case against a Trump presidency is so overwhelming that he is untenable even against an empty field. As our March 3 editorial put it, the threat from Trumps ascension is the contempt he is spreading for the American values of pluralism, democracy and adherence to the rule of law. He has consistently demonstrated either a stunning disregard or ignorance of history and the facts. He has aggressively tried to inflame and exploit latent passions against minority groups, the judiciary, the media and global diplomacy. Trump is, quite simply, a nonstarter. The Democratic primary is a more complicated matter. A decision to endorse, one way or the other, would be imperative if Hillary Clinton had less than a formidable lead going into California. Perhaps she would have followed through on the promise she made in February to debate Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Golden State in May. Perhaps she would have seen fit to meet in person with California editorial boards including ours to take questions in an extensive session. Instead, Clintons California appearances have been limited to rallies, photo opportunities, perfunctory interviews and fundraisers, fundraisers and more fundraisers. Her double-cross on the debate pledge only feeds into the perception (established through the years) of the Clintons sense of entitlement and their presumption that they can set their own rules. The nations most populous state deserves better. It has received more, much more, from Sanders. The senator from Vermont has expressed his eagerness to debate at every turn. He came to our editorial board with no preconditions and took on pointed questions, and the interview was streamed live and archived on The Chronicles Facebook page. Without question, Sanders, unlike Clinton, had great motivation to take risks. His chances of winning the nomination are roughly equivalent to a poker player trying to draw an inside straight. Sanders break with political reality Still, Sanders has had a profound impact on the debate, moved Clinton to the left, and, admirably, inspired young people to engage in politics. The 74-year-old senator has tapped the legitimate anxieties of generations who see the promise of opportunity that has defined this nation slipping away. Yet there is a certain disconnection with reality in Sanders aggressively progressive promises. Its simply not credible to think that a Republican Congress that frustrated President Obama at every turn will show any more deference to a self-described democratic socialist who wants to establish a government health care system and government-paid tuition at public universities. His pedestrian record of accomplishment as a senator does not suggest the skills to deliver a dauntingly difficult agenda. Besides, the national debt already stands at $18 trillion, or about $60,000 for every man, woman and child in the America. While Sanders commitment to action on climate change as an economic imperative and moral obligation to future generations is worthy of admiration, it would be nice to see a candidate appealing to young people to express an equally unflinching dedication to addressing the debt burden we are leaving them. As tempting as it would be to endorse Clinton as a candidate who blends idealism with practicality on domestic and foreign affairs buttressed with a thick resume as first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state there remain serious questions about her judgment and ethics. Our editorial board would have liked to have pressed her on some of those issues, including myriad questions about her email server and those six-figure speeches to Goldman Sachs. There was no shortage of California-focused issues that she could have addressed more fully in a California debate or editorial board sessions, including the federal role in water policy (shes been a bit more detailed than Sanders), her retreat from support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and striking the right balance between security and privacy rights (huge for the technology industry). California loses from having a settled Republican nomination and a Democratic front-runner who has all but declared victory. Our editorial board will push for a reassessment of the primary calendar in 2020 that will assure that major-party candidates must do more than go through the motions to earn votes and endorsements in this state. The Shangri-La Dialogue will kick off Friday night in Singapore and hotspot issues such as the South China Sea disputes will once again attract attention. The Dialogue is believed to be "dominated" by the US and the agendas do not favor China. It is not surprising that Washington behaves as the tone-setter at this year's meeting. Last week, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter uttered a series of criticisms against China and even compared the Sino-US relationship to the 50-year Cold War standoff with the Soviet Union. China is prepared for such aggravating remarks at the forthcoming Shangri-La Dialogue. Senior US officials also laughed at the consensus that China has reached with other countries over the South China Sea issue, which they believed is far-fetched. The US' strategic circle seems to be subjugated by a Cold War mentality. The Pentagon controls the most powerful military in the world. China has built a number of islands in the South China Sea and insisted that they serve for civilian use. However, the US military soon moved into its five bases in the Philippines, deployed spy planes to Singapore, and required access to port facilities in Vietnam's Cam Ranh Bay. It also claimed that China is "militarizing" the South China Sea. How can the US justify such absurd logic? Carter said the Pentagon's best weapons will be deployed to the Pacific theater, which seems like he is initiating a confrontation with China. Does he really believe the US will win more support this way? Do western Pacific countries really want to see the US make the region into a powder keg? China's rise generates security concerns from some neighboring countries. This can be attributed to their inadaptability to the changing regional landscape, which is understandable. But these countries also closely cooperate with China. Joint regional development outweighs security concerns. After experiencing various frictions, East Asian countries do not want the region to be dragged into a security deadlock. As an external power, the US is playing its "balancing" act to contain China's rise rather than maintaining regional stability. It has turned all the conflicts in East Asia into excuses to articulate its strategy against China. This is the real reason for the escalation of tensions in the South China Sea, as the region has never borne such intense competition. Many small countries are unwillingly dragged into conflict. The world will understand that the US pivot to the Asia-Pacific is only to serve geopolitical purposes. The US dominates world opinion and both its hard and soft power will help it gain some advantages at the Shangri-La Dialogue. But opinion in the real world will not center around US interests. China does not fear US military threats or an opinion war. Here are The Chronicles recommendations in key local and state races on the June 7 ballot. The candidate races serve to narrow the field for a final vote in November. Click the links for more on each race. President: The Chronicle is not endorsing in the presidential primaries. Here's why. U.S. Senate: Kamala Harris. The California attorney general is the best choice in an important race thats drawn little interest. Her depth, intelligence and cautious demeanor are suited to a deeply divided Senate. Her Democratic rival, Rep. Loretta Sanchez, is prone to wild statements and quick judgments. There are three GOP entrants, with Duf Sundheim carrying the most appeal. Click here for more. Congress, 17th District: Ro Khanna. His energy and smarts make him the clear choice in a rerun match with incumbent Mike Honda, tarred by an ethics investigation in this South Bay district. Click here for more. State Senate, District 11: Scott Wiener. His workhorse record as a San Francisco supervisor earns him a position in the Legislature where his knowledge of transit, housing and finances will serve the city and northern Peninsula well. Click here for more. State Senate, District Nine: Nancy Skinner. Her long record of public service and deep knowledge of government will make her an effective legislator in a diverse East Bay district. Click here for more. State Assembly, District 16: Catharine Baker. Baker is a pragmatic and independent Republican, willing to cross partisan lines. This approach merits her a second term in the Tri-Valley East Bay district. Click here for more. State Assembly, District 14: Debora Allen is the best choice in a weak field in this district that spans Contra Costa and Solano counties. Rivals, notably Mae Torlakson, are unprepared for this significant post. Click here for more. State proposition Prop. 50: Call this the Leland Yee measure, named for the disgraced San Francisco state senator who pleaded guilty to corruption charges. The change would clarify hazy laws by letting either house of the Legislature suspend members without pay by a two-thirds vote. The change gives the nuclear option to state lawmakers who rarely discipline their ranks. Vote Yes. Bay Area Measure AA: The bays estuaries and shoreline deserve public funds for restoration and as a buffer against rising seas. Voters in nine Bay Area counties should support this important conservation effort. Vote Yes. San Francisco Prop. A: Health Infrastructure Upgrade. This $350 million bond measure improves San Francisco General Hospitals seismic safety, modernizes a vital ambulance facility, and includes funds for buildings providing homeless and mental health care. Vote Yes. Click here for more. Prop. B: Parks Budgeting. This measure locks in a stream of money for a deprived department. But its a mistake to guarantee funds to one area of city government, no matter how deserving, while others compete for funds. Vote No. Click here for more. Prop. C: Affordable Housing. This measure bumps the amount of below-market units required in new residential buildings from 12 to 25 percent. This target, grabbed from thin air by boosters, could crater future construction in a city crying out for more housing. Vote No. Prop. D: Police Shooting Review. Under this plan, the Office of Citizen Complaints will investigate when a police shooting leads to death or injury, not just when a request for review is filed. Vote Yes. Prop. E: Sick Leave. This housekeeping measure would put the city and state rules on counting sick leave in sync. Vote Yes. Judge: Victor Hwang. As a former prosecutor and public defender, Hwang has the edge in a three-way race for an open seat on the local bench. His community ties and experience with difficult cases make him the top choice. Click here for more. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The fantastical spires and ramparts of Pinnacles National Park loom like a childs clay creation writ large. Driving along Highway 146 through rolling chaparral-covered hills, the only way a visitor would know that something significant lies ahead is from the occasional road signs. Most visitors enter Pinnacles by the main entrance on the east side of the Galiban Range (near Hollister) for convenient access to the parks only campground, but there are plenty of overlooked attractions on the western side if you dont mind sleeping outside the park, in a comfortable bed. The parks west entrance is 14 miles from the town of Soledad in Monterey County. Soledads location along Highway 101 is convenient for travelers to get in and out of the area quickly, and is also convenient to a few rural, low-frills attractions, including an overlooked mission and winery tasting rooms. A view of the striking stone faces begins well before reaching the Pinnacles gate. Dont stop to take pictures here, because it gets better. The west side offers spectacular views of the rock formations, even from your car window in the parking lot. These rock spires are whats left of a volcano heading north at a rate of 3 to 6 centimeters per year. The Miocene-era Neenach Volcano, which originated 195 miles to the southeast, straddles the San Andreas Fault. Every time the Pacific Plate creeps north, it pulls the volcanos remains along on its journey. Adding to the geologic forces, erosion helped create the eerie-looking monoliths and crags of Pinnacles National Park. Jason Henry/Special To The Chronicle Intermittently occupied by Indian groups (Chalone and Mutsun) in its earlier days, Pinnacles was established as a national monument by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908. Since then, the monument has increased in size from 2,500 to 26,000 acres, and in 2013, President Obama designated the expansive terrain as a national park. The parks more than 30 miles of trails are often what first lure visitors. Routes range from flat stretches of grassland to uphill climbs through talus caves and up to the rock features that loom overhead. On a day trip, choose between the steep Juniper Canyon Loop (which runs through the spires of the High Peaks Trail, home to a handful of California condors) and the rolling Balconies Cave Trail (which leads to one of the parks two talus caves: Balconies Cave). Adventure seekers can easily cover both in a day. The other talus cave at Pinnacles, the Bear Gulch Cave, is home to a colony of Townsends big-eared bats, who rest there in winter and raise their young in late spring and summer. As a result, the cave has seasonal periods when it is closed to protect the sensitive species. Both caves can be closed suddenly because of storms and high water, so check with the ranger station before planning your trip, if the talus caves are high on your list. The Pinnacles area became a part of the California Condor Recovery Program in 2003, and conservationists estimate there are 33 condors in the park. Climbing high into the rocky spires, hikers can often get views of soaring condors, or even condor nesting sites. Up to 181 other bird species have been documented in the park, and its location on the migratory Pacific Flyway along with its varied habitats of chaparral, oak and pine woodland, riparian, grassland and scree communities make it an optimal destination for birders. At the end of your day, a short drive back to Soledad allows you to investigate a small handful of winery tasting rooms or the Mission Nuestra Senora de la Soledad, or merely collapse in your hotel room and be thankful you dont have to cook up a campfire dinner. Jill K. Robinson is a freelance writer. Email: travel@sfchronicle.com If you go Getting there Take Highway 146 east from Soledad for 14 miles; (831) 389-4485; www.nps.gov/pinn. Leave the RVs at home; Highway 146 is narrow and winding. No road connects the west and east entrances. Where to stay Inn at the Pinnacles: 32025 Stonewall Canyon Road. (831) 678-2400, www.innatthepinnacles.com. This inn is set among the Brosseau Vineyards, with a view of Pinnacles National Park. Each of the six rooms has a different theme named after local wildflowers and plants. Rates start at $250 a night. Jason Henry/Special To The Chronicle Best Western Valley Harvest Inn: 1155 Front St. (831) 678-3833, www.valleyharvestinn.com. Comfortable motel with swimming pool and family restaurant. Rates from $99 a night. Dining Mariscos Puerto Angel: 3022H De La Rosa Sr. St.; (831) 678-9234. This restaurants menu includes gigantic fresh seafood dishes. La Fuente: 101 Oak St.; (831) 678-3130. With a bright, cheery Mexican decor, La Fuente features all-day breakfast, super burritos and full dinners. What to do Pinnacles National Park: (831) 389-4485; www.nps.gov/pinn. Enjoy hiking trails for a variety of skill levels, as well as the opportunity to watch California condors soar over the rugged terrain. Gates open 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. The $15 entrance fee covers seven consecutive days of visits. Mission Nuestra Senora de la Soledad: 36641 Fort Romie Road. (831) 678-2586. Founded in 1791, the Soledad Mission is 13th in the chain of 21 Alta California missions. The grounds included a vineyard, a possible beginning to Soledads wine country. Hahn Estate: 37700 Foothill Road. (831) 678-4555, www.hahnwines.com. The Santa Lucia Highlands region was established as an American Viticultural Area in 1991. Taste some of the best at the Hahn Family Wines tasting room. More information Pinnacles National Park: (831) 389-4486, www.nps.gov/pinn Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders will make two more sweeps through the Bay Area over the next few days as a part of a last-ditch campaign effort in the state before the June 7 California primary. Sanders has stops scheduled in the East Bay and North Bay on Friday and a special concert event in San Francisco on Monday. A proposed settlement of $84 million or more for hundreds of thousands of Uber drivers in California and Massachusetts drew some skeptical questions Thursday from a federal judge, who wondered whether drivers would be shortchanged or denied a chance to opt out and pursue their own claims. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco put off a ruling, however, on whether to grant preliminary approval to the agreement. Lawyers for the ride-hailing company and the plaintiffs in the class-action suit argued for approval, but Chen also heard from attorneys for hundreds of objecting drivers. 385,000 split money The lawsuit, filed in 2013, challenged Ubers classification of its drivers as independent contractors, who must pay their own expenses and are denied other protections that labor laws provide to employees, including minimum wage, overtime, unemployment and workers compensation coverage. The settlement would leave that issue unresolved but pay the drivers partial compensation for wages and expenses. The money would be distributed among 385,000 drivers in California and Massachusetts, going back to August 2009. Another provision would require Uber, which now can fire drivers at will, to have sufficient good cause, determined by an arbitrator, for dismissal. The settlement would grow to $100 million if Uber began selling its shares publicly. But Chen said the suit, if it went to trial, could be worth $1 billion or more to California drivers if they were ruled to be employees. The states labor law assesses hefty penalties for misclassifying employees as contractors and failing to pay them properly, and allows the employees to collect 25 percent of the penalties, with the rest going to the state. The proposed settlement includes $1 million for alleged violations of labor laws, $750,000 of it for the state. Such terms have been approved by other courts despite the potential for much larger penalties, said plaintiffs attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan. Its hard to swallow this pill of a 99.9 percent discount, said Chen, referring to the difference between $1 million and $1 billion. Troubling aspect Chen said he was also troubled by a provision of the agreement that reduces the time period he had previously approved for dissident drivers to drop out of the case and sue on their own. That might violate their legal rights and persuade him to reject the settlement, he said. If that happens, Liss-Riordan said, shell take the case to trial. But those plans could be thwarted by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is preparing to hear Ubers appeal of a ruling by Chen that allowed the suit to proceed as a class action in court rather than going to arbitration for each driver, as the company preferred. Another San Francisco federal judge voiced concerns earlier Thursday about a proposed $27 million settlement of a similar suit by 163,000 California drivers of ride-hailing company Lyft. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria had rejected a proposed $12.25 million settlement in April. Liss-Riordan, who also represents the Lyft drivers, negotiated the increased amount. But Chhabria deferred a ruling after Jahan Sagafi, lawyer for another group of drivers, argued that the company owed them considerably more because of its pitch to riders that the higher fares they were charged during peak traffic periods were for the drivers money the company kept for itself. Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: egelko A judge says a former top deputy to San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera can go to trial in a lawsuit claiming Herrera fired her in retaliation for reporting her suspicions that his staff was taking kickbacks in exchange for millions of dollars in questionable payments for damaged sewer lines. Herrera sought dismissal of the suit by Joanne Hoeper, his former chief trial deputy, by arguing that Hoeper was not a whistle-blower, her suspicions were unfounded, and he had intended to replace her at least a year before she started looking into the sewer payments. But Superior Court Judge Richard Ulmer said Thursday that Herrera had taken no steps to dismiss Hoeper until she told him about her investigation. Ulmer also said the target of Hoepers investigation, the chief of Herreras claims bureau, told Hoeper shed be sorry she was looking into the subject. A reasonable jury could find the citys termination reasons pretextual, Ulmer said. He also rejected the citys argument that Hoepers allegations were based on confidential attorney-client communications that could not be part of a lawsuit, finding that she was acting as an investigator, not a lawyer, in her reports to Herrera. The citys sweeping notions of (attorney-client) privilege would bar most retaliation claims by attorney employees, Ulmer said. That is not the law. The dispute involved sewer lines on private property that were allegedly damaged by roots of trees owned by the city. San Francisco had been paying property owners and their plumbing companies to repair the damage since 1982. But Hoeper, acting on a tip, said she began looking into the program in late 2011, found evidence that tree roots cant penetrate some unbroken sewer lines, and concluded that the city shouldnt be paying to repair private sewers. She also said she suspected that staff in Herreras claims bureau had taken kickbacks in exchange for $10 million in needless sewer repair payments. Herrera ordered a halt to the sewer payment program after receiving a report from Hoeper in 2012. He also removed Hoeper from her job, transferred her to the district attorneys office while continuing to pay her salary, and fired her in January 2015. She has been unemployed since then, her lawyer, Stephen Murphy, said Friday. Herrera said he asked the Santa Clara County counsels office to conduct an independent review, and that office found no merit in Hoepers allegations. Herrera also noted that Hoeper herself, in a July 2012 report to his office, found no evidence kickbacks were paid or received. Hoeper found zero evidence of wrongdoing, and yet continues to insist that shes blowing the whistle on some still-unknown misdeed, Matt Dorsey, a spokesman for Herrera, said Friday. He described Hoeper as a disgruntled ex-employee who had axes to grind against some of her former colleagues. Murphy, Hoepers lawyer, said Hoepers July 2012 findings were based on a preliminary investigation that she never got to complete before she was transferred and later fired. Were looking forward to our day in court, he said. Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: egelko New legislation that would expose short-term rental companies like Airbnb to big fines and misdemeanor charges when hosts fail to follow the citys registration requirements moved one step closer to becoming law on Thursday. The Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight Committee unanimously supported the proposal by two of its members. They described the ordinance, by Supervisors David Campos and Aaron Peskin, as a commonsense proposal that ensures existing short-term rental laws are enforced and dismissed concerns that it goes against federal law. This is not about changing existing law, Campos said at the hearing. It is ultimately about corporate responsibility. About an industry that has made and continues to make tens of millions of dollars in this line of work taking responsibility for the negative impact that they are having on the housing stock. The committee composed of Supervisors Campos, Peskin and Norman Yee forwarded the ordinance to the full board to consider on Tuesday, where its expected to pass. Board president London Breed, who normally sits on the committee but ceded her seat to Campos for this meeting because she had to leave early, also said she supports the legislation. If the legislation is enacted, San Francisco would have among the most stringent regulations and oversight of short-term rentals in the country. Los Angeles and other cities are considering similar legislation that would require short-term rental companies to police their sites to ensure their hosts are complying with local regulations. As has become the norm at Board of Supervisors hearings involving legislation that would impact Airbnb, dozens of hosts showed up to testify about how it has helped them stay in the city. Airbnb hosts speak out Wearing stickers that said focus on solutions, many made one point: that the city makes it overly cumbersome to register as hosts. Once hosts register, they must submit an itemized list of all the furniture, appliances, supplies, equipment and fixtures in their rentals, as well as their cost and acquisition date. The city identifies those as business personal property subject to a tax of slightly over 1 percent of the value. The process just needs to be streamlined better so that it will allow people to register, not be intimidated by the registration process, testified Alice Chiu, an interior designer who has used the money she makes from renting out a spare room to start her own business. She said registering took her an entire day, and included a trip to the city treasurers office and the Planning Department. Under a law that took effect in February 2015, all short-term rental hosts must register with the city. But only roughly 1,400 of the estimated 7,000 or more residents who rent their homes and rooms to travelers have done so, according to city estimates. Under Campos and Peskins bill, short-term rental companies others include VRBO and HomeAway would have to verify that all listings have a valid San Francisco registration number before posting them online. When the city flags rentals that appear not to be registered, the listing services would be required to respond with details about those properties within one business day or face fines. Funds generated from the new plan would go to an affordable housing fund. Companies that disregard the law would face fines of up to $1,000 a day per listing and misdemeanor charges. David Owen, a spokesman for Airbnb, said the city should clean up its own registration process before making companies monitor their hosts. We are disappointed that the board is jamming this through at record speed while not addressing some of the biggest problems with the current registration process, he said. Airbnb is committed to helping the city solve the big issues and we recognize the importance of online platforms being part of the solution, but this proposal will just cause more confusion and less enforcement against the truly bad apples. Owen declined to say whether the company would sue the city if the bill becomes law. Technology law groups have warned that the legislation appears to conflict with federal law that shields online platforms from liability for content generated by their users. Anytime someone proposes to place liability on the platform because the platform users are doing something wrong, that raises concerns, said David Greene, civil liberties director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Voters rejected this Peskin called that issue a red herring and said the city attorney has advised the supervisors the legislation doesnt violate existing law. This is an evolving area of law. No one has really been down this path before, Peskin said. We are making the tweaks (to the law) that I think are necessary to make and we will continue to do so as we learn more about how this phenomenon actually works. Mayor Ed Lee has generally sided with short-term rental companies in the past. His spokeswoman, Christine Falvey, said Lee will consider the legislation when it reaches his desk. But she suggested a veto is not out of the question. Its important to remember that voters rejected this and other short-term rental restrictions just last year, which the mayor must also consider when weighing this legislation from supervisors, she said. Emily Green is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: egreen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: emilytgreen BY RAY MAGLIOZZI Dear Car Talk: In hot weather, I occasionally hear a very loud horn-like sound when I drive at 65 mph or higher. The noise appears to be on the passenger side, toward the front of the car. The local Honda dealer and a local mechanic have checked belts, windows, sunroof and the hood latch. It seems to happen only when I am driving on a curve, and it will stop if I slow to less than 65 mph. Maggie Well, since youve had several mechanics look at this, Im going to make two assumptions. Well, three, actually. CHECK CAR PRICES: Assumption One is that the mechanics have heard the noise. Assumption Two is that once theyve heard the noise, theyve ruled out something dangerous, like a failing wheel bearing, and theyre convinced its more likely a wind noise which explains the stuff theyve checked so far. And Assumption Three is that, since two shops have been all over the car, I have no chance of figuring it out. Back in the old days when a customer had a problem like this, wed strap my brother to the hood and go for a drive and try to reproduce the sound. When we got back to the shop, wed take the leaves out of his mouth, and ask him which direction the noise was coming from. Theres a more modern-day version of that: We have a tool at the garage that has a bunch of small, wireless microphones that attach with hook-and-loop tape straps, suction cups or magnets. With that tool, we can attach a bunch of sensors to various parts of the car and then drive the car, tuning in to one mic at a time. That allows us to home in on the exact location of the sound. That in itself doesnt solve the problem, but it at least narrows it down and gives us a fighting chance. My first guess on something like this although its just a guess would be a bad windshield seal. As the speed of the car increases, the body flexes more. And when you make a turn at 65 mph, the windshield opening may be flexing just enough to move the windshield gasket or seal and create a wind noise. So heres what Id do: First, Id ask your dealer to confirm that hes ruled out anything dangerous, like a wheel bearing. Then Id look for a shop that has one of the listening devices I mentioned earlier. Like NSA Motors. And then try out some theories. Put a couple of microphones around the perimeter of the windshield, and see if the noise is very loud near one of them. Or you can do it yourself by duct-taping your iPhone on there ... as long as you have the dropped-phone replacement coverage. Good luck, Maggie. Daniel Oppenheim has had a long love affair with Land Rovers. He has worked as metallurgical engineer, a management consultant and lastly a sightseeing company owner. Now retired, he and his partner are soon to depart for a year in Croatia, Italy, Turkey and Greece. What an adventure awaits! This is a magical story of adventure, and like all good fairy tales this one starts out in England. It all began in 1997 with a snowy Valentines Day walk in Stratford-upon-Avon. A stop in the local Land Rover dealer for an escorted drive through the countryside in a sparkling new D110 left me exclaiming, I want it! How soon can you get it on a boat? This was sadly met with, Your country doesnt allow the import of this car. Undeterred, I went back to San Francisco and tried everything I could to get a similar vehicle. I ended up flying to San Diego to purchase a perfectly restored 1964 Series IIa soft top station wagon. I christened it Kermit, as Heritage Land Rover owners always name their rigs, and drove back to San Francisco. The itch was temporarily satisfied. CHECK CAR PRICES: Shortly thereafter, while surfing the net for all things Land Rover, I came across a site explaining the Golden Jubilee 50th Anniversary of the LR marque a three-month journey around South Africa. I yelled into the other room, Hey, want to ship Kermit to Durban and drive around for a few months? Sure. So off we went to join LR owners from all over the world on this fantastic celebration of the marque though Mozambique, South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland. Three months later we headed back to the U.S., shipping two additional Land Rovers we had purchased to keep Kermit company in the 40-foot container. Savannah and Jacaranda were both driven, enjoyed and subsequently sold along with Kermit. Roverless, I started sweating and shaking. A friend told me about a 1-inch square ad on Truck Trader for a 1960 Series II pick-up truck in Tahoe, so I drove up to check it out. I brushed off five months of snow, cracked open the frozen doors and connected the battery. It started on the first crank! The jump-wired heater kept me toasty as I drove Donner home. The problem was, it needed a new bulkhead and frame. Fortunately, a friend had a Landy sitting in his backyard, missing the engine and transmission. I purchased Donor, and when all was said and done I had this beauty that you see here. I named it Kudu in honor of the trip to South Africa. Kudu makes it out monthly for a spin. I often take off the half-canvas top and lay the windscreen down on the bonnet. I love the proportional scale of the front, cab and pick up bay. The bronze green paint is an original color. It has a 4-cylinder 2.25L engine with a starter button on the bulkhead. It even has a hand crank through the front bumper to turn it over if the starter goes out. Kudu has a new cotton-loomed wiring harness, new hand bent brake lines, new seats and instrument clusters, even leather grease boots for the front hubs. It has served as a model for adventure clothing, and once was used inside Moscone Center as a meeting room for an international trade show. One heartwarming tale of its frame-off, ground-up restoration was the reassembly of the 142 pieces of galvanizing that had been double dipped in Oakland. My daughter, 15 at the time, was holding a bucking plate while I pneumatically shot aluminum rivets though the pieces. She wanted to switch jobs and deserved a turn as the riveter. She wasnt familiar with the rebound nature of this instrument and double struck a number of the rivets. The resulting smilies are a reminder of the fun we had bringing this baby back to life. See you off-road! Attention Bay Area drivers Were looking for submissions to the bi-weekly My Ride feature. We want to know what you drive and why. Send story ideas to cars@sfchonicle.com with the subject line My Ride. A jury recommended the death penalty Thursday for a man found guilty of the 2013 murders of an 8-year-old-girl attending an Oakland sleepover and a 22-year-old man during a robbery in Berkeley. The Alameda County jurys ruling on Darnell Williams, 25, of Oakland, comes nearly a month after his conviction. He will be sentenced in September by a judge, who can sustain or set aside the death penalty recommendation. Williams was found guilty of three special circumstances that made him eligible for the death penalty: lying in wait, committing multiple murders and committing a murder in the course of a robbery. He was also convicted of attempted murder and personal use of a gun, among other charges. The killing of the 8-year-old girl, Alaysha Carradine, shocked Oakland, even as the city had been struggling to bring down its violent crime rate. Prosecutors said that on July 17, 2013, Williams went to an apartment on Wilson Avenue in the Dimond neighborhood looking for a man whom he believed was responsible for killing his friend. He rang the doorbell and began shooting as the door opened, fatally striking Alaysha while wounding three others in the apartment, including two more children. Alaysha was sleeping over at the apartment, which belonged to the ex-girlfriend and mother of the man Williams believed had killed his friend. Two months later, Williams allegedly shot and killed 22-year-old Anthony Medearis in Berkeley in an alleged robbery attempt during a dice game. This defendant committed the most heinous of crimes, said Alameda County District Attorney Nancy OMalley. The children who survived the injuries inflicted by Williams will always live with the memories of the horror he inflicted. Deborah Levy, one of Williams attorneys, said after the death penalty recommendation, I think a horrible tragedy became more tragic. The death penalty is a barbaric vestige of the ancient past. In our far more enlightened age, it should be abolished. California last executed someone in 2006. That year, a federal judge ruled that flaws in the lethal-injection procedures had created an undue risk of a botched and agonizing execution. State prison officials have drafted several proposed changes in procedures, but they have been tied up in state and federal courts. Death penalty supporters and opponents have submitted signatures for competing ballot measures designed to speed up or end executions in California, setting the stage for voters to decide the issue in November. Hamed Aleaziz is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: haleaziz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: haleaziz A pair of sightseers snapping photos of San Franciscos famed crooked section of Lombard Street were attacked and robbed by two muggers, who assaulted them and took their cash and camera, police said Friday. The incident occurred about 8:30 p.m. on the curvy part of Lombard Street, near where a tourist was shot and wounded last summer when he chased after robbers who stole his camera. There are a lot of tourists who frequent that area and visit. So, unfortunately, people take advantage of that, said Officer Giselle Talkoff, a San Francisco Police Department spokeswoman. Talkoff said the victims of Thursday nights mugging were from out of town and sightseeing in the Russian Hill area when they were confronted on Lombard near Leavenworth Street. One robber punched a 24-year-old woman in the face and yanked her purse out of her hands, police said. The second assailant then took a 52-year-old mans camera and pushed him to the ground. Both had some injuries and were taken to the hospital in non-life-threatening condition, Talkoff said. She said the robbers fled on foot. The only description given was that they are both about 18 years old. Police beefed up patrols of the area in August after a tourist from Thailand was shot in the shoulder by one of two robbers who jumped him around noon as he was taking photos of the meandering section of Lombard Street. Police said the victim was shot when he tried chase the robbers. Following the shooting, the suspects jumped into a getaway car and sped away, but police spotted them and chased them over the Bay Bridge. They were arrested near the Emeryville-Oakland border. Besides Lombard Street, criminals have recently been prowling other San Francisco tourist destination for victims. On May 21, a sightseer from San Mateo County taking photos on Twin Peaks was robbed of his camera by three men who pushed him to the ground and fled in a car. Several other robberies have occurred on Twin Peaks over the past year. A woman was pepper sprayed and robbed of her purse in the scenic area in January by a man and woman working in tandem. In December, three French tourists were robbed and one of them, an 81-year-old man, was shoved to the ground and lost consciousness. Kevin Schultz is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kschultz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: KevinEdSchultz Measures are just trade protectionism, firms say The probes into Chinese steel launched by the US are actually trade protectionism and Chinese steelmakers will take the necessary measures to protect their rights, domestic steelmakers said Thursday. "The reckless moves by the US aim to block Chinese iron and steel imports. We have been investigated a dozen times in the past decade, and we won almost all the cases," Sun Jin, director of the international publicity office of Wuhan Iron & Steel Group, told the Global Times on Thursday. China firmly opposes the US abuse of trade remedy measures and trade protectionism, China's Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao said at a briefing on Thursday in Beijing, chinanews.com reported. The US has launched a series of anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations against Chinese iron and steel exports in recent years. Most recently, the US Department of Commerce said Wednesday that China has been dumping certain iron mechanical transfer drive components in the US, with preliminary dumping margins of 2.17 percent to 401.68 percent, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Thursday. On May 26, the US International Trade Commission announced that it would investigate a complaint by the US Steel Corporation of Pittsburgh, which said that Chinese steelmakers had conspired to fix prices, steal trade secrets and misrepresent the origins of certain carbon and alloy steel products being exported to the US. "The steel industry is unlikely to involve intellectual property as it is a mature industry. And we do not have to steal secrets because we have our own research and development institutes and patented technology," Sun noted. Baosteel Group strictly follows the laws and regulations of the countries and regions where it operates, and always focuses on self-dependent research and development, said a statement on the company's website in May. The repeated investigations launched by the US to shield its industries are abusing WTO rules, the statement also said. The US intends to protect its own industry by taking advantage of "the surrogate country system," Chen Weidong, a professor with the law school of the Beijing-based University of International Business and Economics, told the Global Times on Thursday. The "surrogate country system" is a term used by the EU in anti-dumping probes, under which costs of products in a third country are used to estimate the value of those from non-market economies. This practice should come to an end by December 11, 2016, according to the agreement signed when China joined the WTO on December 11, 2001. Relatively cheap Chinese steel is popular with importers, said Wu Chenhui, a Beijing-based independent industry analyst. Cutting overcapacity China produced 804 million tons of steel in 2015, down 2.3 percent from 2014, according to data released in February by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. In the first four months of 2016, China exported 36.90 million tons of iron and steel, up 7.6 percent year-on-year, China's General Administration of Customs said on May 8. The US accounts for 3 percent of Chinese steel exports, and the EU takes 4 percent, Reuters reported in March. Given the relatively modest amount of imports from China, Chinese steel should not be blamed for the sluggish steel industry and layoffs in the industry in the US, insiders said. "Iron and steel capacity is a global issue and Chinese steel producers are making efforts to deal with it. Wuhan Iron & Steel Group has cut its iron and steel capacity by 5 million tons and plans to cut another 7.6 million tons in the next few years," Sun noted. There is still great demand for Chinese steel in the world and the prices are rising, which contributes to the improvement of the domestic steel sector, Wu told the Global Times Thursday. He said domestic steelmakers should upgrade and produce more high-tech products. No matter how many years pass between encounters with Shostakovichs First Cello Concerto, it always comes right back to memory. The main theme of the first movement a terse, jabbing five-note figure that runs through the entire concerto in restless permutations is as tenacious an earworm as any advertising jingle from your childhood. So one of the marvels in the performance Thursday, June 2, by cellist Alexey Stadler, making a potent debut in Davies Symphony Hall with the San Francisco Symphony, was the way he relocated the center of gravity in this concerto. Instead of focusing on the first movement, where all the obvious and familiar stuff happens, Stadler drew the audiences attention to the slow movement, turning it into an expansive, beautiful and bittersweet rhapsody. Its not as though wed forgotten it was there. The slow movement has a key role to play in the concertos formal plan setting up a solo cadenza so long and eventful that Shostakovich sets it apart as a whole separate movement and the music unfolds in the composers trademark vein of gloomy lyricism. But Stadlers rendition of the slow music hit with the force of a revelation. His playing boasts a combination of coffee-colored string tone and lithe flexibility, and he gave the music an emotional ambiguity that was compelling. On the surface, this would seem to be a fairly straightforward stretch of expressive lyricism, with the soloist unspooling long skeins of melody while the orchestra mostly the strings gently supports those efforts. But there is also a plaintive and uncertain edge to the proceedings, evident in the occasional acerbities of the harmony and in the feints and lunges that sometimes complicate the solo line. Stadler brought out all these inner tensions with a sense of purpose that was all the more telling for the subtlety with which he showed his hand. The luminous sheen of the music was as unmistakable as the gnawing sense which only came to fruition over the long and impeccably plotted arc of the cadenza that followed that there was something troubling below the surface. The full turmoil of the music should ideally come to the fore in the outer movements. But that would have taken a surer guiding hand than the orchestra got from guest conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy, who seemed to be more often reacting to events sometimes at the last moment than steering them. So it was left to Stadler to carry the pieces energetic rhythms and fierce rhetoric, a task he accomplished with great aplomb. His encore, the Sarabande from Bachs Second Cello Suite, was a noble, eloquent affair. After intermission, Ashkenazy led the orchestra in a big, blowsy account of Tchaikovskys Fourth Symphony, one that was far more concerned with broad sonic impact than with finesse or specificity of detail. This has long been Ashkenazys stock-in-trade as a conductor, and when it works, as it did in the boisterous finale, its undeniably exciting. At other times a listener longs for a more disciplined approach. Joshua Kosman is The San Francisco Chronicles music critic. Email: jkosman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: JoshuaKosman San Francisco Symphony: 8 p.m. Saturday, June 4. $15-$140. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., S.F. (415) 864-6000. www.sfsymphony.org A major gun control group has endorsed Hillary Clinton, offering a lift to her campaign in a tighter-than-expected primary race in California and as she tries to pivot to a general election matchup with Donald Trump. The group, Everytown for Gun Safety, announced its endorsement Friday, the day after its National Gun Violence Awareness Day campaign. Gun Sense Voters have a champion in Hillary Clinton, John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said in the statement. Our litmus test is simple: Does a candidate side with the public or with the gun lobby? Hillary Clinton passes that test with flying colors pushing back against the NRAs extreme guns for everyone, everywhere agenda, and ushering in a new political calculus that saving lives from gun violence is a winning issue. The group said it had waited to fully evaluate the candidates and to learn its members preferences before making an endorsement, which comes months after three other gun control groups issued a statement calling Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Clintons Democratic rival, the wrong candidate on gun control. Everytown was founded in 2014 by Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, who put in $50 million of his own money in an effort to form a group that could rival the National Rifle Association. Erika Soto Lamb, a spokeswoman, said the group did not speak for Bloomberg, who has not made an endorsement since deciding against a third-party run earlier this year but who has been highly critical of Trump. Lamb said she could not comment on Bloombergs intentions. In addition to the endorsement, Everytown pledged to help Clintons campaign get out the vote in Californias primary on Tuesday, the spokeswoman said, hosting phone banks and door-to-door campaigns that would start over the weekend. The group also claimed credit for Clintons wardrobe Thursday, as she wore an orange shirt during her foreign policy speech as part of the groups Wear Orange awareness campaign. Though it said it had no plans at the moment to begin advertising campaigns, it has done so in support of candidates and ballot initiatives. Gun control has played a large role in the campaign so far, and Clinton has frequently addressed the issue, seeking to draw clear distinctions between her positions and those of Sanders. Trump, for his part, has accused Clinton of wanting to abolish the Second Amendment. Clinton has also run numerous ads on the subject. Before the New York and Connecticut primaries, the campaign ran one that featured the daughter of the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School, who was killed in the mass shooting there in 2012. No one is fighting harder to reform our gun laws than Hillary Clinton, the daughter said in the ad. Before the Iowa primary, Clinton ran a broadcast ad speaking directly to the camera saying, Either we stand with the gun lobby or we join the president and stand up to them, an unnamed jab at Sanders. On the campaign trail, she took her attacks further, saying Sanders had voted with the NRA and against some gun control bills. Sanders has often strongly defended his record on guns, noting that he has a D-minus rating from the National Rifle Association. Everytown has also directly criticized Trump throughout the primary. During his recent speech to the NRA, Everytown began a hashtag campaign called #MakeAmericaSafeAgain, playing on the candidates campaign slogan. 1 Portland schools: In a city well known for its green activism, an environmental threat has bubbled up in an unexpected place: the drinking water at some public schools. The Willamette Week newspaper reported late Tuesday that over half of the 90 school sites tested between 2010 and 2012 had elevated levels of lead in the drinking water at some locations. Americans will hear more about lead in public school water in the months to come as nervous districts test for it, said James Montgomery, an associate professor in environmental studies at DePaul University and an expert on lead in the environment. Many schools have aging infrastructure, making them especially vulnerable, he said. 2 Soldier deaths: Fort Hood says three soldiers are dead and six are missing after an Army troop truck was washed from a low-water crossing and overturned in a rain-swollen creek at Fort Hood in Central Texas. A statement from the Texas Army post says the accident happened about 11:30 a.m. Thursday in an area near Cold Springs and Owl Creek. Three soldiers were rescued from the swift water, and they are in stable condition. Army aircraft, canine search teams, swift-water rescue watercraft and heavy trucks are being used in the search for the six missing soldiers. The names of the dead are being withheld until their relatives can be notified. KOLKATA, India Residents of an east Indian industrial town were shocked Friday to recognize a man they remember as a diligent student as the person who allegedly shot a UCLA engineering professor before killing himself. They said its been years since theyve heard from Mainak Sarkar, who left Durgapur in the state of West Bengal for a life in the United States. Police say that before he killed UCLA professor William Klug on Wednesday, Sarkar had already killed a woman in Minnesota his estranged wife, according to relatives, neighbors and public records. The 38-year-old Indian American engineer had reportedly put both victims on a kill list police later found in his Minnesota apartment. A former classmate at Durgapurs Bidhan Institute where Sarkar studied for two years after high school before attending the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur said he was totally stupefied by the news of the shooting. Mainak was a very good student. In school, he looked so innocent and was well-behaved, said Mridul, who like many people in India uses only one name. A former teacher at the school also remembered Sarkar as a solid student. His behavior was good and normal, Gautam Biswas said. This shooting is a shock to us. I cant imagine that Mainak is involved in such a shocking incident. Sarkar grew up in Durgapur, where his father worked as a clerk in a cement manufacturing company named the Associated Cement Companies Babcok. As a boy, he attended St. Michaels School until his early teens. Sarkars face looked familiar when I saw his picture in the media today, said Sumita Mukherjee, who was secretary to the principal at St. Michaels when Sarkar attended. This morning I spoke to some teachers of that time. They said he was good in studies and cracked the top-ranking Indian Institute of Technology test. They also say he was well behaved, but a little introverted. Sarkar earned a degree in aerospace engineering in 2000 from the IIT at Kharagpur and moved to the United States. A neighbor who lived three houses from his familys home in Durgapur, 110 miles north of Kolkata, said his parents didnt hear from him after that. According to his LinkedIn page, he later obtained a masters degree from Stanford University. Sarkars father and mother both died several years ago, and his sister married and moved to Kolkata. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate LOS ANGELES A former UCLA graduate student killed a woman in Minnesota before carrying two semiautomatic pistols and a grudge back to Los Angeles, where he fatally shot a young professor he once called a mentor and then killed himself, police said Thursday. The two victims were on a kill list that Mainak Sarkar had composed as was a second professor authorities believe the gunman intended to kill but could not find Wednesday on the bustling campus, police Chief Charlie Beck said. A law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation said the woman on the list was Ashley Hasti, who documents show married the gunman in 2011. Authorities pieced together the case as most classes resumed a day after thousands of students and staff members were locked down on the sprawling grounds of the UCLA. The investigation unfolded rapidly based on a note Sarkar left in the office where he killed 39-year-old professor William Klug. It mentioned the second professor, who also belonged to UCLAs engineering faculty, and asked anyone who read it to check on Sarkars cat in St. Paul, Minnesota. At Sarkars apartment, authorities found his list of three planned targets. Authorities checked the residence of the woman in the nearby town of Brooklyn Park and found her body. A neighbor said Hasti lived in the home with her father. Records in Hennepin County, Minnesota, show Hasti married Sarkar in 2011, though more recently they had different residences and their current relationship was unclear. Hastis uncle, Mark Fitzgibbons, told NBC News that the couple was together for only a couple of years and separated several years ago. Sarkar,38, had disparaged Klug online and the professor knew of his contempt, but police have not uncovered any death threats, Beck said. A blog post written in March by someone identifying himself as Sarkar asserted that Klug cleverly stole all my code and gave it (to) another student and made me really sick. The blog continues: Your enemy is your enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust. Stay away from this sick guy. Beck said it was Sarkar who was mentally unstable. The chief cited conversations in which UCLA officials told investigators the former doctoral students claims of stolen code are a making of his own imagination. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A five-hour standoff with an armed burglar in San Franciscos Chinatown ended Friday afternoon with a fight that left six officers, the suspect and several civilians injured inside a hair salon, officials said. After hours of back-and-forth negotiations, the man jumped onto a window ledge of an apartment in which he had barricaded himself, officials said. Police set off a flash grenade and fired beanbag rounds at him, prompting him to jump through a skylight of an adjacent building. From there, he ran onto the sidewalk where he was hit by a less-than-lethal round and into the salon next door. The suspect, who was covered in broken glass and bleeding, began fighting with police and tried to slash officers and civilians with shards of glass, said Officer Grace Gatpandan, a Police Department spokeswoman. She said the man also spit at and bit officers during the confrontation. Six police officers and the suspect were injured, as were multiple civilians inside the hair salon, Gatpandan said. The man, injured officers and civilians were taken to a hospital to be treated. Gatpandan said all of their injuries were non-life-threatening. The incident started about 9:20 a.m. when an emergency dispatcher received a hang-up call, followed seconds later by another 911 call from a resident in the 900 block of Pacific Avenue reporting that a prowler had just broken into his apartment, Gatpandan said. Police believe the man entered the residence through the roof. When officers arrived at the scene and went into the apartment, the intruder barricaded himself in a room and fired one shot, Gatpandan said. She described the situation as very dangerous. Officers retreated with the resident who had called 911, leaving the intruder inside alone. Police hostage negotiators were called to the scene and tried to talk the man into surrendering while a police tactical unit surrounded the building and cut off all escape routes. Gatpandan said that during the negotiations, the man sounded incoherent, initially saying he would surrender before changing his mind. About five hours into the incident, police deployed the flash grenades in an effort to force the man out. During the standoff, nearby homes and businesses were evacuated and some residents were ordered to shelter in place. Several busy streets in the area were also blocked off. Gatpandan said police will investigate why civilians inside the hair salon had not evacuated. Stephen Dinneen, 67, who lives in a building across the street from where the barricaded suspect was holed up, said he was standing outside when two squad cars rolled up. Dinneen said he heard at least one shot fired, then the police just swooped in. Bill Joe, 59, who lives on the block where the incident occurred, said he arrived home to find police swarming the area and stopping him from going into his home. I was born and raised in Chinatown, Joe said. It's kind of scary, kind of surprising this would happen here, especially in the daytime. Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: KVeklerov Even more students than last year can opt out the annual gaokao this year, as it approaches next week. In recent years, an increasing number of parents sent their children to overseas schools. Even though there's increasing amount of negative news about this group, the parents think this is the best option for their children, especially compared to what they can get at home. Senior high students pose for photos as attending an activity for relaxation in No. 2 High School of Hengshui, north China's Hebei Province, May 24, 2016. Students preparing for 2016 college entrance exam have entered the sprint stage of their review. (Xinhua/Zhu Xudong) When Hu Enrui was a sophomore in middle school, he made a pact with his father Hu Ming that if he could get into the best high school in Lianyungang, East China's Jiangsu Province, his father will send him to a university in the US after he graduated. Hu Ming was surprised when his son said he wanted to study abroad. Lianyungang is a third-tier city and doesn't have as many resources as Beijing or Shanghai, but Hu Enrui said he learned about the US from American films and admired the country. Since then, Hu Ming started saving up. He had worked at a bank in the earlier years and then started his own business. "Money is not an issue. We can afford to send him abroad," he said. "The important thing is he receives a better education and has more opportunities." The annual two-day gaokao (college entrance exam) takes place across China next week. Hundreds of thousands of students sit through the tests that could greatly impact their lives. But many, like Hu Enrui, already know their fate before June. Nowadays, it's not uncommon for Chinese parents to send their children overseas for college education. The trend has been rising in recent years, amid discussions about the regional inequality of gaokao that has led to mass protests against affirmative action policies. Angry parents Hu Ming decided to send his son abroad at a time when discussions about equal access to education in China were becoming more heated. In the past, parents have always argued that Beijing is in an unfairly advantageous position in terms of access to good education, because the scores required for local Beijing children to get into Beijing universities are lower than those from other provinces. Beijing is targeted also because it has a high concentration of prestigious schools, such as Peking University and Tsinghua University. As the number of good-quality higher education institutions in China is limited, the college entrance exam essentially decides the fate of many families across the country. It's a fast and relatively fair way for these children to move up the social hierarchy, which is why it's also a high priority for many parents. Last month, a group of angry parents in Nanjing blocked the road to the provincial government headquarters and demanded justice. The protests came after the Ministry of Education released affirmative action policies that cut Jiangsu and Hebei's college enrollment quota to increase chances of students in poorer, western regions getting into better institutions. After a couple of days, protests also erupted in several cities in Hubei Province. Following the protests, education authorities have reassured parents that the policy was based on the prerequisite that college admission rates for local students in the regions concerned will not be lower than last year. Many commented that when it comes to their children's future, Chinese parents are always edgy. But in reality, most of those who joined the protests are people without a choice, people whose children must take the gaokao to enter a university. The process greatly impacts their children's future. For many others, they have alternative choices, such as sending their children abroad. Choosing another path Hu Ming's son was accepted by the University of California this year and will start in September. Hu will willingly pay for his son's tuition, about one million yuan ($152,000), in full. "People at my age probably have some savings, a couple of apartments, and we are willing to spend a little on our children's education," he said. This applies to many people in the growing middle class in China. Some parents also choose the path of overseas education for their children simply to avoid the gaokao. Zhang Zhanhe, a staff at Nanjing Institute of Technology, said being a teacher at a higher education institution, he doesn't have much faith in the quality of Chinese college education. Besides, he doesn't think his daughter can go to a good university in China, because her grades aren't in the top range of the class. Naturally, sending her abroad became the family's best option. Because they are unfamiliar with the application process, the family sought help from an agency, which took care of compiling the materials. During the application process, it became clearer that his daughter better suits a system where evaluation is not solely based on grades. She had organized a number of school activities and served as an English translator on many occasions, all of which strengthened her application. Supporting an industry According to a 2015 report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, China has the biggest number of students who study abroad. The number of students studying abroad stood at 459,800 in 2014, an increase of 11 percent over 2013, the report showed. In the past 10 years, the number has doubled. The pursuit of overseas education has led to a boom in related consulting agencies. A search on baidu.com turns out many agencies, most of them bragging about how many students they have sent to Ivy League schools. Foreign language schools are also becoming popular in China. Yin Qiaochen, a 2006 graduate of the Nanjing Foreign Language School, said that 200 out of about 500 people in his class chose to study abroad. The high school is one of the best foreign language institutes in East China's Jiangsu Province. There are many such high schools across China with a focus on foreign languages, especially English, providing a better education. Yin recalls when he was studying in the high school, his classmates started to gradually apply to schools abroad from the second year. He applied for an American college as well and convinced his parents it was the right choice. The school also provides a favorable atmosphere for students who want to study abroad. "Every summer, the school organizes overseas trips to help students familiarize with cities and university campuses, mostly in the UK and the US," Yin said. Another prestigious and popular school in China is the High School Affiliated to Shanghai International Studies University. Sun Yu, a teacher at the university, said about one-third of their graduates apply for foreign universities, one-third are accepted early via recommendation and interview by schools in China and the rest take the gaokao. "The high school isn't just an incubator for talents to be sent overseas," Sun stressed. "We've sent talented young people to Chinese universities and various departments as well." But the fact remains that the school excels in providing education on foreign languages and prides itself in producing independent students who are well-conversed in many aspects, not just in academics. Such qualities make the school a natural springboard for those who want to pursue education in a foreign university. Varying experiences Teri Bao, a 17-year-old student, went to study at a British private high school after graduating from middle school in China two years ago. Her parents decided it was best for her to pursue her studies overseas because of the better quality of education compared with China. Bao fully agreed with her parents, saying she had more freedom with her studies in the UK. "We have field trips in our science class, and in our chemistry class we do all sorts of interesting experiments," she said. She recalls being forced to take extra lessons in the Chinese middle school. The teacher would even use up the time for gym classes and morning exercises. But some also experienced disappointment with an overseas education. Yin said if given a second chance, he would've thought twice about applying to a liberal arts college in the US. "Back then I chose the school because it had a good reputation and offered me a stipend," he said. "But I didn't pursue a higher degree, and just a bachelor's degree from a college is not enough to find a good job in China." In recent years, media reported more negative news about the behavior of Chinese students in the US. A couple of students were sentenced for bullying their peers. Some couldn't get accustomed to a foreign society. Some students feel great pressure. They are not ready language-wise and some aren't independent enough to live in a foreign country by themselves. Some parents even accompany their children abroad, cook for them and clean their apartments. The US government is also determined to crack down on underground agencies and students that fake their TOEFL scores or resumes to get into American universities. Despite all the issues, the popularity of overseas education remains high in China. Like Hu Ming, parents want their children to have more choices than they themselves had. After graduation, the children may choose to work in other countries. "His mother and I belong to ordinary working class. We want him to see more and experience more," Hu Ming said of his son. BANGKOK The appointment of former Sen. Bob Kerrey to lead a new American-backed university in Vietnam has set off a sharp debate among Vietnamese over whether he should be disqualified because of his part in killing women and children as a Navy SEAL during the Vietnam War. While the Vietnamese are willing to let bygones be bygones, Ton Nu Thi Ninh, Vietnams former ambassador to the European Union, said by email, the decision to appoint Bob Kerrey to be chairman of the board of the first American-style university in Vietnam strikes me as insensitive to the Vietnamese at best, and taking us for granted at worst. This article originally appeared on Hoodline. The sounds of everyday urban lifesirens whizzing by, streetcars clamoring past, vendors pedaling their waresare the norm at UN Plaza. But soon, chimes and xylophones will be added to the area's soundtrack. Over the past week, construction crews at the plaza have been hammering away at "Sound Commons," a new interactive sound installation developed by the Exploratorium. The installation is the latest addition to the Planning Department's Living Innovation Zones program, which seeks to activate Market Street's underutilized public spaces with temporary interactive experiences. It's the Exploratorium's second Living Innovation Zone; they're also behind Pause on Market Street, near Yerba Buena Lane. Once Sound Commons is complete, the public will be able to explore wooden pathways winding through the plaza's largely ignored lawns. They'll lead to interactive exhibits like aluminum chimes that resemble a forest, swinging pendulums that create syncopated beats, a gravel path that challenges passersby to tiptoe across without making a peep, and echo tubesbased on the popular installation at the Exploratorium. According to the Exploratorium's blog, Sound Commons was financed with "parks-focused" funding from the California Department of Housing and Community Development. The installation will debut later this month, and remain in place for two years. Supreme Procuratorate will be severe on crimes against minors SHANGHAI, June 2 -- China's Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) on Thursday instructed procuratorates at all levels to take a zero-tolerance stance on crimes against minors. Addressing a seminar on procuratorate work for minors, Cao Jianming, Procurator-General of the SPP, said arrest warrants and indictments should be issued as quickly as possible in cases involving minors. Commutation and parole of convicts should be carefully monitored, he added. Procuratorates should work more closely with the police, courts and judicial administrative authorities, focusing on protecting children left behind by parents who leave their hometowns to earn a living, and those who stay with their parents in unfamiliar cities.P Support mechanisms for minors should be improved as well, he said. Four years ago, 13-year-old Wei Xiaoyin began to attend Southwest University of Finance and Economics. Because she was six years younger than all her classmates, she became an instant sensation on campus. All the attention bothered Wei during her freshman year. Instead of calling her by her real name, many people called her the 13-year-old. She tried to dress like her classmates and socialize more with them. After about half a year, she finally managed to get rid of the 13-year-old nickname and become an ordinary freshman. Wei will be graduating from college this year. In April, thanks to a first place ranking on a written test, she got an interview opportunity from a bank. Even though Wei was strongly recommended by the human resources department, she was still denied the job because of her age. Though job hunting has been frustrating, Wei feels very positively about her future. Now she is planning to attend graduate school for further studies. If I ever have my own exceptional child, I would not want him or her to skip grades, but to have a normal students life, Wei repeated several times. A 39-year-old woman from Morocco feels like she has a new lease on life, and it's all thanks to her new face, according to reports. Samira Benhar endured rejection and scorn at home because of a deformity caused by a genetic disease, the Latin American Herald Tribune reports. But after three operations, the mother of two can lead a much more normal life. "I feel like I was born again," she said the report. She and her surgeon, Pedro Cavadas, appeared at a news conference in Manises, Spain. Photos of her transformation circulated online Thursday. COMPLICATIONS: Woman attacked by a chimp suffered problems after face transplant The first of the three surgeries took place in June 2015 to begin the removal of a large portion of a tumor on the right side of Benhar's face, according to the report. Four months later, a second operation removed the rest of the tumor around her eye, and a prosthesis was implanted to improve her appearance in April. PROGRESS: Man who got 1st U.S. penis transplant released from hospital While Benhar is making news across the world, there are other medical conditions that can disrupt how people live. Click through the slideshow above to see some rare medical conditions. BEIJING, June 3 (Xinhua) -- The door of dialogue between China and the Philippines is always open as long as Manila desires to resolve any dispute through negotiations. Philippine President-elect Rodrigo Duterte said his country would adopt an independent foreign policy from his predecessor. Incoming Foreign Minister Perfecto Yasay also said he would like to resume bilateral talks with China. Bilateral talks between the two countries could help untangle disputes in the South China Sea and break a deadlock in bilateral relations, as Yasay previously said. In fact, since China and the Philippines established diplomatic ties in 1975, bilateral relations had developed a lot with broadening cooperation in a wide range of areas. During a state visit by then Chinese President Jiang Zemin to the Philippines in 1996, leaders of the two countries agreed to establish a relationship based on good-neighborliness and mutual trust toward the 21st century. They also reached an understanding based on "shelving disputes and striving for joint development" in the South China Sea. In 2000, the two countries signed the "Joint Statement Between China and the Philippines on the Framework of Bilateral Cooperation in the Twenty-First Century," which confirmed that the two sides would establish a long-term and stable relationship on the basis of good neighborliness, cooperation and mutual trust. During then Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit to the Philippines in 2005, both countries decided to establish a strategic and cooperative relationship aimed at peace and development. During then Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's official visit to the Philippines in 2007, both sides issued a joint statement reaffirming prior commitments of a cordial relationship between the two countries. On the South China Sea issue, successive leaders of both China and the Philippines had agreed that any maritime territorial dispute should be resolved peacefully through direct negotiations. The same commitment was made through the signing of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea in 2002. It is because of the above-mentioned consensus that China and the Philippines had been able to effectively manage their disputes in the South China Sea for quite some time. However, in 2013, the Philippine government led by outgoing President Benigno Aquino, initiated an invalid arbitration case against China involving the South China Sea, despite criticism from the international community. Furthermore, to consolidate its role as a staunch supporter of the United States in realizing the later's "rebalance in the Asia-Pacific," Manila has relentlessly wooed Washington by allowing the U.S. army to use its military bases and hold joint military drills. The Aquino government's irresponsible and reckless actions have only worsened relations between the Philippines and China and increased instability in the region. It is believed that the new Philippine government will be wise enough not to follow Aquino's path and return to the negotiating table. Doing so will contribute to the sound and stable development of China-Philippines ties. A staff member of a courier company in Beijing receives package without asking their clients to show their ID. (Photo/Beijing News) (ECNS)-- A new national standard for China's express delivery industry that mandates real-name registration officially took effect on June 1, but has been met with lukewarm reaction from both couriers and online shoppers, Beijing News reported. As early as November 2015, the real-name registration rule had already been officially enacted. The requirement was reiterated in a norm for the country's courier industry issued by the State Post Bureau in February. Many express delivery companies did not require users to show their ID unless they wanted to have drugs, alcohol or other controlled items delivered, the paper said. Among nine Beijing-based outlets of express delivery companies the paper investigated, only two required users to show ID, it said. On the other hand, a courier named Zhang Qiang (pseudonym) said some users declined to show their ID, citing privacy concerns or simply saying they did not bring it. "We usually don't insist on it," he said, adding that if they did, users might opt for a rival company's service. Xu Yong, an expert in the express delivery industry, said implementation of the real-name registration rule would meet challenges because there was a legal gap to be filled in this regard, and users were still worried about privacy issues. On the other hand, express delivery companies had no way to force users to show their ID and could lose market share if they stuck to the regulation, Xu explained. Previously, the State Post Bureau said it would work to improve user information security management. Shao Zhonglin, another senior expert in the courier industry, said matching measures, personnel adjustment and related training are needed for the success of the real-name registration move. "Implementation of the policy needs a transition period," said Shao. NASA recently released the high definition photos of the surface of Pluto which were taken by probe New Horizons on July 14, 2015. (Photo/NASA) Liu Xiao Ling Tong(R)teaches a kid how to play Sun Wukong on stage. This year, 2016, is the Year of the Monkey. Most Chinese people associate this with the deified monkey Sun Wukong and Liu Xiao Ling Tong, an actor who plays the fictional monkey hero. Liu Xiao Ling Tong is the stage name of Zhang Jinlai. In 1959, Zhang Jinlai was born to an artistic family in Shanghai whose male descendants are famous for playing Sun Wukong on stage. Zhang is the fourth generation to play the Monkey King. Zhang rose to fame by playing Sun Wukong in the 1986 television adaption of the classic novel "Journey to the West." During the six years he spent shooting the adaption, Zhang poured a great deal of effort into his portrayal of the Monkey King, in order to fulfill the wish of his elder brother, Zhang Jinxing, who died in 1966. More recently, Zhang has been promoting his autobiography around the world. He hopes that people can learn something valuable from the Monkey King, such as his enterprising spirit, indomitable will, optimism and perseverance. Since he has no sons, Zhang has to break with the family tradition and recruit an outside candidate to inherit the role of Monkey King. According to Zhang, an actor who wants to effectively play the Monkey King on television or in film must first train by playing the Monkey King in traditional Chinese opera; otherwise, he will not be able to grasp the soul of the character. According to Zhang, traditional Chinese opera requires movement of the hands, eyes, limbs and whole body to imitate monkeys in the wild. As for his collaboration with the Paramount Pictures, with whom he plans to shoot a cinematic version of the classic, Zhang said the filming has been delayed because of problems with the screenplay. Mary Ellen Mark/Berkeley Rep For her unique brand of documentary theater, Anna Deavere Smith interviews people from all walks of life experts and onlookers, the 1 percent and the underclass about a single subject, weaving the resulting transcripts, including every hmm and uh, into solo shows. A graduate of the American Conservatory Theaters masters degree program, she brings that same documentarian thoroughness to her acting, making each characters physicality bearing, gait, facial expressions as specific and sui generis as his or her speech. Kevin Berne/Courtesy American Conservatory Theater In 1945 in a military hospital, Chester Bailey retreats into his imagination, effectively burying memories of a tragic accident. Assigned to help the young man navigate his way back to reality is psychiatrist Philip Cotton. But the case resonates with the doctor, unearthing issues of his own. San Francisco native and Academy Award-nominated David Strathairn (Good Night, and Good Luck, Lincoln, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) is Dr. Cotton opposite American Conservatory Theater masters program alumnus Dan Clegg (Major Barbara at ACT, King Lear at Cal Shakes) as Bailey in this ACT production of Chester Bailey. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate An angry Donald Trump called Thursday night for Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton to be jailed as hundreds of anti-Trump demonstrators filled the streets around the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. The FBI investigation into her private email server when she was secretary of state has shown terrible things, he said. Ive read so much about her emails, and I have to say shes guilty as hell, Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, told the cheering crowd. The fact that shes allowed to participate in this race is a disgrace to the U.S.A. In a San Diego speech earlier in the day, Clinton slammed Trump as unfit to be president, with ideas that are dangerously incoherent and little more than bizarre rants ... and outright lies. If the speech, which didnt mention her neck-and-neck Tuesday primary with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was designed to get under what Clinton described as Trumps very thin skin, she succeeded. He called her speech a political attack, not a foreign policy address. After saying that Clinton has to go to jail, he promised that if she wasnt charged, it could change when he became president. Theres a five-year statute of limitation, he said, smiling. If Im elected, Im sure the attorney general will be taking a good long look at (the email question) and from the fairest point of view. While the crowd filled only about half of the cavernous convention hall, the thousands of people waved white and blue Trump for President signs and roared out their approval for every one of his standard speaking points. Applause for the wall Build the wall, build the wall, they chanted, in response to Trumps plan to seal off the Mexican border. They later broke into chants of USA, USA, when he talked about making America great again. Trump talked about his recent endorsement from the National Rifle Association, calling its members great people who just want the people of their country to be safe. He also promised to fight back against U.S. companies that move their businesses overseas, like Carrier, an air conditioning company. Ill just tell them that theyll be taxed at a rate of 35 percent for every air conditioning unit they bring back into this country, he said. He said hes confident he can win the state of California in the fall, and win it substantially. If we win California, the election is over and we can make America great again. Its been decades since a Republican presidential candidate has won California, and recent polls show Trump running far behind Clinton in the state. After the work of building a company worth $10 billion, he said, winning the election and running the country is going to be easier. But he always kept returning to Clinton and the nonstop attack she made in her talk. Calling her lying, crooked Hillary, he complained that she made up his foreign policy in her speech, adding, Shes a bad person. Calls Clinton naive Trump suggested Clinton was naive when she talked about how important the countrys allies are and how China and Russia envy Americas alliances. Theyre not jealous, they think were stupid, he said. They are not envious of all the people taking our money. Our allies think were stupid people, he said, adding that the country can no longer afford to pay for the protection of countries like Japan. Were not a rich country, were a poor country, Trump said. There were few doubters in the crowd. I like Trump because hes not a politician, said 63-year-old Walter Wall of San Jose. I want to hear him say hes going to build up the military and take care of the immigration problem. But being a Trump supporter isnt easy in the Bay Area, said a Dublin woman who would only identify herself as Maryann. Almost everyone I know is against him, she said. But Ive got a daughter graduating college and I want her to have a good job and a good life. I want the old values I grew up with to come back. Winning too much All these things will happen if hes elected, Trump promised. Were going to start winning so much that youll come to me and say, Mr. President, were winning too much, and well keep winning, Trump said. Outside, things werent nearly as peaceful. At least 200 anti-Trump protesters rushed supporters leaving the rally, prompting pushing, shoving, several fist fights and scuffles. Police in riot gear attempted to separate the two groups, eventually forming a skirmish line as marchers burned flags, Trump hats and threw objects. Crowd gives chase One man was seen throwing a punch directly behind a television reporter, provoking a crowd of people to give chase, all of it on camera. The 7 p.m. rally tied up the citys downtown for much of the day, with police closing off streets around the convention center to cars and pedestrians beginning at noon, in anticipation of as many as 15,000 people attending the rally. Although Trump is the last man standing in the GOP presidential race and virtually guaranteed the partys nomination, hes still campaigning hard in California. He was in Fresno last week and spoke to a crowd of about 3,000 in Sacramento Wednesday night. The businessman is scheduled to hold a rally in Redding on Friday. He might need the extra visibility. A poll released by the Public Policy Institute of California last week found that Trump had the support of only about two-thirds of the states likely Republican voters, with the others either undecided or planning to cast ballots for GOP candidates who already have dropped out of the race. But Trump still has plenty of confidence in his appeal to California voters. In Sacramento Wednesday, he vowed to contest the state in the fall election, even though it has been decades since California supported a GOP presidential candidate. San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Peter Fimrite contributed to this report. John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth @sfchronicle.com Twitter: jfwildermuth Scientists say they may have a clue to the mysterious origin of hot Jupiters, those gas giant planets that circle uncomfortably close to their host star: There may be a second star involved. A survey of 77 stars hosting hot Jupiters has found that roughly half of them are binary star systems. The findings, presented at the Canadian Astronomical Societys annual meeting in Winnipeg, shed light on the dynamics that shape these strange planetary systems and might even offer some insight into our own solar system. The big mystery Ever since hot Jupiters were discovered more than two decades ago, scientists have wondered how these star-scorched worlds came to be. After all, in our own neighborhood, the gas giants lie far from the sun, in the frigid outer solar system. One big mystery about these hot Jupiters is, how did they get in such orbits? said lead author Henry Ngo, a doctoral student in planetary science at California Institute of Technology. Several theories have said there may have been a friend either a nearby star or another massive planet that could have influenced either the hot Jupiters orbit or its formation. Ngo and his colleagues set out to find some of these friends. They surveyed 77 star systems that had hot Jupiters circling them, using the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii to look for any stellar companions. Sure enough, about half of them (47 percent, give or take 7 percent) had companion stars within a distance of 50 to 2,000 astronomical units. Astronomical clues Keep in mind, an astronomical unit, or AU, is the average Earth-sun distance, or about 93 million miles. For comparison, Plutos average distance from the sun is roughly 40 AU; the distance to the star closest to the sun, Proxima Centauri, is about 268,000 AU. So in interstellar terms, 50-2,000 AU is practically spitting distance. Its a clue that maybe binary systems create environments that are easier for hot Jupiters to form, Ngo said. The researchers did find something surprising: There didnt seem to be a correlation between the existence of a companion star and the misalignment of the scorched gas giants orbit with its parent star. Well-aligned and misaligned hot Jupiters had roughly the same likelihood of having a companion star nearby. That means that a theory known as the Kozai-Lidov mechanism, which describes how an objects orbit might be perturbed by a third party, might not be the main mechanism causing these hot Jupiters after all. In fact, it might account for the existence of fewer than 1 in 6 hot Jupiters, Ngo said. That confused us for a bit, because that kind of ruled out one of the main theories, he added. In any case, these companion stars could potentially be close enough to influence the emergence of these hot Jupiters, whether they were born in place or pulled close to the star later. What exactly such mechanisms might be remains unclear for the moment, the researchers said. Its possible, for example, that a binary star system would have had a larger protoplanetary disk, which would allow more planets (such as a hot Jupiter) to coalesce. We are thinking of ways of testing whether or not that idea is correct, Ngo said. Q: I have been attempting to get reimbursed for out-of-pocket expenses from Alitalia, and Im hoping you can help. The problem started when Alitalia checked me in as the wrong passenger on a flight from Miami to Rome to Tel Aviv. There was another E. Weiner on the flight. The problem was discovered by me while waiting to board the flight in Miami. My ticket was supposed to be from Miami to Tel Aviv via Rome. My boarding pass was only to Rome. While the staff scrambled to correct the problem ticket and boarding pass, they said they would board the plane and find my bags. They gave me new boarding passes with my new baggage-claim tickets attached. Unfortunately, when I got to Tel Aviv, only one of my two checked bags arrived. I was told that the other one would be delivered to me in Israel. The bag arrived while I was out touring, but my friends sent me a picture of the suitcase. I thought they were playing around with me, because the bag was not mine. During this time period, the mother of the teenage girl whose bag it was had contacted my friends and requested that we not release the bag back to the airlines. One of my friends was not traveling with any luggage and offered to bring the bag back with him on his flight home to the Miami International Airport and return it to the girls parents. Her daughter had received my bag but refused it. My missing bag contained most of the possessions that I had brought for my trip. I had only the shoes I was wearing on the flight and a few outfits -- certainly not enough for 10 days in Israel. Seven weeks after my return to South Florida, the girls mother called to tell me that the airline had contacted her to return my suitcase. She provided my contact information to the delivery person, and I arranged to have the bag delivered to me. I am requesting that Alitalia reimburse me for all the items I needed to purchase while in Israel without my bag. Ellen Weiner, Coconut Creek, Florida A: This is an exceptionally frustrating case. Alitalia shouldnt have confused you with another passenger; it should have ticketed you correctly, should have delivered your luggage to the right place, should have quickly reunited you with your lost belongings and deep breath! should have compensated you for your loss. But seven weeks changes your perspective, wears you down. By the time you contacted us, you just wanted a sincere apology and a check for anything. You asked for $799, the approximate value of the clothing and toiletries you had to buy, but under international law, you were entitled to up to $1,400. Alitalia shouldnt have taken this long to resolve your issue. Yes, it found your luggage, but way too late. The trick is to ask for compensation as soon as possible. When your luggage goes missing, talk to an airline representative and ask for an allowance to buy clothes and other necessities. Normally, airlines can authorize a few hundred dollars for clothes Ive even seen them pay passengers at the ticket counter in cash. After you returned home, a series of polite but firm emails to one of Alitalias customer-service executives might have done the trick. I list their names, numbers and emails on my consumer-advocacy site: http://elliott.org/company-contacts/alitalia/. This is one of the strangest cases Ive seen in years. Alitalia should have systems in place to prevent one passenger from being confused with another. Alitalia apologized to you for the loss and agreed to refund $600 for your clothes and $100 in baggage fees. Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine. Find travel tips at www.elliott.org. E-mail: chris@elliott.org Twitter: elliottdotorg Usually when people talk about a lab blowing up, its more of a Breaking Bad sort of scenario. Not here. Poke (po-kay) Lab, which drew crowds from its very first lunch at noon on a Thursday, earns its lines out the door with a fast-casual concept built around super-fresh raw fish. The format: (1) Pick out a base layer: sushi rice, brown rice or green salad. (2) Select a sashimi-grade seafood: spicy tuna, salmon, tuna, yellowtail, octopus or cooked shrimp. (3) Add cucumbers and/or onions. (4) Settle on a sauce: signature, mild or spicy. Throw in a side of spicy mayo if so inspired. (5) Add toppings: avocado, crabmeat, green onions, eggs, seaweed, sesame seeds, wasabi, ginger or, better yet, all of them. Or trust chef James Anderson on what hes feeling at the moment, whether thats the chefs special with exotic sauce combos on the catch of the day or the salmon belly that Anderson candies and smokes across the block at Alvarado Street Brewery. 11:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursday-Tuesday, 475 Alvarado St., Monterey, (831) 200-3474, www.thepokelab.com More dining highlights, a few steps away: Boardwalk Sub Shop: This newcomer opened in downtown Monterey a few months ago, but its sign reads Since 1960. People ask, How can you say 1960? Well, this was set in motion the first day I had a sub. I was 6, says owner Terry Teplitzky, who grew up in Atlantic City. Walls decorated with Jersey beach photos and a mural of the famed Steel Pier diving horse lend credibility as does the Jersey Italian ($10.99), with Genoa salami, capicola, mortadella and provolone, lettuce, tomato, onions raw and/or fried. Steak subs include the Philly style with house-made Cheez Whiz. Hoagie rolls from Erasmo Aiello of Palermo Bakery approximate the taste and texture of the Atlantic City breads. A handful of beers, two wines and a range of craft sodas are on draft. 10:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, until 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday, 470 Alvarado St., Monterey, (831) 264-1171, www.boardwalksubshop.com Coming soon: Alvarado Ramen: Hank Kim is giving Monterey something its begged for. No one does ramen here, Kim says. Its not easy, but its good. He plans on making his broths in the traditional Japanese style, with 11 hours of simmering. Basic vegetable ramen will start at $5.50 with lunch specials running $9.50 with a choice of two noodle bowls, three-piece gyoza dumplings or kara-age (fried chicken) and pick of sides (kimchi or yellow pickled radish), with a bottle of water. 487 Alvarado St., Monterey, (831) 235-3455. Mark C. Anderson is a freelance writer. Email: travel@sfchronicle.com Robert Kirkman goes from The Walking Dead to the walking possessed with the horror thriller Outcast premiering Friday on Cinemax. The series has a lot going for it, including the fact that its getting the jump on the fall premiere of The Exorcist series on Fox. Now that TV is awash with zombies, vampires and superheroes, the medium seems to be turning to exorcism as a new content trend. If thats true, Outcast will do just fine. Kyle Barnes (Patrick Fugit, Gone Girl) is a deeply troubled young man who is considered an outcast in the town where he lives, but in fact, has absented himself from the general population because hes afraid of what he might do. As a child, he was terrorized by his mother, who now resides in a state of permanent detachment in a long-term-care facility. He is certain that its all his fault and that hes a kind of demonic jinx to people around him. Thats why he wont see his ex-wife or their young daughter. Kyle teams up with the Rev. Anderson (Philip Glenister, Life on Mars), who has abandoned his own family to devote his life to exorcising demons from the souls of the possessed, of which there seem to be an inordinate number in tiny Rome, W.Va. rather like the overpopulation of murderers in Murder, She Wrotes Cabot Cove, Maine. The series, based on the comic book created by Kirkman and artist Paul Azaceta, has both an overarching plot Kyle is desperate to get to the bottom of his mothers possession and put his own life back in order and a kind of episodic possession of the week structure. Kyles first case with Anderson involves a young boy named Joshua Austin (Gabriel Bateman, Stalker), who is just not himself. He contorts his young body like a pretzel, spews black tar-like gunk at his would-be exorcists and floats above his bed. All thats missing to evoke Linda Blair in The Exorcist is pea-green projectile vomit and his head spinning around. Exorcism isnt easy, though, and Joshua takes a beating to get un-demonized. You could say Kyle beats the devil out of the kid. Other cases are even more challenging than Joshuas, as the exorcists find out when they confront Blake Morrow (Lee Tergesen, Oz), who has killed his best friends wife and seems immune to every attempt to exorcise his resident demon. What turned him from a seemingly decent, average Joe into a maniacal killer? It was the way people use forgiveness as a way of excusing their own faults. What turned my stomach wasnt the sin, he seethes. It was the forgiveness. He sees through the hypocrisy of his upstanding fellow Romans. The shows structure is smart in many ways, giving us more immediate satisfaction as individual stories play out, while piling on layers of mystery about many of the characters. Kirkman does it so well that we almost miss the fact that several subplots are pretty timeworn. For the most part, it doesnt matter, thanks to a riveting anchor performance by Fugit, gotcha-laced direction by Adam Wingard, Howie Deutch and Julius Ramsay, and several notable performances by supporting players, such as Wrenn Schmidt (Boardwalk Empire) as Kyles adopted sister, David Denman (13Hours) as her cop husband who has little use for Kyle, and by Glenister and Tergesen. Character actress Grace Zabriskie (Ray Donovan) is memorably chilling as a judgmental elderly churchgoer who used to be known for her sweetness but has inexplicably become cantankerous and then some. And even without all the special effects needed to depict his possession, young Gabriel Batemans performance lays the foundation for the entire series in the premiere episode. David Wiegand is the TV critic and an assistant managing editor of The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: dwiegand@sfchronicle.com Twitter: WaitWhat_TV. Follow me on Facebook Outcast: 10-episode series. 10 p.m. Friday, June 3, on Cinemax. CAMP TARIQ, Iraq The battle for Fallujah is shaping up to be unlike any of the other assaults in the Iraqi militarys town-by-town war with the Islamic State group. In the nearly two weeks since the operation began, air strikes have been used sparingly, Shiite militias have so far been kept to the perimeter, and the initial advance on the symbolically important town has been slow. U.S.-trained Iraqi counterterrorism forces, wary of coming street battles in the city, are already facing fierce resistance on the outskirts from well-entrenched militants. Those fighters are believed to include many foreign jihadists who are considered better-trained that the ones in towns that have been retaken in recent months. In Ramadi the last major victory for Iraqi forces against Islamic State many of the militants were able to flee to other strongholds along the Euphrates River valley. Now, all of that territory has been cleared, and the extremists have no escape route from Fallujah. That suggests a long fight for the city less than an hours drive west of Baghdad. While Fallujah is smaller in area than Ramadi, an estimated 50,000 people are trapped in the city, twice as many as were in Ramadi when it was recaptured. Aid groups say about 1,000 families have managed to flee the outskirts of Fallujah since the operation began May 22. But the Norwegian Refugee Council, an international humanitarian group that does extensive work in Iraqs Anbar province, says none of the civilians trapped in the center of the city have made it out. Residents have told reporters that Islamic State fighters tightly control all roads in and out of the city and have threatened to kill anyone who tries to escape. There is a clear difference between the Fallujah and Ramadi operations, said Iraqi military Brig. Haider al-Obeidi. The terrain is a challenge, he said, because the outskirts are dotted with orchards and irrigation canals that give Islamic State fighters working in small mobile units an advantage over the slow-moving convoys of armored vehicles The fighters his men are encountering are better trained than those in pervious battles, al-Obeidi said. Military commanders are reporting larger numbers of foreign fighters in Fallujah. Their snipers are smart, they hit essential parts of the bulldozers engines and Humvees wheels, he said. Repairing them takes time and slows advances, and the forces have not received any new weaponry or additional training that would help, al-Obeidi said. The troops have few options beyond trying to protect their units from Islamic State counterattacks, he said. As streets are cleared, they plan to erect roadblocks to guard against suicide car bombs, one of the deadliest Islamic State tactics. Iraqi forces are continuing to move forward, snaking through the desert on Fallujahs southern edge. Smoke rose Friday from a cluster of factories and industrial buildings in the area. On the citys northeastern edge, Shiite militia forces fired mortar rounds into the city from suburbs cleared by Iraqi federal police. 1 Afghan bombing: An explosion at a market place in Afghanistans western Laghman province killed two civilians and wounded 16, an official said on Thursday. The blast took place in the late morning, when the market was packed with shoppers, according to Sarhadi Zwak, spokesman for the provincial governor. In northern Sari Pul province, the governors spokesman Zabiullah Amani said that 17 people had been kidnapped by insurgents on Wednesday. Negotiations were in progress for their release, he said. 2 Yemen conflict: Shiite rebels have retaken ground from forces loyal to the internationally recognized government in two central provinces, with at least 85 fighters killed on both sides over the past three days, Yemeni officials said Thursday. The fighting in Marib and Shabwa provinces, also wounded about 100 fighters. Yemens war pits rebels known as Houthis and their allies against forces loyal to President Abed Rabu Mansour, who is backed by a Saudi-led coalition. Since Yemens civil war began in March 2015, more than 8,100 people have been killed. The United Nations says more than 80 percent of Yemenis are in dire need of food, water and other aid in the Arab worlds poorest country. BENGALURU: The search engine giant, Google, always has surprising services for its users. It was raining technology in Googles Annual Developer Conference. The expertise of Google indeed brings out lot to discuss about the new inventions introduced in the conference. With the advanced technological innovations, Google is getting closer to grab its mission, to organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful; source, Tech.firstpost.com. Googles search engine has helped the world to navigate through pool of information dispersed over the internet within seconds. Using the same line of innovation, Google introduced an artificial intelligence driven assistant to enhance assistive experience for you. According to Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google, People are increasingly interacting naturally with Google, and arent just looking for the worlds information but actually expecting Google to help them with their daily tasks. Which is why were pleased to introduce...the Google assistant. Sharing of information is becoming digital than conventional face-to-face communication. People are connected with just a button through mobile phones. Understanding the need, Google introduced a new messaging app, Allo, in association with the Google assistant feature. You can interact with it directly in your chats, either one-on-one or with friends. Because the assistant understands your world, you can ask for things like your agenda for the day or photos from your last trip. Pichai added. The app is outfitted with Smart Reply which makes your chat more expressive with emojis, stickers, and the ability to get creative with photos. Also, a video calling app, Duo, was introduced for faster and reliable video calling on slower network speeds. Excitingly, you can even contribute in naming upcoming Andriod N OS which is designed for enhanced graphic effects, lower battery consumption and storage. Along with the OS, the Android manufacturers are working on mobile VR, Daydream. It will include users favorite apps, games, YouTube, Street View, Play Movies, Google Photos and the Play Store soon. Pichai further added, We also previewed Android Wear 2.0, including a revamped user experience and standalone apps that run right on the watch, no matter where your phone is or even if it's off. Read Also: Latest Budget Phone Xperia E5 Enters Indian Market with a Bang Lenovo Rolls Out Android Marshmallow Update For K4 Note NEW DELHI: Korean tech giant LG will launch more affordable and flagship devices in India this year as it looks to regain lost ground in the domestic smartphone market. The company, which competes with the likes of Samsung, Apple and Sony in the premium category, will launch 5-6 devices in the sub-Rs 15,000 category to cash in on the burgeoning Indian smartphone market. It launched its flagship smartphone 'G5' today, priced at Rs 52,990. "LG is a leader in consumer durables but that is not the case for mobile phones. We are starting to analyse that. We will prioritise (presence in segments)," LG Electronics India MD Ki Wan Kim told PTI. He added that LG is studying various segments and will launch products in the affordable category, which accounts for a significant portion of the Indian handset market. "We are looking at sub-Rs 10,000 and sub-Rs 15,000 range tentatively. Till Q3, before Diwali, we are looking at launching 5-6 models to test the market," Kim said. He added that depending on the response, the company may look at launching smartphones designed for the Indian consumers. India is the second largest smartphone market globally, after China. Samsung, Micromax, Intex, Lenovo, Lava and Xiaomi are some of the leading brands in the space. Asked about the contribution of the handset business to LG's overall revenues in India, he said it is not yet "meaningful". The G5, which features a modular design, is equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, 5.3-inch display, 4GB RAM, 32GB memory (expandable up to 2TB) and 2,800 mAh removable battery. Launched first in the Mobile World Congress in Spain earlier this year, the handset comes with two rear cameras -- 16MP primary rear camera and a 8MP rear camera for wide-angle shots. It has a 8MP front camera. "This phone will certainly amaze the smartphone users with its ability to be transformed into multiple devices like digital camera, Hi-Fi player and more. G5 will certainly redefine smartphone experience for consumers," Kim said. Along with the phone, the company has also introduced a range of companion devices like 360 Cam, 360 VR and LG Friends Manager Read Also: Micromax Launches the Micromax Bolt Selfie with 5-Megapixel Front Selfie Shooter Xiaomi Mi 5 and Redmi Note 3 Available Without Registrations SINGAPORE: India is expecting USD 56 billion worth of investments over the next four years in the electronics sector to meet its increasing demand, an official has said here. "We must have an electronics output of USD 400 billion a year by 2020 tomeet domestic demand and generate exports worth USD 80 billion," Director in the Department of Electronics and IT Ministry S K Marwaha said. India has allowed 100 per cent Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the electronics sector with a 25 per cent subsidy, he said yesterday during 'India Connect' business forum organised at the ongoing CommunicAsia2016 exhibition being held from May 31 to June 3 in Singapore. Marwaha underlined the need to increase electronics sector output by USD 300 billion over the next four years, given the strong hi-tech products demand, which will also be coming from the development and retrofitting of 98 Smart Cities across the country. Current electronics demand in India is USD 100 billion. To date, India has received USD 16 billion of new investments for the electronics sector, according to Marwaha who expects the industry to be USD 100 billion-strong along with USD 28 billion of existing investments and the new USD 52 billion required input. Marketing campaigns are being held across the world to attract more and more investments in the sector, which also holds the potential of USD 80 billion worth of exports, Marwaha said. The target is to match imports and exports and even make India a net exporter of electronics goods by shipping out more to the global markets, he said after addressing the forum, which was supported by the Singapore Business Federation. India is represented by 54 companies in the mega exhibition covering broadcast, communications and related enterprises, organised by the Singapore Exhibition Services. Read Also: LinkedIn Opens Its Brand New Office In Bengaluru Apple Plant In India To Benefit Retail Sector: Google Official NEW DELHI: India and the US today signed a key pact for exchange of intelligence on terror on a real time basis that include biographic information of known and suspected terrorists. An arrangement between the authorised Indian governmental agencies and the government of the United States of America for exchange of terrorist screening information was signed by Union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi and US Ambassador to India Richard Verma. As per this pact, India and the US will provide each other access to terrorism screening information through the designated contact points, subject to domestic laws and regulations, an official spokesperson said. The agreement would enhance the counter terrorism cooperation between India and the US. With signing of the key pact, India has formally entered into the US Homeland Security Presidential Directive-6 (HSPD-6), which will enable it to access 'unclassified biographic information of known and suspected terrorists' maintained by the US on a reciprocal basis. The HSPD-6 is a model text agreement for exchange of terrorist screening information between Terrorist Screening Centre (TSC) of the US and an Indian agency. There have been several rounds of discussions between the interlocutors of the two countries in the past one year and both sides have narrowed down their differences on several key issues with the aim of signing the pact. The US has already finalised such agreements with 30 countries. TSC is a multi agency organisation administered by FBI which consolidates several terrorist watch lists maintained by different US government agencies into single terrorist database on terror suspects. The database includes the name of the terror suspect, nationality, date of birth, photos, finger prints (if any) and passport number. Officials said, initially some Indian security agencies had expressed their reservations saying the arrangement primarily protects US interests. However, later, the security agencies came to the conclusion that there was no disadvantage in entering into the proposed pact with TSC. The Intelligence Bureau will be the nodal agency and designated as the Indian party to the agreement. It was agreed that while signing the pact, it must be ensured that privacy issues are taken care of, officials said. Read Also: Age No Bar for Brilliance: 8 Year Old Brainiac Astounds Satya Nadella with His New Gaming Application PM Narendra Modi Releases Nation's First 'Disaster Management' Plan BENGALURU: According to the Expedia 2016 Flip Flop Report, after examining the activities and preferences among beachgoers, the survey learnt the interest of Indian people who spend their holiday in beaches. The survey was performed by Northstar, a strategic insights consulting firm with help of Kantar-owned Global Market Insite (GMI) and Lightspeed Research amalgamated group of panels. The results of the Flip Flop Survey India holds the second spot below Thailand with 81 percent in taking a beach vacation last year and India is followed by Italy with 79 percent. Coming to the beach hygiene and safety, Indian stats showed 73 percent and 68 percent accordingly. India bags second rank after Thailand (25 percent) with 24 percent in claiming they would set up a WiFi connection at the beach to stay connected to work. Type of Accommodation Flip Flop Survey learns that 32 percent of Indians look for a family resort and 16 percent of them find shelter in an eco-friendly resort, if they choose to spend their vacation at a beach in the next 12 months. Fascinatingly, 13 percent of Indians stay in a luxury five star resort if they take a beach vacation. What are the things done before departing to beach vacation? Surprisingly, 40 percent Indians have their hair trimmed before hitting beach vacation now; the rate is highest of any country. Indians are followed by Italians at 28 percent then by Netherlands at 27 percent. Interesting fact of Indians are: 30 percent of them go tanning before heading to beach vacation followed by beachgoers from Japan at 28 percent, Hong Kong at 25 percent and Italy at 25 percent. Another fascinating fact is that majority of Indians approximately 43 percent of them get a spa treatment to get beach ready followed by beachgoers from Mexico (23 percent) and Brazil (22 percent). What worries people during a beach vacation? This is a common fear globallyto lose their possessions, with concerns highest among beachgoers from Sweden (47 percent), Hong Kong (41 percent), Germany and the UK (39 percent) and lowest among those from Italy (27 percent), the United States (26 percent) and India (24 percent). Another fact is that overall 19 percent of beachgoers globally are afraid to swim at the beach because of sharks this is highest among those from Hong Kong (53 percent), Singapore (38 percent), India (35 percent) and Malaysia (35 percent) and lowest among beachgoers from Sweden (eight percent), Italy (nine percent) and Austria (10 percent). Read Also: North East Monsoon Getaway From the Pen of a Celebrity NEW YORK: Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Indian- American Democrat in fray for election to the US House of Representatives, has won a crucial endorsement from President Barack Obama, who said being "the son of immigrants" he understands challenges facing America's working families. "As the son of immigrants who worked their way into the middle-class, Raja understands both the challenges facing America's working families and the opportunities their work makes possible," Obama said in the endorsement released by Krishnamoorthi's campaign today. "I know he'll fight hard in Congress to create more good jobs, empower more Americans to start businesses, and help working families afford to put their children through college," Obama said. Krishnamoorthi, 42, had served Obama as issues director in the President's successful US Senate campaign in 2004. Krishnamoorthi is in the fray for this year's open-seat race in the 8th Congressional District of Illinois that includes west and northwest Chicago suburbs. He won the primary in March in the contest to replace Rep Tammy Duckworth in Congress. His win brightened the chance of yet another person of Indian-origin to be elected to the US House of Representatives in the November general elections. Krishnamoorthi said he was "honoured and humbled" to have the support of Obama in his race for Congress. "It only seems like yesterday that the two of us ate dinner in my childhood home in Peoria before the beginning of his historic rise to the US Senate and the White House. "A few gray hairs later, that dinner table conversation continues as we are focused on standing up for the middle class and working to make sure that we come together as a country instead of casting stones and insults at our fellow Americans," he said. Born in New Delhi, Krishnamoorthi, an attorney and entrepreneur, polled 57 per cent of the votes in the eighth Congressional District of Illinois as against his two other rivals State Senator Mike Noland (29 per cent) and Deb Bullwinkel (13 per cent) in the primaries. The district has a sizeable Indian-American population. Krishnamoorthi grew up in Peoria and later served as a founding prosecutor in Illinois Attorney-General Lisa Madigan's anti-corruption unit and as Deputy Treasurer of Illinois. He currently serves as president of Sivananthan Labs and Episolar, Inc, small businesses that sell products in the national security and renewable energy industries. He is a co-founder of InSPIRE, a non-profit organisation that provides training to Illinois students and veterans in solar technology. Krishnamoorthi has so far won endorsements from Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi,former Senior Advisor to the President, David Axelrod as well as from The Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun Times. Read Also: Clinton Says Trump Dangerous, Unfit To Be Commander In Chief Hillary Clinton Raises Over $40 Mn In May Source: PTI WASHINGTON: The U.S. has said it views India as a vital partner in the region, adding that the relationship between the two countries is of "incredible significance" to the world, days ahead of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Washington. "We're very much looking forward to Prime Minister Modi's visit. The U.S.-Indian relationship is of incredible significance, not only to the region but to the world," said State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner. "The breadth of the U.S.-Indian relationship is wide. It addresses security. It has got a strong economic component. We're looking to build closer relationships across the board with India, becaU.S.e we see it as a vital partner in the region," Toner said. Modi is scheduled to arrive in Washington on June 6 on a three-day visit. The Prime Minister is scheduled to meet U.S. President Barack Obama at the White HoU.S.e on June 7 and address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress on June 8. "We have a broad bilateral and multilateral relationship with India and look forward to engaging on all those issues," he said. Read Also: India's Entry Into APEC Likely Focus of Modi-Obama Talks Obama Endorses Indian-American Candidate In Illinois Source: PTI Hula group creates global connection When the pandemic ushered everyone indoors, Moorpark resident and longtime dancer Lisa Rauschenberger decided to get people back outsidesocially distanced, of course. She began to hold weekly hula lessons at... Hospital offers safe option to dispose of meds, narcotics Los Robles Health System is working to crush the opioid drug crisis by raising awareness about the dangers of opioid misuse and the importance of safe and proper disposal of... Rotary works to promote worldwide peace, goodwill The Rotary Club of Simi Sunrise recently invited administrators and principals from the Simi Valley Unified School District to attend a meeting and receive the book The Nonviolence Handbook: A... Free books and Halloween treats Big fun awaits kids at local little libraries Simi Valley has about 20 registered Little Free Libraries that offer free books for children, teens and adults. In addition to providing free books to the community, the Little Free... 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 The highest tide of the year and a deluge of rain are set to combine over the weekend, prompting warnings for those at low-lying areas. The entire NSW coast is under a severe weather warning as of Friday afternoon, with the Bureau of Meteorology predicting strong winds and damaging surf as well as heavy rain and high tides on Saturday. Cold late afternoon of activities on the beach at Merimbula ahead of the deluge. Credit:Jay Cronan Warnings might extend to Sunday, duty forecaster Rob Taggart said. The bureau predicts some parts of the coast could get up to 200mm of rain over the weekend, but expected totals were lower in the capital. Alex Pye shows a video (Cumnock: The Musical! Part One and Two) and an untitled installation. The video's protagonist (the artist) sits in a living room watching commercial television and smoking a bong. The scene changes to her seated on a quad bike (?) riding in circles around a quarry, ultimately going nowhere. In the first scene she wears underwear, in the second brief shorts and a shirt knotted under her breasts, a costume beloved of 1940s and 1950s pin-ups. Finally she is shown sitting on a porch smoking cigarettes and drinking red wine. The different mises-en-scene are interspersed with each evoking feelings of futility, of a purposeless existence broken and simultaneously underscored by drugs, alcohol and reckless behaviour. The video, the untitled installation and the wall piece Thanks for Nothing state Pye's view of a life endured rather than lived. The curator Sabrina Baker has selected six very different artists whose marked individuality is the most striking feature of the exhibition. The spatial openness of the gallery spaces is a very effective and arguably necessary device where such strong statements are not only aesthetically played off against one another but are also ostensibly in dynamic thematic dialogues. Down on her luck by Lucy Forsberg. part of the installation Yeah I'm pluggin' on?But I'm afraid we're not as tough as what we've been told we were in Obnoxious Ladies in the Landscape at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Braddon. Emma Beer is a painter in the very best sense of that word. Her four works, each with very personalised autobiographical titles, are beautiful. This is an artist with astute control of the layered subtleties of spatial delineation and understanding of the risky aesthetic efficacy of blurring the boundaries between figuration and abstraction. The surface is divided into spaces that could be read as windows through which we begin the dialogue as established by Beer. She uses a limited palette through the four works displayed essentially a range of tonal blues and whites. Equally limited is the morphological variety squares, rectangles, singular or grouped lines. These limitations do not any way inhibit the works' expressive possibilities and her insinuative use of spatial and pictorial ambiguities is seductively impressive. For me, her work is concerned with personal history and placing that history within a language of painting that is evocative, articulate and aesthetically resolved. Jacqueline Bradley has a number of works both floor and wall-based. She uses found and made objects in combination and to great effect. This is especially true of Autumn Jacket and Dredging Jacket. Her references to the undeniably rural landscape as seen in both these works impart a sense that the objects are simultaneously a part of and apart from the land they sit on/in. There is a discomforting ambiguity in the surreality of jackets that are at once defence and attack. This is reinforced by the attached wire "enclosures". The wonderful push-pull effect of these possibilities is cleverly presented here and again in Escape Rope (two hemispheres). In the latter the rope elements are finished with sticks whose fragility is overtly apparent. The "escape" offered by the rope is futile and if followed leads nowhere. Camille Serisier presents a fairytale world of pastel and insubstantial absurdities, peopled by equally absurd protagonists. The artifice of her world is reinforced by its being made from paper and by the set-like simplicity of the designs used for the arenas in which the "action" as promulgated by her costumed "heroines" (and one "hero") takes place. Artifice and simplicity (barely) conceal something more sinister but it is something that remains intimated rather than stated in Serisier's pastel plays. Lucy Forsberg's installation Yeah I'm pluggin' onBut I'm afraid we're not as tough as what we've been told we were consists of a number of elements that confront a range of issues in the guise of subverted road signs. Forsberg's signs see her collaged onto, for example, Howard Arkley's suburban sprawl, backyard barbecues, outback races, and Holden utes, in a language that it is easily accessed on a surface level. Upstairs at the Cusack Centre in Kingston has been given a breath of fresh air thanks to three creative ventures moving in. The level, which used to house the Cusacks furniture store, has been predominantly empty for almost a decade. Kate Ticehurst of Subsdance, Craig Rhodes of A Flick of Hares and Chris Lloyd of CARDIF Collective on level one of the Cusack Centre. Credit:Elesa Kurtz David Traylen and Chris Lloyd opened the CARDIF Collective in December 2015, a not-for-profit space to give support to local fashion designers, including studios, equipment and a retail store. Kate Ticehurst also moved her Latin and Brazilian dance company Subsdance into the centre about six months ago from Civic. Police have fined a pro-life supporter for the second time for breaching the protest-free zone around the abortion clinic in Civic. Kerry Mellor, 75, received his first fine in April for breaching the zone about a month after the laws banning protest were introduced. The protest-free zone in front of the ACT health building on Moore Street, Civic. But police withdrew that fine last month. A delegate of the chief police officer told Mr Mellor police had decided to withdraw the fine notice due to "ambiguity" around the "boundaries of what comprises a 'protected area'". Indonesia AirAsia X will end its flights from Sydney and Melbourne to Bali on September 1, in a move that will frustrate travellers but could benefit rival carriers Jetstar, Virgin Australia, Tigerair Australia and Garuda Indonesia. "The suspension of these services is part of a network restructuring aimed at improving operational efficiencies at Indonesia AirAsia X," the airline said in a statement. Indonesia AirAsia X began flying from Melbourne to Bali in March 2015. The AirAsia affiliate began non-stop flights from Melbourne to Bali in March 2015, four months later than it had expected, after delays in receiving Australian regulatory approvals that led many upset customers to seek refunds. It launched Sydney-Bali flights in October 2015, meaning it will have lasted less than a year on the route. Customers who have already booked the low cost carrier's flights to Bali for dates after the flight cancellations are being offered the opportunity to reroute by Kuala Lumpur, move their flights to an earlier date or receive airline credit or a full refund. After suffering three strokes in a day, Greg* lost his courier job and moved into a nursing home, deprived of the ability to care for himself and speak. But that didn't stop debt collection giant ACM - aware of his condition and disability support pension - from demanding he immediately pay off his $5770 debt to Telstra on 60 occasions over five years. During the rare instances the company managed to get him on the phone, he had to utter words such as "stroke", "no", "nursing home" and "speech" to get them to understand his situation. BP said it agreed to pay $US175 million ($242 million) to settle claims by US investors that its managers lied about the size of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill to prop up its stock price, removing the company's last major overhang from the disaster. The investors, who blamed BP for massive losses when the true scope of the spill was revealed, had sought as much as $US2.5 billion. The settlement averts a trial that was set for July in Houston federal court. BP shares plunged by more than 40 per cent in the weeks after the April 2010 disaster, as it became clear the company couldn't immediately contain the spill. Credit:AP The settlement announcement Thursday came shortly after a ruling by US District Judge Keith Ellison to narrow the evidence that could have been presented to a jury. The decision, which would have benefited BP at trial, limited the management statements that investors could claim affected the stock price. BP shares plunged by more than 40 per cent in the weeks after the April 2010 disaster, as it became clear the company couldn't immediately contain the spill. More than 4 million barrels of oil escaped into the Gulf of Mexico during the 87 days London-based BP took to control the well. The European Union executive threw its weight behind the "sharing economy" on Thursday, saying governments should only ban services such as ride-hailing app Uber and Airbnb as a last resort. In new guidelines intended to foster development of the new internet-based services in Europe, the European Commission said any restrictions on them by EU member states should be proportionate to the public interest at stake, such as public safety or social policy. The guidelines were welcomed by Airbnb, which called them "a valuable tool to ensure a clear, stable and consistent regulatory environment for sharing economy users across Europe". Credit:Andrew Harrer Although not legally binding, the guidelines are an attempt to set a Europe-wide approach to the fast-growing sector instead of the patchwork response adopted by European cities so far. Some European cities have responded with curbs and bans on companies like Uber and home-sharing site Airbnb which challenge traditional industries such as taxi services and hotels, drawing complaints of unfair competition. Folks in Silicon Valley are too thin-skinned, believes Nick Denton, the CEO of New York-based Gawker Media. The blog collective founded by Denton faces possible bankruptcy after a Florida judge awarded Hulk Hogan $US140 million for posting a sex tape of the wrestler on Gawker. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel told the New York Times last week that he had bankrolled Hogan's case with the intent of sinking Gawker in response to articles Thiel considered bullying and damaging, including one that publicised Thiel's homosexual orientation. Speaking about Thiel, and others in Silicon Valley who have been covered by Gawker, Denton said at the Code Conference that they're not used to critical looks. Woolworths has been fined $9 million over its role in a laundry detergent cartel case brought by the competition watchdog. In a win for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, after Woolies admitted to being "knowingly concerned in an anti-competitive understanding" with detergent producers, the Federal Court's Justice Jayne Jagot said in court on Friday that "the penalty reflects the objective seriousness of the contraventions". The penalty is the largest the regulator has obtained against a party that was an accessory to competition law breaches, ACCC chairman Rod Sims said in a statement. An understanding struck between Woolies and suppliers Colgate-Palmolive, PZ Cussons and Unilever Australia, which together controlled 83 per cent of the $500 million laundry detergent market, had the effect of pushing up prices for consumers. Morgan Stanley told its staff on Thursday that it was overhauling how employees are assessed in several ways, including by discarding the number scale in favour of lists of up to five adjectives. James Gorman, the firm's chief executive, has sought in recent years more effective ways of evaluating prospective and current employees. Credit:Bloomberg Now, the Wall Street firm plans to change those evaluations - by taking away the numbers. For years, Morgan Stanley employees were graded in part on a numerical scale that rated them from 1 to 5. The changes are the latest effort by a stalwart of corporate America to change how it evaluates employees. Some companies, like Microsoft and Morgan Stanley's longtime rival Goldman Sachs, have made their own changes, which have also included getting rid of numerical ratings. Others, like the consulting firm Accenture, have decided to do away with the annual performance review altogether. To these companies, the ritual had proved wasteful and ineffective. For Morgan Stanley, annual reviews are still helpful in determining how well employees do their jobs. But the current system - in which staff members were asked roughly eight questions and ranked, in addition to being questioned about "areas for development" - was in need of a change. Evaluators will now be asked to list up to five adjectives that describe the employees. The aim is to give more direct feedback and better steer staff members toward areas of improvement. "It's about giving people more information and something they can do more with," Peg Sullivan, Morgan Stanley's global head of talent management, said. "It's more candid and memorable." The final whistle on Origin? Charles Davies-Scourfield, of Sutton Forest asks. "Have you noticed that sporting teams never "play" against each other? They "clash" or "battle" or "face-off" or "challenge" or "fight against". No wonder there are so many injuries." Wait until round two. More sex (Column 8, Friday). "If you want to go completely gender neutral then we must change human to huperson, and woman to woperson. End of discussion! Please!" From Don Leayr, of Albury. However, Bob Coote, according to a few, is wrong to say "midwife" needs updating. "The English word 'midwife' comes from the old German 'mit Weib' i.e. "with the woman". Plainly it is not sexist because, in the present state of evolution, the bearer of children is always female. So his preference for "mid-spouse" is mistaken: the accoucheur (the "midwife") the person who assists with the delivery of the child (not the "bearer" of that infant) may certainly be male and is not inevitably anyone's "spouse". Has Dr John Carmody, of Roseville, cleared this up? To politics (28 days to go). Peter Purches, of North Balgowlah, not having come across the word corflutes, discovered it's a brand of corrugated plastic sheeting. Very useful after first use for making model airplanes. "That might keep the hopes of some of the contenders in the air," he suggests. Also, "There are certain words like 'corflute' that usually only get a run at election time," explains Peter Riley, of Penrith. "Others include 'mandate', 'incumbent', 'pork barrel', and 'bipartisan' and who has ever used the word 'bellwether' in normal conversation? But the Americans have the term 'turkey farm' to describe an area of government that is staffed primarily by political appointees. Now that's an expression we could use." Bruce Hall is a campus landmark, designed to create a " monumental effect " at the top of University Avenue. It was the ANU's first undergraduate hall of residence, and the first in Australia to admit both men and women a liberal concept that soon spread nationally. Despite denials in The Canberra Times (" ANU denies demolition plans for Bruce Hall student accommodation", 7/4/16 ), the ANU has clearly articulated its plans to demolish Bruce Hall in 2017, irreversibly destroying a historic building from the university's founding years. "We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us" Renowned Canberra designers Fred Ward and Derek Wrigley furnished the buildings, and the Dining Hall is one of two 'grand halls' on campus (the other is at University House, which is already heritage listed). Even the ANU's own 2012 heritage assessment proclaimed Bruce Hall's heritage value as "high" and that it "meets the criteria for Commonwealth Heritage List". Despite this, the ANU has advised current students and alumni that it will demolish Bruce Hall, for reasons that simply don't stack up. The university claims that the National Capital Authority requires the Hall's central buildings, including the Dining Hall, to be cleared for "open green space". This is an appalling exercise in scapegoating that falsely presents the issue as beyond the University's control. Advice provided by the NCA confirms there is no requirement for Bruce Hall or its Dining Hall to be demolished. The decision is being driven solely by the ANU and its developers. This ham-fisted excuse is made worse when we discover the ANU's plans, and why other sites were overlooked. Hi guys. It doesn't really work as a salutation for letter writers does it? But all the "guys" and "gals" of the Letters page were quick off the mark to ridicule David Morrison's aversion to the use of the collective noun in the "words at work campaign", as political correctness gone mad. What's wrong with "youse all", quipped Bob Roobottom, of Taree, who reserved "men and women of Australia" for formal occasions. As one of our favourite letter-writing gals, Nola Tucker, of Kiama, explained guy's interesting origins: "Louisa May Allcott used it in Little Women when Jo refers to herself as looking like a 'guy' meaning the painted stuffed figure on bonfires commemorating Guy Fawkes night. It was also a derivative of the Jewish "goyim", plural for non-Jewish people. Much simpler to use 'blokes' and 'sheilas'." Roxy Jacenko was the Sydney gal causing us many query letters until her husband, Oliver Curtis, was found guilty of insider trading. Many complained about our use of the phrase "PR queen" every time we mentioned her husband's court case. Hopefully, Thursday's Supreme Court ruling explained a bit more as to why we mentioned the selfie-obsessed publicist as context - she anointed herself with the moniker. Instagram photo of Roxy Jacenko in a lift modelling her court fashion. Credit:Instagram Anyway guys, our favourite pin-up gal here at the Letters page, is our extraordinarily talented cartoonist Cathy Wilcox, who last week gave a TED talk at the Opera House instructing people (in irony) about how to get with the current culture of outrage. "The two features I value most at the SMH are the letters and the cartoons," Margaret Jaffe, of Kenthurst, wrote. We know men and women of the Letters page would agree. To catch Cathy live, check the livestream at tedxsydney.com Helen Pitt Letters co-editor Ms Ward has committed no wrong, criminal or otherwise, but La Trobe University's stance is flawed to the point of indefensible, and should be abandoned immediately. There is an opportunity to redress this egregious transgression of such a fundamental right; Ms Ward's suspension is part of an investigatory process and the university can simply find that no disciplinary action is justified. While The Age does not share the view the flag is racist (we do, though, see it as a remnant of our colonial past), we recognise that Ms Ward and all those who agree with her have an unassailable right to voice their position. And yet one of the institutions that ought to be championing free speech appears, amazingly, to have cravenly and perhaps illegally infringed this core element of our democracy and culture. La Trobe University has suspended Roz Ward, an academic with the university's Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, ostensibly because on her Facebook page she called the Australian flag racist. Should it maintain its attack on Ms Ward, the university will not only damage its reputation and thus its competitiveness in the lucrative higher education market, it will leave itself open to legal action on a number of fronts. It appears to be in breach of Victoria's charter of human rights, which enshrines freedom of speech and the right to political communication. It may well be in breach of industrial relations law. And it could have breached an implicit common law right to be able to perform one's designated job. There is another, acutely political, layer to Ms Ward's situation. She is the co-founder of the Safe Schools program, a curriculum buttress that gives schools who choose to use it a way to help students, parents, carers and teachers understand the difficulties, discrimination and bullying experienced by many non-heterosexual young people. There has been a prejudiced and ignorant outcry that the program is some form of radical, ideological social engineering because, in part, it recognises the self-evident reality that sexuality occurs along a normal spectrum, and is not binary. It is not the Safe Schools program that is ideological; it is those who so vehemently rant against it. The university bizarrely holds that Ms Ward's view on the flag undermines Safe Schools. It is clear from the Safe Schools website that the program is sober, benign and well-structured. It is seen by the sate government as so appropriate that it is going to make it part of the curriculum of all Victorian public schools. And rightly so for the injustice suffered by LGBTIQ people is literally a matter of life and death. Research shows that more than 15 per cent of LGBTIQ young Australians have attempted suicide and a third have harmed themselves. This is primarily because of homophobic harassment. As many as two-thirds of them have been bullied about their sexual orientation, and more than 40 per cent have thought about self harm or suicide making them six times more likely to consider taking their own life than heterosexual peers. Safe Schools should be judged on its merits and it deserves support. Ms Ward should be judged by her behaviour and her contribution to our society and she deserves support for her right to free speech and respect for her role in an education program that will reduce injustice and save lives. And La Trobe University should be condemned for its failure to stand up for a crucial principle and for a staff member who has been the target of a gormless ideological and political attack. Is it really impolite? We have to overcome our knee-jerk defensiveness in race debates. Each of us can be ignorant, unthinking and casual about racism. And here is the most fundamental, obvious and ignored point: white people are not the best informed and most knowledgable about what racism looks like and what it feels like. It is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and others who must tell us that. Take the council of the West Australian shire of Carnarvon, which voted against raising the Aboriginal flag at their office for NAIDOC. In defence of their decision, Edward Garrett, councillor and long-time resident of the shire, wrote an open letter. "If only those who love to be able to claim the moral high ground by proclaiming me to be racist could speak for themselves," he wrote, "instead of claiming to represent all Australians, we could have a reasoned and informed debate. I stand by my statement that all Australians should be respected under the current Australian flag and that the Aboriginal flag is not unifying (how can it be when it clearly represents only people of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent while the Southern Cross and Union Jack represent all who are citizens of Australia?)." We all want an informed debate. But there's a reason WA Premier Colin Barnett intervened to tell the council to raise that flag: it's important to people of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent. And aren't we all asking the same question: Does this represent all of us? Justin Mohamed, the chief executive officer of Reconciliation Australia, said on The Drum on ABC TV on Thursday night that every Australia Day Aboriginal people asked: "Is this the flag we should be looking up to?" They also ask if Australia Day really is for everyone: "For Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, this is not a day we can celebrate." THE KING OF COMEDY (109 minutes) PG Martin Scorsese's remarkable 1981 showbiz satire is a corrosive parody of his previous work and a prescient statement about the dark side of fandom. Robert de Niro demeans himself relentlessly as a crazed aspiring comic, Jerry Lewis plays it straight as an irascible tonight show host, and Sandra Bernhard is unhinged enough to upstage them both. Screens as part of a Scorsese retrospective. 35-millimetre print. ACMI, tomorrow, 4.15pm. From Neon, Lawrence Johnston's ''candy-coloured journey through the American dream''. ANATOMY OF A MURDER (160 minutes) M Unusually frank for its day, this leisurely 1959 courtroom drama gives director Otto Preminger the scope to approach lurid material in a spirit of sceptical inquiry, while showcasing the talents of an varied group of actors including James Stewart as a folksy defense attorney and Lee Remick as the wife of the accused. Digitally projected. Astor, tomorrow, 7pm. Plant and animal pests need to be dealt with ahead of planting. Galletly advises spot-spraying herbaceous weeds, cutting and pasting woody ones and embarking on a rabbit control program. Livestock also need to be kept out of the planting area, which often requires installing fences. After the seedlings are planted, it's not a matter of sitting back. You need to monitor all you have done. Galletly is a strong believer in sticking to indigenous plants. "We are learning more about self-sustaining systems and the best thing we can do for fauna and remnant flora is put in what is indigenous. It gives everything a better chance of survival." For the same reasons, Galletly says her advice is always "to go wider" when selecting areas to devote to re-vegetation. "It can make all the difference if you are able to get an understory happening away from the taller trees that get all the moisture." Moisture is, of course, critical. Anyone who planted tubestock last autumn or winter would know all about even the hardiest of casuarinas and wattles suffering through and even succumbing to the hot spring and dry summer. But it is hard to pinpoint how much water to give to indigenous tubestock plantings. It depends on your site and climate. Where possible, you need to provide enough water to keep them alive but you shouldn't nurse them so much that they fail to grow deep roots. Over last summer (which was particularly dry and harsh) indigenous seedlings required a deep water once a fortnight but Galletly says by the time these plants are established which can take between six and 18 months they should be able to cope on their own. Labor has pledged an additional $80 million to the Australia Council for the Arts and $60 million to the ABC to produce local drama as part of its arts policy. But it will not rule out changes to copyright laws despite vocal opposition from authors and publishers who claim the book industry is at risk. Labor arts spokesman Mark Dreyfus has pledged $60 million to the ABC for local drama. Credit:ABC Lateline Labor's arts policy, outlined in a media release, states it will approach "any proposals or recommendations to adjust the current territorial copyright regime with caution". As part of the Biennale legacy artwork project, the City of Sydney commissioned Gothe-Snape to produce a permanent work that follows on from the festival. Created in two stages, her work has so far involved a series of walking tours during the Biennale of Sydney, which ends on Sunday. Agatha Gothe-Snape Here, an Echo is inspired by walks she has led through the inner city during the Biennale of Sydney. Credit:Edwina Pickles "The artistic process is not something fantastical or esoteric that happens when you close the door in the studio," she says. "It's something that can happen publicly." Agatha Gothe-Snape found inspiration for her latest artwork by walking through the back streets of Surry Hills. Gothe-Snape and choreographer Brooke Stamp have walked the same plotted path through the city more than 60 times during the Biennale. The walk begins at Speakers' Corner in the Domain and winds its way through the streets of Surry Hills, eventually ending at Wemyss Lane the site where the permanent artwork will take form. Agatha Gothe-Snape has been commissioned to create a Biennale legacy artwork. Credit:Edwina Pickles While most of these strolls have been casual affairs, others are choreographed performances, with the duo playfully engaging with the cityscape. The importance of this process should not be underestimated, however, as Gothe-Snape insists, "it is only through surrendering to moments of play that we can make profound discoveries". These walks are not only performance pieces, but also form the foundation of the Legacy artwork, allowing Gothe-Snape to immerse herself in the cityscape and become intimate with its idiosyncrasies. Gothe-Snape who is trained in painting, performance studies and acting does not aspire to what she describes as "virtuosity in any particular type of discipline". Instead, she values adaptability and characterises her artistic practice as "post-disciplinary". Dying in the First Person Nike Sulway Dying in the First Person by Nike Sulway. Transit Lounge, $29.95 Samuel and Morgan, as twins are sometimes wont to do, develop a form of private communication that in their case evolves into a whole language they call Nahum. But Morgan was estranged from the family young, so when his body is fished up out of a Dutch river by his lover Ana, Samuel must mourn the death of a twin brother he hasn't seen for years. And then Ana volunteers to bring the body home to Australia, but she also brings with her some surprises. But for a long time Baker packed her art away, very nearly for good. Unbeknown to all but a few close friends she had cancer. "For the launch of Mirror [in 2010] I was wearing a wig, and someone would come up to hug me and I'd be bone rigid thinking, 'hell, I hope the wig doesn't come off'. I didn't know if I would survive. They didn't think I would." Circle is the book Baker returned to after remission but before her partner David Blackwell was also diagnosed with advanced cancer. He passed away four years ago. "When I finished Circle, I promised myself I wouldn't do any more artwork," Baker says. "I wasn't going to do another project, I was going to wait and see what happens, and be open to anything. After about six months I missed it so much, but I also became sure of what I wanted to do next." The godwit flies from the Arctic right across the Pacific Ocean. It is just a tiny bird and it filled me with wonder. Jeannie Baker Circle traces the flight of the bar-tailed godwits, the endangered Australian migratory shorebirds that follow ancient pathways from Australia and New Zealand to the Yellow Sea of China and Korea, then to Alaska, and back south over the course of a year. "I love the fact," Baker says, "that the godwit flies from the Arctic right across the Pacific Ocean, from one side of the world to the other, and it is just a tiny bird and it filled me with wonder. As far as anyone knows, it's the longest unbroken journey of any creature on earth, flying from Alaska to Australia or New Zealand." In the 10 years it took Baker to research the godwits, she joined a group of bird scientists camping out in the breeding grounds of the remote Alaskan tundra and flew to the wetlands and tidal flats of the Yellow Sea, where godwits gather in vast flocks for a month to rest, feed and fatten up ahead of the journey north. Any artist who does all this so the reader can get the true feel of the godwit's journey has to be a truly genuine and motivated person, says Phil Straw, who struck up a strong friendship with Baker as she researched the godwits' life cycle. Circle is dedicated to the bird conservationist. Baker is loose limbed and pale skinned with chiselled cheekbones, a girlish fringe, and her voice carries the accent of an English childhood. She grew up in Croydon, a commuter suburb of London, and some of her most vivid memories are taking off in her father's motorbike sidecar for country picnics. Baker was the child who was always "off in a corner making something". There was a rubbish dump across the road from where the family lived. "It was just wild with plants and trees," she remembers. "That place was a playground." After high school she enrolled in graphic design at Brighton Art College. "It had a bias towards illustration and it was the perfect course for me because now when I design my books I'm thinking how the words can be placed on a [two-page] spread and how the images relate to the words." Baker assumed she would teach "because I didn't know anyone who made their living as an artist, I didn't know anyone who was published." In her final year, Baker wrote, designed and illustrated a children's picture book "just because I thought it would be fun to do". "We had a very famous cartoonist come to the college and give a lecture, and he looked at the end of course exhibitions there and I wasn't at the college. I had run out of money. I was waitressing. "He took the trouble to write to me and he said, 'I can introduce you to some people who could really help you. Next time you are in London look me up.' So I did, and he introduced me to the editor of an international illustrator's magazine, now defunct, called Nova and I was given a commission. It spun off everywhere. I was offered an exhibition, I got advertising commissions. At the same time I found a publisher." Polar, written by Elaine Moss, the story of a toy teddy bear, was her first published book, when Baker was 21 years old. Grandfather, the art college project, was her first solo production. A year later in 1975, Baker migrated to Tasmania with Blackwell, a talented young Australian architect who she had fallen for at a party and been inseparable from for two years. "My whole sense of colour changed coming here because England is so misty and rainy," Baker recalls. "The skies aren't as clear, the light isn't as clear. I remember it was a few months before I could even look at the sky. It hurt my eyes so much. In England I would wear much duller colours like browns and blacks, colours I just don't wear here." Where the Forest Meets the Sea, the award-winning book that Baker turned into a 10-minute animated film that won an 1988 Australian Film Institute Award, was a turning point. The Daintree rainforest of tropical North Queensland "opened up something in me". Aware of bulldozers on the fringes clearing land for subdivision, it occurred to Baker that urban Australians were out of touch with the beauty of their natural world. Playing with time, she merged ghost images of the forest, past, present and its possible future, to show the continuity of Indigenous attachment to land and the dangers of overdevelopment. Window (1991) documents the changes of a boy's neighbourhood from rural idyll to city fringe. It was shortlisted for the prestigious Kate Greenaway medal, and won Children's Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year. The Hidden Forest (2000) celebrates the richness and strangeness of Australia's underwater kelp forests. Mirror, the much-acclaimed book published before Circle, is a wordless two-in-one book showing that the lives of two boys, one living in Australia and Morocco, are not altogether different. It was also named Australia Picture Book of the Year. All Baker's books begin in a "small way as scribbles", following her intuition. She draws small oblong boxes representing the book pages on a single piece of white paper and continues to refine the sketches until each individually becomes the size of a book page. Only when she has worked out the proximity of text to image does she send the bound layouts to her publisher. Once the broad design is settled, she sets about creating the collages, using natural textures from materials of the subjects when she can. For Circle, she played with wax to depict the ice and snow of the Arctic and found goose down made the best clouds. Circle didn't come together easily. Apart from the emotional hurdles, she got bogged down trying to depict the journey of the godwits, making sure the narrative of a bedridden child did not overwhelm the story of the birds. But there was an urgency to the project. In the past five years, 65 per cent of godwits' feeding habitats have been destroyed. "You can't afford to be depressed," she says. "You have to do something positive. Every country on the fly-way has to take responsibility." Straw finds hope for the godwits in Baker's message of conservation directed at a younger generation. Baker's cancer scare taught her a deep appreciation for life, the here and now. "When something like that happens to you, and seeing David go through that, you are never quite the same again. But it's made me value life more, in a funny kind of way." Circle is published by Walker Books at $27.99. Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich. The hundreds of voices and reminiscences carefully placed by Alexievich in the structure of this long book are, by turns, inspiring, appalling and deeply moving. Apart from being a splendid instance of the craft of the oral historian, Secondhand Time is a magnificent work of literary art. This vast panorama can justly be regarded, I think, as the War and Peace of our age. The book falls into two parts. The first contains interviews Alexievich conducted and snatches of conversation she overheard between 1991 and 2001. The second part deals with the years 2002-2012. A useful chronological list (printed at the beginning of this translation) of events from the death of Stalin in 1953 to the Maidan protests in Kiev in 2014 (which occurred after the book was first published) reveals the significance of this twofold division. The year 1991 saw the election of Boris Yeltsin as the president of the new Russian Federation and the attempted coup by high-ranking military personnel. By 2002, where the second part starts, the third year of Putin's first term as president, the war in Chechnya was in full swing. The year 2012 saw the return of Putin to the presidency and the wave of as it turned out short-lived mass protests in Moscow, St Petersburg and elsewhere in Russia. Most of the people Alexievich interviewed were perplexed by the new Russia that was emerging in the 1990s a world of ambiguous freedom where the old certainties were replaced, from one day to the next it seemed, by dog-eat-dog lawlessness, exploitation and corruption. Margarita Pogrebitskaya, a 57-year-old doctor, looked at the new Moscow with dismayed eyes. She saw "a strange, unfamiliar city" with the wind blowing "dirty wrappers and scraps of newspaper down the sidewalks ... grey rows of people peddling lingerie and sheets, old shoes and toys, loose cigarettes". Meanwhile the oligarchs were expropriating Russia's great wealth, its reserves of oil, gas and minerals, to amass billions and to buy gold-plated Italian bathroom fittings, penthouses in Manhattan and villas on Cyprus. One or two of Alexievich's interlocutors, such as the 35-year-old advertising manager identified here as Alisa Z, took to this world with steely determination. "I'm no prey, I'm a huntress myself." Most, however, felt lost and betrayed. Those of us who lived through the Cold War will remember how life in the Soviet Union was regarded in the so-called free world: enslaved masses living in poverty, constantly spied on by the secret police, always in danger of being denounced, even by their children or parents, brainwashed by lies and hollow three-word slogans. We were reminded of the gulags, of Stalin's terror, the plight of artists and intellectuals, indeed of anyone who strayed a millimetre from the official party line. All this contained much more than a grain of truth of course, yet it ignored something that lives vividly in the memories of the people Alexievich interviewed. One theme runs through Secondhand Time. Despite the barbarism of the Soviet regime, despite the shortages and deprivations most of the population endured, despite the Cheka, the NKVD then the KGB, those were years of pride, of faith and even of hope. Time and time again we encounter the same sentiment: during communism, these people could hold their heads high because of what had been achieved: victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War; Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space; the achievements of Soviet science and military industry. The Convict's Daughter, by Kiera Lindsey The Convict's Daughter might be called "the new history" highly readable, in fact, a compelling page-turner, but resting on solid scholarship. Subtitled The Scandal that Shocked a Colony, it tells the story of 15-year-old Mary Ann Gill, who eloped with the man of her dreams, James Kinchela. He had all the characteristics of a colonial Mr Rochester: well-born, tall, dark and handsome with the added attraction of wordly experience. Just the kind of gentlemen who would fascinate a teenage girl. Despite his planning for their elopement being totally inefficient, Mary Ann was determined to be his despite the opposition of her father and the shocked titters of respectable Sydney. Mary Ann Gill was the daughter of an Irish publican and former convict, Martin Gill. As proprietor of the fashionable Gill's Hotel in central Sydney, her father was proud of his success, which, in turn, rested on some hard-won respectability. The scandal of Mary Ann's passion for James Kinchela put all this at risk. Martin Gill responded as any outraged father should and charged his daughter's lover with abduction. The ensuing court case provided Kiera Lindsey Mary Ann's great, great, great niece with excellent sources including legal records and extensive press reports that related every breathless detail to their fascinated readers, right down to a description of the carpet bag that Mary Ann "stole" from her mother. Not to mention what she and James Kinchela said to one another through the window of her father's hotel. A lecturer in history at the University of South Australia, Lindsey has not abandoned her profession. She deploys her sources to create something that reads like a novel but, as she points out, Mary Ann's life is only partially documented. Lindsey's achievement is to bring her heroine and her father vividly to life by supplementing biographical facts with background research, insight and a significant, well-judged injection of imagination. From James Dean to Princess Diana, popular culture is strewn with the wreckage of celebrity car crashes. For Stephen Bayley, design writer and founder of the London Design Museum, the car crash is a defining phenomenon of what he calls the Age of Combustion. Yet as a new era of driverless cars dawns, his latest book Death Drive, provides an unusual elegy. Akin to Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon, Death Drive is an autoerotic Babylon that never ends well. Bayley tours 20 of the 20th century's often lurid and salacious tales surrounding the pointless deaths of famous people, Jayne Mansfield, Princess Grace, Jackson Pollock among them. Jayne Mansfield's wrecked car after the fatal accident in which she and two others died on June 29, 1967. Credit:Getty Images Rather than rejoicing in the demise of a product so prone to faulty design and reckless behaviour, Bayley believes replacing the car with driverless vehicles "will drain all the risky enchantment from car use and ownership something precious will have been lost". The history of 20th century car design may be one of incremental safety improvements and increased speed, aerodynamics, and efficiency. But that's boring to romantics who court danger. In Born To Run, the classic '70s paean to desperate, youthful escape, Bruce Springsteen sings of riding in "suicide machines". Indeed all cars are potential death traps. The Crossing, 2016, oil on linen, 265 x 202cm. "Before I went there I had no concept, I really had failed to humanise the events," Quilty says. "Without humans, it doesn't exist. The children particularly it is impossible not to be moved." In Serbia, at a bus station where recently arrived Syrians were heading north to Germany, he met one girl, Heba. Ben Quilty, High Tide Mark, 2016, oil on linen, 170 x 160cm. "To sit with a tiny little girl who was my daughter's age, in Serbia, it was minus 15 degrees, she had a puffer jacket on and tiny little woollen gloves: I challenge anyone not to be moved by her," he says. "She just stood by her parents. To give her my paper my beautiful handmade paper that had come from France or wherever I get it from and beautiful watercolour pencils and sit down with her and communicate with her was just a profound thing to do." Heba, he says, is deeply drawn to the language of art. She "drew and drew and drew" until, hours later, her parents took her onto the bus. "We didn't understand each other, we didn't need to because the drawings just came out of her." Ben Quilty, The Pink Dress, 2016, oil on linen, 265 x 202cm. A few days later, he went to Lesbos to retrace Heba's journey. "Her steps, or those of her dad carrying her, and to find on the shores of Lesbos this sea of lifejackets and little lifejackets that would have fitted her. Pyjamas found that would have fitted my little girl. Those connections for me I feel like I owe that little child all my efforts to bring to attention to what is going on in her world. "Art is a great vehicle for it. It's what I do." Flanagan asked Quilty to accompany him on the trip after the writer was invited by World Vision to document the situation in a different way to standard media representations. The Tolarno show includes paintings and drawings of the young bereaved mother and the girl at the bus station but there is also a bold new video work that Kylie Needham, a screenwriter with much experience in film and television and also Quilty's wife, has collaborated with him on. The piece deals with the story of Ali, a young Pakistani refugee, who speaks directly to the camera in his native language. Ali, says Quilty, came to Australia when he was 16, against his mother's wishes. In Indonesia he got passage on a boat to Australia and arrived on Christmas Island a few weeks before the federal government locked the borders. "He would have ended up on Nauru but was lucky enough to get in," Quilty says. "He came to me as a work experience person and I was intrigued by his story. People had said he was a very good young painter: and he is fabulous, a very good painter and now enrolled in uni. "I took him to a very beautiful waterhole near my studio and got him in his native Hazara language [without subtitles] to recount his experience from stepping on to a boat in Indonesia until he landed in Australia on Christmas Island. He sort of cracks up [with distress] a few times but the only way you can tell the emotion is that he stops. You start to realise what his story is about. "For anyone who sits there long enough it's impossible to miss the emotion of his delivery." Quilty has also made a painting using his bare hands, scraping the paint across the canvas to form words. "You can see my finger prints. It's a gestural work with filthy grey 'Border force' scratched into the middle of it." While Quilty is usually very wary of using text in his paintings, this was an occasion when he felt compelled to. The other side of that is the many drawings he did on the trip with children. "Because they are children they can tell a story in a pretty universal way, without any language barriers. I got the kids to draw the boats they had crossed in from Turkey. Four little tiny people drew the exact same image of a boat and when I got to Lesbos and finally saw the boat a few days later, it was a profound thing to see how much those boats and the details were etched into these little children's minds. "I guess that it is as much about a refugee experience as it is about how we understand each other and communicate messages, about how compassion needs to be translated. People need to be given the opportunity to hear and speak with other people for us to fully appreciate the bad things that are happening to them." All of these experiences have cemented something in Quilty's mind that he has long been pondering: what motivates him to make art? Byrne, The Book Club's founding host, couldn't be more delighted to see the show reach this milestone. "It's a gift of a job. Because I love books so much it's something to share, it's as simple as that." Jennifer Byrne. Credit:Wayne Taylor We pause to order oysters and eye fillet with Bearnaise sauce for Byrne, cheese souffle and rocket and pear salad for me, with the impressively fit-looking presenter declaring she has always been "a good trencherman". Byrne was first approached by then director of television at the ABC, Sandra Levy, to do a one-off show on Australia's favourite books. About a year later they came back to her with a proposal for the monthly The Book Club (now a weekly show). "They did want me, all the pre-planning material they gave me all had my name on it. But what they'd also seen is a million people tuned in to watch that first show, that was pretty amazing, that got their attention." Oysters natural at A La Bouffe Bar & Bistro. Credit:Wayne Taylor Byrne left The Bulletin to go to The Book Club, but it was not her first foray in the world of books. In 1995, after ten years at The Age and several years in current affairs television including 60 Minutes she left journalism to become publishing director of Reed Books. When Reed Books was bought out by Random House about two years later, Byrne was left feeling "quite bereft". She had had, she says, a teenage passion for reporting, hardly surprising since she started at The Age at just 16, and leaving it to go to the world of books was a wrench. Receipt for lunch. "Journalism had been the love of my life, when I left for publishing, and that was a very very hard thing to do, only books could have had that pull. When that all went bust ... that was a hard time, I went to another lover and that lover has betrayed me, I was broken-hearted." Byrne says she spent about four months feeling "a complete failure", but out of that time she learnt that you can have two great loves, professionally speaking, which made it so much easier when she left journalism again to do The Book Club. Despite hitting that flat note at Reed Books, Byrne's professional timing has been brilliant. She was hired at The Age by one of the legends of the profession, Graham Perkin, and fell in with a crowd of industry greats, such as Ben Hills, John Spooner and photographer Bruce Postle. "I wasn't very happy at home at that time and I found a place of excitement. Great people took me in hand and pushed me around and made me better, it was so exciting." Similarly, when she went to Nine to do 60 Minutes, she worked with Gerald Stone, Ray Martin and others. "I was there in the heyday of Nine, I was very lucky, incredibly fortunate. I got The Age golden years and I got the Channel Nine golden years." While she was never a fan of the celebrity interviews, preferring instead the harder news stories that took her to fascinating locations, a few celebrities understandably stand out. "I spent a few hours in a hotel with Keith Richards drinking vodka. And Clint Eastwood, he was so cool." Since 60 Minutes' recent involvement in snatching children off the streets of Baghdad, Byrne says she has been asked many times to comment on the controversy, which she has refused. But with reporter Tara Brown and the rest of the crew now out of jail and home safely, she will say that while people are absolutely right to criticise the kidnapping of children, they should turn down the outrage over revelations that 60 Minutes paid for the story. "Which aspect of chequebook journalism is new? I happen to have a strong view about chequebook journalism and I don't like it, but this is not new. I feel I have some moral right to say to all those people who are outraged, well what are you going to do, are you going to write in and say you'll stop watching this program?" Byrne says the media should be open about it any time money changes hands for a story, declaring it to the public. While she has never been involved in so-called child recovery stories, she says bending the rules was not uncommon in her time on both 60 Minutes and A Foreign Correspondent. "When you're asked if you're a journalist. When the military comes up and asks if you were filming ('No, no, of course not')". Byrne says she discussed the 60 Minutes issue with Ray Martin recently, agreeing with him that at times the money handed out for stories had been genuinely helpful to the subjects of their reports. Adding weight to speculation he is stepping away from playing James Bond, Daniel Craig has signed up for a 20-episode television series that he will also executive produce. The English actor will feature in an adaptation of Jonathan Franzen's novel Purity. It centres on a young woman named Purity who joins a WikiLeaks-style activist organisation in search of her father. Some filmmaker was bound to tackle Bell eventually, and why not Werner Herzog? Admittedly, Herzog's star has fallen since the 1970s, when he was lauded as the reigning visionary of the New German Cinema. Nowadays he seems a likeable but minor oddball, doing his best recent work in documentaries such as 2005's Grizzly Man. Still, he continues to specialise in films about obsessive loners up till now, nearly always men. It would take at least half a dozen movies to do justice to Gertrude Bell. An Oxford graduate with a first-class degree in modern history, she scaled the French Alps, translated Persian poetry, and was responsible for drawing up the borders of what is now known as Iraq, following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War. Herzog's most ambitious film in a long time, Queen of the Desert makes partial amends for his past sexism, presenting Bell (Nicole Kidman) as the female answer to Lawrence of Arabia. It's an old-fashioned star part, and Kidman plays it that way, striking poses meant to show Bell's "spirited" nature along with her sense of style: reclining on a sofa, flinging her head back in laughter, bathing at sunset in a translucent white smock with a friendly camel nearby. Even her tears are wept with a certain grace. The problem is with the big picture. While Bell's decisions helped shape the destiny of the Middle East, Herzog's interest in history and politics remains minimal and while we hear a good deal about her admiration for the Bedouin people, none of the Arab characters play more than a fleeting role. Rather, the script, credited to Herzog alone, defines Bell in relation to a series of Englishmen viewed as possible lovers somewhat undercutting the attempt to portray her as a proudly independent heroine. Kidman's male co-stars don't help much. As the diplomat Henry Cadogan, James Franco as usual acts at one remove, as if he were playing his idea of how some other actor might play a sensitive young man in a period drama. Robert Pattinson as T.E. Lawrence is equally unpersuasive, with little on his mind beyond sniggering at Lawrence's sexual quirks. Damian Lewis as the unhappily married British consul Charles Doughty-Wylie at least seems like a grown-up but the character is too dry and reticent for his relationship with Bell to come to life. On the whole, Queen of the Desert is best classed as an enjoyably bad movie, something less common than it used to be. Herzog's technique has grown more slipshod than ever, with dialogue scenes mechanically staged in lengthy master shots or alternating close-ups. Still, there's no shortage of conventional romantic atmosphere, supplied by Peter Zeitlinger's cinematography with its desert vistas and moody gaslit interiors and Klaus Badelt's lush orchestral score. Even when he's playing it straight, Herzog maintains a slyly perverse indifference to the norms of "good" filmmaking, to the point where it's often hard to tell if he's joking or not. Some of the funnier dialogue non-sequiturs are clearly deliberate, especially in the scenes with Mark Lewis Jones as Bell's crusty ambassador uncle, an irascible eccentric like Herzog himself. Banish the winter blues with musical cheer at a series of four free community concerts, the first of which kicks off tomorrow. The opening program features the Moonee Valley Community Choir, the Moonee Valley Brass and Moonee Valley Development Band performing chilly-inspired songs, creating a winter wonderland event. Expect the score from Disney's Frozen and hits including Hallelujah. Tomorrow, 3pm, Clocktower Centre, 750 Mt Alexander Road, Moonee Ponds, free, 9243 9191, clocktowercentre.com.au PIANO Critically acclaimed pianist Hoang Pham brings renowned German composer Felix Mendelssohn's piano trios to life, with the help of violinist Anna Da Silva Chen and cellist Eliza Sdraulig. A special feature of the program is the world premiere of a new piano trio by Melbourne composer Noel Fidge. Tomorrow, 5pm, Melbourne Recital Centre, corner Southbank Boulevard and Sturt Street, Southbank, $25-$75, 9699 3333, melbournerecital.com.au Live PERFORMANCE THE IMPERIAL BELLS OF CHINA They have performed for the president of China, the king and queen of Belgium and now The Imperial Bells of China brings a vibrant, culturally rich musical spectacle to Melbourne. Be transported back 2400 years to ancient China with the historical chime of bells, traditional dance and folk songs. Today, 8pm, tomorrow, 3pm, Comedy Theatre, 240 Exhibition Street, city, $59-$169, 1300 111 011, ticketmaster.com.au Jacob Boehme's BLOOD ON THE DANCE FLOOR Writer and performer Jacob Boehme brings his personal experiences of being a gay man who is HIV positive into the multi-disciplinary creation that is Blood on the Dance Floor. Through the avenues of theatre, dance, text and image, Boehme searches for answers and explores the importance of identity, bloodlines, community and how they intertwine. Today, 2pm and 7pm, tomorrow, 3pm, Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall, 521 Queensberry Street, North Melbourne, $25-$35, 9322 3713, www.artshouse.com.au THEATRE After a sold out season in Sydney last year, the critically acclaimed production of Blonde Poison comes to Melbourne. Belinda Giblin stars as Stella Goldschlag, a Jewish victim turned Gestapo ally, in an effort to save her family and herself. Giblin was nominated for her performance at the 2015 Sydney Theatre Awards. Ends June 11. Today, 1.30pm and 7.30pm, Southbank Theatre, 140 Southbank Boulevard, Southbank, $48-$65, 8688 0800, mtc.com.au MUSICAL Tony Award winner Jason Robert Brown's first musical, Songs for a New World, brings its small cast and its powerful messages to Chapel Off Chapel. An exploration of every day life and the repercussions of our dreams and our choices, this production stars Teagan Wouters, John O'Hara, Nat O'Donnell and Linden Furnell. Today, 2pm and 8pm, tomorrow, 1pm and 5pm, Chapel Off Chapel, 12 Chapel Street, Prahran, $54-$59, 8290 7000, chapeloffchapel.com.au QVM Night Market. Food NIGHT MARKET An annual mid-week winter institution, the Queen Victoria Market night market is back. More than 30 street food vendors, artisan homewares and craft stores will be on offer next week. This year's foodie highlights include Aussie Bush Tucker and a traditional Italian, butcher style stall serving Italian meat dishes. There will also be live music, with Afro-Cuban Latin jazz group Los Cabrones taking the main stage next week. The market continues on Wednesdays until August 31. June 8, 5pm, Queen Victoria Market, Peel Street, city, free entry, qvm.com.au WINE Jane Ferrari stops by Southbank for a special dinner with matching Yalumba wines. The website listed menu features canapes on arrival before to two entrees and two mains, followed by dessert. Dishes include seared scallops mornay, caviar and baby radish; and corn-fed duck breast, shaved fennel and Grenache salsa. Expect a selection of Yalumba wines for tasting during the courses. June 6, 6pm, Ludlow Bar and Dining Room, 6 Riverside Quay, Southbank, $95, ludlowbar.com.au EXPO With over 200 exhibitors, the Good Food and Wine Show, Australia's largest consumer food and drinks show, comes to Melbourne this weekend. Celebrity chefs Matt Moran and Colin Fassnidge and My Kitchen Rules stars Sammy and Bella Jakubiak with Kirrily Waldhorn join the gastronomic celebration and will be cooking on stage. There will also be street food and snacks, wine tasting and more. Today and tomorrow, 10am, Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, 2 Clarendon Street, South Warf, $19-$30, goodfoodshow.com.au Willo Markets. Elsewhere MARKET BRIGHTON Emerging artisans and designers showcase their works at Willo Markets. Once a month, they gather in the heart of Brighton to sell lifestyle, fashion, beauty and baby products. A family-friendly fair with food and coffee at the ready, Willo Markets gives the wider community the chance to find one-of-a-kind pieces, take part in product launches and support local traders and start-ups. Today, 10am-3pm, 19-21 St Andrews Street, Brighton, free entry, willomarkets.net ST KILDA It's kiwifruit season at the Veg Out Farmers Market in St Kilda. Beenak Kiwifruit Farm will have its season-opening certified biodynamic Heyward Kiwifruit, fresh from the farm in the Yarra Valley. The cooler weather has increased the sugar content in citrus fruits from the Sunraysia region; sweet mandarins and navel oranges from Go Just Nuts are in season. Echuca-based Pacdon Park will have a range of British-style small goods. Today, 8.30am-1pm, Peanut Farm Reserve, Chaucer Street, St Kilda, free entry, vfma.org.au Exhibition SCORSESE The brainchild of Berlin's Museum for Film and Television, Deutsche Kinemathek's SCORSESE exhibition has come to Melbourne. SCORSESE is a tribute to the iconic Academy award-wining director, featuring snippets and screenings from his works in documentaries, television and film, curator's perspectives, storyboards, cinematic objects and public programs. The exhibition provides an exclusive insight into Martin Scorsese's roots, his successful career and the inspirations and collaborations behind it all. Closes September 18. Today and tomorrow, 10am-5pm, Australian Centre For The Moving Image, Federation Square, Flinders Street, city, $18-$25, 8663 2583, acmi.net.au Craft - Victorian Aboriginal Weaving Collective Blue Net, by Glenda Nicholls. WEAVING Admire the latest exhibition by the Victorian Aboriginal Weaving Collective at Craft Victoria. A collaboration of 10 artists and curated by Hannah Presley, the exhibition celebrates the expertise involved in the artwork and the diversity of materials used. Some are made using traditional fibre craft practices and others are bold, modernistic expressions using diverse materials. On display until July 27. Today and tomorrow, 24 hrs, Craft Victoria, 31 Flinders Lane, city, free, craft.org.au ART A multi-disciplinary exhibition by one of China's most esteemed artists begins today. One Hundred Names by Chen Qiulin uses multi-media materials and performance to visually express and explore the juxtaposition of traditionalist values and evolutionary mindsets in her country. The artist explores how Chinese culture and way of life are unsettled by globalisation and urban development. The exhibition also features some of Qiulin's previous works from her *Migration* series. Ends July 24. Mulvany smiles. "The reason I love acting with Miranda is she allows me to do stupid things. My character is mad and Miranda allows the madness to happen without cracking." "Oh, except I am the biggest corpser in the world!" chortles Tapsell. ["Corpsing" is theatre speak for unintentionally breaking character by laughing]. "I don't even know why Lee hired me for this role, I just laugh and laugh." The reason, says The Literati's director Lee Lewis is simple. "Audiences love these two actors. Miranda and Kate are absolutely enchanting on stage and Moliere is difficult to pull off. I wanted actors who are funny, intelligent and charming." Both women are outsiders. Mulvany grew up in the remote iron-port town of Geraldton in Western Australia. At 16 she went to Perth's Curtin University, graduating with a double major in scriptwriting and theatre. At 19, she drove across the Nullabor in her Mazda 121 for her first acting gig at the Sydney Theatre Company and never looked back. Tapsell was born in Darwin but her family moved to Jabiru in West Arnhem Land when she was five. She grew up around Kakadu National Park. At 16, Tapsell won the Bell Shakespeare Company regional performance scholarship and went on to study at NIDA. Her first big break was the title role in Belvoir's Yibiyung while she was still a student. Now both women call Sydney home, but each has a national profile. As an actor and successful playwright, Mulvany has emerged as a leader in the arts community. Two weeks ago, she delivered the Philip Parsons Memorial Lecture at Belvoir, in which she urged the arts community to pull together in the wake of Australia Council funding cuts that left 62 arts companies facing an uncertain future. She asked the arts sector to draw on love: "Love of storytelling. Love of culture. Love of each other. Love of self." Her widely praised speech is the latest of many personal and career highlights in the past two years. As a writer, Mulvany has created two hit plays in Masquerade (Griffin/Sydney Festival), and Belvoir's 2016 season opener Jasper Jones, which she also performed in. She's been writer-in-residence at the Sydney Theatre Company and Bell Shakespeare, won a Sydney Theatre Award for her performance in Bell's Tartuffe and was awarded the 2014 Patrick White Playwrights' Fellowship. She is currently working on a new project for Bell's yet to be announced 2017 season, one that is expected to explode Shakespearian gender conventions. On a personal high note, she married fellow actor Hamish Michael in a low-key ceremony in New York City in last year. "I am wonderfully exhausted," Mulvany says, smiling broadly. Tapsell's star is on the rise, too. Best known for her roles in multi-award winning film The Sapphires and the television series Love Child, Tapsell has been presenting Play School for most of this year. This month, she appears in three new television series: Secret City (Foxtel), Wolf Creek (Stan) and Cleverman (ABC). Like Mulvany, Tapsell has also made an empowering speech. At the 2015 Logie Awards, where she won two awards, she implored the industry to "put more beautiful people of colour on TV and connect viewers in ways which transcend race and unite us." Tapsell says she will continue to agitate for better roles for women and for greater diversity. "This is my trade," Tapsell says. "Kate and I have both dedicated our lives to this. I don't see my career as a trajectory. I see it as my work place. Just like a lawyer or someone in a normal 9-to-5 job. Why not ask for more? "As I get older, I want to be treated seriously as an actor. Maybe some people see me as a know-it-all but I can't help but pipe up. I might be a little woman but we're the ones getting up on stage and putting ourselves out there, we want to make sure we're representing the story right." Mulvany says she wants to write a play for Tapsell. "Miranda is all eyes, all ears, all heart, she feels everything that comes at her whether it's the direction, the character, the offer from another actor, or the script," Mulvany says "It's like she has a synaptic path from her gut to her heart and brain and into her body." ABC's new indigenous superhero series is off to a flying start, with Cleverman already renewed for a second season after it premiered to rave reviews both at home and abroad. The drama which features an 80 per cent indigenous cast received glowing reviews on social media after its first episode on Thursday night, with Australian audiences hailing the show as "incredible television", "brilliant" and "the show Australia needs right now". Created by indigenous TV producer Ryan Griffen, Cleverman is also streaming simultaneously in the United States via SundanceTV - and overseas media such as the Los Angeles Times are taking notice. Untitled #566, 2016. Credit:Cindy Sherman and Metro Pictures, New York At 62, Sherman, too, is no longer a young artist and she says she can see herself in these women, whom she has photographed with a wistful compassion. "I relate to these women, they are older and dealing with it and trying to put on a strong, tough face and trying to maintain some dignity as they're ageing," she says, "And I totally relate to that. I related to a lot of the other series too, but this has a much stronger impact for me when you turn 60, everything just starts to fall apart." Untitled #568, 2016. Credit:Cindy Sherman and Metro Pictures, New York While she says she didn't set out to deal with ageing, her decision in 2007 to start working digitally helped bring her to it a new digital camera, with more pixels and resolution, meant "all the wrinkles are sharper and all the more highlighted". It had been five years since Sherman had been in front of the camera (she'd been busy with several big exhibitions, catalogues, the Venice Biennale and so on). When she finished the new series earlier this year, she sent through the first images to GOMA curator Ellie Buttrose, who was immediately entranced. The large works have been printed using a cutting-edge technique of bonding the image to aluminium plates, meaning the wrinkles and every other luscious detail are exquisitely rendered. For the interview, Sherman is seated in one of GOMA's cinemas aptly chosen given both the cinematic scope and content of her work. After all, it was her 69 black-and-white Untitled Film Stills series (1977-80) that brought her to wide attention and they continue to get press, such is their enduring power. Those photos showed her posed in a variety of settings reminiscent of B-grade film noir cinema shots, and they are at once familiar, enigmatic and disturbing. Her vast array of untitled work since then has ranged through topics commonly grouped together under informal titles such as disasters, fairy tales, pink robes, centrefolds, history portraits and the abject 1990s sex pictures (which featured mannequins and prostheses). The exhibition survey takes in her seven most recent major series head shots (200002), clowns (200304), Balenciaga (200708), society portraits (2008), murals (2010), Chanel (201012) and the latest set of faded stars. For the new series, Sherman wanted to explore these "silent movie types of actresses" and was interested to find the works have a sincerity she can see in the early Film Stills. "It was so different from previous work because they weren't so much caricatures or cartoon-y versions of people that people say I'm making fun of they were more sincere." While Sherman doesn't think she makes fun of her subjects, in an essay for the exhibition catalogue, the National Gallery of Victoria's senior curator of international exhibition projects, Miranda Wallace, wonders: "Is Sherman being cruel with her subjects? Is she poking fun at women by creating these caricatures? Or does she feel empathy towards them?" Wallace notes that while Sherman says she empathises with and adores her characters, she also "takes delight in replicating some of the bizarre choices women make in presenting themselves to the world, through their use of fake tans, make-up, cosmetic surgery and fashion." For the Chanel and Balenciaga series, Sherman collaborated with the fashion houses an interesting move for someone whose work has widely been interpreted as being deeply critical of the relationship between women, image-making and the way femininity is "performed" for the male gaze, with fashion houses deeply embedded in all that. Little wonder, then, that Wallace also writes in the catalogue that, despite fashion's "endless capacity to absorb opposition", Sherman's collaborations with that world "sit on a knife's edge between admiration and parody, complicity and derision". She says Sherman, in early interviews, claimed to be making fun of fashion but has since been increasingly identified as a front-row supporter of haute couture. "Although you might think she is 'subverting from within', there is also the possibility that Sherman's relationship with fashion resembles a case of Stockholm syndrome; like a true fashion 'victim', Sherman has begun to identify with and admire that which holds her captive." The artist, though, seems wary of fashion: with the Balenciaga shots, which were commissioned by Vogue, she says she was trying to imitate pap party photos we might see in the social pages. The final art works clearly critique the gleeful, vapid camera-magnets. Likewise, she used Chanel as a vehicle for her own ends. The fashion house gave her open access to their archives dating back to the 1920s, even pieces Coco Chanel had in her first collection but she wasn't enamoured with the garments. "That was a different experience [to Balenciaga] because I was so in awe of what they were sending me and the value of it that I was so afraid to get anything dirty," she says. "So I didn't use any makeup for that series, I just changed myself digitally. I had chosen outfits that I thought would be loose enough to accommodate me because I don't have a tiny model's body or a tall skinny model's body." But they were not loose-fitting and often had corsets and other constraints inside. "So in some of the poses I look really pissed off and angry because I'm trying to wear this thing but it keeps falling off me, or I couldn't zip it up. Some of them I couldn't even reach behind me, because it was so tight, to pull the zipper up. So it kind of affected a lot of the characters in a funny way. "But I was really shocked at how ugly some [of the clothing] was, too." The discomfort of female attire "totally informed" her childhood, she says. She remembers playing dress-ups with her grandmother's outfits no surprise there but as she turned into a young woman, she wore constraining clothing because it was the done thing. "That is kind of what the Film Stills came out of," she says. "When I was in college going to strip stores and finding a lot of those old pointy bras or girdles and thinking: I remember I wore a girdle when I was like 12 years old just because it held up the stockings. This was before pantyhose. Why would a 12-year-old girl need to wear a girdle? But it was just what, as a girl growing up into a woman, you were supposed to do. It was so bizarre. "So looking at it as an older young woman, thinking back to my childhood, was really what inspired that vision with all those characters from films of that period." Sherman began therapy about 12 years ago and says it has been a huge help to her. The youngest of five (her oldest sibling was 19 years her senior), she grew up in a family where "it was a bad thing to go to therapy because you were not supposed to admit there were problems". She didn't think she had anything she needed to fix. "I thought I was strong, I can get through this through any problems I had, like in a relationship, I could get through on my own. It was when I was in this super-bad relationship and just realising I couldn't get out of it and I didn't know how to do that. [Therapy] helped me and opened my eyes to so many things." She talks with her therapist about dreams and during a patch when she wasn't making any work, she had a "shocking and fantastic" dream in which she had a tube-shaped protuberance above her forehead. "We were talking about all the other aspects of the dream and he said: 'That tube is there anything that it reminds you of?' And I started crying because I realised I had been really frustrated about wanting to get back to work and I suddenly thought oh my God that tube's a camera." After using mannequins for the sex pictures series in the 1990s, she returned to photographing herself in 2000. The socialites, in particular, led beautifully into the new series of glamorous has-beens, despite the seven-year gap between them. For the new work, Sherman began by renting genuine vintage outfits. "I just wasn't satisfied with the results because they looked too much like I was doing Downton Abbey, like I was just imitating something that you see on television," she says. "I started to realise that I needed to invent a costume so I got a piece of fabric and wrapped it around me, so it was never a real dress. It was just this thing I cobbled together." One of the new images has a semi-transparent double within it, another version of the character fading away beside herself. She so liked the ghost-like figure that began as an experiment, she kept it. That spectral echo somehow goes to the heart of much of her work as we look at all these many faces of Sherman in various poses, outfits and personas, we are bound to catch glimpses or suggestions of ourselves, our personal traits and foibles, and those of other people we know. "She picks up on those gaps in ourselves, where we would like to be something or someone else," says Buttrose, who worked closely on the show with Sherman. "It is about aspiration. For me, the reason her work continues to be so strong is because she is not didactic. It is completely open. She puts these characters together but she is not saying how we should see them. She is aware of their follies but she is also deeply empathetic and because those two elements come together, it means the viewer is implicated in the fiction, but not told how to read it. "That is the joy in the work and her ongoing success. Her art asks you to rethink your preconceptions." And there we pause and look again at all these masquerading, captivating and sometimes vulnerable, sometimes frightening Cindy Shermans on the walls. No, they're not really her. They're us. Glamour Perth couple Andrew and Rayne Embley have stepped up for a good cause and have been appointed the "Westpac faces of the WAtoday Swan River Run". They hope to encourage more West Australians to take part in the annual five and 14-kilometre fun runs on July 24 to help raise cash for their favourite causes. Ex-West Coast Eagle Andrew Embley and wife Rayne are Westpac ambassadors for the Swan River Run. Credit:Ray Sparvell Rayne, a successful fashion, lifestyle and motherhood blogger, said the couple were approached by Westpac to support the Swan River Run and it seemed a good fit for them. "Andrew is heavily into his running and that, along with the opportunity to raise funds for the Westpac Foundation, made it very easy to say yes," she said. Biddy the echidna came into the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital in pretty bad shape. The Australian native had been found in a Maryborough backyard with cuts across the back, legs and spines and a minor rib fracture, injuries likely received during slashing work that was taking place nearby. Vets at the hospital said Biddy's cuts were "quite severe" and difficult to treat and so had to give the injured animal a healing bubble bath. A team of three worked to remove dirt and hair from around each spine before Biddy was de-ticked and a deep wound in the front right leg was stitched up. NSW residents are being warned to prepare for a weekend deluge of up to 300 millimetres of rain - more than twice the monthly average in some northern parts of the state - following the likely formation of an east coast low near the NSW-Queensland border. The hardest hit areas are expected to be in northern NSW, but the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) warned that widespread heavy rain and strong winds along the entire coast and adjacent ranges could cause flash flooding and property damage. For Sydney, falls could reach 140mm from Saturday to Monday, with totals dependent on how long the low lingers just off shore. The average monthly rainfall for Sydney in June is 132mm. "But there's no such thing as a purchase contract, I don't think it's legal to do that. Maybe it is, maybe not." "I made some donations but it wasn't $500,000. In the past I have also donated to Labor and the Liberal Party. I have been invited to lunches with John Howard, Paul Keating and Bob Hawke and they were all fundraisers." In a statement, a Liberal Democrat spokesman said: "The Liberal Democrats are proud to announce Roostam Sadri as their No.1 Senate candidate for South Australia. "Mr Sadri approached the Liberal Democrats offering his experience, expertise and a willingness to inject funds into the campaign. Mr Sadri's initial offer of funds got our party interested, but after confirming Mr Sadri's excellent credentials to serve as a Liberal Democrats' senator in South Australia, and after his immersion into the party, the party has preselected Mr Sadri, based on his merits. "Consistent with the party's record and support for financial disclosure, all disclosure obligations will be fully satisfied. The Liberal Democrats oppose taxpayer funding of political parties. Professor Orr said an offence of bribery does not necessarily hinge on an agreement being signed and said most deals in politics, like the infamous "Kirribilli agreement" between Bob Hawke and Paul Keating over the leadership of the Labor Party were done on a handshake. "On its face, there may be two 'electoral bribery' offences," he said. "There doesn't need to be a finalised agreement. Section 326 of the Electoral Act lays out offences in relation to the offering or acceptance of any property or benefit for certain outcomes that include "the order in which the names of candidates . . . appear on a ballot paper". Professor Williams said: "It seems extraordinary to me. It's the sort of thing that should not be happening in our democracy and if it's not proscribed by law, it should be. "We already have a big problem with political donations. If people can actually buy their way into preselection and to the ticket then that's an even bigger problem." Mr Sadri, a leader of the Tatar community - an ethnic minority of Russia - who arrived in Australia from China as a refugee in 1976, said he had "read the agreement" but insisted he or his lawyer had not drafted it. "I was not involved in drafting it. Whoever drafted it might have leaked it," he said. The Primary Agreement, which is marked with Mr Sadri's initials, states: "Mr Sadri will deposit AUD 500,000 in the Liberal Democrats' account [St George Bank details] such that the funds arrive in the account no later than five days from the issuing of the writs for the next Senate election, whether a double dissolution election or otherwise." It goes on to outline that Mr Sadri will then become a financial member of the micro party and fill out a Senate nomination form within five days. If the $500,000 was paid within seven days of the election writs being issued, the Primary Agreement states, the registered officer of the Liberal Democrats would endorse Mr Sadri's position "at the top of the Liberal Democrats' column on the [state to be specified] Senate ballot paper". Fairfax Media understands that members of the Liberal Democrats' federal executive originally proposed Mr Sadri stand in Victoria, where he owns property, before settling on his home state of South Australia. The Secondary Agreement makes clear that the party would control the $500,000. "The Liberal Democrats reserve the right to allocate funds in its account at its sole discretion," the Agreements states "The Liberal Democrats will not discriminate in its commitment of electoral expenditure in [the state in which Mr Sadri is nominated], solely on the basis of Mr Sadri's candidacy in [that State]." The party agreed to advise Mr Sadri of its expenditure each fortnight after the Agreements took effect. On Friday, Mr Sadri said he had thought about starting his own "multicultural party" but decided his political philosophy fit with the libertarian party of Senator Leyonhjelm. "There's too much bureaucratic red tape and I thought maybe it's time to get influence in decision-making," he said. Mr Sadri said he arrived in Adelaide with $US500 in his pocket and three days later was assembling gearboxes for General Motors. He went on to buy out the South Australian Meat Corporation, the country's second-largest abattoir at the time, from the SA state government in the 1990s. He made a profit but the slaughterhouse, just 10 kilometres from the Adelaide CBD, closed within four years. Mr Sadri is not the only businessman standing for the Liberal Democrats. Claims that coral bleaching has caused the "death" of the Great Barrier Reef are distorted and three-quarters of coral in the natural wonder is alive, a Turnbull government agency says. In a statement on Friday, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said there had been "widespread misinterpretation" over how much of the reef had died. Despite "reported claims and counter-claims over the last month" about the large swaths of the reef having perished, preliminary findings from the authority and the Australian Institute of Marine Science revealed "approximately three-quarters of coral on the reef has survived to date". The RSPCA has welcomed a planned federal government ban on cosmetic products that have been tested on live animals, which could be in place from next year. An estimated 27,000 animals are used for live testing every year around the world, prompting the proposed ban on cosmetics including perfumes, make-up and other common products. The Coalition plans to ban the sale in Australia of cosmetics tested on animals. Credit:One Voice Product ingredients that have undergone similar animal testing would also be banned. On Christmas Day in 1918, a small French boy wandered in to the mess hall at Bickendorf air base in Germany as the men of Australian Flying Corps 4 Squadron held a sumptuous lunch. Hungry and lonely, he invited himself to the feast of roast beef and plum pudding, wine and beer laid on for the first Noel since the Armistice. He gave his name as Honore Hemene. His parents were dead, and it emerged he had survived four years on the battlefields of Flanders, aided by the kindness of Allied soldiers. The Australians dubbed him Henri, and then just 'Digger'. In the next few months he became the Squadron mascot, with a knack for joking, catching rats and hitching joyrides on planes. A colourful Porsche was stolen from a Hunters Hull home while its four occupants slept on Thursday night. According to police, a number of unknown people entered the Blaxland Street house between 10pm Thursday and 2.40am Friday. Police were told mobile phones, electronic devices, wallets, credit cards and the distinct AGM-911 Porsche coupe were taken. The Porsche was customised with a vinyl wrap designed by artist Merry Sparks. Credit:NSW Police Media reported the home belonged Zoe McKeough, the managing director of the Better Breathing foundation. The Porsche was customised with a vinyl wrap designed by Brisbane artist Merry Sparks to promote the foundation, which supports research on chronic lung diseases. Mike Baird says the government has not handled the consultation and property acquisition for the WestConnex motorway as well as it should, and been insensitive in some of the areas affected. But the Premier says he will continue to make controversial decisions, because otherwise he would not be doing his job. Mr Baird was speaking at a lunch event at Luna Park on Friday, where he addressed the criticism of those angered by the sacking of councils and contentious infrastructure projects. Asked if there were areas where the government needed to adjust in response to the criticism, Mr Baird said: "I think there are some." His childhood friend and co-conspirator John Hartman was charged with insider trading offences more than five years ago and has already served a prison sentence. But the insider trading trial of Oliver Curtis, banker and husband of Sydney publicist Roxy Jacenko, was years in the making as his legal team took steps to delay or shut down the case. Details of the behind-the-scenes legal wranglings can now be revealed after a Supreme Court jury found Curtis guilty on Thursday of conspiring to commit insider trading. A Queensland town's water supply was topped up with contaminated bore water for four years, the local council has admitted. Water for about 5000 residents in Oakey and nearby Jondaryan, west of Brisbane, was partially sourced from bore water from 2008 to 2012. Bore water at Oakey was contaminated with chemicals from firefighting foam used at an army base. Credit:Grant Bryant It wasn't until 2014 that Toowoomba Regional Council learned the bore water was contaminated with chemicals in firefighting foam used for decades at a local army training base. The council has told News Corp the water was treated and made safe for consumption, but some residents fear their health may have been compromised. Police sieve soil removed from the drain at Carole Park as they look for Sharron Phillips' remains. Credit:Tony Moore Around two weeks ago the witness told detectives Sharron Phillips body was placed inside one of the two drains. Much of the witness' story has been corroborated by details gleaned during the 30-year-old missing person's case. Sharron Phillips' car ran out of fuel on Ipswich Road at Wacol in 1986. Police began digging late Monday and by 4pm Friday, the 50 police had cleared all the soil and debris from the twin tunnels ahead of the weekend rain. That soil is dumped and marked in two locations - one section for the upstream side of the drain and a second section for the soil from the downstream side of the drains - on higher land on Cobalt Street. Detective Inspector Damien Hansen. Credit:Tony Moore "The soil is marked in the meterage from where it is taken out of the drains," Detective Inspector Damien Hansen told reporters. "The drainage is a problem with the rain coming," he said. Sharron Phillips vanished without a trace in May 1986. "So we have decided to store it up here and the screening will protect larger objects if it is washed through," he said. Earlier Inspector Hansen said police would take special steps to protect this soil, which potentially contains some of Sharron Phillips's remains. "Our forensic experts have given us advice and we are confident that we will have barricades that will hold any larger fragments that won't get washed away." The grim and sobering picture here is police need to be able to slowly sieve through this mud and silt and broken soil and hunt for Sharron Phillips' remains. That sieving has begun, but the vast majority of that work begins on Monday. This is how some of the new emoji may appear on your iPhone, once they've been implemented. Credit:Emojipedia You may soon find it much easier to call your friends liars, indicate that you are sick, or make that shrugging guy \_()_/ with your phone, as the organisation that governs emoji has announced 72 new potential pictographs for release this month. It's important to note that the Unicode Technical Committee is still considering these emoji, and won't have a definitive list to add to its standard until June 21. Even then, it will be up to the likes of Apple, Google and Microsoft to actually design and implement the new images into their software so you can start using them. The folks over at Emojipedia which keeps a huge trove of all existing emoji with examples of how they look across different platforms have already released a mock-up of what the new 72 might look like in Apple's iPhone style, although its anyone's guess how they will actually turn out. The one certain thing is that most of them will end up looking completely different depending on where you're viewing them, with "drooling face" in particular likely to cause some miscommunications (are you saying you're hungry, or brain dead?) Facebook is already making efforts to avoid issues like this, making sure its Messenger app for both iOS and Android uses its own consistent version of the standard, with a recent update including stunning, cartoonish versions of all the most popular icons, and even supporting multiple skin tones for the people. Google meanwhile has appealed directly to the Unicode Consortium to include greater gender diversity in the emoji standard, suggesting last month that icons depicting a profession like doctor of chef should be able to be depicted as male or female. Follow Digital Life on Twitter A Comancheros treasurer accused of starting a fire at a Kittens strip club is also suspected of links to other shootings, a court has heard. Police believe Mark Ahern and another man started a blaze that caused almost $400,000 of damage to the Kittens club in the early hours of February 16, after they pulled a vent from the roof and gained entry through the hole. The fire also damaged a neighbouring apartment complex and forced the evacuation of eight residents, the court heard. Mr Ahern, 32, who is charged with two counts of arson and single charges of reckless conduct endangering death, receiving stolen goods and possessing a prohibited weapon, is the treasurer of the Melbourne chapter of the Comancheros motorcycle gang, Melbourne Magistrates Court heard on Friday. Much of the fog that blanketed Melbourne, causing airport chaos on Friday morning, has lifted. But without strong enough winds to flush out the Melbourne basin, a light haze is expected to remain around the city for the rest of the day. "With fairly light winds around, it should remain hazy right into the evening," Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Tom Delamotte said. At least 30 domestic Virgin, Qantas, Jetstar and Tiger flights into and out of Melbourne Airport were cancelled as the city awoke to a shroud of fog. Former stripper Robyn Lindholm has appeared before a magistrate, charged with murdering her former fiance, standover man George Templeton. Lindholm, 43, was this week charged with murdering Templeton - also known as George Teazis - in 2005, following an investigation by homicide detectives. Robyn Lindholm at a press conference into the disappearance of George Templeton in 2005. Credit:Simon O'Dwyer Lindholm appeared via video link in Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday, charged with one count of murder. A charge sheet alleges she murdered Templeton, 38, in Reservoir. Templeton's body has never been found. Fear has gripped a Melbourne primary school amid repeated sightings of a sex pest who exposed himself to a nine-year-old girl six weeks ago. Police have been searching, so far in vain, for a predator lurking near Laburnum Primary School in Blackburn after a man exposed himself to a young girl while she was walking with another student between the toilet and a classroom. Laburnum Primary School Credit:Jason South The security unease has prompted the Education Department to install a new fence and CCTV cameras at the school amid fears the offender has returned. La Trobe University has withdrawn all allegations of misconduct against controversial academic Roz Ward and reinstated the Safe Schools co-founder, effective immediately. Ms Ward said she was ecstatic with the outcome and could not wait to return to work on Monday. "I love my job, and all the people I am privileged enough to work with," she said. "I am looking forward to continuing to do what I think is a really important job." In a statement released late on Friday, La Trobe Vice Chancellor John Dewar defended the university's handling of the matter, saying he had acted in the best interests of the Safe Schools program. A government deal with the militant firefighters' union to end a protracted industrial dispute will cost the Victorian budget up to $160 million, according to new analysis. Senior government sources have revealed that state Treasury has costed implementing the findings of the Fair Work Commission's recommendations at between $140 million and $160 million over four years. CFA volunteers are fearful that a new pay deal with the union will diminish their work. Credit:Eddie Jim The figure is dramatically lower than the $1 billion wage bill that critics of the mooted deal between Premier Daniel Andrews and the united firefighters union had claimed. Drivers are being warned to plan their road trips carefully this weekend, with road closures affecting major tunnels and freeways around Melbourne. Those heading towards Werribee and Geelong are being warned a section of the Princes Freeway will be closed on Friday evening. Major roads are set to be closed across Melbourne this weekend. Credit:AP The freeway will be closed in both directions between Geelong Road and the Maltby Bypass from 7 on Friday to 8 on Saturday morning. The closure is to allow workers to finish removing the old Sneydes Road bridge, after a new bridge was opened last week. During the hour-long broadcast on Sky News on Thursday, Cameron was pressed repeatedly by an interviewer over the high levels of immigration into Britain. After that came a combative town-hall-style session with an audience of voters. Yet Prime Minister David Cameron kept his cool under pressure as he appealed to Britons to remain in the European Union during the first major television forum before the country's referendum on whether to stay. London: He was accused of hypocrisy, scaremongering and a failing common among politicians worldwide - waffling. And while it might not prove a decisive moment for the June 23 referendum, the debate could energise a campaign that has shown relatively few signs of igniting public interest. British Prime Minister David Cameron waves after his Sky News interview with Faisal Islam. Credit:Getty Images During the broadcast, Cameron pointed out the economic risks of quitting the EU, arguing that leaving its single market of about 500 million people would be an "act of self-harm", and appealing to voters not to "roll a dice" on the economic futures of their children and grandchildren. A succession of institutions including the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Bank of England have echoed Cameron's warnings of the likely adverse economic consequences of a withdrawal, known as Brexit. But from the start of his interview on Sky News, Cameron was pressed by its political editor, Faisal Islam, on the issue of immigration and on his government's failure to keep its pledge to restrict the number of arrivals to below 100,000 people a year. The father of a woman who was murdered by US serial killer Michael Madison became airborne as he dived into the courtroom dock in an apparent attempt to attack his daughter's killer, minutes after Madison was sentenced to death. Footage of the dramatic confrontation showed panic break out in the courtroom in Cleveland, Ohio, as Van Terry, the father of Madison's victim Shirellda Terry, 18, leapt through the air on Thursday, local time. Madison was convicted last month of murdering Ms Terry, Angela Deskins, 38, and Shetisha Sheeley, 28. Their bodies were found wrapped in plastic bags near Madison's East Cleveland home in 2013. A jury last month recommended Madison face the death penalty and, when he faced Cleveland judge Nancy McDonnell on Thursday, she followed the jury's recommendation, sentencing him to death for aggravated murder and kidnapping. 5484: that's the number of lives lost to gun violence this year, according to Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organisation that compiles real-time information on shootings in the United States. The 5484 dead from gun violence excludes suicides by gun, which are nearly double the number of gun homicides in any given year. About 36 American have died in gun violence every day this year. The 5484 gun deaths work out to about 36 every day this year. They include the 132 people killed over the Memorial Day weekend. That may seem like a lot of carnage for a long weekend, but it's considerably fewer deaths than the 182 over the Labor Day weekend last autumn. Berlin: Three Syrian men with suspected links to Islamic State have been arrested in Germany on suspicion of planning a large-scale attack in the Dusseldorf, the federal prosecutor said. The plot was uncovered because a fourth Syrian man, identified as Saleh A., turned himself in to authorities in Paris and confessed to the plot. Dusseldorf Harbour. Credit:Dirk Hartung/CC After the confession in February, it took German investigators four months to accumulate enough evidence against the three men to arrest them. Saleh A. remains in custody in France and Germany is seeking his extradition, the prosecutor said. The arrests, made about two months after suicide bombers killed 32 people in Brussels, are likely to deepen concerns that Germany has become a priority target for Islamic militants operating in Europe. When The New York Times factored in a 5 per cent shift in support for Trump in each state, which certainly has already happened in national polling, the New York mogul picked up Florida, North Carolina and Ohio but he still lost to Clinton in the Electoral College, 285 to 253. Hillary Clinton calling Donald Trump "dangerously incoherent". Credit:Troy Harvey It took the factoring in of a 10 per cent shift to Trump, which currently is within the realms of possibility in national polling but perhaps elusive in the vital swing states, for Trump to win throwing to Trump five states that Mitt Romney lost in 2012. They would be Iowa, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado and New Hampshire, for a 305 to 233 vote in Trump's favour. Clinton, no doubt, is sick of warnings, dire, salutary or otherwise. But this week Politico magazine had another caution for her and her campaign's seeming obsession with national demographics: "Demographics are not destiny. In fact, they can be a disaster waiting to happen." Protesters against Donald Trump chase a man leaving a Trump campaign rally in California. Credit:AP Hedging only slightly, Politico goes on: "It's a long way to November and Trump could always self-destruct. But he probably won't, and 2016 is shaping up as a contest that a careful Clinton campaign can easily lose, state by state, even as she piles up the popular vote in California and other sure-win places." This is the context in which a stark contrast in campaign style emerges: Clinton articulates a strategy based almost entirely on demographics, targeting big national constituencies one by one women, Latinos, African-Americans, millennials. But, as Dan Balz observes in The Washington Post, Trump seems oblivious to this kind of needlepoint nonsense. Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton acknowledges supporters in Columbus, Ohio. Credit:AP/File Sure, says Balz, Trump has a core constituency: white voters who didn't go to college. He writes: "But through the primaries, his appeal was cross-cutting, something that surprised and befuddled his opponents. Trump cut into the evangelical vote in ways no one had predicted. He did well among very conservative republicans, among somewhat conservative Republicans; and among the party's moderate block." Donald Trump answers questions during a news conference in New York, where he laid into the media. Credit:AP In an exercise of pundit daring, Nate Silver's respected FiveThirtyEight number-crunching site took a punt in mid-May, wagering that the whole multibillion-dollar venture that is Election 2016 could come down to how a handful of people in Pennsylvania feel when they get out of bed on election day about five months off. In 2012, Obama held Pennsylvania by about 5 per cent that's about 300,000 votes in a country with a population of about 300 million. Replicate that on Election Day this year, and a tiny one-thousandth of all Americans will anoint either Trump or Clinton. Protesters against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump climb on a car outside campaign rally in San Jose, California. Credit:AP The elevation of Pennsylvania to "tipping point" status - the point at which Trump would secure the presidency as his wins were tallied from states that were most-easy to most-difficult to win - is based on a shift to the right by Pennsylvania in a state-by-state analysis of voting data over 20 years. Working against Clinton would be: Supporters clamor to shake hands with Hillary Clinton in Salinas. Credit:AP the local economy (economic confidence is lower than the national average and Trump's "jobs, jobs, jobs" pitch appeals to a big blue-collar contingent); demographics (as sixth-oldest of the states, lots of angry old white men, not overly educated); and voting laws (other states have become more Clinton-friendly through electoral reform). Setting out what he describes as the "clear path" by which Clinton could lose, Politico analyst David Bernstein writes: "The cold math of a potential Clinton defeat is not to be found in national polls, but in the Electoral College and within each state's unique demographics and culture. "Trump won't dramatically remake the political map, but he doesn't need to. He just needs to squeeze a little more out of certain voters in certain states, while Clinton draws a little less." Trump supporters and bikers at a Rolling Thunder rally in Washington, on Sunday. Credit:AP Bernstein's list of Clinton errors that could tweak those local outcomes in Trump's favour includes: Taking Hispanic enthusiasm for granted: Look at Florida, where Democrats are hugely confident, but Hispanic support for Clinton is five points less than it was for Obama in 2012, and while Obama had a 285,600-vote advantage among Hispanics over GOP contender Mitt Romney, Obama carried the state by just 73,000 votes. Use Obama's Florida figures as a template for 2016, and Trump prevails over Clinton. Look at Florida, where Democrats are hugely confident, but Hispanic support for Clinton is five points less than it was for Obama in 2012, and while Obama had a 285,600-vote advantage among Hispanics over GOP contender Mitt Romney, Obama carried the state by just 73,000 votes. Use Obama's Florida figures as a template for 2016, and Trump prevails over Clinton. Alienating young voters: The big millennial turnout for Obama in 2008 was a one-off and their more recent political indifference could cost Clinton in student-heavy states including swing states such as Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Virginia. Clinton must win back the young in the Iowa primary, 84 per cent of under-30s voted for Sanders; and between 2008 and 2012, Obama lost 30,000 young votes and he held Iowa by just 90,000 votes. On that arithmetic, Clinton would be chopped liver. It is the same in North Carolina in 2008, Obama won 368,000 young votes to hold the state by a nail-biting 14,000 votes; in 2012, he lost one-third of those young votes, and Romney romped home with a 92,000-vote margin. The big millennial turnout for Obama in 2008 was a one-off and their more recent political indifference could cost Clinton in student-heavy states including swing states such as Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Virginia. Clinton must win back the young in the Iowa primary, 84 per cent of under-30s voted for Sanders; and between 2008 and 2012, Obama lost 30,000 young votes and he held Iowa by just 90,000 votes. On that arithmetic, Clinton would be chopped liver. It is the same in North Carolina in 2008, Obama won 368,000 young votes to hold the state by a nail-biting 14,000 votes; in 2012, he lost one-third of those young votes, and Romney romped home with a 92,000-vote margin. Letting establishment Republicans find another place to go: By going too far left in the primaries, Clinton dampened her appeal to the GOP's "Never Trump" wing and her likely smaller share of the disaffected Republican vote could be crucial in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and maybe Maine. A poll in Ohio where Trump and Clinton have to contend with competition from Libertarian and Green candidates found that it was Clinton who took the bigger hit, not Trump. By going too far left in the primaries, Clinton dampened her appeal to the GOP's "Never Trump" wing and her likely smaller share of the disaffected Republican vote could be crucial in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and maybe Maine. A poll in Ohio where Trump and Clinton have to contend with competition from Libertarian and Green candidates found that it was Clinton who took the bigger hit, not Trump. Fumbling the trade/jobs issue: To the extent that Trump has policies, his "we'll bring the jobs home" rhetoric plays hugely well in the Rust Belt states: Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota. As president, Clinton's husband signed the most hated of the free-trade deals; as a senator, Clinton voted for them; and as secretary of state she championed them. All that is why Sanders defeated Clinton in the Michigan and Wisconsin primaries. Bernstein concludes: "If Clinton pushed away some of her potential supporters; fails to energise others to vote; and fires up Trump's base by pandering to her own well, she just might be able to make the numbers work out for him. Supporters shake hands with Hillary Clinton in Salinas, California. Credit:AP "If he does pull off the election of the century, Trump's path to 270 Electoral College votes will begin with 164 practically in the bank, from 21 solid-red states generally considered sure things for the Republican nominee. [But] Clinton could push more than enough additional states onto Trump's side of the ledger Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Iowa, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan one mistake at a time." Allocating Trump an Electoral College majority of between 274 and 338, he spells out the "Trump can win" reality of this campaign: "Trump survives a Latino surge in the south and west; Clinton fails to bring home young voters in the south-east and Midwest; Libertarians give Trump a foothold in the north-east; the Rust Belt puts a nail in the coffin and with somewhere between 274 and 338 electoral votes, Donald J. Trump becomes 45th president of the United States." An anti-Trump protester hold a Trump campaign hat that has been set on fire as protesters and Trump supporters clash near in San Diego last month. Credit:San Diego Tribune/AP Clinton will get the Democratic nomination. But when the primaries are done and dusted, what shape will she be in as she embarks on a hard-slog march towards the White House against this wily opponent who, seemingly, goes unpunished by the electorate for his vague policies that shift with the breeze. Will she get the same consolidation, or bounce, in the polls as Trump did on becoming the presumptive nominee? Will uniting her party be any tougher, or easier for Clinton than it has been for Trump? Can she bring sufficient Sanders supporters on board to make a difference? And does she get an additional lift as an unusually high rate of undecided voters make their call? Caracas: Protesters demanding food made a run for the Venezuelan presidential palace on Thursday in a rare, apparently spontaneous outburst of anger at the socialist administration within the heart of Caracas. More than 100 people charged down the main central Caracas thoroughfare chanting "No more talk. We want food," in the latest clash in the crisis-hit South American nation. They got within half a dozen blocks of the palace before police in riot gear began firing tear gas. 'No more talk. We want food': Venezuelans tried to be heard on Thursday. Credit:Bloomberg President Nicolas Maduro, under intense pressure over a worsening economic crisis in the OPEC nation of 30 million, had been scheduled to address a rally of indigenous groups nearby around the same time. PHILIPSBURG/MARIGOT-The 10th anniversary of the St. Martin Believers Connection Convention has been hailed a success with the largest gathering of supportive Christian churches and organizations' participation ever. The annual conference was held under the theme "Let the Fire Blaze in Our Jerusalem at the Kingdom Complex of the Christian Fellowship Church in Colebay. It was symbolic of a jubilee celebration with both sides of the island coming together for a panoramic display of talent in dance, drama, singing and even miming, all with the goal of praise and worship to God. Over the course of the 6 day event, attendees heard from international speakers who delivered congratulatory remarks and solidarity messages. But it was the empowering and anointed preaching of an impressive panel of local speakers that resounded. Apostle Mulrose Toulon of Tehillah Ministries, Pastor Nolan Nanton of the New Testament Baptist Church and Pastor Jerome Thomas of Christian Assembly Ministries spoke directly to the theme of personal spiritual development and then progressively to community development and nation building. Participants were also taught how to detect "false fires or false Christians, many of whom are driven by greed and control." It was made clear that for the church to be truly effective on St. Maarten/St. Martin, then there must be a sincere commitment to unity of the body. Among other highlights of this year's convention were a youth extravaganza, a memorabilia magazine featuring Christian-owned businesses, a culture costume and flag parade and an Explorer boat cruise on the Simpson Bay Lagoon. Persons from various departments who worked over the past 10 years to make the Convention a success were also honored. Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport Silvera Jacobs, in delivering brief remarks congratulated the organizing committee for its selfless dedication to the upkeep of the Conference. She opined that the Conference's vision was in line with the government's interest in faith based tourism activities. The Collective of St. Martin was also represented as well as the St. Maarten Christian Party. Dvds are available of the Conference at the SMBCC Secretariat at the COME Centre on Longwall Road. GREAT BAY (DCOMM):--- The Inspectorate of Ministry of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Transport and Telecommunications (Ministry TEATT), received a complaint on May 30th from a concerned parent reporting a school bus operating with defective brake lights transporting school children. The School Bus Controllers were immediately dispatched and the bus was removed from service immediately. Contact was made with the owner of the bus who cooperated fully with having the brake lights repaired the same day. The bus underwent a full inspection the following day and was cleared to return to service. The driver and owner of the bus will be addressed according to the Enforcement Policy of the Inspectorate. The Inspectorate strongly advises all school bus drivers and owners to follow proper daily vehicle inspection procedures to ensure that school buses are operated in full compliance with the Traffic Ordinance and safety standards. Secondly, general motorists can contact the Inspectorate during office hours 8AM to 4:30PM Monday through Friday at 542-4511/4509 or via email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to report safety issues concerning school buses. We encourage you to take pictures of violations or safety concerns only if this can be done safely and not while operating a vehicle or endangering yourself or other motorists or pedestrians. PHILIPSBURG:--- - Immediately after the fire that took place on the landfill on the night of June 1, 2016, suspicious behaviors were reported concerning the cause of the fire. At this moment, it is not clear how the fire has started, however the Minister of VROMI, Angel Meyers would like to start a full investigation of the Sanitary landfill and its operations. The Minister plan to thoroughly investigate with related stakeholders and the Ministry of VROMI, the occurrences on the landfill. The Minister is taking the activities on the dump very seriously. As mentioned in the Press briefing on June 1st, 2016 the Minister approached SOAB to assist in analyzing the processes of the landfill. With this initiative the Minister Meyers will gain insight to their current risk exposure on the landfill as the responsible ministry for waste management and activities, and the appropriate checks and balances that can be implemented to minimize the risks. The ultimate goal is for the government of St. Maarten to ensure the sanitary landfill is managed optimally. Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 By Azad Hasanli, Anvar Mammadov - Trend: The Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector (ICD) is ready to provide advisory services for Azerbaijan for industrial and special economic zones and Islamic capital markets development, Khaled Mohammed Al-Aboodi, CEO and general manager at the ICD, told Trend. Al-Aboodi said the ICD is willing to cooperate with Azerbaijan in all areas related to the private sector. Al-Aboodi was in Baku May 31 on a one-day visit, and the corporation's mission will hold meetings during this week. As he noted, the visit's main aim is to follow up on several initiatives of the government and see how ICD can assist in mobilizing funding through private sector initiatives. "We also met with several private sector entities to explore financing opportunities," he said. "ICD has a program dedicated to the development and implementation of free trade zones (FTZ)," said Al-Aboodi. "We have successfully raised donor funding for the development and planned implementation of such initiatives in many member countries to help accelerate the rate at which foreign direct investment is done." ICD stands ready to assist Azerbaijan, said Al-Aboodi, adding the economic and developmental impact of these initiatives is tremendous. He noted also that the ICD's intervention includes the full spectrum of design of the framework, implementation support, and also fundraising for technical studies and external consulting. "ICD will liaise with Azerbaijan to provide assistance through knowledge sharing via the Reverse Linkage program of the Islamic Development Bank Group, to share similar experiences of other member countries in similar programs, as well as providing assistance to bring foreign direct investments into the country," explained Al-Aboodi. He also said the ICD has a dedicated advisory department which runs the Sukuk [Islamic bonds] and Capital Markets program, designed to assist the governments and private sectors to raise funding to finance private and public sector projects. "ICD has successfully advised several governments to complete the Sukuk issuances for countries in Africa and the Arab region," Al-Aboodi added. The ICD has been operating in Azerbaijan since 2003. ICD finances mainly small and medium enterprises in the country. The corporation is the founder of the Ansar Leasing and co-founder of the Caspian International Investment Company. The ICD is a multilateral development financial institution and is a part of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Group. PHILIPSBURG:--- Earlier this week we read that a young man of 21 years was gunned down in the city of Schiedam in the Netherlands. The fact that he was dark complexioned, and ethno-racial profiling among Dutch police officers in the Netherlands is condoned as an unfortunate security measure. It have caused many activists throughout the Kingdom of the Netherlands to argue that this is one of the outcomes of a situation where, it has become politically suspect to say that racism within the Dutch Kingdom is unacceptable! In this contribution, we seek to say the new politically suspect as loud as possible: Dutch racism is unacceptable! Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can never hurt us. Whoever wholeheartedly believes that this saying holds all the time, and in every occasion, is either lying to themselves or not part of the human species. The fact is that words like stones can lead to suffering. It is true that the hurt produced by words is of a different kindpsychological rather than physicalbut a hurt it is nevertheless. What is more, we remain silent when listening to these words, forgetting that these words can lead to actions. The racist slurs hurled at chocolate coloured Dutch pop icons, activists and TV presenters (to name a few; Sylvana Simmons, the poet and dramatist Quinsy Gario, and the rappers Knoledge Cesare and Typhoon), contest what they perceive as the racism embedded in the annual Sint Nicolaas and Black Peter celebrations, which many believe leads to psychological suffering. In addition, the treatment that they and the many thousands of dark skinned Dutch men and women (who do not have the benefit of being celebrities) receive because they allow opposing views, is unacceptable. If persons in the Netherlands tolerate that kind of psychological hurt, which we term verbal racial discrimination, they are destroying the very foundations of the social democracy they so cherish. One of the building blocks of the democratic tradition, is the belief that everyone has a right and a duty to freely express their individuality, and therewith pursue becoming who they want to be; in short, making a life for themselves as independent and free individuals. In that pursuit, however, they have to take their fellow citizens and others with whom they live (denizens, irregular migrants, and animals as they too increasingly have rights!) into account. The state, the government apparatus, is there for two reasons: 1) to ensure the human dignity of individuals who live within their borders and their endeavours to better express and make themselves by providing all kinds of provisions, such as equal opportunities to education and general healthcare, etc., 2) and conversely, to offer overall protection by creating incentives (informative campaigns, punishments and fines) to prevent and curtail individuals acts that damage the social bond and unjustly cause suffering to others within the countrys borders and due to the International Bill of Human Rights also outside those borders; the global common good. It goes terribly wrong, and there are growing signs of this, when elected officials in the Netherlands become the chief instigators in the trend to demolish the social democratic tradition of their country. Let me furnish an illustration. A few days ago, in a TV interview, Mr. Halbe Zijlstra, the former State Secretary in charge of Education and Science, and currently Member of the Dutch Parliament for the Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), stated that he condones ethno-racial profiling by the Dutch police. This was in reference to the discrimination suffered by rapper Typhoon, who was pulled over because the officer reasoned that a person with his dark complexion should not be driving such an expensive car. He implicitly reasoned that the psychological hurt endured by Typhoon and other victims does not weigh up against making selective use of sociological statistics the general safety of the Dutch population, as everyone knows that dark complexioned Dutch men and women commit more crime. Aside it is important to note that it is customary for politicians in The Hague to refer to dark complexioned Dutch men and women as allochtonen, meaning those who do not really belong to the Dutch soil or who do not have the right blood. A case of racism dressed up in Sunday school clothes that makes Dutch Antilleans and Surinamese-Dutch (who like their grandparents have never carried any other passport than a Dutch one), not really Dutch! And the idea that Dutch citizens of Moroccan, Turkish, Eastern European descendant have it better because of their lighter skin tone and other physical features is a lie. Individuality, autonomy, and the right to make oneself, are sacrificed when one is a dark complexioned Dutch man or woman, and the latter are told that they should find that acceptable! Since one must take MP Zijlstra to be a reasonable man, a free and rational human being, we are sure that he would not condone that pink-skinned Dutch citizens, who hail from the Netherlands, living here in the Caribbean side of the Dutch Kingdom accept ethno-racial profiling. Zijlstra and we are guessing other politicians with the portfolio of the Dutch Caribbean would immediately respond. No amount of selective use of statistics, even if those statistics were true, would suffice in making it acceptable that the somebodiness of individuals to use the term of Martin Luther King is disrespected. And so it should be! Dutch racism in which ever form, whoever perpetuates it, ought to be unacceptable in any part of the Kingdom! And we have our share here too! Perhaps it is time that those in power consider a trans-Atlantic committee to rid us all from that blight that manifest itself in words and in deeds. Dr. Francio Guadeloupe, President of the University of St. Martin (USM) Dr. Adnan Hossain, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Amsterdam Dr. Natasha Gittens, Director of the USM/SCELL Drs. Jordi Halfman, University of Amsterdam Ms. Geneve Phillip, Dean of Academics, USM Drs. Lisenne Delgado, University of Curacao Drs. Sharelly Emanuelson, Founder of UNIARTE, Curacao DOMINICA:--- This is special request from the people of Dominica. Please tell Dominicans living in the St. Martin to let the Dominican people decide their election. Dominicans living in St. Martin should not accept treats to come down to vote in Dominica. A treat or gift in order to vote could be considered a bribe. We are fighting for the children. Accepting what be construed as a bribe is illegal. Dominica is in a crisis with an increase in sexual abuse of minors. Recently a government minister was charged with interference with a minor. Surprisingly instead of the Administration taking a firm stand on protecting the children, they have gone out on a limb to protect the perpetrator. The Opposition has spoken publicly condemning the incident. Yet the Labour Administration treats the incident as no big deal. One minister has even referred to that minister as a real man. Dominicans have reached out to us in the diaspora to help. The present administration is doing nothing to help the children. They will not even issue a statement. All the party cares about at this time is holding on to this ministers seat in a bye election. Most of the constituency has said they would reject the party. Dominica is holding this by-election on June 7th . So the party is importing Dominican voters living in countries such as yours, paying their way to vote which directly infringes on the Dominica Election Act which controls residency requirements and treating or gifts. Here are the requirements to legally vote in Dominica: Section 5 Registration of Electors Act. Is a Commonwealth citizen who has resided in Dominica for a period of twelve months immediately before the qualifying date; and Is eighteen years of age or over; and Has resided in that polling district for a continuous period of at least three months immediately preceding the date of registration; but in the case of a person who has attained the age of eighteen years within the period of three months immediately preceding the date of his registration, no such residence qualification shall be required. As you can see that many of the Dominicans living and working in the St. Martin would not qualify to vote. Therefore if they did they would be in direct contravention of the Electors Act. At least 3 women on his list The body of a woman named on a "kill list" found in the home of Mainak Sarkar, the man who shot himself and killed a UCLA professor in a murder-suicide on the university's campus, is at the morgue in Minnesota, KTLA reported Thursday. LAPD chief Charlie Beck told the station that a note found at the crime scene prompted authorities to search Sarkar's residence, where they found the list. Beck said it included several names. One of them was William Klug, the 39-year-old engineering professor found killed alongside Sarkar in an office in one of UCLA's engineering buildings on Wednesday. One woman, whose name has not been made public, was also on the list, according to Beck. When authorities arrived at her residence in Sarkar's home state of Minnesota, they found her dead from a gunshot wound, Beck said. Her connection to Sarkar was not immediately clear. Chief Beck said that after shooting the woman, Sarkar drove from Minnesota to Los Angeles carrying two handguns, multiple rounds of ammunition and several magazines in a backpack. After arriving on the UCLA campus, Sarkar went to Klug's office and shot him dead using multiple rounds, Beck said. The Los Angeles Times reported that Sarkar, who was once Klug's doctoral student, had a long-running antipathy towards him. Sarkar believed Klug stole his computer code and gave it to someone else and posted negative comments about his former professor on social media for months, calling him a "very sick person" in a March 10 post, according to Facebook. Beck said the name of another UCLA professor who was unharmed was also on the list. His identity has not been released, for privacy reasons. Sanders within 2 points of Hillary Clinton in Latest Polls Update: Bernie Sanders is in Santa Monica again tonight, Sunday night, campaigning this time at the Santa Monica Pier. In Culver City, has has been seen at Tanner's Coffee on Sepulveda. The guy is really trying hard, that's for sure! In the last 30 days, the State of California has registered 650,000 new voters, 500,000 Democrats, and 138,000 Republicans. This is a hint that young people are registering, specifically so they can vote for Bernie Sanders. This author predicts he will win the California primary, and surprise the Hillary Clinton campaign. The New York Times and LA Times agree that the Vermont Senator is close to leading Hillary Clinton in the polls. In fact one poll, released May 26 by the Public Policy Institute of California, showed Mrs. Clinton leading Mr. Sanders among likely voters. About half of California voters will have voted by mail prior to the polls even opening on Tuesday, June 7th. But the polling places are also important, and Sanders Voters are much more energized and much more likely to show up than Clinton supporters. This was supposed to be a showdown between two family scions; Hillary of the Clinton's, and Jeb of the Bushes. On the Republican side, "Low Energy Jeb" was almost the first candidate of 17 to drop out. On the Democratic side, ironically, almost the diametric opposite has happened. A total of six major candidates entered the race starting April 12, 2015, when former Secretary of State and New York Senator Hillary Clinton formally announced her second bid for the presidency. She was followed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, former Governor of Maryland Martin O'Malley, former Governor of Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee, former Virginia Senator Jim Webb, and Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig. There was some speculation that incumbent Vice President Joe Biden would also enter the race, but he chose not to run. A draft movement was started to encourage Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren to seek the presidency, but Warren declined to run. The other candidates quickly dropped out of the democratic primary. Prior to the Iowa caucuses on February 1, 2016, Webb (citing frustration with Democratic Party leadership) and Chafee withdrew due to low polling numbers. Lawrence Lessig withdrew after the rules of a debate were changed such that he would no longer qualify to participate.[3] Clinton won Iowa by the closest margin in the history of the caucuses over Sanders, in what would be a rare caucus victory for her. O'Malley suspended his campaign after a distant third-place finish, leaving Clinton and Sanders the only two candidates. The electoral battle turned out to be more competitive than expected, with Sanders winning the New Hampshire primary while Clinton scored victories in the Nevada caucuses and South Carolina primary. On three different Super Tuesdays Clinton secured numerous important wins while Sanders scored various victories in between. Precisely because of the tenacity of the Sanders campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton is perceived as weak, both by the electorate and the Washington elite. The two are neck and neck in the California Democratic primary, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll released today. Among surveyed voters likely to participate in the California primary, the former Secretary of State polled at 49 percent and Sanders at 47 percent. These numbers are similar to those in a poll released last week from PPIC, which showed Clinton at 46 percent and Sanders at 44 percent. Clinton continues to hold a sizable lead over Sanders in her national delegate count, merely 73 delegates away from securing the Democratic nomination. Clinton currently has 2,310 bound delegates and super-delegates who have pledged to vote for Clinton at the Democratic National Convention. The California primary has reasonably been considered the last big prizes of the primary season. Sanders and Clinton will be battling for 546 delegates in the California Democratic primary, scheduled for June 7. Mrs. Clinton will probably garner the number of delegates she needs to win the Democratic nomination after votes are counted in New Jersey, where polls will close before California's because of the difference in time zones. But her loss in California will haunt her campaign into the convention. According to NBC, the poll also showed that Sanders held a 36-percent advantage among voters younger than 45 and a 44-point lead among first-time voters. Even if Clinton wins the primary in California, these voters will continue to play an important role in the general election. Also on June 7, Clinton and Sanders will compete in Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and North Dakota for 235 delegates. Sage View Wins CPA Practice Advisors 2016 Tax & Accounting Technology Innovation Award; Sage Impact Named Finalist ATLANTA, GA (Marketwired) 06/02/16 , the market leader for integrated accounting, payroll and payment systems, announced today that won a 2016 Tax & Accounting Technology Innovation Award from CPA Practice Advisor. The business intelligence app empowers accounting professionals to provide timely insight and guidance to their clients. , which brings together apps and tools accounting professionals need to help them run their practice and serve their clients into one customizable online hub, was named as a finalist for the award. Sage View wins @cpapracadvisor 2016 Innovation Award. Sage Impact named finalist #FlaggCA2016 We are thrilled to have Sage View and Sage Impact recognized for their innovation in the accounting profession, said Jennifer Warawa, EVP of product marketing at Sage. These solutions help accountants move beyond providing the standard tax and compliance work and become the strategic advisor their clients need them to be. Accounting professionals are increasingly reliant on technologies to help them achieve greater control over financial data and for them to offer more beneficial advisory services, said Isaac M. OBannon, managing editor of CPA Practice Advisor. Sage View and Sage Impact are giving accountants more accurate data, as well as the tools to help their small business clients be more successful. Sage View helps improve efficiency, productivity and profitability for both accountants and their clients. It easily connects to Sage or other accounting solutions and provides accounting professionals with dashboards, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), reports and alerts for multiple clients in one place, with data uploaded automatically daily. Its accessible anytime, anywhere and can be customized based on their personal preferences and the needs of their clients. Sage Impact allows accounting professionals to access a variety of apps and tools, including Sage One Accountant Edition, Sage View, email and calendar, educational content, news and Twitter feeds, online business community forums, quick links to the applications and resources they use most, and customer support. It helps accountants save time, be more efficient, and grow their practice while increasing engagement with and adding more value to their clients. The Tax & Accounting Technology Innovation Awards honor new or recently enhanced technologies that benefit tax and accounting professionals and their clients through improved workflow, increased accessibility, enhanced collaboration or other means. Winners and finalists of the Innovation Awards are selected by CPA Practice Advisors editorial board and awards committee, a group of accounting thought leaders and professionals from across the country. The awards were presented on Wednesday, June 1, by CPA Practice Advisor during a reception and ceremony at the California Accounting and Business Show and Conference at the LAX Hilton in Los Angeles. The full Sage product portfolio will be on show at , the worlds largest gathering of entrepreneurs and leaders of Small & Medium Businesses, taking place in Chicago, IL, on July 25-28. Learn more on Learn more about Connect with Sage on Follow Sage News in the Follow Sage on Like Sage on Follow Sage on (@SageNAmerica) Follow Sage on Follow Sage on Sage is the market leader for integrated accounting, payroll and payment systems, supporting the ambition of the worlds innovative and fast-growing businesses. Sage began as a small business in the U.K. 30 years ago and 13,000 colleagues now support millions of entrepreneurs across 23 countries as they power the global economy. We reinvent and simplify business accounting through brilliant technology, working with a thriving community of entrepreneurs, business owners, tradespeople, accountants, partners and developers. And as a FTSE 100 business, we are active in supporting our local communities and invest in making a real difference through the philanthropy of the Sage Foundation. Sage a market leader for integrated accounting, payroll and payment systems, supporting the ambition of the worlds entrepreneurs. 2016 The Sage Group plc or its licensors. All rights reserved. Sage, the Sage logos, and the Sage product and service names mentioned herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of The Sage Group plc or its licensors. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Natalia Fuscoe Sage T: 949-864-7093 Adaptive Insights Positioned as a Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Strategic Corporate Performance Management Solutions PALO ALTO, CA (Marketwired) 06/02/16 , the leader in , today announced that Gartner, Inc. has positioned it as a Leader in its 2016 Magic Quadrant for Strategic Corporate Performance Management Solutions* report. This is the first year that Adaptive Insights has appeared in the Leaders Quadrant of a Gartner Strategic CPM report and marks the first time a cloud-only vendor is in the leaders section of the Strategic CPM Magic Quadrant. Over the past 12 months, Adaptive Insights has both rapidly expanded its customer base and made significant enhancements to its product offerings. The companys Adaptive Suite is now used by more than 3,000 companies in over 85 countries around the world. We believe Adaptive Insights advanced to the Leaders quadrant based on continuous traction with midmarket and enterprise customers, high marks in customer satisfaction, strong execution, and cloud experience, said Tom Bogan, CEO, Adaptive Insights. This is a defining moment for both our company and the industry, as we feel it validates and highlights the profound value that cloud-based solutions are delivering to the office of finance. The 2016 Magic Quadrant for Strategic Corporate Performance Management Solutions report evaluated 16 different software vendors on the following weighted criteria: market share, new license and subscription revenue, product strategy, customer satisfaction, and market understanding. The Gartner report states, SCPM solutions support the office of finances budgeting, planning and forecasting efforts. They also provide profitability modeling and strategy management capabilities. Ultimately, these solutions help CFOs and other business leaders orchestrate organizational performance and manage strategy in a more controlled and transparent manner. For a complimentary copy of the report, please visit . For more information, please visit our . *Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Strategic Corporate Performance Management Solutions, by Christopher Iervolino and John E. Van Decker, May 31, 2016. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartners research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Adaptive Insights is the leader in . Via its software as a service (SaaS) platform, the company offers capabilities for , , , that empower finance, sales, and other business leaders with insight to drive true competitive advantage. The Adaptive Suite is sold direct or is available through Adaptive Insights robust cloud CPM channel ecosystem of 200+ partners, including Accenture, Armanino, BDO, CohnReznick, Intacct, KPMG, McGladrey, Plex Systems, and Workday. NetSuite also offers Adaptive Planning as its NetSuite Financial Planning Module. More than 3,000 companies in 85 countries use Adaptive Insights. These range from midsized companies and nonprofits to large corporations, including AAA, Boston Scientific, CORT, Epcor, Konica Minolta, NetSuite, Philips, P.F. Changs, and Siemens. Adaptive Insights is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif. For more information, visit , the , and follow Adaptive Insights on , , , and . Diane Orr Adaptive Insights 650-422-7334 Bill Rundle Highwire PR 415-963-4174 ext.31 Information Builders Ranks as Leader in Dresner Advisory Services Wisdom of Crowds(R) BI Market Study for Seventh Consecutive Year NEW YORK, NY (Marketwired) 06/03/16 Information Builders, a leader in (BI) and analytics, information integrity, and integration solutions, today announced that the company was rated as a leader in the Dresner Advisory Services 2016 Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study. Information Builders ranked as Leader in Dresner Advisory Services Wisdom of Crowds #BI Market Study The annual Wisdom of Crowds BI Market study examines trends related to BI adoption, implementation goals, and deployment success to provide insight into how organizations are investing in and benefiting from BI and related technologies. This year, Information Builders was recognized as a leader in both the Customer Experience Model and the Vendor Credibility Model, and the company also earned a perfect Recommend score as well. According to the Dresner report, With scores consistently above the entire sample, Information Builders is an overall leader in both the Customer Experience and Vendor Credibility models. It saw key improvements in sales responsiveness and follow-up after the sale, consulting professionalism, experience, continuity, and value. The report marks the seventh consecutive year that Information Builders has been ranked among the top vendors. The report analyzed 28 vendors and measured each against prior year ratings across a range of criteria. This years report also extended to 30 areas by adding reporting, governance, streaming data analysis, cognitive BI, and edge computing. Respondents ranked the company above overall averages in nearly every area. Information Builders WebFOCUS BI platform has consistently achieved leadership status since the reports inception due to its commitment to innovation and product usability, third-party technology integration, and staff product knowledge. In this years BI Market Study, Information Builders performs above average in all categories and demonstrates credibility, value, and integrity to achieve a perfect Recommend score. We commend the company on earning a leadership position for the seventh consecutive year. The 2016 Wisdom of Crowds BI Market Study is a respected benchmark of the current needs and trends in BI across various markets and industries. Our ranking in this years assessment underscores our depth of experience, technical knowledge, and commitment to delivering exceptional customer service. Our technology helps organizations achieve value and deeper insights from their data, enabling positive business outcomes such as cost savings, greater efficiencies, and new market opportunities. For more information, access the complete today. was formed by Howard Dresner, an independent analyst, author, lecturer, and business adviser. Dresner Advisory Services, LLC focuses on creating and sharing thought leadership for business intelligence (BI) and related areas. Information Builders provides solutions for business intelligence (BI), analytics, data integration, and data quality that help drive performance improvements, innovation, and value. Through one set of powerful products, we enable organizations to serve everyone analysts, non-technical users, even partners, customers, and citizens with better data and analytics. Our dedication to customer success is unmatched with thousands of organizations relying on us as their trusted partner. Founded in 1975, Information Builders is headquartered in New York, NY, with global offices, and remains one of the largest independent, privately held companies in the industry. Visit us at , follow us on Twitter at , like us on , and visit our page. Kathleen Moran Information Builders (917) 339-6313 Lillian Dunlap LEWIS (781) 761-4500 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 Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend: Armenia must refrain from occupational policy and begin good neighborly relations with Azerbaijan, Turkey's Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on the eve of his visit to Baku June 3. The minister said that occupational policy of Yerevan led Armenia to being isolated, the TRT Haber news channel reported. He added that it is well known that Armenia shows aggression towards its neigbors, in particular towards Azerbaijan. "Response to Armenia on the line of contact is a bright example of Azerbaijan's success," said Yildirim. 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. 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. Yildirim also said that Turkey, from the first day, has been supporting Azerbaijan and will continue to do so. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: The 4th Congress of World Azerbaijanis kicked off in Baku on June 3, with participation of the country's President Ilham Aliyev. President Aliyev said that while addressing the May 31 meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Astana, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan lied four times. "Everyone is aware of the results of the April battles. It is very surprising that in this situation, the Armenian leadership tries to deceive the world. It tries to deceive its people, and the international community as well," said the president. "As a result, Armenia puts itself in a ridiculous position. First they said that they haven't lost territories, on the contrary they occupied the Azerbaijani lands. Further they said that they have gained victory, then said that they have lost those territories and those lands have no value," said President Aliyev. "Then they said that these territories have value and Azerbaijan should return those lands. If those territories have no value, then why should Azerbaijan return them? They got completely confused," added the president. President Aliyev pointed out that the Armenian leadership exposed itself with its remarks. "The latest example for this was the remarks made by Armenia's president during the recent meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Astana. He said that Azerbaijan carried out these activities in April, the "army of Nagorno-Karabakh" took control of the situation and Azerbaijan asked Russia to ensure the suspension of fighting. He lied four times in one sentence," said President Aliyev. The president pointed out that Armenia was the instigator of the April battles, because it doesn't want peace. When Armenia saw increasing pressure on it regarding the peaceful settlement of the conflict, changing the status quo which means the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied lands, it resorted to provocations, said President Aliyev. "They were attacking our positions before the April battles as well, and not only on the line of contact, but in the other direction, in Gazakh, our serviceman was killed," he said. "They were constantly shelling our villages, launching attacks on our territories." The president recalled that in 2014, Armenians staged another provocation: Armenian military helicopter violated the airspace on the contact line. "The helicopter was shot down and Armenians used this as a pretext. The talks were frozen for a year. That is, Armenians always resort to provocations when they see increasing pressure on them," he added. President Aliyev said the April battles were the similar kind of provocation, adding that the Azerbaijani army gave an adequate response and stopped the enemy. "It was the first lie. The second lie is that the "army of Nagorno-Karabakh" took the situation under control. What kind of control is this if they admit that they have lost 800 hectares of territories? It is a very strange control. First, I should mention that the Azerbaijani army liberated not 800 hectares, but 2,000 hectares of territories from the occupants," said the president. President Aliyev noted that over 2,000 hectares of territories have been liberated from the occupants in Aghdere, the administrative territory of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, Fizuli and Jabrayil districts. "Currently, the Azerbaijan army controls several times larger territory and the Armenian army can't move there," said the president. The third, the "army of Nagorno-Karabakh" doesn't exist, said the president, adding that it is a myth, mythology misleading the international community. "The servicemen serving in the Armenian armed units in Nagorno-Karabakh are Armenian citizens," said the president, adding that 80 percent of them are Armenian citizens and the "army of Nagorno-Karabakh" is a myth. The fourth lie is that allegedly, Azerbaijan asked Russia to ensure the suspension of the April battles, said the president, adding that it is a lie, Azerbaijan hasn't made such a request. President Aliyev noted that after these clashes, Azerbaijan carried out a counteroffensive and immediately gained the needed positions. "After this, the Armenian army attempted to regain those positions throughout 2-3 days. Seeing that they can't succeed, suffer losses and if they do not stop, they will lose more territories, Armenians appealed to Russia," said Azerbaijan's president. President Aliyev noted that the chief of General Staff of Russian Armed Forces made a phone call to the chief of General Staff of Azerbaijani Armed Forces, saying that Armenia asks for restoring the ceasefire and invited the chief of General Staff of Azerbaijani Armed Forces to talks in Moscow. "After this, Russia's president made a phone call to me and put forward the same proposal - to restore the ceasefire and we agreed to restore the ceasefire on April 5," said the president. "It is the reality and I don't know another president who lied four times in one sentence. It should necessarily be included in the Guinness Book of Records as an anti-record. Let Armenia take the first place in the world at least in something," he added. President Aliyev said that the April battles once again showed Azerbaijan's power and the strength of the Azerbaijani army. Proud Boys aimed to disrupt South Bend event. This time they failed. The all-ages drag show audience was protected by two dozen supporters who formed a barrier between the venue and a handful of anti-LGBTQ protesters. Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: Armenia's Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandyan has discussed the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with the OSCE Minsk Group (MG) co-chairs in Paris, RIA Novosti reported June 3 citing Armenian Foreign Ministry's press service. "Nalbandyan discussed with the OSCE MG co-chairs the details of the mediators' proposals on creation of mechanisms to investigate ceasefire violations and increasing the powers of the team of the special representative of the OSCE chairperson-in-office," said the press service. 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, June 3 Trend: Azerbaijani army has liberated not 800 hectares, but 2,000 hectares of territories from the occupants, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev said addressing the 4th Congress of World Azerbaijanis in Baku June 3. President Aliyev noted that over 2,000 hectares of territories have been liberated from the occupants in Aghdere, the administrative territory of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, Fizuli and Jabrayil districts. "Currently, the Azerbaijan army controls several times larger territory and the Armenian army can't move there," said the president. The president pointed out that Armenia was the instigator of the April battles, because it doesn't want peace. When Armenia saw increasing pressure on it regarding the peaceful settlement of the conflict, changing the status quo which means the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied lands, it resorted to provocations, said President Aliyev. "They were attacking our positions before the April battles as well, and not only on the line of contact, but in the other direction, in Gazakh, our serviceman was killed," he said. "They were constantly shelling our villages, launching attacks on our territories." The president recalled that in 2014, Armenians staged another provocation: Armenian military helicopter violated the airspace on the contact line. "The helicopter was shot down and Armenians used this as a pretext. The talks were frozen for a year. That is, Armenians always resort to provocations when they see increasing pressure on them," he added. President Aliyev said the April battles were the similar kind of provocation, adding that the Azerbaijani army gave an adequate response and stopped the enemy. President Aliyev noted that after these clashes, Azerbaijan carried out a counteroffensive and immediately gained the needed positions. "After this, the Armenian army attempted to regain those positions throughout 2-3 days. Seeing that they can't succeed, suffer losses and if they do not stop, they will lose more territories, Armenians appealed to Russia," said Azerbaijan's president. President Aliyev noted that the chief of General Staff of Russian Armed Forces made a phone call to the chief of General Staff of Azerbaijani Armed Forces, saying that Armenia asks for restoring the ceasefire and invited the chief of General Staff of Azerbaijani Armed Forces to talks in Moscow. "After this, Russia's president made a phone call to me and put forward the same proposal - to restore the ceasefire and we agreed to restore the ceasefire on April 5," said the president. 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 with the consent of the sides. 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 the Azerbaijani territory, 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, June 3 Trend: Armenian armed forces have 38 times violated the ceasefire with Azerbaijan on the line of contact over the past 24 hours, said the message of Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry June 3. Armenian army violated ceasefire from the positions near the Chilaburt village of Azerbaijan's Terter district, the Sarijali village of the Aghdam district, the Kuropatkino village of the Khojavand district, and the Garakhanbayli, Gorgan, Ashagi Seyidahmadli villages of the Fizuli district. Armenians also opened fire upon the Azerbaijani army positions from nameless heights in the Khojavand, Fizuli and Jabrayil districts. 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. 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 Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend: So far, there is no exact information on the next meeting of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, said Novruz Mammadov, deputy head of Azerbaijani presidential administration, chief of the administration's foreign relations department, speaking to reporters in Baku June 3. "The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs are working in this direction," said Mammadov. "I believe the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs will cope with this task and organize a meeting," he added. "It is necessary to organize the meeting." 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. BRYCE, Utah Here at the annual Bryce Canyon Astronomy Festival, daytime is just as entertaining as night. On the lawn of the Bryce Canyon National Park Visitor Center, kids stomped on 2-liter soda bottles, which rapidly pumped air through plastic tubes that then sent paper rockets flying sky-high. Well, not quite sky-high, but high enough that the kids cheered. This was one of a handful of daytime activities the park put on as part of its annual astronomy festival. Despite its remote location, Bryce Canyon National Park is a somewhat bustling locale it features a visitor center, a lodge, a restaurant, a general store, a horse corral, multiple picnic areas, cabins and campgrounds. All of this lies within about the first 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) of the park's main road. So it wasn't strange, then, to see a crowd of people stopped outside the visitor center, looking through telescopes and launching paper rockets. [Best Night Sky Events of May 2016 (Stargazing Maps)] During the nighttime stargazing parties at the four-day festival, volunteers from the Salt Lake Astronomical Society (SLAS) set up telescopes for visitors to view planets, galaxies and nebula on top of the already-stunning view available to the naked eye. But a few volunteers also showed up during the day to set up sun-viewing scopes telescopes with filters that show a limited amount of light from the sun, making it possible to see sunspots and other details on the surface. Sun observing during the day at the Bryce Canyon Astronomy Festival. (Image credit: Space.com/Calla Cofield) On Thursday (June 2), the paper rockets and solar scopes were provided by members of an astronomy outreach group called the AstronomUrs. ("The U" is the common nickname for the University of Utah.) Bryce Canyon National Park is located more than 200 miles (320 km) from Las Vegas to the south, or Salt Lake City to the north. Its isolation from city lights, high altitude and low humidity make it an ideal place to see the stars. (On my first night here, I was struck not only by how many stars I could see, but how large the planets and stars appeared, and how vivid their colors were.) Each evening, there are three concurrent astronomy-related talks. One of the venues is an outdoor amphitheater by one of the campgrounds. As the presenters reference specific stars and constellations, they can point them out to the audience. Amateur astronomers setting up telescopes at the Bryce Canyon National Park. Volunteers with the Salt Lake Astronomical Society brought the telescopes to the festival. (Image credit: Calla Cofield/Space.com) The star parties begin around 10:30 p.m. each night in a dirt parking lot a mile from the main road, right next to the rim of Bryce Canyon. Despite the veil of complete darkness, the bustling vibe continues. About 25 telescopes were set up by SLAS volunteers, and every half-hour, a presenter gives a short tour of the visible constellations. Don Colton, the SLAS volunteer coordinator for the festival, told Space.com that at past festivals, the star parties have drawn about 600 to 800 people per night. On Thursday, the crowds began arriving before 10 p.m., and there were easily 600 people there by 11 p.m. Shuttle buses to the star field arrived every 15 minutes, packed to the brim with visitors. The new arrivals would then wander among the telescopes, stopping to peer at some celestial object and hear a bit of astronomy trivia from the volunteers. Jupiter was an early target because it was high in the sky; Mars and Saturn gradually rose up to good altitudes for observation. The Milky Way appeared to the east, lying horizontally across the sky and along the rim of Bryce Canyon. The crowd buzzed, but the surrounding wilderness swallowed up the sound, and the sky took center stage. Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. Europe's Rosetta probe captured this photo of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on June 1, 2016, after recovering from a glitch. Rosetta was just 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the comet when it took the picture. The comet-studying Rosetta spacecraft has bounced back from a glitch that incapacitated it over the weekend, European Space Agency (ESA) officials said. Rosetta which has been orbiting Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko since August 2014 went into a protective "safe mode" on Saturday (May 28), apparently because the spacecraft couldn't lock onto distant target stars and orient itself properly. "We lost contact with the spacecraft on Saturday for nearly 24 hours," Patrick Martin, ESA's Rosetta mission manager, said in an update. "Preliminary analysis by our flight dynamics team suggests that the star trackers locked onto a false star that is, they were confused by comet dust close to the comet, as has been experienced before in the mission." [Photos from Europe's Rosetta Comet Mission] The team eventually managed to reconnect with Rosetta, stabilize the spacecraft and get its science instruments back up and running. "It was an extremely dramatic weekend," Sylvain Lodiot, ESA's Rosetta spacecraft operations manager, said in the same update. Rosetta's star trackers use an autonomous star-pattern-recognition function to manage the probe's orientation. When in the correct position, Rosetta can send and receive signals to and from ground stations on Earth. Comet 67P isn't just a rock in space; it constantly spouts dust and gas that remain in a cloud around the icy object. Although the shedding material reached its peak when 67P passed closest to the sun in August 2015, plenty of material remains, and Rosetta can occasionally mistake the debris for stars. That's what apparently happened over the weekend, when the spacecraft was just 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the surface of the comet. Rosetta went dark, and its science instruments automatically switched off. Mission team members immediately got to work trying to recover the silent probe. Ground stations in Australia and Spain reallocated time originally allotted for ESA's Mars Express orbiter to help the recovery. "After we lost contact, we sent commands 'in the blind,' which successfully tackled the hung-star-tracker issue and brought the spacecraft back into three-axis stabilized safe mode, and we now have contact with the spacecraft again," Lodiot said. Rosetta's handlers were able to start moving the spacecraft into a planned 19-mile (30 kilometers) orbit around the comet on Wednesday (June 1). The final orbital correction maneuver associated with this move should take place late Friday evening (June 3), ESA officials said. ESA plans to end Rosetta's mission with a descent onto the surface of 67P on Sept. 30. The spacecraft's path will only grow more challenging in the lead-up to this grand finale as Rosetta descends closer and closer and the debris cloud gets denser, ESA officials said. "The last six weeks of the mission will be far more challenging for flight dynamics than deploying [the Philae lander] to the surface was in November 2014," Lodiot said. During the Sept. 30 impact, Rosetta's star tracker will not be part of the spacecraft's orbital-control program. But that doesn't mean there won't be other issues. "It is always possible that we could get another safe mode when flying close to the comet like this," Lodiot said. Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTRedd or Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2016 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement All images and articles appearing on Space Media Network have been edited or digitally altered in some way. Any requests to remove copyright material will be acted upon in a timely and appropriate manner. Any attempt to extort money from Space Media Network will be ignored and reported to Australian Law Enforcement Agencies as a potential case of financial fraud involving the use of a telephonic carriage device or postal service. Details added (first version posted on 10:52) Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: The 4th Congress of World Azerbaijanis kicked off in Baku on June 3, with participation of the country's President Ilham Aliyev. President Aliyev noted that addressing the May 31 meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Astana, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan lied four times. "Everyone is aware of the results of the April battles. It is very surprising that in this situation, the Armenian leadership tries to deceive the world. It tries to deceive its people, and the international community as well," said the president. "Now, as a result, Armenia put itself in a laughable position. First they said that they haven't lost territories, then said that on the contrary, they occupied the Azerbaijani lands, further they said that they have gained victory, then said that they have lost those territories and those lands have no value," said President Aliyev. "Then they said that these territories have value and Azerbaijan should return those lands. If those territories have no value, then why should Azerbaijan return them? They got completely confused," added the president. President Aliyev pointed out that the Armenian leadership exposed itself with its remarks. "The latest example for this was the remarks made by Armenia's president during the recent meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Astana. He said that Azerbaijan carried out these activities in April, the "army of Nagorno-Karabakh" took control of the situation and Azerbaijan asked Russia to ensure the suspension of fighting. He lied four times in one sentence," said President Aliyev. The president pointed out that Armenia was the instigator of the April battles, because it doesn't want peace. When Armenia saw increasing pressure on it regarding the peaceful settlement of the conflict, changing the status quo which means the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied lands, it resorted to provocations, said President Aliyev. Details added (first version posted on 10:52) Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: The 4th Congress of World Azerbaijanis kicked off in Baku on June 3, with participation of the country's President Ilham Aliyev. President Aliyev said that while addressing the May 31 meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Astana, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan lied four times. "Everyone is aware of the results of the April battles. It is very surprising that in this situation, the Armenian leadership tries to deceive the world. It tries to deceive its people, and the international community as well," said the president. "As a result, Armenia puts itself in a ridiculous position. First they said that they haven't lost territories, on the contrary they occupied the Azerbaijani lands. Further they said that they have gained victory, then said that they have lost those territories and those lands have no value," said President Aliyev. "Then they said that these territories have value and Azerbaijan should return those lands. If those territories have no value, then why should Azerbaijan return them? They got completely confused," added the president. President Aliyev pointed out that the Armenian leadership exposed itself with its remarks. "The latest example for this was the remarks made by Armenia's president during the recent meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Astana. He said that Azerbaijan carried out these activities in April, the "army of Nagorno-Karabakh" took control of the situation and Azerbaijan asked Russia to ensure the suspension of fighting. He lied four times in one sentence," said President Aliyev. The president pointed out that Armenia was the instigator of the April battles, because it doesn't want peace. When Armenia saw increasing pressure on it regarding the peaceful settlement of the conflict, changing the status quo which means the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied lands, it resorted to provocations, said President Aliyev. "They were attacking our positions before the April battles as well, and not only on the line of contact, but in the other direction, in Gazakh, our serviceman was killed," he said. "They were constantly shelling our villages, launching attacks on our territories." The president recalled that in 2014, Armenians staged another provocation: Armenian military helicopter violated the airspace on the contact line. "The helicopter was shot down and Armenians used this as a pretext. The talks were frozen for a year. That is, Armenians always resort to provocations when they see increasing pressure on them," he added. President Aliyev said the April battles were the similar kind of provocation, adding that the Azerbaijani army gave an adequate response and stopped the enemy. "It was the first lie. The second lie is that the "army of Nagorno-Karabakh" took the situation under control. What kind of control is this if they admit that they have lost 800 hectares of territories? It is a very strange control. First, I should mention that the Azerbaijani army liberated not 800 hectares, but 2,000 hectares of territories from the occupants," said the president. President Aliyev noted that over 2,000 hectares of territories have been liberated from the occupants in Aghdere, the administrative territory of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, Fizuli and Jabrayil districts. "Currently, the Azerbaijan army controls several times larger territory and the Armenian army can't move there," said the president. The third, the "army of Nagorno-Karabakh" doesn't exist, said the president, adding that it is a myth, mythology misleading the international community. "The servicemen serving in the Armenian armed units in Nagorno-Karabakh are Armenian citizens," said the president, adding that 80 percent of them are Armenian citizens and the "army of Nagorno-Karabakh" is a myth. The fourth lie is that allegedly, Azerbaijan asked Russia to ensure the suspension of the April battles, said the president, adding that it is a lie, Azerbaijan hasn't made such a request. President Aliyev noted that after these clashes, Azerbaijan carried out a counteroffensive and immediately gained the needed positions. "After this, the Armenian army attempted to regain those positions throughout 2-3 days. Seeing that they can't succeed, suffer losses and if they do not stop, they will lose more territories, Armenians appealed to Russia," said Azerbaijan's president. President Aliyev noted that the chief of General Staff of Russian Armed Forces made a phone call to the chief of General Staff of Azerbaijani Armed Forces, saying that Armenia asks for restoring the ceasefire and invited the chief of General Staff of Azerbaijani Armed Forces to talks in Moscow. "After this, Russia's president made a phone call to me and put forward the same proposal - to restore the ceasefire and we agreed to restore the ceasefire on April 5," said the president. "It is the reality and I don't know another president who lied four times in one sentence. It should necessarily be included in the Guinness Book of Records as an anti-record. Let Armenia take the first place in the world at least in something," he added. President Aliyev said that the April battles once again showed Azerbaijan's power and the strength of the Azerbaijani army. 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. In the battle between Trump and Clinton, Tapper believes the likely Republican candidate has an edge over his Democratic contender. "It's going to be a very hard-fought battle, and he's going to have some advantages," he says. Tapper draws on his own personal experiences to explain further: "Half of my extended family are voting for Trump, and the other half are not." Tapper worries that with so many wanting to vote for Trump, "The very fact that so many members of my family are voting for him makes me think he is part of a phenomenon a lot of people in Washington, New York, and California don't understand at all." The coming general election, Tapper says, will be "nasty, ugly, horrible." Makwaia Wa Kuhenga/ 03 June 2016/ Daily News-Tanzania BREAKING news: The leader of Western Sahara Independence Movement has died after a long illness. Mohamed Abdul-Aziz (68) was Secretary General of the Polisario Front, which fights for an end of Moroccan rule in Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony annexed by Morocco in 1975. This was the sad news that confronted watchers of international news on global television networks mid this week. But it was even most grievous news for combatants of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el Hamra and Rio de Oro (POLISARIO) and the people of Western Sahara who are resisting Moroccan occupation of their country. For us in the rest of Africa, coming to terms with the news of the passing away of a leader of liberation movement reminded us of the passing away of leader of similar stature such as Samora Machel of Mozambique, Augustine Neto of Angola and other leaders who were facing up to colonial rule of their respective countries. It brought to the fore the popular battle cry of those days in the fight against colonialism, minority rule and apartheid in Africa. That battle cry was: A LUTA CONTINUA the struggle continues. This is the least the people of Africa can say coming to terms with the passing away of a leader of a liberation movement which is battling a strange form of colonialism, one African country colonizing another. For when we reflect on liberation struggles against colonialism in Africa, we see that colonial powers have never been inside Africa, but have come outside the continent. In East Africa, an erstwhile colonial power was Britain as much as France was in West Africa. But the thought that a country in Africa can ever be a colonial power over an-other African country appears strange if not far-fetched. But it has happened with Moroccos claims over the territory of Western Sahara as part of the Kingdom of Morocco. The entire international community has roundly rejected this claim. A couple of months ago, this newspaper had a pleasant surprise for me when I read a news item on its page dedicated to news about Africa. Rang the headline: US DOES NOT RECOGNISE MOROCCOS SOVEREIGNTY OVER WESTERN SAHARA. Went on the item: Washington: The United States of America does not recognise the so-called sovereignty of Morocco over Western Sahara, considered by the US as a non-autonomous territory pending decolonisation, congressmen have stressed here. The story went on: The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission dispelled any doubt about the position of the US government on the Western Sahara issue at hearing devoted to the status of Western Sahara. Declared Democrat John Conyers before American politicians, NGOs and international bodies attending the hearing: We must be clear: the US has not recognised the sovereignty of any state over the territory of Western Sahara considered as a nonautonomous territory pending decolonisation. Conyers, who also cochairs the Sahrawi caucus at the US Congress called on the US government to support the Security Councils proposal to provide the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) with a human rights monitoring mandate. Another US official, Co- President of the Tom Lantos Commission, Mr James Mc Govern, enjoined: Western Sahara is last colony in Africa whose people have been awaiting the self-determination process since 25 years ago. He added: Despite the US-Morocco ties, respect for human rights takes first place over any other interest because this principal represents a key component of security in the region. Now before me is a document on country reports on human rights practices issued by the Department of State of the United States. It details, among other things Moroccan violation of human rights including torture and inhuman treatment of Sahrawi people by Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara. According to reports, the European Union (EU) has also been critical in its relationship with Morocco over the latters continued occupation of Western Sahara. But the African Union (AU) has gone even further. It has granted Western Sahara full membership of the all- African body. Majority of African countries, including Tanzania have recognised the Sahrawi Republic as a sovereign state and the state of Western Sahara (SADR) has a full embassy in Dar es Salaam and a number of other African countries. These steps are an unambiguous message to Morocco that its occupation of Western Sahara is wrong and a gross violation of the rights to independence of another people. As I am writing, vivid memories of the Sahrawi people in their liberation struggle come to mind as I visited them in some part of their territory in the 1980s as a guest of Polisario Front, the liberation movement engaging Morocco in its continued occupation of Western Sahara. It is a rather long time since then, but what I am most gratified is that the Sahrawi people have won the support of not only Africa, but the rest of the international community on their indelible right to independence and self-determination. The stance of the United States has lifted my spirits even higher but with a limitation. How much I wish American leaders extended the same stance to the question of Palestine as they are showing on the rights of the Sahrawi people. What is now Israel was not there before 1948. What existed then was Palestine in map and reality. That Israel was created by force of arms abated by the British Balfour Declaration is an undeniable factor proved by historical record. If Israelis have a right to exist as a free people, so Palestinians deserve the same right. What is happening to Palestinians today is heart-rending to all human beings everywhere. Their Israeli neighbours are daily brutalizing them. Why not have a separate state for the people of Palestine to live side-by-side -- and not a local authority as it is today -- which reminds one of the old Bantustans of the erstwhile former apartheid South Africa? It will be good news indeed for us to hear American congressmen voice as much concern on Western Sahara as on Palestine. Coming to terms with the news of the passing away of the Sahrawi leader, memories of my sojourn in the Sahara Desert with the people of Western Sahara, taking coffee with them in their tents in the desert gives me a heartache on the fact that ones home is ones home regardless of where that is. The people of Western Sahara should all be united in the face of the sad news of the death of their leader to continue the struggle. There is nothing as precious as independence. Fighters in the Polisario Front should close ranks for closer unity of purpose to liberate their motherland; they should reject all attempts at driving a wedge aimed at dividing them against their common goal: freedom of Western Sahara. A Luta Continua! (SPS) 062/090 http://dailynews.co.tz/index.php/columnist/148-makwaia-wa-kuhenga/50305-tribute-to-fallen-polisario-leader-mohamed-abdul-aziz London, June 3, 2016 (SPS) The Western Sahara Campaign UK has mourned the passing away of President of Republic, Secretary General of the Polisario Front, Mohamed Abdelaziz, in a statement. Below is the full text of the statement: It was with great sadness that we learnt of the news of the death of the president of the SADR and Secretary General of the Polisario Front, Mohamed Abdelaziz. In particular we recall his visits to the UK to so ably represent his people's struggle. We are even sadder that he was never able to lead his people back to a free Western Sahara. The unwillingness of the international commmunity to apply international law to resolve the Western Sahara conflict is shameful. We deplore the continued inability of the United Nations Security Council to act so that the Saharawi can express their inalienable right to self-determination. The Western Sahara Campaign remain steadfast in our support for the Saharawi to detemine their own future through our activities in the UK whilst we pause to mourn the death of Mohammed Abdelaziz and remember his contribution to his people's cause. Yours in solidarity Mark Luetchford Chair of Western Sahara Campaign UK (SPS) 062/090 Details added (first version posted on 11:04) Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: Azerbaijani army has liberated not 800 hectares, but 2,000 hectares of territories from the occupants, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev said addressing the 4th Congress of World Azerbaijanis in Baku June 3. President Aliyev noted that over 2,000 hectares of territories have been liberated from the occupants in Aghdere, the administrative territory of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, Fizuli and Jabrayil districts. "Currently, the Azerbaijan army controls several times larger territory and the Armenian army can't move there," said the president. The president pointed out that Armenia was the instigator of the April battles, because it doesn't want peace. When Armenia saw increasing pressure on it regarding the peaceful settlement of the conflict, changing the status quo which means the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied lands, it resorted to provocations, said President Aliyev. "They were attacking our positions before the April battles as well, and not only on the line of contact, but in the other direction, in Gazakh, our serviceman was killed," he said. "They were constantly shelling our villages, launching attacks on our territories." The president recalled that in 2014, Armenians staged another provocation: Armenian military helicopter violated the airspace on the contact line. "The helicopter was shot down and Armenians used this as a pretext. The talks were frozen for a year. That is, Armenians always resort to provocations when they see increasing pressure on them," he added. President Aliyev said the April battles were the similar kind of provocation, adding that the Azerbaijani army gave an adequate response and stopped the enemy. President Aliyev noted that after these clashes, Azerbaijan carried out a counteroffensive and immediately gained the needed positions. "After this, the Armenian army attempted to regain those positions throughout 2-3 days. Seeing that they can't succeed, suffer losses and if they do not stop, they will lose more territories, Armenians appealed to Russia," said Azerbaijan's president. President Aliyev noted that the chief of General Staff of Russian Armed Forces made a phone call to the chief of General Staff of Azerbaijani Armed Forces, saying that Armenia asks for restoring the ceasefire and invited the chief of General Staff of Azerbaijani Armed Forces to talks in Moscow. "After this, Russia's president made a phone call to me and put forward the same proposal - to restore the ceasefire and we agreed to restore the ceasefire on April 5," said the president. 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 with the consent of the sides. 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 the Azerbaijani territory, 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. Tindouf (Algeria), June 3, 2016 (SPS) The corpse of President of the Republic, Secretary General of the Polisario Front, Mohamed Abdelaziz, arrived on Friday at the airport of the Algerian of Tindouf, aboard a private jet. The body was received in Tindouf airport by senior Algerian delegation led by the Algerian Parliament Speaker Abdelkadir Bensaleh, accompanied by Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal, Minister of State, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ramtan Lamamra, Deputy Defense Minister, Chief of staff, Kaid Saleh, Minister of Maghreb, African Affairs and Arabic League, Abdelkader messahel, Minister of Mujahideen, Tayeb Zitouni. The event was attended by Saharawi delegation led by Mr. Ibrahim Ghali, in charge of the secretariat of political organization of the Polisario Front. The audience observed a minute of silennce on the spirit of the martyr, presented condolences to members of his small family and Sahrawi people as a whole. The funeral procession will head to the Saharawi refugee camps, specifically the presidential headquarters to deliver a final glance at the body and receive condolences from foreign delegations, then the body will be transported in a solemn funeral procession passing through the Sahrawi refugee camps with majestic farewell by the people, after that the funeral procession will move towards the liberated town of Bir Lahlou, where the final funeral ceremony and burial of the remains will take place. (SPS) 062/090 Manila, June 3, 2016 (SPS) The Philippine Communist Party has sent a message of condolences to Sahrawi Prime Minister Abdelkader Taleb-Omar over the passing of President of the Republic, Secretary General of the Polisario Front, Mohamed Abdelaziz. The full text of the message: The Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP-1930, the Philippine Communist Party) sends deepest condolences to the government of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), to the Frente Popular de Liberacion de Saguia el Hamra y Rio de Oro (POLISARIO Front), and to the revolutionary people of Western Sahara, over the untimely demise last May 31, at the age of 68, of H.E. Mohamed Abdelaziz, President of the SADR and General Secretary of the POLISARIO Front. President Mohamed Abdelaziz, an outstanding Third World leader, will be remembered for his leading role in the founding in 1972 of the POLISARIO Front, the organizational expression of the struggle of the people of Western Sahara for freedom and independence from the Kingdom of Morocco. Since his election as SADR President in 1982, the SADR had won recognition from the African Union and from more than 80 countries from all over the world. In this connection, we express our commitment to continue supporting the struggle of the Saharawi people for self-determination and independence, until the whole world recognizes the sovereign SADR. Kindly extend our condolences to the family of President Abdelaziz. Very sincerely, ANTONIO E. PARIS General Secretary (SPS) 062/090 The company has signed an agreement with respected Spanish-based veterinary biopharmaceutical specialist CZ Veterinaria S.A. (CZV) to distribute its BLUEVAC BTV8 bluetongue vaccine throughout Great Britain. BLUEVAC BTV8 is an established vaccine, having been used in Europe for a number of years. According to John Atkinson, MSD Animal Health vet and Technical Manager, the availability of BLUEVAC BTV8 is good news for the British livestock industry and demonstrates how pharmaceutical companies are responding to changing disease threats. Bluetongue is an increasing threat to cattle and sheep in Europe, including the UK. This agreement means that we can help meet farmers needs later this summer more quickly than we can fast track manufacture and supply of our own vaccine, he said. MSD Animal health anticipates that supplies of BLUEVAC BTV8 will be available to selected European countries, including the UK, in mid-July. The NCAH provides candidates with a solid background in animal physiology, immunology and pharmacology, nutrition and animal disease control, as well as full knowledge of the legal framework in which licensed veterinary medicines are regulated, promoted and sold. It is formally academically accredited by Harper Adams University, who also host both the training courses and examinations. First prize of 100 went to overall winner Libby Merrylees, Equine Territory Manager in the Vetmedica division of Boehringer Ingelheim. Libby said: Studying for, and achieving, the NOAH qualification meant a great deal to me. I enjoyed the course at Harper Adams, and found studying enjoyable, as it had been a long time since Id taken any formal examinations. The knowledge we gain through this level of study strengthens our confidence, and increases our credibility with our customers." Second overall winner was Rachel Fensome from MSD, with Susan Braithwaite from Bayer Animal Health in 3rd. Three NCAH examinations were held in 2015. Libby Merrylees was top student in the examination taking place in January, with Rachel Fensome from MSD in second place. From the May examination, Susan Braithwaite from Bayer came top and Katie Wray from Dechra came second. And in the September examination, Polly Davies from Elanco was top with Sarah Pickford from Ceva Animal Health in second place. NOAHs Chair, Cat Sayer, who presented the awards, said: Congratulations to our top students this year and indeed, to everyone who has achieved the NCAH qualification in 2015. NOAH has an ongoing commitment towards this academic standard and the essential knowledge it imparts to sales representatives joining our industry. All NOAH members representatives are required to be on the NCAH Register and take the examination within two years of starting their role. We believe the expertise this develops ensures best practice and ethical promotion, she said. About the NCAH Top Students for 2015 Ist place overall and 1st place in January exam: Libby Merrylees Boehringer Ingelheim Libby is Equine Territory Manager in the Vetmedica division of Boehringer Ingelheim, responsible for managing Equine accounts in the North of England and Scotland. The companys main therapy areas are currently endocrinology and respiratory. She has been in the role for almost three years, having previously worked as a pharmaceutical representative within the NHS for twenty five years, including over ten years with Boehringer. Libby says: Studying for, and achieving, the NOAH qualification meant a great deal to me. I enjoyed the course at Harper Adams, and found the stimulation of studying surprisingly enjoyable, as it had been a long time since I took any formal examinations. I feel that the knowledge we attain through this level of study really strengthens our confidence within our roles, and increases our credibility with our customers. I absolutely love my job, and I am proud to work for Boehringer. I feel that we strive to give our equine vets the highest quality support that we can, including excellent CPD for them, as well as quality information for their clients. My aim within my accounts is to be viewed as a trusted partner by my customers, and as somebody who really understands their business. Outside work, she enjoys riding her horse, Frank, and having nice lunches in country pubs. She has two grown up sons, James and Jack, who have no interest in horses at all, but share her love of country pubs! 2nd place overall and 2nd place in January exam: Rachel Fensome Rachel qualified as a Veterinary Nurse in 1994 and joined MSD Animal Health (then Intervet UK Ltd) in 2000 as a Clinical Trials Monitor. In 2007 she left to have her son, returning in 2010 to work for the Veterinary Support Group as a Technical Advisor. In 2013 she moved into the Companion Animal Business Unit as a Practice Development Manager. She is involved in product device training and campaign/technical e-detailing. Rachel says: The NOAH exam gave me a refreshing opportunity to revisit and reflect on many areas of my Veterinary Nursing qualification that I haven't utilised outside of general practice for a number of years. The teaching at Harper Adams University was outstanding and clarified specific detail that I hadn't necessarily understood as well beforehand. I found it an invaluable experience, not only supporting and assisting me in my present role, but because it has encouraged me to continue learning with the sense of achievement gained from this exam. In mid-January, I received a surprising early morning email from a content client. The email read, Hi there. How should we handle this? I immediately started to wake up from my sleepy fog and was a mix of interested and scared to see what came next. The message was followed by an email conversation between my client and a well-known stock-image company. The company claimed that an image used in a blog post was protected by copyright and damages needed to be paid to compensate the photographer for their loss of revenue. My client tried to apologize to the company, and the apology was followed by a response informing them that the only apology fit for this situation was cash. The stock-image company requested a settlement amount of several hundred dollars to repair the damage. My heart sunk. Not only was this a tough situation for my client, but it was also completely my fault. Now a client of mine was faced with a settlement request that felt more like a concrete demand. It became apparent to me that how I decided to handle this situation would dictate our future relationship and could have a drastic impact on my business. There are few business owners, whether serving businesses or consumers, that will avoid ever making a mistake. What sets us apart is how we handle them. Here are the steps I took, along with recommendations for other entrepreneurs caught in a mess they need to clean up. Related: 5 Easy Ways to Improve Client Retention 1. Research the mistake Before making any decisions or responding, you have to invest time into discovering the cause of the problem and how deep the mistake went. If you dont understand how it happened and the extent of the damage done, it will be difficult to know the proper steps needed to repair damage and learn how not to repeat the mistake again. After an hour of research, it was obvious to me that my use of the image would not be categorized as fair use due to having a promotional call to action in the blog post. The company had a legitimate claim. 2. Own the mistake and apologize Agreeing to create content and manage a blog for a client comes with responsibility. The images and written content are my responsibility. If there is blame that comes from something that was in my control, then that falls on me. To some, apologizing is admitting a mistake was made. Well, sometimes you have to just admit it and then work to repair it. An apology was more valuable than keeping my pride and losing this relationship. Related: Customer Retention Begins on the Front Lines 3. If necessary, pay to fix the mistake My goal is to make clients money with content, not carelessly rack up fees for negligent mistakes. So after my research, owning the mistake and apologizing, I had to break out the checkbook. Due to our ongoing monthly work, I requested that the amount be taken out of what the client would owe for the following month. Note: If working with clients, you must consider situations like this when pricing your services. You need to be able to make it right without having to forgo rent for the month. 4. Repair damage with client or customer A fundamental of almost any business vertical is how much more it costs to acquire new customers than to keep old ones. In the end, some relationships will be impossible to repair after damage has been done. But if your business depends on strong, trusting relationships, which mine certainly does, you have to repair mistakes to the best of your abilities, and this goes beyond just making your client financially whole. 5. Deliver beyond initial agreement Making up for a mistake doesnt always make up for a mistake. Despite the extra time, effort and money required on your part to repair damage, your client still went through a situation they didnt bargain for. Do something to go above and beyond your normal working agreement. Consider offering them a significant discount or a little extra work free of charge. This will show your dedication and that their business means more to you than just a check every month. Mistakes happen. What will separate you and your business from the competition is how you manage them. Making a strong effort to own and repair any harm done, even going above and beyond the call of duty, will help to re-establish trust and confidence in your business. Related: 3 Ways Owning Your Mistakes Will Make You Powerful Do your research. Dont be afraid to apologize. And pay up when you are at fault to insure a long healthy business relationship. Related: Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: Extensive information about the Azerbaijani realities should be presented to the international community, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev said addressing the 4th Congress of World Azerbaijanis in Baku June 3. "We try to do that as a state. But much depends on the diaspora organizations as well," said the president. "Our access to foreign media is very limited," said President Aliyev. "It is clear that the diaspora organizations of Armenia, of Armenians have been formed over decades. They have penetrated into the world's leading media structures by various means and are represented there," said the president. "Armenians are seen behind the vast majority of the publications discrediting Azerbaijan, distorting the Azerbaijani realities and slandering us," he said. "We should even more improve our activities in this sphere." First of all, there should be carried out work with media, according to the president. The president noted that a layer of Azerbaijani journalists should be established, which would be represented in various media outlets. "They will defend their homeland and will convey the truth, because the 21st century is the century of information and currently, the information wars exist as a tool and as a weapon." Azerbaijan's president pointed out that currently, bloody clashes are taking place in various parts of the world. "How can we know while being in Baku, or in another city about what is happening there, who is right or who is wrong, who is on the offensive and who on defensive? We can know about this only through media outlets," said President Aliyev. If a coordinated dirty campaign is carried out against any country, the public opinion will eventually also follow the same path, according to the president. "Therefore, it is our weak spot. It is a priority. I think that this issue should be seriously discussed during the congress," he added. The president noted that there should be held talks, discussions on taking necessary measures in various countries in order to convey the Azerbaijani realities and a program should be worked out. "If the Azerbaijani state can in any form provide its support in this issue, we are ready," said President Aliyev. "The main thing is that we should do it in a planned manner, and perhaps, it should be the primary issue in all countries where Azerbaijani diaspora organizations operate," he added. "Naturally, extensive information about the Azerbaijani realities should be presented to the international community." "By taking the advantage of our weakness in the first years of independence, the Armenian diaspora was carrying out a very dirty campaign against us," said President Aliyev. "The integral part of this campaign was to present Azerbaijan as an anti-democratic country, while Armenia as a miserable country living under the conditions of 'blockade', as well as to spread false, fictitious information about the history of Nagorno-Karabakh. To some extent, they managed to do it," said the president. President Aliyev recalled that in 1992, the US Congress adopted a well-known and unfair Section 907 [Section 907 of the United States Freedom Support Act bans any kind of direct United States aid to the Azerbaijani government]. "Imagine that Armenia occupied Azerbaijani lands, committed the Khojaly genocide, expelled people from their native lands, and the Congress adopted this decision," said the president. "The US Congress made an amendment according to which Azerbaijan should be deprived of the US government's aid. Why? Because Azerbaijan keeps Armenia in blockade," said President Aliyev. "I believe that no parliament has seen a more absurd and hypocritical resolution than this one," said the president. "Why is this happening? Because the venal and corrupt congressmen affiliated with the Armenian lobby (some of them still continue this dirty mission) resorted to such a lie." President Aliyev noted that this is while Azerbaijan simply remained silent. "That time we didn't have diaspora. Those who were governing Azerbaijan had not idea what is governance. That's why they led the country to brink of the abyss and started a civil war," said the president. "Currently, that amendment [Section 907] is in force. Great efforts should be made in order to cancel it," he said. "At the initial stage, we were really making great efforts, but then we came to a conclusion that there is no need for this, since this amendment makes no sense. We don't depend on anyone's aid." "We firmly stand on our own feet and can render assistance to those in need. What I want to say is that it was the Armenian provocation," he added. The president pointed out that by using the similar methods, Armenians carry out a dirty campaign against Azerbaijan in various countries. "We should convey the truth about that Nagorno-Karabakh is a historical Azerbaijani land. The Azerbaijani people have been living on these lands for centuries," said President Aliyev. "Armenians were resettled in Nagorno-Karabakh from the Eastern Anatolia and Iran in early 19th century. We all know well why they were resettled there," he added. "There was even erected a monument in Nagorno-Karabakh in 1978 in honor of the 150th anniversary of the Armenians' resettlement in Nagorno-Karabakh." "During the war, Armenians demolished that monument in order to erase this from history. That is to say, this is the reality. It is our historical land. All the toponyms, the names of all cities and villages are of Azerbaijani origin," added the president. "Not only Nagorno-Karabakh, but also the Irevan Khanate, Zengezur and Goycha in Armenia itself are our historical lands," said President Aliyev. He noted that the maps published in the Tsardom of Russia in early 20th century show that 80 percent of all the toponyms are of Azerbaijani origin. "During the Soviet period, they started to gradually change those toponyms, demolished, destroyed our historical monuments, mosques in order to erase history. This is the first issue," said the president. "The second issue is that we were subjected to aggression. This happened in front of the whole world. Twenty percent of our lands - Nagorno-Karabakh and seven districts - are under occupation," said President Aliyev. "A policy of ethnic cleansing was pursued against us." "We have a million refugees and IDPs. Khojaly genocide was committed against Azerbaijanis," said the president. "The UN adopted four resolutions and demanded the withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from the occupied lands." "This is history and the legal aspect of this issue," said the president. "Naturally, no one can deny that. Even the pro-Armenian forces can't deny that, albeit they are trying to do it." "Therefore, this truth should be conveyed. There are enough materials in Azerbaijan on this topic - there are maps, books and historical documents," he added. "Our scholars are carrying out great work and a great scientific work "Irevan Khanate" has been created." "Many are unaware that it is our historical land. But we prove this based on the documents and translate them into foreign languages," he said. "Therefore, it should be the main direction for the diaspora organizations." The president noted that diaspora organizations should open relevant websites in their countries of residence. "These websites should be interesting to the public of these countries, and at the same time these sites should contain truth about Azerbaijan. This should be an ongoing process," said the president. President Aliyev also said that there should be newspapers published in Azerbaijani language in those countries, so that Azerbaijani citizens could read them, including children so they would know their mother tongue, and also publish newspapers in local languages so that the public in those countries would read too. "Again, I'd like to note that we live in the age of information, and the importance of information will only grow," Ilham Aliyev said, adding that Azerbaijan must be ready for it, in particular, considering the Armenian diaspora. "Armenia is a poor country, it cannot find the money even to replenish its budget, not to mention rendering any assistance to someone or abroad," President Aliyev noted. "This is while Azerbaijani government solves and can solve many problems, provides and can provide support. It should simply be done deliberately, this work being implemented efficiently. Thus, the information regarding Azerbaijani realities will be provided in accordance with reality." The president of Azerbaijan went on to add that the most recent example of that is related to the April armed clashes, when Azerbaijan launched a counter-attack on Armenian occupiers and liberated several strategic heights and settlements of its occupied territory. "No matter how much Armenia tried to again spread false information about this fighting, it failed," Ilham Aliyev said. "But some corrupt journalists in close business relations with the Armenian diaspora, we all know their names very well, are trying to blame Azerbaijan and were attempting to picture the April fighting as a great victory of Armenia." The president went on to add that it did not work a Azerbaijan has possibilities too, and can say its word as well. "Everybody knows why it happened. Everyone knows about the results of the April fights. It's very surprising that in this situation the Armenian leadership tries to deceive the world. Armenia was trying to deceive its people, then the world community, and now has put itself in a ridiculous position." Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend: The decision by the German Bundestag (parliament) regarding the so-called Armenian genocide is a manifestation of double standards, as the parliament assembled all of a sudden and came up with the decision unanimously, said Novruz Mammadov, deputy head of Azerbaijani presidential administration, chief of the administration's foreign relations department. He made the remarks speaking to reporters on the resolution adopted by the Bundestag on June 2 recognizing the 1915 events as the "Armenian genocide". Armenia and the Armenian lobby claim that Turkey's predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, committed the so-called genocide against Armenians living in Anatolia in 1915. While strengthening the propaganda of "genocide" in the world, Armenians have achieved its recognition by the parliaments of some countries. "The Bundestag MPs make a decision not considering whether they have information on the issue or not, whether they have conducted an analysis or a study in archives or not," Mammadov said. He added that such steps taken in the current situation are leading to further worsening of international relations. "They [such steps] in no way serve to strengthening of peace, security and stability," said Mammadov. "From this point of view I'd like to say that surely such a policy, which is being currently pursued, is wrong." "I think the fundamentals of such a policy were laid with the adoption of the Section 907 against Azerbaijan by the US Congress in the early 90s, and that was also ridiculous," he added. "Azerbaijani territories were occupied, and this amendment was adopted against Azerbaijan as a result," Mammadov noted, adding that such a step was wrong. W e all know business jargon is obnoxious. Yet, so many of us continue to use (and abuse) annoying buzzwords and cliches. Darlene Price, president of Well Said, Inc., previously told Business Insider that most business language cliches were once a fresh, creative way of expressing a popular thought or common idea. "But because of long, excessive use, each phrase has lost its originality, impact, and even meaning," she said. Thankfully, "buzzword backlash is growing," says Lynn Taylor, a national workplace expert and the author of "Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behaviour and Thrive in Your Job." Here are some of the most common and annoying jargony phrases you're using at work, along with commentary from Taylor: 'Hit the ground running' "This must have come from the same sadist who created, 'Break a leg,'" says Tayor. 'Open up the kimono' "The open kimono phrase should be put away once and for all; stored in a distant space capsule, for everyone's sake," she says. 'At the end of the day' "I've witnessed this phrase in corporate America for many years, but now I fear it could outlive the cockroach," she says. 'Lots of moving parts' "Precisely describes the 'soul' of the business droids who use such vexing language." 'Ciao' "This sign-off just tells me the user still has a weakness for pizza." 'Robust and scalable' "If you don't push back, this is the very future of 'Repeated Buzzword Fury,' and it's not pretty," she warns. 'The enterprise' This jargon has been around forever and it's one of the most annoying phrases. 'Run it up the flagpole' "Can humans successfully run anything up a flagpole other than a flag?" Taylor asks. "Exactly." 'Boil the ocean' "An interesting metaphor suggesting impossibility, but with climate change, it cannot be ruled out," Taylor jokes. "Sadly, this expression can make your blood boil, though." 'Ecosystem' Eliminate it from your workplace vocabulary right now ... please! 'We must move the needle' "A ridiculous, annoying and mechanical way of saying 'shape up' without pointing fingers," she explains. 'Peel the onion' "If they had true feelings and tear ducts, Buzzword Bots would not say this," Taylor jokes. 'Our signals were crossed' In other words: you misunderstood. 'Ping' "People who use jargon like 'ping me!' love complicating things and making them sound foreign, cool and geeky." 'Mission critical' What?! 'Take that off-line' So, you're saying you want to speak in private? Okay, then just say "I want to speak in private." 'Bandwidth' Just use normal words, like "time" or "energy." 'Break a leg' It's well-meaning, but trite and needs a reboot. "It's like saying, 'Good luck oh, and end up in ER!' How about something more heartfelt, like, 'Go for it, and hey no broken bones,'" says Taylor. T he City today breathed a sigh of relief as BPs six-year, $57 billion ordeal over the deadly Gulf of Mexico disaster looked to be coming closer to conclusion. Shares in the company were the Footsies top risers, gaining 8.5p, or more than 2%, to 361.6p after the company agreed to pay $175 million (121 million) to settle claims that it misled shareholders over the size of the oil spill. Eleven people were killed in April 2010 after an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and a rupture of its Macondo oil well. An estimated four million barrels of oil spewed into the sea in what was Americans largest offshore oil spill. The class action lawsuit, brought by investors who bought BPs US-listed shares after the catastrophe, was seen as one of BPs last major legal hurdles related to the spill. The investors argued that BP concealed the severity of the situation to keep its shares on solid ground and that they suffered losses when the spills true extent was revealed. The agreement means the claimants will receive just a fraction of the $2.5 billion they sought and that BP should now avoid a trial in Houston federal court next month. The payment, to be doled out this year and next, comes on top of the $56.4 billion BP had previously set aside the cover the cost of the accident. The bill includes the largest-ever US criminal fine at $4.5 billion and about $11 billion in damages to local businesses and individuals. BPs biggest advance by far came last year, when it agreed to pay $18.7 billion to resolve civil claims brought by the US government, Gulf states and local governments. Progress in the legal disputes stemming from the Deepwater Horizon will be welcome news for BP, which earlier this year revealed a $6.5 billion loss its worst for two decades and thousands of job cuts because of the oil price slump. BP warned, however, that the latest settlement did not bring an end to other securities-related litigation in connection with the Gulf of Mexico spill. The firm is expected to face further legal action from individuals not included in the class action suit. A t last there are clear signs that the UKs impending decision on Brexit is having a real effect on the worlds largest financial market that of US Treasury bonds, which is worth all of $500 billion (347 billion) a day. The spread between UK gilt and US Treasury yields is at it widest this century. Looking at similar two-year dated bonds those that best illustrate investors attitude to short-term risk US bonds yield 0.89% whereas the equivalent gilt yields just 0.37%. That is a premium in favour of the Yanks of 52 basis points a level which has not been seen since 1999. The economic fundamentals do not warrant this huge gap. Only this week, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development cut its forecasts for US growth from 2% to 1.8% and the UKs from 2.1% to 1.7%. Theres not much difference there. But thats the long-term story. For now, the mood of investors worldwide is increasingly dominated by the EU referendum. It is actually demand for the security of UK gilts by domestic and international investors in this country that has driven their prices higher and yields lower as we enter the final three weeks of the campaign. At the same time, the Federal Reserve has started publicly acknowledging the importance of the decision we will make on June 23. Fed governor Daniel Tarullo last night added his voice to that of fellow governor Jerome Powell, stating that Brexit would be a factor he would consider at the next rate-setting meeting on June 14 and 15. Tonight we will hear from the third of the five governors, Lael Brainard, and on Monday Fed chairman Janet Yellen will give her final thoughts ahead of the meeting. The market says the expected rate rise this month has now been shifted to July and after the Brexit vote. Thats not because the US economy is picking up less quickly than the Fed thought so it can ease off. Its because the Fed recognises the scale of the toxic and systemic shock that a Leave vote will have not just on the UK or even Europe but on the global economy. F ormer Marks & Spencer boss Lord Rose stands to make millions from a sale of Time Outs food markets venture when the media group decides to spin off the budding business. Time Out Group this week confirmed plans to raise 90 million through a float on AIM next month with a valuation of between 185 million and 225 million. About 20 million being raised in the listing for which orders close today is earmarked for the international expansion of its food markets, which only operates in Lisbon, where it hosts fashion shows. It plans to open in London and New York. Rose (pictured), who leads the pro-EU Britain Stronger in Europe campaign, chairs the food markets business and has subscribed for shares in the subsidiary. He will split a 14% stake in the recently acquired business with two other senior managers, but his exact stake is unknown. Under the so-called equity incentive plan for Time Out Market seen by the Evening Standard, the retail veteran cannot part with his shares until October 2019 unless all or part of the food markets business is sold or is floated on the stock market. Time Out confirmed that a sale of the food business was a long-term option.Time Out Market is seen as one of the ways the company can combat declining advertising revenues from its famous free magazine. Losses widened to 21 million last year as it invested heavily in the food markets arm. L avish Parisian-style interiors, impeccable service and a destination bar and restaurant mean you could easily hole up in Hotel Pigalle for your whole weekend in Gothenburg. Where is it? Right in the centre of Gothenburg, near to the Central Station and the main shopping area of Magasinsgatan. For the unsure, Gothenburg is Sweden's second city and perches on its west coast. Style: Devilishly sinful, lavishly decadent, sumptuously rich - these are the kind of words you reach for when you arrive at Hotel Pigalle. Step off the main drag of Sodra Hamngatan _try not to get run over by a tram in the process - and into Paris in the early 1900s, Belle Epoque-style. Don't come here if you want all white, muted Scandi interiors, more is more reigns at what is easily Gothenburg's hottest hotel. It's dark and sexy with lashings of velvet, swathes of silk and smatterings of brocade and gold. Expect playfully naughty touches such as the cheeky lift that giggles suggestively as it reaches its destination and breast-baring paintings littering the hallways and bedroms, which seem designed with desire in mind. Facilities: You won't find conference rooms, a gym or spa at this luxury boutique hotel - in fact, it doesn;t really have a reception, you check in at Bar Amuse. What it does have, however, is an enviable rooftop bar - a magnet for hip locals on summer days - a destination restaurant, Atelier, whose weekend brunches are famously good. Come here for character and a charm which draws you in, not facilites. The very well-turned out staff in Bar Amuse Extra-curricular: Gothenburg, nicknamed Little London, is a young, creative city that will delight any Scandi-lover. Design shops, street food markets, world class cuisine and all on the agenda. Shop for Scandi basics at concept store and cafe Vallgatan 12; drool over interiors at Artilleriet, eat fried herring and mash from a van at Magasinsgatan street food market and grab a 'fika' (coffee break) at Da Matteo. Food & Drink: The food is a major drawl. You could quite easily stay within the hotel's walls, eating and drinking your way from breakfast through to dinner and cocktails. The action happens in Atelier, its top floor restaurant whose design aesthetic is a riotous mix of Alice in Wonderland, House of Hackney's floral prints and a verdant greenhouse. Start the day with the generous breakfast buffet that really should be called brunch - very good coffee, mini pastries, freshly squeezed juices, cheeses and hams, yoghurt and granola and eggs are all laid out for you. A velvet green booth at Hotel Pigalle's Atelier restaurant But dinner at Atelier is a must and something special. Ask one of the exquisitely dressed waiters to whip you up a cocktail before moving onto one of its very reasonably priced tasting menus. The Pantry Menu (475 Swedish Krona) gives you an explosion of wonderful and surprising flavours from a sequence of small plates that include combinations such as steak tartare with oystercream and cod with burnt cauliflower. For a really decadent experience - very fitting at Hotel Pigalle - ask for its collection of exceptional wines to be paired to each plate. Which room? There are three categories of room ranging from Petite to Classique to Royale. All are decked out in a similarly seductive fashion with heavy velvet and silk curtains, copious plump pillows and cushions and quirky arrangements of naughty pictures and paintings to set the mood. If you want a bit of extra room for you and your lover as well as a spoiling seating area, push the boat out with a royale room. Bathrooms come in luxurious finishes with gold and marble detailing and feature powerful rainforest showers. A decadent marble-effect bathrooms Best for: couples the rooms are made for romance. Any downsides? Some of the rooms are quite noisy - so if you're a light sleeper, make sure you request one away from the tram lines... When to go? Any time you can shop your way through bad weather. But Gothenburg looks best in the sun when drinking and eating heads outside and onto roofs -especially in August, when the beautiful young things convene for Way Out West, the citys annual music festival. Hotel Pigalle's rooftop Price: from 80 Details: Sodra Hamngatan 2A, 411 06 Goteborg; hotelpigalle.se Find out more about Gothenburg at goteborg.com Follow Kate on Twitter @kate_lough and Facebook @kateloughtravel F our men have been jailed over a plot to flood the streets of London with 50million worth of cocaine. In the early hours of July 21 last year, police swooped on a taxi and a van leaving the Port of Tilbury. Officers found a total of 200 kilograms of high purity cocaine in one of the vehicles and the two male drivers were arrested. Police dog units then pursued three other men across marshland, and found them hiding semi-naked in the undergrowth, having cast off their shoes and outer clothing. Detectives from the Met's Special Intelligence Section (SIS) and Essex Police launched a joint investigation and arrested two more suspects. In February, a further 25 killogrammes of cocaine was seized en route to the network bringing the total seized to 225 kilogrammes. Jailed: Greg Spiers was sentenced to 19 years and Tony Rees was jailed for 15 years / Metropolitan Police Police suspected those arrested of being part of an organised criminal network, who were commercially importating cocaine and supplying it to London drug dealers. Officers have said the 50 million pound wholesale value of the drugs would have generated significant criminal proceeds whilst at the same time increasing drug-related street crime in London. Following a five week trial, four men were sentenced today at Woolwich Crown Court for conspiracy to supply controlled drugs and conspiracy to import controlled drugs. Greg Spiers, 48, of London Road, Billericay, Essex was sentenced to 19 years' imprisonment, and Tony Rees, 31, of Cecil Avenue, Chafford Hundred, Essex was jailed for 15 years. Danny Hannaway, 25, of Lea Road, Grays, Essex was sent to prison for 11 years, and Danny O'Sullivan, 32, of Oxwich Close, Corringham, Essex was sentenced to 12 years and six months' in prison. Speaking after the trial, Detective Inspector Andy Whitewood of the SIS, part of the Met's Organised Crime Command, said: "The success of this operation was the result of our ongoing partnership with the National Crime Agency, UK Border Agency and Essex Police, delivering a significant blow against a sophisticated organised criminal group that was intent on supplying drugs to the most vulnerable communities in London. Drug plot: Danny Hannaway and Danny O'Sullivan were jailed / Metropolitan Police "Cocaine weighing 225 kilograms would have made in excess of 50 million had it reached the street-level sellers it was intended for. "The vast majority of these drugs were destined for the streets of London, where drug sales line the pockets of criminals and blight the communities in which they are sold. "Clearly, substantial levels of crime would need to have been committed to generate the funds necessary to purchase these drugs. This would have included burglary and robbery offences which have a devastating effect on the victims. "Drug supply on our streets brings fear to our communities and the Met is determined to prevent it at every possible opportunity." Details added (first version posted on 13:56) Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: Extensive information about the Azerbaijani realities should be presented to the international community, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev said addressing the 4th Congress of World Azerbaijanis in Baku June 3. "We try to do that as a state. But much depends on the diaspora organizations as well," said the president. "Our access to foreign media is very limited," said President Aliyev. "It is clear that the diaspora organizations of Armenia, of Armenians have been formed over decades. They have penetrated into the world's leading media structures by various means and are represented there," said the president. "Armenians are seen behind the vast majority of the publications discrediting Azerbaijan, distorting the Azerbaijani realities and slandering us," he said. "We should even more improve our activities in this sphere." First of all, there should be carried out work with media, according to the president. The president noted that a layer of Azerbaijani journalists should be established, which would be represented in various media outlets. "They will defend their homeland and will convey the truth, because the 21st century is the century of information and currently, the information wars exist as a tool and as a weapon." Azerbaijan's president pointed out that currently, bloody clashes are taking place in various parts of the world. "How can we know while being in Baku, or in another city about what is happening there, who is right or who is wrong, who is on the offensive and who on defensive? We can know about this only through media outlets," said President Aliyev. If a coordinated dirty campaign is carried out against any country, the public opinion will eventually also follow the same path, according to the president. "Therefore, it is our weak spot. It is a priority. I think that this issue should be seriously discussed during the congress," he added. The president noted that there should be held talks, discussions on taking necessary measures in various countries in order to convey the Azerbaijani realities and a program should be worked out. "If the Azerbaijani state can in any form provide its support in this issue, we are ready," said President Aliyev. "The main thing is that we should do it in a planned manner, and perhaps, it should be the primary issue in all countries where Azerbaijani diaspora organizations operate," he added. "Naturally, extensive information about the Azerbaijani realities should be presented to the international community." "By taking the advantage of our weakness in the first years of independence, the Armenian diaspora was carrying out a very dirty campaign against us," said President Aliyev. "The integral part of this campaign was to present Azerbaijan as an anti-democratic country, while Armenia as a miserable country living under the conditions of 'blockade', as well as to spread false, fictitious information about the history of Nagorno-Karabakh. To some extent, they managed to do it," said the president. President Aliyev recalled that in 1992, the US Congress adopted a well-known and unfair Section 907 [Section 907 of the United States Freedom Support Act bans any kind of direct United States aid to the Azerbaijani government]. "Imagine that Armenia occupied Azerbaijani lands, committed the Khojaly genocide, expelled people from their native lands, and the Congress adopted this decision," said the president. "The US Congress made an amendment according to which Azerbaijan should be deprived of the US government's aid. Why? Because Azerbaijan keeps Armenia in blockade," said President Aliyev. "I believe that no parliament has seen a more absurd and hypocritical resolution than this one," said the president. "Why is this happening? Because the venal and corrupt congressmen affiliated with the Armenian lobby (some of them still continue this dirty mission) resorted to such a lie." A man has who ripped the clothes of an elderly woman in a violent knifepoint burglary has been jailed for more than 12 years. Daniel Awofisan, 23, and an accomplice forced there way into a house in Greenwich on July 1 last year, where an elderly couple were at home. The burglars, who were dressed in brown uniforms, knocked on the door, which was answered by the husband. As soon as he opened the door, one of the robbers grabbed the man and put a knife to his throat. They forced him upstairs and demanded that he open the safe - even though the couple did not have a safe. The robbers threatened to kill the man, who sustained cuts and bruises to his face in the brutal attack. The robbers also threatened to kill his wife, as they held her at knifepoint downstairs. One of the thugs, who police later identified as Awofisan, also ripped off the woman's upper clothing and forced her to the floor, crouching over her. The two burglars then called a minicab and fled the scene. Just a day after the burglary, Awofisan started making bank loan and credit card applications using the couple's details. Police raided his home address on August 14, and found credit and debit cards, a driving licence and a chequebook stolen in the burglary. He was arrested a day later and charged that evening. Awofisan, of Peareswood Road, Erith was found guilty of aggravated burglary and sexual assault on Thursday, May 26 at the Inner London Crown Court. Today he was jailed for ten years for the aggravated burglary and two years, to run consecutively, for the sexual assault, and will remain on the Sex Offenders Register for 10 years. He also pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing articles for use in fraud and five counts of fraud by false representation as a result of loan and credit card applications made following the burglary. No money was obtained from the fraud. He was sentenced to six months each for the seven frauds, to run concurrently. Awofisan was also sentenced to a further four months' consecutive imprisonment for a burglary he committed two days prior to the aggravated burglary on June 28 last year, where he stole 150 from Ladbrokes Bookmakers in the Broadway, Bexleyheath, after he lost a substantial amount of money in a fixed odds gaming machine. Detective Constable Andrew Payne from Greenwich Borough Violent and Organised Crime Unit said: "The elderly victims were subjected to horrific violence and degradation, in what was an isolated and pre-planned attack. "Daniel Awofisan has shown no remorse for his actions. He chose not to give evidence at his trial to account for the overwhelming evidence against him. The jury have convicted Daniel Awofisan on the complex evidence gathered by the enquiry team. "I want to praise the victims in this case, who have shown immense bravery in providing key evidence, thus securing this conviction. "This significant sentence of more than 12 years reflects the seriousness of the offences, and has ensured a dangerous predatory offender will be in prison for a substantial period of time." E-fit: A second man is wanted over the burglary / Metropolitan Police Police are still hunting the second man who took part in the burglary, and have offered up a reward of 10,000. DC Payne said: "The investigation will not stop, We have released an e-fit of a man I am keen to speak with in connection with the attack. "A 10,000 reward for any information that leads to the identification, arrest and prosecution of the people responsible for the aggravated burglary is also being offered. "I would ask anyone who has any information about the offence or knows who the man in the e-fit to get in contact with me or call Crimestoppers anonymously." A man has been charged with murder of a student who was fatally shot in Leyton. Abdi Gutale had taken up a part-time job driving a minicab to fund his education and was in the wrong place at the wrong time when he was gunned down at the wheel, his family said. He was ambushed by gunmen in the early hours of Saturday, May 14 as he drove home after finishing a job. Kingsley Harvey, 25, from Leytonstone was arrested on Wednesday in Barking and has since been charged with Mr Gutale's murder. He will be appear in custody at Thames Magistrates' Court tomorrow. Student: Abdi Gutale was gunned down as he drove a minicab / Metropolitan Police Four other men arrested on suspicion of murder have been bailed pending further enquiries. A 19-year-old man and 31-year-old man who were arrested on suspicion of murder are due to return on bail on a date in early July. A 21-year-old man who was arrested on behalf of the Metropolitan Police Service in the Peterborough area on May 17 has been bailed to return on a date in late July. A 22-year-old man , who was arrested in London on May 18 has also been bailed to return on a date in late July. A gang of gun-runners who shipped an arsenal of weapons into the UK from the same suppliers that were used by the Charlie Hebdo terrorists have been jailed for a total of 91 years. Twenty-two AK47-style machine guns and nine Skorpion sub-machine guns bought on the black market in eastern Europe were smuggling into Britain on a boat down the river Medway. The guns were unloaded at the picturesque Cuxton Marina in Kent, with plans to bury them before they were sold on to the highest bidder. However waiting National Crime Agency officers had tracked the crew across Europe and moved in before the cache of weapons could fall into criminal hands. Judge Michael Topolski QC today said the mastermind of the operation, Harry Shilling, 26, and his three lieutenants Richard Rye, 24, David Payne, 43, and, and Michael Defraine, 30, were all continuing dangers to the public. Text boast: Harry Shilling had sent a message reading 'We now officially gangsters' NCA / NCA Shilling, likened to Usual Suspects villain Keyser Soze during the trial and who had planned to keep some of the guns to strengthen his own drug dealing operation, was jailed for 30 years. He was told by the judge: You were in charge of this carefully planned, well financed and sophisticated operation the sad truth appears to be you gave no thought to, nor cared about, the potentially devastating harm that could have been caused. Defraine, the second in command, was jailed for 27 years, the boat captain Payne was sentenced to 14 and a half years, and Rye, who was Shillings man on the continent was jailed for 14 years and three months. The potential was, in their hands or the hands of others, they would have been used to maim or kill and on a truly horrifying scale, said the judge. It has been said that it can't be exaggerated that guns kill and maim, terrorise and intimidate. That's why criminals want them, want to use them, and why they organise their importation supply and distribution. All four men must serve two thirds of their sentence behind bars before being considered for release, and they will spend an extra five years on licence after being freed due to their ongoing risk to the public. A fifth member of the gang, Christopher Owen, 30, who helped to unload the guns from the boat was sentenced to five years and four months in prison, after the judge accepted he had a limited role in the plot. Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson QC told the Old Bailey trial the guns and bullets smuggled in were capable of unleashing carnage on a terrifying scale, with at least one buyer already lined up. They had been bought for a pittance on the black market in Slovakia but could be sold on for thousands of pounds in the UK. The NCA said the haul was four times the size of the arsenal used in the Paris terror attacks, and linked the supply chain to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in January last year. Rob Lewin, from the NCA, said: I think we have probably got very similar weapons to those that were used in the Charlie Hebdo attack. The same supply route and the same methodology of de-activated and then reactivated. We think they have come from the same source in the same country. The trial has been conducted amid unprecedented level of security, with armed police patrolling outside the courtroom and a visible police presence at the courthouse door. The gang planned on August 10 last year to sail a boat called the Albernina from Boulogne, France, into Kent loaded up with the firearms. They had been in regular phone contact as the guns were being brought across Europe, and when they finally arrived, Shilling boasted in a text: We now officially gangsters. Rye, of Lime Road, Swanley, Payne, of Rochester Road, Halling, and Owen, of Bush Road, Cuxton, pleaded guilty to the plot while Shilling, of Hart Dyke Road, in Swanley, and Defraine, of Franklin Road, Bexleyheath, were convicted after a seven week trial. Following the sentencing hearing, Mr Lewin said: The weapons seized here were hugely powerful and the evidence showed that Shilling and his gang would have had no hesitation in using them. They thought having this kind of firepower made them untouchable, but we were determined to stay one step ahead of them all the way. Shilling and Defraine denied but were convicted of being knowingly concerned in the evasion of a prohibition on importation of the firearms and conspiracy to possess firearms with intent to endanger life. Payne, Rye and Owen pleaded guilty to being knowingly concerned in the evasion of a prohibition on importation of the firearms. Rye and Payne also admitted conspiracy to possess firearms with intent to endanger life. A council has announced it is going to stop spraying its parks with weedkiller that has been linked with health fears. It comes after nearly 500 people signed a petition urging Hammersmith & Fulham to stop spraying with glyphosate-based herbicides and today the council promised to switch to chemical-free alternatives, including foam and steam. Now a growing campaign is urging more London councils to check which pesticides they are using for spraying around parks and schools. Activists have raised cancer fears about glyphosate, which is used in pesticides, although there have been contradictory reports about its carcinogenic risks. The EU recently approved a 12- to 18-month extension on glyphosates use to allow time for further scientific studies. The petition on the 38 Degrees website asked the council to please ban the spraying of glyphosate herbicides on our streets and parks. It said: It is not acceptable that ourselves, our children and the animals we share our community with are being routinely exposed to these chemicals, whether we like it or not. This is a matter of great importance for those of us who care about each others health and the health of our children, our cats, our dogs and all the flora and fauna of this city, of course including our beloved bees. Wesley Harcourt, the cabinet member for environment, said: As is the case at almost all local authorities, glyphosate-based herbicides are currently used by Hammersmith & Fulham council contractors, Quadron and Serco. However, we have been working with contractors for some months to replace these with chemical-free alternatives, such as hot foam and steam. Nick Mole, policy officer at Pesticide Action Network UK, said: We have been campaigning for a long time to make our towns and cities pesticide-free and its fantastic this is now happening in Hammersmith & Fulham. People are rightly concerned about glyphosate and other pesticides it schools, playgrounds and parks and the long-term effects on children. To sign the petition, visit you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/ban-dangerous-pesticides-in-write-your-town-city-here-10 A verage house prices in London have risen above 600,000 for the first time in history, new research has shown. The typical value of a home in Greater London, covering 32 boroughs but excluding the City, now stands at 600,076 according to analysis of Land Registry data. Wealth manager London Central Portfolio, which carried out the research, said property prices in the capital have increased by 14 per cent this year. In the last quarter alone they have risen by a staggering 7.9 per cent, the research found. Record low mortgage rates and decreases in the cost of stamp duty on homes less than 937,000 are helping to push up demand, it said. However, despite the seemingly never ending rise in prices, experts warned of a possible downturn after breaching the 600,000 mark. Naomi Heaton, CEO of London Central Portfolio, said: This one-off anomaly is likely to be steeply eroded next quarter, magnifying the contraction in sales already anticipated across the rest of the year." North London estate agent Jeremy Leaf told the Daily Mail: It is no great surprise that average property prices have breached 600,000 for the first time in Greater London bearing in mind the recent pace of house-price growth. But we expect to see prices softening a little in the central London area as the rush in activity in the earlier part of the year was largely down to investors and second home buyers moving forward their purchases to beat the stamp duty hike at the start of April. However, there is no doubt that the continuing shortage of existing and brand new property will underpin further price rises in the medium to long term.' Figures show the rise in London is not matched across the country as average prices elsewhere dipped by nearly 1 per cent quarter-on-quarter to 235,844. A leading celebrity biographer has died in a fall from the balcony of her riverside flat in south London. Writer and journalist Wendy Leigh, 65, who chronicled the lives of famous stars including David Bowie, Arnold Schwarzenegger and John F Kennedy, was found dead on Sunday after falling from her home close to Battersea Power Station. Ms Leigh, who famously had an affair with press baron Robert Maxwell, had recently spoken of her struggle to come to terms with the death of her mother Marion who passed away at Christmas aged 88. On May 22 she wrote on Facebook: Five months today since my mother, Marion died. I wish I could say it gets easier, but the truth is quite the reverse. A friend told MailOnline: She was obviously struggling with the death of her mother. I'm completely shocked and so many people will be sad to hear the news. She was a warm and funny person. A prolific writer and biographer, Ms Leigh recently wrote a book on David Bowie, which she said delved into his 'uninhibited and voracious sexual appetite'. She also shed light on the Nazi past of Arnolds Schwarzenegger's father in 2008 and wrote bestsellers on John F Kennedy and Patrick Swayze. Most recently, she interviewed Im A Celebrity contestant Lady Colin Campbell for the Mail on Sunday following her exit from the jungle and wrote about plans to sell her London flat. She used to be married and had no children. T wo off duty police officers saved a mans life after they found him unconscious and not breathing on their way home from a night out. PC Emily Richardson from the Road Transport Policing Command and PC Tom Upton, who serves in Hammersmith and Fulham, were in Kingston when they heard commotion in a nearby street. The police officers discovered a man lying unresponsive on the ground and began first aid in an attempt to revive him. PC Richardson carried out six cycles of chest compressions before the man began breathing again. But after he was placed into the recovery position and the police officers were joined by on duty colleagues, the man stopped breathing again. The female police officer carried out CPR again and the man caught his breath as paramedics arrived. The man was stabilised and taken to a major trauma centre where he was placed into intensive care. He is expected to make a full recovery after the ordeal last month. A Kingston Police spokesman said: The officers came in yesterday to see the Borough Commander at Kingston on their day off so he could thank them personally. They will be awarded a commendation at our upcoming awards ceremony. Imagine if they had gone a different way home or not heard the commotion. We would like to publicly thank them for what they did. S adiq Khan faces an acute financial problem following his fares freeze and may cut the number of buses, the former head of Transport for London has indicated. Sir Peter Hendy predicted fewer but faster buses were on the way, both to save money and help unclog the roads. It is the first time since the bruising mayoral contest that any authority has shed fresh light on how Mr Khan may meet his most controversial manifesto commitment, to rule out bus and Tube fare rises until 2020. Writing in the foreword to a new report on the future of buses, Sir Peter predicted: In London, fewer but faster and reliable buses will both solve an acute financial problem for Sadiq Khan (the combination of his fares freeze and the complete removal of subsidy from TfL by 2018) and restart bus passenger growth, allowing his electorate to access work, education, health and leisure more easily. Sir Peter was Londons Transport Commissioner for nine years until he left last year to head Network Rail. The study warned that Londoners could soon be quicker walking than taking the bus because the roads are getting so congested. Author Professor David Begg, a former chairman of the Commission for Integrated Transport, said Mr Khans fares pledge would require measures to speed buses up, including tougher congestion charging for cars and vans. The new Mayor has committed to a fares freeze which raises the question of who is going to pay for bus services in London if its not coming from the taxpayer as passengers will not make up the difference in higher fares, he wrote. The solution is to operate buses more efficiently by improving their speed. Prof Begg, chief executive of Transport Times, said a 24 per cent increase in bus speeds would create enough efficiencies to eliminate the 461 million a year subsidy. But without action on worsening congestion, bus passenger numbers would drop by at least 10 per cent every decade, threatening the bus sector with extinction. Explainer: What are Sadiq Khan's plans for London? Mr Khans office responded: TfL is good but flabby. Sadiq is committed to freezing fares and this will require tightening up the financial efficiency of TfL A spokesperson for TfL said: No cuts to the bus fleets have been considered or discussed with the unions. Unite regional secretary for London Peter Kavanagh said buses were a success story and should be expanded. Unite will be working closely with the Mayor to ensure the capitals bus network expands to meet the needs of Londoners. A pair of London men gunned down in Somalia were trying to rebuild the country of their birth and wipe out corruption, friends and family said today. Mohamoud Mohamed Gure, 61, and Abdullahi Jama, 59, left their families in the UK to work as MPs in Somalias federal parliament four years ago. They were among at least 10 killed at the Ambassador Hotel in the capital Mogadishu on Wednesday when a car bomb was detonated outside and armed men burst in, firing at guests and staff. Militant group al-Shabaab admitted responsibility. Dozens of mourners gathered at Mr Gures home in Holloway, north London, last night to express their sympathies to his wife, five sons and three daughters. His nephew Abdul Derow, 38, told the Standard: He and Abdullahi have been trying to rebuild the country. The terrorists do not like anyone involved in politics. He was trying to help Somalia get stability, peace and order, but now that opportunity cannot happen. Mohamoud knew it was risky but he decided to help and work hard. It was his lifes work to bring peace to Somalia and if anyone could do that, it was him. He was very caring and he also wanted to unite Somali communities in London. His death will affect London as much as it affects Somalia. He said that Mr Jama, who lived in Willesden and graduated with a degree in international politics and human rights from City University in 2009, and Mr Gure were committed to restoring peace in their native country. Abdullahi Jama was killed as members of al-Shabaab stormed his bedroom Mr Gures brother-in-law Abdulkadir Nagi, 50, said he had spoken of his fears for his life during one of his regular visits home last month. He said: Everyone was scared for him but he said, We cant sit back and let the country collapse, someone has to do this job. A Somali woman walks in front of Hotel Ambassador on Maka Al Mukaram Road in Somalia's capital Mogadishu / Feisal Omar /Reuters It was his dream to see a united Somalia, but it cost him his life. His wife was talking to him an hour before the attack, then later she got the worst phone call you could ever get. The attack came days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and as the nation prepares for an election later this year. S ixty start-up investors behind successes from Spotify to Just Eat today warned that Londons position as Europes number one hot-spot for tech is under threat from a Brexit. In a letter to the Evening Standard, they said Silicon Roundabout in Shoreditch could only stay the beating heart of the UK start-up scene with Britain firmly in the EU. The specialist investors, who have pumped 14 billion into hundreds of companies, wrote: For that money to go farthest, rather than to waste, we need to stay inside the European Union. Signatories have helped finance some of the worlds fastest growing household names including Facebook, Skype, Betfair and Dropbox. They include Eileen Burbidge, dubbed the Queen of British Venture Capitalists by business journal Fortune, whose Passion Capital, based in Clerkenwell Road, has 86 million invested in 47 companies mostly in the UK. Others include Sonali De Rycker, of Accel, who raised finance for Wonga, Jan Jammer, of Index Investments who backed food app Just Eat, and Alex Macpherson, of Holborn-based Octopus Ventures, which manages 300 million supporting 50 firms including Zoopla. Letter to the Standard: Jan Hammer / Getty In the hard-hitting letter they warned that the economic shock of Brexit forecast by the IMF and the OECD would hit the sector hard: Start-ups would be the biggest victims of such a shock, endangering the firms that everyone has come to love and rely on, and who will form major elements of our economy in the future. With technology transforming shopping and leisure, they boasted: Silicon Roundabout in east London is the beating heart of the UK start-up scene, and Europes number one start-up hotspot, but across the UK we are now seeing start-ups emerge to solve daily problems. Sonali De Rycker is among bosses warning Europes number one hot-spot Silicon Roundabout is under threat from a Brexit / Getty Rejecting Vote Leaves attacks on EU free movement, they said it gave the UK access to a vast European talent pool of coders, data scientists and others which we do not have enough of domestically. Londons music industry also swung behind Remain today, saying Brexit would endanger millions of album sales across the EU. Nearly one in six albums sold in other EU countries are by UK artists, said the British Phonographic Industry. A survey of members found a two-thirds majority wanting to stay in the EU. TODO: define component type apester However, a survey of business owners found them swinging towards the Leave door. More than a third 35 per cent thought leaving the EU would be better for their business, a rise from 26 per cent in two months, said IFF Research. Matt Barnes, director of IFF Research, said: Previously undecided businesses are swinging towards Brexit. Worries about instability were the biggest reason cited by bosses backing Remain. Loss of sovereignty was cited by a majority of Leave backers. Click here to see the full letter and list of signatories. Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, who is on an official visit to the country, held a one-on-one meeting on June 3. Successful development of brotherly and friendly relations between the two countries in all spheres was noted at the meeting. The importance of Binali Yildirim's visit to Azerbaijan - his first as the Turkish PM, was highlighted. It was also noted that this visit will contribute to the further development of relations. During the meeting the sides exchanged views on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, economic cooperation and issues of mutual interest. One of the worlds most famous bankers today warned jobs could be lost in London if Britain votes to quit the EU. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, stressed that an Out vote would be a terrible deal for Britain. In a hard-hitting intervention in the Brexit debate, he raised the prospect of banks moving jobs out of the City to Frankfurt and Paris. If the UK leaves the EU, we may have no choice but to re-organise our business model here, he said in a speech in Bournemouth. Brexit could mean fewer JP Morgan jobs in the UK and more jobs in Europe. Voicing growing public concerns from across the Atlantic about the risks of Britain splitting from the European Union, Mr Dimon warned about the impact it would have on the economy. My observation of the facts is that a vote to leave would be a terrible deal for the British economy, he argued. At a minimum, a Brexit will result in years of uncertainty and I believe that this uncertainty will hurt the economies of both Britain and the European Union. He also warned of the risk of trade retaliation to Britain, if it quit, by other members of the EU which might itself even break up in the long term. Mr Dimons comments came as it emerged that the powerful US Federal Reserve may delay an interest rate hike in June because of concerns over the risks of economic fall-out if the UK quits the EU. The Feds June 14-15 rate-setting meeting comes just a week before the June 23 referendum on Britains EU membership. Daniel Tarullo, a Fed Board governor, yesterday said Brexit would be a factor he would consider at the June policy meeting and that the British votes impact on markets would be key. While fellow Fed Board governor Jerome Powell said last week. I can imagine the upcoming Brexit vote as presenting a factor in favour of caution about raising rates. In Britain, leaders of some of the countrys biggest firms warned that the giant service sector will be damaged by Brexit. George Osborne, speaking at the event in Bournemouth, claimed as many as 400,000 jobs could be lost. Leave campaigners insist Britain, certainly in the longer term, would thrive outside of the EU. But the Chancellor highlighted the business letter warning of the threat to service industries, which employ more than 25 million people in areas including the financial, professional, retail, hospitality and transport sectors. Bosses who signed it include HSBCs group chairman Douglas Flint, PwC chairman Ian Powell, Ocado chief executive Tim Steiner and BTs chief executive Gavin Patterson. As the leaders of some of Britains biggest service businesses we believe that a vote to leave the EU would damage the UKs thriving service sector and put jobs at risk, they stressed. Hitting out at the Leave campaign, Mr Osborne added: It would be simply dishonest to go on claiming that peoples jobs wont be lost by a vote to leave the EU. But Vote Leaves chairwoman, Labour MP Gisela Stuart, said: This latest attempt to do down the British economy by the Chancellor will convince no one. A report by Frontier Economics for business organisation London First stressed membership of the EUs single market is responsible for up to 68 billion in services exports. M inisters campaigning for Britain to stay in the European Union may secretly vote for Brexit, Iain Duncan Smith claimed today. The former Cabinet minister suggested that some Tory MPs had stayed quiet about quitting the EU in a bid to enhance their own careers. Who knows what will happen inside the polling booth. Maybe all of them will be voting to leave, having said they will remain, he told the Standard. I know one thing for certain: all those ministers who say they are voting to leave, damn well will vote to leave. Thats the difference. Mr Duncan Smith, who resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary in March during a row over benefit cuts, suspects there is quite a lot of pressure from No 10 for ministers to keep quiet. I see politics as a vocation but if you see it as a career then you will stay quiet, he added. The MP for Chingford and Woodford Green visited the Est. India restaurant in London Bridge yesterday as part of a save our curry houses campaign. He warned that Indian restaurants were being starved of high-quality chefs from India and Bangladesh by the Governments biased immigration policy, which caps the number of skilled workers from outside the EU. He said: This is a serious issue. There are 600 curry restaurants closing down because owners cant get the right skilled workers to come in. Criticising David Cameron, he said: We stood for election on getting EU migration down to the tens of thousands. Thats what we stood on and if we didnt believe it then we shouldnt have said it. But he still backed Mr Cameron to stay on and negotiate a quick UK exit if the result goes against the Prime Minister. I think if the public say we should leave, and I hope they do, we need to start discussing the matter with the EU. You dont want to have the hiatus of leadership changes. When the PM was elected he had a mandate for five years and this is a single issue. It doesnt matter if he has campaigned on the other side. He has a duty to go along with the will of the British people, and he will need to work with all of us to get that done. Mr Duncan Smith remained coy about being welcomed back into the Cabinet in the near future: It depends on whats going on. I made my point, I resigned. They reversed the things I wanted to stop, they could have done that before mind you, but they didnt. I want to campaign for proper social justice in a Conservative way. I have not for one day regretted resigning. D eepcut army barracks failed in its duty of care to young recruits, a coroner has found. Brian Barker QC made his remarks at an inquest into the death of young soldier Pte Cheryl James, 18, who was found dead with a bullet wound to the head in 1995. She was one of four young recruits to die at the Army training camp over seven years. A fresh inquest was ordered into her death after High Court judges quashed an open verdict recorded in December 1995.The coroner also said there was a "sexualised" atmosphere at the Surrey barracks. However, he said an allegation that Pte James was forced to have sex the night before her death was "wholly without foundation". Sexualised atmosphere: Deepcut Barracks in Surrey / PA Another soldier told the inquest Pte James was coerced into having sex with a colleague the night before she died. However, the coroner dismissed the claim as "at highest assumption, at its lowest was fantasy". The mother and father of Pte Cheryl James arrive at inquest Recording a narrative verdict, Mr Barker said there were not enough officers at Deepcut to train and look after the young recruits, who were bored and undisciplined as a result and turned to sex and alcohol. The coroner added that it was "unsurprising that trainees turned to each other for stimulation". Coroner: Brian Barker QC / Chris Ratcliffe/Getty Images He said: "While some intermittent training was provided, there were too few permanent staff to deliver it and put into place a structured regime to occupy and meet a duty of care to those young men and women." The inquest heard that while sexual relations were not prohibited between squaddies, there was evidence of inappropriate sexual relationships between commanding officers or instructors and trainees. Mr Barker said the Army accepted that some instructors "saw young females as a sexual challenge". Tragic: Private James Collinson, 17, from Perth, Private Sean Benton from Hastings, East Sussex and Private Geoff Gray, 17, from Hackney, east London, who all died at Deepcut army barracks in Surrey / PA Described as "vivacious and bubbly", the inquest heard Pte James was caught in a love triangle with two men at the time of her death. The hearing was also told she had mixed feelings about being in the Army and often spoke with friends and other recruits about being unhappy and wanting to leave. Shortly before her death, she spoke about shooting herself - but her friends thought this was just "banter", the inquest heard. Coroner Brian Barker QC ruled her death was caused by a "self-inflicted" wound at the inquest at Woking Coroner's Court. I f you are a budding Bear Grylls the latest craze imported from New Zealand known as tramping will be the must have holiday this summer. The trend is a minimalist reaction to luxury camping, or glamping, and the over pampered nature of modern life as holidaymakers attempt to carry everything they need for long hikes, canoe journeys or even music festivals with them at all times. However, lacking the climate of New Zealand Londoners have been forced to go to the extreme with hikers and bikers taking the very minimum of lightweight and reliable kit as they choose to go off grid. The new fascination has been taken up by summer festivals, which have put aside special tramping areas for those brave party-goers that just bring a sleeping bag. Ian Mackintosh At GO Outdoors said the retailer has seen a doubling in sales of hi-tech survival gear such as ultralight sleeping bags and one man tents. P olling cards have been mistakenly sent out to 3,462 people who are not eligible to vote in the referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union, the Electoral Commission has said. The figure could rise further because six local authorities are yet to confirm if they have been affected by the blunder. A problem with elections software used by a number of local authorities in England and Wales meant some non-eligible EU citizens were wrongly sent poll cards. Iain Duncan Smith, the former Work and Pensions Secretary and vocal pro-Brexit campaigner, said in a letter to the Prime Minister that the error could have "profound" implications for the outcome of the referendum. Mr Duncan Smith and fellow senior leave campaigner Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin wrote to the Electoral Commission on Thursday expressing "serious concerns about the conduct of the European Union referendum and its franchise". The issue first emerged on Wednesday after some Polish and German citizens living in the UK said they had been wrongly sent polling cards and postal votes. EU nationals, with the exception of citizens from Ireland, Cyprus and Malta, are barred from voting in the referendum. Any postal votes that have been wrongly issued will be cancelled and names will be removed from electoral registers used at polling stations on 23 June, the watchdog said. An Electoral Commission spokesman said: "The software provider has resolved the issue which means that, if any postal votes have been issued to these electors, they will be cancelled and none of these electors will be shown as eligible on the electoral registers to be used at polling stations on 23 June. "All of the affected electors will also be written to by their local electoral registration officer with an explanation of what happened and will be told that they will not be able to vote at the referendum." Mr Duncan Smith said it was "farcical" that local authorities had been sent a survey asking them how many people were affected in their area and branded the bungle a "scandal". "It's becoming worryingly clear that this scandal is much worse than the Electoral Commission originally said," he said. "Today they admitted that they have no idea of the total number of people affected, and it's almost farcical that they are relying on a survey to try and work it out. "It is absolutely vital that the public can trust the electoral process, so there are urgent and unanswered questions for the commission here. "We need to know exactly how many people were affected, how long have they known for, and what assurances can they give us that they will sort this out? "Of particular concern is the issue of postal votes - many of which which will already have been returned. What measures do they intend to take to ensure than any ballots cast by ineligible voters are not counted?" Z idane Konneh woke up in a body bag moments before he was due to be buried in an Ebola grave. A doctor saw his toe flinch and he was hauled out of the bag, while medics found a weak heartbeat and placed him on IV drips which saved his life. The father-of-two had tested positive for the virus after catching it from family members in June 2014. He lost almost all his family to Ebola. He said: They were about to take me to be buried, but there was an American doctor around and saw part of my body shaking. They found my heartbeat. I was taken from the body bag and given four IV drips at the same time. My wife and children were on the ward and one of my children died. Zidane spent one month and 10 days in quarantine before being declared Ebola-free. He added: I am happy I do not have any health problems now so its okay. I have a small problem with my eye but Ive been given glasses to wear. Zidane, 45, could have been just another statistic, one of about 3,900 deaths from the disease recorded in the west African nation during an 18-month period. It was finally declared Ebola-free in March this year. The World Health Organisation estimates that 7,000 people died in neighbouring Guinea and Liberia but secret burials mean the true number could be much higher across the region. Today Zidane still lives in the same community on the edge of Kenema, Sierra Leones third largest city. Of 39 villagers who contracted the disease, only four survived. With him are his remaining children. Another survivor from the village is Ericson Turay, 25, who is looking after eleven Ebola orphans. He was treated for the disease and declared Ebola-free but lost his father, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins. Now he is head of a new family, of which he is not the biological father, and he braves Kenemas dangerous roads as a motorbike courier to make ends meet. Ericson said: I am supporting 11 children and I am not their father. My mother, father, brother and sister all died. I am now the father of this family. When Ebola struck, Sierra Leone, after enduring 11 years of civil war, had been recovering and was on an upward economic trajectory. Before Ebola I was going to school and my father was trying to put me in university to learn peace and conflict studies. But when Ebola came it all stopped, said Ericson. Street Child, a London-based charity launched in 2008, is supporting both men as they try to rebuild their lives and educate the children in their care. The charity is working with Zidane, Ericson and the other adults to ensure the children can attend school and improve their life chances. It provides funds for school fees, books and uniforms and offers essential psycho-social counselling to those mentally scarred by the outbreak. In Sierra Leone it has a network of social workers embedded in 32 towns and villages, who work with children cast out into the street and reunite them with their extended families. The scale of the rebuilding work is immense. George Quaker, 45, operations head of Street Child in Sierra Leone for the Eastern region, was at the vanguard of the battle against Ebola two years ago. His team stayed in the region to deliver fresh water, chlorine, food and hygiene advice into quarantined communities where some aid workers did not dare visit. He said: Ebola was something new and no one knew what it was. To a large extent it was politicised and many people did not believe it was so serious, like it was a tribal problem. However, it was killing people at a very high speed. Too many people were dying and their deaths were not reported. The slow response was one of the reasons it spread as quickly as it did. There was no stopping it. Ericson Turay, who lost all his parents and siblings to Ebola, with some of the 11 orphans who he now brings up as his own family / Olivia Acland Mr Quaker offered his team of outreach workers a choice to stay and help people, or leave for safety. He said: We went into community hospitals, quarantined homes and through the support of Street Child UK we could provide food and non-food items. We provided chlorine and plastic buckets so people could wash their hands regularly. It was basic health information that would save lives. Among the factors contributing to the spread of the disease were a lack of education and a high rate of illiteracy, which meant public safety messages were often ignored. Tom Dannatt, chief executive and founder of Street Child UK, believes one of the lessons from the outbreak of Ebola, which is transmitted through contact with infected bodily fluids, is the importance of education. He said: Street Childs core issue is around education. The biggest lesson that I took from the Ebola outbreak is the danger of having such an under-educated population. You might think illiteracy is a problem for one person but it had an effect on everyone. That person might engage in dangerous health habits which can endanger your whole family or village. There is a real desire to close that education gap. Street Childs Girls Speak Out appeal aims to ensure that girls voices are heard and their issues confronted. The appeal hopes to raise a minimum of 1 million to help 20,000 children gain a quality education and the chance to stay in school. All donations until July 17 will be doubled by the British government. Visit street-child.co.uk to support the appeal. A Japanese boy who was left in a forest by his parents as punishment has been found alive after surviving for six days on his own. Yamato Tanooka, 7, was discovered in an army training ground hut this morning following a massive search - immediately telling his rescuer he was hungry. The boy's parents said they made him get out of their car on Saturday as punishment for throwing rocks at people and vehicles. When they returned several minutes later he had vanished, sparking a major search operation in an area with a high bear population on Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido. Takayuki Tanooka: 'We went too far' / Kyodo/via Reuters His parents had earlier told police that their son had got lost while they were hiking in order to gather vegetables, but later admitted they had in fact left him as punishment. A military officer said the boy was found when a soldier preparing for drills unlocked the hut, about three miles from where he disappeared. Japanese soldiers search for the boy in the forest / Daisuke Suzuki/Kyodo News via AP Yamato said he had walked through the mountains until he found the unlocked building. He drank water from a nearby tap and slept on mattresses spread over the floor. Speaking outside the hospital where his son was taken, father Takayuki Tanooka said: "The first thing I did was apologise to him for causing such an awful memory for him. Medics treat the boy after he was found dehydrated at an abandoned army camp The first thing I said to him was that I was really sorry. He nodded and said OK, like he understood. In an emotional address, he added: "We have raised him with love all along. I really didn't think it would come to that. We went too far. I thought we were doing it for my son's own good." Apology: The boy's father faces the press / Kyodo/via Reuters The boy suffered dehydration and was given an intravenous drip, but apart from minor scratches on his arms and feet, no serious health risks were found, a doctor who examined him told Kyodo News. He was due to remain in hospital in order to increase his core body temperature. The area where he was missing has been hit by heavy rain, with temperatures dropping to 7C overnight. A doctor who examined him said: "He was incredibly calm considering he had been missing for seven days. He didnt panic at all. His father added: "He looked well and didnt appear to have lost any weight. Hes safe thats the most important thing. Im so relieved. D avid Bowie fans can expect a hoard of new material to be released in the coming years, according to his close friend and producer Tony Visconti. The musician revealed he is in talks with Bowies management team to unearth songs the late star recorded but never released. Visconti worked with Bowie on and off from 1969 until his final album, Blackstar, which was released two days before his death in January. Bowie also told Visconti that he had recorded five other new tracks, intended for a follow-up album. I havent heard those songs yet, Visconti told the Standard. I might actually have to help his managerial company to find them. "I have an idea where he might have recorded them, but there is also a lot of unreleased material from many albums. Visconti, 72, was born in New York and moved to London in 1968. He produced many of Bowies albums, including the trio of records he made during his stint in Berlin. He added: I think its logical that over the next few years, youre going to hear a lot of stuff that you havent heard before. Collaborator: Bowie's friend and producer Tony Visconti / Redferns/Getty Images "Im in talks with his management and his label theres going to be some great Bowie stuff coming out. Visconti has just joined the judging panel of Sky Arts Guitar Star, the talent contest to find the best guitarists in the UK. He believes musical virtuosos have gone out of fashion because of the industrys obsession with manufactured pop music. He said: The reality and talent shows give you the impression that some fairy godmothers going to come along and make you a star. David Bowie - in pictures 1 /28 David Bowie - in pictures Loved up David Bowie and his wife Iman at a charity event in 2011 Getty Images The early years David Bowie, back when he was Davy Jones Getty Images Ziggy Stardust David Bowie performed as his intergalactic alter-ego for the last time at Hammersmith Odeon, 1973 Getty Images Station to station David and his first wife Angie Getty Images Bright lights David Bowie performing at the Isle of Wight Festival in 2004 Getty Images Portrait Bowie at a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival, 1983 AFP/Getty Images Theatricality Bowie in his 'Angel of Death' costume at The Marquee Club, 1973 Getty Images Rock stars David Bowie with Iggy Pop (left) in Germany, 1977 Getty Images Mullet man Bowie perfoming in 1987 Getty Images Fame David Bowie receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, 1997 Getty Images Wembley David Bowie performing at Wembley Stadium in 1999 Getty Images Blondies David Bowie with Debbie Harry at the MEN Arena, 2003 Getty Images Icons David Bowie with Kate Moss at an awards party at New York Public Library, 2005 Getty Images David Bowie at the CFDA Awards, 2005 Getty Images Artists David Bowie with Lou Reed at the Lou Reed NY photography exhibit, 2006 Getty Images Red carpet David Bowie and Iman at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008 Getty Images Angie Bowie, Zowie Bowie (Duncan Jones) and David Bowie (wearing an eyepatch) appear at a press conference at the Amstel Hotel on 7th February 1974 in Amsterdam, Netherlands Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns Singer David Bowie with his wife, model and actress Angela Bowie on January 01, 1974 in London Anwar Hussein/Getty Images David Bowie in Labrynth Duncan Jones and David Bowie at the Tribeca Film Festival, New York, America on 30 April 2009 Rex David Bowie pictured to promote his Black Star album Unfortunately too many people know about Auto-Tune. People have the audacity to audition being not very good and think that someones going to wave the wand. "Id like to dispel that theory by being on a show like Guitar Star. This is a no-frills talent show. I want people to understand that its much more rewarding when you attain some degree of fame through your own efforts; from hard, serious practice. Visconti also attacked the record business, saying: For pop music, they [industry bosses] are terrified to lose that imaginary teen audience, so what theyve been doing is just rehashing the hits of the last three months, he said. TODO: define component type brightcove Oh Britney Spears had a hit, lets get someone else who looks just like Britney and get the same person who wrote it to write another one just like it. Then they started making pop records by committee. Its so ridiculous 15 people in the whole world are making the hits. The same people are writing for Lady Gaga that are writing for everyone else. The team might be in Norway, Sweden, or Los Angeles. People who have never met each other are making hits together and its crazy. If this formula was working, youd see that the record business would be a billion-dollar industry, but its not any more. "This manufactured stuff is selling less and less. A person like Alanis Morissette Jagged Little Pill sold 45 million copies worldwide. "Nowadays if you sell three million, which would put you in the Taylor Swift bracket, the record business people start jumping up and down. These arent sales to congratulate yourself on. In the Sixties up to the Nineties, what sold records was quality. Virtuosity was respected. People like that arent respected any more. But they still exist they walk among us! Guitar Star begins on Sky Arts on June 14. Details added (first version posted on 13:56) Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: Extensive information about the Azerbaijani realities should be presented to the international community, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev said addressing the 4th Congress of World Azerbaijanis in Baku June 3. "We try to do that as a state. But much depends on the diaspora organizations as well," said the president. "Our access to foreign media is very limited," said President Aliyev. "It is clear that the diaspora organizations of Armenia, of Armenians have been formed over decades. They have penetrated into the world's leading media structures by various means and are represented there," said the president. "Armenians are seen behind the vast majority of the publications discrediting Azerbaijan, distorting the Azerbaijani realities and slandering us," he said. "We should even more improve our activities in this sphere." First of all, there should be carried out work with media, according to the president. The president noted that a layer of Azerbaijani journalists should be established, which would be represented in various media outlets. "They will defend their homeland and will convey the truth, because the 21st century is the century of information and currently, the information wars exist as a tool and as a weapon." Azerbaijan's president pointed out that currently, bloody clashes are taking place in various parts of the world. "How can we know while being in Baku, or in another city about what is happening there, who is right or who is wrong, who is on the offensive and who on defensive? We can know about this only through media outlets," said President Aliyev. If a coordinated dirty campaign is carried out against any country, the public opinion will eventually also follow the same path, according to the president. "Therefore, it is our weak spot. It is a priority. I think that this issue should be seriously discussed during the congress," he added. The president noted that there should be held talks, discussions on taking necessary measures in various countries in order to convey the Azerbaijani realities and a program should be worked out. "If the Azerbaijani state can in any form provide its support in this issue, we are ready," said President Aliyev. "The main thing is that we should do it in a planned manner, and perhaps, it should be the primary issue in all countries where Azerbaijani diaspora organizations operate," he added. "Naturally, extensive information about the Azerbaijani realities should be presented to the international community." "By taking the advantage of our weakness in the first years of independence, the Armenian diaspora was carrying out a very dirty campaign against us," said President Aliyev. "The integral part of this campaign was to present Azerbaijan as an anti-democratic country, while Armenia as a miserable country living under the conditions of 'blockade', as well as to spread false, fictitious information about the history of Nagorno-Karabakh. To some extent, they managed to do it," said the president. President Aliyev recalled that in 1992, the US Congress adopted a well-known and unfair Section 907 [Section 907 of the United States Freedom Support Act bans any kind of direct United States aid to the Azerbaijani government]. "Imagine that Armenia occupied Azerbaijani lands, committed the Khojaly genocide, expelled people from their native lands, and the Congress adopted this decision," said the president. "The US Congress made an amendment according to which Azerbaijan should be deprived of the US government's aid. Why? Because Azerbaijan keeps Armenia in blockade," said President Aliyev. "I believe that no parliament has seen a more absurd and hypocritical resolution than this one," said the president. "Why is this happening? Because the venal and corrupt congressmen affiliated with the Armenian lobby (some of them still continue this dirty mission) resorted to such a lie." President Aliyev noted that this is while Azerbaijan simply remained silent. "That time we didn't have diaspora. Those who were governing Azerbaijan had not idea what is governance. That's why they led the country to brink of the abyss and started a civil war," said the president. "Currently, that amendment [Section 907] is in force. Great efforts should be made in order to cancel it," he said. "At the initial stage, we were really making great efforts, but then we came to a conclusion that there is no need for this, since this amendment makes no sense. We don't depend on anyone's aid." "We firmly stand on our own feet and can render assistance to those in need. What I want to say is that it was the Armenian provocation," he added. The president pointed out that by using the similar methods, Armenians carry out a dirty campaign against Azerbaijan in various countries. "We should convey the truth about that Nagorno-Karabakh is a historical Azerbaijani land. The Azerbaijani people have been living on these lands for centuries," said President Aliyev. "Armenians were resettled in Nagorno-Karabakh from the Eastern Anatolia and Iran in early 19th century. We all know well why they were resettled there," he added. "There was even erected a monument in Nagorno-Karabakh in 1978 in honor of the 150th anniversary of the Armenians' resettlement in Nagorno-Karabakh." "During the war, Armenians demolished that monument in order to erase this from history. That is to say, this is the reality. It is our historical land. All the toponyms, the names of all cities and villages are of Azerbaijani origin," added the president. "Not only Nagorno-Karabakh, but also the Irevan Khanate, Zengezur and Goycha in Armenia itself are our historical lands," said President Aliyev. He noted that the maps published in the Tsardom of Russia in early 20th century show that 80 percent of all the toponyms are of Azerbaijani origin. "During the Soviet period, they started to gradually change those toponyms, demolished, destroyed our historical monuments, mosques in order to erase history. This is the first issue," said the president. "The second issue is that we were subjected to aggression. This happened in front of the whole world. Twenty percent of our lands - Nagorno-Karabakh and seven districts - are under occupation," said President Aliyev. "A policy of ethnic cleansing was pursued against us." "We have a million refugees and IDPs. Khojaly genocide was committed against Azerbaijanis," said the president. "The UN adopted four resolutions and demanded the withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from the occupied lands." "This is history and the legal aspect of this issue," said the president. "Naturally, no one can deny that. Even the pro-Armenian forces can't deny that, albeit they are trying to do it." "Therefore, this truth should be conveyed. There are enough materials in Azerbaijan on this topic - there are maps, books and historical documents," he added. "Our scholars are carrying out great work and a great scientific work "Irevan Khanate" has been created." "Many are unaware that it is our historical land. But we prove this based on the documents and translate them into foreign languages," he said. "Therefore, it should be the main direction for the diaspora organizations." Details added (first version posted on 15:39) Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Turkish PM Binali Yildirim met in the expanded format June 3 in Baku. Azerbaijani president welcomed the Turkish delegation. "First of all, on behalf of the Azerbaijani people I'd like to once again cordially congratulate you on your appointment to such a high post of prime minister. I wish you great success on your post," Ilham Aliyev said to Binali Yildirim. "I am very glad that you are making your first official foreign visit to Azerbaijan," the president said. "It makes us very happy, and it is natural. That's a great tradition. This shows once again that the Turkish-Azerbaijani relations are at the highest level," said the president. The president further noted that at the one-on-one meeting the sides had an exchange of views on the settlement of bilateral issues, and as usual, there were no differences in opinions. Our goal is to strengthen and further enhance the Turkish-Azerbaijani unity, said Ilham Aliyev. Azerbaijani president stressed that the two countries successfully cooperate in political, economic, transport sectors, as well as all other areas. "Currently, the relations between Turkey and Azerbaijan are at their peak," Ilham Aliyev noted. "There is also work necessary to be done. Very important transport, energy projects, which are uniting us, are being implemented. I am glad they are being implemented in a timely manner." "I am sure that soon we will launch these significant projects of the world scale," Azerbaijani president added. "Turkish-Azerbaijani relations are of great importance for both our people and our countries, as well as the region. Our unity strengthens stability in the region even more." "I am glad that you have arrived in Azerbaijan accompanied by a large delegation," Ilham Aliyev said to Binali Yildirim. "New Turkish ministers will communicate with Azerbaijani ministers and hold all the necessary negotiations. Once again, welcome to Azerbaijan!" In turn, Yildirim said that according to the existing tradition in Turkey, prime minister of this country makes his first foreign visit to Azerbaijan, following the "One Nation - two states" principle. "I also thank Azerbaijan for the warm welcome and hospitality," Yildirim added. Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: Turkey will not forget Azerbaijan's support in difficult days, in particular, the Azerbaijani president's support when he visited Ankara following the terrorist attack in the country, said Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim. He was making a press statement jointly with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Baku June 3. Yildirim said President Aliyev has won the hearts of the Turkish people by paying the visit to Ankara following the terrorist attack. "By paying the visit to Ankara, President Aliyev has demonstrated to the world the true brotherhood and friendship," he added. "I visited Baku for the first time in 2003," Yildirim further said. "Baku is rapidly developing thanks to President Aliyev." He added that not only Baku, but also other cities of Azerbaijan, are developing rapidly. Binali Yildirim's visit to Azerbaijan, which is his first foreign visit as the Turkish prime minister, began June 3. The Scotts Bluff Area Visitors Bureau has awarded funds for several local events that will take place this summer. The High Plains Riot was awarded $4,500 for their 3 day event to include a Rat Rod Motorcycle Show, poker run and concert. With the event, Scotts Bluff County will also receive publications from a national magazine. The show is in its third year and has seen continued growth in potential traveler numbers. Jeramiah Gardner is the chairman for this new event being held Aug. 19-21 at the Weborg 21 Center. Also receiving funds is the Scotts Bluff Valley Fiber Arts Fair. They were awarded $5,564.00. This event has grown substantially in the past couple of years and sees between 600 and 1,000 visitors. The Fiber Arts Fair gives enthusiasts the opportunity for workshops to include knitting, weaving, crochet, quilting, spinning, felting, yarn dyeing and much more. Projects are available for children and adults. The fair also includes a Marketplace were a diverse group of vendors that will offer the sale of their own personal creations. An extremely popular part of the fair is the interaction that the public gets to have with the animals that provide the fibers that the artists work with. Learn more about llama, alpaca, sheep, angora rabbits, angora goats and yak. This event is scheduled for September 9-10. The final grant recipient is the Circle the Bluffs Pow-Wow. This is a Native American Cultural event with two days packed full of traditional singing and dancing, cultural awareness and educational activities. The event will be held on June 25-26 at the Legacy of the Plains Museum. For more information, pcall The Scotts Bluff Area Visitors Center (308) 633-1808. I dont mind doing pushups, maybe because I never was in the military, where as I understand it pushups are often doled out as discipline, but they still arent exactly my idea of a good time. So when local gym owner Adam Gollas included me in a Facebook challenge to complete 22 pushups a day, for 22 days, to raise awareness for veteran suicide, I agreed, figuring I could get involved with a good cause and add a little exercise to my day. The challenge is part of a movement called 22Kill, described as a global movement bridging the gap between veterans and civilians to build a community of support and empowerment, created by the group Honor Courage Commitment. The 22Kill movement was started after the HCC group learned that on average 22 veterans die by suicide every day. They call it 22 Kill because the Department of Veterans Affairs terms it killed by suicide. Part of that comes from the trauma and wounds of combat, but part of it also comes from the difficulty veterans face assimilating back into society after they are discharged from the service. HCC sees the solution as empowering veterans. They strive to give vets a sense of purpose and help them find roles to use their talents outside of the military. The groups goals are to: Raise awareness to veteran suicide and mental health issues such as Post Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injury Educate the public about current veteran-related topics and issues Recruit Veteran Advocates, aka Battle Buddies Support various veteran empowerment programs; i.e. Honor Courage Commitment, Inc., Equest Hooves for Heroes, Brain Treatment Foundation, Center for Brain Health, REACT, Adaptive Training Foundation, and more. Suicide prevention is a very difficult task to undertake, especially when the general public is unaware of the issue in the first place, according to a statement on www.22kill.com. In order to prevent or fix a problem, one must first learn and understand the problem itself and its causes. By educating ourselves, well be able to identify the triggers that can lead someone to thoughts of suicide, and confront those issues as they come, rather than letting them accumulate into something much worse. Last week, veteran journalist and war correspondent Sebastian Junger released a new book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, where he explores the history of PTSD and the problems returning servicemen and women have in our society compared to those of the past. The book talks about how warriors in tribal societies like the American Indians, societies that were often at war, didnt suffer the same depression and feelings of uselessness that todays warrior face. Its about why for many people war feels better than peace and hardship can turn out to be a great blessing and disasters are sometimes remembered more fondly than weddings or tropical vacations, Junger writes on his website. Humans dont mind duress, in fact they thrive on it. What they mind is not feeling necessary. Junger stated in an interview on National Public Radio that only 10 percent of the U.S. military is engaged in any kind of combat, but roughly half of the U.S. military has applied for some type of disability based on PSTD. He theorizes that those military personnel who havent experienced the trauma of combat but still report PSTD are experiencing a different kind of trauma, one of the alienating experience of coming home to a country where they feel out of place. And the fault is not that of the veterans, according to Junger. Its ours. He argues that our modern society has lost its sense of unity and common purpose and we leave returning veterans to fend for themselves. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary, Junger writes. He also argues in Tribe that when soldiers come home they are unsettled by the infighting within their own country. They were told they were fighting for a unity of purpose, but when they come home that unity of purpose isnt there. The countrys arguing about politicians and a whole raft of other issues, many of which must seem insignificant in the eyes of someone who just went through years of high-stakes, life-or-death experiences. Junger argues that all the divisive rhetoric only makes it more difficult for someone to assimilate. Now that Memorial Day is over, its important that we dont forget that the veterans who have been fighting hard battles at home long after their deployment is over. For more information, visit www.22kill.com or http://www.honorcouragecommitment.org. Details added (first version posted on 16:59) Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: Turkish-Azerbaijani relations are developing on a high level, said Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at the joint press conference with Turkey's Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in Baku on June 3. Recalling that he visited Turkey three times this year and that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Azerbaijan as well, Ilham Aliyev noted that the Turkish-Azerbaijani relations are developing, and are currently on the high level. The president said that in 2016, five high-level meetings betwen Azerbaijan and Turkey were held. Ilham Aliyev further said that it is impossible to find other two countries in the world that would've been so close to one another as Turkey and Azerbaijan. The cooperation and partnership continues in all spheres, we are always near each other, always support each other, act together in international organizations, Ilham Aliyev said. The president stressed that a very important decision has been recently made on the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict within the framework of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit in Turkey, a contact group has been established. "Turkey has played a very important role in adoption of these decisions," said President Ilham Aliyev. "Turkey is always with Azerbaijan in the issue of settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and we are grateful for this support." The Azerbaijani president went on to add that the country's territory recognized by international community has been under occupation for many years, and more than one million of Azerbaijanis became refugees and IDPs. "The policy of ethnic cleansing was carried out against us," President Aliyev said. "As much as 20 percent of our lands have remained under occupation for over 20 years. Despite the fact that international organizations, primarily the UN, adopted the relevant decisions and resolutions, the issue hasn't been solved yet." "The UN adopted four resolutions and these resolutions state that the Armenian armed forces must be immediately and unconditionally withdrawn from the occupied territories," the Azerbaijani president noted. "More than 20 years have passed since these resolutions were adopted, but they remain on paper. Why? That's because of double standards and discrimination." "In some cases, UN resolutions are implemented in a single day," President Aliyev said. "As long as we're concerned, these resolutions haven't been carried out for more than 20 years. No sanctions are applied to the aggressor country. That's injustice." Countries & Areas Search for country or area A Afghanistan Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan B Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burma Burundi C Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Central African Republic Chad Chile China Colombia Comoros Costa Rica Cote dIvoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czechia D Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic E Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia F Fiji Finland France G Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Grenada Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana H Haiti Holy See Honduras Hungary I Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy J Jamaica Japan Jordan K Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan L Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg M Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Morocco Mozambique N Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria North Korea North Macedonia Norway O Oman P Pakistan Palau Palestinian Territories Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Q Qatar R Republic of the Congo Romania Russia Rwanda S Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria T Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Timor-Leste Togo Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Tuvalu U Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom Uruguay Uzbekistan V Vanuatu Venezuela Vietnam Y Yemen Z Zambia Zimbabwe details added (first version posted at 16:49) Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: Azerbaijan immediately condemned the German parliament's unfair and biased resolution, which is based on historical lie, said Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. He made the remarks while making a press statement jointly with the Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in Baku June 3. "Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry had issued a statement, and today, I, as the country's president, once again condemn that provocation built on lies. That is an injustice, double standards and distortion of history," said President Aliyev. President Aliyev reminded that the fourth Congress of World Azerbaijanis is being held in Baku June 3. "The heads of all our diaspora organizations are in Baku today and all our diaspora organizations have been instructed to be constantly close to Turkish diaspora organizations and carry out joint rallies, demonstrations and express protests," the president said. "We must demonstrate our unity both in the region and abroad," the president said. "Of course, this unfair decision, made by the German parliament, is a political order," President Aliyev stressed. "Everyone knows that this decision was made on the basis of a big lie, big Armenian lie. Why was this decision made yesterday? Of course, this decision has political aspects, they play a major role." The president stressed that most likely, the concerned sides want to force Turkey to do something, probably impact Turkey's independent policy. "The Armenian issue is just an excuse, it has become, once again, a tool of big countries," he said. The president further said that Azerbaijan has faced a similar situation. The German parliament adopted a very unfair resolution against Azerbaijan, based on a lie on June 12, 2015 as if human rights, democracy, etc. are violated in Azerbaijan," the president said. "First, it is a lie," the president said. "The democracy is developing and all kinds of freedom are ensured in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has freedom of speech, freedom of press, free Internet. Some 75 percent of the population uses the Internet." "How can the freedom of speech be suppressed in the country with free internet? There is freedom of assembly in Azerbaijan. We see the atrocities being committed in some European countries against the peaceful demonstrators. We see how they are beaten, abused and insulted. This is democracy?" "But people live in Azerbaijan comfortably, in terms of peace, tranquility, freedom, and this, as it turns out, is not democracy," said the president. "Why am I saying this? The first ever European Games took place in Baku on June 12 last year. The German parliament passed the resolution against Azerbaijan on the opening day of the European Games - June 12." The president further said that by doing so, the concerned sides wanted to insult, denigrate and slander Azerbaijan. Speaking about the resolution on the "Armenian genocide", Ilham Aliyev said that Azerbaijan didn't pay attention to it. "I am sure that Turkey and the Turkish people will not pay attention to it either," he said. "This resolution makes no sense. It is just a political order, and those who adopted the resolution made a big mistake, both historical and political." Thursday, 02 June 2016 23:29:53 (GMT+3) | Minera del Norte (Mimosa), a subsidiary of Mexican steelmaker Altos Hornos de Mexico (AHMSA), signed a $25 million loan agreement with the North American Development Bank (BDAN) and the nations mining development trust (FIFOMI) to install an emission control system at AHMSAs steel mill facilities. According to NADB, the emission control system will capture 97 percent of the particulate matter released into the atmosphere by secondary production activities at AHMSAs steel mill facilities in Monclova in the state of Coahuila. The seven-year loan agreement will allow AHMSA to install and operate a control system with a collection capacity of up to 29,333 cubic meters per minute, resulting in 30,070 mt per year. This loan, the first that NADB is providing for a project of this kind in Mexico , will set a precedent for other large industries to take actions to combat air pollution in the border region, said Geronimo Gutierrez, Managing Director at the bank. Construction of the emissions control system should begin in June 2016 and will take about 18 months to complete. On June 1, the US DOC announced its preliminary dumping margins regarding the imports of circular welded carbon-quality steel pipe from Oman , Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Vietnam, stating that the products are being or likely to be, sold in the United States at less than fair value. Friday, 03 June 2016 10:30:57 (GMT+3) | Shanghai Chinese steel producer Baosteels Zhanjiang Steel production base is going to carry out a hot run test on its blast furnace No. 2 system on July 15 this year, according to local media sources in Zhanjiang. Thursday, 02 June 2016 23:50:30 (GMT+3) | Sao Paulo Brazil s interim president, Michel Temer, is expected to replace Vale s CEO, Murilo Ferreira, due to political concerns. Ferreira is said to be an ally of suspended president Dilma Rousseff and former finance minister Guido Mantega, and despite being a privately-held company, state pension funds have seats on Vale s board through Valepar, which owns 56 percent of Vale s voting shares. A similar moved happened when former Vale s president, Roger Agnelli, who died in a plane crash earlier this year, was replaced during Rousseffs first term, following pressure from Brazil s government. Ferreira has been focusing on Vale s cost reduction and debt cutting. Earlier this week, Vale admitted it could sell a stake at its iron ore business. Thursday, 02 June 2016 00:03:21 (GMT+3) | San Diego According to Statistics Canada , in the first quarter of 2016 total investment in residential construction rose 2.1 percent compared with the same quarter in 2015 to $26.1 billion. This marked the ninth consecutive year-over-year gain. The increase came from all components, except acquisition costs related to new dwelling units and semi-detached dwellings. Higher investment in apartment and apartment-condominium building construction (up 21.2 percent to $4.1 billion) was responsible for much of the advance at the national level. At the provincial level, increases were recorded in four provinces, with Ontario and British Columbia registering the largest gains (11.3 percent and 10.1 percent, respectively). On June 2, Chinese state-owned China Minmetals Corporation (CMC) and state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) came together for a meeting in Beijing to discuss the overall implementation of the reorganization of the two companies, the plans for which were approved by China s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) on December 8, 2015. According to the reorganization plans, MCC will be merged with China Minmetals Corporation (CMC), becoming the wholly-owned subsidiary of the latter. Thursday, 02 June 2016 23:28:46 (GMT+3) | Sao Paulo Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation (NSSMC), a major shareholder at Brazil flats producer Usiminas , denied this week a media report that said a split could occur at Usiminas , as previously reported by SteelOrbis. NSSMC has opposed the appointment of Sergio Leite, a candidate supported by co-controlling shareholder Techint, as Usiminas CEO. NSSMC said it will appeal the decision. The CEO change was said to have accelerated NSSMCs desire to split the assets of the Brazil flats producer. NSSMC has not made such a decision, the company said on Wednesday, while referring to the alleged company split. The split has been seen as an alternative to end legal disputes involving the two shareholders. None of the companies have confirmed or denied plans to split the company. Friday, 03 June 2016 15:41:40 (GMT+3) | Istanbul Iron ore production at Peru s only producer, Shougang Hierro Peru , fell by 1.04 percent year on year in April this year, according to data issued by the countrys mines and energy ministry. Shougang produced 661,148 mt of the commodity in April, down from 668,045 mt in the same month of 2015. Details added (first version posted on 16:59) Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: Turkish-Azerbaijani relations are developing on a high level, said Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at the joint press conference with Turkey's Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in Baku on June 3. Recalling that he visited Turkey three times this year and that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Azerbaijan as well, Ilham Aliyev noted that the Turkish-Azerbaijani relations are developing, and are currently on the high level. The president said that in 2016, five high-level meetings betwen Azerbaijan and Turkey were held. Ilham Aliyev further said that it is impossible to find another two countries in the world that would've been so close to one another as Turkey and Azerbaijan. The cooperation and partnership continues in all spheres, we are always near each other, always support each other, together engage in activity in international organizations, Ilham Aliyev said. The president of Azerbaijan said that a very important decision has been recently made on the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict within the framework of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit in Turkey, a contact group has been established. "Turkey has played a very important role in adoption of these decisions," said President Ilham Aliyev. "Turkey is always with Azerbaijan in the issue of settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and we are grateful for this support." The Azerbaijani president went on to add that the country's territory recognized by international community has been under occupation for many years, and more than one million of Azerbaijanis became refugees and IDPs. "The policy of ethnic cleansing was carried out against us," President Aliyev said. "As much as 20 percent of our lands have remained under occupation for over 20 years. Despite the fact that international organizations, primarily the UN, adopted the relevant decisions and resolutions, the issue hasn't been solved yet." "The UN adopted four resolutions and these resolutions state that the Armenian armed forces must be immediately and unconditionally withdrawn from the occupied territories," the Azerbaijani president noted. "More than 20 years have passed since these resolutions were adopted, but they remain on paper. Why? That's because of double standards and discrimination." "In some cases, UN resolutions are implemented in a single day," President Aliyev said. "As long as we're concerned, these resolutions haven't been carried out for more than 20 years. No sanctions are applied to the aggressor country. That's injustice." President Aliyev noted that Azerbaijan strengthens its principled position and has gained political, economic and military advantage. "The April fighting has once again demonstrated this," he said. "Armenia's military provocation didn't remain unanswered, Azerbaijani army launched a counter-offensive and more than 20 square kilometers of land was cleared of invaders," Ilham Aliyev added. As a result of this counter-offensive, even a greater territory than mentioned, went under control of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces, the Azerbaijani president said. "We will put up efforts so that this issue is settled peacefully, through negotiations," President Aliyev noted. "The status quo is unacceptable and must be changed. Changing the status quo means withdrawal of the Armenian armed units from our occupied territories." He noted that Azerbaijan supports Turkey in all issues, just as Turkey regrets about the injustice in some cases shown against that country. Ilham Aliyev said that at the same time, Azerbaijan has its say. Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau has announced that in 2015 levels of chemical oxygen demand (COD), ammoniacal nitrogen, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide in Shanghai were down 25.1 percent, 18.4 percent, 33.1 percent and 32.1 percent compared to 2010 levels, respectively. Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau has stated in its Shanghai Environmental Protection and Ecological Construction report for China s 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20), which will be submitted to Shanghai municipal government for approval, that it plans to primarily focus on industry transformation and upgrading, including strict environmental conditions, prohibition of high-pollution projects - for instance, prohibition of construction of new steel capacities, stronger supervision of enterprises, development of environmental protection industries, and cultivation of green low-carbon industries. Qinghai Province-based Chinese steelmaker Xining Special Steel Co. has announced that it has inked a strategic agreement with Chinese state-owned company China North Locomotive and Rolling Stock Industry Group Corporation Limited ( China CNR). Accordingly, the two sides will establish a strategic partnership in the fields of research and development for new products and finished steel supply. According to market sources, a Turkish steel producers hot rolled coil ( HRC ) offers to the export markets are at $480-490/mt FOB. According to market sources, over the past two weeks a Ukrainian steel producers offers to Europe for 0.25"-12" grade B seamless pipes as per ASTM A53 or API have remained stable at $660-710/mt FCA, while the producers price offers to the Middle East for the same product have also remained unchanged, still in the range of $730-760/mt FOB. The bodies of the four members of a helicopter of the SMURD emergency rescue provider that crashed in Moldova on a rescue mission reached Romania on Friday on the way to Iasi. The coffins of doctor Mihaela Dumea, nurse Gabriel Sandu and Commodore Doru Gavril will be displayed at the St, Spiridon Church of Iasi, while the coffin with the fourth body, of copilot Voicu Socae, will be hauled to Bacau. Sandu, 40, was one of Romania's most experienced emergency care nurses, having worked with SMURD since 2005. Primary care physician Dumea had been working with SMURD Iasi for five years while teaching emergency medicine as lecturer to students. The EC 135 helicopter that went down on Thursday in Moldova had been acquired by the Romanian Health Ministry in 2014 for 5 million euros. It was with SMURD since 2014, having undergone a last inspection in 2016. Pilot Doru Gavril, 53, had a helicopter flight experience of more than 4,000 hours. He was the commander of the Iasi Special Aviation Unit. Co-pilot Socae, 36, had an experience of more than 1,480 flight hours. This was the second tragedy to have stricken SMURD Iasi over the past 10 years. In January 2006, two pilots and two medical staff were killed as a SMURD Iasi helicopter carrying them aboard crashed near the airport. Their Eurocopter EC 135 crashed 10 minutes into the flight, about one and a half kilometres away from the control tower, close to a gendarmerie unit. Agerpres details added (first version posted at 16:49) Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: Azerbaijan immediately condemned the German parliament's unfair and biased resolution, which is based on historical lie, said Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. He made the remarks while making a press statement jointly with the Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in Baku June 3. "Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry had issued a statement, and today, I, as the country's president, once again condemn that provocation built on lies. That is an injustice, double standards and distortion of history," said President Aliyev. President Aliyev reminded that the fourth Congress of World Azerbaijanis is being held in Baku June 3. "The heads of all our diaspora organizations are in Baku today and all our diaspora organizations have been instructed to be constantly close to Turkish diaspora organizations and carry out joint rallies, demonstrations and express protests," the president said. "We must demonstrate our unity both in the region and abroad," the president said. "Of course, this unfair decision, made by the German parliament, is a political order," President Aliyev stressed. "Everyone knows that this decision was made on the basis of a big lie, big Armenian lie. Why was this decision made yesterday? Of course, this decision has political aspects, they play a major role." The president stressed that most likely, the concerned sides want to force Turkey to do something, probably impact Turkey's independent policy. "The Armenian issue is just an excuse, it has become, once again, a tool of big countries," he said. The president further said that Azerbaijan has faced a similar situation. The German parliament adopted a very unfair resolution against Azerbaijan, based on a lie on June 12, 2015 as if human rights, democracy, etc. are violated in Azerbaijan," the president said. "First, it is a lie," the president said. "The democracy is developing and all kinds of freedom are ensured in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has freedom of speech, freedom of press, free Internet. Some 75 percent of the population uses the Internet." "How can the freedom of speech be suppressed in the country with free internet? There is freedom of assembly in Azerbaijan. We see the atrocities being committed in some European countries against the peaceful demonstrators. We see how they are beaten, abused and insulted. This is democracy?" "But people live in Azerbaijan comfortably, in terms of peace, tranquility, freedom, and this, as it turns out, is not democracy," said the president. "Why am I saying this? The first ever European Games took place in Baku on June 12 last year. The German parliament passed the resolution against Azerbaijan on the opening day of the European Games - June 12." The president further said that by doing so, the concerned sides wanted to insult, denigrate and slander Azerbaijan. Speaking about the resolution on the "Armenian genocide", Ilham Aliyev said that Azerbaijan didn't pay attention to it. "I am sure that Turkey and the Turkish people will not pay attention to it either," he said. "This resolution makes no sense. It is just a political order, and those who adopted the resolution made a big mistake, both historical and political." President Aliyev went on to add that Azerbaijan is by Turkey's side, as always. "We will further strengthen our unity," the president said. "These provocations against our countries once again testify that only together we can become stronger. Today, the Azerbaijan-Turkey unity is a factor not only in the region, but in the world as well." "No one can deny this factor. We are uniting our power, we realize joint projects. We have once again discussed all current joint projects with the Turkish prime minister today," President Aliyev said. President Ilham Aliyev recalled that Azerbaijan and Turkey started to build the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway when Prime Minister Yildirim was the transport minister, and he applied great efforts for the construction of this road. It will be commissioned in the near future," said the president. The president added that the energy projects have turned into global ones and Azerbaijan and Turkey jointly implement them. "Together with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, we launched the TANAP project in Istanbul in 2012," the president said. "If we had not taken this responsibility, the issues of energy security would have been up for a debate. We've taken on both political and economic responsibility and financial commitments as well." Ilham Aliyev added that the Southern Gas Corridor project worth $45 billion is being implemented. "This will further unite us, bring stability to the region," the president said, adding that the regional countries will maintain closer relations with each other. "In short, our current projects make us stronger and confirm the reliability of the region and its readiness for cooperation and partnership." "In the future, we will strengthen our unity," the president said. "Today, Turkey is a powerful country worldwide. Turkey is a G-20 member and despite crises is developing and becoming stronger." The president stressed that Turkey's strength is also Azerbaijan's strength. "We are pleased with Turkey's success as our own," the president said. "I am sure that today's visit, meetings, discussions will create excellent conditions for the coming years." Add cybersecurity to the list of fields where St. Louis is trying to build new businesses using an accelerator model. With the creation of SixThirty Cyber, which plans to invest $10 million over the next five years, the St. Louis area has at least six business accelerator funds. Based on a survey the Brookings Institution published in February, the only U.S. cities with more are San Francisco, New York, Boston, Chicago and San Jose, Calif. Accelerator programs vary in size and focus, but they all invest in early-stage firms and put them through a period of intensive mentoring. According to the Brookings study, an accelerator can help a community by concentrating entrepreneurial energy and generating vibrancy around innovation. If thats true, St. Louis is more vibrant than most places. The five existing accelerators have financed more than 120 companies in sectors ranging from technology to agriculture to sports. SixThirty Cyber is a second fund from the organizers of SixThirty, which was launched in 2013 to focus on financial technology startups. The idea then was to capitalize on St. Louis strengths by connecting entrepreneurs with such large firms as MasterCard and Wells Fargo Advisors. Jay DeLong, managing partner of the new fund, said SixThirty was seeing a growing number of applications from firms specializing in information security. It invested in some of them, such as Rippleshot, a Chicago company that detects payment card data breaches, but the funds managers realized that the online security opportunity extends well beyond the financial sector. In fact, cybersecurity is a growing concern across all industries. According to a recent study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, corporations boosted their information security budgets 24 percent last year in response to a 38 percent increase in security incidents. In St. Louis, DeLong said, concerns about online security are acute at health care firms such as Express Scripts, defense firms such as Boeing and government entities such as Scott Air Force Base and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. We believe we are going to attract a lot of cyber companies because of our strength in financial technology, but there are all these other firms that are potential partners and customers too, DeLong said. The fund will select five firms for its first class, which begins in September; it will invest between $100,000 and $200,000 in each and put the founders through a 14-week training and mentoring program. Most of the sessions will be in St. Louis but some may be at the Washington offices of Collingwood Group, a consulting firm that is partnering with SixThirty Cyber. Investors in the new fund include Cultivation Capital, a venture capital firm, and the St. Louis Regional Chamber. Cultivation will manage the funds operations, a function it also performs for the original SixThirty and other local accelerators. Those programs have different investment aims but similar operating strategies. Unlike some programs elsewhere, the Cultivation-run accelerators dont invest in businesses at the idea stage. They require entrepreneurs to have a well-developed product, and usually some customers. Even when those entrepreneurs come from a larger place such as New York or Washington, DeLong contends that St. Louis is an ideal place to develop their technology. We are big enough to find a major customer in your space, and we are small enough that you can probably reach out and talk to the CEO, he said. Depending on your perspective, St. Louis is either a big small town or a small big town. In the accelerator space, perhaps that in-between size can be our comparative advantage. Details added (first version posted on 13:56) Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: Extensive information about the Azerbaijani realities should be presented to the international community, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev said addressing the 4th Congress of World Azerbaijanis in Baku June 3. "We try to do that as a state. But much depends on the diaspora organizations as well," said the president. "Our access to foreign media is very limited," said President Aliyev. "It is clear that the diaspora organizations of Armenia, of Armenians have been formed over decades. They have penetrated into the world's leading media structures by various means and are represented there," said the president. "Armenians are seen behind the vast majority of the publications discrediting Azerbaijan, distorting the Azerbaijani realities and slandering us," he said. "We should even more improve our activities in this sphere." First of all, there should be carried out work with media, according to the president. The president noted that a layer of Azerbaijani journalists should be established, which would be represented in various media outlets. "They will defend their homeland and will convey the truth, because the 21st century is the century of information and currently, the information wars exist as a tool and as a weapon." Azerbaijan's president pointed out that currently, bloody clashes are taking place in various parts of the world. "How can we know while being in Baku, or in another city about what is happening there, who is right or who is wrong, who is on the offensive and who on defensive? We can know about this only through media outlets," said President Aliyev. If a coordinated dirty campaign is carried out against any country, the public opinion will eventually also follow the same path, according to the president. "Therefore, it is our weak spot. It is a priority. I think that this issue should be seriously discussed during the congress," he added. The president noted that there should be held talks, discussions on taking necessary measures in various countries in order to convey the Azerbaijani realities and a program should be worked out. "If the Azerbaijani state can in any form provide its support in this issue, we are ready," said President Aliyev. "The main thing is that we should do it in a planned manner, and perhaps, it should be the primary issue in all countries where Azerbaijani diaspora organizations operate," he added. "Naturally, extensive information about the Azerbaijani realities should be presented to the international community." "By taking the advantage of our weakness in the first years of independence, the Armenian diaspora was carrying out a very dirty campaign against us," said President Aliyev. "The integral part of this campaign was to present Azerbaijan as an anti-democratic country, while Armenia as a miserable country living under the conditions of 'blockade', as well as to spread false, fictitious information about the history of Nagorno-Karabakh. To some extent, they managed to do it," said the president. President Aliyev recalled that in 1992, the US Congress adopted a well-known and unfair Section 907 [Section 907 of the United States Freedom Support Act bans any kind of direct United States aid to the Azerbaijani government]. "Imagine that Armenia occupied Azerbaijani lands, committed the Khojaly genocide, expelled people from their native lands, and the Congress adopted this decision," said the president. "The US Congress made an amendment according to which Azerbaijan should be deprived of the US government's aid. Why? Because Azerbaijan keeps Armenia in blockade," said President Aliyev. "I believe that no parliament has seen a more absurd and hypocritical resolution than this one," said the president. "Why is this happening? Because the venal and corrupt congressmen affiliated with the Armenian lobby (some of them still continue this dirty mission) resorted to such a lie." President Aliyev noted that this is while Azerbaijan simply remained silent. "That time we didn't have diaspora. Those who were governing Azerbaijan had not idea what is governance. That's why they led the country to brink of the abyss and started a civil war," said the president. "Currently, that amendment [Section 907] is in force. Great efforts should be made in order to cancel it," he said. "At the initial stage, we were really making great efforts, but then we came to a conclusion that there is no need for this, since this amendment makes no sense. We don't depend on anyone's aid." "We firmly stand on our own feet and can render assistance to those in need. What I want to say is that it was the Armenian provocation," he added. The president pointed out that by using the similar methods, Armenians carry out a dirty campaign against Azerbaijan in various countries. "We should convey the truth about that Nagorno-Karabakh is a historical Azerbaijani land. The Azerbaijani people have been living on these lands for centuries," said President Aliyev. "Armenians were resettled in Nagorno-Karabakh from the Eastern Anatolia and Iran in early 19th century. We all know well why they were resettled there," he added. "There was even erected a monument in Nagorno-Karabakh in 1978 in honor of the 150th anniversary of the Armenians' resettlement in Nagorno-Karabakh." "During the war, Armenians demolished that monument in order to erase this from history. That is to say, this is the reality. It is our historical land. All the toponyms, the names of all cities and villages are of Azerbaijani origin," added the president. "Not only Nagorno-Karabakh, but also the Irevan Khanate, Zengezur and Goycha in Armenia itself are our historical lands," said President Aliyev. He noted that the maps published in the Tsardom of Russia in early 20th century show that 80 percent of all the toponyms are of Azerbaijani origin. "During the Soviet period, they started to gradually change those toponyms, demolished, destroyed our historical monuments, mosques in order to erase history. This is the first issue," said the president. "The second issue is that we were subjected to aggression. This happened in front of the whole world. Twenty percent of our lands - Nagorno-Karabakh and seven districts - are under occupation," said President Aliyev. "A policy of ethnic cleansing was pursued against us." "We have a million refugees and IDPs. Khojaly genocide was committed against Azerbaijanis," said the president. "The UN adopted four resolutions and demanded the withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from the occupied lands." "This is history and the legal aspect of this issue," said the president. "Naturally, no one can deny that. Even the pro-Armenian forces can't deny that, albeit they are trying to do it." "Therefore, this truth should be conveyed. There are enough materials in Azerbaijan on this topic - there are maps, books and historical documents," he added. "Our scholars are carrying out great work and a great scientific work "Irevan Khanate" has been created." "Many are unaware that it is our historical land. But we prove this based on the documents and translate them into foreign languages," he said. "Therefore, it should be the main direction for the diaspora organizations." The president noted that diaspora organizations should open relevant websites in their countries of residence. "These websites should be interesting to the public of these countries, and at the same time these sites should contain truth about Azerbaijan. This should be an ongoing process," said the president. President Aliyev also said that there should be newspapers published in Azerbaijani language in those countries, so that Azerbaijani citizens could read them, including children so they would know their mother tongue, and also publish newspapers in local languages so that the public in those countries would read too. "Again, I'd like to note that we live in the age of information, and the importance of information will only grow," Ilham Aliyev said, adding that Azerbaijan must be ready for it, in particular, considering the Armenian diaspora. "Armenia is a poor country, it cannot find the money even to replenish its budget, not to mention rendering any assistance to someone or abroad," President Aliyev noted. "This is while Azerbaijani government solves and can solve many problems, provides and can provide support. It should simply be done deliberately, this work being implemented efficiently. Thus, the information regarding Azerbaijani realities will be provided in accordance with reality." The president of Azerbaijan went on to add that the most recent example of that is related to the April armed clashes, when Azerbaijan launched a counter-attack on Armenian occupiers and liberated several strategic heights and settlements of its occupied territory. "No matter how much Armenia tried to again spread false information about this fighting, it failed," Ilham Aliyev said. "But some corrupt journalists in close business relations with the Armenian diaspora, we all know their names very well, are trying to blame Azerbaijan and were attempting to picture the April fighting as a great victory of Armenia." The president went on to add that it did not work a Azerbaijan has possibilities too, and can say its word as well. "Everybody knows why it happened. Everyone knows about the results of the April fights. It's very surprising that in this situation the Armenian leadership tries to deceive the world. Armenia was trying to deceive its people, then the world community, and now has put itself in a ridiculous position." Every parents' worst fear comes to St. Louis, as a school shooting leaves three dead. It's not OK that we're not doing enough. MOLINE ACRES Police identified the man slain here Thursday night as Deyon Smith, whose aunt told a reporter he had been shot before. Smith, 18, was found around 8:40 p.m. in the driveway of his family home in the 9800 block of Wendell Drive. Some records list his first name as Deon. His aunt, Paris Drake, said Friday, They shot at him before and hit him, but he survived. The earlier shooting was about two months ago. She said he never shared details with his family on who had shot him then, or why. Smith recently enrolled in St. Louis Community College and was an avid rapper, constantly telling his family he was about to drop his next tape, Drake said. He was a really fun kid. He was very funny and was always cracking jokes. We just really miss him. This is the second murder on the same block this year after Tami Allen, 32, was found dead in her home Feb. 4 . Kevin Fields, 31, was charged with first-degree murder for Allen's death. She was beaten and stabbed, and later died at the hospital. EAST ST. LOUIS A Monroe County man was sentenced Friday to five years in federal prison on child pornography-related charges, prosecutors said. Nicholas J. Perjak, 35, admitted a three-year long addiction to child porn, the U.S. attorney's office said. Investigators found more than 6,000 images of child porn and browsing records indicating that he searched for and accessed pictures and videos containing child porn, they said. Perjak pleaded guilty in February to one count of attempting to access child porn and three counts of accessing with intent to view child porn. Perjak was caught after investigators traced a computer that had attempted to access child porn back to him, prosecutors said. The governing board of St. Louis Public Schools posted a letter on the district website Friday providing an explanation behind its legal action that has angered charter school parents across St. Louis. The letter signed by members of the Special Administrative Board states that their attempt to keep revenue from the desegregation sales tax in district schools, rather than from allowing it to also fund charters, is not an attack on the citys 35 charters, or independent public schools. Instead, the letter states, it is attempt to protect the will of the voters who approved the tax in 1999. This litigation is the result of almost 8 years of unsuccessfully working with the State to get it to live up to its promises and contractual obligations of the 1999 Desegregation Settlement Agreement, the letter states. In 1999, voters approved a -cent sales tax to pay for programs to remedy the impact of segregation in the city school system, such as summer school, vocational education and preschool. The tax was critical piece of the settlement agreement, which the state also agreed to. In April, the SAB joined plaintiffs involved in the settlement agreement and filed a legal motion accusing the state of violating the agreement by indirectly sending more than $42 million of desegregation money over 10 years to charter schools money the SAB says should be returned. Doing so would bankrupt and essentially close most of the charter schools. Charter schools educate about one third of students about 10,500 of them enrolled in public schools throughout the city. The legal action being taken has been characterized in the press and on social media as a dispute between SLPS and charter schools, the letters says. Simply stated, that is not the case. The Districts stance on partnerships and relationships with charter schools remains unchanged. We remain focused on creating great options for the young people of our community. The letter is the SABs first public response to the backlash that erupted after the motion was filed on April 11 in U.S. District Court. In the weeks since, charter school organizers and parents have launched campaigns on social media urging them to drop the legal proceeding. Some have questioned its timing, coming right after the charter school community helped district officials galvanize support for a successful property tax increase. While the timing of the public announcement of the motion being filed on the heels of the successful passage of Proposition 1 is unfortunate, the actual legal proceedings have been in motion for quite some time, the letter from the SAB states. Remember, Proposition 1 will benefit all public school children in St. Louis, both charter and SLPS students, and has no connection to the legal action being taken against the State. Earlier this week, charter school parents asked the federal judge to allow them to intervene in the litigation and join as plaintiffs. They also asked that the judge dismiss the motion to enforce the desegregation settlement agreement. It was a pleasant day for celebrating the new St. Louis riverfront. Thousands came Thursday to mark the reopening of Leonor K. Sullivan Boulevard. They brought picnic plates and dined on food truck fare. Others brought children or dogs and stared at the drifting Mississippi, while listening to cool jazz. Gov. Jay Nixon, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and other dignitaries joined the picnic crowd to celebrate the progress of the CityArchRiver project. So far, the work has elevated Leonor K. Sullivan Boulevard 2.5 feet to reduce the frequency of flooding, and improved amenities along the boulevard, including a bike path, sidewalks, new lighting, landscaping, benches and a stage. This is a game-changer for the St. Louis riverfront, Nixon said. So on behalf of the people of the state of Missouri, congratulations, and thank you. But other parts of the $380 million project, including the Gateway Arch museum, are under construction and are still blocked off by fences. That left many people confused when they showed up to the giant picnic Thursday. Im surprised that its not completed, said Sebrena Atwater-Tellis, 54, of Florissant. Officials say they expect the Gateway Arch grounds landscaping to be finished this fall. The rest of the project, including the museum beneath the Arch, wont be finished until next year, officials say. Still, regional leaders praised the project, which is financed by donations, federal grants, bond dollars and voter-approved taxes, as proof that St. Louis is still one of the countrys leaders in championing urban parks. I can tell you as a mayor Im very, very proud of our city, Im very proud of our region and our state for pulling together to do something great for our generation and for generations in the future, Slay said. Attendees said they liked how the riverfront looks now, and they see the renovation as another sign that the area is turning around. I think its nice, said Felicia Allen, 49, of north St. Louis County. Its a long time coming. Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 By Elmira Tariverdiyeva - Trend: Euronews, a European, multilingual news television channel, has broadcasted a video footage highlighting the region of Guba in the northeast of Azerbaijan and the stunning landscape around the village of Khinalig. "This is one of the highest and most remote villages in the Caucasus and the inhabitants here even have their own language," Euronews reported. "And part of the magic is that sense of isolation." "The scenic route to Khinalig from the city of Guba takes visitors up to more than 2,000 metres above sea level, providing impressive views at every turn," Euronews reported. "If you're looking for a place to really get away from it all this could be it, with breathtaking scenery all around Khinalig and the chance to do some serious hiking," Euronews reported. "I love it here, even for short trips, because we can let go of the thoughts that bother us in the city, enjoy the beauty of the surrounding nature and go on great walks," Metleb Shikbabayev from the Guba Tourism Office said. ST. LOUIS The Veterans Affairs Administrations top official overseeing health care said here Friday that a new round of candidates will be interviewed next week for the long-vacant medical director position in St. Louis. The VA health care system in St. Louis has run through eight interim medical directors since 2013. David Shulkin, undersecretary for health at the VA in Washington, said at a press conference at John Cochran VA Hospital that he hopes the right leader will fill the position soon. We got a number of very good qualified candidates, Shulkin said. Those candidates are actually being called in to do their interviews next week. There have been multiple selection attempts. This time we are really committed to making sure that we get a director who wants to be here and to stay here for a long time so they can be successful, Shulkin said. When you lead health care organizations, having stability at your leadership spot is an absolute vital component of being successful. The struggles are broader than St. Louis. Shulkin said the single biggest challenge for him at the VA is finding the right leaders to run medical centers across the whole network. While St. Louis has had one of the longest vacancies, he said 34 out of 168 VA medical centers have vacancies at the top. Running a health care operation in 2016 is a complex job anywhere, but running it in the VA system, which is under such scrutiny, is a very, very challenging job, he said. He said fewer people with military backgrounds in the U.S., lower salaries compared to the private sector and negative attention about the VAs wait-time crisis have all made it hard to recruit. He said job applications are down 78 percent overall at the VA since 2014, when revelations of long wait lines and poor service appeared at the Phoenix VA and other facilities around the country. Shulkin said there are 44,000 job openings at the VA health care system. We are trying to get the message out that the VA is a fantastic place to work, he said. It is a great place to be able to serve and give back to our veterans. Its a place that is committed to world-class care. Its a place that actually is moving in the right direction. U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., is trying to help the VA be able to offer better salaries to medical directors. She said at the press conference that the medical director position in St. Louis pays about a third or half as much as a similar job in the private sector. Believe me, the vast majority of the people who work at the VA arent here because they want to make more money, she said. They are here because they want to serve, and they are rewarded by their service to veterans. But still, when you are that far below the market, it makes it even more difficult to find the kind of leadership that we all want. In American politics, where has God gone? Of course this is an inadequate way of posing the question. God is always present for believers, even if the political workings of the divine can be hard to discern. And religious people continue to occupy points all along the spectrum. Just ask Hillary Clinton about her Methodism. But especially among Republicans, religious issues have taken a back seat in the partys discourse and religious leaders are playing a diminished role in the 2016 campaign. This was not how things started. Many had the remarkable experience during the primaries of hearing Ted Cruz declare to his followers: Awaken the body of Christ that we might pull back from the abyss. You cant get much more religious than that. But Cruz failed to awaken and unite religious conservatives, a reason why Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee. The split this year among conservative evangelicals was profound. On the one side were those, mainly Cruz supporters, still voting on abortion, gay marriage and other moral issues. On the other were those among the faithful so angry about the direction of the country and what they saw as the marginalization of conservative Christianity in public life that they opted for the strongman who could push back hard against their enemies. Robert Jeffress, the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, spoke for the second group. Most Americans know we are in a mess, Jeffress declared, and as they look at Donald Trump, they believe he is the one leader who can reverse the downward death spiral of this nation we love so dearly. Jeffress reflects a profound pessimism among conservative Christians that contrasts sharply with the movements hopeful spirit in its Reagan Era heyday. The current gloom grows out of an implicit awareness of the reality shrewdly captured in the forthcoming book, The End of White Christian America, by my friend and colleague Robert Jones. Although conservative Christianity will remain important, the sheer force of demography means it will never again enjoy the public influence it once had. And in imagining that Trump will somehow reverse the trend, Christian conservatives are taking a big risk. As he has on so much else, Trump has been entirely opportunistic in his approach to religion. By some measures, hes running the most secular Republican campaign since the 1970s. In the early primaries, particularly in Iowa and the South, Trump tried hard to identify with a constituency he knew would be key to his success. I love the evangelicals, Trump said. Why do they love me? Youll have to ask them but they do. His efforts were often awkward. He mangled references to the Bible, referred to communion as my little cracker, and once momentarily mistook the communion plate when it came around for the donation plate. But none of this seemed to matter. He also was far-sighted. Long ago, he put some money where his political needs would be. As Betsy Woodruff reported last year for The Daily Beast, The Donald J. Trump Foundation contributed $100,000 in 2012 to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and in 2013 gave $10,000 each to The Family Leader, an influential Iowa evangelical group, and to Samaritans Purse. Franklin Graham, Billy Grahams son, said nice things about Trump early on. But he took Trump to task in April when the candidate distanced himself from North Carolinas law barring transgender people from using bathrooms that corresponded to their gender identity. Characteristically, Trump quickly walked the statement back and proclaimed himself a states rights advocate on the question. Nonetheless, his initial signal on the North Carolina law marked a new phase in the campaign. As voting moved to Northeastern states with fewer evangelicals, Trump spoke much less about religion and his evangelical love affair. Among his winks to social moderates: praise for Planned Parenthood for having done very good work for many, many for millions of women. Trumps comments on immigrants, political correctness and Muslims suggest he is far more anti-multicultural than he is pro-religion. He talks more about symbols and public icons than about faith or morals. If I become president, were gonna be saying Merry Christmas at every store, he said last October. The Happy Holiday you can leave over there at the corner. Its an empty promise, since no president could force every store in America to give a Christian greeting. But the fact that he chose to make the media-driven Christmas wars a centerpiece of his argument to Christians shows that his real engagement is with identity politics, not religion. E.J. Dionne ejdionne@washpost.com Copyright The Washington Post Gaetano Iaquaniello, Technology and Business Development Vice President of Kinetics Technology S.p.A, Italy, head of branch office in Azerbaijan of the mentioned company Niccolo Heilpern and the chair of the company Gianni Bardazzi visited Baku Higher Oil School (BHOS) and met with its management. BHOS rector Elmar Gasimov informed the guests about current and future activity directions of the higher school as well as BHOS new campus and international relations. Mentioning the high level of relations currently existing between Azerbaijan and Italy BHOS rector said that the higher school was interested in cooperation with Italian universities and companies. While emphasizing the English as instruction language of BHOS academic system based on international programmes Elmar Gasimov also added the availability of close connection between BHOS education process and production via advanced technologies. He also underlined the high potential of cooperation between BHOS and Kinetics Technology S.p.A expressing BHOS readiness to take necessary steps in this direction. The guests gave detailed information about the company they represented. Informing about specialization of Kinetics Technology S.p.A in carbohydrogens, processing engineering, synthetic gases, production and the use of hydrogen, Gaetano Iaquaniello said that the company supported development of Italian higher educational institutions and realization of projects oriented to scientific research. Stressing company's operation in 36 countries of the globe and its operation in Azerbaijan within SOCAR Polymer project, company's vice president suggested that cooperation with BHOS could be realized in the field of scientific research, students' exchange, lifelong learning programmes and also in frames of EU science and education programmes. Gaetano Iaquaniello also said that he was ready to render any kind of support to commence bilateral cooperation covering such spheres as establishing relations between BHOS and Italian universities, organization of lectures to be conducted by the specialists of the company, organization of internship for BHOS students to be taken in company's branches in Rome and Milan including preparation of scientific papers there. In conclusion of the meeting BHOS rector Elmar Gasimov granted BHOS honorary guest diploma to Gaetano Iaquaniello, Technology and Business Development Vice President of Kinetics Technology S.p.A. LONDON MARKET CLOSE: FTSE 250 steals show; pound keeps lid on FTSE 100 Tuesday, October 25, 2022 - 17:20 London's FTSE 100 edged lower on Tuesday, as a stronger pound put paid to the blue-chip index's hopes of replicating the climbs delivered by its European peers. The pound jumped to $1.1464 at the London equities close Tuesday, from $1.1295 on Monday, as new UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak restored some investor confidence in UK finances. The FTSE 100 index closed down 0.51 of a point at 7,013.48 on Tuesday. A stronger pound acts as a drag to the international earner-heavy index. In European equities on Tuesday, the CAC 40 in Paris ended up 1.9%, while the DAX 40 in Frankfurt ended 0.9% higher. There was an eye-popping climb for the more domestic-focused FTSE 250 in London, however. The FTSE 250 ended up 494.08 points, or 2.9%, at 17,831.63. The AIM All-Share closed up 11.89 points, or 1.5%, at 799.44. The Cboe UK 100 ended down 0.1% at 700.90, the Cboe UK 250 closed up 2.8% at 15,222.68, and the Cboe Small Companies ended up 0.2% at 12,269.51. Sunak pledged to fix the "mistakes" of Liz Truss's leadership as he made his first speech as PM. Sunak said Truss was "not wrong" to want to drive up growth but added that "some mistakes were made." He vowed to place "economic stability and confidence at the heart of this government's agenda", after the financial chaos triggered by Truss. In the FTSE 100, Segro finished 2.1% higher on Tuesday as UBS raised the British property investor and developer to 'buy' from 'neutral'. At the bottom of the blue-chip index was HSBC, falling 4.2%, as it reported a decline in profit and revenue in the third quarter of 2022. In the three months to September 30, HSBC reported pretax profit of $3.15 billion, down 42% from $5.40 billion a year before. Revenue decreased by 3.2% to $11.62 billion from $12.01 billion. HSBC explained that its third quarter results included a $2.4 billion impairment, following the reclassification of its retail banking operations in France to held-for-sale, as well as a net charge for expected credit losses and other credit impairment charges. Whitbread fell 0.8% despite swinging to an interim profit and return to dividends as the hotel sector recovered from Covid-19. In the first half ended September 1, the Bedfordshire-based owner of the Premier Inn chain said revenue more than doubled year-on-year to 1.35 billion from 661.6 million. Whitbread swung to a pretax profit of 307.4 million, compared to a loss of 19.3 million a year before. Compared to the same period of financial 2020, pretax profit was 40% higher than 219.9 million. "The strong recovery in UK accommodation sales continued during the first half, and while Food & Beverage sales remained challenging and 5% behind pre-pandemic levels," Whitbread said. In the FTSE 250, Urban Logistics added 1.5%, but was up over 10% earlier in the day. The UK logistics real estate investor said trading in its first half was strong, as demand strengthened and vacancies fell. "Lettings have been strong across the portfolio, as we see a robust occupational market with high demand and low vacancies. In particular, we're very pleased that our new development at Blenheim Park has let so quickly, with the final unit expected to be let shortly, and providing an expected 6.6% yield on cost across the project," said Chief Executive Richard Moffitt. Elsewhere in London, Made.com plunged 93% as it said talks with possible suitors fell through, with the sofa seller now edging precariously closer to collapse. "Following further discussion, those parties have all now confirmed to the company that they are unable to meet the necessary timetable. As a result, those discussions have been terminated and the company is no longer in receipt of funding proposals or possible offers for the issued and to be issued share capital of the company," Made said. Made.com is also mulling whether a suspension of trading of its shares is "appropriate". The euro stood at $0.9963 at the European equities close Tuesday, higher against $0.9877 at the same time on Monday. Against the yen, the dollar was trading at JP147.77 late Tuesday, lower compared to JP148.82 late Monday. Stocks in New York were firmly in the green at the London equities close, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 0.9%, the S&P 500 index up 1.3%, and the Nasdaq Composite up 2.0%. US equities received a boost from well-received updates from the likes of soft drinks maker Coca-Cola and courier UPS, with both firms posting rises in third quarter revenue and net income. Coca-Cola shares were 1.3% higher, UPS was up 1.9%. Brent oil was quoted at $91.91 a barrel at the London equities close Tuesday, up from $90.88 late Monday. Gold was quoted at $1,655.96 an ounce at the London equities close Tuesday, sharply higher against $1,648.76 at the close on Monday. In Wednesday's UK corporate calendar, Barclays will publish its third-quarter results and Bloomsbury Publishing posts its half-year results. In the economic calendar, there's a services PPI reading from Japan overnight before the Bank of Canada make an interest rate decision at 1500 BST. Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved. Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 By Anakhanum Idayatova - Trend: UK's desire to be Azerbaijan's partner of choice, not just in energy but also in a wide range of other areas, the British Prime Minister's newly appointed Trade Envoy, Baroness Emma Nicholson told Trend. She said her visit underlines the importance of the bilateral relationship. She said she was keen to follow up on the first meeting of the Joint Intergovernmental Commission which was held in London in February, including financial and related professional services cooperation, education, culture and tourism. The Baroness was delighted to be back in Azerbaijan, this time for the first time in her new capacity as Trade Envoy, and had been given an extremely warm welcome by all her interlocutors, had conducted a series of fruitful discussions over the last few days and was looking forward to further meetings on Monday. As we have since July 2006, each Friday well post a mixed bag of quick cigar news and other items of interest. Below is our latest Friday Sampler. 1) Enrique Sanchez Icaza, CEO and Founder of Global Premium Cigars (GPC), has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida against the Food & Drug Administration (FDA). At at high level, the suit alleges the FDAs recently announced deeming rules are cost-prohibitive for GPC, a small business known for its 1502 line of cigars. When I joined this beautiful industry, I promised myself that I would do whatever was necessary to make the cigar industry better, and leave a legacy for my kids to carry on in life, said Icaza in an email released yesterday. Today, that dream is in jeopardy due to the FDAs deeming regulations, and I feel I have the obligation to protect our industry, lifestyle, consumers, clients, friends, and our family from these terrible threats. Its time for action! Talking belongs in the past In the few next days, we will be giving you more information in how you can support, and help us with the tools to fight with strength. GPCs lawsuit is likely the first of many to be brought by a cigar maker against the FDA. The suit alleges the FDAs actions violate the Regulatory Flexibility Act, designed to protect small businesses from over-burdensome regulations, and the Administrative Procedure Act, which sets standards that agencies engaged in rule-making must follow, as well as the First and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The suit has been assigned to Judge Darrin P. Gayles, an Obama nominee. 2) Davidoff is expanding its Brazilian-inspired Escurio line by adding new sizes, including a Corona Gorda (6 x 46), Gran Perfecto (5 x 60/51), Primeros (4.25 x 38), and Mini Cigarillos (3.3 x 20). Escurio was launched in 2015 with three sizes that feature an Ecuadorian Habano-seed wrapper, a Brazilian Cubra binder, and a filler blend that includes Mata Fina and Cubra tobaccos from Brazil paired with Dominican leaves. Several years prior, the Davidoff Nicaragua blend marked Davidoffs first departure from its Dominican roots. 3) Inside the Industry: This week Camacho announced the details of its 2016 Liberty Series limited edition cigar, set to be released tomorrow. According to the announcement, the core of 2016s edition are two high-octane Ligero tobaccos from Mexico and Nicaragua, making up over half of the tri-country filler blend Combined with two Seco tobaccos from Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic for added complexity, the 2016 Liberty displays the perfect balance of intensity and finesse. The cigar sells for $18 and will be the first Camacho Liberty release to also be distributed to Europe. 4) From the Archives: Introducing cigars to someone who hasnt tried them before, or only smokes them on extremely rare occasions? Check out this helpful article from 2010: Five Rules for Introducing Someone to Cigars. The tip provides a few easy-to-follow suggestions, but also makes the important point that smoking a cigar is meant to be an enjoyable experience. Overwhelming a newbie with too many rules will detract from the goal of an enjoyable, relaxing experience. 5) Deal of the Week: StogieGuys.com recommends Bespoke Post, a monthly collection of awesome items delivered to your door for just $55. Past boxes include barbecue accessories, shaving kits, everything you need to make great coffee, and exclusive cigars from E.P. Carrillo paired with custom accessories. You can select a box each month or skip the month entirely. Click here to sign up today. The Stogie Guys photo credit: Global Premium Cigars Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 By Azad Hasanli - Trend: Baku will host the biggest event - 7th Azerbaijan International Insurance Forum (AIIF 2016) - in the Caucasus in the sphere of insurance on June 23-24, said the message from Azerbaijan Insurers Association. The event will be supported by Azerbaijan's Financial Market Supervisory Authority and will bring together more than 200 representatives of insurance markets of 20 countries. The two-day forum will discuss such issues, as "Insurance solutions in a challenging environment and new regulation methods", "New realities on the Azerbaijan insurance market - regulator's approach and forecasts", "Macroeconomic trends and their impact on the regional insurance sector", "New lines of insurance business opportunities for Azerbaijan", "Reinsurance at a glance", "Global reinsurance market trends solutions for the region in the current realities" and others. Currently, 25 insurance and one reinsurance companies operate in Azerbaijan. Will Young unveils a plaque at the official opening of Stratford Samaritans' Community Hub. (Submitted photo) THE original Pop Idol Will Young was in Stratford-upon-Avon to officially open the Stratford Samaritans new Community Hub. The Samaritans won the biggest share of the Town Trusts 1million CommYOUnity Challenge back in 2014 being awarded 420,000 to fund the complete transformation of Tyler House, in Tyler Street, and support the initial running of the Hub. As well as providing this critical affordable space to others, Tyler House is also the new home of Stratford and District Samaritans. Samaritans have a one-to-one room, ready to welcome anyone in need who wants to come in to talk, while upstairs there is a large, bright suite where volunteers take up their posts each day, to man the phones and reply to e-mails and texts to help people in crisis. It opened for business in March, but Will Young visited last Thursday, 26th May, to unveil a plaque at its official opening. Helen Munro, Chief Executive of Stratford Town Trust, with Will Young and Alan Booth, chairman of Stratford Samaritans. (Submitted photo) He met Samaritans volunteers and talked to them about the difference Tyler House makes to their challenging work and to the community. Will said: Will said: It is my pleasure to be opening the new Samaritans community hub at Tyler House. So often people feel they have no one to turn to, and the Samaritans offer a beacon of light and a listening ear. They are an invaluable institution in the United Kingdom and I am proud to be opening the new centre. Hub Manager, Rachel Key, said: Will has spoken eloquently and with passion about a range of issues which are tackled by groups using the Hub, so he is the perfect person to open Tyler House. Already using the Hub are carers organisation Guideposts, Heart of England Mencap, homeless charity Doorway, Al-Anon, which supports the families of alcoholics, the Parenting Project, Sunny Side-Up. In July, Lifespace, a local charity providing mentors for young people, will take up permanent residence there. Jill Young, Director of Stratford Samaritans said: Our volunteers like working in Tyler House; its very relaxing and welcoming and we hope vulnerable or distressed people will also feel comfortable when they visit us to talk about their problems or difficulties face-to-face. Last September, Samaritans introduced a Freephone number and now our branch is busier than its ever been. So we need to keep recruiting new volunteers to support callers who are going through an emotional crisis or just want someone to talk to. Being a Samaritan can be very rewarding when you know you have helped someone through a dark period in their life. And Tyler House is the perfect place for our volunteers to work from to try to support our callers. Claire Bowry, Grants Manager of the Town Trust, said: Already Tyler House is making a very real difference in the community, being used by so many of our local charities as a truly affordable place for meetings and events, enabling some to have their first base in Stratford for many, many years. It is also already helping the Samaritans in their vital work they have told us that having a bright, safe and welcoming environment is so important when you are working long shifts, perhaps through the night, taking very difficult calls. "The branch is entirely manned by volunteers, making recruitment and retention so important. "We are immensely proud to see that our funding has delivered modern facilities at Tyler House which can support the Samaritans and the other charities in their work. Programmatic Ad Buying: And Now a Word From Our Sponsors The glamour of the Mad Men advertising world starkly contrasts with how online advertising is now bought and sold, since much of it happens programmatically. One expert says that without programmatic assistance, it would be physically impossible to place 40 insertion orders for a campaign to appear everywhere a client desires. Programmatic in many ways is leveraging real market realities; its data, upping your bid, lowering your bid, and really working more in an environment of near real time, says Noah Fenn, head of video sales and strategy for AOL. In some ways, its like trading stocks. In quick succession you are trying to make sure you get your marketing message across and that youre scaling and reaching an audience. Although subscription video on demand (SVOD) and transactional video on demand (TVOD) have been successful, ad-supported content isnt going away anytime soon, no matter the viewing device. Despite what some digerati might tell you, consumers regularly accept advertising in exchange for free stuff. The ad vertical is very healthy, and for Roku its one of our fastest-growing segments, says Scott Rosenberg, vice president of advertising for Roku. As the OTT ecosystem has matured, the ad-supported segmentsapps and channels that are freehave grown tremendously. Previously, advertising was bought and sold through direct buys between media companies and brands. In contrast, eMarketer reports that $2.91 billion was spent on digital video programmatic buying in 2015. The company forecasts an increase to $5.37 billion in 2016. Almost all online display advertising is traded programmatically. Currently, 39 percent of video ads are transacted this way, which leaves a lot of room for growth in this area. The good news is that 9 out of 10 TV ad buyers are shifting an average of 10 percent of their budgets away from linear TV to digital, according to AOLs 2015 State of the Video Industry report. In the ideal programmatic transaction, a user clicks on a website, and her internet address and browsing history are packaged and whisked off to an auction site. On behalf of advertisers, software scrutinizes her profile (or an anonymized version of it) and determines whether to bid for the right to place an ad next to the media she is about to view. If youre looking for affluent women between 30 and 35 who own houses and dogs in a specific ZIP code in Dallas, you may hit a premium price. If you take a broader viewsay, all viewers between 30 and 35your pricing may go down, and the supply of viewers could go up substantially. Big Data Today, brands and media companies have deep knowledge about what type of audience they are reaching, based on all the discrete data users leave as they navigate around the internet. This data helps programmatic advertising thrive. Programmatic buying can spread ad buys over multiple platforms and content types to reach a targeted demographic. Online advertising benefits advertisers by allowing them to reach a specific segment of viewers, engage directly with these viewers, and measure their responses. In the OTT world, advertisers use contextual targeting based on a range of data to identify their best possible audience. Publishers that require subscriptions have a lot of information about their viewers. Brands may own even more data. P&G probably owns a lot more data about its customers and its target audience than ABC does, says Mike Shehan, co-founder and CEO of SpotX. That data can provide insight about viewer activity, ranging from basic demographics to complex psychographic information. The audiences clickstream is big business. Advertisers know a viewers age, gender, location, browsing history, shopping habits, registration information, third-party cookie information, trending keywords, purchase history, interests, device information, and the size and location of the player within the frame. Merging first- and third-party data with behavioral and contextual information and adding in machine learning based on predictive modeling yields in-depth information about the audience. This is something TV ad buyers can only dream about. Brands use their data to decide whether they want to buy an impression on a case-by-case basis, in real time. If one parameter isnt working well, they can turn off that buy and move on to another segment. We allow you to determine on each individual basis how much you want to pay for a particular impression, says James Shears, general manager of advanced TV at The Trade Desk. Essentially, you put in metrics you were looking to hit, you find your inventory services, and the system runs algorithms to determine what type of mix from a media perspective actually would benefit you the most, measuring against those metrics. Both buyers and sellers are able to track the entire life of the transaction and transparently see all details associated with a campaign. Previously, this type of information was held in secret with a middleman closely protecting many of the transaction details. Its known that advertising is big business, but the size of the advertising technology industry may come as a surprise. There are more than 2,000 companies in the ad tech space. To keep business transparent on a basic level, publishers list their supply of inventory available with third-party supply-side platforms (SSPs). Brand advertisers use another third-party service called a demand-side platform (DSP) to set the buying parameters and monitor the performance of a programmatic campaign. If Im a website [and] I have cooking videos and someone comes to my site and I have a pre-roll ad slot, as the page is loading, an ad call will go out from my SSP. It will send out a signal to all of those DSPs and say, We have an ad spot, do you want to buy it? They pass along as much information as they can, says Brian Rifkin, co-founder of JW Player. Then a bidding war starts, and those advertisers signal and say theyre interested and they want to pay X. Theyll send back what theyre willing to pay and the advertising creative. The SSP will decide in real time who the winner is; its usually based on price [but] there may be other factors. That advertising will be served on to the website. All that happens quicker than I can snap my fingers if its done correctly. Im a big fan of, Pick your type [of] technology and stick with it, says Rifkin. A lot of people bounce back and forth all the time (to SSPs), but if you think about it, the same buyers are on all of these. There are a number of flavors of programmatic advertising. In a private marketplace, a media company and one or more brands have a private auction open only to those invited to bid. Programmatic direct is a one-to-one interaction for reserved inventory at a fixed price. In an open marketplace, inventory is aggregated from multiple partners for buyers to bid to purchase impressions via an open auction. Programmatic, in particular the open marketplace, is often incorrectly linked with driving down CPMs [cost per thousand impressions], says Shehan. In the video market where supply is short, it can allow publishers to charge a pricing premium on a much larger chunk of inventory. In some regions around the globe, were seeing some publishers charge as much as 25 percent more than rate cards to buy programmatically in a private marketplace. Advertisers are looking for premium inventory. Its inventory that is created by a well-known source, that is fraud-free and has a desirable audience, says Alanna Gombert, deputy general manager of the IAB Tech Lab and vice president of technology and ad operations of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). Fraud-free to me means theres no mechanical device or ill intent within that webpage to mislead a consumer. The biggest issues for brand buyers according to the AOL report is the inability to access premium inventory at scale, cited by 52 percent of the respondents. The next biggest concern is safety and quality, cited by 47 percent. More than half (58 percent) of the publishers said the perceived risk of commoditization of content is their biggest concern, followed closely by what they felt was a lack of existing processes and systems at 53 percent. The IAB Tech Lab is hoping to address some of these concerns. It runs workshops where buyers and sellers can converse with their peers about best practices. For the most part, programmatic is on the media plan now, Gombert says. As a publisher, youre going to be sourcing from advertisers you would never speak to in a normal sales process because theyre buying from all over. Theyre also trying out new things, so be open and aware that this is a channel where you can glean new buyers. There is a fear factor when something new comes out into the market, especially among traditional companies, says Gombert. When a new technology comes out and it is widely adopted by the industry, you need to adopt it. You cant wait, because youre going to miss the budget if youre on the supply side. Youre going to miss this inventory and client expectations if youre on the buy side. Billions of ad transactions go through SSPs and DSPs every day. Here are a few technical pointers to make sure your ad doesnt result in the dreaded spinning icon. (Ad) Tech Talk Implementing programmatic advertising involves connecting your video playback to an SSP such as SpotX, YuMe, or DoubleClick. These SSPs in turn host an ad exchange and manage the programmatic fill against various DSPs such as AppNexus, DoubleClick, and Bid Manager, says Michael Dale, vice president of engineering at Ellation. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Related Articles Companies and Suppliers Mentioned Panasonic Offers Cameras for Broadcast and Streaming Workflows [This sponsored interview was recorded at Streaming Media East 2016.] Panasonic made a splash at the recent Streaming Media East conference when it showed a variety of cameras for both broadcast and streaming workflows. Delix Alex, Panasonic's product manager for PTZ products and IT networking, explained some of the options. "We have two different product categories that I'm heavily engaged in," Alex said. "One is our camcorder lineup. They're heavily used in all sorts of applications, mainly broadcast. It's what we call our AVC-Ultra lineup. An example is our AJ-PX270 handheld camera up to our AJ-PX5000 shoulder mount camera. All of them can stream via IP. We actually have a QOS algorithm there too that adapts to network because we stream over cellular. Then, moving to the PTZ side of things, we have our AW lineup. Starting at the bottom, we have our HE2, which is more of an electronic PTZ. It uses the image sensor. Doesn't have any moving parts. Then we have our integrated PTZs with optical zoom and such. That's where we start with the HE40, which is our HD-PTZ. Our UE70, which is our 4K-PTZ. Our HE130, our flagship model with a very nice image sensor, a 3MOS image sensor." Panasonic's AW-UE70 can encode 4K video and stream directly to Wowza for distribution. "The UE70 is the first 4K PTZ supported by the Works with Wowza program amongst all manufacturers, actually," Alex said. "We can stream our 4K RTP/RTSP H.264 straight to Works with Wowza. They can package it nicely and deliver it 4K." For more, scroll down for the full interview. Tim Siglin: Welcome back to Almost Live here at Streaming Media East 2016. I have Delix with me, a representative from Panasonic. Delix, go ahead and introduce yourself. Delix Alex: Hi there. My name is Delix Alex. I'm a Product Manager for the PTZ product line and IP networking systems. Tim Siglin: Tell me what you mean by IP networking systems. Delix Alex: When I went and started in this role, I was a camera guy. Quickly, the field started changing into an IP/IT world where all the interfacing is IP-based. All the now streamed video, now even power is over Ethernet, moving towards a single cable or no cable solution. Tim Siglin: As you're transitioning, what you're saying is that essentially no longer do we have a DC connector for the power, an SDI connector for the video. We have a single RJ45 with POE ... Delix Alex: Our entire PTZ product line is POE+ plus HD streamed video plus control. If you do need truly live video, you still need the HDMI or HGSTI. Maybe in the future, once true video over IP standards emerge and become standardized, we'll move there as well. Tim Siglin: You talked to me about the IP system solutions. Tell me about the product lineup. Delix Alex: Sure. We have two different product categories that I'm heavily engaged in. One is our camcorder lineup. They're heavily used in all sorts of applications, mainly broadcast. It's what we call our AVC-Ultra lineup. An example is our AJ-PX270 handheld camera up to our AJ-PX5000 shoulder mount camera. All of them can stream via IP. We actually have a QOS algorithm there too that adapts to network because we stream over cellular. Then, moving to the PTZ side of things, we have our AW lineup. Starting at the bottom, we have our HE2, which is more of an electronic PTZ. It uses the image sensor. Doesn't have any moving parts. Then we have our integrated PTZs with optical zoom and such. That's where we start with the HE40, which is our HD-PTZ. Our UE70, which is our 4K-PTZ. Our HE130, our flagship model with a very nice image sensor, a 3MOS image sensor. Tim Siglin: If I understand correctly, the AW-UE70 is a Works with Wowza product. Talk to me a little bit about that. Delix Alex: Yeah. Interestingly enough, the UE70 is the first 4K PTZ supported by the Works with Wowza program amongst all manufacturers, actually. We can stream our 4K RTP/RTSP H.264 straight to Works with Wowza. They can package it nicely and deliver it 4K. Tim Siglin: Are you encoding within the camera itself? Delix Alex: Yes. We're doing something interesting. We're doing a simultaneous encoding of both motion JPEG and H.264. Tim Siglin: Oh nice. Delix Alex: The camera can actually do three motion JPEG and four H264, for a total of seven streams at the same time at different bit rates, at different resolutions. It's pretty powerful, especially with multi-platform devices delivering to different size displays. It's important. Tim Siglin: Let's skip the motion JPEG for a minute. When you do the H264 simultaneous encodes, does it look like it's coming from four separate encoders to the Wowza media server or does it look like it's coming from a single encoder? Delix Alex: We're using the RTP/RTSP protocol for the stream. It's just a different stream identifier at the end of it: stream 1, 2, 3, or 4. Between the four streams, they're all synchronized. You could pull all of them. Tim Siglin: The media server itself could then take all four of those and package them down into HLS, or something along those lines? Delix Alex: Exactly. Tim Siglin: For multi-bitrate or adaptive bitrate. Delix Alex: Yeah. Currently, that was our first target for protocol. We're now looking at other protocols we could possibly support in camera. There are plenty of middle-ware software that can Tim Siglin: Does the device itself, the camera, actually record to an SD card or something along those lines? Delix Alex: That's an interesting question actually. Two of our PTZs in our product line are AW-HE40 and AW-UE70. It's actually our first PTZ that has internal recording. We come from a camcorder world where we've done recording, but in the PTZs they've always been for live for the most part. We're actually recording now in those cameras. Tim Siglin: That file asset that sits there, can I get to it through a secure FTP or some other way? Do I have to physically pull the chip? Delix Alex: You can physically pull the chip. The cameras all have an HTP web server so you can go in through a web server and download it. Or you can have the camera FTP it just like you mentioned. You can script it to do it at different intervals. We have an open API for that. Tim Siglin: If you can do the seven simultaneous transmits, is there a number of records simultaneously. Delix Alex: Record is a single record. It's the H.264 that has the greatest encoding capability. Tim Siglin: Okay. Delix Alex: In the case of the HE40, a full HD, and the case of the UE70 it could be a 4K. Tim Siglin: It's highest raster size and highest bit rate? Delix Alex: In 4K, on the UE70 it's 3840x2160, so UHD. It's about a little under 100 megs in terms of bitrate. Tim Siglin: Okay. Interesting. The camera defaults automatically to whichever is the highest bitrate? Delix Alex: There are several bitrate options and frame rates and resolutions you can record. It doesn't have to necessarily be the resolution the camera's system format is. You can record at a different format as well. Tim Siglin: Okay. Very good. Again, this has been Delix Alex from Panasonic. I'm Tim Siglin with Streaming Media Magazine. We'll be right back. Delix Alex: Thank you. This article is Sponsored Content Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Related Articles Companies and Suppliers Mentioned Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) announced that the European Commission has approved the proposed acquisition of Visa Europe Ltd. by Visa Inc. Visa has now received all regulatory approvals required for the acquisition. The transaction has already been cleared by both the Jersey and the Turkish competition authorities. The transaction is expected to close in Visa Inc.s fiscal third quarter of 2016. Visa will announce the closing once it has occurred. U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in San Jose, California, U.S. June 2, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson By Amanda Becker and Emily Stephenson WASHINGTON - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said a U.S. jobs report on Friday that showed the weakest hiring in more than five years proved that Democratic economic policies are pushing the country in the wrong direction. The report gave Trump his biggest opening yet to target Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on the economy, after months of mostly solid economic indicators. Its going the wrong way folks. Theyve been kidding themselves, theyre playing games. Its going the wrong way," Trump told a rally in Redding, California. Clinton, the front-runner to be the Democratic nominee for the Nov. 8 election, has credited President Barack Obama for reviving the U.S. economy after the 2008 recession but has also said that the recovery is not over. In a CNN interview, Clinton acknowledged the figures were "disappointing to anybody." "I think President Obama inherited a terrible situation and Ive said that repeatedly over the past year and weve come a long way out of the ditch we were dropped into by failed Republican policies," Clinton told CNN's Jake Tapper. The unemployment rate in May fell three-tenths of a percentage point to 4.7 percent, the lowest level since November 2007, but that was in part due to people dropping out of the labor force. Overall, nonfarm payrolls increased by only 38,000 jobs in May. If disappointing jobs reports continue, Trump could use Clinton's pledge to build on Obama's work against her to woo working-class voters in states such as Ohio. The state has lost well-paying manufacturing jobs and is also a key presidential battleground - closely competitive because it does not lean heavily Republican or Democratic. CLINTON LEADS IN POLL Clinton, a former secretary of state, is likely to finally clinch the Democratic nomination over challenger Bernie Sanders on Tuesday when six states hold nominating contests. One is California, the most populous U.S. state, with the most Democratic delegates of any other state and where both candidates have been campaigning heavily. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday, some 46 percent of likely voters said they supported Clinton, while 35 percent said they supported Trump, and another 19 percent said they would not support either. The survey of 1,421 people was conducted between May 30 and June 3. Trump, a real estate developer, has already sewn up the Republican nomination. In the general election campaign, job creation plans are expected to be a priority, particularly in states that have been hit hard by manufacturing-sector job losses. Trump has promised to toss out international trade deals to revive U.S. manufacturing and sweep away a slew of environmental regulations to bolster the ailing energy sector. Job creation in the manufacturing and construction sectors fell sharply in May, according to Friday's jobs report. Trump has already begun working economic numbers into his stump speeches. He has said he could put 15 states that have voted for Democratic presidents in recent elections in play, including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, which have all lost manufacturing-sector jobs. Peter Morici, a conservative economist and professor in the business school at the University of Maryland, said the poor jobs numbers reflected trends that have driven voter frustration and fueled the populist campaigns of both Trump and Sanders. He said Trump needed to add detail to his economic policies, such as detailing changes to social programs like Medicaid, which provides healthcare for the poor. "We can't just turn around and cut income taxes without doing something about those things," Morici said. Republican strategists agreed that Friday's jobs report created an opportunity for Trump to differentiate his policies from Obama's or Clinton's. "It allows Donald Trump to tout how he would do things differently as president and focus on some of the job-creation plans that he has," Republican strategist Ron Bonjean said, adding it would also allow Trump to talk about his record as a businessman. Trump has been fleshing out his foreign policy ideas and has released a tax plan, but he has been light on other details, such as how he would oversee the U.S. financial system. (Additional reporting by Chris Kahn in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler and Alistair Bell) By Svea Herbst-Bayliss BOSTON (Reuters) - Investment firm Tiger Global, known for making big bets on technology companies, told clients on Thursday that its hedge fund climbed 2.3 percent last month, helping shrink its year-to-date losses, a source familiar with the numbers said. May's gain, fueled by stronger returns at some of its biggest holdings including Netflix, Amazon.com and Apple Inc, helped shrink the fund's year-to-date loss to 18.1 percent, the source said. A number of hedge funds posted stronger returns in May as some battered stocks recovered, helping them either shrink their year-to-date losses or erase them completely. Despite May's gains, Tiger Global, which manages roughly $20 billion and has some $6 billion in its hedge fund, still ranks among the year's worst-performing funds, according to industry analysts, after its top tech holdings suffered heavy losses in early 2016. The decline marks a rare misstep for the firm, which earned a 6.8 percent return in 2015, according to investors, when the average hedge fund lost money. A regulatory filing showed that at the end of the first quarter, Tiger Global owned a small investment of 275,000 shares in LendingClub, the online platform that forced out its chief executive officer in early May after its board found evidence of falsified data on some loans. The stock price tumbled last month, and it was not clear whether Tiger Global still held the position in May. 2016 has shaped up as the worst year since the financial crisis for hedge funds, with poor returns prompting investors to pull out roughly $17 billion in assets during the first quarter, eVestment data show. Viking Global Investors, run by Andreas Halvorsen, had a strong May as its fund climbed 5.7 percent, shrinking its year-to-date loss to 2.8 percent, a person familiar with the number said. Some of its biggest holdings, including Alphabet Inc and Amazon.com rebounded in May. Fund manager Mark Kingdon also shrunk his year-to-date loss with a strong gain in May. The Kingdon Global Long/Short Equity fund climbed 5.24 percent last month, leaving it off 3.16 percent for the year, a person familiar with the numbers said. Clint Carlson's Carlson Capital's flagship multi-strategy Double Black Diamond fund moved into the black in May. The fund climbed 2.3 percent in the month and is up 1.24 percent for the year, a person familiar with the numbers said. The firm's $1.1 billion equity long-short Black Diamond Thematic fund rose 3.64 percent in May, extending its year-to-date gains to 13.25 percent. Carlson Capital oversees $9 billion in assets. Reade Griffith's Polygon European Equity Opportunity Fund, which manages $650 million, gained 2.3 percent in May, extending its year-to-date gain to 8.9 percent, a person who has seen the numbers said. Renaissance Technologies, one of the world's most prominent hedge funds with roughly $27 billion in assets, posted small gains in its Renaissance Institutional Equities fund, known as RIEF, inching up 0.59 percent last month. For the year, the fund is up 8.74 percent. (Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by W Simon and Cynthia Osterman) Eli Lilly's (NYSE: LLY) patent on Alimta to be reconsidered at U.S. Patent Office. The company's patent had already been upheld in U.S. Federal Court, according to Bloomberg. The cancer drug patent expires in May 2022, the FDA's Orange Book says. VANCOUVER, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Golden Queen Mining Co. Ltd. (TSX:GQM; OTCQX: GQMNF) (the "Company" or "Golden Queen") is pleased to announce the voting results of the Company's Annual General Meeting held yesterday in Vancouver, British Columbia. Voting Results The Meeting of Shareholders was held on Thursday, June 2, 2016 (the "Meeting"). A total of 60,597,944 common shares were voted, representing 60.64% of the outstanding common shares. Shareholders voted in favour of setting the number of directors at four (4) and for the election of all director nominees. The percentage of votes cast for each is as follows: 1. Number of Directors The number of directors for the Board of Directors of the Company was set as four (4). Votes of shares for % votes cast Votes against % votes cast 56,191,821 92.73% 4,406,122 7.27% 2. The Election of Directors Each of the nominee directors listed in the Company's proxy statement and management information circular dated April 22, 2016 was elected as a director, without a vote by ballot being conducted. Golden Queen received proxies directing voting on the four (4) directors nominated for election as set forth in the table below: Name of nominee Votes for % votes cast Votes withheld/abstain % votes cast Thomas M. Clay 29,804,596 98.84% 349,090 1.16% Bryan A. Coates 29,802,189 98.83% 351,497 1.17% Bernard Guarnera 29,797,376 98.82% 356,310 1.18% Guy Le Bel 29,802,461 98.84% 351,225 1.17% 3. Appointment of Auditors According to proxies received and a vote by show of hands, PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP was appointed as the Company's auditors until the next general meeting of shareholders or until a successor is appointed and the directors were authorized to fix the auditors' remuneration. Votes of shares for % votes cast Votes withheld/abstain % votes cast 59,781,111 98.65% 816,833 1.35% 4. Approval of Company's Executive Compensation Program According to proxies received and a vote by show of hands, approval of the compensation awarded to the Executive Officers as described in the management proxy statement and as required by the rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission was granted. Votes of shares for % votes cast Votes against % votes cast 29,181,090 96.78% 969,397 3.22% Full details of all proposals are fully described in the Company's Management Information Circular available on the Company's website at www.goldenqueen.com, on SEDAR at www.sedar.com, and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov and the detailed results of voting on each proposal are included in the Report of Voting Results filed on SEDAR and on EDGAR. About Golden Queen Mining Co. Ltd.: Golden Queen is an emerging gold and silver producer holding a 50% interest in an open pit, heap leach mining operation on the Soledad Mountain property, located just outside the town of Mojave in Kern County in southern California. Caution With Respect To Forward-looking Statements: The information in the press news includes certain "forward-looking statements". All statements in the press release, other than statements of historical fact, including, without limitation, timing of commencement of commercial production, strip ratios, main pit plans, grade reconciliation plans, in-fill drilling program and performance of the HPGR system and other statements related to plans and intentions with respect to activities on the Project are forward-looking statements. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from statements in this news release regarding our intentions include, without limitation, risks and uncertainties regarding: accidents, equipment breakdowns; changes in planned work resulting from logistical, technical or other factors; that results of operations on the Project will not meet projected expectations due to any combination of technical, or operational factors; that current early production stage results, including flow rates and ore quality, are indicative of results over time; and other risks and uncertainties disclosed in the section entitled "Risk Factors" contained in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and, accordingly, investors should not put undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement made by the Company in the press release is based only on information currently available to us and speaks only as of the date on which it is made. SOURCE Golden Queen Mining Co. Ltd. Professor Myers will donate $200,000 cash grant from award to MIT Finance Group, Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance and the Finance Theory Group NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) and the American Finance Association (AFA) are pleased to announce Stewart Myers, Robert C. Merton (1970) Professor of Finance, Emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management, is the recipient of the Morgan Stanley-AFA 2016 Award For Excellence in Finance. Professor Myers has chosen the MIT Finance Group, the Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance and the Finance Theory Group as the recipients of a $200,000 cash grant that accompanies the award. Professor Myers is a true thought leader in financial economics and has had a deep influence on both the theory and practice of corporate finance. His research focuses on the valuation of real and financial assets, corporate financial policy and the financial aspects of government regulation of business. He has published influential research papers on many topics, including adjusted present value, rate of return regulation, pricing and capital allocation in insurance, real options, and moral hazard and information issues in capital structure decisions. Myers is a past president of the American Finance Association and co-author of Principles of Corporate Finance, now in its 12th edition. He is a Fellow of both the American Finance Association and the Financial Management Association. He also serves as a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a principal of The Brattle Group, Inc. He has served as a director of CAT, Ltd. and Entergy Corporation. Morgan Stanley is proud that the AFA selection committee has awarded Stewart with this distinction, said Vasily Strela, Head of Market Modeling at Morgan Stanley. Stewart has made prolific contributions to the financial research field and is a true pioneer in corporate finance theory and practice. Morgan Stanley has a strong commitment to supporting thought leadership in our industry, and we are delighted with his decision to donate his award money to organizations that continue to advance this important discipline. James Schallheim, Executive Secretary and Treasurer, AFA adds: We are so pleased to recognize Stewart for his contributions to the field. He has provided significant thought leadership, including his notable work involving capital structure and innovations in capital budgeting and valuation. As a past president of the American Finance Association, Stewart more broadly supported the field of financial research and has always demonstrated a commitment to advancing the work we do. The Morgan Stanley-American Finance Association Award for Excellence in Finance recognizes career achievements and leadership in financial economics research. It was established in 2007 and is announced bi-annually. Recipients of the prize may donate the cash gift to an institution of their choice to support financial research. In addition, Morgan Stanley awards a separate Ph.D. Prize for Excellence in Financial Markets each year to a Ph.D. student who has performed outstanding research in the fields of finance and financial economics. To learn more about this prize, please visit www.morganstanley.com/PrizeforExcellence. Morgan Stanley is a leading global financial services firm providing a wide range of investment banking, securities, wealth management and investment management services. The Firm's employees serve clients worldwide including corporations, governments, institutions and individuals from more than 1,200 offices in 43 countries. For further information about Morgan Stanley, please visit www.morganstanley.com. The American Finance Association is the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics. Founded in 1940, the AFA now has more than 10,000 members and publishes the world-renowned Journal of Finance. For further information about the AFA, please visit www.afajof.org. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160603005609/en/ Morgan Stanley Media Relations Lauren Bellmare, 212-761-5303 Source: Morgan Stanley Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: Azerbaijanis have great business opportunities in various countries, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev said addressing the 4th Congress of World Azerbaijanis in Baku June 3. "I welcome this, it is a very positive factor. It expands our people's economic opportunities," said the president. "At the same time, businessmen residing abroad help their relatives in Azerbaijan. It is very important for those living here." "Of course, I would like the Azerbaijani businessmen residing abroad to make investments in Azerbaijan," said President Aliyev. "Currently, the investment climate in Azerbaijan is very positive and all influential international financial organizations mention this." He pointed out that over the last 20 years, since 1995 to date, over $200 billion was invested in Azerbaijan's economy. "Approximately half of those investments are foreign investments. There is a good investment climate in Azerbaijan and the business environment here is improving day after day," said the president. "Especially, as a result of the decrees and orders I have signed since the beginning of the year, there has been a very serious turning point in this sphere. All bureaucratic obstacles are being eliminated and full transparency is ensured," President Aliyev added. "We see the results of all of this in everyday life, in the statements and reports of influential international financial organizations," he said. "Therefore, Azerbaijan is one of the most attractive countries for investments on a global scale." "Currently, there are investment problems, in markets as well, since the situation is aggravating in the world, in the region we live, in the Middle East and in Europe, new clashes, conflict hotbeds emerge, and the stability is being disrupted," said President Aliyev. "There will be no investments where there is no stability. There is stability in Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani people are the guarantor of this stability," said the president. "This creates good opportunities for the business investments." President Aliyev called on Azerbaijani businessmen, who have great financial opportunities, to invest in Azerbaijan in various spheres, in particular, in the real sector of economy, agriculture, industry, tourism sector and high technologies. "All these sectors are developing rapidly. The investments made in these spheres are not wasted and we see this in the economic indicators," said the president. "Investments are properly protected by the Azerbaijani government, as well as by the adopted laws," he added. Further, President Aliyev noted that the Azerbaijanis have always proven themselves in the world as the people devoted to the motherland and today that continues to be so. "Of course, we want every Azerbaijani residing abroad to visit Azerbaijan at least once a year, firstly for the bonds with the homeland not to break, and secondly, because, good conditions have been created in various parts of Azerbaijan," said the president. He added that wonderful, modern hotels and recreation zones have been created in Baku and Azerbaijan's regions. "I believe that currently, Azerbaijan is showing its recreational opportunities on a global scale," said the president. "Meanwhile, this will, of course, bring benefits to the country's economy, since currently, the tourism sector is developing rapidly and very serious reforms are underway for even more rapid development in this sector." "We see that currently, the number of the tourists visiting Azerbaijan is increasing and naturally, we want to see the world Azerbaijanis among those tourists," he added. President Aliyev pointed out that it will be very good if every Azerbaijani family residing abroad visits Azerbaijan at least once a year. Austrian Finance Minister Hans-Joerg Schelling talks to journalists before a cabinet meeting in Vienna, Austria, May 10, 2016. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling is sure Britons will vote against leaving the European Union when a referendum is held on June 23, he said on Friday. "I personally am sure that Great Britain will decide to stay in the union," he said in a speech on taxation in Europe. (Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Maria Sheahan) BEIJING (Reuters) - One Chinese United Nations peacekeeper has been killed, and four injured, after an attack in Mali, China's Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday, calling for an investigation into the incident to bring the perpetrators to justice. Soldiers of a United Nations peacekeeping mission have been stationed in northern Mali, along with French forces, for three years since separatists joined jihadists to seize the region from the government in Bamako. The militants have staged several high profile attacks in the past year, not only in Mali but also in neighboring Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. A peace accord signed last year was meant to bring stability to the region, but attacks against the U.N. mission, Malian military and civilians are still frequent. In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China urged the Mali government and the United Nations to investigate the attack and bring the perpetrators to justice. "This is a grave and intolerable crime. China strongly condemns it," Hua told a daily news briefing, describing the incident as a terrorist attack on the U.N. peacekeeping mission. She did not say who China thought was behind the attack. China now has more than 2,400 peacekeepers in Mali and other African countries, she said, adding that the country would continue to positively contribute to U.N. peacekeeping missions to help ensure peace and stability in Africa. China will contribute a tenth of the budget for U.N. peacekeeping operations between 2016 and 2018, slightly behind the United States, the U.N.'s peacekeeping chief told the country's official Xinhua news agency on Sunday. Five U.N. peacekeepers from Togo were also killed and one person was seriously injured in an ambush in central Mali on Sunday. (Reporting by Michael Martina; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) A combination photo shows U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (L) and Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump (R) in Los Angeles, California on May 5, 2016 and in Eugene, Oregon, U.S. on May 6, 2016 respectively. REUTERS/Lu By Amanda Becker WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton will slam Republican Donald Trump for being too friendly with North Korea and too harsh on European allies during a foreign policy speech in California on Thursday, designed to paint the billionaire businessman as unfit for the White House. The speech in San Diego comes as the former secretary of state seeks to shift her attention to the Nov. 8 presidential election against likely rival Trump, and away from Bernie Sanders, the U.S. senator from Vermont who is continuing his long-shot bid for the Democratic nomination. Trump has said he would sit down with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to try to stop Pyongyang's nuclear program and has criticized the decades-old NATO alliance with mainly European nations as obsolete and too costly for the United States. "Its important that people understand this is not just about Republican versus Democrat, that Trump is unlike any presidential candidate we have seen and he is fundamentally unfit to be our commander in chief," Clinton aide Jake Sullivan said in an interview ahead of Clinton's speech. California, the most populous U.S. state, is among six states that are to hold Democratic nominating contests next Tuesday. Clinton already has a nearly insurmountable lead over Sanders in the delegate count, but is hoping a decisive win in California can help her clinch the party nomination early and quell concerns about divisions in the party ahead of the general election against Trump. Clinton has already delivered several speeches on foreign policy and national security. Her address in San Diego will not break new policy ground, but will mainly respond to Trumps recent comments, her campaign said. Clinton will argue that Trumps statement that he was prepared to talk to Kim Jong Un, made in a Reuters interview last month, has only emboldened him and invited him to be more provocative, Sullivan said. A column this week in DPRK Today, one of North Koreas state mouthpieces, described Trump as a wise politician and Clinton as thick-headed Hillary." Donald Trumps statements about North Korea show that he has more interest in making Kim Jong Un like him than backing up our friends and allies in the region, Sullivan said, noting that South Korea has worked with the United States on missile defense. Trump's remarks on the decades-old NATO alliance of 28 nations will also elicit a response from Clinton, Sullivan said. The New York businessman has said that member nations should pay for their own defense to ease the U.S. burden and that the alliance itself needs reconfiguring. Sullivan, who worked with Clinton at the U.S. State Department, said burden-sharing is not a novel point within NATO and that Clinton will highlight her record of getting allies to step up and share defense costs. Clinton, however, would not walk away from the alliance, which coordinates with the United States on counter-terrorism, nuclear proliferation and other issues, Sullivan said. In addition to California, states holding nominating contests on June 7 are Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota. California Governor Jerry Brown this week endorsed Clinton in the Democratic contest, saying she was the only path forward to stop the dangerous candidacy of Donald Trump. (Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Leslie Adler) Demonstrators hold Turkish and German flags in front of the Reichstag, the seat of the lower house of parliament Bundestag in Berlin, Germany, June 1, 2016, as they protest against a disputed vote in Germany's parliament on Thursday, on a resolution that By Madeline Chambers and Tulay Karadeniz BERLIN/ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey recalled its ambassador to Germany on Thursday in protest against a parliament resolution declaring the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces a genocide at a time when Europe is looking for Ankara's help in the migrant crisis. Turkey rejects the idea that the killings of Christian Armenians during World War One amounted to a genocide. Its deputy prime minister said the vote was a "historic mistake". Even before Germany's Bundestag lower house of parliament passed the symbolic resolution by an overwhelming majority, Turkey's prime minister had condemned the motion as "irrational" and said it would test the friendship between the NATO partners. Within two hours, Turkey had recalled its ambassador to Germany for consultations and summoned a top German diplomat to the foreign ministry in Ankara, according to officials. Armed riot police were deployed outside the German consulate in Istanbul, near Taksim square, in case of protests. President Tayyip Erdogan, in Nairobi, said the resolution would seriously affect relations with Germany and the government would discuss what steps Ankara would take. "The way to close the dark pages in your own history is not by besmirching the history of other countries with irresponsible and groundless parliamentary decisions," tweeted Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. A spokesman for the ruling AK Party responded swiftly to the vote, saying it had "seriously damaged" relations. In a rare show of unity, three of Turkey's political parties, including the ruling AK, issued a statement condemning the vote. "This decision which is against history and the future will no doubt have an impact on German-Turkish relations and will damage bridges of friendship between the two countries," they wrote in the statement, putting their usual divisions aside. The timing could not be worse for Merkel, who is relying on the success of an EU-Turkey deal she has championed to stem the flow of migrants to Europe in return for cash, visa-free travel rights and accelerated talks on EU membership. In an indication of how sensitive the issue was, she did not take part in the vote due to "public engagements". Later, however, she put the emphasis on the close ties between the two countries. "Even if we have a difference of opinion on an individual matter, the breadth of our links, our friendship, our strategic ties, is great," she told reporters when asked about it. A poll for ARD television showed that 74 percent of Germans support the term 'genocide' to describe the killings. Some 57 percent think the resolution will hurt ties with Turkey. Merkel is also keen to avoid raising tensions with Germany's roughly 3.5 million-strong Turkish community "I want to say to people with Turkish roots: you're not only welcome here but you are part of this country," said Merkel. Over a thousand Turks demonstrated against the resolution on Saturday in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin. The nature and scale of the killings remain highly contentious. Turkey accepts that many Armenians died in partisan fighting beginning in 1915, but denies that up to 1.5 million were killed and that this constituted an act of genocide, a term used by many Western historians and foreign parliaments. MIGRANT DEAL THREAT? In Argentina, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he hoped the vote would not prompt Turkey to overreact. "As expected, Turkey reacted and I hope that over the next days and weeks we can manage to avoid overreactions," he said. Several German lawmakers said they did not want to point a finger at the current Turkish government but rather wanted to bolster reconciliation efforts between Turkey and Armenia. "We know from our own experience how difficult and painful it is to work through the past ... but only in this way can human trust and strength grow," Social Democrat Rolf Muetzenich said in parliament before the vote. Armenia welcomed the resolution. The foreign ministry said Turkish authorities continued "to obstinately reject the undeniable fact of genocide". Nearly a dozen other EU countries have passed similar resolutions. French lawmakers officially recognized the Armenian massacre as a genocide in 2001, infuriating Turkey. Ankara also threatened a "total rupture" with France over a 2012 law outlawing denial of the genocide but France's highest legal authority ruled that was an unconstitutional violation of freedom of speech, prompting a thaw in relations. The German resolution says the Armenians' fate exemplified "the history of mass exterminations, ethnic cleansing, deportations and yes, genocide, which marked the 20th century in such a terrible way." It also acknowledges that the German Empire, then a military ally of the Ottomans, did nothing to stop the killings. (Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley, Daren Butler, Orhan Coskun, Ece Toksabay and Humeyra Pamuk in Turkey and Leigh Thomas in Paris and Hasmik Mkrtchyan in Yerevan bureau; Writing by Noah Barkin and Madeline Chambers; Editing by Richard Balmforth) Michael Madison, 35, is pictured in this East Cleveland Police Department booking photo taken July 19, 2013, and released on July 23, 2013. East Cleveland Police Department/Handout via Reuters By Kim Palmer CLEVELAND (Reuters) - Michael Madison, a East Cleveland man convicted of murdering three women and keeping their bodies wrapped in plastic as trophies, was sentenced on Thursday to death by an Ohio county judge. Madison's attorney, David Grant, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A jury earlier this month unanimously recommended the death penalty for Madison, 38, after his conviction on May 5 in the murders of Shetisha Sheeley, 28; Angela Deskins, 38, and Shirellda Terry, 18. In addition to aggravated murder, he was convicted on additional counts, including rape, kidnapping and gross abuse of a corpse, and was ruled a violent sexual predator. East Cleveland police found the first of the three women in July 2013 after receiving a complaint about foul odors coming from a garage behind Madison's apartment. The bodies of two more women were discovered nearby the next day. Madison was arrested at his mother's Cleveland home after a two-hour standoff with police. After Madison was sentenced by Cuyahoga County Judge Nancy McDonnell, Terry's father, Van Terry, ran toward the convict and lunged at him. "Right now I guess we are supposed to give you forgiveness. You tortured our families. You take my child," Terry said. Sheriff's deputies quickly subdued Terry and Madison, who appeared unharmed, was taken to a holding cell adjacent to the courtroom. (Writing by Suzannah Gonzales; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Dan Grebler) Croatia's Prime Minister-designate Tihomir Oreskovic, new First Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Karamarko and new Deputy Prime Minister Bozo Petrov (R-L) seek approval for the new government in the parliament in Zagreb, Croatia, January 22, 2016. REUTERS/A By Igor Ilic ZAGREB (Reuters) - Croatian Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic urged his two deputies on Friday to resign over a political dispute in which they are both embroiled so that the government can press ahead with crucial economic reforms, but they rejected his call. An alleged conflict of interest involving Tomislav Karamarko, head of the biggest party in the ruling coalition, the conservative HDZ, has brought the four-month-old government close to collapse.. Bozo Petrov, the other deputy premier who heads "Most" (Bridge), a small reformist party in the coalition, has been pressing Karamarko to quit. "Relations between Karamarko and Petrov became too big a burden for the government. That's why I call upon them to withdraw so that the government can continue working on reforms as we are already seeing results," Oreskovic, a technocrat prime minister, told reporters. Karamarko and Petrov rejected Oreskovic's appeal, and the former said the prime minister had lost confidence of the HDZ. "We think it would be a good solution if Oreskovic resigned. We think now that a solution is a new majority in the parliament. We prefer that to snap elections as we would lose precious time," Karamarko told reporters. He said Most would not find a place in a new government with the HDZ. Most's Petrov, however, said he was ready to resign if it meant stability for the country and insisted on Karamarko stepping down. It remains unclear whether the HDZ could muster a new majority at all. "It is possible, but even then the government would hardly be stable. The new elections in the autumn are a realistic option," political analyst Davor Gjenero said. Croatia this week put on hold an international bond worth one billion euros ($1.12 billion) due to its political crisis. "I decided to stop the sale as I did not want us to pay an additional premium for this political risk. I believe that maybe already next month we could achieve better terms. At the moment it is clear that this political situation has started to threaten key national interests," Oreskovic said. He added he did not plan to resign as some local media have recently speculated. The Croatian parliament is due to hold a no-confidence vote over Karamarko's alleged conflict of interest by June 18. The government of the newest European Union member country has vowed to pursue reforms - including fiscal consolidation and cutting red tape - to spur growth and cut high public debt. Snap elections would delay reforms and not guarantee coalition stability, Gjenero said. (Reporting by Igor Ilic; Editing by Mark Heinrich) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States Treasury said on Thursday it had imposed sanctions on two pro-government Burundian officials and a member of an armed opposition group for "engaging in actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, or stability" of the African country. A Treasury statement said sanctions were imposed on: - Marius Ngendabanka, a military commander under President Pierre Nkurunziza who is "one of several Nkurunziza regime officers alleged to be involved in 'purification' operations in Bujumbura against those opposed to the presidents third-term bid." - Ignace Sibomana, who has been involved in operations to target those opposed to Nkurunziza. - Edouard Nshimirimana, a former senior army officer who leads the Force Republicaine du Burundi (FOREBU) rebel group. (Reporting by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Eric Beech) UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Washington, DC 20549 FORM 8-K CURRENT REPORT Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 Date of Report (Date of earliest event reported): June 2 , 2016 NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc. (Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter) Delaware (State or other jurisdiction of incorporation) 001-36301 (Commission File Number) 46-4591526 (I.R.S. Employer Identification No.) 399 Park Avenue, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10022 (Address of principal executive offices) (Zip Code) (212) 547-2600 (Registrants telephone number, including area code) N/A (Former name or former address, if changed since last report.) Check the appropriate box below if the Form 8-K filing is intended to simultaneously satisfy the filing obligation of the registrant under any of the following provisions (see General Instruction A.2. below): x Written communications pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act (17 CFR 230.425) o Soliciting material pursuant to Rule 14a-12 under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14a-12) o Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 14d-2(b) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14d-2(b)) o Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 13e-4(c) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.13e-4(c)) Item 7.01 Regulation FD Disclosure. On June 2, 2016, NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc. (NSAM), NorthStar Realty Finance Corp. (NRF), Colony Capital, Inc. (Colony and, together with NSAM and NRF, the Companies), New Polaris Inc., New Sirius Inc., NorthStar Realty Finance Limited Partnership, Sirius Merger Sub-T, LLC and New Sirius Merger Sub, LLC entered into a definitive merger agreement (the Merger Agreement) under which the Companies will combine in an all-stock merger of equals transaction. The Companies will host a joint conference call and webcast on June 3, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. Eastern time regarding the proposed transaction during which the management teams of the Companies will discuss a presentation to analysts and investors. The investor presentation slides to be used in connection with this analyst and investor presentation are attached hereto as Exhibit 99.1 and are incorporated by reference into this Item 7.01. The information in this Current Report on Form 8-K, including Exhibit 99.1 hereto, is being furnished and shall not be deemed filed for the purpose of Section 18 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or otherwise subject to the liabilities of that Section. The information in this Current Report on Form 8-K, including Exhibit 99.1 hereto, shall not be incorporated by reference into any registration statement or other document pursuant to the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. Item 8.01 Other Events. On June 3, 2016, the Companies issued a joint press release announcing, among other things, the entry into the Merger Agreement. A copy of the press release is attached hereto as Exhibit 99.2 and is incorporated herein by reference. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This report may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements relate to expectations, beliefs, projections, future plans and strategies, anticipated events or trends and similar expressions concerning matters that are not historical facts. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the use of forward-looking terminology such as may, will, should, expects, intends, plans, anticipates, believes, estimates, predicts, or potential or the negative of these words and phrases or similar words or phrases which are predictions of or indicate future events or trends and which do not relate solely to historical matters. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and contingencies, many of which are beyond our control, and may cause actual results to differ significantly from those expressed in any forward-looking statement. Among others, the following uncertainties and other factors could cause actual results to differ from those set forth in the forward looking statements: the failure to receive, on a timely basis or otherwise, the required approvals by NSAM, Colony and NRF stockholders, governmental or regulatory agencies and third parties; the risk that a condition to closing of the merger may not be satisfied; each companys ability to consummate the merger; operating costs and business disruption may be greater than expected; the ability of each company to retain its senior executives and maintain relationships with business partners pending consummation of the merger, the ability to realize substantial efficiencies and synergies as well as anticipated strategic and financial benefits, and the impact of legislative, regulatory and competitive changes. The foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. Additional information about these and other factors can be found in each companys reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC). There can be no assurance that the merger will in fact be consummated. We caution investors not to unduly rely on any forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this report. None of NSAM, Colony or NRF are under any duty to update any of these forward-looking statements after the date of this report, nor to conform prior statements to actual results or revised expectations, and none of NSAM, Colony or NRF intends to do so. Additional Information and Where to Find It In connection with the proposed transaction, NSAM, Colony and NRF will cause an affiliate of NSAM, New Polaris Inc., a Maryland subsidiary of NSAM that will be renamed Colony NorthStar, Inc. (Colony NorthStar) and will be the surviving parent company of the combined company to file with the SEC a registration statement on Form S-4 that will include a joint proxy statement of NSAM, Colony and NRF and that also will constitute a prospectus of Colony NorthStar. Each of NSAM, Colony, NRF and Colony NorthStar may also file other documents with the SEC regarding the proposed transaction. This document is not a substitute for the joint proxy statement/prospectus or registration statement or any other document which NSAM, Colony, NRF or Colony NorthStar may file with the SEC. INVESTORS AND SECURITY HOLDERS OF NSAM, COLONY AND NRF ARE URGED TO READ THE REGISTRATION STATEMENT, THE JOINT PROXY STATEMENT/PROSPECTUS, THE CURRENT REPORT ON FORM 8-K TO BE FILED BY EACH OF NSAM, COLONY 2 AND NRF IN CONNECTION WITH THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE ENTRY INTO THE MERGER AGREEMENT, AND ANY OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS THAT ARE FILED OR WILL BE FILED WITH THE SEC, AS WELL AS ANY AMENDMENTS OR SUPPLEMENTS TO THESE DOCUMENTS, CAREFULLY AND IN THEIR ENTIRETY BECAUSE THEY CONTAIN OR WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROPOSED TRANSACTION AND RELATED MATTERS. Investors and security holders may obtain free copies of the registration statement and the joint proxy statement/prospectus (when available) and other documents filed with the SEC by NSAM, Colony, NRF and Colony NorthStar through the web site maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov or by contacting the investor relations department of NSAM, Colony or NRF at the following: Contacts: NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc. Megan Gavigan / Emily Deissler / Hayley Cook Sard Verbinnen & Co. (212) 687-8080 Colony Capital, Inc. Owen Blicksilver Owen Blicksilver PR, Inc. (516) 742-5950 or Lasse Glassen Addo Communications, Inc. (310) 829-5400 [email protected] NorthStar Realty Finance Corp. Joe Calabrese Investor Relations (212) 827-3772 Participants in the Solicitation Each of NSAM, Colony, and NRF and their respective directors and executive officers may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from their respective shareholders in connection with the proposed transaction. Information regarding NSAMs directors and executive officers, including a description of their direct interests, by security holdings or otherwise, is contained in NSAMs Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, as amended by its Form 10-K/A filed with the SEC on April 29, 2016, and in a Current Report on Form 8-K to be filed by NSAM with the SEC in connection with the announcement of the proposed transaction. Information regarding Colonys directors and executive officers, including a description of their direct interests, by security holdings or otherwise, is contained in Colonys Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, its annual proxy statement filed with the SEC on March 31, 2016 and a Current Report on Form 8-K to be filed by Colony with the SEC in connection with the announcement of the proposed transaction. Information regarding NRFs directors and executive officers, including a description of their direct interests, by security holdings or otherwise, is contained in NRFs Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, as amended by its Form 10-K/A filed with the SEC on April 28, 2016, and in a Current Report on Form 8-K to be filed by NRF with the SEC in connection with the announcement of the proposed transaction. A more complete description will be available in the registration statement on Form S-4 and the joint proxy statement/prospectus. You may obtain free copies of these documents as described in the preceding paragraph. No Offer or Solicitation This report is not intended to and shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities or a solicitation of any vote of approval, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. No offer of securities shall be made except by means of a prospectus meeting the requirements of Section 10 of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. 3 Item 9.01 Financial Statements and Exhibits. (d) Exhibits Exhibit Number Description 99.1 Investor Presentation, dated as of June 3, 2016. 99.2 Joint Press Release, dated as of June 3, 2016. 4 SIGNATURES Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, the Registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned hereunto duly authorized. NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc. (Registrant) Date: June 3, 2016 By: /s/ Ronald J. Lieberman Ronald J. Lieberman Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary 5 EXHIBIT INDEX Exhibit Number Description 99.1 Investor Presentation, dated as of June 3, 2016. 99.2 Joint Press Release, dated as of June 3, 2016. 6 Exhibit 99.1 Colony NorthStar Combination of NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc., Colony Capital, Inc. and NorthStar Realty Finance Corp. Creating a Leading Global Equity REIT with an Embedded Investment Management Platform June 3, 2016 Forward-Looking Statements Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This presentation may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements relate to expectations, beliefs, projections, future plans and strategies, anticipated events or trends and similar expressions concerning matters that are not historical facts. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the use of forward-looking terminology such as may, will, should, expects, intends, plans, anticipates, believes, estimates, predicts, or potential or the negative of these words and phrases or similar words or phrases which are predictions of or indicate future events or trends and which do not relate solely to historical matters. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and contingencies, many of which are beyond our control, and may cause actual results to differ significantly from those expressed in any forward-looking statement. Among others, the following uncertainties and other factors could cause actual results to differ from those set forth in the forward looking statements: the failure to receive, on a timely basis or otherwise, the required approvals by NSAM, Colony and NRF stockholders, governmental or regulatory agencies and third parties; the risk that a condition to closing of the merger may not be satisfied; each companys ability to consummate the merger; operating costs and business disruption may be greater than expected; the ability of each company to retain its senior executives and maintain relationships with business partners pending consummation of the merger; the ability to realize substantial efficiencies and synergies as well as anticipated strategic and financial benefits and the impact of legislative, regulatory and competitive changes and other risk factors relating to the industries in which each company operates, as detailed from time to time in each companys reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). There can be no assurance that the merger will in fact be consummated. None of NSAM, Colony, NRF or any other person assumes responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of any of these forward-looking statements. You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. The forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this presentation. None of NSAM, Colony or NRF are under any duty to update any of these forward-looking statements after the date of this presentation, nor to conform prior statements to actual results or revised expectations, and none of NSAM, Colony or NRF intends to do so. Additional Information and Where to Find It In connection with the proposed transaction, NSAM, Colony and NRF will cause an affiliate of NSAM, New Polaris Inc., a Maryland subsidiary of NSAM that will be renamed Colony NorthStar, Inc. (Colony NorthStar) and will be the surviving parent company of the combined companies, to file with the SEC a registration statement on Form S-4 that will include a joint proxy statement of NSAM, Colony and NRF and that also will constitute a prospectus of Colony NorthStar. Each of NSAM, Colony, NRF and Colony NorthStar may also file other documents with the SEC regarding the proposed transaction. This document is not a substitute for the joint proxy statement/prospectus or registration statement or any other document which NSAM, Colony, NRF or Colony NorthStar may file with the SEC. INVESTORS AND SECURITY HOLDERS OF NSAM, COLONY AND NRF ARE URGED TO READ THE REGISTRATION STATEMENT, THE JOINT PROXY STATEMENT/PROSPECTUS, THE CURRENT REPORT ON FORM 8-K TO BE FILED BY EACH OF NSAM, COLONY AND NRF IN CONNECTION WITH THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE ENTRY INTO THE MERGER AGREEMENT, AND ANY OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS THAT ARE FILED OR WILL BE FILED WITH THE SEC, AS WELL AS ANY AMENDMENTS OR SUPPLEMENTS TO THESE DOCUMENTS, CAREFULLY AND IN THEIR ENTIRETY BECAUSE THEY CONTAIN OR WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROPOSED TRANSACTION AND RELATED MATTERS. Investors and security holders may obtain free copies of the registration statement and the joint proxy statement/prospectus (when available) and other documents filed with the SEC by NSAM, Colony, NRF and Colony NorthStar through the web site maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov or by contacting the investor relations department of NSAM, Colony or NRF at the following: Contacts Participants in the Solicitation Each of NSAM, Colony and NRF and their respective directors, executive officers and employees may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from their respective stockholders in connection with the proposed transaction. Information regarding NSAMs directors and executive officers, including a description of their direct interests, by security holdings or otherwise, is contained in NSAMs Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, as amended by a filing with the SEC made by NSAM on April 29, 2016, and in a Current Report on Form 8-K to be filed by NSAM with the SEC in connection with the announcement of the proposed transaction. Information regarding Colonys directors and executive officers, including a description of their direct interests, by security holdings or otherwise, is contained in Colonys Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, its annual proxy statement filed with the SEC on March 31, 2016, and a Current Report on Form 8-K to be filed by Colony with the SEC in connection with the announcement of the proposed transaction. Information regarding NRFs directors and executive officers, including a description of their direct interests, by security holdings or otherwise, is contained in NRFs Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, as amended by a filing with made by NRF on April 28, 2016, and a Current Report on Form 8-K to be filed by NRF with the SEC in connection with the announcement of the proposed transactions. A more complete description will be available in the registration statement on Form S-4 to be filed by Colony NorthStar and the joint proxy statement/prospectus. You may obtain free copies of these documents as described in the preceding paragraph. No Offer or Solicitation This communication is not intended to and shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities or a solicitation of any vote of approval, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. No offer of securities shall be made except by means of a prospectus meeting the requirements of Section 10 of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc. Colony Capital, Inc. NorthStar Realty Finance Corp. Megan Gavigan / Emily Deissler / Hayley Cook Sard Verbinnen & Co. (212) 687-8080 Lasse Glassen Addo Communications, Inc. (310) 829-5400 Joe Calabrese Investor Relations (212) 827-3772 Leading Global Equity REIT with an Embedded Investment Management Platform Strategic Rationale World-Class, Internally-Managed Real Estate and Investment Management Company 1 Larger, More Diversified Portfolio, Consisting Primarily of Owned Real Estate 2 Substantial Synergies and Higher Earnings Growth 3 Potential to Unlock Value via Increased Scale and Multiple Expansion 4 Broad-Based Access to Multiple Sources of Capital 5 Lower Leverage, Larger Balance Sheet and Improved Liquidity 6 Key Terms of the Transaction Timing Merger Structure Key Executives and Board Synergies and Value Creation Tri-party merger of equals NorthStar Asset Management (NSAM), Colony Capital (CLNY) and NorthStar Realty Finance (NRF) 100% stock-for-stock transaction; NSAM as acquirer, to be renamed Colony NorthStar, Inc. Pro forma entity will be an internally-managed equity REIT(1) Thomas J. Barrack, Jr. Executive Chairman David T. Hamamoto Executive Vice Chairman Richard B. Saltzman Chief Executive Officer Board will consist of 13 directors six nominated by NSAM and NRF, six nominated by CLNY and one additional board member to be mutually agreed upon Significant expected identified cost savings of $115 million on a normalized annual basis High earnings growth and potential for multiple expansion Ownership and Exchange Ratio Ownership(2): NSAM 32.85% / CLNY 33.25% / NRF 33.90% Exchange ratio, implied from fixed ownership percentages 1.4663 shares of NSAM for each CLNY share 1.0996 shares of NSAM for each NRF share Size / Scale Pro Forma Equity Market Cap: $7 billion / Total Capitalization: $17 billion $58 billion of Assets Under Management (AUM)(3), including $38 billion of managed funds and vehicles; $162 billion of Assets Under Advisory (AUA)(3) Expected Dividend Annual dividend of $1.08 per share (CLNYs current dividend of $1.60 adjusted for exchange ratio of 1.4663x) Creating a Leading Global Equity REIT with an Embedded Investment Management Platform NRF management contract will be terminated in conjunction with merger. Excludes effect of certain equity based awards issued in connection with the merger. Please refer to presentation endnotes for definition of AUM and AUA. Expected to close in 1Q 2017 Leading Global Equity REIT with an Embedded Investment Management Platform World-Class, Internally-Managed Real Estate and Investment Management Company 1 Larger, More Diversified Portfolio, Consisting Primarily of Owned Real Estate 2 Substantial Synergies and Higher Earnings Growth 3 Potential to Unlock Value via Increased Scale and Multiple Expansion 4 Broad-Based Access to Multiple Sources of Capital 5 Lower Leverage, Larger Balance Sheet and Improved Liquidity 6 1 Led by the same highly experienced team, providing continuity, transparency and a clear, consistent vision Thomas J. Barrack, Jr. Executive Chairman of the Board Executive Chairman of Colony Capital, the investment firm he founded in 1991 Colony Capital has $18 billion of AUM and has invested $64 billion since inception David T. Hamamoto Executive Vice Chairman of the Board Executive Chairman of NorthStar, the investment firm he founded in 1997 Co-Founder and Partner of Goldman Sachs Real Estate Principal Investments (Whitehall Funds) Richard B. Saltzman Chief Executive Officer Chief Executive Officer, President and Director of Colony Capital, Inc. (Colony Financial, Inc. pre-April 2015) since June 2009; joined Colony Capital as President in 2003 Darren J. Tangen Chief Financial Officer Chief Financial Officer of Colony Capital, Inc. (Colony Financial, Inc. pre-April 2015) since June 2009; joined Colony Capital in 2002 Daniel R. Gilbert Head of Retail Platform Chief Investment and Operating Officer of NorthStar Asset Management Group since June 2014; joined NorthStar Realty in 2004 Majority independent board including six nominated by NSAM and NRF, six nominated by CLNY (comprised of its current board members) and one additional board member to be mutually agreed upon World-Class, Internally-Managed Real Estate and Investment Management Company Mark M. Hedstrom Chief Operating Officer Chief Operating Officer of Colony Capital, Inc. since April 2015; joined Colony Capital in 1993 1 World-Class, Internally-Managed Real Estate and Investment Management Platform 1 144 2 101 3 90 4 64 5 Colony NorthStar 58 6 55 7 55 8 53 9 43 10 40 Leading Global Independent Real Estate Managers (1) AUM ($Bn) Colony NorthStars scale, permanent capital, durable fee streams and broad distribution capabilities position the Company as a leading global real estate investment manager Source: Publicly available information as disclosed on each company's website or public reporting materials. (1) Excludes asset managers owned by pension funds, banks and insurance companies. Also excludes firms that only invest in public real estate securities. AUM ranking based on global real estate AUM as most recently disclosed. Refer to endnotes for further disclosures regarding the presentation of AUM. AUM measures may not be comparable between managers. World-Class, Internally-Managed Real Estate and Investment Management Company 1 AUM: $58 billion (AUA: $162 billion) Equity Market Capitalization: $7 billion Total Capitalization: $17 billion Balance Sheet AUM $7 billion Investment Management AUM $11 billion Balance Sheet AUM $13 billion(2) Investment Management AUM (Not Applicable) Balance Sheet AUM (Not Applicable) Investment Management AUM $27 billion(1) Balance Sheet AUM $20 billion Colony NorthStar Investment Management AUM $38 billion Note: AUM figures as of March 31, 2016. Definition of AUM described in the endnote section of this presentation. Excludes NRFs direct balance sheet AUM. Includes NRFs and NSAMs indirect AUM through strategic partnerships/joint ventures with American Healthcare Investors (NSAM-43% ownership) and RXR (NRF-27%). Represents consolidated NRF AUM. Pro forma for the asset monetizations or sale commitments subsequent to the first quarter 2016 through May 5, 2016, which are described in the endnote section of this presentation. Excludes the impact of the other potential asset monetizations. to create a global leader in real estate and investment management Complementary institutional and high net worth capital raising capabilities Highly valuable post-crisis vintage investment portfolio Large, diversified portfolio across multiple sectors Scaled collection of real estate verticals Exceptional capital raising competency via innovative retail channel Intellectual capital from global client advisory business A scaled global leader in real estate and investment management Category Killer with a full-spectrum of distribution capabilities Combining the competitive strengths of each company Colony NorthStars investment management platform provides a unique and balanced AUM composition, covering the entire Real Estate Investment Management (REIM) landscape Colony NorthStars REIM Franchise Target Strategy Debt Equity Hybrid Distribution Channel Institutional (Private) Retail (Private) Public Product Duration Open-End Closed-End Permanent Vehicle Structure Commingled Funds Separate Accounts Public Entities 1 World-Class, Internally-Managed Real Estate and Investment Management Company Differentiated product offering and expertise creates a highly attractive platform Investment Management AUM: $27 billion Investment Management AUM: $38 billion Investment Management AUM: $11 billion Note: AUM and AUA figures as of March 31, 2016. Definition of AUM and AUA described in the endnote section of this presentation. Excludes NRFs direct balance sheet AUM. Includes NRFs and NSAMs indirect AUM through strategic partnerships/joint ventures with American Healthcare Investors (NSAM-43% ownership) and RXR (NRF-27%). (1) 1 World-Class, Internally-Managed Real Estate and Investment Management Company Colony NorthStar(1) Colony NorthStar will have $38 billion of investment management AUM and $162 billion of AUA Townsend Group NorthStar Europe NorthStar Income NorthStar Healthcare NorthStar Income II AHI RXR CLNY Credit Funds & Vehicles CLNY Opportunity Funds & Vehicles CLNY Core Plus / Value - Added Funds & Vehicles 36% 7% 5% 7% 3% 2% 9% 11% 9% 10% NorthStar Europe NorthStar Income NorthStar Healthcare NorthStar Income II AHI RXR Townsend Group 10% 7% 10% 5% 3% 13% 52% CLNY Credit Funds & Vehicles CLNY Opportunity Funds & Vehicles CLNY Core Plus / Value - Added Funds & Vehicles 38% 30% 32% Leading Global Equity REIT with an Embedded Investment Management Platform World-Class, Internally-Managed Real Estate and Investment Management Company 1 Larger, More Diversified Portfolio, Consisting Primarily of Owned Real Estate 2 Substantial Synergies and Higher Earnings Growth 3 Potential to Unlock Value via Increased Scale and Multiple Expansion 4 Broad-Based Access to Multiple Sources of Capital 5 Lower Leverage, Larger Balance Sheet and Improved Liquidity 6 2 Real Estate Equity(2) Real Estate Debt and Other(3) Balance Sheet AUM: $13 billion Note: AUM figures as of March 31, 2016. Definition of AUM described in the endnote section of this presentation. Represents consolidated NRF AUM. Pro forma for the asset monetizations or sale commitments subsequent to the first quarter 2016 through May 5, 2016, which are described in the endnote section of this presentation. Excludes the impact of the other potential asset monetizations. Includes LP interests in private equity fund secondary investments and unconsolidated JV interests. Real estate debt and other includes debt and other debt related securities including CDO bonds, CDO equity and assets underlying CRE Debt CDOs. Real Estate Equity(2) Real Estate Debt and Other(3) Investment Management Balance Sheet AUM: $20 billion Balance Sheet AUM: $7 billion Real Estate Equity Real Estate Debt (1) Larger, More Diversified Portfolio, Consisting Primarily of Owned Real Estate Colony NorthStar(1) Colony NorthStar will have $20 billion of total balance sheet AUM, consisting primarily of real estate equity investments 74% 26% 85% 15% 51% 49% Optimize portfolio utilizing investment management model Co-invest or monetize existing balance sheet positions Incubate new platforms Deleverage and strengthen the balance sheet, reducing cost of capital Larger, More Diversified Portfolio, Consisting Primarily of Owned Real Estate 2 Balance Sheet AUM: $20 billion(1) Net Lease Industrial Other RE Equity(3) Real Estate Debt and Other(2) Healthcare Hotel Initial Colony NorthStar Portfolio Moving Forward Note: AUM figures as of March 31, 2016. Definition of AUM described in the endnote section of this presentation. Represents consolidated NRF AUM. Pro forma for the asset monetizations or sale commitments subsequent to the first quarter 2016 through May 5, 2016, which are described in the endnote section of this presentation. Excludes the impact of the other potential asset monetizations. Real estate debt and other includes debt and other debt related securities including CDO bonds, CDO equity and assets underlying CRE Debt CDOs. Other RE Equity includes multi-tenant office, retail, LP interests in private equity fund secondary investments and unconsolidated JV interests. Residential (Incl. SFR) 8% 5% 7% 7% 18% 29% 26% Leading Global Equity REIT with an Embedded Investment Management Platform World-Class, Internally-Managed Real Estate and Investment Management Company 1 Larger, More Diversified Portfolio, Consisting Primarily of Owned Real Estate 2 Substantial Synergies and Higher Earnings Growth 3 Potential to Unlock Value via Increased Scale and Multiple Expansion 4 Broad-Based Access to Multiple Sources of Capital 5 Lower Leverage, Larger Balance Sheet and Improved Liquidity 6 Substantial Synergies and Higher Earnings Growth 3 Synergies Estimated annualized synergies of $115 million; $80 million of cash and $35 million of stock-based compensation savings (25% 30% combined overhead costs) Potential for further cost savings from increased operational efficiencies Asset Monetizations and Capital Redeployment Continue strategy of asset monetizations and deleveraging Redeploy capital through third-party capital model to achieve enhanced shareholder returns Balance Sheet Optimization and Lower Cost of Capital Improve credit profile and achieve lower cost of capital on go-forward basis Position to achieve investment grade credit profile Higher co-investment levels from new platform Ability to attract institutional capital and execute value enhancing transactions Larger Balance Sheet, Increased Financial Flexibility For illustrative purposes only, the below example shows potential transaction implications for each $1 billion of Colony NorthStar GP capital invested alongside third-party LP capital Investment Income(1): 10% 15% 10% 15% Management Fees(2): +4% +4% Net Performance Fees(3): +4% Illustrative Gross Internal Rate of Return (IRR): 10% 15% 14% 23% Substantial Synergies and Higher Earnings Growth 3 Direct Investment 100% Colony NorthStar ($1 Bn) Vs. Gross investment IRR assuming 5-year hold period. Co-investment scenario assumes a 1.25% management fee and 0.50% upfront asset management fee on third party equity capital, and 25% tax rate on incremental private fund revenue. For illustrative purposes, no incremental overhead expense is assumed. Co-investment scenario assumes the General Partner (GP) receives a total of 17.0% of net limited partner profits, net of 40% sharing interest as compensation to investment professionals. For illustrative purposes, no incremental overhead expense is assumed. 13% Average IRR 19% Average IRR 40%+ Increase in ROE Co-Investment (4:1) 80% Third-Party LP ($4 Bn) 20% Colony NorthStar GP ($1 Bn) Significantly enhanced returns resulting from investment management based economic model $1 Bn $1 Bn $4 Bn 100% Colony NorthStar Direct Investment Co - Investment (4:1) 80% 3rd Party LP 20% Colony NorthStar GP Third - Party LP Colony NorthStar GP Leading Global Equity REIT with an Embedded Investment Management Platform World-Class, Internally-Managed Real Estate and Investment Management Company 1 Larger, More Diversified Portfolio, Consisting Primarily of Owned Real Estate 2 Substantial Synergies and Higher Earnings Growth 3 Potential to Unlock Value via Increased Scale and Multiple Expansion 4 Broad-Based Access to Multiple Sources of Capital 5 Lower Leverage, Larger Balance Sheet and Improved Liquidity 6 Each of the standalone companies is undervalued relative to peer groups Colony NorthStar will present a unique, deep value investment opportunity with a strong growth trajectory Elimination of external management structure, increased trading liquidity, expected RMZ inclusion, and lower leverage could all be catalysts for expansion of valuation multiples Potential to Unlock Value via Increased Scale and Multiple Expansion 4 Source: Wall Street Research, FactSet and SNL as of June 2, 2016. Notes: Industrial REITs include PLD, DRE, LPT, DCT, FR, EGP, STAG, REXR, TRNO and MNR. Healthcare REITs include HCN,VTR, HCP, OHI, SNH, HTA, MPW, HR, DOC, NHI, CCP, LTC, SBRA, SNR and CTRE. Net Lease REITs include WPC, GPT, LXP, SIR and GOOD. Lodging REITs include RLJ, APLE, INN, HT, CLDT, HST, SHO, LHO, RHP, DRH, PEB, XHR, CHSP, FCH, AHP, HPT and AHT. Alternative asset managers include BX, CG, APO, KKR, OAK, ARES and FIG. FFO represents funds from operations. Represents EBITDA multiple, which is the primary valuation metric within Lodging REITs. Economic Net Income (ENI) represents a primary net income / earnings metric used by alternative asset managers. Represents 1Q2016 annualized Core FFO multiple. Represents 1Q2016 annualized CAD multiple. 2016E FFO Multiple 2016E ENI(2) Multiple 2016E EBITDA Multiple Blended Multiple 9.0x 21.8x 18.7x 15.6x 14.5x 18.6x 13.3x 11.1x 11.1x 13.6x 11.2x 9.9x 5.8x Hybrid Peer Average 17.6x REIT Peer Average 14.4x AKR PLD BAM WPC Industrial Healthcare Net Lease Lodging ?? Alternative Asset Managers CLNY ?? NSAM ??? NRF ??? 2016E FFOx 8.1x $ in billions Larger Total Capitalization Now in Top Quartile of REIT Sector (1) 4 Source: Latest company public filings and FactSet as of June 2, 2016. REIT sector includes 148 public equity REITs across all real estate asset classes. Based on share prices as of June 2, 2016 and pro forma shares (including assumed conversion of OP units) and excludes the effect of the special dividend and certain equity based awards issued in connection with the merger. Pro forma for the merger transaction and asset monetizations or sale commitments subsequent to the first quarter 2016 through May 5, 2016, which are described in the endnote section of this presentation, in addition to potential other contemplated asset monetizations. NRF total capitalization as of March 31, 2016, not adjusted for asset monetizations or sale commitments described in the endnote section of this presentation, or the potential other contemplated asset monetizations. Potential to Unlock Value via Increased Scale and Multiple Expansion Larger Equity Market Cap Now in Top Quartile of REIT Sector (1) (4) NSAM?? NRF CLNY Median?? Average?? Top Quartile?? Colony NorthStar?? $2.4 $2.5 $2.5 $3.0 $5.9 $6.2 $7.4 NSAM?? Median?? CLNY Average?? Top Quartile?? NRF Colony NorthStar?? $2.9 $4.9 $6.4 $9.1 $10.2 $12.3 $17.2 Leading Global Equity REIT with an Embedded Investment Management Platform World-Class, Internally-Managed Real Estate and Investment Management Company 1 Larger, More Diversified Portfolio, Consisting Primarily of Owned Real Estate 2 Substantial Synergies and Higher Earnings Growth 3 Potential to Unlock Value via Increased Scale and Multiple Expansion 4 Broad-Based Access to Multiple Sources of Capital 5 Lower Leverage, Larger Balance Sheet and Improved Liquidity 6 Institutional Funds Management Public Capital Markets Retail Network Broad-Based Access to Multiple Sources of Capital 5 Market leading brand and distribution capabilities $6.5 billion AUM 2 vehicles fully raised 4 vehicles currently fundraising 1 vehicle under registration Long-term contract as manager of NorthStar Realty Europe (NYSE: NRE) Significant shareholder of Colony Starwood Homes (NYSE: SFR) Strong expertise and knowledge of capital markets Strong reputation with public REIT investors Incubator of platforms positioned for public markets exit Elite real estate private equity business across multiple funds and platforms Credit Funds & Vehicles $4.3 billion AUM Core Plus / Value-Added Funds & Vehicles $3.7 billion AUM Opportunity Funds & Vehicles $3.5 billion AUM Townsend Group $14 billion AUM $162 billion AUA Note: AUM and AUA figures as of March 31, 2016. Definition of AUM and AUA described in the endnote section of this presentation. Colony 1Q16 Fee-Earning Equity Under Management (FEEUM) of $7.9 billion. Ability to opportunistically access diverse fundraising channels $1.9 billion AUM $3.4 billion AUM NorthStar Real Estate Income II ($1.3 billion AUM) NorthStar/RXR New York Metro Real Estate ($2.0 billion non-traded REIT) NorthStar Corporate Income Fund / Och-Ziff ($3.2 billion closed-end fund) NorthStar Real Estate Capital Income Fund ($3.2 billion closed-end fund) NorthStar Corporate Investment, Inc. / Och-Ziff Leading Global Equity REIT with an Embedded Investment Management Platform World-Class, Internally-Managed Real Estate and Investment Management Company 1 Larger, More Diversified Portfolio, Consisting Primarily of Owned Real Estate 2 Substantial Synergies and Higher Earnings Growth 3 Potential to Unlock Value via Increased Scale and Multiple Expansion 4 Broad-Based Access to Multiple Sources of Capital 5 Lower Leverage, Larger Balance Sheet and Improved Liquidity 6 Capital Structure (1,2) Pro Forma Leverage Lower Leverage, Larger Balance Sheet and Improved Liquidity 6 Upsize and amend corporate credit facility Use net proceeds from asset sales to de-lever the balance sheet Conservative Long-Term Debt Strategy Maintain conservative leverage Extend and stagger debt maturities Limit floating-rate debt exposure Position for investment grade credit profile Continue minimal recourse debt financings Proactive Near-Term Debt Strategy Note: $ in billions. Source: Company public filings as of March 31, 2016. Based on share prices as of June 2, 2016. NSAM based on pro forma shares (including assumed conversion of OP units) and excludes the effect of the special dividend and certain equity based awards issued in connection with the merger. Pro forma for the merger transaction and asset monetizations or sale commitments subsequent to the first quarter 2016 through May 5, 2016, which are described in the endnote section of this presentation, in addition to potential other contemplated asset monetizations. Includes $6 million of NRF recourse debt as of March 31, 2016. (3) Equity Preferred Exchangeable Notes and Other Investment - Level Non - Recourse Debt $7.4 43% $1.6 9% $1.1 7% $7.1 41% Total Capitalization $17.2 Bn Total Debt / Total Capitalization 48% Recourse Debt / Total Capitalization 6% Total Debt / EBITDA Target Level +/? 6.0x Note: $ in billions. Source: Company public filings as of March 31, 2016. Based on share prices as of June 2, 2016 and pro forma shares and excludes the effect of the special dividend and certain equity based awards issued in connection with the merger. NSAM based on pro forma shares (including assumed conversion of OP units). Pro forma for the merger transaction and asset monetizations or sale commitments subsequent to the first quarter 2016 through May 5, 2016, which are described in the endnote section of this presentation, in addition to potential other contemplated asset monetizations. Includes $6 million of NRF recourse debt as of March 31, 2016. Lower Leverage, Larger Balance Sheet and Improved Liquidity 6 In-place deleveraging strategy creates an opportunity to improve the combined companys credit profile and lower its cost of capital $ in billions Equity Market Capitalization (1) $2.4 $2.5 $2.5 $7.4 Bank Debt 0.5 0.3 0.4 (1.2) ? Investment-Level Non-Recourse Debt (3) ? 2.2 8.1 (3.1) 7.1 Exchangeable Notes and Other ? 0.8 0.3 ? 1.1 Total Debt at Share $0.5 $3.3 $8.8 ($4.4) $8.3 Preferred Stock ? 0.6 1.0 1.6 Total Capitalization $2.9 $6.4 $12.3 ($4.4) $17.2 Leverage Statistics Total Debt / Total Capitalization 17% 52% 72% 48% NSAM (As of 3/31/2016) CLNY (As of 3/31/2016) NRF (As of 3/31/2016) Asset Sales and Transaction Adjustments (2) Colony NorthStar Pro Forma (As of 3/31/2016) Asset Monetization Manufactured Housing: $615 million(2) Multifamily: $86 million(2) Additional Contemplated Asset Sales: $750 million Revolving Credit Facility: $850 million(3) Cash on Balance Sheets: $700 million(4) Lower Leverage, Larger Balance Sheet and Improved Liquidity All figures are estimated amounts at closing of the transaction. Represents expected net cash proceeds. Currently under contract. Represents the total size of the existing revolving credit facility. To the extent asset sales are not completed by closing, the company has an existing commitment for an additional $400 million bridge tranche on its credit facility. Combined unrestricted cash balances at closing of transaction. 100% Stock-for-Stock Transaction Repayment of Debt NSAM Term Loan: ~ $496 million NRF Corporate Term Loan: $425 million Rollover of Revolving Credit Facility: $502 million Estimated Transaction Costs: $186 million Cash Distribution to NSAM Shareholders: $128 million Excess Cash: $1,264 million 6 Total Sources: ~$3.0 billion Total Uses: ~$3.0 billion Uses of Capital (1) Sources of Capital (1) Up to ~$1.3 billion of excess liquidity to deploy utilizing attractive co-investment model Vision for the Combined Company Goal to become the premier internally managed global equity REIT with an embedded investment management platform Strong benefits from large base of owned, operating real estate Ability to build platforms across multiple real estate verticals Larger balance sheet and ability to execute larger transactions opportunistically Lower leverage, position to achieve investment grade credit profile and reduce cost of capital Identified cost synergies and potential for operational synergies Potential for higher earnings growth and value creation from overlay of investment management economics Presentation Endnotes Assets Under Management (AUM): Colony AUM refers to the assets for which CLNY provides investment management services and includes assets for which it may or may not charge management fees and/or performance allocations. AUM is presented as of March 31, 2016 and equals the sum of: a) the gross fair value of investments held directly by CLNY or managed by CLNY on behalf of its private funds, co-investments, or other investment vehicles; b) leverage, inclusive of debt held by investments and deferred purchases prices; c) uncalled limited partner capital commitments which CLNY is entitled to call from investors during the given commitment period at its discretion pursuant to the terms of their respective funds; and d) with respect to majority-owned and substantially controlled investments CLNY consolidates gross assets attributable to third-party investors. NSAM AUM represents gross investments reported by each of NSAMs managed companies and Townsend as of March 31, 2016 and is pro forma for asset monetizations or sale commitments subsequent to the first quarter 2016 through May 5, 2016. Includes indirect AUM through strategic partnership joint venture with American Healthcare Investors. NRF AUM is generally based on cost for real estate investments which includes net purchase price allocation related to net intangibles, deferred costs and other assets, if any, fair value for PE Investments, carrying value for corporate investments, principal amount for CRE debt and securities investments and amortized cost for N-Star CDO equity. AUM represents 100% of all real estate assets in consolidated joint ventures. AUM is presented as of March 31, 2016 unless otherwise noted below. Real Estate: Pro forma for asset monetizations or sale commitments subsequent to the first quarter of 2016 and through May 5, 2016 as described below. Corporate Investments: Represents investments in Aerium Group, or Aerium, and SteelWave, LLC (formerly known as Legacy Partners Commercial LLC), or SteelWave. Real Estate Debt: Pro forma for asset monetizations or sale commitments subsequent to the first quarter of 2016 and through May 5, 2016 as described below. N-Star CDO Bonds: Includes N-Star CDO bonds with a principal amount of $140 million related to CRE securities CDOs that are eliminated in consolidation. Assets Underlying CRE Debt CDOs: Includes assets of deconsolidated N-Star CDOs and is based on the respective remittance report issued on the date nearest to March 31, 2016. This amount excludes $432 million of aggregate principal amount of N-Star CDO bonds and amortized cost of N-Star CDO equity of such deconsolidated N-Star CDOs included in CRE securities. Calculations of AUM differ between Colony, NSAM, and NRF, primarily based on Colonys AUM calculation including unrealized appreciation or depreciation for all investments and the uncalled capital commitments from discretionary funds as disclosed above. The final AUM of the combined company may vary from the numbers presented herein as a result of conforming methodologies and realizing these differences. Additionally, this measure may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other asset managers. Assets Under Advisory (AUA): Advised assets include relationships where Townsend provides services such as portfolio strategy development and underwriting advice, or where the services may be limited to performance reporting or certain project specific mandates. Townsend does not have discretion over advised assets. Advised assets are based on totals reported by each client to Townsend or derived from publicly available information. Assets under advisement are calculated on an annual basis. As of March 31, 2016, Townsend provided advice and/or consulting services to clients who have real estate/real asset allocations of over $160 billion (advised assets). Advised Assets include real estate and real asset allocations as reported by clients for whom Townsend provides multiple advisory servicesincluding strategic and underwriting advice for the entire portfolio, as well as on a limited basis, certain project specific requirements. Asset monetizations or sale commitments subsequent to the first quarter 2016 include: Definitive agreements to sell ten multifamily properties for a gross sales price of $307 million, pro rata mortgage financing of $199 million and net proceeds of $86 million; Definitive agreement to sell the manufactured housing portfolio for a gross sales price of approximately $2.0 billion, pro rata mortgage financing of $1.2 billion and net proceeds of approximately $615 million; Four loans and received a full payoff with a an aggregate principal amount of $144 million at par, which $25 million of proceeds were used to pay down a loan facility, resulting in $116 million of net proceeds. Potential Asset Monetizations Net proceeds of approximately $750 million and pro rata debt repayment of approximately $1.7 billion related to potential asset monetizations. Exhibit 99.2 NorthStar Asset Management Group, Colony Capital, and NorthStar Realty Finance Announce Merger to Create Colony NorthStar, a World-Class Diversified Real Estate and Investment Management Platform Equity REIT with $58 Billion of Assets under Management across Different Geographies and Property Types Greater Potential to Enhance Shareholder Returns Through Overlay of Investment Management Economics across a Larger Balance Sheet NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc. (NYSE: NSAM), Colony Capital, Inc. (Colony) (NYSE: CLNY) and NorthStar Realty Finance Corp. (NYSE: NRF) today announced that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which the companies will combine in an all-stock merger of equals transaction to create a world-class, internally-managed, diversified real estate and investment management platform. The transaction has been unanimously approved by the Special Committees of NSAM and NRF, and the Board of Directors of Colony. The combined company will be named Colony NorthStar, Inc. Upon completion of the transaction, terms of which are detailed below, NSAM shareholders will own approximately 32.85%, Colony shareholders will own approximately 33.25% and NRF shareholders will own approximately 33.90% of the combined company on a fully diluted basis. NSAM shareholders will also receive, in addition to its regular quarterly dividend, a special cash dividend equal to $128 million, which represents a one-time distribution of excess NSAM taxable earnings and profits. Upon closing of the transaction, Thomas J. Barrack Jr. will be Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors of Colony NorthStar, David Hamamoto will be Executive Vice Chairman, and Richard B. Saltzman will be Chief Executive Officer. David Hamamoto, Executive Chairman of NSAM and Chairman of NRF, stated, We are incredibly excited to merge with Colony to create a global real estate leader well positioned for long-term growth. This strategic combination is the next logical step for NSAM and NRF, creating substantial value for shareholders and transforming the companies into a world-class, internally-managed equity REIT that includes a sizable, established institutional and retail asset management platform. We are confident that Colony NorthStar with its lower leverage, larger balance sheet and improved liquidity profile is poised for meaningful multiple expansion and substantially enhanced long-term returns for shareholders. Thomas J. Barrack, Jr., Executive Chairman of Colony, stated, This is an amazing combination of three highly compatible companies with complementary strategic priorities that we expect will deliver substantial value for all three sets of shareholders. The combined company will have both the capability and balance sheet capacity to deploy capital to establish and fortify foundational equity real estate positions through all points in the cycle, across geographies, asset types and capital structures. We also will realize substantial efficiencies and synergies by bringing our organizations together and offering a well curated menu of durable real estate business lines with broad-based capital access. The pro forma combined enterprises enhanced scale, diversification, and unique platforms will foster the ability to generate substantial return on equity through high quality real estate investments enhanced by attractive investment management revenues, said Richard B. Saltzman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Colony. In addition, the merger produces an outstanding partnership of complementary management talent with access to enormous capital and distribution resources for the benefit of our shareholders. Transaction Delivers a Number of Strategic and Financial Benefits Creates World-Class Real Estate and Investment Management Platform: Global, diversified equity REIT with $58 billion of assets under management, led by a seasoned management team with access to proprietary deal sourcing and a significant track record as a global investor, operator and asset manager. Larger, More Diversified and Stable Investment Portfolio: Well-diversified portfolio of investments with concentration in scaled verticals across geographies, property types and capital stack positions, consisting primarily of owned real estate. Significant Cost Savings: Approximately $115 million in total annual cost synergies, consisting of approximately $80 million of cash savings and approximately $35 million of stock based compensation savings, expected to be realized post-closing. Stronger Balance Sheet, Ongoing Deleveraging and Improved Liquidity: Asset monetization and sale initiatives by NRF, totaling approximately $1.5 billion in projected net proceeds, are expected to bring the total debt-to-capitalization ratio of the combined company under 50%, while continuing with an objective of upgrading the credit profile of the combined company and lowering the overall cost of capital. Increased Scale and Value Creation: Colony NorthStar is expected to be in the top quartile ranked by equity market capitalization, according to the MSCI U.S. REIT Index (RMZ) classification, with a broad platform that expands its ability to deploy third-party fee-bearing capital to accelerate growth and provide enhanced returns to shareholders from consistent, longer duration fee related income. Widens Access to Multiple Sources of Capital: Unmatched access to global investors targeting real estate investment through public vehicles, private institutional and retail capital platforms. Transaction Structure Under the terms of the merger agreement, NSAM will redomesticate to Maryland and elect to be treated as a REIT beginning in 2017, and NRF and Colony, through a series of transactions, will merge with and into the redomesticated NSAM, which will be renamed Colony NorthStar, Inc. NSAM shareholders will continue to own one (1) share of Colony NorthStar common stock for each share of NSAM common stock they previously owned. Colony common shareholders will receive 1.4663 shares of Colony NorthStars common stock for each share of Colony common stock they own, and NRF common shareholders will receive 1.0996 shares of Colony NorthStars common stock for each share of NRF common stock they own. Each of Colony and NRF has preferred stock outstanding and the holders of such preferred stock will receive shares of preferred stock of Colony NorthStar that are substantially similar to the preferred stock held prior to the closing of the transaction. 2 Certain NSAM and NRF executives have entered into agreements to vote their shares in favor of the transaction, and certain Colony executives, who collectively own approximately 16% of Colonys outstanding common stock, have entered into agreements to vote their shares in favor of the transaction. Management and Governance Colony NorthStars board will consist of 13 directors in total six nominated by NSAM and NRF, six nominated by Colony and one additional board member to be mutually agreed upon by the existing NSAM, Colony and NRF directors. The majority of the board will be comprised of independent directors. In addition to the roles outlined above for Messrs. Barrack, Hamamoto and Saltzman, Darren Tangen will be Chief Financial Officer and Mark Hedstrom will be Chief Operating Officer of the combined company. Al Tylis, NSAMs Chief Executive Officer and a member of the NSAM and NRF Board of Directors, has agreed to assist in the transition following the merger. Dan Gilbert, NSAM and NRFs Chief Investment and Operating Officer will, among other responsibilities, continue to oversee Colony NorthStars retail platform. Messrs. Hamamoto, Tylis and Gilbert have agreed to reduce the cash severance payments and performance-based equity awards that would have been contractually owed to them upon consummation of the transaction by approximately (i) $52 million of cash payments and (ii) 2.6 million shares of performance-based equity awards which would have been earned based on current stock prices at the consummation of the transaction. Additionally, Messrs. Hamamoto, Tylis and Gilbert will forfeit performance-based awards with respect to approximately 1.2 million shares of NSAM common stock and 740,000 shares of NRF common stock as a result of the transaction. Furthermore, in lieu of any remaining cash severance payments resulting from the transaction that these executives would have been entitled to receive, Messrs. Hamamoto, Tylis and Gilbert will receive equity in Colony NorthStar, which will be subject to vesting based on continued employment with Colony NorthStar for one-year following the closing of the transaction, and with respect to Messrs. Hamamoto and Gilbert, will be subject to a two-year lock-up following the closing of the transaction. The number of such shares, in lieu of the remaining $106 million cash severance payments, will be determined based on the five day volume weighted average trading price of the shares of common stock of Colony NorthStar following the merger. Based on the June 2, 2016 closing price of NSAM, this would equate to approximately 8.6 million shares, or approximately 1.4%, of Colony NorthStar common stock, subject to the restrictions referred to above. Similarly, the number of remaining performance-based equity awards contractually owed to each of Messrs. Hamamoto, Tylis and Gilbert upon consummation of the transaction is approximately 2.5 million shares, or approximately 0.4%, of Colony NorthStar common stock. Additionally, Messrs. Hamamoto, Tylis and Gilbert have each agreed to a base salary of $1 for 2017 and have also agreed to forego a 2017 bonus. Approvals and Anticipated Closing The transaction is expected to close during the first quarter of 2017, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, and approval by the NSAM, Colony and NRF shareholders. 3 Advisors NSAM is being advised by Goldman Sachs and is receiving legal counsel from Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, compensation and benefits counsel from Goodwin Procter LLP and tax counsel from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Hunton & Williams LLP. NSAMs Special Committee is being advised by Evercore and is receiving legal counsel from Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP and Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell LLP. BofA Merrill Lynch is acting as lead financial advisor to Colony, and Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are also acting as financial advisors in connection with the transaction. Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP is acting as legal counsel to Colony, and Hogan Lovells LLP is acting as tax and Maryland counsel to Colony. Vinson & Elkins LLP is acting as legal and tax counsel to NRF. UBS Investment Bank is acting as exclusive financial advisor and Venable LLP is acting as legal counsel to NRFs Special Committee. Conference Call and Webcast Details; Investor Presentation NSAM, Colony and NRF will conduct a joint conference call and webcast on Friday, June 3, 2016 at 7:00 a.m. Pacific Time / 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time to discuss the proposed merger. To participate in the event by telephone, please dial (888) 791-4322 ten minutes prior to the start time (to allow time for registration) and use conference ID 1462415. International callers should dial (913) 981-5510 and enter the same conference ID number. For those unable to participate during the live call, a replay will be available beginning Friday, June 3, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time / 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time, through Friday, June 10, 2016, at 9:59 a.m. Pacific Time / 12:59 p.m. Eastern Time. To access the replay, dial (888) 203-1112 (U.S.), and use conference ID 1462415. International callers should dial (719) 457-0820 and enter the same conference ID number. The call will also be broadcast live over the Internet (http://public.viavid.com/index.php?id=119921) and can be accessed on the Investor Relations section of each companys website, which will be available for 90 days. Please refer to the investor presentation, which is available on the NSAM, Colony and NRF websites, for more details on the transaction. About NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc. NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc. is a global asset management firm focused on strategically managing real estate and other investment platforms in the United States and internationally. NSAM provides asset management and other services by managing its NorthStar listed companies and its retail companies, both in the United States and internationally. NSAM earns asset management and other fees pursuant to management and other contracts and through its direct and indirect investments in strategic partnerships and joint ventures. In addition, NSAM owns NorthStar Securities, LLC, a captive broker-dealer platform which raises capital in the retail market. As of March 31, 2016, adjusted for sales, acquisitions and commitments to sell or acquire investments by its managed companies, NSAM had $23 billion of assets under management. In addition, inception to date, NSAM invested $100 million in direct investments in entities that manage $10 billion, including assets held by its managed companies, across a variety of asset classes. 4 About Colony Capital, Inc. Colony Capital, Inc. (formerly Colony Financial, Inc.), a New York Stock Exchange publicly traded company, is a leading global real estate and investment management firm headquartered in Los Angeles, California with more than 300 employees across 14 offices in 10 countries. Through Colonys global investment management business, which has operated under the Colony Capital brand for more than 25 years, Colony has sponsored $24 billion of equity across a variety of distinct funds and investment vehicles that collectively invested over $60 billion of total capital. Colony manages capital on behalf of both Colony shareholders and limited partners in private investment funds under its management where Colony may earn management fees and carried interests. Colonys investment portfolio is primarily composed of: (i) real estate equity; (ii) real estate debt; and (iii) investment management of Colony-sponsored private equity funds and vehicles. Colony has elected to be taxed as a real estate investment trust, or REIT, for U.S. federal income tax purposes. About NorthStar Realty Finance Corp. NorthStar Realty Finance Corp. is a publicly-traded, diversified commercial real estate company that is organized as a REIT and is managed by an affiliate of NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc., a global asset management firm. NRFs primary business objectives are to make diversified real estate-related investments that produce attractive risk-adjusted returns, generate stable cash flows for distribution to its stockholders and build long-term franchise value. NRFs core business activities include acquiring commercial real estate properties, such as healthcare, hotels, manufactured housing communities, office and retail net lease and multifamily; making opportunistic investments such as indirect interests in real estate through private equity real estate funds and originating, structuring and acquiring commercial real estate debt. As of May 5, 2016, adjusted for sales and commitments to sell investments, NRF had $13 billion of balance sheet investments, comprised of 85% real estate equity assets and 15% CRE debt and securities assets. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This press release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements relate to expectations, beliefs, projections, future plans and strategies, anticipated events or trends and similar expressions concerning matters that are not historical facts. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the use of forward-looking terminology such as may, will, should, expects, intends, plans, anticipates, believes, estimates, predicts, or potential or the negative of these words and phrases or similar words or phrases which are predictions of or indicate future events or trends and which do not relate solely to historical matters. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and contingencies, many of which are beyond our control, and may cause actual results to differ significantly from those expressed in any forward-looking statement. Among others, the following uncertainties and other factors could cause actual results to differ from those set forth in the forward looking statements: the failure to receive, on a timely basis or otherwise, the required approvals by NSAM, Colony and NRF stockholders, governmental or regulatory agencies and third parties; the risk that a condition to closing of the merger may not be satisfied; each companys ability to consummate the merger; operating costs and business disruption may be greater than expected; the ability of each company to retain its senior executives and maintain relationships with business partners pending consummation of the merger; the ability to realize substantial efficiencies and synergies as well as anticipated strategic and financial benefits, and the impact of legislative, 5 regulatory and competitive changes. The foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. Additional information about these and other factors can be found in each companys reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC). There can be no assurance that the merger will in fact be consummated. We caution investors not to unduly rely on any forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release. None of NSAM, Colony or NRF is under any duty to update any of these forward-looking statements after the date of this press release, nor to conform prior statements to actual results or revised expectations, and none of NSAM, Colony or NRF intends to do so. Additional Information and Where to Find It In connection with the proposed transaction, NSAM, Colony and NRF will cause an affiliate of NSAM, New Polaris Inc., a Maryland subsidiary of NSAM that will be renamed Colony NorthStar, Inc. (Colony NorthStar) and will be the surviving parent company of the combined company to file with the SEC a registration statement on Form S-4 that will include a joint proxy statement of NSAM, Colony and NRF and that also will constitute a prospectus of Colony NorthStar. Each of NSAM, Colony, NRF and Colony NorthStar may also file other documents with the SEC regarding the proposed transaction. This document is not a substitute for the joint proxy statement/prospectus or registration statement or any other document which NSAM, Colony, NRF or Colony NorthStar may file with the SEC. INVESTORS AND SECURITY HOLDERS OF NSAM, COLONY AND NRF ARE URGED TO READ THE REGISTRATION STATEMENT, THE JOINT PROXY STATEMENT/PROSPECTUS, THE CURRENT REPORTS ON FORM 8-K TO BE FILED BY EACH OF NSAM, COLONY AND NRF IN CONNECTION WITH THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE ENTRY INTO THE MERGER AGREEMENT, AND ANY OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS THAT ARE FILED OR WILL BE FILED WITH THE SEC, AS WELL AS ANY AMENDMENTS OR SUPPLEMENTS TO THESE DOCUMENTS, CAREFULLY AND IN THEIR ENTIRETY BECAUSE THEY CONTAIN OR WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROPOSED TRANSACTION AND RELATED MATTERS. Investors and security holders may obtain free copies of the registration statement and the joint proxy statement/prospectus (when available) and other documents filed with the SEC by NSAM, Colony, NRF and Colony NorthStar through the web site maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov or by contacting the investor relations department of NSAM, Colony or NRF at the following: Contacts: NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc. Megan Gavigan / Emily Deissler / Hayley Cook Sard Verbinnen & Co. (212) 687-8080 Colony Capital, Inc. Owen Blicksilver Owen Blicksilver PR, Inc. (516) 742-5950 or Lasse Glassen Addo Communications, Inc. (310) 829-5400 [email protected] 6 UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Washington, D.C. 20549 FORM 8-K CURRENT REPORT Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 Date of report (Date of earliest event reported): June 1, 2016 Echo Therapeutics, Inc. (Exact name of Company as specified in its charter) Delaware 001-35218 41-1649949 (State or other jurisdiction of Incorporation) (Commission File Number) (I.R.S. Employer Identification No.) 99 Wood Avenue South., Suite 302 Iselin, NJ 08830 (Address of principal executive offices) (Zip Code) Companys telephone number, including area code: be (732) 201-4189 (Former name or former address, if changed since last report) Check the appropriate box below if the Form 8-K filing is intended to simultaneously satisfy the filing obligation of the Company under any of the following provisions ( see General Instruction A.2. below): o Written communications pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act (17 CFR 230.425) o Soliciting material pursuant to Rule 14a-12 under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14a-12) o Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 14d-2(b) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14d-2(b)) o Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 13e-4(c) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.13e-4(c)) Item 5.03 Amendments to Articles of Incorporation or Bylaws; Change in Fiscal Year. On June 1, 2016, the Board of Directors of Echo Therapeutics, Inc., a Delaware corporation (the Company), approved amendments to the Companys amended and restated bylaws, effective as of June 1, 2016 (as amended and restated, the Bylaws). The Bylaws were amended to remove the fee shifting bylaw provision originally adopted in 2014 by the Companys former Board of Directors which provided the Company the opportunity to recover expenses incurred by it as well as its officers, directors, and/or affiliates (including legal fees) against a shareholder pursuing corporate litigation if the shareholder is unsuccessful in litigation. The foregoing description of the Bylaws does not purport to be complete and is qualified in its entirely by reference to the full text of the Bylaws, a copy of which is filed as Exhibit 3.2 to this Current Report on Form 8-K and incorporated herein by reference. Item 9.01 Financial Statements and Exhibits. 3.2 Amended and Restated Bylaws of Echo Therapeutics, Inc., as amended and restated as of June 1, 2016. SIGNATURES Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Company has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned hereunto duly authorized. ECHO THERAPEUTICS, INC. Dated: June 3, 2016 By: /s/ Alan W. Schoenbart Alan W. Schoenbart Chief Financial Officer Exhibit 3.2 AMENDED AND RESTATED BY-LAWS OF ECHO THERAPEUTICS, INC. A Delaware Corporation As amended and restated through June 1, 2016 TABLE OF CONTENTS Article 1 Stockholders 1.1 Place of Meetings 1.2 Annual Meeting 1.3 Special Meetings 1.4 Notice of Meetings 1.5 List of Stockholders 1.6 Quorum 1.7 Adjournments 1.8 Voting and Proxies 1.9 Action at Meeting Article 2 Directors 2.1 General Powers 2.2 Number; Election, and Qualification 2.3 Tenure 2.4 Vacancies 2.5 Resignation 2.6 Regular Meetings 2.7 Special Meetings 2.8 Notice of Special Meetings 2.9 Meetings by Telephone Conference Calls 2.1 Quorum 2.11 Action at Meeting 2.12 Action without a Meeting 2.13 Removal 2.14 Committees 2.15 Compensation of Directors Article 3 Officers 3.1 Enumeration 3.2 Qualification 3.3 Tenure 3.4 Resignation and Removal 3.5 Vacancies 3.6 Chairman of the Board 3.7 Chief Executive Officer 3.8 Chief Financial Officer 3.9 Vice Presidents 3.1 Secretary and Assistant Secretaries 3.11 Salaries 3.12 Action with Respect to Securities of Other Corporations Article 4 Capital Stock 4.1 Issuance of Stock 4.2 Certificates of Stock 4.3 Transfers 4.4 Lost, Stolen or Destroyed Certificates 4.5 Record Date Article 5 General Provisions 5.1 Fiscal Year 5.2 Corporate Seal 5.3 Notices 5.4 Waiver of Notice 5.5 Evidence of Authority 5.6 Facsimile Signatures 5.7 Reliance upon Books, Reports and Records 5.8 Time Periods 5.9 Certificate of Incorporation 5.1 Severability 5.11 Pronouns 5.12 Exclusive Forum for Certain Litigation Article 6 Amendments 6.1 By the Board of Directors 6.2 By the Stockholders Article 7 Indemnification 7.1 Indemnification. 7.2 Burden of Proof; Presumption of Good Faith 7.3 Advances. 7.4 Procedure 7.5 Expenses of Adjudication 7.6 Employees and Agents 7.7 Continuation of Indemnification 7.8 Other Rights 7.9 Reliance 7.1 No Imputation 7.11 Insurance 7.12 Other Financial Arrangements 7.13 Other Matters Relating to Insurance or Financial Arrangements 7.14 Contract Rights; Modification 7.15 Savings Clause 7.16 Effectiveness of Amendments AMENDED AND RESTATED BY-LAWS OF ECHO THERAPEUTICS, INC. A Delaware Corporation (the Corporation) As amended and restated through June 1, 2016 ARTICLE 1 STOCKHOLDERS 1.1 Place of Meetings . All meetings of stockholders shall be held at such place within or without the State of Delaware as may be designated from time to time by the Chairman of the Board (if any), the board of directors of the Corporation (the Board of Directors) or the Chief Executive Officer or, if not so designated, at the principal office of the Corporation. 1.2 Annual Meeting . The annual meeting of stockholders for the election of directors and for the transaction of such other business as may properly be brought before the meeting shall be held on a date to be fixed by the Chairman of the Board (if any), Board of Directors or the Chief Executive Officer (which date shall not be a legal holiday in the place where the meeting is to be held) at the time and place to be fixed by the Chairman of the Board, the Board of Directors or the Chief Executive Officer and stated in the notice of the meeting. 1.3 Special Meetings . Special meetings of stockholders may be called for any purpose or purposes at any time by the Chairman of the Board, the Chief Executive Officer, a majority of the Board of Directors, or at the request of stockholders owning a 75% majority of the voting power of the outstanding shares entitled to vote in the election of directors. Special meetings shall be held at such place, on such date and at such time as shall be fixed by the Board of Directors, or the person authorized to call the meeting. Business transacted at any special meeting of stockholders shall be limited to matters relating to the purpose or purposes stated in the notice of meeting. 1.4 Notice of Meetings . Except as otherwise provided by law, written notice of each meeting of stockholders, whether annual or special, shall be given not less than 10 nor more than 60 days before the date of the meeting to each stockholder entitled to vote at such meeting. The notices of all meetings shall state the place, date and hour of the meeting. The notice of a special meeting shall state, in addition, the purpose or purposes for which the meeting is called. If mailed, notice is given when deposited in the United States mail, postage prepaid, directed to the stockholder at his or her address as it appears on the records of the Corporation. 1.5 List of Stockholders . The officer who has charge of the stock ledger of the Corporation shall prepare, at least 10 days before every meeting of stockholders, a complete list of the stockholders entitled to vote at the meeting, arranged in alphabetical order, and showing the address of each stockholder and the number of shares registered in the name of each stockholder. Such list shall be open to the examination of any stockholder, for any purpose germane to the meeting, during ordinary business hours, for a period of at least 10 days prior to the meeting, either on a reasonably accessible electronic network, provided that the information required to gain access to such list is provided with the notice of the meeting, or during ordinary business hours, at the principal place of business of the Corporation. The list shall also be produced and kept at the time and place of the meeting during the whole time of the meeting, and may be inspected by any stockholder who is present. This list shall presumptively determine the identity of the stockholders entitled to vote at the meeting and the number of shares held by each of them. -1- 1.6 Quorum . Except as otherwise provided by law, the Certificate of Incorporation or these By-Laws, the holders of a majority of the shares of the capital stock of the Corporation issued and outstanding and entitled to vote at the meeting, present in person or represented by proxy, shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of business. Shares held by brokers which such brokers are prohibited from voting (pursuant to their discretionary authority on behalf of beneficial owners of such shares who have not submitted a proxy with respect to such shares) on some or all of the matters before the stockholders, but which shares would otherwise be entitled to vote at the meeting (Broker Non-Votes) shall be counted, for the purpose of determining the presence or absence of a quorum, toward the total voting power of the shares of capital stock of the Corporation. If a quorum has been established for the purpose of conducting the meeting, a quorum shall be deemed to be present for the purpose of all votes to be conducted at such meeting, provided that where a separate vote by a class or classes, or series thereof, is required, a majority of the voting power of the shares of such class or classes, or series, present in person or represented by proxy shall constitute a quorum entitled to take action with respect to that vote on that matter. If a quorum shall fail to attend any meeting, the chairman of the meeting or the holders of a majority of the voting power of the shares of stock entitled to vote who are present, in person or by proxy, may adjourn the meeting to another place, date, or time. 1.7 Adjournments . Any meeting of stockholders may be adjourned to any other time and to any other place at which a meeting of stockholders may be held under these By-Laws by the stockholders present or represented at the meeting and entitled to vote, although less than a quorum, or, if no stockholder is present, by any officer entitled to preside at or to act as Secretary of such meeting. It shall not be necessary to notify any stockholder of any adjournment of 30 days or less if the time and place of the adjourned meeting are announced at the meeting at which adjournment is taken, unless after the adjournment a new record date is fixed for the adjourned meeting. At the adjourned meeting, the Corporation may transact any business which might have been transacted at the original meeting. 1.8 Voting and Proxies . At any meeting of the stockholders, each stockholder shall have one vote for each share of stock entitled to vote at such meeting held of record by such stockholder, unless otherwise provided in the Certificate of Incorporation. Each stockholder of record entitled to vote at a meeting of stockholders, or to express consent or dissent to corporate action in writing without a meeting (to the extent not otherwise prohibited by the Certificate of Incorporation or these By-Laws), may vote or express such consent or dissent in person or may authorize another person or persons to vote or act for such stockholder by written proxy executed by such stockholder or his or her authorized agent or by a transmission permitted by law and delivered to the Secretary of the Corporation. No such proxy shall be voted or acted upon after 3 years from the date of its execution, unless the proxy expressly provides for a longer period. Any copy, facsimile telecommunication or other reliable reproduction of the writing or transmission created pursuant to this Section 1.8 may be substituted or used in lieu of the original writing or transmission for any and all purposes for which the original writing or transmission could be used, provided that such copy, facsimile telecommunication or reproduction shall be a complete reproduction of the entire original writing or transmission. All voting, including on the election of directors but excepting where otherwise required by law or the Certificate of Incorporation, may take place via a voice vote. Any vote not taken by voice shall be taken by ballots, each of which shall state the name of the stockholder or proxy voting and such other information as may be required under the procedure established for the meeting. 1.9 Action at Meeting . When a quorum is present at any meeting of stockholders, the holders of a majority of the stock present or represented and entitled to vote on a matter (or if there are two or more classes of stock entitled to vote as separate classes, then in the case of each such class, the holders of a majority of the stock of that class present or represented and voting on such matter) shall decide any matter to be voted upon by the stockholders at such meeting (other than the election of directors), except when a different vote is required by express provision of law or the Certificate of Incorporation. Any election of directors by the stockholders shall be determined by a plurality of the votes cast by the stockholders entitled to vote at such election, except as otherwise provided by the Certificate of Incorporation. For the purposes of this paragraph, Broker Non-Votes represented at the meeting but not permitted to vote on a particular matter shall not be counted, with respect to the vote on such matter, in the number of (a) votes cast, (b) votes cast affirmatively, or (c) votes cast negatively. -2- ARTICLE 2 DIRECTORS 2.1 General Powers . The business and affairs of the Corporation shall be managed by or under the direction of a Board of Directors, who may exercise all of the powers of the Corporation except as otherwise provided by law or the Certificate of Incorporation. In the event of a vacancy in the Board of Directors, the remaining directors, except as otherwise provided by law or the Certificate of Incorporation, may exercise the powers of the full Board of Directors until the vacancy is filled. 2.2 Number; Election, and Qualification . The number of directors which shall constitute the whole Board of Directors shall be determined by resolution of the Board of Directors, but in no event shall be less than three. The number of directors may be decreased at any time and from time to time by a majority of the directors then in office, but only to eliminate vacancies existing by reason of the death, resignation, removal or expiration of the term of one or more directors. The directors shall be elected at the annual meeting of stockholders by such stockholders as have the right to vote on such election. Directors need not be stockholders of the Corporation. 2.3 Tenure . Notwithstanding any provisions to the contrary contained herein, each director shall hold office until his or her successor is elected and qualified, or until his or her earlier death, resignation or removal. 2.4 Vacancies . Unless and until filled by the stockholders, any vacancy in the Board of Directors, however occurring, including a vacancy resulting from an enlargement thereof, may be filled by vote of a majority of the directors then in office, although less than a quorum, or by a sole remaining director. A director elected to fill a vacancy shall be elected for the unexpired term of his or her predecessor in office, if any, and a director chosen to fill a position resulting from an increase in the number of directors shall hold office until the next election of directors and until his or her successor is elected and qualified, or until his or her earlier death, resignation or removal. 2.5 Resignation . Any director may resign by delivering his or her resignation in writing or by electronic transmission to the Corporation at its principal office or to the Chief Executive Officer or Secretary. Such resignation shall be effective upon receipt unless it is specified to be effective at some other time or upon the happening of some other event. 2.6 Regular Meetings . Regular meetings of the Board of Directors may be held without notice at such time and place, either within or without the State of Delaware, as shall be determined from time to time by the Board of Directors; provided that any director who is absent when such a determination is made shall be given notice of the determination. Regular meetings of the Board of Directors shall be held at such place or places, on such date or dates, and at such time or times as shall have been established by the Board of Directors and publicized among all directors. A notice of each regular meeting shall not be required. 2.7 Special Meetings . Special meetings of the Board of Directors, unless otherwise prescribed by law, may be held at any time and place, within or without the State of Delaware, upon the call of the Chairman of the Board or the Chief Executive Officer and shall be held at the written request of at least two directors then in office, provided that the time shall permit the giving of notice, as provided in Section 2.8 of these By-Laws. 2.8 Notice of Special Meetings . Notice of any special meeting of directors shall be given to each director by the Secretary or by the officer or one of the directors calling the meeting. Notice shall be duly given to each director (i) by giving notice to such director in person or by telephone at least 48 hours in advance of the meeting, (ii) by telegram, cable, telecopy, electronic mail, commercial delivery service, or similar means sent to his or her last known business or home address at least 48 hours in advance of the meeting, or (iii) by mailing written notice to his or her last known business or home address at least 72 hours in advance of the meeting. A notice or waiver of notice of a meeting of the Board of Directors need not specify the purposes of the meeting. 2.9 Meetings by Telephone Conference Calls . Directors or any members of any committee designated by the Board of Directors may participate in a meeting of the Board of Directors or such committee by means of conference telephone or similar communications equipment by means of which all persons participating in the meeting can hear each other, and participation by such means shall be deemed to constitute presence in person at such meeting. 2.10 Quorum . A majority of the total number of the whole Board of Directors shall constitute a quorum at all meetings of the Board of Directors. In the event one or more of the directors shall be disqualified to vote at any meeting, then the required quorum shall be reduced by one for each such director so disqualified; provided, however, that in no case shall less than one-third (1/3) of the total number of the whole Board of Directors constitute a quorum. In the absence of a quorum at any such meeting, a majority of the directors present may adjourn the meeting from time to time without further notice other than announcement at the meeting, until a quorum shall be present. -3- 2.11 Action at Meeting . At any meeting of the Board of Directors at which a quorum is present, the vote of a majority of those present shall be sufficient to take any action, unless a different vote is specified by law, the Certificate of Incorporation or these By-Laws. 2.12 Action without a Meeting . Any action required or permitted to be taken at any meeting of the Board of Directors or of any committee of the Board of Directors may be taken without a meeting, if all members of the Board of Directors or committee, as the case may be, consent to such action in writing or by electronic transmission, and the writing or writings or electronic transmission or transmissions are filed with the minutes of proceedings of the Board of Directors or committee. Such filing shall be in paper form if the minutes are maintained in paper form and shall be in electronic form if the minutes are maintained in electronic form. 2.13 Removal . Unless otherwise provided in the Certificate of Incorporation, any one or more or all of the directors may be removed, only for cause, by the holders of at least seventy-five percent (75%) of the shares then entitled to vote at an election of directors. 2.14 Committees . The Board of Directors shall maintain an Audit Committee and any other committees required by applicable rules and composition requirements as may be promulgated from time to time by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Association of Securities Dealers, any exchange upon which securities of the Corporation are traded, or any governmental or regulatory body exercising authority over the Corporation. The Board of Directors may, by resolution passed by a majority of the whole Board, designate one or more additional committees, each committee to consist of one or more of the directors of the Corporation. The Board of Directors may designate one or more directors as alternate members of any committee, who may replace any absent or disqualified member at any meeting of such committee. In the absence or disqualification of a member of a committee, the member or members of such committee present at any meeting and not disqualified from voting, whether or not such member or members constitute a quorum, may unanimously appoint another member of the Board of Directors to act at such meeting in the place of any such absent or disqualified member. Any such committee, to the extent provided in the resolution of the Board of Directors and subject to the provisions of applicable law, shall have and may exercise all the powers and authority of the Board of Directors in the management of the business and affairs of the Corporation and may authorize the seal of the Corporation to be affixed to all papers which may require it. Each such committee shall keep minutes and make such reports as the Board of Directors may from time to time request. Except as the Board of Directors may otherwise determine or as provided herein, any committee may make rules for the conduct of its business, but unless otherwise provided by the directors or in such rules, its business shall be conducted as nearly as possible in the same manner as is provided in these By-Laws for the Board of Directors. Adequate provisions shall be made for notice to members of all meeting of committees. One-third (1/3) of the members of any committee shall constitute a quorum unless the committee shall consist of one (1) or two (2) members, in which event one (1) member shall constitute a quorum; and all matters shall be determined by a majority vote of the members present. Action may be taken by any committee without a meeting if all members thereof consent thereto in writing, and the writing or writings are filed with the minutes of the proceedings of such committee. 2.15 Compensation of Directors . Directors may be paid such compensation for their services and such reimbursement for expenses of attendance at meetings as the Board of Directors may from time to time determine. No such payment shall preclude any director from serving the Corporation or any of its parent or subsidiary corporations in any other capacity and receiving compensation for such service. -4- ARTICLE 3 O FFICERS 3.1 Enumeration . The officers of the Corporation shall consist of a Chief Executive Officer, a Chief Financial Officer, a Secretary and such other officers with such other titles as the Board of Directors shall determine, including, but not limited to, a Chairman of the Board and one or more Vice Presidents. The Board of Directors may appoint such other officers as it may deem appropriate. 3.2 Qualification . No officer need be a stockholder. Any two or more offices may be held by the same person. 3.3 Tenure . Except as otherwise provided by law, by the Certificate of Incorporation or by these By-Laws, each officer shall hold office until his or her successor is elected and qualified, unless a different term is specified in the vote choosing or appointing such officer, or until his or her earlier death, resignation or removal. 3.4 Resignation and Removal . Any officer may resign by delivering his or her resignation in writing or by electronic transmission to the Chairman of the Board (if any), to the Board of Directors at a meeting thereof, to the Corporation at its principal office or to the Chief Executive Officer or Secretary. Such resignation shall be effective upon receipt unless it is specified to be effective at some other time or upon the happening of some other event. Any officer may be removed at any time, with or without cause, by vote of a majority of the entire number of directors then in office. Except as the Board of Directors may otherwise determine, no officer who resigns or is removed shall have any right to any compensation as an officer for any period following his or her resignation or removal, or any right to damages on account of such removal, whether his or her compensation be by the month or by the year or otherwise, unless such compensation is expressly provided in a duly authorized written agreement with the Corporation. 3.5 Vacancies . The Board of Directors may fill any vacancy occurring in any office for any reason and may, in its discretion, leave unfilled for such period as it may determine any offices other than those of Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer. Each such successor shall hold office until his or her successor is elected and qualified, or until his or her earlier death, resignation or removal. 3.6 Chairman of the Board . The Chairman of the Board, if any, shall preside at all meetings of the Board of Directors and stockholders at which he or she is present and shall perform such duties and possess such powers as are designated by the Board of Directors. If the Board of Directors appoints a Vice-Chairman of the Board, he or she shall, in the absence or disability of the Chairman of the Board, perform the duties and exercise the powers of the Chairman of the Board and shall perform such other duties and possess such other powers as may from time to time be designated by the Board of Directors. 3.7 Chief Executive Officer . The Chief Executive Officer shall, subject to the direction of the Board of Directors, have general charge and supervision of the business of the Corporation. Unless otherwise provided by the Board of Directors, and provided that there is no Chairman of the Board or that the Chairman and Vice-Chairman, if any, are not available, the Chief Executive Officer shall preside at all meetings of the stockholders, and, if a director, at all meetings of the Board of Directors. The Chief Executive Officer shall perform such other duties and shall have such other powers as the Board of Directors may from time to time prescribe. The Chief Executive Officer shall have the power to enter into contracts and otherwise bind the Corporation in matters arising in the ordinary course of the Corporations business. -5- 3.8 Chief Financial Officer . The Chief Financial Officer shall perform such duties and shall have such powers as the Board of Directors or the Chief Executive Officer may from time to time prescribe. In addition, the Chief Financial Officer shall perform such duties and have such powers as are incident to the office of Chief Financial Officer, including without limitation the duty and power to keep and be responsible for all funds and securities of the Corporation, to deposit funds of the Corporation in depositories selected in accordance with these By-Laws, to disburse such funds as ordered by the Board of Directors, to make proper accounts for such funds, and to render as required by the Board of Directors statements of all such transactions and of the financial condition of the Corporation. 3.9 Vice Presidents . Any Vice President shall perform such duties and possess such powers as the Board of Directors or the Chief Executive Officer may from time to time prescribe. In the event of the absence, inability or refusal to act of the Chief Executive Officer, the Vice President (or if there shall be more than one, the Vice Presidents in the order determined by the Board of Directors) shall perform the duties of the Chief Executive Officer and, when so performing, shall have all the powers of and be subject to all the restrictions upon the Chief Executive Officer. The Board of Directors may assign to any Vice President the title of Executive Vice President, Senior Vice President or any other title selected by the Board of Directors. Unless otherwise determined by the Board of Directors, any Vice President shall have the power to enter into contracts and otherwise bind the Corporation in matters arising in the ordinary course of the Corporations business. 3.10 Secretary and Assistant Secretaries . The Secretary shall perform such duties and shall have such powers as the Board of Directors or the Chief Executive Officer may from time to time prescribe. In addition, the Secretary shall perform such duties and have such powers as are incident to the office of secretary, including without limitation the duty and power to give notices of all meetings of stockholders and special meetings of the Board of Directors, to attend all meetings of stockholders and the Board of Directors and keep a record of the proceedings, to maintain a stock ledger and prepare lists of stockholders and their addresses as required, to be custodian of corporate records and the corporate seal and to affix and attest to the same on documents. Any Assistant Secretary shall perform such duties and possess such powers as the Board of Directors, the Chief Executive Officer or the Secretary may from time to time prescribe. In the event of the absence, inability or refusal to act of the Secretary, the Assistant Secretary (or if there shall be more than one, the Assistant Secretaries in the order determined by the Board of Directors) shall perform the duties and exercise the powers of the Secretary. In the absence of the Secretary or any Assistant Secretary at any meeting of stockholders or directors, the person presiding at the meeting shall designate a temporary secretary to keep a record of the meeting. 3.11 Salaries . Officers of the Corporation shall be entitled to such salaries, compensation or reimbursement as shall be fixed or allowed from time to time by the Board of Directors. 3.12 Action with Respect to Securities of Other Corporations . Unless otherwise directed by the Board of Directors, the Chief Executive Officer or any officer of the Corporation authorized by the Chief Executive Officer shall have power to vote and otherwise act on behalf of the Corporation, in person or by proxy, at any meeting of stockholders of or with respect to any action of stockholders of any other corporation in which the Corporation may hold securities and otherwise to exercise any and all rights and powers which this Corporation may possess by reason of its ownership of securities in such other corporation. -6- ARTICLE 4 CAPITAL STOCK 4.1 Issuance of Stock . Unless otherwise voted by the stockholders and subject to the provisions of the Certificate of Incorporation, the whole or any part of any unissued balance of the authorized capital stock of the Corporation or the whole or any part of any issued, authorized capital stock of the Corporation held in its treasury may be issued, sold, transferred or otherwise disposed of by vote of the Board of Directors in such manner, for such consideration and on such terms as the Board of Directors may determine. 4.2 Certificates of Stock . Every holder of stock of the Corporation shall be entitled to have a certificate, in such form as may be prescribed by law and by the Board of Directors, certifying the number and class of shares owned by such stockholder in the Corporation. Each such certificate shall be signed by, or in the name of, the Corporation by one or more of the Chairman of the Board of Directors, the Chief Executive Officer, the Chief Financial Officer, or the Secretary of the Corporation. Any or all of the signatures on such certificate may be a facsimile. Each certificate for shares of stock which are subject to any restriction on transfer pursuant to the Certificate of Incorporation, these By-Laws, applicable securities laws or any agreement among any number of stockholders or among such holders and the Corporation shall have conspicuously noted on the face or back of such certificate either the full text of such restriction or a statement of the existence of such restriction. 4.3 Transfers . Except as otherwise established by rules and regulations adopted by the Board of Directors, and subject to applicable law, shares of stock may be transferred on the books of the Corporation by the surrender to the Corporation or its transfer agent of the certificate representing such shares, properly endorsed or accompanied by a written assignment or power of attorney properly executed, and with such proof of authority or the authenticity of signature as the Corporation or its transfer agent may reasonably require. Except as may be otherwise required by law, by the Certificate of Incorporation or by these By-Laws, the Corporation shall be entitled to treat the record holder of stock as shown on its books as the owner of such stock for all purposes, including the payment of dividends and the right to vote with respect to such stock, regardless of any transfer, pledge or other disposition of such stock, until the shares have been transferred on the books of the Corporation in accordance with the requirements of these By-Laws. 4.4 Lost, Stolen or Destroyed Certificates . The Corporation may issue a new certificate of stock in place of any previously issued certificate alleged to have been lost, stolen, or destroyed, upon such terms and conditions as the Chief Executive Officer may prescribe, including the presentation of reasonable evidence of such loss, theft or destruction and the giving of such indemnity as the Chief Executive Officer may require for the protection of the Corporation or any transfer agent or registrar. 4.5 Record Date . The Board of Directors may fix in advance a date as a record date for the determination of the stockholders entitled to notice of or to vote at any meeting of stockholders or, to the extent permitted by the Certificate of Incorporation and these By-laws, to express consent (or dissent) to corporate action in writing without a meeting, or entitled to receive payment of any dividend or other distribution or allotment of any rights in respect of any change, conversion or exchange of stock, or for the purpose of any other lawful action. Such record date shall not be more than 60 days nor less than 10 days before the date of such meeting. If no record date is fixed, the record date for determining stockholders entitled to notice of or to vote at a meeting of stockholders shall be at the close of business on the day before the day on which notice is given, or, if notice is waived, at the close of business on the day before the day on which the meeting is held. The record date for determining stockholders entitled to express consent to corporate action in writing without a meeting (to the extent permitted by the Certificate of Incorporation and these By-Laws) when no prior action by the Board of Directors is necessary, shall be the day on which the first written consent is expressed. The record date for determining stockholders for any other purpose shall be at the close of business on the day on which the Board of Directors adopts the resolution relating to such purpose. A determination of stockholders of record entitled to notice of or to vote at a meeting of stockholders shall apply to any adjournment of the meeting; provided, however, that the Board of Directors may fix a new record date for the adjourned meeting. -7- ARTICLE 5 GENERAL PROVISIONS 5.1 Fiscal Year . The fiscal year of the Corporation shall be fixed by resolution of the Board of Directors. 5.2 Corporate Seal . The corporate seal shall be in such form as shall be approved by the Board of Directors. 5.3 Notices . Except as otherwise specifically provided herein or required by law or the Certificate of Incorporation, all notices required to be given to any person pursuant to these By-Laws shall be in writing and may in every instance be effectively given by hand delivery to the recipient thereof, by depositing such notice in the mails, postage paid, or by sending such notice by prepaid telegram or facsimile transmission. Notice may also be given to stockholders by a form of electronic transmission in accordance with and subject to the provisions of applicable law. Any such notice shall be addressed to such person at his or her last known address as the same appears on the books of the Corporation. The time when such notice is received shall be deemed to be the time of the giving of the notice. 5.4 Waiver of Notice . Whenever any notice whatsoever is required to be given by law, by the Certificate of Incorporation or by these By-Laws, a waiver of such notice either in writing signed by the person entitled to such notice or such persons duly authorized attorney, or by telegraph, facsimile or electronic transmission or any other available method, whether before, at or after the time stated in such waiver, or the appearance of such person or persons at such meeting in person or by proxy, shall be deemed equivalent to such notice. 5.5 Evidence of Authority . A certificate by the Secretary, or an Assistant Secretary, or a temporary Secretary, as to any action taken by the stockholders, directors, a committee or any officer or representative of the Corporation shall, as to all persons who rely on the certificate in good faith, be conclusive evidence of such action. 5.6 Facsimile Signatures . In addition to the provisions for use of facsimile signatures elsewhere specifically authorized in these By-Laws, facsimile signatures of any officer or officers of the Corporation may be used whenever and as authorized by the Board of Directors or a committee thereof. 5.7 Reliance upon Books, Reports and Records . Each director, each member of any committee designated by the Board of Directors, and each officer of the Corporation shall, in the performance of his or her duties, be fully protected in relying in good faith upon the books of account or other records of the Corporation and upon such information, opinions, reports or statements presented to the Corporation by any of its officers or employees or committees of the Board of Directors so designated, or by any other person as to matters which such director or committee member reasonably believes are within such other persons professional or expert competence and who has been selected with reasonable care by or on behalf of the Corporation. 5.8 Time Periods . In applying any provision of these By-Laws that requires that an act be done or not be done a specified number of days prior to an event or that an act be done during a period of a specified number of days prior to an event, calendar days shall be used, the day of the doing of the act shall be excluded, and the day of the event shall be included. 5.9 Certificate of Incorporation . All references in these By-Laws to the Certificate of Incorporation shall be deemed to refer to the Certificate of Incorporation of the Corporation, as amended and in effect from time to time. -8- 5.10 Severability . Any determination that any provision of these By-Laws is for any reason inapplicable, illegal or ineffective shall not affect or invalidate any other provision of these By-Laws. 5.11 Pronouns . All pronouns used in these By-Laws shall be deemed to refer to the masculine, feminine or neuter, singular or plural, as the identity of the persons or persons so designated may require. 5.12 Exclusive Forum for Certain Litigation . Unless the Corporation consents in writing to the selection of an alternative forum, the sole and exclusive forum for (i) any derivative action or proceeding brought on behalf of the Corporation, (ii) any action asserting a claim of breach of a fiduciary duty owed by any director or officer or other employee of the Corporation to the Corporation or the Corporations stockholders, (iii) any action asserting a claim against the Corporation or any director or officer or other employee of the Corporation arising pursuant to any provision of the Delaware General Corporation Law or the Certificate of Incorporation or these By-Laws (in each case, as they may be amended from time to time), or (iv) any action asserting a claim against the Corporation or any director or officer or other employee of the Corporation governed by the internal affairs doctrine shall be a state court located within the State of Delaware (or, if no state court located within the State of Delaware has jurisdiction, the federal district court for the District of Delaware). ARTICLE 6 AMENDMENTS 6.1 By the Board of Directors . Except as is otherwise set forth in these By-Laws, these By-Laws may be altered, amended or repealed, or new by-laws may be adopted, by the affirmative vote of a majority of the directors present at any regular or special meeting of the Board of Directors at which a quorum is present. 6.2 By the Stockholders . Except as otherwise set forth in these By-Laws, these By-Laws may be altered, amended or repealed or new by-laws may be adopted by the affirmative vote of the holders of at least seventy-five percent (75%) of the shares of the capital stock of the Corporation issued and outstanding and entitled to vote at any regular meeting of stockholders, or at any special meeting of stockholders, provided notice of such alteration, amendment, repeal or adoption of new by-laws shall have been stated in the notice of such special meeting. ARTICLE 7 INDEMNIFICATION 7.1 Indemnification. (a) Any person who was or is a party or is threatened to be made a party to, or is otherwise caused to be involved in, any threatened, pending or completed Proceeding (as defined below), by reason of, arising out of, or in any way related to, the fact that he or she, or a person for whom he or she is the legal representative, is, was or was serving or had agreed to serve in an Official Capacity (as defined below) for the Corporation or, while serving while in an Official Capacity for the Corporation, is, was or was serving or had agreed to serve at the request of the Corporation in an Official Capacity of another corporation, partnership, limited liability company, joint venture, trust, employee benefit plan or other enterprise (Other Enterprise), shall be indemnified and held harmless by the Corporation, to the fullest extent permitted under Delaware law, as amended or modified from time to time (but, in the case of any such amendment, only to the extent that such amendment permits the Corporation to provide broader indemnification than said law permitted the Corporation to provide prior to such amendment), in each case whether the basis of such Proceeding is alleged action or omission to take action in an Official Capacity or in any other capacity while serving in an Official Capacity and whether or not serving in such capacity at the time any Expense (as defined below) is incurred for which indemnification, reimbursement, or advancement of Expenses can be provided under this Article 7, against any and all Expenses actually incurred or suffered by him or her, if such person acted in good faith and in a manner believed to be in, or not opposed to, the best interest of the Corporation and, with respect to any criminal action or proceeding, had no reasonable cause to believe the persons conduct was unlawful. -9- (b) The term Official Capacity shall mean service as a director or officer of the Corporation or service, at the request of the Corporation while serving in an Official Capacity for the Corporation, as a director, officer, trustee, administrator, partner, member employee, agent, fiduciary or other representative of an Other Enterprise. (c) The term Proceeding shall be broadly construed and shall include, without limitation, the investigation, preparation, prosecution, defense, settlement, arbitration and appeal of, and the giving of testimony in, any threatened, pending or completed action, suit, investigation, inquiry, hearing, arbitration, other alternative dispute mechanism or any other proceeding, whether civil, criminal, administrative, investigative, legislative or otherwise and whether formal or informal, including, without limitation, actions by or in the right of the corporation, a class of its security holders or otherwise. (d) The term Expenses shall be broadly construed and shall include, without limitation, all direct and indirect losses, liabilities, expenses, including fees and expenses of attorneys, fees and expenses of accountants, fees and expenses of public relations consultants and other advisors, court costs, transcript costs, fees and expenses of experts, witness fees and expenses, travel expenses, printing and binding costs, telephone charges, delivery service fees, the premium, security for, and other costs relating to any bond (including cost bonds, appraisal bonds, or their equivalents), ERISA excise taxes and penalties, judgments, fines and amounts paid in settlement and all other disbursements or expenses of the types customarily incurred in connection with (i) the investigation, prosecution, defense, appeal or settlement of a Proceeding, (ii) serving as an actual or prospective witness, or preparing to be a witness in a Proceeding, or other participation in, or other preparation for, any Proceeding, (iii) any voluntary or required interviews or depositions related to a Proceeding, and (iv) responding to, or objecting to, a request to provide discovery in any Proceeding. Expenses shall also include any federal, state, local and foreign taxes imposed on such person as a result of the actual or deemed receipt of any payments under this Article 7. (e) The termination of any Proceeding by judgment, order, settlement, conviction or upon a plea of nolo contendere or its equivalent, shall not, of itself, create a presumption that the person did not act good faith and in a manner which the person reasonably believed to be in or not opposed to the best interests of the Corporation, or that, with respect to any criminal Proceeding, the person had reasonable cause to believe that his or her conduct was unlawful. (f) No indemnification shall be provided hereunder with respect to any settlement or other non-adjudicated disposition of any threatened or pending Proceeding unless the Corporation has approved such settlement or disposition, which approval shall not be unreasonably withheld, conditioned or delayed. (g) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Article 7, no indemnification shall be provided hereunder to any such person if a judgment or final adjudication adverse to the director or officer of the Corporation, and from which there is no further right to appeal, establishes that (i) his or her acts were committed in bad faith or were the result of active and deliberate dishonesty and, in either case, were material to the cause of action so adjudicated, (ii) he or she received an Improper Personal Benefit, or (iii) with respect to any criminal action or proceeding, he or she had reasonable cause to believe his or her conduct was unlawful. Improper Personal Benefit shall mean a persons receipt of a personal gain in fact by reason of a persons Official Capacity of a financial profit, monies or other advantage not also accruing to the benefit of the Corporation or to the stockholders generally and which is unrelated to his or her usual compensation by the Corporation for serving as a director or officer including, but not limited to, (x) in exchange for the exercise of influence over the Corporations affairs, (y) as a result of the diversion of a corporate opportunity, or (z) pursuant to the use or communication of confidential or inside information relating to the Corporation for the purpose of generating a profit from trading in the Corporations securities or providing a benefit to a third party. (h) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Article 7, to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law as the same exists or hereafter may be in effect, if any person incurs Expenses as a witness or otherwise incurs Expenses related to any threatened, pending or completed Proceeding as a result of or related to such persons service in (i) an Official Capacity of the Corporation, or (ii) an Official Capacity of an Other Enterprise that such person has served, is serving or has agreed to serve in any capacity at the request of the Corporation, that person shall be entitled to be indemnified and held harmless against all Expenses incurred by such person or on such persons behalf notwithstanding that such person neither is, nor is threatened to be made, a party to the Proceeding. (i) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Article 7, Section 7.1 does not require the Corporation to indemnify a present or former director or officer of the Corporation in respect of a Proceeding (or part thereof) instituted by such person on his or her own behalf, unless such Proceeding (or part thereof) has been authorized in the specific case by the Board or the indemnification requested is pursuant to Section 7.5 of these Bylaws. -10- 7.2 Burden of Proof; Presumption of Good Faith . In any proceeding brought to enforce the right of a person to receive indemnification to which such person is entitled under Section 7.1 of these Bylaws, the Corporation has the burden of demonstrating that the standard of conduct applicable under the DGCL or other applicable law was not met. A prior determination by the Corporation (including its Board or any committee thereof, its independent legal counsel, or its stockholders) that the claimant has not met such applicable standard of conduct does not itself constitute evidence that the claimant has not met the applicable standard of conduct. For purposes of any determination as to whether indemnification is proper under the circumstances because such person has met the applicable standard of conduct required by Section 7.1 of this Article 7, a person shall be deemed to have acted in good faith if the action or failure to act is based on (i) the records or books of account of the Corporation or an Other Enterprise, including financial statements, or on information supplied to such person by the officers of the Corporation or an Other Enterprise in the course of their duties, (ii) the advice of legal counsel for the Corporation or an Other Enterprise, or (iii) information or records given or reports made to the Corporation or an Other Enterprise by an independent certified public accountant, independent financial adviser, appraiser or other expert selected with reasonable care by the Corporation or an Other Enterprise, except if the indemnified person knew or had reason to know that such records or books of account of the Corporation or an Other Enterprise, information supplied by the officers of the Corporation or an Other Enterprise, advice of legal counsel or information or records given or reports made by an independent certified public accountant or by an appraiser or other expert were materially false or materially inaccurate. The provisions of this Section 7.2 shall not be deemed to be exclusive or to limit in any way the circumstances in which a person may be deemed to have met the applicable standard of conduct. 7.3 Advances. (a) To the fullest extent not prohibited under Delaware law, any person claiming indemnification within the scope of Section 7.1 shall be entitled to advances from the Corporation for payment of the expenses of defending actions against such person, as such expenses are incurred and in advance of the final disposition of such Proceeding upon receipt of an undertaking by or on behalf of the indemnified person to repay such amounts advanced only if, and only to the extent that, it shall ultimately be determined by final judicial decision of a court of competent jurisdiction from which there is no further right of appeal that he or she is not entitled to be indemnified by the Corporation. The indemnified persons undertaking to repay the Corporation any amounts advanced for Expenses shall not be required to be secured and shall not bear interest. Except as otherwise provided in this Section 7.3(a), the Corporation shall not impose on the indemnified person additional conditions to the advancement of Expenses or require from the indemnified person additional undertakings regarding repayment. (b) Advancements shall be made without regard to the indemnified persons ability to repay the Expenses and without regard to the indemnified persons ultimate entitlement to indemnification under the other provisions of these Bylaws. (c) Advancements of Expenses pursuant to this subsection shall not require approval of the Board or the stockholders of the Corporation, or of any other person or body. The Secretary shall promptly advise the Board in writing of the request for advancement of Expenses, of the amount and other details of the request and of the undertaking to make repayment provided pursuant to this subsection. (d) Advancements of Expenses shall be made within thirty (30) calendar days after receipt by the Corporation of a statement or statements requesting such advancements from time to time. (e) Advancements of Expenses shall include any and all reasonable Expenses incurred pursuing an action to enforce this right of advancement, including Expenses incurred preparing and forwarding statements to the Corporation to support the advancements claimed. 7.4 Procedure. (a) Any indemnification under this Article 7 shall be made by the Corporation only as authorized in the specific case upon a determination that indemnification is proper in the circumstances because the officer, director, employee or agent has met the applicable standard of conduct set forth in this Article 7. Such determination shall be made by either (a) a majority vote of the members of the Board of Directors who were not parties to such action, suit or proceeding, even though less than a quorum, or (b) a committee of such directors designated by majority vote of such directors, even though less than a quorum. If all members of the Board of Directors were parties to such action, suit or proceeding, such determination shall be made either (a) by Independent Legal Counsel (as defined below), or (b) by the stockholders at the next meeting of shareholders. In any case under this Article 7, the Board of Directors or stockholders are authorized to obtain the opinion of Independent Legal Counsel and to obtain any and all documentation or information that a majority of the Board of Directors believes is necessary to determine the entitlement of such person to indemnification and that is reasonably available to such person. (b) For purposes of this Article 7, Independent Legal Counsel shall mean a law firm, or a member of a law firm, that is experienced in matters of corporation law and neither presently is, nor in the past five (5) years has been, retained to represent: (i) the Corporation or the indemnified person in any matter material to either such party (other than with respect to matters concerning the indemnification that the indemnified party is entitled to hereunder or pursuant to any indemnification agreement to which the indemnified party is a party), or (ii) any other party to the proceeding giving rise to a claim for indemnification hereunder. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the term Independent Legal Counsel shall not include any person who, under the applicable standards of professional conduct then prevailing, would have a conflict of interest in representing either the Corporation or an indemnified person in an action to determine such indemnified persons rights to be indemnified hereunder or pursuant to any indemnification agreement. -11- 7.5 Expenses of Adjudication . In the event that any indemnified person seeks a judicial adjudication, or an award in arbitration, to enforce such indemnified persons rights to indemnification or advancement of Expenses under, or to recover damages for breach of, this Article 7, to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the indemnified person shall be entitled to recover from the Corporation, and shall be indemnified by the Corporation against, any and all Expenses (of the types described in the definition of Expenses in Section 7.1 of this Article 7) actually and reasonably incurred by such indemnified person in seeking such adjudication or arbitration, but only if such indemnified person prevails therein. If it shall be determined in such adjudication or arbitration that the indemnified person entitled to receive part but not all of the indemnification of Expenses sought, the Expenses incurred by such indemnified person in connection with such adjudication or arbitration shall be appropriately prorated. 7.6 Employees and Agents . The Board, or any officer authorized by the Board generally or in the specific case to make indemnification decisions, may cause the Corporation to indemnify and advance expenses to any present or former employee or agent of the Corporation in such manner and for such liabilities as the Board may determine, up to the fullest extent permitted by the DGCL and other applicable law. 7.7 Continuation of Indemnification . The indemnification and advancement of Expenses provided by this Article 7 to any current or former directors or officers of the Corporation shall, subject to Section 7.16 hereof and unless otherwise provided when authorized or ratified, continue as to a person who has ceased to be a director, officer, employee or agent or otherwise serve in an Official Capacity for the Corporation or an Other Enterprise and shall inure to the benefit of the heirs, executors, and administrators of such a person. 7.8 Other Rights . The indemnification and advancement of expenses provided by this Article 7 shall not be deemed exclusive of any other rights to which those seeking indemnification or advancement of expenses may be entitled under any insurance or other agreement, vote of stockholders or disinterested directors or otherwise, both as to actions in their Official Capacity and as to actions in another capacity while holding an office, and shall continue as to a person who has ceased to be a director or officer and shall inure to the benefit of the heirs, executors and administrators of such person. 7.9 Reliance . Persons who after the date of the adoption of this provision in Article 7 serve or continue to serve the Corporation in an Official Capacity or who, while serving in an Official Capacity, serve or continue to serve in an Official Capacity for an Other Enterprise, shall be conclusively presumed to have relied on the rights to indemnification and advancement of Expenses contained in this Article 7. 7.10 No Imputation . The knowledge and/or actions, or failure to act, of any other officer, director, employee or agent of the Corporation or an Other Enterprise shall not be imputed to an indemnified person for purposes of determining the right to indemnification under this Article 7. 7.11 Insurance . The Corporation shall have power to purchase and maintain insurance on behalf of any person who is or was a director, officer, employee or agent of the Corporation or is or was serving at the request of the Corporation as a director, officer, employee, agent, fiduciary or other representative of an Other Enterprise against any liability asserted against such person and incurred by such person in any such capacity, or arising out of such persons status as such, whether or not the Corporation would have the power to indemnify such person against such liability under the provisions of these By-Laws. 7.12 Other Financial Arrangements . The other financial arrangements which may be made by the Corporation for the purpose of satisfying its obligations pursuant to this Article 7 may include the following: (i) the creation of a trust fund; (ii) the establishment of a program of self-insurance; (iii) the securing of its obligation of indemnification by granting a security interest or other lien on any assets of the Corporation; and (iv) the establishment of a letter of credit, guarantee or surety. No financial arrangement made pursuant to this subsection may provide protection for a person adjudged by a court of competent jurisdiction, after exhaustion of all appeals therefrom, to be liable for intentional misconduct, fraud, or a knowing violation of law, except with respect to advancement of Expenses or indemnification ordered by a court. -12- 7.13 Other Matters Relating to Insurance or Financial Arrangements . Any insurance or other financial arrangement made on behalf of a person pursuant to this Article 7 may be provided by the Corporation or any other person approved by the board of directors, even if all or part of the other persons stock or other securities is owned by the Corporation. In the absence of fraud, (i) the decision of the board of directors as to the propriety of the terms and conditions of any insurance or other financial arrangement made pursuant to this Article 7 and the choice of the person to provide the insurance or other financial arrangement is conclusive; and (ii) the insurance or other financial arrangement is not void or voidable and does not subject any director approving it to personal liability for his action; even if a director approving the insurance or other financial arrangement is a beneficiary of the insurance or other financial arrangement. 7.14 Contract Rights; Modification . The duties of the Corporation to indemnify and to advance Expenses to a director or officer provided in this Article 7 shall be in the nature of a contract between the Corporation and each such director or officer and the contract rights thereunder shall be deemed to vest immediately upon the commencement of such persons service to the Corporation or, at the request of the Corporation, to an Other Enterprise. Such contract rights may not be modified retroactively as to any present or former Director or officer without the consent of each such director or officer. Any amendment, modification, alteration or repeal of this Article 7 that in any way diminishes, limits, restricts, adversely affects or eliminates any right of an indemnified person or his or her successors to indemnification, advancement of Expenses or otherwise shall be prospective only and shall not in any way diminish, limit, restrict, adversely affect or eliminate any such right with respect to any actual or alleged state of facts, occurrence, action or omission then or previously existing, or any action, suit or proceeding previously or thereafter brought or threatened based in whole or in part upon any such actual or alleged state of facts, occurrence, action or omission. 7.15 Savings Clause . If this Article 7 or any provision hereof shall be held by a court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable for any reason whatsoever: (a) the validity, legality and enforceability of the remaining provisions of this Article 7 (including, without limitation, each section and subsection of this Article 7 containing any such provision held to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable, that is not itself held to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable) shall not in any way be affected or impaired hereby, and (b) to the fullest extent possible and permitted by law, the provisions of this Article 7 (including, without limitation, each portion of any section or subsection of this Article 7 containing any such provision held to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable) shall be construed so as to give maximum effect to the intent manifested by the provision held to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable. 7.16 Effectiveness of Amendments . Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in the amendments to this Article 7, the amendments to this Article 7 adopted by the Board on June 24, 2014 shall not in any way enlarge, diminish or otherwise modify any the indemnification rights of any former directors or former officers of the Corporation who, as of immediately prior to the Corporations 2014 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, had ceased to act in an Official Capacity for the Corporation or Other Enterprise, including, but not limited to, with respect to any actual or alleged state of facts, occurrence, action or omission then existing or previously existing, or any action, suit or proceeding previously or thereafter brought or threatened based in whole or in part upon any such actual or alleged state of facts, occurrence, action or omission. Xero is getting bigger and better - and not just with its business. The ever-expanding NZX-listed company is shifting from its hub on Market Lane, to a new, larger spot across the road in the redeveloped former Manthel Motors building. As a result, its existing premises being put on the market for sub lease. SUPPLIED Artist's impression of Xero's new digs. Next year, the company will move its 450 Wellington staff, currently located in three buildings, into one 6500 square metre site in a new 5-level office building on the corner of Taranaki and Wakefield streets. READ MORE: * Xero's new home will be all wrapped up in city first * Cassels snaps up Xero Two * Xero sets its sights on being a $1 billion earner * Xero reduces cash burn; analyst detects shift in focus * Xero founder Rod Drury cashes in $20m of Xero shares The work on the heritage-listed 1920s building is being done by The Wellington Company, which is owned by property developer Ian Cassels. Xero entered into a nine-year lease in April 2012 over 1960 square metre space in the former Rialto Cinema building, which was redeveloped into character office accommodation by Willis Bond & Co. The property was subsequently sold to a Wellington property investor, who owns a substantial portfolio of Wellington CBD property, and whose company Cornerstone Partners manages the building. Xero's global facilities manager Nathan McLean said when the company commenced the lease four years ago it had fewer than 150 staff in Wellington. "At the time, we thought the building would serve us well for many years to come and cater for future growth, but we have grown rapidly to support the company's global expansion. "For a highly collaborative company like Xero, where the sharing of ideas and communication is a big part of our culture, it's important to have as many of our people in one building as possible," he said. "That's the main reason why we've decided to sub lease the Market Lane space and consolidate all our people into another character building that will be capable of accommodating future growth." Luke Frecklington, who is marketing the property with Bayleys Capital Commercial colleague Luke Kershaw, said strong interest was expected in the premises which are being marketed well ahead of the availability date of mid 2017. There were three spaces up for sub lease - a 637 sqm site on Level 1, a 1005 sqm on Level 2, and a 317 sqm site at mezzanine level. "There will be just under four years to run on the existing lease when the premises become available, but importantly there is also the flexibility of a six year right of renewal from April 2021," Frecklington said. "Alternatively, if the preference is for a longer initial lease term, there is potential for this to be negotiated with the landlord. "Naming rights could also be available under the sub lease or a lease assignment arrangement, which is a strong drawcard given this is a landmark building in a very high profile corner position." Other tenants at the Market Lane site are Trade Me, Infratil and HRL Morrison & Co, the investment bank which manages Infratil. McLean said Xero staff who were formerly located in the Manthel building had temporarily relocated to the Spark Central complex, which was also owned by The Wellington Company, while other employees were in another building on Wakefield St. The $35 million redevelopment of the 1920s' Manthel Motor's building will retain and refurbish the existing two-level building's facade, which will be incorporated into a new 5-level steel-framed office building that will be leased to Xero for 12 years. Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 By Anvar Mammadov - Trend: Kazakhstan is building a new port on the Caspian shore, which will be similar to Azerbaijan's Baku International Sea Trade Port, Gosman Amrin, deputy chairman of the State Revenue Committee of the Kazakh Finance Ministry, told reporters June 3 in Baku. "The new Kuryk port, which is being built near the Aktau port, will be similar to [Azerbaijan's] Alat port," said Amrin. "An Azerbaijani delegation has already been there and has got acquainted with the construction process." The new port will allow significantly speeding up the freight traffic from Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan, he said. Amrin noted that all the conditions will be created at the port to provide quick and easy cargo transhipment. As of today, cargo transportation by ferries from Kazakhstan to the ports of the Caspian states is possible only through the port of Aktau. The ferry terminal at that port has been working at the limit of its capacity in the recent years. Kazakhstan plans to increase transit transportation from the current 18 million tons of cargo to 33 million tons in 2020 and to 50 million tons in 2030. Police believe Timo Aason entered the Rimutaka Forest Park via Cross Creek and the Rimutaka Incline track. Search and Rescue staff have launched an operation to locate a a 48-year-old man who is believed to be tramping in Southern Wairarapa. Timo Aason's vehicle was located at Cross Creek Rd, close to the entrance to the Rimutaka Incline track, by a local farmer on Monday, and reported to police on Thursday. It appears Aason had entered the Rimutaka Forest Park via Cross Creek and the Rimutaka Incline track. ANDREW GORRIE/FAIRFAX NZ The Rimutaka Incline features a number of tunnels. A sighting suggests he may have entered the park on Monday, according to police. "It is unknown how well equipped he is, but it is thought he may have basic equipment," a police spokesman said. Weather over the past week has been cold, and police say they are concerned for his safety due to a lack of contact with anyone known to him during this time. It is possible other trampers may have seen or spoken with him since Monday, police said. Stacey Oliver / Fairfax NZ The Cross Creek station near the entrance to the Rimutaka Incline track. Search and Rescue staff have been deployed to conduct a search of the area where the car a red Suzuki Swift was parked. Police expect to scale the search down overnight unless further information is received. Aason is originally from Canada, but has been living in New Zealand. Efforts are being made to contact his family overseas. Anyone with any information is being asked to contact Wellington District Police on 04 381 2000. One person is dead and two have been critically injured in car accidents around the South Island. One person is dead and several others, including a pregnant woman, have been injured as the long weekend gets off to a tragic start on New Zealand's roads. A man was killed and another person critically injured in a four-car crash north of Dunedin, while a man was left with critical injuries after being hit by a vehicle in South Canterbury. Meanwhile, a pregnant woman was one of two seriously injured in a two-vehicle crash north of Auckland. The first crash happened on State Highway 1 between Waikouaiti and Waitati, outside the old Hawkesbury Village, in Otago about 6pm. READ MORE: * Pregnant woman injured in crash * Traffic chaos as Auckland flees for Queen's Birthday weekend A 64-year-old man from Kaikoura was confirmed dead at the scene. The crash involved four vehicles, all of which were badly damaged, a St John spokesman said. Another person was flown to Dunedin Hospital in critical condition, while a third person suffered serious injuries and was also flown to hospital. Two others were taken to hospital by road ambulance with moderate injuries, while two people with minor injuries were treated at the scene. Traffic was being diverted off State Highway 1 onto Coast Rd towards Karitane. At 10pm, officers said the road was likely to reopen within the next few hours The serious crash unit were investigating the cause of the crash. Further north, a man was critically injured when he was hit by a car in the South Canterbury village of Albury, northwest of Timaru. The man, aged in his 50s, was struck by a car on State Highway 8, which ran through the village. He sustained multiple limb fractures and was transported to Timaru Hospital in a critical condition, the St John spokesman said. In the North Island, a crash happened just before 7pm on Friday on State Highway 1, just north of the Kaiwaka township. A fire service spokeswoman said one man was trapped in a car with serious injuries, while a pregnant woman had an injured leg. Police said the woman had been airlifted to Whangarei Hospital in a serious condition. The man, also in a serious condition, has been taken to hospital by ambulance. The road was reopened by 10pm. Police said the crash occurred in a passing lane and there was "debris all over the road for 100 metres." Earlier in the afternoon, a serious crash closed State Highway 29 at the Bay of Plenty. One person suffered life-threatening head injuries in the crash on the lower Kaimai Ranges at 2.15pm. There were four people inside the car - one was critical, one suffered serious injuries and two received moderate injuries. Education Minister Hekia Parata announced the latest funding for new school property on Friday afternoon. Three Hawke's Bay schools are to get eight new classrooms in the latest announcement of Budget spending plans. Four will go to Havelock North Primary School, two to Te Mata School, and two to Lucknow School, all in Havelock North. Tauranga and Hamilton also received significant investment as part of the $53.5 million package announced by Education Minister Hekia Parata at Welcome Bay School, Tauranga, on Friday afternoon. The Tauranga area would receive $18m for a new school in the Pyes Pa area with a planned roll of 650, plus $2.5m for six new classrooms split between Oropi School, Welcome Bay School and Maungatapu School. In Hamilton, $25m is planned for a new public-private partnership school called Sylvester Primary School, with a projected roll of 700, along with $4m to expand Endeavour Primary School. Parata said this was a significant investment to ensure local schools could accommodate growth. "As with other parts of New Zealand, Tauranga, Hamilton and Hawke's Bay are all experiencing population growth. "With that population growth comes increases in school rolls, so this investment is about staying ahead of schools' need for more quality learning spaces." Tukituki MP Craig Foss welcomed the investment in Hawke's Bay schools. "Parents and grandparents have told me about capacity issues at Havelock North primary schools and today we have a good result," Foss said. "We want to make sure we're addressing roll growth and providing flexible spaces to support innovative learning environments for our children." He said the ministry would work with the school boards to determine the location of the new classrooms. "Like other parts of the country, Havelock North is experiencing population growth. If the number of houses built in Havelock North increases significantly, and a totally new school is required, then the ministry will begin planning for it," Foss said. Details added (first version posted on 12:01) Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: Azerbaijanis have great business opportunities in various countries, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev said addressing the 4th Congress of World Azerbaijanis in Baku June 3. "I welcome this, it is a very positive factor. It expands our people's economic opportunities," said the president. "At the same time, businessmen residing abroad help their relatives in Azerbaijan. It is very important for those living here." "Of course, I would like the Azerbaijani businessmen residing abroad to make investments in Azerbaijan," said President Aliyev. "Currently, the investment climate in Azerbaijan is very positive and all influential international financial organizations mention this." He pointed out that over the last 20 years, since 1995 to date, over $200 billion was invested in Azerbaijan's economy. "Approximately half of those investments are foreign investments. There is a good investment climate in Azerbaijan and the business environment here is improving day after day," said the president. "Especially, as a result of the decrees and orders I have signed since the beginning of the year, there has been a very serious turning point in this sphere. All bureaucratic obstacles are being eliminated and full transparency is ensured," President Aliyev added. "We see the results of all of this in everyday life, in the statements and reports of influential international financial organizations," he said. "Therefore, Azerbaijan is one of the most attractive countries for investments on a global scale." "Currently, there are investment problems, in markets as well, since the situation is aggravating in the world, in the region we live, in the Middle East and in Europe, new clashes, conflict hotbeds emerge, and the stability is being disrupted," said President Aliyev. "There will be no investments where there is no stability. There is stability in Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani people are the guarantor of this stability," said the president. "This creates good opportunities for the business investments." President Aliyev called on Azerbaijani businessmen, who have great financial opportunities, to invest in Azerbaijan in various spheres, in particular, in the real sector of economy, agriculture, industry, tourism sector and high technologies. "All these sectors are developing rapidly. The investments made in these spheres are not wasted and we see this in the economic indicators," said the president. "Investments are properly protected by the Azerbaijani government, as well as by the adopted laws," he added. Further, President Aliyev noted that the Azerbaijanis have always proven themselves in the world as the people devoted to the motherland and today that continues to be so. "Of course, we want every Azerbaijani residing abroad to visit Azerbaijan at least once a year, firstly for the bonds with the homeland not to break, and secondly, because, good conditions have been created in various parts of Azerbaijan," said the president. He added that wonderful, modern hotels and recreation zones have been created in Baku and Azerbaijan's regions. "I believe that currently, Azerbaijan is showing its recreational opportunities on a global scale," said the president. "Meanwhile, this will, of course, bring benefits to the country's economy, since currently, the tourism sector is developing rapidly and very serious reforms are underway for even more rapid development in this sector." "We see that currently, the number of the tourists visiting Azerbaijan is increasing and naturally, we want to see the world Azerbaijanis among those tourists," he added. President Aliyev pointed out that it will be very good if every Azerbaijani family residing abroad visits Azerbaijan at least once a year. Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 By Anvar Mammadov - Trend: Kazakhstan has by five-six times reduced the time spent on customs inspection of cargo arriving from the Baku International Sea Trade Port in Azerbaijan's Alat settlement, Deputy Chairman of the State Revenue Committee of the Ministry of Finance of Kazakhstan Gosman Amrin told reporters in Baku June 3. He said that if earlier the customs clearance of cargo at the Kazakh port of Aktau city took up to 10-12 hours, now the process of verification of cargo takes an average of about two hours. "In early 2016, Kazakhstan hosted a meeting between former Prime Minister of Turkey Ahmet Davutoglu and President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, and the parties agreed to maximally ease transit conditions," Amrin said. "Of course, we met with our Azerbaijani colleagues, visited the Baku International Sea Trade Port in Azerbaijan's Alat settlement, got acquainted with the organization of work at this port," he added. "Then an instruction was given to create the same conditions in the Kazakh port of Aktau city. As a result, we have almost reached the standard of the Azerbaijani port in Alat settlement." He added that this became possible through obtaining preliminary information regarding the cargo departing from the port of Alat. "As a result of joint actions we began to receive information on arriving cargo, which allowed us to carry out preliminary preparation of the necessary documents long before the cargo arrival," said Amrin. Details added (first version posted on 13:29) Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 By Anvar Mammadov - Trend: Kazakhstan is building a new port on the Caspian shore, which will be similar to Azerbaijan's Baku International Sea Trade Port, Gosman Amrin, deputy chairman of the State Revenue Committee of the Kazakh Finance Ministry, told reporters June 3 in Baku. "The new Kuryk port, which is being built near the Aktau port, will be similar to [Azerbaijan's] Alat port," said Amrin. "An Azerbaijani delegation has already been there and has got acquainted with the construction process." The new port will allow significantly speeding up the freight traffic from Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan, he said. Amrin noted that all the conditions will be created at the port to provide quick and easy cargo transhipment. As of today, cargo transportation by ferries from Kazakhstan to the ports of the Caspian states is possible only through the port of Aktau. The ferry terminal at that port has been working at the limit of its capacity in the recent years. Kazakhstan plans to increase transit transportation from the current 18 million tons of cargo to 33 million tons in 2020 and to 50 million tons in 2030. Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 By Aygun Badalova - Trend: Greece plans to conclude the sale of its stake in natural gas grid operator DESFA to Azerbaijan's SOCAR by the end of the year, Reuters reported referring to Greece's energy minister Panos Skourletis. The minister said that Greece, which signed a third international bailout last year, will get 188 million euros from the deal. Greece's biggest oil refiner Hellenic Petroleum, which also owns 35 percent in DESFA, will get the rest. Skourletis also said the government did not plan to sell a 35 percent stake in Greece's biggest oil refiner Hellenic Petroleum or other energy companies in which the state holds a significant stake. He said the government did not intend to proceed with further privatizations in the energy sector. SOCAR won a tender in 2013 on the purchase of a 66-percent stake in DESFA for 400 million euros. The European Commission started an inquiry into the compliance of the DESFA deal with the EU regulations in November 2014. Currently, the deal is being considered by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Competition. Earlier, Azerbaijan's Energy Minister Natig Aliyev said that the deal on SOCAR's purchasing the 66-percent share in Greece's gas transmission system operator DESFA will be completed after Italy's Snam purchases 17 percent of that share. Brian Rogers Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz Following our health theme from last week, were keeping our readers safe and well with some extraordinary life-saving tips. Last week we saved you from Macular Degeneration. This week we promise to take you step-by-step through removing your gall bladder at home. However, this procedure will have to wait, as there are some more pressing threats to your health for us to deal with. In the news this week, the case of a gorilla shot dead, after a young boy snuck into the zoo enclosure. Zookeepers and onlookers feared for the life of the youngster, so the ape got a bullet. Theres a warning here for all of us. If a young person strays into your personal space, run. If you have a bullet-proof vest, we recommend putting it on. If you see any zookeepers, particularly ones with guns, stop swinging from the trees and lay on the ground spread-eagled. Anyone contemplating going to a jungle-themed dress-up party would be wise to reconsider the gorilla outfit. Mind you, the lion costume probably isnt any safer, as long as the American dentist is still on the prowl. Selfie killers Also in the news this week, latest research concludes more people are now killed while taking selfies, than by sharks. Dang, you folk are in more danger from yourselves than the greatest predators in the ocean. The sharks are now just watching and laughing. The self-harm selfie epidemic is claiming thousands of lives. Self-obsessed snappers are taking one too many steps back, and falling off cliffs. Leaning out a bit far from the sidewalk and being run over by buses. So busy framing themselves up with the train tracks/runway/race circuit, theyre being smashed by locomotives/airplanes/speeding cars and horses. Or simply just failing to watch where theyre going and being killed by just about anything moving in their path. Some cities are even putting stop lights in the pavement, so the engrossed phone users, walking with their eyeballs transfixed to the screen are warned of dangers ahead. Several people have died while photographing themselves with loaded guns pointed at their heads. A pilot attempting to take happy snappies in his Cessna crashed, killing himself and passenger. In some cases, the trains arent even moving. A 14-year-old in India was atop a stationary wagon when he made contact with a 25,000 volt overhead wire. Witnesses say there was quite a flash with that photo. Seven youths drowned when they all stood up in a boat to get a group selfie. Pamplona officials have outlawed selfies during the running of the bulls. A French psychoanalyst reports many fatalities are caused when the selfie-taker loses touch with reality, falling into a sort of narcissistic black-out; rendering them unaware of the dangers around them. Here at RR we recommend a simple course of action. Since selfies are killing more people than sharks, we suggest getting the shark to take the photo; since theyre now short of something to do. Youre welcome. Working with dummies If you happen to be a crash test dummy, theres some important news for you. I know certain members of my family are former crash test dummies. Some of them are yet to crash, so are still just plain dummies. Whatever, the message this week: You may be safer to ride in the front than the back. This week it was revealed more crash test dummies are to be deployed in the back seats of cars, because research there has literally taken a back seat, compared to driver and front passenger safety testing. Car makers are being urged to make more use of airbags in the rear, improve seatbelts and put more focus on child restraint research. Here at RR wed like to see all crash test dummies banned from the driving position. Because it is our observation that they crash 100 per cent of the cars they drive. Take away their keys. Meet Patty Also in the headlines, and this is possibly my favourite story of the year, is that of 87-year-old Patty Ris, who nearly choked on her dinner in a retirement house in Ohio. This could well have been fatal, had she not been sitting next tonone other than 96-year-old Henry Heimlich, also a resident of the home and inventor of the Heimlich Manoeuvre to assist choke victims. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports staff ran to help Patty, but the good doctor was already in manoeuvres. Apparently, he has demonstrated the life-saving method many times over the decades, but had never been in a situation to perform on a real choking victim until now. His technique was successful and the piece of hamburger was dislodged, saving Patty. Our advice therefore is always ensure while dining, you have invited Henry Heimlich. If Henry is not available, youll have to revert to the procedure I invented in 1982, the Heineken Manoeuvre. It may not wash down the obstruction, but at least youll go out with a beer in your hand. A woman has been arrested at Auckland Airport over student loan debt and prevented from flying, according to reports. She tried to board a flight to Australia on Tuesday, was arrested over her loan, and had to appear in court the next day. The Kiwifruit Claim is congratulating the Ministry for Primary Industries for intercepting yak meat carried by a passenger arriving to the country from Mongolia. Had it not been intercepted, it may have caused untold damage to the New Zealand economy. Around $53.5 million will be invested in school property in Tauranga, Hamilton and Hawkes Bay as part of Budget 2016. Education Minister Hekia Parata made the announcement at Welcome Bay School in Tauranga today. The Harmony of the Seas was in the city's port on Friday The Harmony of the Seas in Malaga. Fernando Gonzalez Harmony of the Seas in Malaga - photo gallery The Harmony of the Seas, the largest cruise ship ever built, docked at the port of Malaga on Friday morning after sailing from Vigo. The mega-ship is on its maiden voyage from Southampton (UK) to Barcelona, having recently been launched at a French shipyard. The new record-breaker weighs 227,000 tonnes and measures 360 metres, more than the Eiffel Tower. Local shops, restaurants and attractions are welcoming around 6,000 passengers and 2,100 crew who will be in the city until 6pm, when the ship sets sail again. On board the Royal Caribbean-owned vessel, passengers have been enjoying 18 decks of the latest luxury and advanced technology. Features include tunnel water slides stretching the equivalent of 10 decks and a high-level zip wire ride. Once it reaches Barcelona, the ship will operate cruises on a triangular route to France, Italy and Mallorca over the summer before crossing the Atlantic to the Caribbean for the winter. The new exhibition at the Museo Ruso starting in July will be entitled Chagall and his Russian contemporaries Part of Chagall's Promenade. :: MARC CHAGALL, VEGAP, MALAGA, 2016 - CHAGALL When: From 20 July until 6 November. Where. Coleccion del Museo Ruso, La Tabacalera, Malaga What. Around 50 works of art valued at around 102.22 million euros. Marc Chagall, a Belarusian-born, French artist is one of the best known representatives of the Russian avant-garde in the West. Now his bright, figurative work is set to star in a temporary exhibition Chagall and his Russian contemporaries at the Russian Museum in Malaga, housed in the Tabacalera building. The new exhibition will open on 20 July and run until 6 November. It will include works by Chagall from the museums own collection as well as twelve pieces on loan to the museum from private collectors in Germany and Switzerland. In all, the art included in this exhibition is valued at around 102.22 million euros. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, June 3 By Huseyn Hasanov - Trend: Turkmen-Afghan consultations were held in Ashgabat between the two countries' foreign ministries, said the Turkmen government in a message June 3. The Afghan delegation at the consultations was led by the country's Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Khalil Karzai. The sides exchanged views on the prospects for further development of bilateral partnership, including in the spheres of policy, trade, economy, regional security, oil and gas, and others. Cooperation in the fuel and energy, transportation and communications sectors as part of the implementation of major infrastructure projects - the construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan (TAT) railway - also was the subject of discussions. The Afghan delegation is also scheduled to hold meetings in Turkmenistan's Energy Ministry, Ministry of Trade and Foreign Economic Relations, and Ministry of Education. Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 By Emil Ilgar - Trend: All the Iranians should act in line with the revolutionary principles and revolutionary spirit, said Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei made the remarks addressing the nation June 3 at an event commemorating the 27th anniversary of the death of Imam Khomeini, former supreme leader and founder of the Islamic Republic, according to his official website. During his speech, Khamenei claimed "the US is pursuing its own goals in the region", adding the cooperation with Washington in regional issues would only help the US to realize its own interests in the Middle East. He also said Iran has many enemies, "but foremost among them are America and this very "evil" Britain." A total of 15 militants have been killed in four counterterrorism strikes in recent months against al-Qaeda in Yemen, including one May 19, Central Command of the U.S. Department of Defense announced Friday. Spokesman Col. Pat Ryder said the strikes against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were not previously announced. The May 19 strike in Shabwah governorate in central Yemen killed four fighters, Ryder said. Another strike in the same area killed six fighters Feb. 3; another in Hadramawt governorate Feb. 29 in east Yemen killed three militants and one in the vicinity of Azzan in central Yemen on March 30 killed two fighters. Although pressed by reporters, Ryder failed to explain why the Defense Department did not release information about the airstrikes at the time they were conducted. According to a Central Command statement, however, the Pentagon has launched nine strikes this year against the group in Yemen, killing 81 militants. As the militants have gained ground amid the chaos in Yemen, the Pentagon has increased military support for operations in Yemen, including deployment of special operations forces to advise Yemeni and Emirati forces. The U.S. views al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula as a persistent threat to the region and its own interests. Two fighter jets from elite US military demonstration squadrons crashed in separate incidents on Thursday, including one that had just done a flyover of the Air Force Academy graduation in Colorado where President Barack Obama had spoken, Reuters reported. In Tennessee, a pilot from the Navy's Blue Angels squadron was killed when his F/A-18 jet crashed in Smyrna, about 24 miles (39 km) southeast of Nashville, a Navy spokeswoman said. The crash occurred about 2 miles (3 km) from an airport runway while the Blue Angels were practicing for a weekend air show, the Navy said, adding that the cause of the crash was being investigated. The pilot's name was not made public. In Colorado, a pilot with the Air Force's Thunderbirds squadron was unhurt when his F-16 jet crashed in a field 5 miles (8 km) south of Peterson Air Force Base, the Air Force said. The pilot, whose name was not released, ejected safely and was picked up by emergency response crews, the Air Force said. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said a military helicopter that had been supporting Obama's motorcade on the drive back to Peterson AFB peeled off to find the crash site. A Secret Service agent onboard who is also an emergency medic assessed the pilot, who was then flown to Peterson. The helicopter then resumed its mission in support of Obama's motorcade. Obama later visited the Thunderbird pilot at Peterson to thank him for his service and express relief he had not been seriously hurt, Earnest said. Earnest said the pilot was up and walking around when the president saw him. The president also thanked the emergency responders who picked up the pilot. The cause of the crash was not immediately known and the Air Force said it would undertake an investigation. The Air Force's Air Combat Command said on Twitter that no one was hurt on the ground and there was no hazard to the public. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has admitted to smoking marijuana in the past, said on Thursday he has no plans to light up even after his government makes it legal to do so, according to Reuters. "I don't think so. I'm not someone who has a history of using drugs," Trudeau said, speaking in Winnipeg in a question and answer session with the Winnipeg Free Press newspaper. "I lived in Whistler (British Columbia) for a few years, surrounded by friends who did. "It was never my thing." Trudeau, 44, said he does not drink much alcohol or coffee, either. Canadians are allowed to use medical marijuana with a prescription, but recreational use is illegal. The government has said it will introduce legislation to legalize recreational use in 2017. Trudeau said he wants to change the law for two reasons: to better protect young people from marijuana by providing increased control over points of sale and to take revenue away from organized crime. The bodies of 117 people, including a fetus and two children, have been exhumed from a mass grave in Mexico's town of Tetelcingo, in the state of Morelos, prosecutor Javier Perez Duron said. There remains include those of "a fetus, a baby and a child," Duron said as quoted by El Universal on Friday. The baby was two years old, while the child was seven. According to Mexico's prosecutors, the bodies could have been dumped at the site illegally. Duron said that an investigation is underway to find out who was responsible for the mass burial. According to Duron, heavy machinery will be used to inspect a wider area around the mass grave in order to rule out that more human remains or bodies could be buried at the site. China impounds MR on smuggling charges China allegedly seized an oil tanker and detained several people last month, including one employee of Swiss trading house Gunvor. According to a Reuters report appearing in the South China Morning Post, this move was part of an investigation into suspected tax evasion on imported oil. Gunvor confirmed to the media that its employee had been detained for questioning without naming him. The trading house also said it had not been notified of a formal arrest or any charges against its employee. Gunvor itself has not been formally notified of any investigation involving the company, a Geneva-based spokesman for the company reportedly said to Reuters. He also said that following the detention, the company had looked into the activities of its employee and found nothing wrong. China has stepped up efforts to crack down on fuel smuggling, which increased after the authorities raised consumption taxes on oil products in 2014, creating price gaps between domestic prices and those abroad. China imports most of its commodities from many trading houses and had previously investigated some employees. Chinese customs views import tax evasion as smuggling, Reuters explained. The customs office for Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province in southern China, said it had seized a foreign-flagged tanker and detained several individuals. It said it was investigating suspected smuggling of light cycle oil (LCO), a refinery by-product for diesel blending, without identifying the vessel or the individuals. A senior official at China Changjiang National Shipping Group Corp said that its vessel, the Hong-Kong-flagged 2008-built MR CSC Friendship, had been held to help investigations of Guangzhou customs. Gunvor said it had delivered oil products to China on the vessel on 10 - 14 May, but added that no vessel while under charter by Gunvor has been detained. Gunvors business in China is otherwise ongoing, it reportedly said. The detained Gunvor employee was believed to be Yin Dikun, managing director of Gunvor Singapore. Gunvor said that following the detention of its Singapore office employee, it had appointed Timothy Legge, its chief risk officer, as acting managing director of Gunvor Singapore. Zhou Jule, chairman of China Base Ningbo Group said his company had been the import agent for the cargo, according to Reuters. He said the cargo had been detained as part of an investigation and that his staff had been summoned by the Guangzhou customs, but not detained. China Base said it had re-sold the cargo to Twinace Oil, a Guangzhou based fuel dealer, according to Chinese sources. Twinace declined to comment when asked by Reuters/South China Morning Post. Ensure cleaning products comply - WSS If you cant trust your cleaning products, you cant guarantee compliance, warned Wilhelmsen Ships Service (WSS) in a message to chemical and product tanker operators. WSS has implored owners and operators to look beyond the label of tank cleaning products to ensure compliance with regulation 13.5.2 of MARPOL Annex II. Knowledge of a products chemical composition and trust in the supplier is absolutely crucial, said Jan Fredrik Bjorge, WSSproduct marketing manager (cleaning solutions). The cost of non-compliance can be tremendously high,Bjorge said,so it pays to know exactly what a product is made of, how it reacts with cargo residues and that every time you use it it is exactly what you expect it to be. That may sound like a daunting prospect, but an experienced tank cleaning specialist will be able to provide support - telling you everything you need to know to ensure a clean result, while staying in compliance with all relevant regulations,he said. Equally as crucial as knowledge is trust. Bjorge explained:For global regulations you need standardised products. You need to be able to look at documented performance while knowing that every litre of product is exactly the same as the last same strength, same composition, same volume, same dosage, same results. The danger in using multiple local suppliers is that uniformity of quality is not a given. He noted that all of WSStank cleaning chemicals are highly concentrated and produced in one location Tnsberg, Norway and manufactured in accordance with ISO 9001 and 14001 standards. The products display all the necessary regulatory approvals, data sheets, approval certificates and user guides. Industry standards, in terms of regulation, are constantly climbing, as is the cleanliness that customers demand,Bjorge concluded.By partnering with firms with the right combination of expertise, supply and a high quality chemical portfolio, shipowners can avoid compliance headaches and get on with what they do best providing quality transport services worldwide. WSS, which has offices in 75 countries around the world, servicing 2,200 port locations, owns its own cleaning brand UNITORTM, which includes tank cleaning chemicals, such as Unipol and Tankleen Advance. Markets - VLCC demand picks up The VLCC market saw renewed demand particularly ex MEG in the last week. Although charterers tried to move quietly under the radar, the market turned in favour of the owners, except ex Caribs, Fearnleys reported in its weekly report. The few cargoes being quoted in the open market ex MEG received limited response, but at firm levels indicating the supply of tonnage up to 20th June is slowly, becoming less. Presently the fixture count for June is well ahead of the total concluded at same time last month for May liftings. Owners are counting on strong demand in the third week, as was the case in April and May. They intend to push rates further up, but this remains to be seen, as up to now, May has been more active than the previous months. Suezmaxes enjoyed a busy week with strong numbers seen in all areas. The initial spike was created by the tight Med/Black Sea market, due to uncertainties as vessels were tied up in French ports. The Med/Black Sea tonnage list for vessels with firm itineraries was short and as a result, the rates jumped up to W100 level for TD6 voyages. In W Africa, the force majeure active in most of the Nigerian ports was repealed and as a result, deferred barrels entered the market. with laycan up to 25th June. In the Baltic and N Sea areas, rates came off by a few points, mainly due to lack of activity cross North Sea. In addition, an expected maintenance period at Primorsk added some downward pressure on rates. We dont expect rates to soften dramatically, but we could see a small downward correction, Fearnleys said. Rates in the Med and Black Sea have finally stabilised at around WS115 level. Black Sea was the most active area, however, at time of writing (Wednesday), more Med cargoes were materialising, thus adding some upward pressure on rates. Quite a few ships still have no firm berthing prospects, partly due to the French strikes and a slow turnaround at Trieste. The Trieste situation looks like it could slowly be resolved. Consequently, we will see more ships being circulated with firm positions, which could ease the strong momentum if charterers play the coming days right, Fearnleys concluded. Period charter rates look to be softening judging by some of the fixtures reported on brokers lists in the past week or so. For example, the 1999-built VLCC DS Commander was reported fixed to HOB for 12 months at $35,250 per day, while unknown charterers were said to have fixed the 2016-built VLCC Landbridge Warrior for three years T $35,000 per day. Vitol was believed to have fixed the 2010-built LR2 Totonno Bottiglieri for 12 months at $24,000 per day. In the MR segment, HPCL was rumoured to have fixed the 2005-built Jag Pranav for 12 months at 17,000 per day, while Shell was thought to have taken the 2009-built MR Pegasus for 3-6 months at $16,750 per day and ST Shipping was thought to have fixed the 2003-built MR MTM Mumbai for six months at $16,000 per day. The 2009-built Handysize Atlantic Canyon was thought fixed to Signal Maritime for two years with an option for a further year at $13,500 per day. In the S&P sector, having purchased four Handysize vessels, CP Offen Tankschiffarts was thought to have disposed of the MRs CPO Japan (built 2010) and the CPO Korea (built 2009) to UK-based Union Maritime for an en bloc price of $46 mill. This transaction may still be on subjects. Also on subjects were believed to be the two 2008-built MRs Batissa and Bursa to unknown interests for $22 mill each. The 2011-built VLCC C Elephant was said to have been sold to Greek interests, believed to be involved with Minerva for about $55.6 mill. Reported to be leaving the fleet were the 1986-built sister parcel tankers Stolt Aqumarine and Stolt Topaz, both reportedly sold to Indian breakers for $270 per ldt each. Deliveries included the fifth of five MRs sold by Scorpio Tankers to National Chemical Carriers (NCC), a subsidiary of the National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia (Bahri). The vessel was delivered on 26th May, the ownership was transferred to NCC and the tanker was renamed NCC Bader. All five vessels were built in 2014 at Hyundai Mipo Dockyard for Scorpio Tankers and were bought for a total purchase price of $166.5 mill earlier this year. Elsewhere, Tristar has taken delivery of the first of six MRs from Hyundai Mipo - Silver Manoora. They are being built on the back of long term timecharters to Shell. Newbuildings were scarce with just two VLGCs reported ordered by NYK at Japan Marine United (JMU). The 84,000 cu m vessels are due for delivery in January, 2019 and are priced at $75 mill, according to brokers reports. Minerva opts for grease free bearings Greek shipowner Minerva Marine has replaced the greased bronze mooring winch bearing on board the Aframax Minerva Hellen with Thordon Bearings ThorPlas-Blue. The company said that it is now planning to apply the grease-free alternative bearings to other vessels in the fleet. Superintendent engineer, Dimitrios Mastorakis, said: Since replacing the bronze bearing more than two years ago we have eliminated the costs and maintenance associated with the constant application of grease. We are very pleased with the ThorPlas-Blue product and plan to use it on other vessels. Craig Carter, Thordon Bearings head of marketing and customer service, said: One of main benefits of ThorPlas-Blue is the amount of time it saves ships crew. Crews no longer need to grease the winch bearings and since they dont wear out, maintenance is negligible, leaving the crew to get on with other jobs. ThorPlas-Blue bearings can be easily machined and installed quickly into a variety of applications where greased bronze bearings are traditionally installed. They can also be supplied as a split spherical bearing (SSB) for use in rudder and steering gear systems to counter the alignment problems typical of hydraulic steering systems. They can be applied to all lifeboat and tender davit systems; fairleads, which can have a huge impact on mooring ropes that wear quickly; tiller arms and jockey bars; cranes and hoists; pivot point bushings; winches, capstans, watertight doors and hatches. Aside from the obvious safety and environmental benefits, use of the ThorPlas-Blue product facilitates a smoother more reliable operation of deck machinery since seized bearings from inadequate greasing is no longer an issue, said Scott Groves, Thordon Bearings business development manager. This also reduces operational costs, given that a seized bearing would often result in the need to replace expensive rope or cables. Piston and cylinder damage and subsequent mechanical failure arising from increased levels of vibration is also avoided. Shipowners also save on the costs associated with the purchase, storage and disposal of grease, he added. Visitors to next weeks Posidonia will be able to find out more about both COMPAC and ThorPlas-Blue by visiting Thordon Bearings at Booth 3.111 with the Greek distributor, Technava. Frontline, Diamond S Shipping and Euronav have formed a Suezmax pool- Suezmax Chartering. The aim of the joint venture was to create a single point of contact for cargo owners to access a large fleet of 43 modern Suezmaxes operating on the spot market. Frontline will contribute 22 vessels to the joint venture, including 14 vessels on the water plus eight newbuildings, as they are delivered. A larger fleet will provide more flexibility and more options for cargo owners and also reduce voyage related expenses by optimising vessel selection based on proximity to cargoes, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as a direct consequence of using less fuel for ballasting trips. Suezmax Chartering will operate from the three managers existing offices. Robert Hvide Macleod, Frontline Management CEO, said: "I look forward to working with Diamond S and Euronav on this important venture. We share the common goal of providing safe, timely and high quality service to our customers." Paddy Rodgers, CEO of Euronav, said: I am delighted to start this exciting marketing venture in the Suezmax sector with Diamond S and Frontline. All three companies management share a similar vision in bringing greater transparency to what is a highly fragmented industrial structure. We look forward to working closely with our partners in this initiative. Poulsson takes over ICS chair At the Tokyo Annual General Meeting of the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) on Thursday, Esben Poulsson was elected chairman, replacing Masamichi Morooka. Marooka has decided to stand down after four years in office. Speaking about the tasks ahead after his unanimous election, Poulsson said:Being chairman is a big responsibility and my primary task will be to ensure that ICS continues to represent the considered views of the entire industry. This means reflecting and reconciling the opinions of different ship types and trades, different national viewpoints and the interests of shipping companies big and small. Within ICS there are two major challenges on which we really need to focus this year. The first is working with IMO member states to make further progress in addressing international shippings CO2 emissions, including our proposal that IMO should develop an Intended IMO Determined Contribution for reducing the sectors CO2, similar to the commitments already made by governments as part of the Paris Agreement. But even more pressing from an industry perspective is making sure we are ready for the almost certain entry in force of the IMO Ballast Water Convention, and engaging with governments, especially the US, to overcome some remaining but really serious implementation problems. More generally, ICS will continue to fight for the maintenance of global rules for our global industry, and continuous improvement with respect to our safety record and environmental performance. I especially want to build on ICS efforts to gain greater recognition of what the industry has already achieved and its critical role in the sustainable development of the world economy and the improvement of global living standards. I was fortunate enough to lead the strategic review, which ICS conducted last year and this made me very aware of the enormous scope of activity in which ICS is engaged. This ranges from representation on policy and operational matters, as well as maritime law and employment affairs, to the production of best practice guidance and technical publications that are relied upon by shipping companies and seafarers worldwide. In addition to liaising with governments, this also means maintaining good relations with a large number of international institutions that impact upon the interests of shipowners. As the new ICS Chairman, working with our secretary general, Peter Hinchliffe, I look forward to addressing these challenges,he concluded. Poulsson will be supported in his new role by four ICS vice chairmen: John Lyras (Greece), Karin Orsel (Netherlands), Mark Martecchini (Liberia) and Gerardo Borromeo (Philippines). Coinciding with the AGM, ICS published its 2016 Annual Review of maritime policy developments - see www.ics-shipping.org. Pedro Agramunt, the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), is to meet Turkish leaders during a two-day official visit to Turkey on 6 and 7 June 2016, PACE website reported. In Ankara, meetings are foreseen with Turkey's President, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, as well as the Speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. Agramunt will also meet the Minister of EU Affairs, the Chief Ombudsman and the head of the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD). In parliament, he will hold talks with the members of the Turkish delegation to PACE and members of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee. Suezmaxes at the crossroads In the Suezmax fleet, there are 89 vessels of over 15 years of age (18% of the current fleet), which is the preferred upper employment limit set by most charterers. However, many of the older units are able to trade in the shuttle markets, where age is not so much of an obstacle. Today, 60% of the current Suezmax shuttle fleet is over 15 years old, said Gibson Research in a recent report, following up its recent analysis of the VLCC fleet (see Tanker Operator News 13th May). Older conventional tankers continue to find employment East of Suez, typically loading Middle East cargoes for India or Singapore. Between 2014-2015, huge investment in new Suezmaxes took the orderbook profile as a percentage of the existing fleet to 24%; the highest of all the tanker newbuilding sectors. Almost all of the newbuildings are scheduled to be delivered over the next 24 months. But how are these newbuilds going to be absorbed as there appears to be little chance of any withdrawals from the fleet? Last May, Gibson wrote in the weekly report that supply appears in check, although robust earnings are likely to lead to a slowdown in demolition activity and that the increase in the Suezmax trading fleet is still expected to be limited. We were correct at the time, Gibson said, but the 49 orders placed since last May now paint a different picture. It appears that geopolitical events have a huge influence on the Suezmax segment, more so than other sectors of the tanker market and the short term prospects appear to be very much under treat. For example, the loss of West African barrels to the US (TD5) over recent years (although recently enjoying a renaissance) has been substituted with WAF/UKC (TD20) as the crisis in Libyan production continues and is likely to do so for the foreseeable future. It should be assumed that Libya will one day return to pre-crisis levels in the same way as Iraqi production has returned. Since 2006, Iraqi production has also supported Suezmax demand, with the largest jump in output from 3.3 mill barrels per day seen in 2014 to 4 mill barrels per day recorded last year, which included Kurdish exports through Ceyhan. However, there is a view that Iraqi production has reached a plateau and may even decline in the short term. The loss of revenues from the low oil price has limited the governments ability to pay oil companies, who in turn are not investing in Iraqs infrastructure, which is needed to expand crude exports. The recent supply disruptions in Nigeria represent another threat to the Suezmax market and again some industry experts are forecasting that the nations oil output will drop sharply over the next decade. Wood Mackenzie, the energy consultancy, has cut its output forecast for Nigeria by more than a fifth, to 1.5 mill barrels per day on average over the next decade, due to uncertainty over promised reforms to the cash-strapped state oil company. This is not related to the militant activity which is currently disrupting exports. Nigerian production has reached a 20-year low following recent acts of sabotage. Lost output destined for India discharge may in future have to be sourced from the Middle East, which could support the Suezmax market. Meanwhile, other areas where forecast growth in cargo volumes have not materialised as expected, such as Kozmino and the Caribbean, have taken their toll on Suezmax demand. The Suezmax market could face some tough challenges over the next few years; not just from the threat of the newbuildings, Gibson concluded. A full list of Suezmaxes and every tanker of 25,000 dwt and over can be found in the recently published Gibson Tanker Register 2016. This annual listing takes its usual format with the first section devoted to commercial owners and their vessels, followed an an alphabetical list of all of the tankers included with their basic details. A CD is included with the printed version, which gives more in-depth information, such as vessels by charterer, tanker pools, vessels by dwt, newbuildings by size group and delivery dates. SHARE Phillip Maurice Thomas By Lamaur Stancil of TCPalm INDIAN RIVER COUNTY A convicted drug dealer's 24-year prison sentence has been cut in half by the Obama administration, the White House announced Friday. Phillip Maurice Thomas, 55, formerly of the 1500 block of 14th Avenue, Vero Beach, was sentenced to 24 years and four months in prison in federal court in 2005, according to records. His charges were for four counts of possession of cocaine, Ecstasy and marijuana with intent to deliver. Thomas also had a drug trafficking conviction from 1987 and drug-related convictions in 1996 that led to a 10-year prison stay. Authorities said he had 10 grams of crack cocaine, more than 500 grams of powder cocaine, 240 Ecstasy pills and 833 grams of marijuana at his home near Vero Beach High School. The Multi-Agency Criminal Enforcement unit recovered the drugs when it took Thomas into custody. The commutation reduces Thomas' sentence to 11 years and five months. He is now scheduled to be released from prison Oct. 1, the White House said. His commutation was one of 42 announced this week by the White House. President Barack Obama has sought the reduction of prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. By Lamaur Stancil of TCPalm INDIAN RIVER COUNTY Buoyed by a 14 percent increase in larcenies, Indian River County's overall crime rate last year increased by 10.1 percent, according to statistics released Friday by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The Uniform Crime Report for 2015 also showed a decrease in most of the violent crime categories in the county in 2015. Indian River had fewer murders, robberies and aggravated assaults last year. Rapes reported in the county increased from 24 to 36. Other crimes tabulated in the report are burglary and motor vehicle theft. The larceny category includes crimes such as motor vehicle burglaries, shoplifting and pickpocketing. The car burglaries have been a persistent problem for years, though it's one that's easily preventable. "Our crime analysts determined 90 percent of the cars burglarized were unlocked," Indian River County Sheriff Deryl Loar said. "It's not that people are breaking windows." Despite the increase, last year's crime index remains well below the previous decade's annual average for major crime reports for Indian River. Between 1999 and 2012, the county had an average of 4,600 major crimes annually. Those numbers began to drop in 2011, followed by a dramatic 20 percent decrease in 2013, when 3,402 major crimes were recorded. Law enforcement agencies reported 3,940 incidents for the 2015 Uniform Crime Report, compared with 3,579 in 2014. Many of the major crimes are triggered by drug abuse, Loar said. "Most people are drunk or high when they're arrested," Loar said. "Drugs are the No. 1 problem of why certain crimes go up." The Sheriff's Office's crime index increased 15.1 percent in 2015, while Sebastian experienced a 11.6 percent increase. Police Chief Michelle Morris touted the city's clearance rate, 36.6 percent, the highest for any agency in the county and above the state's average of 32 percent. Two cities, Vero Beach and Fellsmere, posted crime index decreases of 6.1 percent and 1 percent, respectively. Fellsmere's percent represents just one less crime reported from 2014 to 2015. In Vero Beach, Police Chief David Currey couldn't pinpoint any specific move his department made to cause the decrease in crime, but pointed to a few changes that might have helped. Last year, the police added two sworn officers to its roster, giving it 54 officers, he said. Also in 2015, the police bought a couple of bicycles for officers to use at special events or nighttime patrols in strategic locations. "It's an ongoing, never-ending effort," Currey said. "We'll continue to try to deter crime and arrest the people who commit crimes. When crime is down, we hope it's because of what the police department does and the help of the community." The county had just two murders in the report, though that does not include the murder charges filed this week against two teens for the May 2015 shooting death of Reginald Davis Jr., Loar said. The crime report, when tabulated by FDLE, only includes homicides where a murder charge has been filed. The other murders last year were the April stabbing of Martha Perkins and the November shooting of Cynthia Betts. Perkins' daughter, Cherish Perkins, was charged with her death, the Sheriff's Office said. Asbury Perkins, who is of no relation to the other Perkins family, was charged with Betts' death; Betts was his ex-wife, the Sheriff's Office said. MORE COVERAGE St. Lucie County sees decrease in crime rate in 2015 Martin County sees decrease in crime rate, on track with decade-long trend Database: Uniform Crime Reports on the Treasure Coast, 1999-2015 Lakewood Park Regional Park Pool (FILE PHOTO) I recently wrote that because of staff shortages, two of the three St. Lucie County public swimming pools will be open only on very restricted schedules this summer. Good news on that front came Friday afternoon. Swimmers in Lakewood Park and northwest Fort Pierce now will be able to cool off five and four days a week respectively. Previously, hours at Lakewood Park had been restricted to weekends, while the Avenue M pool in Fort Pierce had only been open one afternoon a week. That's important because only about one in three African-Americans report they have basic swimming skills, according to the American Red Cross. The extended hours are possible by shuttling existing staff between pools. "We are pushing to hire more aquatics staff and hope to be expand pool hours more in coming weeks," county spokesman Erick Gill said. The shortage of trained water safety staff is an issue that crops up every summer. One reason is lack of money: St. Lucie County pays around $3 an hour less than surrounding municipalities. As Ashley Mock of the Children's Services Council noted, high school grads and college students looking for a summer job can afford to be picky and drive to other counties for work. To counteract that trend, St. Lucie County recently turned to social media to reach a bigger pool (pun intended) of applicants. Because of the staff shortages, the number of swimming lessons available is less than in previous years. Yet help in the form of a couple of nonprofit organizations is on its way. Sean Boyle, executive director of the Children's Services Council of St. Lucie County, pointed out his organization has helped subsidize swim lessons and training for many years. Boyle said the Children's Services Council has offered heavily subsidized swim lessons for at least the last five years for individual children and those attending summer camps. For instance, eight water safety lessons over two weeks at summer camp normally would cost $65, Boyle said. After the CSC's subsidy, parents only pay $10. The Children's Service Council also is funding certified training for one additional lifeguard, one water safety expert and two adaptive aquatics staff members to work with special needs children. The council is partnering with Indian River State College using members of the school's swim team to provide summer camp lessons for 180 children this summer, Mock said. "The college has facilities and resources that are just too good to ignore," Mock a former IRSC swimmer herself said. "Their swimmers are almost like having built-in staffers. I really hope this pilot program can expand next year." While the CSC is doing sterling work plugging the holes in staff shortages, another group takes a longer view. Ronda Cerulli, who works for the Florida Department of Health in St. Lucie County, coordinates the local Safe Kids Coalition, a global organization dedicated to preventing injuries to children in all areas from bicycle and pedestrian safety to swimming. As Cerulli pointed out, drowning is the second leading cause of death for children. Like the CSC, Safe Kids has been producing its own certified water safety experts. Last week, seven deputies from the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office graduated from a basic water rescue course. Many of them will go on to more rigorous Red Cross training, she said. Cerulli also will be approaching condominium and apartment complexes with pools where additional lessons might be offered. She agrees St. Lucie County is seriously understaffed at its pools and beaches (only three of which are manned by lifeguards), but believes we have made some progress over the last decade in reducing drowning deaths. "The county has lost a lot of key staff (in the Parks & Recreation Department in particular) over a short period," Cerulli admitted, "but we are making a difference. I'm very hopeful that with the Sheriff on board we can move forward." It's looking as if more kids will be able to use the pools we've paid for, and that's very good news for those populations especially at risk for drowning. Anthony Westbury is a columnist for Treasure Coast Newspapers. This column reflects his opinion. Contact him at 772-221-4220, anthony.westbury@tcpalm.com or follow him @TCPalmWestbury on Twitter. EXTENDED ST. LUCIE COUNTY POOL HOURS Starting June 6, the countys three public pools will begin adding extra hours of operation: Lakewood Park Regional Park Pool, 5990 Emerson Ave., Fort Pierce Open swim: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Friday; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday Aquasize: 10to 10:45 a.m. Monday, Wednesday, Friday Lincoln Park Pool, 1211 Avenue M, Fort Pierce Open swim: 2 to 5 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday; 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday Swim camps: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Ravenswood Pool, 400 Ravenswood Lane, Port St. Lucie Open swim: 1 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday; 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday Adult lap swim: 6:45 to 8:15 a.m. Monday, Wednesday, Friday Aquasize: 7:30 to 8:15 a.m. Monday, Wednesday, Friday Swim camps: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday All county pools are scheduled to be open through Labor Day. For more information, visit www.stlucieco.gov/aquatics. Michael Bryk, Indian River County communications director for Donald J. Trump for president, takes a picture of Samantha Failla, Fort Pierce, and Kelsey Eden, Forked River, N.J., at a campaign rally May 31 at the Elks Club in Vero Beach. (LARRY REISMAN/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS) ONLINE ONLY There were no skinhead-looking security guards; no security guards at all. The media as far as I know just me was welcome. There were no protesters outside. The Donald wasn't at the first Trump rally in Indian River County celebrating his apparent anointment as Republican presidential candidate. But almost 150 of our neighbors were there munching on $2-a-slice pizza. Including Gary Burdsall, the Trump campaign's Indian River County chairman. I met Burdsall, who has lived in town since the mid-1970s, Tuesday night at the Elks Club. That's where the Republican Club of Indian River County held an event designed to energize volunteers. Burdsall, 60, owns Able American Jets, a charter travel and air ambulance service. He was a pioneer in the air ambulance business in the 1980s and lives at the Indian River Aerodrome west of town. "I love it when they say, 'We've created jobs'," Burdsall said of politicians. "No one has created a job until they've signed a payroll paycheck." Burdsall respects Trump's ability to build businesses and rebound from business failures. Burdsall said his previous aviation business was crippled after the Sept. 11 attacks. Politically, Burdsall thinks it's time our leaders get this nation in order before helping other countries. Our help worldwide is important, but not now. Burdsall's main political experience was as a pilot, flying Florida gubernatorial candidates Jeb Bush, Bob Martinez and Bob Graham. At the time, he worked for the Becker citrus company. He said Graham, former Democratic governor and senator, would be viewed a political "moderate" today. Federal election records show Graham is the only national politician Burdsall has supported financially in recent years. Interestingly, Trump through April had raised only $12,265 in this region and had only six donors in Indian River County. Statewide, he trailed seven other GOP candidates. The other local Trump leader I met will spend more time than money helping the candidate. That's because Michael Bryk, Trump's local communications director, is a political science major at the University of South Florida. Bryk, a Vero Beach native and 2015 John Carroll High School graduate, said he got into politics this year, talking with friends and watching TV news shows. "I've really learned my passion for this country," said Bryk, who, dressed in a suit and tie, took pictures of rally attendees holding Trump signs. There were several college-age people at the rally, from Indian River State College GOP leader Sergio Mota to Kelsey Eden of New Jersey, who attended with a friend of Bryk's, Samantha Failla of Fort Pierce. There was local political consultant Curtis Carpenter, who brought two of maybe five elementary or preschool children I saw. The bulk of the crowd was white, 60-plus and seemingly middle class. Most local Republican candidates for office were there. I didn't speak with enough to determine if they were there to support Trump or campaign. "I was there supporting my local candidates and the party and I wanted to learn a little more about the Trump candidacy," Carpenter said. A couple of longtime local GOP female leaders were there. Caroline Ginn, a former county commissioner and right-to-life leader, said she supported Ted Cruz in the primaries, but was "exploring" Trump. "I'm learning the way," she said. "He is the nominee." Meanwhile, Rosemarie Wilson announced several local women had formed a group, "American Women Love Donald Trump." Also in attendance was Damien Gilliams, a businessman and perennial candidate for Sebastian City Council. Gilliams showed me a video of a packed Trump rally he attended at the University of Central Florida. Gilliams said he had a proposal for the presidential candidate based on a concept in Trump's book, "The Art of the Deal." The proposal: Trump should put up some of his own property as collateral for fulfilling campaign promises. If the promises are not fulfilled, the federal government gets the property. I wonder if Gilliams would make such an offer next time he runs. The local Trump gathering wasn't a big news maker. But who knows what the future holds? This column reflects the opinion of Laurence Reisman. Contact him via email at larry.reisman@tcpalm.com, phone at 772-978-2223, Facebook.com/laurencereisman or Twitter @LaurenceReisman. Scene from a rollover crash on State Road 60 in Indian River County. (FILE PHOTO) Something is happening on our roads in Indian River, Martin and St. Lucie counties. And it's not good. Motor vehicle crashes have risen sharply in each county on the Treasure Coast. And one county Indian River recorded the highest percentage increase for crashes in the ENTIRE STATE during the past five years. "The statistics show our roads are more dangerous than they were five years ago," St. Lucie County Sheriff Ken Mascara said. The numbers speak for themselves. From 2011 to 2015, motor vehicle crashes rose by 100 percent in St. Lucie County and 105 percent in Martin County, according to Florida's Integrated Report Exchange System. And the regional and statewide leader is Indian River County, which recorded a whopping 175 percent hike in crashes during the five-year period. Only seven other counties in Florida posted crash increases of 100 percent or more. The statewide average is 64 percent. "I'm surprised by the 175 percent increase," Indian River County Sheriff Deryl Loar said. "But it could be expected with all the factors involved." Not surprisingly, injuries from traffic accidents have followed a similar trajectory. What is fueling the steep rise in crashes? DANGER ZONE One of the causes is specific to Indian River County. The Florida Department of Transportation's widening project on Interstate 95 north of State Road 60 has created a danger zone for motorists. There have been 386 crashes more than one a day along a 12.5-mile stretch of I-95 over the past 12 months, according to Loar. In December, Loar successfully lobbied state transportation officials to reduce the posted speed limit from 70 mph to 60 mph in the construction zone. Still, the danger persists. DISTRACTED TO DEATH Both Mascara and Loar fault distracted drivers, in part, for the rise in motor vehicle crashes. "Our deputies continually see motorists texting, talking on phones or putting on makeup," Mascara said. Both sheriffs strongly endorse toughening Florida's benign anti-texting law, which requires a motorist to commit another offense before he can be cited for texting while driving. "Making texting a primary offense would help reduce distracted driving," Mascara said. There were more than 45,000 distracted-driving crashes in Florida in 2015, according to state records. These crashes resulted in more than 39,000 injuries and 214 fatalities. IMPROVING ECONOMY There is consensus among local officials that an improving economy i.e., lower unemployment rates, increased construction, cheaper gas prices and record numbers of tourists in the state has contributed to the rise in crashes and injuries. The most recent state records show the average daily vehicle miles traveled by Florida motorists 550 million in 2014 was the highest it has been since 2007, when state motorists collectively logged 564 million a day. One of the few upsides to the Great Recession: there were fewer vehicles on our roads. REVISED REPORTS Three years ago, state officials changed the reporting requirements for traffic accidents. Previously, sheriff's offices and police departments submitted only long form reports to the state. Long forms are required when a traffic accident involves death or personal injury, a motorist leaving the scene of an accident or driving under the influence. Since 2013, local law enforcement agencies have submitted short forms as well. "Short form crashes are less significant crashes, resulting in minimal property damage and no personal injury," said Lt. Ryan Grimsdale of the traffic division for the Martin County Sheriff's Office. "Since the implementation of this system, all crash reports, including short form reports, are submitted, which has resulted in an increase in documented crashes." Short form reporting may explain, in part, some of the increases in crash numbers. But, as Grimsdale noted, short form crashes are those that result in "no personal injury." So how to account for the increase in injuries, which have risen 73 percent in Indian River, 53 percent in Martin and 42 percent in St. Lucie? The higher numbers can't be explained away by the revised reporting system. Bottom line: Our roads are indeed more dangerous than they were five years ago. All the more reason to put down your smartphone, obey posted speed limits and drive defensively. Baku, Azerbaijan, June 3 Trend: Azerbaijan's friend is a friend of Turkey, while Azerbaijan's enemy is an enemy of Turkey, said Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim at a press conference with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Baku June 3. Yildirim said Turkey has always supported Azerbaijan and will continue to support it. "Unfortunately, double standards are applied against Azerbaijan," added Yildirim. He also stressed that it is time to put an end to the Armenian occupation of Azerbaijani lands, which has been lasting for many years. "Such international organizations as the OSCE Minsk Group must solve this issue and Turkey is closely monitoring it," said Yildirim. He added that international organizations make important decisions within their interests, but when it comes to Azerbaijan and Turkey, those organizations' existence is simply unnoticeable. Yildirim added that this is a clear example of double standards. He also said the international community must abandon double standards in relation to Azerbaijan. The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 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. UNDER ATTACK: A pathogen spread by the ambrosia beetle is threatening avocado trees in the Sunshine State. To date, 12,000 commercial avocado trees have been destroyed by laurel wilt, according to a report in ScienceDaily.com. Mortality is fairly rapid once a tree becomes infected: within four to eight weeks. How pervasive is the spread of laurel wilt? All but six Florida counties all in the Panhandle have reported the pathogen, according to Jonathan Crane, professor of horticultural sciences at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Services. SHARE The tracks and "spaghetti models" of Tropical Depression Bonnie and an area of low pressure in the Caribbean Sea on Friday afternoon. (TCPALM.COM) The general track of an area of low pressure being monitored in the Caribbean Sea on Friday afternoon. (NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER) By Staff Report We're seeing a mix of sun and clouds today amid temperatures in the upper 80s to 90. This afternoon, there's a 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. It's mostly sunny with an east-southeast wind around 15 mph, and gusts as high as 20 mph. Tonight will see a 10 percent chance of showers after 11 p.m. Skies will be partly cloudy, with a low around 73. An east-southeast wind around 5 mph will become calm in the evening. Meanwhile in the tropics, the low-pressure system in the Caribbean Sea has a 70 percent chance of developing into a tropical cyclone in the next five days. Also, Bonnie has restrengthened into a tropical storm. ADVISORIES Thunderstorms: Slight chance, with lightning being a risk when they occur. Rip currents: Today's risk is low. Boating: Thunderstorms risk is low. Fire: Today's risk is moderate in Indian River County and low in Martin and St. Lucie counties. Keep an eye on conditions with our live weather radar. Sunrise today was at 6:26 a.m. Sunset will be at 8:13 p.m. EXTENDED FORECAST Source: National Weather Service Saturday: A slight chance of showers, with thunderstorms also possible after noon. Mostly sunny, with a high near 89. Light and variable wind becoming east southeast 10 to 15 mph in the morning. Chance of precipitation is 20%. Saturday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers after 11 p.m. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 72. East southeast wind 5 to 10 mph becoming light south after midnight. Sunday: A slight chance of showers, then showers and thunderstorms likely after noon. Partly sunny, with a high near 89. South southeast wind 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. Sunday Night: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 74. South southeast wind 5 to 10 mph. Monday: Showers and thunderstorms likely. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 86. South southeast wind 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. Monday Night: Showers and thunderstorms likely. Cloudy, with a low around 74. South wind 10 to 15 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. Tuesday: Showers and thunderstorms likely. Cloudy, with a high near 88. Windy, with a south southwest wind 20 to 25 mph, with gusts as high as 35 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. Tuesday Night: A 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 74. Windy, with a west southwest wind 15 to 20 mph decreasing to 5 to 10 mph after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 25 mph. TODAY'S TIDE FORECAST Sebastian Inlet Bridge High tides: 7:50 a.m. and 7:33 p.m. Friday Low tides: 1:05 p.m. Friday and 1:37 a.m. Saturday Fort Pierce Inlet, South Jetty High tides: 7:07 a.m. and 7:50 p.m. Friday Low tides: 1:11 p.m. Friday and 1:43 a.m. Saturday TROPICS At 8 p.m., the low-pressure system over the western Caribbean Sea is expected to form over the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico or adjacent waters over the weekend. It is likely to develop into a tropical cyclone as it moves across the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Florida Peninsula early next week. Regardless of development, locally heavy rains and flooding are possible over the Yucatan, western Cuba and Florida during the next several days. It has a 30 percent chance of developing into a cyclone in the next two days, and a 70 percent chance in five days. At 5 p.m., Bonnie restrengthened into a tropical storm. It was centered about 285 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. It had top winds of 40 mph as it moved east at 13 mph. Bonnie is forecast to degenerate into a post-tropical low by Saturday. At 2 p.m., a low-pressure system over the western Caribbean Sea is being monitored as it moves west-northwest toward Mexico. It could develop into a tropical cyclone as it moves across the eastern Gulf of Mexico and Florida early next week. It has a 20 percent chance of developing into a cyclone in the next two days, and a 60 percent chance in five days. This could be Tropical Storm Colin if it's able to form. Several models are in agreement in bringing heavy rain and gusty winds to Florida late Monday into Tuesday as the low passes over the state, according to WPTV NewsChannel 5. MARINE FORECAST Source: National Weather Service A high pressure ridge will remain in the vicinity of Central Florida through Saturday. This will result in a gentle to light breeze with a slightly stronger onshore sea breeze each afternoon. Good boating conditions are expected through the weekend. Deteriorating conditions are expected early next week as developing low pressure near the Yucatan Peninsula is forecast to move northeast toward Florida by Monday night and Tuesday. Today: Southeast winds 5 knots becoming east 5 to 10 knots in the late morning and afternoon. Seas 2 to 3 feet with a dominant period 9 seconds. A light chop on the intracoastal waters. Slight chance of showers. Tonight: Southeast winds 5 to 10 knots. Seas 2 to 3 feet with a dominant period 4 seconds. Mostly smooth on the intracoastal waters. Slight chance of showers. Saturday: Southeast winds 5 to 10 knots increasing to 10 to 15 knots in the afternoon. Seas 2 to 3 feet. A moderate chop on the intracoastal waters. Slight chance of showers and thunderstorms. Saturday Night: Southeast winds 5 to 10 knots. Seas 2 to 3 feet. Mostly smooth on the intracoastal waters. Slight chance of showers. Sunday: South winds 5 to 10 knots. Seas 2 to 3 feet. A light chop on the intracoastal waters. Chance of showers and thunderstorms. Sunday Night: South winds 5 to 10 knots. Seas 2 to 3 feet. Chance of showers and thunderstorms. Monday: South winds 5 to 10 knots. Seas 2 feet. Showers and thunderstorms likely. Monday Night: Southeast winds 10 to 15 knots becoming south 20 knots after midnight. Seas 3 to 4 feet. Numerous showers and thunderstorms. Tuesday: South winds 20 to 25 knots. Seas 5 to 7 feet. Numerous showers and thunderstorms. Thank you for reading! Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue. The Google Brain team on Wednesday released a tune created by machine intelligence. The composition is part of Project Magenta, which seeks to boost the capabilities of machine intelligence to create art and music. Among other things, the Magenta team is developing algorithms that enable artificial intelligence systems to learn how to create compelling art and music on their own. Magenta also seeks to build a community of artists, coders and machine learning researchers. About the Magenta Tune Google software engineer Elliot Waite created Magentas first tune with an LSTM (long short-term memory) neural network trained to use some new techniques in attention, said company spokesperson Jason Freidenfelds. LSTM networks are well suited to learn from experience to classify, process and predict time series when there are very long lags of unknown duration between events. The important parts there are memory and attention, Freidenfelds told TechNewsWorld. The neural net has to be able to look over a longer range, and to get a sense of whats important to focus on, to either repeat it or change it. Thats why it seems to have some structure and some repeating elements. The Magenta tune, which consists of a piano melody with the accompaniment of a simple drum beat, was completely self-learned using just a large collection of MIDI pop tunes, Freidenfelds noted. It was primed with four notes C, C, G, G, and we added some drums just to hold it together, but the melody is machine-generated, he said. We didnt give it any rules about music, or any little rules of thumb to help it generate anything nice-sounding, as most previous machine-generated music has done. Whats Next for Magenta A small team of researchers from the Google Brain team are building open source infrastructure around TensorFlow, and will release tools and models on Magentas GitHub page. They also will post demos, tutorial blogs and technical papers, and soon will begin accepting code contributions. The researchers will begin with audio and video support tools for working with formats such as MIDI, and platforms that help artists connect to machine learning models. The alpha version of the code is available on Magentas GitHub page now. The team will accept external contributions when it has a stable set of tools and models. If you have the processing power to analyze color and note patterns, youll come up with stuff thats unique and will be of interest to a wide range of people, said Jim McGregor, founder and principal analyst at Tirias Research. Then you can take the art or music produced and have the system learn from hits on the Web or comments by people or see what appeals to the most people, he told TechNewsWorld. Its beats to music or color patterns that catch the users eye. Is it Art? Visual art ranges from the works of masters like Michelangelo, Picasso and Rubens to those of pop artists like Andy Warhol and abstract artists like Jackson Pollock, to name a few. Some would include paintings by animals. In the world of music, a Beethoven sonata may be miles apart from a piece of modern day techno music or a Lady Gaga song, and genres are countless classic rock, blues, jazz and heavy metal, to name just a few but theyre inarguably music. Are new definitions of the terms art and music needed to reasonably discuss whether machine intelligence can create works that deserve those labels? When it comes to defining art, there are two points of view, noted Michael Jude, a program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan. First, that arts in the eye of the beholder and second, that its an emotional expression of the artist or musician. The first perspective allows the inclusion of art and music created by machine intelligence, while the second does not, Jude told TechNewsWorld. I would say that an AI with sufficient training can create art, he said. Whether its great or not depends on the reaction of the audience. Art typically is valued as much by its flaws as its intrinsic appeal, Jude pointed out. I think machines can create art thats perceived by some to be of high quality. It's been more than two years since Samsung launched its first fitness tracker, the Gear Fit. On Thursday, the South Korean technology giant unveiled the follow-up, predictably called the Gear Fit 2. Samsung's new tracker features a 1.5-inch curved Super AMOLED display (432 x 216 pixels, 322 PPI) powered by a dual-core Exynos 3250 SoC alongside 512MB of RAM. Other amenities include 4GB of onboard storage, Bluetooth, integrated GPS, a heart rate sensor and automatic exercise tracking. It packs a 200mAh battery that Samsung says should last around three or four days, depending on usage, with recharging taking place via proprietary charging cradle, we're told. The wrist strap isn't interchangeable although you can select from different sizes at the time of purchase. The wearable also carries an IP68 rating meaning you won't need to take it off to shower although you probably won't want to go for a swim with it on. It runs Tizen, Samsung's home grown operating system. Like the Pebble 2 and Time 2, Samsung's new wearable will include a dedicated Spotify app for music streaming. One of the tracker's shortcomings is the fact that it won't connect to iPhones. As The Washington Post notes, it will link with all Android phones - not just Samsung handsets. Samsung will begin accepting pre-orders for the $179 Gear Fit 2 in black, blue and pink on June 3. Launch takes place a week later on June 10. Samsung's next Galaxy Note smartphone is set to arrive in a few months (perhaps sooner) and now, we've got a pretty good idea of what it'll look like. uSwitch (via Steve Hemmerstoffer of @Onleaks) has managed to get its hands on what it claims are leaked blueprints of Samsung's next flagship handset. What it reveals is a device that'll look almost identical to the Galaxy S7 Edge, complete with curved edges. The key difference, of course, is the slot for the stylus. The blueprints also reveal that Samsung is ditching the standard USB port in favor of a USB Type-C port, a welcomed move on a high-end device as it enables faster transfers and charging. A series of sensors above the display suggest the phone may feature a biometric iris scanner that would let users unlock their handset simply by looking at it. In related news, serial leaker Evan Blass of @evleaks says Samsung is on track to unveil the next Note smartphone almost two months from now, or in early August. If true, that would be even earlier than the Note 5's debut on August 13 of last year and give Samsung more time on the market ahead of Apple's next iPhone. Up for debate is the name of Samsung's new Note device. Tradition would tell us that it'll be called the Galaxy Note 6 although recent scuttlebutt suggests Samsung may skip ahead and name the device the Galaxy Note 7. Samsung apparently wants to bring the naming convention in line with the Galaxy S series, currently the Galaxy S7. As if the universe is not vast enough as it already is, scientists are now saying that the space outside our world is still expanding at a faster rate than what was originally thought. Researchers at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and the Johns Hopkins University in Maryland have discovered that the universe is growing about 5 to 9 percent faster compared with initial estimates made by astronomers. Adam Riess, an astrophysicist from the STScI and leader of the study, explained that this finding provides a vital clue that could help scientists figure out the mystery of the universe, which is believed to be made up mostly of dark matter, dark energy and dark radiation. Measuring The Universe To find out more about the expansion of the universe, Riess and his colleagues examined several Type Ia supernovas and Cepheid stars using the Hubble Space Telescope. Scientists use these two groups of celestial bodies as a form of "yardsticks" to allow them to measure the distances between objects across the universe. The pulse rates of Cepheid stars are connected to their true brightness, while Type Ia supernovas, which are usually formed following the death of a massive star, are known to have a consistent luminosity to them. The researchers used these two factors to find out how far the supernovas are. They then compared these points to data regarding the expansion of the universe, which was determined by measuring the distance that light from other galaxies has to travel while moving away from Earth. This allowed the team to figure out how fast the universe was growing, a value that is referred to as the Hubble constant. According to Riess and his team's calculations, the universe's Hubble constant is currently at 45.5 miles per second per megaparsec, where the value of 1 megaparsec is about 3.26 million light-years. The researchers estimate that at this rate, the distance between celestial objects in the universe could double in the next 9.8 billion years. This figure is about 5 to 9 percent higher compared with earlier Hubble constant estimates. Previous readings were made by measuring radiation from the universe's cosmic microwave background, which is produced by the remaining light from the Big Bang some 13.8 billion years in the past. The researchers said this discrepancy in readings could be caused by two factors. The first one is that the dark energy that is likely powering the rapid expansion of the universe could be stronger than what scientists initially thought. The second possible reason is that the phenomenon could be influenced by dark radiation, which consists of the ultrafast subatomic particles that were left over following the Big Bang event. The findings of the STScI and the Johns Hopkins University study are featured in the Astrophysical Journal. Photo: Nigel Howe | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan inaugurated Turkish embassy's new building complex in Mogadishu Friday Anadolu Agency reported Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud also attended the opening ceremony. In remarks made at the ceremony, Erdogan said: "Currently, we are in the Mogadishu Embassy Complex of the Republic of Turkey. It is the number one complex in the world. "We have such a magnificent complex. Everywhere I go I always tell friends to give us a sizable place like this to construct an embassy worthy of the glory of the Republic of Turkey." Turkey appointed its first ambassador to Mogadishu in 1981 and has maintained a diplomatic presence there since then. Erdogan also said that Turkey was building a military training center in Mogadishu. "I hope I will be in Mogadishu during its inauguration," he said. He added that the Turkish Red Crescent Health Vocational School will begin its training program in September with 600 students. Erdogan said Turkey's "target is to open 54 embassies in all 54 African countries...13 to 14 years ago, we were present in 12 countries but now we are in 39 countries." He also expressed his satisfaction with Somalia's progress. "I am so happy to see the steps you've taken since I first arrived here in 2011." Erdogan's visit comes after his tour to Uganda and Kenya where he vowed to boost security and economic ties between East Africa and Turkey, and help bring peace in the region. Turkey's First Lady Emine Erdogan, Deputy Prime Minister Veysi Kaynak, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci also attended the inauguration ceremony. Erdogan previously visited Somalia in 2011 when he was then the Turkish prime minister. The same year, Turkey began providing humanitarian assistance to the east African state. Since 2011, Turkey has made a concentrated effort to provide the Somali people basic needs, including security, education, health, institutional capacity building, the building of state institutions, roads, ports, airports, fisheries and energy. The ancient underwater ruins that were recently discovered in Greece may not actually have been a sunken city but rather stone formations that were created by a natural phenomenon. In a study featured in the journal Marine and Petroleum Geology, researchers from the University of Athens (UoA) and University of East Anglia (UEA) found evidence that suggests the underwater city near the Greek island of Zakynthos is actually a group of stones that were shaped by a naturally occurring event in the ocean. While these marine formations do appear like paved floors and colonnades similar to those found in ancient Greek cities, UEA professor Julian Andrews noticed that the ruins didn't include any other signs of human activity, such as pieces of poetry. This missing feature is what inspired Andrews and his colleagues to investigate the site more closely to find out if it is indeed the ruins of a sunken city. Through the use of X-rays, microscopy and stable isotope analyses, the researchers examined the texture of the submerged objects as well as their mineral content. They discovered that these were formed by a natural geological event. Andrews said the doughnut and disk formations, such as those that looked like the bases of columns, are the result of the mineralization of seeps made of hydrocarbon. This can often be seen in both ancient and present-day seafloor settings. The way some of these doughnut-shaped objects are lined up suggests that there may be an underwater fault that partially ruptured the surface of the seafloor. This fault may have also released gases, such as methane, into the ocean. Andrews added that the microorganisms may have used the carbon included in methane as fuel to drive the oxidation of the sediment. This in turn changed the chemistry of the stones, creating a natural kind of cement known as concretion. The cement that was formed in the Zakynthos ruins was made of a mineral known as dolomite, which can be found in sediments rich in microbes. The stone formations were ultimately exposed through erosion, leaving them to be found by divers in the present day. "These features are proof of natural methane seeping out of rock from hydrocarbon reservoirs," Andrews said. "The same thing happens in the North Sea, and it is also similar to the effects of fracking, when humans essentially speed up or enhance the phenomena." 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. There's something magical about the sugary ring-shaped goodness of doughnuts (or donuts, if you choose). In fact, doughnuts are so magical that they get their own day, June 3, National Doughnut Day. And thanks to that celebration, many of us can partake in free doughnuts and deals on doughnuts that will kick us into an extra sugar high for the weekend. Here's where you can score some discounts and freebies on doughnuts across the world. Free Doughnuts Krispy Kreme: Not only will Krispy Kreme give all customers a free doughnut, but the company will also accept donations for The Salvation Army, the charity responsible for bringing us National Doughnut Day. Giant Eagle: Anyone who purchases a beverage at Giant Eagle will also get a free doughnut. Buy a half-dozen doughnuts and get another half dozen free with the Giant Eagle Advantage Card. Even better? Dress as a non-masked superhero and get a free dozen. LaMar's: Print out LaMar's Facebook coupon and get a free doughnut plus a free LaMar's cup with purchase. Honey Dew Donuts: Customers who purchase a medium or large drink will get a free doughnut. Dunkin Donuts: Enjoy a free doughnut with the purchase of any beverage. Shipley Donuts: Get a free glazed doughnut just by stopping by on National Doughnut Day between 5 a.m. and noon. Duck Donuts: Get a free sugar doughnut. Discounts Keurig: Save $2 on The Original Donut Shop Coffee cups. Giveaways, Contests And Sweepstakes Entenmann's: Visit Entenmann's on Facebook for a chance to win free doughnuts for a year. Photo: Mack Male | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Facebook has built an artificial intelligence (AI) engine to better understand the multitude of text and information that users post on the social network. The social media giant on June 1 unveiled DeepText, a deep learning-based text understanding engine that can analyze the content and context of text users post on Facebook with near human accuracy and at an impressive speed: thousands of posts per second. With users posting about 400,000 new stories and 125,000 comments per minute on Facebook, the AI system can potentially help improve overall user experience by classifying content, improving search results and weeding out spam. "We want DeepText to be used in categorizing content within Facebook to facilitate searching for it and also surfacing the right content to users," said Hussein Mehanna, an engineering director at Facebook's machine learning team. What's more impressive with DeepText is it can interpret text not just in English but also in more than 20 languages. "The community on Facebook is truly global, so it's important for DeepText to understand as many languages as possible," Facebook said in a blog post. "Using deep learning, we can reduce the reliance on language-dependent knowledge, as the system can learn from text with no or little preprocessing. This helps us span multiple languages quickly, with minimal engineering effort." Facebook already tests DeepText on some applications. In the case of Facebook Messenger, the tool offers a better understanding on the intent behind a text. If a user says he needs a taxi, for instance, DeepText could recognize that this person needs a ride and thus sends a prompt to contact a taxi. Projects like DeepText could play a pivotal role in Facebook with its plans to use AI to improve its platform. The better Facebook understands what its users talk about, the better it will be at curating the News Feed. DeepText may eventually help counter online hate speech as required by European regulations, which call for the review and removal of hateful speech posted online within 25 hours of notification. DeepText can also help in hiding spam, which can help improve user experience and keep more people using Facebook and its products. Search engine giant Google also uses AI to ensure delivery of important emails and improve filtering amid proliferation of spam and phishing. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. In a cave in Slovenia, scientists and tourists alike continue to anticipate the hatching of "baby dragons." Although these small, pale and blind creatures are not the kind of dragons we see on TV, these animals are thought of with fondness in the Central European country, thus earning its nickname. Known as olms, these aquatic salamanders are truly rare as they only breed once in a decade. These amphibians are found mainly in Balkan Cave Rivers and have not been seen in the wild. Several of them reside in Slovenia's Postojna cave, which is a popular tourist destination in the country. Indeed, researchers working inside Postojna cave have been waiting for months for a batch of olm eggs to emerge. In late May and early June, two of these baby dragons have finally hatched. Baby Dragons The story began in January this year when a tour guide noticed that an olm egg became attached to the wall of an aquarium at the cave. By March 10, 64 eggs were all laid by a single female olm. Of the 64 eggs, only 23 eggs were to emerge safely. The first baby dragon hatched on May 30, followed by a second on June 1. Scientists expect the remaining 21 eggs to come out in the coming weeks. Although no one witnessed the first olm to wriggle out of its egg, the awe-inspiring event was captured by an infrared camera. Researchers at Postojna have also teamed up with experts from France, who have been studying olms in a lab located underground since the 1950s. This French lab is also the only other habitation where these aquatic salamanders have been carefully observed coming out from their eggs. No one has ever witnessed an olm younger than two years in nature. "It's one of those moments where you are happy to be alive now and experience such a unique event," says biologist Saso Weldt, one of the researchers in the cave. Although the new baby dragons will take about 15 years to grow into maturity, both of them will have an average lifespan of 100 years. These animals will reach a maximum length of 35 centimeters (13.5 inches) at maturity. The pale predators, which could go on without eating anything for up to a decade, use their acute sensory receptors for movement and smell. This helps them hunt for snails and crabs even in the dark. Slovenia's Folklore Olms have earned their special place in Slovenia's natural folklore, as they were believed to be the offspring of dragons. In 1689, Slovenian scientist Janez Vajkard Valvasor first described olms as a baby dragon in his book named The Glory of Duchy of Carniola. Valvasor said olms were tiny baby dragons that would get washed into the sea, where they would fully mature. He said these baby dragons would spend the rest of their lives under the crust of the Earth. This description became the groundwork for the folklore in Slovenia. It wasn't until about 200 years later that the myth was dispelled, and scientists began studying olms as amphibians. In the meantime, scientists in Slovenia hope to understand better how olms grow and live for a hundred years. Photo: Ryan Somma | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The concept of a global quantum internet is still in its infancy, but scientists believe it is possible, especially with the right equipment in space. Now, for the first time ever, engineers from Singapore and the United Kingdom have tested a quantum satellite device and sent it into orbit, marking the first step towards the development of a global quantum network. Experts from the University of Strathclyde and the National University of Singapore (NUS) dispatched the compact device known as SPEQS (Small Photon-Entangling Quantum System) into space. SPEQS contains parts used in quantum communication and computing. Basically, it produces and measures pairs of photons or light particles. Results from the recent test reveal that SPEQS does work the device is creating photon pairs with connected properties. This indicates its efficient performance. How It Works The research team's first device is a technology pathfinder that takes photon from BluRay laser and then splits it into two. The device measures the photon pair's properties with the help of a laser diode, mirrors, crystals and photon detectors aligned in an aluminum block. What This Means For The Future Quantum entanglement is a link between quantum particles that would allow power in computing and security in communication. Albert Einstein once described it as "spooky action at a distance." Scientists say producing correlated photons is the first step towards creating entangled photons. Professor Artur Ekert, who had invented the idea of applying entangled particles for cryptography, says the findings of the new study are taking entanglement into the next level. Ekert adds that the experiments will lead to more secure quantum communication and powerful quantum computation on a global level. There are local quantum networks already in use, but the problem Singaporean and UK scientists wanted to solve was the limit set by distance. Often, local quantum networks limit signals sent through the air at ground level to a few hundred kilometers. Thanks to entangled photons, engineers may be able to beam them from satellites to connect points on the opposite side of the planet. And although the photons still have to move through the atmosphere, the distance is only approximately equivalent to 10 kilometers at ground level. What's Next? While global quantum networks are still a few goals away, researchers have planned a series of roadmaps to get there. The next SPEQS sent to space is expected to produce entangled photons. With later satellites, the team will work with CubeSat nanosatellites. A complete global quantum network would lead to a fleet of satellites into orbit and an array of stations at ground level. Findings of the study are reported in the journal Physical Review Applied. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. As of January 2016, the number of cancer survivors in the United States is at 15.5 million and the American Cancer Society (ACS) expects it to increase to 20 million after 10 years, a new report has revealed. Every two years, the ACS collaborates with the National Cancer Institute to plot an estimate of cancer survivors in the United States. In the latest data, they have found that the number of survivors is increasing because of the significant improvement in the diagnosis and treatment process, an aging population and population growth Age And Type Of Cancers Cancer survivors were defined as individuals previously diagnosed with cancer. It also includes patients currently on cancer therapy and those declared cancer-free for 30 years. The survivors were also noted to vary according to type of cancer, but advanced age is observed to be more common. Survivors aged 70 years and above comprised 47 percent of survivors, while more than 65,000 were those aged 14 years old and below. Of the survivors, 56 percent were diagnosed with cancer in the last 10 years and about a third were diagnosed half a decade ago. The report also noted that as much as 21 percent of female survivors were diagnosed about 20 years ago versus 13 percent of males. The report also mentioned the most common types of cancers among the survivors. For men, the most common is prostate cancer with more than 3.3 million survivors. It is followed by colorectal cancer and melanoma with nearly 725,000 and 614,000 survivors, respectively. For women, the top three cancers are breast, uterine and colorectal cancer at close to 3.5 million, 757,000 and 727,000 survivors, respectively. However, these numbers do not indicate that these cancers are the most frequently diagnosed malignancies. Kimberly Miller, an epidemiologist at ACS and the report's lead researcher, clarified that the numbers are based on the cancer history of the survivors. For instance, lung cancer ranks as the second most common malignancy in men, but since it has a poor survival rate, it is only found in few cancer survivors. "Despite increasing awareness of survivorship issues and the resiliency of cancer survivors, many challenges remain. These include a fractured health care system, poor integration of survivorship care between oncology and primary care settings, lack of strong evidence-based guidelines for post-treatment care and financial and other barriers to quality care, particularly among the medically underserved," the researchers concluded. Overall Health Of Cancer Survivors The researchers believe there should be more long-term support systems in place to help the survivors with the challenges they are more likely to face. "Many cancer survivors have to cope with long-term physical and psychological effects of their cancer treatment," said Miller. The community must be aware of the present and future needs of the survivors. Cancer does not only target a specific organ, it also significantly affects the emotions and psyche of the patient, said Lenox Hill Hospital surgical oncology chief Dr. Stephanie Bernik. Bernik hopes programs tailored to address the overall aspects of cancer care will become available in the future. Reports like this are carried out to help health care providers identify the population of cancer survivors they need to assist on a long-term basis. How can primary care physicians help with this? Miller said the patient-doctor relationship must be strengthened in order to cope with the challenges of the disease. Physicians must work on getting more education on how to support their patients and in turn, patients must religiously follow-up with their doctors. Doctors can advise survivors to maintain a healthy lifestyle and, if necessary, make referrals to mental health experts. One area where doctors can help is by guiding the survivors, especially the young females, on fertility preservation. The report is published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians on June 2. Photo: Sheila Sund | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Young fish are likely getting hooked on eating microplastic particles in the seas and the effects are no different from teens feasting on junk food, including changing behaviors and stunted growth, new research has warned. Researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden discovered that exposure to high polystyrene concentrations makes larval perch choose plastic over their natural food composed of zooplankton. As a consequence, the young perch are slower, smaller and more prone to predation. Fish reared in different concentrations of microplastic particles have reduced hatching rates and display abnormal behaviors, said lead study author and marine biologist Oona Lonnstedt. The microplastic particle levels tested in the current study are similar to what is found in many coastal habitats in Sweden and elsewhere in the world today. According to the team, larvae exposed to microplastic particles defined as those less than 5 mm (0.2 inch) in size and hail from fragmented large plastic waste remained much less active than those reared in waters free from such particles. They also ignored the smell of predators. The plastic-exposed ones were eaten over four times more quickly than control fish, with the former all dead within two days. The researchers called for banning plastic microbeads, which can be a source of these particles, in cosmetics. These microscopic waste materials reach the oceans through lakes and waterways, accumulating in high rates in shallow coasts. The effects of microplastics could be profound as they include higher mortality rates in fish, warned Lonnstedt. Last year, a separate study estimated that around 8 million tons of plastic waste enters the oceans every year. Tiny fragments of these are worried to build up in the guts of marine creatures as well as leach toxic chemicals. The United States has already banned the use of plastic microbeads in personal care products, with the pressure to do the same mounting in countries in Europe like the United Kingdom. Microbeads are deemed unnecessary plastic pollution, recently estimated to lead to up to $13 billion in yearly environmental damages. The findings are published in the journal Science. Photo: NOAA Photo Library | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A Russian rocket carrying highly toxic chemicals is expected to crash in Canada's Arctic waters this weekend. The warning was issued late last week by the international civil aviation authority. It said that the Russian rocket would be falling into Baffin Bay, just between Greenland and Ellesmere Island. While the rocket is expected to fall outside Canada's territorial waters, the impact would still be within the seas where Canada exercises economic control. The projected impact is also within the ice-free North Water Polynya, a renowned animal hotspot. Polar bears and whales, as well as cod and seabirds, can be found in these waters. Alex Speers-Roesch, a campaigner for Greenpeace Arctic said that the concept of dropping a missile carrying toxic chemicals near Baffin Island is "just as preposterous as drilling for oil there." Canada said Russia did not give enough warning about the incoming rocket stage. "We have stressed to the Government of Russia the need for greater advance warning of planned launches to ensure that all precautions, relating both to the safety and security of our airspace and any potential environmental concerns, can be appropriately addressed," said Global Affairs Canada spokesman Austin Jean in an emailed statement. However, according to the Russian Embassy in Ottawa, the Canadian federal government had been informed about the rocket launch. "The Canadian side was informed it would be done in a way that no territory of Canada or its territorial waters would be affected while the fuel of disposed rocket stages fully burn out," stated the embassy's press secretary Kirill Kalinin in an email. In the statement, Kalinin stressed that environmental concerns were "seriously taken into account." The Russian rocket in question is said to be powered by hydrazine, a highly toxic chemical. Only two countries in the world continue to use hydrazine as rocket fuel. The rocket launch was part of Russia's Rokot program, which is a commercial satellite launch service. The program repurposes Cold War-era ballistic SS-19 missiles to launch the commercial satellites. Photo: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Matt Smith almost wasn't the 11th Doctor: instead, a black actor nearly nabbed the role. Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat recently released details that, before Smith donned the fez and bowtie, Doctor Who initially offered the role to a black actor. This is important because the topic of diversity often comes up when discussing the show: many criticize it for the fact that it just isn't very diverse. The Doctor has always been a white male, and many believe that he's long overdue for a change, by either becoming a different ethnicity or female. "We've tried," Moffat told Doctor Who Magazine. "The part has been offered to a black actor, but for various reasons it didn't work out. Should the Doctor be black? Should the Doctor be a woman? So long as the Doctor is still the Doctor, anything is possible." Who was the actor who almost became the 11th Doctor? The Independent reports that it was Chiwetel Ejiofor, known for his roles in 12 Years a Slave and The Martian. Doctor Who is more diverse than many realize, though. Although many praise the series for adding Pearl Mackie, a mixed-race actress, as the Doctor's newest companion, both Noel Clarke and Freema Agyeman, both black actors, traveled in the TARDIS with the Doctor long before that. The series has also included a cast of all ages in the blue box, including Alex Kingston and Bernard Cribbins. The series also recently regenerated the Master and made him into Missy, a female. Moffat, though, believes that the series still has areas where it can improve. "Young people watching have to know that they have a place in the future," he said. "That really matters. You have to care profoundly what children's shows in particular say about where you're going to be." Unfortunately, Doctor Who is currently on hiatus until a Christmas special airs at the end of the year. The series returns next year with a full season, though, which will also serve as the last with Moffat as showrunner. Chris Chibnall will take on the reins from there as the head of the series. Although rumors hint that the current Doctor, Peter Capaldi, will leave with Moffat, it's more likely that he'll stay on. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Gotthard Tunnel: Worlds longest and deepest 57 km long Swiss supertunnel to connect Europe together The Gotthard base tunnel under the Swiss Alps was officially announced as open on Wednesday amidst great fanfare, costumed dancers, fireworks and plenty of yodelling and alphorns. The ambitious European train system at 57.5 kilometres (34.5 miles) in length is both the longest and deepest tunnel in the world that runs as much as 1.4 miles below the surface in sections. It will connect the northern and southern Europe by train as well as mark the beginning of a logistical and trade revolution between them. Switzerland says it will transform European freight transport. Swiss Federal President Johann Schneider-Ammann in a speech to guests in Erstfeld, near the northern entrance to the tunnel, said it was a giant step for Switzerland but equally for our neighbours and the rest of the continent. A live relay carried a speech from the southern end of the tunnel, in Bodio, by the Swiss federal transport minister, Doris Leuthard. Subsequently, two trains set off in opposite directions through the tunnel, each carrying hundreds of guests who had won tickets in a draw, and the new route was formally open. The days events were attended by European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, Italys Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern. After taking the inaugural run on the tunnel, Mr. Hollande insisted Britons to vote to stay in the EU as he recalled the opening of the 50.5-km Eurotunnel between Britain and France in 1994. Nobody could have imagined that one day you would be able to travel from England to France that way, he said. Since then, we are more united that ever and I hope the British will remember that when the day comes. In 1947, Carl Eduard Gruner was the first Swiss engineer to conceive the rough design for a rail tunnel under the Gotthard Pass. However, it was finally approved in a Swiss referendum in 1998. Due to bureaucratic delays, concerns over the cost and other hurdles, the start of the construction was pushed back until 1999. The new tunnel, which cost more than 12 billion Swiss francs ($16.78 billion) and 17 years to build, was finally constructed within the timeframe and budget originally set out. The key component in the creation of this high-speed corridor is that it will whiz freight and passengers from as far north as Rotterdam, Europes busiest port, all the way south through Switzerland and into northern Italys industrial heartland. The engineers building the Gotthard were met with some tricky challenges and were required to overcome it, as it runs underneath an older tunnel that was completed in 1980. More than 30 short tons of debris were dugged out as workers blasted and drilled through 73 different types of rock, including stone as hard as granite and sedimentary materials soft as chalk. The rock was then used to make concrete to support the tunnel. When full commercial service begins in December, the journey time between Zurich, Switzerlands commercial centre, and Milan, Italys business capital, will drop by a full hour to two hours and 40 minutes. However, it is the supertunnels extra freight capacity that will make the difference. From 180 trains, the capacity will raise to 260 freight trains a day (and 65 passenger trains) in the existing 15-km Gotthard tunnel. The 44 percent increase means as much as 377,000 tons a day of goods and material will be able to roll out between northern and southern Europe. With the completion of the Gotthard, the tunnel has overtaken Japans 53.9km Seikan rail tunnel as the longest in the world and pushed the 50.5km Channel Tunnel linking the UK and France into third place. Newly-appointed Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik and Pakistani counterpart Khawaja Muhammad Asif met Friday in Islamabad to discuss bilateral defense cooperation Anadolu Agency reported "One of the most important issues between [the two countries] is a deal for T129 attack helicopters," Isik said at a joint press conference held after the meeting. The deal for the sale of the T129s -- a multi-role attack helicopter co-developed by Turkish Aerospace Industries -- will "further enhance our bilateral cooperation in the defense industry," Isik asserted. The Turkish defense minister added that plans to purchase Pakistani-made Super Mushshak basic trainer aircraft were still in the pipeline. He went on to note that the Pakistani authorities, for their part, had requested the purchase of four Turkish Ada-class corvettes (which would be built in Pakistan). Isik also said that Turkey and Pakistan had begun discussing details of a cooperation deal by which Turkey would help modernize the Pakistani navy's fleet of three Agosta-class submarines. Isik also met with Pakistani army chief General Raheel Sharif on Friday at Pakistani army headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. At the meeting, the two men discussed regional security and defense collaboration, according to an army statement issued after the meeting. Isik, for his part, voiced his appreciation for the Pakistani armed forces' contributions to the fight against terrorism and promotion of regional peace and security. 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. "Any unfriendly action by Western countries will receive a timely and adequate response in the future," the Russian diplomacy stressed. | Read More Sources at Turkish Prime Ministry on Friday dismissed reports that the country's intelligence chief and a senior foreign ministry official had been "removed" from their posts. A source within the ministry speaking on condition of anonymity said there had been reports that National Intelligence Organization (MIT) Chief Hakan Fidan and Ministry of Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioglu had been reassigned. "The reports saying the mentioned figures were removed from their posts do not reflect the truth," the source said. According to earlier claims in some Turkish media, Sinirlioglu on Friday was appointed Turkey's permanent UN representative. Hakan Fidan was also alleged to have been assigned as Turkey's ambassador in Tokyo. Sinirlioglu has been a long-standing diplomat and served as a ministerial undersecretary before being given the interim post as foreign minister in a caretaker government which ran Turkey until early elections were held on Nov. 1, 2015. Sinirlioglu also served as Turkey's ambassador in Tel Aviv between 2002 and 2007. In Feb. 2015, Fidan resigned as the head of MIT to run for election in Turkey's June 7 parliamentary contest. Fidan held his MIT post since May 2010, after serving as deputy undersecretary for then-prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He has been an influential figure domestically and made headlines several times, mainly related to Turkey's former 'solution process' with the PKK and its Middle East policy. A prolific writer with credits including Stormbreaker and Foyles War, Anthony Horowitz tells Tim Dams about his latest New Blood New Blood is your first BBC drama how did it come about? I have been an ITV writer for a very, very long time. About 80% of my work has been for ITV. But I began conversations with [former BBC head of drama] Ben Stephenson and mentioned to him that I had a new crime format. He was very interested, particularly as he was looking for material that would play younger, for an audience in their twenties and thirties. I sent Ben the first script on Monday for New Blood, and by Friday he had commissioned it. Why didnt you take it to ITV? For a long time I have argued that the three breaks in an hour of ITV drama makes it extremely difficult for a writer to maintain any degree of emotional honesty. Or just to keep the narrative rolling. I have long wanted the purity of the BBC1 hour. What spurred you to write New Blood? My interest is what it is like to be 20 25 years old in London. And that is what gives this show its freshness. The leads are not those slow middle-aged problem-carrying detectives you see so often on TV. They get drunk, they bicycle everywhere, they are always asking for a pay rise, they cling to their jobs by their fingernails. The show has got that smile to it, which I think has been missing from British television. So its not a dark, grungy show? I am slightly wary of more battered women, more chopped up women, more kidnapped children all that stuff. I want something that makes me smile but which has the same danger, and the same excitement. What kind of shows would you compare it to? People have talked about Spooks, Starsky and Hutch. I often mention Lethal Weapon because that gives you an idea of the bromance at the heart of it, and the banter and the fun in a dangerous and quite violent world. The action is a little heightened. At the end of episode three, the two boys are chased through a London hotel by two chamber maids with AK-47 machine guns. They get to the roof and realise the only way out is to jump off the roof down into the swimming pool below. Tell us about the casting? Its brave of the BBC to launch a major 9pm show with two unknowns who are carrying the whole thing on their shoulders. I wanted the boys to be outsiders. I didnt want them to be British Anglo-Saxon white British. That puts them into too much of a mould: what school they went too, what class their parents were. So I thought I would go Eastern European and Iranian. And its in London? We shot a lot in East London. London is very much a third character. The London you see is cosmopolitan and multinational. It is very now London with all its energy. Whats the climate like for TV writers now? The atmosphere has changed while I have been a writer. It is now a fantastic time to be a TV writer. If I asked someone in the street five years ago to name half a dozen TV writers, they wouldnt be able to name one. But now names like Sally Wainwright, Jed Mercurio or Vince Gilligan are household names because television has become authored. Television has become what literature was 20 years ago its a hotbed of new ideas and people trying to do original things rather than making tired formats. Now you can watch shows like Breaking Bad, The Good Wife or The Night Manager. 20 years ago it wasnt like that TV has come of age. Youve written over 40 novels as well as plays and TV screenplays. How do you fit it all in? It boils down to no social life! Thats not true entirely. But I love writing I adore storytelling I love the whole business. I work very, very long hours. So does Jill. Sometimes we will sit together in our Clerkenwell home and it will be 11.30 on a Friday night and we are both at our desks doing stuff.. I think being married to the producer creates an environment where work comes first. It always does. My children know this as well. Work comes first that is the rule in the family. Which medium do you enjoy most plays, TV or novels? Probably TV I love the collaboration, the excitement, the speed. I love the fact that a TV page has got fewer words on it than a page of a novel. Theres more white space, so less to do! What excites me is that Ben and Mark are going to be stars in six months time. And they are so nice, and they have been such fun to work with. You dont get that with a book. DETAILS Newcomers Mark Strepan (The Mill) and Ben Tavassoli (No Offence) star in Horowitzs new BBC1 investigative drama, New Blood. The 760-series is produced by Eleventh Hour Films (Safe House, Foyles War, Vexed), which is run by Horowitzs wife Jill Green. Directed by Anthony Philipson (Cuffs, Our Girl) New Blood portrays modern London through the eyes of two outsiders one Polish/British and the other Iranian/British. Strepan and Tavassoli play the roles of junior investigators working at the Serious Fraud Office and the police. Brought together by two seemingly unrelated cases, they come up against the uber rich and powerful corporations, individuals, governments and the new breed of criminals who hide behind legitimate facades and are guarded by lawyers. The series producer is Eve Gutierrez. New Blood is available on the iPlayer now and airs on BBC1 at 9pm on Thursday 9th June Share this story Chinese users expressed their irritation after Windows 10 upgrades were made from being optional updates to becoming required ones. (Photo : Twitter) Chinese users blasted IT giant Microsoft over the company's aggressive push to have them upgrade to Windows 10. The outrage came after Microsoft changed the upgrading process for their new Windows 10 operating system. Unlike before, where users had the option to decline the offer to upgrade to Windows 10, it is now a recommended update. Advertisement Users now only have the option to either temporarily cancel it or have it rescheduled for another time. On the other hand, those who use older Windows versions have no choice, as the update will automatically start the upgrade at the specified time if the notification is ignored for too long. Irate netizens took to popular Chinese microblogging site Weibo to express their anger, the Global Times reported. Over 1.2 million complaints have been reportedly posted on a thread about the issue. One user, a graphic designer who uses the handle 3jinyeshixin, said that he lost so much work when the upgrade automatically started during an inappropriate time. The comments online were echoed by Beijing-based public relations officer Yang Shou, who said that the update interrupted his work for a client. Shuo also remarked that, just because he didn't notice the update notification, it does not mean he allowed it. Microsoft refused to comment when asked about the matter. However, the company's technical staff have reportedly posted instructions for users on how to switch back to older Windows versions. The software giant's aggressive push to get Chinese users to move to Windows 10 is said to be part of its efforts to secure and maintain its share of the market against competitors like Google and Apple. However, Internet Society of China legal adviser Zhao Zhanling said that Microsoft could be held liable for the forced upgrades, adding that the company violated users' rights to be informed and choose, Reuters reported. Hundreds of people come to watch performances by Maori people from New Zealand Thursday night, which is part of the New Zealand festival in Ho Chi Minh City. Face carving/tattooing was a traditional practice of Maori people, who came from eastern Polynesia and arrived in New Zealand in canoe voyages some time between 1250 and 1300. The drawings give details of their lineage status and origin. A woman opens her eyes wide, which is one of the Maori traditional facial expressions to show strong emotions. Such expressions are made to greet visitors, for amusement, to acknowledge an important event or achievement, or to prepare for battle. Wide eyes with the tongue stretched out, a facial expression for men. The event is organized by the New Zealand General Consulate in the city. Feather headdress is a typical part of the traditional Maori costume. Locals have a group selfie with one of the dancers. You can find the original Vietnamese story here on Zing At least three foreign companies have reportedly expressed interest in becoming a strategic partner with local telecom giant MobiFone, as the company is set to sell state-owned shares this year. Australia's biggest telecom company Telstra has met with MobiFone many times over the past year, news website VnEconomy reported on Wednesday, citing a MobiFone representative. Telstra reaffirmed its interest at a meeting with Minister of Information and Communications last month, the report said. Swedish mobile network operator Comviq and Norwegian operator Telenor too want to invest in MobiFone, according to the website. In the meantime, MobiFone's share sale plan remains unclear. Early media reports indicated that MobiFone, now wholly owned by the Ministry of Information and Communications after severing its ties with the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) in 2014, would possibly sell a maximum stake of 20 percent to foreign investors. However, over the past decade, the plan's details, including time frame, have been constantly changed. The share sale plan was back on the table again at the end of last year, still without specifics. The Ministry of Information and Communications told the media that the sale will possibly raise around VND20 trillion ($882.75 million). In its April report, UK-based intangible asset valuation consultancy Brand Finance estimated MobiFone's brand value at $539 million, up 76 percent from last year. Together with VNPT's Vinaphone and military-run Viettel, MobiFone controls a majority of Vietnam's telecom market which boasted over 120.3 million mobile subscribers at the end of last year. China said it will assert its rights over islands in the South China Sea while maintaining its compliance with international laws and the UNCLOS. (Photo : Reuters) The international court ruling of the case filed by the Philippines against China in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague could be a vital turning point for the years-long maritime dispute. A column by William Gallo in Voice of America said that the ruling of the tribunal "could have wide-ranging implications for China's sweeping claims in one of the world's most important and bitterly contested waterways." Advertisement Gallo pointed out that while the decision may not determine which country has the rightful sovereignty over the disputed islands and waters, the ruling could still incite major effects on both countries and the territories they are fighting for. The Arbitration in the South China Sea The arbitration case filed by the Philippines in Jan. 2013 indicates the country's purpose of declaring the territory China claims to be theirs should comport to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). If such ruling is passed, it means that China's claims would be deemed invalid under the eye of international law. The Philippines' case also seeks a ruling that would classify the maritime features occupied by China "as rocks, low tide elevations, or submerged banks, but not islands." It also seeks a declaration stating that the Philippines has the right to operate inside its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and continental shelf, per the UNCLOS outline, without getting harassed by the Chinese. In response, China rejected the Philippines' claims by filing a Note Verbale in February of the same year and called on to the Philippine government to resolve the conflict by means of bilateral talks with them. Since then, the battle continued with China still refusing to acknowledge arbitration and did not submit a memorial to the international court in response to one submitted by the Philippines. The Ruling According to Gallo in VOA, the ruling that is expected to be released anytime soon is considered technically binding. While there is no way that the UNCLOS can enforce the rulings or even impose any sanctions or penalties to those who ignore its decisions, a ruling in favor of the Philippines could put diplomatic pressure on China and even urge other countries to stand against the Asian giant. "A ruling against China would also set an important legal precedent and become part of international law," Gallo explained. "It could also encourage other countries [that] have territorial disputes with China to take similar legal action." Foreign investors are possibly looking forward to the governments disinvestment in 10 major companies including dairy giant Vinamilk and information technology leader FPT. But economists say it is too early to say if they would buy large numbers of shares in these firms since the government has not yet announced the time frame for the stake sale or foreign ownership cap in the companies. Sovereign fund State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC) has been instructed to draft detailed plans for the divestment, including the time frame involved, and submit them to the government for approval. The stakes are estimated to be worth at least US$4 billion, more than half of it in Vinamilk, in which the government owns 45.1 percent. Vinamilk dominates the local dairy market and is one of the most sought-after equities in the country. Its value has climbed 10 times in the past decade, making it a rare success story in a state sector plagued by bad debts, inefficiency and low profitability. Dominic Scriven, general director of Dragon Capital, the countrys first and largest foreign investment fund, said the move is a breakthrough for the stock market, which is failing to attract foreign investors because of many barriers and a meager supply of attractive stocks. Overseas remittances and FDI actually disbursed were both worth $12 billion last year, while foreign investment in the stock market fell to a mere $122 million from $234 million the previous year. The governments disinvestment from some of its best firms like Vinamilk and FPT would mean more opportunities for foreign investors to acquire blue chips, he said. They are expected to be the choice of foreign investors also because many of the other good firms are too small to make them viable investments for large institutional funds. Talking about the disinvestment road map, Lai Van Dao, the general director of SCIC, said it has not been decided yet. The fund would have to carefully assess things to get the best prices, he said. But this is precisely the sticking point for investors especially since plans for selling the governments stakes in many firms have been delayed for years. Investors had to wait for six years for an initial public offering by Vietnam Airlines. Finally the IPO was held last November, but attracted little interest from foreign investors. Of 49 million shares, equivalent to a 3.5 percent stake in the company and valued at about $1.5 billion, only over 120,000 were bought by foreign investors. Two local banks bought some 48 million. Foreign investors interest in a company will also depend on the foreign ownership cap. The current 49 percent foreign shareholding ceiling in Vinamilk has long been reached, and new rules allowing 100 percent foreign ownership in many sectors remain unclear, with investors awaiting clarity on definitions and regulations. The government has recently allowed the elimination of the cap in listed companies. Some sectors will however continue to have restrictions. Restrictions still apply in sectors where foreign investment is conditional. However, the government has yet to spell out which companies or sectors will be excluded from this, aside from banking, where foreign ownership is still limited to 30 percent. This could be a hurdle to foreign investment inflows into the market. In most well-run companies like Vinamilk and FPT, the limit has been reached. Strong demand from foreign investors for attractive companies has created an alternative off-market system in Vietnam: foreign investors charge other overseas investors a premium of up to 15 percent for them. Another issue that could affect foreign investors decision to buy is the size of the stake on offer. They may be reluctant to invest if it is too small since they cannot then influence strategic decisions in the company. Foreign investment is considered one of the keys to growing the Vietnamese stock market, which is around one-eighth the size of the Singapore bourse, Southeast Asias largest. A vaunted program to equitize, or partially privatize, hundreds of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) has consistently failed to reach its targets, and many investors have been put off by poor transparency, the small stakes on offer and unrealistic valuations. Administrative procedures are also a hassle for foreign investors, according to insiders. To trade, foreign funds need to be locally registered, which can take months, leaving many reliant on specialist funds already established in Vietnam or looking to gain exposure through indirect investment products such as exchange-traded funds. This year the government planned to equitize nearly 300 SOEs, but only managed 109 to date. Marketing Deputy Minister of Finance Truong Chi Trung said the divestment would help the major firms attract new investors, which could improve their corporate management. SCIC, which was set up in 2005, had sold government stakes in 724 businesses for more than VND6.25 trillion ($276.82 million) as of 2014, according to its latest report. It manages assets worth around VND69 trillion ($3.05 billion). To get the best prices for their shares, the 10 major firms should be widely marketed abroad. Vietnam has had experience with such programs. To issue US$1 billion worth global sovereign last year, the country hired three foreign banks, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, and Standard Chartered Bank, to help attract international investors. Meetings are scheduled with potential investors in Singapore, Hong Kong, London and three cities in the US, the finance ministry has said. The banks will organize road shows. The more investors evince interest in the governments divestment plans, the more likely the 10 firms shares will fetch high prices. Vietnam is trying to speed up a share sale program that began in the 1990s as it seeks to spur economic growth to a four-year high of 6.2 percent this year. After tantalizing investors since last year with supposed plans to sell out its stakes in 10 major companies, including diary giant Vinamilk and information technology leader FPT, the government has decided to go slow. The State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC), Vietnams sovereign fund, recently announced a list of 120 companies in which it would sell the governments stakes worth more than VND6.3 trillion (US$278.06 million) this year. But of the major companies, it includes only FPT and Sa Giang Import and Export Corporation, in which SCIC holds 6 and 50 percent stakes. SCIC's latest plan came less than two weeks after it and other shareholders of Vinamilk voted to remove the 49 percent limit for foreign ownership. The fund owns 45 percent of the diary company, while foreign investors have already hit their limit with Singapore's F&N Dairy Investment holding 11 percent. Besides Vinamilk, other major companies that are off the list include insurer Bao Minh Group, Binh Minh Plastic Joint-stock Company, and Vietnam Reinsurance Corporation. SCIC's stakes in them range from 37.1 to 50.7 percent. "SCIC will sell its stakes only when it has new investments that are more profitable," news website VnExpress quoted SCIC chairman Nguyen Duc Chi as saying at a recent press conference. The fund reportedly earned around VND5.06 trillion ($223.42 million) in dividends last year, more than 53 percent of it from Vinamilk. That was equivalent to nearly half of its revenue which included the sale of shares. SCIC now has stakes in 197 companies which have a combined market value of nearly VND95.7 trillion ($4.22 billion), according to VnExpress. Its holdings are equivalent to 23 percent of the companies' combined charter capital. Vietnam's motorbike market has grown again after declining for three years. Photo: Ngoc Tho Vietnams motorbike sales in 2015 increased for the first time in four years, with Japan's Honda staying on top , according to a new report. The Vietnam Association of Motorcycle Manufacturers (VAMM) said its members sold 2,849,000 motorbikes last year, or an average of 7,805 a day. The number was up 5.5 percent from 2.7 million in 2014, and was the first increase since 2011. Honda continued to be the most popular brand accounting for 70 percent of the sales, thanks mostly to the mid-range Wave models. Yamaha came second, followed by SYM. The consumption peaked in January and December, each with around 300,000 motorbikes sold. VAMM expects sales to hover at the same level this year as manufacturers are not launching new products. Motorbike is the most popular means of transport in the 90-million-strong Vietnam, where public transport does not receive adequate interest and investment. Figures released late last year showed that Hanoi has more than 600 motorbikes registered every day while the number in Ho Chi Minh City was 750. Vietnam's seafood exports are completely safe and not affected by the recent mass fish deaths in the central region, the Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) said Thursday. VASEP said in a press release that seafood product intended for export are mostly come from south-central and southern provinces, while the mass fish deaths were reported in north-central Vietnam. It said the seafood is caught by large vessels in offshore areas far from the coast. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has also confirmed that samples of seafood caught in offshore areas in central Vietnam were safe, the association added. Many Vietnamese seafood processors also source supplies from other countries, according to VASEP. Therefore, the fish kill scandal does not affect the supply and safety of Vietnamese seafood products for export, the release wrote. VASEP issued the statement after it was informed that the European Union on May 24 warned member countries of the abnormal mass fish deaths in Vietnam and asked the countries to tighten control on Vietnamese products. Government officials have promised to announce the cause of the fish deaths soon. Five people, including four teenage boys, got electric shock and died in an accident at a fish farm in the northern province of Bac Ninh Thursday. The accident happened at around 5 p.m. when Nguyen Xuan Thuy, 37, who owned the fish farm in a rural village and four boys aged 12-16 were building an iron bridge to link the fish farm and the shore. The five were reportedly electrocuted. When nearby residents rushed to the site, they were all dead. Local police are still investigating the case. Foreigners have been a regular target for robbers in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Diep Duc Minh The Ho Chi Minh City police are looking for the suspect in a street robbery this week in which a German tourist was held up. The District 2 police said they have received a complaint from the tourist, identified only as Adomat, 20, and his companions, another German, 21, and a 26-year-old from the Netherlands, news website Zing reported. They said they were traveling to Mui Ne Tuesday when Adomats motorbikes broke down in HCMCs District 2. The alleged robber rode over and helped push the motorbike for a while. But when they reached a deserted area, he stopped and introduced himself as a police officer, and asked to see the tourists bags. He told Adomat to go with him to a nearby police station for a drugs check. After traveling around 100 meters, however, he told the German to get off and leave his bag, threatening to pull out a gun. Adomat said he was scared and followed his order. His bag had a tablet, two cameras and VND2.5 million ($110) in cash. Vietnams tourism market has seen a strong recovery this year, with a 20 percent increase in foreign arrivals in the first five months, thanks largely to its visa waiver for various nationals, including German. But the lack of security remains a big challenge to the industry. A Moroccan man was stabbed last Friday evening while fighting off two men who had snatched his wifes purse in Ho Chi Minh City. He is recovering in hospital. Minister of Information and Communications at the regular meeting of the government on June 2, 2016. Photo: Ngoc Thang Two months after the mass fish deaths were first reported in central Vietnam authorities announced they have unraveled the mystery but declined to reveal the cause. Minister of Information and Communications Truong Minh Tuan said at a regular meeting of the government Thursday that authorities need more time to announce the reasons for the fish deaths. As many ministries and agencies helped crack the mystery, there are varying opinions and so we need more time for feedback before we can come to a final conclusion. Besides, since authorities not only collected scientific evidence but also legal evidence, they need more time to investigate before bringing the culprit to book, he said. Tuan told Thanh Nien the ministry would reveal the cause of the deaths later this month. The Ministry of Science and Technology has also said it has collected enough evidence to prove the cause, and the proof is scientifically convincing. Hundreds of tons of fish were washed ashore in April in Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri, and Thua Thien-Hue provinces, apparently killed by industrial effluents. Suspicion has centered on Hung Nghiep Formosa Steel Company, a major Taiwanese firm in the Vung Ang Economic Zone in Ha Tinh, which admitted it has a large sewage pipe going straight into the sea. But it claimed all its discharged wastewater had been treated. Officials have said they cannot find any connection between Formosa's discharge and the disaster. Heavy machinery is seen at Sany Heavy Industry assembly plant in Lingang Industrial Park, near Shanghai June 28, 2012. As Beijing moves in to buy up firms from Germany's famed "Mittlestand" of mid-sized manufacturers, politicians are nervous that Chinese owners may take their vaunted technology and move jobs abroad. But one of the first prominent mid-sized German engineering firms to sell out to the Chinese says such fears are overblown. When Putzmeister, a 58-year-old maker of pumps for concrete, was bought by its Chinese competitor Sany for 360 million euros($402 million) in 2012, its workers protested outside the factory gates, fearing job losses. Four years on, however, the company's employment in Germany has held steady and it has promised to maintain it at least until 2020. Sales are up by nearly a third, the brand is still intact and established relationships with suppliers have been left in place. With the Chinese back for more acquisitions, the four-year-old merger is again drawing attention, this time as an example of how to sell out while safeguarding operations at home. In headlines from the latest Chinese shopping spree, home appliance maker Midea Group made a $5-billion bid for German robot maker Kuka last month, and Fujian Grand Chip Investment Fund agreed to pay 670 million euros for semiconductor manufacturing equipment maker Aixtron. German economy minister Sigmar Gabriel signaled politicians' unease this week, saying he would like to see a rival offer for Kuka from a German or European firm. A Putzmeister company logo is pictured at the "Bauma" Trade Fair for Construction, Building Material and Mining Machines and Construction Vehicles and Equipment in Munich, southern Germany, April 11, 2016. Putzmeister executives remember similar worries. Before their company went up for sale, sales had only begun recovering from the 2009 global financial crisis. The suitor, Sany, from China's southwestern Hunan province, had itself overtaken Putzmeister as the global market leader for concrete pumps, mostly by selling cheaper pumps to Chinese customers. It was easy to imagine the Chinese firm following the merger by taking German designs and shedding German jobs. But Putzmeister's German Chief Executive Gerald Karch insists that was never the plan. "The strategy was and is the strict preservation of brand and corporate identities at both firms," he said in an e-mailed response to questions. Since the takeover, rather than shift production to China, Sany has divided up the market, selling its own pumps in China and the German firm's pumps in the rest of the world. Putzmeister pumps still come with German-engineered parts sourced from its previous suppliers. The German firm acts as the global distribution hub for the combined company. "There are positive impulses there," said Frank-Christian Raffel, Munich-based partner in boutique advisory firm MelchersRaffel, which specializes in M&A deals between German-speaking and Asian countries. "Evidently it is being well run by the Chinese." With employment at the company's factories in Germany holding steady, the workers who picketed against the merger four years ago now say they are more fortunate than they might have been had a buyer arrived from elsewhere. "I think if it were an American company, it would be a lot worse for the workforce," said Joerg Loeffler, head of the works council at Putzmeister. Nevertheless, although the merger appears to have been mostly a success in terms of sales and employment, the company acknowledges it may still take years to unite two very different corporate cultures and realize all the benefits of linking up. Plaster master Putzmeister, whose name means "plaster master", is an example of how Germany's small and medium-sized manufacturing sector produced "hidden champions" that excel as world leaders in niche markets, a path that turned Germany after World War Two into Europe's powerhouse of export-led manufacturing. The company's colossal truck-mounted cranes helped build the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, and were sent to pump millions of liters of seawater to cool Japan's tsunami-wrecked nuclear reactor in Fukushima in 2011. But it was hit hard by the financial crisis, when sales plummeted from 1 billion euros to 440 million, allowing Sany to snatch the crown of world leader in 2009. One aim of the merger was for Putzmeister to help Sany gain a technological edge over rivals by improving quality at its own production sites. To this end, joint projects were set up and engineers exchanged to facilitate the transfer of know-how. Following the takeover, the companies also expressed a desire for some co-operation in the procurement of parts, and raised the possibility that Sany could supply some of Putzmeister's components. But while Putzmeister has helped Sany purchase some parts, such as hydraulic components from German supplier Bosch Rexroth, it has kept its purchasing strategy and supply chain unchanged to maintain its reputation as a premium brand. PR campaign Concerns about a deterioration in quality due to Putzmeister's new owners were allayed by intensive PR work with customers, according to Cora Jungbluth, from the Bertelsmann Stiftung charitable foundation, who carried out a case study on Chinese takeovers of German firms. A man walks past a logo of Sany Group during a news conference in Beijing, October 18, 2012. Over in China, the firms initially operated a two-brand strategy. However, Putzmeister has since removed its pumps from the Chinese market, saying Sany's products enjoyed a "good reputation" there. Putzmeister said it continues to take advantage of Sany's distribution network to sell its concrete-spraying machines, which Sany doesn't have in its portfolio. By agreeing last year to guarantee jobs until 2020, Sany also managed to win over Putzmeister's workers. The German firm's global workforce has remained stable at 3,300 and there have been no noticeable changes for those working in its German factories. Thomas Heck, Head of PwC's China Business Group, said that so far German firms' experience with Chinese investors has shown that the overwhelming majority are less focused on quick financial profits and more on long-term strategic goals. "They really want to go global and gain a foothold in developed markets and are aware that this might take even a decade," Bertelsmann's Jungbluth added. Despite Sany's willingness to keep Putzmeister on a long leash, there have still been challenges to overcome, notably in marrying corporate cultures. Few of Sany's Hunan-based employees speak English. Norbert Scheuch, Putzmeister's chief executive from 2009 who negotiated the merger, left the company a year after the deal. He told Reuters he had frequently become frustrated with his new bosses' hierarchy-driven management style, which he said slowed down decision-making and thwarted his efforts to make acquisitions. Joint projects were complicated by a Chinese culture that privileged rank over expertise, he told Reuters, contrasting it with an expectation from German managers that their knowledgeable subordinates will speak up. Unable to make small talk in Chinese, Scheuch said he often felt shut out of decisions. He described himself as the "party pooper" forced to temper Sany's initial over-optimistic expectations for growth in Europe's saturated markets. Putzmeister says current CEO Karch has built up a good basis of trust with Sany's billionaire founder Liang Wengen, a son of Hunanese peasants who rose to become at one point China's richest man. But the company acknowledges that more time is needed for the integration to succeed on all levels and in all countries. There are signs that future Chinese investors are becoming more savvy about foreign takeovers and the need to understand the local culture, says M&A adviser Raffel. "The Chinese are very willing to learn nowadays. I know investors that have bought German companies and are now holding workshops in China on how the German Mittelstand works." People lay flowers at the monument to Armenians killed by Ottoman Turks during World War I in Yerevan, pictured in 2014 A growing number of parliaments, mainly in Europe, have voted laws or resolutions explicitly recognising the Armenian "genocide", while others hold back from using the term which infuriates Turkey. On Thursday, German lawmakers became the latest popularly-elected body to recognise the "genocide", immediately drawing a rebuke from Turkey which called the vote a "historic mistake". Yerevan has long sought international recognition of the word genocide but Ankara rejects the term to describe the mass killings more than a century ago and argues that it was a collective tragedy in which equal numbers of Turks and Armenians died. More than 20 countries and the EU parliament More than 20 countries have recognised the tragic events as genocide in addition to the European Parliament, which did so on June 18, 1987. France was the first major European country to use the disputed term in 2001. The first pontiff to publicly utter the word "genocide" was Pope Francis, in April 2015. Before the German vote, parliaments in Austria and Luxembourg were the latest in Europe to pass resolutions that use the disputed term, and condemn it. Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kin were killed between 1915 and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart, and have long sought to win international recognition of the massacres as genocide. Turkey rejects the claims, arguing that 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians and as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians rose up against their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian troops. Uruguay first to declare genocide Uruguay was the first country to specifically use the term genocide, in 1965. Since then countries including Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Netherlands, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland have as well. In 1996, Greece, which has conflictual relations with neighbouring Turkey, decreed April 24 "the day of memory of the genocide of Armenians by the Turkish regime". Obama pledge goes unfulfilled US President Barack Obama made a campaign pledge to "recognise the Armenian genocide" if elected, but has since avoided using the politically charged term, while insisting that his "view of that history has not changed". An armed pro-Russian separatist stands in front of the destroyed Donetsk International Airport, on June 1, 2016 Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday accused government soldiers of launching a new offensive near a prized but obliterated airport in the separatists' de facto capital of Donetsk. The claim appears to fit with a mounting death toll reported by the government in Kiev and foreign monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). It also comes ahead of a decision later this month by the European Union on whether to extend its sanctions against Russia for its actions in Ukraine. The insurgents seized Donetsk airport in January 2015. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko vowed to win back the main trophy of the 25-month war -- a pledge that has clashed with the West's efforts to bring peace to the European Union's backyard. A rebel fighter who identified himself by the nom de guerre Moskva (Moscow) said the Ukrainian assault began from positions just north of Donetsk last Saturday. "The entire (airport) terminal was hit by air defence guns," he told AFP. Such heavy weapons were meant to have been withdrawn from the frontline dividing rebel-run regions from the rest of Ukraine within days of a February 2015 truce being signed. Poroshenko's military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk told AFP that "the Ukrainian armed forces are observing a state of ceasefire" and blamed the escalation on the rebels. The truce helped contain the worst violence but failed to bring a halt to one of Europe's bloodiest conflicts since the 1990s Balkans wars. US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt said on Tuesday he was "shocked by the escalation happening in eastern Ukraine in recent days". Hundreds of 'undetermined explosions' The scale of exchanges of heavy weapons fire appears to have grown exponentially after weeks of relative calm. An armed pro-Russian separatist of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic walks in front of the destroyed airport on June 1, 2016. The OSCE said its teams had recorded 305 "undetermined explosions" just north and west of Donetsk between late Monday and early Tuesday. A man who identified himself as a 42-year-old Russian volunteer fighter told AFP that eight members of the separatist force had been killed in a town 10 kilometres (six miles) north of Donetsk since Monday. And a spokeswoman for Ukraine's envoy to OSCE-mediated peace talks with Russia said that 26 government troops had died last month alone. More than 9,300 civilians and fighters from both sides have perished since the revolt against the pro-Western administration installed after the ouster of a Russian-backed president broke out in April 2014. Russia denies plotting the separatist conflict, which began shortly after it seized the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, in retaliation for seeing Ukraine pull out of its historic sphere of influence. But it admits that volunteer and off-duty soldiers were fighting alongside the rebel force. The self-described Russian volunteer solider blamed the latest spike in violence on attempts by Poroshenko to revise the terms of last year's truce. The agreement was meant to offer separatist regions limited autonomy and the right to hold local elections -- conditions opposed by numerous lawmakers and nationalist volunteer battalions who backed government troops throughout the war. Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with North Korean envoy in surprise visit. (Photo : Getty Images) Chinese President Xi Jinping urged friendship with North Korea in an unexpected meeting with an envoy from the North amid Beijings worries about Pyongyangs nuclear weapons program. In an unexpected turn of events, China's President Xi met with North Korea's vice party chairman Ri Su Yong in a landmark visit that has not occurred in either country in over three years, UPI reported on Wednesday. Advertisement According to the outlet, Ri delivered a letter from Kim Jong Un where the North's leader expressed his wish to "strengthen" relations. North Korea and China had experienced a tense relationship over the years due to the former's insistent testing of nuclear weaponry along its shores. Xi's Meeting with the North Koreans According to UPI, China and North Korea currently have a tense relationship. However, the New York Times noted that the Chinese President appeared to strike a positive tone in the conversations, where he told the top official from North Korea how his country puts "great importance to developing a friendly relationship with North Korea" and wants "calm" for the Korean Peninsula. Even so, Xi made no mention or any reference to North Korea's nuclear weapons, though the letter from the North Korean leader reportedly states that they would not end the controversial program, according to BBC News. "The surprise meeting is believed to have been the first encounter between Mr. Xi and a senior North Korean official since 2013, when he met with Choe Ryong-hae, who was then a special envoy of the Workers' Party in the North," the American media noted. Simultaneous Events While Xi and the North Korean diplomacy envoy were talking peace, a South Korean media outlet reported that Chinese authorities are on high alert after a North Korean crossed the border illegally. Ironically, the report that states that the border-crosser appeared to be a soldier from the North came simultaneously as Pyongyang's envoy went to Beijing. According to BBC News, China remains an ally of North Korea while supporting sanctions imposed by the United Nations for the latter's series of uncalled for missile fires. However, UPI said that the ties between the two Asian nations have become strained, particularly because of the increase in kidnappings and homicides in Chinese provinces that face the North Korean border. "Authorities in the Chinese province of Jilin issued a region-wide text message to local residents on Monday after they received notice an armed North Korean soldier was roaming the area," the report stated, adding that citizens were discouraged from going out of their houses after dark. Troops join the search for a boy missing since his parents abandoned him in a bear-inhabited forest on Japan's main northern island of Hokkaido A seven-year-old boy missing since being abandoned in a bear-inhabited forest in northern Japan as a punishment nearly a week ago was found alive on Friday and reunited with his parents, officials said. The boy, apparently unharmed and in good health, was discovered at a military base. Reports said he had taken shelter in a hut and found a tap to drink from but was hungry and immediately asked for food when he was discovered. "A Self-Defence Force official who was on a drill found a boy whose age appeared to be seven," said Tomohito Tamura, spokesman for police in northern Hokkaido island. "There was no conspicuous external injury, and the boy introduced himself as Yamato Tanooka," he told AFP, adding that the boy's parents were reunited with him and confirmed he was their son. "He looked in good health, but he was sent to hospital by medical helicopter" Self-Defense Forces spokesman Manabu Takehara told AFP. The child had been missing since Saturday after his parents said they made him get out of their car on a mountain road as punishment for misbehaving -- actions that have seen them severely criticised. The parents originally told police their son had got lost while they were out hiking to gather wild vegetables, but later admitted they became angry and ordered him onto the road because he had thrown stones at cars and people. 'Yes, I am' The local Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper said the boy had told police that on Saturday night he walked some distance to the hut on the military base. The base is reportedly located some 5.5 kilometres (3.4 miles) northeast of where he went missing. An unidentified Self-Defence Force official told national broadcaster NHK that there were two buildings on the perimeter of an exercise field, and that when the soldier opened the door of one of them he found the boy inside. "When the official asked 'are you Yamato?' the boy said 'Yes, I am'." Another military official also told NHK that the boy was hungry so the soldier who found him gave him something to eat. Nippon TV said there was a tap outside the hut and that the boy had been drinking water from it while he sheltered there. Japanese media interrupted regular programmes to broadcast news of the stunning development in the case which has drawn huge media attention -- and criticism of the parents' actions. The discovery was the top trending item on Twitter in Japan. "Wow, he was found!" read one tweet. "How come a child can survive only with water?" asked another. Police rescuers and fire personnel initially led the search for the boy but after coming up empty-handed the local town of Nanae requested military support. From Wednesday Japanese soldiers joined in the hunt in the rugged region, where heavy rains at times hampered the operation conducted in overgrown forest and through tall bushes. Searchers had expressed frustration that they were unable to find any evidence of the boy's whereabouts. Police have said they are considering filing neglect charges against his parents, according to Kyodo News. "I feel very sorry for my child," the father told a television reporter earlier this week, as Japanese public opinion bubbled with outrage over the parents' actions. "I am so sorry for causing trouble for many people." A Blue Angels pilot is dead after crashing during a practice exercise in Tennessee. The pilot of a separate Thunderbirds jet ejected and survived after the aircraft went down in Colorado, following a flyover for the graduation ceremony at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Chinese Government To Boost Property Market (Photo : Getty Images) It is not just Wang Jianlin, Chinas richest man and chairman of the Dalian Wanda Group, who is wary of the June 16 opening of the Shanghai Disneyland. Residents of the Chinese financial capital are also not too keen on the approach of the formal opening of the resort. However, their dislike for Shanghai Disneyland are for different reasons. Wang Jianlin sees Shanghai Disneyland as a competitor to the 15 to 20 Wanda parks across China that he plans to build and operate in the next 10 to 20 years. Advertisement Shanghai residents, meanwhile, dislike the huge crowds they anticipate descending upon the city by middle of the month. As a result, a survey among residents, conducted by the Shanghai Bureau of Statistics in April, showed two-thirds of residents do not have plans to visit the resort in 2016, reported China Daily. Of the one-third who have plans, they do not want to be crushed by the expected rash of visitors, so they plan to visit on a weekday when the queues for entrance and rides are shorter. To do that, the locals plan to go on leave from their jobs for one or two days. Since the parks soft opening on May 7, over 40,000 people have visited Shanghai Disneyland. When it opens, the resort is anticipating 10 million annual visitors which would be a boom to the Shanghai economy, but at the same time a bane to its residents who have to deal with additional stresses of city life such as gridlock, congestion, overpopulation and high prices. This early, the operators of the resort are experiencing the rude and crude behavior of Chinese tourists. Orlandoweekly reported that because of reports of children pooping in the bushes, visitors carving graffiti on lampposts and thrash thrown all over, Shanghais Civilization Office and Tourism Bureau just issued a new guide. The guide contains six rules, namely: throw trash in the garbage bin, protect public property, do not destroy the flowers or plants, do not lay down on the grass, do not jump queues and maintain proper behavior while inside. Let's Misbehave: a Cole Porter Soiree. Devised and performed by Mark Nadler. Teatro Vivaldi, ANU Arts Centre, Friday, June 10, at 6.30pm. Dinner and show from 6.30pm $70/$80/$90, show only from 8.30pm $30/$40/$50 (prices depend on seat location). Bookings: 6257 2718. In a career spanning more than 40 years, New York performer Mark Nadler has done many things. He's acted in plays and musicals, accompanied Dame Edna Everage and performed with Marvin Hamlisch and Martin Short in a show called Three Singular Sensations. He has been a soloist with symphony orchestras across the US and at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, where he has performed six times. But he's never performed in Canberra. Cabaret performer Mark Nadler in action. Nadler is making his national capital debut with Let's Misbehave: a Cole Porter Soiree, in which he accompanies himself on the piano while singing songs by, and telling stories about, one of the great popular American songwriters. "I'm doing some of his very, very well-known songs You're the Top, Night and Day, Begin the Beguine, Let's Do It, Brush up Your Shakespeare and some very obscure songs including some little-known treasures," Nadler says. An Australian Defence Force cadet in Canberra accused of raping a fellow cadet while she was sleeping has been granted bail. Police allege Jack Toby Mitchell, 19, assaulted the 18-year-old woman in the early hours of Saturday morning after the pair shared a taxi back to the ADFA campus from Civic nightclub Mooseheads with a third male cadet. The court heard the pair had known each other for four months and the woman had previously told Mr Mitchell she only wanted to be friends when he asked to begin a relationship. The woman told police she was intoxicated and thought Mr Mitchell was taking her back to her room, but instead he took her back to his room and began kissing and touching her on his bed. She allegedly told Mr Mitchell she "felt fuzzy" from the alcohol and turned away from him saying she wanted to sleep, but he began sexual intercourse. Australians facing ruin because of fraud and misconduct in the finance sector would be bailed-out by a "last resort" compensation scheme proposed by senator Nick Xenophon. The scheme would cover people who lose money because of misconduct but are not compensated because the institution or individual that wronged them are bankrupt or have inadequate insurance. Senator Nick Xenophon met with victims of poor financial advice. Credit:Pat Scala Victims left devastated by poor advice welcomed the push, saying such a scheme would give them a chance to rebuild their lives. "It will never compensate people fully for the damage and harm they're received, but there needs to be a last-resort scheme," Senator Xenophon said in Melbourne. "It's about time they are doing that," she said. "Any change to make it safer is a good thing." Amy Rickhuss went into cardiac arrest during a breast enlargement operation. Ms Morgan, now 34, was one of six patients who had serious complications during surgery at The Cosmetic Institute's Bondi and Parramatta facilities and whose cases were the subject of a NSW Health Care Complaints Commission investigation. The Commission in April found the patients were given unsafe doses of a cocktail of sedative drugs that made them unconscious without their consent. Krystle Morgan's lung was punctured during a routine cosmetic surgery at The Cosmetic Institute in Bondi in 2014. Credit:Greg Totman It found the six patients suffered life-threatening complications and 33 were exposed to questionable levels of sedation at The Cosmetic Institute. In April, the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons said the HCCC findings were "shocking" and had highlighted the urgent need for governments to regulate the cosmetic surgery industry. Dr Hussain said the NSW regulation was a long-overdue win for patient safety and will help ensure people undergoing cosmetic surgery procedures are given the same protections as patients undergoing any other type of invasive of surgery. "We have long been concerned by the gap in quality and safety systems surrounding cosmetic surgery which has meant some patients were being administered high volume local anaesthesia in unlicensed premises which have been able to fly under the radar in terms of accreditation and audit," he said. The NSW amendment applies to surgical procedures other than dental that are intended to change a person's appearance and which involve general, epidural, spinal or major regional anaesthetic or unconscious sedation. Facilities that carry out these procedures will have nine months to become properly licensed under the Private Health Facilities Act and Regulation. Health Minister Jillian Skinner said a NSW Health discussion paper informed the changes which will "ensure a safer regulatory environment for patients undergoing selected cosmetic surgical procedures". "Reports of significant adverse health outcomes for some patients has led to growing public concern over high-risk practices by some operators," Mrs Skinner said. New Medical Board of Australia guidelines for medical practitioners who perform cosmetic surgery will also come into effect from October 1 and include cooling off periods for patients. Merrilyn Walton, the professor of Medical Education, Patient Safety at the University of Sydney, referred a series of incidents involving life-threatening cosmetic surgery procedures to the Health Care Complaints Commission, which she once headed. She welcomes the new regulations which she has urged successive governments to introduce for 17 years. "This is great," she said. "It means patients can trust the environment they are in complies with minimum standards to ensure their safety. "Now the doctors will be required to report their adverse events and apply mandated safety standards. "There will be oversight by the NSW Ministry of Health." Earlier this week Fairfax Media reported that a push by payday lenders into loans for elective and cosmetic surgery could also lead to a rise in risky procedures and put people's health at risk. Lenders are looking for new revenue streams following a crackdown into the sector by the corporate regulator. Fairfax Media has reported at least four cases involving the emergency transfer of patients from The Cosmetic Institute to hospital. They included the case of Amy Rickhuss who went into cardiac arrest during cosmetic surgery at The Cosmetic Institute's Parramatta clinic on January 30, 2015. She was rushed to Westmead Hospital's emergency unit and early reports from The Cosmetic Institute indicated that she "had a reaction to the anaesthetic". Fairfax Media later revealed Ms Rickhuss, 21, who survived the life-threatening experience, was given Intralipid, a drug most commonly used to treat an overdose of local anaesthetic. Fairfax Media also revealed a 22-year-old woman from Mordialloc in Victoria was rushed to St Vincent's Hospital emergency unit from The Cosmetic Institute's Bondi clinic after having serious complications during a breast enlargement procedure. The HCCC report said two patients flatlined while having breast enlargements at The Cosmetic Institute clinics and needed to be resuscitated, another suffered a seizure, and a third went into ventricular tachycardia and needed to be resuscitated. Patients were routinely given adrenalin with a cocktail of sedative drugs "well above the accepted upper limit of safe dosage", and "an overdose of adrenalin is likely to have contributed to some of the adverse outcomes seen in patients", the report says. The Cosmetic Institute had marketed breast augmentations under conscious sedation, using the local anaesthetic. But patients were given a combination of sedative drugs that in many cases "were consistent with general anaesthesia" and "in excess of the safe upper limit recommended for these drugs". The Cosmetic Institute general manager Andrew Gill said the clinics had taken steps to address the issues, but disputed the HCCC's finding that the clinics had put the health and safety of the public at risk. All TCI surgeries in NSW were now performed at Concord Private Hospital under deep sedation or general anaesthetic, Mr Gill said in a statement to Fairfax Media in April. The decision by Murray Goulburn to slash milk payments to farmers has been condemned by dairy industry leaders, with the head of Bega Cheese saying it had eroded trust and damaged the wider dairy industry. Murray Goulburn, the nation's biggest dairy processor with about 2600 farmer suppliers, was fiercely criticised at an industry breakfast in Melbourne on Friday. Participating in a panel discussion with three other industry leaders, Bega Cheese executive chairman Barry Irvin said: "The damage to the industry goes across the industry." He blasted Murray Goulburn as he sat just three seats away from its chairman, Philip Tracy, saying Murray Goulburn would produce its "highest profit since the GFC" in 2015-16. A new deal The equipment purchase was made shortly after the federal government signed the China Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA), which promised to speed up the process for working visas, boost trade and slash tariffs. Illustration: Simon Bosch. The seven Chinese workers didn't know it but they were ChAFTA pioneers. They were holding some of the first subclass 400 visas issued as part of the new agreement. (The 400 visa is intended for temporary workers who are doing short-term, highly specialised, non-ongoing work for three to six months.) The revelations come against a backdrop of growing fears that some of the country's 1.3 million foreign workers on visas equivalent to one in 10 of the Australian workforce are being exploited and undermining the economic fabric of the country, A recent Senate inquiry into foreign worker exploitation heard many harrowing testimonies covering a raft of industries including food processing and late last year convenience chain 7-Eleven was also exposed for systemic underpayment of wages mostly to foreign students on visas. Last year Taskforce Cadena, a joint taskforce including the Fair Work Ombudsman and Border Force, raided karaoke bars in Perth and Melbourne following allegations of wage fraud, sham contracting and sexual slavery of female hosts at the karaoke bars. Stacking the deck Now a Fairfax Media investigation can reveal that Sydney-based Hercules Carparking Systems 2004 purchased the car park stacker from China-based Shenzhen Fine Automatic Machine Company in September. The Chinese company supplied the labour and paid the wages. The Australian company paid the airfares, accommodation and food. Copies of the visas, passports and letters of invitation from Hercules inviting the men to come to Melbourne show they were brought out to "assist with the installation of our Pit Type lift and slide mechanical carparking machine". The invitation letter said "nobody else in Australia could do the work" and so "your coming here will not affect the employment of any local citizens". A similar letter, written by the Chinese company, said: "These visas were granted due to the high level of skills of the technicians, and there was no requirement to include details of wages paid on the visa applications." Ridiculous claims Australian workers on the site beg to differ. One, who was contacted by Fairfax Media, disagreed that the work could only have been done by these men. "It is ridiculous. A lot of the work is welding," he said. There were also safety issues. A worker said: "They were working on scaffolds and the safety equipment they brought with them wasn't safe." Yet they should have known better. Under Occupational Health and Safety Regulations, it is compulsory for employers to ensure that training is provided to workers on construction sites to teach them about safety and hazards common in the building industry. Documents show that on February 26, 2016, two days before boarding their plane, the non-English-speaking workers were granted "work safely in construction industry" certificates from NSW-based ABE Education, commonly referred to as a "white card". Fairfax Media can reveal that the course was taken online at a cost of $58. It was a multiple choice test, written in English, not Mandarin. Stand-ins for testing One caller inquiring about how to get "white cards" for 10 non-English-speaking Chinese workers asked ABE if it was OK for an Australian to complete the test on behalf of Mandarin-speaking employees. ABE chief executive Dominic Ogburn said: "Yeah", before adding: "We've got another company, a Chinese construction company who have done the first one for them (the workers) and then they hand out the answers to them and then they go online and then do it themselves." Ogburn later denied he was advising companies how to rort the system. He told Fairfax Media: "It's not the correct interpretation. It's not what I was trying to convey." He said he had a strong compliance record. Low pay The translator for the seven Chinese workers, Ming, told Fairfax Media the men were paid between $US70 and $US75 a day, which is well below the going rate for a lift industry worker of $42 an hour. It is also below the national minimum wage is currently $17.29 for a full-time adult worker. The middle-aged workers were not given pay slips, paid penalty rates or paid super, despite working six days a week. As well as allegedly in breach of safety conditions they were not covered by WorkCover. They were paid and technically employed by the Chinese company, which refused to respond to a series of questions. Despite being paid illegal wages and flouting a number of laws, the arrival of the seven men into Australia was quick and simple. Swift transit A visa grant notice shows that the subclass 400 visas were issued to the seven Chinese workers the same day the application was lodged. The fast-tracking of the visas is part of ChAFTA, which was signed last September amid fears it would be exploited by companies looking for cheap imported labour to reduce labour costs. According to employment migration expert Joanna Howe, a senior law lecturer at Adelaide University and Rhodes scholar, the ChAFTA workers are required to be employed in accordance with Australian law. But she says there are less checks and balances. "The ChAFTA prevents labour market testing which means there is no proper mechanism to determine that a Chinese worker is not replacing local workers in the Australian labour market," she says. It means Chinese companies can import a workforce on the subclass 400 visa for short-term projects without any labour market testing requirements. "Although the 457 visa has additional regulatory requirements like a minimum wage threshold for visa holders, the subclass 400 visa does not have the same level of regulation and timeframes and procedures for visa approval are significantly more streamlined, meaning there are far less checks and balances." 'Low risk' means low oversight All a visa holder has to do is provide a letter of offer from their overseas employer attesting to the fact that the worker's employment conditions satisfy Australian workplace standards and that their activities will not adversely impact Australian workers. It means an employer can make a false assertion in a letter of offer and it would theoretically go undetected. This is because subclass 400 visa applications are considered "low risk" by the Department of Immigration, according to Dr Howe. "They have a standard processing time of five days. In fact most are approved within 24-48 hours," she said. "Further, DIBP does not have the resources and has certainly not displayed the inclination to verify whether subclass 400 workers once in Australia receive equivalent pay and conditions to Australian workers." Additionally, there is no mandatory skills assessment for an installer or servicer from China on the subclass 400 visa once they arrive in Australia. This creates occupational, health and safety concerns. Suppliers 'responsible' for wages Hercules managing director Terry Smith places the onus of paying correct wages on the supplier of the stacker: "That's all over to the Chinese company," he told Fairfax Media. Smith, who lives in a $3 million house in the blue-ribbon Sydney suburb of Mosman, says it is "absolutely incorrect" that the seven workers were only paid $US75 a day. He says the $US75 per day figure was the result of a "translation on a translation", though Smith could not say how much the men actually got paid. "They're all paid in China. No one receives a cent over here." Visa for specialised skills A spokesman for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection said the subclass 400 visa, also known as the Temporary Work (Short Stay Activity) visa, allows people to enter Australia to undertake short-term, highly specialised work. "Applicants are required to demonstrate that they have specialised skills, knowledge or experience which can assist an Australian business and which cannot reasonably be found in the Australian labour market," the spokesman said. "A requirement for the visa is that there be no adverse impact on the employment, training, or conditions of employment of Australian citizens or permanent residents," the spokesman said. The signing of ChAFTA last June was steeped in politics as unions, some academics and the ALP went head to head with the federal government, warning that the looser regulations and decision not to include labour testing could potentially undermine award wages and jobs. Turnbull lashed Labor Indeed, in a television interview on September 23, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said an advertising campaign supported by the union movement and the ALP was "extreme scare-mongering" "designed to frighten people back into poverty". And earlier that month, then trade minister Andrew Robb slapped down Labor's attempts to introduce market testing into ChAFTA to ensure Chinese workers weren't taking Australian jobs, telling Parliament: "We are going to do things to China that we haven't done to any other country. That's the problem. All of a sudden, it underscores the xenophobic racist activities on your side of the House." For the seven workers, things didn't go according to plan. According to the translator, their accommodation was shifted to serviced apartments closer to the site, where they shared a room. After a few weeks, some of them were sent back to China. Hercules' Smith, said there was "a change of plan". Failure to comply with OHS Smith, who was unable to explain why his previous business Hercules Carparking Systems went under in 2010 owing creditors hundreds of thousands of dollars, confirmed that they didn't stay the full 10 weeks. "They were experts who marked out the specifications of the machine," he said. "In fact the factory insisted that, with that being the first, that they did send a crew out to get the marking done correctly." The men ceased work after allegedly being caught not complying with occupational health and safety laws. A worker on the site told Fairfax Media the safety equipment was "like kids' toys". Another said they used a thin piece of nylon as a harness when they were on the scaffold. "It was something you would use on a dog," he said. "It was so unsafe, it was appalling." Smith said the men flew back to China and he employed a local crew to complete the job. Business booming Smith's business is booming in the wake of the apartment development craze across Australia. He told Fairfax Media he had 170 projects on the go and was receiving inquiries daily. "We've got about another 20 of those (car stackers) coming but now that it's been fully explained how they get marked out because there's a process to it all the future ones we don't need anyone coming out," Smith said. "In fact it's a pain in the neck to get these guys to come out because of the visas and visas can take time and there were delays in the visas. We'd much rather have our own crews." When asked whether it was possible that the problem with the rates of pay was at the China end of the arrangement, Smith said: "We've worked with this company before. I don't see why they would want to tell us porky pies." Smith said he could provide a certificate from the factory in Shenzhen showing how much the workers from China were being paid for their work in Australia. However, Smith did not return Fairfax Media's calls after the first interview earlier this week and no certificate was produced. The Chinese company, which was the employer of the seven men, did not respond to a series of questions about its previous and current dealings with Hercules or how much the workers were paid. Allegations taken seriously A spokesman for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection said the government "took seriously" all allegations of overseas workers being exploited and underpaid. "All temporary visa holders with work rights are entitled to the same basic rights and protections as Australian under applicable workplace laws," the spokesman said. "Employers are obliged to engage and remunerate staff in accordance with the Fair Work Act," the spokesman said. ChAFTA is now in full swing, with some companies benefiting from the reduced tariffs and easier access to the world's largest marketplace, but for Howe, it has flaws that need fixing. When it comes to the subclass 400 visa she says it isn't too late to redesign "so that there are stricter processes around approval and enforcement of visa holders' workplace rights, wages and conditions". Loading A media company has been fined $272,850 for allegedly disguising employees as unpaid interns. Judge Tom Altobelli imposed the penalty against Sydney-based AIMG BQ Pty Ltd in the Federal Circuit Court following a Fair Work Ombudsman investigation and legal action. The company, linked to the Ostar International Media Group, runs Chinese-language websites and publications for Australia's Chinese community, including the Oriental BQ Weekly. Company director Zhao Qing Jiang was also fined $8160 for his failure to comply with a notice to produce documents to Fair Work inspectors. A three-year injunction has been imposed on him to prevent further breaches of workplace laws. Google Is Open to Returning to China, Says CEO Google CEO Sundar Pichai. (Photo : Getty Images) If done right, Google may resume its search business in China, the companys CEO Sundar Pichai revealed in an industry conference on Wednesday. "If we can do it in the right and thoughtful way, we are always open to it," Pichai said at the Code conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. "I care about serving consumers everywhere." Advertisement Google shuttered its operations in mainland China and moved its Chinese-language search engine to Hong Kong in 2010 following a series of cyberattacks on Google originating from the country. The Internet giant also said it will stop censoring search results in China. The controversial move cut Google off from the rapidly growing Chinese market, one that has been courted by rival Facebook and constitutes the second-largest market for Apple. Google co-founder Sergey Brin said China's censorship campaign mirrors the "totalitarianism" of the former Soviet Union, where he was born. Due to a reorganization the previous year, Brin and co-founder Larry Page now run Alphabet, a holding of the company's "moonshot activities" while Pichai runs Google. The past year also saw Google seeking Chinese approval for access of its Google Play app store in the country, according to USA Today. AI Development Pichai's speech at the Code conference focused mainly on Google's work on artificial intelligence for voice-activated searches, saying Google "sensed a shift" three to four years ago and transitioned to improving voice searches. "We saw significant step changes," he said. "We felt the inflection point and made a big shift internally." Today, one out of every five searches is done via voice rather than typing, and Pichai foresees this trend to grow even further over the next years. In response to a question on whether Google is better than its rivals Amazon, Facebook and Apple in developing AI and machine learning, Pichai said Google has "been doing it longer." "People have been asking questions to Google for a long time," he added, although noting that the company is still in its early stages in AI technology. "You take the long view and bring your strengths to it," he said. "This is the heart of what we do." On Sunday a group of Timbercorp victims will meet at a small shed in Coburg, Melbourne, for a regular monthly meeting. More than 100 victims set up the action group, the HNAB Group, when the agribusiness collapsed in 2009. The HNAB Group are victims not only of Timbercorp but also their accountant, Peter Holt, who was one of the biggest spruikers of managed investment schemes and was described in Parliament by Senator Sam Dastyari as a "crook, a criminal and a fraudster". Each month they talk about their plight, including the emotional and financial impact of the money they lost and the loans they have to repay following writs served by Timbercorp's liquidator. People have had heart attacks, anxiety attacks so severe they were thought to be heart attacks, various immune-related diseases known to be stress-induced, and severe depression and anxiety affecting relationships, family, work and all aspects of life. One man attempted suicide by hanging. Fairfax Media can reveal that the online training course offered by ABE is only available in English. The seven workers could only speak Chinese. It was purchased online for $58 after being "organised by someone in the office", Hercules managing director Terry Smith said. A caller later made an inquiry to ABE's Dominic Ogburn asking him to explain how non-English speaking workers could complete the two- to three-hour course. He was told: "We've had quite a few people who are Mandarin do our course ... So there's nothing to prevent others from assisting them in going through it." When asked if someone could do the course for them, Mr Ogburn replied: "Yeah ... We've got another company, a Chinese construction company, who have done the first one for them and then they hand out the answers to them and then they go online and then do it themselves." He said he didn't want to be giving any "tips" but "we know that's what they [the construction companies] do because we say 'how the hell are they doing it in only an hour' but we know [laughs] that's what's going on. So you could do it and then write down the answers as you are doing each of the questions." Mr Ogburn later denied he was advising companies how to rort the system. He told Fairfax Media: "It's not the correct interpretation. It's not what I was trying to convey." He said he had a strong compliance record. Australian of the Year David Morrison says employees should not use "non-inclusive" words like "guys". Credit:Graham Tidy The beauty of language is its lability, and in the agency of each person to fashion it to his or her own purposes. But as a journalist and columnist, I also understand the need to find new things to rail against each week. There is a constant requirement for a fresh source of outrage into which to dip one's pen. And what greater outrage is there to a journalist than an affront to freedom of speech? Especially by lefties who would have us all speak in gender neutral pronouns and use unisex bathrooms. So it is in this spirit of collegiality I offer up to my fellow hacks the following listicle of actual true and real threats to freedom of speech in this country. It is for use by any journalist, commentator, or hell, even dinner party bore, who needs a genuine source of righteous indignation. My apologies, but well-meaning videos made by Australians of the Year do not appear. Here they are you guys are welcome! The Knitting Nannas are a fixture of CSG protests. Credit:Peter Rae The criminalisation of grandmothers who enjoy craft, and democracy In March the Baird government passed legislation which increased tenfold the penalties faced by anti-Coal Seam Gas protesters. They can be fined $5500 or jailed for up to seven years for "unlawful aggravated entry" to certain sites. The same laws extend the definition of a mine to include gas exploration sites. People targeted by the laws include the anti-CSG "Knitting Nannas" protesters, who have been known to lock themselves onto fences as they quietly click their needles. Pre-existing laws against trespass and criminal damage are apparently not enough to deter these raging anarchists. I am not sure what Voltaire would say but most people, even if they're not Enlightenment philosophers, hold protest to be an important form of free speech. Your own potential jailing, fellow scribes In 2014, the Abbott government passed national security legislation which made it illegal for journalists (or whistleblowers) to report on "special intelligence operations" undertaken by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). They face jail terms of up to 10 years if they do. This law would prevent journalists from reporting even a bungled covert operation. As pointed out at the time, it would have covered the 1983 Sheraton Hotel incident where the national spy agency set up a raid as a training exercise but neglected to mention it to hotel staff, and were intercepted by the police in a farcical fiasco that could have made a passable Benny Hill episode had it not been potentially fatal. Attorney-General George Brandis assured us the provision would be "sparingly used", and said he hoped that would provide "reassurance". Again, I cannot speak for Voltaire on this. But it's hard to feel reassured when the mistakes and misadventures of our security agency are off-limits to public examination. That is, unless you trust all governments to always act in the interests of their citizens, even at the expense of their own interests. The liberty to engage in Facebook rants As social media sashays to the centre of the public discourse, there is increasing debate over the rights of public servants, or anyone funded by the taxpayer dime, to use their social media accounts to shake their fist at The Man. There have been several cases of public servants being sacked for breaking with the rules of impartiality and ranting (usually left-wingishly) on Facebook, or even the more public forum of Twitter. The freshest example is Roz Ward, who manages the controversial "Safe Schools" program through her post at LaTrobe University. Ward has Marxist views, and was "exposed" as having called the Australian flag "racist" in a comment on her own private Facebook page. She has been suspended from her position with the university. News Corp have gone after Ward particularly hard. The adage attributed to Voltaire about defending your right to say mean things about the Aussie flag even if you disagree with those mean things (I paraphrase from the original French) perhaps doesn't apply to left-wing academics. There you go, freedom fighters: that should be enough to get you started. It is time the CFA and Metropolitan Fire Brigade were merged, otherwise two bureaucracies will continue to claim they are right when all that people need is a reliable and safe fire service. Or are those in control afraid of a drop in their personal power? Bruce Dudon, Woodend Destruction of a great organisation Daniel Andrews is prepared to destroy the CFA in order to provide payback to the UFU for its support in getting him elected. No one in their wildest dreams would call the MFB a model services operation. It is one where the UFU has veto over every decision. A very good organisation, the CFA, will be destroyed for the sake of union politics and payback. Congratulations, Mr Andrews, you cannot be trusted and you are dud. Terry O'Connor, Avondale Heights Bring them all home I am pleased the bodies of Vietnam War veterans have been returned to Australia (The Age, 3/6), but why only them? My grandfather, John Charles Robertson, the commanding officer of the 2/29th in Malaya, was killed at the Battle of Muar along with many of his comrades in January 1942. A huge proportion of them were captured by the Japanese and had inhumane treatment inflicted on them. My family would have liked him to be returned, with his men and others, but it was not to be. The unresolved grief of my grandmother, mother and uncles was profound and affected all of the family, in a similar way to the families of the veterans who have just been repatriated. Everyone should have been returned, not just some. Is it thought that the families of the World War II veterans are now too old to care? Unlikely, I would have thought. Debby Myers, Barwon Heads Priorities, gentlemen On April 25, our Vietnam veterans led our Anzac Day march; an overdue sign of recognition and respect. On June 2, when 25 Vietnam veterans and their family members came home in coffins, our Prime Minister was at a mattress factory and the Opposition Leader was at a fish market. Where was the respect and recognition from our would-be leaders? Lest we forget. Lynne Jordan, Balwyn North Offensive description Labor's "war on business", says Scott Morrison. I do not think so. To start with, the $50billion tax payout of our money to small business has already been criticised by small business groups for being inadequate to stimulate business or increase hiring. Secondly, for those who fought in a war, the terminology is highly disrespectful. War is armed conflict that results in death, leaving families devastated. War does not describe Labor's view that the money could be better spent stimulating spending and increasing growth and jobs via tax cuts for those who earn less than $80,000 a year. Can we expect Mr Morrison to wrap himself in the flag to make his next pronouncement on Labor's war? Mike Reece, Balwyn North Opportunistic attacks I am disgusted at the political opportunism involved in the attacks on the Treasurer and Prime Minister over their accusing Labor of a "war" on a range of matters. We have had "wars" on drugs, drink driving, tax cheats and wars on many issues without a single protest on the use of the word "war". Choosing to link the current use of that word with the return of service men's remains is reprehensible. It shows a lack of integrity on the part of all involved. John Weymouth, Ringwood East Top of their class Having enjoyed at least 30 school experiences in Victoria and London, I did notice the "best" principals (The Age, 2/6). Brother Gregory addressed his students as "men". Karin was more concerned with students' mental and emotional wellbeing than the colour of their hair. Peter encouraged staff get-togethers, which was great for young initiates. Michael sent posters from the Uffizi Gallery to adorn school walls and enhance the arts area. Helene welcomed me home to Victorian schools with afternoon tea and champagne because I had travelled to London to teach after becoming "in excess". Stories of those with a calling, hard work, dedication, calmness and love of the job. I miss you all. Kathryn Money-Bond, Glen Iris Hipsters of the past Before coffee machines, coffee was traditionally served in a coffee pot, milk in a milk jug, sugar in a sugar bowl and hot water in a jug if required, on a tray. Nothing is new (The Age, 3/6). Jennifer Gomes, West Melbourne Sexist form of address Thank you, Australian of the Year David Morrison. I have long objected to being called a guy. I am a 70-year-old woman. I am met with amazement when I reply to young people in the service industry: "I am not a guy". Yes, it is sexist and offensive and if I call men "girls" in reply, they are stunned. Megan Peniston-Bird, Hawthorn The power of words I am delighted to learn from readers (Letters, 3/6) that gendered terms for groups are no longer important. Next time I address a group of people I shall call them ladies, even if they are all men, and they will not raise an eyebrow. I shall be comfortable referring to the human race as womankind and not expect a "minority group" (because males are a numerical minority in Australia) to complain. All those who act can be referred to as actresses, single folk as spinsters, killers as murderesses because we are all terribly modern and there is no longer any reflection of power in words. Janine Truter, The Basin It's time to act Surveys show that more than two thirds of Australians want more action on climate change and for the Great Barrier Reef to be safeguarded against its impacts. The government's response is to stick its metaphoric fingers firmly in its ears. Robert Brown, Camberwell Protect the 'brand' As the election approaches, there are laments about the quality of political debate and future of education. Universities are moving from historically independent institutions of critical and creative thinking to commercialised arms of governments and big business. La Trobe University's suspension of Safe Schools Coalition co-founder Roz Ward (a colleague), is a case in point. The university exhorts students to "push the boundaries of knowledge". Yet its vice-chancellor acts more like a business manager concerned for the university's "brand" than an academic leader of a great institution. Dr Philomena Horsley and Dr Rose Mann, Northcote Children, behave Congratulations, Monash City Council, for introducing "preschool rules" to maintain order, with councillors forced to place their hands on their head if they wish to speak at certain times (The Age, 2/6). Could you send a copy of your new rules to Nillumbik Shire Council, particularly the one about banning members of the public who interject from attending meetings for up to six months? Jack Lawson, Hurstbridge Follow the Swiss lead Switzerland's 60 kilometre Gotthard Base Tunnel which involved engineers digging through 73 different kinds of rock and excavating more than 27million tonnes of rubble cost $16.5billion (World, 3/6). Stage one of the East West tunnel was expected to cost $6 billion to $8 billion (The Age, 29/7/2014). Why is our infrastructure so expensive to build? Russell Creek, Camberwell Beating the superbugs So there is a "superbug catastrophe risk as antibiotics fail" (Editorial, 2/6). In the early 1970s, an article in the British Medical Journal stated that a hospital in Scotland had eliminated any semblance of superbugs by not using antibiotics on every post-surgical case. The overuse of antibiotics has created this issue. We need to stop trying to kill bugs because they mutate and the survivors become the new bug, resistant to each antibiotic along the way. If they are left alone, the "bugs" will return to their original, virtually non-invasive self. Of course, when lowered immune systems are compromised, people need assistance but only in those cases, not as general antibiotic overuse. By improving patients' immune systems and exposing them to nature's healing sunshine, rather than placing them in closed, infected hospitals, we will go a long way to getting on top of this problem. Dr Alan Powell, chiropractor, Balwyn North Medals for all three? Re the debate over whether Jobe Watson should retain his Brownlow Medal (Sport, 2/6). Surely the Solomonic thing to do is strike extra Brownlows for 2012 runners-up Sam Mitchell and Trent Cotchin. That way justice is served on two indisputably deserving players and the rights and wrongs of Watson's case can be debated in another place and time. All three players can do without the current pressure. Wal Pritchard, Devonport, Tas Winners and losers The bottom falling out of the property market (BusinessDay, 3/6) might be a disaster for investors. However, lower prices will enable those who missed out to investors at auction to finally be able to buy a house to live in, to make a home. Bring it on. Margaret Callinan, Balwyn AND ANOTHER THING I get the reason for a deconstructed coffee. But, seriously, there are hipsters and there are wankers. Michael Carver, Kew Politics Scott Morrison, Minister for War on Everything. Kevin Ward, Preston Warren Growth has joined Jobson as a much vaunted campaigner. Ian Thomas, Armadale Dad's Army is alive and well in Australia. Gerry Ruffa, Hamilton It's a topsy turvy world when Labor supports the big end of town and the Libs want to remove super rorts. Jeff Langdon, Smythesdale Is anyone else sick of Bill Shorten's: "The truf of the matter is ..."? Ray Davis, Eltham Before making promises, both leaders should begin with "when, or if, finances allow". Veronica Dingle, Brighton Is Bill the inner Malcolm? Terry Malone, Warburton The government tells me how good the GDP numbers are, but the ASX figures tell a different storey. John Groom, Bentleigh Why doesn't the CFA start its own union and cut the firefighters union out of the picture? Adrian Jackson, Middle Park Donald Trump is a lightweight compared to the ruthless Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Rod Matthews, Fairfield Furthermore Greg Baum, great article on Eddie Betts (3/6). Though bittersweet for a Carlton supporter. But what can be achieved with a small set, nine cast members and a lot of passion is just as impressive. The current trend in music theatre is big. Very big. Little Shop of Horrors Esther Hannaford as Audrey and Brent Hill as Seymour. Credit:Jeff Busby The current tour of The Little Shop of Horrors is a perfect example. The piece, created by musical powerhouse Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, has a bit of a cult following thanks in no small part to the brilliant 1982 adaption of the stage production. LIttle Shop takes us inside Mushnik's down and out flower shop on Skid Row where bumbling botanist Seymour has come into possession of a strange and interesting unidentifiable plant. When he discovers the plant will flourish when it devours human blood his life goes from good to great to really, really bad in a snappy two-hour musical extravaganza. Two people dressed as nuns have been caught defacing a 'Tax the Church' poster in a street in Melbourne's inner north. The pair seemingly attempted to rip down two campaign posters for the Australian Sex Party on a street corner near Smith Street in Collingwood. Two people dressed as nuns deface an Australian Sex Party poster in Melbourne. Photos of the incident were sent to the party's Victorian branch earlier this week, however it is not known when the images were taken. The party's lead candidate for the Victorian Senate, Meredith Doig, said it was not a political stunt as far as she was aware. THE SONGS: We Are Never Ever Ever Getting Back Together, State of Grace, All Too Well, The Last Time, Girl at Home, The Moment I Knew. BEST LYRIC: "Standing there in my party dress / In red lipstick / With no one to impress / And they're all laughing / As I'm looking around the room / But there's one thing missing / And that was the moment I knew." The good old days... Swift has a habit of using her famous break-ups as inspiration for her songs. Credit:Getty JOHN MAYER John Mayer, 38, was one of Swift's hardest relationships, judging from the lyrics of Dear John. The pair dated from November 2009 to February 2010. In the lyrics of Dear John, Swift ponders Mayer's changeability "wondering which version of you I might get on the phone tonight". It's clear from the lyrics that Swift felt used by the relationship and maybe she took it far more seriously that he did. THE SONG: Dear John BEST LYRIC: "Don't you think I was too young to be messed with / The girl in the dress cried the whole way home / I should've known." TAYLOR LAUTNER Swift dated Twilight's Taylor Lautner, 24, between August and November 2009 after meeting on the set of the film Valentines Day. However, the relationship is said to have ended because Lautner was too serious about their romance. The song Back to December is reportedly and apology to Lautner for the break up. THE SONG: Back To December BEST LYRIC: "Your guard is up and I know why / Because the last time you saw me is still burned in the back of your mind ... you gave me roses and I left them there to die / So this is me swallowing my pride, standing in front of you saying I'm sorry for that night." JOE JONAS Joe Jonas, 26, and Swift dated between July and October 2008. Jonas was her first celebrity boyfriend. The relationship reportedly ended when he made a 27-second phone call to dump her so he could date another woman. It clearly hurt as the pop star has devoted four songs to him*. THE SONGS: Last Kiss, Forever and Always, Holy Ground and Better Than Revenge (about Jonas's ex-girlfriend Camila Belle) BEST LYRIC: "Did I say something way too honest, made you run and hide like a scared little boy". (*They settled their differences last year when Jonas started dating one of Swift's main Squad members, Gigi Hadid. They even went on a boat ride down the River Thames in London that included Swift, Jonas, Harris, Hadid and model Karlie Kloss.) HARRY STYLES Swift dated former One Direction star Harry Styles, 22, from December 2012 to January 2013 but it may have started in secret before then. The relationship certainly had an impact on Swift as she penned three songs about the experience. Later Swift told Hollywood Life that Styles had a "wandering eye", so clearly trust was an issue. THE SONGS: Style, I Knew You Were Trouble and Out of the Woods. BEST LYRIC: "I knew you were trouble when you walked in, shame on me now" CORY MONTEITH While the late Cory Monteith (aged 31 at the time of death in July 2013) and Swift never really dated, the Glee star did inspire one of her songs. Swift says the song Mine is about a guy, "that I just barely knew put his arm around me by the water, and I saw the entire relationship flash before my eyes." On this one we have to assume she has a good imagination. THE SONG: Mine BEST LYRIC: "Do you remember, we were sittin', there by the water? You put your arm around me for the first time." CONOR KENNEDY Conor Kennedy, 21, and Swift had a summer fling between July and September 2012. Swift reportedly took the fling far too seriously and bought a house right near her new beau which she quickly sold off when he dumped her. THE SONG: Begin Again BEST LYRIC: "I think it's strange that you think I'm funny 'cause he never did" (TBH, who wouldn't get excited about dating a Kennedy?) ACTU secretary Dave Oliver is backing the SDA over the deals with Coles and anti-union McDonald's. Credit:Chris Hopkins So instead of starting a career at the "shoppies", Cullinan took a job at the pulp and paper division of the CFMEU and later the National Tertiary Education Union. A sliding doors moment for all, perhaps. This week the Fair Work Commission found an agreement between Coles and the SDA covering 77,000 workers, failed a crucial legal test that all workers must be better off than the award, the wages safety net. Cullinan's work, in conjunction with Fairfax Media, has uncovered well over $150 million a year in underpayments at Australia's largest three employers. All involving the country's biggest private sector union, the Labor Party's largest affiliate. In the wake of this week's events people are asking, "Who is this guy?" It is a good question. Cullinan has never had a high profile as a union official. But for years, in his own low-key way, the 40-year-old from Melbourne's outer suburbs has been a prolific activist for fast food workers, casual workers, academics and for Bangladeshi workers in sweatshops. In 2010 he was the Labor candidate for the state seat of Ferntree Gully but failed to be elected as the Brumby government was defeated. In person, he's direct, personable, highly intelligent and fearless. He's still a Labor member and has just won one of the most significant wage underpayment cases in Australian history. An ideal political candidate? Perhaps not. Cullinan said he knew when he exposed the SDA and Coles there would likely be consequences. "I was well aware that if I had any hopes of a political career in the future that's going to be somewhat stymied." This week the head of Australia's union movement, ACTU secretary Dave Oliver, lent strong support to the SDA over the deals with Coles and even the anti-union McDonald's, where, as Cullinan and Fairfax Media revealed, workers are paid up to a third less than the award. Incredibly, the ACTU is campaigning this federal election to "protect" penalty rates. Yet it is backing a union that does deals that cuts them or removes them entirely with little compensation for huge numbers of workers. Oliver's curious position highlights the power the SDA is able to wield in the union movement. It has had a similar influence in Labor, where it has undoubtedly slowed the progress towards same sex marriage. Bill Shorten, belatedly, this week was forced to distance himself from the union, telling ABC Radio in Queensland: "I am not here to defend the SDA." But these dirty wage deals should not be a surprise to anyone in the ACTU or ALP. The SDA emerged from the 1950s as a fiercely anti-communist union backed by B A Santamaria's ultra conservative National Civic Council. It is now one of the last remnants of the Labor split and the era of Cold War politics. It has morphed into an organisation with incredibly close relations with employers it even pays them about $5 million a year in commissions, ostensibly in return for deducting its members fees from their payrolls. In return, the union maintains a large membership, giving it great influence in Labor on social policy. Cullinan politics were also influenced by Catholicism. But he was attracted to the Young Christian Workers (YCW) movement where he worked in the 1990s and early 2000s. "The history of the YCW was it was the progressive socialist left of Catholic social action," he says. His dogged pursuit of the SDA has its roots from his time at the YCW working with retail and fast food workers. He knew something was amiss. Eventually a senior labour movement figure told him to have a close look at the SDA. "I came to understand there was this great secret of the union movement." Over the next decade, in his spare time, he helped workers at Baker's Delight and at 7-Eleven. He set up a blog that raised concerns about SDA deals with big retailers such as Target. It was the slow boring of hard boards. But he pressed on. Last May, Fairfax Media ran a series of stories on the SDA's deals with retailers and its sway over Labor on social issues. The next day Cullinan got in touch about Coles, and later, Fairfax ran a prominent report exposing it. Cullinan had obtained a Coles store roster from Melbourne's west and had then crunched the data to show that most workers were underpaid. Things moved quickly after that. A case was launched at the Fair Work Commission with the backing of the meatworkers' union. There was an early big win where Coles had to concede 27,000 casual workers and thousands of young workers were being underpaid. It likely cost Coles $15 million a year. But they wanted more. A Coles trolley operator, Duncan Hart, joined the Fair Work case, and helped by a gun pro bono lawyer Siobhan Kelly, they took the case further. This week's ruling will require Coles to pay higher penalty rates, or adjust rosters, or have its agreement with the SDA scrapped. It could cost Coles an extra $70 million a year in wages. It's a watershed moment for Australia's low paid. "On the back of the current case it is going to be difficult for the SDA to sustain its practices and business model," Cullinan says. There might come a point where the big supermarkets, forced to pay award rates, see no reason to deal with the SDA, as they can no longer deliver cut-price wage deals. This raises the possibility that there will be no reason for Coles and Woolworths to maintain their close ongoing relationship with the union. That, in turn, is a relationship that delivers the union's Catholic, socially conservative leadership enormous political power within Labor. Couldn't that leave supermarket workers worse off? Cullinan can't see how it could be worse, with workers now paid well under minimum legal rates. He is hopeful change will come. "The broader union movement would be much better off with a progressive union representing these workers," he says, "even if [that union] would be much smaller." Do you know more? Contact us securely via Journotips or SecureDrop A Malaysian Navy officer makes a call as their ship approaches a Chinese Coast Guard ship in the South China Sea on March 15, 2014 in Kuantan, Malaysia. (Photo : Getty Images) Rising tensions in the South China Sea are set to dominate Asias biggest security summit in Singapore on Friday, highlighting a deepening rivalry between the United States and China ahead of a landmark legal ruling in The Hague. The unofficial Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD) is the final chance for the two nations to drum up support before a decision from the Permanent Court of Arbitration in a case brought by the Philippines. Advertisement Manila is disputing Beijing's claim to an area shown on its maps as a nine-dash line stretching deep into the maritime heart of Southeast Asia, covering hundreds of disputed islands and reefs. According to a report posted by Reuters on Wednesday, the U.S. is expected to push for Southeast Asian countries, as well as major regional powers such as India and Japan, to publicly support any decision favoring the Philippines, who asked the court to recognize its right to the waters in the South China Sea. China, which rejects the court's authority, will try to convince the countries to abstain from taking a public position and make it easier to stave off criticism from the West, the report said. "The value of the case is the long-term reputational damage and the pressure . . . on the Chinese. That only works if you have a big coalition that can keep this in the public eye," said Greg Poling, director the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. "But if the Chinese . . . get a ton of countries to abstain, that deflects a lot of that criticism," Poling added. Among 20-odd delegations that are expected to attend the summit, much attention will be spent on the positions of Southeast Asian countries. Regional players have had difficulty coming to an agreement regarding China's claims in the South China Sea, as they struggle to balance their security interests with their deep ties to the world's second largest economy. In addition to China and Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei have also staked their claim in the increasingly militarized area. The U.S. has also increased its patrols and exercises in response, stressing the need to keep international sea-lanes open. Of particular importance would be Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha's keynote opening speech, whose rare international appearance will be closely scrutinized for hints on Thailand's strategic stance on the issue. "Thai policies reflect the predicament of the region," Tim Huxley, a security expert with the event's organizer, the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies, told Reuters. "Regional states want to have positive relations with China yet at the same time . . . strategically they are aligned with the West and they have reasons for being cautious about China's behavior in the region." The three-day summit offers a rare opportunity for regional military and intelligence officers and their civilian leaders to openly discuss regional defense trends and tensions. The summit comes amid major strategic shifts in the region, particularly the recent election of tough-talking Rodrigo Duterte as president of the Philippines and the lifting of the U.S. arms embargo on its former Cold War foe Vietnam. The agenda also includes the heightening tensions over North Korea, which conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and followed by a satellite launch and test launches of various missiles, which brought a new round of sanctions. The isolated country attempted to fire a missile from its east coast this week, but the launch seems to have resulted in failure. Other topics of discussion include the threat of radical militants in Southeast Asia, as well as cybersecurity, which has become a major issue following a series of bank heists from Bangladesh to Ecuador. "Only a meeting of minds can solve or mitigate these challenges and as host, we will make sure that leaders get full opportunities to engage each other," Singapore Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen said in a post on his Facebook page. When Tamyka Smith fled a violent relationship five years ago she was left with more than just physical and emotional scars. The 27-year-old was "financially ruined" and lacked the qualifications to start a career as her former partner controlled her money and dissuaded her from studying. "Besides the physical abuse and emotional abuse, he also controlled my bank accounts which made it really hard to pay my TAFE fees to further my education and get a job," she said. The NSW Government will launch fee-free vocational training scholarships for survivors of domestic violence in July, recognising that many people leave abusive relationships in the same predicament as Ms Smith. Family and friends of a man who died after being attacked at a KFC car park have expressed shock at his death and described him as "one of a kind". Wayne Tolmie, 50, died in hospital on Thursday afternoon following the attack in the parking lot of the KFC at Morayfield, north of Brisbane. A man was knocked unconscious in a car park outside a KFC restaurant at Morayfield on Wednesday night. Credit:Nine News Police allege Conrad Joseph Carter, 32, knocked Mr Tolmie to the ground with one punch outside the Morayfield KFC and further attacked him while he was on the ground on Wednesday night. Mr Carter faced court on Thursday charged with grievous bodily harm, but police have since upgraded the charges to murder and he remains in custody. The future operation of the world-famous radio telescope at the Parkes Observatory is in doubt because of impending funding cuts to the CSIRO. A leaked management briefing note shows that the iconic Dish could even stop operating if a shortfall of $4 million cannot be made up through external funding sources. CSIRO's acting director of astronomy and space science, Douglas Bock, said: "CSIRO has no plans to cease operations at any of our astronomy facilities or reduce appropriations to astronomy research." Dr Bock also said: "CSIRO has not received any formal notification from AAL [Astronomy Australia Limited] of any changes to their future funding of astronomy in Australia." A timetable revamp for many of Melbourne's busiest bus routes on Sunday will trigger a new performance regime that compels the city's second biggest bus operator to run 85 per cent of its buses on time. But a tougher 90 per cent punctuality target that is set in Transdev's government contract has been put on ice, after the Andrews government rejected major timetable changes the company proposed for its bus routes last year. MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 27: Melbourne bus driver Charles Lablache at the Fitzroy TransDev bus depot on March 27, 2016 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Chris Hopkins/Fairfax Media) Credit:Chris Hopkins The Sunday timetable change means Transdev will be held to account for the reliability and punctuality of its buses, just as Metro Trains and Yarra Trams are, with a regime of financial bonuses and penalties. But if Sunday's change means passengers can hope to see fewer late buses, their bus journeys will also take longer in many cases, because run times have been padded out to factor in worsening congestion. A Melbourne mother has told of her desperate attempt to stop a thief who hijacked the family car with her three-year-old son strapped in the back seat. Meadow Heights woman Tina Ye was getting ready for work and went to close her garage door at home after putting her sleeping son Marcus in his car seat, when she heard the car door slam. Ms Ye said she turned around and saw a man had jumped in the driver's side, and started to drive off. She told Channel Seven that she wrenched open the car door, yelling at the man to let her son out, but he took off about 6.40am on Monday. She said she chased the car down the street, receiving bruises and cuts to her hands as she tried to hold on as it speed off with her son inside. Adass Israel School in Elsternwick, where Malka Leifer was principal from 2003 to 2008. Credit:Pat Scala Judge Cohen subsequently ruled Ms Leifer was mentally unfit to face extradition, lifted her home detention and ordered she receive outpatient treatment in a Jerusalem clinic. The court heard Ms Leifer's treatment was due to begin next week and was expected to last initially for six months. She would receive up to five treatments during that time, the court heard, until a committee reassessed whether she was fit to stand trial. The court ruled that process could go on for up to 10 years. If the committee continually finds she is unfit to stand, she may evade her extradition trial indefinitely. Since the request for extradition first reached court on August 2014, Ms Leifer has had five different psychiatric assessments. Solicitor Nick Mazzeo, who has acted for abuse victims at the Adass Israel School, said they were "devastated" about the news. "The decision has further exacerbated the trauma these victims have gone through and are still going through," said Mr Mazzeo, of Lennon Mazzeo law firm. "I'm hopeful that there will be an appeal of the decision, if the prosecutor believes that that is possible." Michelle Meyer, the chief executive of Jewish victims support group Tzedek, said Ms Leifer had "manipulated the system" and was doing everything to avoid extradition. "She has been well enough all this time to continue living, raising her family and possibly working, that doesn't suggest to me that she is unable to be extradited." She said the alleged victims were angry and despondent. "They were pinning their hopes on getting some closures, but there is still no closure," Ms Meyer said. "For a lot of them, the healing process will be put on hold. They have been left in the lurch." A spokeswoman for the Attorney-General's Department said Australian authorities were working with Israeli authorities regarding the next steps in the extradition process. "Australia retains a strong extradition interest in Ms Leifer who is wanted to face prosecution in Victoria for serious criminal conduct relating to 74 sexual assault offences," she said. They said it would be inappropriate to comment further. Manny Waks, who heads an organisation aiming to prevent sexual abuse in Jewish communities, said Ms Leifer's alleged victims "feel outraged, devastated and completely let down by Israel's legal system". Several of Ms Leifer's victims are living in Israel. "They are also fearful of bumping into her on the street," Mr Waks said. Another victim of abuse in the Jewish community, who did not want to be named, said the judge's decision was "disgraceful". "That the judge gave more weight to the psychological status of the perpetrator than the turmoil and disruption to the lives of those affected only deepens sense of injustice. "At the end of the Second World War, people like Eichmann were extradited to Israel to face trials for their crimes, yet Israel is standing in the way of the extradition of a person who is wanted under the most serious of charges. I find this hypocritical at the highest level." Jennifer Huppert, president of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, said the community was overwhelmingly disappointed by the decision. "The victims themselves have said in court proceedings and at the royal commission that they feel they need to have had this matter heard in a court in Australia, and we are concerned about the victims and we sympathise with their point of view. "We are extremely disappointed by the decision, we think it's important for the victims that they feel they can have their day in court, and they have the right to have their day in court." Jewish Community Watch representative Shana Aaronson was shocked by the judge's ruling. "Disappointed isn't really a strong enough word. For the [alleged] victims in Australia this has dragged on and on for them and it's horrible," she said. The Israeli prosecutor's office has been given 72 hours to appeal the lifting of the house arrest, which it is understood it will do. Police have charged a male Protective Services Officer with the sexual assault of a Victoria Police employee. The PSO was charged with four counts of sexual assault after the incident in Melbourne earlier this year. PSO Credit:Justin McManus Detectives from Taskforce Salus laid the charges against the PSO from Transit and Public Safety Command. He will face the Ringwood Magistrates' Court on 15 November and has been suspended without pay. Victoria's health department will take into account a cosmetic surgery crackdown in NSW as part of its own review into the billion-dollar industry. A department of health spokesman said the Victorian review was "part of a national process" and the new NSW regulations announced on Friday would be considered. Victoria's health department is reviewing laws surrounding the billion-dollar cosmetic surgery industry. "The Department is currently reviewing legislation governing safety and quality in health care, and the new NSW regulation will assist in informing this work," the spokesman said. The NSW government's Private Health Facilities Act creates a new class of cosmetic surgery, which will be subject to strict licensing standards that apply to private health facilities. Surfer Ben Gerring has died after he was critically injured in a shark attack off a beach south of Perth. Mr Gerring, 29, died in Royal Perth Hospital on Friday night. He had been there since his leg was bitten off by a shark while he was surfing at Falcon near Mandurah, on Tuesday. Mr Gerring was attacked about 4pm and had his right leg severed above the knee. He was later transferred from Peel Health Campus to Royal Perth Hospital with life-threatening injuries. Paris: The jet used on the EgyptAir MS804 route from Paris to Cairo was forced to make three emergency landings in the 24 hours preceding its crash, according to reports in French media. On three occasions the Airbus A320 was forced to turn around after taking off and return to its originating airport - Asmara in Eritrea, Cairo, and Tunis - after its warning systems signalled anomalies on board. Each time it returned, it was quickly allowed to leave again after inspectors carried out a technical audit and found nothing amiss, the reports said. China's foreign minister Wang Yi attends a press conference during the Fourth Session of the 12th National People's Congress (NPC) on March 8, 2016 in Beijing, China. (Photo : Getty Images/ Lintao Zhang) China's foreign minister Wang Yi highly criticized an IPolitics reporter on June 1, Wednesday, after the latter asked questions pertaining to China's human rights records. The China's FM called out the reporter's question as unacceptable and irresponsible during his recent visit to Ottawa, Canada. Advertisement Wang met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Minister Of Foreign Affairs Stephane Dion to discuss sensitive topics, including trade to human rights issues. In the press conference with the Canadian media, online news site IPolitics reporter Amanda Connolly asked questions to Dion about the case of Canadian Kevin Garratt, who was held in China for espionage and stealing state secrets. "I want to respond to the question from this reporter about China. I have to say that your question is full of prejudice against China and arrogance where I have heard that come from and this is totally unacceptable," IPolitics quoted Wang as saying. Wang continued claiming that there were no other people who could talk about the human rights condition in China except the Chinese people. The China's FM also condemned the reporter's manner of asking questions by calling it irresponsible and claimed that they did not appreciate unwarranted accusations. The controversial response of Wang was exactly the opposite to Chinese President Xi Jinping statement when he was asked a similar question by a British reporter during his visit in London in 2015. Jinping admitted that China has a room for improvement in terms of human rights. The visit of China's FM in Canada was deemed as a significant event to refresh the bilateral relations between the two nations. A free-trade deal is reportedly on board for Ottawa and China. The ties between Canada and China have gone sour after Garratt was detained in 2014 over espionage charges, according to Yahoo! News. His wife was also held and was out on a bail. China has been facing scrutiny since the nation faced political tightening under the governance of Xi. The freedom of speech was highly restricted where bloggers, reporters, activists and journalists were harassed and detained. Watch Wang's reply during the press conference in Ottawa on June 1, Wednesday: New Delhi: The Indian government believes it has found a new revenue source: it will bottle and sell water from the holy, and filthy, Ganges River online. For years the government has been racking its brains to save the national post office given email, mobile phones and courier services have almost killed letter delivery revenues. Farindra Choudhary, who works as a cook, with a bottle of Ganges water she keeps at home for religious occasions. Credit:Amrit Dhillon The plan is to sell water from the holy river through a government portal to Hindus who can have a bottle of Gangajal (Hindus call the Ganges 'Ganga' and 'jal' is water) delivered to their homes by the postman. On Monday, Ravi Shankar Prasad, who is minister for Telecom and IT but also heads the Postal Department, told journalists the idea killed two birds with one stone: it would revive the post office's revenues while serving the 'cultural needs' of the people. Rio de Janeiro: Police investigating the disappearance of Tasmanian man Rye Hunt in Rio de Janeiro say they have received a report of a body sighted in the city's harbour, but searchers have been unable to find it. Mr Hunt has been missing since May 21 following an argument with travel companion Mitchell Sheppard at Rio de Janeiro's international airport, where the pair had planned to buy plane tickets to Bolivia. On Friday, lead investigator Elen Souto said a fishing boat reported spotting a body on Wednesday morning. The body was dressed in clothing similar to that worn by Mr Hunt when he was last seen. The body was reportedly sighted near a small island, Ilha Rasa, some eight kilometres from Copacabana Beach. WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., June 3, 2016 -- The United States Coast Guard (USCG) has awarded Piedmont Propulsion Systems, LLC (PPS) a five-year contract to provide repair and overhaul services for the Hamilton Sundstrand 14RF propeller systems installed on USCG's fleet of HC-144A Ocean Sentry aircraft. The HC-144A is a Maritime Patrol Aircraft manufactured by Airbus Military. Unveiled in 2006, the HC-144A is the military version of the commercial CN-235-300M and serves the USCG as a medium range surveillance and maritime patrol aircraft. Sammy Oakley, General Manager of PPS said, "We're very proud to be able to serve the USCG's very important mission and maintain its aircraft propellers to the highest standards." PPS has a rich history of providing aircraft propeller repair and overhaul services for the United States Government, including existing contracts and subcontracts supporting the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, Department of Transportation, Department of Commerce and Department of Justice. About Piedmont Propulsion Systems (www.piedmontpropulsion.com) Piedmont Propulsion Systems, LLC, a subsidiary of First Aviation Services Inc. offers extensive component maintenance and overhaul capabilities to the commercial, regional, military, corporate and general aviation industry through its facilities in North Carolina. PPS has over 65 years of experience in propeller maintenance overhauls and is a FAA and EASA Part 145 Repair Station. PPS is a Hartzell and McCauley authorized service center and also has factory trained Dowty and Hamilton technicians. PPS has the majority market share for the Hamilton 14SF/RF, Dash 8, ATR, EMB-120 and DHC-6 platforms. About First Aviation Services Inc. (www.firstaviation.com) First Aviation Services Inc. (FAvS), headquartered in Westport, Connecticut, is a leading provider of repair and overhaul, rotables management and related engineering services to the aviation industry worldwide. FAvS's principal operating subsidiaries are Aerospace Turbine Rotables, Inc. (AeTR) and Evolution Aerospace, Inc. (EVO) in Wichita, KS and Piedmont Propulsion Systems, LLC (PPS) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. More information about FAvS and its subsidiaries may be found on the company's website www.firstaviation.com. The three board members, who are accused of sheltering fugitives and spreading false news, said they would appear in court on Saturday The board of the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate confirmed Thursday that three of its leading members will appear before a misdemeanor court Saturday to face trial in the latest twist of an ongoing stand-off between the union and the interior ministry. Syndicate head Yehia Kalash, secretary-general Gamal Abdel-Reheem and undersecretary Khaled El-Balshy have been officially charged with sheltering fugitives - journalists Mahmoud El-Sakka and Amr Badr - as well spreading false news about the police raid of the union's headquarters on 1 May to arrest the two journalists. The syndicate's board, which held a meeting on Thursday, asserted its full support to Kalash, Abdel-Reheem and El-Balshy, noting that the charges against them constitute a "fierce attack" against Egyptian journalists and freedom of expression and freedom of the press in Egypt. The syndicate added that their referral to trial is "unprecedented" in the history of Egyptian unions and syndicates. The three board members were questioned by prosecutors earlier this week before being released on bail that was paid anonymously against their will. Unprecedented move The unprecedented move by security forces against the union last month has left the syndicate and the interior ministry at loggerheads. Last Sunday, the union leaders underwent hours of questioning by prosecutors on the two charges levelled against them. Shortly afterwards, prosecutors set bail at EGP 10,000, which the trio refused to pay as a form of protest against the legitimacy of the investigation and charges. However, after their bail was paid anonymously against their will, the union leaders grudgingly agreed in the early hours of Tuesday to leave detention. Kalash told reporters later on Tuesday that the journalists' syndicate cannot be broken, insisting that "whoever bets against it will lose in the end". Search Keywords: Short link: Authorities warn about rainbow fentanyl Victims often arent aware theyre taking it The Ventura County Office of Education and state health officials have issued a warning to schools and families about rainbow fentanyl, a form of the potentially fatal synthetic opioid that comes in bright colors. Rainbow fentanyl can be found in... Cancer support community to host remembrance event Cancer Support Community Valley/Ventura/Santa Barbara invites family members and friends of those who have died from cancer to attend the second annual Evening of Remembrance from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thurs., Nov. 3 at Cancer Support Communitys Garden of Hope,... Grant advances CSUCI research Cal State Channel Islands assistant professor of computer science Scott Feister and assistant professor of mathematics Alona Kryshchenko recently received $112,480 from the National Science Foundation to continue a grant to support their research project, Enhancing Laser Based Ion Sources... Healthcare agency recommends flu shots The Ventura County Health Care Agency offers options for the community to receive flu shots through its Ambulatory Care Clinic system, public health clinics and pop-up clinics. Although seasonal influenza viruses are detected year-round in the United States, they are... Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Steinbach-based window manufacturer, Loewen, announced Friday that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the business of La Loma Windows & Doors, based in Tucson, Arizona. The La Loma acquisition will be a complementary addition to our current portfolio of Loewen products manufactured in Steinbach, said Loewen president and chief executive officer Al Babiuk in a release. La Loma, which was founded in 2004, is a manufacturer of highly customized wood and steel window and door products, known for their distinctive craftsmanship and unique traditional and contemporary styles. Babiuk said Loewen would be maintaining operations in Tucson, with the very skilled and dedicated staff there. The companys senior vice-president of product and marketing, Clyde Loewen, said the acquisition would expand the companys unique, custom architectural solutions for the premium segment of the window and door market. For some, fentanyl is a miracle drug used to dampen extreme physical pain from a devastating injury, surgery, or cancer treatment. For others, it is a cheap, highly addictive mental escape hatch. Fast acting, inexpensive, and more powerful than morphine and heroin, it can bring death in moments. The synthetic painkiller has been around since the 1960s, but a recent surge in overdose deaths linked to fentanyl has prompted congressional hearings, a CDC network-wide health alert, and a national conversation about prescription drug addiction. For many, Thursdays confirmation that Prince died after an accidental fentanyl overdose makes a national health crisis feel somehow personal. Fentanyl is sometime used used in lollipop form to treat military personnel who suffer devastating injuries on the battlefield and is also prescribed to cancer patients in patches or lozenges. Now, according to a CNN report, an illicit version of the drug is flooding into communities across America. Casual users are taking fentanyl in a pill or powder form. Others are using it to cut heroin or are buying patches from recovering cancer patients. The painkiller, which looks like heroin, is so inexpensive and so prevalent that is now being peddled as a stand-alone. The high is quick and potent. And sometimes, even in small amounts, fentanyl can be deadly. As I wrote for the The Daily Beast in March, drug counselors say that with heroin there is at least a chance for recovery after a relapse. But fentanyl can kill within moments. The high takes off even before the injection is complete. That explains why addicts, like my friend Queenie, are so often found lifeless with the syringe still dangling from their arm. Fentanyl can be up to 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times stronger than pharmaceutical grade heroin. Incidences of seizures or deaths related to its abuse have soared in some states. The drug is so strong that law enforcement officers wear hazmat suits during search and seizure operations. According to CNN, It first showed up in deadly doses on the streets in 2007, and the DEA was able to trace it to a single lab in Mexico. Even though that lab was shut down and drug seizures subsided for a time, in 2014 public health officials began tallying increases in at least 10 states. Last March, President Obama addressed a conference on prescription drug abuse in Atlanta where he urged us to focus our collective attention on prioritizing treatment over criminalization. His proposal included a request for $1.1 billion in new funding for drug treatments that would go directly to the states and training for health providers and drug prescribers. First responders around the country have been trained to used naloxone, the so-called save shot. But because fentanyl moves so quickly, the damage is often done before medical personnel can arrive. It is suspected that naloxone was used to save Prince, after his flight crew made an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois, in mid-April. He died a week later. Prince, we now know, was found in an elevator at his Paisley Park estate. He had been dead at least seven hours. Authorities did not say how the chart-topping artist obtained the drug or how he administered the deadly dose. What we do know is that fentanyl does not care about fame. It does not care about wealth, age, or color. It has no preference for gender, politics or religion. It does not care who you love, who loves you, or that you love at all. Fentanyl is prolific and efficient. Hordes of online Neo-Nazis thought they were being pretty clever. They developed a coded insignia that could secretly mark out Jewish public figures and writers. Mic discovered this week that a Google Chrome app allowed fellow Nazis, trolls, and self-identified Donald Trump supporters to search blogs and social media and help them target the Jewish people who had been identified. Typing the (((echoes))) symbol around a name acts like a corrupted anti-Semitic trigger warning and flags its targets as Jewish or anti-white to other bigoted users. Since most sites strip parentheses and other punctuation from search results, it is extremely difficult to find specific instances on social media, making it challenging to trace patterns of abuse. When The Daily Beast examined the Chrome app, it also emerged that a list of named Jewish actors, directors, and media figures were being targeted. Trump may be the favored presidential candidate of these trolls, but even his family members werent safe from their anti-Semitic attacks. Hidden in its JavaScript is Jared KushnerTrumps son-in-law. The owner of the New York Observer married Ivanka Trump in 2009. Its a bit ironic, considering that such a large portion of Trumps support comes from the same hate groups who put this list together. Then again, its not like their garbage worldview makes any sense anyway. Most of the users of the simple Chrome extension called Coincidence Detector, which was built by enterprising Neo-Nazis, probably have no idea how the app works. Its available in the Chrome store, and is designed to help you detect total coincidences about who has been involved in certain political movements and media empires. Arent Neo-Nazis subtle? Curious about how they put it togetherWhat does Neo-Nazi JavaScript look like? Who is on the list? Who made it?I downloaded the extension and dug in. If youre following along at home, Chrome saves extensions in the Library folder (on Mac, usually ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Extensions) under the apps ID, which generally looks like the product of someone repeatedly smashing their head against their keyboard or the name of a volcano in Iceland. In the case of Coincidence Detector: hldnghbakgkgeocjllocmpobpppkfepo. The folder contained nothing special. There was a ReadMe file featuring only # ((( Coincidence Detector ))); an icon PNG and loading GIF; and HTML for the extensions pop-up menu. Chrome extensions are pretty boring. But there were a few details worth mentioning. Based on the myscript.js file, the author apparently ripped the extensions function from this Stack Overflow post. The extension also changes any instance of Israel to Our Greatest Ally. The extensions main JavaScript file started with a note reading // Initial list in case load doesnt work. Below that was an initial list of 171 Jewish surnames (as well as a few celebrities, including Woody Allen and Winona Ryder). A link to its source URL, a GitLab list compiled with the help of the anti-Semitic The Right Stuff (TRS) Forum, features 8,772 organizations and people, including Kushner, to echo-ify. Most of those on the list are Jewish. What a coincidence! A few of the names on the listincluding Milo Yiannopoulos and Andrew Breitbartseem to be included as odd jokes. But whatever. Thats enough Nazi JavaScript for one day. Update, 6/3/2016: The app has apparently been pulled from the Chrome store. Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry called on the international community to fulfil its pledge to make a Palestinian state a "tangible reality", addressing a conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that opened in Paris on Friday. Shoukry is heading the country's delegation at the international peace gathering in Paris which seeks to relaunch peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians. Shoukry also expressed Egypt's readiness for the revival of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which called on Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territory occupied in 1967, including east Jerusalem, in exchange for a normalisation of ties with Arab countries. During his address the Egyptian minister called on Washington, Moscow and the European Union "to push the peace process towards a solution" as he presented his country's vision for a "comprehensive, just solution" for the Palestinian issue, which he says is central for Middle Eastern stability. Shokury said it was imperative that the international community "commits to its pledges to bring the Palestinian state out of its theoretical and legal frame, to become a tangible reality the Palestinians live and Israelis coexist with peacefully," a foreign ministry statement said. He highlighted that striking equilibrium "between legitimacy and a balance of interests" is a prerequisite for stability, and criticised what he described as unprecedented "negligence" of the peace process since the 1993 Oslo accords whereby Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization recognised each other for the first time. The Egyptian minister is planning to hold bilateral talks with Arab and foreign leaders to discuss the course of the peace process. The meeting in the French capital brings together the Middle East Quartet - which comprises the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - as well as the Arab League, and around 20 other countries, without Israeli or Palestinian participation. It aims to lay the ground for a fully-fledged peace conference to be held by the end of the year, but skepticism is high about whether the initiative will make genuine progress. The gathering of ministers had been postponed from May to June to ensure the United States would attend, although Washington has made it clear it does not expect a major outcome from the new peace bid. The initiative has already been rejected by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who believes direct negotiations were the only way to resolve the conflict. Egyptian President Adel-Fattah El-Sisi last month backed the Paris initiative and called on the Palestinians and Israelis to seize what he described as a "realistic" and "great" opportunity to reach a peaceful solution. "There will be a warmer peace [between Egypt and Israel] if we provide a solution for our Palestinian brothersand give hope to Palestinians to establish a state and offer guarantees for both countries," he said. Search Keywords: Short link: So here we are. It all comes down to Califhey, wait. No, it doesnt all come down to California. Thats how Bernie Sanders has been framing next Tuesday, and the media have completely bought into it. Watching cable news, youd think that if Bernie wins California, Jerry Garcias going to rise from his grave and the Dead will reunite and Sanders will be the nominee. Californias big, and Californias razor close, and certainly it makes a difference whether Sanders or Hillary Clinton wins it. But not that big a difference. A whopping total of 475 delegates are at stake, but if its as close as the polls suggest, the winner stands to net a mere 20 or 30 delegates. Using this excellent delegate calculator, lets go through all the remaining races and then circle back to the big prize, bearing in mind that right now, among pledged delegates, its Clinton up by 268, 1,769 to 1,501. Saturday June 4, Virgin Islands. Seven delegates are at stake. The U.S.V.I. are three-quarters African American and just 15 percent white. So say Clinton wins it 75-25. Shell take five delegates to Sanderss two, netting three. Sunday, June 5, Puerto Rico. Ive been banging on about Puerto Rico being important because it has 60 delegates, which is a pretty big prize. Lets say Clinton wins that one by, oh, 65-35, which doesnt seem crazy. Shell win the delegate contest 39-21, netting 18. Then come all the contests on Tuesday, June 7: South Dakota has 20 delegates. Say Sanders wins 60-40. Hell win the delegate race 12-8, netting four. North Dakota has 18 delegates. Give Sanders another 60-40 win here; again, hell win 11-7, netting another four. Montana has 21 delegates. Give Sanders a third win of about that size. Thats 13-8 in terms of delegates, so he nets five more. New Mexico is a little more interesting. It has 34 delegates. A poll came out earlier this week showing Clinton with a 26-point lead. I cant quite believe that, but about half the turnout is expected to be Latino, so give Clinton New Mexico by 14 or 15 and she wins the delegate race 20-14, netting six. Now we come to New Jersey and its 126 delegates. Not much polling. There was one in early April that showed Clinton +9, but early April was a long time ago. An early May survey had her +28, and a mid-May one +17. Sanders certainly hasnt been competing there much. Lets be if anything a little conservative and say Clinton wins it roughly 58-42. That translates into delegate totals of 73-53, so shell pick up 20 delegates. So if these totals are about right, Clinton will win another 170 delegates, Sanders another 136. That would her at 1,939 and him at 1,637. Which brings us to California. Californias 475 pledged delegates are awarded in a pretty complicated way (heres a PDF of the whole plan, if youre interested). Most of them, 317, are awarded within congressional districts based on who won that district. There are 53 of those. In 2008, according to Bob Mulholland, the veteran California Democratic insider and a Clinton supporter this year, she won 42 of them. But thats an eight-year-old race, as he noted to me, so who knows if it means anything for this year. Another little wrinkle is that all congressional districts arent created equalsome have as many as nine delegates, others as few as four. Just 105 delegates are awarded on the basis of the total statewide vote, and then there are 53 elected officials and party operatives who are pledged according to the results. Thats your 475. Then there are 73 superdelegates, from Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer on down. But put them aside. This is about pledged delegates, right, because thats whats up for grabs when people vote. This brings us to one of the great obfuscations of this primary season. You always read that a candidate needs 2,383 delegates to clinch the nomination. And that is true if you include superdelegates. Hang with me here, this matters. There are 4,051 pledged delegates and 713 supers. Add those two numbers together, then divide that by two, then add one (i.e., 50 percent plus one). That gets you to 2,383. But if youre talking pledged delegates only, 50 percent plus one is 2,026. You never see that number, and I guess I understand why2,383 is the number, officially. But 2,026 is a majority of pledged delegatesyou know, the ones you win by persuading voters to pull the lever with your name on it. Ive been mystified as to why the Clinton people arent pushing more awareness of the 2,026 number. If the situation were reversed, we can be sure that Jeff Weaver would be all over cable denouncing the mere existence of 2,383, that strutting harlot of a number! So its next Tuesday night in California. The state-by-state delegate scenario that I played out above has occurred. Clinton is at 1,939, needing just 87 delegates out of California to hit 2,026. Do you know how badly Sanders would have to beat her to limit her to 86 delegates? No, you dont. But I do. Hed have to win by 82 to 18 percent. That would net Bernie 309 delegates out of California and would get him to 2,026, while shed have 2,025. That isnt going to happen. Whats going to happen, even if Sanders wins the state by, say, three or four points, is that he will net about 20 delegates, but she will still have won around 225 or 230, meaning she will exceed 2,026 by about 150 delegates, and Sanders will be short of the magic number by about the same amount. And then therell be a little cherry placed on the sundae the following Tuesday when the District of Columbia votes and Clinton wins big and nets another 10 or so delegates. So thats the unfuzzy math. It has nothing at all to do with the superdelegates Sanders and Weaver have spent months traducing. Its pledged delegates, earned in the voting booth (or at the caucus hall). Superdelegates will never, ever, ever undo such an outcome, and they never, ever, ever should. In a season when Sanders people have alleged a rigged system and sometimes outright theft, that would be the only actual case of theft in this seasonfor superdelegates to tell the voters sorry, you made the wrong choice when you chose your candidate, who is (incidentally) the first woman nominee in our partys history. And then California Democrats will meet after the fact at the Long Beach Hyatt Regency on June 19 to formalize everything, just like that recent meeting in Nevada. But lets not even go there. You can buy it online, but in Spain not a single bottle is left for sale. Wine lovers have exhausted the production of Peza do Rei wine. They say the Romans named Orense so for being the City of Gold, but from this city also pour burgas, fountains and bodies of warm water that have attracted people from around the world for its healing properties since the times of the Empire. I walk around the city, exquisite in its bars and restaurants (I wrote this article sitting in my favorite, Tamarindo Casa Cocina y Patio Bar). Everything here points to the wine of the Ribeira Sacra, winegrowing zone at the north of Orense. Visitors will drink the wine here, in the terraces, but it is in the banks of the Mino and Sil rivers where time will stop to ripen every bunch. Everything has changed in this remote space in Spain, almost touching Portugal, since its most distinguished guest chose a wine for one of his most important receptions: Barack Obama. Obamas wine maker is from Galicia, the Spanish newspapers said. The chosen wine, Peza do Rei, from Cachin Wineries, was at the center of the toast at the last Gala de la Hispanidad, hosted by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute in Washington, D.C., to honor the legacy of the Hispanic community in the United States. The demand for Peza do Rei bottles has skyrocketed ever since. Obamas wine, kindly nicknamed by the press, has been selling out. It has also stimulated a growth in the investors in the field, suddenly enamored by the wines that pour from these mountains. The desire in America for the wine from the Ribeira Sacra region directly contrasts with the indifference with which this same product is received in Spain, its country of origin. The exception however, is, almost exclusively, the most important gastronomic journalist in Spain, veteran Victor de la Serna. He speaks to me with enthusiasm of the wines of the region: Algueria, Guimaro, Silice Viticultores, Pedrouzos, and Ponte da Boga (I would add Eduardo Pena and Ribeiro Vina Mein to the list). Ruben Perez, technical director at Ponte Da Boga winery, says: We commercialize the wines of Ponte Da Boga in the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, China, and the Philippines. In the coming years, our efforts will be focused on the US, Canada, England, Germany, and Norway. The North American market is huge, and always has room for unique and original items, which is what wines from the Ribeira Sacra offer. The movie Sideways created a frenzy among consumers for the variety of Pinot Noir, offering a style of wine similar to Ribeira Sacra. Ana Delia Perez, owner of Adega Algueira, a winery located in the Ribeira Sacra, said that the high scores awarded by [influential wine critic] Robert Parker in 2008 to one of their wines, as well as others in the region, were an important endorsement to the region.Those scores have been steady year after year for a wide range of wines, and there are now many wineries from the Ribeira Sacra with a presence in the prestigious guide of The Wine Advocate, Perez added. Other similar guides, such as View from the Cellar, are recommending wines from this zone. Of the 192,7000 liters of wine from the Ribeira Sacra marketed outside of Spain, 104,700 make their way to the United States. The United Kingdom and Norway follow in the list of countries demanding the wine. Portugal, as incredible as it may seem, located only a few kilometers from the vineyards, does not request a single bottle. Dominic Rodriguez, from Classic Wines, and one of people responsible for the growing success of the Spanish wine in the United States, said: Ribeira Sacra wines are great wines. But, more importantly, the name of the varietal, mencia, is now being appreciated by American consumers as a very unique wine. There is an increase in demand the US because more importers and distributors are starting to carry mencias from the Ribeira Sacra, due, to a large degree, to the highly acclaimed mencias obtained from Bierzo, a rising wine region in the northwest of Spain. As with all the wineries in the zone, the strategy of Adega Algueria is not based in quantity, or in tackling the market as a whole, but in maintaining the line of quality, based on a rational viticulture, from its own production and low yield, with a special interest in the recovery of minority native varieties, explains Perez. In regards to the interest among investors interested in the region of the Ribeira Sacra, the owners of Adegas Algueira show themselves to be open, but cautious. We are respectful to those who want to develop a project in the Ribeira Sacra, but only as long as they respect the nature of mountain viticulture, and the strong slope cultivation that characterize us, said Perez. We must preserve our authenticity. Similar to other wineries in the region, Algueira aims to attract tourists: they offer daily wine tastings, and since 2003 have had a restaurant attached to the winery, and a boat that ambles around the Sil river, which offers a unique perspective of our viticulture. Rodriguez admitted that Obamas wine has been a major PR coup, but added, Peza do Rei was not chosen by Obama, but rather by a Gallego (native from Galicia) who has some influence in the catering service, so he deserves the credit, not a President that had nothing to do with it. The Galician media blew this out of proportion without any merit to it. The good thing about it is that every winery in Galicia was encouraged to push harder in the US market. While he recommends all of the regions wines, Rodriguez singled out the wines of Abadia da Cova, which deserves a lot of credit because, as it promotes its own brand, and constantly promotes Ribeira Sacra. In Orense, the wine makers speak about conquering the globe with humility. They travel to New York, they present new wines, and then they trace their steps back to bury their hands in their vineyards. With additional reporting by Carlota Tarrago DETROIT The abduction and murder of 13-year-old Deontae Mitchell has shocked a city already reeling from a spate of child killings. Police have apprehended two of three suspects believed to be involved in the death of Mitchell, whose body was found in a field and positively identified Thursday afternoon. Mitchell had been abducted at gunpoint Tuesday night on the citys eastside after biking with his cousin. Before he was kidnapped, Mitchell had picked up money dropped by Gregory Walker as he was urinating against an exterior grocery store wall, Mitchells cousin told police. Surveillance video captured what happened next. Walker, holding a nickle-plated revolver, is seen grabbing Mitchell by an arm and forcing him into the open rear passenger door of a black Chevy Impala. The car was later found near I-94 on the eastside. Walker, 45, was arrested early Thursday in Toledo, Ohio, about an hour from Detroit. (He was with an unidentified person, who was also detained. ) Walker has been convicted multiple times for receiving or concealing a stolen motor vehicle. Hes also been convicted of cocaine possession and a firearms charge. This should be a message to all who perpetrate crimes against children: were going to continue in a very relentless way to find you and bring you into custody, police chief James Craig said. Were talking about a defenseless child. An adult male with a gun. Once again, another coward preying on children that needs to stop. Hours later police took Ernest Coleman into custody as a suspect in the childs death, said Sgt. Michael Woody. Police are still searching for 51-year-old felon Roy Portis in connection with Mitchells death. Records show he last lived on Lenox Street, near the site of the kidnapping, and that he was convicted for arson in 2011 and four years earlier for receiving stolen property. (Portis was discharged from probation in November 2014.) The Michigan State Police and Federal Bureau of Investigation and have joined the manhunt for Portis. Several Detroit children have been killed or injured by gunfire in recent months. On Easter, a 3-year-old girl was caught in a hail of bullets and died. In April, a 4-year-old boy was shot and his father was killed, then a 6-year-old girl playing in a yard was shot in her back. In May, a 2-year-old was shot, and a 5-year-old died after accidentally shooting herself with a gun found under her grandmothers pillow. Downtown is looking all beautiful and everything but in the hoods, we cant keep our children alive, said Darlene Sanders, a hair stylist who lives on the citys west side who was having lunch at a downtown restaurant. Its a damned shame. I dont know whats wrong with people. In the last week, Russia has stepped up its attacks in northern and western Syria, and the U.S. has cried foul, claiming Russia is only pretending to target terrorists. Despite claims they are focusing on [al Qaeda in Syria] and [ISIS], Russia and [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad have primarily targeted the moderate opposition, a U.S. intelligence official explained to The Daily Beast. Moscows offer of joint operations with the United States [against ISIS] was a blatant attempt to deflect attention from his targeting of moderate opposition, and sadly, innocent Syrians trying to survive the disaster Assad has created. By continuing to back Assad, it appears Moscow has squandered the opportunity presented by the cessation of hostilities to stabilize the situation in Syria. Russia has a completely different version of this story. The Kremlin says some of the U.S.-backed rebels not only work with al Qaeda but refuse to sever the relationship. Therefore, it is not Russias fault that U.S. allies are working so closely with a terror group and that Russia accidentally strikes U.S.-backed rebels in its the war against extremists in Syria. And the fact is, the Russians arent totally wrong. Some of the U.S.-backed rebels do team up with al Qaeda. The latest Russian-led assault in Syria has made it harder for the U.S. to convince those groups to break those terrorist ties. Its a situation that further exposes the Achilles heel of the American strategy in Syria: the line between terrorist and moderate rebel is pencil-thin. The claims and counterclaims by the United States and Russia are the latest iteration in the battle of who is a legitimate target in counter-terror operations inside Syria. The debate was resurrected this week after the country has suffered its worst bombardment in months. A purported wave of Russian strikes earlier this week on hospitals in opposition-held parts of the city of Idlib killed at least 60. In addition to the city of Idlib, Russian and Syrian government airstrikes have concentrated on the neighboring province of Aleppo, home to Syrias largest city, and Daraya, a Damascus suburb under siege by the regime. In recent weeks, Russia has supported Syrian forces in Aleppo, moving troops from the city of Tadmour, U.S. defense officials told The Daily Beast. Russia has denied targeting anyone other than al Qaeda and ISIS, which are excluded from a so-called cessation of hostilities that took effect in February. But terrorists are clearly not the only casualties in the Russian air attacks. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Russian air strikes have killed more than 2,000 civilians, including 500 children and 300 women, since Russias intervention began on Sept. 30. The U.S. believes that Russia has set its sights on the rebels in the latest campaign to weaken opponents to Assad by conflating opposition groups with al-Nusra Front, al Qaedas franchise in Syria. Last month, before the latest assault, Secretary of State John Kerry called for rebels to distance themselves physically and politically from Nusra. A month earlier, U.S. Special Envoy for Syria Michael Ratney issued a statement urging the opposition to dissociate from terror groups. It didnt happen. Last week, Russia claimed they were pausing for a day for rebels to relocate from Nusra. Russia then ramped up its attacks on both rebels and Nusra. The Russians claim that as opposition areas shrink, rebel forces are increasingly moving toward Nusra-held areas, making it difficult to distinguish between rebels and terrorists. I have an impression, which is supported by yet unconfirmed facts, that these [moderate] groups intentionally occupy al-Nusra front positions in order to prevent al-Nusra from being attackedPerhaps those supporting al-Nusra are interested in breaking down the ceasefire and doing everything to force a military solution [of the Syrian crisis]. This would be totally unacceptable, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Sputnik News last month. What appears to be happening is that in critical areas of the war the rebels are pinched between Nusra and the Russian bombardments. And when the Russians see Nusra arriving, they point out its presence and declare the strike legitimate, experts believe. Its a self-fulfilling prophecy because Russian bombardments have weakened critical mainstream opposition defenses, requiring Nusra to deploy reinforcements, after which Russia can point to Nusra and say that Russian strikes have targeted Nusra all along, said Jennifer Cafarella, a Syria analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. To be sure, it has been clear for years that the U.S.-allied anti-Assad rebels in Syria lean on al Qaedas military prowess for their survival. Some U.S. officials stress that Nusra and opposition forces currently are working together on occasion and that such cooperation is not born out of shared ideology but practical wartime necessity. Kerrys growing push for the opposition to distance itself from Nusra became all the more difficult this week, after the latest rise in air assaults on the opposition. Simply put, the opposition needs Nusras help to survive, experts said. Indeed, the opposition working with al Nusra is the best defense for civilians who are victims of the ramped up air campaign and the threat of a regime ground advance. This week, reports emerged of civilians fleeing Idlib after the attacks on the hospitals. The opposition does not have enough military capability to preclude defeat. In the absence of that, they have chosen an alliance with Nusra. An alliance does not equal shared objectives or ideology for most groups, Cafarella asserted. All the while, ISIS has seized numerous villages from U.S.-backed rebels in northern Aleppo and is positioned to take Azzaz. These opposition forces face defeat without increased U.S. support. In the short term, there is nothing to stop Russia from continuing its attacks on Nusra and opposition groups. The Geneva talks are, at best, tenuous. The chief negotiator resigned earlier this week in protest against the regimes refusal to allow humanitarian aide into besieged areas and in objection to Russias air campaign. The United Nations has so far not followed through on a pledge to make humanitarian airdrops into rebel-held areas without Assads permission. A June 1 deadline set by the United Nations International Syria Support Group passed with no action. The failure, once again, of the ISSG to deliver on its promise to intervene confirms that Russia has freedom of action in Syria, Cafarella told The Daily Beast. Sensing Americans enormous frustration with money in politics, Senate Democrats have now signaled they are preparing a Democracy Package. Following the lead of President Obama in his final State of the Union address, the senators have begun to assemble a set of reforms to boost the profile, first reports indicated, of campaign finance reform. But the details of this package are astonishingly weak, and would represent an extraordinary step backward. The plan is weaker than those of both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. It is weaker than the position of the vast majority of Democrats in the House. And most importantly: It would do little if anything to end the corrupting influence of money in politics. At the core of the proposed package are four ideas: Senate Democrats would strengthen disclosure; they would propose a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United; they would strengthen enforcement at the FEC and SEC; and they would direct the states to make redistricting decisions through non-partisan commissions. None of these are bad ideas. But like prescribing aspirin for a broken leg, none of them are going to address the real problem with our Congress. The core corruption in Americas government is captured in a single aphorism: He who pays the piper calls the tune. The job of a member of Congress has become the job of raising money. Members spend anywhere between 30% and 70% of their time raising money. But they dont raise that money from the average American. They raise it from the richest Americans. And those Americansthe ones who pay the piperget to call the tune. Again and again, journalists and researchers have shown how the agenda of Congress gets set by its funders, and how the details of legislation get filled by the lobbyists of the funders. Thats not to say many lawmakers sells votes. Practically no one in Congress is that corrupt. Or stupid. And no one trying to influence Congress needs to be that corrupt, either. Everyone in Washington understands the influence game. It is a dance, not a bargain. As one member was told by a more experienced colleague when she came to Capitol Hill, always lean to the green. To clarify, she added: He was not an environmentalist. But none of the reforms that the Senate Democrats are talking about would even begin to address this core and corrupting economy of influence. Democrats like disclosure. Anyone should. But disclosure wont change the fact that special interests fund congressional campaigns. It might embarrass Republicans, and hence, staunch the money going to Republicans. But it doesnt change the system, and its the systemwhether benefiting Republicans or Democratsthat is corrupt. Democrats love to talk about amending the Constitution to reverse the vilified Citizens United. But they know very well that since the Civil War, America has never passed an amendment opposed by one party. And they know with perfect certainty that their colleague, Mitch McConnell (R-KY), will never support an amendment to reverse Citizens United. Democrats support law enforcement at the FEC and more aggressive enforcement at the SEC. Who wouldnt? But the corruption that debilitates Congress is the legal corruption, not illegal corruption. Enforcement wont touch that. And yes, the way the House of Representatives is gerrymandered is criminal. But pushing a solution that wont have any real effect until 2025 isnt a strategy for getting a government that America can trust. Its a puff that shouldnt fool anyone. The only reform that would have a meaningful effect is to change the way Congress funds its campaigns. And the most promising development in this election cycle had been that both Democratic presidential candidates have endorsed legislation that would do precisely that. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both have supported small dollar citizen funding of congressional campaignsthe first time thats been central to any major candidates platform for as long as anyone can remember. What the Senate Democrats are considering is an embarrassing retreat. Just at the moment when the Democrats could give America a clear signal of how they would make things different, and just at the moment when the vast majority of Americans have signaled that they would support precisely the change that would make things different (72% in recent polls indicate they support small dollar citizen funding of campaigns), Senate Democrats want to retreat. Four years ago, in a poll conducted by the Clarus Group, 80% of Americans said they thought campaign finance reforms had been designed more to help current members of Congress get re-elected [than] to improve the system. Thats a perfect description of the Senate Democrats Democracy Package. No doubt it will help them raise money; no doubt it will help them embarrass Republicans; no doubt it will give the candidates something to say when asked about the corrupting influence of money in politics. But no doubt, this package of reform is not enough to change the corruption in Washington. And its time that we progressives step above our partisan allegiance, and call it as it is. The devil is domestic violence in Outcast, a new Cinemax series premiering tonight from Robert Kirkman, the macabre mastermind behind The Walking Dead. For his follow-up to that critically hailed comic (and blockbuster AMC television adaptation), Kirkman remains firmly in supernatural territorythis time, for a story (based on his and artist Paul Azacetas comic of the same name, which debuted in 2014) about a rural town beset by demonic possession, and two unlikely allies determined to do something about it. And yet to a far greater degree than his prior hit, Kirkmans latest is rooted in a more mundane, human evil: that of the abuse perpetrated against those we supposedly (or are supposed to) love. On the basis of The Walking Dead and now Outcast, Kirkman has transformed himself into TVs premiere purveyor of plaguesin the former, a zombie apocalypse; in the latter, a horde of demons who resemble swirling black ink-smoke and assume control of the living for reasons that, at least for now, remain opaque. Over the course of its first four episodes (which is all Cinemax provided critics in advance), the show establishes itself as a portrait of all-too-relatable sins. Dark forces may be creeping through the downtrodden country burg of Rome, West Virginia, where houses roofs are weighed down and warped by wet leaves, stores are as quiet as they are dusty, and graffiti-loving skate kids loiter around empty parking lots. However, the real threat to the towns citizens seems to be not only Satan, but those faux-trustworthy individuals who are allowed to enter through the front door, and inhabit parlors, kitchens, and living rooms. The pariah at the center of Outcast is Kyle Barnes (Patrick Fugit), whos introduced dreaming of a wife (Kate Lyn Sheil) and child that, we soon learn, fled him after a mysterious incident involving abuse. Kyle has returned home to live in isolated squalor in his moms ramshackle abode, where (as flashbacks reveal) he was routinely preyed upon by the womandragged around by the hair, and locked away in a pantry closet where hed scrawl drawings on the wallbecause she was possessed by a malevolent spirit. How she came to be that way isnt explained in episode one. Yet its clear she isnt Romes only victim of Beelzebubian manipulation from the series chilling opener, in which a young boy stares open-mouthed at a bug on his bedroom walland then crushes it with his forehead, smearing its blood over his face before chomping into it with unnatural viciousness. Outcasts maiden chapter (available to stream, for free, online https://cinemax.outcasttvseries.com/watch-the-pilot-for-free-now/) is helmed by Adam Wingard, one of American cinemas most promising horror directors responsible for 2011s slasher-ish Youre Next, 2014s John Carpenter-style thriller The Guest, and this falls buzz-worthy The Wood. Wingards precise compositions capture the raw, damp, gone-to-seed decay of his West Virginia milieu. Moreover, they evoke an atmosphere of desperation and desolation in tune with his characters, all of whom are trying to cope with, and overcome, the cloud of brutality and misery hovering just overhead. Before long, Kirkman has paired Kyle with his former foster sister Megan (Boardwalk Empires Wrenn Schmidt), who strives to care for him despite the fact that her cop husband Mark (The Offices David Denman) despises him, as well as Reverend Anderson (Philip Glenister), a preacher with a habit of cursingincluding taking the Lords name in vain when it suits himand a track record of performing exorcisms to free innocents from Satans sinister grip. Thanks to a confluence of events culminating with the revelation that Kyles blood has the power to expel demons from their hostsa discovery that may explain how he saved his mother, whos now a nursing-home vegetableKyle and Anderson soon become reluctant partners driven to pursue a new spate of demonic possession cases. In their storylines, as well as in Kyles flashbacks and an additional narrative strand involving Megan confronting a former foster brother who molested her years earlier, the unholy is found in the comfortable, seemingly safe confines of the suburban home. In Kirkmans chilling worldview, terrors are something located withinbe it with regards to ones body, soul, residence or mind, the last of which becomes the true source of pain for Kyle, Anderson and Megan as they grapple with both present crises and inescapable memories of past traumas. After a sterling first installment, Outcastenhanced by a foreboding industrial score by Atticus Ross (Trent Reznors NIN producer, and contributor on The Social Network and Gone Girl)slows down its pace and more evenly divides its time between various points of interest. Those include not only Megan and Mark, but also police chief Giles (terrific character actor Reg E. Cathey), who soon finds himself investigating a strange camper near a raft of crucified forest animals that may be the scene of an acquaintances crimes. In its second and third episodes, the material periodically drags to a crawl while laying the bedrock foundation for forthcoming action. And its habit of leaving key details and interpersonal dynamics vague borders on irritating. Though it resumes building momentum by the end of its fourth chapter, theres a sense that the show requires somewhat more vigorous storytelling, lest it potentially fall victim to the mounting peak-TV epidemic of skimping on compelling episode-to-episode plot in order to encourage binge-watching bulk sessions. In a turn thats far removed from his cheerily naive Almost Famous breakout performance, Fugit embodies Kyle with haunted self-doubt and insecurity as a man struggling to comprehend the worlds, and his own, capacity for cruelty. And Glenister, an English actor best known for his UK small-screen work, strikes a uniquely no-nonsense, rough-around-the-edges chord as Anderson, a true believer whose faith requires no decorous delicacy. In horror-maestro Kirkmans assured hands, theyre an intriguing duo beset by abusive evils both internal and externaland ones that, as the show tantalizingly suggests, are all too often embraced, nurtured, and propagated like a homemade virus by those nearest and dearest to us. The military's search-and-rescue centre received a distress call from a boat full of migrants in the Mediterranean on Friday, 265km northwest of the western Egyptian town of Salloum, the army said in a statement Friday. Greece's coastguard spokesman, Nikos Lagadianos, said four bodies were pulled out of the water and at least 340 people rescued as Greece rushed two patrol vessels, a military airplane and three helicopters to the scene for the rescue operations. Passing merchant vessels were also taking part in the rescue efforts some 75 nautical miles south of Crete. At least 700 migrants were believed to be on board the smuggling boat which capsized off the coast of Crete, with hundreds still missing, the International Organisation for Migration said. The incident took place in international waters. It was not immediately clear what flag the ship carried, where it set off from, or the nationalities of those aboard. Thousands of migrants and refugees head for Europe every month in overcrowded and rickety smuggling vessels boats. Some 204,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to reach Europe since the beginning of 2016, while 2,500 died while making the precarious trip, the United Nations' refugee agency said on Tuesday. Search Keywords: Short link: Geneina is due to stand trial next week over charges he spread false news Related Egypt's former top auditor referred to court for 'spreading false news' Egypt's former top auditor, Hisham Geneina, was released from detention where he was facing trial for spreading false news, after his family paid bail, his lawyers said Friday. Geneina initially refused to pay bail because he does not believe he committed a crime, his lawyer Ali Taha had earlier said. But after one of his daughters was rushed to hospital over news of her father's detention, his family moved to pay a bail of EGP 10,000 (approx. $1,128), Taha said, adding that his client has been released. Geneina was summoned for questioning last month over accusations of spreading false news. The charges stem from his statements last December that corruption costs the country EGP 600 billion (approx. $67.6 billion) over a four-year period. He is due to stand trial on 7 June. In March, President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi dismissed Geneina from his position as head of the Central Auditing Organization after a committe investigating his report concluded that Geneina had misled the public. Search Keywords: Short link: The NAS is compromised by the serious conflicts of interest within the NAS and its research arm, the National Research Council (NRC). Even studies relied upon by the NAS to show GMO safety are authored by people with conflicts of interest. Indeed, the new report by Food & Water Watch 'Under the Influence: The National Research Council and GMOs' highlights the millions of dollars in donations received by the NAS and NRC from biotech companies. On its website, GMWatch discusses the Food & Water Watch report, which documents the one-sided panels of scientists the NRC enlists to carry out its GMO studies and describes the revolving door of its staff directors who shuffle in and out of industry groups. The report also shows how it routinely arrives at watered-down scientific conclusions based on industry science. Some 11 out of the 19 members of the NRC committee listed in the NAS report have ties to the GMO industry or to pro-GMO advocacy. The two reviews of animal data relied on by the NAS to claim GMO safety are authored by people who also have conflicts of interest (an analysis of these reviews and why they are misleading is here). Readers are advised to read the Food & Water Watch Report to see for themselves the massive conflicts of interests that Ridley either remains ignorant of or wishes to gloss over in order to push a pro-GMO agenda. 'False and misleading statements' GMWatch notes that the NAS committee member chosen to speak about the food safety aspect of the report to the online magazine The Conversation was Michael A. Gallo, emeritus professor of environmental and occupational medicine at Rutgers University. Gallo is a regular pro-corporate commentator who in 2004 defended farmed salmon in the wake of research showing it contained high levels of toxic PCB chemicals. In his piece for The Conversation, Gallo makes false and misleading statements, which are apparently designed to reassure the public about the safety of GM foods. For example, he says that any changes seen in GMO feeding experiments were "within normal ranges". GMWatch states that this is an unscientific statement of a type often used to dismiss significant differences found in GM-fed animals compared with the non-GM-fed controls and goes on to highlight how pro-GM scientists make "a nonsense of the scientific method" and to come up with conclusions designed to mislead. GMWatch concludes: "It is well established that conflicts of interest affect scientific outcomes and conclusions in every field that has been investigated, from tobacco to pharmaceuticals to GM crops and foods. The public deserves better than the NAS's biased attempt to convince the public that GMOs are safe." It is not the first time advocates for GM like Matt Ridley have used flawed reports to push for this technology and to attempt to pass off tainted sources as 'independent' and thus beyond reproach (see this and this). Readers may also wish to read these commentaries on the NAS report. Rosemary Mason's 44-page open letter response to Ridley Matt Ridley's piece in The Times may be regarded as part of the government's on-going push to get GMOs into Britain and a timely intervention as the debate about glyphosate in the EU reaches a head. The final vote on renewing the licence for glyphosate use in the EU will take place on 6th June 2016. The British Government is supporting the European Food and Safety Authority's assertion that it doesn't cause cancer, despite the WHO saying it is "probably carcinogenic." In her 44-page open letter (1/6/2016) to Ridley and the editor-in-chief of The Times, Rosemary Mason responds to Ridley's piece by saying, "I think I smell an industry rat." While Ridley takes about the safety of GM crops and reduced chemical use, Mason rubbishes such claims by referring to Charles Benbrook's paper on the massive increases in glyphosate use in trends in glyphosate herbicide use in the United States and globally (2016) which states that: "Since 1974 in the U.S., over 1.6 billion kilograms of glyphosate active ingredient have been applied, or 19 % of estimated global use of glyphosate (8.6 billion kilograms). Globally, glyphosate use has risen almost 15-fold since so-called 'Roundup Ready'." If recent evidence demonstrates anything, it is that GM crops and glyphosate use are joined at the hip where industry profits are concerned. GMOs drive the sales of glyphosate. As if to underline this, referring to Monsanto, Jack Kasky on Bloomberg reports: "Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant is focused on selling more genetically modified seeds in Latin America to drive earnings growth outside the core US market. Sales of soybean seeds and genetic licenses climbed 16 percent, and revenue in the unit that makes glyphosate weed killer, sold as Roundup, rose 24 percent." In the same piece, Chris Shaw, a New York-based analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Co states that "Glyphosate really crushed it", implying it was a major boost to Monsanto's profits. The bottom line is sales and profit maximisation - and the unflinching and defence of glyphosate despite the cover up of its harm and the effects on communities in Latin America, where cancers, birth defects, infertility and DNA changes since being exposed to GM Roundup Ready Crops are reported. An unstoppable global momentum against GMOs and glyphosate Mason draws Ridley's attention to a recent piece in the New Eastern Outlook in which William Engdahl discusses the relicensing of glyphosate in the EU: "What is amazing about the entire ongoing battle over glyphosate re-approval is that opposition and awareness that the EU Commission is willing by any means possible to bow to the chemical industry glyphosate weed-killer cartel and approve a probable carcinogen, is growing by leaps and bounds, and internationally. "That awareness is in turn bringing light to the very dark corners of the world of GMO itself, something that Bill Gates, David Rockefeller, Monsanto, Syngenta and friends are none too able to withstand. To date the EU Commission has received a staggering 1.5 million citizen petitions demanding they not re-approve glyphosate. "The opposition to EU Commission approval of glyphosate has taken on a self-expanding character and that has the agribusiness weed-killer cartel alarmed. The process is exposing to the general public, for the first time in such a clear manner, the degree of corruption in not only Brussels but also in the so-called scientific bodies that advise it on what is safe and what not." Signed by individuals and groups representing 60 million US citizens, Mason also brings the Letter from America to the attention of Ridley, which warned David Cameron (and the rest of the EU) not to authorise GM crops. It confirmed the devastating effects on human health and the environment. Feeding the world? Who cares? This is about corporate profit GM is not about public good or feeding the hungry as lobbyists claimed, but about corporate control of the food system. It stated: "Studies of animals fed GM foods and/or glyphosate, however, show worrying trends including damage to vital organs like the liver and kidneys, damage to gut tissues and gut flora, immune system disruption, reproductive abnormalities, and even tumors ... "These scientific studies point to potentially serious human health problems that could not have been anticipated when our country first embraced GMOs, and yet they continue to be ignored by those who should be protecting us. Instead our regulators rely on outdated studies and other information funded and supplied by biotech companies that, not surprisingly, dismiss all health concerns. "Through our experience we have come to understand that the genetic engineering of food has never really been about public good, or feeding the hungry, or supporting our farmers. Nor is it about consumer choice. Instead it is about private, corporate control of the food system Americans are reaping the detrimental impacts of this risky and unproven agricultural technology. "EU countries should take note: there are no benefits from GM crops great enough to offset these impacts. Officials who continue to ignore this fact are guilty of a gross dereliction of duty." Most of the countries in the EU apart from Britain took that advice and opted out of GM (including Scotland, Wales and Ireland). Mason argues that glyphosate is a biocide: it kills life. She knows this from her direct experience on her nature reserve in the UK and cites various sources of evidence to highlight a correlation of the huge loss of biodiversity with GMOs and glyphosate use in the US, the massive adverse impacts on human health and links between herbicide use (including glyphosate) and antibiotic resistance. In citing a wide array of sources throughout her letter, Mason also highlights the ongoing collusion between academia and biotech companies, not least Monsanto, resulting in fraudulent practices intended to deceive the public and fool it into accepting harmful but highly profitable products. Readers are urged to read Mason's open letter to Ridley in full. In it, she outlines how GMOs, glyphosate and the increasingly globalised system of chemical-intensive food and agriculture have led not only to academic fraud but also to an increase in congenital anomalies in the UK, decreased mental acuity and adverse impacts on fetal and child development and a wide range of diseases and illnesses. And she also takes apart Ridley's claim about GM crops and new techniques being no different from conventionally bred crops and safer (as have others), highlights various conflicts of interest within prominent bodies which shape policy and public opinion and addresses the issue of Golden Rice that Ridley also misrepresents in his piece (see this as well). Ideology and self-interest driving the pro-GMO lobby Whereas Ridley offers a short but prominent newspaper article based on a flawed report, industry-inspired cliches and falsehoods, Mason is compelled to respond with a 44-page, comprehensive and fully-referenced text that pulls together relevant scientific research on GMOs and glyphosate. At the same time, she highlights the corruption and deceptions that have made it possible for powerful commercial interests to destroy the environment and human health for profit. A privileged viscount like Ridley, affluent biotech company CEOs, politicians and well-paid career scientists spout public relations rhetoric and deride critics for denying GM to the hungry poor. However, the pro-GMO lobby relies on fraud, regulatory delinquency, opaque practices, smear campaigns, dirty tricks, the debasement of science and PR messages such as a trillion meals containing GMOs have been eaten and no one has died or become ill as a result and that 'the debate is over'. Aside from well-funded slick PR, it also relies on secretive studies and makes baseless claims wrapped up as scientific facts. And yet it is their critics who are dismissed for supposedly being emotive, unscientific, ideologues driven by self-interest. In making such accusations, pro-GMO figures attempt to deflect attention from their own self-interested motives, their hypocrisy concerning their policies towards the poor or their massive political influence. These people tend to be part of an enclosed world that promotes allegiance to a corporate-dominated paradigm that is intolerant of alternative views. And the result is a certain self-righteousness that leads them to impose their will and neoliberal ideology on the rest of humanity in collusion with the machinery and active backing of national states, while they set out to denigrate models of agriculture that could sustainably feed much of the world and ignore those factors (largely fuelled by the neoliberal system they support) that currently create poverty, hunger and food insecurity. When saying that Europe's agriculture will wilt if it rejects GM, Ridley mirrors the claim made by Owen Paterson that Europe will become a museum of world farming if it does not embrace GM crops (and, by implication, its chemical inputs). The evidence indicates that this is nothing more than fear-mongering. Ridley's tone reflects Paterson's baseless attacks on critics of GM. Finally, for those who may not be aware, Owen Paterson is a British MP and former the former environment minister. Due to his ongoing promotion of GM, fellow Conservative Party MP Zac Goldsmith described him as a puppet of the biotech industry. He is also Matt Ridley's brother-in-law. Colin Todhunter is an extensively published independent writer and former social policy researcher, based in the UK and India. More of his articles can be found on Colin's website. Support Colin's work here. Egypt's foreign ministry denied on Friday that an Egyptian official insulted African colleagues by describing them as "dogs and slaves" during the United Nations Environment Assembly meeting which took place in Nairobi last week. "After an investigation conducted by the foreign ministry officials through video recordings and the sessions records, we deduced that all claims that the head of the Egyptian delegation insulted the African countries are lies," the statement said. On Sunday, head of the African Diplomatic Corps Technical Committee Yvonne Khamati presented a memo demanding that Egypt be banned from representing Africa in any official capacity after the head of the Egyptian delegation reportedly referred to Africans delegates as "dogs and slaves" during the meeting. According to Khamati, the Egyptian official allegedly used the epithet during consultation talks between Egypt, Morocco and other African delegations over a failed resolution to determine the environmental impact of latest Israeli incursion into the Palestinian Gaza Strip, a resolution which Egypt endorsed. During the meeting, Khatami told Kenyan Capital FM News on Sunday some members of the Kenyan delegation, who had previously served in Arabic-speaking countries and understood the language, were able to pick up on the epithet dogs and slaves" reportedly used by the the Egyptian official who was upset with certain African delegations. The Egyptian delegation at the UNEA meeting was headed by Ambassador Hisham Shaeer, the assistant foreign minister for environment affairs and sustainable development. The ministry said in its Friday statement that it asked the Egyptian ambassador to Kenya to demand the removal of Khamati from her post "after the harm it caused to the Egyptian people." Search Keywords: Short link: If they try to return to their ancestral land, which they are cruelly partitioned off from by wire fences, they are attacked by mercenary gunmen. That any of them remain on the land at all is testament to their courage and resilience, and to their profound sense of connection to the land. A profound connection Land is more than just life to the Guarani, it is central to their entire conception of themselves. Their history revolves around it, and it is a central tenet of their religion. They call it "the land without evil" and their ancestors wandered for centuries searching for it. Generations of their people are buried there, and they cannot countenance the idea of leaving. As far as they are concerned, there is no future without their land, no matter what condition it has been left in by outsiders. From what was once millions of hectares of dense forest in the central core of South America, the Guarani are now reduced to tiny patches of land, islands they have claimed in a sea of chemically-enhanced plantation agriculture. A strong sense of connection to the environment is a common feature among many tribal societies around the world, and this is particularly true of the Guarani. Land is not just a food source, a home, or a commodity to them, it is a totality, a universe to which they belong and towards which they have a deep responsibility. Sadly the loss and destruction of their land has translated accordingly. Depression is rife among the Guarani, and Tonico's people, the Guarani Kaiowa, suffer the highest suicide rate in the world. Faced with the prospect of a life of poverty and perpetual struggle on the margins of a society they did not create and which offers them less than nothing, hundreds have tragically taken their own lives. Terrible threats, simple solutions The solution is clear. Map out the Guarani's land and return it to the tribe, as Brazilian and international law demand. But waiting for Brazil's government - wracked by political chaos - or the country's courts, in which Guarani land cases are paralysed, to rule in their favor, has taken its toll on their morale. A deep sense of misery has set in. Tonico spoke candidly about this terrible problem: "So many young Guarani people commit suicide. It's around one a week. The time comes when you have had enough of waiting [for change]. You work yourself up with hope, then the courts dash your hopes. Your family suffers with hunger and malnutrition, the despair increases, there is no security, no hope, you are not sure of life improving. It is very sad." For speaking out and campaigning for their people's basic right to dignity and self-determination, Tonico and other Guarani leaders are harassed, intimidated, and attacked. He continued: "A slow genocide is taking place. There is a war being waged against us. We are scared ... They kill our leaders, hide their bodies, intimidate and threaten us. Me, too, many times. Last month they telephoned me and warned me there would be consequences if I carried on showing a film about the Guarani to politicians." An ongoing struggle Far from being sympathetic to the tribe's plight, the local government of Mato Grosso do Sul state is, in many ways, actively hostile to the Guarani. Many local politicians and journalists are on the side of ranchers and soya barons who despise the Guarani and would love to see them wiped off the face of the earth. Tonico and other activists have found they must look beyond their home region for support, to the world's media, and to international NGOs like Survival International. "We are always fighting for our land. Our culture does not allow violence but the ranchers will kill us rather than give it back. Most of the land was taken in the 1960s and 70s. The ranchers arrived and pushed us out. The land was of good quality, with rivers and forest. Now it is very valuable. The Guarani were living there for hundreds of years and we never suffered." Despite the threats to his own life, Tonico hopes to at least reduce the level of violence being meted out almost daily against his people by making their struggle as visible as he can to the world. His real objective though is to exert pressure, on the Brazilian government and on agri-business to push towards a humane solution and a viable future for his people. The situation may be bleak, but as long as the Guarani have brave leaders like Tonico to raise their voice, there is always hope that they can defend their lives, protect their lands and determine their own future. Lewis Evans is an author, and campaigner at Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples' rights. The two reactors were expected to be operational in December 2013 and October 2014, according to a report in Power Technology, which stated: "The Chinese nuclear project is benefiting from the experience gained from the Finnish and French NPPs, with significant savings in cost and construction time." Reports from the site indicate that the current completion target is 2018 "at the earliest". In April 2015 the South China Morning Post ran a report stating that the Taishan reactors had not been subject to tests before installation, and could therefore suffer from the same defect. CGN Power spokesperson Wang Xiaofei stated on 18th May that Areva had performed a comprehensive review of the manufacturing process of the parts in the two units at the Taishan plant according to the requirements of the "relevant regulations", and that nothing was found to be sub-standard. However Wang said nothing of the non-destructive tests that the Chinese National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA) had ordered on the units last year - leaving open the possibility that some problems may have been detected. Fears not yet dispelled The Taishan EPR vessels and heads were not forged by Areva, but were instead made in China and Japan under Areva's direction and using the identical manufacturing process, as reported by China Free Press. The vessel for Taishan 1 was made by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (Japan), which delivered the unit to site in 2011. Dongfang Electric Corporation (China) began to make the vessel in December 2009, and delivered it from its factory in Nansha, Guangzhou to Taishan on 22nd October 2014. Professor Woo Chung-ho, a Hong Kong nuclear energy expert and former senior scientist at Atomic Energy of Canada, told CFP of his surprise that a Chinese factory had forged the reactor: "I didn't know China was able to produce a pressure vessel. This component is quite special, it's large. Every step in the manufacturing process requires strict control. The welding of the pressure vessel is highly complex because it is very thick and must be able to withstand high pressure, raising serious safety concerns." Lai Kwong-tak, policy convenor of the Professional Commons think tank, added his own serious safety concerns: "Areva has repeatedly had problems with product quality, even falsifying quality control tests, which China completely overlooked when they received the components. It shows that China lacks real regulatory power and has always relied on safety measures carried out by the French." And as an anonymous nuclear energy expert told CFP: "No one takes money out of their own pocket in this kind of company. All funds are borrowed, whether from banks or bonds, so there's interest on everything. No profit means money lost on interest. You can work out the massive sum they're losing daily if you go back to the average amount of electricity the plant is projected to generate each day." So while the sealing of the Taishan reactors in their concrete shell might demonstrate that the vessels and heads were found to be completely sound, it could also reflect an economic decision to press ahead regardless of known problems. A French nuclear engineer with over 20 years' experience and who specialises in nuclear reactors confirmed to CFP that the Chinese operators had been anxiously pushing for construction to speed up, so that the plant could come into service next year. "They want the plant to be the first in the world to use third-generation nuclear technology", he said. Hinkley C fears The Taishan project is being carried out by Taishan Nuclear Power Joint Venture Co (TNPJVC), in which CGN has a 70% stake, while EDF has 30%. The same two companies are also at the heart of the UK's nuclear ambitions. The Hinkley C nuclear plant with its twin 1.6GW EPRs is to be shared between EDF and CGN with 66.5% of the joint venture company and 33.5% respectively. CGN is to take the lead at nuclear sites at Bradwell in Essex and Sizewell in Suffolk, taking 66.5% of the two projects leaving 33.5% for EDF. Instead of the EPR, CGN is looking to use its own (never built) 'Hualong' reactor design at these two locations. The big question raised for the UK is whether EDF and CGN are 'fit and proper' to be conducting major nuclear power projects here based on huge taxpayer guarantees and electricity market subsidies when their joint operation in China remains so questionable and opaque. Areva, the company due to forge the reactors for Hinkley, also looks like failing the 'fit and proper test'. Last month it was found to have 'falsified' the safety certificates on 400 key nuclear components. Now the French government is forcing EDF buying the near-bankrupt company. Oliver Tickell is Contributing Editor at The Ecologist. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said on Friday that the state is currently managing eight national projects, which are being executed by more than 1,000 companies and nearby 2 million Egyptian workers, although he warned that development in the education and health sector is unlikely for some time. "The cost of those projects is more than EGP 1.3 trillion ($146 billion) so that's why we're being very cautious and getting in to details, to avoid any corruption," El-Sisi said in a television interview with presenter Osama Kamal which tackled several topics, including internal development, the media and freedom, and international relations. "The military is participating in these national projects through its own engineering authority, but only for the sake of monitoring the performance and to make sure that the expenditure of those projects is wisely spent." "It will take between 12 and 13 years in order to achieve what we have in mind for the education sector, which is nearby the same case with the health sector as well," El-Sisi said. Egypt's spending on healthcare and education would account for 5.7 percent and 11.1 percent of total government spending respectively. The past years have witnessed frequent calls to increase spending on both sectors; the doctors syndicate has lobbied for the allocation for health care to be raised to 15 percent of the state budget. El-Sisi explained in the interview, which lasted for more than an hour and a half and marked the beginning of his third year in office, that the state is currently trying to make all data registered through national ID cards, in order to fight corruption. However, he stressed that there will be no "pressure imposed by the state on the monitoring bodies." "We are building state institutions and we will never accept any attack on them," El-Sisi added. The Red Sea islands issue "Each state body respects the role of the other one. For instance, the Red Sea agreement with Saudi Arabia is now being studied by the parliament, which will form committees to decide whether to ratify it or not, with no pressure at all from any entity," El-Sisi said. In April, both Egypt and Saudi Arabia governments sealed a deal to redraw maritime borders to recognise that the two Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir are under Saudi sovereignty. The deal, which was made last month when Saudi Arabia's King Salman visited Cairo, caused widespread controversy in Egypt, with dozens of protesters taking to street to oppose the deal. Many activists are facing trials for "illegally protesting" the deal. "The state is not against the right to protest at all," El-Sisi said. "But this should happen in a legal way and I want to make it clear that 90 percent of people being imprisoned or in custody are for criminal charges and we are currently studying the cases of the few remaining percentage and soon I will release a fourth batch of prisoners as I did three times before," he added. Youth, media and social media "I also wanted to say that I never get upset by any youth voices which disagree with me, as long as the disagreement is for the sake of the country," the president said. "I think the Egyptian youth are fully aware about what is happening around them, but I also need to warn them about social media websites," El-Sisi said. El-Sisi said that that sometimes the information being circulated on social media can mislead the youth about public issues. "I also wanted to say that the media need to be controlled; not for the sake of seizing public opinion, which is something that will never happen again, but in order to regulate its role and know what to say and what not to say," he added. Search Keywords: Short link: A Union Hall man has been charged with solicitation to commit murder and assaulting the intended victim at a Rocky Mount business last month. Robert Winkfield Adkins, 43, was arrested on May 18 and charged with the unclassified felony, according to Sgt. J.P. Nolen with the Franklin County Sheriffs Office. The investigation began on May 2 when an anonymous caller contacted the sheriffs office to advise that he had been propositioned to commit a murder for hire, Nolen said. Then on May 18, Adkins was arrested for misdemeanor assault and battery of the intended victim when Adkins allegedly attacked him at his workplace. On May 23, investigators executed a search warrant at Adkins residence on Brooks Mill Road, where they collected computers and other electronics, Nolen said. The evidence is being analyzed by the sheriffs office. Adkins is being held without bond in the Western Virginia Regional Jail. His preliminary hearing is set for June 30 at 2:30 p.m. in Franklin County General District Court. Adkins defense attorney is former Commonwealths Attorney Cliff Hapgood. Solicitation to commit murder is punishable by 5 to 40 years in prison if Adkins is convicted. Rocky Mount veteran Melvin Chittum is one of four local veterans who will enjoy safer homes, thanks to the generosity of The Home Depot Foundation and Meals on Wheels through a grant received by STEP Inc. A disabled Navy veteran, Chittum is wheelchair-bound and suffers from COPD. He received a dehumidifier to address high levels of humidity in his home, along with an air purifier and eight months worth of filters. The Home Depot will also provide materials to build a handicap accessible ramp to his front door, which will be constructed by the homeowner. A Vietnam vet, Chittum served on the USS Chicago. Serving in the military seems to run in the family. His father and two of his sons also served and are serving. We believed in what was right. We believed in protecting our country, Chittum said. Sometimes living arrangements for senior veterans are aggravated by age and disabilities, said STEP Executive Director Marc Crouse. At STEP, we want to do what we can to help those who served our country. We are grateful for the generosity of good neighbors, like The Home Depot and Meals on Wheels, which allows us to further help our vets. STEP is one of only eight Meals on Wheels programs across the country to receive $10,000 in The Home Depot gift cards as part of the annual Celebration of Service campaign to help improve the homes and lives of veterans and their families and address major housing challenges. STEP is the designated community action agency for Franklin and Patrick counties and is using the funds to purchase materials and equipment to perform the needed repairs and upgrades. Recipients must be active participants in the Meals on Wheels program offered through STEP. Chittum, who also suffers from degenerative disc disease, said he appreciates the help. The wheelchair ramp will ensure there is something more substantial to go over every day. Thats a big plus. Sometimes we all take the small things for granted, he said. The equipment and supplies were installed by The Home Depot associates Allan Hurd and Dave Nunley, who are a part of Team Depot, The Home Depots associate volunteer force, and are employed at the south Roanoke store. Three Patrick County veterans are also recipients of the home repairs and improvements. According to information provided by The Home Depot, more than 8.4 million veterans will be 65 or older by 2020, and more than 4 million veterans are living with service-related disabilities. The Home Depot Foundation has invested more than $138 million to improve housing needs of U.S. veterans since 2011. The Home Depot associates contribute their own time and talents, and in partnership with local nonprofits, they have transformed more than 25,600 veteran housing units. New Burlington Area Homeless Shelter director carrying mission forward The new executive director of the Burlington Area Homeless Shelter says she's excited for her new role and here to serve the community. French President Francois Hollande urged Israel and the Palestinians to make a "courageous choice" for peace as he opened a conference on the conflict in Paris on Friday. The meeting is aiming to lay the ground for a fully-fledged peace conference to be held by the end of the year but few believe that genuine progress will be made. Neither Israel nor the Palestinians have been invited to the talks and Israel has angrily compared the French initiative to the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement to draw up the region's borders. And although US Secretary of State John Kerry is attending the conference, Washington has made it clear it believes little or nothing will be achieved. Hollande said a solution would have to come from the Middle East region, but in the end it was up to the Israelis and Palestinians "to make the courageous choice of peace". "The discussion on the conditions of a lasting agreement between Israelis and Palestinians must take into account the whole of the region," he told representatives of some 25 countries, as well as the United Nations, European Union and Arab League. While scepticism over the new peace bid is high, the consensus among some diplomats appears to be that any effort is better than none at all. After decades of failed negotiations, few believe the climate is right to bring together Israelis and Palestinians for another shot at solving one of the world's longest-running conflicts. Direct negotiation "doesn't work," French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault insisted Friday. "Currently everything is blocked. We don't want to act in the place of the Israelis and Palestinians but we want to help them," he told France Info radio ahead of the conference. One French diplomatic source told AFP that without a new drive to find peace, "we risk heading towards even more violence in an international context where there is no visible American effort on the case." The United States, the traditional mediator in the conflict, has not moved the two sides towards a new peace process since talks collapsed in April 2014 and Washington has been decidedly cool on the French initiative. "We're not bringing any specific proposals to this meeting tomorrow," a senior State Department official said. But senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said France's bid offered "a flicker of hope" for a resolution to the conflict. In an opinion piece in the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Erekat said the Paris talks offered "a broader framework" than the moribund bilateral track. "The French initiative is the flicker of hope Palestine has been waiting for and we are confident that it will provide a clear framework with defined parameters for the resumption of negotiations," the Palestine Liberation Organisation secretary general wrote. Israel though is fiercely opposed to the French initiative. Senior foreign ministry official Dore Gold said the talks would "completely fail", and that Israel would prefer a Middle East-driven process backing direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians. According to diplomatic sources, the French conference will seek to focus on a 2002 Saudi-led peace initiative. Under that proposal, Arab leaders said they would recognise the state of Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied since 1967, and the creation of a Palestinian state. The plan was largely ignored by Israel at the time, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week he would be open to re-negotiating aspects of it with the Palestinians. "In a way, the French initiative has already had an impact, as it has forced Netanyahu to propose an alternative in the Arab Peace Initiative," a European diplomat in Israel told AFP. "If the international community comes together and says the two-state solution is the only option, that is important in itself -- after years of people talking about the two-state solution being dead." In recent years the conflict has fallen behind in diplomatic priorities as other Middle Eastern crises such as the Arab Spring and the war in Syria took precedence. Analysts say this Palestinian frustration has driven a wave of violence which has left 206 Palestinians and 28 Israelis dead since October. Israel blames incitement by Palestinian leaders and media for most of the violence. Search Keywords: Short link: Brooke Nevils doesnt merely want her name out there. She also wants her voice heard. Loudly, clearly and very forcefully. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate NORWALK Eva Landegger only lives four months out of the year in Norwalk. Even so, shes managed to make a few friends, particularly of the winged variety. The swans, they dont have very good eyesight, Landegger said. They come when I clap, and I feed them bread. Since they cant see I put the bread out of my mouth and my hands behind my back and lean forward and they take the bread from me just like that. Her friendship with the wildlife is just one of the many things Landegger said shell miss about her Rowayton home as she prepares to sell the property at 133 Rowayton Ave. Listed for $5 million through Halstead Property listing agents Betina Hegel, Susan ORourke and Nancy Dauk, the home is one of four custom condominiums on Five Mile River in the Barclays Landing Association designed by award-winning Norwalk architect Bruce Beinfield in 2003. Because Landegger is the propertys first owner, parts of the home are customized despite being part of a condominium association. Custom glass cabinets in the kitchen, a Christopher Peacock dressing room in the master bedroom and the addition of subtle accents throughout the homes interior set it apart from the other three properties in the association, and all the perks of living in an association like outdoor maintenance are included. Were selling a lifestyle here, Dauk said. Its right on the water, in an association so you dont have to take care of anything and its walking distance to everything in the village The energy here is just phenomenal. Its such a happy home. Its not just a house or a condo. The homes crowning glory, though, is outside. The private deep water dock off the backyard, associated boat slip and custom 27-foot mahogany boat are included in the $5 million price tag, a rare amenity in real estate. Dauk said most owners dont leave custom boats behind so finding a home that includes one is a rarity. Landegger said she spends so little time in Connecticut splitting eight months out of the year between her home in Paris and her service work in Uganda that her home and boat in Norwalk are rarely taken advantage of. Landegger commissioned the 10-seat custom boat with an inboard motor from the Netherlands. The name De Kapiteinssloep means The Boat Captain in dutch. The private dock can accommodate up to a 42-foot boat. I feel to have this gem and not use it is a crime, Landegger said. I want someone else to have that joy. Landegger said giving up the home is difficult because, after 12 years shes made great memories with her grandchildren there. But, she said, the time is right to move on. The boat sits in the water and the house is empty most of the year, Landegger said. It has to be lived in. This chapter is closed for me. Although the home as only been on the market a few days, ORourke said an open house proved there is already substantial interest in the property and she predicts it will sell well in the current market. It would make a great scale down for someone, or a young couple or small family, ORourke said. The fact that its maintenance free is also a wonderful aspect and would make it a great place for a weekend or part-time person. kkrasselt@scni.com; 203-354-1021; @kaitlynkrasselt Contributed photo NORWALK The Columbus Memorial Scholarship Fund announced that it has awarded a $4,000 college scholarship to Iliana Schiavi, a senior at Brien McMahon High School in Norwalk. The Columbus Memorial Scholarship Fund has been awarding scholarships for more than 75 years. The fund was established in 1940 by eight Italian business owners in Norwalk, who started the fund as a way to give back to their local community and aid in the success of future generations. Since inception, nearly $200,000 has been awarded in scholarships. STAMFORD A first-class relic of St. Anthony of Padua will be displayed at the Basilica of St. John the Evangelist on Tuesday, June 14, the day after the saints feast day. Three Masses in honor of St. Anthony will be offered at the Basilica that day, at 8 a.m., 12:10 and 7:30 p.m., with veneration all day long, said Tom Muscatello, spokesman for the Friends of St. Anthony. HARTFORD Connecticut Democrats are a house divided. Dont blame this family feud on Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. Inside the partys annual fundraising banquet in Hartford, the establishment wing gave a standing ovation Thursday night to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who gave a full-throated defense of his austerity budget. But outside the Connecticut Convention Center, hundreds of union picketers in a beef with Malloy and majority Democrats in the Legislature over state employee layoffs tried to upstage the event. There was no direct mention by Malloy of the 1,000 pink slips handed out by the state, which his administration has called a last resort to close a $1 billion deficit. The layoff number could double. It would be great if every day was sunny and if every day was easy, Malloy said. Sometimes hard choices have to be made. Malloys recent support for a controversial $22 million economic incentive package for Westport-based Bridgewater Associates, the worlds largest hedge fund, further inflamed the union protesters. Some of them held up signs saying support workers, not hedge funds. The demonstration created an awkward gauntlet for many Democratic standard bearers, who had to walk or drive past the picketers to enter the $185-per-plate Connecticut Democratic Progress Dinner. Weve created a budget where those who need it the least get it the most, said Ed Leavy, a longtime English teacher at Bullard-Havens Technical High School in Bridgeport and secretary/treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers of Connecticut. A traditional reservoir of support for Democrats, the unions usually buy tables at the fundraising dinner, but not this year. And those unions that did buy tickets before a boycott was organaized gave the seats to workers who were laid off, said Lori Pelletier, president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO. Pelletier questioned the priorities of the Malloy and fellow Democrats, saying that Bridgewater fund manager and Greenwich resident Ray Dalio doesnt need corporate welfare. He makes $9 million a day, Pelletier told Hearst Connecticut Media. State Rep. William Tong, D-Stamford, chairman of the states Commission on Economic Competitiveness, stood by the incentive package. Its centerpiece is a $17 million forgivable loan if Bridgewater, which has $150 billion in assets under management, creates 750 jobs in the next five years. We have to compete, Tong said. Connecticut lives and dies by its core industries, and finance is one of them. U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said he met with the union picketers on his way into the banquet. Ive got friends outside and Ive got friends inside, Murphy said. I told (the picketers) my hope is the party will be able to come together for November. Theres no way we win if were not united. The rise of Donald Trump as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee gave Democrats a diversion that was part of the keynote speech delivered by former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. He only likes us in tiaras and heels, Granholm said of Trumps view of women. The choice of Granholm, who comes from the labor stronghold of Michigan, was ironic for Democrats, including Malloy. Connecticuts governor presented himself as a friend of labor, saying he has stood up for paid sick leave and raising the minimum wage during his five years in office. At least one picketer was shooed away by the convention center employees for handing out leaflets near the buildings entrance. Nick Balletto, the state Democratic chairman, downplayed the rift during an interview before the dinner. Nobodys happy, Balletto said. Theyre part of the Democratic family. We knew this was going to be a tough budget. They want to make it something else that its not. On her way into the dinner, former Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz greeted Pelletier, the AFL-CIO boss. I am very empathetic, Bysiewicz said in an interview. I remember going through when John Rowland laid off 2,000 to 3,000 workers. neil.vigdor@scni.com; 203-625-4436; http://twitter.com/gettinviggy Hamas and three other Palestinian groups on Friday condemned Paris talks aimed at restarting moribund peace negotiations with Israel. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and his Fatah movement have thrown their weight firmly behind the French initiative, which hosts representatives of some 25 countries, the United Nations, European Union and Arab League, on Friday. Israel has rejected the initiative and the militant Islamist Hamas group, which rules the Gaza Strip, has also condemned talk of a negotiated settlement. "The ideas presented by France in the form of an initiative represent a serious infringement on the shared national principles of Palestinians, especially the right of return," read a joint statement from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Several million Palestinian refugees live in the nations surrounding Israel, and Palestinians demand that they be allowed to return to their former land. Palestinians and Israelis are not represented in the Paris talks, which aim to lay the ground for a full-fledged peace conference to be held by the end of the year. "We stress our rejection of this initiative and of every move which aims to return to futile negotiations," Friday's statement added. Speaking at the opening of the conference, French President Francois Hollande urged Israel and the Palestinians to make a "courageous choice" for peace. After decades of failed negotiations, few believe the climate is right to bring together Israelis and Palestinians for another shot at solving one of the world's longest-running conflicts. But senior Palestinian official Saeb Erakat said France's bid offered "a flicker of hope" for a resolution to the conflict. The story was edited by Ahram Online* Search Keywords: Short link: WILTON State Reps. Tom ODea, R-Wilton, and Gail Lavielle, R-Wilton, will be hosting an in-depth budget analysis with the Connecticut Mirrors expert budget reporter Keith Phaneuf. The budget was the most discussed topic this session, with each legislative caucus releasing multiple budget proposals, in addition to the three different proposals Gov. Dannel P. Malloy released. ODea, Lavielle, and Phaneuf will provide a review of Connecticut's budget and fiscal situation, discuss their implications for the state's economy, and take questions. Parades, duck races and food vendors will line the streets of Dannebrog and Loup City this weekend. Dannebrogs 29th annual Grundlovsfest, a festival celebrating the towns Danish heritage, is set for Saturday and Sunday. This years theme is Happy Danes on the Plains. Loup City is hosting its annual Polish Days from Friday through Sunday. The Polish Days Parade will start at 10:30 a.m. Saturday with a Favorite Board Game theme. Grundlovsfest has a full schedule of events during the two days, including a kids tractor pull, kids stick horse races, arts and craft shows and a parade. Of course, the festival wouldnt be complete without Danish food, such as Havarti cheese and dried beef. The parade, starting at 10 a.m. Saturday on Main Street, has the same theme as the whole festival. Parade participants are encouraged to follow a historic Danish theme. Local firefighters will participate in a showdown that displays the routines and duties of their job, said Connie Jacobsen, a member of the Grundlovsfest committee. From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, the Pawnee Arts Center will have Native American art for sale and will raffle off an Acoma Wolf pot. Jacobsen said theres always something going on in the quaint town, but Grundlovsfest is special to Dannebrog. Grundlovsfest derives as an Independence Day festival for Danes, as it celebrates the king of Denmark granting a parliamentary form of government. Dannebrog is working hard to preserve its Danish heritage, she said. Though Jacobsen said there may not be many Danish people in the town anymore, the community still feels strongly about those Danish roots. The Polish Days 2016 parade, which will start on Eighth Street, will include entries being judged on theme, originality, creativity and appearance. Overall first- and second-place ribbons will be given in each category, as well as a grand champion ribbon for best overall entry for the board game theme. More information and schedules for the festivals can be found on the Dannebrog Nebraska Facebook page, the Polish Days Parade Loup City, Nebraska Facebook page or by email at polishdaysparade@gmail.com. On this weeks segment of Segue, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Interim Chancellor Stephen Hansen, PhD, is joined by Kay Werner, retired manager of information technology at SIUEs East St. Louis Center and former First Lady of SIUE. In addition to her lifelong commitment to serving the SIUE community, Werner is also an SIUE alum, holding a specialists degree in education administration from the School of Education, Health and Human Behavior (SEHHB). Werner also earned a bachelors in history from the University of Missouri- Columbia and a masters from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Having fulfilled a fruitful career of more than 30 years as an educator, manager and community service leader, Werner shares, In these experiences, learning has been lifelong - you just keep going and going. Werner has been a dedicated advocate for many SIUE initiatives, both past and present. She has made contributions to many off-campus organizations such as Dress for Success, River Bluffs Council of Girl Scouts, Board of Trustees of the Childrens Museum, Anderson Hospital and the Strategic Committee for the SEHHB. Werner is widely recognized as one of the founding members of SIUEs Meridian Society, a womens philanthropic organization focused on community service, integration and involvement. In recognition for her tireless efforts, Werner was presented with SIUEs Distinguished Service Award in 2015. Discussion begins with Werner explaining her pursuance in academia and at SIUE, specifically. She explains that a career in teaching after completing her undergraduate studies was a mere accident, as her original plan was to pursue a career in law. She adds, I found a great love for teaching and interacting with high school kids. I woke up one day and said to myself, This is where Im supposed to be. Werners path to joining SIUE was almost inevitable as her husband is former SIUE Chancellor David Werner, who served the SIUE community in multiple capacities for 36 years. Kay shares that her husband has a love and affection for this institution. He has often said that he planned for us to come here and move onto a better place someday, she describes. One day, he had the epiphany that we were at that better place. Though she could not join faculty due to nepotism via her husbands appointment at the University, Werner had a deep desire to stay involved with the campus community. As a result, she combined her love for teaching and technology to enhance information technology services at the Universitys East St. Louis Center. That was a great job which I loved, she shares. I felt that I truly made a contribution to the staff and to the institution, while working alongside a great team. As First Lady of the University, Werner shares that many great opportunities arose to make a large impact on both her community and the SIU System. While many community involvement experiences are shared, Werner specifically addresses her involvement as chair of the A Book in Every Home project. An initiative, which began at the Carbondale campus under former SIUC First Lady Beverley Sanders before changing hands to the Edwardsville campus, the project seeks to provide literature to young students throughout the counties of Madison and St. Clair. In 2015, the project distributed more than 100,000 books to homes, schools and libraries across the Metro East region. We have partnered with the St. Louis Blues, the (former) St. Louis Rams, the National Honor Society, the Girl Scouts of America, the SIUE Lovejoy Library and many others, Werner says. The program just keeps growing, and it has been absolutely wonderful. Werner continues by describing the community impacts made by the SIUE Meridian Society. An organization currently comprised of more than 65 women, Werner shares that the organization has donated approximately $250,000 over the last 10 years to assist various collaborative projects between the University and community. Further, the Society established an endowment at SIUE two years ago with high hopes to rapidly grow the program. Werner shares what the Distinguished Service Award meant to her. That was a thrill and a real surprise, she says. I know of other people who have received the Award, and I say to myself, Wow ... Im in their company now. It was flattering, and Im extremely grateful. A goal she made for herself during her undergraduate studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Werner shares her drive to every day, meet someone new. It was enlightening, adds. I met people from all over the world, and I made a lot of great friends that way. Hansen concurs by sharing, These characteristics represent your openness to the world and your passion for organizations. Your passion explains your success as a leader in the SIUE community and in the GlenEd area, and can serve as an example for all of us. I have always been inspired by your openness and passion, which are attractive and major keys to success. They conclude with Werners revelation of a special talent in the laundry room. While she takes pride in her clothes washing skills, Hansen counters her talent by adding, Youre way too modest - your talent is making people smile, and making great contributions to society and your community. Tune in to WSIE 88.7 FM every Sunday at 9 a.m. as weekly guests discuss issues on SIUEs campus. By Logan Cameron, SIUE Marketing and Communications French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault warned Friday that hopes of a two-state solution in the Israel-Palestinian conflict were in "serious danger" without a peace process on the table. Ayrault, who hosted an international meeting in Paris in a bid to revive the moribund peace process, said that a solution which would see Israelis and Palestinians living side by side was "getting further away each day." "We must act, urgently, to preserve the two-state solution, revive it before it is too late," Ayrault said after the meeting. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian representatives attended the meeting. France portrayed Friday's meeting as a first step by the international community to weigh different options, but the Americans have been chilly towards the talks, although Secretary of State John Kerry attended. "We have chosen to extend a hand to the Israelis and the Palestinians. We hope that they accept it," Ayrault said. A statement released by all those attending also re-affirmed support for the two-state solution. "The participants... are alarmed that actions on the ground, in particular continued acts of violence and ongoing settlement activity, are dangerously imperilling the prospects for a two-state solution," read the statement. Search Keywords: Short link: Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Lailatul Fitriyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3, 2016 It is appalling how much fear the government and society have in this supposedly multicultural and multi-religious nation. Following the wave of homophobic and anti-transgender attacks on members of the LGBTQ ( lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer ) community, fears have been raised again over anything and everything communist. Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu is among those trumpeting such fears. Some Indonesian Muslims zealously defend the officials who made flippant remarks about the threat of the hammer and sickle, while others are sick with the fear of symbolism, perhaps invoked by officials and politicians to silence the critical masses. A fear of almost everything, from communism to feminism, is supported and propagated by Islamic elements like the notorious Islam Defenders Front ( FPI ). The notion of fear does not have a place in Islamic teachings because of two main reasons. Firstly, Islam itself originated in seventh century Mecca as the alienated other of that time. Prophet Muhammad was an orphan who, by the age of 6, had lost his father and mother. His clan, the Quraysh, was a ruling tribe of Mecca at that time, but his immediate family were very poor and not part of the ruling elite. His mission is said to have been built on the foundation of questioning and criticizing the Mecca elites who vested their political and economic interests in the continuation of the polytheistic practices and oppression of women and the poor. Muhammad was thus a revolutionary figure who spoke truth to power. Secondly, at the heart of Islamic teachings are the principles of social justice ( adl ) and goodness and beauty ( ihsan ). The two principles are supposed to influence every single act undertaken by a Muslim in their day-to-day lives. The Koran mentions that Muslims must aim for justice for all, even when it means that they should stand against their own family. The Koran also exhorts Muslims against following misleading paths, even if it means that they need to stand against their fathers. Islam is an inherently egalitarian faith that upholds critical thinking and attainment of justice as its core teachings. Thus it is very hard to imagine that the fear of the other arises from Islamic teachings as zealots say when justifying propaganda and violence against, for instance, anything communist. Unfortunately, many Muslims fall to divisive propaganda without questioning the power play behind it. Support from Muslims to ban leftist books is especially sad; instead of upholding Islamic values they are emulating the destruction of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad in 1258 AD. They are crippling one of the most important principles in Islam, the preservation and distribution of knowledge. Amid all this hatred, if we are serious about doing something in the name of Islam, we should pick the side of the oppressed, rather than that of the oppressors. We should pick the side that supports the struggle of the Mothers of Kendeng against the construction of cement factories, for example, rather than the side of those who block their struggle, the corporations and the government. Second, regardless of the issue, we should always question the power play and vested interests that has led to so much violence. If you are a Muslim and drifting through the issue of anti-communism, at least ask yourself whether you completely understand what communism is. Islam is a religion that yearns for justice and does not stand with those who have and abuse power. Since its very inception it has been rife with an egalitarian spirit and concerns for giving back a voice to the voiceless. The Koran does not reference a preferred form of government, nor political ideologies. So, the next time you are asked to stand against communism in the name of Islam, remember that Islam only stands for one ideology the shared dignity of humanity. *** The writer is Nostra Aetate Fellow 16 at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome. --------------- 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 Ahmad Almaududy Amri (The Jakarta Post) Wollongong Fri, June 3, 2016 The US Department of Defense ( DoD ) publishes its Freedom of Navigationreport from time to time. In the report, the DoD has stated that numerous countries with excessive maritime claims are allegedly exercising rights against the use of the sea guaranteed to all nations by international law. Since 2000, the US has included Indonesia in its report. Only one alleged excessive maritime claim by Indonesia is usually stated in the report, nonetheless since 2010, more than one claim have been filed against Indonesia. In fact, in 2014 there were three maritime claims listed. The US is a signatory to the UN Convention on Law of the Sea ( UNCLOS ) but has not ratified the convention. On other hand, Indonesia has been cooperative in implementing UNCLOS since its inception in 1982. Furthermore, Indonesia has signed and ratified the instrument. Now the question is whether the US unilateral act through publication of reports containing excessive maritime claims should be considered a concern by other states? In my view, states should not consider this issue something urgent and rather table it through the bilateral track. Speaking of Indonesia, in the 2014 DoD report, Indonesia is alleged to have exercised excessive maritime claims in three aspects: partial designation of archipelagic sea lanes, prior notification required for foreign warships to enter the territorial sea and the archipelagic waters and restriction on stopping, dropping anchor, or cruising without legitimate reasons in seas adjoining the territorial sea. Article 53 ( 1 ) UNCLOS regulates designation of archipelagic sea lane passage by archipelagic states. Indonesia, in accordance with Article 53 ( 9 ) has proposed the establishment of the Archipelagic Sea Lane Passage of Indonesia ( ALKI ) to the International Maritime Organization ( IMO ). As a result, Indonesia has set ALKI as mandated by Article 53 ( 1 ) UNCLOS and regulated it into national law through Government Decree No. 37/2002. Determination of ALKI is based on the 69th Maritime Safety Committee ( MSC ) held in London on May 11-20, 1998. Nonetheless, in its decision, the MSC awarded partial designation of ALKI. One of its considerations was that ALKI had not included an East-West route. This is why the US has alleged Indonesia of exercising excessive maritime claims. To accommodate various views of foreign states that have not fully accepted the designation awarded by the IMO, Indonesia has reached an agreement with the US and Australia in providing the right of innocent passage over archipelagic waters, known as 19 Rules Agreed by the US, Australia and Indonesia on the exercise on archipelagic sea lanes passage. Furthermore, in accordance with Article 53 ( 12 ), even though Indonesia has not designated an East-West route, the right of archipelagic sea lanes passage may still be exercised through the routes normally used for international navigation. Government Decree No. 8/1962 required prior notification for warships entering the territorial sea and archipelagic waters of Indonesia. The decree was then replaced by Government Decree No. 37/2002 on the rights and obligations of foreign ships and aircraft in implementing the rights of archipelagic Sea lane passage through designated archipelagic sea lanes, which scraps the provision on prior notification. Notifications are only required for foreign warships intending to stop at Indonesian ports. Pursuant to the third maritime excessive claim, Indonesia has never set any restriction as such in seas adjoining its territorial waters. The marine area adjoining the territorial sea is the contiguous zone, which is also part of Economic Exclusive Zone ( EEZ ). As stipulated in Article 33 of UNCLOS, in the contiguous zone, states are authorized to conduct necessary coastal surveillance in order to prevent violations of laws and regulations, customs, fiscal and immigration. There is no provision in the contiguous zone regime that specifically prohibits foreign ships to stop, anchor and cruise without any reason in the contiguous zone. In the EEZ, as stipulated in section 5 UNCLOS ( articles 55-75 ), a coastal state has sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring and exploiting, conserving and managing the natural resources, whether living or non-living, of the waters superjacent to the seabed and of the seabed and its subsoil, and with regard to other activities for the economic exploitation and exploration of the zone. Article 73 of UNCLOS, which regulates law enforcement in the EEZ, says coastal states may take such measures, including boarding, inspection, arrest and judicial proceedings, as may be necessary to ensure compliance with the laws and regulations that was determined in accordance with the provisions of UNCLOS. In the EEZ regime, there is no specific arrangement that prohibits foreign ships to stop, anchor or cruise without legitimate reason. Nonetheless, coastal states may take action as stipulated in Article 73 UNCLOS in such circumstances where foreign vessels violate the national laws governing its sovereign rights in the EEZ. In conclusion, the three claims directed against Indonesia by the US should not be included in its report as they do not represent the prevailing Indonesian legal provisions governing maritime area. This unilateral act should not continue. The allegations should instead be discussed with the states mentioned on the list. Bilateral forums are more appropriate and effective in addressing and resolving allegations of excessive maritime claims of states. *** The author is writing a PhD thesis on maritime security challenges in Southeast Asia at the Australian National Center for Ocean Resources and Security, University of Wollongong, Australia. --------------- 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 (Associated Press) Los Angeles, United States Fri, June 3, 2016 An actor who starred on the musical dramedy "Glee" is scheduled to turn himself in to federal authorities Friday in a child pornography case. Mark Salling, who played bad-boy Noah "Puck" Puckerman on the series, is scheduled to be arraigned on two charges of receiving and possessing child pornography. The 33-year-old actor was indicted by a grand jury last week. In December, Los Angeles police and federal agents seized a laptop, hard drive and flash drive they say contained images and videos depicting child pornography. He was charged with one count of using the Internet to obtain a pornographic still image and video of young girls and a second count of possessing two other porn videos that also featured underage girls. Salling's publicist did not return an email seeking comment. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Asmara Wreksono (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3, 2016 The Conjuring took the world by storm when it premiered in 2013 and the sequel to the movie is coming out in June 2016. The award-winning horror movie is based on a story from the files of Ed and Lorraine Warren, a couple who investigate the paranormal. The Warrens work with ghosts came to public attention in 1976 when they handled a case in a town called Amityville. While the first installment of The Conjuring captured the story of the Perron family of the Harrisville haunting case, The Conjuring 2 focuses on a case of haunting in Enfield, England. This time, Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) traveled to Enfield to help the Hodgson family in handling the unexplained phenomenon happening in their house. The Jakarta Post had the opportunity to exclusively interview Patrick Wilson about The Conjuring 2, the strange phenomenon experienced by the crew during filming and the casts relationship with the Hodgson family. When The Conjuring 1 was filmed, there was already talk about a sequel. Were you immediately interested to reprise your role back then? Why? You know, I was. I wouldnt have taken the job with the first one if I didnt think there would be at least one more. You know I realized there were a lot of stories to be told and the way that these movies were structured, with finding out a little bit more about Ed and Lorraine Warren, and also theres going to be a different taste every time. I think thats a good recipe for a couple of movies, at least and I knew I love working with Vera (Farmiga) and James (Wan), so I had a feeling that we would be back for at least one. So well see what happens beyond this. Is this sequel more intense than the first one? How do you think James Wan did this time? I do think its more intense. Its a much more emotional ride. I think it can be more terrifying, but I think it at times can also be more romantic. I think theres a lot of characters in the movie as well as all the scares. The one thing about James is he doesnt "walk" through anything. He pushed himself a lot and you can see that on screen. We came back and re-shot some stuff. He wanted to be perfect. He told me when he signed back on he wanted to make a great film and I think hes really done that. Vera Farmiga had claw marks when you guys were finishing the first Conjuring. Yeah, they were from me (laughs). But have you or any of the cast experienced supernatural activities while filming the second Conjuring? Nah, not really. I wish I have some crazy story of somebody flying through the air, but then again we didnt have [somebody to] bless the set on the first one and we did on the second one. But I did get a video. It happened after I left one night, there was a video of giant curtains blowing pretty violently by themselves. There were no door open, no fan, no air conditioning. There was nothing. It was very strange. Its like the wind came out of nowhere and was blowing very violently. That was very unexplained, I just have to say. You guys filmed The Conjuring 2 in England. Was it at the exact spot where the poltergeist happened? It was right around the corner. We did shoot in Enfield. We didnt shoot in the actual house. Im sure the last thing those people want to do is relive anything that went on there, but we shot at a place that looks identical and it was literally just a few blocks away. We did shoot in Enfield and it was pretty great. So did you get to visit the original house? Yes, I got to see it, but I did not go inside. What was the relationship between you guys and the Hodgsons? Did you get to meet them? We did, yes. Its funny: Different people get different sorts of reactions about how much they want to talk to them. They were very sweet and very thankful that were sort of honoring their story, but you could also tell that its something that -- even though were making a movie about it -- theyve struggled with this and lived with this for a long time now. And whatever your view is on the paranormal -- lets say you don't believe in any of it, then its a woman who had a severe mental problem. Youre either someone who gets possessed by a ghost, or youre someone who had a real mental breakdown or something. And either way, thats someone that needs help and someone thats going through something really tragic. So thats the way that I looked at it. Ed and Lorraine wouldve helped them, so I was fascinated and respectful and wanted them to know that we were there to honor their story, not to just make a movie about it. What are your favorite horror movies of all time? Lets see, I loved Poltergeist when it came around. I was a kid when I saw it. I love The Shining, although thats just more creepy, I think, than a horror movie. When I was a kid I used to be terrified at this TV version of Salems Lot, which in hindsight wasnt very scary but it was to me when I was about 6 years old. Have you heard about the ghosts and paranormal activities we have here in Indonesia? Not specific cases, but I heard theres a lot there. Yes. Would you like to tell me one? (laughs) Would you like to visit and check them out? I would love to. Oh, Im not afraid. Im fascinated. Yes. So, is there already talk about The Conjuring number 3? Well see the day after it comes out. I think theres definitely stories to be told, so its definitely up to the audience. The audience have to go see this one first. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Huang Zhiling (China Daily/Asia News Network) Fri, June 3, 2016 It's still too risky to downgrade giant pandas from endangered to vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species, said an expert from a major breeding center for the species in Sichuan province. The IUCN completed an appraisal of the number of pandas and their habitats a year ago. A well-informed source recently told the South China Morning Post that the organization is considering downgrading the giant panda's status. The IUCN would only say that an appraisal is underway and the results have not been released yet. Zhang Hemin, chief of the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda in Wenchuan county, Sichuan, said such a downgrading would be detrimental to panda conservation. (Read also: Malaysia-born baby panda named Nuan Nuan) Pandas survive solely along the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in six mountain ranges, five of which are in Sichuan. Their habitat, which totals about 23,050 square kilometers, is very vulnerable, since Sichuan is prone to earthquakes. "In the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, 6 percent of the panda habitat in Sichuan was lost," said Zhang, a panda expert who has been devoted to panda research and conservation for 33 years. The number of giant pandas in the wild and in captivity has increased over the past decade. China's fourth panda census, the results of which were released last year by the State Forestry Administration, tallied 1,864 wild pandas and 375 captive pandas worldwide at the end of 2013. That compares with 1,596 wild pandas and 164 captive pandas worldwide in the third census, which was carried out in 2000 to 2002. Despite the population increase, 24 of the 33 groups of wild pandas found in the fourth census are believed to be endangered, with some groups having fewer than 30 pandas, Zhang said. Eighteen groups have fewer than 10 pandas each and are in severe danger of extinction, he added. Meanwhile, Belgium's Pairi Daiza zoo announced on Thursday the birth of a panda, just three months after Chinese experts tried to artificially inseminate the mother, Hao Hao. __________ Su Zhou contributed to this story. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Malcolm Ritter (Associated Press) New York, United States Fri, June 3, 2016 Scientists proposed a long-term project Thursday that involves creating DNA blueprints for making human beings, a prospect some observers find troubling. The researchers said they have no intention of using these genomes huge collections of genetic material to make people. Instead, they said in interviews, human genomes would be used in lab experiments, inserted for example into cells or simplified versions of organs called organoids. That might help scientists identify the effects of genetic mutations, or create safer stem cells for transplantation, said the researchers, George Church of Harvard University and Jef Boeke of New York University. They are among 25 authors of a paper proposing the effort, which they call the Human Genome Project-Write. The paper was released by the journal Science. The project would also include creating genomes of animals and plants and new methods to edit DNA. Scientists can make relatively short stretches of DNA now, but creating entire genomes the size of the human one with current technology would be hugely expensive. The main goal of the new project is to cut the cost of engineering and testing big genomes more than a thousand-fold in 10 years. The hope is to make it inexpensive enough that scientists could study "millions of genomes in dozens of cell types" to look for the effects of mutation, Church said. Other potential payoffs from the project include engineering virus resistance into mammal cells that are used to make medicines, so that infections don't shut down production, he said. It could also help efforts to genetically modify pigs so that organs from them can be transplanted into people without fear of rejection, Boeke said. The researchers aim to launch the effort this year after raising $100 million in support from public, private, philanthropic, industry and academic sources from around the world. They said it's hard to estimate the total cost of the project, but that it's likely less than the $3 billion Human Genome Project, which revealed the makeup of the human DNA. (Read also: Study hints at biology of schizophrenia, may aid treatment) The project would seek public involvement and study the ethical, social and legal implications of the work from the start, the researchers said in Science. "It's important to engage legal and ethical scholars and society at large to really help shape the goals as well as communicate the reasons that we're launching this project," Farren Isaacs of Yale University, another author of the paper, said in an interview. Researchers also must study the potential for misuse of the new technology and how to prevent that, Church said. Word of a closed meeting about the project leaked out last month. Two observers who criticized that gathering told the AP in a joint statement this week that they were pleased by the Science paper's commitment to public involvement, but they still had reservations about the project. Basic ethical questions still need to be asked, like whether developing the ability to make human genomes is a good idea, wrote Laurie Zoloth, a professor of religious studies and bioethics at Northwestern University, and Drew Endy, an associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford. To construct a genome, even just in a cell, "implies a level of power and control that must be carefully and fully debated," Zoloth wrote in an email. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Safrin La Batu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, June 2 2016 The Jakarta administrations forced eviction policy for dealing with slums and unconventionally developed areas with the aim of revamping the face of the city has been accused of being a non-participative approach that causes more harm than good for affected residents. A group named Coalition Against Land Acquisition recently criticized the eviction policy because it caused new social and economic problems for the evictees who had generally already lived a difficult life. The group offers an alternative plan: instead of evictions, it proposes, the administration should develop the areas by engaging affected residents in dialogues on how they want their neighborhood to look. The group calls the approach urban land reform. 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 Dicky Christanto (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, June 2 2016 Indonesias young gun Jonatan Christie is set to face legend Lin Dan of China in the second round of the BCA Indonesia Open Super Series Premier 2016 on Thursday. Jonatan, who advanced after trashing Chinas Hsu Jen Hao 21-12, 21-19 in the 42-minute match that was Wednesdays opener, is quite confident he can knock out the world number three. 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 A $10 billion deal between Iran and European aircraft manufacturer Airbus for 118 aircraft is still pending authorisation from the United States, Deputy Transport Minister Asghar Fakhrieh Kashan told AFP Friday. Iran has ordered about 200 planes from three Western manufacturers since nuclear-related sanctions were lifted in mid-January. However, the Airbus deal still needs approval from the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) because more than 10 percent of components in Airbus planes are of American origin. Western manufacturers were barred for nearly two decades from selling aircraft or equipment and spare parts to Iranian aviation firms. After the lifting of sanctions, Tehran and Airbus signed a memorandum of understanding for the purchase during a late-January visit to Paris by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. On April 18, French Transport Minister Alain Vidalies announced during a visit to Tehran that US authorisation for the deal was imminent. "We are in a very advanced stage of negotiations since the meetings should be held next week to finalise the decision," Vidalies said. Kashan told AFP on Friday that the MoU with Airbus "is a hire-purchase contract and the money must come from bank financing". "We have had discussions with Airbus and finance channels have been identified," he said. "Some banks are willing to provide the funding, but Airbus has had delays in obtaining US authorisation" to conclude the contract, he said, adding that he hoped this would now be done by the end of June. Despite the entry into force of the Iran nuclear deal, major international banks, especially in Europe, appear reluctant to do business with the Islamic republic for fear of punitive measures from OFAC. Airbus sales chief John Leahy was recently quoted by the specialised Aviation Daily website as expressing concerns about the Iran deal. "We have to have a reliable international banking system" to ensure that the agreement is not endangered, Leahy said. The issues "need to be sorted out in the next few months, otherwise there will be no deals," he added, stressing that "banks are very shy" of doing business with Iran. However Airbus chief executive Fabrice Bregier said Friday that "we are making progress everywhere" and said it was normal for a deal of such magnitude. "This is a big contract so it's not easy," he said at a meeting in Dublin of the International Air Transport Association. Search Keywords: Short link: Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Words and Photos Agung Parameswara (The Jakarta Post) Thu, June 2 2016 A group of Chinese tourists disembarked from the air-conditioned bus into a spacious open-air wantilan (pavilion) at Batuan village on a humid afternoon. The scorching heat was clearly irritating them, but there was no time to complain about the weather. Their guide escorted them to several local people who provided the tourists with sarongs and sashes. They donned the apparel hurriedly before crossing the street to go through the huge split gate that welcomed them to one of the islands frequently visited temples: Puseh temple. It lies in the villages Tengah hamlet, a 30-minute drive from Denpasar, and the main reason for its popularity among visitors is clearly visible to the naked eye. The temple is a masterpiece of Balinese traditional architecture. The Candi bentar, (split gate), and the outer wall are richly decorated with carvings, reliefs and statues that demonstrate the sophistication of Balinese artisans. Passing through the split gate, the visitors arrive in the inner courtyard and are immediately greeted by an architectural tour de force in the form of a kori agung, literally a grand gate, a towering structure of red bricks and complicated ornamentation made of carved sandstone. The carvings depict the stylized flora of Bali and the mythical Bhoma, a ferocious tiger-like creature that guards the islands fertility. 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 News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3, 2016 Several mass organizations have protested against the use of their logos without permission during a recent anti-communist symposium. The event, held on Wednesday and called "Protecting Pancasila from Threats from the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and Other Ideologies", was organized by several retired military generals to discuss warnings of a revival of the defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and to uphold Pancasila as the state ideology. The event's committee claimed the symposium was supported by dozens of mass organizations including GP Ansor, the youth wing of the country's largest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama, and the Catholic Students Union (PMKRI). However, members of both organizations clarified that their logos had been used without permission. Adung Abdul Rochman, the general-secretary of GP Ansor, said he received the invitation to attend the symposium a few days before the event. He was shocked to find a statement saying the event was supported by GP Ansor in the invitation letter. We object if suddenly we are considered to be one of the events supporters. We don't know anything about its agenda or background, Adung said on Friday. Angelo, the chairman of the PMKRI presidium, also expressed his objection to the use of the PMKRIs logo by the symposiums committee without the group's consent. The group planned to file a report to the police for that misuse. The PMKRI had always recognized Pancasila as the state ideology, he said. However, he objected to an anti-PKI movement being used as a way to make others cooperate with right-wing extremist groups. Currently, we havent seen any real threats from the PKI. On the contrary, the real threats that endanger this nation come from right-wing extremists or fundamentalist religious groups," Angelo said. The anti-communist symposium was set up to challenge a previous symposium in April called "Dissecting the 1965 Tragedy", which brought together victims and families of the 1965 communist purge, human rights activists, academics and state officials to discuss how to resolve the long neglected case. The retired generals and groups such as the Islam Defenders Front also urged the government not to offer a formal apology to the PKI and not to continue the reconciliation efforts started in a bid to settle the historic human rights abuse cases. There has not been any detailed plan from the government on how to resolve the 1965 political conflict and atone for the bloodshed. (vps/rin) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3, 2016 Attempts at formal reconciliation and settlement for victims of the 1965 political conflict and violence would only reopen old wounds, as many efforts at "natural" reconciliation have taken place, a symposium on the 1965 history has concluded.. A number of retired military generals organized the symposium titled "Protecting Pancasila from the threat of the Indonesian Communist Party [PKI] and other ideologies" in Jakarta on Wednesday and Thursday. The event was set up to challenge the previous symposium in April titled "Dissecting the 1965 Tragedy", which brought together victims and families of the 1965 communist purge, human rights activists, academics and state officials to discuss how to settle the dark chapter in Indonesian history. On the last day of the symposium, it issued a list of recommendations that would be submitted immediately to the government. "We are calling on the government, NGOs and the public not to bring up past cases anymore, as it could open old wounds, disrupt the nation's unity, or even encourage prolonged horizontal conflicts," said Indra Bambang Utoyo of the Communication Forum of Indonesian Veterans' Children (FKPPI). The kidnapping and murder of six Army generals on Sept. 30, 1965, led to the purge of PKI members, sympathizers and their families, resulting in hundreds of thousands of victims killed across the country during the massacres in 1965 and 1966. However, Indra said there were several indications of the revival of the PKI in the country. "Since the beginning of the reform era [in 1998], the PKI has been trying to keep its existence by holding three congresses, managing to reverse the historical facts, spreading videos and films consisting of agitation and defamation, and blaming its own faults on others such as the New Order government, the Indonesian Military [TNI] and Muslims," he said. Furthermore, he urged the government to ban the PKI and all of its activities, corresponding with several regulations, including the 1966 Provisional People's Consultative Assembly (MPRS) law that banned the dissemination of communism, Leninism and Marxism in Indonesia. Besides, the government needs to deepen lessons about the national ideology Pancasila in schools, as well as in non-formal and informal education, he added. Coordinating Political Legal, and Security Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan said on Monday that the government would include the input from the counter-symposium, combining it with the previous symposiums recommendations. Meanwhile, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) historian Asvi Warman Adam said on Wednesday that the counter-symposium could be ineffective as communism had been long dead worldwide. "It's going to be ineffective if its only message is just about the revival of the PKI, because the PKI has been dissolved. However, stigma about communism was always present during the 30-year regime of New Order," he said, as reported by Kompas.com. (vps/bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3, 2016 Indonesia is in a cyberattack emergency amid a growing number of attacks over the past few years on account of a lack of cybersecurity, officials said on Friday. Cyberattacks in Indonesia rose 33 percent in 2015 from the previous year, Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Luhut B. Pandjaitan said. From the figure, 54.5 percent of the attacks were aimed at e-commerce-related websites, he said, adding that most of the attacks caused the systems to stop working. "Indonesia experiences many cyberattacks every day and we don't have coordinated cyberdefense yet," he said in his office as reported by Antara news agency. The government is setting up a National Cyber Agency to tackle cyber-related issues and also as part of its national policy on information technology defense. National cyberspace desk head at the Office of the Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister, Agus Barnas, said the plan for the agency establishment had been initiated in January last year during the tenure of former coordinating minister Tedjo Edhy Wibowo. However, there is detailed plan in place yet on when the National Cyber Agency will be officiated, Agus said. "Various issues have been raised related to whether we need the new agency," he said without giving further details. Indonesia is ranked second among countries where cyberattacks are launched and is the most prone to cyberattacks, according to data from the office of the coordinating minister. "The most alarming fact is that in 2015 there was a fourfold increase in cybercrimes from 2014. The cybercrimes did not come from overseas, [the attacks] came from Indonesia with also domestic targets," Agus said as quoted by Antara. Furthermore, Bank Indonesia also recorded an increase in cybercrimes, in the form of network misuse, with a rise of 66.7 percent in 2015. The network misuse in financial transaction crimes were aimed at stealing financial data as well as passwords for logins, Agus said. There were also cases of financial data manipulation, especially related to electronic transactions and the use of electronic payment systems, he added. The office of the coordinating ministers cyberspace desk has conducted a thorough study from 2013 to assess the technical, legal and institutional sectors of cybercrimes. The desk has also mapped the sectors and the authorities of government offices in managing cyber-related issues, which include cyberdefense, cybercrime, cyberinteligence, cybersecurity, cyberresilience and cyberdiplomacy. (rin) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3, 2016 A law that obliges foreign workers who have been working in Indonesia for more than six months to register for the national health insurance scheme, which is run by the social security provider BPJS, has raised queries from the diplomatic community in the country. "If diplomatic missions already have their own medical insurance schemes, what we are offering is actually a coordination with the Indonesian government, and thus cutting the costs that would have to be covered by the embassies," Healthcare and Social Security Agency (BPJS Kesehatan) head of marketing Budi Mohammad Arief said on Thursday. Budi was speaking during a seminar at the Foreign Ministry to raise awareness of the mandatory registration for the national health insurance, as stipulated in the 2011 Social Security Provider Law. The law states that all foreign workers who have been in Indonesia for six months must register for the program. During the session, a number of representatives from diplomatic missions, namely the ambassadors from Iraq and Jordan, raised questions in regard to the regulation. Both said that under their respective national policies, their governments had already outlined their own insurance schemes for those employed at the embassies, negating the need to join additional schemes. BPJS Ketenagakerjaan CEO Agus Susanto, whose institution is responsible for health insurance for workers in Indonesia, said the government aimed to work together with all countries that had representatives here, but would discuss the issue further with lawyers due to the fact that the legal framework of such cooperation was still unclear. "Of course I understand that those who have diplomatic immunity may not be obliged to register, but I'm saying that for those who are local staff, they must participate in the social security program," Agus said. Local staff at foreign representative offices can comprise foreign workers from respective home countries but who do not hold a diplomatic title. Agus said 27 diplomatic missions had registered for the program. He also called on all embassies to urge every foreign company that had branches and human resources employed in Indonesia to register for the social security program. Indonesia hosts 132 foreign embassies and consulates. The protocol and consular affairs director-general at the Foreign Ministry, Andri Hadi, said the diplomatic missions that had registered would benefit from the four programs provided through the insurance scheme, namely employment injury benefits, death benefits, the provident fund program and the pension program. However, it is to be noted that foreigners are exempted from the pension program. Policy states that coverage automatically ceases when a foreigner leaves Indonesia for good. Andri said the ministry would try to bridge between the BPJS Ketenagakerjaan and the embassies in attaining the goal of universal health care, which the government aims to reach by 2019, and includes both formal and informal workers. "The embassies hold all the data of their citizens and companies located here, so they can also monitor who has registered and who hasn't," Andri told reporters. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Lailatul Fitriyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3 2016 It is appalling how much fear the government and society have in this supposedly multicultural and multi-religious nation. Following the wave of homophobic and anti-transgender attacks on members of the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) community, fears have been raised again over anything and everything communist. Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu is among those trumpeting such fears. Some Indonesian Muslims zealously defend the officials who made flippant remarks about the threat of the hammer and sickle, while others are sick with the fear of symbolism, perhaps invoked by officials and politicians to silence the critical masses. A fear of almost everything, from communism to feminism, is supported and propagated by Islamic elements like the notorious Islam Defenders Front (FPI). 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 News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3, 2016 A number of retired Army generals this week organized a symposium claiming to protect the countrys national ideology, Pancasila, from the feared revival of communism and other ideologies. However, even the symposium coordinator seems unsure as to the exact nature of the perceived threat. On the first day of the event on Wednesday, retired Army general and symposium coordinator Kiki Syahnakri tried to explain the difference between communism, Marxism and Leninism to journalists during a press conference. He explained that a Marxist must be an atheist because dialectical materialism, the philosophy behind Marxism, was inspired by the ideas of philosophers Aristotle and Plato on the universes creation. Marxism is Aristotelian. So a Marxist doesnt believe that the universe was created. That is to say, they believe the universe is present in itself, Kiki said. So its clear that they are atheists as they dont believe in God. On the other hand, Lenin thought that Marxists were too soft. Hence, to implement the ideas, he needed to seize power, he needed to make the revolution. However, Kiki was contradicted by philosopher and Catholic priest Franz Magnis-Suseno. Karl Marxs ideas arent related to Aristotles, and Aristotles ideas arent related to atheism, Franz told The Jakarta Post over the phone. Franz explained that Marxism was Marxs critique of capitalism that analyzes the mechanisms of change within a society. He also said the main behind Marxism was to see the proletariat overthrow capitalism. The late Soviet leader Lenin added the ideas of the democratic organization of a revolutionary vanguard party and the achievement of a dictatorship of the proletariat, Franz added. Marx didnt talk about the revolutionary party. But Lenin focused on the party, not only the theory. Lenin had the idea to manage the revolution, so he created the revolutionaries, called communists, he said. So, communism is a combination of Marx and Lenins theories. Kikis explanation of Marxism suddenly went viral on social media on Wednesday night after Rappler journalist Febriana Firdaus posted it on her Facebook account. As of Thursday evening, the post had been shared by netizens more than 800 times. Some questioned Kiki's references in making such misleading explanations. Wow, he has invented a new theory, which is tremendous and super, Poedjiati Tan commented on Febrianas post. Sir, if you are too lazy to read [books], you could have just checked Wikipedia, said Bonaventura Aditya Perdana. Febriana faced the consequences on Thursday, the second day of the symposium, as she was reportedly barred from covering the event by some participants who claimed to be members of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI). Considering her inconsistent news coverage, foreign media journalist @febrofirdaus was kicked out of the national symposium, tweeted the official FPI Twitter account @DPP_FPI. Meanwhile, Kiki responded to the development by saying that journalists should report fairly on the symposium. I advise all journalists to avoid pitting us against each other, he said. I regret there have been reports of attempts to bully and bring disunity. (vps/dmr) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3 2016 Residents living in community unit (RW) 7 in Cengkareng, West Jakarta, have voiced support for a planned crackdown by the National Narcotics Agency (BNN) on the distribution of drugs in two neighborhoods in the area. There are 15 neighborhood units (RT) in RW 7, which was previously called Kampung Ambon. BNN Jakarta head Iwan Abdullah Ibrahim said on Thursday that drug distribution had been stopped in most neighborhood units in the area, but not in RT 9 and RT 13. We can solve drug problems with various measures, such as through the legal approach, the customs approach or even a military approach. Why cant we rid RT 009 and RT 013 of drugs? said Iwan during an event to inaugurate a building in the area on Thursday. 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 (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3 2016 The rampant flow of sexual violence against children does not seem to have slowed down despite heavier sentences being approved by the President. A 5-year-old girl has allegedly been raped by her neighbors in Cibubur, Ciracas, East Jakarta. The suspects are F, 16, and I, 12. Parents of the toddler revealed on Thursday that they suspected something was wrong with their daughter after she complained that she was hurting when she urinated. I asked her how come she felt pain when she peed. Thats when she told me the whole thing, the parent said as quoted by kompas.com on Thursday. Based on her accounts, the incident took place on May 20 when her babysitter left her with the two teenagers. 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 Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3 2016 After more than a month of intense deliberation, the House of Representatives finally passed on Thursday the regional elections bill into law, despite objections from certain factions to several points in the law. One such point is Article 7, which stipulates that legislators from the House, Regional Legislative Councils (DPRD) and Regional Representative Councils (DPD) have to submit a written resignation if they are nominated as candidates to run in regional elections. During his speech at the plenary session, the House working committee chairman, Rambe Kamarulzaman, said all 10 House factions disagreed with the idea that legislators should resign from their posts when competing in elections. All factions objected to the resignation requirement, until two days before the final meeting with the government. It was then that we finally agreed to accept it, said the Golkar Party legislator. The government said the resignation stipulation followed a Constitutional Court ruling in September 2015, which stipulates that civil servants and legislators have to leave their positions to run in elections. Rambe said the implementation of the article might open the door to another judicial review in the future. The potential for a judicial review [against the article] is high, as long as the individuals or parties have a legal standing, he said. However, working committee deputy chairman Lukman Edy of the National Awakening Party (PKB) was pessimistic that political parties would file a judicial review given that public trust in legislators was weakening. Meanwhile, Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) legislator Rahmat Nasution Hamka from House Commission II overseeing home affairs, criticized the Constitutional Courts ruling, arguing that the court sometimes used erroneous logic in issuing its decisions. The passing of the regional elections bill into law was greeted with applause by the General Elections Commission (KPU). Its the right decision because its in line with the Constitutional Court decision, which is mandatory, KPU commissioner Hadar Nafis Gumay said. The KPU is concerned about Article 9, which stipulates that the election commission must set regulations (PKPU) after first consulting with the House and the government in a hearing. Such a regulation could reduce our independence. We were surprised by this point because the House never told us or invited us to talk about it, Hadar said. He added that the point might disturb local elections because it was possible that the KPU and legislators with political interests might conflict in setting regulations. The House claims they are following the Legislative Institution Law that stipulates that their recommendations are binding to all parties. Also under the new law, Article 135 stipulates that the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) has the authority to accept reports, investigate and issue verdicts on administrative violations and transactional politics. Previously, to take action against transactional politics, Bawaslu could only recommend the reports to courts. _____________________________________ To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News. 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 NATO's top military officer, General Petr Pavel, denounced U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday for criticizing the alliance as obsolete and said such comments played to the hands of its opponents. In unusual criticism of a presidential candidate, Pavel, chairman of the NATO Military Committee, said in an interview that Russian "President (Vladimir) Putin and some others may be pleased by this approach". "To take such an approach would be a great mistake," he said. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election, has criticized the decades-old NATO alliance with mainly European nations - a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy - as obsolete and too costly for the United States. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was set up in a different era, Trump has said, when the main threat to the West was the Soviet Union. It was ill-suited to fighting terrorism. Pavel, a former Czech Republic army chief, said the NATO alliance formed in 1949 was not perfect but it had great potential as well as the chance to be improved. "Statements like these are not necessarily damaging, but they are not useful," Pavel said in Singapore on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia's biggest security summit. On Thursday, Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton also lambasted Trump's foreign policy platform as "dangerously incoherent". Trump's emergence as a strong presidential candidate has been a talking point at the Shangri-La Dialogue. Carl Thayer, an Australian security expert, said the prospect of Trump in office would have to be dealt with realistically. Australia's experience had shown that "you damn well have to work with the U.S. president", he told a news conference. FREEDOM OF NAVIGATION At the meeting, Pavel was to discuss regional issues, including rival claims in the South China Sea and rising tension in Northeast Asia, where North Korea has been stepping up its testing of nuclear capabilities. China and the United States have traded accusations of militarizing the South China Sea, which is claimed almost entirely by Beijing. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam have claims to parts of the waters, through which trade worth trillions of dollars is shipped every year. "Freedom of navigation in this region, through the South China Sea, is crucial for any further development in the region and it's difficult to imagine that without this freedom, there will be stability and peace in this region," Pavel said. NATO could not act on the issue using military means, but mainly political means, he added. North Korea, which conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and followed that with a satellite launch and tests of various missiles, was a great concern for NATO, Pavel said. Western sanctions have not been successful in deterring Pyongyang from developing its nuclear capabilities. "The only country which may change the equation is China," Pavel said, pointing to the fact that 90 percent of North Korea's trade is with its big neighbor. Pavel also said he hoped an upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw would agree cyber as an operational domain of war, along with air, sea, land and space. Search Keywords: Short link: Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3, 2016 Indonesia will propose a minimum wage be set for workers in Southeast Asian countries at the next ASEAN manpower ministers meeting in an effort to protect employees in the region. Vice President Jusuf Kalla introduced the idea amid concerns over a lack of protection for nationals of ASEAN member states. "Vietnam very much supports what I have said about the need for ASEAN countries to protect their citizens from exploitation," Kalla said on Thursday as quoted by Antara news agency. He said other ASEAN member countries had expressed interest in pushing for a minimum wage for workers in the region. Kalla said manpower ministers from ASEAN member countries would meet shortly to discuss the issue. "We are in agreement. Cambodia has also agreed," he asserted. Kalla added that the government did not want large multinational companies in ASEAN countries to compete for the lowest wages. "Competition is good, and so far we have not lost out due to low wages because the raw material is the same, the factories too," Kalla said. He said the government would invite the ASEAN secretary-general to discuss the issue with Vietnam and Cambodia. "Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia have many workers. We may also ask Bangladesh, Malaysia and Singapore. Even Thailand already has high wages," he said. When speaking at the World Economic Forum in Malaysia recently, the Vice President proposed a standard minimum wage be applied throughout the Southeast Asian region. He said many international footwear and garment companies had relocated their factories to Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia because workers wages in the countries were lower. "They produce shoes and clothes for US$15, but sell them for $100. Let's not be played like that. Let's also not let our workers be exploited," Kalla said. (liz/dan) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3, 2016 The US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) has provided a grant to help Indonesia develop its aviation safety systems in eastern areas of the country. The US Embassys counselor for commercial affairs, Rosemary Gallant, who represents USTDA, and the Transportation Ministrys civil aviation director general, Suprasetyo, signed the grant agreement in Jakarta on Thursday. The grant-signing ceremony was conducted during an Indonesia-US Aviation Working Group (AWG) seminar held to mark the first anniversary of successful US-Indonesia cooperation on aviation. US Ambassador to Indonesia Robert O. Blake and Transportation Minister Ignasius Jonan witnessed the ceremony. The project funded by the USTDA grant includes the development of concept operations and a capital investment plan and the implementation of a timeline to help improve flight safety and air navigation practices in Papua and Maluku. As a large, populous and mobile archipelago, air transport is crucial for Indonesias economy and its citizens, both in terms of passenger and cargo traffic, Blake said This grant directly supports the government of Indonesias efforts to improve air safety and to promote economic development, particularly in Papua and Maluku. The technical assistance will help the Transportation Ministrys civil aviation directorate general in updating air navigation capabilities and improving the safety and operations of commercial and general aviation in the eastern region of the country, the US Embassy said in a statement. In the long term, the project is designed to help increase the efficiency of the civil aviation sector and improve airspace management. The grant supports the goals of the US government to enhance collaboration between the US and Indonesia and support safe and efficient aviation growth in Indonesia, the embassy noted. The AWG was established through the signing of an MoU between Blake and Jonan on April 20, 2015. Since then, the AWG has served as a platform in which US and Indonesian aviation stakeholders can engage with each other to facilitate the growth of Indonesias aviation sector. Hosted by Jonan at the Transportation Ministry, the seminar entitled Enhancing Indonesia-US Aviation Cooperation included a set of comprehensive sessions covering themes of safety, training, and maintenance needs, which will help equip Indonesian aviation professionals with the necessary knowledge and skills needed for Indonesias aviation future. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Indra Budiari (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3 2016 Lawmaker Fanny Afriansyah, also known as Ivan Haz, was dismissed on Thursday from the House of Representatives. However, his troubles are still far from over as attention now turns to his criminal trial regarding abuse. During a plenary session, House deputy speaker Taufik Kurniawan declared that lawmakers had approved the Houses ethic councils (MKD) findings that Ivan had breached behavioral standards by abusing his domestic helper. The abuse case broke out in October 2015 when the domestic helper filed a report against the son of former vice president Hamzah Haz to the Jakarta Police, claiming that she had been severally beaten by the United Development Party (PPP) politician since working for him in May. 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 Esther Samboh and Grace D. Amianti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3, 2016 Indonesias largest lender by assets Bank Mandiri is cutting its loan growth target this year as it sees a bleak outlook with bad loans soaring more than expected. Bank Mandiri president director Kartika Tiko Wirjoatmodjo told The Jakarta Post the banks loan growth was expected to slow to between 10 and 12 percent this year, down from a previous target of 12 to 14 percent as it gets more cautious disbursing lending amid rising bad loans. The gross ratio of non-performing loans (NPL), Tiko continued, was expected to soar further to touch 3.5 percent sometime this year, up from 2.89 percent in March and 1.81 percent in March of 2015. As a consequence, Bank Mandiri will see its loan loss provision, which banks allocate as an allowance for bad loans, surge to between Rp 14 trillion (US$1.02 billion) and Rp 16 trillion this year, from a previous expected figure of Rp 12 trillion. The weaker-than-expected overall performance is expected to put pressure on and creep into Bank Mandiris profit, which last year nearly flat-lined at 2.3 percent growth, totaling Rp 20.3 trillion. These changes are expected to be incorporated into Bank Mandiris revised business plan to be submitted to the Financial Services Authority (OJK) this month. The honeymoon period is over. We can never expect 20-something percent loan growth again, Tiko said in an interview on Thursday. Indonesias banking sector overall has been hit by a combination of increasing bad loans and weak demand against the backdrop of a domestic economy that has yet to see significant improvement after its growth hit a six-year low of 4.79 percent in 2015. Nationwide commercial banks loan growth weakened to 7.7 percent April, far below the OJKs goal of 12 to 14 percent loan growth this year. Gross NPL ratio stood at 2.8 percent in March, a figure that has continued to worsen since hitting 2.46 percent in May last year. The credit quality of the corporate sector has been declining since the end of 2014 with balance sheets deteriorating across sectors, international credit ratings agency Standard & Poors (S&P) wrote in its latest assessment on Indonesia, published on Wednesday, which maintains the nations sovereign credit rating at BB+ with a positive outlook, one notch below invest budget ment grade. The worse-than-expected performance of Bank Mandiri may be a sign of worsening performances by local banks in the months ahead. S&P credit analyst Ivan Tan said in his latest report that Indonesian banks NPL would continue to increase to between 3 and 4 percent this year, in accordance with the regional trend due to external macroeconomics headwinds. Tan said the ratings agency assumed that credit quality would deteriorate gradually, rather than spiking sharply. However, the ASEAN banks high capital reserves, he added, would act as sufficient buffers to maintain resilient in the face of global risks this year. Going forward, Bank Mandiri will push for credit growth in promising sectors such as corporate (including state-owned enterprises), consumer (motorcycles, cars) and micro loans, which have seen above-average growth. The bank has established a special business division, called the Special Asset Management Unit, to focus on monitoring and assessing bad loans, which primarily occur in the coal sector and in commodities overall. We can only hope to grow above the market, Tiko said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Esther Samboh and Grace D. Amianti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3 2016 Indonesias largest lender by assets Bank Mandiri is cutting its loan growth target this year as it sees a bleak outlook with bad loans soaring more than expected. Bank Mandiri president director Kartika Tiko Wirjoatmodjo told The Jakarta Post the banks loan growth was expected to slow to between 10 and 12 percent this year, down from a previous target of 12 to 14 percent as it gets more cautious disbursing lending amid rising bad loans. The gross ratio of non-performing loans (NPL), Tiko continued, was expected to soar further to touch 3.5 percent sometime this year, up from 2.89 percent in March and 1.81 percent in March of 2015. As a consequence, Bank Mandiri will see its loan loss provision, which banks allocate as an allowance for bad loans, surge to between Rp 14 trillion (US$1.02 billion) and Rp 16 trillion this year, from a previous expected figure of Rp 12 trillion. The weaker-than-expected overall performance is expected to put pressure on and creep into Bank Mandiris profit, which last year nearly flat-lined at 2.3 percent growth, totaling Rp 20.3 trillion. These changes are expected to be incorporated into Bank Mandiris revised business plan to be submitted to the Financial Services Authority (OJK) this month. The honeymoon period is over. We can never expect 20-something percent loan growth again, Tiko said in an interview on Thursday. Indonesias banking sector overall has been hit by a combination of increasing bad loans and weak demand against the backdrop of a domestic economy that has yet to see significant improvement after its growth hit a six-year low of 4.79 percent in 2015. Nationwide commercial banks loan growth weakened to 7.7 percent April, far below the OJKs goal of 12 to 14 percent loan growth this year. Gross NPL ratio stood at 2.8 percent in March, a figure that has continued to worsen since hitting 2.46 percent in May last year. The credit quality of the corporate sector has been declining since the end of 2014 with balance sheets deteriorating across sectors, international credit ratings agency Standard & Poors (S&P) wrote in its latest assessment on Indonesia, published on Wednesday, which maintains the nations sovereign credit rating at BB+ with a positive outlook, one notch below investment grade. The worse-than-expected performance of Bank Mandiri may be a sign of worsening performances by local banks in the months ahead. S&P credit analyst Ivan Tan said in his latest report that Indonesian banks NPL would continue to increase to between 3 and 4 percent this year, in accordance with the regional trend due to external macroeconomics headwinds. Tan said the ratings agency assumed that credit quality would deteriorate gradually, rather than spiking sharply. However, the ASEAN banks high capital reserves, he added, would act as sufficient buffers to maintain resilient in the face of global risks this year. Going forward, Bank Mandiri will push for credit growth in promising sectors such as corporate (including state-owned enterprises), consumer (motorcycles, cars) and micro loans, which have seen above-average growth. The bank has established a special business division, called the Special Asset Management Unit, to focus on monitoring and assessing bad loans, which primarily occur in the coal sector and in commodities overall. We can only hope to grow above the market, Tiko said. Shares in Mandiri traded at Rp 9,200 apiece on Thursdays close, unchanged from the previous day. The stocks have dropped 10.5 percent in the past year, getting outperformed by the Jakarta Composite Indexs (JCI) 5.1 percent fall. ---------------- To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News. 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 Satria Sambijantoro (The Jakarta Post) Beijing Fri, June 3 2016 Indonesian diplomatic corps in Beijing are engaging in talks with the Chinese authorities concerning the latest incident in Natuna, Riau Islands, but this time they will not take a megaphone diplomacy approach that might unnecessarily stoke tensions, a top diplomat has said. Soegeng Rahardjo, the Indonesian Ambassador to China, argued that any unintentional crossing of Indonesian waters by foreign ships was normal, noting that Indonesian fishermen sometimes did the same when in waters near Papua New Guinea or Australia. He was referring to last weeks incident in Natuna waters where a Chinese-flagged vessel was detained by the Indonesian Navy for allegedly conducting illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in an area that Jakarta argued was part of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ). 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 News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3, 2016 Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro has called on banks to be proactive in helping the manufacturing sector grow amid the economic slowdown by providing long-term financing. Bambang said the banking industry should play a bigger intermediary role in the economy to prevent a further slowdown. However, banks should also strengthen resilience as commodities prices were still under pressure in the global market. As long as prices are low, it will be difficult for companies to pay off their liabilities or to take out more loans, he said at the 2016 Banking Service Excellence Awards in Central Jakarta on Thursday. The country, he continued, should reduce its reliance on the commodities sector by transforming commodities-based businesses into natural resources-based manufacturing businesses that could act as a locomotive to drive national economic growth. Amid the transformation, banks would have pivotal roles to play in providing more affordable funds for companies to enter the manufacturing sector. This manufacturing sector has room to expand, Bambang said, and has the potential to be a new engine of growth. The manufacturing industry in Indonesia contributes only 21 percent to gross domestic product, while in developed countries the industry contributes more than 30 percent. (ags) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3 2016 The Indonesian Navy said Thursday it may sink a Chinese fishing vessel, the Gui Bei Yu 27088, which the Navy arrested last week near Natuna Islands in Riau province. Budi Amin, the Navys Western Region Fleet Command (Koarmabar) spokesman, said if Navy investigators working on the case managed to collect enough evidence from their questioning of the eight crewmen of the Chinese ship, then the Navy would go ahead with the option. The investigation is still ongoing. If later investigators confirm their accusations in the case, then they will hand over dossiers of the case to prosecutors, Budi said on Thursday, adding: It will depend on evidence collected during the legal process. 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 News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3, 2016 Nightspots will be permitted to operate during Ramadhan, which commences on Monday or Tuesday, as long as they comply with the regulations issued by the Jakarta administration, the Jakarta governor has said. One day prior to the fasting month, all nightspots must close, but during the month they are allowed to operate, said Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama at the Kalibata Heroes Cemetery in South Jakarta on Friday. The decision is based on Bylaw No. 6/2015 on tourism and Gubernatorial decree No 98/2004 on the tourist industry in Jakarta , which prohibits nightspots from operating the day before the start of Ramadhan. Meanwhile, Ahok has issued a circular on tourism during Ramadhan and Idul Fitri. He said permitted hours of operation for nightspots would be the same as during last years fasting month. Based on the circular, nightclubs, massage parlors, spas and independent bars will be allowed to operate between 8:30 p.m. and 1:30 a.m., tribunnews.com reported. Those who work in nightspots want to be able to enjoy Ramadhan and Idul Fitri. If their workplaces are closed the entire month, theyll see an income drop. The most important thing is that their working hours are regulated, Ahok stressed. Meanwhile, the police have warned groups against carrying out any raids on nightspots, saying that it is the duty of police officers to do so if they deem necessary. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Medan Fri, June 3 2016 Drug rings have reportedly turned large swathes of hilly and forested areas in North Sumatra into marijuana plantations. North Sumatra Police community information affairs head Adj. Sr. Comr. MP Nainggolan said that judging from police and military discoveries, there was an increasing amount of marijuana plantations in those areas. Nainggolan added that marijuana fields, found in the mountainous Tor Sihite and Tor Antarsa regions in Mandailing Natal regency by Indonesian Military (TNI) personnel, were the largest so far this year. 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 Related Boat packed with migrants capsizes off Greece Greece's coastguard on Friday said the death toll from the sinking of a migrant boat had risen to nine, amid fears that hundreds more could be missing. "Until this point 340 (people) have been rescued and nine bodies have been recovered," the coastguard said in a statement, without giving details on the migrants' nationalities. Search Keywords: Short link: Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Margareth S. Aritonang (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3 2016 A reconciliation effort aimed at settling past rights abuses in the country is at a crossroads after anti-communist groups got the nod from the military to reject and boycott activities that may lead to discussions of the 1965 communist purge. A two-day symposium set up by retired Army generals on Thursday saw Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu and Indonesian Military (TNI) Commander Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo warn of the rise of communism. Both the minister and the general supported action to contain and eliminate the putative resurgence of communism across the country. Ryamizard referred to the growing use of communist symbolism, the arrest of teenagers in Simalungun, North Sumatra, for sitting on the statues of iconic revolutionary heroes and calls to dissolve existing military territorial command structures (Komando Teritorial) as indications of a revival of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). 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 Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3 2016 The governments second attempt at promoting real estate investment trusts (REITs) has hit a wall as regional administration officials have expressed their ignorance toward the subject. Adrial, the head of budget supervisory at the Tangerang municipal administration, was clueless when asked about REITs. I only heard about it today. The information about REITs is really minimal in the region, he told The Jakarta Post at a workshop. Adrial and dozens of other officials attended a workshop held by the Financial Services Authority (OJK) and Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX) that was aimed at popularizing REITs as an investment tool. The government included REITs in its fifth economic policy package in October 2015. It removed double-taxation schemes within REITs, in hope of attracting new investors. The government previously implemented two schemes on dividends paid from investment returns and on a collective investment vehicle (CIV) that pooled investment funds. After its removal, now only a single tax scheme will apply on both the CIV and the investors, which are holders of a collective investment contract (CIC). It turns out that the tax scheme removal was not attractive enough for investors. They pointed out to one remaining obstacle: the property transfer fee (BPHTB) that carries a 5-percent cost. Coordinating Economic Minister Darmin Nasution acknowledged that the fee was a stumbling block for realizing the revamped REIT scheme. He said the government already intended to slash the 5 percent fee to 0.5 percent and re-include REITs in the 11th economic policy package in March. However, regional administrations are reluctant to follow suit because the fee is a major source of revenue. In Tangerang, for instance, BPHTB is the second biggest revenue source after property tax (PBB). The BPHTB contributes to almost 30 percent of its total regional revenue (PAD), the citys data show. The municipality is targeting higher revenue from the BPHTB this year of Rp 305 billion (US$22.27 million), an increase from the Rp 290 billion obtained in 2014. Adrial said Tangerang still had set the BPHTB rate at 5 percent and had not taken any decision to cut it, as the central government intended to. In my personal opinion, a low rate would suit big cities, like Tangerang, where property growth is good. However, the scheme might not work for smaller cities, where BPHTB is their biggest source of revenue. Coordinating Economic Ministrys head of regional economic division Gede Edy Prasetya acknowledged that a lower BPHTB might hurt regional budgets at first, but would generate revenue from other sources. Income will instead multiply as more properties are built from the increasing REIT investments. Youll get more from property tax, advertisement tax and many more sources. The number of labor will also increase, he said. Meanwhile, the OJK acknowledges the lack of REIT promotion in the regions. The authority so far has only held workshops in Jakarta and Surabaya in East Java. However, many invitees, including regional councilors, did not come. Their presence is vital because they are the one who create bylaws, said OJK investment development director Sujanto. ---------------- To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News. 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 Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3, 2016 As equity transactions in the capital market decrease, publicly listed brokerage firm Reliance Securities is planning to focus on the fixed-income business amid increasing demand from regional development banks (BPDs). The fixed income market, where debt securities--particularly bonds--are traded, drove the company's performance in the first quarter of 2016, according to Reliance president director Jurgantara Usman. The publicly listed brokerage firm saw a 57 percent year-on-year increase in revenue to Rp 28.36 billion (US$2.08 million), while its net profit grew 22 percent to Rp 7.26 billion. "We predict the equity market will remain sluggish in 2016. Hence, Reliance will try to be less dependent on it. Our strategy is to increase retail sales in the fixed income business," he told thejakartapost.com after an extraordinary general meeting in Jakarta on Thursday. With the downturn in the equity market, Jurgantara continued, many customers are shifting to safer and less risky investments in the debt market, while at the same time there is increasing demand from corporate clients, especially BPDs. "The BPDs, especially the big ones, are currently seeking bonds to purchase as they have excessive idle funds, mostly for paying civil servants' remuneration," Jurgantara said. Reliance, he further said, has established a new team to seek potential new clients in the regions, posting a satisfying performance to date. (ags) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Grace D. Amianti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3 2016 A recent Bank Indonesia (BI) effort to modify rules relating to the countrys interbank rate is expected to help improve liquidity in the local money market and lower borrowing costs in the long run. The central bank issued last week a circular stipulating several changes in the rules of the Jakarta interbank offered rate (Jibor), an indicative rate used for money market transactions that influences liquidity in the economy, in a bid to stimulate more activity in the domestic money market. Among the changes that took effect on June 1 are extensions of transaction window time and tenors in the interbank market as well as an increased maximum transaction value. DBS treasury and markets director Wiwig Santoso said the central bank had done the right thing. He welcomed the move as a way to create a more credible local interbank market, prompting more transactions and increasing liquidity in the banking system. Jibor is determined based on indicative rates submitted by contributor banks. It is derived from unsecured loan transactions between banks in Indonesias money market, which indicates banks liquidity. In the circular, the central bank extended the interbank markets transaction window time to 20 minutes, from 10 minutes previously, while also allowing a longer period for rupiah lending, to three months from one month in the prior rule. BI also doubled the maximum allowed for transactions in the interbank market to Rp 20 billion (US$1.46 million) from a previous Rp 10 billion, while total transactions should not exceed Rp 20 billion a day. Wiwig said the improvements in the Jibor system would help banks with more leniency on time to make transactions between themselves and better offers due to the longer tenor available, so they could manage liquidity more easily. This will help banks in managing their liquidity. When we manage short-term liquidity, we conduct transactions in the interbank market and repurchase [repo] with BI, said Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) treasury director Panji Irawan. Herman Savio, treasury and capital market head at Bank Danamon, agreed that the changes would help banks in managing their liquidity due to the interbanks higher transaction maximum and longer tenors. He added that the move could help to deepen the local money market as it would increase Jibors credibility as a reference rate for other financial instrument transactions, such as swaps, loans and repo, following BIs introduction of a new benchmark rate previously. The average Jibor, as of Thursday, stood at 4.9 percent overnight, or for a day, 5.54 percent a week, 6.06 percent a month, 6.82 percent per three months, 7.46 percent per six months and 7.79 percent per 12 months, BI data showed. ---------------- To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News. 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 Hans Nicholas Jong (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3 2016 From Acehnese fighting to protect the Leuser National Park to Papuans resisting the expansion of palm oil companies, thousands of people across the archipelago are waging an environmental war. The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) has recorded 773 cases of environmental activists being unfairly charged in the past five years, with 233 being assaulted and 28 murdered. We can see that assaults against activists and people who fight for their rights is still rampant, Walhi executive director Nur Yaya Hidayati said. According to her, there is a contradiction when it comes to how the government treats environmental activists and local people in environmental conflicts. On the one hand, the government opens up room for the public to be involved in decision making but on the other hand, repression, such as arrests, is increasing, Yaya said. Walhis finding is in line with a 2015 report by the Agrarian Reform Consortium (KPA) on violence in agrarian conflicts. In 2015, there were 35 cases of companies committing violence, followed by the police with 21 cases, the military with 16 cases, other government institutions with 10 cases, gangs with eight cases and local communities with three cases, according to the report. In the past companies generally hired civilian security forces (Pamswakarsa), however, nowadays police and thugs are more likely to be hired to suppress peoples demands and resistance. In most cases, companies are the ones who file complaints [in agrarian conflicts]. Therefore, police personnel will come to assault local people. The police should be aware of the background of the problem before taking the easy way and harassing local people, Yaya said. She said that Walhi and other activists had talked to the police to persuade them to refrain from assaulting local people. But its difficult to change the way law enforcement personnel perceive local people. In their minds, local people are rebellious. They believe that the right side [in a dispute] is the side with money, said Yaya. However, in many agrarian conflicts, local people are usually the ones who are victimized. In many places. There are overlaps between concessions and community land. Therefore, local people try to defend their lands, which they feel are being seized. Thats when conflicts happen, Yaya said. Therefore, she said, it was important that security personnel took a more humane approach and tried to understand the nature of conflicts. Its hard for local people because they usually dont have legal ownership of their land, such as land permits. They have lived there for generations but their rights arent recognized by the government. And then the government issues permits to companies without considering the people who live there, said Yaya. According to Walhi spokeswoman Khalisah Khalid, companies have recently begun hiring members of mass organizations to do their dirty work, according to Walhi spokeswoman Khalisah Khalid. For example, in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, companies hire members of multiple organizations, instead of just one like they did in the past, she said. To change the mind-set of law enforcement bodies, which often side against local people, it is now necessary for President Joko Jokowi Widodo to intervene, according to Yaya. The President has to be consistent in his commitment. He said that development had to start from the peripheral areas, but he neglects the land rights of people, she said. On one hand, the government promised to designate 12.7 million hectares of customary forest as well as 9 million hectares of land for agrarian reform. But on the other hand, he lets the state apparatus assault local people. _________________________________ To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News. 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 Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3, 2016 The Jakarta Posts founding editor-in-chief Sabam Pandapotan Siagian has passed away at the age of 84, leaving behind a long legacy of journalism and diplomacy. Through his vast achievements, he became a leading public figure and an inspiration to many. Current Post chief Endy Bayuni called him a perfectionist with a level of dedication and a keen eye for detail like no other. "He would scrutinize word by word, sentence by sentence," said Endy of the man whom he looked up to as a mentor and father figure since he began his career at the Post. Endy spoke highly of Sabam, who, he said, had given him his first break in journalism in 1983. It was through his experience at the Post that Endy learned the ropes of the industry. Referring to the deadline pressure of newspapers, Endy said where others not so perfectionist could live with their mistakes the next day, Sabam was certainly not like that. When it was written and published, it had to be perfect, he added. That is a rare quality, even today, said Endy. "He was very dedicated and a perfectionist." At a time when the country was under the leadership of long-term leader Suharto, Sabam always remained independent and was unafraid to voice his opinion. He was often critical of the New Order regime. Reminiscing about the man who he considered a great teacher, Endy touched upon Sabam's other impressive role as a diplomat. Sabam brought Indonesia to the attention of the world in many international forums, he said. Tagor Siagian, Sabam's older of two sons, remembered his father as an awe-inspiring journalist more than anything else. Tagor recalled the times when he would carry his father's typewriter - a trusted tool which his father used all through his life - everywhere his old man would go. The work desk of the late Sabam Siagian that he used during his time working at The Jakarta Post office. (JP/Damar Harsanto) Inspired by him, Tagor followed in his footsteps and also became a journalist. "Father would always stress the importance of professionalism in journalists and also being knowledgeable and upholding the dignity of a journalist," Tagor said. Sabam passed away on Friday at 4:25p.m. after extended health complications, including diabetes and increasingly frequent dialysis treatment. Tagor said the family had last gathered to celebrate Sabam's birthday on May 4. It was only four days later that he was hospitalized. Among those influenced by Sabam's stint in the Foreign Ministry was former foreign minister Hassan Wirajuda, who had fond memories of the staunch senior journalist. "Pak Sabam Siagian was to me a good friend and senior colleague, sharing his professional passion both as a diplomat and in his case also as a seasoned journalist," Hassan told the Post. Hassan, who was at the time of Sabam's tenure as a diplomat heading the political division of Indonesia's permanent representative office in Geneva, Switzerland, said it was a difficult time to be in charge of mending relations with Australia. But Sabam was perfect for the task and was there at the right time, having been a senior journalist himself and coming from a Bataknese background, the senior diplomat asserted. His passion on diplomacy continued when he returned to the Post, having actively written on foreign policy issues and participated in relevant seminars and workshops, Hassan added. "During my time as foreign minister Pak Sabam eagerly attended the Foreign Policy Breakfast and was always willing and keen to share his experience and wisdom with his younger cohorts with all his sincerity," he said. Indonesian Ambassador to Australia Nadjib Riphat Kesoema, whose position Sabam held in 1991-1994, also remembered him fondly. "On behalf of all of the staff at the Indonesian Embassy in Canberra and all Indonesians in Australia who have come to know ambassador Sabam Siagian, I convey my most heartfelt condolences at his passing. Sabam was a warrior of journalism and an accomplished diplomat who dearly loved his country," Riphat said. "Farewell ambassador Sabam, you have left many a lesson for Indonesia's younger generation of diplomats and journalists. May you rest in peace." Special staffer to the coordinating political, legal and security affairs minister, Atmadji Sumarkidjo, who was a journalist at Sinar Harapan and Suara Pembaruan expressed his respect for Sabam for his willingness to nurture the younger generation to become qualified journalists by asking them to allocate time to read books. Sabam began his early career in journalism in the two above-mentioned evening newspapers before he took the position as the Posts chief editor. He recalled how Sabam invited reporters to his house only to give them books as he emphasized the need for journalists to understand the background and context of an event or case being pursued. What impressed him the most was the willingness of Sabam to go into the field with reporters as well as editors just to see the real facts behind the story or to conduct interviews together. Sabam didnt only sit and give orders, but went along with reporters. Thats why we called him our guru, and a mentor for many of us as journalists, he said. Sabam also nurtured a wide network of resourceful people who would then become his good friends, such as Indonesias noted economists Widjojo Nitisastro, Emil Salim and Subroto. H.S. Dillon, human rights commissioner from 1998-2001, recalled Sabam as a journalist and a gentleman. (dan) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3, 2016 Sabam Pandapotan Siagian, the founding editor-in-chief of The Jakarta Post, passed away on Friday at the Siloam Hospital in Central Jakarta. He was 84. Sabam served as the Post's chief editor from 1983 to 1991. Afterwards, he became Indonesias ambassador to Australia from 1991 to 1994. He remained active in and passionate about diplomacy and journalism until the end. It was in journalism that Sabam made his greatest mark. One legacy he left behind was the Post itself. Any new newspaper takes years to make its presence felt. The Post took a shortcut when it launched in April 1983, thanks to Sabam, who had already made a name for himself in the diplomatic and business communities as a journalist for Sinar Harapan. Born in Jakarta on May 4, 1932, Sabam studied at the University of Indonesia's School of Law from 1952 to 1959. During those years, he was active in student groups, including by participating in the Afro-Asian Students Conference in Bandung in 1956. He also spent time as a research assistant on the military for Indonesia's permanent representative at the United Nations from 1967 to 1973. In 1978, he was named a Nieman Fellow for Journalism at Harvard University, Cambridge, US. Due to his achievements, he received The Spirit of Journalism award during National Press Day on Feb. 9, 2010, in Manado, North Sulawesi. Even after he was diagnosed with kidney failure, Sabam still followed politics and city issues and shared his insights with his juniors at the Post. Rest in peace, Pak Sabam. (yan) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3, 2016 Senegal has expressed an interest in buying military vehicles manufactured by Indonesian strategic industries, including ships, helicopters and VIP-class vessels for fast coastal-crossing. The interest was conveyed by Senegal President Macky Sall to Indonesian Ambassador to Senegal Mansyur when he handed over his credentials on Friday. Senegal is building up the economy and wants to gear up its military transportation for border surveillance, Mansyur said as reported by Antara news agency, underlining the two countries militarily have something in common in contributing to world peace. Senegal has 3,575 military personnel on UN peacekeeping missions and ranks seventh among the countries with the most UN peacekeepers, while Indonesia ranks 11th with 2,729 personnel in eight African countries. During the event, Mansyur promoted Indonesian-made military vehicles and primary weaponry systems, at which the Senegal government requested the technical specifications and details. The vessels are made by state-owned shipbuilder PAL while the helicopters are manufactured by state-owned aircraft manufacturer Dirgantara Indonesia. (ags) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3 2016 Publicly listed PT Surya Semesta Internusa with assets ranging from real estate and hotels to infrastructure construction will proceed with its expansion strategy this year although it foresees pressure on revenue. Surya Semesta has set aside Rp 1.3 trillion (US$95 million) for capital expenditure to improve the performance of its three business units: property, construction services and hospitality, president director Johannes Suriadjadja said. Seventy percent of the total capex, approximately Rp 910 billion, will be used by its property business unit to expand its industrial land. It aims to acquire around 300 ha of land before the end of 2016 in Subang regency, West Java. To date, we have used Rp 100 billion out of Rp 1.3 trillion in available funds to acquire 30 hectares of land in Subang, Johannes said, adding that the sluggish progress had been due to the large number of land speculators in the region. The remaining 30 percent of the allocated Rp 1.3 trillion, approximately Rp 390 billion, is to be used for other expansion needs, Johannes told journalists after the companys shareholders meeting in Jakarta on Wednesday. Surya Semesta, whose shares trade under the code SSIA on the local bourse, continues to work on the second phase construction of an industrial area dubbed the Suryacipta Technopark in Karawang, West Java. It has formed a joint venture with Japan-based diversified company Mitsui & Co. Ltd. and Thailand-based TICON Industrial Connection Plc, called PT SLP Surya Ticon Internusa (SLP), for the project, which consists of 12 buildings for lease with a total area of 28,000 square meters (sqm). SLP is also planning to build seven ready-made factories this year, with a total area of 24,000 sqm, according to a report released during the firms shareholders meeting. Up until now, SLP has had 16 ready-made leased warehousing facilities that have been in commercial operation since 2014 with occupancy rate of 75 percent by the end of 2015. Surya Semesta plans to add two more hotels to its hospitality industry portfolio with hotels to be acquired in Lampung and Pekanbaru, in Sumatra. The company currently owns four hotels namely Gran Melia in Jakarta, Melia Bali Hotel, Banyan Tree Ungasan Resort in Bali and Batiqa in Karawang through a number of subsidiaries, including PT Suralaya Anindita International. Furthermore, through its subsidiary PT Nusa Raya Cipta, Surya Semesta aims to boost its construction services unity by securing new contracts worth Rp 4.5 trillion this year, an increase of approximately 9.8 percent from Rp 3 trillion in contracts last year. The company believe the target can be realized in line with the growth of commercial and high-rise building construction projects as well as infrastructure projects that are part of the governments long-term program, its annual report reads. Although the company continued its plan to expand business, it was pessimistic about the total revenue to be recorded this year because of the economic slowdown, Johannes said. Surya Semesta predicts to book Rp 4.48 trillion in revenue this year, an 8 percent decrease from Rp 4.87 trillion last year. In 2015, the company managed to increase its revenue by 9 percent from Rp 4.47 trillion in 2014. The increase was due to the 16.3 percent increase in revenue reported by the companys property business unit amounting to Rp 692 billion last year, the 8.5 percent increase in the construction services business unit to Rp 3.5 trillion and a 4.6 percent increase in the hospitality business unit to Rp 655 billion. New projects undertaken in 2015 included the Regatta Apartment in Jakarta, Praxis Hotel & Apartment in Surabaya, East Java, the Pullman Hotel Ciawi in Bogor, West Java, and Radison Hotel Uluwatu in Bali. (vny) ---------------- To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News. 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 Winandriyo Kun Anggianto and Dimas Muhamad (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3 2016 Youla Lasut was speechless when she found out that her husband Alfian Elvis Repi, a crew member of the tugboat Brahma 12, was eventually released by the militant Abu Sayyaf group after more than a month in captivity. After the release of 10 captives early this month, we were all relieved when President Joko Jokowi Widodo announced that the other four hostages would soon join them. The release of the Indonesian sailors teaches us important lessons in dealing with such depraved groups. 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 Egypt needs to introduce an inheritance tax and make fiscal data publicly available in order to adequately tackle social and economic inequality, world-renowned economist Thomas Piketty said in Cairo on Thursday. Speaking at the launch of the first Arabic edition of his 2014 international best-seller, Capital in the Twenty First Century, translated by Egyptian economic journalists Wael Gamal and Salma Hussein, the French economist questioned the rationale of taxing consumption but not inherited wealth. It is a bit strange that you will tax consumption, so whoever wants to buy a coca cola in Egypt will pay a tax, but you can inherit millions and millions without being liable for tax, he said. Egypt is in the process of replacing an old haphazard sales tax system with a 10 percent value-added tax on a wide range of goods and services, a cornerstone in the strategy of Egypt's s government to reduce the budget deficit. I think it important that there exist an inheritance tax, if only as way to generate information about wealth, said the economist in his characteristic provocative style. In his book, Piketty calls for a global tax on wealth to stem the growing inequality of wealth, the product of an economy where the rate of return on capital is higher than the rate of growth, meaning that inherited wealth or self-accumulated wealth is growing faster than wealth earned through labour. By wealth, Piketty means net-wealth (minus debt), in terms of the total value of assets owned such as real estate, financial assets, or financial debt. Marshalling graph after graph and peppered with historical anecdotes, the award-winning French economist showed his Cairo audience in his presentation, as in his book, how major political shocks contributed to the reduction of inequality during most of the 20th century, notably two world wars, the Bolshevik revolution, and the Great Depression, and the rise of the welfare state of the post-war period. By contrast, he argues, wealth inequality has been on the rise since the 1970s and 80s. In the United States, a dramatic rise in the top corporate incomes and managerial compensations in recent decades has created a society where wealth inequality is on track to return to an extreme not seen since before the First World War. The hefty book (the English edition is almost 700 pages) has drawn praise for being firmly anchored in vast amounts of data. Along with over thirty collaborators from 20 countries, Piketty spent fifteen years systematically collecting historical data on income and wealth covering two centuries of North American and European history. This is something which has never been done before largely because this historical data was too historical for economists and too economic for historians, he explained to fans gathered at the old campus of the American University in Cairo, minutes away from Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the 2011 revolution. "Troublesome" lack of transparency One of the main limitations of the study, Piketty admits, is that it is centered on developments in the West. Unfortunately we know very little about income and wealth inequality within Egypt or within other Middle East countries, this is largely because we have no access to income tax or inheritance tax data, so it is impossible to make proper comparisons with other countries, said the Paris School of Economics professor. Official household survey data used by governments and international organisations to measure inequality in countries like Egypt greatly underestimates inequality, said the award-winning economist. After Brazil made fiscal data available following the publication of Capital, said Piketty, the numbers told a very different story than official survey data about the trajectory of inequality in the country from in 2006, where the data started. The lack of transparency about income and wealth in the Middle East and particularly in Egypt is troublesome, in that it allows for bad policy that fails to address inequality and basic needs, said the economist. If you dont know enough about how income is distributed and who is benefiting from growth and who should benefit from social security, it makes it very difficult to have a peaceful discussion about these issues, he said, stressing the need for societal dialogue about how public money is spent. It is important not to limit social policy to cash transfers, said Piketty in response to a question about Egypt from the audience, stressing the importance of access to services. Access to education and health are at least as important if not more important than cash transfers, he said. A staunch advocate of progressive taxation, Piketty said that Egypts income tax rate on the wealthiest (22.5 percent) was very small compared to developed countries. Piketty cites the 80 to 90 percent tax imposed on top earners in the UK and the US in a high-growth post war period. It did not kill capitalism, or growth, he said. No country in the world has become rich with a small government, said the economist who has since sparked a series of vehement rebuttals by conservative writers and critics. Although bigger government is not always good, it can lead to great prosperity if it is transparent and efficient, he told the audience. If small government was enough, Bulgaria and Romania would be richer than Denmark and Sweden, he said. The myth of meritocracy Sometimes the elites have a lot of imagination to justify inequality, said the economist, stressing the need for data transparency to uncover economic and social realities. In the summer of 1914, with war looking inevitable, France became the last of its peers to adopt a progressive income tax, long after Germany, Japan and Britain. Part of the reason why France was so late, said Piketty, was because the French elite felt like the country had already become and egalitarian, meritocratic society in the century following the French Revolution, even though the concentration of wealth in France was nearly as high as that in Britain, which had adopted a progressive income tax in 1909. To expose a more contemporary misconception, Piketty uses data from 2012-2013 to show a clear linear relationship between university attendance rates in the US and parental income. Pikettys graph shows children born to the poorest parents as having a 20 percent chance of attending university, while children of the wealthiest have roughly a 95 percent chance of entering into higher education, belying the official American discourse about a land of equal opportunity. Meritocracy is largely a myth invented by the winners of the system, said the economist. Though there is no mathematical formula to determine at what level wealth inequality starts to hamper economic growth, certainly what we can learn from history is that the level of concentration of wealth in pretty much every European society up until World War I was not useful for growth, said Piketty. A complicating factor is that extreme inequality is self-sustaining, often leading to the persistence of inequality over time. Politically, the danger with rising inequality and the accumulation of societys wealth in the hands of a few is that threatens the very foundations of democracy, exacerbating social tensions and leading to the rise of radical nationalistic and xenophobic political movements, warns the author whose book has been read by millions across the world. If you dont even manage to address inequality in a peaceful manner its always tempting for some political leaders to exploit inequality in order to raise anger against a particular population, he said, citing the rise of the right-wing Front National party in France and the stridently anti-immigration presidential campaign of Donald Trump on the other side of the Atlantic. But Piketty denies being a doomsday prophet. I am much more optimistic that some people imagine, he said. Some people read my book and they think I am very pessimistic which is very sad because this is not the way I look at the future. I think that the right reforms can solve these problems. Search Keywords: Short link: Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Grace D. Amianti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3 2016 Publicly listed Indonesian media outlet Tempo Inti Media expects that a future strategic partner will help develop its online arm in the face of a revenue squeeze. The company, popularly known as Tempo, is currently in the process of releasing its online portal, called tempo.co, as a separate entity as part of efforts to consolidate its business, a Tempo executive has said. Tempo Inti Media president director Bambang Harymurti said the company was seeking a potential strategic partner to take part in its new plan. He said the company was in serious discussions with prospective candidates, but declined to provide further details. Im still bound by a non-disclosure agreement, so I cant tell now, he said on Wednesday. Bambang also declined to mention the amount of funds it is seeking from the spin-off. He said the main thing Tempo wanted from a potential partner was that its values should be in accordance with those of the company, namely trustworthy, independent and professional. Of course, the prospective strategic partner that we seek should complement both parties strengths and weaknesses. The spin-off is part of Tempos efforts to improve its business performance this year in response to revenue pressures in 2015 that saw a decrease in demand for its services. Last year, Tempo booked a 25.4 percent decrease in revenue to Rp 252.5 billion (US$18.4 million) as the company saw declines in publishing demand after the 2014 presidential election. In 2014, the company printed ballots for general and presidential elections that produced revenue worth Rp 38 billion as explained by its management during a shareholder meeting on Tuesday. Despite falling total revenues, the company booked Rp 6.58 billion in net profit last year and Rp 132.7 billion in advertising revenue, which grew 10.6 percent year-on-year (yoy). Its digital circulation also grew 94 percent yoy, the management said. Toriq Hadad, Tempos marketing and business development director, predicted that revenue from advertisements and circulation could grow between 15 and 20 percent this year. For 2016, Bambang said the company expected to see a 7 percent yoy increase in total revenues to Rp 269 billion. A set of new business strategies will support the target, including its spin-off plan and revenue from prospective tenants renting office spaces in its new building located in Palmerah, West Jakarta. Tempo will remain with its strategy of combined digital and physical outlets, which Bambang claimed as the most secure form of business. He said the combination created a mutual exchange of costs, revenue and profit. There will be efficiency when we apply the digital economy doctrine, which boasts produce once and sell many times, he said. -------------- To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News. 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 Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3, 2016 At least 10,000 people representing various hard-line and civil society groups marched to the State Palace on Friday in protest of what they claimed to be the revival of the defunct of Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). The groups, including the Islam Defenders Front (FPI), Islamic People's Forum (FUI) Pemuda Panca Marga and the Communication Forum of Indonesian Veterans' Children (FKPPI), started their long march after Friday prayers at Istiqlal Mosque in Central Jakarta. Wearing white garb and military-like attire, the protesters held posters as they called for the eradication of communism in Indonesia. "This is an anti-PKI movement," Maman Suryadi, who led the FPI protesters, told the thejakartapost.com. Protesters demands included for President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo to not revoke the 1966 Provisional People's Consultative Assembly (MPRS), which disbanded the PKI and banned anything communism-related, and also banned lessons on PKI in school curriculum. The protest was a continuation of a two-day symposium entitled Threat of the Indonesian Communist Party [PKI] and Other Ideologies during which retired military generals and groups discussed threats brought about with the alleged revival of the PKI and ways to protect Pancasila as the state ideology. Tuparjo from Pemuda Panca Marga said the purpose of the rally was to warn the government and public over the rising influence of communism. The protesters also urged the government to be firm on matters related to the PKI. "Communism and radicalism must not live in this country," he said. Members of the Pemuda Panca Marga group take part in a rally protesting an alleged revival of the defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and communism in Indonesia in Central Jakarta on June 3. Around 10,000 people took part in the protest to push for the government to take a firm stance on communism in Indonesia.(thejakartapost.com/Anton Hermansyah) Meanwhile, Arive Bawomo from FKPPI also said that the group's members urged the government to not apologize over the 1965 tragedy as demanded by human rights activists, victims and family of victims of the massacres. The government has yet to find a conciliatory solution for the 1965 communist purge, which is believed to have killed at least 500,000 people suspected to be members or sympathizers of the PKI. Jakarta Police deployed around 3,000 personnel for Friday's rally. Police officers will guard the protest and manage traffic to prevent congestion, said Sr.Cmr. Dwiyono of the Central Jakarta Police. (rin) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, June 3, 2016 UNICEF Indonesia has praised the World Health Assembly's decision to approves a new resolution on nutrition to encourage extended breastfeeding of young children beyond six months. The resolution issued by the governing body of the World Health Organization (WHO), composed of health ministers from WHO member states, last week called for an end to inappropriate promotion of foods and beverages for infants and young children, including breast milk substitutes and complimentary foods. This is welcome news because more than 2.5 million babies born every year in Indonesia are losing out on the full benefits of breastfeeding, as parents receiving conflicting information about whats best for their children, UNICEF Indonesia chief of nutrition Harriet Torlesse said in a statement on Thursday. Indonesia prohibits the promotion and advertising of infant formula for babies aged 0-6 months. UNICEF Indonesia says the guidance clarifies that follow-up formula and growing-up milk targeted for consumption by babies aged six months to three years should be regulated in just the same manner. It further says breast milk is the ideal food for infants. It is safe, clean, environmentally friendly and contains antibodies, which help protect against many common childhood illnesses, UNICEF Indonesia said. Breastfed children perform better in intelligence tests, are less likely to be overweight or obese and less prone to diabetes later in life. Women who breastfeed also have a reduced risk of breast and ovarian cancers. However, UNICEF Indonesia says, inappropriate marketing of breast-milk substitutes has continued to undermine efforts to improve breastfeeding rates and duration worldwide. UNICEF, WHO and the Health Ministry recommend that breast milk is given to children up until at least their second birthday. For newborn babies, this means being breastfed immediately after delivery and fed nothing but breast milk for their first six months, no water, no other food, just breast milk. For older infants, aged between six months to at least two years, breastfeeding should continue, and be complemented by other safe and nutritionally adequate foods, UNICEF Indonesia says. Data show that 96 percent of Indonesian women breastfeed their children at some point, and this is quite high. However, only 42 per cent of infants aged under six months are exclusively breastfed. By the time children approach their second birthday, just 55 per cent are still given breast milk. While we should continue our efforts to increase exclusive breastfeeding rates, we must also protect, promote and support continued breastfeeding until children are at least 2 years old, Torlesse said. According to UNICEF Indonesia, the breast-milk substitute business is a big one, with sales forecast to reach Rp 25.8 trillion (US$1.89 billion) in Indonesia this year. If children were breastfed according to the recommendations, the country would save Rp 20 trillion each year in healthcare costs and wages. A study commissioned by Padjadjaran University, together with UNICEF and Alive and Thrive, reveals that improved breastfeeding in Indonesia could save 5,377 child lives and Rp 3 trillion in health costs every year by preventing childhood illnesses such as pneumonia and diarrhoea. Boosting breastfeeding could save Rp 17 trillion in wages each year on improvements in cognitive ability and increased earnings in later life. UNICEF urges the government to extend the scope of the current national legislation to include the promotion and advertising of all breast milk substitutes that are specifically marketed for feeding infants and young children up to the age of three years. (ebf) Allegheny Front is a severe book. Its a book that doesnt trouble itself to protect the reader. An animal has just enough brains to cure its own hide, muses a man who is pages away from having just enough brains to see his own hide opened by a shotgun blast. In this collection of stories, his second book after the novel Honey from the Lion, Matthew Neill Null gives us a near-journalistic depiction of the violence men have wrought on nature and on themselves. But Null is shifty, prone to sliding into a different kind of honesty, a shelter-in-the-storm tenderness made all the more seductive due to its relative scarcity in the collection. Null is from West Virginia, and most of the literary press surrounding Nulls work lays the West Virginia on pretty thick this interview is no exception. The insistence on the West Virginia narrative is not without good reason, though; Null is in possession of a ranging, encyclopedic knowledge of the Mountain State that is every bit as deep as it is wide. Over the course of a few emails, I had the pleasure of speaking with Null about a variety of topics from the efficacy of spoken stories to the forgotten work of Wendy Brenner. The Millions: West Virginia is all over your work. In Lydia Millets introduction to this collection, she admits to knowing almost as little of hardscrabble country life in West Virginia as its possible to know. I know about the Wild and Wonderful Whites and prescription pills. Ive heard the lazy, ridiculous incest jokes since I was a kid. I suspect most of your readers will be bringing a similar patchwork of misinformation regarding West Virginia to the table do you see Allegheny Front and Honey from the Lion as an attempt to complicate or at least augment this bizarrely pervasive cultural perception in any way? Matthew Neill Null: There are so many different people in a place like West Virginia, but we bear down on the most lurid aspects. The pill-eaters certainly exist some are my pals! but this vision leaves out the county surveyor, the deacon, the forester, the nurse raising kids on her own. But the world has certain expectations, and youll never go broke on stereotype. Writers like Daniel Woodrell have parleyed this into good, long careers. I think of it as meth-lab trailer porn. I give a fuller spectrum of life because that is my experience of the place; my family has lived there for generations, since a time before the United States existed. My mom, who came from a modest background to say the least (her toy was an empty guitar case, and the house had no indoor plumbing), went to nursing school and climbed the ladder. My dad was a lawyer, from a family that has risen and fallen and risen again. One grandfather was a union pipefitter, the other a mechanic for Columbia Gas though his father had been a state senator. I was blessed because we had friends from the entire expanse. It was a small place. Everyone was necessary. This is rare, I now know. We are stratified on the level of class. You walk into a party and find out everyone went to Bard together. TM: In an interview with American Short Fiction, you bring up Breece Pancake as being generally accepted as the best writer to have come out of West Virginia. You go on to say that with Allegheny Front you wanted to do something different, because if youre a writer from West Virginia, particularly a white male, youll be compared to [Pancake]. Its strange to imagine writing in the shadow of a 26-year-old man who died some 30-plus years ago whose name still might not ring a bell with many readers. Is this indicative of a shortage of West Virginia literature in general? Or is it just not getting the attention it deserves? Are there West Virginia writers we are woefully unaware of? MNN: Oh man, Im not the best person to ask. Ive consciously avoided writers from my territory, because I wanted to engage the place totally, with my own language, own vision. Im sure there are woefully overlooked writers of skill, as there are everywhere. My favorite West Virginia books are Black Tickets by Jayne Anne Phillips and Lord of Misrule by my pal Jaimy Gordon, as well as Muriel Rukeysers U.S. 1, with its long section on the Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster. If people have encountered any writing from West Virginia, its likely The Stories of Breece DJ Pancake, which has had a cult revival, thanks to many champions such as John Casey, Andre Dubus III, and Kurt Vonnegut. In my grad program, people were obsessed with it. Pancake killed himself at 26 in a bizarre episode, so his slender oeuvre is frozen like a fly in amber. Certainly the book of a troubled young man, confused, hurt, haunted by the land and history and class, still coming to terms with women and rejection. I wanted a more expansive world. We prize the human perspective too much. I mean my book to be a corrective to a certain understandable chauvinism. TM: In The Slow Lean of Time, one of the characters dies and another is reassured by the fact that the drowned man would live on on their tongues, not forever, but for a while, the nearest thing to forever. Your stories often flirt with this collision of past and future, of old ways which eventually must submit to new. In The Second District, one of the hunters (who, rather primitively, has just used a dog to cave a bear) is prideful of owning the first phone I encountered that could take pictures. My question is this: why are these stories that live on the tongue still so vital when we live in a world where everyone has a phone that takes a picture? MNN: If you look at social media, you see this leveling of American culture. Everyone has the same photo of the same beach, the same blue water, same wedding party, same slang, same songs, same movies. We have one lingua franca. We curate ourselves for mass consumption. But real speech, in the moment, in groups of two or three, tears at the veil. What we say that is not recorded. Drunken confession. Botched jokes. The rejected advance. Campfire at a deer camp. The novel as village gossip. The writer must rescue the whispered and the regrettable. Im from a place totally shaped by talk, by verbal facility. All that silence, space, and privation gave people that gift, like the Irish, like Southerners. It was our currency, in lieu of any other. If you went to buy cigarettes, you werent getting out of there without a 20-minute conversation with the cashier and a couple sheep jokes. The uneasy relationship between a past and an uncertain future is the major pivot of my work. It is impossible to shear my familys identity from the West Virginia landscape. But I came of age at a time that was hyper-conscious of the fact that the place was dying. Free land brought us; we were broken on the rock of global capitalism. My world is gone, but we lived rich, particular lives there. The fiction Im writing now has a new focus: how to live in a world where there is no future. I find myself going back to beloved writers from Eastern Europe under communist regimes: Tadeusz Konwicki, Gyorgy Konrad, Danilo Kis. In absence of hope, their gaze is forced backwards. This may be a dead road, but Im looking for a hint. TM: I have to ask about the dedication. Your first book, Honey from the Lion, was dedicated, For the land and the people. The dedication in this book, however, reads, For the animals. At one point during my reading, I joked with myself that I might reread the collection to tally up how many gruesome (or at least very fully realized) animal deaths I came across. Animals human and otherwise are not treated particularly well in this collection that dedicates itself to them. What gives? MNN: Interactions between humans and animals fascinate me. People in West Virginia live close to the bone I hunted and fished for the table, like most. But if you look at the greatest swath of contemporary America, people encounter animals bloodlessly shrink-wrapped in the grocery aisle, or they keep pets and fetishize them. (I say this as a dog-lover. You take a young thing from its natural mother, inflict Stockholm Syndrome on it, and convince yourself that this is true love.) So I wanted interactions that are not filtered through sentiment or the factory slaughter-house. Force the issue. As Joy Williams says, Good writing never soothes or comforts. Look hard at the brutality people inflict on the landscape, the animals, and one another. Im from a place with a thin population. Animals filled out my world. In bed at night, I would wonder what the deer were doing up on the ridge. How the trout lived under the ice. So it was important for me to have a story like Natural Resources that is partly told from the perspective of animals. For me, the land, humans, and other forms of life are equally balanced; my work explores what happens when the balance is nudged, be it by capriciousness, bureaucracy, or extractive industry. The poet Rebecca Gayle Howell is from eastern Kentucky, from a farm family, so we became fast friends. In her collection Render / An Apocalypse, she has poems like, How to Kill a Rooster, How to Kill a Hen. Weve both noticed that, at our readings, no one objects to the violence that people do to each other, or that people do to the landscape, but sometimes a person will flip over the death of an animal. Im not sure what this means. Im still thinking on it. Perhaps because we project an innocence upon animals they cannot speak, like very young children. But then, Ive seen a mink kill a hen and not bother to eat it. It killed for play or for spite. When I was rattling around for my novel, sometimes I would read a passage set on this howling winter mountainside a lion attacks a team of horses, a teamster is mortally hurt, a horse has its foot sheared off when a log pins it against a stump. I worried to Rebecca about that, and she said, You must get comfortable with discomfort. With inflicting discomfort. Thats the difference between art and wallpaper. TM: Unsentimental is a word Ive seen stamped all over reviews of your work, usually always intended as complimentary; for whatever reason, sentiment has become a pejorative. That said, one of the stories from this collection, The Island in the Gorge of the Great River, elicited more of an emotional response from me than anything Ive read recently. I think perhaps my reaction had something to do with the relative lack of obviously emotional points of reference in your work a sort of supply/demand relationship. Is this a balance youre conscious of striking or is it something that happens on its own? MNN: In The Island in the Gorge of the Great River, I wanted to summon that sharp, bone-deep desire most of us feel toward someone when were young its so immediate and annihilating theres no way to resist. Well, okay, we feel it when were older, too, but if fate has blessed us with wisdom, we manage it better. (Ive not been blessed.) My tendency is to withhold emotion for as long as possible, then release it at certain, charged moments. I noticed this early on as a symptom of my writing, then began to use it more consciously as a tactic. That said, now that Ive written two books, I want to tear down my practice and find a new syntax. Im a couple hundred pages into a novel, part of which follows the dissolution of a long and disastrous marriage, so the exploration of the characters interior emotional landscape must be more a part of it. But even then, I dont think Im capable of going too far in the other direction. Sentimentality (not sentiment) is the enemy and the destroyer. Evan S. Connell is impressive in Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge. A master of restraint. Even if the characters cannot articulate it to themselves, you always know what they feel. Connell is the forgotten American stylist of the 20th century. Such an elegant writer. His nonfiction works are just as startling, if not more so. TM: Youre something of a compendium of writers I should have heard of by now. Who else should I be embarrassed not to know about? MNN: Wendy Brenner is a fabulously talented short story and essay writer. She hits a sweet spot between Joy Williams and Padgett Powell, though she has a voice all her own, often more poignant. Begin with her essays for the Oxford American, specifically Love and Death in the Cape Fear Serpentarium and Strange Beads, then read her story collection Large Animals in Everyday Life. Paula Nangles woefully-overlooked novel The Leper Compound follows a young girl into adulthood as Rhodesia is becoming Zimbabwe. A poets novel, in a way. Ive met precisely one other human being who has read it. Sybille Bedfords A Legacy is a moving dream. I dont even want to talk about it. Malcolm Bralys On the Yard is a prison novel, written while the author was incarcerated in San Quentin. But this isnt the rough diamond you expect from prison lit. This novel is technically flawless. His memoir False Starts is out-of-print, once again proving the world is unjust. TM: Youve mentioned a world where there is no future, Eastern European communist regimes, and intentionally inflicting discomfort this dissolution of a marriage novel is shaping up to be a real hoot! Im having a difficult time imagining your work taking place under a roof. Are we still in West Virginia? Can you spill the beans? MNN: In The Rumpus, the reviewer Micah Stack actually counted up what percentage of Allegheny Front takes place inside he said it was less than two percent! I love it. I dont want to lift the lid off the pot, but the next novel takes place in the early-1960s, mostly in West Virginia but with interludes elsewhere. It traces political corruption, the rise and fall of the Great Society, and the tension between Marxists and anti-communist liberals in the American labor movement. The story of rural life is thought to be incoherent. It is not. Global political forces shape the private lives and social crises of characters who live in distant, even isolated areas, seemingly far from the main stage of history and the centers of power, commerce, and media. Susan Howe displays this to great effect in My Emily Dickinson and The Birth-Mark. TM: I noticed a conspicuous lack of mining throughout this collection. Its almost always there, but you keep it out of the foreground. Was this a deliberate move to avoid another of those tired West Virginia tropes, or is that just one more of the ways in which the state has been misrepresented? MNN: My friend Phyllis says that the quintessential West Virginia story features a laid-off coal miner whose wife has just left him. He broodily gets whiskey-drunk (okay, meth-addled if the story was written in the last decade), goes deer-hunting (preferably with his dead fathers rifle), and accidentally shoots his beloved hound dog. The trailer door slams. He is now truly and forever alone. But more seriously, yes, I wanted it to be in the background, always there, pervasive but rarely noticed, dark clouds on the horizon. In my novel, in their difficult moments the male characters always think of going into the mines. If my life doesnt pan out, I can always do this. They think of it wistfully, as one thinks of suicide. Antiquities Minister Khaled El-Nany inspected on Thursday the Giza Plateau development project and the new phase of #ScanPyramids Antiquities Minister Khaled El-Enany toured Giza Plateau on Thursday to inspect the latest work being carried out on the development project there and to solve any problems that could hinder its completion. The Giza Plateau development project aims in part to improve security measures in order to make the site more tourist friendly. Ashraf Mohi, Director-General of Giza Plateau, told Ahram Online that the project started in 2009 but stopped after the 2011 uprising. Late last year, the project resumed and it is now near completion, Mohi explained. Mohi added that several works have been achieved as part of the project, including the completion of the administration building has been constructed, the construction of a visitors' centre, and the installment of a state-of-the-art security system with monitoring cameras and TV circuits. A new lighting system to illuminate the Giza Pyramids and the plateau at night will also be installed soon At the end of his tour, El-Enany stopped at the #ScanPyramids Project along with former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass who is leading the project's scientific committee. Hamada Anwar, who heads the project, told Ahram Online that four telescopes were installed in front of the northern and eastern side of King Khufu's pyramid to collect the cosmic rays (Meoun) found in the air in order to explore the inner architecture of the pyramid and determine if it houses any hidden corridors or cavities. Next month, a detailed report based on the #ScanPyramids project will be submitted to the antiquities minister. Search Keywords: Short link: Hawass told Ahram Online that " All previous results of this project is completely wrong and we hope that this new technique would be accurate." The committee appointed by the minister of antiquities which I led, Hawass went on, would review all the readings and results submitted in order to tell the world the accurate results. "Personally I don't believe in the results of these new techniques used but I hope to be wrong and they show me something accurate because all scientific research that have been done along the last 21years are results in the air," Hawass told Ahram Online. Back in 1979, then US president Jimmy Carter decided June would be Black Music Month. Now, in an official proclamation, President Barack Obama has decided it should instead be called African-American Music Appreciation Month and celebrated properly. Mr Obama is well known for his love of hip hop, naming a Kendrick Lamar song as his favourite of 2015 and inviting a number of artists into the White House during his eight years as president. Spotify playlists Hes also a lover of Aretha Franklin, who sang at his inauguration, as well as Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Billy Holiday. Take a look at hisfor a lesson in great music past and present. Mr Obama wrote: Songs by African-American musicians span the breadth of the human experience and resonate in every corner of our nation animating our bodies, stimulating our imaginations, and nourishing our souls. These artists speak to universal human emotion and the restlessness that stirs within us all. African-American music helps us imagine a better world, and it offers hope that we will get there together. Read the full proclamation below: A vital part of our Nations proud heritage, African-American music exemplifies the creative spirit at the heart of American identity and is among the most innovative and powerful art the world has ever known. It accompanies us in our daily lives, and it has rung out at turning points in our history and demonstrated how our achievements as a culture go hand-in-hand with our progress as a Nation. During African-American Music Appreciation Month, we honor the artists who, through this music, bring us together, show us a true reflection of ourselves, and inspire us to reach for the harmony that lies beyond our toughest struggles. Songs by African-American musicians span the breadth of the human experience and resonate in every corner of our Nation animating our bodies, stimulating our imaginations, and nourishing our souls. In the ways they transform real stories about real people into art, these artists speak to universal human emotion and the restlessness that stirs within us all. African-American music helps us imagine a better world, and it offers hope that we will get there together. This month, we celebrate the music that reminds us that our growth as a Nation and as people is reflected in our capacity to create great works of art. Let us recognize the performers behind this incredible music, which has compelled us to stand up to dance, to express our faith through song, to march against injustice, and to defend our countrys enduring promise of freedom and opportunity for all. (Charles Dharapak/AP) NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2016 as African-American Music Appreciation Month. I call upon public officials, educators, and all the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate activities and programs that raise awareness and foster appreciation of music that is composed, arranged, or performed by African Americans. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand sixteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fortieth. BARACK OBAMA If you enjoy a hearty meal of Cumberland sausages and Jersey Royals, washed down with some good old English wine, it may be a good time to reflect on how youll vote in the EU referendum. Yes, your home-grown bangers and mash - as well as Cornish Pasties, Melton Mowbray Pork Pies and even some types of British cheese - could be at risk if we leave Europe at the end of this month. Yes, your home-grown bangers and mash - as well as Cornish Pasties, Melton Mowbray Pork Pies and even some types of British cheese - could be at risk if we leave Europe at the end of this month. How so...? It's basically because the EU protects these products from being imitated, keeping the quality high and preventing the knock-off sausages (often with lower quality meat) from taking on their name - the same way that champagne made outside the French town can't called itself... champagne. The UK boasts 73 food and drink products with EU Protected Food Names (PFN) status, and the protection may fall away if it leaves the EU. The status helps consumers recognise British products as traditional and authentic, preventing non-genuine, possibly inferior, products from using the name. Basically, if Britain votes for Brexit on June 23rd and leaves the European Union the quality and reputation of a whole load of food and drink might be under threat from imposters. And we don't want that, do we? (Stefan Rousseau/PA) The irony of this when Britishness and sovereignty are the mainstays of the Leave campaign is not lost on us. Lewis Crofts, chief correspondent at global market analysts MLex, says: After a Brexit, the UK could negotiate a trade deal with the remaining EU members. Such a deal would most likely contain provisions on the continued recognition of each others protected names. But the UK would also have to insist its names were protected when negotiating new deals outside Europe, and Crofts says anti-Brexit campaigners believe the UK would struggle to negotiate beneficial deals without EU clout. Heres a look at some of the products on the PFN list 1. Orkney beef & lamb, which must be produced and reared using traditional methods in Orkney, and slaughtered and prepared there. 2. Traditionally-farmed Gloucestershire Old Spots pork. The meat and products, including bacon, gammon and sausages, must be from the traditional unimproved pig breed Gloucestershire Old Spots, reared using traditional farming methods, including allowing the meat to mature on the bone for several days. 3. Armagh Bramley Apples; limited to apples grown within the Archdiocese of Armagh, Northern Ireland. Products must be harvested between early September and late October. 4. Traditional Cumberland sausage; limited to products produced in Cumbria, with a meat content of at least 80% and sold coiled. (Thinkstock) 5. Jersey Royal Potatoes; grown, prepared and processed on Jersey, using traditional methods. 6. Yorkshire Wensleydale cheese; limited to cheese produced in Wensleydale, North Yorkshire, using whole milk from cows grazing in the area. 7. Melton Mowbray pork pie; limited to products produced using a traditional recipe and within the vicinity of Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire. 8. Scottish Farmed Salmon: Atlantic salmon that has been conventionally and organically farmed on the west coast of Scotland, the Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland. 9. Cornish pasty; only pasties produced in Cornwall using a traditional recipe, with at least 12.5% beef and 25% vegetable content (but products can be finally baked outside Cornwall). 10. Stilton cheese. Produced, processed and prepared in Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, using traditional methods and normally using full-fat pasteurised cows milk from cows grazed in the designated area. (Thinkstock) 11. English wine; only wine produced in England from grapes also grown there, using prescribed methods, from vines growing below 220m above sea level. 12. Cornish Clotted Cream; limited to products produced, processed and prepared from milk produced in Cornwall and containing a minimum butterfat content of 55%. Will you be voting in the EU Referendum on 23rd June? If so, which way? Tell us... The highlight from the first major live TV event of the EU referendum campaign was undoubtedly when English Literature student Soraya Bouazzaoui laid into David Cameron, accusing him of waffling. The news of Bouazzaoui's slating of the Prime Minister has travelled fast. Her main point of contention was when he insisted that Turkey will not become a part of the European Union in the near future. The Muslim student, who studies at Southampton Solent University, said she had intended to vote Remain in the June 23 referendum but had been put off by the In campaign, which she described as a complete shambles. Im an English literature student I know waffling when I see it." Soraya Bouazzaoui shows why we need Humanities pic.twitter.com/l8TVYNujoV Helen Rogers (@helenrogers19c) June 3, 2016 Ive seen nothing but scaremongering, Ive seen no valid facts, Ive seen no pros and cons, said Bouazzaoui during the Sky debate. Everything Ive seen has made voting In to the EU look worse. Cameron attempted to assure her that there was a positive case for remaining in the EU, but she cut him off, saying: Thats not answering my question. Let me finish now, because Ive seen you interrupt many people before. Let me finish. Im an English literature student, I know waffling when I see it, OK. Im sorry, but youre not answering my question how can you reassure people who want to vote Out that we are safe from extremism when we are willing to work with a government like Turkey who want to be part of the EU when they are under heavy accusation? Bouazzaoui was priased by hundreds of people on social media for saying exactly what she thought to the PM. Soraya Bouazzaoui. You are my hero. Thank you for that! #Brexit Cameron Wartnaby (@Cameronwartnaby) June 3, 2016 @StrongerIn @LeaveEUOfficial @David_Cameron You absolutely got owned by Soraya Bouazzaoui, we should have more interviewers like her on SKY Phil (@philipshears) June 3, 2016 But there were some who thought she didnt come across well. Bouazzaoui hit back at claims she was rude by saying she had given the PM a taste of his own medicine. Whatever your opinion, she certainly ensured the debate was a lively one. Differences in opinion between the sexes regarding higher education starts as young as 13, research shows. At this age girls are more likely to believe that going to university is important compared to boys. Just 36% of boys enter higher education compared with 46% of girls, and Oxford University researchers found that even in Year Nine, when pupils are aged 13/14, girls have a more positive attitude towards university than boys. The statistics may explain the growing disparity in university admissions between the sexes. The decision to go on to higher education at age 15 or 16 can significantly impact A-level choices, a study published by The Sutton Trust showed. (monkeybusinessimages/Thinkstock) Data from 3,000 young people found almost 65% of girls in Year Nine believe it is very important to go to university, compared with 58% of boys. Over half of all the Year Nine pupils surveyed (61%) said it is very important to get a degree, compared with only 13% who said it is of little or very little importance. About 10% of girls feel it is not important to get a degree, but this rose to 15% when only boys were questioned. (michaeljung/Thinkstock) Pupils aged 15 and 16 with similar GCSE results are twice as likely to go on to do three A-levels if they see university as a likely goal for them. Professor Kathy Sylva, the reports co-author, said this could explain the gap in admissions later. She said: The higher aspirations of girls in comparison to boys may be linked to their greater A-level success and gaining admission to university. The report also found that disadvantaged students are less likely to think they will go to university, with only 27% having high aspirations compared with 39% of their better-off peers. (Chris Radburn/PA) The chief executive of The Sutton Trust, a foundation which promotes social mobility, called on schools to raise pupils aspirations. Sir Peter Lampl said: We need to offer more support to disadvantaged young people throughout their education so that they are in a position to fulfil their potential after GCSEs. The Government has said that the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their classmates has narrowed since 2011, and David Cameron has promised to increase the proportion of disadvantaged young people entering higher education by the end of this Parliament compared to 2009 levels. A spokeswoman said: We have introduced a more rigorous curriculum so every child, regardless of their background, learns the basics they need, such as English and maths, so they can go on to fulfil their potential, whether thats into the world of work or continuing their studies, and encouraging more young people, particularly girls, to study Stem (science, technology, engineering, maths) subjects. 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Animals rights groups and conservationists have long accused the temple of secretly acting as a tiger farm and making huge profits by selling animals and tiger parts on the black market. Repeated efforts to shut down the temple have been delayed and complicated by the fact that secular Thai authorities are often reluctant to intervene in the affairs of the clergy. The temple has always denied trafficking allegations. The new carcasses were preserved in huge glass jars seized during searches conducted in the living quarters of temple abbot Phra Sutthi Sarathera, alias Luang Ta Chan, and of the temples workers, police said. The searches came after wildlife authorities stumbled upon and confiscated a cache of items made mainly from tiger carcasses including two large pelts, 1,045 ta krut talismans made of pelts, nine fangs, 33 small pieces of skin, 65 Luang Ta Maha Bua medallions, 13 Luang Ta Chan medallions and two tiger-fang ta krut talismans. These products were found in a pickup truck that was about to leave the temple yesterday afternoon, police said, adding that more similar items were found during additional searches. Two laymen and a monk were in the truck when authorities spotted it leaving the temple, police said. The two men were later identified as Kongkiat Chanpheng, 37, and Net Kulruangklai, 42, both residents of Sai Yok district, while the monk remained unnamed, police said. Tuanjai Noochdamrong, director of the Wildlife Conservation Office, under the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, said the office initially filed charges of illegal possession of carcasses of protected wild animals against the temple. Police were investigating why the wild animal carcasses had been stored at the temple and if they were intended for illegal trade, said Ms Tuanjai. The carcass of a tiger aged between one to two months is normally worth B100,000 in some countries where it is turned into talismans or used in Chinese traditional medicine, she said. Another 30 preserved carcasses of tiger cubs were found on Thursday, labelled in English and possibly for sale. Forty dead cubs were found Wednesday (June 1) in a freezer in the kitchen of Wat Pa Luang Ta Maha Bua, known as the Tiger Temple. Some of the people at the temple insisted they had nothing to do with the tiger cub carcasses, she said. More than 20 tiger cubs, aged between one to two months, that had previously been used to attract tourists to the temple had disappeared, she said, adding that security officials continue to search for them. As of yesterday, the team handling the relocation of the remaining 137 Bengal tigers had successfully transferred 64. The team expects to complete all the transfers by tomorrow (June 4). Aside from the tigers, the team also found one Banteng and pieces of illegal timber, some of which was believed to be the protected Afzelia xylocarpa variety while the rest awaits examination to find out what type of wood it is. An unnamed source at the Wat Pa Luang Ta Maha Bua Foundation said that about 40 tiger cub carcasses were found in the office of a veterinarian who used to work for the temple. The same source revealed that there are some photos showing the veterinarian storing tiger cubs in large glass jars. In the pictures, an unidentified monk was seen watching the veterinarian work, said the source. Chaloemkiat Sriworakhan, deputy national police chief, said representatives of the department had already lodged a complaint with Sai Yok police asking them to press charges against the suspects behind the illegal possession of the animal carcasses. Police were looking for the motive for storing the carcasses at the temple, Gen Chaloemkiat said. Read original story here. Hughes State Attorney finds no facts to support investigation into Noem airplane use The Hughes County States Attorney found Tuesday that there were no facts to support a criminal prosecution" for Noem's alleged misuse of the state airplane. This May 19, 2016, photo shows Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss at an air show in Lynchburg, Va. A Blue Angels F/A-18 fighter jet crashed Thursday, June 2, near Nashville, Tenn., killing the pilot just days before a weekend air show performance, officials said. A U.S. official said the pilot was Kuss. (Matt Bell/The Register & Bee via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Emergency services remove the body of a victim as more than 100 bodies are pulled from the sea near the western city of Zwara, Libya, Friday June 3, 2016, after a smuggling boat carrying mainly African migrants sank into the Mediterranean. Libya's navy spokesman Col. Ayoub Gassim says that the bodies of more than 100 migrants have been retrieved, but the death toll is likely to be higher. (APTV via AP) Police form a line to contain protesters outside a campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. A group of protesters attacked Trump supporters who were leaving the presidential candidate's rally in San Jose on Thursday night. A dozen or more people were punched, at least one person was pelted with an egg and Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) But the tribe has a long way to go Three BSF troopers were killed and 10 other persons, among them civilians, were injured three criticallyon Friday in a Hizb-ul-Mujhadeen attack on a security forces convoy in south Kashmir's Bijbehara town, police sources said. A police official here in Srinagar said that "a BSF convoy coming from Jammu to Srinagar was ambushed by militants on the highway in Bijbehara town of Anantnag district". Militant outfit Hizb-ul-Mujhadeen claimed the responsibility of the attack. Its operational spokesperson Burhanuddin told a local news agency that "several Indian troopers were killed in the attack carried out by a special squad of the outfit". Besides the death of these troopers, many more were critically injured, he said, vowing the attacks on the security establishments will continue. Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti strongly condemned the militant attack in her home town. Immediately after the attack, she spoke to Director General of the Border Security Force (BSF) K.K. Sharma and expressed anguish and sorrow over the death of three personnel in the attack. Following the attack, heavy exchange of fire took place in the town situated on the 300-km Jammu-Srinagar National Highway No.1A, according to eyewitnesses. The injured BSF troopers were shifted to a Srinagar hospital, the police sources added. The attackers were holed up inside the government sub-district hospital building, who later were believed to have fled the spot. The eyewitnesses said security forces immediately cordoned off the area after the attack which sparked panic in the area, however, the traffic on the busy national highway was later restored. "Such senseless attack is a desperate attempt by the elements inimical to peace to derail the peace efforts of the government and subvert the rejuvenating economic activity in the state," Mehbooba Mufti said in a statement. Mufti said the elements inimical to interests of Jammu and Kashmir have always tried to derail the peace efforts and the latest militant strike was again aimed at subverting the peace and development initiatives launched by her government. She also said such dastardly attacks have only brought miseries to the people and tragedies for the victim families, both security forces personnel and the civilians. The chief minister while expressing solidarity with the bereaved families of the security forces personnel, said: "I would like to express my sincere condolences to the families who have lost their loved ones in the attack." The run-up to the Rajya Sabha election this year is tainted by corruption charges. The legislators from Karnataka were allegedly caught on tape demanding bribe in exchange of their votes in sting operations. However, no money were exchanged on the camera. The sting operations by a private news channels exposed the corruption in electing members to the Upper House. JD(S) legislators, Mallikarjun Khuba and G.T. Deve Gowda, B.R. Patil from Karnataka Janata Party and Varthur Prakash, an Independent were shown in the sting video aired on the India Today channel. Of 57 seats, which will go to the polls on June 11, Karnataka gets to send four candidates to the Upper House. Each candidate need 45 votes to secure their nomination. While the Congress is set to win two seats and the BJP one, the heavy lobbying is underway for the fourth seat. The fight for the fourth seat boils down between Congress's nominee retired IPS officer K. C. Ramamurthy and JD(S)'s B. M. Farook, a businessman from Mangaluru. While Khuba candidly quoted his price, which was more than Rs 5 crore, Gowda's aide, who was identified as his son-in-law Ram, was seen inquiring can the 'lobbyists' go as high as Rs 10 crore. Two other MLAs were also showed allegedly discussing bribe money in the sting video. Another sting video by Times Now showed how votes are bought from Independents through favours in guise of development. "JD(S) offered me Rs 7 crore for voting for their candidate. But the Congress will give me Rs 100 crore for my constituency development. They will even offer me some chairman post of some board, that is what they are saying, an MLA said in the sting video. The JD(S) with 40 MLAs was already short of five votes to secure a Rajya Sabha seat for its sole nominee. However, infighting within the party deprived it of five more votes as last week Z. A. Zameer Ahmed Khan openly declaring his support to Ramamurthy. The Congress with the strength of 123 MLAs in 225-member House has surplus of 33 votes after ensuring victory for former central ministers Oscar Fernandes and Jairam Ramesh. The BJP with 44 MLAs and support of two Independents, meanwhile, is assured of a seat for its nominee Union Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. The Congress eying to bag the third with its surplus votes and support of 'rebel' JD(S) MLAs, small-time parties and Independents. In an attempt to downplay the Mathura incident, the ruling Samajwadi Party on Friday asserted that the rioters involved in the violence were "outsiders" who had gathered at a park on the state government land for a protest. "They were not local people. They had come from neighbouring states of Bihar and Madhya Pradesh and had gathered at the park belonging to the state government. They were given permission to hold a peaceful protest for just two days," Uttar Pradesh Public Works Department Minister Shivpal Yadav said at a press conference. He asserted that the protesters had refused to vacate state government land, despite repeated pleas and warnings from the administration for three years. Yadav asserted that the administration had cut off the water and power supply to the Jawaharbagh park in order to uproot the protesters. "If anyone from the police or the local administration is found guilty of not discharging his duty, he will be held accountable and will be punished," Yadav said. Thursday's violence saw 22 protesters and two police officers killed in the clash. Police has recovered a hoard of ammunition and weaponry from the protest site. The Indian-American gunman who shot dead his former college professor in California had also murdered his wife and planned to kill another faculty member, police said. Local news reports said Mainak Sarkar, 38, had killed his wife Ashley Hasti at her Minnesota home, before driving to Los Angeles. According to CBS Minneapolis, they were married in 2011. Sarkar shot his former professor William Klug, 39, multiple times at a small office in the Engineering Building of the University of California Los Angeles on Wednesday, before turning the gun on himself. Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck said Sarkar had plans to kill another UCLA faculty member, but could not do so as he was not able to find him. The faculty member, whose name was not revealed by police, is safe. "We believe that he went to kill two faculty from UCLA. He was only able to locate one," Beck said yesterday. He said police found an extra box of ammunition in his Minnesota home. According to the LAPD chief, Sarkar arrived at the UCLA campus "heavily armed". "He had a backpack, two semiautomatic pistols and extra magazines. It looks like he was certainly prepared to engage multiple victims," Beck told reporters. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is assisting the Los Angeles Police Department in its investigation. In a blog post, Sarkar, an IIT Kharagpur graduate, had accused Klug of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else. "William Klug, UCLA professor is not the kind of person when you think of a professor. He is a very sick person," Sarkar wrote. "I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy. He made me really sick. Your enemy is your enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust." Local media quoted several university officials and students as saying that Sarkar's allegation was not true. "UCLA says there is no truth to this," Beck told reporters in response to a question. Klug graduated from Westmont in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science in engineering physics, completed a master's degree at UCLA and a doctorate at CalTech. He was an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA. "We're deeply saddened by this tragic news and send our condolences to his wife, Mary Elise, also a Westmont graduate, and their family," UCLA President Gayle D Beebe said. "Dr Klug was an excellent student at Westmont who conducted student research with two professors during his college years," Beebe said. In the latest Knesset Channel rating of cabinet ministers, Yaakov Litzman remains the leader, as he has been for quite some time. He scores 5.9 out of 10 followed by [former Defense Minister] Moshe Yaalon with 5.6, and in third place, newly-appointed Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman with 5.5. the rating is carried out by the Knesset Channel program . The ratings are from May 2016. Among Members of Knesset the top three slots go to Shelly Yacimovich (Machane Tzioni) with 4.7, Erel Margalit (Machane Tzioni) 4.7, and in third place, Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) with 4.6 (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) During a routine security inspection at Ben-Gurion International Airport prior to takeoff, a passenger boarding a flight to the USA via Stockholm was found to be carrying a dismantled pistol in his bag. The weapons was in his carry-on. The passenger was turned over to the custody of Israel Police. The Airports Authority advises all passengers to carefully check bags before using them for an overseas trip, especially bags used for IDF reserve duty which are more likely to contain bullets or other items prohibited from in the airport and on flights. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) New Yorks attorney general can continue his legal effort to bar two former American International Group Inc. executives from the securities industry and forfeit any improperly gained profits, the states highest court ruled Thursday. The Court of Appeals for the second time refused to dismiss the lawsuit originally filed in 2005 by then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, ruling it should go to trial. The suit claims ex-AIG chief executive Maurice Hank Greenberg and ex-chief financial officer Howard Smith had engaged in fraudulent reinsurance transactions to conceal from investors a deteriorating financial condition. AIG itself resolved state charges as part of a $1.64 billion agreement with regulators in 2006. The insurance giant was bailed out by the federal government in the 2008 financial crisis. Greenberg and Smith settled related federal Securities and Exchange Commission complaints without admitting wrongdoing in 2009. Their attorneys challenged the state lawsuit, arguing that New Yorks Martin Act against securities fraud authorizes neither a permanent industry ban nor disgorgement of profits, and that releases from other settlements barred further financial forfeit. As we have previously stated, in an appropriate case, disgorgement may be an available equitable remedy distinct from restitution under the states anti-fraud legislation, Judge Leslie Stein wrote. Moreover, as with the attorney generals claim for an injunction, issues of fact exist which prevent us from concluding, as a matter of law that disgorgement is unwarranted. The court rejected another dismissal motion two years ago, concluding there was sufficient fraud evidence for trial. (AP) The following is via Breaking911.com: A U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron Blue Angels jet crashed in Smyrna, Tennessee, near Nashville on Thursday killing the pilot. Photos posted to social media showed a massive fire following the incident. It happened around 3 p.m. local time. The Blue Angels were doing a practice run for an upcoming air show in Smyrna. The crash comes moments after a Thunderbird Jet crashed in Colorado Springs where President Obama was attending a graduation ceremony. Air Force spokeswoman Lt. Col. Michal Kloeffler-Howard said the pilot ejected but there was no information on the pilots condition. No injuries were reported on the ground. Obama was still at the stadium taking photographs and greeting attendees in a private area during the air show that lasted about half an hour south of Colorado Springs. News of the crash broke while Obamas motorcade was returning to Peterson Air Force Base for his flight back to Washington. The crash occurred about 15 miles south of Peterson Air Force Base, where Air Force One was waiting to take off. House Speaker Paul Ryan endorsed Donald Trump on Thursday, ending an extraordinary public split between the GOPs presumptive presidential nominee and the nations highest-ranking Republican office holder. I had friends wishing I wouldnt support him. I had friends wishing I would, Ryan said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press. I really didnt feel any pressure, other than my goal is to make sure that were unified so that were at full strength in the fall so we can win the election. The Wisconsin Republican acknowledged he continues to have concerns Trumps combative style. It is my hope the campaign improves its tone as we go forward and its all a campaign we can be proud of, Ryan said. Ryan said the endorsement is not the product of any deal with the billionaire developer. Trump won his endorsement, Ryan said, based on an understanding of our mutually agreed upon principles. Ryan said he specifically wanted to go over Trumps approach to executive power, judicial appointments, and his position on abortion. Those conversations took some time, Ryan said. I feel much more comfortable that hes in the same page with us. Most importantly, it is obvious that Hillary Clinton is not, Ryan said. Ryan ended a weeks-long standoff with Trump minutes before the interview by outlining his support for the New York billionaire in a column published in his hometown newspaper. Ryans announcement marks a significant shift for a GOP desperately trying to come together ahead of a general election matchup against likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Some of the Republican Partys best known leaders have vowed not to support Trump, including 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who tapped Ryan as his running mate. The day before Ryans announcement, Romney signaled support for a possible third-party candidate instead of the presumptive Republican nominee. Ryan shocked the political world last month by refusing to endorse Trump once the real estate mogul became the last major Republican presidential contender still in the race. The pair spoke privately in a series of Washington meetings last month and their campaigns have maintained contact. Yet as the GOPs so-called Never Trump movement struggled to identify a viable alternative, many believed it was only a matter of time before Ryan fell in line. It was basically getting a comfort level of our idea about where the country is headed and where it ought to go, Ryan told AP. Its more of an understanding of each other and these principles and policies. Ryan has embraced reforms to Medicare and Social Security as his signature policy fight on Capitol Hill. Most Republicans in Congress have followed Ryans lead to reduce the cost of the popular programs that are contributing to the national debt. Trump has repeatedly promised not to cut the popular programs, echoing a position more commonly adopted by Democrats. Its no secret that he and I have our differences. I wont pretend otherwise, Ryan wrote in a column in the Janesville Gazette. And when I feel the need to, Ill continue to speak my mind. Ryans announcement was released as Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton was delivering a foreign policy speech excoriating Trumps approach. (AP) A Somali prisoner at Guantanamo Bay told a military judge Thursday that he has experienced what he believes are intentional noises and vibrations inside the high-security section of the prison known as Camp 7, echoing the complaints of a defendant in the Sept. 11 war crimes case who alleges he has been subjected to sleep deprivation while in custody. Hassan Guleed, an alleged member of East Africa Al-Qaida making his first appearance in a U.S. court since his 2004 capture, portrayed the sounds and vibrations as well as chemical odors in testimony at the U.S. base in Cuba as a kind or pressure intended to make detainees cooperate with authorities. He contrasted it with other forms of abusive treatment that he and others experienced while held by the CIA in overseas prisons before being taken to Guantanamo. We have mental torture in the Camp 7. In the black site, there was physical, Guleed started to say when prosecutors and the judge cut him off to keep him from discussing details about his confinement that are classified as secret. Guleed said several other prisoners have experienced the same sounds and vibrations, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, and Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian who was the first prisoner to be subjected to brutal CIA interrogation techniques. The Somali prisoner, who wore a black and white head scarf and a traditional white dress shirt as he testified in broken English, faced aggressive cross-examination from federal prosecutor Ed Ryan, who sought to show he was a biased witness by asking him about allegations that he trained at an al-Qaida camp and performed surveillance on a U.S. military base as part of a suicide bombing plot. Guleed, who has never been charged with a crime, denied involvement with al-Qaida. You are lying to us right now arent you sir? Ryan asked. The defendant said he was not. Twice, courtroom monitors cut the sound feed so that spectators could not hear information deemed classified. The testimony was intended to support allegations by Sept. 11 defendant Ramzi Binalshibh, who has alleged he has been subjected to intentional sleep deprivation, which his lawyer says interferes with his ability to participate in his defense. Binalshibh, Mohammad and three other Guantanamo prisoners face trial by military commission for planning and providing logistical support to the Sept. 11 hijacking plot. They could get the death penalty if convicted. Abu Zubaydah, who has not been seen in public since he was captured in Pakistan in 2002, had been expected to testify Thursday about his own experiences with noises and vibrations in Camp 7. But James Harrington, a civilian lawyer for Binalshibh, asked the judge to postpone his appearance just as he was about to come into the courtroom when it became clear that the judge would allow Ryan to ask questions similar to those he asked Guleed. Unlike the Somali, Abu Zubaydah has a lawyer, and he told the court that he would object to incriminating questions. Afterward, Navy Cmdr. Patrick Flor, the military lawyer for Abu Zubaydah, said his client was disappointed not to get a chance to express himself in a public setting after so many years. If he would have been able to walk into the courtroom, that would have been the first time he would have been able to walk that far, unshackled in 14 years, Flor said. Zubaydah may get a chance to testify later, possibly in a hearing scheduled for July. Military officials have repeatedly denied that guards in Camp 7 intentionally make sounds or vibrations, though there has been documented use of sleep deprivation during interrogations in CIA black site prisons and Guantanamo in the past. Prosecutors have suggested in court that Binalshibh is inventing the allegations, which have become one of the many issues that have sidetracked proceedings in the Sept. 11 case, which remains in the pretrial stage with no trial date set. The judge, Army Col. James Pohl, earlier issued an order directing the military to cease any deliberate noises or vibrations without determining whether any had occurred. Binalshibh says it has continued despite that order. (AP) Donald Trump said that the federal judge presiding over a lawsuit brought by former Trump University students has an absolute conflict in handling the case because he is of Mexican heritage. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee told The Wall Street Journal, in an interview in Fridays edition, that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel has an inherent conflict of interest because Trump is building a wall, a reference to Trumps proposal to build a wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico. Trump University is the target of two lawsuits in San Diego and one in New York that accuse the business of fleecing students with unfulfilled promises to teach secrets of success in real estate. Trump has maintained that customers were overwhelmingly satisfied with the offerings. Trump has brought up Curiels ethnicity several times this year, including last week at a rally in San Diego. Curiel was born in Indiana and served as a federal prosecutor and a judge in the California state judicial system before being nominated to the federal bench by President Barack Obama in 2011. On Wednesday, Curiel ordered some records that were released in the class action lawsuit against Trump University be yanked from public view. Late Tuesday, Curiel ordered some released documents to be resealed and resubmitted with sections blacked-out. He said some records had mistakenly been released last week, when he ordered some documents made public. Lorella Praeli, director of Latino outreach for Democrat Hillary Clintons campaign, said Friday that Curiel and his family epitomize the American dream. The fact that Donald Trump doesnt see Judge Curiel and his family as Americans makes him unfit to be president of this great nation, a nation of immigrants, Praeli said in a statement. (AP) House Speaker Paul Ryans endorsement of Donald Trump comes with caveats. Ryan, the nations highest-ranking Republican, isnt promising to help his partys presumptive presidential nominee on the campaign trail. Hes not publicly backing any of Trumps policies. And even as he vows to vote for the brash billionaire, Ryan is reminding voters he doesnt support Trumps confrontational style. It is my hope the campaign improves its tone as we go forward and its all a campaign we can be proud of, Ryan told The Associated Press. The Wisconsin Republicans endorsement may have ended a weekslong holdout that exposed deep divisions within the GOP. But his comments during an exclusive interview with the AP exposed lingering reservations, suggesting that Ryans shift was driven more by a deep desire to defeat leading Democrat Hillary Clinton than to support Trump. Its very clear to me that Hillary is in no certain way going to be advancing our principles and policies. Shes promising another Obama term, Ryan said Thursday. Its also become clear to me through my conversations that Donald Trump is somebody I know is comfortable with these principles and general policies. Ryan couched his endorsement around what he called an increased comfort level with Trumps approach toward Ryans policy priorities, including halting overreach of the president and executive branch. Yet he offered no public support for Trumps policy priorities in the AP interview. He also insisted he made no deals with the New York businessman in exchange for his endorsement. I had friends wishing I wouldnt support him. I had friends wishing I would, Ryan said from his congressional office just down the hill from where he lives in the small Wisconsin city where he grew up. I really didnt feel any pressure, other than my goal is to make sure that were unified so that were at full strength in the fall so we can win the election. Ryans announcement marked a significant step for a GOP desperately trying to come together ahead of a general election matchup against Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee. Some GOP leaders have vowed not to support Trump, including 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who tapped Ryan as his running mate. Just a day earlier, Romney signaled support for a possible third-party candidate instead of the presumptive Republican nominee. As the GOPs Never Trump movement struggled to identify a viable alternative, many believed it was only a matter of time before Ryan fell in line. The endorsement, he said, was not the product of any deal with the billionaire developer, but a decision based on an understanding of our mutually agreed upon principles. Ryan said he specifically wanted to go over Trumps approach to executive power and judicial appointments, and his position on abortion. Those conversations took some time, he said and added: I feel much more comfortable that hes in the same page with us. Most importantly, it is obvious that Hillary Clinton is not. Ryans announcement came as Clinton delivered a foreign policy speech excoriating Trumps approach. Electing Trump, she said, would be a historic mistake. Ryan first outlined his support for the New York billionaire in a column published in his hometown newspaper. He had shocked the political world last month by refusing to endorse Trump once the real estate mogul became the last major Republican presidential contender still in the race. The pair spoke privately in a series of Washington meetings last month and their campaigns have maintained contact. Ryan said he made the decision to formally endorse Trump earlier in the week. Major differences remain, however. And conservative leaders across the country continue to have deep reservations about Trumps devotion to Republican principles and his temperament. In particular, Ryan has embraced major changes to Medicare and Social Security as his signature issue on Capitol Hill. Most Republicans in Congress have followed Ryans plan to reduce the cost of the popular programs, which are contributing to the national debt. In contrast, Trump has repeatedly promised not to touch Medicare and Social Security, echoing a position more commonly adopted by Democrats. The two also break on immigration. Trump wants to deport more than 11 million immigrants in the country illegally in addition to imposing a temporary ban on Muslims from entering the U.S. Ryan opposes both policies. We obviously have a different kind of style and tone. Thats very clear, Ryan told the AP. Anyone who knows anything about us knows that. But what really, ultimately matters is how best can we make sure these principles and policies get enacted in 2017. And it is clear that is far more likely to happen under a Trump presidency than a Clinton presidency. (AP) A deal seems closer than ever in Israels negotiations to normalize diplomatic relations with Turkey, but some key issues remain unresolved, two Israeli ministers said. While Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz and Construction Minister Yoav Gallant on Thursday expressed optimism about the negotiations with Turkey, the Israeli Prime Ministers Office said that no concrete progress has been made. Turkish-Israeli relations broke down after the 2010 Gaza flotilla incident, in which nine Turkish militants were killed in clashes after attacking Israeli commandos boarding a ship that was trying to breach the blockade on Gaza. Turkey has conditioned normalizing ties with Israel on an official apology over the flotilla incident, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered in 2012; compensation for the victims families, which is currently being finalized; and a removal of the maritime blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza, a step that Israel opposes. Speaking at a conference in the southern Israeli city of Eilat, Gallant said, Israel and Turkey are very close to reaching a deal. This agreement is essential to Israels national security and it will have significant implications on the tourism and energy industries, and maybe even the construction industry. In an interview with Radio 103FM, Steinitz said, About 95 percent of the deal with Turkey is done. I wont go into the details, but I believe weve dealt with 95 percent of the issues successfully. I was under the impression we could have finalized things by Passover [in April], but Turkey was just putting together a new government, and that might have set things back a little. Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkeys former prime minister, resigned May 22. (Source: JNS.org) Irans top leader on Friday ruled out any formal cooperation with America against the Islamic State group, their common adversary in Iraq and Syria, insisting that the United States remains a prime enemy of Tehran, despite a landmark nuclear deal with word powers. Trusting the U.S. would be a big mistake, said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, insisting that cooperation with America goes against the independence of Iran. There has been no formal talk of a joint fight or even cooperation between Iran and the United States against the Islamic State group. Nevertheless, Khameneis remarks were somewhat ironic since the war against the Islamic State has put Americans and Iranians in close proximity. In Iraq, Irans powerful Revolutionary Guards are on the ground, helping Shiite militiamen and Iraqi forces in their offensive on Fallujah, an IS stronghold west of Baghdad. A U.S.-led airstrikes campaign is also backing that battle. But Khamenei said that despite the nuclear deal which went into effect this year, Iran has many small and big enemies, but foremost among them are America, Britain and Israel. He spoke at a ceremony marking the 27th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought hard-line clerics to power and ousted the U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Tens of thousands of Iranians attended the ceremony in Tehran while state TV broadcast Khameneis 90-minute speech live. The deal with world powers eased Tehrans isolation from the international community and removed many economic sanctions in exchange for Iran curtailing its nuclear program. But the agreement, struck in 2015 with moderate President Hassan Rouhanis administration, has been assailed by Iranian hard-liners, and in the months since its implementation, Iran has conducted missile tests criticized by the U.S., as well as aired footage on state television of an underground missile base. In Syria, Shiite power Iran is a top backer of President Bashar Assad, along with Russia. Tehran has deployed what it says are military advisers to support the Syrian government and has had casualties in the conflict, though it denies the presence of Iranian combat troops. Meanwhile, the U.S. and its Western allies, along with most Gulf Arab nations, back the Syrian rebels fighting to topple Assad. (AP) Hillary Clintons trouble with the Democratic base reaches back to the moment her longtime mentor, Marian Wright Edelman, blasted Clintons husband for cutting a deal with Republicans ahead of his 1996 reelection and signing a welfare overhaul law that she said makes a mockery of his pledge not to hurt children. Edelmans husband, Peter Edelman, quit his Clinton administration job in protest over the 1996 bill, and the tensions lingered for years with Marian Wright Edelman telling an interviewer during Hillary Clintons 2008 presidential campaign that the Clintons were not friends in politics. Today, many who have followed the strained political history between these two leading women of the left are perplexed about where they stand with one another. Clinton, who is expected to clinch the Democratic nomination next week, has put her connection to Edelman at the center of her outreach to liberals who view her with suspicion in part due to her support for the welfare overhaul legislation. She regularly tells audiences about her job with the Childrens Defense Fund in the 1970s, as she did at a recent NAACP gathering in Detroit when she said that standing up against injustice has always been my North Star, ever since I went to work for Marian Wright Edelman. Edelman, 76, seemed to signal that the two had come to terms when she appeared in a campaign video last year, recalling Clinton as a caring, young, bright, creative student who cared about children and those left behind. Its confusing, totally confusing, said Ben Jealous, a former NAACP president who interned for the Childrens Defense Fund in the 1990s and backs Clintons challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Marian was our hero. Peter is a saint theres no other way to put it, Jealous said. The connection to the first lady was a point of pride, he said. But the Clintons have allowed political calculations to triumph too often, he added. As progressives, you were given a conscience for a reason, and it should guide your policy. The relationship between Clinton and Edelman underscores one of the central challenges facing the Democratic candidate as she shapes her general-election strategy: how to deal with the complicated politics surrounding her husbands economic record. With the welfare bill, Bill Clinton was willing to anger liberals to pursue a centrist image that was part of his 1996 reelection strategy. In her campaign this year, Hillary Clinton has sought to strike a balance between her references to Edelman and her efforts to capitalize on her husbands legacy. She recently suggested that Bill Clinton would work in her White House on economic revitalization. Clinton and Edelman declined to be interviewed for this story. Despite the promotional video, a Childrens Defense Fund spokeswoman said that Edelman does not endorse candidates for public office because of the organizations nonprofit status. Peter Edelman, a Georgetown law professor, said he was reluctant to be interviewed. Its 20 years later, he said. I think were all in a good place now. Peter Edelman said he is 100 percent behind Clintons campaign. I strongly believe that Hillary is the most qualified candidate for president, he said. The history between the Clintons and the Edelmans dates to the late 1960s. Peter Edelman said he was impressed when Hillary Clinton, then a student named Hillary D. Rodham, delivered a 1969 Wellesley commencement speech, and he introduced her to his wife. Marian Wright Edelman hired Rodham at the Childrens Defense Fund in 1973, after she graduated from Yale Law School. Edelman proved a powerful and sometimes surprising mentor. She sent Clinton to knock on doors in poverty-stricken parts of New Bedford, Mass., and collect data. Daniel Yohalem, a New Mexico civil rights lawyer who joined the fledgling organization with Clinton, said that over the eight or so months that they worked together, they saw how Edelmans idiosyncratic approach had the potential to make a real impact. The data they gathered was used for a report that eventually stopped schools across America from pushing out disadvantaged, minority and disabled children. Yohalem said he also recalled a more idealistic Clinton than he observes from afar today. She was very committed as an advocate as a young person, Yohalem said. Political ambition was not a big part of her life back then. It was a nice time to know her because of that. Clintons connection with the Edelmans continued when she moved to Washington in 1974 to work on President Richard Nixons impeachment inquiry. She joined the Childrens Defense Fund board in 1978 and chaired it from 1986 until 1992. The Edelmans son, Jonah, recalled Clintons frequent phone calls to the familys Washington home. On occasion, Clinton would come to the house, where she and Edelman hammered out Childrens Defense Fund issues at the kitchen table. They were sisters in the best sense of sisterhood, said David Hornbeck, a Childrens Defense Fund board chairman who has known both women for decades. Both were policy wonks, he said, who fought many battles together, prayed together and wept together. After Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992, the new first lady appeared to carry her mentors goals into the White House. Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health policy at George Washington University, remembered Hillary Clinton marching her into the Oval Office to convince the president of the importance of supporting childhood immunization. He heard her loud and clear, Rosenbaum said. The Childrens Defense Fund seemed well positioned to help shape the Clintons policy agenda. Bill Clinton took the stage at the Washington Hilton on the organizations 20th anniversary, addressing Edelman as my dear friend and alluding to many other ties between the nonprofit and his administration. He was amazing, recalled Eve Brooks, then-president of the National Association of Child Advocates, adding that it all seemed a little too good to be true. In those early days, the Clintons had an exaggerated view of their own combined capacity, recalled Peter Edelman in an extensive 2004 interview for a presidential oral history project at the University of Virginias Miller Center. The Clintons burgeoning political agenda and the looming 1996 reelection campaign created tensions between the third-way approach espoused by the Democratic Leadership Council and the ideals embraced by the Childrens Defense Fund. The result was a juxtaposition of fury and friendship. In November 1995, with congressional Republicans pushing for welfare changes, Marian Wright Edelman wrote a vituperative open letter to the president in The Washington Post, saying that he faced a defining moral litmus test for his presidency. That month, Hillary Clinton invited Peter Edelman to fly on Air Force One to Yitzhak Rabins funeral. He spent the return flight playing hearts with the president and saw Hillary leap into her husbands lap, Edelman recalled in the Miller Center interview. Marian Wright Edelman did not let up the pressure. In early June 1996, she led a massive rally on the Mall, railing against cant-do leaders driven more by polls than principle. The same day, in the Oval Office, the president delivered his weekly radio address expressing his commitment to end welfare as we know it by requiring more work and strict time limits. The first lady made no public appearances that day. But in the following weeks she helped rally support for the measure on Capitol Hill. Signed in August 1996, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act aimed to end chronic dependency by putting time limits on welfare and requiring recipients to seek jobs, while shifting responsibility from the federal government to the states changes that critics thought would hit the most vulnerable hardest. Hornbeck recalled Hillary Clintons support for the legislation as an anomaly: It was so out of character with who she is and who she had been and who we continued to think she was, he said. The Edelmans made no secret of their objections. Marian Wright Edelman released a scathing statement blasting Bill Clinton for signing this pernicious bill. Peter Edelman quit his position as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services. Then, in print, he excoriated The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done. To those who knew Hillary Clinton and Marian Wright Edelman, this was the moment that showed how far Clinton had traveled from her early activist days. Pragmatism, expediency thats the issue, said Yohalem, Clintons former colleague at the Childrens Defense Fund. Clinton later acknowledged that she had put pragmatic politics ahead of her mentors principles. In the painful aftermath [of the welfare debate], I realized I had crossed the line from advocate to policymaker, she wrote in her 2003 memoir, Living History. I hadnt altered my beliefs, but I respectfully disagreed with the convictions and passion of the Edelmans and others who objected to the legislation. The couples contacts remained cordial. Hillary Clinton accepted Marian Edelmans invitation to Peters 60th birthday party in 1998 at the Sphinx Club in downtown Washington. And Hornbeck recalled her arriving at the Childrens Defense Funds Haley Farm in Tennessee in 1999 for the dedication of its Langston Hughes Library, describing the two women walking alone at dusk across a bridge over a lake. Nobody was privy to what they said, he recalled. But even as the old wounds were stitched up in public Bill Clinton awarded Marian Edelman the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000, and Hillary Clinton was honored in 2013 at the Childrens Defense Funds 40th anniversary gala the scar of welfare overhaul remained. In the 2004 interview, Peter Edelman said the relationship with the Clintons is never going to be exactly the same. And in the run-up to the 2008 election, he told the New York Times, They dont acknowledge the number of people who were hurt. Its just not in their lens. Clintons candidacy 20 years later has prompted a renewed debate about the legislations impact, weighing the rapid decline in caseloads in the late 1990s with a rise in the poverty rate after the 2008 economic crash. Sanders, who voted against the measure, has called it an attack, by and large, on low-income African-Americans. Clinton, who defended the legislation in her 2008 campaign, has tried to thread the needle this year. In a recent radio interview, she described the positive impact on people who got that first rung on the ladder of a job. But she blamed a Republican president, George W. Bush, and state governors for any shortfalls in the policy. Then Clinton appeared to offer a concession, perhaps one that Edelmans backers would welcome: We have to take a hard look at it again, she said. (c) 2016, The Washington Post Frances Stead Sellers Hes finally got Paul Ryans endorsement, but many officials in Donald Trumps new wave of supporters remain reluctant backers at best. Leaders who have pledged their backing still arent wholly satisfied with his temperament, policies or readiness for the White House. As Trump works to unify the fractured GOP behind him, these Republicans, Ryan among them, are struggling to show the same enthusiasm Trump has generated among rank-and-file conservatives across the nation. Hes a work in progress, says Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, who promised to support the GOP nominee several weeks ago. Would Trump be a good president? To me this is a question of alternatives, Cole told The Associated Press on Friday in a classic lukewarm embrace. Im comfortable that he will be a better president than Hillary Clinton. The day before, House Speaker Ryan ended an extraordinary public split by endorsing Trump in a column published in his hometown newspaper. Republican officials suggested that the endorsement marked an important step toward party unification, even while conceding that the speakers endorsement was somewhat underwhelming. In a subsequent interview with The Associated Press, Ryan did not express support for any of Trumps policies, would not promise to campaign on his behalf this fall, and reminded voters that he doesnt support Trumps confrontational style. And, the day after the endorsement, Ryan lashed out at Trumps suggestion that a federal judge should recuse himself from a case involving one of Trumps companies because of his Mexican heritage. Look, the comment about the judge the other day just was out of left field for my mind, Ryan said told Wisconsin radio station WISN. Its reasoning I dont relate to, I completely disagree with the thinking behind that. Ryan continued: So he clearly says and does things I dont agree with and Ive had to speak up on time to time when that has occurred, and Ill continue to do that if thats necessary I hope its not. He is not alone. Several other Trump backers on Friday had trouble detailing which of his policies they support and expressed continued concern about his temperament as president. And, keeping the candidate at arms length, still others reassured nervous colleagues by citing constitutional protections that could help limit the risks. I still believe we have the institutions of government that would restrain someone who seeks to exceed their constitutional obligations, Arizona Sen. John McCain told The New York Times. We have a Congress. We have the Supreme Court. Were not Romania. Our institutions, including the press, are still strong enough to prevent unconstitutional acts, he said. New York Rep. Peter King, another Trump backer, suggested his partys resistance to the New York businessman is fueled by his outsider status. While Trump has long been a political donor, he has no direct experience in governing and remains unfamiliar to many GOP leaders. Its not like the boardroom when you can just fire somebody. Hes not going to be able to fire Nancy Pelosi, King told the AP on Friday. Its not a question of intelligence or ability but is he ready for all the uncertainties that go with politics and government? Ryans decision to endorse Trump came after several personal conversations as well as communications between their staffs. Major policy differences remain. And conservative leaders across the country continue to have deep reservations about Trumps devotion to Republican principles. Trump has repeatedly promised not to touch expensive entitlement programs such Medicare and Social Security, a position in direct conflict with Ryan. The two also break on immigration. Trump wants to deport more than 11 million immigrants in the country illegally in addition to imposing a temporary ban on Muslims. Ryan opposes both policies. The Republican speaker said he now has an increased comfort level with Trumps approach toward Ryans priorities, including halting overreach by the president and executive branch. I had friends wishing I wouldnt support him. I had friends wishing I would, Ryan said from his congressional office just down the hill from where he lives in the small Wisconsin city where he grew up. I really didnt feel any pressure, other than my goal is to make sure that were unified so that were at full strength in the fall so we can win the election. Some GOP leaders have declared they wont support Trump, including 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who had Ryan as his running mate. Earlier in the week, Romney signaled support for a possible third-party candidate instead. GOP operative Tim Miller, among a shrinking group of vocal anti-Trump Republicans, offered a warning to any party leaders who believe they can influence Trump by joining his campaign. Donald Trump is not going to be body-snatched and turned into a constitutional-small government-welcoming-to-all Republican, Miller said. If you sign up with Trump, you get unadulterated Donald and all the bad that comes with it. (AP) AXAS insurance arm is to stop backing tobacco firms. The company, the worlds biggest health insurer, said that as a healthcare provider, investing in the sector made no sense But how many of its customers even knew the firm had around 1.6billion tied up in tobacco? Its worth pointing out, of course, that the move does not affect the fund management side of Axas business just the money invested by its insurance arm. Axa fund managers are still free to invest in whichever companies they believe will deliver the best returns for savers. And many of those could include companies which manufacture and sell cigarettes and other tobacco products. The Axa Framlington UK Growth fund, for example, has 3.6 per cent of its money in Imperial Tobacco. These businesses have been some of the most successful investments for savers over recent years. The addictive nature of the customers of tobacco companies means the firms have been able to steadily grow their share price as well as pay a chunky dividend. Over the past ten years, British American Tobacco shares have more than tripled from 1358p to 4182p. That would have turned a 10,000 investment into 30,795. Imperial Brands has grown from 1670p to 3769p in that time. Many savers may not like the idea of profiting from businesses which are making money selling this type of product. But as some of the biggest firms in the FTSE 100 they are among the most common to be found in investment funds. Savers have the option to pick an ethical fund, which can screen out all companies which profit from tobacco, arms or pornography, for example. But many people dont want a blanket ban on anything bad. So-called sin stocks, like it or not, have been incredibly successful investments over the years and ruling them out entirely could impact on your returns. So is it possible to quit tobacco stocks without opting out of UK funds? Data provided by Hargreaves Lansdown shows that very few UK funds do not invest in the sector. The Lindsell Train UK Equity fund is one of them. It looks for firms which will outperform over the long term. Hooked: The addictive nature of the customers of tobacco companies means the firms have been able to steadily grow their share price as well as pay a chunky dividend Some 22 per cent of the 2.1billion fund is in financial services companies, including London Stock Exchange Group, and a further 22 per cent in beverage businesses such as Heineken and Diageo. It has returned 90 per cent over the past five years. The Unicorn UK Smaller Companies fund has 15 per cent of its cash in industrial engineering businesses, 11.5 per cent in support services, and 11 per cent in construction companies. The fund has returned 76.1 per cent over the past five years. The Unicorn UK Income and F&C Mid Cap funds also dont include tobacco in their holdings. Finding this information is quite difficult though. Funds publish a full list of their investments as little as once a year, and some contain hundreds of companies, many of which you might never have heard of, which makes checking and comparing an arduous task. And if you pick a fund on this basis it is important to remember that it is not part of the strategy of these funds to avoid tobacco, it is just what their investment choices happen to be. So if avoiding the sector is important to you it is vital to regularly check for any changes. Of course, many savers wont be concerned about tobacco. But perhaps they are worried about other sectors. Franklin UK Smaller Companies has no oil companies or tobacco firms in its portfolio. Standard Life UK Equity Income Unconstrained has no oil or pharma stocks. Adam Laird, investment manager at Hargreaves Lansdown, says: Ethics is a personal subject and each saver will approach it differently one persons renewable wind energy is anothers blot on the landscape. Whatever your ethics, its crucial you check a fund before you hand over your savings to ensure you understand where your money is going. Did you know, for example, that the 8billion Woodford Equity Income fund has 16.6 per cent of its cash in tobacco stocks? It also has 23.8 per cent in pharmaceutical firms. BP has agreed a settlement with investors who launched a class-action lawsuit against the blue chip energy group accusing it of understating the severity of the disastrous 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The oil giant said it will pay out $175million (121.3million) to shareholders who bought stock soon after the oil spill and later claimed that the share price did not reflect the magnitude of the disaster facing the company. Investors had sought a settlement of $2.5billion (1.7billion). However, BP said this settlement did not resolve other securities-related litigation in connection with the spill, so other payouts could be on the way. Disaster: The Gulf of Mexico oil spill was sparked by an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in April 2010 The settlement with shareholders, who will be paid during the current financial year, follows that with the US government and five states affected by the spill, to whom BP agreed to pay up to $18.7billion. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill was sparked by an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig on 20 April 2010, which killed 11 men and saw 134 million gallons of oil flow into Gulf waters in one of the worst environmental disasters to strike the United States. More than 8,000 birds, sea turtles, fish and other wildlife were found injured or dead in the six months after the spill. Shares in BP were trading 2.3 per cent, or 8p higher this morning at 361p, buoyed as well by a rise in oil prices above the $50 a barrel level. The stocks has fallen by 45 per cent since the Gulf of Mexico disaster and lately have been under pressure amid falling crude prices. The price of UK benchmark Brent crude has more than halved over the past two years, falling from around $114 a barrel in June 2014 to below $30 earlier this year, causing oil companies' profits to shrink. But this morning the oil price pushed back above the $50 a barrel level after figures yesterday showing another draw-down in US crude stockpiles offset oil cartel Opec's failure to agree on any cuts to its production levels at a meeting. Like rivals, BP has been forced to reduce spending, cull jobs and sell assets in the face of the oil price slump. It shrank capital spending three times last year to 13billion and slashed nearly 10 per cent of its 80,000 workforce. The bankruptcy of BHS is a horror story. The biggest financial tragedy is the hit to living standards for staff, members of the pension schemes and the supply chain. No doubt a new generation of no-frills discounters will be queuing up to take control of the better-located stores, with firms such as Primark, Poundland, B&M and Wilco all possibilities. So the wheels of commerce will continue to turn, as they will if Britain votes to leave the EU on June 23 or hang on. Failure: The BHS scandal has exposed the desperate shortcomings of accountants, lawyers and City firms in whom business and consumers place their faith to uphold the integrity of commerce What this saga has done is expose the desperate shortcomings of accountants, lawyers and City firms in whom business and consumers place their faith to uphold the integrity of commerce. It also suggests that the post-Maxwell reforms of Britains occupational pension schemes are deeply flawed, and those tasked with running these quangos appear to be out of their depth. There are no excuses for Sir Philip Green, the proprietor of BHS, who after stripping hundreds of millions of potential investment out of BHS, sold the company to a three-times bankrupt for one pound. Green is a grown-up and should have seen Dominic Chappell coming. Indeed, the only adviser who did warn off Green was unpaid investment banker Anthony Gutman of Goldman Sachs. One suspects that if Green knew how his reputation as king of retail would be wrecked by his shabby sale he would have taken a different course of action. Now he must suffer the consequences. It is time, however, to focus more attention on the advisers. No doubt the Insolvency Service will do its stuff and throw custard pies at Chappell and his associates, who could face lifetime bans from boardrooms and worse. But who is going to correct the shoddy work done by rapacious advisers? It is my understanding that Chappells main advisers, the accountants Grant Thornton and law firm Olswang, collected 8million in fees (presumably paid out of BHS funds) to advise Chappell and Retail Acquisitions on a transaction which had no chance of succeeding. Then Linklaters, one of the Citys poshest firms of lawyers acting for Green, accepted Olswangs due diligence as if it was holy writ. It wouldnt be so bad if the principal professionals responsible had appeared before the investigating select committees and admitted their errors. Instead, they sent second-line representatives and pleaded privilege and confidentiality the excuses of cowards. The real worry is that the advisers including KPMG involved in both the pension funds and the attempt at a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) will be probed, if at all, by their own slug-like regulatory bodies. That is why a broader judicial or fast-track Companies Act probe is necessary. As for the Pensions Regulator, what we have seen so far from chief executive Lesley Titcomb shows a degree of inattention to the train crash which was about to happen that borders on negligence. If ever there was a moment when Britain needed the most robust pensions regulation, it is now. Pension shortfalls have been the biggest issue at BHS, a deal-breaker at Tata Steel and centre of attention at Austin Read. Latest data shows that the deficits on gold-plated defined benefit schemes have blown out from 255billion to 330billion over the past year. And judging from current near-zero ten-year gilt yields, one of the measures used to crystalise the size of deficits, they arent going to shrink any time soon. At a time of a national emergency for the High Street, the reputation of City advisers and pensions, Remain ministers are running around the country yelling recession and lost jobs. Its time they focused on what is really important to citizens, which is where they buy their nighties, lighting and homewares, and lost trust in their lifetime savings. Dimon geezer Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase was once President Barack Obamas favourite Wall Street banker. A series of lacerating fines for misconduct left the bank $38billion and upwards poorer and the door of the Oval Office slammed shut. None of this seemed to bother George Osborne as he stood beside Dimon in Dorset warning that as many as 4,000 JP Morgan jobs in the UK could be moved overseas as a result of a Brexit. If American investors were less craven, Dimon would have been booted out in favour of a cleanskin years ago. Annual gala Walmart has lessons to teach FTSE 100 boards. At British annual general meetings, some dry old stick tries to crack through the agenda as quickly as possible (hoping no one notices the fat-cat pay), and seeks to buy off investors with a few curled-up-at-the-corner cheese sandwiches, some crisps and lukewarm, milky tea. At WalMarts annual gathering in Bentonville, Arkansas, 14,000 shareholders turned up for a gala meeting hosted by British comedian James Corden and a succession of rock and county and western bands. Cool customer: Pop star Rihanna performs in a pair of Cornelia James gloves Luxury brand manager and investment firm The House of Britannia has bought a majority stake in events firm Best Of Britannia Retail, which holds exhibitions promoting British-made products. Its first event was held in 2012 and it now hosts 300 brands, with previous exhibitors including Morgan motor cars and The Royal Mint. This year the event will also be staged in Preston and Bristol, with plans for further expansion and potentially taking it overseas. Best Of Britannias website will soon host 200 top British brands selling their wares online to consumers around the world. The House of Britannia has bought and backed a number of British brands and in March last year snapped up a majority stake in Queens glovemaker Cornelia James, which also makes gloves for the likes of pop star Rihanna. The brand is well known for its 100-plus evening gloves, and in recent years has won popularity with the likes of pop stars Taylor Swift and Madonna. Sir Philip Green was yesterday accused of a 'lamentable failure of behaviour' after the collapse of BHS. The billionaire tycoon was lambasted for putting the reputation of British business at risk amid mounting anger over the demise of the 88-year-old chain and loss of up to 11,000 jobs. Green sold the company to three-time bankrupt and playboy Dominic Chappell for just 1 last year and has faced fierce criticism over his handling of the situation in recent months. Lord Myners, the former chairman of Marks & Spencer and a former City minister, said selling BHS to Chappell was 'like giving the keys of your car to a five-year-old'. 'Lamentable': Billionaire tycoon Sir Philip Green was lambasted for putting the reputation of British business at risk amid mounting anger over the demise of the 88-year-old chain and loss of up to 11,000 jobs The boss of the Institute of Directors which traditionally stands by senior businessmen and women also launched a fierce attack on Green. Simon Walker said: 'I think it has the potential to be deeply damaging to the reputation of British business. We spend a lot of time agonising about the loss of trust in the business community and I think we can see why. Sir Philip is a very high-profile business leader. He is the person who is on the front page with Kate Moss on his arm and who has a 100million super yacht and so on. 'When someone like this ends up behaving like this, people think that's how business is, and it's not. 'The majority of business leaders are people who are more likely to have mortgaged their homes to keep their company going than to own this kind of lavish thing. 'There has been a lamentable failure of behaviour and there are a lot of questions to be asked.' A series of investigations have been launched into BHS's collapse, including by the Insolvency Service and MPs. Business minister Anna Soubry said that 'any issues of misconduct' at the company 'will be taken extremely seriously'. Green has said he is 'saddened and disappointed' by the collapse of BHS. But he also came under fire from Myners, who said: 'It is pretty indisputable he must take some of the responsibility for what has happened. 'Not least of all for selling the business to Dominic Chappell, which was rather like giving the keys of your car to a five-year-old and allowing the five-year-old to crash your car.' Doomed: Green sold BHS to three-time bankrupt and playboy Dominic Chappell for just 1 last year and has faced fierce criticism over his handling of the situation in recent months Myners, who has had a long-running dispute with Green after he fought off a 9billion bid for M&S from the tycoon in 2004, called on the Topshop billionaire to write off a loan that he is owed by BHS. As a secured creditor to BHS, Green's company Arcadia stands to rake in up to 35million from the wind-down, depending on how much is raised from the sale of all its stock and property. Myners said: 'We should make sure this money is used for the benefit of employees and pensioners. Thank goodness he didn't succeed [in taking over M&S]. If he had done, I don't know what would have happened to M&S.' A spokesman for Green said that he had written off more than 200million of loans to BHS. The money is from a number of loans made going back to 2009. On Thursday, BHS's administrator Duff & Phelps announced the business will be wound down and all 164 shops closed and sold to other retailers after it failed to find a buyer. Its stock and all fixtures and fittings will be sold over the next two months and proceeds will be paid to creditors. The 20,000 past and present BHS staff who paid into a pension at the retailer will be offered some protection despite the company going bust. When the chain went into administration in April the fund entered into the assessment process for the Pension Protection Fund. The PPF is funded by contributions from other company funds and will pay 90 per cent of pensions due to members not yet retired and the full commitment to those already retired. Despite calls for Green's wife, Lady Tina Green, who owns many family assets, to face MPs, Frank Field, chairman of the Work and Pensions Committee, yesterday said he had no intention of calling her. Pocket money dished out to kids has reached its highest level for nine years, according to an annual survey that has been running since the 1980s. Children now receive 6.55 per week from a parent or guardian on average, an increase of six per cent compared to last year, according Halifax. This is now the highest allowance since before the financial crisis, which suggests a loosening of family purse strings after almost a decade, but it yet again raises the thorny question of how much pocket money should you give children? Happy piggy: According to data, kids are getting the highest weekly pocket money since 2007 - and more children are saving some of it How much should kids get? The number of children receiving pocket money has increased by three per cent in the last 12 months, meaning four in five kids are now given a weekly cash sum. Nine year-olds receive the least on average at 4.68 while 14 year-olds receive the most at 8.03. But those averages hide the fact that many parents will have grappled with the issue of what age to start giving pocket money and how much to give. They must weigh up two opposing points: the desire not to give children too much and lead them to think money grows on trees, with the need to give them a meaningful sum that reflects the modern-day cost of buying things and fosters a savings habit. Why give pocket money? Giles Martin, head of Halifax Savings, said: 'Pocket money is a great training tool in money management and a fantastic way of instilling a sense of the value of money from an early age. 'Getting children to set aside even just a small amount each week can help them to develop a strong savings habit that with serve them well through to adulthood, so it's particularly encouraging to hear that almost four in five children are now doing so.' Those who received pocket money as a child exercise more control over their spending than those who didnt and are less likely to be overdrawn, a study by ING Group found in 2014. It also said more than half who received pocket money when they were younger now regularly add to their savings suggesting it can help people develop long-term financial planning skills. Pre-crisis peaks: The data shows 2005 was the year pocket money peaked - but it could be set for a steady climb back north How much do kids get? Boys receive more pocket money than girls. On average, boys receive 6.93, compared to 6.16 for girls, meaning boys are over 12 per cent better off. The data shows that between 1987 and 1998, pocket money nudged up only slightly from 1.13 per week to 1.76. But by 2000, kids were receiving 3.60 on average and this had risen to above 8 from 2005 to 2007, before falling back to 5.89 in 2010 as more families faced up to financial difficulties in the recession. Despite the pocket money pay rise, 42 per cent of children still believe they should receive more pocket money than they do. However, 51 per cent believe they receive the right amount of money. Almost half say knowing how much their friends get is important to them, a significant increase on 2015. Mr Martin said: 'It's reassuring to see that the average weekly amount has reached a nine-year high. 'Some parents are clearly not feeling the pinch in the same way as they have done in recent years. It's likely it'll be a few more years until we reach the dizzy heights of 2005 though, when we saw the highest average pocket money since our records began.' Do kids save their pocket money? The data also shows that a larger proportion of children now save some of their pocket money, up to 79 per cent compared to 70 per cent last year. Almost one in eight save all of it. Children who live in London have by far the strongest savings habit, with 94 per cent saving some or all of their pocket money. This might be because children in the capital get the most, at 8.21. Scots are the second most generous, handing over 7.06 per month. Kids in East Anglia get the rawest deal, receiving 4.96 on average. Nine in 10 parents say they encourage their children to save some of their pocket money. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Bill Parry A community activist from Woodside has announced that he will challenge Margaret Markey (D-Maspeth) for her seat in Assembly District 30, which she has held since 1998. David Rosasco declared that the current system of government is broken, illustrated by the influx of residential towers, hotels and motels in western Queens. Without naming any lawmaker by name, Rosaco, a Democrat, told a crowd of 50 supporters at Engelines Restaurant and Bakery on Roosevelt Avenue that gentrification and the displacement of low-income residents are a reality. No one at any level of government appears to stand up publicly and oppose this, Rosasco said. These same persons would purport to stand with you, the people of this community, while at the same time racing to eventually have all of us removed from this community because of the rising cost of living. The very structure of this government and the way it budgets its money must be questioned. There are people without food on their table. There are others who cant stay in their homes where theyve lived for many years, many for decades. During his hourlong speech, delivered without notes, Rosasco said it was time to fashion budgets and legislation that would rein in agencies that are of less need for the many and expand the role and dollars of other agencies that have a greater need, such as those that handle infrastructure, Section 8, SCREE, and HEAP. While they talk and debate and entertain themselves at cocktail hours and dinner dances and modern art shows, (we) restored an entire U.S. zip code to pristine condition, Rosasco said. The 43-year-old professional translator returned to his hometown of Woodside in 2005 after living in Japan for 12 years. When Rosasco saw the filth under the No. 7 subway line around 61st Street and Roosevelt Avenue, he grabbed a broom and started sweeping. His neighbors began to notice and joined him. And then the children came and the Woodside Neighborhood Association was born. Every weekend, during every kind of weather, they would gather and clean, paint hydrants, remove illegal dumping and graffiti and planting hundreds of trees all with young people who volunteered as much as 250 hours a year. These are your future leaders right there, Rosasco said, pointing to a table filled with young people. I have attempted to involve the youth, minority and immigrant children, other smaller church and mosque congregations that often get little attention, other individual residents who have for years performed the hard labors to maintain their own communities. Rosasco ran for City Council in 2009, but he was removed from the primary ballot by lawyers working for the Queens Democratic Party. The voters were disenfranchised, he said. Rosasco thinks the decade he has spent on the streets with the residents of Woodside gives him an edge over the modern politician. He knows the need for more state dollars in the district for practical concerns such as food pantries for the needy and upgrade medical facilities. In the end, I believe that this district, which includes Woodside, Maspeth and Middle Village, will be better served by the person speaking to you now than any combination of my opponents or current officials in government, he said. Rosasco becomes the second Democrat from Woodside to challenge the incumbent, Margaret Markey. Brian Barnwell, 29, announced his candidacy in August. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Patrick Donachie A homeless Jamaica man was arrested and charged in the shooting death of an aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo last year before the West Indian Parade in Brooklyn, according to the NYPD. Police said Micah Alleyne was arrested by officers in the 71st Precinct for the murder of Carey W. Gabay, who was the first deputy counsel for the Empire State Development Corporation and a top aide to the governor. On Sept. 7, 2015 at about 3:41 a.m. Gabay was walking north on Bedford Avenue, between Sullivan Place and Montgomery Street in the East Flatbush area of Brooklyn. He was walking home from the JOuvert festival, an annual event held prior to the West Indian Parade. Gunfire broke out near the outside of 1680 Bedford Ave. and Gabay was struck in the head, police said. He was transported to Kings County Hospital, where he died of his injuries Sept. 16. Alleyne, who lives at the Lincoln Motor Inn in Jamaica, was charged with murder, criminal possession of a firearm and reckless endangerment, according to police. He was indicted on the charge of murder in the second degree on Wednesday, according to the Brooklyn District Attorneys office. Alleyne engaged in mutual combat with others that involved multiple handguns, and in doing so he fired the bullet that struck Gabay, according to the DAs criminal complaint. Alleyne lives at the Lincoln Motor Inn, located at 90-35 Van Wyck Blvd. in Jamaica, according to police; it is used as a temporary homeless shelter. Gov. Andrew Cuomo thanked investigators for their work and decried the loss of Gabays life in what he called a senseless tragedy. Todays arrest is a major step forward in the pursuit of justice for Careys family and loved ones, Cuomo said. I commend the investigators and prosecutors for their tireless efforts to ensure those responsible for Careys death are held fully accountable for their actions. Police continued to seek several other individuals in connection with Gabays murder. Police said investigators were continuing to search for two men and one woman. The NYPD previously announced a $22,500 reward that was offered for information that would lead to an arrest and conviction in the murder. Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson said the investigation would continue until everyone involved in the murder was apprehended. As I have said from the beginning, we are determined to get justice for Mr. Gabay and his family, he said. And we will continue to press forward until we hold everyone responsible for his death accountable. Anyone with knowledge of the incident is asked to call NYPD CRIMESTOPPERS at 1 (800)-577-TIPS, Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Kevin Zimmerman For this third season of Queens Kudos awards, which recognizes the best in the boroughs theater scene, the TimesLedger decided to shake things up a bit. Rather than simply focus on the professional productions, the paper opted to include the numerous shows staged each year by the boroughs large stable of community theater companies. This past winter nominations were sought and readers voted on the first Community Theater Queens Kudos, which awarded prizes to the JC Players for Seussical: The Musical and to the Parkside Players production of Vanities. So now it is time to turn our attention back to the Actors Equity-approved showcases and acknowledge those actors and actresses who delivered memorable performances in musicals and straight plays that ran in the borough between January 2015 and last month. Here are the 2016 Off-Off-Broadway Queens Kudos winners: Supporting Actress in a Musical: LilyAnn Carlson, Merrily We Roll Along, Astoria Performing Arts Center One of Stephen Sondheims few missteps and quite possibly the biggest flop ever to open on Broadway, Merrily We Roll Along is the story of three friends and how they change over time here told in a story that unfolds in reverse. Carlson brings an impeccable sense of comic timing and a gorgeous singing voice to the part of Gussie Carnegie. At one point Carlson utters a toss-away line that sums up Gussie perfectly. I never change, she said. I just change those around me. Funny, sexy, smart and vindictive, Carlson turns in one of the best performances of the past year. Supporting Actor in a Musical: Billy Lowrimore, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Astoria Performing Arts Center APACs Artistic Director Dev Bondarin certainly knows her way around a musical and how to wring top-notch performances from her casts. As comfort counselor Mitch Mahoneywho is performing the community-service element of his parole at The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling BeeLowrimore possesses one of the most magnificent singing voices heard on a Queens stage in quite some time. And, while it would be easy to play Mitch as a cartoon thug, Lowrimore grounds this man in reality and mines the humor of his situation. Supporting Actress in a Play: Angela Iannone, The Importance of Being Earnest, Titan Theatre Co. Oscar Wildes smartly written and extremely funny play tends to favor Lady Bracknell with some of the best lines. Upon hearing that the lead character was orphaned as a child, she responds, To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness. Lady Bracknell could easily come off as dithering old fool and even a self-parody. But with a canon of subtle glances and volumes of stinging prose, Iannone pulls off something wonderful. She creates a likeable and funny persona out of a character who is actually neither. Supporting Actor in a Play: Kyle Kirkpatrick, The Pillowman, The Chain Theatre In the darkly funny and equally disturbing play, The Pillowman, Kirkpatrick scores with an outstanding performance as the mentally challenged brother of the lead character. Kirkpatrick beautifully captures the nuances of a person with brain damage, without slipping into a caricature. He makes his character Michal, a real person with dreams and fears. But what really convinced us of his skill was his next performance as part of The Chains Usual Rejects comedy show. Kirkpatrick so totally disappeared into Michal that when we saw him again it was like watching an entirely different person. Actress in a Musical: Jennifer Knox, A Chorus Line, The Secret Theatre For the 40th anniversary of the landmark, Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, The Secret Theatre brought us more than just one singular sensation in its A Chorus Line earlier this year. Although many of the talented cast members earned praise and Kudos nominations, this show belonged to Knox and her performance as Cassie. Throughout Knox does not make one false step as she runs the gamut of feelings that spring forth, from ex-lover to mother figure to desperate chorus girl. But it is her six-minute solo performance in The Music and the Mirror, where she alternates gliding across the floor like a prima ballerina with the gyrating movements of a Vegas showgirl, that seals the deal. God, Im a dancer. A dancer dances, Knox sings. As if anyone could stop her. Actor in a Musical: Torrey Wigfield, Hair, The Secret Theatre As Claude, the leader of the Tribe, the young people who preach peace and love, Wigfield turns in a mesmerizing performance. He beautifully portrays Claude as a bohemian bon vivant, whose life revolves around sex, drugs and rock n roll. Clause is self-assured, sexy and a natural leader. But then Claude has a moral crisis his anti-war stance is conflicting with a sense of duty when his draft notice arrives. Wigfield makes this struggle real and captures the confusion and fear Claude experiences. He also possesses a terrific singing voice that shines in his numbers Manchester, England and The Flesh Failure (Let the Sunshine In) at the finale. Actress in a Play: Leigh Anne West, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, The Chain Theatre The history of American literatures greatest villains begins with Simon Legree in Uncle Toms Cabin, moves on to Mr. Hyde in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and, of course, stops by Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Nurse Ratched looks prim and proper and even a little mousey, but it quickly becomes clear she is an angry, disturbed individual who thrives on the power she wields over her charges. West owns this production. Without once raising her voice or getting a hair out of place, she makes it quite clear nothing is going to happen if Nurse Ratched has not signed off on it. West speaks volumes with an unsettling glance or quick turn of her head, which keeps everyone off kilter and herself unchallenged as the ultimate ruler of the ward. Actor in a Play: Kirk Gostkowski, The Pillowman, The Chain Theatre In Martin McDonaghs disturbing yet funny play, The Pillowman, Gostkowski plays Katurian, a writer of gruesome tales in an unnamed police state trying to survive a run-in with detectives and attempting to keep his mentally-ill brother safe. It is a lot to put on one actor, but Gostkowski delivered his best performance to date. He balances the fear of not knowing what is going on with the anger his character feels at the polices threat to burn the copies of his stories. Gostkowski expertly manages an extraordinary wide ranges of emotions when it comes to his brother, from protector to accuser to savoir-of-sort. Director of a Musical: Tom Rowan, A Chorus Line, The Secret Theatre Rowan takes a 40-year-old show and makes it seem fresh and relevant. He expertly mixes the bittersweet moments, like What I Did For Love and At the Ballet, with the light numbers, Sing! and I Can Do That. As a director, Rowan also elicits phenomenal performances from his cast nearly across the board. Director of a Play: Greg Cicchino, The Pillowman, The Chain Theatre As one of the founding members of The Chain Theatre, Cicchino has expertly helmed numerous productions ranging from dramas to comedies. But with The Pillowman, he accomplishes something unique. This is a serious drama with gruesome aspects that arrives at its humor quite naturally. Cicchino manages to keep the audience in a constant state of uncertainty with no idea of what is coming next. Will it be another horrifying scene or a bit of absurdity that leaves you laughing and horrified at yourself for laughing? Musical: A Chorus Line, The Secret Theatre Quite possibly the best show to play in Queens during the last three years. A Chorus Line is the reason people go to the theater. It tells a compelling story that everyone can relate to in some way and does so in a tuneful and visually appealing manner. Director Tom Rowan captures the fear, frustration, angry and joy that comes from wanting to be a performer while remaining true to yourself. Simply put, this show delivered singular sensations all night long. Play: The Pillowman, The Chain Theatre When a play attempts to walk the pencil-thin line between funny and grotesque way too often, it fails to accomplish either. The Chain Theatre and its production of Martin McDonaghs The Pillowman pulls off this tremendous feat with aplomb to spare. The play, which revolves around a writer who pens short stories about children who suffer the most violent of demises, is disturbing, at times sickening and also extremely funny. Google McDonagh and The Little Jesus the title of one of the writers storiesto see for yourself. What is more horrifying? The story or your reaction? It is a brilliant piece of theater delivered by four incredible actors that will stay with you long after the curtain falls. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Madina Toure Thousands of Queens residents and elected officials came out to support veterans and active armed service members as a military band played at the 89th annual Little Neck/Douglaston Memorial Day Parade, billed as the largest in the country. The parade, which started at Jayson Avenue and Northern Boulevard, featured decorated war veterans, public servants and civic leaders as marshals and honorees. The opening and closing ceremonies took place at the Divine Wisdom/St. Anastasia school at 45-11 245th St. in Douglaston. Retired Lt. General Richard Mills, USMC, who has served in Italy, Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia and Iraq, served as the grand marshal. Gov. Andrew Cuomo marched during the parade. The parade also featured local high school marching bands, wreath-laying ceremonies and military organizations. City Comptroller Scott Stringer said he has been attending the parade every year since he became comptroller. He said the parades around the city are an important reminder that people who make sacrifices to better the country should never, ever be forgotten. He also stressed that the city needs to take care of its veterans. Its equally important that the city government recognizes we have an obligation to 900,000 people who come home that are veterans and have such trials and tribulations regarding housing and job development, Stringer said following the parade. I hope this is not a one-day event but we think about this year round. Borough President Melinda Katz, who first came to the parade in 1998, said Queens has the most parades of any borough in the city. Whitestone, College Point, Laurelton, Rosedale, Forest Hills, Maspeth and Glendale/Ridgewood also held parades. Were home to the most veterans in the city of New York and the communities come out to not only honor those that are fallen but also pay tribute to those that are serving, Katz said. And its just a great day for families. City Councilman Paul Vallone (D-Bayside) said his district is the only one that has three parades within 24 hours. This year marked his eighth time attending the parades of Little Neck/Douglaston, College Point and Whitestone. It truly shows that the communities here in northeast Queens understand what our veterans have done for us and the sacrifices they have made, Vallone said. Lorenzo Elleby, a staff sergeant for the U.S. Army, whose unit is Fort Totten, has been to the parade at least 20 times and has also attended other parades in the borough. Theyre all good, Elleby said. It just gets better and better over time. Three teenage girls from Francis Lewis HS who are part of the schools ROTC program also marched during the parade. Hollis resident Leandra Budhram, 18, a non-commissioned master sergeant, said it was her last year marching in the parade because she is graduating from the program. It was nice to march for the veterans who work dearly for the United States and we thank them so much for their service, Budhram said. Her fellow ROTC mates expressed similar sentiments. Iris Yu, 17, of Fresh Meadows said she has more appreciation for what the parade represents. You get a sense of what people give up, Yu said. Flushing resident Arthur Hagendorf, 64, attended the parade for the first time with his wife, Gigi, 64, who has been many times because she once taught in the area. I think it symbolizes the greatness of this country and honors all the peoples lives who were defending it, Arthur Hagendorf said. St. Albans resident Melvin Jefferson, 52, attended the parade for the first time with his wife because their 6-year-old daughter was marching in it as part of the Girl Scouts. He said he enjoyed the old cars on display during the parade. Its a time to get together and reflect on what happened so far in the United States, Jefferson said. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Prem Calvin Prashad May was National Asian Pacific Islander History Month, and against that backdrop, Asian Americans, both nationally and in the borough, are taking steps to hold the U.S. government accountable for historical missteps and current racial discrimination. U.S. Rep. Grace Meng (D-Flushing) introduced a bill to Congress calling for the removal of the term oriental from federal law. As a result of these efforts, H.R. 4238, which aims to modernize terms relating to minorities by removing dated and defunct terms such as oriental and negro in federal law, passed Congress in a rare showing of bipartisan support, receiving 76 co-sponsors, including two Republicans. The bill was signed into law by President Obama, last Friday. Specifically, the law revises the definition of minority in federal law to mean any U.S. citizen who is an Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, African American, Hispanic, Puerto Rican, Native American, or Alaska Native. The important distinction for Asian Americans was to delegitimize the use of oriental as a description, particularly due to its historical connotations of excluding and othering Asian immigrant communities in the United States. Adding to efforts to seek historical redress, a group of New York-based Chinese Americans created a traveling exhibition, Remembering 1882 to commemorate migrant Chinese railroad workers and discuss the impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act. The exhibition opened two weeks ago in Chinatown. Organizers circulated a White House petition on social media, calling on the federal government to apologize for the categorical exclusion and singling out of Chinese immigrants over the 19th and 20th centuries. Though both efforts are meant to redress historical grievances, some activists say the attitudes that formulated the creation of the Chinese Exclusion Act persist today, allegedly in the highest offices of federal agencies. Wary of a growing cyber, trade and espionage conflict between the United States and Peoples Republic of China, federal agencies have stepped up efforts to combat leaks of confidential information and punish those suspected of leaking trade secrets. No doubt, intelligence leaks and personal information of federal employees have put pressure on these agencies to give the impression of diligence in prosecuting agents of industrial espionage. However, Asian American civil rights groups allege that the government has engaged in malicious prosecution in their arrest and prosecution of up to five Chinese American scientists and researchers, all arrested and released without charges within the last 18 months. Though no wrongdoing was found, some of the arrested were fired from academic positions and found their reputations in shambles. In many cases, investigators either misconstrued the nature of the work the scientists had done, or flagged innocuous personal correspondence as suspicious. These cases drew parallels to the botched case against Chinese American scientist Wen Ho Lee, who was accused of leaking nuclear secrets to China in the 90s, only to be exonerated. Like Lee, many of these suspects were preemptively labeled in the media as spies, to their personal and professional detriment. The FBI is widely known to have engaged in spying on Chinese Americans during the Cold War, suspecting the community of disloyalty. Joyce Xi, daughter of one of the scientists, in conjunction with the Asian American civil rights group Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAAJ), started a petition to call on Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the Obama administration to examine possible racial biases within the Department of Justice, as well as apologize to Chinese Americans that had been accused and subsequently cleared of wrongdoing. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Bill Parry On the eve of Memorial Day weekend, Borough President Melinda Katz announced that the long-awaited Queens Vietnam Veterans Memorial project, the first boroughwide memorial to honor all Queens residents who died while serving in the southeast Asian conflict is now fully funded and ready to proceed. The memorial will be constructed where the iconic Elmhurst gas tanks once stood. Katzs recent $1.5 million allocation from her fiscal year 2017 discretionary capital funds comes on top of the $500,000 in funding first secured when she was a city councilwoman back in 2008. Katz made the announcement during the annual Memorial Day Observance Ceremony last Thursday at Borough Hall. This latest allocation is a step towards fulfillment of a promise made years ago, Katz said. More veterans call Queens home than any other borough, and the Queens Vietnam Veterans Memorial will be a fitting and dignified tribute to those who served. The vision for a physical, boroughwide memorial was first forged by our own veterans who wanted to memorialize the sacrifices made by hundreds of Queens residents and their families during what was a tumultuous period in our nations history. Freedom is not free, and with the memorial, their service will be appropriately recognized and remembered for generations to come. With the necessary capital now in place, work can begin on the design and construction of the $2 million project, which will be located in the northwest corner of Elmhurst Park, a 6.22 acre former brownfield turned greenspace on 79th Street between Grand Avenue and 57th Avenue in Elmhurst. In the late 1990, the Keyspan Company removed the tanks and in 2001, it began remediation of the site before selling the land to the city for $1 in 2014. The members of our countrys Armed Forces who served in the Vietnam War sacrificed so much on behalf of their country, yet at the time they were not given appropriate recognition, said John Rowan, the Vietnam Veterans of America president and an Elmhurst native. The Queens Vietnam Veterans Memorial will help address that historical wrong by honoring all Queens residents who gave their lives in that conflict. A total of 420 Queens residents lost their lives while serving in the Vietnam War, according to the Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 32, which represents Vietnam War veterans of Queens. The late Pat Toro, the former president of Chapter 32 and a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran, was a vocal and persistent supporter of the conflict before he died from an Agent Orange-related illness in 2014. Pat Toro fought hard for this before he died of blood cancer from Agent Orange, its killing all of us, current VVA Chapter 32 President Michael OKane, of Glendale, said. I havent met anyone I served with who isnt sick from Agent Orange. Were losing 750 veterans a day, in fact, I heard just a few weeks ago that we passed a milestone that more veterans have died after the war than during the war. Thats why I want this memorial to go up soon. I hope to see it in my lifetime. There is no timetable set for when the memorial will be constructed. Korea's exports to the U.S. have surged and its trade surplus has risen by around US$9 billion since the free trade agreement with Washington went into effect on March 15, 2012. The figures support the view that the FTA has had a positive impact on the Korean economy, contrary to fears voiced at the time that American agricultural imports would decimate Korea's farming industry. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said Friday that Korea's exports to the U.S. rose 10.3 percent over the two years since the FTA went into effect, well above the average export growth rate of six percent. An official at the Korea International Trade Association said, "Korean products accounted for only 2.57 percent of the U.S. market in 2011 but rose to 2.75 percent last year." Exports of car and other transport machinery parts rose 17 percent annually on average, of chemical products 13.1 percent and of petrochemicals 10.4 percent. The growth in car shipments, however, was achieved independently of tariff cuts in the U.S., which do not start until 2016, due to improved quality and brand awareness. Imports of American cars also surged thanks to tariffs falling from eight to four percent. Beneficiaries are not just GM, Ford and Chrysler but cars made in the U.S. plants of Toyota, Honda and Volkswagen. In 2011, only around 1,600 American-made cars were sold here, a mere 10 percent of imports, but last year the number rose to more than 30,000 and 19 percent. "Once tariffs are abolished in 2016, foreign carmakers are going to step up marketing even more aggressively," said Yoon Dae-sung at the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association. Agricultural Imports Drop While the two sides were negotiating during the tenure of presidents Roh Moo-hyun and Lee Myung-bak, civic groups and farmers warned that U.S. meat and agricultural imports would wreak havoc on the local industries. But in fact imports of American agricultural products fell more than 20 percent over the last two years while exports to the U.S. of Korean farm products rose more than 20 percent. Imports of U.S. beef, which was among the most contentious issues, also fell around 10 percent. The Korean market share of U.S. beef fell from 10.4 percent in 2011 to 7.2 percent last year, while the share of Korean beef rose from 42.8 percent to 50.2 percent. Imports of American pork and chicken also fell to around half the levels prior to the FTA. Meanwhile, exports to the U.S. of Korean farm products rose from $440 million in 2011 to $530 million in 2013. Nam Yang-ho at the Korea National College of Agriculture and Fisheries said, "This is evidence that we can succeed if we use FTAs as an opportunity to boost the competitiveness of our agricultural industry." At least four people have died and a desperate effort was underway Friday to find hundreds more believed missing after a migrant boat capsized off the Greek island of Crete, the coastguard said. Coastguard spokesman Nikos Lagadianos said at least 340 people had been rescued, and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said the vessel "is believed to have left Africa with at least 700 migrants on board". It was the second migrant vessel found in that area of the southern Aegean Sea since last week, indicating that people smugglers may be forging a new route to avoid NATO ships. A coastguard spokeswoman told AFP a major rescue operation was underway, including four ships that were passing through the area, in clear but windy conditions about 75 nautical miles south of Crete. "The number of people in distress could be counted in the hundreds," she said. It was not immediately clear where exactly the boat had left from or where it was headed, or the nationalities of those on board. The coastguard spokeswoman said a passing ship spotted the sinking vessel off Crete. The coastguard rushed two patrol boats, a plane and a helicopter to the scene. About half of the 25-metre-long boat was completely underwater, the spokeswoman said. The deaths are the first in Greek waters since April, as a controversial March deal between the EU and Turkey, designed to halt the flow of migrants using the popular Aegean route, has led to a sharp drop in traffic. Nevertheless, some 204,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe since January, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday. More than 2,500 people have died trying to make the perilous journey this year the vast majority of them on crossings between Libya and Italy as Europe battles its worst migration crisis since World War II. The most recent deadly incident in the Aegean dates back to early April when four women and a child drowned off the island of Samos. Greek tourist islands in the Aegean witnessed the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people crossing in flimsy boats from nearby Turkey last year, many of them refugees fleeing the war in Syria. But the number of people using that route has reduced to a trickle after the EU-Turkey deal, under which migrants landing on the islands can be sent back to Turkey, as well as the deployment of NATO ships in the Aegean. The IOM said its observations supported the theory of a possible new migrant route, reporting a "surge of new arrivals to Greece further south, on sea lanes connecting North Africa to the island of Crete." On May 27, the Greek coastguard intercepted a boat off Crete carrying 65 Syrian, Afghan and Pakistani migrants, under the control of two suspected people traffickers a Ukrainian and an Egyptian. The coastguard did not indicate if that boat, which the migrants said had left from Turkey, was heading for Italy or whether the smugglers had chosen the route through the southern Aegean to reach Greece by avoiding NATO ships deployed further north and east. The NATO deployment is aimed at cutting off the Aegean route previously used by hundreds of thousands of migrants fleeing poverty and conflict in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. SOURCE: AFP Mushcup's Brian Steff takes his turn in 'My Favorite Guitar' Mushcup's Brian Steff has an arsenal of guitars though his favorite is one loved and admired by fans SHARE While the media focus on the battle to drive ISIS from the Iraqi city of Fallujah, the most critical drive to crush the caliphate is happening in Syria. Right now. Helped by U.S. Special Forces, Syrian Kurds and Sunni tribal fighters are laying the groundwork for retaking the caliphate's capital in Raqqa. I was in northern Syria in March and talked to Syrian Kurdish leaders about these efforts, which are heating up north of the city. This week, I heard the latest details from Saleh Muslim, a top political leader of the Syrian Kurds. He spoke by phone from Kobani, a city that Kurdish fighters retook from ISIS in early 2015 after an epic battle supported by U.S. airpower. He stressed how important are the efforts of the 300 U.S. Special Forces and what still must be done to ensure that Raqqa falls. "Now the fighting is only for north Raqqa," says Muslim, a burly man with a large mustache. "That means laying siege to the city and cutting the supply lines. There are a lot of mines, so it means going patiently, not so quickly. I don't know if it will be soon." The key to the timing will be how many Sunni Arabs can be persuaded to join Kurdish fighters in the effort, in an umbrella group called the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF a joint Arab-Kurdish force that is still heavily Kurdish. The Arab fighters are vital because Raqqa's population is heavily Sunni Arab and might resist being liberated by Kurdish fighters. "We (Kurds) don't want to show ourselves as occupiers, we want to depend on local forces," said Muslim. The locals will be needed both as fighters and as administrators of the city after ISIS is defeated. "Recently, we've heard a lot of Arabs have joined, so maybe there are enough for north Raqqa," he added. But there aren't yet enough Sunni Arab fighters in the SDF for the taking of Raqqa, he told me bluntly. Here is where U.S. policy and the role of the special forces become key. Let me first explain why the battle for Raqqa is so vital, and why U.S. policy toward the Syrian Kurds must be clarified to crush the jihadi base. Although ISIS is being pushed back in Iraq, Iraqi forces are still a long, long way from being able to retake Mosul, ISIS's other major stronghold in northern Iraq, which is much larger than Raqqa. Sectarian conflicts inside Iraq, exacerbated by neighboring Iran, are far deeper than in Syria, and make defeating ISIS more difficult. So the liberation of Mosul won't happen soon, certainly not in 2016. Meantime, it is possible to imagine how Raqqa could fall much sooner, with a cataclysmic impact on ISIS. That's because Raqqa is the theological capital of the caliphate, where its leadership is based, along with the bulk of foreign fighters; its demise would deal a crippling blow to the ISIS story line of building a transnational Islamic state. But first, as Muslim noted, more Sunni fighters are needed. I asked whether the Syrian Kurds would want Raqqa to be part of their self-declared federal state of Rojava. This would probably be hard for Sunni Arabs to swallow. "The people of Raqqa should decide," Muslim told me in a previous interview. "We are not trying to make them part of our federal state." He said that the city and surrounding villages should elect local councils that would make that decision. However, he added that the Kurds would require local councils "that are not enemies of the Kurds and would not produce a new ISIS. Only then would we feel safe." Skeptics note that there have been reports of revenge against Sunni Arab villages retaken from ISIS by Syrian Kurds. Muslim claims these stories were spread by ISIS supporters who fled to Turkey. He insists that Syrian Kurds don't have the same bitter feelings toward Sunni Arabs as Iraqi Kurds, who recall the genocidal Anfal campaign against them by Saddam Hussein. "We never had an Anfal," Muslim said. The bottom line: The battle for Raqqa has far better potential for success than the battle for Mosul if U.S. Special Forces can help organize more Sunni fighters and ease the way for a post-ISIS transition. The recent surprise visit to northern Syria by the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Joseph Votel, to meet with the SDF indicates that the U.S. military understands this. Trudy Rubin is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Readers may email her at trubin@phillynews.com. SHARE Contributed photo by Eric Snoza Daniel Black Contributed photo/Raul Rubiera Fouad Fakhouri Contributed photo Darryl One By Times Record News The Wichita Falls Symphony Orchestra has named Daniel Black, Fouad Fakhouri and Darryl One as finalists for music director and conductor. Previous conductor Candler Schaffer, who helmed the symphony for two decades, retired recently. Over the past nine months, a 12-member search committee made up of board members, orchestra musicians and community leaders reviewed applications from more than 140 candidates from around the world. Each finalist will conduct one classical program during the 2016-17 season. Before each of their respective concerts, the finalists will conduct rehearsals with the orchestra and meet with members of the community. Audience members also will have an opportunity to participate in the selection of the next conductor. Darryl One, who will conduct the symphony Oct. 1, is the music director of the Victoria Symphony Orchestra. Black will conduct the WFSO on Nov. 12. Described as "vital and engaging" with "a droll sense of humor on the podium. He is the assistant conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.Fakhouri will conduct the Wichita Falls Symphony Orchestra Feb. 18, 2017. From 2004-2016 Fakhouri served as music director and conductor of the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra in North Carolina.Selection of the new music director and conductor will be made after the final audition concert, based on an evaluation process conducted by the search committee with input from the WFSO Board of Directors, members of the orchestra, audience and community members. The orchestra's next music director and conductor will assume the podium for the 2017-2018 concert season. For more information, contact the WFSO office at 723-6202 or wfso@sbcglobal.net. United Regional Health Care System SHARE By John Ingle of the Times Record News Two medical providers in Wichita Falls will go their separate ways, one with their eye to the future of postgraduate medical education and the other left shocked, trying to determine the next step. United Regional Health Care System President and CEO Phyllis Cowling said Thursday that she and hospital board Chairman Blake Andrews notified the leadership of the Wichita Falls Family Practice Residency Program on May 26 that the hospital will not continue their affiliation with the local program. Instead, the hospital will beginning focusing on a partnership with a university-based program for training family physicians in a postgraduate setting. Cowling said the reason for the change with the largest provider in health care in the area is it wants to ensure the "availability of high-quality graduate medical education" for Wichita Falls and the surrounding area. The goal, she said, is to achieve three things: have consistent and sustainable educational and clinical quality; be able to recruit exceptional candidates for the program; and retain a high quality of physicians. "We believe that achieving these objectives will ultimately benefit local graduate medical education (for) United Regional and our community," she said. "Further, we believe that partnering with an experienced, respected medical school to sponsor local family medicine training will provide the best opportunity going forward to achieve these desired objectives and outcomes." Dr. Ahmed Mattar, director of the WFFPRP, said the organization was caught somewhat off guard by the decision by United Regional he specifically named Cowling to change course after years of working together. He said the program has been working with United Regional for the past 2 1/2 years on the program, and adhered to recommendations, including a high rate of physicians passing their board exams upon completion of the curriculum. "The ultimate measure of success of a residency is when the residents are finished with the training and they take the board exam," Mattar said. "Over the last four years, we've had 100 percent passing. There's not anything better than that." The WFFPRP began in 1979 and has served the medical community and patients since its inception. The director said the residents are taking care of a high majority of patients at United Regional, including the hospitalists employed by the hospital charged with providing 24/7 patient-care coverage. Mattar said United Regional doesn't have the authority to close the program, but it has effectively done so by "denying access" for the program to the hospital through the hospital board's decision. Cowling said physician privileges, a standard physicians must achieve to admit or care for patients in a hospital, are not being stripped from resident doctors because they didn't' have them to begin with. They were and are working under the guidance of standing physicians (such as Mattar) to practice at United Regional who will continue to be able to care for patients there. The United Regional CEO said they are in the beginning stages of querying what schools will fit in to what they are wanting to do. She said the Texas A&M and Texas Tech programs are examples of what they are looking for because they have strong family medicine programs, but it will be some time before a decision is made. Cowling said it is too early in the process to say which programs they are targeting. As far as the local program in place now, she said United Regional, nonetheless, has told the group they will help the next couple of years during the transition. "Although we don't have the legal and financial responsibility of the program that rests with the North Central Texas Medical Foundation we nonetheless feel ethical and moral responsibility to help these residents complete their training, those who are already in play. We'll be helping, financially, in some regard with that phasing out, if you will." She said they are still working out the details of the assistance the hospital will provide. Cowling said she wanted to make sure it is known that this was not a rash decision by the hospital, rather it had taken some time of review and months of consideration for the board to move in this direction. That doesn't ease the tensions of the folks associated with the program, Mattar said. They are left concerned about the thousands of indigent and poor people who relied on the program's service for care. It's not just patients cared for by residents at United Regional who will be affected, he said, but those at the program's clinic downtown as well as those at Wilson's Womens Clinic. What's more, he said, is it's not just about the patients who are affected, but the doctors who are here or have committed to come to the WFFPRP. "They are not simply numbers," Mattar said. "They are people with lives." The Times Record News will continue to follow this story as both sides work to find their paths forward. Nine free trade agreements with 46 countries over the last 10 years have saved Korea US$8 billion in tariffs to trading partners. The Korea International Trade Association in a report on Sunday looked back at the FTAs Korea signed in the past decade, and said, "The average tariff rate imposed on Korean products by the countries that imported them fell from 5.3 percent in 2004 to 4.7 percent in 2013." Park Chun-il at KITA said, "If we include the FTAs with Australia, Canada, and Colombia that will go into effect this year, the effect on reducing tariffs will be around $10 billion. And if the FTA with China happens, the effect will surpass $20 billion." Trade volume expanded. Trade between Korea and Chile, for instance, rose by 450 percent from $1.58 billion in 2003 to $7.12 billion last year. The bilateral deal became effective in 2004. The number of Korean companies that export to Chile soared from 733 before the FTA to 2,096 in 2013. The market share of Korean cars in Chile rose from 12 percent to 31 percent during the period, overtaking Japanese and American cars. By Christopher Collins of the Times Record News The state of Kansas likely will join the fight against the federal government on the issue of transgender bathroom rights in schools, but as of Thursday it was unclear whether the state will join Texas and other parties in a lawsuit here or file suit independently. Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt reportedly has the blessing of Gov. Sam Brownback to enter the state into litigation, according to a news release sent by Schmidt's office. Now Schmidt has to decide whether to join 10 other conservative states in a pre-existing lawsuit or to go it alone either way, action is expected "shortly," the release said. On May 25, Texas and 12 other plaintiffs sued the U.S. departments of Justice and Education in the U.S. District Court of Northern Texas. The lawsuit asserts that by issuing guidance to states on how transgender students ought to be allowed to use the bathroom, the federal government was attempting to rule by "administrative fiat" and that it was turning workplaces and schools into "laboratories for a massive social experiment." It seeks declaratory and injunctive relief from the federal government, especially where it concerns the possible loss of federal funding if the guidance isn't followed. Among plaintiffs in the lawsuit is Wilbarger County's Harrold Independent School District, which, in response to the Barack Obama administration guidance, passed a policy stating students would be required to use the bathroom that matched their biological sex, gender identity notwithstanding. No documents had been filed in the case Thursday to indicate Kansas has decided to join the lawsuit. The Texas Attorney General's Office did not return a call for comment. Kansas legislators are considering a resolution that would condemn the Obama guidance, along with encouraging the state attorney general's office to pursue litigation. It appears the latter goal has already been achieved. If Kansas came on board the Texas lawsuit, it could do so through what is called a "permissive joinder of parties," which allows plaintiffs to join already-existing lawsuits if "they assert any right to relief jointly ... arising out of the same transaction," according to Cornell University Law School. No timetable has been announced to the possible joining of Kansas to the existing lawsuit. SHARE By John Ingle of the Times Record News Writing and passing a defense-spending bill has been one of the last bastions of bipartisanship in Washington, D.C., U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry said Thursday in his Wichita Falls district office, but that, too, has now become beguiled by partisan politics when providing for the common defense of the nation is the federal government's primary obligation. The congressman spoke about the House passing the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act as well as presidential politics and President Barack Obama's guidance on transgender restrooms in public schools. The House passed the $610 billion NDAA on May 19 by a 277-147 margin. Thornberry said he was pleased to see 40 Democrats vote in support of the bill, while only five Republicans voted against it. But, the bill received almost-unanimous bipartisan support in the House Armed Services Committee, which Thornberry chairs, by a 60-2 vote. "I would've liked to have had an even stronger bipartisan vote," he said. "At the last minute, some of the Democrats decided to vote 'no' even though they participated in writing the bill, and I think Ms. (Rep. Nancy) Pelosi asked them to do that. "That's unfortunate because supporting the military has been one of the last bipartisan vestiges left in Congress, and I'm afraid that sort of thing erodes bipartisanship over time." Thornberry said he was proud the House version of the NDAA addressed two important issues facing the defense of the country readiness and reform. The Air Force and Marine Corps have been cannibalizing retired or out-of-service aircraft for some time now, he said, just to keep aircraft in inventory flying. Now the Navy is having to harvest parts of working ships to keep others going. The result has been an exhausted military strapped with multiple deployments without the needed equipment, training hours or opportunities to hone and maintain skills. The Army, he said, kept mechanics in the states when a flying unit deployed overseas recently and contracted the maintenance of aircraft to civilians because military members are leaving the service because of the long hours and for better opportunities on the outside. "Bottom line is lots of statistics and lots of talking to people eye-to-eye have convinced not only me, but most of the committee, that we're in a severe readiness crises," he said. "The bill starts to turn that around. It does it by putting more money into training and maintenance, but it also buys new helicopters and planes and so forth, and it stops the cuts in end strength. The reform piece addresses issues in acquisition, Commissaries on military bases, TRICARE, the Uniformed Code of Military Justice System and organization reform. As with last year's NDAA, the White House is threatening to veto the legislation despite the House bill meeting the $610 billion funding amount he president requested. The administration is at odds with the House version removing money from operations and using it for readiness. "I believe that it is fundamentally wrong to send people out on deployments if they are not fully trained and fully supported," Thornberry said. "They are not being adequately trained or adequately supported the way we're going right now." The bill funds about six months worth of deployments as the office of the president transitions from Obama to the winner of this November's General Election. It's the same method Democrats used, he said, when the White House transitioned from President George W. Bush to Obama. Speaking on presidential politics, Thornberry agreed this cycle has been "weird" during both primaries, and doesn't see that changing in November. He said endorsements seem to count less than ever this go round, and he'll focus on helping Republicans running for the House who are defense-minded instead of a presidential candidate. Presumptive Republican nominee and billionaire developer Donald Trump shouldn't expect an endorsement from the District 13 representative. "If you endorse somebody, it's like a stamp of approval and embracing them," Thornberry said. "I'm not comfortable doing that with him based on a number of reasons." One thing he is sure of, he said, is he will not cast a ballot for Secretary Hillary Clinton. Thornberry said the president's guidance for schools to provide separate restrooms for transgender students is another example of "how distorted the appropriate balance of powers have become under President Obama." He said it is not a federal issue and should be handled at the local level, adding that he has the full confidence of school districts such as Harrold in Wilbarger County and others to make decisions based on what's best for their district. He said it has become a tool for political gain by Democrats as seen with the NDAA and another recent bill on which items were attached that didn't pertain to the legislation. "That's the history of this president," Thornberry said. "When history is written, we will look back at the opportunity President Obama had to bring the country together being the first African-American, biracial president we have ever had, and he will leave office with a country more divided that when he entered office." Two important measures the House will address next week include pieces of legislation funding for Zika virus research and response, and restructuring the debt of Puerto Rico. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally, Wednesday, April 6, 2016, in Bethpage, N.Y. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson) SHARE By Los Angeles Times It's customary, once a candidate has secured a party's presidential nomination, for former rivals and party elders to line up behind the victor. Of course, some of their endorsements are more enthusiastic than others, but generally it isn't just about promoting party unity; typically, leaders of a party will sincerely regard their own nominee as a superior alternative to the other party's candidate. But there is nothing typical about the impending nomination by the Republican Party of Donald Trump. Trump's willful ignorance, hair-trigger temperament and bigoted comments about women and minorities absolve prominent Republicans of any obligation to fall into line even if they agree with him on the issues. (In fact, on several points he seems to depart from the party's core positions.) Party loyalty is no excuse for supporting a manifestly unqualified and possibly dangerous candidate. To their credit, some prominent Republicans recognize this fact and are refusing to board the Trump train. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has said that Trump lacks the fortitude, humility, temperament and strong character necessary to deal with the challenges that confront the nation. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the party's 2012 candidate, said that "I wanted my grandkids to see that I simply couldn't ignore what Mr. Trump was saying and doing, which revealed a character and temperament unfit for the leader of the free world." Sadly, however, other Republicans aren't following Romney's and Bush's admirable example. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida has offered an agonized but unequivocal endorsement of the man who mocked him as "little Marco." Rubio told CNN that he would attend the Republican National Convention, release his delegates so that they may support Trump and, if asked, speak on Trump's behalf. "I don't want Hillary Clinton to be president," Rubio said. "If there's something I can do to help that from happening, and it's helpful to the cause, I'd most certainly be honored to be considered for that." Trump also has won the endorsement of two Washington insiders who ought to be appalled by, if nothing else, his contempt for traditional politics. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, calling Trump "a phenomenon," said, "I don't have any problem supporting him." Former Sen. Bob Dole, an elder statesman of the party and its 1996 presidential candidate, added that "the voters of our country have turned out in record numbers to support Mr. Trump. It is important that their votes be honored and it is time that we support the party's presumptive nominee." It's understandable that prominent Republicans would be reluctant to endorse Hillary Clinton (even if in their hearts they regarded her as preferable to Trump). Yet it's possible to oppose Clinton and also refuse to endorse Trump; indeed, that's the position of Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney. And Clinton won't be the only alternative in November for Republicans who can't bring themselves to support Trump. Over the weekend the Libertarian Party nominated former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson for president, raising the possibility of a meaningful third-party candidacy for the first time in decades. It's harder to dismiss the argument that Republican leaders should support Trump because he was the choice of primary voters. Such deference to the voters' wishes certainly should be the rule; but an exception is necessary when the prevailing candidate is as problematic and poisonous as Trump. For those reasons, we hope that other prominent Republicans resist the pressure to endorse Trump. SHARE Today we are here to help readers who are feeling understandably besieged, beleaguered and beset because they once proudly voted for Republicans for president and now don't know what to do. We have invented a device that may help them find a way out of their political predicament. It's a task we've had success with in the past. In the Reagan era, when Democrats were going way overboard in attacking President Ronald Reagan's counselor and later attorney general, Edwin Meese, over rather trivial missteps, I invented a gadget I called the Meese Measuring Stick. I urged Democrats to hold it up to the image of their favorite Democrat and asked them, "What would you be saying if your favorite Democrat did what Meese did?" Answer: nothing. Today, I'm creating a new political tool: a Political Selfie Stick. Here's all you need to do: (1) on your smartphone, click onto Donald Trump's latest name-calling attacks on whomever just displeased him; (2) attach your smartphone to the end of a store-bought selfie-stick; (3) stare at videos and tweets of Trump's new crude, vile, slanderous, name-calling attacks and envision them being made by President Trump. You'll want to catch Trump's latest: You will see Trump attacking New Mexico's impressive Republican governor, Susana Martinez, while visiting her state. She is everything the Republican Party needs to embrace to survive a popular woman in a party that is about to be headed by a billionaire who has often attacked women; a Hispanic-American in a party whose new leader has called illegal Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals. But Martinez didn't come to his event or endorse him yet so Trump attacks her competence as governor because New Mexico allowed "large numbers" of Syrian refugees to relocate there (a mere 10 Syrians relocated there during Martinez's governorship). You will see Trump crudely and cruelly attacking Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton and her husband, Bill Clinton saying there was something "very fishy" about the gunshot death of the Clintons' friend and former White House deputy counsel Vince Foster, whose demise was repeatedly investigated and ruled a suicide. Trump bizarrely told The Washington Post Foster "knew everything that was going on, and then all of a sudden he committed suicide." And: "There are people who continue to bring it up because they think it was absolutely a murder." Foster's sister Sheila Foster Anthony wrote a poignant, yet also scathing, denunciation of Trump's statements. She said her brother had talked to her about his psychological problems, that she'd given him names of three doctors to consult. The note was found in Foster's wallet when his body was discovered. Now that you are up-to-date and have Trump's latest bullying attacks freshly in mind let's return to our final instruction so you can use your Political Selfie Stick: (4) tap the camera icon, pose and click. Now check out your POTUS Trump Selfie. Stare closely at your expression as you posed with Trump's latest attacks and bullying freshly in mind. If you are smiling, then you will be perfectly comfortable with the decision you clearly will be making on election day But consider Trump's latest cheerleader. That honor goes to North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un. In an editorial in North Korea's official news organ, DPRK Today, the scholar Han Yong Muk, whose message is being viewed as Pyongyang's official line, urged Americans to vote for Trump for president and "not that dull Hillary." The writer praised Trump's March comment that he would withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea unless Seoul increases its defense spending. The editorial said: "Trump said he will not get involved in the war between the South and the North, isn't this fortunate from North Korea's perspective?" And by the way, if you Republicans still have your old Meese Measuring Stick, use it one last time. Hold it up to the presumed Democratic nominee and ask yourselves: What you would be saying if Clinton just earned those words of praise from North Korea's hard-to-please leader? Martin Schram, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, is a veteran Washington journalist. Readers may send him email at martin.schram@gmail.com. Detroit General Motors announced its largest recall of Takata air bag inflators yet, but the nation's biggest automaker says the parts are unique to its trucks and SUVs and don't pose a safety risk. The government's highway safety agency disagrees. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says GM must proceed with two recalls adding up to 1.9 million trucks from the 2007 through 2011 model years. More Information Makes, models in recall Here are models covered by Thursday's recalls: General Motors: Certain 2007-2008 Cadillac Escalade, Escalade ESV, Escalade EXT, Chevrolet Avalanche, Silverado 1500, Suburban, Tahoe, GMC Sierra 1500, Yukon, and Yukon XL. 2007-2011 Cadillac Escalade, Escalade ESV and Escalade EXT, Chevrolet Avalanche, Silverado 1500, Suburban and Tahoe, GMC Sierra 1500, Yukon and Yukon XL vehicles. 2009-2011 Chevrolet Silverado 2500 and 3500 and GMC Sierra 2500 and 3500. Ford: Certain 2007-2011 Ford Ranger pickups; 2006-2011 Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan and Lincoln Zephyr/MKZ vehicles; 2007-2010 Ford Edge, Lincoln MKX vehicles; 2005-2006 Ford GT vehicles and 2005-2011 Ford Mustang. Volkswagen: Certain 2004-2008 Audi A4 and 2005-2011 Audi A6 cars. Daimler Vans: Certain 2010-2011 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, 2009-2011 Freightliner Sprinter, and 2009 Dodge Sprinter vans. Jaguar-Land Rover: Certain model year 2007-2011 Land Rover Range Rover SUVs and 2009-2011 Jaguar XF cars. BMW: Certain 2007-2011 X5 xDrive30i, X5 xDrive35i, X5 xDrive48i, X5 xDrive50i and X5M vehicles. 2009-2011 X5 xDrive35d, 2008-2011 X6 xDrive35i, X6 xDrive50i and X6 M vehicles, and 2010-2011 X6 ActiveHybrid vehicles. Mercedes-Benz: Certain 2008-2011 C300 Sedan, C300 4matic Sedan, C350 Sedan, C63 AMG Sedan vehicles. 2010-2011 GLK350, GLK350 4-Matic and E350 Coupe vehicles. 2011 SLS AMG, E350 Convertible, E550 Coupe and E550 Convertible vehicles. See More Collapse The recalls were unveiled Thursday along with those from six other automakers totaling 4.4 million vehicles. They are part of the first round of a massive Takata recall expansion announced in May. A total of 17 automakers are adding 35 million-to-40 million inflators to what already was the largest auto recall in U.S. history. Takata inflators can malfunction and spew shrapnel into drivers and passengers when exposed to humidity and repeated hot-and-cold cycles. GM said that it would begin the recall process in cooperation with the NHTSA even though it doesn't believe inflators in its trucks are unsafe. The company said that no inflators in its trucks have ruptured during an estimated 44,000 crashes, or in testing of returned inflators. It also says the inflators were uniquely made for GM trucks and SUVs with greater venting and machined steel end caps. "We don't have any evidence at this point that these inflators aren't working as designed," spokesman Tom Wilkinson said. He wouldn't say if GM is trying to avoid recalls, which could be expensive for the company. But NHTSA spokesman Bryan Thomas said GM has filed paperwork declaring the inflators defective and they will be recalled. "The science clearly shows that these inflators become unsafe over time," he said. The GM resistance, although good-mannered, is surprising given the fact that the company was fined and is still being monitored by NHTSA for covering up faulty small-car ignition switches two years ago. Documents detailing the latest round of recalls were posted Thursday by NHTSA. They include recalls from Volkswagen, Ford, Daimler Vans, BMW, Jaguar-Land Rover and Mercedes-Benz. Recalls from eight other companies were posted last Friday. The documents cover passenger air bags mainly in older models in states with high temperatures or humidity. Recalls related to Takata in this round now total 16.4 million vehicles. The recalls are being phased in during the next three years. Takata uses ammonium nitrate to create a small explosion that inflates air bags in a crash. But the chemical can deteriorate over time when exposed to high heat and humidity and can blow apart a metal canister, spewing hot shrapnel. The inflators are responsible for at least 11 deaths and more than 100 injuries worldwide. Takata agreed to the expansion May 4, and more recalls will be announced later. The recalls are being phased in due to a lack of available replacement parts. Models from 2011 or older in high heat and humidity areas will get first priority, followed by 2008 and older models in Southern-tier states, then 2004 and older models in the rest of the country. Research has shown that it takes at least six years for the ammonium nitrate to deteriorate. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate New York United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz knows that his airline has alienated some of its most loyal fliers. His effort to win them back starts with a new business class product that he personally unveiled Thursday at his first major public appearance since becoming CEO. "It is about the entire experience," Munoz told The Associated Press. "It's not just a new seat. It's not just new meals. It's not just better wines." Business travelers, who may pay $5,000 for a trans-Atlantic flight, want seats that are comfortable to work, eat and sleep in. They want direct access to the aisle, particularly on overnight flights where nobody wants to have to crawl over a sleeping passenger to use the bathroom. So, United is giving its business class seats their first upgrade in a decade and removing middle seats from those planes that still have them in the premium cabin. Passengers will also get do not disturb signs and more storage space. There will be dedicated lounges in key airports just for business class fliers. It's all part of a new service called Polaris. Munoz says the product represents "the new spirt of United" and is part of "winning back the trust of our customers." He acknowledges more work needs to be done. "Airline travel has become like going to the dentist," he told the crowd gathered in a Manhattan event space for the unveiling. The goal is to improve it from "lounge to landing." Seth Kaplan, managing partner of industry newsletter Airline Weekly, says the new seats will let United match business-class offerings from American Airlines and Delta Air Lines. "United has been a financial laggard for a long time," Kaplan says. "United hopes that reinvesting in the product will help bring it up to speed." But Munoz knows updating the physical product isn't enough. That's why flight attendants are getting a new level of training for international flights, which he says will filter down to domestic trips some also take. Traditionally, in the airline industry, some of the more-senior flight attendants the ones who often get international flights aren't as enthusiastic or friendly as passengers hope. "It's a never-ending battle," Munoz says, acknowledging that United has a history of testy relations with its unions. United involved flight attendants early on in the design of Polaris, a move Munoz hopes will encourage them to gladly take on the additional work such as offering three sets of wine instead of just one. United has yet to reach a joint contract with the flight attendants following the 2010 merger with Continental Airlines. The flight attendants union said Thursday that a new contract would improve both employee morale and the customer experience. Albany A Dutchess County man who drove to Colonie to meet a 12-year-old girl for sex was sentenced to more than 10 years in federal prison Friday by a judge who blasted him as "one disturbed individual." Daniel Jurow, 37, of Rhinebeck, received a term of 121 months in prison followed by federal supervised release for life at his sentencing by U.S. District Court Judge Mae D'Agostino. He pleaded guilty in February to attempted coercion and enticement of a minor, which carries a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison. State Police arrested Jurow on March 12, 2015 after he drove to a McDonald's parking lot in the Kohl's Plaza on Central Avenue in Colonie hoping to meet who he thought would be his child sex victim. Instead he was arrested and later pleaded guilty to the federal charge. The would-be child named "Jessie" was in reality two State Police investigators who were posing online to thwart child molesters. "I find the facts of this case very, very disturbing and I see my share of disturbing facts in this courtroom," D'Agostino told Jurow. "I think your actions would alarm even the most hardened individuals in the criminal justice system." Jurow argued his efforts to meet the girl came at a difficult period in his life. He said his father had just died, friends were abandoning him and his car had broken down. And that, he claimed, was why he took out an advertisement on Craigslist in December 2014 touting himself as a "safe, hot man for virgins to practice with" for whatever they desired. "When I posted a personal ad in search of an inexperienced woman, I imagined meeting a shy college student with whom I could share the curiosity, nervousness and playfulness typical of early dating experiences," Jurow told the judge Friday. "A 12-year-old girl was hardly the type of woman I was trying to meet." The judge was not buying it. D'Agostino revealed that in December 2014, Jurow was communicating with an actual 15-year-old girl and asked that teenager to send him naked photographs. And D'Agostino noted Jurow was in 2013 putting out "absolutely disgusting ads" seeking girls with braces. One of the ads, she noted, said, "Flash that smile my way." "So you can't tell me in writing or sit there and tell me that when your 94-year-old father died in 2014 and your car broke down, that's when you decided to become one disturbed individual," the judge told Jurow. "You were doing it before that." Between December 2014 and the night of his arrest, an eager Jurow engaged in a series of conversations with the undercover investigators on Craigslist and then kept communicating via text messages. On March 6, 2015, Jurow made plans to meet up with the girl at the McDonald's parking lot when she could get time to sneak away from her aunt. "OK, I know where you're talking about. That should be enough time to get to know each other and play a bit," Jurow wrote. The would-be girl told Jurow: "omg I can't believe this is going to happen." Jurow answered: "And it's going to be such a good time for both of us." Jurow told the would-be girl "it's super-important we don't tell anybody about this. If anyone found out, it would be really bad." The judge noted Jurow had lubricant and condoms in his car when he was stopped by State Police in Colonie. "Had you not been stopped, had this been an actual 12-year-old, that 12-year-old's life would have been ruined," D'Agostino told Jurow. "I think you're a predator. I think you're dangerous and given the opportunity I think you would do it again." rgavin@timesunion.com 518-434-2403 @RobertGavinTU This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Waterford The union representing 700 workers at the Momentive Performance Materials silicones plant in Waterford will begin contract talks with the company next week in Syracuse. In advance of the talks, IUE-CWA Local 81359, which represents the majority of those workers, held a rally in front of the massive Momentive factory Friday afternoon as a way to get workers together ahead of the negotiations, which have been contentious in past contracts. Health care costs are the biggest concern among union members at the plant, Local 81359 President Dom Patrignani said. That is the same central issue in other contract negotiations between companies like Verizon and Honeywell, and their unions, as health care costs nationwide have been increasing. "The biggest thing that everyone wants is affordable health care," Patrignani said. "All we want to do is have a fair contract." Local union workers at Momentive signed a three-year contract with the company in July 2013 that expirew soon. It took about a month for the two sides to reach the agreement in 2013. The Waterford Momentive plant makes silicones used in a variety of products from caulk to cookware, electronics and cars. Workers from a Momentive plant in Willoughby, Ohio, are also included in the negotiations. Momentive officials said they were aware of Friday's rally and were looking forward to the contract talks. "We are committed to providing a safe work environment, strong employment opportunities for the region, and a market-competitive compensation and benefits package," Momentive spokeswoman Tina Reiber said. "Our negotiations with the IUE-CWA are scheduled to begin next week and our goal for negotiations is to reach a ratified agreement that promotes a safe work environment, meets the realistic needs of all parties, and allows the business to control costs and be competitive. We want to ensure that Waterford and Willoughby, Ohio, remain places where current employees and future generations want to work." lrulison@timesunion.com 518-454-5504 @larryrulison What mysteries might still be hidden under Egypt's pyramids? A team accompanied by Egypt's former antiquities minister and famed archaeologist Zahi Hawass are testing a new scanner on the Great Pyramid of Giza on Thursday, hoping that modern technology could help unlock ancient secrets buried deep beneath the stone. The scanner, which uses subatomic particles known as muons to examine the 4,500 year-old burial structure, was first set up at the site last year and will complete its data collection this month. "It's running right now, and if it manages to detect one of the three chambers we already know exist inside, then we will continue the scans," Hawass said. He has been appointed by the Antiquities Ministry to head the team that will review the scan results. Late last year, thermal scanning identified a major anomaly in the pyramid -- three adjacent stones at its base which registered higher temperatures than others. 5 soldiers dead and 4 missing in Texas flood HOUSTON Five soldiers were killed and four were missing after an Army truck was washed from a low-water crossing and overturned Thursday in a rain-swollen creek at Fort Hood, a spokesman for the Texas Army post said. Aerial and ground crews searched the 20-mile Owl Creek that winds through heavily wooded terrain on the northern fringe of the 340-square-mile Army base after the truck flipped in swift floodwaters during a late morning during a training exercise. Three soldiers were rescued and were hospitalized in stable condition. Parts of Texas have been inundated with rain in the last week, and more than half of the state is under flood watches or warnings, including the counties near Fort Hood. At least six people died in floods last week in Central and Southeast Texas. Associated Press Hillary Clinton calls Trump unfit to run U.S. SAN DIEGO Previewing a rancorous fall campaign, Hillary Clinton assailed Donald Trump on Thursday as a potential president who would lead America toward war and economic crisis. During a speech in San Diego that was billed as a foreign policy address, the Democratic former secretary of state unloaded on her likely Republican election opponent, counting down reasons he is not qualified from his aggressive Twitter attacks to his emotional outbursts. "He is not just unprepared; he is temperamentally unfit," she told supporters in a ballroom. "We cannot let him roll the dice with America." Associated Press Gorilla exhibit to re-open with enlarged barrier CINCINNATI The Cincinnati Zoo said Thursday it will re-open its gorilla exhibit next week with a higher, reinforced barrier after a 3-year-old boy got into the enclosure, leading to the fatal shooting of a male gorilla. Zoo spokeswoman Michelle Curley said the outer barrier will now be 42 inches high a half foot taller than before with solid wood beams on top and at the bottom, plus knotted rope netting at the bottom. The zoo said there had been no earlier breaches in Gorilla World's 38-year history and that the previous barrier had passed multiple inspections by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which accredits zoos. Meanwhile, a prosecutor reviewing the police investigation of the case said he'll announce a decision on charges Monday. Associated Press The U.S. Treasury on Wednesday put North Korea back on a blacklist of "primary money laundering concerns," which places third-country banks at risk of sanctions if they do business with Pyongyang. Banks in the U.S. and several other countries are already banned from dealing with North Korea. But due to the blacklisting, banks in third countries that deal with North Korea would now be barred from dealing with U.S. banks, which would be a much greater loss. It effectively blocks North Korea's access to SWIFT, the global financial network that banks use to transfer billions of dollars every day. The only other option is clandestine cash transports, but they are also subject to U.S. restrictions. The move is aimed at closing loopholes in countries like China and Middle Eastern nations where North Korean laborers toil under slavery-like conditions. It affects some 60,000 North Korean laborers overseas whose valuta remittances to the regime may no longer go through. The Financial Times said the move will put added pressure on Chinese banks to sever ties with North Korea. Chinese banks are already barred from certain transactions with North Korea, but the move ups the pressure. One diplomatic source said, "There were some small banks operating in China's three northeastern provinces that handled remittances by North Korea using accounts opened by Chinese citizens, but they will now have to tread carefully." China slammed the announcement. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters, "China opposes any country's unilateral sanctions." Beijing has cut banking ties with the North except in certain areas it considers legitimate, like payment for imports not affected by recent UN sanctions. Colonie A Chinese businessman with a home in an upscale subdivision in Colonie says he and other Chinese investors are behind the purchase of two historic buildings in downtown Albany. Martin Lu, who has an address in the Archmont Knolls neighborhood off Route 2, owns several rental properties in Albany and Troy that he acquired earlier this year. But Lu's biggest deal yet has been the $4.4 million purchase of two office buildings on State Street in Albany last month. The larger of the two buildings, 69 State, is home to Bank of America's operations, including its Merrill Lynch offices. The second building, 63 State, used to house the Center for Economic Growth and was originally built in 1876 for Mechanics and Farmers Bank of Albany. Lu revealed in brief telephone and email interviews this week that he is a member of a Christian group of Chinese entrepreneurs from the city of Hangzhou in the Zhejiang province that have been investing in the United States and other places like Taiwan and Israel. Lu is affiliated with a Chinese screw manufacturer called Esrom Hardware. "We moved from China," Lu said. "We go to a Chinese church here." Lu declined to answer additional questions about his family situation and future plans. "I will keep confidentiality on other questions," he said. The Colonie home that serves as the business address for the various entities Lu has set up to acquire local properties was purchased last July for nearly $500,000 using a mortgage from Cap Com Federal Credit Union, property records show. However, most of the business entities were created using the name Jia Lu. Lu said he goes by both names. He is also listed as a managing member of a Texas entity called Esrom Investments. Lu's properties in Troy are on 3rd Street and 10th Street. His Albany properties are located northwest of the Palace Theater on Clinton Avenue and Ten Broeck Street. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter. Until now, the acquisition of the two buildings at 63 State and 69 State, which are located down the hill from the state Capitol, had been largely shrouded in mystery. Prime Cos. in Cohoes has been hired by Lu and his group to manage both 69 State and 63 State, said Todd Curley, a partner in the firm who leads Prime Property Management. Curley says 69 State St. has a total of 160,000 square feet of space, with about 60,000 of that vacant. The 63 State St. building, with 5,878 square feet of space, is totally vacant, making it ideal for a law firm. Both buildings have parking included. Curley said Bank of America, which is the major tenant of 69 State St., is expected to remain in the building for a while. He said there is a lot of potential for the building to add small suites or even apartments. "Really everything is under consideration right now," Curley said. lrulison@timesunion.com 518-454-5504 @larryrulison Nothing calls our can't-win parenting culture into sharper focus than the outrage aimed at the parents of a 3-year-old boy who entered a gorilla exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo over the weekend. "They should have shot the mother instead," popped up on my Twitter feed shortly after word spread that zoo officials shot and killed Harambe, the 17-year-old western lowland gorilla who dragged the boy through a moat. Similar sentiments have followed ever since. More than 400,000 have signed a Change.org petition calling for the zoo, Child Protective Services and the Cincinnati Police Department to hold the child's parents responsible for Harambe's death. Strange, coming from the same culture that shames and pillories parents for helicoptering. Modern parents and our hovering, smothering, hyperwatchful ways have been blamed for saddling kids with anxiety and depression, robbing them of their childhoods, sabotaging their self-reliance and sapping them of future leadership skills. Ease up, we're told. Cut the apron strings. Lengthen the leash. There's even an annual Take Our Children to the Park and Leave Them There Day. "The world is not perfect it never was but we used to trust our children in it, and they learned to be resourceful," free-range parenting founder Lenore Skenazy once told The New York Times. "The message these anxious parents are giving to their children is 'I love you, but I don't believe in you. I don't believe you're as competent as I am.'" Shame on you, helicopters. Until, that is, your child is perceived as a little too free-range. Then, shame on you for that. Now, the boy from the zoo is 3 an age at which few people would advocate hands-off parenting. But we certainly encourage parents of children that young to allow their kids to explore the world around them within reason. And within reason means the mother's eyes may have left her son for a minute enough time for him to dart from her grasp and her sight. "The mother was standing next to a zoo exhibit and lost track of her child for perhaps a minute or so," Ohio State University criminal law professor Ric Simmons told reporters. I wasn't there, and neither were most of the people tossing out furious judgments, signing petitions and otherwise passing themselves off as experts in parenting other people's children. So we don't truly know the extent to which the child was allowed to roam free. Police are investigating the events that led to the boy falling into the gorilla enclosure, and if the parents are found to be negligent, we'll no doubt hear about it. As we should particularly as a cautionary tale for other parents and caregivers who take young children to zoos. But we don't yet know what happened, and it's premature and cruel to lash out at the parents. Parents look away. Parents get overwhelmed. Parents make mistakes. These are not crimes punishable by death. ("They should have shot the mother instead." Seriously?) They shouldn't even be crimes punishable by social media's shame tribunal, especially when that same tribunal delights in pointing out all the ways modern parents screw up our kids with our fussy, eternal (literal and metaphorical) hand-holding. The gorilla's death is a tragedy, without question. But the little boy's death would have been also. And so would the mother's. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter. It's hard to believe that bears repeating, but it does: So. Would. The. Mother's. Moral outrage at a living being's untimely demise loses credibility when it's used to call for the demise of another living being's. Especially because, as author Bunmi Laditan ("The Honest Toddler: A Child's Guide to Parenting") noted on her Facebook page, we aren't exactly universal in our embrace of animal rights. "Unless you're a card-carrying vegan, how is the death of an animal shaking you to the core?" Laditan wrote. "You eat ribs, no? That too is animal. Burgers. Chicken fingers. Wings. All animals. Is it because gorillas are considered closer to people? Like pets? Or because the gorilla wasn't killed for a TGIFridays appetizer platter? "I think people are upset that the gorilla was killed to save a child of parents that they perceive to be negligent," Laditan continued, "not because they care about the gorilla who, just so you know, wasn't exactly living his best life in a zoo." That's an excellent point. The world is not perfect, as Skenazy rightly noted. We ought to stop insisting that parents should be. Heidi Stevens is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close [June 02, 2016] China-based GCL Exhibits at Renewable Energy Asia 2016 BANGKOK, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The four-day Renewable Energy Asia 2016 officially kicked off in Bangkok on June 1. On the first day of the event, Minister of Energy Thailand, General Anantaporn Kanjanarat, and his delegation visited the booth of GCL System Integration Technology Co. Ltd, and engaged in a discussion with GCL vice president Mr. Hu Huiming. Anantaporn praised GCL for its efforts in offering clean energy over the last several decades, and expressed his willingness to aggressively support GCL's cooperative efforts in Thailand's clean energy sector. Mr. Hu Huiming also expressed the company's sincere intentions in making contribution to Thailand's solar energy development, and further revealed that the company is setting up a local team in Thailand ad its plan to invest in the country's manufacturing sector. In addition, the company emphasized the interest in partnering up with Thai parties on the development and utilization of clean energy. GCL brought its flagship products, including the highly-efficient solar modules and system packages, to Thailand. GCL patented Sapphire high-density module features a power output exceeding 350W and a module efficiency of 17.3%. Sapphire's technology provides a power output 11% higher than standard modules with the same cells and reduces the gap between module efficiency and cell efficiency from 2% to 0.3%. GCL has, since inception, valued its growth outside of its home market and has achieved several growth and expansion breakthroughs. Mr. Hu said at the exhibition that GCL has received high recognition for its technology, brand and products. The company expects to increase its sales significantly from 2015 as it expands distribution channels globally, especially in the US, Southeast Asia, Australia, Japan, Africa, South America and other key markets. About GCL System Integration Technology Co. Ltd GCL System Integration Technology Co. Ltd (002506 Shenzhen Stock) (GCL System) is under GCL group (GOLDEN CONCORD Group), a world's Top 500 energy company specializing in clean and sustainable power production. The group, founded in 1990, now employs 20,000 people. GCL supplies 35% of the total worldwide wafer capacity yield, represents 30% of silicon market shares, and owns global assets worth nearly USD$16 billion. With over 5 GW PV module supply capacity, GCL System is committed to becoming the world's leading solar energy company. It delivers a one stop, cutting-edge, integrated energy system. 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. Photo - http://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20160601/0861605351-a Photo - http://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20160601/0861605351-b [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] The latest defections by North Koreans working in restaurants in China has led to even more stringent monitoring of North Korean laborers abroad and resulted in fewer workers going overseas to earn money for the regime. A source who traveled to Russia recently said, "North Korean laborers used to show up in certain spots in Vladivostok every morning looking for work, but they all disappeared" after 13 North Korean workers defected to South Korea in early April. An estimated 20,000 North Koreans labor in logging camps in Russia. The regime in Pyongyang has relied on their remittances, but since the recent defections its primary focus seems to have shifted from making money to clamping down on defections, according to the source. North Korean traders, who used to travel with relative freedom overseas, now apparently face stringent curbs on their movements. Meanwhile, a woman who had been working in a North Korean restaurant in Southeast Asia also apparently defected to South Korea early this year. [June 03, 2016] UpGrad and IIIT-Bangalore Partner With Uber and Gramener for Their Data Analytics Program MUMBAI, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- IIIT-Bangalore University and UpGrad, the online higher education platform founded by Ronnie Screwvala and Mayank Kumar, have announced their partnership with Uber and Gramener to strengthen their post-graduate diploma program in Data Analytics. Through this partnership, UpGrad aims to make their data analytics program not only cutting edge, academically rigorous but also industry relevant. The program scheduled to go live in June 2016, will see Uber and Gramener come together for the program, co-curating it along with UpGrad and IIIT B and developing live case studies and projects to make sure that students get an immersive work place experience. Top management from the companies will also be giving guest lectures on the platform besides mentoring students. "Data drives the core of Uber's operations and we have a passion for unearthing and rethinking massive amounts of raw data to gain actionable insights. India has an exceptional talent pool and we are incredibly excited to partner with UpGrad to mentor and deliver our learning and experiences with students," said Sai Alluri, Analytics Lead at Uber India. "There's a huge gap between learning versus applying analysis. The right application of a simple technique saved a client $2 million in a single quarter. The wrong application of powerful techniques often leads them on a wild goose chase. Gramener and UpGrad will be working together to build real-life case studies based on Gramener's cross-industry experience and to train students on real-world applications of analysis," said S. Anand, Chief Data Scientist at Gramener. According to experts, the data analytics ndustry in India alone is expected to face a shortage of at least two lakh data scientists. This program, which was curated for working professionals to acquire industry relevant knowledge, grow their professional network and accelerate their career in data analytics, now aims at bridging this gap by readying professionals for this foreseen demand of the industry. The program will also have industry leaders such as Sameer Dhanrajani (Business Leader, Analytics and Data Sciences, Cognizant Technology Solutions), Ujjyaini Mitra (Associate Director, Analytics, Flipkart), Kalpana Subbaramappa (Ex-AVP, Genpact), Vinit Vishal (Head-Analytics, Arvind Brands) among many others as individual contributors for the program. IIIT-Bangalore and UpGrad had earlier announced their partnership to launch this unique program, which aims to train over 10,000 professionals in the field of data analytics. The program covers the depth and breadth of the subject in the form of interactive lectures, live sessions and a three-month capstone project mentored by industry professionals. "IIIT-Bangalore has an accepted leadership position in higher education in IT, thanks to world-class faculty working in cutting technology areas and close proximity, both physical and intellectual, to global industry leaders. Joining hands with UpGrad, an emerging leader with deep connects to industry and at a time when the technology has matured to impact the entire life-cycle of learning - delivery of lectures, assessment of homeworkers, experience sharing with classmates and collaborative project work with project mates - we expect this program to be a game changer. I am sure the students will find this a first-rate program from the best players, that is sure to make a positive difference to your careers," said Prof. Sadagopan, Director of IIIT Bangalore, while talking about the partnership of IIIT-B and UpGrad. "India went through the technology wave in 90s and became the IT hub of the world. We are on the brink of the next wave which will be driven by data analytics, and India is bound to become the analytics hub. At UpGrad, we believe that this program, which is going to impart academic knowledge from IIIT-B professors and mentorship from industry leaders, will provide just the right mix to prepare working professionals to grow with this wave," signed off Ronnie Screwvala and Mayank Kumar, Founders, UpGrad, in a joint statement. About UpGrad: UpGrad is an online higher education platform founded by Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar, Ravijot Chugh and Prabhav Phalgun in March 2015. UpGrad looks to provide quality post-graduate online programs for working professionals who wish to build and expand their skill sets. Since its first program on entrepreneurship launched in November 2015, UpGrad has launched programs on digital marketing, angel investment and a data analytics diploma in association with IIIT Bangalore. Media Contact: Roohi Shaikh [email protected] +91-9619691940 Think Ink Communications [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [June 03, 2016] Ficosa North America Hiring Hundreds for New Tennessee Plant DETROIT, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Ficosa North America, a branch of the global automotive technology manufacturing company Ficosa International, is now hiring hundreds of employees from a variety of skill levels and educational backgrounds for their new 270,000 square foot automotive manufacturing facility in Cookeville, Tennessee, which is about 80 miles east of Nashville. "We're looking to fill positions practically from top to bottom," said Fred Zicard, vice president of Ficosa North America. "From production and project managers, technicians and engineers, to human resource specialists and assembly and warehouse workers. There are a lot of opportunities for anyone who has the skills and desire to be a part of building the car of the future. Some of our more successful employees even get the opportunity to live and work in other countries." The plant, which will produce rear view systems for automotive manufacturers such as Nissan, Ford, Volkswagen, Fiat Chysler, and General Motors, will increase production capacity and help provide much needed manufacturing jobs in the U.S. and Tennessee. "We've got a lot of talented, qualified individuals in the Cookeville and Putnam County area who will be an integral part of the success of this plant," said Cookeville Mayor Ricky Shelton. "From recent grads at Tennessee Tech to some of the up and coming young men and women in our advanced manufacturing high school programs. We're excited to be able to offer them, and anyone else who is interested in moving to our beautiful city, an opportunity to live and work here in Cookeville." To help fill positions, Ficosa North America is working with AtWork Group, KellyOCG, Manpower, ResourceMFG and Wise Staffing Group. Those who are interested in applying for a job should send their resumes to [email protected]. About Ficosa North America Ficosa International began operating in the United States in 1995, through a technical-commercial office in Michigan. Since then, the company has expanded its capacities for the development of projects for the North American area, with the creation of a test laboratory in 1996, a CAD department in 1997, and a prototype laboratory in 1998. In 2000, Ficosa North America consolidated its engineering center with a new headquarters in Madison Heights, Michigan. About Ficosa International Ficosa is a global company devoted to the creation of high-technology vision, safety, efficiency and connectivity solutions for the industry, with the desire to contribute to society through our commitment to technological innovation, human values and energy efficiency. Founded in 1949 and based in Barcelona, Ficosa currently has more than 9,700 employees in 18 countries worldwide in Europe, North and South America and Asia, with consolidated sales of more than one billion dollars in December 2014. The rear view system (interior/side mirror) is Ficosa's main business, known worldwide and recognized by top global OEMs. For more information, visit www.ficosa.com. MEDIA CONTACT: Heather Ripley Ripley PR 865-977-1973 [email protected] Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160602/375053 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ficosa-north-america-hiring-hundreds-for-new-tennessee-plant-300279249.html SOURCE Ficosa North America [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [June 03, 2016] Do Site Hiccups Cause Lost Sales in Your Magento Store? They shouldn't! SAN FRANCISCO, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Does your Magento store experience slow checkouts and delayed pageview loads under heavy site traffic? Do you lose sales thanks to downtime caused by catalog updates? It's a common tale, but it doesn't have to be your story any more. Magento Certified Developer Kevin Bortnick will explain why companies don't have to settle for poor performance in a webinar airing on June 8 at 10:00 AM PDT. To learn how ClustrixDB for Magento demonstrated 100 percent store uptime and zero errors under extreme workloads, and while re-indexing, register now at: http://www.clustrix.com/webinar-achieve-new-levels-of-performance-for-magento-e-commerce-sites/ Shedding the Magento status quo: no performance hiccups Bortnick will explain the results of the recent live demo of the ClustrixDB for Magento bundle that took place at this year's Magento Imagine Conference, in which: The Magento store ran for 50 hours during which it processed 2.6 million orders, averaging 14.6 checkouts per second A catalog update triggered reindexing every 12 minutes The site delivered 147 million page views (816 per second) The results: Clustrix achieved an average response time of 267 millisecons, with 0% error rate and 100% checkout uptime under these conditions. In this webinar, Bortnick will explain how fast-growing businesses can achieve similar performance. With ClustrixDB for Magento, your Magento site will deliver a superior customer experience even on the biggest selling days of the year. And you can perform catalog updates without affecting normal site operations or impacting the user experience. Flexing database power: how to pay for exactly what you need, not a penny more Additionally Bortnick, who has architected large scale e-commerce modules and installations for Mophie, Saudi Aramco, Home Depot and Stanford University, will discuss how ClustrixDBthe Magento-approved drop-in database replacement for MySQLscales performance up or down as you add or subtract commodity server nodes, with only a few clicks. Without defaulting to the highly problematic techniques for scaling MySQL (such as read slaves, replication lag or sharding), this "scale out" ability allows ClustrixDB to flex up and down to deliver exactly the right amount of performance, at minimum cost, every month of the year. Who should attend? Magento partners who build or support large e-commerce sites Business owners or technical leads running high growth Magento merchant sites Database administrators (DBAs) who work with Magento and MySQL About Clustrix Clustrix provides the leading scale-out relational database engineered for the cloud or data center. ClustrixDB is a drop-in replacement for MySQL and an ideal solution for high-transaction, high-value workloads typically found in businesses such as ad tech, e-commerce, gaming and large web and mobile businesses. Our customers use ClustrixDB for critical business applications that support massive transactional volume and real-time reporting of business performance metrics. ClustrixDB delivers more than 25 trillion transactions per month for customers including AOL, Flipkart, MakeMyTrip, Choxi, Photobox, Rakuten and Symantec. Headquartered in San Francisco, visit www.clustrix.com to learn more. Clustrix is trademarked in the U.S. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Other product or company names mentioned may be trademarks or trade names of their respective companies. Media contact: [email protected] or 415-989-9000 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/do-site-hiccups-cause-lost-sales-in-your-magento-store-they-shouldnt-300279248.html SOURCE Clustrix [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [June 03, 2016] Raytheon awards $300,000 in MathMovesU middle school scholarships and grants WALTHAM, Mass., June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) awarded $300,000 in scholarships and grants to middle school students and their schools as part of its MathMovesU program, an initiative designed to engage middle school students in math and science. Each of the 150 middle school students from across the United States will receive a $1,000 MathMovesU Middle School Scholarship to be used for a math, science or technology camp or program, or saved for the first year of college. Additionally, each recipient's school will receive a matching grant from Raytheon. The 150 scholarship recipients were selected from a pool of 6th, 7th and 8th grade student applicants who created multimedia presentations that illustrate the importance of math in the world aroun them. Student submissions were evaluated on creativity, originality, time commitment and the use of math equations to demonstrate an enthusiasm for the subject. The MathMovesU Middle School Scholarships are just one way Raytheon highlights the importance of math to the 21st century workforce. Raytheon engages with the MathMovesU community of educators, parents, non-profit partners, policy-makers and students to explore the different efforts under way to improve STEM education and inspire the next generation of innovators. About Raytheon Raytheon Company, with 2015 sales of $23 billion and 61,000 employees, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, civil government and cybersecurity solutions. With a history of innovation spanning 94 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration, C5I products and services, sensing, effects, and mission support for customers in more than 80 countries. Raytheon is headquartered in Waltham, Mass. Visit us at www.raytheon.com and follow us on Twitter @Raytheon. This document does not contain technology or Technical Data controlled under either the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations or the U.S. Export Administration Regulations. Media Contact Raytheon Company Mike Doble +1.703.284.4345 [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/raytheon-awards-300000-in-mathmovesu-middle-school-scholarships-and-grants-300278971.html SOURCE Raytheon Company [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [June 03, 2016] McKesson Canada and its partners put their heads together and raised $92,800 for children fighting cancer SAINT-LAURENT, QC, June 3, 2016 /CNW Telbec/ - Together with employees, community partners, and the support of Robert Dumas and Sun Life Financial Quebec, McKesson Canada is pleased to announce they've raised $92,800 for Leucan in support of children living with cancer across Quebec. On June 3 at its head office in Saint-Laurent, Quebec, McKesson Canada held its sixth annual Leucan Shaved Head Challenge, presented by PROXIM supporting Leucan. For this year's edition, McKesson Canada invited key partner Robert Dumas, President of Sun Life Financial Quebec, and his employees to participate in the Challenge. The Leucan Shaved Head Challenge is a fundraiser where participants "put a price on their heads" and invite friends, colleagues, and loved ones to donate as they shave their heads in support of Leucan. "Today was a good hair day at McKesson Canada. The success of this fundraiser is a true testament to the commitment of our team members to go above and beyond to help those in our communities in need of support," said Alain Champagne, President, McKesson Canada. "We're incredibly proud that our team members committed to this effort and shaved their heads, both in support of Leucan and in solidarity with children battling this disease across the province." McKesson Canada held other head-shaving events at its offices in Markham and Mississauga, Ontario. A total of 20 McKesson Canada employees shaved their heads to support Leucan in Quebec and other childhood cancer charities across Canada. "Last year, I had the privilege of being the honorary chair for The Leucan Experience Gala and was inspired by the fighting spirit of the many young people and their families," said Robert Dumas, President, Sun Life Financial, Quebec. "I then made a commitment to Alain Champagne that I'd participate in this year's Shaved Head Challenge! I've kept my promise. I'm very proud that the young spokespeople have inspired our team and that we're on board for the 2016 edition." McKesson Canada and its retail banner pharmacy PROXIM have been supporters of Leucan since 2010. Collectively, the companies have contributed over $700,000 to help Leucan's important work. About McKesson Canada Founded over 100 years ago, our company is dedicated to the delivery of vital medication, medical supplies and the development of information technologies that enable the health industry to offer patients better and safer care. Our solutions enable pharmacies, manufacturers, hospitals and other health care institutions to reach out to the millions of patients they treat daily, while contributing to the quality and safety of care in Canada. About Leucan For more than 35 years, Leucan has been supporting cancer-stricken children and their families from the day of diagnosis through every stage of the disease. As a loyal ally of hundreds of families and thousands of members across Quebec, the Association provides specific and personalized services delivered by a qualified team with a cutting edge expertise. Leucan also funds clinical research and the Leucan Information Centre. With its many offices, Leucan is present throughout Quebec. About Sun Life Financial Sun Life Financial is a leading international financial services organization providing a diverse range of protection and wealth products and services to individuals and corporate customers. Sun Life Financial has operations in a number of markets worldwide, including Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, India, China, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and Bermuda. As of December 31, 2015, the Sun Life Financial group of companies had total assets under management of $891 billion. For more information please visit www.sunlife.com. SOURCE MCKESSON CANADA [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [June 03, 2016] Alliance Family Of Companies Relocates To New Headquarters IRVING, Texas, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Alliance Family of Companies today announced the relocation of its corporate headquarters to a larger, more functional and modern office space near its former headquarters in Irving, Texas. New Corporate Headquarters Positions Alliance for Future Alliance's employees moved into the new headquarters on April 4, and officially celebrated the move with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday, June 3. The ceremony, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., included members of the Greater Irving Las Colinas Chamber of Commerce. Then on Saturday, June 4, Alliance will hold a Street Carnival for employees, vendors and their families from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. "This is a great way for all our employees and friends, and their families, to come together to celebrate our recent successes and move to the new headquarters," said CEO Justin Magnuson. The new headquarters, with more than 25,000-square-feet, is located in Suite 100 at 4545 Fuller Drive in downtown Irving. It features training and conference rooms, group huddle/lounge areas, a large reception space, lunch room, a fitness area, and large corner offices in the executive suite. "The new larger space not only accommodates our growth we've experienced over the past three years, but positions us for expansion into global markets," Magnuson said. Alliance has maintained its aggressive growth trajectory in the first half of 2016, with revenue for the first quarter up 40 percent over Q1 2015, as the company continues to roll out new products and services across the country. Alliance continues to expand its in-home neurodiagnostic platform, which is now offered in 22 states and 28 distinct markets. Also, Alliance has made sleep testin, which allows patients to stay in their own homes, available nationwide. Its sleep program was established in 2006 and was historically only available to patients in North Texas. In 2015, Alliance acquired both Telemedx Corporation based in Texas and Coastal Diagnotics Group of Florida. Telemedx operates the largest digital receiving center for EEG data in the world, providing services to nearly 300 hospitals across 35 states, while Coastal Diagnostics is the premier neurodiagnostics services provider in Florida. Expansion of both programs have contributed to the growth of Alliance in 2016, and are on pace to exceed 2016 forecasts. "With our move, we are not only recognizing the rapid growth we've experienced recently, but proactively positioning our company for the future," Magnuson said. "We are investing in research and development, and are taking advantage of cloud-based platforms to make significant transformations and contributions to the neurosciences community." "Over the next several months, expect to see great things from Alliance as we continue to innovate the delivery of healthcare services, making it more accessible and convenient for our patients," he added. About Alliance Family of Companies Alliance Neurodiagnostics is the largest provider of in-home video monitored EEG in the country. We offer diagnostic testing with an emphasis on the innovative delivery of healthcare services that enables doctors to create treatment plans and improve our patients' quality of life. We work with more than 500 physicians to serve patients in 35 states, providing comprehensive reporting for routine and ambulatory EEG services. We monitor our patients during the testing to ensure accuracy and the quality of our services. Our services are supported by a cloud-based platform that allows physicians and neurologists to access and review patient data from anywhere in the world. We also provide sleep diagnostic testing nationwide to assist in identifying and treating suspected sleep disorders. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375296 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375297 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375298 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375299 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/alliance-family-of-companies-relocates-to-new-headquarters-300279562.html SOURCE Alliance Family of Companies [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [June 03, 2016] Royal Ontario Museum and MagnusCards Partner on App to Assist Museum Visitors with Autism ROM takes the lead as first museum in the world to partner with the Magnusmode MagnusCards ROM Card Decks launch Monday, May 30, 2016 TORONTO, June 3, 2016 /CNW/ - In celebration of National Access Awareness Week, Magnusmode, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Autism Ontario, and Easter Seals Canada are pleased to announce the launch of two new digital museum guides for visitors with autism, created on the Magnusmode MagnusCards platform. Magnusmode produces apps to support those with cognitive special needs, including autism. The digital app MagnusCards is an innovative, free, web and mobile app that uses digital guides (called Card Decks) and game elements to help people access their communities with greater independence. Each Card Deck uses pictures and text to provide step-by-step instructions for various social interactions, situations, behaviors, and activities. Magnus, an interactive character who acts as the user's guide, provides reassurances and reinforces routine for users exploring new environments. The ROM MagnusCards feature two decks: one which guides and prepares the visitor on what to expect when entering the ROM, and the other is an educational scavenger hunt through the ROM's James and Louise Temerty Galleries of the Age of Dinosaurs. The ROM is the first museum in the world to create MagnusCards that invite, engage, and support visitors with cognitive special needs. "This program reinforces the ROM's commitment to exceeding visitor expectations and opening up new ways for people to experience all the Museum has to offer," said Josh Basseches, ROM Director. "Through extensive research, planning and collaboration with Magnusmode and Autism Ontario, the ROM has taken a leadership role in enhancing how museums welcome people of all abilities into their community." "Museums have a key role to play in helping remove the isolation that can exist for many people with autism," says Nadia Hamilton, CEO and Founder of Magnusmode, and sibling of a young man with autsm. "We chose to work with the ROM, a world renowned institution, as our founding museum partner. With this proven model we can now begin to collaborate with museums across Canada and around the world with tools that enable museums to educate, engage, and inspire all members of the community." The ROM Card Decks are available for download in the MagnusCards app under the Arts and Culture category. The MagnusCards app is available on iTunes for iOS, Android, and web. Social Media Like: Magnusmode Facebook | ROM Facebook Tweet: @Magnusmode | @ROMToronto Instagram: magnusmode | romtoronto Watch: Magnusmode YouTube | ROM YouTube Blog: Magnusmode Blog | ROMblog About Magnusmode Magnusmode is the company behind MagnusCards and was founded by Nadia Hamilton, whose brother Troy has autism. When Troy graduated from high school, there were few opportunities for continued personal and social development. This inspired Nadia to start a company that leverages technology to empower and support people with cognitive special needs. | www.magnusmode.com. About the ROM Opened in 1914, the ROM is Canada's largest museum of natural history and world cultures and has six million objects in its collections and galleries showcasing art, world cultures and natural history. The ROM is the largest field research institution in the country, and a world leader in research areas from biodiversity, palaeontology, and earth sciences to archaeology, ethnology and visual culture - originating new information towards a global understanding of historical and modern change in culture and environment. For tickets, memberships and 24-hour information in English and French, visit www.rom.on.ca or call 416.586.8000. The ROM's Accessibility Strategy The ROM is committed to making the Museum accessible for all visitors and has created a comprehensive policy. To ensure that all visitors can experience its history and treasures, the ROM has developed audio and digital guides, tactile displays, and digital access to collections. The main entrance of the Museum is stair-free, while the main foyer has a two percent slope allowing visitors to enter the area smoothly from the street. All floors are accessible by elevator or platform lift and the Museum's wayfinding system includes Braille and tactile elements. The ROM offers visitors complimentary wheelchairs, large-format floor plans, captioning of the digital donor wall, sign language podcasts, descriptive audio guides, tactile elements in the galleries, and increased seating throughout the Museum. For specific questions or concerns, the ROM can be contacted at 416.586.8000 prior to visiting. For those visitors who are deaf, deafened or hard of hearing, Bell Relay Service can be reached by dialing 711 or 1.800.855.0511. SOURCE Magnusmode [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [June 03, 2016] Securus Files Two (2) Additional Requests for Invalidation of Global Tel Link (GTL) Patents DALLAS, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Securus Technologies, a leading provider of civil and criminal justice technology solutions for public safety, investigation, corrections and monitoring, announced today that it has filed additional patent invalidation requests (a.k.a. Inter Partes Reviews or IPRs) with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). A brief description of each patent that Securus has filed to invalidate is as follows: Patent No. 8,630,726- "System and Method for Detecting Three-way Call Circumvention Attempts" - pertains to detecting three-way call attempts and to preventing a user from circumventing or masking a three-way call attempt by generating a continuous or constant noise. Patent No. 7,403,766- "Telecommunication Call Management and Monitoring System with Voiceprint Verification"- relates to call management for authenticating users and restricting access of a telephone system in an institutional facility. "After a significant amount of legal and patent expert review, we believe both of the GTL patents highlighted above are worthy of the formal process of patent invalidation," said Richard A. ("Rick") Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Securus Technologies. The United States atent and Trademark Office has put a new "invalidation process" in place that allows litigants in patent infringement cases to attempt to invalidate patents. GTL has used this process to their advantage in having some pieces (claims) of Securus patents invalidated and we have done the same to GTL. Based on recent IPR rulings, we expect the invalidation process to eliminate approximately 50% of Securus and GTL previously approved patents. If that occurs, GTL will likely spend approximately $120 million and Securus will likely spend approximately $40 million in outside legal fees a foolish use of money on both sides. BUT , GTL will also have the added burden of trying to invalidate an additional 20 to 30 new patents Securus is getting approved each year or likely approximately $30 million to $45 million per year in additional legal costs to them. This is an interesting/high-cost strategy that will not allow GTL to reinvest in their business, and should advantage Securus in the long term. "Invalidating GTL existing patents is part of a process that they initiated two (2) years ago instead of negotiating a reasonable license agreement with Securus a route that every other significant carrier in our sector has taken. We have negotiated 19 license agreements with carriers 2 of those with GTL," said Smith. "The carriers that have negotiated license agreements all have received significant value and I believe they have recognized that. Overall, our patent related metrics are superior to those of GTL so we should eventually prevail," concluded Smith. ABOUT SECURUS TECHNOLOGIES Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and serving more than 3,450 public safety, law enforcement and corrections agencies and over 1,200,000 inmates across North America, Securus Technologies is committed to serve and connect by providing emergency response, incident management, public information, investigation, biometric analysis, communication, information management, inmate self-service, and monitoring products and services in order to make our world a safer place to live. Securus Technologies focuses on connecting what matters. To learn more about our full suite of civil and criminal justice technology solutions, please visit SecurusTechnologies.com. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100831/DA57799LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/securus-files-two-2-additional-requests-for-invalidation-of-global-tel-link-gtl-patents-300279630.html SOURCE Securus Technologies [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] What you need to know about Powerball and the $700 million jackpot North Korea's long-term allies Vietnam and China have banned North Korean officials blacklisted by the UN. Flag carrier Vietnam Airlines asked travel agencies in mid-May to blacklist 16 North Korean officials subject to UN Security Council sanctions. Vietnam has been implementing the sanctions more strictly since Washington lifted an embargo on sales of weapons to Hanoi, according to UPI. On April 23, Hanoi expelled Choe Song-il, the deputy chief of the branch of North Koreas Tanchon Commercial Bank. The bank is suspected of laundering money earned from the North's sales of weapons overseas and financing the regime's nuclear and missile programs. China also banned a North Korean diplomat in charge of arms deals who was attempting to enter through Beijing Capital International Airport on May 20. The man is believed to be Jang Yong-son, a North Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation representative in Iran, who flew in from Tehran. Chinese officials tried to send him back to Iran, but he resisted so they sent him to Pyongyang. Volunteer walks in honor of her husband Thousand Oaks resident Joan Hull will be among those participating in this years Conejo Valley Walk to End Alzheimers at 9 a.m. Sat., Oct. 22 at the Westlake Promenade. Hull... Overpass could get protective fencing A substantial safety upgrade for the areas most notorious overpass is finally getting some Caltrans considerationbut dont expect changes any time soon. At the Sept. 21 Moorpark City Council meeting,... Early detection is the best way to survive breast cancer Every October, we celebrate those men and women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer. But what is breast cancer and how can it be diagnosed and managed? There are... You have reached a premium content area of Transitions. To read this entire article please login if you are already a Transitions subscriber. Not a subscriber? Subscribe today for access to: Full access to the website, including premium articles videos, country reports and searchable archives (containing over 25,000 articles). It's important to know how to find your lost Android phone, should you suddenly find yourself without it. When your phone goes missing, your first inclination may be to find a way to track it down by searching for advice on Google or maybe your second inclination, after start panicking. While Google used to direct users to a variety of questionably helpful pages, the search engine has now taken matters into its own hands. If you lose your Android phone, Google can help you out right from its homepage. Google's Find My Device feature offers a very simple way to track down your phone, whether its been left behind in a cab or a coffee shop, or simply misplaced behind the couch cushions. Below, we'll walk you through the process of recovering your lost phone using Google. Find My Device also works with other Android-powered gadgets including tablets and smartwatches. How to find your lost Android phone with Google 1. Assuming that your phone has Location services turned on, that Find My Device is enabled (which it usually is by default) and that your device is synced with your Google account (which it almost definitely is), Google can track your phone right from its homepage. Just go to https://www.google.com in any web browser, sign into your Google account (if you aren't already signed in) and type "I lost my phone" or "find my device" into the search box. Alternatively, you can type it into your browser's address bar if Google is set as your default search engine. (Image credit: Tom's Guide) 2. If this is the first time you've used the Find My Device feature, you'll see a message asking you to "allow Google to use location data, device information, and connection events to locate your devices and accessories." Click Allow to confirm. (Image credit: Tom's Guide) 3. Google will now search for your device and show your phones location on a map. This is accurate to within about 50 feet, and often even less. Google will even tell you your phone's current signal strength and battery level. (Image credit: Tom's Guide) 4. To pinpoint the exact location of your device, click "Play Sound." This will make your phone ring for up to five minutes, even if it's set to Silent mode. Press the power button on the device, when you find it, to stop it ringing, or click the "Stop Ringing" button in your browser. (Image credit: Tom's Guide) 5. If your phone is a public place, you should lock the screen to protect your privacy. Google helpfully lets you display an on-screen message so that anyone who finds your device can contact you. Click the "Secure Device" button and optionally enter a message and phone number though obviously not the one for your lost Android phone! (Image credit: Tom's Guide) 6. Click "Secure Device" to lock your phone. You'll see a message confirming that your device is secured. You can still use Find My Device to locate your phone. Click Dismiss to close this message or choose "Security checkup" to check activity in your Google account in case anyone's been using your lost phone. (Image credit: Tom's Guide) 7. If your phone contains sensitive information and Google has located it in a difficult to retrieve place, such as in another state or country, you may want to remotely erase the device to stop anyone accessing your data. However, this is very much a nuclear option because it will permanently wipe your phone clean and prevent you from using Find My Device's Locate, Ring and Lock features. You should really only use it as a last resort. To proceed anyway, click the Erase Device button, then Erase Device again. You'll be prompted to sign into your Google account to confirm the deletion. (Image credit: Tom's Guide) 8. Provided that Find My Device is enabled on your Android phone, you should always be able to locate your lost phone via Google, using the method described above. To check that the feature is turned on, to safeguard you against future loss, go to Settings, then Security on your Android phone. Tap "Find My Device" and ensure the toggle is set to "On." Also go to Settings, Location and ensure that "Use location" is switched on. Happy hunting! The Already Released MasterWatt Maker PSU Cooler Master has released one model of its high-end MasterWatt Maker series, with 1200W max power. We already covered this product in a previous news post, published a couple of weeks before Computex. However during the show, we noticed another high-end PSU in addition to the digital MasterWatt Titanium unit. This one has similar capacity and efficiency, and is still under development. We should stress that Cooler Master decided to rename all of its PSU lines using the MasterWatt description. The flagship family of products is the MasterWatt Maker, which currently includes only one member, followed by MasterWatt Pro, including the existing V series models with 80 PLUS Platinum and Gold efficiency. The rest of Cooler Master's PSU lines will be the MasterWatt and MasterWatt light. The company plans to use Silencio fans on all of its PSU models. The second MasterWatt 1200 features an analog platform supported by a digital interface in order to provide PSU status data through a corresponding application. What is interesting here is that, according to our sources, this analog unit will offer even higher performance than the already-released, digital-controlled MasterWatt PSU. In order to avoid confusion, this new PSU will most likely use another name once it is ready to hit the market (expect it in 2017). The Platform Of The Still In Development MasterWatt PSU We took some photos of both MasterWatt platforms and indeed the analog one looks highly interesting. The existing MasterWatt is made by Enhance Electronics while the upcoming one is developed by a Japanese company, which unfortunately we are not allowed to mention. This new OEM has never developed a desktop PSU before, so the upcoming MasterWatt will be its first try. What we know for sure is that some ideas stemming from this parallel project, which started before Enhance handled the design and construction of the already-released digital MasterWatt, have also been used in the existing platform. One of those ideas is depicted on the specially-designed cables, which have heavy duty connectors on the PSU side to handle increased amperage (up to 1.5x more) compared to normal connectors. Follow us on Facebook, Google+, RSS, Twitter and YouTube. Brooding UK rockers The Veils are today announcing the details of the forthcoming album Total Depravity via the way of a brand new single Axolotl. A stunning dark rock gem, Axolotl is the freshest cut from Total Depravity, an album which saw the band reunite with producer Adam Atom Greenspan, whos partnership with producer Nick Launay has led to essential releases from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Arcade Fire, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Band Of Skulls and many others. Recorded over a two-year period, between Estudios Sa da Bandeira in Portugal, Konk Studios in London, Casa Lynch in Los Angeles and El-Ps studio in Upstate New York, Total Depravity is set for release August 26 via Nettwerk Records. For more info stay locked to the bands Facebook page. The Breeders are one of the most treasured and influential alternate rock bands of the 90s. With ties to other equally influential bands and legendary albums like 1993s Last Splash, theyve influenced everyone from Nirvana to Radiohead. Courtney Barnett is one of the biggest acts to come out of Australia in years, with her success propelled by a universally acclaimed debut album, countless well-received TV performances, and a virtually ceaseless international tour schedule. The two recently came together in a very exciting way. According to social media posts by both parties, Barnett and her band recently paid a visit to The Breeders in an Ohio recording studio, where the latter are currently recording a new new album. Best of all, however, The Breeders got Courtney to jump on one of the tracks. Courtney Barnett in Ohio yesterday to play Nelsonville visited us in the studio, they wrote. Of course we had them sing backup vocals on a song. Most bands have to struggle for years before they get any national attention and it takes a lot of good fortune to have your song featured in ad, especially in an age when film and television syncs are a prime revenue source. But Janey, a newly formed Newcastle band, hit a bullseye on their first try. As the Newcastle Herald reports, their catchy single Today Could Be The Day is featured in the background of airline Jetstars newest ad campaign. Janeys Sarah Otto wrote the song with Lindsey Jackson, a Sydney-based songwriter and producer. The song was one of a handful Otto penned for Native Tongue Music Publishing, an independent Australian songwriter agency. Otto, who normally makes her living as a music teacher on the Central Coast, formed Janey with her brother Billy and Canberra drummer Daniel Faber, recording the tune which subsequently reached Number 28 on the iTunes alt chart. After sharing some of the songs shed written with her brother, Otto was encouraged to form a band and perform the songs live. Janey, named after Ottos middle name, played their debut show at The Entrance Ocean Baths clubhouse in February. This is going into new territory. Its fun, Otto, who normally pens Christian and folk music, told the Newcastle Herald. We knew in the back of our heads we were writing for a publisher Its a different headspace. OUR TKC BLOG COMMUNITY REVEALS THAT SKETCHY RIDERSHIP STATS WILL BE FOCUS OF TOY TRAIN STREETCAR EXTENSION OPPOSITION!!! "They are counting each person twice as a new rider, rather than taking an actual toll for each individual . . . A streetcar rep was on the train when he entered and counted the riders boarding. At the end of the line, he exited and re entered as instructed and was counted again. Does this bring into question whether actual ridership is half of what is being reported? Certainly seems that way." "Of course the streetcar stats are phony. Even the way they're being reported as part of an organized publicity campaign for an extension. The stats they give to reporters are total riders NOT ridership on the line which doesn't even come close to more populated areas like the Broadway corridor. Don't even get me started on the cost per mile in comparison with the bus which is so astronomical that the newspapers refuse to report it. All good info that we look forward to debating with the streetcar proponents when they launch their second campaign for expansion that was already rejected by voters." - No independent verification yet - Riders ordered to re-enter at the end of the line artificially boost stats. - Media quotes toy train hype touting TOTAL RIDERS and NOT RIDERSHIP Kansas City MSM has been dutifully reporting streetcar ridership without much question of their validity but now the question of expansion calls those stats into question.To wit . . .A well-informed denizen of our blog community started this morning conversation . . .This comment inspired a quick check with insiders already working on a campaign to oppose another rigged TDD effort in the works and the note was confirmed bluntly.Quick problems with streetcar numbers . . .Don't take TKC's word for it, do that math and notice that these aren't even ATA numbers, it's just presser copy from the streetcar authority.At the very least, the same hobos are being counted twice along with the tourists who need back to their cars. While end of the line exits are common place on transit lines in major cities, on a small line this bit of unnecessary formality seems a bit sinister in order to increase the appearance of activity.difference here . . . The total ridership number is propaganda whilenumbers can be compared to other lines throughout the metro. As rates begin to normalize following debut spectacle, expect the ridership stats to become even secretive.Again, this talk is important because of the corrupt politics at play as Kansas City gears up for another gerrymandered voting district in order to promote a tragically flawed economic development scheme before the public has a chance to examine any real data or ask critical questions.You decide . . . "Im fed up with visiting crime scenes where the victim is an innocent child. Im fed up with schools and universities being ground zero for mass killings. And Im fed up with trying to convince misguided legislators, at various levels of government, that sensible gun regulations can be enacted without offending the Second Amendment. Despite the challenges, however, we must continue to argue for ways to eliminate the widespread availability of illegal guns on our city streets. "As we recognize National Gun Awareness Day we must double down on our collective efforts to make our intolerance of gun violence more widely known. Far too often, a life is cut short at the hands of someone who is barely old enough to drive. Yet, we receive no help to mitigate these tragedies. The Missouri State Legislature consistently turns a blind eye to passing smart legislation that will aid local municipalities in reducing this problem. And Congress seems to forget about all of these horrific mass shootings as soon as the corresponding news cycle ends. "While it is easy to be discouraged by our perceived lack of progress, I say double down! Double down in voicing your disdain with ineffective leadership in Jefferson City. Double down in advocating for more commonsense gun laws. Double down in your commitment to your community by reporting suspicious activity and/or engaging with the myriad of organizations that we have in Kansas City working to make our communities safer . . ." Amid yet. . . The latest press statement from Kansas City Mayor Sly James targets rival politicos who oppose his anti-gun agenda and encourages locals to continue their struggle against 2nd Amendment rights.Take a look:Money line:You decide . . . "The tigers will be in an exhibit at the Downtown Days Festival in Lee's Summit. Several people have complained and say they plan to boycott the event because of how the tigers are being treated. "Organizers have been getting complaints about captivity. The 300 pound white tigers are a brother and sister duo." Earlier this week our blog community wasenough to report objections to abefore any other local media outlet.Now, here's the best report of suburban rage on what some might describe as animal cruelty . . .Deets:A preview shows tragically small cages and smiling suburbanites enjoying themselves at the spectacle which may or may not be a convincing endorsement.You decide . . . USA Today reveals 5 hidden-gem Greek islands in the following article signed by Nick Kontis: Greece has somewhere between 2,000 and 6,000 islands and islets scattered through the Aegean and Ionian Seas, of which a little over 200 are inhabited. Many visitors come to the islands with an ingrained image: Whitewashed houses and churches with vivid blue accents, crisp burnt orange sunsets, a labyrinth of narrow streets where a slant of sunlight peaks through the alabaster town square. That really is what favorites like Santorini and Mykonos look like, which is why they're so popular and crowded. But so too do many lesser-known gems. These five islands are perfect for travelers seeking just the right blend of historical sights, unhurried adventure and a dash of delicacies, along with a sprinkling of bouzouki music and Greek dancing. Here, local life is not overrun by large crowds of holiday makers on week-long package deals. Amorgos Its an adventurous eight-hour overnight ferry to arrive at the Amorgos ports of Aegiali or Katapola, but well worth it. This peaceful island is located in the southeast corner of the Cyclades, and has managed to elude most island hoppers. Located at a viewing distance from Naxos, Santorini and Ios, Amorgos captivates visitors with its natural beauty, slow-paced life, quaint villages and traditional architecture. It is filled with fabulous beaches, inspiring filmmaker Luc Besson to shoot scenes from the movie The Big Blue on the beach of Agia Anna, below the 1000-year-old Byzantine monastery of Hozoviotissa. A walk in Chora and holdover villages of Amorgos is a step back in time. The main port of Katapola is filled with churches dating back to the time of early Christianity. The island's trail network is well maintained for hiking enthusiasts, who can try short distances or spend long days exploring its diverse paths, abandoned villages and mines and hidden beaches. The stairway to heaven ascent to the summit is 2,624 feet, with picture-perfect panoramic views. On a clear day, you'll get vivid views of neighboring Naxos. Places to stay: The two main settlements, the ports of Aegiali and Katapola, house most guests to the quiet island. A five-star resort and spa is available for higher-end tourists, high on the hill adjacent to Aegiali town. The island capital of Chora is charming, and offers a splendid local lifestyle. Places to eat: Some of the tastiest fare in the Aegean is created in local chefs' kitchens. This definitely holds true on Amorgos. Restaurants can be found in both tourist settlements of Aegiali and Katapola. Amorgian island favorites include kalogiros (aubergine with veal, feta and tomatoes) and exohiko (lamb and vegetables in a pastry). Seafood is plentiful and prepared from the catch of the day. Dont miss: The pride of Amorgos and the most famous sight on the island is the impressive 11th-century monastery of Panagia Hozoviotissa, constructed on the slope of a rocky cliff. The monastery was created as an ode to the Virgin Mary, who is said to be the protector of the island. The ascent is well worth it, with a view of the sparkling Aegean below. Hikers should get up early and stay out late as the sunrise and sunsets on the island provide a kaleidoscope of colors. Walk up to the Aegialis Hotel and Spa for sweeping panoramic views of burnt orange sunsets. Visit the Archaeological Museum, which was the home of 16th-century island noblemen. Kefalonia The Ionian Island of Kefalonia was put on the map by the 1994 bestselling novel Captain Corellis Mandolin, by Louis De Bernieres, which was later made into a film starring Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz. The movie showcased the island's sheer mountain landscapes and sparkling waters. Kefalonia is the largest of the Ionian islands, and the fifth largest in Greece. Despite the bustle of summer vacationers on Lassi, Karteleos and on the long, golden beach of Skala, Kefalonia is filled with secluded beaches, steep terrain ideal perfect for exploring on foot, and miles of shoreline you might have all to yourself. A third of the island's 45,000 inhabitants live in or near Argostoli town. Most visitors to the island arrive by daily ferries from the Peloponnese to the port of Poros. Myrtos Beach on Kefalonia is world-class. Backed by steep limestone rock walls, it's a mesmerizing, shimmering portrait of white pebbly rocks leading to shades of sapphire, cobalt, teal, turquoise and just about every other blue that exists. Where to stay: The charming capital of Argostoli and the second-largest city of Lixouri offer the most hotels and inns. The unhurried seaside fishing village of Fiscardo is also a favorite place to stay. For beachcombers coming for the sparkling white, red, brown and black sands, there are accommodations in Skala, Lassi, Lourdas, Trapezakii, Katelios, Sami and Agia Efimia. Where to eat: Argostoli offers Greek and international cuisine. You will also find waterfront eateries in the coastal towns. In Argostoli and in nearby Lixouri you can find local dishes, including the famous Kefalonian meat pies made with traditional phyllo dough pastry sheets. Fiscardo offers fresh seafood and risotto dishes with picturesque views of impressive fish boats. Fish restaurants are abundant throughout the island. Try the local white wine Rombola, a specialty of the island. Dont miss: Visit the ruined Castle of Agios Georgios for elevated island views. Charming Assos is a magical village in an isthmus complete with its own Venetian fortress dating back to 1595. Just south of Assos lies spellbinding Myrtos Beach. At the Cave Lake of Melissani, you enter through an underground path and step into a boat to tour the cave. Archaeological excavations have found artifacts from the 4th century B.C. Continue on to the stunning limestone stalactites and stalagmite formations of Drogarati Cave. Visit the impressive church of Saint Gerasimos. Mount Ainos with its wild prancing horses dates back to Alexander the Great. Near Poros, hike up 1,500 feet to the monastery of the Virgin Mary for some of the island's most jaw-dropping views. Kimolos On sleepy Kimolos, visitors will find Greek island life at its unrushed finest. Almost connected to big brother Milos Island by a 15-minute ferry ride, Kimolos remains under the radar. This is an island where locals are on a first-name basis, and if you stay long enough, the locals will begin to know your name as well. Kimolos is filled with hidden fishing villages, and beaches and swimming areas you might have entirely to yourself. The beaches Rema and Karas create the illusion of being in natural swimming pools. Klima and Prasa are filled with white sand and azure waters. Monastiria, Soufi and Agioklima are in spectacular bays where one can enjoy a leisurely swim, and dive from 30 feet into the Aegean Sea. Prasa and Aliki are popular among locals. Another highlight is the Gerakias cave. Dive into the sparkling waters, or walk along its shallow path inside the cave. Where to stay: The island has no hotels, but there are plenty of rooms to rent. Look for signs around the island that say "rooms to let. Most are in the capital of Chorio Town and in the beach areas of Psathi, Aliki, Bonatsa and Kalamitsi. The charming locals on the island rent family-run properties, where rooms have been created as rentals for tourists. Where to eat: There are a couple of tavernas by the sea as you enter Psathi port. The island pulse revolves in the capital and only main town of Chorio. You'll find home-cooked meals with fish so fresh that it just left the sea, succulent goat, lamb and many other local specialties. The island's signature dish is a tomato- and onion-topped focaccia-like pizza bread called Ladenia. In many of the popular beach settlements you will find an eatery or two. Dont miss: Hike to the mushroom-shaped rock formation of Skiadi. The peculiar boulder is a spectacle out of an episode of Lost in Space. For the perfect ending to any day on Kimolos Island, take a drive to Ellinika Beach for its impressive sunsets, and marvel at the spellbinding rock formations rising out of the sea at Aspragremna, where there are remains from ancient wrecks. Milos Eighty miles southwest of Athens, and halfway to Crete, lies one of Greeces most awe-inspiring portraits in rock. Born from explosions in the sea three million years ago, the uneven, serrated geological formations of rock walls that surround Milos are amazing. Less fashionable than its glitzy Cyclade brethren Santorini and Mykonos, Milos offers visitors a romantic escape. The horseshoe-shaped island has over 75 beaches, each with its own unique characteristics. Milos is filled with lacy shores, multi-hued blue waters, golden white sand, pebbly coves and rocky heights of granite ascending from the sea in shades of white, red, yellow and black. The island's most astounding swimming hole is the famous moonscape rocks of Sarakiniko. If the sea is calm, it's an ideal stop for kayaking and cave exploration. Beachgoers should seek Paliochori, with its crystal-clear waters, multi-colored sand and shiny pebbles, and Papafragas, submerged in a cave enclosed by soft white rocks in deep blue waters. The towering rock slabs of ex-pirate den Kleftiko offer one of the most impressive landscapes on the island. Where to stay: The port towns of Adamas and Pollonia, and capital of Plaka offer rooms from $50 to $300 a night. There are also accommodations on Paliochori beach, and other notable beach areas and settlements on the island. Where to eat: Milian hospitality can be found through its gastronomy. Many restaurants can be found along the waterfront on the ports of Adamas, the picturesque seaside port of Pollonia, and the labyrinth of Plaka. Try island specialties: Pitarakia, small pies filled with local cheese and mint; Koufeto made with white pumkin, honey and almonds, which used to be served only at weddings; and watermelon pie made with olive oil, sesame and honey; and rooster cooked in white wine. On Palechori beach you can feast on volcanic cuisine, with your meal prepared in an oven placed in hot sands close to warm sulphur springs. Dont miss: The island is an ideal destination for sailing holidays. The eruptions in the sea thousands of years ago have left an astounding variety of rock formations and no two beaches are alike. From the port town of Adamas, choose a sailing vessel for a day-long excursion at sea. Replicas of classic early 20th-century wooden vessels that plowed Greeces Mediterranean, and catamarans are parked in a handy row right on the waterfront. The sailing expedition provides stunning views of the island's geological highlights and a chance to swim in waterholes only accessible by boat. Zakynthos Due to its convenient airport, complete with easyJet, Ryanair and other low-cost carriers, the summer months can be quite crowded. But if you abide by the savvy traveler's adage and avoid Greece in August, you will find a marvelous relaxed island. Even in the summertime, the island is large enough to get away from the tourist crowd and to discover an unrushed island lifestyle. The southernmost island of the Ionian chain boasts Greeces most recognizable beach. Most travelers visit the island for a glimpse of Navagio Beach, or as it is also known, Shipwreck Beach. In the early '80s, smugglers involved in a high-speed pursuit with the Greek coast guard washed ashore right onto the beach. As years passed the boat was never removed. The sand has completely engulfed the now iconic fixture, and it remains smack dab in the middle of the white sand. The beaches of Agios Nikolaos, Alikes, Argassi, Dafni, Gerakas, Kalamaki and Port Zoro also offer superb swimming areas. Parts of the island are actually closer to Albania than to Greece. Most settlements and beaches are in the southern half of the island. The northern half of the island gets increased precipitation in the winter months and mostly sunshine during the summer, creating verdant vegetation and fertile green hills. While occupying Zakynthos, the Italians called the island The Flower of the East, with over 7,000 varieties on the island. Splendid Zakynthos town offers an ideal boardwalk setting to mingle with locals, and comes complete with an impressive Venetian castle high above the citadel. Where to stay: Beyond the package-deal beach accommodations exists the charming and lively capital of Zakynthos town and port which offers accommodations for all budgets. In 1953 Zakynthos was devastated by a major earthquake. The town was reconstructed with thought and respect to its Venetian roots, and previous architectural character. Where to eat: Zakynthos town is filled with local island fare, along with Italian treats as well. The waterfront of Zakynthos town provides a dreamlike setting for a meal. Almost anywhere you visit you will find homemade cuisine created by a local family. Agios Nikoloas and most beach areas throughout the island have a restaurant or two on or near the beach grilling spiny lobsters, mouthwatering octopus, and fish hauled in by local fisherman just hours before it touches your plate. Dont miss: Get a car and explore the vast island interior complete with mountainous villages that dot the countryside, ancient monasteries, and impressive flora and fauna. Youll find chance encounters with gawking goats who wonder why they have to share their roads with you, while sheep herders tend to their flocks in the middle of nowhere. Marvel at hidden churches and monasteries. Make sure to visit the Neo-Byzantine Museum complete with pieces of 17th-century churches scattered throughout the island. As Port Skinari, hire a boat to visit the striking Blue Cave, 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 Bike touring is fast becoming a popular way of exploring a tourist destination. Health buffs and extreme adventurists find this a fun and interesting activity as compared to just lounging around by the pool in the hotel. Anyone can actually do a bike tour. It is not for hardcore enthusiasts only. Sure, some bike tour companies only welcome biking experts, but there are active trips that cater to bikers of all abilities. Even if you are not a "fit" person because you stay sedentary on normal days, the activity is still an enjoyable one. There are activities of varying difficulties. Try the simple ones first. Nobody is too old to join. As long as you can ride a bike without a problem, you're in. With that being said, biking tours encourage a group to take their time in enjoying the activity. One session ranges from a half day to half a month. It is not about the speed; it is about completing it. Some of the places that are known for a scenic bicycle ride are the following: 1) South Korea - Jeju Island is popular among local and international cyclists, with paved roads and beautiful sceneries. 2) Taiwan - Taroko National Park has 19 kilometers of gorge with bike lanes shown in the movie "To The Fore". 3) Japan - Safety and cleanliness are main Japanese priorities when it comes to outdoor activities. Biking is an inexpensive way to tour an otherwise expensive country. 4) Scotland - The nice countryside background can make a 15-day tour around the country from Glasgow to Edinburgh look like peanuts. 5) New Zealand - You will be biking around places that look like they are taken straight from travel magazines. 6) Central Europe - This place offers a challenging but rewarding route. With the Alps in the background during the ride, we are not complaining. 7) Australian outback - Rides are sometimes surprised by few wild animal spotting here and there. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 The network KoobCamp, leader in the tourism branch with its more than 30 web portals dedicated to campsites and holiday villages, chose the best ones which distinguished themselves for being pet-friendly. The first place has been assigned to Spina Camping Village, in Comacchio (FE), Emilia Romagna. (TRAVPR.COM) ITALY - June 3rd, 2016 - The Spina Camping Village of Lido di Spina, in Comacchio - Emilia Romagna, is the winner of the prize reserved to the best Pet-Friendly campsites for the year 2016. The experts of KoobCamp ( www.koobcamp.com ), network which includes Campeggi.com ( www.campeggi.com/en ) and other 30 web portals specialized oncampsites and holiday villages, choose this campsite for his dedication in welcoming and assisting all the guests who travelled with their pets. Situated in Lido di Spina, the area of the seven Lidi di Comacchio preferred by young people, the Spina Camping Village becomes the Italian testimonial of the pet-friendly campsites. These campsites chose to go beyond the simple acceptance of our four legged friends by offering high-level services as for example: hosting of cats, dogs and other pets in different types of accommodations (mobile homes and pitches), allow them to access the beach, all the green zones of the campsite and the restaurant's patio, Dog Beach, dogs area, showers reserved to dogs in the toilets, make available specific products for hygiene and nutrition. With this victory, the Spina Camping Village of Lido di Spina, inComacchio (FE - Emilia Romagna), can now praise himself of the title of absolute winner in this special chart made by KoobCamp and reserved to the italian 10 best pet-friendly campsites. The top ten, which is valid for the assignment of the Certificate of Excellence Pet-Friendly 2016 by KoobCamp, is the following*: Spina Camping Village - Lido di Spina, Comacchio (FE), in Emilia Romagna - WINNER I Tre Moschettieri Camping Village - Lido di Pomposa, Comacchio (FE) in Emilia Romagna Camping Village le Pianacce - Castagneto Carducci (LI), in Tuscany Camping Union Lido Park & Resort - Cavallino Treporti (VE), in Veneto Tiliguerta Camping Village - Muravera (CA), in Sardinia Campeggio Baia dei Gabbiani - Scarlino (GR), in Tuscany Camping Village Marina di Venezia - Cavallino Treporti (VE), in Veneto Villaggio Barricata - Porto Tolle (RO), in Veneto Desenzano Camping Village - Desenzano del Garda (BS), in Lombardy Villaggio Italgest - Magione (PG), in Umbria * N.B. the chart is not placing order, except for the winner. In order to obtain more visibility from the tourists, all the campsites and holiday villages in the top ten for the Certificate of Excellence Pet-Friendly 2016 will receive an adhesive, which attests the recognition given by KoobCamp and which will be available in a special variation for the winner, Spina Camping Village (FE). The announcement of the winners of the Certificates of Excellence 2016 by KoobCamp comes after the Certificates already given for categories Aquapark, Family and Glamping. At the same time it forestalls the prizes for Restaurant, Sport, Wellnessand Wi-Fi. ### Nowadays, getting Vietnam visa on arrival is a fastest and most popular way for foreign tourists who wish to visit Vietnam. There are more and more visitors to enter Vietnam per year, including New Zealand. (TRAVPR.COM) NEW ZEALAND - June 3rd, 2016 - Sometimes, we have received some of questions regarding to Vietnam visa for New Zealand passport holders. For example: How to apply Vietnam visa for New Zealand? Please give me the Vietnam visa procedures for New Zealand? Do I need to send you any documents to proceed visa? In order to explain clearly for you about those questions, we created this article. Please follow information as below: 1. How to apply Vietnam visa for New Zealand passport holders? You can apply visa online in anywhere as long as there is connecting on the internet. Please access on our website: www.VisaVietnam.NZ and apply visa (No need to send us any documents), then confirm and settle the payment online. We will help you proceed the visa approval letter with Vietnam Immigration Department. Within 2 working days (normal service), the approval letter will be sent to you via your email which you applied with us. After that, you will print it out and use it for boarding the plane and get the visa stamp at the landing visa counter as soon as arriving at Vietnam International Airport. 2. What documents do I need prepare to get the visa stamp at Vietnam Airport? To get the visa stamp at Vietnam airport, you should prepare some required documents in advance, when you arrive, just need to show it and receive the visa stamp to enter Vietnam normally. These documents are: - Your passport. - The entry & exit form (You should print and fill it out before arriving Vietnam). - 2 photos 4x6 cm or same size passport photos (If you dont have photos, you can take photos on arrival at the airport. It costs 5 USD/person at HCM airport or 2 USD/person at Hanoi airport) - The stamping fee by cash only (Its 25 USD/person for 1 month single entry visa, 50 USD/person for 1 month multiple entries visa, 25 USD/person for 3 months single entry visa or 50 USD/person for 3 months multiple entries visa.) When arriving at Vietnam airports, you will see the Landing visa sign. Kindly go to the Landing Visa counter to pick up your visa. Please note that you should check carefully information in visa sticker when you get back passport. 3. Can New Zealand passport holders get business visa? The service fee? We are pleased to inform that we can help New Zealand get both tourist visa & business visa. However, getting Vietnam visa for New Zealand is more difficult than the others, thats why the service fee for New Zealand Citizens is higher than the other countries. Here is the service fee for tourist visa: - 10 USD/person for 1 month single entry visa. - 10 USD/person for 1 month multiple entries visa. - 20 USD/person for 3 month single entry visa. - 32 USD/person for 3 month multiple entries visa. For more information about us, please visit http://www.visavietnam.nz. Our staff is 24/7 available. ### Gagan K Teja Tribune News Service Patiala, June 3 Hundreds of patients who visited Government Rajindra Hospital today were put to harassment as contractual nurses and ancillary staff of the hospital locked the Outdoor Patient Department, demanding regularisation of their services. The protesting staff has been taking up the issue of regularisation for the past few years. Despite assurances, the government is yet to regularise their services. Following this, the staff has initiated a protest against the state government and locked the Outdoor Patient Department (OPD), affecting the medical services in all departments, including radiology, gynaecology, ortho and medicine, to a large extent. After the contractual staff locked the OPD gates yesterday evening, Medical Superintendent of the hospital Dr BL Bhardwaj took up the matter with the higher authorities, following which the Secretary of the Medical Education Department Hussan Lal had called them for a meeting, which they refused to attend. Thereafter, DRME MK Mohi visited the hospital and held a meeting with the staff members. Mohi informed them that the department had already initiated the regularisation work and they had a meeting with Punjab Chief Minister Parkash in this regard on Monday. She urged the staff to postpone their strike by a few days in the larger interest of the patients. Even police officials tried to intervene in the matter. However, the protesters refused to call off the strike claiming that this is not the first time they had been assured of regularisation. They said the government had been befooling them time and again. This time, they would get back to work only when they would get notifications. Senior vice-president of the Nurses and Ancillary Staff Union Mandeep Kaur Sandhu said the protest would be called off only when the notification would be issued. She said: The contractual staff working here hails from different parts of the state and unlike the regular staff, we get only four offs in the month following which their family life has taken a backseat. Moreover, in case of illness or other medical emergencies, we are not given any benefit of being a staff and have to bear the entire expenses from our own pockets. How can we run the families in this meagre amount? Meanwhile, Dr Bhardwaj said it was unfortunate that they were causing extreme inconvenience the to patients coming to the hospital. We share their concern but they should understand that we are trying our best to help them. We cannot allow them to disrupt our functioning, he said. Agony of contractual employees There are about 580 nurses, 96 ancillary staff and 250 Class IV employees and they have been working on a contractual basis for over three years. The nurses have served for a period of six-and-a-half years. Most of the work in the hospital is being carried out by this contractual staff. Though the Punjab Government had assured that the services of these contractual employees would be automatically regularised after three years, they are yet to be regularised despite repeated protests, rallies and dharnas in the past. Charu Chhibber Tribune News Service Chandigarh, June 2 Expectant women who visit the citys three civil hospitals for an ultrasound test have to return disappointed since there is no radiologist to operate the ultrasound machines. Patients and their kin are forced to bear the inconvenience of visiting the Government Multi-Speciality Hospital, Sector 16, or Government Medical College and Hospital, Sector 32, to get an ultrasound done. While the Government Civil Block Hospital, Sector 22, and Civil Hospital, Mani Majra, see over 200 women out patients every week, Civil Hospital, Sector 45, witnesses a footfall of about 100 such patients per week. These hospitals were upgraded from civil dispensaries by the Health Department with a view to provide better facilities to patients. However, the Health Department has failed to provide radiologists despite repeated promises. Worst perhaps is the Civil Hospital, Mani Majra, that witnesses the maximum number of pregnant patients, but still has been running without a radiologist for the past two years. Few days ago, my sister, who is six-month pregnant, complained of stomach ache. We rushed her to Civil Hospital, Sector 22. But an ultrasound could not be performed. We were asked to take her to the GMSH-16, rued Shelley Singh, a Sector 22 resident. Pratibha Devi, mother-in-law of another seven-month-old high-risk pregnant patient, who visits the Civil Hospital, Mani Majra, for her monthly visits to the doctor, said, Every time an ultrasound is required, we have to go all the way to the GMSH-16. According to sources, 23 posts of radiologists in Chandigarh are lying vacant. The private sector has a great demand for radiologists so they are offered bigger packages. The Health Department, on the other hand, gives a salary that is too low in comparison to the private hospitals, said a Senior Medical Officer, adding that walk-in interviews to fill the vacancies have been conducted five times over the past three months but to no avail. When contacted, Dr Vanita Gupta, Director, Health Services, Chandigarh, said walk-in interviews were called on May 23 to fill the 23 vacant posts of radiologists and the department would soon fill up these posts. S Nihal Singh The recent murder of an African student in Delhi, Masunda Kitada Oliver, has illuminated a less endearing aspect that has been a fact of life for as long as one can remember. India is a racist and colour-conscious society. And this trait is drilled into the consciousness of the young from an early age. The desirability of fair skin can be gauged by advertisements of whitening creams endorsed by film stars and in an average North Indian home it is customary of the eldest lady of the house to extol the virtues of a prospective bride by the description, her skin is as white as milk. In the popular imagination, there are rankings of foreigners. The whites, having been our rulers until recently, are in a special category. But people with mongoloid features, dubbed Chinese by the common man, are singled out for the psychological shock of India's defeat in the 1962 war with China. Our compatriots from the North-East become victims of this prejudice. Africans are in a special category of the other because of their features and colour. The uproar the lynching to death of the Congolese student caused is all to the good. The African diplomatic corps reacted in the strongest terms. It led External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to undertake a damage control exercise. Oliver's parents were brought to India although she made the absurd statement that the murder was not racially motivated. The BJP Chief Minister of Goa, for his part, wants all Nigerians out of his state. Part of the problem is that African students usually live in lower middle class areas on the fringes of the city, with their more liberated ways clashing with Indians' more conservative mores. Second, a minority of Africans is associated with dubious activities but, above all, the police force at the lower levels, representative of conservative Indian mores as they are, are usually cavalier in their treatment of African complaints. What has changed by the horrific murder is the strong African reaction, with Nigerian envoy Sola Enikanolaiye suggesting that racism and Afro-phobia were of major concern. His African colleague from Ghana, Mr Samuel Panyin Yalley, took to verse to express his anguish. That the murder of the Congolese happened on the eve of an officially-sponsored Africa Day jamboree was doubly embarrassing. In recent years, Africa has been a continent of major focus for commercial reasons in the opportunities it represents and the role of the Indian diaspora in many countries. The reverberations of Olivers murder were instantaneous in the attacks on Indian-owned shops in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital. India, of course, is not alone in its racial and colour prejudices. In my extensive travels in South-East Asia, I found men and women of the Philippines even more colour conscious, contrasting my relatively fair skin with their darker pigment. After ascertaining where I was from, a gentleman in the lobby of the upscale Manila Hotel authoritatively pronounced, Indians are a white race! Living in Britain as I did for years, I can testify that a black man is treated more civilly there than in India. And in my two-year residence in France, I found that a black man was judged by his assimilation in French literature and language and the black have been honoured at the highest level in French cultural and literary institutions. In more recent times, I must confess, this veneer of reverence for the cultured black man is being severely tested, perhaps because of the terrorist activities some of the supposedly assimilated Middle Easterners have indulged in. Coming home, where do we go from here? There is the whisper of awareness that educating the people in the dignity of the other is a task that must be undertaken, delicately describing it as sensitisation. It will prove to be immense task. One has only to look at the matrimonial advertisements to discover how highly fair skin is rated. Inevitably, it will be a slow process, but it must start at the primary class. Across the country, we have different shades of skin pigmentation; in the South, a recent attack on an African in Hyderabad suggested that physical features as much as colour of skin are loaded against him or her. The worst examples of colour and racial prejudice were indeed to be found in apartheid South Africa and in the United States. Mercifully, South Africa is now a new nation although, as can be imagined, prejudice against Africans still exists and some Afrikaners, descendents of the Dutch, are not reconciled to the new order. During my first visit to the United States in the 1950s, I discovered that in the Deep South there were separate lunch counters for blacks and I stayed at an all-white hotel in Montgomery, Alabama barred to blacks. Although racial prejudice still exists in the US, the road it has travelled has been dramatically demonstrated by the election of a black man to the presidency, Barack Obama. We have one advantage in India if the authorities are serious about educating the people. We have people of all possible shades from Kashmir to the South and the North-East. Although African features are rare, except in some tribal communities. Indeed, one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen was a deep black Tamilian in the Seychelles who was stunning in her beauty. There are, indeed, many black men and women the world can be proud of, South Africas Nelson Mandela being the most famous of them all in recent history. Not only did Mandela serve as a prisoner in the oppressive days of apartheid but he gave new hope to his country and the world by forgiving his oppressors in a Gandhian act to begin a new chapter in the history of a country with a tragic past. There is hope yet for India, if only the authorities would put their shoulder to the wheel. Hamid Ansari In current discussions in many places, the terms Arab and Islam are used together or interchangeably. But are the two synonymous? Is Arab thought synonymous with Islamic thought? Is all Arab thought Islamic or visa versa? Above all, can all Islamic thinking be attributed to Arabs? I raise these questions because for a variety of reasons and motivations the contemporary world, particularly the West, tends to create this impression of a powerful, irrational force that, from Morocco to Indonesia, moves whole societies into cultural assertiveness, political intransigence and economic influence. The underlying basis for this, as Aziz Al-Azmeh put it, are presumptions of Muslim cultural homogeneity and continuity that do not correspond to social reality. Allow me to amplify. Islam is a global faith, and its adherents are in all parts of the world. The history of Islam as a faith, and of Muslims as its adherents, is rich and diversified. In different ages and in different regions the Muslim contribution to civilisation has been note worthy. In cultural terms, the history of Islam is the history of a dialogue between the realm of religious symbols and the world of everyday reality, a history of the interaction between Islamic values and the historical experiences of Muslim people that has shaped the formation of a number of different but interrelated Muslim societies. An overwhelming number of Muslims of the world are non-Arabs and live in societies that are not Arab. Equally relevant is the historical fact they contributed to and benefited from the civilisation of Islam in full measure. This trend continues to this day. The one conclusion I draw is that in ascertaining Islamic and Muslim perceptions on contemporary happenings, the experiences and trends of thinking of the non-Arab segments of large Muslim populations in the world assume an importance that cannot be ignored. These segments include countries with Muslim majorities (principally Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey) as also those where followers of the Islamic faith do not constitute a majority of the population (India, China, and Philippines). Amongst both categories, India is sui generis. India counts amongst its citizens the second largest Muslim population in the world. It numbers 180 million and accounts for 14.2 per cent of the country's total population of 1.3 billion. Furthermore, religious minorities as a whole (Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Parsis or Zoroastrians) constitute 19.4 per cent of the population of India. India's interaction with Islam and Muslims began early and bears the imprint of history. Indian Muslims have lived in India's religiously plural society for over a thousand years, at times as rulers, at others as subjects and now as citizens. They are not homogenous in racial or linguistic terms and bear the impact of local cultural surroundings, in manners and customs, in varying degrees. Through extensive trading ties before the advent of Islam, India was a known land to the people of the Arabian Peninsula, the Persian Gulf, and western Asia and was sought after for its prosperity and trading skills and respected for its attainments in different branches of knowledge. Thus Baghdad became the seeker, and dispenser, of Indian numerals and sciences. The Panchatantra was translated and became Kalila wa Dimna. Long before the advent of Muslim conquerors, the works of Al-Jahiz, Ibn Khurdadbeh, Al-Kindi, Yaqubi and Al-Masudi testify to it in ample measure. Alberuni, who studied India and Indians more thoroughly than most, produced a virtual encyclopedia on religion, rituals, manners and customs, philosophy, mathematics and astronomy. He commenced his great work by highlighting differences, but was careful enough to relate, not criticise. Over centuries of intermingling and interaction, an Indo-Islamic culture developed in India. Many years back, an eminent Indian historian, Prof Tara Chand, summed it up in a classic passage: It is hardly possible to exaggerate the extent of Muslim influence over Indian life in all departments. But nowhere else is it shown so vividly and so picturesquely, as in customs, in intimate details of domestic life, in music, in the fashion of dress, in the ways of cooking, in the ceremonial of marriage, in the celebration of festivals and fairs, and in the courtly institutions and etiquette. Belief, consciousness and practice became a particularly rich area of interaction. Within the Muslim segment of the populace, there was a running tussle between advocates of orthodoxy and those who felt that living in a non-homogenous social milieu, the pious could communicate values through personal practice. In this manner the values of faith, though not its theological content, reached a wider circle of the public. This accounted for the reach and popularity of different Sufi personalities in different periods of history and justifies an eminent scholar's observation that Sufism took Islam to the masses and in doing so it took over the enormous and delicate responsibility of dealing at a personal level with a baffling variety of problems. It also produced a convergence or parallelism; the Sufi trends sought commonalities in spiritual thinking and some Islamic precepts and many Muslim practices seeped into the interstices of the Indian society and gave expression to a broader and deeper unity of minds expressive of the Indian spiritual tradition. The cultural interaction was mutually beneficial and an Islamic scholar of our times has acknowledged an incontrovertible fact that Muslims have benefited immensely from the ancient cultural heritage of India. The framers of our Constitution had the objective of securing civic, political, economic, social and cultural rights as essential ingredients of citizenship. Particular emphasis was placed on rights of religious minorities. Thus in the section on Fundamental Rights all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion. In addition, every religious denomination shall have the right to establish and maintain institutions for religious and charitable purposes, to manage its own affairs in matters of religion, and to acquire and administer movable and immovable property. Furthermore, all religious or linguistic minorities shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice. Given the segmented nature of society and unequal economy, the quest for substantive equality, and justice, remains work in progress and concerns have been expressed from time to time about its shortfalls and pace of implementation. The corrective lies in our functioning democracy, its accountability mechanisms including regularity of elections at all levels from village and district councils to regional and national levels, the Rule of Law, and heightened levels of public awareness of public issues. The one incontrovertible fact about the Muslim experience in modern India is that its citizens professing Islamic faith are citizens, consider themselves as such, are beneficiaries of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution, participate fully in the civic processes of the polity and seek correctives for their grievances within the system. There is no inclination in their ranks to resort to ideologies and practices of violence. I come back to the principal theme of this talk. Why is the Indian model of relevance to our globalising world? Globalisation has many facets economic, political and cultural. All necessitate the emergence of a set of norms, values and practices that are universally accepted. A sociologist has defined it as the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole. An obvious implication of this would be assimilation and homogenisation. In a world of intrinsically diverse societies at different levels of development, this could only result in denial of their diversity and imposition of uniformity. Such an approach can only result in conflict. The challenge for the modern world is to accept diversity as an existential reality and to configure attitudes and methodologies for dealing with it. In developing such an approach, the traditional virtue of tolerance is desirable but insufficient; our effort, thinking and practices have to look beyond it and seek acceptance of diversity and adopt it as a civic virtue. We in India are attempting it, cannot yet say that we have succeeded, but are committed to continue the effort. We invite all right-minded people to join us in this endeavour. Thank you. Excerpted from Vice President Hamid Ansari's speech at the Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco. Tribune News Service Chandigarh June 3 Prakash Javadekar, Union Minister of State for Environment, Forests and Climate Change, admired the vulture breeding and conservation programme of the state government in Pinjore today. He was in Pinjore, along with Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, to launch Asias first Gyps Vulture Reintroduction Programme. They released two Himalayan Griffons in the wild from the Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre, Pinjore. Khattar described the breeding and conservation of vultures as a significant step towards saving the species. He said the state government was formulating a scheme to conserve forests, besides various schemes in the Shivalik hills. The 500-meter area around Mangar Bani has been declared no construction zone by the state government. The government was also formulating a scheme to develop a herbal park in 500 acres in Morni. Forests and Wildlife Minster Rao Narbir Singh appreciated the management of the Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre. He said that the state government would leave no stone unturned conserve vultures. The union minister handed over 10 vultures, which have siblings at the centre to AK Srivastava, field director, Van Vihar National Park, Madhya Pradesh, as a part of the genetic management of captive vulture population. Lalit Mohan Tribune News Service Dharamsala, June 3 Dharamsala may soon be connected with Chandigarh by air. A nine-seat Grand Caravan 208 B plane likely to fly between Chandigarh and Dharamsala carried out a test flight at the Gaggal airport today afternoon. At present, Dharamsala is well connected with Delhi by air with four to and fro flights. However, there was no flight between Chandigarh and Dharamsala. Director of the Gaggal airport in Kangra, Parwinder Tiwari, while talking to The Tribune, said the IIC Technologies Company of Hyderabad had mooted a proposal to fly the nine-seat plane between Chandigarh and Dharamsala. It has entered into an agreement with a Himachal-based company Air Himalayas for the purpose. Already, the company has carried out flights between Chandigarh and Kullu. However, they carried out a test flight at Gaggal airport in Kangra district today for the first time. Tiwari said that company was proposing an airfare between Rs 8,000 and Rs 10,000 for a trip between Chandigarh and Dharamsala. The plane has nine seats, including 4 business class. The airport director said the company, for the time being, was carrying out a survey at the said airports of calculate the logistics of operating intercity flights in Himachal. The sources here said the company had made a request to the Himachal government to subsidize three to four tickets per sortie in the initial phase to make the project of connecting various destinations of Himachal with small planes a success. It has proposed that in lieu of the subsidy provided it can offer seats to the government officials wanting to travel in different parts of the state. The Gaggal airport of Kangra is the busiest of Himachal. Four flights were going to and fro from Delhi to Dharamsala daily. The cost of one-way ticket from Delhi to Dharamsala was about Rs 15,000 or more in the peak tourist season. With the IIC technologies proposing to ply small planes at lower fare from Chandigarh to Dharamsala, the authorities here feel it can give further boost to tourism in the area. The small planes have already been a success in Nepal where they are landed even on kucha airstrips using the GPRS system. The story can be repeated in Himachal. Tribune News Service Srinagar, June 3 Indian Ambassador to Cuba Tsewang Namgyal called on Governor NN Vohra in Srinagar today. With a focus on the strong historical ties between India and Cuba, the Governor suggested to Ambassador Tsewang Namgyal to invite the Cuban authorities to explore possibilities existing in Jammu and Kashmir for establishing mutually beneficial projects and programmes. The Governor also referred to a high potential of Indo-Cuban collaborations in the education sector and fostering and encouraging several joint research programmes in various similar fields. Tribune News Service Jammu, June 3 Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today lambasted Pakistan for carrying out a terror attack in the Bijbehara area of south Kashmir. Three BSF men died and three others were injured in the attack. I fail to understand what such a situation will give, Mehbooba said. Condemning the act of terror and expressing solidarity with the bereaved families, the Chief Minister said: What if there would have been retaliation from the BSF? Children, women and men would have been killed and a situation like Handwara would have emerged. Mehbooba was speaking during a Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao function after inaugurating an international convention centre in Jammu here this evening. She was critical of Pakistan's response to the peace process. Pakistan is itself fighting terrorism and their children are being killed but at the same time it is promoting terrorism in the state, which is not acceptable. We want to improve the relations but such incidents happen. Post the 1987 elections, a situation arose and people also supported the gun but now people dont want it anymore and Pakistan must understand it, she said. Pakistan claims it loves people of Kashmir, but this is not the way to love, Mehbooba added. Earlier in the day, immediately after the attack, the Chief Minister spoke to Director General, BSF, KK Sharma and expressed anguish and sorrow over the death of the BSF personnel in the attack. Such senseless attack is a desperate attempt by the elements who want to derail the peace efforts of the government and subvert the rejuvenating economic activity in the state, the Chief Minister said in a statement. She said such dastardly attacks and senseless killings had only brought miseries to the people and tragedies for the victim families, both security forces personnel and the civilians. The only purpose of such gory acts seems to keep the turmoil in the state on and the latest attack is again aimed at vitiating the atmosphere, she said. She also announced several schemes for girls, including 50 per cent subsidy on scooties for girl students of one college each in Jammu and Srinagar. CM takes on separatists over Pandit colonies Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Friday took on separatists over the construction of separate colonies for migrant Pandits in Kashmir. We want to bring back Kashmiri Pandits to Kashmir and instill a sense of security among them they will be absorbed in separate colonies where other people will also live with them. After living there and once they feel the atmosphere is right, they can head towards their homes, the CM said, adding that even workers of various political parties in Kashmir live in hotels with personal security officers. Our Correspondent Jaipur, June 3 More than 250 people among them 100 children were taken ill in a suspected case of food poisoning at a wedding reception at Maksoodpura village in Sikar district of Rajasthan late on Thursday night. Several people complained of vomiting and abdominal pain after they ate their dinner and were immediately taken to SK Hospital in Sikar, SHO Ranauli Police station said. No casualty has been reported yet. Many were discharged in the wee hours of Friday. The district administration has asked the states state Medical and Health Department to collect samples of food for testing. One Kishan Lal Yadav hosted a reception dinner for his sons wedding. Spoilt curd is believed to have caused the food poisoning. No case is so far registered against the host. Simran Sodhi Tribune News Service New Delhi, June 3 Prime Minister Narendra Modi will embark on a five-nation tour to Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland, the United States and Mexico tomorrow. Indias entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) will top the PMs agenda during the visit. His US trip has been the most hyped with Modi scheduled to address a joint session of the US Congress on June 8. But the two issues that are likely to play spoiler during the trip are: the governments inability to check problems related to the ease of doing business in India and Indias human rights record for which the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the US Congress will hold a hearing on June 7 itself. Officially, India has denied that Switzerland and Mexico were added later to the PMs itinerary primarily to enable Modi to meet the leadership of both countries to push for Indias membership of the elite 48-member group. However, the backing of the two countries for Indias NSG membership remains crucial. The group works on consensus and the government is hoping Modi will be able to convince both countries to support Indias membership application which is likely to come up for discussions at the plenary meeting of the NSG to be held in Seoul in June. Modi will also seek Obamas support for joining the NSG when the two leaders meet. India formally applied for the NSG membership on May 12. The PM will first travel to Afghanistan where he will inaugurate the Afghan-India Friendship Dam in Herat province, along with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. From there, he travels to Qatar and then will make a stop-over in Switzerland where Modi will also raise the issue of black money stashed away by Indians in Swiss banks. This was also one of the poll promises of the BJP. We are in touch with the Swiss Government and we have a few plans in the near future, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said. Tribune News Service Haridwar, June 3 Noted Ayurvedacharya Dr DK Shrivastava has been invited at the maiden Ayurveda workshop at Stockholm, Sweden. Rishikesh-based Shrivastava will be briefing and training delegates at the workshop to be held from June 11 to 23. The conference will be a part of the International Yoga Day celebration. Another workshop will also be held in Norway in presence of Shrivastava. Dr DK Shrivastava said his focus would be on establishing ancient Ayurveda treatment, which has been practised and honed by seers since ancient age. Its a matter of pride for me that I will be representing India in Europe and will be apprising them of Ayurveda and yoga. People in western and European world are getting attracted to the natural medical therapies, of which Ayurveda is the oldest and the best as these have no side effects, he said. He would give presentations and training on pulse diagnosis, naturopathy and art of healthy living. The Rishikesh Ayurveda Medical Union, the National Integrated Medical Association (NIMA) and the Ayush Medical Association have congratulated the ace Ayurveda practitioner for being invited by European countries. Notably, Dr ?DK Shrivastava for the past few years has been a regular visitor to European countries where he has been promoting Ayurveda and yoga. Having been to Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Netherland, Spain, France and Belgium, he said India had the potential to guide the world to the path of good health, through yoga and Ayurveda. Tribune News Service Dehradun, June 3 Indian Ambassadors to Nepal, Thailand and Madagascar met Chief Minister Harish Rawat and Governor KK Paul here today. During their meeting with Rawat, the envoys discussed various possibilities of development in the state. Rawat told Ambassador to Nepal Ranjit Ray that citizens of the Himlayan nation and Uttarakhand had a cultural connection since time immemorial. For the convenience of people from both sides, we need to focus on road and bridge connectivity in the Indo-Nepal frontier regions. Maximum local problems might be resolved if District Magistrates and other officials of frontier districts of both nations hold regular meetings, the Chief Minister said. Ambassador to Thailand Bhagwant Singh Bishnoi said there was immense potentials in the pharmaceutical sector of Uttarakhand. Thai pharmaceutical companies might invest in the state. Rawat gave directions to SIDCUL Managing Director R Rajesh Kumar to prepare a proposal in this regard. Bishnoi suggested that road shows might be organised to fetch the capital investment in the state. Ambassador to Madagascar Chandra Ballabh Thapliyal, a resident of Uttarakhand, suggested that marketing arrangements for the farm production of farmers of hilly areas should be given special importance. Rawat said the state government was providing bonus amount on various local crops and trying to create demand of these crops. Principal Secretary, Energy, Umakant Pawar, PWD Secretary DS Gabriyal, SIDCUL MD R Rajesh Kumar and other officials were present during the meeting. During their meeting with the Governor, the focus was on exploring the potential of tourism and micro-hydel projects in the state, Paul said the state had conducive conditions for foreign investment in these spheres. If these possibilities were showcased and projected effectively, foreign investment could be brought to Uttarakhand, he said. The Governor said there was a 325-km highway from Tughlaqabad Dry Port (Delhi) to Banbasa which was the border area of Uttarakhand touching Nepals western border and just 30 kilometres away from Mahendranagar which is the industrial/trade centre of Nepal. This highway joining Tughlaqabad and Uttarakhand could be beneficial in Indo-Nepal trade activities. During the discussion on promoting trade between Uttarakhand and western Nepal, the ambassador to Nepal said the work on strengthening the Sharda river barrage was underway in accordance with the agreement between India and Nepal. Paul told the ambassador to Thailand that the state had a great scope for herbal spas. It came up during the discussion that Thaliand was keen on investing in the pharmaceutical industry in Uttarakhand. The Governor presented mementos to the three Ambassadors. Tripoli, June 3 The bodies of 104 migrants have washed up on a beach in the western Libyan town of Zwara, the navy said on Friday, warning that the toll could rise. The number of bodies retrieved last evening was 104 but the toll is expected to rise since an average boat carries 115-125 passengers," Libyan navy spokesman Colonel Ayoub Qassem said. People smugglers have exploited the chaos gripping Libya since the 2011 uprising that overthrew dictator Moamer Kadhafi to traffic migrants across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. It is a lucrative business for the smugglers who cram migrants into boats that are small and unsafe for the perilous journey to Italy just 300 kilometres from Libya's shores. Thousands of migrants try each year to make the crossing, but many drown when their boats founder. Qassem said migrant boats leaving from western Libya usually set off from the port cities of Sabratha and Zwara, with passengers who are mostly African or Arabs from Morocco. The identities of the bodies found yesterday were not yet known. Some 204,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe since January, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday. More than 2,500 people have died trying to make the crossing this year -- the vast majority of them between Libya and Italy -- as Europe battles its worst migration crisis since World War II. AFP ATHENS, June 3 Hundreds of migrants were rescued from a sinking ship on Friday in a massive operation in the southern Mediterranean off the island of Crete, the Greek coastguard said, but four bodies were also recovered. Greek search and rescue teams were dispatched to the area, about 75 nautical miles off southern Crete in territory, which falls under Egypt's jurisdiction. In total, 340 people were rescued by midday, Greek authorities said. There was no immediate information on the nationalities of the migrants or on the victims. Greek media said the wooden boat the migrants were sailing in started taking in water. It was not immediately clear where the boat had sailed from. "From some scattered accounts we have heard (from those rescued) they set off from the African coastline," coastguard spokesman Nikos Lagkadianos said. It was too early to determine how many people had been on the vessel, he said. Hundreds of thousands of mainly Syrian refugees crossed the short but precarious sea corridor to Greece from Turkey last year in small inflatable boats, but that route was effectively sealed after an EU-Turkey clampdown in March. Now, warm weather and calmer seas in the Mediterranean have led to a surge in recent weeks in the number of people trying to cross to Italy from Libya, where people-smugglers operate with relative impunity. Boats on this much longer journey risk being blown off course to islands such as Crete. Friday's incident was the third in a week involving migrant rescues or landings on the island. Reuters ANKARA, June 3 Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Friday Tehran had no intention of cooperating on regional issues with its main enemies the United states and "evil" Britain, state TV reported. "America has continued its enmity towards Iran since (the 1979 Islamic) revolution... It is a huge mistake to trust the evil Britain and the great Satan (US)," Khamenei said in a speech broadcast live on state TV. "We will not cooperate with America over the regional crisis," he said, adding that: "Their aims in the region are 180 degrees opposed to Iran's." Iran's most powerful authority, Khamenei also said the United States had not remained committed to a nuclear deal reached between Tehran and six major powers in 2015 aimed at curbing the country's disputed nuclear programme. Reuters Ramallah: Israel on Friday released a Palestinian MP after detaining her for 14 months Khalida Jarrar, a top figure of the leftist Palestinian Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was released at a military checkpoint near the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem, where crowds welcomed her and moved with her to her home in Ramallah. Israeli forces arrested Jarrar in April 2015 from her home in Ramallah. She was transferred to administrative detention for six months and later was sentenced to 15 months in jail. Jarrar only served 14 months of her sentence. IANS US should not be trusted, says Ayatollah Tehran: Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said today that the US was Tehran's "enemy" and should not be trusted. Despite Iran's fulfilment of its obligations pertaining to the nuclear deal, the US has failed to live up to its commitments, Khamenei said. "If any political trend (group) trusts the US, it will commit a grave mistake," he said. Khamenei made the remarks in a ceremony held to commemorate the 27th death anniversary of the founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, reports said. IANS Celebrity biographer Wendy Leigh dies in London London: The prolific celebrity biographer Wendy Leigh died in London on Friday. She was 65. Her agent Dan Strone at Trident Media Group said today that she died in a fall from her riverside apartment in London on Sunday. She was known for her books about David Bowie, John F Kennedy Jr., Arnold Schwarzenegger, Grace Kelly and other major figures. British media commentator Roy Greenslade said on his blog that Leigh had a popular touch. "She moved on from sex manuals to write a series of celebrity biographies, most of which antagonized her subjects. But they were always scrupulously researched and full of interesting psychological insights," he said of Leigh. He described Leigh as a longtime friend and said she was intelligent, uninhibited, and perpetually smiling. AP San Jose, June 3 Scuffles broke out between supporters of US presidential candidate Donald Trump and protesters on Thursday before and after the Republican spoke at a rally in San Jose, California. Videos posted on Twitter and online by local and national media showed clashes in the street outside of the San Jose Convention Center, where demonstrators fought and threw punches at each other. Hundreds of protesters waved Mexican flags, chanted anti-Trump slogans and burned Trump hats and at least one American flag outside of the rally, where Trump, to the delight of his supporters, vowed to stop illegal drugs from coming into the United States from the south, to build a wall on the US border and have Mexico pay the bill. "We are going to build that wall, don't even think about it," he said gave two thumbs up as his supporters chanted "build that wall". Protests have become common outside rallies for Trump, the party's presumptive nominee, who has polarised opinion with his rhetoric against illegal immigration. He abandoned a rally in Chicago in March after clashes between his supporters and protesters. "Violence against supporters of any candidate has no place in this election," John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman, wrote on Twitter in response to the clashes. Footage also showed a woman wearing a Trump jersey being pelted with eggs and food as she entered the rally while in another video clip, a Trump supporter was seen bleeding from the side of his head. Police were captured on video clips trying to disperse the crowd. Officers wearing riot gear were shown forming lines to control the crowd and taking at least one protester into custody. It is unclear if arrests were made as San Jose police officials were unavailable for comment. Reuters To settle a suit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, New Prime Trucking, Inc., which does business as Prime Inc., will pay over $3.1 million and make job offers to more than 60 women who were deemed negatively affected by the companys same-sex driver trainer policy. According to EEOC, the agreed upon payments follow an earlier court order that found the truckload carrier had violated federal law when it required that female truck-driver applicants be trained only by female trainers. That court order held that Prime violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by denying employment opportunities to women as a result of its same-sex trainer policy. EEOC said that Prime had adopted that policy in 2004 after it was found in a previous agency lawsuit to have violated Title VII based upon the sexual harassment of one of its female driver trainees. The present suit was brought against Prime in September 2011 based on a discrimination charge filed by Deanna Roberts Clouse. Because Prime had very few female trainers, its same-sex trainer policy forced female trainees to wait extended periods of time, sometimes up to 18 months, for a female trainer to become available, which resulted in most female driver trainees being denied employment, EEOC stated in a news release. On the other hand, male applicants were promptly assigned to male trainers. EEOC said that Prime ceased using its same-sex trainer policy in 2013 as a result of the agency's suit. After the court's order on liability, Prime agreed to pay $250,000 to Clouse to resolve her claims. Last month, Prime agreed via consent decree to pay over $2.8 million in lost wages and damages for 63 other women, whom EOC said were denied job opportunities. EEOC noted that it was unable to determine the precise number or identities of all women affected by Prime's unlawful policy because, as the court found, Prime failed to preserve the lists [of women who were put on waiting lists] and cooperate in identifying women impacted by the policy " The order on liability and consent decree were entered in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri (EEOC v. New Prime Trucking, Inc. Civil Action No.6:11-CV-03367 MDH). In addition, the court permanently enjoined Prime from discriminating against applicants or employees on the basis of sex and ordered that Prime shall not implement a same-sex trainer policy or practice that creates barriers to the entry or advancement of female driver applicants or employees. The court also ordered Prime to give priority hiring consideration to the class members and make them immediately eligible for benefits without a waiting period. "When women break into male-dominated fields, they are often trained by men, said Andrea G. Baran, regional attorney of EEOC's St. Louis District. We should not expect that these women will be sexually harassed. It is disrespectful to men everywhere to assume that they will harass women if they work together in close quarters. Rather, employers have a responsibility to adopt strict anti-harassment policies and practices and enforce them so that all employees-- regardless of sex --can work and succeed together." Springfield, Mo.-based Prime is one of the nations largest truckload carriers, providing service to customers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Meanwhile... the Movement for Social Justice is questioning if the lights from the deyas lit Russel Howcroft is well-known for his enthusiasm for advertising, as one half of Gruens yin and yang duo with Todd Sampson. The TEN exec was also recently appointed as Chair of Think TV, a new body promoting both FTA commercial networks and Foxtel as heavyweight platforms against online competition. We are getting beaten up by idiotic headlines, he told the Australian Food and Grocery Councils annual conference in Brisbane this week. (Headlines such as) `New AppleTV will blow up the TV industry, `TV flickers as viewers find new screens, and `Fewer people than ever are watching TV. Its nonsense. Dont read this crap. Referring to TENs platform tenplay he noted, You cant block the ad, you cant fast forward the ad, you cant skip the ad. And you know what? People dont care. They actually quite like it. The reach of broadcast TV remains high, but it is also decreasing as it is challenged by new players. In the last OzTAM multi-screen report 87.4% of Australians watched broadcast television (free-to-air and subscription channels) at an average of 85:17hrs per month on in-home TV sets. In 2012 the average time spent viewing was 113:38hrs. Source: AAP / SBS Perth viewers of the Today show must have been confused yesterday when a Live broadcast of a man protesting on a rooftop at Scarborough was seen in the dark at 8:14am. Especially when he was also in morning sunlight at 8:14am on Sunrise. When Nine crossed to the scene at 8:14am AEST it was 6:14am WST. But the programme played two hours later into WA with the Live marker still visible. Sunrise had already wrapped around 9am AEST when it later served a Live news cross into Perth at 10:14am AEST, 8:14am WST. The Scarborough deli owner is staging a rooftop protest to protest against demolition works which have encroached on the shop. Making things even more confusing for Nine viewers is their local news bulletins which break into Today to avoid the very problem of stale news. But that would have meant viewers dipped in and out of sunlight between Today and Nine News Perth bulletins. Nine was contacted for comment. Kyiv Regional Council has decided to ask the Cabinet of Ministers to lift the moratorium on inspecting the homes for the elderly, chairman of the Kyiv Regional State Administration Maksym Melnychuk made a statement, Ukrinform reports. "Today, in the Kyiv Region, there are about 50 of such types of homes. I would ask you, deputies, to restore order in your constituencies," Melnychuk said. Kyiv Regional Council decided to request the Cabinet to lift the moratorium on inspecting the homes, operated by the businesses, with plenty of residents. Recall that fire in a nursing home killed 16 elderly people and one employee on May 29, 2016 in Brovary district of the Kiev Region. tl The Russian occupation troops suffered heavy losses, including 180 gunmen were killed in action, another 190 were injured in Donbas in May, according to data released by Spokesman of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Defense Ministry of Ukraine Vadym Skibitsky at a press briefing on Friday. "Military intelligence has registered heavy losses of personnel in the First Army Corps of Russian occupation troops: 180 persons killed in action, another 190 injured. Among those killed 80 are Russian citizens at least 30 of them are cadre military of the Russian Armed Forces, mainly from special operations units. According to our information, at least 70 of injured rebels were taken to Russian hospitals in the Rostov region," said the Ukrainian military official. tl The United States will provide financial assistance to Ukraine in the amount of $ 1 billion. Signing of the Declaration on Intent and Agreement on Loan Guarantees between Ukraine and the United States took place in the presence of Ukraines President Petro Poroshenko, the press service of the President reports. "This is evidence that the United States is Ukraines reliable strategic partner," he said. The President noted that the result of today's signing will be a more effective cooperation between Ukraine and the USA. The agreement on the loan deal was reached during Poroshenkos visit in Washington, meetings with U.S. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden. Poroshenko is confident that cooperation deal will be signed between Ukraine and the IMF, other financial institutions along with a receipt of macro-financial assistance from the EU following the signing of the one billion USD loan contract with the U.S. tl In one of the concluding shootings of the Memorial Day weekend, just around midnight, two people reportedly pulled out guns and began firing in East Garfield Park. Officers received the first call early Tuesday reporting a person been shot on Homan Avenue, immediately followed by a second victim, and then a third. Just a few minutes later, a person walked into a hospital. In sum, 27 people of the 69 hit by gunfire over the weekend were either shot near or in the Harrison District, which is cited as the city's most homicidal area and is heavily patrolled by law enforcement. The number of people shot there went so high that Deputy Superintendent John Escalante assured to tone up patrols. Early Tuesday, there were update about nine more people been shot, ChicagoTribune reported. As far as rest of the weekend shooting is concerned, it was spread out over Chicago, reaching as far as north (West Rogers Park), northwest (Jefferson Park), and far south (West Pullman) area. The violence centralized primarily on the West Side. Although, there was a hike in the number of shootings as compared to 2015, the number of deaths dropped significantly. 12 people were killed last year, and 44 wounded during the holiday weekend. This weekend, though a total of 13 more people were shot, six fewer were actually killed. Despite officers patrolling some of the most ungovernable areas on the city's West Side and South Side, several people were still shot in the city's most heavily guarded area. The homicide victims included James Taylor, 44, and Johan Jehan, 39. Both were killed in two unconnected Monday Night shootings, TheGuardian reported. Many of the victims were on a "strategic subject list" of those, presumably involved in pulling the trigger, The Chicago police department said. The department's investigation scrutinize criminal records, details from previous shootings, gang connection, as well as past contacts with officers in order to pin down if someone should be on the list because they are a probably a victim or an assaulter. The department divulged that the list encompass about 1,500 people, whom they are trying to contact before a shooting actually happens. According to Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, the department cannot claim its good until a Memorial Day weekend goes by without reporting a single shot being fired. English students at Yale University have launched a petition calling on English professors, lecturers and instructors to get rid of a core course requirement that seeks enrollees to study writers like Milton and Shakespeare. The undergraduates of the Ivy League university have argued that a prestigious institution like Yale University should "decolonize" and not limit readings to "white male authors," The Guardian reported. This, after Adriane Miele, a writer for the college publication Yale Daily News, wrote a scathing column criticizing the promotion of literary work that "actively oppresses and marginalize non-white, non-male, trans and queer people." The classes for English majors include writers like T.S. Eliot, Alexander Pope, Edmund Spenser and Geoffrey Chaucer. While, the aforementioned names have had a profound effect on the current state of literature in the world, students also think that Yale should not foster "a culture that is hostile to students of color." The campaign has elicited a variety of reactions from teachers and alumni of the department. Professor Jill Richards has conceded that two semesters of white male poets is "unacceptable" and that changes should be made in the curriculum soon to accommodate the development. However, Katy Walman, a English literature graduate of the Connecticut University, wrote a think piece for Slate criticizing the protest for suggesting that students no longer need to learn from dead white poets. Though she acknowledged that the lack of opportunity for people of diverse race, class, gender and sexuality in the past was a "tremendous injustice," she also said that the current course makeup only reflects the "tainted history" of literature, a big part of which was dominated by "straight white cis-men." Another prominent issue critics of the campaign raise is the fact that there are not enough early modern writers who are gay, transgender or in the minority, Reason reported. Actor James Franco was the keynote speaker invited for the Commencement Ceremony at Cornell University on Sunday and despite promising to keep his speech short, he was able to inspire many of the graduates after talking about the many hardships he had to face in show business. The 38-year old actor told the graduating crowd that while he would have loved to study in Cornell University since he was accepted there after high school, he instead went to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to study English, the Ithaca Journal reported. He then dropped out against his parent's wishes to pursue a career in acting and had to take odd jobs to make ends meet. Once, he had to practice accents for an audition while working at McDonalds just so he would do well at the test. "At the time I knew I wanted to be an actor at any cost," said Franco. He also told the graduates of his experience working with esteemed actors like Kirsten Dunst and Willem Dafoe, who all inspired him to constantly study acting until he met a mental dead end. He decided to go back to school to finish his English degree from UCLA which he did impressively in two years. This is not the first time that Franco gave a commencement speech, the Cornell Sun reported. He previously addressed the Graduating Class of 2012 of University of Texas at Arlington, receiving rapturous applause from the crowd for his humorous speech despite initial hesitation. Franco was also invited by UCLA to give the commencement speech in 2009 however he had to back out because of backlash from students were skeptical of his qualifications especially since he only graduated from the school the preceding year. You may watch the video of James Franco's commencement speech in full below. Union Pacific Plans to Invest $33.7 Million in its Nevada Rail Infrastructure Union Pacific plans to invest $33.7 million in 2016 to improve Nevada's transportation infrastructure. The company's multi-million dollar private investment will enhance employee, community and customer safety and increase rail operating efficiency. Freight railroads like Union Pacific operate on track built and maintained without taxpayer funds. Union Pacific's private investments sustain jobs and ensure the company meets growing demand for products used in the American economy. Union Pacific's planned investment covers a range of initiatives: $31.2 million to maintain railroad track and $2.4 million to maintain bridges in the state. Key projects planned this year include: $14.5 million investment in the rail line between Fallon and Lovelock to replace 30 miles of rail. $7.1 million investment in the rail line along the Winnemucca Subdivision to replace 56,527 railroad ties. $3.1 million investment in the rail line between Caliente and Moapa to replace more than 16 miles of new pad. This year's planned $33.7 million capital expenditure in Nevada is part of an ongoing investment strategy. From 2011 to 2015 Union Pacific invested more than $180 million strengthening Nevada's transportation infrastructure. "We constantly evaluate our customers' needs to make targeted investments that enhance our efficiency and deliver the goods American businesses and families use daily," said Wes Lujan, Union Pacific vice president - Public Affairs, Western Region. "Continuing to aggressively invest in our infrastructure is an important element in Union Pacific's unwavering safety commitment." Union Pacific plans to spend $3.75 billion across its network this year, following investments totaling approximately $33 billion from 2006-2015. These investments contributed to a 25 percent decrease in derailments over the last 10 years. ABOUT UNION PACIFIC Union Pacific Railroad is the principal operating company of Union Pacific Corporation (NYSE: UNP). One of America's most recognized companies, Union Pacific Railroad connects 23 states in the western two-thirds of the country by rail, providing a critical link in the global supply chain. From 2006-2015, Union Pacific invested approximately $33 billion in its network and operations to support America's transportation infrastructure. The railroad's diversified business mix includes Agricultural Products, Automotive, Chemicals, Coal, Industrial Products and Intermodal. Union Pacific serves many of the fastest-growing U.S. population centers, operates from all major West Coast and Gulf Coast ports to eastern gateways, connects with Canada's rail systems and is the only railroad serving all six major Mexico gateways. Union Pacific provides value to its roughly 10,000 customers by delivering products in a safe, reliable, fuel-efficient and environmentally responsible manner. The statements and information contained in the news releases provided by Union Pacific speak only as of the date issued. Such information by its nature may become outdated, and investors should not assume that the statements and information contained in Union Pacific's news releases remain current after the date issued. Union Pacific makes no commitment, and disclaims any duty, to update any of this information. Senior military official to meet defense chiefs at key Singapore dialogue 2016-06-03 11:43 Ministry of National Defense spokesman Yang Yujun briefs Chinese media in Singapore on Friday morning. [Photo by ZHANG YUNBI/CHINA DAILY] Senior Chinese military official Sun Jianguo will meet with defense and military leaders from Russia, Singapore, Australia, Vietnam and Thailand during the 15th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Ministry of National Defense spokesman Yang Yujun told Chinese media in Singapore on Friday morning. The dialogue, organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, will be held from Friday through Sunday in Singapore. Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, will lead the Chinese delegation attending the dialogue from Friday to Sunday. The spokesman said Sun will deliver a keynote speech during a plenary session on Sunday and answer questions from the attending delegates. During his speech, Sun will elaborate on China's policies and practices regarding strengthening Asia-Pacific security cooperation and promoting regional security governance, Yang said. Throughout his attendance at the dialogue, Sun will elaborate on China's positions on international and regional security issues and introduce the contributions made by the Chinese military to champion peace, security and stability in the world and in the Asia-Pacific region, the spokesman added. Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha is scheduled to give the keynote speech on Friday evening at the influential gathering of senior defense officials from within and outside the Asia-Pacific region. Aug. 19, 2022 Fitness. When the average citizen thinks of being fit, it is easy for cardio and strength training to come to mind. That is not the case for those serving in the Air Force and Space Force. Comprehensive Airman Fitness teaches that to have overarching fitness and resilience, one must work on his or 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. Boston Brass to Perform Free Concerts at UW Boston Brass, world-renowned musicians and recording artists, will perform free concerts June 5, 10 and 11 at the University of Wyoming. (bostonbrass.com) Boston Brass, world-renowned musicians and recording artists, will perform three free concerts during a weeklong summer intensive June 5-11 at the University of Wyoming. The concerts are scheduled Sunday, June 5, at 7 p.m.; Friday, June 10, at 7 p.m.; and Saturday, June 11, at 11 a.m. All three will take place in the Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts concert hall. For the first time, the UW faculty brass quintet, Snowy Range Brass, will perform alongside Boston Brass during the opening night concert. Friday nights concert will feature a UW student quintet. Saturdays gala concert will include performances by the chamber groups and the large ensemble. The Boston Brass Summer Intensive is a weeklong session designed around performance and career development for brass players seeking advanced instruction of chamber music, audition preparation and guidance for those aspiring to careers in music performance. Boston Brass members are Chris Castellanos, horn; Jeff Conner, trumpet; Domingo Pagliuca, trombone; Sam Pilafian, tuba; and Jose Sibaja, trumpet. This year, special guest Tim Morrison, former principal trumpet of the Boston Pops and featured trumpeter of film composer John Williams, joins the group. They will offer their expertise in areas such as career development, audition preparation, maximizing performance, recording and networking. Students will experience performance opportunities in group and master class settings. This is a high-caliber institute with performances by active working professional musicians and gifted college students who are on paths to performance careers, says Scott Meredith, UW associate professor of trumpet and Boston Brass Summer Intensive coordinator. The week is an exciting time for the UW Department of Music, Laramie as a community and our future musicians. Through more than 100 performances each year, the members of Boston Brass play to audiences at concerts, educational venues and jazz festivals. In addition to solo performances, Boston Brass regularly performs with orchestras, bands, organ, jazz bands and a variety of other ensembles. The group has performed in 49 states and 30 countries, and has conducted master classes around the world. For 30 years, Boston Brass has entertained audiences with classical arrangements, burning jazz standards and the best of the original brass quintet repertoire. The group has been featured on CBSs The Early Show, National Public Radio's Performance Today and the Great American Brass Band Festival. The group has recorded several diverse albums. Central Wyoming Housing, Economy Information Meeting in Casper Effects of the energy industrys downturn on central Wyomings housing and economy will be described during a free public session in Casper Tuesday, June 7. The presentation is 6-7 p.m. at the Natrona County extension office at the Agricultural Resource and Learning Center, 2011 Fairgrounds Road, according to Hannah Swanbom, community development educator with University of Wyoming Extension. The oil and coal/energy industry decline has really affected residents in the area and, as a result, our housing market is changing from the previous years, she says. The Wyoming Multiple Listing Service and Casper Board of Realtors have joined with UW Extension to provide the session. The number of houses on the market and in foreclosure has shifted. Swanbom says a variety of speakers will attend the session to help provide information. We hope to reach out and educate the general public about the current market conditions, Swanbom says. We will have a variety of speakers at the session and look forward to helping answer questions. Contact Swanbom at (307) 235-9400 or hswanbom@natronacounty-wy.gov for more information. University of Wyoming Calendar for June 6-12 Boston Brass will perform free concerts June 10 and 11 in the UW Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts concert hall. (bostonbrass.com) These are among the activities scheduled June 6-12 at the University of Wyoming: Monday, June 6-Friday, June 10, 1-4:45 p.m. daily -- The UW Art Museum will host a Summer Art Camp session for students ages 6-10. The cost is $60 per student. Participation is limited to 30 students. For more information, call (307) 766-6622, or go online at www.uwyo.edu/artmuseum. Wednesday, June 8, 11:45 a.m.-1 p.m. -- Edison, an indie folk rock band, will perform for the UW Summer Programs concert series on Simpson Plaza. Free. Thursday, June 9, 5:30 p.m. -- Indoor vertical dance and Lights Along the Shore musical performance will take place in the UW Berry Biodiversity Conservation Center. Free. Friday, June 10, 7 p.m. -- Boston Brass, world-renowned musicians and recording artists, will perform in the Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts concert hall. Free. Friday, June 10, 8 p.m. -- Planetarium show, Death of the Universe. A STAR Observatory tour follows at 9 p.m. Tickets cost $3 for students and $4 for non-students, Physical Sciences Building basement. Advance tickets are available in Room 204 of the Physical Sciences Building. Saturday, June 11, 11 a.m. -- Boston Brass and other brass musicians will perform a gala concert in the Performing Arts Center concert hall. Free. Dinosaur skeletons, ancient mammal fossils and other exhibits are on display in the UW Geological Museum, open Mondays through Saturdays from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Free. The UW Department of Botanys Williams Conservatory is open to the public Mondays through Fridays from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Free. Li issues appeal to overseas Chinese 2016-06-03 08:52 Investment, help with efforts for cross-Straits unification are urged Distant relatives Premier Li Keqiang meets with representatives participating in the eighth Conference for Friendship of Overseas Chinese Associations in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Thursday. WU ZHIYI / CHINA DAILY Premier Li Keqiang has called on overseas Chinese to invest steadily in China and contribute to cross-Straits unification. "Overseas Chinese are welcome to invest and start their businesses in the motherland, as China is shifting from reliance on natural resources to human resources and promoting innovative industries," he said. He made the remarks on Thursday when meeting more than 700 participants from 136 countries and regions. They were attending the eighth Conference for Friendship of Overseas Chinese Associations, hosted by the State Council's Overseas Chinese Affairs Office. The office has held seven conferences since 2001, extending its gratitude to more than 60 million overseas Chinese worldwide. Li said the Chinese mainland and Taiwan belong to one country, and he hoped overseas Chinese would continuously support and make their own contributions to national unification. Addressing the participants at the Great Hall of the People, Li said, "For a long time, overseas Chinese have made great achievements in their own fields and crucial contributions to China's economic and social development, and I hope you will continue to do so." However, facing international and domestic challenges, China has to cultivate new economies by deepening reforms and promoting innovation to achieve medium- to high-speed growth. "China is still one of the most attractive destinations for investments, and overseas Chinese are welcome to invest in these new areas," he said. One of the participants was He Ruyi, director of the China-US Cultural Exchanges Center and an organizer of the welcoming ceremony in Washington for President Xi Jinping when he paid a state visit to the United States in September. Born in Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning province, He left for Maryland in 1988 and now works for the US Food and Drug Administration's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. "Today, we have so many compatriots coming together and received by the premier. It was encouraging to see him, showing the importance the Chinese government attaches to us," He said. UW, INL Researchers Study Pulling Rare Earth Elements from Industrial Waters UW student Savannah Bachman works in the laboratory of civil engineering Associate Professor Jonathan Brant, exploring the potential retrieval of rare earth elements from water produced in oil and gas production. (UW Photo) University of Wyoming researchers have joined colleagues from the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to study the potential for retrieving rare earth elements from water produced in oil and gas production and geothermal projects. The U.S. Department of Energy recently announced that the UW/INL/USGS research project is one of four selected to receive up to $4 million to assess the occurrence of rare earth minerals and other critical materials that may be dissolved in high-temperature fluids associated with energy extraction. By validating methods for recovering and purifying critical materials, the economic and production benefits of geothermal energy projects can be improved, making them more cost-competitive at a wider range of locations, a DOE media release says. These valuable minerals could be found in elevated temperature fluids produced by oil, gas or mining operations. The UW/INL/USGS project aims to develop a database of rare earth elements and trace metals from oil- and gas-produced waters from some of the nations most prolific hydrocarbon basins; identify similar oil and gas reservoirs; and create a mathematical screening tool to test national geochemical databases. Rare earth elements are a series of chemical elements found in Earths crust and dissolved in water. Due to their unique chemical properties, they have become essential components of many technologies spanning a range of applications including electronics, computer and communication systems, transportation, health care and national defense. The demand and cost of rare earth elements have grown significantly over recent years, stimulating an emphasis on economically feasible approaches for their recovery. This is a big award that really supports the importance of these regional associations -- in particular, UWs with INL, says Don Roth, UW professor emeritus and associate director of the Center for Advanced Energy Studies (CAES). It wouldnt have been possible otherwise. CAES is an energy research consortium whose members are UW, INL, the University of Idaho, Idaho State University and Boise State University. Awards such as this have two-fold importance, says Bill Gern, UWs vice president for research and economic development. First, it continues to develop and deepen our relationship with the Center for Advanced Energy Studies, its member institutions in Idaho and with the Idaho National Laboratory. Second, if the research demonstrates recovery of strategic critical elements from produced water is feasible economically, it will help commoditize this by-product of oil and gas development, supporting how produced water is handled in the future. In addition to the federal grant, the Wyoming Legislature has appropriated funding for research into rare earth elements. Heading the research from UW are principal investigator Scott Quillinan and Fred McLaughlin of the Carbon Management Institute in the School of Energy Resources (SER); and Jonathan Brant, associate professor in the Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering. INLs researchers are Travis McLing and Hari Neupane. Quillinan notes that there is very little research regarding the character of rare earth elements in oil and gas produced waters. In the past, these waters were not evaluated for rare earths due to analytical complications related to high salinity. He explains that the new research project stems from the Carbon Management Institutes investigation of deep saline aquifers evaluated for carbon dioxide storage in southwest Wyoming. Using analytical methods developed by INL team members, the UW researchers demonstrated for the first time that its possible to accurately measure rare earth concentrations in highly saline fluids. Leveraging these results, we were able to secure additional support from the Wyoming Legislature, via SER, and build additional relationships through the CAES initiative to conduct an assessment of Wyoming reservoirs, Quillinan says. We now plan to expand the study in Wyoming to more reservoirs and outside of Wyoming by analyzing prolific oil- and gas-bearing formations from the USGS produced-water sample catalog. At the conclusion of this study, we will have a better understanding of the rare earth element character and processes of deep saline reservoirs across the U.S., and the technological research gaps that need to be addressed in order to harvest these products. In a separate study, UW researchers last year received a $600,000 grant from DOE to develop a way to recover rare earth elements from the ash of Wyomings Powder River Basin coal. UW Art Museum Collaborates with Wyoming Art Party to Host Parade Workshops Minha Kim, a UW Art Museum volunteer, models a bee mask and costume she created to honor Wyoming's unsung heroes: pollinating bees. (UW Art Museum Photo) The University of Wyoming Art Museum will host the Wyoming Art Party's Parade Project for two free workshops Saturday, June 4, and Saturday, July 2, from 10 a.m.-noon as part of the museum's Family Saturday Art Class and Open Studio. Families are invited to these free public workshops that will feature mask making and winged costume creation. The workshops will be inspired by pollinating insects, referencing the public programs and installation, Love Motel for Insects: Laramie Train Variation, by artist and biologist Brandon Ballengee at Laramies Depot Park this summer. The workshops will tie into this year's Laramie Jubilee Days Parades theme of Unsung Heroes. Participants can continue their work with local artists June Glasson, Meg Thompson and Adrienne Vetter of the Wyoming Art Party during additional workshops at the Laramie Plains Civic Center July 1, July 6 and July 8 from 5-7 p.m. Organizers encourage participants to wear costumes made during the workshops in the parade Saturday, July 9. With the whimsical costumes created during the workshops, the UW Art Museum and Wyoming Art Party hope to generate a highly visible creative presence during the 2016 Laramie Jubilee Days Parade, says Erica Ramsey, the UW Art Museums Artmobile educator. Wagons, bikes and rollerskates are encouraged. For more information, call the Art Museum at (307) 766-6622, visit the website at www.uwyo.edu/artmuseum, or follow the museum on Facebook and Instagram. Through its Museum as Classroom approach, the UW Art Museum places art at the center of learning for all ages. Located in the Centennial Complex at 2111 Willett Drive in Laramie, the museum is open Mondays through Saturdays from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday hours are extended to 7 p.m. February through April and September through November. Admission is free. UW College of Engineering Creates Scholarship for Displaced Coal Workers, Families A new scholarship fund has been created by the University of Wyoming College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS) to assist displaced coal industry employees around Wyoming. In recent months, the coal industry in the state has sustained significant layoffs and staff reductions. That has led to economic uncertainty for many Wyoming families. An option for displaced workers is to pursue continuing education at UW or one of Wyomings seven community colleges. In the early stages, the CEAS will provide 10 scholarships at $1,500 each for one academic year, but will actively raise money for additional awards. The scholarship is a one-time award, but it can be applied for and awarded again in subsequent years. The scholarships will be implemented as soon as possible. The scholarship will be available to former coal industry employees to pursue an engineering degree at UW, or an engineering-related degree at one of Wyomings community colleges. It also will be available to children of the displaced workers, but that award is restricted to those who plan to attend UW and seek an engineering degree only. The scholarship helps serve UWs Tier-1 Engineering Initiative, which was instituted in 2014. Part of the Tier-1 mission is to help serve our constituents in the state and provide mechanisms for economic diversification, CEAS Dean Michael Pishko says. Retraining displaced workers is a great way to do that -- give them other skills to help businesses in Wyoming. This is a way to give back to the workers who have given so much to the state. For more information or to apply, contact CEAS Student Advising Coordinator Laurie Bonini at (307) 766-4254 or lbonini@uwyo.edu. People interested in contributing to the fund should contact Craig Russow at the UW Foundation at (307) 766-1803 or crussow@uwyo.edu. Wyoming Business Tips for June 12-18 A weekly look at Wyoming business questions from the Wyoming Small Business Development Center (WSBDC), part of WyomingEntrepreneur.Biz, a collection of business assistance programs at the University of Wyoming. By Nicholas Giraldo, WSBDC market researcher How do I get my business noticed on search engines? Phil, Buffalo Wyoming tourism season will be in full swing soon, bringing in visitors by the millions. According to the Wyoming Office of Tourism, Wyoming had 10.5 million visitors in 2015, spending nearly $3.4 billion. If those numbers grow, thats a lot more visitors to the Cowboy State -- all looking for places to shop, eat and stay. In order to capture a piece of this consumer spending, every small business in Wyoming needs an online presence. What that means is having a website that is mobile friendly, has location information within website content, is registered with online business directories and has customer reviews. Here are some tips to remember: -- Mobile-friendly website: Its reasonable to assume travelers are bringing their smartphones with them and using those mobile devices as their local guide. Search engines, such as Google, have taken notice and have added mobile-friendly as a positive ranking factor to their mobile search algorithms. What that means is if your website is not mobile friendly (meaning it fits nicely on a smaller screen and provides a good user experience), it may not show up on a travelers search results on a phone or tablet. Bottom line: If you want your website to be found more easily via a mobile phone, make sure its mobile friendly. -- Local information keywords in website content: Keywords containing your business name and location in your website content are important to getting found by visitors. If you own a coffee shop, for instance, incorporating your business name and location into your content will help increase the chances of a visitor finding you via local search. Cup of Joe Coffee Company, located in historic downtown Laramie would be an example of incorporating the business name and location in your content. Incorporating the business name and location into your websites metadata also is helpful to being found online. For instance, having Cup of Joe Coffee Company, located in historic downtown Laramie in your home pages title and description increases its chances of being found via a local search for coffee in Laramie. -- Online business directories: Creating a consistent business listing and posting to online business directories is another way to ensure your business is found in local searches. Examples of online business directories are yellowpages.com, dexknows.com or localize.com. One free and easy way to do this is by registering your business with services such as Google My Business and Bing Places for Business. The drawback is both Google and Bing upselling their additional services, with Bing selling paid listing services and Google adding more of its free services to your account. -- Customer reviews: Reviews act as a signal to both visitors and search engines. For visitors, reviews can heavily influence their purchasing decisions. To search engines, reviews provide their users with useful customer-sentiment data, or peoples opinions about your business. Managing reviews becomes crucial to getting found online and also offers a great way to interact with customers and build a loyal customer base. To encourage more reviews, be direct and ask your customers to leave a review via Google+ Local, Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook or any other directory of your choosing. With more and more people using their mobile phones as their local guide to a community, having an online presence that is mobile friendly, incorporates relevant keywords in its content and metadata, is registered via online directories and has positive reviews will put your small business front and center of potential customers eager to experience the local scenes throughout the Cowboy State. A blog version of this article and an opportunity to post comments are available at www.wyen.biz/blog1/. The WSBDC is a partnership of the U.S. Small Business Administration, the Wyoming Business Council and the University of Wyoming. To ask a question, call 1-800-348-5194, email wsbdc@uwyo.edu, or write 1000 E. University Ave., Dept. 3922, Laramie, WY, 82071-3922. Wyoming Center on Aging and Wyoming Alzheimers Association to Provide Training for Community Educators The Wyoming Center on Aging (WyCOA), housed in the University of Wyoming College of Health Sciences, and the Wyoming Chapter of the Alzheimers Association are partnering to offer a class to train volunteers to take Alzheimers disease information back to their communities. Training the Trainer: Alzheimers Instruction for Volunteer Community Educators is Tuesday, June 14, at the Agricultural Resource and Learning Center, located at 2011 Fairgrounds Road in Casper. The free class will take place from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Continental breakfast and lunch will be provided. Scholarships may be available to help defray travel costs. Space is limited, so those interested are encouraged to register soon at www.uwyo.edu/wycoa. Community educators from more rural areas are especially encouraged to attend. No prior experience is required to attend, although participants are asked to take what they learn back to their communities and present programs provided by the Alzheimers Association. After attending the training, attendees will be able to present classes such as The Basics of Alzheimers and Know the 10 Signs in their own communities. The Alzheimers Association programs include PowerPoint presentations, class handouts and teaching guides. Timing of the class coincides with National Alzheimers and Brain Awareness Month. Everyone who has a brain is at risk to develop Alzheimers, a progressive brain disease without any cure. More than 5 million Americans are living with Alzheimers disease. It is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States. For more information about the class, call Jenny Wolf, WyCOA project coordinator, at (307) 766-2829 or Janet Lewis, executive director of the Alzheimers Associations Wyoming chapter, at (307) 316-2892. About the Wyoming Chapter of the Alzheimers Association The Wyoming Chapter of the Alzheimers Association provides educational programs, support groups, information and referral services, one-to-one consulting, and federal and state advocacy efforts in Wyoming. In addition, the Alzheimers Association is the leading nonprofit funder of dementia research. About WyCOA WyCOA is a resource for the state of Wyoming, including older adults, professional and family caregivers, students and aging researchers. WyCOA seeks to be the premier source for reliable, credible information about aging, including healthy aging and health care conditions common in older adults. WyCOAs mission is to optimize the health and well-being of Wyoming's older residents and their caregivers through interagency partnerships, basic and applied research, community education, and clinical training and services. Contributed Photo/Barbara Mazeika Matt DeNoto, Alisa De Los Santos, Georgan George and Paul Carpenter star in Panic Production's "Figaro," opening Saturday. SHARE It's a wrap! Panic! Productions will close out its season with a lively production of "Figaro," which opens Saturday and will run through June 19 at the Hillcrest Center for the Arts in Thousand Oaks. J. Bailey Burcham is directing the story of a scheming servant, a philandering aristocrat and the smart women in their lives. Charles Morey's acclaimed adaptation of this popular comic tale of love and deceit among the rich and their servants was first written in 18th-century France. Panic!'s production will bring the story to the '60s, celebrating the sexual revolution and showcasing the fashion to match. "The creative team put its collective head together and decided that the late 1950s/early 1960s was the perfect time to update the action of the play while still retaining its language and satirical message," said producer Robert Weibezahl. "The women's movement was in its infancy, and relationships between men and women at least outwardly were still governed by a more sexist set of rules. But it doesn't take long to see that the men are all buffoons and the women hold all the cards." "Figaro" stars Farley Cadena, Paul Carpenter, Alisa De Los Santos, Matt DeNoto, Brian Felker, Georgan George, Michelle Miller, Keith Moreton and Robert Weibezahl. The set and lighting design are by Jeff Calnitz, with costume design by Barbara Mazeika. Shows are Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 general admission, $17.50 for students and seniors. Visit www.hillcrestarts.com or call 381-1246 for tickets or more information. Contributed Photo/eighthelementphotography.com Comedian Josh Blue will perform Friday and Saturday at the Ventura Harbor Comedy Club. SHARE THEATER VENTURA COUNTY "The Mousetrap": Elite Theatre Company presents the long-running Agatha Christie murder mystery set in a country hotel. John Eslick directs and German actor Alexander Schottky stars in the production. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through July 3, 2731 S. Victoria Ave., Oxnard. $18 general admission, $15 seniors, students and military. 483-5118; elitetheatre.org. "The Addams Family": High Street Arts Center presents this musical comedy based on the macabre television family from the 1960s. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through July 3, 45 E. High St., Moorpark. $20 general admission, $18 seniors, students, teachers and military, $16 children 12 and under. 529-8700; highstreetartscenter.com. "Figaro": Panic! Productions will close its season with Charles Morey's recent adaptation of the classic Beaumarchais farce exploring themes of love, deceit, mistaken identity and social class. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, June 4-19, Hillcrest Center for the Arts, 403 W. Hillcrest Drive, Thousand Oaks. $20 general admission, $17.50 seniors and students. 381-1246; hillcrestarts.com. "Snow White": Gypsies in a Trunk, an all-volunteer troupe of actors, will perform this free fairy tale show. 2 p.m. June 5, Harbor View Park between Cabezone Circle and Barracuda Way, Oxnard. For more information, visit channelislandsharbor.org or fairytalesinthepark.com. "The Wiz": Actors' Repertory Theatre of Simi presents the musical classic by Charlie Smalls and William F. Brown. Directed by Keenon Hooks, the production is an urbanized retelling of L. Frank Baum's novel "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" and features a live orchestra. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, June 4 through July 10, Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center, 3050 Los Angeles Ave., Simi Valley. 583-7900; simi-arts.org. "Playzapalooza! 2016": Santa Paula Theater Center's seventh annual one-act showcase will feature nine plays. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays, through June 12, 125 South 7th St., Santa Paula. $15 general admission, $13 seniors, students and military. 525-4645; santapaulatheatercenter.org. "Clarence Darrow": Rubicon Theatre co-founder James O'Neil will take the stage in David Rintels' one-man play about controversial lawyer Clarence Darrow, who became known for his work in such high-profile cases as the Scopes "Monkey" Trial and the Leopold and Loeb trial. Through June 12, 1006 E. Main St., Ventura. $25-$54. 667-2900; rubicontheatre.org. "The Pillowman": The Flying H Group Theatre Company presents Martin McDonagh's tale of a fiction writer living in a totalitarian state who is interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories. Not suitable for children. 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays, through June 5, 6368 Bristol Road, Ventura. $10 opening weekend, $15 all other shows. 901-0005; flyinghgroup.com. "Skylight": Ojai Arts Center Theater presents the award-winning Broadway drama written by David O'Hare and starring Ojai's Buddy Wilds and Anna Kotula. The play chronicles the aftermath of an affair between a man and his family's young housekeeper as an aromatic spaghetti dinner is prepared on stage. 7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through June 5, 113 S. Montgomery St., Ojai. Free. 640-8797; ojaiact.org. Down South "In Case of Emergency": Chalk Repertory Theatre presents Ruth McKee's comedy about a woman trying to sort through the emergency supplies that fill her garage and the issues that fill her personal life. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays, through July 3, various private homes in Montrose, Atwater Village and Pasadena. $20-$30. 323-379-9583; chalkrep.com. "42nd Street": Song, dance and the American dream play out on a Broadway stage in this Tony Award-winning musical. Through June 19, Hollywood Pantages, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. 800-982-2787; hollywoodpantages.com. "The Musical Adventures of Flat Stanley": The Westside Children's Theatre present their debut performance, a 60-minute production based on the character Flat Stanley, which began as a series of children's books written by Jeff Brown. 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. June 4, 3 p.m. June 5, Electric Lodge, 1416 Electric Ave., Venice. westsidechildrenstheatre.com. CLASSES VENTURA COUNTY African drumming class: Malik Sow, an African master drummer from Senegal, and Solo Soro, from Ivory Coast, lead a weekly class in West African drumming from 7:30-9 p.m. Mondays at Lightning Ridge Screen Printing, 4435 McGrath St., Ventura. Cost is $20 per class, and a drum can be rented for $5. For information or to arrange a drum rental, call 650-7455. COMEDY VENTURA COUNTY Josh Blue: The winner of Season 4 of NBC's Last Comic Standing will perform his stand-up act, which includes off-the-cuff improvisation. 8 p.m. June 3, 7 and 9 p.m. June 4, Ventura Harbor Comedy Club, 1559 Spinnaker Drive, Ventura. $20. 644-1500; venturaharborcomedyclub.com. Up North Jerry Seinfeld: The comedian, actor and writer makes a rare stop along the Central Coast to perform his stand-up routine. 7 and 9:30 p.m. July 21, Chumash Casino Resort in Santa Ynez. For tickets or more information, visit www.chumashcasino.com. Down South Comics Support Their Own: An all-star benefit featuring Ray Romano, Brian Regan, Bill Burr, Dana Carvey, Louie Anderson, Bob Saget, Jon Lovitz and hosted by Arsenio Hall. June 20, Saban Theatre, Beverly Hills. For tickets visit www.sabantheatre.com. DANCE Footworks Youth Ballet: The ensemble presents a trio of one-act ballets featuring Gounod's "Faust," Prokofiev's "Classical Symphony" and "Hansel and Gretel in Fairytale Land." 2 p.m. June 4-5, Oxnard Performing Arts Center, 800 Hobson Way, Oxnard. $14-$20. 486-2424; footworksyouthballet.org. SHARE Fayrene Parrish, a painter and sculptor, will have a showcase exhibit at the Ojai Art Center from Saturday through June 29. Her exhibit is in conjunction with the center's photography branch's 2016 exhibit, "Shades of Gray," a display of black-and-white and gray-toned photographs. A reception will be held Saturday from 1-3 p.m. Parrish's work is in private, corporate and government collections throughout the world. She also is an illustrator and author of how-to books in art instruction for all ages, including for children. Her oil painting, "Old Friend on the Path," is shown here. For more examples of her work, visit www.fayreneparrish.com. Parrish has presented demonstrations and workshops throughout the Western states, Hawaii, France and Italy. Her primary focus has been inspiring community interaction through art, beginning in the 1970s with the Malibu Art Colony, then the first art gallery in Channel Islands Harbor called The Sea Gallery, and several in the Northwest. After a 20-year stay in the Northwest, Parrish and her husband Ted have returned to California and are living in Ojai. Since her return, Parrish has founded The California Annual Sculptors Symposium held at Ocean Pines in Cambria, and recently organized an interactive art organization called "Art From The Heart" for senior retirement communities. "Shades of Gray" is the 13th annual Ojai Art Center Photography Branch juried exhibit. All photographs in the exhibit are in black, white and shades of gray. Because the theme was open, many different genres and techniques will be represented. Photographers from Ventura County and beyond are participating, as well as students in a special division for grades 7-12. For more information, visit www.ojaiacphoto.org. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays at 113 S. Montgomery St., Ojai. For more information, call 646-0117 or visit www.ojaiartcenter.org. SHARE CAMARILLO Classes center on thoughtful prayer "The Power of Your Word," an accredited Center for Spiritual Living class for ministry, will take place Mondays, starting June 13 through Aug. 1 from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Center for Spiritual Living, 221 Daily Drive, No. 1. Each week will present a thoughtful approach to the deeper understandings of prayer. The courses provide experiential exercises to give these ideas a reality for the student. Cost is $150, plus $45 for accredited certificate registration or $10 per class to audit. For more information, call the Rev. Pam Geagan at 482-4300 or the Rev. Betty Ann Brennan about required texts at 278-9443. MOORPARK Events hosted at Presbyterian church Moorpark Presbyterian Church announces its upcoming activities at 13950 Peach Hill Road. All are invited. TGIF ASL (American Sign Language) Fun Night will be Friday from 7-8 p.m. The free event is for kids and adults, both hearing and deaf. Learn, practice or share American Sign Language through an ASL story time, learn summer-related sign concepts and make s'mores. Refreshments will be served. For more information, call Joan Johnson at 529-8422 or visit http://www.MPCLife.org. GenPraise, a night of multigenerational praise and worship, will be June 12 at 6:30 p.m. The program features congregational singing of contemporary praise music, hymns, gospel and more led by a praise team, choir, soloists and ensembles featuring all ages. An ASL interpreter will be provided. An ice cream social will follow the free event. For more information, call Worship Director Dan McGowan at 529-8422. Vacation Bible School with a theme of "Cave Quest: Following Jesus, The Light of the World" will be July 11-15 from 9 a.m. to noon. Kids will experience Bible adventures, games, songs and treats. An ASL interpreter will be provided. The program is for children entering kindergarten through fifth grades. Cost is $30 per child. Scholarships are available. The deadline to register is July 1. Each child will get a T-shirt and CD. For more information, call Children's Ministries Director Paige McIlraith at 529-8422. For information about the events, visit at http://www.MPCLife.org. SIMI VALLEY Catholic church hosts free concert The St. Rose of Lima Master Chorale has been rehearsing for its debut at Carnegie Hall in June. Music Director Clare Delto will conduct the choir in a concert at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church on Friday at 7:30 p.m. as the choir performs the "Requiem" by Mark Hayes, in addition to other selections. The free concert is at the church, 1305 Royal Ave. For more information, call Lori Alexander at 527-4720. SOMIS Community church hosts free car show A free antique car show and ice cream social will be held at Somis Community Church on June 11 from 2-4 p.m. at 3300 West St. Trophies will be awarded for People's Choice, Ladies' Choice, Kids' Choice, and Best Motorcycle. Register your vehicle before Wednesday at Somis.Church@gmail.com. For more information, call 386-3175. THOUSAND OAKS Temples join for Shavuot services Temple Etz Chaim and Temple Adat Elohim invite the community to Tikkun Leil Shavuot, A Special Night of Torah Study Repairing the World One Letter of Torah at a Time, on June 11 at 7:30 p.m. in the Paskow Sanctuary, Temple Etz Chaim, 1080 E. Janss Road. The Erev Shavuot service and Torah study session, "The Jewish View of Capital Punishment: What Does Judaism Say about the Morality and Justness of Capital Punishment," will feature guest speakers who deal regularly with these issues in their professional lives. Judge Karen Nudell, Superior Court judge for the Criminal Division; Dan Kuperberg, a senior trial attorney for the Los Angeles County Public Defender's Office; and Rabbi Dalia Samansky, will discuss the sixth commandment to not murder and the morality of capital punishment. The evening will conclude at 9:30 p.m. with blintzes and other delicacies. Shavuot services will continue with first day of Shavuot Services on June 12 at 10 a.m. in the Winer Chapel and conclude with second day Shavuot services with Yizkor on June 13 at 10 a.m. in the Paskow sanctuary with services and Yizkor. For more information, visit http://www.templeetzchaim.org or contact the temple office at 497-6891 or rebecca@templeetzchaim.org. Singers welcomed at summer choir Those who enjoy worshipping through music and the fellowship of other music lovers are invited to sing with Emmanuel Church's summer choir during June and July. Rehearsals will begin at 9 a.m. Sundays, starting June 12 in the sanctuary at 588 Camino Manzanas. The choir will sing an anthem each Sunday, along with hymns and praise music. Anthems will be easy to learn, and the hymns and praise music for that morning's service will be reviewed and easy to pick up as well. The choir will be off in August. For those interested in continuing after the summer, weekly rehearsals for the fall program begin on Sept. 8. The choir will resume leading worship on Sept. 11. For more information, call Lance Merrill weekdays in the church office at 498-4502. VENTURA Kid's Bible study set at Encounter church Kids' Cove Jam Submerged is coming to ENCOUNTER | Bible Fellowship Church on June 20-24 from 9 a.m. to noon. This five-day summer camp takes kids, ages 4 through grade five, on an adventure through music, drama, stories, art and games. Children will discover Jesus' view of people. Cost is $25 per child. Each family will receive a music CD and a coupon to invite a friend for $10 off. A closing program for families will feature the children June 23 at 6:30 p.m. Register online at http://www.encounterlife.org or go to ENCOUNTER | Bible Fellowship Church, 6950 Ralston St., from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, 6-7:30 p.m. Saturdays, and 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Sundays. For more information, call 656-7766, ext. 248. KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/THE STAR Erica Marie Isaacs waves toward the crowd as she gets closer to the podium to receive her diploma as a member of Simi Valley High School's Class of 2016 on Thursday. SHARE KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/THE STAR Bryan Munguia and Jessica Marie McLaughlin share pictures on their smartphones as they wait the wings of Simi Valley High School to commence with fellow members of the Class of 2016 on Thursday. KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/THE STAR Simi Valley High School's Class of 2016 has many exuberant supporters in the audience on Thursday, some with confetti, others just vocal with joy. KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/THE STAR Kylie Rochelle Wimmer (from left), Julianna Renay Brown, Devon Nicole Luther and Alyssa Lynn Gutierrez show their spirit in a portrait before they graduate with fellow members of Simi Valley High School's Class of 2016 on Thursday. By John Scheibe of the Ventura County Star Elyssa Gutierrez and hundreds of her classmates made up the first Simi Valley High School graduating class to have enrolled in a program as freshmen in which each of them would have to map out a 10-year plan for their lives. "They had to set goals for themselves not just in high school but in the years beyond," Jennifer Christman, who teaches math, dance and leadership classes at the school, said of the 2016 graduates, who received their diplomas Thursday evening. The program now known as the College and Career Seminar includes everything from learning to develop a budget and money management basics to students writing a letter to themselves that they would read four years later as high school seniors. Gutierrez said last week that she'd read the letter she wrote to herself as a freshman. In it, she promised she would "work really hard to make sure I had a high GPA in high school." "I also promised that I would know what I wanted to focus on in school," she said. So how closely did she hew to these promises? "I feel I did really well," said Gutierrez, 18, although she quickly added that it "didn't really all come together until the beginning of my senior year." That's when Gutierrez decided she would enroll at Moorpark College come fall. She had wanted to go on to a four-year college when she was a high school freshman. But then she realized how much more expensive a four-year college would be. Combine this with all of the other challenges that college freshmen face, and Gutierrez decided it would be much better if she attends Moorpark College for her freshman and sophomore years. "My parents really liked the idea, as well," she said, noting that the college won't be as much of a financial burden on them. Best of all, she said the college ranks high academically. Gutierrez plans to focus on biochemistry and hopes to become a criminologist. Devon Luther, 17, who graduated alongside Gutierrez on Thursday, also saw herself enrolling in a four-year college. But now she's decided to also go to Moorpark College in the fall, hoping the time there will give her a better idea of what kind of career she wants. Leaving Simi Valley High for college is a somewhat bittersweet experience, she said. "The school has become my second home," Luther said. "I'll miss the camaraderie. I know college will probably be very different." Julianna Brown, 17, promised herself she would go on to Brigham Young University in Utah in the fall. "It's a goal that I set and plan to keep," she said. Brown, who plans to study graphic design at BYU, wants to return to Ventura County after she finishes college. "This is one of the best places to grow up in and live in," she said. Kylie Wimmer, 17, also plans to attend a four-year college, California Lutheran University, where she will focus on liberal studies. She plans on becoming a high school teacher. As for her time at Simi Valley High, Wimmer said she learned many things, including how to be a good leader. "I'm a lot more independent now than when I started high school," she said. "I know what's going on and am willing to help others." WENDY LEUNG/THE STAR Regal Cinemas will be Janss Marketplace's newest tenant when it opens on Sunday with a fundraiser preview event. SHARE By Wendy Leung of the Ventura County Star It took a couple of months longer than expected but those reclining seats and that new sound system have arrived at the Janss Marketplace movie theater. Regal Cinemas will have preview showings starting Sunday with a grand opening June 9. The new Thousand Oaks theater will donate proceeds from Sunday to Tuesday sales to local and regional charities. Movie tickets, popcorn and soda will be $3 each on those three days. Movies shown during the preview event include older films such as "Inside Out," "Spotlight" and "Ride Along 2." All proceeds will go to Variety: The Children's Charity of Southern California; Make-A-Wish Tri-Counties; and Play Conejo, a nonprofit that is raising money to build a playground for special needs children in Thousand Oaks. From June 9 to June 16, moviegoers will receive free popcorn and drink with admission. Regal replaces Regency Theatres, which closed at the start of the year. "Prior, Regency did a lot. They were great," said Sandy Sigal, CEO of NewMark Merrill Cos., which owns the mall. "We wanted to bring someone that was fresh. We wanted a state-of-the-art facility. We didn't want Janss to be a mark-down kind of shopping center." The theater was completely renovated with stadium seating and reclining seats that have individual electronic controls. There will also be alcohol service and the capability to show 3D movies. Going upscale is a trend that makes sense for movie fans like Simi Valley resident Nelson Chery. He said he would pay more for better features. "It's worth it," Chery said. "Going from $9 to $11 or $12 is not a big jump especially if it's better accommodations." Regal joins Cinepolis in Thousand Oaks and Studio Movie Grill in Simi Valley in a group of luxury theaters in the area. Chery believes that as more film buffs stream movies at home, it behooves theaters to offer something special. "It's like eating out," Chery said. "You want to eat something better than what you would be eating at home." For showtimes and other information, visit www.regmovies.com/Theatres/Grand-Openings. VINIT SATYAVRATA/SPECIAL TO THE STAR Debra Louth screams with joy as she opens the MacBook Air laptop that she received as part of an Apple ConnectED grant given to teachers and students of Piru School. SHARE VINIT SATYAVRATA/SPECIAL TO THE STAR Bill Raymond, a science teacher at Piru School, sets up a new iPad mini he received as part of the Apple ConnectED grant given to the school. VINIT SATYAVRATA/SPECIAL TO THE STAR Piru School Principal Diana Vides speaks to teachers and staff as they await MacBook Air laptop and iPad devices given to the school by an Apple ConnectED grant. VINIT SATYAVRATA/SPECIAL TO THE STAR Erick Magana, a graduate from Piru School gives a speech on "Technology for Students" during an event at the school where an Apple ConnectED grant provided MacBook Air laptops and iPads to teachers and students. VINIT SATYAVRATA/SPECIAL TO THE STAR Luanne Schaper, a third-grade teacher at Piru School, receives a iPad mini and a MacBook Air laptop from school Principal Diana Vides. By Tony Biasotti, Special to The Star Piru, a farm town east of Fillmore, has around 2,000 residents and only a handful of businesses. In many ways, the center of the community is Piru School, so it's fitting that an effort to transform not only education in Piru, but the community itself, is happening through that school. On Thursday, representatives of Apple were at the elementary school to hand teachers and staff members 35 iPads and 16 MacBook Air laptops. It's the first step in a grant from Apple to the school called ConnectED, and a precursor to the day in August when the school year starts and all 300 students are given iPads. ConnectED started in 2013, when President Barack Obama asked leading technology companies to help improve technology and broadband access in schools. Apple was one of those companies, and it has committed about $100 million to 114 schools in the nation, all of them chosen because they face challenges in funding, technology and student achievement. Piru Elementary is one of 11 schools in California to get the grant. The value of the hardware Apple is donating in Piru is about $500,000, and also includes Apple TVs and projectors in every classroom and a new wifi network for the campus. Apple is also providing 17 days of training for Piru teachers on how to use their new devices and integrate them into the school's curriculum. The students will take their iPads home with them, and AT&T has agreed to provide free cellular data access for at least the next three years. That means hundreds of families in Piru will get an Internet-connected iPad for home use, in a town where many people have no broadband access or computers at home. "This community is a great example of what people call the digital divide, and we're happy we can do something about that," said Martha Hernandez, the assistant superintendent for instructional services at the Fillmore Unified School District, which includes Piru Elementary. "This opens up the whole world to them," said Maggie Lofton, a first-grade teacher in Piru. "It gives them equity in learning with kids from more affluent areas." By putting an iPad in every student's hand, Piru Elementary will bypass a generation or two of educational technology. The school has never really had computers in the classroom; instead, the classes take turns in the computer lab. IPads in the classroom are becoming more common, and their record is mixed. Many schools, including some in Ventura County, have reported positive results, but there have been some high profile failures. The biggest of those was in Los Angeles, where the L.A. Unified School District abandoned a $1.3 billion program to give an iPad to every student, teacher and administrator. In L.A., there were problems with the educational software provided by education publishing company Pearson, and there were also irregularities reported in the bidding process. School officials in Piru and at Fillmore Unified say they're confident their experience will be better. Apple has learned from its experience in L.A., they said, and it's also committed to working directly with all of the schools that get ConnectED grants. Between now and August, trainers from Apple, most of them former teachers, will work with Piru's teachers to incorporate the new technology into their lesson plans. Apple representatives will be available when the teachers need to speak with them, and Apple is providing tech support and free repairs or replacements if the students lose or damage their iPads. "The reason we know we're not going to fail is we have Apple behind us," said Diana Vides, Piru School's principal. The teachers in Piru have yet to use their new iPads and laptops to draw up lesson plans, but many of them are already seeing the possibilities. The new Common Core curriculum standards emphasize "the four Cs": communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking. Internet-enabled devices are particularly helpful with the first two, which Vides called "21st-century skills." Piru's public library is located at the school, and Vides said the students will be able to use their iPads to download free e-books from the library. Someday, the iPads will probably replace textbooks, but that won't happen right away, she said. Tara Manly, a second-grade teacher, was thinking about how to use the devices as she tore the blue ribbon and white wrapping paper from her iPad and laptop. She said she'd like to see her students keep blogs with some of their written work, so their classmates, and students in other classes, could read and comment on it. "It opens the learning from my room to the entire campus and really to the whole world," she said. CONTRIBUTED Photo This photo was taken in 1928 days after the St. Francis Dame collapsed in San Fransicisquito Canyon, east of Santa Clarita. The failure of the St. Francis Dam on March 12, 1928, is regarded as the worst American civil engineering failure of the 20th century, affecting the Santa Clara River Valley profoundly. SHARE CONTRIBUTED Photo This photo was taken in 1928 days after the St. Francis Dame collapsed in San Fransicisquito Canyon, east of Santa Clarita. The failure of the St. Francis Dam on March 12, 1928, is regarded as the worst American civil engineering failure of the 20th century, affecting the Santa Clara River Valley profoundly. By Bartholomew Sullivan, USA TODAY NETWORK WASHINGTON Just before midnight on March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam north of Santa Clarita failed, sending a torrent of water from its reservoir 1,800 feet above sea level racing 54 miles to the sea. At least 530 people were killed. California's second-worst disaster, after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, is little known today, said Alan Pollack, president of the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society. He hopes a bill to commemorate the disaster, recently introduced in Congress by U.S. Reps. Steve Knight, R-Lancaster, and Julia Brownley, D-Westlake Village, will undo an "injustice." The way Pollack, a medical doctor, explains it, the dam breach is part of Los Angeles water history forgotten by design by city boosters eager at the time to see the metropolis continue growing through the creative storage of scarce water. The dam and six others in the region were built to supplement and, if necessary, temporarily replace the water from the Owens Valley that began flowing 230 miles by aqueduct to L.A. beginning in 1913. The aqueduct was dynamited early in its history by angry farmers in the Owens Valley and it runs across the San Andreas Fault, so the need for a backup was clear. The St. Francis Dam created a reservoir by installing a dike to control the flow of the St. Francisquito Creek with concrete walls rising 185 feet above the canyon floor. Water was inches from the crest when the dam failed. "It was basically an inland tsunami, full of water and trees and anything it picked up: houses, railroad tracks, farm animals and corpses ... taken along with the flood. It ended up killing 531 people," Pollack said. The wall of water flooded into the Santa Clara River and inundated Fillmore, Bardsdale and Santa Paula, sweeping some victims into the Pacific Ocean. An unmarked mass grave of some of its victims is at Ivy Lawn cemetery in Ventura. The city of Los Angeles paid out $4.8 million to survivors. "Because of the politics of the time in Los Angeles this up-and-coming city they didn't want this event to disrupt that growth, that boosterism that was going on, so they quickly made reparations to all the victims, and then they forgot. They wanted the event forgotten, and it has been over the years," Pollack said. "And that's the injustice we want to correct." Another political consideration at the time was pending in Washington: a bill to finance the much bigger Hoover Dam on the Colorado River at the Nevada-Arizona border. The engineer of the St. Francis Dam project, Irish-born William Mulholland who had supervised construction of the Owens Valley aqueduct system and is immortalized in a stretch of road took full responsibility for the failure, then retired to obscurity. Pollack recently testified before the House Natural Resources Committee, saying the bill has the support of 8,000 residents of the area. One of them is Dianne Erskine-Hellrigel, founder of the Community Hiking Club and a collaborator in creating a foundation to collect private donations for the monument. Her mother was 6 years old when the dam broke and took her to the site of the breach when she turned 6, she said. "I couldn't imagine what a 180-foot wall of water would look like," she said. But in studying the disaster, she learned of those who were killed and some who miraculously survived. She told the story of Lyman Curtis, who worked at the dam and who sent his wife Lillian, his 3-year-old son Daniel and the family dog up the nearest hill, then went back to collect his sleeping daughters. Lillian and Daniel survived. Lillian died in 1993 at age 93, according to a Los Angeles Times obituary. Santa Clarita Mayor Bob Kellar said his community is "very, very pleased" the bill has bipartisan support. "This is huge," he said. "I'm just embarrassed it wasn't done sooner." Something was. The site is No. 919 on California's list of historic landmarks, designated in April 1978, an official with the state's Office of Historic Preservation said. The Knight-Brownley bill would put a 440-acre area around the former dam site into a St. Francis Dam Disaster National Memorial, administered by the U.S. Forest Service "for the purpose of honoring the victims of the ... disaster," the bill states. As envisioned, the bill would encourage the formation of a foundation to collect donations to build a visitor center and museum where the names of the known victims would be displayed. "The St. Francis Dam disaster resulted in the death of approximately 425 area residents, including many in Ventura County, and is among the worst civil engineering failures in the 20th century," Brownley said. "I support creation of the national monument because it is imperative that we remember and honor those who were killed, injured or dislocated due to the flood and to educate the public about our local history." The national monument idea was inspired by a side trip Pollack took years ago during a medical conference to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the site of a national memorial commemorating a May 1889 dam failure that flooded that town and killed 2,209 people. "I said, 'Why the heck don't we do that here?' It's just as deserving," Pollack said. STAR FILE PHOTO Aaron Starr (left) addresses the Oxnard City Council last month as Michael Quick delivers a bin with more than 3,900 signatures for a proposed ballot initiative to turn back sewer rate increases. The county last week found enough voter signatures were valid for Starr's measure to be on the November ballot. SHARE By Gretchen Wenner of the Ventura County Star An Oxnard resident's proposed initiative to turn back sewer rate hikes garnered more than twice the number of valid voter signatures needed to qualify for the November ballot, county elections officials have determined. "We continue to be impressed with our 61 volunteers who worked so diligently, helping us gather nearly 4,000 signatures in only 16 days," Aaron Starr, who spearheaded the effort, wrote in an email. He called the successful signature drive an "extraordinary achievement." It was conducted in a shortened time frame because of an ongoing legal battle with the city. Nearly 76 percent of 500 sample signatures analyzed by the Ventura County Elections Division were found to be valid. That means of the 3,958 signatures turned in, 2,992 are counted as valid, the county report says. Download/view: Signature Verification Certificate That's more than double the required number of 1,430 needed to qualify. The county report was dated May 27. It was received by the Oxnard City Clerk's office shortly before 4 p.m. Tuesday, the city's time stamp shows. Both offices were closed Monday for the Memorial Day holiday. Despite repeated queries to both offices from The Star on Tuesday, including after the city had received the report, the information was not immediately made available, though officials from both entities acknowledged Thursday it should have been released. "We strive to provide updates to the media simultaneously or immediately after notifying the City Council," City Manager Greg Nyhoff said in an emailed statement. "The council was notified of the results Tuesday evening. A lack of communication among the city clerk's, city manager's and public information offices resulted in a delay in providing the information" to The Star until Wednesday, he wrote. Nyhoff said that the three departments met Thursday to discuss the issue and that being transparent is important to the city. "This serves as an opportunity for us to improve our internal processes and communication with the media going forward," Nyhoff concluded. The Star has objected to any policy that delays release of public information until after the city first notifies council members, staff or other people of its choosing. "There's nothing that allows the city to first distribute (public information) to people it prefers and delay release to the press" or members of the public, said Nikki Moore, legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association. If a city knew it had a document and simply did not want to turn it over before the council received it, "they egregiously violated the Public Records Act," she said, referring to the set of state laws that governs access to public information. Unfortunately, she added, the act has no enforcement mechanism beyond suing for records that haven't been disclosed. That means there is no penalty against an agency that wrongly delays or denies release of records. "This is becoming a bigger and bigger problem across the state," Moore said. "Basically, agencies are using various provisions of the act to slow disclosure, rob the public of information and take breaking news out of the picture." Mark Lunn, Ventura County's clerk, recorder and registrar of voters, whose Elections Division prepared the signature verification report, said his office should have had a better process for responding to queries about the report's status. Employees told The Star only the Oxnard City Clerk's Office could answer questions, even though the county, not Oxnard, was verifying voter signatures. Lunn said Thursday no section of the government code allows the county to deny access to a completed, disclosable report it created. He said while staff have been told not to speak on behalf of entities they work for in this case, city clerks who have contracted with the county for certain elections duties he would work with staff to improve the process. Starr's initiative, if approved by a majority of voters in November, would repeal wastewater rate increases that took effect March 1. The measure claims rate hikes approved 4-1 by the City Council in January are "harmful to the general welfare of residents" and encourage businesses to leave town. Councilman Bryan MacDonald voted against the rate hike. The series of annual increases would, by 2020, raise a typical household's annual wastewater bill by nearly $326, city figures show. The city is suing Starr over the initiative, claiming it is illegal, threatens public health and would cause the city to default on bond obligations. At a court hearing Tuesday, a judge ruled the trial will be held after the November election as it will only be needed if the measure passes. Stardust Mobile Estates resident Dotti Bash said she was assured by the owners that she qualified as low-income and her rent would rise only modestly. SHARE By Kevin Clerici After two years of maneuvering, including a successful lawsuit, owners of the Stardust Mobile Estates mobile home park in Ventura have won approval to sell its spaces to residents instead of renting them out. The impending switch from rental spaces to resident-owned lots at the 125-space park could generate millions, providing the longtime owners a hefty nest egg. Some residents, however, are less confident about their futures. Under California law, once the first sale is completed ? the spaces should hit the market in late 2010 or early 2011 ? the 40-year-old park will no longer fall under the city's mobile home rent-control ordinance. The owners will be allowed over four years to raise rents to market rates, likely resulting in higher monthly payments than the $390 to roughly $550 being charged now. Ventura's Planning Commission unanimously approved the conversion earlier this month, and an attorney for the owners said not a single resident would be displaced. Each can purchase the space where the mobile home sits, or elect to stay and pay increased rents. People who earn less than $49,000 or live on fixed incomes will get a better deal. While city rent-control will be gone, they will remain covered by state mobile home protections and can apply for special financing to buy their spaces, said Sue Loftin of The Loftin Firm, a Carlsbad-based law group frequently hired by park owners that has overseen dozens of conversions statewide. "Those who live on Social Security alone will be able to buy and possibly reduce their housing costs," Loftin told the commission. "The process is all about choice." Stardust Mobile Estates is located on 12.6 acres at 11100 W. Telegraph Road, near North Wells Road. Dotti Bash, 88, has lived at the park for more than two decades. She plans to stay. "I'm too old to even think about buying my dirt," she said. Bash was assured by the owners that she qualified as low-income and her rent would rise only modestly. "I quit worrying about it," said Bash. But resident Claudette Marie Lemay, 73, a retired Ventura Unified School District librarian, is troubled by the uncertainty. She was disappointed in the conversion approval, because city rent control has long provided retirees like her a sense of reassurance. She might be able to afford to buy her space, she said, but the combination of a mortgage, homeowner association fees, utilities and property taxes are guaranteed to be far more than the $541 a month she pays now. "I'm from Massachusetts. I am not going back there," she said. As for state assistance for low-income buyers, she said, "I have no confidence in that. The state is absolutely broke." The money in that program ? the Mobilehome Park Resident Ownership Program ? is safe from state raids, said Chris Westlake, deputy director of financial assistance with the California Department of Housing and Community Development, which runs the program. There is, however, a cap of $2 million in assistance per mobile home park. The going rate for a space in Southern California is $115,000 to $200,000, Westlake estimated, so the $2 million could be chewed up quickly. "We would not be able to satisfy all residents," he said. Plus, there is only about $8 million available for the entire state, Westlake said, and it's distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. "There is never enough money," said Frank Wodley, a Chatsworth mobile home resident and president of the Coalition of Mobilehome Owners California. The coalition and affordable housing advocates prefer to see park residents band together and buy the entire park themselves. The state has established a different program to help such efforts, he said, but park owners have to be willing to sell, and selling spaces individually on the open market often is far more lucrative. Selling 125 spaces at $200,000 would generate $25 million. A park-wide sale likely would net a third of that, officials estimated. About 365,000 mobile home spaces currently exist in 4,700 parks statewide. Out of those, 165,000 are under some type of rent control, Wodley said. "The park owners claim, ?This is the American Way, own a piece of the rock.' But at what price?" he asked. Built in 1968, Stardust has been a family-owned business for 41 years, said co-owner Jim MacKay, who lives at the park and prides himself on the maintenance. The park also has a clubhouse, lounge, laundry facilities and swimming pool. He said he could have sold to a big corporation or out-of-town management firm "in about 48 hours" but wanted residents to have the chance to buy their spaces. The next step for the owners is to complete a comprehensive appraisal and apply with the state Department of Real Estate, which will help set a sale price for each space. MacKay also pledged that his team of attorneys would sit down with each resident to go over the options. "I firmly believe in all my heart that this is a good thing for a resident who elects to buy (the space) and those who remain a renter," said MacKay, 69. "People don't realize this is a business. We are not out to force people from their house. That doesn't make any sense." Ventura city officials disliked the proposal because it would eliminate some of the city's already limited low-cost rental housing, remove rent control, and put a greater strain on the roughly 2,500 rental mobile home spaces that remain in the city ? all of which are virtually full, officials said. Last year, the Planning Commission rejected the application, saying it was incomplete. The City Council upheld the determination on appeal, prompting a lawsuit. In August, a judge ruled the owners complied with state law in the conversion process and that Ventura overstepped its authority by rejecting the plan. Superior Court Judge Glen Reiser ordered the city to approve ? without condition ? Stardust's tentative map for its conversion and ruled the city must pay its attorney fees and other legal costs. SHARE Part of Bernie Sanders' charm is that for all of his arm-waving jeremiads, he appears unthreatening. He's the weird old uncle in the attic, Larry David's crazy Bernie. It's almost a matter of style. Who can be afraid of a candidate so irascible, grumpy, old-fashioned and unfashionable? After all, he's not going to win the nomination, so what harm can he do? A major address at the party convention? A say in the vice presidential selection? And who reads party platforms anyway? Well, platforms may not immediately affect a particular campaign. But they do express, quite literally, the party line, a written record of its ideological trajectory. Which is why two of Sanders' appointments to the 15-member platform committee are so stunning. Professor Cornel West not only has called the Israeli prime minister a war criminal but openly supports the BDS movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions), the most important attempt in the world to ostracize and delegitimize Israel. West is joined on the committee by the longtime pro-Palestinian activist James Zogby. Together, reported The New York Times, they "vowed to upend what they see as the party's lopsided support of Israel." This seems a gratuitous provocation. Sanders hardly made Israel central to his campaign. He did call Israel's response in the 2014 Gaza war "disproportionate" and said "we cannot continue to be one-sided." But now Sanders seeks to permanently alter i.e. weaken the relationship between the Democratic Party and Israel, which has been close and supportive since Harry Truman recognized the world's only Jewish state when it declared independence in May 1948. West doesn't even pretend, as do some left-wing "peace" groups, to be opposing Israeli policy to save it from itself. He makes the simpler case that occupation is unconscionable oppression, and that until Israel abandons it, it deserves to be treated like apartheid South Africa anathematized, cut off, made to bleed morally and economically. The Sanders appointees wish to bend the Democratic platform to encourage such diminishment unless Israel redeems itself by liberating Palestine. This is an unusual argument for a Democratic platform committee, largely because it is logically and morally perverse. Israel did, in fact, follow such high-minded advice in 2005: It terminated its occupation and evacuated Gaza. That earned it (temporary) praise from the West. And from the Palestinians? Not peace, not reconciliation, not normal relations, but a decade of unrelenting terrorism and war. Israel is now being asked pressured to repeat that same disaster on the West Bank. That would bring the terror war, quite fatally, to the very heart of Israel Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ben Gurion Airport. Israel is now excoriated for declining that invitation to national suicide. It is ironic that the most successful Jewish presidential candidate ever should be pushing the anti-Israel case. But perhaps not surprising considering Sanders' ideological roots. He is old left not the post-1960s, countercultural New Left. Why, the man honeymooned in the Soviet Union, not in such fashionably cool communist paradises as Sandinista Nicaragua, where Bill de Blasio went to work for the cause, or Castro's Cuba, where de Blasio honeymooned. (Do lefties all use the same wedding planner?) For the old left, Israel was simply an outpost of Western imperialism, Middle East division. To this day, the leftist consensus, most powerful in Europe (which remains Sanders' ideological lodestar), holds that Israeli perfidy demands purification by Western chastisement. Chastisement there will be at the Democratic platform committee. To be sure, Sanders didn't create the Democrats' drift away from Israel. It was already visible at the 2012 convention with the loud resistance to recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. But Sanders is consciously abetting it. The millennials who worship him and pack his rallies haven't lived through and don't know the history of Israel's half-century of peace offers. They don't know of the multiple times Israel has offered to divide the land with an independent Palestinian state and been rebuffed. Sanders hasn't lifted a finger to tell them. The lovable old guy with the big crowds and no chance at the nomination is hardly taken seriously (except by Hillary Clinton, whose inability to put him away reveals daily her profound political weakness). But when he makes platform appointees that show he does take certain things quite seriously, like undermining the U.S.-Israeli relationship, you might want to reconsider your equanimity about the magical mystery tour. It looks like Woodstock, but there is steel inside the psychedelic glove. Charles Krauthammer's email address is letterscharleskrauthammer.com. He writes for The Washington Post Writers Group. Tacos & Tequila (T&T) at Luxor Hotel and Casino is celebrating the change of season with brand-new fall cocktails created by mixologist, Lillian Hargrove (Pictured: Bacon Me Crazy Photo credit: Peter Harasty). Guests may toast to cooler weather with fall-inspired cocktails including Bacon Me Crazy, made with bacon-infused Milagro Reposado, poached pear and vanilla bean infused bianco and a fresh lime; the Xocolate, made with Casamigos Reposado, Grand Marnier, Carpano Antica and Mole bitters with a sugar, cinnamon, Cayenne pepper and dark cocoa rim garnished with an orange twist; and the Vampire Bite, made exclusively for Halloween and Dia de los Muertos, made with Grey Goose, Grey Goose Cherry Noir, Patron Cafe XO Dark Cocoa and garnished with two Luxardo cherries. MGM Grand Hotel & Casino will host comedian and Emmy Award-winning actor Brad Garretts annual Maximum Hope Foundation Charity Poker Tournament Saturday, July 2 on the casino floor between Wolfgang Puck Bar & Grill and KA Theatre. The tournament, which will begin at noon, offers participants the opportunity to play alongside Garrett, Willie Garson (White Collar, Sex and the City) and other celebrities as well as professional poker players. All proceeds from the event will benefit Maximum Hope Foundation. I am thrilled and humbled once again to host this amazing event with MGM Grand, said Garrett. Maximum Hope helps hundreds of families and kids each year as a direct result of this tournament. No parent should have to worry about losing their home or having their electricity turned off while also caring for a child who is battling to survive. I am touched by the story of every family we help, and grateful for every person who attends our event. They literally make it possible for us to continue the incredible work we do. The poker tournament is a No-Limit Holdem event requiring an entry fee of $250. Participants will have the opportunity to re-buy within the first two hours of play for an additional $100 or purchase three re-buys in advance for the price of two. There also will be a final add-on available at the conclusion of the two-hour re-buy time period. The winner will take home a guaranteed $10,000 first-place prize, with other prizes being awarded to the final five players. All participants must be 21 years of age or older. Wolfgang Puck will donate a delicious buffet brunch which will be served for the enjoyment of all tournament players between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Garrett will auction off two seats to his private home poker game with Ray Romano with 100% of the selling price going directly to families in need. Founded by Garrett in 2000, Maximum Hope Foundation is a non-profit organization offering urgent financial relief to families caring for a child with a life-limiting illness. Children with complex medical diagnoses often endure years of treatment, which can cause a huge financial strain for their families. Working diligently with hospital and hospice social workers, Maximum Hope provides financial help for necessities like rent, utilities, groceries or gas. This immediate, compassionate assistance allows parents to remain focused on what is most important: their child. The wrecked cockpit of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is shown to the press during a presentation of the final report on the cause of its crash at the Gilze Rijen airbase in the Netherlands on Oct 13, 2015. (Photo: AFP/Emmanuel Dunand) KUALA LUMPUR: Families of six Malaysia Airlines crew members who were killed when flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine nearly two years ago filed a lawsuit on Thursday (Jun 2) blaming the carrier for the tragedy. The suit accuses the airline of negligence and breach of contract and is believed to be the first filed against the company over the 2014 disaster, said Balan Nair, a lawyer representing families of the six Malaysian crew members. It comes two weeks after a suit by 33 next-of-kin from Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia was filed against Russia and President Vladimir Putin in the European Court of Human Rights. All 298 passengers and crew - the majority of them Dutch - died when the Boeing 777 was hit by a Russian-made BUK anti-aircraft missile over war-torn eastern Ukraine on Jul 17, 2014. Thursday's filing in Malaysia blames the airline for the tragedy, saying it "dispatched and executed the MH17 flight over an area known to be under armed conflict, which posed an unreasonable risk of harm and death". Balan did not give a compensation amount being sought, saying that would be decided by the courts. He said the airline had offered to settle for an undisclosed amount, but families rejected the proposed sum. He did not rule out an eventual out-of-court settlement. Malaysia Airlines meanwhile said it is yet to be served with the mentioned suits and that the MH17 flight route complied with International Civil Aviation Organisation regulations. Under the 1999 Montreal Convention, next-of-kin have until the second anniversary of an air disaster to file lawsuits against the carrier involved. Chong Seng See, whose sister Chong Yee Pheng is one of the six crew members mentioned in the suit, said in a statement issued by his lawyers that families have endured deep pain due to the "horrific manner" of their loved ones' deaths. MH17 had a total crew of 15. Malaysia Airlines already is facing lawsuits by scores of families over the disappearance of MH370 and could face legal action from more MH17 next-of-kin. MH370 vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014 - just four months before the MH17 tragedy - with 239 passengers and crew aboard. Small pieces of wreckage found on Indian Ocean islands and the east African coast have confirmed MH370 went down, but no crash site has been located and the reasons for the plane's disappearance remain a baffling mystery. The privatisation of Mobifone will gear up in 2016-17 as the Government of Viet Nam hastens the privatisation of State-owned enterprises.- File Photo These include Norway's Telenor, Sweden's Comviq and Australia's Telstra, Vneconomy reported. The privatisation of Mobifone, the second-largest mobile phone service operator in Viet Nam, with a brand valued at US$539 million by UK-based Brand Finance, was long awaited as the privatisation plan had been delayed several times since 2005. The privatisation of Mobifone will gear up in 2016-17 as the Government of Viet Nam hastens the privatisation of State-owned enterprises. Among the foreign firms eyeing Mobifone's stake sale, Telstra, Australia's leading telecommunications and information services company, was seen to be active recently. As preparations for Mobifone's privatisation resumed strongly over the past year, Telstra signaled its desire to return to Viet Nam's telecommunications market and become a strategic stakeholder of Mobifone. Previously, Telstra had participated in Viet Nam's telecommunications market through a business cooperation contract with the Viet Nam Post and Communications Group, with an estimated investment of $240 million, according to Vneconomy. However, it left the Vietnamese market in 2003. Han Kotterman, Telstra's international chief operating officer, said at the meeting between Minister of Information and Communications Truong Minh Tuan and Deputy Head of the Mission of the Australian Embassy Layton Pike, held late in May, that Telstra wanted the opportunity to join the privatisation of Viet Nam's telecommunications enterprises, the newspaper reported. He proposed the stake held by foreign investors should be increased, adding that higher stakes would promote accountability and mutual cooperation. He also said Telstra aimed to participate in the privatisation of Mobifone. Telenor and Mobifone's former partner Comviq were also reported to have an interest in Mobifone. Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Pham Hong Hai said at the Mobifone meeting in April that the evaluation of the company was underway and the proposal to the government would serve as the basis for completing the privatisation plan. Mobifone sought to divest from SeABank and TPBank in April. It raised VND77 billion ($3.4 million) from selling more than 8 million shares out of its holding of nearly 14.3 million shares of TPBank while the SeABank shares sale was cancelled due to no registered bid. Theoretically, foreign investors can hold a maximum 49 per cent stake in a public company, according to the Government's Decree 60/2015/ND-CP, issued in June 2015. Being a member of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement is one of Vietnams advantages, said Japanese investors. Relating to plans to expand investment in 12 TPP member countries, 12.8% of the surveyed businesses chose Vietnam, 10.7% chose Japan while 4.9% chose the US. Another survey conducted by the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) early this year showed that more than 60% Japanese businesses operating in Vietnam planned to expand their investment and considered it an important investment destination. Japanese businesses named low labour cost, social and political stability, good investment environment and growth ability as Vietnams advantages. The survey also said that Japanese businesses put a high hope on the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) with simplification of customs procedures, tax removal and unity in certificate of origin (C/O). JETRO conducted the survey on 1,027 Japanese businesses, 364 of which invested in manufacturing and 193 others in non-manufacturing industries and services in Vietnam. Around 58.8% of the surveyed businesses said they gained profits, down 3.5% while 26.2% suffered loss, up 1.3%, according to the survey. In general, Vietnam has remained a trusted destination of Japanese investors. Japans investment in Vietnam will help the country improve its competitiveness in fields requiring highly qualified workers like engineering, manufacturing and electronics. Katy Perrys visit to Ninh Thuan was designed to capture the public attention to critical issues impacting the millions of children who are not benefitting equally from prosperity in a way the majority living in the province. During the visit, the pop star visited a school supporting children with disabilities and a junior high school for ethnic students. According to Katy Perry, many students did not want to follow in their parents footsteps because they dreamed of being doctors and teachers and breaking the cycle of poverty their parents are living in. According to UNICEFs website, following a visit to Vietnam, the American super star is calling for increased focus on children being left behind in one of Asias fastest growing economies. Northern market has a good trading session - Photo baomoi.com The benchmark VN Index on the HCM Stock Exchange inched down 0.1 per cent to close at 622.70 points, facing the possibility it will finish in negative territory at the end of the day after a five-day rally. The southern market lacked support from blue chips as most of these stocks remained flat, including Vietcombank (VCB), Vietinbank (CTG), Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BID) and property developer and retailer Vingroup JSC (VIC), as well as insurer Bao Viet Holdings (BVH). Sacombank (STB) and Hoang Anh Gia Lai JSC (HAG) fell 1.8 per cent and 1.2 per cent, respectively, contributing to the southern market's decline. The HNX Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange, however, edged up 0.4 per cent to end at 82.78 points and is likely to extend its rally for a sixth day. Energy stocks on the northern market had a good trading session. PetroVietnam Mud Drilling Corp (PVC) and PetroVietnam Technical Service Corp (PVS) increased by 2.8 per cent and 1.1 per cent, respectively. Other large-cap stocks, such as Asia Commercial Bank (ACB) and Sai Gon-Ha Noi Bank (SHB), also improved. Both local markets traded nearly 103 million shares worth VND1.4 trillion (US$62.8 million). 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. The role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations is under threat from security challenges posed by superpower competition, an analyst has said. Chheang Vannarith, co-founder and chairman of the Cambodian Institute for Strategic Studies, told the live Hello VOA radio program on Thursday that conflicts between the United States, China and Russia over the South China Sea and access to the resources in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region were shaking the very foundations of the strategic alliance. So, we see the momentum of the power competition between U.S. and China will make the Asean region very shaky as some countries turn to the U.S. and others turn to China, he said. Chheang said countries such as Laos may be influenced by China, as it will host the Asean summit this year. Laos will be the Chair of Asean this year and it will face pressures from others including Chinas pressure not to discuss the South China Sea so much, he said. He added that the U.S. had shifted its focus toward Vietnam, which it signed a wide-ranging co-operation accord with last month, rather than its traditional regional ally, Thailand. The United States picks Vietnam and Cambodia is facing risks because the Cambodian government is turning to China and Vietnam is picking the United States. So, the problems and political tensions in Cambodia can tie in with the changes of geo-politics in the region, Vannarith added. He went on to say that if the Asean bloc is divided, there will be few winners. We see Asean still values Asean as the priority in controlling the disputes as well as managing the political stability and security in the region. But as we know each county has its individual interest, so if the national interest and the regional interest do no match, it would be divergent. But we see Asean still ties up as a group now. Chheang also said Russia is paying more attention to Asia as tensions with the European Union and U.S. persist. So, Russia is turning to Asia to expand its influence to develop its economy and strategic territories in the Asia-Pacific, he said. Cambodias dependence on China has raised concerns among observers, with one analyst telling VOA Khmer last month that overreliance on Chinese loans could lead the country to a diplomatic and economic deadlock. Russia recently signed a cooperation agreement with Asean, known as the Sochi Declaration, and Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly called Cambodia an old friend, a great partner, and a most trusted friend. Meanwhile, the U.S. has been touting the Trans-Pacific Partnership in Asean signatory nations, and is reportedly considering Vietnamese approaches to relax a weapons embargo in place for decades. Even Japan is getting in on the action, in May announcing a $6.8 billion investment program to counter Chinas influence. China is feeling some push back, particularly led by Japan that's trying to stiffen regional countries. But without decisive American action, Japan is just not strong enough to continue to do it, Carl Thayer, a defense analyst at Australia's University of New South Wales, told VOA at the time. Bottom line is that time seems to be on China's side. The recent announcement of unprecedented security and economic cooperation between the United States and its former adversary Vietnam provides a good lesson for Cambodia to follow, an analyst has told VOA Khmer. Dr. Deth Sok Udom, vice rector of Cambodias Zaman University, told listeners to the Hello VOA live call-in program that Cambodia should seek to manage financial assistance from China more efficiently and maintain good relations with the United States. U.S. President Barack Obama concluded a three-day visit to Cambodias eastern neighbor on May 25, which ended with the signing of an agreement to end the countrys long-running arms embargo against Vietnam, an enduring legacy of the Cold War. The gesture was seen as an attempt by the U.S. to leverage Vietnams military capabilities in the face of Chinese activity in the South China Sea dispute, although Obama played down the significance of the move. Sok Udom said the relationship between the states was complicated, with the U.S. role in Cambodia traced back to pre-Khmer Rouge intrigues, when the U.S. was accused of supporting a coup against then-Prince Norodom Sihanouk and installing the regime known as the Khmer Republic, leading Sihanouk to create a Beijing-backed government-in-exile. China gained the upper hand in the region, Sok Udom said, after the U.S. defeat in the Vietnam War, also backing the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1979. In response to its defeat in Vietnam, major powers including the U.S. supported the Khmer Rouges seat at the United Nations, while an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died under its reign. The U.S. meanwhile strengthened partnerships with its traditional allies Thailand and the Philippines. However, by the early 1980s, U.S. ad Chinese interests had begun to align in the region as both powers sought to combat perceived Soviet Union encroachment in their respective spheres of influence. Both the U.S. ad China supported the so-called resistance factions (including the remnants of the Cambodian genocidaires) which fought the Vietnamese military that had removed the Khmer Rouge from power. While relations between all sides finally normalized in the early 1990s, the recent rise of China has reset the stage for new geopolitical rivalries. Sok Udom said that in international relations there is no eternal enemy or eternal friend. He suggested that Cambodia should realign its foreign policy away from focusing on a single superpower to keep its diplomatic options open in the future. Chinese offsetting of aid from the West was not necessarily a positive thing for Cambodia, he said, referencing the decision to suspend relations with the U.S. in the 1960s, which contributed towards Cambodias slide towards civil war and the rise of the Khmer Rouge. While China is the largest investor and aid donor, the E.U. and U.S. remain the countrys biggest export markets, he added. A spokesman for Cambodias main opposition party on Friday told reporters that Kem Sokha, the acting president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, had once more refused to attend a court session where he was scheduled to be questioned. Yem Ponharith, a CNRP lawmaker for Prey Veng province, said the party maintained that Kem Sokha was immune from legal action under the constitution unless there was clear evidence of a crime having been committed. The announcement came after Than Leng, the judge investigating Kem Sokha over solicitation allegations, issued a subpoena late on Thursday for previous refusals to attend court. Kem Sokha has repeatedly said he is a lawmaker holding immunity, so he will not go to the court... but we are still studying the legalities with the lawyers to discern whether the law has been properly and fully implemented or not, he said. On May 26, armed police attempted to detain Kem Sokha after he missed a Phnom Penh Municipal Court appearance where he was due to be questioned over solicitation allegations. The ruling Cambodian Peoples Partys 68 lawmakers unanimously voted in favor of continued legal action against Kem Sokha on Monday amid an opposition boycott of the session. Than Leng, the investigating judge, could not be reached for comment on Friday. Taing Sunlay, the court director, declined to comment on the ongoing case, referring questions to a spokesman, who could also not be reached. Four rights workers from local NGO Adhoc Ny Sokha, Yi Soksan, Nay Vonda and Lim Mony were early last month detained along with election official Ny Chakrya as part of the investigation into Kem Sokha. The rights workers were charged with bribing a witness while Ny Chakrya was accused of being an accomplice to the act of bribery. A local official from Kampong Cham province, Seang Chet, was also jailed. Kem Sokha is alleged to have engaged in an affair with a woman named Khom Chandaraty, also known as Srey Mom. Both the United States and the European Union have expressed their concerns over the case against Kem Sokha, calling for a resumption of the so-called culture of dialogue between the two parties. A statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday responded to the concerns by saying the critics did not understand Cambodias legal system. Just ten years ago, Cambodians relied on dingy, storefront Internet businesses if they wanted to get online. Computers were old, power cuts were frequent, and overhead fans creaked along in a failing attempt to keep customers cool as they paid per minute to surf the Internet or to simply send and receive emails. Local businessman Sourn Narein remembers that time, not so long ago, when smart phones were unknown as were Wi-Fi-enabled laptops. On a recent morning, as he sipped an Italian-style coffee in a trendy air-conditioned cafe in Phnom Penh surrounded by other young customers online with their expensive phones and tablets Sourn Narein stated the obvious: Its getting really more modern. Even five years ago, Cambodians still lacked such technology, he told VOA. Its making life better and more convenient, he said. I can connect better with my customers. Young, urban, middle-class Cambodians have access to all the latest hardware and software. They follow the news on their smartphones and research their assignments for school and university online. Economic growth, higher incomes, and better standards of living for some have contributed to a rapid change in the countrys adoption of digital technology particularly in the major towns and cities. The statistics are compelling. According to the Telecommunication Regulator of Cambodia, the country is in the process of a dramatic digital transition: the number of Internet users grew from about 320,000 in 2010 to 6.7 million by the end of 2015. The digital marketing firm Geeks In Cambodia reports that, in 2016, the number of active Facebook users stood at 3.4 million in a total population of some 15 million people. In addition, it is not just ease of doing business, the growth of social media in the country also contributed to changes in the political landscape of the country. Vibrant use of social media platforms and digital devices by Cambodias youth was widely believed to have contributed to the extremely strong performance of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party in the 2013 national election. The ruling Cambodian Peoples Party lost 22 seats in the National Assembly that year. Information and communications technology are almost completely changing the way Cambodians live and work these days, said Khov Makara, a spokesman at the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. In April, the government revealed its medium-term vision for information and communications technology in a policy paper that aims to achieve greater connectedness and readiness by 2020. The Cambodian government categorizes telecoms and the ICT sector as two fundamental pillars that will push the countrys economic growth, says the policy document, which speaks of boosting the role of technology in driving e-government, e-commerce, and technology for development, or tech4dev. Probably realizing that so many politically-aware young people were using social media as their primary platform for communication, Prime Minister Hun Sen in recent months adopted Facebook in earnest, and has told his cabinet to implement the principals of e-government so that his government can providing fast, responsive, accountable service to citizens. The ICT policy paper also focuses on improving computer literacy among public servants. Technology is helping many [public and private] institutions to achieve better, more accurate, quality work, said Kheng Piseth, who monitors the sector for the Open Institute, a Cambodian NGO focused on developing education and access to information technology. ICT is important for growth in many sectors in the economy, said Kheng Piseth, though there were also risks due to the fast-changing technological environment and the rapid influx of information. Its not technological devices or programs which are harmful, but users themselves make the use of those technologies harmful, he said. The government also acknowledged similar issues in its ICT policy paper, noting that e-commerce was slow moving due to issues surrounding online security, including securing payments. With ICT reshaping the economic and political landscapes, some are now employing ICT to deal with community problems, such as Sreyneang Ons LiGeek team, which consists of five middle school students all under the age of 15. LiGeek created the ImEx mobile application, a marketplace platform to connect farmers with potential buyers. The app has received widespread praise and international recognition. Sreyneang, 13, said that she and the rest of her all-female LiGeek team, wanted to alleviate the common difficulty farmers are confronted with in having to work through middlemen to get their farm produce to markets and consumers. Middlemen often squeezed farmers on prices to get the best deal possible in order to make the most profit from consumers. So, we created this mobile apps in the hope that farmers will get paid better prices for their hard work, Sreyneang told VOA Khmer. The government also wants to encourage technological innovations to solve community problems, said Khov Makara, of the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. The Open Institutes Kheng Piseth suggested that adequate thought should first go into figuring out what the peoples needs are, and how to better provide for those needs, before focusing on inventing need technology just for the sake of invention. Better to define a problem and solution first before creating technology and trying to adapt it to a problem, which it may not actually be able to solve. We should try and predict the future needs of the people and figure out what they will want to make their livings conditions more convenient, before thinking of inventing something new to deal with those needs. After days of heavy fighting, Afghan forces have regained control of parts of Helmand province previously in the Taliban hands. Neither the province of Helmand, nor its capital, Lashkar Gah, was in danger of falling to the Taliban, according to the Afghan Ministry of Defense. General Daulat Waziri, the spokesman for Afghanistan's Ministry of Defense, told reporters in Kabul Friday that the Taliban suffered heavy casualties during recent clashes, with 160 insurgents killed and 65 others wounded in several districts. He said Afghan forces managed to break the Taliban hold of Marja, the district that had fallen into insurgent hands last year. He also said Afghan forces managed to reopen a 10-kilometer stretch of road between Lashkar Gah and Marja that the Taliban had blocked for months. Taliban militants overran several security checkpoints and killed dozens of police officers in Helmand late last month. Heavy fighting in multiple districts including Gereshk, Nad Ali, Sangeen and Marja led to fears that Lashkar Gah would fall to the Taliban. Fighting in the province was so fierce last year that NATO-led forces had to send hundreds of additional troops in support of Afghan forces. General Waziri said Afghan forces also reopened another key highway between Kandahar and Terenkot, the provincial capital of Uruzgan province. Alexei Navalny, the leading Russian opposition activist who heads the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and the unregistered Party of Progress, was interrogated by police this week, after which his office and home were searched. The police action was connected to a libel case against him brought by former Russian Interior Ministry investigator Pavel Karpov. Karpov is among a group of people on whom the U.S. government imposed sanctions for their alleged involvement in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, the Hermitage Capital lawyer who died in a Moscow prison in 2009. The Kremlin's own human rights council said Magnitsky, who was arrested accusing Russian officials of involvement in a $230 million tax fraud scheme, was probably beaten to death. Karpov filed suit against Navalny on May 19, accusing the anti-corruption activist of slandering him by posting a video that asked how an Interior Ministry officer with a modest official salary could have come into possession of expensive cars and apartments without engaging in corrupt practices. Navalny has been the target of various criminal investigations and has been repeatedly interrogated. On May 17, Navalny and about 30 FBK members were attacked by a group of men wearing Cossack hats and uniforms at an airport in southern Russia. Navalny accused Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika and his son Artem of being behind the attack. Back in December, the FBK published a report linking Artem Chaika to organized crime. In an interview with VOA's Russian service, Navalny discussed his latest problems with Russian law enforcement agencies. Q: What happened in the latest incident, and why are Russian law enforcement structures once again putting pressure on you? A: On the morning of June 1, I was called in for questioning. The interrogation was rather formal. And then, after the interrogation, people entered the office and said, "Hello, we are [from] the criminal investigation department. We are going to search you personally." They patted down my back, lifted up my trouser legs, forced me to take off my shoes, checked to see if I had some terrible secrets in my shoes, and then declared that they were going to search my home. This was, on the one hand, absurd, of course. Because it's ridiculous: What kind of search can you do in a libel case? The criminal case was launched the same day the libel case was filed: There is no indication of why it was [a] slander [case], what information the policeman Pavel Karpov does not like. ... In general, it's all absurd. But, on the other hand, there is definitely logic in these actions. The logic is that, on the basis of this ridiculous and trumped up case, it is necessary to take away all the equipment, phones, confiscate all of the memory cards; to rummage through them and find something else. Because the task of the authorities is not even connected to this criminal case, or to defend Pavel Karpov of the Magnitsky List, but to fabricate a criminal case against me and guarantee my non-participation in the [September 2016 Russian parliamentary] elections, against the backdrop of the European Court of Human Rights having overturned earlier fabricated cases, one after another. [In February 2016, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia's conviction of Navalny on embezzlement charges in 2013 was "prejudicial," and that he had been denied a fair trial ED.] Q: Pavel Karpov is indeed on the "Magnitsky List" actually, on two of them, the European one and the American one. Why do you think the Russian state is so seriously protecting those accused of involvement in Magnitsky's death? A: There has been no reasonable answer to this question. It had seemed to me it was protecting them because, first of all, America is giving them a hard time, because some foreign senators adopted an act against Russia, so that means [they] have to protect them no matter what, even if they are notorious crooks. This is what I thought before the [Panama Papers] documents were published, which prove that the offshore accounts of the cellist [Sergei] Roldugin, who is an obvious "corrupt coffers" for Vladimir Putin, also received money under this scheme [i.e., the one uncovered by Magnitsky ED]. These same firms and persons were involved. [In late April, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which was involved in bringing the Panama Papers to light, reported that Roldugin, a friend of Putin's since the 1970s, "received money from an offshore company at about the same time it was being used to steal money from the Russian government in the notorious Sergei Magnitsky case." ED.] I'm certainly not trying to say that the murder of Magnitsky was carried out so that Putin could receive more money he doesn't need it. It's just that there is a unified money-laundering infrastructure, or that [they] overlap. So, it turns out that the people who stole 5 billion rubles from the budget [which Magnitsky uncovered ED], also replenished fully or partially, we do not yet know the Putin coffers. Therefore, the mechanisms that protect Vladimir Putin personally are involved here. Q: What do you call a system that is part of the state in fact, it wears epaulettes while, at the same time, according to [Hermitage Capital CEO] William Browder, it is involved in a rather interesting way of making money? A: There is an excellent word, known to everyone "mafia." This "mafia" system is a merger of bandits and the state. It is a system that is built in part on family ties. Their children are already inter-married. Loyalty is based on the fact that these people grew up together since childhood, the same way it happens in the real mafia. So you have these people who grew up together, the way Roldugin grew up with Putin, [and who are] loyal [to each other]. This perfectly describes the system as a mafia. It is honed mainly to receive benefits for making money, but if, as a collateral effect, it is necessary to kill someone, it kills people. Q: Was the latest criminal case against you launched because the authorities sense the previous ones failed, or simply because the system will never leave you alone? A: In as much as this is being done very deliberately and very crudely, it is, of course, a signal to a certain circle of people that, look, nothing distracts us and we won't let up. But more generally, of course, it is the practical implementation of a political decision that I should not be allowed to participate in the elections. And, in general, that no independents should be allowed to run, and that to prevent us from participating in the elections, they will bring criminal cases against us. This concerns not only me. A lot of people my colleagues from both the Party of Progress and the Anti-Corruption Foundation can't run for office because they were put on probation, and several are in jail or political exile. A decision was made, and I'm trying to derail this decision from a formal point of view by having it overturned by the European Court of Human Rights, where I win. But they're simply inventing new cases. On a crisp morning in February, Indian troops surrounded a sleepy, riverside village in the disputed mountain region of Kashmir. Intelligence had suggested three anti-India rebels were hiding out in homes set among the willows and poplar trees. As the soldiers prepared to lay siege on a cluster of houses, they were surprised by a barrage of rocks, bricks and abuse hurled by hundreds of villagers demanding they go away. The rebels also began firing, drawing the soldiers into a battle on two fronts. Two students and one rebel were killed before the troops eventually retreated and the other militants got away. The incident marks a recent shift in how local Kashmiris are responding to the hundreds of thousands of Indian soldiers deployed in the Himalayan territory. For decades, local villagers had remained behind locked doors when troops arrived to root out rebels bent on ending Indian control over the region. Not anymore. Frustrated after decades of political stasis and worn out by military operations to root out rebels from their midst, many Kashmiris are rising up at the first sight of troops entering their villages, and protecting the very militants Indian forces are trying to locate. We're all militants now. Our men, women and children are all warriors against Indian rule, said Adbul Rashid, a farmer of Lelhar in his mid-40s. Stones are now the people's weapons. When the soldiers returned to Lelhar in April, the villagers were ready. Public announcements asking women and men to beat back the troops had already gone out from the minarets of various mosques, and the troops were met by a hail of rocks. Intense clashes erupted, but this time the soldiers did not fire. And the three hiding militants fled to safety. Both India and Pakistan have claimed Kashmir in its entirety since 1947, fighting two wars over the picturesque mountain region. Each country controls a portion of Kashmir, which is divided by a U.N.-drawn militarized line of control. On the Indian side, about 68,000 people have died in an armed insurrection and Indian military crackdown since 1989. Indian military officials estimate there are some 200 militants in the region, staging attacks on Indian law enforcement and crossing back and forth over the de facto border with Pakistan. It's a steep drop from the 20,000 estimated to have waged the insurgency in the early 1990s, but military officials say their job is getting harder as the villages increasingly get involved. It's a big problem, a challenge for us to conduct anti-militant operations now, said Lt. Gen. D.S. Hooda, India's senior military commander in the region. He noted that armed soldiers had little hope of competing with the militants for public sympathy. Most citizens in the mostly Muslim region have long resented the Indian presence, and support rebel demands that Kashmir be independent or part of Pakistan. Frankly speaking, I'm not comfortable anymore conducting operations if large crowds are around, Hooda said. Militarily, there's not much more to do than we already have done. ... We're losing the battle for a narrative. Human rights activist Khurram Parvez said that, while the rebels are fewer in number, their influence has grown. Beyond their usual guns and grenades, rebels now carry smartphones to coordinate their movements with village supporters, and load photos and videos onto social media sites. It's a more like a symbolic militancy now which tries to rally the support for freedom, and glamorizes militants, resistance and defiance, Parvez said. But people listen to them and support them more openly and fiercely. Kashmiris in the countryside regularly defy the curfews imposed when the military plans an operation in their area. Some militants have even become household names. India's military might have crushed militancy to a large extent, but they've failed to change people's minds, Parvez said. Their support for militants and freedom (from India) is now increasingly manifesting in fierce ways. Indian forces admit the village defiance is forcing them to change their strategy. During an average counterinsurgency operation, general law and order has become more important to tackle than the actual operation itself. It's a matter of serious concern, top paramilitary officer Nalin Prabhat said. They're trying to reach out to Kashmir's youth, organizing school debates, sightseeing trips throughout India and visits to sporting events in hopes of persuading them to stay away from the insurgency and anti-India protests. But the so-called Operation Goodwill campaign has so far had little impact among Kashmiris aged 18 to 35 - two-thirds of the region's 7 million people - who have grown up politically radicalized over decades of brutal armed conflict. Kashmir continues to be one of the most militarized regions in the world. The countryside is crisscrossed by coils of barbed wire. Police and army checkpoints are a common sight, and emergency laws grant government forces sweeping powers to search homes, to make arrests without warrants and to shoot suspected rebels on sight without fear of prosecution. Earlier the sight of an army soldier would send us into hiding, said Zahoor Ahmed Reshi, sitting amid the rubble of what was once his home in the southern village of Gudroo, near Lelhar. The modest wood house was destroyed by an army mortar fired at a rebel who took shelter there during a firefight. When the village came under siege again in May, hundreds of men and women clashed with the soldiers to help three trapped militants escape. People have overcome their fear, the 48-year-old villager said. Everybody is now saying, it's do or die. Nonreligious organizations will gather on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial Saturday in Washington in an effort to show they are a voting bloc to be reckoned with come November. Reason Rally 2016 organizers said they expect about 30,000 people to attend the event, which will be held from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Lyz Liddell, executive director of the Reason Rally Coalition, told CNN the rally is "absolutely" a political event. "That's the reason we're holding this in an election year," Liddell told the news organization. "We want to see reason taking precedence over religious-driven ideology." A similar event was held in 2012, which was also an election year, but she said the atmosphere surrounding it may have seemed more exclusionary. "Some of our speakers were anti-theists and anti-religion," she told CNN, saying the focus of this year's rally is more secular. "We need to ally with people who share our goals. It's not an 'atheist vs religious people' conversation." Reason Rally's website says those expected to attend include secular, atheist, agnostic, humanist, freethinking and nonreligious people. The dozens of speakers planned for Saturday's event include "science guy" Bill Nye, comedian Julia Sweeney, magician Penn Jillette, Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and NASA scientist Carolyn Porco. Speakers will address science-based sex education in schools, transgender people's use of public restrooms, and evidence-based responses to climate change, Liddell told U.S. News & World Report. Attendance diversity Ahead of Saturday's Reason Rally, the Pew Research Center said it's hard to estimate the number of atheists in the United States. The matter is complicated, researchers said, because some adults who describe themselves as atheists also say they believe in God or a universal spirit. Meanwhile, some people who identify with a religion, such as Catholicism or Judaism, say they do not believe in God. Some Pew findings about atheists: A new clean technology to turn sunlight into liquid fuel could drastically shrink the need for large plantations to grow crops for biofuels, while combating climate change, Harvard University researchers said on Thursday. That could help protect food supplies and local people's land rights, they suggested. Dubbed "bionic leaf 2.0," the technology uses solar panels to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen, the scientists said in a study published in the journal Science. Once separated, hydrogen is moved into a chamber where it is consumed by bacteria, and with help from a special metal catalyst and carbon dioxide, the process generates liquid fuel. The method is an artificial version of the photosynthesis process plants use to make energy from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide, scientists said. If it becomes economically viable, the technology could replace oil wells or plantations where food crops are grown for fuel, the study's lead author said. "This [new energy source] is not competing with food for agricultural land," Harvard University Professor of Energy Daniel Nocera told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Crops for fuel, rather than food Crops such as corn and sugar cane have been increasingly cultivated to produce biofuels. About 4 percent of the world's farmland is used to grow crops for fuel rather than food, according to a University of Virginia study published in March. Tens of thousands of small-scale farmers across Africa, Asia and Latin America have been displaced by plantations growing crops to make biofuels, according to GRAIN, a Barcelona-based land rights group. The new technology could help protect their land rights while also reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet, Nocera said. "The [land] footprint these solar panels need is about one-tenth the size of what you would need for sugar cane," he said. If governments put a price on carbon-dioxide emissions, the "bionic leaf" would appeal to investors as a cost-effective alternative energy source, the professor added. Today, however, it remains cheaper to grow biofuel crops or extract fossil fuels than to produce renewable energy, Nocera said. A carbon tax boosting U.S. gas prices to European levels -- although not yet on the cards -- would likely be enough to spur investment in the new technology, he said. "Bionic leaf 2.0" converts solar energy into liquid fuel with 10 percent efficiency, far higher than the 1 percent efficiency seen in the fastest-growing plants that use a similar process, Nocera added. When Polands right-wing Prime Minister Beata Szydlo swept to an election victory late last year, one of the first things her government did was remove the blue European Union flag from the backdrop of her news conferences, and leave only the red and white Polish flag. It was a symbolic, patriotic gesture that signaled a more distant relationship with Brussels. At the same time in Austria, more than 260,000 citizens signed a petition that forced the Austrian parliament to open a discussion on a referendum to leave the European Union. Seeks similar referendum Eurosceptics in both countries are now watching Britains march to a June 23 referendum closely. We need a referendum similar to the referendum in Great Britain, so the people of Austria can decide, said Robert Marschall, leader of Austrias EU Exit Party, in a VOA interview. Like in Britain, the migrant crisis that saw more than 1 million mostly Muslim newcomers enter Europe last year is a key driver of the movement to part with the EU. Austria last year took in 90,000 asylum-seekers an equivalent of 1 percent of its population, at a time when unemployment is more than 8 percent. Many people do not understand why they want people to come to Austria if there is such a high unemployment rate, Marschall said. In Poland, where the burning of EU flags has become common at demonstrations, anti-EU sentiments are stoked by memories of historic foreign intervention by Russia, but perhaps more poignantly by Germany. Migrant quotas The mandate proposed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel for EU members, including Poland, to accept a share of the migrants has galvanized support for Szydlos Law and Justice Partys pledge to defy the quotas. At the beginning, there were a lot of voices in Poland in favor of taking refugees from the Middle East, said George Byczynski, head of the British Poles Initiative, a Polish civic group in London. But the threat of financial penalties for not doing so changed those attitudes. Suddenly, Poles started feeling this is again an authoritarian approach to helping people, he said. Andriy Korniychuk, an analyst at the Institute of Public Affairs, a research organization in Warsaw, says antimigrant sentiments helped bring Szydlo to power, and he says the anti-EU wave is showing no signs of slowing. The Eurosceptic movement is growing. If you look just at the general tendencies, recent polls show there are more skeptic movements are growing in Poland, Korniychuk told VOA. But movements in both countries have failed to gain the same traction that the Brexit campaign has in Britain. No significant action In Austria, the petition to launch a campaign to leave the EU led to a discussion on a referendum in parliament on January 27, but it resulted in no action after none of the 183 lawmakers introduced a bill. In Poland, analysts say the countrys status as the largest beneficiary of EU aid is the chief reason the movement has not led to any concrete, significant action for a Polish exit. Poland is a poster child of European integration. It has a lot of financial support from the cohesion, Korniychuk said. He said the arguments presented by Eurosceptics have failed to outweigh the economic benefits that Poles have seen on the ground, from infrastructure projects to foreign investment. The arguments to leave the EU, he said, are very symbolic in regard to the protection of sovereignty of Poles. Szydlos government removed the EU flag from her news conferences but that was, for many, the limit of her willingness to express anti-EU intentions. Since taking office, the Polish leader has never proclaimed quitting the European Union as one of her governments goals. No one, however, is ready to declare efforts to leave the EU dead in Poland or Austria. Recent gains by right-wing parties in elections in both countries surprised many. I dont think that its clear how this will unfold in terms of translating onto this specific issue, said Davis Lewin, a political analyst at the Henry Jackson Society, a London research organization. But we can be absolutely certain that as part of all of these parties programs will come an assault on the EU. President Pierre Nkurunziza has given armed gangs in Burundi 15 days to surrender to authorities and hand in their weapons or face unspecified action. Nkurunziza was speaking during a visit to Mugamba district, some 65 km southeast of the capital Bujumbura, where many local officials have been killed in recent weeks. Tit-for-tat attacks between Nkurunziza's security forces and his opponents have escalated since April 2015 when he announced a disputed bid for a third term. He won re-election in July. "We give them 15 days to surrender," Nkurunziza said of the armed gangs on Wednesday. "On the 15th [of June] we will put a stop to [the violence]. I came to tell you that we won't rest until security is restored." The government conducted a similar arms mop-up in the capital in November. Burundi police said in early May that more than 450 people had been killed in unrest that began a year ago. The United Nations says over 250,000 have fled the country since last April. A new round of peace talks between the government and its opponents aimed at ending the political crisis was launched in the Tanzanian city of Arusha in late May. Previous discussions in Burundi and Uganda over the past year collapsed or stalled. In Cambodia, a petition containing more than 170,000 thumbprints from people who express deep concerns over ongoing political turmoil is now being investigated by the government for possible fraud. Cambodia's Interior Minister Sar Kheng announced Thursday that the government is creating a working group to determine the authenticity of thousands of thumbprints attached to the petition the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) submitted to the Royal Palace on Monday. The CNRP said those who signed the petition want King Norodom Sihamoni, the country's largely symbolic king, to intervene in the ongoing political turmoil that some worry will plunge the country once more into violence. But now officials in the ruling party, which has been in power since 1979, say they will create a group that will conduct in-person interviews with people listed on the petition to determine whether they had, in fact, signed it themselves. Kheng said the working group would be named the "Investigation and Examination of Thumbprints Given by the Citizens to Petitions of the Cambodia National Rescue Party." Waste of money Yim Sovann, a CNRP spokesman, said the government is wasting resources that would be better spent on issues such as border protection and poverty reduction. "All these issues are the issues that we have to think about, while [the petition] is an issue between the people and the king," he said, adding that the petitioners were exercising their right to freedom of expression. Gen. Khieu Sopheak, Ministry of Interior spokesman, could not be reached for comment. On Wednesday, Sopheak told VOA Khmer that if CNRP officials are found to have submitted forged thumbprints, the party would be culpable for "immoral activities" and defrauding the monarchy. Meas Ny, a social development researcher, said the formation of the working group was an attempt to take revenge on the opposition party and would only make the situation more tense. "I think this is just a waste of taxpayer money, taxpayers like me, on a useless activity that [the government] thinks is a major issue," he said. Local tribal elders have secured the release of 17 passengers abducted by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan Wednesday evening. The people had been kidnapped as they traveled by bus from Balkh district of Sar-e-Pul province to the provincial capital. According to a press release from The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA, the passengers were from the Hazara community. Zabihullah Amani, the spokesman from the office of Sar-e-Puls governor, said the abductees were released Thursday night. Earlier this week, the Taliban had abducted almost 200 passengers from Kunduz province and executed 17 of them. UNAMAs press release had also condemned the spate of abductions, hostage-taking and summary executions carried out in recent days against passengers travelling in civilian vehicles. Several hundred protesters gathered in Kabul Thursday to demonstrate against Taliban abductions and killings. As Turkey reels from terror attacks, the fallout of Syria's civil war, and political and economic uncertainties, Turks abroad are thinking hard about taking traditional summer holidays back to their homeland. "I have not made a decision yet," said Doga Eralp, who teaches conflict resolution at American University in Washington, D.C. "There are political developments happening outside my will. I will decide accordingly. But I know at least two Turks who will not go to Turkey this summer." Nadya Uygun, an Armenian born in Turkey who lives in Naples, Florida, says that the combination of pressures on Turkish citizens make her reluctant to visit. "I no longer go there due to many reasons including my safety concerns, the rising racism in Turkey and my Armenian background," she said. "I am an outspoken Armenian, so I often find myself in trouble in Turkey. But I used to visit there once or even twice every year." More than 5 million Turkish citizens live outside the country, according to the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Going home 2016 may reverse the trend, but there has been a steady increase in the number of Turks visiting home in recent years, according to Basaran Ulusoy, president of the Istanbul-based Association of Turkish Travel Agencies. Ulusoy says returning Turks spent $5.8 billion when they visited in 2015, up from $3.8 billion in 2004. For many Turks living outside of Turkey, family ties in Turkey lure them home in summer. "But if I did not have family there, I would not go there that is certain" said Sinan Ciddi, a visiting professor at Georgetown University. "I am worried about my family every day." Halis Cadirci, a restaurant manager in Washington, D.C., says visiting Turks will be wary of traveling to cities along the Syrian border. "I will be staying in Istanbul, where the war or violence is not felt so intensely," said Cadirici, who plans to visit for two months. "But if I was to visit cities like Kilis, Gaziantep, or Maras, where IS activities are reportedly high, then I would have more doubts about whether I should go or not." Lezdar Kaplan, a post office employee in Stockholm, said there is a difference between visiting Turkey as a citizen of Turkey versus being a tourist. Kaplan grew up in Diyarbakir, a mostly Kurdish enclave in eastern Turkey where Turkish police are battling Kurdish insurgency. "It is my homeland," said Kaplan, who visited the region recently. "And I will go again on the first opportunity. But if I was to go there as a tourist, I too could have been scared." The threat of IS terror, though, is not only found along the border of Syria but in urban centers of Istanbul and Ankara where IS claimed responsibility for bombings in the last year. Kemal Ozmen, a financial adviser in Bucharest, Romania, says that staying away from places where jihadist violence is widespread can be difficult. "Islamic State activities clearly threaten everyone's safety in Turkey," said Ozmen, who may skip Turkey this year for another destination. "My biggest concern is the security of my family, so I would rather choose a holiday destination where I will feel my children are safe and sound." Tourism Tourism to Turkey has plummeted after a series of bombing attacks claimed by Islamic State (IS) and insurgent Kurds. Visitor traffic fell by a record 28 percent to 1.75 million in April, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Turkey is grappling with more than three million refugees, most of whom fled the civil war in Syria. And continuing diplomatic disputes with Russia have led to a crippling drop in trade. Meanwhile, political rows over the hard-line policies of the Turkish president including a crackdown on freedom of expression are gripping the nation. Countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel and Russia, have advised their citizens to avoid travel to southeastern Turkey. The U.S. Department of State has warned its citizens to avoid traveling, particularly to the Turkish cities near the Syrian border. At least 24 people were killed in clashes late Thursday in northern India when police tried to evacuate a park illegally inhabited by thousands of sect members. Two police officers were among those killed while attempting to expel around 3,000 followers of a semi-religious sect who had been illegally occupying the patch of land in the city of Mathura for two years. Hundreds of members of the Swadhin Bharat Vidhik Satyagrah group were arrested during the evacuation, which began after authorities won a court order to remove tents and makeshift wooden structures set up by the land occupiers. The squatters responded to the evacuation with gunfire, some of them shooting from treetops. Hand grenades were also thrown, according to local media. "The culprits will not be spared at any cost. The police had gone there to vacate land following court orders,'' said Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav of the state of Uttar Pradesh. The occupants were reportedly demanding lower gas prices and the "cancellation" of the election of various members of government. On social media, group members describe themselves as political revolutionaries inspired by Subhas Chandra Bose, an independence leader who went missing in a military operation in 1945. For most of the graduating class of 2016, the future is looking up. Research on U.S. college graduate employment conducted by the consulting firm Accenture shows that 21 percent of this year's college seniors accepted a job before graduating nearly double the figure from the previous two years. Additionally, a vast majority of them 88 percent are optimistic they will land a job in their field, up 23 points from 2015. "The grads are telling us they've really thought about what they want to do in the future," said David Smith, senior managing director of Accenture Strategy. "They've studied the job market, they've thought about careers. And they did that prior to entering colleges and universities." As a result of their pragmatism, Smith says, graduates are beginning to see their research pay off. But these improved numbers, which speak to both an overall improvement in the U.S. economy and a rise of graduates who report being underemployed, don't necessarily translate to greater opportunities for everyone. For international students, existing legal and social barriers can make entering the job market difficult. On the legal end, there's the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), established by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 1996. For the U.S. government, the program serves as a safety tool and fraud prevention mechanism. But for international students, it translates to limited work visa availability and strict employer requirements. Finding a visa sponsor New York University in downtown Manhattan enrolls more international students approximately 13,000 than any other U.S. institution. Across the state, nondomestic students contributed more than $3.7 billion in 2015, or $30.5 billion nationwide, according to data by NAFSA. But despite their contributions, both to the economy and on campus, many foreign-born students face greater hurdles when applying for their first job, according to NYU Assistant Professor of International Education Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng. "The first question that many employers will ask directly is, Are you authorized to work in the U.S.?'" Cherng said. He said U.S. regulations make it extremely difficult for a company to invest in an international graduate student. With the exception of students who have degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, international students are eligible to work for 12 months upon graduation on an F-1 visa, an optional practical training program. Any extension beyond that, such as a six-year maximum H1B visa, is both expensive and limited. "It costs anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 for a company to actually sponsor an H1B visa," Cherng said. "Depending on what your expertise is, they have to petition the U.S. government, [and] it's a high rejection rate." Hunan, China, native Bingqing Zhou, an MA graduate of NYU's International Education program, remembers the constant pressure she felt immediately after graduating. "You get your diploma and you are happy and then you find out that nobody sponsors you," Zhou explained. "They can get another employee easily without any sponsorship. Why would they bother to hire you?" English language, social capital Even after obtaining a green card in 2013, Zhou believes her opportunities remain limited, in part because English is her second language a frustration shared by many international students, including Fulbright scholar and NYU graduate student Arely Cordova, from Mexico. "For me, it takes longer to explain a complex idea, especially an abstract one, so it's very complicated," Cordova said. Although she plans to return to Mexico upon graduation her plan is to conduct research and create a support network for relatives of emigrants she says her time in the United States has taught her about the struggles that minorities face in the labor market, apart from language issues, such as building social capital and withstanding prejudice. "The system is built in a way that doesn't help minorities, and minorities have to work probably two or more [times] harder than others," Cordova said. "Sometimes, we are humans and we cannot face that challenge." Like Cordova, Zhou acknowledges that the hurdles she faces are difficult, but not insurmountable. When searching for a job, she says, it's important to remind herself that she has something unique to offer. "I think the major thing is to find your passion," Zhou said, "something that you have that other people don't." Ultimately, Zhou is determined to make her parents and friends proud, possibly as an international student adviser. "I'm close to my 30s," she said. "I want to show them that I can do this." Finding her confidence, Zhou explains, is as important as any other challenge in her quest to achieve personal success, i.e. the American Dream. Some Sunni tribes in Syria and Iraq, driven from their ancient lands by Islamic State (IS), are planning their return in a post-IS scenario. VOA has learned that dozens of tribes, whose ancestors date back to Biblical times, are waiting in Iraqi and Syrian areas outside of IS control, weighing strategies and hoping to return home more powerful than ever. "Arab tribes cannot do much currently, given that [IS] controls all aspects of life," Qussai Hwaidi, a Syrian activist who closely works with tribal leaders in IS-stronghold Raqqa, told VOA. "They can play a huge role in bringing peace and order once IS has been pushed back." IS is facing an onslaught as a U.S.-led coalition is backing Iraqi and foreign troops to drive them from the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Mosul. In Syria, Kurdish and Arab forces are moving toward the IS de-facto capital of Raqqa. Tribal leaders have been meeting with local authorities to map out plans. Tribes have had difficulties under IS rule, with some leaders fleeing and others left behind in IS territory. Allegiance or persecution Since the rise of IS, many Arab tribal leaders in Iraq and Syria have pledged allegiance to the group, fearing persecution and repression and hoping to remain on their lands. Those who have refused loyalty have faced persecution. In 2014, IS allegedly killed 700 members of a prominent Syrian tribe called al-Shaitat when the tribal leaders refused to pledge allegiance. IS tried to keep tribal differences in check as it established a networking infrastructure of the Diwan al-'Asha'ir (Council of Tribal Outreach), which is responsible for tribal affairs in Iraq and Syria. It prevented in-fighting among tribes while under IS control. "IS has successfully maneuvered conflicts among tribes," Hello Najat, the head of the Iraqi security office in the city of Kirkuk, told VOA. Earlier this year, clashes erupted between tribes in Iraq over how to detain people fleeing from IS territories. "They started shooting each other over why someone from Jbour [tribe] at checkpoints can arrest someone from Obeid [tribe] and vice versa," Najat said. "IS removed tribe members from the checkpoints and replaced them with foreign fighters to resolve the problem." Post-IS scenario The U.S. and its allies have trained and armed thousands of Sunni tribal members of Iraq and Syria in the last two years, but could not put together a cohesive tribal force. While Sunni tribes can be crucial to hold the traditionally Sunni areas after IS, their participation in the fight against IS also helps to bring an effective Sunni presence in the operation, Michael Knights, an Iraqi expert at the Washington Institute, told VOA. "We have to essentially recruit Sunni tribal members either directly into the armed forces like the [Iraqi] army and the federal police," he said. Alternately, he suggests that the U.S. should help develop them as a support group where the Iraqi army would carry the main fighting along with Kurdish Peshmerga forces. "The Sunni tribal forces will really be there to help to hold liberated areas and to provide a sort of Sunni face to the operation," Knights said. Ahmed Mahmood of the al-Hadidi tribe, one of the largest Sunni tribes in Iraq's Nineveh province, met last month with 25 leaders from other tribes to discuss their role in the liberation of the city of Mosul from IS militants. "We ask the president of Kurdistan region, Masoud Barzani, to support us in forming a tribal mobilization force to participate in the liberation of Mosul," said Mahmood, referring to the Iraqi Kurdish leader who has often called for preserving the rights of Sunni tribes. Non-Sunni groups in Iraq and Syria make efforts to mobilize those Sunni tribes and enlist them into their respective forces as a legitimization tool to attack IS-held Sunni territories, experts say. Sunni tribes, in return, demand control over their affairs and local security a call that will change the balance of power between them and their governments after IS. But analysts say only a consensus within the Shi'ite-dominated government in Baghdad can straighten out its strained relations with Sunni tribes. The central government will continue to govern the areas, but there needs to be negotiations on balance of power at all levels, Knights said. "There is no way the federal government is going to be completely excluded from any of the areas outside of the Kurdistan region, but it can change the way it operates in these places," he said. "Typically, they [tribes] don't want outsiders to come in policing them and arresting them." Astronomers thought they had a handle on how the universe ticks, but the cosmos may be toying with them. A team of astronomers has calculated that universe seems to be expanding faster than what scientists previously figured. If the new research is right, then science's basic understanding of what's been happening to the universe in the past 13.5 billion years after the Big Bang could be just a bit off kilter. "This is really an end-to-end test the universe gives us; it's sort of our final exam,'' said Nobel laureate and study lead author Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute. "We get a D-plus probably because things don't match up.'' Astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to measure the distance of 2,400 stars to calculate the rate the universe is expanding. The number they came up with is 5 to 9 percent faster than other scientifically accepted measurements that calculate the expansion rate based on cosmic background radiation from 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The new study was released Thursday by NASA and is to be published in The Astrophysical Journal. Either one set of calculations is wrong - which outside scientists say is the most likely possibility, though they can't find something wrong yet - or the expansion rate has speeded up since 13.5 billion years ago. And if that's the case, as Riess advocates, than our understanding of the universe is not quite right. It's as if we're looking for someone and we're in the right room, but looking at the wrong wall, said Riess, who won the 2011 Nobel in physics for proving in 1998 that the universe is expanding. So now Riess and many of the same scientists are trying to figure just where astronomy made a wrong turn. Riess and co-author Alex Filippenko of Berkeley said there are many possible explanations for why the universe is expanding faster now: It could be that there's a mystery particle, what scientists call a sterile neutrino, which hasn't been seen but could change calculations to make the cosmic calculations balance out. It could be that dark energy is increasing. It could be the universe is more curved than theorized. And it could be that Einstein's General Relativity just isn't quite right when we look at the whole universe. Or it could be the measurements are off. "There's potentially something very exciting, very interesting that the data is trying to tell us about the universe,'' Filippenko said. Both Princeton astrophysicist David Spergel and California Institute of Technology physicist Sean Carroll say while it's possible that we have to go back to the cosmological drawing board, it's far more likely that one of the two expansion rate measurements was calculated wrong somehow. "It's far too early to jump up and down to say the universe is messing with us,'' Carroll said, but then he added that both measurements were by solid and careful scientists. A seven-year-old Japanese boy who was abandoned by his parents in a forest last week has been found. Yamato Tanooka was discovered by chance Friday in a military hut by a soldier who was not part of the massive search party that had been looking for the youngster. Officials say the boy is in good condition and devoured rice cakes the soldier offered him. Yamato told authorities he walked the several kilometers to the empty hut in a military drill area. He said the door was unlocked and water from a faucet outside the hut was his only source of nourishment. He kept warm, he said, by sleeping between mattresses in the hut. The boy's father said he and his wife put the boy out of their car last Saturday on the main island of Hokkaido in a forest, known to have bears, to teach him a lesson because he had misbehaved, throwing rocks at cars and people. The boy's parents said, however, when they returned a few minutes later they could not find him. Originally, the parents told police they were out hiking and gathering wild vegetables when their son became lost. The tale of the missing boy has mesmerized Japan and the parents have been brutalized on social media. A most apologetic father appeared on Japanese television after the boy was recovered. "We have raised him with love all along," said the father, Takayuki Tanooka, bowing deeply and fighting back tears. "We went too far." He vowed to do a better job as a father. The elder Tanooka said he told his son he was "sorry for causing him such pain." The boy's disappearance has opened a debate in Japan about its child-rearing practices. Mitsuko Tateishi, an author and educator, says Japan remains behind the West in protecting children. She said she doubts any action will be taken against the boy's parents. The head of Thailands military-dominated junta, Prayuth Chan-ocha has defended seizing power two years ago to avoid further unrest or even civil war. Prayuth, who, as army commander-in-chief, led a bloodless coup in May 2014 and has since become prime minister, Friday told those attending a regional security summit, I can assure you that Thailand will return to democracy. The military takeover, which ousted a weakened civilian government, was needed to put the country on the track of reform and prevent further damage to the economy of the kingdom which had lost equilibrium. The junta remains in power at a time of continuing concern about the health of highly-revered King Bhumibol, who at 88, is the world's longest reigning monarch. He has spent nearly all of his recent years in a Bangkok hospital. Rebutting international criticism of the juntas sweeping power and clamping down on civil liberties, Prayuth said, We do not have any intention to violate human rights ...all of our measures have been based on the rule of law. Overseen by the junta, a new constitution has been drafted and is to be voted on by the people in August, but debate about the charter criticized across the domestic political spectrum is muzzled. Prayuth recently stated that a rejection of the constitution would delay elections for a new government and that he might have to remain in power despite how much you hate me. Thailand, a reliable U.S. military ally during the Cold War era and Vietnam War, under the current military junta, has had warming security and trade ties with both China and Russia following Washingtons criticism of the coup and its explicit concerns about repression of rights and the lack of a quick restoration of democracy. Thailand and other small and medium-sized countries are avoiding the trap of having to choose sides, said Prayuth. His speech at the opening dinner of the gathering, better known as the Shangri-La Dialogue, is a prelude to the annual main event here, the sometimes acrimonious exchanges between senior military officials of the United States and China. Official delegations, security analysts and academics from more than 50 countries on Saturday will parse the remarks of U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Admiral Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the general staff of the Peoples Liberation Army, or PLA, about Chinas militarization of the disputed islets in the South China Sea. Sun, who is in charge of international relations for the PLA, on Friday was said to have met separately with security officials from eight nations ahead of the Asia Security Summit. The talks come amid increasing nervousness among most ASEAN members about what is perceived as increasingly aggressive actions and militarization of the Paracels and Spratlys. The moves have been seen as the primary catalysts for the Vietnamese and the Americans former enemies to bridge closer security ties, underscored by U.S. President Barack Obamas visit last month to Vietnam, which also has conflicting maritime territorial claims with China. Beijing accuses the United States of militarizing the South China Sea with its increasing freedom of navigation passages in the sea and overflights. This conference in Singapore comes just ahead of an international arbitration ruling on the Philippines claims against Chinas maritime claims. Beijing has already indicated it will not abide by The Hague tribunals findings and regards the process as illegitimate. An influential U.S. lawmaker, Republican Senator John McCain, who chairs the Senates Armed Services Committee, said in Singapore on Friday that there could be consequences should Beijing make good on its threat to reject the U.N. court ruling. The senator urged states in the region to back Washingtons statements that The Hagues findings should be binding. America and the world are counting on the nations of Southeast Asia to recommit their power and resolve to upholding this system on which our shared security and prosperity depend, McCain said in a speech at Nanyang Technological University. International lawyers do not expect the tribunal to actually rule on the legality of the Chinese nine-dash line encompassing the major part of the South China Sea claimed by Beijing, said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor of politics at the University of New South Wales. Thayer, at the Shangri-La Dialogue, in response to a query from VOA News about concerns China is poised to declare an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea, said, Theres no capability for China to carry it out ...theyre just playing mind games. An ADIZ is an area, publicly announced, extending beyond national territory where unidentified aircraft face interrogation via radio and could be intercepted for identification prior to crossing into sovereign airspace. In 2013, China imposed an ADIZ in the East China Sea covering Japanese-controlled islands, known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese. Travels: Paris, France; Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; and Beijing, China. June 2-4: In Paris for discussions on Middle East peace, including the Counter-ISIL Coalition efforts in Iraq and Syria. In Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, where Kerry will meet with senior government officials, host a town hall with young leaders, attend a traditional Mongolian cultural festival. June 5-7: In Beijing, China, Kerry and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew to attend the eighth U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED), where discussions will focus on a range of bilateral, regional and global areas of immediate and long-term economic and strategic interest. Kerry and Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong will also meet for the seventh annual U.S.-China Consultation on People-to-People Exchange (CPE), which promotes people-to-people ties between the two countries in the fields of education, culture, science and technology, sports, womens issues and health. The CPE will be held concurrently with the S&ED. Source: U.S. State Department U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday that both Israel and the Palestinians needed to take immediate steps to demonstrate the will to seek lasting peace. We need to find some immediate kinds of steps on the ground that will make a difference, Kerry told reporters in Paris. Everybody agreed today that you cant impose a solution from outside and you need to have direct negotiations." Ministers from more than 20 countries who gathered in Paris welcomed Frances offer to coordinate efforts to convene an international conference by year's end. Neither Israel nor the Palestinians attended. "A negotiated two-state solution is the only way to achieve an enduring peace, with two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security," conference participants said in a joint communique after their meeting. Participants underscored that the status quo was not sustainable. "Actions on the ground, in particular continued acts of violence and ongoing settlement activity, are dangerously imperiling the prospects for a two-state solution," the communique said. Participants discussed possible ways in which the international community could help advance the prospects for peace, including by providing meaningful incentives to the parties to make peace and end the Israeli occupation that began in 1967. Hollande approach French President Francois Hollande called on Israel and the Palestinians to "make the courageous choice of peace" as he opened Friday's conference. "The discussion on the conditions of a lasting agreement between Israelis and Palestinians must take into account the whole of the region," he said. Hollande said international powers should play a key role in facilitating the peace process, but that ultimately it would be up to the two sides to work out their differences. "The threats and priorities have changed. The changes make it even more urgent to find a solution to the conflict, and this regional upheaval creates new obligations for peace," he said. Washington's response to the French effort has been tepid, with Kerry agreeing to attend simply to listen to ideas proposed by France and others. Still, senior U.S. officials stressed the sense of urgency about working toward a negotiated two-state solution. "We're not here to propose any kind of specific agenda," a senior State Department official said. "While the U.S. is open-minded about ideas, we haven't made any decisions about what, if any, our role would be in that initiative going forward." Despite the recent escalation in violence between Israelis and Palestinians and their absence at the conference, the swearing in Monday of ultranationalist Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who said he supported a two-state solution, has provided a glimmer of hope. After a meeting that included U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday, Kerry told reporters he would possibly be open to holding an international conference later this year with Israeli and Palestinian representatives in attendance, but he cautioned that the talks were just getting started and that such a meeting was far from set in stone. "We'll see. We'll have that conversation. We have to know where it's going, what's happening. We're just starting let's get into the conversations," he said while shuffling between meetings. Poor prospects Experts caution that the chances of a genuinely open-minded discussion are dim. "I think June 3rd could produce something in terms of moving the process forward," regional expert Natan Sachs of the Brookings Institution told VOA. "There's a lot of will, especially among the powers the U.S. and now France to get something going. They might get Israel to acquiesce somewhat to this kind of idea, but [the likelihood of] a major breakthrough, a major movement in the peace process that remains quite low." Sachs noted that the Israelis rejected the idea of an international conference because it was viewed as one that was intent on imposing a solution upon them. The French-led peace initiative included ministers and delegates from the so-called Middle East Quartet (the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations) and the Arab League. On the sprawling estate of the nation's first U.S. president at Mount Vernon, Virginia, 100 people raise their right hands and pledge allegiance to their new country. It's the final step in a naturalization process that has taken some of them years to complete. "I am very, very, very happy," said Maha Rafeh, an Egyptian native. Her smile is framed by a green hijab artfully draped over her head, and she waves a small American flag. Nearby, her son and daughter capture every second of this life-changing moment on cellphones. Rafeh has been working toward this for 10 years. "I can't imagine I reach this moment, now after hard time," she said. This naturalization ceremony is the last step in the process for people born outside the United States and seeking to become Americans. The event is held to swear in green card holders who have fulfilled specific requirements set by Congress: a command of the English language and knowledge of U.S. government and history, biometric scanning, and about $680 in fees. After these candidates, hailing from 53 countries, take the oath of allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, an actress playing Martha Washington the country's first first lady offers greetings and tea to some of the newly minted Americans. They and their loved ones celebrate the milestone with hugs and kisses, taking snapshots set against the backdrop of first President George Washington's home, just south of the nation's capital. Such ceremonies take place across the country throughout the year. In 2015, nearly 730,000 residents were naturalized, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS. "Compared to last year, USCIS has seen an increase in naturalization applications," Jim McKinney, public affairs officer for USCIS, told VOA by email. In an election year where the issue of immigration has been brought to the forefront, McKinney would not speculate on the reason for the increase. "Application numbers ebb and flow from year to year, and even within the year," he said. Rights, responsibilities Among these new citizens is a palpable sense of their newfound rights and responsibilities. For Friederike Kaiser, who comes from Canada, U.S. politics was of great interest before she was even in the country. "Being able to vote is something I'm really looking forward to," she said. The wife of a U.S. serviceman, she says she has been following the presidential race closely and considering the candidates. "It's been a really interesting election cycle already, and it's just beginning," she said. "We still have a long way to go before November." For Magalia Letlow, originally from Guyana, a chance to have a say on how the government is run is also a priority, along with better employment opportunities. "Being able to get more jobs, that's the best thing, that more doors are going to be open for me," she said. Many information technology and government jobs require U.S. citizenship. A government job was, in fact, Romel Gayagoy's path to citizenship. Born in the Philippines and brought up in Miami, Florida, he serves in the U.S. military. Most naturalization applicants have to spend at least five years as permanent residents, but members of the U.S. armed forces and recently discharged service members can obtain U.S. citizenship more quickly. For Gayagoy, it made sense to use the expedited track while serving the country he calls home. "I feel like I've been a U.S. citizen for a long time, but this seals the deal," said the officer, dressed in his Army uniform. "It's an honor." Egyptian-American Rafeh giggles as she shows off her naturalization certificate the proof that she is now entitled to the same benefits as anyone born in the U.S. Along with her excitement for the day is a profound appreciation for what she sees as a sense of order in the U.S. "Everyone follows the law. Everyone respects the law." When asked, however, what she loves most about the U.S., her excitement wells up again: "Everything." WATCH: 100 New US Citizens Are Sworn In A jury in Minnesota has found three Somali-Americans guilty on all charges of conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State militant group. U.S. federal prosecutors had accused Mohamed Farah, Guled Omar and Abdirahman Daud, all in their early 20s, of planning to travel to Syria to fight for IS. The full indictment can be read here. The men were also found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder overseas, a charge that carries the possibility of life in prison. The defendants, who will be sentenced at a later date, showed little emotion when listening to the verdict. The case captured the attention of Minnesota's Somali-American community, which has seen about a dozen of its members join Islamic State, a few years after losing about 20 young men to Somalia-based al-Shabab. Farah, Omar and Daud are among a group of Somali-American men the FBI tracked for a period of months starting in March 2014. That month, a member of the group aroused suspicion when he applied for an expedited passport to travel to Turkey, but was unable to answer basic questions about his planned trip. The case relied heavily on audio recordings made by a friend of the men, Abdirahman Bashir, who turned into an FBI informant. Bashir told the court that the FBI paid him over $100,000 for his cooperation. Bashir, who had also once plotted with the defendants to join Islamic State, cried when he testified in court against his former friends. Two other men who pled guilty to the charges, Abdullahi Yusuf and Abdirizak Warsame, also testified against their former friends. Defense lawyers tried to counter the testimonies by arguing the FBI informant entrapped the defendants, encouraging them to engage in the incriminating recorded conversations. The defense witnesses included one of the defendants, Guled Omar, who told the jury that the men were not serious when they were recorded talking about traveling to Syria. "We all boast," he said. The other two co-defendants, Mohamed Farah and Abdurahman Daud, decided not to testify. Parents worry about prejudice In giving the case to the jury Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis told the group of seven women and five men to reach a just verdict, to rely on evidence and to conduct their deliberations without prejudice. Still, the parents of the defendants questioned if the all-white jury could give the men a fair hearing. These are white jurors, no Somali, no black person, no Muslims. Anyone who heard the case, on the air, will be scared when they hear terrorists; these people are susceptible when it comes to terrorism, Farhiya Mohamud, mother of Daud, told VOA's Somali service. She said she had confidence in the lawyers but added, "Whatever happens is Allahs will." Ayan Farah, mother of Mohamed Farah, said that if the jury finds her son guilty, she will continue to press his case in court. Until we get justice, we will not give up. We are allowed to take appeals three times, and we will go all the way to the Supreme Court," she said. "But if it ends here, and our kids are let go and they come home, that is all we want. It's nearly the start of summer in the U.S. vacation time for families and breeding time for mosquitoes, including the one that carries the Zika virus. Dr. Tom Frieden, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says much can be done to prevent the spread of Zika in the U.S., particularly in the south, if Congress would only provide the money. "We need a robust response to protect American women and reduce, to the greatest extent humanly possible, the number of families affected. We don't know who those children will be. We don't know where they will grow up, but anything we don't do now, we will regret not having done later," he said. Frieden and other top doctors say Zika would not be a major threat except that it causes serious birth defects, including microcephaly, which literally means "small head." "When a child is born with microcephaly, it's not because the skull was malformed, it's because the virus destroyed the brain cells, and the skull collapsed around the demolished brain," Frieden said. Some lawmakers say there's no evidence the virus will spread in the U.S. like it has in Latin America and the Caribbean. Dengue, a similar virus, has spread in the southern part of the western hemisphere, but, aside from a few cases in Florida and Texas, it has not spread from one person to another in the U.S. Worst nightmare That's small comfort to Dr. Peter Hotez, a pediatrician and chief of the Baylor College of Medicine National School of Tropical Medicine. "Microcephaly," he said, "is every parent's worst nightmare." In early February, U.S. President Barack Obama asked Congress for $1.9 billion for emergency funds to fight Zika. Before Congress left for a spring break in late May, it had not allocated any money, although the Senate has approved $1.1 billion toward mosquito extermination and research, including the development of a vaccine, and the House has agreed to $622 million. Some congressional leaders have called the request "a slush fund." Frieden told reporters that a three-month delay in funding an epidemic can cause it to grow exponentially. He defended his agency's requested budget and said that, in the interim, the CDC has been forced to take money away from programs to fight Ebola in West Africa, and from the states' emergency funds that provide health services to victims of flooding and other catastrophes. Dr. Edward McCabe, medical director of the March of Dimes, told VOA, "My concern is that people won't start getting worried about Zika virus in the U.S. until we start seeing babies with microcephaly and other birth defects." Pressing Congress Since February, top U.S. doctors have pressed Congress for Zika funding. Frieden and the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, have testified before House and Senate committees about the need for emergency funds to fight Zika, as have others. In April, the CDC held a summit with state and local officials ahead of the virus' anticipated arrival in the U.S. Doctors from various organizations representing city, county and state public health agencies have made the point that they lack the money to wage an effective fight against the Zika virus. Frieden said the greatest emotion he feels about preparing for the Zika virus is frustration. "Imagine that you're standing by and you see someone drowning, and you have the ability to stop them from drowning, but you can't. Now multiply that by a thousand or a hundred thousand. That's what it feels like to know how to change the course of an epidemic and not be able to do it," Frieden said. When Congress returns from a two-week break June 6, the debate over Zika funding will continue. U.S. President Barack Obama, using his last commencement address as president, offered the graduating cadets of the U.S. Air Force Academy life lessons he has learned about national security and foreign policy over the past seven years. In Colorado Springs, Colorado, Obama on Thursday urged the more than 800 new Air Force officers not to pull back from U.S. engagement and leadership in the world. "We can't be isolationists. It's not possible in this globalized, interconnected world," he said. "In these uncertain times, it's tempting sometimes to try to pull back and wash our hands from conflicts that seem intractable, let other countries fend of themselves." While never mentioning the contentious primary election season, Obama's comments were a veiled swipe at presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has called for, among other things, building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and assessing America's commitment to NATO. "We cannot turn inward," Obama said. "We cannot give in to isolationism. Thats a false comfort." Diplomacy, treaties He reminded the graduates that U.S. military force alone can't solve all problems, and stressed the need for diplomacy and treaties. "Weve got to draw on every tool, all elements of our national power," Obama said. "That is how we won the Cold War -- not just with the strength of our arms, [but] with the power of our ideas, the power of our example." Treaties, such as the one that established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or those that limit conventional and nuclear weapons, "help keep us safe," Obama said, saying one of the most effective ways for the U.S. to lead in world affairs. "On just about every issue, the world looks to us to set the agenda," he said. "Here is a fact: The United States of America remains the most powerful nation on Earth and a force for good. ... "When there is a problem around the world, they do not call Beijing or Moscow. They call us," Obama said. He also told the academy graduates that the U.S. military "is the most capable fighting force on the planet." His comments were directed at Republican critics who have said the military has been diminished under his leadership. Despite what he called the most peaceful and prosperous era in history, Obama said there are serious threats facing the U.S.: terrorist networks, the Islamic State group, Russia, disputes in the South China Sea, North Korean nuclear threats and Iran. 'Challenge of your generation' All these "are testing an international order that we built, where the sovereignty of nations is respected and all nations abide by the same rules," the president said. How to meet these threats while also seizing the incredible opportunities of this moment in history, that is going to be your challenge, the challenge of your generation." Of the academy's 812 graduates, Air Force officials said 345 are going to train as pilots, and another 60 will train to operate remotely piloted aircraft, such as drones, which have become a central tool of U.S. counterterrorism efforts. It said about a quarter of the class is female. Earlier this year, Obama delivered commencement addresses at Howard University and Rutgers University. Earlier in the day Thursday, one of the U.S. Air Force's Thunderbird team planes crashed after flying over the graduation ceremony. Authorities say the pilot was unharmed after ejecting safely from the plane. Obama later met briefly with the pilot. The president's commencement address occurred the same day the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, sharply criticized Trump's foreign policy, saying, "He is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility." Trump later claimed that Clinton "made up" his foreign policy. The U.S. military has announced several counterterrorism strikes in Yemen that were previously unreported and that killed a total of 15 al-Qaida militants. That brings the total number of U.S. counterterrorism strikes in Yemen this year to nine, according to the Pentagon. Col. Pat Ryder, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command which overseas military operations across the Middle East, told reporters Friday one of the airstrikes occurred May 19 in the Shabwah Governorate of central Yemen. A February 3 strike in the same governorate killed six al-Qaida operatives. Two other strikes, one in February and one in March, targeted al-Qaida militants in eastern and central Yemen. Ryder said al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, remains a significant threat. He added the disclosure of the strikes was part of a decision by the military to be more transparent, particularly when the military has been highlighting strikes in Iraq and Syria. Going forward, our intent is to do this similar kind of thing, he said. The spokesman said delays might occur for future strike announcements to allow for intelligence gathering and operation assessment. Sometimes the chatter that comes after the strike allows us to collect more intelligence on adversaries and conduct future strikes, Ryder said. Intelligence officials have long considered AQAP as the most dangerous of the al-Qaida affiliates. In 2010, AQAP attempted to send explosive-laden packages to the U.S. The year before, it sent Nigerian-born Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to detonate a bomb hidden in his underwear on a Northwest Airlines flight. South Sudan's President Salva Kiir, First Vice President and former rebel leader Riek Machar, and Vice President James Wani Igga met this week to talk about the remaining stumbling blocks impeding full implementation of the peace agreement. William Ezekiel, undersecretary of the National Committee for Information, said the three leaders discussed the demilitarization of Juba City, cantonment sites for SPLA-In Opposition forces in the three regions of Upper Nile, Equatoria and Bahr El Ghazal, and the dispute over the 28 states that Kiir unilaterally created last year. Ezekiel said the leaders will form a national committee to study proposed states and borders that are mutually agreeable. "After agreeing on the number of states, a technical committee will be established to identify borders between the states, Ezekiel said. They will work in consultation with the community-based groups. They will work also with chiefs [and] with relevant bodies of major interest to this." Ezekiel said the committee is to report back to the leaders within 30 days with a recommendation on the number of states and their borders. The committee is made up of 15 members: four from the SPLM, three from the SPLM-In Opposition, one from the former detainees, two from the political parties and three from the Troika countries of the United States, Britain and Norway. Tanzania and South Africa will also contribute two members. Ezekiel said SPLM-IO officials are eager to resolve the matter of Kiir's 28 states, which were carved out of the existing 10 states after the peace agreement was signed in August 2015. "It is a positive step forward in the implementation of the peace agreement, Ezekiel said. This issue of 28 states has been widely regarded not only inside South Sudan, but up to [the] international level as a major violation to the peace agreement." The three leaders agreed to form the Transitional National Legislative Assembly and are expected to meet again Friday to continue their discussions on other thorny issues pertaining to full implementation of the peace agreement and the work of the Transitional Government of National Unity, which was formed in April. The United States and other western countries have roundly criticized the Transitional Government of National Unity's failure to fully implement the August peace agreement. Punches, and at least one egg, were thrown outside the venue where Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican U.S. presidential candidate, was holding a campaign rally Thursday night in San Jose, California. Several hundred demonstrators and Trump supporters clashed before and after the rally. Police dressed in riot gear formed lines to try to keep the two sides apart. Protesters jumped on cars and threw traffic cones and water bottles at police. Others snatched hats -- with Trump's campaign slogan "Make America Great Again" -- from his supporters and set the items on fire. And one female Trump supporter, who was videotaped taunting protesters, was cornered and pelted with an egg. Police said there were no immediate reports of injuries and no major property damage, The Associated Press reported. Local media, however, reported several dozen fistfights had broken out and noted several people were seen with bloody wounds. Four people were taken into custody, according to the AP, but police had not released final numbers late Thursday. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, a supporter of Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, criticized the Republican candidate for igniting problems in cities that local police departments have to deal with. "At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign," Liccardo said. Inside the rally, Trump revved the crowd up by saying to stop illegal drugs from coming into the United States from the south, he would build a wall on the U.S. border and have Mexico pay the bill. "We are going to build that wall, don't even think about it," he said as his supporters chanted "build that wall." Debbie Tracey, a U.S. Navy veteran from San Jose, told the AP she is a Trump supporter and supported his calls for a wall on the border. "I'll go help build the wall because if you are going to come to this country, land of opportunity, you should be here legally," she said. The rally took place hours after Clinton gave a scathing speech in San Diego where she said Trump was "unfit" to serve as president. Protests have become more common at Trump events. Last month in New Mexico, protesters clashed with police, dozens were arrested last week in San Diego after Trump held a rally, and the candidate canceled a rally in Chicago in March after clashes between his supporters and protesters. A survey by an independent Moscow-based polling agency has found that Russians believe their country has a trio of main enemies the United States, Ukraine and Turkey, in that order. The findings of the Levada Center poll, conducted among 2,400 people across Russia May 20-23, contain little new data other than Turkey's inclusion in the top enemies list. Until recently, a majority of Russians viewed Turkey either neutrally or positively. According to polling data going back a number of years, the United States has long been seen by a considerable part of the Russian population as a potential threat and a source of global evil. The Levada Centers poll found that the level of anti-American and anti-European sentiment in Russia is now higher than it was before Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in early 2014, but lower than it was at the start of 2015. The polling agency found that negative attitudes toward Ukraine have increased, with 48 percent naming it as one of the five nations most hostile to Russia, up from 37 percent in 2015. The number of respondents who named Turkey as one of the five most hostile countries jumped to 29 percent in the latest poll, up from just 1 percent in 2015. Last November, Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet it said had crossed into its airspace, despite warnings. The United States rating remained basically unchanged: 72 percent of the respondents in the latest poll named it one of the five nations most hostile to Russia, down slightly from 73 percent in 2015. Aggressive propaganda blamed Belarus, Kazakhstan and China were named as the top three countries most friendly to Russia (although Chinas rating dropped from 43 percent in 2015 to 34 percent in the latest poll), followed by India, Armenia and Cuba. Syria came in seventh place, but its friendly rating showed the greatest increase (from 2 percent of the respondents last year to 10 percent in the latest poll). The Levada poll also found that support for Russia joining the European Union has dropped dramatically over the last seven years. In 2009, 53 percent of respondents said they supported Russia becoming an EU member and 21 percent opposed it. In the latest poll, 56 percent said they were against Russia joining the EU, while only 24 percent supported it. The director of the Levada Center, Lev Gudkov, told VOA that the results of this poll show the impact of an extraordinary and extremely aggressive anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian propaganda" campaign that started after popular protests ousted Ukraines Russia-backed president, Viktor Yanukovych, in early 2014. According to Gudkov, Russias leadership has a "paranoid fear" of color revolutions like Georgias 2003 Rose Revolution and Ukraines 2004 Orange Revolution. Thus, the aim of Moscow's anti-Ukrainian propaganda campaign was not only to discredit Yanukovych's successors, but to subvert the liberal, democratic values that motivated those who participated in the protests that led to his ouster, said Gudkov. Another aim of the anti-Ukrainian propaganda is to discredit Russia's democratic opposition, he said. Spreading fear The efforts to discredit Ukraines pro-Western government and Russias democratic opposition, said Gudkov, have been accompanied by an extremely powerful and, in its own way, effective anti-American campaign" that is still being carried out via Russia's TV channels daily. We see the results of this: more than 70 percent (of respondents) expressed clear hostility toward the United States," he said. With Russia's economy faltering, the Kremlin needs to have an external enemy in order to mobilize Russian society, because a crisis is approaching and the regime does not feel very confident, despite all the high ratings and demonstrative support of the population," Gudkov said. That is why the authorities are trying to create an atmosphere in which the Russian public feels the country is on the brink of war, he added. Yevgeniy Magda, director of the Center for Public Affairs, a Kyiv-based research institution, said Russian government propaganda has a significant impact on Russian society. There is a certain dependence of public opinion on the national media, which is centralized in Russia, and which, as a rule, expresses a uniform position on key issues concerning Ukraine, Magda told VOA. The results from the Levada Centers polls, he said, show just how potent an effect this unified propaganda machine has. Still, Magda added that this situation could change radically in a few years, as a result of pluralization of the press and democratic processes" inside Russia. Five soldiers are dead and four others remain missing after their vehicle was overturned in a flooded creek at Fort Hood Army base, military officials in Texas said. Three bodies were found soon after the two-ton truck was overtaken by the swift current of Owl creek during morning exercises Thursday. Two more bodies were found late Thursday. The army withheld the names of the soldiers pending notification of relatives. Army aircraft, canine units, and swift water rescue boats continue the search for four more soldiers who were also in the truck. The Light Medium Tactical Vehicle, as it's called, resembles a flatbed truck with a walled bed and is used to carry troops. Three soldiers were rescued and are currently hospitalized in stable condition. Fort Hood, 320 kilometers northwest of Houston, has seen a dramatic increase in rainfall over the past few days. Flooding caused by heavy rains in and around Houston, Texas, in mid-April resulted in at least eight deaths and damage to more than 1,000 homes. Severe weather and flooding over the past weekend left at least four other people dead as well. Officials are preparing for the possibility of more floods, as the hurricane season officially began June 1. As Sudans South Kordofan province prepares to mark the fifth anniversary of war on Sunday, the U.N. refugee agency reports thousands of people continue to flee the region, with no let-up in sight. Most are heading for South Sudan. In the lead-up to South Sudans Independence in 2011, conflict erupted between Sudans government and a rebel movement, the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement-North. The U.N. refugee agency reports the problems that were pushing people to flee their homes back then continue to this day. UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said so far this year, more than 7,500 refugees have crossed the border to Yida in South Sudans Unity State already home to some 70,000 refugees. He said thousands more are expected to arrive in the coming weeks as the conflict in South Kordofan intensifies. From the refugees, we are hearing of escalating violence, a talk of ground attacks, aerial bombings," he said. "The recent arrivals are also citing lack of food, no access to schools for their children. This seems to be especially acute in and around the Um Doreein area. Most people are either arriving by trucks; some are coming on by foot, or by bicycle many traveling for about a week or so to reach there. Refugees are reporting the conflict in South Kordofan has shifted to the northeast and some people have become trapped and are unable to escape. The UNHCR said nearly 90 percent of those arriving in South Sudan are women and children. It added that a high number of children have become separated from their families during flight. The agency said the refugees are being transferred from Yida to a refugee camp in Adoung Thok. It said the camp, which was established in 2013, is badly overstretched so, a new refugee camp is being set up nearby to accommodate new arrivals. Swaziland's King Mswati III is set to become the next chairman of the Southern African Development Community at the regional heads of state and government summit to be held in Swaziland's capital, Mbabane, in August. But the kingdom's pro-democracy groups say the country's absolute monarch should not be allowed to lead the regional body. They argued the king's administration continuously violates the fundamental rights of citizens by preventing freedom of speech and association. King Mswati recently told an SADC parliamentary forum that the kingdom's monarchical democracy which his administration established is "a new democratic ideology that works." Political parties are banned from participating in elections organized by the Swaziland Electoral Commission the only institution mandated to organize official polls in the southern African kingdom. Mario Masuku, leader of the banned People's United Democratic Movement, a pro-democracy group, said King Mswati's imminent chairmanship of the regional body makes a mockery of the tenets of democracy. It is a shame for SADC to have a chairman of the character and caliber of King Mswati, who is an absolute monarch who does not respect the fundamental rights of people, [and] who does not respect the international norms of democracy," Masuku said. Supporters of the administration say it is a source of pride for Swazis for King Mswati to assume the rotating chairmanship of the SADC. They also say violence carried out by pro-democracy groups has undermined peace and security in the country. Masuku says people supporting the king do so only because they are benefiting from the status quo. "Swaziland has been divided into two sections of society, Masuku said. One society is the one that benefits from the corrupt and unscrupulous manner of governance, and those will always back whatever the monarchy says because they benefit. The rest are the poor, the unemployed and all the people that respect the fundamental human rights." The government plans to buy new cars for use by visiting heads of state and government when Swaziland hosts the Southern African Development Community meeting in August. But pro-democracy groups say the planned purchases, which they estimate at more than $11 million, reflect misplaced government priorities. Presumptive Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump reacted strongly Thursday night to the blistering foreign policy speech Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton delivered earlier in the day in which she attacked Trump, saying he "is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility." "My temperament is so much tougher, so much better than hers," Trump countered in his evening address in San Jose, California. He said "Lyin', Crooked Hillary" had "made up" his foreign policy. Hours before Trump's speech, Clinton emphasized her own experience as first lady, senator and secretary of state, saying she would provide the steady diplomacy the country needs. She said, "It's not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin." In response, the billionaire mogul said of Clinton's speech it was "hard to stay awake" during her address, adding Clinton could make a lot of money if she delivered speeches to insomniacs. With public opinion polls showing terrorism as a major concern among Americans, Clinton targeted Trump's positions on the issue. Trump vs. Clinton Trump has promised to temporarily block Muslims from crossing U.S. borders. "The struggle against radical Islam also takes place in our homeland. There are scores of recent migrants inside our borders charged with terrorism. For every case known to the public, there are dozens more. We must stop importing extremism through senseless immigration policies," Trump said in a foreign policy speech in April. Trump's other anti-terrorism proposals include a pledge to torture and murder the families of suspected terrorists and target Islamic State. "I have a simple message for them," Trump said. "Their days are numbered. I won't tell them where and I won't tell them how. But they will be gone. And soon." But Clinton said Trump's presidency would have the opposite effect. A Trump presidency would embolden ISIS, she said referring to the group also known as Islamic State. Security concerns "National security is the foundation of how we make sure our interests are pursued in the world, said Louis Goodman, Emeritus Dean of International Relations at American University in an interview with VOA. The two presidential candidates have presented very different approaches to terrorism, which experts like Goodman believe would likely produce different results. While Donald Trump is making statements that push people away from us and make it difficult for our allies to cooperate with us, Hillary Clinton is consistently reaching out to our allies and trying to get them to cooperate so we can work together and stop this criminal behavior thats called terrorism. And I fear that a practice or policies like those Trump is articulating will increase terrorism. If Donald gets his way, theyll be celebrating in the Kremlin, Clinton said. We cannot let that happen. Clinton's speech comes five days before California holds its Democratic primary, which is expected to give her the delegates she needs to capture her party's presidential nomination even though several polls show the race getting tighter in California. Democratic rival Bernie Sanders has been campaigning vigorously there. Twenty-three people were arrested Thursday on charges related to the alleged illegal financing of the political party that carried former President Otto Perez Molina to power, Guatemalan authorities said. National Civil Police spokesman Jorge Aguilar said more arrests were expected. Judge Miguel Angel Galvez said 45 arrest orders have been issued against business executives and former government officials. Perez Molina and his former vice president, Roxana Baldetti, are in jail awaiting trial in multiple corruption cases. Thursday's arrests have to do with the alleged financing of the Patriot Party in exchange for favors. A United Nations-backed commission is working with local prosecutors to root out corruption in Guatemala. An elite U.S. Navy pilot was killed Thursday in one of two separate crashes of military jets. The Navy flier died when he failed to eject from his Blue Angels F-18 fighter jet during a practice flight for an air show near Nashville, Tennessee. The jet crashed as the pilot was taking off. No one on the ground was hurt. The Navy is releasing no other details at this time. Also Thursday, President Barack Obama met with the pilot of a U.S. Air Force Thunderbird jet that crashed shortly after a flyover for the president's Air Force Academy graduation speech in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The pilot ejected from the plane and was not seriously hurt. The jet crashed into a field and no one on the ground was injured. The White House says Obama met with the pilot at Peterson Air Force Base, expressing his relief that the flier was safe and thanking him for his service to the Air Force. The cause of the crash is under investigation. A new report from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva said the situation in eastern Ukraine remains volatile two years into the war between Russian-backed armed separatists and the government. The latest U.N. figures show nearly 9,400 people have been killed and more than 21,500 others wounded since the conflict began in mid-April 2014. U.N. monitors said active fighting has decreased; but, they warn, the Minsk peace agreement is fragile and the situation could develop into a protracted conflict or escalate again. They said both scenarios would have dire consequences for the civilian population and be harmful to human rights for many years. U.N. Human Rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told VOA there is a worrying increase in heavy weaponry near the contact line, which borders the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine and the government-controlled area. There have been strongly credible reports of servicemen from across the border from Russia coming into and out of Ukrainian territory," she said. "And, the same goes for heavy weaponry as well. There have been very credible reports. The report accuses the armed rulers of eastern Ukraine of widespread human rights violations and abuses. It says 2.7 million civilians living under their control have no freedom of expression, assembly and association. Enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment are deeply entrenched practices, according to the report. Shamdasani said the U.N. has documented several cases of conflict-related sexual violence. The majority of the allegations suggest that the threats of rape and other forms of sexual violence are used as a method of torture and ill-treatment during detention during the arbitrary or illegal detention both toward men and toward women," she said. "And the threats of sexual violence toward female relatives are often used to compel male detainees to confess or to relinquish their property. U.N. investigators found that impunity in eastern Ukraine continues to be a key pattern of the conflict. They said law and order in the territories controlled by the armed groups has collapsed and illegal parallel structures have developed. The U.S. secretary of defense is in Singapore for Asia's largest annual security forum attended by defense ministers and military chiefs from around the world. Ash Carter is at the three-day summit, known as the Shangri-La Dialogue, where he will give a speech Saturday. Discussions at the gathering, which ends Sunday, will likely be dominated by China's continued buildup in the South China Sea. Carter warned last week that China is in danger of building a "great wall of self-isolation" with its South China Sea operations. China claims most of the South China Sea and since last year has begun building military outposts on small islands it has reclaimed from the sea. The area is also claimed by the Philippines and Vietnam. In all, six governments claim parts of the resource rich region. However, there is no official U.S.-China meeting on the Dialogue's itinerary. Besides the South China Sea, other areas for discussions are likely to include tensions on the Korean peninsula, U.S.-China relations and the rise of the Islamist militant movement in Asia. Carter has said the Asia-Pacific region is "the single most consequential" region for America's future. The United Nations says it is ready to go ahead with airdrops of food, medicine and other assistance to areas of Syria that have a critical need for help, but is awaiting the Damascus government's permission before beginning the humanitarian effort. The World Food Program (WFP), a U.N. agency, said it is seeking Syria's approval for flights that would deliver supplies to 19 "besieged areas of the war-torn country. Either helicopters or planes would be used for the airdrops, although land access would be feasible in some areas if Syria approves, WFP said. The plan to deliver aid under U.N. auspices was put in motion by the International Syria Support Group of mostly regional and world powers, led by the U.S. and Russia. A U.N. official in London told VOA the world body's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is awaiting clarification from the Syrian government before the airdrops begin. A regional OCHA office previously submitted a clearance request directly to Syrian authorities, the official added. In 15 of the besieged areas WFP hopes to reach, helicopter operations would be the only viable option if land access is not granted, the agency said. High-altitude airdrops may be possible in two encircled villages - Fouah and Kfraya - WFP said, and these would augment high-altitude airdrops already begun to the northeastern city of Deir Ezzor. A key adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad rejected the need for urgent humanitarian aid Thursday in remarks broadcast to an American audience, but she said the Syrian government and U.N. officials have been discussing the issue. "Nobody is starving," said Bouthaina Shaaban. Shabaan, considered a member of Assads inner circle, denounced the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar for their support for Syrian opposition groups, and claimed thousands of "terrorists" have infiltrated Syria with Western support. She also ridiculed Western aid programs, saying the Syrian have never been used to eat tinned food and macaroni. Shabaan spoke from Syria by Skype Thursday to a group in Washington. A U.S. State Department official dismissed Shaaban as a propaganda mouthpiece for the Assad regime trying in vain to mask the suppression of the Syrian people and the regime's brutality. The world has not been fooled by her lies, the official said. An American military cargo plane dropped light weapons Thursday to rebels besieged by the Islamic State (IS) terror group in the northern Syrian town of Marea, the first resupply to them by the United States after weeks of appeals for help, according to local activists. U.S. warplanes have also launched several airstrikes on IS positions in the countryside north of the city of Aleppo in a bid to help Mareas defenders repel a concerted, weekslong effort by the jihadists to seize the town, a crucial one for insurgents fighting forces of President Bashar al-Assad in the Aleppo countryside. On Friday, Colonel Pat Ryder, spokesman for U.S. Central Command, declined to provide details about the U.S. resupply missions, saying only that the U.S. provides weapons and ammunition to Syrian Arab counter-IS forces as they make progress. However, Ryder denied reports from local activists that the U.S. airdrops included anti-tank weapons. Pleas for more support Rebels with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have been appealing for weeks for U.S. assistance complaining that the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) benefit from close air support and arms supplies while they have been ignored and left on their own. The battles for the towns of Azaz and Marea have flared and ebbed since February, but the IS push this time has been more determined possibly to compensate for the recent loss of territory in Raqqa province to the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-dominated SDF. The offensive amounts to the most significant advance near the Turkish border for IS in two years, said rebel commanders. Marea and Azaz fell to opposition forces in 2012 and are vital stops along a rebel supply route from Turkey to districts the rebels hold in Aleppo, which the government has been trying to encircle for months. Turkey has made several public appeals also in recent days on behalf of the besieged rebels. Last week, Turkeys deputy chief of the Turkish general staff, Yasar Guler, urged U.S. counterparts to provide more support to the FSA. IS headquarters targeted Thursdays strikes targeted IS headquarters, arms dumps and barracks in several villages, including Talalin, Hawr Nahr, Arshaf and Tel Malid. The U.S.-led strikes hit weapons storage centers and tactical units for IS in the northern countryside of Aleppo on Thursday evening, Salih al-Zain, spokesman for Syrian opposition forces in Aleppo, told local news outlet ARA News. He said four armored vehicles were destroyed in the bombing runs. The air drop and airstrikes came as a former Russian minister disclosed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was weighing whether to deploy thousands of combat troops to Syria so his ally President Bashar al-Assad could pull off a decisive victory. Andrei Fyodorov, a former deputy minister for foreign affairs, told Al Jazeera television in an interview that Putin was discussing with military commanders the possibility of deploying combat troops on the Syrian battlefield. This is under discussion; there are plans for this," the Kremlin insider said. Russian invervention Eight months ago, when Russia first intervened in Syria to prop up Assad with an air campaign an intervention that changed dramatically the dynamics of the long-running conflict Putin said he had no plans for a major ground operation in the war-wracked country. But he offered also the caveat for now. Russian special forces commandos and some tank crews have been spotted on the battlefield since, but in small numbers the vanguard for ground operations by the Assad regime has featured Iranian and Lebanese Shiite fighters as well as Iraqi and Afghan recruits. A ground combat role for Russia would alter the dynamics of the conflict even more. Recently, a former chief of staff of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, Gen. Salim Idris, told VOA that the armed revolution against Assad couldnt be won, but neither could the regime finish off the rebellion. The only way the military stalemate could be ended, he argued, would be if Russia does more. Even then, he said, the rebels would most likely resort to an "underground war" of bombings and hit-and-run attacks. The violent standoff between the regime and the rebels has in effect led to a de facto partition of the country and allowed jihadist groups such as the al-Qaida and Islamic State affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra to thrive. Ground intervention a gamble On the discussions in Moscow of a ground deployment, Fyodorov said: This is a delicate issue for our military. There are serious doubts that any participation by Russia on the ground would be favorable. [Rather, it could] complicate the negotiation process and lead to further disagreements with the U.S. But he added that from the point of view of Russian military analysts, if Assad could seize back more territory, it could create the circumstances for elections which Assad would win, he argued. "That is why the issue of ground operations is becoming more actual, he said. A U.S. official told VOA that Russia does appear to be shifting some equipment from the area around Palmyra in what could be preparation for an offensive. Youre seeing some movement that could help them move towards Raqqa, the official said, cautioning "nothing is imminent. Pressure rebel negotiators Talk of a ground intervention by Russia is perhaps being raised now to put more pressure on rebel negotiators to concede an Assad role in a transition. If that is the reason for the airing now of a possible Russian troop deployment, it will most likely fail. Rebel militias and opposition politicians have been adamant that Assad will have to go, insisting he can play no role in the future of the country. Even if the negotiators did agree on a role for Assad, they would not be able to persuade rebel militias to lay down their arms, say political activists. Venezuelan security forces fired tear gas at protesters chanting "We want food!" near Caracas' presidential palace on Thursday, the latest street violence in the crisis-hit OPEC nation. Hundreds of angry Venezuelans heading towards Miraflores palace in downtown Caracas were met by National Guard troops and police who blocked a major road. President Nicolas Maduro, under intense pressure over a worsening economic crisis in the South American nation of 30 million, had been scheduled to address a rally of indigenous groups nearby around the same time. The protest spilled out of long lines at shops in the area, witnesses said, after some people tried to hijack a food truck. "I've been here since eight in the morning. There's no more food in the shops and supermarkets," one woman told pro-opposition broadcaster Vivoplay. "We're hungry and tired." The government accused opposition politicians of inciting the chaos but said security forces had the situation under control. Despite their country having the world's biggest oil reserves, Venezuelans are suffering severe shortages of consumer goods ranging from milk to flour, soaring prices and a shrinking economy. Maduro blames the fall in global oil prices and an "economic war" by his foes, whom he also accuses of seeking a coup. "Every day, they bring out violent groups seeking violence in the streets," he said in a speech at the indigenous rally, which went ahead near Miraflores later in the day. "And every day, the people reject them and expel them." Critics say Venezuela's economic chaos is the consequence of failed socialist policies for the last 17 years, especially price and currency controls. The opposition wants a referendum this year to recall Maduro. Protests over shortages, power cuts and crime occur daily, and looting and lynchings are on the rise. Several local journalists said they were robbed during Thursday's chaos in downtown Caracas. The government's top economic official, Miguel Perez, acknowledged the hardships Venezuelans were undergoing but promised the situation would improve. "We know this month has been really critical. It's been the month with the lowest supply of products. That's why families are anxious," he told local radio. "We guarantee things will improve in the next few weeks." An American military cargo plane dropped light weapons Thursday to rebels besieged by the Islamic State (IS) terror group in the northern Syrian town of Marea, the first resupply to them by the United States after weeks of appeals for help, according to local activists. U.S. warplanes have also launched several airstrikes on IS positions in the countryside north of the city of Aleppo in a bid to help Mareas defenders repel a concerted and weeks-long effort by the jihadists to seize the town, a crucial one for anti-Assad insurgents in the Aleppo countryside. On Friday, Colonel Pat Ryder, spokeman for U.S. Central Command, declined to provide details about the U.S. resupply missions, saying only that the U.S. provides weapons and ammunition to Syrian Arab counter-IS forces as they make progress. However Ryder denied reports from local activists that the U.S. airdrops include anti-tank weapons. Pleas for more support Rebels with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have been appealing for weeks for U.S. assistance complaining that the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) benefit from close air support and arms supplies while they have been ignored and left on their own. The battles for the towns of Azaz and Marea have flared and ebbed since February, but the IS push this time has been more determined - possibly to compensate for the recent loss of territory in Raqqa province to the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-dominated SDF. The offensive amounts to the most significant advance near the Turkish border for IS in two years, said rebel commanders. Marea and Azaz fell to opposition forces in 2012 and are vital stops along a rebel supply route from Turkey to districts the rebels hold in Aleppo, which the government has been trying to encircle for months. Turkey has made several public appeals also in recent days on behalf of the besieged rebels. Last week, Turkeys deputy chief of the Turkish general staff, Yasar Guler, urged U.S. counterparts to provide more support to the FSA. Thursdays strikes targeted IS headquarters, arms dumps and barracks in several villages, including Talalin, Hawr Nahr, Arshaf and Tel Malid. The U.S.-led strikes hit weapons storage centers and tactical units for IS in the northern countryside of Aleppo on Thursday evening, Salih al-Zain, spokesman for Syrian opposition forces in Aleppo, told local news outlet ARA News. He said four armored vehicles were destroyed in the bombing runs. Putin pushes for Assad victory The air-drop and airstrikes came as a former Russian minister disclosed that Russian President Vladimir Putin is weighing whether to deploy thousands of combat troops to Syria so his ally President Bashar al-Assad can pull off a decisive victory. Andrei Fyodorov, a former deputy minister for foreign affairs, told Al Jazeera television in an interview that Putin is discussing with military commanders the possibility of deploying combat troops on the Syrian battlefield. This is under discussion, there are plans for this," the Kremlin insider said. Eight months ago when Russia first intervened in Syria to prop up Assad with an air campaign an intervention that changed dramatically the dynamics of the long-running conflict Putin said he had no plans for a major ground operation in the war-wracked country. But he offered also the caveat for now. Russian special forces commandos and some tank crews have been spotted on the battlefield since but in small numbers the vanguard for ground operations by the Assad regime have featured Iranian and Lebanese Shiite fighters as well as Iraqi and Afghan recruits. A ground combat role for Russia would alter the dynamics of the conflict even more. Recently, a former chief of staff of the Western-backed rebel military coalition the Free Syrian Army, Gen. Salim Idris, told VOA that the armed revolution against President Assad couldnt be won but neither could the regime finish off the rebellion. The only way the military stalemate could be ended, he argued, would be if Russia does more. Even then, he said, the rebels would likely resort to an underground war of bombings and hit-and-run attacks. The violent standoff between the regime and the rebels has in effect led to a de facto partition of the country and allowed jihadist groups such as the al-Qaida and Islamic State affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra to thrive. Russia ground intervention a gamble On the discussions in Moscow of a ground deployment, Fyodorov said: This is a delicate issue for our military. There are serious doubts that any participation by Russia on the ground would be favorable. [Rather it could] complicate the negotiation process and lead to further disagreements with the U.S. But he added from the point of view of Russian military analysts, if Assad could seize back more territory, it could create the circumstances for elections, which Assad would win, he argued. That is why the issue of ground operations is becoming more actual, he added. Talk of a ground intervention by Russia may be being raised now to put more pressure on rebel negotiators to concede an Assad role in a transition. If that is the reason for the airing now of a possible Russian troop deployment it will likely fail. Rebel militias and opposition politicians have been adamant that Assad will have to go, insisting he can play no role in the future of the country. Even if the negotiators did agree a role for Assad, they would not be able to persuade rebel militias to lay down their arms, say political activists. Funeral Announcements A daily list of current funeral annoucements as heard on KXRA 1490 AM/100.3 FM News Updates The daily news, sports, and events delivered daily from Voice of Alexandria. Sports Update This current sports headlines delivered daily from Voice of Alexandria. Upcoming Events This email is the events of the area delivered daily from Voice of Alexandria. Breaking News The big news. Sent only as it happens. The Embassy has issued a second advisory in a week and assured assistance to reach border. The same day (4 May) that the new Supreme Allied Commander in Europe - US General Curtis Scaparrotti - took office at Nato, appointed just like his 17 predecessors by the US President, the North Atlantic Council announced that an official Israeli mission would be established at Natos headquarters in Brussels. [This mission] will be headed by the Israeli ambassador for the EU. So, Israel is even further integrated into Nato, to which it is already closely linked through the Individual Cooperation Programme. Nato ratified this on 2 December 2008, three weeks before the Israeli operation Cast Lead at Gaza. It includes among other things, collaboration between intelligence services and connections with Israeli forces, including nuclear forces, to Natos electronic system. The US has provided Israel another three hundred bomber fighters with dual conventional and nuclear capacity and many other weapons. Israel is not a party to the Non Proliferation Treaty and therefore is not subject to controls by the International Atomic Energy Agency. It possesses a non-declared nuclear arsenal reckoned at 100 400 nuclear tests including H-bombs and neutron-bombs with a power estimated to be the same as almost four thousand Hiroshima bombs. The carriers include a further three hundred F-16 and F-15 US fighters, and around 50 Jericho II ballistic missiles on its mobile launch pads. Italy concluded a military cooperation agreement with Israel, formalized in national law by Law 94/2005. It involves our countrys armed forces and military industry in activities subject to a security agreement and therefore secret. In this context, high level Italian technology can also be used to upgrade Israeli nuclear forces. Germany provided Israel with 5 Dolphin Submarines and shortly will provide it with another. Der Spiegel documents that these submarines have been modified so that they can launch long-range cruise missiles. The official Israeli Mission at Nato will be flanked by Missions of the Kingdom of Jordan and the Emirates of Qatar and Kuwait, very active partners that will be even further integrated in Nato on their own merits. Jordan hosts secret CIA bases in which the New York Times and Der Spiegel evidence [1] Al Quaeda and Isis militant Islamists have been trained for the covert war in Syria and Iraq. Qatar has participated in Natos war against Libya, infiltrating in 2011 around 5, 000 commands on its territory (as declared to the Guardian by the same head of the Qatari staff), plus those against Syria: the former Qatari Prime Minister, Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, admits this in an interview to the Financial Times, and talks about Qatari and Saudi operations of interfering in Syria with the consent of the United States. Kuwait, through the Transit Agreement, allows Nato to establish its first stopover in the Gulf, not only to send military forces and materials to Afghanistan but also for practical cooperation between Nato and Kuwait and its other partners such as Saudi Arabia. Partners supported by the USA in a war that wreaks civilian bloodshed in Yemen. Kuwait also participates in it, with 15 fighter bombers. Italy now provides Kuwait with 28 new generation Eurofighter Typhoon fighters, built by a consortium to which Finmeccanica, together with industrials from Great Britain, Germany and Spain, belong. An 8 billion euro contract, the biggest ever signed by Finmeccanica, which will receive about half in cash. It was signed on 5 April in Kuwait by the Defense Minister, Khaled al-Sabah, and the Managing Director of Finmeccanica, Mauro Moretti. The godmother of the event is Minister Roberta Pinotti, an efficient canvasser of arms (see the sale of 30 M-346 fighter for advanced training to Israel). The Eurofighter Typhoon, that Kuwait will use to massacre in Yemen and elsewhere, can also be equipped with nuclear bombs: those in the hands of Saudi Arabia [2]. We have already documented this in the news video Nuclear Alert: Saudi Arabia has the bomb on Pandora TV. To train the teams, Aeronautica Italiana provides strengthening the fundamental role for regional stabilization carried out by Kuwait. A success for Minister Pinotti who, a week later, after selling fighter bombers to Kuwait, was honoured by the Catholic Union of the Italian Press with the Naples City of Peace 2016 prize. At the ceremony, Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe defined Pinottis commitment to the service of politics as the highest form of love, that is centred around the protection and dignity of human life, proposing therefore changing her title from Minister of Defense to Minister of Peace . At this point we ask ourselves, what does Pope Francis think? In December 2015, the United States and Russia made an agreement to bring down President Erdogan. From the Russian side, its the support of Erdogans friends the NGOs IHH and Imkander for the Caucasian jihadists from 1995 to the end of the year 2000, then, today, the personal support by Recep Tayyip Erdogan for Daesh, and finally the planned destruction of a Soukhoi over Syria last November which have triggered their anger. Given that the Turco-Mongol empires were always the historical enemies of Russia, Moscow is not worried about the future of the country, but want only to overthrow its chief whatever the cost. The United States, on the other hand, make a distinction between Turkey, a allied member-state of NATO, and President Erdogan, an autocrat who is bathing in delusions of grandeur and stamping all over Western ideals. Overthrowing him is a necessity, partly in order to be able to continue presenting NATO as the defender of democracies, and partly because no leader is allowed to defy Washington without being punished. The CIA already caused him to lose the elections last June by creating the HDP from nothing , but was overtaken by the massive ballot-rigging during the elections in September. Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin thus agreed to support the Syrian Kurds against Daesh, thinking that in the end they might come to represent a military force capable of disturbing the machinations of the apprentice dictator of Ankara. And in fact, Recep Tayyip Erdogan vehemently condemned the Pentagons support for the YPG (Peoples Protection Units), the visits to Syria by the Commander of the anti-Daesh Coalition, Brett McGurk, and the head of CentCom, General Joseph Votel. Consequently, the Turkish secret services (MIT) have stepped up their aid for Daesh to help it resist the invasion. But it seems that the White House and the Kremlin have misread their adversary. Far from considering the development of the YPG as dangerous, President Erdogan has integrated it into his strategy. The Americans and the Russians wrongly believe that the Syrian Kurds form a united group. But in reality, the YPG is the armed branch of the PYD (Democratic Union Party), which has two co-Presidents - a woman, Asya Abdullah, and a man, Salih Muslim. Asya Abdullah is faithful to the principles of Abudllah Ocalan the founder of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) and intends to create a Kurdistan on Turkish territory. Salih Muslim is a traitor who, in a secret meeting at the Elysee on the 31 October, negotiated an agreement with Presidents Hollande and Erdogan. In these conditions, Recep Tayyip Erdogan intends to turn to his own advantage the trap that is being set for him by the US and Russia. On his instructions, the police and the Turkish army are currently carrying out operations against the Kurds of the PKK. These forces of repression have already destroyed several villages and terrorised the population of several others, forcing them to flee. Over the last few weeks, this campaign of terror has provoked the displacement of the Kurdish populations of a number of Turkish villages situated at the Syrian frontier. The White Palace then offered their houses to Syrian Sunni refugees whom he thinks are favourable to the jihadists. This is how the transmutation of the population along the Turco-Syrian frontier began. In order to understand what President Erdogan is doing, we have to remember that at the end of the 19th century, Sultan Abdulhamid II who also wanted to homogenise the Turkish population - encouraged the Kurds to expel the Christians, even to massacre them. This programme continued and grew in force with the arrival of the Young Turks, who massacred a million and a half Pontic Greeks and Armenians. The end of this programme supposed that the Kurds should be the ones to be expelled this time, and be replaced by Turks, or, failing them, by Sunni Arabs. This is the programme that, in 2011, France agreed to implement with Turkey, hoping to limit the massacres. According to a secret Treaty signed by the Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the time, Alain Juppe and Ahmet Davutoglu, Paris and Ankara were to create a new state in Syria in order to dislodge the Kurds of the PKK. This is the agreement that Francois Hollande agreed to apply by organising, at the Elysee, the meeting Erdogan-Muslim. And it is this agreement that Washington and Moscow, without knowing it, are in the process of completing. Each month, Boris Kachka offers nonfiction and fiction book recommendations. You should read as many of them as possible. Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi (Knopf, June 7) The young Ghanaian-Americans debut novel largely merits the hype-bump delivered by Ta-Nehisi Coatess tweet-blurb seven months ago (Stay woke). In 14 fine and searing chapter-long character studies, she follows the bloodline of two half-sisters one in Ghana before and after its founding, one in the U.S. before and after emancipation that is stalked for seven generations by sorrow and oppression. Though Homegoing feels a little like linked short stories, its family history steadily accretes and its resonance grows, along with Gyasis range and our empathy. Barkskins, by Annie Proulx (Scribner, Jun 14) Junes other great multigenerational saga examines New World conquest through the other end of the telescope. In Proulxs first novel in 14 years (and her longest by far), the itinerant master of American life and landscape follows two Frenchmen who conquer and exploit Canadas limitless woodlands, then tracks their industrialist descendants across national borders and centuries of resource depletion. This late-issue Proulx feels less like The Shipping News or her sere Wyoming stories than There Will Be Blood or Philipp Meyers The Son (which she surely influenced). Im Just a Person, by Tig Notaro (Ecco, June 14) In the four years since the deadpan comic announced her cancer diagnosis in a routine that demolished the wall between comedy and tragedy, shes starred in a documentary and worked on an Amazon series, both about the annus horribilis in which her mother died, a relationship ended, and she suffered from two near-fatal illnesses. What more can we glean from a memoir? Reflection, thoroughness, and long-term effects like a reconciliation with her distant father all related in a high-wire balancing act of clarity and pathos over a minefield of sentimental death-traps. Grief Is the Thing With Feathers, by Max Porter (Graywolf, June 7) Allusive and half-poetic, Porters tribute to a familys grief and to Crow, a cycle of Ted Hughes poems, is both simple and invigoratingly bizarre: A Hughes scholar and his two sons mourn the accidental death of their mother with the help, it seems, of a plastic crow come to life. Dad, Crow, and Boys take turns narrating, tracing the arc of a mourning process that will neither be rushed nor slowed. You dont have to read Hughess Crow first, but you might as well; both books are short, strange, and timeless. In the Darkroom, by Susan Faludi (Metropolitan, June 14) A Pulitzer-winning journalist and feminist author (Backlash, Stiffed), Faludi was well positioned to stumble across the best story of her career: the transition of her estranged, overbearing father, Steven, a Hungarian Jewish survivor of the Nazis, into Stefanie, a 78-year-old woman. Assigned to tell her parents story, Faludi digs deep into history and beneath Stefanies enduring tendency to self-mythologize. Its in Faludis nature to go far beyond the personal, too, examining gender fluidity from the perspective of a last-wave feminist whose worldview is shifting all over again. The Girls, by Emma Cline (Random House, June 14) The young novelists fictionalization of Charles Mansons murderous cult doesnt need to be nearly as well written as it is. Narrated by fresh cult inductee Evie Boyd and focused more on her relationship with a dark-hearted female acolyte than the black-hearted maniac leading them, its a womans twist on a sexy-scary tale in which obsession becomes a hinge joining love to hate. Cline might have gotten her famously enormous advance even if her writing werent crystalline, self-contained, brimming with painterly metaphors and tactile similes. But as it happens, readers get all the pleasure and none of the guilt. Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War, by Mark Danner (Simon & Schuster, June 14) The story of our so-called War on Terror too often bifurcates into two opposed narratives: the radicals are steadily winning, or we are quietly destroying them. Danner is a seasoned war journalist, but his new book is more of a reframing of what we know into a third narrative, of a depressing stalemate in which were all complicit. A state of exception created by Bush and perpetuated by Obama has resulted in torture, extra-legal detention, drone strikes, and blanket surveillance all of which only feeds the cycle of terror and retaliation, which only exposure and accountability can break. The Waco Parks and Recreation Department will have a ribbon-cutting ceremony and open house at 9 a.m. Saturday to celebrate the completed renovation of the Dewey Community Center, 925 N. Ninth St. The open house will include building tours, class and exercise program demonstrations, games and refreshments. For more information, call 750-8080. Chevy car show The Heart of Texas Classic Chevy Club will hold the Lone Star XXXIV convention and car show Friday and Saturday at the Holiday Inn Northwest Waco, 1801 N. Development Blvd. Registration is open from noon to 5 p.m. Friday and 8 a.m. to noon Saturday. Car show entry fee is $30; spectator admission is free. Proceeds will support the Wounded Warrior Project. The show will celebrate 1955-57 Chevys, but also is open to all Chevy model years through 1972. The event will include awards, raffles, and a 50/50 drawing. For more information, call 723-1226 or 744-9827. Railroad Family Day The Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum, 315 W. Avenue B in Temple, will have a free Be a Curator Family Day event from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday. Visitors will have an opportunity to learn how the museum staff cares for objects, and to investigate artifacts, design their own masterpieces, and create an exhibit about their lives. For more information, call 298-5172 or visit www.rrhm.org. Pancake breakfast Benson Memorial Church, 2594 State Highway 7 in Chilton, will have a pancake breakfast fundraiser from 7 a.m. to noon Saturday. Cost is $7 for adults, $5 for kids, for a plate of pancakes, eggs, sausage, bacon, grits and a drink. To pre-purchase tickets, call Earnest Landrum at 292-9847, Randy Evans at 339-4927 or Leon Minifield at 523-8060. Brazos Button Club The Brazos Button Club will meet from 9:30 a.m. to noon Saturday in the Fellowship Hall at Bellmead Church of Christ, 907 Hogan Lane. Sadie Jackman will present a program about Modern and Vintage Glass. Refreshment will be served. For more information, call Marlene Tucker at 993-3022. Submit items for Briefly in printed or typed form to Briefly, P.O. Box 2588, Waco 76702-2588; fax to 757-0302; or email to goingson@wacotrib.com at least one week before an event. Notices cannot be accepted by phone. Because of high volume, some items might be omitted. As Brazos River communities far downstream evacuated from record flooding this week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers tried to stem the damage by holding back rising water at Lake Waco and Lake Whitney. By Thursday afternoon, Lake Whitney was up 15 feet above normal and Lake Waco was about 17 feet above normal. All parks and ramps were closed at both lakes. Swollen rivers promised to raise both lakes higher by Friday, with no plans for significant dam releases until at least early next week. Lake Wacos level stood at about 479 feet above sea level, matching the level set on May 31, 2015, when floodwaters wrecked parks around the lake. By Friday morning, it had surpassed the 480-foot mark, the third-highest level recorded in the lakes history. Lake manager Heath McLane said Thursdays heavy rains in the North Bosque River watershed between Waco and Stephenville could push the lake several feet higher. Well hold until we absolutely have to release or until the stream channel has enough capacity without flooding, he said. We know there will be more damage. Thats why were here, to hold back the water. The frustration is that this is the sixth time this year weve been more than 10 feet over. Wed just gotten back down when this hit. He said the goal is to control the Brazos in the Richmond area south of Houston, which was up this week a record 7 feet above flood level and showed little sign of receding. Six people have died, and more than 1,400 homes have been affected by the flooding. Meanwhile, the damage from Lake Wacos flooding was almost identical to the Memorial Day floods of 2015. The Corps spent most of 2015 cleaning up parks after that flood, only to see a 16-foot rise this April that ravaged them again. The cleanup after this flood could take the rest of the year, McLane said. On Tuesday evening, as the lake hit 473.6 feet, a city of Waco sewer lift station on Green Oaks Drive was submerged, causing about 50,000 gallons a day of wastewater to flow into the lake until levels recede. City officials removed pumps and electrical equipment just before it went underwater. High water also has closed roads such as San Ann Road, Eichelberger Crossing and Yankie Road. It has submerged the Lake Waco Wetlands under several feet of water. The wetlands, which was drained dry for most of the winter, will now be flooded for at least a couple of weeks, said Nora Schell, coordinator of the science and wildlife facility. Were just going to be inundated with water, but the plants will pop back up, she said. It will bounce right back up, all these soils and plants. There will be fish in places we havent seen for a while. At Lake Waco Marina and Slippery Minnow Restaurant, owner Rich Chatmas prepared for the flooding by removing electrical equipment, boat trailers and food, and securing docks. He said every day it looks more like 2007, when flooding that reached 486 feet closed him down for the whole summer season. Last years floods also cost him about a month of peak business time. Were going to do everything we can to hold on, but its going to be a tough financial year, he said. Theres not much we can do but hope, pray and wish for the sun to come out and the rivers to go down. Fort Worth-based National Weather Service meteorologist Dennis Cain said the North Bosque watershed could see 2 to 3.5 inches of rain through Saturday morning, meaning another burst of floodwater for the lake. Cain said the Richmond flooding will remain at crisis levels for days. I dont see it receding soon, he said. Theres a lot of water upstream and were looking at two or three more days of rainfall. Theres a lot of water falling everywhere. . . . Eventually you get to the point where everything is runoff and nothing is going into the ground. The Corps built Lake Waco in 1964 to control flooding on the Bosque and Brazos Rivers, and it still has a generous amount of flood storage left. The lake has gone as high as 488.5 feet on Christmas Eve 1991, and it could theoretically reach 500 feet, though McLane said major releases would be necessary once the lake exceeded 490 feet. Meanwhile, more floodwaters swamped the Brazos around Granbury, with flows at Horseshoe Bend of 57,700 cubic feet per second enough to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool in less than two seconds. The only flood-control dam standing between that floodwater and Richmond downstream is Lake Whitney. Even before Thursdays rain, Whitney was up 15.6 feet above normal. The lake was releasing 1,410 cubic feet per second Thursday for electric generation purposes but would not open its floodgates until next week at the earliest, Corps officials said. The 2016 Toyota Avalon is unveiled during the media preview of the Chicago Auto Show in this 2015 photo. (Andrew Nelles/AP) The Avalon is the best Buick that Toyota ever made. In certain respects ergonomic common sense, total ease of use it is a better Buick than any Buick. There is another important Buick-esque comparison. But first, an aside: We all get older, which means we all eventually need a car that treats the elderly well. That means ease of ingress and egress, which refer to more than the size or weight of the human body. Age is accompanied by ancillary stuff such as back braces and various other ambulatory aides, all of which consume space and encumber movement even as they help it. A car has to make those devices easy and comfortable to use. Car seats have to accept the back braces, meaning they have to make them feel an integral part of the seats that support them. Other ambulatory aides canes, crutches, walkers must be able to move into the car easily . . . and be removed from the automobile the same way. I discovered all this by happenstance. The 2016 Toyota Avalon XLE Premium sedan appeared in my driveway during a week in which I, quite painfully, learned what it means to be getting older. I had what appeared to be a bad reaction to a hypertensive drug joint pain, corresponding walking problems, other aches. I needed a car that coddled me and accepted my stuff. I was hoping for a big, soft Buick sedan, long favored by Americas aging population. Toyotas Avalon XLE Premium showed up instead. It certainly was big enough. It readily accepted my walking devices, all of which were nicely stored for easy retrieval. I was impressed by the usable space and the material quality of the Avalons cabin, and the common sense of it all. We live in an age of portable, chargeable devices smartphones, tablets and the like. Most cars nowadays thus are equipped with wire-reliant charging portals, which are a bit of an annoyance. The Avalon XLE Premium does away with all this with wireless charging, thus eliminating the need to keep up with wires and hunt for their proper automotive portals. There also is the matter of instrument panels. The Avalon has one of the cleanest, most uncluttered panels Ive ever seen, which also means it is one of the easiest to understand and use. That seemingly little thing eases the stress of driving, which is no small thing when you already are dealing with high blood pressure. And what about driving? The Avalon XLE Premium bespeaks solid confidence. When everything else seems to be going wrong with your body, the last thing you need is a car that seems to be uncertain of its mission. The 3.5-liter, 24-valve gasoline V-6 in the Avalon XLE Premium delivers (268 horsepower, 248 pound-feet of torque). It is adult performancegets done what needs to be done, gets you where you need to go without showing off and attracting the kind of police attention that would make an already bad day worse. There are days when you realize youth isnt a forever thing, when you appreciate cars such as the Buick La Crosse, Chrysler 300 and Toyota Avalon XLE Premium. Ive had mine. Im just glad I was on Toyotas test-drive list when it happened. 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. Hawaiian Electric Industries, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the electric utility, banking, and renewable/sustainable infrastructure investment businesses in the state of Hawaii. It operates in three segments: Electric Utility, Bank, and Other. The Electric Utility segment engages in the production, purchase, transmission, distribution, and sale of electricity in the islands of Oahu, Hawaii, Maui, Lanai, and Molokai. Its renewable energy sources and potential sources include wind, solar, photovoltaic, geothermal, wave, hydroelectric, municipal waste, and other biofuels. This segment serves suburban communities, resorts, the United States armed forces installations, and agricultural operations. The Bank segment operates a community bank that offers banking and other financial services to consumers and businesses, including savings and checking accounts; and loans comprising residential and commercial real estate, residential mortgage, construction and development, multifamily residential and commercial real estate, consumer, and commercial loans. This segment operates 42 branches, including 29 branches in Oahu, 6 branches in Maui, 4 branches in Hawaii, 2 branches in Kauai, and 1 branch in Molokai. The Other segment invests in non-regulated renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure in the State of Hawaii. Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. was incorporated in 1891 and is headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii. At first I thought the type of door hung on my 2014-built house must have been installed by mistake. This is what happened to me at my house in the southern suburbs of Perth in May. Thieves kicked through the door, ripping it clean in half. Heather McNeill was shocked to find out how easily her door was kicked in. You think you're secure in your home until someone kicks in your front door and you realise it's hollow and filled with cardboard. Every police officer, insurance assessor and builder who visited my house in the days that followed all said the same thing, "this is an internal door, it shouldn't be here". But I soon learnt it wasn't a mistake. My builder, Summit Homes Group, assured me it was the external door I had signed for in my building contract and that it met industry requirements. A quick call to the WA Building Commission and I found out there actually were no requirements around the type of external doors builders must use in residential homes and it seemed new home builders were beginning to take advantage of it. I thought to myself, 'what is the point of having a double bolt and lock on my front door if it's made of cardboard?' M&B Building Products, which supplied my door, is one of the largest door suppliers to WA's building industry. The music icon Prince died from an overdose of a synthetic opioid called fentanyl, the local medical examiner has found. The report from the Midwest Medical Examiner's Office was issued in the US on Thursday, more than a month after the music superstar was found dead at age 57 at his Paisley Park mansion. The single-page report said Prince "self-administered fentanyl," referring to a synthetic opioid many times more potent than heroin. The report - which was signed by Quinn Strobl, the office's chief medical examiner - gave no indication of how Prince obtained the drug, nor did it list any other cause of death or "significant conditions". "I'm going to have a rest. I'm going to go and have four weeks off and just sit on a beach with my little boy," the bubbly star said. The star split from her husband of nine years, Chrys Xipolitas, earlier this year. "He's never been to Cyprus before and all of our family is over there, so it will be really nice for him... I'm really looking forward to it." Johnas comes first in all aspects of life, even before Nicodemou's own needs. She said their main focus is now on their three-year-old son, Johnas. Credit:Ada Nicodemou/Instagram "The older they get the more they need you around as well," she explained. "When I am with him, I really like to give him quality time." 'People don't like Pia' Posing with Home and Away's Logie award in May, Nicodemou said she takes issue with "anyone bagging the show". Credit:Getty Images While Nicodemou kept conversation to a minimum about her private life, she was happy to dispute claims of infighting and back-stabbing on set. An unnamed source was reported as saying in Monday's Woman's Day that "people don't like Pia" adding that she "throws [her modelling career] in their faces any chance she gets. "She has one of the smallest acting portfolios on the show, but carries on like she's a five-time Oscar winner," they added. Nicodemou, 39, put the story down to the need for magazine sales and said she didn't even bother reading it. "We were laughing at how comical the story was. There are no on-set tensions. I don't even know what they are talking about," she said. "It's a shame. isn't it? That we are still doing that and there is negative press out there when there is no reason for it." She explained that the soap stars are more like "a real family" and she takes issue with "anyone bagging the show". "You look forward to seeing people every day and we have great laughs. We hang out with people outside of work as well. This Sunday I am going out to dinner with Lynne McGranger [who plays Irene Roberts]. "We are always hanging out, so we really must like each other," she laughed. "I'm really, really proud of the show," she added, giving a special mention to their recent Logie win in the Best Drama category. Seven issued a statement to Fairfax Media on Tuesday also refuting the claims. "Reports from unnamed sources in the media are untrue," a Seven spokesperson said. "Since beginning on Home and Away 18 months ago, Pia has undertaken a massive career change, had to relocate from Melbourne to Sydney and had to work through a relationship breakdown." Miller, 32, who split from retired AFL player Brad Miller last year and who is now dating Cheyenne Tozzi's ex Tyson Mullane, has yet to comment. Beauty regime Lending her voice to the Palmolive campaign, before she headed to the Home and Away set for a day's work, Nicodemou said her main aim is to influence women to start thinking about themselves, even if that just means taking some time to body moisturise daily. If you feel like everything has been getting faster lately, you're not alone. Astrophysicists, including Brad Tucker at the Australian National University, have calculated the most accurate measurement yet for the expansion rate of the nearby universe. ANU astronomer Brad Tucker. Credit:Stuart Hay/ANU They've found that in our little corner of the cosmos everything is flying apart quite a bit quicker than we've previously thought. Within 10 billion years, the distance between local galaxies will double. That means something a bit odd is going on. "Immediately we were highly suspicious," Beck told the Los Angeles Times. "That made me uneasy about what we would find when we got to Minnesota." A SWAT officer searches a student who was evacuated from the UCLA campus on the day of the fatal shooting. Credit:AP The LAPD worked with the FBI and Minnesota authorities and served a search warrant at Sarkar's home, Beck said. Inside, they found extra ammunition and a box for one of two pistols found at UCLA, as well as the "kill list" with the three names, the chief said. Authorities went to the woman's home in Brooklyn Park, a Minneapolis suburb, and found her body just after midnight Thursday, police said. Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck comments on the investigation into a murder-suicide on the UCLA campus. Credit:AP It appeared she had been dead of a gunshot wound for "maybe a couple of days," Beck said. Beck declined to name the woman but said Sarkar was suspected in her death. Victim Bill Klug, a professor of mechanical engineering. Credit:AP "We would physically arrest him were he still alive," the chief said. Sarkar drove from Minnesota to Los Angeles, according to Beck, but it was unclear how long he was in LA before Wednesday's shooting. Detectives don't think it was "more than a couple of days", the chief said. On Wednesday, Sarkar carried a backpack, two semi-automatic pistols and extra magazines to Klug's fourth-floor office, where he fatally shot the professor before turning the gun on himself, Beck said. Klug, 39, was an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Sarkar had accused him of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else, according to police. A source called the gunman's accusations "absolutely untrue." Klug had been the target of Sarkar's anger on social media for months. On March 10, Sarkar called the professor a "very sick person" who could not be trusted. "William Klug, UCLA professor is not the kind of person when you think of a professor," Sarkar wrote. "He is a very sick person. I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy," Sarkar wrote. "He made me really sick. Your enemy is my enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust." Klug, who was described by friends as a kind and caring man, worked diligently to help Sarkar finish his dissertation and graduate, even though the quality of Sarkar's work was not stellar, one source said. "Bill was extremely generous to this student, who was a subpar student," the person said. In his doctoral dissertation, submitted in 2013, Sarkar expressed gratitude to Klug for his help and support. A syllabus from 2010 lists Sarkar as one of two teaching assistants in a mechanical and aerospace engineering course, MAE: 101: Statics and Strength of Materials. Sarkar was listed in the 2014 doctoral commencement booklet with Klug as his adviser. It is not immediately clear, Beck said, whether Sarkar tried to find the other professor on his list. The second professor, whom Beck did not name, was not on campus at the time of the shooting. Police have been in contact with that person, who "is fine", the chief said. Investigators are trying to determine Sarkar's actions in recent days, particularly his drive from Minnesota, Beck said. Police are searching for Sarkar's car, a 2003 grey Nissan Sentra, with Minnesota licence plate 720KTW. Beck said police don't expect the vehicle to be "any significant danger", but officials have asked anyone who sees it to call police. Before enrolling at UCLA, Sarkar earned a master's degree at Stanford University following an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, according to his LinkedIn page. In the US, he also had a stint as a research assistant at the University of Texas and worked as a software developer. After UCLA, Sarkar worked remotely as an engineering analyst for an Ohio-based rubber company, Endurica. Will Mars, the company's president, confirmed to the Times that Sarkar worked for Endurica until August 2014. He declined to provide more details. On Wednesday, thousands of students and UCLA staff members found themselves racing to barricade classroom doors with desks, projectors and anything else they could find after mobile phones buzzed across campus with alerts of a possible shooting. By 12.05pm, police confirmed that two men had been killed in an engineering building. The campus was declared safe, and UCLA officials lifted a lockdown that had cancelled classes for the day. TNS Thursday marked the first day of the 400 mile yard sale across Kentucky's historic highway 68. The yard sale stretches from Paducah all the up to Maysville, with nearly 30 communities participating. Those cities included Bowling Green, where vendors were busy setting up their booths early Thursday morning. Lee Wright, Master Craftsman at Artsy Fartsy Furniture Restoration, told WBKO there was just something more fun about the yard sale verses making a sale inside a shop. "I have met people from all over the country. My pieces of art have been taken to many different states, so again, just exposure and getting to meet the different people." The Kentucky Department of Tourism is asking people to share their 400 mile yard sale adventures with the hashtag 'Kentucky summer.' If you find something you're especially excited about, or even chance upon a good meal while traveling through a town, post those stories to social media. The yard sales runs from now through Sunday. It has only been one month since the WCO launched the new version of the nCEN application, developed in response to requests for alignment of existing functionality with daily operational needs of Customs administrations. Fiji became the first country to implement this new version of the nCEN, which introduces: an alignment in the information fields related to detection methods and risk indicators with the wording/designation used in the WCO Customs Risk Management Compendium an upgrade of the in-built information communication interface enabling information-sharing on investigations, suspect persons, and/or companies (not just seizures) and significant enhancements to the search capability of the system allowing easy targeting of entities On 16-25 May 2016 the WCO conducted an nCEN Workshop at the Regional Training Center in Fiji, in order to train Customs officers from Suva and Nadi on the functionality of the newly implemented application. The organization of the workshop was possible due to the generous financial support provided by the Eurocustoms Fund. The implementation of the nCEN application was one of the priorities for Fiji Revenue and Customs Authority in the framework of the national enforcement action plan, and FRCA leadership expressed its hope that the nCEN will not only benefit enforcement efforts at the national level, but will also boost data sharing in the Oceania region as a whole. The nCEN application is provided to WCO Members free of charge, and a range of customized solutions is available, catering to each administrations circumstances and needs. For example, a fast track implementation is offered to those administrations that already possess the hardware needed to support the application. More information on the nCEN can be obtained by contacting the WCO CEN Program at nCEN@wcoomd.org. Story Saved You can find this story in My Bookmarks. Or by navigating to the user icon in the top right. Three juveniles charged with robbing same Paducah store twice in one day Email To : Multiple e-mail addresses must be separated with a comma character(maximum 200 characters) Email To is required. Your Full Name: (optional) Your Email Address: Your Email Address is required. By Joe Jackson Jun. 03, 2016 | 12:32 PM | MAYFIELD, KY Three men were arrested on drug and gun charges in Graves County Thursday afternoon. According to the Graves County Sheriff's Office, deputies received a call that three men were trying to break into a home at 124 Dorothy Lane near Mayfield. When deputies arrived at the home, they found a vehicle with three men inside, 42-year-old Brent Anderson of West Paducah, 51-year-old Dennis West of Paducah and 30-year-old Cory West of Mayfield. Deputies said they could see a handgun in the front seat of the vehicle along with a small glass vial that contained methamphetamine. More methamphetamine was found in Anderson's pocket. A criminal history check on Dennis West and his son Cory West revealed that they are convicted felons. All three men were arrested. Cory West was charged with possession of methamphetamine firearm enhanced, possession of a handgun by a convicted felon and public intoxication. Dennis West was charged with possession of meth firearm enhanced and possession of a handgun by a convicted felon. Anderson was charged with possession of meth firearm enhanced. All three were lodged in the Graves County Jail. Rita Redmond was a true lady who felt that every pupil had something to gift to the world Loading... It's now only a month until we hear the results of Sir John Chilcot's inquiry into whether Britain acted lawfully when we went to war in Iraq in 2003. The results will be released after seven years of seemingly unending U-turns and back tracking. So if there's one thing that can be said about this verbatim play from theatre company Lung, it is that it is exceptionally timely. Unfortunately, that doesn't make up for the fact that watching the show is about as fun as watching the real thing probably was. 'But this is political theatre!' I hear you cry. 'What the hell does fun matter?' And I suppose you're right, fun isn't always necessary. But political theatre absolutely must be engaging and it absolutely must represent its source material in a more dramatic way than just replaying it onstage. As it is, vast swathes of Chilcot has dark suited men and women peer over their glasses as they speak into their microphones and rustle papers while witnesses drone on and on. Two desks are positioned either end of the stage, at one sits Chilcot and his frowning group of interviewers, at the other, members of the cabinet and figures from the time give their testimonies. They speak the words the originals spoke in the actual inquiry. This set up is occasionally broken up by moments where soldiers, their parents and Iraqis stand in the middle of the desks and give their own personal views out front. The fact that these testimonies from people on the ground - those directly affected by the conflict - are unlikely to have been heard in the inquiry is an irony that is only vaguely highlighted in this play. The main tragedy here is that what these people are saying is vitally important, but it rarely draws us in. The Chilcot inquiry, the war in Iraq, the holding accountable of Tony Blair and his cabinet, are events that will define our era. But it's so hard to feel emotionally involved watching this play. Parts of Chilcot are chilling. When it becomes clear that Clare Short the Secretary of State for International Development at the time was barely aware of the decision to go to war, you begin to wonder just what was going on at Westminster. Watching Alastair Campbell Tony Blair's spin doctor try to justify why he was chairing meetings with MI5 is shocking. The ensemble of actors are good, but Matt Woodhead's direction feels staid and static and the script from Woodhead and Richard Norton-Taylor is clunkily edited. The hearings themselves took three years in total, and we get a real glimpse of the hell it must have been. It is a dispiriting evening, which you can't help but think is how we will be feeling when Chilcot's report finally is published. Chilcot runs at Battersea Arts Centre until 10 June. Loading... "Any movie that's commercially released is necessarily a piece of shit." It's a strange thing to come from a Hollywood actor's mouth, let alone his own hand, but the line gets to the heart of Social Network star Jesse Eisenberg's third play The Spoils: a study in social superiority and rich-kid privilege. Eisenberg plays Ben, a wealthy Jewish twentysomething, kicked out of NYU and living rent-free in an apartment bought for him by his father. An aspiring film-maker, he mostly kicks around at home, smoking pot and self-destructing, paralysed by the weight of his own expectations. Privilege has given him every opportunity and, as such, average won't cut it. He has to be exceptional. For people like him, he says, even banking "is kind of an easy way out." But exceptional means elevating oneself above everyone else, and Ben cuts everyone and everything around him down. His Nepalese housemate Kalyan (Big Bang Theory's Kunal Nayyar), a modest economics major out to get a good job in the city and the one person who sticks by Ben, bears the brunt of it, but no-one's spared his scorn. Not Kalyan's conscientious doctor girlfriend Reshma (Annapurna Sriram); not his old schoolmate Ted (Alfie Allen), an uninspiring Wall Streeter with a slack jaw and no sense of humour. Ben belittles them all, lambasting mainstream tastes, ruining shared jokes and strenuously outdoing them at every turn. He's a modern-day Misanthrope, bitter as black coffee, who reserves a special kind of hatred for himself. Out of the window, the city looks a long way away. A washed-out, whited-out Jasper Johns flag hangs on the wall. The one person who meets his standards is Ted's sweet-hearted fiance Sarah (Katie Brayben), the woman with whom he's been infatuated since elementary school. At eight, he dreamt of her shitting in his face and, decades later, clings to the memory of an innocent playground flash. Bidding to impress her, he invites her to see the film he's working on footage of a homeless man eating from the trash he's faked off the back of something Kalyan saw for real. Needless to say, it doesn't go to plan. Though it protests to be an arch comedy of manners, The Spoils works best as a character study. It nails something particular the perils of privilege and Eisenberg rises to the challenge of wringing pity from the most viciously unlikeable character. Ben can't help himself. He was damned from the start, isolated by his headstart in life, and, as the others forge a friendship, his self-regard spirals into a deep-seated self-loathing that manifests as self-sabotage. Eisenberg plays him, brilliantly, as a man out of joint with himself, crunched around the furniture as if even the standard sitting position is beneath him. Yet, Eisenberg still lets us admire Ben just suggesting that maybe everyone else, with their crappy, extended in-jokes and their fawning, flattering small-talk, is somehow spoiled in a different way. The problem, though, is that The Spoils is so fundamentally American the sort of play that talks its arguments out that British audiences might struggle. There's not a trace of metaphor here, and in straining for a credible real-time psychology, The Spoils frequently goes slack as it drags on a problem exacerbated with humour that gets lost in translation. Nonetheless, at its sharpest, Scott Elliott's production has the car-crash quality of cringe comedy, with a real crackle to the performances not least Nayyar's nerdy Nepali and Brayben's sympathetic, horrified Sarah. It's easy to scoff at West End fare, but Eisenberg goes after something and goes after it hard. Even if not entirely victorious, he takes the spoils. The Spoils runs at Trafalgar Studios until 13 August. Jose Mourinho is reportedly the first choice to provide the voice of Pope Francis in a new animated movie about the apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Obviously deemed to be sufficiently pious enough for the part, the Manchester United boss has apparently been approached to lend his dulcet tones to the film, entitled Fe, which is due for release next year. According to the Mirror, Mourinho will dub the role of Pope Francis in Portuguese, English, Spanish and Italian. Fe is being made to mark the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary to shepherd three children in Fatima. It is scheduled to premiere on May 13 in 2017 with Mourinhos selection approved by the Vatican, according to reports in Portugal. The Mirror also add that Mourinho is expected to donate his voice-over fee to a charity for underprivileged children, which is bloody nice of him. Rui Pedro Oliveira, who signed Mourinho for the voiceover on behalf of production company Imagineview, said he took up the offer without reticence or demands. How very Papal. Gretchen S. Yeninas, a breast cancer survivor, shares her story and advice for early detection. As a breast cancer survivor, what advice do you have for others in monitoring their own health? I was 41 and just had my second mammogram when my cancer was found. And despite it being Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Subtitled on its poster as a disability revenge play, the Shakespeare in the Ruins production of Richard III casts Winnipeg actor Debbie Patterson as Richard, a physically misshapen royal scion employed as a secret weapon in the battle between the Lancaster and York families. Directed by Christopher Brauer, this iteration of Richard is the first in Canada (and possibly the first anywhere) to cast a disabled actor as the disabled monarch. Patterson, a longtime member of the SIR troupe, has been living with multiple sclerosis for years. The canes she employs to walk in the play are her own. Hence, Patterson is not obliged to crip up for the role as an able-bodied actor might. She plays the hunchbacked king straight up, determined to prove a villain upon the coronation of Edward IV (Arne MacPherson) to divide and conquer the royal house. PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Local actor Debbie Patterson, who has multiple sclerosis, plays Richard III. Typically, Richard has been presented with the understanding that the twistedness of his physical form (cheated of feature by dissembling nature) is a manifestation of a twisted morality. Brauer reverses that premise, proceeding under the assumption that Richard has always been treated as the family attack dog, and his subsequent fiendish machinations represent a lashing-out at his family for, if nothing else, fatally underestimating him. Subtly altering Richards motivations engenders some sympathy for this devil. But a devil, he still remains, and Patterson relishes portraying Richards exuberant knavery as addressed directly to the audience. See Richard astonished at his own powers of persuasion when he successfully courts Anne (Toni Reimer) though he himself killed both Annes husband and her father-in-law. See him comfort his Tower of London-bound brother Clarence (Andrew Cecon) in one scene, only to heartlessly engineer his murder later. See Pattersons face light up upon Richards discovery of a confederate in the treacherous Buckingham (a slick Omar Alex Khan) in a display of conspiratorial glee. Of course, conspiratorial glee is the operating premise of Shakespeare in the Ruins as audience members are obliged to move from place to place in the sprawling brick shell structure of St. Norberts Trappist Monastery in the theatres promenade style of performance. It creates a certain sense of camaraderie between audience and cast, ideally. This reviewer did hear one or two muttered complaints opening night, which was a little rich given the admirable way Patterson powered her way through the show with nary a sign of diminished energy. (Ever tried navigating a wheelchair over gravel?) Patterson has solid support, with others in the cast doing double- or triple-duty, notably Andrew Cecon (murdered twice as both Clarence and Rivers), Sarah Constible (icily officious as Hastings, and homicidally ingratiating as the hired killer Ratcliff) and Tracey Nepinak as the deposed queen Margaret, imperious and bloodthirsty. Cherissa Richards makes the dramatic most of the tragedy-prone Queen Elizabeth, and much of the comic relief falls on the capable shoulders of Toby Hughes, who plays Richards emissary Catesby, for example, with a subtle underlay of the wilfully clueless corporate functionary. Richard III is the second-longest of Shakespeares plays, after Hamlet, but this production fares fine with a judicious trim that runs roughly two-and-a-half hours with intermission. Bring a sweater. As with the plays abundant treachery, the evenings can elicit a chill. randall.king@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @FreepKing If you value coverage of Manitobas arts scene, help us do more. Your contribution of $10, $25 or more will allow the Free Press to deepen our reporting on theatre, dance, music and galleries while also ensuring the broadest possible audience can access our arts journalism. BECOME AN ARTS JOURNALISM SUPPORTER Click here to learn more about the project. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 02/06/2016 (2336 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is to sit down with the chief of Attawapiskat First Nation on June 13 a meeting that comes amid continued calls for increased mental health services to address an indigenous suicide epidemic. The Prime Ministers Office said Thursday he is looking forward to speaking with the chief and working together to find solutions for the challenges facing the people of the embattled Ontario reserve. On the same day, Trudeau will also meet a special delegation of northern Ontario First Nations youth, including youth from Attawapiskat. The meetings follow a spate of youth suicide attempts on the reserve that garnered international media attention. Charlie Angus, the MP for the area and the NDPs indigenous affairs critic, says concrete federal investments are desperately needed, including a significant increase to the existing number of mental wellness teams available to First Nations across the country. At a Commons committee this week, Health Department official Tom Wong admitted the existing 10 teams fall far short of what is needed. As I said before, 10 teams is not sufficient and so we would like to actually increase it, Wong said during his testimony. If we look at 80 teams, we would be looking at $40 million to $50 million. The ongoing problems plaguing northern Ontario reserves also prompted Health Minister Jane Philpott to visit both Attawapiskat and Kashechewan First Nation on Thursday to examine conditions on the ground. Angus accompanied the minister and indigenous leaders for the trip. In an interview prior to flying to the communities, Angus said it is both unacceptable and unethical that bureaucrats continue to deny health-care services needed on reserve. In April, Dr. Michael Kirlew, a doctor based in Sioux Lookout, Ont., addressed this issue before a parliamentary committee and delivered an emotional testimony of why drastic change must be taken in order to save lives. The more time that we wait, the more children will die, he said. There are still unnecessary barriers for physicians trying to deliver care on reserves, Kirlew added. Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation said Thursday the federal government and Ontario governments have been developing a framework to work together to address ongoing issues. At the end of May, the province unveiled the largest investment in indigenous health care in its history, earmarking more than $220 million over the next three years. The announcement also included permanent funding of $104.5 million annually after the initial three years to deal with the unequal access to health care. I am hopeful we are making headway, Fiddler said in a phone interview with The Canadian Press. As an immediate first step, Fiddler said, the government should look to barriers such as travel restrictions, which prevent doctors from accompanying patients for compassionate reasons. We are working on that right now to ensure those types of barriers are removed, Fiddler said. In a statement late Thursday, Philpott said the visit allowed her to connect with indigenous leaders, community members, local health providers and youth. I am inspired by their passion and by the ideas that have been discussed and look forward to continued conversations, especially with youth, as we work towards improved health and wellness in these communities, she said. The government is committed to meaningful investments in First Nations and Inuit communities, Philpott added. with files from Keith Leslie Follow @kkirkup on Twitter Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 02/06/2016 (2336 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. QUEBEC A report by Quebecs health and welfare commissioner says the province has the worst emergency room wait times in the western world. The report, released Thursday, says 35 per cent of patients in the province must wait five hours or more for care, compared to 15 per cent in Ontario, five per cent in the United States and Germany and two per cent in Switzerland. Health commissioner Robert Salois described the provinces emergency rooms as chronically overcrowded and accused authorities of lacking the leadership and will to tackle the problem. Robert Salois, Quebec health commissary, unveils a report on hospital emergencies, Thursday, June 2, 2016 in Quebec City. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot The report found that 1.5 million emergency room visits surpassed the Health Departments maximum wait time in 2015-2016, amounting to 13 million extra hours spent waiting for care. In Quebec, 10 per cent of emergency-room patients leave the hospital without having seen a doctor. In certain hospitals, the figure rises to more than 30 per cent. Salois said the government should study the 20 or so Quebec hospitals with good results and implement their practices across the province. In the report, Salois claims overcrowding in emergency rooms has become a chronic, socially unacceptable problem that has gone on far too long. Its nine recommendations include an increased role for nurses. Others would adjust the number of doctors based on patient volume in emergency rooms and ensure family clinics are open on evenings and weekends. Quebec Health Minister Gaetan Barrette said the report was nothing new and the solutions were the same as his own. He said many of the recommendations were already about to be implemented. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Canadian bankers are calling on the government to take further steps to cool surging housing markets in Toronto and Vancouver. The heads of National Bank of Canada and Bank of Nova Scotia said mortgage down-payment requirements should be boosted to tame the market, joining the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which said Wednesday measures should be taken to reduce the risk to the financial system from household debt and rising prices. Down payments should return over time to 10 per cent from five per cent, national bank chief executive officer Louis Vachon said. For the longest time, we had minimum 10 per cent cash down and we had 25-year maximum amortization and that worked very well, Vachon, 53, said Wednesday in a telephone interview. I think over a period of time thats where we need to gravitate back to. His comments follow those by Brian Porter, CEO of Scotiabank, who said Tuesday the countrys third-largest lender was easing back on mortgage lending because it was concerned about high prices in the two cities. We just took our foot off the gas the last couple quarters in terms of mortgage growth for the reasons I cited, in terms of Vancouver and Toronto, Porter said in an interview with Bloomberg TV Canadas Pamela Ritchie. Porter told the Globe and Mail newspaper Wednesday that the government could consider several measures including raising down payments, increasing the qualifying rate for five-year fixed mortgages and imposing a temporary luxury tax on foreign buyers. The comments come as price rises in the two cities remain undaunted by moves by the government earlier this year. Foreign buyers, particularly in Vancouver, are adding to the upward pressure. The federal government in mid-February raised down-payment requirements to 10 per cent for the portion of a house above C$500,000 while making it more costly for banks to fund lending. Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau said in an interview two weeks ago its too soon to know the impact of federal changes to mortgage rules aimed at cooling the Vancouver and Toronto markets. Its been just about three months its been in place, so its early days, Morneau said at the time. We continue to be very focused on this file. Both Toronto and Vancouver continue to have house price escalations that force us to pay close attention. The Canadian housing market is stable on the whole though the government is continuing to monitor Vancouver and Toronto, a spokeswoman for Morneau said Thursday. We have allocated funding to Statistics Canada to gather data on the activity of foreign investors and are prepared to take further action if required, Annie Donolo said by email. Vancouvers property market will drive British Columbias housing sales past its 2005 high to a record this year before prices cool next year, according to a forecast from the western provinces real estate board on Thursday. Home sales in the province will rise 12 per cent and prices will jump 20 per cent this year, the British Columbia Real Estate Association said. Home sales jumped nationwide by 10 percent in April from a year earlier, the most activity for that month and the second-highest level on record, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. In Vancouver, prices increased 25 percent to an average of $844,800 from the year before and sales climbed 15 percent. The average price of a detached home in Toronto jumped 19 per cent over the same time. The OECD said as part of its global report Wednesday that macro-prudential measures, or regulations, should be tightened further and targeted regionally to reduce financial-stability risks from high household debt and house prices. Generally what weve seen from the regulators is a good approach, Vachon said. Theyre targeting very specific markets and segments where they feel theres a higher risk, and that is a far better approach than what weve seen in other countries. Bloomberg News Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. MONTREAL A Quebec judge has refused to release Cinar animation co-founder Ronald Weinberg pending his next court appearance Monday. Weinberg along with John Xanthoudakis and Lino Matteo were imprisoned on Thursday after a jury found them guilty on most of the charges they faced in a $120-million fraud case. Quebec Superior Court Justice Pierre Labrie told Weinbergs lawyer this afternoon he would not review his decision to keep her client behind bars. Weinberg co-founded the Cinar animation company, which created popular childrens shows such as Arthur and Caillou. The three men were charged with transferring funds from Cinar to the Bahamas nearly 20 years ago. Sentencing arguments are set for Monday. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. TORONTO Canadas largest real estate board must give its realtor members access to more home sales data, which they could share with the public online, the Competition Tribunal said Friday. The tribunal said the Toronto Real Estate Board must include in its home sales data feed information it currently does not disclose, including sales figures, pending sales and broker commissions. Member realtors can also request access to archived data. In its decision, the tribunal said realtor members would be allowed to post that information on their websites, as long as users are required to register to access it. Sellers would be permitted to opt out of having their addresses and listings posted online. TREB has been given 60 days to make the changes. In a statement Saturday, CEO John DiMichele said TREB is examining the tribunals order with its legal counsel before making any public comments as the matter is before the courts. The Competition Bureau said Friday the competition commissioner has been served with a notice of appeal by TREB, alleging that the tribunal erred when it ruled in favour of the bureau earlier this year. One realtor said under Fridays decision, some uncertainty remains as to what they can do with the data. TREB may limit its members to only use the data directly related to the business of providing residential real estate brokerage services, the tribunal wrote in the decision. Thats pretty ambiguous, actually, said Ara Mamourian, broker and owner of Torontos Spring Realty Inc., adding that it doesnt differ much from the status quo. Currently, realtors are prohibited from sharing home sales data with anyone who hasnt signed a representation agreement with them to either purchase a home or list their property, Mamourian said. The wording of the tribunals decision makes it appear that may remain the case, he said. But he will take the ruling as a green light to once again start posting home sales information on his website, he added. TREB must also pay more than $1.8 million in legal costs within the next 30 days. If it decides to pass those costs to its realtor members, it must do so equally, the tribunal said. The order comes after the tribunal concluded in April that TREB prevented competition and stifled digital innovation by prohibiting its realtor members from posting sales data online. All of the affected parties the Competition Bureau, TREB and the Canadian Real Estate Association, which has intervenor status in the case were permitted to make submissions. The case has been ongoing since 2011, when the competition commissioner filed an application with the tribunal challenging restrictions that TREB imposed on its members. Follow @AleksSagan on Twitter. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A weaker-than-expected demand for steel grain bins has led to the layoff of 24 workers at Westeels St. Boniface production plant. The workers, some of whom had been back on the job for less than a month after being laid off last December, were given their layoff notices Wednesday, a spokesman for their union Local 9074 of the United Steelworkers Union said Thursday. Paul Lussier, president of the local, blamed the layoffs on a lack of work. Westeel general manager Bruce Allen confirmed soft market conditions were a big factor. We were cautiously optimistic about the year, but it hasnt panned out exactly like we were expecting. Last year and this year, there has been a little bit of caution out there. A little bit of trepidation, I guess, on the farm, Allen said. But its tied up with so many things market conditions, financial conditions, the Ukraine situation. The markets ebb and flow, but I think its safe to say its kind of soft all over. The States has been soft and Western Canada has been soft. He and Lussier said theyre hoping demand will pick up again before the end of the summer, noting the fall and early winter is typically the busiest time for grain-bin orders. If it does, perhaps all 24 of the workers will be recalled, along with a few others who were laid off last December but hadnt yet been called back to work. Allen said a lot will depend on how good a crop farmers have this year and how much excess storage capacity farmers have on their farms. If their bins are relatively full and the harvest is looking good, theyre going to need more storage, he said. The president of the industry group that represents farm-equipment manufacturers in Canada Regina-based Agricultural Manufacturers of Canada said Westeel isnt the only grain-bin manufacturer experiencing weaker-than-expected demand. This is absolutely industry-wide, Leah Olson said, adding it isnt the only agricultural manufacturer laying off workers. John Deere has been having quite a few layoffs. The tractor market is lower than it has historically been, Olson said. Olson said Canadian grain farmers are more confident about their prospects for this year than many of their U.S. counterparts. And the lower-valued Canadian dollar is making Canadian grain and Canadian-made agricultural products more affordable in international markets. As a result, farm-equipment manufacturers are still well-positioned to have a decent 2016, she said. But nobody is talking about having a record-breaking 2016. Although Westeen and the Steelworkers Union are attempting to negotiate a new collective agreement for the Westeel workers the old three-year contract expired last month Allen and Lussier both denied that had anything to do with this weeks layoffs. murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Close allies will curb or even halt the flow of intelligence to the Communications Security Establishment if the electronic spy agency is forced to spill its closely guarded secrets in open court, argues a senior CSE official. In turn, that could dry up the flow of quality information necessary to ensure the safety and protection of Canadians and Canadian interests, says Scott Millar, director general of strategic policy and planning at CSE. Millars warning comes in an affidavit filed in a legal tug-of-war between the federal government and a civil liberties watchdog over what CSE must disclose in court. A sign for the Government of Canada's Communications Security Establishment (CSE) is seen outside their headquarters in the east end of Ottawa on July 23, 2015. Close allies will curb or even halt the flow of intelligence to the Communications Security Establishment if the electronic spy agency is forced to spill its closely guarded secrets in open court, argues a senior CSE official.In turn, that could dry up the flow of "quality information necessary to ensure the safety and protection of Canadians and Canadian interests," says Scott Millar, director general of strategic policy and planning at CSE. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association is suing the national surveillance agency, claiming it breaches the constitutional rights of Canadians by intercepting their private communications. The organization filed the lawsuit almost three years ago in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. But an initial phase of the legal saga played out this week in Federal Court in Ottawa with cross-examination of witnesses over disclosure of federal records in the broader case. The Ottawa-based CSE uses highly advanced technology to intercept, sort and analyze foreign communications for morsels of intelligence interest to the federal government. It is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance that also includes the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. A federal watchdog declared earlier this year that the spy agency broke privacy laws by sharing information about Canadians with foreign partners. Certain types of metadata containing Canadian identity information were not being properly minimized stripped of potentially revealing details before being shared with the CSEs four key foreign partners. Metadata is information associated with a communication such as a telephone number or email address but not the message itself. Still, privacy advocates argue it can be highly revealing. CSEs activities are shrouded in secrecy, says Grace Pastine, the civil liberties associations litigation director. CSE is required to have policies in place to protect the privacy of Canadians, but it has not provided the details of those policies to Canadians, she said in a statement. Were calling on the federal government to state clearly who it is watching, what is being collected, what is being shared with foreign governments and how it is handling Canadians private communications and information. In his affidavit, Millar says if CSE is forced to reveal sensitive material provided to it by a Five Eyes agency, or related to the alliances processes, it is very likely to be damaging. A loss of faith in either the commitment or ability of CSE and the Government of Canada to protect such information could result in a significant decrease in information being shared with CSE and even a termination of access, he says. Damaging trust and respect through disclosure of information against the expressed wishes of one or more of our Five Eyes partners would have a detrimental effect on future collaborative efforts, consequently harming not only the interests of Canada, but also those of our closest partners. The federal Liberals have expressed concerns about CSE, committing during the election campaign to limit the agencys power by requiring a warrant to engage in the surveillance of Canadians, the civil liberties association noted. However, to date, the government continues to oppose the lawsuit. Follow @JimBronskill on Twitter Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA When Brig.-Gen. Greg Smith first touched down in Iraq in February to advise and assist the Iraqi army in its fight against Islamic State militants, he assumed that ISIL had the upper hand. Instead, what he found amidst the grit and violence and destruction that has consumed large chunks of Iraq and neighboring Syria was an Iraqi army that would not back down. They are crushing them in many ways and pushing them back, said Smith, the Canadian chief of staff of the Combined Joint Forces Land Component Command for Operation Inherent Resolve, the American-led coalition whose mission is to help guide Iraqs own forces. In his first media interview since deploying to Iraq, Smith said he had underestimated the prowess of the Iraqi soldiers. Much of the Iraq army had collapsed and fled when the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant variously known as ISIL, ISIS or Daesh swept through swaths of Iraq in 2014, capturing its second-largest city, Mosul. And yet when he arrived, it was the militants of ISIL who were on the run, Smith said. I have to admit I was very surprised to see how badly they were doing once I got here and started getting read in on operations, he said. The Iraqi forces, notwithstanding perhaps somewhat of a poor brand based on how activities occurred in 2014, are quite honestly taking it to Daesh. Smith said he was minding my business as commandant of the Canadian Army Command and Staff College in Kingston, Ont., when my boss called me one day and said, Hey, youre promoted and going to Iraq.' He arrived shortly before Iraq announced the beginning of an offensive to retake Mosul by the end of this year. Since then, Iraqi forces have been attacking northward toward the city along the Tigris River. They are supported by coalition airstrikes and, on the ground, by some 200 U.S. Marines providing indirect artillery support from a base near the town of Makhmour. One Marine was killed in an Islamic State rocket strike in March. Make no mistake, though: the campaign to capture Mosul will be long and difficult, Smith warned. Even if this was the Canadian army trying to do it, this would be a tough fight, he said in a phone interview from Baghdad. But were training with the Iraqis right now. Were doing that building partnership piece. [The Iraqis] have begun operations to isolate that part of their forward line of troops. And Im actually quite impressed with their tactical agility and their speed. All of the military operations are planned and led by Iraqis, he pointed out. This is not a coalition effort. This is us supporting the Iraqi government and the Iraqi forces. We support them with operational fires. We provide surveillance for them. We provide advise-and-assist (support). Targets for coalition airstrikes are chosen in consultation with the Iraqis, he added. We have joint targeting cells. Every one of those targets are approved by the Iraqi army, or if its up in the north, its potentially by Kurdish forces. That is done hand-in-hand. If the Iraqis or the Kurds say dont hit that target, thats not what we do. Based in Baghdad, Smith is one of three one-star Canadian generals assigned to Operation Inherent Resolve. Brig.-Gen. David Anderson leads a team that liaises with Iraqs defence and security ministries, a job Smith compared to that of the strategic advisory team Canada sent to support the Afghan government. Brig.-Gen James Irvine, based in Kuwait, is commander of Canadas Joint Task Force-Iraq, which includes all Canadians involved in the mission. He will be replaced today by Brig.-Gen. Shane Brennan. While Smiths team works mainly with Iraqi regular forces, Canadian special forces are training and advising Kurdish peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq, where the Kurds are holding a line east and north of Mosul. Its an active front that ISIL often attacks. Smith says Canadian special forces in the area, who are officially in a non-combat training role, sometimes work from the forward line of troops. They have exchanged fire with the enemy. One Canadian soldier, Sgt. Andrew Doiron, died last year in a friendly-fire incident near the front. The Kurds, however, are unlikely to take part in any direct assault on Mosul. The city lies beyond land they consider Kurdish territory. Most peshmerga, when asked, will say they are fighting for Kurdistan rather than a united Iraq. That presents complications for Iraqs international partners. We are here supporting Iraq, said Smith. This is a one-country policy from a Canadian perspective and from a coalition perspective. Ive seen on the news plans for Kurdish separation, or whatever. Ive heard [peshmerga and Iraqi regular forces] tactically work very well together. Its a respectful relationship. Were enabling both sides. As for the longer political solution, that is very much an Iraqi democratic problem. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne says her provinces position going into talks about making changes to the Canada Pension Plan isnt the biggest hurdle to getting a deal done it is other provinces that are balking at retirement reforms. Ontario is pushing for changes to the CPP that would mirror the provincial pension program it promised to create, and plans to start phasing in next year and charging new premiums to pay for the plan the year after that. Federal officials see Ontarios position in the talks as a key hurdle to negotiating an agreement, but Wynne said her province has not been the problem in discussions around CPP reform. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne's speaks during a press conference regarding the political fundraising question at Queen's Park in Toronto on Monday, April 11, 2016. Wynne is pressing the need for immediate reforms to the Canada Pension Plan to deal with a looming national crisis on retirement security. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette We remain the champions of CPP enhancement, Wynne said Friday at an event in Ottawa. We have continued to be at the table when other provinces have not necessarily been putting forward retirement security as a priority. We have continued to bring it to the table. Wynne said her province will forge ahead with its own pension plan next year, known as the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (ORPP), in the absence of buy-in on changes to how much CPP pays out in retirement benefits and how much workers will be expected to pay in premiums. I will be a very happy woman if we can find a consensus across the country. But Im not going to let people down if we cant, she said. We will continue to put the ORPP in place in the absence of that consensus. Federal, provincial and territorial finance ministers will meet later this month in Vancouver to talk about CPP reforms with the aim of having a deal in place by the end of the year. Since December, when the federal and provincial finance ministers last met, political and bureaucratic conversations have been intensifying behind the scenes to garner support for an expanded pension plan. But coming to a consensus has proven difficult. An agreement would be the first major CPP overhaul in almost 20 years after the provinces and federal government agreed to increase premiums in 1997 as part of work to make sure that one generation of workers wasnt paying for the retirement of another generation. Most provinces were ready to agree to an expansion of CPP in 2013. But the previous Conservative government balked at the move, which led the Ontario Liberals to head down the path of their own provincial pension plan. Quebec also has its own provincial pension plan. Any change to the CPP requires the consent of seven provinces with at least two-thirds of the population, meaning Ontarios blessing is needed for any deal. Provinces like B.C. and Saskatchewan are wary of any deal where premiums paid by workers and business owners would have to go up, but their percentage of the national population means their exclusion wouldnt kill an agreement. Our position was that retirement security was a national crisis, that its something that needed to be tackled, Wynne said. Lets find a consensus across the country, lets have a CPP enhancement that is going to ensure that Canadians have a secure retirement because whats in place now is not adequate. So that remains our position. Ontario is looking for a national agreement to target Canadians who dont have a workplace pension plan, provide coverage to those higher up on the income scale, increase the maximum annual benefits to seniors to about $25,000 from the current $12,500, a move that would require an increase in premiums. Follow @jpress on Twitter Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signalled Friday he would take a firm stand with China on human rights, revealing how Canada expressed its dissatisfaction with the country after its foreign minister publicly berated a Canadian journalist. Trudeau said freedom of the press is very important to him, noting that asking tough questions is a key part of the medias role. The latest controversy comes as Canada and China work towards deepening their economic relationship, including a possible free trade deal. Trudeau said he would continue to raise rights questions with China, including the case of a Canadian, Kevin Garratt, who has been jailed in China on espionage charges. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities 2016 Annual Conference in Winnipeg on Friday, June 3, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods In Ottawa on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi blasted a journalist from the web outlet IPolitics who asked about Chinas human rights record, saying the question reflected arrogance, was irresponsible and full of prejudice. Wang appeared visibly angry as he delivered the scolding at a joint news conference with Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion. I can confirm that both Minister Dion and department officials from Global Affairs Canada have expressed our dissatisfaction to both the Chinese foreign minister and to the ambassador of China to Canada our dissatisfaction with the way our journalists were treated, Trudeau told a news conference in Winnipeg. The IPolitics question was agreed to by a number of journalists representing several news organizations at the event, including The Canadian Press. The new Trudeau government got off to a good start with Chinese leadership last fall, with the prime ministers first meeting with Premier Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Turkey. Trudeau is also travelling to Beijing for the next G20 summit later this year. Xi praised the vision of Trudeaus father, Pierre, for establishing diplomatic relations with China in 1970, while Wang said this week his country looks forward to cultivating a new golden era in relations with Canada under the new Trudeau government. China wants to pursue a free trade deal with Canada, something Wang emphasized during his visit to Ottawa this past week. The visiting Chinese minister also went out of his way to praise the subsequent Liberal governments of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin for improving relations with his country, but conspicuously failed to mention the previous decade of Conservative rule under Stephen Harper. Harper struck a frosty note with the Chinese in 2006 when he said he would not back away from criticizing their human rights record, or sell out Canadas values for the sake of the almighty dollar. But Trudeau also made clear he would not be short-changing any future talk of human rights as his government tries to deepen economic co-operation with China. We will continue to bring up human rights concerns every chance we get while at the same time we work to create economic opportunities both for Canadian and for Chinese citizens, Trudeau said. The fact is the way Canada has always engaged best in the world is to be active and vocal about the things that we are concerned about and disagree on, while at the same time looking for common ground that will be of mutual benefit for all of our citizens. The prime minister said he raises human rights every time he meets with Chinese officials, including Garratts jailing, who he said is in prison for espionage without any evidence to support the allegations and accusations. Dion said Friday that he raised the issue of how China treats journalists within his borders during his meeting with Wang. But he said it is not his job to defend Canadian journalists working at home. Conservative and New Democrats have criticized Dion for not speaking out on behalf of the berated journalist, Amanda Connolly, during the press conference itself. I consider Mme. Connolly as a professional with a thick skin and she does not need me to go to her rescue, Dion said from Paris at an international meeting on the Middle East. Dion noted that he said during the press conference that he had raised human rights and consular affairs issues in his meeting with Wang, including the Garratt case. I did it very, very frankly in my meetings with the Chinese minister and I even raised with him the case of the rights for Chinese journalists in China, said Dion. I think thats the best way to see progress made. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The advocacy office that Manitobas First Nations leaders set up to help families navigate their way through the child welfare system without losing their children celebrated its first anniversary Friday. So far, 400 families have made their way to the First Nation Family Advocacy Office in the past year, director Cora Morgan told an open house at the same building that also houses the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs offices. The advocacy office showed off its new digs Friday, a small suite on the 18th floor at 275 Portage Ave. Up to now, its been sharing space with other AMC programs. The AMC released a report on flaws in the Manitoba child welfare system in 2014, called Bringing Our Children Home which included 10 recommendations to realign the current system with First Nations culture, beliefs and values. A key recommendation of that report was to establish a First Nations advocate office for families to turn to for help, which was done last June. First Nations have been empowered for a decade to run their own child welfare system on the basis of an agreement struck with the provincial government. But practically since its inception, First Nations, especially chiefs, have been at loggerheads with the government over how to run the system at reserve level and in urban areas. Manitoba, with nearly 11,000 children in care, is believed to have the highest rate of child apprehension in the western world, Morgan told a group of families that came to celebrate the anniversary Friday. Over the years, high-profile cases have cast the system under a series of spotlights but there have been two cases in particular that have earned Manitoba its harshest condemnation. Eleven years ago, Phoenix Sinclair, a five year old was murdered by her mother and step father, prompting the largest inquiry into the provinces child welfare system ever. In 2014, authorities discovered the body of Tina Fontaine in the Red River. The Sagkeeng 15-year-old was in the temporary care of the child welfare system when she was murdered. That death galvanized a nationwide campaign for a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, which Ottawa is proceeding with under Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The advocates office is small, with two workers, plus Morgan. They currently have 250 open cases that fall into three separate categories: families with kids in care who need help regaining custody; former foster children who are now starting their own families and find their babies flagged for apprehension as newborns; and families who want to keep their children from being apprehended and need help connecting with community organizations for services. alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Seven months after assuming office, Patty Hajdu, Canadas minister for the status of women, has become quite familiar with the misogynist attacks female politicians face regularly on social media, and she says its time for the corporations making billions off these sites to do something about it. Last month, she tweeted about how disheartening it was to have to constantly delete hate-filled tweets targeting her. Today, she will participate in a panel discussion at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in Winnipeg about the reasons more women dont run for office. Among those reasons is the fact female politicians are subjected to a level of hate-filled, crude, sexist and abusive attacks that should make any reasonable person sick to their stomach. Threats of violence are the norm rather than the exception, but Hajdu said unless the abuser threatens to kill, it seems everyone shrugs it off, including the people running the sites where this hate is allowed to flourish. Social media, she says. Its somewhat lawless. She said its not only women who bear the brunt. Anyone in a marginalized group, including indigenous Canadians, are the targets of tweets and posts on Facebook. Entire websites have been set up specifically to humiliate and ostracize. Not just me but entire groups in the community have attempted to take down these pages, to report these pages, to report these offensive tweets, and unless its a direct threat of murder, its almost impossible to get action from some of these large corporations that are, I dont think, doing a very good job of policing the space and supporting vulnerable people, including women. Ask any woman in politics and she will be able to list you off the top of her head several examples of when she was belittled or abused because of her gender. U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has had to develop a skin thick enough to withstand daily attacks about everything from her sex life to her intelligence. It is no secret her affinity for pantsuits something too much ridiculed is largely because to succeed in a mans world many women have to try and walk, quite literally, in their clothes. Former French housing minister Cecile Duflot was the recipient of wolf whistles while she spoke in the French National Assembly because she had dared to wear a dress into the chamber. You might think it happened 50 years ago. It was in 2012. Hajdu is cognizant of the fact social-media attacks are not the only reason women are still 50 per cent less likely to run for office than men. There are many other barriers, including socio-economic ones, particularly at the municipal level, where you run without the support of a party campaign and often have to find the finances yourself. In the last provincial election, 69 of the 221 candidates were women, and 14 of them won their seat. Federally last fall, 30 per cent of the candidates were women. We were left with 88 female MPs, the most in Canadian history, representing one in four MPs total. In Manitoba, only 18 per cent of municipal councillors and 10 per cent of mayors are women, which is lower than the national numbers, where 26 per cent of councillors and 16 per cent of mayors are women. Since Agnes Macphail became the first female MP in Canada in 1921, she has been followed into the House of Commons by 314 other women. Since 1921, more than 2,650 men have been elected. Manitoba has had just 13 female MPs. Hajdu herself is the result of a Liberal party effort to have people in the community identify to party brass female leaders in their communities who should be encouraged to run. She was the head of Thunder Bays largest homeless shelter when a colleague saw the Invite Her to Run initiative and did just that. Similar efforts are made in the U.S., with campaigns such as She Should Run. But in an environment in which women are already less inclined to seek public office, asking a woman to subject herself to daily barrages of hate is adding to the reasons she will say no, rather than diminishing them. Hajdu said she hasnt yet approached Facebook or Twitter or any other digital-media site for a meeting about the matter, but that may not be far off. I dont have any problem talking with people about gender-based violence, she said. Whether or not theyre going to listen, thats another story. mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The Prime Ministers speech was welcomed enthusiastically by mayors Brian Bowman and Don Iveson, who said the comments are solidifying the perception that Ottawa is accepting the position that decisions affecting local communities need to be made by local leaders. In the past, municipal leaders often found themselves caught in a power struggle between federal and provincial politicians over which local projects should be funded. Both mayors said its reasonable to expect Ottawa to have its own objectives on what it wants accomplished through the $120-billion infrastructure fund and they said local leaders can best determine which projects meet those objectives. JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman, right, greets Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Friday morning. I know that there will be MPs who will fight for their wards, thats something that will happen across Canada, but were dealing with the Prime Minister and the minister responsible for the country, Bowman said. Having the criteria set out the way they are, its a very strong step in the right direction. During his Friday morning speech to the 1,600 delegates attending the Federation of Canadian Municipalities annual conference, Trudeau said his governments priority when funding local projects is that they must meet federal objectives, including creating jobs as quickly as possible and that they combat the problems posed by climate change. Local decision makers know best which projects will achieve those goals more ambitiously, said Iveson, mayor of Edmonton and chair of the Big City Mayors Caucus. That was music to local government ears today. Bowman said hes confident the new Pallister government is prepared to allow local municipalities to determine which projects will be constructed in any future joint-funding agreement between Ottawa and the provincial governments. aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 02/06/2016 (2336 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Manitoba Senator Murray Sinclair gave his full support to the governments medically assisted dying bill Thursday, saying the law is constitutional and that without passing it by the June 6 Supreme Court deadline, Canadian doctors will not have legal protections to participate in assisted deaths. Sinclair, Manitobas former associate chief justice, explained his position to the Free Press in an interview shortly before he delivered his maiden speech in the Senate on the bill. This is an issue that is important to all of Canada, Sinclair said from his fifth-floor office in Centreblock. Senator Murray Sinclair smiles as he waits for a television interview to begin in the foyer of the House of Commons, Tuesday, April 12, 2016 in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld In February 2015, the Supreme Court said it should no longer be illegal for a competent adult who is suffering from a grievous and irremediable illness or disability to request and receive help to end their life. The court gave the government one year, until Feb. 6, to allow Ottawa or provincial governments time to craft regulations to enact medical-assistance in dying. That deadline was pushed back to June 6 at the request of the federal government to account for time lost due to last falls election. The courts ruling did not specifically limit access to a medically assisted death to someone who is dying, nor did they limit it to physical conditions only. Bill C-14 does both those things, and critics say by limiting access to assisted dying to people who are dying, and preventing someone suffering only from a psychological illness from the same right, the bill is unconstitutional. Sinclair said the government doesnt have to introduce a bill that mirrors exactly what the court said for that law to be constitutional, as long as the new law complies with the charter. In this case, the charter says that every charter right you have is subject to such reasonable limits as are demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society, said Sinclair. Our obligation in the Senate is to ensure the government has carefully considered that provision before they enact this legislation. They have certainly given a right to individuals under this law that is less than what the court said but they have the right to do that as long as they can justify it under article one of the Charter. I think that they have. Sinclair is also concerned if the bill isnt passed by June 6 something that is virtually impossible at this point patients wont be able to access assisted deaths because doctors wont feel they are fully protected by the law to provide that assistance. Manitobas other independent senator, Raymonde Gagne, told the Free Press Thursday she is listening to voices on all sides of this debate and has not yet made up her mind where she stands on C-14. When I first saw the bill, my first thought was it was quite balanced, she said. But she has since also heard of amendments which could make sense. This is the first major legislation Sinclair and Gagne are dealing with as new senators. They both took their seats in April. Both say they feel the independence in the Senate is growing and neither feels beholden to anyone on an issue. Sinclairs appointment came just four months after he wrapped up work as the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he wont smoke pot when his government makes it legal for Canadians to light up. Trudeau, speaking in Winnipeg during a question-and-answer session at the Free Press News Cafe late Thursday afternoon, repeated the fact he smoked marijuana when he was younger but is well past that phase of his life. I dont think so. As Ive said many times, I am not someone who has a history of using drugs, said Trudeau, who was interviewed by Free Press Editor Paul Samyn. The prime minister also took questions from students from Children of the Earth high school in Winnipeg who attended the event. Trudeau said he lived in Whistler, B.C., for a time and was surrounded by friends who used marijuana. But it was just never my thing, he said. I dont drink very much, I dont smoke, never have. I dont even drink coffee because I dont like the jolt that caffeine gives me. And when I told people I dont drink coffee it made far more of an uproar than it did when I told people I once smoked a cigarette, once smoked a joint. So, the fact is its my choice that I not do that, and we should respect adults choices to make their own decisions. Currently, Canadians suffering from an illness and who have an appropriate prescription are allowed to smoke pot; however, recreational use remains illegal in Canada. The Liberal government intends to make good on its election promise to introduce legislation next year to legalize its recreational use. Trudeau said Thursday the Liberal plan calls for legalizing marijuana but not necessarily decriminalizing it. There are two things that convinced me that legalization of marijuana of changing our marijuana regime are necessary. One of them is because right now, underage Canadians have incredibly easy access to marijuana. In a U.N. study of 29 different advanced developing countries, the No. 1 country for underage access to marijuana in the world was Canada. Its easier for our kids to get their hands on pot than anything else. You can talk about how marijuana may be less harmful than alcohol or cigarettes in some ways, and theres studies to prove that, but there is no question that the developing brain, underage Canadians, are more vulnerable to the harmful effects of marijuana. So, my approach is to say if we legalize marijuana, if we start controlling points of sale, demand to show proper I.D. the same way we do for alcohol or cigarettes, will make it more difficult for young people to get access to marijuana. RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (left) is interviewed at the Winnipeg Free Press News Cafe by Free Press Editor Paul Samyn with students from Children of the Earth High School in the audience on Thursday. And the second thing is that our current system provides billions upon billions of dollars of revenue to criminal organizations, street gangs and gun runners. Its a massive source of revenue for violence in our streets. So legalizing, getting the point of sale out of the hands of criminals, controlling who we sell it to, will make our system safer for Canadians. Trudeau was asked where he would prefer to see marijuana sold in Canada. The federal government doesnt necessarily decide that on its own. Liquor control is done by the provinces and we have provinces like Quebec that do it very differently than other places, than Ontario does, for example, or even Manitoba, the prime minister said. So, itll be up to the federal government to create a framework to work with the provinces to figure out what exactly is going to work for different jurisdictions across the country. Thats the only responsible way to go about doing this, and, like we said from the very beginning, were going to do this responsibly. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Manitoba Senator Murray Sinclair says the governments progress on reconciliation with Indigenous people may not be fast enough for everyone but he is willing to give them time because he sees progress. We all must understand it took us seven generations to create this mess, Sinclair said in an interview from his Parliament Hill office. I am prepared to grant them a significant degree of leeway as to what it is they choose to work on, as long as they are working. One year ago this week, Sinclair was wrapping up the first Truth and Reconciliation events in Ottawa, after he delivered the executive summary and 94 Calls to Action based on six years of work as the commissions chair. Now he is wrapping up his first two months as one of Manitobas two new independent senators, a position he took in part because it affords him a chance to continue to work on the TRC progress. RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Sen. Murray Sinclair. He told the Free Press while there is, and has long been, a hunger for change within the Indigenous community that needs to be appeased, being constantly angry about the lack of progress will just wear you out. If you burn yourselves out over that fire each time when you get close to success, youre not going to have anything left to offer, he said. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a product of the settlement agreement between Canada and survivors of residential schools. The six-year journey chronicled the history of the schools, the number of children forced to attend them (more than 150,000 is the estimate), and the physical, sexual and psychological abuses suffered by students. Sinclair referred to the schools as cultural genocide, and they have been blamed for many of the social problems facing Canadas Indigenous communities today, including family breakdown and substance abuse. The Calls to Action had a heavy focus on implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as educating everyone in Canada, from kindergarten through to graduate schools of medicine, law, journalism and nursing, the business community and religious leaders, about the history of aboriginal people and the legacy of residential schools. There was a call for government to enact policies to reduce the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the child welfare and justice systems, eliminate education gaps for Indigenous children, and call an inquiry into the high rate of murdered and missing Indigenous women. Progress has been made. The government has been working on setting up the inquiry since December and will launch it later this year. Last month, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett went to New York City to fully endorse the UN declaration on Indigenous people, removing Canada as the lone country with objections to the document. The federal budget included new funding for child welfare and education on reserves, although the amounts were lower than expected or previously promised. That fact has some believing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau raised expectations for Indigenous people and Canadas commitment to reconciliation beyond what his government is able to deliver. In an interview at the Free Press News Cafe Thursday, Trudeau said there just is no quick fix. Its not going to be suddenly okay, we can invest money today and tomorrow, or next week, or one year from now everything will be great, he said. I think we understand that the challenges were facing were created largely by Canada and the Canadian government over decades and indeed centuries and are going to take years to turn around. Sinclair said keeping expectations high is the only way things ultimately get accomplished. He added one of the biggest impacts Trudeau can have on reconciliation is a top-down approach to change the habits and processes of the civil service. We need to get past the political voices and it needs to become part of the mentality of those working on the ground, he said. The biggest single failure of the apology of 2008 was that they never made it clear to the bureaucracy to take the apology seriously and what it meant. mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the countrys municipal leaders exactly what they wanted to hear during his speech Friday morning his government will fund infrastructure projects that the local leaders want to build. In a speech to more than 1,600 mayors and councillors from across the country, Trudeau re-iterated the commitment made by his Infrastructure minister on Thursday municipalities will decide which local projects will be built with the promised $120 billion Ottawa will provide over the next 10 years. Building reliable, modern, sustainable infrastructure is about growing our communities, is about making our cities and towns a healthier place to live, Trudeau said. We know that every dollar invested in infrastructure is a dollar invested in our communities. JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities Big City Mayors Conference at the RBC Convention Centre in Winnipeg Friday morning. The Prime Minister was the keynote speaker at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities annual conference and trade show. Trudeau had committed to spending $120 billion on municipal infrastructure over a 10-year period in his March budget but local municipal leaders had expressed concern over who would get to decide which projects would be built. That uncertainty was eliminated at a closed-door meeting Thursday between the mayors of the countrys 21 largest cities and Trudeaus infrastructure minister, Amarjeet Sohi. You know what your communities need, Trudeau told the municipal leaders. We shouldnt tell you whether you need light rail or subways.thats your job as municipal leaders, to tell us what you need and how the federal government should help. Trudeau said the only caveat he is placing on the infrastructure dollars is that the projects chosen by the local leaders had to comply with his governments objective of creating jobs and dealing with climate change. Trudeau will be holding a formal news conference later this morning. In the afternoon, hell be meeting with Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister. Trudeau held a brief photo op with Winnipeg mayor Brian Bowman before the start of the FCM conference. aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 02/06/2016 (2336 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Police are looking for two suspects who allegedly attacked three men in the North End early Thursday. Around midnight, the three men were walking to a bus stop on Polson Avenue near Andrews Street when two people approached and demanded they surrender their belongings. But before the victims could respond, they were attacked, police said in a news release. One of the victims was knocked unconscious and the other two fled and called police. One of the victims was taken to hospital in critical condition, another was treated and released, and the third didnt need medical attention. Police and a canine unit searched the area but couldnt find the suspects, and the major crimes unit is continuing the investigation. They are looking for two aboriginal youth, both about 16 or 17 years old and 58 tall. Anyone with information can call 204-986-6219 or Crime Stoppers at 204-786-8477. Teen charged in several South Osborne break-ins Police have arrested one suspect they believe is responsible for several break-ins in the South Osborne area. The 15-year-old boy was arrested after police received several reports of residential break-ins in the 400 block of Montague Avenue around 5:15 a.m. June 1. As police responded to the area, a resident near Osborne Street and McNaughton Avenue flagged them down and said his hoome had just been broken into by two male suspects. Police searched the area and found one suspect. The 15-year-old has been linked to several break-ins, both recent and historical, the Winnipeg Police Service said in a news release. Police said theyve recovered several stolen items and ask victims of recent residential or garage break-ins in the South Osborne area to contact investigators. The teen is charged with 11 counts of break-and-enter and theft, as well as identity theft, theft under $5,000, mischief under $5,000, and two counts of failing to comply with court conditions. He is in custody and the investigation continues. Anyone with information can call investigators at 204-986-6219 or Crime Stoppers at 204-786-8477. This investigation is continuing by members of the District 2 Crime Unit. Anyone with information that may assist investigators is asked to call 204-986-6219 or Crime Stoppers at 204-786-TIPS (8477). Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A group of Indigenous demonstrators are optimistic that unlocking the gates to Kapyong Barracks will also clear some of the barriers to reconciliation. On May 31, members of the Department of National Defence and 17 Wing unlocked the former military base to allow Kylo Prince and a number of other Indigenous activists, supporters, and healers to set up a ceremonial space in the yard off Morpeth Boulevard. Prince, a local ceremony leader and a Dakota Ojibway member of Long Plain First Nation, organized the demonstration to share traditional ceremonies, practises and bring hope and healing to the surrounding community. Danielle Da Silva - Sou'wester Kylo Prince organized a traditional Indigenous ceremony, including sweatlodges, a feast, and a warrior dance, on the grounds of Kapyong Barracks. Part of my vision from fasting was to tear down the barriers that weve been hiding behind, Prince said. My vision told me that I was supposed to take that down and invite people to come pray with us. Thats hard to do if youre out in the bush so it occurred to me that we should do it in the city. The group lit its fire on May 29 outside of the fences and were prepared for resistance from local authorities. However they were happy, and pleasantly surprised, to see support from uniformed military members who cut the lock to the barracks and delivered a dozen port-a-potties to the site. Prince said he was jubilant when the chains to the barracks were cut. It was amazing the way things worked out for this little piece of land here, Prince said. Its possibly a chance to help soldiers with PTSD our own Indigenous soldiers and even the non-Indigenous. Its good for them to know what it is we do, Prince said. The Kapyong Barracks were vacated by the Canadian Forces in 2004 and has sat empty since. The land has been the subject of prolonged negotiations and court battles between the government and seven First Nations which have outstanding land claims. In August 2015, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled the government has a duty to consult First Nations. Prince said he doesnt want the gathering at Kapyong to affect the ongoing negotiations. Rather, the presence on the former military base is about bringing traditional ceremonies to the public. The group plans to build about four sweat lodges, host a Sunday morning feast to honour missing and murdered Indigenous men, and hold a warrior dance, among other traditional healing ceremonies. This is a high-profile place. Our ceremonies deserve that. Theyve been kept hidden for so long that some of our own people dont know, Prince said. There are no dances in the city, and this particular (warrior dance) is for our own spiritual strength. Prince said everyone is welcome to attend the ceremonies and gain further understanding of Indigenous culture and tradition. You cant have ceremony with just one person, Prince said. Everybody in the ceremony is equally as important as everybody else. Danielle Da Silva - Sou'wester The gates to Kapyong Barracks were opened by the Department of National Defence to allow a group of Indigenous demonstrators to host traditional ceremonies on the site. The group has received support from neighbours who dropped by with donations or to sit in on the songs and ceremonies and learn about Indigenous traditions, Prince said. The event was also expected to draw participants from communities far from Winnipeg due to the significance of the site. One man made his way from Michigan to participate in the ceremony, picking up firekeeper John Marrazzo (from Quebec) along the way, to act as a the groups head of security. Changes Wind Boy, who is also a member of the American Indian Movement, said he was amazed by the co-operation of the military in opening up the space, noting in his home community rather than opening gates, authority figures open canon fire. Prayer and talking opened that gate, he said. I dont doubt anything in this life after yesterday. To strike an agreement it gives me hope for my home. The group was camped out on the site for about a week to host their ceremonies and Prince said he hopes the demonstration will become an annual event. Our people are spiritually starved for this, he said. Being able to pray together is a good start at reconciliation. Potential Winona Area Public Schools Board members who fear they missed the filing deadline shouldnt worry theyll have a second chance to get in the race, with a little help from the district court. Confusion surrounded the filing dates for board elections this spring. The Winona school district is classed as a primary eligible district, meaning if more than two candidates file for election to a single seat on the board, the district will hold a primary election in August to eliminate all but the top two vote-getters for each seat. The law requires that the filing period for primary eligible districts coincides with the general election filing period of two weeks, closing on May 31. Notice of filing must be publicized two weeks before filing opens. When district administration discovered that it had missed the legally required dates, it contacted legal counsel to explore options to rectify the situation. Thursday night, Christian Shafer of Ratwik, Roszak and Maloney explained the districts course of action. The remedy is to file an errors and omissions petition with the district court, Shafer said. That petition asks the court to order filing to be reopened following proper notice to the public. Shafer proposed to present the petition to the court as soon as possible, with a hearing on the matter likely to be held next week, and the election filing period to begin three weeks after the date of the court order. The board voted unanimously to approve filing the petition. Board chair Mohamed Elhindi offered his apologies to the community for the confusion. Im glad there is a provision in the law to fix the mistakes we make, Elhindi said. Four school board seats will be on the ballot in November. Election to three seats on the WAPS board election districts 3, 4 and 5 will be for a full four-year term. A special election for the District 2 seat will be held to fill the remaining two years of board chair Mohamed Elhindis term. Elhindi will step down as chair of the Winona Area Public Schools board, effective July 21. Four candidates have filed so far: Allison Quam in District 3, where Brian Zeller has not refiled; Karl Sonneman in District 4, where Jeanne Nelson has not refiled; and in District 5, incumbent Tina Lehnertz has filed for re-election, as has Ken Kersting. No candidates have filed in District 2 to replace Elhindi. CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly listed which candidates were running in which districts; the order has been fixed above. Agriculture, invention and innovation. Those are three areas of focus U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar came to Winona Thursday to highlight, during a two-day district tour that included visits to several area manufacturers. Klobuchar toured Winona manufacturing company RiverStar Inc. Thursday morning, and praised the company for continuing to develop and produce new products for both the US and abroad. The Minnesota Made tour hit locations in Harmony, Spring Grove and Winona, among others, to discuss Klobuchars efforts to promote industry through her position on the Joint Economic Committee and as a supporter of growing state industries. This is such a great example of innovation, Klobuchar told RiverStar employees after a presentation of a variety of their products. The economy hasnt been easy and you made it through and are even stronger by being innovative. The array of products on display Thursday certainly demonstrated a willingness to try new things. Klobuchar was presented with a high-tech combine simulator, robots used by police and military across the globe to inspect inside buildings, and remote control units for large-scale farm equipment. Not to mention pickleball rackets and balls. The pickleballs may be RiverStars most inconspicuous product, but they hold the distinction of being the only U.S. manufacturer of pickleballs. Autumn Brennan, RiverStars marketing director, said the conversation about making pickleball rackets started similarly to the rest of the wide range of products a need, and an idea for improvement brought to them by an area enthusiast who was sick of cheap rackets and said, we have to make something that works. So its kind of like a dream machine, this place is, Brennan said. RiverStar was founded in 1995, coming out of affiliate company RiverSide Electronics, which was founded in 1984. The company has nearly 40 full-time employees, and facilities in Winona and Rushford. Owner and founder Steve Craney said they dont take everything that comes their way, but the wide range of companies they work with from Fortune 100 to startups are in markets they think will continue and grow. We identify a product that we think we can work successfully with, Craney said. Klobuchar said she is trying to work through a variety of avenues to increase trade and American manufacturing, including tax reform, transportation and workforce development. As one of those efforts, shes carrying a bill that will end the U.S. trade embargo to Cuba. The 2016 State of Manufacturing survey by Enterprise Minnesota concluded that Minnesota continues to be strong in manufacturing, though has the ongoing pressing need of workforce development, training skilled workers for ever-advancing technology present in manufacturing. Those findings, presented in May at Southeast Technical College, said that purposefully developing a technically skilled workforce is critical to the future of manufacturers. Across the state, machine operators and assemblers are in great demand and more and more those jobs require a degree of technical training and expertise. Less positively, the survey found that many discount the technical skills that lead to a career in manufacturing for other paths they, too often mistakenly, believe offer better job prospects. Across the state, more than two-thirds of manufacturers are finding it difficult to attract and retain skilled, reliable workers. Klobuchar said that to counteract that, it is more important than ever to attract women and younger workers to manufacturing. People forget that manufacturing is still here, Klobuchar said. Its still here. The conversation was calm and questions thoughtful at a community forum about a planned halfway house in Winona Thursday evening. More than 30 community members gathered at the Riverport Inn to hear more about the house, coming to Winona this fall. Some were neighbors with concerns about how the house would be supervised and secured. Others were recovering addicts who shared their own success stories involving a stay at a similar facility. The house, located at 730 W. Broadway, will be the first in the county to focus on alcohol and drug abuse recovery. It will serve 16 men who are transitioning back into the community after completing inpatient treatment, which isnt available locally. A private agency called Common Ground owns and will manage the house, and representatives from the agency welcomed questions and comments at the forum. Common Ground started as an outpatient substance abuse treatment center in Rochester in 2001, and opened a second outpatient clinic in Winona in 2014. Common Ground substance abuse counselor and community outreach specialist Tori Utley said in that time, theyve worked with more than 100 people recovering from addiction in Winona. Theyve been working on finding a suitable house for more than a year. We know that having a supportive environment really does enhance recovery, she said in her opening presentation, stressing that the house is designed to help its residents focus on restoring relationships in the community, getting jobs, and making healthy life choices. Residents in the home will be required to attend five hours of treatment per week in the home, adhere to strict curfew rules, find employment and seek other community supports. The house will be licensed for chemical dependency treatment through the Minnesota Department of Human Services and the Minnesota Department of Health. Community members asked questions about the house for more than an hour, ranging from the role a halfway house plays in recovery to how the house would be staffed, organized, and in compliance with regulations. In response to questions about the role of halfway houses, Common Ground clinical director Eric Spagenski shared that he himself had experienced chemical dependency. Treatment, and a stay at a halfway house, set him on a path to a successful recovery. A halfway house gives people a chance to learn how to live a healthy life, he said, sometimes for the first time. Without that support, its harder to stay on the right path. They come back to this environment and they dont have anywhere to live except with an old friend. We see them fighting tooth and nail, but we can see the writing on the wall, Spagenski said. A man asked why neighbors werent notified of the plans sooner. The agency purchased the house last October. Utley responded that Common Ground anticipated questions, and wanted programming to be developed so they would have answers to those questions, and more meaningful dialogue. What impact is this going to have on the neighborhood? asked Marc Rothering, who has lived across the street from the house for 37 years. He was specifically concerned about parking, which he said was already an issue in the area. He also asked about foot traffic of 16 people, especially late at night. Common Ground CEO Mattea Schmitz said in order to have a car, clients would have to provide their drivers license, insurance, current tabs, and a car they own. Given those requirements, she anticipated no more than three clients would have cars at the house. In addition, a strict 10 p.m. curfew would limit outdoor noise and traffic, and residents would have a separate smoking area, not on the sidewalk. We want it to continue looking like a very nice home in the neighborhood, she said. During a break, Rothering said while he was sympathetic to the needs of those the home will benefit, he still had unresolved questions. Parking was one, the conversion of a single-family residence into a place for 16 people another, and then safety. Clients will be there for dependency, but what about other issues they have? None of those things have really been addressed today yet, he said. But given the right structure and supervision, it could work, he said. Hopefully it will all work out. Neighbor Andrew Higl said he, too, felt a bit better after hearing about how the house would work, and that it would have some oversight by the state, along with peer reviews. He said he and his family arent against the house, but really hope its run well. Neighbor Colette Hyman said she was fully in support of the house, and hoped the community would be welcoming. I would be really proud to be neighbors with this kind of facility, she said. About a dozen Wisconsin prisoners plan to launch a hunger strike beginning next week aimed at ending a form of indefinite solitary confinement that officials use to keep order in the institutions, according to an inmate advocacy group. One Wisconsin prisoner, LaRon McKinley Bey, says he has been held in this non-punitive administrative confinement status for at least 25 years. McKinley Bey sued the state Department of Corrections in April, alleging that the long-term isolation has created or exacerbated mental illness among prisoners, including himself. Ben Turk, with the Industrial Workers of the World in Milwaukee, said the effort is set to begin June 10 and is based at Waupun Correctional Institution but could spread to other prisons. The push will include rallies in Madison and Milwaukee, an online petition and a letter writing campaign, according to IWW, a worker advocacy group whose activities including supporting the rights of prisoners. The overarching demand is to end administrative confinement to not allow long-term solitary confinement, Turk said. In addition, the prisoners are asking for a one-year limit on stints in solitary, also known as restrictive housing; increased oversight of the states use of isolation; improved mental health treatment for inmates in solitary; and a federal investigation into what some prisoners describe as a mind control program. As of late April, 116 Wisconsin prisoners were held in administrative confinement, DOC spokesman Tristan Cook said. Such confinement is used for inmates who pose a threat to staff, self or other inmates or the security or orderly running of the institution. Cook said the agency is aware of the planned hunger strike and will continue to evaluate and monitor the situation to ensure the health and safety of inmates. In June 2015, the state Department of Corrections reduced the maximum stint in solitary confinement for violating prison rules from 360 days to 90 days, with longer stints possible under certain circumstances. But those limits do not apply to inmates deemed to be violent or hard to manage who are in administrative confinement a form of isolation that can go on for years, even decades. The status of each inmate in administrative confinement is reviewed every six months, but McKinley Bey charges in his lawsuit that those reviews are a sham. Colorado has banned the use of such indefinite solitary confinement, as has California, which agreed to end it after a legal challenge and a large hunger strike. In his handwritten lawsuit, McKinley Bey said he is held in a small cell at Waupun for four days a week, 23 hours a day. The other three days a week, McKinley Bey stays in the cell, alone, with meal trays slid through a slot in the door. Contact with other people consists mostly of correctional officers who take him shackled to and from the shower and recreation in an indoor caged area or occasional sessions with mental health staff. Visits are done remotely by video screen. McKinley Beys description of conditions in administrative confinement matches that of Cesar DeLeon, another Waupun prisoner who plans to participate in the hunger strike. Both say they are never allowed to go outside. Constitutional challenge In his lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee, McKinley Bey charges long-term solitary confinement violates the U.S. Constitutions Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel or unusual punishment. He cited a lack of meaningful human contact and severe environmental and social isolation and no bright-line criteria for how to get back to the general prison population. Many mentally ill prisoners cry and act out because theyve been broken by the effects of isolation, the complaint states. McKinley Bey also alleges in the suit that officer Joseph Beahm whom he and two dozen other inmates at Waupun have accused of physical and psychological abuse repeatedly subjected him and the other prisoners in administrative confinement to cold showers in November 2015. In 2014, a federal jury rejected an earlier lawsuit by McKinley Bey alleging that Waupun correctional officers, including Beahm, had mistreated him. In his latest complaint, McKinley Bey argues he and other inmates in administrative confinement are suffering from a syndrome caused by prolonged solitary confinement. Former Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Dr. Stuart Grassian, in a 2006 Washington University Journal of Law and Policy paper, Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement, wrote that prisoners held in long-term isolation can develop a delirium that includes decreased alertness, fearfulness, paranoia and agitation and random, impulsive and self-destructive behavior. The Department of Corrections has not yet responded to McKinley Beys latest suit. A message seeking comment on the suit was not returned. History of violence Self-described as one of the most dangerous people in prison, McKinley Bey is serving a 262-year sentence for crimes including robbing and tying up two elderly Madison women in their homes in 1984, and a 1987 escape in which he shot a sheriffs deputy and another was injured. McKinley Bey, who added the name Bey after he was imprisoned, continues to be held in isolation because he is considered a threat to the institution after several violent encounters with staff and inmates, according to records from his unsuccessful 2013 lawsuit against the department. Most recently, he was convicted in Dodge County Circuit Court in 2014 with a felony for throwing feces on a Waupun correctional officer. One clinician who examined McKinley Bey in connection with that case concluded he is a sociopath a condition known as antisocial personality disorder which is difficult to treat. Psychologist Brooke Lundbohm of Behavioral Consultants Inc., said McKinley Bey has demonstrated a long pervasive history of antisocial behaviors and attitudes for which he has been imprisoned throughout much of his adult life. However, Lundbohm concluded McKinley Bey understood the wrongfulness of his actions when he threw waste on the officer. McKinley Beys long stint in administrative confinement began after a 1987 incident in which he convinced a female Milwaukee County sheriffs deputy to smuggle a gun to him in jail that he used to escape during a transfer to Dane County. According to news reports, he shot a Milwaukee County sheriffs deputy; a second deputy was injured when he jumped out of the squad car in which all three were riding. Milwaukee County was ordered to pay $5.3 million to the two injured deputies. The deputy who smuggled the gun was sent to prison. McKinley Bey is not the only prisoner claiming long-term administrative confinement is cruel. Waupun inmate Norman C. Green, who also calls himself Prince Aturn-Ra Uhuru Mutawakkil, said he has been in solitary in Wisconsin for about 18 years. He described his long-term isolation in a 2012 blog post as a holocaust that leaves the body static but alive but incinerates the mind and spoils the soul. Prisoner advocate Peg Swan of Blue River said she has found it difficult to generate sympathy for inmates in administrative confinement, some of whom are suffering from severe mental illness. I think its the worst of the worst myth, Swan said. I have not been able to get anyone to look at them to look at these guys. The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalisms reporting on criminal justice issues is supported by a grant from the Vital Projects Fund. The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates. The Volunteers of Columbus Community Hospital will host a soup and salad luncheon Tuesday, June 14 at Faith Lutheran Church in Columbus, with continuous seating from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tickets are $8 per person for adults and $3 for children 10 and under. A variety of homemade salads, desserts, two soups (wild rice mushroom and chicken noodle), coffee and lemonade will be served. Tickets are available through a member of the Volunteers of CCH, the Gift Shoppe at Columbus Community Hospital, or at the door on the day of the event. Proceeds from the event will be used by the Volunteers of CCH to purchase equipment and services for the patients of Columbus Community Hospital. For more information call 920-623-1280 or pwalker@cch-inc.com. Performing arts students in Mauston will celebrate a significant achievement when they pick up four Tommy Awards at the Overture Center in Madison later this month. Alex Fyfe, Vanessa Lehman, Reece Gray, and Allison Lavold were all honored for their performances in Mary Poppins, last falls musical production at Mauston High School. The four Tommy Awards are the most Mauston has earned for a musical production. The Tommy Awards are given out annually to top theater performers in high schools across Wisconsin. Vanessa Lehman, who will graduate from MHS on Sunday, received the Spirit Award for her lead role as Mary Poppins. Fyfe, a sophomore foreign exchange student from Germany, earned a Tommy for Outstanding Supporting Cast Performer, while Gray and Lavold, both middle school students, were honored with Outstanding Youth Performer awards. Fyfe played the Bird Woman. Gray portrayed Michael Banks, while Lavold played Jane Banks. The awards ceremony is June 12 at the Overture Center and all four students plan to attend. Fyfe, who will return to Germany after the ceremony, said family and friends back home didnt realize winning a Tommy was a big deal until she filled them in. When I got into the musical, people were telling me about the Tommy Awards and I didnt know anything about it. When I got nominated, I had to look it up online. I educated myself about it and found out its really cool, Fyfe said. When I won it, I found out how much of a big deal it really is. All four of us love being on stage. When youre passionate about it and youre in that atmosphere, it just gives you a really good feeling. Director Rachel Tambornino, who also teaches at MHS, was pleased to see the students earn recognition for the dedication they showed through weeks of rehearsal. When the curtain finally went up for their performance, the cast was ready to deliver. Its nice that we are recognized for the talent that our students have because we have some super talented kids here, Tambornino said. Mary Poppins was nominated for seven Tommys and while they didnt sweep, the cast and crew was thrilled to earn four. Tambornino said Maustons fall musicals have gotten better every year, gaining additional recognition from the Overture Center. Its really cool because its a state honor and if we would have had an outstanding lead performer, they would have been able to try out for nationals in California called the Jimmy Awards, Tambornino said. This isnt just a little thing; this is a huge deal because every high school in Wisconsin can enter into this program. Maustons Mary Poppins was considered a community musical, allowing non-high school students to get nominated. Both Gray and Lavold said it was fun to learn from Lehman and Fyfe, along with other high school students. Lehman said the support of the community during the performances made the hard work gratifying. Its really nice when the crowds get into it because it gets us more hyped up for it and I feel like it makes us perform better, Lehman said. Fyfe said her host mom taped the musical and sent footage back to her family and friends in Germany. They were really proud because they know how much I like doing this, she said. The whole experience was just really positive. Fyfe, who had previous acting experience in Germany, plans to continue performing after she returns home. For Lehman, performing arts could be a future career goal. The senior will major in the subject at college. Gray and Lavold have a few more years to hone their skills, but it could help them earn lead roles in high school. Mary Poppins was their first large production and both are excited for future opportunities on the stage. I just love the whole aspect of it, even the rehearsals because you get to see it get closer to the end product, Lavold said. When its time to perform, I really like the crowds reaction. I usually dont wear makeup and all my friends came up to me after the performance and were like, Are you wearing makeup? To work on it for so long and to finally see everything come together is pretty cool, Gray said. Tambornino said the Tommy Awards will be broadcast on Wisconsin Public Television on a date yet to be determined. The record-breaking tailback leaves people dumbstruck: "The things hes able to do with the football in his hands, I havent seen anyone like him before." Myron Buchholz realizes he is long shot to unseat long-time incumbent Ron Kind for Wisconsins third Congressional district, but he believes its a shot worth taking. Buchholz, a retired high school history teacher from Eau Claire, announced his grassroots campaign for Congress last fall. Taking a cue from presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, Buchholz is challenging Kind as a progressive Democrat. The states third congressional district covers most of western and southwestern Wisconsin, including Juneau County. Kind has headquarters in both La Crosse and Eau Claire, including an office in Washington D.C. He has served as Wisconsins third district representative since 1997. It wont be easy to unseat an incumbent with nearly 20 years of experience, but Buchholz said his campaign is building steam. With the primary election about two months away (Aug. 9), Buchholz is busy traveling through the district, listening to voters and discussing issues that impact them. He said one of the biggest issues is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an agreement between the U.S. and several other countries Kind supported. Buchholz believes the TPP could be another blow for workers in the U.S. and could especially affect farmers in Wisconsin. The anger over what is in this huge document is becoming fairly noticeable. When I go door-to-door and talk to people, more often or not, they know about it, Buchholz said. Most people understand what it is. And Ill get Trump voters, Republicans and lots of Democrats in Eau Claire that feel that way. They know about the TPP and they dont like it. After seven years of negotiations, the TPP was signed in February. President Obama joined leaders from 11 additional Pacific Rim nations to set global trade agreements through the TPP. The agreement promises to help increase American exports, expand the U.S. economy, support well-paying jobs and strengthen the nations middle class. Buchholz, however, along with many labor organizations, believe otherwise. There is a huge concern about jobs; that this is one of many trade agreements that weve had through the past 30 years and none of them have been a positive development for the American working class, Buchholz said. The National Farmers Union is steadfastly opposed to this because every time they look up the numbers for the Korean deal, for NAFTA, for Chile, TAFTA, its always lopsided where we are buying from them more than they are from us and thats just the agricultural sector. Buchholz believes grassroots movements can stop agreements like the TPP. He cited the controversy and resistance to the Keystone Pipeline that was supposed to transport oil from Western Canada to the U.S. Buchholz said Obama initially supported the pipeline but, feeling pressure from those who opposed it, declined to sign an agreement to build the it across the country. Im a retired history teacher and I argue that you cant find a better example of grassroots democracy in action than the resistance to the pipeline, Buchholz said. The pipeline company is suing the U.S. government for $15 billion in lost wages. They might not win, but its another example of how corporate control is having an effect on democracy in our country. Buchholzs opposition to Kind stretches back to 2002 when the congressman voted for U.S. involvement in the Iraq war. Buchholz referred to the nations involvement in the Iraq invasion as the worst foreign policy decision in American history. There were 133 congressmen who voted no and 23 senators who voted no, but he voted along with it, Buchholz said. Another issue I have with him stems from his voting to keep the Syrian refugees out of the country. Here he voted for this terrible war that so destabilized the Middle East and here we are 13 years later and we have the worst refugee crisis since World War II. You ignore the words on the Statue of Liberty and vote along with Republicans saying You cant come here. If elected to Congress, Buchholz would like to improve the Affordable Care Act, bringing health insurance to more Americans. Kind wasnt really a leader in developing the Affordable Care Act and what was passed was kind of watered down, Buchholz said. Buchholz does share some of Kinds ideals. He would like to improve the nations clean, green energy infrastructure. Buchholz said more industries are seeing the benefits of green energy and he wants to champion the movement to a cleaner environment. After 34 years teaching history, Buchholz retired last June. While he misses being in the classroom, he passionately believes the time is right to make his first foray into the political arena. Ironically, Buchholz has a chance to make history if he unseats Kind and takes his movement to Washington. The TPP is the biggest issue for me and voters in this district have a right to know what side their congressmen is on with this issue for the Aug. 9 primary, Buchholz said. Ive looked at this a lot and with a lot of different groups and we dont need this agreement. I find it laughable because corporations who havent raised wages here arent going to raise wages in Vietnam, for crying out loud. A message left at Kinds office in La Crosse was not returned before deadline. House Speaker Paul Ryan's endorsement on Thursday of presumed Republican nominee Donald Trump was met with everything from shrugs to cheers among Republicans and a hint of schadenfreude among Democrats. In a column for his hometown paper, the Janesville Gazette, Ryan presented it as a matter of necessity. House Republicans are set to start laying out a series of policy proposals and Ryan can't expect likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to support their agenda. But after conversations with the divisive candidate, Ryan said he now feels confident Trump would help make that agenda a reality. "Its no secret that he and I have our differences. I wont pretend otherwise," Ryan wrote. "And when I feel the need to, Ill continue to speak my mind. But the reality is, on the issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground than disagreement. For me, its a question of how to move ahead on the ideas that I and my House colleagues have invested so much in through the years." By the time Ryan made the announcement, he was the lone GOP leader holding out on embracing Trump. He was under pressure from both wings of his party to make a decision. "Ryan was a party of one for a long time and now he has that problem solved," said University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden. "He has many others, but he has that one solved." UW-Madison journalism and political science professor Mike Wagner said Ryan may have chosen the Janesville newspaper as a way to head off a primary challenge from tea party candidate Paul Nehlen. It's hard to say whether anything changed for Ryan or Trump in the weeks Ryan spent mulling his endorsement, Wagner said. "As he passed the 1,237 (delegate) threshold, maybe it was either a resignation or a realization that the party needed to get the headlines of 'why arent people endorsing Trump' out of the news so they can focus their attention on not just the presidential race, but down-ballot races," he said. Ryan's endorsement might not help those candidates, Wagner said, but it lowers the possibility that Trump's candidacy will hurt them. Republicans down the ballot have a variety of options in approaching the November election, Burden said. They can embrace Trump wholeheartedly, denounce him or offer tepid support as Ryan has. However, Burden added, not 24 hours after endorsing Trump, Ryan had already openly criticized the candidate for accusing U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel of being biased against him in the Trump University case because of his "Mexican heritage." Burden said he expects that criticism to continue throughout the race and he doesn't expect to see the same from Democratic leaders once their nominee is chosen. Wisconsin Democrats reacted to Ryan's endorsement with scorn. "Ryan has backed away from his own criticisms of Trump's dangerous, divisive campaign, bowed down, kissed the ring, and conceded that Trump is the leader of the Republican Party," said Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesman Brandon Weathersby called the move "frightening," arguing Trump "would jeopardize our security at home and ruin our relationships abroad." "The next time Paul Ryan is held out as the intellectual heart of the Republican Party remember he is voting to give Donald Trump the codes to our nations nuclear arsenal," said Scot Ross, executive director of the liberal group One Wisconsin Now. Conservative radio host Charlie Sykes, a champion of the "Never Trump" movement in Wisconsin, called the endorsement a "surprise and a disappointment" in a column for his Right Wisconsin website. Sykes questioned the timing Trump hasn't changed his public behavior significantly since Ryan last expressed concerns with him and the terms of Ryan's support. Sykes said "confident" isn't a word that should be used for anything Trump says or does, arguing his promises and positions are subject to change. However, Sykes said, Ryan may have had no choice. There's no guarantee Trump will advance the House GOP agenda, but there's more of a chance he will than Clinton. Sykes quoted the Washington Examiner's Philip Klein, who wrote that Ryan will "forever be tainted by his support for Trump" if Republicans lose the presidential election, losing any credibility he has to rebuild the party. "We can only hope hes wrong about that," Sykes wrote. "But hope is a slender reed these days." Other Wisconsin Republicans were less grim about the announcement. Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, was initially resistant to support Trump, and even indicated previously that he wouldn't vote for him in November. He's still not quite there, but is beginning to see it as a sort of inevitability. "Im not a Hillary Clinton fan, so the reality is I have few options," Nygren said. "I hope to be able to get to a point to support the Republican nominee, but its still a process. Im going to (the Republican National Convention), so I should be able to perhaps learn a little bit more, get some answers to questions out there." Nygren said he hopes to see Trump work more to make Republican voters like him comfortable with supporting their party's nominee. "The way people view the Republican Party has a lot to do with how he presents himself. So I just hope he does a better job presenting his ideas in a more positive way that brings people that have concerns with him to a point of comfort," Nygren said. It would be unrealistic to say "Never Trump," as some Republicans have, Nygren said. "Maybe it would be more accurate to say 'Question Mark Trump,'" he said. About a dozen Wisconsin prisoners plan to launch a hunger strike beginning next week aimed at ending a form of indefinite solitary confinement that officials use to keep order in the institutions, according to an inmate advocacy group. One Wisconsin prisoner, LaRon McKinley Bey, says he has been held in this non-punitive administrative confinement status for at least 25 years. McKinley Bey sued the state Department of Corrections in April, alleging that the long-term isolation has created or exacerbated mental illness among prisoners, including himself. Ben Turk, with the Industrial Workers of the World in Milwaukee, said the effort is set to begin June 10 and is based at Waupun Correctional Institution but could spread to other prisons. The push will include rallies in Madison and Milwaukee, an online petition and a letter writing campaign, according to IWW, a worker advocacy group whose activities including supporting the rights of prisoners. The overarching demand is to end administrative confinement to not allow long-term solitary confinement, Turk said. In addition, the prisoners are asking for a one-year limit on stints in solitary, also known as restrictive housing; increased oversight of the states use of isolation; improved mental health treatment for inmates in solitary; and a federal investigation into what some prisoners describe as a mind control program. As of late April, 116 Wisconsin prisoners were held in administrative confinement, DOC spokesman Tristan Cook said. Such confinement is used for inmates who pose a threat to staff, self or other inmates or the security or orderly running of the institution. Cook said the agency is aware of the planned hunger strike and will continue to evaluate and monitor the situation to ensure the health and safety of inmates. In June 2015, the state Department of Corrections reduced the maximum stint in solitary confinement for violating prison rules from 360 days to 90 days, with longer stints possible under certain circumstances. But those limits do not apply to inmates deemed to be violent or hard to manage who are in administrative confinement a form of isolation that can go on for years, even decades. The status of each inmate in administrative confinement is reviewed every six months, but McKinley Bey charges in his lawsuit that those reviews are a sham. Colorado has banned the use of such indefinite solitary confinement, as has California, which agreed to end it after a legal challenge and a large hunger strike. In his handwritten lawsuit, McKinley Bey said he is held in a small cell at Waupun for four days a week, 23 hours a day. The other three days a week, McKinley Bey stays in the cell, alone, with meal trays slid through a slot in the door. Contact with other people consists mostly of correctional officers who take him shackled to and from the shower and recreation in an indoor caged area or occasional sessions with mental health staff. Visits are done remotely by video screen. McKinley Beys description of conditions in administrative confinement matches that of Cesar DeLeon, another Waupun prisoner who plans to participate in the hunger strike. Both say they are never allowed to go outside. Constitutional challenge In his lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee, McKinley Bey charges long-term solitary confinement violates the U.S. Constitutions Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel or unusual punishment. He cited a lack of meaningful human contact and severe environmental and social isolation and no bright-line criteria for how to get back to the general prison population. Many mentally ill prisoners cry and act out because theyve been broken by the effects of isolation, the complaint states. McKinley Bey also alleges in the suit that officer Joseph Beahm whom he and two dozen other inmates at Waupun have accused of physical and psychological abuse repeatedly subjected him and the other prisoners in administrative confinement to cold showers in November 2015. In 2014, a federal jury rejected an earlier lawsuit by McKinley Bey alleging that Waupun correctional officers, including Beahm, had mistreated him. In his latest complaint, McKinley Bey argues he and other inmates in administrative confinement are suffering from a syndrome caused by prolonged solitary confinement. Former Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Dr. Stuart Grassian, in a 2006 Washington University Journal of Law and Policy paper, Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement, wrote that prisoners held in long-term isolation can develop a delirium that includes decreased alertness, fearfulness, paranoia and agitation and random, impulsive and self-destructive behavior. The Department of Corrections has not yet responded to McKinley Beys latest suit. A message seeking comment on the suit was not returned. History of violence Self-described as one of the most dangerous people in prison, McKinley Bey is serving a 262-year sentence for crimes including robbing and tying up two elderly Madison women in their homes in 1984, and a 1987 escape in which he shot a sheriffs deputy and another was injured. McKinley Bey, who added the name Bey after he was imprisoned, continues to be held in isolation because he is considered a threat to the institution after several violent encounters with staff and inmates, according to records from his unsuccessful 2013 lawsuit against the department. Most recently, he was convicted in Dodge County Circuit Court in 2014 with a felony for throwing feces on a Waupun correctional officer. One clinician who examined McKinley Bey in connection with that case concluded he is a sociopath a condition known as antisocial personality disorder which is difficult to treat. Psychologist Brooke Lundbohm of Behavioral Consultants Inc., said McKinley Bey has demonstrated a long pervasive history of antisocial behaviors and attitudes for which he has been imprisoned throughout much of his adult life. However, Lundbohm concluded McKinley Bey understood the wrongfulness of his actions when he threw waste on the officer. McKinley Beys long stint in administrative confinement began after a 1987 incident in which he convinced a female Milwaukee County sheriffs deputy to smuggle a gun to him in jail that he used to escape during a transfer to Dane County. According to news reports, he shot a Milwaukee County sheriffs deputy; a second deputy was injured when he jumped out of the squad car in which all three were riding. Milwaukee County was ordered to pay $5.3 million to the two injured deputies. The deputy who smuggled the gun was sent to prison. McKinley Bey is not the only prisoner claiming long-term administrative confinement is cruel. Waupun inmate Norman C. Green, who also calls himself Prince Aturn-Ra Uhuru Mutawakkil, said he has been in solitary in Wisconsin for about 18 years. He described his long-term isolation in a 2012 blog post as a holocaust that leaves the body static but alive but incinerates the mind and spoils the soul. Prisoner advocate Peg Swan of Blue River said she has found it difficult to generate sympathy for inmates in administrative confinement, some of whom are suffering from severe mental illness. I think its the worst of the worst myth, Swan said. I have not been able to get anyone to look at them to look at these guys. 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 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. Luncheon at 6 p.m. and cards at 6:30 p.m. Cost is $5 for food, cards and prizes. This is a benefit to support the Yakutat Presbyterian Church in Yakutat, Alaska. Public welcome. A donation to the food pantry would be appreciated. Knights of Columbus fish fry, Knights of Columbus Hall, 918 Silver Lake Drive, Portage. Cocktails at 4 p.m. Dinner from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Public invited. Cost is $10.75. Lodi Red Cross blood drive, noon to 6 p.m. United Methodist Church, 130 Locust St., Lodi. 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. Portage Center for the Arts opening reception of Art that Blooms, 4 to 6 p.m. Portage Center for the Arts Drury Gallery, 301 E. Cook St., Portage. The reception will be followed by a poetry reading. The exhibit runs through July 30 (floral longevity will vary as the exhibit progresses). For more information, call 608-742-5655. 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. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., staff mobile office hours, 2 to 3 p.m. Oxford Public Library, 129 S. Franklin Ave., Oxford. Mobile office hours allow constituents to meet with the senators staff to request assistance with a federal agency or regarding other federal matters. Unique Singles, 5 p.m. Susies Steak and Seafood Restaurant, county Highway CX, Portage. All single men and women older than age 50 welcome. The group is strictly social with no dues or officers. Saturday Babysitting Basics, 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Divine Savior Healthcare, 2817 New Pinery Road, Portage. Students will learn about the responsibilities of babysitting, child development, first aid and child/infant CPR. For students age 11 and older. Cost is $25. To register, call Community Health and Wellness at 608-745-6289. The Ice Age Trail Alliance Lodi Valley Chapter hosts the Mammoth Fun Run and Hike on the Ice Age National Scenic Trail. Chose from a 6K or 8K trail run, or a 6K hike. Registration is from 8 to 8:40 a.m. in Doctors Park, 218 S. Main St., Lodi. Last shuttle to the trailhead is at 8:40 a.m. for a 9 a.m. start. Race day registration only. All distances are approximate. For more information visit www.iceagetrail.org/event/lodi-valley-chapter-mammoth-fun-run-and-hike/. Donations are appreciated for this family-oriented event. Prizes, unofficial timing, snacks and free massages. Well-behaved dogs welcomed on leash. Donate $25 or more and receive an Ice Age Trail bandana. Proceeds will be used for corridor protection, trail building and maintenance. Guided Downtown Portage Walking Tour. The tour is free and leaves at 10 a.m. from the Portage Area Chamber of Commerce office, 104 W. Cook St., Portage. Portage Womens Civic League hosts tours of the home of Zona Gale, 506 W. Edgewater St., Portage, each Saturday through Aug. 27. Tours will be given from 1 to 3 p.m. and the charge is $5 per person. The Zona Gale home was built by the Pulitzer Prize winning author in 1906 for her parents. The home is not handicapped accessible. This home is the clubhouse for the Civic League. For tours outside of the scheduled times, call 608-742-4625. 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 Monthly Breakfast, 8:30 a.m. Dinos Restaurant, 2900 New Pinery Road, Portage. All single men and women older than age 50 welcome. The group is strictly social with no dues or officers. Sunday Bingo at Portage VFW, 5 to 7 p.m. VFW Hall, 215 W. Collins St., Portage. Doors open at 4:30 p.m. Hard cards are $1 and chips are available. All are welcome. Runs the first and third Sunday of each month. 32nd annual Elks Kids Fisheree, Pauquette Park, Portage. All children age 12 and younger are welcome to participate. Sign in will begin at 9:30 a.m., fishing will start at 10 a.m., and finish at noon. Zumba Toning, 6 p.m. Rusch Elementary School, Portage. $5 drop in fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com. Monday Columbia County Public Health Walk-In Clinic, 8 a.m. to noon, Columbia County Division of Health, 2652 Murphy Road, Portage. Use door No. 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. Euchre card party, 6:30 p.m. Bethlehem Lutheran Church, W8267 Highway 33 East, Portage. Public welcome. Contact: Cloe, 429-2363. Free summer meals for kids and teens, served Monday through Thursday. Free to kids and teens age 18 and younger. Meals served from 11:15 to 11:50 a.m. at Goodyear Park (by the Splash Pad), 1100 MacFarlane Road, Portage, and from 12:05 to 12:40 p.m., followed by a fun food activity from 12:30 to 1 p.m., at the Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. Meals will be served through Aug. 11. Portage Public Library Childrens Department will hold Book Buddies every Monday in June and July (except for July 4) from 9:30 to 10:15 a.m. as part of the Summer Library Program. Students going into grades 1 through 5 are encouraged to meet in the Childrens Program Room to pair up with adult and teen volunteers to practice their reading by reading aloud or silently. Volunteers will offer reading assistance and sign reading slips for participants. Juice and donuts will be provided by the Friends of the Library. For more information, please call 742-4959 ext. 211. Portage Canal Society Inc. meeting, 6:30 p.m. Portage Public Library, Tech Room, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. Anyone wishing to be involved with the renovation of the Portage Canal is invited to attend. Contact Fred Galley at galleystudio@gmail.com or 608-742-6151. Portage Pedalers Monday night ride, meet at 6:30 p.m. at Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. Monthly rides meet at: MayPortage Public Library; Junebehind Crawford Oil, Highway 33 East and county Highway EE; July and Augustparking lot across from Hill Auto; and September at 6 p.m. at Portage Public Library. Wear a helmet and bikers under 18 must ride with a parent. Randolph Red Cross blood drive, 11:30 to 5 p.m. First Reformed Church, 406 S High St., Randolph. 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. Seniors Bowling Social, 1 p.m. Tollys Alleys, East Wisconsin Street, Portage. Cost is $6 and includes three games of bowling and shoe rental. 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 href=mailto:4dreamers@frontier.com>4dreamers@frontier.com. Zumba Toning, 6 p.m. Harrisville. $5 drop in fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com. Tuesday Free summer meals for kids and teens, served Monday through Thursday. Free to kids and teens age 18 and younger. Meals served from 11:15 to 11:50 a.m. at Goodyear Park (by the Splash Pad), 1100 MacFarlane Road, Portage, and from 12:05 to 12:40 p.m., followed by a fun food activity from 12:30 to 1 p.m., at the Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. Meals will be served through Aug. 11. 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. Photography Interest Group, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Northwoods Inc., Highway 51 South, Portage. Meet with fellow photographers to share photos and tips, explore new ideas and inspire creativity for upcoming events. Call Fred Baewer with questions at 608-742-4691. 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. Wednesday Bingo, 5:30 p.m. 131 Restaurant, North Main Street, Pardeeville. Bingo will be played every Wednesday, except the first one of the month. Columbia County Public Health Walk-In Clinic, 8 a.m. to noon, Columbia County Division of Health, 2652 Murphy Road, Portage. Use door No. 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. Concerts at the Portage, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. VFW Hall, 215 W. Collins St., Portage. Featuring Portage Middle and High School Choirs. Desserts provided by Portage Music Boosters. Bring a lawn chair or blanket to enjoy this free concert. Free summer meals for kids and teens, served Monday through Thursday. Free to kids and teens age 18 and younger. Meals served from 11:15 to 11:50 a.m. at Goodyear Park (by the Splash Pad), 1100 MacFarlane Road, Portage, and from 12:05 to 12:40 p.m., followed by a fun food activity from 12:30 to 1 p.m., at the Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. Meals will be served through Aug. 11. Portage Pedalers Wednesday night ride, meet at 6:30 p.m. at Pat and Dougs house, W7956 Douglas Center Road (East of Briggsville on Highway 23 North via 3rd Avenue). Meeting place May through July is Pat and Dougs house; AugustJohn Muir Park; and September at 6 p.m. at Pat and Dougs house. Wear a helmet and bikers under 18 must ride with a parent. 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 Wal-Mart. Call Bonny Oestreich, RN, at 608-234-0159 for 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. Public informational meeting on panfish and largemouth bass management for Mason Lake, Adams/Marquette Counties, 7 to 9 p.m. New Haven Town Hall, 330 Golden Court. The purpose of this meeting is to give a status update about the fisheries of Mason Lake located in Adams and Marquette Counties and elicit public opinions for making potential changes to fishing regulations for largemouth bass and panfish. Presented by Jennifer Bergman, Wisconsin DNR Fisheries Biologist. 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. AMPI retired employees breakfast, 8:30 a.m. Dinos Restaurant, 2900 New Pinery Road, Portage. 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. A Portage mans stated original intentions were put to the side as the Columbia County Circuit Court moved forward with a felony charge of exposing a child to harmful material. Timothy Christensen, 37, appeared in court Thursday morning for his preliminary hearing to determine whether there is probable cause for criminal charges. He is accused of exposing a minor to an obscene photo through an iPod. Assistant District Attorney Crystal Long called Detective Robert Bagnall to testify about the Portage Police Departments investigation of the case. Through questioning, Bagnall explained that on May 19 he was asked to follow up on a report of a 14-year-old boy being exposed to harmful material. The woman who contacted police was Christensens ex-girlfriend, who had broken up with him in late April, according to Christensens testimony to police. On May 16, the woman told police, her son had shown her an explicit photo that he had found on his iPod. Later that day after the woman spoke to him about it, according to Christensen, he had snapped at the woman because, he said, she had been persistently bothering him, then called her a drunken whore and reportedly threatened to kill her. Bagnall said he had spoken with Christensen who had admitted that he had taken pictures of himself with an iPhone belonging to the boy, but which he had used while the boy was staying with his father. Christensen was under a court order not to possess a cell phone or any electronic device with a wi-fi connection following a 2011 conviction for first-degree sexual assault, for which he served three years in prison and was serving a sentence of 10 years of extended supervision. During questioning Bagnall said that when he spoke to the woman, she said that this shared phone usage was a regular procedure among them. Defense attorney Ryan Frank asked about other pictures that were sent in messages to a woman, to which, Bagnall confirmed that there were, but had been deleted. Did he tell you he thought he had deleted the picture? Yes, confirmed Bagnall. How did it get to the iPod? Frank asked. I dont know, Bagnall answered. Did Mr. Christensen say it was an accident? Frank asked. Long objected to the question. It goes to the intent, explained Frank. Judge Alan J. White sustained the objection, bringing a close to questions in the hearing, and ruled there was probable cause, ordering Christensen bound over for trial. Christensen entered a plea of not guilty to the charge of exposing a child to harmful material, which carries a potential sentence of up to seven and a half years in prison. A Wisconsin Dells couple are being held on $7,500 cash bond each, accused of selling cocaine and marijuana, following a May 27 search of their apartment that ended in their arrests and placement of a 2-year-old child in a foster home. Jessica Nicole Surratt, 28, and Robert Lee Miller, 36, appeared in Columbia County Circuit Court via video from the county jail on Thursday afternoon. District Attorney Jane Kohlwey requested that Miller be held on $10,000 cash bond, noting the list of evidence including 240 grams (8.5 ounces) of cocaine in separate packaging and one and a half ounces of marijuana, along with hundreds of other baggies and cutting agents. Despite having a criminal record, said defense attorney Tristan Eagon, Miller is local, though without the kind of network that could support that level of bail, going on to say that, $10,000 is completely and utterly out of reach for him. Miller was arrested after detectives with the Columbia County Sheriffs Office acted on a search warrant, going to the apartment where he lived with Surratt and her son on Cedar Street in Wisconsin Dells. According to court documents, Miller told officers that after he lost his job about seven months ago, he began selling cocaine, crack cocaine, marijuana and pills. The sales happened at the apartment because he did not feel comfortable driving with drugs, he said. In addition to the drugs, officers found $5,782 in cash, three suspected drug ledgers, two safes, four scales, seven cutting agents (for preparing cocaine), and plastic baggies. The circumstances are not good, said Judge Alan J. White. The court has taken a view that those that deliver drugs are dangerous. White ordered Miller be held on $7,500 cash bond and to have no contact with Surratt. Surratt appeared on the monitor a few minutes later. She lived at the apartment with Miller and her 2-year-old son. When questioned by detectives, she told them that she would sometimes help with sales taking money in exchange for drugs when someone came to the apartment. They had used the money to pay for rent, but she was getting worried about the conspicuousness of the short-term traffic to their apartment, selling to 30 or 40 people. We have the same situation, Kohlwey said of Surratt, large amounts of cocaine, large amounts of marijuana. She has worked out a situation where she can have no contact with Robert Miller, said Eagon, laying out a plan for a potentially safe release for Surratt on bond. She has full custody of her son, who is now with a foster family. Not all of the reports from the Columbia County Sheriffs Office had been filed at the time that the criminal complaint was filed, according to Detective Lt. Roger Brandner. Following the arrest, a statement was released by the department anticipating charges relating to child negligence. The Columbia County District Attorneys Office is a participant in the Wisconsin Alliance for Drug Endangered Children, along with about 50 other counties, which puts focus on children as under-appreciated victims of drug abuse. Together we can be proactive as a team to send the message that Wisconsin values the safety of children, according to the groups mission statement, and will not accept child neglect, physical, emotional or sexual abuse due to drugs. Surratt, on the same conditions as Miller, was ordered held on $7,500 cash and to not have contact with Miller. Her next court date is scheduled for Aug. 19. Miller is due in court next on Aug. 15. The park surrounding the Columbia County side of the Colsac Ferry landing will soon be, in more ways than one, the place to go. Wisconsin Department of Transportation Secretary Mark Gottlieb who, a year ago, announced a $500,000 project for a new restroom at the landing near Lodi will be back on the site June 10, to dedicate the finished building. The ceremonial ribbon that Gottlieb will help cut about 10 a.m. includes a strand of toilet paper. Joining Gottlieb at the ribbon-cutting will be Nancy Elsing, executive director of the Columbia County Economic Development Corporation, and Dean Schwarz, chairman of the town of West Point. Angela Adams, deputy director of the DOTs Southwest Region, will be mistress of ceremonies at the dedication, which will be hosted by the town of West Point. The free ferry runs 24 hours a day between landings in Columbia Countys town of West Point and Sauk Countys village of Merrimac every seven minutes or so, when the Wisconsin River isnt frozen. Its owned by the state, but operated by the Columbia County Highway Department. Traditionally, the Columbia County Visitors Bureau holds an unofficial kickoff of the ferrys summer season around Flag Day, which is June 14. The kickoff events usually include representatives of the Visitors Bureau offering free miniature flags and Columbia County tourism information to people waiting to get on the ferry and that will happen on June 10, too, from 2 to 6 p.m. But the return of Gottlieb for the ribbon-cutting ceremony marks a unique occasion the long-awaited solution to a problem that has challenged supporters of the state-owned ferry landing park on the Columbia County side. The problem: Restrooms that nobody wanted to use. For many years, the landing area had a small, smelly building with pit toilets and no running water. In June 2015, Gottlieb unveiled, at the landing, plans for a 27- by 31-foot wayside facility, featuring full plumbing service, and family restroom facilities. The state would pick up the half-million-dollar cost of the project, which also includes improved paving for the parking area and some landscape work. Work on the building was well underway by the fall of 2015, with the target of completion by the coming summer. Schwarz noted, in October, that the wayside, and other improvements, were designed to turn the Columbia County ferry landing from a mere pit stop into a tourist destination. Other kickoff events are also intended to promote the ferry as one of many Columbia County tourism destinations. Officials of the town of West Point will serve refreshments after the ribbon-cutting, and there will be even more refreshments in the afternoon. From 2 to 6 p.m., LODI (which stands for Lodi Opportunity and Development, Inc.) will operate a bratwurst stand, and the Columbia County Visitors Bureau will also offer treats, along with the little flags and informational material. Other hosts for the June 10 events include the Ice Age Trail Alliance and the Friends of Scenic Lodi Valley. East Albert Street had become a de facto bypass where drivers speed by, endangering walkers, runners, bicyclists and skateboarders. So say about 40 of the people living in or near the vicinity of the northern Portage neighborhood which is why theyve submitted a petition asking the city to put in two new stop signs, at East Albert Street and Dorothy Drive, and at East Albert and Hamilton Street. But Public Works Director Aaron Jahncke told the citys Municipal Services and Utilities Commission Thursday that granting the request probably wont slow drivers down, and may have unintended consequences. Jahncke said he isnt yet making a recommendation one way or the other, but hes working with the Portage Police Department to study the traffic volume and speed in the area. He told about seven East Albert Street area residents who attended the meeting that hed have data later this summer some of it from an existing electronic speed feedback sign, which could help pinpoint how many vehicles travel through the area and how fast they typically go. Dan Pare, an East Albert Street resident and one of the petition signers, said he has seen people speeding numerous times, especially from Highway 33 to Hamilton Street. Even without timing them with radar, Pare said, I believe theyre going closer to 55 (mph) than 25. Mary Gonzagowski, who also lives on East Albert Street, said many drivers use East Albert Street to avoid driving through downtown Portage, especially since the completion of last years improvements on East Albert and East Haertel streets. Westbound drivers, in particular, turn off Highway 33 at East Albert, rather than proceed through downtown and some of them drive large trucks. In addition to having children playing in the residential area, she said, the area also attracts numerous species of wildlife, including deer, turkeys, cranes and geese. Jahncke noted, however, that if motorists perceive a stop sign as unnecessary or a nuisance, it wont be long before they start going right through the sign with maybe just a tap of their brakes. Thats happening already in other areas of Portage where stop signs have been set up with the goal of slowing traffic, he said. Typically, before a traffic control device of any kind is put up on a road, traffic engineers determine whether its warranted. A number of factors go into that determination, JOKahncke said, including the areas accident history, visibility, vehicular and pedestrian conflicts and traffic volume. And, he noted, the perceived potential for accidents doesnt count in determining whether a traffic control device is warranted only the actual accident statistics. Commission Chairman Doug Klapper said he sympathizes with the residents wish that drivers would slow down. I feel your pain, he said, in that the people are driving very fast. But if stop signs wont result in reduced speeds, commission members asked, what will? Commission member Jeff Monfort offered one idea. I hate those things, but what about speed bumps? he asked.I cant stand them. I hate them. But they work. Jahncke said that on some streets, small islands or boulevards can be effective in reducing traffic speed. He said he would like to study the traffic and speed in various Portage neighborhoods, to get some sense about where such measures would be most effective. You have to look at the neighborhood as a whole, he said. The commission took no action on the matter Thursday, but Klapper urged East Albert Street residents to keep their eye on future Municipal Services and Utilities Commission agendas, as the discussion is likely to continue in the future. The H.H. Bennett Studio, Wisconsin Dells, will welcome its new director and mark its 126th anniversary from 1 to 3 p.m. June 12 with a wine and cheese reception sponsored by the Friends of the H.H. Bennett Studio. David Rambow has been hired to head the Studio, a Wisconsin Historical Society site. Rambow is one of the few people in the country who can use the same methods H.H. Bennett did when he took his famous photographs of the Dells. Rambow does wet plate photography that uses glass negatives as Bennett did. Under his company name, D.C. Rambow & Company Photographers, he frequently gives demonstrations and takes photographs at Civil War reenactments using the process. His photography was featured in the films, Cowboys and Aliens and True Grit and was a subject of a short film by Minnesota Public Television. Rambow, a native of Sturgis, South Dakota, was most recently a museum technician at the Effigy Mounds National Monument, Harpers Ferry, Iowa. He holds bachelors degrees in history and anthropology, has worked as a curator in history museums in South Dakota and Minnesota and as a naturalist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Guests at the reception can also view the new digital kiosk the Friends have provided and vote for a favorite photograph from the exhibit of water photographs in the museum galley. Commitment to active citizenship earns W&M grad national award Executive board: Allison Heisel '16 (fourth from left) was a member of last year's Branch Out executive board along with (left to right) Lizzie Shaw '16, Thomas Fergus '16, Meghan Foley '16, Sruvee Sathi '16 and Noella Handley '16. Photo courtesy of Allison Heisel '16 Photo - of - Hide Caption Recent William & Mary graduate Allison Heisel 16 has been named Active Citizen of the Year by Break Away, a national organization that promotes alternative break programs. According to Break Aways website, the award is presented to individuals based on their commitment to lifelong active citizenship prioritizing community in their values and life choices. Heisel, a philosophy major, received the award for her work with the universitys Branch Out alternative breaks program as well as her leadership on campus, including the creation of the Diversity in Philosophy Discussion Group. Although Break Away staff members arent part of the selection process, it was clear to them why the awards committee picked Heisel, said Nisha Kavalam, programs director for Break Away. She embodies the qualities of an active citizen through and through: She cares about her community, she works hard to make sustainable change and she is a strong, passionate leader, said Kavalam. The particular example of her work in the philosophy department is truly admirable she recognized a need in her community and succeeded in making a change. We are so excited to know her and proud of her for all of her accomplishments! Evolution of an active citizen A native of Fairfax, Virginia, Heisel has long been involved in community engagement, often focusing on issues of hunger and homelessness. She first participated in short Branch Out trips during her freshman year at the university. The Branch Out program, operated by the Office of Community Engagement, offers students the opportunity to participate in regional, national and international service trips over weekends and school breaks and emphasizes education, reflection and reorientation for participants. Branch Out was named Program of the Year by Break Away in 2011. During her sophomore year, Heisel volunteered to be a site leader for a spring break trip to Washington, D.C., which had students work with the nonprofits D.C. Central Kitchen and D.C. Urban Greens. The decision to become a site leader for the trip had a major impact on Heisel, she said. When I became a site leader, it really challenged a lot of what I thought previously about community engagement and how to do that in a way that was respectful and impactful and mindful, she said. Branch Out and Break Away use a model of active-citizenship that involves four stages: member, volunteer, conscientious citizen and active citizen, Heisel said. When she started at W&M, she was decidedly in the volunteer stage, in which someone is engaged in service but not invested in exploring the root causes of the issues. I was volunteering left and right for one-day service opportunities but never really invested in a long-term relationship or really thinking critically how volunteering was driven by the community that I was trying to help, she said. Branch Out really challenged me to think critically about how I was engaging and why I was engaging and showed me that the answers to those two questions are actually really, really important in making sure that you are maximizing positive impact and minimizing harm. During her junior year, Heisel served as a regional site leader for a Branch Out weekend trip to Shalom Farms near Richmond, Virginia. This past year, she served as both a student director for Branch Outs national trips and a site leader for one of them, working with Lynchburg Grows in Lynchburg, Virginia. Being involved in Branch Out throughout the years has shaped Heisel in multiple ways, she said. It changed the way she thinks about community engagement and her relationships, including the one she has with herself, saying that more than anything, Branch Out taught me how to be a person. Being involved in Branch Out means reflecting really critically about your actions and how they impact people, and it creates a really strong sense of teamwork. And all of those things are really important just in moving through the world, thinking about what am I doing and why am I doing it and trying to make my little section of the world a more connected, healthier and happier place. Making change where you are Heisel applied that lesson within her own field of study at William & Mary when she established the Diversity in Philosophy Discussion Group. The group provided an open forum for students to discuss marginalized aspects of philosophy, from feminist bioethics to Chinese philosophy. When I started that, it was really important to me to cultivate a culture of curiosity We were all engaged in learning together, and it was less about being right and more about learning from everybodys relative areas of expertise, and thats something I learned a lot about in Branch Out, Heisel said. Meghan Foley 16, who nominated Heisel for the award, said that Heisels commitment to making change where she is as she did in the philosophy department is an inspiration. We cant all work for nonprofits or be social workers, and so I just thought it was really amazing how Allison took this critical social justice-oriented outlook she had developed through working with alternative breaks and in other areas of her life and then saw a need within a world she already inhabited and then took action, said Foley, who served as a student director of Branch Out with Heisel. Its really easy to complain about something and talk about how you wish there was more diversity in departments or that your syllabus is different than it is, but its rare to find someone to follow through on that commitment and really make things happen. Melody Porter, director of the Office of Community Engagement, said that other students were similarly inspired by Heisel and look to her as a model of active citizenship. In a class Porter taught last semester, she asked her eight students to pair off and discuss an active citizen they know and admire; two of those groups 50 percent of the class talked about Heisel. One thing that it says about the William & Mary community is that people are really interested in this and want to learn from each other, and they do, said Porter, who was named Staff Person of the Year by Break Away in 2010. A lot of people have learned from her example. One of the things that makes Heisel stand out among others is her intentionality, Porter noted. Shes very thoughtful about all she does in the world and how she relates to people, and I think that set her apart as an active citizen because so much of active citizenship is recognizing that your actions influence other people and matter in the world, Porter said. This summer, Heisel is attending the Sherwin B. Nuland Summer Institute in Bioethics at Yale University. In the fall, she will begin a one-year AmeriCorps VISTA position, working in the Office of Student Leadership and Service-Learning for the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. There, shell focus on supporting food insecurity-related campus initiatives and work with the nonprofit Backpack Beginnings, whose mission is to deliver child-centric services to feed, comfort and clothe children in need. Later, Heisel hopes pursue a doctorate in philosophy. The role that active citizenship plays in all that is that its sort of a framing and a grounding, she said. Youre never end-state active citizen. There are always opportunities to grow, which is exciting. W&M student awarded Udall Scholarship Udall scholar: Rachel Merriman-Goldring '17 intends to pursue a career in environmental education. Photo - of - Hide Caption Environmental policy is often supported by science, but Rachel Merriman-Goldring 17 believes in also enacting change through art. For the past three years, the environmental policy and government double major has been studying non-traditional ways to educate communities on environmental issues through the use of graphic design, data visualization and public art projects. One of these was seen on the William & Mary campus in the fall of 2014: a floating art installation near the Crim Dell Bridge that used an old fishing boat and oyster shells to illustrate the decline in oyster populations in the Chesapeake Bay. My installation made a distant statistic about bivalves in the bay far more immediate, she said. For the first time, this effort allowed me to combine my love of environmental education with my love of art. It was thrilling to realize that two things I care about so much can coexist and reinforce each other. The process of producing this installation inspired me to do more. Its this unique approach to environmental education that garnered interest from the Udall Foundation, which recently selected Merriman-Goldring as one of their 2016 scholars. As a scholarship recipient, Merriman-Goldring will be awarded up to $7,000 and will spend a long weekend in Tucson, Arizona, this summer meeting and sharing ideas with other scholars, professionals and Udall alumni. Scholars also become involved in the Udall alumni network, allowing them to meet and work with other individuals who are similarly passionate about the environment. Liz Jacob 17 received an Honorable Mention in this years competition. Established in 1992 to honor Congressmen Morris and Stewart Udall, who were instrumental in enacting legislation that benefitted the environment and American Indians, the Udall Scholarship is reserved for sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue careers related to the environment, tribal public policy, or American Indian healthcare. This year, 60 undergraduates were selected from a pool of 482 applicants nationwide who had been nominated by their universities. I loved the idea of a scholarship aimed solely at students interested in the environment, and Morris and Stewart Udall, the men for whom the scholarship is named, are great inspirations for any aspiring environmentalist, said Merriman-Goldring. Merriman-Goldrings own environmental aspirations began to flourish as a high school junior when she took a week-long sailing trip with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to learn about the regions environmental plights. Everyone talked about oysters, she said. I remember being shocked when I found out that oysters had fallen to less than 1 percent of historical highs. It frustrated me that legislative inaction and poor regulatory enforcement had led to the precipitous drop in oyster populations. That trip later became the inspiration for her freshman year Monroe research project, and led to a deeper exploration of environmental issues plaguing the bay and beyond. Alan C. Braddock, Ralph H. Wark Associate Professor of Art History and American Studies, taught the Art and Ecology class that stimulated Merriman-Goldrings interest in merging art with environmental education, and said she is the perfect candidate for the Udall Scholarship. She brings extraordinary enthusiasm and a commitment to interdisciplinary inquiry in addressing environmental issues, he said. In addition to taking coursework in environmental studies, she has proactively pursued extracurricular projects to implement her ideas for environmental education. This past fall, Merriman-Goldring co-curated an interdisciplinary art exhibition that educated the public on Virginia factory farms. She also volunteers as a Clean Water Captain with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF), advocating environmentally-friendly practices in the Williamsburg, Virginia area, and using art and graphics to help make CBF's outreach efforts more accessible. And, as the Environmental Art Chairman for Williamsburgs Triangle Arts and Culture League, she is working to bring more environmentally-minded public art installations to the community. Im ultimately interested in finding ways to bring about the social change needed to create political and structural changes that are crucial for environmental protection, she said. At this point, Im interested in doing that through non-curricular environmental education, with a focus on art-based approaches that integrate environmental justice. Sophomores and juniors interested in applying for the Udall Scholarship this academic year should contact Lisa Grimes (lmgrim@wm.edu). 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 Gov. Gina Raimondo announced increased funding for Pre-K programs in Woonsocket on Wednesday. After her remarks, she spoke with The Call about her position on the natural gas energy facility proposed in Burrillville. Tiger (illustration) By: Tanya Malhotra (Scroll down for video) A temple that allowed visitors to walk among its tigers, has been raided by police after 40 dead tigers were found in a freezer, according to police in Thailand. Bangkok police said that they have arrested three Buddhist monks on Thursday, after being accused of trying to smuggle tiger skins and other tiger parts. The Tiger Temple has been popular with tourists who pay about $20 to pose for photos with the tigers and to feed their babies. Police raided the temple on Monday, and confiscated the 137 tigers that were held on the premises. Police also seized tiger skins and amulets made from tiger parts. Baby tigers were found in 20 glass jars, which were used for medicine. The seizure of tiger products followed the discovery of 40 dead tiger cubs in a freezer of the temple. Investigators believe that tigers were being preserved for use in potions. A young man wanted to make a point about racism in the United States, but his plan backfired when he was exposed for a liar by police. 20-year-old Khalil Cavil of Texas was working at the Saltgrass Steak House in Odessa when he claimed he was discriminated against because of his Muslim name. Cavil took Cortney Batchelor and Tomas Juska By: Chan Yuan A jealous boyfriend was arrested on a charge of manslaughter after killing a man by punching him in the face, according to police in the United Kingdom. Now, 21-year-old Cortney Batchelor of Dunstable, has been sentenced to serve four years in prison after being convicted of manslaughter in connection with the death of 24-year-old Tomas Juska. According to the police investigation, the two men, who did not know each other, were out enjoying a Saturday night at Club Cookies. Batchelors new girlfriend was working behind the bar, when Juska, who was drunk, was chatting her up. Batchelor became agitated and confronted the drunk man who gave the woman his phone number. Batchelor then punched him with such force that his legs crumpled beneath him. His head then hit the ground with a sickening thud, resulting in the catastrophic injuries that caused his death. Batchelor claimed that he believed he was about to be punched, and was acting in self defense. He was found guilty by a jury of manslaughter. Batchelors girlfriend had stood by him, and is now expecting his child. Are You Registered to Vote in The EU Referendum? This article is old - Published: Friday, Jun 3rd, 2016 With just a few days left to do so have you checked if youre registered to vote in the EU Referendum? There are now just three weeks left until the big vote on Britains membership in the European Union, residents are being reminded to make sure they are registered to vote in this months referendum. If you didnt receive a polling card to take part in the recent Welsh Assembly and Police Crime Commissioner Elections, you may not be registered to vote in the EU Referendum on Thursday June 23rd. In Wrexham the current eligible electorate is 97,382. The franchise for the EU Referendum is the Parliamentary franchise which means that citizens of EU countries are not eligible to vote in the Referendum, whilst UK citizens living overseas are. There are 3100 EU electors living in Wrexham who will not be eligible to vote in the Referendum due to the above franchise. Anyone who registered to vote before the May 5th elections (and anyone who has registered to vote since) does not need to reregister. Registration to vote in the EU Referendum closes at midnight on Tuesday 7th June. Registering to vote is easy and just takes a few moments of your time to do so! After polls close, Wrexham.com will be live at the local count to report if Wrexham has voted to stay in or out of the EU Referendum. The overall Wales vote however will be announced in Flintshire when all the votes across Wales have been counted and verified. Last week saw Wrexhams first debate on the EU Referendum, with over 90 people attending the event held at the Wrexham Library. You can register to vote for the EU Referendum here. Town Centre 100 PSPO Fine Zone To Tackle Anti-Social Behaviour This article is old - Published: Friday, Jun 3rd, 2016 Wrexham Council are asking your thoughts on their proposals to fine those taking part in anti social behaviour in Wrexham town centre. Wrexham Council have launched a consultation asking for your thoughts on the introduction of a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) to help tackle antisocial behaviour across Wrexham Town Centre. PSPOs are new legislation that has been used by Wrexham Council in Rhosddu, calling it a hotspot at the time, which can see fines of 100 issued (or 75 if paid within seven days) however non-payment could see prosecutions with a maximum penalty upon conviction being a fine up to 1000. The consultation notes: As a resident, visitor or business owner in the area it is likely that you will be aware of issues of anti-social behaviour which occur in these areas. In the examples of such behaviour the first noted is Rough sleeping, then Drug abuse; and intoxication from that and Drinking alcohol and under the influence of such. If the proposed PSPO goes ahead, much of the town centre will be covered by an order along with Capel y Groes on Powell Road, Eagles Meadow, King Street and Bellevue Park. The proposals prohibit specific behaviour, with the consultation allowing you to agree or disagree with each point. Behaving in a manner that is likely to cause harassment, alarm, nuisance or distress. That consuming alcohol or being in possession of open containers of alcohol likely to cause or causing Anti-Social Behaviour is prohibited in the Restricted Area. Loitering in a state of intoxication or through drug induced activity is prohibited in the Restricted Area That Person(s) within the Restricted Area are prohibited from eating, drinking, inhaling, injecting, smoking or otherwise using any intoxicating substances or the preparations for any such activities. (This includes alcohol and any other legally obtained product which is intoxicating in nature) Defecating or urinating in a public place is prohibited in a Restricted Area. That sleeping within Wrexham Bus Station in Kings Street, and any public toilet facilities within the Town Centre during the hours of darkness is prohibited. The proposed Order in comes off the back of a series of issues regarding antisocial behaviour in the town centre particularly around the bus station, which recently became subject to a dispersal order in a bid to tackle the problem. PSPOs have been used elsewhere such as Hackney, Newport and Oxford for geographically wide outright bans of rough sleeping, with such areas accused of criminalising homelessness via the legislation. Wrexhams proposals are however specific to the bus station and toilets rather than the full town centre. It is unclear how the Council intends to collect the prompt 75 fine from rough sleepers who are deemed in breech of the PSPO, or if prosecutions of homeless people would be pursued which could end in a conviction with a potential fine of 1000. Last month a similar order was introduced in Rhosddu Park and Cemetery, with two people since receiving fines for drinking in the area. Speaking about the proposals Cllr Hugh Jones, Wrexham Councils Lead Member for Communities and Partnerships, said: We have been aware for some time that the levels of anti social behaviour occurring in the town centre is unacceptable and is of concern to visitors, businesses and residents alike. In order to address this problem we are proposing to use powers given to us under legislation to introduce a PSPO, similar to the one that has been successfully introduced in Rhosddu Park and Cemetery. The Order will give authorised officers the right to issue a 100 fine which will deter offences taking place in these areas. I will be taking a report to the Councils Executive Board in June for the proposed order and I encourage as many people as possible to take part in the consultation so we have a wide range of views on the proposals. To take part in the consultation with details of the Order and a fuller map of the affected area are available online on the following links: The English link to the consultation is here, with the Welsh consultation link is here. Hard copies of the consultation are also available from Contact Wrexham and the Guildhall Reception on request. Wrexham Glyndwr Universitys International Exchange Deal With Historic French University This article is old - Published: Friday, Jun 3rd, 2016 Wrexham Glyndwr University is to sign a new exchange agreement with one of the worlds oldest universities. The institution recently invited representatives from Universite de Reims Champagne-Ardenne in France, to visit the campus and agree a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to cement an international partnership. The MoU will create collaborative opportunities for Wrexham Glyndwr Universitys three schools Applied Science, Computing and Engineering; Social and Life Sciences and North Wales Business School. Lecturers from both institutions will visit each others campuses to deliver academic modules, which will fulfil staff development needs and improve programme content. Opportunities will also be sought for students to experience academic and professional life at the French university. Welcoming the partnership, Vice Chancellor Maria Hinfelaar said she is looking forward to collaborating with the French university. Professor Hinfelaar added: I would like to thank University of Reims for visiting us and for supporting our mission statement of working in partnership to inspire and educate our students and enable social and economic success. We look forward to working closely with the university and see our students benefit from this relationship. This is a great opportunity to maximise and expand our international links this is an exciting time for us. The University of Reims, in Northern France, was created in 1548 and has about 20,000 students. The universitys representatives Olivier Nocent, Oliver Sirot and Catherine Gaillot presented Professor Hinfelaar with Pommery Champagne and they received Penderyn Welsh Whiskey in return. Chris Jones, Head of North Wales Business School, said: For many years we have welcomed many of their students onto degree courses here. Now, we have decided to work together to create a bigger and stronger relationship going forward. We discussed many collaborative opportunities for three Schools in particular: Applied Science, Computing and Engineering; Social and Life Sciences and North Wales Business School. During the visit we worked towards signing an activity based Memorandum of Understanding that will formalise our plans and give us a basis on which to move forward. For more information on the schools involved with the MoU visit the Wrexham Glyndwr University website. Official campaigning for the June 23 referendum on UK membership of the European Union (EU) is plumbing the depths of anti-immigrant xenophobia. Last Thursday, the Office for National Statistics released figures revealing that net migration to the UK had risen to 333,000 in 2015, the second highest figure on record, with EU-only net migration at 184,000, equalling its record high. The ONS report prominently pointed out that the 20,000 rise in net migration was caused by a 22,000 drop in the number of British people moving abroad rather than a rising influx of migrants. But this was almost universally ignored as the media and leading lights in the Leave campaign denounced Prime Minister David Cameron for failing to honour his own anti-migrant pledges and to blame this failure on EU membership and the free movement accorded to its citizens. Over the next days the anti-migrant propaganda reached fevered levels, especially after a poll for the Guardian reported a two point lead for Leave for the first time and a Daily Telegraph survey reported a four point rise in one week for a Brexit [British exit from the EU] to 46 percent, with Remain on 51 percent. Boris Johnson, the former London mayor, and Tory cabinet members Michael Gove and Priti Patel stepped up the attack this week. In a joint statement issued Tuesday, they urged an Australian-style points-based system to determine eligibility for entry into the UK after a Leave vote ended the right to free movement within Europe. The document makes clear that this is a challenge to Camerons leadership, led by his likely successor, Johnson, in the event of a Brexit. The automatic right of all EU citizens to come to live and work in the UK will end, as will EU control over vital aspects of our social security system, they wrote. For relevant jobs, we will be able to ensure that all those who come have the ability to speak good English, the Vote Leave campaign said. If we implement these principles, for the first time in a generation it will be possible for politicians to keep their promises on migration. The targeting of Cameron was underscored by Patel in the Daily Telegraph, where she attacked the prime minister as one of a number of socially privileged Remain backers that fail to care for those who do not have their advantages and are concerned only with inexpensive domestic help, willing tradesmen and convenient, cheap travel. Patel is a former lobbyist for British American Tobacco and worked for Diageo, the global alcoholic drinks company. In 2012, the newly-minted friend of the British worker co-authored a book, Brittania Unchained, declaring, Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world and arguing that instead of rewarding laziness the UK must strive to emulate the work ethic and low-tax culture in parts of Asia. Gisela Stuart, the Labour co-chair of the Vote Leave campaign, signed the letter, complaining, The single market means automatic massive free movement of labour. The Daily Express was among several newspapers to endorse the plan, declaring, We must end open-door immigration, whereas others argued that a points-based system was too lax as evidenced by Australia allowing in far greater numbers of migrants. In the Spectator, Lord Green, the head of the right-wing think tank Migrant Watch, urged a tough system of work permits confined to the highly skilled ... enforced by extending current penalties (hefty fines and possible imprisonment) to any citizensEuropean or otherwisewho were found to be working here without a permit. UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage boasted on Breitbart, Todays front pages mark a genuine sea change in British politics. The two men most likely to succeed David Cameron as prime minister have both now publicly committed to an Australian-style points system for immigration. There can be no going back from these positions. The Remain campaign shares responsibility for fuelling anti-migrant sentiment, with Cameron not only pledging to reduce migration to less than 100,000 a year but making measures to curb the benefits available to migrants a key platform of his argument to remain in the EU. More important still is the actual role of the EU in constructing a Fortress Europe to repel migrants fleeing the devastation created by the colonial wars waged by Europe and the United States in the Middle East and North Africa. A particularly venal role is being played by the main pseudo-left groups in the UK advocating a Left Leave votethe Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Party, Counterfire and the Stalinist Communist Party of Britain. The central message they have insisted on is that nothing matters more in the referendum than that a Leave vote will precipitate a leadership challenge to Cameron. Whoever displaces Cameron, they insist, there will be civil war in the Tory party, which will speed the day for the subsequent election of a Labour government under Jeremy Corbyn. To this end, the pseudo-left have denounced the undemocratic character of the EU, while at the same time boosting the democratic credentials of the British parliament. Above all they have had to downplay the threat posed to the working class from the rising fortunes of the right wing of the Tory Party and UKIP and the poisonous anti-migrant sentiment being whipped up. On April 4, Chris Bamberry of Counterfire complained, Many, particularly on the left, predicted this would be vile campaign dominated by racism and the presence of Nigel Farage and Ukip. But it hasn't worked out like that. Farage and Ukip have been sidelined. ... Far from being a carnival of reaction and racism, it is fairly boring. The SWPs Six myths about the European Union insisted, Bosses need European migrantsand if Britain left the EU, they would not be kicked out. ... Mass deportations or even a tough visa regime would risk economic disaster. So there is immense pressure to keep the status quo. Tomas Tengely-Evans of the SWP enthused this week, Tory MPs are gunning for David Cameronand ready to depose the prime minister after the European Union referendum, before insisting, This is the lefts chance to topple the Tories and push back against their austerity and racism. Dave Sewell, also of SWP, argues that whereas the racist Tory right and Ukip, not the left, brought up the debate on the EU and They, not us, are the most visible face of Brexit. ... it doesn't follow that they would be the ones to benefit ... The biggest beneficiary so far of the Tories' EU splits has been Jeremy Corbyn, says Sewell. Therefore, he insists, Telling people that the choice is between Cameron, the EU and the bosses on one hand or Farage and the racists on the other [i.e., telling the truth!] is dangerously counterproductive. The Socialist Workers What we Think column on May 24 goes so far as to claim those who argue that the bigger enemy is Fortress Britain fail to recognise how voting Leave will blow a hole in the walls of Fortress Europe. This will supposedly undermine Camerons plans to use the EU to police the UKs borders because he wants to make sure refugees in Greece never reach Britain. ... Anti-racists must fight for open borders and freedom of movement. This is the most disgusting cynicism. Left Leave are standing in the same trench as Johnson and Farage and dragooning workers behind the reactionary bourgeois forces they speak for. They even echo the propaganda of the Tory right that the free movement of EU citizens is a threat to the livelihoods of British workers, rather than urge a united offensive against the capitalist class. On the Left Leave web site, CPB General Secretary Robert Griffiths states, The free movement of people principle in the Treaty of Rome (1957) has always been a cloak for the free movement of labour, so that workers can move more easily to where business can make a bigger profit from them. ... The result has been mass migrations of capital, jobs and labour across Europe at the expense of national and regional economies, local communities and union negotiated terms and conditions of employment. An article by Socialist Party supporter Thomas Barker complains of EU legislation allowing workers to float from country to country within the EU and of this playing a pernicious role in undermining pay and conditions for existing workforces. The Left Leave campaign is framed precisely as a defence of national and regional economies, i.e., British capitalism, and existing workforces from the impact of migrant labour. Everything else, including the cynical demand to Open the borders! to migrantswhen the ruling elite is united in sealing borders off even more firmlyis smoke and mirrors to conceal the devils compact they have made with the right. The ongoing stagnation in the global economy, marked by falling investment and the emergence of overproduction in key basic industries, is fuelling the rise of trade war protectionist measures by the major powers, above all the United States. Last week, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) launched an investigation into Chinese steel mills which have been accused by the United States Steel Corp of stealing secrets and conspiring to fix prices. Chinese industrial overcapacity, especially in steel, will be on the agenda of the strategic and economic dialogue to be held between the US and China in Beijing next week. The US treasury undersecretary for international affairs, Nathan Sheets, recently called for China to allow its industries to better reflect capacity and global demand conditions. In other words, China should cut back production. Overproduction in the Chinese steel industry has been blamed for an increase in cheap exports and the loss of jobs and plant closures in both Europe and the US. Recent tariffs on imports of steel have boosted American prices, but authorities are looking for further measures. Industrial overcapacity was important for the global economy and we hope to make some progress on it in Beijing, Sheets told a meeting at the Brookings Institution in Washington. The issue is fraught, however, with contradictions because many industrial companies in the US are dependent on cheap steel imports for their business models. Stuart Barnett, the head of the Chicago-based Barsteel Corp which supplies a range of manufacturers said the government had done a pretty good job of keeping out the cheapest steel imports. But now the greatest fear we have is that China keeps cheap steel for itself and makes products that undercut other industries, he said. In other words, suppression of the increasingly ferocious struggle for markets and profits in one area of the industrial economy will see it resurface in another. Pressure from the US for China to cut back production and exports were met with a sharp response from the Chinese government. Speaking at a briefing in Beijing on Thursday, Zhu Guangyao, Chinas vice-finance minister, said: Trade disputes between China and the US should be addressed in accordance with World Trade Organisation (WTO) principles. We are opposed to abusive trade remedy measures. There was an even stronger reaction from Chinas Hebei Iron and Steel Group, the countrys largest steel producer. In a statement posted on its website on Thursday, it denounced the investigation by the US ITC. The protectionist behaviour taken by the US on purely groundless accusations by US Steel has seriously broken WTO rules, distorted the normal world steel trade and damaged the essential interests of Chinese steel mills and US steel users, it said. US Steel filed the complaint a month ago, claiming it was the victim of a Chinese computer hacking incident in 2011. The ITC has now taken up the case, identifying 40 Chinese steelmakers and distributors as being the subject of investigation. Baosteel, Chinas second-largest steelmaker, the worlds fourth-largest and a target for the ITC probe, said the US was in breach of WTO rules and urged the Chinese government to take all necessary measures to ensure the countrys steel industry received fair treatment. The ITC case has raised concerns it could be the start of far broader measures, possibly including a wholesale ban on Chinese steel imports, according to Simon Evenett, a professor of international trade at University of St Gallen in Switzerland, who is engaged in monitoring protectionist measures. The big thing is really the potential scale of this case versus the pinpricks that we have seen unleashed over the past nine months, he told the Financial Times. This should be setting off alarms bells. It is really a nuclear option. The conflicts go beyond steel and extend to the entire functioning of the WTO, the international body in charge of regulating the global trading system. They are being fuelled by an aggressive push by the United States on two fronts. Last week, the US told other WTO members it was vetoing the reappointment of Seung Wha Chang, a respected South Korean expert on international trade law, to a second term on the organisations appellate body which adjudicates on international trade disputes. Reappointment for a second term has been standard procedure in the past. Washington cited several decisions that have gone against the US as a pattern of what it called overreaching and arriving at abstract decisions. The appellate body is not an academic body that may pursue issue simply because they are of interest to them or may be to certain members in the abstract, the US declared. It is not the role of the appellate body to engage in abstract discussions. Other members of the WTO, including Brazil, Japan and the EU say the US veto risks undermining the independence of the appellate body and the entire system. The EU said the US actions are unprecedented and pose a very serious risk to the independence and impartiality of current and future appellate body members. The US move prompted a highly critical editorial in Wednesdays edition of the Financial Times. The newspaper noted that in the wake of the collapse of the Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations last yearlargely as a result of the US decision to walk away from further discussionsthe last thing the WTO needed was another blow to its authority. With the end of the WTOs role in negotiating global trade deals, its only real remaining function was to adjudicate between governments over existing trade rules and order miscreants to bring policies into compliance. The fact that the US is now trying to subvert it by removing a judge who happens to disagree with the American viewpoint is seriously disturbing, it said. The episode, it continued, also vindicated, at least in this instance, those critics of the US who say Washington favours global cooperation only insofar as it controls the international institutions that run it. This is a serious charge to which the US remains exposed. The issue of the appellate body is linked to another brewing conflict within the WTO. Following its ascension to WTO membership in 2001, China is this year seeking to be accorded market economy status, which would make it more difficult to prosecute Chinese companies for alleged dumping, i.e. selling goods at artificially low prices. The US is reported to have been lobbying hard for the upgraded status not to be granted, against opposition from at least some European powers, as well as Britain. The British government has portrayed itself as Chinas best friend in the West, as financial interests in the City of London seek to profit from expanded Chinese investment and financial activity. Britain has said that if China is accorded full market status, dumping charges could still be dealt with under WTO rules. But this does not appear to have had any impact on the push by the US to prevent its status being raised. Under conditions of global overcapacity, persistently suppressed demand, and warnings of a productivity slowdown in major developed economies, global conflicts over trade are deepening, and, together with the endless promotion of economic nationalism, threaten a global trade war similar to that which emerged in the 1930s. In that period, the growth of protectionism served as the antechamber to world war. Today, the growth of economic nationalism under conditions of another persistent world slump is likewise fuelling conflicts that threaten to erupt into another global conflagration. The HBO television comedy-drama Girls recently concluded its fifth season. Since its 2012 debut, the show has received widespread praise from media critics and commentators, and it has gained a degree of popularity among an audience of young people. Praise for the show generally lauds its frankness and realism about the unpleasant, even ugly, aspects of life for American youth. Such aspects certainly exist in abundance. Young people face a reality dominated by ceaseless war, growing poverty and unemployment and underemployment, suffocating debt, and, in many cases, social despair. A recent Pew report revealed that, for the first time in 130 years, Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 are more likely to be living with their parents than with a spouse or partner. Such social instability inevitably wreaks havoc on the personal lives of this new American lost generation. The characteristics of millennials in the US so often mocked in the mediaanxiety in regard to the future, a reluctance to commit to jobs or romantic partners, reliance on financial help from parents and relatives, an increased use of social media due to the fraying of traditional social bondsare not subjective failings, but rather the objective consequences of the social disaster that has engulfed millions. Girls has been presented, both by its champions and its detractors, as a truthful, warts and all representation of the experiences and outlook of American millennials. Indeed, in fits and starts, the show manages to capture certain truthful elements of this generations experience. Ultimately, however, the shows creators are unable to probe the source of social difficulty to its source, and their fixation on a complacent layer of the upper middle class severely limits the series. HBOs Girls follows Hannah Horvath (show creator Lena Dunham), a 24-year-old aspiring writer living in Brooklyn, New York. At the shows outset, Hannah has been working as an unpaid intern at a literary agency and receiving financial help from her parents to make ends meet. In the pilot episode, Hannahs parents inform her that they will be cutting off financial support. This sets off something of a personal crisis, as Hannah must now grow up and find a way to support herself, financially and emotionally, in notoriously expensive and pressure-filled New York City. Hannah is joined by a group of female friends apparently intended to represent a kind of cross-section of American youth: the uptight and micromanaging Marnie (Allison Williams) who often chastises the others for not behaving more responsibly; the free-spirited and reckless Jessa (Jemima Kirke) who operates largely on thoughtless emotional impulse; and the preposterously naive and inexperienced Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) who is often overwhelmed by the emotional and sexual circumstances that the young women find themselves in. The characters wander somewhat aimlessly from job to job, and from one sexual encounter to the next, all presumably as part of some ill-defined process of finding themselves. Hannah struggles to find work that meets her financial needs while giving her a sense of fulfillment, at various points working in an office run by a sexual harasser, joiningand then leavingthe famed Iowa Writers Workshop, and taking a job as a private elementary school teacher. Her on-again off-again relationship with the self-righteous and bizarre Adam (Adam Driver, once again playing an enigmatic misfit) forms something of an emotional throughline for the series. In the first episode, Hannah remarks to her parents that I think that I may be the voice of my generation; or at least a voice of a generation. Countless reviews and media pieces have made a similar case for Dunham. The New York Times, for example, remarked in a 2014 profile that [Dunham] is perhaps to the millennials what J. D. Salinger was to the post-World War II generation and Woody Allen was to the baby boomers. For an artist lauded as being a voice of one of the most economically embattled generations in American history, Dunham has remarkably little to say. The show fixates on the personal lives and sexual relationships of its characters, with long stretches of runtime spent in bedrooms, and graphic sex scenes taking center stage in nearly every episode. The instability in the characters work lives is presented as being almost entirely the result of personal ambivalence and poor individual choices. As noted, small morsels of truth do stand out. The friendships and romantic relationships contain a degree of complexity that resembles life more closely than one finds in current Hollywood fare. The various job interview scenes, in which Hanna and others squirm as they seek to fit in, simultaneously desperate for work and resentful of vacuous corporate jobs that appear to be their only options, are among the series strongest. Yet, the financial anxiety that comes from un- and underemployment, so central to the lives of millions of youth, finds little expression. There is more to creating an authentic portrait of life than just including copious amounts of profanity and graphic sex. An honest and thoughtful portrait of the millennial generation would concretely and forthrightly depict a generation under attack, beset on all sides, yet increasingly determined to fight for better conditions. It would trace the social desperation and malaise that suffuses the outlook of many young people back, above all, to their material conditions. Girls, by contrast, reduces the problems of society and history to individual, personal issues. The shows fifth season is particularly empty-headed in this regard. Hannahs earlier financial insecurity has largely disappeared from the showand with it, any pretense that the series represented the experiences of a wide section of young people instead of merely the layer responsible for its creation. One feels the self-satisfaction of this social stratum in the cliched, self-consciously snappy dialogue that makes reference to Democratic Party politician Dennis Kucinich, public radio personality Ira Glass, the New York Timess Michiko Kakutani and the various manufactured controversies of concern to the identity-politics crowd. Dunham herself is a vocal supporter of Hillary Clinton, remarking in an interview that Clinton has been a really important figure in the cultural conversation around feminism and politics for a long time, and that Womens rights are the area where Im most focused, and her track record of protecting womenas first lady, as a senator, as secretary of stateis impressive. Except, of course, for the thousands of women incinerated by the US bombing campaigns in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan. ... If Dunham ever genuinely aspired to become the voice of a generation, she has failed badly. Instead, she has become the voice of a self-absorbed group within that generation whose financial insecurities are assuaged by the knowledge they are only an inheritance away in many cases from taking their rightful place in the upper echelons of society. No matter Dunhams intentions, she and others in her milieu are separated from the most profound social problems by a gulf of wealth and privilege. Try as they might, they can see only small parts of the problem, not the whole. The Department of Justice announced Wednesday that it would not press federal civil rights charges against two Minneapolis police officers involved in the shooting death of 24-year-old Jamar Clark last November. The Obama administration, which has funneled millions of dollars of military grade equipment and armored vehicles to local police departments, has repeatedly declined to bring federal charges against killer cops. Following the killing of Clark last year, protests against police violence erupted throughout Minneapolis. Police responded by deploying paramilitary units to viciously break up demonstrations. The decision by federal officials not to bring charges over Clarks killing comes after county prosecutors in Minneapolis announced in March they would not file state criminal charges against the two officers. US Attorney Andrew Luger announced Wednesday that an independent federal investigation had found insufficient evidence to support federal criminal civil rights charges against Minneapolis police officers Mark Ringgenberg and Dustin Schwarze. Both officers have been on desk duty since the killing. According to police officials, Ringgenberg and Schwarze were responding to a call on November 15, 2015 of a man interfering with paramedics in a north Minneapolis neighborhood. Upon their arrival they confronted Clark who, they claimed, continued to interfere with the paramedics. As officers approached Clark, what they described as a struggle ensued leading to Clark being shot in the back of the head as he was pinned down on the ground. He would die later in a hospital after his family decided to remove him from life support. Federal prosecutors placed great emphasis on whether or not Clark was in fact handcuffed when shot. If he was not handcuffed, then a case could be made for the officers that they were acting in self-defense. However, if he was handcuffed, then the officers had no reason to shoot Clark, in the execution style they did, as he was restrained and posed no real danger. While police officials have admitted that Clark was unarmed at the time of the shooting, they have repeatedly disputed the claim that he was handcuffed. However, according to multiple witnesses present at the time of the shooting, the young unarmed black man was handcuffed and not resisting when shot. Luger stated, Given the lack of bruising, the lack of Mr. Clarks DNA on the handcuffs, and the deeply conflicted testimony about whether he was handcuffed, we determined that we could not pursue this case based on a prosecution theory that Mr. Clark was handcuffed at the time that he was shot. And, in fact, we reached the conclusion, based on all of the evidence that we reviewed, that the evidence suggested that Mr. Clark was not, in fact, handcuffed when he was shot. He further added, Our second area of focus was what happened when Mr. Clark and the two officers were on the ground. We wanted to know whether the available evidence would support a finding beyond a reasonable doubt that the officers acted in a manner that was objectively unreasonable, even if Mr. Clark was not handcuffed. As both officers have not been charged, they therefore did not act, according to federal prosecutors, in a manner that was objectively unreasonable. In other words, regardless of whether he was handcuffed or not, the officers had every right to shoot Clark in the back of the head as he lay pinned down on the ground. Ringgenberg and Schwarze join the ever growing list of murderous cops who have avoided criminal charges or conviction. Accompanying them will be: Edward M. Nero in the killing of Freddie Gray; Richard Haste in the killing of Ramarley Graham; Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown and Daniel Pantaleo in the killing of Eric Garner. With the US primary campaigns drawing to a close, the two parties of the US ruling elite, Democrats and Republicans, are preparing to nominate candidates who may be subject to criminal indictment between now and the general election. The Republicans have as their presumptive nominee Donald Trump, a man who made his billions through various scams and insider dealings. US newspapers have been filled this week with details of the fraudulent methods he employed to enhance his fortune. Court documents in the lawsuit joined by numerous former students at Trump University allege that the supposed training in real estate provided by the school was a fiction. It was a fraud on two levels. At an enormous price, up to $35,000 for the Gold Elite program, students were told little more than buy low and sell high. As many as 5,000 students paid a total of $40 million for the worthless instructions, most of which could be obtained, according to press accounts, through a simple Internet search. As for the claim that Trump would be personally involved in sharing his supposed real estate expertise, with instructors who are handpicked by me, the documents show that Trump played no role in the education program except allowing his name and face to be used to promote the venture, and then cashing the checkshis cut of loot was at least $5 million. New York state attorney general Eric Schneiderman, appearing on two television interview programs Thursday morning, said, We have laws against running an illegal, unlicensed university. This never was a university. The fraud started with the name of the organization. He added, It was really a fraud from beginning to end. While Trump U. accounts for only a small fraction of the real estate moguls personal wealth, the methods used were representative of his business model as a whole, and for that matter, of his presidential campaign, which has been focused largely on appealing to increasingly desperate sections of workers and the lower middle class, offering Trumps billionaire persona as the solution to deepening economic afflictions. There is something extraordinary in the fact that one of the principal parties of the ruling class is preparing to choose an individual like Trump as its presidential candidate. Despite the initial hypocritical criticisms of his vulgar and racist pronouncements, nearly all Republican Party leaders have now reconciled themselves with Trump, culminating in Thursdays statement by House Speaker Paul Ryan that he will support his candidacy. This can only be explained in relation to broader social tendencies that have produced an immense degradation of American politics. Trump personifies the descent of corporate America into ever more brazen methods of speculation, swindling and outright theft, which culminated in the economic crash of 2008. Over the past 40 years, the operations of the American ruling class have taken on an ever more parasitic character, with a mass of financial operations covering over a long-term industrial decline. On the Democratic Party side, Hillary Clinton is currently under investigation for conducting all her government communications while Secretary of State on a private email server, an arrangement clearly intended to keep her correspondence under her control, regardless of the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. Later this summer she is expected to be interviewed by the FBI, which could lead to criminal charges over the mishandling of classified materials or perjury. Clinton represents a more polished version of the same social processes that have created Trump. Bill and Hillary Clinton have accumulated a personal fortune topping $150 million by serving as speechmakers to corporate audiences, backed by their fundraising work at the Clinton Foundation, which connects corporate donors and charitable organizations in return for lucrative fees. The foundation has become the center of a web of international influence-peddling that keeps the Clintons in front of their real constituency, the worlds billionaires, making them fabulously wealthy in the process. Clinton is also more directly associated with the crimes of the state and the military-intelligence apparatus. The criminalization of the American financial aristocracy has found its reflection in foreign policyin the casting aside of all legality and the adoption of torture, assassination and preemptive war as the principal means for asserting the interests of the ruling class abroad. It is significant that as the viability of her candidacy is being called into question as a result of the continued successes of her rival, Bernie Sanders, Clinton decided to focus a major speech in San Diego California on a critique of Trumps foreign policy views. Clinton made her pitch to the military, based on the argument that she, and not Trump (or Sanders, or some other candidate) would be the most effective commander-in-chief of US imperialism. Clinton focused her speech on the decision by President Obama and his top military and foreign policy advisers, including Clinton herself, to authorize the Navy Seal Team 6 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. She made no reference to the foreign policy debacle with which she is most closely identified, the US-NATO bombing of Libya, although it accomplished the same end. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was murdered in his home town of Sirte by US-backed rebels, an event that Clinton celebrated at the time with the infamous wisecrack, We came, we saw, he died, touching off gales of laughter among her claque of traveling aides. Trump and Clinton are both products of the same process: the criminalization of the American ruling elite, as the methods of the mafia have come to predominate in both the operations of Wall Street and the practice of imperialist statecraft. Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four May 12 to 14 marks the 90th anniversary of the coup by Jozef Pisudski in Poland with which the Polish bourgeoisie tried to save its rule from the threat of socialist revolution. Today, he is being idealized by large sections of the Polish bourgeoisie and the US imperialist elite. In large measure, this is bound up with the increasing popularity of his conception of the Intermarium, a pro-imperialist alliance of right-wing nationalist regimes throughout Eastern Europe that was primarily directed against the Soviet Union. The resurgent interest in the Intermarium has been bound up with the increasing drive toward a new world war which, as the ICFI stated in its resolution Socialism and the Fight Against War, has been accompanied by a revival of geopolitics among the ideologists of imperialism. This series reviews the history of the Intermarium, the main basis of which emerged in the period leading up to World War I, as a bourgeois nationalist antipode to the United Socialist States of Europe that were proposed by Leon Trotsky. This is the final part in a four-part series.Part 1was posted on May 31;Part 2on June 1 andPart 3on June 2. The PiS-government and US war preparations against Russia With the new right-wing government in Poland under the Law and Justice Party (PiS), the incorporation of Poland into US war plans against Russia and the realization of the Intermarium plans has reached a new level. While promoting vitriolic nationalism, Catholic bigotry and racism, the PiS government has been transforming the country into a military fulcrum that would stand at the very center of any military confrontation between NATO powers and Russia. More so than any previous government, the current PiS government and President Andrzej Duda have put the revival of the Intermarium at the heart of their foreign policy efforts. In his inauguration address in August 2015, Duda, who maintains close ties to the head of PiS, Jarosaw Kaczynski, announced that he would make the creation of an alliance among the states between the Baltic, Black and Adriatic Seas the central axis of his foreign policy. This regional bloc should eventually lead to deeper economic, political and military integration. As has been explained above, these plans are not entirely new. However, under the government of the liberal Civic Platform (PO), these plans were put to the sidelines. While supporting a fervently anti-Russian policy, the PO government was oriented more toward an alliance with Germany. The turning point came with the coup in Ukraine in February 2014 and the simultaneous resurgence of German militarism. After the coup in Ukraine in February 2014, the PO government increased military spending in 2015 to reach 2 percent of the total GDP in 2016. The NATO military build-up in Eastern Europe since 2014 has turned the entire region into a dangerous hotspot and possible platform for war with Russia. A central element of the build-up has been the Obama administrations European Reassurance Initiative (ERI) and the Readiness Action Plan, which were both announced at the NATO summit in Wales in September 2014. In 2015, US funding for the ERI totaled $985 million. An additional $789.3 million are requested for 2016. For 2017, the Obama administration has requested a quadrupling of ERI spending to $3.4 billion so as to allow for a constant presence of an army brigade in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as additional exercises and positioning of combat equipment. In a conscious provocation against Russia, the US started Operation Atlantic Resolve in 2014 with enhanced training and security cooperation with Poland, the Baltic States, Romania and Bulgaria. Since then, numerous US military units, among them the Armys 173 Airborne Brigade, 1 Cavalry Division and 3 Infantry Division, have participated in rotating deployments in Poland where they conducted joint military training and exercises with the Polish armed forces. The US is also planning to pre-position military equipment, including Abrams tanks and infantry, in Baltic and Central European countries, among them Poland. However, the NATO build-up has fallen far short of the expectations of the Polish bourgeoisie. More significantly still, the Ukraine crisis brought to light increasing divisions within the NATO alliance, above all between the United States and Germany, which has become the dominating imperialist power in the EU. The latter, maintaining close economic and political ties with Russia, agreed to the economic sanctions against Russia in 2014, which amounted to economic warfare, but has consistently opposed the permanent stationing of NATO troops in Eastern Europe. The German bourgeoisie remains divided over the policy toward Russia. Important sections, particularly the Social Democratic Party (SPD), have insisted, much to the dismay of Warsaw, that a dialogue with the Kremlin must be upheld. Moreover, some of the largest German companies have increased, rather than decreased, their cooperation with Russia. Most significantly, the German chemical company BASF has struck a multibillion-dollar deal with the Russian gas monopolist Gazprom in 2015. Its subsidiary, Wintershall, is participating in the preparation for the pipeline Nord Stream 2, which is vehemently opposed by both the United States and Poland. Leading politicians from the PiS have described the pipeline as a threat to the national security of Poland and a starting point for an anti-Polish, German-Russian alliance. Just how much concern Germanys continuing ties with Russia have provoked in Warsaw was revealed in a report that was jointly published by the Polish Defence Ministry and the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in 2015, entitled Transatlantic Relations in a Changing European Security Environment. In one of the essays, Andrew A. Michta pointed to the increasing divisions within the alliance over the policy toward Russia: Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy wont commit to anything beyond economic sanctions; France is vacillating; and the medium-sized and small states along NATOs frontier like Poland and the Balts lack the punching power to move Europe to action. Further, he suggests that the Polish-German axis, with which the government of the Civic Platform (PO) has been mainly associated with, was in danger of disintegrating over these differences: The dream was that with Germanys full backing Central Europe would finally escape its middle-periphery dilemma by simply being no ones periphery. The Central European hedge rested on the assumption that Germanys intra-regional relationships, especially its relationship with Poland, would offset its Russian Ostpolitik as a historically dominant policy vector. Behind the concerns over Germanys relationship with Russia stands the more fundamental geopolitical competition between US and German imperialism. Historically, German imperialism has sought to bring Eastern Europe and the territories of the former Soviet Union under its complete control in two world wars, while fighting the United States. This fundamental conflict has been covered up since the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, which significantly weakened the German bourgeoisie and made it dependent for a long historical period upon the support of US imperialism, not least of all in fighting the Soviet Union. However, with the re-emergence of German militarism these differences are again beginning to emerge with increasing sharpness. This is a major reason why leading US think tanks and political analysts saw the Ukraine crisis as a confirmation of the need for a revival of the Intermarium, which has been increasingly discussed over the past five years. Thus, Polish-American political analyst Jan Marek Chodakiewicz, who works for the Institute of World Politics, a pro-Republican graduate school for diplomats and secret service agents in Washington, argued in 2012 that the US had to focus on the Intermarium in its strategy for several reasons. The Intermarium, he argues, forms the regional pivot and gateway to both East and West and, in addition, is the most stable part of the post-Soviet area (and most free and democratic). Therefore, Chodakiewicz advises, the United States should focus on solidifying its influence there to use it as a springboard to handling the rest of the successor states, including the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Russian Federation itself. [1] Warning of an alliance between Berlin and Moscow, he writes: In essence, promoting a pro-American bloc in the middle of Europe, either to complement or counterbalance the increasingly anti-American western Europe, would be indispensable to return the US influence to the old continent. [2] Around the same time, the late Alexandros Petersen published a book titled World Island: Eurasian Geopolitics and the Fate of the West, in which he made the case for a return to the geopolitical thinking of the British imperial strategist Halford Mackinder and the integration of Pisudskis Intermarium policy into US strategy for the domination of Eurasia. These conceptions have been pushed more aggressively since the US-backed coup in Ukraine in February 2014. George Friedman, the founder and former head of the private intelligence agency Stratfor, which maintains close ties to the US military and intelligence apparatus, has repeatedly underlined the need for such a strategy. In a piece entitled From Estonia to Azerbaijan: American Strategy After Ukraine, he outlined his strategy for US imperialism with the following words: Similar to the containment policy of 1945-1989, again in principle if not in detail, it would combine economy of force and finance and limit the development of Russia as a hegemonic power while exposing the United States to limited and controlled risk. The coalescence of this strategy is a development I forecast in two books, The Next Decade and The Next 100 Years, as a concept I called the Intermarium. The Intermarium was a plan pursued after World War I by Polish leader Jozef Pisudski for a federation, under Polands aegis, of Central and Eastern European countries. What is now emerging is not the Intermarium, but it is close. And it is now transforming from an abstract forecast to a concrete, if still emergent, reality. Hinting that such an alliance would be formed in addition to NATO and perhaps eventually as a substitute, he complained that NATO was not a functional alliance and was divided over Russia policy. Therefore, the United States should advance the military build-up of the regimes in Eastern Europe and work for them to form a military alliance: The Poles, Romanians, Azerbaijanis and certainly the Turks can defend themselves. They need weapons and training, and that will keep Russia contained within its cauldron as it plays out a last hand as a great power. Two years earlier, at the Forum for New Ideas in 2012, Friedman had already aggressively argued for a return to Pisudskis Intermarium strategy before a select audience of the Polish elites. Arguing that Europe was again confronted with a resurgent Germany and a possible alliance between Moscow and Berlin, he called upon Poland to take on a leadership role in Europe. Stressing that the EU lacked the capacity to protect Poland in case of a military conflict, Friedman said: Poland must now depend on itself. I will put before you a more radical idea, one that comes from General Pisudski, the Intermarium. The Intermarium basically says: We are caught between Germany and Russia, and that stinks. So, we must become a very difficult morsel to swallow and we cant become that ourselves. And he proposed the Intermarium. There are nations in Europe that survived simply because they were too much trouble to fight with. Poland must become too much trouble. But Poland must also form a free trade zone with countries who need Polish exports, need to be aligned with Poland, need to be led by PolandSlovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, even Turkey. There is a moment of leadership here that Poland can undertakein working with the United States to create a stable environment (emphasis in the original). Friedmans long-time collaborator at Stratfor, Robert D. Kaplan, stressed in a piece from August 2014 titled Pisudskis Europe that it is Poland and Romania, the two largest NATO states in northeastern and southeastern Europe respectively, that are crucial to the emergence of an effective Intermarium to counter Russia. Together they practically link the Baltic with the Black Sea. While the Intermarium was still far from being realized, Kaplan enthused, a trend is discernible. High-level meetings between the Intermarium countries have intensified, as the Pentagon and State Department act as hubs for all these countries militaries, intelligence services and diplomatic corps to interact. Stronger US support to Eastern and Central Europe must be matched by stronger bilateral ties between the countries themselvesto say nothing of increased defence expenditures in the region. These discussions over foreign policy within the Polish and also the US elites preceded the ascendance to power of the government of the Law and Justice Party, which is much more closely oriented toward the US and aims to revive the Promethean project. There have been three central elements of the governments policy over the past few months that are aimed at ensuring the close integration into US war plans. First, the PiS government has dramatically stepped up the build-up of the countrys armed forces. It has lent enthusiastic support to all NATO plans for military expansion in Eastern Europe, appearing as one of the driving forces for the most hawkish proposals. Thus, Duda has long been demanding the permanent stationing of NATO troops in Poland, a proposal that is set to be discussed at the NATO summit in Warsaw in July 2016. It also dramatically increased military spending, following the advice of George Friedman that Poland had to become too much trouble. The amount of military spending was increased to 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), which is well above the threshold of 2 percent of GDP demanded by NATO. Simultaneously, PiS stepped up efforts to build up a large army of paramilitary formations. The number of such paramilitary troops tripled between spring 2014 and the fall of 2015 to now approximately 80,000. This compares to the total number of 120,000 soldiers active in the regular Polish Armed Forces. The PiS government is now integrating these paramilitary formations, which maintain close ties to the countrys virulently racist and violent far-right, into the state (see Polish government intensifies military build-up). Much like the guerrilla troops employed by the right-wing government in Ukraine in the civil war since 2014, these troops are aimed not only to help in case of war against Russia, but also to be deployed against the working class in case of mass demonstrations or a civil war. Second, the PiS-government has significantly stepped up its efforts to coordinate policies with the Visegrad group (Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic), increasingly forming a political bloc of opposition toward the policies of Germany within the EU. Politically, one of the main unifying elements has been the opposition to the refugee policy of Berlin. On a military level, discussions are underway about a possible joint military brigade between Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine, named LITPOLUKRBRIG, which, according to some analysts, could become the prototype for a joint military unit. In addition, Poland plans to form a Baltic Sea and Black Sea association, allowing countries that are not yet NATO members, like Ukraine and Moldova, to take part. It is against this background that the third element of the PiSs policies, the build-up of a police state, has to be understood. The massive militarization of Polish society and the military build-up are incompatible with the maintenance of basic democratic rights. Immediately following its inauguration, the PiS government has staged a constitutional coup, bringing the security services under its control. The Constitutional Court has been blocked ever since and the countrys public broadcasting services were brought under government control. With a new anti-terrorism bill and a surveillance law, the government has built up the structures of a police state. With this, the PiS government tries to secure itself against impending social and political opposition to its war policies and extreme social inequality. However, to what extent the Intermarium alliance can and will be realized is still an open question for several reasons. First, the project is fundamentally dependent upon the support of imperialism, above all US imperialism, but there is no consensus in ruling circles in the US over this project. Second, the Eastern European bourgeoisie itself is divided over what policy to pursue vis-a-vis Russia. This goes in particular for Hungary and the Czech Republic, neither of which supports Polands aggressive course relating to Russia. Third, the Polish bourgeoisie itself is, as it has always been, bitterly divided over its foreign policy. While fiercely anti-Russian, supporters of the former government party Civic Platform (PO) still support a policy that is oriented toward both Germany and the United States, arguing that the Intermarium project is doomed to fail. Nevertheless, the militarization and war strategy of the Polish government, which is working on behalf of US imperialism, must be seen as a major danger. The bourgeoisies that emerged out of the Stalinist bureaucracies and their restoration of capitalism 25 years ago are turning the region into a military fulcrum which might develop into a nuclear confrontation between US imperialism and Russia. As in the 20th century, the Intermarium project is the geopolitical component of a policy that is aimed at mobilizing far-right forces and building up the military against the threat of a socialist revolution by the working class. The working class of Poland and Europe must oppose the bourgeoisies strategy of militarism and war by building a socialist anti-war movement and fighting for the unification of the continent on a socialist basis in the form of the United Socialist States of Europe. Concluded Notes: 1. Jan Marek Chodakiewicz: Intermarium. The Land Between the Baltic and the Black Seas, 2013: Transaction Publishers, p. 2. 2. Ibid., p. 391. Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena attended an outreach meeting on May 27 called by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the end of last weeks G7 summit in Japan. Participants in the meeting also included the political heads of Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Laos, Papua New Guinea and Chad. Sri Lankan government leaders and the Colombo media hailed Sirisenas invitation to this meeting as a major victory in breaking the isolation of Sri Lanka from the international community. Television channels showed a jubilant Sirisena speaking with supposed world leaders including Abe, US President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minster David Cameron, as proof of cordial relations. The main purpose of the meeting was strategic: to more firmly tie the countries involved to Japan and to the US, particularly to Obamas pivot to Asia and preparations for war against China. The fact that Sirisena was invited is an indication of just how rapidly his government has integrated Sri Lanka into the geo-political agenda of US imperialism. With the exception of Chad, all the other countries occupy important geo-strategic positions and are thus important to US-led efforts to encircle China with webs of alliances and strategic partnerships. Vietnam and Laos share borders with China. Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and, to a lesser extent, PNG occupy important locations across sea lanes between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, vital for Chinas trade with Africa and the Middle East. The US military and strategic pivot to Asia, formally launched in 2011, has greatly inflamed tensions throughout the region. The Obama administration has encouraged Japan to more aggressively assert its territorial claims against China in the East China Sea. Likewise, Washington has backed the maritime claims of Vietnam and the Philippines in the South China Sea. Over the past year, the Pentagon has provocatively sent warships on three occasions within the 12-nautical mile territorial limit surrounding Chinese-claimed islets, on the pretext of freedom of navigation. Central to the discussion at the G7 summit was the deep-going global crisis of capitalism and the US-led war preparations against China. The final G7 communique, though not directly naming China, warned that there should be no restrictions on freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea. At the meeting, Sirisena declared: I am aware how G7 countries have appreciated the change we created With a revolutionary change of governance, my government has succeeded in creating the path for a viable development environment and for reconciliation in a multifaceted society. For the working class and poor in Sri Lanka, Sirisenas utterances about good governance, viable development and reconciliation are hollow phrases. The North and East of the country are still under heavy military occupation seven years after the military defeat of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Police-state methods are used to suppress the struggles of workers and youth. Sirisenas revolutionary change is nothing but a shift in foreign policy away from Beijing and toward Washington. Sirisena won the January 2015 presidential election in what amounted to a regime-change operation orchestrated by Washington. The US backed the ouster of his predecessor Mahinda Rajapakse as president, not because of Rajapakses war crimes and anti-democratic methods, but because of his close relations with Beijing. In a joint statement at the outreach meeting, Japan and Sri Lanka confirmed the importance of maintaining the freedom of the high seas and maritime order based on the rule of law. In the parlance of the US and its allies, maritime security signifies challenging Chinese claims in the East China and South China Seasmoves that threaten to precipitate military conflict. Significantly, Abe offered two naval patrol vessels to Sri Lanka as part of the two countries maritime security cooperation. The Sri Lankan president went to the conference literally with a begging bowl in his hand. We lack finances for extensive development efforts and therefore seek developed nations and multilateral and bilateral investors to invest in Sri Lanka, he said. The island, ravaged by 30 years of civil war, is now being hard hit by the world capitalist crisis. Sirisenas appeal for finance underscores his governments nervousness about the eruption of struggles of workers and the poor against relentless attacks on living conditions. Early last month, the government began to implement austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund, including tax increases and preparations for further privatisations. After meeting with the Japanese prime minister, Sirisena signed a joint statement between the two countries. Abe pledged 38 billion yen ($US340 million) in loans to Sri Lanka for the construction of power transmission lines and water supply facilities. In a separate meeting with Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Abe promised a $5 billion loan, with the immediate release of $1.5 billion. Japan also agreed to further development aid for Vietnam. While Tokyo is lining up behind the US pivot, it is also pursuing its own geo-political interests. The reply of the Tamil nationalist web site TamilNet to the February 17 open letter to TamilNet issued by the WSWSdemanding that TamilNet retract its slanders claiming that the WSWS is a supporter of genocide and imperialismis an admission of political bankruptcy. TamilNets reply, titled Sri Lanka sacred cow to both US imperialism and social imperialism, does not contest any of the points the WSWS made in its open letter. It cannot and does not attempt to defend its earlier slanders against the WSWS or refute the WSWSs charge that TamilNet is a Tamil nationalist mouthpiece for US imperialisms pivot to Asia and the installation of an unpopular, pro-US regime last year in Sri Lanka. Instead, TamilNet admits that the Tamil nationalist parties have integrated themselves into US foreign policy and the Indian states attempt to win influence in Colombo by backing President Maithripala Sirisena. It writes that the Tamil leadership looks upon appealing to the USA and India for support, despite its previous impotent pleas falling on deaf ears. This section of Tamil polity deserves the attack, as it is still impotent for a global struggle-based polity. TamilNets attempt to distance itself from the Tamil National Alliances (TNAs) embrace of the Sirisena regime and of US foreign policy reeks of bad faith. All factions of the Tamil nationalist establishment promoted the Tamil bourgeoisies appeals to US imperialism to intervene on its behalf in Sri Lanka and at the United Nationsincluding TamilNet, which wrote many articles pressing for a greater role for Washington. In one of these articles, Stephen Rapp dodges question on international investigations, TamilNet begged US Ambassador for Global Criminal Justice Stephen Rapp to mount a stronger intervention in Sri Lankan politics. Criticizing Rapps dodging of a proper response on calling for international investigations, it approvingly cited Tamil nationalists appeals to Washington to draw up a blueprint for a new regime in Sri Lanka. The civil society representatives urged the visiting US diplomat to propose a framework on a political solution in the resolution, it wrote. TamilNet tries to cover up its pro-imperialist record with more baseless slanders, attacking the WSWS as a supporter of the Sri Lankan state. It writes, However, the world socialists conditioned by the so-called Sri Lanka, created and being propped up by the very imperialists, dont answer the most crucial question why this Sri Lanka should be a single unit in the global struggle of the world working class, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics. The allegation by mysterious unnamed Tamil activists for alternative politics that the WSWS is conditioned to support the Sri Lankan state is no less false and defamatory than TamilNets previous claims that the WSWS supports imperialism and genocide. It is TamilNet, and not the WSWS, that accepts the reactionary state system that emerged in the Indian subcontinent from the abortion of the revolutionary upsurge of the Indian working class and oppressed masses by the Partition of India, sponsored by the former British colonial rulers, in 1947. TamilNet seeks to work within this framework to obtain a separate Tamil statelet in northern Sri Lanka. The record of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), which publishes the World Socialist Web Site, and of its Sri Lankan section, the Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka), is well known. It never defended the post-1947 set-up or the Sri Lankan unitary state. It fought for the revolutionary overthrow of the formally independent capitalist states that emerged in 1947 from the collaboration between the Indian bourgeoisie and imperialism, advocating the United Socialist States of Sri Lanka and Eelam, as part of the Socialist United States of South Asia. Even TamilNet felt compelled to acknowledge, in previous articles, that the SEP has unflaggingly opposed the Sri Lankan state as a tool of the Sri Lankan capitalist class and of imperialism, based on the Trotskyist movements opposition to the bourgeois state system that emerged from the Partition of India at the end of British colonial rule in 1947-1948. In fact, when TamilNet was unsure how to criticize Sri Lankan state policy, it sometimes looked for arguments to the WSWS, which it quoted extensivelyand which it now slanders as a supporter of the Sri Lankan state. Thus in 2012, as demands grew for an inquiry into the Sri Lankan armys mass slaughter of Tamils at the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, TamilNet was unpleasantly surprised by Rajapakses cynical proposal to form a state-run Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) to investigate. This cut across Tamil nationalists demands for an international inquiry, which Sri Lankan officials attacked as a US regime-change operation trying to discredit Rajapakse. To find a political basis for criticizing the Sri Lankan states LLRC proposal, TamilNet turned for arguments to the WSWS. It wrote, World Socialist Web Site feature by Sarath Kumara rightly exposes the LLRC farce of the Colombo-centric state and its imperialist abetters, in contrast to what [Sri Lankan Ambassador to the UN] Tamara [Kunanayakam] in the garb of socialism and anti-imperialism try to defend the agent state guilty of genocide. Only the working class, in a unified struggle for a workers and peasants government and socialist policies, can defend the most basic democratic rights and address these horrific war crimes, concludes Sarath Kumara. What has changed since then is not the position of the SEP or of the WSWS. Rather, the Tamil nationalists were drawn into a US imperialist operation to effect regime change in Sri Lanka, toppling Rajapakse and installing Sirisena as part of the US pivot to Asia to isolate and prepare for war with China. The TNA, Sri Lankas main Tamil nationalist party, unconditionally supported the regime-change operation and now is complicit with the government in implementing austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), attacking the islands workers and poor. The TNA spread illusions in the war-torn areas that the new government would rebuild the country, provide jobs and good governance, and grant the Tamils full democratic rights. However, the social situation facing working people has only worsened. The new government, praised by the TNA as a democratic revival, has refused to release Tamil political prisoners and arrested at least 21 Tamils under the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act since it came to power in January 2015. With TNA officials now in top state posts, including as Opposition leader in parliament, TamilNet fears that rising working class opposition to the Sirisena regime will discredit the TNA and Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka, India, and the Tamil diaspora. Fear of an increasingly revolutionary mood among workers drives TamilNet to denounce the WSWS. TamilNet violently denounces the international revolutionary strategy proposed by the SEP, for the unification of the working class in the Indian subcontinent in struggle against imperialism and war. It writes, Partial in covering up the aggressive corporate and military operations of especially China, and covering up the competitive role it played in the genocide of Eezham Tamils, the world socialists in the island now come up with a vertical ploy of integrating South Asia and rallying the working class across the Indian subcontinentall starting from Sri Lanka. This claim that the SEP excuses the crimes of Chinese foreign policy is yet another slander by TamilNet refuted by its own articles. The SEP criticized all the major powers, including China, for giving a green light to the Colombo regime in 2009 to end the civil war by carrying out mass murder of the Tamil-separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in northern Sri Lanka. On July 1, 2013, TamilNet quoted from a WSWS article by K. Ratnayake, writing, The author also notes, not without adequate substance, that All the major global and regional powers backed the renewed communal war against the LTTE, supplied military assistance and remained silent about the Sri Lankan militarys atrocities against civilians. The US and its allies only began to raise very limited concerns about the slaughter of civilians in the final months of the war, not out of concern for Tamils, but as a means for forcing the government to distance itself from China. TamilNets criticisms of Chinese state and corporate influence in Sri Lanka are utterly reactionary. They aim only to give a thin left veneer to the Tamil nationalists pro-imperialist policy, masking their alignment on the most aggressive forces in world politics: US imperialism and its imperialist allies in Europe, Japan, and Australia. TamilNets orientation is pro-imperialist and violently hostile to the struggle to unify the Tamil, Sinhalese, and Muslim workers and oppressed masses in Sri Lanka. On this basis, they defend the Sri Lankan state and are ready to sanction the bloodiest crimes against the workers, youth, and oppressed masses. Of particular significance is their chilling indifference to the repeated mass slaughters of Sinhalese by the Colombo regime. In the one passage where TamilNet addresses points raised by the WSWSs open letter, it excuses the utterly reactionary policy of the Tamil nationalists, who helped the Sri Lankan state repress mass uprisings and strikes of Sinhalese workers and youth. TamilNet writes, World socialists in the island talk about the massacre of 160,000 JVP Sinhala youth in 1971 and in 1989. The JVP never reached out to Tamils, and unfortunately the Tamils were watching in silence. This is a political lie. There was shock and horror among the Tamils at the mass slaughter of Sinhala youth, some of whom had sought refuge in Tamil-held areas. The Tamil workers and oppressed masses did not intervene to avert the slaughter, however, because the Tamil nationalists divided the working class along ethnic lines to avert a common revolutionary struggle of workers across the island. The LTTE, from which TamilNet descends, ethnically cleansed areas under their control, expelling Sinhalese and Muslims from northern Sri Lanka. A reactionary division of labor emerged, in which the Tamil nationalists worked with the Indian and Sri Lankan state to crush the successive mass uprisings in the island. The LTTE had signed the Indo-Sri Lankan accord in 1987. Its terms specified the dispatch of the Indian army to disarm the LTTE and other armed groups. Initially, the LTTE cooperated with the Indian deployment, but later it sought out the Sri Lankan state as an ally against the Indian forces. In 1989, the LTTE, in a deal with freshly elected President Ranasinghe Premadasa, received arms and supplies to fight the Indians, while Premadasa deployed the Sri Lankan military to crush the insurgency in the South. Sri Lankas ruling parties and associated organizations are primarily responsible for the massacres. Without the silent support of the parliamentary Tamil-nationalist parties and the LTTE in 1989, the massacres would not have been possible. TamilNets total indifference to these slaughters shows that it is prepared to sanction the bloodiest crimes of imperialism and of the bourgeoisie in Sri Lanka today. On Wednesday morning, Mainak Sarkar, previously an engineering student at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), shot and killed his former engineering teacher, Professor William Klug, in his office. Shortly after, Sarkar took his own life at the same location. Another reported victim, believed to be Sarkars wife, was found dead in Minnesota. Police also reportedly found a kill list in Sarkars Minnesota home including his wifes name and that of another UCLA professor. The second named professor is alive and unharmed. Multiple police departments, including several SWAT teams and the FBI, swarmed the UCLA campus in response to reports of a shooting. By the time they arrived on campus, however, the shooter was already dead. Despite this, the entire 420-acre campusone of the biggest in the state, with about 42,000 studentswas put on lockdown. There have been numerous images of students and teachers waiting on their knees, or marching with their hands above their heads, all under the eyes of police officers armed to the teeth. Facts are still emerging about the incident, but the media has latched onto these events to incite panic and to justify the police lockdown of the campus. Early reports from the media called it a mass shooting and even promulgated exaggerated reports of multiple shooters on campus. These reports were completely unsubstantiated and served only to whip up hysteria. By most accounts, the police response caused more panic and distress than the shooting itself. One student reported seeing a man holding a shotgun walking through the hall of his building. Having received an alert on his phone about an active shooter on campus, the student panicked and ran, fearing for his life. He later reflected that he wasnt sure if he saw the shooter or an officer. This was almost certainly an officer, as Sarkar had killed himself by the time the alert was sent out. A main consideration behind the heavy militarization of the police and their mass mobilization in situations such as these is the preparation for large scale suppression of an eruption of working class opposition. Pictures from the scene, which show multiple officers decked out in body armor, fatigues, and armed with long semi-automatic rifles recall the lockdown Boston and the suppression of popular protests against police violence in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland. At this point, it seems that the shooters immediate motivation was largely personal. Sarkar accused the professor of stealing some of his ideas and denounced him online on several occasions. The shooting occurs within a broader social context. In the US, there have been 186 school shootings since the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012. According to Everytownresearch.org, there were eight shootings at schools in the US in May alone. Workplace shootings are even more prevalent. A 2014 US Centers for Disease Control report that looked at data over a 20 year period found an average of over 700 workplace homicides annually. The pervasiveness of these acts of violence cannot be ezplained by lax gun laws. They come from a society beset by deep economic, social and political crises. Published below is the second part of a five-part series on the report of the 21-month Royal Commission into the trade unions in Australia. See Part One, Part Three, Part Four and Part Five. Most workers are all too familiar with the standard line presented by their union leaders in the course of negotiations for a new employment agreement. On the infrequent occasions that bureaucrats descend from their comfortable office suites, and back-room deals with management, to address the workers, they insist they are fighting it out and remain at loggerheads with management. After the inevitable sell-out, the union either conceals the real contents of the agreement, or declares it did the best it could under difficult economic conditions, in order to save jobs, or both. The final report of the Royal Commission into the trade unions partially lifts the lid on what really happens. The company and its union lackeys jointly work out how they can slash workers rights and conditions, and how much the union will be paid for selling the deal and suppressing opposition. The report contains numerous examples where trade union bureaucrats impose huge cuts to workers pay and entitlements, and receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange. In many cases, the company forges a list of union members from its employees, and pays their membership dues. This allows the union to artificially inflate its membership records, in order to increase its factional weight within the Labor Party. For the unions, this is all the more critical under conditions where millions of workers see no point in paying dues, to the tune of hundreds of dollars a year, for the privilege of being lied to and betrayed. The following examples all relate to the Australian Workers Union (AWU), which officially boasts 100,000 members. The current Labor Party opposition leader, Bill Shorten, was national secretary of the union from 2001-2007, and Victorian state secretary from 1998-2006, the period covering most of the reports revelations. He was succeeded in the latter role by Cesar Melham, who held the post until 2013, when he retired to become a Labor Party MP. Winslow Citations refer to Volume IV, Chapter 10.8 of the royal commission report, available here. Since the mid-1990s, Winslow Constructors, a civil construction company, has had an arrangement with the AWU whereby Winslow pays the union membership fees for all permanent employees who have worked for the company for more than one year. This arrangement is still in place today. Every six or twelve months, Winslow sends the AWU a list of its eligible employees. The AWU crosschecks the list against its records and sends the company an invoice for membership fees (point 8). According to the commission report, the requirement under rule 9 of the AWU rules to obtain from the employees signed membership applications was largely ignored (point 76). It states that a significant number of persons were recorded as members of the AWU when in truth they are not members under the rules, and in circumstances where they may well not have known whether or not they were members. The payments total hundreds of thousands of dollars. In June 2010, for example, the union invoiced Winslow $44,401.51 (point 71). Another invoice, in May 2012, was for $74,218.18 (point 78). In some cases, invoices were written down as payments for training provided by the union. The report states, the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that the invoices in question were not related to the provision of training. The counsel assisting submitted that the purpose of this practice was to allow Winslow to claim its payments to the union as tax-deductible training expenses (point 40). In exchange, the AWU functions as Winslows industrial police force. It appears, from evidence presented to the Commission, that one of the unions tasks is to try and ensure that the wages of Winslow workers remain lower than those of the workers employed by at least its main competitor. The union secretly reports to Winslow the details of EBAs that it has signed with the competitor, allowing Winslow to arrange for its own workers to always be paid less. These sordid dealings are conducted entirely behind the backs, and at the direct expense, of Winslows employees. The Royal Commission report contains segments of private emails sent in 2010 between Winslows director Dino Strano and Peter Smoljko, then an organiser for the AWU. Their correspondence sheds light on the obsequious and unrestrained grovelling of the union toadies to their corporate masters. The Winslow managers, on the other hand, treat their bought-and-paid-for organisers with unconcealed contempt. On September 28, 2010, Smoljko sent an email to Strano containing the recently signed EBA between the AWU and BMD Constructions, a competitor company. Half of BMDs workers were also being covered, at the time, by the AWU. Overjoyed that AWU secretary Cesar Melham had sent him the agreement, Smoljko was unable to contain his excitement at the prospect of being congratulated by Strano for having accomplished the mission. Referring in his email to Cesar Melham, Smoljko wrote to Strano: Cesar has finally delivered, here is the BMD EBA! P.S. He had to use the excel spreadsheet that I developed for you to help drive this outcome! (point 90) Smoljko finished by crowing to Strano that the agreement, should bring a smile to your face! (Point 91) The Commission report reveals why. Workers at Winslow were earning substantially less than their BMD counterparts. Under the agreement, a new entrant to the industry was going to be paid $20.95 per hour by BMD, compared to Winslows $16.19 per hour for the same position. A backhoe operator at BMD would be paid $24.67 per hour at BMD, but just $20.51 at Winslow. And all of this, Smoljko reminded Strano, had been achieved through the use of his own excel spreadsheet. Responding to Smoljkos email, Winslows Strano declared: You dont know me well enough. He instructed his overzealous lackey to ready yourself for battle and lets develop a strategy on how we will preserve our ability to stay competitive... In other words, it seems that while Winslow had a temporary edge over its competitor, Strano was demanding that the union now come up with even more creative ways for further augmenting the companys profits. Underscoring the master-servant relationship between the company and union, Rohan Davidson, Winslows general manager, then ordered Smoljko to tally up the difference in labour costs between the two companies, writing: Peter, from this info, can you please work up what their labour rate would be on a project valued at $10m. (point 93) Indeed, Winslows management was so satisfied with Smoljkos work that it hired him as manager of human resources. By taking this path, Smoljko was only acting in accordance with the rule, not as an exception to it. Many other union executives before him have clawed their way up through the trade union apparatus, to be rewarded at the end by corporate jobs and salaries. No change is needed to their job descriptions, since they are simply required to continue boosting corporate profits. The primary benefit, one can imagine, is that they no longer shoulder the tiresome responsibility of having to occasionally feign concern for the employees rights and interests. Chiquita Mushrooms Citations refer to Volume IV, Chapter 10.6 of the report, available here. Chiquita Mushrooms is a mushroom farming company with sites in Mernda and Yarambat, in the state of Victoria. The company is owned by Costa Group, a giant agri-business with a market value of close to $1 billion. At the time covered by the report, Chiquitas annual profits were slightly more than $300,000. In the course of negotiations for a new EBA with the AWU in 2004, Chiquita demanded the removal of clauses in the previous contract that restricted its ability to use a labour-hire company to supply workers for its sites (points 8-9). Workers employed in this way, classified as independent contractors, are not covered by the same agreement as workers employed directly by Chiquita. The former are generally unable to find permanent jobs. Many are immigrants with limited English, and are compelled to accept the super-exploitative conditions offered by the labour hire companies. They typically have no protections against dismissal, so are forced to work long hours, on-call at any time of day, for very low wages. Far from opposing Chiquitas demand, the AWUs representative at Chiquita, Frank Leo, then AWU assistant secretary in Victoria, insisted only that Chiquita use a specific labour-hire company, One Force, as the sole provider of cheap labour. Leo informed Chiquita that One Force, unlike another labour-hire firm that Chiquita had been using, was union-friendly (point 16). Immediately after the union had pushed through this agreement, Chiquita sacked large numbers of workers, who were instructed to reapply for their previous positions through One Force, with far inferior conditions. Those who did get back their old position no longer received additional pay on weekends and public holidays. For example, on Sundays and public holidays, workers employed directly by Chiquita earned $26.56 and $36.95 per hour (point 82), respectively, while One Force contractors received just $18.95 an hour. Moreover, on weekends, the contract workers received no additional bonus rates for packing more than four boxes of mushrooms per hour, and on weekdays their bonus rates were half those of Chiquita employees (point 80). In exchange for being granted the right to cut their workers pay and entitlements, Chiquita paid the AWU $24,000 over six months, for so-called education leave (point 102). Chiquitas human resources manager, Joe Agostino, cynically and candidly informed the Royal Commission that these payments were a very small price to pay to avoid disruption to production arising from the use of independent contractors (point 35). In other words, the union guaranteed that it would suppress any strikes against the mass sackings and the wage reductions, so long as it was paid off. According to an analysis of commission documents published by the Australian newspaper on June 27, 2015 , One Force, which, thanks to the AWUs Frank Leo, had been given a monopoly to supply super-exploited contractors, paid the AWU $150,000 over the next ten years. According to the newspaper, One Force signed up its employees as members of the union and the AWU credited the revenue from One Force as membership payments. In the course of the Royal Commission hearings into Chiquita, four former employees testified with bitterness and anger about the AWUs role. They described how the union had not only agreed to, but had organised, the mass sackings. Sharon Dellervigni began working at Chiquita in 1991 and immediately joined the AWU. Dellervigni told the Commission that Frank Leo ordered workers to accept the 2004 agreement and the mass sackings that would follow. She conveyed Leos contemptuous attitude to the workers when, like a real company man, he announced the new conditions that they would have to accept. The company needs to make redundancies, Dellervigni recounted Leo declaring. You are lucky to be getting any redundancy payment because you are employed as casuals. Casuals are not entitled to anything. You can come back to work as agency workers. You can keep your same jobs through One Force. (point 69) Dellervigni explained: The workers were not happy about this. Some of the pickers spoke out and said the AWU was selling us out. Mr Leos response was that the redundancies were going to happen, we were lucky to get anything and we should be thankful ... I was very angry about this. At a number of meetings I spoke up and asked why we were being made redundant just to be replaced in our same roles through an agency. Unsurprisingly, given her outspoken opposition to the unions sell-out, Dellervigni was not rehired after applying for her old job through One Force, and received just $18,000 in redundancy pay. When I heard about [the payments to the union] I was dumbfounded, but it made sense to me considering the lack of support we received from the AWU during the redundancy process, she said. It appeared to me during this time that the AWU was clearly doing what Chiquita wanted. Thiess John Holland In 2004, the Thiess John Holland construction consortium finalised a deal with the AWU and the Construction, Forestry Energy and Mining Union (CFMEU) for the construction of the EastLink freeway in the state of Victoria. Thiess John Holland paid the AWU $110,000 per year, for three years, ostensibly to pay for a union organiser and supply him with a car. In exchange, the AWU agreed to trade away the conditions of its own members. These included critical protections against working in dangerous weather, such as rain, hail and extreme heat. Generations of workers had fought major battles to establish and defend these conditions because of the many deaths that used to occur on construction sites before they were won. As a result, with work proceeding around the clock, the consortium finished the project five months early, saving it millions. In testimony to the Royal Commission, Labor opposition leader Bill Shorten openly defended the unions role. It had a reputation ... that we wouldn't be staging, you know, unauthorised industrial action, he boasted. So I believe that a company would want us engaged, and they would want to make sure that the AWU was providing services to its workforce. The truth of the matter is ... that some companies like dealing with unions... True indeed! In separate testimony, Shorten openly defended the AWUs role on behalf of the companies as modern trade unionism. He declared: What Ive done as a union leader and what literally thousands of other union representatives do, is make sure that we have co-operation in the workplace. (See: Australian union leader defends modern deals to boost corporate profits) Cleanevent Shortens comments followed the revelation in the Commission that in 2010 the AWU had struck a deal with the cleaning company Cleanevent, saving the latter an estimated $6 million in wages over three years. In exchange, Cleanevent paid the AWU $75,000 for union dues, and provided the names of its employees who were signed up as members. Under the secret Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Cleanevent and the AWU, cleaners were paid as little as $16.64 an hour. A cleaner working 38 hours on this wage would earn just $632 per week. Since the Australian Council of Social Services defines the poverty line as $400 per week for a single person, to support a family on $632 would mean living beneath the poverty line. Moreover, under the MoU, the workers were also stripped of additional allowances, to which they were legally entitled, for working on weekends, public holidays and at night. To be continued To contact the SEP and get involved, visit our website or Facebook page. The author also recommends: Australian union boosted membership lists by imposing low wages [23 June 2015] Authorised by James Cogan, Shop 6, 212 South Terrace, Bankstown Plaza, Bankstown, NSW 2200. TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) - A prominent Tallahassee lawyer was arrested after a police sting operation near Florida State University. According to Florida State University Police, officers with the FSUPD setup an undercover drug operation near the campus of FSU. Police said that Larry Block agreed, through a series of calls, to buy 10 grams of cocaine for $800. Block reportedly arrived around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday and made contact with the seller, who was an undercover officer. After he gave the undercover officer $800 in cash, police arrested Block and charged him with one count of purchasing cocaine. On Wednesday, he posted $10,000 bond, court records show. His lawyer Thursday filed a not guilty plea and requested a jury trial. One of Block's more notable cases was representing the family of Rachel Hoffman, who was reportedly killed during a Tallahassee Police undercover sting operation. The case settled for $2.6 million in 2012. Block was also the lead attorney for recount ballots for the Florida Democratic Party in Palm Beach County during the 2000 presidential election, his website states. MILTON, Fla. (AP) - Doctors have found a 20-year-old Florida Panhandle man competent to stand trial on charges that he fatally bludgeoned and stabbed his mother. A judge on Thursday granted a defense attorney's request to have another doctor evaluate William Brandon Aydelott before the case goes to trial. Aydelott was 17 when authorities say he killed Sharon Hill Aydelott on Christmas Eve 2013. The Pensacola News Journal (http://on.pnj.com/25EAtkn ) reports Aydelott exhibited bizarre behavior in the courtroom after his arrest, including babbling to himself during a hearing in January 2014. He's been undergoing treatment at Florida State Hospital and officials there say his competency has been restored. He faces a first-degree murder charge. His mother was a middle school teacher and he was a promising pitching prospect at Gulf Breeze High School. TALLAHASSEE Fla.-- The National Institutes of Health is giving a Florida State College of Medicine scientist nearly $2 million dollars for his research. The Institute believes his research could provide more insight into diseases like cancer. David Meckes, an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Sciences, is researching the signals that are sent by damaged cells in our body, which could be a possible source for the spread of cancer and other diseases. This theory could provide more effective and less harmful ways to treat diseases, like cancer. Meckes says, the field of research is still young and rapidly expanding, he says he plans to use the grant will help him further examine his theory. "More recent evidence that these vesicles are important players in cell communication and can result in enhanced cancer or tumor growth or tumor spead. So if we can understand how these changes occur we can better theoretically treat cancers," said Meckes. Meckes received the 1.7-million dollar grant from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. TALLAHASSEE/FT. HOOD (WTXL/AP) - The American Red Cross in Tallahassee prepared Friday to send volunteers to Ft. Hood following devastating floods in Texas. Volunteers working for the Red Cross's local chapter made plans to head to Texas in hopes of providing much needed relief following severe weather and flooding which has displaced residents in 20 percent of Ft. Bend County. Storms off of southeast Texas continued to threaten worse flooding with nearly the entire eastern half of Texas under flash flood watch or warning as the effects of days of heavy rains linger in creeks and rivers. Kathy Bland, a Disaster Services Volunteer at Red Cross Tallahassee, along with two other volunteers, arranged to leave for Ft. Hood to provide victims with food, clean kits, and shelter. They are scheduled for an approximate two-week deployment, depending on how much help is needed. Keeping in mind the majority of local volunteers have their own families and friends to take care of, Bland explained that outside volunteers have a major role in aiding disaster relief. "You do have supplies [in] some areas, but unless you have volunteers out there to get it out where it needs to go, its kind of a moot point", she said. Bland also emphasized the importance of local residents being prepared for severe weather and disasters as hurricane season has officially begun. "A lot of these folks don't have a Plan B, which is why you do have to open up shelters... sometimes it takes a little while for help to get to you", she said. Bland reminded residents to prepare kits, first-aid, food and water for at least three days. Red Cross Tallahassee will be collecting donations that will aid in providing disaster relief and assuring volunteers can be sent out as quickly as possible. More information on volunteering and how to donate can be found online. TALLAHASSEE Fla.-- Florida Governor Rick Scott says he wants to help Donald Trump's Campaign in the sunshine state. The two are set to meet Monday in New York to discuss Trump's strategy to take Florida in the upcoming presidential election. Scott said, "I called Donald. I talked to him quite a bit and said, look I want you to win Florida. I predict he'll win Florida but we're talking about how we won in 2010 and 2014. In 2010, I was not the establishment candidate and we won and I want to talk to him what it takes to win. Romney did win the state and I believe Donald Trump can win big if he does the right things." Some have speculated that Scott could be Trump's running mate. Scott, however has said he is not interested. France's President Francois Hollande said Friday that only Israelis and Palestinians can make the "courageous choice" to achieve peace, noting that the French initiative can only help provide guarantees for a "lasting, solid accord." Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Hollande, who opened a peace conference in Paris, explained why he thought the French initiative had something new to offer, noting that changes that have swept the Middle East mean that past efforts for peace between Israelis and Palestinians are no longer as relevant. "The discussion on the conditions for peace between Israelis and Palestinians must take into account the entire region," Hollande said. French President Hollande, right, arriving to the conference accompanied by French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault (Photo: Reuters) "The threats and priorities have changed. The changes make it even more urgent to find a solution to the conflict, and this regional upheaval creates new obligations for peace. We must prove it to the international community." He noted that if the peace process fails, "the vacuum will inevitably be filled by extremists." The European Union's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, told reporters in Paris on Friday that major powers had a duty to revive talks between Israel and Palestine and that the perspectives created by the Oslo accords in 1993 were at risk. "The policy of settlement expansion and demolitions, violence, and incitement tells us very clearly that the perspective that Oslo opened up is seriously at risk of fading away," Mogherini said. France has grown frustrated over the absence of movement toward a "two-state solution" since the collapse of the last round of talks in April 2014, arguing that letting the status quo prevail is like "waiting for a powder keg to explode." In a statement ahead of the conference on Thursday, the French president said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict faces a "dangerous deadlock," noting that the meeting will allow participants to "reaffirm their commitment to the two-state solution and their determination to create the conditions for resumption of direct talks." Israel and the Palestinians were not invited to the conference on Friday. Instead, representatives of some 30 countries, as well as the United Nations, European Union, the Quartet and Arab League, will try and lay the ground for a fully-fledged peace conference to be held by the end of the year. Right now if we put Palestinians and Israelis around a table it is highly likely the discussion will last less than a few minutes, said a French diplomatic source. The meeting, the first international conference on the issue since Annapolis in the United States in 2007, will not touch on any of the chronic core differences between the two sides. Its initial focus is to reaffirm existing international texts and resolutions that are based on achieving a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip co-existing with Israel, an outcome some say is becoming unrealistic. US Secretary of State John Kerry arriving to the Paris conference (Photo: Reuters) It will also try to establish working groups comprising various countries that would meet in the coming months and tackle all aspects of the peace process and create economic and security incentives or guarantees for both sides. The United States, the traditional mediator in the conflict, has been decidedly cool on the French initiative, with US Secretary of State John Kerry agreeing to attend merely to listen to ideas proposed by France and others. Were not bringing any specific proposals to this meeting tomorrow, a senior State Department official said, adding that no one had any real firm ideas on what the outcome was expected to be. We havent made any decisions about what, if any, our role would be in that initiative going forward. Israel, meanwhile, is fiercely opposed to the French initiative. In a press conference with Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini on Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated Israel's concerns, saying that the conference would allow the Palestinians to evade direct negotiations. Soini, meanwhile, emphasized that Finland opposed boycotts against Israel and expressed complete opposition to BDS activity. Netanyahu, right, meets with Finnish Foreign Minister Soini (Photo: GPO) After decades of failed negotiations, few believe the climate is right to bring together the Israelis and Palestinians for another shot at solving one of the worlds longest-running conflicts. A recent attempt by the Americans to restart talks collapsed in April 2014, with the Palestinians accusing Israel of continuing settlement constructionwhich they say sabotages the two-state solutionwhile Israel accused the Palestinian Authority of inciting to terrorism and evading direct negotiations. While skepticism is high over the new peace bid, the consensus among some diplomats appears to be that any effort is better than none at all. The fear in France is that there is no credible perspective of solving this issue, diplomatically or politically, a diplomatic source in Paris told AFP. We risk heading towards even more violence in an international context where there is no visible American effort on the case. Netanyahu and Hollande meet in Paris (Photo: GPO/File) According to diplomatic sources, the French conference will seek to focus on a 2002 Saudi-led peace initiative. Under that proposal, Arab leaders said they would recognize the State of Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from territories captured in 1967, and the creation of a Palestinian state. The plan was largely ignored by Israel at the time, but Netanyahu said this week he would be open to re-negotiating aspects of it with the Palestinians. In a way, the French initiative has already had an impact, as it has forced Netanyahu to propose an alternative in the Arab Peace Initiative, a European diplomat in Israel told AFP. If the international community comes together and says the two-state solution is the only option, that is important in itself - after years of people talking about the two-state solution being dead. Last month, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi threw his support behind the effort to revive peace talks, coming out with a direct call on Israelis and Palestinians to promote a peace accord, which he said might even be more important than Israel's Peace Treaty with Egypt. Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, right, meets with Palestinian President Abbas (Photo: Reuters) Foreign Ministry director-general Dore Gold said on the eve of the talks that they would completely fail, and that Israel would prefer a Middle East-driven process backing direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians. He spoke at a press conference in which he compared the Paris conference to the SykesPicot Agreement that divided the Middle East. "One hundred years ago, Messrs Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot tried to dictate a new order in the Middle East. It was at the height of colonialism in our region," he said. "It failed then and it will fail now. The only way to make peace is through direct talks without preconditions with the support of Arab states, and not in conferences in Paris. If you have a dispute with your neighbor, you don't need to travel all the way to France and bring in Senegal to solve it." Palestnian President Mahmous Abbas meets with French President Francois Hollande (Photo: AFP/File) Gold went on to say that, "I've been reading what the Palestinians have been saying about the conference and how it affects their motivation to reach an agreement with us. Today (Thursday) there was an op-ed by Saeb Erekat in Le Monde. He says the time for direct negotiations has passed and that's why he's turning to the Paris conference, and has great expectations that the conference could serve as a substitute for direct talks. "It shows that conferences like that provide an escape route for the Palestinians from negotiating with us. We've been through this before, and we must bring them back to where they are sitting face to face with Israeli diplomats. This is our aspiration. We're not escaping negotiations with the Palestinians, they're escaping negotiations with Israel." The conference faced a challenge as thousands of people were evacuated from their homes south of Paris while the River Seine surged to its highest level for over 30 years in the French capital, shutting down the famed Louvre and Orsay museums and a metro line. In Paris, the Seine rose above 5 meters (16 feet), forcing the SNCF rail operator to close the RER C commuter line that runs along the river and is used by tourists to reach the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame Cathedral and Versailles. Flooding by the Eiffel Tower (Photo: AFP) The Seine could peak at six meters in Paris on Friday, officials said, stressing that this was still well below the level where it would pose danger to residents. The river reached a record high of 8.6 meters in 1910, when thousands of Parisians had to flee flooded low-lying areas of the city. Nineteen people died, including 11 when cooking gas cylinders blew up, during clashes between police and residents being evicted from illegally occupied government land in northern India, police said Friday. Top state police officer Daljit Chaudhary said two police officers were among those killed as some from a crowd of 3,000 protesters fired at them Thursday in Mathura, a town 300 kilometers (200 miles) southwest of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state. Chaudhry said Friday that the police had gone to a district in the town to retake land from illegal occupiers following a court order. #Korean Air Korean Air plane brings home stranded passengers from Cebu An alternative Korean Air plane on Tuesday brought home passengers stranded in Cebu following the crash of one of its aircraft there last week, the air carrier said. On Sunday, ... #KBO Heroes beat Twins to even KBO postseason series With their relentless offense inflicting early damage, the Kiwoom Heroes defeated the LG Twins 7-6 on Tuesday to even their South Korean baseball postseason series at one game apie... ANKARA - Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Friday Tehran had no intention of cooperating on regional issues with its main enemies, the United States, "evil" Britain, and the "Zionist entity," state TV reported. Khamenei also accused Washington of not being committed to a nuclear deal reached between Tehran and six major powers, including the United States, in 2015 that aims to curb the country's disputed nuclear programme. "America has continued its enmity towards Iran since (the 1979 Islamic) revolution ... It is a huge mistake to trust evil Britain and the Great Satan (the United States)," Khamenei said in a speech broadcast live on state TV. "We will not cooperate with America over the regional crisis," he said, adding that: "Their aims in the region are 180 degrees opposed to Iran's." "They use human rights, terrorism ... as pretexts to avoid fulfilling their commitments," Khamenei went on to say. BEIRUT - The Syrian army aims to target Islamic State in Raqqa province, a pro-Damascus newspaper reported on Friday, in a new offensive focusing on areas that a US-backed alliance is also aiming to capture from the jihadists. The initial target is the town of Tabqa, the location of an Islamic State arsenal, the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar reported, adding that the army would was putting "a foot in the area without leaving it completely to the Americans' allies". Tabqa is also a target of the US-backed Syria Democratic Forces alliance (SDF) which has launched a multi-pronged attack against IS in the provinces of Raqqa and neighbouring Aleppo, aiming to deny it access to the Turkish frontier. The Syrian army announced on Thursday a new operation backed by Russian air strikes in the Athriya area of eastern Hama province, some 100 km (60 miles) southwest of Tabqa and some 50 km (30 miles) from the provincial frontier with Raqqa. Asked about the al-Akhbar report, a Syrian military source told Reuters the army was focused on eastern and northern areas of both Homs and Hama provinces "in the direction of Daesh (IS) gatherings". This weekend, a peace conference convenes in Paris. The peace in question is between Israel and Palestine. Despite that, there will be no Israelis or Palestinians at the conference. The foreign ministers in attendance, including the US secretary of state, know first-hand how hard it is to advance a resolution to this century-old conflict. It's hard to do it when the two sides are not there; but it's even harder when they are present. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The first conclusion from the conference in Paris is that the commitment to direct negotiations, which has been dominant in all peace efforts since the Oslo Accords, is growing weaker. We're returning to an older era during which diplomats and statesmen in the West were preaching for a forced solution. American diplomat George Ball wrote about this approach in a 1977 article. Israel, he claimed, was incapable of making on its own compromises that would ensure its existence. Israel "needs to be saved from itself." Kerry, who was hoping for good tidings from Jerusalem but received none, arriving at the Paris conference (Photo: Reuters) The second conclusion is that Israel is beginning to pay the price for its government's rhetoric and makeup. Veteran American negotiator Dennis Ross and his colleague David Makovsky published an article in the US media this week describing the difficulties the current Israeli government faces. They state that, among other things, US Secretary of State John Kerry has agreed to attend the Paris conference only after coalition talks between Netanyahu and opposition leader Isaac Herzog collapsed. Kerry was hoping for good tidings coming from Jerusalem. When he realized he will not receive any, he chose Paris. The problem is that peace is not imminent - not in Paris, not in Ramallah and not in Jerusalem. Abbas wants to internationalize the conflict. The Paris conference is therefore an achievement for him. He will make Israel keep paying the price on the international stage, but won't get his independent state. Even if Israel was willing to make the necessary concessions, it's doubtful he would've been willing to making the concessions he is required to make. When a resolution draft is formulated and accepted by all members of the Security Council, if such a resolution is reached at all, the Palestinians would be the first to object to it. The great upheaval in the region pushed the Palestinian issue aside. Four Muslim states are considered major players in the area: Iran, Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Three of them have shared interests with Israel. These interests lie in the concern of Iran growing stronger, strained relations with the Obama administration, the threat of ISIS terrorism, and the need for an anchor of stability in the Middle East. What is the Palestinians' place in this alignment? At best, they're in the margins. The renewal of peace talks might have made it easier on the leadership in Saudi, Egypt and Turkey to form, strengthen or renew ties with Israel, but it's not a necessary condition. The occupation is our curse, and the curse of the Palestinians. They, like us, cannot stomach it, but are also unable to throw it up. "We'll always have Paris," Humphrey Bogart consoles Ingrid Bergman at the romantic climax of the movie Casablanca. But Israel, it turns out, will not always have Paris. At least not this weekend. GENEVA - Israel is holding discussions with the International Criminal Court over its investigation into possible war crimes in the 2014 Gaza conflict, the ICC's prosecutor said. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The disclosure would indicate a step-up in Israeli engagement with the Hague-based tribunal and a shift from a policy of non-cooperation with ICC probes of alleged war crimes in Palestinian territories. An Israeli government source said there was contact with the ICC on procedural issues, but declined to go into detail. "Israel has agreed to engage with my office and we are exchanging information," ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said during a visit to the UN in Geneva late on Thursday. She said the ICC was in touch with both sides in the Gaza conflict. The preliminary examination under way could lead to the opening of a criminal investigation and war crimes charges against individuals on both sides of the 50-day war between Islamist Hamas militants in Gaza and Israel. Israeli airstrike during Operation Protective Edge (Photo: Reuters) Health officials said more than 2,100 Palestinians, died in the conflict. Israel put the number of its dead at 67 soldiers and six civilians. Until now, Israel has publicly declined all cooperation with the ICC on investigations related to its conflict with the Palestinians. It has argued that the Palestinian Authority is not a sovereign state and so has no right to formal relations with the first permanent international war crimes court. Activists have long sought to involve the ICC in one of the world's most protracted and politically-charged conflicts, though court officials have always been wary about stepping onto what some see as a diplomatic minefield. Last year, then-Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, who is now defence minister, threatened to lobby the ICC's European backers to stop financing the court after it opened the initial Gaza inquiry at the Palestinian Authority's invitation. The Palestinians have keenly engaged with the ICC, repeatedly sending it dossiers of evidence of what they say were Israeli atrocities in the Gaza war and inviting the ICC to send a field team to investigate on the ground. Israel denies committing war crimes in Gaza and has kept Gaza, a small coastal enclave, under blockade largely since Hamas seized control there in 2007. Any ICC visit to Gaza would require Israeli cooperation since the territory is virtually inaccessible by sea or via its land border with Egypt. Court officials would have to arrive through an Israeli airport. "If a visit to the region is required, or when it's required, we will also be making that request to visit," Bensouda said. She declined to comment when asked whether a request had been made. BEIRUT- Syrian Islamist insurgents attacked government forces and their allies in the country's northwest on Friday where the same factions recently waged a fierce assault that inflicted heavy losses, monitors said. The insurgents, including fighters from the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, had already captured one village just two hours after beginning the latest attack southwest of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Government forces were responding with shelling and heavy air strikes in the area, near the town of Khan Touman, the British-based monitoring group said. MOGADISHU- Turkey's president opened a new Turkish embassy in Somalia's capital on Friday amid heavy security less than two days after militants attacked a hotel in the city, killing 15 people. The al-Shabab extremist group, which is waging an insurgency against Somalia's weak government, has claimed responsibility for the attack on the Ambassador Hotel in Mogadishu. This is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's third visit to Somalia. He is the only non-African president to visit war-ravaged Somalia in decades. Erdogan visited Somalia last year, a day after al-Shabab attacked a hotel hosting Turkish delegates and killed at least six people. BRUSSELS - Luxembourg on Friday upped its bid to be a leader in the nascent space mining industry by setting aside 200 million euros ($223 million) to fund initiatives aimed at bringing back rare minerals from space. Luxembourg in February announced plans for a law that would make it the first state in Europe to give legal clarity to the commercial exploitation of asteroids. A similar law was passed by the United States in November. "We have a first budget to get started but if we need more money, we will be able to provide it," Etienne Schneider, Luxembourg's economy minister told a news conference. WASHINGTON- The US military says it conducted four counterterrorism strikes against al-Qaida militants in Yemen in recent months, including one May 19 that killed four enemy combatants. US Central Command says the strikes killed a total of 15 members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. The four strikes were not previously announced. Altogether, the US has launched nine strikes this year against the group, which the U.S. says is a persistent threat in the region and to Western interests. LONDON/ONITSHA- The Niger Delta Avengers militant group has claimed three new attacks on Nigeria's battered oil infrastructure, promising to drag production down to "zero". The attacks are the latest in a Delta region situation that a major local youth group said is "rapidly deteriorating and getting out of control", putting intense pressure on Nigeria's stretched finances. Early on Friday, the group said via its Twitter account it had blown up a pipeline in Nigeria's Bayelsa state owned by Italy's ENI, hours after attacks on another ENI pipeline as well as one belonging to Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd (SPDC). MOSCOW- Washington has asked Moscow not to target the al-Qaida's branch in Syria, the Nusra Front, for fear of hitting the moderate opposition, Russia's foreign minister said Friday. Sergey Lavrov said that Russia long has insisted that the moderate, US-backed opposition groups should leave the areas occupied by Nusra. He said in televised remarks that Russia and the US have engaged in close dialogue on how to secure a cease-fire in Syria, but added that fighting the Islamic State group and Nusra should be a top priority. "They are telling us not to hit it (Nusra), because there is 'normal' opposition next .. to it," Lavrov said. "But that opposition must leave terrorists' positions, we long have agreed on that." CAMP TARIQ- An international aid organization says 12,000 people have fled the outskirts of Fallujah since the operation to retake the Iraqi city from the ISIS was announced nearly two weeks ago. The Norwegian Refugee Council said Friday that almost all the fleeing families lived on the city's outskirts. Iraq's prime minister says safe corridors were established to allow some civilians to flee, but residents inside the city and aid groups say almost all of the 50,000 civilians inside Fallujah are trapped. It's been almost 50 years since the Israeli Dolphin class submarine Dakar sank in the waters off of Crete. Now, new color pictures are being released of the crew and of the submarine the last pictures of these young men before their submarine sank to the bottom of the sea, never to surface again. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter A short video of the sailors and the submarine has been gathering dust in the house of one of the submariners' widows, Bat Sheva Tal. She was married to First Sergeant Tzvi Tal. The Dakar (Photo: Association of Former Dolphin Submariners) (Photo: Association of Former Dolphin Submariners) Tal's grandson, Yaniv Rozen, found the old 8mm film and gave it to his friend's grandfather who served on the Dolphin class submarines. The family movie shows the Dakar in being passed from British into Israeli handsin Portsmouth, UK, several weeks before the sub met its tragic end. One of the submariners, Carmel Avraham, who was supposed to be on the Dakar's fateful journey said "It was really emotional to see this film of my friends." The Dakar leaving Portsmouth. All 69 crew members perished (Photo: Association of Former Dolphin Submariners) At the last minute, he and five other crew members of the Dakar were told picked to go on a different submarine from Portsmouth to Haifa, a journey the Dakar never finished. One of the reasons that the Dakar's sinking was such a surprise was due to the fact that it seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be in fine working order. "We did dry runs and then went to do live drills off the coast of Scotland with the British navy to get us familiar with the sub and with how to operate as a team," Avraham remembers. 'I didn't want to be called a survivor' (Photo: Association of Former Dolphin Submariners) "We had a British admiral with us during the drills and both us as crew and the sub itself received high marks during the drills. We returned to Portsmouth for some minor fixes and adjustments before going back to Israel. The Dakar then set sail to Israel, where it was to arrive at a ceremony with the Prime Minister and President before becoming operational." However, as the Dakar was preparing to set sail, Avraham and five other crew members were plucked from the Dakar to be put on a different submarine. Handover ceremony from British to Israeli hands (Photo: Association of Former Dolphin Submariners) "All six of us were against it, but orders are orders, and we went to the other submarine," Avraham recalls. "The sea was rough, and on the first Saturday out, we got a message that contact with the Dakar had been lost. But they didn't tell us it was the Dakar. We joined the search on the same day as contact was lost without knowing which sub it was, which seemed a bit strange. We had just watched this brand new submarine leave port in England. One of the officers on board the Dakar even joked that 'if something happens to us, throw bouquets.'" 'The whole unit, friends, experiences all of a sudden a whole world is lost' The entire state of Israel was enveloped in worry as to the fate of the 69 sailors on board the submarine. And then, one of the most dramatic and sorrowful moments of the search happened. (Photo: Association of Former Dolphin Submariners) "No one knew about the second Dolphin class submarine I was on, so when we finished our search, we arrived in secret to the Port of Haifa," remembers Avraham. "Someone saw us going into the old submarine slips in Haifa, and then rumor spread that 'the Dakar has been found and its crew is in the Port of Haifa.' The families of the Dakar crew arrived in Haifa, as they were sure that it was their family members' submarine. They also recognized some of us former Dakar crew members. They were convinced that the mystery had been solved." It only took a few minutes for the tears of joy to turn into tears of pain and sorrow. What was going through your mind when you realized that the last minute change is what changed your life ? "It was the moment that our commander told us that contact with the Dakar had been lost, and we understood that something terrible must have happened. I remember that I felt like I was floating. I understood that the entire crew 70 people that the submarine where you lived and worked, your friends, all those experiences, all of a sudden, it's like an entire world is destroyed. Everyone is gone, and you'll never see them again." (Photo: Association of Former Dolphin Submariners) "I remember the first 24 hours when I was on shift doing my job, and it was really hard. I never thought 'wow, I'm lucky.' I refused to be called a survivor it felt really strange." To mark 17 years since the discovery of the wreck of the Dakar, a special memorial flotilla was launched with former submariners and the families of those who lost their lives on the Dakar. The flotilla left the Hertzeliya Marina accompanied by other Israeli naval vessels and civilian boats. There was a short ceremony with a wreath laying and led by high ranking Israeli Navy officers. FORT MEADE- Accusations that Guantanamo Bay guards tormented a suspected Sept. 11 plotter are not credible, a former prison commander testified during a pre-trial hearing on Friday. Yemeni defendant Ramzi Bin al Shibh has said that electronic devices hidden inside the walls of his cell at the US Navy base in Cuba produced tremors and banging noises, disrupting his sleep for years. A detainee from Somalia, Guleed Hassan Ahmed, took the stand at the hearing on Thursday to echo Bin al Shibh's complaints. Expert Advice with Jeremy Sheppard. 03/06/2016 The Housing Industry Association (HIA) publishes a report listing the top residential property markets around Australia which they call Hot Spots. But they are not hot spots for investors. On the contrary, investors should probably avoid these locations. What is a hot spot? My definition of a hot spot for property investing is based on supply and demand. I want high demand and low supply: High demand relative to supply = capital growth oh-la-la A hot spot is one in which demand exceeds supply by such a significant degree that there is tremendous pressure on prices to rise in the short term. According to HIA hotspots are: areas which enjoy a combination of rapid population growth as well as high levels of residential building I love the use of enjoy in that sentence. To the young investor these 2 definitions might seem like the same thing. But they are closer to being the complete opposite. Table 1 shows HIAs National top 20 building and population hotspots Table 1 HIAs hot spots Source: Housing Industry Association - Population and Residential Building Hotspots 2016 Some investors might read that report and assume these are good investment locations. But these are not hot spots for future capital growth. Some of these markets are actually terrible investment locations. Investors should be careful to read these reports upside down. You need to know who HIA is and why they claim these locations are hot-spots. About HIA HIA are not evil, not to everyone anyway. They do serve a useful purpose. They have an excellent page on their website declaring their purpose, vision, history, structure, initiatives and more. At least theyre relatively transparent. However, HIA represent builders. Thats builders of property. Building creates extra supply which helps to keep prices down. For us evil property investors, we want low supply. We want to target locations in which everything is pointing towards high capital growth. So HIA actually support our enemies developers. Their idea of a hot spot should be an investors idea of a not-spot. Whats wrong with residential building? Oversupply is the worst thing that can happen to a location in terms of capital growth potential. And theres very little you can do about it after youve bought. Your only option might be to sell. Investors need to make sure they dont buy into oversupplied areas. Recognising the characteristics of an oversupplied area is not that hard. The percentage of stock on market (SOM%) for example is a great indicator and freely available at DSRdata.com.au. But investors also need to monitor areas theyve already bought in, to make sure oversupply isnt on its way. If so, they can at least sell before things get ugly. Monitoring regional markets is especially important. Keep in mind that every new property built represents a pin-prick in the capital growth potential for that area. Whats wrong with population growth? I wrote an article on this topic for YIP magazine called, The great population growth myth. It was published in April 2015. It was 5,000 words. I know, right? So to summarise Population growth often indicates higher supply NOT higher demand of property. Those locations in which population growth is impossible are the ones in which supply is the most constrained. These have much better capital growth potential. The greatest population growth that indicates the possibility of oversupply is the kind that occurs with heavy developer activity. New housing estates are a classic example. They are also usually the furthest distance from the CBD where land supply is plentiful and infrastructure and amenities threadbare. But even CBD locations can be tarnished with high developer activity - in the unit market. Just remember that population growth at a micro level, like suburbs, is not an indicator of increasing demand, but increasing supply. Imagine getting those round the wrong way. Two side of the equation Note that supply is not the only side of the equation demand is important too. Developers have a tendency to focus on demand more so than supply. Although they may get the supply side wrong, they can often find areas with decent demand. So some of the markets mentioned in HIAs report will not have the lowest demand to supply ratios (DSR). In fact, the average DSR was 56 which was the median DSR for Australia at the end of April 2016. The highest DSR in HIAs report was 72 - for Melbourne CBD houses. However, the development they mentioned in Melbourne may have been attributed to the unit market, not housing market. The report didnt specify. The DSR for units in that case was only 66. Some of the markets in the HIA report had a DSR less than 40. This is in the bottom quartile or red area of the graphic above. There were over 1,000 property markets around Australia with a DSR of 73 or higher. In other words, there are literally tens of thousands of better investment locations than the ones appearing in HIAs report. DSR vs HIA Table 2 shows the top 20 investment markets in Australia by DSR (Demand to Supply Ratio) as at the end of April 2016. Table 2 High DSR locations Note that new properties are more expensive than old ones. Developers never build old properties. So where there is heavy developer activity, the median climbs. But this is not capital growth. Its median growth not the same thing. If youre ever to find a market with negative capital growth but rising medians, its one with heavy developer activity. So dont come pointing your finger at me 12 months from now saying I was wrong. Capital growth is not accurately measured in markets with heavy building. Who loves HIA? Obviously HIA is a good thing for developers and their builders. And the more development, the more supply which keeps a lid on prices. So, first home buyers might respect them. The report might also come in handy for real estate agents selling developer stock. In fact, the marketing arm of many a developer jump on these sorts of reports. Ive even noticed one award winning buyers agent in QLD referring to this report as a plus to invest in some of these locations. Hmm. Not all BAs are created equal. Before enlisting their help, check if they understand the concept of supply and demand. Most BAs I know totally get it. In fact, a lot of them are members of DSR Data. Conclusion Sure it all comes down to supply and demand. But how you interpret the statistics to come up with a demand to supply ratio (DSR) is crucial. Far from being top spots, heavy developer activity actually creates bot-spots. News Mediterranean Sea - The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Stout (DDG 55) completed the multinational search and rescue exercise Argonaut May 31. Stout worked in conjunction with naval forces from host nation the Republic of Cyprus, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the State of Israel and the United Kingdom to test each country's search and rescue capabilities. "Working together with the host nation's medical team offers us a chance to learn from one another and share different methods and perspectives with how we treat patients in these types of scenarios. At the end of the day our ultimate goal is the well-being and health of those that we treat, and that is something we share with all medical personnel no matter where they come from." - Hospital Corpsmen 1st Class Elizabeth Jackson, USS Stout independent duty corpsman "The team on Stout has been very hospitable and everyone has shown maximum effort and focus for all of the scenarios. Although we are from different parts of the world we were able to work together well and accomplish our goals with the Argonaut exercise." - Staff Nurse Sakis Theodosiou, Republic of Cyprus medical team "The coordination between all countries involved [was impressive]; regardless of language barriers and standards of communication we were able to come together and execute a successful and mutually beneficial exercise. We have learned a great deal from this exercise and look forward to the rest of deployment." - Ensign McGeady Bushnell, USS Stout SAR officer The exercises began with boat and helicopter exercises as Stout's deck department and medical team recovered and treated simulated casualties alongside staff nurses from the Cyprian Department of Defense. The exercises concluded with a nighttime medical evacuation simulated exercise in which a Cyprian search and rescue helicopter dropped off and picked up a casualty on Stout's flight deck. Both the day and nighttime evolutions were a success and offered invaluable training opportunities to prepare the crew for high-risk, high-stress scenarios they may potentially face during deployment. Stout is currently deployed conducting naval operations in the 6th Fleet area of operations with the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group (Ike CSG) in support of U.S. national security interests in Europe. U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa, headquartered in Naples, Italy, oversees joint and naval operations, often in concert with allied, joint, and interagency partners, in order to advance U.S. national interests, security and stability in Europe and Africa. News Washington, DC - On June 3, Under Secretary Gottemoeller will participate in a panel discussion titled, NATOs Future and the Warsaw Summit, at the Wroclaw Global Forum in Wroclaw, Poland. On June 5, Under Secretary Gottemoeller will travel to Amman, Jordan, where she will meet with Jordanian officials to discuss bilateral and regional security issues. From June 6-8, Under Secretary Gottemoeller will travel to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. On June 6, she will meet with officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and National Security Council in Jerusalem. On June 7, she will receive military briefings and visit Tel Aviv University. On June 8, Under Secretary Gottemoeller will lead the U.S. delegation in the 45th meeting of the Joint Political Military Group, hosted by Israeli Ministry of Defense Director General Udi Adom in Tel Aviv. On June 13, Under Secretary Gottemoeller will lead the U.S. Delegation to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty 20th Anniversary Meeting hosted by the Provisional Technical Secretariat of the Preparatory Commission to the CTBT in Vienna, Austria. From June 15-16, Under Secretary Gottemoeller will lead the U.S. Delegation to the 10th Anniversary Meeting of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism in The Hague, Netherlands. Latest News New York, New York - Friday, June 3rd 10:30AM ET, First Lady Michelle Obama will deliver her final commencement address as First Lady at the 170th Commencement Ceremony of The City College of New York on the CCNY campus in historic Harlem, where more than 3,000 students make up the Class of 2016. The City College of New York was the first public higher education institution in New York City and has one of the most diverse student bodies in the nation with over 40% first-generation college students, almost 40% non-native English speakers, and half from low-income households. Established as a free institution dedicated to overcoming barriers to advancement, CCNY continues its mission of access to excellence and keeping tuition affordable. Tomorrow will mark Mrs. Obamas 23rd commencement address as First Lady, and 3rd address for the Class of 2016. In 2009, Mrs. Obama addressed the first full graduating class at the University of California, Merced and spoke at the Washington Math and Science Tech Public Charter High School Graduation in Washington, DC. In 2010, Mrs. Obama addressed graduates of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, the George Washington University, and the Anacostia Senior High School. In 2011, Mrs. Obama addressed graduates of the University of Northern Iowa, Spelman College, and Quantico Middle High School. In 2012, Mrs. Obama addressed graduates of Virginia Tech, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and Oregon State University. In 2013, Mrs. Obama addressed graduates of Eastern Kentucky State University, Bowie State University, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Academic Magnet High School. In 2014, Mrs. Obama addressed graduates of Dillard University, the District of Columbia College Access Program, and an assembly of high schools in the Topeka, Kansas Public School District. In 2015, Mrs. Obama addressed the graduates of Oberlin College, Tuskegee University, and Martin Luther King Jr. Preparatory High School. In 2016, Mrs. Obama has addressed Jackson State University and Santa Fe Indian School. Yuma News Yuma, Arizona - Join AWC for a week of spectacular fun and learning activities as we explore through STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) at AWCs Summer Science Camp. Students will learn exciting and innovative ways to get hands-on experience with important science, technology, and engineering (STEM) concepts. The camp takes place on June 27th July 1 from 9am to 12pm for ages 14 and up. Tuition is free and spots are limited. Register by contacting Regina Abraham, AWC Math & Science Administrative Secretary at (928) 317-6302. All participants must bring their own snacks and drinks to camp. An eco-friendly water bottle and at least one healthy snack is strongly recommended. Students must check in at least 10-15 minutes before their session begins. (All students must check in and out with a parent or guardian daily). TENTATIVE SCHEDULE Date: June 27th, 9am - 12pm at AS 101 Workshop Lead: Reetika Dhawan, AWC Professor of Mathematics Workshop Description: How does a magnet work? Why does a compass point north? Why can we turn on lights buy just flipping a switch? What is a circuit? What are resistors and capacitors? Through hands-on experiments discover the answers to these questions and more! This workshop introduces students to the basic concepts of magnetism, static electricity, current electricity, and circuit components ranging from the resistor to the DC motor. Subjects covered: Electronics & Physics Date: June 28thTime: 9am - 12pmLocation: TBA Workshop Lead: Dr. Anita Smith & Dr. Mathew Smith, AWC Professors of Biology Workshop Description: Entomology is rooted in nearly all human cultures from prehistoric times, primarily in the context of agriculture. Learn about different insect body parts. Find out how Insects communicate with one another Research what types of bugs are considered pests, Research how insects use color to blend in with their environment. Learn the life cycle and life stages of insects. Subject covered: Entomology Date: June 29thTime: 9am - 12pmLocation: TBA Workshop Lead: Fred Croxen, AWC Professor of Geology Workshop Description: In this workshop students learn about, collect, identify, and categorize rocks and minerals. We will even examine and prepare fossils. Subjects covered: Geology Date: June 30thTime: 9am - 12pmLocation: TBA Workshop Lead: Prof. Robert Killin, AWC Professor of Chemistry Workshop Description: During this workshop you will perform chemical reactions, to learn how interdependent we all are with our natural surroundings. Subjects covered: Chemistry Date: June 29thTime: 9am to 12pmLocation: TBA Workshop Lead: Dr. Joann Chang, AWC Professor of Biology Workshop Description: Disease Transmission and the Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) Students in this session will be discussing disease transmission with special attention to Zika and measles and examine the ease of transmission in the current age of transportation. Students will be learning about immune responses and how science has taken advantage of the immune systems antibodies to help us identify diseases through the Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA). Students will do a mock transmission and use the ELISA to detect who has been infected. Subjects covered: Biology 'Forged in fire and tempered in ice' President Obama challenges newly minted second lieutenants The Long Blue Line added 812 new members to the United States Air Force Thursday, June 2. The United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs held its 58th annual graduation ceremony under a sunny, blue sky. The ceremony included some high-powered visitors, including President and Commander in Chief Barack Obama, Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James, Gen. Mark Welsh III, Class of 1976, retiring chief of staff of the Air Force, and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper. The United States Air Force Thunderbirds performance team provided the exclamation point for the event, as the crew performed various formations over the appreciative crowd at Falcon Stadium. (The day's festivities were tempered in the afternoon when news circulated that one of the Thunderbird airplanes had crashed following the graduation ceremonies, although no one was injured.) President Obama, who returned for a second and final graduation address at USAFA, received a rousing welcome from the crowd. Before beginning his address to the Class of 2016, President Obama took a moment to recognize Welsh, who will conclude a 40-year Air Force career on July 1. He also singled out several individual cadets for their accomplishments, including Cadet David Higgins who is headed to the Olympics in Rio. "Bring home the gold, David," President Obama said. Then he added, "No pressure." "You can take enormous pride in all the hard work that has brought you to this day," he told the graduating cadets. "Cadets, here you were tested by fire ... literally. When you went to BEAST, Waldo Canyon was actually on fire. During recognition, you ran to the Rock in a blizzard. So you have more than earned your unofficial motto 'forged in fire and tempered in ice.'" During his address, the Commander in Chief shared three lessons he's learned as president that he hopes will assist the new graduates in their roles as new Air Force leaders. First, he said, it's important that the new second lieutenants practice what they learned at the Academy, including "the importance of evidence and facts and judgment." President Obama assured the graduates and the assembled crowd that America has been and will be the global leader for decades to come, thanks to the values and beliefs of this country. "The United States is in a better position to lead than any other nation," he said. "And here's another fact. Our military is, by a mile, the strongest in the world." A second lesson is that "America cannot shirk the mantle of leadership," he said. "We can't be isolationist," he said. "In these uncertain times, it's tempting sometimes to pull back, and try to wash our hands of the conflict ... and let other countries fend for themselves. "But history teaches us, from Pearl Harbor to 9-11, that oceans alone cannot protect us. Hateful ideologies can spark terror from Boston to San Bernardino..." A third lesson, President Obama said, is that military force is necessary at times. He listed a number of military successes during his tenure, including the death or capture of various ISIL and other terror group leaders. "If you target Americans, we will find you and justice will be done and we will defend our nation," President Obama told the crowd, which responded with rousing applause. He added, however, that our nation should never rush to war. "You need to explore other options first," he said. "Because sending our troops into harm's way should always be a last resort." President Obama challenged the graduates to hold tight to the ideals they have been taught, but to also assess reality when making critical military decisions. "Cadets, in your positions of leadership, you will be called upon to sustain this balance ... to be hard headed and big hearted. Guided by realism and idealism," he told the cadets. In closing, President Obama congratulated the new officers and launched them into their new careers. "We can never know what the future holds," President Obama said. "When I'm no longer president, I will sleep well tonight because I know that men and women like you serve to keep us free. Stay true to the values you learned here integrity, service before self, excellence do this and I'm confident we will always remain one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Of the 812 graduates in the Class of 2016, 630 were men and 182 women. Some 345 are headed to pilot training, with 60 headed into the remotely piloted aircraft field. A total of 423 of the new officers are rated. More photos from graduation: New Delhi: The AAP government on Friday decided to convene a two-day special session of Delhi Assembly next week to discuss various issues including lack of cleanliness, accusing the BJP-controlled civic bodies of turning the city into a "garbage bin" due to their "lax functioning". The special session will begin on June 9. The decision was taken at a Cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal at the Delhi Secretariat. "Delhi Assembly session next week to discuss how BJP's MCD has made whole of Delhi into a garbage bin due to its corruption and mismanagement (sic)," Kejriwal tweeted. The Chief Minister claimed his government has done a "commendable job" in preventing outbreak of dengue in the national capital and said the BJP-led municipal corporations of East, North and South Delhi need to "improve their functioning". The move comes at a time when the Aam Aadmi Party is gearing up for elections to the three civic bodies -- East Delhi Municipal Corporation, North Delhi Municipal Corporation and South Delhi Municipal Corporation -- to be held next year. In the recent bypoll to 13 wards, AAP made a debut by winning five seats, while Congress managed to win five seats and BJP three. During the two-day session, Speaker of Delhi Assembly Ram Niwas Goel may administrate oath of office to AAP MLA Rakhi Birla as Deputy Speaker of the House. AAP has formalised her name as successor to Bandana Kumari who resigned on Saturday. New Delhi: The Delhi Police has busted a kidney trade racket in the national capital with the arrest of five persons, including two personal staff of a doctor at the Indraprastha Apollo Hospital. They were arrested from the Apollo Hospital in southeast Delhi at around 9 pm on Thursday. The police were tipped off about the gang's presence in the hospital. As per the police, middlemen Asim, Satyaprakash and Debashish arranged for suitable donors after Aditya and Shailesh, who worked as personal staff of a senior doctor in the hospital, got willing recipients. While the donors got only 3-4 lakhs as compensation, the kidneys were sold at 25-30 lakhs to wealthy recipients. The middlemen made a cut of 1-2 lakhs per deal. The police said that they have credible information about 5 such illegal transplants carried out by the gang in the past 6 months. Importantly, the police have made it clear that involvement of doctors and/or of the hospital management cannot be ruled at this juncture. The police is examining documents it has seized from the hospital. A case has been registered at Sarita Vihar police station and the accused are being interrogated to find more about the gang's reach. (With PTI inputs) New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested a senior Delhi government official in an alleged graft case and recovered Rs 500,000 from his home, an official said on Friday. The official said that Rahul Aggarwal, Sub Divisional Magistrate, Saraswati Vihar, was arrested on Thursday night along with "three private persons in a bribery case of Rs 50,000". The accused persons were likely to be brought to the Rohini court here later Friday where the CBI will seek their remand. New Delhi: Three Indian tourists carrying valid documents were illegally detained by the Italian police and were later freed only after intervention by the Indian embassy in Rome, a senior government official said on Thursday. "Our mission in Rome has reported that they received a distress call on May 30 from one Miss Apoorva, who informed that her brother Akshit Goel along with two of his friends -- all Indian nationals -- had been illegally detained by the Italian police in the town of Ventimiglia in north Italy," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said at his weekly media briefing here. "All the three Indian nationals were visiting Italy for tourism purposes and were carrying valid passports with valid Schengen visas," he said. Following this, Swarup said, the embassy assured the family of all possible help and contacted the Italian police authorities in Ventimiglia and the country's interior ministry in Rome. "The embassy was also able to establish contact with Akshit. He told our mission that he and his friends had been detained by the Italian police in the Ventimiglia railway station during a checking for illegal immigrants," the spokesperson said. "Later, they were flown along with other detainees to Bari, a town almost 1,000 km away in the south of Italy," he said. "Our embassy immediately contacted the police authorities of Ventimiglia and Bari as well as the ministry of interior affairs in Rome and apprised them of the problem." Swarup said that after checking, it was found that the Italian authorities had made a mistake and they promised to release the three Indians. "Finally, at around 9.30 p.m. on May 30, they were released from police custody," he said. "The embassy coordinated with the authorities to ensure proper arrangements and safe transportation of the Indian nationals from Bari to premises of the Indian embassy in Rome." Stating that the three reached the Indian mission on May 31 around 9 a.m., the spokesperson said that all three Indian nationals were lodged at the Indian embassy premises and provided adequate care. "The embassy made arrangements for their onward journey to Nice in France on the same day where they are enrolled for an internship programme at a French university," Swarup said. "Their families were informed of their safe release and the embassy assured them of all necessary assistance in getting them back safely to the university in France," he said, adding that the three reached the university on June 1. Swarup also said that India "strongly raised the issue" with the Italian authorities and was in touch with them to ensure adequate steps were taken so that such unfortunate incidents involving Indian nationals did not recur in the future. Panaji: The Goa Lokayukta will begin hearing of pending cases before it from June 6 onwards. "In all 22 cases which are pending before the Lokayukta, fresh notices have been issued. The first hearing would be held on June 6," a senior official in Lokayukta office, told PTI today. The hearing will take place after a gap of more than two years. Justice (Retired) P K Misra has taken over as the new Lokayukta of Goa. The post was vacant since 2013 when Justice (Retired) Sudershan Reddy resigned on personal grounds. Lokayukta has received cases related to corruption by government officials, illegal appointment in services and others which were kept pending in absence of the Lokayukta. State government had also referred cases related to civil liability due to illegal mining as pointed out in Justice M B Shah Commission report to Lokayukta. The lokayukta had referred the cases back to government seeking some clarification. However, it is yet to receive a response. Gurgaon: Bracing up for the renewed agitation by a section of Jats from June 5, Gurgaon district authorities on Friday appointed 22 duty magistrates and issued orders prohibiting any gathering of five or more persons in the district for the next 60 days. Besides 22 duty magistrates, three sub-divisional magistrates have been put in overall charge of their respective areas. The district administration has already held a coordination meeting between civil and police officers, Gurgaon Deputy Commissioner T.L. Satyaprakash told the media at the mini-secretariat here. Satyaprakash said any group resorting to unlawful activities will be dealt with sternly under the National Security Act, enforced in the state. He said the preventive steps have been taken even though representatives of a majority of Jat organisations in Gurgaon have assured of deferring their protest till July 21, by when the state government is expected to file its reply to the Punjab and Haryana High Court notice in a case. On June 1, the Jat Sangharsh Samiti said the community will not protest for quota in government jobs and education institutions till July 21. The deputy commissioner said that messages on the social media were also under surveillance and those found sending inflammatory messages would be taken to task. Meanwhile, Satyaprakash, who is also the district magistrate, has issued orders under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code, prohibiting all activities like any gathering of five or more persons, and blocking roads, passages, railway tracks, water channels, power houses etc. No firearms, swords, lathis, knives and other sharp-edged weapons of offence likely to cause injury or obstruct the maintenance of peace would be allowed to be carried. Panaji: Citing NIA chief Sharad Kumar's reported statement that so far there was no evidence about Pakistani agencies having helped the terrorist outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad carry out the Pathankot attack, Congress today sought to know who were the attackers then. "If the terrorists were not from Pakistan, then who were the terrorists who attacked the Pathankot base?" Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh said here. The government needed to clarify its position on the NIA chief's statement, he said. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and the national security adviser need to answer who were these terrorists," the Congress leader said. NIA's "clean chit" to Pakistan was a complete failure of Indian diplomacy, Singh said. The Congress leader also took a swipe at Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, saying he was more concerned about Goa, his home state, than the country. "Parrikar is hardly the Defence Minister. He is Super Chief Minister of Goa," he said. Singh was here to participate in a function to release a book 'Public Matters', written by former Union Minister of State for External Affairs Eduardo Faleiro. New Delhi: India has joined a global ballistic missile anti-proliferation regime just days ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the United States and other countries, mainly aimed at winning support for the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) membership. Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Vikas Swarup told reporters that India joined the Hague Code of Conduct (HCoC) against Ballistic Missile Proliferation on Thursday. "India has joined the Hague Code of Conduct (HCoC) against Ballistic Missile Proliferation by notifying the HCoC Central Contact in Vienna through diplomatic channels," Swarup said. The MEA spokesperson, however, categorically stated that the move would have no impact on national security as well as the country's ballistic missile programme. Our national security interest will not be impacted in any manner, whatsoever, by joining HCoC," Swarup said in response to a question whether India would have to shelve its Agni missile programme after joining HCoC. He further stated that India's bid to enter the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) was "on track" and that New Delhi could be granted membership "soon". The HCoC is a voluntary, legally non-binding international confidence building and transparency measure that seeks to prevent the proliferation of ballistic missiles that are capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction. "India s joining the Code signals our readiness to further strengthen global non-proliferation objectives," the spokesperson added. Asked about India's bid to become member of nuclear control regimes, Swarup said, As far as MTCR is concerned, our application is on track and well-received, and we expect that process of India's membership would be completed soon. He also added that the country was in discussion with other control regimes like Wassenaar Arrangement for the membership. (With PTI inputs) New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi sets off on Saturday on a five-nation visit to Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland, the US and Mexico during which the focus will be to broaden bilateral trade, energy and security cooperation and push for India's bid to become a member of Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). PM Modi is likely to seek support of Switzerland and Mexico for India's membership of the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group as both these countries are key members of the elite grouping. The issue is likely to figure during Modi's meeting with Obama in Washington on June 7. India has formally applied for membership of the NSG on May 12. During his talks with the Swiss President Schneider- Ammann the Prime Minister is also likely to raise the issue of black money stashed by Indians in Swiss banks. The Prime Minister will first travel to Afghanistan where he will inaugurate the Afghan-India Friendship Dam, earlier known as Salma Dam, in Herat province, along with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Both the leaders will also hold talks on a range of issues including current situation in Afghanistan. "Looking forward to my visit to Afghanistan tomorrow. I will join President Ashraf Ghani to inaugurate Afghanistan- India Friendship Dam in Herat. It is symbol of our friendship and would usher in hope, light up homes, nourish the fertile fields of Herat and bring prosperity to the people of the region," said the Prime Minister. Modi said he will exchange notes with "friend" Ghani on regional situation and "setting agenda" for bilateral cooperation in the coming period. From Afghanistan, PM Modi will travel to energy-rich Qatar tomorrow itself and from there he will leave for a two day visit to Switzerland on Sunday. About the Qatar visit, Modi said, "This visit will nourish the historical bonds of friendship deeply rooted in people to people contacts, energy, trade and investment partnership." "I will interact with the Indian workers at the Workers' Camp and some of the members of over 6 lakh Indians who have nurtured our relations through their sweat and toil." The Prime Minister will also interact with business leaders in Qatar with an aim seek investment and realise the full potential of trade and investment cooperation between the two countries. In Qatar, the Prime Minister will hold talks with his counterpart Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani and Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani on a host of issues which may include trade and security. PM to inaugurate Salma Dam in Afghanistan Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the Rs 1,700 crore Afghan-India Friendship Dam, the Salma Dam, along with Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani in that country's Herat province on tomorrow. The multipurpose project, undertaken by Indian Government on river Chist-e-Sharif in the province concerned, is expected to irrigate 75,000 hectares of land and generate 42 mega watt power, besides ensuring water supply and other benefits to local people. Touted as a "landmark" infrastructure project, the dam is located 165 km east of Herat town and connected with earthen road, the Union Water Resources Ministry said in a statement. "Due to security reasons Indian engineers and technicians involved with the project have been reaching the site once in a month by helicopter service provided by Government of Afghanistan," the statement said. The Ministry said that all the equipment and material required for the dam work were transported from India to Bander-e-Abbas port of Iran via sea and then along 1200 km by road from there to Islam Kila border post at Iran-Afghanistan border and then further 300 km by road from the border post to the site. "Cement, steel reinforcement, explosives etc were imported to Afghanistan from neighboring countries. The gross capacity of the Dam is 633 Million M3. The height of the Dam is 104.3 Mt, length 540 Mt and width at the bottom is 450 Mt," it said. Funded by Indian Government, the successful completion of the project represents culmination of years of hard work by 1,500 Indian and Afghan engineers and other professionals in "very difficult" conditions, the Ministry said. The project is executed and implemented by WAPCOS Ltd, a public sector enterprise under the Water Resources Ministry. PM expected to push for India's NSG membership Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to strongly push for India's membership at the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) during his visit to Switzerland, Mexico and the US -- countries that are part of the elite group that looks after critical issues relating to the atomic sector. India has been pushing for membership of the 48-nation bloc for last few years and had formally moved its application on May 12. "This has been the objective we pursued for many many years. I think we have made lot of progress and that has led us to formally apply for the NSG membership some days ago. We are engaged with all NSG members," Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said. He said India was looking at a very major domestic expansion in nuclear power sector besides at a "very large" international collaboration with different countries and its entry into the NSG would help its objective of having clean energy. Insisting India not signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty should not be linked to its bid for NSG membership, he said India fulfilled all its commitments relating to atomic sector. "We have a very solid record with which much of the world is comfortable. The NSG has already made one exception for us. In a sense, our credentials have been examined, a judgement was arrived at in 2008. "In 2008, we gave some commitments, we gave commitments on separation of our nuclear programme, between civil and the strategic side. We agreed to accept and implement additional protocol... We faithfully followed up," he said. The Foreign Secretary said granting NSG membership to India is a "logical next step". During his talks with the leadership of Mexico, Switzerland and the US, Modi is likely to seek support for India's membership bid at the NSG. (With PTI inputs) Jammu: Condemning the call given by Hurriyat Conference for a shutdown in Kashmir on Friday, BJP said the opposition to establishment of a Sainik Colony in the Valley was "unjustified". "We condemn the call given by Syed Ali Shah Geelani and other Hurriyat leaders for a shutdown in Valley today. A soldier while defending his motherland or fellow countrymen does not differentiate between any region and religion," BJP state spokesperson Brigadier Anil Gupta said. The cause of the soldiers should be supported by all irrespective of their individual beliefs. The soldiers deserve to have a piece of land for building a shelter for their families, he said. "Unfortunately, rather than supporting the cause of the soldiers, separatists and Valley-centric politicians are playing divisive politics at their cost which has adverse impact on their morale," he said. "J&K today has a large population of soldiers both serving and retired. There is only one Sainik Colony in the state. A Sainik Colony in the Valley is needed keeping in view the welfare of the soldiers belonging to the state. "Those playing politics with the sentiments of the soldiers will have to pay a heavy price for the same because if soldiers decide to come to streets for their cause, it would be disastrous," he warned. New Delhi: Amid controversy over a media report quoting National Investigating Agency (NIA) chief Sharad Kumar on a Pakistani link to the Pathankot attack, the Ministry of External Affairs on Friday asserted that "involvement of Pakistan`s nationals in the Pathankot Air Base attack is an accepted fact". The Indian government has also asserted that "enough information" on the involvement of Pakistanis has been provided to Islamabad. "I understand that DG NIA has issued a clarification that his words are being misinterpreted. Let me clarify the position. The involvement of Pakistan`s nationals in the Pathankot Air Base attack is an accepted fact," MEA spokesman Vikas Swarup said here in a statement. "I would remind you that investigations are ongoing. Foreign Secretary had conveyed to his Pakistani counterpart when they met in New Delhi in April that it was time for review of progress in investigation in the attack after return of Pakistan`s JIT, which had gathered all evidence that it had wanted when it visited India," the spokesman said. He further said "enough information" has also been provided to Pakistani authorities through two Letters Rogatory to conduct investigation in Pakistan so that "all those associated in Pakistan with planning, support and execution of the attack are brought to justice". "At this stage, we await further response and information from Pakistan. It would be injudicious to speculate in this situation," the spokesman added. According to a TV channel, DG NIA had given clean chit to Pakistan government but the top NIA official later denied making any such statement. Last month the Interpol has issued a Red Corner Notice against Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorist Shahid Latif who has been termed as "one of the crucial handlers" of the Pathankot airbase attackers by the NIA. A five-member joint investigating team (JIT) from Pakistan visited India in March to probe the Pathankot attack in which Jaish-e-Mohamed militants attacked the Indian air base on January 2 and killed seven security personnel. The attack has led to a downslide in bilateral ties. Mathura: Yes, this is precisely what happened when violence was raging in Mathura following an anti-encroachment drive by the police. News agency ANI reported on Friday that Hema Malini, an MP from Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, uploaded shoot pictures of hers on Twitter just hours after her Parliamentary constituency was hit by violence. BJP MP (Mathura) Hema Malini uploads shoot pictures on her Twitter even as death toll from Mathura incident rises. pic.twitter.com/CCilzxReCZ ANI (@ANI_news) June 3, 2016 However, she later deleted the tweets, something which ANI confirmed. #UPDATE BJP MP (Mathura) Hema Malini deletes the aforementioned tweets. ANI (@ANI_news) June 3, 2016 The MP later tweeted that she was upset by the developments in Mathura and appealed to the people of Mathura to remain calm and not get misguided by violent elements. I just came bk frm Mathura & got the news of the violence tht has taken place there in which policemen have lost their lives. Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) June 3, 2016 So so upset by ths news frm a place which is so dear to me Will go there again if my presence is required.My heart goes out to the bereaved Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) June 3, 2016 Heartfelt condolences to families of SP City Mukul Dwivedi & SHO Santosh Kumar who laid down their lives in the line of duty. Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) June 3, 2016 I fervently appeal to the people of Mathura to remain calm & not get misguided by violent elements Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) June 3, 2016 At least 24 people were killed, including two senior police officials, in clashes between cops and encroachers following an anti-encroachment drive at Jawaharbagh. Meanwhile, the BJP has come out in defence of its MP saying she has already expressed grief over the incident. I am sure Hema Malini ji will go to Mathura, she has expressed her grief over what has happened. Let's not divert from the issue, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said. But law and order is a state issue; why has the UP CM not reached the site of violence as yet? Patra asked. Anantnag: Three jawans of Border Security Force (BSF) were martyred and seven others were injured when their convoy was attacked by terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir's Bijbehara here on Friday. ANI quoted police sources as saying: Security forces convoy fired upon by terrorists in J&K's Bijbehara (Anantnag) The cops further informed that three civilians were also injured in today's attack considered to be as a guerrilla attack on the security forces. Following the attack, heavy exchange of fire was underway in the town situated on the 300-km Jammu-Srinagar National Highway No.1A, according to eyewitness. The injured BSF troopers have been shifted to a Srinagar hospital, the police sources added. The attackers were holed up inside the government sub-district hospital building. The eyewitness said security forces immediately cordoned off the area after the attack which sparked panic in the area. Traffic on the busy national highway was also suspended. Additional forces have been rushed to the area which has been cordoned off by CRPF and Rashtriya Rifles. The security forces had to face tough time during their search operations when some of the people hurled stones at them. Hizbul Mujahideen group has sent emails to some of the local news agency claiming responsibility for the attack. Meanwhile, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti hit out at Pakistan and said, "Pakistan says it loves Kashmir.What sort of love is this? Attacks on our jawans? Citizens also get caught in crossfire." In New Delhi, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh expressed deep anguish and pain at the incident and asked BSF Director General KK Sharma to rush to the spot to take stock of the situation. Former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah condemned the incident and said it was an indication of worsening law and order situation in the state. The BSF convoy comprising 23 vehicles was coming from Jammu to Srinagar ferrying jawans who were returning to join their duties after their leave. The attack comes 10 days after the Hizbul Mujahideen had killed three policemen in two separate incidents in Srinagar city. They had threatened to carry out similar attacks. BSF convoys have often been the target of terrorist groups. Last year in August, a BSF convoy was attacked by Lashker-e-Toiba terrorists at Udhampur in which two of its personnel and a terrorist were killed. Another terrorist Mohammed Naveed was captured alive after the terror strike. Meanwhile, ANI posted a video relating to the incident - Watch it here: Kendrapara: A book binder's son has topped the Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) in MBA leaving the academic fraternity in the district headquarters township elated. Sk. Fallauddin, father of OJEE MBA topper, was forced to sell off a piece of urban land to meet his son's study expenses. Shadab Anwar (22), who was the best commerce graduate in Kendrapara autonomous college, has earned first rank in OJEE-MBA. "It's a matter of pride for our college. The highlight of Anwar's achievement is that he hailed from a family with a modest income," said Principal of Kendrapara autonomous college, Sachidanand Sadangi. "Anwar was good at studies. He had excelled in 10th standard, plus two and plus three examination. I have another younger son and daughter. I was forced to sell off a decimal of land in Kendrapara town to meet with their academic expenses. With Anwar's achieving top rank in joint entrance examination, I feel I did not commit a mistake in selling the land," observed Fallauddin. "There is no short-cut to success. I was very sincere towards studies. It has borne fruit. Topping entrance has inspired me for achieving greater heights. I have set my target to excel in MBA and get a good job. My father is very supportive," said Anwar. Despite his limited income, monetary constraints never deterred him from perusing higher education, he said. Anwar's success is inspirational given the fact that he hails from minority community. People from minority community here are lagging behind in education front. Still Anwar with parental support has set an example for people from his community, said educationist and retired teacher of Kendrapara Autonomous College, Bhagaban Jena. Washington: Pakistan has not taken "sufficient action" against terror groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), blamed for attacks in India, the US has said while noting that these outfits continue to operate, train, organise and fundraise in that country. The State Department in its annual 'Country Reports on Terrorism - 2015' report said that the Pakistani military and security forces undertook operations against groups that conducted attacks within Pakistan such as Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), but did not take action against externally-focused terror groups. It said some UN-designated terrorist groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) affiliates Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FiF) were able to raise funds and hold rallies in Pakistan. "Pakistan did not take substantial action against the Afghan Taliban or Haqqani, or substantially limit their ability to threaten US interests in Afghanistan, although Pakistan supported efforts to bring both groups into an Afghan-led peace process. "Pakistan has also not taken sufficient action against other externally-focused groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), which continued to operate, train, organize, and fundraise in Pakistan," it said. LeT and JuD leader Hafiz Saeed, who is also a UN-designated terrorist, was able to make frequent public appearances in support of the organization's objectives, which were covered by the Pakistani media. "In September, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Agency prohibited media coverage of LeT and affiliated groups, although the groups continued to recruit and operate around the country. Despite JuD and FiF's proscription under UN sanctions regimes, the Pakistani government affirmed in December that neither organisation was banned in Pakistan," the State Department said. India, the State Department said continued to experience terrorist attacks, including operations launched by Maoist insurgents and transnational groups based in Pakistan. Indian authorities continued to blame Pakistan for cross-border attacks in Jammu and Kashmir, it said. In July, India experienced a terrorist attack in Gurdaspur, Punjab; the first in the state since the 1990s, the report said. Over the course of 2015, the Indian government sought to deepen counter-terrorism cooperation with the US. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi continued to prioritise counter-terrorism cooperation during Obama's visit to India in January and Modi's visit to Washington in September. The Indian government closely monitored the domestic threat from the IS and other terrorist organisations, it said. The State Department said Pakistan was also slow in taking action against 2008 Mumbai attack perpetrators. Balochistan: A Pakistani father of 35 is now searching for a fourth wife as he romps towards his goal of 100 children, a dubious ambition in the conservative Muslim country where polygamy is rare but still practiced. Sardar Jan Mohammad Khilji, 46, says he believes it is his religious duty to have as many children as possible. Insisting it is "very rare" that he mixes up his children`s names, the medical technician said he juggles their affections by taking turns to attend family events with them and their mothers, such as weddings. His three current wives support his procreational and matrimonial goals, he said, adding that they all live in harmony together -- though he would not allow AFP to speak with them. Rights activists warn it is women and children who suffer most in polygamous marriages. Pakistani men are permitted to take up to four wives under Islam, though to do so they must seek permission from their first wife and an arbitration council. It remains rare for men to take multiple wives in the country, but when polygamy does take place, studies have shown it can result in "depression and despair" among wives, while children often struggle to know their father, said Rafia Zakaria, a women`s rights activist. The Koran, she told AFP, dictates that multiple wives may be taken only when a husband can do "perfect justice" among them. "Well, perfect justice is impossible, and for this reason polygamy is never a good situation," said Zakaria, who campaigns against the practice. "Someone always suffers and almost always it is the women and children," she added. Family lawyer Mohammed Bilal Kasi, who deals with polygamy cases in Quetta agreed. "We lawyers are well aware of social problems surrounding polygamy," he said. "Women and children undergo mental agony due to these affairs." The tension can lead to serious legal disputes over property and rights after the father`s death, he said. Denied his permission to speak, Jan`s wives could not describe what life is like for his sprawling dynasty, who all live together in a five-bedroom mud hut in the outskirts of Quetta in restive Balochistan province. At least two of his children appear to support his goals, however, including his eldest child Shagufta Nasreen. "A large family is like Allah bestowing a case of mangoes," the 15-year-old explained, adding that she hopes to go into medicine like her father. Jan`s eldest son, 13-year-old Mohammed Esa, also wanted to emulate the patriarch -- but he has set his sights even higher, resolving that he will have more than 100 children. Jan, who claims he is a qualified medical technician, runs an unregulated clinic where he treats people for minor ailments such as headaches, adding that as he is "serving humanity" he charges just 250 rupees ($2.30) per patient while providing his services to the poor for free. He also runs a seminary funded by donations where nearly 400 students -- including four of his sons -- are studying the Koran, and says he pays for 20 of his 35 children to attend private school. The household expenditures of his growing empire, however, can reach up to 120,000 rupees per month -- more than ten times Pakistan`s average -- in a neighbourhood that lacks basic amenities such as tap water and sewage, he said. He insisted he has never faced any financial problems trying to care for his brood, but did not explain how he could cover all the expenses with just pay for his medical work. Jan conceded that his needs may increase as his children grow and so is calling on the government to allocate funds for the food, education, and healthcare of his family -- a request that is unlikely to be fulfilled. But Jan has faith. If the government does not listen, he said, he trusts in God to provide. Pakistan has the highest birth rate in South Asia -- around three children per woman according to World Bank and government figures -- though an accurate census has not been conducted in more than 30 years. Jan put his fertility down to daily doses of fresh and dry fruits, milk and meat; as well as reciting the Holy Koran and praying five times a day. While his eldest child is 15, his youngest is just a few weeks old. At the beginning of March he was still a father of merely 33, but that month two more daughters were born within six days of one another, he says. His marriages were all arranged by his parents. "I married the first one...when I was 26 years old, and the next year wedded the other two within a gap of five months," he told AFP. His next wedding, however, could be arranged via Facebook: since his story aired in Pakistani media, he says, he has had a slew of marriage offers via the social network. A large poster on the wall at Jan`s house carries the symbol he used when he ran for provincial office in 2013: a double bed, which, he told AFP, "denotes special pleasure and meaning in my life". That time at least, his ambition fell short: he garnered 980 votes, not nearly enough to win. Kabul: In the rugged terrain of the Taliban heartland in southern Afghanistan, the fight against Kabul has become a war for control of key stretches of main roads and highways as the insurgents use a new tactic to gain ground. First they storm a checkpoint, kill all the policemen, seize their weapons and equipment and effectively cut off the main road to a remote village. They raise the white Taliban flag and plant roadside bombs to prevent cars from coming through the checkpoint. Any vehicle that attempts to pass through is either blown up or attacked, residents and local leaders say. Then they wait. Faced with shortages of basic food items and price hikes as their supplies dwindle, the villagers are eventually forced to abandon their homes and to move to a place where they can afford to eat and live. Most sneak out on foot or on donkeys through backroads and mountain paths, leaving many of their belongings behind. Though the new tactic may be obviously simple, it has helped the Taliban gain ground albeit at a slower pace than a deadly, surprise raid on an entire village. The Taliban have been waging war against the Kabul government since 2001, when their regime was overthrown in the US-led invasion. Since the international combat troops pulled out of Afghanistan at the end of 2014, leaving behind only a largely training and advising contingent, the insurgency has intensified as Afghan forces struggle to take the lead in the battle. The Taliban are now refocusing their attention mostly on the southern provinces of Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan, US and Afghan military officials say, although the insurgents have also struck elsewhere, such as the northern Kunduz province where they briefly overran and held the provincial capital for a few days last fall. The results have been daunting the United Nations says 3,545 Afghan civilians were killed and 7,457 wounded in the war in 2015, most of them by the Taliban. In the south, one of the worst hit areas is Uruzgan province where the Taliban have been putting pressure in recent weeks on Afghan forces around the provincial capital of Tirin Kot, said the US military spokesman in Kabul, Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland. "The Taliban's main focus in the south is now Uruzgan" and US forces have been providing assistance and air support as needed, Cleveland said. The director of Uruzgan's provincial council, Abdul Hakeem Khadimzai, described the situation there as the "worst in 15 years." In May alone, he said, "around 200 security forces were killed and more than 300 were wounded" in Uruzgan. The figures are an estimate but Khadimzai insisted that if he were to "include civilians, then they would be doubled." The numbers could not be independently verified as the Afghan government does not release military and police casualty figures. New Delhi: SpaceX has released a breathtaking timelapse video of its most recent Falcon 9 rocket landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean via Vine. Last week's success means SpaceX has has now landed three Falcon 9 first stages in a row on a boat in just two months. On Friday May 27 2017, the Falcon 9 rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on a mission that delivered the Thaicom 8 satellite to a supersynchronous transfer orbit. Thaicom is one of Asias leading Asian satellite operators, influencing and innovating communications on a global scale The company said that Falcon 9 has safely returned to Port Canaveral this afternoon after leaning noticeably due to damage sustained when it landed last week. New Delhi: An extremely bright fireball lit the pre-dawn sky over much of Arizona early Thursday morning, June 2, turning the dark into light. According to NASA, the fireball was due to a small asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere above Arizona just before 4 a.m. local (MST) time and turned the night into day for a brief flashing moment. NASA says that the asteroid - estimated at 5 feet (1-2 meters) in diameter - with a mass of a few tons and a kinetic energy of approximately half a kiloton was moving at about 40,200 miles per hour (64,700 kilometers per hour). Watch NASA's meteor camera video of June 2, 2016 Arizona fireball below! However, there are no reports of any damage or injuries, but the fireball event did leave smoke trails that were caught on video; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN--uCY0LUY and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sOqPOL1gIM. There are no reports of any damage or injuriesjust a lot of light and few sonic booms, said Bill Cooke in NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. If Doppler radar is any indication, there are almost certainly meteorites scattered on the ground north of Tucson. Although the fireball was seen primarily from Arizona, witnesses from Utah, New Mexico, California, Texas and Nevada also reported the event. (Source: NASA) Puducherry: The opposition AIADMK today appealed to the new Lt Governor Kiran Bedi to come out with a firm measure to ensure that a new government was formed in the Union Territory. "It is indeed a sad commentary on democracy that despite lapse of more than 15 days since the results of May 16 assembly polls were announced, Congress could not form the Ministry," AIADMK's legislature party leader A Anbalagan told reporters here. He urged Lt Governor Kiran Bedi to come out with a firm step to ensure that a new government was formed here. "She can in the alternative ask the next single largest party to go in for formation of the ministry," he suggested. "We are not in a position to do our democratic duties in our constituencies as we are yet to be sworn in as members of the House," he said. Anbalagan said he would lead an AIADMK delegation to meet the Lt Governor and seek her intervention to break the deadlock. Agra: As the death toll in the Mathura violence rose to 21, Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday called on Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, assuring him all possible help from the Centre. "Spoke to UP CM Shri @yadavakhilesh and reviewed the situation in Mathura. I have also assured him of all possible help from the Centre," Singh tweeted. "Anguished over the loss of lives in the incidents of violence in Mathura. May God gives strength to the bereaved families to bear the loss." 21 people, including two policemen were killed, after clashes broke during an anti-encroachment drive in Uttar Pradesh's Mathura town on Thursday. Superintendent of Police (City) Mukul Dwivedi and Farha Station House Officer (SHO) Santosh Kumar Yadav were killed in firing by the encroachers. Five other policemen were injured. The clashes broke out when police were trying to evict illegal occupants of a land in Jawahar Bagh by activists, believed to be of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi, on the directions of the Allahabad High Court. UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav expressed grief and ordered a probe into the incident. He assured of strict action against the culprits. '@UPGovt will ensure the strictest action under law against the perpetrators in the Mathura incident. Speedy prosecution of the accused'-CM CM Office, GoUP (@CMOfficeUP) June 3, 2016 Yadav instructed Principal Secretary (Home) and Director General of Police to personally inspect the clashes at Mathura at the earliest and take stock of the situation. Meanwwhile, Bharatiya Janata party MP from Mathura Hema Malini extended condolences to the families of the policemen killed. So so upset by ths news frm a place which is so dear to me Will go there again if my presence is required.My heart goes out to the bereaved Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) June 3, 2016 UPP police lost two brave officers today in the line of duty. My salutations to them. We shall always remember their supreme sacrifice Javeed (@javeeddgpup) June 2, 2016 Huge cache of arms recovered in Mathura 45 arms of 315 bore, two 12 bore one factory made 315 bore rifle, one 12 bore rifle, four 315 bore Javeed (@javeeddgpup) June 3, 201 Mathura Superintendent of Police Rakesh Singh said criminal elements had encroached upon a major part of the 280-acre government land named Jawahar Bagh. IG (Law and Order) H R Sharma said around 3,000 encroachers pelted stones and later opened fire at the police team as they reached the spot. In retaliation, the police had to fire after using batons and tear gas at them, he said. The encroachers threw hand-grenades and bombs at the police and beat up many of them. Reports say that at least four dozen people, including, two dozen police personnel, were injured in the skirmishes. Ram Vraksha Yadav, leader of the activists, and the security officer of the group Chandan Gaur managed to flee along with thousands of their supporters The UP Chief Minister announced Rs 20 lakh ex gratia to the family of the killed police official. Expressing grave concern over the Mathura violence, the Congress Party on Friday cornered the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party Government over the deteriorating law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) castigated the violent clashes between the police and illegal occupants of a land in Mathura and slammed the Akhilesh Yadav led government, for not being able to maintain law and order situation in the state. Mathura: Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police Javeed Ahmed on Friday confirmed that twenty-four people, including an SP and an SHO, were killed in Thursday's clash between police and encroachers during an anti-encroachment drive in Mathura district. Addressing a press conference, Ahmed said Superintendent of Police (City) Mukul Dwivedi and Farha Station House Officer (SHO) Santosh Kumar Yadav were martyred in the clashes. He said besides the two cops, all twenty-two people were the one who indulged in arson. The DGP said 124 people have been arrested on charges of causing loss to government property and murder. 196 more have been arrested under Section 153 offences, he added. The police will invoke National Security Act (NSA) against Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi leader Ram Vraksha Yadav, Chandan Gaur, the security officer and two other prominent members of the group, Ahmed informed. Ram Vraksha Yadav and Chandan Gaur managed to flee along with thousands of their supporters. The top cop hailed the locals, who helped the police in nabbing some of the culprits. The UP DGP informed that 23 policemen are admitted to hospitals, who were injured in the violence. 47 locally made 'katta' pistols, six rifles and 178 live cartridges were seized, the DGP said. The violence had erupted when police were trying to evict illegal occupants, believed to be of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi, from Jawahar Bagh yesterday on the directions of the Allahabad High Court. The encroachers threw hand-grenades and bombs at the police and beat up many of them. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has ordered a probe into the incident. He assured of strict action against the culprits. '@UPGovt will ensure the strictest action under law against the perpetrators in the Mathura incident. Speedy prosecution of the accused'-CM CM Office, GoUP (@CMOfficeUP) June 3, 2016 Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday called CM Yadav, assuring him all possible help from the Centre. "Spoke to UP CM Shri @yadavakhilesh and reviewed the situation in Mathura. I have also assured him of all possible help from the Centre," Singh tweeted. Spoke to UP CM Shri @yadavakhilesh and reviewed the situation in Mathura. I have also assured him of all possible help from the Centre. Rajnath Singh (@BJPRajnathSingh) June 3, 2016 Expressing grave concern over the Mathura violence, the Congress party on Friday cornered the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party government over the deteriorating law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) castigated the violent clashes between the police and illegal occupants of a land in Mathura and slammed the UP government for not being able to maintain law and order situation in the state. Mathura: As the death toll mounted to 21 in the clashes that took place during an anti-encroachment drive in Uttar Pradesh's Mathura district, it is being learnt the protesters, numbering around 3,000, belonged to the Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi, who claim to be the "true followers of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose". Ram Vraksha Yadav is the leader of the activists, and Chandan Gaur is the security officer of the group. Both managed to flee along with thousands of their supporters. The protesters who described themselves as "Satyagrahis" possessed country-made guns, rifles, pistols, cartridges and explosives, including grenades. The UP Director General of Police tweeted that a huge cache of arms was recovered in Mathura. Huge cache of arms recovered in Mathura 45 arms of 315 bore, two 12 bore one factory made 315 bore rifle, one 12 bore rifle, four 315 bore Javeed (@javeeddgpup) June 3, 2016 The 'Satyagrahis' had been making unrealistic demands which include: Cancellation of election of President and Prime Minister of India Diesel be made available at the rate of 60 litres for one rupee and petrol at 40 litres for one rupee. The country should follow the law of Netaji's Azad Hind Fauj and the acts of British era should be abolished. Azad Hind Fauj's currency should be introduced. The 270 acre Jawahar Bagh be handed over to them. No police action on the 'Satyagrahis' Non-veg food should be banned across the country and non-vegetarians should be punished. The violence had erupted when police were trying to evict illegal occupants from Jawahar Bagh yesterday on the directions of the Allahabad High Court. According to Mathura police, two bullets hit Station House Officer (Farah), Santosh Yadav, who was declared dead on arrival by doctors at Niyati Hospital. SP (City) Mukul Dwivedi, who was placed on ventilator support, succumbed to bullet injuries later, said doctors at the private hospital. Over 100 people, including the city magistrate Ram Araj Yadav, were also injured in the clashes that lasted for almost four hours. Mathura/New Delhi: As the death toll in yesterday's Mathura clash rose to 24 on Friday which includes Mathura Superintendent of Police (City) Mukul Dwivedi, Farah Police Station SHO Santosh Yadav and 20 protesters, Chief Minister Akhiles Yadav admitted that there were "some lapses" on the part of administration and intelligence network that led to untoward incident. The Uttar Pradesh CM ordered a commissioner-level inquiry into the violence while the Centre sought a report from the Uttar Pradesh government on Thursday's violence in Mathura, over 160 km from the national capital. Over 300 people were arrested in the violence that also left 23 policemen injured, including many seriously. "This is a serious matter and will be investigated at commissioner level. All those found guilty will be brought to justice," Akhilesh Yadav told reporters. Twenty-four people were killed in the clash between police and encroachers during an anti-encroachment drive on Thursday in Jawahar bagh in Mathura. Those killed include Superintendent of Police Mukul Dwivedi. While around 300 people have been detained for their involvement in the clash, the city continues to be tense even as heavy police reinforcement has been deployed. The chief minister also accepted that there was a lapse in the handling of the matter. "Many attempts were made to hold discussions (with the encroachers), warnings were issued, but they still didn't evacuate the land. There has been a lapse as well. The mistake was the police went without full preparation. There was so much danger involved. No one knew how many explosives were inside," he said. Asked whether it was an intelligence failure, the chief minister replied: "It wasn't an intelligence failure... after inquiry only it would be clear how many weapons (revolvers and bombs) were there." Akhilesh Yadav also announced ex-gratia relief of Rs 20 lakh each for the families of the two police officers killed in the violence. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh reviewed the situation in Mathura and assured all help to the state government. Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said there was lapse on the part of state government and it should ensure that such unfortunate incidents do not recur. He said the home ministry is waiting for the Uttar Pradesh government's report over the incident. State Governor Ram Naik also sought a detailed report about incident. He said proper inquiry should be conducted, the accused arrested soon, and strict legal action taken against them. Criticising the ruling Samajwadi Party, former Chief Minister and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati sought resignation of the Akhilesh Yadav government. She demanded a "time-bound judicial probe" into the incident, saying a commissioner level probe "will only be considered as a formality". Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi condoled the death of police officers and others, and said the incident stands as a "reminder" of the deteriorating law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh. Demanding a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the matter, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came down heavily on the Uttar Pradesh government over the incident and maintained that without political protection the people could not have stored large quantities of arms and illumination. BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra stated, "There is a complete breakdown of administration and law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh. Mathura is not a small city. It is a centre of the region and such a hoard of ammunition and weaponry was getting piled up there. How did the local administration miss that? How can such error happen?" BJP Secretary Shrikant Sharma, who rushed to Mathura on the directions of party President Amit Shah, faulted the Akhilesh Yadav government for letting the situation get out of control. "It was the Samajwadi Party goons who encroached on the Jawaharbagh area some three years back and police was not given the freedom to act. It's a matter of sheer negligence," IANS quoted Sharma as saying. "We demand a CBI inquiry into the matter," he told a press conference at Mathura. Actor-turned- politician Hema Malini, who was elected to the Lok Sabha from Mathura on the BJP ticket in 2014 polls, also favoured a CBI inquiry into the incident. On Thursday evening, encroachers attacked a police team which had gone to the Jawaharbagh area of Mathura to ensure peaceful eviction of encroachers as directed by the Allahabad High Court. The group, which calls itself "satyagrahis" or revolutionaries, was staying in the park on the pretext of staging demonstrations and occupying the 300-acre Jawaharbagh since January 2014. Later in the day today, an uneasy calm prevailed as forces from other parts of Uttar Pradesh were rushed to bring normalcy to the town where a large cache of ammunition was recovered from the members of 'Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi', an outfit claiming to owe allegience to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, in Jawahar Bagh area. (With Agency inputs) New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Friday assured "strict action" against the perpetrators of the Mathura violence, which claimed 24 lives including those of two policemen. "Uttar Pradesh government will ensure the strictest action under law against the perpetrators in the Mathura incident, speedy prosecution of the accused," tweeted the Chief Minister. Yadav also promised to support the families of the killed police officers. "My deepest condolences go to the families of these bravehearts. My government will ensure all support to the families," another tweet said. The Chief Minister also announced ex-gratia relief of Rs 20 lakh each for the families of the two police officers. On Thursday evening, protesters opened fire at a police team when it went to Jawahar Bagh area in Mathura to get it evicted following the orders of Allahabad High Court. Kolkata: The results of WBSCTE JEXPO 2016 are expected to be announced by West Bengal State Council of Technical Education on June 5, 2016. The students can access their results on webscte.org, www.wbscte.net. The exam was conducted in May for admission to Engineering/Technology diploma courses in polytechnics. A total of 92,135 students had appeared in the exam this year. Those who will clear the written leg of the examination will be called for the counselling/interview round. How to check JEXPO results 2016: 1. Visit the official websites of the board: www.webscte.org or www.wbscte.net 2. Fill in the required information like the name and roll number 3. Click on the Submit 4. Your result will appear on the page About WBSCTE: Within the National Framework of Polytechnic Education, few polytechnics started functioning in our State immediately after independence. To look after the academic activities of polytechnic education, State Council for Engineering & Technical Education was set-up as a Government outfit by an Executive Order. The Council was a part of the Chief Inspectorate of Technical Education and thereafter with the Directorate of Technical Education. AICTE started as an Advisory Body of the Ministry of Education, Government of India. By an Act of Parliament, AICTE was made a Statutory Body in 1987. The Statutory Council advised all States to give autonomous status to the State Councils of Technical Education. On the basis of aforesaid guideline, Government set-up a committee under the Chairmanship of Prof. Sankar Sen, the then Vice Chancellor of Jadavpur University to suggest procedure for setting-up a Statutory Council for the Technical Education. After examining the recommendations, Government in the Technical Education & Training Department moved a Bill before the Legislative Assembly for setting-up a Statutory Council of Technical Education. West Bengal State Council of Technical Education became a Statutory Body under West Bengal Act XXI of 1995. The Council started its activities as a Statutory Body after Gazette Notification on 12th June, 1996. Athens: More than 110 bodies were pulled from the sea off Libya's shores on Friday after a smuggling boat carrying mainly African migrants sank into the Mediterranean, and a separate massive search-and-rescue operation in the open sea saved 340 people and recovered nine bodies. The two sinkings were the latest deadly disasters for refugees and migrants hoping to find better lives in Europe, and came in addition to the over 1,000 people who drowned since May 25 while attempting the perilous, lengthy journey across the sea from North Africa to Europe's southern shores. In Libya, at least 117 bodies - 75 women, six children and 36 men - were pulled out from the waters near the western city of Zwara, Mohammed al-Mosrati, a spokesman for Libya's Red Crescent, told AP. All but a few were from African countries. The death toll was expected to rise. No lifejackets were seen on photos Red Cross photos of the bodies. But, as is frequently the case, authorities were uncertain when or how the people died. Libyan coast guards found an empty boat drifting yesterday, Libyan navy Col. Ayoub Gassim said, adding it was possible the vessel had capsized a day earlier. Al-Mosrati of the Red Crescent said the bodies were not "decomposed and therefore have drowned within the past 48 hours." He said the boat that was found might have been the one carrying the victims. But strong winds and currents can push bodies from one place to the other, he said, making it difficult for authorities to determine where the tragedy occurred. Speaking by telephone, Gassim of the Libyan navy blamed Europe for "doing nothing but counting bodies" in efforts to stop the massive illegal migration from Libya. Aid officials say the last two weeks have been especially deadly because smugglers are using riskier tactics, bigger boats and even less-seaworthy vessels than ever before. William Spindler, a spokesman for the UN refugee agency, noted new and far riskier tactics being used by traffickers. The second boat capsized on May 26, drowning what his agency estimated was around 550 migrants. Another migrant boat sank elsewhere in the Mediterranean today, with Greek authorities saying 340 people were rescued and nine bodies recovered in a massive search-and-rescue operation involving Greek helicopters, aircraft, patrol boats and passing merchant ships. Greece's coast guard said the roughly 25-meter vessel, which resembled a large fishing boat, had been carrying an undetermined number of people when it was located half-sunk about 75 nautical miles south of Crete in international waters. It was not immediately clear where the boat was from, who it carried, or where it was trying to go. The coast guard said the operation was continuing to search for any potentially missing passengers. "The information we have on the number of people on board the vessel is still unclear - we've heard that there were 400 or 500 people on board, but we cannot confirm that number," Coast Guard spokesman Nikos Lagadianos said. "There is a huge rescue effort underway." Washington: US President Barack Obama on Friday commuted the prison sentences of 42 people, most of them non-violent drug offenders, reflecting his calls for criminal justice reform. Most of those pardoned were small-time drug dealers who received long sentences under a code shaped by the government`s war on drugs. The punishments were made under "outdated and unduly harsh sentencing laws," the White House said in a statement. "The individuals receiving a presidential commutation today have more than repaid their debt to society and earned this second chance." Some were serving life sentences. Held in various prisons across the country, they will be released between October 1, 2016 and June 3, 2018. Obama has now commuted sentences for 348 people, more than the total amount issued by the previous seven presidents combined. Obama has called for legislation to reduce sentences and provide alternative punishments for small-time offenders. "There remain thousands of men and women in federal prison serving sentences longer than necessary, often due to overly harsh mandatory minimum sentences," the White House said. Some 2.2 million people are behind bars in the United States, a quarter of the world`s prisoners in a country with only five percent of the world`s population. They include legions of the mentally ill and drug addicts, often from disadvantaged minorities, in a prison system many experts criticize for encouraging high rates of recidivism. Brasilia: Brazil`s interim government on Thursday pushed for speeding up the impeachment process against suspended president Dilma Rousseff, who could be forced from office just as Rio starts hosting the Olympic Games. Rousseff, accused of taking unauthorized loans to patch up the state budget during her 2014 reelection campaign and in early 2015, was suspended for the trial on May 12. The suspension can run as long as six months, but acting president Michel Temer`s team argued for ending far earlier, possibly even before the start of the Rio Olympics on August 5. "For us, for the Temer government, it would be best if it were as quick as possible, while respecting the rules laid down by the Supreme Court," Temer`s chief of staff Eliseu Padilha said. A decision on the scheduling, which Rousseff`s side would prefer to be more drawn out, will be made by the Supreme Court. Rousseff`s lawyer, Jose Eduardo Cardozo, called the impeachment process "a huge farce" and a "coup." The Senate will try Rousseff and must vote by a two thirds majority to remove her from office. Temer, who was her vice president, would then stay until scheduled elections in 2018. Anything less and Rousseff would return to power. The impeachment trial comes on top of a huge corruption scandal centered on state oil company Petrobras. Two of Temer`s ministers implicated in the scheme have been forced to resign in the last few days after secret recordings of them apparently criticizing the probe were released to the media. In one of them, planning minister Romero Juca appeared to be saying that the impeachment could be used to block investigators. However, the Senate rapporteur for impeachment struck a blow against Rousseff on Thursday, saying that he opposed allowing those recordings to be used by her defense during the trial. Rousseff, who is blamed by many Brazilians for a deep recession and the political crisis, has rock bottom popularity ratings -- as does Temer. In the midst of the turmoil, Brazilian deputies approved a big salary increase for civil servants and the military on Thursday. California: Scuffles broke out between supporters of US presidential candidate Donald Trump and protesters on Thursday before and after the Republican spoke at a rally in San Jose, California. Videos posted on Twitter and online by local and national media showed clashes in the street outside of the San Jose Convention Center, where demonstrators fought and threw punches at each other. Hundreds of protesters waved Mexican flags, chanted anti-Trump slogans and burned Trump hats and at least one American flag outside of the rally, where Trump, to the delight of his supporters, vowed to stop illegal drugs from coming into the United States from the south, to build a wall on the US border and have Mexico pay the bill. "We are going to build that wall, don`t even think about it," he said gave two thumbs up as his supporters chanted "build that wall." Protests have become common outside rallies for Trump, the party`s presumptive nominee, who has polarized opinion with his rhetoric against illegal immigration. He abandoned a rally in Chicago in March after clashes between his supporters and protesters. "Violence against supporters of any candidate has no place in this election," John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman, wrote on Twitter in response to the clashes. Footage also showed a woman wearing a Trump jersey being pelted with eggs and food as she entered the rally while in another video clip, a Trump supporter was seen bleeding from the side of his head. Police were captured on video clips trying to disperse the crowd. Officers wearing riot gear were shown forming lines to control the crowd and taking at least one protester into custody. It is unclear if arrests were made as San Jose police officials were unavailable for comment. Jerusalem: Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat has said France`s bid to revive Israel-Palestinian peace efforts brings "a flicker of hope" for a resolution to the conflict. In an opinion piece in the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Palestine Liberation Organisation secretary general Erekat said that multilateral talks opening Friday in Paris offered "a broader framework" than the moribund bilateral track. "The French initiative is the flicker of hope Palestine has been waiting for and we are confident that it will provide a clear framework with defined parameters for the resumption of negotiations," he wrote in the piece, published online late Thursday night. "The international conference should be viewed as an opportunity to create a negotiating environment in which power is equalised and law and human rights prevail." Israel, which opposes the French peace drive, put the head of its foreign ministry in front of the media Thursday evening for an unscheduled press conference. Diplomat Dore Gold said the bid was doomed to fail, likening it to a 1916 colonial effort to carve up the Middle East. "This effort utterly failed then and will completely fail today," he said in a reference to the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement between France and Britain to draw up the region`s borders. "The only way to get a stable regional arrangement that will allow us to create real peace in the Middle East is if the parties of the region come to understandings between them," he said. "Therefore we prefer a Middle Eastern process and not a process that somebody is trying to create in Paris." According to French diplomatic sources, the fresh peace push would centre on the 2002 Saudi Arabian-led initiative, in which Arab leaders said they would recognise the state of Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied since 1967, and the creation of a Palestinian state. The proposal was largely ignored by Israel at the time but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a positive reference to it on Monday, saying it "includes positive elements that can help revive constructive negotiations with the Palestinians". Neither Israel nor the Palestinians will be represented in Paris at Friday`s talks, which aim to lay the ground for a fully-fledged peace conference to be held by the end of the year. scw/jod/pg Athens: More than 200 migrants were rescued in the south Aegean Sea off the island of Crete after their boat sank, Greece`s coastguard said on Friday. "So far about 250 people have been rescued, based on the first data," coastguard spokesman Nikos Lagkadianos told Skai TV, adding that weather conditions were good. He said it was not clear how many were aboard the vessel but that based on a first assessment it was unlikely to have carried many more than those rescued so far. Fleeing war, thousands of mainly Syrian refugees have braved rough seas this year to make the short but precarious journey from Turkey to Greece`s islands, from which most continue to mainland Greece and northward into wealthier western Europe. However, Crete, Greece`s southernmost island, lies north of Libya and Egypt. A group of 113 mostly Afghan migrants has landed on the island on Wednesday, the first big arrival on the island since the migrant crisis began. Warm weather and calmer seas in the Mediterranean have led to a surge in recent weeks in the number of people trying to cross to Italy from Libya, where people-smugglers operate with relative impunity. Boats on this much longer journey risk being blown off course to islands such as Crete. Tehran: Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Friday Tehran had no intention of cooperating on regional issues with its main enemies the United states and "evil" Britain, state TV reported. "America has continued its enmity towards Iran since (the 1979 Islamic) revolution... It is a huge mistake to trust the evil Britain and the great Satan (U.S.)," Khamenei said in a speech broadcast live on state TV. "We will not cooperate with America over the regional crisis," he said, adding that: "Their aims in the region are 180 degrees opposed to Iran`s." Iran`s most powerful authority, Khamenei also said the United States had not remained committed to a nuclear deal reached between Tehran and six major powers in 2015 aimed at curbing the country`s disputed nuclear programme. Singapore: Islamic State jihadists in the strategic northern Syria town of Manbij "aspire" to directing international terror plots, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said today. Anti-IS fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed alliance of Kurds and Arabs, this week launched an offensive to capture Manbij. The town is on the north-south axis between Jarablus, on the border with Turkey and controlled by IS fighters, and Raqa, the Islamic State group's self-proclaimed capital in Syria. Its capture has long been seen as key in stemming the flow of foreign fighters into and out of Syria. "There are people there, and I can't go into any details, who aspire to inspiring or even directing plots outside of Syria," Carter said at a news conference in Singapore, where he is attending a regional security summit. "That, along with that fact that it is a transit hub for foreign fighter flows in both directions, is a reason why it is an important objective and we are pleased to work with local forces ... Who basically want to take back their own territory from ISIL ... And they are making progress," he added, using an acronym for the IS group. Carter is in Singapore until Sunday for the Shangri-La Dialogue, a meeting of Asian security chiefs to discuss regional security. Tokyo: A seven-year-old boy missing since being abandoned in a bear-inhabited forest in northern Japan as a punishment nearly a week ago was found alive on Friday and reunited with his parents, officials said. The boy, apparently unharmed and in good health, was discovered at a military base. Reports said he had taken shelter in a hut and found a tap to drink from but was hungry and immediately asked for food when discovered. "A Self-Defence Force official who was on a drill found a boy whose age appeared to be seven," said Tomohito Tamura, spokesman for police in northern Hokkaido island. "There was no conspicuous external injury, and the boy introduced himself as Yamato Tanooka," he told AFP, adding that the boy`s parents were reunited with him and confirmed he was their son. The boy "looked in good health" but was taken to hospital by helicopter for a check-up as a precaution, Self-Defense Forces spokesman Manabu Takehara said. The child`s emotional father later apologised when speaking to reporters outside the hospital where the child was being treated, in an appearance aired by public broadcaster NHK. "My excessive act forced my son to have a painful time," he said. "I deeply apologise to people at his school, people in the rescue operation, and everybody for causing them trouble," he added, thanking the rescuers. "The first thing I said to my son was, `I`m very sorry to have caused you to face this suffering because of me,`" said the father, whose name has not been released, adding that his son nodded in return.The boy had been missing since Saturday after his parents said they made him get out of their car on a mountain road as punishment for misbehaving -- actions that have seen them severely criticised. The parents originally told police their son had got lost while they were out hiking to gather wild vegetables, but later admitted they became angry and ordered him onto the road because he had thrown stones at cars and people. The local Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper said the boy had told police that on Saturday night he walked some distance to the corrugated metal hut on the military base -- located some 5.5 kilometres (3.4 miles) northeast of where he went missing. An unidentified Self-Defence Force official told NHK that there were two buildings on the perimeter of an exercise field, and that when the soldier opened the door of one of them he found the boy inside. "When the official asked `are you Yamato?` the boy said `Yes, I am`," he said. The boy was hungry so the soldier who found him gave him something to eat, another military official told NHK. Nippon TV said there was a tap outside the hut and that the boy had been drinking water from it while he sheltered there.Japanese media interrupted regular programmes to broadcast news of the stunning development in the case which has drawn huge media attention. The discovery was the top trending item on Twitter in Japan. "Wow, he was found!" read one tweet. "How come a child can survive only with water?" asked another. Ken Noguchi, a renowned alpinist who has climbed Mount Everest, tweeted: "If he survived by himself, it`s an unbelievable miracle." Others were concerned about the impact of the ordeal on the young boy and even whether his parents should regain custody of him. "I wonder if his heart was broken as he was discarded in the mountain," read a tweet under the user name Shirokuma. "Should he be given back to the parents?" tweeted a user with the name Fujimo. Police rescuers and fire personnel initially led the search for the boy but after coming up empty-handed the local town of Nanae requested military support. From Wednesday Japanese soldiers joined in the hunt in the rugged region, where heavy rains at times hampered the operation conducted in overgrown forest and through tall bushes. Police have said they are considering filing neglect charges against his parents, according to Kyodo News. Lima: Smiling broadly in a white shirt or broad-brimmed peasant`s hat, Keiko Fujimori dances for the crowds at election rallies. But it is her name that most grabs Peruvian voters` attention. She came of age during the violent period of her father Alberto Fujimori`s rule in the 1990s which destroyed his marriage to her mother and landed him in jail for crimes against humanity. His US-educated daughter, known to Peruvians simply as "Keiko", took over as first lady at the age of 19. Now 41, she is, like her father, a divisive conservative figure. But she leads the polls for Sunday`s presidential runoff election against her opponent, center-right economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. She has spent the past five years touring the country, meeting voters in preparation for her bid to be its first female president. "With this energy and this passion we can solve the country`s immediate problems," she said at the closing campaign rally of her Fuerza Popular party. "We represent change for our country," she said, on stage along with her American husband Mark Villanella and their two daughters. "She has had quite a high level of support during her whole political career. For many people it is surprising that she enjoys such popularity," said Maria Luisa Puig, an analyst at the Eurasia Group consultancy. Alberto Fujimori`s dark decade in power from 1990-2000 lives on in the memory of many Peruvians. But he won the love of many for stamping out the Shining Path, a communist guerrilla group that carried out attacks and kidnappings. "Many of Keiko`s supporters remember her father`s tough line on terrorism and think that she can be similarly tough on crime," Puig said.Peruvians refer to Keiko affectionately though inaccurately as "the Chinese" -- "La China". The Fujimoris are actually one of thousands of families of Japanese descent in Peru following waves of economic immigration. Alberto Fujimori, now 77, is in jail for crimes against humanity. A court held him responsible for massacres of people he said were terrorists in 1991 and 1992, including one in a university. Keiko misjudged voters` sensibilities when she pledged during her last election campaign in 2011 to pardon her father. That made her lose the election to leftist Ollanta Humala. "She is a monster," said one voter, 23-year-old trainee teacher Elizabeth Diaz, at a campaign rally in support of Kuczynski. "Her father did a lot of harm to Peru. He killed students." This time round Keiko has been more cautious about her father`s legacy. She has promised to defend human rights.Keiko`s mother Susana Higuchi accused Alberto Fujimori`s men of torturing her during his rule. She fled the presidential palace and divorced him in 1994. Keiko sided with her father and has rejected her mother`s claims as "myths." Now, her supporters want her to follow in her father`s footsteps. "I don`t believe everything they say about her," said one supporter, Miguel Zevallos. "She will fight and she will look after poor people." Keiko Fujimori has vowed to invest in infrastructure for poor communities and grant tax breaks to small companies. She has promised to fight crime by putting more police on the streets and building more prisons. Ahead of the first round, opponents tried to get her excluded from the election for alleged vote-buying. The electoral board dismissed the case against her but disqualified several other candidates. As the second round approached, a fresh corruption scandal struck the secretary general of Fuerza Popular, Joaquin Ramirez. Thousands of her opponents marched in Lima five days before the vote, waving banners reading: "Fujimori never again". Manila: Controversial Philippine president-elect Rodrigo Duterte has launched a profanity-laced tirade against the United Nations while criticising it for being too weak to fix problems in the Middle East and Africa. In a seemingly unprovoked attack on the UN at a Thursday night press conference, Duterte vented his anger in response to a question about foreign media groups that were critical of him. "That`s the trouble here, they`re always raising fears about this or that United Nations convention," Duterte said, even though the journalists` criticism had not been linked to UN protocols. "Fuck you UN, you can`t even solve the Middle East carnage... couldn`t even lift a finger in Africa... shut up all of you." Duterte, 71, had been incensed by the criticism of foreign and local media groups to his comments earlier in the week that corrupt journalists were legitimate targets of assassination. Explaining his stance on corrupt journalists, Duterte said on Tuesday that one murdered reporter who was a vocal critic of his who deserved to die. Duterte refused to apologise on Thursday and warned the media: "Don`t fuck with me". The Philippines is one of the most dangerous nations in the world for journalists, with 174 murdered since a chaotic and corruption-plagued democracy replaced the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos three decades ago. The United Nations has made no recent criticism of Duterte, who has been mayor of the southern city of Davao for most of the past two decades and will be sworn into office on June 30. But in 2008 the then-UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, Philip Alston, highlighted concerns about unsolved murders in Davao. "A death squad operates in Davao City, with men routinely killing street children and others in broad daylight," Alston said in a report. Human rights groups have accused Duterte of links to the so-called Davao Death Squads, which they say have murdered more than 1,000 people. Duterte has variously denied and acknowledged any links to them. But he has been unequivocal that thousands of criminals will be killed when he takes office and unleashes security forces in an unprecedented war on crime. One of Duterte`s main election campaign pledges was to end crime within six months of taking office. This week he offered bounties worth tens of thousands of dollars to security forces who killed drug traffickers. Duterte courted further controversy by wolf whistling a female journalist, then responding to her husband`s outrage by insisting he was not sexually harassing her. cgm-kma/eb/sls London: A British serial paedophile who preyed on impoverished children in a Kuala Lumpur slum and bragged about the abuse online faces life in jail on Friday when he is expected to be sentenced. Richard Huckle, 30, who has pleaded guilty to 71 counts of child sex offences, including rape, targeted children while posing as a volunteer working with Christian communities in the Malaysian capital. Huckle posted pictures of the abuse of boys and girls on website True Love Zone (TLZ), with the youngest victim believed to have been around six months old. "He`s one of the most committed, manipulative, conniving paedophiles I have come across," said Matthew Long of Britain`s National Crime Agency (NCA). Huckle was snared by an Australian investigation on the dark web -- a hard-to-access part of the Internet often used for illegal activity. The Old Bailey central criminal court in London heard earlier that he targeted poor victims over nine years and was writing a guide to child abuse that he intended to publish for profit. "Impoverished kids are definitely much easier to seduce than middle-class Western kids," he said during an online chat. He said he planned to "mould" one of his victims into a "perfect wife" so that he could get away with abusing more children. Investigators have identified 23 victims -- 22 Malaysians and one Cambodian. Of the offences Huckle has admitted, 22 carry a discretionary life sentence.The NCA has faced criticism after it was revealed they did not visit Malaysia until 16 months after Huckle`s arrest, and Malaysian authorities are pressing Britain for more information on his crimes. Ong Chin Lan, assistant director of a special division dealing with such crimes, said late Thursday that Malaysian police still did not know the identities of Huckle`s victims. "We have asked for the information repeatedly and will continue to press them for more information for follow-up action," state-run news agency Bernama quoted Ong as saying. "So far, the victims have not been identified and the NCA only informed us about the incident about one month ago." British police arrested Huckle, from Kent in southeast England, at London Gatwick Airport in December 2014 as he returned home from Malaysia to spend Christmas with his parents. He was carrying a heavily-encrypted computer and camera that contained over 20,0000 images of child sex abuse, many of which showed him committing offences including rape.Police also found a ledger in which he detailed the abuse of 191 victims, but officers were unable to press charges on all cases as there was no photographic evidence. They believe the images may be contained within files still encrypted on the computer. Huckle has refused to reveal his passwords. Huckle`s defence argued in mitigation that he had not inflicted any physical pain on his victims, but the prosecution said that "clear sounds of distress" were heard on the videos. Other videos showed children forced to sexually abuse each other, abuse being committed as other children watched and children being urinated on. Other victims were forced to hold up signs advertising the paedophile website, which had thousands of members. Australian police were able to infiltrate the heavily-encrypted site after identifying its owner, male Adelaide child worker Shannon Grant McCoole, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison last year. Website users were required to upload a regular supply of child abuse images in order to retain membership, Australia`s federal prosecution service said at the time of McCoole`s sentencing. Police were later able to pinpoint Huckle as one of its most prolific users. Huckle, whose child abuse is believed to have started during a gap-year trip to Cambodia aged 19, said he was based in India in order to conceal his identity as he posted videos online. Huckle admitted to his parents that he had committed the abuse after he was arrested at Gatwick Airport, where his father was waiting to pick him up. "His mother was both extremely upset and extremely angry. She and his father called the police and asked them to take their son away," said prosecutor Brian O`Neill. jwp-dt/kjl Seoul: The two Koreas stepped up an angry war of words Friday as tensions mounted over a series of North Korean defections and the South`s rejection of Pyongyang`s repeated offers of military talks. Tensions have been running high on the divided Korean peninsula ever since the North conducted its fourth nuclear test in January followed by a long-range rocket launch. In the past month, a new source of friction has emerged with two cases of group defections by North Korean staff working in Pyongyang-run restaurants in China. A dozen women and their restaurant manager arrived in Seoul in April, and three others from a separate restaurant followed them this week. North Korea insists the staff were duped and effectively kidnapped by South Korean intelligence agents and are being held in the South against their will -- an accusation Seoul categorically denies. "The allurement and abduction clearly proves that the puppet forces of south Korea are the most hideous human rights abusers," a spokesman for the North Korean Red Cross said in a statement.Referring to the latest case of the three women who had been working in a restaurant in the northern Chinese province of Shanxi, the spokesman said they were the victims of a sophisticated, "premeditated abduction". He said South Korean agents "lured" the women away from their work and spirited them across the border with Laos and then into Thailand. Seoul`s unification ministry dismissed the "groundless" accusations on Friday, and said North Korea could better spend time examining why its citizens wanted to flee. "We hope North Korea will look back on the continued defections and use it as an opportunity to improve the human rights and livelihoods of its people," ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-Hee said. The South Korean government estimates that Pyongyang rakes in around $10 million every year from about 130 restaurants it operates -- with mostly North Korean staff -- in 12 countries, including neighbouring China. Tough UN sanctions imposed on North Korea after its January nuclear test significantly curtailed the isolated state`s ability to earn hard currency, making the restaurants an even more important source of income than before. There have been reports of staff not being paid, with restaurants pressured into increasing their regular remittances to Pyongyang.Another recent source of cross-border tension has been South Korea`s negative response to a proposal from North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un to hold military talks to defuse the situation. Seoul argued that the offer amounted to little more than diplomatic posturing given Kim`s renewed commitment to expanding the North`s nuclear arsenal. In a statement issued late Thursday, the North`s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said the South`s rejection of talks was confrontational. "If they turn their back on us, the result will be miserable," the statement said. "Our response will be the toughest offensive aimed to push them deeper into the abyss and lead them faster to self-destruction," it added. In Seoul, the Unification Ministry said such bellicose rhetoric only served to underline the duplicity inherent in the North`s talks proposal. "We can see that North Korea is proving that its previous demands for dialogue was just an insincere posturing," spokesman Jeong said. Los Angeles: A former University of California, Los Angeles, student shot dead a woman at her home in Minnesota before he drove almost 2,000 miles (3,200 km) to the school and killed a professor but failed to find a third intended victim, police said on Thursday. Mainak Sarkar, 38, had intended to kill a second professor besides shooting engineering professor William Klug, 39, at a small office on the campus, police said. He shot himself dead after the killing, police said. The shootings prompted a two-hour long lockdown on Wednesday. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck told reporters on Thursday that a search of Sarkar`s St Paul, Minnesota, home turned up a "kill list" that included the name of the woman found dead nearby, Klug - who was Sarkar`s professor at UCLA - and the name of another professor at the school, who was not harmed. Officials would not release the name of the woman, whose body police said they found at a house in the 2400 block of Pearson Parkway in Brooklyn Park near Minneapolis. A marriage license application obtained by Reuters lists a residence on that block as the home of Ashley Erin Hasti and Sarkar, who married in Minnesota in 2011. Neighbours also said Hasti lived at the home. Records do not show whether the couple, who appeared to have been living separately, were divorced. An active Facebook page belonging to a Minneapolis-area woman named Ashley Hasti shows pictures of Sarkar, but not more recently than May of 2011, about two weeks before their marriage. A page apparently belonging to him, with no public posts since 2011, still prominently displayed several photos of them together. According to the birth date listed on the marriage license application, Hasti turned 31 in March. "We believe that Sarkar came to the Los Angeles area very recently, within the last couple of days," Beck told reporters at Los Angeles police headquarters. "He went there to kill two faculty from UCLA. He was only able to find one." The other professor was off campus at the time, Beck said. Sarkar was armed with two 9mm pistols and multiple ammunition clips, Beck said. He killed himself immediately after fatally shooting Klug, he said. Police searched Sarkar`s Minnesota home after finding a note at the Los Angeles crime scene asking for someone to check on his cat, Beck said. "In the search of Sarkar`s residence in Minneapolis, a list was located," Beck said. "The list has been described as a `kill list.` That was the wording that was put on it." The attack on Klug appeared to be provoked by Sarkar`s belief that his former professor had stolen computer code from him, according to a March blog post that appeared to be written by Sarkar, Beck said. "Your enemy is my enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm," the post said. "Be careful about whom you trust." Reuters was not able to confirm the authenticity of the blog. "UCLA says there is no truth to this," Beck said of the alleged theft of code. "This was a making of his own imagination." The anger reflected in the March blog contrasted with earlier online records indicating Sarkar had gotten along with Klug. In a copy of his 2013 dissertation posted online, Sarkar thanked Klug. "I would like to thank my adviser, Dr William Klug, for all his help and support," Sarkar wrote. Beck said UCLA faculty members were aware that Sarkar, who graduated in 2013, harboured anger towards them. "There was some harsh language but certainly nothing that would be considered homicidal," Beck said, referring to social media postings by Sarkar. His motive for killing the woman was unclear, Beck said. University officials did not respond on Thursday to requests for comment on Sarkar`s claims. Prior to his time at UCLA, from 2003 to 2005 Sarkar attended Stanford University, where he received a master`s degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, university spokeswoman Lisa Lapin said. Police in Brooklyn Park said they discovered the woman`s body when they went to check on her. They did not immediately disclose her identity. Klug was a married father of two children. His wife, Mary Elise Klug, said in a statement released through UCLA that the family was grateful for the support it had received. "Bill was so much more than my soulmate. I will miss him every day for the rest of my life," she said. Reports of shots fired, or even sightings of possible gunmen, have sparked heavy police responses and lockdowns at US schools and elsewhere because of the nation`s history of mass shootings. Last October nine people were shot and killed at Umpqua Community College in southwest Oregon. The 2007 attack at Virginia Tech, in which a gunman killed 32 people, was the deadliest mass shooting in US history. Classes resumed at UCLA on Thursday, with the university offering counselors for students, faculty and staff. UCLA, part of the University of California system, has more than 43,000 students. California: A gunman who shot dead his former college professor in California had also killed his wife before taking his own life, authorities said Thursday, adding that both of the victims were on a "kill list." Local news reports in Minnesota said Mainak Sarkar, 38, killed his wife Ashley Hasti before embarking on a 2,000-mile (3,220-kilometer) journey to Los Angeles in his car to shoot his former professor William Klug. Officials in Hennepin County, in the midwestern state of Minnesota, said Hasti and Sarkar were married on June 14, 2011. It was unclear if the couple were still married. Klug, 39, a father of two who taught mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California Los Angles (UCLA), was shot in a small office on campus on Wednesday before Sarkar turned the gun on himself, police said. Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck said a note in Sarkar`s backpack -- in which he asked that his cat be looked after -- led police to his home in Minnesota where a "kill list" was found. He said Klug was named on the list along with another UCLA professor and the deceased woman, apparently Hasti. She was found dead of a gunshot wound at her home in the small Minnesota town of Brooklyn Park. Beck said investigators believe Sarkar killed her before driving to Los Angeles to continue his rampage, armed with two semi-automatic pistols and multiple rounds of ammunition. "We believe he went there to kill two faculty of UCLA," Beck said. "He was only able to locate one. The second member was off campus." "He was certainly prepared to engage multiple victims with the ordnance he had at his disposal," Beck added. He said Sarkar was convinced Klug had stolen his computer code and given it to someone else, and seemed bent on revenge. "That appears to be his motive," Beck said. "We have discussed this with UCLA (which) says there is no truth to it. "This was a making of his own imagination." The murder-suicide prompted a lockdown and a massive security deployment at the university, amid fears of a mass shooting. The university was shut down for the day but reopened on Thursday and a vigil was planned later in the evening to honor Klug. Students and staff affected by the shooting were offered counseling. The Los Angeles Times quote a source who was close to Klug as saying the professor had gone out of his way to help Sarkar finish his dissertation and to graduate, even though his work was subpar. In his doctoral dissertation, submitted in 2013, Sarkar thanked Klug for his help and support. But he apparently developed a grudge against his former mentor, and offered scathing criticism of Klug in a now-deleted blog post on March 10. "William Klug, UCLA professor is not the kind of person when you think of a professor," he wrote in the post quoted by several US media. "He is a very sick person. I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy..." Beck said the other professor targeted by Sarkar told investigators he was aware Sarkar held a grudge but did not think "it would rise to the level of homicide."According to his LinkedIn page, Sarkar got his master`s degree from Stanford University and also studied aerospace engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, where he graduated in 2000. He apparently worked as a research assistant at the University of Texas in 2003 and then took on a job as a software developer. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Thursday that the deadly shooting at UCLA was a reminder of how endemic gun violence had become in the United States, where readily-available firearms claim around 30,000 lives each year. "When guns are so easy to get, when that violence continues to play out on our streets, we have to speak up and speak out -- have smart legislation to try to prevent that where we can," he told reporters. "You can have a Ph.D. or you can be a little kid, you could be black or white, brown or Asian ... and gun violence has just become too acceptable. We`ve become immune to it." United Nations: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has placed the Saudi-led military coalition supporting Yemen's government on an annual blacklist over the deaths of hundreds of children in airstrikes. Yemen's Shiite Huthi rebels who seized the capital Sanaa in September 2014 were also added to the list of children's rights violators released yesterday, detailing offenses in 14 countries. "Emerging and escalating crises had a horrific impact on boys and girls," said a statement from the office of the UN envoy for children and armed conflict. "The situation in Yemen was particularly worrisome with a five-fold increase in the number of children recruited (by armed groups) and six times more children killed and maimed compared to 2014," it said. The Saudi-led coalition is responsible for 60 percent of the total 785 children who were killed and 1,168 wounded last year in Yemen, said the report. The coalition launched its air campaign to push back the Huthis in March 2015, but the rebels still control the capital and many parts of the country. "In Yemen, owing to the very large number of violations attributed to the two parties, the Huthis/Ansar Allah and the Saudi Arabia-led coalition are listed for killing and maiming and attacks on schools and hospitals," the report said. Of the 762 verified cases of recruitment of child soldiers, 72 percent were attributed to the Huthis, 15 percent to pro-government forces and nine percent to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, according to the report. "In several situations of conflict, aerial operations contributed to creating complex environments in which large numbers of children were killed and maimed," said Leila Zerrougui, the UN envoy for children and armed conflict. "State-allied armed groups and militia have also increasingly been used to fight in support of government forces, in some cases recruiting and using children," she said. More than 6,400 people have been killed in Yemen since the coalition began its campaign and some 80 percent of the population is in dire need of humanitarian aid, according to the UN. Washington: A plane from the US Air Force's elite Thunderbird team crashed in Colorado shortly after flying over a ceremony where President Barack Obama spoke, an official said. The pilot ejected safely from the aircraft and was undergoing a medical examination, according to the Air Force official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Following the accident yesterday, Obama met with the pilot at Peterson Air Force Base before heading back to Washington aboard Air Force One. Obama expressed relief that the pilot was not injured and thanked him for his service to the country, according to reporters who were traveling with the president. The official said the F-16 Thunderbird crashed "shortly after conducting a flyover in support of the US Air Force Academy graduation commencement ceremony" in Colorado Springs, where Obama addressed the crowd. Obama used the occasion to defend his approach to the Syrian conflict, warning against allowing the United States to become drawn into a new civil war in the Middle East. The accident occurred about six miles (nine kilometers) from Peterson Air Force Base. The cause of the crash was under investigation, the Air Force official said. Washington: Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi`s visit to Washington next week, a senior US administration official has described the US-India relationship as of incredible significance to the world. "The US-Indian relationship is of incredible significance, not only to the region but to the world," US State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner said in his daily media briefing on Thursday. "We have a broad bilateral and multilateral relationship with India and look forward to engaging on all those issues," he said. Describing the breadth of the US-Indian relationship as wide, Toner said it addressed security and has got a strong economic component. "We`re looking to build closer relationships across the board with India, because we see it as a vital partner in the region," he said. Modi will visit Washington on June 7-8 during the course of which he will meet US President Barack Obama and address a joint meeting of the US Congress. YEREVAN, JUNE 2, ARMENPRESS. Minister of Labor and Social Affairs of Armenia Artem Asatryan says the Armenian Government conducts steps towards the solution of social issues and the provision of stable incomes for the families of soldiers killed during the April 4-day war. He said family needs were assessed and there are already proposals on including nearly a dozen of families in the respective projects. It will solve the issue of providing stable employment in connection with the works of the small enterprises and agriculture. The Ministry of Economy also made a proposal which has been discussed. Currently the discussions are underway to make this issue comparable and complete, Armenpress reports, the Minister stated. He stated the Government now solves all short-term issues within the given program. At the same time, it is planned to form a complete mechanism in order to make the sources of stable incomes clear and constant. YEREVAN, JUNE 2, ARMENPRESS. Armenias accession to Horizon 2020 heralds a new era of cooperation between Armenia and the European Investment Bank and Fund, Armenpress reports in a briefing with reporters the head of the European Investment Banks Directorate for Operations in the Neighboring countries Heinz Olbers told. If up till now we were focused on financing infrastructural projects, such as transport or energy, this project will give a real opportunity to focus on the private sector as well, SMEs and large business. The project will be particularly focused on innovative companies, where we see Armenias great potential and we will be glad to cooperate, Olbers said. He added that they are in Armenia to get better acquainted with the companies operating in Armenia. Armenia signed a document on May 19, 2016 with the European Commission by which it accessed to Horizon 2020. Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly 80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020) in addition to the private investment that this money will attract. It promises more breakthroughs, discoveries and world-firsts by taking great ideas from the lab to the market. By coupling research and innovation, Horizon 2020 is helping to achieve this with its emphasis on excellent science, industrial leadership and tackling societal challenges. The goal is to ensure Europe produces world-class science, removes barriers to innovation and makes it easier for the public and private sectors to work together in delivering innovation. YEREVAN, JUNE 2, ARMENPRESS. Minister of Economy of Armenia Artsvik Minasyan says the adoption of the Armenian Genocide resolution by the German Bundestag is one of the important steps of restoring the historical justice. However, the Minister thinks that especially Germany must have been the first leaders of that process. I am grateful to those Bundestag MPs who voted for the resolution. But we also expect further actions. I think that now steps eventually must be taken towards the restoration of the historical justice, he stated. The German Bundestag adopted the Armenian Genocide recognition resolution, which is entitled "Remembrance and commemoration of the genocide of Armenians and other Christian minorities in 1915 and 1916". Only one MP voted against the adoption, and one abstained. Speakers were unanimously stressing the need of facing the past, also for contributing the reconciliation between Armenia and Turkey. The Bundestag voiced the crime of the Ottoman Turkey, and stressed this step is neither an accusation nor a claim, but a tribute to the memory of the victims. YEREVAN, JUNE 2, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia send a thank you letter to the President of Federal Republic of Germany Joachim Gauck, Chancellor Angela Merkel and President of the Bundestag Norbert Lammert on the occasion of the resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide. As Armenpress was informed from the press service of Armenian Presidents Office, President Sragsyan expressed deep gratitude to them and all the political and social forces that confidently approved that resolution. President Sargsyan expressed confidence that the resolution will be important in terms of recognizing other genocides and preventing future ones. The adoption of the resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide was a really historical move. It was historical not only for Armenia and the Armenian people, or Germany and the German people, but for the entire civilized world. This symbolizes the supremacy of democracy and universal values and underscores the consistent role of Germany in preserving those values. This was an address to the whole world that the crimes against humanity committed even 100 years ago are not only not forgotten but are condemned by a righteous assessment, reads the Presidents letter. YEREVAN, JUNE 2, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian people are thankful to the German parliament for adopting the resolution recognizing and condemning the Armenian Genocide, as well as for taking some responsibility for that. Armenpress reports numerous Armenians gathered in front of the German Embassy to express gratitude. Member of the youth organization of the Republican Party of Armenia Arusyak Poghosyan told Armenpress that the adoption of the resolution was not only a political but also a huge humanitarian action. That crime was committed against the entire humanity. Only a tough condemnation can prevent such crimes in the future. Naturally, it rather difficult for Germany to take such decisions considering the geopolitical situation. We so that Turkish reaction came without a delay and it was rather aggressive, Arusyak Poghosyan said, adding that it is their duty to express gratitude to a country that displayed a real political will. The participants of the event, shouting Thank you, Germany, conveyed their gratitude to the German Bundestag and people for recognizing the Armenian Genocide. YEREVAN, JUNE 2, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian Assembly of America welcomes today's near unanimous vote in the Bundestag, Germany's National Parliament, affirming the Armenian Genocide, Armenpress reports, citing the official website of the Assembly. The resolution titled "Remembrance and commemoration of the genocide of Armenians and other Christian minorities in the years 1915 and 1916" was overwhelmingly approved despite threats emanating from Turkey. Prior to the vote, Turkey's President Recep Erdogan warned that bilateral diplomatic, economic, trade, political, and military ties between Germany and Turkey will be damaged. In addition, Members of the German Parliament and journalists writing about the resolution have been receiving threats such as: "You will be eliminated," or "Your end will be like that of Hrant Dink," who was a Turkish-Armenian journalist murdered in broad daylight in January 2007 for speaking the truth. Christian Democratic Union (CDU) member and president of the Bundestag, Norbert Lammert condemned what he described as threats, including death threats against German parliamentary deputies of Turkish origin if they voted for the resolution. "We will not be intimidated," he said. Lammert spoke eloquently about the Armenian Genocide on the occasion of the centennial. "What happened in the midst of the First World War in the Ottoman Empire, before the eyes of the world, was a genocide," Lammert said. "We Germans are in no position to lecture anyone about how they should deal with their past. Yet due to our own experiences, we can encourage others to face their history, even when it is painful: self-critical commitment to the truth is essential for reconciliation." In an unofficial translation, the resolution text includes that: "The Bundestag regrets the inglorious role of the German Reich, which as military ally of the Ottoman Empire did nothing to stop these crimes against humanity despite receiving clear information from German missionaries and diplomats about the organized deportation and annihilation of Armenians. This commemoration by the German Bundestag also serves as an expression of particular respect for the oldest Christian nation on earth." German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed that the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks should be acknowledged as genocide. Through her spokeswoman, Christiane Wirtz, Merkel told journalists yesterday morning that she "sided with her parliamentary group" in favor of the Armenian Genocide Resolution. Noting that there is never a good time to speak about something so heinous as genocide, Green party co-chairman, Cem Ozedmir (a German of Turkish origin) read statements by German officials from 1915 showing that they knew that up to 90 percent of deported Armenians had been killed. The resolution states that the fate of the Armenians "exemplifies the history of mass exterminations, ethnic cleansing, forced migrations, the genocides that have atrociously scarred the 20th century." "The vote by the German parliament follows other European countries in acknowledging this painful chapter in history as well as the resolutions adopted by the European Parliament conditioning Turkey's EU admission to coming to terms with its genocidal past," stated Armenian Assembly Executive Director Bryan Ardouny. "The Assembly applauds the Bundestag's principled stand, especially as Turkey continues to blockade Armenia - the last closed border in Europe - refuses to normalize relations with Armenia and unconditionally supported Azerbaijan's recent attempt to once again wipe Armenians off the map in Nagorno Karabakh," Ardouny continued. YEREVAN, JUNE 2, ARMENPRESS. Sooner or later or international political leaderships must recognize the Armenian Genocide, if they do not want new genocides to happen, Vice President of Republic of Armenia National Assembly Eduard Sharmazanov told the journalists after the RPA Executive Body meeting, commenting on the adoption of the resolution recognizing and condemning the Armenian Genocide by the German Bundestag. The adoption of the resolution by the Bundestag opens new doors for recognitions and closes doors before denialism. Unfortunately, the Turkish leadership is not ready to face its own history, Armenpress reports Sharmazanov saying. Sharmazanov added that he held a phone conversation with the Bundestag Vice President Bulmahn. I highly appreciated the position of the German MPs and once again stated that here the key issue is that a country that was an ally for Turkey during the World War I, recognized the Armenian Genocide, Eduard Sharmazanov said. To the remark that Armenian-Turkish relations will deteriorate further, Sharmazanov mentioned that it was Turkey who cancelled the Armenian-Turkish protocols. Turkey brought forward preconditions; therefore, Turkey must take steps for reconciliation, Sharmazanov said, adding that Turkey does vice de versa by recalling its Ambassador from Germany. The German Bundestag adopted on June 2 the Armenian Genocide recognition resolution, which is entitled "Remembrance and commemoration of the genocide of Armenians and other Christian minorities in 1915 and 1916". Only one MP voted against the adoption, and one abstained. Speakers were unanimously stressing the need of facing the past, also for contributing the reconciliation between Armenia and Turkey. YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. Dialogue between NATO and Russia is even more important when tensions are high, Armenpress reports, citing TASS, North Atlantic Alliances Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told a press conference in Paris on Friday. "Defense and dialogue are the two tracks of NATOs approach to Russia," Stoltenberg said. "And we are moving forward on both tracks," he added. "Dialogue between NATO and Russia is even more important when tensions are high. Because we must avoid accidents and incidents spiralling out of control," Stoltenberg said adding that "a new Cold War is in nobodys interest." The NATO secretary general said he discussed the agenda for the Warsaw Summit with French President Francois Hollande. "We reviewed our agenda for the Warsaw Summit, including our plans to enhance our forward presence in the eastern part of the Alliance. This is a defensive and proportionate response to Russias actions in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine," Stoltenberg said. Addressing Hollande, Stoltenberg said: "In particular I appreciate your (Frances) efforts, along with Germany, to find a peaceful solution to the crisis in Ukraine.". Gannett had called on investors to withhold support for Tribune-backed board members after management spurned the offer and criticized Gannett for undervaluing the company USA Today publisher Gannett said Thursday it was reconsidering its $864 million offer for rival newspaper group Tribune Publishing amid a heated war of words between the two media firms. Gannett, which last month raised its offer for its rival -- owner of the Los Angeles Times and other large dailies -- suggested it may withdraw the bid after a Tribune Publishing shareholder meeting backed the company's plan to remain independent earlier in the day. Gannett had called on investors to withhold support for Tribune-backed board members after management spurned the offer and criticized Gannett for undervaluing the company. "Gannett is reviewing whether to proceed with its acquisition offer taking into account the results of the 'withhold' vote," a Gannett statement said. The statement included comments from Gannett vice president Michael Dickerson, who sought to win over Tribune Publishing shareholders. "We never intended to engage in a public fight for Tribune," Dickerson told Tribune shareholders. "Instead we anticipated having constructive discussions with your board. However, rather than engaging with Gannett, the Tribune board has adopted an unproven strategy, implemented various delay tactics and ultimately effected a transaction that significantly diluted Tribune's outstanding shares." Gannett's offer "would deliver superior and certain value for Tribune's owners at a tumultuous time for the company," he argued. Gannett's bid aimed to combine the national daily USA Today with its rival's big regional newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun, in addition to the coveted Los Angeles Times daily. After the bid became public, Tribune Publishing denounced Gannett's "hostile tactics," calling them part of an effort to "steal the company from our shareholders." Tribune later adopted a "poison pill" share plan to make a takeover more complicated, adding a new investor as it pledged to continue efforts to remain independent and pursue its own path to adapt to the digital era. Story continues In a statement after its shareholder meeting, Tribune Publishing announced it was "rebranding" by changing its name to "tronc." The name, shortened from "tribune online content," according to a statement "captures the essence of the company's mission" to "deliver personalized and interactive experiences to its 60 million monthly users." Separately, a Tribune Publishing shareholder filed suit accusing the company of breaching its fiduciary responsibility by rejecting the Gannett offer, the Chicago Tribune reported. The suit by Capital Structures Realty Advisors says the company stacked its board and structured a new investment to fend off the takeover bid against shareholders' interests. Tribune Publishing group was spun off the larger Tribune Co. in 2014, retaining the group's newspaper holdings. Gannett also broke up its media conglomerate last year, splitting off its television operations into a new firm called Tegna. Petro-Canada gas stations in Kelowna, Kamloops, Edmonton and Calgary are running out of petrol from their parent company, Suncor. In Kelowna, an employee at the Petro-Canada at Glenmore and Kane roads said they ran out of regular grade gas at 2:45 p.m. PT on Thursday and were out of premium grade by 5 p.m. Similarly, a staffer at the Petro-Canada on Highway 33 said they hadn't run out of gas yet, but they expected to soon. "We're out of gas and unless we can get it from a third party then we'll be out three to five weeks," said Tianna Byers, an employee at the Petro-Canada on Highway 97 in Kelowna. "The fire in Fort Mac has reached a place called Wood Buffalo in Alberta, which is our supplier so we can't get any more gas." Buyers said the location she works at ran out of mid-grade gas and diesel yesterday, and out of premium at 8:30 p.m. on Thursday. She said the shortage is mostly affecting gas stations in Western Canada, including B.C. In Calgary, a Petro-Canada employee at a station on 37th Street S.W. also said they were completely out of gas, and had heard that other locations in the city were as well. Production issues "There have been issues both with crude production because of [the wildfires in] Fort McMurray," said Dan McTeague, senior petroleum analyst with GasBuddy.com. "But most importantly on Friday of last week one of the refineries that supplies gasoline into the B.C. market and into Kamloops and Kelowna experienced an unknown problem in which production has been curtailed." McTeague said most of the Okanagan's gas comes from Edmonton via Kinder Morgan's TransMountain pipeline, which is he says is usually "jam packed." He said although he couldn't confirm the shortage was due to the Fort McMurray wildfire specifically, one clue is that pipeline operators recently issued a call for nominations because they had extra space. "That is really a significant clue given it's rare that it happens," McTeague said. Story continues He said the Suncor refinery in Edmonton processes140,000 barrels of oil a day and supplies gas stations as far as Thunder Bay, Ont. McTeague said he has heard anecdotally of 20 gas stations shutting down in both Edmonton and Calgary because of lack of supply. He wasn't sure how many have closed in B.C. because of the issue. Shortage can be predicted, he said, explaining that in the U.S. refiners are required to issue a weekly summary of supply and demand. "In Canada no such thing is available and apparently it doesn't seem to be on anyone's radar screen and it should," he said. Gas shortages are rare, McTeague said, but last summer Shell stations were on allocation meaning their supplies were rationed instead of set by demand. CBC News has contacted Suncor, but the company has not responded yet. With files from Anita Bathe and Brady Strachan By Vladimir Soldatkin and Olesya Astakhova MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia, the world's top oil producer, plans to continue its consultations with OPEC and may hold a meeting with the group this autumn, Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, of which Russia is not a member, failed to agree on output targets on Thursday, at its first meeting since April when Saudi Arabia refused to sign up to an oil output freeze without Iran - which is trying to recover market share after the lifting of sanctions - ruining a wider global agreement. "We will continue our relations with OPEC... We have an energy dialogue format which we will continue. We will for sure do a related meeting this year," Novak said, referring to consultations on the market situation between Moscow and OPEC. Brent oil prices held at around $50 (34) a barrel on Friday although OPEC did not agree on output targets, supported by Saudi Arabia's pledge not to flood the market with more fuel. Novak said Saudi Arabia had the capacity to increase output but he thought that Riyadh would stick to a "balanced" oil production policy. Saudi Arabia was pumping at an average of 10.25 million barrels of oil per day (bpd) in May, slightly up from 10.15 million bpd in April, a Reuters survey showed. Russian output was slightly down to 10.83 million bpd in May. REBALANCING Having been pessimistic over the timing of the market's imbalance receding, energy ministers, including Novak, have started to note signs of it heading back towards rebalancing. The International Energy Agency said in May that unplanned disruption to output in Canada, Nigeria and Libya could help run down a global overhang of unused crude this year, while demand will benefit from growing gasoline usage. "It was a successful meeting, it was full harmony among members. We reviewed thoroughly market's status of oil supply and demand. The worst was over," Qatari Energy Minister Mohammed Al-Sada told reporters in Moscow, referring to the OPEC meeting. "The market is heading towards rebalancing." Al-Sada said he saw "huge shrinkage in investments" in the oil industry because of the recent price weakness - down to as low as $27 per barrel in January - "which can lead to shortage down the road." "Investment is needed to come back so that we can sustain production and satisfy the market medium to long term," he said. On Thursday, OPEC decided unanimously to appoint Nigeria's Mohammed Barkindo as its new secretary-general after years of friction over the issue. Novak, who was meeting al-Sada on Friday in Moscow as a part of a regular inter-governmental commission, told reporters that he saw the appointment of a new secretary general as a key OPEC decision. He reiterated that Russia did not expect any new actions from the cartel and said he kept his forecast of an average oil price for 2016 at between $40 and $50 per barrel. (Writing by Katya Golubkova; Editing by Adrian Croft and David Evans) To tip or not to tip? Thats often the question for travelers. The answer varies depending on whether you are here at home or traveling abroad. In a handful of countries such as Japan, travelers risk insulting waiters or hotel workers by offering a tip. But in other countries, such as the U.S. and Canada, not offering a tip can be insulting, says Kristen Bonner, a researcher for financial website GoBankingRates. You should also know that while tipping is customary in some countries, like the U.S., it isn't customary in others. Those countries include Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Brazil, and China, according to Bonner. One way to make sure you know whether or not to tip is by turning to apps that can provide guidance in a pinch. Several tipping guides that will tell you how much tip is customary are available for smartphones. Among them are Global Tipping and Tip Like a Local for iOS devices and Tipping Bird for Android devices. Another good idea is to make sure that you have cash on you. Before heading out on your travels, visit your bank to exchange big bills for smaller denominations. If traveling in the U.S., carry plenty of $5 or $1 bills, says Bonner. If youre traveling outside of your home country, visit a currency exchange kiosk or bank to get local currency in small denominations. Tipping Rules of Thumb Keep these suggestions in mind while traveling. Airports: In countries where tipping is the norm, such as the U.S. and Canada, tip porters who are checking in your bags at the curbside with $5 for one bag and an extra $3 to $5 for each additional bag. Taxis: In the U.S. and Canada, tip your taxi driver 10 to 20 percent of the bill. The tip for a town car and limo driver is a little higher15 percent to 20 percent. In Europe, the practice is to round up on a fare. So if your fare was 23, round up to 25. When in doubt while traveling in other countries, Bonner says rounding up is a good rule of thumb. Restaurants: In the U.S. and Canada, its typical to tip 15 to 20 percent, or up to 25 percent if the service was excellent. For parties of eight or more, the tip may already be included. While some restaurants are beginning to do away with tips altogether, the practice isn't that common yet. In Europe, adding a tip of 5 to 10 percent is appreciated, but restaurants in some countries such as Italy already add a service charge, to your bill so you don't need to give an additional tip. You dont need to tip in countries where tipping is not customary, such as in Japan and South Korea. Story continues Hotels: At five-star hotels in the U.S. and Canada, tip a bellman $5 per bag. At less highly rated hotels, a tip of $1 to $2 per bag is customary. Many travelers forget to tip the housekeepers before checking out, Bonner says. She recommends that you tip $2 to $10 for each night of your stay. You can tip doormen between $2 to $5 per day. If the concierge has been helpful with things like making reservations, you can tip them anywhere from $5 to $20. In Europe, hotel staff expect to be tipped. The practice varies considerably in regions such as Asia and South America. More from Consumer Reports: The best matching washers and dryers Generator Buying Guide 8 ways to boost your home value Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright 2006-2016 Consumers Union of U.S. Topper's Pizza Barrie store manager Skye McDaniels (middle) teams up for photo with Karen Trottola, Director of Marketing (right) and Jeff Dillon, Executive VP (left) announcing the record setting details of their 10 week Sick Kids fundraising campaign.Click here for high-resolution version TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - June 3, 2016) - Editors Note: There is a photo associated with this press release. The results are in! Topper's Pizza Canada was involved in a record breaking campaign, raising a total of $44,623.00, surpassing last year's customer donations by over $10,000. The Toppazzini family matched $1 to every $5 raised, bringing the total donation to $53,547.60. In an effort to increase funding and awareness among local communities across Ontario, Topper's Pizza joined with SickKids for this ten week fundraising campaign. Donations were collected online, phone orders, in store donation or by ordering the Topper's Feel Good Meal, a meal created specifically for this campaign. "At SickKids, we believe that where you live shouldn't determine if you live," said Wendy Dempsey, manager, sponsorship and cause marketing, SickKids Foundation. "We were thrilled that so many people chose to contribute to Topper's campaign through their pizzerias across the province. These donations will be put towards the hospital's highest priority needs allowing us to help more sick children in need of specialized care from four corners of our province." The majority of the donations came from franchises outside of the GTA, reaffirming that SickKids hospital impacts lives every where. "Our franchise partners really jumped on board with the program this year, and our call centre was a huge driver of the campaign's success," said Karen Trottola, Director of Marketing and Communication for Topper's Pizza Canada. To thank them for their passion and commitment, Toronto Sick Kids Hospital paid a visit to the Sudbury call centre to celebrate their success and say Thank You, as they were approaching the end of the campaign. "Over the past four years, Topper's Pizza Canada's Feel Good campaign has raised over $200,000 in donations," says Trottola. "We'd like to thank all of our customers for their continued support." About Topper's Pizza Canada Founded in 1982, the Topper's Pizza franchise has over 37 pizzeria locations across Ontario serving up authentic Italian specialty pizzas as well as wings, salads, desserts and their new Crustano Sandwiches. The company began franchising in 1992 and has plans for rapid expansion across Ontario and Canada. Topper's success is built on a four generation Toppazzini family legacy which has been carried on with the tradition of using fresh, high quality ingredients, local vegetables and their trademark Authentic ItalianBread Crust. Topper's Pizza strives to give back to their local communities while in addition, partnering with SickKids Foundation. For more information, visit www.toppers.ca Story continues About SickKids Foundation Established in 1972, SickKids Foundation raises funds on behalf of The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and is the largest charitable funder of child health research, learning and care in Canada. Philanthropy is a critical source of funding for SickKids - one of the world's foremost paediatric healthcare institutions. Thanks to the generosity of the community, and as a result of a record-breaking year in fundraising and investment returns, SickKids Foundation generated an unprecedented $136 million for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2015. For more information, please visit sickkidsfoundation.com. To view the photo associated with this press release, please visit the following link: http://www.marketwire.com/library/20160602-1057672_SickKidsCampaign_800.jpg The judge handed Richard Huckle, 30, 22 life sentences to be served concurrently after he pleaded guilty to 71 counts of child sex offences (AFP Photo/) (NATIONAL CRIME AGENCY/AFP) A British serial paedophile who preyed on impoverished Kuala Lumpur slum children voiced deep remorse before a London court on Friday for his "disgusting behaviour". Richard Huckle, 30, who has pleaded guilty to 71 of 91 counts of child sex offences, including rape, targeted children while posing as a volunteer working with Christian communities in the Malaysian capital. More than 20,000 images of child sex abuses were found on his heavily-encrypted laptop. Huckle appeared in the dock at London's Old Bailey criminal court where judge Peter Rook heard mitigation from his lawyer Philip Sapsford. Rook said he would have to weigh up whether a life sentence was appropriate for 22 of the most serious counts before passing sentence at 10:00am (0900 GMT) on Monday. Sapsford asked for leniency, arguing that in pleading guilty, his client had spared a jury from being exposed to images of his abuse. He accepted it would be "a very long time" before Huckle was released from prison but asked that the sentence give his client "hope" of rehabilitation into society. Huckle had bragged about his abuse online and was snared by an Australian investigation on the dark web -- a hard-to-access part of the Internet often used for illegal activity. - 'All my own doing' - In the letter of remorse written on May 23 and read to the court by his lawyer, Huckle acknowledged "the scale of the damage I have caused". "I completely misjudged the affections I received from these children. "My low self-esteem and lack of confidence with women was no excuse to be using these children as an outlet." He said he was "gullible to be easily influenced" by the "pathetic, perverted lust of those who drew me into the dark net". And he said he hoped there would be help for the victims of the "disgusting behaviour I performed on them". "I am open and eager to rehabilitate from this offending behaviour," he wrote. Story continues "In no way do I want to be treated as a martyr to child sex tourism in Malaysia. "This was all my own doing as a consequence of my own immaturities. "I am deeply remorseful and regretful of what has happened and will do all I can in being proactive towards rehabilitating myself." The Old Bailey heard earlier that Huckle targeted poor victims and was writing a guide to child abuse that he intended to publish for profit. He posted pictures of the abuse of boys and girls online. Huckle admitted offences against children aged between six months and 12 years, committed between 2006 and 2014. Investigators have identified 23 victims -- 22 Malaysians and one Cambodian. - Outrage in Malaysia - Huckle, who comes from Kent in southeastern England, was arrested at London's Gatwick Airport in December 2014 as he returned from Malaysia to spend Christmas with his parents. Files on his laptop showed him committing offences including rape. Huckle has not handed over the passwords for some files which remain encrypted. Police also found a ledger in which he detailed the abuse of 191 victims, but officers were unable to press charges on all cases as there was no photographic evidence. Videos recovered showed children being forced to sexually abuse each other, abuse being committed as other children watched and children being urinated on. The case has sparked revulsion in Malaysia, with newspapers on Friday plastering photos of Huckle on their front pages along with angry headlines. "This monster defiled our kids," read the headline in The Star leading daily. Huckle took children with him to church and regularly roamed an impoverished Kuala Lumpur neighbourhood to snap pictures of children, those who had met him said on Friday. But several people interviewed by AFP said they had seen no reason to suspect Huckle of child sex abuse. Paul Packianathan, senior pastor of a Protestant church located in a Kuala Lumpur suburb, said Huckle's church visits were infrequent and had aroused "no suspicions". He condemned Huckle's actions as "despicable". Finnish English Espoo, Finland, 2016-06-03 13:52 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SRV GROUP PLC STOCK EXCHANGE RELEASE 3 June 2016 at 2:55 PM SRV wins about EUR 290 million contractor agreement for the implementation of Central Finland Central Hospital SRV will further boost its position as implementers of large, high-profile projects. The Council of Central Finland Health Care District approved the new hospital's more detailed overall budget and the project management contractor agreement worth about EUR 290 million agreed with SRV on 3 June 2016. The final project management contract agreement will be signed in June. A new central hospital will be built near the existing Central Finland Central Hospital in Kukkumaki in 2020. The total investment in the new central hospital will be worth about EUR 490 million. "This is a historic agreement for SRV, because it's the company's largest contract in which our company's own capital will not be tied. Our order backlog totalled EUR 1,6 billion at the end of March. Central Finland Central Hospital will significantly increase our already record-high order backlog. The final target price of the project management contractor agreement was confirmed at a meeting of the Administrative Council of the Central Finland Health Care District. This is a great example on how SRV could found reduction on costs in co-operation with the client in order to meet the target price set, says Juha Toimela, who is in charge of operations in Finland. The project will be included in SRV's backlog following the agreement's signature on 15 June 2016. The prerequisite for signing the agreement is that the decision made by the Council of Central Finland Health Care District has entered into force. The new hospital will be built near the existing central hospital. Most of the hospital premises will be taken up by specialised care, while some will be reserved for the City of Jyvaskyla's basic health care. Earth-moving for the new hospital will begin in early August and actual construction in the beginning of September 2016. The new hospital will comprise 100,000 gross square metres. The hospital will improve health care efficiency, change structures, processes and logistic solutions and integrate basic health care, specialised care and social work services. The hospital's expenses will be divided among the 21 municipalities that make up the Council of Central Finland Health Care District. SRV has solid experience in the construction of health care and specialised premises. In recent years, for example, SRV has built the A&E annex to Jorvi Hospital in Espoo, and the HUSLAB laboratory building in Meilahti, Helsinki. "The hospital projects we have carried out in recent years have been extremely successful. The HUSLAB laboratory building, for example, was completed ahead of schedule, with zero faults. We are currently also working on three new buildings for Tampere University Hospital; the New Children's Hospital in Helsinki; the basic renovation and extension of the Women's Hospital; and the health and wellbeing centre in Kalasatama, Helsinki, says Mr Toimela. For more information, contact: Juha Toimela, Vice President, Operations in Finland, +358 40 594 5473, juha.toimela@srv.fi Kimmo Kurki, Production Manager, +358 40 705 7266, kimmo.kurki@srv.fi Timo Kauppi, Regional Director, +358 40 592 3008, timo.kauppi@srv.fi Paivi Kauhanen, SVR, Communications, +358 50 598 9560, paivi.kauhanen@srv.fi www.srv.fi You can also find us on social media: Facebook LinkedIn Twitter Instagram SRV Building for life 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 The already-divisive Ghostbusters reboot is going to go down in history as the single most disliked trailer in YouTube history. That is, of course, assuming that there'll never be a Dirty Grandpa 2. Nevertheless, Paul Feig's take on Ghostbusters, featuring an all-star cast of female comedic talent, has come in for vocal criticism online and it's not gone unnoticed. Recently, Dan Aykroyd spoke up in its defence whilst Melissa McCarthy admitted that she almost pitied those who spent their time ranting against the film. Judd Apatow, who's made such films as Knocked Up, The 40-Year Old Virgin and Trainwreck, was recently quizzed about his thoughts on the film and his opinion on the hate it's been getting. "I would assume theres a very large crossover of people who are doubtful Ghostbusters will be great and people excited about the Donald Trump candidacy. I would assume they are the exact same people." Yikes. "That movie is made by the great Paul Feig and stars the funniest people on Earth, so I couldnt be more excited. I think people have paid too much attention to just some angry trolls. And it will be judged on its own greatness." To be fair, Apatow has a point here. The hatred for the Ghostbusters reboot has been exceptionally vocal and, yes, the media is to blame for that. Not only that, those who dislike the film are basing their anger on two trailers and the fact that it's a Ghostbusters reboot. Keep in mind that Melissa McCarthy - who's actually IN THE FILM - said that the first trailer wasn't all that great and the fact that the CinemaCon footage (most of which hasn't been seen online) received quite a warm welcome by those who saw it. Apatow went on, explaining that some things need to change and "we have our past and if you can come up with a new, cool way to do something, then thats exciting and hopefully it will make a lot of people happy." Again, this is a fair point. You only need to look at successful reboots like Christopher Nolan's Batman to know that, with the right talent behind it, things can work out. While Paul Feig might not be in Christopher Nolan's league, he does have a solid filmography working with comedy. He directed Bridesmaids, Spy, some of the best episodes of Arrested Development AND The US Office, so clearly he knows what he's doing. What do you think? Are you against the idea of another Ghostbusters and if so, why? Let us know in the comments! Via Uproxx As it's been confirmed earlier today, Donald Trump will be visiting Ireland before the end of the month. Already, Trump's visit has been met with wide criticism from many corners of Irish society and there's already talk of protests. But where exactly is Trump planning to go? Well, he's said that he's in the country to visit Doonbeg Hotel, one of his many hotels around the globe. However, there's a decent chance he'll be doing a bit of sightseeing while he's here. So, using our terrible, terrible Photoshop skills, we've visualised Donald Trump in a number of lesser known, but still hugely important Irish landmarks. Take a look. KC's, CORK CITY Trump might enjoy the KC Special or the Kashmir. Both solid choices. They don't carry Trump Steaks, though. CURRACLOE BEACH, CO. WEXFORD Ah, Curracloe Beach. The sight of many a happy memory for us all. Now imagine Trump's helicopter landing in the distance and eventually, the construction of a gigantic Taj Mahal-esque hotel in the surrounding environments. THE MOURNE WALL, CO. DOWN Well, we know he's a fan of walls. THE SMOKING AREA IN WORKMAN'S, DUBLIN CITY Can't imagine Trump would enjoy Todd Terje blasted at huge volumes whilst surrounded by all kinds of nationalities. THE SUPERMACS ON EYRE SQUARE, GALWAY CITY The eternal question - Papa Johns, Supermacs or Quiznos? The correct answer is, of course, Supermacs. Every time. TAYTO PARK, CO. MEATH Much like Trump's policies, the Cu Chulainn Rollercoaster is filled with many twists and turns and is absolutely crazy when you see it from afar. THE ROOST, MAYNOOTH TOWN Highly doubtful Trump would get into The Roost, in fairness. FOXY JOHN'S, DINGLE DEFINITELY wouldn't be let in here, either. THE PAV, TRINITY COLLEGE Likewise, Trump would undoubtedly be loudly protested by any number of societies in Trinners. Alibaba and Suning aim to increase sales to 400 billion yuan in three years Updated: 2016-06-03 09:50 By Wang Zhuoqiong(chinadaily.com.cn) A pedestrian walks past a store of Suning.com, the online shopping site of home appliance chain Suning, in Shanghai, Jan 19, 2016. [Photo/IC] Alibaba Group and Suning Commerce Group Co announced an alliance with home appliance brands on Wednesday to stimulate their sales to reach a total of about 400 billion yuan in the next three years. Under the new strategy, home appliance brands including Midea, Haier, Samsung, Hisense, Huawei and Xiaomi will increase their annual sales revenue to 50 billion yuan in three years from the current 10 billion yuan. With Alibaba's nearly 700 million members and Suning's 1600 physical stores selling baby products and appliances, the new model is hoping to help brands with resources in big data, logistics and sales from both Alibaba and Suning. Zhang Jindong, chairman of Suning, said the new model that integrates online and offline commerce will break the invisible walls between brand producers and consumers. In 10 months, the two titans of the Chinese retail industry have completed their business transactions since the announcement last August of their strategic partnership. Photo by Daderot [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons When I was first appointed as the director of the MIT Media Lab, The New York Times said it was an "unusual choice" - which it was since my highest academic degree was my high school diploma, and, in fact, had dropped out of undergraduate programs at both Tufts and the University of Chicago, as well as a doctoral program at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. When first approached about the position, I was given advice that I shouldn't apply considering my lack of a degree. Months later, I was contacted again by Nicholas Negroponte, who was on the search committee, and who invited me to visit MIT for interviews. Turns out they hadn't come up with a final candidate from the first list. The interview with the faculty, student and staff went well - two of the most exciting days of my life - although quite painful as well, as a major earthquake in Japan occurred the night between the two days. In so many ways, those two days are etched into my mind. The committee got back to me quickly. I was their first choice, and needed to come back and have meetings with the School of Architecture + Planning Dean Adele Santos, and possibly the provost (now MIT president) Rafael Reif, since I was such an unorthodox candidate. When I sat down to meet with Rafael in his fancy office, he gave me a bit of a "what are you doing here?" look and asked, "How can I help you?" I explained the unusual circumstance of my candidacy. He smiled and said, "Welcome to MIT!" in the warm and welcoming way he treats everyone. As the director of the Media Lab, my job is to oversee the operations and research of the Lab. At MIT, the norm is for research labs and academic programs to be separated-like church and state-but the Media Lab is unique in that it has "its own" academic Program in Media Arts and Sciences within the School of Architecture + Planning, which is tightly linked to the research. Since its inception, the Lab has always emphasized hands-on research: learning by doing, demoing and deploying our works rather than just publishing. The academic program is led by a faculty member, currently Pattie Maes, with whom I work very closely. My predecessor, as well as Nicholas, the lab's founding director, both had faculty appointments. However, in my case, due to the combination of my not knowing any better and the Institute not being sure about whether I had the chops to advise students and be sufficiently academic, I was not given the faculty position when I joined. In most cases, it didn't matter. I participated in all of the faculty meetings, and except for rare occasions, was made to feel completely empowered and supported. The only awkward moments were when I was mistakenly addressed as "Professor Ito," or after explaining my position to academics from other universities had to endure responses like, "Oh! I thought you were faculty but you're on the ADMINISTRATIVE side of the house!" So I didn't feel like I NEEDED to be a professor. When I was offered the opportunity to submit a proposal to become a professor, I wasn't sure exactly how it would help. I asked a few of my mentors and they said that it would allow me to have a life at MIT after I was no longer Lab director. Frankly, I can't imagine ever leaving my role as director of the Lab, but that was a nice option. Also, becoming a professor makes me more formally part of the Institute itself. It is a vote of confidence since it requires approval by the academic council. I am not interested in starting my own research group, but rather have always viewed the entire Media Lab itself my "research group," as well as my passion. However, as I help start new initiatives and support faculty, from time to time, I have become more involved in thinking and doing things that require a more academic frame of mind. Lastly, I have begun to have more opinions about the academic program at the Media Lab and more broadly at MIT. Becoming a faculty member would give me a much better position from which to express these opinions. With these thoughts in mind-and with advice from my wise mentors-I requested, and today received, appointment as a member of the MIT faculty, as a Professor of the Practice in Media Arts and Sciences. I still remember when I used to argue with my sister, a double PhD, researcher, and faculty member, calling her "academic" as a derogatory term. I remember many people warning me when I took the role as the director of the Media Lab that I wouldn't fit in or that I'd get sick of it. I've now been at MIT approximately five years - longer than I've been at any other job - (and my sister, Mimi, is now an entrepreneur.) I feel like I've finally found my true calling and am happier than I've ever been with my work, my community and the potential for growth and impact for myself and the community in which I serve. So thank you MIT and all of my mentors, peers, students, staff, and friends who have supported me so far. I look forward to continuing this journey to see where it goes. I've posted the research statement that I submitted to MIT for the promotion case. The appointment is effective July 1, 2016. 4 Things to Know So You Dont Get Ripped Off When Setting Up an Online Business in Singapore Remember the days when virtually every polytechnic student was running some kind of blogshop selling clothes sourced from City Plaza or Bangkok? While that craze died down quite rapidly, Singapores e-business scene has actually been quietly growing over the years. Online retailers like HipVan, Love Bonito and Reebonz have made quite a name for themselves. If youve always dreamt of setting up a successful e-business that would eventually become so successful youd be able to quit your job, well, you never know until you try. But before you jump in, here are four areas in which you should do your homework. Setting up the website The first sum of cash youll have to fork out on behalf of your new business will be to cover the cost of booking a URL and web hosting. This is something that is pretty much a no-brainer for those whove already done it and have a web hosting company theyve been using for years. But for total noobs, its easy to get overcharged. Many moons ago, I too had an online store, and we ended up paying 500 SGD to a local company for hosting space and a URL. Now, if youve done your homework, youll realise this is way more than what you should be paying, especially for a fledgling site with little traffic. In fact, you can quite easily find a whole bunch of companies online that will give you a years worth of hosting and your URL of choice for under 200 SGD. So make sure you do your research online before signing up for a package. There is no need to stick with a local company, as a local web developer can work on your site no matter where your hosting comes from. Some popular places to get web space include HostGator and BlueHost, but if you do your research you might be able to find even better deals. Its a good idea to read reviews to make sure youre getting a stable connection though. Designing your marketplace If youre serious about creating a professional-looking website rather than a blogshop, unless you and your business partners have web design skills, youll probably want to get a web developer to do it for you. Story continues Now, you might be shocked to realise that some developers are quoting a few hundred dollars, while others are demanding tens of thousands of dollars. To deal with this, its important to know exactly what these developers are promising to do, and what you actually need. Those who quote you shocking amounts of money are usually offering to develop a site for you from scratch. This means they presumably start with a blank template and then magick an ecommerce site out of nothing. Thats like setting up a blog without using WordPress or Blogspot, and instead opening up Notepad and writing the code from scratch. This is something you will probably never need. What you should be doing is using an established ecommerce platform and then getting a developer to customise a site on it for you. The most famous ones on the market are Shopify and Magento. When you speak with your developer, ask him if he can customise these platforms instead of build an ecommerce site from scratch. At the same time, you want to ensure the developers abilities dont extend to little more than changing the font and adding your banner on top. Its usually safer to find someone who has a portfolio containing other ecommerce sites built using the same platform youre using. Having a good legal framework in place There are lots of copycats out there on the internet, and lets face it, youre probably not the only one with dibs on goods from your supplier in Thailand/China/Korea. The only thing thats stopping some opportunistic person from ripping off your business is what you put up onlineyour site design, your brand and your online content. Therefore, its really advisable to have a good legal framework in place to protect your work. Unless youve invented some new product that promises to reverse balding, youre not looking at anything long and complicated like applying for patents. Protecting yourself legally will probably be a matter of simply making sure you copyright all the necessary material so you dont get ripped off. Spend a little money and get a lawyer to give your site the once-over. Ideally this should be done at the start, but many online shop owners take a risk by waiting to see if they have a chance at becoming profitable before spending that money. Purchasing inventory Unless youre buying blogshop clothes from City Plaza, you are probably going to be purchasing inventory overseas because, uh, everything in Singapore is expensive and already imported from somewhere else. While making your very first order might involve you buying one of those huge Thai rainbow bags and hopping on a TigerAir flight, at some point youll reach the stage where you need to send large amounts of money to your suppliers. And we really, really dont advise you withdraw a suitcase-full of cash and take it to the moneychanger at Mustafa. Instead, you should be using a remittance service like World First that will send the money electronically to your suppliers. Your main concerns about remittance services will be about reliability and not being overcharged for your inventory purchases. Dealing with all of the above can be pretty overwhelming when youre still trying to get your online store off the ground, but trust us, it gets easier with time, and once you know how everything works its a model you can easily replicate should you later decide to start selling Kpop merchandise/fake eyelashes/stress balls online. Have you ever tried to set up an e-commerce site? Share your tips and experiences in the comments! This article was brought to you by World First Asia Pte Ltd. The post 4 Things to Know So You Dont Get Ripped Off When Setting Up an Online Business in Singapore appeared first on the MoneySmart blog. MoneySmart.sg helps you maximize your money. Like us on Facebook to keep up to date with our latest news and articles. Compare and shop for the best deals on Loans, Insurance and Credit Cards on our site now! More From MoneySmart Turkey and Germany on Friday vowed their critical alliance would not be broken by a ferocious dispute sparked by the German parliament's resolution recognising the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman forces as genocide. Seeking to keep the row from erupting into a full-blown crisis, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim emphasised the key relationship would continue while Berlin said ties were strong enough to weather splits. The German lower house on Thursday passed a non-binding resolution recognising the mass killings of Armenians from 1915 under the Ottoman Empire as genocide, prompting Ankara to recall its ambassador from Berlin for consultations. The dispute sparked alarm over the potential damage to relations between Turkey and Germany at a sensitive time when the two sides are working together to implement a deal seeking to halt illegal migration to the EU. "Germany and Turkey are two very important allies. No one should expect that relations will suddenly deteriorate completely because of this decision or similar decisions," Yildirim said. "Whatever the circumstances, we will continue the relationship with our friends and our allies," he added. - 'Weather differences' - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned on Thursday that the motion would "seriously affect" ties between the two countries, saying he would have further talks after returning from an Africa trip. But Yildirim emphasised that less than half of the lawmakers in the Bundestag were present for the vote. Despite the resolution having cross-party support, top figures like Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier were all absent for the vote. Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert described the relationship as "very broad and very deep", saying such ties "can and will weather any differences in opinion." Yildirm held talks Friday in Baku with Turkey's top ally Azerbaijan which is locked in an explosive dispute with Yerevan over the Armenian-controlled territory of Nagorny-Karabakh, seized in a war after the fall of the Soviet Union. In Baku, Yildirim adopted a slightly harsher tone, saying the resolution "dealt a blow to deep rooted Turkish-German relations" while hoping the harm would be "at the minimum level". The use of the word "genocide" goes to the heart of a long-running battle for world opinion between Armenia and Turkey over the massacres committed a century ago. Armenia has led a campaign for decades to have the bloodshed characterised as genocide, which Turkey rejects as a gross injustice. Ankara argues the killings were a collective tragedy in which equal numbers of Turks and Armenians died. Beyond recalling the ambassador, it was not clear what concrete action Ankara could take against Berlin, and EU capitals will hope there is no knock-on effect on the controversial deal aimed at stemming the flow of migrants through Turkey. "In the medium term, Germany and Turkey have deep-rooted intrinsic links which will not disappear from one day to the other," said Samim Akgonul, political scientist at France's Strasbourg University, adding Turkey had a tendency to "blow hot and cold" over the issue. - 'Hitler's grandchildren' - Around 200 Turkish demonstrators, some hurling eggs, protested outside the Germany embassy in Ankara. Some carried pictures of Cem Ozdemir, a German lawmaker of Turkish origin who was one of the initiators of the resolution, with a red cross like a target superimposed on his face. Many top officials made no secret of their anger, with some implying Germany wanted to hide its own guilt for the Holocaust or even alienate the three million strong ethnic Turkish population in Germany from their own identities. Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Germany wanted to say "'I am not the only one that committed genocide'." Turkey's secular and pro-Islamic press were for once united in condemnation of the resolution with the mainstream Hurriyet daily screaming "Shame on You!" in its headline. "Hitler's grandchildren accused Turkey of genocide," said the opposition Sozcu, adding a picture of Merkel in Nazi uniform with a Hitler moustache. "Our comrades-in-arms (from World War I) stabbed us in the back," added the pro-government Sabah. At the time of the killings in World War I, the Ottoman Empire and Imperial Germany were allies and the resolution put partial blame on Germany for failing to prevent the massacres. (Bloomberg) -- Two weeks into the job, Taiwans new president is bringing clarity to her policy toward China, and the result may be more turbulent times with leaders in Beijing. Tsai Ing-wen, chairwoman of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, is making good on promises made during her May 20 inauguration speech to seek closer ties with countries other than China and wean the island of economic dependence on its neighbor. Other symbolic steps also suggest she is reversing her predecessors pro-Beijing push. Tsais initial policies may only spur further disquiet in Beijing, where leaders had pressed her to affirm the One-China principle that says the two are part of one country, and raise the possibility that Beijing may respond with measures to weaken the islands already faltering economy. Chinas Taiwan Affairs Office had compared her inauguration speech to an incomplete answer sheet. Tsai has made clear policy choices in her first few days in office, distinguishing Taiwan from China on nearly every front -- political, economic, cultural and foreign relations, said Chang Ling-chen, a professor of political science at National Taiwan University. The incomplete answer sheet wont get completed. Now the only question is how long the mainland will wait before taking action? Turning to Japan On her first full day in office on May 23, Tsai created a mechanism with Japan to settle maritime disputes, signaling possible warmer ties with Japan, which also has territorial disputes with China. Her cabinet said it would work directly with Japan to resolve differences over fishing rights in waters near the Japanese reef of Okinotori, rather than taking a legal approach. Also on May 23, Premier Lin Chuan issued an order dropping criminal charges against 126 protesters who broke into the cabinet headquarters in 2014 to demonstrate against a trade pact with Beijing. The same day, when confirming the appointment of the islands new representative to the U.S., Tsai used the title "ambassador" rather than representative -- terminology that will rankle China because ambassador connotes that Taiwan is a country, not a Chinese province as Beijing insists. Story continues For a QuickTake explainer on Taiwan-China relations, click here. Other moves will also irk China. The day after her inauguration, the education minister announced a plan to abolish school syllabus changes that her predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou, made in 2014 highlighting the One China idea and toning down language about Taiwans self-rule. On May 24, Tsais office canceled a tradition of remotely paying tribute to the tomb of Sun Yat-sen. The practice was also seen as honoring the One China idea given Suns status as the founding father of modern China and that his tomb is on the mainland. Xu Shiquan, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of Taiwan Studies, said Tsais first few days in office showed "zero sign shes going to accept the consensus over the One China framework reached in 1992. Tsai must now decide how much further she wants to push. On May 25, the director of Chinas Taiwan Affairs Office, said cross-strait dialogue channels -- including 23 commercial, tourism and cultural agreements -- would collapse if Taiwan doesnt commit to the 1992 Consensus. Beyond China Already she is looking beyond China to boost economic growth that was the weakest since 2009 last year. In her first week, she set up an office to coordinate her New Go South initiative, which intends to boost economic ties between the island and the countries of Southeast and South Asia. A TVBS public opinion poll conducted between May 23 and May 25 showed 54 percent respondents expect cross-strait relations in the second half of this year to be tenser, compared with 34 percent in June 2015. This marks the most pessimistic outlook in the history of the television channels polling. The survey had a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points. At the same time, Tsai also took "positive steps" in her first week to "signal good will" toward Beijing, according to Bonnie Glaser, senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. One example is Taiwans new health ministers speech last week at the World Health Organizations annual assembly in Geneva, which only referred to "Chinese Taipei" and did not mention Taiwan. "It appears that Beijing is holding out for more from Taipei," Glaser said. "Tsai is not going to commit to the 1992 Consensus, so it remains to be seen if something else will satisfy the Chinese." Flash Point Taiwan will continue communication and dialogue to maintain existing communication mechanisms and negotiation operations, Taiwans Mainland Affairs Office said in response to questions about the relationship in an e-mailed reply to Bloomberg News on May 31. The next potential flash point would be Tsais visit in late June to Panama and Paraguay, two of the dwindling number of countries that maintain formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. The trip will include a stopover in the U.S. "It would still be premature for Beijing to take harsh counter-measures because shes not that provocative," said Xu. "However, the so-called cold peace would not last long and could turn into cold confrontation if this kind of status quo lingers." --With assistance from Adela Lin To contact the reporter on this story: Ting Shi in Hong Kong at tshi31@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at rmathieson3@bloomberg.net, Nicholas Wadhams, Andrew Davis 2016 Bloomberg L.P. China rejects US abuse of trade remedy measures Updated: 2016-06-03 09:53 (Xinhua) BEIJING - China opposes abuse of trade remedy measures, Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao said on Thursday in response to the latest trade spat between the United States and China on steel. A week ago, US regulators launched an investigation into complaints by United States Steel Corp that alleged Chinese competitors had stolen its secrets and fixed prices, and the company sought to halt nearly all imports from China's largest steel producers and trading houses. "China's stance is clear in this respect. That is, the country opposes abuse of trade remedy measures," Zhu stressed when answering a question on the issue at the 16th Lanting Forum, held in Beijing. China-US trade is rapidly expanding and annual bilateral trade has exceeded $558.4 billion, and it is inevitable that problems and contradictions will emerge during the development process, the vice minister said. However, to solve trade disputes, both parties should abide by WTO rules and hold dialogues to guard against abuse of trade remedy measures, according to Zhu. "We should oppose trade protectionism in the context of the principle of free trade, which is agreed upon by and serves the interests of both countries," said Zhu. On the same day, Hebei Iron & Steel Group, China's leading steelmaker by output, released a statement on its website, accusing the United States of breaching WTO rules. It said US protectionism is damaging the world steel trade. "The protectionist behavior taken by the United States, based on purely groundless accusations by US Steel, has seriously broken WTO rules, distorted the normal global steel trade and damaged the essential interests of Chinese steel mills and US steel consumers," the statement said. The United States said on Friday it had signed a major new loan guarantee with Ukraine aimed at helping the war-scarred former Soviet republic stabilise its floundering economy. The $1-billion (900-million-euro) commitment is the third of its kind issued by Washington since a pro-EU revolution brought down Ukraine's Russia-backed president in February 2014. The pledge is to provide Ukraine with more affordable access to international capital markets and fill its gaping budget hole. "The guarantee sends a strong signal of the United States' continued support for Ukraine as it pursues reforms that fulfill the Ukrainian people's aspirations for a prosperous and democratic future," US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt said in a statement. The new US assistance is part of a $40-billion global rescue package agreed by Ukraine and the International Monetary Fund in March 2015. About $17.5 billion of that money is a loan from the Fund. The rest includes a loan restructuring programme approved by Ukraine's private Western creditors and assistance from individual governments and international institutions. The IMF had been frustrated by the slow adoption of painful belt-tightening measures that were resisted by populist parties and helped weaken leaders who rose to power after Ukraine's 2014 turn toward the West. Allegations of government corruption led to the resignation of prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and his replacement by pro-Western parliament speaker Volodymyr Groysman in April. Ukraine has so far only received $6.7 billion in IMF disbursements and none since August 2015. But the sides last month reached a staff-level agreement to resume the programme after parliament adopted a raft of austerity measures prescribed by the IMF. That progress allowed Kiev's other partners to resume their own lending and help Ukraine shed the dysfunctional economic legacy of its Soviet past. Kiev hopes to receive $1.6 billion in fresh funds from the IMF by July. Story continues The east European nation's economy contracted by 9.9 percent last year but appears to be on course to achieve modest growth in 2016. Ukraine reported a 0.1 percent expansion of gross domestic product (GDP) between January and March compared to the same period in 2015. This marked the first quarter of annualised growth since the end of 2013. A Venezuelan court has ruled to allow jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez to appeal his 14-year sentence for inciting violence at anti-government protests in 2014, his lawyer said Friday. The ruling comes as embattled President Nicolas Maduro faces growing tension over severe shortages of food, medicine and electricity, as well as opposition maneuvers to oust him in a recall referendum. Lopez, who calls himself a political prisoner, will have his first appeal hearing on June 20, said his lawyer, Carlos Gutierrez. The US-educated economist turned himself in to the authorities on February 18, 2014, amid a wave of pro- and anti-government protests that swept the country and left 43 people dead. The government accused Lopez, the radically anti-Maduro leader of the Popular Will party, of inciting the violence. He denies the charge, calling his arrest an act of political repression. His sentence, handed down last September, was strongly condemned by the United Nations, the United States and the European Union. Gutierrez said international pressure may have convinced the courts to finally allow his client's appeal, which had been in limbo since he filed it in October. He cited the call by the Organization of American States this week for Maduro and the opposition to hold talks as a "fundamental element" in the court's decision. Oil-rich Venezuela has slid into crisis as global crude prices have plunged over the past two years, threatening Maduro and the socialist economic model he inherited from his predecessor and mentor, the late leftist firebrand Hugo Chavez. The center-right opposition, which won control of congress in elections last December, has passed an amnesty for scores of jailed activists it calls political prisoners, including Lopez. But the law was struck down by the Supreme Court, which the opposition condemns as pro-Maduro. Greek rescuers were searching for survivors Friday after a migrant boat sank off the island of Crete, leaving at least nine people dead and hundreds missing. Two helicopters, three ships and a coastguard vessel were searching the waters off the Greek island of Crete where the boat, believed to have come from Africa with hundreds of migrants on board, capsized. "Until this point 340 (people) have been rescued and nine bodies have been recovered," the Greek coastguard said in a statement, without giving details on the migrants' nationalities. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) earlier said the vessel was "believed to have left Africa with at least 700 migrants on board". In a separate incident, Libyan authorities said they had found the bodies of at least 117 migrants on the shore in the western Libyan town of Zwara -- possibly from one of another three boats that capsized last week off the Libyan shores -- and warned that the toll could rise. "The total number of bodies retrieved until now is 117... 70 percent of them were women plus six children," said Khames al-Boussefi, media coordinator to the Libyan Red Crescent. The names and nationalities of the drowned migrants, whose bodies were found on Thursday, were not yet known. - Italian president thanks islanders - The Friday sinking marked the second migrant vessel found in that area of the southern Aegean Sea since last week, indicating that people smugglers may be forging a new route to avoid NATO ships. It was not immediately clear where exactly the boat had left from or where it was headed, or the nationalities of those on board. Italian President Sergio Mattarella, meanwhile, urged the European Union not to "leave Italy alone" to face the influx of migrants. Speaking on the Italian island of Lampedusa, the first point of arrival in Europe for many migrants, Mattarella said Italy and Europe owed a "debt of gratitude" to the islanders for "the lives saved, for the welcome given to those fleeing hunger and war". In Greece, a coastguard spokeswoman said a passing ship spotted the sinking vessel off Crete. When rescuers reached the scene, about half of the 25-metre-long boat was completely underwater, the spokeswoman said. "The number of people in distress could be counted in the hundreds," she said. The deaths are the first in Greek waters since April, as a controversial March deal between the EU and Turkey designed to halt the flow of migrants using the popular Aegean route has led to a sharp drop in arrivals. Nevertheless, some 204,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe since January, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday. More than 2,500 people have died trying to make the perilous journey this year -- the vast majority of them on crossings between Libya and Italy -- as Europe battles its worst migration crisis since World War II. - A new route? - Greek tourist islands in the Aegean witnessed the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people crossing in flimsy boats from nearby Turkey last year, many of them refugees fleeing the war in Syria. But the number of people using that route has reduced to a trickle after the EU-Turkey deal, under which migrants landing on the islands can be sent back to Turkey, as well as the deployment of NATO ships in the Aegean. The IOM said its observations supported the theory of a possible new migrant route, reporting a "surge of new arrivals to Greece further south, on sea lanes connecting North Africa to the island of Crete." On May 27, the Greek coastguard intercepted a boat off Crete carrying 65 Syrians, Afghans and Pakistanis, under the control of two suspected people traffickers -- a Ukrainian and an Egyptian. The coastguard did not indicate if that boat, which the migrants said had left from Turkey, was heading for Italy or whether the smugglers had chosen the route through the southern Aegean to reach Greece by avoiding NATO ships deployed further north and east. The NATO deployment is aimed at cutting off the Aegean route previously used by hundreds of thousands of people fleeing poverty and conflict in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Philippine president-elect Rodrigo Duterte was on Thursday accused of sexual harassment and disrespecting women after wolf whistling a female journalist on a nationally televised press conference. Duterte, 71, interrupted a question from television reporter Mariz Umali on Tuesday night about his Cabinet appointees with a light-hearted comment about her trying to get his attention, then wolf whistling and breaking into a short serenade. Umali continued trying to ask her question as Duterte smiled and some other reporters laughed. In an interview with her GMA network on Thursday, Umali described his remarks as "improper". While Umali said she would not ask for an apology and sought not to inflame the controversy, her journalist husband took to Facebook to criticise Duterte. "Catcalling my wife is wrong in so many levels," husband Raffy Tima wrote. "Some jokes are funny and should be laughed at but disrespecting women is definitely not one of them." At the same press conference, Duterte created another controversy by saying there was justification for killing corrupt journalists, and that one "rotten son of a bitch" reporter deserved to have been murdered. Duterte, an incendiary politician who won last month's elections by a landslide on a pledge to end crime by killing tens of thousands of criminals, has previously been criticised for comments about women. On the campaign trail he made a joke about wanting to rape a "beautiful" Australian missionary who had been sexually assaulted and murdered in a 1989 prison riot in his hometown of Davao. When his daughter reacted to those comments by revealing she had been raped, Duterte described her in jest as a "drama queen". Duterte, whose first marriage was annulled and is in a long-term relationship with another woman, has also openly boasted about having mistresses and using Viagra to have sex with them. - 'Not a sexual thing' - Duterte dismissed the criticism at a fresh news conference late Thursday, saying wolf whistling was "not a sexual thing". "There has to be sexual undertones but if I am just whistling, that kind of (criticism) is intruding into freedom of expression," he added. Duterte had signed a local women's rights ordinance in 1997 which classified whistling at women as sexual harassment in Davao. Aida Santos, president of Manila-based women's rights groups WeDpro, said Duterte's wolf whistling was a form of sexual harassment. "Catcalling treats women as sex objects... some say it's a way of being cute but it's wrong," Santos told AFP. Duterte and his aides have repeatedly said such controversial comments and actions should not be taken too seriously: that he is a straight-talker and an authentic character who likes to joke and speak the language of the streets. His spokesman Salvador Panelo said Thursday that women should consider the president-elect's wolf whistling as a compliment and a sign of "fondness". Supporters also point to his pro-women policies in Davao, which he has ruled as mayor for most of the past two decades. However Duterte's jokes sent messages to society, according to Elizabeth Angsioco, national chair of the Democratic Socialist Women of the Philippines. "His words and actions reinforce looking at women as second-class citizens," she told AFP. Arto maxin & relaxin at the recent Holy Stokes London premiere So who influenced you both to pick up photography and continues to influence you? J: My mum. She always used to shoot photos, so my first camera was one I got from my mum. A: Really? Thats rad! J: She pushed me on it, and thats what got me going. But I dont really have any heroes in photography to be honest. A: Other than your mum. J: Well she got me into itbut she wasnt that good at shooting photos [laughs]. A: But shes still a hero! For sure she would be, she got you started on the whole thing, and thats a pretty big move. J: True A: Oh you know what Ive shot a lot of in the past few months? Pregnant nudes Its weird, dont ask me how I got into it but thats what Ive been shooting. Maybe we can find some niche strip clubs while were here A: Im talking like seven months pregnant [here Arto ducks out of the conversation to scroll through his phone and find evidence]. Like with video, being shot on 4K, theres a new level of importance and stances on the use of high quality digital camera, lenses and evolving lighting equipment placed on photography, especially within skateboarding at the moment. Do you feel you need to keep up with getting the newest equipment, or prefer to experiment with different old and new technologies? J: I like experimenting. A: Were experimenting? J: When? Tonight? [laughs]. No, I like to mess around in a darkroom. My digital camera is just the Canon 7d, but its good enough you know? Magazines arent going bigger than they are right now, and Im not really fanning out on new equipment. This guy though[points at Arto, who is now deep in his phone]. Arto A: Whats up? J: Youre not paying attention! A: Sorry, I was looking for a pregnant nude photo. Look, heres one! Its not the one I was looking for, but J: What did you even use that for? A: I just shot it for her personal collection. Its not actually nude this one, but very pregnant. Theres a whole niche out there, though unfortunately it doesnt pay any bills. Anyway sorry, what was the question? I got stuck on the pregnant nudes J: Were talking about camera equipment! Basically about how cameras are becoming more high tech each year. Do you like to experiment with older formats, or have to have the newest equipment? A: Well I like to shoot with everything. I feel like photography you have a little bit more leeway with doing weird stuff, know what I mean? Movies you might want to keep a little cleaner, but you could go and get a lens, smash it up, balance it on some weird camera and get an out of focus art photo and it will look sick. But shooting a whole movie through a broken lens might get a little bit much! I feel like you can have a little bit more freedom with experimenting with weird stuff in photography, which is fun. Old stuff, new stuff, you know. For commercial work its nice to have the newest of the new, but I think even old digital cameras are pretty good these days you could get by for years to come. How do you feel how the internet and Instagram has changed the role of the skate photographer, and of skateboarding print media as a whole? J: I think thats a big problem, especially because companies use Instagram as one of their big marketing tools. I think its fucked up that companies regram photos without even asking or being willing to pay for it, and when you dont even have anything to do with the company at that. Back in the day you would submit your lo-res photos, if they liked it theyd ask for your hi-res photos, and you knew that if youd taken a decent photo you were getting paid for it. Nowadays? Screenshot, boom, thank you. A Wild West scenariodo you have any thoughts of where it will go from here in the next few years? A resurgence in print perhaps? J: To be honest, I have no clue! I think print will survive in an underground scene. A: Its definitely nice to read a magazine in print, I dont want to read a magazine on my iPad. I like reading books, I like reading print, I like photos in print. J: You still check websites once in a while? A: Occasionally, Ill look at ThrasherIll get out of bed, have my coffee and have a poke around on the web, but then go about my day. I dont sit there looking at stuff, but I glance at it. When it comes to photobooks and stuff, its nice to have printed matter which makes me super-hyped that they did this show and this stuff got printed and hung on the walls. Its rad to see that. Looking over the past 5 decades of skateboarding, which other key times other than right now would you loved to have documented? A: What key times? Some of the early California, Venice, Dogtown, Alva daysthe old California would be nice to see, go back into the 1960s, 1970s and poke your head around that. J: The vert ramp days for me Hosoi A: Definitely Hosoi, the 80s. Late 70s to late 80s. Up until about 1988, then it all went to shit. Thats the era I started, around 1991 J: Thats when it went to shit, when he started [laughs]. A: Thats right, it went to shit when I started! Small wheels, pressure flips, just terrible. Vert is dead, no more big airs Im off to wax the curb and do a bigspin skid on it. I mean there were a couple of guys still killing it J: Dont you wax your pool coping? A: Wax it? No you dont, you put a layer of lacquer to give it a little bit of movement. Finally, whats the worst thing either of you have ever accidentally knelt or lay in whilst shooting photos? A: The worst thing? Ive definitely been on some piss-filled alleys. The LA River, you never know what sort of surprises youll have down there. J: Just on this trip, I was cleaning a pool with a blower, getting the leaves up. It blew off the drain cover, and there was a snake in there, a king snake. A: A live one? J: A live one a big one too. Thank god I didnt just leave the drain cover off! I didnt lay in it, but it was sketchy enough! Yo Will, how was Seoul and how long were you there for? We were in Seoul for about three weeks; I was there with two other friends and we were mainly excited to skate around all the insane spots, but also got to sightsee and hang out with some really fun people! The food and beer was incredible and our local friends would take us around to amazing fried chicken spots and just the most extravagant shopping areas and skate spots you could imagine. Besides the usual touristy stuff I had an interesting time getting some tattoos as they are illegal in Korea, but thanks to our friends we found some amazing parlours and got a couple from a great Japanese artist. Whats the skate scene like? The skate scene in Korea was interesting. Being relatively young, with the first shops opening in the 1990s, it had this tight knit feel to it and an excitement that attracts a diverse group of people. The main aspect that stood out to me was this sense of peaceful rebellion the skaters had, it was really going against the status quo for them to be doing what they do and as passionately as they do it. Many spots? The skate spots in Seoul are amazing; everything was marble, perfect to skate and best of all there are no skate stoppers. Some of the spots we saw seemed like they were straight out of a video game. The spots seemed to be never ending, it is just such a huge city you could never find everything. Skate spots we would session for hours and hours back home we would just skate past without bothering, because without a doubt there would be something ten times better around the corner. Is there a central meeting spot for skaters? The local skaters had worked really hard in getting a small plaza area called Culture Park open for skateboarding. There was a Southbank feel to the plaza and you could tell this was the Mecca for Korean skateboarding, with portable ramps, rails and ledges all set up amongst the existing stairs, ledges and hubba. Getting busy around 2 oclock everyday, this place was the meet up! What were the best/worst things about your trip? Best thing about this trip was just getting to meet all these new and inspirational people and get a real eye opener into a different world the differences culturally were really intriguing to me. Just getting to have the chance to chill out and skate whenever and however I wanted was the best experience. The worst would probably be just the usual injuries; rolling my ankle quite early on, which put me off my board for a week and also meant I couldnt do some of my normal go to tricks. Cheers Will Faithful use smartphones as Pope Francis leaves at the end of his weekly audience in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican May 11, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini By Julia Fioretti BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Europe's telecoms operators will have to justify giving priority to certain services on their network, according to new EU regulatory guidelines in a move likely to disappoint an industry hoping for more leeway so they can boost revenues. The European Union last year adopted its first ever net neutrality rules which require telecoms operators such as Orange, Deutsche Telekom and Telecom Italia to treat all Internet traffic equally. BEREC, the body comprising the EU's 28 telecoms regulators, has produced a set of draft guidelines on implementing the net neutrality rules, which will be presented on Monday and adopted in August after feedback from interested parties. The telecoms industry is seeking to increase revenues from specialized services such as connectivity for driverless cars and Internet-connected devices to offset declining turnover from its traditional telephony business. But net neutrality advocates worry about creating a two-speed Internet, benefiting only companies with deep pockets that can pay for faster transmission of their services. The guidelines seen by Reuters say operators will only be able to offer such services over dedicated network capacity if it is "objectively required" and only if it does not negatively affect the Internet. National regulatory authorities (NRAs) will have to verify whether an application needs to be delivered separately from the rest of the Internet to guarantee a committed level of quality, or "whether they are instead set up in order to circumvent the provisions regarding traffic management", the guidelines say. Telecoms operators had lobbied strongly against strict rules forbidding them from prioritizing some types of data over others, arguing that they need to be able to dedicate network capacity to services requiring a guaranteed level of quality, such as facilitating the exchange of medical data between patients and health professionals. Story continues Services such as high-quality voice calling on mobile networks, live television delivered over the Internet and remote surgery will likely be allowed as specialized services, the document says. "Given that we do not know what specialized services may emerge in the future, NRAs should assess whether a service qualifies as a specialized service on a case-by-case basis," it adds. One industry source said that while it was a positive sign that BEREC had not created a list of what can be considered specialized services, the fact that each new application will have to be assessed individually is a source of uncertainty for operators. "With restrictive guidelines, you can forget 5G and connected cars," said another industry source. The regulators say that zero-rating - namely where one application, say, Facebook, does not count toward someone's data usage - will be allowed until they hit their data cap. In other words, the operator will not be able to continue treating Facebook as completely free if the customer has used up the data in his subscription. (Reporting by Julia Fioretti; Editing by Alexandra Hudson) Screen Shot 2016 06 03 at 12.34.37 PM A senior adviser to Donald Trump's campaign told CNN's Kate Bolduan that Hillary Clinton wouldn't tell the truth "if you waterboarded her," leaving the anchor seemingly stunned. "What?" Bolduan said. "You couldn't get the truth out of her with a waterboard," the adviser, Barry Bennett, repeated. "And you brought in waterboarding," Bolduan responded. Trump has suggested that the military should return to the practice of waterboarding, or simulated drowning, which has been banned, even hinting that he might go further to gather intelligence. "I'd go further. I'd listen to the military people, but I'd go further," Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, said during a CNN interview on the day of the Brussels terrorist attacks in March. "And by the way, torture works." He has, at various points during the campaign, backed slightly away from those positions. Bennett's comments on CNN came after Bolduan asked whether a remark Trump made during his San Jose, California, rally Thursday night was a "real threat." Trump had suggested that his theoretical administration's attorney general would take a "very good look" into Clinton's use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. Bolduan asked whether Trump should still pursue an investigation by the attorney general if the Department of Justice "finds that there was nothing illegal that happened." "I'm more interested in the FBI," said Bennett, who once served as ex-presidential hopeful Ben Carson's campaign manager. "But if the DOJ tries to stop the FBI, then yes." The State Department's inspector general released a report on Clinton's use of a private email account last Wednesday, saying she "did not comply" with department policies. The report cited "longstanding, systemic weaknesses" related to communications that preceded Clinton's appointment as secretary of state. But the inspector general's report singled out Clinton's failures as more serious. "At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department's policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act," the report said. Story continues NOW WATCH: 'Its not cool to not know what youre talking about': Obama slams Trump during Rutgers speech More From Business Insider Alibaba actively assisting SEC investigation: Jack Ma Updated: 2016-06-03 16:13 (Xinhua) Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, attends a joint meeting on strategic cooperation with the city government of Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province.XU KANGPING/CHINA DAILY HANGZHOU - Alibaba is actively assisting an investigation launched by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and has provided all the requested information, according to Alibaba's chairman Jack Ma. In an interview with Xinhua on Thursday, Ma said he welcomed the SEC inquiry as it help Alibaba as a company and give it more exposure. Alibaba has no similar counterpart in the US and some American investors struggle to understand Alibaba's business model, he said. "The best way to settle questioning is transparency and communication," he said. Many companies have been investigated by the SEC and the process separates the wheat from the chaff, he said. Alibaba has disclosed that the SEC early this year started to investigate its accounting practices, including consolidation policies and transaction data, for potential violations of federal securities laws. The SEC, however, indicated that the inquiry did not imply any wrongdoing. Ma also made his first statement a day after SoftBank announced the sale of a 4-percent stake in Alibaba. Ma said SoftBank reduced its holdings to alleviate its debt while Alibaba increased its own stakes as it was upbeat over the future. "Alibaba has ample cash and is optimistic about its earnings in the future," Ma said, adding that Alibaba would continue to raise its holdings if there is the opportunity and it has sufficient funds. We can help you make sense of the agribusiness industry, extending from chemicals and fertilizers used as inputs into agriculture, to the commodities, food and by-products that are an output to farming, with policy and regulation applied at every step of the value chain. Global emerging markets investment major Abraaj has raised EGP360m ($40.5m) though an IPO of Egypts Cleopatra Hospital Group. Abraaj continues to hold 80 per cent of the companys shares following the listing on the Egyptian stock exchange, the second IPO of the year for the bourse. The firm said Cleopatras IPO was more than 28 times oversubscribed on the retail tranche offering, and more than six times oversubscribed on the institutional tranche, with more than 65 per cent of the orders coming from international investors. Cleopatra, Egypts largest hospital group in terms of both beds and hospitals, is valued at about EGP1.44bn through the sale price of EGP9 per share. Abraaj invested in the company in 2014, in partnership with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Deutsche Investitions-und Entwickungsgesellschaft, and the Societe de Promotion et de Participation pour la Cooperation Economique. Ahmed Badreldin, partner at Abraaj and vice chairman of Cleopatra Hospital Company, said, This IPO reflects the renewed, strong investor confidence in the capital markets and healthcare sector in Egypt. During the first phase of our investment in the Company, we focused on creating scale by acquiring hospitals in attractive catchment areas of Cairo. We view this IPO as the beginning of the second phase of the Companys expansion, both in terms of reach within Cairo and across other governorates, and in scale through the addition of more hospital beds and rollout of ambulatory clinics to provide quality healthcare services across Egypt. Copyright 2016 AltAssets There has been a significant increase in the number of GP-led transactions reviewed by LPs over the past 12 months, according to a study by Capstone Partners focused on GP-led Secondaries. Too hot to handle Updated: 2016-06-03 08:20 By Wang Ying(China Daily Europe) Companies eye a piece of the e-commerce pie in China, but many are getting their fingers burned It's no secret that China is the world's largest e-commerce market, considering the staggering amounts of money shoppers spend online. The National Bureau of Statistics says online retail transactions hit 3.87 trillion yuan ($589 billion; 530 billion euros) last year, a 33 percent increase on 2014. Shoppers pick out fruit at a supermarket in Beijing. [Photo by A Jing / For China Daily] Yet while the country may be the global leader in e-commerce, online sales contribute just 11 percent of its total retail sales, according to Nielsen's market intelligence. However, the company estimates that online sales are growing at a rate of 53 percent year-on-year, an indication of huge market potential. Naturally, companies are rushing to set up internet platforms to sell their products, but not all of them have tasted success, including some big players. "China's e-commerce market is evolving very quickly, and it is difficult for an internet platform to keep up without strong China-centric funding and resources," says Ben Cavender, principal of China Market Research Group. "There are tremendous opportunities for e-commerce to grow further, but right now it is still at an early stage. In three to five years, two to three dominant players will emerge from the competition." Metao, a Chinese cross-border e-commerce provider started in October 2013, reportedly faces imminent closure despite receiving $35 million in investment in 2014. One client told Economic Information Daily that she had not received an order placed a month ago, and that her calls to the customer service hotline had gone unanswered. On April 7, suppliers of grocery platform Yummy77 gathered in front of its offices in Shanghai to demand payment only to discover that it had gone bankrupt, Xinhua News Agency reported. Yummy77, officially launched in May 2013, was seen as a leading grocery e-commerce company due to its prompt delivery services and generous discounts. In May 2014, Amazon China made an investment of $20 million, swelling its evaluation to $100 million. Li Chengdong, an independent e-commerce strategy analyst, says the fall of the site was largely due to factors such as the lavish spending on the construction of warehouses and a logistics network, an inexperienced management team, and the fact that buying fruit and vegetables online is still a novelty to most Chinese consumers. It also did not help that competition is stiff. Data from Forward (Qianzhan) Intelligence Co Ltd shows the value of China's fresh grocery e-commerce market expanded from 1 billion yuan in 2011 to 56 billion yuan last year. The consultancy projects the market to reach 128 billion yuan by 2018. The promising outlook has attracted some big players to vie for a slice of the pie, including Alibaba, Yihaodian and JD.com. To make matters worse, buying fresh produce online costs on average twice what it does at a brick-and-mortar store because of the costs to store and transport it, according to consultant company Analysys. Li says most e-commerce sites in China that sell fresh produce are struggling to make ends meet, and that having adequate financing is key to survival. British online fashion and beauty retailer ASOS also met its Waterloo in China on April 7, announcing that it will discontinue local operations. CEO Nick Beighton says the company will continue to do business in China via its main website, and that the decision was made to "serve our growing customer base in China in a more efficient and less costly manner". Despite the growth in online apparel sales in China - the China National Textile and Apparel Council says 723.2 billion yuan in apparel was traded online last year, up 20 percent on 2014 - ASOS has posted a total loss of 8.6 million euros ($9.5 million) since entering the Chinese market in 2013. In contrast, the brand boasts an average growth rate of 20 percent in the international market. Li believes the company's poor performance in China was caused by an unsuccessful marketing campaign that failed to reach its target audience. Market analysts Cavender predicts more players will exit China's competitive e-commerce scene unless they can set themselves apart from their competitors. "While e-commerce is growing quickly, it's a very competitive market with a lot of online stores fighting for customers," he says. "Because they have to offer both a high level of service and competitive prices in order to attract customers, margins are very thin. "Companies need to respond to consumer need, both in terms of brands and products, and service quality. If a site has the same products as everyone else and cannot deliver faster or offer something different, consumers will just choose the cheaper, more established option." wangying@chinadaily.com.cn Huawei probe may signal 'protectionism' Updated: 2016-06-04 03:00 By Zhong Nan,Ma Si(China Daily) The reported US investigation into Huawei Technologies over whether the company has exported US technological goods to sanctioned countries might be motivated by trade protectionism, according to some Chinese analysts. It will have limited impact on the Chinese tech giant, they said. The United States has subpoenaed Huawei as part of a probe into whether the Chinese telecom equipment maker has exported such products to Iran, Cuba and other nations on the US sanction list, The New York Times reported. The investigation comes after the US Commerce Department temporarily sanctioned another Chinese tech company, ZTE Corp, this year, and it highlights a growing discord between China and the US on communication technology trade, analysts said. Ma Yu, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation in Beijing, said the US is paying close attention to Chinese technology firms as they strive to gain a bigger international presence. "There has been an obvious rise in global trade protectionism, and China has been targeted as a main rival that poses a serious threat to US jobs in the telecommunication sector," Ma said. Huawei, one of the world's largest makers of smartphones and telecom equipment, has been growing robustly in recent years. The company is aiming to beat Samsung Electronics Co and Apple Inc within the next five years to become the world's biggest smartphone maker, with a market share of more than 25 percent, its director, Yu Chengdong, told The Wall Street Journal on Friday. Xiang Ligang, an independent telecom analyst and founder of industry website cctime.com, said the probe will have limited impact on Huawei, given the company's abundant intellectual properties and its ability to make in-house chips and operating systems. "Compared with ZTE, which chiefly relies on the US semiconductor company Qualcomm Inc for mobile chips, Huawei is using self-developed chips in its smartphones and tablets," Xiang said. Even if the US government blocks sales of US technology to the company based on its probe results, Huawei may still rely on its competitive research and development team to meet its technological needs, Xiang said, adding that "the probe is a challenge but also an opportunity". According to The New York Times, the US government is demanding that Shenzhen-based Huawei submit all of its information on the export or re-export of US technology to Iran, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Syria, Sudan and Cuba. The subpoena is administrative, not criminal, and Huawei had not been accused of wrongdoing, the newspaper said. Huawei declined to comment on the US inquiry, but a company representative told Reuters that it abides by US laws and regulations. Contact the writers at masi@chinadaily.com.cn Suddenly, it's a small world Updated: 2016-06-03 08:17 By Wang Zhuoqiong(China Daily Europe) Heading out of the country on holiday used to be the preserve of a privileged few In the early 1990s Ma Ding, now in his 50s, joined a tour group traveling to Thailand - almost the only option the group could find to travel overseas. It was a luxury package, and members of the group had to pay 9,000 yuan, a small fortune. But when they reached each destination, the group was asked to pay extra for shows or encouraged to buy local medicines. Ma and his wife returned to Shanghai with a big bag of medicine made of snakes but never had the chance to use them. It was a time when obtaining a tourist visa for the United States or Europe was even difficult for many wealthy people in China like Ma. It would not be until 2005 that Ma, who owns two pawnshops in Shanghai, had the chance to visit the United States for the first time. He and his wife were among five out of 19 people in their group to be granted a tour visa. "The United States as the world's most advanced country was the place I dreamed of visiting," Ma says. "The trip was also something I promised my wife when we got married." The couple traveled for 14 days, taking in both the east and west coasts, and splashed out more than 60,000 yuan. Since then they have barely stopped traveling. Ma and his family - two children - now travel four or five times a year, and he says that on average they spend about 1 million yuan ($153,000) a year. For instance, they have stayed in Seattle for a month or two in summer so their children could attend a local summer camp. "Traveling is like an addiction," Ma says. "You feel bored after three months staying at home. The world is so big, and there are so many things we haven't seen or done." Ma was one of those on the first luxury world tour organized by the country's largest online travel agency, Ctrip.com, in 2010. He has been to more than 100 cities in about 50 countries and regions, and traveled a total of 400,000 kilometers, he says. "Traveling is not just going abroad to see the world. It's also an opportunity to relax and change. It helps you see things from a different perspective." Wang Chunfeng, vice-president of Beijing Utour International Travel Service Co Ltd, says the first significant milestone for the country's outbound tourism was when the National Bureau of Statistics first published figures on the subject in 2000. That year more than 10.47 million outbound trips were made. Before then official statistics related only to inbound tourism and domestic travel. From 2001 to 2015, Wang says, China's outbound tourism market grew by more than 18 percent a year, and it is projected to reach 600 million in total in the next five years. Change is also reflected in the reasons people give for going abroad. "In the early days most outbound travel was related to business or work," Wang says. "Now more than 90 percent of it is for leisure." Thanks to rising demand for individual travel and more specialized and even personalized tour products, the ease of booking flights and accommodation on the internet and of obtaining visas, as well as the increase in flight destinations throughout the world, even from smaller Chinese cities, physical travel agencies have been in sharp decline, Wang says. Last year less than a third of travel bookings made in China were made in a brick-and-mortar travel agency. As recently as five years ago, for many people outbound traveling was still a dream, Wang says, but that has changed. Jiang Yiyi, director of the China Tourism Academy's International Tourism Development Institute, says China's outbound tourism market is likely to grow rapidly this year, with the number of outbound tourists projected to surpass 130 million, 10 percent more than last year. Developed economies are paying more attention to the role of inbound tourism in boosting local economies and employment. So neighboring, medium-distance and long-distance destinations will continue to compete for Chinese tourists, she said, thanks to relaxed visa policies and improved Chinese-language services that many countries have introduced in recent years. More outbound tourists are likely to emerge from China's central and western regions, especially from second- or third-tier cities and rural areas, she says. The Ministry of Transport forecasts that the country will have 42 high-speed railway lines operating by the end of this year, stretching a total of 20,000 kilometers. The rapid development of high-speed rail gives people from once-isolated areas easy access to large cities, which will greatly broaden the source of outbound Chinese tourists. Urbanization will also continue to power growth in tourism consumption. Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics suggest 58 percent of the country's population will live in cities by the end of this year. Mid-sized and small cities and rural areas are already warming to the outbound tourism market. The worthy daughter Updated: 2016-06-03 08:19 By Mei Jia(China Daily Europe) Hong Ying spotlights the mother-daughter relationship in her latest novel, Mimidola: The River Child Author Hong Ying says she writes only three types of novels - those that seek to understand and explore a house, a city or the world. Yet a lingering theme of many of her signature works is the mother-daughter relationship. Above left: Hong Ying's latest novel, targeting young readers, features beautiful illustrations. Above right: Hong Ying is known for her autobiographical work Daughter of the River. Photos Provided to China Daily Chinese author Hong Ying has shifted focus to children's books, and her latest novel is a fantasy about a 10-year-old girl's adventures. Photos Provided to China Daily In her latest novel, Mimidola: The River Child, by People's Literature Publishing House, a beautifully illustrated fantasy story for young readers, the mother is absent from the beginning, leaving a 10-year-old Mimidola to undertake adventures by herself. After an intense journey to the underground and to ancient India in four magical days, she grows up, brave and witty enough to conquer fear, eliminate a flood and reunite with her mother. "I had a terrible childhood being a daughter born out of wedlock," Hong Ying, 54, tells China Daily at her Beijing apartment. "Mimidola is my effort to reconcile with those memories." The Chongqing-born author's real name is Chen Hongying. She took five years to finish this book, whereas her earlier novels like K: The Art of Love, were done in months, she says. The author also discovered her latent sense of humor through her latest novel, as she makes many jokes between the lines, a rarity in her previous works. Unlike Mimidola from Jiangzhou, a fictional version of Chongqing in Southwest China, the writer's memories of the 1960s and early '70s with her mother are painful. Hong Ying says her mother seldom spoke to her. "In between those miseries, I spread my wings of fantasy, imagining that I was loved and that I could fly across the Yangtze River, and I felt my pains soothed," she recalls. "Later, I realized she was just trying to protect me so she kept a distance from me - the extra child in the family," she says. "But her apathy made me rebellious. I did everything she told me not to, and I paid the price for it." Hong Ying left home at a very young age to study writing at Lu Xun Academy in Beijing and Fudan University in Shanghai. She left the country for a stay in Britain in the 1990s and returned to Beijing in 2000. She records those years in her autobiographic works, Daughter of the River in 1997 and Good Children of the Flower in 2009, both of which are available in multiple languages. Fellow author A Lai says when the two novels were reprinted in April, he was astounded to read such a courageous and frank account of cruelty in the times of hunger and disasters that a generation of Chinese faced, while most other writers learned a "skillful way" to hide it. It is her own daughter, Sybil, born in 2007, who gradually dispersed her childhood resentment and brought a new light into her life and writing, Hong Ying says. "Sybil is like her father: warm, loving and brave, full of sunshine," she says. The daughter knows her past and the grandma's past through many bedtime stories. "I don't want her to be possessed by fear, as I was. I'd like her to have the wisdom to control fear." Her husband, Adam Williams, thinks Hong Ying's books can be read by all age groups. Mimidola was created by combining her daughter's positive, happy nature and Hong Ying's own wisdom and insights. "And several Mimidola dialogues are from what Sybil said," she says. "The heroine of Hong Ying's books is always the daughter," A Lai says. "The author has become a mother herself, so combining the two images, readers get a key to unlock all her emotional secrets." Hong Ying began to read children's books in 2006 before Sybil's birth. In 2012, Hong Ying began to create stories for her daughter, who by then was bored with the books she had. Two years later, she published her first children's book, The Girl from the French Fort, which has bilingual text with pictures by British illustrator Cherry Denman. She continued to work with world-acclaimed illustrators for Mimidola, paying special attention to the paper used and the colors for illustrations, according to Zhao Ping from the People's Literature Publishing House. "We observed a global trend that many acclaimed writers are picking up children's books, too," says Qiu Huadong, literary critic and director of Lu Xun Academy, noting that Mimidola is interesting because it uses cultural details and resources from East and South Asian countries. In addition, it touches on budding love and also serious social and environmental issues. "Mimidola is adored by the many characters she meets, but there's no prince charming to save her from trouble. She has to be strong and fight for herself," Hong Ying says. Though inspired by environmental problems, like the Beijing smog and social issues like missing children, the author says her book is really about parental education. In the novel, Mimidola is separated from her single parent, the mother, at the beginning of the story. When she is alone, her two companions are her ability to love, passed down from her mother, and knowledge that came from reading books. "All of us, children or grown-ups have to face disasters, setbacks or miseries that happen suddenly. Maybe 90 percent of us are beaten, but Mimidola isn't. Her mother's education leads her to stand up and fight," Hong Ying says. Besides novels, Hong Ying also writes poems and is currently working on a film adaptation of her novel The Lord of Shanghai. meijia@chinadaily CUNA continues to analyze the Consumer Financial Protection Bureaus (CFPB) 1,300-plus page proposal on short-term, small-dollar loans. The CFPB has agreed to brief CUNA members on the proposal, and CUNA is currently working to schedule the briefing. The CFPBs proposal adds restrictions on payday, title, and high-cost installment loans that meet certain requirements. This rule is incredibly complicated with a lot of moving parts. Wed like to see a rule that will not only allow credit unions to remain in the market but also encourages even more credit unions to fill the needs consumers have for small dollar credit, well be carefully looking at the proposal and working with the CFPB to educate them about how the rule could detrimentally impact consumer friendly credit union products if not properly tailored, said CUNA Chief Advocacy Officer Ryan Donovan. Donovan added that an early concern is potential compliance issues, and the additional burdens that would mean, particularly for small credit unions with limited compliance resources. CUNA appreciates the CFPBs recognition that it can use its authority under Section 1022 of the Dodd-Frank Act to conditionally or unconditionally exempt any class of covered persons, service providers, or consumer financial products or services. CUNA has been urging the agency to use Section 1022 to tailor its rules to target the bad actors in the financial services marketplace, and not to add to the already burdensome regulations that credit unions face in the wake of the financial crisis. One person Harriet has questioned in pursuit of her story is dead, another is missing. The conspiracy may be hidden deep, but it involves those who are powerful, ruthless and with a great deal at stake, but Harriet won't stop no matter how deadly her quest becomes. In this game no-one is pure, but are their machinations politics as usual or do they cover something darker? Now, as Harriet continues her search for the truth, someone closer to her inner circle is found murdered. Canadian dairy farmers have taken to the streets in protest at trade arrangements which have seen them flooded with imports of dried milk protein concentrate from the US. The protest, organised by Dairy Farmers of Canada (DFC), involved 3,000 dairy producers who gathered for a rally on Parliament Hill, Ottawa, as well as outside the Prince Edward Island office of the minister for agriculture. DFC president Wally Smith called on the government to take action to ensure a robust dairy sector in the country. See also: Crisis cash arrives for Australian dairy farmers He acknowledged the situation in Canada was significantly better than in other parts of the world where supply management mechanisms have been dismantled. But he said the Canadian dairy industry was facing a number of challenges that need to be addressed by the government. In particular, the dairy industry wants to see measures taken to address the problem of diafiltered milk, which crosses into Canada tariff-free because it is not even classed as a dairy product. Some cheese processors have taken to using the substance as part of their required minimum percentage of milk when making cheese, instead of using it as part of their allowable percentage of added ingredients. https://twitter.com/_stacypardy/status/738421725356904448 There is also huge concern about the impact of the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement which has opened up Canada to an additional 17,700t/year of cheese from the EU. The government has promised a compensation package as this deal amounts to an annual loss of between $110m-$150m/year (58m-80m/year) in revenues and market share for Canadian dairy farmers. Thank you to all the supporters who made the trip to Ottawa #CanadianMilkMatters #StrongAndUnited #FortsEtUnis pic.twitter.com/A4JWXTUcih James Dybka (@JamesDybka) June 2, 2016 #Canadianmilkmatters. And this is why so we can provide a stable future for the next generation of farmers pic.twitter.com/lGYvNBKqQS Leslie Johnson (@cl_johnson) June 2, 2016 A statement from the Candian government said it was looking for long-term, sustainable solutions to the challenges facing the industry. Our goal is to improve the position of Canadian dairy farmers, help modernise the Canadian dairy industry, and ensure this critical Canadian industry can continue to grow and thrive in an ever-changing global economy. We must ensure we arrive at the best possible outcomes which address the challenges and opportunities facing the Canadian dairy industry in a way that will pave the way forward for not only todays dairy farmers, but their children and grandchildren. SALINAS, Calif., June 2, 2016 Animal protection and conservation organizations filed a lawsuit today challenging Monterey Countys contract renewal with the U.S. Department of Agricultures Wildlife Services a notorious federal wildlife-killing program that has killed more than 3,000 coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions and other animals in the county in the past six years. [Photo: Bobcat, Felis rufus, by Robin Silver / Center for Biological Diversity.] Nationwide, Wildlife Services killed more than 2.7 million animals in 2014 (the last year for which data is available). The agencys use of poison and traps has also injured people and killed more than 1,100 dogs since 2000.Todays lawsuit notes that Monterey Countys renewal of the contract violates the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) because the county failed to analyze the environmental impacts of its agreement and wrongfully claimed an exemption from CEQA. Also, the county held no public hearings about a CEQA exemption claim, and has not disclosed the details of its agreement with Wildlife Services.A Monterey County resident joined with Animal Legal Defense Fund, the Animal Welfare Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Project Coyote and the Mountain Lion Foundation to file todays lawsuit.Monterey Countys previous contract authorized Wildlife Services to kill hundreds of coyotes, as well as bobcats, mountain lions and other animals every year without fully assessing the ecological damage or considering alternatives. Over the past six years, Wildlife Services has killed 3,563 animals in Monterey County using traps, snares and firearms. From June 2014 to June 2015 alone, Wildlife Services killed 105 coyotes, three mountain lions and two bobcats.Peer-reviewed research shows that such reckless slaughter of animals particularly predators results in broad ecological destruction and loss of biodiversity. The programs controversial and indiscriminate killing methods have come under increased scrutiny from scientists, the public and government officials. In addition, the program has been responsible for the deaths of many threatened and endangered species, as well as family pets.Building on our recent success in requiring Mendocino County to comply with CEQA before hiring Wildlife Services, the Animal Legal Defense Fund and our allies will continue to push for compliance and wildlife protection in Monterey County, said Stephen Wells, executive director of the Animal Legal Defense Fund. California deserves more from their elected officials.Wildlife Services lethal predator control program is ecologically destructive, ethically indefensible and economically unjustifiable, said Camilla Fox, founder and executive director of Project Coyote. We hope that this action propels Monterey County to explore non-lethal options to reduce conflicts with native wildlife as other counties like Marin have done and we stand poised to help in this direction.Californians should be aware that their tax dollars are funding this harmful wildlife-killing program, said Collette Adkins, an attorney and biologist at the Center for Biological Diversity. We hope our lawsuit spurs Monterey County to realize that people value wildlife and this business-as-usual killing is no longer acceptable.The Animal Legal Defense Fund was founded in 1979 to protect the lives and advance the interests of animals through the legal system. To accomplish this mission, the Animal Legal Defense Fund files high-impact lawsuits to protect animals from harm; provides free legal assistance and training to prosecutors to assure that animal abusers are punished for their crimes; supports tough animal protection legislation and fights harmful legislation; and provides resources and opportunities to law students and professionals to advance the emerging field of animal law. For more information, please visit aldf.org.The Animal Welfare Institute is a nonprofit charitable organization founded in 1951 and dedicated to reducing animal suffering caused by people. AWI engages policymakers, scientists, industry, and the public to achieve better treatment of animals everywherein the laboratory, on the farm, in commerce, at home, and in the wild. For more information, visit awionline.org.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: biologicaldiversity.org.Project Coyote, a national non-profit organization headquartered in Northern California, is a North American coalition of wildlife educators, scientists, ranchers, and community leaders promoting coexistence between people and wildlife, and compassionate conservation through education, science, and advocacy. For more information, visit ProjectCoyote.org.The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 2 million members and online activists. Since 1970, our lawyers, scientists, and other environmental specialists have worked to protect the world's natural resources, public health, and the environment. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Bozeman, MT, and Beijing. Visit us at http://www.nrdc.org and follow us on Twitter @NRDC.For 30 years, the Mountain Lion Foundation has worked with member volunteers and activists to further wildlife policies that seek to protect mountain lions, people and domestic animals without resorting to lethal measures. For more information, visit mountainlion.org. Israel Dawson's film "Freedom Sleepers" will premiere at the UCSC SocDoc thesis screening at Del Mar Theatre in Santa Cruz on June 8. The film documents the struggle to reclaim the rights of homeless people in Santa Cruz, and features footage from the community sleepouts held at Santa Cruz City Hall since July 4 of 2015. [Top photo: Israel Dawson conducts an interview as community members prepare to march to Santa Cruz City Hall for the first community sleepout on July 4, 2015.] Dawson embedded himself and spent long periods of time documenting the Freedom Sleepers, the group of unhoused and housed activists who named themselves that shortly after initiating the sleepouts.The Freedom Sleepers continue to sleep at Santa Cruz City Hall once a week. They do so as an intentional act of civil disobedience to violate the city's parks trespassing ordinance and/or the city's camping ban, depending on where exactly they choose to sleep at City Hall.In the early months of the sleepouts, the Santa Cruz police conducted massive raids on the protests, arresting some and citing many. During the process of filming "Freedom Sleepers," Dawson faced extreme pressure from the authorities.The Social Documentation Program, also known as "SocDoc," is a master's degree program at UC Santa Cruz that was founded in 2005. The SocDoc website describes the program as being designed for, "future documentarians committed to social change and to documenting communities, cultures, issues, and individuals who are marginalized in our current landscape of representation."In addition to "Freedom Sleepers," the thesis screening on June 8 will feature the following films: "ADI At The Confluence" by Joor Baruah; "Fishermen Without A Sea" by Lucas Bonnetti; "Love, Art and Liberation" by Maricar Camaya; "Holding Out" by Rebecca Gourevitch; and "Wesley's Soledad" by Rogelio Novales.What: UCSC SocDoc Thesis Screening 2016When: Wednesday, June 8, 2016 - 6:00pmLocation: Del Mar Theatre (Downtown Santa Cruz)The event is free and open to the public.For more information about the Social Documentation Program at UCSC, see:SocDocFor more information about the Freedom Sleepers, see:Freedom SleepersAlex Darocy China 'committed to peace' Updated: 2016-06-03 08:15 By Zhao Huanxin and Hu Yongqi(China Daily Europe) Premier Li says neighbors must optimize common interests, manage differences China does not intend to assume a role as "big brother", but instead seeks to build a community of a shared future with all its neighbors, Premier Li Keqiang said in Beijing on May 31. "There are no grounds for China to become a superpower, and neither does China have the intention to be one," Li said. Premier Li Keqiang, accompanied by China Daily Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Zhu Ling (right), meets Suthichai Yoon of Nation Multimedia Group of Thailand and other Asia News Network executives at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 31. Feng Yongbin / China Daily "China has a long way to go to realize modernization. It needs a stable regional and peaceful international environment, and China is committed to safeguarding that environment." The premier made the remarks in answering a question from Suthichai Yoon, chief adviser of Thailand's Nation Multimedia Group, during a meeting at the Great Hall of the People with a delegation from 21 Asian media outlets. The media representatives gathered in Beijing for the two-day annual board meeting of the Asia News Network. The ANN, founded in 1999, is one of the world's biggest media alliances. It comprises leading, mostly English-language news groups with a combined readership of at least 14 million. Zhu Ling, publisher and editor-in-chief of China Daily, is the acting chairman of ANN for 2015-16. The annual meeting coincided with China Daily's 35th anniversary, which fell on June 1. Li said even if China can realize modernization in the coming decades, Beijing will not seek hegemony, nor will it bully any country, however small that nation is in terms of population or landmass. Just as a person may accidentally bite his lip, it is only natural that neighbors will have differences, the premier emphasized, but the key is to address such disparities in a calm, diplomatic way. "I firmly believe that our era is one that needs peace and cooperation," he said. "The common interests among China and its neighbors are way greater than disparities, and we can always optimize the common interests and better manage our differences." Endy M. Bayuni, editor-in-chief of the Jakarta Post, says he was impressed that Li answered all of the questions, which Bayuni described as serious and tough ones. "I'm glad he responded to our concerns about where the country is going, as many are worried about the potential of China misusing its growing power." In answering a question from Phonekeo Volakhoun, editor-in-chief of Laos' Vientiane Times, about the outlook for relations between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Li said China has consistently supported the integration process of ASEAN and the building of the ASEAN community. The premier said he will attend a summit in Laos in September to mark the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the China-ASEAN dialogue. "We're committed to pursuing the policy of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness in developing relations with neighbors," he said. "We would like to expand political trust with ASEAN members and other Asian countries ... and make concerted efforts to build a close community of a shared future in Asia." (China Daily European Weekly 06/03/2016 page2) HOW DOES COUNTY MANAGEMENT COVER UP 9 FALSE IMPRISONMENTS AND BEING HELD HOSTAGE HERE'S HO by Deirdre Sanders Thu, Jun 2, 2016 4:30PM This week, the full Fourth Circuit Court of Appealsin a decision that impacts residents in Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia held that you have no expectation of privacy in historical location data generated by your cell phone. This decision, which follows decisions from four other federal appellate courts, means that now, in the vast majority of states, federal law enforcement agents dont need to get a warrant to get access to this data from a cell service provider. [ACLU map of the 29,659 datapoints generated by Mr. Graham's cell phone over 221 days] In the case, United States v. Graham, law enforcement officers relied on a simple court order to learn each place that Mr. Graham and his co-defendant had travelled for more than seven months. The 221 days worth of data officers obtained on the two defendants contained nearly 30,000 datapoints for each defendantdata that the ACLU discovered could reveal when the defendants were home and when they left home, when their travel patterns changed from the norm, and even that Mr. Grahams wife was pregnant. This cell site location information (CSLI) was generated every time the defendants phones tried to connect with a cell tower to send or receive data. We filed an amicus brief in the case, and, in a great opinion last year, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit held, despite conflicting rulings from other circuits, that individuals have an expectation of privacy in historical cell site records like these. The court held the Fourth Amendment required police to use a search warrant to obtain this information. But the government asked the court to rehear the case en banc (with the full court), and the full court agreed. This week the full court overturned its earlier opinion, relying on a wonky legal principle from two 1970s Supreme Court cases called the third party doctrine. This principle holds that information you voluntarily share with someone elsewhether that someone else is your bank (such as deposit and withdrawal information), the phone company (the numbers you dial on your phone), or a government informantisnt protected by the Fourth Amendment because you cant expect that third party to keep that information secret. But the Fourth Circuit took the third party doctrine further than any case weve seen so far. The court held that it didnt matter if cell site location information could reveal sensitive information about our lives; it didnt matter how many days worth of data the government got from the service provider; and it didnt even matter whether we had any idea the phone was generating the data or had any real control over when or where the phone generated data. Purely because that data was shared with a service provider, the Fourth Amendment didnt protect it. As the dissenting judges in the case recognized, this opinion has important ramifications for the future, and especially for the Internet of Things, where sensors and devices may constantly be generating and sharing data about us with little to no volition on our part, other than, perhaps, the initial decision to purchase or use the device. For this reason, the dissent notes, the mere fact that the data is shared with a third party shouldnt matterits much more important to look to the sensitivity of the data collected. Here, the sheer volume of data collected by the government221 days worthfar eclipses that of any other case decided by the courts so far. Its nearly eight times the surveillance period involved in United States v. Jones, a 2012 case where the Supreme Court held GPS tracking requires a warrant, and more than three times the period the Eleventh Circuit evaluated in United States v. Davis, a CSLI case last year. Graham further proves Justice Sotomayors point in her concurring opinion in Jones that the third party doctrine is ill suited to the digital age. We live in an era in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks. We use cell phones to stay in touch with friends and family on the go, rely on GPS mapping technologies to find our way about town, and wear Fitbits to try to improve our health. Its impossible to use any of these technologies without sharing data with third parties, but choosing to rely on 21st-century technology shouldnt mean we have to relinquish our constitutional rights. As weve written before, and as Justice Sotomayor also noted in Jones, this problem arises because courts dont understand that secrecy doesnt have to be a prerequisite for privacy. Even if our data isnt technically secret, (because we have intentionally or unintentionally shared it with someone or something else), this doesnt mean we dont think this information should be kept private from the prying eyes of the government. The Graham dissent concludes: Only time will tell whether our society will prove capable of preserving age-old privacy protections in this increasingly networked era. But one thing is sure: this Courts decision today will do nothing to advance that effort. Five federal appellate courts have now spokentheir hands are tied by the Supreme Courts 1970s third-party doctrine precedent. Congress could step in and, like California and other state legislatures, require a warrant for location information. But given the lack of speed and efficiency with which our federal legislature moves, that may never happen. Now, more than ever, its clear that the only way to assure[] preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted is for the Supreme Court to revisit and overturn the third party doctrine. We hope the Graham defendants will petition the Supreme Court for review. If they do, well be right there with an amicus brief in support. United States v. GrahamFourth Circuit Court of Appeals En Banc opinion A weekly 30 minute review of international news and opinion, recorded from a shortwave radio and the internet. With times, frequencies, and websites for listening at home. 3 files- Highest quality broadcast, regular broadcast, and slow-modem streaming. NHK World Radio Japan, Radio Deutsche-Welle, Radio Havana Cuba, and Sputnik Radio. Dear Radio Friend,The latest Shortwave Report (June 3) is up at the website http://www.outfarpress.com/shortwave.shtml in 3 forms- (new) HIGHEST QUALITY (160kb)(33MB), broadcast quality (13MB), and quickdownload or streaming form (6MB) (28:59) Links at page bottom(If you have access to Audioport there is a highest quality version posted up there {33MB} http://www.audioport.org/index.php?op=producer-info&uid=904&nav=& PODCAST!!!- feed:// http://www.outfarpress.com/podcast.xml (160kb Highest Quality)NEW ARTICLE about the Shortwave Report in the Boulder Weekly by Gavin Dahl-This week's show features stories from NHK World Radio Japan, Radio Deutsche-Welle, Radio Havana Cuba, and Sputnik Radio.From JAPAN- On weekday mornings NHK presents a feature called Insight, here are two from this week. The first is a reaction to the speech Obama gave at his visit to Hiroshima, where he described the bombing as "death fell from the sky," without implying any American responsibility. The second Insight is about French Polynesia, where for 30 years the French government conducted nuclear weapons tests without acknowledging health risks to the people and environment.From GERMANY- A court in Argentina convicted 15 ex-military officials for conspiring to kill dissidents in the CIA directed Operation Condor. In Nigeria militants have been attacking oil pipelines in protest. A far-right leader in Germany expressed his racism against Africans, and Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande appealed for european unity. The Economy minister of Germany spoke out against the Transatlantic Trade And Investment Partnership, and polls in England predict that the referendum on Britain leaving the EU likely to win. The lead negotiator for the Syrian opposition resigned, and at least 1000 refugees drowned in the Mediterranean Sea last week. Turkish President Erdogan made further threats to Germany if they recognize the Armenian genocide as a genocide, and he also told Muslim families to cease using contraceptives and called birth control treason.From CUBA- The Organization for American States, or OAS, is targeting Venezuelan President Maduro as a threat to democracy, possibly requiring outside intervention. Then a Viewpoint on the final presidential election in Peru this Sunday- in some perspectives this is a contest between two ultra-right-wing candidates, adding to the shift to the right in Latin American politics.From RUSSIA- George Galloway interviewed British journalist Peter Oborne about his new book called "Not The Chilcot Report." Sir John Chilcot is the chairman of a public inquiry into the British role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It is intended to reveal if the public were deceived by the government, especially Tony Blair. George and Peter discuss the lies as well as the others who promoted the war, specifically the Parliament and the media- and are similar deceptions perpetuating the current wars in the Middle East and North Africa?There is an article about the Shortwave Report by Cassandra Roos on line -I was interviewed for an informative weekly radio show Mediageek, available at http://radio.mediageek.net All that plus times and frequencies for listening at home. It's free to rebroadcast, please notify me if you're airing it and haven't notified me in the last month, please mention the website if you only air a portion. If you just want to listen and have a slow connection, try the streaming version- lower sound quality but good enough and way easier if you don't have a high-speed internet connection. If streaming is a problem because of your slow connection, download the smaller file- it takes 20 minutes or less, and will play swell in any mp3 player application (RealPlayer, Winamp, Quicktime, iTunes, etc) you have on your computer.TIME SLOT on KZYX! This program will be aired on Sunday afternoon at 4pm (PST) on KZYX/Z Philo CA, you might be able to stream via < http://www.kzyx.org I hope you'll listen and air this if you're connected with a radio station. I am still wondering how to get financially compensated for the 25 hours I put into this program weekly- any ideas are appreciated. Any stations rebroadcasting this (or listeners) are welcome to donate for production costs. You can do so through the website. Many thanks to those that have donated! No Guilt! (maybe a little)links for this week's edition- http://www.outfarpress.com/swr160603.mp3 > (33 MB) HIGHEST QUALITY http://www.outfarpress.com/swr_06_03_16.mp3 > (13 MB) Broadcast Quality http://www.outfarpress.com/swr_06_03_16_24.mp3 > (6 MB) Slow Modem streamingWebsite Page-FurthuR! Dan Roberts"The common man, no matter how sharp and tough, actually enjoys having the wool pulled over his eyes, and makes it easier for the puller."-P. T. BarnumDan RobertsShortwave Report-YouthSpeaksOut!- We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts! Donate $ 415.00 donated in the past month Get Involved If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us. Bernie Sanders has supported SF Democrat Jane Kim who is a big supporter of charter schools. Has Sanders betrayed his "political revolution" by endorsing Kim? Kim Supports Privatization of Education Through Charters. Has Sanders Betrayed His Revolution by Endorsing Jane Kim?JUNE 3, 2016by RICK BAUMBernie Sanders is calling for a revolution. Were his proposals implemented, some positive changes could occur. Life threatening global environmental problems could be more seriously addressed, economic inequality could be reduced, everyone could be guaranteed health care as a right, and public higher education could be tuition free.To carry out his revolution, there will need to be a well-organized mass movement that is not dependent on a single individual such as himself. It will obviously need help and support from other political leaders.Recently, Sanders began endorsing some Democrats running for office. One of his endorsees is Jane Kim who currently serves on San Franciscos Board of Supervisors and is seeking election to Californias State Senate. She has received endorsements from many progressive organizations and individuals in San Francisco. Her major opponent could be characterized as a business friendly Democrat.1Perhaps Sanders decided to endorse Kim because she has put forward a plan for tuition free community college education for San Francisco residents and those who work in San Francisco at least half-time who attend City College of San Francisco (CCSF). Funding would come from additional transfer taxes on the sale of properties worth over $5 million, i.e. the rich.2Kims proposal is a step toward restoring free community college in California as existed statewide some 35 years ago. If enacted, it would benefit many CCSF students who are predominantly working class students of color.3Unfortunately, Kim holds other views that are problematic. She favors charter schools. The goals of her housing proposals are questionable. Additionally, she brags about having helped to attract major corporations to San Francisco by offering them tax breaks.What is quoted below (in places emphasis is added) are Kims November 2015 responses to questions submitted to her by the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) which has endorsed her as has its CCSF affiliate AFT 2121.KIM FAVORS CHARTER SCHOOLSFormer President of the San Francisco Board of Education Kim wants to improve our education system and close the achievement and opportunity gap. One way she believes this can be done is by nurturing the role of charter schools in our systemThis is extremely troubling. Charter schools are usually predominantly funded with money from taxpayers. They are generally anti-union, offer teachers no job protections, are often run by private for profit companies, and can be selective in who enrollsrejecting those who are suspected of being trouble makers or are seen as having special needs.Kim explains why she supports charter schools.Charter schools serve as an important space where minority students and low income communities may receive education that is critical for gaining skill and knowledge. Not limited to serving any specific community, charter schools are also essential for talented students that excel in any given area to receive the continued training that is essential for their growth. Offering an alternative environment for students, charter schools serve as a necessary option for education by integrating both characteristics of a public and private schools. I have supported existing charter schools reauthorizations in San Francisco that have demonstrated successful outcomes for students and I have voted against new charter authorizations, many of whom do not have a track record of success.Kim favors charter schools because they are essential for talented students. Who determines which students are talented? Do charter schools really cultivate talented students? Shouldnt the educational needs of every student be cultivated to bring out their potential? Should any public money be used for charter schools especially when public schools suffer from inadequate funding and potentially excellent teachers are discouraged from going into teaching due to the low pay levels? Furthermore, do charter schools violate equal educational opportunities?Under Kims model, with the talented students attending charter schools, charters will be praised for their success. Public schools, devoid of supposedly talented students, will be criticized for not doing a good job based on questionable criteria for measuring successful schools, and then face threats of funding cuts and closure.Kim states she will make sure that charter schools have to demonstrate a record of successful outcomes, whatever that means, when that might not be hard to do if they have all the talented students.HOUSING POLICIESSan Francisco is going through a boom. It has a robust economy with a low level of unemployment, but simultaneously one of the worst housing crisis in the country. Many people are being wrongfully evicted. Rents and home prices have skyrocketed. Those most adversely impacted have been people with low to moderate incomes who are facing wrongful evictions and are being gouged by higher rents forcing them to move out of the city. For example, housing in San Francisco for most teachers is unaffordable.4Kims approach:I challenged San Francisco to make the City more affordable by setting the goal that 33% of all new housing that is built should be affordable for low- and middle-income households. In addition, I established the forward thinking standard that 40% of housing that is built on public land should be affordable to these same householdsWhen affordability is not defined, it is a slippery concept that could be applied to people with more than six figure incomes. Given the great need for housing that people with lower incomes face, why does Kim advocate that only 40% of housing built on public land be affordable? Given San Franciscos housing crisis, should public land on which housing is to be built be used for any housing other than housing that lower income folks can afford to live in? i.e. Shouldnt all housing built on public land be affordable for those with lower incomes as a start to solving the housing crisis?Noteworthy is that Kim helped pass a tenant rights ordinance she describes as the boldest protections ordinance in the country to counter frivolous and profit incentivized evictions. Despite this bold tenant protections, she stated at a Board of Supervisors meeting on May 24 that San Francisco is becoming a city with record levels of evictions and rents.5HOUSING FOR THE HOMELESSSan Franciscos major housing crisis is also reflected in its large number of homeless people. Kim states:My legislative priority for the upcoming year is to address housing homeless children and their families. We have a limited window of opportunity to end the cycle of poverty for the next generation, and it must include stable, safe, and clean housing. If we do not address this now, we guarantee that the homeless child today suffers chronic homelessness and intransigent poverty as an adult. I am actively partnering with the mayor as well as experts in the arena of housing, finance, and family homelessness to fully implement a roadmap to end the family homelessness by 2019.6Yes, providing a home for homeless children is an obvious priority, but shouldnt Kim seek to immediately house all who are homeless?6 Is she saying that if you are not part of a family with childrentough luck, plan on remaining homeless or find a partner and make a baby!?Additionally, how will housing for the homeless going to be properly addressed if only a portion of new housing built will be affordable?KIM FAVORED CORPORATE SUBSIDIESElsewhere, Kim brags about one of her accomplishments.I authored a tax exclusion legislation to attract technology companies and small businesses in a corridor in my district with the highest commercial vacancy rate in San Francisco in 2011. The commercial vacancy rate has fallen as low as 2.4% in most parts of my district and this corridor is now home to Twitter, Uber, Square, Dolby, and Zendesk. I am committed to creating good paying/family wage jobs, so that diverse residents can continue to live in the Bay Area.Kim claims her corporate tax break attracted the above companies with their presumably highly paid workers. Has attracting these companies led to less affordable housing in San Francisco exacerbating its housing crisis that results in driving people out of the city and/or creating more homelessness?CONCLUSIONIn politics, one would be a fool to seek out perfect allies. However, given his expressed goals, should Sanders be aligning himself with a politician such as Kim?Were Sanders revolution successfully carried out, wouldnt charter schools and the type of corporate tax subsidy favored by Kim be what one would expect from a triumphant counter-revolution?Footnotes1 SF Bay Guardian Endorsements include endorsements of Sanders and Kim.Among the ways the SF Bay Guardian characterizes Kims major opponent, Supervisor Scott Weiner, is the following:Its just that on economic issues, hes a conservative that is, he believes in market-based solutions to issues like housing, he didnt support the anti-speculation tax, he doesnt support higher mandates for affordable housing, he was on Airbnbs side in the critical vote on saving housing from conversion into hotels 2 San Francisco Chronicle quoting Eric Jaye, a consultant for Kims campaign:The pair (Sanders and Kim) connected over the issue of free community college for all, which Jane has worked for.3 Kims proposal has some serious shortcomings. Free tuition would only be available to San Francisco residents and those who work half-time in San Francisco. This could mean that a tenant wrongfully evicted by a slumlord and having to move out of San Francisco would no longer be eligible for free tuition while the landlord would be.Her proposal could also result in homeless students and those who couch surf facing difficulties proving they are San Francisco residents and are therefore eligible for free tuitionTo address the above concerns, Kim could promise that if she is elected to the State Senate, she would immediately put forward legislation to make all of Californias community colleges tuition free. Here, she wavers a bit, I believe that community college should be free or nearly free to all who wish to attend.4 See San Francisco Chronicle andThere is not one single home currently for sale in San Francisco that would be affordable for the average teacher to buy. This sobering stat comes from new Redfin research that compared the average salaries of teachers across California to home prices in the state. In San Francisco, where the median teacher salary in 2012 was $59,700, Redfin calculated that a home affordable for someone making that much each year would cost $220,000. There are no listings at that price point currently available in the city.5 Excerpt of May 24, 2016 meeting that may not be available for long, starting at 1:10 http://www.aft2121.org/2016/05/reclaiming-the-california-promise-free-city-college/#more-6536 Video of entire meeting with the quoted statement: http://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=10&clip_id=25473 6 To her credit, Kim recognizes the problem:1 out of every 25 San Francisco public school students is homeless facing daily sleep deprivation, anxiety, hunger, and lack of access to clean clothing, showers, or basic toiletries. Based on Compass Connecting Point data, there are enough homeless students in San Francisco schools to fill more than 70 classrooms or 35 Muni buses. They are our neighbors, our childrens classmates, and they are struggling.###Page 8 http://www.aft2121.org/wp-content/uploads/SD-11-Jane-Kim-Questionnaire.pdf CA Charter school billionaire backers pour it on in California legislative races-Walmart Gap NetFlix Take-OverCA Charter schools and billionaire allies pour it on in California legislative races "More than 80 percent of the associations donations since last July have come from five people: GAP co-founder Doris Fisher, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, developer Eli Broad, Texas billionaire and former hedge fund manager John D. Arnold and Carrie Walton Penner, the granddaughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton."JUNE 2, 2016 6:00 AMCharter schools and allies pour it on in California legislative racesCharter school association, related group and EdVoice spend nearly $9 million in 12 districtsHandful of wealthy donors leading the effortTeachers unions have spent relatively little so farCharter schools and allies pour it on in California legislative races 00:59Charter school association, related group and EdVoice spend nearly $9 million in 12 districts. EdVoice has paid for ads in the 4th Assembly District contest. The spending, though, has come under criticism. Campaign footage posted on YouTubeBY JIM MILLERCharter school advocates and their allies, largely bankrolled by a handful of wealthy donors, are dominating the states political landscape this primary season, pouring nearly $9 million into legislative races around the state.Saying they are tired of current conditions in California schools, they are spending in 12 different districts, seeking to elect lawmakers they believe will be more sympathetic to their cause on such issues as teacher performance, tenure and the way schools are governed.The California California Charter Schools Association, EdVoice and the charter-school funded Parent Teacher Alliance are spending significantly more than those groups committed during the last three legislative primary seasons, through Wednesday spending a third of all outside money seeking to influence legislative elections.EdVoice, which has spent nearly $5 million in six districts since April 1, is supporting candidates it believes will be receptive to changing the education system, either through charter schools or changes in public schools, said Bill Lucia, the organizations president and CEO.Continue Reading ... China Life takes stake in landmark NY property Updated: 2016-06-03 08:20 By Li Xiang and Hu Yuanyuan(China Daily Europe) China Life Insurance Group Co, the country's largest insurer, has taken a sizable but undisclosed stake in a landmark New York office block, in a deal worth $1.65 billion. The insurer is believed to be the largest investor in the Manhattan building, at 1285 Sixth Avenue, in a transaction led by US developer RXR Realty LLC, according to media reports. The purchase marks the latest high-profile property move by a Chinese company, in a trend experts say is fueled by the desire to hedge against the risks of a slower Chinese economy and the yuan's depreciation. "It's a reasonable move by China Life, given the expectation of a strong dollar and the sound economic recovery in the United States," says Grant Ji, executive director of capital markets for northern China at CBRE Group, a US commercial real estate company. The 167,220-square-meter Sixth Avenue site houses tenants include UBS Group AG and the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Ji says trophy properties in prime locations such as New York and London are considered ideal targets for Chinese insurers, as they offer low-risk investments that generate a stable yield. Property deal tracker Real Capital Analytics told The Wall Street Journal recently that Chinese companies have been the most-active investors in the US since the start of the year, buying 47 properties worth a combined $9.3 billion. China Life's purchase also comes at a time when Chinese insurers have been suffering a significant decline in profits and investment returns, due to the sharp volatility of the domestic A-share market. "More life insurance companies are interested in investing in foreign real estate to earn stable rental yields and to diversify their investment portfolio," says Sally Yim, senior vice-president at global rating agency Moody's Investors Service Inc. "China Life's overall real estate holding is still small, so despite the illiquid nature of this kind of investment, we believe the risk is manageable." China Life was hit by a 57.2 percent fall in net profits to 5.22 billion yuan ($794 million; 715 million euros) in the first quarter of the year. Its investment return also dropped by 4 percent to 3.7 percent during that period. Last year, the company and its domestic rival, Ping An Insurance Co, jointly invested in a $500 million development project in Boston's Seaport District, which marked both companies' first move into the US property market. Contact the writers at lixiang@chinadaily.com.cn and huyuanyuan@chinadaily.com.cn China Life Insurance Group Co is China's largest insurer. Chen Junmin / For China Daily ( China Daily European Weekly 06/03/2016 page27) Exhibition on the Soong sisters highlights their huge role in China's 20th century history, as well as their personal lives There has never been a trio of sisters more famous in China than the Soongs, and their contributions to the country and the wartime efforts have now been commemorated in an exhibition, The Soong Sisters: Special Memories. The exhibition, at the Duoyunxuan Art Center in Shanghai, runs until July 31. It is presented by Xinmin Evening News and the municipal management council for the cultural relics of Sun Yat-sen and Soong Ching-ling. An exhibition in Shanghai showcases rare photographs and artifacts used by the Soong sisters who are today still revered for their contributions to China's political scene and war-time efforts. Photos Provided to China Daily The 300 exhibits comprise original documents, photographs, video recordings, clothing, daily utensils and artwork, and were collected from both sides of the Taiwan Straits. The three women - Ai-ling (1888-1973), Ching-ling (1893-1981) and Mei-ling (1898-2003) - are well-known for their key roles in China's political scene throughout the 20th century. Two were once the first ladies of China - Ching-ling married Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), also known as the Father of Modern China while Mei-ling wedded Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975), the former leader of the Kuomintang government and president of the Republic of China. The eldest sibling, Ai-ling, was married to Kung Hsiang-hsi (1881-1967), the richest man in China in the early 1900s. While Mei-ling and Ai-ling were ardent supporters of the Kuomintang, Ching-ling was steadfast in her Communist beliefs. Despite their differences in ideology, the three sisters nonetheless joined hands to lend vital support to war relief efforts in the fight against Japanese invaders. In 1940, when the Japanese occupied the capital city of Nanjing, the three reunited in Chongqing and established the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives. The three sisters provided aid to numerous schools, hospitals, air raid shelters and war-torn communities. After the fall of the KMT in 1948, Mei-ling and Ai-ling moved to Taiwan with their families, while Ching-ling stayed in the Chinese mainland. The three sisters never again met in person. Ai-ling and Mei-ling later moved to New York, where they spent their last days, while Ching-ling died in Beijing. "The Soong sisters were born and raised in Shanghai. This is the first time the three of them are reunited since 1949, when they went their separate ways," says Chen Qiwei, chief editor of Xinmin Evening News. "They were the elites of their time and role models for women in China. The exhibition features the bond between the sisters, as well as their shared patriotic love for the nation. These are people of historical significance, and yet ordinary folks at the same time. It's really the details of family life that reveal the true colors of people." The Soong sisters were born to American-educated Methodist minister Charles Soong, and all three of them attended Wesleyan College in the US state of Georgia. Mei-ling left Wesleyan College and later graduated from Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She spoke excellent English, and with a Georgia accent, which helped her to connect with American audiences, according to records from Wellesley College. In the 1930s, she and her husband initiated the New Life Movement, combining Confucianism with Christianity, and encouraged self-cultivation among the Chinese people. When World War II broke out, she initiated a welfare project to establish schools for orphans of Chinese soldiers and referred to these children as her "warphans". To better provide for them, she established the Chinese Women's National War Relief Society. Mei-ling also played an active role in the political scene and was the English translator, secretary and adviser to her husband Chiang. In 1943, Mei-ling became the first Chinese national and only the second woman to make a public address to both houses of the US Congress, speaking about the Chinese people's determination to fight against the Japanese. In 1995, she made a rare public appearance when she attended a reception held on Capitol Hill in her honor as part of the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. The original crimson dress and silk shawl that Mei-ling wore at this reception are among the rare exhibits, alongside historical photographs of her 1943 lectures in the US. "It was her last visit to Washington, DC, and again, her appearance and speech reflected the spirit of Chinese people, which won the respect of the American people. Without the victory of the war against the Japanese invaders, there would not be today's China," says Hau Pei-tsun, a politician from Taiwan who was in the KMT army during the war. Hau adds that he remembers Mei-ling as a "warm and friendly lady, who treated us like her own children" and notes that she would often crack jokes and evoke much laughter at banquets. Also among the exhibits is the wedding gown that Mei-ling wore in 1927. The white dress features a Chinese qipao-style collar line and a drop-back hem. It is believed that Mei-ling, who was later known as Madame Chiang, had contributed to the design. This bridal look, complete with a white headscarf fastened with a hair clasp, was widely copied at the time, as evidenced by vintage photographs showing a number of celebrities donning similar gowns. Another significant war-related artifact at the exhibition is the medal that Ching-ling received from the KMT government in recognition for her contributions during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45). Ching-ling was also the person who had introduced Western authors and journalists to Mao Zedong, who was based in Yan'an in Shaanxi province. "Despite their differences, the three sisters each made great contributions to the victory of the war. When you put together the stories of all the three sisters, you'll get a complete picture of the war," says Xiao Guiyu, chairman of the management council of Sun Yat-sen cultural relics in Shanghai. Xiao adds that the Soong sisters are fine examples of the fusion of Chinese and Western cultures who have made a significant impact on generations after them. Neither Ching-ling nor Mei-ling had children, while Ai-ling was survived by two sons and two daughters. In attendance at the exhibition was Chiang Fang Chi-yi, the widow of Chiang Hsiao-yung. The latter's father is Chiang Ching-kuo, the son of Chiang Kai-shek and his first wife, Mao Fumei. Fang Chi-yi has been the keeper of the diaries of Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo. Part of the Chiang Kai-shek diaries is now open to the public at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. "The three sisters shared the happiness and suffering of the nation through the 20th century. Even though they were separated for decades far across the seas, the emotional connection between them never faded," Fang Chi-yi says. "The more they aged, the more they missed each other. They asked about one another whenever there were visitors coming from the other side of the Straits. Their spirits in heaven must be consoled now, seeing this exhibition taking place," she adds. zhangkun@chinadaily.com.cn Two archaeologists clean a bronze vessel unearthed from the excavation of the Marquis Haihun's tomb in Nanchang, Jiangxi province. Photos Provided to China Daily An annual list of the top archaeological finds in China is getting more public attention thanks to increasing media coverage of excavations of historical sites They are commonly referred to as the Academy Awards of Chinese archaeology. The annual list of the top 10 archaeological discoveries in China for 2015 was released in Beijing on May 16. The finds cover a time span that ranges from the Paleolithic period to the First Sino-Japanese War in the 19th century. Clockwise from top: Bronze objects unearthed from the Sifangtang site in Hubei province. A bronze carriage component called xiawei from the Zhouyuan site in Shaanxi province. Tools made of bones unearthed from the Gantangqing Paleolithic sites in Yunnan province. The final list was picked from 25 candidates, and included finds such as a Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24) tomb identified as the burial site of dethroned emperor Liu He in Jiangxi province and a vessel identified as the famous warship Zhiyuan from the Beiyang Fleet, which sank in 1894 off the coast of Liaoning province. The list also recognized older projects that achieved breakthroughs last year. Among them was a mining and smelting site in Hubei province. Excavations at the site have been continued since 1970, but last year archaeologists found a laborers' tomb cluster. Also recognized were the Liangzhu cultural sites in Zhejiang province, which were discovered in 1936. While finds from the Liangzhu sites have made the top 10 lists many times before, their latest claim to fame is the discovery of a hydraulic project. The annual listing was launched in 1990 by Beijing-based newspaper China Cultural Relics News, and the jury is composed of archaeological authorities and scholars from leading museums and universities, such as the Palace Museum and Peking University, to make its final selection. An analysis of the 260 finds that have made the lists since they were launched in 1990 shows that finds from Henan, Jiangsu, Shandong and Shaanxi - all provinces boasting rich historical and cultural legacies - dominate the honor boards. Interestingly, finds from the well-known Sanxingdui site in Sichuan province, which covers a period from the late Neolithic Age to the Bronze Age, have never made the list. Many remarkable artifacts unearthed there in 1986 surprised the world, and a museum has been built at the site. Among the finds that were in contention for this year's list were several building foundations and city walls, but they failed to make the cut. Gao Dalun, who heads the research institute that made the finds there, says he is not surprised that the site lost out, because in recent years there has been a big jump in major archaeological discoveries in the country, making the competition to make the list even fiercer. He adds that, when it comes to Sanxingdui, people have much higher expectations for it. "The site covers about 25 square kilometers, and we've only excavated fewer than 10,000 square meters. I believe Sanxingdui has great potential to make it to the list." Meanwhile, the list has begun to garner growing public attention in recent years. This is partly because of increasing media coverage of excavation sites. The underwater archaeological excavation of the warship Zhiyuan was broadcast live on television. Also, carefully curated exhibitions of unearthed objects boost public interest. The Capital Museum in Beijing is holding two exhibitions, dedicated to finds from the tomb of Marquis of Haihun Liu He and that of a queen who also was a general, Fu Hao of the Shang Dynasty (c. 16th century-11th century BC), at the Yin Xu relic site in Henan. Speaking of what could appear on next year's list, Li Shuicheng, a professor of archaeology at Peking University, says it's difficult to predict what will happen next year because, besides ongoing excavations, accidental finds can always change the scene. "But above all, the list aims to raise public awareness of cultural legacies and conservation work," he says. linqi@chinadaily.com.cn Top 10 finds in 2015 1. Gantangqing Paleolithic sites, Jiangchuan county, Yunnan province 2. Jiangzhuang relic sites of Liangzhu culture, border of Xinghua and Dongtai cities, Jiangsu province 3. Liangzhu hydraulic project site, Hangzhou, Zhejiang province 4. Neolithic Age site, coastal area of Hainan province 5. Zhouyuan site, Baoji, Shaanxi province 6. Sifangtang site, Daye, Hubei province 7. Tomb of Marquis Haihun, Nanchang, Jiangxi province 8. Taiji Palace site, Luoyang, Henan province 9. Liao Dynasty imperial concubine tomb, Duolun county, Inner Mongolia autonomous region 10. Warship Zhiyuan, waters off Dandong, Liaoning province Dumplings and dragon boats Updated: 2016-06-03 08:19 By Pauline D Loh(China Daily Europe) RICE DUMPLINGS evolved into regional specialties, mixed with different ingredients to make them more tasty. Xu Yu / Xinhua Editor's note: To understand China, sit down to eat. Food is the indestructible bond that holds the whole social fabric together and it is also one of the last strong visages of community and culture. Every Chinese child knows the story of Qu Yuan, a patriot who threw himself into the river in despair after his country was obliterated by invaders. He appears in textbooks even to this day as a shining example of devotion to king and country. It is rather a sad story, but it does add to the romance that surrounds an important Chinese festival - Duanwujie, better known as the Dragon Boat Festival. Dragon boats commemorate the people's efforts to save the patriot-poet. Qu Yuan was a court official and adviser to the ruler of the state of Chu during that time in history in China known as the Warring States Period (475-221 BC). However, he was dismissed and sent home, mainly because he didn't always tell his emperor what he wanted to hear. Political rivals made sure he was never invited back to court, and he spent the rest of his life writing tragic epic poems, some of which have become classics. When the state of Chu was swallowed by its stronger neighbor, Qu committed suicide in the river. He was a well-loved man and the people frantically went out in boats to try to save him. They couldn't find his body, and legend has it that they then threw rice wrapped in bamboo leaves into the water so his body would not be eaten by the fish. That is the most popularly accepted origin of rice dumplings and dragon boat races. However, the mid-summer festival, had been observed long before that. In the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar, the sun is at its strongest during this time and the occasion was observed with the burning of cleansing herbs such as mugwort and the drinking of realgar wine, a sort of oral antiseptic against prevalent plagues and pestilence. Realgar wine, or xionghuangjiu, has a mineral compound added to it that actually has a little arsenic. It was used in ancient times as an antidote to poisons. In the popular fairy tale of the Lady White Snake, a 1,000-year-old reptile takes on human form and falls in love with a poor but good-looking herbalist. She marries him and helps him develop his practice into a successful venture. But instigated by an unbendingly righteous monk, he forces her to drink realgar wine on Duanwu and she reverts to her original form, thus scaring him to death. Realgar wine or xionghuang jiu, has a mineral compound added to it that actually has a little arsenic. Photos Provided to China Daily Despite his ingratitude, she goes on to offend the deities by stealing a magic herb to save him and ends up being captured and imprisoned under a pagoda on the banks of West Lake after giving birth to his child. Duanwu only evolved into the Dragon Boat Festival, or simply the Rice Dumpling Festival, after Qu Yuan. Dragon boats commemorate the people's efforts to save the patriot-poet, and now the races are contested not only in China, but all over the world where Chinese have settled. In countries and regions like Singapore, Hong Kong and Macao, expatriate communities also take part in the races with great enthusiasm. Dragon boat races have become an international sport, rather like Formula One on water. The Chinese have always marked important occasions with special foods, and for Duanwu, it is always with rice dumplings. The first dumplings were probably made with plain rice, but these zongzi, as they are known in Chinese, soon developed into regional specialties. The main ingredient is glutinous rice, which holds its shape after cooking and keeps well in the summer heat. Millet, whole wheat grains, barley, red beans, mung beans or peanuts are also mixed into the rice to make it more tasty. In South China, glutinous rice is also soaked in an alkaline solution that turns the grains yellow, and the process creates a chewy texture. These are jianshui zongzi, which are always eaten dipped into old-fashioned granulated sugar. Apart from that, the folks in the southern coastal provinces prefer their rice dumplings savory rather than sweet, and the salted dumplings are filled with beans, pork and mushrooms. Sometimes the rice is fried and seasoned with soy sauce to add fragrance and color. In Guangdong province, the dumplings get bigger and are shaped almost like miniature pillows, filled with five-spice coated fatty pork and plenty of mung beans cooked inside the rice. Often, traditional cooks also add a whole salted egg yolk. In Beijing and other northern provinces, the preference is for sweet dumplings, filled with sugary red-bean paste. One of the most popular versions is a red bean and rice dumpling, with or without its ball of bean paste filling. Other ingredients may include fragrant osmanthus flowers, lotus seed paste, walnuts, jujubes, melon seeds or sesame. It is not just the flavors that vary from region to region. The dumplings come in different shapes as well. The simplest dumplings are triangular, made with a single large bamboo leaf and simply folded over. A more traditional shape is the perfect pyramid, with four corners. This is the dumpling that takes the most skill to make. Even if you get the shape right, the challenge is in how to tie it properly so it does not disintegrate in the boiling pot during the long cooking period. paulined@chinadaily.com.cn China's regional rice dumplings Guangdong/Hong Kong Savory rice dumplings are the order of the day, filled with lots of mung beans and a piece of pork fat that has been generously coated with Chinese five-spice powder. The Cantonese also like alkaline dumplings that are a clear crystalline amber, filled with a dollop of red bean paste. Sichuan The dumplings they like are mostly filled with a mixture of red beans and rice. Shanghai/Zhejiang Rice dumplings are also savory here, filled with meat and mushrooms. The younger gourmets like plain rice dumplings that are dipped into sugar. Fujian/Taiwan Bak chang, as the locals call their version, literally translates as meat dumplings. The glutinous rice is fried and flavored with soy sauce and sometimes garlic, and a balance of lean and fatty pork is added, together with dried Chinese mushrooms. Henan/Hebei/Beijing The preference is for sweet dumplings, made with a mixture of red beans and rice, and often stuffed with a whole Chinese jujube, a fruit that is abundant in the region. Elsewhere in the world... Singapore/Malaysia The Straits Chinese, or Peranakan, were the first Chinese to settle in Southeast Asia centuries ago. Some believe that they are the descendants of the first group of immigrants sent down by Admiral Zheng He, the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) navigator. Peranakan cuisine is a mixture of Chinese cooking styles plus local ingredients, which often include tropical spices and herbs. The rice dumplings Peranakan chefs make use minced meat, mainly chicken, flavored by lemongrass and pounded, toasted coriander seeds. They also use dried prawns, finely chopped, to add fragrance and flavor. Sometimes, chili is also added for extra spiciness. Vietnam Influenced by immigrants from the Chinese coastal provinces, Vietnamese rice dumplings are also mainly savory, filled with soy sauce, stewed belly pork and mushrooms. Niger Delta group asks President Buhari to constitute substantive NDDC Board The inauguration, according to the group, was in line with the NDDC Act to ensure fair representation of the nine constituent states in the Niger Delta region. Why reform can be ponderous Updated: 2016-06-03 08:18 By Ed Zhang(China Daily Europe) Locally and departmentally built barriers often compromise the capability of China's administrative system to get things done Unsympathetic critics of China often say its reform is too slow. But quick or slow, it is not China's choice, though its government seems enormous and able to take on many functions that other governments can't. A recent meeting with some city-level officials in human resources management, which Chinese often call talent management or talent strategy, revealed to me why reform can be so hard within a large administration, even in a time of electronic communications. There are lots of new industries in the city. Inevitably, local companies would want to hire some individuals from abroad with plenty of expertise. Such individuals, according to guidelines from the central government, deserve the same rights as local residents and may even be eligible for some financial subsidies for moving to China. But no, the officials said, they can enjoy local residential status in only one city. Their rights are applicable only locally, and in other Chinese cities, for instance, where they arrive on flights. When different cities grant different overseas individuals local residential rights, none of them is supposed to enjoy the same rights in all the cities of a province, even less in all the cities of the People's Republic of China. Such nationally fragmentary, logically contradictory policies to promote the "import of talent" into China can be disastrous in many ways, first of all in limiting the country's capability to lead an innovation-driven economy, a national goal President Xi Jinping emphasized last week in Beijing. The existing talent rules virtually mean that each specialist can be treated as a specialist in only one city - not when the person attends a professional conference, or participates in a joint venture elsewhere. They reflect a wrong concept - that the individual is not to be treated as a specialist needed by China, but a person to be owned by a local bureaucracy. Locally and departmentally built barriers often behave like this to compromise the seemingly all-around capability of China's administrative system. They destroy the uniform standards of a working government. There must be additional institutional barriers for reforming state-owned enterprises, and for creating a better regulatory environment for foreign and private businesses. Before Xi and Li Keqiang took office as China's president and premier, such situations had already been rampant - for overseas individuals working in this country and worse still for Chinese citizens. The two leaders must have learned about them. And that was why ambitious reform programs were adopted - to change the economy and to improve the government. Now around three years have passed, and lots of powers of the central government have been trimmed or delegated to the local level. But one can still hear people complain about how life can be made difficult by conflicting rules from different authorities. Taming a large administrative system is hard, so hard that many politicians choose not to do it. Nor is it like economic reform, for which there are theories and case studies to consult. There is no playbook for making so many departments work to fulfill the same task. Understandably, therefore, China's reform attempts are slow, and will be slow to bear fruit. In the process, any progress involves an effort to mitigate the influence of an economic slowdown and bureaucratic inertia as well. The country's top policy advisers are sober-minded enough to tell the public that China is in for a long transition that may last for the next few years at least. But think about the country's previous transition, from a closed-door, planned economy to manufacturing for the global market. It took more than 20 years. It took many changes and changes back before it finally reformed all the numbered industrial ministries (such as No 8 Ministry of Machine-Building) out of existence, and created a more or less level, though far from ideal, ground for business competition. The historical lesson is to be remembered. The author is editor-at-large of China Daily. Contact the writer at edzhang@chinadaily.com.cn Add business to development lessons Updated: 2016-06-03 08:18 By Fu Jing(China Daily Europe) Leading business schools should take into consideration opportunities in developing countries when designing their strategies Justin Lin, a former chief economist of the World Bank, acquired a new hat at the end of April when he became the inaugural dean of Peking University's South-South Cooperation and Development Institute. In September, enrolled students from developing countries will be able to study the experiences and lessons of China's development in recent decades. Lin, who is passionate about using the country's experiences to spark African economies, says the inauguration is a milestone event, as it will systematically begin the export of China's development and institutional experiences. In fact, Tsinghua University, just a few blocks away from Peking University, has already started to do this. Headed up by Xue Lan, dean of the School of Public Policy and Management, the college launched a master's in international development several years ago, mainly focusing on offering outstanding students from the developing world an opportunity to explore China's recipes for development. Aiming to contribute to the development formulas for developing countries, the programs are timely complements to the Belt and Road Initiative, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank, which has been formed by the BRICS countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Such initiatives are also designed to offer support for less-developed countries to bring about their own miracles. It is also worth mentioning that many high-level officials and academic leaders in China graduated from universities in the United States, Britain, Germany and other Western countries in the 1980s and early 1990s, such as Lin and Xue, as well as the Chinese leadership's chief economic adviser, Liu He, and People's Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan. They know well how to mix knowledge gained in the West into China's colorful development realities. So teaching students from developing countries such skills should be at the core of the curriculum in the programs offered by Peking and Tsinghua universities. However, Lin and Xue are providing only one type of education that China can offer to poorer countries. Another is business management. Over the years, nearly all of the top business schools in the US, Britain, France, Switzerland and other countries have launched programs in China, while thousands of Chinese students and executives have flown overseas to further their business education. China and the European Union have even jointly launched a business school with branches in Shanghai and Beijing. Business management schools at Chinese universities have also become more competitive, and some have started to take small steps in enrolling overseas students. Just as China has shaped a great development legacy on the policy front, Chinese businesspeople have gained tremendous experience in building various-scale business empires from scratch. In this sense, Peking and Tsinghua universities are just setting an example for how China can pass on its development pattern and the lessons it has learned. Considering the massive demand for such knowledge from developing countries, the next step may be to develop an independent university for South-South cooperation and international development. With its headquarters in Beijing, it could set up branches in developing countries in Africa and elsewhere. Leading Chinese business schools should take into consideration the opportunities in developing countries when designing their strategies. Plus, China has advantages in linking the expertise of the developed world, too. Now, China has proposed third-party cooperation with countries such as Britain, France and Switzerland. If that concept is used in education, the benefits offered to developing countries will be increased. The author is deputy editor of China Daily European Weekly. Contact the writer at fujing@chinadaily.com.cn Its summertime, and the sippin is easy. But if you plan on day-drinking under the hot sun, you better pace yourself. Might we suggest a low-ABV cocktail? Using vermouths, liqueurs, and sparkling wines, these drinks pack all the flavor of a regular cocktail but with less alcohol, making them a perfect fit for long, lazy days by the pool or extended backyard revelry. Here are five fresh takes on low-ABV cocktails, plus two classics, that will quench your thirst and keep you upright all summer long. Created by: Tim Harris, Burke & Wills, New York Ingredients 1.5 oz Aperitivo Cappelletti (or substitute a 50/50 mix of Aperol and Campari) 1.5 oz. dry white wine 1.5 oz. club soda 2 dashes grapefruit bitters Directions: Build in a large wine glass with ice, and stir. Garnish with a grapefruit peel. Created by: Enzo Cangemi, Babbalucci, New York Ingredients 1.25 oz. Frangelico 1/4 oz. coffee syrup 2 dashes chocolate mole bitters Prosecco Directions: Build in a champagne flute. Top off with chilled prosecco. Created by: Pamela Wiznitzer, Seamstress, New York Ingredients 2 oz. Campari 1 oz. Perfect Puree Blood Orange 1/2 oz. Honey Syrup Splash Soda Water Directions: Build drink in a Collins glass, add ice, and stir. Garnish with the orange chip clipped to the side of the glass. Created by: Jacques Bezuidenhout, Wildhawk, San Francisco; Photo by Amanda Picotte Ingredients 2 oz. La Quintinye Vermouth Royal Blanc 1/2 oz. Mathilde Pear Liqueur 1/2 oz. lemon 2 dashes orange bitters Club soda Directions: Build in a highball glass with ice, and stir. Garnish with lemon wheel & rosemary sprig. Photo by Amanda Picotte Ingredients 750 ml. Prosecco DOC 750 ml. Campari 750 ml. La Quintinye Vermouth Royal Rouge 1 cup fresh fruit (sliced oranges, apples, raspberries, optional) Directions: Add the sweet vermouth and Campari to a punch bowl filled with large ice cubes. Add fresh fruit and top with the Prosecco DOC. Stir gently and serve. Created by Gaspare Campari, Milan, Italy; Photo by Jim Sabataso Ingredients 1.5 oz. Campari 1.5 oz. sweet vermouth Club soda Directions: Fill a Collins glass with ice. Add Campari and vermouth. Top off with soda. Garnish with a lemon or orange twist. Photo by Jim Sabataso Ingredients 3 parts prosecco (or any dry sparkling wine) 2 parts Aperol 1 part soda Directions: Add ice and prosecco to a white wine or rocks glass. Add soda. Pour Aperol over the top. Garnish with an orange slice. Jim Sabataso is a writer, cocktail enthusiast, and bar director for The Palms Restaurant in Rutland, Vermont. Follow him on Twitter @JimSabataso> Capcom announced yesterday that Noel Brown, a well-known competitive Street Fighter and Marvel vs. Capcom player, is banned from competing in the rest of the 2016 Pro Tour for sexually harassing a woman at Combo Breaker, a Pro Tour qualifying event in Chicago, Ill. this past weekend. Brown non-consensually groped the woman, who Capcom and Combo Breaker organizers report wishes to remain anonymous. This unwanted and unwarranted contact was caught on camera in the pre-match live stream. As this is Browns first offense, Capcom has banned him from competing in any other Pro Tour events for the rest of 2016. A second offense will result in a lifetime ban from participating in all future Capcom Pro Tour events, Capcom said in a statement. We will use this as a baseline penalty if similar incidents occur in the future. We do not condone any acts of harassment and we want all of our players and fans to know we will continue our work to ensure that all Capcom Pro Tour events provide safe, inviting environments where the focus is on healthy competition and exciting rivalries, Capcom said. The organizers of Combo Breaker announced that Brown is banned from competing in any of Combo Breakers 2017 events. They will re-evaluate Brown in 2018 to determine if he will then be allowed to attend their events. In a correspondence with Shoryuken, Evo stated that Brown is banned from competing in Evo 2016, the biggest fighting game tournament of the year. It is good to see some of the biggest companies and organizers in the fighting game community taking swift action regarding sexual harassment, and Capcoms statement about wanting to provide safe and inviting environments suggests their intentions are in the right place. However, banning Brown is a just the one step forward towards reducing the rampant sexism in e-sports. Part of Capcoms statement (We will use this as a baseline penalty if similar incidents occur in the future) implies they did not have a policy beforehand, which is telling of how far the fighting game community and e-sports still have to go in preventing sexual harassment and making the community more open for non-male players. Female and non-binary competitors and fans in every corner of e-sports are regularly subjected to sexist attacks, from viewers regularly using gendered insults in the chat for e-sports match streams, to specific instances like when a team named themselves Gonna Rape Hafu At Regionals, Hafu being an opposing female competitor. Banning Brown will hopefully send a signal that this kind of hateful behavior will not be tolerated. Donald Trump doesnt have the best relationship with Mexicans, but former Mexican president Vicente Fox wants to change Trumps views on the country and, perhaps, convince him not to spend all of Americas money on a border wall if, perish the thought, he becomes president. During an interview on WABC Radios Election Central with Rita Cosby on Thursday, Fox challenged Trump to a one-on-one debate. Im willing to come here, to come here, to the States, if its for a debate. A direct personal debate with him, said Fox during the interview. No, this is not a show and I dont want his $10 million he says hed raise for a debate. No charge on my side. But, the thing is we should listen to what were saying and that will be very exciting and very interesting for everybody to hear about. In a previous interview with Fusion, Fox didnt mince words when discussing Trumps passion project, declaring, Im not going to pay for that fucking wall. Fox is also notorious for attacking the Republican candidate on Twitter. This debate is unlikely, unfortunately. Earlier this week, Trump backed out of debating Bernie Sanders, so chances are slim that Trump will debate Fox and convince him that the taco bowls are better at Trump Tower. Listen to Foxs interview here. According to recent news reports, the Hulk Hogan sex tape lawsuit that threatens to bankrupt Gawker media was anonymously funded by Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley billionaire, early investor and board member of Facebook, and Libertarian supporter of Donald Trump. According to reports, Thiel decided to wage proxy legal warfare against Gawker because he was mad at them for publishing a story in 2007 saying that he was gay (Thiel is openly gay, but in 2007 he had not yet formally gone public about his sexual orientation). This story is amazing on multiple levels: 1. Peter Thiel is RUTHLESS. He stayed angry at Gawker for YEARS and kept biding his time, waiting for them to do something that might make themselves vulnerable to a lawsuitand then he sprung into action! 2. Peter Thiel is DIABOLICAL. Hulk Hogans lawyers deliberately did some legal maneuvering during the trial that would exempt Gawkers insurance company from having to pay for the settlementpresumably at Thiels direction, they were deliberately trying to kill the company by exposing the companys own assets. 3. Peter Thiel is PETTY. Now that Gawker is facing a $140 million court judgment, Peter Thiel went to Stage 2 of his plan, by going public as the financial backer of the Hulk Hogan lawsuitthus laying down the gauntlet to any prospective buyers or investors to warn them not to go near Gawker. This is cold-blooded shit! (Side note: how petty do you have to be to set this kind of elaborate evil plan into motion, YEARS later, against a shitty gossip website that most people dont even pay attention to? Peter Thiels a billionaire! His time is INFINITELY valuable! Instead of spending time secretly managing Hulk Hogans sex tape lawsuit, he could have just ignored Gawker and stuffed his ears with $100 bills and spent his time doing cannonballs into his private Olympic-sized swimming pool full of champagne! I cant even fathom this level of pettiness. I almost have to admire that kind of attention to detail, and that kind of long-term lust for revenge. Maybe being petty is what makes people truly great!) What does this all mean? First of all: Gawker is screwed. Even if they eventually get this $140 million verdict overturned or reduced on appeal, Peter Thiel is not going away. He can keep tormenting Gawker forever, until they go bankrupt. Former Gawker editor A.J. Daulerio (who originally approved the Hogan story to be published, and whose disastrous testimony at the trial made him look like the least sympathetic defense witness since Jeffrey Dahmer) got slapped with $100,000 in punitive damages that Daulerio will have to personally pay. Now, I dont want to bend over backwards to defend Gawkers conduct: they were a bunch of sleazy morons for publishing the Hulk Hogan sex tape when he didnt want them to; they probably were legally wrong to do what they did, and they probably deserved to lose big in court. But the bigger story here is the possible chilling effect that this precedent could have for media coverage and freedom of the press. What troubles me about this story is not the fact that a clickbait gossip site got sued for posting a sleazy sex tapeits the idea that a vindictive billionaire can use a loophole in the court system to secretly wage legal battles by proxy, without his name and influence being known until after the fact. Its scary that a rich, powerful man can use such sneaky, underhanded tactics to destroy a media organization for petty, personal reasons. As Felix Salmon writes in Fusion: If Thiels strategy works against Gawker, it could be used by any billionaire against any media organization. Sheldon Adelson, Donald Trump, the list goes on and on. Up until now, theyve mostly been content suing news organizations as plaintiffs, over stories which name them. But Thiel has shown them how to go thermonuclear: bankroll other lawsuits, as many as it takes, and bankrupt the news organization that way. Very few companies have the legal wherewithal to withstand such a barrage. In a worst-case scenario, if the types of tactics that Thiel used against Gawker are able to stand, no media organization will be safe. Any billionaire could use his unlimited resources to bankrupt any media organization he disapproved of, by funding third-party lawsuits that were totally unrelated to the billionaires own life or business. Aside from the merits of the Hulk Hogan case (and again, Gawker acted like a bunch of stupid scumbags), what Thiel is doing is an absolute perversion of the justice system. But I also have no idea how to stop it. Sure, rich people using the courts to get what they want is nothing new; but this idea of billionaires secretly funding lawsuits and acting like puppet masters behind the scenes just feels even more wrong. If someone is suing you, you deserve to know who your adversary really is. If youre being sued, you should have a right to know who is funding the lawsuit against you; it seems like thats part of the legal principle of having the right to face your accuser in court. Maybe plaintiffs should be required to disclose the sources of funding for their legal fees? If political campaigns are required to disclose the names of people who donate to fund the campaign, shouldnt a lawsuit (a matter of public record) be held to the same standard? And no matter how you feel about Gawkers conduct against Peter Thiel or in the Hulk Hogan sex tape case, theres also an important First Amendment principle at stake here: Media companies should be able to fearlessly question, antagonize and even offend rich, powerful people without fearing that theyll get torpedoed years later by an unrelated lawsuit bankrolled by the rich guys. It was especially cunning of Peter Thiel to do this to one of the least-sympathetic, least-defensible media organizations in America, so everyone would be laughing at how screwed those idiots at Gawker are, while overlooking the larger implications of Thiels scheme. (See? This man is DIABOLICAL.) Of course, it might turn out that this Gawker case is not THAT big of a dealmaybe Gawker is a one-time anomaly: A gossip site that made itself exceptionally vulnerable to a ruinous lawsuit, and that happened to run afoul of the wrong petty, vindictive billionaire. Maybe everything will be fine. But even if thats the case, I dont like what it says about Americabecause apparently, were now officially living in a country where our legal rights only exist depending on the whims of billionaires, and our only recourse is to hope that the billionaires are friendly billionaires like Warren Buffett, and not evil billionaires like the Koch brothers. I hate these Silicon Valley modern day robber barons, by the waywith their self-serving philanthropy and their boundless optimism and their blithe indifference to wealth inequality and their sanctimonious bullshit about how their companies are making the world a better place while also, oh by the way, making themselves even more incredibly rich. Im so glad that your latest app is making life better for rich white people in San Francisco! Good job, guys! The rest of us are out here living in the real world where unarmed black people can still be murdered by police with impunity! Do you have an app for that? No? Social justice and equal rights under the law are not very monetizable, are they? Youre not interested in solving societys most intractable problems; youd rather make a mobile app to help rich jerks hire underpaid part-time help to walk their Corgis: Its like Uber for dog walkers! And the worst thing about todays Silicon Valley rich guys like Peter Thiel is that they act like THEYthe richest, most privileged, most-rewarded and unquestioningly admired rich people in historyare the victims! I miss the days when rich guys were VICTIMIZERS. I miss the days when rich guys were purely, unapologetically EVILwhen rich guys would hire Pinkerton goons to make the streets run red with the blood of the working man, and then play croquet amidst the piled-up corpses of striking coal miners. Compared to the real blood-soaked bastards of American capitalism, like John D. Rockefeller, todays Silicon Valley billionaires are a bunch of thin-skinned weenies. Anyway, Id like to close by saying: Peter Thiel, please dont sue me or Paste Magazine for publishing this. But especially dont sue me. I dont have any money; Im just a humble freelance writer trying to pay the bills and hopefully someday I can help send my kids to college so they can have a more stable career than me, with dental insurance and paid vacation and multiple pairs of pants. Oh wait, youre on the record as being very anti-college. Never mind! Im going to send my kids to, uh, Libertarian Camp, and they can start their own businesses right after high school, selling Ayn Rand action figures. (Please dont sue us!) Im sure that deep down, youre not a bad guy, Peter Thiel. Im sure youre actually a warm hearted, visionary genius, and not a cold, joyless, money-grubbing automaton who has never known true human love. (Please dont sue us!) And Im sure your libertarian political philosophy is actually very wise and principled, and not an inhuman, self-serving, laughably pseudointellectual dreck pile that has never worked, and will never work, anywhere in the real world! Im sure you have great judgment about politicsafter all, you funded the work of James OKeefe, the conservative activist who made those controversial videos to expose the ACORN group a few years backIm sure hes actually a crusading journalistic truth-teller, and not a creepy fedora-wearing College Republican dimwit! (Please dont sue us! Please!) And youre a pledged delegate for Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention! Oooh, good for you! Im sure a wealthy Silicon Valley grandee like you will feel totally comfortable hanging out in Cleveland for three days with a bunch of working class whites from the Rust Belt! Hey, if theres one thing Republican convention-goers love, it is: gay people from San Francisco! And Im sure Donald Trump is actually a very smart, statesmanlike person who is going to lead America into a new golden age of entrepreneurial brilliance, and not the worst thing to ever happen to this country. Hey, someone like you who was right about PayPal and Facebook is surely 100% right about absolutely every other major issue facing the world! (Please dont sue us!) So anyway, thank you, Peter Thiel, for standing up to the bullies at Gawker. With your help, America will remain a shining beacon of liberty where pro wrestlers can say the N-word in the privacy of their own homes while having sex with their best friends wife on camera. Penn Jillette and all the other Libertarian heroes of America salute you! (Ugh. Penn Jillette is the worst. Even if I didnt know anything else about Libertarianism, and all you told me about Libertarianism was, Penn Jillette is a Libertarian, I would still hate Libertarianism.) In conclusion: Peter Thiel is awesome, and please dont sue us. No really, DONT sue us. I love you, Peter Thiel. But Penn Jillette sucks. Is pop stardom fascism? Is the glitzy parade of egocentric personality-worship a distant cousin to dictatorship? Maybe not, but for one moment of Popstar: Never Stop Never Stoppings 80-minute duration were gulled into thinking these questions matter to a madcap, joke-a-second takedown of pop music and its overprivileged stewards: We glimpse the cover of the fictitious album that drives the films action by dint of sheer awfulness, and we see its star, Conner4Real (Andy Samberg), positioned at its center, his hand held straight and aloft in an unwitting evocation of historys greatest tyrant. Its impossible to mistake the reference for anything other than what it is, but the gag is just one in Popstars comic artillery. Like so much of the films rapid-fire parody, this particular bit of visual tomfoolery doesnt last long enough to make an impression on either the audience or the story, such as it is; its life cycle begins and ends in the time it takes to move on to the next scene. Still, the punch line does its job and leaves us laughing even if theres nothing else to say about it, which is pretty much all that Popstar needs to do to earn its keep. The film is a joint effort by The Lonely Island, the comedy threesome of Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer. As features like Katy Perry: Part of Me and Justin Biebers Believe are to their stars, so is Popstar to Conner, a spoiled, dimwitted manchild and global superstar who rose to fame with his pals Owen (Taccone) and Lawrence (Schaffer) as The Style Boyz, a foul-mouthed and nerdy outfit that recalls NSYNC by way of Beastie Boys and MC Paul Barman. In the films present, Conner has gone solo with Owen in tow and Lawrence left in the dust. If youve seen the trailers, youve pretty much seen the film: a rise-fall-rise narrative where Conner tastes the bitter side of the music business and has to face up to his ego and settle the rift his departure from the band has put between him and his chums. Oh, its willfully absurd and endlessly stupid in the best ways possible, too. Thats important. Youre not watching Popstar for an insightful glimpse into Conners ennui leading into his emotional. Youre watching it to hear classically vulgar Lonely Island tunes and watch Samberg act a fool, a gleeful smile spread across his mug all the way. Popstar marks the second time the group has spun a feature out of whole cloth together; the last time they did, they made Hot Rod, the unloved child that became a cult hit on the back of its unabashed weirdness and Sambergs knack for taking abuse. (Search YouTube for the clip where he riffs on Footloose before falling down a mountain for forever. Its a stunner.) Hot Rod feels like an anomaly for a trio of goofy white dudes obsessed with the intersection where pop meets rap. Popstar might be the film that theyve been brewing in their minds since 2007, or maybe even 2005. Think of it as the culmination of their love for pop culture excess and slick, bumping production. Samberg, Taccone and Schaffer have an innate gift for mimicking music styles and skewering industry mores, so its a great surprise that that gift translates unevenly to a feature stage. Popstar should be a better film than it is. Make no mistake: Its amusing at worst and riotous at best, especially in concert scenes bent around new Lonely Island tracks like Finest Girl (Bin Laden Song), whose basic conceit is so unmitigatedly bawdy that giving it away here would be close to criminal, and in its cavalcade of celebrity cameos, from Questlove to Usher to, of course, Justin Timberlake, who plays Conners twitchy personal chef with hysterical precision. The satire is obvious, and the overarching joke is that our pop music gods are dopes with inflated heads, and that the music they make is disposable once you pick apart the words. Try this: Listen to a Lonely Island track and tune out Samberg, Taccone and Schaffer as they rap verse to verse. Youll find your head bopping to the beat, unfussed by the lyrics. Listen to the track again and pick up on what is said. Youll start laughing like a loon because thats the goal of the exercise, but if you do the same thing with the average pop song, you may find yourself cringing instead. Thats what The Lonely Island has been about for years, and Popstar is no different, except that it runs its setups into the ground and doesnt do or say anything new. It is exactly what you expect from The Lonely Island, and not much else. That isnt a bad thing, either. As a wacky summertime popsicle, you can do worse than Popstar, with its brazen profanity, TMZ mockeries, fantastically shallow characters and escalating ridiculousness. (Theres a truly incredibly dick joke in here that hinges on having an actual dick out on display. Points for evening the nudity disparity between men and women.) But while the film leaves no stone unturned, it never uncovers anything The Lonely Island hasnt already uncovered. After all, who knew popular music is hollow and soulless pap churned out to make corporations fistfuls of money? Directors: Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone Writers: Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, Andy Samberg Starring: Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schaffer, Tim Meadows, Sarah Silverman, Chris Redd, Imogen Poots, Joan Cusack, Will Arnett Release Date: June 3, 2016 Boston-based critic Andy Crump has been writing about film online since 2009, and has been contributing to Paste Magazine since 2013. He also writes for Screen Rant, Movie Mezzanine, and Birth. Movies. Death., and is a member of the Online Film Critics Society and the Boston Online Film Critics Association. You can follow him on Twitter and find his find his collected writing at his personal blog. He is composed of roughly 65 percent craft beer. JLL has relocated to the Warsaw Spire office complex at Plac Europejski 1 in Warsaw. Ultimately, the real estate advisor will consolidate all of its Warsaw-based units to this location. On the 30th May 2016, the JLL Poland consulting team moved into its new office located at Warsaw Spire, occupying [] Panattoni Europe is stepping up its involvement in brownfield investments. The developer has created within its European structures a new position to focus on environmental studies that of Environmental Director Europe, taken up by Piotr Kocioek. He will be responsible for implementing the developers strategy on the remediation of [] Pontus Sundin has joined Helaba's real estate finance team as head of the bank's representative office in Stockholm. The office will focus on both local and international clients and work together with the Nordic team at the bank's HQ in Frankfurt, Germany. Sundin has been professionally active as a banker [] WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A series of farm tours this summer will allow families to explore modern dairy farming practices in northern Indiana. The Northern Indiana Dairy Trail, co-sponsored by Purdue Extension, will take place June 18 and 25, with five to six dairy farms open to the public from noon to 5 p.m. each day. Participants will have an opportunity to visit each farm's facilities and talk with the operators about animal care and feeding, milk production, and the influence of dairy farming on the community and environment. Visitors may tour as many farms as they like each day. All tours and events, including milk and yogurt tastings and children's activities, are free. The 12 participating farms are in Elkhart, Kosciusko, LaGrange, Marshall, Noble and St. Joseph counties, which together contain 28 percent of all dairy cows in the state. Farms on the trail range in size from 110 to more than 3,000 cows. "Each of these outstanding farms does something a little different in how they produce milk," said Kelly Heckaman, Kosciusko County Extension director. "Each has a different herd size. Some have robots, some have automatic calf feeders, one is organic, one has a digester and one is Amish. We wanted a representative cross section of the dairy industry in northern Indiana." A panel of private and public volunteers and sponsors, including the American Dairy Association Indiana and Indiana Dairy Producers, organize the Diary Trail. Funding for the event comes from more than 40 industry and state sources. In addition to the focus on modern dairy farming, some farms will feature displays and activities based on historical farming methods as part of Indianas bicentennial celebration. The trail has been designated a Bicentennial Legacy Project by the state. No registration is required. Volunteers and tour guides will assist with parking and guide visitors around each farm. For more information about the participating farms and the history of the Dairy Trail project, visit http://www.dairytrail.com/. Writer: Jessica Merzdorf, 765-494-7719, jmerzdor@purdue.edu Source: Kelly Heckaman, 574-372-2340, kheckaman@purdue.edu Agricultural Communications: (765) 494-2722; Keith Robinson, robins89@purdue.edu Agriculture News Page At the least a house gives shelter and protection from the elements. At best it is a personal haven for comfort, security and a place to call 'home'. Exactly how does a house become a home? Rosie Cox's study in Home Culturesexplores property owners' notions of 'home' and their home making journeys and argues that sometimes what is 'homey' about a home is its very lack of robustness. We tend to assume that most people wish for low-maintenance, well insulated robust houses offering reliable protection from the weather, dirt and noise of the outside world. Most of us strive to keep our houses well maintained, to our own taste and reflecting our own style via DIY. Could the DIY process represent more than just upkeep? Cox interviewed 30 homeowners from New Zealand about their home improvements: were they DIY or paid for? She explored what motivated their home renovations and the division of labour. Surprisingly, most did not want a perfectly fortress like house but preferred to put their own stamp on it through self-improvements and felt they did not truly 'own' it until they had. The bond between house and owner was also found to be linked to the fabric of the house, many expressing a preference for more malleable materials such as wood over concrete or steel. A historical dearth of stone dictated many wood constructed houses, which has continued to the present day. One homeowner considered his wood front door 'a special part of the home'. Despite the extra maintenance it needed, it was warmer and more welcoming than an aluminium or uPVC one and gave great satisfaction to work on it, preserve it, be proud of it and call it home. For many New Zealanders, DIY not only harked back to the home building crafts of early settlers but also evoked emotional responses such as cementing family relationships and establishing social identities as well as creating a home. Cox concludes, "This article has illustrated one of the reasons why people may opt for homes that are made of familiar and traditional materials and has shown how strong their motivations are to do so. (It) expands the concept of homeyness and invites new ways to think about the relationships between home, housing materials and the identities of home owners." Advances in stem cell research have made it possible to convert patients' skin cells into heart cells, kidney cells, liver cells and more in the lab dish, giving researchers hope that one day such cells could replace organ transplantation for patients with organ failure. But successfully grafting these cells into patients' failing organs remains a major clinical challenge. Now a team of researchers led by UC San Francisco scientists has demonstrated in mice that it is possible to generate healthy new liver cells within the organ itself, making engraftment unnecessary. What's more, they did it by converting the very cells that drive liver disease, thereby reducing liver damage and improving liver function at the same time. The technique takes advantage of a viral gene delivery technology that has gone through early validation in patients for liver-directed gene therapies, suggesting it could be readily translated into a therapy for patients with liver disease, said Holger Willenbring, MD, PhD, a professor of surgery at UCSF and senior author of the new study, published June 2, 2016 in the journal Cell Stem Cell. "Part of why this works is that the liver is a naturally regenerative organ, so it can deal with new cells very well. What we see is that the converted cells are not only functionally integrated in the liver tissue, but also divide and expand, leading to patches of new liver tissue," said Willenbring, who is also associate director of the Liver Center at UCSF and a member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research. More than 600,000 patients in the United States alone suffer from end-stage liver disease, or cirrhosis. The only available cure is liver transplantation, but the shortage of donor livers means only 6,000 patients benefit from this therapy each year in the U.S., and more than 35,000 patients die. The new approach specifically targets liver fibrosis, the progressive scarring of the liver that is a primary driver of liver disease. Fibrosis develops when liver cells called hepatocytes can't regenerate fast enough to keep up with damage caused by toxins such as alcohol or diseases such as hepatitis C or fatty liver disease. Cells called myofibroblasts fill in gaps left by dying hepatocytes with scar-like fibrotic tissue. It's a bit like patching a flat tire: at first the patches help maintain the liver's structural integrity, but eventually a liver that is more patches than functional tissue starts to fail. Fibrotic liver disease has a slow fuse, but leads to catastrophic failure: someone who contracts hepatitis C at age 25 may feel just fine for decades, then suddenly at age 50 start experiencing the fatigue, faintness, nausea, bruising, diarrhea and jaundice that indicate the onset of end-stage liver disease. The reason is that the liver can adapt as long as at least 20 percent of it is functional, Willenbring says, but once it dips below that critical threshold, patients are often dead within two years. advertisement "Liver fibrosis is not rare," Willenbring said. "It's actually the end stage of many chronic liver diseases. Obesity, for instance, can lead to fatty liver disease, which is predicted to become the number one cause of liver fibrosis in the next 10 years." Technique reduces liver damage, increases liver function in mice Willenbring has dedicated his career to using stem cell biology to generate new hepatocytes (for instance, from a patient's own skin) that could be used in place of transplants to treat liver failure. Ironically, however, just as he and his lab have come closer to achieving this dream, Willenbring has had to grapple with the realization that this cell therapy approach may fail to reach the majority of patients with liver failure because the tangle of fibrosis itself impairs the successful engraftment of transplanted cells. So over the past five years, Willenbring and his team -- in close collaboration with the laboratory of Dirk Grimm, PhD at Heidelberg University Hospital in Germany -- have embarked on a different approach: converting fibrosis-causing myofibroblasts into healthy new hepatocytes within the liver itself. advertisement Previous research had identified a cocktail of gene-regulating proteins that can convert other cell types into hepatocytes, but the team needed a way to deliver these instructions to myofibroblasts. After several years of work, the team identified a subtype of adeno-associated virus (AAV) that could specifically infect myofibroblasts. The researchers focused on AAV because it has been shown to be safe and effective in early human gene therapy trials, e.g., for therapy of the bleeding disorder hemophilia B. The team showed in mice with liver disease that viruses packed with the cell fate-changing cocktail indeed infected myofibroblasts and converted them into functional hepatocytes. The number of new cells was relatively small -- less than one percent of all hepatocytes in the treated mice -- but this was sufficient to reduce fibrosis and improve liver function. The viral approach was also effective in converting human myofibroblasts in a dish into working hepatocytes, but more work is certainly needed to prepare this approach for use in human patients, the researchers say. In particular, the lab is working to package the treatment into a single virus, reducing potential side effects and streamlining clinical development. The team is also working to make the viruses more specific to myofibroblasts -- in the current paper muscle cells and some cells of the immune system were also infected, though without converting them into liver cells or obviously impacting their function. The new results suggest that in the fibrotic liver this approach could produce a more efficient and stable improvement of liver function than cell transplant approaches, Willenbring said, adding that once the viral packaging is optimized, such a treatment could be done cheaply at a broad range of medical facilities, not just in the specialized research hospitals where stem-cell transplants could be conducted. Willenbring is the first to acknowledge that the new technique is not a replacement for the current standard of care in liver disease: "A liver transplant is still the best cure," Willenbring said. "This is more of a patch. But if it can boost liver function by just a couple percent, that can hopefully keep patients' liver function over that critical threshold, and that could translate to decades more of life." An international study, in which Spain's National Research Council (CSIC) participates, reveals that asteroids have endured a multitude of impact strikes since their formation 4,565 million years ago. Scientists have reconstructed a timeline of these collisions using a physics-based model which reproduces the process through time, comparing its results with present-day information about chondrite meteorites. The work appears in the publication Astrophysical Journal. According to the researchers, the size distribution of the objects which make up the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter indicates that these asteroids have been struck by projectiles of over 20 centimetres in size at least 100 million times. The resultant craters from these strikes are proportional to both the diameters and the velocities of these projectiles. The information compiled on ordinary chondrites indicates that these meteorites originate from small asteroids which, with a diameter of less than a few hundred kilometres, collided, giving rise to these rocks millions of years ago. "Our work allows us to make fundamental predictions on the extent of breaking up from collisions, or the level of alteration by strikes due to impacts, which the huge majority of asteroids have experienced. It also explains the observations of the degree of alteration by strikes which appear in those chondrites which reach Earth," notes Josep Maria Trigo, CSIC researcher at Catalonia's Institute of Space Studies, in the Institute of Space Science. In Germany's University of Braunschweig's labs, researchers Eike Beitz and Jurgen Blum, who led the research project, have carried out the impact simulation experiments. "These have been vital to understanding the physics of the process, and key in establishing the results of the impacts made by projectiles of such a varying range of shapes and velocities which occur naturally" Trigo points out. For his part, Gabriela Parisi, from the University of La Plata (Argentina), has put the physics model into practice utilizing a series of algorithms which reproduce the series of impacts between asteroids previously outlined, and has managed to replicate the collisions timeline. The model replicates the external features of the asteroid, 21 Lutetia, established during the visit by the European Space Agency's Rosetta Mission probe. This is an irregular-shaped asteroid with a major axis measuring 121 km. 21 Lutetia has a heavily cratered surface- one crater reaching 55km in diameter- which shows clear evidence of the numerous collisions which have occurred ever since the beginnings of the planetary system. The model published in this work predicts that, as a result of fragmentation caused by large-sized projectile collisions, asteroids have huge slabs on their surfaces. The deposits of loose dust and rubble caused by this process, otherwise known as regolith, forms a surface layer a few kilometres deep. The article concludes that it is possible that a large number of the non-differentiated meteorites, or chondrites, which have reached Earth come from these layers of regolith. A number of space agencies are planning exploration missions to asteroids in order to bring back samples from their surfaces. The Japanese Space Exploration Agency's Hayabusa 2 and NASA's OSIRIS Rex will visit two primitive asteroids to collect samples which they will bring back to Earth. As the CSIC astrophysicist notes, "to be able to retrieve and analyse samples of the protoplanetary disc's formative materials which are in pristine condition, we will have to find asteroids between a few hundred metres and a few kilometres in size, which are homogeneous in nature." Forty-five year-old African-Americans are more likely to die of stroke than are whites, not because of differences in care, but because blacks are having more strokes, according to new research in the American Heart Association's Journal Stroke. Few studies have examined whether the elevated stroke rate in blacks explains why there are more stroke deaths. The REasons for Geographic And Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) Study investigated why blacks and U.S. Southerners are more likely to die from stroke. They found the higher number of stroke deaths is due to a greater number of strokes occurring at younger ages among blacks. At age 45, blacks were four times more likely to die of stroke than their white counterparts in this analysis. By age 85, there was no difference in stroke death rates among blacks and whites. "The magnitude of public health burden of the racial disparity in stroke is staggering, with an estimated 22,384 "extra" stroke events i.e., above what would be expected relative to rates in whites occurring in blacks in 2014," said George Howard, Dr.P.H., study lead author and a professor of biostatistics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health. "With a life-long cost of stroke of $104,000 for each of the events, this black-white difference in stroke costs America more than $2.3 billion annually. Obviously, efforts that would even marginally reduce this burden would pay remarkable dividends for the U.S." He blamed racial differences in the development and control of risk factors and encouraged more aggressive prevention efforts. "We need to do more to focus on prevention and control of risk factors before they result in a stroke. Unfortunately, most of the research resources are focused on treating stroke patients and preventing recurrent stroke." Researchers said prevention efforts addressing risk factors like high blood pressure and diabetes that are more common in African-Americans are at the root of the problem; and to reduce the disparity in stroke we must "go further upstream" to make inroads on racial differences in the traditional and non-traditional risk factors that lead to stroke. Researchers analyzed data on 29,681 people selected at random from across the United States. Conducted between 2003 and 2007, REGARDS used a combination of mail and telephone interviews to assess risk factors, followed by regular in-home visits to collect other biological samples and measure blood pressure, height, and waist circumference. The pattern of stroke mortality they found in their study data mirrors national data, where the black-to-white hazard ratio for dying from a stroke is about 4.0 at age 45 but falls to just 1.0 by age 85. The researchers found that the risk of having a stroke followed a remarkably similar pattern; however, there were no black-white differences in the risk of dying once a stroke occurred. Things are suddenly looking up for a shelter dog named Freya, once dubbed the "world's loneliest dog." After spending virtually all her life languishing unloved, passed over by thousands of potential adopters in Britain, Freya will soon be seen by millions worldwide as one of the stars in an upcoming feature film - and best of all, she'll get a new home to boot. Freshfields Animal Rescue 'Freya's' Doggie Diary The 6-year-old Staffordshire bull terrier was just a few months old when she was picked up as a stray and dropped off at Freshfields Animal Rescue. Since then, while other animals were rescued into forever homes, Freya has been waiting. According to the Metro UK, as many as 18,720 pet-seekers passed Freya up in that time. "She has been here many years now and is constantly overlooked, which breaks our hearts as we adore her," shelter manager Kate Jones told the website. "We do not understand why she has been overlooked for so long." Dodo Shows Odd Couples Kitten Isn't Sure About His Pittie Brother At First Freshfields Animal Rescue 'Freya's' Doggie Diary Late last month, several U.K. news outlets ran the sad story of Freya's fruitless search for a new home, noting that she has also been diagnosed with epilepsy. Among those who read it - and were clearly moved - was "Transformers" director Michael Bay. So much so, in fact, he got her a job (and offered even more). Freshfields Animal Rescue 'Freya's' Doggie Diary/Wikipedia "Found this in the news last week in the UK. We gave the Loneliest Dog, a role in Transformers," Bay posted on Twitter this week. "Freya has epilepsy and has been in a shelter her whole 6 year life. We are also going to find her a home," he tweeted."If not she will come to my house. Welcome to the cast Freya!" Twitter/MichaelBay There's no telling yet what sort of role Freya will play in the upcoming Hollywood blockbuster, but for the folks at Freshfields Animal Rescue, the attention is welcome news. "It was a bit of a surprise to say the least as we were just focusing on finding her a home," a shelter spokesperson told The Dodo. "Michael Bay's office contacted us directly and after lengthy communications we're happy for her to be part of the cast. This came as an added bonus alongside the fact that we have people currently getting to know her with a view to offering a permanent home which has always been our main priority." Freshfields Animal Rescue 'Freya's' Doggie Diary Dodo Shows Foster Diaries Guy Falls In Love With His Little Meatball Of A Foster Dog For years, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) has been fighting to rescue Tommy and get him to a sanctuary. His story is the topic of a new documentary, "Unlocking the Cage," which follows the historic fight of Steve Wise, president of NhRP and an animal rights lawyer, and his attempts to persuade the New York court system to grant Tommy, along with three other captive chimpanzees, legal rights as intelligent, living beings. But now, Tommy's disappeared - and no one knows what's going on. According to the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets records, Lavery "donated" Tommy to the DeYoung Family Zoo in Wallace, Michigan, in September 2015. But when The Dodo reached out, the zoo said it wasn't familiar with any chimp named Tommy and claimed that the alleged disappearance is a publicity stunt for "Unlocking The Cage." The zoo added that all its chimpanzees are accounted for and happy. Furthermore, the zoo claimed to be unfamiliar with any chimpanzee named Tommy - and wouldn't even confirm his existence. "Tommy does not appear to be at the DeYoung Zoo and the zoo has refused to tell us, tell [a] reporter for the Daily Mail, or tell a reporter for the Dodo, where Tommy is," Wise said in a statement. "We are seeking all relevant records about Tommy from the appropriate New York, Michigan and federal agencies. We will not rest until we find him and have him sent to Save the Chimps sanctuary," he said. According to government records obtained by NhRP, Lavery "donated" Tommy to the DeYoung Family Zoo in Wallace, Michigan, in September 2015. The NhRP also has records from July 2015, when the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) last inspected the zoo, show that one chimpanzee lived at the zoo. In a November 2015 inspection, records showed that there were two. What happened between then and now is a complete mystery. This browser does not support the video tag. YouTube/John Del Signore Tommy made his unexpected move to Michigan after an appeal in the case to free him was dismissed by the New York State Court of Appeals. "Prior to the court denying our appeal and ending Tommy's case, there was an injunction in place which prevented Lavery from moving Tommy out of the state, since Tommy was the subject of an ongoing lawsuit in the state," Kevin Schneider, executive director of NhRP, told The Dodo. After the case was dismissed, Lavery was free to do as he wished with the unfortunate chimp. Some say you should never go into business with your family. But for Herschel Segal, who started the Le Chateau clothing chain and Davids Tea, and his daughter Sarah Segal, who founded Squish Candy, a gourmet gummies company, family and business are a good combination. At a conference last week ) organized by Futurpreneur Canada, a non-profit organization that helps young people start their own businesses, father and daughter shared experiences and offered advice. Sarah openly admits she never wanted to go into the family business. I felt that I would never been taken seriously that I was getting what I was getting because I was in my familys business. She studied sciences, went to work at a United Nations research centre in Beijing focused on water pollution, and was looking toward a life in academia, when her love of Puer tea pulled her back to Canada in 2010. It wasnt planned, Sarah says of her decision to join her dad in Davids Tea, which Herschel co-founded with his cousin David. I got in for the right reasons I got into the tea business because I love tea. Even though she stepped away from Davids Tea to launch Squish Candy in 2014, she remains on the board. Its taking your hands off the steering wheel, she said, noting a new management team is in place at Davids Tea. Its a chance to watch a company from a distance at a board level. Its very frustrating as entrepreneurs, as people who know the business, to see someone else do it. Its like seeing someone else raise your kids. Herschel concedes its challenging to join a family business and Sarah is the only one of his children to enter the retail world. A family businessyoure damned if you, youre damned if you dont, he said. If you make a success, Well, youre the bosss kid. If you fail, then how could you be so stupid with all that? You cant win, he said. Squish has six locations in Canada including inside Hudsons Bay flagship store on Queen St. Sarah says the company is looking to expand including possibly in suburban Toronto and Vancouver. Given that businesses have been gravitating to the top-tier upscale malls, it is creating chances for new retailers in smaller malls. Its giving people opportunities to get in on short-term deals, she said. I know thats something as a young business, Im extremely interested in, she said, noting landlords are ready to make deals, such a six-month pop lease instead of a 10-year agreement. A mall spot might have been unattainable just a little while ago, she added. Sarah is focused on her artisanal candy venture, which has received financial backing from her father, though he remains completely hands off. I only offer advice if asked, said Herschel, who has invested in the candy business along with other ventures. Its been tremendous to be able to work with her. I let her do her thing. And Sarah believes her fathers secret to success is his willingness to listen others, regardless of age or experience. He takes everyone seriously. Hes very open to creative ideas. He doesnt care who is saying it, she said. He cares about the quality of the idea. So I never felt like he listened to me because I am his daughter. He listens to everyone equally. SHARE: For Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke, playing the spirited Lou in romantic drama Me Before You was refreshing for the variety of colourful outfits she wore and the fact she kept her garments on throughout. Its a departure from her GOT character Daenerys Targaryen, who is often seen in various stages of undress on the fantasy series. Did Clarke find it freeing to have lots of clothes on, especially the eclectic and fun getups that Lou favours? Hells yes, it was wonderful! laughed Clarke during a brief stop in Toronto to promote the film, which opens Friday, alongside the bestsellers author and film screenwriter, JoJo Moyes. I feel on the show, I feel very strongly and I feel very proud of being able to say . I stand next to every choice and say it was for the (GOT) character, said Clarke, who recently appeared nude in a dramatic GOT scene. There (are) no random titillating scenes for Daenerys in our show, and Im really strong about that, she added. The 29-year-old Clarke said I love fashion and praised amazing costume designer Jill Taylor (My Week with Marilyn, The Full Monty) for sourcing Lous 72 outfits from vintage stores and main street shops, clothes that helped her get to the heart of her character. She especially liked the fact Taylor had pockets sewn into every outfit. Im from the school of thought that youve got to take your character for a walk, so youve got to put on those shoes and Lou had some pretty informative shoes, said Clarke. Based on Moyes novel, Me Before You tells the story of working-class Lou who falls into the role of companion for wealthy Will Traynor (The Hunger Games Sam Claflin). A handsome London businessman with a fondness for extreme sports, Will is badly injured in an accident, becoming a quadriplegic. Unwilling to live with restrictions, he has made plans to go to a Swiss clinic and end his life. Lou will do everything she can to make him change his mind, undergoing some changes herself as the two draw close. The story has echoes of Bridget Joness Diary in Lous fun-loving, quirky personality, a hint of Pygmalion and more than a bit of Cinderella (yes, Wills family owns a castle). That wasnt present in my imagination when I was writing her, said Moyes, a former journalist who switched to writing romance novels, including After You, the sequel to Me Before You. I think I had a far more prosaic view of who (Lou) was but I get that and its funny now that this story is done and I am looking at it with a more distant, analytical eye, I can see all sorts of tropes in there: Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester, Beauty and the Beast, Bridget Jones, there lots of elements in there I didnt realize when I was writing it. Clarke said Louisa, known as Lou, felt very familiar to her from the moment she picked up Moyes book. Theres just so much of me in this character. I feel so I understand her cosmically because I just get her, said Clarke. Like Lou, Clarke uses humour as a fallback. Something going wrong, crack a joke, lets laugh, lets giggle about it and thats something Louisa has in spades. She just wants to bring the warmth out in the situation I like seeing people happy. Clarke was leaving for Kentucky as soon as she wrapped this leg of her Me Before You tour to start shooting the film adaptation of Joe Sharkeys crime drama Above Suspicion with director Phillip Noyce (Salt, Patriot Games), starring opposite Jack Huston. And judging from the accent she showed off when prompted, Clarke will be very convincing as an Appalachian mountain woman. I just want to do as many different roles as I possibly can, said Clarke. Me Before You controversy Not everyone is happy with the plot of Me Before You, with protests by disability rights advocates at the London premiere and online criticism. Me Before You author JoJo Moyes, who is also the films screenwriter, said she based the story about a young man in a wheelchair contemplating assisted suicide on a newspaper story she had read. But even her father predicted: I think youre going to get into to trouble, when she showed him the finished book, Moyes recalled. In the film, outgoing Lou (Emilia Clark) does all she can to dissuade Will (Sam Claflin) from his plan, the urgency of her campaign intensifying as the two begin to fall in love. The very last thing I would ever want to do is suggest that a disabled life is a life less worth living, said Moyes in Toronto recently. If anything, I what I was trying to show was you should look beyond the disability and the thing I love about the book as well as the movie is the number of women who come up to me having fallen head over heels in love with a man who cant move from the neck down. Because they forget the disability. Moyes stressed that, while she doesnt agree with the actions taken by the man in the newspaper story who sought medically assisted suicide at Swiss clinic Dignitas, what I do feel is I cant judge him because Im not that person. SHARE: Evan Rachel Wood grew close to Ellen Page during the making of Into the Forest; events in their personal lives helping foster their sibling relationship onscreen. Page, who came out as gay in 2014, was just like this flower that had bloomed, said Wood last September when Into the Forest had its world premiere at TIFF. She became friends with the Canadian actress not long before Page made an emotional speech about her own sexuality at an LGBT youth conference in Las Vegas. A lot of people dont want to acknowledge that as a struggle. They dont think its real, or whatever biphobia there is out there, said Wood of the aftermath of coming out as bisexual in an interview with Esquire magazine in 2011. We certainly bonded on that and growing up and realizing who you are and how much better it felt and why weve chosen to be activists about it and speak out, because if you can and you have the privilege, then we choose to make it count, she said. Wood and Page play sisters living in an isolated west coast home in Into the Forest. At first, a power outage is a nuisance but after it becomes clear it is continent-wide and their food and supplies begin to dwindle, they are forced to be resilient in ways they could have never imagined. Although the women hardly look related Wood is tall, angular and fair and Page is petite and dark-haired they convey a sister-like closeness onscreen, one that includes all the typical sibling tension. Yes there are horrible things that happen and yes, its intense, but I think the film also has rebirth literally and figuratively, said Wood. All your luxuries are taken away and stripped down to nothing. What really makes you human? And where theres loss, death theres birth and wherever theres love, theres hope. They have each other and thats the thing that gets them through it all. Wood said its rare to work on a film centred on the story of two young women. She added shes been lucky to work with three female directors from her 2003 breakout role in Catherine Hardwickes Thirteen, to Julie Taymors 2007 musical Across the Universe and now Into the Forest, written and directed by Canadian Patricia Rozema. She said the atmosphere on the Vancouver Island set of the film was similar to Thirteen in that we all just committed so full to it. Wood credits Rozema, who can get these performances out of people because of the environment she creates. She truly understands the emotional arc of the character. Most directors dont, said Wood of Rozemas behind-the-camera style. Shes feeling it there with you. SHARE: One of the many gifts of the Liberal election win in 2015 was the assurance that there would be soon be a bill on assisted dying and therefore a soothing of a secret dread. Many voters treasured this particular gift. I always thought Id get Alzheimers disease. It wasnt the actual death I feared, although I fear death as a concept and am hugely grieved by a recent personal event. It was more the protractedness of the illness, of having labels sewn in my clothes to assist the police when I wandered about a city I no longer recognized under a name I could no longer provide. Families stricken with Alzheimers see such sorrow. So does every family, but everyone has their own set of fears. The most we can ask is to die in our sleep. I was selfish. Under a promised assisted dying bill that turned out to be Bill C-14, Id have been able to go to a final sleep in my own home with my family around me or in the next room if they were squeamish and maybe an Albinoni oboe concerto playing, and books scattered about the bed, you know, dizzy madcap stuff. My last meal would be the bone marrow from Montreals LExpress or a pancake from the Okonomi House. Such are the silly fantasies of a healthy person. But death, assisted or not, is a terrible scene. I predict no final pudding will please me. There will be a car alarm honking in the background. My foot will hurt. My last words will be about my foot. Im aware that other people have grander ambitions. I was raised by a strict Scottish code, the message being, Dont get your hopes up. But I truly thought Canadians would be granted a gentler passage into death. And now Canadians see Bill C-14, tabled in April and scarcely half the bill the Supreme Court of Canada called for, and they are mystified. Its not a terrible situation. Thanks to the court, assisted death will now be like abortion, legal but with no mandated structure in place. If you can find the right doctor, you can have a painless death. Its not the high-minded solution I had expected of the Trudeau government but I, in a large city in a well-governed province, will likely find that doctor. Others will not. Ottawa is rational and I wonder if some voting calculus told the government that a bill offering exactly what the Supreme Court ordered more or less assisted death for most who asked would be too hot to handle. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has many Yes cards right now. Always use the Yes cards you have in your hand. They slip away so quickly. The Supreme Courts deadlines were created to discipline a Conservative government that had little respect for the intent of the law. The court could have ruled with no deadline and the Harper government would have let years slip away. So it set dates, and Harper delayed, and the bill, written in haste, will not meet the June 6 deadline. Health Minister Jane Philpott, a distinguished family doctor, told the CBC that it was tough to regulate advanced directives about prolonged illnesses, which is true enough. That said, it need not have been watered down to such an extent. Our federal government is being rebuilt on a new foundation of compassion. There is a practical reason that an unelected Senate, still in chaos over affiliations and expense rules, will be helpful. Senators tend to be older. As a practical matter, the older one is, the more death one sees and the closer it approaches. About death, the old masters will have sober second thoughts all right. But the bill is a test of the Supreme Courts strategy. Deadlines for bills being passed to match rulings based on the Constitution seem faintly undemocratic. Surely courts can rely on the understanding that in a democracy, Parliament will follow the rule of law. It says a lot that the court believed deadlines were necessary to make the Harper government apply court rulings it despised. Perhaps deadlines could be dispensed with as we adjust to a court, a Parliament and a Senate all trying to do the right thing in enlightened times. If Canadians had confidence that their final years wouldnt end in hideous physical and mental pain, that medical science would be used to alleviate suffering, perhaps theyd barrel though life more bravely. It would be a public good. Lets see if the Senate will meet this test. SHARE: Canadas top judge is calling for mutual respect between lawmakers and courts, more female, minority and indigenous appointments to the bench, and greater efforts to address the needs of low-income and indigenous communities. In a wide-ranging speech pegged to Canadas 150th birthday next year, Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin surveyed the evolution of the role of the courts and highlighted what she called a healthy tension between the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government. The speech, coming at a time when Parliament is struggling to respond to a deadline set by the high courts ruling that would decriminalize assisted suicide for grievously ill patients, was a remarkable defence of the role of judges. It was also a call to action for all branches of government to achieve reconciliation with aboriginal Canadians, although McLachlin did not refer to cultural genocide as she did in controversial remarks last year about the impact of residential schools. In a text of her noon address to the Empire Club of Canada, McLachlin placed judges squarely at the centre of former Liberal prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeaus project of making Canada a just society. Have we achieved the goal of a just society announced almost four decades ago? The answer depends on how one defines a just society. Are things perfect? Certainly not. Could there be less crime, less discrimination, less injustice? Certainly. Yet judged in terms of the former prime ministers criteria, an argument can be made that Canadian society today is a more just society than it once was more egalitarian, more respectful of rights, more open to opportunity for all. If Canada is the second best country in the world, as a recent study concludes, its justice system has played a role in achieving that result. McLachlin underscored what she called the overarching project of reconciliation between Canadas indigenous peoples and other Canadians upon which our society as a whole is currently engaged. If we are not successful in this project, Canada will fall short of its potential, not only in matters of justice, but also on the economic and cultural fronts. Over the past three decades, the courts have been involved in resolving legal issues central to the project of reconciliation. The work is not complete. How the three branches of governance legislative, executive and judicial meet the task of finding reconciliation with the descendants of our first nations will shape the country in the decades to come. My hope is that we meet this challenge with courage and determination, in the spirit of respect and magnanimity demanded by the honour which binds the Crown in all its relations with Canadas indigenous peoples. McLachlin said the judicial job changed after 1982 when Trudeaus government handed judges the task of assessing whether laws stack up to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the constitutional guarantees of aboriginal and treaty rights. It has been a turbulent period, replete with change and marked by tension healthy tension, I would maintain between the judicial branch of governance and the legislative and executive branches. McLachlin said it wasnt for her to pronounce how well the judiciary has done at interpreting the constitution but said Canadas jurisprudence is increasingly an influential benchmark for courts around the world. First appointed to the top bench by a Conservative government, later named top judge by a Liberal government, McLachlin herself had a much publicized run-in with the previous Conservative government in 2014 which saw many of its legislative initiatives overturned by the high court. Former prime minister Stephen Harpers officials and then-justice minister Peter MacKay accused her of improperly calling MacKay to express concerns over a judicial appointment, which was later found to be unconstitutional by the high court. McLachlin didnt directly address that brouhaha. Instead, she outlined her top five challenges for the justice system: the need for balance and due deference between judges and lawmakers; for judicial appointments of merit and diversity; for appropriate staff and resources for courts so they are not overly dependent on the executive which is often a party before the courts; for greater access to justice for non-elites or poorer and self-represented litigants; and for greater efforts to reconcile the historic grievances of indigenous communities. The speech comes at time when the new Liberal government of Pierre Trudeaus son, Justin, says it intends to overhaul the judicial appointment system, and when the Supreme Court of Canada itself faces a vacancy when Justice Thomas Cromwell retires after the courts spring session. McLachlin called the effort a critical venture. Speaking of overall appointments, she said it is important to appoint judge who can work in both official languages where this is required for the full and effective discharge of their duties. She said in addition, appointments to the bench should reflect the diversity of the society they are called upon to judge to ensure different perspectives are brought to the task of judging, and to maintain the confidence of all Canadians in the justice system. She said Canada, with 36 per cent women on the federal bench, is viewed as a leader in the appointment of women although we might well ask why the figure is not even higher. We fare less well when it comes to judges from minority and indigenous populations. Finding good candidates has been a challenge in the past, due to under-representation of these groups in law schools and legal practice. But that is changing. We can and should do better in the decades to come. McLachlin was scathing in her assessment of overall access to justice, noting a 2015 study that ranked Canada only 18th in the world. We may have Cadillac justice for the elite and large corporations, but too often ordinary Canadians find themselves shut out of court or forced to go it alone without a lawyer. Courtrooms are filled with unrepresented litigants trying to navigate the system as best they can, increasing strains on the process and triggering yet further delays. Legal aid in many parts of the country is woefully inadequate. I believe we must meet the challenge of providing access to justice to ordinary Canadians, if we are to maintain public confidence in the justice system, she said. If people are excluded from the system, if they conclude it exists only to serve the interests of the elites, they will turn away. Respect for the rule of law will diminish. Our society will be the poorer. SHARE: HALIFAXA frail 94-year-old Canadian who was decorated while serving with Allied naval convoys in the Second World War has been struggling to gain entry to a Halifax hospital that cares for veterans. Petter Blindheims son Peter says he has been informed by Ottawa that it wont fund care at the Camp Hill Veterans Memorial hospital under regulations that provides care for Canadians who fought with allied nations against Nazi Germany. Veterans Affairs has sent the family a letter saying that because Blindheim signed up with the Royal Norwegian Navy based in Britain after the date on which the German army occupied his homeland, he doesnt qualify for benefits as an Allied Veteran. The refusal letter says Petter would need to have enlisted between April 8 and June 9, 1940, to qualify. Sailors who signed up with the Norwegian Armed Forces which had shifted to London, England after that date, were considered to be in the resistance service and arent eligible for the Canadian support programs. Peter Blendheim, whose last name was changed slightly by his mother, says the department is being overly bureaucratic in denying the care to his father, who he says was decorated for service on merchant marine vessels and corvettes. Its rigid, bureaucratic, and inflexible and also incorrect on a number of levels, Peter said during an interview Friday. He says at one point his father was commended by the Royal Norwegian Navy for his courage when a torpedo sank a vessel he was serving on in November 1942. After the torpedoes hit the ship, he selflessly ran to the deck and removed the primer from his depth charges so they wouldnt go off as the ship sank, said the son. He imagined in his head the men surviving in the water ... but shock waves from the depth charge killing, injuring or maiming more people. ... So he went and removed the primer and was recognized by the supreme commander of the Norwegian forces based in London, England. Blendheim says his father, who lives in an apartment with his wife Marilyn, is struggling to look after himself and the family has tried for over a year to bring him into a care facility where he can be supported. My mother has reached a breaking point in her own health and her ability to deal with this. My father has fallen down three times over the past year, once bumping his head, once spraining his back and once breaking his arm, he said. He said hed believed the Camp Hill programs would be an option when the time came for his father to receive care, and as a result Petter isnt on a lengthy waiting list for a provincially funded nursing home. The son is appealing to the federal minister of Veteran Affairs, Kent Hehr, to make an exception and allow his father to enter the hospital. Hehr declined a telephone interview, but an aide sent emailed quotes saying he understands the frustration of veterans and families facing such circumstances. I have directed the Department of Veterans Affairs to reach out to this individual and his family and work with the Nova Scotia Health Authority to ensure that all options for care are explored, the email said. A regulation in the Veterans Health Care Regulations says that the benefits are extended to members of Allied forces that fought in the Second World War, other than resistance groups. Read more about: SHARE: MONTREALThe federal New Democrats who showed Thomas Mulcair the door last April must have had various dream candidates in mind to replace him. Almost two months later, most of those presumed successors have vanished into thin air. On Friday, MP Nathan Cullen who finished in third place against Mulcair in 2012 and was widely considered the best positioned to win the succession became the latest potential candidate to pull his name off the list. Brian Topp the veteran party strategist who ran second in that last federal race had already declined the opportunity to try again. Former Halifax MP Megan Leslie, a popular choice among New Democrats, made it clear within days of the convention that she was done with politics for the foreseeable future. What they all have in common is their sense that at this juncture their energies are better spent on battles other than that of keeping the third-place federal NDP afloat. Topp serves as chief of staff to Alberta premier Rachel Notley. His mission is to ensure the provinces first NDP government does not become its last for decades. Leslie toils on the environmental front in a senior position with WWF-Canada. She will have a front-row seat on the upcoming national discussion as to how best to offset climate change and on the Liberal efforts to come up with more proactive policies. Cullen says he wants to focus on the upcoming federal debate over electoral reform. The NDP has long coveted a change to a more proportional voting system. Justin Trudeaus promise to change the system in time for the next federal election offers the New Democrats their best shot ever at advancing that goal. But other sirens may also be serenading Cullen. British Columbia will be going to the polls next spring, offering the NDP an opportunity to end a 16-year Liberal reign. Many in Cullens home province would have him join the next big electoral battle on the New Democrat horizon. Although he says he is not contemplating a move to provincial politics, they believe it is not his last word on the matter. The divisions on exhibit at the NDP convention do not on their own account for the fact that so few seem to burn with the desire to lead the party. The impetus for a strong NDP opposition in the Commons has declined precipitously since Justin Trudeau replaced Stephen Harper as prime minister. Cullen himself spent the last NDP leadership campaign advocating a formal alliance of sorts with the Liberals, and found substantial support for the idea. It is understandable that he would feel there are more productive ways to advance his ideals than to lead an all-out partisan fight against the Trudeau Liberals. Still, a leader for the federal New Democrats must be found and the list of qualified prospects is getting shorter. For now, many will turn to Peter Julian. The B.C. MP is the partys current House leader. Fluently bilingual, he is streetwise in Quebec. He went to university in French in Montreal. As past executive director of the Council of Canadians, Julian has ties to the activist base of the NDP. He would be acceptable to many of the partys conflicted constituencies. And what of activist Avi Lewis? He, too, is otherwise occupied but, in any event, he also lacks some essential qualifications for a federal leadership role. As part of his campaign to promote the LEAP manifesto at the April convention, Lewis gave almost as many media interviews at Mulcair. But when Radio-Canada invited him to discuss the document and the major restructuring of the Canadian economy it advocates, he declined for lack of proficiency in French. Unless he has since signed up for a crash course in Canadas other official language, those who continue to press Lewis to bid for Mulcairs succession should move on to more viable candidates. The NDP, like Stephen Harpers Conservatives, has worked too hard to establish a presence in Quebec to put it all on the line by electing a leader who cannot communicate in the language of the provinces majority. The day French-speaking voters in this country support a party whose leader needs an interpreter to speak to them is the day when non-francophone voters across Canada embrace a candidate for prime minister who does not speak English. Chantal Hebert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Read more about: SHARE: WINNIPEGPrime Minister Justin Trudeau says restoring indigenous languages is key to preventing youth suicides in First Nation communities but stopped short of promising to recognize them as official languages. Trudeau told a virtual town hall with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network in Winnipeg that languages are at the core of indigenous culture and identity. Communities that do a better job of teaching their own language and culture see massive decreases in suicide rates, Trudeau said. This is something that we know is essential, he said Friday. As an indicator of pride and identity, belonging and culture, indigenous languages are essential. Trudeau pointed to the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on residential schools released a year ago which found preventing children from learning their own language was a powerful tool for assimilation. We need to counter that by celebrating languages, Trudeau said. He wouldnt say whether the federal government will recognize indigenous tongues alongside French and English as Canadas official languages but said he looks forward to discussing the idea with chiefs. A rash of suicides, with some victims as young as 13, has prompted several First Nations to declare states of emergency in the past few months. Liberal MLA Judy Klassen, who represents a northern Manitoba riding, told the legislature Thursday that she and others from her home community of St. Theresa Point First Nation carry around box-cutters because you never know when you will come across a child hanging from a tree. This is our nightmarish reality, she said. Canada has failed for centuries to live up to the treaties signed with indigenous people, Trudeau said following a speech to the countrys municipal leaders. The Liberals have put over $8 billion on the table over five years to improve the standard of living for indigenous people but change will not happen overnight, Trudeau said. But he says closing the gap for First Nations is not a problem that is going to be fixed quickly. But some say elevating indigenous languages to official status would be a huge step forward. Grand Chief Sheila North Wilson, who represents northern Manitoba First Nations, said suicides crises have become all too common in some communities. Things stabilize but . . . it never really fully goes away, said North Wilson, head of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak. Part of the despair felt by many stems from past racist policies which sought to make people ashamed of their culture and language, she said. Officially recognizing indigenous languages would give First Nations their rightful place in this country, she said. Its ridiculous to fly into a remote northern reserve in Manitoba and hear the flight attendant give a safety message in English before putting on a French recording, North Wilson said. They should be broadcasting them in Cree because we want the elders to understand, she said. Thats not honouring them as people. Read more about: SHARE: OTTAWAPrime Minister Justin Trudeau signalled Friday he would take a firm stand with China on human rights, revealing how Canada expressed its dissatisfaction with the country after its foreign minister publicly berated a Canadian journalist. Trudeau said freedom of the press is very important to him, noting that asking tough questions is a key part of the medias role. The latest controversy comes as Canada and China work toward deepening their economic relationship, including a possible free trade deal. Trudeau said he would continue to raise rights questions with China, including the case of a Canadian, Kevin Garratt, who has been jailed in China on espionage charges. In Ottawa on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi blasted a journalist from the web outlet IPolitics who asked about Chinas human rights record, saying the question reflected arrogance, was irresponsible and full of prejudice. Wang appeared visibly angry as he delivered the scolding at a joint news conference with Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion. I can confirm that both Minister Dion and department officials from Global Affairs Canada have expressed our dissatisfaction to both the Chinese foreign minister and to the ambassador of China to Canada our dissatisfaction with the way our journalists were treated, Trudeau told a news conference in Winnipeg. The IPolitics question, which was asked of Dion, was agreed to by a number of journalists representing several news organizations at the event, including The Canadian Press. There are no shortages of concerns about Chinas treatment of human rights advocates such as the Hong Kong booksellers and its detention of the Garratts, not to mention the destabilizing effects of its territorial ambitions in the South China Sea. Given these concerns, why is Canada pursuing closer ties with China, how do you plan to use that relationship to improve human rights and security in the region and did you specifically raise the case of the Garratts during your discussions with the foreign minister today? the reporter asked. The new Trudeau government got off to a good start with Chinese leadership last fall, with the prime ministers first meeting with Premier Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Turkey. Trudeau is also travelling to Beijing for the next G20 summit later this year. Xi praised the vision of Trudeaus father, Pierre, for establishing diplomatic relations with China in 1970, while Wang said this week his country looks forward to cultivating a new golden era in relations with Canada under the new Trudeau government. China wants to pursue a free trade deal with Canada, something Wang emphasized during his visit to Ottawa this past week. The visiting Chinese minister also went out of his way to praise the subsequent Liberal governments of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin for improving relations with his country, but conspicuously failed to mention the previous decade of Conservative rule under Stephen Harper. Harper struck a frosty note with the Chinese in 2006 when he said he would not back away from criticizing their human rights record, or sell out Canadas values for the sake of the almighty dollar. But Trudeau also made clear he would not be short-changing any future talk of human rights as his government tries to deepen economic co-operation with China. We will continue to bring up human rights concerns every chance we get while at the same time we work to create economic opportunities both for Canadian and for Chinese citizens, Trudeau said. The fact is the way Canada has always engaged best in the world is to be active and vocal about the things that we are concerned about and disagree on, while at the same time looking for common ground that will be of mutual benefit for all of our citizens. The prime minister said he raises human rights every time he meets with Chinese officials, including Garratts jailing, who he said is in prison for espionage without any evidence to support the allegations and accusations. Dion said Friday that he raised the issue of how China treats journalists within his borders during his meeting with Wang. But he said it is not his job to defend Canadian journalists working at home. Conservative and New Democrats have criticized Dion for not speaking out on behalf of the berated journalist, Amanda Connolly, during the press conference itself. I consider Mme. Connolly as a professional with a thick skin and she does not need me to go to her rescue, Dion said from Paris at an international meeting on the Middle East. Dion noted that he said during the press conference that he had raised human rights and consular affairs issues in his meeting with Wang, including the Garratt case. I did it very, very frankly in my meetings with the Chinese minister and I even raised with him the case of the rights for Chinese journalists in China, said Dion. I think thats the best way to see progress made. Read more about: SHARE: Paramedics rushed a man in his 20s to hospital with life-threatening injuries following a shooting in Etobicoke Friday afternoon. Initially, Toronto Police said they got several calls close to 5:30 p.m. including one saying an injured person was inside a vehicle near Aukland Rd. and Bloor St W. Police later confirmed that it was because of a shooting, although its not clear whether this happened at the mans vehicle or somewhere else. Officers have closed off Aukland Rd. from Dundas St. W. to Bloor St W. for an investigation. SHARE: A London, Ont., high school teacher uses a pen camera to secretly take videos of the cleavage of his female students. A man surreptitiously takes zoomed-in photographs of the private areas of two women sunbathing in bikinis on Woodbine Beach. In both cases, the men involved were charged with voyeurism. And both were acquitted because, while the judges found the videos were probably taken for a sexual purpose, they could not make that finding beyond a reasonable doubt. It is possible Wendell Taylor had an artistic motivation in mind when he used his camera, concealed by a towel, to take photos at the beach, suggested Ontario Court Justice Richard Blouin. Superior Court Justice Andrew Goodman did not specify an alternative motive for teacher Ryan Jarviss morally repugnant and professionally objectionable behaviour; only that one was possible. The two cases are being appealed by the Crown, arguing in part that both the judges engaged in impermissible speculation on what other motivations there might have been for the photography. The accused men didnt testify in either case. The cases raise questions about whether the voyeurism law imposed in 2005 to protect against sexual exploitation and breach of privacy in a time of rapidly changing technology is working. I am concerned that in these cases the accused not taking the stand seems to provide a pretty powerful shield against convicting them, says University of Ottawa law professor Carissima Mathen. She points to a case where a conviction did occur because the police had caught the accused masturbating while recording. If all you have is the fact of the recording of someone who is not nude as defined by the Criminal Code or engaging in sex, and the accused doesnt take the stand, it seems that the voyeurism law has very little teeth. And that seems to be inconsistent with the underlying objective of the voyeurism offence. She argues that the law should be tweaked so that judges can look beyond the accused persons state of mind to the overall context to determine if there is a sexual aspect. Mathen says that in the case of the London high school teacher, the judge could have found the recordings were taken for a sexual purpose based on the evidence. R. v. Jarvis joins a long list of cases that raise serious questions about the ability of the criminal law to meaningfully address sexual offences against women, she wrote in a February blog post with Jane Bailey, a law professor at the University of Ottawa. As the Jian Ghomeshi criminal cases suggested, the law is not always well-equipped to manage these kinds of situations, agrees Lenore Lukasik-Foss, director of the Sexual Assault Centre of Hamilton. I dont know how a court can decontextualize these images from objectifying women and having some sort of sexual purpose. The Crown argues in its submissions for the Taylor appeal that there was nothing in the evidence which established that the respondent was taking the photographs for an aesthetic or artistic purpose. Though acquitted on the voyeurism charge, Taylor was found guilty of mischief. The defence is appealing, arguing that the judge wrongly found it was possible to interfere with the lawful enjoyment of property when on public property. Arguments have yet to be filed in the Jarvis case, which will be heard before the Ontario Court of Appeal. The Taylor case is scheduled to be heard Thursday at the Superior Court of Justice. In the Taylor case the Crown argues the judge wrongly did not consider the absence of consent in deciding why the photographs were taken. An inference was available from the fact that the respondent did not seek the consent of the subjects, that he did not do so because he had an illicit sexual purpose in taking the photographs, the Crown argues. The defence interprets Blouins reasoning differently, arguing that having consent does not affect whether the images taken are for a sexual purpose for example, in the case of a pornographer. He also suggests the reason Taylor did not ask for permission is because he knew from prior experience that he would be denied, regardless of why he wanted to take the photos. In this case, defence lawyer Stephen Whitzman, argued, gaps in the evidence allowed the judge to find there were reasons the photos were taken other than for a sexual purpose. The defence asked the judge to consider that another reasonable possibility was that the respondent just likes womens bums. The judge accepted the defence argument. He did not err in doing so, I believe. Whitzman also argues Blouin was mistaken in finding that the complainant had a reasonable expectation of privacy while sunbathing on the beach, in the age of the iPhone. The possibility of such images being uploaded to the Internet should not be part of the consideration, he argues. A PRIVACY RIGHTS QUIZ Can you be photographed in a public space, like a beach or the TTC without permission? Yes. Photographing in public places is a constitutionally protected right. But there are limits depending on the circumstances. Does how zoomed-in a photo is make a difference? It may. In R. v. Taylor, the judge ruled a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy when it comes to someone zooming in on private areas. Can you be photographed at a public nude beach without permission? Yes. In a 2014 ruling, R. v. Lebenfish, the judge found there was no reasonable expectation of privacy at a public nude beach where photography is not prohibited. Are there other criminal charges apart from voyeurism that can protect you from being photographed? If the photographer is stalking you or causing you to reasonably fear for your safety, or interfering with your enjoyment of property, that could possibly lead to criminal harassment or mischief charges. SHARE: Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders says his force has eradicated a street gang called Heart of a King with links to Montreal and Nova Scotia following a series of raids Thursday. We kicked in 43 doors, Saunders told a news conference at police headquarters on Friday morning. Fifty-three people have been arrested and more arrests are anticipated in what police call Project Sizzle, Saunders said. This investigation had many tentacles to it, Saunders said. When we work together, we have amazing conclusions like we have today. Search warrants were executed early Thursday morning by tactical units from police forces in Toronto, Peel, Halton, Durham, and Montreal early Thursday morning, Saunders said. The Heart of a King group also known as HOK is involved in murder, weapons and gun trafficking and prostitution, Saunders said. It originated in Halifax, growing out of the gang called North Prestons Finest, Saunders said. He made his comments at police headquarters on College St., surrounded by evidence that included 19 handguns, a rifle and bags containing $45,000 in cash. There was also a photo of a man on a Bentley luxury car and a luxury Mercedes SUV. The evidence on display also included a thick jewelled wristwatch and a silver ring with the words Pay Up spelled out in gems. He said the probe involved more than 600 officers, led by the Integrated Gun and Gang Task Force. Police were spotted outside a condo in the Fort York neighbourhood and an apartment building at Dufferin and Liberty Sts. The Montreal Police conducted raids the same day as part of the same operation. Four of the arrests were in Montreal. Saunders said that members of the HOK gang were charged in the shooting death of Charles Shillingford, 25, on Oct. 31, 2015. Police said Shillingford was shot on Charles St., near Yonge, and died of a single gunshot wound to the chest. Saunders noted that Jahmal Joseph Richardson, 31, was arrested for that shooting. Also charged with murder for the Shillingford killing were two Nova Scotia men Mitchell Mannette, 20, and Denzell Desmond, 19 and Kyle Sparks-MacKinnon, 26, of Toronto. Sparks-MacKinnon was also charged with second-degree murder and attempted murder in the Jan. 31 fatal shootings of David Eminess, 26, and Quinn Taylor, 29, at 410 Spadina Ave. Read more about: SHARE: Torontonians shouldnt have to hold on to their butts. Thats the message from a group of urban enthusiasts looking for more places for the city to park its collective keister. A lot of these great spaces you can tell people want to hang out in, theyre at times sitting on the planters or leaning against the walls. Theres no infrastructure provided, said Stas Ukhanov, one of the people behind #SitTO, an informal campaign to point out a lack of public seating. By Ukhanovs count, on Yonge St. from Lake Ontario all the way to Bloor St., weary travellers come across just two benches, both supplied by businesses. You can have great streets and parks that are full of people, but if the people dont stick around, you dont have the vibrant places that people enjoy. He points to the Spanish Steps in Rome, the red stairs atop the TKTS booth in New Yorks Times Square, and the steps outside Ryerson Universitys student learning centre as enviable examples of people-filled places. Its almost a natural amphitheatre into the streets, he said of the building at Yonge and Gould sts. On Saturday, as part of 100in1Day, a showcase of city improvement projects, the group will unfold 20 Ikea chairs in spots around town. The chair clusters would accelerate a concept thats already spreading in the city: Streets for people. Toronto the Good wasnt always dotted with patios, and tickets were once handed out for loitering, he said. There was just this idea that if youre on the streets you probably shouldnt be there and you should move along, Ukhanov said. Streets are not just for moving, theyre our greatest public land assets. Streets make up one of the largest chunks of publicly owned space, covering more than 25 per cent of the city, a greater proportion than parkland, according to the citys Complete Streets office. Toronto has always been a sittable city, and it continues to be one, Adam Popper, an urban planner and project manager with the department, wrote in an email. Not including park benches, the city has almost 1,700 public street benches, with anywhere from 100 to 200 added each year. The challenge is finding enough space for seating, he said, adding that the city must consider accessibility, the desirability of a sitting spot, and maintaining rights-of-way. For Ukhanov, the folding chairs provide a quick fix. Temporary chairs are a small, easy investment, but might inspire more seating in future street redesigns. Were not pointing fingers at anyone, we just want people to reflect on that. SHARE: Ontarios privacy watchdog and the group that advocates for police boards across the province say a proposal to transfer all carding data from the Toronto police to a social justice group is feasible if privacy issues are dealt with. Its bold, Fred Kaustinen, executive director of the Ontario Association of Police Services Boards, said of the letter sent to the Star that proposed that carding data collected by Toronto police be handed over to the Anti-Black Racism Network. His concern is that the proposal might prevent police from having access to useful investigative information. The proposal was made in a letter by Black Lives Matter, responding to a call for alternatives from Mayor John Tory. It suggests that ABRN, a separate group composed of local academics, be entrusted with historical carding data, both to protect it and to better analyze how exactly its being used. Kaustinen, whose organization advocates for police boards and helps set their policies to oversee forces, raised questions about how such an arrangement might work. What protections are there, and who is this community group accountable to with all this data? Would all of this data have to be redacted to address the privacy issue? Brian Beamish, Ontarios Information and Privacy Commissioner, said, Simply providing legacy data to community groups, in identifiable format, is not something this office could support. But Kaustinen and Beamish said they are open to working with the proposal. This information is potentially very sensitive, and access to it must be carefully controlled, Beamish stated. It may be possible to protect the privacy of individuals, while ensuring necessary transparency, through a structured and rigorous program to de-identify the legacy data so it could be shared with and studied by others, including the Anti-Black Racism Network. My office would be happy to discuss this issue, as well as the treatment of the legacy data with the Toronto Police Services Board, the Network and Black Lives Matter. Alexandria Williams, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, said she was happy to hear that the provinces top privacy official is willing to work with her group. There are so many ways to access information while making sure peoples private identity is protected. She said the IPCs offer to sit down and work on a solution is welcomed. To have a body like this recognize what were doing shows that were finally being heard. As for who the ABRN would be accountable to, thats something the letters authors said could be worked out. They told the Star that academics with ABRN are already bound by their obligations to the institutions they work for, which are regulated by the province. But they said a formal accountability structure, at least for the privacy issue, could be worked out, as suggested by the IPC. The proposal by BLM came in response to Mayor John Torys request that the group provide some possible solutions to the data issue. Now that they have done so, a spokesperson for Tory says he has already shared the recommendations. The mayor and staff reached out to Black Lives Matter and others to provide advice on the carding data, Amanda Galbraith said in an email. The Mayor welcomes their advice and has shared their letter with the members of the Toronto Police Services Board. Kaustinen said he agrees with some of the proposals key goals, but thinks removing all carding data from police hands is not in line with new provincial regulations that come into effect at the beginning of next year, which will make arbitrary, race-based carding illegal. He said if the proposal is taken up, police must be guaranteed proper access to collected data that has investigative value, as long as its obtained under the new rules. The premise (of the new regulations) is this information has to be of some operational value or it shouldnt be collected at all; theres some purpose to collecting it, he said. I think the whole idea behind the regulation was to get rid of these interactions without purpose. So if theres some operational reason for it, why would you deny that information to the police? As for historical data that BLM wants to take away from police, Kaustinen said, I think where there are ongoing public safety concerns, legitimate ones, either because of patterns of criminal behaviour and association, that there is a case that police retain some of this information. He said its difficult to define historical in the context of useful investigative information. The reason organized crime is called (that) is because its organized, its networks, and a lot of those networks take decades to expose, certainly years. So some of this information, I would suggest, would still be of investigative value and should be retained. Other data, my sense would be if theres no clear operational reason for it, then it should be expunged. He said a lot of details still need to be worked out, ahead of the new provincial carding regulations soon coming into effect. Its all about finding the right balance between the rights of the individuals, all individuals, including you and I, and public safety interests. No one agency should have the sole deciding vote on what that (balance) is. SHARE: VIDEO OF ATWOOD SPEECH1981: https://vimeo.com/110370009 On Feb. 5, 1981, police came crashing down on Torontos bathhouses with crowbars and sledgehammers. When the dust cleared, almost 300 gay men were arrested on bawdy house charges. In response to the raids, the citys gay community banded together with protests, media outreach and fundraisers. At the time, Canadian literary icon Margaret Atwood spoke out against the raids. This year, as part of Pride month, a panel will discuss how the raids and response laid a foundation for the future of the gay community. The Star spoke with Atwood about the raids and the upcoming panel. How did you get involved in the Pride panel? I spoke at the original rally, so thats why theyve asked me to do it. Its a human rights issue. It was a human rights issue then and it still is. What can you tell me about the raids? There was a big raid, a lot of people were arrested and that was enough of that for the gay community. Especially since they had been harassed in many different ways over the years. They were not harming anybody; they all got arrested because they were gay. . . . It was just sort of an ongoing anti-gay campaign. How was the climate different for gay people in those days? I really dont know that much about it because Im not gay. I think the kinds of people who would get arrested in such a location were not, for instance, my lesbian friends out in British Columbia. It depended on what kind of lifestyle people were living just how much this affected them. It was a big rallying cry for the community at that time and it was probably a turning point. Do you have any sense as to why the raids were carried out? They thought it was wrong. People do that sort of thing out of their own convictions. People think its wrong and should be put a stop to, but there wasnt a sort of, Hey, lets stop a minute, who is this hurting? How much money is it costing the average taxpayer? Do you want to spend millions of dollars on pestering gay people when you could actually be spending it on education, hospitals or just about anything else? So what did you do? Basically I just turned up and said my piece. You had a famous line during your speech, can you tell me about that? Oh, yes: What do the police have against cleanliness? What a smarty-pants, eh? That was bad of me. If it were the days of Twitter I probably would have gotten some yell-back. Were you at all worried about speaking out? No, first of all its Canada, second of all it was Toronto and third of all, what were they going to do? I made a speech, excuse me. It wasnt Nazi Germany where I could have been shot, but no, I didnt feel that anybody was going to do anything horrible to me and I think at that moment in time it was on such a big scale and expensive and silly that people who might have had lingering concerns probably werent going to have concerns about me talking about that. Have you been active in the LGBTQ community since your speech? Well I mean, I have friends in it, but I think the community is now extremely well organized and has a lot more power and reach than they did at that time, so they dont actually need me to be active. People can do just about anything without feeling like theyre going to be strung up from a tree. What are the issues youre still seeing in terms of acceptance for LGBTQ people? I think its still a problem for teenage kids. You need to ask them, but the people who seem to be expressing anguish at the moment are transgender people. Is there anything else youd like to add? I think youve stretched this as far as it can go and squeezed every word out of me. Why dont we leave it there? This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Read more about: SHARE: A Toronto judge has criticized the income cutoff for legal aid funding in Ontario as not realistic given the face of poverty in Canada. Superior Court Justice Ian Nordheimer was presiding over the case of Tyrell Moodie, charged with a number of drug offences, who was denied funding by Legal Aid Ontario because he made more than the organizations threshold income level for a single person about $12,000. Moodie, 23, works part time and earned about $16,000 in 2015. Nordheimer put a halt to the charges against Moodie until the government picks up the tab for his lawyer, which court heard could cost a minimum of $11,000. It should be obvious to any outside observer that the income thresholds being used by Legal Aid Ontario do not bear any reasonable relationship to what constitutes poverty in this country, Nordheimer wrote in a ruling last week. Nordheimer cited a Statistics Canada report from 2015 that calculated the low-income cut-off, before tax, for a single person living in a metropolitan area for 2014 at $24,328, or more than twice the figure that Legal Aid Ontario uses. Until LAO increases its low-income threshold, the number of similar applications made to the courts for state funding could very well go up, particularly in areas of the province where the cost of living is so high, said Moodies lawyer, Scott Pearl. Everyone is presumed innocent, and should be able to pay for a lawyer, he told the Star. Certainly for many individuals like (Moodie) who come before the courts, have a job and earn money, but barely enough to pay their rent and buy food its not realistic for someone in those circumstances to afford a lawyer. A spokesperson for LAO said demand for legal aid for low-income individuals remains high. Although the province has recognized this and has made a multi-year commitment to raising the legal aid financial eligibility thresholds, Legal Aid Ontario has a yearly budget it must adhere to and it must prioritize, in accordance with its legislation, the cases it is able to fund, said Feroneh Neil in an email. There have been three 6-per-cent increases to the financial eligibility thresholds since 2014, Neil noted, with the most recent this past April. Moodie faces various drug offences, including trafficking of cocaine and possession of marijuana. Nordheimer noted that this is a complex case where the accused would not have been able to represent himself without the assistance of a lawyer. It is necessary for the applicant to have counsel in order to have a fair trial, the judge wrote. The Crown pointed out that Moodie had failed to take steps to try to find other sources to pay for a lawyer, but Nordheimer found that he has limited assets, practically no financial support from family, and would be unable to secure a loan given his low income and outstanding debt. Moodies bail conditions, which include a curfew, have also made finding a second job difficult, the judge wrote. Moodies request for state funding for a lawyer is known as a Rowbotham application. Criminal defence lawyer Daniel Brown, who was not involved with the case, said it can be challenging for an accused to bring such an application to court on their own, or to find a lawyer who will do it free. The most vulnerable members of our community are disproportionately affected by cuts to the legal aid certificate system including marginalized racial groups, those with mental health issues, the impoverished, and the uneducated. The current legal aid cut-offs for funding are completely unrealistic, he said. The system is broken and Justice Nordheimers ruling is a step in the right direction to improve the funding problem. SHARE: Three U.S. army soldiers died Thursday when their truck overturned in a creek at Fort Hood, Texas, according to a statement by the Army. The incident occurred around 11 a.m. (12 p.m. EST) at a low water crossing near the northeastern part of the sprawling Army base. Three soldiers were rescued and were in stable condition at a nearby hospital while six remained unaccounted for. Rescue operations continued into the night Thursday, and involved assets such as helicopters, watercraft and search teams from local and state agencies, according to the Army. A medium tactical vehicle is often used as a troop transport, and is comprised of a front cab and bed that can hold equipment or additional soldiers. While medium tactical vehicles have substantial ground clearance they are not built specifically for high-water operations. The deceased and missing soldiers are from the 16th Field Artillery Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division, the Army said. The 1st Cavalry Division is just one of several units that comprise the Armys III corps that is stationed at Fort Hood. The names of the dead will not be released until 24 hours after their next of kin have been notified. The 1st Cavalry Division is grieving after a training accident at Fort Hood during flash flooding this morning. We are deeply saddened by the loss of several Troopers and continue search operations, Maj. Gen. John C. Thomson III, 1st Cavalry Divisions Commanding General, said in a statement Thursday night. Your thoughts and prayers are greatly appreciated during this difficult time as we care for the Families, loved ones, and fellow Soldiers of those impacted by this tragedy. Severe flooding has swept through Texas in recent days as bands of thunderstorms have pummeled dozens of counties across the state, forcing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to declare emergencies in many of them. In a statement Abbott extended his condolences to the families of those lost and said that Texas stands ready to provide any assistance to Fort Hood as they deal with this tragedy. Prior to Thursdays deaths officials at Fort Hood closed two main thoroughfares that stretched through the base, advising motorists to stay from areas prone to flooding. Local weather reports have indicated that Fort Hood has received nearly 3 inches (7.6 centimetres) of rain since Wednesday. It is unclear why the soldiers were attempting to ford an area that had been subject to earlier flash flooding. However, the unit might have been on an exercise in a training area near where their vehicle overturned and were attempting to return to a different part of the base. Fort Hood covers more than 300 square miles (777 square kilometres) and is one of the largest military installations in the United States. Its expansive network of ranges and trails makes it a perfect place for armoured vehicles and other units to train their soldiers. SHARE: A U.S. navy Blue Angel crashed shortly after takeoff, killing the pilot, during an air show practice on Thursday in Smyrna, Tennessee, a Navy official said. According to navy spokeswoman Cmdr. Jeanette Groeneveld, the F/A-18 single-seat jet crashed while in formation. The navy has notified the pilots next of kin and will not release the name or aircraft number for 24 hours. The F/A-18 crashed at approximately 4:01 p.m. Eastern time. According to Groenveld, the cause of the crash was unclear and the navy has opened an investigation into the incident. Our thoughts and prayers are with the team right now, Groenveld said. Images posted to social media show a smoke cloud and fireball rising from a residential neighbourhood. The F-18 crashed just hours after a separate incident in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where an F-16 crashed after flying over the Air Force Academys graduation ceremony where President Barack Obama was in attendance. The F-16 was a part of the air forces demonstration squadron, the Thunderbirds. The pilot ejected safely. It is extremely rare for two aircraft from two demonstration squadrons to crash on the same day. Both groups are comprised of the best pilots their respective services have to offer. After the crash, the pilot met briefly with Obama before the president left Colorado in Air Force One from Peterson Air Force base. The president thanked the pilot for his service, according to a White House press pool report. First responders were sent to the scene of the crash, and the pilot is currently undergoing a medical evaluation out of precaution, according to Peterson Air Force Base spokesman Robb Lingley. Pictures online show the aircraft mostly intact laying upright in a field. Lingley added that the air force would be conducting a thorough investigation into the crash and currently could not determine its cause. SHARE: WASHINGTONInsulting minority groups yet again, Donald Trump followed a series of bigoted comments about a Hispanic federal judge by referring to a black supporter on Friday as my African-American. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has alternated between racial insensitivity and outright racism even as he promises to win the votes of unprecedented numbers of visible minorities. His latest remarks, in fact, came as he was boasting about his supposedly tremendous support from black Americans, about 90 per cent of whom view him unfavourably. Speaking at a rally at an airport in Redding, Calif., Trump began a long story about how a black supporter cold-cocked a protester at one of his rallies. (Great guy, he said.) As he was winding up, he spotted another black man in the crowd. Aw, look at my African-American over here, he said, pointing from the lectern. Look at him, he said, pointing again. Are you the greatest? You know what Im talking about? Black Americans on Twitter greeted the aside with a mixture of anger, dismay and incredulity. America. 2016, wrote DeRay Mckesson, the prominent Black Lives Matter activist. Please let Donald Trump know that slavery was abolished over 150 years ago, wrote Calvin Clarke, 25, a Hillary Clinton supporter in Brooklyn. The man Trump was referring to, Gregory Cheadle, took no offence. Cheadle, a Republican congressional candidate, told the local Redding Record Searchlight that he got two autographs out of that. And he was pleased Trump had acknowledged the existence of a black Republican. To give the black folk the time of the day, I was happy, Cheadle said. Regardless, Trumps latest affront will deepen the angst of Republican strategists who worry their party will be crippled in November by the unending stream of unprompted racial outrages from a candidate who has refused to change his message or his style. Trump made the remark just a day after Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, gave a high-profile speech in which she suggested he was a bigot for his Islamophobia and his attacks on illegal immigrants. It also matters when he makes fun of disabled people, calls women pigs, proposes banning an entire religion from our country, or plays coy with white supremacists. America stands up to countries that treat women like animals, or people of different races, religions or ethnicities as less human, Clinton said. What happens to the moral example we set, for the world and for our own children, if our president engages in bigotry? Trump was unmoved. Just before the rally began, CNN broadcast an interview in which journalist Jake Tapper challenged Trump repeatedly on the candidates claim that the federal judge handling a fraud lawsuit against his Trump University has a conflict of interest because he is Mexican. The judge, former prosecutor GonzaloCuriel, was born in Indiana to parents from Mexico. Hes American, Tapper said. Hes of Mexican heritage, Trump responded. His assault on Curiel, which began in February but intensified in the last week, has flummoxed even his most ardent defenders. Kayleigh McEnany, a CNN commentator who has defended almost all of his incendiary statements, said he shouldnt have made that comment, thats for sure. NBC correspondent Katy Tur said Trump aides she did not name believe the attack will make it harder for him to win. Read more about: SHARE: Van Terry stepped to the podium and tried to contain the emotions simmering inside him. Behind him, in a bright orange jumpsuit, sat Michael Madison, the man convicted of brutally murdering Terrys teenage daughter. In front of Terry sat Nancy McDonnell, the Ohio county judge who would decide whether Madison deserved to die for his crimes. Right now, I guess in our hearts were supposed to forgive this clown, he said, looking forward, towards the judge, then back, towards the murderer. Who has touched our families, taken my child. He paused. For a moment, it was as if were being pulled in two directions at once: up, towards justice, or down, towards the dark place his daughters killer dwelt. Thats when Madison smiled, reported Cleveland.com. And Terry snapped. In an instant, the grieving father was flying across the room, diving over a wooden table, his arms outstretched towards Madisons neck. No, no, no, pleaded someone in the courtroom as panic alarms went off. Sheriffs deputies stopped Terry before he could reach his target, restraining the distraught dad and telling him to calm down before he ended up in irons himself. All the while, Madison kept grinning. If the heart-wrenching courtroom scene was unusual, then so, too, was the gruesome case that brought it about. The tragedy began in the fall of 2012. That September, Shetisha Sheeley called her mother, Kim, to say she was stopping by to borrow a little money. But the 28-year-old never showed. It was the first in a series of warning signs for Glenville, a poor, overwhelmingly African American neighbourhood in East Cleveland. The next one came three months later when Shetishas brother was fatally shot. Dontel Sheeley died three days before Christmas, but when his family held a funeral, Shetisha again didnt appear. Kim began to fear she had lost two children. Six months later, in late June 2013, another local woman went missing. Angela Deskinss family posted photos and increasingly desperate message on social media, but got no leads on the 38-year-olds whereabouts. A few weeks later, Shirellda Terry was the last to disappear. The book-loving 18-year-old was last seen coming home from work. Van Terry and his family put up missing posters, handed out flyers and waited. But the news they got was not what they wanted. On July 19, a cable television worker reported a foul smell coming from a Glenville garage, according to The Associated Press. Inside, police discovered a womans decaying corpse wrapped in garbage bags sealed with tape. The next day, authorities found two more bodies nearby, one in a vacant house and another in a backyard. They belonged to Sheeley, Deskins and Terry. All three spots were visible from the second floor balcony of Michael Madisons apartment, according to Cleveland.com. He was a handsome but heartless registered sex offender convicted in 2002 of attempted rape, according to court records reviewed by the AP. He had previous convictions for drug-related charges. One acquaintance described him as a weed man involved in marijuana sales. Cops quickly pinned the three killings on Madison. He confessed to slaying Sheeley and Deskins but said he couldnt remember killing Terry, although he did recall putting her body in a garbage bag, prosecutors said in court. His defence attorneys never argued that Madison was innocent. Rather, they claimed he had killed the women without premeditation, and should be spared the death penalty. Their deaths were not the result of any planning by Mr. Madison, they were the result of spontaneous eruptions of violence, that were so characteristic of his behaviour at that time, his attorney, David Grant, said in court, Cleveland.com reported. Madison never expressed remorse, prosecutors pointed out. Madison also said he had been influenced by another serial killer, Anthony Sowell, who was convicted in 2011 for murdering 11 women, according to the AP. Madisons victims had been tortured, mutilated and strangled, authorities determined. At least one was raped. Sheeleys body had been folded in half at the waist before she was stuffed into a trash bag. Deskins, meanwhile, was body discovered wrapped in electrical cords with a belt still cinched around her neck. Madison saved his most gruesome killing for last, however. Unlike the older women, Shirellda Terry apparently didnt know her attacker. She had simply been plucked off the street on her way home, then tortured, killed and thrown away like trash. Thats what was on Van Terrys mind as he approached the podium Thursday in Cuyahoga County court. When I first went up there I was OK, he told Fox8. But he wasnt. I was thinking about how he mutilated my child, how you cut my child, and you did all this while my child was still alive so you caused my baby great pain, he said. And when Madison who couldnt remember killing Terrys daughter smiled at the grieving father, Terry snapped. He charged across the room and dove at the murderer. I dont know if I thought about leaping or thought about what have you, I just know I wanted him, Terry told Fox8. Instead, he was restrained by sheriffs deputies. Prosecutors said afterward that they are not sure if they will charge Terry for the courtroom incident. The man reached a breaking point obviously and the defendant was taunting him, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty told ABC5. He killed his daughter. This is the type of thing Mr. Madison finds amusing. Michael Madison is a gutless coward, McGinty added. Van Terrys family members said they, too, understood why he had snapped. He was upset. Hes telling you that he lost his baby, thats a slice of his heaven, and (Madison) is sitting over there smiling, his sister, Sonya Richardson, told Cleveland.com. Its like, enough. Terry himself was unrepentant. I call it a father feeling his pain, he told Fox8, describing his courtroom outburst. And if I do get charged Im all right with that because I did what was right. In addition to statements from victims like Van Terry, Judge McDonnell also listened to Madisons attorneys argue the killer should be spared the death penalty. They said he suffered abuse as a child leading to lasting psychological damage. Prosecutors called Madison the worst of the worst and pressed for a death sentence. This man is evil, he is a personification of it, McGinty said, according to Cleveland.com. The sentence will not bring back the victims, but in the future, when other cold-blooded criminals do their cost benefit analysis, they will know that death is in the equation for them. A jury had already recommended death when Madison was convicted last month. Judge McDonnell, however, had never before sentenced someone to die. This time, she made an exception. In coming to my decision today, I am struck by the sheer inhumanity of what one human being can do to not one, but three human beings. It is incomprehensible, she said, facing Madison, Cleveland.com reported. People who commit the kind of crimes that you have committed must be punished, and must be punished as severely as the law allows. It is absolutely necessary. Her decision will be little comfort for Van Terry, however. Before the trial, he said he didnt want Madison to get the death penalty. Release him inside the (prison) population and let him deal with it every day of his life, he told ABC5 in 2013. Thats what I think; I think he should suffer like we suffered. SHARE: PARISThe swollen Seine river kept rising Friday, spilling into thestreets of Paris and forcing one landmark after another to shut down as it surged to its highest levels in nearly 35 years. Across the city, museums, parks and cemeteries were being closed as the city braced for possible evacuations. The Seine was expected to peak in Paris sometime later Friday at about 5 metres above normal. Authorities shut the Louvre museum, the national library, the Orsay museum and the Grand Palais, Paris striking glass-and-steel topped exhibition centre. We evaluate the situation for all the (cultural) buildings nearly hour-by-hour, said Culture Minister Audrey Azouley, speaking to journalists outside the world-famous Louvre. We dont know yet the evolution of the level of the Seine River in Paris. At the Louvre, home to Leonardo da Vincis Mona Lisa, curators were scrambling to move some 250,000 artworks from basement storage areas at risk of flooding to safer areas upstairs. Louvre takes hurried precautions Nearly a week of heavy rain has led to serious flooding across a swathe of Europe, leaving 16 people dead and others missing. French president Francois Hollande says more decisions may be required due to the exceptional flooding situation in Paris and other French regions. Hollande spoke Friday at a press conference with visiting South-Korean president Park Geun-Hye. He didnt elaborate on what new decisions he is considering should the Seines level keep rising. Hollande said he has attended a meeting so we can be vigilant regarding the rising water level, the peaks which might potentially involve more decisions. The French president said what is happening now, especially in Paris and in some regions, is exceptional. Although the rain has tapered off in some areas, floodwaters are still climbing and could take weeks to clear. Traffic in the French capital was snarled as flooding choked roads and several Paris railway stations shut down. Basements and apartments in the capitals well-to-do 16th district began to flood Friday afternoon as the river crept higher, and authorities were preparing possible evacuations in a park and islands on Paris western edge. French authorities activated preliminary plans to transfer the French presidency, ministries and other sensitive sites to secure places in case of flooding. The SGDSN security agency says the French presidency and the prime ministers office are not immediately threatened but the National Assembly and the Foreign Ministry were at greater risk. In addition to the Louvre, the Orsay museum, home to a renowned collection of impressionist art on the left bank of the Seine, was also closed Friday as was the Grand Palais, which draws 2.5 million visitors a year. The Louvre said the museum had not taken such precautions in its modern history since its 1993 renovation at the very least. Disappointed tourists were being turned away but most were understanding. Its good that they are evacuating the paintings. Its a shame that we couldnt see them today, but its right that they do these things, said Carlos Santiago, visiting from Mexico. Elsewhere in Europe, authorities were counting the cost of the floods as they waded through muddy streets and waterlogged homes. German authorities said the body of a 65-year-old man was found in the town of Simbach am Inn and a 72-year-old man died of a heart attack after being rescued from a raging stream in the village of Triftern, bringing the countrys death toll from recent flooding to 11. Frances Interior Ministry also reported the death of a 74-year-old man who fell from his horse and drowned in a river in the Seine-et-Marne region east of Paris, the second death in France. In eastern Romania, two people died and 200 people were evacuated from their homes as floods swept the area, including one man ripped from his bicycle by a torrent of water in the eastern village of Ruginesti. In Belgium, rescue workers found the body of a beekeeper swept away by rising waters while trying to protect his hives in the village of Harsin. The German Insurance Association estimates this weeks flooding has caused some 450 million euros ($500 million) in damage in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg alone. The foul weather has added to the major travel disruptions France is already experiencing after weeks of strikes and protests by workers upset over the governments proposed labour reforms. French rail company SNCF said the strikes had led to the cancellation of 40 per cent of the countrys high-speed trains. French energy company Enedis said more than 20,000 customers were without power to the east and south of Paris. Paris measures Seine water levels using an unusual method called the Austerlitz scale, which compares the surface level with an underwater sensor at the Austerlitz Bridge, said regional environment director Jerome Goellner. In normal times, the river level is between 1 metre and 2 metres on the Austerlitz scale, he said, a historical system used out so one flood can be compared to another. But a piece of trash trapped in the sensor led authorities to undercount the rise of the Seine this week, he said. The Seine so far has risen about 4.5 metres from its typical position following days of heavy rain. Goellner says its not possible to put a precise time on the peak expected Friday but were near the maximum. Extreme rainfall, such as that hitting France, has increased worldwide and especially in Europe because of man-made climate change, four different scientists told The Associated Press on Friday. They said downpours like this are one of the clearest signals of global warming. Record-breaking rainfall in Europe has increased 31 per cent from 1980 to 2010, when compared to the previous 80 years, according to a 2015 Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research study. These increasing trends have already been measured and are now affecting every storm that forms, including recent storms in France, said Gerald Meehl, a climate scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, With leading Paris museums closed, the surging currents were a tourist attraction in themselves. Prakash Amritraj of India, a 42-year-old visiting with his wife and two children, took selfies on the Mirabeau Bridge in western Paris. I had never thought of possible floods in Paris city centre. In India, we have the monsoon, but here! Its not supposed to happen! he said. While he sympathized with all those affected, he appreciated the flooding from a different perspective. Its kind of beautiful, in a way, he said. SHARE: BEIJINGCommemorations were held in Taiwan and elsewhere Friday ahead of the 27th anniversary of Chinas bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests centred on Beijings Tiananmen Square, while the government in China, where the incident remains a taboo topic, said it had long ago turned the page on the political turmoil. Former student leader Wuer Kaixi was joined by lawmakers at Taiwans legislature on Friday to mark the June 4, 1989, military assault that left hundreds, possibly thousands, dead. Taiwans democratic politics and open society have long served as a counterpoint to Chinas authoritarian one-party system, which permits no discussion of the crackdown or memorials for the victims. Wuer said the Chinese government continues to prevent him from returning to China and bars his elderly parents from travelling to meet him and their grandson outside the country. This is what a so-called great nation has done to me, Wuer told participants in the gathering outside Taiwans parliament. We are facing a nasty and brutal China. Wuer fled China after the crackdown, in which he was named the second most wanted among the student leaders. Unable to return home, he married a Taiwanese woman and settled on the island in 1996. Earlier this year he ran an unsuccessful campaign for a seat in the legislature. With the anniversary looming, security in China has been tightened and victims family members have been placed under additional restrictions. At least half a dozen people have reportedly been detained for attempting to commemorate the events, although a small group wearing T-shirts condemning the crackdown converged on the square on Sunday, among them former house painter Qi Zhiyong, who had both of his legs amputated after being shot by martial law troops early on June 4, 1989. In Washington, D.C., the State Department called for a full public accounting of those killed, detained, or missing and for an end to censorship of discussions about the events of June 4, 1989, as well as an end to harassment and detention of those who wish to peacefully commemorate the anniversary. In a statement, it also urged the Chinese government to respect the rights and freedoms of all its citizens. Asked about the anniversary, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China had long ago reached a clear conclusion about the political turmoil at the end of 1980s and other related issues. Chinas explosive economic growth in the years that followed proves that the path of socialism with Chinese characters we chose to follow . . . is in line with the fundamental interests of the Chinese people, and it represents a wish shared by them all, Hua told reporters at a daily news briefing. Another former student leader, Wang Dan, told a commemorative event in Tokyo that Chinas post-crackdown development proves it isnt necessarily true that economic growth will eventually lead to democracy. Wang, now a professor in Taiwan, said holding such memorials was about more than just remembering the 1989 events. Its a gesture to show your political position, he said. Its a gesture to fight against the view of the Communist Party. Read more about: SHARE: Much of the assisted-dying debate has focused on whether enough people in pain will be able to end their lives. In legal terms this is a good question. Why should some be denied their constitutional right to death? But in broader human terms it has things backward. If government has any role in this life and death matter it is not to ensure that as many as possible exercise their right to die. Rather it is to create conditions that would allow as many as possible to keep on living. The too-narrow critique was raised again in the Senate Wednesday as members of the upper chamber questioned Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and Health Minister Jane Philpott. Most questioners were particularly irked by a clause in the bill that would limit voluntary euthanasia to those near death. Some senators asked why the right to be killed should be denied to those who face intolerable suffering but are not about to die. Others asked why the bill would bar people from deciding ahead of time that they should be killed later if they found themselves with a debilitating condition such as dementia. In the context of rights alone, these are valid questions. But in the context of life and death which is what Bill C-14 is about they are odd ones. The right to death is not the same as other rights. Unlike, say, the right to free speech, it is irrevocable. Those exercising free speech rights can reverse themselves later. Those exercising death rights cannot. Death is a one-way ticket. Canadian society recognizes this when it comes to suicide. Suicide is seen as a tragedy. We devote medical resources to psychiatrists and others in the hope that they can talk people out of suicide. We involuntarily commit to hospital those deemed at risk of harming themselves. In Toronto, special fences exist along the Bloor-Danforth viaduct to deter would-be suicides from hurling themselves into the Don Valley. In short, while suicide is legal in Canada, society does everything it can to convince those weary of life from taking this extreme measure. Yet most of the debate around medically assisted death is entirely different. Here, the questions most commonly raised are whether the proposed legislation is broad enough: Should it include those suffering pain who are not near death? Should we let minors take advantage of the right to be voluntarily killed? What about those fearful of getting Alzheimers in the future? Should they be allowed to make advance directives to be killed? Rarely does the debate focus on measures that might persuade the sufferers to keep on living. To their credit, some senators did raise this issue Wednesday. New Brunswicks Paul McIntyre, a Conservative, asked Philpott how serious the government is about providing better palliative care to those near death. The health minister said the government is prepared to make significant investments in the field. Ontarios Tobias Enverga, another Conservative, asked a similar question: If Ottawa did pony up cash to make the lives of those near death more bearable, how could it be sure the provinces would spend it on palliative care? Philpott answered that the debate over C-14 has opened up a conversation for us as Canadians about what we want a good death to be like. Questions of the money devoted to palliative and long-term care matter because, in the end, it will be the elderly who end up availing themselves of medically assisted death. Most will do so not because they suffer from a relatively rare and high-profile condition, such as Lou Gehrigs disease, but simply because they are old. In Belgium, according to government statistics, 75 per cent of those who take advantage of voluntary euthanasia are between the ages of 60 and 89. It is no coincidence that Canadas debate over voluntary euthanasia comes as this country struggles over how to pay for the costs associated with an aging population. We may decry death, but it is the cheapest solution. Some fret over whether some version of Bill C-14 will be enacted before the Supreme Courts arbitrary June 6 deadline. I am not sure this matters much. I am, however, puzzled that so much of the debate particularly on the left has been framed around simple questions of individual rights. Yes, those in unbearable agony who want to die should be able to enlist medical help. But, where possible, wouldnt it be better if Canadians collectively tried to alleviate that agony and provide reasons to live? Thomas Walkom's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. SHARE: A Three Amigos summit Canada, U.S., Mexico celebrating the abominable NAFTA trade deal of 1994, is coming at the end of this month and normally Id save this column for it. But Id like to suggest Justin Trudeau and trade minister Chrystia Freeland, take time to think about striking a different note there, like backing off future deals such as the Pacific and European ones now pending. They came into office saying theyd carefully examine those deals before signing on, which is ritualistic crap as ex-Quebec premier Jean Charest wrote this week. You say youll look seriously, then you just sign as another new Liberal government did with NAFTA. But that pattern might be changeable. Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz, one of the smart guys Freeland reveres (too much perhaps), says he advised her against the deals, so thats a bit of cover. But mostly ordinary people everywhere have rounded on them. U.S. and German support for the Europe deal has dropped from the mid-50s to the teens in just two years. And its usually the far right such as Trump which has occupied the new terrain. It will go by default to them unless someone else steps up. So what has changed? Whats behind this shift? The pro-dealers keep citing numbers to prove what bargains were getting. I wouldnt say numbers lie but they dont tell the truth. Numbers dont do anything, theyre numbers! What has pre-empted numbersism is common sense, like when Bernie Sanders says you didnt need to be a genius in 1990 to visit Mexico and realize that people willing to work for a few dollars a day would get jobs from farther north if trade deals (which were, by the way, rarely about trade and mostly about freedom to move production) went through. Now, that common sense logic has been ratified by experience. Its exactly whats happened. Elementary logic also suggests that deals (theyre rarely called free trade deals any more, just trade) written in secret with only corporate figures present alongside governments versus workers, womens or native organizations, environmentalists: basically everybody else will reflect guess whose interests? That doesnt take genius either, though WikiLeaks provides useful confirmation. The credibility dip has been steep. The chief argument that liberal pro-dealer Paul Krugman, another Nobelist, has left for those deals is that they raised wage levels in poor countries. I think theres some truth to that but why does it fall solely on Western workers families to pay the price for such progress through their own desperate decline while the rich soar to levels never known before? This is an exact recipe for the rise of xenophobia and rage, as you neednt look far to see. Lastly, the glam is gone from the globalization mantra. I recently attended a performance of Bachs Cello Suites in Toronto. Cellist Misha Maisky introduced himself as a citizen of the world. I play an Italian cello with French and German bows, Austrian and German strings, my six children were born in four countries, my second wife is half Sri Lankan, half Italian, I drive a Japanese car, wear a Swiss watch, an Indian necklace and I feel at home everywhere. It was weirdly tone-deaf for a virtuoso. Didnt he know where he was? And who doesnt drive a Japanese car? Outside the concert a Latino busker played La Vie en rose on an alto clarinet. He didnt congratulate himself for being a world citizen. He just is, like so many others. Deal celebrants may not have noticed how dated their shtick has grown. And now for some breaking news. On Wednesday, General Electric said it will build a new plant in Welland, Ont., in response to hefty bribes, whoops and subsidies from governments here. Theyll happily screw their U.S. workers, just the way many Canadians were screwed by previous moves to Mexico, then China, then Vietnam its your basic race to the bottom. The benefit in Welland? 150 measly jobs. But theyre jobs. The only excuse for sticking with Canadas disgraceful sale to Saudis of democracy-busting military equipment is to provide some work around London, Ont., where so many decent factory jobs vapourized during the NAFTA years. Whats the alternative no trade? Hardly. These people sometimes talk as if no one ever thought about trading before NAFTA. But slathering on more of these particular (not even really about) trade deals will only make things worse. Rick Salutins column appears every Friday. Read more about: SHARE: At the risk of rousing the ire of Chinas foreign minister, who apparently so detests being challenged by journalists, we humbly offer him a bit of advice: if you want to quell international concerns about your countrys human rights record, publicly attempting to silence foreign reporters is probably not the way to go. The Chinese official, Wang Yi, was in Ottawa on Wednesday to meet with his Canadian counterpart, Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion. After the tete-a-tete, the two held a press conference during which Wang was apparently caught off-guard by a perfectly predictable question. Amanda Connolly, a reporter from online news site IPolitics, asked Dion whether, as his government seeks to repair relations with China after the frosty Harper years, he will pressure Beijing to improve its lousy treatment of human rights advocates. She also inquired about Kevin Garratt, a Canadian coffee-shop owner, who has been held in China on credulity-stretching espionage charges since 2014. The query had been approved by several news organizations, but Wang, evidently, did not appreciate it. I have to say your question is full of prejudice against China and arrogance, he told the reporter. Its totally unacceptable. His tirade continued for more than two minutes. Dion, whose foreign policy has too often put tactics over principle, looked on impassively. In fact, Connolly asked just the right question. As Canada repairs ties with China, we will inevitably have to grapple with that countrys record of human rights abuses. After all, Human Rights Watch decries Chinas history of curbing fundamental rights, including freedom of expression when their exercise is perceived to threaten the [state]. Wangs outburst fits the mould. Its not without dark irony that the ministers outburst came just days before the 27th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, in which state troops with assault rifles and tanks killed hundreds (perhaps thousands) of unarmed pro-democracy protestors. Public commemoration of the tragedy is strictly prohibited. Yet for decades relatives of the victims have sought answers and compensation from the state. For this, they claim they have been persistently surveilled and harassed. Over the last week alone, at least four people were detained in Beijing for privately meeting to mark the occasion. Journalists will not and should not ignore these issues. If the minister hoped to silence or reassure his Canadian critics, he clearly achieved the opposite. We should not take for granted that we live in a country where the worst abuse our reporters are likely to suffer for telling the truth is an interminable lecture from a tone-deaf minister. Read more about: SHARE: Re: In defence of Pickering Nuclear, letters, June 1 In defence of Pickering Nuclear, letters, June 1 In the last couple of months the Star publishes two four-page pro-nuclear ads, then allows Mr. Gibbons a column to say Too much trust in old nuclear plants, but subsequently prints two letters refuting two days later! Could you not find even one letter to point out that the Pickering station is not running on all cylinders? Out of eight reactors, two have been out of service, idle, not making power. Fifty-four reactor years with no electricity! Furthermore, the Power Workers Union is just plain stubborn and wrong when they say that fossil fuel is the only alternative to nuclear. All countries are building the alternatives solar, wind, electricity storage, etc. These are going up surprisingly fast. Will readers of the Star get to know that most everywhere, except in Ontario, investments in nuclear are disappearing? William Shore, Sutton, Ont. The CEO of Ontario Power Generation claims that a Pickering extension enjoys strong community support in Pickering. Thats only because people dont know about it. OPG has been promising the closure of the plant for a decade. First in 2007, then in 2013, and then in 2018. Now we hear they want to extend it till 2024. When will it end? Will they ask for another five years after that? And so on and so on? This plant opened in 1971 with an expected lifespan of 30 years. Its now 45. I think the nuclear plants are actually hampering economic growth eastward along the Toronto-Montreal corridor. The residents of Pickering have done our time. Weve carried the risk for the rest of Ontario. We want our safety back, our waterfront, our peace of mind. Shut it down. Barbara Pulst, Pickering Some of your letter-writers suggest nuclear power can help address climate change. But if we look at the whole nuclear system including uranium production we find nuclear is not climate-friendly. Writing in Scientific American, Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi argue, Nuclear power results in up to 25 times more carbon emissions than wind energy, when reactor construction and uranium refining and transport are considered. If we want to protect Torontonians from extreme weather, we should ramp up renewable sources such as wind and solar. Doing so would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and, because air and sunlight are free, help contain costs for consumers. Gideon Forman, Climate Change and Transportation Policy Analyst, David Suzuki Foundation, Toronto What a pity that two senior executives from OPG and its union have to resort to shallow, childish rebukes of a perfectly sound column by Jack Gibbons to make their points. Each clearly has a vested interest in the status quo. The fact is that the Pickering complex is aging, along with which goes increased risk arising as the current licensing is due to expire. When confronted with this situation, Hydro Quebecs CEO counterpart to Mr. Lyash, the CEO of OPG, did the right thing and closed their nuclear plant while asking, Would you fly in a plane flying beyond its approved life? Independent opinions by recognized experts are on the record as recommending that the Pickering licence not be extended beyond its current mandate. A future-oriented alternative based on hydro power from Quebec is already spelled out, which will not only be more economical but add to the long-term reliability of each provinces supply and seasonal balance. Jobs will not be lost by moving in this direction. The agency through which Pickerings licence extension will be considered, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, gets funding for two-thirds of its annual costs to the very nuclear operations it supervises. By any normal standards of oversight, this might be considered a potential conflict of interest, especially when CNSC deals exclusively with the nuclear file. Roger J. Short, Kimberley, Ont. Its always telling when management and unions agree on something. OPG executives and the Power Workers Union are trying to convince you to protect and subsidize their fat jobs. Just take a look at the sunshine list and youll see why. Even some shift managers earn over $400,000 a year. You wont see those salary levels in the hydroelectric, wind and solar industries. Thats partially why renewable energy is now the least expensive option for electricity. Jack Gibbons has presented a compelling case as to why we dont need Pickering. What he didnt point out, though, is that the building and operation of nuclear plants is a dying business. There hasnt been a CANDU reactor sold in 30 years. Globally, the International Energy Agency has reported that almost 200 of the 434 reactors operating at the end of 2013 will need to be retired by 2040. The real future is in decommissioning. Ontario has already set aside the funds for retiring old plants. We should tap into those funds and employ the skilled professionals at OPG in a real growth industry the decommissioning of obsolete nuclear plants. Theyre going to have to do so anyway. Lets give them a head start. Malcolm W. Hamilton, Toronto On April 20, 2012, the Ontario Energy Board issued its report Incentive Regulation Options for Ontario Power Generations Prescribed Generation Assets. In the executive summary of this report we read: With respect to nuclear operations, the benchmarking analyses that have been performed indicate that OPGs nuclear units have performed poorly, and dramatically so with respect to the Pickering units. The benchmarking analyses referred to by the OEB are based on an independent study carried out by ScottMadden. Their report evaluated the performance of OPGs nuclear facilities against worldwide nuclear industry benchmarks and show that the Pickering A and B plants have among the worst, and on some measures the worst, operating records among the plants in the World Association of Nuclear Operators and Electric Utility Cost Group databases. This alone should give us reason to close the Pickering nuclear station immediately. Furthermore, on certain of the 19 indices in the ScottMadden report, including some key indicators, the Pickering units are not only the worst performers in North America, but they achieve this distinction by a wide margin. For example, Pickering A1, B7 and A4 all have forced loss rates (FLR) over 30 per cent; no other North American pressurized water or pressurized heavy water reactor has an FLR over 20 per cent. The 2015 update of the ScottMadden report shows very little improvement in the performance of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. Question: Are these not compelling reasons to close Pickering immediately? Dr. F. R. Greening, retired OPG senior research scientist, Hamilton It is not surprising that the two letters you published extolling the virtues of nuclear power came from an employee and a union representing employees. Both letters are misleading. Nuclear power is very safe. There are around 450 nuclear reactors operating around the world and there have only been three disastrous failures: Three-Mile Island (U.S.A.), Chernobyl (Ukraine) and Fukushima (Japan). The latter was caused by a tsunami, not a failure of the plant itself. However, it also illustrates the weakness of nuclear power and one of its hidden subsidies. The likelihood of failure is very low, but the damage such a failure causes is incalculably huge. For this reason, no commercial insurer will touch a nuclear plant. Rather they are insured by the state, which will be forced to clean up and compensate victims should a disaster strike. Ontarios nuclear plants are only able to supply electricity at a relatively low price because the debt incurred during their construction was lifted off their shoulders by Premier Mike Harris. (He was probably thinking of selling them.) How much is this worth? Well, I invite readers to contemplate how much wealthier they would feel if they did not have a mortgage Comparing the cost of nuclear generation to gas generators is inappropriate. The nuclear plants are base-load generators; their power is meant to be cheap. The gas plants are peakers, idle much of the time, only springing into action when demand is high because nuclear generators cannot boost (or lower) their output quickly. They are not load following. When we are forced to sell electricity to our neighbours at bargain rates, we are largely selling electrons generated by the nukes! Yet another subsidy to nuclear power is the willful ignorance of our politicians on the subject of nuclear waste. For the moment it is in temporary storage, generally on site and above ground. As long as the nuclear power plants are operating, we dont think too much about this waste. However, once they are shut down, people are going to wonder whether they can somehow use the prime lakefront properties. Then they will realize that they cannot because of the many tonnes of highly radioactive material which the inner workings of the plant and its spent fuel rods represent. One way or another, this radioactive material will have to be stored safely (away from terrorists certainly) for at least 200,000 years. The cost of this storage will be borne by future taxpayers, essentially forever. How long is 200,000 years? Well, 200,000 years ago, Homo neanderthalensis still existed and Homo sapiens was only just emerging. Looking ahead 200,000 years, it is entirely possible even likely that Homo sapiens will have vanished too! The bottom line is that nuclear power is not as inexpensive as its proponents would have us believe! Peter Bursztyn, Barrie SHARE: Re: Toronto police raid marijuana dispensaries, May 27 Re Toronto police raid marijuana dispensaries, May 27 Justin Trudeau really should go down the hall and elbow his way into former Toronto police chief and MP Bill Blairs Parliamentary office and tell him he wants to fast track the legalization of cannabis to the end of June 2016. Then Justin might call current Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders and ask him to politely to drop the 257 charges and release any of the 90 arrested in last weeks cannabis dispensary raids who might still be lingering in one of his steel cages. Millions of dollars in police and court time are about to be squandered even if the Liberals keep their word to introduce cannabis legislation in the spring of 2017. Surely Canadians have better, more enlightened and humane ways to spend their tax dollars. Here is the reality check upon which the above suggestion is offered: Dr. Kieran Michael Moore, associate professor of emergency and family medicine at Queens University in Kingston, recently pointed out that we have a prescribed drug epidemic in Ontario. According to Dr. Moore, 5,383 Ontario residents died from non-intentional, opioid-related causes from 2002 to 2014. Here in Hastings County, an average of five people died each year between 2006 and 2010 from accidental opioid overdoses. Dr. Moore points out that even a week of opioid pain killer use can lead to addiction. In that same time period, how many people died from cannabis? Zero. Not one death has ever been attributed cannabis overdose in North America. In fact, a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicated that in certain areas, legalized marijuana coincided with a drastic reduction in painkiller deaths. But Big Pharma and Big Alcohol do not like what they are seeing and they have the money to lobby politicians. Toronto Police Chief Saunders justified his actions by saying, its a genuine health concern because of the lack of a regulatory process or quality control and due to the fact that some dispensaries were within 300 metres of schools. Herein lies the problem. Richard Nixons War on Drugs propaganda has permeated our consciousness about cannabis since 1971. The outright lies and politically motivated distortions of the truth are all engrained deeply in our society. Organized crime was just given a reprieve by Toronto Police. Street dealers will once again fill the demand because the people who want cannabis know the truth: as a drug cannabis is comparatively harmless yet very helpful to many who suffer from various health issues. If politicians would simply educate themselves about the reality of this plant, new industries could flourish. Like the wine revolution in Prince Edward County, where someone with passion can buy some land, plant some vines, squash some grapes and market their wine, Hastings County could have a flourishing hemp/cannabis agricultural renaissance. From hemp we can derive paper, cloth, hemp-crete building material, synthetic fuel produced seven times more efficiently than ethanol from corn, etc. etc. The choice is yours Justin. Please, go knock on Bill Blairs door. Alan Coxwell, Stirling, Ont. The edible chocolates candies and cookies seized in the Toronto Police raid on medical marijuana dispensaries that were within 300 metres of schools show the irresponsibility of this unregulated industry. These edibles are attractive and more readily accessible to children and adolescents who would normally not smoke cannabis. In Colorado, where nearly 50 per cent of the legal cannabis sold is in the form of edibles, there has been a dramatic increase in admissions to hospital by children as a result of cannabis intoxication due to accidental ingestion. Pot Tarts for breakfast, anyone? James G. Wigmore, Toronto The police may be right to enforce rules on cannabis dispensaries, but they are also expected to prioritize. Cannabis laws have always been selectively enforced, as evidenced by enforcement disparities among jurisdictions, ages, genders, races and classes. Dispensaries in B.C. have been granted absolute discharges, based in part on the governments refusal to comply with court rulings of over a decade ago mandating a constitutional and functional medicinal cannabis regime. Most recently, the Supreme Court struck down the regulations for prohibiting edibles, extracts and topicals. The police should also consider the consequences of indiscriminately shutting down dispensaries, regardless of their business practices and proximity to schools. Lacking dispensaries, most patients will return to the black market, or seek the help of an adolescent relative or acquaintance, or turn to more problematic drugs such as alcohol, fentanyl and oxycodone. Vancouver and Victoria are more wisely identifying and culling out the bad actors, leaving the mom and pop clubs to compete with armed gangs, who also sell other prohibited substances of unknown provenance, potency and purity on commission, tax free, to anyone of any age, anytime, anywhere, no questions asked. Amid this chaos, dispensaries provide compassion, knowledge, peace and order. Matthew M. Elrod, Victoria The crackdown and raids upon storefront distributors of marijuana last week were absolutely predictable and necessary. It was like arguing balls and strikes with an umpire. Turn your head and mumble, That wasnt a strike and you might get away with it, but get in an umpires face and show him up in front of 30,000 people and youre gonna get tossed. These storefront operators were warned in advance that they were breaking the law and to shut down. That there would be consequences. There is simply no argument. They were breaking the law because it has yet to be changed. The police had to respond eventually or they would have lost all credibility in their duty to enforce the law. They had been publically shown up in front of all the people theyre sworn to protect. This was predictable and inevitable, and when some of these people re-stock and open again, for business, they are more than likely to be busted again. Bill Blair and the federal government had better get busy, in haste, because the longer that this game of cat and mouse goes on, the worse that the government and law enforcement will look. Rob Cowan, Toronto Where is the Toronto Stars much-acclaimed investigative reporting in the recent sweep of Torontos pot shops? Police Chief Saunders claim that no legitimate dispensaries were close doesnt make it true, given that his definition of what is legal is based on regulations that have been struck down. By all means shut down the so-called dispensaries that are clearly illegitimate and illegal and have sprung up over the past 6 months. That doesnt justify shutting down dispensaries that have operated ethically for years. Yet this has happened. At the very least, where is the guidance for those people who legitimately depend on their dispensaries for debilitating conditions? What are they to do while they wait for their dispensaries to either reopen or while they wait for a lengthy approval process for a mail-order dispensary? Ellen Morrow, Toronto I cant help but think that Thursdays raids of marijuana dispensaries was a smoke screen to attempt to cover up the inability of the police force to deal with more life-threatening issues, such as enforcing the laws around guns, knives, murder, attempted murder and gang-related activities. Surely curbing the rising homicide rate is better use of our resources than targeting marijuana dispensaries that within the year will most likely be legal. Patricia Gareth, Toronto Read more about: SHARE: In the wake of the failed merger of Staples (SPLS) and Office Depot (ODP) -- which has left each office supplies retailer in a weakened state -- Walmart (WMT) is sensing an opportunity. "We will soon be piloting the delivery of office supplies," Tracey Brown, chief member officer of Sam's Club, told TheStreet at a tour of a Sam's Club location Thursday ahead of Walmart's annual meeting. Brown didn't disclose when the pilot would begin, or where. Nor did she say whether it would be contract-based like the delivery services offered by Office Depot and Staples. Delivering office supplies makes perfect sense for Sam's Club given the composition of its member base. A good portion of the member base at Sam's Club are small-business owners that visit the warehouse club operator to buy products such as bulk oil for their restaurant or office supplies for the supply closet. Sam's Club has two types of business memberships. For a $100 annual fee, a business member could add up to 16 members to the account for $45 a person. This higher premium option is eligible for cash rewards based on how much is spent in a given year. The other membership option costs $45 a year and only allows for eight add-on members and doesn't offer cash rewards. Sales among business members at Sam's Club have been mixed over the past year as small- and medium-sized businesses across the country have focused on cutting costs, such as stocking fewer items in cupboards and supply closets. So entering office supplies delivery could be a way for Sam's Club to reinvigorate sales from business members and gain a little loyalty by making shopping for them easier. At the very least, it's not a bad idea by Brown's team in light of the disruption to similar businesses at Office Depot and Staples. At Office Depot's North American business solutions segment, which primarily ships office supplies under contract to businesses, sales declined 7% in the first quarter when excluding the impact of the strong U.S. dollar. The sales decline was driven mostly by customer attrition and lower customer additions, primarily due to the substantial business disruption related to the thwarted takeover of Staples. In a call with analysts last month after the deal with Staples was scuttled, Office Depot conceded it has lost significant talent in its business solutions segment, and was working to rebuild the talent pool in order to reignite sales. Meanwhile, Staples has fared slightly better with its delivery business, but isn't exactly setting the world afire on the top-line. Sales for the company's North American commercial segment were unchanged in the first quarter vs. a year earlier. Operating income rose a measly $14 million year over year. Staples found the most success in promotional products, facilities supplies, and breakroom supplies, partially offset by declines in ink and toner, and paper. "Our strongest momentum was in the mid-market, where sales were up in the mid-single-digits," said outgoing Staples CEO Ron Sargent to analysts on a May 18 call. Staples defines a mid-market business customer as one with 10 to 200 employees. Sargent continued, "Improved customer acquisition and retention offset modestly lower sales through existing customers." Ultimately, Sam's Club may want to consider quickly moving from the test phase to full scale rollout of office supplies delivery given the amount of sales being rung up by Office Depot and Staples each year. According to data compiled by TheStreet, both Staples and Office Depot have generated more than $28 billion in sales from their North American office supplies businesses in the past two years. Not too shabby. Of the many unexpected twists to the 2016 presidential campaign, California's emergence as a competitive race is high among them -- and it's good news for media in the state. That Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are spending lavishly in hopes of winning Tuesday's California's primary, historically an afterthought given its last-place spot in the primary schedule, has been a surprising boon to CBS (CBS) , which owns six of its 28 local TV stations there. "The greatest thing is to see Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders purchasing time in California," Peter Dunn, president of CBS Television Stations, said in a phone interview in New York. "They're going head-to-head, which is something we didn't think would happen. When California comes into play for political that's huge." CBS got a big boost from political advertising in the first quarter as the company's total ad sales jumped 31% from the same period a year earlier. The network's Boston station WBZ-TV was responsible for much of that growth thanks in large part to a spirited New Hampshire primary. Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz spent aggressively at the Boston station, which broadcasts into much of the Granite state, as did Clinton and Sanders in a contest won by the Vermont senator. "Our first quarter spending was the strongest we've seen in years," Dunn added. Spending on California's primary promises to bolster CBS's second-quarter advertising revenue. The network owns two stations in Los Angeles, two in Sacramento and two more that cover all or parts of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose. As of May 12, the two Democratic contenders had spent more on TV advertising than any other candidates. Sanders had dolled out $73.7 million for more than 124,000 TV ads while Clinton's television spending reached $62.6 million, responsible for more than 105,000 ads, according to analysis of Kantar Media data compiled by the Wesleyan Media Project. By comparison, Trump used $18.5 million of his campaign's cash for about 33,000 TV ads. Even though Clinton is all but assured the Democratic nomination, Sanders' determination to campaign aggressively in California has helped to sustain political ad spending during a period in the election cycle when the two parties typical close ranks to prepare for their July conventions. But Sanders remains convinced, publicly anyway, that he can win the California primary and justify continuing his campaign in an effort to convince the party's super delegates to switch their allegiance from Clinton. Supporters of the former New York senator and secretary of state counter that Clinton's more than three million vote lead -- roughly 13 million to 10 million -- demonstrates that Sanders should officially drop out of the race if he loses the California primary. CBS has also benefited during the current quarter from unexpected spending at WCBS-TV, its New York affiliate, in the weeks leading up to the state's April 19 primary. Though Sanders lost the New York primary and Trump trounced his Republican rivals, spending for television time at New York stations far exceeded previous years when the state's contest, like California, has been similarly overlooked. "This is the first time since 2008 that we've seen presidential primary money being spent in New York," Dunn said. "We've had a lot of spending that we don't normally see." For CBS, Trump's candidacy presents at least the possibility that the native New Yorker could turn his home state into a battleground contest despite it having voted Democrat in each of the past seven presidential elections. CBS also stands to gain from a hotly-contest senate elections in Colorado, Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois where it owns its network affiliates in Denver, Miami, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Chicago. CBS CEO Leslie Moonves has already said political advertising at CBS in 2016 will set a new record, providing the company with additional resources. "Political is a huge part of our budget planning process," Dunn said. "It will be a lot higher this year." Strong companies with above-average dividend yields are hard to find. In many cases, investors looking for high dividend yields have to resort to buying stocks with sky-high yields. But stocks with such yields can be fool's gold. They are often an indication of a company in distressed financial condition and can be a red flag that the dividend will be cut. Fortunately, there are still top-notch companies with popular products and strong brands that also provide high dividend yields. One is PepsiCo (PEP) , a company with a long track record of sustainable growth and excellent dividends. Case in point: PepsiCo has increased its dividend for 44 consecutive years. This makes PepsiCo one of just 50 Dividend Aristocrats, stocks with 25 or more years of consecutive dividend increases. Click here to see all 50. There's a reason PepsiCo has an excellent long-term dividend track record. The company is a consumer goods giant that has a long list of strong brands. PepsiCo is a holding in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. See how Cramer rates the stock here. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells PEP? Learn more now. In total, PepsiCo has 22 billion-dollar brands, brands that generate more than $1 billion every year in sales. It is likely that one or more PepsiCo products could be found in your home (and nearly everyone else's in the U.S.). And, it is rapidly expanding its reach in international markets, particularly the emerging economies like China and India. Investors don't have to go dumpster-diving for solid dividends. Consider PepsiCo and its 3% dividend yield for a great combination of growth and dividend income. PepsiCo's Leading Consumer Brands Perhaps the best aspect of PepsiCo's business is that it has a large product portfolio filled with popular brands. In addition to its core Pepsi products, it offers additional beverages such as Gatorade, Tropicana, Aquafina and Lipton. It has 22 brands that each collect at least $1 billion or more in annual sales. It also has a large food business under the Frito-Lay and Quaker brands. PepsiCo has a diversified business model: PepsiCo derives about half of its sales each year from beverages and half from food. This helps diversify the company and insulate it from unfavorable shifts in consumer preferences. For example, the decline in soda consumption in developed markets like the U.S. has caught the soda industry flat-footed. Soda sales have declined for more than a decade in the U.S., and this puts PepsiCo and main rival Coca Colain a difficult position. But PepsiCo has adequately prepared for this with a large food portfolio, which meaningfully boosts growth. PepsiCo's food business is a major advantage because the food segment is leading its growth, as is its focus on international expansion. Last year, PepsiCo's organic revenue, which excludes the negative effects of foreign-exchange fluctuations, grew 5% from the previous year. The rising dollar has eroded revenue and earnings for multinational companies like PepsiCo, but excluding currency, its results are very healthy. In 2015, PepsiCo's organic earnings per share rose 10% from the previous year. The Frito-Lay North America and North American Beverages units each grew organic earnings by 7% for the year. The company saw strong results overseas as well, despite the difficult foreign-exchange environment. International growth will be a major driver of PepsiCo's future. Last year, 44% of PepsiCo's revenue came from outside the U.S. This percentage will likely only grow. This includes taking advantage of new channels. Last year, PepsiCo more than doubled its e-commerce business in China. Overall, PepsiCo generated more than $8 billion of free cash flow last year. It also generated a 19.6% return on invested capital. Part of PepsiCo's ability to generate such strong returns and cash flow is its focus on cost controls. In 2014, the company announced a plan to cut costs by $5 billion over the five-year period through 2019. It is on track to reach its goal, as it delivered $1 billion in productivity savings last year. PepsiCo's balanced business is a source of strength, but the company was nearly forced to break itself up at the request of an activist shareholder. Famed activist investor Nelson Peltz of Trian Fund Management invested in PepsiCo last year and strongly urged management to spin off its beverage unit from its higher-growth food business. The rationale was that each company standing alone would collectively receive a higher valuation in the equity market than the existing entity. PepsiCo declined this request, however, and was right to do so. With the food and beverage business, PepsiCo has valuable diversification. In addition, the food and beverage businesses complement each other. They provide a great deal of leverage over distributors and give PepsiCo optimal shelf space at retailers. Recently, Peltz announced that Trian is no longer a PepsiCo shareholder. This news should be greeted well by shareholders. It is one fewer headache that PepsiCo management has to deal with. The Beauty of PepsiCo's Dividend Thanks to its strong brands, stable profits, and reliable growth, PepsiCo has the ability to richly reward shareholders with dividends and share buybacks. Last year, PepsiCo delivered $9 billion to investors in combined dividends and share repurchases. Since 2012, PepsiCo returned $24 billion in cash to investors, and it projects another $7 billion in capital returns this year. Its dividend is particularly attractive. PepsiCo has a very shareholder-friendly management which understands how much its investors crave dividends. The company has passed along steadily rising dividends for the past several decades. According to the company, over the past decade PepsiCo increased its dividend by 10% on average each year. In February, PepsiCo announced a 7% dividend increase. The annualized dividend rose to $3.01 per share. With the announcement, PepsiCo has now lifted its dividend for 44 years in a row. That easily qualifies it as a Dividend Aristocrat, the select group of U.S. companies that have raised their dividends for at least 25 years in a row. In just a few more years, PepsiCo will qualify as a Dividend King, a company that has raised its dividend for 50 or more years. Continued dividend growth is very likely. PepsiCo has a modest payout ratio. Last year, PepsiCo distributed 60% of its earnings, which leaves plenty of room for future increases, as earnings are likely to continue growing. PepsiCo's current dividend yield is approximately 3%, which is significantly higher than the S&P 500 index, which yields 2.2%. Final Thoughts on PepsiCo PepsiCo has a great brand, effective management team, and a fantastic business. It has created huge amounts of wealth for its shareholders over the past several decades, and will continue to do so for many years to come. It is constantly innovating its product line and is looking for growth in new markets. It offers an above-average dividend yield as well as dividend growth each year. These qualities make it a great addition to an income investor's portfolio. This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author was long PEP. Union Pacific (UNP) shares are up nearly 1% thanks to an upgrade to overweight by analysts at Morgan Stanley. Union Pacific is well-run company, TheStreet's Jim Cramer, co-manager of the Action Alerts PLUS portfolio, said on CNBC's "Mad Dash" segment Friday. This stock can be considered a hedge against Eastern railroad companies because of its exposure to Mexico, Cramer said. Yes, Mexico, the country Donald Trump loves to hate. According to Union Pacific, it is the only railroad serving the nation's major gateways. So while other railroad companies are suffering from a major decline in coal shipments, Union Pacific is "a great play on Mexico and the strength of Mexico," Cramer said. "Coal is going away at a speed that we never thought could happen in this country" in favor of natural gas, Cramer explained. He noted Morgan Stanley also resumed coverage on Norfolk Southern (NSC) with an underweight rating. Norfolk Southern, which has major exposure to coal, actually had a "good quarter," he said, but only because the company laid off employees to cut expenses. It, too, is a well-run company, but it has a revenue problem right now, Cramer concluded. At the time of publication, Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS had no position in companies mentioned. 6 days Milos Day 1: Arrival on Milos island Arrival on Milos Day 2: Phylakopi - Sarakiniko - Plaka Half-day walk along the spectacular north coast (ancient obsidian trading center of Phylakopi, Papafrankos and Sarakiniko). Lunch and swim break at Sarakiniko. In the afternoon, transfer to the capital, Plaka, visit of the charming medieval village, its fortress, the Ancient Acropolis with the Greek theater, the place the famous Venus statue was found, early-Christian catacombes. Optional scenic hike back to the hotel (or transfer by taxi). Day 3: Abandoned sulfur mine and mineral beach In the morning, visit of an abandoned sulfur mine on the western coast (spectacular scenery). Transfer to the paradise-like beach of Paleochori, with its hot springs, fumaroles, colorful rocks. Lunch in a wonderful beach restaurant. Afternoon: swim break, optional 2 hour walk in the area. Late afternoon: return to Adamas. Visit of the interesting Mining Museum before dinner. Day 4: Spectacular boat trip around Milos and to Kimolos Island Free day - a great option is to take full-day boat tour around the island with its spectacular volcanic coastline (approx. 50 EUR per person). Delicious lunch on board. Free evening. Day 5: 4x4 safari: Tsingrado, Kalamos and Vani baryte mine Visit of Tsingrado explosion crater, Kalamos lava dome with active fumaroles. Lunch and swimming break at a beach. Short hike and 4x4 drive to Cape Vani, visit of the abandoned manganese-baryte mine. Day 6: End of tour or extension Transfer to airport / port, or own extension. Dates and details Volcano watching guide Observing Erta Ale's lava lake at night Over 1500 volcanoes in the world are consideredbut only some of them, 20-40, are erupting at any given time. There is a huge choice if you are want to exploring fascinating volcanic environments as such.If you want to watch "real" live eruptions, the choice is much more limited and you might want expert help to choose a suitable location: It depends on the current situation, the time of the year (climate!), your preferences, your physical abilities and other factors.To keep updated about erupting volcanoes, you can have a look at our volcano news section As some of the most rewarding volcano destinations we recommend (especially if it's your first time) Italy and. - For volcano-lovers, they are a real must: No doubt, these are nr. 1 when it comes to potential opportunities of viewing interesting eruptions from close, with only little or moderate physical effort involved and in relatively high safety. In addition, excellent overall comfort (accommodation, food, transport) is readily available.If you are not familiar with a volcano in question, it is recommended that you visit it with an experienced guide.Our team can rely on a vast network of contacts with both the international scientific community and expert local logistic organizers. We offer exciting travel opportunities to the most rewarding volcano destinations. Check out our travel and tour section A screen image from VRBO.com shows a listing. Owners can pay HomeAway thousands of dollars a year to list on the site; the firm charges renters a service fee that run into the hundreds of dollars. (VRBO/VRBO) HomeAway.com, the online vacation rental site, has riled customers with a change in practices that some say has made the getaways of their renters more expensive. At issue is a new service fee that HomeAway imposed in February on renters who book through the companys site. The move has infuriated property owners, some of whom pay HomeAway thousands of dollars each year to list on the site. They say HomeAway, which owns VRBO.com and VacationRentals.com, is using its market power to hit renters with excessive fees. I was blindsided by the fees, says Ivan Arnold, a Los Angeles-based investor who lists five homes on VRBO.com. Arnold is the lead plaintiff is a class-action lawsuit filed against HomeAway in March, claiming fraud and breach of contract. Arnold claims the service fee has had a devastating effect on inquiries and bookings. We already pay them to list; they shouldnt go after our renters as well. Arnold paid $1,848 as a subscription fee to list one of his properties on the site for 12 months, according to court documents. The booking fees came after a change in ownership late last year when travel giant Expedia bought HomeAway for $3.9 billion, a move that positioned the company to compete more aggressively with Airbnb, another short-term lodging website. An image from the VRBO.com website shows a listing, with the service fee highlighted. Bypassing the companys payment system and fees means a cost to the property owner: a less visible listing. (VRBO/VRBO) The new owner added the booking charge, levied on all renters of HomeAway sites. The fee is 5 to 9 percent of the rental cost and can add hundreds of dollars onto the price of a vacation rental. Some renters have balked. By April, the backlash over the fees had hit HomeAway headquarters in Austin, Tex. Tom Hale, chief operating officer, left the company after slightly more than a year in the job. He had become the public face of change, and homeowners had focused their anger on him. We appreciate his contributions over the years, a company spokesman said, declining to comment further on his departure. HomeAway vigorously defends the fees and plans to use most of the money for marketing, says Jordan Hoefar, corporate communications manager for HomeAway. He adds that booking on HomeAways system is safe and secure and should give travelers peace of mind. Our book-with-confidence guarantee protects travelers against fraud, double bookings, Hoefar says. We guarantee the vacation experience. Controlling the process Its critics say HomeAway is trying to limit owner-renter interaction in order to control the entire rental process. I have seen a dramatic drop-off in bookings, says Larry Grossmann, a Missouri investor who owns four condos in Gulf Shores, Ala. Renters are angry with the fees. In recent years, two basic revenue models for short-term rental companies have emerged. HomeAways rival, Airbnb, allows the homeowner to list a property for free. In exchange, Airbnb controls the booking process and does not permit the homeowner and prospective renter to communicate outside Airbnb until the payment is made. Airbnb takes a percentage of the rental (between 6 and 12 percent) and distributes the rental proceeds to the homeowner once the tenant checks in. HomeAways model has always been the opposite. Homeowners pay a listing fee, and the service has been free to renters, who contact the owners directly. They then agree to a price and can either make the transaction among themselves or use HomeAways online booking service. This approach allowed homeowners and renters to get to know each other before committing to rent. We like to talk to the [prospective] tenants before we rent, says Eric Karla, owner of a cabin at Sonora Pass near Yosemite, Calif. We can vet them. We like to know who is going to be staying in our places. We cannot do that with Airbnb. Many homeowners said the original HomeAway model worked well. Homeowners could find tenants at a fraction of what property managers or Realtors charged, and they controlled the whole rental process. It was similar to a nicely designed classified ad site. You post your house, someone sees it, contacts you, rents the house. Clean, simple, profitable for all. (Full disclosure: I list a property on VRBO and have always been happy with the results. Ive yet to see a large drop in bookings, though this is not my rental season. I do not use HomeAways online payment system and am not a party to the lawsuit.) By 2014, HomeAways revenue had grown to almost $500 million. Along the way, the company acquired more than 20 competitors around the globe and now lists more than 1.2 million homes worldwide. More than 800,000 of these properties use HomeAways booking service, according to the company. While HomeAway and Airbnb dominate the short-term rental business, HomeAway has traditionally been much stronger in vacation rentals. Airbnb typically has attracted shorter-term urban dwellers. The two companies increasingly are encroaching on each others turf, but HomeAway still is considered stronger in the family rental business. I get so many more inquiries from VRBO than Airbnb, says Grossmann, who lists on both sites. Its not even close. I would never have renewed HomeAways dominant market position and steady cash flow caught the eye of Expedia. It, too, has grown through aggressive acquisitions, gobbling up Orbitz and Travelocity, among other rivals. HomeAway declined to comment on the pending litigation, but a company spokesman, Adam Annen, said that discussions about the new fee were in the works months and months before the Expedia acquisition. That rankles Arnold. In November 2014, HomeAway chief executive Brian Sharples told shareholders that HomeAway was going to be free to travelers. He then pointed out that TripAdvisor and Airbnb have chosen to charge big fees to travelers. Were letting everyone know when you come to our platform, you dont pay a fee. A little more than a year after saying this, they started charging fees, Arnold says. I would never have renewed my listing agreement if I had known about these fees. Property owners are not required to use HomeAways booking system, so they can steer their renters away from the service fee. But owners say there is strong incentive to use the booking system. A property owners listing position is critical to successful renting. The higher your listing position, the more inquiries and bookings you get. High listing is prime beachfront in this business. When an owner declines to use HomeAways booking system, their listing drops in position. Owners who use HomeAways online booking system pay $349 a year to list and those who dont will pay $499 under a new pricing structure that takes effect in July. I only use [HomeAways] booking system because I need the good placement listing, Karla says. If I get repeat renters, I will have them pay me directly so they can avoid the fee. Its easy to see why HomeAway would want to include the service fee. Last year, the company recorded about $14 billion in transactions. Five percent of that is real money and would more than double its annual revenue. Patty Craver of Bethesda, Md., has used VRBO for a number of family vacations. I think its unfair for VRBO to charge owners and renters, she says. The fee would be a factor in my decision to use them, but if I found the perfect property I would probably still rent it. Fees are everywhere these days. Most homeowners given HomeAways market dominance have little choice but to stay with the company. I am investigating other options, but I am not going anywhere, Grossmann says. HomeAway is still the number one source of revenue, even with the drop-off. Still, others, such as Arnold, have vowed not to do business with HomeAway again. In fact, he has put two homes in Palm Springs up for sale. He believes the new fee structure will destroy the rental business. VRBO was such a great site, he says. They made money, we their customers made money, renters were happy. Thats all over. Still scanning a badge to get into your office building? Thats so 2015, Mark Ein says. This is how Ein, chairman of security firm Kastle Systems, gets to work: He walks right in. The gate to the parking garage opens as he drives up in his Tesla . The buildings doors open as he approaches, thanks to a series of sensors that recognize an app on his iPhone, which he keeps in the inside pocket of his jacket. I literally just walk in through the door, said Ein. I dont pull out a card. I dont wave anything around. It just opens. KastlePresence is a new, hands-free approach to office security. (Kastle Systems) This is KastlePresence, a new, hands-free approach to office security that the Arlington firm began quietly rolling out in buildings across the country earlier this year. About a dozen office buildings are using the technology including Vornado Realty Trusts corporate building in Crystal City, which helped test the product for nine months. Roughly 50 buildings across the country have signed up to implement the system by years end. Kastle executives say the new technology is safer it is encrypted so that each time you open a door, the app creates a new one-time-use key than its predecessors, which often require workers to scan a badge or chip to access parts of a building. It is more efficient, too, they say, because the app can be downloaded and managed electronically without having to worry about doling out plastic cards and replacing them when theyre misplaced, making the new system more cost-effective for building owners. We conceived of this a few years ago and threw a lot of resources at it, said Ein, a venture capitalist who bought Kastle Systems in 2007. It is the biggest platform weve ever launched. In all, Kastle has spent $60 million over the past three years developing and testing the technology. It is the largest undertaking of its kind for the security company, which was founded 42 years ago by an engineer and has since grown into an $85 million-a-year business. It sounds like something from Star Trek, said Kenneth T. Carlisle of SecurityNet, a San Francisco-based consulting firm. Usually you have to press a button or swipe a card its a very laborious process. If Kastle has found a way to work around that, its something I think the current generation of workers would be rather interested in. The technology itself is fairly simple: Sensors pick up on nearby smartphones using Bluetooth technology and allow building access accordingly. But executives say its implications are far-reaching and could soon help companies track important data occupancy patterns, say, or air quality and adjust building settings, such as heating and air conditioning. The app also has a safety button that allows employees to notify nearby security guards when they are in danger. The real value here is in the data, said Piyush Sodha, the companys chief executive. We will be able to say, There are 28 people in the left wing of Kastle from 8 to 9 in the morning. All of that is very valuable information. After Ein took over Kastle Systems nine years ago, he met with building owners around town, asking about their security needs. Among the items they wanted: hands-free access to their offices. I told him, My tenants are sick of pulling their wallets out of their pockets to scan in it just doesnt make sense, recalled Michael Darby, principal of District-based Monument Realty. Having to pull out a key is a stupid thing, especially when Im also carrying in bags and paperwork and lunch and all of these other things. At the time, though, the idea seemed more like a futuristic pipe dream than something Ein could bring to life. He put it on the back burner, focusing instead on creating technology that could help make sense of surveillance footage from video cameras. But in recent years, Kastle has returned to its roots, looking for new ways to update its Kastle keys, which control access to more than 2,000 buildings, including the Empire State Building, the Warner Theatre and the Willard Office Building. The company is on track to bring in $100 million in revenue this year, keeping in line with annual growth of about 15 percent. It has 450 employees, half of them in the Washington area. Year-over-year growth continues to climb, said Brian Eckert, Kastles chief marketing officer. Security is a fundamental need, in good economic times and bad. No two doors are alike Sodha keeps his iPhone in the front pocket of his pants. Eckerts is usually in his back pocket. Other employees carry their phones in their purses or briefcases, or are talking on them when they arrive at work. All of that presented a challenge for Kastle, which had to find a way for its sensors to scan different types of phones in a number of ways. The companys developers spent weeks finding ways to adjust the placement of its sensors so that they have as wide a range as possible. There were other hurdles, too: Some people walk faster than others, so Kastle had to find a way to account for paces. (Its solution: a setting in the app that allows each user to choose his gait slow, medium or fast.) This started with a vision, but unfortunately, reality hit along the way, Sodha said. You have different peoples behavior, different environments and a multiplicity of phones. That has been the toughest part: achieving universality in what we have. The result is a system that is largely customizable, with a series of sensors that can be programmed for different uses. A buildings main entrance, where a dozen people may be coming in at once, may require readers to scan phones in shorter ranges one foot away, say than a side door , where a sensor could begin scanning from six feet away. Weve built all this variation into the system because the honest truth is that no two doors are alike, Sodha said. You want the main entrance, the external perimeter of the building, to have super-tight controls. But if Im on the fifth floor, whistling my way in, we can be a bit more flexible. There is one more hurdle the company had to account for, Sodha says: phone batteries. KastlePresence works only if a smartphone is powered on with Bluetooth enabled. But no need to worry if your phone is out of juice, Sodha says. Theres a simple backup: The old-school Kastle key, the kind you wave in front of a sensor. We made sure we created an infrastructure that could handle both the new and the old, he said. Darby, for one, says he much prefers the new system. He had KastlePresence installed at his offices earlier this year. This is a logical transition, he said. The way the world is changing, its time we move past keys. In 1992, Emily Winslow was raped while a college student in Pittsburgh . Two decades later, after she had moved to Cambridge, England, and become a successful crime novelist and mother of two, Winslow learns that theres DNA evidence linking the attack to a man arrested on a drug charge in New York. It turns out the man had raped another woman in Pittsburgh, just months after he attacked Winslow. Stunned by this flood of information, Winslow decides to turn it into a mystery book, Jane Doe January. This time, of course, its not fiction, and the consequences are far more personal. Fueled by anger and curiosity, Winslow musters her strength and her investigative chops to learn all she can about the man who has been charged in her rape and will, she "Jane Doe January: My Twenty-Year Search for Truth and Justice" by Emily Winslow (William Morrow) hopes, finally stand trial and serve time. After finding out his name Arthur Fryar she does an image search and up comes an eerily familiar face. His chubby cheeks make me flinch, she writes. I find his Facebook page, but I dont dare friend him to see what hes posted even though Im desperate for information. [Review: Consequence: A Memoir] She tracks down his sister, also on Facebook, and gasps at the family photographs that seem to portray her attacker as a happy man, smiling with friends, seeming to be on his way to a prom, or maybe a wedding. Winslow wonders how, unlike the characters in her novels who do bad things, this man who really did do a bad thing can seem so content. I think: How dare you? Via Skype and email, Winslow establishes frequent communication with both current and past officials in Pittsburgh involved with her case. Using LinkedIn, she locates the detective who first interviewed her in the hospital after her rape. Now that she knows who Fryar is, Winslow thinks she can learn what urged him on, what directed him to me, and what he got out of [the rape], knowledge shed find electrifying. Through Googling she learns that her father and Fryars share the same name. She learns courtroom jargon: Prior Record Score, or PRS; Guideline Ranges, what judges use in sentencing; and statutory limits (which turns out to be a deciding factor in her case). She learns the name of Fryars first Pittsburgh victim: a woman she calls Georgia to protect her identity. Winslow discovers that transcripts of her pretrial testimony can be imprecise or wrong, but reading over hers, shes happy that her f-bomb was not redacted. After compiling a record of Fryars arrests and incarcerations, she suspects detectives had kept this information from her; she becomes enraged and driven for more answers. These passages are suspenseful, fast-paced and full of legal complications, like an episode of Law & Order: SVU. But unfortunately, after learning that the trial is postponed, Winslow becomes strangely vindictive not toward Fryar, but toward Georgia: I bet that shes doing whats expected: recoiling from the case, trying to avoid anything more to do with it. I feel like shes the kind of victim that the system is designed around, someone who is a lot easier to deal with. These jabs at Georgia escalate, as do others directed toward women in the book. Winslow faults her English friends for their reserved responses when she tells them about the rape and coming trial and is angry at female lawyers and judges she sees as unsympathetic to her situation. Theres an odd jealousy of Georgia that makes much of the book uncomfortable to read. The other victim is going to get it all, Winslow writes, a solemn courtroom, a sympathetic jury, an avenging judge. . . She matters. Im still the beggar Ive been for two decades. Winslow deserves our sympathy and respect, especially given that Arthur Fryar is a free man today. But regardless of her honesty, Winslows self-focus is alienating. Georgia, on the other hand, haunts me what is her story, I wonder? There are millions of Georgias in this world. Look it up. Sibbie OSullivan is a writer on the arts who lives in Wheaton. "We Trust" by Annie Bissett. Japanese mokuhanga watercolor print, 25" x 38.5"; on view at Charles Krause/Reporting Fine Art. (Annie Bissett/Charles Krause/Reporting Fine Art) Massachusetts woodblock printmaker Annie Bissett uses much the same technique as 19th-century Japanese artist Hokusai, so its fitting that one of her prints is called The Great Wave, the title often applied to Hokusais best-known work. But in Bissetts woodblock, on display in Past. Present. Now! at Charles Krause/Reporting Fine Art, the surge that dominates the composition is derived from a dollar bills ornamental border. Rampaging metaphorically off the money, the filigree threatens to swamp a canoeist. The print is one in a series, Loaded, that considers the power of cash and the pain of its lack. Bissett lifts the word God from the oft-worshiped currency and transforms the same sort of embellishment that serves as a wave into smoke from a burned-out car. Also included are pictures that contrast two similar but opposed phrases, such as filthy rich and dirt-poor. The wealthy one is rendered in the sort of lettering seen on bonds and bills; the needy one in a rough scrawl. Bissetts themes include gay history, whether in a portrait of a same-sex male couple who lived in the Plymouth Colony or the autobiographical series I Was a 20th Century Lesbian. Her other interests include Colonial-period almanacs and contested contemporary frontiers, such as the ones between the United States and Mexico, and Israeli and Palestinian territory. The border series combines modern, historical and mythical imagery with another venerable form of graphic communication: mapmaking. Like her Japanese predecessors, Bissett uses water-based pigment that melds into a richly colored whole during multiple applications of various hues. She may employ the technique to mimic ukiyo-e prints explicitly, or to simulate such other processes, such as engraving. The consummate printmaking provides both artistic and historical resonance. Bissett may have a 21st-century sensibility, but centuries of craft and heritage deepen her work. Past. Present. Now! Watercolor Woodblock Prints by Annie Bissett On view through June 18 at Charles Krause/Reporting Fine Art, 1300 13th St. NW. 202-638-3612. charleskrausereporting.com. Adam Hager's "Tune," on view at Arlington Arts Center's "Spring Solos 2016." (Dawn Whitmore/Art by Adam Hager) Spring Solos 2016 Of the many works in Arlington Arts Centers Spring Solos 2016 that involve repurposing or deconstructing, perhaps the most engaging is Adam Hagers Tune. The local artist disassembles clocks, computers and other gizmos, using the pieces to make toy vehicles. But Tunes main component is from a full-size car: Its a de-greased Chevy engine, to which Hager has attached tuning forks, hammers and a crank, so that gallery visitors can turn the handle and produce music. The punningly titled device is not quite a well-tempered clavier, but sort of an automotive gamelan. The music is visual in R. John Mertenss Paradoxical Acousmetre, an installation of hanging audio tape in a darkened space. Amy Ritter gives 3-D form to large black-and-white prints of rooms, furnishings and mobile homes, creating places that feel almost real, yet tentative. Lauren Rice uses construction materials such as wood, foam, plaster and copper pipe to make objects from a fictional archaeological excavation site. Maggie Gourlay employs drywall, paint and mirrors in her autopsies of the typical contemporary home; the mirrors are placed on the floor to suggest with the added nudge of recorded dripping sounds puddles in a structure thats being slowly destroyed by water. Also at the center is Hedieh Javanshir Ilchis As You Spread, I Am Erased. In the Iran-born local artists paintings, designs that recall traditional Persian tiles and manuscripts decay and disappear into modernist abstractions. The reference may be to corrosive politics theres a shadow above a map of the Middle East in Ethereal Transgression or to the loss of personal memory. Although separate from Spring Solos, Ilchis works have an affinity with many in that selection, especially Gourlays. They seek truth below the surface, and in the processes of change. Spring Solos 2016 On view through June 12 at Arlington Arts Center, 3550 Wilson Blvd., Arlington. 703-248-6800. arlingtonartscenter.org. Judith Seligson. "Pace Pace," oil on canvas, 42x42 in, 2013. (Greg Staley) Judith Seligson Her art doesnt flow, Judith Seligson insists. She has A Gap Frame of Mind, which is the title of her exhibition at the Athenaeum and the subject of her upcoming book, which surveys science, psychology and literature, as well as visual art. In the Alexandria-based artists geometric abstractions, the existential breach between things whether neurons or people is represented by boundaries that divide blocks of color. The paintings titles invoke artists Richard Diebenkorn and Piet Mondrian, but Seligsons style is more reminiscent of those of Josef Albers and Frank Stella. Save for one text-based piece, all these pictures array hard-edged forms in mainly (but not exclusively) muted colors. Most divide rectangular fields into Euclidian subsidiary shapes, but some burst from the format with multiple overlapping, off-kilter panels. Theres drama in the large gestures, such as the way a bright hue jumps from a panel to the adjacent one, but also in such almost-hidden features as a tiny, lime-green square nestled off-center in a large expanse. If Seligsons approach is crisply mathematical, it doesnt banish play. Judith Seligson: A Gap Frame of Mind On view through June 12 at the Athenaeum, 201 Prince St., Alexandria. 703-548-0035. nvfaa.org. Katie Pumphrey. "Head and Horns," Charcoal on canvas, 2016, 92 x 60; on view at Susan Calloway Fine Arts. (Katie Pumphrey/Susan Calloway Fine Arts) Katie Pumphrey In the age of cute YouTube critters, Katie Pumphrey depicts animals that are muscular, kinetic and competitive. The bison, wolves and fish in Heavyweight, the D.C. artists show at Susan Calloway Fine Arts, appear as if alive in the real world, not putting on a show for a videocam. Whether painted loosely in oils or drawn more precisely in charcoal bathed with acrylic washes, Pumphreys subjects defend their territory. Their stance is unapologetically autobiographical. Raised in rural Maryland, Pumphrey is the youngest of four children. She grew up to be a long-distance swimmer, and last summer she traversed the English Channel. The artist doesnt put herself, or any other human, into her blue-heavy ocean scenes, which are the shows most abstract pictures. But shes there in the jabs of paint that suggest fish in frenzied motion, and swirl dynamically around on a potential food source. What Pumphrey portrays is nothing less than the survival instinct. Katie Pumphrey: Heavyweight On view through Saturday at Susan Calloway Fine Arts, 1643 Wisconsin Ave. NW. 202-965-4601. callowayart.com. Dani Stoller (front-left), William Vaughan (front-right), Seth Rue and Maren Bush (background) star in the Folger Theater production of District Merchants. (Teresa Wood) On rare occasions, a play is served up two ways by two companies over a short period of time, giving theatergoers those who can afford it, anyway a valuable opportunity to compare, contrast and reflect on how the work holds up and how many ways it might still manage to speak to us. Just such a moment is upon Washington, as two major theaters present a pair of what promise to be wildly divergent takes on one of Shakespeares most hotly debated, even in some quarters reviled, works. The Merchant of Venice is playing this summer at both Folger Theatre and the Kennedy Center, in productions that are sure to reignite questions of whether this tragicomedy about a Jewish moneylender exacting a terrible revenge is a credible portrait of Jewish persecution, or something more like an antique, anti-Semitic tract. The Kennedy Center entry, a version by Shakespeares Globe in London that brings the ingenious British actor Jonathan Pryce to D.C. in the guise of Shylock, seems likely to be the more conventional version. Directed by Jonathan Munby who did a splendid job at Shakespeare Theatre Company several years ago, staging Lope de Vegas 17th-century drama The Dog in the Manger this Merchant runs in the Eisenhower Theater from July 27 to July 30. (Aurelia Fronty/For The Washington Post) The Globe productions Portia, the young woman who prosecutes Shylock for the crime of demanding a pound of flesh from the Venetian merchant Antonio, is Rachel Pickup, who has previously appeared on Washingtons stages, including at the Folger, the site of the summers other Merchant. There, Washington playwright/director Aaron Posner, perhaps the citys pre-eminent electrifier of Shakespearean storytelling, is putting his own stamp on the play, with an adaptation he calls District Merchants. As he has proven in the past at Folger with his versions of Measure for Measure, Macbeth, A Midsummer Nights Dream and The Comedy of Errors, Posner has a knack for injections of highly pertinent modern themes and devices into Shakespeares work. His Merchant is set, according to Folger, amid blacks and Jews in, among other places and times, Washington after the Civil War. So expect a version of the piece with Matthew Boston as Shylock and Maren Bush as Portia that attempts to tie the plays issues more concretely to American racial and ethnic history. It runs now through July 3. The coincidental Merchants are illustrative of the citys ever-livelier summer theater offerings. Other highlights: For lighter seasonal refreshment, you might consider the inaugural visit to Washington of the Tony-winning Kinky Boots. With original pop tunes by Cyndi Lauper and a book by Harvey Fierstein, the musical at the Kennedy Center is an endearing adaptation of a 2005 movie about a campaign to create jobs and, at the same time, stylish footwear. June 14-July 10. 202-467-4600. kennedy-center.org. There should be mirth at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, too, when New York Citys small army of irreverence, the Upright Citizens Brigade, shows up for its first-ever extended out-of-town gig, with We Know How You Die! This is the comedy troupe that set the likes of Amy Poehler, Ellie Kemper and Kate (Hillary Clinton) McKinnon onto a life on the laugh track. July 12-31. 202-393-3939. woollymammoth.net. Woolly is also producing the local premiere, now through June 26, of the widely admired An Octoroon, a play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins that resets in scaldingly funny terms a 19th-century Southern plantation play by Irish playwright Dion Boucicault. Jacobs-Jenkins, a Washington native and 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist for his magazine-office tragicomedy, Gloria, was previously represented at Woolly by the crackling Appropriate, about a white family puzzling over their dead fathers racist past. The cast of "An Octoroon poses for a photo. (Scott Suchman) Actor Mark G. Meadows will star as jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton in the DC premiere of "Jelly's Last Jam" at Signature Theatre. (Christopher Mueller) For musical lovers, the menu looks diverse as well as diverting. At Signature Theatre, a revival of the rarely seen Jellys Last Jam, the 1992 musical by George C. Wolfe about jazz great Jelly Roll Morton, opens Aug. 2, with jazz pianist Mark G. Meadows playing the role originated on Broadway by late Tony winner Gregory Hines. Aug. 2-Sept. 11. sigtheatre.org. 703-820-9771. And Fords Theatre will take the leap into the Broadway sweepstakes with a pre-Broadway engagement of Come From Away, a new musical by Irene Sankoff and David Hein. It tells the story, based on true events, of what happened after dozens of commercial airliners were grounded in a town in Newfoundland after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Sept. 2-Oct. 9. 202-347-4833. www.fords.org. God bless Ross, but I suggest holding off on all those balloons we ordered for the triumphant return of David Schwimmer. Fresh from playing the late Robert Kardashian in FXs bang-up American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, Schwimmer now stars in AMCs unsatisfying new restaurant drama Feed the Beast (premiering Sunday) as a recently widowed, alcoholic sommelier trying to open a restaurant in an as-yet-ungentrified area of the Bronx. Schwimmer is probably the best thing about the show, but thats not saying a lot. Based on a Danish series (Bankerot) and adapted here by showrunner Clyde Phillips, Feed the Beast is about the grandeur of fine cooking and the hassles of organized crime. Its a restaurant story and a corruption story, but mostly its one of those cable TV series that tries too hard to be a cable TV series. The cliche scenes of big-city mob violence are interspersed with lovely shots of stove flames and mouth-watering sautees, but the shows sizzle immediately fizzles. Jim Sturgess co-stars as Dion Patras, a cocaine-addicted neer-do-well who is doing time in the county clink for burning down a restaurant owned by the fearsomely criminal Woijchik clan. In jail, Dions legendary cooking skills win over the guards, but the minute hes released, hes pursued by Patrick Woijchik, a mobster known as The Tooth Fairy (because he likes to pull his victims teeth out), who demands cash restitution for the destroyed restaurant. Eager to keep his teeth, Dion frantically turns to his lifelong pal Tommy Moran (Schwimmer), begging him to reconsider their scrapped dreams of opening a top-notch restaurant in an old warehouse. Not so long ago, Tommy, Dion and Tommys late wife, Rie (Christine Adams), were going to open a restaurant they had named Thirio. (Thirio? Rhymes with Cheerio, means beast in Greek. A terrible name. I suggest a quick visit to the hipster business-name generator: Bread & Marrow, perhaps? Pistol & Grouse?) Rie drew up the designs; Tommy was going to run the wine list and Dion was going to dazzle diners with his culinary greatness. But Rie was killed in a car crash, leaving Tommy to care for their son TJ (Elijah Jacob), who hasnt spoken since his mothers funeral. (Ever notice how many of TVs traumatized children can choose and sustain absolute muteness?) While Tommy swallows his pride to ask his estranged father (John Doman) for a cash loan to launch Thirio, Dion gets in deeper with the Tooth Fairy, agreeing to hide a massive (and massively tempting) stash of cocaine. Dions character is written in such a clumsy and obvious way that Sturgesss only option is to drench a lot of acting sauce on his scenes and then proceed to chew em all up. Schwimmer, on the other hand, seems to be drawing from an authentic well of nuance, even when the writing is doing him no favors at all. The impulses here are correct, in theory: Given the rise of foodie and restaurant culture in the Yelp era, theres certainly an appetite out there for a well-made TV drama set in this milieu, filled as it is with ego, toil, conflict and beauty. A few episodes in, viewers will get the urge to send Feed the Beast back to the kitchen. Feed the Beast (one hour) premieres Sunday at 10 p.m. on AMC. Business cards at Whaleys, a new seafood restaurant along the Southeast waterfront, reflect the theme. (Dayna Smith/For the Washington Post) If you order only one dish at Whaleys, the citys latest seafood attraction, make it fried squash blossoms. Presented as a harmonious quartet, the edible flowers call to all the senses with their saffron hue, their gentle crackle and a filling of sweet chopped shrimp thats improved by espelette and a swab of ginger aioli. Limiting yourself to one dish here along the Southeast waterfront would be a shame, though, because the equals to that shareable appetizer are clams casino, rethought with racy chorizo atop the tender clams, and cigar-shaped razor clams tricked out with pickled chilies and a Meyer lemon vinaigrette. All three small plates reveal a chef, Daniel Perron, 26, who knows we eat first with our eyes and whose time in the kitchens at the Oval Room, Fiola Mare and Blue Duck Tavern informs much of the cooking at Whaleys. Chef Daniel Perron rethinks clams casino by substituting chorizo for the traditional bacon. (Dayna Smith/For the Washington Post) The razor clam crudo is spiked with pickled chilies and a Meyer lemon vinaigrette. (Dayna Smith/For the Washington Post) Launched in May by cousins Nick and David Wiseman, who raised the local deli bar with DGS Delicatessen downtown, Whaleys is named for a Revolutionary War-era naval officer who defended Maryland fishermen from the British. The seafood restaurant allows the business partners, both fourth-generation Washingtonians, to rekindle youthful memories of catching crabs on the Eastern Shore and family dinners at the venerable Crisfield Seafood Restaurant in Silver Spring. Beyond a 35-foot facade of glass is a dining room made mesmeric with a bar whose tiled front is the color of sea foam, and with a mural, Under the Sea, created by artist John DeNapoli. His sublime school of fish includes striped bass, blue crabs, mackerel and other sustainable inhabitants of the deep blue sea. Although the kitchen is hidden from view, the raw bar is on full display, raised in the back of the restaurant for all to see. Expect your Sweet Jesus oysters from Maryland and Olde Salts from Virginia to arrive free of grit and glistening beneath their liquor (which fans know to slurp, along with the oysters). The excellent soft-shell crab is accompanied by a zesty romesco sauce. (Dayna Smith/For the Washington Post) Son and mother Zachary and Beth Lawhorn check out the seafood tower. (Dayna Smith/For the Washington Post) Repeat fishing at Whaleys teaches customers that appetizers trump entrees. Best to make a meal of the small plates, then, including blue crab salad brightened with lemon zest, ennobled with sea urchin and garnished with tiny potato chips. Main dishes include a decent brined pork chop. But meat cant beat Perrons crisp soft-shell crab: craggy tempura-battered totems affixed to the plate with zesty romesco. Throw in Whaleys sunny service, and youve got the dinner equivalent of a day at the beach, hold the sand. 301 Water St. SE. whaleysdc.com. No phone as of press time. Entrees, $26 to $32. Chris Wallace, left, Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier at the first official Republican debate. Wallace wont let candidates do phone interviews on Fox News Sunday. (Aaron Josefczyk/Reuters) The phoner is back, and no one in network TV news is too happy about it. Donald Trump pioneered the lightning round of TV interviews via phone a.k.a. phoners during his remarkable run for the Republican presidential nomination during the past 11 months. With phone in hand, Trump could be seemingly nowhere and everywhere all at once, appearing for interviews on several shows in quick succession. Trumps telephonic blitzkrieg may have no equal in modern politics; suffice to say, this is not how candidates from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama have campaigned for president. TV people hate this sort of thing (or say they do); television is a visual medium, and a disembodied voice doesnt make for great television. Whats more, phone interviews arguably cheat viewers, who cant see the candidates facial reactions and body language or who might be whispering sweet talking points into his or her ears mid- interview. Plus, a phone call tends to sound like an Edison wax recording on TV, even with the best cell or landline connections. But just as the networks seemed to stiffen their backs against Trump, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has started playing the phone game in earnest, too. Clinton did back-to-back phone interviews with MSNBC and CNN on Tuesday and one with CNN last week. If anything, Clintons increased use of the tactic raises the stakes for the networks; there are now effectively only two major political gets for cable and broadcast news programs, which means Clinton and Trump have the leverage to dictate the terms of any interview. It could leave TV-news producers with a dilemma: Should they play ball with the two leading presidential candidates or hold out for a face-to-face interview only? Fox Newss Chris Wallace knows that holding out has a price. In August, as Trump was phoning the Sunday talk shows, Wallace stood firm and decided Trump had to appear on camera if he wanted to be on his program, Fox News Sunday. Trump declined and Wallace lost the chance to speak to him for the next two months. The decision, he said, cost his show some ratings; even on the phone, Trump could boost a programs Nielsen numbers. But Wallace maintains that the Sunday shows occupy a unique place. Theyre the place for long, in-depth, probing interviews with the candidates. The idea of appearing by phone strikes me as debasing the currency of what the Sunday shows are all about. The venerable Sunday programs Meet the Press on NBC and Face the Nation on CBS have since adopted similar bans on phone interviews (ABCs This Week With George Stephanopoulos still permits them), a trendlet that encourages Wallace. Im glad they got religion along the way, and I welcome them into the fold, he says. Network people point out (perhaps a bit self-servingly) that phone interviews arent as effective for a candidate as being in a studio. What an interviewee gains in media ubiquity and ease over the phone no hair or makeup necessary, no waiting in the green room for a scheduled time slot he or she loses in impact, they say. We think [an in-person interview] is a far better and more illuminating experience for viewers, said CBS News spokesman Richard Huff. But other hosts say a ban on phone interviews makes little sense; viewers want to hear from the candidates even if they cant see the candidates. Jake Tapper, the host of CNNs daily program The Lead, prioritizes the choices this way: In person is always preferable to satellite, and satellite is always preferable to phoner, but as I learned as a print reporter, Id rather have the phone interview than nothing, he said. Meet the Press host Chuck Todd has previously said that hell no longer do phone interviews on the Sunday program but will do them on Today or on his daily MSNBC show. The difference, according to the network, is that the daily interviews are briefer than the Sunday sit-downs, and that the candidates travel schedules may make it difficult to get them in front of a camera during the week. Of course, technology has made the cant-get-to-a-camera excuse a bit hollow these days. Inexpensive video connections are available virtually everywhere via Skype, Periscope, Meerkat or FaceTime, although the quality of such transmissions might be another issue. Like Foxs Wallace, the producers of CBS This Morning have held out against the phone, declining several phone-interview offers from Trumps camp. The program did make one exception for breaking news: In the aftermath of the Brussels terrorist attacks in March, it broadcast an audio clip of Trump commenting on the news with CBSN, the networks digital streaming news network. But Wallace contends that theres nothing like mano-a-mano. My feeling is that except in extraordinary circumstances, we should force the candidates to come on, he said. We have to maintain our standards and be true to ourselves and not compromise. Dear Heloise: In my business, I travel a lot and have had many different systems for documenting my mileage. The best one that works for me is actually quite easy, and because of it, Ive been much more consistent with my documentation. At the start, I take a picture of the odometer for the beginning mileage. When Im finished, I take another picture of the ending mileage. I do this from week to week, and at the end of the week I record the mileage on a spreadsheet Ive created on my computer. The pictures on the phone are date- and time-stamped, so its easy to document. Once recorded, I delete the pictures. Its the easiest way Ive found to document mileage. Anna S., via email Anna S.: Brilliant! What is it about keeping up with mileage and expenses when on business? I seem to come home from a speech with an envelope stuffed with receipts. Thanks for your hint. Dear Heloise: When guests visit, I try to give them ideas of places to consider during their stay, making their experience more memorable. I bought large, plastic zipper-top bags and placed pamphlets and small magazines that advertise local attractions in different bags. The bags are labeled dining, night life, attractions, etc. Theyre in a basket on top of the dresser in their bedroom. Our guests have really appreciated the gesture. Henri K. in San Antonio Dear Heloise: Heres my maintenance hint for anyone who wants to keep the kitchen and bathroom drains odor-free: I simply drop a couple of seltzer tablets down the drain and chase them with a cup of vinegar. I wait about five minutes, and during that time, I boil a large, manageable pot of water. Then I pour the boiling water down the drain fast but carefully. No more smelly drains. Sally in Georgia Sally in Georgia: This is a great hint, Sally. Next time, try boiling the vinegar, then pour it in and wait five minutes or so, then add the hot water. This will help clean any buildup in the drain and the p-trap. Follow by running cold water for a minute or so. Vinegar is just one of my go-to liquids for jobs around the house. This is why I created the pamphlet Heloises Fantabulous Vinegar Hints and More. Visit my website, Heloise.com, to purchase a copy, or send $5 and a stamped (68 cents), self-addressed, business-size envelope to: Heloise/ Vinegar, P.O. Box 795001, San Antonio, TX 78279-5001. There are many different types of vinegars. For this job, and for most cleaning jobs around the house or outdoors, good old white or apple-cider vinegar is whats called for. No balsamic down the drain! Dear Heloise: Whenever we go on picnics, I take vinyl table covers for the tables well be using. I also take big black metal clips to use on the tables. I clip the cover to the table to prevent them from blowing off. Vickie, via email Heloises column appears six days a week at washingtonpost.com/advice. Send a hint to Heloise , P.O. Box 795000, San Antonio, Tex. 78279-5000, or email it to Heloise@Heloise.com. In the world of outrageous, hang-from-a-precipice adventure, one thing is certain: Going extreme means extremely different things to different travelers. Some adventurers have told me that really testing yourself on a trip is all about dealing with temperatures that your body isnt used to. What do you mean, exactly? I asked. Oh, you know, they said. Really hot. Super cold. I couldnt argue. A few extreme travelers are radicals when it comes to the use of equipment. They wont bring any. To others, the trip itself is secondary to getting a chance to stock up on interesting new ropes and helmets the latest in lightweight, semipermeable, sun-reflecting and snow-ejecting gear. Then there are those who insist that real adventure means having encounters with people or animals that you cant engage with at home. This made perfect sense, I thought. Something like meeting villagers in Tibet? I asked. Or hippos near the Nile? More like snorkeling with penguins, they said. Since Ive written often about adventure travel, I sometimes visit libraries to give a slide talk about these kinds of trips. Whats interesting for me is the canyon-wide range of opinions that crop up during the Q&A. High Line Park in New York Citys Chelsea neighborhood. (iStockphoto) There was the man who reported that seeing roadkill made a car trip complete for him. And the woman who suggested I shave my eyebrows before a trip to Japan, because they looked uncivilized. (They are on the bushy side, I have to admit.) But during one library talk, a comment really brought me to a stop. An audience member in the back raised a hand after Id asked everyone to toss out ideas on what made an adventure trip truly challenging. Expecting something about mudslides or dust storms, I heard this instead: Its not about gasping for breath, a woman wearing a wool hat said. Its about putting your emotions to the test. She added softly, Have you ever tried going back home after a long time away? Off went the projector. Down I sat. After some weeks spent thinking about this, I made up my mind. Sure, Id read Thomas Wolfes You Cant Go Home Again. But how dangerous could this be? I would make some reservations and give the thing a try. Not only would I boldly revisit the New York City neighborhood where I grew up (Chelsea on Manhattans West Side), but, taking care to investigate roadkill along the way, Id also drive up to Montpelier, the Vermont capital where Id spent many vacations as a kid. Two extreme, albeit homey, destinations in one week. Id go the woman in the wool hat one better. A new New York Back in the day, Chelsea was a place that nobody had heard of. Sandwiched between the Hudson River and Fifth Avenue, and stretching from 14th Street northward to the Empire State Building, it was a mix of pleasantly undecorated brownstones, small-time manufacturers and corner coffee shops that wafted toasty, burger-y smells out to busy sidewalks. That was then, I discovered. This is now. As soon as I started to walk around, I felt lost. The street signs said the same things they always had Seventh Avenue, 16th Street. But there seemed to be nothing else I could recognize. Where, for instance, was the local landmark officially known as Eugenes Dry Cleaner? Operated by a man named Al, Eugenes had become famous for its spectacular fish tanks tanks that, Al would assure, had nothing to do with his French dry-cleaning process. A plaque on the counter attested to the stores role as the setting for a long-forgotten episode of Candid Camera. Next, I hunted around for Kabob & Brew, a little restaurant that had deeply impressed me as a kid by spelling its name three different ways on canopy, overhead sign and window. Instead, I found a gallery displaying silver gel photography. Hi and Mels Corner Luncheonette, which had carried more different kinds of gum than Id seen anywhere, used to be just down the block from here. But right about on that spot stood an outlet of West Elm contemporary home decor. Even though it was April, I found I was sweating. Someone had been messing around with memories that I relied on. It was as if my mom were alive again, but dressed in skinny jeans. My heart began drilling into my rib cage, excavating and emitting blasts like a Chelsea construction crew finishing a job. I felt as if I was about to bungee jump from the balcony of my old apartment, 20 stories up. I might have, in fact, if Id had access and a cord. A city of out-of-towners This was the moment I made up my mind to head for Vermont right away. Maybe the Green Mountains, which curl up all around Montpelier, could calm things down a bit. Maybe a maple tree or two would make revisiting feel like a trip back in time. I loaded the car and pointed it north, toward a town that had always worn its history as casually as a flannel shirt. State senators and sap producers knew each other all their lives. Shopped at Somers Hardware. Ate at the Brown Derby on the edge of town. Then, right near the granite, gold-domed state capitol, I started to notice the tattoos. Colorado. Canada. Brooklyn. On biceps. On necks. On the back of somebodys knee. Montpelierites, I realized, had allegiances to other places. Many license plates werent the state-standard green. I began to ask around. Was anyone a native Vermonter, like in the 60s or 70s? It didnt seem so. Well, but I feel like one, a bartender said when I barged in, desperate for a beer. Originally from New York, he added. Chelsea district, if you know that. Way too edgy now. Way too stressful. Cant even go there anymore. Sipping the first of my microbrews, shaking the guys hand, I came to realize an extreme thing. I felt at home. Peter Mandel is an author of books for children. His website is petermandel.net. More from Travel: Travels intangible souvenirs are the sights, sounds and smells of faraway places A hometown girl goes looking for the quirky heart of Houston From Georgia to Maine: What I learned on a 6-month hike along the Appalachian Trail My babymoon in Vermont: One last chance to relax and reflect before the baby comes Angela Holocker, center, principal at Malapeake Middle School, responds to a vote during a meeting of the Queen Anne's County School Board in Centreville, Md. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post) When word started to leak out that a new school board majority in Queen Annes County, Md., had decided to oust its long-standing and well-regarded schools superintendent, the community was stunned. People crowded into school board meetings, decrying what they saw as a secret move, demanding public input, seeking an explanation. Carol Williamson had been doing a great job for eight years, they said. Graduation rates were up and the school system was strong, they said. A personable leader in this scenic swath of Marylands Eastern Shore, Williamson was a familiar face at honor society ceremonies, student plays, concerts and football games. Many said they had no reason to think her contract wouldnt be renewed. You have made a decision that has left this community feeling betrayed, Barbara Sutherland, the countys Teacher of the Year, said at a packed school board meeting in April. The semi-rural county of 50,000 people just east of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge is still reeling. What started with discussions about the superintendents contract renewal has become an unusual effort to seek the states help in removing the three-member majority on the school board amid allegations of willful neglect of duty, incompetence and misconduct. Williamsons supporters argue that members of the board majority failed to give the superintendent an annual review, did not tell the public of its decision for weeks and refused to discuss a new contract at public meetings. They also accuse board members of ethics violations and say that one of the members said principals who spoke out were unscrupulous and would be gone after Williamsons contract ended. Board members Annette DiMaggio and Jennifer George listen to a concerned teacher during a meeting of the Queen Anne's County School Board in Centreville, Md. (Bonnie Jo Mount/Washington Post) Members of the board who voted against Williamson have said little, but they hint at concerns about low numbers of minority teachers and stagnant academic achievement. Though few residents have publicly backed the board majority at meetings, Fred McNeil, a former board member, retired educator and former president of the local teachers union, said in a letter to the editor sent to the Bay Times and the Record Observer that while in office he saw unfair pay raises, disrespect of staff and favoritism. He thanked the new majority for its courage and said their vote was correct, legal and best for the community. The debate has touched on race, political power and transparency, and it also reflects the duality of the nations local school boards. Many exist under the radar for long periods and get little notice during campaign season but make decisions that directly affect what is most dear to constituents: their children. This can get personal, said Frederick M. Hess, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has studied school board politics. If you think the superintendent is doing a terrific job and running good schools and keeping your kids safe, youre going to be pretty bitter if you think someone is driving that person out of town. [Questions linger over search for new Montgomery schools superintendent] We deserve answers School board decisions regarding superintendents have sometimes been a flash point across the country in recent years, and there have been high-profile controversies involving other Maryland districts. Last year, some on the Montgomery County school board privately lost faith in the schools superintendent, Joshua P. Starr, and in a surprising move did not renew his contract. Baltimore officials came under fire in May for launching a superintendent search without telling the public. In Hillsborough County, Fla., a new board majority in 2015 clashed with and fired MaryEllen Elia, who was Floridas Superintendent of the Year and was a finalist for the national Superintendent of the Year. [Blunder of the year? Board fires acclaimed superintendent] School boards trying to shift political power have run afoul of their communities for other reasons, too. In Colorados Jefferson County, residents recently instigated a recall against three board members who wanted to weaken the teachers union and boost charter schools. The recall effort succeeded. Board member Arlene Taylor listens to a community member during a meeting of the Queen Anne's County School Board in Centreville, Md. (Bonnie Jo Mount/Washington Post) Emotions ran high at Queen Annes board meetings in March, April and May. Many residents have asked the boards majority for data and details to explain the decision to let Williamson go. Some have implored the board majority to reconsider or to compromise with a one-year contract for Williamson while the district searches for her replacement. I have never seen something like this in our county, said Dick Smith, a lifelong county resident and businessman who has served as a school board member and was a county commissioner. Its pitted people, my side against your side. Its tearing our community apart. The appeal to the state board includes 14 names but is supported by a petition that has more than 1,200 signatures, including those of parents, teachers, principals, business owners, retirees, former county officials and educators from nearby Washington College who have children in county schools. I dont know if I would have been up in such arms if everything had been presented differently, with a direction and a reason, said Susan Sweitzer, a parent who launched the petition to the Maryland State Board of Education. I felt that it was just done, with no direction and no future plans. Mark Cascia, a former board president, noted that the board majority had been in office 14 months on the day of its critical vote and had not done a performance evaluation of Williamson. He said he remains puzzled by the lack of public explanation. I think its an obligation they have, he said. Since March, opponents have filed complaints to a school board ethics panel, the state Board of Education and the states open-meetings compliance board. They have won on a number of allegations of violations of open-meetings law but not on overturning the decision to let the superintendent go. Maryland education officials say that the states authority to remove school board members is narrowly defined and that such cases are very rare. They did not have a timeline for a decision. Williamsons supporters have kept pushing, with four principals among those out front. It would behoove you to tell your constituents why you have decided to divide a county and put a high-performing school system in peril, Angela Holocker, a middle school principal, told the board at a recent meeting. We deserve answers. Concerns about diversity The intensity of the effort may reflect both the depth of outrage and the size of Queen Annes. There are 7,700 students in 14 public schools, and its still small-town in terms of relationships, said Bernie Sadusky, who preceded Williamson as superintendent. He said people who call the superintendent expect a call back. Williamsons supporters tout her abilities, saying she knows the nitty-gritty of budgets and curriculum, started a laptop initiative and has helped a strong system improve. She has a knack for remembering peoples names, they say a personal touch. Some in Queen Annes suggest old grievances might underlie the conflict. In 2011, Williamson was sharply criticized for accepting a contract with a $10,000 pay incentive at a time of severe budget strains when teachers were not getting raises. Williamson said she understands the board has a right to go in a new direction. I only wish they had shared that direction with me, because I think I could have helped them get there, she said. She is 71 years old, with no plans to retire. Those who have said they dont know why Williamson was voted out include the members of the school boards minority voting bloc, Tammy Harper and Beverly Kelley. Arlene Taylor, a member of the board majority who voted not to renew Williamsons contract, said each member had her own reasons for the decision. Taylor said she found the dearth of black teachers in the county a problem. Overall, she said, I just think its time for change. Lack of diversity in the teaching force is an issue in many school districts. In Queen Annes, 4.8 percent of teachers and counselors are minorities, as are 13 percent of principals and assistant principals, district data indicates. Student enrollment is about 7 percent black, 6 percent Hispanic and 1 percent Asian, according to state data. Its important for our children to see men and women who look like them, Taylor said. As for the effort to unseat her and the two other board members, Taylor declined to comment. My trust is in God, she said. Jennifer George, the boards president, did not respond to requests for comment, and Annette DiMaggio, the other member who voted against renewing Williamsons contract, declined to comment. George said at a school board meeting that the school system is good but is stagnant and failing on the foundation part. Were crumbling underneath. She did not give details. We look great on paper, she said. Heck, yeah, we look great, but we can even be better. State data shows graduation rates have ticked up during Williamsons tenure, and the county ranks second statewide. Participation in Advanced Placement exams is up, and out-of-school suspensions are down. Less positive are mean combined SAT scores, which have slipped by 27 points in seven years, reflecting a state trend. Bob Hardy, a resident of the county for more than 25 years, said that he likes Williamson but thinks the board had its reasons for parting ways. The school board has made its decision, he said. We need to move on. We need to focus on the kids and stop all of this. If people have complaints, he said, the best recourse is the ballot box. Christina Schindler, an administrator and parent, questioned why the board has continued to say little. Theyve had ample time to articulate their reasoning and develop a plan, and were still waiting, she said. In May, the third board meeting in a row started with public testimony on the issue. Principals spoke, voicing frustration. A teacher said he and several others were concerned about the fallout. Would they still be using Chromebook computers next year? A parent who works for the district said his childrens educational future was being jeopardized and recited a quotation about how evil can triumph when good men do nothing. Harper, part of the board minority, gave Williamsons contract another shot. She made a motion that Williamson be hired as interim superintendent for a one-year term at her salary plus $1. Kelley, her colleague in the minority, seconded the motion and pleaded for someone to join them. I think we need to heal, Harper said, and healing requires leadership that everyone understands. The motion failed. THE DISTRICT 1 dead, 3 wounded in separate shootings One of four men shot Thursday night in two incidents has died, according to D.C. police. Jarell Walker, 22, of Suitland, Md., was pronounced dead at a hospital. Police said he was shot about 11:50 p.m. in the 3700 block of Hayes Street NE. Police said that Thursday nights other shooting occurred about 11 p.m. in the 1500 block of 19th Street SE and that three men were wounded. Peter Hermann and Dana Hedgpeth Inmate is charged in fracas at city jail Authorities on Thursday charged a 26-year-old inmate in connection with one of two fights that occurred last week at the D.C. jail and prompted officials to place a housing unit in lockdown. Vernon P. Hedrick of Northeast Washington was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon. An arrest affidavit accuses Hedrick of stomping on the head of another inmate four or five times before being subdued by correctional officers in the jail, in the 1900 block of D Street SE. The fight allegedly involving Hedrick occurred about 7:15 p.m. The affidavit filed in support of the charges does not give a reason for the altercation. Hedrick is awaiting trial on charges in a fatal shooting Sept. 11, 2014, in Northeast. Peter Hermann VIRGINIA Student is arrestedin video incident A Fairfax High School senior was arrested Thursday after the alleged video-recording of male students in restroom stalls, police said. Police said in a statement that Phatsakorn Pongpasit, 20, was charged with possession of child pornography and the unlawful creation of an image of another. Pongpasit was released, and his next court date has not been set, a spokesman for Fairfax police said. One student made allegations of possible recording, but more than one student was recorded, a police spokesman said. Justin Wm. Moyer Woman, 89, robbed, assaulted in Fairfax An 89-year-old woman was robbed Friday as she entered her car in the Springfield area, the county police said. The incident occurred around 10:15 a.m. in the 6600 block of Loisdale Road, police said. They said a man approached, assaulted her, grabbed her purse and fled. She was not seriously injured, the police said. Martin Weil Baltimore, MD--May 3, 2016--Left to right: J. Wyndal Gordon, C.D. Witherspoon (at microphone), Hassan Giordano and other political activists hold a press conference about what they say are voter irregularities in last week's election. It was held outside the city's board of election headquarters. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun) A group of Baltimore activists has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to void the results of the citys April 26 primary it called anabsolute disaster after a series of glitches and irregularities. The group, Voters Organized for the Integrity of City Elections, says the only way to renew confidence in the Baltimores election process is to start over and hold a new election. The problems during the spring primary have raised questions about the results in municipal races, where state Senate Majority Leader Catherine Pugh won the Democratic primary for the mayoral election against former Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon by just about 2400 votes. Contests for city council were also tight; several incumbents lost their seats in some cases by a margin of just a few dozen votes. The State Board of Elections moved to decertify the results after discovering there were more completed ballots than voters who checked into polling places. An investigation uncovered nearly 1,200 provisional ballots improperly counted without verifying the voters registration status with no way to remove them from the results. [Votes were improperly counted in Baltimore] The results were recertified with some irregularities unexplained. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Maryland, also alleges Baltimore poll workers were woefully unprepared, that thumb drives with election results went missing and that some votes were illegally won with promises of Election Day jobs and boxed chicken meals. Lead plaintiff Hassan Giordano, a Baltimore activist, said filing a lawsuit was the only recourse after state officials declined to intervene. We finally had an election where people were inspired enough to show up, had record turn out and this happens: Issue after issue after issue, said Giordano. Dixon, the runner-up in the mayoral race, declined to seek a recount or file her own court challenge this week. [Pugh wins mayoral race] Her spokeswoman Martha McKenna says the campaign is working to get answers about where things went wrong directly from the State Board of Elections. City and state elections officials did not immediately return requests for comment on the lawsuit. Shortly after Prince Georges County officials chose a Largo site for their proposed regional medical center, developers launched apartments and retail projects across the street. The apartments are finished and are being leased. But the ground-floor retail spaces are as empty as the grass lot on Arena Drive where, according to the original plans, the new hospital should be nearing completion. The projected 2017 opening date has been pushed back nearly three years as the state hospital board assesses the project and weighs whether to approve it. The latest setback came in May, when the state health-care commissioner assigned to the project asked for design modifications that would scale back the hospitals size and scope. Commissioner Robert E. Moffits recommended changes include reducing the bed count and square footage and eliminating planned ambulatory care clinics. The modifications, he said, will better fit the needs of the regional health-care market and shave more than $100 million from the price of construction. Prince Georges County Executive Rushern L. Baker III (D). (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post) [Significant changes needed in hospital project, state official says] Dimensions Healthcare System and the University of Maryland Medical System which are partners in the project say they will submit a modified application by the end of the summer. But elected leaders such as County Executive Rushern L. Baker III (D) say Moffits demands could clash with their original vision of creating a teaching hospital large enough to attract and accommodate an influx of physicians and patients. The size is based on what the hospital is designed to do, Baker said in an interview. I just find it ironic that after five years that one individual can come up with cuts where no one else saw them. Remember, its not a hospital. It is a regional medical center. Business leaders are watching the developments carefully, said David Harrington, president of the Prince Georges County Chamber of Commerce. He said he receives questions from members particularly those poised to invest in Largo worried about repeated delays in the project. My answer to them is, Hang in there, Harrington said. The hospital is happening. We feel very confident it will happen. The question is when. [Regional medical center seen as economic engine for Prince Georges] In addition to state approvals, there have been problems with funding. Baker and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) spent part of the past legislative session entangled in a dispute over how much money the state would put into propping up the transitioning health-care system while the hospital is built. Eventually, Hogan agreed to the funding, and legislators later passed a law mandating specific allocations in future years. Now, attention has shifted to the state regulatory process, one of the most complicated and extensive in the country. Dimensions applied for the required certificate of need in October 2013. No project has been on the Maryland Health Care Commissions docket for longer. James R. Estepp, director of operations for the Greater Prince Georges Business Roundtable, said the business communitys optimism is bolstered by the number of top state Democrats supporting the hospital project, including House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert). In addition, hospital backers note that Moffit, a Hogan appointee, signaled in his May 17 letter that the hospital is needed and the state is committed to its success. [Read Moffits letter calling for changes in the hospital project] The fact is, investment will take place, and we will get the right growth in Largo, Estepp said. We are seeing a process that is being worked out. It has happened before, and its not the first time its been lengthy. Baker said that during a retail conference in Las Vegas last month, investors told him that they are not so much doubtful as they are eager to begin pushing forward on marketing for all the ancillary business the hospital is expected to generate. County Council Chairman Derrick Leon Davis (D-Mitchellville), who represents the Largo area, said there are simply too many economic opportunities to pass up. I believe that the center part of the county represents the heartbeat of Prince Georges County, Davis said. A regional medical center that is geographically central, well thought out and well planned will pump vitality from the heart throughout the entire county. For backers of the project, a new hospital that also trains doctors is critical to changing long-held negative perceptions about health care in the county. For that reason, some supporters remain skeptical about the changes Moffit is proposing even though he said those changes must be made for the project to win state approval. I think our goal and responsibility is to give Prince Georges the best regional medical facility that we can, said Del. Tawanna P. Gaines (D-Prince Georges), who is vice chair of the Dimensions executive board. You always want to take input, but we know far better the needs of residents. . . . We cannot fail the residents of Prince Georges County. They have been very patient. U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen is facing Del. Kathy Szeliga in the U.S. Senate race. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post) Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) launched his first general election attack in the U.S. Senate race, blasting GOP opponent Kathy Szeliga for her ties to the Citizens United group reviled by progressives for ushering in an era of unlimited political spending. Citizens United President David Bossie headlined a Thursday fundraiser for Szeliga, a Republican state lawmaker from Baltimore County who will face off against Van Hollen in November. The conservative group also aired a nearly $25,000 radio spot on Szeligas behalf ahead of the Republican primary in April. Citizens United is best known as the plaintiff in the 2010 case when the Supreme Court struck down corporate spending limits in federal campaigns. Van Hollens campaign attacked Szeliga for her ties to the group in fundraising appeals sent to supporters this week. Citizens United has been the driving force behind the deluge of secret outside money that is choking our democracy, said Van Hollen spokeswoman Bridgett Frey in a statement. Voters want a leader who will put working families first, not politicians who promote big money, secret, outside special interests at the expense of Maryland families. Szeligas campaign spokeswoman called the attack baseless and hypocritical because Van Hollen has also benefited from unlimited spending in politics. A group backed by the National Association of Realtors poured nearly $1 million into the Democratic primary on Van Hollens behalf. House Minority Whip Kathy Szeliga is facing attacks for support from Citizens United. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post) [Edwards and Van Hollen benefit from super PACS] Congressman Van Hollen is a career politician who has filled his campaign war chest with as much money from lobbyists and special interest groups as he can get his hands on, said spokeswoman Leslie Shedd. Bossie, Marylands new Republican national committeeman, says hes supporting Szeliga as a long-time state resident and called Van Hollens attacks fearmongering. Van Hollen has rarely discussed Szeliga since handily beating Rep. Donna Edwards for the Democratic nomination in April. In his victory speech, he attacked Donald Trump instead, mirroring an approach by down-ticket Democrats across the country seeking to tie their opponents to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Natasha McKenna died after a struggle with sheriffs deputies at the Fairfax County jail last year. (Courtesy of Natasha McKenna's family) A $15.3 million wrongful death lawsuit was filed Friday in the case of a mentally ill woman who died after a struggle with sheriffs deputies at the Fairfax County jail last year. The mother of Natasha McKenna, 37, alleges that the deputies failed to follow proper procedures when they handcuffed, wrestled and then repeatedly used a stun gun on McKenna while attempting to transfer her to another jail. The lawsuit, filed in Fairfax County Circuit Court, names as defendants Sheriff Stacey Kincaid and the team of deputies that was sent to remove the Alexandria woman from her cell in February 2015. [Fairfax inmate was Tasered while shackled] The death of McKenna, a black woman who was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 12, prompted an outcry from mental health advocates and the Black Lives Matter movement, saying that the deputies should have used less force and tried to de-escalate the confrontation. The Fairfax County Sheriffs Office released a more than 40-minute-long video of the February encounter between deputies and inmate Natasha McKenna, who died days after the struggle. Editors note: This video contains graphic content. The sheriffs office has blurred the body of McKenna, who appears naked in the video. (Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post) It also spurred a criminal investigation, which ended in September when Fairfax County Commonwealths Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh declined to press charges against those involved, saying the deputies showed restraint given the circumstances. [Prosecutor: No charges in the death of Natasha McKenna] Attorney Harvey Volzer, who is representing McKennas mother, Christine Wilson, said in a statement that the criminal investigation shows that black persons in Fairfax County must look to the civil courts for justice. Natasha McKenna is a tragic example of how minority and handicapped persons rights only get lip service in Fairfax County, Volzer wrote. Kincaid did not respond to a request for comment, but she has said the deputies acted appropriately during a difficult encounter. McKenna, who had been acting erratically for weeks, was arrested in January 2015 by Fairfax County police on an outstanding warrant on charges that she assaulted an Alexandria police officer. She allegedly assaulted the officer during a scuffle that month at a Hertz rental car agency. McKenna was transferred to the Fairfax County jail, where over the next eight days Alexandria police failed to pick her up on three occasions because of a delay in communications. During that period, McKennas mental health declined, she got into altercations with deputies and soiled her cell. Finally, on Feb. 3, the Fairfax County Sheriffs Office decided to transfer McKenna. A deputy initially coaxed McKenna into handcuffs, but she then grew agitated and started resisting, according to a report prepared by Morrogh. The six-member emergency response team was sent in to restrain her. You promised me you wouldnt kill me, McKenna was heard saying on a video of the incident, according to Morroghs report. The deputies wrestled McKenna to the ground while she cursed and tried to bite them, according to the report. McKenna was eventually shocked with a stun gun four times to bring her under control. Morrogh reported that McKenna was breathing for several minutes after being subdued but was found unresponsive after being transferred to a loading bay in the jail. She was revived but later died at a hospital. A state medical examiner ruled that McKennas death was an accident linked to the use of the stun gun and being restrained. Her death was attributed to a rare condition called excited delirium, in which a person with a mental illness or on drugs grows so agitated their heart gives out. In September, the Sheriffs Office released the graphic video of the encounter. Police in Maryland are investigating the theft of a ghost bike memorial for a former NAVY Seal. Retired Navy Capt. Timothy A. Holden, a 1972 Naval Academy graduate who commanded SEAL Team One and served in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, died in August after he was struck and killed by a motorist while riding his bicycle in Montgomery County. A ghost bike an all-white bicycle left at the collision site marked a spot near where he fell in the 6100 block of Massachusetts Avenue. [Former Navy SEAL killed in bike crash to be buried in Arlington Friday] On June 3, Montgomery County police responded to that block after the report of a theft, the police department said in a statement. An investigation revealed that sometime between May 26 and May 30, the ghost bike that memorialized Holden was stolen, according to the statement. The removal of ghost bikes has caused controversy before. After a ghost bike marking where a 22-year-old woman was killed on her bike near Dupont Circle was removed by the city in 2009, for example, bicyclists responded by replacing it with 22 more. Police asked that anyone with information about the theft of the ghost bike from Massachusetts Avenue call the 2nd District Investigative Section at 240-773-6710. Those who wish to remain anonymous may call Crime Solvers of Montgomery County at 240-773-TIPS (8477). Koissy Kemmeth had a real job, federal authorities say, as a driver for the Ivory Coast Mission to the United Nations. But they say he used that diplomatic cover to help associates steal identities and live in the D.C. area under false pretenses. Kemmeth appeared in federal court in Virginia this week on charges including wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the government and false claims. He was indicted last month. One Ivory Coast citizen who lived in Northern Virginia, according to prosecutors, used the names and personal information of at least seven real people with Kemmeths help. The associate was not named in court papers. Prosecutors say the driver would write employment verification letters on official Ivory Coast Mission letterhead for various landlords using those real names and confirming that his associate was employed by the Ivory Coast Mission. He allegedly said this associate, who has not had legal status in the United States since 2009, was employed as a translator. Kemmeth wrote that he was the mans supervisor, authorities said. At one point Kemmeth appeared to sign a letter with the name of a former member of the Ivory Coast Mission while giving his own phone number, according to the indictment. His associate, meanwhile, would get fake identity cards made for himself under the assumed names and rent apartments in the Washington suburbs. The associate also filed false tax returns under stolen identities, officials say, and deposited the refunds into Kemmeths accounts. The scheme lasted from 2010 to early 2015, according to the indictment. The other man rented apartments in Ashburn and Potomac Falls, Va., according to the indictment. He was evicted from one Ashburn apartment in 2014 for failure to pay rent. While Kemmeth does have diplomatic immunity, prosecutors say it extends only to official acts related to his government. Kemmeths attorney Paul P. Vangellow did not return a call for comment. Tiffany Jolliff of Arlington, who is blind, says at least two Uber drivers refused to pick her up after they saw her service dog, Railey. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post) An Arlington woman is suing ride-hailing giant Uber after she says at least two drivers refused to transport her and her service dog. In the 29-page suit, Tiffany Jolliff, who is blind, said the company violated the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Virginians With Disabilities Act in refusing to transport her on at least three occasions. In one instance last June, an UberX driver refused to pick up Jolliff once the driver realized that she was traveling with her service dog, a yellow Lab named Railey. Jolliff said she was holding the door handle when the driver accelerated. According to the suit, Jolliff, 29, was dragged several feet before she was able to let go. Friends with whom she had been dining took her to the hospital, where she was told that she had sprained a shoulder. She missed almost a week of work and since then has avoided using Uber, the suit says. Tiffany Jolliff, with lawyer Deepa Goraya, from the the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, filed a lawsuit Thursday in federal district court in the Eastern District of Virginia against Uber, alleging violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Virginians with Disabilities Act. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post) The alleged driver, Albertine Djeumi Cole, is named in the suit. Attempts to reach Cole were unsuccessful. The suit cited at least two other instances in which UberX drivers allegedly refused to allow Jolliff into their cars once they realized she was traveling with a dog. We hope that this case will illustrate the huge obstacles that blind people face in the D.C. metro area just to get from place to place, said Peter Romer-Friedman, deputy director of litigation for the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, and Gilbert LLP, which are representing Jolliff. There is a very bad trend of the rest of society getting access to wonderful technologies to make their lives better, while people who are blind are getting left behind. An Uber spokesman could not say whether Cole was still working for the company. We were disappointed to learn of this riders experience as we are committed to increasing transportation options everywhere for everyone, Uber said in an emailed statement. We expect drivers to comply with our Code of Conduct that explicitly states service animals must be accommodated in compliance with accessibility laws. Uber officials said the companys drivers are required to sign the code of conduct, indicating that they understand the expectations. Uber runs several services, including a black-car luxury service and the lower-cost UberX, in which people use their own cars to give rides to customers who summon them via the companys app. There is also UberPool, in which a driver can pick up multiple passengers and deliver them to various locations. The suit was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria. In addition to seeking damages in an amount to be determined at trial, Jolliff is asking that Uber develop a program to educate drivers about the legal obligations to transport passengers who travel with service dogs, provide periodic reminders about those obligations and improve its complaint process. Jolliff, who works for the Labor Department, said in her suit that she filed complaints with Uber but received only cursory responses. In some instances, Jolliff said, she was charged a $5 cancellation fee even though it was the driver who refused service. Jolliffs filing comes a little more than a month after Uber reached an agreement in a 2014 class-action lawsuit filed by the National Federation for the Blind. In the suit, filed in California, the federation said Uber drivers regularly denied rides to blind people with guide dogs. In one instance, the suit said, a driver put a service dog in the trunk and refused to pull over when the passenger, who was blind, became aware of the animals location. As part of the settlement, which is still to be approved, Uber agreed to take steps to ensure that its drivers know they must provide service to people traveling with service dogs. Uber also said it would improve its system for responding to complaints filed by customers who are traveling with service animals. The company also agreed to pay $225,000 over three years to cover attorneys fees and court costs. [Uber sued for allegedly refusing rides to blind passengers] Jolliffs attorneys contend that although the settlement in the class-action lawsuit addresses some of the issues raised in her suit, it does not bar individuals with claims from seeking damages. As Uber has looked to expand its reach, it has run into questions about whether it does enough to accommodate riders with special needs. This has been a particular issue in the Washington region and other communities that are considering allowing Uber to handle their paratransit services. [Transportation agencies look to Uber for paratransit services] Metro is exploring possible partnerships with Uber and its competitor Lyft to introduce an alternative and less-expensive option to MetroAccess, the transit systems door-to-door service for elderly customers and people with disabilities. This spring, seven of the nine members of the Montgomery County Council sent a letter to Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld opposing the idea. The council members said Uber and other such services had not done enough to meet the needs of passengers with disabilities. They said the company lacked enough wheelchair-accessible vehicles and questioned whether drivers receive adequate training. [Montgomery County officials oppose Metro partnership with Uber, Lyft for paratransit] The year-long Metrorail rehabilitation plan includes 15 projects that will require the longest stretches of single-tracking and station shutdowns. The year-long Metrorail rehabilitation plan includes 15 projects that will require the longest stretches of single-tracking and station shutdowns. The year-long Metrorail rehabilitation plan includes 15 projects that will require the longest stretches of single-tracking and station shutdowns. View Graphic Consider vanpools, teleworking, bike share but if you really, really have to take Metrorail starting this weekend, pack patience. That was the message from Metro Chief Paul J. Wiedefeld on the eve of a massive subway rebuilding project set to begin Saturday. The SafeTrack rebuilding program is 15 projects focused on repairing specific sections of rail within the 117-mile system. But the program is expected to have a ripple effect, upending the commutes of hundreds of thousands of people across the Washington region. With just two weeks to come up with a plan to help alleviate fears of packed rail cars and overloaded highways, regional leaders in conjunction with Metro have scrambled to provide alternatives for commuters. They have added additional bus service, shuttles, bike share stations and urged businesses to adopt flexible work schedules and encourage their employees to telecommute whenever possible. Libby Garvey (D), chairwoman of the Arlington County Board of Supervisors, who appeared with Wiedefeld at a Friday news conference at the East Falls Church station, site of the first SafeTrack project, noted that crews were busy installing a new bike-share dock at the station as they spoke. She said the public understands this is work that must be done. Metros plan to overhaul the transit system officially begins on Saturday. Heres what Silver Line riders need to know about how the repairs will affect them. (Claritza Jimenez,Danielle Kunitz/The Washington Post) This is going to be inconvenient, but it has to happen, and people are relieved and thankful that Metro is giving maintenance and safety the attention that it needs, Garvey said. [Brace yourself: Metros massive rebuilding project begins this weekend] The maintenance blitz is an effort to squeeze three years of work into one. It will include a rotating slate of 15 repair and rebuilding projects to be conducted over the next year. The projects, or surges, are catch-up work designed to help restore the 40-year-old system to what the transit industry calls a state of good repair. The first project involves 13 days of single-tracking between Ballston and East Falls Church that will mean longer waits for Orange and Silver line riders. That will be followed by a 16-day shutdown of stations between Eastern Market and Minnesota Avenue/Benning Road. On Friday, Wiedefeld made no attempt to sugarcoat the possible impacts on commuters, warning riders that they could expect extreme crowding and delays if people dont come up with some alternatives. He also was careful to tamp down expectations that SafeTrack would be a a cure-all for the 40-year-old systems many problems. During SafeTrack, Metro plans to install about 50,000 new rail ties, clean 87,000 feet of drains, plug hundreds of water leaks and fix or replace thousands of pieces of infrastructure in the system, including rails, electrical insulators, power cables and the connector assemblies used to attach cables to one another. Metros plan to overhaul the transit system officially begins on Saturday. Heres what Orange Line riders need to know about how the repairs will affect them. (Claritza Jimenez,Danielle Kunitz/The Washington Post) Weidefeld portrayed SafeTrack as a last-ditch attempt to turn around a system that has suffered from decades of neglect. The reason why were doing this is to make the system safer and more reliable as quickly as we can, he said. Despite a high-profile campaign to warn customers of the changes, officials are prepared for people who simply missed the memo. In Arlington, ambassadors wearing neon-colored vests will greet people and explain what options they might have to get to where they are going. The scope of the SafeTrack project is unprecedented among U.S. subway systems. Even though many suffer from the same maintenance and infrastructure problems as Metro, none have chosen to tackle them all at once. Three years ago, the Chicago Transit Authority shut down 10 miles of track on its busiest rail line for five months. But even then, officials spent at least a year developing contingency plans for how they would move riders. As part of the effort, the agency hired more than 400 new bus drivers. [What Metro can learn from Chicagos shutdown] Metro, however, had no such luxury. The final SafeTrack plan was released just two weeks ago. I have to say it was extremely challenging to come up with mitigation strategies within such a short bit of time, said Christian Dorsey (D), an Arlington County board member who also sits on the Metro board. But from within that challenge, some wonderful results have been produced. He added: Hopefully we will get through this in a way that shows the resilience of our region. [Heres what Arlington is doing to get you moving during Metros SafeTrack] The next surge, starting June 18, may prove even more challenging since it will force a 16-day shutdown of service along the Orange, Blue and Silver lines from the Eastern Market station to the Benning Road and Minnesota Avenue stations. Blue Line service will be limited to Virginia during that project, and the two other lines will have reduced service, with buses replacing trains. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) on Thursday unveiled her plan for dealing with that shutdown, which includes Capital Bikeshare discounts, expanding morning and evening rush-hour parking restrictions to clear lanes for buses, and a moratorium on public-space construction. [Heres D.C.s plan for keeping you moving during Metros SafeTrack] In Fairfax County, Supervisor Catherine M. Hudgins (D-Hunter Mill) said residents there should also be prepared for major changes. I think we will be introducing people to a transit experience that they have not had before, Hudgins said. Arlington County Board candidate Erik Gutshall canvasses in the Ashton Heights neighborhood May 24, 2016. Gutshall is trying to unseat fellow Democrat and incumbent board member Libby Garvey in the June 14 primary. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) The infighting among Arlington County Democrats took a sharp turn in the past week, with elected officials and their supporters now publicly debating whether campaign materials criticizing an incumbent on the County Board are misleading or a fair assessment of her record. Erik Gutshall, who is challenging incumbent Libby Garvey in the June 14 election, mailed campaign brochures to thousands of local residents that accuse Garvey of failing to plan for school overcrowding and of implying that a real estate tax exemption for seniors could be eliminated. That triggered rebukes from two Democratic officeholders, state Del. Patrick A. Hope (D-Arlington) and County Board member Christian Dorsey (D), who said the mailings were negative, misleading and mischaracterizations of Garveys positions. Both statements, in public Facebook postings, then spawned their own debates among followers of both politicians, neither of whom have publicly endorsed either candidate. The back-and-forth has grown, with 11 current or former officeholders weighing in with support for Gutshall and calling his campaign material well-documented and well within the bounds of robust healthy democratic debate. That statement was posted on Gutshalls campaign website. [Liberal challenger vs. maverick incumbent in Arlington board race] The campaign had been relatively sedate, with face-to-face debates that have been polite and noncontroversial. But the mailings have revealed the intense intra-party differences that occasionally flare up in Arlington. And party leaders remain angry over Garveys support of Republican-turned-independent John Vihstadt two years ago over Democrat Alan Howze. Vihstadt won both a special and general election, ending 15 years of an all-Democratic County Board. The mailing that sparked the controversy claims the board chair is threatening the ability of our most vulnerable seniors to live in Arlington and is putting Arlingtons seniors at risk. It included large photos of two concerned-looking older women. Gutshall said Friday that although he stands by the substance of the brochures, I agree that the overall message could have been communicated without such emotional imagery. He revised his statement Saturday to remove that line and to say that he has not and does not intend to attack Garvey personally, but wants to call attention to legitimate policy differences. Garvey said Saturday that the charges are false and misrepresent her stances. Her campaign manager, Scott Pedowitz, said that they are trying to turn a question or a vote for further study into a policy position. Garvey suggested earlier this year that the county look into eliminating real estate tax exemptions for certain middle- to low-income senior homeowners. At a March board meeting and at a campaign debate Wednesday, she said the exemptions create a windfall for seniors or their beneficiaries when the homes are sold. She would prefer that more seniors be funneled into the countys less-popular tax deferment program, which would recoup the unpaid taxes when properties are sold. Gutshall immediately noted that paying back the deferred taxes upon sale would prevent low-income seniors on fixed incomes from staying in their homes without passing on a large tax burden to their families. [Arlington board chair faces opposition from within her own party] Garvey has not addressed the second point in the mailing, that she twice tried to cut the amount of money devoted to Arlingtons Affordable Housing Investment Fund, a revolving loan fund that helps nonprofit organizations build low-cost housing, often for those on low or fixed incomes. Another Gutshall flier asserted that while Garvey was on the Arlington School Board for 15 years, she failed to plan for the predicted crisis of skyrocketing enrollment that is now enveloping the schools. Garvey also had suggested this year that schools could start as early as 5 a.m. and run until 11 p.m. to allow the facilities to be used more fully, especially for high school students who work in the afternoons and evenings. Garvey, who has responded to those charges on her campaign website, said she worked to renovate or build nearly two dozen schools and never advocated forcing students into early or late classes. But she added that creating flexibility for high school students and their families who want to choose a different sort of high school experience could be useful. Gutshalls next campaign mailing, which is expected to go out early this week, calls for Democrats to work together but raises questions about Garveys failure to support party nominees in other races. The next debate between the two candidates is at 7 p.m. Sunday at Campbell Elementary School, 737 S. Carlin Springs Rd. Daniel Harmon-Wright is led back to jail after a hearing on Jan. 30, 2013, in the town of Culpeper, Va. Attorneys for the former Culpeper police officer convicted of manslaughter sought a mistrial. (Reza A. Marvashti/AP) Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) mistakenly restored the right to vote to several violent felons currently in prison or on supervised probation, as part of his sweeping clemency order, records show. Among the 206,000 felons who were awarded voting rights are some high-profile killers whose crimes shocked their small communities. Ronald R. Cloud, 68, was in prison in West Virginia for sexual assaults involving a child when he pleaded guilty in 2014 to the murder of a Fauquier County man in a three-decade-old cold case. Daniel Harmon-Wright, 36, was a Culpeper police officer when he shot a Sunday school teacher in her Jeep as the vehicle drove away. When McAuliffe restored their rights and the rights of others amid great fanfare on April 22, he presented it as a way for Virginia to move past the Jim Crow era, because African Americans have been disproportionately affected by felon disenfranchisement. One in 4 African Americans in Virginia had been banned from voting because of laws restricting the rights of those with convictions. The administration said only felons who had served their time and completed parole would win back the right to vote and be permitted to resume other aspects of civic life, such as serving on a jury or running for public office. He was immediately criticized by Republicans and some law enforcement officials, who said the wholesale restoration of civil rights was too rushed and warned that mistakes would result. McAuliffes spokesman, Brian Coy, attributed the errors to flaws in a system officials devised to identify convicted felons in Virginia. But officials did not check for felons living outside Virginia, such as Cloud, who is serving the first of two life sentences in West Virginia, and Harmon-Wright, who is on supervised probation in California. This is obviously a massive administrative undertaking, Coy said. We are working constantly to refine the working administrative database that were using to implement this process. As we are made aware of ways we can refine it, were executing those refinements immediately. The state corrected the errors Thursday after inquiries from The Post about why the civil rights of Cloud, Harmon-Wright and several others were restored, according to a searchable database on the Secretary of Commonwealth website. Their rights were restored on April 22, the day McAuliffe signed the clemency order. State Del. Robert B. Bell (R-Albemarle), who is running for attorney general, said the errors confirmed the concerns voiced by critics. This exceeds our worst fears, Bell said. He did not even comply with his own very, very modest restrictions. At least if youre going to do it, do it right. Last month, Republicans sued the governor, arguing that he does not have the authority under the constitution to restore the civil rights of hundreds of thousands of felons with one sweeping order. They also expressed concern that McAuliffes action simplifies the process felons must follow to win back the right to own a gun. Jim Fisher, Fauquier commonwealths attorney, asked his staff to check the state database for anyone convicted of homicide and sex crimes in the county, which has a population of about 70,000. In addition to Cloud and Harmon-Wright, they discovered Cecil Leonard Hopkins, 51, who strangled his girlfriend and pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter. He is living in Maryland under supervised probation. Two others Virgil J. Dantic, 77, and Frank P. Ferrara, 52 are serving time in Virginia prisons for sex crimes, records show. Theres going to be lots and lots more. Thats part of the problem with rushing this through, Fisher said. His search did not capture people in local jails awaiting trail or sentencing, fugitives on outstanding charges or those serving sentences on grand larceny, burglary or narcotics distribution charges. This really demonstrates the foreseeable problem with rushing through a mass felon amnesty executive clemency order with no protocols, no scrutiny, just doing it, he said. As of Thursday night, McAuliffes spokesman, Coy, could not say how many people had mistakenly been given back voting rights while serving sentences in other states. In the cases of Dantic and Ferrara, data entry errors were to blame, Coy said. In one case, a Social Security number was incorrect; in another, the computer program dropped a zero at the start of a Social Security number, he said. The folks you brought to us are going to be removed, Coy said. None of them have exercised any rights. In the interest of keeping the list clean, it would be nice if prosecutors called us before they called you. None of the felons had registered to vote, Coy said. If they had, the Department of Elections voter database would have allowed it, and they could have voted by absentee mail. Prosecutors have urged the state to release the list of more than 200,000 voters whose rights McAuliffe restored so they can more easily check for errors. The state has denied Freedom of Information Act requests, citing a working papers exemption, and they will not change that position as a result of the errors, Coy said. This underscores our point that this is a working list. We are constantly refining it, he said. No matter what their motivation was, the work of these prosecutors will help us to refine the list. Jim Plowman, the Loudoun County commonwealths attorney, has repeatedly been denied a list of the restored felons, and he said blanket restoration is troubling for many reasons. He pointed to a defendant who was accused of aggravated malicious wounding in 2013, after a previous stabbing conviction in 2007, and the man was found not guilty in 2014 by reason of insanity. The man is now in a state mental hospital, having not yet been restored to sanity, but he has had his rights restored, Plowman said. This is why these things deserve individual review, Plowman said. In the meantime, the state is relying on prosecutors and felons themselves to spot errors. Coy had this message for felons in prison or under supervised probation who discover that their rights have been restored: You should contact our office immediately. The crowd cheered during Gov. Terry McAuliffe's restoration of rights announcement last month at the capitol in Richmond. (Mark Gormus/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP) Republican lawmakers on Friday urged Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) to fire state workers who erroneously restored voting rights to felons currently in prison or on probation. They also called for the governor to apologize for the mistake of including felons behind bars among 206,000 former convicts made eligible to vote by McAuliffes blanket clemency order. The governor was so eager to get this done, it appears he didnt even do due diligence, House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) told reporters during a conference call. Im frankly stunned at what weve learned. Its incredibly reckless. When McAuliffe issued his executive order in April, his administration said it would apply only to felons who had served their time, completed probation and were no longer in the criminal-justice system. The governor vowed on Friday to correct any errors and defended state employees, saying a few mistakes were bound to be made. The people who worked on this worked very, very, very hard, he told reporters after an unrelated bill signing. I would just ask anyone in the Republican Party, Id like to see them put together a list of 206,000 names and 17 million bits of information. . . . [Weve] got a handful of problems and were going to fix it. The governors spokesman, Brian Coy, said no one will lose their job as a result of what he called administrative errors in compiling a list used to create a public website to check, according to dates of birth and Social Security numbers, whether an individuals civil rights have been restored. Questions about the accuracy of the list have been at the center of a dispute between McAuliffe and GOP lawmakers since April 22, when the governor reversed Virginias century-old practice of disenfranchising felons. At the time, he said the order would help Virginia move past the Jim Crow era, because African Americans have been disproportionately affected by felon disenfranchisement. According to the state, about half of newly restored felons are African Americans, despite the fact that blacks make up less than 20 percent of Virginias population. Until then, Virginia governors restored civil rights to felons on a case-by-case basis. [In Virginia, the race is on to register 200,000 felons] Republicans immediately blasted the order, and last week they filed a lawsuit alleging that McAuliffe overstepped his constitutional authority. After the administration declined to release the list to the public, prosecutors in Fauquier and Loudoun counties punched identifying data for violent felons into the database and found at least seven who should not have been eligible, according to McAuliffes criteria, but whose rights were restored. Among those is Ronald R. Cloud, who pleaded guilty in 2014 to the murder of a Fauquier County man in a three-decade-old cold case and is in prison in West Virginia, and Daniel Harmon-Wright, who was a Culpeper police officer when he fatally shot a woman in her Jeep in 2012. He is on parole and living in California. Coy said the mistakes occurred in some instances because the state did not check for felons living outside Virginia. He said the state is correcting errors as they are discovered; he could not say how many have been caught. The safeguard here is if an individual who is not in accordance with the criteria for restoration of rights fills out a voter registration application, they will be subject to a felony conviction, he said. He added that the administration plans to release the list next year as part of an annual report to the General Assembly. Republicans say they want the list to prevent fraud in the November election. They have accused McAuliffe of granting blanket clemency to help his friend Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. McAuliffe has denied any political motivation. Laura Vozzella contributed to this report. A picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency shows Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, right, shaking hands with Virginia state Sen. Richard H. Black (R-Loudoun) in Damascus in April. (AFP/Getty Images) After Virginia state Sen. Richard H. Black popped up in Damascus this spring, shaking hands with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the reaction was swift and cutting. Dangerously clueless, Democrats said. Ignorant of Assads brutality, said the White House. Even fellow Republicans cracked jokes. In the month since, the Northern Virginia legislator, who regards Assad as a protector of Syrian Christians and a buffer against Islamic extremism, has been on the receiving end of something else: invitations. Black (R-Loudoun) has been asked to speak, alongside congressmen and a senior State Department official, at a Washington forum on energy and foreign policy. To attend a reception, as the guest of a Jewish constituent, at the Israeli Embassy. To hold Skype sessions with Middle East interest groups. To address a couple of hundred Syrian expats in Boston. Theres definitely a lot of interest in hearing what I have to say about Syria, Black said. I think its pretty clear to people that theyre not getting the straight scoop from their government, and theyre interested in hearing factual information about whats actually going on. Black listens during a news conference in Damascus. He sees Assad as a protector of Syrias Christians. (Youssef Badawi/European Pressphoto Agency) Blacks late-April meeting with Assad continues to reverberate, raising and expanding the profile of a man who for years had been known for a single anti-abortion stunt: He was the guy who once mailed tiny plastic fetuses to fellow legislators. Now, hes the local legislator who had a two-hour sit-down with Assad, a dictator the Obama administration says unleashed chemical weapons on his own people. Democrats see his trip as a tin-eared political caper, one that reinforces the notion that Black is not just outside the mainstream but also a little nutty. If I got on a plane and said to Assad, Attaboy, you would absolutely think, Saslaw has lost it, said state Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax). And by God, you would be right. . . . I like Dick, but were moving into weird. Blacks support for Assad has earned him other foes; he now has a spot on the Islamic States enemies list. But Black, 72, has also drawn praise from left- and right-leaning skeptics of U.S. foreign policy. The decorated Vietnam veteran figures that about half the people who have phoned to express approval are Democrats from the partys Bernie Sanders wing. A global viewpoint To critics who say Black had no business lending legitimacy to Assad, the senator replies in a way familiar to anyone who has seen him operate in Richmond: with passion and a visceral reference to war. Show me somebody on the [U.S. Senate] Foreign Relations Committee who has shed more blood for this country, and maybe they can tell me I have no business speaking out, said Black, who received a Purple Heart for his military service. Black fought in the jungles of Vietnam, flying helicopters for the Marines, directing the dropping of more than 1,000 bombs and engaging in close ground combat. A onetime Baptist who converted to Catholicism as an adult, Black feels deeply about war, suffering and life. That drives him whether he is battling abortion or conducting an unlikely tete-a-tete with Assad in the Syrian palace, where the discussion ranged from international politics to chit-chat about family. Even before Vietnam, Black was drawn to global affairs. He grew up with a father who traveled across Latin America for the IRS and a nanny with a backstory out of an international thriller. After the war, he was stationed in Germany as an Army lawyer. So Black thinks and acts globally, sometimes in ways that seem jarring for a state legislator with no role in setting foreign policy. [Va. senator travels to Syria to shake hands with Bashar al-Assad] His April visit with Assad was particularly surprising because Black, one of Virginias strongest voices for protecting life at every stage, embraced a man the White House blames for a 2013 sarin gas attack that killed more than 1,400 civilians. Black feels certain that Turkey and al-Qaeda engineered the attack in hopes of triggering a U.S. strike on Syria. The senator says he believes that by drawing attention to the issue with his visit, he can help set U.S. foreign policy straight. But Blacks intensity and tactics whether hes praising Assad or blasting Toni Morrisons Beloved as moral sewage can make him an easy target, even among kindred spirits. [Why a Va. senator told a teacher, You do not know better than the parents] I cant comment on this. But I want to. So much, Del. C. Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) tweeted in April along with a photo of Black shaking hands with Assad. Black drew similar reactions in 2014 when he wrote a letter of praise to Assad. The Syrian president posted it on Facebook, prompting the Islamic State to put Black on its enemies list. [Islamic State adds Loudouns Sen. Black, Rick Santorum to enemies list] Whats the matter, Dick? state Sen. William M. Stanley Jr. (R-Franklin) joked at the time. Kim Jong Un not returning your text messages? Would you kill this child? Black is used to the jabs. He is still mocked 13 years later for enclosing tiny pink, plastic fetuses in letters he sent to senators ahead of an abortion vote. And yet, Blacks bill became law. As a state delegate in 2003, Black wrote a bill requiring minors to get parental consent for abortions. The measure cleared the House but seemed doomed in a Senate committee controlled by moderates. On the eve of the committee vote, Blacks letter landed. You can see that by the 11th week of gestation, a child is well-developed and unmistakably human, it said. Would you kill this child? The little fetus dolls, bought for 17 cents a pop from an anti-abortion group, caused an uproar. People were really appalled by this and talked about nothing else for days afterwards, said Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax). My receptionist was sobbing. . . . She had had many miscarriages, and she and her husband so much wanted a baby. And here she comes to work, opens my mail which is her job and out came a fetus. It just devastated her. And I have never forgiven him for it. Black said the outcry helped his cause, drawing attention to the bill and preventing moderates from quashing it in committee. Yet even some pro-life Republicans questioned his strategy. You need to shock the conscience, not [cause] the visceral, physical revulsion, said one Richmond Republican, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid offending Black. Bucking conventional political wisdom has often worked for Black, who has beaten better-funded challengers backed by Emilys List and other abortion rights groups. Black led a revolt against GOP leaders in 2014, when he warned that Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) had a secret plan to circumvent the legislature to pull off his marquee campaign promise: expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Pure conspiracy theory, GOP leaders said at first. But Black dug in and eventually got changes made to obscure budget language that he said could pave the way for an expansion via executive order. The McAuliffe administration, which declined to comment for this article, later conceded that the governor was, in fact, pursuing a secret expansion plan one thwarted by Black. [Pucketts Senate exit undid McAuliffes secret plan to expand Medicaid] Unnaturally stubborn When he was young and his mother ill, Black had a nanny who told stories of international intrigue and injustice. Born in Germany, she was an acrobatic dancer who, while entertaining troops during World War II, was caught behind enemy lines in Poland and gang-raped. She resumed dancing after the war and was on tour when her troupe went belly-up, stranding her, penniless, in Havana. There she met Blacks father, an IRS agent dispatched to audit island hotels owned by American mobsters. She moved to Miami to care for Black and a younger sister. As a painfully shy, pimply teenager in Miami, Black was drawn to nerdy-but-daring pursuits. He hunted poisonous snakes. He nearly blew himself up in a home chemistry lab. He was unnaturally stubborn by his own account and refused even as his nanny beat him with a ruler to put down his chemistry book and go to bed. That was the last straw for the nanny, who quit. But her stories of brutality, combined with his tour in Vietnam, formed a potent foundation for his later career as a Pentagon lawyer prosecuting rape cases and as a legislator in the General Assembly. When I think about abortion, Black said in the Senate one day in 2013, on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, my mind returns to battlefields in Vietnam. He went on to describe, in cinematic detail, the death of an enemy soldier who had lobbed a grenade at the Americans and got a bayonet slashing in return. I remember this enemy soldier, this Viet Cong soldier, screaming, screaming with desperation, screaming like an animal, said Black, who wanted his enemys suffering to end. And all that I could do as the enemy were surging around us was to yell across the field and say: Shoot him! For Gods sake, just shoot him! And they did. As we ran by, I recall looking at him, and he was clearly dead, he said. No one would doubt that he was dead. And yet his body shook with the adrenaline that had surged from the horror and the terror that he had gone through. Ladies and gentlemen, the children who die in the womb dont die easily. People do not die easily. People die in a desperate struggle for life. Stanley, the Republican who later teased Black about his fan letter to Assad, took in that speech from a corner of the Senate reserved for GOP cut-ups. All opposed to abortion yet inclined to crack wise, they rolled their eyes as Black launched his Vietnam analogy. Were like, What is he talking about? Stanley said. And by the end . . . we were all so moved by it that we were in tears. But Democrats were outraged that Black had also invoked the Holocaust, as he suggested that people might look back on abortion someday and wonder why ordinary citizens did not do more to stop it. For such a polarizing figure, Black has forged some unlikely alliances. He has won praise from some womens groups for separate laws he wrote that made the state address its backlog of untested rape kits and allowed minors to consent to rape exams, even when their parents object. He picked up the torch, said Kristine Hall, policy director for the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance. Sen. Barbara A. Favola (D-Arlington), a vocal abortion rights advocate, worked closely with Black last year to address concerns that colleges were playing down sexual assault. She did not find it easy. Black wanted all campus rapes reported to police. Favola feared that would deter some victims from seeking help. Only after weeks of wrangling did they reach a compromise. Hes very well intentioned, she said. But he does not see any gray in things. Some of Blacks harshest critics suggest something darker. They point to comments he made in 2002, while debating a bill to change Virginias definition of spousal rape, which then applied only to cases involving physical injury or couples living apart. I do not know how on earth you could validly get a conviction of a husband-wife rape where theyre living together, sleeping in the same bed, shes in a nightie and so forth, there is no injury, theres no separation or anything, he said. The remark resurfaces every time he runs for office. GOP Congressional Candidate: Spousal Rape Shouldnt Be a Crime, read a Mother Jones headline in 2014, when Black briefly ran for Congress. [Dick Black makes surprise decision to drop out of race to replace Frank Wolf in Congress] Black said he never doubted the notion of spousal rape; in the 1980s, he prosecuted an Army doctor for raping his estranged wife. He said he only questioned how prosecutors could win convictions without injury or separation. And ultimately, he voted for the bill, which became law. But to Blacks detractors, such as Progress VA Executive Director Anna Scholl, the nightie comment suggested that he blames victims for inviting sexual assault. It speaks, she said, to a deeper sentiment that men just sometimes cant help themselves. Library board to legislature His first stint in politics came after Vietnam, when he was back at the University of Miami and elected to the student senate. Black was in his late 20s, married, with two children. In the Age of Aquarius, his idea of a toe-tapper was Born Free. He was the odd man out. The antiwar movement was roaring, so the senate spent most of its time when they werent talking about rock concerts talking about the war and trying to pass antiwar resolutions, he said. Decades passed before he joined another deliberative body. In 1997, soon after retiring and moving to Loudoun County with his wife, Barbara, to be near their first grandchild, Black was put on the local library board. He greeted the gig like a jury summons. I told myself, Boy, this really sounds boring, he said. At his first meeting, Black learned of plans to provide Internet access something he feared could expose young library patrons to pornography. He persuaded the board to require filters, triggering a civil liberties lawsuit and making national news. Maybe if I had done this in Nebraska it would have been one thing, but to do it in Loudoun County, home of AOL, was hugely contentious, Black said. Black ran for the House of Delegates the next year and won. In the Virginia House and later the Senate, Black continued to champion social issues, along with bills related to autism, Lyme disease and many other topics. He also spent the better part of a decade seeking clemency for a black woman who, under the states three-strikes law, got a much harsher sentence for robbing banks with a fake grenade than a more affluent white woman who had robbed a string of pharmacies with a toy gun. [From the archives: A portrait of injustice in black and white] That bit of Blacks biography is all but forgotten in Richmond, though his pro bono effort was the subject of a Washington Post article in 2003. The story made note of something else about Black. Hes the guy, it said, who sent miniature plastic fetuses to his fellow legislators during a debate over an abortion bill this year. Hillary Clinton exhorted California Democrats on Friday to quickly mail back ballots for Tuesdays primary as she races to hold off a strong surge from rival Bernie Sanders that would sully the nomination victory she expects to claim the same day. Both Sanders and Clinton are urging supporters to turn out for what each calls a crucial symbolic vote that caps the long and increasingly contentious Democratic primary. Front-runner Clinton, however, is focusing on Californias high percentage of voters who mail in their ballots rather than cast them in person. We have to, starting with the California primary on Tuesday, send an unmistakable message we are stronger together, Clinton said. Were going to work together for a better and fairer nation, and thats why I need all of you to send in those ballots that are sitting on your kitchen table. Send them in today; send them in tomorrow. Make sure everybody you know who has a ballot sitting around sends them in, Clinton said. Sanderss campaign spent months registering voters and informing those with no party preference that they could request Democratic ballots. At his rallies, however, the senator from Vermont stays away from the nitty-gritty of the system and focuses on getting people out on primary day, June 7. If there is a large voter turnout, we will win, Sanders said to thousands of supporters in Chico on Thursday night. If there is a very large voter turnout, we will win by big numbers. If there is a low voter turnout, we will lose. Mail-in ballots, which have accounted for more than half of all ballots cast in recent elections in the state, may favor Clinton because they are often requested by the kind of older and reliably Democratic voters who have been her strongest supporters this year. But a large number of ballots that were requested have not been returned, leading to worry among Clinton backers that voters have disengaged. Clinton leads Sanders by just two points a statistical tie in three recent California polls. She did not mention Sanders in upbeat remarks to a women-themed rally here that included many Hollywood figures. California votes in huge numbers, as you know, by mail, right? And so we need all of you to join with the hundreds of thousands of Californians who have already voted, Clinton said. For those who have not found the time to send in a ballot, Clinton said, We need everybody to show up on June 7. California voters can exchange an unused mail-in ballot for an in-person one on primary day. If all goes well, I will have the great honor as of Tuesday to be the Democratic nominee, Clinton said Friday, the rest of her words drowned out by cheers. She and former president Bill Clinton are separately zig-zagging across California in a five-day push to salvage what had been a commanding lead for her in the nations most-diverse state. She focused Thursday on Hispanic voters in El Centro and on Friday sought out Asian American voters in Westminster, where the local president of the Vietnamese American Democratic Club was among the speakers who welcomed her. Clinton does not need to win California to win the nomination, but a loss here would highlight weaknesses, including a lack of strong support from younger voters. Sanders maintains that California can still deliver him the delegates he needs to win, although that remains prohibitively unlikely. At the least, a Sanders victory in California would strengthen his leverage to demand policy, procedural or other changes from a Democratic Party he has claimed has stacked the deck against his insurgent candidacy. Sanders tells every audience that high voter turnout would win him the state but does not get into detail about how to turn in ballots. On Thursday, Sanders was introduced at rallies by the actress Susan Sarandon, who said that voters needed to resist any attempts to deny them the vote. You can tell people you went to the polls, and you brought your friends, you brought your parents you brought everybody, Sarandon said in Chico. And if there was any problem at the polls, you stayed there until you fixed it. You are not going to back down. You are not going to be cheated. Earlier in her address at a community college here, Clinton joked that her long career in public policy leads to periodic reexamination of positions on childrens welfare and other issues she said she has held for what, 40 years? People keep discovering me. Im like an archaeological dig, she joked. Some of the more than a dozen introductory speakers who welcomed Clinton here highlighted elements of that record while blasting presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. None dwelled on Sanders and the challenge he still poses for Clinton. She has been scrutinized, dissected and vetted more than anyone in this country and for more years, actress Sally Field said, before zeroing in on one of Clintons weak points as a candidate the large number of people who say they dont like her. Over the past months, I have hear the word likability used so often, Field exclaimed. What is this? A high school popularity contest? Shes not running to be everybodys friend. Shes running to be the president of the United States. Some patients and doctors are defending top leaders of the NIH Clinical Center, who would be replaced by Director Francis Collins as part of a management overhaul. (Michael Reynolds/EPA) Some patients and high-ranking officials at the National Institutes of Health are urging Director Francis S. Collins to reconsider his planned demotion of top leaders at the agencys flagship hospital, contending that blame for safety problems identified by an outside panel has been misplaced. In a letter to Collins on Thursday, an advisory group of hospital patients asked him to rethink his plan to replace the Clinical Centers current leaders with three new executives and a structure similar to the one at most hospitals. Referring to the renowned hospitals chief, John Gallin, and his top aides, members of the NIH Clinical Center Patient Advisory Group said that while it is not unusual to call for someones head when a challenging report comes out, in this case the very people who can help fix the problem are instead becoming scapegoats. Last month, eight senior leaders from NIH institutes wrote a letter to Collins protesting his overhaul plan and rejecting the idea that the hospital lacked a culture of safety. News of the May 16 letter was first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday. In a statement Thursday, Collins said he agreed with many of the points made by the doctors, which, he noted, are consistent with the independent review panels recommendations. But he added that while change is never easy, our shared goal is to make the Clinical Center meet or exceed standards and expectations in every single area of its function. [Patient safety issues prompt shake-up at NIH hospital] The growing conflict follows an April report from the task force appointed by Collins that said research needs and interests at the Clinical Center had taken priority over ensuring patient safety. The blunt review revealed that the hospital had no adequate system for individuals to anonymously report errors in care or treatment that might have caused serious injury. It also noted that supervisors failed to appropriately address situations that were identified. The review was launched last year after the NIH suspended the operation of a unit that manufactures drugs for clinical research when an inspection discovered contamination and other problems. In April, the NIH suspended production at two other laboratory manufacturing facilities after an internal inquiry determined they were not in compliance with safety standards and posed potential risks to patients. No one was harmed in those incidents, but five years ago, the hospital faced a superbug outbreak that left seven patients dead and was not detailed until researchers reported it in a scientific paper a year later. The 63-year-old hospital is the largest of its kind.It sees thousands of patients with rare and difficult diseases, many of whom enroll in NIH clinical trials as their last hope. The free, cutting-edge care has led to numerous medical breakthroughs. [NIH hospital needs sweeping reform to protect patient safety, panel says] But most physicians and researchers conducting studies on those patients report to the NIHs 27 institutes and centers, not the hospitals managers. That diffusion of authority makes central decision-making and accountability nearly impossible, the review found. Gallin, who started the patient group in 1998, has drawn widespread admiration for his responsiveness to patient needs, said Jerry Sachs, one of 14 patients who signed the letter to Collins. Sachs said he and two others began writing the letter after Collins announced the shake-up and have not had contact with Gallin or the protesting physicians. We know this guys dedication, he said of Gallin. We know these people and . . . their expertise and their extraordinary work. The physicians letter, released by the NIH late Thursday, contends that the review panel and media coverage demonized [hospital] leadership, demoralized highly effective employees . . . and alarmed our patients. It was signed by seven department heads and distinguished senior scientist Harvey Alter. MINNESOTA Three convicted in Islamic State plot Three Minnesota men accused of plotting to go to Syria to join the Islamic State group were convicted Friday of conspiracy to commit murder overseas. A federal jury convicted Guled Ali Omar, 21, Abdirahman Yasin Daud, 22, and Mohamed Abdihamid Farah, 22, of the most serious charges they faced. Conspiracy to commit murder outside the United States carries the possibility of life in prison. They were also convicted of other counts, including conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and attempting to provide such support. Prosecutors have said the men were part of a group of friends in Minnesotas Somali community who inspired each other to join the Islamic State group. A total of 10 young men were accused in the conspiracy; six have pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to support a foreign terrorist organization. A seventh, Abdi Nur, 22, is at large, believed to be in Syria. Associated Press PENNSYLVANIA Man charged in suicide pact with wife An 80-year-old Pennsylvania man who told police he had a suicide pact with his wife of more than 50 years was charged Friday with criminal homicide. Audy Maxineau plays a public piano outside the MARTA public transportation station in Atlanta Friday. "I've seen these pianos in other cities and always wished they would do it here." (Dg/AP) Edward Friday cut the throat of his wife, Wilma Jean Friday, 82, then slit his own wrists and took 20 opioid painkillers at their home on May 22, Rostraver Township police said. Police found her bleeding and unconscious. She died two days later of hypovolemic shock. The defendant was discharged from a hospital Friday and jailed without bond. Assisted suicide is illegal in Pennsylvania. Associated Press AS VENEZUELA has plunged into economic chaos and a humanitarian crisis, its hemispheric neighbors, including the United States, have mostly looked the other way. Fecklessly, they propose dialogue between the regime of President Nicolas Maduro and the opposition, ignoring the governments blatant violations of constitutional and democratic order and its longstanding refusal to negotiate seriously. The remarkable exception to this dismal diplomatic record has been Luis Almagro, the secretary general of the Organization of American States. Since taking office a year ago, the former Uruguayan foreign minister has revived the once-moribund regional organization by becoming an eloquent advocate for democracy and human rights. This week Mr. Almagro stunned his timid fellow statesmen by proposing that the OAS formally review Venezuelas adherance to the Inter-American Democratic Charter, a 2001 treaty that binds OAS members to democratic norms and provides for collective action when they are violated. In a 132-page letter to the OAS permanent council, Mr. Almagro documented the Maduro governments sweeping breaches of the rule of law and the mounting humanitarian crisis caused by food, medicine and power shortages. He called for the immediate release of political prisoners and steps to repair institutions and combat corruption. Most important, he stressed that a recall referendum on Mr. Maduro, sought by the opposition and provided for in the constitution, should be held this year. On that depends democracy in Venezuela, the report concluded. The good news is that Mr. Almagros bold action prompted the OAS permanent council to convene its first meeting on Venezuela in two years despite the buffoonish posturing of Mr. Maduro, who called a rally in Caracas to tell Mr. Almagro to stuff his report. The bad news is that cowardice and crass political calculations by council members prompted it to to issue another anodyne appeal for dialogue. The non-response was orchestrated by Argentina, even though its new president, Mauricio Macri, said after his election last November that he would support collective action on Venezuelas violation of democratic norms. That was then: Mr. Macris foreign minister now is hoping to be elected the next U.N. secretary general, and so is anxious to appease Venezuela and its dwindling band of allies. At least Buenos Aires has an excuse. The Obama administration has inexplicably joined in the empty dialogue chorus while failing to take a position on Mr. Almagros letter. Secretary of State John F. Kerry took time from his fruitless pursuit of negotiations in Syria last weekend to place a supportive call to former Spanish prime minster Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who heads the trio of left-leaning statesmen who have tried to broker Venezuelan talks. They have achieved nothing, for the same reason Mr. Kerry has failed in Syria: They lack leverage over a criminal and uncompromising regime. In fact, as Mr. Almagro tartly noted in his letter, political dialogue is useless without a commitment a priori to democracy and the rule of law. The solution in Venezuela, he rightly argued, is not talks but votes. When the political system of a country is extremely polarized, the only solution can come from the decision of the sovereign, says his report. On Thursday, Mr. Almagro reiterated his call for a review of Venezuela under the Democratic Charter. Hes calculating that greater diplomatic pressure could force the Maduro regime to schedule a referendum. Mr. Almagro ought to have the support of the United States. Colby Coash can point to the moment his evolution in thinking about the death penalty began. It was Sept. 3, 1994, and Coash now a conservative senator in the Nebraska legislature but then a freshman at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln decided to go with some friends to the state penitentiary. Willie Otey, convicted of first-degree murder, was set to be executed at midnight, and people were gathering in the parking lot outside. Coash can still remember the scene: the live band, the grilling meat, the revelers popping cans of beer and chanting, Fry him! You wouldnt have been able to tell the difference between the parking lot of the penitentiary and a tailgate. It was pretty ugly, Coash says now. Even though he went to the event as a supporter of capital punishment, he says, it kind of changed my heart. I thought, I dont want to be a part of state-sponsored killing. For much of the past 40 years, public support for the death penalty has been high, topping out at 80 percent in 1994, according to Gallup polling. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the death penalty was so popular that it was used as a political cudgel by Republicans looking to depict opponents as soft on crime. In the 1988 presidential race, Democrat Michael Dukakis was hammered by George H.W. Bushs campaign and the media after he said at a debate that he would not support the death penalty, even if someone raped and murdered his wife. In 1992, candidate Bill Clinton, then governor of Arkansas and looking to avoid a repeat of Dukakiss trouble, returned to his home state to preside over the execution of a mentally disabled prisoner named Ricky Ray Rector. Since the Supreme Court legalized capital punishment in 1976, most individuals of all political orientations were for the death penalty when asked the question in the abstract, says Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. But that has started to shift. Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both support the death penalty but Trump is much more enthusiastic, and Clinton has had to answer for her husbands criminal justice policies during her primary campaign against Sen. Bernie Sanders. A Pew poll found that just 40 percent of Democrats supported capital punishment last year, down from 71 percent in 1996. That same poll showed GOP support for the policy dropping 10 points, from 87 to 77 percent, over the decade. Times are changing for conservatives but for markedly conservative reasons. In the past year, Republican lawmakers in red-leaning Nebraska, Utah, Missouri, Kentucky, Kansas, Ohio, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and New Hampshire have all sponsored bills to repeal the death penalty. Theyre organizing themselves in places like North Carolina, Tennessee and Washington state, too. Coash is now part of a small group of activists who argue that the best case against the death penalty is a conservative one and that the best way to make progress on the issue is to convince other Republicans in red states where the death penalty is, for the most part, uncontroversial. After that night in Lincoln, Coash decided he couldnt support the death penalty as a pro-life Catholic. But it wasnt until he made it into the Nebraska legislature in 2008 that he could do anything about it. For years, state Sen. Ernie Chambers, a progressive firebrand from North Omaha, had been introducing bills to stop the death penalty, but only twice in 1979 and 1999 had they passed, and both were promptly vetoed. In 2015, though, Coash sensed an opening. Though Nebraskas legislature is technically nonpartisan, its not difficult to tell that many of the members are, like their voters, Republicans and voters had sent a group of freshman lawmakers to the state House that year whom Coash figured might be open to his conservative arguments. So he began reaching out to his new colleagues, one by one, and asking them to sign on to Chamberss bill. Coash realized that the traditional arguments against the death penalty the potential for error; the way it is unevenly applied to poor, black and mentally disabled defendants were not working on conservatives. Those arguments, he figured, were too abstract for death penalty supporters, who looked to death row inmates and saw men who they felt didnt deserve their sympathy. So he tailored his approach. I started to frame the death penalty in a different way, to change the narrative, he says. I used Republican principles to argue that this was a broken system. First, he made the case that the death penalty was costly and ineffective. Nebraska had spent an estimated $100 million on death penalty cases and executed only three people since the Supreme Courts 1976 ruling that affirmed the constitutionality of capital punishment. Second, Coash argued, conservatives are supposed to be the ones who push back against unjust overreach into individuals lives, and what would be a better example of that intrusion than potentially taking an innocent life through capital punishment? Third, he said, the families of victims many of whom had testified before his committee that the endless appeals on death penalty cases were traumatizing and unjust deserved better. When asked to describe his position in personal terms, he said it was consistent with a promise he made to always vote pro-life. The debate on the bill was long and emotional. But in May 2015, Nebraskas legislature voted to repeal the death penalty, becoming the 19th state to ban it and the seventh since 2007. A week later, lawmakers wrangled enough votes to overturn Gov. Pete Rickettss veto. The governor has poured his considerable financial resources into a November ballot measure to reinstate it, but the efforts of Coash and his colleagues have turned Nebraska into a test lab for opposing the death penalty from the right. Religiously committed conservative activists have received a number of boosts over the past few decades, including Pope John Paul IIs declaration of Catholic opposition to the death penalty in 1995. (Pope Francis has been just as emphatic.) The past several years have also seen what Dunham calls the innocence revolution more prisoners being exonerated, sometimes through new investigations, other times through DNA evidence which has drawn attention to the potential for error. Dunham thinks the resurgence of activist groups focused on limited government in the wake of the recession reignited the dialogue about the costliness of the policy. Younger voters, too, are slightly less likely to support capital punishment than older conservatives. Last year, the National Latino Evangelical Coalition voted unanimously to oppose the death penalty. In October, the National Association of Evangelicals updated its 1973 resolution in support of the policy to acknowledge the opposition of some of its members. To help reach pro-death-penalty Republican voters, anti-death-penalty conservatives are turning to people who can speak in ways conservatives might identify with, even if these advocates arent, themselves, conservative such as Christy Sheppard, a counselor from Ada, Okla., whose cousin, Debra Carter, was murdered in 1982. A few months ago, Sheppard traveled to Nebraska to tell the story of what happened after her cousins death. Five years after the slaying, police arrested two men, Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz, and charged them with murder. Fritz received life in prison; Williamson was sentenced to death. For years the family was satisfied, even happy with the outcome until DNA testing 11 years later proved that both men were innocent. The man eventually found guilty in Carters death, Glen Gore, was already in prison on other charges by the time a DNA test identified him. He walked away from a work crew after learning that he was a suspect in the 1982 murder but turned himself in a week later. He was convicted in 2006. . Sheppard felt tremendous guilt over the ordeal that Williamson, who suffers from bipolar disorder, faced. To think that we wanted him to die for a crime he wasnt even guilty of he didnt even know her is just horrible, she says. When anti-death-penalty groups began asking her to tell her story, she says, I felt like I couldnt not say anything. But anti-death-penalty conservatives are still working against broad support for capital punishment, especially among their fellow conservatives. Kentuckys bill failed by one vote to make it out of the House Judiciary Committee. In Utah, the Senate passed a bill, but it was pulled from the House floor after leaders realized that it didnt have enough votes. And in Nebraska, Ricketts and his billionaire father, TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars backing Novembers ballot initiative to bring the death penalty back. The group organizing those efforts, Nebraskans for the Death Penalty, said in a news release last year that, according to its polling information, 64 percent of Nebraska voters agreed with its position. The thread running through Nebraska, Kentucky, North Carolina and other states where conservatives have been working against capital punishment is Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, a group founded by Heather Beaudoin, a 31-year-old from Michigan with a background in conservative politics. Beaudoin was raised in an evangelical family. She likes to say that her opposition to the death penalty is of the Lord, because its something shes felt passionate about since she was a little girl. After a brief stint in Washington, D.C., after college, Beaudoin moved to Montana to work for AmeriCorps, and one day, outside her office, the Montana Abolition Coalition held a rally with exonerees and their family members. Beaudoin landed a job with the coalition by suggesting that she lead outreach to evangelicals and the law enforcement community. After a few years, she went to Equal Justice USA, a group that works on criminal justice reform issues, to launch a national organization aimed at conservatives. That turned into Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty. Beaudoin reaches out to evangelical and other faith-based leaders and gets them talking about policy; her colleague Marc Hyden, the groups national advocacy coordinator, works with movement conservatives, college Republicans, tea party activists and libertarians. For me, its about redemption, Beaudoin says. I think that is true for most evangelicals as well. Thats at the center of our faith. We believe in grace, we believe that God can do wonderful things. How can we say, You are the worst of the worst, you are not worthy, and we will dispose of you? What does that say about us and what we believe? Hyden says he and Beaudoin have been surprised by how theyve been welcomed at events like the Conservative Political Action Conference and on conservative college campuses. Im finding that we are being accepted in some of the most conservative circles of America, he says. Hyden, who previously worked for the National Rifle Association, frames his arguments to movement conservatives in a slightly different way than Beaudoin does. Theres nothing limited about giving power to the state to kill you, he says. Especially if you dont trust the government to launch a health-care site or deliver mail. But he understands as well as anyone that the journey to opposing the death penalty is a long and difficult one. I used to support it, Im a little ashamed to say, Hyden says. I was willing to violate my own conservative principles. The harder he looked at the issues, though, the less I could justify supporting it. It risks innocent lives, theres no way its pro-life and it costs more than life without parole. That kind of introspection, Coash and his allies say, is exactly what their side needs. During the debate over the death penalty in Nebraska, Coash said, his father-in-law, a farmer, was shocked and asked him, What the hell are you doing? Coash laid out his case, landing on the fact that the state hadnt even carried out an execution in 20 years. Coash says his father-in-law responded: Well, shoot, get rid of it then! He knows that the pro-death-penalty movement is formidable, but he remains hopeful. Nebraskans, he says, are very practical people. Twitter: @marincogan Read more from Outlook and follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter. Scott W. Bergs books include 38 Nooses: Lincoln, Little Crow, and the Beginning of the Frontiers End. He teaches nonfiction writing and literature at George Mason University. Joe Gould is a jaunty and emaciated little man who has been a notable in the cafeterias, diners, barrooms, and dumps of Greenwich Village for a quarter of a century. So begins Professor Sea Gull, Joseph Mitchells 1942 New Yorker profile of Joe Gould. Its one of the most famous sentences in the magazines long history of famous sentences, and getting to know Mitchells Gould bum, clown, huckster, madman, self-styled last of the bohemians is the place to begin in order to fully appreciate what Jill Lepore is up to in her marvelous new book, Joe Goulds Teeth. Mitchells specialty was chronicling the lives of those in New York City who were down but not quite out, and Joe Gould was the perfect embodiment of the type. He was an unkempt Harvard dropout who would flap his arms and squawk like a sea gull, or consume a meal consisting entirely of ketchup, or recite impromptu poetry designed to mock the very members of the intelligentsia who made up his audience, or drop his pants and jump on a table and swing his . . . but where was I? "Joe Gould's Teeth" by Jill Lepore (Knopf) Yes, Joe Gould was an eccentrics eccentric. But that doesnt explain why were still talking about him 74 years later. Gould was not merely a character: He was also a writer, and not only was he a writer, he was the ur-historian of New York street life, the author of The Oral History of Our Time, a collection of interviews with everyday folk that would reveal what he called the informal history of the shirt-sleeved multitude what they had to say about their jobs, love affairs, vittles, sprees, scrapes, and sorrows. The entire project, running into the millions of words (according to Gould) was preserved for posterity (according to Gould) in a mountain of schoolhouse composition books, one after another after another, hundreds of them, stored wherever he could find a willing benefactor with some spare room in a cellar, shed, closet or trunk. Goulds project was perfectly calibrated to confirm and conform to Mitchells bone-deep belief that the annals of humankind were always more interesting when written from the bottom up. Only, in the Oral History, Gould had gone Mitchell one better. He may have been ridden with fleas, but he was, very literally, making history. At least thats what Gould said he was doing. Not for nothing does Lepore call the Oral History the longest book ever written and never read. Mitchell never could figure out where most of Goulds composition books were kept, or if, in fact, there were anywhere near as many as Gould said there were. And most of the excerpts Mitchell did manage to locate werent filled with carefully transcribed interviews but rather with very personal essays relating Goulds own musings and activities many times fourth and fifth revisions of those essays. Gould lived out his later years as a charity case, penniless and toothless (hence the books title), and died at a sanatorium in 1957. But it was not until 1964 that Mitchell publically punctured the myth of Joe Gould, the one hed single-handedly created himself, in a two-part article called Joe Goulds Secret in which he revealed a single eerie and theretofore unreported exchange between writer and subject. (Both Professor Sea Gull and Joe Goulds Secret are available in the Mitchell compilation Up in the Old Hotel.) Mitchell described the moment he learned the truth about the Oral History. My God! I said. It doesnt exist. I was appalled. There isnt any such thing as the Oral History, I said. It doesnt exist. I stared at Gould, and Gould stared at me. His face was expressionless. In the 22 years between Professor Sea Gull and Joe Goulds Secret, the New Yorker had published John Herseys Hiroshima, and in 1965 it would follow with Truman Capotes In Cold Blood. But still, Mitchells strange update on the tale of Joe Gould is considered by many to be the magazines masterpiece, a reading experience akin to what Lepore calls watching DiMaggio play his best game ever. Shes not kidding: Its riveting. And then, if you were paying attention as the next three decades unspooled, it got even weirder. Though Mitchell continued to come into his office at the New Yorker every day for 32 more years, all the way up to his death in 1996, he never published another story. The italics are intentional, for its a tale worthy of Ripleys. The story of Joseph Mitchell, writer, and Joe Gould, funhouse-mirror reflection of Mitchell, has for a half-century and counting blazed as a kind of undimming bonfire around which writers and readers of the elusive genre known as creative nonfiction circle to warm their hands and speak in awed and reverent whispers. Into that circle now steps Lepore, a professor of history at Harvard who, since 1999, has written for the New Yorker as a kind of unofficial national historiographer. Author of 11 books and many academic papers and New Yorker pieces, she has established herself as perhaps the most prolific, nimble and interesting writer of American history today, vigorously kicking at the past until she dislodges it from the ossifying grip of received wisdom. Her characteristic starting point in Joe Goulds Teeth is to refuse to take at face value Mitchells contention that the Oral History didnt exist. Mitchell knew that a phantom text was a better story than a sort-of-kind-of-but-not-really completed text. She doesnt exactly succeed in her quest to find the missing fragments of Goulds history, but she doesnt exactly fail, either. Rather than bursting through the door, arms laden with all of Goulds missing composition books (wouldnt that be dramatic?), Lepore instead takes us along as she sifts in archives and attics for the pieces that do remain, in order to discover the story underneath the story underneath the story. As she brings to bear the methods of an ace historian at the top of her game, Lepore turns Joe Goulds Teeth into a ripping detective story. By the time shes done (in 154 pages of text and 67 pages of notes), Lepore hasnt truly debunked anything though she does reveal Gould to be more of a psychopath and Mitchell to be more of a fabulist than has been previously understood as much as she has worked to widen the sphere of history, as Gould himself wrote of his Oral History. Lepores stance to be fair, the stance of any good writer of biography is that Goulds story is a nexus standing in the middle of an exceedingly rich intersection of themes that embrace mid-20th-century American attitudes toward race, class, gender, psychiatry, celebrity and, of course, history. Of all the stories swirling around Goulds, none interests Lepore so much as that of Augusta Savage, an African American sculptor and civil rights activist from Harlem who became the unreciprocated love of Goulds life, an unwilling muse and, after she refused his offer of marriage, an object of outright harassment. No other writer has made this connection between Savage and Gould, and one of the central satisfactions of Joe Goulds Teeth is the way it unexpectedly veers away from Gould to take Savages story on its own terms, delivering by Trojan horse, as it were, a gift-wrapped second biography, a personal history set against Goulds in striking, illuminating relief. Myth, seen in one light, is simply history scrubbed clean of complications. Reinserting those complications is what interests Lepore most. In the end, Joe Goulds Teeth is a story about stories, a history about history, an investigation into other investigations. Two writers guard an archive, she writes. One writes fiction; the other writes fact. To get past them, you have to figure out which is which. Its an elegant expression of the puzzle at the heart of the book. As for its solution, were offered no easy answers: Rather, I think I can hear Lepore saying, somewhere in the distance, Good luck with that. President Obama delivers the commencement address for the 2016 class of the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs on June 2. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press) If you look at the polls, it is clear whos winning the 2016 presidential contest: Barack Obama. There remains the technical impediment that the president is constitutionally barred from a third term. But the longer the campaign goes on, the higher Obamas approval rating rises. This should be bad for Donald Trump and good for the eventual Democratic nominee, almost certainly Hillary Clinton. But it is even better for Obamas legacy. According to Gallup, which has been charting the nations assessment of its presidents longer than anyone else, Obamas approval stands at 52 percent, compared with 44 percent disapproval. That may not look impressive but it is actually quite good for a president nearing the end of his second term; Ronald Reagan, by comparison, had 49 percent approval at this point in his tenure. For most of last year, Obamas numbers were upside-down more Americans disapproved than approved. So there are two obvious questions: What airport is going to be renamed Obama International? And why the turnaround? I believe the increasingly warm feelings about the president must have something to do with the contrast between him and his potential successors. Trump and Clinton may be the most widely disliked major-party contenders ever (though Trump is arguably in a class of his own, with nearly two-thirds of Americans saying they would never, under any circumstances, vote for him as president.) Here's what a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted May 16-19, 2016 said about the race between Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton and GOP candidate Donald Trump. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post) The speculation about when Trump will shift tactics and begin acting presidential is laughable. It should be clear by now that Trump is not only unwilling to change but incapable of doing so. Look at the way he continues to lash out at anyone he perceives as having slighted him New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R), for example, a potentially valuable ally whom Trump is determined to make into an enemy. Look at the news conference Tuesday at which he lashed out at a reporter, calling him a sleaze, for having questioned Trumps record of charitable giving. Then look at Obama. Whatever you think of his policies, not for a minute has he failed to comport himself with the dignity and gravitas required to serve as president. Never has he given the impression of acting out of pique rather than calculation. Never does he seem a threat to put ego-gratification above what he believes to be the best interests of the nation. Im setting a low bar here. The fact that Trump does not clear it has to engender a degree of fondness for Obama and has to help Clinton, who does the gravitas thing just fine. Another factor in Obamas rising approval has to be the realization that despite Republican proclamations of doom and gloom, on balance things are going pretty well. Slow but steady economic expansion has not only reduced unemployment to 5 percent but also perhaps begun to move the needle slightly on incomes. Consumer confidence, an important indicator, is up. The effect of the recovery hardly feels like a boom but is nothing like the total bust that Trump and other Republicans describe. The president has been increasingly forthright in showcasing his administrations record his remarks in Indiana on the economy this week sounded almost like a vintage Obama campaign speech. He has also demonstrated his intention to do everything he can to ensure that his successor is a Democrat who seeks to build on his achievements, not dismantle them. Like many presidents in their final months, Obama is spending considerable time and effort on foreign affairs. Here, too, we see contrast and legacy. He has fundamentally changed the U.S.-Cuba relationship in ways that will be hard for anyone to reverse. He has continued to act with extreme caution in the Middle East, resisting calls for substantial deployment of U.S. combat forces. He made a bold statement against nuclear proliferation by visiting Hiroshima and hugging a survivor of the atomic bombing that turned the city into a smoldering wasteland confronting the past without apology but with sober reflection. Trump, on the other hand, believes it would be fine if Japan and South Korea got nuclear weapons of their own. We tend to appreciate presidents more after they leave office. The inevitable reassessment of the Obama years seems to be starting early perhaps in apprehension of the years to come. Even Obamas harshest critics have to admit he was a steady hand in the White House. Reflection on this fact can only increase Clintons chances against a man who prides himself on being combative, capricious and cocksure. Read more from Eugene Robinsons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A. In his May 30 Education column, Why two bright students say I messed up their high school, Jay Mathews discussed his inclusion of the ratio of Advanced Placement tests to graduating seniors in his high school rankings. I agree with the students. They complained that encouraging high student AP participation so schools score well on this metric significantly increases AP student diversity and results in less focus on top students. The best students are not challenged and educated as well as they should be. Measuring AP participation, not success, perverts education orientation toward a single school achievement ranking. My high school in Philadelphia taught all students to learn and understand by questioning and challenging; we were not taught uniformly to the test. The more advanced students formed groups by subject, with time divided between self-study and advanced instruction. We were not bored in class, and the teachers had more time to devote to other students. We made it into colleges and courses appropriate for our varied abilities. Increased individual learning reduced pressure and frustration. Ronald Sheinson, Silver Spring Jack Markell is governor of Delaware. Ive met too many people who want to work but arent given a shot. Often, thats because licensing and certification requirements create obstacles to joining skilled professions where no or lower barriers should exist. A couple of years ago, my office identified a clear example in Delawares barber and cosmetology industries, which used to require either paying for 1,500 hours of instruction or spending 3,000 hours as an apprentice to earn a license the equivalent of about a year of schooling or two years as an apprentice. That wasnt necessary to succeed in these fields, and the rules kept some good people out of these professions because it was either too expensive or took too long to become qualified. To address those issues, we came up with a third option that allows people to combine on-the-job experience with a shorter school program. Meanwhile, research across the country has suggested that there is a lack of access to work in certain legal and health services that dont require a law or medical degree, such as providing defense in eviction cases and basic primary-care services, because of overly burdensome licensing laws. With the massive proliferation of licensing boards created by state governments for everything from florists and manicurists to construction and maintenance workers its time that public officials across the country take a close look at how we can remove impediments to jobs. In an era of increasing partisanship, this issue presents a clear opportunity for elected officials to help their constituents go as far as their potential will take them. Thats something that respected policy leaders on the left and right agree on. Still, governors and legislators face real obstacles. Those who work in every affected industry have an enormous incentive to keep barriers in place. Removing professional licensing requirements means more competition for incumbents. Many of them point to the public safety interest in having some licensing system, even though a closer examination would show safety does not explain the need for all of their requirements, as in the case of barbers and cosmetologists. To overcome those hurdles, political leaders must build coalitions to represent the diverse beneficiaries of licensing reform. That includes groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and other criminal justice advocates concerned about ex-offenders who are forced to wait too long after release before joining certain professions and earning the type of living that would help them avoid recidivism. Pushing back against the power of licensing boards also fits with concerns from the right about government overreach. One conservative state senator in Delaware has bemoaned the number of licenses he needed in his business career, and conservative lawmakers have made complaints about licensure requirements part of their message about excessive government involvement in the economy. By bringing groups such as these together, we can enact broad reforms necessary to reverse the overregulation of many professions and address the fact that Delawares Division of Professional Regulation averages more than 85,000 active licenses in a given year in a state with a population of only 930,000. A recent Supreme Court ruling has helped shift the political winds in favor of reform, with the justices deciding that when a controlling number of the decision makers on a state licensing board are active participants in the occupation the board regulates as is often the case board members may be subject to liability under federal antitrust laws if there isnt sufficient supervision of the board by the state. We should use that ruling as an opportunity to be more judicious about the number of licensing requirements created and who creates them. To build support and make the case for change in Delaware, I recently signed an executive order creating a committee to review existing licensing regulations and recommend ways to eliminate unnecessary barriers to entry. Through that process, we will root out onerous requirements, recognizing that not all of our regulations can be right. We will ask whether those licensed in states with less imposing requirements are in fact less qualified, and we will challenge ourselves to defend the reasons for additional burdens on licensees. Our final product will also confirm our commitment to the benefits of thoughtful professional licensing. We all appreciate the requirements that doctors must earn the MD or DO after their names to practice medicine, and that lawyers must acquire JDs to show they can be trusted to provide expert legal advice. The important role of our licensing system is most clearly seen when we eliminate the excess. For far too long, we havent been sufficiently thoughtful when industries create high barriers to entry. The government has a moral obligation to protect its citizens from dangerous professional conduct, but we also have an obligation to ensure that hard-working Americans have every opportunity to improve their lives. States must lead the way. Steven Pearlstein is a Post economics writer. He is also Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University. In 1714, Bernard Mandeville published the Fable of the Bees, a tale of a hive of industrious and avaricious bees that became so prosperous that it had the luxury of beginning to worry about its virtue and by so doing brought on its own demise. It was Mandevilles paradox of private vice and public benefit that Adam Smith would revive decades later in writing of the invisible hand of the market that miraculously transforms individual greed into collective prosperity. And ever since, economists and champions of free markets have relied upon this paradox to defend not only the wealth-creating efficacy of capitalism but its morality as well. Liberal economist Samuel Bowles has made it his lifes work to challenge the ideas that greed is good and that free markets can be relied on to deliver the greatest good to the greatest number. In A Cooperative Species, Bowles and fellow University of Massachusetts professor Herbert Gintis showed that it is not only selfishness that has been hard-wired into our nature by the evolutionary struggle for survival so have instincts such as cooperation, altruism and fairness. This biological evolution in favor of pro-social characteristics, they argued, has been reinforced by a simultaneous cultural evolution through which societies that have encouraged and enforced ethical and generous behavior have won out over those that have clung to the law of the jungle. The Moral Economy is Bowless latest effort to purge homo economicus the single-minded income-maximizing economic actor as the conceptual foundation of our economic thinking. After all, even Adam Smith and free-market champions such as Friedrich Hayek acknowledged that free-market economies rely not only on people pursuing their self-interest but on people also being honest, fair and concerned for the well-being of others most of the time. In his latest book, Bowles argues that it is not sufficient to rely on rule of law, property rights and private contracts the holy trinity of free-market fundamentalism to ensure pro-social behavior. Those incentives must be reinforced by widely accepted moral codes and norms of social behavior. Drawing on game theory, behavioral and experimental economics, and even neurobiology, he shows that over-relying on the markets financial incentives will undermine moral values and social norms and cause them to atrophy, like unused muscles. "The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives Are No Substitute for Good Citizens" by Samuel Bowles (Yale Univ.) To illustrate the point, Bowles cites the story of a chain of day-care centers in Haifa, Israel, that imposed a fine on parents who were late in picking up their children at the end of the day. It turned out that the fine undermined the sense of moral obligation not to extend the workday of center staff and instead made the right to show up late something they could buy as an added service. And then theres the story of the Boston fire commissioner who, upset by what he felt was an abuse of sick days by firefighters on Mondays and Fridays, imposed fines for those taking more than 15 days. Insulted firefighters called in sick in droves over the Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays. Equally ineffective: rewarding students with money if they get better test scores, giving bonuses to doctors who reduce the length of their patients hospital stays or offering money to passersby to help move a sofa. And as anyone who lived through the recent financial crisis understands, the surest way to destroy wealth is to provide too much financial incentive to overpaid and under-regulated investment bankers. Bowles joins philosopher Michael Sandel, experimental psychologist Joshua Greene, education writer Alfie Kohn and management expert Daniel Pink in asserting that the pleasure we take in doing the right thing (or avoiding the shame of doing the wrong thing) is often a more effective incentive than money. What works best, Bowles writes, is to encourage civic action by appealing to both material interests and moral sentiments, framed so that the two work synergistically rather than at cross-purposes. He cites numerous examples of when moral behavior and social norms have been enhanced, or crowded in, by market incentives, in contrast to those examples when pro-social behavior is crowded out. But what makes this somewhat belabored discussion so unsatisfying in the end is that Bowles fails to offer any useful criteria for knowing in advance whether an incentive will fall into one camp or the other. The Moral Economy is based in part on the Castle lectures that Bowles delivered at Yale in 2010, and the first hundred or so pages have the clarity, accessibility and broad historical sweep that are the hallmarks of a memorable lecture. But midway through the book, Bowles begins to lose sight of the big picture and allows himself to get tangled up in logical hair-splitting and the arcane jargon of experimental social science. His points become repetitious, the flow of the argument is lost, and its hard to find the connection between the research and everyday economic reality. As a result, what might have been a useful critique of market fundamentalism, written for a general audience and drawing on a range of exciting new research, winds up as disappointingly narrow and academic. One of the blind spots of modern economics has been its inability to incorporate moral sentiments and social norms into its models of how people, firms and even entire economies behave. Such norms and sentiments can be hard to define and even harder to measure; how they change and evolve remains largely a mystery. But, as the earliest philosophers understood, and as Bowles reminds us once again, civic virtue is no less important to a prosperous economy as it is to a successful state. On June 21, Donald Trump will meet with nearly 500 prominent evangelical Christians who are trying to get more comfortable with the idea of supporting a decidedly secular candidate. The organizers are leading lights of the Christian right, including the Family Research Councils Tony Perkins, radio host James Dobson and the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Ronnie Floyd. These leaders describe the event as a listening session. The Trump campaign, and just about everyone else, will regard it as an en masse endorsement. The proposed deal is not subtly put. In exchange for their support, Trump is offering to appoint conservative Supreme Court justices and to lift restrictions on the political activities of tax-exempt institutions. Were going to take care of you, Trump recently told an evangelical audience. This is a particularly clear presentation of a long-term temptation (as old as the third temptation of Christ). The emperor, or king, or president offers to further the mission of the church. The church, in turn, provides legitimacy to power. In the current case, support for Trump is presented as pragmatism. So lets be clear about what is gained and what is lost. Religious conservatives gain a better shot at a conservative Supreme Court nominee. This is not even close to a sure bet. A political candidate who claims to be pro-life but supported partial-birth abortion as late as 1999 has convictions charitably described as fluid. But Trump is more likely to make a conservative selection than is Hillary Clinton. So what is lost? Support for Trump involves a massive, disorienting shift, especially given the reputation of the religious right. It is, well, unexpected for evangelicals to endorse a political figure who has engaged in creepy sex talk on the radio, boasted about his extramarital affairs, made a fortune from gambling and bragged about his endowment on national television. But the tension runs much deeper. Evangelical Christians are not merely choosing a certain political outcome. They are determining their public character the way they are viewed by others and, ultimately, the way they view themselves. They are identifying with a man who has fed ethnic tension for political gain; who has proposed systemic religious discrimination; who has dramatically undermined the democratic values of civility and tolerance; who has advocated war crimes, including killing the families of terrorists; who holds a highly sexualized view of power as dominance, rather than seeing power as an instrument to advance moral ends. In legitimizing the presumptive Republican nominee, evangelicals are not merely accepting who he is; they are changing who they are. Trumpism, at its root, involves contempt for, and fear of, outsiders refugees, undesirable migrants, Muslims, etc. By associating with this movement, evangelicals will bear, if not the mark of Cain, at least the mark of Trump. Over the Christian churchs two-millennium existence, there have been a variety of attempts to define a distinctly Christian approach to the messy business of politics. Over the past few decades, the most serious and successful effort has been made by Catholics (who have their own disturbing history of blessing strongmen). Catholic leaders have constructed a model of social engagement that places the needs of the weak and vulnerable at its center. The justice of a society is judged by its treatment of the powerless, the dispossessed, the exile. Evangelicals, sadly, have no such broadly held framework. So Trumps supporters are attempting to devise their own guidelines on the theological fly. We dont need a spiritual giant in the White House, says Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress. We need a strong leader. There is also, he argues, the electability factor in beating Clinton. What is specifically Christian about this argument for an electable strongman? It could easily be made by any third-rate political operative. It is presented as political realism by people who know almost nothing of politics. Have they factored in the global depression that might result from Trumps trade war? Or the military challenges that might be invited by weakening traditional alliances and security arrangements? Presumably, evangelical leaders know more about moral and spiritual principles. But here they are often silent. Instead, many are preaching a type of utilitarianism a distasteful offering of incense to the emperor for the sake of the greater good. But in lowering the sights of Christian political involvement, they are no longer serving a faith where justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. They are dishonoring that ideal before a watching nation. Donald Trump won South Carolina's presidential primary with strong evangelical support. Yet evangelicals remain bitterly divided, as many question his stance on social issues ranging from abortion to gay marriage. (Dalton Bennett/The Washington Post) To everything there is a season. This is the time for principled dissent. Read more from Michael Gersons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook . Everything about gentrification is controversial even its definition. One recent study by sociologist Michael Barton compared how the New York Times and researchers used the term to talk about city neighborhoods; he found very little agreement about where change was happening. Thats not the only thing we cant agree on. Gentrification is painted alternately as a destroyer of neighborhoods or a savior of cities. These competing views are driven in part by misconceptions about what the word means and what it entails. Here are some of the most common. 1. Gentrification leads to lower crime. Over the past decade, urban crime rates have dropped precipitously. City-watchers often point to gentrification. A letter to the editor in the New Orleans Times-Picayune called a city getting safer one of the chief byproducts of gentrification. A Mic article attributed a 30 percent crime drop in one Brooklyn neighborhood to the phenomenon. The logic is simple: Poorer neighborhoods tend to have more crime. Gentrification, which brings an influx of wealthier residents, should lower the crime rate. In fact, studies of the relationship between crime and gentrification have found the opposite: Gentrification often leads to increases in crime. One study found that larceny and robbery went up in gentrifying neighborhoods across the country. There are at least two explanations for this pattern. The new, wealthier residents might be more lucrative targets for would-be burglars and robbers, perhaps enticing them to engage in more illegal acts. And crime thrives on instability, anonymity and weaker social ties, all of which make it easier for criminals to blend in and less likely for neighbors to look out for one another. Gentrification, by definition, destabilizes a neighborhood. 2. Gentrification causes widespread displacement. For many, gentrification is synonymous with the expulsion of low-income residents. As urbanist Richard Florida wrote in CityLab, Displacement can be and is a big issue in places where gentrification is occurring at a feverish pace. The Charlotte Observer warned that gentrification may be complicated, but its not a myth and neither is displacement. Of course, when neighborhoods change, some families do get pushed out. But my research shows that longtime residents arent more likely to move when their neighborhood gentrifies; sometimes theyre actually less likely to leave (in part because of the improvements gentrification can bring). In one study, I found that the probability that a household would be displaced in a gentrifying neighborhood in New York was 1.3 percent. A 2015 study in Philadelphia found something similar that neighborhood income gains did not significantly predict household exit rates. What distinguishes gentrification is not who moves out; its who moves in. In a gentrifying neighborhood, new residents are more likely to be well-off . As a result, the neighborhoods poverty makeup can shift, even if no one leaves. In 2004, I found that a neighborhoods poverty rate could drop from 30 percent to 12 percent in a decade with minimal displacement. Thats because gentrification often leads to new construction or to investment in once-vacant properties. Its also worth noting that the vast majority of poor neighborhoods across the country arent gentrifying. Outside of hot metro areas such as New York, Washington and San Francisco, most poor places stay poor. 3. Longtime residents hate gentrification. Gentrification has a decidedly negative connotation, often painted as a loss for a neighborhoods old-timers. This idea is amplified by the press. An In These Times magazine article about gentrification in the Big Easy claimed that when native New Orleanians talk, the topic inevitably turns to conflicts with the new migrants. In a story about a proposed apartment building in Washington, Bloomberg Views columnist Megan McArdle wrote that longtime residents were vehemently opposed on the grounds that this would cause gentrification. New York Daily News columnist Josh Greenman describes this as a we-were-here-first attitude. Of course, some people dont want to see their neighborhoods change. But often, residents appreciate certain aspects of gentrification. Homeowners stand to gain a windfall as the value of their property appreciates. Increased retail activity brings more goods and services to once-forlorn areas. With gentrification, residents may no longer find it necessary to travel outside their neighborhood to have a sit-down meal or avail themselves of fresh produce. Whether residents appreciate the changes comes down to two things: the amenities in their neighborhood prior to gentrification, and whether the new services benefit the people who live there. In neighborhoods with severe disinvestment, lacking many retail services that most people take for granted, one may find long-term residents who appreciate gentrification. As the Washington City Paper wrote about the District, Most longtime residents of low-income neighborhoods dont clamor for gentrification, exactly, but they do want the things it often brings: grocery stores and other retail within walking distance; better transit connections; reduced crime; and attention from the city government. 4. Gentrifiers are white. The stereotypical image of a gentrifier is a bearded white guy on a fixie or a young white professional who treats her dog like a spoiled child. One D.C. resident protested white gentrifiers in his neighborhood with lawn signs. Spike Lee has also talked about the phenomenon in explicitly racial tones, asking, Why does it take an influx of white New Yorkers in the south Bronx, in Harlem, in Bed Stuy, in Crown Heights for the facilities to get better? As the website Gizmodo put it, Across the United States, white infill is associated with gentrification. But gentrification is hardly a white thing. In many neighborhoods, middle-class Asians, blacks and Latinos are part and parcel of the process. Millennials and young professionals of all races appreciate the attractions and conveniences of city living. In a 2009 study, I found that gentrifying neighborhoods are more racially diverse than non-gentrifying ones. Theres another reason for this, too. Kesha Moore of Drew University has shown that professionals are drawn to some low-income minority neighborhoods because of a desire to give back to the communities where they or their parents grew up. In minority neighborhoods that are gentrifying, nonwhite gentrifiers arent as noticeable as white ones. And even when we do notice them, we dont call them gentrifiers. 5. Gentrification happens naturally. When we talk about a gentrified neighborhood, we may imagine something specific a bustling street with new coffee shops, boutique clothing stores and artisanal breweries. Gentrification probably does mean getting a Starbucks or another upscale cafe, Gizmodo wrote. In fact, the coffee chain is so synonymous with the phenomenon that the Guardian asked: In gentrified cities which came first: Starbucks or higher real estate prices? Its true that a lot of gentrifying neighborhoods get these amenities. But its not inevitable. As sociologist Sylvie Tissot has shown, gentrifiers dont rely on market forces alone to bring in the types of restaurants and shops compatible with a neighborhoods new image. The same gentrifiers who are drawn to a low-income neighborhood for cheaper housing might also work to change the area more to their liking. This might mean leaning on police and code enforcers to drive out seedy bars, or pushing policymakers to provide subsidies to businesses that fit in. To be sure, market forces help change commerce in gentrifying neighborhoods. But often lurking behind the invisible hand are activists and policymakers who wish to nudge the market to produce certain outcomes. Sometimes, the poor try to use these same levers to change their neighborhoods. Consider Harlem, where residents in the 1970s sought to stabilize their community by luring middle-class homeowners and retail. Their successes may have paved the way for outsiders to invest, move in and spur gentrification. But change began long before the demographic shift. outlook@washpost.com Five myths is a weekly feature challenging everything you think you know. You can check out previous myths, read more from Outlook or follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter. Steven Mufson is a Washington Post staff writer covering energy and other financial news It seems hard to remember a time when oil wasnt fueling a crisis of some sort: invasions of Mideast oil exporters, a roller coaster of prices, boom and bust cycles from North Dakota to Nigeria, and a quixotic quest for American energy independence that started with President Richard Nixon. In her well-researched book Panic at the Pump, Meg Jacobs takes us back to the twin oil shocks of the 1970s, which shook not only the American economy but also American politics. These jolts were a rude discovery of the limits of U.S. resources, will and global power. They exposed a sense of impotence and disillusion already fanned by the Watergate scandal and the unhappy end of the Vietnam War. Many of the debates of the 70s remain touchstones of our politics today. [How the worlds great oil powers became so powerless] In the first shock, Arab oil exporters imposed an oil embargo on the United States for helping Israel during the Yom Kippur War in 1973 an energy Pearl Harbor, a Nixon aide called it. In the second, a drop in Iranian output after the revolution ousted the shah in 1979, and output cuts and price increases by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), inflicted grave damage on Jimmy Carters presidency as well as the global economy. (The humiliating hostage crisis in Iran also overshadowed Carters last year.) "Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s" by Meg Jacobs (Hill and Wang ) Both oil shocks led to long lines at gasoline pumps and anger among American motorists and voters. It was, Jacobs argues persuasively, a time that transformed American politics. Democrats and Republicans fought among themselves as well as with each other over how best to respond. Many Americans worried that an era of boundless optimism, economic growth and prosperity would give way to limits and scarcity. Others came away convinced that the United States would have to boost its military capabilities and be ready to fight to protect its economic as well as national security. The oil crises drove both parties away from heavy-handed regulation, but it was a long process. Among Republicans, President Dwight Eisenhower had imposed oil import restrictions to protect domestic producers. Later, Nixon, eager to curb widespread anger at the pumps, imposed price controls, including different prices for old oil and newly discovered oil as well as a byzantine system that allocated restricted supplies of gasoline to service stations. Nixon, in the wake of an oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., and massive Earth Day demonstrations, oversaw the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Yet Republicans such as George H.W. Bush, who made a fortune in the oil patch, and Ronald Reagan pulled the party in another direction, and they believed that the oil crises bolstered their case. They and a growing conservative intellectual movement declared that free markets would promote new oil production and ration supplies. Jacobs, in describing this, does not lose sight of the fact that most of these Republican advocates of deregulation still clung to subsidies such as the oil depletion allowance. And, as oil prices soared, they sought to soften EPA regulations to ease burdens on the petroleum industry. Jacobs, a research scholar at Princeton Universitys Woodrow Wilson School, gives us a rich chronicle of this period. She describes how the Watergate struggles undercut Nixons authority and distracted his attention from energy. She recounts the too-often-overlooked battle that took place in the Ford administration over energy policy. President Gerald Ford signed a bill that extended price controls and established fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles over conservatives protests. But as Jacobs notes, there was a group of free-market Mohicans in the administration that was moving to the center of the Republican policy establishment, tugging in the other direction toward fewer controls. Few figures are more divisive and misunderstood in that turbulent decade than Carter. The Democratic president came into office declaring the moral equivalent of war against high oil prices and U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Sen. Henry Jackson (D-Wash.) joined Carter in pressing for conservation a word later banished from the energy policy lexicon and replaced by energy efficiency. Both men sought to subsidize investment in alternative sources of energy. Carter put solar panels on the White House roof; Reagan later took them down. At that time, Democrats, for the most part, still opposed letting the free market dictate conditions and wanted to protect the members of the lower and middle class, most of whom drove to work. [Review: Americas War for the Greater Middle East] But Carter and his posture on energy became objects of mockery for Republicans. Never mind that many of the measures associated with him actually began under Nixon although Carter did have every other light bulb in the White House unscrewed. As the energy crisis deepened in the summer of 1979 after new rounds of OPEC price increases, Carter delivered a speech lamenting that Americans faced a crisis of confidence and saying that too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. It became known as the malaise speech, although Carter never used that word. For a few days the speech sharply boosted his approval ratings, but today it is seen as a failure. Indeed, while Carter did deregulate airlines and trucking, he kept to a gradual phasing out of oil price controls, even though higher oil prices would have brought about the lower consumption he sought. To this day, Carter remains a symbol of weakness in part because of his handling of the energy crisis. Yet after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, he issued what became known as the Carter Doctrine. Scrapping his initial version of his State of the Union address shortly after the invasion, Carter delivered a stern warning that the United States would intervene in the Middle East to protect oil supply lines. That initial step led to a buildup that has enabled America to project force in the region. As early as 1968, the elder Bush here an intriguing character who pushed for partial deregulation under Nixon predicted that the next struggle will be in the Middle East. When as president in 1990 he chose to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait, Bush could rely on a military that had been bolstered first by Carter and later by Reagan, who created U.S. Central Command in 1983. At a time when political candidates are bickering over how to make America great again, there is much to recommend in this book. First, it explains that the oil crisis was exacerbated by regulations but was also a product of peaking U.S. supplies and rapidly increasing consumption. Today, we are benefitting from a boom in shale oil, thanks to technology that wasnt available back in the 70s. But now that oil prices are going down, so is U.S. shale oil production, and Americans are consuming more gasoline than they have since 2007. Four decades after Nixons call for energy independence, the United States still imports more than half its total petroleum needs. Second, a free market in oil can still take account of costs not priced into a barrel of crude. To slow climate change, it seems that policymakers must find a way to slow carbon dioxide emissions, whether by fiat or a carbon tax or cap and trade. We may have more plentiful oil reserves than we ever imagined, but climate change is shouting that there are, in fact, limits to certain kinds of consumption after all. Jacobs ends on a downbeat note. She says, We are living with the failures of the 1970s to craft public policies to induce conservation and promote alternative energies. The unwillingness of Congress and Americans more broadly to back a bit of sacrifice in the form of a gasoline tax drives her to despair. And in wondering whether we might tackle energy security, stable growth and climate change simultaneously, she says, the lesson of the 1970s does not provide much optimism. I wish I could say she was wrong. Darren Woodruff is chairman of the D.C. Public Charter School Board. Marco Clark is founder and chief executive of Richard Wright Public Charter School. When you send your kids off to school in the morning, you expect that theyll return home safely. But for too many D.C. families, the expectation of safe passage isnt guaranteed. Since the start of the school year, an average of eight students each month have been the victim of robberies around the District. In a heart-wrenching episode, a high school student was stabbed to death by a fellow student while heading home from school. No student should have to fear the journey home. Thats why partners across the District are stepping up to prevent further harm to students. Recently, representatives from a variety of educational, civic and government organizations participated in the citywide Man the Block Safe Passage Program. Man the Block is an initiative created by Southeast D.C.s Richard Wright Public Charter School in 2011 to help students get to and from school safely. Richard Wright parents, staff members and other adults have lined the streets between the school and the closest Metro stop at the start and end of the school day, ensuring that walkways are safe, free of harassment and clear of drugs and alcohol. After seeing Man the Block work at their school, leaders at Richard Wright realized the need to have Safe Passage extended to students in every neighborhood, so they worked with other schools and city agencies to expand the program. Theyve brought in volunteer organizations, including Omega Psi Phi fraternity, 100 Fathers, volunteers from the D.C. Council, universities, businesses and even the Marines. As a result, thousands of students have safer passages between school and home. The benefits of the program extend beyond safety. The involvement of families and other community leaders sends an unmistakable message to students that adults support and stand with them. Students see that the community cares about their future and is committed to ensuring they get a great education in a safe environment. Ensuring student safety is something every adult can get involved in, and not just through official Man the Block events. About 30,000 students every day take free trips on Metro trains and buses through Metros Kids Ride Free programs. These students attend schools in every ward, and they need adults to help maintain safe neighborhoods. When you drop your child off at school or pick him or her up, stick around a few extra minutes to make sure other students getting on the bus or walking to the Metro get there safely. If you have a home or business near a school, take time around arrival and dismissal time to stand outside and help keep an eye on the street. Call, email or visit your nearest school to see what their greatest needs are and how you might be able to help. This issue goes beyond school safety. This is about keeping all of our children safe. We all want D.C.s children to live in a safe city, a place where they can learn, play and grow without the threat of violence or other bad influences. Keeping our children safe has always been a community-wide effort, and it still is today. As The History Channel reboots the iconic 1977 miniseries "Roots," here's a look at how the two casts share some similarities. (Nicki DeMarco/The Washington Post) As The History Channel reboots the iconic 1977 miniseries "Roots," here's a look at how the two casts share some similarities. (Nicki DeMarco/The Washington Post) The new version of Roots that aired this past week was an important reminder of the degradation and brutality experienced by enslaved Africans in America. While the violence, rape and murders depicted in Roots shocked many viewers, the graphic miniseries helped underscore the real costs of slavery, the humanity of the enslaved and the depravity of the enslavers unlike idealized pop-culture depictions such as Gone With the Wind. As a historian, I am dismayed at those who believe that people should move on from more than 250 years of slavery that continues to shape our collective history. For a deeper understanding of slaverys toll in the United States, heres some further reading and viewing. Help Me to Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery, by Heather Williams Williamss meticulously researched, poignant work looks at how the sale of enslaved children, mothers and fathers separated families, even after emancipation. Williams draws on newspaper advertisements, church publications and letters to chronicle the search for sold loved ones in these families own voices, and she shows the emotional pain people experienced. A must-read for understanding how truly devastating slavery was and how seeking lost family members during and after slavery created both hope and despair. North American Slave Narratives, Documenting the American South This open-access resource is full of manuscripts, broadsides, letters and pamphlets written by slaves. The voices of those who experienced the horrors of slavery are invaluable for reclaiming the veracity of their experiences, giving the reader words and images that are not mediated by masters voices. Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household, by Thavolia Glymph In Roots, the plantation mistress, Nancy, plays an especially harsh role. Glymphs book looks at how slave women interacted with the women of the planter class. Cruelties detailed by female former slaves in interviews with writers from the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s help illuminate how their mistresses were invested in supporting slavery and white supremacy. Glymph shows how domestic labor is key to understanding freedom and civil rights. The Birth of a Nation (2016) The story of Nat Turner and the rebellion he led, due for release in October. Turner starts out as a traveling slave preacher who makes money for his master by calling for peace, but his eventual realization of his complicity in the evils of slavery turns him into a leader of an uprising for freedom. Cleverly reusing the title of a 1915 film lionizing the Ku Klux Klan, the movie destroys the stereotypes written by William Styron in The Confessions of Nat Turner. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, by Walter Johnson A compelling book that gets at the heart of what the sale of Africans and African Americans in the New Orleans slave markets entailed, both in human and financial costs: the separation of families; the ways people were sold to cover debts of their masters; how the enslaved employed strategies to affect their sales. The Spread of U.S. Slavery, 1790-1860, by Lincoln Mullen This interactive map created by Mullen, a history professor at George Mason University, shows the spread of slavery in America, detailing where enslaved and free African Americans lived before the Civil War. It gives an excellent view of the pervasiveness of slavery in the United States. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, by Frederick Douglass I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Douglasss searing first-person account of the brutality of slavery, religions role in his masters savagery and his eventual escape is a powerful story of slaverys destructiveness. Yes, its often taught in high school, but Douglasss story bears another look, even if youve read it before. The Narrative is a testament of Douglasss will to endure throughout the many atrocities he experienced, and when published in 1845, it was instrumental in furthering abolitionists cause. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, by Ira Berlin Berlins book is a thorough history of slavery that presents a very different picture than the traditional one that focuses on the years leading up to the Civil War. Berlin shows what slavery was like before cotton plantations developed and how it changed afterward, juxtaposing the history of slavery with the history of the American idea of race. The book works against stereotypes, showing how slavery was constantly made and remade over its first 200 years. Twitter: @AntheaButler Read more from Outlook and follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter. On Thursday, Donald Trump escalated his racist attacks on Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge hearing one of the fraud cases against Trump University. The presumptive Republican nominee had already called the judge a Mexican the Latino jurist was born in Indiana and floated the allegation that Curiels ethnicity biases him against Trump because of the candidates immigration stance. Trump had threatened to use the power of the presidency against the judge, saying we will come back in November and people ought to look into the judge. Then, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Trump said Curiels Mexican heritage presented an absolute conflict in hearing a case against him. Yet that very afternoon, the highest-ranking Republican official in the land, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), endorsed Trump. Incredibly, one of the justifications cited in Ryans reasoning was that he had talked with Trump about the proper role of the executive. And Trump learned that the proper role of the executive is . . . to threaten a federal judge in an overtly racist attack? Republicans had better get used to such jarring juxtapositions, now that the party has embraced a man who traffics in racist politics and conspiracy theories. Ryans salute ends any doubt: The GOP is the Party of Trump. Ryan and his colleagues have bet their future, and that of the Republican Party, on Trump, and they now own what the volatile showman says and does. Ryan, after holding out for a month before embracing Trump, folded without any tangible concession. The speaker says he thinks Trump would support the House Republicans agenda. But the reverse is already true: The Republican establishment has, with Ryans capitulation, made Trumps agenda their own. And what is that agenda? Lets consider some of the theories Trump has floated and people such as Ryan are, with their endorsements, now countenancing: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered. Rafael Cruz, Teds father, was involved in the JFK assassination. President Obamas wedding ring is inscribed There is no god but Allah. Bill Ayers wrote Dreams From My Father. Obama was born Barry Soetero. The Hawaii official who verified Obamas birth certificate was murdered. Clinton administration official Vincent Fosters suicide was really a murder. A demonstrator who rushed the stage at one of Trumps rallies has ties to the Islamic State. The Islamic State pays the cellphone bills of Syrian refugees. Trump is being persecuted by the Internal Revenue Service because hes a strong Christian. The government has falsified statistics on unemployment, Ebola, refugees, health insurance and immigration. Global warming is a hoax created by the Chinese. Vaccines cause autism. These were among 58 conspiracy theories tallied up last month by People for the American Way, a liberal group, all documented with links to Trumps allegations. Better make that 59: Just hours after Ryans endorsement, Trump disseminated an accusation on Twitter that Hillary Clinton killed four Americans in Benghazi. The list goes on: A U.S. general dipped bullets in pigs blood to shoot Muslims; Muslims in New Jersey celebrated on 9/11; Obama is a Muslim. All thats missing from Trumps oeuvre is a theory about Area 51 and fluoridation. Certainly not everybody who supports Trump supports everything he says. But Ryan and his colleagues, by embracing Trump, are making paranoia and racism once limited to the dark corners of the Internet mainstream. They are putting themselves, and their party, behind Trumps bigotry and conspiracy theories. They are blessing Trumps recent attack on one of the few high-ranking Hispanics in the GOP, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, and on his labeling Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Pocahontas because she claimed to have Native American ancestry. The evening before Ryans embrace of Trump, the New York Times reported the resignation of the head of Hispanic media relations at the Republican National Committee because of her discomfort with Trump. They are legitimizing, too, Trumps attack on Curiel, in which he tries to disqualify a federal judge because of his ethnicity. He referred to the American-born Curiel as the judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican. This is reminiscent of how he referred to Obama: We have a terrible president who happens to be African American. Surely Ryan and most of his GOP colleagues in Congress wouldnt allow such talk to cross their own lips. But in endorsing Trump, they have made his vile words the creed of the Republican Party. Win or lose, they have turned the Party of Lincoln into the Party of Trump. Twitter: @Milbank Read more from Dana Milbanks archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. As the conflict in Syria has raged and spilled over its borders, I have been skeptical that there is an American military solution to the complex political and religious problems at the heart of the crisis. I remain skeptical and am glad that the Obama administration has been reluctant to engage in a large-scale humanitarian intervention. But I am saddened that it has not engaged in large-scale humanitarian action. The distinction is important. For most of the past 75 years, the United States has been the worlds humanitarian. It has provided the most foreign aid and taken in the most refugees. For decades, the United States took in about 50 percent of the total number of those who were resettled from foreign lands. Not anymore. American aid in the Syrian crisis has been matched by the European Union, and neither is doing enough. As for refugees, the United States has become an international embarrassment. It has pledged to take in 10,000 Syrians but last year accepted just 2,192 and is struggling to take in more, despite the fact that, thanks to its distance from the conflict, it can be selective. Meanwhile, Canada, with a population about one-tenth of the United States, has already resettled more than 25,000 Syrians. For its part, Germany has registered nearly half a million applicants for asylum for 2015 alone, according to the New York Times. But the worlds richest countries are being put to shame by some of the poorest. Lebanon now has more than 1 million registered refugees, making up a quarter of the countrys population. Jordan is not far behind with more than 650,000. And Turkey houses nearly 3 million. These countries need aid on an entirely different scale than they are receiving. In addition, Washington has traditionally taken the lead in setting the agenda for humanitarian action, corralling other countries to make donations, accept refugees and provide forces for peacekeeping operations. The administration is now acting on some of these fronts, but it is still not commensurate with the enormity of the suffering. In February, a major donors conference in London was organized by the United Nations, the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway and Kuwait. Syria is a human tragedy of epic proportions. An estimated 400,000 people have died, 6.5 million have been internally displaced and nearly 5 million have fled the country. Some will say that this is precisely the reason we should send in more troops, bomb more targets and set up safe zones in the country. But that assumes that we have a local partner to work with and, most crucially, that there is some political order we could help establish that would be effective and legitimate in the eyes of the Syrians. Without those ingredients, foreign military intervention turns into chaos and colonial occupation. But what Washington can do is try to respond to the crisis with a set of humanitarian efforts that are equal to the scale of the tragedy. President Obama should address the U.S. public and describe the human suffering, remind us of our nations best traditions and urge that Congress support him in providing more aid, receiving more refugees and leading in greater collaborative efforts internationally. He should appoint George W. Bush and Bill Clinton as the countrys special ambassadors for humanitarian action on Syria. Donald Trump will criticize Obama. Republicans will raise the specter of terrorism. But they are wrong, and he should say so. Americans have always been wary of taking in refugees. Large majorities opposed taking in Germans (Jews) in the 1930s and even immediately following World War II after we had learned about the Holocaust. Fifty-five percent opposed taking in Hungarians after the Soviet invasion in 1956, and 57 percent from accepting the boat people of Indochina after the fall of Saigon in 1975. But U.S. leaders insisted, and all these groups were accepted, assimilated and have become vital parts of U.S. society. Obama is not running for reelection. He has been bold in other areas, proposing policies that he knows Congress will reject in the hope of changing the conversation. Why not on the single greatest source of human suffering in the world right now? The problem is not simply one that affects the political right or the Obama administration. Where is Bernie Sanders, who is very concerned about Americans who cant pay for college but seems largely indifferent to Syrians who cant manage to stay alive? Where are the worlds rock stars, who once sang We Are the World and staged a Live Aid concert to fight poverty in Africa? Millions of Syrian men, women and children are fleeing their homes, living in squalor and losing their lives. Where are all of us? Read more from Fareed Zakarias archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. Elizabeth D. Samet is the editor of Leadership: Essential Writings by Our Greatest Thinkers. J. Kael Weston has written an angry book perhaps too angry. The Mirror Test documents his seven years as a U.S. State Department political adviser to military units operating in some of the deadliest regions in Iraq and Afghanistan. It concludes with his departure from government service and homecoming to the American West, his geographical and moral foil for Washington, which he seems to regard as a Death Star of corruption and betrayal. The title alludes to the defining moment when a disfigured patient, bandages just removed, first looks into the mirror. Will the patient accept or reject the new self reflected? When and how, Weston demands, will the United States confront the transformations these wars have etched into its image? This problematic books three parts explore the the wrong war in Iraq, the right if neglected war in Afghanistan, and the disconnect between those Americans who have been touched by wars violence and the many more who have not. The third section, partly an elegy for several Marines, chronicles Westons visits to families and grave sites from Texas to Colorado to the small towns where he locates the real America. From his first war-zone posting to Iraq in 2003, Weston, at great personal risk, determined to know the people whose countries he was meant to help rebuild with infrastructure projects, elections and newly constituted governance structures. Despite working through interpreters, Weston formed durable bonds with Shiite truckers in Baghdad and Sunni sheiks in Fallujah. Later, working in Afghanistans Khost and Helmand provinces, he bravely cultivated diverse constituencies: madrassa and university students, village elders and ex-Taliban members. "The Mirror Test: America at War in Iraq and Afghanistan" by J. Kael Weston (Knopf) It is difficult to begrudge Weston his anger. He witnessed the bloody consequences of a war strategy greatly shaped by an amalgamation of hubris and inattention that helped set conditions for the displacement or death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans as well as for thousands of U.S. casualties. His book is appropriately unstinting in its depiction of horrors: from the potato factory where a Marine mortuary affairs team processed Iraqi remains after the battle of Fallujah in 2004 to the Helmand field hospital where a wounded Afghan child lay alongside maimed Marines. Numerous front-line accounts of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been written by journalists and military veterans. As a former Foreign Service officer, Weston is perfectly positioned to provide a different perspective on these wars sometimes-particular complexities; he did just that in a co-written 2012 Foreign Affairs article on the Afghanistan troop surge. The Mirror Test offers insights into tribal, cultural and religious dynamics; the limits of military power as a political instrument; the use of drones; the heavy reliance on special operators; cooperation and failed cooperation among military services, agencies and allies. Yet the analysis is somewhat impoverished by the fact that the diplomatic cable Weston regards as his most significant is classified, together with other material to which he occasionally alludes, and thus unavailable for this book. But Weston is hampered chiefly by his indignation, which, as Virginia Woolf once noted, causes a writer to swerve from the story when it most demands attention. The prose itself seethes with staccato fragments, disorienting congeries and comparisons gone haywire: It was like we were all living through Iraqs version of Picassos Guernica, if not also a hellish Hieronymus Bosch-like Last Judgment scene, Fallujah-style. Sometimes, just as it does in those books Woolf describes, anger contracts Westons narrative with a spasm of pain. Anger often betrays by making us small when we need most to be grand. Disgusted by the war tourism of congressional delegations to Iraq shocked that politicians engage in politics, even during war Weston reports his enjoyment when mortars landed just close enough to one convoy to rattle Sen. Sam Brownback and his staff. For Weston, this happy accident vindicates his claim that Marine jobs are a lot more stressful than senatorial duty in Washington. He likewise expends significant energy in condemnation of Fobbits, those service members who rarely, if ever, left increasingly cushy military bases, in contrast to the grunts who daily patrolled the streets of Fallujah with him. Fobbits, according to Weston, read reports (and Tolstoy) in climate-controlled cubicles, drafted novels, applied to MFA programs and had the soft bellies that come from eating too much of the ice cream supplied to American bases. The gulf between tooth and tail is an old one. To Weston, grunt and Fobbit are different species. This dichotomy is too easy: No war can be prosecuted exclusively with combat troops. If some personnel took advantage of the relative safety of a base, many more worked diligently at the duties assigned them. If Weston believes war is a racket, he should look to the senior leaders who contracted for the ice cream rather than to the personnel at the other end of the chain. Two faiths survive the wreckage of Westons seven years in war. The first faith is in the Marines: He calls them my tribe and continues to advocate generously for them. The other faith rests in an old-fashioned American Story about pioneer values and an entrepreneurial spirit that can wield the soft power and accomplish the Big Things of which he believes government no longer capable. Westons bitter rage thus finally gives way to gauzy nostalgia. Neither sentiment especially conduces to the national mirror test he justly demands. Part of Bernie Sanders charm is that for all of his arm-waving jeremiads, he appears unthreatening. Hes the weird old uncle in the attic, Larry Davids crazy Bernie. Its almost a matter of style. Who can be afraid of a candidate so irascible, grumpy, old-fashioned and unfashionable? After all, hes not going to win the nomination, so what harm can he do? A major address at the party convention? A say in the vice presidential selection? And who reads party platforms anyway? Well, platforms may not immediately affect a particular campaign. But they do express, quite literally, the party line, a written record of its ideological trajectory. Which is why two of Sanders appointments to the 15-member platform committee are so stunning. Professor Cornel West not only has called the Israeli prime minister a war criminal but openly supports the BDS movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions), the most important attempt in the world to ostracize and delegitimize Israel. West is joined on the committee by the longtime pro-Palestinian activist James Zogby. Together, reported the New York Times, they vowed to upend what they see as the partys lopsided support of Israel. This seems a gratuitous provocation. Sanders hardly made Israel central to his campaign. He did call Israels response in the 2014 Gaza war disproportionate and said we cannot continue to be one-sided. But now Sanders seeks to permanently alter i.e., weaken the relationship between the Democratic Party and Israel, which has been close and supportive since Harry Truman recognized the worlds only Jewish state when it declared independence in May 1948. West doesnt even pretend, as do some left-wing peace groups, to be opposing Israeli policy in order to save it from itself. He makes the simpler case that occupation is unconscionable oppression and that until Israel abandons it, Israel deserves to be treated like apartheid South Africa anathematized, cut off, made to bleed morally and economically. The Sanders appointees wish to bend the Democratic platform to encourage such diminishment unless Israel redeems itself by liberating Palestine. This is an unusual argument for a Democratic platform committee, largely because it is logically and morally perverse. Israel did in fact follow such high-minded advice in 2005: It terminated its occupation and evacuated Gaza. That earned it (temporary) praise from the West. And from the Palestinians? Not peace, not reconciliation, not normal relations but a decade of unrelenting terrorism and war. Israel is now being asked pressured to repeat that same disaster on the West Bank. That would bring the terror war, quite fatally, to the very heart of Israel Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ben Gurion Airport. Israel is now excoriated for declining that invitation to national suicide. It is ironic that the most successful Jewish presidential candidate ever should be pushing the anti-Israel case. But perhaps not surprising considering Sanders ideological roots. He is old left not the post-1960s, countercultural New Left. Why, the man honeymooned in the Soviet Union not such fashionably cool communist paradises as Sandinista Nicaragua where Bill de Blasio went to work for the cause or Castros Cuba where de Blasio honeymooned. (Do lefties all use the same wedding planner?) For the old left, Israel was simply an outpost of Western imperialism, Middle East division. To this day, the leftist consensus, most powerful in Europe (which remains Sanders ideological lodestar), holds that Israeli perfidy demands purification by Western chastisement. Chastisement there will be at the Democratic platform committee. To be sure, Sanders didnt create the Democrats drift away from Israel. It was already visible at the 2012 convention with the loud resistance to recognizing Jerusalem as Israels capital. But Sanders is consciously abetting it. The millennials who worship him and pack his rallies havent lived through and dont know the history of Israels half-century of peace offers. They dont know of the multiple times Israel has offered to divide the land with an independent Palestinian state and been rebuffed. Sanders hasnt lifted a finger to tell them. The lovable old guy with the big crowds and no chance at the nomination is hardly taken seriously (except by Hillary Clinton, whose inability to put him away reveals daily her profound political weakness). But when he makes platform appointees that show he does take certain things quite seriously, like undermining the U.S.-Israeli relationship, you might want to reconsider your equanimity about the magical mystery tour. It looks like Woodstock, but there is steel inside the psychedelic glove. Read more from Charles Krauthammers archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. Getting out of prison can be a daunting journey for anyone no matter the offense. In many jurisdictions, ex-inmates receive little more than the clothes on their back, their meager personal possessions confiscated upon entry, a few dollars and an open-ended bus ticket. Looking out on the wide-open world often instills dread and depression instead of hope and promise. The 650,000 former prisoners returning to the free world in the United States each year are branded with a scarlet letter F for felon for the rest of their lives. We must do more to integrate them into society as full, productive returned citizens. The best way? Offer the opportunity to restore all their rights as citizens: voting, employment, housing and even gun rights. Our twin pillars of the criminal-justice system have been punishment and rehabilitation. We are doing a decent job in punishing offenders, in many cases with long, often mandatory, sentences for various crimes, but doing a terrible job at rehabilitating them. Prison is rarely time well spent for inmates. According to the Justice Departments comprehensive study of released inmates, the vast majority go right back into the criminal-justice system. In fact, 37 percent are rearrested within six months of release, 56.7 percent within a year, two-thirds within three years and almost 77 percent by year five of their release date. That means that in the time it takes an ordinary college student to graduate, only 23 percent stay out of the sights of law enforcement. To change the trajectory, we should add a third pillar: redemption. For former inmates, staying out of prison is difficult. They are denied many of the basic freedoms we take for granted. These restrictions and limitations are often called collateral consequences since they linger long after the former inmates have paid for the crimes by being incarcerated. States and the federal government have put in place tens of thousands of these limits on felons as further punishment, often without clear connection to the convicts criminal history. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) recently reinstated the voting rights of 200,000 felons. His move has been denounced by many, including Republican legislative leaders, who are suing over the executive order. Regardless of the restorations legality, neither side is right. Individuals with a felony conviction should not be given their rights back; they should have to earn them through hard work and by playing by the rules. The governor was wrong to issue blanket restoration to those convicted of offenses, ranging from murder to petty theft, and his Republican opponents are wrong to forever damn the convicted to a life beset by challenges. In the Old Dominion alone, any person convicted of any felony faces 413 limitations and consequences after prison. These range from a ban on acquiring a horse racing official permit to work and living restrictions such as not being able to return to a licensed profession or being forbidden from residing with their adoptive children. Instead of permanently barring felons from pursuing a full and truly free life outside prison, we should encourage them to rejoin their community and society as a whole through a post-release redemption-based system. Although voting is symbolic, it is not enough for us to restore the franchise and call it a day. We should and can do much more, but we should reward former prisoners only if they earn it. They alone must choose if they will return to lives of crime or substance abuse and the resulting punitive measures or if they will redeem themselves in the eyes of the law and their fellow citizens. If they choose the latter, we have an obligation to reward them if they can earn their redemption. States and the federal government should set out stringent criteria that ex-offenders must meet, including holding steady employment, making appropriate financial restitution to the state and their victims, paying taxes, liens and debts (e.g. child support) in a timely manner and participating in and serving the community. Most important, they must remain on the straight and narrow, free from criminal acts and convictions and from substance abuse. If those convicted of felonies or other crimes meet these criteria, the state should go a step further after a time and completely expunge and/or seal their criminal records. Maryland took a first step in this direction recently by enacting the states Justice Reinvestment Act, which expands eligible offenses for expungement to 50. In addition, the states should restore all their prior rights as citizens, including suffrage, employment, housing and many others. After five years, these former inmates would be eligible to petition a court for full citizenship restoration with final approval granted by the states governor (or the president in federal cases). The restoration of basic rights could well become a cause for celebration for the former inmates, their friends and family a graduation of sorts something many of those returning from prison have never experienced. For felons and former inmates, the states should set expectations high that you will be pardoned if you can earn it. Donald Trump, left, listens as Michael Sexton introduces him at a news conference in New York where he announced the establishment of Trump University, on May 23, 2005. (Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press) Students, parents, grandparents, anchor babies: Thank you for welcoming me here today to give the long-awaited Trump University commencement address. Mr. Trump is sorry he couldnt be here today himself. As you may know, hes busy fighting a judge whos a hater of Donald Trump, biased, a total disgrace and, we believe, Mexican. Mr. Trump has handpicked me, however, to fill his big, actually slightly-smaller-than-large shoes. Mr. Trump has assured me that I wont be protested and shouted off this stage, because youre the only student body left in the country that doesnt care about political correctness. The only safe space you want is one you can buy and flip for double your money. Am I right? Besides, if youve learned just one thing from our wise founder, its that the way you deal with words you dislike is not to protest, but to sue. Donald Trump is being sued by former customers of Trump University. Here's everything you need to know about the ill-fated business venture. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) So, lets not be politically correct today. Lets shoot from the hip, okay? Lets talk about what youve learned here and the challenges you face as you reenter this not-yet-great-again economy. Because some of you are losers, particularly the ones suing me, you will probably confront constant failure in your life. Dont let that get you down. Remember: Every time a wall goes up, a door opens. A big, beautiful door that lets the good ones back in from Mexico. And think about the classmates youll be competing with out there. I want you to look at the person to the left of you. Look at the person to the right of you. All three of you probably wasted your money in attending this vaunted institution. Fortunately, theres still hope to learn something useful: All three of you have been accepted into our new graduate program. The tuition is equal to the exact amount of each of your remaining bank account balances. Dont worry, youll learn all about price discrimination in the next course. And for those of you who choose not to continue your schooling, well, lets just say youre lucky Mr. Trump loves the poorly educated, too. But seriously, lets talk about our terrible American education system more broadly, and what Mr. Trump is doing to improve it now that his charitable work with Trump University LLC is almost complete. Higher education in this country with the exception of Trump University is an embarrassment. Were losing to China. Were losing to Mexico. We just dont win anymore when it comes to education. Okay, I know that, technically, the data show that at real universities the ones that are actually accredited we almost look like were winning. Some dummies might even mistake those schools for actually putting out a good product. After all, education is one of the few sectors in which the United States is running a massive trade surplus with the rest of the world. Thats because there are three times as many foreign students studying here as there are American students studying abroad. Our net trade surplus in education was $27 billion last year. Thats twice the size of our surplus for movies and TV. And yes, I know that when China sends 300,000 students to U.S. colleges, as it did last year, those students are typically not eligible for financial aid. Which means they end up cross-subsidizing the tuition paid by poor and middle-class American students, particularly as state appropriations continue to fall. And yes, I know that the near-million international students who came here last year spent money on lots of U.S. products besides education. But if theres a second thing our institutions wise founder has taught you, its to never let facts get in the way of a good story. Which is why Im proud to say that the prospect of a President Trump is already sending international students running for the hills, according to a recent survey of prospective students. Not only has Mr. Trump ruined your own finances through Trump University, hes already begun doing his part to ruin the finances of real colleges, other U.S.-born college students and local economies, too. And thats all without disclosing his secret master plan for reforming higher education. Sounds like winning to me. Speaking of winning, wed love to know what you think of todays address. In exchange for signing the pre-scored Better Business Bureau surveys under your seats, please collect a free bottle of Trump-brand self-tanner on your way out. (Remember, students: Screw sunscreen. Always wear self-tanner.) Thank you, graduates. Mr. Trump is so proud of you. He asked me to leave you with one final word of advice. If you all will just write us one more check, Id be happy to tell you what it is. Paul Kupiec is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Ryan Nabil is a research associate at the American Enterprise Institute Metro officials have been quick to capitalize on the recent subway service crisis by requesting an additional $25 billion in taxpayer support over the next 10 years to fund its operations and safety improvements, and an additional $2.5 billion for underfunded pensions. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.s non-voting congressional delegate, made the case for additional funding before Congress: When Metro shuts down, the federal government shuts down. So just try getting along without a Metro if you want a federal government at all. But taxpayers should not be fooled into providing additional funds to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority until it meets minimum operating benchmarks. Metro has many problems, but the biggest one is not inadequate taxpayer support. Metros subsidies are not so different from other mass transit system subsidies. Taxpayers provide a subsidy of $2.02 for each Metro passenger trip Metros figures exclude the implicit subsidy it receives from the many federal government employees who use the system and have their fare paid as a tax-free employee benefit. In contrast, New Yorks system receives a subsidy of $1.92 per ride. Even the wildly inefficient Amtrak system receives only a 25-cent subsidy per passenger mile, compared with $0.42 for Metro. Metros problem, first and foremost, is management. The WMATA board allowed prior managers to defer Metros maintenance and lose control of the systems operating costs. Expanded Metro operating hours, a WMATA board decision, shortened the time available for track maintenance. Weak Metro management oversight failed to ensure that reported maintenance and system problems were properly rectified. A Federal Transit Administration safety study found more than 3,000 unresolved serious maintenance issues, some outstanding since 2002, and the National Transportation Safety Board identified instances in which, for months at a time, Metro continued to run passenger trains over areas with known track defects that could cause a train derailment. Wages and benefits consume nearly 78 percent of its operating budget, and the share would be larger still if Metro properly funded its employee pension liabilities. Metro spends $3.10 in labor costs for each passenger trip, compared with $1.92 in New Yorks Metropolitan Transportation Authority and $1.88 in Bostons Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. The most common WMATA job, a bus operator, requires a drivers license and a high school diploma or equivalent. The job pays an average of $63,000, with extensive benefits and overtime pay. This salary is 57 percent higher than the national average for transit system bus drivers ($40,160) and 66 percent higher than the average salary of a non-transit bus driver in the area ($38,000). With overtime, experienced WMATA bus drivers can earn more than $100,000 a year. Despite its rich salaries, Metro has historically not filled many of its open positions. Indeed, Metro has been accused of creating position shortages to justify overtime hours. Many Metro employees earn as much in overtime as in base pay. Excessive overtime not only increases Metros current operating expenses, but it also increases the pensions of many Metro workers earning overtime. Instead of cowering before D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), who represents the District on Metros governing board, and Nortons veiled threats to cripple the federal government unless taxpayers commit billions of additional dollars to support Metro, Congress, Maryland, Virginia and the District must hold WMATA accountable for meeting minimum operational benchmarks. Imposing only one single required benchmark would have wide-ranging implications for Metros operations. For example, Metro could be required to reduce its labor costs per passenger trip to meet specific targets over the next few years or reduce its operating cost per passenger mile, currently 83 cents toward the national average of 64 cents. Metro has a number of options available to reduce its labor cost per trip. It can reduce the use of overtime, control upcoming union contract increases and promote Metro ridership by improving reliability and altering Metros fare structure. Metro fares are very expensive compared with those of other mass transit systems.A monthly pass for Metro costs $237, compared with $116.50 in New York and $75 in Boston. Metros problems are a consequence of Metros failure to manage the system. Before Metro gets additional taxpayer support, it should be required to demonstrate concrete operational improvements. Congress, the District, Maryland and Virginia must have the good sense to withhold additional funds and keep pressure on Metro to meet minimum benchmarks of performance. Petey Jones, center, a former running back at T.C. Williams High School who was featured by an actor in the film "Remember the Titans," in 2014. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post) Elizabeth Tibebu and Salem Mesfin are students at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria. Among the more unsettling feelings is walking into an environment everyone presumes to be supportive and welcoming but feeling as if you dont belong. Sadly, this has been our experience. We are students. Chances are that we will behave our age and engage in occasional mischief. The problem arises when students of color are disproportionately targeted and disciplined with harsh, punitive measures. For example, one white student said blatantly racist things to an African American in class without being reprimanded. Meanwhile, an African American student got a two-day suspension for talking back to a teacher, yet white students merely get sent out of the room for similar behavior. A study by the Education Department bore out the discrepancy in school discipline between white students and minority students. We love our high school and want to be proud of it. T.C. Williams High School, after all, is the school featured in the feature film Remember the Titans. However, the excessive, discriminatory and reckless approach to discipline from some teachers and school officials often makes us feel unsafe and unwelcome. When students are suspended, they easily fall behind on schoolwork. Little sympathy is shown to students who have been suspended because they are seen as bad students. In a sense, the students are being punished twice. We want this to end. We want to create a safe learning environment in which we are valued and respected. Ultimately, we are worth more than our mistakes. Through our research, we know that creating the right environment for students and for teachers is possible. One of the best ways to do this is through restorative justice, a tool to build and maintain strong communities. Restorative justice leads to reconciliation and often improves the culture of schools and workplaces where it is implemented. In schools, it strengthens bonds between adults and students and eliminates racial disparities in discipline. Some school districts, including in Oakland, Calif., and Denver, are seeing the benefits of restorative justice. Educators and school administrators are finding that harsh discipline policies that alienate students and push them out of the path of academic achievement are ineffective. Instead, these school officials are increasingly embracing restorative practices such as peace circles and community-building circles. Having been on the receiving end or having witnessed racial disparities in suspension rates for African American and Latino students, we advocated for restorative justice. We met with Alexandria City Public Schools officials, wrote letters of concern, shared our experiences and expressed what our friends and classmates were going through as further proof that restorative justice was desperately needed. In 2013, we thought school officials were listening when the superintendent of Alexandria City Public Schools promised to implement the approach. But we since have been discouraged. ACPS has fallen short in important steps in this process. The district has yet to hire a restorative justice coordinator, circulate a youth-developed student survey, fully train teachers and staff or meaningfully involve students in the implementation process by allowing us to lead restorative-justice circles. With more promises made than fulfilled, it is hard for us to feel as though the school district truly intends to implement the alternative to punitive and ineffective school disciplinary policies and practices. If students failed to fulfill our commitments in the classroom, we are sure that the school system would find a way to retaliate. Teachers and school administrations should be held accountable, just like us students. We are tired of being punished more harshly because of the color of our skin, and we think our schools can and should do better. We know what it takes to make school culture safer and more supportive for young people and adults. Whats not helpful is for Alexandria City Public Schools to fall short of its commitments to student safety and equity. It is not too late. Stephen L. Kass, a lawyer in New York, is an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School and New York Universitys Center for Global Affairs and is chair of the New York City Bar Associations Task Force on Legal Issues of Climate Adaptation. the Supreme Courts decision in February to stay President Obamas Clean Power Plan may lead to a protracted legal battle over aging, unprofitable and environmentally unsound coal plants. But instead of litigating our way out of the problem, there is a simpler solution: The federal government could buy the plants and close them. The courts move threatens to not only derail the presidents initiative to curb greenhouse-gas emissions at U.S. coal-fired power plants but also unravel the progress that the United States and 195 other nations made on climate change in Paris in December. If the courts invalidate or delay the Clean Power Plan, some climate activists may turn to a Plan B that would encourage enlightened business leaders and states with large coal plants to support a voluntary version of the Clean Power Plan. But such an effort would be even less effective than the complex and overly cautious Obama plan, which at best would reduce power-plant emissions by 15 percent more than what is expected without the Clean Power Plan and would take 15 years to do that not nearly enough to meet U.S. commitments under the Paris agreement. There is another alternative which Ill call Plan A that would avoid the considerable litigation risks of the Clean Power Plan and achieve more quickly and with greater certainty a reduction in emissions at least equal to those of the Clean Power initiative. Under Plan A, the federal government would buy or, if necessary, seize under eminent domain all existing U.S. coal plants and close them over 10 years. Such a use of federal authority is well-established and would not be subject to serious legal challenge. (Plant owners could dispute the amount of compensation offered but not the public purpose of federal action intended to protect the environment.) Plan A would include fair, market-based compensation for coal-plant shareholders and generous severance, relocation and job-training programs for employees, who should not be asked to bear the burdens of emissions reductions. Once authorized by Congress, Plan A could be carried out before the legality of the Clean Power Plan was finally adjudicated and long before it could be implemented. Moreover, since Plan A would set a firm deadline for coal plants to close, it would provide a strong incentive for wind, solar and other renewables to replace the lost coal capacity at rates that are already competitive with coal. Impossible, you say, since a Republican-controlled Congress would never authorize the substantial sum required to purchase (or seize) the coal plants and provide support to their workers. Perhaps, but consider how Congress would react if coal-plant owners and unions supported such a program and urged their friends in the House and Senate to enact it. This is by no means fanciful. As the recent bankruptcy of coal titan Peabody Energy illustrated, coal-plant owners and institutional investors, as well as their lenders, are locked in to deteriorating assets that are losing the competition against natural gas and renewable energy sources and facing increased regulation of pollutants independent of climate change initiatives. These parties might welcome a graceful exit from coal. Even unions, faced with declining jobs and wages in the coal sector, might support a well-financed and carefully designed program to enable workers to pay off mortgages, car loans and medical or college bills and prepare for a more productive future in other energy-sector jobs. The benefits of Plan A would likely exceed its costs. Although it is not possible to estimate accurately the total cost of acquiring all of the several hundred currently operating coal-fired power plants, the Environmental Protection Agency has estimated the net benefits of the greenhouse-gas reductions under the Clean Power Plan at between $26 billion and $45 billion by 2030, not counting the substantial public-health savings from reducing coal plants toxic emissions unrelated to climate change. Plan A would achieve these same benefits, only faster and with more certainty. Such savings should go a long way toward making it feasible for the government to purchase or condemn the plants, which are typically almost 40 years old, fully depreciated and only marginally profitable under current and foreseeable market conditions and environmental requirements. Moreover, because Plan A would compensate private owners for the market value of their plants, it would avoid conservatives claims of excessive regulation without compensation. Plan A would permit the United States to fulfill its Paris commitments on a timely basis and insist on similar levels of compliance by other nations. And Plan A could do this while avoiding protracted litigation and uncertain implementation of the Clean Power Plan, helping investors escape the declining value of their coal plants and providing meaningful benefits for workers who are asked to change careers as part of our nations commitment to a livable global climate. Oil workers and firemen douse flames at the Khabbaz oil field southwest of Kirkuk, Iraq, on Wednesday after a reported attack by the Islamic State. (Marwan Ibrahim/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images) The West suffers from what one leading strategist calls an autoimmune disease in fighting the Islamic State. The self-defense mechanisms championed by Donald Trump and his European neo-populist counterparts have gone into toxic overdrive weakening the Wests body politic and making the jihadist fever far worse. David Kenning, a British counter-radicalization expert, made this provocative argument in a telephone interview this week and in recent research for various Western governments. His comments are part of a new wave of analysis that views the Islamic State more as a youth gang driven by the identity politics of victimization than as a religious or ideological movement. These skeptical analysts argue that many current messaging strategies against the Islamic State are backfiring and that polarizing politicians such as Trump have amplified the jihadists impact and been their best recruiting tool. Islamophobia helps the jihadists by fueling their narrative about embattled Muslims, Kenning argues. It creates a sense of wounded community a shared identity of having been wronged, which prompts violent revenge. Watch the videos distributed by the Islamic State and youll often see young men atop pickup trucks in Syria and Iraq, their hair streaming in the breeze, cradling .50-caliber machine guns in an almost sexual way. Kenning explains why the self-styled caliphates appeal is so powerful with alienated, adolescent recruits: The Islamic State brand is empowering. It tells you youre a victim and offers a license for revenge. And, through social media, it offers you celebrity, a chance to be somebody rather than nobody. Anyone who thinks a theological argument could counter this is simply naive. Trump is the leading American example of the polarizing populist response to the jihadists, but its in Europe where social cohesion is really beginning to crack. Politicians such as the Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage in Britain, the right-wing nationalist Marine Le Pen in France and the Muslim-bashing Geert Wilders in the Netherlands are the faces of a Europe shaken by the dual onslaught of terrorism and Islamophobia. Lapis Communications, a Middle East-based consulting firm that works with Kenning and other strategists, explains in a recent paper why Islamophobia helps the jihadists: Instead of undercutting recruiting, it pumps value into the brand. We are dealing primarily with the adolescent mindset, contends Lapis, citing statistics that 90 percent of jihadists today are under 25. These militant youths want to see things in black and white. The only antidote, argues Lapis, is the grey of social compromise and tolerance, of nuanced and considered thoughts. Another contrarian analyst who shares this perspective is Marc Sageman, a psychiatrist and former CIA case officer. In a forthcoming book titled Misunderstanding Terrorism, Sageman explains the process of radicalization stressing that its a community phenomenon instead of an individual or religious one. Sagemans hypothetical jihadist group emerges from a political protest community that is attacked by the state and, as society is polarized, becomes radical and violent. Sageman says his model explains more than 80 percent of the 34 campaigns of political violence he has studied over two centuries. Its a simple enough concept: People turn to violence when they feel their community is excluded and under attack. What policies will best counter the Islamic State? I asked each of the analysts for suggestions. The common theme is that the counter-extremist campaigns should stop feeding the jihadists dreams by treating them as a terrifying Muslim threat to the West. Such talk just flatters and motivates them. Radical Islam isnt the cause, its the excuse, says Lapis. Messaging that feeds the sense of an isolated and aggrieved Muslim community is the worst thing that can happen in the West, says Kenning. Kenning argues that the best way to defeat the Islamic States strategy is for the Trumps of the world to shut up. If they do that, the caliphate would quickly run out of steam. Theyre rotten at governing, he says. The word on the street is that their caliphate is boring. And these days, it has become a dangerous place, too. Kenning thinks the best approach is to gradually pull the Islamic State apart by exploiting the fault lines among those fighting under its flag. The imagined community of the Islamic State is far weaker than it may seem, argues Sageman. What gives it strength, paradoxically, is fear and hatred from the West. The Islamic State is a threat to our security, to be sure, but so is the response from Trump and his fellow Muslim-bashers. Read more from David Ignatiuss archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. Capital punishment in the United States is on the wane. Fewer people, 49, were sentenced to death in 2015 than in any year since the Supreme Court reauthorized the ultimate sanction in 1976; only 28 were executed, the fewest in 20 years. States find it harder to obtain lethal-injection drugs, especially now that pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has barred the use of its products. A recent Supreme Court ruling overturned the death sentence of a black man in Georgia on the grounds that prosecutors improperly kept African Americans off the jury. A death-penalty abolitionist, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), has given Hillary Clinton a run for her money in the Democratic presidential race; she, in turn, has voiced only qualified backing for capital punishment. And polls show downward movement in support for the death penalty. Given all this, the Obama administration, perhaps the least favorable to capital punishment in recent memory, might not have sought the death penalty against Dylann Roof, the young white supremacist charged in the massacre of nine black men and women as they prayed in a South Carolina church a year ago. But on May 24, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch announced that the Justice Department would urge execution for Roof and the reaction from capital punishments opponents has been conspicuously muted. The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty put a protest on its Facebook page. Sanders issued a generic statement of disapproval through his spokesman, but only in response to a question from Huffington Post. Thats about it. Some crimes are so ghastly that even death-penalty skeptics find it hard, or at least inopportune, to challenge the moral intuition that calls for capital punishment; thus, there will probably always be a death penalty in the United States, as long as that moral intuition remains widely felt, and as long as the people can and will express it through democratic institutions. Agreeing with South Carolinas prosecutors, who are also seeking death for Roof, Lynch determined that his cold-blooded, racially motivated slaughter, coupled with his lack of remorse, amply fulfilled the Justice Departments stringent criteria for invoking this rarely used power. Two of the most popular arguments against the death penalty its alleged disparate impact on black killers of whites, and the risk of condemning an innocent person patently dont apply to Roof. All that would remain is a pure moral objection; thats Sanderss position, and a perfectly honorable one. Notwithstanding much commentary, however, it is not the view of most Americans, or even close. Support for the death penalty in murder cases still beats opposition 61 percent to 37 percent in the most recent Gallup poll. Sixty-seven percent said the death penalty is applied either the right amount or not enough, and 53 percent to 41 percent the public agrees it is applied fairly. Whats really happening is that overall support has ebbed from an anomalous high in the 90s, when violent crime was also unusually high. As crime waned, so did the punitive backlash, and support for the death penalty settled back to normal levels. Since 1936, support has fallen below 50 percent in the Gallup poll only four times; only in 1966 did opposition lead, 47 to 42. To be sure, death-penalty sentiment has become partisan along with everything else; now only 40 percent of Democrats favor it, as opposed to 71 percent of Democrats in 1995 and 77 percent of Republicans today, according to the Pew Research Center. Hence Clintons equivocations. She cant repudiate the federal death-penalty expansion during her husbands administration, including the law Lynch is wielding against Roof, and, unlike Sanders, Clinton doesnt have the luxury of running to the unrealistic left of the November electorate. In a November candidates forum, she expressed hope that the Supreme Court would somehow rid state death penalties of their lingering flaws, while preserving the federal version, in which she has much more confidence, to deal with particularly heinous crimes . . . like terrorism. She cited Timothy McVeigh, a Roof-like domestic terrorist against whom the Clinton Justice Department successfully pursued the death penalty for the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people, including 19 children. (Responding to my query, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon confirmed that she agrees with the Justice Department decision on Roof.) Clinton left open obvious and difficult questions, starting with where to draw the line between the worst of the worst and merely bad, murderers. She was, in short, wrestling with the dilemmas facing any society that would entrust such life and death decisions to the people voters, legislators, jurors rather than abolishing capital punishment for all cases, even for terrorism and genocide, as the European Union has done. It was that rare moment when Clinton seemed to be saying something that both she and most Americans really think. Read more from Charles Lanes archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. Almost all the houses on this street in Mit Badr Halawa, Egypt, are homes to people who now work in France and send remittances back home. (Sudarsan Raghavan/The Washington Post) The May 22 news article For one village in Egypt, crash was devastating stated, Many were smuggled into France; others entered illegally. Really? The second part of the sentence implied that those smuggled into France entered legally. Presumably the sentence was meant to end with others entered legally. There is a difference. William Ulman, Annandale Outside Republican presidential candidate Donald Trumps rally in San Jose on Thursday, his supporters were chased down, punches were thrown and Make America Great Again hats were set alight. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) Outside Republican presidential candidate Donald Trumps rally in San Jose on Thursday, his supporters were chased down, punches were thrown and Make America Great Again hats were set alight. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) Democrats and Hispanic activists said Friday that they are increasingly alarmed by a spate of violence at Donald Trump rallies instigated by anti-Trump protesters, fearing that the incidents widely viewed on television and social media will only help the GOP candidate and undermine their attempts to defeat him. The latest flash point came Thursday in downtown San Jose, where a demonstration outside a Trump campaign rally quickly escalated out of control. Several protesters assaulted Trump supporters, ripped pro-Trump signs away from them and stomped on vehicles in the area. A flurry of video clips circulating Friday morning showed bystanders who sustained bloody injuries. The chaotic scene was part of a long-running trend of violence at Trump rallies, where uncomfortable ethnic tensions have taken center stage in response to the candidates proposals to deport illegal immigrants en masse and temporarily ban foreign Muslims from the country. But unlike several violent eruptions earlier this spring, when the attacks were mostly carried out by Trump supporters against protesters, young anti-Trump protesters have been the assailants at several recent events. Democrats and liberal activists said the acts were aberrations out of step with largely peaceful anti-Trump demonstrations. Its deplorable, no matter whos doing it, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton told CBS News Friday. 1 of 19 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad In photos, disruptions and protests during the Trump campaign View Photos Protesters and supporters of Donald Trump clash during his campaign. Caption Protesters and supporters of Donald Trump clash during his campaign. June 2, 2016 A woman wearing a Trump shirt is pelted with eggs by protesters while pinned against a door near where the candidate was holding a rally in San Jose, Calif. Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images Wait 1 second to continue. Clinton said in a separate interview that Trump shared some blame: He created an environment in which it seemed to be acceptable for someone running for president to be inciting violence, to be encouraging his supporters, now were seeing people who are against him responding in kind, Clinton said on CNN. It should all stop. It is not acceptable. Trump and his supporters have dismissed the idea that he bears any responsibility for the assaults. At a Friday afternoon rally in Redding, Calif., which did not see any notable clashes, Trump said the assailants in San Jose were thugs. We wrapped up, everybody was cheering like crazy, and they walk out and they get accosted by a bunch of thugs burning the American flag, Trump said, adding for emphasis: And you know what? They are, they are thugs. Luis Miranda, communications director for the Democratic National Committee, stressed that the protesters were not connected to the party or Clintons campaign. Part of what we have to make clear is that these arent Democratic Party protests in any way, Miranda said. The vast majority of people who are protesting have done it peacefully and are protesting an ugly and divisive campaign. The images have been jarring: In April, in Costa Mesa, Calif., police clad in riot gear corralled protesters who vandalized police vehicles and harangued Trump supporters as they left a campaign event. The next day, in the Bay Area, protesters threw eggs and spat on police officers who formed a protective barricade around a venue where Trump was scheduled to speak. The protests regularly feature oversize Mexican flags, presumably to protest the real estate moguls anti-immigrant rhetoric. Trump and his supporters have seized on the imagery to suggest that he is the target of an out-of-control and angry flank of the left that is hung up on identity politics. View Graphic Many in the GOP were wary of Trump. Theyre coming around. What Trumps most ardent supporters want is this clash of political civilizations, said Republican strategist Kevin Madden, who says he will not vote for Trump in November. They want . . . to show that a lot of these anti-Trump protesters who are waving Mexican flags and attacking Trump people, that those protesters are standing in their way of making America great again. The Trump campaign has wrongly suggested that the protests have been organized by the National Council of La Raza, an organization that promotes Hispanic equality. Janet Murguia, president of the group, said Friday that the organization has not been involved in planning the protests. She said the confusion may come from the common use of the phrase la raza, or the race, by many Hispanic organizations. Murguia condemned the violence and feared it would damage pro-Hispanic advocacy efforts. I feel that it does undermine our overall objective in making sure that we can accomplish the results that we are fighting for, she said. Murguia also called on political leaders inside and outside of the Hispanic community to join in condemning the assaults. People have a right to be angry. Were angry, too. But violence is never the answer, she said. Were all now looking at this and thinking that we need to step up in different ways. Im prepared to do that, and I know there will be others as well. In no way, shape or form should violence ever be the answer. It is incumbent upon us as leaders in this community to condemn this. Clashes have become common at Trump rallies, which were defined this spring by escalating tensions between protesters and supporters. As Trumps chances of seizing the GOP nomination grew, mostly peaceful protesters flocked to his campaign events to denounce his anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric. High-profile incidents in Fayetteville, N.C., Louisville, Chicago and elsewhere featured a recurring pattern: Trump supporters, frustrated by interruptions, would punch, kick or drag out protesters. Clinton and other Democrats have blamed Trump for setting a tone at campaign events that has made violence a regular feature. At times, Trump seemed to wink at the attacks by his supporters, promising in one instance that he would cover all legal costs incurred as a result and urging the crowds to break into chants of Trump! Trump! Trump! as protesters were hauled away. Donald Trump has inspired these protesters. This is not because of someone in the Democratic Party, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said Friday. That kind of incendiary conversation and tone that he has set . . . thats whats inspiring this reaction, not the Democratic Party. Trump painted a different picture in Redding, saying the campaign has always treated protesters well. When we have a protester inside, which isnt even very often, I say, Be very gentle, please dont hurt him, Trump said. Take care of him. If he wants to shout if he punches you in the face, smile, as your nose is pouring blood out of it. Be very, very nice. Sullivan reported from San Jose and Redding, Calif. Hillary Clintons trouble with the Democratic base reaches back to the moment her longtime mentor, Marian Wright Edelman, blasted Clintons husband for cutting a deal with Republicans ahead of his 1996 reelection and signing a welfare overhaul law that she said makes a mockery of his pledge not to hurt children. Edelmans husband, Peter Edelman, quit his Clinton administration job in protest over the 1996 bill, and the tensions lingered for years with Marian Wright Edelman telling an interviewer during Hillary Clintons 2008 presidential campaign that the Clintons were not friends in politics. Today, many who have followed the strained political history between these two leading women of the left are perplexed about where they stand with one another. Clinton, who is expected to clinch the Democratic nomination next week, has put her connection to Edelman at the center of her outreach to liberals who view her with suspicion in part due to her support for the welfare overhaul legislation. She regularly tells audiences about her job with the Childrens Defense Fund in the 1970s, as she did at a recent NAACP gathering in Detroit when she said that standing up against injustice has always been my North Star, ever since I went to work for Marian Wright Edelman. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clintons campaign released a biographical video in advance of her official campaign kickoff. (Hillary Clinton via YouTube) Edelman, 76, seemed to signal that the two had come to terms when she appeared in a campaign video last year, recalling Clinton as a caring, young, bright, creative student who cared about children and those left behind. Its confusing, totally confusing, said Ben Jealous, a former NAACP president who interned for the Childrens Defense Fund in the 1990s and backs Clintons challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Marian was our hero. Peter is a saint theres no other way to put it, Jealous said. The connection to the first lady was a point of pride, he said. But the Clintons have allowed political calculations to triumph too often, he added. As progressives, you were given a conscience for a reason, and it should guide your policy. The relationship between Clinton and Edelman underscores one of the central challenges facing the Democratic candidate as she shapes her general-election strategy: how to deal with the complicated politics surrounding her husbands economic record. With the welfare bill, Bill Clinton was willing to anger liberals to pursue a centrist image that was part of his 1996 reelection strategy. In her campaign this year, Hillary Clinton has sought to strike a balance between her references to Edelman and her efforts to capitalize on her husbands legacy. She recently suggested that Bill Clinton would work in her White House on economic revitalization. Hillary Clinton, left, applauds with Childrens Defense Fund Marian Wright Edelman, right, after a performance where Clinton was honored in 2013. (Alex Brandon/AP) Clinton and Edelman declined to be interviewed for this article. Despite the promotional video, a Childrens Defense Fund spokeswoman said that Edelman does not endorse candidates for public office because of the organizations nonprofit status. Peter Edelman, a Georgetown law professor, said he was reluctant to be interviewed. Its 20 years later, he said. I think were all in a good place now. Peter Edelman said he is 100 percent behind Clintons campaign. I strongly believe that Hillary is the most qualified candidate for president, he said. Sisters in the best sense of sisterhood The history between the Clintons and the Edelmans dates to the late 1960s. Peter Edelman said he was impressed when Hillary Clinton, then a student named Hillary D. Rodham, delivered a 1969 Wellesley commencement speech, and he introduced her to his wife. Marian Wright Edelman hired Rodham at the Childrens Defense Fund in 1973, after she graduated from Yale Law School. Edelman proved a powerful and sometimes surprising mentor. She sent Clinton to knock on doors in poverty-stricken parts of New Bedford, Mass., and collect data. Daniel Yohalem, a New Mexico civil rights lawyer who joined the fledgling organization with Clinton, said that over the eight or so months that they worked together, they saw how Edelmans idiosyncratic approach had the potential to make a real impact. The data they gathered was used for a report that eventually stopped schools across America from pushing out disadvantaged, minority and disabled children. Yohalem said he also recalled a more idealistic Clinton than he observes from afar today. She was very committed as an advocate as a young person, Yohalem said. Political ambition was not a big part of her life back then. It was a nice time to know her because of that. Clintons connection with the Edelmans continued when she moved to Washington in 1974 to work on President Richard Nixons impeachment inquiry. She joined the Childrens Defense Fund board in 1978 and chaired it from 1986 until 1992. The Edelmans son, Jonah, recalled Clintons frequent phone calls to the familys Washington home. On occasion, Clinton would come to the house, where she and Edelman hammered out Childrens Defense Fund issues at the kitchen table. They were sisters in the best sense of sisterhood, said David Hornbeck, a Childrens Defense Fund board chairman who has known both women for decades. Both were policy wonks, he said, who fought many battles together, prayed together and wept together. After Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992, the new first lady appeared to carry her mentors goals into the White House. Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health policy at George Washington University, remembered Hillary Clinton marching her into the Oval Office to convince the president of the importance of supporting childhood immunization. He heard her loud and clear, Rosenbaum said. The Childrens Defense Fund seemed well positioned to help shape the Clintons policy agenda. Bill Clinton took the stage at the Washington Hilton on the organizations 20th anniversary, addressing Edelman as my dear friend and alluding to many other ties between the nonprofit and his administration. He was amazing, recalled Eve Brooks, then-president of the National Association of Child Advocates, adding that it all seemed a little too good to be true. In those early days, the Clintons had an exaggerated view of their own combined capacity, recalled Peter Edelman in an extensive 2004 interview for a presidential oral history project at the University of Virginias Miller Center. The Clintons burgeoning political agenda and the looming 1996 reelection campaign created tensions between the third-way approach espoused by the Democratic Leadership Council and the ideals embraced by the Childrens Defense Fund. The result was a juxtaposition of fury and friendship. An angry response In November 1995, with congressional Republicans pushing for welfare changes, Marian Wright Edelman wrote a vituperative open letter to the president in The Washington Post, saying that he faced a defining moral litmus test for his presidency. That month, Hillary Clinton invited Peter Edelman to fly on Air Force One to Yitzhak Rabins funeral. He spent the return flight playing hearts with the president and saw Hillary leap into her husbands lap, Edelman recalled in the Miller Center interview. Marian Wright Edelman did not let up the pressure. In early June 1996, she led a massive rally on the Mall, railing against cant-do leaders driven more by polls than principle. The same day, in the Oval Office, the president delivered his weekly radio address expressing his commitment to end welfare as we know it by requiring more work and strict time limits. The first lady made no public appearances that day. But in the following weeks, she helped rally support for the measure on Capitol Hill. Signed in August 1996, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act aimed to end chronic dependency by putting time limits on welfare and requiring recipients to seek jobs, while shifting responsibility from the federal government to the states changes that critics thought would hit the most vulnerable hardest. Hornbeck recalled Hillary Clintons support for the legislation as an anomaly: It was so out of character with who she is and who she had been and who we continued to think she was, he said. The Edelmans made no secret of their objections. Marian Wright Edelman released a scathing statement blasting Bill Clinton for signing this pernicious bill. Peter Edelman quit his position as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services. Then, in print, he excoriated The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done. To those who knew Hillary Clinton and Marian Wright Edelman, this was the moment that showed how far Clinton had traveled from her early activist days. Pragmatism, expediency thats the issue, said Yohalem, Clintons former colleague at the Childrens Defense Fund. Clinton later acknowledged that she had put pragmatic politics ahead of her mentors principles. In the painful aftermath [of the welfare debate], I realized I had crossed the line from advocate to policymaker, she wrote in her 2003 memoir, Living History. I hadnt altered my beliefs, but I respectfully disagreed with the convictions and passion of the Edelmans and others who objected to the legislation. The couples contacts remained cordial. Hillary Clinton accepted Marian Edelmans invitation to Peters 60th birthday party in 1998 at the Sphinx Club in downtown Washington. And Hornbeck recalled her arriving at the Childrens Defense Funds Haley Farm in Tennessee in 1999 for the dedication of its Langston Hughes Library, describing the two women walking alone at dusk across a bridge over a lake. Nobody was privy to what they said, he recalled. But even as the old wounds were stitched up in public Bill Clinton awarded Marian Edelman the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000, and Hillary Clinton was honored in 2013 at the Childrens Defense Funds 40th anniversary gala the scar of welfare overhaul remained. In the 2004 interview, Peter Edelman said the relationship with the Clintons is never going to be exactly the same. And in the run-up to the 2008 election, he told the New York Times, They dont acknowledge the number of people who were hurt. Its just not in their lens. Clintons candidacy 20 years later has prompted a renewed debate about the legislations impact, weighing the rapid decline in caseloads in the late 1990s with a rise in the poverty rate after the 2008 economic crash. Sanders, who voted against the measure, has called it an attack, by and large, on low-income African Americans. Clinton, who defended the legislation in her 2008 campaign, has tried to thread the needle this year. In a recent radio interview, she described the positive impact on people who got that first rung on the ladder of a job. But she blamed a Republican president, George W. Bush, and state governors for any shortfalls in the policy. Then Clinton appeared to offer a concession, perhaps one that Edelmans backers would welcome: We have to take a hard look at it again, she said. Obama has commuted the sentences of 348 federal inmates since he took office. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP) President Obama granted clemency to 42 inmates Friday as part of an ongoing effort to release federal prisoners who are serving prison terms resulting from sentencing laws that the White House said were outdated and unduly harsh. To date, Obama has commuted the sentences of 348 federal inmates. The White House said in a statement that the president will continue commuting the sentences of inmates through his seven remaining months in office. Half of the inmates on Fridays list had been sentenced to life for nonviolent drug offenses, according to the White House. Obama has granted more commutations than the previous seven presidents combined, according to White House officials. Despite these important efforts, only legislation can bring about lasting change to the federal system, wrote Neil Eggleston, the White House counsel. There remain thousands of men and women in federal prison serving sentences longer than necessary, often due to overly harsh mandatory minimum sentences. One federal inmate who was released but not under Obamas clemency initiative is Weldon Angelos, 36, a father of three from Utah who was sentenced in 2004 to a 55-year mandatory minimum prison term in connection with selling marijuana. The specific circumstances of Angeloss release are unclear because court records in his case are sealed. But after a long campaign from his supporters, including Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Angelos was quietly released Tuesday after a federal court granted him an immediate reduction in sentence. He was able to immediately go home to his family without serving three months in a halfway house, as those who receive clemency are required to do. The release allowed Angelos to see the son he left at age 7 graduate from high school Thursday. Angelos is one of the nations most famous nonviolent drug offenders and became a symbol of what advocates said was the severity and unfairness of mandatory sentences. His case was championed by the group Families Against Mandatory Minimums, former FBI director Bill Sessions, conservative billionaire Charles Koch and others. Three years ago, more than 100 former judges and prosecutors, former elected and appointed government officials, and prominent authors, scholars, activists and business leaders signed a letter urging Obama to grant Angelos commutation. In February, former federal judge Paul G. Cassell, who sentenced Angelos, wrote a letter asking Obama to swiftly grant him clemency. Cassell said that the sentence he was forced to impose was one of the most troubling that I ever faced in my five years on the federal bench and that it was one of the chief reasons he stepped down as a judge. But Obama never granted clemency to Angelos. The granting of mercy instead came from the Salt Lake City prosecutor who charged him in the case, according to his lawyer. After three and half years of inaction on Weldons clemency petition, he is free because of the fair and good action of a prosecutor, attorney Mark W. Osler said. He returns to citizenship because of the actions of one individual just not the individual I was expecting. Weldons freedom is a wonderful thing but remains just one bright spot among many continuing tragedies. A White House spokeswoman said that the White House cannot respond with details about any individual clemency case. Julie Stewart, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, called the release of Angelos fantastic news and past due. According to the Justice Department, those whose sentences were commuted by Obama on Friday were: Eric E. Alvarez, New York, N.Y. Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possess with the intent to distribute cocaine and cocaine base (crack); conspiracy to commit money laundering. Eastern District of North Carolina Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (April 18, 2000) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Dale Baldwin, Largo, Fla. Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine base; possession with intent to distribute cocaine base (three counts). Middle District of Florida Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (June 28, 1995) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Delaine F. Berg, Imboden, Ark. Offense: Conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine. Eastern District of Missouri Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (May 26, 1998) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Phillip Blackwood, Ridgewood, N.Y. Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute cocaine base; distribution and possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance. Eastern District of New York Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Nov. 21, 2008) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Wilhemina Bryan, Orlando Offense: Conspiracy to import five kilograms or more of cocaine; conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute at least five kilograms of cocaine; possession with intent to distribute cocaine. Middle District of Florida Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (May 21, 2001) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Charrell Franklin Burrage, Davenport, Iowa Offense: Possession with intent to distribute; possession of firearm in furtherance of drug-trafficking. Southern District of Iowa Sentence: 300 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (November 29, 2004) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Christopher Shawn Collier, Midland, Tex. Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than 50 grams of methamphetamine; possession with intent to distribute more than five grams of methamphetamine. Western District of Texas Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (May 10, 2002) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire June 3, 2018. Richard Eugene Dains, Porter, Tex. Offense: Did conspire to manufacture methamphetamine; did knowingly and unlawfully possess in and affecting commerce, a firearm and prior thereto the defendant had been convicted in a court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year; did knowingly use and carry a firearm during and in relation to a drug-trafficking crime, namely, conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine. Eastern District of Texas Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Oct. 16, 1992) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Douglas Ray Dunkins Jr., Fort Worth. Offense: Conspiracy. Northern District of Texas Sentence: Life imprisonment; five years supervised release (Jan. 20, 1993) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Ronald Gregory Farah, Boca Raton, Fla. Offense: Conspiracy to import marijuana into the United States; importation of marijuana into the United States; conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute marijuana; possession with intent to distribute marijuana. Middle District of Florida Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (April 30, 1997) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Joe Mack Flowers, St. Petersburg, Fla. Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of crack cocaine; possession with intent to distribute of 50 grams or more of crack cocaine; possession of a firearm during a drug-trafficking offense; convicted felon in possession of a firearm. Middle District of Florida Sentence: Life plus 60 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (July 1, 1991) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Ronald Glinton, Boynton Beach, Fla. Offense: Conspiracy to manufacture and possess with intent to distribute cocaine; conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine base; possession with intent to distribute cocaine; possession of cocaine with intent to manufacture cocaine base. Southern District of Florida Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (April 2, 1993) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Gregory E. Graham, Denver Offense: Distribution of cocaine base. District of Wyoming Sentence: 300 months imprisonment; eight years supervised release; $1,000 fine (Nov. 1, 2005) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Teresa Mechell Griffin, Orlando Offense: Conspiracy to possess cocaine powder and/or cocaine base with intent to distribute; unlawful travel in interstate commerce with the intent to promote, manage, establish, carry on or facilitate the promotion, management, establishment and carrying on of unlawful activity; distribution of one kilogram of cocaine (two counts). Western District of Oklahoma Sentence: Life imprisonment; five years supervised release (May 6, 1994) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Larry Roscoe Gunnell Jr., Hightown, N.J. Offense: Possession with intent to distribute crack and aiding and abetting. Eastern District of Virginia Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (July 8, 1999) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Marvin Hampton, Orangeburg, S.C. Offense: Possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base; knowingly using and carrying a firearm during and in relation to, and possession of a firearm in furtherance of, a drug-trafficking crime. District of South Carolina Sentence: 180 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Nov. 28, 2006) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Cedric Jarreau Hawkins, Chicago Offense: Distribution of 5.4 grams of cocaine base within 1,000 feet of a protected location after two or more prior felony drug convictions. Northern District of Iowa Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Feb. 1, 2008) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire June 3, 2018. Cleon Jermaine Hawkins, Baker, La. Offense: Possession with intent to distribute cocaine base and cocaine; possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime. Middle District of Louisiana Sentence: 180 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (June 5, 2008) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Bennit Hayes, Jonesboro, Ga. Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine and five grams or more of cocaine base; possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of a mixture and substance containing cocaine. Northern District of Florida Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release; $800 fine (Feb. 6, 2003) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Patrick Henderson, Beloit, Wis. Offense: Conspiracy to distribute cocaine base. Western District of Wisconsin Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (April 13, 1998); amended to 292 months imprisonment (March 16, 2015) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire June 3, 2018. Tony Jones, Tallahassee Offense: Conspiracy to distribute cocaine base; possession with intent to distribute cocaine base (two counts). Northern District of Florida Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (May 16, 1997) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire June 3, 2018. Everette Bryant Law, Roanoke Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute crack cocaine, to distribute crack cocaine with intent of carrying on unlawful activity, to distribute cocaine with intent of concealing proceeds of unlawful activity; distributing crack cocaine, aid and abet (three counts); false financial transactions to conceal proceeds of drug-trafficking crime. Western District of Virginia Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (March 25, 1994) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Gary Allen Lott, Oklahoma City Offense: Conspiracy to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine (two counts); maintaining a residence to manufacture methamphetamine (three counts); possession of chemicals with intent to manufacture methamphetamine; use of a firearm in relation to a drug-trafficking crime. Western District of Oklahoma Sentence: Life plus five years imprisonment; five years supervised release (April 5, 2000) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire June 3, 2018. Kareem Martin, River Rouge, Mich. Offense: Possession with intent to distribute cocaine base. Eastern District of Michigan Sentence: 276 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Jan. 18, 2007) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire June 3, 2018. Nolan McSwain, Altadena, Calif. Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine; possession with intent to distribute cocaine. Central District of California Sentence: Life imprisonment (Dec. 6, 1993) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire June 3, 2017. Sherman Ray Meirovitz, Minneapolis Offense: Possession with intent to distribute cocaine; conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute cocaine. District of Minnesota Sentence: Life imprisonment (Jan. 5, 1990) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire June 3, 2017. Darran Lamar Moore, Miami Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine and 50 grams or more of cocaine base. Southern District of Florida Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (March 22, 2005) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Robert Pettway, Pensacola, Fla. Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine and 50 grams or more of a mixture and substance containing a detectable amount of cocaine base. Northern District of Florida Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release; $1,000 fine (Aug. 31, 2004) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Patrick Kit Plumlee, Newport News, Va. Offense: Continuing criminal enterprise; distribution and possession with intent to distribute cocaine and cocaine base (eight counts); use of a firearm in relation to a drug-trafficking crime; renting, leasing and making premises available for storing and distributing cocaine and cocaine base; money laundering and conspiracy (10 counts). Eastern District of Virginia Sentence: Life plus 60 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (July 18, 1994); amended to 420 months imprisonment (Jan. 6, 2016) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Shawn Antonio Pressley, Greensboro, N.C. Offense: Possess with intent to distribute cocaine base (crack); carrying a firearm during a drug-trafficking crime. Middle District of North Carolina Sentence: 322 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Jan. 23, 1998) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Anthony Walter Puig, Land OLakes, Fla. Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of cocaine; possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of cocaine. Middle District of Florida Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; eight years supervised release (Dec. 18, 2002) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Emlera Quince, Knoxville, Tenn. Offense: Possession with intent to distribute cocaine base (two counts). Eastern District of Tennessee Sentence: 300 months imprisonment; eight years supervised release (June 30, 1997) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Oct. 1, 2016. Jesus Ruiz, Kennedale, Tex. Offense: 1. Conspiracy to distribute marijuana. Western District of New York 2. Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute marijuana; conspiracy to export marijuana. Western District of New York Sentence: 1. 92 months imprisonment; eight years supervised release (July 12, 1993); 2. 360 months imprisonment; eight years supervised release (April 17, 1998) Commutation grant: Prison sentences commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Garrie Lavert Samuels, Groveport, Ohio Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute a quantity of cocaine base; aiding and abetting distribution of more than 50 grams of cocaine base; aiding and abetting distribution of more than five grams of cocaine base. Western District of Texas Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (April 8, 2003) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Robert Lewis Sleepers III, South Bend, Ind. Offense: Conspiracy to distribute cocaine and cocaine base; conspiracy to commit money laundering. Northern District of Indiana Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (June 18, 2004) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Almos L. Starks, Jacksonville, Fla. Offense: Conspiracy to distribute cocaine and cocaine base; possession with intent to distribute cocaine; possession with intent to distribute in excess of 50 grams of cocaine base; possession of firearms by a convicted felon. Southern District of Ohio Sentence: Life imprisonment; six years supervised release; $20,000 fine (Oct. 5, 1995) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016, and unpaid balance of the fine remitted. Phillip Maurice Thomas, Vero Beach, Fla. Offense: Possession with intent to distribute at least five grams or more of cocaine base; possession with intent to distribute at least 500 grams or more of cocaine; possession with intent to distribute a mixture and substance containing MDMA or ecstasy; possession with intent to distribute a mixture and substance containing marijuana. Southern District of Florida Sentence: 292 months imprisonment; eight years supervised release (April 8, 2005) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Shane William Tuttle, Great Falls, Mont. Offense: Possession with intent to distribute (three counts); use of a firearm during drug-trafficking offense (two counts); illegal use of communication facility (two counts); possession with intent to distribute cocaine. District of Montana Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; four years supervised release (Sept. 14, 1994) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Craig L. Watson, Jacksonville, Ark. Offense: Conspiracy to distribute more than 50 grams of crack cocaine; distribution of cocaine; attempt to distribute cocaine base; possession with intent to distribute cocaine base. Eastern District of Arkansas Sentence: 276 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (July 10, 2006); amended to 240 months imprisonment (Dec. 15, 2011) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Lawrence McArthur Webb, Salem, Va. Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than 50 grams of cocaine base and more than five kilograms of cocaine powder; distribution of cocaine (two counts). Western District of Virginia Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (June 4, 2007) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Danny Ray White, Garland, Tex. Offense: Attempt to manufacture and manufacture of methamphetamine; attempt to manufacture and manufacture of amphetamine; possession of a three-neck round-bottom flask; possession of a listed chemical, ethyl ether. Eastern District of Texas Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release; $11,000 fine (July 19, 1996) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire Oct. 1, 2016. Julian L. Wyre, Chicago Offense: Possession with intent to distribute cocaine base. Northern District of Illinois Sentence: 204 months imprisonment; five years supervised release; $250 fine (Nov. 6, 2008) Commutation grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire June 3, 2018. Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at Trump Doral golf course in Miami. Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at Trump Doral golf course in Miami. Carlo Allegri/Reuters Businessman Donald Trump officially became the Republican nominee at the partys convention in Cleveland. There are reasons to be skeptical that the wall on the border would ever be built. Putting a ban on Muslims entering the country seems neither practical nor constitutional. But Donald Trump has finally made one three-word campaign promise that voters may be able to count on. Im not changing, he declared this week. Indeed, it is the rest of the political world that is having to adjust. If recent days are any indication, the remaining five months of this presidential campaign are likely to be fought entirely on Trumps terms. The celebrity real estate mogul continues to defy predictions including some of his own that he will soften his rhetoric and elevate it to a more presidential level as he moves into a general-election campaign. His adversaries are now adopting his tactics, even as Trump himself is intensifying and broadening his attacks. Democratic nominee-in-waiting Hillary Clinton, not usually known for her zingers, delivered a speech that was positively Trumpian in the volume of insults she aimed at the man who will be at the top of the GOP ticket. Donald Trumps ideas arent just different they are dangerously incoherent, Clinton said. Theyre not really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies. Meanwhile, even as she was speaking, a Tweet arrived from House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) announcing that the Hamlet of Janesville has come to terms with what pretty much everyone else knew was inevitable. Ill be voting for @realDonaldTrump this fall. Im confident he will help turn the House GOPs agenda into laws, Ryan wrote. That second sentence was the rationalization. The reality was that Ryan had capitulated, having earlier insisted that he could not support Trump unless he advances the principles of our party and appeals to a wide, vast majority of Americans. Trump did not budge, so Ryan had to. The speakers endorsement ended his awkward standoff with the man who will be his partys nominee. But it put Ryan into another kind of difficult position, which is having to answer for everything that Trump has to say. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told CNN that he fears that Trumps bombast will become a trademark for the entire party, much as 1964 GOP nominee Barry Goldwaters vote against the Civil Rights Act that year did. It did define our party, for at least African American voters, and it still does today, McConnell said. That was a complete shift that occurred that year and weve never been able to get them back. McConnell urged Trump to be more conciliatory now that he has all but won the GOP nomination. I think the attacks that hes routinely engaged in for example, going after Susana Martinez, the Republican governor of New Mexico, the chairman of the Republican Governors Association I think, was a big mistake, McConnell said. What he ought to be doing now is trying to unify the party and I think attacking people once you have won its a time, if you can, to be gracious and to try and bring the party together, McConnell added. So far, however, the closest that Trump has come to that was announcing that he would recycle the nickname Lyin Ted, which he had applied to his GOP rival Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and apply it to Lyin Hillary. Republican leaders are also worried that Trump is further alienating important constituencies. In an interview Thursday with the Wall Street Journal, Trump stepped up his attacks on the federal judge presiding over lawsuits against one of his endeavors, the now-defunct Trump University, suggesting that Indiana-born Gonzalo Curiel should be taken off the case because he has Mexican roots. Im building a wall. Its an inherent conflict of interest, Trump said. On Friday, in an interview with CNNs Jake Tapper, Trump refused to back down when Tapper suggested that his objection to Curiel was the definition of racism. But hes an American. Hes an American, Tapper said of the judge. Hes of Mexican heritage, hes proud of it, Trump replied. So much for reaching out to Latino voters an effort so futile for the GOP at this point that the Republican National Committees Hispanic media director, Ruth Guerra, resigned this week. Sources said it was because she was fed up. Her replacement, Helen Aguirre Ferre, who has a history of negative comments about Trump, had to scrub her Twitter account. She deleted one Tweet sent less than a month ago, in which she predicted that Trump would drive Miamis Cuban Americans from the Republican Party. Ryan, fresh from having endorsed Trump, expressed dismay over the presumptive nominees comments about the judge, which he told a Wisconsin radio station were out of left field for my mind. Its reasoning I dont relate to, Ryan said in an interview with 1130 WISN. I completely disagree with the thinking behind that. Early on, Trump was criticized for seeming to encourage violence by his supporters at his rallies. But Thursday night, it appeared that the other side had been inspired to do the same and more in San Jose. Anti-Trump protesters pelted his supporters with eggs and water balloons, snatched their Make America Great Again hats, and burned them. Some were even caught on camera punching people for the offense of having shown up at a Trump rally. In an interview on CNN, Clinton said she condemns all violence in our political arena, but she blamed Trump for setting the tone. He set a very bad example. He created an environment in which it seemed to be acceptable for someone running for president to be inciting violence, Clinton said. Trump has lowered the bar, and now is it a surprise that people who dont like him are stepping over that low bar? I dont think it is. I dont think any of this helps anybody, she added. All of this has had the predictable effect on Trump himself. During Clintons address, she noted wryly that she supposed that Trump was composing tweets about her at that very moment. And sure enough, he was: Bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton! Reading poorly from the teleprompter! She doesnt even look presidential. But he was just getting warmed up. Remember I said I was a counter-puncher? Trump said in San Jose. I am. After what she said about me today and her phony speech. That was a phony speech. That was a Donald Trump hit job. I will say this. Hillary Clinton has to go to jail. She has to go to jail. And this is only the beginning of the general-election season. There are still more than 150 vitriolic days to go. In Libya in 2011, President Obama showed a willingness to use his commander-in-chief powers to prevent a humanitarian crisis. Then came Syria. (Gillian Brockell,Missy Ryan/The Washington Post) Preparing to go to war in 2011, President Obama laid out a case for involvement in the mounting crisis in Libya. Without strong Western action, he told Americans, the conflict in Libya would trigger a humanitarian crisis and destabilize a fragile region. Most acutely, the presidents senior aides worried that failing to launch military action would allow dictator Moammar Gaddafi to follow through on promises to exterminate Libyans demanding political rights. It would also extinguish hopes for democracy taking root across the region. In the days that followed, U.S. and allied aircraft began bombing government forces in a United Nations-backed operation that marked a high-water moment for the Arab Spring. If the 2011 Libyan intervention was the moment that Obama proved his willingness to use American military power in protection of foreign civilians, then Syria was the place where he revealed his core instincts against doing so. The presidents decision to back away from plans to strike Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2013 in response to a chemical weapons attack on civilians that August revealed his determination to avoid getting himself embroiled in more foreign conflicts. That decision has provided fodder for critics who believe Obama has been too restrained with the use of American military power, even when the cause is just. But it has also shielded the presidents legacy from the toxic fallout of another Middle Eastern intervention like that in Libya, where strife and lawlessness have plagued its post-revolution era. The two decisions reveal differences within Obamas inner circle and the presidents fundamental skepticism that military power can transform conflicts whose roots and players the United States may never fully understand. In Libya, Obama acceded to arguments from advisers including Susan E. Rice, then-ambassador to the United Nations; Samantha Power, then a White House adviser who advanced the responsibility to protect; and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They saw Gaddafis moves to quash uprisings in the cities of Benghazi and Misrata as a chance to show that the United States had a stake in preventing mass killings, even in countries where American interests were marginal. Five months of NATO-led strikes helped disparate and poorly trained groups of rebels advance into Tripoli, ending Gaddafis 40-year rule. Obama characterized the turmoil that followed as his chief foreign-policy regret. Absorbed with the other crises in the Middle East and hopeful that European nations, with their proximity to North Africa and historic ties to the region, would take responsibility for nurturing a new democracy there, the United States took a limited post-revolution role in Libya. Over time, U.S. officials saw Libyans unity fall away and watched as a lack of government know-how undermined the countrys attempts to rebuild. By the summer of 2014, the country had slipped into another civil war. Speaking in an interview that year, Obama said it wasnt that the intervention was the wrong decision, it was that he had underestimated what Libya would need the day after. The day after questions had been foremost on Obamas mind since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011. As the uprising turned to armed insurrection to civil war, Obama resisted calls from his chief advisers, including Clinton, then-CIA director Gen. David H. Petraeus and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, to arm rebels against the Assad government. Obama and other senior aides thought it was improbable that a poorly armed peoples army would succeed against Assads robust military and his Russian and Iranian backing. The calculus changed in August 2013, when U.S. intelligence officials concluded that Assads military had used rockets to launch a sarin gas attack on Ghouta, a rebel-controlled suburb of Damascus. Images filmed shortly afterward showed victims at least 1,000 people, including scores of women and children convulsing or dead from exposure to deadly airborne chemicals. In an Aug. 31 speech, Obama described the massacre as an assault on human dignity. The president, who had promised in 2012 that the use of chemical weapons would be a red line for U.S. action in Syria, ordered his military to prepare for strikes on regime military targets. Then, in a decision that blindsided even his top advisers at the Pentagon and State Department, the president changed course. After a lengthy discussion with Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, who, like Obama, was disposed against intervention, Obama announced that he was ready to launch a limited attack on Assads arsenals but would first secure congressional approval. It never materialized. Since then, the conflict has ground on, and the death toll now approaches half a million. In the years that followed, the Islamic State gained strength, Russia plunged in to shore up its ally Assad and millions of refugees have flowed into Europe. Although the Ghouta attack resulted in a deal to empty Syrias chemical arsenal, some of those weapons have been used since against civilians. In an explanation he later gave to the Atlantic, Obama stood by his decision. He was a believer in humanitarian intervention, but only in a narrow set of circumstances that presented a direct threat to the United States. Weve got to be hard-headed at the same time as were big-hearted, and pick and choose our spots, and recognize that there are going to be times where the best that we can do is to shine a spotlight on something thats terrible, but not believe that we can automatically solve it, he said. In contemplating direct attacks on Assads forces, the president was worried that a punitive strike would enhance the Syrian leaders standing and lengthen the war. More important, a U.S. attack on Assad may have provoked unknowable consequences and drawn the United States further into the war and farther away from the presidents core priorities. The bloodshed in Ghouta was a tragedy just not one, in the presidents eyes, that was Americas to own. Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the vehicle as a 180-foot van. It is a 15-foot van. Bob Allen rents vans outfitted with beds and mini-kitchens to San Franciscans in need of housing who can't afford the city's exhorbitant apartments. (Bob Allen) Dwayne Golstein works for a pathology firm in Los Altos, Calif., handling delivery and lab work during a swing shift from 3 p.m. to midnight. Every morning, he wakes up in his home on a street nestled between a shopping plaza and office building complexes. Faced with the most expensive rentals in the nation, workers in the Bay Area increasingly are searching for creative housing options. Somewhere between homeless encampments and luxurious lofts, another in a growing list of alternatives has surfaced for Golstein and others priced out of the market: renting a van not to drive but to live in. At least once a day I lose my mind. Its low light, Im tired, and Im trying to get out of my clothes, said Golstein, 38. Im loading up my laptop. Wait, wheres my phone? I just had my phone, he added. Or Ill cut up something to eat. Where are my utensils? Youre sitting basically on a bed where you cant walk around and look. Thats the difficulty. Golstein found Bob Allens van rental on Craigslist recently. Allens sleeper go-tel rental business is relatively cheap, mobile and an adventure. The longtime San Francisco resident owns two white 2015 Dodge Caravans that he rents out short- and long-term, depending on customers needs, be they for camping, weekend trips or week- or month-long rentals. Allen, 68, said he considered every detail when he came up with the idea in 2012. His vans include eight-inch foam beds that can sleep two, storage underneath the beds, tinted windows and curtains for privacy and kitchenette areas with electric two-burner stoves and shelves in the back. What some may call roughing it, Allen calls an affordable solution. He charges $700 to $800 a month to rent his sleeper vans, in addition to 40 cents a mile charged via Getaround, the car-sharing service. [Slovakian architects Ecocapsule makes tiny houses seem enormous] A basic rental agreement Allen printed off the Internet outlines the rest of the terms. Renters can also throw in Allens add-on packs, which offer options such as a frying pan, bowls and cooking utensils at $2 a day, or a fishing pole, spinner reel and bait at $1 a day. Other items such as a folding table or additional stoves are also available for additional per-day costs. And it all comes with a how-to guide Allen wrote himself on where to park, shower and cook, plus other tips on navigating life in a van. San Francisco remains the most expensive place to live in the country, with latest reports estimating median rent for a one-bedroom apartment at $3,590, according to Aprils numbers by real estate start-up Zumper. Some renters get creative in order to survive the housing crisis living on a sailboat or in a wooden box or trucks. Others besides Allen try to market their ideas to struggling renters. In March, after the story about an illustrator living in a wooden box in a friends living room went viral, the man offered on his website to build boxes for other people to live in or rent out. And Craigslist seems to serve up more absurdity, with listings such as a crawl space in Pacific Heights for $500 or a shipping container in Bayview for $600. The horrors go on: bug infestations, toilets inside closets, and roommates packed into bunk beds and partitioned living rooms. The van is an alternative to outrageous rent in this city, Allen said. You have to be a good planner. You have to be discreet. Sleeping in vehicles remains part of a larger conversation in the country, as many cities leave it to police discretion on how to handle car-dwelling. Sleeping in vehicles is a type of ban that has really increased in recent years, said Maria Foscarinis, founder and executive director of National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. The centers 2014 report on the criminalization of homelessness found more cities frown upon sleeping in cars. According to the centers national survey of 187 cities, from 2011 to 2014, there was a 119 percent increase in the number of cities banning sleeping in vehicles. In 2014, 81 cities banned it. Allen charges $700 to $800 a month to rent his sleeper vans, in addition to 40 cents a mile charged via Getaround, the car-sharing service. (Bob Allen) For the time being, San Francisco law specifies only where and when people cannot live in their vehicles. According to San Francisco Municipal Police Code, the use of vehicles for human habitation is prohibited from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m in streets, parks or beaches within the city and county. This section is not often enforced, Officer Albie Esparza said in an email. Most car-dwellers will be asked to leave or receive a ticket and fine from police. In extreme situations, violators may receive jail time. Allen says none of his renters have experienced trouble with the law so far. But the laws in California may soon shift. In June 2014, Los Angeless law banning living in vehicles was challenged and brought to the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which struck the law down as unconstitutional. I know at least some cities in California have been looking at their laws in light of that decision, Foscarinis said. [D.C. shift could make tiny houses more abundant] Still, Golstein says, living in a van is far from ideal. He says he times his meals to limit bathroom trips. His go-to meal after coming back from work, usually bought at Trader Joes, consists of avocado and smoked oysters in olive oil tossed in an herb salad with honey mustard. He noticed losing some weight in the month after moving into the van. I mean, it sucks I cant eat food unless Im at work, or I go out and eat, buy something. Ive lost some weight, because I walk everywhere already. The back of the van, theres a little stove, but I just think it would look odd at 2 oclock in the morning for this guy to have smoke coming out of the back of the van in the neighborhood, Golstein said. Before moving into the van, he rented a bed through Airbnb for $400 every two weeks in a room with three sets of bunk beds. Golstein, who said he was asked to leave the four-bedroom house in Los Altos Hills on short notice, compared living in that room to living in military barracks. Greed is a terrible thing in Silicon Valley. He put me in basically what would be equivalent to a teenagers room, Golstein said. This guy wants . . . grown adult professionals to be jumping in and out of bunk beds every day? And you want $800 a month for one bed? At the time Golstein moved out, he said, the landlord planned on raising rent to $1,000 a month. With a budget of around $1,000, Golstein figured he would pay $250 a week to rent the van while he looked for another place. He spends several hours a day at coffee shops to charge his phone and computer, but living in a 15-foot van comes with its challenges. The free time I have, Im restricted. When I return to my abode, Ive got 2 1 / 2 hours of time every night. Pakistani security officials with Naeem Bokhari, allegedly part of a joint terrorist network of al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the Pakistani Taliban, in Karachi on Feb. 12, 2015. (European Pressphoto Agency) Five years after most senior al-Qaeda leaders are thought to have fled this port city, officials in Karachi worry that the organization is regrouping and finding new support here and in neighboring Afghanistan. They are especially concerned about the recruitment of potential foot soldiers for the next major terrorist attack. The resurgence has been managed by a South Asian offshoot called al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), created by al-Qaedas top leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in 2014 in order to slow advances by rival Islamic State militants in the region. [A closer look at Ayman al-Zawahiri] Initially, AQIS struggled to gain traction in Pakistan it has been the principal target of President Obamas drone-strike strategy in the countrys northwestern tribal belt. But AQIS is now finding its footing in southern Pakistan, powered by fresh recruits and budding alliances with other militant organizations. They are making a comeback of sorts, said Saifullah Mehsud, executive director of the FATA Research Center, which monitors militant groups. But its a different, more localized al-Qaeda. After the fall of Afghanistans Taliban government in 2001, many al-Qaeda leaders spilled into northwest Pakistan or attempted to blend in in Karachi, a bustling city of more than 20 million residents. A significant number of those core leaders were eventually killed or captured, or fled to the Middle East, officials said. But the formation of AQIS is again allowing al-Qaeda to tap into Karachis wealth and network of madrassas in search of recruits and technical expertise and sparking deadly clashes with Pakistani security forces. The core al-Qaeda, the thinkers and planners, are not coming to the front right now, but they are giving directions, and . . . the local boys are going in big numbers, said one counterterrorism official in Karachi who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to the media. While Pakistani officials remain confident that al-Qaeda probably cant pull off another 9/11-style attack on the United States, there is concern that the group is, as one official put it, planning something big. The official added that it is unclear, however, whether such an attack would be aimed at Pakistan, another country in South Asia or the West. Those concerns mirror assessments from U.S. commanders in Afghanistan, where there are also signs that elements of al-Qaeda are trying to come together. A 30-square-mile training camp was discovered in Kandahar province in October, and last month U.S. and Afghan special operations forces freed a kidnapped Pakistani from an al-Qaeda-linked camp in Paktia province. [Probably the largest al-Qaeda training camp ever is destroyed] They are looking to nestle in with the Taliban so they have some level of sanctuary, said Brig. Gen. Charles H. Cleveland, chief spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan. Ultimately, what we think al-Qaeda gets out of this relationship is, if the Taliban can provide them some ungoverned space, that allows al-Qaeda space to really conduct their global operations. In Pakistan, officials say al-Qaeda is also re-adapting through enhanced alliances with established militant groups, including the Sunni-dominated Pakistani Taliban and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a sectarian group that had been focused on attacking Shiite Muslims. The coordination comes as Pakistans military has stepped up its operations against various militant groups, prompting them to seek out support from al-Qaeda for survival, said one Pakistani law enforcement official who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. But officials say that the threat from al-Qaeda extends far beyond Sunni militant groups rebranding themselves. Instead, they say, al-Qaeda is finding new recruits from some unlikely Karachi neighborhoods. Although ethnic Pashtuns and foreign fighters have historically formed the backbone of al-Qaeda in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, some ethnic Bengalis and other Urdu-speaking Mohajirs Muslims who migrated to Pakistan from India after the 1947 partition are also being lured into the group, officials said. They are not into this factional fighting, or fighting with other sects or Shiites, but they will go for enforcement of sharia law overall and be drawn to al-Qaeda sermons against the West, the official said. Counterterrorism officials in Karachi have a list of several hundred active al-Qaeda members, which makes them assume there are at least a few thousand on the streets. In Karachi, AQIS has divided itself into three operational segments recruitment, financial and tactical made up of four-to-six-person cells. The recruitment cells work in madrassas and schools, casually preaching Islam before targeting certain students for potential recruitment, officials said. Nobody may even know its al-Qaeda operating, said Saad Khan, a retired Pakistani intelligence officer. Cells solicit local businesses for donations, often under the guise of supporting Islamic charities, officials said. Officials have no estimates for how much money al-Qaeda raises from relatively wealthy Karachi but said that militants are often found carrying hundreds of dollars in cash. They are being told they dont need to do any job and they dont need to indulge in petty crimes, the counterterrorism official said. But they are told they have to remain very discreet. Although such discretion complicates the work of counterterrorism officials, they think that the Karachi cells are just spokes in a broader operation centered near Pakistans southwestern border with Afghanistan or Iran. From Karachi, AQIS tactical cells ferry money and messages to that general area, often moving through Quetta, which is also where part of the Afghan Taliban leadership resides, officials said. From Quetta, militants cross the border into Afghanistan but appear to have little knowledge about al-Qaedas broader ambitions or tactics in the region, intelligence officials said. The people we come into contact with say they go to Afghanistan but are put into a small corner and remain there and cant go out, the Pakistani counterterrorism official said. Then they get direction from there, from another Pakistani, and return. In Pakistan, officials said AQIS has been linked to just one major attempted terrorist attack an effort two years ago to hijack a Pakistani navy vessel from the port of Karachi. The attack was foiled, but five Pakistani navy officers were convicted of helping to orchestrate the operation, according to media reports. AQIS militants have also been linked to several recent police killings in Karachi. Officials say they are targeted revenge attacks or the early stages of a larger plot to try to weaken the morale of security forces. What still makes al-Qaeda different and more dangerous from other militant groups is a disciplined management system, said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Peshawar-based expert on militants. Another dangerous thing is they are always looking to penetrate into the armed forces looking for sympathy. U.S. intelligence officials have worried for years about potential links between al-Qaeda and rogue Pakistani military officials. That Osama bin Laden was found hiding near a Pakistan military training academy did little to allay their suspicions. Pakistani security and intelligence agencies, however, seem to have no tolerance for the modern-day al-Qaeda. We dont go for arrests, the counterterrorism official said. We just search through their computer, their things, and then neutralize them. Last month, police in Pakistans Punjab province reported killing 14 al-Qaeda militants, including the groups leader there, over two days in encounters with police. Pakistans Dawn newspaper reported that the suspects had been in police custody for four months before they died. Saad Muhammad, a retired Pakistani general, said Pakistans military is determined not to allow AQIS to jeopardize its recent gains against Islamist militant groups. You cant say they will be totally naked, but they will not be able to gain strength in any significant way, Muhammad said. But Syed Tahir Hussain Mashhadi, a retired Pakistani army colonel and sitting senator, said the real concern remains how a city such as Karachi fits into al-Qaedas broader global ambitions. The answer to that, he said, remains murky. Al-Qaeda is just an umbrella, and the top of the pyramid is what is controlling and enduring, he said. They dont have to put much effort into Pakistan because all they have to do is pick up all these existing, bloodthirsty splinter organizations and they have a ready-made killing machine. Nisar Mehdi in Karachi, Aamir Iqbal in Peshawar and Antonio Olivo in Kabul contributed to this report. Read more Pakistani husbands can lightly beat their wives, Islamic council says U.S. airstrike against Taliban leader crossed a Pakistani red line Pakistans welcome, if brief, moment of stability may be at an end Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world The Major Crimes Task Force investigates cases from inside a discreet government warehouse tucked in the outskirts of Kabul. The team is part of an effort by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to deliver a better sense of security to Afghans in government-controlled areas. (Antonio Olivo/TWP) In a war-weary country steeped in cynicism, the re-energized Major Crimes Task Force of the national police seems plucked from central casting down to the hard-boiled search for justice as it pursues the goal of rooting out government corruption in Afghanistan. Theres the sharply dressed detective, guzzling pomegranate energy drinks while working into the night to nail the crooked cop suspected of selling off $140,000 worth of fuel meant for Afghan troops on the Taliban front lines. Theres the teams savvy but beleaguered boss, navigating a sharks den of Kabul power brokers some of whom the task force happens to be investigating for theft and bribery in his efforts to get cases prosecuted and his 130 men more resources. And, on the sidelines, there are the international donors, who watch with guarded hope as the FBI-designed team once nearly dismantled for being ineffective has become a central part of President Ashraf Ghanis vow to reform the nations criminal justice system and give Afghans a much-yearned-for sense of security. We are like eagles; were waiting for our prey, said Afghan National Police General Abdul Ghayor Andarabi, the task force boss. He was recently appointed to lead the team after it focused for years on what one NATO official disdainfully characterized as stolen-license-plate cases. With Ghani shifting resources to focus more on the corruption he called our national shame in a speech in May, Andarabi proclaimed that his team could take down much of Afghanistans criminal underworld if it could only get new wiretap kits, button cameras, machines for lifting evidence from a suspects phone and, mainly, more manpower. We need resources, the stocky general said inside a cavernous government warehouse on Kabuls outskirts that serves as the task forces headquarters. We have been told we have full support from top officials. Well see if that happens in practice. NATO officials, at least, want that. They plan to highlight the Major Crimes Task Force at an international summit on Afghanistan to be held in July in Warsaw, where they will seek commitments for $4 billion more in annual security funding through 2020. That summit, plus another one scheduled for October in Brussels that will address about $3 billion requested for Afghan reconstruction funds, may be Afghanistans last chance for significant aid from an international community frustrated by the lack of successes after several billion dollars already spent. Its very important that we as the international community really focus on how we can support this government to govern independently, said Douglas Keh, country director for the United Nations Development Program in Afghanistan, which runs a law-and-order trust fund that finances the Afghan National Police with $45 million per month. International aid has already started to decline and is likely to fall significantly over the next four years, Keh said. Then, what happens? U.S. Army Col. Craig Trebilcock, a judge in York County, Pa., working with NATO to help restructure Afghanistans law enforcement system, said the changes will allow prosecutors, judges and investigators to work in tandem on major cases. In the current system, where corruption really flourishes is in the gaps between the ministries, Trebilcock said. Because they dont communicate and coordinate with each other very well, there is an opportunity anytime a case moves from one stage to the next for it to be lost track of, bribed away, or dismissed under some obscure and inane technicality. Maj. Abdul Tawab Aryan, an FBI-trained investigator, is at the spear point of the fight against corruption. With Hollywood-ready looks and a taste for tailored suits, Aryan, 34, wears the jaded expression he saw on detectives played by Vin Diesel or Jean-Claude Van Damme in the American action movies that inspired him to join the Afghan National Police in 2007. After several hard years in the provinces, he now runs the anti-corruption unit inside the Major Crimes Task Force. Among the 87 cases the task force has brought to the Afghan attorney generals office since February, the anti-corruption unit has arrested government prosecutors for soliciting bribes, police officials smuggling weapons and others in the government running counterfeit money operations. One recent afternoon, Aryan took a swig of his tangy energy drink and grumbled about how he rarely gets to see his wife, 3-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter amid the constant pressure to work harder. My son, he cant recognize his father, he said, smiling softly. He then dug into the case that is his latest obsession: a caper in Afghanistans Kapisa province where the provincial police chief Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Fayeq allegedly orchestrated the theft of about 60,000 gallons of government fuel meant for Afghan troops fighting the Taliban. The chief did not respond to phone calls for comment but has claimed innocence in local news reports. Aryan got a tip about the scheme from a paid informant. After he drove out to the Kapisa police station, he realized that someone had fabricated documents showing that the fuel went to government troops in various parts of the country. In reality, the insider thieves had sold the fuel to a local pump station over several months, Aryan said. They saw me as a young, ambitious officer who might take money to stop investigating, Aryan remarked, leafing through examples of the fake paperwork in a thick file that shows that additional fuel is still missing. I showed some leniency to make them think I was eager to get paid. But, slowly, I kept investigating. The suspects were arrested in April. But the police chief, who has friends in the Afghan parliament, was back at his job within hours. Aryan ruefully recalled how Fayeq smirked at him during a three-hour interrogation. He was sure he had some backers who would help him, Aryan said. He was correct. On average, Afghan police officers make between $176 and $221 per month, officials said. Major crimes detectives make between $294 and $353 per month. Last year, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found that a large portion of $300 million in payments meant for national police salaries could not be verified as actually having gone to the officers. The report concluded that the money was either being skimmed by superiors or that payroll rosters were inflated with ghost employees who existed only on paper. If you look upstream and all you see happening is your work being auctioned off to the highest bidder, at a certain point youre going to go: Hmm, maybe I should be part of this because thats how the system works around here, said Trebilcock, the NATO adviser. Sediq Sediqqi, spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior, which oversees the national police, said those problems are isolated. He noted that about 3,000 new recruits per month have signed on with national police during the past year. We do understand that theyre not getting a good salary for what they do, Sediqqi said. But we strongly believe that there is a willingness within the Afghan people to be part of this establishment. Doing something, anything, about the crime that has spread like weeds through their country feels satisfying, several of the hard-bitten detectives said even if Andarabi calls their successes a drop in the ocean. In the past few weeks, the team arrested a government prosecutor in Kabul who allegedly solicited several thousand dollars in bribes in exchange for dropping cases. They also arrested the leaders of a kidnapping ring that earlier this year killed a 14-year-old boy after his father, a judge in Kapisa province, could not come up with $40,000 in ransom money. I think during the night about the sheer volume of cases, said Maj. Mohammad Younus Mohammadkhel, who has investigated 10 abductions since March with the victims including deputy ministers, businessmen and foreign-aid workers. The main goal of our team is to prevent such incidents, said Mohammadkhel, fingering a picture of the dead boy. There was good news that day for Aryan. The Kapisa police chief had been suspended from his job, a sign that he had lost support in Kabul. Soon, Aryan said, trying out his English, he will be in jail. Around him, his men went back to work. Read more In Afghanistan, the Taliban isnt the only group battling for land Number of displaced in Afghanistan doubled since 2013, report says Despite billions in U.S. funding, Afghan forces have a problem with boots Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Canada called in, and paid, firefighting reinforcements. Nearly 300 South African firefighters arrived in Alberta, Canada this week to help quell wildfires that have destroyed entire neighborhoods and forced Fort McMurrays population of nearly 90,000 to flee. And now theyve just got a surprise pay raise. The South Africans are part of the Working on Fire program, a government funded initiative that recruits young people from impoverished neighborhoods and trains them as firefighters. The program has already trained more than 5,000 men and women. The team, made up of 301 firefighters and managers, were just happy to visit Canada. A smaller team of firefighters worked in Alberta and British Columbia last year and earned $1500 each. The amount seemed more than fair considering that is more than 10 times what they would earn at home, according to Canadas Globe and Mail newspaper. But theyre in Canada, where wildfire crews make $21 to $26 an hour on 12-hour shifts, with overtime. The Canadian Interagency Forest Fore Centre, concerned with the rate the South Africans received in 2015, decided to bump their salaries up to par with other crews. It opened our eyes, Llewellyn Pillay, managing director of Working on Fire, told the Globe and Mail. Its a much more ethical way of doing it. Its the right way to operate, morally. We had never thought about itwe were just happy to have the chance to go to Canada. Now we realize we cant assume that South Africas rates are at parity. If the South Africans were excited to be in Canada before, they should be ecstatic by the news of a raise. On arriving at the Edmonton International Airport early on Monday morning, the South Africans returned a warm Canadian welcome with an impromptu song-and-dance special. The wildfire in Canadas oil and gas region has burned for nearly a month. Canadian officials called in reinforcements of about 1,000 additional firefighters, including from the United States, to join the 1,200 already on the ground. Story continues Sign up for the Quartz Africa Weekly Brief the most important and interesting news from across the continent, in your inbox. Sign up for the Quartz Daily Brief, our free daily newsletter with the worlds most important and interesting news. More stories from Quartz: The swollen Seine River kept rising Friday, spilling into Paris streets and forcing one landmark after another to shut down as it surged to its highest levels in nearly 35 years. Across the capital, museums, parks and cemeteries were being closed as the city braced for possible evacuations. The Seine was expected to peak in Paris later Friday at about 16 feet, 3 inches above normal. Authorities shut the Louvre Museum, the national library, the Orsay Museum and the Grand Palais, Pariss striking glass-and-steel-topped exhibition center. We evaluate the situation for all the buildings nearly hour by hour, said Culture Minister Audrey Azoulay, speaking to journalists outside the world-famous Louvre. We dont know yet the evolution of the level of the Seine River in Paris. At the Louvre, home to Leonardo da Vincis Mona Lisa, curators were scrambling to move some 250,000 artworks from basement storage areas at risk of flooding to safer areas upstairs. Nearly a week of heavy rain has caused serious flooding across a swath of Europe, leaving 16 people dead and others missing. 1 of 47 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad After heavy rain, France sees historic flooding View Photos Some towns in central France are suffering their worst floods in more than a century. Caption Some towns in central France are suffering their worst floods in more than a century. June 5, 2016 The Cher River at the Castle of Chenonceau, in France. Across Europe, at least 18 people have been killed in floods that trapped people in their homes, felled trees and power lines and cut off roads and rail lines. Guillaume Souvant/AFP/Getty Images Wait 1 second to continue. Although the rain has tapered off in some areas, floodwaters are still climbing and could take weeks to clear. Traffic in the French capital was snarled as flooding choked roads, and several Paris railway stations shut down. Basements and apartments in the citys well-to-do 16th district began to flood Friday afternoon as the river crept higher, and authorities were preparing possible evacuations in a park and islands on Pariss western edge. French authorities activated preliminary plans to move the presidency, ministries and other sensitive offices to secure sites in case of flooding. The General Secretariat for Defense and National Security said the presidents and prime ministers offices were not immediately threatened but the National Assembly and the Foreign Ministry were at greater risk. President Francois Hollande said more decisions may be required because of the exceptional flooding situation in Paris and other French regions. Hollande spoke Friday at a news conference with visiting South Korean President Park Geun-hye. He didnt elaborate on what new decisions he is considering should the Seine keep rising. The French president said that what is happening now, especially in Paris and in some regions, is exceptional. In addition to the Louvre, the Orsay Museum, home to a renowned collection of impressionist art on the left bank of the Seine, was also closed Friday, as was the Grand Palais, which draws 2.5 million visitors a year. Residents evacuate their home in Nemours, south of Paris on June 2 as floods inundated parts of France and Germany. (Jerome Delay/AP) Louvre officials said the museum had not taken such precautions in its modern history since its 1993 renovation at the very least. Disappointed tourists were being turned away, but most were understanding. Its good that they are evacuating the paintings. Its a shame that we couldnt see them today, but its right that they do these things, said Carlos Santiago, visiting from Mexico. Elsewhere in Europe, authorities were counting the cost of the floods as they waded through muddy streets and waterlogged homes. German authorities said that the body of a 65-year-old man was found in the town of Simbach am Inn and that a 72-year-old man died of a heart attack after being rescued from a raging stream in the village of Triftern, bringing the countrys death toll from recent flooding to 11. Frances Interior Ministry also reported the death of a 74-year-old man who fell from his horse and drowned in a river in the Seine-et-Marne region east of Paris, the second death in France. With leading Paris museums closed, the surging currents were a tourist attraction in themselves. Prakash Amritraj, 42, visiting from India with his wife and two children, took selfies on the Mirabeau Bridge in western Paris. I had never thought of possible floods in Paris city center. In India, we have the monsoon, but here! Its not supposed to happen, he said. While he sympathized with all those affected, he appreciated the flooding from a different perspective. Its kind of beautiful, in a way, he said. Iraqi soldiers are battling to drive the Islamic State out of Fallujah. But just beyond the edges of the flashpoint city are Shiite militias that many Iraqis fear could undermine the campaign against the radical group. These government-aligned militiamen have helped push the Islamic State out of key areas of the country but also have become a complication for the U.S.-backed military coalition assembled to destroy the hard-line Sunni group. They filled an important void left by Iraqs weakened armed forces, but their religiously motivated agenda has aggravated Iraqs combustible sectarian divisions. That is particularly problematic in a place like Fallujah, in Iraqs Sunni heartland, where residents have a history of revolt. A decade ago, al-Qaeda militants staged a punishing insurgency against then-occupying U.S. troops. Anger at the government in Baghdad helped the Islamic State win control of the area in January 2014. Iraqs government has ordered the militias to stay away from the fighting inside the city. And the U.S. military says it refuses to give them air support, fearing that their involvement could help the Islamic State rally besieged residents to its cause. The militias are sectarian just like Daesh is sectarian, said Majid al-Juraisi, a tribal leader from the city who fled to Baghdad when the Islamic State took control. Daesh is the Arabic name for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL. We reject their involvement in this campaign completely, he said. Progress by Iraqi forces toward entering the city appeared to have been substantially slowed by a fierce counterattack by the Islamic State on Thursday. The militant group has booby-trapped the city with improvised explosive devices, sniper nests and hidden tunnels that help its fighters stage surprise attacks. Maj. Gen. Saad Harbiya, commander of military operations west of Baghdad, also said the Islamic State is using some of the estimated 50,000 civilians in the city as human shields. Daesh defenses were fierce at the beginning of the operation, but we see signs that they are being weakened, and we are confident that we will push them out, he said. The militias mostly Shiite Muslim groups known collectively as popular mobilization units, or PMUs have a reputation for brutal reprisals against Sunnis suspected of being loyal to the Islamic State. Iraqis and human rights groups have accused them of torture, forced disappearances and executions. Iraqi officials fear that in Fallujah, about an hours drive west of Baghdad, the militias reputation has played into the hands of the Islamic State. The group appears to be telling residents that the governments assault will result in sectarian slaughter. Starting in 2013, Fallujah residents rebelled against Iraqs Shiite-dominated government, citing years of official neglect and other grievances, and the unrest eventually helped the Islamic State take control of the area. Those grievances may still be raw for many in Fallujah, even though their patience for the Islamic States brutal rule appears to have long ago evaporated. Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi has gone out of his way to deemphasize the role being played in the campaign by the militias, which are still shelling the city and making sectarian-tinged pronouncements from the outskirts of town. The militias many of which are heavily influenced by neighboring Iran, a Shiite powerhouse hold considerable sway over the Western-friendly premier. He has been weakened recently by anti-government protests and rising public anger over his handling of Iraqs crises. A recent spate of Islamic State-perpetrated bombings of Shiite areas in Baghdad has increased the pressure on Abadi to launch an assault on Fallujah, even as his U.S. allies prefer that he focus on retaking the northern city of Mosul from the group. Abadi appears even more vulnerable to the whims of the militias, which appear to be itching to exact revenge on Fallujah for the Islamic State bombings in the capital, said Michael Pregent, an Iraq expert at the Hudson Institute. Shiite militias want to punish Fallujah for continued [Islamic State] attacks on Shiite areas in and around Baghdad. Abadi is powerless to stop the IRGC-backed Shiite militias, he said, using initials to refer to Irans Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is believed to fund and train the militias. Ahmed al-Assadi, a spokesman for the PMUs, denied accusations of abuse. He noted that the PMU groups fall firmly under the authority of the prime ministers office and said their fighters would obey orders not to enter Fallujah. Fighting in the city is the job of the counterterrorism forces, the military and the police. Our mission is to surround areas on the outskirts, help with the siege. But we stand ready to give further assistance if required, Assadi said. U.S. coalition air raids in support of Iraqi troops would stop if the militias started to fight inside the city, said Army Col. Chris Garver, a spokesman for the coalition. Only government forces and approved Sunni militiamen are receiving supportive airstrikes, which have totaled 48 around Fallujah in the past two weeks, he said. We wont shoot in support of units that are not properly aligned with the government of Iraq, Garver said. But to some Iraqis, especially Sunnis, that separation appears to be little more than show. They see the United States as willfully allied with the militias and Iran, which also has played a major role in the operation to win back Fallujah. Iran has dispatched advisers to the battlefield, such as Qasem Soleimani, the countrys most powerful spy commander. The militias didnt participate in the liberation of Ramadi because the Americans said no, said Juraisi, the tribal leader, referring to the Islamic States expulsion from the capital of Anbar province in December. So what is being done in Fallujah has been given approval by the Americans, and in Iraq that matters more than what the Iraqi government decides, he said. Read more: Iraqi military claims advances in Islamic State-held Fallujah The war against the Islamic State hits hurdles just as the U.S. military gears up Islamic State bans satellite TV in Iraqs second-largest city, citing infidel brainwashing Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world EDMONTON, AB / ACCESSWIRE / June 2, 2016 / Grizzly Discoveries Inc. (GZD.V) (OTC Pink: GZDIF) (FSE: G6H) ("Grizzly" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has appointed Mr. Andre Dallaire as an Advisor to the Board of Directors of the Company. Mr. Dallaire is a former Canadian diplomat, having served as consul and assistant trade commissioner for ten years in the US, Turkey, Peru and France. Mr. Dallaire subsequently worked as a financial advisor and consultant to Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain Telecom in Bahrain. Mr. Dallaire currently resides in Panama and has been an active investor in gold and other mineral resources stocks since 2008. The Company also announces that the Board of Directors has granted stock options ("Options") to directors, officers, and consultants of the Company to acquire up to an aggregate 2,200,000 common shares of the Company ("Shares") under the Company's Stock Option Plan, of which 1,400,000 were granted to insiders of the Company. The Options are exercisable at a price of $0.075 per Share, vest immediately upon issuance, and expire on June 2, 2021 or earlier in accordance with the provisions of the Company's Stock Option Plan. 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 over 235,000 acres of precious-base metal properties in British Columbia; more than 223,430 acres of properties which host diamondiferous kimberlites in the Buffalo Head Hills region of Alberta; and metallic and industrial mineral permits for potash totaling more than 143,000 acres along the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. 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 Story continues 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. SOURCE: Grizzly Discoveries Inc. A migrant boat capsizes off the coast of Italy on May 26. On Friday, another boat filled with hundreds of migrants capsized near the island of Crete. (Marina Militare via AP) A grim succession of shipwrecks and drownings in the Mediterranean Sea this week has highlighted a shift in migrant smuggling operations away from relatively safer routes into Europe and sparked recriminations about whether European governments are doing enough to stem the flow. The rising death toll spiked Friday with the discovery of more than 100 drowning victims off the Libyan coast, as rescuers searched for survivors of at least two other stricken boats in waters off Crete and Egypt. The new wrecks padded a toll estimated to exceed 1,000 this week. With 2015 as the deadliest year on record for those who sought passage into Europe by sea, more than 2,500 people have died so far this year, compared with 1,800 in the same period last year, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). In the past 10 days alone, the 2016 death toll for migrants attempting to make the central Mediterranean crossing from North Africa to Europe, typically via Italy and its outer islands has already doubled. That has shifted the focus of refugee organizations from the shorter, safer Greek route traveled mainly by people from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East to those who are crossing from the Maghreb. For many in Europe and North Africa, the question is why no systematic European Union policy or temporary solution has been put in place to prevent further deaths at sea. In Libya on Friday, Col. Ayoub Gassim, a spokesman for the Libyan navy, blamed E.U. leaders, who he said were doing nothing but counting bodies. The accusation struck a chord even in Brussels, the E.U. headquarters, where some critics cited the nature of E.U. policymaking. Everybody knows what needs to be done an E.U. border and coast guard agency, said Marc Pierini, a former E.U. ambassador to Libya and Syria. [Why the number of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean keeps rising] The E.U. does have a border control agency, known as Frontex. But it has neither vessels nor surveillance equipment of its own, relying instead on individual E.U. member states to provide both. We are definitely in crisis-management mode only, which is not good for seeing the next crisis coming and getting the proper structures in place, Pierini said in a telephone interview from Brussels. We are dealing with short-termism. And basically putting patches on leaks, he said. They talk about keeping the numbers down, as if the numbers are not human beings like you and me. An Italian official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss E.U. deliberations, said Italy has been pressing its European partners for more than a year to take greater action, such as deploying more ships and other resources, to address the growing number of deaths in the Mediterranean. Video from the Italian navy shows a large ship capsizing off Libyas coast on May 25 with more than 500 migrants aboard. (Italian Navy) [Tensions rise between E.U., Turkey over deal to end refugee crisis] Another obstacle is resistance from the Italian and Greek governments to hosting any substantial, long-term humanitarian aid operations on their shores. The rationale typically stems from a desire to protect their countries from becoming holding pens for migrants who have no claim to E.U. asylum. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported Tuesday that at least 880 migrants and refugees had died trying to cross the Mediterranean in the past week. As the approaching summer brings warmer weather and better sea conditions, smugglers from North Africa are likely to continue packing migrants into unseaworthy vessels bound for Europe in dangerous conditions. A migrant resettlement deal between the E.U. and Turkey in March, which effectively closed much of the Balkan route from Greece into Western Europe, also means that more migrants are likely to be smuggled along the central Mediterranean route in the coming months. Gassim, the Libyan navy spokesman, told the Associated Press that Libyan coast guard personnel found a capsized smuggling boat Thursday. Given the typical capacity of these vessels, he said, the actual death toll may even be as high as 125. Similar emergencies were reported Friday across the Mediterranean, as governments from Europe and North Africa launched immediate rescue operations. Seventy-five miles from the southern coast of Crete, Greek authorities dispatched a military aircraft, three helicopters and two patrol vessels to attend to a capsized boat carrying what officials first described as a significant number of migrants. According to a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 342 migrants were rescued and four bodies were recovered. The search continued throughout the day. Farther south, the Egyptian military responded to a distress call from a smuggling boat carrying an unknown number of migrants toward Europe. On its official Facebook page, the military said Friday that it dispatched ships and helicopters to a site about 165 miles off the coast of Sallum, a seaside town in northwestern Egypt. The number of migrants aboard the vessel remains unclear. The danger posed by the central Mediterranean route is hardly news to leaders in Europe or North Africa. Similar tragedies have plagued the region for years. In October 2013, a vessel carrying more than 500 people capsized off the coast of Lampedusa, Italys southernmost island, leaving 359 confirmed dead. The migrant crisis, the largest on European soil since the end of World War II, has only worsened since then. More than 1 million people poured into the continent in 2015. As the archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Angelo Scola, told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica: Because of its geographical position and because of a social and cultural resilience, Italy could, should have a leading role in accommodating asylum seekers. The government does not share the sentiment. When migrants make landfall in Italy, authorities are required by law to process them for political asylum. But the European Union has sanctioned Italy for failing to fingerprint the new arrivals it receives, which decreases the number it must shelter. Last month, Angelino Alfano, Italys interior minister, proposed an idea of floating hot spots where migrants would be subject to health, security and identity checks while still at sea. Although many details behind the project remain unclear, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, is likely to reject the proposal, on the grounds that the hot spots violate the freedom of movement protected by E.U. human rights law. Stefano Pitrelli in Rome and Erin Cunningham in Istanbul contributed to this report. Read more More than 700 migrants drown in the Mediterranean in May U.N. says 500 migrants drown in the Mediterranean in April Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Kamal Eldarat, left, and his son, Mohamed, have been freed from a prison in the United Arab Emirates after their acquittal Monday on charges they raised donations to aid armed groups in Libya. (Amal Eldarat via AP) Two U.S. citizens have been freed from a prison in the United Arab Emirates following their acquittal this week on charges that they supported militants fighting in Libya, their family said Friday. Kamal Eldarat, 59, was released late Thursday, according to his daughter, Amal Eldarat. His son, Mohamed, 34, was released Tuesday, she said. [American businessmen acquitted in the UAE ] The two men were detained for 21 months following a 2014 security sweep that rounded up almost a dozen Libyans and men of Libyan heritage living in the UAE. Initially held incommunicado, the Eldarats went on trial in January on charges of supporting terrorists in Libya during the 2011 Arab Spring rebellion against dictator Moammar Gaddafi. The terrorism charges eventually were dropped, but they still faced charges of providing supplies to armed groups in Libya and raising donations without government permission. The Eldarats and two others a Libyan Canadian and a Libyan resident of the UAE were acquitted Monday, though they were led from the courtroom in handcuffs and returned to prison while their releases were finalized. Salim Alaradi, the Canadian citizen, was released Tuesday and has already flown out of the country to be reunited with his family. In a telephone interview from the UAE, Mohamed Eldarat said he and his father must retrieve their U.S. passports from UAE authorities and get medical attention for ailments that developed or worsened during their lengthy detention. Family members and human rights groups said the Eldarats were tortured, enduring beatings, waterboarding and sleep deprivation. UAE officials denied the allegations and said the defendants had been provided due process. Before determining their plans, the Eldarats also must look into their business affairs, Eldarat said. His father was a successful real estate developer in the UAE, and the son ran a chain of Subway sandwich shops. But Mohammad Eldarat said his first meal after he regained freedom was the most American food he could think of a Big Mac and McDonalds. Im so grateful for everything the U.S. government has done, he said. They faced a lot of roadblocks, but the fact they were there gave us a lot of emotional support. The Eldarats are Libyan Americans who sought asylum in the United States during Gaddafis reign. The family has lived in the UAE for two decades but retained U.S. citizenship. The case put a strain on relations between Washington and Abu Dhabi. The State Department sent consular officials to attend the court proceedings, and U.S. officials pressed the UAE government to release the men. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault welcomes Secretary of State John F. Kerry to an international conference on peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians in Paris on June 3. (Pool photo by Stephane de Sakutin/via Reuters) A gathering of foreign ministers and senior diplomats Friday called for an international conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be held by years end, warning that violence and settlement growth are endangering a two-state solution. Secretary of State John F. Kerry was among 29 diplomats who issued a joint statement in Paris expressing alarm at the deteriorating situation on the ground, citing settlement activity in the West Bank and a rash of Palestinian attacks on Israelis. They called the status quo unsustainable and affirmed their support for a just, lasting and enduring peace, with two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. The one-day summit organized by France brought together diplomats from the European Union, the Arab League, the United Nations and the Middle East Quartet, including the United States and Russia. Neither Israel nor the Palestinians were invited, however, as the conference was considered a first step toward what the joint communique called the prospect of convening before the end of the year an international conference. [Arab-Israeli peace initiatives are popping up all over] The diplomats agreed to establish teams to work on economic and security incentives they could offer if the Israelis and Palestinians reached an agreement. Kerry, however, demurred when reporters asked if he backed another conference this year with Israelis and Palestinians participating. Were just starting, he said. Lets get into the conversations. The Israeli news media reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had called Kerry on Thursday night asking him to work to soften any harsh language in the joint statement that the Israelis believed would be included at the insistence of Arab diplomats. Though the eventual statement was mild, the conference itself was condemned by Israeli government officials who say only direct negotiations with no preconditions proposed repeatedly by Netanyahu but rejected by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will lead to peace. [Israel tells France multilateral approach to peace wont work] Israels public security minister, Gilad Erdan, called it borderline delusional to think that diplomats from outside the region could meet in Paris and make a meaningful contribution to Middle East peace. The Foreign Ministry called it a missed opportunity and compared it to the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, which carved up the Middle East after the Ottoman Empire fell. History will record that the conference in Paris only hardened the Palestinian position and distanced the chances for peace, a Foreign Ministry statement said. The meeting was embraced by Palestinians, who have sought to internationalize negotiations in part because they dont trust the United States to act as a neutral mediator and consider the Europeans more sympathetic to their aspirations. Saeb Erekat, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, called the multilateral approach a flicker of hope Palestine has been waiting for. If Israel is allowed to continue its colonization and apartheid policies in Occupied Palestine, the future will be for more extremism and bloodshed rather than for coexistence and peace, he said in a statement. The Palestinians want to establish a state on land that Israel captured after the Six-Day War of 1967. International pressure has been building since the U.N. General Assembly recognized a state of Palestine in 2012, though one does not exist in reality without a negotiated agreement with Israel. For years, many diplomats have been warning that the window for a two-state solution to the conflict is narrowing. Negotiations have been moribund since 2008, and a nine-month effort by Kerry to restart the talks collapsed with mutual recriminations. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Friday that urgent actions were necessary to preserve the two-state solution, revive it before it is too late. Ayrault said direct negotiations have not been fruitful, with the result that currently, everything is blocked. We extended our hands to the Israelis and Palestinians, and we hope that they will respond positively and take action to renew the peace process, Ayrault said. French President Francois Hollande opened the conference calling for Israelis and Palestinians to take the brave step toward peace. He said the spread of terrorism around the world makes the push for peace more urgent. Violence is growing and hope is fading thats why we want to try and revive the peace process, he said, adding, The only ones to benefit from the continuation of the status quo are the extremists who oppose peace. William Booth and Ruth Eglash in Jerusalem contributed to this report. Read more: Kerry quest for Middle East peace collapses The U.N. Security Council agreed Friday to formally request Syrian approval of humanitarian airlifts of food and medical supplies to civilians in besieged areas where the government has denied access for land shipments of aid. The agreement to make the request, which is to be made Sunday by U.N. representatives in Damascus, was reached by consensus in the council, although some members appeared to feel more strongly about it than others. Britain, which had requested the council meeting, said land convoys allowed so far by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have been too little, too late. Airdrops are costly, complex and risky, but we all agree now that they are the last resort and we must now use them to relieve the human suffering, Britains U.N. ambassador, Matthew Rycroft, told reporters after the closed-door meeting. Countries with influence over the regime, like Russia and Iran, must ensure that air access is granted, he said. If the [Assad] regime chooses to block land access or blocks the World Food Program from delivering aid by air, then the U.K. and other members of an international group that has demanded the access will consider other actions. Rycroft said that Russia had agreed to the consensus demand and that theres no doubt Russia does have very significant influence over the regime. In an interview with Russian television, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov repeated Moscows insistence that the United States and others collaborate more closely with Russia in actions against the Islamic State. While humanitarian access was vital, he said, it is of secondary importance to the terrorist threat. The United States and Russia are co-chairs of an international task force that set June 1 as a deadline for Assad to permit full ground access to 19 areas where aid to civilians has been blocked, primarily by surrounding government troops, in some cases for years. U.N. officials have said that up to a half-million people remain without assistance. Airdrops and helicopter landings, using private contractors, would be administered by the World Food Program, which has said that such operations are too unsafe without guaranteed protection from government troops and air defenses. Asked whether his government or others were prepared to use their own air forces to deliver assistance if access is denied, Rycroft said they would wait to see Assads response to the Sunday demand and take the matter one step at a time. At the State Department, spokesman Mark Toner said that U.S. focus remains on exerting the pressure on actors on the ground . . . to provide that secure environment for aid delivery. YEMEN Rockets kill at least 17 in busy market in Taiz At least 17 civilians, including 10 women and a girl, were killed and dozens were wounded when rockets hit a busy market in the western city of Taiz on Friday, Yemeni medical officials said. The rockets were fired by Houthi rebels, the Shiite fighters besieging the city. They struck about 3:30 p.m., when Taiz residents were shopping in preparation for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which starts next week. At least 30 people were wounded, and the death toll was expected to rise, the officials said. The market in the Old City of Taiz is under the control of local resistance forces loyal to the internationally recognized government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition. The city has been hit hard by fighting since coming under siege by the Houthis. Fridays civilian death toll was one of the highest since the United Nations declared a truce on April 10 to pave the way for peace talks in Kuwait. The truce has been breached by both sides. Associated Press SYRIA U.N. agrees to seek approval for aid airlifts The U.N. Security Council agreed to formally request Syrian approval of humanitarian airlifts of food and medical supplies to civilians in besieged areas where the government has denied access for land shipments of aid. The agreement to make the request, which is to be made Sunday by U.N. representatives in Damascus, was reached by consensus in the council, although some members appeared to feel more strongly about it than others. Britain, which had requested the council meeting, said land convoys allowed so far by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have been too little, too late. Airdrops are costly, complex and risky, but we all agree now that they are the last resort and we must now use them to relieve the human suffering, Britains ambassador to the U.N., Matthew Rycroft, told reporters after the closed-door meeting. The United States and Russia are co-chairs of an international task force that set June 1 as a deadline for Assad to permit full ground access to 19 areas where aid to civilians has been blocked, primarily by surrounding government troops, in some cases for years. Karen DeYoung PHILIPPINES President-elect taunts reporters, blasts U.N. Philippine President-elect Rodrigo Duterte dared reporters Thursday night to stop covering him after drawing flak for earlier comments that corrupt journalists were legitimate targets of assassination, even as he vowed to be a changed man by the end of the month when he takes office. Im urging you: Make this trip your last in Davao City, Duterte said in English during a two-hour televised briefing, referring to the city where he has been mayor for decades. I do not care if no one is covering me. Do not threaten me I said Im ready to lose the presidency, my honor or my life. Just do not f--- with me. Duterte called the briefing for Thursday after he drew flak for his Tuesday comments on corrupt journalists, who he said arent protected by laws safeguarding freedom of expression. His Thursday remarks and his wolf-whistling at a female reporter at the same briefing triggered a flood of criticism on social media and prompted Paris-based Reporters Without Borders to call on journalists to boycott him. The United Nations, which has links to the international organization promoting journalists safety, wasnt spared by Duterte. The president-elect, who takes office June 30, cursed the United Nations, which he said has failed to solve Middle East conflicts and problems in Africa. Im telling the networks, do not come here. I do not need you, he said, urging reporters to cover him only through state-run television or government websites. Duterte said he could also order cabinet members to stop talking to journalists. Bloomberg News Thousands turn out for Tel Aviv gay-pride parade: Colorfully dressed drag queens and bare-chested, muscular men on floats partied alongside thousands of others from the LGBT community at Tel Avivs annual gay-pride parade Friday, the largest event of its kind in the Middle East. Israeli media said 200,000 people joined the festivities. The sun is out, and everybody is partying and having fun the atmosphere is great, said Christian Tummann, a German tourist celebrating with his husband. Croatias leader refuses to step down as government unravels: Croatias prime minister said he wont resign despite a crisis in his governing center-right coalition. Instead Tihomir Oreskovic urged his two deputies to step down to end a political deadlock. The senior governing party, the Croatian Democratic Union, and its junior partner, the Most group, each have a deputy prime minister. The crisis erupted when Most said it would support an opposition motion to replace its partners deputy prime minister. From news services Europe Strikes and protests against labour reforms continue in France Oil refinery staff at six of the countrys eight sites remain on strike in France, leading to severe fuel shortages across the country. Rail strikes continue to affect high-speed, local and services in the Paris area. On Monday, Air France pilots voted to strike, but have yet to set a date. Air traffic control staff belonging to the SNCTA union are due to strike today and stay out until Sunday. The ongoing strikes and protests are in opposition to the labour reform law being imposed by the Socialist Party government that will erode job protection and make it easier to fire staff. One-day strike of refuse workers in Italian capital Staff working for AMA, Romes waste management authority, struck for 24 hours Monday. The dispute is over longstanding contract issues. Occurring at the height of the tourist season, the strike quickly had an impact. There is only a limited rubbish collection on Sundays, so the backlog from the previous day led to waste mounting up in the streets. Further strikes in Greece announced Greek primary school teachers announced they will strike on June 8. This is to protest plans by the Syriza-led government to cut school hours to save money and manage teacher shortages. POEDIN, the union representing staff in state hospitals, announced it would hold a 24-hour strike the same day. Drivers and other staff at UK warehouse set to strike Three quarters of Unite members working at the warehouse in Leicestershire of catalogue retailer Argos have voted to strike June 7. Warehouse staff and administration will begin a six-day strike. They are opposing plans by Argos to outsource 96 drivers jobs to haulier Eddie Stobart Ltd., which they say will mean lower pay, worse working conditions and less job security. Irish care home staff continue protest A protest by care workers at the Oberstown residential unit for youth offenders in County Dublin, Ireland is continuing. On Tuesday, staff refused to open bedroom doors between 8 a.m. and 12 noon, confining youth to their rooms. Management had to make emergency arrangements to provide food and drink. The members of the Services Industrial Professional and Technical Union and Impact unions are concerned about safety measures at the unit and inadequate staffing levels. Staff have been assaulted by youth who are detained there because of criminal convictions and challenging behaviour, which has led to high levels of sickness absence. A meeting between staff and management under the auspices of the Workplace Relations Commission took place Wednesday. Dockers strike and threat of strike by airport ground handling staff in Cyprus Last Friday, Cyprus Port Authority dockers walked out for two hours while a disciplinary hearing against their SYALK union head, Demetris Patsalos, took place. He had made criticisms of the planned privatisation of the port. Ground handling staff at Larnaca and Paphos airports have threatened to strike over collective agreements that two ground handling companies are trying to impose. The handling staff are represented by the private employees branch of the SEK union. Breakdown of talks could lead to Norwegian oil production strike Offshore oil workers in Norway organised by the Industry Energy union could strike after talks with oil the Norwegian Oil and Gas Association broke down Monday. Norway, the biggest oil producer in Western Europe, has been hit by the collapse in crude oil prices. Producers are taking advantage of the collapse in oil prices to refuse to offer any wage increases. The Industry Energy union represents around 4,000 oil production employees out of a total of 7,500. Talks with two other unions representing offshore employees will continue. The state mediation service is expected to intervene to try to prevent a strike. Middle East General strike in Morocco The Moroccan Workers Union along with the Democratic Work Convention, the Democratic Work Federation and the General Moroccan Workers Union took part in a 24-hour strike Tuesday. They also held a sit-in in front of the parliament building in the capital, Rabat. The strikers are protesting government proposals to change pension entitlement, which would mean increasing the retirement age to 63 from 60 and workers paying more in contributions but receiving poorer benefits. Africa International Monetary Fund determines pay for civil servants in Malawi This week civil servants in Malawi demonstrated against an inadequate 15 percent pay offer made by the government. Placards on the demonstration spelled out demands for a 67 percent pay increase, full pay while on leave, additional hiring of staff and unbiased promotion. Workers are also demanding support for medical costs. The government claim their pay offer is determined by the International Monetary Fund, which verifies budget spending priorities. Mauritanian miners strike Mauritanian miners at the Tasiast gold mine in the Inchiri region are striking for improved wages and conditions. The mine is owned by the Kinross corporation. They are protesting the difference in their pay and conditions, compared to those of expat workers. They claim management are imposing wage cuts to keep the mine open, saying they have a programme to increase production by 50 percent while cutting costs by half. The strike, which began May 23, has brought gold production to a halt. Measures to keep the mine operational were carried out by contractors. Zimbabwe rail workers reject derisory offer Striking workers at National Railways of Zimbabwe refused to return to work after an offer from management was rejected. They have been without wages for nearly one-and-a-half years. The Zimbabwe Amalgamated Railways Union says they are demanding six months pay before they will consider authorising a return to work. Management only offered a flat $330 payment for workers to return after the union explained they had no money for bus fares to travel to work. Nigerian union supports state against strikers A body of trade unions and associations in Ekiti state are attempting to break a strike over pay by civil servants. These organisations, calling themselves concerned trade unions, comprises the National Union of Road Transport Workers, Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria, Ajegboro Association, Cooperative Drivers Union, Okada Riders Association and others plan to organise a rally in support of the state governor. They are urging striking civil servants, owed 15 months wages, to return to work. The strike was called by the official Nigerian labour bodies, the Trade Union Congress, the National Labour Congress and Joint Negotiating Council. The concerned trade unions are using workers in other Nigerian states having returned to work without being able to gain payment of past wages to cajole Ekiti employees back to work. These unions have signed a petition to persuade Ekiti workers to end the strike, claiming the state does not have the money to pay them. The strikebreaking call comes on top of threats by the governor of dire consequences if strikers do not return. Goal Supermarket in South Africa employ scab labour to undermine strike Workers at Goal supermarket in Western Cape, South Africa went on strike and protested at the store Saturday. They demanded a 15 percent pay increase and an improvement in their conditions. The workers were attacked by the companys security guards. As the supermarket staff walked out last week, scabs were brought in to take their place. Although the Food and Allied Workers Union have reduced their pay claim to 13 percent, the company is still only offering 6 percent. A worker complained they were given contracts to sign without being given time to read them, and wages were paid without pay slips. Workers complain that when they take on extra responsibilities they do not get extra pay. Platinum miners strike ruled illegal by South African courts Platinum miners walked off the job at Sibanye Gold in Kroondal, South Africa on Saturday. They are demanding improvements in allowances for undertaking drilling operations, transport and travelling, and safety bonuses. A court ruling deemed the strike illegal, with the union facing repercussions if miners did not return to work on Monday. Sixty-five percent of the 10,000 employees are members of the Association of Miners and Construction Union (AMCU), which conceded to the court ruling. The union and management are in negotiations over transport for night shift workers. Sibanye Gold has only recently expanded into platinum mining and is in the process of finalising a deal to take over Anglo Platinums Rustenburg plant. The deal is part of a process of restructuring in the South African mining industry. South African Metro workers lose jobs for striking One hundred thirty members of the South African Transport Workers Union (SATWU) have been told they will not get their jobs back at Metrorail Western Cape. The company claims the employees, who began an unofficial strike on April 7, were linked to a spate of arson attacks on railway carriages, but have presented no evidence. Police are investigating the incidents. A total of 35 carriages have been attacked. Metrorail returned to court to have the strike deemed illegal as a result of the arson attacks. The union originally received a notice of a protected strike, but Metrorail had it overturned on the first day of the strike. A 19-year-old Indiana man has been charged with three counts of felony murder after allegedly enacting a crime spree that authorities have likened to the plot of the horror film The Purge, according to court documents obtained by PEOPLE. The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said in a press release this week that Jonathan Cruz was held on $200,000 bail pending an initial hearing Thursday in the Marion County Superior Court, and was charged with a total of 17 counts, including armed robbery and intimidation. Cruz allegedly shot three men Billy Boyd, Jay Higginbotham and Jose Alberto Ruiz between May 12 and May 15, police said. All the victims appear to be random, according Marion County prosecutor Terry Curry. Detectives are attempting to link the case to gang-related activities, according to a probable cause affidavit. Cell phone and social media evidence believed to be created by or depicting Cruz hints at the criminal gang link, including images of the teen flashing gang signs and waving weapons. A witness, described as a female, teenage drug customer, told police that Cruz bragged about going on a "purge," according to an IMPD affidavit. The 2013 film which has spawned two sequels depicts an America where the government allows a 12-hour period during which all criminal activity is legal. 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. Boyd's body was found on a sidewalk with two bullet wounds to the head around 1 a.m. on May 12, police say. A few hours later, Higginbotham was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds by police at 4:20 a.m. On May 14, a victim reported being robbed at gunpoint by two men around 6:00 a.m. Cruz and suspect Steven Clark, 18, allegedly made off with cash and two cell phones. Ruiz's body was found the next morning in a vehicle parked near an intersection after officers were dispatched at 4:30 a.m. Cruz was arrested on May 16 in a separate matter, and charged at the time with criminal confinement, kidnapping, intimidation and battery. Cruz's initial hearing is set for Thursday afternoon, and he could face life in prison without parole if convicted. Sumner Redstone has formally asked a Massachusetts court to deny Viacom CEO Philippe Daumans request for an expedited trial on the issue of Daumans removal from the Redstone family trust. Attorneys for Redstone filed the response to Daumans legal action in a probate court in Canton, Mass. on Friday. A hearing on Daumans motion in his suit challenging his removal from the board of the Redstone family trust and Redstones National Amusements holding company is set for Tuesday. The filing also asks that the venue for the legal fight be switched from Massachusetts, where the Redstone trust is incorporated, to California, where Redstone lives. The filing urges that the case be transferred to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Cowan, who ruled in Redstones favor last month on a separate case involving former Redstone companion Manuela Herzer. The legal filings blast Dauman and George Abrams, who was also removed as a director of the trust and of National Amusements, as being motivated by self interest. Dauman and Abrams have said that Redstone is being manipulated by his daughter, Shari Redstone, who is manipulating her ailing father into actions that he would not otherwise have taken against his longtime confidants. Redstones filing asserts that Dauman and Abrams went to court to protect their own financial interests and employment at Viacom, where both are also directors. Les Fagen, attorney for Dauman and Abrams asserted that there were still many undisclosed facts to emerge about the conduct of Shari Redstone and her reps. Dauman and Abrams legal battle is part of an acutely self-interested legal strategy that they began plotting months earlier to secure their tenuous positions with Viacom, the filing states. Even their own papers filed today reveal that the Trustees as stated in the affidavits have not seen Sumner for as long as many years, Fagen said. We look forward to a full hearing on Tuesday when we will seek expedited discovery and an independent review of the facts in order to resolve this matter as quickly as possible. Story continues Redstones attorneys claim that Dauman knew he was in danger of ouster at Viacom because of the stocks poor performance over the last year. In February, according to the motion, Dauman and Abrams got legal advice on how to contest Redstones mental capacity in the event that they were removed. Since then, the filing states, Dauman and Abrams have disregarded Redstones authority, public pursuing a sale of a minority stake in Paramount Pictures in spite of Redstones vocal opposition. Plaintiffs therefore felt no compunction acting against Sumners wishes, the motion states. They unceremoniously removed him as Viacoms Chairperson. They shrugged off Sumners opposition to their shopping Paramount. They ignored his requests for information regarding a potential Paramount transaction, as well as long-term strategic plans (if any) for Viacom as a whole. In short, Plaintiffs treated Sumner as though he was already gone. Redstones filing includes supplemental statements from a geriatric expert who maintains that the elder Redstone does have sufficient mental capacity to make decisions about the trust, National Amusements and the management of Viacom. The expert, Dr. James Spar, reported that Redstone believes that Dauman is doing a bad job at Viacom. The battle over control of Redstones empire has been raging for a year, but has turned into a Shari Redstone vs. Philippe Dauman battle royale in the past few weeks. Dauman and Abrams were removed from the boards of the trust and National Amusements last month. The filing also notes that a majority of the seven Redstone trustees have ratified the removal of Dauman and Abrams, which attorneys assert mean that the removal of the two would be legal even if Redstone were deemed incapacitated. Related stories Sumner Redstone: Philippe Dauman Has 'Done a Bad Job Running Viacom' Sumner Redstone's Granddaughter Vows Legal Action in Viacom Battle Shari Redstone Fires Back: She Doesn't Want to Run Viacom, Despite Dad's Support mark zuckerberg and daughter Good morning. Here's everything you need to know in the world of advertising today. 1. An explosive report that will detail rebates in the US advertising agency industry is due for "imminent release," The Wall Street Journal reports. The WSJ says the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) report lay out how the practice is "widespread," despite many ad firms claiming they do not accept rebates in the US, which will likely lead to tensions in their relationships with marketers. The ANA declined to comment on the WSJ report when contacted by Business Insider, but we understand it is expected to land at some point today. 2. Twitter and Yahoo reportedly held merger talks. A report in The New York Post says the social media company, whose user growth has plateaued, held a management-level meeting with Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in recent weeks. 3. Facebook is changing its rules so that Mark Zuckerberg cant keep control if he leaves. Facebook is changing its certificate of incorporation so that Zuckerbergs majority voting control is only good while hes an executive at the company and he cannot pass his majority control to descendants. 4. Facebook is killing Notify, its app that sent breaking news notifications. Notify never caught on in the App Store it was ranked at number 286 in the store's news section as of June 1 now Facebook says the technology will be used in Messenger instead. 5. Tribune Publishing is changing its name to tronc, and everyone is making fun of it. Tribune Publishing company, the publisher of major big city newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and LA Times, is changing the firm's name in a rebranding effort after years of struggle. 6. More people now use Snapchat on a daily basis than Twitter. 150 million people use Snapchat on a daily basis compared to Twitter's 140 million daily active users, according to an average of analysts' estimates surveyed by Bloomberg. Story continues 7. Amazon is completely blowing away competitors in one of the most important shopping channels. Amazon beats all of its competitors in time spent on their mobile websites by a long shot: Mobile visitors spent an average of 103 minutes on Amazon, compared to Target's 20 minutes and Walmart's 14 minutes. 8. We interviewed Xaxis CEO Brian Gleason on ad blocking, ad tech "swim-lanes", and media rebates. Xaxis is the programmatic advertising platform that sits within the world's largest advertising agency holding group, WPP. 9. Gawker CEO: Silicon Valley billionaires "can't expect to hide in the shadows." Nick Denton made the comments about the need for more criticism of billionaires after it was revealed that venture capitalist Peter Thiel had helped fund Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker. 10. QUIZ: Can you guess why these ads were banned? We gathered 21 ads that were banned by various advertising regulators and media platforms around the world. NOW WATCH: Adam Savage reveals why he and 'MythBusters' cohost Jamie Hyneman won't be working together anymore More From Business Insider hillary clinton Hillary Clinton is looking ahead to the general election and training her fire on Donald Trump. She roasted her likely opponent in a lengthy speech on foreign policy on Thursday, emphasizing her experience and saying that electing Trump to the presidency would be a "historic mistake." Clinton's speech got rave reviews from foreign-policy and political analysts, as well as from pundits on TV networks after it aired. CNN host Fareed Zakaria called it "the best speech she has ever made." A Clinton aide told Business Insider that she spent the past 10 days formulating the speech. She spent a cross-country flight on Wednesday honing it with Megan Rooney, one of the campaign's speechwriters, and worked on final edits up until midday on Thursday, right before she gave the speech. And the address ended up covering a lot of ground. She hit Trump on his proposal to build a wall along the US border with Mexico, criticism of the Iran nuclear deal, comments on US alliances and nuclear proliferation, calls to bar Muslim immigrants from entering the US, and readiness as commander in chief. "It's very challenging for Hillary to make a good foreign-policy argument against Trump," Ian Bremmer, a geopolitical expert and president of the Eurasia Group, told Business Insider in an email, calling the speech "very solid." "Most of what he's arguing for is completely implausible (nukes for Japan; a trade war with China); some is unconstitutional (a Muslim ban, sending back immigrants). But he's not in any way being punished for his policy agenda," Bremmer continued. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has suggested that South Korea and Japan might need to obtain nuclear weapons, said that he would restrict imports from China, and threatened to deport millions of immigrants living in the US illegally. Story continues "He's promising to be everything that the establishment hasn't been and to be fair, on that limited count, he's certainly delivering," Bremmer said. Still, Clinton has been slipping in primary polls in California, and Trump continues to see a groundswell of support among Republicans. While Clinton was delivering her speech in California, House Speaker Paul Ryan endorsed Trump for president. Clinton "has plenty of intellectual points she can score," Bremmer said. "I'm certain the foreign-policy establishment found much to like. Lord knows they detest Trump and they aren't getting on board the way the Republican leadership is. ... But that isn't going to swing the election." Whether or not this speech will alone tilt the balance of the November election, it's one of the most comprehensive looks we've gotten yet of what Clinton will bring to her general-election campaign if, as expected, she secures the Democratic nomination for president. Trump dismissed the speech as a "bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton" as she was giving it. donald trump Here are some of the key points she made against Trump in the speech: On his proposal for a wall along the US border with Mexico to keep out undocumented immigrants: "We are not a country that cowers behind walls. We lead with purpose, and we prevail." And: "We're lucky to have two friendly neighbors on our land borders. Why would he want to make one of them an enemy?" On his criticism of the Iran nuclear deal: "Donald Trump doesn't know the first thing about Iran or its nuclear program. Ask him. It'll become clear very quickly." And: "There's no risk of people losing their lives if you blow up a golf-course deal. But it doesn't work like that in world affairs." On his suggestion that US allies don't contribute enough to their own defense: "Yes, our friends need to contribute their fair share. I made that point long before Donald Trump came onto the scene." On his statements about Muslims: "Through all his loose talk, there's one constant theme: Demonizing Muslims and playing right into the hands of ISIS." On his vague plans to combat the terrorist group ISIS: "A Trump presidency would embolden ISIS. We cannot take that risk." On his readiness as commander in chief: "Imagine Donald Trump sitting in the Situation Room, making life-or-death decisions on behalf of the United States. Imagine if he had not just his Twitter account at his disposal when he's angry, but America's entire arsenal. ... Do we want him making those calls someone thin-skinned and quick to anger, who lashes out at the smallest criticism?" On his foreign-policy experience: "He says he has foreign-policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia." But Clinton didn't spend all of her time attacking Trump she also outlined her own credentials. She said: I have some experience with the tough calls and the hard work of statecraft. I wrestled with the Chinese over a climate deal in Copenhagen, brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, negotiated the reduction of nuclear weapons with Russia, twisted arms to bring the world together in global sanctions against Iran, and stood up for the rights of women, religious minorities, and LGBT people around the world. She also hit back against Trump's "America-first" strategy. "I believe in strong alliances, clarity in dealing with our rivals, and a rock-solid commitment to the values that have always made America great," Clinton said. She made the case for American power around the world. "I believe with all my heart that America is an exceptional country that we're still, in Lincoln's words, the last, best hope of earth. We are not a country that cowers behind walls. We lead with purpose, and we prevail," she said. And she warned about what she thinks might happen if the US embraces Trump's more isolationist worldview. "If America doesn't lead, we leave a vacuum and that will either cause chaos, or other countries will rush in to fill the void. Then they'll be the ones making the decisions about your lives and jobs and safety and trust me, the choices they make will not be to our benefit," Clinton said. Here's how some other experts reacted to the speech on Twitter: HRC delivered a compelling case that Trump would be a reckless commander in chief. That is her strongest argument Laura Rozen (@lrozen) June 2, 2016 Perhaps Clinton's best speech thus far - erudite, calm, collected & sure; she has Donald by the balls. https://t.co/sebhZ8InB3 Brooklyn Middleton (@BklynMiddleton) June 2, 2016 You may hate Hillary and love Trump, but Trump looks more than a little nuts these days and HRC looks and sounds presidential. Stuart Rothenberg (@StuPolitics) June 2, 2016 NOW WATCH: 'Youre a sleaze!': Here are all the insults Trump hurled at the press during a bizarre press conference More From Business Insider Recently, actor Fardeen Khan hit back at his trollers for fat shaming him on social media. The actor, who had been at the receiving end of many cruel jokes and comments after photographs of a plumper version of him started doing the rounds, called the trolls cowards and stated that he was not ashamed, offended or depressed, and was in fact living the happiest chapter, with pounds to show for it. Body shaming has become a phenomenon in the social media age, and today, with most of our lives being determined by Instagram and hashtags such as #collarbone challenge, which encourages people to stack as many coins as possible on the gap of their collar bones, #thigh gap and #bikini bridge which, according to social media are the desired body types, or the more positive #curvy, which says that it is okay to be curvy, the body is becoming an object of discussion like never before. Our celebrities have also not been immune to body shaming, and while some have accepted their weight, or have worked towards losing it, others have fought back at the trollers and given them fitting replies. We take a look at Bollywoods ladies who have hit back at cyber bullies in their own ways: Huma Qureshi: The actress, best known for her performance in Gangs of Wasseypur, made waves when she appeared in a Femina magazine cover in July 2014, holding a mannequin, with the words, I dont owe you perfection! My body my rules! covering her curves. The actress broke the size zero stereotype and made a bold statement with the hashtag #BetterRoleModelsForYoungWomen. While the actress has shed a few kilos, she has reportedly stated that she does not believe in starving, and is just making a healthy choice. Vidya Balan: The actress, who has received a lot of flak for her weight, has stood up against her trollers, and has gone against the industrys convention of the size zero frame. She has constantly been picked at by the fashion police, especially after a disastrous outing at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013, and is mostly seen wearing sarees in public. Her answer to all the criticism that comes her way - power packed performances in films such as Kahaani and Dirty Picture. Story continues Zarine Khan: The actress has been quite vocal about the fact that she had lost a lot of weight before getting into Bollywood and was asked to put on kilos for her role as Princess Yashodhara in the 2012 film, Veer. Khan was criticised for her weight gain, and, in a fitting reply to her shamers, this April, she posted two photographs of herself, taken when she was in the 9th and 12th standard, and wrote a lengthy post on Instagram about how she had worked hard to become fitter, and that it was done for herself, and not for the body shamers. The post earned her much admiration for her courage. Khushi Kapoor: While not a star yet, Sridevis teen aged daughter, who is quite active on social media, was at the receiving end of trolls when she put up a side profile picture of herself. On an Instagram post, she hit back, saying, Its sad how in this day and age where feminism is finally getting the attention it deserves, girls still feel the need to tear each other down and indulge in body shaming. I dont care if you think my stomach pops out or if I dont fit into your idea of beautiful, but for your own conscience please realise that having such narrow minded opinions of people makes you an ugly person inside. Pareeniti Chopra: The actress, who was always on the heavier side, recently debuted her newly sculpted body in a series of pictures. It took nine months of hard work for her to attain her new figure, and while many including cousin Priyanka Chopra, congratulated her for her achievement, she became the subject of internet jokes, and snide remarks. She responded saying that the weight loss was her personal choice, and not for anyone else. Bhumi Padnekar: Another actress who got flak for reducing was Bhumi Pednekar, whose debut film, Dum Laga Ke Haisha, had her put on around 28 kilos. The film, where she plays the role of an overweight, educated housewife opposite Ayushman Khurrana, won her much acclaim. However, when she lost all the weight, she came under some criticism. Her response to her trollers was that she will lose weight when she wants to and gain it when she wants to. It is my body. I will treat it the way I want it. Richa Chadha: Richa Chadha recently opened up about her struggle with body image issues and with Bulimia, an eating disorder, which is typically characterised by eating and then throwing up. Her problems began after she started listening to conflicting comments from the industry. According to her, she was asked to lose weight, put on weight, get a boob job, and a lip job, etc. Terrified of putting on weight, Chadha started working out extensively, and stopped eating. It was after she approached a nutritionist, that she resumed eating everyday food such as rajma chawal dosa, parathas. The Masaan and Sarabjit actress has overcome her body image issues. Sonam Kapoor: The actress known for her style quotient, was plump until she entered Bollywood. Kapoor lost 30 kilos to prepare for her role in her debut film, Saawariya. The actress recently took serious offence to a Tweet that someone had posted, and lashed out at body shamers, tweeting, Fat shaming or skinny shaming Its still body shaming! Sonakshi SInha: Sonakshi Sinha had to lose 30 kilos in order to get into the role of Rajjo, in her debut film, Dabaang. The actress, who has been constantly body shamed for being on the plumper side, decided that she had enough of the trolls, and put up a photo of a skeleton, with the words, To all those who keep commenting on my weight, whether its a full picture, or a close up where you cant see jack. Take a good look at this picture. Now get this: 1) this aint ever gonna be me. 2) get over it. 3) i wish u could see which finger i hold up for shallow and idiotic people like yourself. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan: The former Miss World and actress, who was on a maternity break before she got back into movies with her 2015 film, Jazbaa, had put on weight post pregnancy. She was subjected to much ridicule, with people calling her plump, fat, chubby and flabby. The actress and mother of a five year old girl, lashed out on her body shamers saying that for her, the wellbeing and health of her family is more important than going back to her pre-pregnancy body in miracle time. Actress Raveena Tandon also hit out at the trollers for body shaming Bachchan. She wrote, Our body has just gone through the beautiful process of creating and developing a whole new life and bringing its afely into thisworld! And some cads dont even give you that breathing space to be when you just want to be and enjoy the moment ! Zwara (Libya) (AFP) - The bodies of at least 117 migrants trying to reach Europe, many of them women, have washed up on a beach in the Libyan town of Zwara, the Red Crescent said Friday. "So far, 117 bodies have been found, 70 percent of them women and six children," Khames el-Boussefi, spokesman for the Libyan Red Crescent in the western town, told AFP. "We are going out again to search around Zwara and nearby beaches," he said. Earlier, Libyan navy spokesman Colonel Ayoub Qassem gave a similar count of bodies retrieved since Thursday evening, cautioning it was likely to rise since an average boat carries 115-125 passengers. People smugglers have exploited the chaos gripping Libya since the 2011 uprising that overthrew dictator Moamer Kadhafi to traffic migrants across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. It is a lucrative business for the smugglers who cram migrants into boats that are small and unsafe for the perilous journey to Italy just 300 kilometres (190 miles) from Libya's shores. Thousands of migrants try each year to make the crossing, but many drown when their boats founder. Qassem said that migrant boats leaving from western Libya usually set off from the port cities of Sabratha and Zwara, with passengers who are mostly African or Arabs, many of them from Morocco. The identities of the bodies found on Thursday were not yet known. Qassem said it was not clear if the victims had been on three boats that capsized last week off the Libyan shores. Survivors and the United Nations had said at the time that almost 700 migrants, including 40 children, who were on those boats had drowned. Some 204,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe since January, the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday. More than 2,500 people have died trying to make the crossing this year -- the vast majority of them between Libya and Italy -- as Europe battles its worst migration crisis since World War II. Qassem criticised the failure of the international community to deal with the problem. Story continues The global community limits itself to "counting bodies and issuing statements", he said. The Zwara municipality also regretted what it called "the strange silence of all those in charge", including Libyan government officials and NGOs. A statement on its Facebook page said Zwara "lacks all the means necessary to deal with such a problem". Seventeen Shiite Hazaras kidnapped in northern Afghanistan have been released, officials said Friday, after gunmen hauled them out of their vehicles in the latest assault on the ethnic minority group. The incident on Wednesday in Sar-e-Pul province comes amid a spate of attacks against civilian vehicles, underscoring a worsening security situation after the Taliban named a new leader last week. "We secured the release of 17 passengers abducted by Taliban gunmen" late Thursday, provincial governor Zaher Wahdat told AFP. "Local elders and residents mediated for their safe release," he said, adding that all 17 were civilians with no government connections. The Taliban have so far not commented on the incident. There has been a surge in violence against Hazaras, a community that has suffered a long history of oppression, with a series of kidnappings and killings in recent months. The latest incident came after after the Taliban killed 10 bus passengers, many of them summarily executed, and kidnapped dozens of others in northern Kunduz province earlier this week. The insurgents said they were targeting Afghan security officials aboard the buses passing through the insurgency-prone district of Aliabad. Regional police commander Shir Aziz Kamawal said a handful of passengers from the Kunduz attack were still in Taliban captivity. "The hostages have been spread out into several villages in Chardara district of Kunduz," Kamawal said. "Village elders are trying to secure their release." The violence underscores Afghanistan's fragile security situation as the militants intensify assaults against government forces after launching their spring offensive in April. The Taliban also last week announced Haibatullah Akhundzada as their new leader, elevating a low-profile religious figure in a swift power transition after officially confirming the death of Mullah Mansour in a US drone strike. Observers say Akhundzada, who is seen as more of a spiritual figurehead than a military commander, will emulate Mansour in shunning peace talks and intensifying attacks against the Afghan government. Shocking to absolutely nobody: America is sometimes offensive, other times confusing. Since it's founding, and through the present. And @BlakeDontCrack in an epic tweet reminds us of this fact. Source: Twitter What's he referring to? Black Lives Matter, which began after Trayvon Martin's death in 2012 to rebuild the black liberation movement and draw attention to injustices that many black people face. As its founders wrote on its website, "the statement 'black lives matter' is not an anti-white proposition. Contained within the statement is an unspoken, implied 'too' as in 'black lives matter too,' which suggests that the statement is one of inclusion rather than exclusion." Unable to resist running their mouths and apparently uninterested in the basic meaning of the phrase these white politicians chimed in to the convo. But they might have been better off ... just not. Martin O'Malley at the Netroots Nation conference in July Source: Mic/Getty Images The context: The former Maryland governor was booed when he responded to demonstrators "black lives matter" exclamations with "Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter." He later issued an apology. Hillary Clinton at a historic black church in June 2015 Source: Mic/Getty Images The context: Clinton was telling a story about her mother while visiting Christ the King United Church of Christ in Florissant, Missouri. But she landed in some deep trouble with the black audience when she said, "I asked [my mother], 'What kept you going?' Her answer was very simple. Kindness along the way from someone who believed she mattered. All lives matter." Donald Trump at a rally in Virginia in February Source: Mic/Getty Images The context: Trump responded to protesters shouting "black lives matter" at a rally at Radford University with "All right, folks. You're gonna hear this. You're gonna hear it once." He then announced, "All. Lives. Matter." Story continues Jim Webb during a Democratic debate in October Source: Mic/Getty Images The context: All the potential Democratic presidential candidates were asked whether black lives mattered or if all lives mattered during the October Democratic debate in Las Vegas. Webb was the only one to say "As a president of the United States, every life in this country matters." Jeb Bush in New Hampshire in July Source: Mic/Getty Images The context: When asked his opinion on whether O'Malley needed to apologize for saying all lives matter, Bush answered, "We're so uptight and so politically correct now that we apologize for saying 'lives matter'? "If he believes that white lives matter, which I hope he does, then he shouldn't have apologized to a group that seemed to disagree with it." Chris Christie at a town hall event in Iowa in November Source: Mic/Getty Images The context: The New Jersey governor was asked to address how he would support law enforcement if elected. "I think all lives matter," he said. "But let me tell you this: When a movement like that calls for the murder of police officers ... no president of the United States should dignify a group like that." Carly Fiorina on The Kelly File in August Source: Mic/Getty Images The context: Fiorina believes that black people have suffered because of Democratic initiatives. "First of all, of course all lives matter," she said. "Secondly, black lives have been diminished under Democratic policies. That's just true." John Kasich in an interview with CNN in August Source: Mic/Getty Images The context: Like Bush, the Ohio governor was asked if he could comment on whether O'Malley should apologize. "All lives do matter," he said. "Black lives matter, especially now, because there's a fear in these communities that, you know, the justice isn't working for them." Ted Cruz at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March Source: Mic/Getty Images The context: The Texas senator defended law enforcement and questioned why Democrats opted not to say "all lives matter." "The Democratic Party is unwilling to say the words 'all lives matter,'" he said. "When did it become controversial to say every human being is a precious gift from God and we value everybody? All lives matter, but let me tell you, blue lives matter." Ah, 238 years of American hypocrisy, summed up in one simple tweet. Hartford Funds a segment of The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. (HIG) has total assets of $73.6 billion under management (as of Mar 31, 2016). It claims to manage more than 45 funds across a wide range of styles and asset classes. The company prides itself in following human-centric investing. It believes that human-centric investing can create solutions and advisor tools that not only strengthen bottom lines, but strengthen advisor-client relationships by helping investors better realize their true life goals. Its parent company, Hartford Financial Services was founded in 1810 and is recognized as one of the renowned insurance companies in the U.S. Below we share with you five top-rated Hartford mutual funds. Each has earned a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and is expected to outperform its peers in the future. To view the Zacks Rank and past performance of all Hartford mutual funds, investors can click here to see the complete list of Hartford funds. Hartford Growth Opportunities HLS IB HBGOX seeks growth of capital and maintains a diversified portfolio by investing in common stocks of growth oriented mid- and large-cap companies. HBGOX may invest not more than one-fourth of its assets in securities of foreign companies. The funds sub-adviser Wellington Management utilizes fundamental analysis to identify companies with superior growth prospects. Hartford Growth Opportunities HLS IB has a three-year annualized return of 14.2%. HBGOX has an expense ratio of 0.90% as compared to the category average of 1.17%. Hartford Healthcare HLS IB HBGHX invests a large chunk of its assets in securities of both U.S. and non-U.S. health care companies. HBGHX invests in securities of companies of any size located in several countries. Hartford Healthcare HLS IB has a three-year annualized return of 18.2%. As of April 2016, HBGHX held 90 issues, with 5.99% of its assets invested in Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. Story continues Hartford Stock HLS IA HSTAX seeks capital appreciation over the long run. Though HSTAX invests in equity securities of companies irrespective of their market capitalization, it invests a significant portion of its assets in securities of companies with market capitalization similar to those listed on the Russell 1000 Index. HSTAX may also invest a maximum of 20% of its assets in securities of companies located in foreign lands. Hartford Stock HLS IA has a three-year annualized return of 10.7%. Donald J. Kilbride is the fund manager of HSTAX since 2012. Hartford Small Cap Growth HLS IA HISCX invests the lions share of its assets in common stocks of small-cap companies with impressive growth potential. Not more than 20% of its assets may get invested in securities of non-U.S. companies. Hartford Small Cap Growth HLS IA has a three-year annualized return of 8.7%. HISCX has an expense ratio of 0.65% as compared to the category average of 1.30%. Hartford Balanced Income R5 HBLTX seeks current income. HBLTX invests around 45% of its assets in equity securities and the rest in fixed income producing securities. The fund primarily focuses on investing the equity portion of its assets in common stocks of companies with market capitalization of more than $2 billion and impressive dividend paying abilities. Though HBLTX generally invests in quality debt securities, it may also invest a maximum of 20% of the fixed income portion of its assets in securities that are rated non-investment grade. Hartford Balanced Income R5 has a three-year annualized return of 6.3%. As of April 2016, HBLTX held 1,443 issues, with 7.08% of its assets invested in Us 5yr Note (Cbt) Jun16 Xcbt 20160630. To view the Zacks Rank and past performance of all Hartford mutual funds, investors can click here to see the complete list of funds. About Zacks Mutual Fund Rank By applying the Zacks Rank to mutual funds, investors can find funds that not only outpaced the market in the past but are also expected to outperform going forward. Learn more about the Zacks Mutual Fund Rank at https://www.zacks.com/funds. 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 Get Your Free (HBGHX): Fund Analysis Report Get Your Free (HISCX): Fund Analysis Report Get Your Free (HBLTX): Fund Analysis Report Get Your Free (HBGOX): Fund Analysis Report Get Your Free (HSTAX): Fund Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research From Road & Track The Buccaneer S2B first flew in 1958 and went into service in 1962. A subsonic fighter, it was designed to be able to carry a nuclear bomb below radar coverage. It may be nearly 60 years old and has been retired for more than 20 years, but it still looks modern. This one is sitting in a sort of plane graveyard at England's Bruntingthorpe Aerodrome. It used to be a British Air Force base, but is now a private owned airport that is home to a sort of airplane graveyard. It's also home to some very long runways that host top speed runs and vehicle testing. Today, the runways are being taken over by Prodrive and Subaru America, but it's not a rally car. Not close. This is what you'd call the ultimate road racing WRX STI. And it's been built to dominate the Isle of Man. Every year, Subaru of America has a little fun with Mark Higgins and a WRX STI during the Isle of Man TT. For the last few years, a very lightly prepped STI with Higgins at the wheel has set new records for cars on the legendary lap of the Island. You may remember the time when our own Chris Cantle somehow managed to not ruin his pants when Higgins had the biggest tank slapper you've ever seen while driving the course. They're really going for it. Last year, Higgins did the lap in 19:15 at an average speed of 117 mph. That's pretty fast, but Subaru thought they could go faster. Way faster. Motorcycle fast. So instead of running something off the shelf on the island, they decided to make something special for it. The Subaru WRX STI TT Attack is that car. The body shell is a WRX, but the rest is vastly different. Under the hood is a 2.0 liter WRC engine producing 550 horsepower and 405 lb-ft of torque. That's linked to a sequential rally gearbox with new ratios. The interior is totally stripped out, just a digital dash, two seats, and a shift lever. It runs on slick tires. And out back there is a giant wing that'd be the envy of Subaru enthusiasts everywhere. Story continues That wing also has a little trick: It's active. At the push of a button, the wing can stall, removing downforce from the rear of the car and increasing speed on long straights. That's because the goal is to make this thing fast enough to go around the Isle of Man as fast as a motorcycle. Yeah. It's that crazy. But today it's on the wide open runways of Bruntingthorpe for a shakedown test. The car is just black and white-no livery yet-which gives it the aura of a storm trooper's weekend racer. There's basically nothing to hit here, which is good, since I'll be driving the car. Before this test, the car had only had one other proper test and was driven just a handful of times at it. That said, it was hitting top speeds near 175 on the long runways. It's fast. I squeeze into the car. Literally squeeze, since the seat is fixed, the wheel isn't removable, and Mark Higgins doesn't have as much of an affinity for burritos as me. Higgins hops into the passenger seat and Prodrive's ace engineer Richard Thompson shows me the way around the controls. The sequential gearbox has one lever, pull back for up, push forward for down. Higgins prefers it. "I always know where to go to shift, no matter where my hands are," he says. "Paddles can get confusing." It's also a rather innovative gearbox. It's not a true sequential box, but rather an h-pattern unit with hydraulic actuators. Thompson says this setup is ideal because it still allows for random access, like immediate engagement of first after a spin which can save crucial seconds on a rally stage. Thompson tells me to let it heat up, and once it's warm, Higgins selects first gear on the center console and tells me we're good to go. There's some apprehension about the racing clutch, but it ends up being very easy and forgiving, and then we're on our way. And then we could smell burning. Burning never smells good. As we pull onto the track, I start getting used to the car and the track. I'm short shifting as we start out since I have no clue where we're going and I want to show Mark Higgins that I care about his baby. But when I put it into fifth, it suddenly bounces out of gear. And then we hear a substantial clunk. And then we could smell burning. Burning never smells good. I stop the car and we both climb out. A short jog back to where we heard the clunk reveals what happened: Fifth gear split in half and fired out of the gearbox. Instead of taking laps in the car, we ride back to the paddock in a Vauxhall Astra. Day over. David Lapworth and Richard Taylor, both of Subaru WRC fame, meet us when we return. They're convinced it's a technical failure. I'm convinced I somehow ruined their lovely car. The next day at Prodrive, Richard Thompson tells me that it wasn't my fault. New ratios were made for gears four, five, and six that were of a different design than the rally ratios in first through third. They had wider teeth for strength, but the inner portion was narrower. That's what failed, shattering the gear in half and leaving a hole that appears to be a small meteor strike in the side of the gearbox casing. "That's why you test," Richard Taylor says. "Better to happen now than at the Isle of Man. Maybe not better for you!" But he was right. It's always better to have this happen in a test. And that's because they have high goals for the car at the Isle of Man. They believe it can hit 180 mph where the old car could top out at 166 mph and get to that speed quicker. It'll be faster in the corners since it has slicks and real downforce. The idea is that it can go around the course in the same time as a motorcycle, which means something like a 130 mph average. Even from my short drive, I know this car is capable of that sort of time. After this test the car went to the Isle of Man and to Bicester for two more shakedowns, where it performed flawlessly. The fix to the gearing worked and they're ready to run at the Isle of Man. Subaru will be gunning for the record next week. From Delish Food has taken over way more than just mealtime. The things we eat used to make headlines for little more than the occasional product recall, but today, celebrity cookbooks abound, viral food videos bombard our news feeds, and food-focused legal disputes pop up in the news almost daily. You won't believe some of the lawsuits that have erupted between hangry consumers and big-name brands over the years. Read up on some of the most insane food suits to date and decide for yourself whether the pleading parties have a case...or they're just nutcases. 1. Starbucks runs into ridiculous coffee conflicts Earlier this year, the king of java got wrapped up in a $15,000 lawsuit when a customer suffered second-degree burns from a scalding cup of coffee. They can't seem to get it right with the cold stuff, either-more recently, Starbucks was hit with a whopping $5 million suit when a woman claimed the chain puts too much ice in their cold drinks! Her point was that Starbucks cheats customers by misrepresenting the amount of beverage they'll actually receive, and charges more for them, too. Can't wait to see how that caffeine-fueled feud plays out. 2. Whole Foods gets blamed for homophobia People order some crazy cakes these days, but when social media exploded with photos of a confection with a homophobic slur piped on top, the people of the internet did a double-take. A customer in Texas accused Whole Foods employees of writing the offensive message, and pressed charges because of the "pain, anguish, and humiliation" he suffered. Soon after, he withdrew his $100,000 lawsuit, admitting that the whole thing was a hoax. How about a pie of humble pie...er, cake? 3. Haribo and Lindt have a real bear of an argument Turns out there's a real sour side to the candy biz. Haribo has been feuding with Lindt Chocolate since 2012 about the similarities between Lindt's gold-foil Teddys and Haribo's Gold Bears mascot. Hmm...we're pretty sure that no one was confusing the chocolate bears with colorful gummies, and a federal court judge eventually agreed. The ruling stated that Lindt's candy was "neither a violation of Haribo's 'Gold Bear' trademark nor an illegal imitation of the fruit gum products." Sounds like a sweet ending to us! Story continues 4. McDonald's gets stingy with the napkins There's nothing worse than grabbing a quick fast-food meal and realizing that something is missing from your order, but back in 2014 one man freaked out at Mickey D's because they didn't give him enough...napkins? Webster Lucas received just one napkin with his order at his local McDonald's in California, and claimed that when he asked for more he was denied and received a racist comment from the manager. Though the manager offered him free burgers later on, Lucas decided to sue for $1.5 million due to "mental anguish"-something he'd done to other chains including Walmart and Denny's previously. *Eye roll* 5. Dunkin Donuts pays up for a bad spill On a bad morning, any one of us might cry over spilled coffee, but a New Jersey woman had an epically awful day back in 2012, and it was all Dunkin Donuts' fault. While walking back to her car with a tray of coffees, Maria Marsala tripped over an exposed metal spike in the parking lot, causing her to spill the hot drinks all over her face and neck. She suffered burns and hurt her hand and knee, and the coffee chain was slapped with a personal injury lawsuit, which they settled for $522,000. That's a whole lotta lattes. 6. Chobani gets flack for false advertising In 2014, two dudes from New York filed a class-action suit, accusing the yogurt brand of deceiving customers with its "Greek yogurt" label. Their argument stated that "there is nothing 'Greek' about the products," and pointed out that "none of the products sold in the U.S. are made in Greece or made by Greek nationals." Hey, guys? Nobody cares. Chobani fired back, assuring them that their fans are smart enough to know that "Greek" refers to the style of yogurt, not its origins. 7. Subway's Foot-longs don't measure up The "five dollar foot-long" jingle that made Subway's offer so well-known ended up backfiring, thanks to customers' complaints that their sandwiches weren't true to size. Several lawsuits skewered the shops for selling subs measuring just 11 inches, causing customers to lose out on 45 cents per sandwich. Subway settled the issue by requiring restaurants to start measuring the bread to ensure it's precisely 12 and 6 inches long. A judge even approved $520,000 in attorney fees and $500 for each of the individuals involved in the suit! 8. Sriracha stirs up a spicy dispute Hot sauce fans who add a squirt of spicy rooster sauce to everything couldn't imagine meals without their beloved Sriracha-but a community in Southern California decided that they just couldn't live with it anymore. The city of Irwindale, the location of Sriracha-producer, Huy Fong Foods, sued the company in 2013 due to the pungent chili odor coming from the factory. The suit called the smell a "public nuisance," and residents complained about headaches and irritation to their eyes and throat as well-the California Department of Health even got involved. A judge ruled in the people's favor and shut down the factory temporarily, causing Huy Fong Foods' owner to consider moving the operation elsewhere. The latest news in this spicy scandal is that Irwindale is going after the company for over $400,000 in unpaid contributions to the city. The CEO's response? Good riddance. Spent hours giving yourself the perfect manicure only to have it chip the moment you pick something up? Dont we all know the struggle! Well, it may have less to do with the nail polish you use and more to do with how youre painting your nails. I spoke with Tom Bachik, LOreal Paris Global Nail Designer and celebrity man-icurist to people like J. Lo, Blake Lively and the Kardashian Krew, about the most common mistakes people make when painting their nails. Here are eight to keep in mind the next time you do your nails: 1. You use nail polish remover to clean your nails You may have heard you should clean your nails with nail polish remover (even if you dont have polish on them) to remove any natural oils that can affect the adhesion of nail polish. Well, its true and false. Oils can block polish from adhering properly, but many nail polish removers contain lanolins and moisturizers to prevent it from being too harsh on our hands. These too can create a barrier between your nails and the polish. For longer wearability, Bachik instead recommends using 70 to 90 per cent rubbing alcohol to clean your nails before applying polish. 2. You slap on topcoat too soon Have you ever given yourself the perfect manicure and proudly gone about your daily business only to get a dent in the polish hours later? It may be because you applied your topcoat too hastily. Now, I hear you waiting for your layers of polish to dry takes an eternity and aint nobody got time for that. However because topcoats tend to be quick drying, if you apply a thick coat of colour or uneven coats of polish and slap on your topcoat before its fully dry, the topcoat will dry first, creating a seal and preventing the rest of the solvents from evaporating. Which is why dents and smudges can happen even though your manicure dried hours ago. 3. Youre holding the brush wrong If your nails are looking streaky, it might be because of the way youre holding the brush. Holding the brush at a higher angle may cause uneven pressure and the tips of the brush to drag through the polish, which creates lines.Keep the brush flatter, press it out and then polish it, say Bachik. Story continues 4. Youre filing your nails wrong Do you curl your fingers towards you when youre filling your nails? If you do, youre doing it wrong. When you do that, youll follow the shape of your fingers and because none of our fingers are perfectly aligned, when you turn your hand away back from you youll notice your nails are all going in a different direction. Instead, hold your hand away from you with your fingers pointing upwards and use the horizon as a guide to file your nails for a consistent shape. 5. Youre using the wrong nail file The lower the number on the file, the coarser the buffer, and vice versa. Bachik recommends using a sponge buffer thats no coarser than a 240 grit. Anything coarser may cause separation of the nail layers, especially if you file back and forth, and you can end up with brittle nails and perhaps even a little bit of pilling. 6. Youre too rough on your cuticles Clean lines make a manicure, but dont get too crazy with the cuticle cutter! Your cuticle is actually a guardian, its a seal that protects the matrix area of where the nail grows out, says Bachik. You dont want to shove that back and get underneath there as it can cause separation of the cuticle and possibly an infection. In fact, prodding and peeling away at your cuticle can have the reverse effect. Your body will sense that as trauma and will want to protect that area, so it will actually grow your cuticle back thicker, Bachik says. He recommends gently using an orange wood stick to push and even out the shape of the cuticle so you have an even shape from one side to the other. 7. You soak your nails This may be the most relaxing part of getting a manicure, plus it helps softens your cuticles, making them easier to push back, but it can actually affect the longevity of your polish. You nails are porous and if we soak them too long, they soak up the water and it would actually change the nail shape, explains Bachik. Then, after we polish them and the nails dehydrate back, they shrink back to the shape they were, causing stress on the polish which can cause chipping and cracking. 8. You file away ridges A sleek coat of polish looks best on a smooth nail bed but filing away ridges can do more harm than good. Filing away ridges thins out the nail where those ridges are and as the nail grows out its going to split on you, says Bachik. Instead, use a ridge filler to fill in any gaps instead of buffing ridges away. Now go forth and slay with those nails! For more info and an easy two-step nail art tutorial, check out the video below: In an effort to boost ad revenue, Instagram is catering to brands with a new suite of tools, it announced on Tuesday. The three new business tools are aimed at helping businesses stand out, get insights, and find new customers, the company said. The tools will also help businesses learn more about you than they ever could before from Instagram. The new tools were necessary, Instagram says, because there was a desire from our business community to do more. That may be, but there was also a desire from parent company Facebook, no doubt, to better monetize Instagram through ad revenue. Facebook (FB), which acquired the photo sharing site that has more than 400 million monthly active accounts, back in 2012 for $1 billion (a price that now looks like a steal), has seen its own ad revenue rise and rise. In its first-quarter earnings report in April, it reported mobile ad revenue of $4.2 billion, a 75% increase from the year before, and a figure that represented 82% of overall ad revenue. Video ads were the main driver of that stunning growth. Instagram first launched video ads in 2014 (it had no videos until 2013), but Facebook doesnt break out Instagrams figures publicly. It did share that Instagram now has 200,000 advertisers; Facebook has 3 million. Instagram is under more pressure than ever to attract the ad budgets of brands who have lots of options these days, including Snapchat, which just surpassed Twitter in daily users. Instagram also just rolled out an algorithm that will prioritize certain posts in users' feeds (potentially good news for advertisers) rather than show photographs in chronological order. (See the above Yahoo Finance video.) The new tools appear to be aimed more at small businesses than at huge brands like Disney (DIS) and Activision (ATVI), which were the first brands to run video ads on Instagram. (James Quarles, Instagrams global head of business and brand development, says the tools are for businesses on-the-go.) As examples of the kind of brands that will benefit, Instagram lists Jackson & Hyde, a small handbag maker in California, and Caeden, a wearable-tech maker. In a graphic accompanying its blog post, Instagram calls Caeden an Instagram success story and says Caeden saw a 50% increase in reach, and a 17% increase in spending by its customers, after it promoted its new product launch on Instagram. Story continues So, what are these exciting new business tools? For the most part, functions that Facebook already offers. In other words, this is Instagram catching up with its owner. First, Instagram will offer business profiles to brands with an existing Facebook page. The profile distinguishes a company from an individual user, although the only way to tell is pretty subtle: a contact button. Instagram users can call, text or email the business, and get directions. Second, Instagram is offering a tool called Insight, a feature weve seen on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and other social companies with actionable data to sell to advertisers. The tool tells brands how many impressions a post got, plus other information to show which posts best resonated with followers, who are, of course, potential customers. Master & Dynamic, an audio company that started using Instagram in 2014, is eager for these insights. Up until this point we've used third-party tools to track activity, but we imagine it will be a much more seamless experience going forward, says Mary Kate Pagano, the companys social media manager. We've never had any sort of demographic information on our followers; although we're able to make informed guesses based on their behavior, having hard data is always preferable to guesswork. Indeed, thats the idea, according to Instagram. We built these mobile tools to make it easier for businesses to channel the interest they create to attract new customers, says Quarles. Companies like Master & Dynamic may not want to abandon third-party options just yet. Jenn Herman, who runs social media strategy firm Jenns Trends, warns, I think this will help businesses better understand what is really happening with their account so that they can better adjust their strategies But I want to caution anyone who currently pays for a third-party analytics tool not to cancel those services. The third tool is called Promote, and will allow companies to turn well-performing posts into ads right within the app. That doesnt necessarily mean more ads for users, but it means more targeted ads. A brand can even pick an old photo that was not an ad and turn it into an ad with one click (and a fee). The business profiles and the Insight tool are free. Promoting a post comes at a cost. To determine the cost, Instagram uses auction-pricing (as does Facebook), a complicated process that depends on a number of factors, including how many other advertisers are bidding for the same placement, as well as the size of the group youre targeting. The new tools are nothing new compared to what Facebook and competitors of both services have, but still will excite small businesses looking to grow their brand footprint. They also will likely aggravate some, as any new features on popular platforms do. "As with any big change, this is going to get a whole lot of people all worked up," says Jenn Herman. "You'll get a slew of businesses jumping on the bandwagon, thinking this is the quick and easy way to see results on Instagram... They'll start boosting posts, promoting themselves to exhaustion, and then complain that Instagram doesn't work... Let them rant and complain. Those of us who adopt this change with open arms, and evolve with the platform as it grows, will continue to see benefits." The tools may also represent more work for those brands. Keeping up with marketing efforts on yet another social media platform, while costly, is now necessary. The suite of tools will be made available next month in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand, and to the rest of the world by the end of this year. -- Read more from Yahoo Finance: This company wants to cure your hangover through Instagram Why Twitter can't stop disappointing investors Facebook's live video plan should scare Twitter, Snapchat and Periscope By Andrew M. Seaman (Reuters Health) - Children and adolescents who take medication to treat their attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may be at a slightly increased risk of heart problems, suggests a new study. "Our results suggest that the events are rare, however, parents and clinicians should be aware of the potential for cardiac adverse effects" in children taking methylphenidate, or Ritalin, said senior author Nicole Pratt, of the University of South Australia in Adelaide. The findings of the new study show that more research is needed on the potential side effects of the drug, she told Reuters health. Methylphenidate, a stimulant, reduces impulsivity and hyperactivity in children with ADHD, write Pratt and colleagues in the BMJ. However, there have been concerns that the drug may be tied to heart problems. For the new study, the researchers used insurance data on 114,647 South Korean children up to age 17 with ADHD who received at least one prescription for methylphenidate. Between 2008 and 2011, 1,224 of the children developed cardiovascular problems for the first time. Overall, 864 children developed heart rhythm problems, 395 had high blood pressure, 57 had heart attacks, 67 had strokes and 44 had heart failure. Kids were about 61 percent more likely to have a heart rhythm problem when they were taking methylphenidate than when they weren't, the researchers found. Kids were most at risk for a heart rhythm problem during the first three days of treatment, but the increased risk disappeared once the child had been on the drug for more than 56 days. The risk for a heart rhythm problem was also highest among children with congenital heart disease. There was no overall increased risk of heart attacks while children were being treated with methylphenidate, but there was a slightly higher risk between eight and 56 days after the start of treatment. No link was found between methylphenidate and high blood pressure, stroke and heart failure. Parents should not change their children's medications based on this study's results, Pratt told Reuters Health in an email. Instead, they should discuss their concerns with their child's doctor. "When the medicine is deemed necessary children should have blood pressure and heart rate monitored to help mitigate any potential risk," she said. In an editorial, John Jackson notes that the researchers looked at whether children experienced a heart problem near the time they started taking methylphenidate, compared to when they weren't taking the medication. The study did not look at whether heart problems occurred more often in those who started taking methylphenidate than in those who were not prescribed the drug, wrote Jackson, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. The new study, "underscores the need to consider the severity of ADHD symptoms and the option of non-stimulants for children with high cardiovascular risk, to avoid uses that are entirely off label, and to closely monitor patients for whom stimulants are critical for their wellbeing and development," he wrote. Pratt said it will be important to replicate these findings in other populations. "This information will help clinicians and parents weigh up the risks against the benefits of treatment particularly in mild cases of ADHD," she said. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1TNNZHd and http://bit.ly/1TNO2Tz BMJ, online May 31, 2016. Aegion Corporation AEGN declared that it has won an $8 million contract from the City of Montgomery, Alabama for its Infrastructure Solutions platform. The contract is for the second and final phase of a wastewater pipeline rehabilitation project located in the Econchate Basin. The Econchate Basin is a collection system that drains into the Econchate Wastewater Treatment Plant. The first phase of the project, which was completed in Apr 2016, was also awarded to Aegion. Per the contract, Aegion will install Insituform (cured-in-place pipe) CIPP and iPlus Composite to rehabilitate over 20,000 feet of 8-inch to 48-inch diameter pipelines. It also includes the rehabilitation of 34 manholes and construction of over two miles of all-weather access road in the wetland area. The second phase of the project is likely to begin later this month and is expected to be completed in 15 months. Aegion has a positive outlook for its Infrastructure Solutions' Insituform CIPP technology and expects it to perform well in the major North America water and wastewater pipeline market. The company recently announced a $6.8 million municipal contract in the City of West Palm Beach, FL, to rehabilitate approximately 6,000 feet of 48-inch diameter forced main sewer pipeline by installing Insituforms InsituMain system. This is a good win to improve and use the CIPP product in the pressure pipe market. Further, Aegion will benefit from its strong backlog at the end of the first quarter. Its consolidated backlog was $756.7 million, marking an increase of around 1% from the Mar 31, 2015 level. Moreover, the companys contract wins in the past as well as its scope to gain more such deals in the future bode well for the company. Aegion currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the same sector include Installed Building Products, Inc. IBP, Simpson Manufacturing Co., Inc. SSD and TopBuild Corp. BLD. All these stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). 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 SIMPSON MFG INC (SSD): Free Stock Analysis Report TOPBUILD CORP (BLD): Free Stock Analysis Report INSTALLED BUILD (IBP): Free Stock Analysis Report AEGION CORP (AEGN): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research San Francisco (AFP) - Airbnb on Friday said it is cracking down on racism after booting one home-sharing host for blatantly discriminating against a woman of color who had made a reservation. A freshly launched review of how hosts and guests interact online and in the real world should be completed by September, when the San Francisco-based startup will announce the findings and what it will do about them. "We have a zero tolerance policy for discrimination and when we become aware of it we take action," Airbnb said in a letter to members. Airbnb said that it has enlisted former American Civil Liberties Union head Laura Murphy to lead its discrimination-fighting efforts. "Racial discrimination is unacceptable and it flies in the face of our mission to bring people together," Airbnb said in an email response to an AFP inquiry. The high-profile campaign to ferret out discrimination at the popular home-sharing service came after an Airbnb host in the US state of North Carolina fired off hateful, race-based messages to a black woman while canceling a stay she had booked at his home. Airbnb told AFP it was "horrified" by the messages. The host was removed from the service, while the guest was ensured a safe place to stay, according to the startup. "The incident in NC was disturbing and unacceptable," Airbnb chief executive Brian Chesky said in a message posted at his @bchesky Twitter account. "We have permanently banned this host." Complaints of racism by Airbnb hosts are not new, having given rise to an #Airbnbwhileblack hashtag used for commenting on the topic at Twitter. An African-American man last month filed a US lawsuit against Airbnb based on racial discrimination by hosts. Airbnb said that it has been fighting the problem with offerings such as unconscious bias training for employees and hosts. By Victoria Bryan and Allison Lampert DUBLIN/MONTREAL (Reuters) - Airlines want one global deal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from air travel despite higher costs, in order to avoid a patchwork of regulation that would be harder to manage, an executive of the International Air Transport Association trade group said on Friday. The market-based plan must win the support of the United Nations aviation agency's 191 member countries at a fall assembly, or risk the European Union's imposing its own emissions trading scheme on international airlines. At its annual meeting this week in Dublin, the trade group said the deal led by the International Civil Aviation Organization, or ICAO, should be the only agreement to reduce emissions from international aviation. "It's really a top priority," said IATA Corporate Secretary Paul Steele. "It's dominated discussions here in our board meetings." Steele expressed optimism that a deal would be reached at Montreal-based ICAO. The plan would allow airlines to offset their emissions by buying carbon credits from designated environmental projects. Airlines recognize the deal would add costs. For example, the cost of fuel on an A380 flight from London to Beijing would be $45,000, and a carbon offset at the highest price would be 10 percent of that, Steele said. "The industry hates costs," Steele said. "But this is a cost we believe needs to be built into system, and with that level and with a carbon offset scheme, we think it's the right way to go." Countries remain divided over the proposed agreement on issues like the large number of exempted states. According to early drafts, at least a third of emissions from air travel would not have to be offset. To help bridge the divide, Singapore recently proposed a pilot phase before the start of the global agreement, two sources familiar with the talks said. IATA has said any pilot period should not delay the planned agreement's 2021 start date. Steele said airlines wanted as much of the industry as possible to be involved in the program from the start. Ahead of the fall assembly, ICAO's president and some countries will hold late August meetings before presenting a new draft to the governing council, the sources said. Aviation was excluded from the landmark climate accord in Paris in December, when countries agreed to limit the rise in global temperatures to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. (Reporting by Victoria Bryan in Dublin and Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn) From Esquire If there is a single, overriding lesson in the unfolding Trump University scandal, it is this: If you are the defendant in a civil trial in which you are accused of a massive and grotesque act of fraud, it's probably best if you don't get up in public and imply (loudly) that the presiding judge is a Mexican criminal. This can result in the judge's simply saying, "Fck it," and dumping a metric ton of evidence regarding said fraud into the public domain. This then will require you to hold a press conference in which you are forced to call a reporter "sleaze" and generally act out because-and I am borrowing here from the Twitter account of the great Quinn Cummings-you are really a giant toddler. If there is a single, overriding question in the unfolding Trump University scandal, however, it is this: Why in god's name is anyone surprised? Of course, the fact that He, Trump was behind this scam is prima facie evidence of some thoroughgoing shenanigans, but that's not what I mean. He, Trump is an apex bunco artist, but he also is a high-profile American corporate businessman of the late 20th century. But I repeat myself. Bernie Sanders gets roasted in some quarters for saying this, but it's true-for going on 40 years now, the primary business model for the American corporate class has been fraud. What we're getting a peek at now with the Trump University is indeed garish in its contempt for the suckers, but what it's not is surprising. From The New York Times: Within the documents made public Tuesday were internal employee guides encouraging customers with little money to pay for the tuition with their credit cards. "We teach the technique of using OPM ... Other People's Money," explained the internal instructions for salespeople. The documents pushed employees to exploit the emotions of potential customers. "Let them know you've found an answer to their problems," read confidential instructions to salespeople. The most striking documents were written testimony from former employees of Trump University who said they had become disenchanted with the university's tactics and culture. Corrine Sommer, an event manager, recounted how colleagues encouraged students to open up as many credit cards as possible to pay for classes that many of them could not afford. Story continues This is awful stuff. No question about that. But is it really worse than those famous emails from the Enron employees about Grandma Millie and how easy it was to game the California energy market? From CBS News: Officials with the Snohomish Public Utility District near Seattle received the tapes from the Justice Department. "This is the evidence we've all been waiting for. This proves they manipulated the market," said Eric Christensen, a spokesman for the utility. That utility, like many others, is trying to get its money back from Enron. "They're f------g taking all the money back from you guys?" complains an Enron employee on the tapes. "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?" "Yeah, grandma Millie, man" "Yeah, now she wants her f------g money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her a------ for f------g $250 a megawatt hour." President George W. Bush was joined at the hip with the top executives of Enron. He fobbed off that relationship and, in general, the elite political media let him. And let's not forget that we still don't know what went on with Dick Cheney's energy commission meetings that took place right at the beginning of the Avignon Presidency in 2001. Is Trump University really worse than that? Is Trump University really worse than Timberwolf? Timberwolf was a collateralized debt obligation put together by the good people at Goldman Sachs. It was, by any measure, a scheme to defraud investors. Goldman marketed this dead flounder just as it was dawning on the various Masters of the Universe that the housing bubble was about to burst. Goldman gave Timberwolf a marketing value of over a billion dollars. Investors could cash in on the debts owed by other people. Simon Head of The New York Review of Books, picks things up from there: As underwriter and placement agent for Timberwolf, Goldman produced a pitch book for clients that claimed that it was structured to "generate positive performance for the benefit of both debt and equity investors" and had "an objective of zero loss for CDO debt investments." Yet Goldman emails subpoenaed by the Levin committee show that at the exact moment the bank was making this sales pitch, senior Goldman executives, including Blankfein, knew that the real market value of Timberwolf's underlying assets was much lower, and that they were aiming to unload as much of the CDO as they could before it lost even more value. There doesn't seem to me to be much difference between Goldman's "pitchbook" for Timberwolf, and Trump University's "playbook" for its sales staff, except that Goldman's publication probably was printed on higher quality paper. Of course, Timberwolf collapsed and nobody made any money except Goldman, which had bet on the failure, essentially betting against itself while it sold this garbage to the suckers out there in the world. I wonder if their hearts glowed with her warm compliments. This led to one of the greatest moments in the history of the United States Senate, when Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, just by quoting internal Goldman e-mails, broke the Senate record for using a single obscenity. "How much of that shitty deal did you sell to your clients?" "You didn't tell them you thought it was a shitty deal?" "Should Goldman Sachs be trying to sell a shitty deal?" This is the organization to which Hillary Rodham Clinton gave three speeches for fees totaling $675,000. I wonder if any of the people involved in marketing the shitty deal that was Timberwolf were in the audience? I wonder if anybody who cut her those hefty checks made any money out of what was transparently a swindle? Just as I wonder whether or not George W. Bush got any money from the people who were conning Grandma Millie, or whether Dick Cheney's friendship with Enron swindler di tutti swindlers Ken Lay was even more lucrative than we know today. This isn't cynicism. This is the universe of our politics today, and it has been for almost four decades now. There are those In The Know and there are the suckers. There's nobody in between any more, and it's certainly not the government. Too often, the government is on one side while pretending to be on the other. So, yeah, it's a goddamn shame what Trump University did to those poor people and I hope they sue him for everything, including his socks and underwear. But please, don't ask me to be shocked. This is the world we live in. The American democracy is becoming the longest con of all. Click here to respond to this post on the official Esquire Politics Facebook page. By Pavel Polityuk, Matthias Williams and Alexei Kalmykov KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said on Friday he would not let his decision-making be shackled by powerful vested interests, allowing him to push through reforms and usher in a period of economic stability. In his first interview with foreign media since taking office in April, Groysman told Reuters he was confident of receiving a further installment of aid worth $1.7 billion from the International Monetary Fund, which is contingent on implementing reforms. He will travel to Washington in mid-June, with Ukraine having recently taken two major steps - freeing up gas prices and passing legislation to tackle corruption in the judiciary - under its commitments in a $40 billion international bailout deal. The appointment of Groysman, 38, ended months of political turmoil that had stymied policymaking. He had cut his teeth as Ukraine's youngest ever mayor, at 28, before becoming speaker of the rough-and-tumble parliament. Since the fall of communism, Ukraine's business oligarchs have frustrated efforts by a succession of governments to reform the economy, most recently in the form of changes promised by pro-Western leaders after street protests toppled the previous president in 2014. Asked if he could free himself from the oligarchs' influence, Groysman said: "I consider myself to be completely free in terms of my views and my decision-making." "I can be dependent only on Ukrainian society," he added. "We will fight for every reform, for every change, fight transparently." FIGHTING FOR EVERY REFORM Groysman took power with Ukraine just emerging from recession, still fighting a war against Russian-backed separatists in the eastern Donbass region and amid growing disillusion with the pace of change since the 2014 uprising. A ceasefire agreement negotiated by Ukraine, Russia and Western powers is barely holding, with each side accusing the other of failing to honor their promises. The IMF and Ukraine's other main backers - the European Union and United States - have also urged Kiev to speed up the reforms and tackling of endemic corruption. An agreement for more IMF aid had been derailed by the political turmoil in Kiev. An IMF mission visited in May for talks on a new memorandum, which is still being drafted, and the Fund is expected to decide on disbursing new aid in July. "During the last IMF mission, we had a constructive and frank discussion about the problems, and we found a common ground that allows us to move on," Groysman said. "I do not see anything that would prevent us to get (the next installment)," he added. "I am optimistic about our continued co-operation with the IMF." "We need to ensure macroeconomic stability," he said. "This requires fighting corruption with deregulation, privatization, and an effective judicial system," he said. Once Ukraine returns to economic growth, which Groysman saw happening "very quickly", Ukraine and the IMF could even move to a "very different system of cooperation", he said, without specifying what the change would be. He also said Ukraine could soon expect to receive a $500 million loan from the World Bank to buy gas in exchange for certain conditions, including improving governance at state energy giant Naftogaz. Ukraine is expected to bypass Russia to purchase the gas, but Groysman did not completely rule out buying supplies from Russia's Gazprom, saying his government would take a "political decision" if Gazprom made the right offer. Ukraine's Western backers have praised the steps taken since Groysman came to power, and on Friday Washington signed a new loan guarantee agreement worth $1 billion. However, it has not all been plain sailing. Kiev has pledged to privatize hundreds of state-owned companies, but last week the IMF and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) criticized the process. They complained to Groysman that the sale of the Odessa Portside Plant - seen as the first major test of Kiev's ability to attract foreign investment - fell short of international standards and could deter respectable investors. Groysman ruled out making any change to the reserve price of $521 million for the fertilizer plant, which the IMF and EBRD say is too high. "No. We have started this process and are interested in making it happen," he said. NO ELECTIONS AT GUNPOINT The Minsk ceasefire agreement to stop the violence in Donbass, which has already killed more than 9,000 people, requires Ukraine to hold local elections in the region and pass a law giving it greater autonomy. Meanwhile, the EU is due to decide within weeks whether to renew sanctions on Russia, imposed after Moscow's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Some countries in the bloc want them lifted. Asked whether Ukraine could hold elections in the Donbass region this year, Groysman said: "Here is the question to Russia: when they will meet their obligations? When will they withdraw their troops and withdraw fighters and mercenaries, and when do we regain control over the territory?" Elections are impossible "under the barrel of a gun", he said. Lifting sanctions, he said, would only reward Russian aggression. "I believe that the lifting of sanctions or easing of sanctions, is unacceptable for any civilized state because today Ukrainian soldiers are defending not only the borders of Ukraine - it is the eastern border of Europe." (editing by David Stamp) AMC AMCs latest series Feed the Beast follows two friends looking to pay their debts, rebuild their lives and carry out their dream of running a high-end restaurant in the Bronx, all while evading mob bosses, navigating abusive relationships and staying out of prison. The show has all of the ingredients of a juicy culinary crime drama, but with multiple competing story lines and a weak turn by one of its stars, its too soon to tell if theyll all come together. Related Links: Feed the Beast kicks off by introducing us to its two main characters. Dion (Jim Sturgess) is an unkempt, seemingly manic chef who has been spending some time behind bars after setting the restaurant he worked for on fire dont go feeling bad for him though, his talents in the kitchen have kept him comfy and more than a few of his guards well fed. His friend Tommy (David Schwimmer) is a sommelier whos been dealing with the recent death of his wife and his resulting communication problems with his young son T.J. (Elijah Jacob) by turning to the bottle. Before I even screened the first two episodes of this series, I read an interview show runner Clyde Phillips did with Vanity Fair. In it, he recounts a gift he gave to Schwimmer: a tombstone engraved with the words Ross Geller, 1994 to 2004. Friend. It was meant as the final nail in the coffin of the character thats come to define the actor over a period of decades even after his celebrated performance in Ryan Murphys O.J. Simpson saga The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story. Feed the Beast is not going to erase the memory of goofy Ross Geller his burning torch for Rachel will forever be the stuff sitcom romances are made of but Schwimmers turn as Tommy, the tortured widower struggling to be a father to his traumatized son and move past his own grief is some of the best work hes ever done and the main reason to watch this show. Story continues Schwimmer is that rarest of unicorns, an actor who actually understands comedic timing. Hes able to add humor to even the heaviest, most heartbreaking of scenes a visit to his late wifes grave, a meeting with his estranged father, the silence between him and his mute son on the ride to school and he does it without us even realizing. Hes the perfect fit for Phillips, who favors dark humor and sarcastic undertones in most of the dialogue he writes see Nurse Jackie and Dexter for reference. But if Schwimmers the main course, his scene partner is the side dish we could definitely do without. Its not that Sturgess isnt a capable lead he carried The Way Back, a film that followed a group of Siberian gulag escapees on their 4,000-mile journey to freedom. That movie also boasted names like Ed Harris, Colin Farrell and Saiorse Ronan and it definitely deserves a place in your Netflix queue, but for some reason, in his first starring TV series, Sturgess spends the premiere episodes nursing what I can only describe as the worst Robert De Niro impression Ive ever seen on screen. And Ive seen a lot. To be fair, hes working with a character not even half as developed as Schwimmers. Its like someone saw Bradley Cooper in that disaster of a movie Burnt and thought, That must be how all chefs really are unhinged self-centered coke heads who f*ck anything on two legs. Before hes even out of prison, Dions snorting a line and screwing his lawyer in a holding cell. He then spends his next 24 hours hitting up his uncle a man who runs a brothel in an upstairs apartment for cash and a fake passport to leave the country before getting caught by the mob, inviting them into Tommys home, promising the two will start a restaurant to pay his debts and then pressuring his friend to upend his life all for his own selfish gain. Its not that a**holes dont exist in the world but I cant imagine someone being as big of a douchebag as this guy. His entire makeup is just too unbelievable especially when matched against Schwimmers Tommy, a man whos experienced real dramatic loss in his life, both personally and professionally and whos been left to provide for his son doing a job he hates while dealing with his abusive father (The Wires John Doman). Tommys the man who should be giving the world a big middle finger, not Dion and Dions acting out doesnt paint him as a genius or a compelling character, it just makes him seem like a tool. The only time Sturgess is bearable is when hes opposite Schwimmer. Tommy and Dions relationship is the core of the series and its when theyre in the kitchen that we get our best scenes. Their first meal after his release from prison is a pasta filled with the few ingredients Dions able to forage in Tommys kitchen. Its simple and beautiful maybe a metaphor for their friendship, before life and their choices screwed everything up. It proves you can make something of nothing, which is what theyre trying to do in launching their restaurant, Thirio (Greek for beast), in a sketchy neighborhood in the Bronx. Thirio is its own character in the series too. In dreamy flashbacks we see Tommy, Dion, and Tommys late wife Rie (Christine Adams) working together to give life to the place. Now that Ries gone, Tommy finds himself living in the tomb of that dream almost literally. Hes made a home for his son in the building the restaurant was meant to be housed in, surrounded by fancy Italian coffee machines, Cyprus pillars and expensive stoves. The few periphery characters in the show also have some compelling side stories. The mob boss obsessively hunting Dion nicknamed The Tooth Fairy (Michael Gladis) he likes to collect debts while educating his victims on the vestigiality of wisdom teeth may seem like a bad guy (his unrealized dreams of becoming a dentist force him to wield a pair of pliers a bit too aggressively) but we learn its his own father thats pushed him toward a life of violence. Tommys relationship with his son T.J. is also strained. The two are both grieving, but while Tommy chooses to handle his emotions by swirling wine in a glass, T.J. opts for silence. A bit of bad acting aside, the current pace of the show is its biggest problem. Were jerked from one scene to the next so often that whiplash becomes a real concern at a certain point. I blame it on all of the extraneous story lines Dions uncle, the detective blackmailing him into ratting out the mob, Tommys complicated relationship with his dad, the lawyer Dion may be romantically involved with, Tommys flirtation at a grief group. Its a lot to keep up with and the show spends more time jumping around, trying to hit every character than fleshing out the ones we might really care about. But everyone knows not to judge a four-course meal by the appetizer so Im holding out hope that Feed the Beast can live up to its stellar cast and promising story line. Maybe it just needs a bit more time to marinate. Feed The Beast premieres Sunday, June 5 at 10 p.m. ET on AMC. ROK and US Marine Chemical attack Chemical agent attacks have long been a part of a militarys arsenal. During ancient times, while the Persians were under siege by the Romans, they pumped toxic gases made from sulphur crystals and bitumen into tunnels that the Romans were digging. Centuries later, weve found more innovative methods to wreak havoc with agents that are naked to the human eye. It is estimated by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention that the normal response time for a chemical attack is 12 hours far too long for an emergency of this scope. In addition to this deficiency, hospitals actually carry a limited amount of supplies for nerve agent exposures. Even if a hospital was lucky enough to have an ample supply, their varied shelf lives make them unsustainable resource due to their costly nature. Women Syria Chemical Gas Treatment To address these insufficiencies, a streamlined logistical system has been implemented by the CDC their antidote of choice? Meet Chempack. chempack firefighter Chempacks contain antidotes to assist state and local officials in responding quickly during a nerve agent attack. Initiated in 2002 with an overall budget of $6 million, the program has since expanded to 1,960 Chempacks strategically located in 1,340 locations in the US. In fact, more than 90% of the US population is an hour away from a Chempack. Chempack locations For obvious reasons, the specific location for each of these Chempacks is not disclosed to the public. There are two different types of Chempacks: a version for first responders, which is used to treat up to 454 people; and a more robust version for hospitals, which is used to treat up to 1,000 people. Story continues Each chempack unit contains the antidotes to prevent human nervous system failure, such as Diazepam, which reduces the severity of chemically-induced convulsions. To deliver these agents, the Chempack also includes military grade MARK 1 autoinjectors that are loaded with doses of the antidotes. Chempack internals A general view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters is seen in Atlanta, Georgia, in this file photo taken September 30, 2014. REUTERS/Tami Chappell/Files In densely populated areas like New York, officials have created mobile Chempack units, where a designated driver can leave their location within three minutes, resulting is a faster response time. With US National Intelligence Director James Clapper stating that terrorist organizations, such as ISIS, were already planning on using chemical weapons towards the US, the CDC's Chempacks may prove to be a public necessity. NOW WATCH: A chemical reaction results in the stuff of nightmares More From Business Insider BEIJING (Reuters) - Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N), whose accounting practices are under investigation by U.S. regulators, is a difficult company for the United States to understand, Executive Chairman Jack Ma said in an interview to Chinese media on Friday. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched a probe earlier this year into the Chinese e-commerce firm's accounting practices to determine whether they violated federal laws. Questions about Alibaba's growth rate and its relations with affiliated companies have dogged the firm for years. [nL3N18M42U] In the interview with China's official Securities Times, Ma said the investigation does not mean Alibaba has problems but that the SEC is just performing its duties. "Alibaba's business model does not have any references in the U.S., so it's not just a matter of one or two days for the U.S. to understand Alibaba's business model," Ma was quoted as saying. The SEC focused on the accounting for affiliated logistics firm Cainiao Network, accounting practices applicable to related-party transactions in general, and operating data from its annual "Singles' Day" sale, according to Alibaba's annual report filed last week. It was not immediately clear what prompted the SEC investigation. Alibaba said in May the SEC advised it the investigation should not be seen as an indication the company had violated federal securities laws. "We want to thank the SEC for giving us an opportunity to interact," Ma said in Friday's interview. Ma said he did not know when the results of the probe would come, but he hoped that afterwards the regulator would be able to give Alibaba a clear explanation, and a smoother system for communication could be established. An Alibaba spokeswoman declined to provide additional comment. Many U.S.-listed Chinese companies have said that foreign regulators and investors do not understand their businesses. [nL3N0YN27O] Financial results of Cainiao, started jointly in 2013 by Alibaba, Yintai Holdings, Fosun Group, Forchn Holdings and five major delivery companies, have in the past not been part of Alibaba's financial statements, raising questions among some investors and analysts. Alibaba said its latest annual report disclosed for the first time Cainiao's revenue, net loss, assets and liabilities. (Reporting by Paul Carsten; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman) BEIJING (Reuters) - Alibaba Group Holding Ltd , whose accounting practices are under investigation by U.S. regulators, is a difficult company for the United States to understand, Executive Chairman Jack Ma said in an interview to Chinese media on Friday. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched a probe earlier this year into the Chinese e-commerce firm's accounting practices to determine whether they violated federal laws. Questions about Alibaba's growth rate and its relations with affiliated companies have dogged the firm for years. [nL3N18M42U] In the interview with China's official Securities Times, Ma said the investigation does not mean Alibaba has problems but that the SEC is just performing its duties. "Alibaba's business model does not have any references in the U.S., so it's not just a matter of one or two days for the U.S. to understand Alibaba's business model," Ma was quoted as saying. The SEC focused on the accounting for affiliated logistics firm Cainiao Network, accounting practices applicable to related-party transactions in general, and operating data from its annual "Singles' Day" sale, according to Alibaba's annual report filed last week. It was not immediately clear what prompted the SEC investigation. Alibaba said in May the SEC advised it the investigation should not be seen as an indication the company had violated federal securities laws. "We want to thank the SEC for giving us an opportunity to interact," Ma said in Friday's interview. Ma said he did not know when the results of the probe would come, but he hoped that afterwards the regulator would be able to give Alibaba a clear explanation, and a smoother system for communication could be established. An Alibaba spokeswoman declined to provide additional comment. Many U.S.-listed Chinese companies have said that foreign regulators and investors do not understand their businesses. [nL3N0YN27O] Financial results of Cainiao, started jointly in 2013 by Alibaba, Yintai Holdings, Fosun Group, Forchn Holdings and five major delivery companies, have in the past not been part of Alibaba's financial statements, raising questions among some investors and analysts. Alibaba said its latest annual report disclosed for the first time Cainiao's revenue, net loss, assets and liabilities. (Reporting by Paul Carsten; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman) From Esquire Donald Trump eats his steak well-done, grilled to leathery brownness, sapped of all juice and flavor and purpose. Trump's preferred steak is as brazenly unsubtle as his campaign speeches. He eats his steak wrong. So watching Trump struggle through a red and raw heap of steak tartare, glistening egg yolk included, would be terribly satisfying. Anthony Bourdain, who seems to take personal offense with Trump's palate-though not his fellow New Yorker's politics-wants to feed him that steak tartare. When the New York Daily News asked Bourdain which presidential candidate he'd like to dine with, Bourdian said, "Trump. But for all the wrong reasons. I'd like to see him struggle with chopsticks and eat a well done fucking steak." Then he added, "I'd like to feed him steak tartare." Though Bourdain eats such delicacies as fetal duck egg, so it could be worse. President Obama, with whom Bourdain shared a meal in Vietnam two weeks ago, is apparently quite skilled with a pair of chopsticks. Trump likes McDonald's. In San Jose on Thursday, a volatile crowd outside a Donald Trump rally assaulted numerous attendees. They punched a man in the face, knocking him to the ground; bloodied another man by bludgeoning the side of his head with a duffel bag; trapped a woman against a glass door, pelting her with an egg and other objects; snatched a cap off a mans head, lighting it afire on the street soon afterward; and perpetrated other hateful acts against total strangers, with many fellow protesters cheering them on and a brave few fervently pleading for nonviolence. The bad actors in San Jose should be arrested, prosecuted, jailed, and broadly condemned. In addition to attacking fellow human beings, they did violence to the shared right to assemble. They assaulted the American inheritance of a politics that is decided peaceably at the ballot box by the people, not in the streets through force or intimidation. Recommended: Who Will the Republican Vice Presidential Nominee Be? By using the preferred approach of the Donald Trump supporter who infamously sucker punched a peaceful protester, another execrable actor who ought to serve jail time for his inexcusable thuggery, San Joses violent anti-Trump protesters offered a reminder that beyond left and right, conservative and liberal, pro-Trump and anti-Trump, there is a broad majority of Americans who intuitively understand the peril of abiding violence in politicswho understand that it would ultimately empower the most thuggish, ruthless, impulsive sociopathsand that it is vital to stand together on that point, now and forever after, if on nothing else. All that would be true regardless of the horse-race implications of Thursdays violence. It is nevertheless worth noting the likely effects of the violence. The San Jose anti-Trump protesters, like the violent anti-Trump protesters in Costa Mesa before them, more likely helped than hurt the odds of Trump being elected president. Story continues Phone videos of Mexican flags waving as Trump supporters are attacked will fuel nativist anxieties about immigration as well as hate-group fundraising. White supremacists were undoubtedly smiling as they read the news. In a week with headlines about Trump Universitys shockingly unethical behavior, old footage of Trump telling a TV interviewer that he got furious at his former wife when she didnt have dinner on the table when he got home, and the revelation that Trump failed to make good on a pledge to a veterans charity until the press called him on it, San Joses protesters managed to do the one thing that would give Trump supporters, if not the candidate himself, moral high ground in anything. Recommended: How the Democratic Establishment Won Heres how I put it a month ago in a piece titled, Hard Truths About How to Beat Donald Trump: At anti-Trump protests, eschew violence and any other behavior that helps his cause. The activist left is very antagonistic to respectability politics, which Wikipedia defines as attempts by marginalized groups to police their own members and show their social values as compatible with mainstream values rather than challenging the mainstream for its failure to accept difference. Since nonviolence is a value held dear by large majorities on the activist left, not a mainstream value it rejects, efforts to keep anti-Trump protests as peaceful as possible are not at all inconsistent with rejecting respectability politics. Theyre a no-brainer. Results-oriented activists should go a step farther. If organizers at anti-Trump rallies did their utmost to keep Mexican flags out of the hands of activists and to have as many American flags waving as possible that may or may not constitute respectability politics. Labels aside, that tactic would significantly increase the chance that a given rally will help the anti-Trump cause and significantly decrease the chance that a given rally will harm the anti-Trump cause. All who regard preventing the empowerment of a demagogue who pits his supporters against Mexicans and Muslims as a hugely important goal should prioritize its achievement. All that said, any reader of mine who is tempted to react to violence by a tiny subset of Trump opponents by supporting the candidate himself should understand that not only have Trump supporters engaged in violence on multiple occasionstwo beat and urinated on a homeless man while saying Trump was rightthe candidate himself has, on other occasions, explicitly encouraged violence, unlike Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders or Gary Johnson or Jill Stein or any other credible candidate for the presidency in my lifetime. Maybe he should have been roughed up, Trump said of one verbal dissenter who was beaten at one of his rallies. On another occasion, he declared that he missed the old days when people saying nasty things at political rallies would be carried out on a stretcher. Recommended: Becoming Hmong American And that Trump supporter who sucker-punched a protester at a rally? Trump later told a journalist that his people were looking into the possibility of paying the mans legal fees. If you looked upon the scene in San Jose with disgust at the outbreak of political violence in America, as we all should, it is vital to grasp that while there are violent people who support and oppose every candidate, the only candidate irresponsible enough to advocate for political violence has been Donald Trump. The civic responsibility to reject political violence is therefore both a strong reason for everyone to reject Trump and occasion for the activist left to take stock of its coalition and prepare for the future anti-Trump protests that are and ought to be ahead. Addressing the parts of the activist left who acted as apologists for San Jose on social media, the libertarian journalist Jesse Walker offered this critique on Twitter: The great tacticians of Twitter think random attacks on rally-goers are a reenactment of the Battle of Cable Street. Looks more like the Days of Rage to me, with all the ridiculous posturing that implies. (Look up David Dellinger's critique of the Days of Rage sometime. D-E-L-L-I-N-G-E-R. Not a hippie-puncher.) I'll skip past the moral critique of such tactics. They'll just call it bourgeois sentimentality and we'll get nowhere. I'll also ignore the more hard-nosed question of whether the "optics" will "help Trump." (I mean, they obviously do help Trump. That's how polarization politics works. But set it aside.) And for the sake of argument, we'll stipulate that Trump's a fascist. Maybe he is. He certainly veers toward it & could get there. You know who isn't a fascist? Most of the people who go hear him speak. I've covered several of these rallies. Saw some ugliness. But the offline crowds aren't the same as the online Trump troll mob. Which is to say: I encountered some genuine Nazis, but mostly I met the sort of people who dug Perot 24 years ago and have now convinced themselves Trump is a worthy vessel for their grievances. Could any of them become brownshirts? Sure. People like them have before. Right now they haven't. Aiming at them is just acting out. You're making the closest, weakest scapegoats your target. (And feeding their fears.) And with what endgame? You want, what, people to be too physically scared to go to a Trump rally? OK, they'll just go to the polls then. Thursdays violence erupted in a left-leaning part of the country that likes to think of itself as unusually tolerant. And yet, would its residents feel safe wearing a Trump 2016 t-shirt around San Francisco or Oakland or San Jose? People in the Bay Area regularlyand often rightlyurge other parts of the country that are intolerant toward different people in different ways to engage in introspection and improve their community. How many will do anything to respond to the fact that yesterday, at a political rally in their community, some of their neighbors got beat up merely for attending? Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. Whether the ingredients are traditional, exotic or frankly bizarre, French liqueurs are reliable "ambassadors of quality", an industry leader says. Visitors to the Printemps des Liqueurs, the industry's annual trade fair, this month could sample tipples concocted from rose petals, tea or... how about litchis? Jean-Dominique Caseau, president of the liqueur producers' union who oversaw the trade fair, says 53 percent of France's production goes for export. "Liqueurs are ambassadors of French quality the world over," he says. French distiller Giffard's offerings are as boundless as the client's imagination as it adapts to shifting global trends along with its rivals in the lucrative industry. France is home to some 50 often family-owned firms producing 89 million bottles a year for sales topping 500 million euros ($560 million). Whereas old school drinkers relaxed after dinner with the likes of a blue curacao, a shot of cherry brandy or perhaps a nip of green Chartreuse, Edith Giffard-Jouanneau, heading up a fourth generation at Giffard, says today's post-prandial tippler tends to be more adventurous. Customers can order a host of liqueurs made from exotic ingredients such as rose petals or litchi, popular all across Asia, or elderflower, a favourite in bars from New York to Scandinavia. The firm, headquartered in the western town of Avrille, also respects tradition as befits a company founded in 1885 -- anyway, these days, "the older liqueurs are, the trendier they are," Giffard-Jouanneau says. Her great-grandfather Emile started the firm back in 1885 offering patrons a classic peppery creme de menthe. Caseau, whose Maison l'Heritier-Guyot in the eastern city of Dijon produces no fewer than 18 million bottles of creme de cassis a year, says France has been able to keep abreast of global drinking trends. "The globalisation of drinking has led us to view liqueurs differently," says Caseau, noting that in Japan, France's top market after the United States, cassis is imbibed with tea. Story continues For Judith Cartron, fifth-generation owner of the Nuits Saint Georges producer in the Burgundy region, tea -- from black to mate or rooibos herbal varieties -- is an essential ingredient. "The fad for cocktails and mixology is ramping up interest in our products," says Cartron, who has been working with tea specialists to select the finest leaves to be macerated for just a few minutes in alcohol. Cartron, who exports to Dubai and as far as Australia, tries to bring out a new product every 12 to 18 months. - Family secrets - But traditional favourites remain as "barmen also use our proven eau-de-vie, and even absinthe ... as today people want to consume authentic quality products," says Emmanuel Hanquiez of the Manguin distillery near Avignon in southeastern France. Giffard meanwhile extended their reach with the recent purchase of French distillery Bigallet, founded in 1872 and renowned for its popular aperitifs made from Alpine plants genepi and castiglione. "When we took them over, Bigallet was going to halt production of its China-China, a bitter blend of macerated and distilled orange peel with a bouquet of spices and quinquina," an aromatic wine, Giffard-Jouanneau says. "Today, we produce it for the United States where barmen adore its bitter tang," she adds. "Traditional recipes and family secret (recipes), plus the image of a made-in-France product -- that's essential -- are a winner." The firm is now toasting sales that have soared 40 percent in the past five years, largely borne by unquenched US demand for cocktails. BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina is studying whether to back moves at the Organization of American States and the Mercosur trade group to censure Venezuela and block it from leadership positions in response to allegations the socialist government is behaving undemocratically, the Argentine government said Friday. OAS head Luis Almagro, who has accused Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of sidelining his country's opposition-led congress and stuffing the supreme court with loyalists, has requested an emergency meeting to discuss a possible censure of the country. If OAS members agree that Venezuela is violating basic democratic principles laid out in the group's charter, it could pave the way for a vote that may suspend it from the regional diplomatic body. Meanwhile, a senior Brazilian official said on Thursday Brazil may help block Venezuela from taking the rotating presidency of Mercosur in a bid to prevent Maduro from strengthening his power. Argentina has not changed its position on Maduro's government, Argentine cabinet head Marcos Pena told reporters, after activists accused Argentina of withdrawing its support for the Venezuelan opposition, and does not rule out supporting a censure. "For both the charters in Mercosur and the OAS, we absolutely have not ruled it out," Pena said. "We think at this time the best regional contribution is to promote a path of dialogue." Argentina's new center-right president Mauricio Macri had supported invoking the democratic charter before Venezuela's December legislative elections, where the opposition won a two-thirds majority and took control of the National Assembly, Pena said. "There has not been any change in Argentina's policy on this topic." Application of the charter carries risk, Pena added. "The democratic charter isn't a solution to any problem. The Venezuelan government could also use whichever of these mechanisms as a way of shielding itself against external interference," he said. Argentina's foreign minister has also called for dialogue between the Venezuelan government and the opposition, saying solutions to the country's polarization could not be imported. A week after taking office in December, Macri called for Mercosur members to support the release of Venezuelan political prisoners. (Reporting by Nicolas Misculin; Writing by Maximiliano Rizzi and Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by James Dalgleish) Istanbul (AFP) - Turkey and Germany on Friday vowed their critical alliance would not be broken by a ferocious dispute sparked by the German parliament's resolution recognising the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman forces as genocide. Seeking to keep the row from erupting into a full-blown crisis, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim emphasised the key relationship would continue while Berlin said ties were strong enough to weather splits. The German lower house on Thursday passed a non-binding resolution recognising the mass killings of Armenians from 1915 under the Ottoman Empire as genocide, prompting Ankara to recall its ambassador from Berlin for consultations. The dispute sparked alarm over the potential damage to relations between Turkey and Germany at a sensitive time when the two sides are working together to implement a deal seeking to halt illegal migration to the EU. "Germany and Turkey are two very important allies. No one should expect that relations will suddenly deteriorate completely because of this decision or similar decisions," Yildirim said. "Whatever the circumstances, we will continue the relationship with our friends and our allies," he added. - 'Weather differences' - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned on Thursday that the motion would "seriously affect" ties between the two countries, saying he would have further talks after returning from an Africa trip. But Yildirim emphasised that less than half of the lawmakers in the Bundestag were present for the vote. Despite the resolution having cross-party support, top figures like Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier were all absent for the vote. Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert described the relationship as "very broad and very deep", saying such ties "can and will weather any differences in opinion." Yildirm held talks Friday in Baku with Turkey's top ally Azerbaijan which is locked in an explosive dispute with Yerevan over the Armenian-controlled territory of Nagorny-Karabakh, seized in a war after the fall of the Soviet Union. Story continues In Baku, Yildirim adopted a slightly harsher tone, saying the resolution "dealt a blow to deep rooted Turkish-German relations" while hoping the harm would be "at the minimum level". The use of the word "genocide" goes to the heart of a long-running battle for world opinion between Armenia and Turkey over the massacres committed a century ago. Armenia has led a campaign for decades to have the bloodshed characterised as genocide, which Turkey rejects as a gross injustice. Ankara argues the killings were a collective tragedy in which equal numbers of Turks and Armenians died. Beyond recalling the ambassador, it was not clear what concrete action Ankara could take against Berlin, and EU capitals will hope there is no knock-on effect on the controversial deal aimed at stemming the flow of migrants through Turkey. "In the medium term, Germany and Turkey have deep-rooted intrinsic links which will not disappear from one day to the other," said Samim Akgonul, political scientist at France's Strasbourg University, adding Turkey had a tendency to "blow hot and cold" over the issue. - 'Hitler's grandchildren' - Around 200 Turkish demonstrators, some hurling eggs, protested outside the Germany embassy in Ankara. Some carried pictures of Cem Ozdemir, a German lawmaker of Turkish origin who was one of the initiators of the resolution, with a red cross like a target superimposed on his face. Many top officials made no secret of their anger, with some implying Germany wanted to hide its own guilt for the Holocaust or even alienate the three million strong ethnic Turkish population in Germany from their own identities. Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Germany wanted to say "'I am not the only one that committed genocide'." Turkey's secular and pro-Islamic press were for once united in condemnation of the resolution with the mainstream Hurriyet daily screaming "Shame on You!" in its headline. "Hitler's grandchildren accused Turkey of genocide," said the opposition Sozcu, adding a picture of Merkel in Nazi uniform with a Hitler moustache. "Our comrades-in-arms (from World War I) stabbed us in the back," added the pro-government Sabah. At the time of the killings in World War I, the Ottoman Empire and Imperial Germany were allies and the resolution put partial blame on Germany for failing to prevent the massacres. There is more than meets the eye to the 2016 Miss USA contestants. The backstories of the beauties are striking. Read: 52 Women Strut Their Stuff as They Vie for the Title of Miss USA 2016 When Miss District of Columbia is not competing for the Miss USA crown, Deshauna Barber is a First Lieutenant in the Army. She is one of the 52 contestants hoping to clinch the coveted crown. Miss Nevada, Emelina Adams, is competing after the death of her older sister to a drug overdose, just six weeks after she won the state pageant. Losing my sister to something like that was very traumatizing; it still doesn't feel real to me. It's been really hard. I hope I can win Miss USA for her, she told Inside Edition. Miss Alaska, Ariane Audett, overcame much hardship to get to the competition she grew up homeless. "Because of various circumstances we were moving from home to home, from different women's shelters and living in her car, sleeping in tents, Audett said. "Even if I don't win Miss USA, I still will inspire those girls who look up to me and say wow, she grew up literally sleeping on the streets." Read: 17-Year-Old Pageant Queen Arrested for Forging Doctor's Notes to Excuse Class Absences Miss Indiana, Morgan Abel, is a mental health nurse who almost died as a child after she was diagnosed with a rare brain-eating amoeba. I had really bad headaches to the point where i couldn't stand up and i had to crawl everywhere where I was going, she said. The contestants will go head-to-head in Las Vegas Sunday for the annual Miss USA pageant. Watch: Ex-Miss Pennsylvania Stands By Claim Trump's Pageant Was Rigged: 'He Doesn't Scare Me' Related Articles: Artificial intelligence may one day embrace the meaning of the expression "A picture is worth a thousand words," as scientists are now teaching programs to describe images as humans would. Someday, computers may even be able to explain what is happening in videos just as people can, the researchers said in a new study. Computers have grown increasingly better at recognizing faces and other items within images. Recently, these advances have led to image captioning tools that generate literal descriptions of images. [Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures] Now, scientists at Microsoft Research and their colleagues are developing a system that can automatically describe a series of images in much the same way a person would by telling a story. The aim is not just to explain what items are in the picture, but also what appears to be happening and how it might potentially make a person feel, the researchers said. For instance, if a person is shown a picture of a man in a tuxedo and a woman in a long, white dress, instead of saying, "This is a bride and groom," he or she might say, "My friends got married. They look really happy; it was a beautiful wedding." The researchers are trying to give artificial intelligence those same storytelling capabilities. "The goal is to help give AIs more human-like intelligence, to help it understand things on a more abstract level what it means to be fun or creepy or weird or interesting," said study senior author Margaret Mitchell, a computer scientist at Microsoft Research. "People have passed down stories for eons, using them to convey our morals and strategies and wisdom. With our focus on storytelling, we hope to help AIs understand human concepts in a way that is very safe and beneficial for mankind, rather than teaching it how to beat mankind." Telling a story To build a visual storytelling system, the researchers used deep neural networks, computer systems that learn by example for instance, learning how to identify cats in photos by analyzing thousands of examples of cat images. The system the researchers devised was similar to those used for automated language translation, but instead of teaching the system to translate from one language to another, the scientists trained it to translate images into sentences. Story continues The researchers used Amazon's Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing marketplace, to hire workers to write sentences describing scenes consisting of five or more photos. In total, the workers described more than 65,000 photos for the computer system. These workers' descriptions could vary, so the scientists preferred to have the system learn from accounts of scenes that were similar to other accounts of those scenes. [History of A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (Infographic)] Then, the scientists fed their system more than 8,100 new images to examine what stories it generated. For instance, while an image captioning program might take five images and say, "This is a picture of a family; this is a picture of a cake; this is a picture of a dog; this is a picture of a beach," the storytelling program might take those same images and say, "The family got together for a cookout; they had a lot of delicious food; the dog was happy to be there; they had a great time on the beach; they even had a swim in the water." One challenge the researchers faced was how to evaluate how effective the system was at generating stories. The best and most reliable way to evaluate story quality is human judgment, but the computer generated thousands of stories that would take people a lot of time and effort to examine. Instead, the scientists tried automated methods for evaluating story quality, to quickly assess computer performance. In their tests, they focused on one automated method with assessments that most closely matched human judgment. They found that this automated method rated the computer storyteller as performing about as well as human storytellers. Everything is awesome Still, the computerized storyteller needs a lot more tinkering. "The automated evaluation is saying that it's doing as good or better than humans, but if you actually look at what's generated, it's much worse than humans," Mitchell told Live Science. "There's a lot the automated evaluation metrics aren't capturing, and there needs to be a lot more work on them. This work is a solid start, but it's just the beginning." For instance, the system "will occasionally 'hallucinate' visual objects that are not there," Mitchell said. "It's learning all sorts of words but may not have a clear way of distinguishing between them. So it may think a word means something that it doesn't, and so [it will] say that something is in an image when it is not." In addition, the computerized storyteller needs a lot of work in determining how specific or generalized its stories should be. For example, during the initial tests, "it just said everything was awesome all the time 'all the people had a great time; everybody had an awesome time; it was a great day,'" Mitchell said. "Now maybe that's true, but we also want the system to focus on what's salient." In the future, computerized storytelling could help people automatically generate tales for slideshows of images they upload to social media, Mitchell said. "You'd help people share their experiences while reducing nitty-gritty work that some people find quite tedious," she said. Computerized storytelling "can also help people who are visually impaired, to open up images for people who can't see them." If AI ever learns to tell stories based on sequences of images, "that's a stepping stone toward doing the same for video," Mitchell said. "That could help provide interesting applications. For instance, for security cameras, you might just want a summary of anything noteworthy, or you could automatically live tweet events," she said. The scientists will detail their findings this month in San Diego at the annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics. Original article on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. SYDNEY, June 3 (Reuters) - Shareholders of Australian ports and rail freight giant Asciano Ltd voted for a A$9.1 billion ($6.6 billion) buyout by a global consortium led by Canada's Brookfield Asset Management Inc, leaving the company's future in the hands of regulators. The vote was widely expected to succeed since Brookfield and its co-bidders own about half of Asciano's shares and the target endorsed the offer, but the unanimous result has formally left it to Australia's foreign investment and antitrust watchdogs to decide on the deal. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission last week said it was concerned the takeover would give Brookfield's Australian bid partner, Stevedoring Company Qube Holdings Ltd , too much control over the trucking market. The Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) has paused its deliberations until after a July 2 general election. In another speedbump, trucking company Australian Container Freight Services Pty Ltd, which is half-owned by Asciano, has started court proceedings seeking a formal assurance regarding its future once the deal goes through. Asciano is fighting the action, which is unresolved. The deal would also require court approval. In a speech before the vote in Sydney, Asciano Chairman Malcolm Broomhead said he now expects the deal to be finalised on Aug. 19 to allow time for the regulatory and legal hurdles to be cleared. When Asciano first announced Brookfield planned to buy the company in mid-2015, it had said it expected the deal to be completed by the end of the year. Asciano shares were down 0.1 percent at A$8.86, while the broader market was up, reflecting uncertainty about whether the deal would go ahead. ($1 = 1.3833 Australian dollars) (Reporting by Byron Kaye; Editing by Anupama Dwivedi) The auto industry is under pressure due to a series of recalls by different companies. Safety recalls dent the brand image of a company and add to expenses. Recently, six automakers announced that they will be recalling around 2.5 million more vehicles in the U.S. due to faulty Takata airbag inflators. Of the total vehicles recalled, General Motors Company GM is recalling 1.9 million SUVs and trucks. Volkswagen AG VLKAY has issued a recall of 217,000 vehicles. Daimler AGs DDAIF Mercedes-Benz USA unit will be recalling 200,000 units, while Daimler Vanc USA will recall 5,100 units. BMW AG has announced the recall of 92,000 vehicles. Tata Motors Limiteds TTM Jaguar Land Rover brand will recall 54,000 vehicles. Ford Motor Co. F also issued a recall of around 1.9 million vehicles for Takata inflators just one day before this recall announcement by other automakers. Last month, Takata declared another 3540 million airbag inflators with ammonium nitrate as defective. Following this announcement, around 15 automakers went on to recall 16.4 million vehicles in the U.S. To date, more than 100 million vehicles have been recalled globally due to flawed Takata airbag inflators. Takata airbag inflators explode with excessive force, throwing metal fragments into a vehicle at passengers and the driver. These defective airbag inflators have been linked to 13 deaths worldwide and more than 100 injuries. While 11 deaths have been confirmed to be the result of these inflators, authorities are still investigating the causes behind two deaths in Malaysia. According to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), new airbag inflators are not immediately hazardous. However, they will pose a risk to safety after years of exposure to high humidity and variation in temperatures. Meanwhile, General Motors announced that it does not believe that there is any safety issue in the trucks and SUVs it has added to the Takata recall recently. It announced the recall only to cooperate with the NHTSA. The company has justified that none of the inflators ruptured during 44,000 crash deployments. Moreover, it claimed that the Takata inflators made for its vehicles have unique features. 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 FORD MOTOR CO (F): Free Stock Analysis Report DAIMLER AG (DDAIF): Free Stock Analysis Report TATA MOTORS-ADR (TTM): Free Stock Analysis Report VOLKSWAGEN-ADR (VLKAY): Free Stock Analysis Report GENERAL MOTORS (GM): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia did not expect any new actions from OPEC at a meeting on Thursday but views the election of a new secretary general for the cartel as an important step, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Friday. (Reporting by Olesya Astakhova; Writing by Jack Stubbs; Editing by Katya Golubkova) Former Bachelor Ben Higgins just got a rose from GOP honchos in Colorado who really, really want him to run for the states House of Representatives. Higgins, who was the reality shows leading ladies man in season 20, may be ditching the small screen for Congress, exploring a run on the Republican ticket in Colorados 4th District. According to the Colorado Statesman, Higgins, a 28-year-old former account manager for a software company, has already been meeting with GOP power brokers in his district this week. Im very impressed with Ben, said Willie Pinkston, another Republican candidate for the seat, who told the Statesman he would step aside so that Higgins could run. Also Read: Jimmy Kimmel Notices 'The Bachelor' Has a Staring Problem (Video) Higgins would be running against Democratic Rep. Dan Pabon, who is seeking his fourth term representing the district. The reality star even has a new website up and running, though by the looks of it he could really use a graphic designer. Higginss fiancee, Lauren Bushnell, moved to Denver to live with Higgins after wrapping their season of the ABC show. Also Read: 'Bachelor' Season 20 Finale: Ben Higgins Hands Out His Final Rose - And Proposes (Video) The best part? He kinda still sounds like hes on the set of The Bachelor, telling The Colorado Independent, Whatever lies ahead, love, grace and hope are ideals that guide my life. I will take them with me into my next adventure. Yeah. We kinda puked in our mouths too. Related stories from TheWrap: 'Bachelor' Season 20 Finale: Ben Higgins Hands Out His Final Rose And Proposes (Video) 'Bachelor' Season 20 Sneak Peek Reveals Two Past Contestants Vying for Ben Higgins' Heart (Video) Amy Schumer Asks New 'Bachelor' Ben Higgins for 'Phone Sex' (Video) After achieving Bachelor fame, Ben Higgins' future may be in politics. The 28-year-old reality star, who lives in Denver with fiancee Lauren Bushnell, is "seriously considering" a run for a seat in the Colorado House of Representatives, The Colorado Independent first reported. The software consultant has already launched a website for supporters. "Thank you for your support as Ben explores his opportunities to make a positive impact on his local community!" the website's homepage reads, asking visitors to sign up for emails. WATCH: EXCLUSIVE -- Inside Ben Higgins & Lauren Bushnell's Life in Denver and Why They'll Be a 'Bachelor' Couple That Makes It The open seat Higgins could potentially run for is currently held by Speaker Pro Tem Dan Pabon, a Democrat who was arrested for suspicion of DUI on St. Patrick's Day. Although Republicans have already nominated Willie Pinkston to run against Pabon, Pinkston told The Colorodo Independent that he'll "be happy to" drop out if Higgins decides to run. Still, the Bachelor star says he's undecided at this point. "Whatever lies ahead, love, grace, and hope are ideals that guide my life. I will take them with me into my next adventure," Higgins said in a statement. "Lauren and I aren't sure yet what that will be, but in terms of representing House District 4, Willie Pinkston is an amazing person and any decision I make regarding entering the race will be based on what is best for Willie, his family and for Lauren and me." "My priority is giving back to my community and serving my neighbors," he added. "Since the conclusion of The Bachelor, I have been exploring how I can best be of service. I am definitely not a politician, but I have a lot to offer through my years in the financial services industry and, more importantly, my work in charitable and humanitarian organizations." He echoed his undecided stance on Thursday on Twitter, responding to a tweet by his political strategist, Dustin Olson, calling his "positivity" a "breath of fresh air" should he decide to run for office. Story continues "Thanks, there will be a lot to consider and think about the next few days/weeks," Higgins tweeted. Thanks @DustinOlson, there will be a lot to consider and think about the next few days/weeks. https://t.co/mzVMOb9jB9 Benjamin Higgins (@benhiggi) June 2, 2016 But his resume is already proving to be politics-friendly. Aside from working in the financial services industry, Higgins is involved in several charities, which he continuously promotes on social media. Two notable organizations are the Baker Youth Club, a youth development agency in Indiana that strives to provide quality supervision for young people in the community, as well as Humanity and Hope United Foundation, a non-profit organization that works to empower communities in Honduras. According to a press release, Higgins' objective is "creating an environment for economic opportunity in our area and rolling back unnecessary burdens imposed by government." He has already reached out to Colorado policy experts, including Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, and former Colorado Senate President John Andrews, asking them to bring together experts on a range of issues to identify public policy opportunities for action. When ET caught up with Higgins and Bushnell in March, Higgins told us he was planning to go back to work at the same company he worked at prior to his Bachelor fame. As for 25-year-old Bushnell, she said she was much more open to new possibilities thanks to her job as a flight attendant. "I'm still a flight attendant, so that's in the plans, but the great thing about my job is that it's so flexible," Bushnell said. "So, the opportunity to fly and potentially do something else on the side -- which has always been, you know, it has been a dream of mine to eventually own my own business or something like that -- but right now, I am going back to work and focusing on our relationship and moving to Denver." WATCH: 'Bachelorette' JoJo Fletcher Reveals Love Lessons She Learned From Ben Higgins Higgins also made it clear that his number one priority was his new fiancee, declining to compete on Dancing With the Stars unlike previous Bachelor stars. "You know, it kind of goes back to the whole thing -- there is one main goal for me now, and that's us, and I think right now, Lauren and I being together is my main concern," Higgins explained. "I don't think adding too much more to that right now is the right thing." Watch below: Related Articles Tens of thousands of Sufis descended on the Bangladeshi capital Friday in a defiant show of unity, following a spate of targeted killings of members of the Muslim minority by suspected Islamist militants. Braving a scorching sun, the followers of a top Sufi leader gathered in the streets near Dhaka's main commercial district as speakers exhorted tolerance for other Muslims and members of different faiths. Sufism is an offshoot of mainstream Islam whose followers are often denounced as "infidels" in Bangladesh for their mystical traditions, including worshipping at shrines. "If anyone does good work and has faith in the God, he'll be blessed by Him. It does not matter whether he's a Muslim, Jew or a Christian," Mohiuddin Khan Faruqi, one of the speakers said. Many followers had travelled from remote parts of the country to join the gathering, with police saying about 30,000 people took part and organisers putting attendance at a couple of hundred thousand. Security was tight as police vans patrolled the streets and organisers set up nearly a dozen check-posts to search people who entered the venue. Fourteen Sufis have been murdered since December 2013 in religiously motivated attacks. "I've heard militants have killed Sufi leaders. But I am not afraid," said Azizul Haq, 55, a farmer, who travelled from a town located 150 kilometres (95 miles) north of Dhaka. "By following Sufism, I've become a good human being. Sufism is the rightful path," he said. The Sufi leader, Hazrat Dewanbagi, was scheduled to address and lead the congregation after the Friday prayers from his home, which was to be shown on a giant screen as part of stepped-up security measures. Abul Kalam Azad, a spokesman for the Sufi congregation, told AFP that the extra security was due to "the recent attacks" on minorities by Islamist extremists. Islamists have claimed responsibility for around 40 killings in the last three years of foreigners, secular bloggers, gay activists, Hindus and Christians and Sufis. Many have been slaughtered with machetes. Most have been claimed by the likes of homegrown Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) or international jihadists such as the Islamic State organisation or Al-Qaeda's South Asia wing. Police have blamed the JMB, a banned militant group founded by Afghan-trained Islamists, for most of the attacks, but rejected the assertion that IS or the Al Qaeda have any presence in Bangladesh. BARCELONA (Reuters) - Barcelona are convinced Brazil captain Neymar will commit his long-term future to the Nou Camp as protracted negotiations between the Spanish champions and the striker continue over an extension to his current deal, which expires in June 2018. The 24-year-old forward, who just completed his third season at Barca, has attracted the attention of several leading European clubs but his present employers are keen to play down talk that Neymar could soon be plying his trade elsewhere. "Neymar will stay," Barca sporting director Robert Fernandez said on the club's official website (www.fcbarcelona.com). "He will reach an agreement with Barca and he will be here for a long time," he added. "The club will make it public when the extension is to be made." Neymar scored 31 goals in 48 appearances last season to help the club win a domestic league and cup double. Fernandez is also confident that central defender Javier Mascherano, who has two years left on his current deal with the Catalan giants, will remain at the club. Mascherano has been linked in the Spanish media with a move to Italian side Juventus but Barca will not want to lose another defender after Brazilian right back Dani Alves was confirmed to be leaving the club after eight seasons on Thursday. When asked about Mascherano, Fernandez said: "We are clear. We will reach an agreement. He is a vital player for us and I don't have any doubts about whether he will stay." The 31-year-old, who can also be deployed as a defensive midfielder, has been a regular for Barca since his arrival from Liverpool in 2010. (Reporting by Adriana Garcia; Editing by John O'Brien) Brussels (AFP) - Belgium will next week examine France's request for the extradition of Mohamed Abrini, who has been linked to both the Paris and Brussels attacks, federal prosecutors said Friday. A court hearing will be held in Brussels on January 9 to "examine the request" to transfer Abrini from Belgium to France, the federal prosecutor's office said in a statement. In March, Belgian police arrested the 31-year-old Abrini, a key suspect in the Paris attacks last November 13 in which 130 people were killed. He also turned out to be the so-called "man in the hat" seen in CCTV footage with two bombers shortly before they staged the Brussels airport assault on March 22. The bombings, combined with another an hour later at a Brussels metro station, killed a total of 32 people. In what appears to be part of growing fraud aimed at college students, scammers posing as IRS agents are demanding that students pay a bogus federal student tax or face arrest or other penalties, the IRS and Federal Trade Commission are warning. In yet another incarnation of IRS imposter fraud, scammers are telephoning students and telling them that they owe a "federal student tax"a tax that doesn't even exist. They then direct the students to send their payments using a MoneyGram wire transfer or some other untraceable method. Those who simply hang up may receive follow-up calls. The scammers employ several techniques to make the calls sound legitimate, including using so-called caller ID spoofing, in which incoming caller ID information appears on peoples phones as 911 or as the name of a government agency. The perpetrators can be convincing because they may have legitimate information about the students they call, such as the name of their schools. These scams and schemes continue to evolve nationwide, and now theyre trying to trick students, said Commissioner John Koskinen in a statement issued by the IRS. Taxpayers should remain vigilant and not fall prey to these aggressive calls demanding immediate payment of a tax supposedly owed. Officials did not say how much money the scammers were seeking, except that the amount varied greatly. In September, the FBI issued an alert about another telephone scam targeting college students. In those calls, which may appear on caller ID to come from the FBI itself, the scammers advise students of delinquent student loans or dues, delinquent taxes, or even overdue parking tickets. As with the IRS scam, the students are directed to wire their payments. How do the scammers get the contact numbers and other information to reach students? Trying to find out ourselves, we found websites offering lists of college and university student data, including telephone numbers. College directories are another source. In more innocent times, college directories were a great convenience to help students find each other," says Edgar Dworsky, a former Massachusetts assistant attorney general who founded Consumer World, a consumer resource site. "In these times, they are an invitation for telemarketers and scammers. IRS fraud and impersonation scams are targeting others as well. Along with phone calls, scammers may contact would-be victims using email and texts. They often pretend to be from the government. But they also may say theyre from a company such as Microsoft, the E-ZPass tolling system or your electric company, among others. A scammer may even pose as a grandchild, niece, nephew or other family relative in need of emergency cash for a medical emergency or because that person claims to have been arrested. In some cases, scammers aren't seeking money, but Social Security numbers and bank account information that they can use to obtain credit or do other mischief in your name. In March, the IRS warned about a new scam in which imposters claiming to be agents called would-be victims on the pretense of trying to verify tax information. What to Do Be skeptical. If you receive an unexpected phone call, email, text or any other communication that appears to come from the government or a company, be wary. Dont feel like you must cooperate because the caller asking you to pay your student tax claims to be from the IRS, the FBI or anywhere else, advises Dworsky. Keep in mind that these agencies will never call unexpectedly or direct you to send immediate payment by wire or prepaid card. Verify. If its a phone call, consider calling back to find out if the call is legitimate. But dont use the number the person provides or that appears on caller ID. Instead, find the number yourself by searching for it on the web. If the call is from someone you know, perhaps from a grandchild seeking money in an emergency, call back using the number you already have or ask someone else in the family for the persons contact information. The same goes for email. Email return addresses can be easily faked, Dworsky says. Never send money. The one thing these scams typically have in common, no matter whom they target, is a demand that would-be victims send money, typically by wire, debit card, or even gift card. The IRS is never going to call and say: Send us an iTunes gift card or pay your debt with a prepaid Green Dot card, Dworsky says. Dont hand over personal information. No matter how genuine a caller seems, never provide your Social Security or bank account numbers or other sensitive information. Limit the information you put online. If you post information about yourself, your family or friends, scammers can use those details to make it appear as though they know you, making a scam seem more legitimate. To avoid the student tax scam, consider asking your college or university to limit or delete your contact information from its public campus directory, especially if it doesnt require visitors to enter a user name and password, Dworsky advises. Report fraud attempts. If you suspect fraud, you can file a report with the Federal Trade Commission and the FBIs Internet Crime Complaint Center. You can report tax agent impersonation fraud to the IRS. More from Consumer Reports: 8 Ways to Boost Your Home Value Why your cable TV bill is going up Get the Best Cell Phone Plan for Your Familyand Save up to $1,000 a Year Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright 2006-2016 Consumers Union of U.S. Andrew Renneisen | Getty Images. U.S. government debt prices were higher on Monday morning as investors awaited the release of economic data and eyed auctions. U.S. stock index futures pointed to a lower open Friday after the May jobs report showed creation of 38,000 jobs, well below expectations. Futures had pointed to a flat to slightly higher open ahead of the report and turned to trade slightly lower after the report. Dow futures were last trading about 60 points lower. The U.S. dollar index reversed to trade more than 0.8 percent lower. Read More Odds for interest rate hikes plunge after major jobs report miss Treasury yields fell, with the 2-year yield last near 0.8 percent and the 10-year yield around 1.74 percent. Headline unemployment was 4.7 percent. The labor force participation rate was 62.6 percent. Average hourly earnings rose 0.2 percent. The Commerce Department says the trade deficit increased 5.3 percent in April to $37.4 billion, up from an imbalance of $35.5 billion in March, according to the Associated Press. Exports increased 1.5 percent to $182.8 billion but imports rose faster, increasing 2.1 percent to $220.2 billion. In other economic news, ISM non-manufacturing data and factory orders are set to be released at 10:00 a.m. In an interview with CNBC before the jobs data release, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said that the timing of a rate hike was "not really that important." "Two rate hikes in 2016, that's my own call for that, if the data continue to be in line with my outlook, that's a slow and gradual increase this year," said Evans, an alternate member of the Federal Open Market Committee. "Timing's not really that important, you mentioned possibly two summer hikes, that would be a little bit more than I'd say is priced in to the dots certainly and the market expectations," Evans added. "Timing's not really that critical for my viewpoint, as long as by the end of this year we're at just a little under 1 percent," Evans added. Story continues Fed Governor Lael Brainard is set to give a speech on economic outlook and monetary policy at 12:30 p.m. ET. Oil traded lower, with U.S. crude futures just below $49 a barrel and brent near $49.80 a barrel. Read More Early movers: GPS, AVGO, AMBA, AVP, CC, TM, CST, FB, BP, AVH & more The pan European Stoxx 600 Index (STOXX: .STOXX) was up 0.6 percent on Friday. In Asia, Japan's Nikkei (Nihon Kenzai Shinbun: .N225) closed 0.48 percent higher on Friday. In China, the Shanghai Composite (Shanghai Stock Exchange: .SSEC) closed 0.44 percent higher. CNBC's Patti Domm contributed to this report More From CNBC On June 3, 2016, we issued an updated research report on premium basic materials company, BHP Billiton Limited BHP. The company is one of the largest diversified resource firms in the world, with operations in several continents. It is involved in mineral exploration, production & processing, oil and gas exploration & development, as well as steel production. Although successful in global trade, the company remains challenged by external market headwinds. Bullish Aspects BHP Billiton recently announced that it would soon implement a new strategy to enhance shareholders returns and value in the near term. The company expects the strategy to assist it in generating higher profitability and productivity going ahead. In addition, BHP Billiton aims to increase its copper and shale asset base to ensure a surge in revenues once the commodity price improves. Also, new exploration activities and innovations are expected to support top-line and bottom-line growth rates over time. The companys progressive dividend policy reflects its commitment to increase shareholders' wealth. However, it should be noted that the company's lucrative dividend policy needs to be supported by a superior capital management system. To this end, the company invests in high-return growth opportunities to generate capital to be deployed share buybacks and dividend return programs for its shareholders. Also, the companys new operating model is expected to make its business more stable amid the volatile mining conditions. Per the new operating model, BHP Billiton would concentrate on three aspects of assets, namely safety, cost and volume. We believe that the companys margins expand in the upcoming quarters on the back of an overall improvement in its operational performance. Headwinds The current macroeconomic situation has posed several challenges for the mining industry. Sluggish economic growth in several emerging markets, weakening demand from major industrial goods consumers like China, uncertainties in financial markets, and volatility in the energy markets are likely to hurt top-line and bottom-line performance of BHP Billiton. Moreover, dismal commodity pricing continues to affect the companys revenues. Further, stiff competition exposes BHP Billiton to risks of market share loss and compels it to adopt price-cutting programs, which, in turn, are expected to adversely affect its revenues. Other Stocks to Consider BHP Billiton presently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Other favorably placed stocks in the industry include Ciner Resources LP CINR, McEwen Mining Inc. MUX and Lonmin plc LNMIY. All the three stocks presently hold the same Zacks Rank as BHP Billiton. 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 BHP BILLITN LTD (BHP): Free Stock Analysis Report MCEWEN MINING (MUX): Free Stock Analysis Report CINER RESOURCES (CINR): Free Stock Analysis Report LONMIN PLC ADR (LNMIY): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Tehran (AFP) - Iranian police have arrested 132 men and women, some of them alleged bisexuals, a judiciary website said Friday, in the latest crackdown on partygoers accused of breaking Islamic rules. On Thursday night police in Tehran arrested "more than 70 drunk men and women at a restaurant in Farahzad," on the capital's northwestern outskirts, Mizan Online reported. The news agency later quoted police as saying there were 40 men and 30 women, including 26 men and six women who tested positive for alcohol. "Six bisexuals were identified among those arrested," it said. Drinking alcohol and dancing with the opposite sex are forbidden in the Islamic republic. In addition, "62 men and women were arrested at another party in Bandar Abbas," a southern port city, Mizan said without giving a date. Last week, Iran arrested eight people accused of involvement in making "obscene" music videos. It came days after more than 30 students partying at a graduation ceremony in northern Iran were arrested and given 99 lashes each for violating the country's morality code. On May 16, Iran also announced the arrest of eight people for working in "un-Islamic" online modelling networks, particularly on the photosharing app Instagram. The crackdown comes despite moderate President Hassan Rouhani's effort to allow greater social and cultural freedom. Tehran's police chief announced in April the recruitment of 7,000 plainclothes police in the capital to fight against "immorality". The officers are responsible for monitoring and reporting "noise, harassment of women and women's lack of Islamic veil inside cars," he said. The devastation wrought by the Black Death plague pandemic in medieval England has been revealed in a uniquely detailed archaeological study carried out for more than a decade with the help of thousands of village volunteers. Although some historians have played down the impact of the bubonic plague that struck Europe and Asia in the 1300s, new research shows that the Black Death was as deadly as described in writings that have survived from the time, with some villages suffering an almost 80 percent drop in population after the plague. The study gathered and analyzed data about broken pieces of domestic pottery found in more than 2,000 test pits measuring 11 square feet (1 square meter) at the surface and up to 4 feet (1.2 meters) deep that were dug in 55 villages in eastern England. [See Photos of How Archaeologists Tracked the Impact of the Black Death] The test pits were excavated from 2005 to 2014 by an estimated 10,000 volunteers, including students, homeowners and local community groups, under supervision by archaeologists and trained local team leaders. Each of the villages in the survey is known to have been occupied before the Black Death, which by some estimates killed more than 3 million people in England between 1346 and 1351. In most of the surveyed villages, the quantities of pottery pieces indicate sharp long-term falls in population from the time of the Black Death. Many village populations did not recover until about 200 years later, in the 16th century. Seeing the big picture The new study has been able to map, for the first time, how different communities were affected by the plague. Overall, the population of the surveyed villages fell by an average of 45 percent after the Black Death. One of the worst-hit villages, Pirton in Hertfordshire, suffered a 76 percent drop in population. But a few villages seem to have survived almost unscathed. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States, the Black Death killed between 75 million and 200 million people in Europe and Asia after its appearance in central Asia early in the early 14th century, and reached its peak in Europe, where it killed up to 60 percent of the population. Story continues Study leader Carenza Lewis, an archaeologist at the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom, told Live Science that the quantity of dated pottery pieces found at different depths in each test pit served as an indicator, or proxy, for the human population of the sites at different times. "Human communities in this part of the world are using pottery consistently through the medieval period," Lewis said. "Pottery is cheap to buy, so everyone has it. It's easy to break, and when it's broken, you throw it away rather than trying to mend it, because it's cheap. And when you've thrown it away, it doesn't rot, so it just sits there forever." Pottery and population Although gathering data about pottery from test pits had been done at single sites before, this study was the first time that so much data from so many sites were brought together to provide an overall picture of population changes. [In Photos: 14th-Century 'Black Death' Grave Discovered] The multiple test pits dug at each of the 55 villages in the study resulted in more accurate data, Lewis added. "This is a completely different approach just scatter-gunning these villages with these test pits," she said. "Each pit is like one piece of a jigsaw puzzle that you can just put in place." Lewis said the results clearly showed the "eye-watering" impact of the Black Death on the region, contrary to some recent studies that have suggested that historical accounts of the plague's devastation were exaggerated. "There's been a prevailing view in the second half of the 20th century that these kinds of epidemic diseases were quite widespread, and that communities recovered pretty quickly," Lewis said. "I think it was just rather unfashionable to think that something as dramatic as the Black Death could have had such an impact." The results of the latest study, however, clearly show otherwise. "We can't identify whether these people died of the plague or whether they just moved away to a better place because someone else had died of the plague and a better place became available," Lewis said. But "what we definitely see is that the overall volume of pottery in use drops by 44 to 45 percent in a long-term, sustained drop, and we can see that some communities were much worst hit than others," she said. Incredible devastation Lewis said the findings support the emerging consensus that the population of England remained between 35 and 55 percent below its pre-Black Death levels well into the 16th century. [Pictures of a Killer: A Plague Gallery] She added that several villages in the county of Norfolk, in the northern part of the study area, had suffered up to an 80 percent decline in population, according to the analysis of the pottery. Yet, a few villages in Suffolk, in the southern part of the study area, actually saw an increase in population over the same time. "Now, we can see what the change is; we can now start to work out why it happened," Lewis said. "And it looks like agricultural villages were particularly badly hit because agriculture is labor-intensive, and when the population drops, the availability and cost of labor is high. So, what we see is the economic bottom line for agriculture becomes very unsustainable." In the Suffolk villages where the population actually increased, though, these "seem to be villages that were tied into the cloth trade, which was very profitable," Lewis said. "Today, these villages are just somewhere nice to live, but in the medieval period, they were like small businesses they've got to be able to sustain themselves, and if they're not sustainable, they collapse," she added. In the new study, Lewis noted the potential for the test-pit data technique to be extended to other areas. "This new research suggests there is an almost unlimited reservoir of new evidence capable of revealing change in settlement and demography still surviving beneath today's rural parishes, towns and villages anyone could excavate, anywhere in the U.K., Europe or even beyond, and discover how their community fared in the aftermath of the Black Death," she wrote in the study. The new study was published online May 17 in the journal Antiquity. Original article on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The bodies of at least 85 people, believed to be refugees who drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean, have washed up on beaches along Libyas northwestern coast this week, a Red Crescent official said Thursday. The dead appeared to be from sub-Saharan Africa, though it was unclear when they had drowned, reports al-Jazeera. Two children were among the victims found on beaches near the Libyan city of Zuwara. The news came just days after the U.N. announced that 880 people had drowned amid a string of Mediterranean shipwrecks. The boats were largely heading from northern Africa to Europe. Libyas government has struggled to control the outflow of migrants from the countrys shores to Europe, typically aboard unsafe ships. Human smuggling is now so pervasive a phenomenon that it accounts for up to half of northwestern Libyas gross domestic product, according to E.U. officials. [Al-Jazeera] Buried beneath Hart Plaza's hulking concrete, Boys Noize can't wait to hit the decks at Movement Electronic Music Fesival's aptly named Underground Stage. It's easy to see why. The German native -- real name Alex Ridha -- is making his first solo appearance at the storied Detroit techno festival's Acid Showcase after playing the main stage as Dog Blood with Skrillex in 2015. It's also the first U.S. gig since his fourth studio album, Mayday, dropped on May 20, so he's eager to see how the stateside crowd responds to its hard-hitting, genre-disruptive material. Electronic Music Legends Abound at Movement Detroit's 10-Year Anniversary Festival While Ridha would be forgiven for taking it easy just one week removed from his album release, complacency has never been the hyperactive artist's calling card. "I just flew in from Germany," he says, grinning widely. "I've been working on my live set and the movie soundtrack for Snowden. It's a new Oliver Stone movie coming in September." As that live set won't be unveiled until Sonar Barcelona later this month, Billboard Dance had plenty of time to catch up with Ridha prior to his performance to discuss his new record and techno's American resurgence. What was your creative approach on Mayday? The only thing I wanted to do was get away from the 4/4 rhythm and try different tempos. I didn't really have a plan for which particular styles. I bought a few new drum machines and synthesizers and let myself get inspired by these. The first track I made was "Mayday". So that kind of set the tone, you know? It's like 100 percent machine. Then I made "Midnight," a kind of industrial vibe. The collaborations were all very organic. I didn't really plan the vocals, they just kind of happened. For example, TEED and I were actually going to a POLICA concert before we ended up going back to my studio and making "2 Live." Story continues Boys Noize Shares Track by Track Walkthrough of 'Mayday' Album: Exclusive What inspired you to get away from the 4/4? I just wanted to try new things for myself. It has always been hard to integrate vocals into my music, because as a DJ, I don't play vocal tracks. It's always a bit too cheesy for me. So with "Starchild," I basically made this very complex rhythm. It's not really a dance track in the end. It's really refreshing to me because it's still a little bit chaotic and then she brings the calm into the song. But when it comes to structures, I'm always bored by the verse chorus, verse chorus format. But it is the same with basic techno tracks, they just go on for six minutes. So I always try to transform it and make it more interesting with a structure where the listener don't really know where it's going. studio A photo posted by Boys Noize (@boysnoize) on May 24, 2016 at 8:05am PDT You blend techno with hip-hop on the album. Do you feel that the current climate is more open-minded to that? Yeah it's not like that anymore for the new generation, especially over here. You can see kids playing a rap tune and then a techno tune and I think everything is possible. That's something I have been looking forward to for many years. 2ManyDJs were one of the first DJs that really paved the way for it. Because back then there was nobody else doing that type of shit. And now I think that people have accepted that things kind of move together, especially in electronic music. It's funny... some of my inspirations were also those early UK breaks records. And even back then they sped up hip hop samples and put techno sounds on it. And when house started in the gay community and also in the hip hop community, there were all these hip-house records. Like late 80's and early 90's, they were also merged. And I grew up with that sound, so I'm happy to see that. Boys Noize Shares Menacing Video for 'Overthrow': Watch What's your sense with how the American public feels about techno? It's growing like crazy. The underground sound is growing bigger and bigger. I guess all the kids are now growing out of the EDM sound, so first they were like 'now it's deep house' and now from that they're getting more and more into techno. And you know Movement is such a great festival, it's like one of the most traditional ones. They've been here before EDM and have always been super supportive of the house and techno sub-culture. And you can see it. I mean, Kraftwerk is playing here. That means so much, because they usually don't play anywhere else. I think it means a lot to have this... especially for Detroit and Berlin to have such a great past in common. So it's great to have a festival that celebrates that and to see that it's still possible to throw a big festival without booking the obvious mainstream music. this just happened @movementdetroit -- A photo posted by Boys Noize (@boysnoize) on May 30, 2016 at 8:49pm PDT June 2 (Reuters) - BP Plc agreed on Thursday to pay $175 million to shareholders who brought a class-action lawsuit that accused the oil company of misleading them by understating the severity of the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP said the claims will be paid during 2016-2017. However, the company said in a statement this settlement does not resolve other securities-related litigation in connection with the spill. In 2014, U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison in Houston said investors who bought BP's American depositary shares soon after the explosion could pursue claims as a group that BP publicly "lowballed" the oil flow rate, and that the share price "did not reflect the magnitude of the disaster facing the company." (http://reut.rs/1UyxPUm) In separate legal action, U.S. Judge Carl Barbier in April 2016 granted final approval to the company's civil settlement over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill after it reached a deal in July 2015 to pay up to $18.7 billion in penalties to the U.S. government and five states. The rig explosion on April 20, 2010, the worst offshore oil disaster in U.S. history, killed 11 workers and spewed millions of barrels of oil onto the shorelines of several states for nearly three months. (Reporting by Diane Craft in New York and Vishal Sridhar in Bengaluru; Editing by Diane Craft and Ed Davies) While most pitchers' success is determined by command, Jimmy Nelson has risen to ace status for the Milwaukee Brewers by being effectively wild. That could be a wise game plan as he faces a struggling Philadelphia Phillies team that hasn't been patient enough to take many free passes. Nelson will try to extend a strong three-week stretch Friday night when the Brewers seek their fifth straight road win and ninth in row at Philadelphia. Nelson (5-3, 2.88 ERA) has come of age in his fourth season, leading Milwaukee starters in wins, ERA, strikeouts (59) and innings (72). The right-hander, however, has certainly taken an unusual path to get there. The 26-year-old Nelson ranks in the majors' top 15 with 28 walks and 14.6 pitches thrown per inning. He's hit at least one batter in each of his last five. "When guys step in the box, they know they can't really bank on a pitch where they're looking at," catcher Jonathan Lucroy told the league's official website. "He has a lot of movement within the zone. He throws strikes, but they're not going to hit my spot every time; they're going to be kind of spread around." Nelson has been outstanding with a 1.57 ERA over his last four outings. He allowed six of the first seven batters to reach base Sunday before settling in and giving up two runs over 7 1/3 innings in a 5-4 home win over Cincinnati. Nelson has pitched into the eighth inning in three of his last four starts. He could fare well after Milwaukee (25-29) grabbed a 4-1 win in the opener of this four-game series. Entering Thursday, Philadelphia ranked near the bottom of MLB with 129 walks and 3.76 pitches seen per plate appearance. The Phillies (26-28) also have totaled 12 runs, batted .189 and struck out 63 times during a season-worst seven-game losing streak. Maikel Franco and rookie Tommy Joseph combined for four of the team's five hits in the opener. Franco, who hit his team-high ninth homer Thursday, is 9 for 17 with four long balls and nine RBIs in the four meetings with the Brewers this season. Story continues Nelson went 1-0 with a 4.63 ERA in two starts versus Philadelphia last season. Odubel Herrera has hit two doubles in his three career at-bats in the matchup. Vince Velasquez (5-2, 3.63) leads the Phillies in victories, but he's hoping to recapture his early season form. Since going 4-1 with a 1.44 ERA in his first five starts, the right-hander has gone 1-1 with a 6.31 mark over his past five. Velasquez will try to rebound after allowing a career-high seven runs and nine hits over 4 2/3 innings in Sunday's 7-2 road loss to the Chicago Cubs. ''It's one of those days they put the bat on the ball, it falls into play and you've got to just continue pitching,'' Velasquez said. He'll get his first look at a Milwaukee team that has won seven of 10 overall and looks to extend a franchise-record winning streak at Philadelphia. Jonathan Villar and Chris Carter homered and Lucroy added two hits for the Brewers in the opener. Lucroy is 11 for 21 with three homers and 11 RBIs over his last six games and has gone 16 for 36 in his past nine against the Phillies. By Estelle Shirbon LONDON (Reuters) - When Nigel Farage rolls into town in a purple double-decker bus to campaign for Britain to leave the EU, the music blaring from the loudspeakers is from the classic World War Two movie "The Great Escape". "That's what we need, isn't it? A great escape from this European Union!" Farage told cheering supporters as his bus arrived at a recent campaign stop, a typical scene as he tours Britain ahead of its June 23 referendum on EU membership. Critics say it is outrageous to suggest a parallel between a tale of British and allied prisoners of war escaping from a Nazi camp and the prospect of the United Kingdom leaving the EU, but supporters of Farage's UK Independence Party love it. "This has to be the best campaign tour! The 'Great escape' theme :) what a brilliant choice. Makes you proud to be British!" wrote user @Mat_Griffin on Twitter. Memories of World War Two are central to many Britons' self-image as an indomitable island people. Historians say the contrast with fellow EU member nations which experienced fascist rule and foreign occupation is a main reason why Britain has struggled to find its place in the bloc. Talking about the war is a reliable way to tug at patriotic heartstrings, and both sides in the EU debate have been doing it. Prime Minister David Cameron, campaigning to keep Britain in the bloc, recounted in a speech last month that when he departs for EU summits from a Royal Air Force base, he passes a Spitfire, the fighter plane that helped to repel Adolf Hitler's Luftwaffe. "Like any Brit, my heart swells with pride at the sight of that aircraft," he said. Cameron went on to argue that it was not by choice that Britain stood alone against the Nazis in 1940, after the fall of France and before the United States entered the war, and that wartime leader Winston Churchill had never wanted isolation. "In the post-war period he argued passionately for Western Europe to come together ... so that our continent would never again see such bloodshed," Cameron said. CHURCHILL, HITLER AND THE EU Churchill's grandson Nicholas Soames, a member of parliament, has said Churchill would have voted "Remain". But the "Leave" camp argues that he did not want his country to be fully involved in European integration and would therefore have backed a British exit. "All of the evidence about Churchill's view on the matter says he wanted Britain to be a separate sponsor and friend to the developing union in Europe," said Julian Thompson, a retired major general who chairs pro-Brexit group Veterans for Britain. Treading into even trickier territory, "Leave" campaigner and former London mayor Boris Johnson argued that the EU and Hitler were part of the same long history of doomed attempts to dominate Europe. "Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods," he said in a newspaper interview. The comments by Johnson - a senior member of Cameron's Conservative party which is divided on the issue - caused a row that dominated the campaign for days on end. The shadow of Hitler was also present on the front page of The Sun, Britain's top-selling newspaper, when it mocked a package of reforms obtained by Cameron that he said gave Britain "special status" within the EU. Referring to "Dad's Army", a hugely popular BBC TV comedy about a group of hapless older men volunteering to defend Britain against Nazi invasion, the Sun asked: "Who do you think you are kidding Mr Cameron?" This was the first line of the Dad's Army theme tune, except that in the original, the question was addressed to "Mr Hitler". (editing by David Stamp) By Jon Herskovitz AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - At least 12 people, including five Army soldiers, have died in Texas due to torrential rain in the past week that has also damaged hundreds of homes and led the state to evacuate three prison facilities, officials said on Friday. The U.S. Army and local teams were using boats, helicopters and sniffer dogs to search for four soldiers who went missing when their military vehicle overturned in a flood-swollen creek on Thursday at Fort Hood army base in central Texas. Five other soldiers in the vehicle were killed while three more who survived were expected to be released from a hospital as early as Friday, a military official told a news conference. "This tragedy extends well beyond Fort Hood and the outpouring of support from around the country is sincerely appreciated," Major General John Uberti told reporters. The vehicle overturned at a low-water crossing and military officials have not said why the convoy was training near a swollen waterway. The sprawling army post covering an area about 15 times larger than Manhattan was closing flood-hit roads when the accident took place. There was likely one more flood-related death in the state, San Antonio police said on Friday, after recovering the body of a man caught in metal bars at a river drainage. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice began evacuating on Friday about 1,700 inmates at its Ramsey Unit in Rosharon, about 30 miles (50 km) south of Houston, due to flooding along the Brazos River. It evacuated about 2,600 inmates from two other facilities this week due to flooding on the same river. Many inmates were sent to other units with available beds, it said. The National Weather Service has placed large parts of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi on a flash flood watch. Parts of Texas saw record rain for May, including Brenham, about 70 miles northwest of Houston, which received 29.49 inches (74.9 cm), it said. Heavy rains are forecast to hit Houston and eastern Texas through the weekend, likely causing more flooding, it said. Governor Greg Abbott toured flooded areas south of Houston and said he had started the process for emergency aid. "I saw some neighborhoods that were literally islands, completely surrounded by water," he told reporters. More than 160 flights have been canceled at airports in Dallas and Houston as of 4:30 p.m. (2130 GMT) on Friday due to the weather, according to tracking service FlightAware.com. (Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Additional reporting by Jim Forsyth in San Antonio; Editing by James Dalgleish) London (AFP) - Anti-EU campaigners in Britain seized the initiative Friday, ahead of June 23's referendum, with a leading advocate slamming "unelected, unaccountable elites" and UKIP's leader vowing to lead a Brexit flotilla up the Thames. Michael Gove's grilling on Sky News television, in which he attacked the "invincible arrogance of Europe's elites", came 24 hours after Prime Minister David Cameron, who is campaigning for Britain to remain in the European Union, endured a bruising encounter on the same channel. Gove is justice minister in Cameron's government and was one of his closest allies before announcing he would join the "Leave" campaign. "I think it's time that we said to people who are incapable of acknowledging that they've ever got anything wrong: 'I'm sorry, you've had your day,' Gove said. "Unelected, unaccountable elites, I'm afraid it's time to say you're fired. We're going to take back control." Facing questions from a studio audience after being interviewed by Sky's political editor, Gove had a couple of awkward moments. One questioner compared "Leave" campaigners like him and former London mayor Boris Johnson to British World War I generals leading soldiers into battle without knowing what they were facing on the other side. But Gove's performance drew wide praise from pro-Brexit figures and some commentators. "Terrific, calm performance from Michael Gove. In a different league to the Prime Minister," wrote anti-EU UKIP leader Nigel Farage on Twitter. Political commentator Iain Dale added on the social media platform: "If there was a share market in Goves, you'd be buying them tonight". - Farage flotilla - Earlier, Farage said he would join a 60-boat procession which will sail up London's River Thames to the Houses of Parliament on June 15 in a protest organised by campaign group "Fishing for Leave". Story continues "It will be big, visual and dramatic, and the demand will be clear -- we want our waters back," he told LBC radio, arguing that Britain's fishing industry was in decline because of European Union quotas. The announcement came amid another busy day of campaigning by both sides ahead of the vote in 20 days' time. At an event with finance minister George Osborne, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, said leaving the EU could put at risk some of the US bank's 16,000 jobs in Britain. A joint letter signed by HSBC chairman and chief executive Douglas Flint and Stuart Gulliver, PwC chairman Ian Powell and BT Group chief executive Gavin Patterson among others also warned of the risk to the services sector. Cameron visited a brewery to make the case for staying in after facing a more hostile reception than the lower profile Gove during his Sky appearance Thursday evening. The referendum vote remains on a knife-edge according to the pollsters. The "Remain" campaign currently has 51 percent support compared to 49 percent for "Leave", according to an average of the six last opinion polls by the What UK Thinks academic project which excludes undecided voters. Academics believe this figure could be as high as 20 percent. Meanwhile, the election regulator said thousands of EU citizens who are not eligible to vote in the referendum had received polling cards and postal votes due to a software glitch. The Electoral Commission said it had found 3,462 ineligible electors had been affected but added none of their votes would be counted even if submitted. de palma poster A24 final In the 1970s, movies were ruled by New Hollywood. Made up of the likes of Robert Altman, Woody Allen, Michael Cimino, and William Friedkin (to just name a few), these filmmakers had differing levels of success, but they attained legendary status by bringing a more adult, sobering storytelling to movie theaters in an era absorbed by the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement. A few known as the "Movie Brats" managed to create works that would redefine how generations of filmmakers work, and how we see movies now. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Brian De Palma were the five core members. They quickly formed a close bond and pushed each other to make movies that audiences had never seen before. And they did, with "Jaws" (Spielberg), "Star Wars" (Lucas), "The Godfather" ("Coppola), "Taxi Driver" (Scorsese), and "Carrie" (De Palma). De Palma was the glue of the group. Looked up to thanks to his film-school success (often casting a young Robert De Niro), De Palma was never too shy to give his opinion. And he was known for fighting hard to get his vision, influenced greatly by Hitchcock, in works like Sisters, Carrie, Blow Out, Scarface, Body Double, The Untouchables, and Mission: Impossible. In the new documentary De Palma (in theaters June 10), directed by Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Frances Ha) and Jake Paltrow (The Good Night), the legend gives his usual unfiltered thoughts while looking back on his incredible career and explaining the struggles that went on behind the scenes. Business Insider sat down with De Palma, 75, at the Metrograph in New York City (which is running a retrospective of his work in June) to talk about being brutally honest, ditching the Hollywood system, the movie he regrets making, and why he gave George Lucas a hard time about Star Wars. de palma paltrow baumbach Story continues Business Insider: Did it take a lot of convincing by Noah and Jake to get you to agree to this? Brian De Palma: No. No. No. No. It was very informal. I've known Noah for 20 years. Jake I met 10 years ago and we used to get together because we all live in the same neighborhood for dinner once a week. BI: Do you guys still do that? De Palma: Oh, yeah. It's like a directors' group at dinner and we would tell our various war stories and what we're working on. Then Noah and Jake were interested in this new digital camera and they wanted to do some tests for it. And having talked about various experiences over many years we decided that I would sit down in Jake's living room and Jake operated the camera and Noah monitored the sound and they would just ask me questions, basically saying what we had talked about over dinner. It was very informal. They had no idea what they were going to do with it. We shot it for a whole week. BI: And were you thinking, "These are just shooting tests. I can say anything." De Palma: Yeah, absolutely. BI: But suddenly they came to you and said, "We want to make this into a movie"? De Palma: No. The interviews were taken five years ago and in their moviemaking schedules they had time and decided they wanted to do something with it. And that's what they did. BI: This sounds very similar to what you were involved with in the 1970s, building a community of directors Scorsese, Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg. De Palma: That's very true. BI: Theres never been a competitiveness with other directors? De Palma: People have always asked that, but even with our group in the '70s, as successful as those directors were, there was never a competitiveness. It's kind of odd. We were young directors trying to get into the Hollywood system on some level and we all basically met at Warner Bros., and all had disastrous experiences, which I guess bound us together for life. We used to hang out together in Hollywood. We were young men. Going out to dinner together. I miss that. I remember going to the premiere of Goodfellas, so that was the '90s, and by then we were beginning to disperse. We were going into different areas and weren't that close anymore, in the sense of calling each other up and saying, "Let's go have dinner." I missed that and that's when I went and assembled this next group. BI: Did you ever find yourself competing for projects with them? De Palma: Not really. I don't think we ever competed for projects because Steven was off in his own world and George was making "Star Wars" movies. It's interesting, some of them, like Francis, were very interested in making studios. BI: Did Francis want you involved with American Zoetrope [the studio Coppola attempted to make]? De Palma: Marty [Scorsese] and I went and saw Zoetrope. I remember seeing the flatbed editing machines. Marty and I went because Marcia Lucas [George Lucas' wife at the time] was editing Marty's movie. She edited Taxi Driver. [She was a supervising film editor.] So we went up and stayed with George. But what Francis was doing wasn't for me. movie brats Mark J. Terrill BI: In 2007, Lucas, Coppola, and Spielberg introduced the best director Oscar, which went to Scorsese. Why weren't you also onstage with them? De Palma: Yeah, that's interesting. You know, Vanity Fair wanted to do a picture of the five of us at one point in one of their Hollywood issues, and I was shooting a movie in Europe so I wasn't going to fly back to take this picture. I said, "No, thank you." BI: But seeing Scrosese's friends handing him his first Oscar, it was puzzling to me that you weren't there. De Palma: I was always the anti-establishment member of the group. I've never been nominated for an Oscar. I've never worked within the Hollywood establishment on any level. I made a lot of people very mad. BI: But at the same time wealthy. De Palma: Absolutely. We all made a lot of money. But I left the whole system and went to Europe after "Mission to Mars." I started making movies that were internationally financed. So I really left the Hollywood system completely. Steven is obviously in it, Francis is financing his own films, and George left completely. BI: Have you talked to George since he sold Lucasfilm? Is he content with stepping away? De Palma: I only know what Steven says. I think he misses it to some extent. Steven sees a lot more of George than I do. He went and sold his franchise to Disney and it's something he so carefully cultivated for so many decades so I don't know. I think he does miss it. BI: One thing that grabbed me in the documentary was your openness about your relationship with your father. [Who was never around during De Palma's youth and, the director says, cheated on his mother with other women.] Do you think the stories you tell are based on your feelings toward him? De Palma: Well, we're all a product of our upbringing to some extent. But my older brother was very influential too because he sort of represents that egomaniac that appears in many of my movies. My father was basically a very hardworking orthopedic surgeon, very much involved in his work. Whatever happened between he and my mother by the time I was born, they were at odds with each other and just hung in there until I went to college, basically. So it's interesting, the times I spent with my father I can count on one hand. I remember going to see a John Wayne Western with him. BI: Which one? De Palma: The Horse Soldiers. That's about it. BI: But in Home Movies, the character Denis peeps on his father, which you say is based on you confronting your father with a knife and accusing him of adultery. Did doing that scene close a chapter in your relationship with him? De Palma: I actually approached it as a comedy. A bizarre comedy. It all happened, but by the time I made the movie I saw the absurd aspects to it. BI: Anything you regret saying in De Palma? De Palma: No, because when you're talking with people about experiences in show business whether they are actors, directors, cinematographers they are usually extremely careful because they want to work again. BI: I experience that on a daily basis. De Palma: Right, as you know trying to get an interview where someone says something negative about anybody is very difficult. I'll never forget an actor talking about working with another actor, and they did the interview at an old-age home. They were like, "How did you like working with so-and-so?" And he said, "He was awful. He was just impossible." So that's how I went about this, a candid look at what it's really like. wise guys mgm BI: The projects you turned down Fatal Attraction, Flashdance, Taxi Driver do you regret not taking any of those? De Palma: Boy, that's a hard question to answer. I think Adrian [Lyne] did a very good job with Fatal Attraction. Now a movie I wish I hadn't done was Wise Guys. The studio changed their minds and didn't want to make it. They just wanted us to go away. I should have just taken my money and walked instead of dealing with a studio that didnt want to make the movie. BI: Legend has it you were very hard on George the first time he showed you guys "Star Wars." De Palma: That is not correct. [Laughs] I am sarcastic. I am considered the class clown, but a sarcastic clown. So I would make fun of certain things. Because everyone would take this stuff too seriously. BI: So you were just messing with him about not liking the opening crawl? De Palma: No, the crawl didn't make any sense at all. And I kept kidding him about the Force. I was like, "What is the Force?" [Laughs] But you have to understand, we used to look at each other's movies in order to be helpful. We might say some things that werent nice. You know, I remember reading an account where Marcia [Lucas] was very upset with me. And I don't remember this, but there was an account where Marcia told me, "You've hurt George's feelings and you should be gentle with him." I don't remember that. I really don't know what they're talking about. I was basically myself. The thing the guys could always count on with me is I would say what I thought. I wasn't holding back. I remember having a big discussion with Steven about Close Encounters. There were some sections I thought didn't work. And this was considered a crowning success of his career. And I was like, "I don't know, this doesn't really work for me." [Laughs] BI: Do you remember a part that didn't work for you? De Palma: I don't remember. But I remember going to a screening up on 55th street and afterward going to him and saying, "I don't know, Steven." But I think we have to do that, and I do it with Noah and Jake and these directors. If they are going to show me something or I'm going to show something to them, I want them to say what they think and not what will make me feel better. NOW WATCH: 'Star Wars' director J.J. Abrams explains why inclusivity is good for everybody More From Business Insider Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f105871%2fgraduation_ Great sibling, terrible cameraman. Deandro Wurangian was thrilled to attend his sister Deandra's high school graduation last week in Anaheim, California. He even decided to film the event, so Deandra could have a special video of this exact moment she walked across the field to accept her sweet, sweet diploma. SEE ALSO: Tossing your cap at graduation can have disastrous results Except Deandro was so busy cheering, he forgot to film. Deandra told Mashable that she wasn't too surprised by the video. "My initial reaction was that [it] was something my brother would do," she said. Still, she added, "I adored how much he cheered because I didn't realize how proud of me he was." Awww. Yeah, okay, so Deandra won't have a video of her graduation. But she will have a video of her brother shouting "Yeah! That's my sister!", which is arguably even better. Plus, there's always college graduation Deandra plans to attend California State University in Long Beach next fall. Image: deandra wurangian [H/T: BuzzFeed] Walmart beer Walmart is quietly rolling out its own craft-beer labels. The retailer recently started selling several varieties, including Cat's Away IPA, After Party Pale Ale, Red Flag Amber, and 'Round Midnight Belgian White, Brian Sozzi at TheStreet reports. All four flavors come in a 12-pack that costs $13, the company told Business Insider. The beers are being rolled out to all Walmart US stores this year, and they are currently available at about 2,200 stores, the company said. Walmart has also launched a brand called Pacific Drift in California. "We want to bring craft beer to the masses," Al Dominguez, Walmart's senior vice president of adult beverages, told TheStreet. The beers are brewed by Rochester, New York-based Trouble Brewing. Getting into craft beer is a smart move for Walmart. The market for hoppier, fuller-flavored beers has been growing at a much faster rate than the overall beer market in recent years. Walmart beer Craft brewers reported a 13% increase in volume in 2015, marking their eighth straight year of double-digit growth, according to the Brewers Association. In the same year, the total US beer market reported a 0.2% drop in volume. Walmart's foray into craft beer is a threat to Anheuser-Busch InBev the world's largest beer manufacturer and the maker of Budweiser, Michelob, and Rolling Rock which has been snatching up craft-beer brands in recent years. Since 2011, Anheuser-Busch InBev has purchased eight craft beer brands, including Goose Island, Blue Point, 10 Barrel, Elysian, Golden Road Brewing, Four Peaks Brewing Company, Camden Town Brewery, and Breckenridge Brewery. NOW WATCH: 8 ways to open a beer without a bottle opener More From Business Insider NAIROBI (Reuters) - Police in Burundi shot and wounded a student and a taxi-driver on Friday during a protest by schoolchildren against the arrest of their colleagues for defacing President Pierre Nkurunziza's portrait, students and residents. The incident took place in Muramvya province, about 50 km (30 miles) east of the capital Bujumbura. The schoolchildren, aged between 12 and 17-years-old, were marching on the highway between Bujumbura and Gitega. "We were in the streets to ask for the release of our colleagues who were unjustly arrested, then some police officers who were in a pick-up vehicle of the intelligence office opened fire on us, a colleague was hurt by one bullet and was taken to hospital for treatment," one student told Reuters. A police officer, who did not wish to be named, confirmed the student and the taxi driver had been shot. The five students had spoiled Nkurunzizas photo in a book, a school administrator said. Burundi has been mired in a year-long crisis in which more than 450 people have been killed since Nkurunziza pursued and won a third term. Opponents said his move violated the constitution and a deal that ended a civil war in 2005. Nkurunziza's camp says a court ruling had declared the former rebel-turned-president eligible to seek another term. Two weeks ago, more than 300 students of a school in the capital's Ruziba neighborhood were sent home for the same reason. (Additional reporting by Patrick Nduwimana in Kigali; Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Angus MacSwan) Nairobi (AFP) - Eleven high school students in a city in central Burundi were detained and charged Friday with defacing a photo of President Pierre Nkurunziza, a police official said, as three people were shot and injured in a protest at the arrests. "The prosecutor in Muramvya has just decided to detain 11... for insulting the head of state," the police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The children, six girls and five boys aged over 14, were placed in custody in Muramvya central prison in mid-afternoon." The information was confirmed by several witnesses, including a parent who saw his daughter being taken off to the prison, and a lawyer who helped the students. Insulting the president carries a potential jail term of five to 10 years, according to the country's penal code. An impoverished country in central Africa struggling with a legacy of ethnic conflict, Burundi plunged into crisis in April 2015 when Nkurunziza announced he was running for a third term, a vote he won last July amid opposition boycotts. Violence has left more than 500 people dead and forced more than 270,000 Burundians to flee the country, according to the UN. The 11 students were rounded up on Friday morning by members of the national security service, the police said. About a dozen others, aged under 14 -- the age of criminal responsibility in Burundi -- were released. Hundreds of students at Muramvya municipal high school immediately rallied to demand the release of the 11, witnesses said. "Policemen in the Burundi secret service opened fire to disperse the protest," said one source. Two demonstrators were injured, along with a passing motorcyclist, the witnesses said. In a separate incident last month, more than 300 students aged 14 to 16 were sent home from their school in the town of Ruziba after staff found a picture of the president had also been defaced in textbooks. In some pictures the eyes had been gouged out, while insults against the president were scrawled over others. Ruziba, a town in the county of Kanyosha just south of Bujumbura, is a stronghold of principal opposition leader Agathon Rwasa. By Clement Manirabarusha BUJUMBURA (Reuters) - President Pierre Nkurunziza has given armed gangs in Burundi 15 days to surrender to authorities and hand in their weapons or face unspecified action. Nkurunziza was speaking during a visit to Mugamba district, some 65 km southeast of the capital Bujumbura, where many local officials have been killed in recent weeks. Tit-for-tat attacks between Nkurunziza's security forces and his opponents have escalated since April 2015 when he announced a disputed bid for a third term. He won re-election in July. "We give them 15 days to surrender," Nkurunziza said of the armed gangs on Wednesday. "On the 15th (of June) we will put a stop to (the violence). I came to tell you that we wont rest until security is restored." The government conducted a similar arms mop-up in the capital in November. Burundi police said in early May that more than 450 people had been killed in unrest that began a year ago. The United Nations says over 250,000 have fled the country since last April. A new round of peace talks between the government and its opponents aimed at ending the political crisis was launched in the Tanzanian city of Arusha in late May. Previous discussions in Burundi and Uganda over the past year collapsed or stalled. (Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Tom Heneghan) By Heather Somerville SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Uber has raised $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, the U.S. ride-hailing service said on Wednesday, gaining a crucial partner in its expansion into the Middle East. The investment from the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund was part of Uber's most recent financing round that valued the company at $62.5 billion, Uber said, making it the most highly valued venture capital-backed company in the world. In a written statement, Uber co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick called the investment a "vote of confidence in our business." As part of the investment, a managing director at the Saudi fund, Yasir Al Rumayyan, will take a seat on Uber's board, the company said. Other board members include Benchmark Capital general partner Bill Gurley and Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington. Uber said the Saudi's investment puts the company's total balance sheet, including cash and debt, at more than $11 billion. The funding round is a departure from the startup investing climate, which has seen contraction in recent months as technology companies face greater scrutiny over their valuations. It shows that the some of the most high-profile companies with mass consumer adoption -- among them also Snapchat, which last week disclosed a $1.81 billion funding raise -- can still demand investor dollars, even as other tech firms are downsizing to weather a funding drought. Uber has committed to investing $250 million in the Middle East and North Africa, where it has grown aggressively and is now operating in nine countries and 15 cities in the region. But, as in other regions including China and India, Uber is competing in the Middle East against local ride-hailing startups such as Careem, which operates in 20 cities across the region. In the first quarter of the year, Uber had more than 395,000 active riders across the Middle East, a five-fold jump from the first quarter of 2015, and 19,000 active drivers, representing a four-fold increase over the same period. Story continues Uber says it has operated in Saudi Arabia since early 2014 and about 80 percent of its more than 130,000 riders in that country are women. Uber will use some of the new funds in growth markets including China, where the company is in fierce competition with market leader Didi Chuxing, which is backed by Internet giants Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd. "What we continue to be most focused on though is the growth of our businesses around the world, particularly in developing markets like China," Allen Penn, head of Asia operations at Uber, told a technology conference in Hong Kong. Uber and Didi Chuxing have both spent heavily to subsidize fares to gain market share, betting on China's Internet-linked transport market becoming the world's biggest. Despite the increased competition, Uber is spending 75 percent to 80 percent less per trip now than last summer, putting the company on a more sustainable path, Penn added. (Reporting by Heather Somerville; Additional reporting by Elzio Barreto in Hong Kong; Editing by Tiffany Wu, Tom Brown and Simon Cameron-Moore) Sometimes, the chance to embrace new passions and thrilling pursuits in a far-off destination is reason enough to plan a trip. While it's a no-brainer to purchase insurance if you want to visit an off-the-grid destination to enjoy high-risk activities, other times, the answer isn't so clear-cut. Sure, you can account for rapidly approaching hurricane season, but what about unforeseen events? It's impossible to predict if inclement weather, political instability, an emergency public health scare or illness will disrupt your travel plans. And aside from choosing whether or not to buy insurance, you'll be faced with a string of caveats attached to many policies, so it's important to do your homework before taking your chances. Deciding whether or not to take the risk or buy travel insurance is up to you. To help you weigh your options, we asked industry experts to deliver practical advice and insight on travel insurance. [See: 10 Outrageous Fees Every Traveler Should Know About.] Know Where You're Already Covered Before deciding if it's worthwhile to buy insurance, the first step is understanding where you need coverage and where you don't. For example, some major credit cards offer some medical and baggage insurance. For example, if your travel is interrupted or canceled due to sickness, inclement weather or other conditions, you can be reimbursed for prepaid travel expenses such as flights and hotel rooms for up to $10,000 per trip with the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. And many major health insurance providers, like Blue Cross Blue Shield, cover some out-of-network medical services overseas, but make sure to read the fine print since expenses like emergency medical evacuations, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, are typically not included. "If you're not sure if your medical insurance covers you while you're overseas, and for the activities you plan on doing, ask them -- don't assume. Every provider and every policy may have differences," says Phil Sylvester, chief content and communications officer of World Nomads, a company that offers insurance plans online. While some major credit cards cover baggage loss, it's important to know if it's available to you and understand the specific limitations, like time required without your luggage before you can be reimbursed for replacing lost items, Sylvester says. For example, World Nomads covers a maximum of $150 per item, or a total of $750 per person, if bags are delayed by 12 hours or longer. Understand the Different Types of Policies The next step is pinpointing a provider and policy that offers the type of insurance you need, based on key variables such as trip price, destination and itinerary, along with pre-existing medical conditions. "There are three main areas of travel insurance: medical costs and medical evacuation, loss or theft of belongings and thirdly, cancellation and delay expenses," Sylvester explains. "Not all policies are the same," he cautions, stressing the importance of selecting the coverage that's best for your situation. For example, if you're planning a trip where you'll be carrying tech equipment, he advises ensuring that the maximum and minimum pricing thresholds for individual items matches the amount of gear in your possession. "Policy wording matters too, as providers may define certain benefits or meanings differently, so make sure you understand exactly what is being offered," he says. If you're having trouble navigating overly complicated language, contact the provider and ask for additional clarification, he adds. According to John "Johnny Jet" DiScala, editor in chief of the travel site JohnnyJet.com, "You really need to read the fine print, because [insurance policies are] not all created equal." And if you're planning an extended trip overseas, he says it's a smart idea to consider all options and use savvy tools like InsureMyTrip, a travel insurance comparison website that helps consumers find policies that meet their particular criteria and pairs them with providers. [See: 10 Common Pieces of Travel Advice You Should Never Follow.] Consider The Type of Trip You're Planning and the Cost The key criteria to consider before buying insurance include "cost of the trip, length of the trip, your itinerary and your health," says Chris Elliott, a consumer advocate and journalist. "A simple point-to-point trip domestically probably isn't worth insuring. An around the world adventure, definitely." If you're planning to spend more than $5,000 on a trip, "that's known as a 'big ticket' purchase, and it it should be insured," he says. Another time travel insurance is a wise idea is if you have a complex or extended itinerary, he adds. "If you're on a tour with a lot of moving parts, then insurance could be useful. When one part doesn't go as planned, the right policy can help you make a quick recovery." Aside from your trip itinerary and price, it's important to consider airfare protection and other common perils that may arise, says Dean Sivley, president of Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection. Historically, a little more than two-thirds of travelers do not buy insurance, Sivley explains. But rather than have travelers' frustrations come to a boil due to common stressful situations, such as missed flight connections, trip cancellations or lost or delayed baggage, the company offers immediate travel assistance. With its AirCare flight insurance coverage, if any of these situations arise, the company immediately transfers $50 to $1,000 (depending on the claim) directly to your bank account. The Berkshire Hathaway AirCare policy option starts at $34 for domestic trips. Invest in Insurance If You're Going Abroad If you're planning an international trip, you shouldn't think twice about buying insurance, Elliott says. "Medical providers outside the U.S. often ask for upfront payments for medical services that can cost thousands of dollars, and travel insurance can guarantee these payments," he says, adding that this also holds true for medical evacuations, "which can cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars." Also, keep in mind that if you're on Medicare and heading overseas, you should consider a policy that includes out-of-pocket medical coverage "since Medicare doesn't typically cover events outside of the country," he adds. And with cruise insurance, it's a smart idea to shop around, Elliott says, pointing out that there are often limitations and insurance could be overpriced. Depending on how often you travel, you may want to invest in annual coverage, Elliott says. "I personally recommend an annual travel insurance policy. I get mine through Allianz. If you travel more than two times a year, it could be worth it for you." It's also wise to invest in medical evacuation coverage, he adds, spotlighting Medjet as a choice provider. "Travel insurance won't always cover every aspect of a medical evacation or hospitalization, so that's worth having as well," he adds. Factor in Other Events and Calamities "A hurricane falls clearly into the definition of an unforeseen event. We know they're coming, but where and when cannot be predicted. That's what travel insurance is for," Sylvester says. The key factors to think about if you're considering traveling to a hurricane-affected area during hurricane season include whether you'll have access to a cancellation benefit if flights are cancelled due to weather and if your hotel is uninhabitable, he explains. Still, there are some caveats. For instance, the airline must have halted flights for 24 hours to acquire cancellation coverage, he adds. It's also important to understand timing, Sylvester adds. For example, if you are planning a trip to a Zika-affected area such as Brazil for the Olympic Games, you won't be covered, because unlike an unforeseen natural event, Zika has already been declared a public health emergency and pregnant and expecting women have been cautioned against visiting affected areas. If that is a concern, ensure you've selected a comprehensive policy with a "cancel for any reason" clause, which typically cost more than other policies, but give you peace of mind, Sylvester adds. [Read: 10 Tips for Changing Your Tickets (or Postponing Your Trip).] Practice Patience If you're in a bind, and you are trying to get home due to an unforeseen weather disruption or other calamity, wait to rebook your flights, Sylvester cautions. "The airline that got you there is responsible for getting you home on their next available flight. Be patient." And if you're traveling to an area that is hurricane-prone, most reputable carriers and hoteliers have set procedures to help accommodate travelers, he adds. Liz Weiss is the Travel editor for Consumer Advice at U.S. News & World Report. You can follow her on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn, circle her on Google+ or email her at eweiss@usnews.com. Scottish DJ Calvin Harris didn't wait long before he spoke out about the end of his relationship with Taylor Swift. The news broke yesterday and spawned a ton of irresponsible speculation. Both Swift and Harris have reputations as not being...amazing to break up with. So what would the DJ say? Would he slam Swift? Would he make a joke about her new album's release date? Would he drop a new track with Rihanna dissing Swift? Um, none of the above. The only truth here is that a relationship came to an end & what remains is a huge amount of love and respect Calvin Harris (@CalvinHarris) June 2, 2016 That's incredibly mature. We hope that this leads to a Taylor Swift album of measured respect for her ex-lover. Even though that might be incredibly boring. But this is great. This is a much hipper version of conscious uncoupling. Hell, Swift even retweeted Harris' breakup tweet. That's beyond amicable. Next up, Swift launches a lifestyle website and Calvin Harris starts fronting Coldplay. Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here? Gigi Hadid Wears Her Heart On Her Sleeve In New Snapchat Twitter Reacts To Zayn Malik-Gigi Hadid Breakup Reports Ryan Gosling Is, Like, 47% Woman The Daily Beast Kremlin via ReutersThe cracks in Vladimir Putins war machine appear to be growing as two of his biggest allies in the senseless slaughter of Ukrainians blast the countrys weak military.Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov went public with his complaints late Monday on Telegram, where he said he was very unhappy with the current state of the war.Earlier we used to say that we were conducting a special military operation on the territory of Ukraine, but the war is already happening on our territor Ottawa (AFP) - Canada has lodged a formal complaint over Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's berating of a Canadian reporter during his visit to Ottawa this week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday. "I can confirm that both (Foreign) Minister (Stephane) Dion and department officials from Global Affairs Canada have expressed our dissatisfaction to both the Chinese foreign minister and to the ambassador of China to Canada, our dissatisfaction at the way our journalists were treated," he told a news conference. "Freedom of the press is extremely important to me," he said. "We know that the job of the media is to ask tough questions and we encourage you to do that." A visibly irritated Wang Yi told a reporter during a news conference Wednesday that she had "no right" to question Beijing's human rights record. The reporter had asked Dion about what Canada was doing to pressure China over human rights and its holding of a Canadian man on espionage charges. "Your question is full of prejudice and arrogance," Wang said, standing beside Dion at the joint briefing. "This is totally unacceptable". "The people that know the most about human rights in China is not you, it's only the Chinese people. You don't have the right to speak," he added. "Don't ask these kinds of irresponsible questions again." Although China often condemns other countries for criticizing its human rights record, it usually refrains from doing so in such direct terms at news conferences abroad. In contrast, Chinese President Xi Jinping admitted his country had "room for improvement" on human rights after a British journalist asked him a similar question during Xi's visit to London last year. Canadian media had portrayed Wang's Ottawa visit -- when he also met with Trudeau -- as an attempt to improve relations as Canada presses for a free-trade deal with the world's second-largest economy. Ties have been strained by the detention of Canadian citizen Kevin Garratt in 2014 on espionage charges. He had run a Christian-themed coffee shop near the North Korean border. Beijing announced in January that he was formally charged after his wife -- who had also been detained -- was released on bail. By Rod Nickel WINNIPEG (Reuters) - Canada has complained to China about the behavior of Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who publicly berated a Canadian journalist in Ottawa this week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday. Wang lost his temper on Wednesday when pressed by a female reporter about human rights in China, saying the question was unacceptable and calling her arrogant and irresponsible. The incident occurred after a meeting with Canadian Foreign Minister Stephane Dion, who raised the case of Kevin Garratt, a Canadian citizen charged with spying in China. Dion and Canadian Foreign Ministry officials had "expressed our dissatisfaction to both the Chinese foreign minister and the ambassador of China to Canada... (about) the way our journalists were treated," Trudeau told a news conference in Winnipeg. No one was immediately available for comment at the Chinese embassy in Ottawa. The affair comes at a delicate time for Trudeau, who wants to boost trade with China to help revive a struggling Canadian economy. He is set to visit China in late August in the run-up to a G20 summit in Hangzhou. China wants a free trade agreement with Canada. Opinion polls have consistently shown Canadians are divided about the idea, citing concerns about human rights, freedom of religion and fears of increasing Chinese influence in Canada. Trudeau, saying there was no evidence to back the charges of spying against Garratt, raised the case with Wang at a private meeting on Wednesday. The Canadian was detained in August 2014 near China's sensitive border with North Korea. "We will continue to bring up human rights concerns every chance we get ... the way Canada has always engaged best in the world is to be active and vocal about the things we are concerned about and disagree on, while at the same time looking for common ground," Trudeau said. Dion, criticized by commentators for not intervening on behalf of the Canadian reporter, on Friday told journalists that she was "a professional with a thick skin" and did not need him to go her rescue. (Additional reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Alan Crosby) (Adds data, background) OTTAWA, June 3 (Reuters) - Canada's trade deficit in April narrowed to C$2.94 billion ($2.24 billion) from a record C$3.18 billion in March as exports grew at a slightly faster rate than imports, Statistics Canada said on Friday. The shortfall - larger than the C$2.45 billion deficit forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll - reflects Canada's struggle to deal with weak crude prices that have slashed the value of exports and hamstrung growth. Exports rose by 1.5 percent overall as oil prices recovered slightly and the United States imported more natural gas. Exports of industrial machinery, equipment and parts jumped by 10.5 percent to hit a 15-year high. Imports increased by 0.9 percent on higher imports of aircraft and other transportation equipment. Exports to the United States, which accounted for 74.8 percent of Canada's global total, rose by 2.3 percent while imports advanced by 3.0 percent. As a result, Canada's trade surplus with the United States dropped to C$1.57 billion from C$1.74 billion in March - the lowest surplus since December 1993. ($1=$1.31 Canadian) (Reporting by David Ljunggren Editing by W Simon) Ottawa (AFP) - Canada's trade deficit narrowed in April as energy exports rebounded and foreign sales of industrial machinery and equipment rose dramatically, official figures showed Friday. Statistics Canada said the trade shortfall was Can$2.9 billion (US$2.2 billion), down from Can$3.2 billion in March. Analysts had expected a slightly smaller deficit. Exports increased 1.5 percent in the month to Can$41.8 billion, while imports rose 0.9 percent to Can$44.7 billion despite declines in six out of 11 categories. Bilateral trade rose with the United States, Canada's neighbor and largest trading partner. Exports to Mexico, a partner in the North American trade pact, also increased. But imports from Germany and South Korea fell, as did exports to Britain and Spain. Exports of Canadian energy products rose in April for a second consecutive month as prices started to rebound after the 2014 rout. Natural gas exports led the gain in this segment, up 43 percent. Crude oil exports were also up. Exports of industrial machinery, equipment and parts, meanwhile, posted their strongest gain in 15 years, up 10.5 percent. Exports of unwrought precious metals and precious metal alloys also increased. But exports of aircraft and other transportation equipment and parts decreased in the month. Overall higher imports were led by a spike in foreign sales of aircraft, ships, locomotives, railway rolling and rapid transit equipment, as well as crude oil. Partially offsetting these gains were lower imports of industrial machinery and electrical equipment. Imports of communications and audio and video equipment also declined. By John Tilak TORONTO, June 3 (Reuters) - Real Matters, a provider of real estate industry data, is looking to raise at least C$100 million in an initial public offering this fall that could value the company at close to C$1 billion, according to two sources familiar with the situation. The Canadian company could raise as much as C$200 million ($154.48 million) but a decision will be made closer to the listing date, likely in September or October, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the matter is private. Canada has not seen an IPO over C$5 million since October, according to Thomson Reuters data. Higher levels of market volatility and global macroeconomic uncertainty have weighed on investor sentiment for IPOs this year. More technology companies are also choosing to stay private longer because of robust capital availability. "We are continually assessing our options and look forward to coming to public markets in due course as we fund our expansion," Real Matters spokeswoman Lyne Fisher said in an email, while declining to comment on the timing. The move comes after the company in April raised C$100 million in equity through a private placement, in what was one of Canada's biggest technology funding rounds in recent years. At that time, the company was valued at C$653 million. While Real Matters has not formally picked a banker yet, it has been working with BMO Capital Markets to lay some of the groundwork for the offering, one of the sources said. BMO and boutique investment bank INFOR Financial were advisers on the recent fund raise. INFOR also advised the company on an acquisition earlier this year. Real Matters uses its proprietary software to offer a range of data on real estate services such as appraisals, mortgage closings and title searches. Its clients include more than 60 of the top 100 U.S. banks and some insurance companies. It operates under the following brands: Solidifi, Linear Title & Closing, Southwest Financial Services and iv3CUS. Story continues Data from CrunchBase Inc and publicly available information show that investors in the company include Whitecap Venture Partners, Wellington Financial and Urbana Corp. BMO and INFOR did not immediately respond to requests for comment. ($1 = 1.2947 Canadian dollars) (Reporting by John Tilak; Editing by Cynthia Osterman) Photo: Arno Elias / I'm Not A Trophy Last year it was reported that Queen Cara had retired from fashion, parting ways with her agency Storm to focus on her acting career. But the supermodel came back with a bang to front the La Collection de Paris Saint Laurent campaign in March and then as the face of Chanel eyewear for SS16. Now, the model, actress and animal enthusiast (check her Insta for constant posts of pets and fluffy things) has turned her talents to a slighter different modelling project by becoming the inaugural brand ambassador for the first ever Im Not A Trophy campaign. Founded by French artist and photographer, Arno Elias, Im Not A Trophy is a global initiative that aims to bring awareness to endangered animals, as well as draw attention to the illegal and mindless acts of trophy hunting of lions, elephants, rhinos and many other innocent creatures. The campaign features original photographs of Cara, shot by Arno, with images of endangered species printed all over her skin. Elias explained why Delevigne, with over 30 million followers on Instagram, was the perfect fit for his first campaign: "Cara is the genuine personification of I'm Not A Trophy. [She is] truly a woman who plays by her own rules. Cara's enthusiasm and vivacity are an integral part in bringing light to our message of wildlife protection." This isn't the first time Cara has publicised her animal rights activism. Following the killing of Cecil the lion in July 2015, by recreational game-hunter Walter Palmer, which grabbed headlines internationally, the 23-year-old auctioned her TAG Heuer watch to raise money for the conservation of wild animals in Africa. Photo: Arno Elias / I'm Not A Trophy Cara shared her eagerness to front this new campaign, explaining, "I knew that illegal poaching and trophy hunting was becoming an epidemic, but after meeting and working with Arno, he really enlightened me on how tragic and serious of an issue this truly is. I am extremely passionate about animals and am so honoured to be representing an organisation and cause that is fighting for the rights of these innocent lives." Through the initiative Cara also hopes to empower women, continuing: "I want to highlight women as powerful figures within our society. Much like the species that are trophy hunted and displayed as prizes, women are often seen as possessions. Its time for our society to end the treatment of humans and animals as trophies." Story continues Those wishing to support the campaign can contribute to a variety of foundations listed on www.imnotatrophy.org, and limited edition prints of the model are available for purchase on the site, with all proceeds from Caras prints benefiting wildlife conservation efforts. Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here? '90s Style File: Tyra Banks Rihanna's Style Guide For Summer In The City Your New Instagram Stalk: Maria Nilsdotter When it comes to overcoming obstacles, no one is betterliterallythan the rock climber Ashima Shiriashi. At age 15, Shiriashi recently conquered a V15 boulder, the second-toughest classification in the world. It wont be long before she conquers a V16and just about anything else you put in front of her. But other members of the new class of Next Generation Leaders have overcome less physical obstacles. The gymnast Simone Biles was all but abandoned by a drug-addicted mother as a young girl, only to find a new family with her grandparentsand a new vocation when she discovered gymnastics. Firas Alshater was imprisoned and tortured by the government of his native Syria for documenting its atrocities, yet hes now helping other refugees feel more comfortable in Germany. Destiny Watford had to overcome what she calls the dumping ground mentality to rally her community in Baltimore to stop the construction of a polluting incinerator. To TIMEs Next Generation Leaders, obstacles are just something in the way. Championing French-American cultural ties through film, the fifth edition of the Champs-Elysees Film Festival unspools June 7-14 in the heart of Paris. The famed boulevard is home to several of the citys finest first-run theaters including the UGC George V and Gaumont Ambassade. Instead of the usual tentpole pics, the theaters will host a diverse line-up ranging from eight U.S.-backed independents in competition to a political-themed section to archival screenings of acclaimed pics. The fest also features a salute to made-in-Chicago works, master classes and a shorts program, all with a nod to promoting and celebrating Gallic-American cross-cultural influences and relationships. The brainchild and baby of producer, exhibitor and distributor Sophie Dulac, the festivals cultural mission is now more important than ever, she says. We dont have a big international film festival in Paris, she says. The festival brings people to the most beautiful avenue in the world. The varied program of 80 films offers something for everyone, pro and non-pro: distributors seeking product, VIPs, general audiences, cinephiles and children, Dulac says. In addition to the audience award sponsored by TitraFilm, for the first time the eight competition films will vie for a jury prize. Actress Nicole Garcia [shell also lead a master class] heads the jury along with up-and-coming thesps Deborah Francois, Felix Moati, Sophie Letourneur, Vincent Rottiers, and Zita Hanrot. Its important for American independents to receive these credits and acknowledgements from professionals, says Dulac of the jury prize. Additionally, American and French shorts vie for audience awards. From its first outing, the fest has showcased documentaries as official selections rather than delegating them to a special section. I love documentaries: they are often really good, says Dulac, noting that in the past, several docs (such as 2015s Cartel Land) have found a French TV outlet through the festival. Three topical documentaries are among 2016s contenders: Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinbergs Sundance U.S. Grand Jury prizewinner Weiner about the disgraced New York City politico; Jeff Feuerzeigs Author: The JT LeRoy Story, about the infamous literary hoax; and Robert Greenes performance-based Kate Plays Christine. Story continues Weiners co-filmmaker Kriegman, sees the fest as an opportunity to gauge the docs appeal to audiences who may not have been exposed to Weiners fall from grace. Whats exciting about going to this festival is to find out how the film will play internationally. The hope is that its enough of a self-contained story, that the narrative will resonate with people who have no idea about Anthony Weiner, Kriegman says. Bridging that cultural gap between the U.S. and France remains the fests core purpose, Dulac says. U.S. indies continue to need the attention the festival brings. Because of the lack of co-production funds, its a challenge to convince French distributors to take the risk. Its my job to bring these films to French audiences, she adds. The fests programming has evolved and expanded with each edition: a new section will present virtual-reality shorts including Viens! Its very surprising and slightly erotic, says Dulac. The special Chicago section came about via the sister city program between Paris and Chicago now in its 20th year. Director Andrew Davis [The Fugitive] will attend; screening are films made in or about the windy city. They run the gamut from Stephen Frears High Fidelity to acclaimed docs Hoop Dreams by Steven James and Frederick Wisemans Public Housing. Narrative classics get their due and represent a cross-section rarely played at the plush Gallic multiplexes. Blue Velvet, Endless Summer, Little Big Man and Missing, [with Costa-Gavras set to attend] are on the docket. They join premieres of studio releases including Viggo Mortensen starrer Captain Fantastic and Whit Stillmans Love & Friendship. There are also two days of industry events geared toward discovering new talent. The festivals broad reach is ambitious, Dulac acknowledges, and she aims for increased attendance despite the heftier security presence, which is a fact of life in France today. Americans can come to France, we are welcoming them, says Dulac. It is very important in these times that we enjoy, enjoy. More than ever, were trying to live normally. Related stories Cannes: New Specialty SVOD Platform Nowave to Launch in France, U.K. Cannes: Europe's Top Regional Film Funds To Forge Co-production Collaboration Pact (EXCLUSIVE) France's New 30% Tax Rate Expected to Lure More U.S. Productions traffic jam If you drive or even if you don't fuel prices are probably on your mind. But paying more at the pump isn't the only thing that people are concerned about. They're also increasingly aware that relying on gasoline is terrible for the planet. As far back as 1826, people have been researching alternatives to highly polluting gasoline. A brief history of biofuel shows that, in that year, a new environmentally friendlier option hit the market: ethanol. It was made by converting parts of plants into energy. Ethanol soared in popularity during World War II as a result of fuel demands, but it never became the dominant source. But here's the problem: It's always been more expensive than lead fuel. On top of that, countless companies have failed to keep promises of big improvements in ethanol, leading to a "boy who cried wolf" stigma surrounding the science. But a new project is closer than ever to solving that dilemma. Xylome researcher Thomas Jeffries and a team of supporters from the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) have tapped into a wild new source for ethanol production. They found that a yeast S. passalidarum living inside beetle guts is super efficient at converting xylose, a plant sugar, into energy. A little bit of engineering has made it even more efficient. Timothy Donohue, principal investigator at the GLBRC and a microbe expert, says that "bacteria prefer to eat sugars like glucose and tend either not to metabolize xylose or do so very slowly and poorly." eating insects farmed beetles This is a problem considering that it means a waste of resources within the plant materials. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lists other alternative fuels, such as methane and electricity from wind. It's true that neither of these produce as much emissions wind doesn't produce any as the CO2 released by the burning of lead fuel, but they aren't perfect, either. Methane is released into the atmosphere at a lower rate, but it is also much more potent than CO2, enabling it to trap more heat and further global warming. Story continues And wind energy may seem glamorous from the outside, but it's got its own flaws as well. Wind turbines result in mortality of birds and bats in a plethora of ways, including direct collision, habitat fragmentation caused by the need for space, and sudden changes in air pressure around the turbines leading to traumatic injury. Few options seem to be able to compete with the combination of environmental friendliness and efficiency that Xylome's new product hopes to provide. Says Donohue: The more xylose that microbes will eat, the more fuel that can be produced (in this case, ethanol). Xylome is using these improved microbes to enhance ethanol production, thus providing more fuel per ton of biomass that is processed. This will also enhance profitability of making other fuels or chemicals from xylose in the future. The new method works for not only the traditional corn crops, but also different types of grasses and wood and the nonedible parts of plants. This means that ethanol production isn't depleting an ever-demanded food supply. An even bigger bonus is that existing manufacturing locations will be used for the new production rather building new ones. Win-win for the environment! The process is expected to totally change the economic dynamics of ethanol, as these strains will allow companies to better convert xylose into a host of products. The new method will make its public debut on June 20 to 23 at the International Fuel Ethanol Workshop & Expo in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. NOW WATCH: A young entrepreneur is turning trash into fuel More From Business Insider (CHICAGO) The Chicago agency that investigates police misconduct cases released more than 300 video clips Friday, along with audio recordings and police reports from 101 incidents it has investigated the latest step by the city to restore public trust in its beleaguered police force. The Independent Police Review Authority posted the material to its website. The video was captured by police dashcams and bodycams as well as bystanders recording on cellphones. One video shows an officer slamming a woman face-first into the hood of a car during a party in a West Side neighborhood in July 2014. The city recently agreed to pay the woman $50,000 in a settlement. Another shows officers firing into a van and killing a man suspected of robbing an electronics store. Authorities say he struck an officer with the van. Releasing records related to open investigations is nearly unprecedented in a city where the police department for decades had a reputation for secrecy. City Hall waited until last November, following a judges order, to make public video from more than a year earlier showing a white police officer fatally shooting a black 17-year-old. There was no initial indication that any of the footage was as explosive as the October 2014 dashcam video showing the death of Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times. Officer Jason Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder, and a Cook County judge said Thursday he would appoint a special prosecutor to handle the case. IPRA said not all of the videos released Friday show police shootings or other incidents. Some show officers responding to the scenes or people running away. Since the McDonald video was released, the city has released information including police reports of the McDonald video and thousands of emails between Mayor Rahm Emanuels office and the department and IPRA. Craig Futterman, a University of Chicago law school professor who played a key role in forcing the city to release the McDonald video, said its too early to know whether the latest release of material is a sign of progress. Decades of secrecy and institutional denial should give us reason for skepticism about this, but I look forward to seeing whether this will really be a significant step in the direction of transparency, Futterman said. This really has the potential to mark a new day in Chicago. In some cities, such as Seattle, nearly all police video is posted online almost immediately. But elsewhere around the country, the public often must wait months or years to gain access to the videos. In some places, the video is never released. By Justin Madden and Fiona Ortiz CHICAGO (Reuters) - A graphic 2012 video of Chicago police shooting dead an unarmed black man who charged toward them was among hundreds of audio and video recordings released on Friday by Chicago's police oversight body. The Independent Police Review Authority, or IPRA, said information about 101 incidents involving the use of force by police from January 2011 to March 2016 showed its commitment to transparency in the wake of public uproar over Chicago police shootings, mostly of black men. The Authority said that in the future it would make public video and audio recordings of incidents involving the use of force by police and misconduct, along with police reports, within 60 days of an event. "These past few months, as this city has struggled with so many questions about policing and about police accountability, it has been clear that we all agree that there's a lack of trust and that increased transparency is essential to rebuilding that trust," IPRA head Sharon Fairley told a news conference. The Authority's investigations used to be largely secret. The change in operating style came after Mayor Rahm Emanuel pledged to abolish and replace the agency, blasting its investigations of police misconduct as ineffective. All of the incidents in the videos are under investigation by IPRA as to whether the police action was justified. Some of them have already resulted in civil settlements between the city and the person claiming mistreatment by the police. Some of the 101 cases have multiple audio, video and document files that have been made public. In the graphic video of the 2012 incident, a number of police are seen confronting, then tasering and shooting 28-year-old Ismael Jamison, who was agitated and was approached by police after they received reports he had assaulted a bus driver. The union for Chicago police officers decried the release of the videos, saying on its website that the images could put officers in danger and violate terms of their collective bargaining agreement with the city. Story continues IPRA was formed in 2007 to investigate problems at Chicago's police force, which has a history of complaints of abuse. But the agency has been plagued by budget and staffing shortages. Emanuel fired his police chief when protests erupted in November after the city released a video of a white police officer fatally shooting a black teenager in October 2014. It was one of a number of U.S. police killings that have sparked a national movement over policing and race. The officer, Jason Van Dyke, has been charged with murder in the shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, and his trial is pending. Federal investigators are looking at the Chicago Police Department's history of use of force. (Writing by Fiona Ortiz; Editing by Matthew Lewis) 2000 - 2022 24 .- . focus-news.net, () . 24 . 24 . . 24 . June 3 (Reuters) - Chico's FAS Inc hit back at activist investor Barington Capital's claims of being behind the retailer's progress, saying its operating improvements began well before the hedge fund started "substantively engaging" with the company. The women's apparel retailer said in a statement on Friday that its improvements began last year following the appointment of a new chief financial officer and accelerated after it named Shelley Broader as chief executive in December 2015. Barington started engaging with Chico's in March this year and its earlier suggestions had been evaluated in a review by Broader, the retailer said. The hedge fund, which holds a 1.5 percent stake in Chico's, said on Thursday that it wanted the retailer to slash selling, general and administrative costs by $100 million, improve merchandising and grow its Soma intimate apparel brand by 200-300 stores over the next five years. Chico's has already identified potential cost savings of $65 million-$85 million annually as part of the review, the company said. It said "pursuing the bricks and mortar strategy" suggested by Barington would conflict with its "disciplined store growth plan," which includes closure of 170-175 underperforming stores through 2017. Chico's also defended Broader's compensation, saying it was in line with those of her peers, was tied to performance and included equity components to align her interests with shareholders' interests. Barington founder James Mitarotonda had said Broader's $13.5 million package was nearly twice as large as what some rival CEOs earned and a bulk of it was not tied to performance goals. Chico's also dismissed Mitarotonda's claims that Bonnie Brooks was nominated for board slate because she was friends with Broader. Mitarotonda is one of the two nominees put up by Barington for Chico's board. Brooks and Bill Simon - the other independent director nominee - were selected for their skills and expertise, "not the relationships they have or don't have with members of the company's leadership team," Chico's said. The company said that Mitarotonda's claim that Brooks, the vice chairman of Hudson's Bay Co, might have a conflict of interest was not true as the two companies were not significant competitors. (Reporting by Ramkumar Iyer in Bengaluru; Editing by Kirti Pandey) BEIJING (Reuters) - China's navy will send five ships to join a major U.S.-hosted naval drill this summer, even as tension mounts between the world's two largest economies over the South China Sea. The Rim of the Pacific exercise, or RIMPAC, billed as the world's largest international maritime exercise, is held every two years in Hawaii in June and July. Critics of the Obama administration, including U.S. Senator John McCain, have said the United States should bar China from the drills to show U.S. disapproval of its military actions. The United States and its allies have expressed growing concern over the Asian giant's military buildup, as well as its increasingly assertive posture in the South China Sea. China's Defence Ministry, in a short statement late on Thursday, said its flotilla, including two warships and a hospital ship, would participate in live fire, anti-piracy, search and rescue and other drills. Despite China's anger at U.S. military patrols close to islands China controls in the South China Sea, and U.S. criticism of China's military build-up, both countries have been trying to improve defense ties and ensure regular communications. Past participants in RIMPAC have included nations, such as Russia, that are not treaty allies of the United States. China took part in the RIMPAC exercises in 2014 with more than 20 countries, but defense officials have said its participation was limited to areas such as humanitarian relief and search and rescue operations. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) If webby U.S. media startup Vox were acquired by the Chinese Communist Party, it might resemble Sixth Tone, a new English-language media outlet aimed at attracting a Western readership. Launched on April 6, garnering some immediate attention from the Western China-watching community, Sixth Tone is a Chinese invention: a media start-up under party oversight that features a slick, attractive website and appealing headlines designed to entice Western readers. Chinese state media has long been known for its turgid reporting, formulaic pronouncements, and utilitarian web formats. And thats in Chinese their English-language counterparts, such as the state-sponsored China Daily, known for its saccharine reporting, are often even worse. The ruling Communist Party, through its official media mouthpieces and foreign ministry spokespeople, often repeats its belief that China is unfairly represented in Western press, giving news consumers around the world an overly negative image of China. Sixth Tone appears to be an answer to that perceived problem. But that highlights the inherent conundrum facing the publications editors. While its not officially party-operated, Shanghai-based Sixth Tone is a sister publication to state-backed digital outlet The Paper, sharing both its resources and its state-owned parent company, Shanghai United Media Group, which provided about $4.5 million of Sixth Tones initial funding. And as a publication based in China, it is subject to strict censorship. Many Western readers approach all media with deep skepticism, and China watchers in particular are highly sensitive to anything that smacks of censorship or self-censorship. How will Sixth Tone make its articles appealing to a cynical Western readership without crossing party lines? The plan, Sixth Tones founding editor-in-chief Wei Xing told Foreign Policy in an April interview, is to humanize China news. If we cover a very big topic, we prefer to cover the topic with people stories, Wei said. We want to go beyond the reports, to go to peoples homes. Though the new media outlet is currently aimed primarily at a Western audience, Wei told FP that Sixth Tone doesnt plan to compete directly with major outlets such as the Wall Street Journal or state broadcaster China Central Television English, but rather to fill a specific niche. According to an April 6 press release, the start-up will showcase a fresh side of China through its deep features, timely news reports, and rich commentaries and by focusing on the everyday realities of Chinese peoples lives. Even in such a short time period, theres already been an editorial shake-up at Sixth Tone. Wei resigned on May 30 to launch a video-based media start-up; Qiu Bing, CEO of The Paper, left in late May. Wei told FP in a June 1 interview that such quick turnover was common among Chinese media start-ups. The new editor-in-chief, Zhang Jun, told FP in an email that his vision for Sixth Tone remains the same as its previous editor, and that he also hopes to grow the number of our reporting trips to Chinas heartland. Two months into Sixth Tones existence, its emphasis on the human side of the news is taking shape. The website features personal narratives often related to major national issues, such as one April 27 essay by a former migrant worker who shared how he eventually became the director of an NGO; long-form dives into social problems, like an April 8 piece about a childrens gangs in rural China; and inside looks at controversial topics, such as an May 10 article about a man who decided to raise an intersex baby he found abandoned by the road. The stories are often interesting or surprising, offering glances into little-known parts of life in China. The outlets strategy for handling its existential conundrum how to attract foreign readers without crossing the party is also emerging. Sixth Tones hyper-local, highly personal focus often has the effect of stripping many articles of their larger, possibly charged, political contexts. One April 20 article, How Crushing Debt Fractured My Family, is a typical example. In the piece, a woman details how business debt broke apart her once-happy extended family. Its an interesting insider look at family dynamics in China, how relatives work together to build a family construction business, and what can happen when a company fails. But the origin and details of the debt are given very brief treatment: In the midst of the global financial crisis in 2008, the government stopped paying the arrears they owed at the family construction site. The explanation leaves the reader asking what government entity failed to pay arrears, and what recourse may have been available to the company. Its not hard to guess at the pressures behind that articles approach; were it to place blame on a more specific target, a disgruntled government official could make life difficult for Sixth Tone, or for the author or editor individually. Other articles in Sixth Tone touch on hot-button issues, but in some cases avoid in-depth discussion of their provenance or possible real-world solutions. For example, one April 26 essay, titled Why I Am Not a Good Doctor and written by a prominent Chinese physician, seems to promise to address the explosive issue of Chinese hospitals, which are plagued with episodic violence as patients or their families, sometimes desperate after an operation has gone wrong or when expensive treatments have wiped out their savings, having physically attacked doctors and nurses. Chinese hospitals are overburdened and understaffed, reads the articles sub-headline, leaving many doctors unable to give their patients the standard of care they deserve. That much is true: numerous factors have created this endemic problem. State-owned hospitals often underpay and overwork their staff, who often face obstacles in striking or engaging in collective bargaining. To supplement their income, doctors may prescribe expensive and unnecessary tests and drugs. And patients often have little recourse in the case of malpractice or corruption. But the personal essay itself does not engage these causes. Patient-hospital disputes are by no means a new trend, the article states, correctly but incompletely. Our medical staff have problems, as does the hospital, as does the world. Then theres an April 28 long-form article, called Children of Coal: After the Collapse, a gritty inside look at the lives of four young graduates of a coal college in Shuangyashan, one of Chinas failing mining towns in its industrial north. Its narrative-driven, with few background paragraphs to provide context or additional analysis, but also fascinating. One college graduate fed directly into the coal industry described his first experience entering a mine this way: I felt like a plate of sushi on one of those circular belts, heading straight into the mouth of a monster hiding in the shadows. Yet the article scarcely mentions the crucial subtext of Shuangyashan. In March, more than 1,000 miners and others took to the streets there in a mass demonstration. One group held a sign that read We must live. We must eat. Indeed, labor-related protests, which Chinese authorities often view with wariness as potentially destabilizing, nearly doubled in 2015 versus 2014, which itself marked a doubling of the total in 2013. That Shuangyashan strike went unreported in Chinese state media, and received only a fleeting reference in the Sixth Tone piece. A May 20 essay on a truly daring topic a lesbian relationship between two Muslims from Chinas far western region of Xinjiang revealed similar gaps. Timed to roughly coincide with the May 17 International Day Against Homophobia, it eloquently described the difficult choices that two lovers must make when neither can reveal the relationship to their respective families. But it provided almost no larger social, political, or religious context for a love story that is, presumably, closely related to three topics all highly controversial in China sexuality, religion, and ethnicity. When asked about these omissions, Wei said in a June follow-up interview after his resignation, that Sixth Tone face[s] all the challenges that media in China face an allusion to the tight control that Chinese authorities maintain over what can and cannot appear in print or online. As a state-market hybrid, Sixth Tone enjoys greater, though still limited, editorial freedom than official state outlets such as party mouthpiece Peoples Daily and state news agency Xinhua, which both have English-language websites. Chinese media outlets, once largely state-run, began commercializing in the 1980s; now, out of the thousands of newspapers, periodicals, and broadcast stations in China, most rely on subscriptions and advertising for revenue. With about 3,000 followers on Twitter and around 1,300 on Facebook so far, Sixth Tone has a modest following among U.S.-based China watchers, some of whom see it as supplementary reading to what is currently available about China in English. The publication is a useful contribution to some of the knowledge coming out of China, Bill Bishop, publisher of influential newsletter Sinocism, said in an interview with FP. Its more about culture, and thats great, because frankly, there should be more stuff in English about that. The publication may also hold an appeal for internationally-minded Chinese. Muyi Xiao, a Chinese photojournalist who will begin work at Sixth Tone in August, studied at the International Center for Photography in New York after launching her career in Beijing. She said during her study abroad, she often thought deeply about the idea of insider and outsider perspectives. I think we need more insiders point of view on Chinas stories for foreign readers, she told FP. Sixth Tone focuses not only on topics about China that the world is interested about but also the topics that the world doesnt necessarily know about China. That focus, said Xiao, is what drew her to Sixth Tone. And while she does have some concerns about censorship, she said, the content they run looks good to me. Youre not going to read this and think this is party propaganda, said Bishop. But even so, it shouldnt be forgotten where this fits in with the broader propaganda strategy, he explained. Since assuming office in late 2012, Chinese President Xi Jinping has worked to project a global image of a strong, competent China, while simultaneously tightening the partys grip on media and the Internet. Xi has rebranded Chinas rise as the inspirational-sounding Chinese dream, demanded absolute loyalty from state media outlets, and called for more positive energy, or peppy pro-China posting, on the Internet. To better tell the China story, said Bishop, thats an ongoing project for the party for some time. To be sure, Chinese media entrepreneurs face tough choices. Some choose to leave China for Hong Kong or even for foreign countries to pursue their passions in environments with greater media freedom. Others never enter the newsroom in the first place. But some remain, trying to produce important work within an increasingly constrained system. Our sense of readers impressions of Sixth Tone, said current editor-in-chief Zhang, is that we are seen as a voice that stands apart from traditional media, addressing difficult and fresh subjects without sensationalism or prejudice. And theres always the possibility that Sixth Tone, still young, will continue to evolve. Image Credit: Twitter/Fair Use Photo: Vernon Lee/Yahoo Singapore China is regrettably steering toward a policy of intimidation and coercion as it militarises the South China Sea at a startling and destabilising rate, said US senator John McCain at an event in Singapore on Friday (3 June). Making a plea to defend the rules-based order in Asia, McCain said that there have been disturbing signs of such a policy including the Chinese conducting dangerous intercepts of military aircraft flying in legal airspace, harassing fishermen from the region, cyber-theft of intellectual property and using trade as a weapon. Speaking at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies Public Lecture at Marina Mandarin Singapore, McCain said that China has to make a choice on how it uses its growing power. China could continue to coerce and intimidate its neighbours and unilaterally enforce its territorial claims. It could pursue mercantilist economic policies. And it could engage in a zero-sum game for regional power and influence, said McCain, who is also the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Such a path would harm the interests of every nation in the region including China, said McCain. The senator from Arizona added that China could alternatively choose a better path. It could cooperate with its neighbours and manage disputes peacefully, consistent with the same international rules that have benefited China so greatly. It could expand free and open trade with the region and the world. And it could expand cooperation with other Pacific powers on regional security challenges, from piracy to stability on the Korean Peninsula, McCain said. A major test to the rule of law in the region will come later this month when the Permanent Court of Arbitration is expected to reach a decision on a case filed by the Philippines about disputed areas in the South China Sea. McCain said that the enforcement of the courts ruling requires serious political will and its legitimacy will depend on the support from countries in the region, especially those in Southeast Asia, the Vietnam War veteran added. Story continues Turning to the United States, McCain reiterated a longstanding position of the US government that the superpower is firmly committed to upholding the security and prosperity in Asia despite concerns about the challenges that it faces, ranging from economic uncertainty to gridlocked politics. The US will continue to protect freedom of the seas, strengthen its alliances and develop new partnerships. As a testament to the American commitment to regional security, the US will soon have two aircraft carriers operating in the Pacific, McCain said. In the area of free trade, McCain said that he will continue to press for congressional ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He added that ratification of the trade agreement would be vital to show the enduring commitment of the US to prosperity in Asia. Having chosen to play a leadership role in the world, the US will not abandon its allies and partners, McCain said. That choice has, at times, been unpopular. But it was, and still is, the right choice. And you need to know that it is a choice that millions and millions of Americans and many of us who speak on their behalf are prepared to make today. Read more: Yahoo Singapores interview with Kirk Wagar, the US Ambassador to Singapore, about the South China Sea dispute. HONG KONG, June 3 (Reuters) - China's Anbang Insurance Group Co Ltd will try for a second time to buy U.S. life insurer Fidelity & Guaranty Life after the Chinese firm put on hold its acquisition plan earlier this week, the South China Morning Post reported on Friday. Anbang withdrew its application to buy Fidelity & Guaranty Life after failing to provide information requested for processing the deal, New York state's financial services regulator said on Tuesday. The Chinese group will be able to resubmit its application if it provides the necessary information, the regulator said. Anbang will try a second time with a "refiled acquisition application" to the New York regulator, the newspaper reported, citing a person with knowledge of the plan. "Anbang will continue to work with Fidelity & Guaranty Life to complete the deal," the newspaper quoted the person as saying, without elaborating. Anbang did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Privately owned Anbang agreed in November to buy the annuities and life insurer for $1.57 billion. Fidelity said in a statement earlier this week that Anbang was working with the regulator to secure approval for the acquisition, and that Anbang expects to refile an application in the near future. (Reporting by Donny Kwok and Tris Pan; Editing by Christopher Cushing) - By James Li The June 2016 Undervalued Predictable Screener detected 101 stocks trading at deep discounts compared to their stock prices. Fourteen of these stocks are Chinese banks, suggesting that the Chinese banking industry contains several good stock buys. A very predictable screener The Undervalued Predictable Screener, as its name suggests, searches for stocks that have high predictability ranks and are undervalued compared to their stock prices. GuruFocus added the Predictability Rank feature after back testing Warren Buffettas strategy for the 10-year period from 1998 to 2008. Measured on a scale of 1 to 5 stars, the predictability rank measures how consistent are a companyas revenue per share and EBITDA per share based on an annual growth trendline. Companies that have experienced operating losses in the 10-year period seldom receive higher than two stars and usually just get one star. On the other hand, companies whose revenue per share has a near-perfect correlation with its annual growth trendline and whose EBITDA per share has a nearly straight, positive slope receive a predictability rank of five stars. To determine which of the 570 predictable stocks are undervalued, the screener calculates the intrinsic value of the companyas stock using the discounted cash flow (DCF) and the discounted earnings. According to the 2008 study on DCF, the discounted cash flow model computes a fair, or intrinsic value of the company based on its book value, current free cash flows, 10-year growth rate and the terminal value. The study also shows that the stock price is more correlated with EPS instead of the current free cash flow; therefore, the discounted earnings valuation more accurately measures the companyas intrinsic value. Due to its higher correlation with the stock price, EPS is used in the fair value calculator instead of the current free cash flow. Story continues Economic downturn suggests discounted companies As the Chinese economy continues experiencing downturns, many securities from China and Hong Kong atrade at low multiples of earnings,a according to IVA Fund portfolio manager Charles de Vaulx (Trades, Portfolio)as May 4 PM letter. The declining Chinese economy likely prompted the market to set Chinese company stock prices at huge discounts to avoid another crisis like the late 1990s Asian Crisis. Due to these discounts, Chinese banks are trading at much lower prices compared to their tangible book values and thus appeared on investorsa lists of stocks to watch. An overview of the stocks screened Although the screener lists 14 stocks, some of the stocks are duplicates: there are a few stocks that are listed on both the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SHSE) and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKSE). The five stocks that are listed on the HKSE also trade on the SHSE, and the HKSE stock has a similar P/E to its SHSE equivalent. The main difference between the two equivalent stocks is the yield, but this difference is most likely because the stock is trading in two different countries. Among the nine companies (excluding duplicates), only three of them have a 5-star predictability rank. One of these stocks, the China Merchants Bank Co. Ltd. (600036.SS) has its predictability rank on watch as indicated by the red border around its stars. The red border indicates that China Merchants Bank may have its predictability rank changed by the next quarter as the company deviates from its predictability standards. Some likely reasons why China Merchants Bank may lose its 5-star predictability rank in the upcoming quarter are its financial strength rating of 5 out of 10 and its relatively low equity-to-asset and interest coverage ratios. However, the most likely reason why the 5-star predictability rating is in jeopardy is the bankas EPS growth, which is currently lower than 62% of companies in the global Asian banks industry. Furthermore, the bank had decreasing EPS growth year over year from 2012 to 2015. 1157725949.png Companies whose 4-star predictability rank is flagged by the red border may disappear from the undervalued predictable screener should their predictability ranks decrease below four stars. Despite some of the companies that have questionable predictability rank (those with red borders around the stars), these stocks are undervalued for a few reasons: low P/E ratios and low tangible book values are usually the first two reasons that come to mind. However, the most likely reason comes from the Peter Lynch charts: the majority of the stocks in the Chinese banking industry are trading at prices lower than their earnings line. Additionally, most of the earnings lines are positively sloped, suggesting that these companies have potential for increasing earnings growth. Stock analysis: The top two predictable stocks The two stocks with 5-star predictability ranks not currently on watch are Bank of Nanjing Co. Ltd. (601009.SS) and Bank of Ningbo Co. Ltd. (SZSE:002142). According to the undervalued predictable screener, the Nanjing Bankas stock price is at 72% discount and the Ningbo Bankas stock price is at 71% discount, both relative to their discount EPS values. Although Nanjing Bank has a lower P/E ratio than Ningbo Bank, the yield of Nanjing Bank is lower. Both banks have a financial strength of 7 out of 10, suggesting that neither bank is in danger of going bankrupt despite the slow Chinese economy. Despite the high financial strength, the banks have modest Piotroski F-scores: 4 out of 9 for Nanjing Bank and 5 out of 9 for Ningbo Bank. 291037032.png Although Ningbo Bankas current Piotroski F-score is slightly higher than Nanjing Bankas current F-score, Ningbo Bank has more volatile F-scores than does Nanjing Bank. This suggests that Ningbo Bank is more likely to experience an unhealthy financial outlook in a declining Chinese economy. Furthermore, Ningbo Bankas Piotroski F-score decreased to a rating of 2 in 2012, its lowest ranking in the past five years. The two companies appear to have a financial strength that is too high, based on their financial data. With equity-to-asset ratios lower than 87% of companies in the global Asian banking industry and interest coverage ratios less than 0.5, one might expect these companies to have a lower financial strength rating. The high financial strength rating may be due to high Altman Z-scores, but there is no information about the Z-scores. Despite having volatile Piotroski F-scores, Ningbo Bank has a slightly higher profitability and growth rating than Nanjing Bank. Based on the chart below, Ningbo Bank has less volatile net margins than does Nanjing Bank, even though the margins are decreasing year over year. 1135540498.png Throughout the past five years, Ningbo Bank generally had higher returns on equity (ROE) than Nanjing Bank; however, in 2015, Ningbo Bankas ROE decreased while Nanjing Bankas ROE increased, meeting near 19%. During 2015, both banksa ROE decreased about 2%, and Nanjing Bankas end-of-year 2015 ROE is two basis points higher than Ningbo Bankas end-of-year 2015 ROE. Both banks have a current ROE that is higher than 85% of stocks in the global Asian banking industry. Although it has a slightly higher return on equity, Nanjing Bank has a more volatile return on assets than does Ningbo Bank. Both banks have the same return on assets (ROA) throughout 2013 and 2014, and at the end of 2015, Nanjing Bankas ROA is one basis point lower than Ningboas ROA. Currently, Ningbo Bankas ROA is six basis points higher than Nanjing Bankas ROA. 395323175.png 1513594671.png The two 5-star Chinese banks have very high revenue growth: Nanjing Bankas three-year revenue growth is higher than 96% of global Asian banks while Ningbo Bankas three-year revenue growth is higher than just 90%. Nanjing Bankas revenue growth peaked at 53.14% in 2015 when Ningbo Bankas revenue growth decreased to 16.60% from its 2013 value of 29.53%. Both banks have nearly identical competitors. Nanjing Bank, the second-largest bank in China based on asset scale, has the largest market cap among its competitors. On the other hand, Ningbo Bank, with a market cap about half that of Nanjing Bank, has the lowest market cap among competing firms. Both banks also have relatively low P/S ratios compared to competing banks, but Nanjing Bank has a lower P/S ratio than does Ningbo Bank. Nanjing Bank also has a slightly lower P/B ratio than does Ningbo Bank. There are many other good Chinese banking stocks besides Nanjing Bank and Ningbo Bank. For more information about other good Chinese banks, use the All-In-One Screener. You can also use this screener to find U.S. banks with financials similar to these stocks. Additionally, you can explore undervalued predictable companies in other industries and sectors. Start a free seven-day trial of Premium Membership to GuruFocus. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. The Hillary Clinton campaign condemned Donald Trumps attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel on Friday, defending the U.S. District judge who has become the most recent object of the presumptive GOP nominees wrath because of his rulings in an ongoing lawsuit involving Trump University. In a series of tweets and interviews over the last several days days, Trump has attacked the credibility of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, calling him very biased and unfair, and suggesting he is a hater of Donald Trump because he is Mexican. He told the Wall Street Journal Thursday that Judge Curiel had an inherent conflict of interest because he was of Mexican heritage and Im building a wall. The Clinton campaign came to Judge Curiels defense Friday, in a statement condemning Trumps attacks. Judge Curiel and his family epitomize the American Dream, said Lorella Praeli, Director of Latino Outreach for Hillary for America. His parents worked hard to give their U.S.-born children a better life. Judge Curiel was born in Indiana to parents who had emigrated from Mexico. He recently ruled to unseal documents in the case that offer a glimpse at the business dealings of Trump University, which allegedly duped plaintiffs into spending tens of thousands of dollars for get-rich-quick schemes. The fact that Donald Trump doesnt see Judge Curiel and his family as Americans makes him unfit to be president of this great nation, a nation of immigrants, Praeli continued. In Trumps version of America, this Latino family isnt really American. And Hillary Clinton will fight for ALL Americans, she concluded. San Bernardino (United States) (AFP) - Hillary Clinton launched stinging criticism of Donald Trump on Friday, even suggesting her likely Republican presidential opponent wants to be America's "dictator," as she proclaimed she will be the Democratic flag bearer once California votes next week. President Barack Obama lent his voice to the denunciation, saying Trump's aggressive posture towards immigrants, Muslims and women is "feeding resentments" among Americans and urging them to seek out scapegoats for their frustrations and problems. Amid increasingly brazen attacks on both sides, Clinton and Trump are emerging as the two rivals who will do battle in the general election. Trump is already the presumptive Republican nominee, while Clinton has begun talking as if she is the Democratic flag bearer. "We need everybody to show up on June 7," she told a few hundred supporters at a college in Culver City, California. "If all goes well, I will have the great honor as of Tuesday to be the Democratic nominee for president," she said to loud cheers. Democrats in six states vote Tuesday, including California and New Jersey. Clinton is already on the cusp of securing enough delegates to defeat Senator Bernie Sanders for the nomination and she is certain to surpass the threshold on June 7. Sanders has been barnstorming California, hoping for a miracle in which he wins the remaining contests and many so-called super-delegates, senior party figures who can vote at the party convention for whomever they choose, switch alliances and support him. But Clinton barely mentioned Sanders's name, opting instead for a full-on assault on Trump during her four stops Friday, in Culver City, Westminster, Santa Ana and San Bernardino. "Donald Trump is not qualified to be president and commander in chief," she said. Clinton added that she was appalled at the tenor of the political discourse, suggesting Trump was straying from democratic principles. Story continues "We are trying to elect a president, not a dictator," she said in San Bernardino. - 'Ready to lead' - She battered Trump over his character and his lack of coherent foreign policies, branding him "temperamentally unfit" and otherwise unprepared to lead the United States. "He just engages in rants and personal feuds and outright lies, something our nation cannot afford in our commander in chief," the former secretary of state said. More than a dozen women -- Hollywood actresses, members of Congress, and civil servants -- joined her on stage in Culver City to offer their support. "She is bad-ass, and she is ready to lead," US House Democrat Linda Sanchez boomed. While Clinton has upped her attacks on Trump as a fraud, Trump has drilled into Clinton as dishonest and "crooked." But Trump, who has faced repeated accusations of racism and xenophobia, waded deeper into controversy Friday after praising a black supporter as "my African American" at a rally in Redding, California. "Oh, look at my African American over here. Look at him," Trump said. "Are you the greatest?" Campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said there was "no ill will intended, obviously." - Clashes at Trump rally - Trump also hit out at the protesters -- he labeled them "thugs" -- who clashed with his supporters in California the previous evening, the latest in a string of his rallies to be marred by violence. Hundreds of demonstrators insulted Trump supporters as they tried to leave the event in San Jose. People hurled eggs, and according to the Los Angeles Times a dozen or more people were punched. Crowds had earlier chanted "No hate in our state" and carried signs that read "Dump Trump" as they marched near the convention center. Hispanics outnumber whites in California, the most populous US state, and many have been shocked by Trump's characterization of Mexican immigrants as "rapists" and his pledge to build a wall along the southern US border. Trump stepped up attacks Friday against the judge handling a class action lawsuit of former students against the now defunct Trump University. The students claim the program was a scam. Trump insists the jurist's Mexican heritage prevents him from being impartial. The tycoon told the Wall Street Journal there was "an inherent conflict of interest" for Gonzalo Curiel to rule on the case. The judge was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants. Clinton sounded incredulous that Trump would insult and attack the judge. "What more represents the American dream than this family?" she asked. Trump's attack on the judge earned swift condemnation from House Speaker Paul Ryan, the nation's top elected Republican, who only a day earlier said he would vote for the billionaire in November after weeks of hesitation. "I completely disagree with the thinking behind that," Ryan said in a radio interview. Donald Trump (Photo: CNN/screenshot) Donald Trump was repeatedly pressed on Friday about why he continues to bring up a judges Mexican heritage while saying the judge should recuse himself. CNN anchor Jake Tapper asked Trump again and again if that was improper or could be construed as racist. The mogul initially avoided the question, but ultimately doubled down on his attack. If you are saying he cant do his job because of his race, is that not the definition of racism? Tapper asked towards the end of the exchange, which will air in full Sunday. No, I dont think so at all, Trump replied. U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a federal district judge in the Southern District of California, is overseeing a case against the now-defunct Trump University. Trump has repeatedly complained about Curiels supposed bias while invoking the judges heritage, which has unsettled a number of legal observers. Others have bluntly labeled Trumps criticism as racist. The presumptive GOP nominee claims that his plan to build a massive wall along the U.S. border with Mexico has resulted in a conflict of interest for Curiel in the case over Trumps for-profit university. Hes proud of his heritage, OK? Im building a wall, Trump told Tapper. Hes a Mexican. Were building a wall between here and Mexico, he added. Tapper, however, pointed out that Curiel was born in Indiana. We live in a society thats very pro-Mexico, and thats fine. Thats all fine, Trump said at another point in the interview. But I think he should recuse himself. Because hes a Latino? Tapper asked. Im building a wall, Trump maintained. Watch part of the interview below: (Reuters) - Constellation Brands Inc is seeking a valuation of about C$1 billion ($772.02 million) for a possible initial public offering of its Canadian wine business this year, Bloomberg reported on Friday. The unit, which includes eight wineries and 160 retail locations across Ontario, is expected to list in Toronto as early as the fall, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. (http://bloom.bg/1Um5kXd) Constellation produces the Jackson-Triggs and Inniskillin wine brands in Canada. The company, which owns major brands such as Corona beer and Robert Mondavi wines, is working with Goldman Sachs Group Inc , Toronto-Dominion Bank and Bank of Nova Scotia on the offering, Bloomberg reported. Constellation Brands and the banks could not be immediately reached for comments. ($1 = 1.2953 Canadian dollars) (Reporting by Nikhil Subba in Bengaluru; Editing by Don Sebastian) The man who fatally shot a UCLA professor has been identified as Mainak Sarkar, a former doctoral student who drove from Minnesota to California with two semiautomatic handguns, police said Thursday. Sarkar, 38, killed himself after shooting professor William Klug, 39, inside a small office in an engineering building on campus, police said. Read: Entire UCLA Campus Locked Down After Reports 2 People Were Shot Sarkar, who lived in Minnesota, kept a "kill list" in his home, LAPD Police Chief Charlie Beck said. There were three names, including that of Ashley Hasti, 31, who married Sarkar in 2011, CBS affiliate WCCO-TV reported. She was found shot to death in her father's Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, home early Thursday, authorities said. It's not clear if the two had been divorced. Sarkar, police said, had been living in an apartment in nearby St. Paul. The University of Minnesota medical student is believed to have been killed by Sarkar before Wednesday's UCLA shooting, the Brooklyn Park Police Department said Thursday. After being contacted by the LAPD, the local officers went to the woman's house just after midnight and found her body inside, authorities said. Also on the list was Klug and a second professor, Beck said. The other instructor, who was not named, was unharmed. Sarkar may have intended to kill both men, but the other teacher was off campus, Beck said. Sarkar had targeted Klug on social media and accused him of stealing "intellectual property," according to Beck. The gunman had "issues" with both professors, the chief said, and they were aware of Sarkar's criticism. But "there were no death threats" and nothing posted online that could be "considered homicidal." Read: Barricade Doors, Find Cover That Could Stop A Bullet: How to Survive a Campus Shooting Klug was described by friends and colleagues as a caring and attentive professor who went the extra mile in helping Sarkar finish his dissertation and graduate in 2014, the Los Angeles Times reported. Story continues Klug was Sarkar's adviser. The sprawling Los Angeles campus was placed on lockdown Wednesday as police scoured buildings and classrooms, responding to 911 calls of shots fired. Sarkar carried both weapons and multiple rounds of ammunition in a backpack as he entered the college grounds, police said. The weapons were legally purchased in Minnesota, according to authorities. Watch: Judge Denies Bail to Uber Driver Who Allegedly Killed Six in Shooting Spree Related Articles: An obscure court in The Hague will soon issue a ruling likely to inflame tensions in the South China Sea and force Washington to clarify how far it is willing to go to defend its allies in Manila. The international tribunal is due to issue a decision this month over territorial disputes in the strategic waterway that have pitted China against its smaller neighbor, the Philippines. Most experts believe the court will side with Manila on the key issues. But China has already rejected the courts authority and vowed to stick to its far-reaching claims over the contested shoals, reefs, and rocks that the Philippines also asserts are its own. With a minuscule navy and coast guard, Manila will be looking to the United States for both diplomatic and military support. But, so far, Washington has stopped short of promising to come to the rescue of the Philippines if its ships clash with Chinese vessels in the South China Sea. Weve had a number of uncomfortable senior-level engagements with the Filipinos over the past few years where they have pressed us, quite hard at times, to make our commitments clear, a former senior U.S. government official, who was present at some of the discussions, told Foreign Policy. But the United States always declined to clarify its stance, the ex-official said. The showdown in the South China Sea has been heating up for years, thanks to Chinas large-scale land reclamation and aggressive use of fishing fleets and coast guard ships to bully other countries to steer clear of what Beijing considers its territory. But the real spark threatening to ignite that tinderbox is 6,000 miles away, in the wood-paneled, stained-glass chambers of the Permanent Court of Arbitration. The five-person tribunal has been wrestling with a host of tricky legal questions, poring over centuries-old maps, parsing legal terminology, and studying satellite images of the disputed outcrops since the Philippines filed its complaint in 2013. Story continues From the beginning, China refused to acknowledge the tribunals jurisdiction in the case, or even the Philippiness right to seek arbitration, and did not participate in the proceedings that concluded late last year. The Philippines had argued that Chinas so-called historic claims to the waters of the South China Sea outlined in a sweeping nine-dash line that purports to show Chinese control over nearly all of the waterway date only to 2009 and lack all basis in the historical record and in international law. Lawyers noted in particular that none of the features in dispute from Fiery Cross Reef to Gaven Reef had any Chinese-language names until recently, belying Beijings claims of a long, documented, historical relationship with those rocky outcrops. Further, the Philippines argued, the reefs and atolls that China has occupied arent islands at all and thus dont entitle Beijing to claim the surrounding 200 miles of water and no amount of dredging and land reclamation can make them islands. Moreover, Manila said that some of the features are not even rocks, as they are underwater at high tide, and do not qualify for a boundary of 12 nautical miles. Finally, the Philippines argued that Chinas aggressive behavior, including forcing Philippine fishermen and coast guard ships out of their own waters, violates the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea that China ratified. While China never formally responded to The Hague tribunal, Chinese officials have repeated their own counterarguments in speeches, essays, and statements. They simply claim that the rocks and reefs in those waters are Chinese territory and always have been and that China has historic rights over the vast expanse of the South China Sea, even though the U.N. convention grants no such rights. Recently, China launched a public relations counteroffensive to discredit the tribunal and its ruling before any decision has been made public. Most legal experts expect the tribunal will rule in favor of the Philippines on most, if not all, of the questions, and a decision is expected this month. James Kraska, a professor of international law at the U.S. Naval War College, is one of those expecting a big win for the Philippines. And China, he said, which was bound to submit to the arbitration, is legally bound to comply with the decision. But Beijing has vowed it will not respect the panels ruling, regardless of what it decides, and that is almost certain to raise temperatures across Asia. Chinese officials say they respect international law but argue that panels like the one in The Hague have no authority. All the islands, where we are doing reclamation, are Chinese islands, are Chinese territory, Wang Xining, a deputy director-general at the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a recent interview. So on the South China Sea, I think there is a huge misunderstanding. We wish to act based on international law. Inside China, Kraska said, a legal defeat would be a slap in the face to leadership in Beijing, which has against all evidence and law insisted that the disputed areas are sovereign Chinese territory. Chinas costs from losing will be great. Through its conduct, Beijing already has killed the meme of its peaceful rise, so most of the damage has already been done, he said. But the decision will be embarrassing and have its greatest impact regionally in the coming decades, and internally, trying to explain to its people how it lost. Analysts and former U.S. government officials say China has a range of options as to how to respond. It could issue a diplomatic protest, send more ships to the disputed waters, step up dredging and land reclamation activities at contested reefs, or even implement an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) around all the islets it lays claim to. Under an ADIZ, Beijing would demand foreign aircraft seek Chinese permission to fly through the area. But few expect China to seek a military clash with the United States, and even an accidental escalation is less likely than a few years ago, said retired Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the U.S. Navys former chief of naval operations, thanks to new communications protocols he helped put in place. For the Philippines, a legal win would be, above all, a moral victory and could well inspire other countries in the region to also seek arbitration; indeed, Japan and Indonesia have toyed with doing just that in their own disputes with China. The Philippines maintains that the decision of the tribunal, once rendered, will be legally binding and should be accorded due respect by everyone, including China, Jose Cuisia, the Philippine ambassador in Washington, told FP. But the biggest question is how the United States will respond to the panels ruling and especially to any uptick in tension between the Philippines and China. If the waters around those disputed atolls are determined to be international waters rather than Chinese turf then Washington will likely be under pressure to conduct more freedom-of-navigation operations with naval ships. By sailing within 12 miles of those disputed features, the United States would make clear that those waters are open to all and cant be fenced off by Chinese forces. Thats a crucial point to underscore in a waterway that moves more than $5 trillion worth of goods annually. I think its incumbent on us to insist were not going to recognize the Chinese claims, said Greenert, who stepped down as Navy chief last year. However, the sluggish U.S. response a few years ago allowed Beijing to create facts on the ground with its large-scale reclamation and construction of military harbors and airfields, he said, a view shared by other former officers and diplomats. We did not get out ahead of it, Greenert said. Its a fait accompli; they are there. It is unfortunate. An even bigger looming question is whether Washington will defend the Philippines if it gets into a scrap with China over those rocks and reefs. Since 1951, the Unites States and the Philippines have maintained a mutual defense treaty. During the Cold War, U.S. officials made clear that the treaty commits the United States to defend the Philippines not just in the event of an attack on its home islands, but also in the event of a military challenge in the waters of the South China Sea. In recent years, the U.S. administration has not specified whether that interpretation still stands. As President Obama has said, our commitment to the Philippines is ironclad, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Anna Richey-Allen said. But the nature of the U.S. commitment in the event of a showdown on one of those disputed shoals is still not entirely clear. Richey-Allen told FP that the State Department does not speculate about hypothetical situations with respect to the defense treaty. Experts and former U.S. officials say the ambiguity in Washingtons stance potentially reins in both Manila and Beijing from taking rash action, because they dont know how the United States might respond. The basic logic of the U.S. government position is that strategic ambiguity provides us more maneuvering space than might otherwise be the case, the former official said. But in the case of another territorial dispute involving China and a U.S. ally, Washington has been crystal clear about its alliance commitments. In the East China Sea, where Beijing is at loggerheads with Tokyo, top American officials and President Barack Obama himself have promised that the United States would honor its treaty obligations and come to the defense of Japan if a conflict erupted over the disputed Senkaku Islands, known in China as the Diaoyu. The different approaches to Japan and the Philippines are partly due to the language of the defense treaties, experts say, and partly a calculation that Tokyo has a more capable military that could deter possible provocations by Beijing. When Asian and Western defense officials, including U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, gather in Singapore for an annual security conference this weekend, the imminent court ruling from The Hague and Americas potential response will be the main topic of discussion. Carters scheduled speech will be closely followed for any hints of a change in Washingtons policy. When it comes to maritime tensions between China and the Philippines, one potential flash point that could draw a U.S. response is the Second Thomas Shoal. A team of less than a dozen Philippine Marines are stationed at the shoal on a rusting, World War II-era ship, the BRP Sierra Madre, which was run aground deliberately to safeguard Manilas claims in the area. If the Philippine troops run into trouble, the Obama administration could be forced to make a difficult call. But U.S. officials have privately discouraged Manila from taking any action that could trigger a crisis. Or, as another former senior administration official put it: Does the U.S. really want to get into a war over the Second Thomas Shoal? FPs Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian contributed to this article. Photo credit: Jay Directo/AFP/Getty Images doctor who pearl mackie peter capaldi bbc "Doctor Who" was very close to having its first non-white actor in the title role. Showrunner Steven Moffat said that an offer was previously given to a black actor, though the timing is unclear. Moffat, who didn't name the actor, told the show's official magazine that "for various reasons, it didn't work out." Scottish actor Peter Capaldi currently plays the coveted role. But the producer still thinks casting a non-white actor in the role is important. "I certainly don't think there's ever been a problem with making the Doctor black, which is why it should happen one day," Moffat said. "Sometimes the nature of a particular show historical dramas, for instance makes diversity more of a challenge, but 'Doctor Who' has absolutely nowhere to hide on this," he added. In April, "Doctor Who" announced that it was replacing actress Jenna Coleman, who decided to leave the show last year, with black actress Pearl Mackie as the Doctor's companion. "We decided that the new companion was going to be non-white, and that was an absolute decision, because we need to do better on that. We just have to," Moffat said of the casting. "I don't mean that we've done terribly our guest casts are among the most diverse on television but I feel as though I could have done better overall." And even with a non-white actress playing the companion, Moffat hasn't shelved his desire for a non-white Doctor in the future. "Two non-white leads would be amazing," Moffatt, who's leaving the show after one more season, said. "In fact, a lot of people would barely notice." NOW WATCH: George Clooney nails Hollywood's diversity problem More From Business Insider By Igor Ilic ZAGREB (Reuters) - Croatian Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic urged his two deputies on Friday to resign over a political dispute in which they are both embroiled so that the government can press ahead with crucial economic reforms, but they rejected his call. An alleged conflict of interest involving Tomislav Karamarko, head of the biggest party in the ruling coalition, the conservative HDZ, has brought the four-month-old government close to collapse.. Bozo Petrov, the other deputy premier who heads "Most" (Bridge), a small reformist party in the coalition, has been pressing Karamarko to quit. "Relations between Karamarko and Petrov became too big a burden for the government. That's why I call upon them to withdraw so that the government can continue working on reforms as we are already seeing results," Oreskovic, a technocrat prime minister, told reporters. Karamarko and Petrov rejected Oreskovic's appeal, and the former said the prime minister had lost confidence of the HDZ. "We think it would be a good solution if Oreskovic resigned. We think now that a solution is a new majority in the parliament. We prefer that to snap elections as we would lose precious time," Karamarko told reporters. He said Most would not find a place in a new government with the HDZ. Most's Petrov, however, said he was ready to resign if it meant stability for the country and insisted on Karamarko stepping down. It remains unclear whether the HDZ could muster a new majority at all. "It is possible, but even then the government would hardly be stable. The new elections in the autumn are a realistic option," political analyst Davor Gjenero said. Croatia this week put on hold an international bond worth one billion euros ($1.12 billion) due to its political crisis. "I decided to stop the sale as I did not want us to pay an additional premium for this political risk. I believe that maybe already next month we could achieve better terms. At the moment it is clear that this political situation has started to threaten key national interests," Oreskovic said. He added he did not plan to resign as some local media have recently speculated. The Croatian parliament is due to hold a no-confidence vote over Karamarko's alleged conflict of interest by June 18. The government of the newest European Union member country has vowed to pursue reforms - including fiscal consolidation and cutting red tape - to spur growth and cut high public debt. Snap elections would delay reforms and not guarantee coalition stability, Gjenero said. (Reporting by Igor Ilic; Editing by Mark Heinrich) Zagreb (AFP) - Croatia's ruling coalition was on the brink of collapse Friday after the head of the government's dominant party said it no longer had trust in Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic. The statement came after Oreskovic called on his two deputy premiers to resign over growing disputes within the fragile right-wing coalition, which has barely functioned since it took power in January. Deputy premier Tomislav Karamarko, head of the HDZ party which dominates the government, refused to quit and said either fresh elections or a "reconfiguring" in parliament were now the only solutions. "Oreskovic does not enjoy our trust," said Karamarko, whose party leadership is due to meet on Saturday to discuss further moves. Oreskovic had earlier called for the resignations of Karamarko and his other deputy, Bozo Petrov, who leads the coalition's junior party Most. Karamarko faces a no-confidence vote by June 18 over an alleged conflict of interest, and Petrov said last week that his party would back the vote if Karamarko does not step down. "It is clear to everyone that the current political situation has started to jeopardise national interests," Oreskovic told reporters. While Karamarko dismissed the call for his resignation, Petrov said he was "ready to quit if that would help stabilise the country," but the final decision would be made by his party. Early elections would delay the implementation of badly-needed reforms in the European Union's newest member, whose economy remains one of the poorest performers in the 28-nation bloc. Two days ago Croatia suspended the issuing of its eurobonds, with the finance ministry citing "domestic political uncertainties" as the reason. Last month a local newspaper published a contract showing that a lobbyist for Hungary's oil group MOL, which is in dispute with Croatia over its Croatia's national oil group INA, paid Karamarko's wife for consulting services between 2013 and 2015. Story continues Karamarko acknowledged the existence of the contract but has denied any wrongdoing. The opposition Social Democrats nevertheless called for the no-confidence vote, and a national watchdog is also probing the affair. The Croatian government and MOL, hold 44.8 and a 49 percent stakes respectively in INA, and are in arbitration, notably over how the company is managed. From ELLE "It's a book about sex, drugs, hair, hot pants, tax, technology, class, race, gender, and foolishness," is how British music writer and media correspondent David Hepworth describes Never a Dull Moment: 1971-The Year That Rock Exploded (Henry Holt). Cleverly crafted chapters form a glittery, boisterous month-by-month calendar of the "annus mirabilisthe busiest, most creative, most innovative, most interesting, and longest-resounding year" of an era that produced music we are still listening to. The Beatles had disbanded, Elvis Presley was consigned to Vegas, and Beach Boy Brian Wilson was no longer feeling the good vibrations. But Hepworth argues that the end of the pop era marked the beginning of rock's reign, having merged with an excess of sex and drugs to create a coveted new lifestyle of elegant decadence. In this watershed year, talk of an alternative culture prompted "rock fans all over the world [to muse] at what sort of new world might be in the process of being born." Icons such as Marianne Faithfull and Eric Clapton grasped intuitively that the formula was "fame finds money becomes glamour." Among the cavalcade of top-selling albums that emerged in 1971, Hepworth cites Joni Mitchell's Blue, Carole King's Tapestry, the Who's Who's Next, Led Zeppelin's IV, James Taylor's Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon, Rod Stewart's Every Picture Tells a Story, and the late David Bowie's Hunky Dory. While Hepworth includes stories of some of the great talents who went underappreciated or imploded or were later rediscovered-Judee Sill, Harry Nilsson, Alex Chilton-he notes that many artists have enjoyed careers "longer than their contemporaries who became novelists, politicians, captains of industry, and actors, let alone their old friends who remained at school when they hit the road with a guitar over their shoulder." Hepworth acknowledges that nearly everything about the music world has changed over the past decades, from how music is procured and produced to how it's published and promoted. Yet the concept of the hit single prevails, and Hepworth calls the Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar," from their Sticky Fingers LP, the "key single" of 1971, "gravid with lust and throbbing with abandon." Just like the Zeitgeist in which that evergreen jukebox jolter first hit the charts. Whether you spin it or stream it, this indelible music, writes Hepworth, "no longer belongs to the people who made it or just to those of us who were lucky enough to be there when they did so. Now it belongs to everyone." Hot on the heels of "Preacher," which premiered in May, AMC is to air another new series, Sunday, June 5, with former "Friends" star David Schwimmer in a leading role. Adapted from the Danish series "Bankerot," "Feed the Beast" follows Tommy Moran and Dion Patras, two childhood friends who dream of having their own restaurant. The pair finally open up a spot in New York's Bronx, once Dion gets out of jail following dubious dealings with the local mafia. However, unfinished business with the mob soon makes life complicated for the partners. David Schwimmer has kept a relatively low profile on the small screen since "Friends" ended in 2004. However, the actor is a back in a big way for 2016. At the beginning of the year, he played lawyer Robert Kardashian in the new FX series "American Crime Story," which focused on the O.J. Simpson trial during season one. In "Feed the Beast," the former Ross Geller will step into the role of Tommy Moran, a New York sommelier, widow and father, whose young son TJ refuses to speak since the death of his mother. He'll be joined by Jim Sturgess, a British actor seen in "Across the Universe" and "Cloud Atlas," who plays Dion Patras, a talented chef who's a cheerful dreamer with a cocaine habit. The series will also mark the return of Clyde Phillips, the screenwriter and producer known for working on former Showtime series "Dexter" and "Nurse Jackie." "Feed the Beast" is due to premiere Sunday, June 5, straight after "Preacher," another new series launched May 22. These two new shows form part of a wider schedule refresh underway at AMC, a cable network that rose to the forefront in 2007 thanks to the success and general acclaim achieved by "Mad Men," its first original creation. Since then, the network has scored another major hit with "The Walking Dead," which draws audiences approaching those of major TV networks. In this occasional series, OZY takes to streets and neighborhoods across the globe to ask a simple question: How was your day? Fiona Haughey London I was down at the river at 7 this morning, to lead a walk. My work is entirely unlike a lot of peoples, in that its entirely tide dependent you can only go at low tide. I call it beachcombing, which is very different from mudlarking. Mudlarking has an implication of digging, and unless you have a permit you are not allowed to dig. In the 1860s, when stuff was off-loaded from ships, you got a lot of stuff dropping into the mud, and you got a lot of kids going down into the mud to see what they could find, for the family to use or to be sold to raise money. Kids were the first mudlarks and it sort of escalated from there. Theres the Society of Mudlarks, but you have to be formally invited to join. We dont dig, except if we find human bones. Then we have to tell the police so they can check if its a modern thing. Theres a wealth of animal bones down there, but if we find human material we always lift it. We found one Bronze Age skeleton thats got evidence of trepanning a hole drilled in its skull and thats on display at the Museum of London as the first evidence of surgery. Gettyimages 566451253 View from the foreshore of the Thames. Source: Getty Im an archaeologist first, but I do walks for the public through London Walks. Before we go down I always issue people a pair of gloves, for health and safety. Technically, Wellingtons would be the best footwear if you got stuck in deep Thames mud you could wriggle your feet out of them, but they are freezing in December. I know where all the soft patches are, so I wear an old pair of trainers. I do get people turning up for tours in jelly shoes and flip-flops, but I specify sensible shoes: Theres always going to be glassware on the shore, especially if youre near pubs. I used to teach primary school, before I had my six kids. And then I went into archaeology. My first term at University College London they were just beginning to look at the material from the Thames everyone said you couldnt use it because it had no provenance, it was all muddled. I went down to the Thames at Bermondsey and I was fascinated this stuff was just sitting there. The earliest material Ive physically got from the river is a hand ax thats 10,000 years old. Youve got stone tools, metal tools, one of the two Iron Age fish traps in the whole country. Weve got trees and forests from the Mesolithic, but we dont take people there. Thats a very dangerous site: Its serious, serious mud, and the only way out is a police launch and a rope. Story continues For about 150 years they were dredging the river, and the dredgers would bring these things up and sell them to collectors during the Victorian period. A lot of the big Thames collections have been donated by antiquarians, so we knew there was a lot there. I have two or three boxes of 20th-century materials. I call it the archaeology of the future, because its all archaeology. We get modern weapons, and bullets from gangs; Ive got a World War II incendiary-bomb cap courtesy of Hermann Goring. My own personal research is on the Thames Ive been working on the stretch of the Thames between Blackfriars Bridge and London Bridge for 20 years. Were constantly monitoring; were constantly recording the exposure and disappearance of structures. Just near London Bridge Ive got a Roman structure and 40 ancient trees; I wont take tours near them because they would just disintegrate. Americans on tours pick up Tudor artifacts from the shore, and I tell them theyre from the 1500s, and they say, Thats older than my country. Related Articles New York (AFP) - Alternative rockers Death Cab for Cutie said Friday they would donate proceeds from their upcoming shows in North Carolina to two groups opposing a new state law restricting the rights of transgender people. The band, a favorite with university crowds in the 2000s, said it respected artists led by Bruce Springsteen who have shunned North Carolina, but wanted to honor commitments to play the June 11 and June 16 shows. Death Cab for Cutie, as well as the Scottish synthpop group Chvrches who will open the June 16 show, said in a statement that they will "not take a single dime" from the concerts. They said they would donate all proceeds to two North Carolina-based activist groups -- the Freedom Center for Social Justice and Southerners On New Ground -- that are fighting the new law. "This nefarious brand of bigotry is embarrassing for the state of North Carolina and has no place in this great nation," the bands said in a statement. North Carolina in March passed a law that requires transgender people to use the bathroom corresponding to the sex on their birth certificates. The move led other states to seek similar laws but also triggered a backlash, with President Barack Obama's administration issuing a directive to all US schools to make transgender students feel comfortable. Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard has long been outspoken in his advocacy of gay rights, but said in the statement that the band has met "wonderful people" in North Carolina. Since Springsteen, artists who have canceled North Carolina shows include alternative rockers Pearl Jam, Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, pop band Maroon 5, violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman and the Cirque du Soleil. Artists who have gone ahead with shows while donating at least some proceeds include pop superstar Beyonce, British folk revivalists Mumford and Sons and 1980s pop sensation Cyndi Lauper. shia fighters iraq The "most influential commander" of the Shia militias that have become crucial in the fight against the terrorist group ISIS is a US-designated terrorist himself and has close ties to Iran, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. To Shia militia fighters in Iraq, Jamal Jaafar Ibrahimi is "singular leader, arranging logistics and military plans" for much of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs) and the right-hand man of perhaps the most notorious Iranian commander in the Middle East Qassem Soleimani. Ibrahimi reportedly carries out the operations Soleimani plans for Iraq. And his influence extends beyond just the Shia PMUs he's known to have "de facto control of other forces, including army and police, on parts of the battlefield where the militias lead the fight," according to The Journal. Iranian-backed PMUs once targeted US soldiers during the Iraq war. But they're now Iraq's "strongest combat force," and the US leans on them for ground operations in the ongoing fight to defeat ISIS (also known as the Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh). The Washington Post recently examined the threat from the Iran-backed Shia militias that have become increasingly important on the battlefield, most recently in Fallujah, an Iraqi city that forces are fighting to liberate from ISIS. Hugh Naylor and Mustafa Salim explained: These government-aligned militiamen have helped push the Islamic State out of key areas of the country but also have become a complication for the US-backed military coalition assembled to destroy the hard-line Sunni group. They filled an important void left by Iraq's weakened armed forces, but their religiously motivated agenda has aggravated Iraqs combustible sectarian divisions. ... The militias ... have a reputation for brutal reprisals against Sunnis suspected of being loyal to the Islamic State. Iraqis and human rights groups have accused them of torture, forced disappearances and executions. Story continues The Journal's story highlights the difficult choice between allowing Iranian influence in the region, which could bring even more sectarian division along with it or increasing US military involvement to defeat the terrorist groups the militias are currently targeting in the Middle East. So far, it looks like Iran is winning. Zalmay Khalilzad, a former US ambassador to Baghdad, told The Journal that Iran's militias are "the infrastructure of future civil wars." Although US officials have been warning against Iranian influence in Iraq, they haven't been able to stop it. Despite Ibrahimi's terrorist status, he has a residence near the US embassy in Baghdad's Green Zone. "He's a designated terrorist," Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for the US-led anti-ISIS coalition, told The Journal. "That's how we think about him. But he's there, so he's got to be accounted for." NOW WATCH: The US Army is sending Apache attack helicopters to fight ISIS in Iraq More From Business Insider London (AFP) - The formidable team of trainer John Gosden and riding legend Frankie Dettori are strongly-fancied to win the Epsom Derby for a second successive year on Saturday with Wings of Desire. They will face 15 rivals, five of whom come from the mighty Aidan O'Brien stable in Ireland -- Golden Horn's triumph last year ending a run of three successive Derby victories for the Irish trainer -- whose best fancied horse is US Army Ranger. Wings of Desire wasn't even in Gosden's mindset as a potential Derby runner, let alone winner six weeks ago as he had withdrawn him. However, an impressive win in the influential Derby trial the Dante Stakes at York -- Dettori having chosen to ride him instead of more experienced stable mate Foundation -- forced a rethink and owner Lady Bamford was politely asked by Gosden to come up with the 75,000 (97,000 euros, $108,000) to supplement him for the Derby, the blue riband event of the turf. "That was my fault, I thought I'd save the owner 1000 for the next entry stage and withdraw him," Gosden told AFP. "Our idea was to aim him for the 'Ascot Derby', the King Edward VII Stakes at Royal Ascot later in June. "However, his win in the Dante changed our minds and we altered course. Thankfully it hasn't cost her any money as he had won that amount in prize money already." If succesful, Lady Bamford will be amply compensated for that oversight as the winner pockets 870,000 and there is a precedent for a horse winning it after being supplemented having been withdrawn earlier in the entry process -- as Kris Kin proved in 2003. - 'Progressing nicely' Gosden, who is bidding for his third win in the race having first triumphed with Benny The Dip in 1997, acknowledges that Wings of Desire is still pretty callow but he is a progressive type who can cope with the tough Epsom course. "He's been progressing nicely both mentally and physically and he's trained round Epsom so he knows a bit about the challenge that lies ahead," said the 65-year-old Englishman, whose only concern is the rain that has been falling steadily all week. Story continues If he wins, O'Brien will record a sixth victory in the race to draw alongside the legendary late Vincent O'Brien (no relation). His stable jockey Ryan Moore has kept the faith with Chester winner US Army Ranger although others such as Deauville, second to Wings of Desire in the Dante, and Port Douglas, who was runner-up to Moore's mount in the Chester Vase, have their supporters too. O'Brien, modest as they come despite his success, is never one to pinpoint one standout horse. "The lads (the jockeys) will all work out what they want to do and where they want to be once they see the draw and what's around them," the 46-year-old told At The Races. "Horses win from every kind of a draw in the Derby -- it just depends how things fall. "We've been happy with the way everything has gone in the trials. Sometimes you'd rather not win and learn something, than win and learn nothing. It's so far so good." O'Brien's Irish compatriots, veteran duo Dermot Weld and Jim Bolger send raiders in the shape of Harzand, who will relish the rain that has fallen, and Moonlight Magic respectively. However, perhaps the joker in the pack could be Ulysses trained by Michael Stoute, who has won the race five times, most notably with the ill-fated Shergar in 1981. Ulysses earned his place in the field due to an impressive win in a maiden earlier this season. "I know it's a big step up from a maiden to a Derby, but it's been done before and he's trained by Sir Michael, who knows how to win the race," said jockey Andrea Atzeni. One tweet by Tesla Motors (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk has given fans of electric vehicles the kind of news they never could have imagined just a few years ago. Musk tweeted out the front page of a Norwegian newspaper "Dagens Naeringsliv" and wrote: "Just heard that Norway will ban sales of fuel cars by 2025. You guys Rock!!" The Norwegian headline says four political parties have agreed on an energy message: "Stop sales of diesel and gasoline vehicles in 2025." The question is whether or not Norway has officially signed off on a ban of gas-powered cars nine years from now. While the country offers some of the biggest tax incentives in Europe to buyers of electric vehicles, the majority of cars and vans sold each year are gasoline and diesel powered. A draft of the country's 2018-2029 National Transport Plan presented this spring set a target of zero emissions from new cars by 2025, according to several media sites. But there's a clear difference between having a goal of zero emissions vehicles and outright banning the sale of gas powered cars. Norway's auto population is not very big. In fact, its auto sales are among the smallest in Europe, with just over 150,000 cars sold last year. Still, for any country to completely stop selling new gas and diesel powered vehicles would be a major step toward accelerating adoption of electric vehicles. By Devika Krishna Kumar NEW YORK, June 3 (Reuters) - U.S. diesel futures have soared about 40 percent in the last two months, prompting independent refiners to pounce, selling future output on the view that resurgent domestic demand and higher exports may turn out to provide only a brief boost. The surprise rally in U.S. diesel futures has put prices on track for their biggest quarterly percentage gain in seven years. Money managers and hedge funds have invested heavily in the fuel as stronger-than-expected demand has helped draw down record inventories. Diesel typically enjoys strong seasonal demand in these months from farmers fueling tractors and equipment during the spring planting season. But prices this year have gotten an extra boost from robust exports to Europe and Latin America. Strikes in France have slashed European supplies for almost two weeks, boosting demand for U.S. diesel. But the announcement that one French refinery would restart hit U.S. diesel margins on Thursday. The distillate crack spread had jumped 7 percent, then gave up most of the day's gains. Refiners such as Valero Energy Corp and Phillips 66 typically look for big price rallies to sell future output. These refiners were presented with a rare opportunity to lock in profits when diesel prices and margins popped in April and May. Producer short positions in NY Harbor Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD) have soared to levels not seen since November 2010, data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission show. Refining margins, represented by the U.S. diesel crack spread (1HOc1-CLc1), have jumped by about 70 percent since early April and are on track for their biggest quarterly percentage gain since 2013. Margins widened to $14.94 on Thursday, their highest since mid-February, but then gave back most of the day's gains on the French refinery announcement. Locking in $13 to $14 per barrel of profit through the rest of 2016 was better than the single-digit margins earlier this year, a trader at a U.S. East Coast refiner said. But they remain a far cry from the record hit in 2012, which exceeded $45 a barrel. Story continues "Refiners are systematic, because they need to lock in margin," said John Saucer, vice president of research and analysis at Mobius Risk Group. "Anytime there's an uptick in a crack or a margin they're going to capitalize on it." The rally could fade if hedging gathers pace and speculative buying wanes. In a further sign of selling into next year, the average for the 12 futures contracts expiring in 2017, called the calendar strip, has not kept pace with gains in this year's prices. Since early April, the 2017 strip has risen 21 percent to $1.64. Over the same period, the 2016 strip has gained about 29 percent, while the front-month contract has jumped about 40 percent. The picture for refiners has improved dramatically since the bleak outlook this winter, after margins fell as low as $8 a barrel in late January. Soon after that, many refiners shut capacity due to weak profits because of a big glut in diesel. But refiners are skeptical that margins will remain strong, because U.S. crude is on track for its biggest quarterly percentage gain since 2009. Fear for tighter margins going forward has encouraged them to hedge. The heightened activity in diesel is surprising for this time of year, when typically the market buzz surrounds gasoline, heading into the busy summer driving season. INVENTORY DRAWS Speculative investors turned bullish on diesel early in May for the first time in about two years, after inventories that had been bloated by a mild winter started to decline. Distillate stockpiles, which include diesel and heating oil, have now fallen for seven weeks straight, hitting the lowest level last week since early December 2015, data from the Energy Information Administration showed. "The bullishness is kind of the market's expectation that the oversupply that has been built up is turning a corner and that we have reached an inflection point," said Rob Smith, director of refining and products markets at IHS. "People are trying to time it right." (Additional reporting by Liz Hampton in Houston and Jessica Resnick-Ault in New York; Editing by David Gregorio) By Marton Dunai DEBRECEN, Hungary (Reuters) - In a graveyard in Hungary, solemn contemplation gave way to frantic sportsmanship on Friday as dozens of grave diggers battled to prove they were the fastest and best in the business. Taking their places at plots selected by pulling names out of a hard hat, 18 two-man teams waited for an official to shout "Start!" before shoveling at the ground to dig a precise, regulation-size grave as quickly as possible. "I don't think this is morbid," the Hungarian Undertakers Association's deputy chairman, Zoltan Juracsik, told Reuters at the national grave-digging contest at the wooded cemetery in Debrecen, Hungary's biggest city after Budapest. "This is a profession, and the colleagues who toil in competition today are proud and deserve our respect." In less than half an hour, the local team, perhaps enjoying the home advantage, finished their grave first. The stragglers took almost one hour. The graves were then judged on neatness and whether they complied with the regulation size: 200 cm long, 80 cm wide and 160 cm deep (7 feet by 2 feet 7 inches by 5 feet). The winning team wins a place in an international tournament against Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The contest is meant to improve the prestige of grave digging and attract young men to a job that must still be done by hand in crowded graveyards where mechanical diggers cannot fit. One of the competitors, Csaba Halasz, 21, began by taking summer job after high school. Although he graduated with a degree in physical education, he stayed in the business. "This job chose me," he said. "It's hard but it's worth it. Relatives come and thank me every time. The profession just lured me in." (Editing by Robin Pomeroy) Would Disney have even existed without this female animator? Would Disney have even existed without this female animator? If you havent logged onto Google today, you need to do so right now. Make sure and press the play button on todays Google Doodle. Go ahead. Well wait. (No really.) The doodle is a tribute to Lotte Reiniger, an animator who would have turned 117 years old today. Maybe youve heard of Reiniger. Shes the artist behind the world first feature-length animated film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, which debuted in 1926. Bu even if youve never heard her name, some of your favorite animated classics were heavily influenced by Reinigers work. She used scissors and cut paper silhouettes to create gorgeous stop-motion animation films long before Walt Disney ever got his start. Disneys first animated feature-length film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, was released in 1937, over a decade after Reinigers Prince Achmed. Its impossible to look at Reinigers work and fail to appreciate the impact she had on Disney favorites. Like Cinderella Cinderella cinderelladisney The Frog Prince frogprince And Aladdin achmed alladin Reiniger, born in Berlin in 1899, began cutting silhouettes when she was just a little girl. According to Vox, she once wrote, I could cut out silhouettes almost as soon as I could manage to hold a pair of scissors. I could paint, too, and read and recite; but these things did not surprise anyone very much. But everybody was astonished about the scissor cuts. She originally wanted to be an actress, but when when she was a drama student, she used her special artistic talents to create title art for films. Once she learned animation, her art became the centerpiece of later movies. Many of her films are available on YouTube, and they are glorious! (Caution: if you go there, chances are high that youll fall into an internet hole that will be almost impossible to climb out of. Dont say we didnt warn you.) Story continues Our favorite might be Cinderella: You can learn more about Lotte Reinigers work and how Google created her gorgeous Doodle tribute here. The post Would Disney have even existed without this female animator? appeared first on HelloGiggles. A young Pakistani woman died on Wednesday after she was beaten and set on fire earlier in the week, reportedly all because her family . After her father decided 19-year-old Maria Sadaqat, a schoolteacher, would not marry the son of her employer, a group of men attacked the young woman in her home, dousing her in gasoline, setting her ablaze and leaving her for dead. Sadaqat was taken to a hospital in Islamabad with burns on 85% of her body, the Express Tribune and Agence France-Presse reported. According to the BBC, Sadaqat's father said the father of the man who proposed, who owns the school where the victim worked, was among the perpetrators. "[Sadaqat] was teaching at their school," the victim's aunt, Aasia, told the BBC. "They sent in the proposal six months ago but the guy was already married and had a daughter. They wanted her to run the school after marrying the son of the owner of the school. ... Her father refused the proposal and they took the revenge by doing ." MariaSadaqat's mother and aunts intvd by .@iramabbasi @BBCUrdu Maria, 19, beaten, burnt to death #Pakistan #womenpic.twitter.com/qDplpQ15vH https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cj9Sbd0WEAAED8n.jpg:large Sadaqat is hardly the only woman to die as a result of gender-based violence in Pakistan; she's one of several victims to be immolated in the past year. Pakistani officials f , which is merely a small portion of the estimated that . Attacks like Sadaqat's, , are regrettably common in Pakistan, where a recent law passed in the Punjab province banning violence against women was met with outrage. Vehement protests against laws that prohibit violence against women might be unthinkable in an ostensibly more "progressive" country like the United States (o), but attacks on women who reject men directly or indirectly are not uncommon. In the first two months of 2016 alone, two American women, C . At least a dozen other women were also brutally attacked over the course of the previous year apparently for saying no to men who were interested in them. It would seem that could be the price women pay for autonomy, regardless of their cultural background or where they live. Maria Sadaqat was not the only woman who could have feared she would lose her life for saying no to a man, in Pakistan or in another part of the world. Unfortunately, she likely won't be the last for whom that fear would be or will be well-founded. TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / June 3, 2016 / DNI Metals Inc. (DNI.V) (DMNKF) (FSE:DG7N) ("DNI" or the "Company") DNI adds New Director, Keith Minty, a mining engineer to help with the development of the Vohitsara Graphite Deposit . Mr. Minty, P. Eng. MBA has more than 30 years professional experience in mineral resource exploration and development in precious and base metals, industrial minerals and coal in Canada and internationally. Mr. Minty has directly involved in the realizing mineral resource projects value by constructing, operating and managing gold and platinum group metal projects. Mr. Minty has been associated with premier mineral resource exploration and developing companies such as Hunter Dickinson Inc., Viceroy Resources, North American Palladium and Thani Investments in many senior operating and management positions. Until 2013, Mr. Minty was the Chief Operating officer for Thani Investment Ltd.,(a private Dubai based Venture Capital Group) and a subsidiary of Thani Emirates Resources Ltd., and was primary responsible for unlocking value from their worldwide mineral resource projects. Mr. Minty obtained extensive graphite technical and operating experience at both North Coast Industries (now Northern Graphite Corporation) Bissett Creek Graphite and Cal Graphite Corporation (now Ontario Graphite Inc.) Kearney graphite mine and has experience of in the development of several past and new Sri Lanka graphite projects. Mr. Minty has had the opportunity of conducting Madagascar precious metals project valuations and is knowledgeable of the political and social requirements associated with Madagascar project development and operations. Mr. Minty is an active member of the board of directors of Auryn Resources Inc. and Callinex Mines Inc. mineral resource companies. Mr. Minty obtained a B.Sc. in Mining Engineering from Queen' University in 1978 and a MBA from Athabasca University in 2014. Paul Gorman has resigned from the board of DNI. The board expresses their appreciation in Mr. Gorman valuable contributions in advancing the company to it's new operating entity. Story continues DNI's board of directors approved a debt for equity transaction and is issuing 300,000 shares to a consultant. In the next 90 days DNI has 437,500 options expiring. With the addition of a new CFO and three new directors, the board has approved the granting of incentive stock options. Pursuant to its Stock Option Plan, DNI has granted incentive stock options to certain directors, officers, and consultants of the Company to purchase up to an aggregate of 2,250,000 common shares in the capital stock of the Company. The options are exercisable at a price of $0.06 per common share, on or before June 3, 2021. The company's approved option plan allows for up to 10% or 3,972,420 options to be issued. Neither the CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. DNI Canadian Securities Exchange DG7N Frankfurt DMNKF OTC Issued: 39,724,204 For further information, contact: DNI Metals Inc. Dan Weir, President & CEO 416-595-1195 DanWeir@dnimetals.com Also visit www.dnimetals.com We seek Safe Harbour. This announcement may include forward looking statements. While these statements represent DNI's best current judgment, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary, including risk factors listed in DNI's Annual Information Form and its MD&As, all of which are available from SEDAR and on its website. SOURCE: DNI Metals Inc. There has yet to be a non-white actor cast in the titular role of BBCs popular and long-running Doctor Who series, but thats not from lack of trying, according to showrunner Steven Moffat. The role was previously offered to a black actor, the showrunner told the shows official magazine, according to BBC. But, for various reasons, it didnt work out, said Moffat. The Radio Times reports the actor in question was 12 Years a Slave star Chiwetel Ejiofor, who was offered the role of the eleventh Doctor, a role that ultimately went to Matt Smith. Ejiofor was always a popular fan choice for the role, along with other black actors including David Harewood and Idris Elba. Also Read: 'Doctor Who': BBC Reveals New Companion for Peter Capaldi's Time Lord Ejiofors reps did not immediately respond to TheWraps request for comment. Peter Capaldi currently plays The Doctor, the characters twelfth incarnation. The writer-producer also reiterated his drive to make the show more diverse, revealing that there was a mandate put in place to cast a non-white actor as the newest Doctors companion. We decided that the new companion was going to be non-white, and that was an absolute decision, because we need to do better on that. We just have to, Moffat said. Pearl Mackie (pictured above), whose father is from the West Indies, was cast as Capaldis costar in April. Also Read: 'Doctor Who' Spinoff Unveils Cast Moffat also says there is no excuse why the Doctor has never been played by a non-white actor. Sometimes the nature of a particular show historical dramas, for instance makes diversity more of a challenge, but Doctor Who has absolutely nowhere to hide on this, he said. Young people watching have to know that they have a place in the future. That really matters. You have to care profoundly what childrens shows in particular say about where youre going to be. In January, Moffat announced he would be departing Doctor Who after Season 10, to be replaced by Chris Chibnall. Story continues Related stories from TheWrap: 'Doctor Who': BBC Reveals New Companion for Peter Capaldi's Time Lord 'Doctor Who' Spinoff Unveils Cast 'Doctor Who' Showrunner Steven Moffat to Exit Series By Nellie Andreeva Prison Break star Dominic Purcell was seriously hurt in an accident on the set of the new event-series installment of the Fox drama, which is filming in Morocco. He suffered a broken nose and head injury during shooting Monday when a set piece was dislodged and fell on his head. Purcell was airlifted from Marrakesh to Casablanca for treatment and is expected to make a full recovery. According to Prison Break producer 20th Century Fox TV, filming of the limited series was not impacted by the accident, beyond a brief stoppage when the mishap occurred. I hear Purcell is expected to be sidelined for a couple of weeks while his wounds heal, with filming continuing around him. When he returns, the production will pick up all of his missed scenes, with no cuts to his presence on the series due to the accident. Prison Break has been filming its new season mostly in Vancouver, with a location shoot in Morocco, which I hear doubles for civil war-torn Yemen, where a major portion of the action is set. Production will move back to Vancouver next week as scheduled, with Purcell filming any missed Morocco scenes with the help of greenscreen (and of course a ton of makeup to cover his scars). Our friend and colleague Dominic Purcell was injured earlier this week during the filming of our event series Prison Break, and was flown to a medical facility where he received treatment, a 20th TV spokesman said in a statement to Deadline. We are happy to report that he is in great spirits and is expected to make a full recovery. He wanted us to express his appreciation to the fans around the world who have expressed their concern and support, and to reassure them that he will be back at work very soon. Purcell wrote about his ordeal on Instagram. Had a little accident on set, he said. Pays to have a thick skull when an iron bar falls on your head!! busting it open severely, also broke my nose in two places and a hundred stitches in my head Stoked to be alive. All good Doc said I have an unusually tough tissue fiber thats what saved me apparently. Story continues On the bright side, I got a free nose job out of it, Purcell quipped, noting that he was going back at work asap. Here is one of Purcells posts with a photo of his banged-up face. The original Prison Break, which ran for four seasons, centered on Michael (Wentworth Miller), who went to prison to try and save his convicted brother Lincoln (Purcell) by hatching an elaborate escape plan. In the dramas new chapter, which picks up after Michaels apparent death, Sara (Sarah Wayne Callies) has moved on with her life, raising her and Michaels child with her new husband (Mark Feuerstein). When clues surface suggesting that Michael might be alive, Sara teams with Lincoln to engineer the series biggest escape ever. The new Prison Break is slated to premiere in the spring. Related stories TV Academy Turns 70 & Opens Doors To New HQ As Generations Turn Out Fox Taps Craig Kurland As EVP Business Affairs Empire Executive Producer Sanaa Hamri: Were No Longer Scared Telling The Real Truth Get more from Deadline.com: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Newsletter Donald Trumps repeated demands that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is of Mexican heritage, recuse himself from the fraud cases against Trump University, have no legal or constitutional merit. Indeed, they draw from a long-standing but failed legal playbook used against minority judges. Trump argues that his campaigns hardline position on illegal immigrationnamely, the presumptive Republican nominees repeated promise to seal off the the border between Mexico and the U.S.creates an absolute conflict with the judge, who Trump described as a Mexican appointed by President Obama. Curiel was born in Indiana; his parents were Mexican immigrants. Im building a wall, Trump told the Wall Street Journal Thursday. Its an inherent conflict of interest. Legal scholars roll their eyes at Trumps line of attack. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitutionand no U.S. law, regulation or code of judicial conductthat suggests that a judge must recuse him or herself because of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference, or any other aspect of someones personal identity. After all, no judge is free from these categories. The notion that a judge has to recuse him or herself because of racial makeup, religious background, gender or ethnicityits all just nonsense, Stephen Burbank, a professor for the administration of justice at the University of Pennsylvania Law School told TIME. Its absolute nonsense. Arthur Hellman, an expert on federal judicial ethics at the University of Pittsburghs law school said that if that were indeed a standard, it would result in chaos. If a judge could be forced to step aside merely because of membership in a minority group of some kind, judges would constantly be removed from cases, he told TIME. U.S. Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor could be feasibly barred from weighing in on cases concerning civil rights. Chief Justice John Roberts, a Catholic, could be forced to recuse himself from any case having to do with religion. Story continues The idea that judges must put aside their personal identities and appeal instead to whats known as judicial temperament, Hellman explained, has long been the bedrock of the U.S. judicial system. That idea was solidified in 1974 when Judge Leon Higginbotham, an African-American district judge, refused to recuse himself from a case that had to do with racial discrimination. Higginbotham, who was himself regularly the object of racial bias, argued that his personal experience should not be disqualifying and later issued what is now considered a universally accepted opinion on the matter. I concede that I am black. I do not apologize for that obvious fact. I take rational pride in my heritage, just as most other ethnics take pride in theirs, he wrote. However, that one is black does not mean, ipso facto, that he is anti-white; no more than being Jewish implies being anti-Catholic, or being Catholic implies being anti-Protestant. Demanding recusals based on judges personal identity, he concluded, would create a double standard within the federal judiciary. But Trumps strategy to discredit Curiel because of his ethnicity also draws on a long and storied legal playbook employed by lawyers on both sides of the aisle. In 1998, lawyers in a case concerning a commercial breach of contract attempted to force federal Judge Denny Chin, who is of Asian descent, to recuse himself because some of the people in the case were Asian-American, and the defendants had been portrayed in the press as anti-Asian. The lawyers also argued that because Chin had been appointed by President Bill Clinton, he was biased since the case touched on conduct by the Democratic National Committee. An appeals court later upheld sanctions against one of the lawyers in the case. In 2011, lawyers opposed to legalizing gay marriage argued that federal judge Vaughn Walkers decision to strike down the marriage ban in California should be vacated because Walker, who is gay and in a long-term relationship with a man, stood to gain from his own ruling. In 2014, federal Judge Paul Borman became the latest in a long series of Jewish judges who have been asked to recuse themselves in cases that have to do with Palestinians. Prior to his appointment to the San Diego district court in 2012, Curiel was assistant U.S. attorney in California, where he faced death threats while successfully prosecuting the Mexican drug cartel run by Arellano Felix. Trump has repeatedly called the judge biased, a Donald Trump hater, and a total disgrace. Curiel has not responded to Trumps attacks. Federal judges are bound to a code of conduct restricting them from mak[ing] public comment on the merits of a matter pending or impending in any court or weighing in on candidates for public office. Trumps lawyers have not formally filed a motion to remove Judge Curiel in the fraud case involving Trump University. If they choose to do so, its extremely unlikely that it would be successful, Burbank said. Kayleigh McEnany, a Harvard Law student who acts a public representative for Trump, said as much. Her candidate of choice should have not mentioned the judges heritage, she said on CNN Thursday. There is no a viable argument there that because of his heritage that he is somehow biased. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump hit back at Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on Thursday night, casting as pathetic the scathing speech she delivered against him earlier in the day. After what she said about me today in her phony speech that was a phony speech, that was a Donald Trump hit job I will say this, Hillary Clinton has to go to jail, he said at a rally in San Jose, California, referring to Clintons use of a private email server as secretary of state. Shes guilty as hell. During her speech, Clinton denounced Trumps ideas as dangerously incoherent and called him temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility. Read more: Read Hillary Clintons Speech on Donald Trump and National Security At his own rally, Trump returned her criticism of his temperament and lamented the national security speech as boring. It was pathetic. It was so sad to watch, he said. I think she could make more money if she made speeches and sold them for people that cant sleep. SAN JOSE, Calif. Hours after Hillary Clinton called him unfit to represent the nations interests around the world, Donald Trump lambasted his likely Democratic presidential rival in his own Thursday speech in California. Among other barbs, Trump called her pathetic and vowed that if he wins the presidency he will investigate whether she broke the law by using a private email server for official business while she was secretary of state. Speaking to a crowd of a few thousand people at a convention center here, Trump repeatedly trashed Clintons foreign policy speech in San Diego earlier in the day. At first, Trump called her speech sad and so boring that it nearly put him to sleep. It was so sad to watch, he declared. But Clintons remarks clearly touched a nerve with the presumptive Republican nominee, who kept returning to the subject again and again throughout his 45-minute appearance. He repeatedly accused Clinton of lying about his foreign policy proposals, including his previous suggestion to the New York Times and other news organizations that Japan be allowed to have nuclear weapons which he now denies saying. She lies so much, Trump insisted. He also accused Clinton of cozying up to President Obama and his policies so that she would avoid being prosecuted for the email scandal, which he called an embarrassment. Remember Hillary Clinton used to hate Obama? Now its, Yes, sir, Mr. President, sir, Trump said. Anything Obama wants, shes going forward with. Because you know why? She doesnt want to go to jail. Trump called it a disgrace to the United States that Clinton was allowed to continue to run for president. If he wins, he told the crowd here that he will ask the attorney general he appoints to take a very good look at it from a fair standpoint. Again referring to Clintons foreign policy remarks as a phony speech, Trump later added, I will say this: Hillary Clinton has to go to jail. She is guilty as hell. Story continues Trumps appearance here came amid yet another firestorm over racially tinged criticism hes lobbed at a federal judge presiding over a case involving his now-defunct Trump University. In a new interview with the Wall Street Journal, Trump suggested that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel has an absolute conflict in presiding over the case because of his Mexican heritage. He accused Curiel, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, of being biased against him because of his pledge to crack down on illegal immigration. Im building a wall, Trump told the paper. Its an inherent conflict of interest. Trump had previously hinted at Curiels ethnicity in campaign speeches, including a rally last week in San Diego, where the case is currently pending. But he had never been so blatant about what he believes to be Curiels bias. Court filings show that Trump has not requested that the case be reassigned to a different judge. At his San Jose rally, the GOP candidate made no mention of Trump University. Trump also didnt mention the backhanded endorsement he received earlier in the day from House Speaker Paul Ryan, who announced that he would vote for Trump, after previously refusing to do so. Instead, Trump kept his focus largely on Clinton for whom he coined yet another nickname. Reminding supporters that he used to call Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, his former rival, Lyin Ted, he said he would no longer do so. We love Ted. We dont say Lyin Ted anymore, he declared. Instead, he would save that nickname for Clinton. Lyin, crooked Hillary, he said. Donald Trump Donald Trump ramped up his racially tinged attacks on the judge presiding over the fraud lawsuits against Trump University. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump said US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel had" an absolute conflict" in presiding over the civil cases against Trump University because Curiel was "of Mexican heritage," as Trump put it, and belonged to a Latino lawyers association. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee said Curiel's ethnic background was relevant because of his campaign promises to build a wall on the Mexican border and deport immigrants who are in the country illegally. "Im building a wall. Its an inherent conflict of interest," Trump said, according to The Journal. Trump's rhetoric against Curiel has alarmed a number of legal experts who view his comments as an attack on judicial independence. If this continues, I would hope that some prominent federal judges would set Mr. Trump straight on whats appropriate and whats not in our democracy, University of Pennsylvania law professor Stephen Burbank told The Journal. Trump's comments on Thursday follow a long line of attacks against specific ethnic groups that have underscored his campaign's platform. NOW WATCH: The real story behind Trump's taco bowl tweet More From Business Insider Violence broke out in San Jose, California on Thursday night, after an angry mob of protesters lashed out against Donald Trump supporters following a rally at the convention center. A crowd estimated to be 300-strong filled a city block and angrily chased people as they left Trump's speech. Some agitated demonstrators hit cars, broke signs, and lit fire to at least to one supporter's "Make America Great Again" hat, according to multiple reports on social media. One woman wearing a "Trump" jersey was cornered by the mob and pelted in the face with eggs, spit on and doused with water bottles. San Jose police were in place to combat those protests, but after about 90 minutes, the mob turned unruly. At least four people were arrested and one officer assaulted. San Jose police have yet to release total arrest figures. Watch: The moment a Trump supporter, surrounded by protesters, is egged in the face, hit by other food. pic.twitter.com/qYFdwJWvrS a Jacob Rascon (@Jacobnbc) June 3, 2016 Another supporter walking down the street was hit in the head by an angry protester, causing heavy bleeding. Watch: The moment a Trump supporter, surrounded by protesters, is egged in the face, hit by other food. pic.twitter.com/qYFdwJWvrS a Jacob Rascon (@Jacobnbc) June 3, 2016 The mob threw punches, even chanting "Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!" at one point. Raw video: Fighting continues in streets following @realDonaldTrump rally in San Jose. pic.twitter.com/PR9zaAzZKy a M. Scott Mahaskey (@smahaskey) June 3, 2016 The violence started just after the Trump rally ended around 8 p.m. Authorities said protesters had mostly remained peaceful during Trump's speech, chanting "Donald Trump has got to go" outside the presumptive GOP nominee's event. "It was unbelievable," Cupertino resident and Trump supporter Steve Tong told NBC News. "I've never seen anything like that in America before." Tong also said he saw protesters taunting an elderly couple at a nearby parking structure, and smashing in windows of parked cars. Story continues Donald Trump Supporters Pelted with Eggs, Spat on and Beaten as 300 Protestors Mob California Convention Hall After Speech| 2016 Presidential Elections, Presidential Elections, Real People Stories, Donald Trump Officers form line btw protesters and supporters walking to rally. Protesters now chanting against Trump and police. pic.twitter.com/fjC8Xsnajh a Jacob Rascon (@Jacobnbc) June 3, 2016 Mayor Sam Liccardo blamed Trump's presence for inciting the violence, telling the Associated Press that at "some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign." Approximately 5,000 people attended Trump's rally on Thursday, as he continued to hold his stance on stricter immigration laws. "We're going to bring people into this county, but we're going to bring them in legally," he said. Trump also continued to throw jabs at Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, calling Clinton "pathetic" and accusing Sanders of "rigging the system." He later retweeted a tweet calling her dangerous. " @angeloftruth11: Clinton says Trump is dangerous. Who's the one who killed 4 Americans in Benghazi? https://t.co/ZV5ehm6NKR" Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2016 Clinton's campaign chair John Podesta condemned the violence, saying "violence against supporters of any candidate has no place in this election." Sanders's representative Mike Casca agreed, adding "we cannot stop Trump's violent rhetoric with violence only peaceful protest in a voting booth can do that." This isn't the first time there's been violence on Trump's campaign trail. Last Friday, San Diego police arrested 35 protesters outside a Donald Trump rally as supporters and opponents began throwing trash at each other. In April, approximately 20 people were arrested outside a rally in Orange County, California, as residents threw rocks at motorists, put holes in the tires of a police SUV, and even attempted to flip a police vehicle Similar mobs have broken out inside Trump's campaign event in Arizona and outside them in Kansas City, Missouri. "I hope they arrest these people because they're really violating all of us," Trump, 69, said of the Kansas City violence. "They deserve to be arrested." "I'll file whatever charges you want," he continued. "If they want to do this... we're going to go strongly for your arrests." "We're going to take our country back from these people," Trump had said, according to ABC News. "These are bad, bad people." Disturbing new details have emerged in the alleged rape and murder of Karen Perez, the Texas teen whose remains were recovered from an abandoned apartment building in South Houston, Texas. During a hearing on Wednesday inside the Harris County Juvenile Detention Center, prosecutors revealed Perez's teenage boyfriend who has been charged with her death allegedly used his cellphone to record the 15-year-old's final moments. A spokesman for prosecutors tells PEOPLE investigators were able to access a two cell phones used by the alleged suspect, recovering damning text messages and audio files from both devices. Officials are not naming Perez's boyfriend because he is a minor and is charged as a juvenile. Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson told the court that one of the defendant's phones contained text messages to Perez who went missing on Friday after leaving her school that demanded she skip classes with him. When she told him she couldn't, he allegedly texted her that he'd kill her, Anderson said. After Perez was reported missing, Anderson claims her boyfriend and his father set out to search for her. After driving around for a bit, "the defendant told his father to just take him home because she is not alive." Anderson said at Wednesday's hearing that a second recovered cell phone was found in the abandoned apartment complex where volunteers discovered Perez's body during an organized search Monday evening. Her remains were concealed beneath a sink, according to law enforcement officials. 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. "The second cell phone contained a video," Anderson said. "The video is completely black but the audio is good. You can clearly hear the defendant forcing the victim to have sex with him. He even calls her by name." Anderson claimed in court that the victim's final pleas were also captured in the recording. "You can hear the victim saying she does not want to do this," Anderson explained. "You can hear the defendant choking the victim. You can hear the victim stating, 'I don't want to die.'" According to Anderson, the suspect and two other males lured Perez to the deserted building, and that the sexual assault and strangulation occurred after the two other students returned to class. After Perez died, Anderson said the suspect can be heard saying, "I told you." Investigators allege the boyfriend confessed to the killing after being confronted with the cell phone evidence. When asked if he killed Perez, he allegedly replied, "Yes, I did. That's all I'm saying." By Melissa Fares and Gina Cherelus NEW YORK, June 3 (Reuters) - Madison Sawyer, 20, was determined to quit the temporary job she took after graduating with honors from Santa Fe College in December and find a permanent position, but so far she is stuck making $10 an hour. Even temporary jobs, like the one held by Sawyer through staffing company Kelly Services Inc, may be harder to come by, creating a tough environment for new college graduates. The May jobs report released on Friday, which showed the U.S. economy created the fewest jobs in more than 5 years, also showed a continuing decline in temporary employment, a trend that typically is a leading indicator for declines in overall employment. Since the Labor Department began tracking temporary help data in 1990, changes in the trajectory of temporary employment have preceded those of overall employment by more than half a year on average, Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed. Ahead of the Great Recession, for example, temporary staffing jobs began declining on a consistent basis in the spring of 2007, roughly a year before employment overall began to plummet. Coming out of the recession, temporary staffing levels started trending higher by September 2009, six months ahead of the comparable trend in wider employment. In the first five months of the year, U.S. employers shed about 64,000 temporary jobs, the biggest decline since August 2009 when the global financial crisis was still hampering economic activity. The number of temporary jobs fell by 21,000 in May. "Last quarter, we saw the slowdown at the commercial staffing companies," said Jeff Silber, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets. "That's usually the first sector that sees this kind of slow down." "I don't want to pull the fire alarm here, but those numbers indicate that we're not moving in the right direction," he said. Employers turn to temporary workers when they see growth in their demand outlook but are not sure if that growth is permanent. That wariness could dampen prospects for the 1.8 million college graduates headed into the labor market this summer. Story continues Friday's data confirmed softening demand for part-time workers flagged by at least one staffing industry chief executive in recent months. In lowering his company's outlook in April, TrueBlue Inc Chief Executive Steven Cooper said staffing demand was slowing among the company's largest customers. "Manufacturing and related industries remain sluggish," he said in a statement reporting TrueBlue's first-quarter earnings. And while full-time employers are expected to hire 5.2 percent more new graduates from the class of 2016 compared to last year, that figure is well below the 11 percent increase originally projected in November, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Laura Botero, 25, recently returned from Brazil, where she was a Fulbright scholar. She had a six-month temporary job lined up as a research associate at Harvard University when she returned, but her contract there ends in one week. "Finding a job has been harder than I thought. While companies are hiring and positions are open, getting an offer has been a challenge," said Botero. "Getting rejected over and over makes you think about what you are doing wrong. All I feel is panic." Still there are some bright spots in the market. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a firm that tracks layoffs, jobs in technology and health care should be plentiful. Hannah Jin, who graduates from UCLA next week with a degree in computer science and software engineering, is interning at Facebook as a software engineer. Facebook offered her a full-time job, but she turned the offer down to work at a startup. "There are not enough software engineers and we are more valued when we are younger," said Jin. "Those two makes the job market work in our favor." (Writing by Anna Driver; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli) Slow poisoning the earth in the name of progress has resulted in industrial and technological advancement. Little did anyone guess how violent the payback could turn. The wrath of nature is so hard to tame that the whole world is now desperate to arrest global warming that is gradually pushing the earth toward gradual extinction. Needless to say, this very threat compels us to cool off the ills of global warming to protect the environment. While this huge task needs constant effort, June 5 has been particularly set aside as World Environment Day to commemorate the worth of the environment. So long it was presumed that global warming leads to climate change causing rising sea levels, drought in one region and flood in others. But economists have come up with the latest theory that global warming can cause job losses, recessions and even a tumbling stock market. This makes it imperative for the financial world to boost the socially responsive theme to their product lineup. As a result, we have seen a surge in environment-friendly and socially conscious ETFs lately. There are clean energy ETFs, low carbon ETFs and even environment-oriented ETFs at investors disposal. There are plenty of stock options as well, although ETFs are seemingly better choices as their basket approach minimizes security-specific risks. And what could be a better option than discussing a few ETFs, dealing largely with the act of environment protection, ahead of the World Environment Day? Below are a few such ETF options and a look at their performance. Low Carbon & Fossil Fuel Free ETFs Building a low-carbon economy and battling the unsafe effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have lately become a global task. Not only the developed economies, the emerging ones are also pushing themselves to attain this goal. China intends to build a pollution-free environment. As part of this mission, the president of China and the U.S. president Barack Obama recently struck a deal to lessen carbon emissions. In December, global leaders assembled in Paris at the COP 21 meet to chalk out an elaborate and comprehensive plan to lower carbon emissions and arrest the rise in the global temperature to 2 degree Celsius by the turn of this century. Also, rich countries like the U.S. and those in Europe assure $100 billion per year to relatively needy nations to help them to limit emissions of greenhouse gasses by 2020. As a result, low-carbon ETFs have caught investors attention recently. The SPDR MSCI ACWI Low Carbon Target ETF (LOWC) This $93.4-million ETF puts half of the exposure in the U.S. followed by Japan (8.2%) and the U.K. (6.5%). This 1,415-stock ETF looks to track stocks from developed and emerging markets that discharge lower carbons. There is yet another global ETF, namely iShares MSCI ACWI Low Carbon Target ETF (CRBN), focusing on reduced carbon exposure. The 1,234-stock fund has amassed about $229.6 million in assets. Its geographic exposure is also pretty similar to LOWC. Etho Climate Leadership U.S. ETF (ETHO) This ETF has a 400-stock portfolio having a carbon emission profile that is 5070% lower per dollar invested than the conventional broad-based benchmark. This new ETF has garnered about $2.6 million in assets (read: How to Invest 'Fossil-Free' with This New ETF?). SPDR S&P 500 Fossil Fuel Free ETF (SPYX) The fund gives exposure to the performance of companies in the S&P 500 Index that do not own fossil fuel reserves. The 467-stock fund has amassed about $80.7 million in assets so far (read: Fossil Free ETFs Head to Head: ETHO vs SPYX). A Look at Clean Energy ETFs It would be unwise if we do not discuss clean energy ETFs today, especially given its recent boom. Among these green ETFs, wind energy ETF First Trust ISE Global Wind Energy Index Fund (FAN) has been on a tear lately. The fund is in the green in the last one-week, four-week, year-to-date and one-year frame (as of June 2, 2016). Investors can also take a look at another outperforming product PowerShares Cleantech Portfolio ETF (PZD) (read: Save the Earth--Target Clean ETFs). 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 SPDR-MSCI ALC (LOWC): ETF Research Reports ISHARS-M L CRBN (CRBN): ETF Research Reports FT-GLB WIND EGY (FAN): ETF Research Reports PWRSH-CLEANTECH (PZD): ETF Research Reports To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research 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 Today in One Paragraph House Speaker Paul Ryan said hed vote for Donald Trump after weeks of consideration. Meanwhile, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder will not support the presumptive Republican nominee. Hillary Clinton called Trump temperamentally unfit to be president during a major foreign policy speech. President Obama gave the final commencement address of his presidency at the United States Air Force Academy. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli announced he will step down on June 24. And police found a kill list in the home of the UCLA shooter. Top News Ryan Is Ready. The House Speaker endorsed the presumptive Republican nominee, writing in a column for his hometown newspaper that hes confident Trump can make the conservative agenda a reality. Ryan admitted that the two have differences, but said we have more common ground than disagreement. (Frank Schultz, GazetteXtra) Recommended: Protesters Assaulted Democracy in San Jose Snyder, Not So Much. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder said he will not back Donald Trump. Ive stayed out of the whole thing, and Im going to continue to, Snyder told The Detroit News editorial board on Wednesday. Ive got important things I want to work on in Michigan. Snyder said his main focus is maintaining a Republican majority in the state House. (The Detroit News) Clinton Bashes Trump. The former secretary of State billed Donald Trumps national security ideas as dangerous during a foreign policy speech in San Diego, California. Theyre not even really ideasjust a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies, Clinton said. Trump responded to the speech on Twitter, criticizing Clintons teleprompter reading skills. (Monica Alba and Andrew Rafferty, NBC News) Meanwhile, In Colorado. President Obama delivered the commencement address at the U.S. Air Force Academy in which he defended his foreign policy. We cant be isolationists. Its not possible in this globalized interconnected world, he said. The address was the 26th in his presidency. A Thunderbirds fighter jet crashed after performing a flyover at the ceremony. There were no injuries. (ABC News, Denver Post) Story continues Solicitor General Rests His Case. Solicitor General Donald Verrillis chief deputy, Ian Gershengorn, will replace him for the rest of President Obamas term in office. Verrilli has argued dozens of cases before the Supreme Court, with gay marriage and the Affordable Care Act among his victories. Thanks to his efforts, 20 million more Americans now know the security of quality, affordable health care, Obama said in a statement. (Richard Wolf, USA Today) Recommended: Who Will the Republican Vice Presidential Nominee Be? UCLA Shooting Update. Authorities found a kill list at the home of 38-year-old Mainak Sarkar, the gunman who killed Professor William Klug in a murder-suicide Wednesday at the University of California, Los Angeles, campus, according to the Los Angeles police chief. The list contained Klugs name as well as the name of another woman who was found dead in Minnesota Thursday. Police have not identified the woman. (CNN) Tomorrow in One Paragraph. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton will continue to campaign in California. First Lady Michelle Obama will give the commencement address at The City College of New York. And President Obama will travel to Miami, Florida, where he will attend a DSCC roundtable and deliver remarks at a DNC event. Follow stories throughout the day with our new Politics & Policy page. And keep on top of the campaign with our 2016 Distilled election dashboard. Top Read Those who live there tend to like it, but theyre aging, and there arent enough jobs to keep younger people around. So kids and grandkids move to the cities, coming back on holidays, inheriting their parents homes and leaving them empty, wondering what will happen to the towns their parents say used to thrive. This is how rural America dies: not with a bang but a whimper. The Atlantics Alana Semuels on the slow decline of rural America. Top Lines Sincerely, Donald. The presumptive Republican nominee is known for dishing out praise and insults on Twitter. But one of his lesser-known hobbies is writing lettersboth mocking and adoringto his admirers and critics. (Michael Barbaro, The New York Times) Recommended: How the Democratic Establishment Won Harry Reid Tells All. The Democratic senator blames Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for the rise of Donald Trump and vows to do his best to make sure Trump never gets elected president in an interview with Politicos Burgess Everett. From Sanders to Trump. The Atlantics Conor Friedersdorf corresponded with a Bernie Sanders supporter who is flirting with the idea of voting for Donald Trump: a nightmare for Democrats attempting to coalesce the party behind Hillary Clinton. Top View Notorious Ilomantis Ginsburgae. Scientists at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History learned that it was possible to classify insect species using female characteristics, as well as male. So, they named a new species of praying mantis after Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. (Camila Domonoske, NPR) We want to hear from you! Were reimagining what The Edge can be, and would love to receive your complaints, compliments, and suggestions. Tell us what youd like to find in your inbox by sending a message to newsletters@theatlantic.com. -Written by Elaine Godfrey (@elainejgodfrey) Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's former top auditor Hisham Geneina was referred for criminal prosecution on Thursday on a charge of spreading false news about the cost of the country's corruption, judicial sources said. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi sacked Geneina, who led the country's top anti-corruption watchdog, in March after he publicly concluded that government corruption had cost the country billions of dollars. Geneina became the target of fierce public backlash from senior officials and pro-government media after he gave newspaper interviews alleging that corruption had cost the country 600 billion Egyptian pounds ($68 billion)over a four-year period. Sisi subsequently appointed a presidential commission that quickly concluded that Geneina had misled the public by overestimating the scale of corruption. Khaled Ali, a defence lawyer representing Geneina, told Reuters his client was detained on Thursday after being charged with spreading false news and refusing to pay bail. Geneina will remain in detention until the first session of his trial, which is scheduled for Tuesday, Ali said. (Reporting by Haitham Ahmed, Mahmoud Mourad and Mostafa Hashem; Writing by Eric Knecht; Editing by Andrew Roche) From Popular Mechanics Lest you think Elon Musk is not serious about his ambitions for Mars, then you should know the Tesla and SpaceX chief is not only setting a timetable for going there but also channeling his inner John Locke and thinking about how the planet should be governed. His idea: Let the people of the Red Planet vote for everything themselves. Musk was at the ReCode Code Conference last night when, as is typical of a Musk talk, he veered into ruminating on hypotheticals about AI, the future, and living on Mars. He confirmed his plan to send people to Mars as early as 2024, with their scheduled arrival in 2025. Then Musk veered into politics. To Musk, the ideal strategy for Martian governance would not be a representative democracy like America's, where we elect people to stand for us in the House and the Senate and vote on our behalf. He would rather see a direct democracy where the people themselves vote on the issues. According to The Verge, Musk said: "I think that's probably better, because the potential for corruption is substantially diminished in a direct versus a representative democracy." That's not the only way Musk's style of self-rule would differ from Earthbound governments. He'd also like to see all rules and regulations be sunset laws, meaning they have an expiration date and go out of effect if the people don't vote to re-approve them. Basically, he'd make it tougher to get new laws on the books and easier to remove old ones. Musk's preferred direct democracy is a system that works better with small groups of people-few of us would have time to weigh and vote on all the issues and massive bills that members of Congress must consider. But given that Mars isn't likely to support a huge population anytime soon, maybe it's just the ticket. With the U.S. is going through an election Musk called not the "finest moment in our democracy," we might as well be open to new options. Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f105046%2fa3a5490e50bf40549939e42a872540f3 When Elon Musk makes a proclamation, people stand up and take notice. At the Code Conference in California on Wednesday, Musk reiterated one of his boldest claims to date, saying that, if all goes according to plan, SpaceX will start flying people to Mars by 2024, a more ambitious goal than any nation or private company has established. SEE ALSO: Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to send people to Mars by 2024 Musk didn't give away too many details of the company's plan, saying that more Mars colonization plans will be revealed during a conference in September, but he did explain some of the reasoning behind SpaceX's audacious goal. Musk said: Just going off Musk's remarks, it's unclear if the 2024 mission is designed to have people orbit Mars or actually land there, but either way, it's an incredibly ambitious goal. Here are some reasons to be skeptical of SpaceX's plan. SpaceX hasn't flown a human to space So, here's the deal: It's 2016 and the company is aiming for a crewed mission to Mars in eight years, yet they haven't successfully sent a robot to Mars or even a human to orbit around the Earth. With human missions comes a level of risk that SpaceX has not had to manage during its time in business. The company simply hasn't been put to the test in that way. SpaceX is expected to launch astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA starting as soon as next year, so that will offer the firm an opportunity to introduce astronauts into their workflow and risk management programs. However, to go from those missions to human exploration of Mars in just seven years would be an astonishing feat. For now, it's difficult to see how a SpaceX-run humans-to-Mars mission might work out. "Saying that they can reduce the risks adequately to start sending humans to Mars in the next ten years seems to me to be extremely bullish," said John Logsdon, professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, in an interview. Story continues Image: Spacex The fact is, no matter what, going to Mars is risky. Only four space agencies have successfully landed robotic craft on or put spacecraft into orbit around Mars, so a private company aiming for that technically challenging ground is ambitious in a whole new way. The company will attempt to drive down that risk as well as costs by sending an uncrewed Dragon capsule to Mars in 2018 and continuing to test out their methods every two years after that, but problems can always crop up. History of broken promises Musk also has a history of making informal promises about timelines that don't pan out. "They, and especially Elon in his individual pronouncements, have always been much more ambitious on things like schedule than what turned out to be the case," Logsdon added. In 2011, for example, Musk said that SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket a booster larger than the Falcon 9 that is in use today would fly by the end of 2012. Four years later, the Falcon Heavy has yet to even be revealed to the media, though SpaceX is planning its first test flight for later this year. Image: spacex A Mars mission could take up to $150 billion If SpaceX succeeds in their plan, the company will leap-frog over NASA in the race for Mars. But doing so will require a huge investment of the sort that even NASA is having trouble raising. NASA isn't planning on launching any kind of crewed mission to Mars until the 2030s. In all likelihood, it will take billions of dollars to actually get humans to Mars, and NASA is stumbling in its attempts to get the money needed for this kind of mission from Congress. Musk has yet to lay out a plan to fund his idea. "I've seen numbers anywhere between $80 [billion] and about $120 [billion] to $150 billion," Chris Carberry, CEO of Explore Mars, a non-profit founded to help send humans to Mars, told Mashable in an interview. "I suspect he's [Musk] planning on doing it for a lot less." It's possible that SpaceX will want to team up with NASA, other companies or different space agencies to make Musk's dream a reality. Lockheed Martin has proposed a possible architecture they could build in partnership with NASA that would put an orbital outpost around the red planet by 2028, in anticipation of a full landing in 2030. Image: SpaceX SpaceX's funding and design architecture will remain a mystery until Musk presents his ideas more formally in September, but there's a chance SpaceX's plans may dovetail nicely with NASA's or even Lockheed Martin's planning. "A smart company would not ignore sources of expertise, and most of the expertise in the world on landing on Mars resides at JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory], resides at NASA," Logsdon said. Of course, with government involvement comes possible slowdowns and less freedom for companies seeking to do something ambitious, but that might be a trade-off Musk and SpaceX are willing to take. Myriad of technical challenges Perhaps the most compelling reason to be skeptical is the technological barriers that need to be overcome before any humans board a SpaceX capsule bound for Mars' rust-colored surface. The company will need to develop a new kind of spacecraft, according to Musk, for the half-year trip to Mars. SpaceX's Dragon Version 2 is about the size of an SUV and is built to transport humans to the International Space Station, but it won't be a very comfortable astronaut hangout on a long journey to another planet. The company still needs to work out the kinks of its 2018 mission before any human-rated craft can be flown. In addition, SpaceX still doesn't have a sure-fire method for safely landing cargo or people on the red planet, a major hurdle of any Mars mission. Building and testing a new space system isn't easy, and one of the biggest challenges SpaceX will face on its road to Mars is creating a life support system capable of keeping astronauts alive on the way to and from the red planet. Image: spacex "Our experience right now has been on the International Space Station, and that is constantly being repaired, and is constantly getting supplies from Earth, so this is many orders of magnitude more complicated," Carberry said. "I hope he can really speed things up and motivate everyone else, but I'd be really shocked if he could actually get people alive and back on Mars in 2024," he said of Musk's aspirations. No matter what, technologically, SpaceX will need to have a near-perfect testing record in order to make it to Mars on such an ambitious time-scale. As it is, the company doesn't have a perfect record. In June 2015, a Falcon 9 rocket built by SpaceX disintegrated in the skies above Florida just after launching with an uncrewed Dragon capsule carrying supplies for the Space Station. Every new space program has growing pains, and there's no reason to think that SpaceX's will be any different. Those rocket landings though Since he founded SpaceX in 2002, Musk has been aiming for Mars. "Mr. Musk has been very explicit since starting business that he would create successful space business to get to Mars," Logsdon said. In fact, the entrepreneur has often said that he would be willing to die on the red planet, as long as it's not on impact. So, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the company is putting its Martian ambitious into high gear now. Image: spacex "Elon is a smart person," Logsdon said. "He has smart people working with him, whatever plan they have come up with is not going to be harebrained; its going to be executable." Although SpaceX has a long way to go before getting people to Mars, it isn't like the company is sitting around doing nothing. In a bit more than 10 years, the company has become a world-class launch provider. SpaceX is also in the process of making good on another promise, landing four different boosters back on Earth after delivering payloads to space. This allows them to drastically lower the costs of reaching various Earth orbits. "He has made very ambitious announcements before, and he kind of lives up to what he says, and I have a lot of faith and optimism in what they're doing, and I think it's going to be interesting to see if they beat NASA to Mars," Commercial Spaceflight Federation president Eric Stallmer told Mashable. DUBLIN (Reuters) - The head of Dubai-based airline Emirates expressed concerns on Friday about the impact on travel across Europe if Britain votes to leave the EU in a June 23 referendum, as airline bosses gathered at a conference prepared for the worst. Noting forecasts about economic disruption in the UK in the event of a vote to leave the EU, airline president Tim Clark said he was also worried about political and economic volatility in the rest of the 28-nation bloc. "My concern is what will happen in the rest of the EU," Clark told reporters at the annual IATA airline industry meeting in Dublin. "Instability means lowering demand, lowering in demand means less people travelling on aeroplanes. How long that would last, I don't know," he said. The CEO of German carrier Lufthansa (LHAG.DE) also said he expected demand to fall if Britain leaves the bloc. "We have already brought down our growth plans," CEO Carsten Spohr said when asked whether the airline was making capacity adjustment plans in the event of a Brexit. Airlines are among those that have benefited the most from EU agreements on open airspace and free movement of people, and airline executives fear Brexit's resulting long-winded renegotiation period between governments which would need to take place to ensure that their current access to the skies was retained. If Britain votes to leave, bilateral agreements allowing unlimited travel between Britain and the rest of the EU would have to be renegotiated. Britain would also have to agree other deals, such as with the United States, which has an open skies arrangement with the EU. But for Irish carrier Aer Lingus, owned by UK-based International Airlines Group (ICAG.L), chief executive Stephen Kavanagh said a Brexit could create opportunities. "If Heathrow or the UK becomes difficult to transfer through from the European perspective, then that again accelerates the opportunity for us in expanding Irish airports as a gateway," he said. (Reporting by Tim Hepher and Victoria Bryan; Additional reporting by Sarah Young; Editing by Jason Neely and David Evans) In this through-the-looking-glass period in U.S. politics, where cognitive dissonance has become more normal than remarkable, there shouldnt be much left that surprises us. The Republican National Committee has hired an outspoken critic of its presumptive presidential nominee to convince Hispanic voters to support him. The governor of South Carolina can tie Donald Trumps rhetoric to a mass murder in her state, but still vow to support him as the presidential nominee. It was still a little jarring, though, to watch House Speaker Paul Ryan deliver the weekly Republican address on Friday less than 24 hours after he endorsed Trumps candidacy in an op-ed published by his hometown newspaper. Related: Donald Trump Out Negotiates Paul Ryan in Endorsement Deal The United States, he warned, is headed in the wrong direction. How do we get back on track? he asked. Well, we can get angry, and we can stay angry Or we can channel that anger into action We can start to tackle our problems before they tackle us. This is what Americans do. We dont accept decline. We dont give in to division. We find a better way. The words would have carried a little more weight if Ryan, the lone senior elected Republican holdout in Trumps effort to unite party leaders behind him, had not just publicly caved in to a candidate whose stock in trade is the very anger and division that Ryan decries. Ryan was using the weekly address to tout A Better Way, the House Republican conferences new set of proposals for addressing a variety of problems, including poverty, unemployment, a bloated tax code, national security, rising healthcare costs and what it views as executive overreach by the Obama administration. Related: Obamas Final Campaign Begins in Earnest with Assault on Trump Under Ryan, the House is expected to roll out a series of detailed policy proposals in the coming months, and his apparent hope is that if Trump somehow wins the White House, he will be willing to sign a Republican Congresss bills into law. At least thats how he justified his endorsement of Trump on Thursday. Story continues For me, its a question of how to move ahead on the ideas that Iand my House colleagueshave invested so much in through the years. Its not just a choice of two people, but of two visions for America. And House Republicans are helping shape that Republican vision by offering a bold policy agenda, by offering a better way ahead. Donald Trump can help us make it a reality. Like many others in the party, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Ryan appears to have latched onto the hope that once in power, a President Donald Trump will begin to display an interest in policy that has been utterly absent from his campaign so far. Related: Trump Hits the Panic Button at the Hint of a Third Party Run And that he will stop stoking anger for angers sake. And that he will stop dividing the nation along racial, ethnic and religious lines. And that there will be ponies for everyone. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: By Georgina Prodhan DUESSELDORF, Germany (Reuters) - Technology developed by Epson that enables robots to perform precise tasks, such as putting a key into a keyhole and turning it with just the right amount of force, is set to open up new markets for the printers, projectors and robotics group, its president told Reuters in an interview. The Japanese group this week unveiled a new piezo force sensor based on its proprietary inkjet printing technology that has made it a global household name, which it hopes will give it an edge as it seeks to quintuple its robotics sales over the next decade. The Micro Piezo sensor, which attaches to a robot head, allows the robot to feel its way into a space with an accuracy of 5 microns or 5 thousandths of a millimeter, a roughly tenfold improvement on currently available force sensors, Epson says. "It changes the way robots can be used," President and Chief Executive Minoru Usui told Reuters, speaking through a translator. "We think the market potential for the force sensor is enormous." Usui said the new sensor could enable Epson to address new markets such as food production, medical equipment and pharmaceuticals, with the automation of tasks such as putting syringes together or packaging medicines. "To perform complex tasks like this with robots, it has needed really complex software, which has made it impossible for many people," he said. "This makes the software a lot simpler, which makes it easier to actually introduce the robots." The company said by adopting the sensor technology tasks such as placing a capacitor or resistor in an integrated circuit with dozens of tiny holes could be done with less expensive precision tools or software than currently required because the robot can find its own way to locating where the component needs to go. It could also make for easier automation of tasks like polishing, where a light touch is needed. The new sensor has a list price of 6,500 euros ($7,200), and is compatible across Epson's robot range, increasing the total price of an industrial robot by around a quarter to a third. Story continues The potential market is seen largely in countries with low levels of industrial automation like China, India and Brazil, where precision equipment and processes are not already widely in place, said Epson's German factory automation sales manager Dirk Folkens. "They are more or less just starting automation," he said. "German manufacturing is very sophisticated." China, the world's biggest industrial robotics market, still has only 36 robots per 100,000 employees, about half the global average. But it is hungry to automate more, and home appliances maker Midea is currently trying to buy German robotics specialist Kuka (KU2G.DE) for 4.5 billion euros. Epson itself has just begun using force-sensing robots in its own factories to assemble print heads, cartridges for label printers, projectors and watches, said Folkens. The new sensor is due to go on sale following the Automatica robotics trade fair in Munich at the end of this month. Epson is estimated to be the world's eighth-biggest robot maker, with an installed base of 55,000 robots mainly in the electronics industry. Its robotics sales were 15.4 billion yen ($141 million) in the year to end-March but it aims to increase that figure to 100 billion yen by 2026, with 20 billion expected in the current year. ($1 = 0.8965 euros) (Editing by Greg Mahlich) From Country Living Here's a sentence we never thought we'd write: If Fabio were a horse, he would be Frederik the Great. We know. But hear us out. Though Frederik has been making the rounds on social media for quite some time, he recently had a burst of popularity, thanks to coverage from People and The Guardian. Now, he's a bonafide horse-celebrity, with a Facebook following nearly 40,000 strong. Just look at him: Check out those gorgeous locks: And so that you know you're not alone in your admiration, here are some comments that have flooded his YouTube page, where one of his videos from 2011 has more than 5 million views. "When a horse has better hair then you." "That animal does not deserve to be sat upon or reined; it is a great injustice to his majesty to enslave him as such. " "More beautiful than any man made wonders of the world." "When a horse is looking 100 time better than you." Frederik is a 15-year-old Friesian Stallion who lives in Arkansas, and he even has his own art gallery, where you can purchase photos of him in action. According to The Guardian, Stacy Nazario, Frederik's owner, has owned him since she was just six years old. "His personality went right along with his looks," Stacy told The Guardian. "He's just phenomenal. His temperament is sweet. I could put a baby right next to him and he would just be gentle with it. He's a gentle giant." To learn more about Frederik, check out his Facebook page-but not before looking at a few more pictures of this majestic beast: (h/t Jezebel) By Nate Raymond NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former Oppenheimer & Co Inc investment adviser was arrested on Friday on charges he traded on inside information supplied by a childhood friend working at Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) about deals that drugmaker was considering. David Hobson, who during the alleged scheme also worked for RBC Capital Markets, was charged in an indictment filed in Manhattan federal court for making illegal trades that earned him over $187,000 (128,858) and about $145,000 for his customers. His friend, Michael Maciocio, secretly pleaded guilty on May 20 to charges related to the scheme, which ran from 2008 to 2014 and which the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a lawsuit said earned him $116,000 from his own insider trading. Hobson, 47, was arrested at his home in Providence, Rhode Island on charges of conspiracy and securities fraud. He was released later in the day following a court hearing. His lawyer declined comment. Maciocio, 46, has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors pursuing the case, according to his plea agreement. His lawyer did not respond to requests for comment. The charges were brought by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who since 2009 has overseen an insider trading crackdown that has resulted in charges against 104 and the conviction of 79. According to authorities, Maciocio in his role at Pfizer as director of chemical research and development, received information about potential deals relevant to his tasks evaluating manufacturing demands and capacity. While Maciocio was not typically given the identity of the company in a potential deal, he used the information to perform research to discern its identity, sometimes with Hobson's help, authorities said. After identifying the company, Maciocio then passed the information to Hobson, who executed trades in accounts belonging to himself, Maciocio, and clients of Oppenheimer and RBC, charging documents said. The tips enabled Hobson to illegally trade in the stocks of Medivation Inc (MDVN.O), Ardea Biosciences Inc and Furiex Pharmaceuticals Inc, the indictment said. Story continues The former employers of Hobson and Maciocio were not named in the court papers, but Pfizer, Oppenheimer, a unit of Oppenheimer Holdings Inc (OPY.N), and RBC, a unit of Royal Bank of Canada (RY.TO), confirmed their employment. Oppenheimer said it has "cooperated extensively" with authorities. Pfizer said it "takes these allegations seriously and is cooperating fully with the authorities." The cases in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, are U.S. v. Hobson, No. 16-cr-351, and Securities and Exchange Commission v. Maciocio, No. 16-cv-4139. (Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Alistair Bell) (Adds details about Michael Maciocio's plea agreement) By Nate Raymond NEW YORK, June 3 (Reuters) - A former Oppenheimer & Co Inc investment adviser was arrested on Friday on charges he traded on inside information supplied by a childhood friend working at Pfizer Inc about deals that drugmaker was considering. David Hobson, who during the alleged scheme also worked for RBC Capital Markets, was charged in an indictment filed in Manhattan federal court for making illegal trades that earned him over $187,000 and about $145,000 for his customers. His friend, Michael Maciocio, secretly pleaded guilty on May 20 to charges related to the scheme, which ran from 2008 to 2014 and which the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a lawsuit said earned him $116,000 from his own insider trading. Hobson, 47, was arrested at his home in Providence, Rhode Island on charges of conspiracy and securities fraud. He was released later in the day following a court hearing. His lawyer declined comment. Maciocio, 46, has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors pursuing the case, according to his plea agreement. His lawyer did not respond to requests for comment. The charges were brought by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who since 2009 has overseen an insider trading crackdown that has resulted in charges against 104 and the conviction of 79. According to authorities, Maciocio in his role at Pfizer as director of chemical research and development, received information about potential deals relevant to his tasks evaluating manufacturing demands and capacity. While Maciocio was not typically given the identity of the company in a potential deal, he used the information to perform research to discern its identity, sometimes with Hobson's help, authorities said. After identifying the company, Maciocio then passed the information to Hobson, who executed trades in accounts belonging to himself, Maciocio, and clients of Oppenheimer and RBC, charging documents said. Story continues The tips enabled Hobson to illegally trade in the stocks of Medivation Inc, Ardea Biosciences Inc and Furiex Pharmaceuticals Inc, the indictment said. The former employers of Hobson and Maciocio were not named in the court papers, but Pfizer, Oppenheimer, a unit of Oppenheimer Holdings Inc, and RBC, a unit of Royal Bank of Canada, confirmed their employment. Oppenheimer said it has "cooperated extensively" with authorities. Pfizer said it "takes these allegations seriously and is cooperating fully with the authorities." The cases in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, are U.S. v. Hobson, No. 16-cr-351, and Securities and Exchange Commission v. Maciocio, No. 16-cv-4139. (Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Alistair Bell) By Dustin Volz and Jason Lange WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. congressional committee has launched an investigation into the Federal Reserve's cyber security practices after a Reuters report revealed more than 50 cyber breaches at the U.S. central bank between 2011 and 2015. The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology on Friday sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen to express "serious concerns" over the central bank's ability to protect sensitive financial information. The letter cited the Reuters report, which was based on heavily redacted internal Fed records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The redacted records did not say who hacked the bank's systems or whether they accessed sensitive information or stole money. "These reports raise serious concerns about the Federal Reserve's cyber security posture, including its ability to prevent threats from compromising highly sensitive financial information housed on the agency's systems," said the letter, signed by House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, and Barry Loudermilk, a Georgia Republican and chairman of the panel's oversight subcommittee. A Fed spokesperson said the central bank had received the panel's letter and "will respond to it." The panel asked the Fed's national cyber security team - the National Incident Response Team - to turn over all cyber incident reports in unredacted form from Jan. 1, 2009, to the present. It also asked for incident reports from the Fed's local incident response teams. Global policymakers, regulators and financial institutions have become increasingly concerned about the security of the international banking system after a string of cyber attacks against banks in Bangladesh, Vietnam and elsewhere linked to fraudulent transaction messages sent across the global financial platform SWIFT. The probe into the Fed's security practices followed a separate inquiry by the same committee into the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's handling of the cyber theft of $81 million from one of its accounts held by the central bank of Bangladesh. Story continues The committee said it has jurisdiction over the Fed's cyber security because the panel is tasked with oversight of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, an agency responsible for developing federal cyber security standards and guidelines, under a 2014 federal information technology law. The panel also requested a "detailed description of all confirmed cyber security incidents" from 2009 to the present, all documents and communications referring or relating to "higher impact cases" handled by the Fed's NIRT team, all documents and communications with the Fed's Office of Inspector General related to confirmed cyber incidents, and an organizational chart detailing the Fed's top cyber security personnel. The committee requested a response to its inquiry by June 17. (Click here to read the letter: http://tmsnrt.rs/1VBXvSz) The Fed's computer systems hold confidential information on discussions about monetary policy that drives financial markets. The central bank's staff suspected hackers or spies were behind many of the breaches, the records obtained by Reuters show. The Fed had declined to comment on the records, which represent only a slice of all cyber attacks on the central bank because they include only cases involving the Washington-based Board of Governors, a federal agency that is subject to public records laws. (For a graphic on the Fed security breaches, see: http://tmsnrt.rs/1TxSu8R) (Reporting by Dustin Volz and Jason Lange; Editing by David Chance and Tiffany Wu) By Dustin Volz and Jason Lange WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. congressional committee has launched an investigation into the Federal Reserve's cyber security practices after a Reuters report revealed more than 50 cyber breaches at the U.S. central bank between 2011 and 2015. The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology on Friday sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen to express "serious concerns" over the central bank's ability to protect sensitive financial information. The letter cited the Reuters report, which was based on heavily redacted internal Fed records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The redacted records did not say who hacked the bank's systems or whether they accessed sensitive information or stole money. "These reports raise serious concerns about the Federal Reserve's cyber security posture, including its ability to prevent threats from compromising highly sensitive financial information housed on the agency's systems," said the letter, signed by House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, and Barry Loudermilk, a Georgia Republican and chairman of the panel's oversight subcommittee. A Fed spokesperson said the central bank had received the panel's letter and "will respond to it." The panel asked the Fed's national cyber security team - the National Incident Response Team - to turn over all cyber incident reports in unredacted form from Jan. 1, 2009, to the present. It also asked for incident reports from the Fed's local incident response teams. Global policymakers, regulators and financial institutions have become increasingly concerned about the security of the international banking system after a string of cyber attacks against banks in Bangladesh, Vietnam and elsewhere linked to fraudulent transaction messages sent across the global financial platform SWIFT. The probe into the Fed's security practices followed a separate inquiry by the same committee into the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's handling of the cyber theft of $81 million from one of its accounts held by the central bank of Bangladesh. The committee said it has jurisdiction over the Fed's cyber security because the panel is tasked with oversight of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, an agency responsible for developing federal cyber security standards and guidelines, under a 2014 federal information technology law. The panel also requested a "detailed description of all confirmed cyber security incidents" from 2009 to the present, all documents and communications referring or relating to "higher impact cases" handled by the Fed's NIRT team, all documents and communications with the Fed's Office of Inspector General related to confirmed cyber incidents, and an organizational chart detailing the Fed's top cyber security personnel. The committee requested a response to its inquiry by June 17. (Click here to read the letter: http://tmsnrt.rs/1VBXvSz) The Fed's computer systems hold confidential information on discussions about monetary policy that drives financial markets. The central bank's staff suspected hackers or spies were behind many of the breaches, the records obtained by Reuters show. The Fed had declined to comment on the records, which represent only a slice of all cyber attacks on the central bank because they include only cases involving the Washington-based Board of Governors, a federal agency that is subject to public records laws. (For a graphic on the Fed security breaches, see: http://tmsnrt.rs/1TxSu8R) (Reporting by Dustin Volz and Jason Lange; Editing by David Chance and Tiffany Wu) By Joe Bavier ABIDJAN (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will withhold future payments under its programme with Guinea-Bissau unless the government backtracks on loan bailouts for two private banks, the institution's country representative said. Donors have also suspended budget support equal to 2.1 percent of GDP for this year, Oscar Melhado told Reuters by email. Total donor contributions, including direct budget support and financing for targeted sectors and projects, typically make up around 80 percent of the budget. The tiny West African nation, which has been mired in a months-long political crisis, must submit a new 2016 budget factoring in this lost budget support before IMF payments resume. "The IMF will not disburse any outstanding credit tranches as previously envisaged," Melhado said. The IMF agreed a programme with Guinea-Bissau last July to help the frequently unstable state get back onto its feet after 2014 polls drew a line under a military coup two years earlier. The former Portuguese colony has seen nine coups or attempts since 1980. Political turmoil has helped make it a major transit point for South American cocaine heading to Europe. Last year the government rejected IMF advice and paid 34 billion CFA francs ($57.81 million), 5.5 percent of GDP, for bad loans off Banco da Africa Ocidental and Banco da Uniao. A former prime minister who oversaw the deal told Reuters it was necessary to avoid bankrupting the private sector. "The costly bank bailouts benefit the wealthiest people in the country and wealthy foreign shareholders, and come at the expense of urgently needed projects to improve the infrastructure and to reduce poverty," Melhado said. "OUR REASONING WAS LOGICAL" The public prosecutor's office launched an investigation into the bailouts last month. "The State has asked the courts to cancel the contracts," Bakari Biaii, the magistrate handled the investigation, told Reuters. "We are awaiting the response." Story continues The bailouts occurred under former prime ministers Domingos Simoes Pereira and Carlos Correia. Pereira told Reuters they had been proposed by a previous transitional government and had been approved with a view to helping Guinea-Bissau's fragile recovery. "We cannot allow the private sector as a whole to go into bankruptcy," he said. "Our reasoning was logical, but, yes, it goes against the agreement that was set out by the IMF." Correia could not immediately be reached for comment. The move by the IMF comes amid a deeping crisis caused by a power struggle within the ruling PAIGC party between a faction led by Pereira and one led by President Jose Mario Vaz. Vaz's dismissal of Pereira as prime minister last August led to weeks of political instability until Correia was named to head the government as part of a compromise in October. Vaz also sacked Correia last month and replaced him with political ally Baciro Dja. Dja named a new cabinet on Thursday but Correia's ministers have refused to leave their offices. Without the IMF payments, this year's budgetary shortfall will climb to 3.1 percent of GDP, the IMF's Melhado said. (Additional reporting by Alberto Dabo in Bissau; Editing by Tim Cocks and Richard Balmforth) By Warren Strobel and Yara Bayoumy WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's powerful deputy crown prince is expected to visit Washington in mid-June for talks with top U.S. officials, possibly including President Barack Obama, amid growing friction between the longtime allies, three sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. Mohammed bin Salman, son of Saudi Arabia's King Salman, has been leading a drive to end the kingdom's dependence on oil and liberalize its economy. He also serves as defense minister, and his discussions with U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter and other top U.S. officials are expected to include the conflict in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition last year began a military campaign against Houthi rebels who receive some Iranian support. The civil war in Syria also is expected to be on the agenda. Riyadh is seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and has provided military support to rebels fighting him. One of the sources said the deputy crown prince will be in Washington from June 14-16 and then will travel to New York for meetings with financial firms, and possibly to Los Angeles. This person spoke on condition of anonymity because the visit has not been formally announced. A White House official said, "We dont have any visit to announce at this time." Prince Mohammed's talks in Washington will come at a sensitive time for U.S.-Saudi relations and energy markets. U.S.-Saudi ties have cooled under Obama. Many Gulf Arab monarchies, including Saudi Arabia, have privately said they have been disappointed by what they consider the U.S. retreat from the region under Obama, allowing Iran to expand its influence, especially after a nuclear deal was reached last year. Saudi Arabia's campaign in Yemen has also been a focus of concern. This week, the United Nations added the Saudi-led coalition to an annual blacklist of states and armed groups that violate children's rights during conflict. Separately, the Saudis have mounted a campaign to defend the kingdom's counter-terrorism record in advance of the expected declassification this month of 28 pages from a 2002 congressional report on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Story continues Critics say those documents could implicate Saudi officials in the attacks on New York and Washington. Riyadh denies that, and has called for the documents to be made public. In oil markets, OPEC again this week failed to adopt a clear oil-output strategy at a meeting attended by the new Saudi energy minister, Khalid al-Falih. Prince Mohammed, whose father has delegated him unprecedented powers, has launched a plan aimed at ending the kingdom's oil dependence by 2030. But it would require shaking up a bureaucracy that has stymied changes in the past, challenging powerful religious conservatives and building up a private sector currently reliant on state spending. Obama and Prince Mohammed, along with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, met in the Oval Office in May 2015. Obama visited Riyadh in April when he attended a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council. (Editing by John Walcott and David Gregorio) By Ned Parker and Jonathan Landay (Reuters) - A 17-month U.S. effort to retrain and reunify Iraq's regular army has failed to create a large number of effective Iraqi combat units or limit the power of sectarian militias, according to current and former U.S. military and civilian officials. Concern about the shortcomings of the American attempt to strengthen the Iraqi military comes as Iraqi government forces and Shiite militias have launched an offensive to retake the city of Falluja from Islamic State. Aid groups fear the campaign could spark a humanitarian catastrophe, as an estimated 50,000 Sunni civilians remain trapped in the besieged town. The continued weakness of regular Iraqi army units and reliance on Shiite militias, current and former U.S. military officials said, could impede Prime Minister Haider al-Abadis broader effort to defeat Islamic State and win the long-term support of Iraqi Sunnis. The sectarian divide between the majority Shi'ite and minority Sunni communities threatens to split the country for good. Critics agree that there have been some military successes, citing the continued victories of American-trained Iraqi Special Forces, who have been fighting Islamic State for two years. But the presence of 4,000 American troops has failed to change the underlying Iraqi political dynamics that fuel the rise and growing power of sectarian militias. Retired U.S. Lieutenant General Mick Bednarek, who commanded the U.S. military training effort in Iraq from 2013 to 2015, said the Iraqi army has not improved dramatically in the past eight months. He blamed a variety of problems, from a lack of Iraqis wanting to join the military to the resistance of some lower-level Iraqi officers to sending units to American training. The Iraqi militarys capacity hasnt improved that much - part of that is the continuing challenge of recruitment and retention, said Bednarek. Our (officers) train who shows up, and the issue is we are not sure who is going to show up. Two senior U.S. military officers and Bednarek said that with few exceptions, the most effective and only truly non-sectarian Iraqi government fighting force is the Iraqi Special Forces, sometimes called the Counter-Terrorism Service. American officials expressed worry that the Special Forces units may burn out after nearly two years of continuous combat. MILITIA INFLUENCE Across Iraq, regular Iraqi army units have largely watched from the sidelines as Iraqi Special Forces and Shi'ite militias have reclaimed land from Islamic State, current and former U.S. military officials said. Militias have repeatedly taken advantage of the power vacuums that have emerged after Islamic State defeats. The Iraqi military operations command of Salahuddin province, north of Baghdad, is dominated by a Shi'ite militia leader, Abu Mehdi Mohandis, according to a current U.S. military officer, an Iraqi security official and three Iraqi officials who monitor the province. Mohandis serves as the chief state administrator for Shiite paramilitary forces. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned him in 2009 for allegedly attacking U.S. forces in Iraq. He was also convicted in absentia by Kuwaiti courts for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait. The Fifth Iraqi Army Division in eastern Diyala province is considered to be under the command of the Badr group, a powerful Shiite militia and political party with strong ties to Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, according to four current and former U.S. military officers. In Baghdad, U.S. military officers estimate that 10 percent to 20 percent of the 300 officers who run the Iraqi military's Operations Command have an affinity or association with either the Badr militia or the Shiite religious leader Muqtada al Sadr. And after Iraqi Special Forces, aided by U.S. air strikes, captured a strategic oil refinery in the town of Baiji in October, Shiite militias looted all of its salvageable equipment, according to a senior U.S. military official and three Iraqi government officials. Over the past year, U.S. military officers have struggled to ensure that militias do not seize American weaponry delivered to the main Iraqi army supply depot in Taji and to a brigade in the Saqlawiya region. We would transfer arms to units in those areas - and either because of corrupt commanders or outright robbery - they would end up in the hands of the militia groups, said one U.S. officer. The officer noted, however, that controls have been tightened and the number of cases was small. "You can't eliminate it entirely. It's just not realistic." "AN OFFICIAL BODY" Iraqi government and senior paramilitary leaders said the reports of poor training and Shi'ite militia dominance in the military are false. They said the militias follow the orders of the prime minister and his military commanders. Iraqi defense ministry spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool called the militias an official body connected with the office of the commander-in-chief of the armed forces." He said they take their orders only from government officials and "have a great role in supporting the army forces and the federal police. Mohammed Bayati, a former human rights minister and senior Badr group leader, now commands forces in northern Salahuddin Province. He said the Shiite paramilitaries fall under the army, police and regular military chain-of-command. Bayati told Reuters that any reports of militias operating on their own were false. Yesterday, I was in the Salahuddin Operations Command, he said. "All orders are coming from the police and army leadership." The Shi'ite militias "are supporting the army and police. The spokesman for the government umbrella body that oversees the militias, Ahmed Al-Asadi, said the Shi'ite forces did not loot the Baiji refinery. "I deny totally such allegations," he said. Islamic State, he said, stole and destroyed equipment. The office of Prime Minister Abadi and the Iraqi Embassy in Washington didn't respond to requests for comment. AMERICAN CONCERNS But current and former U.S. military officials and local Sunni leaders say the militias continue to take advantage of the vacuums that emerge in predominantly Sunni areas after Islamic State forces are defeated. A lack of strong regular army units allows the militias to remain the dominant players. Norman Ricklefs, a former U.S. government adviser to the Iraqi interior and defense ministries, said the state has still not filled the void in most areas retaken from ISIS. He said militias are the most powerful they have been since Iraqi government forces defeated them in a series of battles across Iraq in 2008. Ricklefs regularly visits Iraq and maintains ties with the Iraqi security apparatus and Shiite and Sunni politicians. In the cities the militias occupy - Samarra and Tikrit and significant parts of eastern Baghdad - they are the most powerful force, Ricklefs said. "For the first time since 2008, the government has lost control of large parts of cities" to Shiite militias. One senior U.S military official said the setbacks call into question the Obama administration's overall strategy in Iraq. He said any military training effort would fail until the U.S. put more pressure on Iraq's Shi'ite and Sunni political leaders to strike a genuine power-sharing agreement. "We need to accelerate the reconciliation piece to make Sunnis feel they are part of the government, said the official, who asked not to be named. Are we really in any way focused on that?" Obama administration officials said the U.S. strategy is succeeding and Iraqi forces have steadily grown stronger with American support. U.S. advisers have helped train existing units and set up two new Iraqi divisions, according to American and Iraqi officials. They achieved this despite struggling with shortfalls in Iraqi funding to hire new soldiers and a shortage of Iraqi Shiite volunteers. But there has been little improvement in overall Iraqi army combat readiness, according to a U.S. civilian official, one ex-official, a former general and three current senior U.S. military officers. Last October, American military officials estimated that only five Iraqi army divisions were ready for battle and put their combat readiness at only 60 to 65 percent. Today, those figures have increased only marginally, the officials said. 'LION'S SHARE' OF PROGRESS The U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Colonel Chris Garver, said that despite the difficulties, U.S. forces have seen Iraqi army units improve after training. He also cited advances by army brigades in areas around Falluja as signs of success. But Garver acknowledged that the lions share of military offensives has been spearheaded by the Special Forces, and that two years of battle are taking a toll on Iraqs elite soldiers. The Government of Iraq has relied heavily on the Iraqi special operations forces and the potential for these forces being depleted into combat ineffectiveness is a real concern, he said. Garver said the regular Iraqi army continues to struggle with increasing its ranks. Recruiting and funding have both been well-documented challenges for the GOI," or Government of Iraq. "These are areas the GOI must address. Brigadier Rasool, the Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman, rejected any suggestion that the regular Iraqi army was not an equal partner to the Iraqi Special Forces. We have troops who were able to retake land from Daesh, Rasool said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. After the fall of Mosul, the Ministry of Defenses joint command has resupplied and retrained the Iraqi security forces. The current and former U.S. officials contended that the Falluja offensive is again exposing the weakness of regular army units. "The regular army does not seem to have been rebuilt," Ricklefs said, "and its a real pity. (Reported by Ned Parker in New York and Jonathan Landay in Washington. Warren Strobel and Yara Bayoumy contributed reporting from Washington; Edited by David Rohde and John Walcott) By John Miller and John O'Donnell ZURICH/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - An unusual number of suicides by top executives in Switzerland has prompted introspection in its business community over how senior managers are dealing with stress as its companies struggle to retain their status in the global economy. The death last week of the former chief executive of Zurich Insurance, Martin Senn, came less than three years after the insurer's finance chief, Pierre Wauthier, took his own life. Wauthier had blamed pressure from the company's then chairman Josef Ackermann in a suicide note, although Ackermann was cleared in a subsequent investigation. Acquaintances of Senn, 59, said he had been withdrawn since he was ousted from the company late last year, though few details of the circumstances that led to him shooting himself at his family home in the upmarket Alpine resort of Klosters have emerged. Martin Naville, chief executive of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce, said the business circles where Senn and Wauthier once moved had been left shocked, pondering what could have been done to prevent the tragedies. "The only thing you can do is to be more attentive to signs," Naville said. He knew Senn, who was president of the chamber, as well as Wauthier, who had British-French dual citizenship. He also knew Carsten Schloter, the German-born head of telecoms group Swisscom, who took his life in 2013, and Alex Widmer, head of bank Julius Baer, who committed suicide in 2008. Their deaths contrast with the picture postcard image of Switzerland as one of the world's wealthiest and most stable countries. Switzerland's overall suicide rate is below the global average, roughly in line with countries such as Germany, according to the World Health Organisation. Naville said he saw nothing in Swiss executive culture to explain the deaths. "Every case can be very different," he said. "Human beings are so complicated." But others describe a generation of managers caught between highly demanding international investors and Switzerland's conservative traditions. Story continues "If you fail, you are expected to excuse yourself from the conversation and drop any further ambitions. You're not expected to show your face again," said Susan Kish, a former UBS banker who has started a number of businesses, including an entrepreneurship network in Zurich. PROXY FOR SWISS ECONOMY Switzerland has been hit in the past few years by a slowing global economy and a strong franc currency that has hurt vital exports. Zurich Insurance mirrors many of the challenges and is now in the throes of restructuring as it slashes thousands of jobs. "Zurich (Insurance) is a proxy for the Swiss economy," said Stefan Michel of Swiss business school IMD. "Switzerland is no longer an island," he said. "The pressure from global shareholders and regulators is increasing. Whenever I ask people in the financial sector how they feel, they answer: 'I am tired'." Staid for most of its nearly 150 years, Zurich Insurance rose to prominence in the 1990s with a series of takeovers. But its fortunes turned in 2001, when the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States left it with heavy losses, while runaway expenses at its headquarters hit the bottom line and shareholder trust. It underwent an overhaul before Senn was appointed CEO of Zurich in 2010. Its chairman from 2012, Josef Ackermann, formerly Deutsche Bank's CEO, was pushing management to abandon its conservative course, people familiar with the matter have told Reuters, and take more risks on its investments to bolster returns. Ackermann resigned after Wauthier's suicide note suggested he had been driven into a corner by the chairman, who was later exonerated in an investigation. Senn is remembered fondly by employees who spoke to Reuters as someone who knew staff by name and shook hands with everyone at meetings, regardless of rank. But after a series of profit warnings and an aborted takeover attempt for British rival RSA (RSA.L), he was pressured out by the company's Dutch chairman Tom de Swaan last year. Reinhard Sprenger, an author and management consultant who has advised top Swiss firms, said corporate setbacks, with the near collapse of bank UBS during the financial crisis and the bankruptcy of airline Swissair, have jolted the country. "The Swiss were once supremely self confident ... that has changed and they have come back to earth." The annual economic conference in the Swiss resort of Davos, one of the top gatherings for the world's policymakers and business leaders, has become shorthand for a new generation of driven managers who put their corporations above national interests, said James Breiding, author of a book on how Switzerland became successful. "Like Japan, Switzerland had a strong sense of community and egalitarianism. In the last 20 years, we've seen the emergence, however, of the 'Davos man,'" he said. "Those men that embraced the Davos scepter found themselves in an increasingly lonely club." (Additional reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by Susan Fenton) Recent college graduates are facing the possibilities of what comes next new job, more school, and, of course, student loans. While repaying those loans might be daunting, one Boston school decided to offer its former students a chance for some help, in exchange for donations. Northeastern University reportedly sent out a text to a select group of alumni, saying they'd be entered for a chance to win $1,000 to put toward student loans that is, if they gave back to their alma mater. "Summer's on us! Make a gift to NU and you could win $1K toward your student loan payments," the text, which is making the rounds on social media, reads. Get Your Free Credit Score & Monitoring Plus Weekly Updates From Our 50+ Experts Get It Now Privacy Policy Undergraduate tuition at Northeastern University averages about $60,000 each year, according to their site. For the full four years, that's about $240,000, not including room and board, books or other school-related expenses. While any help with repaying student loan debt would be a godsend, many people were not pleased with the campaign and took to social media to air their gripes. "@CALawMama I would still have a lot of debt even if I won. I would def donate to yr alma mater 4 a chance at 100k! #StillInsultingButLessSo," one person tweeted in response to the news. "Got that text this morning and legit laughed out loud," another person wrote on Twitter. "Come on NU, you're not this tone deaf." Northeastern University said in an email to Credit.com that the campaign has already ended. "Inspired by a well-intentioned donor, the university launched a one-time text message campaign to a limited group of alumni," a spokesperson for the university wrote. "It was a one-day effort and has now concluded." Paying Back Student Loans Though Northeastern's message garnered negative attention, you may welcome the chance for some help in paying off your student loan debt. But instead of betting on a lotto, you may want to consider some of the student loan forgiveness plans outlined here. Story continues Remember, missed student loan payments can impact your credit score. (To see how your student loan debt is affecting your credit, you can view your free credit report summary, updated each month, on Credit.com.) There are some options for people who are behind on federal student loan payments. To get out of default, you can combine eligible loans with a federal Direct Consolidation Loan, or you can go through the government's default rehabilitation program. If you make nine consecutive on-time payments (and the payments can be extremely low), your account goes back into good standing, and the default is removed from your credit report. More from Credit.com (Reuters) - Facebook Inc's (FB.O) board has proposed removing Mark Zuckerberg's majority voting control in the event of the social media giant's chief executive and founder deciding to exit management at some point in future. In a proxy filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook's board said it would ask shareholders to vote on a proposal that would convert Zuckerberg's Class B shares into Class A shares if he is no longer in a leadership position. The move was first proposed in late April in a regulatory filing. As of June 2, Zuckerberg beneficially owned about 4 million Class A shares and about 419 million Class B shares, collectively representing about 53.8 percent of total outstanding voting power and 14.8 percent of total outstanding economic interests. The proposed move, to be voted on at Facebook's annual general meeting on June 20, is designed to make sure a future Facebook chief's management powers aren't limited, the board said. "These new terms thus ensure that we will not remain a founder-controlled company after we cease to be a founder-led company," the board said in the filing on Thursday. (http://bit.ly/1Y5tYkP) Under current provisions, Zuckerberg is allowed to hold Class B shares and exercise majority voting control even if he leaves the company. Zuckerberg would also be allowed to pass his Class B shares, and possibly his majority voting control, to descendants after his death. (Reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell) By Dmitry Zhdannikov, Rania El Gamal and Reem Shamseddine VIENNA (Reuters) - Russian oil billionaire Vagit Alekperov isn't easily swayed, but Saudi Arabia's new Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih achieved it this week. Intense diplomacy by the soft-spoken Falih at his first OPEC meeting - with his speech peppered by words such as "gentle approach", "no shocks" and "consensus" - has persuaded Alekperov that OPEC is more alive than dead. "The fact that OPEC agreed on its new management shows they want to regain their coordinating role. The cartel will perform market management again," Alekperov, chief executive of Russian energy firm Lukoil, said after meeting Falih and Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh separately in Vienna. On Thursday, OPEC could not agree to set a clear oil-output target as Iran refused to limit its own production. But the meeting was relatively peaceful and free of the usual clashes between political rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, with Falih promising not to flood the market and to listen to Tehran. In a rare compromise, OPEC also decided unanimously to appoint Nigeria's Mohammed Barkindo as its new secretary-general after years of friction over the issue. Oil prices stood flat at $50 a barrel on Friday, up 80 percent from their January lows. Falih, who in April succeeded veteran Ali al-Naimi, was the first OPEC minister to arrive in Vienna. He met most fellow colleagues on the sidelines, spent several hours with independent OPEC analysts and held a long news conference with reporters. "If you want to call it (OPEC) a talking shop - I have no problem with that. But I think it's going to do a lot more than talking. We are going to do coordination and cooperation ... to achieve market objectives," Falih said on Thursday. DRIVERLESS CAR The nature of Thursday's meeting surprised many OPEC watchers, who have grown used to acrimonious gatherings. Falih's ultimate boss, Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, effectively scuppered plans to clinch a global production freeze in the Qatari capital of Doha in April. Story continues Prince Mohammad said Riyadh would not agree to the deal, which would also have involved non-OPEC Russia, if Iran didn't join in despite Tehran insisting it wants to regain market share after the lifting of international sanctions earlier this year. "After Doha, oil markets were beginning to look like a driverless car. That needed to change," said a source familiar with Saudi thinking. A non-Gulf OPEC source said Riyadh realized it needed OPEC unity because the group's fight for market share against higher-cost producers, such as U.S. shale, was taking longer than expected when formulated in 2014. "The Saudis trashed OPEC in Doha. But they realized they don't want to throw away decades of OPEC history and decided to be more cooperative," said Gary Ross, founder of U.S.-based Pira consultancy, who came to Vienna together with other OPEC watchers and analysts for meetings. "The Saudis definitely decided to change tack after Doha as they were concerned that people were doubting the viability of OPEC. I think this softer approach will last," said Amrita Sen, who also came to Vienna. Falih acknowledges that Riyadh realized it needs OPEC. "The markets can ultimately balance themselves but as we have seen, when we rely on markets alone it is extremely painful for everybody," he said on Thursday. "I think managing in the traditional way that we have tried in the past may never come again ... We will not go with setting a price target for OPEC ... But (we should be) coordinating strategies and trying to understand what each of us can and cannot do." (Additional reporting by Alex Lawler and Shadia Nasralla; Writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov; Editing by Dale Hudson; Editing by Dale Hudson) By Dmitry Zhdannikov, Rania El Gamal and Reem Shamseddine VIENNA (Reuters) - Russian oil billionaire Vagit Alekperov isn't easily swayed, but Saudi Arabia's new Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih achieved it this week. Intense diplomacy by the soft-spoken Falih at his first OPEC meeting - with his speech peppered by words such as "gentle approach", "no shocks" and "consensus" - has persuaded Alekperov that OPEC is more alive than dead. "The fact that OPEC agreed on its new management shows they want to regain their coordinating role. The cartel will perform market management again," Alekperov, chief executive of Russian energy firm Lukoil, said after meeting Falih and Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh separately in Vienna. On Thursday, OPEC could not agree to set a clear oil-output target as Iran refused to limit its own production. But the meeting was relatively peaceful and free of the usual clashes between political rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, with Falih promising not to flood the market and to listen to Tehran. In a rare compromise, OPEC also decided unanimously to appoint Nigeria's Mohammed Barkindo as its new secretary-general after years of friction over the issue. Oil prices stood flat at $50 a barrel on Friday, up 80 percent from their January lows. Falih, who in April succeeded veteran Ali al-Naimi, was the first OPEC minister to arrive in Vienna. He met most fellow colleagues on the sidelines, spent several hours with independent OPEC analysts and held a long news conference with reporters. "If you want to call it (OPEC) a talking shop - I have no problem with that. But I think it's going to do a lot more than talking. We are going to do coordination and cooperation ... to achieve market objectives," Falih said on Thursday. DRIVERLESS CAR The nature of Thursday's meeting surprised many OPEC watchers, who have grown used to acrimonious gatherings. Falih's ultimate boss, Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, effectively scuppered plans to clinch a global production freeze in the Qatari capital of Doha in April. Prince Mohammad said Riyadh would not agree to the deal, which would also have involved non-OPEC Russia, if Iran didn't join in despite Tehran insisting it wants to regain market share after the lifting of international sanctions earlier this year. "After Doha, oil markets were beginning to look like a driverless car. That needed to change," said a source familiar with Saudi thinking. A non-Gulf OPEC source said Riyadh realized it needed OPEC unity because the group's fight for market share against higher-cost producers, such as U.S. shale, was taking longer than expected when formulated in 2014. "The Saudis trashed OPEC in Doha. But they realized they don't want to throw away decades of OPEC history and decided to be more cooperative," said Gary Ross, founder of U.S.-based Pira consultancy, who came to Vienna together with other OPEC watchers and analysts for meetings. "The Saudis definitely decided to change tack after Doha as they were concerned that people were doubting the viability of OPEC. I think this softer approach will last," said Amrita Sen, who also came to Vienna. Falih acknowledges that Riyadh realized it needs OPEC. "The markets can ultimately balance themselves but as we have seen, when we rely on markets alone it is extremely painful for everybody," he said on Thursday. "I think managing in the traditional way that we have tried in the past may never come again ... We will not go with setting a price target for OPEC ... But (we should be) coordinating strategies and trying to understand what each of us can and cannot do." (Additional reporting by Alex Lawler and Shadia Nasralla; Writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov; Editing by Dale Hudson; Editing by Dale Hudson) Lima (AFP) - Peru's presidential race is tightening on the eve of Sunday's elections, with one poll showing a virtual tie between Keiko Fujimori, daughter of an ex-leader jailed for massacres, and former Wall Street banker Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. A divisive conservative figure, the 41-year-old Fujimori remains the favorite to win the runoff vote despite her father Alberto Fujimori's dark legacy. But three last-minute polls showed her earlier estimated lead of more than five percentage points had narrowed. Part of the large chunk of previously undecided voters appeared to be opting for Kuczynski, 77, a former economy minister and World Bank executive. Pollster GfK said Friday its latest survey indicated Fujimori had 50.3 percent of the vote to 49.7 percent for Kuczynski. "That is clearly a technical tie," GfK director Hernan Chaparro told foreign media in a news conference. Another pollster, Datum, said Fujimori had 52.1 percent of the vote to 47.9 percent for Kuczynski, known as "PPK." "PPK is gaining support from undecided voters," said Datum's director Urpi Torrado. Pollster CPI on Thursday gave Fujimori 51.6 percent to 48.4 percent for Kuczynski. CPI director Manuel Saavedra estimated some five percent of voters are still undecided. That is enough to swing the result against the populist conservative Fujimori. - Crimes against humanity - Fujimori is popular among poor rural communities but also has a high disapproval rating nationwide. Many Peruvians associate Fujimori with her father's authoritarian rule. He is in jail for corruption and for crimes against humanity, for massacres of opponents he alleged were terrorists in the 1990s. Some 23 million Peruvians are obliged to vote on Sunday in the election to replace outgoing leftist President Ollanta Humala. Both candidates have vowed to fight crime and create jobs in the South American mineral exporter, one of the region's strongest economies. Story continues "I want to be president of Peru to work for change... to build a great, prosperous country that is united and reconciled," Fujimori told supporters at her closing campaign rally. "With the support of all of you, I will have the honor of becoming Peru's first woman president." Kuczynski stressed his long experience as a financier and minister. "We are going to hit the ground running," he told supporters of his Peruvians for Change party. "We will not have to read the instruction manual, because we know what must be done." - Corruption allegations - The election campaigns have been stained by allegations of corruption and irregularities. Ahead of the first round, opponents tried to get Keiko Fujimori excluded for alleged vote-buying. The electoral board dismissed the case against her but expelled several other candidates. A corruption scandal struck the secretary general of her Popular Force party, Joaquin Ramirez. He resigned after media revealed the US Drug Enforcement Agency was investigating him over suspected money-laundering. Kuczynski has vowed to stamp out corruption and violence by drug gangs, promising to stop Peru becoming a "narco-state." Fujimori criticized him as an ally of big business, out of touch with ordinary citizens. "For many people, it is surprising that she enjoys such popularity. But many of Keiko's supporters remember her father's tough line on terrorism and think that she can be similarly tough on crime," Maria Luisa Puig, an analyst at the Eurasia group consultancy, told AFP. "Peruvian elections are always quite unpredictable." A poll by Ipsos a week ahead of the vote had given Fujimori a lead of 5.3 percentage points. Since then, she has faced a tough televised debate with Kuczynski and a mass rally against her in Lima on May 31. The third-place candidate from the first round, leftist Veronika Mendoza, threw her support behind Kuczynski. Both runoff candidates are seen as pro-market in their policy plans to further Peru's economic growth. The Lima stock exchange closed 2.2 percent higher on Friday. The painkiller is 50 times more potent than heroin. Amid all the speculation and controversy, the death of legendary artist Prince has been officially ruled an accidental opioid overdose. The Midwest Medical Examiner's Office in Minnesota released an autopsy report yesterday listing the cause of his death as an accident, and citing fentanyl toxicity. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid painkiller approved for treating very severe pain. While it's in the same class as more commonly prescribed opioids (such as oxycodone), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warns that fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) describes fentanyl as the "most potent opioid available for use in medical treatment." In an interview with People, addiction expert Ben Levenson said the drug was originally intended for palliative careto relieve the suffering of people with grave illnesses. He explained that fentanyl is not ideal for regular pain management: "It hits you fast and it wears off fast, so it's not a good drug for someone who is, for instance, recovering from knee surgery, although it's widely prescribed. It was never designed for that." RELATED: What Everyone Needs to Know About Opioids Levenson, who founded a series of addiction treatment centers called Origins Behavioral Healthcare, also pointed out that fentanyl is prescribed in micrograms as opposed to milligrams because it's so potent. (According to the DEA, a dose as small as 0.25 mg is potentially lethal.) The drug is "highly sought after by addicts," Levenson said. Fentanyl and other opioids are becoming an enormous problem in the U.S., as more and more people become dependent on them. We underestimated the addictive potential of opioid painkillers [at first] and theyve been overprescribed," Antoine Douaihy, MD, a professor of psychiatry and medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, told Health in a previous interview. Story continues The CDC reports that one in four patients treated with long-term opioid therapy in a primary care setting end up struggling with addiction. Since 1999, deaths from prescription opioids have quadrupled. The problem is that patients build up a tolerance to these drugs. Opioids work on the reward center of the brain, and the more you take them, the more you need to get the same effect. We have a health care system that doesnt provide good education about how to manage pain, said Dr. Douaihy. And the easiest answer [for treating patients pain] is to give them a prescription for opioid painkillers without taking into consideration any factors that could put them at risk for misusing or abusing them. RELATED: FDA Approves Implant to Battle Opioid Addiction "If a patient reports, 'My pain is an 8,' you have to treat them at an 8," Levenson told People. "The reason people get to the level of needing fentanyl, and doctors going ahead and prescribing them is because they've worked their way through lower-strength opiates." Fentanyl is administered in a variety of ways, under various brand names. Duragesic is a skin patch, for example; Sublimaze is an injection; and Acqtic is delivered orally through a "lollipop." According to the CDC, most fentanyl-related overdoses and deaths are linked to an illicit version of the drug that's often mixed with heroin or cocaine. The situation is getting worse very quickly. In Ohio, for example, the agency estimates that there was a 500% surge in fentanyl-related overdoses between 2013 and 2014. Last March, the DEA issued a national alert classifying fentanyl as a threat to health and public safety. And the New York Times recently reported that in some states, accidental deaths due to fentanyl abuse are surpassing the number of deaths from heroin abuse. If you have been prescribed fentanyl or another opioid medication, consult with your doctor to get all the information you need to take the drug safely, including the correct dosage and frequency, and whether any underlying health issues put you at higher risk for an overdose. Prince's cause of death has been confirmed: The pop icon overdosed on a potent synthetic opioid called fentanyl. Fentanyl is up to 50 times more powerful than heroin and up to 100 times more powerful than morphine, and is "the most potent opioid available for use in medical treatment," according to the Drug Enforcement Agency. Like other opioid drugs such as heroin, oxycodone and morphine fentanyl binds to opioid receptors in the brain and fuels the production of dopamine, which triggers pain relief and feelings of pleasure. Fentanyl can be taken in a number of formats, including intravenously, intranasally or as a tablet, patch or lozenge. Doctors can prescribe it, but it's also being sold on the streets. Fentanyl-related overdoses have been occurring "at an alarming rate" in recent years, the DEA stated. In this year alone, the drug has been linked to 10 deaths in 12 days in the Sacramento area, at least 19 deaths in 11 days in Buffalo and eight deaths in a single week in Milwaukee County. Source: TOM GANNAM/AP Given the staggering number of fentanyl-related deaths Prince's included there's no question we need treatment options for folks who are addicted to it. But which treatment option works best? "The jury is still out," John Merrigan, register of the Franklin County Probate and Family Court in Massachusetts and co-chair and founder of the Opioid Task Force, said in a phone interview Friday. In the opioid-addiction-treatment community, there's debate over which forms of treatment are superior. Some treatments involve completely abstaining from drug use think 12-step programs or abstinence-only rehab centers. Others involve using legal, less euphoric opioid drugs such as Suboxone or methadone to manage withdrawal symptoms and drug cravings. Source: Uncredited/AP The abstinence approach: Origins Behavioral Healthcare, a network of recovery centers in Florida and Texas, uses different types of care to help patients achieve sobriety. Patients undergo a medical detox, then receive different types of therapy that meet their own individual needs, from psychiatry to psychodrama to sensory deprivation tanks. When they've finished an inpatient program, some Origins patients move to a transitional, clinically-supervised sober living environment. Story continues For founder Ben Levenson, there are certain cases where longterm maintenance drugs are appropriate, but "the goal is abstinence," he said in a phone call Friday. Detoxing alone isn't nearly enough to end people's opioid use for good. "People go to detox for a week, or two weeks, and then they return to their regular housing where their neighbor's their dealer," Merrigan said. He's seen people with opioid addiction go in and out of detox "seven or eight times." "They're overdosing when they come out," he said. That's why Levenson's facilities address the internal issues causing people's addictions. "My patients don't have a drug and alcohol problem they have a drug and alcohol solution," Levenson said. "It's what they're using to get okay inside." An Origins facility in Texas. In a report provided to Mic via email, Origins tracked "use events" among 388 patients who completed a year-long post-discharge recovery support system. Among those who finished the full program and didn't go "out of contact" before it was over 219 had no use event, while 169 did. Clients who stayed in an Origins inpatient treatment for 60 or 90 days were less likely to have a use event than those who completed 30- or 45-day stays. The maintenance approach: For Maia Szalavitz, a science journalist who has covered drug issues for decades and is the author of Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction, the best way to treat opioid addiction is clear. "The only thing proven to reduce death rates is maintenance with Suboxone or methadone," she said in a phone interview Friday. "Anybody who recommends anything other than that is potentially putting patients at risk of dying." Source: Spencer Platt/Getty Images Maintenance therapy gives patients a steady tolerance to opioids, making it harder for them to overdose. As the National Institute on Drug Abuse points out, studies have shown methadone maintenance therapy reduces illicit drug use, lethal overdoses, criminal activity, needle sharing and HIV infection rates among other benefits. The World Health Organization recognizes methadone as "the most effective" treatment for opioid drug abuse, and the National Institutes of Health has stated that "all opiate-dependent persons under legal supervision should have access to methadone maintenance therapy." Drugs like Suboxone and methadone do have their downsides: They can be sold on the street or traded for heroin, and some people experience unpleasant side effects. There are also folks who favor abstinence because they don't think it's right to continue taking opioid drugs potentially for the rest of your life. "The argument for abstinence-only treatment is, 'We're morally superior,'" Szalavitz said. "But that's not an argument that should be allowed to win in the face of death." The takeaway: No matter the eventual form of treatment, Merrigan stressed that early intervention is key that, and raising awareness about how dangerous fentanyl really is. "You have to hope for next generation to be educated and aware of how destructive this drug is to your body, your life your family," he said. "Stay away." Tetelcingo (Mexico) (AFP) - A fetus, a two-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl were among 117 human remains recovered from a mass grave made by Mexican authorities in 2014, officials said. It took 12 days for forensic experts to dig the pit in the central state of Morelos, and there was one more body than they previously believed were buried in a cemetery in Tetelcingo. Morelos attorney general Javier Perez said authorities are investigating why they had a registry of 116 bodies instead of 117. Authorities will continue digging to make sure there are no other unknown bodies. The case has caused outrage in Mexico, where more than 28,000 people have disappeared in a decade of drug violence. Families of missing people came from other states to observe as authorities began to dig the grave on May 23. Perez said the fetus, a 36-week-old female -- nearly full term -- was found dead on a street in 2012 in the city of Cuernavaca. The seven-year-old girl was found on December 26, 2012, between Cuernavaca and Jiutepec, and an autopsy concluded that she had died of a contusion in the chest. The two-year-old boy was discovered in a river in April 2013, with his death caused by head trauma. The bodies of the children were never claimed, Perez said. The law allows authorities to bury bodies that are not identified and that nobody claims, but irregularities were found in the Tetelcingo case. Some bodies were buried without a document with a case number, or the number was ineligible. Perez said 28 remains did not have a genetic registry. Authorities have not said how many crime victims were among the bodies. - A mother's despair - The scandal erupted after a mother launched a legal battle to recover the body of her son, Oliver Wenceslao Navarrete Hernandez. Navarrete was found dead after he was kidnapped in 2013. His family was unable to bury him because prosecutors insisted on keeping the body for forensic tests. But the body vanished from official records until an official revealed that Navarrete was buried in the mass grave with apparently falsified documents. Story continues His family was present when officials opened the grave for the first time in December 2014, and they made a video of the grim dig. But it was not until November 2015 that the discovery became public. Under pressure, authorities agreed to exhume all the bodies and open an investigation. One former official from the state prosecutor's office is facing charges and another is investigation. "We will continue (to look into the actions of) other public servants and former officials," Perez said. Perez said DNA samples were taken from each body in a bid to identify all of them. The 117 remains were taken to another cemetery, "The Garden of Memories," where they will be placed in wall crypts. By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - Generic drugmakers, hoping for rich pickings from the launch of copies of GlaxoSmithKline's best-selling Advair inhaler in the United States next year, say they can win business without a race to the bottom on price. "Nobody wants to kill the market," said Rajiv Malik, president of Mylan, which will have the first commercial Advair copy, assuming U.S. regulators approve its substitutable generic device by a target date of March 28, 2017. A rival version from Hikma and Vectura is hot on its heels, with an approval date of May 10. After that, however, there will be a hiatus, which Malik thinks will curb excessive price discounting. "It will be GSK plus one competitor for some months and then two competitors for maybe 12 to 18 months," he said in an interview. "We believe it is not going to be a commodities product." Ventura chief executive James Ward-Lilley agrees, pointing out that the two initial generic suppliers will not be in a position to replace all GSK's business. Mylan wont have the manufacturing capacity to serve the whole market. Nor will we. That should lead to some rational behavior in terms of pricing, he said. The stakes are high for all concerned. Advair, for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), is a major opportunity for generics companies at a time when fewer blockbuster medicines are losing patent protection, after a wave of expirations that peaked in 2012. For GSK, U.S. generic Advair is a challenge as tries to return to growth while coping with declining sales of a product that has sold more than $1 billion annually since 2001. Global Advair sales, which hit a high of $8.3 billion in 2013, were $5.6 billion in 2015, with half that generated in the United States. Although Advair is already available generically in Europe, demand for copies is expected to take off more swiftly in the United States, where managers of prescription plans, like Express Scripts, can quickly drive conversion. "You see in the U.S., unlike in Europe, very rapid switching between brands and between molecules and between devices," said Ward-Lilley. "Doctors are agnostic and are not in control of the decisions." The U.S. price of Advair has already come down a lot in the past two years, under pressure from players like Express, and falling revenues means it accounted for 12 percent of GSK group sales in the first quarter, down from 20 percent in 2013. Advair inhalers, typically lasting a month, officially retail for more than $330 in the United States but industry analysts estimate GSK can offer discounts of around 50 percent. GSK declined to comment. Nonetheless, Malik said there remained "quite a bit of room" for generics to undercut Advair without wrecking the market. "Yes, GSK has been under price pressure recently but the price is still pretty attractive to bring in a generic," he said. Although the U.S. patent on Advair expired in 2010, an additional patent on the Diskus inhaler used to deliver the drug runs until August 2016. That and the difficulty of making the two-in-one medicine has delayed competitors. Malik, who says Mylan has invested some $325 million in a factory in Ireland to make generic Advair, expects competition down the road from Sandoz, the generics unit of Novartis, and Teva - but it won't be a crowded market. There are, of course, still regulatory uncertainties. Will the U.S. Food and Drug Administration give approval on time or will it delay, given the complexity of the drug and device? And will generics be fully substitutable, as their makers hope? After years of citing the difficulty of copying Advair, GSK changed its tune last year and said it was now factoring in the prospect of U.S. generics, which could erode U.S. Advair sales to just 300 million pounds ($433 million) in 2020. Yet GSK still expects its respiratory business in 2020 to be at least as big as it was in 2015, thanks to the arrival of new lung medicines, including new kinds of inhaled drugs, a recently approved injection for severe asthma and a three-in-one inhaler for COPD. "We're feeling rather positive about the positioning of new products in the respiratory field at a time when Advair sales are coming down," said Patrick Vallance, GSK's president of pharmaceuticals R&D. (Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Ruth Pitchford) Chen Shi (Liao Fan), the suavely severe hero of The Final Master, is an apostle of the Wing Chun style of hand-to-hand combat. The moment you witness the hair-raising brand of Wing Chun he favors, you see why someone could be religiously devoted to this particular school of kickass: Its cooler than cool. In The Final Master, the principal weapon on display is a dragon pole with a pair of butterfly swords attached to each end. It looks like a giant Swiss Army knife, and when Chen and one of his opponents go at each other, whipping those double-edged blade blossoms through the air (whoosh! whoosh! whoosh!), then slamming the daggers against each other (clang! clang!), we seem to have walked into the worlds most primitive yet elaborate street fight. Its like seeing a lightsaber duel in which each fighter has the limbs of Edward Scissorhands. The combat scenes in The Final Master are galvanizing, and the most catchy element in them may be the post-sync sound effects. The airy scrape of metal on metal lends the scenes a slashing excitement. The Final Master was written and directed by Xu Haofeng, the popular author of martial-arts fiction who wrote the screenplay for Wong Kar-wais The Grandmaster (2013). That movie was also the tale of a Wing Chun maestro Ip Man, the guru who ultimately trained Bruce Lee and though its images had a historical glow, it was a somber mess of a movie; it had neither enough fighting nor enough of consequence to make up for the absence of fighting. The Final Master, set in Tianjin in the 1930s, is actually a far better film, because Xu, as a storyteller, has crafted it as a likably skewed piece of wuxia mythology. Its a passionate comic book in which the combat has meaning. Chen, with his moody poker face (he looks like a goateed Matt Damon with bangs), takes a beautiful wife (Song Jia), who up until then he has barely spoken to, and he also takes on a brilliant apprentice, the feral prodigy Geng Liang Chen (Song Yang), a former coolie he trains to face off against the champions of eight out of the citys 19 fight-club academies. Only if he can defeat all eight will Chen be allowed to set up his own academy. If that entry bar sounds extreme enough to be a little nuts, have no fear it is. And thats without mentioning that Geng, even if he does succeed in winning all eight battles, will then be ostracized, and perhaps murdered, for the crime of having made the academies lose face. (And you thought getting into Oberlin was hard.) What makes all of this jumping-through-hoops ritual absorbing, rather than annoying, is that its driven by Chens devotion at all cost to the holy cause of Wing Chun. Liao Fan conveys the glamorous burden of an East-meets-Western hero, and the spark that animates the fight scenes, each of which is staged with its own unique tenor and style (and weapons!), is that theyre all being fought for a higher cause. Call it the Force of Wing Chun. The story is choppy, to the point of being needlessly confusing at times, yet it also disarms our expectations in likable ways. We dont get the usual training-of-the-disciple sequence, and that may be because the film doesnt want the audience to develop too close an identification with Geng, since its built into his relationship with Chen that hes going to be betrayed. Chen remains the hero, a man of grudging nobility, yet he is plotted against from all sides, and his marriage is a hotbed of pain, since Song Jias Guohui Zhao is in agony over the child she was forced to give up because of his non-Chinese father. For a martial-arts picture, theres an unusual amount of angst rolling around in The Final Master. Thats one reason the fights are cathartic. Theyre exploding with the emotion the rest of the movie scarcely knows what to do with. Chen takes on each fight as a solemn call of duty, and Liao Fan, so commanding in the 2014 noir thriller Black Coal, Thin Ice, proves a dynamic physical actor by mimicking one of Bruce Lees most magnetic traits: His movements are lightningbut minimal. He does just enough to hit you, or cut you. When Chen faces off in an alleyway against an army of thugs equipped with bamboo staffs, or, later on, a cadre of academy hooligans wielding knives the size of car bumpers, hes so good at turning their own energy against them that his enemies seem to melt on contact. The Final Master isnt the knockout it could have been (the script has enough holes to feel a little too hollow), and it has virtually no chance to cross over to stateside audiences the way that films like House of Flying Daggers and Kung Fu Hustle did a decade ago. But if Xu can figure out a way to streamline his talent, he has the makings of a movie like that in him. An Inconvenient Truth, the epochal Al Gore/Davis Guggenheim documentary about climate change (which back then was still routinely called global warming), came out 10 years ago last week. There have been any number of climate-change docs since, and none of them has summoned anything like the impact of Gores seismic cinematic lecture. But one of the few nonfiction filmmakers whos come close to inspiring that level of conversation on any subject is Charles Ferguson, who directed the definitive, awards-showered Iraq War doc No End in Sight (2007) and also Inside Job (2010), his penetratingly skeptical, ahead-of-the-curve look at the 2008 financial meltdown and its aftermath. Time to Choose is only Fergusons third feature, and his first in five years, and given that its his own highly ambitious inquiry into climate change, youd think that it would be something of an event. But Time to Choose enters a different documentary marketplace than the one that defined An Inconvenient Truth or No End in Sight. The thirst for nonfiction hasnt disappeared, but the way that we consume documentaries has been splintered and fragmented, multiplied and in another sense diminished. Time to Choose is opening with a notable absence of fanfare, and its hard not to wonder if the very subject of climate change has produced a kind of Chicken Little syndrome. The global temperature is rising! The ice sheets are melting! The world is ending! But do I really have to see another movie about it? At this point, climate-change fatigue seems an understandable if not exactly justifiable emotion. Yet Time to Choose, while it isnt structured to be the slap-in-the-face wake-up call that An Inconvenient Truth was, is still a film that shapes and alters your perceptions. Narrated in a tone of calm insurgency by Oscar Isaac, its not out to rehash every piece of evidence that man-made climate change is happening, or that its effects are potentially catastrophic. In quick strokes, it reminds us why the rise in carbon dioxide levels degrades the air and the seas in ways that are already starting to devastate the planet. (Some, as a result, may call the film one-sided. But most scientists would not.) Really, though, the movie is a dive into what the future of the earth, of energy consumption, of our lives is going to look like. Its about how inconvenience gives way to inevitability. Ferguson has a background in academia and technology, and in 1996 he became an Internet multi-millionaire when he sold his website-development company to Microsoft; he works with a freedom of economy and scale that most documentary directors dont have. One of the intriguing aspects of his born-again career he was 52 when No End in Sight was released is that he embraced the fullness of being a filmmaker, using the possibility of creating a movie not just as a way of dispensing information but as a rounded visual-dramatic experience. He became an aesthetician of truth. That has never been more so than in Time to Choose, which creates a flow of indelible images. Ferguson traveled the globe to film eye-popping landscapes of the natural world, which sounds like it might be precious, as though he were shooting a lush environmental calendar, but he doesnt linger, and the revelation is that in image after image, he also reveals the destruction of the natural world. We see, from sweeping helicopter shots, the shocking, shaved-earth aftermath of mountaintop removal, or billowing midnight oil fires that look as vast as hurricanes, or the toxic horror of the coal-sludge impoundments of Appalachia, or in shots that were done surreptitiously, since the penalty for taking them is five years in prison what the peatlands of Indonesia now look like. They are forests that used to absorb more carbon than all the rest of the worlds forests combined, but they are now being razed by the government and sold to corporations that want to mine the area for palm oil (which goes into everything from cookies to cleaning products). The destruction of the Brazilian rain forests, so obsessed over in the 80s, now sounds quaint next to the global epidemic of deforestation that is captured in Time to Choose. The image of an ecosystem that is collapsing in slow motion; of the global pollution wrought by the mining of fossil fuels these are charged topics that have been fought over for years, yet Ferguson lets us take in the issue through the evidence of our senses. His images sear themselves into your imagination. Time to Choose may come off, at moments, like the Koyaanisqatsi of environmental devastation, but it is also a dreadfully beautiful achievement. It shows us what the building blocks of climate change look like. It also points to a way out. The movie is structured as a meditation, and there are times its a little flat; there may simply be a limit to how much excitement there is in watching someone like the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu say, with notable matter-of-factness, I dont think most citizens in the world have really grasped what is happening, and what the risks are. Many of our major cities will be submerged. Yet he may be right: When it comes to climate change, the majority of people even those of us who arent skeptics live in something of a denial, because the whole thing, lets be honest, is terribly abstract. Fergusons biggest news flash and he provides a truckload of evidence for it is that renewable energy sources like wind and solar, which have been mocked for years as well-meaning but minor hippie-dippy solutions, have become a ruthlessly competitive economic alternative. They are now cheaper than fossil fuels, and the film makes a potent case that the reason we arent using more of them is that big oil simply doesnt want it that way. The fossil-fuel companies, whether in the United States or China (a nation so hooked on coal that it is poisoning itself), control the government, the propaganda, the thinking. Its their way or no way. Time to Choose says: There is another way. Like An Inconvenient Truth, the movie provides its audience with impassioned dollops of information, but more than that it simply asks us to open our eyes. Related stories Bernardo Bertolucci To Head Jury of New Fest Dedicated To Climate Change (EXCLUSIVE) Oscar Isaac to Star in Alfonso Gomez-Rejon Thriller 'A Foreigner' (EXCLUSIVE) Oscar Isaac Cast in 'Hamlet' Off Broadway in 2017 By Tuomas Forsell and Jussi Rosendahl HELSINKI (Reuters) - After a year of negotiations and strikes, Finland's center-right government convinced the country's unions on Friday to accept an 'internal devaluation' that will cut workers' benefits for the first time in a century. The largest trade unions and main business representatives approved a proposed labor reform pact intended to boost export competitiveness in the stagnant economy of the Nordic country, a euro member state. The reform pact will increase annual working hours, lower holiday bonuses, freeze wages for a year and increase pension contributions for workers while lowering them for employers. "Today, we are making history in Finland. Only few countries are able to make a decision this tough by a joint agreement," Prime Minister Juha Sipila wrote on a blog post. "With these measures, we will significantly catch up the competitiveness of Sweden and Germany." With the country's largest industrial workers' union on board, around 85 percent of Finnish workers have now signed up for the deal. The government has promised to sweeten the deal with tax cuts. High costs and rigid labor markets have been seen as a major obstacle for spurring growth in the country which has been pressured by a decline in Nokia's former telephone handset business, recession in neighboring Russia and a fast-ageing population. A preliminary agreement on the labor pact was reached in March but on-off talks between individual trade unions and business lobbies continued right up to the Friday deadline. To reach the deal, the government had to compromise on its ambition to shift away from centralized wage-setting toward company-level labor deals - a move seen boosting small companies in particular. Some entrepreneurs and analysts said the deal was insufficient to spur growth significantly. "This pact does not fix the structural problems in the Finnish economy," said Mikael Pentikainen, managing director of the Federation of Finnish Enterprises. According to the World Economic Forum, Finland currently has the most rigid wage negotiation system in a comparison of 140 countries. The Finnish economy is forecast by the European Commission to expand 0.7 percent this year, less than any other EU country except Greece. But data earlier on Friday showed the gross domestic product had expanded more than initially estimated in the first quarter, fueling hopes of a stronger recovery. (Editing by Tom Heneghan) A former product manager at Alphabet Inc. GOOGL owned Nest Labs has filed a federal-level complaint against both Google and Nest claiming that he was fired on unfair grounds. The complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleges that he was fired for posting comments against Nest CEO Tony Fadell and that both Google and Nest are trying to block workers voices through illegal surveillance. The employee was reportedly fired under allegations that he breached Googles Data Classification Guidelines by posting memes opposing Fadells acts on a private Facebook, Inc. FB group. Nest has been trying to avoid further information leak after some critical memes were published by Recode that reflect employee dissatisfaction over Fadells management style, which they believe to be the source of the companys recent internal troubles. The plaintiffs lawyer Chris Baker argued that Google has violated national labor laws that permit employees to protect themselves by sharing information with outsiders and the press. Google lawyers, on the other hand, argued that Google did not engage in any law violation. News website The Information reported on Thursday that the complaint was filed on May 18 and that Brian Katz, Google global-investigations team manager and former State Department special agent, unveiled an internal whistleblower website to Nest employees in a meeting to encourage them to report their grievances to management instead of airing them in public. If NLRB eventually finds the fired employees claims to be fair, Nest might have to re-hire him and pay him back wages. Not only this, Google and other tech companies could be forced to change their confidentiality rules and media policies. At present, Google has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Better-ranked stocks in the broader technology space are CommVault Systems, Inc. CVLT and LG Display Co., Ltd. LPL each sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). 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 LG DISPLAY-ADR (LPL): Free Stock Analysis Report COMMVAULT SYSTM (CVLT): Free Stock Analysis Report FACEBOOK INC-A (FB): Free Stock Analysis Report ALPHABET INC-A (GOOGL): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Fiserv, Inc. FISV reached a new 52-week high of $106.65 in yesterdays trading session. Its shares have been rising since May 5 when the company announced its first quarter 2016 results. In addition, the company made a couple of collaboration-related announcements, which increased investors optimism. Fiserv has extended its 16-year old credit processing contract with John Deere Financial, a division of Deere & Company DE by another 10 years. This apart, the company revealed that its Mobiliti Edge based solutions have been selected by the Bangkok Bank to enable mobile banking services for its clients. Fiserv holds a dominant position in the financial and payments solutions business. In the recently announced first quarter results the company managed to deliver strong bottom line numbers despite soft top line growth. Moreover, the company has a strong pipeline and expanding margins, which allowed it to reaffirm its earnings and revenue guidance for 2016. Fiserv has also made a couple of strategic acquisitions in the first quarter, ACI Worldwides Community and Billers Solutions, which would allow it to expand its product portfolio further over the long run. In the past 30 days, upward estimate revisions have pushed up the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2016 by 0.7% to $4.42 per share, while for 2017 it inched up 0.4% to $4.97. Moreover, in the same period, the companys shares jumped over 8% compared with a gain of approximately 2% in the S&P 500 index. Nonetheless, the companys highly leveraged balance sheet and stiff competition from peers like Equifax Inc. EFX, Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. FIS and Global Payments Inc remain concerns. Currently, Fiserv has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). 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 EQUIFAX INC (EFX): Free Stock Analysis Report DEERE & CO (DE): Free Stock Analysis Report FIDELITY NAT IN (FIS): Free Stock Analysis Report FISERV INC (FISV): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Four U.S. Army soldiers remain missing Friday in a deadly flash flood accident that killed five other troops on Fort Hood, Texas, the deadliest non-combat Army vehicle accident in recent years. A group of 12 soldiers were training in low-lying area Thursday that hadnt been hit by flooding in the past, Fort Hood spokesman Chris Haug said during a press conference Friday. It was a situation where the rain had come, the water was rising quickly and we were in the process, at the moment of the event, of closing the roads, Haug said. The soldiers truck was overturned by the rushing waters. Other soldiers in a truck following the Light Medium Tactical Vehicle pulled three rescued troops from the water. They remain in stable condition at Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center on Fort Hood. All the soldiers belong to 3rd Battalion, 16th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division. The accident follows a series of deadly training accidents across the armed services in recent months. The worst came in January, when 12 Marines were killed after two helicopters collided during a nighttime training mission off the coast of Hawaii. House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) said in a statement Friday that the recent accidents including this weeks crashes of an Air Force Thunderbird in Colorado and a Navy Blue Angels aircraft, which killed Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss are cause for concern. We dont yet know all the details of these incidents, but they are the latest in an alarming increase of significant military accidents, he said. Those who have died and their families deserve a full, objective, complete look at the circumstances and any deeper causes that should be addressed. Speaking in Singapore, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Friday that weeks accidents were the result of safety issues in training. We are going to make sure that we learn lessons, Carter said of the accidents. Story continues Military leaders have been warning of grave consequences for cutting training and readiness accounts since the adoption of mandatory budget cuts brought on by the 2011 Budget Control Act, otherwise known as sequestration. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller told a House Armed Services Committee panel in March that the Hawaii crash was partly due to training shortfalls. When you dont have enough aircraft to fly, then your flight hours go down and it becomes difficult to maintain your currency, Neller said. We are fiscally stretched to maintain readiness across the depth of the force, he continued, and aviation units are currently unable to meet our training and mission requirements. Last month, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Daniel Allyn said his service is still recovering from the effects of the 2013-14 sequestration experience. Thats when the Armys readiness and training budgets were hit the hardest and the Army, he said, is struggling to address our readiness and modernization shortfalls. Photo Credit: Drew Anthony Smith/Getty Images Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f105361%2f956e2cc705724acfa3da03ea12393bee At least five Fort Hood soldiers died on Thursday and four more were still missing on Friday after rushing floodwater flipped over a military truck during a training exercise at the Texas military base. Three more soldiers were taken to the hospital and treated for non-life-threatening injuries. The incident comes as the state continues to be inundated by heavy rains that have sent rivers to record heights, only two years after many of them ran dry in a record drought. SEE ALSO: As floodwaters rise, Paris closes the Louvre to protect valuable artwork Aerial and ground crews were searching the 20-mile creek that winds through heavily wooded terrain on the northern fringe of the base, using aircraft, canine search teams, swift-water rescue watercraft and heavy trucks. The Army hasn't released the names of the victims because it is still notifying relatives. More than half of the state is under flood watches or warnings on Friday, including the counties near Fort Hood. At least six people died in floods last week in Central and Southeast Texas. Fort Hood spokesman John Miller said the creek crossing was flooded by two days of intermittent heavy rains when the floodwaters swept the Light Medium Tactical Vehicle from the road. The vehicle resembles a flatbed truck with a walled bed and is used to carry troops. Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a statement saying the state "stands ready to provide any assistance to Fort Hood as they deal with this tragedy." Image: NOAA Across Texas, many were watching a new batch of storms that could dump up to 10 inches of rain through Saturday and worsen flooding from waterways that already have risen to record levels. For example, the Brazos River near Glen Rose, Texas broke its all-time record level, reaching 35.9 feet on Friday morning. The same river rose nearly 5 feet above the previous record level when it reached 54.81 feet on Thursday in Richmond, about 30 miles southwest of Houston. Story continues The heaviest rainfall Thursday night was reported in LaPorte, on the western shore of Galveston Bay, where 4.36 inches of rain was recorded between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. Thursday. Officials say the Brazos has not dropped much and that additional rainfall could make the flooding worse. Heavy rains were moving into the Houston area on Friday morning, threatening to worsen flooding there. "With the rain that's predicted, that's not going to help things as that water has no place to go," said Lt. Lowell Neinast, with the police department in Richmond, where more than 700 people have been evacuated from their homes. This week's storms are the latest in a string of torrential rains since May 2015 that have put swaths of the state under water. Some areas now overwhelmed by water had run dry two years ago due to drought conditions. In April, the Houston area saw an unprecedented deluge, with some parts of the metro area picking up nearly 2 feet of rain in a single day. Image: NOAA The flooding this time around is the result of a stalled low pressure area in the upper levels of the atmosphere above the Southwest. This low is pulling warm, moist air northward from the Gulf of Mexico and causing the air to rise, cool and condense into heavy showers and thunderstorms. In addition the the meteorological factors behind the event, climate studies show that long-term, human-caused global warming is making heavy precipitation events such as what Texas has been experiencing more common. Additional reporting by the Associated Press. The food industry has been facing the brunt of the recent outbreak of bacterial infections caused bypotentially lethal bacteria like Listeria monocytogenes and E.coli. Fast food restaurants and food companies are incurring heavy losses from the repeated recalls of their products fearing that they could be contaminated with these bacteria. . Last week, TreeHouse Foods Inc. THS announced the recall of products which are expected to be contaminated by L mono bacteria. A supplier SunOpta Inc. STKL had notified TreeHouse of the possibility of contamination of the products that had been distributed nationwide. The recall is expected to affect revenues significantly for the company. L mono is known to cause serious infections in children, weak or elderly people. It can be as lethal as to cause miscarriages and stillbirths among pregnant women. However, healthy individuals may suffer only short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea. General Mills, Inc. GIS also announced a voluntary national recall of four specific flavors of its Nature Valley protein chewy bars and Nature Valley simple nut bars on grounds of possible L mono contamination in this week. Costco Wholesale Corp. COST came into news for the wrong reasons after Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) alleged that its rotisserie chicken salad caused E. coli infection in 19 people from the U.S. states of California, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Utah, Virginia and Washington. The company took its rotisserie chicken salad off the shelves, effective Nov 20. In addition, the retailer stopped further production of the item. E. coli is commonly found in the intestines of humans and animals, some strains of which can cause severe food poisoning. In Dec 2015, leading coffee retailer Starbucks Corporation SBUX reportedly removed the holiday turkey paninis and several other items in more than 1,000 stores across three U.S. states after an E. coli outbreak. The sandwiches contained celery, an ingredient responsible for Costcos chicken salad recall in Nov 2015. Story continues Also in November, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. CMG had to close 43 outlets in Oregon and Washington as a safety measure after 37 students from Boston College fell ill, most likely after the consumption of E. coli infected food from one of the companys restaurants. The company enforced stricter guidelines for suppliers in the wake of the latest E. coli outbreak that affected several customers in six U.S. states. Widespread recalls by food companies are in one way a relief for consumers because it ensures that regulatory authorities are more vigilant. However, negative publicity associated with these outbreaks keep customers away from fast food restaurants. Chipotles first-quarter revenues reported in Apr 2016 took a hit as negative publicity surrounding the E. coli outbreak had dented its sales to a large extent. The E. coli outbreak, has hurt traffic severely for many of its restaurants. Similarly, repeated recalls made by companies like Starbucks and TreeHouse can hurt the companys top and bottom line. 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 GENL MILLS (GIS): Free Stock Analysis Report TREEHOUSE FOODS (THS): Free Stock Analysis Report CHIPOTLE MEXICN (CMG): Free Stock Analysis Report STARBUCKS CORP (SBUX): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research A 7-year-old boy left by his parents on a mountain road in Japan as punishment for his behavior has been found after a six-day search by the Self-Defense Forces. Yamato Tanooka was found at a military exercise area in Shikabe, a town on Hokkaido, Japans northernmost island, where he had been since last Saturday. He was last seen about three miles from there. Heres the background to the story, via Asahi Shimbun, the Japanese newspaper: Yamato and three other family members were on a day trip at a park in Shikabe on May 28, where the boy threw pebbles at people and cars. To discipline Yamato, the parents left him in the mountain and drove away, according to their account. When they returned to the place five to 10 minutes later, he was not there. The parents initially told police the boy went missing when the family was gathering edible wild vegetables. They later changed the explanation and said they left the boy in the mountain to punish him. Yamato, a second-grader, suffered no injuries, officials said, and he survived on water. One of his rescuers offered him rice balls, which he accepted and ate, news reports said. The Japan Times adds: He was taken to a hospital in Hakodate in an apparent state of exhaustion. He was placed on an intravenous drip as he had symptoms of mild dehydration and hypothermia, a doctor there said. He had minor scratches on his arms and legs but was otherwise unharmed. It was at the hospital that he was reunited with his parents and sister. The boys father has apologized several times for the actions, including on Friday during an emotional news conference. Recommended: A New Origin Story for Dogs I feel very sorry for the boy as I came down on him hard, Takayuki Tanooka said, adding he had apologized to Yamato. Tanooka also apologized to the Japanese public, who have been captivated by the story of the missing boy and engaged in a debate over disciplining children. Story continues I deeply apologize to people at his school, people in the rescue operation, and everybody for causing them trouble, Tanooka said. I have poured all my love into my son, but from now on, I would want to do more, together with him. I would like to protect him while he grows up. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. By Suzannah Gonzales (Reuters) - Four fugitives wanted in connection with the beating death of a transgender man at a Vermont homeless encampment have been arrested in San Diego, police said on Friday. Police Chief Brandon del Pozo in Burlington, Vermont, told a news conference that Erik Averill, 21, Jordan Paul, 21, Myia Barber, 22, and Allison Gee, 25, were arrested on outstanding warrants on Thursday by San Diego police. They were being sought in the death of Amos Beede, 38, who was assaulted on May 22 and died on May 29. The four will be charged with murder after they are returned to Vermont, Burlington Police Lieutenant Shawn Burke told Reuters. He said in the meantime they were being held in San Diego and the investigation would continue. Bias against a transgender person had been a possible motive in the crime, but officials now believe the motive was retaliation. "We believe at this point it fits into a wider pattern of aggression against fellow homeless rather than targeted aggression motivated by Beede's transgender status," del Pozo said at the press conference. He said Averill and the others had beaten Beede after Averill learned that Beede had dumped bottles of urine inside Averill's tent in reaction to feces being spread on another tent. Averill has an arrest record for alleged assaults and other incidents involving transient people that had nothing to do with bias, del Pozo said. Before the suspects were taken into custody, they were in Roswell, New Mexico, where Averill was arrested for domestic assault on Barber, the Burlington Police Department said in a statement. Police said the suspects had driven west from Vermont and that GPS information led authorities to them in San Diego. (Reporting by Suzannah Gonzales) From Road & Track More than almost anything else, Americans value originality. Some cultures respect precision, others prefer a carefree spirit-what the Italians call sprezzatura-and still others recognize the value of tradition and experience. In the Land of the Free, however, you gotta be original. If you're a musician, for example, you're never going to get anywhere unless you have your own music, no matter how talented or skilled you are. If you're an actor, you'd better have a unique "look" or you'll never work outside the exciting field of soap opera. No surprise, then, that the Ford Mustang has traditionally outsold the Camaro, the Challenger, the Javelin, the Barracuda, and every other kind of sporty 2+2 to bear the sobriquet "ponycar." How could it be otherwise? They're called ponycars because the Mustang was the original one. They aren't called "cudacars," even though the Barracuda reached the dealers first. Americans respect the idea of originality, and the Mustang was the original ponycar design. Although the Camaro started life as an unashamed Mustang copy, the second-generation design owed nothing to any Ford in history. It was stunning-looking, clearly Euro-inspired but still plainly American. Not even the urethane bumpers and warm-color strips of the late Seventies could ruin the design. The third-gen car that succeeded it was even better: outrageous proportions and no-excuses performance. The Camaro that appeared in 1993 borrowed the "Corvette Indy" concept-car styling and married it to an absolutely first-class powertrain. The facelifted 1998 model raised the ante with the all-aluminum LS1 engine from the Corvette. It was supposedly detuned from the 'Vette, but the detuning didn't go any farther than the brochure. You couldn't buy a faster car for the money, and there were precious few cars that could beat it any any price whatsoever. Story continues As is typical with affordable performance cars, the vast majority of fourth-gen Camaros have been crashed, stolen, "modified" in the most horrifying fashion possible, or simply left to rot. As a consequence, we have to rely on memory when comparing them to modern hardware. That's where my friend Kevin comes in. He and I campaigned his thoroughly modified fourth-gen Camaro Z28 in SCCA Solo about a decade ago. Few people have more practical experience with LS1-powered Camaros than Kevin does. Last week, he called me to tell me he'd found a "time capsule car." It was a 2002 Z28 convertible with the six-speed manual transmission. "Stock right down to the muffler and the skip-shift feature," Kevin noted. It had been the "beach car" for some fellow in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and it had been treated to the best of everything for its entire life. Full dealer service records. No crashes, no stories. And get this-when the engine failed a few years ago, the owner paid $6600 to have a General Motors LS1 crate motor put in! What kind of person puts a brand-new crate motor in a car that's already a decade old? On Memorial Day, Kevin and I met outside the sandwich shop where I play an acoustic set at lunch twice a week for tip money and the occasional free meal. The weather was perfect, the roads were empty, and we were driving a Z28 Camaro on Memorial Day. That's a very American thing to do, you know. I first drove a fourth-gen LT1 car in early 1993 when a fellow BMX racer bought a new six-speed, zero-options Z28. At the time I was daily-driving a 1990 VW Fox, and the Camaro seemed like an enormous nuclear-powered rocketship in comparison. Twenty-three years later, this one seems sensibly proportioned. The existence of the super-sized new Mustang and Camaro has done a lot to redeem the size and weight of their immediate predecessors. The existence of the super-sized new Mustang and Camaro has done a lot to redeem the size and weight of their immediate predecessors. The interior is, of course, laughable, right down to the hilariously cheap-looking plastic "35TH ANNIVERSARY CAMARO" badge that is pinned or SuperGlued to the Playskool-quality dashboard. I recall that they didn't age well, but this one barely has creases in the seats. All of the interior panels are unfaded and correct. You sit low, not quite Corvette-low but much lower than in the current model. Pop two latches and press one of the horrible Nineties GM buttons, and you're open-air, one elbow resting comfortably on the low door, arms stretched to the steering wheel. The LS1 rumbles low and quietly; this is from the era before fake exhaust noise. The shifter has long throws, but it's easy to find first gear, and with a gentle roll of the very, very, VERY long-travel accelerator pedal, we're off. F-body cars of this era were notorious for a capricious and sometimes dangerous traction-control system; deactivating it is the sole change Kevin's made so far. You don't really need it-the length of the pedal travel is a poor man's traction-control system all by itself. Once I'm out on a four-lane street, I floor the throttle and let the Z28 gather speed at a pace that seems about equivalent to that of my 2014 Accord V6 six-speed. True to Kevin's description, this is a rattle-and-squeak-free Camaro. The suspension is soft, hilariously so by modern standards. You can't get a Lexus with this much body motion nowadays. I stop at the next light, rolling out afterwards at a much more relaxed pace. The skip-shift works just like it does in a modern Viper. In fourth gear at 30 mph, acceleration is modest but hiccup-free. After just a few miles, I'm utterly charmed by the relaxed nature of the beast. It rides well, it can easily keep pace with traffic, the visibility is absolute, and it's thoroughly comfortable. Modern Camaros seem very tense compared to this laid-back convertible. Although Kevin is notorious for turning these cars into single-purpose, polyurethane-bushing racetrack weapons, he swears that he's going to make a minimum of modifications to this one. "Just enough to keep it interesting." A fifth-gen car along the same lines-sleek, sporty, uniquely GM-would have been absolutely brilliant. GM's decision to let the fourth-gen Camaro wither and die shortly after this convertible was built probably ranks as one of the worst crimes ever committed against domestic automotive enthusiasts. A fifth-gen car along the same lines-sleek, sporty, uniquely GM-would have been absolutely brilliant. Think of an LS2-powered Z28 with all of the C6 Vette's technical innovations. It would have been a perfect riposte to the retro 2005 Mustang, and it would have attracted a completely different type of buyer. We all know what GM actually did, of course. They brought out a retro car, an imitation of the '67 Camaro, which itself was an imitation of the '64 Mustang. It was cramped, dark, heavy, blocky, and generally unpleasant. Only in its most track-focused variants did the fifth-gen car have any real virtue whatsoever. And it was never quite good enough to knock the Mustang off its pedestal. The new-gen car rectifies some of those shortcomings. It's smaller. Lighter. More usable. Faster, too. Too bad that it's still dragging 1967 behind it like an inescapable anchor. I'd rather have a Camaro that looks to Kevin's fourth-gen car for inspiration. One that could be mistaken for a supercar, or a spaceship. One that cheats the wind instead of ramming it head-on. Something that doesn't steal the roofline from the 1980 Buick Skylark. Give me a truly original Camaro, and I'll give you my attention. In the meantime, I'll be busy letting Kevin's time-capsule convertible run down the two-lanes of southern Ohio, thinking about what might have been. Born in Brooklyn but banished to Ohio, Jack Baruth has won races on four different kinds of bicycles and in seven different kinds of cars. Everything he writes should probably come with a trigger warning. His column, Avoidable Contact, runs twice a week. On a spring evening in late-19th-century Paris, you might have heard, To the Moulin Rouge! Onward! Long live the Four Arts! Taxis filled with extravagantly costumed revelers would have been storming across town toward Montmartre. It was the night of the Bal des QuatzArts, the annual ball organized by and for the students of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the most prestigious art school in France. All of artistic Paris emerged from its bohemian depths to revel in what Yale French professor Maurice Samuels calls a wildly anarchic expression of subversive fervor. By the end of the fete, partygoers typically found themselves stripped naked. In fact, the QuatzArts was the setting for Frances first-ever striptease in 1893, which was led by the popular artists model Sarah Brown and eventually incited a dayslong street riot. The students used the rhetoric of high art to justify the eroticism and decadence of their big night out. The Bal des QuatzArts began in 1892 and continued until 1966. It was named for the four major traditional arts architecture, painting, sculpture and engraving taught at the Ecole (QuatzArts being an abbreviated form of Quatre Arts, or Four Arts). The inaugural ball, a small affair held at the Elysee Montmartre, was a means for students to playfully stick it to their schools conservative administration. The student-organizers created elaborate set pieces harking back to antiquity and invited female model friends as the only guests. Instead of being proxies for idealized mythological subjects within gilded frames, the models were at the forefront of the evenings proceedings real in-the-flesh, naked women. The students used the rhetoric of high art to justify the eroticism and decadence of their big night out. The 1893 edition of the ball, held at the Moulin Rouge, was a much bigger deal, attended by students and models, dancers, musicians, theater and art critics and even members of Frances national art academy. During the main event, the grand cortege, artists and models paraded as various historical and mythological figures. The highlight, though, was unquestionably the redheaded model Sarah Brown. Carried in by men clad only in loincloths, she appeared as a modern-day Cleopatra and led other models in what would come to be considered Frances first modern striptease. The crowd was enraptured, and word spread quickly throughout Paris. Story continues The titillating news soon reached Rene Berenger, an anti-vice leader and founder of the League for the Prevention of Public Licentiousness. Berenger insisted the state attorney investigate, which resulted in Brown, three other models and one of the organizers being prosecuted for public indecency. In her essay The Art of Posing Nude: Models, Moralists and the 1893 Bal des Quatz-Arts, historian Lela Felter-Kerley explains that during the ensuing trial, the defendants and witnesses claimed the Balls costumes and floats had been created with only the best artistic intentions in mind. They argued there was no difference between how the models presented themselves in the studio and at the Ball. Still, the five defendants were found guilty and each fined 100 francs, with no jail time imposed. Carte d'invitation au bal des quat'z'arts 1907 An invitation to the 1907 Bal des QuatzArts. Source: Public Domain The night after the verdict, a thousand students gathered in the Latin Quarter to protest the courts perceived violation of their artistic liberties. They marched, chanting, through Paris to Berengers house, where police were summoned to drive them away. Meanwhile, back on the Left Bank, a smaller number of Beaux-Arts sympathizers began shouting and throwing glasses at police officers. Someone flung a heavy ashtray at an officer, who hurled it back into the crowd, striking Antoine-Felix Nuger, a 23-year-old shop clerk who lost consciousness and died the next day. With Nugers death, says Felter-Kerley, what had started out as a relatively peaceful student protest grew into the revolt of an uncontrollable mob. For four days, hordes joined the students in damaging property and attacking police. Many were injured, the Latin Quarter was left in shambles, and order was restored only after the police commissioner resigned and rioters gradually drifted back to their studios. Berengers morality crusade had not merely failed he had succeeded in indirectly promoting support for debauchery. Indeed, the Bal des QuatzArts would carry on, without interference from the authorities for fear of further disorder. As it flourished into the 20th century, the ball became an increasingly formal part of the students development at the Beaux-Arts. And by the time Paris other attractions followed suit by incorporating erotic elements into their after-hours spectacles, the QuatzArts had become, according to Samuels, an accepted part of Frances antic nightlife. Related Articles Paris (AFP) - The international community committed Friday to try and push Israel and the Palestinians to resume peace talks under a French-led initiative, despite a decidedly lukewarm reaction from Washington and hostility from Israel. Indirect peace talks between the two sides collapsed more than two years ago, and French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault warned that the diplomatic void meant the prospect of a two-state solution to the decades-long conflict was in "serious danger." He repeated France's wish to organise an international conference, with both the Israelis and the Palestinians, before the end of the year. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian representatives attended the talks in the French capital aimed at laying the ground for a fully-fledged peace conference to be held by the end of the year. The Palestinians hailed the Paris meeting as a "very significant step" toward peace that sent a clear message to Israel about its ongoing occupation of lands they want for a future state. But Israel lashed out, saying the initiative would only strengthen the Palestinians' hand and would go down in history as having "pushed peace further away." At the meeting, representatives from 28 countries, the Arab League, European Union and United Nations discussed ways in which the international community could "help advance the prospects for peace, including by providing meaningful incentives to the parties to make peace," according to a joint statement. But few believe genuine progress will be made. Despite a widespread sense of scepticism that the French initiative will succeed where so many others have failed, Ayrault said the world could not "fold its arms and do nothing." - A sense of urgency - In their final statement, the participants agreed that "the status quo is unsustainable" and voiced "alarm" at the situation on the ground, citing continuing acts of violence and Jewish settlement building. Story continues Washington, which has traditionally taken on a mediating role between the two sides, has not tried to initiate any fresh peace moves since the previous US-led round of indirect talks collapsed in April 2014 and has remained decidedly cool on the French initiative. US Secretary of State John Kerry told journalists after the talks that while "we need to find some immediate kinds of steps on the ground that would make a difference... we can't impose a solution from outside, we need to have direct negotiations and I will continue to encourage that." Earlier, in opening the conference, French President Francois Hollande had urged Israel and the Palestinians to make a "courageous choice" for peace. - 'A clear message' - Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erakat said the Paris talks sent a "clear" message to Israel. "The Paris meeting is a very significant step and its message is clear: If Israel is allowed to continue its colonisation and apartheid policies in occupied Palestine, the future will be for more extremism and bloodshed rather than for coexistence and peace," he said in a statement. But Israel said the French effort would only cause the Palestinians to harden their positions. "The Paris meeting will go down in history as having only hardened Palestinian positions and pushed peace further away," foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said in a statement after the meeting. Ayrault said the talks were focused on the 2002 Saudi-led Arab peace initiative. Under that proposal, Arab leaders offered to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied since 1967, and the creation of a Palestinian state. At the time, the plan was largely ignored by Israel, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week he would be open to re-negotiating aspects of it with the Palestinians. Speaking after the meeting, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir rejected this idea, saying the Arab peace initiative already "has all the elements for a final settlement." "To argue that the Arab peace initiative should be watered down to accommodate the Israelis is not a wise approach," he said. "It provides Israel with a lot of incentives and it's incumbent on the Israelis to accept that." Analysts say Palestinian frustration of the deadlock in negotiations has driven a wave of violence that has left 206 Palestinians and 28 Israelis dead since October. Israel blames the bloodshed on incitement by Palestinian leaders and media. PARIS (Reuters) - Activity in the French private sector accelerated to a six-month high in May, driven by a pick-up in the dominant services sector that offset weakness in manufacturing, a survey showed on Friday. Data compiler Markit said its purchasing managers index for services rose in May to 51.6 from 50.6 in April, the fastest rate of growth in seven months, although that was slightly lower than a preliminary reading of 51.8. The index rose further above the 50-point threshold dividing an expansion in activity from a contraction. Markit's overall PMI index, which includes services and manufacturing, rose to 50.9 from 50.2 the previous month, also slightly down on the 51.1 originally reported. The final reading was the highest since November, when Islamist attacks killed 130 people in Paris bars and cafes, a stadium and a concert hall, hurting business at hotels and restaurants, which Markit said remained the weakest spots. "A further build-up in backlogs of work should help support activity growth in the near term," Markit economist Jack Kennedy said. "However, an anaemic pace of job creation alongside softer business expectations suggests that service sector companies are not overly confident this marks a convincing shift into a higher gear," he said. The employment sub-index in the services sector fell to 50.2 in May from 50.8 in April, again lower than the 50.9 initially reported. However, official figures have started to show an improvement in employment. The number of jobless people in France fell for the second consecutive month in April. (Reporting by Michel Rose, editing by Larry King) On Jun 3, we issued an updated research report on Frontier Communications Corporation FTR. The company reported strong financial results in the first quarter of 2016. Contrary to the Zacks Consensus Estimate of a net loss, the company posted net income in the reported quarter. Moreover, the top line outpaced the consensus mark. Positives Frontier Communications recently completed the purchase of Verizon Communications Inc.s VZ wireline assets for $10.5 billion in California, Florida and Texas. We believe that the Verizon deal will drive revenues and free cash flow at Frontier Communications and also help the company retain its dividend sustainability. We are also optimistic about Frontier Communications collaborations with other companies to offer differentiated products. In this regard, the launch of its OTT (over the top) services called Freedom TV to cater to millennials preferences should result in increased market share. Meanwhile, management foresees strong broadband subscriber growth in 2016 and expects growth to accelerate on the back of new marketing programs. Evidently, in the first quarter, the company added 24,600 broadband customers. Moreover, Frontier Communications launched its latest line of services branded as Vantage a premium digital platform to deliver HD TV, ultra fast broadband and enhanced VoIP services. The company aims to introduce Vantage TV to more than 3 million households over the next 3 to 4 years. We believe that the new Vantage line, along with its existing OTT and FiOS services, will help Frontier Communications grow its footprint substantially. Frontier Communications is also leaving no stone unturned to derive benefits from the growing Business Service Segment. Particularly, the company has been targeting the Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs). It has been enhancing its Ethernet capabilities lately and eyeing the retention of SMB customers with attractive plans. Risks However, Frontier Communications is significantly challenged by slow economic recovery in its service territories and is striving to put a check on the loss of legacy fixed telephony business to wireless and other offerings. Further, potential decline in wireless backhaul and residential revenues add to the companys concerns. Moreover, Frontier Communications exited the first quarter of 2016 with $500 million of cash and cash equivalents compared with $936 million at 2015-end. Total debt at the end of the reported quarter was $15,866 million. Such a low cash balance and a highly leveraged balance sheet raise apprehension. Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider Frontier Communications currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Better-ranked stocks in the sector include Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd. CHT and TELUS Corporation TU. Both the stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). 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 TELUS CORP (TU): Free Stock Analysis Report CHUNGHWA TELECM (CHT): Free Stock Analysis Report VERIZON COMM (VZ): Free Stock Analysis Report FRONTIER COMMUN (FTR): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Libreville (AFP) - Former top African Union official Jean Ping, who is running in Gabon's upcoming presidential elections, on Friday shunned a police summons, denouncing it as a bid to oust him from the race. Ping, a former AU commission chief, said the summons was unfounded and a manoeuvre to keep him out of the public eye. He had been called to the judicial police -- an investigative unit under the orders of the judiciary -- at 10am, but chose not to attend. Police had deployed in large numbers outside the judicial building, where several dozen Ping supporters had turned out to show their backing. "I was summoned without due cause," Ping told AFP. "Who exactly is behind the summons and why? I don't know... but when you summon someone to the judicial police on a Friday, it's to put him in jail straight away." The presidential election, expected in August or October, will pit incumbent Ali Bongo, who is seeking a second term, against Ping and several other well-known figures including parliamentary leader Guy Nzouba Ndama and former prime minister Raymond Ndong Sima. In May, the government accused Ping of seeking to foment civil war after he made statements allegedly calling on supporters to fight "to the death" and talked about a war "to get rid of the cockroaches". On Friday, government spokesman Alain-Claude Bilie By Nze confirmed that the state would file a complaint against Ping over those remarks. On May 21, Ping accused the government of using "Machiavellian" judicial means to try to force him out of the presidential race. Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f105213%2fbran_coldhands_mystery Warning: Contains spoilers from Game of Thrones Season 6, episode 6. LONDON Right, so let's get this straight once and for all. Is Benjen Stark (i.e. the same Benjen Stark that has been missing from the show for a full SIX SEASONS, ever since he went trotting off beyond the wall back at the start of Season 1) is that Benjen Stark the same character as the mysterious "Coldhands" figure from George R. R. Martin's books? The same character that's been absent from the show so far, and who many assumed had been cut out? SEE ALSO: The pieces may be moving into place for another major battle on 'Game of Thrones' Well first, let's recap. Benjen Stark swooped in on horseback at the start of last Sunday's episode to rescue Meera and his nephew from all those pesky undead. He was wearing a hood and his face was covered. After he'd got them to safety and Bran was awake, he revealed his true identity and said something about how the Children of the Forest had revived him after he was attacked by the White Walkers (he didn't go into detail about what exactly he's been doing for the last six seasons, but maybe that's a story for another day). Coldhands, meanwhile, is a mysterious character who appears earlier in Martin's books and helps Bran and co. navigate their way through the land beyond the wall to track down The Three Eyed Raven. His real identity has yet to be revealed, but we do know that he's undead and that he can't pass beyond the wall. So are they the same character? Well, from the looks of this recent tweet from Isaac Wright (a.k.a. Bran), it seems likely. Those emoji don't lie. The evidence doesn't stop there, either. In this behind-the-scenes clip for episode 6, co-creator D.B. Weiss actually refers to the character as "Coldhands Benjen." So if Coldhands from the books is the same character as "Coldhands Benjen" from the show, why did George R. R. Martin explicitly deny this theory in the hand-written notes for his original A Dance with Dragons Manuscript? Story continues Seems like there are a couple of possibilities here: either Martin was lying to keep the return of a big character secret, or the show has gone off on another tangent. Maybe Benjen will return in the books, but as a separate character to Coldhands? It's always possible that the show could have merged the two characters into one and combined their storylines to save screen time. Ultimately, until The Winds of Winter hits the shelves, we know nothing. Yahoo Finance is tracking the stocks youre following, based on your Yahoo Finance ticker searches. Gap (GPS) The retailer reported a 6% decline in comparable-store sales for the month of May at its Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic stores. Analysts forecasted a 7.2% total decline. Broadcom (AVGO) - The semiconductor company posted better-than-expected earnings in the second fiscal quarter. The company reported adjusted earnings per share of $2.53 on revenues of $3.56 billion. Starbucks (SBUX) The coffee giant is looking to disrupt the multi-billion dollar ready to drink tea market. Starbucks has teamed up with Anheuser-Busch (BUD) to bottle, distribute and market Teavana ready-to-drink teas throughout the United States. Toyota (TM) The automaker halted production at three of its plants in Japan following an explosion at a suppliers plant earlier this week. Toyota said it expected production to fully resume by the beginning of next week. Apple (AAPL) The tech giants services have been restored following an outage late afternoon on Thursday. Apple said services related to iCloud and the Photos application, as well as its App Store, have resumed. Twitter (TWTR) - Snapchat has more daily users than Twitter. Bloomberg is reporting that the messaging app now has 150 million people using the service each day. Twitter is estimated to have less than 140 million daily users. Walmart (WMT) The retail giant is partnering with Uber and Lyft to test grocery delivery service. The pilot program will launch in Phoenix and Denver later tis month. ATHENS (Reuters) - Lawyers have filed an application to the European Union's human rights court to halt the deportation of a homosexual Syrian refugee who was denied asylum in Greece, a German advocacy group said on Friday. The former oil industry worker has been threatened with death by Islamic State (IS) if he doesn't return to Syria and work for the radical Islamist group in oil operations in territory it controls, it said. The man was one of only two asylum seekers the Greek asylum service have rejected out of a group of 30 applicants it considered, a government migration official told Reuters. The decision was "incomprehensible", especially in view of the man's sexual orientation, said Karl Kopp, spokesman for the German group Pro Asyl which provides support for refugees. "We applied for interim measures ... because the man is in imminent danger if he returns to Turkey," Kopp said of the man who fled first to Turkey and then Greece in March. "He worked in the oil industry," he said. "When he was in Istanbul, IS threatened to kill him if he didn't join their oil operations in Syria." Three lawyers from Pro Asyl joined a local lawyer in Lesbos and the Greek refugee council (GCR) to jointly apply for interim measures at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg on Thursday to stop his deportation. A Pro Asyl statement said the man faced discrimination in Turkey, which it called "one of the countries in Europe and beyond where homosexuals face the most problems and dangers". He is now being held by Lesbos police until the deportation process is completed, a local police spokesman told Reuters. This would be the first case before the ECHR to challenge the EU-Turkey deal that lets Athens send illegally arriving refugees back to Turkey, Pro Asyl said in an announcement. Under Greek law, there is room for a further domestic appeal on the decision, which could potentially prevent him from being deported if approved, the migration official said. Applications for interim measures, which can also prevent a deportation, are normally considered by the ECHR within a few days, unlike normal appeals that usually take more time. (Reporting by Lefteris Karagiannopoulos; Editing by Tom Heneghan) BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's coalition government on Friday agreed to tighten controls over the country's BND spy agency and impose new legal restrictions on its surveillance activities, according to sources familiar with the agreement. The long-delayed reform package for Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND, was agreed during a meeting at the German chancellor's office on Friday, according to several participants in the meeting. The legal reforms, which must still be finalized by the German parliament, would ban the BND from spying on countries in the European Union and its citizens, as well as EU institutions, except in the case of suspected terrorist activity. The agreement also requires the head of the BND, the chancellor's office and an independent panel of judges to approve strategic foreign espionage activities based on keyword lists, according to the sources.The changes would also spell out more clearly when the agency would be permitted to carry out such spying activities. The BND intelligence service has been in the limelight after a series of scandals that embarrassed German Chancellor Angela Merkel, including revelations that the agency had helped the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) spy on European allies, using such lists of keywords. That news sparked public outrage in a country suspicious of surveillance because of the excesses of Nazi and Communist secret police in its past, and triggered the reform drive. In April, Gerhard Schindler, who has run the BND since 2012, abruptly left his post two years earlier than planned, amid reports that he was forced out over disagreements about the reform effort. News of the agreement came a day after three Syrians were arrested on suspicion of planning attacks in Dusseldorf. German authorities are on heightened alert about possible large-scale attacks by Islamist militants after the bombings in Brussels in March and Paris in November. Those events also raised questions about how European intelligence agencies cooperate with each other. The new reform measures are to be debated by the German cabinet before the parliament's summer break, which usually begins in July, according to the sources. (Reporting by Thorsten Severin; Writing by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Toni Reinhold) BERLIN (Reuters) - German President Joachim Gauck will not run for a second five-year term in office, given his age and health reasons, the German newspaper Bild reported on Friday, citing political sources. Gauck, 76, is expected to explain his decision in a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday, the newspaper reported. Gauck's term ends in March 2017. A spokeswoman for the president declined to comment. The German president holds a largely ceremonial role, represents the country in matters of international law and at official gatherings. The president is not directly elected by the people, but rather by a committee, the Federal Convention, which consists of members of the German parliament and the same number of delegates sent from the state parliaments. The president has a term of five years and can only be re-elected once. Any German citizen over the age of 40 is able to become president. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Andreas Rinke; Editing by Toni Reinhold) By Robin Emmott BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Germany and France will relaunch closer European military cooperation this month and could start a common defense fund but there are no plans to form an EU army, officials say. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini will propose deepening defense links at a June 28-29 leaders summit, despite rising Euroscepticism, and argue that EU integration can work to maintain Europe's clout alongside the United States. Proponents say closer defense cooperation among the European allies is needed particularly to reduce costly duplication in production of defense systems and programs at a time when greater investment is required in defense technology. British scepticism about European integration has often hampered EU defense plans. After Britain's June 23 referendum, officials want to use the proposals to cement Britain's EU membership if London decides to stay. But they will still go ahead if British voters decide to leave. "The goal is a European defense union," said a senior German government official. "That is not about competing with NATO but we need a stronger Europe. If we wait for the Eurosceptics, then we will only go backwards," the official said. Shortcomings in Europe's 2011 Libyan air campaign and aging equipment in African missions have also convinced French officials. France sees military independence as paramount, but wants to move ahead with ideas blocked by Britain, such as a joint EU command headquarters and shared military assets. "The ideal situation would be that Britain remains in the EU but no longer stops others from developing a stronger, integrated foreign and security policy," said Elmar Brok, a German center-right EU lawmaker who heads the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee. But EU officials say British fears of an EU army of soldiers wearing the same uniforms is overblown. EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker called for a European army in March 2015, but in reality any capabilities that governments develop together, from radars to ships, will remain national. The decision to relaunch closer military cooperation, which was first tried by Britain and France in the 1990s, is because no European nation has the resources to confront the failing states on Europe's borders, militant attacks or a resurgent Russia. "The logic is overwhelming," said Nick Witney, a former head of the European Defence Agency that was set up in 2004 to improve Europe's defense capacities. "If you look at the scale of under-investment in Europe's defense technology, it requires Europe's military powers to develop together." 'ARCHIPELAGO' SYSTEM One idea under discussion is a European investment fund for defense, which would allow EU governments who pay into it to also borrow so as to ensure funds are always available for joint defense programs. Those range from new helicopters to drones. The fund, which could start on a small scale in 2017, could be backed by the European Investment Bank to finance projects. Other proposals could include enlarging cooperation between forces. Germany and the Netherlands have combined tank and naval forces and want to develop a common surface-to-air defense. French and British forces agreed in 2010 to work together. "We have islands of cooperation. The idea is to link them into an archipelago," said a senior EU defense official. Only 15 percent of the EU's defense investment went to collaborative projects in 2013, down from 26 percent in 2011, according to the European Defence Agency. Germany and France say sharing of resources may be the only way to sustain adequate military forces. EU officials point to the merger of missile systems companies in France, Italy and Britain in 2001 to create MBDA, the only European group able to design and produce world-class missile systems. "Europe can no longer afford the inefficiencies of duplication and over capacity that our existing fragmented market entails," the European Commision said in a defense paper. (Additional reporting by Tom Korkemeier; Editing by Richard Balmforth) Istanbul (AFP) - Turkey reacted with predictable fury to the passing of a resolution by the German parliament recognising as genocide the massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire but it remains to be seen if the move will have wider repercussions. Recognition of the killings from 1915 as genocide has been a red line for Turkey both under its previous secular rulers and also the Islamic-rooted ruling party of Recep Tayyip Erdogan that rose to power in 2002. Turkish officials vied with each other to give the most indignant response, with the justice minister saying the country which "burned the Jews in the ovens" had no right to make accusations against Turkey. Turkey's usually deeply polarised press was for once united in a shared wave of anger with one daily even portraying Chancellor Angela Merkel in a Nazi uniform with a Hitler moustache and calling Germans "Hitler's grandsons". - How far will Turkey's reaction go? Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2009 led an unprecedented process of rapprochement with Armenia to normalise ties which is now in tatters. Yerevan refused to give concessions while the AKP has pursued a more nationalist line, helping it at the ballot box at the expense of the strife-torn Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Rather than bring the sides closer together, the 100th anniversary of the tragedy in 2015 only served to increase the mutual acrimony. "President Erdogan will not be timid in his usual rhetorical flourish and displays of diplomatic disdain for the (German) vote," said Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center (RSC) think-tank in Yerevan, adding other officials would also try to "out-do each other in demonstrations of allegiance". Turkey made the conventional diplomatic riposte of withdrawing its ambassador for consultations. But Prime Minister Binali Yildirim struck a more conciliatory tone Friday saying that while damaged, relations would not suddenly nosedive. Story continues - Will there be concrete consequences? Germany is a key economic partner of Turkey, with total trade volumes amounting to $38 billion in 2013 and in troubled economic times it's unlikely Ankara would want to disturb these waters. Furthermore, it is the key partner of Turkey in the EU, in a relationship that goes back to the alliance between the late Ottoman Empire and Imperial Germany that saw them fight on the same side in World War I. For all the angry rhetoric, there has so far been no concrete warning from a top Turkish official of material retaliation against Germany. And crucially, there has been no talk of linking the dispute over the genocide to the already troubled deal to reduce the flow of migrants to Europe that Merkel championed. "There will be shows of anger but probably no serious rupture in relations between Turkey and Germany," said Jean Marcou, Director of International Relations at the Grenoble Institute of Political Studies. - Can there be a breakthrough in the future? The Bundestag's move came after similar recognition from foreign parliaments, including France, and the issue is yet another thorn in the side of Turkey's stalled EU bid. But with public opinion in Turkey firmly behind the Turkish government on the issue, it seems inconceivable that Ankara could step back from its red line on genocide recognition. "Without denying the existence of the massacres, Turkey considers them as one of the unfortunate consequences of a state of war," said Marcou. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag stated Friday bluntly that "there is nothing in our nation's past" that can compare to Germany's crimes against the Jews. Yet the vote in the German parliament was as much about finding a lever to pressure Turkey at a time of troubled relations as it was about the historical guilt for the Armenian genocide. "This may only tend to limit the negative impact on the outlook for a later re-engagement by Turkey and Armenia in recommitting to the 'normalisation' process, said Giragosian. Gigi Hadid and her squad hit the town just hours after news broke of her split from Zayn Malik. The 21-year-old model made quite the style statement when she showed up to The Nice Guy in West Hollywood, California, with pal Kendall Jenner and her younger sister Kylie, who also recently broke up with her longtime boyfriend, Tyga. It was hard to ignore Gigi's skimpy style statement that included a Rolling Stones crop top, sheer high-wasted cut-out leggings and ankle boot heels. WATCH: Calvin Harris Breaks His Silence on Split From Taylor Swift -- 'A Huge Amount of Love and Respect' Remains Getty Images Getty Images She also started posting on Snapchat following her breakup, and cryptically shared a photo of a glass of lemonade. Could Gigi be alluding to Beyonce's album, Lemonade, about infidelity? Snapchat Also in her Snapchat story, the Victoria's Secret model posted a pic of a T-shirt with a heart on its sleeve. The message below the image reads: "I know it's obvious, but I love you." PHOTOS: Kylie Jenner Flashes Insane Underboob in Jumpsuit, Breaks Zipper While Out With Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner Snapchat Snapchat While Gigi is out and about, Zayn has kept pretty quiet with the exception of one social media post. The 23-year-old singer shared a shirtless photo of himself on Instagram that showed him on a balcony waving his drink in the air. Zayn did not include a caption with the pic. ET reached out to Hadid and Malik's reps for comment on the reported split. Malik's rep had no comment. After sparking dating rumors in November, Gigi's mother, Yolanda Hadid, revealed to ET a month later that she had yet to meet Zayn. "Gigi's 20 years old (she's 21 now), loving life, shopping like she should," Yolanda said at the time. "I haven't met him yet, so I can't say anything about him." Related Articles Gillian Anderson has joined Starzs adaptation of Neil Gaimans American Gods, Variety has learned. Anderson will play Media, the mouthpiece for the New Gods, functioning as their public face and sales representative, by taking the form of various iconic celebrities. She lives off the attention and worship that people give to screens to their laptops, their TVs, to their iPhones in their hands while they watch their TVs. Ever the perky spokesperson, and always in control, she spins stories in whatever direction best suits her. The casting marks a reunion between Anderson and American Gods executive producer Bryan Fuller the two previously collaborated on NBCs Hannibal. In addition to Hannibal, Anderson recently returned to her iconic role as Dana Scully in Foxs revival of The X-Files, which premiered in January, and will next be seen in the third and final season of crime thriller The Fall, which will air later this year. American Gods is produced by FremantleMedia North America. Fuller and Michael Green are writers and showrunners. David Slade is directing the pilot and additional episodes. FMNAs Craig Cegielski and Stefanie Berk are executive producing the series along with Fuller, Green, Slade and Gaiman. Senior Vice Presidents of Original Programming Marta Fernandez and Ken Segna are the Starz executives in charge of American Gods. Starz retains all network pay TV and SVOD rights to the project, and FremantleMedia is distributing the series worldwide. The plot of American Gods posits a war brewing between old and new gods: the traditional gods of mythological roots from around the world steadily losing believers to an upstart pantheon of gods reflecting societys modern love of money, technology, media, celebrity and drugs. Its protagonist, Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle), is an ex-con who becomes bodyguard and traveling partner to Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane), a conman with personal ties to the battle between the deities. Story continues Related stories Starz President Glenn Curtis to Retire 'Outlander' Renewed for Seasons 3 and 4 Anthony Hopkins on 'The Dresser,' 'Westworld' and Why He Hates Car Chases Asian stocks were mostly higher on Friday ahead of the U.S. government's release of May's nonfarm payrolls. Analysts surveyed by Reuters are looking for the economy to have added 164,000 jobs in May. Investors and traders from across the globe will likely be paying closer attention than usual to the nonfarm payroll data as a strong reading could solidify the Federal Reserve's decision to implement a rate hike in the coming months. Meanwhile, China's Caixin Markit services purchasing managers' index (PMI) for May fell to 51.2 from 51.8 in April, but remained above the key 50 level which indicates an economic expansion. A separate Markit survey of Japan's services sector rose to 50.3 in May from 49.3 in April. Find out what's going on in today's market and bring any questions you have to Benzinga's PreMarket Prep. Australia's ASX index was an outperformer and gained 0.76 percent, while Japan's Nikkei index gained 0.48 percent, China's Shanghai Composite index gained 0.46 percent, Hong Kong's Hang Seng index gained 0.42 percent and Taiwan's TSEC index gained 0.37 percent. European stocks were also mostly higher with four hours of trading remaining. Markit's composite PMI output for the entire eurozone in May inched higher to 53.1 from 53.0 in April. The UK's FTSE index was higher by 0.97 percent, Germany's DAX index was higher by 0.63 percent and France's CAC index was higher by 0.52 percent. The price of oil also ticked higher Friday morning after a meeting of OPEC representatives failed to agree to an output cap and data from the U.S. showed oil production in the country fell another 32,000 barrels a day week-on-week. Brent crude rose 0.16 percent to $50.12 a barrel for August deliveries and WTI crude rose 0.08 percent to $49.21 a barrel. "The fact oil prices didn't make any major movements shows the markets had zero expectations a production ceiling would be reached in the meeting," Ric Spooner, chief analyst at CMC Markets told The Wall Street Journal. Story continues See more from Benzinga 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. Sundar Pichai, Senior Vice President for Products, delivers his keynote address during the Google I/O developers conference in San Francisco, California May 28, 2015. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith Google's cloud service may want to spent a lot more on hiring enterprise sales people if it wants to catch up to the competition. According to a research note by Evercore's Ken Sena on Thursday, the number of sales job openings at Google Cloud Platform far lags behind its biggest competitors, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Salesforce. Currently, GCP has only 80 sales job openings, a small fraction compared to AWS, Azure, and Salesforce, all of which have over 300 open spots in sales. Based on Sena's own estimates, GCP's sales cost only accounts for 8% of its total operating expenses, a tiny portion compared to some of the larger enterprise players. And although GCP ramped up its sales hires in recent months, nearly doubling to 50 sales reps in the West Coast alone, Sena notes that Google's investment seems more focused on the technical side than sales potentially weakening its growth prospects in the enterprise space, which tend to rely heavily on sales people to sign large business customers. Googles Cloud investment seems more focused on tools and infrastructure versus the sales headcount needed to help Google garner greater Cloud market shareas a result, we tend to view AWSs business as being under less competitive threat than we did previously, which our new estimates better reflect," Sena wrote. Unlike consumer products that could sometimes become major hits without much sales and marketing efforts, enterprise technology is still an area that's largely dictated by a strong sales culture. It's possible to penetrate small businesses and teams within large businesses without any sales people, but to sell to large businesses who drive the big bucks, a large sales team is essential. AWS's recent $400 million deal with Salesforce, for example, wouldn't have happened without a large number of enterprise salespeople involved. Sena's note argues GCP's level of investment not just in sales, but across data centers and infrastructure also falls behind competition. GCP's total expenses was $1.9 billion in 2015 and is expected to grow to $3.4 billion in 2016, a fraction of AWS's $6.9 billion in 2015 and $9.1 billion projected in 2016. Story continues GCP AWS expenses Still, it's too early to count GCP out of the picture. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has stated that the company will invest "significantly" in GCP this year, and has brought in VMWare cofounder Diane Greene, who's one of the most powerful people in enterprise tech, to lead GCP last year. Plus, as Sena noted, a lot of GCP's investments are flowing into improving its technical capabilities, giving it a niche advantage over other cloud providers. Its pricing is also more competitive than others, he notes. In any case, all this leads to the conclusion that GCP won't be a major threat to the market leading AWS in the near future, Sena writes. "In sum, while big-name customer additions (notably Snapchat, Spotify, and some of Apples business) and the hire of Diane Green have created some obvious reasons for concern from an AWS standpoint, our conclusion is that AWS is likely better situated than some may perceive," he writes. NOW WATCH: Doctors now say this type of cancer isnt actually cancer and the new classification is changing thousands of lives More From Business Insider traffic Google has launched a new tool to show how fast and mobile-friendly a website is, and it doesn't seem to be a huge fan of Google's own products. Google debuted the tool on its Small Business blog, in a post that explains the virtues of good site design: "If a potential customer is on a phone, and a site isnt easy to use, theyre five times more likely to leave." But when The Next Web's Natt Garun tested it, she found that Google's own websites didn't fare so well. Here is what she found for Google's main search page: Screen Shot 2016 06 02 at 1.23.35 PM That was Thursday, and by the time we tested it on Friday, it had changed (interesting): Screen Shot 2016 06 03 at 11.11.21 AM Regardless, YouTube still got crushed when we tested it: Screen Shot 2016 06 03 at 11.51.52 AM And the actual site for the group within Google that made the tool (Think With Google) only did so-so when we tested it today: Screen Shot 2016 06 03 at 11.13.15 AM On Thursday, The Next Web found Think With Google scoring significantly worse. With regards to its Mobile Speed metric, Google writes, "If customers are kept waiting for too long, theyll move on to the next site ... The worlds gone mobile. Now, its your turn." Google was not immediately available for comment. NOW WATCH: Mark Cuban explains why downloading Snapchat is a huge mistake More From Business Insider By Luiza Ilie BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Dozens of candidates standing for office in Romania's local elections on Sunday are either already subject to graft investigations or have not been sufficiently screened for any past abuses of power, anti-corruption groups say. Data compiled by Reuters showed around a third of the some 350 local officials under investigation or sent to trial since 2012 are running -- with many confident of securing office. Sunday's voting stakes are high, with local administrations having an overall budget of 67 billion lei (11.5 billion pounds) this year -- roughly a third of the country's consolidated budget revenue -- and access to European Union development funds. Ex-communist Romania, which joined the EU in 2007, has long been dogged by a reputation for high levels of corruption despite efforts by prosecutors to crack down on graft. Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International rated it third most corrupt EU country after Bulgaria in Italy in 2015. The International Monetary Fund last month cited "a high perception that public funds are being diverted and frequent experiences of irregular payments and bribes". An EU report this week mentioned it as one of three hotspots for fraudulent claims on EU funds. In a country with a population of around 20 million, no fewer than a quarter of a million candidates are vying for some form of public office, ranging from that of big city mayors to small town or county councillors. Candidates need only sign statements vouching they are entitled to run, confirming that they are at least 23 years old and have not lost their rights to hold public office due to past court convictions or other sanctions. But observers say their statements cannot be fully verified because local election bureaus by law do not have access to the personal identification numbers of candidates as they register, and so cannot conduct proper searches on them. This means that people can in theory run who have either been sentenced for graft or previously lost their seats due to conflicts of interest or because they could not account for their wealth under regulations passed at the EU's request. "I am wondering whether it's anyone's job in this country to check whether the candidates are entitled to run," said Laura Stefan, anti-corruption expert with think tank Expert Forum. While Expert Forum calculates that roughly 450 people who do not meet the age requirement are running, she says there is not enough access to the data that could show how many candidates fail the anti-corruption criteria. Records on the past activities of hundreds of thousands of candidates are held in the database of the so-called National Integrity Agency, a body whose specific role is to ensure the probity of public officials. But the current arrangements leave open which state body will search through its database and match its records with the hundreds and thousands of names on candidate lists. Contacted by Reuters, the Interior Ministry said by email it was not its role to monitor the statements signed by candidates vouching for their validity to run. It referred questions on the matter to the Central Election Bureau, which did not respond to a request for comment. "HE ALSO DID GOOD THINGS" Data compiled by Reuters from lists of candidates publicly available on line and prosecutors' documents between 2012 and the present-day show around 100 of some 350 local officials who have been investigated or sent to trial since 2012 are running in this election. Many of those under investigation have publicly denied wrongdoing and -- notwithstanding a conviction rate of 92 percent achieved by Romania's DNA anti-graft prosecution unit -- benefit from a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. While they are officially entitled to run pending final verdicts, the fact they choose to run at all is a sign for some of the reluctant but broad acceptance of corruption in Romanian society. "Citizens don't have a culture of anti-corruption," said Cristi Danilet, a judge who sits on Romania's judicial watchdog. "If you ask people why they would choose someone who is corrupt to continue leading them they would answer 'It's true that he stole, but he also did good things'". The capital Bucharest has seen its city mayor and four out of six district mayors put under investigation or sent to trial for taking bribes and abuse of office in the last year. Two of them are running to win their districts again this year. In Bucharest's fifth district, the city's poorest, Marian Vanghelie has won four consecutive terms since 2000, his popularity boosted in part by a scheme of welfare vouchers to the poor. He is on trial for taking bribes worth 30 million euros from a business involved in a public works contract, a charge he denies. "People say the fact that I am running proves I have courage and dignity and that I am not afraid -- which means that I am innocent," Vanghelie told Reuters. Some of his constituents agree. "I will vote for Marian Vanghelie because he is a very good man," said 51-year-old pensioner Mariana Stefan. "He did what he promised to do, supported everyone in all our problems." (Additional reporting by Diana Bitan and Sinisa Dragin) The grandson of the 80-year-old woman who was assaulted on a Port Angeles, Washington bus is speaking out. Read: Brave Driver Saves 80-Year-Old Woman From Brutal Bus Beating Corey Olsen told Inside Edition his grandma will still ride the bus, despite the vicious attack she endured Saturday. She plans to still ride the bus, he said. That really goes to her character to say, You can kick me in the face, but I am still going to ride the bus. She is a pretty tough cookie. Surveillance footage from the bus shows Angeline Olsen attacked by Riley E. White, after he rose from his seat and kicked the 80-year-old in the face. He started punching her and slamming her head into the floor, reported Corporal David Dombrowski of the Clallam County Sheriff's Office to InsideEdition.com. White also attacked the bus driver, Joy Crummett, when she tried to intervene. The suspect then reportedly yelled at the driver, "let go or Im going to rip your throat out," authorities told InsideEdition.com. Crummett distracted the suspect long enough to open the back doors and allow four other passengers to escape and call 911. Read: Cops: Former Bus Driver Steals City Bus After Driver Tells Her to Stop Smoking Between the suspects alleged attacks on the two women, the quick-thinking driver was able to cut the battery on the bus to prevent the man from driving away, trapping him there until authorities arrived. On Thursday, a bruised Angeline Olsen faced White in court. White has been charged with assault and kidnapping. Angeline Olsens family have set up a GoFundMe page to help pay for expenses. Watch: Bus Driver Saves 5-Year-Old Boy's Life After He Began Choking On Penny Related Articles: By Angeliki Koutantou ATHENS (Reuters) - Hundreds of migrants were rescued from a sinking ship off the island of Crete in the southern Mediterranean on Friday, the Greek coastguard said, saying it was impossible to speculate how many could still be unaccounted for. The death toll in the southern Mediterranean has mounted in recent weeks by migrants attempting sea crossings from North Africa to Europe this year. More than 2,000 people have died. Greek authorities said 340 people were rescued, but four bodies were also recovered in a location some 75 nautical miles off southern Crete, in territory which falls under Egypt's search and rescue jurisdiction. There was no immediate word on how many people may be missing and Greek coastguard officials refused to speculate. Greek media carried unsourced accounts the vessel was carrying anything between 500 and 700 people. It was not immediately clear where the boat had sailed from. "From some scattered accounts we have heard (from those rescued) they set off from the African coastline," coastguard spokesman Nikos Lagkadianos told Reuters. Merchant ships sailing in the area assisted in the operation, with about 242 people rescued taken to Italy and others to Egypt, Turkey and Malta, the Greek coastguard said. Hundreds of thousands of mainly Syrian refugees crossed the short but precarious sea corridor to Greece from Turkey last year in small inflatable boats, but that route was effectively sealed after an EU-Turkey clampdown in March. Now, warm weather and calmer seas in the Mediterranean have led to a surge in recent weeks in the number of people trying to cross to Italy from Libya, where people-smugglers operate with relative impunity. Boats on this much longer journey risk being blown off course to islands such as Crete. Friday's incident was the third in a week involving migrant rescues or landings on the island. (Reporting by George Georgiopoulos and Angeliki Koutantou Editing by Jeremy Gaunt) Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has said that hed beef up the Pentagon, deficit spend to stimulate the economy and still somehow eliminate the national debt in eight years without cutting Social Security or Medicare. At the same time, the Tax Policy Center found his tax plan would add nearly $10 trillion to the national debt. Nevertheless, Grover Norquist believes he has the potential to be the most fiscally conservative president in modern history. The president of Americans for Tax Reform is the man behind the infamous pledge to not add a single new dollar in revenue to the U.S. government, which arguably brought down President Obamas attempts at a grand bargain with then-House Speaker John Boehner and brought us the fiscal cliff. He says he not only supports Trump, but has faith that the New York real estate mogul will be a game-changing president for the cause of small government. In turn, Trump has verbally agreed to the pledge, though Norquist is still waiting for a signed copy to put on his website. Not to mention that the Tax Policy Center found that Trumps tax plan would add nearly $10 trillion to the national debt. Nevertheless, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, believes that Donald Trump is a fiscal conservative: in fact, Norquist believes Trump has the potential to surpass even Ronald Reagan and become the most fiscally conservative president in modern history. In an interview with TIME, Norquist explained how Trump won him over, or rather how he believes Republicans in Congress will win Trump over when it really matters. What do you make of the Tax Policy Center finding that Donald Trumps tax plan would add $9.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years? Weve been growing at 2 percent since the recession ended and the [President Barack] Obama recovery began. The [President Ronald] Reagan recovery was 4 percent a year, Obamas was 2 percent a year. The difference between 4 percent a year and 2 percent a year is $5 trillion more money to the federal government just from growthmore people working. Thered be 13 million more people working today if wed followed Reagans policies instead of Obamas. Getting those people back to work is the most important things to do and its also what Trump focuses on and the secret to his unexpected success against a bunch of political pros in the primaries and his polling well against a pro pro in [likely Democratic nominee] Hillary [Clinton]. So the growth that youre looking at would take half of that proposed deficit away. What he does is almost all pro-growth policy unlike [President George W.] Bushs tax cuts, which were not always focused on economic growth. He takes the corporate rate and business tax rate for individuals, people in the sharing economy and others1099 workers, not just corporationsto 15 percent. Were presently at 35 or higher for individuals that makes us noncompetitive with the rest of the world. The European average is 25 percent and were at 35 plus local and state corporate income tax. So Im interested in growth, I think its important to get that going and I think Trump is interested in that as well. Story continues Trump recently said hed stimulate the economy saying hed borrow knowing that if the economy crashed you could make a deal which many interpret to mean hed be willing to deficit spend economic stimulus. Any comment? I dont quite know what he was trying to get at there. When any politician tells you, Im going to do X, what theyre telling you is the direction they want to move in. Because whatever you want to do, borrowing money or spending money, would have to pass a Republican House and a Republican Senate. If hes elected, hell have a Republican House and a Republican Senate, both of which have voted to dramatically reduce the size and scope of government. They have faced a President Obama who has vetoed or refused to consider a number of their approaches but I think the amount of spending restraintand Trump talks regularly about this, the amount of waste, fraud and abusein politics today is such that if you strip that out theres an awful lot to be saved. Theres some very good proposals to save money in the Defense Department without reducing our effectiveness in our international strength But Trump says he wants to increase Pentagon spending, not decrease it? Well, he says that he wants to make the Pentagon stronger. Proposals such as the one put forward by Congressman [Ken] Calvert that Dov Zakheim, a former Reagan and Bush defense person, put togetheryoure talking about dropping hundreds of billions of dollars by dropping the number of civilian Pentagon employees. And then you have to have the questions as to which weapons systems you have how much of. Have you talked to Trump about signing your pledge? I have talked to his staff and they say he will. They have it and hell get it but theyve had a smaller staff so I have a request in for that. Not all the other candidates running for president except for [Jeb] Bush signed the pledge. I dont consider it signed until its on the web for everybody to seeits not just me. The fiscally conservative group Club for Growth has expressed reservations about Trump and the Huffington Post had a headline proclaiming The Age of Norquist Is Over because Donald Trump is not a fiscal conservative, do you think you can endorse Donald Trump and is he a true fiscal conservative? I will vote for and support the nominee of the Republican Party. Trumps tax policy is quite good, its as good as a number of themthere were like 16 other proposalsit was one of the best in terms of how it hung together and aggressively pro-growth it was. So on spending he has focused on the reforming government and hell be working with a Republican House and Senate which have already passed bills that would drop spending by $6 billion over the next decade. So the idea that Trump, [House Speaker Paul] Ryan and [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell would sit down theres an awful lot of spending restraint that can be done. Certainly, the Republicans have had some tremendous successes against Obamathe spending cuts in the sequester and making 85% of the Bush tax cuts permanent. But you could do a great deal more if you had a Republican president who was supportive of moving in those directions. Take Trumps laughable pledge to eliminate national debt without cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Do you think that fiscal conservatives can vote for Donald Trump in the fall? Sure because all hes doing is laying out what direction he wants to go in. Presidents only get to set directions, they dont get to say how far you go in the direction youre talking aboutthats what Congress decides. And what Trump did well during the campaign is say Im focused on jobs, Im focused on the jobs, Im focused on the jobs. The one thing Obama never talks about is jobs. He wants to cure the environment at the cost of jobs, he wants the EPA to do this at the cost of jobs, he wants global warming at the cost of jobs. He never talks about all the jobs that hes killed. The 13 million peoples kids whose parents dont have someone in the household earning a living because of Obamas economic policieshis have been very damaging for the country. By focusing on growth and job creation Trump is doing exactly the right thing and the tools, lower rates But hes also looking to increase spendingdeficit spending? I havent heard him say deficit spending. So has his campaign assured you that they are not going to increase net spending on the Pentagon? As a percentage of GDP, if were actually growing the economy over the next decadeand hes been very clear about thisI sat 10 feet in front of him at the speech he gave to the Center for the National Interest, the old Nixon Center, on foreign policy. And he started off by saying, Guys this all starts with a strong economy. Only if we have a strong economy can we afford the military that we need to have. The world is full of countries like Pakistan and Russia which had really nice militaries and not an economic base to support them. Step 1: get the economy going again and then you can afford as a percentage of federal spending to have the kind of military support that you need. There are all sorts of challenges: you reform government to cost less. You dont have to cut government to cost less. But how do you reduce the deficit, or eliminate it as hes pledged to do in eight yearswithout cutting Medicare or Social Security, which Trump has pledged to protect? Well, Social Security takes 60 votes to change any way so thats not a terribly interesting promise by anybody. Because that would take 60 votes and Democrats have made it clear that they like that as an issue, they dont want to solve the problem. Clinton saw the problem back in the late 1990s but because of Monica Lewinsky, couldnt do anything about it because the hard left of his party said: Dont touch it. He sat in the room and told Republicans that he understood that you needed to move towards 401ks, wanted to do that. But he had lost control of his own presidency by then. Then Bush ran twice saying you should give people the choice, 401ks, IRAs. He won the presidency twice with that issue front and center. The Democrats decided that they didnt want that, they wanted it as an issue so they could say that they opposed reforming it in order to claim that the Republicans wanted to cut it. When of course the Democrats solution every time theres been a crisis in Social Security has been to cut benefits, raise taxes, never reform. So thats a challenge but the good news is that for Republicans going forward and for Trump, is there have been a series of reforms proposed that dont effect anybody who is on Social Securityput Social Security asideMedicare, Medicaid. They dont deal with anybody who is on Medicare now but would block grant Medicaid jobs programs, public housing and food stamps and block grant them just as Clinton did with aid with aid to children. You block grant them as aid to states and let them take different approaches and that gave you dramatic reductions in cost and dependency. But nobody cut any budgets. Is that something that Donald Trump or his campaign has told you that he wants to block grant Medicare or Medicaid? No, these are the reforms that have come out of the Republican House and Senate. Presidents put lots of ideas forward and thats fine but if you look at whats happened in the last 50 years of historythe last 100 years of historyCongress decides how money is going to spent, how taxes are going to be cut, and so on. What Trump represents is: Hillary Clinton would be like Obama, shed go no no no to every reform. And Trump said hes open to a bunch or reforms starting with tax reductions, so wed get the reforms and then wed look at other ways to reduce spending and rein it in. The President doesnt have to come with a set of proposals. The House and Senate have put together and voted repeatedly on a whole series of them. And yet Presidents have taken office with significant agendas. Look at George W. Bushmore of those initiatives came from the White House. Youre taking the burden off of Trump here saying he shouldnt have ideas? No, no. Wrong. Reagan just adopted the congressional legislation Kemp Roththat was his tax plan. George W. Bush certainly had his own tax plan. George W. Bush had his own tax plan that was written to navigate a primary system which is why it wasnt a particularly helpful tax cut in terms of being pro-growth. If hed let Congress work with him on writing it wed have had a much stronger, better economy and a better tax bill. Trumps plan is more pro-growth than Reagans and certainly dramatically more pro-growth than anything that George W. Bush put forward in his campaign. He also talked which Reagan did and Bushgosh, if he did I never heard himabout the regulatory burden. Were now looking at $1.8 trillion a year absorbed by regulatory costs in the United Stated States, which is more than people pay on their regular income taxes. The government screws with you more through regulatory burdens than through the personal income tax and while not everybody technically pays the personal income tax, we all pay the cost of the regulations which raise the price of everything in the country. That makes everything you buy more expensive, getting a first home more expensive, all of these challenges. I think his focus on that will, in retrospect, be seen asthe tax cut is fundamentally sound and pro-growthbut his focus on deregulation is something that has been missing. Because weve taken tax increases off the tablethe taxpayer protection pledge has stopped any tax increase from 93 when the Democrats had both houses and the presidency to 2009for 15-16 years, no tax increase. Only when the Democrats have everything can you raise taxes in America. Listening to you, what do you think is more important in this election is it saving Republican House and Senate majorities or winning back the White House? In this case they are the same project. There is not a conflict. The Republicans back in 96 said should we try and help [GOP nominee Senator Bob] Dole who was not doing well, who was never doing well, or should we focus on the House and the Senate. With the House and Senate they were more seen as in play, first of all they were closer. Two, they were fresh, new unused to governing as a majority. This time weve had the Republican House and Senate most of the time since 94. With that, we know how to govern and campaign on that. The House does not look in any way in trouble. The Senate is fine as long as its an okay election. Trump is polling neck-in-neck with Hillary at this point. Its not one of those things where we have to do a triage because one, Trump has his own resources, two, the House and Senate have their own resources. Is Donald Trump a fiscal conservative? He hasnt been a governor or a senator so he doesnt have a voting record, whereas you could say, This governor has done this, or This candidate has done this. In this campaign he has laid out a pro-growth, more limited government, regulatory relief approach while keeping an eye on having a strong national defense. In that case, hes outlined a set of political positions very similar to the ones Reagan outlined. His tax cut is more aggressive than Reagans, but were many years past Reagans successes. Reagan would be cheerful with his tax cut but this is more aggressive than Reagans. Reagan had a skeptical House and Senate in some ways. They pruned it back a little bit. Trump would not face the same challenge. So, yeah, hes fiscally conservative. You make it sound like he could be the most fiscally conservative president since Ronald Reagan? Yes. And beyond that. Because he has a House and Senate that are dramatically more pro-growth, dramatically less excited about government spending, dramatically more opposed to the corruption that you have from ear marks and so on. When Reagan was president earmarks in Congress were viewed as a sign of your virility, how important you are, how cool you are. Oh, Im a big person, I can bring earmarks back. Remember Reagan had the 800-page transportation bill which was a whole collection of earmarks and he said, This is ridiculous? He said, Im going to sign it but I never want to see this again. The Republican House and Senate themselvesnot the presidentended earmarks. That self-imposed discipline by a Republican House and Senate, together with a Republican president who can sign economic reform bills buy you an awful lot of economic growth. So, Donald Trump, heir to Ronald Reagan? He could be. He is campaigning that way. And, again, because he has a Reaganite House and Senate which Reagan never did. Just to nail you down: you said Trump is fiscally conservative, but is a fiscal conservative? Yeah, I think hes a fiscal conservative. My only hesitation was with a governor, or an elected official, they would have had a record to point to. But, yes, hes a fiscal conservative he wants to pay down the national debt, rein in spending. One of the things thats helpful with Trump is that he has been in business. When somebody comes up with a regulatory idea, he has a sense of who that would hurt, what jobs that would kill, that would never occur to Obama. Not that he doesnt carealthough, I dont think he caresbut he doesnt know what this would do to somebody else and what it would do to families across the country. Trump would get it immediately. Within a few short weeks in the early summer of 2015, Hollywood director and graphic artist Blake Leibel made a series of drastic life-changing decisions that alarmed his friends and upended his family. According to a close family friend who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter on condition of anonymity, Leibel began behaving "erratically" and started showing "signs of instability" shortly before abruptly leaving his pregnant wife and small child and moving out. As jarring and unexpected as these changes were, few could have predicted the turn that Leibel's life would take in the months to come. On May 31, Leibel, 35, was arraigned in a Los Angeles courtroom on charges of "murder, mayhem, aggravated mayhem and torture" after sheriff's deputies discovered the wealthy Toronto native barricaded behind furniture and bedding in a West Hollywood apartment with the corpse of his Ukrainian girlfriend, Iana Kasian, 30. "Kasian was tortured and mutilated before she was killed and all of her blood was drained from her body," the prosecutor's office wrote in a statement. Read More: Former 'Shield' Actor Convicted of Second-Degree Murder If convicted of first-degree murder, Leibel, one of two scions of prominent Toronto real estate developer and former Olympian sailor Lorne Leibel, could face the death penalty. Leibel's attorney Alaleh Kamran filed a motion to have her client's mental competence evaluated. A court will hear arguments on June 14. Leibel, shackled in chains and wearing a suicide prevention vest at this week's hearings, pleaded not guilty. "This is a serious matter," said Kamran in a statement released by her publicist, Howard Bragman, who is also a well-known crisis consultant, "Mr. Leibel's defense team request that the public and the media respect his right to a fair hearing in court." Leibel had once worked alongside Hollywood legend Mel Brooks on an animated spinoff of the 1987 classic Spaceballs, but his career then took a few twists and turns. He co-authored a grisly graphic novel that explored "the root of all evil," and wrote a screenplay about a serial killer called Psychopomp. Story continues While the full scope of what transpired in Leibel's life - and perhaps in his mind - in the past 12 months remains murky, one starting point may be the first weeks of the 2015 summer, when his family life in his adopted L.A began to unravel. Read More: Troy Ave Charged With Attempted Murder Following Irving Plaza Shooting According to the family friend, who has known Leibel and his ex-wife Amanda Braun for more than a dozen years, the director left Braun, now 38, when she was eight-and-a-half-months pregnant with their second child. Within weeks, Leibel had filed for divorce, moved out of the couple's Beverly Hills home and into a newly leased West Hollywood apartment and taken up with Iana Kasian, a Ukrainian who, according to news reports, had studied law before coming to the United States. Through her attorney, Amanda Braun released this statement: "Our family is shocked and saddened by this tragedy. It has been very difficult for me and my family to process exactly what has occurred. At this time, I ask that our privacy be respected. I will have no further comment." Leibel had for years been entangled in legal disputes with his estranged father, and repeated attempts to challenge his deceased mother's will had apparently taken their toll. But these most recent, and dramatic, changes seemed to arrive out of the blue - and they were frightening. "The separation from Amanda felt like it came out of nowhere and it took her by surprise," says the family friend, "I've known him to be a gentle person who loved his son. But that was when he started showing signs of instability." Read More: Former 'Criminal Minds' Casting Director Abandons Workshop Business After Pay-to-Play Controversy It was around that time that Leibel, whom this friend had always perceived as quiet, good-natured and pleasant, began to behave "erratically." Another close family friend who has known and worked with both Leibel brothers says the news of Blake's arrest was completely unexpected. "Was he mentally unstable?" he asks, "Nothing to this level. He was usually a pretty eccentric and weird guy, but nothing like this." As a director, Leibel had already garnered a reputation for eccentricity, according to people who worked with him. But by last summer, he no longer seemed interested in his family, which struck this friend as odd and out of character. Whereas before she said he spent most of his free time with his son, now he was leaving his wife and dating at least two other women, one of whom was Iana. According to one producer who worked with him on the 2008 film Bald, starring Jonathan Cherry and Sally Kirkland (which went straight to DVD), Leibel's eccentricities were a mask. "He was like a big teddy bear," says this producer, "He always wanted everyone to laugh, but his ideas were crazy, out there." On Bald, for instance, Leibel pushed for a last-minute change to the script that would have required 14 women to come onto the set with shaved heads. But while he was often "extravagant" on set, with a wild and creative imagination, in private, he was "very polite and quiet, a good guy," she says. Read More: LAPD Rules Out Recently Discovered Knife as Murder Weapon of Nicole Brown, Ron Goldman Leibel's artistic forays paint another picture, however. As the Washington Post first reported, Leibel co-authored Syndrome, a graphic novel that begins with a terrifying scene of a corpse being drained of its blood, a horror that bears eerie similarities to the real-life murder for which Leibel is now being charged. In that story, "a rogue neuropathologist makes a startling breakthrough - literally isolating the root of all evil in the recesses of the human brain," according to the book's description on Amazon, "With the help of a naive Hollywood actress, a tormented motion picture director, and a condemned serial killer, Dr. Wolfe Brunswick launches a bold experiment in the Nevada desert, the outcome of which could transform humanity forever." But while Leibel's art was no doubt disturbing, the family friend and others who knew him say nothing in his behavior indicated a propensity toward anything like the violence of which he now stands accused. "He just wanted to make everyone happy," says the producer. "We couldn't ever figure it out," says the family friend, "He loved Amanda and then all of a sudden he was gone." As the summer of 2015 progressed, Leibel appeared to be quickly jettisoning everything that until then he had shown only enthusiasm and love for: his wife, his son and the life they had built together. According to the family friend, Braun found out that Leibel and Kasian were together only when she saw them "out on the town" one day. Braun had by then given birth to Leibel's second child. Read More: Former Epix Executive Arrested for Stealing $8 Million Kasian, meanwhile, was already pregnant. "It just totally sideswiped Amanda," says this friend. "Blake didn't offer any explanation, he just stopped coming home." Roughly nine months later, Leibel's life seemed to have been changed utterly. In April, Kasian gave birth to their child and the two were living in the leased West Hollywood apartment. On May 20, two-and-a-half weeks after the birth of his child with Kasian, police arrested Leibel on an unrelated charge of sexual assault against a third woman, whose name has not yet been released. He was released on $100,000 bail. The rape charge and investigation are pending in light of the more recent, and gruesome, event. After the rape allegation, Kasian went to stay with her mother. She returned to the shared apartment to talk to Leibel last week. But she was dead when authorities found her, the subject of "sustained blunt force trauma to her head," according to police. Officers again arrested Leibel, who had blockaded himself inside the apartment - this time for murder. By Lacey Ann Johnson FORT MEADE, Md. (Reuters) - Accusations that Guantanamo Bay guards tormented a suspected Sept. 11 plotter are not credible, a former prison commander testified during a pre-trial hearing on Friday. Yemeni defendant Ramzi Bin al Shibh has said that electronic devices hidden inside the walls of his cell at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba produced tremors and banging noises, disrupting his sleep for years. A detainee from Somalia, Guleed Hassan Ahmed, took the stand at the hearing on Thursday to echo Bin al Shibhs complaints. The former commander, who testified under an alias and who had overseen Camp Seven, the secret part of the prison where former Central Intelligence Agency captives are held, said Bin al Shibh was responsible for about 90 percent of prisoner complaints there. Defense attorney James Harrington asked the commander why no one investigated the vast majority of Bin al Shibhs complaints. He replied: There was no need to investigate it. We didnt deem it was credible. Bin al Shibh is known for cursing at guards, outbursts and threatening to have peoples relatives beheaded, said the officer, who oversaw Camp Seven from August 2015 to May. The former commander said he investigated and found no machinery within the walls of Bin al Shibh's cell, other than plumbing. Bin al Shibh is among five men being tried for conspiring to help hijack airliners that slammed into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon and crashed in a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001. Almost 3,000 people died in the attacks. Defense attorneys had called Ahmed to testify in an attempt to prove that prison staff have ignored a 2013 court order to stop harassing Bin al Shibh. Guards have denied the abuse allegations. The death penalty case against the five suspects has been plagued by repeated delays. The men were arraigned on current charges in 2012 and have been in U.S. custody for more than 12 years. In a news conference after the hearing, defense lawyer James Connell said he thought the trial would start by late 2019. Story continues Defense attorneys also said they were trying to invite the United Nations' special investigator on torture, Juan Mendez, to Guantanamo Bay to investigate conditions. There are 80 prisoners still at the Cuban base, mostly from Yemen. The next session of the pre-trial hearing is scheduled for July. Reuters monitored the proceedings over closed-circuit television at a press room at Fort Meade, outside Washington. (Writing by Ian Simpson; Editing by Chris Reese and Leslie Adler) GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Guatemala's attorney general accused ex-president Otto Perez on Thursday of negotiating hundreds of bribes for public contracts, and ordered at least 50 people arrested for participating in the massive corruption scheme. The latest accusation comes after a bribery scandal toppled Perez's government, forcing his resignation and landing him in jail last fall. The latest accusations also sweep in other politicians and prominent business leaders. Authorities arrested 23 people during the day and sent seven international orders for capture, including for Alba Lorenzana, the wife of Mexican media magnate Angel Gonzalez and a partner in his companies. "We are facing a criminal structure that had co-opted power ... with the ultimate goal of illegal enrichment," Attorney General Thelma Aldana said at a news conference, adding that the organization was led by Perez and his former vice president Roxana Baldetti. According to the investigation, officials and businessmen started using a "mechanism" during the 2011 elections to hide bribes, pulling in at least $130 million. The scheme continued until the resignation of Perez and Baldetti, who are both in jail pending trial for customs fraud. Lawyers for Perez and Baldetti were not immediately available for comment on the newest accusations, which include charges for illicit campaign finance, illegal association, passive bribery and money laundering. Perez has denied any involvement in the customs fraud. The attorney general's office and the Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a U.N.-backed body that was key in Perez's fall, said Perez and Baldetti took at least 60 percent of the funds for themselves, to live a life of luxury. The investigation is looking at 450 cases of illicit contracts, involving bankers, officials, and businessmen such as the legal representative of Sigma, Guatemala's most important construction firm, as well as people who acted as front men to hide the source of funds. "The conditions under which one works (as an official) have their risks and today I have to confront this situation and confront my joint responsibility," said Rudy Gallardo, director of the National Register, which processes personal identification cards, and one of those detained in the case. This is the third pending case for Perez and the fourth for Baldetti, who are both also accused of arranging bribes with a Spanish firm in exchange for a port concession. (Reporting by Sofia Menchu; Editing by Kim Coghill) * Gulf investors hold big British real estate portfolios * Property prices have fallen in upmarket parts of London * Investors fear prices could further deteriorate with Brexit By Sylvia Westall and Pamela Barbaglia DUBAI/LONDON, June 3 (Reuters) - Gulf Arab investors, some of the biggest buyers of British real estate, are holding back from new deals because they fear a property price slump if Britain leaves the European Union, according to legal and investment sources. Sovereign and private investors from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have been prolific buyers of British assets in the past decade, snapping up billions of dollars worth of property, mostly in London. "Sovereign wealth funds are concerned that Brexit is taking its toll on the property market in London," said a London-based lawyer who works with some of the largest Gulf funds. He declined to be named, citing the confidential nature of his work. "The situation will further deteriorate if there's a Brexit vote." The value of residential property in upmarket areas popular among Gulf investors - including Chelsea, South Kensington and Knightsbridge - fell between 3.5 and 7.5 percent on the year in May, according to estate agent Knight Frank. Gulf family businesses and private investors are heavily involved in London real estate. Investors from the UAE accounted for more than 20 percent of buy-to-let property sales in the UK in 2015, said Amit Seth, the Middle East and North Africa head of international residential developments at London-focused real estate agency Chestertons. "At the moment it seems clear people are little bit more sceptical on making an investment today because of Brexit," said Seth, who is based in Dubai, referring to private Gulf investors in residential real estate. He said investors were still researching opportunities and discussing them with his company, but not finalising deals. While the precise impact on Gulf investments is unclear, overall flows of foreign capital into commercial real estate in Britain stopped in the first three months of 2016, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said in April. Business investment in the country also fell in early 2016, statistics showed this week. Story continues LONDON LANDMARKS Gulf investors also have broader worries about their investments in other sectors and how a possible Brexit in a June 23 EU referendum could affect the British economy, the sources said. A YouGov poll for the Times newspaper showed an even split between "Remain" and "Leave" voters on Wednesday. There is no suggestion long-term investors from the Gulf will exit assets en masse if Britain votes out, but many are worried about the impact on portfolios and wider economic effects, a senior Gulf government official said. "Of course we are worried about what will come next if the British decide to leave the EU," the official said. "We think that there will be a negative impact on our investments in the UK because the selling (prices) will go down and the banks in England will face some difficulties." Asked to comment on Gulf investor concerns, Tobias Ellwood, a British Foreign Office minister, said the EU referendum was a significant event that had been discussed as part of regular bi-lateral engagements covering a wide variety of areas. "But (it) has not been raised in any form in relation to impact on investment opportunities, which go from strength to strength," he told Reuters in Qatar's capital Doha on May 21. Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jaber al-Thani, a former Qatari prime minister and investment chief who oversaw much of the Gulf state's UK acquisitions, has spoken out against a "leave" vote. "In the Middle East we all want to see a strong Europe, and believe that economic integration is key to making it stronger. In fact, we believe the UK should not only be part of the EU but should lead it," he told Reuters, describing the City of London as the "financial capital of the world". Qatar is one of the most high-profile investors in London, owning landmarks such as the Shard skyscraper, Harrods department store and Olympic Village, as well as luxury hotels. It also leads a consortium that bought the owner of the Canary Wharf financial district last year. While the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) wealth fund has been diversifying its portfolio away from Europe towards more investments in the United States and Asia in the last couple of years, it is still heavily invested in Britain and holds stakes in Barclays, Royal Dutch Shell and Sainsbury's . If Britain votes to leave "then you are going to see a big hit to investments", said a senior Qatari banker who does business with sovereign and private investors. He said investors were still working on deals without finalising them until the picture becomes clear. "They are watching to see what happens, but people are continuing to work on new things as they take months to get done." CANARY WHARF The QIA has $256 billion of assets under management globally, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute (SWFI). It has at least $7 billion directly invested in equities traded on the London Stock Exchange, in which it also holds a 10.3 percent stake, according to Thomson Reuters data. Sheikh Hamad said in April that Qatar's total investments in Britain were around 30 billion pounds ($44 billion), according to comments in a Financial Times interview. Kuwait Investment Authority, which has $592 billion in assets under management according to SWFI, is also a major investor though its London-based Kuwait Investment Office. In 2013 it said the fund had more than doubled its investment in Britain over the previous 10 years to more than $24 billion. Like Qatar, Kuwait owns London landmarks such as the More One riverside development which houses the headquarters of the mayor, as well as buildings in Canary Wharf. It has focused on infrastructure investments through its Wren House Infrastructure Management arm set up in 2013. Uncertainties about the legal and regulatory framework that would result from a Brexit is a worry for any large investor in Britain, said Fabio Scacciavillani, chief economist at Oman Investment Fund, which SWFI says has $6 billion under management. "If the region's sovereign wealth funds have invested in UK assets they would be rightfully concerned for their long-term returns outlook," he said, adding most would put their decisions on hold until after the vote. "Brexit implies a long and potentially thorny period of adjustment as the UK will need to negotiate trade relationships." A report published by Britain's Treasury in April predicted foreign direct investment into the country would be between 10 and 26 percent lower after fifteen years if it left the EU, compared to where it would be if it stayed in. All Gulf Arab countries are concerned about the prospect of an "out" vote, said a Saudi businessman who meets regularly with senior Gulf officials. He said the British government had been informed unofficially at several levels about the concerns. An exit would affect investments, he added. ($1 = 0.6810 pounds) (Additional reporting by William Maclean, Hadeel Al Sayegh, Tom Arnold and David French in Dubai, and William James in London; Editing by Pravin Char) What comes next? Lin-Manuel Miranda's been freed -- from Broadway's Hamilton, that is! The 36-year-old star and creator of the hit musical is planning to exit the stage on July 9 when the company's contracts expire, according to The Hollywood Reporter. That leaves 44 more opportunities for theatre lovers to catch a live performance from him at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York City. WATCH: 'Hamilton' Cast Opens Up About Diversity, Beyonce & Crashing the Phone Lines The scheduled departure would come just weeks after the 70th Annual Tony Awards, where the production is up for a record-breaking 16 nominations, including Best Musical. But don't worry about finding ways to catch Miranda in action, as he already has a ton of exciting projects lined up. On Tuesday, Disney revealed that Miranda will be joining the cast of Mary Poppins Returns, the studio's live-action sequel to the 1964 classic, as a streetlamp lighter named Jack. The reboot, helmed by Into the Woods director Rob Marshall, will also star Emily Blunt as Mary Poppins. NEWS: 'Hamilton' Dominates the Tony Awards With 16 Nominations "The iconic original film means so much to me personally," Marshall said in a statement. "I look forward to creating an original movie musical that can bring Mary Poppins, and her message that childlike wonder can be found in even the most challenging of times, to a whole new generation." Miranda will also be making a guest appearance in a Broadway-themed edition of James Corden's "Carpool Karaoke" segment on The Late Late Show next Monday, where he'll be joined by Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Audra McDonald and Jane Krakowski. Last October, ET reported that the Broadway star would be lending his songwriting talents to Disney's Moana, an upcoming film from Walt Disney Animation Studios that's centered around a Hawaiian princess. WATCH: Meet Disney's Newest Princess & the 14-Year-Old Hawaiian Native Who Plays Her "I can't wait for you to meet Moana," Miranda shared via Twitter in January. Story continues I can't wait for you to meet Moana. https://t.co/viKx8hC8oU Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) January 6, 2016 Watch the video below to hear more on what to expect from the adorable animated adventure, which stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as a demigod named Maui. Related Articles A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon an event the rarity of which ranks somewhere between the Transit of Venus and a life-affirming debate on Facebook: A fountain in New Yorks Madison Square Park had been drained and cleaners were hard at work collecting the change at the bottom. Since the fountain is near The Atlantics Manhattan office and adjacent to the worlds first Shake Shack, Id seen many a tourist discharge his or her spare change into the water over the years. And I had always casually wondered what became of it. It turns out, one of my wishes was now coming true. I approached one of the workers, who was vague on the details. According to him, the money collected in the 149-year-old granite fountain generally goes to charity when there is enough of it; when fewer coins remain, however, he said the workers are free to keep it. About $20 had been collected so far, perhaps enough for the two men to get Shack Stacks, fries, and shakes nearby. Recommended: The Graying of Rural America The Madison Square Park Conservancy, which maintains the park, did not respond to more formal inquiries about its leftover-change policy, but some clues may lie in the practices of its uptown peer Bryant Park. Back in 2012, Jerome Barth, then the parks director of operations told The New York Times that the money collected from the fountain goes to the cost of cleaning the fountain. Given that both parks, like most of New York Citys bigger parks, are governed by nonprofit organizations, a claim that the money goes to charity is technically true. But many of the coins dont even make it until cleaning day. We have over 50 beautiful, decorative display fountains in NYC parks, Maeri Ferguson from the Parks & Recreation Departments press office rhapsodized in an email. They are cleaned regularly by Parks staff (every few weeks) but we consistently find that most of the coins have already been removed by entrepreneurial New Yorkers and there is not a significant amount left to be collected. Beyond that, the city does not seem to have a firm policy in place for handling the coinage. Story continues Apparently, if you can take it here, you can take it anywhere. Next, I reached out to Kansas City, which calls itself The City of Fountains. Their answer was the same: We do not collect the coins in the fountains as they disappear almost as soon as they are thrown inpicked out by homeless, wrote Heidi Downer, a manager from the citys Parks and Recreation Department. I am interested if other cities actually collect enough to make an impact. It seems entrepreneurs are everywhere these days. Recommended: Protesters Assaulted Democracy in San Jose Kansas Citys official literature claims that the only city with more fountains is Rome, which holds a major exception to the prevailing paradigm of citizen-collected coins. Throwing coins into Trevi Fountain is codified by years of tradition, a ritual (over the back, right hand over left shoulder), and by film, such as Three Coins in the Fountain, which features the participants throwing the coins wrong. The thousands of dollars thrown daily in the fountain fund a supermarket for the needy. Thats not to say Rome doesnt have its own entrepreneurs. For over three decades, Roberto Cercelletta, who went by the nickname DArtagnan, pillaged the fountain for as much as $1,000 on a daily basis. He was ultimately felled by the Italian press, which chronicled his exploits, the difficulties he faced following the introduction of the euro coin (which was immune to his magnetized wand), and his eventual downfall at the hands of Italian police, who finally arrested him in 2002. Private fountains, however, are another story. At the Mall of America in Minnesota, nonprofit organizations are free to apply for a piece of the $24,000 that gets collected from the fountains each year. Charities also benefit from the tens of thousands of coins thrown in the fountains at places like Disney parks, Vegas casinos, and Rainforest Cafes. The implications of this charitable giving on the wishes themselves remains unclear. But those hoping for a better world should feel somewhat assured. Their coins might feed someone hungry, and not just with any old hamburger, but with Shake Shack. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. If you're looking for a financial adviser to give you advice on saving for retirement, you'd probably want one that looks out for your best interests. But finding such an adviser may be more difficult than you'd expect. Some advisers are just as concernedmaybe even more concernedabout their own financial interests. Those that look out for your best interests are known as fiduciaries. Such advisers invest your savings, say, in low-cost funds for a fixed fee instead of comparable funds that charge more in commissions. They promise there won't be any hidden fees that surprise you later. And if your adviser has any conflicts of interest that could sway his judgment about which investments are best for you, he's required to tell you. Savers also have the option of turning to commission-based advisers who may not be fiduciaries. These advisers are only required to make investments on your behalf that are "suitable" for your needs. That means that while the investments your adviser chooses could be appropriate for your financial goals, you could end up paying him more money in commissions and other fees than if you had hired a fiduciary. That's money that you could be putting aside for retirement instead. American families are losing billions of dollars because of an out-of-balance system that allows for conflicted advice, said Labor Secretary Thomas Perez earlier this year. Responsibility should be rewarded, not exploited. The Department of Labor, which regulates retirement accounts, estimates that savers lose as much as $17 billion a year from unnecessary costs due to such conflicts of interest. The Fiduciary Rule To prevent those saving for retirement from paying higher fees, the Department of Labor published the Conflict of Interest Rule last April. It requires that all financial advisers dealing with retirement accounts act as "fiduciaries" and look out for their clients best interests. The rule is being phased in and won't be fully enforced until January 2018. Story continues In the meantime, opposition to the fiduciary rule is mounting. On Wednesday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and several investment industry groups filed a lawsuit to prevent the rule from being enforced. They claim that the rule makes it more difficult for smaller investors to afford retirement advice. The reason, they argue, is that paying commissions on smaller amounts could end up being less expensive than paying a fixed or asset-based fee often charged by a fiduciary. Earlier this year, the U.S. House and Senate, responded to those same arguments from the financial industry by voting against the rule. Pamela Banks, senior attorney and program manager for Consumers Union, the advocacy and policy arm of Consumer Reports, says she isn't concerned about the mounting opposition. That's partly because President Obama has vowed to veto any bill that tries to kill the measure. Also, many financial advisory firms plan to meet the requirements of the rule anyway. A recent survey by Fidelity Investments shows that almost half of all investment companies have started to make changes to comply with the rule. Sheryl Garrett, chief executive of Garrett Planning Network, which connects individuals with financial advisers who are fiduciaries, also says that businesses are adapting to the new requirements. You either go out of business because youre not complying, or you step back and rethink how you can serve these clients in their best interest," she says. What You Can Do Until the fiduciary rule is fully in force, one way to ensure you hire a fiduciary is to work with a fee-only financial planner. These professionals charge only for their advice and they dont earn commissions based on the investments you choose. Good sources to find fee-only financial advisers are the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors and the Garrett Planning Network. Sheryl Garrett says it's also a good idea to ask a potential financial adviser to sign a fiduciary oath from the Committee for the Fiduciary Standard, which advocates in favor of fiduciary advice. Ask the adviser if he is going to be a fiduciary 100 percent of the time," says Garrett. "If he cant agree, keep looking for someone else. More from Consumer Reports: The best matching washers and dryers Generator Buying Guide 8 ways to boost your home value Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright 2006-2016 Consumers Union of U.S. Screen Shot 2016 06 02 at 5.54.44 PM A new report shows which industries some of the world's biggest hedge funds are investing in. And the short version is that they're betting on you, the consumer. The world's ten largest long/short equity funds are bullish on the consumer discretionary, industrials, and consumer staples sectors, according to eVestment, a research firm. eVestment compiled baskets of the largest hedge funds in aggregate and by strategy, and analyzed those funds' market exposures and risks. "It really speaks to the perceived strength of the economy," eVestments research head Peter Laurelli told Business Insider. The research tallies with earlier observations from the likes of Credit Suisse, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. According to a Credit Suisse note out in mid-May, hedge funds are betting on sectors like consumer services, household and personal products, and retailing. JPMorgan in May noted that hedge funds were betting on "momentum driven technology and consumer discretionary names." Comcast, Alphabet and McDonald's, which all fall in to that category, ranked as the three most popular hedge fund bets for companies with market capitalizations of at least $100 billion. Amazon, another company in that sector, ranked fifth. The same companies scored highly in another ranking put together by Goldman Sachs showing the companies that were most important to hedge funds. NOW WATCH: FORMER GREEK FINANCE MINISTER: How I dealt with stress when Greece nearly defaulted More From Business Insider A $110m windfall is on the horizon. When it comes to Silverlake Axis (Silverlake), theres more than what meets the eye. Analysts assert that the market is significantly undervaluing Silverlake, given that it is a software company handling core banking systems for a number of big players in the ASEAN banking scene. According to a report by DBS, the moratorium period relating to Silverlakes 20% stake in Global Infotech (GIT) has ended. Being one of GITs substantial shareholders, GIT had advised Silverlake that it may sell up to 8m of its shares within the six-month period beginning 24 June 2016. As a result, DBS anticipates roughly $110m to be raised from these share sales, translating to about 4.2 S cents special dividend per share to equity holders. Moreover, DBS asserts that Silverlake has a solid balance sheet with a net cash position, and pays quarterly annualised dividends of about 5%. On top of the end-FY16 dividends from operations, Silverlakes end-FY16 yield can shoot up to 12.6%. DBS is bullish on Silverlake, as the business is in talks with several Malaysian banks on the possibility of implementing its software to replace the banks current core banking systems. Each contract is seen to be worth MYR150m-200m, and DBS thinks it is probable that Silverlake locks down one by the end of 2016. Given the current low valuations for the company, coupled with potential catalysts like its special dividends and new contract wins, the current share price weakness reflects an ideal buying opportunity. More From Singapore Business Review From Seventeen On the last day of classes at Boston Latin School in Massachusetts, graduating senior Phillip Sossou had something special to leave behind: 411 charcoal portraits depicting every single member of his class. "I was trying to show everyone in a positive light," he told the Boston Globe. Phillip came up with the idea for the portraits back in September and took them on as an independent project for his AP Art class. His art teacher was skeptical that he'd be able to complete the project in time, but Phillip was highly motivated. He drew for hours every day, and the work took months. "There were times that I wanted to stop," he told the Globe. "I thought they probably are not going to appreciate this because we are so divided." Indeed, this has been a particularly challenging year at Boston Latin School, which made headlines with allegations of racism from the student body and administration. Phillip hoped to remind his classmates to take pride in their school and embrace their class's diversity. "I'm so amazed to see how close some of these are to the actual people," senior Justin Springle told the Globe. "Some of them are spot on." "It was a lot of hard work," student Kenneth Zhang, 16, added. "It's really emotional - and I'm not even a senior." The portraits will hang at school till June 8, when students will be allowed to take them home. Despite the incredible response to Phillip's portraits, he isn't pursuing art as a career. This fall, he'll attend Bunker Hill Community College. Later, he hopes to study computer science at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst. No sooner do I write a column lamenting Hillary Clintons inability to win news cycles than she starts winning them. She won one the old-fashioned way in California Thursday, with substancebut also with high-class mockery and disdainwith her brilliant speech about Donald Trumps ridiculous attempts to articulate a foreign policy. The speech was so potent that Paul Ryans perfectly timed attempt to steal her thunder, by finally endorsing Trump, fell flat. Why? Because Clinton used blunt, confident language for a change. There was almost a Thatcherite clarity to her attack on Trumps foreign policy ideas: Theyre not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies. It was devastating and Trumps response was lame. He criticized the way she read from the teleprompter (actually she was pretty goodfor her). And she raised an issue that not even Mitt Romney or Ted Cruz had taken on: Trumps mental stability. Ill leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for dictators who have no love for the United States, she said. Sentence after sentence, example after example, hammered down on the tycoons head: his support for the Tiananmen Square massacre, his admiration for Vladimir Putin and Kim Jung Un, his constantly shifting, feckless positions on ISIS. I suspect that this speech will have tremendous impact on this campaign. It may even work to Clintons benefit in the California primary to be held next Tuesday. The confidence of her rhetoric should have sent a message to Bernie Sanders: its time for you to suspend your windmill-tilting; there is serious business, the demolition of Donald Trump, to focus on now. She has shown a toughness and a tone and a level of impolitic candor that she has never demonstrated before. Going forward, I can see her using that same tone on other topics: Trumps fetid immigration policy, his proposed budget, his shaky grasp on the U.S. Constitution. One other point: On the day before Clinton gave the speech, she received a Republican endorsement that really mattered. It was from Retired Colonel Pete Mansoor, chairman of the military studies department at Ohio State, who had been a top aide to David Petraeus during the planning and execution of the Iraq surge. Mansoor is not a politician; quite the opposite. He is an exemplar of the best military tradition: duty, honor, country. He told Chris Hayes on MSNBC that Trump lacked the character to be President. He said that hed never voted for a Democrat before in his life, but he would vote for Clinton this time. I suspect that Mansoor reflects the feelings of the U.S. military brass. The race will twist and turn over the next five months. Clinton may have a bad week next week, especially if she loses California. She still has obvious weaknesses as a candidate and as a human being. But this speech demonstrates that she knows just exactly how to go after Trump. His idiot-savant narcissism will never seem the same. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally on Thursday in El Centro, Calif. (John Locher/AP) Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton said on Friday that she condemned recent violence against Donald Trump supporters, but she also accused the presumptive GOP nominee of inciting violence in other incidents. Clinton told CNNs Jake Tapper in an interview that Trump set a very bad example by not condemning violence committed by his supporters last year. I condemn all violence in our political arena, Clinton said. I condemned it when Donald Trump was inciting it and congratulating people who were engaging in it. Pro-Trump supporters and protesters clashed at Trumps Thursday night rally in San Jose, Calif., where Trump fans were filmed being punched and kicked outside of the event. Clintons campaign chair, John Podesta, also condemned the violence Thursday night. He created an environment in which it seemed to be acceptable for someone running for president to be inciting violence, to be encouraging his supporters. Now were seeing people who are against him responding in kind, Clinton told Tapper. It should all stop. It is not acceptable. Clinton is in a tight race with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in California ahead of states June 7 primary. A win there by Clinton next week could make it hard for Sanders to continue his campaign in the face of increasingly daunting odds. Clinton said she is expecting a strong performance in the Golden State and will move forward attempting to unite her party. After Tuesday, I am going to do everything I can to reach out to try to unify the Democratic Party, and I expect Sen. Sanders to do the same, Clinton said. And we will come together and be prepared to go to the convention in a unified way to make our case, to go into the general election to defeat Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton Hillary Clinton's campaign seemed to anticipate Donald Trump's response to her Thursday foreign-policy speech slamming his national-security credentials. Clinton's camp sent out a memo as soon as her speech wrapped up, with the subject line "Trump Literally Said All Those Things." "Some of the comments she referenced are so ignorant, incoherent or outrageous, it could be hard to believe they actually came out of the mouth of the GOP's presidential nominee," the memo read. "But they literally did. All of them." The memo listed various remarks from Trump that Clinton had referenced in her speech, including links to the quotes. So when Trump tweeted Friday morning implying Clinton had lied about Trump's positions, she had a ready response. Here it is: In Crooked Hillary's telepromter speech yesterday, she made up things that I said or believe but have no basis in fact. Not honest! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2016 Clinton's speech got rave reviews from pundits and foreign-policy experts. In the speech, she roasted her likely general-election opponent on his comparative lack of experience on the world political stage, emphasizing her credentials and saying that electing Trump to the presidency would be a "historic mistake." The speech was wide-ranging Clinton hit Trump on his proposal to build a wall along the US border with Mexico, criticism of the Iran nuclear deal, comments on US alliances and nuclear proliferation, calls to bar Muslim immigrants from entering the US, and readiness as commander in chief. Story continues NOW WATCH: Greg Norman reveals the truth behind President Clintons late-night 1997 injury More From Business Insider donald trump Donald Trump hit back at Hillary Clinton at a rally in San Jose Thursday evening, declaring that the Democratic frontrunner has to go to jail and is guilty as hell." Hillary Clinton has to go to jail. Alright I said it. She has to go to jail, he said. The fact that they even allow her to participate in this race is a disgrace to the United States, is a disgrace to our nation." Trumps shots at Clinton came after a fiery foreign policy speech she gave earlier the same day, during which she denounced Trumps policy proposals as as a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies" and declared that electing him would be a historic mistake." While Trump didnt go into detail about the arguments Clinton made in her speech, he called it "phony" and a "Donald Trump hit job," and lambasted her for the email scandal that has plagued her campaign for more than a year. Clinton has long been fighting to alleviate concerns that her private email account posed security risks to government business and classified material. But last Wednesday, the State Department released a damning report claiming she "did not comply" with the department's policies regarding her email. The report faulter her, as well as previous secretaries of state, for "longstanding systemic weaknesses" in managing communications. The FBI is also conducting an ongoing investigation into her use of the private email server. In his speech, Trump also suggested Clinton only supports President Obamas nuclear deal with Iran because shes worried about facing jail time. He said he's confident the FBI will indict her, and said if he wins the presidency, his attorney general will "take a very good look into it." The only reason shes behaving like this, and the only reason shes been dragged so far left, believe me, is she doesnt want to go to jail over the emails." NOW WATCH: Donald Trumps history with WWE explains a lot about his persona More From Business Insider If you only read one thing: Hillary Clinton demonstrated a remarkable ability to attack Donald Trump Thursday as she laid into his foreign policy in strikingly personal terms. Billed as a major policy address, it was more of a major political one, as Clinton set substance aside to make the case that Trump is a danger on the international stage. The assault marked a major shift for Clinton, who had previously criticized Trumps tone and policy, and the viciousness of her tone ensured it would break through into the political bloodstream. The speech demonstrates the lessons Clintons team is learning from the contentious GOP primary even as she faces a fight to the finish in California with Bernie Sanders. In the Golden State home stretch, the attack was designed to contrast her ability to take it to Trump to Sanders, while laying the groundwork for the fall campaign. Donald Trump was uncharacteristically slow to respond to Hillary Clintons attack Thursday, only criticizing her for using a teleprompter and declining to substantively rebut a long list of alleged flaws with his candidacy. Trumps counter-punch to Clinton lacked its usual resonance. At a rally in San Jose, Trump called Clinton a criminal and absolved vanquished rival Ted Cruz of his Lyin Ted label. Meanwhile, Trump secured the endorsement of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan after a weeks-long dance. Ryan, who a week ago said nothing had changed in his thinking, embraced Trump after some of his worst pressarguing he was only looking to defeat Clinton and maintain GOP majorities in Congress. The tepid endorsement follows a pattern of other top Republicans who have declined to fully embrace Trump even as they plan to stump for him. And for good reason, as Trump fueled a fire over his controversial comments about a federal judge presiding over the Trump University lawsuit. Last week, Trump said the judge should recuse himself because he is of Mexican heritage. The Indiana-born jurist is the son of immigrants, and Trump told the Wall Street Journal Thursday that simply being of Mexican-descent was a conflict of interest for the judge, because of his build-the-wall stance. Republican lawmakers will be pressed to condemn Trumps commentsand if they dont, could deepen their partys substantial troubles among Latino voters for more than this election. Story continues Clintons extended attack against Trump may have signaled her willingness to get dirty in taking the fight to Trump, but that doesnt mean shell refocus her campaign around criticizing her opponent, aides said. At her two events after the policy speech, Clinton was back to routine stump speech and talking points, perhaps wary of leaning too far into the Trump attacks after watching his GOP rivals flail in their efforts against him over the last six months. How Trump won over Evangelicals. Sanders faulty delegate math. And Trumps shaky Trump U defense. Here are your must-reads: Must Reads Trumps God Machine TIMEs Elizabeth Dias on how the GOP nominee won over a scion of the Bible Beltand Americas evangelical base Hillary Clinton Tears Into Donald Trump on Foreign Policy, Temperament Clinton leaves the policy aside as she attacks Trump personally, TIMEs Philip Elliott writes Donald Trumps Secret Weapon: Letters of Love, Flattery and Revenge Handwritten missives illustrate Trumps career [New York Times] Donald Trump Defends Attacks on Judge in Trump University Case The Republicans charge that Judge Gonzalo Curiel has a conflict of interest draws criticism from some legal observers [Wall Street Journal] Paul Ryan Endorses Donald Trump Its an abrupt about-face for the speaker, who has been outspoken about his clashes with the controversial businessman [Washington Post] Violence Erupts Outside Donald Trump Rally Anti-Trump protesters assault supporters outside event [San Jose Mercury News] Sound Off Making Donald Trump our commander-in-chief would be a historic mistake. It would undo so much of the work that Republicans and Democrats alike have done over many decades to make America stronger and more secure. It would set back our standing in the world more than anything in recent memory. And it would fuel an ugly narrative about who we are that were fearful, not confident; that we want to let others determine our future for us, instead of shaping our own destiny. Hillary Clinton in a foreign policy address in San Diego Thursday Ted Cruz is no longer a liar. We dont say Lyin Ted anymore! We love Ted. Donald Trump on his vanquished rival at a rally in San Jose Thursday evening Bits and Bites Trump Shifts Tactics to Woo Martinez Endorsement Days After Insults [Santa Fe New Mexican] Read Hillary Clintons Speech on Donald Trump and National Security [TIME] People Are Defending Trump University. But They Depend on Donald Trump for Business [Associated Press] Mitch McConnell: Trump May Alienate Latino Voters [TIME] Bernie Sanderss Factually Incorrect Delegate Math [Washington Post] Hillary Clinton Supports Death Penalty For Dylann Roof [Huffington Post] Snyder Decides Against Endorsing Trump for President [Detroit News] Some Officials Worry About Briefing Trump, Fearing Spilled Secrets [Reuters] London (AFP) - The machine Hitler used to send coded messages to his generals met the supercomputer that revealed its secrets on Friday, watched on by veteran operatives whose painstaking work helped bring World War II to an end. Scientists at Bletchley Park in southern England, the WWII code breaking headquarters, fired up the valves, whirring wheels and spinning tors of the two machines to recreate how German military chiefs sent secret messages and how they were deciphered. Hitler's Lorenz machine boasted 1.6 million billion possible coding combinations thanks to a series of twelve rotors, a million times more complex than the more feted Enigma machine. Through luck and the ingenuity of engineer Tommy Flowers, scientists were able to deduce how the machine operated and then build a machine to work out the settings of Lorenz's rotors. "Colossus" is regarded as the world's first programmable, electronic digital computer, but received little attention as the project was kept secret for decades, depriving those responsible of due accolades. Among those watching at the National Museum of Computing were Margaret Bullen, who helped build Colossus, and some of the remaining operatives who fed encrypted German messages into the machine, including Irene Dixon, now in her nineties. - 'Impossible task' - It was only decades after the war that Dixon discovered she had been processing the most sensitive of information. "We found out we were intercepting coded messages sent by Hitler to his generals," she told AFP. "Hitler would've been furious if he had known, we were decrypting the messages even before his generals were". Information gleaned using Colossus helped the Allies confirm that Hitler mistakenly believed the D-Day landings would target Calais, and experts believe the supercomputer may have shortened the war by two years. Dixon and other "Wrens" from the women's branch of the Royal Navy were sworn to secrecy, and even other workers at Bletchley Park were unaware of the existence of the massive computer, which took up a whole room. Story continues "Some of the Wrens did ask why it was so hot (close to the Colossus room), and some used to dry their washing next door," recalled Dixon. The main Lorenz cypher machine is on loan from the Norwegian Armed Forces Museum in Oslo, but the special keyboard used to send the message to the rotors is a recent discovery. Museum researcher John Wetter saw a "telegram machine" for sale on auction site eBay and realised it was actually a Lorenz teleprinter. He travelled to the southern English town of Southend and found the machine on the floor of a shed, covered "with rubbish". "We said 'Thank you very much, how much was it again?' She said 'A9.50', so we said 'Here's a A10 note -- keep the change," he said. The 10 Colossus machines are believed to have been destroyed in order to maintain secrecy, but late scientist Tony Sale dedicated his life to rebuilding one as part of efforts to protect the Bletchley Park complex from developers. "I'm glad that my late husband's dream is being carried forward," his wife Margaret told AFP. "The last 25 years, life has been Bletchley Park. Quite a lot of people said it was an impossible task." Modesto (United States) (AFP) - Pundits have all but written Bernie Sanders out of the race but his fans are not letting go of their dream. They still want to believe he can take his promise of a fairer society all the way to the White House. Sanders is mounting a last stand in the progressive bastion of California, which holds its primary next week, to prove -- against all odds -- that he can defeat Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic standard-bearer in a match-up against Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee. Giovan Lunar, a 21-year-old biology student, emerged fired up Thursday from an afternoon rally in Modesto, a small town in the center of the most populous US state. "He's giving us hope. He really cares about our future," said the young man, sporting black-rimmed glasses and a pencil mustache -- and undeterred by Clinton's overwhelming lead in the delegate race. Three thousand people braved scorching heat to hear the Vermont senator pitch his promise of free health care, higher taxes on the rich and legal marijuana, a week before the final "Super Tuesday" of 2016 when six states vote including California. "If we have a large turnout, we're going to win," Sanders told the crowd, who roared back: "Bernie! Bernie!" and "Feel the Bern!" Prince and David Bowie tracks set the mood and the occasional whiff of marijuana floated in the air as actress Susan Sarandon -- a longtime friend of the 74-year-old Sanders -- whipped up the multi-ethnic, multi-generational crowd. In Modesto, many of Sanders's supporters are young people who will vote for the first time in the November presidential election. "He's an inspiration. Look at this crowd. He has a great message to youth about unemployment, student debt," said Misael Villeda, a 24-year-old psychology student. "He's energized the Democratic Party." But Clinton is also campaigning hard in California to snatch victory from Sanders -- and take his last remaining argument for staying in the presidential race off the table. And the odds are in her favor. Story continues - Bernie-mania - The US presidential nominations process is based on winning delegates, and Clinton has already amassed 2,313, according to CNN's tally, just 70 shy of the number needed to clinch the nomination. Sanders is considerably behind, at 1,546. Several hundred delegates are up for grabs next Tuesday, and Clinton is all but assured of passing the threshold. However steep the odds, the Sanders camp is not giving up -- starting with Sarandon, who told AFP she fully expected Clinton to be indicted over her use of a private email server as secretary of state. "A lot of the super-delegates are changing their mind," Sarandon said. Sanders has long argued that Clinton's lead is based on her broad advantage with so-called super-delegates, party grandees who can vote for whoever they wish at the national convention in July. Without the huge super-delegate advantage, Clinton's lead is much narrower. - 'Two evils' - But much as they want to believe in his chances, many Sanders supporters are already soul-searching over what to do if Clinton triumphs over their champion. Some, like Villeda, are resolved to do what it takes to keep Trump from the presidency. "Hillary needs us to win," he said -- consoling herself with the hope that Sanders' strong challenge to Clinton will give him leverage to shape party policy. Others find it harder to stomach the idea of backing a candidate they fought tooth-and-nail. Artiste Booker, an African American stay-at-home-mother, calls her a Republican in disguise -- a frequent line of attack from the Sanders camp. "She's not honest. She's not truthful. Look at her emails," said the 31-year-old. Booker says she would struggle to pick between Trump and Clinton: "It would be like choosing between two evils." Trump has repeatedly said he is confident he can win over supporters of the self-style democratic socialist -- with whom he shares a protectionist platform on trade, and an anti-establishment message that has proven powerfully appealing in the White House race so far. And some of the most extreme voices in the Sanders camp have indeed suggested a Trump presidency would be preferable to electing Clinton. But that argument got short shrift from Leroy Smith, a 26-year-old bartender with a bold afro: "It's like calling to vote for Hitler to topple the system." Plus, he says, "Trump is a bad businessman, and it's the last thing this country needs." Marie Frazier, a 59-year-old homemaker, is torn about her choice come November. "I love Bernie Sanders. I don't want to give up the idea of voting for Bernie Sanders," she said. "But I don't want Donald Trump to win." Alexandria Vera, the eighth-grade English teacher who was allegedly impregnated by a 13-year-old student, was ordered by a judge to stay away from minors at an arraignment hearing on Friday, June 3, in Harris County, Texas. The 24-year-old faces a felony charge of continuous sexual abuse of a child and could face a minimum of 25 years in prison without parole, the Daily Mail reported. PHOTOS: Stars at Court According to local news station KHOU-TV, judge Michael McSpadden ordered Vera to wear a GPS monitor and barred her from having contact with the victim or anyone under the age of 17. The former teacher at Stovall Middle School was also banned from using the internet while at her home and given a house curfew from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. Assistant District Attorney Tiffany Dupree spoke to the press outside the courtroom. Its extremely serious. As parents, we entrust teachers with a very important role to educate our students, and we should not be concerned about teachers getting in a sexual relationship with our children while theyre at school. The parents of the victim are being investigated by Child Protective Services, according to KHOU-TV. Court documents show that Vera told police the students mom and dad were very supportive and excited about the baby. But Vera said she had an abortion once social workers learned of their relationship. Vera claimed that she and the student had sex on an almost daily basis at her home, and that she became pregnant in January 2016. She has a 4-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. She is next scheduled to appear at court on July 12. A shocking jobs report miss has traders spooked the economy may be sputtering. And what does it mean for the Fed? We look at the fallout. Catch The Final Round at 4 p.m. ET with Yahoo Finance's Jen Rogers, markets correspondent Nicole Sinclair, columnist Rick Newman, and Sarah Hunt, portfolio manager at Alpine Funds. Winners and losers Stocks ending the week on a down note include teen retailer Zumiez on weaker than expected profit guidance and Citi dropping as CEO Michael Corbat revealed second quarter net income would fall 25% year over year. Meanwhile, the chemical company Chemours got shellacked after noted short-seller Citron Research said it had a "toxic" balance sheet and that the stock was "going to zero." Chemours strongly refutes the statements. Stocks bucking the tape higher today include The Gap after the retailer said sales were improving heading into the Memorial Day weekend, chipmaker Broadcom up on an earnings beat and small dividend hike, and Avianca, the South American airliner soaring on a Journal report that United and Delta are considering bids for the company. What to watch It was on this day 100 years about that the National Guard officially got its name after Congress passed an important, if not overlooked, act to strengthen our military. State militias have been around in some form since the early 1600s and they represent the oldest-known segment of todays defense infrastructure. But on June 3, 1916, the National Defense Act made the use of the term National Guard mandatory for state militias, and the act gave the President the authority to mobilize the Guard during war or national emergencies here, for service or in different parts of the world, for the duration of the event that caused the mobilization. The Act was clearly intended to guarantee the State militias status as the nations primary reserve force. (In 1933, the National Guard officially became a component of the Army.) The Act also doubled the number of yearly drills and tripled the number of training days; established the Reserve Officer Training Corps; and paid for 375 new airplanes, creating the Armys first Air Division. President Woodrow Wilson championed the move as part of a preparedness effort related to World War I, which the United States government had avoided in 1916, but was watching closely. The expanded Guards first role in 1916 was to help in efforts at the border with Mexico, as Army forces were battling Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. During World War I, the National Guard accounted for 40 percent of the troop strength in the American Expeditionary Force. The role of state militias was frequently mentioned in the Constitution. Article 1, Section 8, defined the duties of the federal government and the states in forming militias, and using them within the United States. And the Second Amendment made it clear that the federal government had no ability to disarm state militias, famously stating that, A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Story continues Most of the troops in the Continental Army were recruited from militias, and local militias were used to fight with the regular army. Since then, the militias or National Guard contributed to every military campaign here and abroad. Today, the National Guard has numerous roles domestically and internationally. The National Guard responds to various domestic situations, such as fighting fires fires and helping communities deal with natural disasters, since at a state level, the governors have the ability to call up Guard members. The President also has the right to mobilize the Guard, putting members on federal duty status. More Historical Stories From Constitution Daily 50 interesting facts about Abraham Lincolns life 10 fascinating birthday facts about President John F. Kennedy Phillys conventions: Civil rights, TV, heat dominate 1948 meetings (Repeats with no change to text) * Indian PM makes major visit late in Obama's term * Modi, once unwelcome in Washington, to address lawmakers * Progress on defence, nuclear cooperation sought * U.S. senators express human rights concerns By Douglas Busvine and Patricia Zengerle NEW DELHI/WASHINGTON, June 3 (Reuters) - Two years ago there were questions over whether Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi could get a visa to enter the United States. Next week he visits Washington as one of President Barack Obama's closest international partners. Obama invited Modi for one of the last big visits by a world leader before his term ends in January. Although the trip won't feature a lavish state dinner, the Indian leader will address both houses of Congress, considered a rare honour. This will be their seventh meeting since Modi became prime minister in May 2014, an impressive tally for a U.S. president and a leader who is not a formal ally, said Ashley Tellis at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "The personal relationship between the president and the prime minister ... is really one of the unanticipated surprises of the past two years," said Tellis, an expert on India. The developing relationship is seen as an Obama foreign policy success. Washington views India as an important part of its rebalance to Asia and as a counterweight to China. The two countries are finalising agreements that would make it possible for their militaries to cooperate more closely, and for U.S. defence manufacturers to both sell and make high-tech weaponry in India. A deal on logistics would govern issues such as how the two countries account for costs of military exercises. Another involves encrypted communications and geospatial data transfer. A history of colonial rule followed by decades of non-alignment has, however, made New Delhi wary of an embrace by the more powerful United States, which has overtaken Russia as India's top arms supplier. Story continues "It is neither a strategic partnership nor an alliance," said Nitin Gokhale, founder of defence portal Bharat Shakti. "It can be a long-term arrangement, but to call it a strategic partnership would be premature." There are frustrations, too, on the U.S. side. The two countries reached a civil nuclear agreement in 2005, but it has yet to yield any contracts for U.S.-based companies. Only now is Westinghouse, a unit of Japan's Toshiba, approaching the finish line on a deal to build six reactors in India. GETTING TO KNOW YOU The visit gives Modi a chance to network with U.S. lawmakers who may feature in a Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton administration but, as it coincides with the California primary, he is not expected to meet either. Modi is generally popular with U.S. lawmakers, who extended his invitation to address Congress. But they criticise what they see as lingering unfriendliness to U.S. firms and a stifling bureaucracy, and question New Delhi's record on human rights. "The economic engagement between our two countries should increase and it should be more accessible for U.S. companies," Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a telephone interview. Obama and Modi are expected to discuss India's desire to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 48-member club of nuclear trading nations. India was shut out for decades because of its weapons programme, and the civil nuclear agreement with the United States gave it access to foreign suppliers without giving up its arms. Obama administration officials have said they backed India's desire to join the group, but the idea faces resistance among some on Capitol Hill, as well as from China, an ally of India's arch-rival Pakistan. "Existing NSG guidelines were established to guard against nuclear proliferation, and we should not create exceptions for particular countries," Corker said. There is lingering concern in Washington over Modi's handling of communal riots in 2002 that killed at least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, in Gujarat. Modi was chief minister of the state at the time and, though a court-ordered inquiry found insufficient evidence to prosecute him, the issue prevented him from getting a U.S. visa for years. Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, raised human rights on a visit to New Delhi this week, saying the two largest democracies had "special obligations" to set the highest standards. Congress' Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission has scheduled a hearing on India for June 7, the day Modi arrives in Washington and the day before his address to the combined House of Representatives and Senate. He leaves the United States on June 8. Corker promised to asked Modi about India's record on human trafficking, which he brought up recently in an emotional Senate hearing with Obama administration officials. "The country we believe has 12-14 million slaves, which is close to half the number we believe exists worldwide," Corker said. "It's obviously a very significant issue and when he's here, it's one I certainly plan to raise." (Additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Mike Collett-White) Selena Gomez continues to bring the runway to her Revival tour with three new designer looks by Rodarte, Valentino and Monse while performing at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Wednesday night. Christian Classen, Revival tour's fashion director, teased his Instagram followers that new looks would be coming soon by providing clues leading up to the reveal. Selena Gomez Will Perform in North Carolina, Donate Proceeds to Local LGBT Group One of the new looks is a custom Rodarte green and blue Lycra bodysuit covered with sequins and a red, pink and black faux-fur coat (below), which Gomez now wears for the finale of the show. Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the sisters behind Rodarte, told Billboard, "We loved working with Selena and her stylist Christian on this project. The looks developed from a natural conversation between all of us about color, texture and reflection." THE ONE WHEN 2 RAD SISTERS CUSTOM DESIGN A KILLER FINALE LOOK. ------------ #selenagomez #revivaltour #chrisclassenstyle #revivalstyle #RODARTE #brooklyn #epicnight A photo posted by christian classen (@chrisclassen) on Jun 2, 2016 at 8:31am PDT Earlier in the night, Gomez donned a Valentino chiffon gown with cloud glitter embroidery from the fall 2016 collection (below) styled with Giuseppe Zanotti heels and a long braid while at one point playing the piano. THE ONE WHERE VALENTINO HAS A VERY SPECIAL NIGHT IN NEW YORK. ---- #selenagomez #revivaltour #chrisclassenstyle #revivalstyle #valentino #brooklyn #epicnight A photo posted by christian classen (@chrisclassen) on Jun 2, 2016 at 1:27am PDT The opening Monse look also got slightly updated, with Gomez wearing a black version of the custom Swarovski-adorned bodysuit (below) that attached to a black flowing deconstructed taffeta gown, also by Monse (see the full look at the top of the page). Fernando Garcia, one-half of the Monse design team, explained the change of bodysuit color to Billboard: "The color black represents New York to us. We wanted to celebrate her coming to the city by showing her sexy side, in all black." Story continues In addition to the new looks, Gomez has worn custom designs by Karl Lagerfeld, Vionnet, Sonia Rykiel and Giuseppe Zanotti on her Revival tour. The U.S. portion of Gomez's tour will continue until next month before she heads abroad. [[{"fid":"615537","view_mode":"media_original","type":"media","attributes":{"height":1502,"width":1240,"alt":"Selena Gomez","class":"media-element file-media-original"}}]] Selena Gomez performs at Barclays Center on June 1, 2016 in New York City. Kevin Kane/WireImage Stocks (^DJI, ^GSPC, ^IXIC) are trending strongly down at midday after a huge miss in the monthly unemployment report. Financials are leading the way down (XLF), while utilities (XLU) are still in the green. Keith Bliss of Cuttone & Co. joins us live from the New York Stock Exchange. To discuss the other big stories of the day, Alexis Christoforous is joined by Yahoo Finance's Nicole Sinclair and Seana Smith. Breaking down the unemployment report There have been conflicting views on what the numbers mean both now and in the past. Why is this? Why you'll be working into your seventies More and more Americans feel like theyre going to hold off on their golden years. Around 23% of Americans say they wont be able to retire until theyre at least 70 years old. Thats from a new study by Willis Towers Watson. In addition, Wall Street is fighting the Department of Labor over a new rule that was supposed to protect people's retirement savings. Beer + Coffee = Tea? Starbucks new team up stands to make billions. The coffee giant is partnering with brewing company Anheuser Busch to debut ready-to-drink Teavana teas. Today, the premium ready-to-drink tea business generates $1.1 billion in sales. Thats part of the global $125 billion tea industry. The ready-to-drink teas hit shelves by mid 2017. Get the Latest Market Data and News with the Yahoo Finance App By Parisa Hafezi ANKARA (Reuters) - Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Friday Tehran had no intention of cooperating on regional issues with its main enemies, the United States and "evil" Britain. Khamenei also accused Washington of not being committed to a nuclear deal reached between Tehran and six major powers, including the United States, in 2015 that aims to curb the country's disputed nuclear program. Under the agreement, economic sanctions were lifted in January after Iran suspended sensitive nuclear work that the West suspects was aimed at creating a nuclear bomb. Iran denies seeking a nuclear bomb. Inflation, unemployment and other economic hardships persuaded Khamenei to support President Hassan Rouhani on the nuclear question aimed at improving the parlous state of Iran's economy. "America has continued its enmity towards Iran since (the 1979 Islamic) revolution ... It is a huge mistake to trust evil Britain and the Great Satan (the United States)," Khamenei said in a speech broadcast live on state TV. "We will not cooperate with America over the regional crisis," he said, adding that: "Their aims in the region are 180 degrees opposed to Iran's." Asked about Khamenei's remarks, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said he did not really have a response. "His rhetoric is always somewhat hyperbolic and so we take it with a grain of salt and don't necessarily rise to the bait," Toner told reporters. Relations with Washington were severed after Irans 1979 Islamic revolution and enmity to the United States has always been a rallying point for hardliner supporters of Khamenei in Iran. Tehran and Washington have common interests and threats across the Middle East. They have cooperated tactically in the past, including when Tehran helped Washington counter al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Islamic State militants (IS) in Iraq. The United States and its allies in the Middle East accuse Iran of supporting terrorism and interfering in the affairs of regional states, including Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Tehran is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's main regional ally and has provided military and economic support to his fight against rebel groups and IS. Following the end of the sanctions on Iran, the country has started to increase trade with the West. But some U.S. sanctions remain and U.S. banks remain prohibited from doing business with Iran directly or indirectly because Washington still accuses Tehran of supporting terrorism and human rights abuses. "They use human rights, terrorism ... as pretexts to avoid fulfilling their commitments," Khamenei said. "If we remain strong and united and revolutionary, those who are trying to bully Iran and are against us will not succeed," he told a gathering to commemorate the anniversary of the death of the revolution's founder, Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, in 1989. Iran has repeatedly urged Washington to do more to remove obstacles to the banking sector. Khamenei, whose hostility toward Washington holds together Irans faction-ridden leadership, said Iran should "remain cautious in its economic interaction with the West". (Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed in Washington; writing by Parisa Hafezi, editing by Gareth Jones and Cynthia Osterman) Fallujah (Iraq) (AFP) - Iraqi forces made progress Friday in their assault on Fallujah, moving into a southern neighbourhood of the Islamic State group's bastion, commanders said. An AFP photographer embedded with interior ministry SWAT teams said Iraqi forces had managed to enter the Shuhada neighbourhood, on the southern edge of the city centre. "The security forces have advanced from Naimiya neighbourhood to Shuhada," Lieutenant General Abdelwahab al-Saadi, the operation's overall commander, told AFP. "The clashes between the security forces and Daesh members were fierce," said another officer, using an Arab acronym for IS. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the launch of an operation to retake Fallujah on May 23. After an initial phase of shaping operations aimed at cutting off the jihadists' last supply lines, elite forces on May 30 attempted to enter Fallujah from three directions. They have not pushed deep into the IS bastion however, slowed in their advance by tough resistance and widespread concern over the fate of 50,000 civilians believed to be trapped inside the city. The Norwegian Refugee Council, which runs camps for displaced people south of the city, said Friday that an estimated 12,000 residents of the area have fled their homes since May 21. None of them however were from the city centre, where trapped civilians have little to eat, no safe water to drink and are at risk from intense shelling and bombardment. The city has been besieged for months and no aid delivery has reached it since September 2015. By Alex Lawler VIENNA (Reuters) - OPEC's strategy of letting the oil market balance itself is working as investment in the industry is falling and any recovery will take time to bring new supplies, a senior Iraqi oil official said on Friday. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries shifted policy in 2014 to focus on market share rather than cutting production to support prices, and at a meeting in Vienna on Thursday left the strategy in place. "OPEC let the market work and so far they are succeeding, because it's affected investment," Falah Alamri, the head of Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO), told Reuters. Iraq is OPEC's second-largest producer. "Investment now is declining. When investment comes to the market it will take time to produce oil - one year, two years." Oil prices at $50 a barrel are about half the levels of two years ago, before the strategy shift. But crude has risen more than 80 percent from a 12-year low in January, supported by signs that the price collapse is curbing output of U.S. shale oil and other higher-cost supplies. "So far, so good," Alamri said, asked whether he thought OPEC's strategy was working. "The fields that should survive are the low-cost fields. The high-cost fields should go out." A potential negative for OPEC may come from a significant drop in world oil demand, said Alamri, who was cautious on the outlook for prices over the rest of the year. "Oil prices may continue the same current trends for a few months then in the last months of the year may take a different trend, if demand growth slows and supply remains stable or increases," he said. Iraq last year was OPEC's fastest source of supply growth, boosting output by more than 500,000 barrels per day, despite spending cuts and conflict with Islamic State militants. Iraqi officials expect further growth in the country's exports this year, but at a slower rate than 2015. (Editing by Dale Hudson) By Tom Miles GENEVA (Reuters) - Israel is holding discussions with the International Criminal Court over its inquiry into possible war crimes in the 2014 Gaza conflict, the ICC's prosecutor said. The disclosure, in an interview with Reuters, would indicate a step-up in Israeli engagement with the Hague-based tribunal and a shift from a policy of non-cooperation with ICC probes of alleged war crimes in Palestinian territories. An Israeli government source said there was contact with the ICC on procedural issues, but declined to go into detail. "Israel has agreed to engage with my office and we are exchanging information," ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said during a visit to the U.N. in Geneva late on Thursday. She said the ICC was in touch with both sides in the Gaza conflict. The ICC's preliminary examination under way could lead to the opening of a criminal investigation and war crimes charges against individuals on both sides of the 50-day war between Islamist Hamas militants in Gaza and Israel. Health officials said more than 2,100 Palestinians, mostly civilians, died in the conflict. Israel put the number of its dead at 67 soldiers and six civilians. Until now, Israel has publicly declined all cooperation with the ICC on investigations related to its conflict with the Palestinians. It has argued that the Palestinian Authority, a is not a sovereign state and so has no right to formal relations with the first permanent international war crimes court. Activists have long sought to involve the ICC in one of the world's most protracted and politically-charged conflicts, though court officials have always been wary about stepping onto what some see as a diplomatic minefield. Last year, then-Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, who is now defense minister, threatened to lobby the ICC's European backers to stop financing the court after it opened the initial Gaza inquiry at the Palestinian Authority's invitation. The Palestinians have keenly engaged with the ICC, repeatedly sending it dossiers of evidence of what they say were Israeli atrocities in the Gaza war and inviting the ICC to send a field team to investigate on the ground. Israel denies committing war crimes in Gaza and has kept Gaza, a small coastal enclave, under blockade largely since Hamas seized control there in 2007. Any ICC visit to Gaza would require Israeli cooperation since the territory is virtually inaccessible by sea or via its land border with Egypt. Court officials would have to arrive through an Israeli airport. "If a visit to the region is required, or when it's required, we will also be making that request to visit," Bensouda said. She declined to comment when asked whether a request had been made. (Refiles to use more generic term "inquiry" in lede.) (Additional reporting by Jerusalem bureau; Writing by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Mark Heinrich) Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel announced Friday it was relaxing restrictions on the movement of Palestinians to and from the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The measures, similar to those of previous years, were announced by COGAT, the unit which manages civilian affairs in the West Bank under the auspices of newly-appointed Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a hardliner. Up to 500 people from the Gaza Strip will be allowed to attend Friday prayers at the Israeli-controlled Al-Aqsa mosque compound in east Jerusalem over the holy month, set to begin on Sunday or Monday. In addition, 200 Gaza residents will be allowed to visit relatives in the West Bank during Ramadan, and 500 Palestinians from the West Bank will be authorised to visit family in Gaza, COGAT said. Israel will also allow 300 Palestinians living abroad to visit relatives in Gaza, and 500 West Bank Palestinians would be permitted to travel out of Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport. There will be additional allowances for the Muslim holidays which follow the end of Ramadan. The COGAT statement said the measures were "in line with the Israeli civil policy striving to improve the quality of life" for Palestinians and "maintaining freedom of religion". Israel has been facing a wave of Palestinian attacks since October that cost hundreds of Palestinian and Israeli lives, triggered in part by tensions over Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam's third holiest site. The attacks have largely abated, but a ban remains in place on Israeli lawmakers -- both Muslim and Jewish -- from visiting the site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, to prevent tensions from flaring. But deputies in the Arab Joint List have informed the Israeli parliament they intend to pray at the site during Ramadan, regardless of the ban. Johnson & Johnson JNJ announced that Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc. has entered into a definitive agreement under which it will acquire a privately held company Vogue International in a deal worth about $3.3 billion in cash. Based in Florida, Vogue is focused on the marketing, development and distribution of salon-influenced and nature inspired hair care and other personal care products. The proposed acquisition will give Johnson & Johnson a full line of leading advanced hair care products including the OGX collection of shampoos, conditioners, treatments, styling products, body care and bath products, the FX line of hair styling products, and the Proganix and Maui Moisture hair care lines. The acquisition is slated to close in the third quarter of 2016 and is not expected to impact Johnson & Johnsons sales or earnings guidance for 2016 that was announced with first-quarter 2016 results. We are positive on the deal. The Vogue acquisition is in line with Johnson & Johnsons strategy of strengthening its global presence in the hair care category and will also complement the companys existing Consumer portfolio. Johnson & Johnsons Consumer business currently has three $1 billion brands. The company expects to expand that to five $1 billion brands by 2020. The company has been working on prioritizing and investing in key Consumer areas including baby care, skin care and over-the-counter products and has been striking deals to augment the segment further. This April, it announced its intention to acquire a privately held company NeoStrata, in a bid to boost its skin care portfolio. Financial terms of the agreement were undisclosed and the transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2016. Johnson & Johnson is a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) stock. Some favorably ranked stocks in the health care sector include Pfizer Inc. PFE, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company BMY and Retrophin, Inc. RTRX. All three stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). 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 BRISTOL-MYERS (BMY): Free Stock Analysis Report PFIZER INC (PFE): Free Stock Analysis Report JOHNSON & JOHNS (JNJ): Free Stock Analysis Report RETROPHIN INC (RTRX): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research By Jake Spring BEIJING (Reuters) - Jaguar Land Rover is suing Chinese automaker Jiangling Motor for allegedly copying the British firm's Range Rover Evoque, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said - a rare move by a foreign automaker to fight copycats in the world's biggest autos market. A spokesman for JLR, owned by India's Tata Motors (TAMO.NS), said in brief emailed comments to Reuters that a court in Beijing's eastern Chaoyang district "served Jiangling with newly filed actions surrounding copyright and unfair competition." He declined to elaborate. The suit relates to Jiangling's Landwind X7 sport utility vehicle copying the design of the Evoque, JLR's first China-made model that went on sale last year, said the person with knowledge of the legal proceedings, who is not authorised to talk to the media and didn't want to be named. A spokesman for Landwind declined to comment. Despite widespread and often blatant copying, global automakers generally don't take legal action in China as they feel the odds of winning against local firms are low. Also, a lawsuit can be bad for branding if the Chinese public think a foreign company is bullying domestic competitors. If JLR wins its case, it could prompt other automakers to also take legal action, said Chen Jihong, a Beijing-based lawyer at Zhong Lun Law Firm, speeding up a shift to stronger enforcement of intellectual property rights. CLOSE RESEMBLANCE Landwind unveiled a new version of its X7 SUV in November 2014, drawing criticism for its striking likeness to the Evoque, an imported version of which was already on sale in China. The two SUVs have a similar shape, with the roof and windows tapering from front to back, and near identical tail lights and character lines on the side panelling. The X7's front grille is slightly more rounded than the hard edges of the Evoque. The slight differences between the two cars can be virtually eliminated using widely available kits that allow a Range Rover grille, logo and Land Rover badges to be put on an X7. Kits on Alibaba's (BABA.N) Taobao shopping website cost around 128 yuan (13.39). Story continues The X7 costs around a third of the price of an Evoque, and is some way behind in technology and performance, said Yale Zhang, managing director of Automotive Foresight. JLR and Jiangling have agreed that Landwind will not sell the X7 in Brazil, the source said, where it recently appointed an importer. The two automakers are also discussing what Landwind can and can't do in any X7 design update, the person said. JLR sales fell by a fifth in China in January-March of last year - when it launched its China-made Evoque - after rising 36 percent in the same 2014 period. In the same period this year, JLR's China sales rose 19 percent. A lawsuit could be a long and gruelling process. It took Honda Motor , for example, 12 years to win a case in China against a little-known local automaker - for copying its best-selling CR-V SUV - according to a report by the official Xinhua news agency, confirmed by a Honda spokesman. Even then, the Japanese firm was awarded only 16 million yuan ($2.43 million) in compensation. It had sought 300 million yuan. (Reporting by Jake Spring, with additional reporting by Michael Martina and Beijing newsroom; Editing by Ian Geoghegan) Lima (AFP) - Peruvians vote Sunday on whether Keiko Fujimori, daughter of an ex-president jailed for massacres, will be their new leader. Polls show Fujimori, 41, is favored to win the runoff against former Wall Street banker Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, 77. Many Peruvians mistrust Keiko Fujimori because her father Alberto is in jail for corruption and massacres of leftist rebels. But others love her, remembering how Alberto Fujimori boosted the economy and stamped out the Shining Path insurgent group. "Peruvian elections are always quite unpredictable. There are many undecided voters," said analyst Maria Luisa Puig of the Eurasia Group consultancy. "But Keiko Fujimori right now has an advantage over Pedro Pablo Kuczynski because of the support she has from poorer voters," Puig told AFP. Both candidates are right of center economic liberals. They have promised to fight crime, create jobs and put the dark past of Peru's 1980-2000 civil conflict behind them. "I want to be president of Peru to work for change... to build a great, prosperous country that is united and reconciled," Fujimori told supporters at her closing campaign rally late Thursday. "With the support of all of you, I will have the honor of becoming Peru's first woman president." Kuczynski stressed his long experience as a banker and former economy minister. "We are going to hit the ground running," he told supporters of his Peruvians for Change party. "We will not have to read the instruction manual, because we know what must be done." - Fight crime, defend poor - Security has been a major election issue. Many voters say they are fed up with violence blamed on drug gangs. "I know that she will be tough. She said so and I trust her," said one of Fujimori's supporters, Miguel Zevallos, at a campaign rally. "I don't believe everything they say about her. She will fight and she will look after poor people." Story continues Another voter, Lima taxi driver Mario Armando Callupe, 27, said he would vote for Kuczynski. "He is very well prepared for the job and he proved it when he was economy minister. He is a big brain," Callupe said. "Keiko Fujimori seems to me like a woman with a lot of strength and spirit who wants to do a good job. But she lacks experience." A survey published on Thursday by pollster CPI gave Fujimori nearly 52 percent of the vote to 48 percent for Kuczynski. Previous polls gave Fujimori a wider lead. The latest poll followed a tough televised debate between the candidates and a big street rally against Fujimori. "For many people it is surprising that she enjoys such popularity," said Puig. "But many of Keiko's supporters remember her father's tough line on terrorism and think that she can be similarly tough on crime." - Corruption allegations - The election campaigns have been stained by allegations of corruption and irregularities. Ahead of the first round, opponents tried to get Keiko Fujimori excluded for alleged vote-buying. The electoral board dismissed the case against her but expelled several other candidates. As the second round approached, a fresh corruption scandal struck the secretary general of her Fuerza Popular party, Joaquin Ramirez. He resigned from the post after media revealed the US Drug Enforcement Agency was investigating him for suspected money-laundering. Kuczynski seized on the scandal and vowed to end "the narco-state." Peru's economy is seen as stronger than most of its Latin American neighbors. The country is a big exporter of copper, gold and other minerals. But growth has declined during the term of outgoing President Ollanta Humala. The International Monetary Fund forecasts it will grow by 3.7 percent this year. Japan's transport ministry raided small-car maker Suzuki's headquarters Friday in the wake of its shock admission that it used improper fuel-testing methods for years, affecting millions of cars. Officials descended on the company's base in Hamamatsu city, around 250 kilometres (155 miles) southwest of Tokyo, saying they were hunting for documents linked to the under-fire emissions and fuel-economy testing. "We are raiding Suzuki's headquarters to confirm the information that the company supplied" to the ministry, an official in charge of automotive safety told AFP. The agency also raided the office of rival Mitsubishi Motors after its shock revelation in April that it had cheated on fuel-efficiency tests for decades. Suzuki, which was for years led by its 86-year-old chairman Osamu Suzuki -- a direct descendant of the company's founding family -- has admitted to using a testing method not approved by Japanese regulators. But it has repeatedly insisted it had not meant to deceive drivers. The company said in a statement it will "fully cooperate" with the transport ministry, but declined to speculate on what sort of financial penalties it could face. "We'll just have to wait and see," a company spokesman told AFP. Instead, the company claimed this week the problem was linked to scaling back resources earmarked for testing in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which set off the world financial crisis. After the Lehman shock "the increased workload of developing new models and engines led Suzuki to be unable to allocate sufficient manpower for the (approved) test," it said Tuesday. "In addition, (we) failed to invest in necessary infrastructure... as well as to make efforts to improve testing technology." Suzuki's Tokyo-listed shares dropped 0.92 percent to 2,829.5 yen by the lunch break on Friday on reports of the raid. The company has confirmed that 26 vehicle models were involved, about half produced for other automakers, since it started using the unapproved testing in 2010. Story continues More than two million cars, all sold in Japan, were affected, it said. The Suzuki revelations come during a tough time for the global industry. Japan's transport ministry ordered all domestic automakers to probe their own compliance with government testing methods following Mitsubishi's revelations that it manipulated fuel-economy data. Germany's Volkswagen, meanwhile, is struggling to drive past a worldwide emissions cheating scandal, while Tokyo-based auto parts giant Takata has been hit by lawsuits and regulatory probes over claims it hid deadly airbag flaws linked to at least 13 deaths and scores of injuries globally. TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese investigators raided Suzuki Motor Corp's headquarters on Friday as they probe the minicar maker's use of improper fuel economy tests, an official said. Investigators were looking for confirmation of Suzuki's claims that it had used data compiled from indoor tests performed on individual parts, rather than vehicle coasting tests, the transport ministry official said. It was the second such raid by the transport ministry on a Japanese automaker after Mitsubishi Motors Corp (7211.T) in April, as the government cracks down on manufacturers over the mileage testing scandal. Mitsubishi's admission that it had misrepresented its fuel economy readings led to its takeover by Nissan Motor Co Ltd and the resignation of its president last month. Suzuki's improper tests involved 14 branded models and 12 models sold under other brands. Japan's No. 4 automaker by sales has said it lacked the resources after the 2008 global financial crisis to meet regulatory testing standards. It also cited increased pressure to develop models and engines in the late 2000s. (Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Stephen Coates) "The Bill Cosby episode was the same as when we did the protest episode, when we did the kale episode; we did all these things that were based on conversations on real-life things that were happening," actor and comedian Jerrod Carmichael (The Carmichael Show) told The Hollywood Reporter during the Comedy Actor Emmy Roundtable. "I have an obligation as a comedian, as someone who exists in the world, to just reflect those conversations," he said. "I just do it as honest as possible." The episode of The Carmichael Show brought controversial opinions into the sexual-assault accusations against Bill Cosby. Carmichael told THR how important it was to voice the difference of opinion. Read more: Ouch! Aziz Ansari, Rob Lowe, Keegan-Michael Key Play 'Most Embarrassing Moment' in Comedy Actor Roundtable "This is one of the first times in American history where black people are able to be genuinely just human beings. We're able to really exist in America, and our conversations cannot necessarily fit into a box or be inhibited in any way. We can argue, and we don't necessarily take one side of an argument. It's balanced. The intention of my show is to reflect that." When asked if anyone, black or white, told Carmichael not to do the episode, he said, "Yeah. Sure. Mostly lawyers," inciting laughs among the Roundtable members. "But not doing it wasn't an option." Read more: 'The Carmichael Show' Star Reflects on Renewal Delay, "President Trump" and What's Next Carmichael went on to stress the importance of bringing a dramatic background to comedic work, saying that is what comedy is: "It is dramatic." He quoted Steve Carell as saying, "An actor in a comedy shouldn't be aware that they are in a comedy." He went on to say that comedy is "tension that needs to be broken, and you have to be able to create that tension in order to let the air out. And so coming from a dramatic background is so beneficial to comedy. The situation can be funny, and it can be funny because you maybe said a very serious, perhaps absurd thing in that moment, but it has to be real." Story continues More roundtables featuring comedy actresses, drama actresses and actors and reality hosts and producers will roll out throughout June in print and online. Tune in to new episodes of Close Up With The Hollywood Reporter starting June 26 on SundanceTV, with the premiere of the Comedy Actors Roundtable on Sunday, July 17. And look for clips at THR.com/roundtables, with full episodes available on THR.com after broadcast. var el = document.getElementById('targetParams');if (el !== null && typeof(el) != 'undefined') {var srcParams = $('.advert iframe').attr('src');var addParams = srcParams.split(";");for (i=1;i<=addParams.length - 1;i++) {if (addParams[i] != '=null' && addParams[i] != 'dcopt=ist' && addParams[i] != '!c=iframe' && addParams[i] != 'pos=t' && addParams[i] != 'sz=728x90') {el.value += addParams[i]+";";}}}brightcove.createExperiences();>>>>>>> (Photo: Splash News) Johnny Depp has been rocked hard by his ugly divorce and domestic violence allegations made by his estranged wife Amber Heard. Johnny has been an emotional mess, a source tells PEOPLE. The actor, 52, has been traveling around Europe with his band the Hollywood Vampires for the last week, making stops in various places including Sweden and Denmark. The band is set to take the stage in Romania on Monday for the last performance on their European tour. The concerts and the tour are good for him, says the source. He doesnt want to let his fans down. Its the best distraction. But while the actor whose mother, Betty Sue Palmer, died May 20 after a long illness is doing his best to keep his head high, focusing on his music hasnt been enough to keep his mind off his personal life. He is still very upset about his mom and about all the Amber drama, adds the source. Depp has been spotted partying with locals after his concerts and staying out until nearly 4 a.m., but the source says its just typical celebration. His team is keeping a close eye on him, says the source. He has been drinking, but hasnt been out of control. Depp reportedly canceled an appearance at the Reason Rally in Washington, D.C., scheduled for Saturday. As for the future, Depp is planning to spend the summer with his two kids, Lily-Rose, 17, and Jack, 14. He talks about his kids a lot and misses them. He is making plans with the kids this summer. They are planning a trip to France. If there is one label Kanye West will always happily wear, it's family man. In an interview on the Big Boy's Neighborhood radio show on the radio station Real 92.3 in Los Angeles on Friday, West admitted to being very protective of his two children and wife Kim Kardashian West. "I'm crazy about my kids," he said. "I'm crazy about Kim." "I'm so happy to be a father," West, 38, added. "I want to learn what my daughter has to say. What she learns. I just want to learn how she learns in this world. I'm extremely protective." The outspoken rapper and fashion designer also credited his daughter North, 2, for his popular Yeezy sneakers. "When I left Nike for Adidas I did it for my daughter," he admitted. "There was an opportunity to grow. There was love and admiration at Adidas, this was to make a better life for my daughter." West and his reality star wife, recently celebrated their two-year wedding anniversary in Italy, where they were married in 2014. They also recently welcomed their second child together, Saint, 6 months. Keeping Up with the Kardashains airs Sundays (9 p.m. ET) on E! A mably hormone-addled t Nicolet High School in Glendale, Wisconsin, did that thing teenagers do where they unfurl the Confederate flag in class and declare it "White Privilege Day." Needless to say, the school has asked the student to take some time off. According to local ABC affiliate WISN, Nicolet administrators suspended the child after the incident Wednesday, calling the student's actions disruptive and upsetting to fellow students. "This action disrupted the class and upset many students," Principal Gregory Kabara said in an email to parents. "While district policy allows for students to initiate conversation about a controversial issue, it must be presented in the ordinary course of classroom instruction and cannot be disruptive to the educational setting." Ku Klux Klan supporters wave the Confederate flag during a demonstration at the South Carolina Statehouse in July. It remains unclear what the student's intentions were, but it's probably no surprise to the student or anyone else that whipping out a white supremacist symbol in the middle of a classroom would earn some form of punishment. This is especially true in light of recent public debates: The Confederate flag's status as a hate symbol having represented Southern states who supported the institution of slavery during the U.S. Civil War sparked heated debate last year after white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine black people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. The debate, which has been going on in one form or another for decades, prompted government officials to remove the flag from its place over the South Carolina Statehouse grounds where it had flown since 1961. Meanwhile, it took Nicolet students and administrators a the time South Carolina did to openly denounce the flag and its hateful connotations. "I think it's a really terrible thing to happen for our school," Hannah McBride, a graduating senior, told WISN. "I don't think it's an accurate representation of the student body at Nicolet." Washington (AFP) - A US air strike last month killed four suspected Al-Qaeda militants in Yemen, the ninth such attack this year, the US military disclosed on Friday. The strike on May 19 took place in the southern province of Shabwa, US Central Command (Centcom) said in a statement. It brought to nine the number of US air strikes against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) since the beginning of the year, the statement said. Four of the strikes had not previously been disclosed. US attacks have killed a total of 81 suspected AQAP fighters, the statement said. An air strike against a training camp on March 22 killed 56 militants, according to Centcom's latest tally. The United States, which has considered AQAP the most dangerous Al-Qaeda branch since 2009, regularly conducts airstrikes against the jihadist group in Yemen, mostly using drones. AQAP has taken advantage of the country's civil conflict between Houthi rebels and Yemeni government forces to expand its influence in the country's south and southeast. US soldiers had been deployed in Yemen until March 2015, when the last troops left the country in the face of a Houthi rebel advance. However, a "very small number" of US soldiers recently returned to the southern port of Mukalla, retaken from AQAP in April, the Pentagon confirmed last month. The soldiers were deployed to support Yemeni forces and the Arab coalition taking part in the fight against Al-Qaeda in the region. AQAP is "using the unrest in Yemen to provide a haven from which to plan future attacks against our allies as well as the US and its interests," Centcom's statement said. "The United States will not relent in its mission to degrade, disrupt and destroy Al-Qaeda and its remnants." Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has expressed admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean president Kim Jong Un and other international big men who have seized and wielded power while trampling over human rights and the judicial and criminal justice system. Throughout his relentless march to the Republican presidential nomination this year, Trump has at times shocked his audiences with his anything-goes assault on long cherished government norms and legal protections. He vowed to roundup and deport 11 million illegal immigrants despite an array of due process and constitutional barriers that might block such an enterprise. He escalated his feud with reporters and news organizations that have criticized him including The Washington Post and The New York Times by threatening to seek an easing of libel laws if he becomes president. Related: Clinton Finds Her Voice on Trump: Withering Criticism, With a Side of Mockery Trump has also said that he would restore the use of water-boarding and other forms of torture to extract intelligence from captured terrorists, and order the retaliatory killing of family members of ISIS terrorists. And he has promised to prevent Muslims other than U.S. citizens from entering the country until the government gets a better handle on terrorists threats. Now the bombastic billionaire is shaking up the legal community by stepping up his public attacks on a federal judge of Mexican heritage who is presiding over lawsuits brought against the now defunct Trump University that charge fraud of thousands of students. Legal observers fret that Trumps escalating attacks on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel of California -- who has refused to dismiss the civil case against Trump and former school officials and has released hundreds of pages of testimony damaging to Trumps business reputation -- pose a dangerous affront to the independent judiciary. In an interview Thursday with The Wall Street Journal, Trump insisted that Curiel, a U.S-born citizen whose parents immigrated from Mexico, had an absolute conflict in presiding over the high-profile case given that he was of Mexican heritage and a member of a Latino lawyers association. Story continues Related: Clintons Strategy From Now On: Baiting the Trump Bull Trump at one point suggested that Curiel came from Mexico -- which wasnt true and argued yesterday that his Mexican heritage was highly relevant, because of Trumps campaign attacks on illegal immigrants and his pledge to build a wall along the southern border to keep out other undocumented immigrants. Im building a wall, Trump told the newspaper. Its an inherent conflict of interest on the part of the judge. Trump is also rattling the cage of former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Democratic party by threatening if he wins -- to order the Justice Department to seek indictments against Clinton unless she is charged before the end of the year for gross mishandling of highly sensitive State Department email. The State Departments Inspector General last week issued a stinging critique of Clintons mishandling of her email messages by using a private email server, in contravention of revised departmental regulations. The FBI, meanwhile, is well along in an investigation of whether Clinton or any of her aides violated criminal law. Related: Obamas Final Campaign Begins in Earnest with Assault on Trump During a rambling speech at a rally in San Jose, California Thursday evening, Trump insisted that Clinton has closely embraced most of President Obamas policies to avoid being charged by the Justice Department. The only reason shes been dragged so far left believe me is she doesnt want to go to jail over the emails, okay? Trump bellowed. I have watched so many lawyers, watched so many different networks, I have read so much about the emails. Folks, honestly, shes guilty as hell. And the fact that they even allow her to participate in this race is a disgrace to the United States, its a disgrace to our nation, he added to a cheering gathering. So, well see what happens Ive always had great confidence in the FBI I cant believe they will let this go. And you know what? If they do let her get away with it, it will be a big topic of conversation on the campaign trail, he said. And then if I win, theres a five year statute of limitation. Everything is going to be fair, but Im sure the Attorney General [he picks] will take a very tough look at it, from a fair standpoint, okay? Trump has issued similar warnings in the past, including a March 30 interview with David Muir of ABC News in which he said that, if elected, I would probably appoint people that would look very seriously at her email disaster. Related: We Now Know Hillary Lied Multiple Times About Her Email Server He also has threatened to take action against Judge Curiel, an Obama administration appointee, after he wins election in November. Trump has denounced the judge as a hater of Donald Trump and a disgrace. But we will come back In November, Trump said recently at a rally in San Diego. Wouldnt that be wild if I am President and come back and do a civil case? Where everybody likes it? Okay. This is called life, folks. Trumps menacing remarks about the judge and Clintons email case as well as his frequent contemptuous comments about reporters and news organizations are highly troubling to many legal experts concerned about the First Amendment, the rule of law and the separation of powers. The New York Times reported on Friday that while many in the GOP Republican establishment are reluctantly lining up behind him including House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), who belatedly announced his support yesterday many conservative and libertarian legal scholars warn that electing Mr. Trump is a recipe for a constitutional crisis. Related: Trump May Need a Thicker Skin in Going After Clinton Who knows what Donald Trump with a pen and phone would do? Ilya Shapiro, a lawyer with the libertarian Cato Institute, said in an interview with the newspaper. . You would like a president with some idea about constitutional limits on presidential powers, on congressional powers, on federal powers, added Randy E. Barnett, a prominent conservative law professor at Georgetown University, and I doubt he has any awareness of such limits. Congressional GOP leaders including Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) -- say that they are confident that Trump will soften his tone and respect the rule of law if he defeats Clinton in November. Hell have a White House counsel, McConnell told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday. There will be others who point out theres certain things you can do and you cant do. However, in her foreign policy address in San Diego on Thursday, Clinton repeatedly warned that Trump has a very thin skin and is prone to lash out at his adversaries or critics. This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes, she said, because its not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Leon Osborne, a basement producer from Fremantle, Australia, describes his music in terms of push and pull between two poles. "I was more interested in half-time 140 b.p.m. stuff when I put out my last double single," the producer explains in an email. "Since then I dropped virtually everything down to 120 b.p.m. and I've been making a lot of house-inspired songs I think I swing back and forth between dance and slower electronic music." Bonobo Talks Outlier Brand, Output Residency & Next Album On "Circle Limit," his latest single, that transition is an easy one: after a lounge-friendly opening portion that evokes the producer Bonobo, the pace picks up, the bass becomes more nosy, and suddenly Osborne is nudging his listener in the direction of the dancefloor. "I tried to see if I could make songs that you can dance to," he tells Billboard, "but [that] also have a range of distinct movements and continue to develop and change." Check out "Circle Limit" and its B-side, "Today - Tomorrow," below. (Photo: Yahoo Singapore) Its been about 20 years since Les Miserables was performed in Singapore. Based on Victor Hugos novel, Les Miserables was last staged in 1996 at the Kallang Theatre. Since its last appearance here, the worlds longest-running musical has toured the US and still plays on Londons West End. A film musical version was also released in 2012 featuring Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway and Russell Crowe. Even before it arrived in Singapore, the production encountered some hiccups. The Business Times reported that the opening night was abruptly rescheduled from 29 May to 31 May. And during the shows run in Manila its stop just before Singapore a number of cast members fell ill, said lead actor Earl Carpenter, who plays Inspector Javert. We had a lot of illness in Manila. The majority of the company were very, very sick during their time in Manila, which was a shame. That takes the sparkle out of the eyes, knocks out the energy, he said. After waiting so long for the musical to return to Singapores shores, should theatre-goers here be concerned? Its live theatre. We do what we can do. Sometimes your energys not always there, said Carpenter during a media call on Thursday (2 June). But were in a new city and were very excited to be here. The show begins with the tale of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict who attempts to turn his life around after breaking parole. Set in 19th-century France, it also follows several characters such as Fantine, a woman driven to prostitution to support her child; Enjolras, a student leading an uprising; and Eponine, a street urchin caught in a love triangle. Comparisons This contemporary version of the musical has a more cinematic edge, with a stage that features painted scenes from the story projected onto its background. Visually, its more striking, said Nick Allott, mananging director of Cameron Mackintosh Ltd, the production company behind Les Miserables. This is a show thats timeless, and it will play (well) to an audience thats coming to it fresh. Story continues Although the producers allow some countries to stage the show in their own way, Allott says there will be no specific adaptations or tweaks for the Singapore audience. Its the story, the strength of the score and strength of the characters that will always bring an audience in Singapore has a very sophisticated audience. Theres no need to simplify things or complicate things, explained Allott. Given the likely comparisons with the Broadway and West End actors, or even the movie, some cast members were quick to assert that the predominantly Australian talents are no less talented. I came from the UK cast of Les Miserables that played at the Queens Theatre, and to join (this cast) is like nothing else I believe theres a lot more passion coming from Australia. The Australians in this cast are epic, said Paul Wilkins, who plays Marius. Rather than emulating the performances of other big names who have starred in the musical, the current cast members believe they are bringing a different dynamic to the table. I realise I didnt need to be stressed at auditions by comparing myself to anybody else. Were all so different and always interpret the material differently, said Chris Durling, who plays Enjolras. I think the one thing that us Aussies are known for is our extreme work ethic. Big shows like Les Mis are few and far in between, and people work very hard to get into them. I dont take it for granted and Ill do the best that I can. (Photo: Yahoo Singapore) Introducing new audiences to the show There was a quiet confidence among the cast that the 2012 movie has not diminished interest in the musical. Allcott believes that, in some places, the movie provided an incentive for new audiences to watch the stage version. He said: There used to be an argument that if you had a film, the film would kill the stage show. But thats proved not to be the case. I think the two sit side by side very comfortably. As far as younger audiences are concerned, Simon Gleeson, who plays Jean Valjean, believes even young children will find something about the Les Miserables story that they connect with. Gleeson illustrated his point with an anecdote involving his then seven-year-old daughter, who repeatedly told him not to rehearse the powerful song Bring Him Home while she was in the house. She said, I forbid you to sing in the house. I realised its because she would go to her room and cry because she locked on to the fact that something was wrong that I wasnt happy, that I was in pain and she couldnt comprehend what it was about, he said. She doesnt understand the story but she understood from the music alone that it hit her in a very emotional way. And thats what this show does. Most Americans already know what's been hiding in the water in Flint, Michigan: dangerous levels of lead and other lethal toxins. But whatever mind-warping poisons lie in the supply 75 miles southeast in Grosse Pointe Farms a nearly all-white Detroit suburb remain a mystery. Officials at Grosse Pointe South High School apologized this week after an anti-black rant from some of its students surfaced in an online video. The footage shows students using racial slurs and advocating that black people be shipped back to Africa, segregated from whites or re-enslaved to restore white rule in the United States. "Alright so what are you going to do to them in 2040?" one student asks another, referring to his plans for African-Americans. "They're going to be owned by white people and white people are going to be the dominant [sic] of the country," the other student replies. The students also talked about burning blacks at the stake, maiming the enslaved with cattle brands and trading them for booze. Principal Moussa Hamka condemned the comments as a "deplorable" violation of the school's code of conduct, the Associated Press reported Friday. "The majority of our students and community members do not accept and will not tolerate such bigotry," Hamka said in an email. He also indicated the students in the video could face consequences. This is the second time in recent months Grosse Pointe officials have had to address racism among their white students. In March, the school suspended four students who posed in a photograph with the word "n*gger" scrawled on their stomachs and legs. The photo went viral online. Grosse Pointe's new NAACP chapter praised the school's response to that incident. "It's not easy to stand up to bigotry, especially if you have people out there saying, 'You can't control people's attitudes, you can't impose your values on others,'" Greg Bowens, co-founder of the chapter, said during a March press conference. Story continues White Michigan students suspended for writing the word n*gger across their stomaches: http://buff.ly/1Z1ogik pic.twitter.com/PU0tXkpFfj https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CdsMPz6W8AAcX9X.jpg:large Only 185 of Gros se Po inte South's nearly 1,700 students were black during the 2014-2015 academic year, according to the school ranking website School Digger Gary Niehaus, superintendent of Gro sse Poin te scho ols, told local television station WJBK that four boys involved in the video have been identified. "Our kids know better and you get disappointed when you think kids know better and they continue to make poor choices," Niehaus said. But Grosse Pointe South shouldn't be totally singled out. In January, an Arizona high school had to address a similar photo that showed graduating seniors posing in T- shirts that spelled out the word "n*gger." In that case, one student said she couldn't be racist because she had a black boyfriend. Oh, and the photo was meant for him as a joke, she added. these girls got suspended for 5 days when they should've been expelled. they go to desert vista high schoolpic.twitter.com/q3Q5UKmh04 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZWubWBVAAAL_WD.jpg:large Incidents like these drove the campus protests that embattled several universities last fall, when black studen ts an d white allies sought changes in the ways administrators responded to rac ial discrimination and anim osity. But perhaps fewer racial incidents would pop up at places of higher learning and high schools, at that if educator s were mor e proactive about racial literacy among their students. Here are three l essons Gross e Pointe South High and other schools could use: Descendants of American slaves can't just "go back to Africa." The United States is only 150 years removed from the abolition of slavery, centuries after about 388,000 Africans were enslaved in North America by white European aristocrats in the North, and plant at ion owners in the South. According to the T, as many as 12.5 million Africans were ripped from their native lands and shipped to the United States, the Caribbean and South America between 1525 and 1866. Fast-forward to today , and the African continent has been carved up into many sovereign nations that would be hard-pressed to accept the descendants of American slaves as refugees. A basic but nuanced social studies course could easily lay out these points for unknowing students. President Barack Obama speaks on the 150-year anniversary of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Re-segregation would likely make the United States a global pariah. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made it illegal to discriminate against people on the basis of race, sex, religious affiliation or national origin. But more than 50 years later, the country is still debating equal rights for minorities. The conversation about public bathroom access f or transgender people in North C a rolina has provided clear evidence that th e US sh ould n ot pass laws enforcing re-seg regation . Regardless, lawmakers in North Carolina passed House Bill 2 in March, which, among other provisions, requires transgender people to use People from across the country swiftly condemned the law. It is estimated that HB2 has now cost the state tens of millions of dollars in economic activity and busin ess investments, according to the News Observer a harsh referendum on how people feel about the law's not-so-latent bigotry. Slave shackles are pictured at the Lincoln Museum in Illinois. Slavery still exists in the world and should be vigorously dismantled. Slavery is still a problem, both domestically and globally. An estimated 20.9 million people remain enslaved today often in the form of involuntarily domestic and sexual servitude for humans trafficked across national borders according to the group End Slavery Now. TV and film depictions of this historical phenomenon, such as the rece nt Roots reb oot t h at debuted to high ratings Monday, are reminding new gen eration s of what slaves have endured, and still endure today. It's 2016, America. If Grosse Pointe South students aren't embarrassed by these incidents, perhaps it's their social studies teachers who should be. One pair of teenagers has an expensive sense of humor. Last Sunday, a 15-year-old and a 14-year-old set a potato chip bag on fire in a Longo's grocery store in Ontario and caused roughly $2 million in damages, Global News reported. They fled the store at around 7:30 p.m. before firefighters worked to contain the blaze. The Longo's store in Ontario, Canada The flames almost reached the ceiling, Daniela Stalteri, a witness of the fire, told Global News reporters. Smoke engulfed the store, but luckily no one was injured. The teenage pyros were identified by security cameras. Authorities arrested them and charged them with arson. Source: LifeHacker According to LifeHacker, Reddit users report that greasy chips are an effective way to start fire when you don't have kindling. Hot Cheetos (and Takis), anyone? Put this chip hack to the test, but maybe try it on a grill at your next BBQ and not the supermarket. By Agnieszka Barteczko, David Mardiste and Andrius Sytas WARSAW/VILNIUS/TALLINN (Reuters) - Energy market regulators in Poland and Lithuania are investigating whether Polish electricity grid operator PSE is breaking European Union rules by limiting Lithuanian imports. The restrictions, which are adding to tensions between the Warsaw's eurosceptic government and the European Commission, could be in breach of EU market rules, legal experts said. "The Commission and the Polish regulator have received a request from a market participant regarding the situation when transmission capacity from the Polish side is limited to zero during night hours," Lithuania's National Commission for Energy Control and Prices, said in an email. Lithuania and Poland started power transactions on their first 500-megawatt link last December. The investigation was initiated after Estonia's state-owned power group Eesti Energia filed a request in April asking if the restrictions comply with EU regulations. "The situation is definitely problematic as the Polish TSO (transmission system operator) clearly is not acting in accordance with its previously made statements and officially submitted information," Hando Sutter, the company's chief executive, told Reuters in an email. Import restrictions raise a question about achieving the EU's goal of creating an energy union, Sutter said. The EU wants to see electricity flowing freely across the bloc without technical or regulatory barriers, helping to reduce prices for consumers and ensure security of supply. Meanwhile, Poland has called for greater energy union to help it reduce EU reliance on Russian gas. PSE said unregulated power imports "can destabilise the system" at night, when demand is low and government officials said it was a necessary step to protect its coal power plants, a source of 80 percent of electricity, from imports of "cheap, subsidised electricity". "The day and night fluctuations, which could be caused by the excess of electricity coming from the Baltic states to Poland, are a threat to our power stations...," Piotr Naimski, a senior government official in charge of energy infrastructure, told Reuters. Story continues Christian Schnell, a partner at the Warsaw-based law firm Solivan said import restrictions could violate article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which prohibits unfair trading conditions. Asked whether Warsaw was discussing the issue of power import restrictions with the European Commission, Naimski said: "We are trying to explain this situation and we are looking for some understanding for (the) Polish energy system." The European Commission declined to comment. (Additional reporting by Barbara Lewis in Brussels; Writing by Nerijus Adomaitis; Editing by Alexander Smith) 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. By Andrea Shalal BERLIN, June 3 (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp, the largest U.S. arms maker and parent of Sikorsky, has begun to study the possibility of selling commercial helicopters to Iran, but said the market may be small and the company still needed guidance from the U.S. government. Lockheed, along with Boeing Co, is one of the first major U.S. aerospace companies looking into selling to Iran for the first time since U.S. sanctions were imposed following Iran's Islamic Revolution of 1979. European aircraft manufacturers already are starting to get orders from Iran after sanctions were lifted on Jan. 16. Nathalie Previte, vice-president of sales and marketing for Sikorsky, said the company had received numerous inquiries from existing customers, including leasing companies and operators, interested in possible helicopter operations in Iran. Sikorsky's S-76 and longer-range S-92 commercial helicopters could be options for Iran, Previte said, although she added that the country has little of the offshore drilling activity that drives helicopter demand in the oil and gas sector. "I want to understand the U.S. government's policy about what can be done and what can we not do, and really clear everything with the U.S. government even before we start completing the analysis," Previte told Reuters at the Berlin Air Show. Previte's comments marked the first time Lockheed has acknowledged looking into possible sales to Iran. The company is mainly a government and defense contractor, but entered into the commercial market with its purchase of helicopter maker Sikorsky from United Technologies Corp last year. Sikorsky is studying which of its products could be sold in Iran but is still working through the regulatory and compliance issues with the U.S. government, Previte said. She added it was unclear how big the market could be. Boeing Co Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg on Thursday said Iran's demand for airliners was real, and the prospect of a major order there was moving closer. Story continues Airbus in January agreed to sell Iran 118 planes worth about $27 billion at list prices, and says it also sees Iranian demand for helicopters. AgustaWestland, a unit of Italy's Leonardo Finmeccanica SpA , also has seen interest in its helicopters from operators looking to do business in Iran, industry sources said. Even if the U.S. government agrees to allow Lockheed, Boeing and other U.S. manufacturers to sell aircraft to Iran, analysts said the companies still face obstacles, including a potential lack of funds and lingering skepticism from financial backers. Steve O'Bryan, who heads business development for Lockheed's mission systems and training business - which includes Sikorsky - cautioned against overplaying the potential sales. "We're looking at it, of course, but we're going to take a very conservative approach on this," he said. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by John Walcott and Bill Rigby) Tony Fadell, CEO of smart home company Nest Labs, is leaving the company two years after it was acquired by Google for $3.2 billion. Fadells departure comes as both he and his company have been facing increasing criticism from the outside and inside alike, though he says he had been considering the move for some time. Although this news may feel sudden to some, this transition has been in progress since late last year and while I wont be present day to day at Nest, Ill remain involved in my new capacity as an advisor to Alphabet and Larry Page, said Fadell in a blog post announcing the news. Alphabet is a holding company run by Page that counts Google, Nest and other firms and ventures among its portfolio. Marwan Fawaz, a former Motorola executive, will be replacing Fadell as Nests CEO. Under Tonys leadership, Nest has catapulted the connected home into the mainstream, secured leadership positions for each of its products, and grown its revenue in excess of 50% year over year since they began shipping products, said Page in a statement. Hes a true visionary and I look forward to continuing to work with him in his new role as advisor to Alphabet. Im delighted that Marwan will be the new Nest CEO and am confident in his ability to deepen Nests partnerships, expand within enterprise channels, and bring Nest products to even more homes. Nest is best known for its smart thermostat, which learns homeowners temperature preferences and can be adjusted from afar with smartphone software. The company also makes Internet-connected home security cameras and smoke detectors. Google purchased the company as a beachhead in the smart home gadget market. Fadell, a former Apple executive known as the father of the iPod and a 2014 TIME 100 honoree, stayed aboard to run Nest following the Google acquisition. However, he found himself under increasing pressure in recent months as technical glitches plagued the companys products and employees openly griped about his leadership style. Among the most harsh critiques came by way of the former CEO of Dropcam, which Nest acquired in 2014 for $555 million, who recently challenged Fadells dim assessment of that firms employees. Technology news site Recode reported in April that Google was bringing back former Motorola president Rick Osterloh to organize and run its hardware efforts. A British serial paedophile who preyed on impoverished Kuala Lumpur slum children voiced deep remorse before a London court on Friday for his "disgusting behaviour". Richard Huckle, 30, who has pleaded guilty to 71 of 91 counts of child sex offences, including rape, targeted children while posing as a volunteer working with Christian communities in the Malaysian capital. More than 20,000 images of child sex abuses were found on his heavily-encrypted laptop. Huckle appeared in the dock at London's Old Bailey criminal court where judge Peter Rook heard mitigation from his lawyer Philip Sapsford. Rook said he would have to weigh up whether a life sentence was appropriate for 22 of the most serious counts before passing sentence at 10:00am (0900 GMT) on Monday. Sapsford asked for leniency, arguing that in pleading guilty, his client had spared a jury from being exposed to images of his abuse. He accepted it would be "a very long time" before Huckle was released from prison but asked that the sentence give his client "hope" of rehabilitation into society. Huckle had bragged about his abuse online and was snared by an Australian investigation on the dark web -- a hard-to-access part of the Internet often used for illegal activity. - 'All my own doing' - In the letter of remorse written on May 23 and read to the court by his lawyer, Huckle acknowledged "the scale of the damage I have caused". "I completely misjudged the affections I received from these children. "My low self-esteem and lack of confidence with women was no excuse to be using these children as an outlet." He said he was "gullible to be easily influenced" by the "pathetic, perverted lust of those who drew me into the dark net". And he said he hoped there would be help for the victims of the "disgusting behaviour I performed on them". "I am open and eager to rehabilitate from this offending behaviour," he wrote. Story continues "In no way do I want to be treated as a martyr to child sex tourism in Malaysia. "This was all my own doing as a consequence of my own immaturities. "I am deeply remorseful and regretful of what has happened and will do all I can in being proactive towards rehabilitating myself." The Old Bailey heard earlier that Huckle targeted poor victims and was writing a guide to child abuse that he intended to publish for profit. He posted pictures of the abuse of boys and girls online. Huckle admitted offences against children aged between six months and 12 years, committed between 2006 and 2014. Investigators have identified 23 victims -- 22 Malaysians and one Cambodian. - Outrage in Malaysia - Huckle, who comes from Kent in southeastern England, was arrested at London's Gatwick Airport in December 2014 as he returned from Malaysia to spend Christmas with his parents. Files on his laptop showed him committing offences including rape. Huckle has not handed over the passwords for some files which remain encrypted. Police also found a ledger in which he detailed the abuse of 191 victims, but officers were unable to press charges on all cases as there was no photographic evidence. Videos recovered showed children being forced to sexually abuse each other, abuse being committed as other children watched and children being urinated on. The case has sparked revulsion in Malaysia, with newspapers on Friday plastering photos of Huckle on their front pages along with angry headlines. "This monster defiled our kids," read the headline in The Star leading daily. Huckle took children with him to church and regularly roamed an impoverished Kuala Lumpur neighbourhood to snap pictures of children, those who had met him said on Friday. But several people interviewed by AFP said they had seen no reason to suspect Huckle of child sex abuse. Paul Packianathan, senior pastor of a Protestant church located in a Kuala Lumpur suburb, said Huckle's church visits were infrequent and had aroused "no suspicions". He condemned Huckle's actions as "despicable". KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian authorities sought details on Friday of the abuse by a British paedophile who is awaiting sentencing in his homeland on charges of raping and abusing scores of Malaysian children. Malaysians were shocked when news broke on Thursday that Richard Huckle, 30, had raped and sexually abused numerous Malaysian children from impoverished families while he worked in the country as a freelance photographer for nearly a decade. Malaysian police said they were seeking details on the man's victims from their British counterparts while the Malaysian government set up a hot line for members of the public to phone if they had information. "The victims have not been identified and the NCA only informed about the incident about one month ago, but no information had been given because the case is still on trial," Ong Chin Lan, a senior officer in the police's Sexual, Women and Child Investigation Division, told the Bernama news agency. The NCA is the London-based National Crime Agency. "We have asked for the information repeatedly and will continue to press them for more information for follow-up action," she said. Huckle, who was arrested in London when he was returning home for Christmas in 2014, began exploiting children and documenting his activities in 2005 when he first visited Malaysia. His victims were aged between six months and 12 years, according to a British court document. Media reports said Huckle had gained the trust of people in Christian-dominated communities in Muslim-majority Malaysia and also lived in churches in the capital, Kuala Lumpur. He was charged with 91 offences, including 14 counts of rape of a child under 13 years old. His victims included five children aged between 3 and 12 at the time of the abuse, and a baby believed to be six months old, the document said. He is believed to have abused up to 200 children, the BBC reported. 'NO REPORTS LODGED' Malaysian police said they were aware of 23 victims and only found out about the case when their British counterparts came to Malaysia in April to inform them of Huckle's arrest and the charges against him. No reports were previously lodged by either the victims or their caretakers, criminal investigations department deputy director Law Hong Soon told a news conference. Huckle pleaded guilty to 71 offences. A London court will sentence him on Monday and he faces a life sentence. While the police sought more details the government had set up a special phone line for information, Women, Family and Community Development Minister Rohani Abdul Karim said in a statement. The government was also setting up a sex offenders' registry, she said. A child rights group said the Huckle case was the tip of the iceberg. "Sadly, child sex abuse is very prevalent in Malaysia," said Sharmila Sekaran if the advocacy group Voice of the Children. Sekaran said child sex tourism was also a problem. The U.N. Children's Fund said the case highlighted a global problem and it wanted to help drafting laws to protect children in Malaysia. British authorities recovered more than 20,000 indecent images of children from Huckle's computers and cameras after his arrest, and also found a 60-page "how-to" guide he wrote on sexually abusing children and how to evade detection. (Reporting by Joseph Sipalan; Editing by Praveen Menon and Robert Birsel) * April exports +1.6 y/y vs Reuters poll +2.0 pct * April imports -2.3 pct y/y vs poll f'cast +0.8 pct * Trade surplus 9.1 bln rgt vs poll f'cast 7.6 bln rgt * Exports to China -16.6 pct y/y, U.S. +11.7 pct, EU -5.3 pct KUALA LUMPUR, June 3 (Reuters) - Malaysia's exports in April grew 1.6 percent from a year earlier on higher shipments of manufactured goods and palm oil, government data showed on Friday. Exports grew faster than the 0.2 percent expansion in March, but was slightly slower than the median forecast in a Reuters poll of 2.0 percent. The increase, however, was offset by lower exports of liquefied natural gas and crude petroleum, according to data from the International Trade and Industry Ministry. Imports in April fell 2.3 percent from a year earlier, compared with the previous month's 5.5 percent decline. April's trade surplus fell to 9.1 billion ringgit ($2.20 billion) from 11.2 billion ringgit in March. Exports to China fell 16.6 percent due to lower shipments of commodities, mainly palm oil and palm-based agriculture products, petroleum products, LNG and metalliferous ores. Exports to the European Union also dropped 5.3 percent. But those to the United States rose 11.7 percent, mainly due to a jump in shipments of electrical and electronic products. For a graphic on Malaysia's exports and imports, click: http://link.reuters.com/xyb28s KEY DATA (Exports and imports in percent, trade in billions of ringgit) Apr Mar Feb Jan Dec Nov Oct Sept Exports 61.35 66.59 56.72 61.85 68.30 67.63 75.81 70.16 y/y% 1.6 0.2 6.7 -2.8 1.4 6.3 16.7 8.8 Imports 52.29 55.39 49.37 56.46 60.31 57.39 63.65 60.47 y/y% -2.3 -5.5 1.6 3.3 3.2 9.1 -0.4 9.6 Balance 9.06 11.2 7.35 5.39 7.99 10.23 12.16 9.69 MAIN EXPORTS April 2016 % of % change (bln rgt) total vs year ago Electrical & 21.5 35.0 2.1 Electronic Products Palm oil 3.5 5.7 9.4 Liquefied natural gas 2.2 3.5 -32.4 Chemicals and 4.7 7.6 2.5 products Crude oil n/a n/a n/a Refined petroleum 5.2 8.5 34.4 products Machinery 3.5 5.8 17.2 Story continues Rubber products 1.7 2.5 -6.6 EXPORT MARKETS (bln rgt) % of total % yr/yr China 6.75 11.0 -16.6 Singapore 9.15 14.9 15.4 Japan 4.41 7.18 -18.7 USA 6.63 10.8 11.7 Thailand 3.16 5.1 -12.4 ($1 = 4.1450 ringgit) (Reporting by Rozanna Latiff; Editing by Jacqueline Wong) From Popular Mechanics The Advanced Capability Extended Range Mortar (ACERM) takes portable firepower to an entirely new level, transforming one of the humblest infantry weapons into one of the most powerful. The mortar is a mechanically simple device-not much more than a tube with a firing pin-and the design is little changed from the 81mm mortars of WWII. Recoil is absorbed by the ground, so the weapon does not need the complex mechanisms of other artillery. A crew can fire 15 per minute, enough to break up infantry assaults. The plunging, high-angle fire of the mortar is effective against targets in trenches or behind cover. The mortar has always been the footsoldier's favorite piece of artillery. That's partly because of the simplicity, and partly because they are controlled at battalion level and below. Unlike heavier artillery, they're available right when you need them. The standard infantry support weapon is the M-252 81mm mortar, which lobs a 10 lb. high-explosive bomb at a range of about three miles. It is light enough to be portable when broken down into its three component parts (though carrying the awkward 29-lb. base plate is never popular). Mortars are not especially accurate weapons. The first round may be 100 meters or more off-target, but by adjusting the aim point, the crew can get on target after a few shots. When aiming at a tree line from which enemy fire is coming, or an company dug in across an entire hilltop, precision is not so vital. Others targets are tricky though. For instance, you could not hope to hit a moving vehicle with a mortar. That all changes with ACERM. ACERM, a project of the Office of Naval Research, outfits the mortar bomb with wings, control fins, GPS navigation, and a laser seeker head as well as an enhanced warhead. Basically, we're talking about a smart mortar bomb with some surprising new capabilities. The first improvement is in range. Normally, the only way to increase the range of a mortar is to add a bigger charge of propellant or a rocket booster. Thanks to the wings ACERM has better aerodynamics and can hit targets more than 6 miles away, doubling the distance it can fly. Story continues The other improvement is accuracy. Opponents tend to gets their heads down after the first bombs land, so the first shots may be the most important. The GPS guidance system, similar to that on the ubiquitous JDAM series of bombs , gives an accuracy of better than ten meters. The effective kill radius of the bomb is 35 meters, so even first shot should be close enough to the target to do the job. In addition, ACERM features a new warhead with more high-density fragments and less explosive, and this has a significantly greater effect that the old version. Previously, programming a guided mortar round with the target coordinates required some hefty equipment. Even the newer Precision Lightweight Universal Mortar Setter System weighs 40 pounds. ACERM comes with a Miniature Mission Setter that looks like a rugged Android tablet, because that's exactly what it is. At two pounds, it is small enough to slip in a cargo pocket and has an touchscreen Android interface. That is an important feature when you want to reduce the chances of mortar bombs being sent to the wrong address in the thick of the fight. GPS guidance is only half the story. ACERM has another trick up its sleeve, the Low-Cost Semi-Active Laser Seeker. This is a miniature laser sensor that allows the mortar bomb to act like a laser-guided missile that hits wherever an illuminated laser spot is directed. The accuracy is better than one meter, and it can even hit moving targets. The "Low-Cost" part is important. The ACERM has a target price of $10,000 (cheap for the military), and at that price it could be acquired in quantity. The mortar team may not be able to see a target six miles or more away, let alone mark it with a laser designator, but the ACERM project aims to give them some help. Some of the live fire tests will employ Skylark I-LE, a small hand-launched drone developed by Israeli company Elbit. Like the US RQ-11B Raven it resembles, the Skylark carries a video camera and thermal imaging, but it also has an extra feature, a miniature laser for target marking. The ACERM team can locate targets, laser them, and hit them with great precision. ACERM is part of the Enhanced Expeditionary Engagement Capability program meant to give better fire support to the U.S. Marine Corps. The program includes a variety of live-fire tests through the next year, and aims to reach the Pentagon's Technology Readiness of 6: "prototype demonstration in a relevant environment." Development may not stop there. There are plans for ACERM-X, an "eXtreme performance" version with a rocket booster. This should be able to achieve ranges somewhere out beyond 25 miles. ACERM-X will also be able to perform a clever trick known as MRSI, Multiple Round Simultaneous Impact. Here, several rounds are fired at the same target along slightly different trajectories, so even though they are fired one after the other, they all arrive at the same moment. BAE Systems' Archer howitzer can deliver six rounds at once using MRSI; ACERM-X could manage a similar one-mortar volley. ACERM is an impressive demonstration of how a dumb weapon can be upgraded with the addition of some electronics. Its final evolution might see the end of the mortar: the developers suggest that it could be dropped from a drone as a miniature glide-bomb. The drone does all the spotting and laser designation, the crew are safe miles away. And nobody has to carry that base plate. Mark Cuban Mark Cuban trolled Donald Trump by releasing a parody video of Trump singing the lyrics to the song "Billionaire," by Travie McCoy and Bruno Mars. The video was composed of many cuts from Trump's campaign rallies and television appearances, with the beat from "Billionaire" playing in the background. "Billionaire as performed by @realDonaldTrump," Cuban tweeted on early Friday morning. "Why did I do this? Because I can :)." Trump's words were combed to say the following lines: I wanna be a billionaire so frickin' bad Buy all of the things I never had Uh, I wanna be on the cover of Forbes magazine Smiling next to Oprah and the Queen. Oh every time I close my eyes I see my name in shining lights, yeah A different city every night, oh I swear the world better prepare For when I'm a billionaire. Cuban told Business Insider in an email that he thought the video would be "fun to do" after he challenged the presumptive Republican nominee's net worth in an interview earlier this week. The mash-up promoted an app with which Cuban is involved, called Register to Vote. During an interview earlier this week with WABC's "The Bernie and Sid Show," Cuban, the business mogul and owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, said that he went over Trump's recent FEC filings the ones Trump's campaign claimed displayed his "massive" fortune. But the star of ABC's "Shark Tank" said that he saw a different story reading through the report. He said: I don't think he's very good at brands for non-real-estate products. And, to me, it's more a reflection of desperation. So when you're putting your name on steaks, and you're putting your name on water, you're putting your name on playing cards, you're putting your name on all this nonsense, right? You're not going to make big bucks, no matter what. It's not like Trump Steaks were going to make him $100 million. It's not like it was going to make him $5 million. "I asked, 'What the hell are you doing? Are you that desperate for money?' Seriously," Cuban said. Story continues After reading Trump's FEC filing, Cuban said that "it's not even close" as to who has more in liquid assets between the two. "I do," he said. Cuban has flirted with presidential politics in recent weeks. He generated additional buzz after Hillary Clinton expressed openness to him serving as her running mate during a "Meet the Press" episode, during which Cuban also said that he'd be intrigued by the possibility. The mogul has since said that Clinton's team has reached out to his team about setting up a meeting, although it wasn't clear if it was to talk about the possibility of serving as a running mate. Watch Cuban's parody video below: More From Business Insider Matt Damon wants new graduates to strive to engage with the worlds problems. The 45-year-old actor gave the commencement speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on Friday, fitting given his well-known Boston roots, and his role in 1997s Good Will Hunting, in which he played a genius janitor at MIT. Damon poked fun at his own qualifications to give the speech having dropped out of Harvard University to pursue acting full-time and joked he was fake graduating for a second time in his life. Still, Damon who brought along his wife, Luciana Barroso, his four daughters, and his parents clearly took the honor seriously, and used his time on the stage to urge MIT graduates to pay attention to world issues. WATCH: 13 Best Pieces of Advice From Celebrity Commencement Speeches MIT, you have to go out and do really interesting things, important things, inventive things, because this world has some problems that we need you to drop everything and solve, he said, referring to the blackboards that line MITs halls, for which students can drop everything to write ideas down. So, go ahead and pick from the worlds worst buffet economic inequality, how about the refugee crisis, massive global insecurity, climate change, pandemics, institutional racism fear-driven brains working overtime here in America. And add that to an American political system thats failing, he added, also taking a few jabs at presidential hopeful Donald Trump. You got congressmen in a two-year election cycle who are incentivized to think short term and simply do not engage with long-term problems, and add to that a media that thrives on scandal and people with their pants down, anything they can get you to tune in so they can hawk you products you dont need, and add to that a banking system that steals peoples money. (Photo: Getty Images) Damon acknowledged his bluntness. Its alright, Im not running for office, I can say anything I want, he joked. Story continues The Martian actor later shared advice former president Bill Clinton gave him. A natural response is to tune out and turn away, but before you step out into our big troubled world, I want to give some advice that Bill Clinton gave me almost a decade ago, he shared. What he said was, Turn towards the problem you see, you have to engage. That is what I want to tell you today, is to turn towards the problem that you see and engage with them walk right up and look them in the eye, and look yourself in the eye and decide what you want to do about them, he continued. Damon emphasized that its OK to fail, recalling countless auditions he and his BFF Ben Affleck would go on, only to be rejected. Those experiences became our armor, the Oscar winner explained. Finally, the Jason Bourne actor stressed that theres no substitute for experiencing other cultures firsthand, and seeing the worlds problems for yourself. Specifically, Damon talked about his clean water project Water.org a non-profit he co-founded to provide safe water and sanitation in the developing world. Human beings will take your breath away, Damon shared about his experiences around the world. They will teach you so much, but you have to engage. Theres a lot of trouble out there, MIT, but theres a lot of beauty too, and I hope you see both. Damons not the only celebrity giving moving commencement speeches. WATCH: Judge Judy Gives Powerful Advice in Tear-Jerking Commencement Speech Ryan Seacrest reflected on his recent speech at the University of Georgia last month, when ET caught up with him at 102.7 KIIS FMs Wango Tango 2016. I was scared to death because I wanted to get it right for the students who have worked for years to be there, Seacrest told ET exclusively. I was up all night trying to figure out what to say to them. We finally came up with something I put on paper and hopefully they appreciated it. It was an honor to do that. I never did that before. Fifty thousand people in the stadium and I was really happy to be there. Watch below: Related Articles By Greg Torode SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Influential U.S. Senator John McCain said on Friday he feared for the consequences if China rejected an impending U.N. court ruling on the South China Sea dispute and called on Asian nations to back U.S. statements that the outcome should be binding. In a speech in Singapore ahead of a key regional security forum, McCain, who chairs the U.S. Senate's Armed Services Committee, said enforcement of the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague would be a major test for the region. The Philippines has gone to the court to contest China's claim to an area of the sea stretching deep into the maritime heart of Southeast Asia, covering hundreds of disputed islands and reefs. Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei also claim parts of the sea. China refuses to recognize the case. McCain urged China to shift from what he called coercion and intimidation of neighbors to co-operation. "China can choose to disrupt the rules-based order. Or it can choose to become a vital partner in maintaining it," he said on the sidelines of the annual Shangri-la Dialogue. "I fear the consequences if China chooses the path of disruption," McCain added, later saying it could force the wider region to cooperate more closely militarily and economically. The Arizona senator urged Southeast Asian nations to restate their support for a rules-based order. "America and the world are counting on the nations of Southeast Asia to recommit their power and resolve to upholding this system on which our shared security and prosperity depend," he said. Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, also speaking on the sidelines of the meeting, said New Delhi supported the peaceful resolution of the dispute. "We are very clear about our policy in the South China Sea," he said. "As (far as) India is concerned, we have always been insisting that all parties should resolve this peacefully based on the international laws and various other international norms." McCain said China "would be facing severe criticism from the world" if it opted to ignore the ruling of the court in The Hague, which is expected to rule in coming weeks. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who is leading the U.S. delegation at Shangri-La Dialogue, is expected to make similar calls to Asian nations attending the meeting. In a speech at the U.S. Naval Academy last week, Carter accused China of attempting to play by its own rules on the high seas, in the global economy and in cyberspace and warned that it could erect "a Great Wall of self-isolation" given regional concerns about its behavior. On Friday, to emphasize U.S. concerns about maritime security in what is one of the world's busiest waterways, Carter took a flight on a U.S. P8 surveillance aircraft along with his Singaporean counterpart. At a joint news conference, he urged China to participate in the rules-based order that the U.S. presence in Asia had helped maintain for the past 70 years and said Beijing had to make its own choices. "Obviously we hope it makes the choice of one that is cooperative with the system of security which has served this region so well for so long," Carter said. (Reporting by Greg Torode and Marius Zaharia, Writing by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan) On Jun 3, 2016, we issued an updated research report on Medtronic plc MDT. The company ended fiscal 2016 on a promising note with fourth-quarter earnings and revenues both surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate. Foreign exchange headwinds still remained significant, negatively impacting revenues by $179 million. However, the companys expectation of not-so-substantial currency headwinds in fiscal 2017 boosts our confidence in the stock. For fiscal 2017, Medtronic expects currency headwinds to the tune of approximately $25$75 million based on current exchange rates on revenues. The consolidated company has successfully demonstrated strong segmental performances, reflecting successful integration and achievement of synergy targets. All four major business groups contributed to solid top-line growth on above-market revenue growth which, according to the company, highlighted sustainability across groups and regions. According to management, the Covidien integration is on track and is meaningfully accelerating all three fundamental growth strategies of Medtronic therapy innovation, globalization and economic value. In fiscal 2016, the company delivered $355 million related to Covidien integration synergies, contributing 440 basis points to its EPS leverage. Medtronic is resorting to all possible means to boost growth. This includes penetration in emerging markets, expansion of its portfolio and restructuring of initiatives. These should benefit the company over the long term. We are also encouraged by Medtronics recent foray into the rapidly growing transcatheter mitral valve replacement (TMVR) market through its recently completed $458 million acquisition of California-based medical device start-up firm, Twelve, Inc. However, on the flip side, we note that the company is currently entangled in multiple legal issues which are weighing on the bottom line. Moreover, a soft economy and tough competition headwinds keep us on the sidelines. Story continues At present, Medtronic retains a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Key Picks in the Sector Some medical product stocks worth a look are Boston Scientific Corporation BSX, ICU Medical, Inc. ICUI and LeMaitre Vascular, Inc. LMAT. All three stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). 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 BOSTON SCIENTIF (BSX): Free Stock Analysis Report MEDTRONIC (MDT): Free Stock Analysis Report LEMAITRE VASCLR (LMAT): Free Stock Analysis Report ICU MEDICAL INC (ICUI): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Megyn Kelly Fox News host Megyn Kelly laid into Donald Trump for his escalating attacks on the judge presiding over two fraud lawsuits involving Trump University. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Thursday, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel had "an absolute conflict" in presiding over the civil cases against Trump University because Curiel was "of Mexican heritage," as Trump put it, and belonged to a Latino lawyers association. Trump said Curiel's ethnic background created an "inherent conflict of interest" because Trump has promised to build a wall along the US-Mexico border and deport immigrants who are in the country illegally. Kelly brought Bill Bennett, a former US secretary of education with a degree from Harvard Law School, on her show to discuss Trump's attacks on the judge. But the segment turned into mostly an extended riff from Kelly, a former attorney. "I'm a journalist here at Fox News and I've been doing legal commentary here for 10 years," Kelly said. "This is out of line." Bennett agreed, calling Trump's comments "unfortunate," and Kelly continued. "First of all, people are saying that this judge is a member of La Raza, the group that's been protesting Donald Trump," Kelly said. "He isn't. He's a member of a Hispanic lawyers association that has no partisan stripes whatsoever. They support Hispanic lawyers and judges. That's it." Kelly also slammed Trump and his supporters for referring to Curiel's Mexican heritage. "Secondly, the man is not Mexican," Kelly said. "He's American," she added. "His parents are Mexican he's of Mexican heritage. He was born in Indiana." She also shot down the notion that Curiel might have a conflict of interest in Trump's case. "Third, he has no conflict of interest," Kelly said. "Now Donald Trump is saying the judge needs to be investigated, someone should look into him, just because he's ruled against Donald Trump in this litigation repeatedly." Story continues "That doesn't make you biased!" Kelly said. "It doesn't." Earlier this week, Curiel ruled to unseal documents in the Trump University case, including sales and marketing "playbooks" from 2007 through 2010 that advised instructors on how to sell the courses to students. Kelly said she had planned on talking about House Speaker Paul Ryan's endorsement of Trump on her show until the news broke that "Trump continues to attack a ... sitting federal judge, who, by the way, did a lot to fight the judge cartels when he was a prosecutor." "'A Hispanic cannot judge a case against me.' That is what Trump is saying," Kelly said, later adding, "And let me tell you, when he does this, I guarantee you right now, that this judge is getting threats and vitriol and who knows what else." Kelly aired a clip of her recent interview with Trump during which she asked him whether he considered the effect that his messaging has on people. "Now he's out saying this judge is a total disgrace, that they ought to look into him, and he's on the precipice of becoming the president of the United States," Kelly said. See the full exchange below: Mark Abadi contributed to this report. NOW WATCH: 'Its not cool to not know what youre talking about': Obama slams Trump during Rutgers speech More From Business Insider The 63rd Sydney Film Festival is full of home-grown heroes and helmers who want to change the world. The theme of the 63rd installment of the Sydney Film Festival (SFF) is Change your view, change your world, and a far-reaching program of 244 films from 60 countries, a virtual reality showcase, and strong themes like capital punishment and the plight of refugees see it fulfill its remit. There are several films thought the program that allow for a different perspective, and in which we see filmmakers really engaging with the world around them and, in many cases, making an argument for change, says SFF director Nashen Moodley. A strong competition line-up includes Boo Junfengs Apprentice from Singapore, Brazilian helmer Kleber Mendonca Filhos Aquarius and U.S. filmmaker Matt Ross Captain Fantastic, toplining Viggo Mortensen and Aussie thesp Nicholas Hamilton. All three films come straight from a berth at Cannes. Sydney will also see a local boy by way of the Croisette when Mel Gibson attends the fest with Blood Father from French director Jean-Francois Richet. Its a really good film, a great thriller and its a fantastic performance by Mel Gibson, Moodley says. The director adds that both the program and attendances have been growing with last years audience reaching 176,000. Theres been a geographical expansion too, and weve now started screening in Cremorne [in northern Sydney], so its been a busy time, he says. Launching the fest June 8 is Goldstone by local indigenous helmer Ivan Sen, the second time Sen has had the top slot. Sen opened the Sydney festival in 2012 with Mystery Road, which starred Aaron Pedersen as detective Jay Swan. Goldstone centers around the same character though Sen avoids the term sequel. Its a film in its own right, Sen says. A spinoff more than a sequel, [and] whatever issues went unresolved in Mystery Road, [Goldstone] doesnt go out of its way to resolve them. Story continues Sen acknowledges that it is unusual for a helmer to open the festival twice in such short succession and says he is very passionate about the character of Jay Swan as he has a lot in common with him. Hes this indigenous character that is walking between both the white world and indigenous world and trying to uphold laws from both societies, Sen says. Goldstone also stars Jacki Weaver and David Wenham and is distribbed by Transmission Films. Moodley calls Goldstone a complex and very satisfying film one that works as a thriller and looks at some pressing issue in Australian society. This new program will screen nine virtual reality features, four local and five international, and hold a special VR panel. Matt Ravier, VR programmer, says while he encountered the technology a few years ago at SXSW it was only now he felt it was ready to take the festival stage. The technology has matured and caught up with the ambitions of filmmakers wanting to work in that medium, Ravier says. The Down the Rabbit Hole program will feature documentaries like A History of Cuban Dance, from Lucy Walker; animated short The Rose and I by artists Eugene Chung, Jimmy Maidens and Alex Woo; plus music vid fabulous wonder.land, which takes its cues from Damon Albarn and the Lewis Carroll classic book. What excites me is that [VR] disrupts the traditional methods of storytelling and it creates a new filmmaking grammar and that opens up a whole range of possibilities for artists, Ravier says. Another immersive film experience is the annual Gourmet Cinema program. Sydney is a foodie town and pairing food and cinema is bound to please. For the past four years, the festival has shown a film about food and then asked a top Sydney chef to make a menu inspired by the pic. Auds then watch the film over the dinner. This years film is Ants on a Shrimp: Noma in Tokyo, a docu by Maurice Dekkers about Noma chef Rene Redzepi shuttering his Copenhagen restaurant and heading to Japan. Pic will be interpreted in food by Ross Lusted, head chef of the Bridge Room, which last year was named Restaurant of the Year by Aussie guide the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide. In European Cinema: 10 Women Filmmakers to Watch, the festival aims to spotlight the work of top European women behind the lens. According to a study last year by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, women directed only 7% of the 250 top-grossing films in 2014 and together with Variety and European Film Promotion this sidebar aims to shine a light on some emerging talents. With the selection of the films we worked very closely with Variety chief film critic Peter Debruge and I think we have come up with 10 really amazing films and we expect at least five of the directors to attend the festival and interact not only with audiences but with the local film industry, Moodley says. TIPSHEET WHAT: 63rd Sydney Film Festival WHEN: June 8-19 WHERE: Sydney WEB: sff.org.au Related stories Cannes Film Review: 'Blood Father' Mel Gibson, Kate Hudson and Kurt Russell Team for 'Barbary Coast' TV Series Golden Globes: 8 Biggest Secrets From Inside the Ballroom Even after this neglected and sick dog was rescued off the streets of Kentucky, it would take weeks before he would learn to trust again. Read: Dog Thrives With 3 Amputated Legs After Being Run Over by a Train Barkley, a Shetland Shepard and Dauchshund mix, was spotted wandering in a trailer park more than a month ago, Daviess County Animal Shelter director Ashley Clark told InsideEdition.com. "We had calls on him, but he was running loose in the neighborhood," Clark said. Finally, a couple had lured him into their home, and brought him into the shelter. They determined that the pads of his feet were infected and raw, and his nails were extremely long. He also needed emergency dental work, since his teeth and gums were rotten, Clark said. But, Clark said the senior dog was neutered, well fed and otherwise healthy, which was indication that Barkley had a previous owner. Even though Barkley was finally safe and receiving medical attention, he was still terrified of his environment. In a video of Barkley posted to Facebook by the Daviess County Animal Shelter, he can be seen at the back corner of his enclosement, facing the wall. He is near motionless, and is unresponsive even when offered food. According to the shelter, he couldn't even be put on a leash and will "belly-roll" to the pressure. Now, two weeks later, Clark said Barkley has begun coming out of his shell, but still has a long way to go. "He's relaxed a bit more," she said. "He doesn't come to us wanting attention, but he doens't run from us either." He's also stopped biting people at the shelter, which Clark also acknowledges as an improvement. Read: Boy Born With Dwarfism Celebrates His Condition After Adopting A Dog Who Also Has Dwarfism After putting out a desperate plea for donations toward Barkley's dental procedure, Clark told InsideEdition.com that Barkley was sent to the dentist early Friday after they met their goal. Story continues Now, the shelter is looking for a quiet and patient family to adopt the once-neglected dog. "He's going to have to be somewhere where he can learn to trust," she said, adding, "that's going to take a while." For more information about providing Barkley a forever home, please contact Daviess County Animal Control in Owensboro, Kentucky, at (270) 685 8275 or email dcacanimals@yahoo.com. Watch: Little Dog Named Bubba, Found 'Lethargic' From Meth and Heroin Use, Has Finished Detox Related Articles: By Gabriela Lopez MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - A Mexican judge has ordered properties of a former state governor in the ruling party seized as part of an investigation into fraud and other crimes, putting the spotlight on political corruption ahead of local elections this weekend. Ernesto Canales, the anti-corruption czar in the opposition-controlled region of Nuevo Leon, said Friday that the order was against several officials, including ex-state governor Rodrigo Medina, for suspected embezzlement, breach of office and other crimes that cost the state 3.6 billion pesos ($194 million). "This is not a campaign against a group of officials," Canales said. "It's about highlighting conduct of a group of public officials that shouldn't have occurred." Canales said the seizure was related to the installation of a Korean plant in the state, an apparent reference to the 2014 deal between Medina's government and carmaker Kia Motors for a $1 billion works in Nuevo Leon. Nuevo Leon's new government says the deal violated state law by offering "excessive" incentives; it is working with Kia to end the dispute. Senior Mexican officials say local officials profited from land deals anticipating Kia's arrival. Medina, who was governor of Nuevo Leon between 2009 and 2015, belongs to President Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which is competing for 12 state governorships this weekend, many of them close races. Canales said Medina and the other officials would have to respond to charges the state's anti-corruption authorities would be presenting to a judge in the next two months. Home to the industrial city of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon is one of the country's richest regions. Medina's record in office came under heavy scrutiny last year, when the state elected Mexico's first independent governor to succeed him. Jaime Rodriguez, a former PRI politician nicknamed "El Bronco" (the gruff one), won the Nuevo Leon governorship by a landslide last June after running an anti-establishment campaign that railed against corruption in Latin America's No. 2 economy. The PRI ruled for 71 consecutive years until it was voted out in 2000. By then it had become a byword for corruption. Pena Nieto returned the party to power in 2012, pledging a new era of clean government. However, his administration has battled allegations of graft during the past two years. In a statement, Nuevo Leon said 11 officials were targeted in the seizures. Canales initially spoke of seven officials. (Reporting by Gabriela Lopez; Editing by David Gregorio and Leslie Adler) By Edgard Garrido MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A Mexican science teacher has come up with a novel way to get his students' attention - giving lessons dressed as Spider-Man. Moises Vazquez, 26, said he was inspired to pull on the tight blue and red suit of the superhero after reading in comics that the Marvel character behind the mask, Peter Parker, worked as a science teacher after his time as a freelance photographer. "I do the same job as anyone else, I don't think it's the best class in the world just because I put on a suit. But I assure you I want to be the most honest and dedicated there is, I just want to make the classroom a better place," he said. When giving class at the National Autonomous University of Mexico as the superhero, Vazquez leaves home in eastern Mexico City with his mother's blessing, and rides in public transport to the prestigious seat of learning dressed as the Avenger. Vazquez's family originally thought that pretending to be Spider-Man could hurt his career when he started donning the suit for class a year and a half ago - but instead the unusual turn has gone down well with students and other teachers, he said. "Obviously they reacted with surprise, but they were happy too," Vazquez added. "Everyone was smiling at me." On the streets of the megalopolis, people are generally surprised to learn the Mexican superhero is a university lecturer, assuming that his outfit is part of a film shoot. (This copy corrects spelling to Spider-Man from Spiderman) (Reporting by Mexico City Newsroom) The U.S. is a diverse nation of immigrants, and first lady Michelle Obama won't let you forget. It's also a nation whose earliest monuments and institutional buildings were built with the help of African-American slaves. "Every single day... I wake up in a ho use that was built by slaves." Obama delivered a message to that effect at the 170th commencement of the City College of New York in the historically black Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan on Friday. The speech marked the final commencement address as first lady for Obama, who is the first black woman to symbolically serve in the position. In one quote, the first lady summed up why the historic achievements of her and her husband, President Barack Obama, should be an inspiration and a source of pride to college graduates, regardless of their socioeconomic status or national origin. "And, graduates, [the American immigrant story is one] that I witness every single day when I wake up in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters two beautiful, black young women head off to school waving goodbye to their father, the President of the United States, the son of a man from Kenya who came here to America for the same reasons as many of you: To get an education and improve his prospects in life." Graduates of City College of New York attend the 170th commencement ceremony . CCNY's class of 2016 is one of the most diverse in the nation. More than 3,000 students make up the Class of 2016, according to the college. The White House says that more than 40% of the class are first-generation college students, 40% are non-native English speakers, and half come from low-income households. Source: Bebeto Matthews/AP The first lady made a habit of speaking at schools that showcase diversity. F Some of those nearly two dozen speeches were delivered at historically black schools, including the all-female Spelman College in Atlanta, Dillard University in New Orleans, and Bowie State University in Maryland. Here's the first lady's full speech from Friday: New York (AFP) - First Lady Michelle Obama took a veiled swipe at Donald Trump while delivering a passionate defense of immigration and diversity, in the final commencement address of her husband's presidency on Friday. "Infusions of new cultures and new ideas, generation after generation, created the matchless alchemy of our melting pot and helped us build the strongest, most vibrant, most prosperous nation on the planet," Obama told the 2016 graduating class of City College of New York. "Some folks out there today seem to have a very different perspective," she said, appearing to allude to the presumptive Republican nominee for president, without using his name. "They seem to view our diversity as a threat to be contained rather than as a resource to be tapped, they tell us to be afraid of those who are different," said the first lady, wife of Democratic president Barack Obama in remarks that appeared more pointedly political than usual. "They act as if name calling is an acceptable substitute for thoughtful debate, as if anger and intolerance should be our default state." Donald Trump has vowed to build a wall along America's southern border to keep out illegal immigrants, and has run a controversial campaign insulting women, Mexicans, Muslims, the disabled and journalists whom he dislikes, among others. "In America we don't give in to our fears, we don't build up walls to keep people out, because we know that our greatness has always depended on contributions from people born elsewhere but sought this country," Obama said. She deliberately chose CCNY, a public college and immigrant-rich New York for her final address to a university graduating class. The school welcomes students who speak more than 150 different languages and come from every possible background in a city that for centuries was the gateway for immigrants striving for a better life in America, Obama said. While she did not mention Trump, Michelle Obama did reference ex-secretary of state Colin Powell, a CCNY graduate and son of Jamaican immigrants who served Republican president George W. Bush, calling him a role model for young people. (Reuters) - Michigan lawmakers on Thursday approved paying off a $467 million deficit incurred by Detroit Public Schools and to fund costs associated with creating a new school system, online legislative records showed and local media reported. The state's Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved the bill package, sending the legislation to the state Senate which could take up the legislation when it convenes on Tuesday, according to online records. This plan saves Detroits school system and returns local control to the city, preventing a disastrous bankruptcy that would have affected every community in the state," House Speaker Kevin Cotter, a Republican, said in a statement. The legislation has the state paying off $467 million in operating deficit incurred by the cash-strapped school system and providing $125 million to create a new debt-free school district, the news website MLive.com reported. The Detroit public school system, or DPS, has nearly 46,000 students. It has been under state control since 2009 because of a financial emergency. Thursday's legislation comes less than a month before DPS was expected to run out of money to pay employees. House Democrats said in a statement that the legislation would force the closing of DPS schools and allow failing charter schools to "proliferate." House Republicans are playing games with the Detroit Public Schools, and the children of Detroit are the ones who will lose, House Democratic Leader Tim Greimel said. Democrats also opposed the legislation because it does not include a Detroit Education Commission, a body that would work to prevent low-performing schools from opening and ensure schools are placed in underserved areas, MLive.com reported. (Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee Editing by Jeremy Gaunt.) Satya Nadella Microsoft's board of directors wants the company to move faster to transform into a cloud-computing powerhouse, chairman John Thompson told Bloomberg's Dina Bass. Thompson says that cloud is a "very different model" for Microsoft than selling software the traditional way, but one that Microsoft has no choice but to embrace. The company knows that the pressure is on, he said. "You can re-imagine things when you're stressed. It's a lot easier to do it when you're stressed because you feel compelled to do something," Thompson told Bloomberg. "I see a lot of stress at Microsoft." The reason why he wants Microsoft to move faster: CEO Satya Nadella says that total cloud software will generate $20 billion in revenue by 2018. That's a considerable business, but it's still a small fraction of Microsoft's total revenues. In fiscal year 2015, Microsoft brought in nearly $94 billion. Meanwhile, companies are running to cloud computing full-speed ahead, where they rent computers and software instead of buying it all and installing it in their own data centers. The fear is that Microsoft's traditional software businesses will shrink faster than the cloud business can grow to make up for it. Thompson said that he didn't want Microsoft to "wake up one day" and be in IBM's position. IBM has had 16 quarters of shrinking revenue. But growing the cloud business faster will require a lot of changes for the company, which has already been through a lot since Nadella took over. John Thompson For instance, Microsoft needs to ramp up its cloud partner ecosystem everything from consultants to software developers offering their wares on its cloud, Azure. The company's current enormous partner system is still mostly focused around its traditional software, from Windows to its database SQL Server. Story continues And Microsoft may need to change the incentives for its massive sales team, too. It has been tinkering with this for a few years, now. As we previously reported, in 2014 the incentive was to get customers to add cloud to their umbrella software contracts, whether the customers wanted or used Microsoft's cloud. In 2015, salespeople were pressured to get their customers to actually use Microsoft's cloud. But another overhaul to sales incentives could come in July, the start of Microsoft's next fiscal year, Bloomberg reports. Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw clarified: "Delivering cloud services and expanding our portfolio for customers requires us to constantly look at ways to evolve and improve. We do this at regular intervals across all of our business areas. Were pleased with customer response and proud of the efforts of our sales leaders and teams around the world." NOW WATCH: Microsoft has created an AI bot that captions photos and its shockingly accurate More From Business Insider Staffers at Minnesota Public Radio have voted to join performers union SAG-AFTRA, with 39 voting yes and 17 voting no, along with 18 challenges. The new bargaining unit will cover employees who create content for MPR News, American Radio Works, and the newly formed Investigative Unit. SAG-AFTRA said the election allows the employees to move forward to negotiate a first contract. We are excited about embarking on this new partnership with MPR management, said Marty Moylan, reporter for MPR News. We look forward to having a seat at the table and to starting our negotiations. Region 18 of the National Labor Relations Board conducted the election. In-person voting occurred on May 17, but the count was not conducted until Thursday because several ballots from remote locations were cast by mail. I want to congratulate the working journalists and media professionals at Minnesota Public Radio on their decision to join SAG-AFTRA, said SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris. As they continue to do their excellent work, they will now be able to negotiate with their employer the compensation terms and workplace protections shared by thousands of our news industry members across the country. SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director David White said, Im thrilled with the outcome of todays vote and welcome the staff of Minnesota Public Radio into the SAG-AFTRA family. MPR is one of the most important voices in public media and together we can ensure their essential work will enrich peoples lives for many years to come. MPR is the fourth public media organization to be unionized by SAG-AFTRA in recent years, following KPCC in Pasadena, KBPS in San Diego and WBEZ in Chicago. SAG-AFTRA also represents public media professionals at National Public Radio, KQED in San Francisco and WNYC in New York. SAG-AFTRA has about 165,000 members. Related stories SAG-AFTRA Files Unfair Labor Charge Against Grey Global Netflix: Our Successful Female-Led Shows Are 'Testament to Their Talent' Rosie O'Donnell on Donald Trump: 'Do Not Give Up, He Will Never Be President' Hundreds of colleges are offering programs that simply arent worth the expense. And while its difficult for families to figure out which schools are a good deal, a new report from Third Way suggests the reality is: depressingly few. Cost really only matters if students know what theyre buying, said Tamara Hiler, an education-policy advisor at the bipartisan think tank and the lead author of the report. While much of the debate surrounding higher education has focused on rising tuition costs and student-debt loads, less attention has been devoted to what students get for the money theyand taxpayersshell out to attend. And although criticism has been heaped on for-profit schools such as the now-shuttered Corinthian Colleges for preying on vulnerable students, many traditional non-profit schools appear to be doing the same. To get at the value piece, Hiler and her colleagues studied how full-time students with federal loans at the nations 1,000-plus four-year, private, nonprofit colleges are faring using data from the U.S. Education Departments College Scorecard, a database that allows students to compare the return on investment of various schools. They calculated that at the average institution, almost half of students who enroll and have to take out loans wont earn a degree within six years. At the average school, just 63 percent of students who earned a degree but had to take out federal loans to get it earned more than $25,000roughly what someone with a high-school diploma is likely to earnsix years after graduation. Students who drop out often earn much less. While some college presidents would contend that there are other ways to measure value, its hard to argue that much good comes from sending millions of public dollars to schools that spit out students who arent earning a living wage and who cant pay back their loans. As the report notes, the U.S. gave out more than 1 million Pell grants during the 2013-14 school year, many of them to students who are the first in their families to pursue college and who are young people of color. The expenditure cost taxpayers some $4.5 billion. Recommended: Do Reading Logs Ruin Reading? The grants are intended to help low-income students work their way toward the middle-class through higher education. Yet many of the schools who have very good outcomes for students take relatively few Pell-grant recipients. Just over a quarter of the hundreds of schools where more than 38 percent of students are Pell recipients (the average percentage of Pell students at these schools) graduate at least half their students within six years. [I]n a measurement we developed called the mobility metric...we found levels of achievement so abysmal as to call into question the very promise of higher education at many of these schools, Hiler and her co-authors write. "Cost really only matters if students know what theyre buying." Hiler is careful to point out that there are good exceptions. The historically black Spelman College in Georgia, for instance, graduates more than 70 percent of its students, half of whom receive Pell grants. But a deep dive on what these schools are doing right and to look for commonalities is beyond the scope of Hilers report (Spelman didnt immediately respond to an interview request), and its hard to incentivize good behavior, particularly where colleges are worried that admitting more Pell recipients will lower graduation rates. The difficulty with incentivizing schools to focus on outcomes is largely because there are few consequences for bad behavior. Hiler pointed out that three-quarters of the schools her team studied would be considered dropout factories if they were in the K-12 system. At that level, the countrys education laws call for interventions and even closures if schools dont get better. But at the collegiate level, there are few repercussions for schools who fail to graduate students prepared to enter the workforce. Recommended: Protesters Assaulted Democracy in San Jose The report outlines a series of recommendations, among them a call for colleges to do a better job of supporting struggling students and to pay back a portion of their students loans where students dont graduate and find good jobs. Yet when the Obama administration called for a college-ratings plan that involved tying federal aid to such markers, colleges immediately pushed back and the concept gained little traction in Congress. The report also calls for additional assistance for schools that enroll a high number of poor students, similar to Title I funding in the K-12 realm, and a Pell floor, where high-performing schools would be required to take some percentage of Pell recipients. Related Story How Mentorship Is Helping More Latino Men Earn College Degrees Hiler acknowledges the challenges of incentivizing better behavior from colleges, but says she hopes the conversations will happen as lawmakers consider reauthorizing the nations main higher-education law next year. In the meantime, she said, more high schools seem to be taking interest in what happens to their students after senior year, with some schools refusing to let their kids go on school-sponsored trips to colleges with low graduation rates. There has to be a groundswell of support, Hiler said. We deserve more information about these schools. While the College Scorecard is a good start, it still offers a very limited amount of data, which limits the scope of reports like Hilers. For instance, the data only covers first-time, full-time students with federal loans, which is only about 40 percent of students at private, nonprofit schools. So outcomes for students who didnt take out loans, who transferred schools, or who dropped out and then returned, arent captured. Recommended: A New Origin Story for Dogs Hiler said her team started with private nonprofits because they tend to cost more, so students are being asked to put more on the line when they enroll, and because the schools have more leeway in who they accept, the implication being that theres no excuse for such poor outcomes when a school can be selective about who it admits. The think tank plans to do a follow-up report on public schools next, Hiler said. This is maybe the most important and expensive purchase that these families are ever going to make, she said. But its worth pointing out that while the report finds that many schools are not good for their students, college overall is still a smart choice when its made with value in mind. College graduates are more likely to have jobs than those with only a high-school diploma, and some estimates suggest that graduates earn a million dollars more over their lifetimes than non-graduates. Very expensive schools like Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for instance, have very good outcomes for students. There are good, and bad, options at every price point. As Hiler said, The question, really, is looking at what that college is giving you. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. Mitch McConnell Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is worried that Donald Trump could drive Latinos away from the Republican Party forever. In an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday, the Kentucky senator called Trump's anti-Latino rhetoric "a big mistake," citing the presumptive Republican nominee's recent criticism of New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez. "What he ought to be doing now is trying to unify the party, and I think attacking people once you have won, its a time to be gracious and try to bring the party together." In an interview with Business Insider on Tuesday, McConnell said Trump should "put aside all the score settling." While discussing Trump's effect on Latino voters, McConnell said the GOP nominee could have a similar impact on the group as 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater had on black voters. Goldwater, a senator from Arizona, had voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, leading many black voters to distance themselves from the party in what McConnell called a "defining moment" for the GOP. "That was a complete shift that occurred that year, and we've never been able to get them back," he said. Despite saying he disagreed with Trump on some issues, including Trump's proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US, McConnell said he will still vote for him. NOW WATCH: MITCH McCONNELL: Snowden 'did not perform a public service, he was a traitor' More From Business Insider From Redbook When Koto Nakamura went into labor, she couldn't wait to meet her little girl, who she and her husband planned to name Hinata. The Australian couple had a room ready with pink and frilly things to welcome Hinata home. But, despite being told by doctors that their first child would be female, their bouncing lady baby turned out to be a boy. "I thought everyone was joking," Nakamura told TODAY Parents. "I lost words and I couldn't believe it until I saw his bottom." Noto's look of utter disbelief was caught on camera by birth photographer, Jessica Jackson, and thank goodness it was, because her reaction is nothing short of priceless. "This was one of the most amazing moments-a roller coaster of emotions in just a few short minutes," said Jackson. "Pure shock, excitement, happiness and relief. This is the reason why birth photography is so important. Imagine when (the baby) is all grown up and his parents are telling his birth story to him and they have these images to share the way they looked when they found out this news." Despite the hint of horror in Noto's expression, she's now proud to call little Taiga, which means "big and gracious" in Japanese, her son. "I was shocked for a few seconds, and then it didn't matter if it was a girl or a boy." Kiev (AFP) - Foreign monitors observing Ukraine's bloody eastern separatist conflict said on Friday they had lost their second surveillance drone over pro-Russian territory in a week. The disclosure coincides with a new upsurge in fighting in a 25-month war that has tattered the West's ties with Moscow and put on edge eastern European nations that were once part of the Soviet Union's domain. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said the drone downed on Friday was flying at an altitude of 9,000 feet (2,740 metres) when it "lost all communication and experienced simultaneous system failures". Its Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) said evidence "strongly suggests" the drone was hit from a rebel position about 30 kilometres (20 miles) northeast of the insurgents' de facto capital of Donetsk. The monitoring team had another surveillance vehicle shot down shortly after it had spotted a powerful surface-to-air missile system in a separatist region 35 kilometres northeast of Donetsk on May 27. "The missile that the SMM's UAV recorded, the kind of weapon unavailable to separatists without Russian support, is even more evidence of direct Russian involvement in the conflict," the US mission to the pan-European security body said in a statement. An OSCE source in Kiev said the number of drones at its disposal remained an operational secret but that the group was working on "restoring their capacity". The United Nations on Friday said 9,371 people have died since a revolt across parts of the Russian-speaking east of Ukraine erupted against the pro-Western government in Kiev in April 2014. Ukraine and the West accuse Russia of stirring up the unrest and sending soldiers and equipment across parts of the frontier currently under rebel control. Moscow denies the charges and accuses Washington of fomenting three months of bloody protests that brought down Ukraine's Russian-backed administration in February 2014. Story continues - 'Zero progress' - The OSCE deploys unarmed monitors and organises periodic talks between Moscow and Kiev envoys aimed at ending one of Europe's bloodiest crises since the 1990s Balkans wars. But a sharp May escalation that claimed the lives of 26 Ukrainian soldiers and an undisclosed number of rebels has dampened hopes of a quick end to the bloodshed. "Unfortunately, we have achieved zero progress (in negotiations) this year," Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told reporters. The new wave of violence in the EU's backyard comes with some members of the bloc calling for an easing of sanctions it imposed on Russia for the Kremlin's March 2014 annexation of Crimea and alleged support of the insurgents' campaign. EU leaders will meet in Brussels to decide what to do by the end of the month. Some lobby groups in nations such as Italy and France believe that a gradual restoration of economic ties will see Russia lift the ban it imposed in reprisal on Western food imports in 2014. The decision has hurt European farmers but also helped drive up consumer prices in Russia itself. Others, however, argue that the West cannot bend to Russian President Vladimir Putin's increasingly assertive foreign policy and seeming effort to dominate former Soviet states. "Ukraine's security, stability, sovereignty and territorial integrity continue to be threatened by Russia's direct support for separatists in eastern Ukraine," a senior Western diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity. June 3 (Reuters) - Ratings agency Moody's downgraded oilfield service providers Halliburton Co and Baker Hughes Inc, about a month after a deal between the two companies was torpedoed by opposition from U.S. and European antitrust regulators. Moody's Investors Service downgraded both the companies' senior unsecured rating to Baa1 from A2. "Debt incurred to finance its failed bid to acquire Baker Hughes Inc together with the negative impact on profitability and cash flow of the very weak oilfield services environment have eroded HAL's credit metrics to levels which no longer support its A2 rating," Moody's Vice President Andrew Brooks wrote. (http://bit.ly/1Ps9LE6) Moody's downgraded Baker Hughes, citing the failed deal, elevated leverage and developing business model. (http://bit.ly/1PscT2I) Halliburton agreed to pay a $3.5 billion breakup fee after its $28 billion deal to buy Baker Hughes was scrapped in May. Baker Hughes announced a $2.5 billion plan to buy back stock and pay down debt using the money. Halliburton said it would consider acquisitions to bolster its weaker businesses. Oilfield service providers' profitability has been eroded after a crash in crude prices forced oil companies to reduce drilling and capital spending. (Reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Don Sebastian) ian-connor-more-rape-allegations Image via Instagram In early April, two women accused stylist Ian Connor (who has worked closely with Kanye West, A$AP Rocky, and Wiz Khalifa) of rape. After he quickly denied those accusations saying, I, Ian Connor am not a rapist nor do I condone rape in any shape or form, I dont respect liars nor forced situations, two more women have come forward with accusations that bring the total number of allegations to five. According to Daily Mail, two women from Chicago and California waived their rights to anonymity and recorded video statements describing the events, which can be seen here. Both give accounts of the alleged events in detail. He even FaceTimed somebody while it was going on, one of the women said. One of his friends FaceTimed him and he picked up and was showing them. Most of the alleged events took place back in 2014, and one of the women explained her hesitation to come forward, saying, I thought people wouldnt believe me. I knew his fan base and its young boys who idolize people who they dont really know. When Connor heard that one of the women went to Daily Mail to publicly tell her story, he allegedly sent her private messages that said, I pray that you have a good lawyer because I will be getting everything. Connor has been vocal in response of the new accusations, sending out multiple tweets that claim he has photo/video evidence that back up his side of the story. Those can be seen below. Screen Shot 2016-06-03 at 2.39.53 PM Screen Shot 2016-06-03 at 2.40.04 PM Screen Shot 2016-06-03 at 2.40.32 PM Screen Shot 2016-06-03 at 2.41.12 PM Screen Shot 2016-06-03 at 2.41.27 PM Screen Shot 2016-06-03 at 2.41.37 PM Screen Shot 2016-06-03 at 3.02.49 PM Screen Shot 2016-06-03 at 3.02.59 PM More from Pigeons & Planes Admiral Yuan Yubai Since the establishment of modern China following World War II, China and Taiwan have claimed nearly the entirety of the South China Sea as their own. The countries established such a claim with the Nine Dash Line throughout the region that, Beijing and Taipei assert, it shows how the entirety of the South China Sea belongs to them. Whether the Nine Dash Line has any basis in international law or not, it is far from the most ridiculous basis for a claim that China has over the sea. Instead, Chinese Vice Admiral Yuan Yubai was responsible for the most ridiculous claim for why all of the South China Sea belongs to Beijing. Speaking at a defense conference in London on September 14, 2015, Yuan said that "the South China Sea, as the name indicates, is a sea area that belongs to China." "And the sea from the Han dynasty a long time ago where the Chinese people have been working and producing from the sea," Yuan continued. His remarks came following a comment at the conference by Japanese Vice Admiral Umio Otsuka, who said that deterrence was becoming increasingly important throughout East and South Asia. To back up his views, Otsuka pointed at China's expansionism throughout both regions. After Yuan responded to Otsuka that the region belonged to China because of the sea bearing China's name, Yuan took a slightly more conciliatory measure by saying that "the real situation in the South China Sea at present is safety and freedom of navigation." Currently, the various islands and atolls in the sea are claimed and disputed by a mix of countries, principally Taiwan, Vietnam, China, and the Philippines. South China Sea Map_05 NOW WATCH: The US Navy's last line of defense is this ultimate gun More From Business Insider The mother of the 3-year-old boy who climbed into the gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo will not face any charges. Read: 9 Frightening Animal Encounters: When a Day at the Zoo Becomes a Nightmare Cincinnati police have questioned the boy's mother, 32-year-old Michelle Gregg, but published reports now say they will recommend no criminal prosecution. Many are furious that the mother failed to stop the child from entering the compound on Sunday, leading to the death of the silverback gorilla, Harambe. Now some legal observers are wondering if the mom may sue the Cincinnati Zoo for not making the gorilla compound secure enough. Legal expert Royal Oakes told Inside Edition: What kind of a design do you have if a 3-year-old, if you look away for a moment, is able to climb over and suddenly spend time with a gorilla? The zoo could sue the parents because the gorilla ended up getting killed. That would be as popular as the Ebola virus. Read: Mom's Panicked 911 Call from Zoo's Gorilla Exhibit: 'He's Dragging My Son, I Can't Watch This' Meanwhile, the Gorilla World exhibit, which has been closed since the horrific incident that garnered worldwide attention, is set to reopen Tuesday. Officials have spent the last week installing new mesh fencing around the gorilla compound to make it more secure. Watch: Gorilla Saga Brings Back Agonizing Memories for Mom Whose Son Was Attacked in 2004 Related Articles: The peppered moth has long been one of the most popular stories in all of evolutionfor Darwinians and creationists alike. The Darwinians have always treated the sudden appearance in the mid-19th century of dark-winged moths of this species (Biston betularia) as the first evidence of evolution taking place within a single human lifetime. Creationists have countered that this supposed slam dunk for natural selection was just a product of biased scientific research bordering on fraud. A study published this week in the journal Nature finally resolves this bitter debate with irrefutable genetic evidence. So which side wins? Is it the textbook case for Darwinism? Or was it all a terrible mistake, as the creationists have alleged? Im going to make you hold your breath for a bit while I fill in the background. Until the mid-19th century, the common form of peppered moth had a pale coloration suited to hiding on the bark of light-colored or lichen-coated tree trunks. The theory was that this camouflage enabled it to avoid being eaten by birds. But in 1848, in the industrial city of Manchester, England, a specimen with black wings turned up. By the end of the 19th century, this version of the peppered moth was everywhere, and the paler, mottled version had disappeared, almost becoming extinct. The shift was no accident, according to scientists. Reliance on coal for heating and industrial production had blackened skies and forests. An editorial in the same issue of Nature quotes an 1851 railroad guide to the English industrial midlands: The pleasant green of pastures is almost unknown, the streams, in which no fishes swim, are black and unwholesomethe few trees are stunted and blasted. These blackened tree trunks no longer camouflaged pale-colored moths, and birds presumably devoured them. But the random appearance of the black form of the same species conferred a distinct advantage, because those moths were much harder for hungry birds to spot. It was natural selection in action. (The same shift occurred in the same species at about the same time in the United States, particularly around pollution-blackened Pittsburgh. But most of the research in the new study took place in Britain.) Story continues To test the Darwinian version of events, an Oxford University scientist named Bernard Kettlewell in the 1950s introduced moths of both colorations in polluted and unpolluted forests. He verified the theory that camouflage suited to local conditionswhether dark or lightsaved those moths from being gobbled up by birds. Additional circumstantial evidence for natural selection developed after the 1950s, when antipollution laws began to un-blacken the landscape. That proved advantageous to the lighter form of peppered moths, which began to make a broad resurgence. Other scientists later quibbled over some of Kettlewells methods: Was it a valid test to pin dead moths to tree trunks or to flood a forest with an unnatural abundance of living moths? Creationists then treated this healthy scientific scrutiny of methods as if it were a debate about the fundamental scienceand blew it out of proportion, often with the help of selective quotation. In the normal course of science, other researchers tested the original proposition using better methods and verified Kettlewells results in meticulous detail. But creationists have generally ignored that evidence and stuck with the original quarrel. This brings us to the new genetic study, by a team of scientists largely working in the laboratory of Ilik Saccheri at the University of Liverpool. Applying next-generation sequencing technology to open up what were previously treated as genetic black boxes, they tracked the change in peppered moths to a specific gene. Then they narrowed the change to a specific random mutation on that gene, exactly as Darwinian theory had predicted. The mutation involved what is popularly known as a jumping gene (a transposon, or transposable element, to scientists): a mobile segment of DNA that can change position within a genome and alter the expression of other genes. The researchers not only found the specific mutation, but they dated its appearance to about 1819, early in the modern era of heavy reliance on coal. Because creationists have continued to use the peppered moth to further an antiscience agenda, said Saccheri in an interview, I think its important to respond with additional layers of evidence. And so here we have in some sense the ultimate piece of evidence thats now written in stone. Jerry Coyne, the University of Chicago biologist that creationists love to quote for his past criticisms of peppered moth research, praised Saccheris work. Im satisfied that the bird predation story is sound and the original experiment was right, he said. The new study completes this story. We now know what happens all the way from the mutation itself to the ecological forces involved. Saccheri recommended that creationistsor the people who call themselves creation scientistsgo to any natural history museum with a collection of peppered moths and extract the DNA from both lighter and darker varieties. You can do the test that we describe in the paper, and you will find the transposonthat is, the mutationin the black ones. And further, you will find that not a single light-colored moth has that. Were no longer relying on historical records that people can cast aspersions on. You look inside modern biological material and there is only one conclusion you can draw. But Im going to make a prediction: Creationists will not draw that conclusion. They will instead ignore the science, because what they care about has nothing to do with science, or facts, or even truthand everything to do with blind religious faith. Get Informed: Here's How You Can Help Ferguson, Mo. Related stories on TakePart: These Seven Fish, Frogs, and Lizards Are New to Science Color-Changing Rabbits Cant Cope With a Warmer World When Animal Rights Backfire Original article from TakePart The two Koreas stepped up an angry war of words Friday as tensions mounted over a series of North Korean defections and the South's rejection of Pyongyang's repeated offers of military talks. Tensions have been running high on the divided Korean peninsula ever since the North conducted its fourth nuclear test in January followed by a long-range rocket launch. In the past month, a new source of friction has emerged with two cases of group defections by North Korean staff working in Pyongyang-run restaurants in China. A dozen women and their restaurant manager arrived in Seoul in April, and three others from a separate restaurant followed them this week. North Korea insists the staff were duped and effectively kidnapped by South Korean intelligence agents and are being held in the South against their will -- an accusation Seoul categorically denies. "The allurement and abduction clearly proves that the puppet forces of south Korea are the most hideous human rights abusers," a spokesman for the North Korean Red Cross said in a statement. -- 'Premeditated abductions' -- Referring to the latest case of the three women who had been working in a restaurant in the northern Chinese province of Shanxi, the spokesman said they were the victims of a sophisticated, "premeditated abduction". He said South Korean agents "lured" the women away from their work and spirited them across the border with Laos and then into Thailand. Seoul's unification ministry dismissed the "groundless" accusations on Friday, and said North Korea could better spend time examining why its citizens wanted to flee. "We hope North Korea will look back on the continued defections and use it as an opportunity to improve the human rights and livelihoods of its people," ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-Hee said. The South Korean government estimates that Pyongyang rakes in around $10 million every year from about 130 restaurants it operates -- with mostly North Korean staff -- in 12 countries, including neighbouring China. Story continues Tough UN sanctions imposed on North Korea after its January nuclear test significantly curtailed the isolated state's ability to earn hard currency, making the restaurants an even more important source of income than before. There have been reports of staff not being paid, with restaurants pressured into increasing their regular remittances to Pyongyang. -- Dialogue dispute -- Another recent source of cross-border tension has been South Korea's negative response to a proposal from North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un to hold military talks to defuse the situation. Seoul argued that the offer amounted to little more than diplomatic posturing given Kim's renewed commitment to expanding the North's nuclear arsenal. In a statement issued late Thursday, the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said the South's rejection of talks was confrontational. "If they turn their back on us, the result will be miserable," the statement said. "Our response will be the toughest offensive aimed to push them deeper into the abyss and lead them faster to self-destruction," it added. In Seoul, the Unification Ministry said such bellicose rhetoric only served to underline the duplicity inherent in the North's talks proposal. "We can see that North Korea is proving that its previous demands for dialogue was just an insincere posturing," spokesman Jeong said. Windhoek (AFP) - The Namibian government on Friday called for bids from trophy hunters to kill three endangered black rhinos, despite fierce global criticism over previous auctions. An American hunter last year paid $350,000 to shoot one of the prehistoric beasts with a high-powered rifle, with government officials on hand to ensure he killed the correct animal. Since 2012, Namibia has sold licences each year to kill individual rhinos, saying the money is essential to fund conservation projects and anti-poaching protection. It says the only rhinos selected for the hunts are old individuals that no longer breed and that pose a threat to younger rhinos. On Friday, the environment ministry advertised three black rhinos available for the hunting season which ends in November. The advertisement offered discounts to Namibian-owned companies or those employing a Namibianregistered professional hunter. Environment ministry spokesman Romeo Muyunda defended the auction, telling AFP: "We feel we are doing the right thing. "As a country we have our own legislation and we are not doing anything contrary to any law. As a matter of fact, our constitution allows us to empower our own people, he said. "We are hoping to get enough money from this auction but we also do not want it to be controversial like in the past, he said. In neighbouring South Africa, nearly 1,200 rhinos were killed by poachers last year in a slaughter driven by demand for powdered rhino horn in some Asian countries, where it is seen as medicinal. From Esquire It's a day of the week ending in "y", so yes, there's another story about how fcked the American infrastructure that services our drinking water really is. This time, it's The Guardian, which has demonstrated that Flint was not the only American city that was fudging the test results regarding how much lead was in its water supply. Thousands of documents detailing water testing practices over the past decade reveal: Despite warnings of regulators and experts, water departments in at least 33 cities used testing methods over the past decade that could underestimate lead found in drinking water; officials in two major cities-Philadelphia and Chicago-asked employees to test water safety in their own homes; two states-Michigan and New Hampshire-advised water departments to give themselves extra time to complete tests so that if lead contamination exceeded federal limits, officials could re-sample and remove results with high lead levels; some cities denied knowledge of the locations of lead pipes, failed to sample the required number of homes with lead plumbing or refused to release lead pipe maps, claiming it was a security risk. Experts seem rather displeased. Marc Edwards, the scientist who first uncovered the crisis in Flint, described water testing in some of America's largest cities as an "outrage". "They make lead in water low when collecting samples for EPA compliance, even as it poisons kids who drink the water," Edwards, a Virginia Tech scientist, said. "Clearly, the cheating and lax enforcement are needlessly harming children all over the United States. "If they cannot be trusted to protect little kids from lead in drinking water, what on Earth can they be trusted with? Who amongst us is safe?" Who, indeed? Some of the ways that city and state officials have used to cheat the system would be laughable, if the consequences weren't so serious. Philadelphia, a city accused of having the worst water testing in the US, asks testers to pre-flush their pipes, remove aerators and slowly pour water into a sample bottle. The EPA has warned against all these testing methods, which could "mask the added contribution of lead at the tap". Documents show some authorities have also removed high-risk homes from testing or sought to obscure their dangerous lead levels. In Michigan, a department of environmental quality (MDEQ) official told the director of a town water department in a Detroit suburb called Howell to "bump this one out", referring to a sample with high lead levels, by taking additional samples. "I would suggest at least five more samples," Adam Rosenthal, an official at the MDEQ drinking water office wrote in an email in 2008. New Hampshire offered similar advice to water system officials in that state, advising water departments to test early so any high results could be re-tested. "If your water system samples early in their compliance period, then time remains for you to collect a second set of samples," reads advice from New Hampshire's department of environmental services to local water systems. "This may result in a 90th percentile below action levels." Story continues You will note that, in all of these cases, the officials were advised to make sure that the lead levels were lower than they appeared to be. If this were a couple of cities, you could make a case that the cities were breaking all this rock to avoid public panic. But 33 cities? There's a tangle of motives there-lassitude, inertia, underfunded regulators, greed. In the nine years since the EPA last updated lead regulations, a substantial body of peer-reviewed science has shown no level of lead is safe for humans. Tiny amounts are associated with impaired development and behavioral problems in children, and exposure is linked to a propensity to commit violent crimes. Also in that time, peer-reviewed studies by EPA scientists and academics showed how testing methods that flout guidelines miss lead contamination. Some of these studies even stemmed from previous lead contamination crises, such as in Washington DC in 2001. "What on earth can you do when the environmental policemen at EPA have condoned open cheating on the water lead rule for more than a decade now?" said Edwards, the author of several studies. There is no question that, between this story and what happened in Flint, something is amiss at the EPA regarding its oversight policies on water quality. I suspect that whatever it is can probably be solved by a judicious increase in its regulatory budget. However, I would almost guarantee you that, some time in the next week or so, you will hear something from someone about how this proves that the EPA is useless and should be done away with and its functions handed over to some private entity that will guarantee pure water for everyone-at a decent profit, of course. Update (2:52 PM): It seems that the folks in Philadelphia are taking things into their own hands. Good on them. Click here to respond to this post on the official Esquire Politics Facebook page. By Marius Zaharia SINGAPORE (Reuters) - NATO's top military officer, General Petr Pavel, denounced U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday for criticizing the alliance as obsolete and said such comments played to the hands of its opponents. In unusual criticism of a presidential candidate, Pavel, chairman of the NATO Military Committee, said in an interview that Russian "President (Vladimir) Putin and some others may be pleased by this approach". "To take such an approach would be a great mistake," he said. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election, has criticized the decades-old NATO alliance with mainly European nations - a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy - as obsolete and too costly for the United States. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was set up in a different era, Trump has said, when the main threat to the West was the Soviet Union. It was ill-suited to fighting terrorism. Pavel, a former Czech Republic army chief, said the NATO alliance formed in 1949 was not perfect but it had great potential as well as the chance to be improved. "Statements like these are not necessarily damaging, but they are not useful," Pavel said in Singapore on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia's biggest security summit. On Thursday, Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton also lambasted Trump's foreign policy platform as "dangerously incoherent". Trump's emergence as a strong presidential candidate has been a talking point at the Shangri-La Dialogue. Carl Thayer, an Australian security expert, said the prospect of Trump in office would have to be dealt with realistically. Australia's experience had shown that "you damn well have to work with the U.S. president", he told a news conference. FREEDOM OF NAVIGATION At the meeting, Pavel was to discuss regional issues, including rival claims in the South China Sea and rising tension in Northeast Asia, where North Korea has been stepping up its testing of nuclear capabilities. China and the United States have traded accusations of militarizing the South China Sea, which is claimed almost entirely by Beijing. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam have claims to parts of the waters, through which trade worth trillions of dollars is shipped every year. "Freedom of navigation in this region, through the South China Sea, is crucial for any further development in the region and it's difficult to imagine that without this freedom, there will be stability and peace in this region," Pavel said. NATO could not act on the issue using military means, but mainly political means, he added. North Korea, which conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and followed that with a satellite launch and tests of various missiles, was a great concern for NATO, Pavel said. Western sanctions have not been successful in deterring Pyongyang from developing its nuclear capabilities. "The only country which may change the equation is China," Pavel said, pointing to the fact that 90 percent of North Korea's trade is with its big neighbor. Pavel also said he hoped an upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw would agree cyber as an operational domain of war, along with air, sea, land and space. (Additional reporting by Paige Lim, Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Angus MacSwan) As a new set of graduation caps are thrown and a new group of college alumni head out into the real world, universities leave graduates with one last gift, advice from this seasons commencement speakers. Thanks to the magic of internet streaming the rest of us can also benefit from that knowledge. This year we saw a prolific group of newsmakers, political figures and celebrities speak at college graduations throughout the country. From President Barack Obama to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, heres our roundup of the sage wisdom dished out at this years commencement speeches. 1. Steven Spielberg Harvard University, Massachusetts Thursday May 26th, 2016 I want to be clear that your intuition is different from your conscience. They work in tandem, but heres the distinction: Your conscience shouts, Heres what you should do, while your intuition whispers, Heres what you could do. Listen to that voice that tells you what you could do. Nothing will define your character more than that. 2. President Barack Obama Rutgers University, New Jersey Sunday May 15th, 2016 Cynicism is so easy, and cynics dont accomplish much. As a friend of mine who happens to be from New JerseyA guy named Bruce Springsteen, once sang they spend their lives waiting for a moment that just dont come. Dont let that be you. Dont waste your time waiting. 3. Lin Manuel Miranda University of Pennsylvania Monday May 16th, 2016 There will be blind alleys and one-night wonders and soul-crushing jobs and wake-up calls and crises of confidence and moments of transcendence when you are walking down the street, and someone will thank you for telling your story because it resonated with their own. 4. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Bridgewater State University, Massachusetts Saturday May 14th, 2016 What makes your heart flutter and your stomach clench, what makes you wake up ready to go, and what makes you grind your teeth? One of the hardest things in the world of Twitter and Facebook and Snapchat is to carve out time just for yourself making it a priority to develop yourself as totally separate from what anybody else thinks. If you figure that out, nothing will be more valuable. 5. Sheryl Sandberg University of California, Berkeley Monday May 16th, 2016 I used to go to sleep worrying about all the things I messed up that dayand trust me that list was often quite long. Now I try really hard to focus on each days moments of joy. Nepali soldiers have kicked off efforts to partially drain a giant glacial lake near Mount Everest, fearing possible flooding that could threaten the lives of thousands, an army official said Friday. Scientists say climate change is causing Himalayan glaciers to melt at an alarming rate, creating huge glacial lakes which could burst their banks and devastate mountain communities. Imja Tsho, located at an altitude of 5,010 metres (16,437 feet), just 10 kilometres (six miles) south of the world's highest peak, is the fastest-growing glacial lake in Nepal. The surface area covered by the lake expanded from 0.4 to 1.01 square kilometres between 1984 and 2009, triggering concerns that it may breach its banks and flood villages downstream. "With the aim of minimising the risk of a possible outburst... the Nepal Army has begun efforts to lower the level of water in Imja lake by opening a channel," said army spokesman, Tara Bahadur Karki. "A mechanical gate will be installed and will be manually operated to control the water flow through the channel," Karki told AFP. The work began in April and the army expects to complete the project by the end of the year, he said. A flood would have a catastrophic impact on the lives of more than 56,000 people living in villages located as far away as Nepal's densely populated Terai plains, one scientist said. "Dozens of villages located nearby and in the downstream Terai districts up to 50 kilometres away from the lake are vulnerable," Rishi Ram Sharma, Director General at the national Department of Hydrology and Meteorology told AFP. "The lake had been gaining in volume over the last 30 to 40 years due to climate change." Nepal is home to some 3,000 glacial lakes, of which seven are regarded as high-risk, Sharma said. The move to partially drain the lake comes one year after a major international study warned that glaciers in the Everest region could shrink by 70 percent or disappear entirely by the end of the century, owing to climate change. A study published in 2014 by the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development used satellite imagery to show how Nepal's glaciers had shrunk by nearly a quarter between 1977 and 2010. Watch out, U.K. retailers Wal-Mart (WMT) is coming for you. After playing second fiddle to the company's U.S. business as it retooled itself, international chief David Cheesewright said Wal-Mart's U.K. division is ready to transition from a steady operator focused more on profits into one that's ready to gun for market share. The first step in that process is stealing a page directly from its big brother's playbook investing more of its money so that it can sell merchandise to consumers at a lower price. In the first half of the year, the division invested 250 million ($360 million) into lowering prices investments that are starting to show up on its store shelves, Cheesewright said. "You can expect that we will shift the balance from protecting profit to protecting share," he told reporters ahead of the company's annual meeting with shareholders, being held in Arkansas on Friday. Wal-Mart has struggled in the U.K., as food deflation and a hyper-competitive low-price environment have eaten into its revenue. In the recently ended quarter, as 10 of the company's 11 markets posted positive comparable sales, the U.K.'s same-store sales dropped 5.7 percent. Cheesewright said the company was "very disappointed" with the performance at its Asda supermarkets, where trends began to decline more rapidly in January. "When all four of the players in the main space are now appearing to be a kind of ... low-cost retailers, I think you're going to get ... some real pressure on price," he said. Though Cheesewright said his division would not hesitate to dispose of poorly performing formats that have little hope for a turnaround and do not play a key role in its strategies, he clarified there are no plans to dispose of Asda. He added that the division remains profitable. In addition to its changes in the U.K., Wal-Mart's international division is forging ahead with the expansion of its Sam's Club stores in China. The company currently operates a dozen of these locations in the Asian nation, though it has been working on changes to its assortment and footprint. These include bringing in imported foods, and scouting out space at malls. Story continues Finding real estate for a store that requires a 30-foot ceiling can be challenging in China, where space is limited. When a landlord builds a mall, they could squeeze three floors of tenants into the space that would be required for just one Sam's Club. So to prove the format could be a profitable anchor for landlords, Wal-Mart invested in three malls there, with the first recently opening in Zhuhai. "They always struggled with the mechanics and some of the financials," Cheesewright said, referring to landlords there. "What we're now seeing is a lot more interest." The company plans to open 115 stores in China over the next three years, with Sam's Club playing an integral role in those openings. More From CNBC Yenagoa (Nigeria) (AFP) - Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday faced urgent calls to stop security spiralling out of control in the oil-rich south, after militants claimed two new attacks against key pipelines. The Niger Delta Avengers, blamed for a wave of bombings in the region since the start of this year, claimed the attacks on infrastructure operated by Shell and Eni's Nigerian subsidiaries. "At 3:00am today (0200 GMT Friday), @NDAvengers blow up the SPDC Forcados 48" export line," it said on Twitter, referring to the Shell Petroleum Development Company. The group said the attack was carried out because Shell had refused to heed earlier warnings not to repair the pipeline, which was damaged in February and is still not back on stream. Half an hour later, a "strike team" blew up the Brass to Tebidaba crude oil line in Bayelsa state operated by Agip, the subsidiary of Italy's Eni, the NDA said. The militants' purported spokesman, Mudoch Agbinibo, warned the company "not to commence repair works on any of the blown pipelines in Bayelsa. We will make you regret it". Shell later confirmed "signs of a leak" on the Forcados pipeline after the reported attack but said it had "yet to fully evaluate the potential impact and damage". The company operates the line as part of a joint-venture with the state-run oil firm the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), French group Total's local subsidiary and Agip. Desmond Agu, commandant of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps in Bayelsa, confirmed the second attack and said the pipeline had been shut down. "We have dispatched our men and we have intensified patrols in the area. We are working round the clock to protect critical infrastructure in Bayelsa," he added. - Increasing attacks - Friday's attacks follow two claimed bombings of Agip pipelines elsewhere in Bayelsa state on Thursday and the sabotage on Tuesday of two oil wells operated by the US group Chevron. Story continues Six people -- four soldiers and two personnel -- were also killed on Wednesday in neighbouring Delta state when suspected militants disguised as commuters opened fire on an NNPC boat. The NDA denied any involvement but it has vowed to bring oil production to a standstill in Nigeria, which normally depends on crude exports for 70 percent of government revenue. The attacks have already had an impact, with output slashed to 1.4 million barrels per day, well down on the budgeted 2.2 million bpd this year. That has exacerbated a sharp decline in oil revenue due to the global fall in crude prices since mid-2014, which has left Nigeria's government cash-strapped and has stalled growth. Shortage of natural gas deliveries has hit electricity production and left pumping stations unable to supply water to much of megacity Lagos, which is home to some 20 million people. The NDA are believed to have sympathy for a former oil rebel leader who commanded militants in the region in the 2000s and is now wanted on money laundering and corruption charges. - 'Rapidly deteriorating' - The Nigerian military, which has slammed the NDA as "economic terrorists", has deployed gunboats and fighter jets to the creeks and swamps of the delta in search of the militants. Buhari last week ordered enhanced security in the delta, adding: "We have to be very serious with the situation... because it threatens the national economy." But Eric Omare, from the Ijaw Youth Council rights group, said more needed to be done as the situation was "rapidly deteriorating and getting out of control". Buhari should "urgently and personally take charge of the management of the process to return peace and normalcy to the region". Talks were required between both sides to restore peace, he said, calling on the NDA and other militant groups to stop their campaign of violence. "The events that are happening in the region pose serious economic, environmental and security challenges to the entire nation," he said. By Libby George and Ulf Laessing LONDON/ABUJA (Reuters) - The Niger Delta Avengers militant group has claimed responsibility for three new attacks on Nigeria's oil infrastructure, promising to cut production to zero. The attacks are the latest in a Delta region conflict that a major local youth group said is "rapidly deteriorating and getting out of control", putting intense pressure on Nigeria's stretched finances. The Nigerian Air Force, in a statement issued late on Friday, said it had deployed additional "fighter aircraft, helicopter gunship and surveillance aircraft" in troubled oil-producing areas to conduct "offensive air operations and intelligence gathering". The army has moved reinforcements to the swamps in the last few weeks. Early on Friday, the Niger Delta Avengers group said via its Twitter account it had blown up a pipeline in Nigeria's Bayelsa state owned by Italy's ENI, hours after attacks on another ENI pipeline as well as one belonging to Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd (SPDC). "At about 3:30am our (@NDAvengers) strike team blew up the Brass to Tebidaba Crude oil line in Bayelsa," the group said on a Twitter feed it uses to claim attacks. Shell confirmed its 250,000 barrels a day Forcados pipeline had been hit again and was leaking. "We have ... mobilized appropriate oil spill response measures," SPDC said in a statement. The pipe had been shut in February after a seawater attack but a new strike might complicate three-month long repairs, for which the firm has brought in experts from abroad. Force majeur has been in place for Forcados crude since then. The Niger Delta Avengers say oil firms are responsible for pollution and say the poor swampland region fails to reap any benefit from its reserves. It said its attacks had brought Nigeria's oil production to just 800,000 barrels per day (bpd), from 2 million bpd, without killing anyone, though they hit infrastructure feeding crude grades already under force majeure. The ENI pipeline is used to transport Brass River crude. The group also hit ENI's Ogboinbiri-Tebidaba and Clough Creek-Tebidaba pipelines in Bayelsa and warned ENI not to start repairs or "we will make you regrets it". ENI did not respond to a request for comment. LOUD SOUND Ayiri Appah, a resident of Ogboinbiri, where the ENI pipelines are located, said he "heard a loud sound" from the area between 2 and 4 am local time. Three grades of Nigeria's oil - Forcados, Brass River and Bonny Light - are under force majeure, while Exxon Mobil lifted force majeure on Qua Iboe, the country's largest export stream, on Friday. Nigeria's oil minister said on Thursday that output was 1.6 million bpd. Even if the most recent attacks, which also included facilities belonging to Chevron under its Escravos grade, took out all exports of the oil linked to them, June production would remain near 1.2 million bpd. Experts said the violence showed little sign of abating, and would keep pressure on the Nigeria's oil production and finances. President Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim from the north, on Thursday canceled what would have been his first visit to the Delta region since taking office. The Avengers have accused Buhari of ignoring local problems by having never visited the Christian region in the south. The Ijaw Youth Council, which represents one of the largest ethnic groups, called on Buhari to "urgently and personally take charge ... to return peace and normalcy to the region." (Additional reporting by Seng Li Peng and Florence Tan in Singapore, Ulf Laessing in Abuja, Anamesere Igboeroteonwu in Onitsah, Tife Owolabi in Yenogoa, Alexis Akwagyiram in Lagos and Julia Payne in London; Editing by William Hardy and David Holmes) ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday said fraudsters have asked the government for money to negotiate the release of more 200 girls abducted by Boko Haram militants over two years ago from their school in the northeastern town of Chibok town. The first of the 219 girls held captive since the mass kidnapping in April 2014 to be found alive was discovered last month. A second girl was rescued days later, although campaigners said she was taken in a separate abduction. "While the rescue and safe return of the remaining Chibok girls remains a top priority of his administration, he will not fall for the antics of fraudsters," Buhari's spokesman, Femi Adesina, said. Adesina said the president stated this during a meeting with archbishops of the Church of Nigeria. "President Buhari said that his administration will continue to insist on a thorough authentication of the identities and bona fides of any persons or groups claiming to have custody of the girls before entering into negotiations with them," he said. Boko Haram, which has tried to create an Islamic caliphate in northeast Nigeria over the last seven years, captured 276 girls in the Chibok raid but 57 escaped in the melee. Under Buhari's command, and aided by Nigeria's neighbors, the army has recaptured most territory lost to the group. (Reporting by Felix Onuah, Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram, Editing by Angus MacSwan) By Anshuman Daga SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Noble Group is raising $500 million in a rights issue and its chairman plans to step down within 12 months - the latest in unexpected measures this week as Asia's largest commodity trader struggles with the fallout from an accounting dispute and weak markets. The resignation plans by Chairman Richard Elman, who is also Noble's founder and largest shareholder with a fifth of the company, come just days after its chief executive quit and the firm said it would sell a North American energy business, its crown jewel. Noble also said on Friday it would cut headcount and that the rights issue will be supported by Elman as well as China Investment Corp (CIC), which holds close to 10 percent of the firm and will now be entitled to a second non-executive director on the board. The developments this week have raised fresh questions about the trading firm's financial health and strategy just after it finalised $3 billion in credit facilities, a crucial move allowing it to refinance all of its debt maturing this year. News of the rights issue sent Noble's shares sliding nearly 12 percent to their lowest level in 13 years on the planned dilution but its bonds rallied sharply with its 6 percent perpetuals climbing nearly 10 points. "This rights offering is a clear sign the new management is making the balance sheet their first priority, a big contrast from the last one," said Andrew DeVries, analyst at independent research firm CreditSights. "This doesn't get them out of the woods by any means but it's a great first start," he said. Worries over Noble's finances have roiled the Singapore-listed trader since it was accused in February 2015 by Iceberg Research of overstating its assets by billions of dollars, claims which the company rejected. Since then, Noble's market value has plunged by more than 75 percent while its debt financing costs have risen after it lost its investment grade rating. "This is a boost to the balance sheet but at what cost to shareholders?" said Nirgunan Tiruchelvam, an analyst at Religare Capital Markets. "We also have to figure out what Elman's plans are," he said. Story continues The company said it aims to generate $2 billion in additional liquidity over the next 12 months from the rights issue and other measures, such as the sale of low return assets and working capital reduction measures. On a conference call on Friday, Noble executives said this would be enough to meet the company's debt refinancing for 2017. Noble's share price, like that of most its peers, was hit by the sector's price rout between 2014 and early 2016, but it has failed to recover alongside commodities since the start of this year. The rights issue is being underwritten by banks including HSBC, Societe Generale, ING Bank and DBS Bank, which helped the company with its credit facilities. Morgan Stanley is also underwriting the issue. ($1 = 1.3757 Singapore dollars) (Reporting by Anshuman Daga; Additional reporting by Aradhana Aravindan, Umesh Desai and Henning Gloystein; Editing by Edwina Gibbs) WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) - A North Carolina woman is being sought on a charge of failing to report the death of her 75-year-old mother, whose body was discovered in a freezer by a neighbor last week, police said on Friday. The dead woman, Arma Ann Roush, lived with her daughter in Goldsboro, North Carolina, located about 50 miles southeast of Raleigh, and was last seen alive in August 2015, according to a statement from the city's police department. A neighbor told local media that she bought the freezer for $30 at a yard sale last month. The neighbor said the seller told her the freezer contained items for a Sunday school project, but she became suspicious when no one from the church showed up to claim them, according to WRAL TV. When the neighbor finally opened the freezer, she saw a frozen foot inside, WRAL reported. "My heart went in my throat," said the woman, who was not identified. An autopsy conducted this week confirmed Roush's remains were inside, police said. Her body was intact and there were no signs of foul play, said police, who are still investigating how it came to be in the freezer. Roush's daughter, Marcella Jean Lee, 56, is wanted on a felony charge of failing to report a death, and more charges are expected, according to the police statement. (Reporting by Colleen Jenkins, editing by G Crosse) Northrop Grumman Corp. NOC has received a contract from the U.S. Navy for support services of the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrator (BAMS-D) program. This is a modification contract valued at $62.4 million. The contract entails Northrop Grumman to exercise an option for operation and maintenance services in support of the BAMS-D project. Additionally, the company will provide logistics support, organization, intermediate, and depot level maintenance, and field services representatives to ensure the BAMS-D aircraft is mission-capable for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. BAMS-D is presently testing the RQ-4 Triton UAV. Fiscal 2016 operations and maintenance (Navy) overseas contingency operations fund will be used for the contract. Work under the contract is slated for completion in Jun 2017. Northrop Grumman, with a major platform-centric focus, is the fourth largest U.S. defense contractor (following The Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin Corporation and General Dynamics) in terms of 2015 revenues. The company has a strong presence in Air Force, Space & Cyber Security programs. Its product line is well positioned in high priority categories, such as, defense electronics, unmanned aircraft and missile defense. Owing to the government's strategy of strengthening its existing defense systems, defense giants are scoring some sizeable contracts in recent times. We appreciate the initiatives being taken by Northrop Grumman to boost its order flow. It continues to invest heavily in research and development (R&D), which increased over 25% in 2015 to $712 million. These initiatives will ensure increased affordability and cost competitiveness, driving its top line. Currently, Northrop Grumman has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Zacks Rank A few better-ranked stocks in the aerospace and defense space include BAE Systems plc BAESY, CAE Inc. CAE and Esterline Technologies Corp. ESL. While BAE Systems carries a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), CAE and Esterline Technologies hold a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). 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 NORTHROP GRUMMN (NOC): Free Stock Analysis Report ESTERLINE TECHN (ESL): Free Stock Analysis Report BAE SYSTEMS-ADR (BAESY): Free Stock Analysis Report CAE INC (CAE): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research (Adds Breakingviews link, updates share prices) June 3 (Reuters) - Commercial real estate manager NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc, REIT NorthStar Realty Finance Corp and private equity firm Colony Capital Inc have agreed to an all-stock merger that would create a company with $58 billion of assets under management, they said on Friday. NorthStar Realty Finance shares fell 5.8 percent to $12.70, while NorthStar Asset Management dropped 6.5 percent to $11.51. NorthStar Asset Management shareholders will own about 32.85 percent, Colony Capital shareholders about 33.25 percent and NorthStar Realty Finance shareholders about 33.90 percent of the combined company - Colony NorthStar Inc - on a fully diluted basis, the companies said. NorthStar Asset Management was spun off from NorthStar Realty Finance in 2014. Colony Capital Chief Executive Richard Saltzman will become CEO of Colony NorthStar, while the PE firm's founder Thomas Barrack will become the executive chairman. The companies said they expected about $115 million in total annual savings from the merger, likely to close during the first quarter of 2017. The deal, which would create an internally managed equity REIT, has been approved by the committees and the board of all the companies. Colony Capital was working with NorthStar Realty Finance for a "tri-party all-stock" proposal, the companies said in May. NorthStar Asset Management was advised by Goldman Sachs, while UBS Investment Bank was adviser to NorthStar Realty Finance. BofA Merrill Lynch is the lead financial adviser to Colony, and Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are also providing financial advice in connection with the merger. (Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila) Oslo (AFP) - The small Norwegian company Nordox has prospered in Oslo for 50 years, but it now stands to lose 15 percent of its sales due to an EU deal being hammered out in Brussels, just one of many upshots of Norway's decision to remain outside the bloc. Hailed as a model by the pro-Brexit camp, Norway rejected European Union membership in two referendums in 1972 and 1994 but it is still closely linked to the bloc through its membership in the European Economic Area (EEA). While the EEA gives Norway's five million inhabitants access to Europe's lucrative inner market of 500 million consumers -- the EU accounts for 80 percent of Norway's exports and 60 percent of its imports -- it does not give it a vote in setting the rules. In Brussels, Norwegians have to leave the room when big decisions are made, hard enough as it is to get the 28 EU member states to agree. "In the corridor while the EU education ministers are discussing (but allowed to join them for lunch)," tweeted Norwegian education minister Torbjorn Roe Isaksen in 2013, illustrating the Scandinavian country's inability to influence European decision-making. The inverse is not true: since the creation of the EEA in 1994, some 10,000 EU laws have been integrated into Norwegian legislation, half of which are still in force. Former prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, now NATO's secretary general, in 2001 dubbed the remote decision-making "fax democracy". "The no side won in 1994 but has lost since then without any new referendum on the issue... with a lot of integration simply running by default since we're part of an evolving inner market," says professor Oivind Bratberg, an expert on European affairs at the University of Oslo. - Rules dictated by EU - Agriculture and fisheries are among the few areas where Norway has retained sovereignty. "We follow the European rules much more than the Norwegian rules," admits Nordox's managing director Lars Tomasgaard. Story continues "All the rules that apply to us in terms of workers' protection, product registration, all these kinds of rules are dictated by the rules in the EU. They are just a carbon copy of these European rules." The biggest problem facing Nordox, which specialises in fungicides and antifouling paints, is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal Washington and Brussels are currently negotiating. Norway does not yet know if it will be part of the agreement. By abolishing customs duties in transatlantic trade, a deal would make the products of Norway's European rivals less expensive on the North American market, and increase North American competition in Europe, Tomasgaard says. "We have all the disadvantages," he insists, alarmed by the prospect of losing 15 percent of the company's sales ($110 million, 99 million euros). The same thing goes for Norwegian salmon, one of the country's main export products, likely to become much less competitive across the Atlantic than its Scottish, Danish or Faroese cousins. Like Iceland and Liechtenstein, which are also members of the EEA, Norway has a veto right allowing it to oppose European regulations but it has never used it for fear of the consequences. "There is a lack of democracy," admits European Affairs Minister Elisabeth Aspaker. "Norway is not sitting at the table when the decisions are made but still we try to have as good a dialogue as possible with the Commission, (and) we also invest time in bilateral dialogue with the member states," she tells AFP. While there is what some see as a democratic deficit, Norway is at the same time a net contributor to European budgets, paying in 391 million euros per year in the 2014-2021 period. - Stay in, says Oslo - US President Barack Obama says Britain ought to remain in the EU, and Oslo agrees. "The Norwegian government also thinks that Britain should stay in," Aspaker says. "There are so many challenges these days in Europe: it's about migration, it's about climate change, it's about creating new jobs. There is a need for more cooperation within innovation and research ... This whole package calls for a more united Europe, more cooperation, not less." While Norway is cited as a model for Britain thanks to its prosperity -- owed largely to its North Sea oil -- Scandinavian eurosceptics, who obviously favour a "Leave" vote on June 23, discourage Britons from following in their footsteps. "The EEA is better than being a member of the EU," says Kathrine Kleveland, head of Norway's "No to EU" lobby. "But if it were up to me, I'd opt for a bilateral deal because with the EEA you have to accept some of the EU rules and directives and the EU influence is too strong for my liking." Included among those rules: the free circulation of workers, one of the key complaints of Brexit advocates. Hailing the Norwegian model as an example to follow is the result of "a great misunderstanding", says Bratberg. "An EEA assimilation similar to that of Norway would simply not work in Britain." It "would create more problems than it could solve: they would sort of regain formal sovereignty in not being a member, but they would create an immense democratic deficit." New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio emphasized on Friday the importance of waiting until more facts are known before jumping to conclusions about the recent death of a local black teenager. The New York Police Department is investigating the May 27 death of 16-year-old Dayshen McKenzie on Staten Island as a possible hate crime. According to early reports, notably in the Daily News, he collapsed and died from an asthma attack after being chased by a mostly white group who were said to be shouting racial slurs and waving a gun. On Friday morning, de Blasio told WNYCs The Brian Lehrer Show that the incident was distressingly similar to the highly publicized 1986 death of Michael Griffith in Howard Beach. The mayor said the NYPD handles bias crimes seriously, but warned against rushing to judgment before the details are known. I dont know enough and the police dont know enough yet, and I want to be very clear about that, de Blasio said, according to the Staten Island Advance. We cannot rush to judgment on this one, we need to know more. He urged for cooler heads to prevail while the police do their jobs. We just dont know enough yet to determine what happened here, he told Lehrer. And I think its important that people take a breath while the PD has a chance to really investigate and get right the facts of this case. Earlier in the day Friday, the Daily News reported on the alleged racial motivation behind McKenzies death. A witness, former NYPD officer Diane Fatigati, told the paper that what she saw leading up to the teens death made her consider the incident a homicide. To me, its murder, Fatigati told the Daily News. They were chasing him thats a crime. Youre hunting them because theyre black. Youre calling them a n*****. Fatigati reportedly rushed to McKenzies side and tried to resuscitate him, but it was too late. The liberal de Blasio has had a mixed relationship with New Yorks law enforcement community. His two predecessors, Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani, were both law-and-order stalwarts who embraced controversial police tactics like stop and frisks. Story continues De Blasio sparked severe backlash in December 2014 by saying he taught his biracial son to be especially careful when dealing with police. In a silent protest, dozens of NYPD officers turned their backs on de Blasio at an officers funeral the following month. But while de Blasio warned against rushing to judgment, the Rev. Al Sharpton, founder of the National Action Network (NAN), released a statement on Friday calling for the federal government to get involved. Sharpton cited the 2014 death of Eric Garner, a black Staten Islander who died after an NYPD officer apparently placed him in a chokehold, as a reason why the local district attorneys office should be viewed with skepticism. (The district attorney at the time, Dan Donovan, has since been elected to Congress.) On Saturday, during NANs live action rally and radio broadcast, Sharptons statement reads in part, we will call on the federal government to investigate this incident as a possible hate crime because after the Staten Island District Attorneys office (under the former prosecutor) showed questionable investigative skills in the Eric Garner case, we cannot in confidence rely on the DAs office to pursue this matter to the degree the community feels will bring justice to the family of Dayshen McKenzie. Washington (AFP) - US President Barack Obama on Friday commuted the prison sentences of 42 people, most of them non-violent drug offenders, reflecting his calls for criminal justice reform. Most of those pardoned were small-time drug dealers who received long sentences under a code shaped by the government's war on drugs. The punishments were made under "outdated and unduly harsh sentencing laws," the White House said in a statement. "The individuals receiving a presidential commutation today have more than repaid their debt to society and earned this second chance." Some were serving life sentences. Held in various prisons across the country, they will be released between October 1, 2016 and June 3, 2018. Obama has now commuted sentences for 348 people, more than the total amount issued by the previous seven presidents combined. Obama has called for legislation to reduce sentences and provide alternative punishments for small-time offenders. "There remain thousands of men and women in federal prison serving sentences longer than necessary, often due to overly harsh mandatory minimum sentences," the White House said. Some 2.2 million people are behind bars in the United States, a quarter of the world's prisoners in a country with only five percent of the world's population. They include legions of the mentally ill and drug addicts, often from disadvantaged minorities, in a prison system many experts criticize for encouraging high rates of recidivism. The U.S. Energy Department's weekly inventory release showed that crude stockpiles recorded another drop. The report further revealed that refined product inventories gasoline and distillate both decreased from their previous week levels too. EIA Data Blunts OPEC Impact Importantly, these bullish data sets offset the uneventful OPEC summit that again failed to agree on a production freeze. As a result, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures edged up 0.3% (or 16 cents) to settle at $49.17 per barrel Thursday. Analysis of the EIA Data Crude Oil: The federal governments EIA report revealed that crude inventories decreased by 1.37 million barrels for the week ending May 27, 2016, following a decline of 4.23 million barrels in the previous week. The analysts surveyed by S&P Global Platts the leading independent commodities and energy data provider had expected crude stocks to go down some 3.1 million barrels. Another pullback in the level of production, marking the twelfth consecutive weekly drop, led to the modest stockpile drawdown with the world's biggest oil consumer. In particular, crude inventories at the Cushing terminal in Oklahoma the key delivery hub for U.S. crude futures traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange were down 704,000 barrels from previous weeks level to 66.92 million barrels. Despite the third inventory decline in 4 weeks, at 535.70 million barrels, current crude supplies are up 12% from the year-ago period and are at the highest level during this time of the year. The crude supply cover was down from 33.1 days in the previous week to 32.9 days. In the year-ago period, the supply cover was 29.4 days. Gasoline: Supplies of gasoline were down for the third time in 4 weeks as demand strengthened. The 1.49 million barrels draw slightly more than analysts polled number of 1.4 million barrels decrease in supply level took gasoline stockpiles down to 238.62 million barrels. Despite last weeks decline, the existing stock of the most widely used petroleum product is 8% higher than the year-earlier level and is comfortably above the upper half of the average range. Story continues Distillate: Distillate fuel supplies (including diesel and heating oil) fell 1.26 million barrels last week, easily outpacing analysts expectations for a 400,000 barrels drop in inventory level. The decrease in distillate fuel stocks the seventh in as many weeks could be attributed to lower imports. But at 149.62 million barrels, distillate supplies are still 13% higher than the year-ago level and are well above the upper half of the average range for this time of the year. Refinery Rates: Refinery utilization was up by a marginal 0.1% from the prior week to 89.8%. About the Weekly Petroleum Status Report The Energy Information Administration (EIA) Petroleum Status Report, containing data of the previous week ending Friday, outlines information regarding the weekly change in petroleum inventories held and produced by the U.S., both locally and abroad. The report provides an overview of the level of reserves and their movements, thereby helping investors understand the demand/supply dynamics of petroleum products. It is an indicator of current oil prices and volatility that affect the businesses of the companies engaged in the oil and refining industry. The data from EIA generally acts as a catalyst for crude prices and affect producers, such as Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM, Chevron Corp. CVX and ConocoPhillips COP , and refiners such as Valero Energy Corp. VLO , Phillips 66 PSX and HollyFrontier Corp. HFC. 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 VALERO ENERGY (VLO): Free Stock Analysis Report CHEVRON CORP (CVX): Free Stock Analysis Report EXXON MOBIL CRP (XOM): Free Stock Analysis Report CONOCOPHILLIPS (COP): Free Stock Analysis Report HOLLYFRONTIER (HFC): Free Stock Analysis Report PHILLIPS 66 (PSX): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research (Photo: BBC America) Warning: This recap for the The Redesign of Natural Objects episode of Orphan Black contains spoilers. Orphan Black fans needed a comedy chaser after last weeks trauma-drenched ghost story. And while The Redesign of Natural Objects was less overtly hilarious than the Clone Clubs farce-heist excursion into Bright Born earlier this season, it did gift us with the endlessly GIF-able sight of Alison Hendrix performing in her churchs production of Jesus Christ Superstar. Seriously, that entire sequence will live on Tumblr from now until the end of our clone descendants lifetimes. While Alison dominated the comedy spotlight, other characters scored some great one-liners as well. Take Cosima, who responded to Mikas innocent query about the status of her illness with a perfect bit of gallows humor: Incurable, so that sucks. And then there was Adeles reaction to meeting Sarahs twin sister Alison at the prison where Donnie is currently behind bars: You look just like her, except for less anger and more hygiene. Related: Catch Up on Orphan Black With Our Recaps For that matter, Donnie being in prison was pretty hysterical, too. Well, initially anyway. Having been bitten by the amateur theater bug full force, the big galoot tries to put himself into the mindset of a Big House veteran to impress his lunchroom seatmate. For a minute, Donnie is all Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock. But then the seatmate reveals hes actually playing the bait for his colleague, a muscle man sporting a very distinctive Neolutionist tattoo. And in that split second, Donnie becomes a heck of a lot more like Tobias Beecher in Oz. Saving her husband from an epic beating, followed by a brutal death, becomes Alisons mission throughout the rest of the episode. At the same time, the writers attempts to convince us that shed go so far as to betray her own clone sisters to the scheming Detective Duko in exchange for Donnies safety was something of a non-starter. Alison is too wily (and stubborn) to just give in to a bullys demands. So when Sarah revealed that Alison had actually lead Duko into his own trap, it was less of an A-ha! moment than an Of course! moment. Story continues A Woah moment, meanwhile, was Mrs. Ss businesslike execution of Duko for the crime of killing her mother, Kendall. And, to her credit, Kendall faced her death with far more stoic revolve than her executioner, who begged for his life until she put a shotgun blast in his chest. But first, she made sure to extract key details from him about Evie Chos endgame, which involves inserting those gene-altering robot maggots into millions of people under the guise of routine gene therapy. That makes the Clone Club our last line of defense, with Susan, Rachel, and Ira as unlikely allies. Related: Watch the Orphan Black Cast in a Charades Showdown The plan right now is to fertilize one of the few remaining viable Leda eggs, specifically Sarahs, with sperm from one of the few remaining Castor clonesspecifically Ira. The episode ends with Cosima en route to Susans island looming forebodingly in the distance like the cover of a certain oft-mentioned book about a mad scientist where theyll either save the world or kill each other trying. Were betting on the former, but also maybe the latter given the frostiness between Rachel and Cosima. Onto the Clone Power rakings! And can Alisons church perform Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat next year? 1) Cosima With thoughts of saving Delphine bouncing around in her brain, Cosima threw herself back into action this week, heading up the Leda/Castor plan and heading off to Susans island without a trace of fear. Its good to have our science guru back. 2) Alison Alison Hendrix/Superstar/Do you even know how awesome we think you are? This performance single-handedly redeems the whole Blood Ties fiasco. 3) Sarah Back on the horse and off the sauce after hitting bottom last week, Sarah made peace with Mrs. S by bringing Duko to their doorstep, and leaving the room so she wouldnt have to witness her foster mother playing murderer. 4) Mika We agree with Sarah that re-establishing contact with the Clone Club through Kira is a violation of maternal privilege. But it was good to see the newest clone in touch with her sisters again. And another missing clone, Helena, finally makes her overdue return next week. Non-Clone MVP: Donnie For taking that prison licking, while still managing to keep on ticking. And if hes ever cast as an ex-con hell now have real-world experience to draw on. Orphan Black airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. on BBC America. jyn rogue one The news out of "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" gets more interesting by the day. Disney executives reportedly ordered reshoots to give the movie more of a "classic" "Star Wars" feel after seeing a cut they didn't fully like. Now the usually reliable Making Star Wars is reporting that the overhaul is even bigger than expected. According to members of the crew the site talked to, 32 sets are being created and they are expecting to reshoot 40% of the film over eight weeks, double the number originally reported. Eight weeks for reshoots is substantial. So, if true, there might be more going on than just throwing in more old-school "Star Wars" vibes and filming a cameo of young Han Solo. Yet one part of Making Star Wars' post has already been debunked. According to the post, Christopher McQuarrie, screenwriter of "Rogue One" and director of "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation," is partnering with "Rogue" director Gareth Edwards on the reshoots. But McQuarrie told Slashfilm that is false: "If there are any reshoots on 'Rogue One,' Im not supervising them. For any outlet to say so is not only wrong, its irresponsible. Gareth Edwards is a talented filmmaker who deserves the benefit of the doubt. Making a film let alone a 'Star Wars' chapter is hard enough without the internet trying to deliberately downgrade ones years of hard work. Who does that even serve? Let him make his movie in peace." The post also states that "The Force Awakens" director J.J. Abrams is supervising the reshoots. Business Insider reached out to Abrams' reps but has not yet received a reply. Regardless, with a larger-scaled reshoot that could take eight weeks, there's still a lot of heavy lifting to be done before audiences see it for themselves on December 16. Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. NOW WATCH: Bill Cosby will stand trial on sexual assault charges More From Business Insider JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - S&P Global Ratings on Friday affirmed South Africa's investment-grade credit rating and kept its negative outlook, pushing the rand higher. S&P affirmed the rating on the sovereign debt of Africa's most industrialised country at BBB-, but warned that the outlook remained negative, reflecting the potential adverse consequences of low GDP growth. "The outlook remains negative, reflecting the potential adverse consequences of low GDP growth and signalling that we could lower our ratings on South Africa this year or next if policy measures do not turn the economy around," S&P said in a statement. The rand extended earlier gains to trade at 15.0600, up more than 3 percent on the day. South Africa's Treasury welcomed the decision by S&P, saying it would give government more time to demonstrate the concrete implementation of economic reforms. "The benefit of this decision is that South Africa is given more time to demonstrate concrete implementation of reforms aimed at achieving higher levels of growth and place public finances on a sustainable path," Treasury said in a statement. A cut to below investment grade would have pushed up Pretoria's borrowing costs, making it harder to plug a budget deficit estimated at 3.2 percent of GDP in the 2016/17 financial year. (Reporting by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo; Writing by James Macharia and Richard Balmforth) * Targets lower fiscal deficit in 2016/17 * Aims to lift tax-to-GDP ratio * Finance minister says economy has stabilised * Economy still vulnerable; growth moderate (Adds analyst quote, details) By Syed Raza Hassan and Asad Hashim ISLAMABAD, June 3 (Reuters) - Pakistan is targeting a near 16 percent rise in tax revenues in the fiscal year ending June 2017, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said on Friday as he unveiled a budget aimed at shoring up the South Asian country's finances. Dar said Pakistan would cut its fiscal deficit to 3.8 percent of gross domestic product for the coming financial year, down from the 4.3 percent envisaged for this year, and helped by a planned rise in tax collection to 3.95 trillion rupees ($37.8 billion). Pakistan's economy is growing at its quickest rate in eight years after a slide in oil prices and expansion in industry and services boosted demand. Investor confidence has slowly returned to a country that was battered by the global financial crisis. "The dangers to the economy are now far behind us. Economic growth has hit an eight year high. This would have been even better if it had not been for a 28 percent fall in the cotton crop," Dar told parliament. Still, the economy remains structurally weak, hamstrung by poor infrastructure, struggling exports, the threat of militant violence and a very narrow tax base. The GDP growth rate of 4.7 percent in the year to June 2016 was less than the government's 5.5 percent target, and a contraction in the agricultural sector this year meant many Pakistanis do not feel much better off. Pakistan's economy needs to grow at more than 6-percent per annum to absorb new entrants coming into the workforce, experts say. Dar said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government's priority in the year ahead was to push Pakistan's persistently low tax-to-GDP ratio to above 10 percent and raise taxation revenues. Pakistan's financial year runs from July to June. Khurram Husain, a Karachi-based analyst, said the government was proposing to raise taxes on turnover and financial transactions, which could hurt economic activity. It had largely left income and consumption taxes alone, he said. Story continues "I see it more as a fire-fighting budget. The government is having a very hard time transiting out of fire-fighting mode into producing a growth-inducing budget. And this budget speech appears to confirm that," Husain told Reuters. Successive governments have promised to rein in tax evaders and boost revenues but face fierce resistance to change, including from the many politicians and businessmen believed to be among those dodging their taxes. Fewer than one percent of Pakistan's 190 million people pay income tax. The low level of collection and the hefty cost of funding its military has left Pakistan with insufficient money to spend on modernising its schools and hospitals, to the dismay of donors who end up financing much of the social infrastructure. Dar said total spending for the 2016/17 year was estimated at 5.08 trillion rupees, while the defence budget would rise 11 percent year-on-year to 860 billion rupees. Some economists predict that Pakistan will miss its fiscal deficit targets over the coming years and start hiking spending after it exits an International Monetary Fund programme later this year and heads into a general election in 2018. For Pakistan budget highlights: ($1 = 104.6000 Pakistani rupees) (Additional reporting by Mehreen Zahra-Malik in ISLAMABAD; Writing by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Douglas Busvine and Richard Balmforth) A Pakistani father of 35 is now searching for a fourth wife as he romps towards his goal of 100 children, a dubious ambition in the conservative Muslim country where polygamy is rare but still practiced. Sardar Jan Mohammad Khilji, 46, says he believes it is his religious duty to have as many children as possible. Insisting it is "very rare" that he mixes up his children's names, the medical technician said he juggles their affections by taking turns to attend family events with them and their mothers, such as weddings. His three current wives support his procreational and matrimonial goals, he said, adding that they all live in harmony together -- though he would not allow AFP to speak with them. Rights activists warn it is women and children who suffer most in polygamous marriages. Pakistani men are permitted to take up to four wives under Islam, though to do so they must seek permission from their first wife and an arbitration council. It remains rare for men to take multiple wives in the country, but when polygamy does take place, studies have shown it can result in "depression and despair" among wives, while children often struggle to know their father, said Rafia Zakaria, a women's rights activist. The Koran, she told AFP, dictates that multiple wives may be taken only when a husband can do "perfect justice" among them. "Well, perfect justice is impossible, and for this reason polygamy is never a good situation," said Zakaria, who campaigns against the practice. "Someone always suffers and almost always it is the women and children," she added. Family lawyer Mohammed Bilal Kasi, who deals with polygamy cases in Quetta agreed. "We lawyers are well aware of social problems surrounding polygamy," he said. "Women and children undergo mental agony due to these affairs." The tension can lead to serious legal disputes over property and rights after the father's death, he said. Story continues - A case of mangoes - Denied his permission to speak, Jan's wives could not describe what life is like for his sprawling dynasty, who all live together in a five-bedroom mud hut in the outskirts of Quetta in restive Balochistan province. At least two of his children appear to support his goals, however, including his eldest child Shagufta Nasreen. "A large family is like Allah bestowing a case of mangoes," the 15-year-old explained, adding that she hopes to go into medicine like her father. Jan's eldest son, 13-year-old Mohammed Esa, also wanted to emulate the patriarch -- but he has set his sights even higher, resolving that he will have more than 100 children. Jan, who claims he is a qualified medical technician, runs an unregulated clinic where he treats people for minor ailments such as headaches, adding that as he is "serving humanity" he charges just 250 rupees ($2.30) per patient while providing his services to the poor for free. He also runs a seminary funded by donations where nearly 400 students -- including four of his sons -- are studying the Koran, and says he pays for 20 of his 35 children to attend private school. The household expenditures of his growing empire, however, can reach up to 120,000 rupees per month -- more than ten times Pakistan's average -- in a neighbourhood that lacks basic amenities such as tap water and sewage, he said. He insisted he has never faced any financial problems trying to care for his brood, but did not explain how he could cover all the expenses with just pay for his medical work. Jan conceded that his needs may increase as his children grow and so is calling on the government to allocate funds for the food, education, and healthcare of his family -- a request that is unlikely to be fulfilled. But Jan has faith. If the government does not listen, he said, he trusts in God to provide. - Facebook proposals - Pakistan has the highest birth rate in South Asia -- around three children per woman according to World Bank and government figures -- though an accurate census has not been conducted in more than 30 years. Jan put his fertility down to daily doses of fresh and dry fruits, milk and meat; as well as reciting the Holy Koran and praying five times a day. While his eldest child is 15, his youngest is just a few weeks old. At the beginning of March he was still a father of merely 33, but that month two more daughters were born within six days of one another, he says. His marriages were all arranged by his parents. "I married the first one...when I was 26 years old, and the next year wedded the other two within a gap of five months," he told AFP. His next wedding, however, could be arranged via Facebook: since his story aired in Pakistani media, he says, he has had a slew of marriage offers via the social network. A large poster on the wall at Jan's house carries the symbol he used when he ran for provincial office in 2013: a double bed, which, he told AFP, "denotes special pleasure and meaning in my life". That time at least, his ambition fell short: he garnered 980 votes, not nearly enough to win. Ramallah (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - A prominent Palestinian lawmaker vowed to keep up her campaign for prisoners' rights after being released Friday following 14 months in an Israeli jail, AFP journalists at the scene said. Leftwinger Khalida Jarrar, 53, was arrested in April 2015 and later sentenced to 15 months in prison for encouraging attacks against Israelis, according to the Israeli army. She was released a month early due to overcrowding in Israeli jails, according to the prisons' administration. "There are still many prisoners, more than 7,000 -- including judges, parliamentarians, children and the sick," Jarrar told reporters at her home in Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank. A handcuffed Jarrar had been brought by Israel Prison Service officers to the Jabara checkpoint between Israel and the West Bank, where she was freed and walked a few metres (yards) on foot. She was greeted by Ayman Odeh, the head of the Arab Joint List in the Israeli parliament, and dozens of supporters. Jarrar is a senior figure in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist party considered a terrorist organisation by Israel. Many of its leaders are in custody and Jarrar has been jailed multiple times. Despite her release, Jarrar still has a five-year suspended sentence, according to Palestinian rights organisation Addameer. Her husband Ghassan Jarrar, himself a leftist jailed multiple times, told AFP he was only able to see his wife during the hearings of her trial in an Israeli military court. "It was very hard for her," he said, adding proudly that she "set up a school in prison and five girls were able to pass their exams through it." Jarrar is a member of the Palestinian parliament which has not met since 2007 after elections a year earlier were won by the Islamist movement Hamas. Six members of that parliament are still held by Israel, according to the Palestinian Prisoners' Club. LONDON (Reuters) - British rookie Jolyon Palmer will have a new Renault chassis for next week's Canadian Formula One Grand Prix after badly damaging the previous one in a Monaco crash last weekend, the team said on Friday. "Jolyons incident means we will use a new chassis," said technical director Nick Chester in a team preview of the Montreal race. "The car hit the barriers quite hard at an oblique angle which damaged the front of the chassis and since we have a new chassis available it makes sense to introduce it." Palmer lost control on the pit straight in Monaco immediately after a safety car stint had ended. The car skewed into the barriers on lap eight and came to rest at the Sainte Devote corner. The Briton blamed wet conditions and the slippery paint markings of a zebra crossing on a street circuit that uses regular roads. "The car was pitched sideways and I collected the barriers. It was just the wrong place at the wrong time," he said. "I had a bit of bruising on my feet so it was just my ego and the car that had to suffer." Palmer will also have the latest specification Renault power unit in his car for the first time in Canada. Renault made just two available in Monaco -- one for their works team and one for Red Bull Racing, whose engines have Tag Heuer badging. The French manufacturer's cars failed to finish in Monaco with Denmark's Kevin Magnussen also retiring following a collision with Toro Rosso's Russian Daniil Kvyat at the tight Rascasse corner. Chester said the crash had damaged mainly 'bolt-on' parts that were easy to replace. Renault racing director Fred Vasseur said Kvyat's attempt to pass, while one lap down, had been "a completely stupid move." Canada is the seventh race of 21 this season. Palmer has yet to score any points. (Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Ed Osmond) Muscat (AFP) - Long seen as unwanted fleabags wandering the streets in search of food, dogs in Oman have become pampered pets thanks to changing attitudes among Muslims towards canine companions. They may be man's best friend to millions around the globe, but in the Islamic world dogs have traditionally been shunned because tradition holds that they are unclean. In a suburb of Muscat, a 35-room "hotel" with a difference stands as a testament to the turnaround in pooch fortunes in the Gulf sultanate. The two-storey building boasts two small swimming pools, a veterinary clinic, grooming salons, a dressing room and two dog trainers. Three of the bedrooms at the PetCare Veterinary Centre are reserved for canine couples only. While it is by no means the first of its kind in the world, in Oman it is still something of a rarity. Its creator is Adel al-Jamri, who has travelled the globe participating in dog-breeding contests as far afield as Asia and Europe since the 1990s. Omanis and foreign residents alike bring their dogs to stay for between one night and three months, particularly when they go on holiday. Jamri said he was encouraged by "a change of mentality" in Oman that has seen a growing interest in dogs for companionship, hunting or to enter into competitions and animal shows. "The dog is no longer an unclean animal," he said. And their owners "entrust them to us, especially when they go on vacations". Muslim tradition holds that dogs' saliva is unclean and could spread disease. Islam "prohibits the ownership of dogs, apart from those used for guarding or hunting," said Sheikh Ahmed Khashba, the imam of a mosque in the Omani capital. While breeding camels and horses is an ancient tradition in Oman and neighbouring Gulf countries, "raising dogs and cats is new for us in the sultanate," said Salem al-Ghanimi, a customer at a pet store in Muscat. He puts it down to "the tendency of some people to imitate foreigners". Story continues However, many families still avoid keeping dogs because they believe it goes against the teachings of Islam, said Ghanimi. Store manager Mohammed Wassim says younger generations are at the forefront of the new trend of keeping pets. - 'More faithful than humans' - At the PetCare Veterinary Centre, four-legged guests undergo daily 15-minute exercise sessions. They range from small chihuahuas to German shepherds and golden retrievers. Hotel rules are strict: a dog cannot check in without a veterinary certificate showing it has had the necessary vaccinations. But with an occupancy rate that often exceeds 95 percent, there is no shortage of guests, said its chief administrator Azzan al-Zadlaji. The cost is eight rials ($21) a day for full board, or less if the owner provides the food. Smaller puppies qualify for a discount. The parents of 15-year-old student Sultan al-Rawahi brought their son's Dutch shepherd for one month to help him to concentrate on his exams. Sultan Yahia, another Omani, brought his pitbull for training in preparation for competitions. He also has a German shepherd at home. With purebred dogs growing in popularity, the centre has become a meeting point for dog breeders and owners who hope to start Muscat's first canine club. In the meantime they hold a dog show every Friday in an Oman park. And it is not just dogs that are pampered by Oman's growing ranks of animal aficionados. Lamia al-Bakri spends almost a fifth of her monthly salary on her cat. But she says her furry friend is worth it, "especially these days with animals proving to be more faithful than some humans." Paris (AFP) - Paris' world-famous Louvre and Musee d'Orsay museums shut on Friday to rush valuable artworks out of their basements, as the rain-swollen River Seine reached its highest level in three decades. At least 14 people have been killed in floods that have wrought havoc in Europe after days of torrential rain, trapping people in their homes and forcing rescuers to row lifeboats down streets turned into rivers. Parisians were urged to stay away from the Seine, which has spilled its banks in places and was expected to reach a peak of six metres (19.5 feet) Friday. A man on horseback died Thursday after he was swept away by a swollen river in Evry-Gregy-sur-Yerre, southeast of Paris. Ten people have been killed in Germany and two in Romania, while a bee-keeper died in Belgium while trying to protect his hives from the floods, local authorities in the Nassogne region said. French Environment Minister Segolene Royal said she feared more bodies would be found as waters recede in villages in central France, some of which have suffered their worst floods in a century. In Paris, officials have erected emergency flood barriers along the Seine, whose banks are home to both the Louvre -- the world's most visited museum, with attractions including the Mona Lisa -- and the Musee d'Orsay. The riverbanks are normally thronging with tourists in what is supposed to be the start of summer, but visitors were walking away disappointed. "We were going to go the Louvre today, and we were going to go on the boat cruise for dinner tonight -- and they were both cancelled," said American tourist Elle Yarborough, an English teacher from Boston. "It's too bad, but we're still happy to be in Paris." - Museums prepare for the worst - The downpours add to a gloomy atmosphere in France just a week before the country hosts the Euro 2016 football championships, with workers facing more train strikes Friday after months of protests and political turmoil. Story continues Both the Louvre and Musee d'Orsay, which see a combined 12.5 million visitors a year, closed their doors Friday so that artworks could be brought out of their basement archives to higher floors. While the river's swelling has so far caused little damage in Paris and is unlikely to submerge the city centre, residents living near the Seine were urged to clear their basements. Boat traffic has been banned in the capital, and a regional train line that runs along the Seine has been suspended. More than 20,000 people have been evacuated in France since the weekend and around 19,000 homes are without power. Rescuers in the Parisian suburb of Longjumeau paddled up streets in lifeboats Thursday, while in the town of Montargis, only the tops of cars could be seen peeking above the surface. French President Francois Hollande said a state of "natural catastrophe" would be declared when the cabinet meets next Wednesday, a necessary step to trigger compensation payments. - German devastation - Several towns in southern Germany have been devastated by flooding. In Simbach am Inn, the force of the water swept away the entire stock of a sawmill, leaving huge stacks of splintered wood blocking roads. On one street, a car could be seen parked vertically against the wall of a house, pushed there by the floodwaters. Many other vehicles lay flipped over on roads blanketed by mud. Six people have been killed in the Simbach area, including three women from the same family -- a mother, grandmother and daughter -- who had been trapped in their house. "The (rise in) water was so quick that practically no residents had the time to run away," police spokesman Armin Angloher said. Four people were killed earlier this week in the southern German region of Baden-Wuerttemberg, while three others are missing, a police spokesman in Bavaria state said. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her thoughts were with the families "who have been plunged into this devastation". The forecast had not called for rain in the 10 days preceding the Females of Faith Farm Fellowship at Chickadee Creek Farm in Pennington, New Jersey, in May, but the surprise storm clouds did not dampen attendance or enthusiasm. These church ladies with their hats came out in the rain, Sandy Kimbrough, who organized the event, said of the 16 black women clergy, ranging in age from the mid-30s to 78, who arrived from congregations in central New Jersey to attend the latest programming in Kimbrough's Black Clergy Wellness Initiative. As leaders in their communities, she hopes, pastors can preach not only the word of God but the importance of wellness too. They have enormous influence in the community, said Kimbrough, a member of St. Johns Baptist Church in Ewing, New Jersey. Look at Martin Luther King. Religious leaders have been very instrumental in leading a lot of our social movements. We need to have them not just talk the talk but buy in to changing the culture. We need them to not just put out the literature on diabetes in the lobby for their parishioners but to really get this. The statistics are grim. African Americans have the highest rates of obesity in the U.S.; more than half of all African American women are obese. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for African Americans, and about 14 percent of all African Americans over the age of 20 have diabetes. In New Jersey, in 2007 the Department of Health and Senior Services issued a strategic plan to eliminate health disparities. A grant issued in 2010 allowed the Office of Minority and Multicultural Health to expand its reach and capacity among community-based groups working on chronic disease prevention and management, but as of 2013, the rate of obesity in the state had increased among African Americans, according to data from the New Jersey State Health Assessment. (Obesity among white people also increased.) The statistics on black health and the disparity [with white health]its a chasm that gets wider and wider as we age, Kimbrough said. Story continues Kimbrough wants her programming to help minimize these disparities by extending the nutrition and farm-based education many kids are receiving in school to adults and seniors. She reaches them where they are already a rapt audience and where they are already eating: church. Church meals, often eaten together, are opportunities for pastors to lead by example, Kimbrough said. Other programs in the Black Clergy Wellness Initiative have included a farm to church tasting at the Princeton Theological Seminary for African American seminarians and a cooking demonstration featuring healthier versions of foods that are traditional in the black church, she said. The meatless collard greens and oven-baked crispy chicken were delicious, and both pastors and church kitchen staffers attended. We cant have them own their pulpits but not their kitchens, Kimbrough said. The Females of Faith Farm Fellowship at Chickadee Creek was a soggy success. The farms Jess Niederer, who won the 2016 National Outstanding Young Farmer award, answered questions about organic farming practices, CSA membership, and where attendees could purchase pea shoots and sweet turnips like the ones in their salad. I got into farming primarily because of a concern for peoples health. This was a perfect sort of request, Niederer said of the day Kimbrough drove up her driveway and pitched the idea of women pastors congregating at a woman-owned farm. I wanted to celebrate [Jess] as well as reacclimate people of color to the farms, Kimbrough said, With the history of blacks on Americas farms as being more of a negative memory as opposed to a positive one, weve got to try to turn more blacks around and give them a new glimpse of agriculture in their livesbecause it will save their lives. Wellness, in other words, is not just a matter of public health; it is the movement that underlies all the others. This focus enhances all of the other movements. In order to march, to be cognitively involved, weve got to be here, she said. Weve got to be alive. Outside at Chickadee Creek Farm, as the women prayed about wellness and sang spirituals, Kimbrough realized she was, in a sense, preaching to the choir. Their theology," she said, "pointed to a wholeness of well-being: We believe God wants us to be wellto be wholein our physical [being], in our emotional [being], in our spirit. Their understanding embraces all of this Gods green earth, being well, and moving toward the light. Take the Pledge: Let's Put an End to Food Waste Related stories on TakePart: Will 2016 Be the Year of the Soda Tax? Beats, Rhymes, and Vegan: The Hip-Hop Activists Are Out to Save Black Lives Kids Plant Michelle Obamas White House Kitchen Garden for the Last Time Original article from TakePart House Speaker Paul Ryan may have endorsed Donald Trumps presidential campaign, but his office said Friday that he will not encourage other Republicans to support their partys presumptive nominee. And just one day after Ryan announced that he will vote for Trump, which came after a month-long standoff, the speaker denounced him for racially tinged criticisms of a federal judge. During a Wisconsin radio interview with News Talk 1130 WISN, Ryan condemned Trumps recent remarks questioning the fitness of U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel. Trump suggested that Curiels Mexican heritage was a conflict of interest in a civil case he is overseeing against the now defunct Trump University. The comment about the judge the other day just was out of left field from my mind, Ryan said. Its reasoning I dont relate to. I completely disagree with the thinking behind that. Ryan said that the comment was evidence that Trump clearly says and does things I dont agree with, and Ive had to speak up from time to time when that has occurred. Indeed, before Ryan said a month ago he was not ready to endorse Trump because he had concerns about his commitment to the Constitution and to conservative principles, he had publicly criticized Trump on several occasions. Ill continue to do that if its necessary. I hope its not, Ryan said Friday. But its not as if Trumps comments on Thursday could have caught Ryan by surprise. Trump first complained about Curiel back in February, and even then questioned his ability to preside over the Trump University case based on the fact that Curiel, who was born and raised in Indiana, is Latino. Theres a hostility toward me by the judge, tremendous hostility, beyond belief. I believe he happens to be Spanish, which is fine, hes Hispanic, Trump said in February. Trump attacked Curiel by name numerous times during a speech last week in San Diego, calling him a hater, saying he should be ashamed of himself, and again raising his ethnic background. And then in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Trump said that Curiel had an inherent conflict of interest in the case because he was of Mexican heritage. Story continues Im building a wall across the U.S.-Mexican border, Trump said. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. (Photo: REUTERS) Numerous legal and political observers have noted that Trumps attacks on Judge Curiel signal a level of disregard for the independence of the U.S. judiciary, which is one of the three coequal branches that check and balance each other. Americas founding fathers created the nations constitutional system with the intent to prevent excessive power from being concentrated in any one place in the government, and to insulate the government from being overly responsive to popular passions. Trump has repeatedly expressed a desire to act unilaterally as president. He has talked about forcing members of the military to commit war crimes and making it easier to sue media organizations. He has also publicly threatened critics. Political experts have noted that if Trump won the election this fall, he could attempt to use his massive public platform and celebrity, as well as the substantial powers of the federal government, to go after those who do not support his agenda. Ryan said Friday that he had spoken with Trump about executive overreach and found the businessman and reality TV personality responsive to his concerns. But many conservatives sympathetic to Ryan believe that Trumps assurances are worthless, because Trump has repeatedly shown a tendency to backtrack on his own statements. Ryan boosters expressed bafflement over the timing of this weeks Trump endorsement, but some said they thought he was likely trying to protect his six-point reform agenda from Trump criticism as the speaker unveils each piece over the next three weeks. Our goal is to spend this summer and this fall talking with our fellow citizens about these ideas, about these principles, about these policies, Ryan said. If Ryan is attempting to insulate his policy agenda and tie Trump to it, then his endorsement of Trump was also a concession to political pressures. Ryan does not want to be blamed in any way for a Trump loss, because it would give oxygen to the forces that have created him. Many political insiders of both parties see Trump as a fool or dangerous, or both, and Republicans who hope or expect him to fail are mostly trying to get out of his way so that they can pick up the pieces after he loses the election this fall to Clinton. And so, despite Ryans endorsement of Trump, he will also likely do as little as possible to support his candidacy. A Ryan aide told Yahoo News that he would not be encouraging other Republicans one way or another on whether to support Trump. Ryan was speaking for himself, the aide said of the speakers Thursday op-ed, in which he said he would vote for Trump. This is a decision individuals will make on their own. The speaker believes we need to be unified this fall to beat [likely Democratic nominee Hillary] Clinton. The aide also said that Ryan and Trump have had approximately five conversations, and that the conversations will continue. Ryan said Thursday in his endorsement of Trump that over the course of their conversations he had become confident that the governing agenda he is presenting, starting next week, would have a willing partner in Trump if he were to become president. Ryan is rolling out the first of six agenda items welfare reform next Tuesday. He told Vicki McKenna of WISN that during his talks with Trump (including a high-profile face-to-face meeting at the Republican National Committee last month) they had reached a comfortable understanding of each other, not just the two of us as people but just as the relationship between a Trump presidency and a Republican Congress. At the end of the day, this agenda were rolling out which is our conservative principles it is clear to me that we have somebody who is a willing partner in advancing these things and I know for darn sure Hillary Clinton is going to go in the opposite direction, Ryan told McKenna. Paul Ryan House Speaker Paul Ryan's endorsement of Donald Trump doesn't mean that the House speaker will be in constant agreement with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, he said on Friday during an interview with WISN radio host Vicki McKenna. While explaining his endorsement of the businessman, Ryan called Trump out for a recent comment to The Wall Street Journal. Trump said in a Thursday interview that US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel had "an absolute conflict" in presiding over the civil cases against Trump University because Curiel was "of Mexican heritage," as Trump put it, and belonged to a Latino lawyers association. He added that Curiel's ethnic background was relevant because of his campaign promises to build a wall along the US-Mexico border and deport immigrants living in the country illegally. "I'm building a wall," Trump told The Journal. "It's an inherent conflict of interest." Ryan said on Friday that he "completely" disagrees with that logic. "Look, the comment about the judge the other day just was out of left field for my mind," Ryan told McKenna. "It's reasoning I don't relate to, I completely disagree with the thinking behind that." "He clearly says things I do not agree with, and I've had to speak up from time to time when that happens," Ryan said, adding that he will continue to do so if necessary. Paul Ryan Ryan reiterated that he endorsed Trump because he believes that the real-estate magnate will help advance Ryan's conservative policy agenda, which he is set to begin unveiling next week. He also said that Trump's list of potential Supreme Court nominees played a big factor in his decision. "At the end of the day, it is clear to me that we have somebody who is a willing partner in advancing these things," he said. "Hillary Clinton will go in the opposite direction." The saga surrounding whether Ryan would endorse Trump began nearly a month ago, when he told CNN's Jake Tapper that he was not yet ready to endorse after Trump cleared the field following a big win in the Indiana primary. He announced his support for Trump in an op-ed published in his hometown Wisconsin newspaper, The Gazette, on Thursday. Story continues "We're different people," Ryan said. "We have a different tone, a different style, that's very clear. But what matters to me is the agenda we're going to be producing. Are we more likely to get those ideas into law with Donald Trump than Clinton? ... The answer is yes." But McKenna brought up the fact that many conservatives feel disenfranchised by Trump because of prior statements he made. She considered Trump's comment that he might still add potential Supreme Court nominees to his list of justices as an example of something he could have made a more careful statement about. Ryan agreed. "I think we're getting used to that," he said. McKenna added that Trump's supposed carelessness "is the problem a lot of people have." "I know," Ryan responded. NOW WATCH: Heres what Trumps spokesperson has to say about Paul Ryan More From Business Insider Weirdest Reuters Photos 2015 Japan's nationwide fertility rate just hit its highest level in 21 years. The total rate increased to 1.46 in 2015, slightly up from the previous rate of 1.42 in 2014, according to the health ministry. The biggest contribution to the increase came from women 30 to 34, according to Bloomberg. This is no doubt a good sign for a country struggling with a looming demographic crisis. But what's particularly interesting about this spike in fertility is that there was a correlation with cash incentives for new parents. Christopher Wood, author of CLSA's weekly Greed & Fear newsletter, pointed out in his latest installment that the highest fertility rate among Tokyo's wards was in the Minato Ward, where parents get one-time cash payouts of up to 180,000 yen about $1,684 a birth. Moreover, he noted that the biggest improvement in fertility in the country was in a town called Ama on the island of Nakanoshima, which has a "leveraged scheme to incentivize mating": parents get 100,000 yen (about $940) for the first baby, but get 1 million yen (about $9,400) for the fourth kid. The town's fertility rate bumped up to 1.80 from 1.66 between 2014 and 2015. Wrote Wood in the note: This fits a point made by GREED & fear before, namely that the best way to deal with Japan's demographic issue is via financial incentives, with 10 million per child seeming to [us] about the minimum level of incentive required in central Tokyo given the costs of parenthood, a reality [we are] well aware of. Screen Shot 2016 06 03 at 11.27.35 AM Notably, some economists have argued that women who lived in developed economies are dis-incentivized to reproduce precisely because having kids is very expensive. Or, another possibility here, as one of my economics professors once put it a few years back: "Why would a woman choose to have another kid that costs $250,000 a year when she can instead go work in finance and rake in $1 million a year?" So Wood's ideas are quite interesting: It appears that cash incentives, at least somewhat, address the whole issue of not having kids because they're too expensive. Story continues Wood added in his note: In the end nothing can detract from the power of financial incentives. Just as higher minimum wages will encourage the acceleration of robot technology, the provision of a meaningful capital sum should encourage child rearing. It is certainly superior to negative rates, and also more reflationary. NOW WATCH: Japanese engineers have built a super-efficient floating solar plant More From Business Insider From Cosmopolitan A new statue in Sugar Land, Texas, is here to celebrate the world's love for taking selfies - but not everyone in the town is excited to see it. Depicting two women taking a selfie, the bronze statue is part of a 10-piece collection donated by city resident Sandy Levin and was resurrected in front of Sugar Land's town hall. According to Time, the Sugar Land Parks and Recreation Advisory Board claims that the collection is meant to depict "activities that occur in the Square," but even though other statues depict more "timeless" activities - such as a man playing guitar - people seem to be offended that a selfie statue would be included in the mix. On the other hand, quite a few people have totally embraced Sugar Land's new selfie statue and, of course, used it as the perfect opportunity to take another selfie. Follow Gina on Twitter. Peru is a nation divided. As polling day in the second round of this years hotly contested presidential elections has edged closer, Peruvians have been forced to choose between two camps. But its not the two candidates, their policies or their vision for the countrys future that is driving a wedge between voters. Instead, the controversial legacy of a notorious former leader from more than a decade ago is shaping how Peruvians choose their next president. Read More: The Caretaker President and Poet Taking Charge of a Troubled Brazil That former leader, Alberto Fujimori, was a right-winger and President of Peru for ten years from 1990. A child of Japanese immigrants to Peru, Fujimori helped kickstart the countrys economy with controversial free-market reforms, and tackled left-wing rebels. But he was a controversial figure during his time in office, and after fleeing to Japan and resigning by fax in 2000, he flew to Chile in 2005, only to be arrested and extradited to Peru, where he was convicted of human rights abuses during his time in power. He is now serving a 25-year sentence in prison. Yet the former leaders daughter, Keiko Fujimori, could become the next President of Peru after polls close on June 5, even while her father sits in jail. She leads her opponent, 77-year-old Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, by three points in the polls. Read More: These 5 Facts Explain Why Venezuela Could Be on the Brink of Collapse Fujimori already won the first round of voting in April, taking home 39.86 per cent of the votes. Kuczynski trailed far behind with 21.05 per cent, narrowly beating the left-wing Veronika Mendoza for second place. Under Perus electoral system, if no candidate wins a majority of the popular vote in the first round, a run-off between the top two is triggered. After Fujimoris narrow defeat in the second round of Perus last elections in 2011, she is now poised to make it over the topthanks in part to taking pages from her fathers playbook. She has worked very hard to reinforce her fathers traditional base of support. For five years she has been incessantly travelling the country, visiting town after town in the interior, said Steven Levitsky, a Peru expert and Professor of Government at Harvard University. Story continues Read More: The Troubling Historical Anniversary That Falls During Obamas Argentina Trip Fujimoris supporters say her time has now come: Right now, she is the only option that we have to put our future in the hands of somebody who can lead Peru out of this current situation, said Rita Rodriguez, 50, leader of a local branch of the Fuerza Popular party in central Lima. She was a member of Alberto Fujimoris original Cambio 90 party in the 1990s and has remained a fujimorista ever since. But experts believe that the Keiko Fujimoris popularity is not only down to her links with her father. The number of committed fujimoristas in Peru is only around 15 to 20 per cent of the electorate, says Levitsky. Keiko Fujimori has out-campaigned everybody else since the last election, building without question the strongest political organization in the country. Luz Salgado, a Member of Congress for Fuerza Popular and a key member of Alberto Fujimoris government in the 1990s, agrees: You can certainly separate Keiko Fujimori from her fathers legacy. She has admitted that her fathers government made errors. And responsibility for these errors is individualyou cant be held accountable for what your father has done. Fujimoris critics argue that, even beyond the problem of her father, Fujimori lacks the necessary experience to be president. She is not somebody with the ability to lead our country, says Gonzalo Cordova, 35, a member of an anti-Fujimori activist group in Lima. Shes lived a public life since she was very young. Then she became a member of congress. Shes never had an actual job. Yet it is her ability to walk a tightrope of public perception that has defined Fujimoris campaign. She is both the daughter of a former president and a champion of the poor; she can simultaneously distance herself from her fathers legacy and embrace his traditional support base. It wasnt always so: in an interview for a 2005 documentary about her fathers fall, she defended him defiantly. What politicians here in Peru still cant believe is that after all the accusations that they have made up against my father, his approval ratings are still between 35 and 40 per cent. The more hes attacked, the more popular he becomes. Thats what they fear: the return of Fujimori. In the decade since that interview, Fujimori has attempted to carve out her own political identity. During a television debate before the first round of voting in April, she signed a pledge to not use her political power to benefit any member of her family if elected. This was widely interpreted in Peru as a promise not to pardon her father. As election day looms, Fujimoris true political identity remains a mystery to many Peruvians, even as they are poised to elect her to the countrys highest office. There is a huge amount of debate in Peru about whether her efforts to distance herself from her father are just theater, and that the plan is to simply pardon him on day one of her presidency, says Levitsky. The truth is, nobody really knows. (Note: election law forbids publication of polls in Peru a week prior to June 5 voting) By Mitra Taj LIMA (Reuters) - Less than a decade after Peru imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori, voters will decide on Sunday whether to put his 41-year-old daughter back in the presidential palace where she once served as his first lady. Keiko Fujimori has a slight lead over her rival, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, ahead of the run-off vote, helped by her tough stance on crime and years of campaigning in poor villages in the populist style of her right-wing father. But with pollster Ipsos estimating a fifth of voters tend to remain undecided until election day, Kuczynski, a 77-year-old former investment banker, could stage a late surge. It is Fujimori's second bid to become Peru's first female president. Her critics fear a return to the days when her father ruled the Andean nation by decree, despite her repeated promises to respect the democratic institutions he trampled before his government collapsed in a vast corruption scandal in 2000. Alberto Fujimori, the son of Japanese immigrants, is serving a 25-year sentence for graft and human rights abuses committed during a crackdown on a bloody leftist insurgency. "Voting for Fujimori would be legitimizing the dictatorship," said Eduardo Leon, a 34-year-old restaurant owner who plans to vote for Kuczynski. Fujimori slipped in two opinion polls after tens of thousands protested her candidacy on Tuesday. The surveys, by Datum and CPI, showed her back in a statistical tie with Kuczynski. Both candidates are free-market champions who defeated leftist rivals in a crowded April 10 first-round vote as Peru reinforced the recent trend of South American countries turning away from left-wing policies. Fujimori's brand of populist conservatism is rooted in her father's decade-long rule, when leftist guerrillas were crushed and new schools and roads were brought to far-flung towns. That stands in stark contrast with Kuczynski's technocratic style. "As an economist he's used to numbers and can be frigid in that sense," said Kuczynski's running mate, Martin Vizcarra, a former governor of a copper-mining region in southern Peru. Kuczynski is one of the few high-profile politicians in the global minerals exporter unburdened by corruption and money-laundering allegations. While he is widely viewed as honest and experienced, he is seen as less supportive than Fujimori of the social safety network that millions of poor Peruvians rely on despite nearly two decades of robust economic growth. TOUGH STANCE ON CRIME Prosecutors in Peru have been investigating potential irregularities in Fujimori's campaign finances and one of her top aides stepped down last month amid allegations he had links to drug trafficking. But Fujimori has seized the initiative on the crime issue, the leading voter concern, by backing a proposal to declare a state of emergency in Lima after a wave of homicides. She also supports the death penalty for rapists of children and has vowed to build prisons high in the Andes to isolate dangerous criminals, a proposal Kuczynski dubbed "cruel." "He feels sorry for them, he's trembling," Fujimori said mockingly at a campaign rally. "My hand will not waver! I'm going to be firm with criminals!" The fierce battle between Fujimori and her opponents has overshadowed Kuczynski, who has shied away from direct attacks even as he courted undecided voters. "Vote for democracy, no blank or spoiled ballots!" Kuczynski said, wagging a finger in a campaign ad. Fujimori says her father, who named her first lady after he divorced her mother, is innocent of the crimes that made him one of the few world leaders to be imprisoned in his own country. But she has promised not to use presidential powers to free him. Her supporters say her background would set the bar higher if she became the second Fujimori to rule Peru. "It's obvious she wants to clear the family name," said Hernando de Soto, a high-profile Peruvian economist who has endorsed her. "She's going to do everything possible to not be authoritarian." (Additional reporting by Teresa Cespedes; Editing by Kieran Murray and Peter Cooney) Lima (AFP) - Both candidates running for president of Peru have vowed to create jobs and wealth. In a land of gold and copper, that means tackling deadly disputes over mining. US companies such as gold miner Newmont and Southern Copper are busy extracting minerals from the Peruvian Andes, helping the economy outperform many of its neighbors. But such projects have sparked deadly protests by locals in rural areas who say the mining damages the environment. That has put the two right-of-center candidates in Sunday's presidential runoff vote in a bind. Frontrunner Keiko Fujimori, the 41-year-old daughter of jailed former president Alberto Fujimori, has vowed to improve life for poor rural communities. Her opponent, former banker and mining executive Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, has made similar promises. But both have also vowed to invest in the country's mines, one of its biggest assets, accounting for 10 percent of the economy. In doing so, they risk the mistrust of voters. "We don't expect anything from either candidate, since they both defend the current model," said Wilfredo Saavedra, president of the Environmental Defense Front in the northern mining city of Cajamarca. "Whoever governs the country must respect the popular will: no to mining near the heads of rivers, no to open-cast mining and yes to protection of the ecosystem." - Mercury poisoning - In recent years protests have forced the suspension of various copper, gold and silver mining projects, according to the Peruvian Economic Institute, a non-profit development group. The investment in those projects is valued at $21.5 million overall, the group says. Civilians have been killed in clashes with police at protests, including actions against mining by Newmont and Southern Copper. The state ombudsman says 69 people have been killed in such protests since 2011. Meanwhile unregulated mining activities are poisoning local villages. The government declared an environmental emergency last month in 11 Amazon jungle districts where mercury pollution blamed on unregulated gold mining poisoned people and fish. Story continues Carlos Galvez, president of the National Mining Society, complains of a "double standard." "Legal operations with environmental precautions are not being permitted, while there are a lot of people involved in illegal mining in prohibited areas," he told AFP. "The new government must show leadership to convince the population of the necessity to move forward with mining projects that ensure financing for the growth of the country and to reduce poverty." The outgoing government of Ollanta Humala has cracked down in illegal miners, destroying their equipment. The two candidates to replace him have put more emphasis on "formalizing" the unregulated mining sector in order to reap the profits from it. Kuczynski and Fujimori have promised to protect the environment and invest in improving basic services in rural communities before launching mining projects in them. "Both candidates support the mining sector. But the outlook for new projects is not good," said Maria Luisa Puig, a Peruvian analyst at the Eurasia Group consultancy. "This is a period of low prices and the existing social conflicts are not easy to resolve." Last month, President Obama visited residents and local politicians in Flint, Michigan, to talk about the city's water crisis. Standing on stage, Obama asked for a glass of water from the tap, and took a sip, proving that Flint's water was safe for drinking if it was filtered. But as one city begins to emerge from its more than two-year water crisis, at least 33 others across the country may be heading in the same direction. Philadelphia could be one of the worst and now the city's water department is being sued for it. According to the Guardian, the Hagens Berman law firm filed a class action lawsuit against the city, accusing officials of putting the public at risk with its bad water-testing practices. President Obama drinks Flint tap water. Steve Berman, the law firm's managing partner, told the Guardian that the city's construction "creates the perfect storm for lead pipe corrosion." He added, "Yet the city has decided to conceal this growing health hazard from its own citizens," alleging that officials have "rigged" lead-testing procedures. In January, the outlet reported Philadelphia is among the cities whose officials have been continually and intentionally flubbing routine reports on water safety. Medical ethnographer Dr. Yanna Lambrinidou told the Guardian at the time that Philadelphia's procedures for water testing have minimized lead levels for two decades. "Philadelphia is arguably worse than Flint in the testing of drinking water because they use pre-flushing, the removal of the aerator and the slow flow of water into bottles, which can also distort the result," she explained. Though city officials didn't respond to the Guardian for comment and have previously thrown skepticism at the allegations now formally waged in Thursday's lawsuit, Philadelphia residents have lost faith in their local government. Navajo Tafari, a father of five, told the Guardian he doesn't trust the city "for anything." He said, "I pay my taxes, I go to work, I do what I'm supposed to do, but as far as, like, trust no, I don't." Manila (AFP) - A Philippine politician said he had given more than $3,000 to police officers for killing drug traffickers, the first such rewards since president-elect Rodrigo Duterte promoted bounties for slain criminals. Duterte won last month's elections in a landslide after pledging to wipe out crime by killing tens of thousands of criminals, and this week said he would pay bounties to law enforcement officers for dead drug traffickers. Tomas Osmena, mayor-elect of Cebu, the nation's second-biggest city, offered similar rewards and announced on his Facebook page on Thursday night he had paid out 155,000 pesos ($3,300) to police who killed three men he said were drug traffickers. Osmena posted a series of comments celebrating the deaths of the three men, as he lashed out at the Commission on Human Rights, a constitutionally mandated body, for investigating the circumstances of the May 28 killings. "CHR = Criminals. Have. Rights. (Even more than the real victims)," Osmena wrote. Osmena described one of the slain suspects, Rowen Secretaria, as one of Cebu's biggest drug dealers. Osmena did not return calls from AFP requesting comment, and in a previous interview refused to disclose where the money for the bounties would come from. Osmena and Duterte, like all winners in the national elections, will not take office until June 30. But Duterte this week urged security forces to begin the war on crime immediately, calling on them to kill criminals. Duterte announced on Tuesday he would pay three million pesos ($21,000) to law enforcers for killing drug lords, with lesser amounts for lower-ranking people in drug syndicates. However Osmena's rewards are the first confirmation of a payment being made for killing a suspect. Duterte's law-and-order campaign pledges hypnotised millions of Filipinos hoping for quick solutions to the nation's deep-rooted problems of crime and corruption. However human rights groups and other critics voiced alarm that a Duterte presidency would lead to extrajudicial killings and a general breakdown in the rule of law. Story continues A recent spate of drug suspects being killed has deepened those fears. Police have confirmed killing at least 15 drug suspects, including Secretaria and his group, since May 24. However police have insisted all of those deaths occurred because the suspects fought back, and that there were no illegal killings. Controversial Philippine president-elect Rodrigo Duterte has launched a profanity-laced tirade against the United Nations while criticising it for being too weak to fix problems in the Middle East and Africa. In a seemingly unprovoked attack on the UN at a Thursday night press conference, Duterte vented his anger in response to a question about foreign media groups that were critical of him. "That's the trouble here, they're always raising fears about this or that United Nations convention," Duterte said, even though the journalists' criticism had not been linked to UN protocols. "[Expletive deleted] you UN, you can't even solve the Middle East carnage... couldn't even lift a finger in Africa... shut up all of you." Duterte, 71, had been incensed by the criticism of foreign and local media groups to his comments earlier in the week that corrupt journalists were legitimate targets of assassination. Explaining his stance on corrupt journalists, Duterte said on Tuesday that one murdered reporter who was a vocal critic of his who deserved to die. Duterte refused to apologise on Thursday and warned the media with a further expletive. The Philippines is one of the most dangerous nations in the world for journalists, with 174 murdered since a chaotic and corruption-plagued democracy replaced the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos three decades ago. The United Nations has made no recent criticism of Duterte, who has been mayor of the southern city of Davao for most of the past two decades and will be sworn into office on June 30. But in 2008 the then-UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, Philip Alston, highlighted concerns about unsolved murders in Davao. "A death squad operates in Davao City, with men routinely killing street children and others in broad daylight," Alston said in a report. Human rights groups have accused Duterte of links to the so-called Davao Death Squads, which they say have murdered more than 1,000 people. Story continues Duterte has variously denied and acknowledged any links to them. But he has been unequivocal that thousands of criminals will be killed when he takes office and unleashes security forces in an unprecedented war on crime. One of Duterte's main election campaign pledges was to end crime within six months of taking office. This week he offered bounties worth tens of thousands of dollars to security forces who killed drug traffickers. Duterte courted further controversy by wolf whistling a female journalist, then responding to her husband's outrage by insisting he was not sexually harassing her. A pilot has died in a U.S. Navy Blue Angels jet crash Thursday afternoon in Smyrna, Tennessee, PEOPLE has learned. According to a press release from the Naval Air Forces, the name of the pilot is being withheld pending next-of-kin notification requirements. Country star Hunter Hayes was scheduled to fly in a US Navy Blue Angels F/A-18 Hornet jet on Thursday ahead of the Great Tennessee Air Show at the Smyrna Airport this weekend. Five other Blue Angel jets were not involved in the incident and landed safely moments later. Larry Farley, the Rutherford County fire chief, dispatchers were told that one person was killed, The Tennessean reports. Pilot Killed in US Navy Blue Angels Jet Crash, Hunter Hayes on Scene and Scheduled to Fly Same Day| Hunter Hayes According to a source on the scene, Hayes was talking to a member of the Blue Angels team when the crash occurred. "[Hayes] jumped up from his chair and went to the window to see the smoke," the insider told PEOPLE. "There was a big fireball and tons of smoke. Everyone is waiting in stunned silence, hoping for some good news." New York (AFP) - A Polish grandfather attempting his third solo trans-Atlantic kayak crossing has been forced to give up because of strong waves off the US coast. Adventurer Aleksander Doba paddled off from the tip of Manhattan Sunday. His goal was to reach Portugal in time to celebrate his 70th birthday on land in September. But waves off Sandy Hook in the state of New Jersey pushed Doba ashore, he said on his Facebook page Friday. Doba reached shore safely with his kayak but it was too severely damaged to go out again, his land-based team said. He will try again next year, it said. A star at home, gray-bearded Doba gained global attention when he was named a National Geographic adventurer of the year in 2015. At that point, the retired engineer -- also an avid rock-climber, parachutist, glider pilot, sailor and yacht skipper -- had already had two solo Atlantic kayak crossings under his belt. The first, between October 2010 and February 2011, took him from the Senegalese capital Dakar to the Brazilian city of Acarau. The second saw him set off from Lisbon in October 2013 and arrive in Florida in April of the following year. Los Angeles (AFP) - Forged in the white heat of California's gay and lesbian counter-culture, the political careers of four women have changed the course of history for members of the LGBT community. Carole Migden, Sheila Kuehl, Jackie Goldberg and Christine Kehoe, the first openly gay politicans to serve on the state legislature, spent more than a decade taking the fight for civil rights off the streets and into the halls of government. They are the focus of "Political Animals," a new feature length documentary celebrating their landmark civil rights victories and documenting the struggles they faced. "One wonderful thing about being a lesbian and a women's activist is that you learn very early that it doesn't pay to be a good girl. You need to be a bad girl," says Kuehl, 75. Between them, the women are responsible for the first domestic partnership registry enacted by a legislature, the first anti-bullying bill protecting gay students and numerous other laws which have effected social change in California. Migden, 67, worked for gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk in the 1970s and in many ways she and her three colleagues are the legacy of his profound impact on American politics and popular culture. Milk joined the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, becoming one of the first openly gay elected officials in the US, before he was murdered by a former supervisor the following year. Migden was asked to advise mayor Diane Feinstein on LGBT issues upon Milk's killing, the subject of an acclaimed 2008 feature film starring Sean Penn. - 'Our own Pied Piper' - "As an openly gay man, unafraid, mature and one who achieved power in the straight world, Harvey Milk's clarity of vision, audacity and supreme self confidence added dignity to gayness," Migden told AFP. "Our community recognized our own Pied Piper and embraced his pride and quest for visibility. Harvey showed me by example to be unabashed, to run for office, to fund-raise from all but vote independently." Story continues Migden authored legislation in 1999 which for the first time recognized domestic partnerships at the state level without court intervention. Now a consultant specializing in bringing women into office, she is involved in the election campaign for Hillary Clinton, whom she says has "faced and overcome sexist attitudes throughout her entire career." "Political Animals" shows the tough bargains Migden and her colleagues had to strike to make progress as legislators who were often swimming against the tide to create social change. A former child actress turned civil rights attorney and law professor, Sheila Keuhl became the first openly gay person to be elected to the California legislature, in 1994. Perhaps her most notable contribution was the California Student Safety and Violence Prevention Act of 2000, which added sexual orientation to the list of prohibited bases for discrimination in schools. "Students told me they would carry copies of the law in their backpacks and press them on teachers and administrators who were turning a blind eye to the daily harassment and abuse these kids were suffering," she said. - Tenacity - "Political Animals" also celebrates the achievements of Jackie Goldberg, who spent six years in the assembly from the turn of the millennium, after starting out as a student civil rights activist. The 71-year-old Berkeley graduate, a major player in the 1960s free speech movement on US campuses, was the first openly lesbian councillor elected to Los Angeles City Council. In the state assembly she authored the Domestic Partner State Law in 2003 that provides same-gender couples with nearly the same rights as married couples. The fourth of the quartet, Christine Kehoe, served in the assembly and then the senate for 12 years from 2000. A Catholic who has stood against church teaching on homosexuality, Kehoe led San Diego's "No on 64" campaign against a measure that would have quarantined people infected with HIV. She describes Pope Francis as a "breath of fresh air" but adds: "Real change in Catholic teaching has not come yet. Like the Church's deeply embedded misogyny, (its) hypocrisy about homosexuality will take a lot longer to change." "Political Animals," which premieres on Saturday at the Los Angeles Film Festival, was the brainchild of Jonah Markowitz and Tracy Wares, LGBT filmmakers who first met in middle school in Boulder, Colorado. "Needless to say we were immediately drawn into these women -- Jackie's tenacity, Shelia's erudite poise, Carole's brash and unapologetic strategy and Christine's patient, emotional and unilateral ability to bring different parties to the table," they said in a statement. Douala (AFP) - Can a "pot in a bag" help fight climate change? Some Cameroonian housewives who think so are using the clever new fad to stew up their tasty rice and tomatoes. The fireless cooker, which looks like a bag and comes in colourful traditional prints, works on a simple principle -- it retains heat. Made of polystyrene and cloth, it sells for between 10,000 CFA francs ($17.15) to 22,000 and is made and sold by an NGO helping the needy in the heavily polluted city of three million people, Douala. One perk is it lasts forever. But aside from helping people save money, the goal, says Catherine Leugue who runs the NGO, is "to save gas, wood, carbon and petrol". The potpourri of fresh ingredients first was thrown into a traditional pot to be heated up using a firewood or gas-powered stove. "We contribute in our own way to protecting the environment because our fireless cooker bags do not emit smoke," she told AFP. Does the food taste as good, though? - 'Dinner's ready!' - Sitting on benches peeling onions and chopping carrots, peppers and leaves, a group of women prepared a local delicacy -- sauteed rice with tomatoes and herbs. The potpourri of fresh ingredients first was thrown into a traditional pot to be heated up using a firewood or gas-powered stove. Just as the vegetables reached boiling-point, Leugue added five bags of rice, five litres of water and seasoning for local flavour. "It's important to add enough water, salt and seasoning because once we put the pot in the cooker, we won't be able to open it again until the meal is ready," she says. The downside for the hungry is that using the bag means an extra 45 to 50 minutes to cook. "Cooking in the bag takes longer, but that's not a problem because I can do other things meanwhile," said Marie Siendjeu. "I like it," she added. "I use four times less firewood and sawdust now and I can cook all kinds of dishes in the bag. As the bag started to steam, "Dinner's ready!" called out Leugue, who aims to hit local markets next in order to attract more customers. On the same day that that a shooter opened fire at the University of California, Los Angeles, leaving two dead, President Barack Obama appeared at a town hall Wednesday in Elkhart, Indiana, for PBS NewsHour. An audience member asked him about gun control, accusing Obama of being too radical on the issue. Obama's reaction was anything but lukewarm: "Do you know that Congress will not allow the Centers for Disease Control to study gun violence?" Obama said in response to the Elkhart resident's question about why he and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wanted to restrict "good people" from getting firearms. "They're not allowed to study it. Because the notion is that by studying it, the same way we do with traffic accidents, somehow that's going to lead to everyone's guns being confiscated." The president staunchly disagreed with the audience member's viewpoint that any kind of gun regulation was violating the rights of said "good people." "So, sir, I just have to say respectfully, there is a way to have common-sense gun laws," Obama concluded in his response. "But the only way we're going to do that is if we don't have a situation in which anything that's proposed is viewed as some tyrannical destruction of the 2nd Amendment." The interaction came as part of a few bonus questions the president fielded after the official broadcast had ended. Source: Mic/Getty Images "I'd like to use Chicago, your hometown ... as my first example," the audience member said while challenging the president. "Why can't we round up these thugs, these drug dealers and gang members and hold them accountable for their actions, or allow the good people in Chicago access to firearms to protect themselves?" Leaving the racial implications of the question aside, Obama said that he had not once suggested guns be taken away from Americans, but was instead a proponent of "common-sense gun laws" to keep firearms out of the hands of those who have a history or are suspected of violence. However, the president added, the mere mention of gun control precipitates political paralysis. Story continues "We are not allowed to do any of that when it comes to guns, because if you propose anything, it is suggested that we're trying to wipe away gun rights and impose tyranny and martial law," Obama said. He cited the government's response to automobile fatalities, which, thanks to regulation (like requiring seat belts and airbags), have declined by 25% over the past decade. Obama argued guns need to be approached in a comparable way, regulated for the sake of public safety. However, the president added, the mere mention of gun control precipitates political paralysis. In order to demonstrate the harmful ramifications of not regulating firearms access and manufacturing, the president also described an incident in the Situation Room from earlier that day in which he'd received intel on specific American citizens who were ISIS sympathizers. "We're allowed to put them on the 'no fly list' ... but because of the National Rifle Association, I cannot prohibit those people from buying a gun," Obama said. PBS NewsHour coanchor Gwen Ifill talks to Obama during the town hall. NRA lobbying on Capitol Hill is largely responsible for the aforementioned political paralysis. After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012, champions of gun control were galvanized, campaigning for a change in existing laws. Yet they were financially no match for the NRA. "The National Rifle Association outspent supporters of new gun controls [expanding background checks] by hundreds of thousands of dollars as the Senate considered and ultimately rejected legislation," the Hill wrote in April 2013. President Barack Obama on Friday commuted the sentences of 42 people convicted of drug-related crimes, saying the individuals were serving prison terms based on "outdated and unduly harsh sentencing laws." Obama's grants of clemency Friday brings the number of commuted sentences he's granted over his time in office to 348 which the White House said is "more than the previous seven Presidents combined." Many of those whose sentences Obama reduced were serving life sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. "He remains committed to using his clemency power throughout the remainder of the Administration to give more deserving individuals that same second chance," the White House wrote in a press release. Commuter-in Chief? -- Obama has now commuted more prison sentences than prior 7 pres combined:https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/03/30/president-obama-has-now-commuted-sentences-348-individuals ... Obama has made criminal justice reform a priority during his time in office. Last July, he called for the reduction or elimination of mandatory minimum sentencing for drug-related offenses. Earlier this year, he called for an end of putting incarcerated juveniles in solitary confinement. And he's pushed for banning employers from making potential employees disclose their criminal history in job applications. Washington (AFP) - Although Donald Trump defeated numerous rivals for the Republican presidential nod fairly easily, polls suggest he'll lose the November general election to Democrat Hillary Clinton, now just days away from clinching her party's nomination. But Norman Ornstein -- a highly regarded expert with four decades' expertise in US electoral politics -- says it would be a mistake to rule out a surprise Trump victory in November, in what has been an utterly unpredictable campaign season. Ornstein sat down with AFP to answer questions about the tumultuous 2016 presidential race. Q: Why has it been so hard for Hillary Clinton to lock up the Democratic nomination? A: Hillary Clinton simply can't emerge very easily as a figure of change. That was true in 2008, when there was strong desire for change, and Barack Obama became that candidate of change. Now, eight years later at the age of 68, having served in the Obama administration, change isn't the word you're going to use about her. Her issues involving email and other questions going back to some of the scandals, some of which were not real but were blown out of proportion from the Clinton administration years, are weighing her down a little bit. The fact that her focus is on incremental policies to help improve the country, and not on sweeping revolution like Bernie Sanders, doesn't help her very much either. The populism that we see out there, which is anti-establishment, is not going to work for a figure who is a core figure of the establishment. Q: Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has mounted an astonishingly vigorous challenge to Clinton from the left during the Democratic primaries. What does the future hold for him within the party? A: The symbolism if Sanders wins California becomes important because that will embolden him to dig in and stay in the contest longer and to demand more from Hillary Clinton in terms of policy, platform and the like, which will pull her to the left before he concedes. Story continues For Bernie Sanders at some point, this becomes a question of how he goes back to the US Senate. He could go back as a major figure, he is now a national figure, where he wasn't before. He could be the leader of the left, but if he persists in a quixotic campaign that he can't win and damages Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the White House, he could also go back as a pariah. Q: Can Trump beat Clinton in November? A: Because our politics are tribal, most Republicans are going to end up voting for Trump. Why would they vote for Trump even if they don't much like him or don't care for some of his policies? Because he's not Hillary Clinton. Negative partisanship will play a role. Because of the tribal politics and the negative partisanship, Donald Trump probably starts with a floor of around 45 percent of the votes. If he gets over 50 percent, he's got a chance of winning the electoral college numbers to win an election. Let's face it. Things can happen in the final weeks and months before the election. What if there's a Brexit? What will that do to the global economy and maybe the American economy? What if we have an attack like Paris in October? Maybe people will say we can't trust a person who's never had any experience, but maybe there is the allure of a strongman. We just don't know. And while Trump is not likely to expand his base beyond angry white voters, anything can happen in this day and age. The pressure is off for Prince Harry. As the spare not the heir, Princess Diana and Prince Charless youngest son has been able to serve in active war zones, travel to Las Vegas, and remain unmarried into his 30s. But his lack of royal responsibilities doesnt excuse him from dressing appropriately at least according to one 91-year-old man. While visiting with 45 war veterans on Thursday, the 31-year-old member of the British royal family wore a blue suit, black oxford shoes, and white button down shirt without a tie. The men, many of whom took part in the D-Day Landings, were in formal attire with their military lapels and pins. Prince Harry of Wales became a captain in the British Army and retired last year following 10 years of service and two tours of duty on the front lines of Afghanistan. And in comparison to his compatriots, the royal was rather underdressed. As soon as Prince Henry walked into the event, he realized he got the dress code wrong. Are they all wearing ties in there? I should have worn a tie. Oh well, its too late now, he said, according to the Telegraph. To make matters even more embarrassing, nonagenarian Ivor Anderson directly asked, Wheres your bloody tie? Despite the apparent fashion shaming, Anderson admitted that it was all in jest (ah, British humor humour). I told him he should wear a bloody tie. I said I had a spare one; he said he couldnt wear mine because he didnt have his wings. (Wings are badges bestowed on qualified military parachutists. Harry flew helicopters.) Remember Harry: Its always better to be overdressed than underdressed. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. Princess Kate isn't the only royal with second-hand shop connections. A tartan wool dress coat by Elizabeth Emmanuel that belonged to Princess Diana is one of two garments worn by the late princess that will be up for auction on June 14. After receiving less-than-positive reviews when Diana wore it on an official trip to Venice in 1985, the sailor-collared dress coat ended up at a high-end second hand shop dropped off in a bundle of unwanted clothing by Sarah Ferguson's mother, Susan Barrantes. Purchased by a lucky customer in 1990, the one-off piece is now expected to reach up to $21,641. Want to keep up with the latest royals coverage? Click here to subscribe to the Royals Newsletter. Princess Diana's Totally '80s Favorite Dress Is Up for Auction Plus Another Found at a Second-Hand Shop!| The British Royals, The Royals, Princess Diana Also up for auction: a 1980s teal sequined dress designed by Catherine Walker, which is expected to reach approximately $144,340 at Kerry Taylor Auctions. Diana loved the look so much she wore it three times. "It's a real razzle- dazzle number and it was unlike any other piece in her wardrobe," auctioneer Taylor tells PEOPLE, adding that the puff-sleeved creation was "really stylish and quite cutting edge at the time." Princess Diana's Totally '80s Favorite Dress Is Up for Auction Plus Another Found at a Second-Hand Shop!| The British Royals, The Royals, Princess Diana Commissioned by Diana shortly before an official State visit to Austria with Prince Charles, the figure-hugging design debuted on a night out with her husband at the Burgtheater in Vienna on April 14, 1986. Such was the close relationship between Walker and the princess that Diana didn't even see sketches of the dress, let alone try it on, before her trip. She later wore it to a charity ball in 1989 and again for a film premiere in 1993. Thirty years later, the piece is being sold for a third time, after the death of the current owner, a private collector from Austria who "loved Princess Diana" and wanted the dress to return to the country in which it was first worn, says Taylor. Princess Diana's Totally '80s Favorite Dress Is Up for Auction Plus Another Found at a Second-Hand Shop!| The British Royals, The Royals, Princess Diana It originally sold for $43,800 at Christie's in 1997 and later to the Austrian buyer for $108,206 in 2013, making the dress an impressive investment. Prince Harry Opens Up About the Influence His Mother Diana Had on His Work "More and more people are seeing that you are better off putting your money into something like this," says Taylor, noting, "They are unique one-off pieces and after all, there was only one Princess Diana." An expert in high-end vintage fashion, Taylor has sold several of Diana's dresses over the years and says that interest is far from waning. "Diana was a style icon and whatever she wore one day, the rest of the world copied the next." Prison Break star Dominic Purcell suffered a head injury on the set of the Fox reboot, but he is expected to make a full recovery and production will not be affected. The actor shared a gruesome photo of the injury on Instagram and promised to be back at work asap. Pays to have a thick skull when an iron bar falls on your #head!! busting it open severely also broke my nose in two places. Haha. I got a free nose job out of it Stoked to be alive. All good, he wrote. Also Read: Fox Moves 'Pitch' Up to Fall, Bumps 'Bones' Back to Midseason The actor was filming for the event series in Morocco when a piece of the set fell and hit him in the head. He was rushed to a hospital and is expected to make a full recovery. According to a Fox spokesperson, the actor will take a short hiatus from filming while he recovers, but his presence in the series will not be affected. Our friend and colleague Dominic Purcell was injured earlier this week during the filming of our event series Prison Break, and was flown to a medical facility where he received treatment, said a Fox spokesperson. We are happy to report that he is in great spirits and is expected to make a full recovery. He wanted us to express his appreciation to the fans around the world who have expressed their concern and support, and to reassure them that he will be back at work very soon. Related stories from TheWrap: Paul Adelstein to Reprise Role on Fox's 'Prison Break' Miniseries Sarah Wayne Callies Joins Fox's 'Prison Break' Reboot 'Lethal Weapon,' 'Prison Break,' '24 Legacy': Watch Trailers for New Fox Shows (Videos) * Goves makes case for Brexit after Cameron urges "In" vote * Minister dismisses views of economists, foreign leaders * Labels EU a "job-destroying machine" By Estelle Shirbon LONDON, June 3 (Reuters) - A government minister campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union said on Friday he was glad not to have economic authorities on his side because they had been wrong about the euro and had failed to predict the global financial crisis. Justice Secretary Michael Gove also branded the 28-member bloc a "job-destroying machine" that had hollowed out communities across Britain, citing the failure of his own father's fishing business which he attributed to EU quotas. Britons will vote in a referendum on June 23 on whether to remain in the EU, a choice with far-reaching consequences for politics, the economy, trade, defence and migration flows in Britain and far beyond. The debate has split the ruling Conservative Party, with Prime Minister David Cameron leading efforts to keep Britain in the club, and senior figures like Gove and former London mayor Boris Johnson heading the campaign for a "Leave" vote. The International Monetary Fund, Bank of England, Confederation of British Industry and numerous other organisations have warned a British exit, or Brexit, would harm the economy. Challenged on why the "Leave" camp had not received similar backing from economic authorities, Gove said those warning against a Brexit had once advised Britain to join the European single currency. In Britain, the euro is widely seen as an experiment gone badly wrong that the country did well to avoid. "I'm glad that all these organisations are not on my side," Gove said during a live interview and question-and-answer session with members of the public on Sky News television. Gove's appearance mirrored a similar programme featuring Cameron on Thursday night, during which he was grilled on his failure to achieve his target of bringing immigration down to below 100,000 arrivals per year. Story continues IMMIGRATION V ECONOMY Immigration is a major concern for many voters and the "Leave" camp argues that Britain cannot control it because of EU freedom of movement rights. The issue is seen as the main weakness of the "Remain" camp. The economic argument, on the other hand, is widely perceived as a problematic issue for "Leave" campaigners like Gove, who was quizzed during the programme by voters on what would happen to jobs and house prices if there was a Brexit. "The truth about the European Union is that it is a job-destroying machine," he said, arguing that Britain would have enhanced opportunities for growth and for trade deals with the likes of China, India and the United States outside the bloc. A long list of foreign leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, have said they wanted Britain to stay in the bloc, but Gove dismissed those interventions, saying those leaders would never cede sovereignty in the way required of EU members. "Don't pay attention to what they say, pay attention to what they do," he told the audience. Gove also attacked U.S. banks Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, which have donated funds to the "Remain" campaign, saying they were doing very well out of the European Union and portraying them as part of an elite that cared little for ordinary people. "Banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs said that Greece could enter the euro and they knew that that was wrong. Banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs spend millions lobbying the European Union in order to rig a market in their favour." JP Morgan's Chief Executive Jamie Dimon told British staff of the bank earlier that a Brexit would mean fewer jobs in their country and more in Europe. (Editing by Angus MacSwan) (Reuters) - A county prosecutor will announce on Monday whether or not he will bring charges against the family of a 3-year-old boy who fell into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo on Saturday, prompting zoo officials to kill an endangered gorilla to rescue the child. Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters was scheduled to hold a news conference on the incident at 1 p.m. EDT on Monday, his office said in a statement. Cincinnati police said earlier they were focusing their investigation on the child's parents and family and that they had turned over the results of their probe to Deters' office for review.. The gorilla, a 17-year-old 450-pound (200-kg) animal named Harambe, was shot and killed by zoo staff after he dragged the boy around and was hurting him. Western lowland gorillas are critically endangered and the killing triggered intense public debate over the zoo's handling of the incident, the barrier to the gorilla enclosure, and the role of the boy's parents. The family said through a spokeswoman on Wednesday that the child was doing well, and that they had no plans to sue the zoo over the incident. The child had a concussion and some scrapes, the family said earlier on social media. The zoo said on Thursday it will modify the railing that surrounds its Gorilla World exhibit, making the barrier higher and adding knotted rope netting. The exhibit has been closed but will reopen on Tuesday. (This copy corrects day of announcement, it is Monday, not Friday) (Reporting by Fiona Ortiz in Chicago; Editing by Frances Kerry) (SAN JOSE, California) A group of protesters attacked Donald Trump supporters who were leaving the presidential candidates rally in San Jose on Thursday night. A dozen or more people were punched, at least one person was pelted with an egg and Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. Police stood their ground at first but after about 90 minutes moved into the remaining crowd to break it up and make arrests. At least four people were taken into custody, though police didnt release total arrest figures Thursday night. One officer was assaulted, police Sgt. Enrique Garcia said. There were no immediate reports of injuries and no major property damage, police said. The crowd, which had numbered over 300 just after the rally, thinned significantly as the night went on, but those that remained near the San Jose Convention Center were rowdy and angry. Some banged on the cars of Trump supporters as they left the rally and chased after those on foot to frighten them. Police were keeping their distance from the crowd as the scuffles played out, but keeping them from getting any closer to the convention center. Our police officers have done an extremely courageous and professional job so far, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo told The Associated Press by phone. Were all still holding our breath to see the outcome of this dangerous and explosive situation. The mayor, a Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter, criticized Trump for coming to cities and igniting problems that local police departments had to deal with. At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign, Liccardo said. The presumptive GOP nominee spoke for about 50 minutes at the rally, sniping at Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and calling her speech on foreign policy earlier in the day pathetic and sad to watch. Story continues Protesters before the speech included Adam Rivas, a 22-year-old community college student who was born and raised in San Jose, was holding a spray-painted sign that read Dump Trump. Rivas said he was particularly disturbed by Trumps remarks about Mexicans. For any one Mexican here he bashes, there are about 20 Mexicans out there who are hard-working and just doing their job, he said. Trump supporter Debbie Tracey, a U.S. Navy veteran from San Jose, she came to hear Trump speak, she left his rally with two hats a T-shirt and a handful of signs that said Veterans for Trump. Passing in front of a wall of protesters, many chanting in Spanish, she said she supported Trumps call for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Ill go help build the wall because if you are going to come to this country, land of opportunity, you should be here legally, she said. San Jose (United States) (AFP) - Protesters who oppose Donald Trump scuffled with his supporters Thursday as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee held a rally in California, with fistfights erupting and one supporter hit with an egg. Hundreds of demonstrators blocked a police van and then entered the parking area of the San Jose Convention Center where the event took place, insulting Trump supporters in their cars and attacking those leaving the rally. A dozen or more people were punched, the Los Angeles Times reported, saying at least one person was hit with an egg. ABC News reported that some protesters surrounded the car of a presumed Trump supporter as it left the convention center garage, shaking the car and smashing its tail light. Crowds had earlier chanted "No hate in our state" and carried signs that read "Dump Trump" as they marched near the convention center. One protester was seen burning an American flag and some supporters were spat on. Several fistfights erupted but were quickly broken up. Police were out in force, at one point forming a line to allow Trump supporters access to the rally and prevent clashes that have erupted at a number of the real estate magnate's events in recent weeks. Trump was last in the San Jose area in April, when he spoke at the California Republican Party convention where protesters blocked access to the venue, forcing him to use the back door. Last week, dozens of protesters were arrested in San Diego after a campaign appearance by Trump, who has angered many with his rhetoric against Hispanics, women, Muslims and others. Demonstrations at a Trump rally in New Mexico last month also turned violent as protestors overran barricades and clashed with police in riot gear. (Adds comment from Pratt & Whitney) DUBLIN, June 3 (Reuters) - Qatar Airways has cancelled its first Airbus AIR.PA A320neo jet and remains at an impasse with the European planemaker over delays in deliveries caused by engine problems, its chief executive said on Friday. Akbar Al Baker said the carrier would soon start talks with alternative engine supplier CFM, a joint venture between General Electric Co and Safran SA of France. It has held talks with rival planemaker Boeing over switching to 737s but was not yet walking away from Airbus, he said. "We will switch to the MAX if we cannot resolve our issue. We will go to current option 737s and convert it to MAX," he said, adding he was sure Boeing could find production slots. Al Baker has refused to accept planes with engines made by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp, because the engines required additional time to start under certain conditions. The airline said in May it was reducing the frequency of more than a dozen regular routes from Doha because of hold-ups in the delivery of new planes from Airbus. The delays are affecting Qatar Airways' profit, but the carrier is not seeking compensation, Al Baker told reporters on the sidelines of the International Air Transport Association annual meeting in Dublin. "We are five aircraft down this summer. This is why we are screaming because it is making a huge impact on my bottom line," Al Baker told journalists. "We are still at an impasse. We have walked away from our first A320neo because it is more than a certain number of days late, so exercised a walk-away clause," Al Baker said, adding the carrier would exercise walk-away clauses on the other four delayed planes when they reach the time limit. He added he is also still waiting for deliveries of three A350 planes, which have been held up since February due to issues with cabin equipment. He said he expects Airbus to deliver 10 of the planes as promised this year and that he had met with the CEO of Airbus's planemaking unit, Fabrice Bregier, and programme executive Didier Evrard on Thursday to "iron out the issues". Story continues "The ball is in court of Airbus. We will start delivery of the airplane delayed from February imminently, provided the issues we have are resolved," he said, adding the A350 problems were likely to be resolved before the A320neo issues. Pratt & Whitney in a statement said Al Baker's remarks were "inaccurate and mischaracterize the performance of the engine." Pratt's PW1100G-JM engine has been certified, has been delivered to three other airlines and meets performance and contract specifications, including a 16 percent improvement in fuel efficiency, the company said. "We have resolved the very few initial teething items airlines have experienced," Pratt said. "Production engines shipping today to Airbus already include hardware and software improvements. In fact, solutions for the items are well known and have been extensively covered in detail by the media." (Reporting by Victoria Bryan and Alwyn Scott; Editing by Conor Humphries and Cynthia Osterman) DUBLIN (Reuters) - Qatar Airways said on Friday its 15 percent stake in British Airways-owner IAG (ICAG.L) was a strategic rather than financial investment which helped purchasing and network planning, but it was not seeking a board seat. The Gulf carrier said in May it had increased its stake in International Consolidated Airlines Group to 15 percent from 12 percent amid a rapid global expansion. "IAG is a strategic investment, not a financial investment," Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker told reporters at the International Air Transport Association annual meeting in Dublin, adding Qatar was "satisfied with 15.01 pct.". "The benefit is really unlimited, joint purchases, joint insurance, joint component repairs, handling, joint catering," he said, adding that Qatar's Hamad International airport in Doha was a perfect hub to feed India, where IAG was not very strong. He said he had "absolute confidence" in the management of IAG and that Qatar was not seeking a seat on the board. Speaking to Reuters at the same conference, IAG chief executive Willie Walsh insisted that the Qatar Airways holding had no bearing on any operational tie-ups and any deepening of the partnership was "completely separate" to the equity holding. While the airlines' cargo partnership, joint procurement and code shares were working well, "we would do these whether they (Qatar Airways) had a stake in us or not," he added. (Reporting Sarah Young and Victoria Bryan; Writing by Conor Humphries; Editing by Alexander Smith) DUBLIN, June 3 (Reuters) - Qatar Airways has cancelled its first Airbus A320neo jet and remains at an impasse with the European planemaker over delays in deliveries caused by engine problems, its chief executive said on Friday. The delays are having an impact on Qatar Airways' bottom line, but the carrier said it is not seeking compensation, Akbar Al Baker told reporters. The airline announced in May it was reducing the frequency of more than a dozen regular routes from Doha because of hold-ups in the delivery of new planes from European manufacturer Airbus. "We are 5 aircraft down this summer. This is why we are screaming because it is making a huge impact on my bottom line," Al Baker said at the International Air Transport Association annual meeting in Dublin. "We are still at an impasse. We have walked away from our first A320neo because more than a certain number of days late, so exercised a walk away clause," Al Baker said. He said he still expects Airbus will be able to deliver 10 of the larger A350 planes as promised this year. "We will have no alternative but to lease. We awaiting final response from airbus," he said. We are "not talking about compensation. It is about us getting aeroplanes so we can meet network requirement." (Reporting by Victoria Bryan; Writing by Conor Humphries) The late-great Carroll Shelby built an incredibly successful career of making all sorts of cars faster, more often than not, with a bigger or more potent engine under the hood. The icons are well knownlegends like the Shelby Cobra, GT350 Mustang, and the big GT500. But by the 1980s, Shelby was plying his trade over at Chrysler, at the behest of chairman Lee Iacocca, churning out special editions like the Dodge Shelby Charger, zippy CSX, rorty GLHS, and thisthe 1989 Shelby Dakota muscle truck. 1,500 of these racy pickups were built for just one year and a whole two-and-a-half decades later they still turn heads. This one especially. The spotless pickup recently turned up for sale online, and its odometer reads a claimed 25,307 miles. RELATED: Heres What the 2020 Ford Mustang Could Look Like So what makes these rarified work trucks special? As with most Shelbys, it starts under the hood. Up until 1989, the standard Dodge Dakota pickups were offered in only four-cylinder and V6 variants. But Dodge (and Shelby) wanted more, so the larger 5.2-liter Magnum V8 from Dodges full-size pickup was shoehorned into the midsize Dakota, albeit not effortlessly. To fit, Dodge had to swap the V8s belt-driven fan for an electric unit mounted in front of the radiator. That did the trick, as well as earned the V8 a few extra ponies, pushing the special Dakota up to 175 horsepower and 270 lb.-ft. of torque. That performance may sound paltry by todays standards, but in 1989 it was seen as quite sporty, and netted a zero to 60 mph dash in 8.5 seconds. A four-speed automatic with lockup torque converter transmitted that power to the rear wheels. RELATED: Shelby is Selling Off Some of its Prototypes and Concepts Additional Shelby performance goodies included a limited-slip differential, transmission cooler, along with a host of eye-catching body mods, including a unique air dam and bumpers, Shelby floor mats, monogramed seats and door panels, a CS steering wheel, 15-spoke hollow alloy wheels, and shouty body graphics. Story continues While the Shelby Dakota didnt return for 1990, its V8 legacy did continue, and in 1991 the 5.2-liter eight-cylinder became an option on new Dakotas. Of the 1,500 Shelby Dakota pickups built, 860 were dressed in red while a rarer 640 came adorned in Bright White. This 89 is said to be #245 of those white trucks, sold new to its original (and sole) owner in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, for $15,985 (the Shelby package cost $3,933 in its day). Currently, its demanding bids north of $10,000 for its low-mileage originality. RELATED: This 2010 Shelby GT500 has Driven Just 21 Miles Ever Giant panda Hao Hao gave birth to a male cub in the Pairi Daiza zoo in Brugelette, Belgium. The pink cub, which was blind and hairless, weighed around six oz (171 g). Hao Hao, who is on loan from China with male panda Xing Hui, can be seen holding the baby in her mouth and jaws in this video. The panda birth is described as a rare event, as the giant panda is classified as endangered by the IUCN. It is also the third birth in Europe in 20 years. Credit: Pairi Daiza It's only fitting that a home run ruined Jake Odorizzi's otherwise fantastic start the last time he took the mound. The results of Ricky Nolasco's last outing were a bit more surprising. Minnesota finally showed a little power in the series opener, something that might not bode well for Odorizzi as he gets the ball for the visiting Tampa Bay Rays against Nolasco and the Twins on Friday night. Odorizzi (2-3, 3.36 ERA) gave up just two homers in five April starts, then watched seven sail over the fence in six outings last month. The latest was especially demoralizing. The right-hander was perfect through 5 1/3 innings Sunday against the New York Yankees before shortstop Brad Miller's error led to the first baserunner. Odorizzi then issued a walk with one out in the seventh before Starlin Castro's two-run homer accounted for the only hit he would surrender. He left after that inning and was saddled with a 2-1 defeat. It was the first time since 1914 the Yankees won with just one hit, and Odorizzi has allowed only three in 12 innings over his last two starts. ''One swing changes the whole outcome, and that's solely upon me,'' Odorizzi said. ''I didn't even watch it. I knew it went off the bat pretty hot, so I didn't even look. I knew we were losing.'' The Twins (16-37) have gone deep off Odorizzi in each of his last two starts against them, and they broke a three-game homerless streak in Thursday's 6-4 win over the slumping Rays (22-30). Eduardo Nunez led off Minnesota's half of the first with an inside-the-park homer before Brian Dozier's solo shot in the fifth. Byung Ho Park had three of a season-high 15 hits for the Twins, who had lost three in a row. They'll try to keep rolling behind Nolasco, who earned another start with a solid performance his last time out. Nolasco (2-3, 5.28) had an 8.14 ERA in five May starts prior to Sunday, including giving up six runs in 2 2/3 innings against Kansas City on the 23rd. There was speculation that he would be removed from the rotation when Kyle Gibson returns from the disabled list, but he allowed two runs and three hits in six innings to beat Seattle 5-4. Story continues "I was commanding the fastball pretty good, had some (velocity) going," Nolasco said. The right-hander allowed at least four runs in six of his first nine starts, but manager Paul Molitor was happy with what he saw Sunday. ''He made enough pitches,'' Molitor said. ''It seems like he's one of those guys that has a little trouble settling into a rhythm, but once he gets a little feel, the outs can start coming quickly. Good outing.'' Nolasco hasn't had much success against the Rays, posting a 7.33 ERA in eight career starts. Last-place Tampa has dropped five in a row, though, and has been outscored by 29 runs while going 2-11 since May 21. Evan Longoria hit a two-run homer while Miller and Curt Casali also had two hits Thursday, but Brandon Guyer went hitless and is 1 for 18 over his last four. In May 2012, ABC broke into its daytime coverage to show President Obama endorsing same-sex marriage, the culmination of years of activist work to take the idea from the radical fringe into the mainstream. We saw an economic version of that this week, and while none of the networks fired up their Breaking News graphics for it, the impact on society could be just as large, and the people who helped make it happen should be just as lauded. Its time we finally made Social Security more generous, said the president in Elkhart, Indiana, to applause, and increased its benefits so that todays retirees and future generations get the dignified retirement that theyve earned. This was totally unexpected: We knew the Elkhart speech was about the economy, but we didnt know Obama would concur with a rallying cry on the left for several years now: Expand Social Security. Related: The Retirement Cost That 80% of Americans Arent Ready For This movement crystallized from research into the looming retirement crisis. Too many Americans are headed into their golden years without nearly the kind of savings needed to maintain their standard of living. And their defined-benefit pensions have gradually transitioned into defined-contribution plans like 401(k)s, which have rewarded Wall Street with hidden and excessive fees while eating away at individual gains. The change also shifted market risks from employers onto employees, who must hope to avoid a drop in stocks as they hit retirement age. Research from just a few months ago found that the median family has only $5,000 saved in their 401(k) retirement account. And lower-income Americans are unlikely to have access to any retirement plan at all. Social Security was not designed to become a national retirement system by itself, but thats what its become for Americans in the bottom half of the income distribution. Related: The Retirement Revolution That Failed Why the 401(k) Isnt Working Story continues Despite all this, the initial impulse from the Obama administration was to use Social Security cuts as a bargaining chip in a larger deal with Republicans. Grand bargain talks from 2011 to 2013 repeatedly invoked a different way to calculate the consumer price index (known as chained CPI), which would have resulted in $1,000 less a year for the average 85-year-old. Obama put chained CPI in his fiscal year 2014 budget. Contrary to some after-the-fact snickering, this was a very credible threat, and it allowed Republicans to point to a Democratic president favoring entitlement cuts. Only the Tea Partys unwillingness to consider anything resembling a compromise saved retirees from cuts. Related: 6 Popular Social Security Myths Busted At first, liberal groups played defense on chained CPI, accustomed to mobilizing in opposition rather than staking out a bolder claim. But the expansion movement can really be traced back to one blogger: Duncan Black, popularly known as Atrios, who waged an initially lonely crusade in a series of 2012 columns in USA Today, explaining why the retirement crisis was coming and how expanding Social Security represented the cleanest solution. Eventually, Black found adherents. The New America Foundation, in a groundbreaking proposal, called for an entirely new, $11,000-a-year universal benefit on top of Social Security. By mid-2013, most major liberal groups adopted an old bill from former Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin to modestly expand Social Security with more generous cost-of-living increases that better reflect rising medical costs for seniors. By 2014, chained CPI was out of the presidents budget. The reason Social Security expansion was a wedge issue waiting to be wielded is that its massively popular. People recognize the unfolding retirement crisis in their own lives, whether with their parents finances or their own. Expanding the program consistently rated as a 75-25 issue, taking in even a majority of Republicans, even when introducing the concept of paying for it with higher taxes on the wealthy (typically by scrapping the payroll tax cap that has a $100,000 a year worker pay as much into the Social Security program as LeBron James). Lawmakers followed the rank and file consensus. Elizabeth Warren jumped aboard the Harkin bill in late 2013. A House bill quickly got dozens of co-sponsors. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who holds down the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, endorsed an expansion amendment. Bernie Sanders made it a campaign plank, one that Hillary Clinton eventually had to endorse, albeit in a more targeted fashion. Related: Watch Out, Hillary Clinton: A Revolt Is Brewing in the Democratic Party Now President Obama, who started this all by embracing the opposite position years ago, has explicitly endorsed the expansion of Social Security. This victory is a great credit to Duncan Black and everyone who moved a minority opinion in the corridors of power in the Democratic Party into the mainstream. There are wildly varying ways to claim support for Social Security expansion, ones that are modest and ones that are disruptive. But before the question, even among Democrats, was how much to cut Social Security; now the question is how much to expand it. The skeptic would say that one party moving to a new position doesnt magically make that law. In fact, theres evidence that presidential-level endorsements can polarize issues that have widespread support. But look whats happening in the Republican Party, which skews older and has a greater stake in Social Security in the immediate term. Im not going to try to break through what I imagine are surgically sutured hair follicles and get into Donald Trumps mind, but he recently said: Theres no way a Republican is going to beat a Democrat when the Republican is saying, Were going to cut your Social Security and the Democrat is saying, Were going to keep it and give you more. Related: Heres a Good Reason to Worry About Trumps Economic Policies Politically, Republicans know that Social Security cuts equal political death. The same was true of opposition to same-sex marriage, which is why most of the GOP caucus just stopped talking about it. The path to Social Security expansion cant go through the courts the way marriage equality did, and it will take a lot more work. But the center-left, in Washington and in the country, is on board. And that is a testament to the power of taking a stand and not relenting. Eventually, the world might just swing your way. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Washington (AFP) - Troubled newspaper group Tribune Publishing was trying for a new image as it seeks to fend off a takeover bid and adapt to the digital era. Instead, its new name "tronc" -- all in lowercase letters -- drew ridicule, mockery and disbelief. The "rebranding" provoked a flood of derision on Twitter and from media analysts and critics. "At first I though it looked like hoax," said Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University who also blogs about the media industry, calling the name change "ridiculous." Kennedy said it appears to be a move by a group seeking to evolve from the struggling print newspaper business "but they don't sound like they have a clue on how to." The name tronc -- derived from "tribune online content," according to a statement -- was chosen because it "captures the essence of the company's mission" to "deliver personalized and interactive experiences to its 60 million monthly users." But "tronc" is also a British term for the pooling of tips or other resources. And in French, it translates to tree trunk. On Twitter, the comments were merciless. "If you wanted to signify the pathetic nasal honks of the last dying dinosaur, 'tronc' would be a pretty good word," tweeted New York Times deputy tech editor Quentin Hardy. "The robot overlords appear to have won," said NPR media writer David Folkenflik. Emily Bell, director of the Columbia University Tow Center for Digital Journalism, said in a tweet: "I thought Tronc was a Lars von Trier trilogy about the moral descent of a suburban architect and his customs officer wife." The company, which includes the Los Angeles Times and other large dailies spun off the larger Tribune Co. media conglomerate in 2014, has been searching for a new direction in an industry that is increasingly digital. Over the past month, it has been fending off a takeover effort from USA Today publisher Gannett. Story continues But the name change did little to inspire confidence. - 'Cartoon caveman' - Mashable's Patrick Kulp called it "a head-scratching name that might sound better suited for a cartoon caveman." At the Nieman Lab media blog, an editor's note said the lower-case spelling would not be accepted. "Because we do not hate our readers, Nieman Lab style from here on out will be a capitalized Tronc, no matter what the company insists," the note said. A Los Angeles Times article also used the Tronc spelling. Washington Post media writer Erik Wemple pulled no punches, writing that "the Tribune lost its mind" with the name change. "Far worse than the name and punctuational idiosyncrasies is the direction in which (chairman Michael) Ferro is pushing the company," Wemple said. Wemple said the release simply offered "buzzwords" and phrases with little real meaning such as turning the group into "a content curation and monetization company." "If all that baloney sounds like the work of a team with no background in journalism, then it accurately represents itself," he wrote. Muhammad Ali Former heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali has died, according to a family spokesperson cited by ABC and NBC News. Ali had been suffering from respiratory issues this week, apparently related to his Parkinson's disease, and was hospitalized in Arizona, according to sources cited by Reuters. "It's extraordinarily grave. It's a matter of hours," the source told the newswire service earlier Friday. Ali, 74, was diagnosed with Parkinson's in the 1980s, but remained active for much of the past 30 years, despite challenges caused by the neurological disease. News of Ali's rapidly deteriorating health Friday marked a significant downturn for the former boxer who's condition was described by doctors as "fair" the day before. Ali has been hospitalized several times over the years, most recently in early 2015. The Hollywood Reporter noted that he has looked "increasingly frail" in public appearances, "including April 9 when he wore sunglasses and was hunched over" during an event in Phoenix. Ali's daughter, Laila, who was an undefeated boxer herself, was reportedly among Ali's nine children with him at the hospital in Arizona. She thanked fans for their support and posted a baby picture of her daughter, Sydney, who was born in 2011, being held by the boxing legend. Despite the debilitating effects Parkinson's disease had on Ali's body, it never seemed to daunt the boxing legend's spirit. Ali remained a charismatic presence in public. A towering figure in his prime, he still traveled and made appearances in his later years despite being muted by the thousands of punches he took during his remarkable career. He beat the invincible Sonny Liston, fought a string of thrilling fights with Joe Frazier and stopped George Foreman in the "Rumble in the Jungle" in Zaire. But he paid a terrible price for the estimated 29,000 punches he took to his head during a career that made him perhaps the most recognized person in the world. Story continues The Associated Press contributed to this report NOW WATCH: Floyd Mayweather just spent $4.8 million on one of the fastest cars in the world More From Business Insider A Blue Angels jet crashed near the Smyrna-Rutherford County Airport in Smyrna, Tennessee, during an air show practice run on Thursday, June 2. The US Navy said the pilot of the F/A-18 aircraft died from injuries sustained in the crash, which happened shortly after takeoff/ The other five Blue Angels jets landed safely. Local media said a vigil will be held for the pilot on Thursday evening. The accident was the second fighter jet crash on Thursday. A US Air Force Thunderbirds pilot ejected before the F-16 aircraft crashed during an Air Force Academy graduation ceremony south of Colorado Springs. The pilot, Maj. Alex Turner, met with President Barack Obama afterwards. Credit: YouTube/Heather Fox From Esquire In February 2013, Fox News correspondent James Rosen asked then-State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland whether the U.S. government had been conducting "secret, bilateral" negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. Nuland denied the allegation. But, as The Washington Post reports, it later emerged that the two countries had, in fact, been in discussions as far back as "mid-2012." Rosen followed up with Nuland's successor, Jen Psaki, on the subject in a December 2013 presser: ROSEN: Is it the policy of the State Department, where the preservation or the secrecy of secret negotiations is concerned, to lie in order to achieve that goal? MS. PSAKI: James, I think there are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that. Obviously, we have made clear and laid out a number of details in recent weeks about discussions and about a bilateral channel that fed into the P5+1 negotiations, and we've answered questions on it, we've confirmed details. We're happy to continue to do that, but clearly, this was an important component leading up to the agreement that was reached a week ago. This exchange-part of an eight-minute block spent discussing the disparities between Nuland's statements and, well, what was really happening-is the perfect fuel for a right-wing media news cycle, one that very likely would spill over into mainstream outlets. Which might be why, when the State Department posted video of the press briefing to its YouTube channel, the exchange was scrubbed and replaced with a white flash to cover the edit. No one really noticed the White Light of Truth until this year, when a New York Times Magazine profile of Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes questioned whether the Obama administration had misled the public on the timeline of the Iran deal. Rosen asked a colleague to dig up the tape-looking for further evidence the timetable had been tampered with-only to find that it wasn't there. Story continues According to the Post, when Rosen followed up with another State Dept. spokesperson, Elizabeth Trudeau, she said the M.I.A. status of the footage was "a glitch." But yesterday, the administration walked that back, too. Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs John Kirby came clean on the matter, revealing that an internal investigation had found a "specific request was made to excise" that section of the video that was uploaded to YouTube. He added the whole video had now been put up, and that the Department had put new protocols in place to prevent this kind of tampering in the future. But he offered no further details on who in the State Department requested the exchange be cut, and said a formal investigation into that matter was unlikely: "There were no rules in place to govern this sort of action, so while I believe it was an inappropriate step to take, I see little foundation for pressing forward with a formal investigation." Some things don't need more investigating, though-for instance, we now know that the administration misrepresented the timeline on which the Iran nuclear deal was negotiated, and it has taken repeated steps to shove that under the rug. [H/T: The Washington Post] MacGyver's got a new gig. Richard Dean Anderson will executive produce the first feature-length film from the non-profit marine conservation group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Why Just One? will follow Sea Shepherd's 2015 sea turtle defense campaign, which took place in Honduras, Florida and Costa Rica. The anti-poaching campaign took place on the remote Pacuare Island and Moin Beach, the latter of which is where Costa Rican turtle defender Jairo Mora Sandoval was murdered on May 31, 2013, while attempting to protect leatherback turtle nests. Sea Shepherd was founded by former Greenpeace member Paul Watson and is known for its actions against the Japanese whaling industry. "My support for Captain Paul Watson, and the hearty hordes of volunteers who make up the crews venturing out to sea, has exposed me to the kind of ongoing education that continues to enlighten me, both head and heart," said Anderson. "It is my hope, as Executive Producer, that this documentary will shed a bright light on a dire situation, and proceed to enlighten all of us to care about these endangered turtles, as well as all of our earth's marine life." Charmed actress Holly Marie Combs, who currently appears on Freeform's Pretty Little Liars, will act as an associate producer on the doc. "Sea Shepherd has shined an international spotlight on the slaughter of dolphins in Japan and the documentary Why Just One? will bring that same international spotlight on the poaching of sea turtles in Costa Rica," said Combs. Why Just One? was crowdfunded, with its IndieGoGo campaign reaching its funding goal in 24 hours, with the help of backers from over 40 countries. The film is scheduled for release in July. Read More: Stephen King's 'It' Adaptation Finds Its Pennywise the Clown (Exclusive) In the fourth and final chapter of Historys admirable Roots remake, Chicken George at last was able to return to the States. But any sort of a happy ending was still a long ways off for Kunta Kintes lone grandchild and his family. Read on, and after we follow the treacherous path he was forced to travel, you can grade the miniseries in TVLines poll and share your thoughts. RELATEDShowtime Lands Daniel Craig-Starring Adaptation of Franzens Purity Novel FAMILY REUNION | Although Sir Eric swore that, once George had won him enough cockfighting money to pay back Toms gambling debt, hed free the slave, the Englishman didnt honor his vow for more than two decades. When finally George was permitted to head home to the Lea farm, he discovered that his mother had passed away, and, rather than free Matilda and the children as promised, his father had sold them to a North Carolinian by the name of Benjamin Murray. As soon as George arrived at the Murray plantation, Benjamins son, Frederick, made his cruelty plain by telling Matilda that she could get reacquainted with her husband only when the workday was over. Even when the couple was allowed to reunite, sadness cast a shadow over them: Three of their kids had been sold just weeks after theyd arrived at the Murray plantation, and son Tom, a gifted blacksmith, accused his father of living the sportin life instead of looking after his family. And things were about to get worse: Rightly fearful that, the moment Frederick could, he would re-enslave George, Matilda made the heartbreaking decision to send him away. RELATEDOutlander Renewed for Seasons 3 and 4 Roots Part 4 Recap BATTLE SCARS | Ordinarily, Tom did his damnedest to stay out of trouble. However, after wife Irene was raped by white men during the Civil War, he began working to help the Union with fellow Murray plantation slave Jerusalem and Fredericks fiancee, Nancy, who was secretly a spy for the North. When their plan went awry, Frederick hanged Jerusalem and, since Nancy wouldnt name any other accomplices, he hanged her, too. Meanwhile, George and fast friend Cyrus joined the Union army and barely made it out of the massacre at Fort Pillow, Tenn., with their lives. When the war ended, a bittersweet celebration erupted at the Murray plantation: Matilda and her family were free, yet she was understandably haunted by the loved ones that shed always miss. Later, after Cyrus showed up at the plantation with Georges hat, Matilda charged Tom with the task of bringing his father home safely. Story continues RELATEDSummer TV Schedule: 110+ Dates to Save in June and July Roots Part 4 Recap THE NEXT GENERATION | Two weeks later, Tom with a little ancestral guidance tracked down George near the Tennessee border. Alas, the wars end didnt mean that they were out of danger. On their way back to the Murray plantation, they were attacked by bushwhackers and, in the wake of Lincolns assassination, turned away by a disgruntled Union encampment temporarily, that is. Thanks to Georges talent for winning over a crowd, he was able to convince the soldiers to let them stay by talking up Toms skills as a blacksmith. Back at the Murray plantation, Benjamin offered his former slaves a deal to stick around and work the land, but it was a deal of the raw variety, so they passed. Frederick, of course, couldnt let George and Matilda leave peacefully, so he picked one last fight. Literally, his last George shot him dead. On the trail to a new life, George invited Cyrus to become what he really already was a member of the family and Tom asked his father how to name his and Irenes newborn daughter the right way. Though the infant was Toms first child not born a slave, he noted, shed still need to be a warrior like Kunta Kinte in order to stay free. So, in the end, Tom kept up the traditions of his ancestors, traditions that later inspired his great grandson, Roots author Alex Haley, who we saw (as played by Laurence Fishburne) with his forebears as the miniseries drew to a close. So, what did you think of Historys Roots? Vote in the poll below, then hit the comments with your review. Related stories Performer of the Week: Rege-Jean Page Ratings: Roots Opens Strong, Thunder/ Warriors NBA Game Sets TNT Record Walton Goggins Joins SIX, Replacing Joe Manganiello in Navy SEAL Drama RPM's Big Week returns in July with a star-studded series of events. Armin van Buuren will kick things off with a show at a Brooklyn Warehouse on July 1. The following day, Brooklyn will also serve as the host of HYTE, which includes appearances by Berghain residents Ben Klock and Marcel Dettmann back to back, Masters at Work's Kenny Dope, Detroit's Kyle Hall, and many, many more. (The event carries into July 3rd). At the same time, Aly & Fila, Arctic Moon, and Ferry Tayle, among others, will converge on Governor's Island for Future Sound Of Egypt. [[{"fid":"615518","view_mode":"media_original","type":"media","attributes":{"height":620,"width":620,"class":"media-element file-media-original"}}]] On July 3rd, dance heads can flock to New Jersey's Meadowlands Racetrack for Life In Color with W&W, Destructo, NGHTMRE, and others. In case the line-up is not enticing enough, Life In Color offers "a journey of self-awakening. A place where fears, insecurities and self-doubt are transformed by feelings of pure joy and happiness." By the time July 4th rolls around, everyone should be in a suitably celebratory mood. As an added bonus, RPG will bring Oliver Heldens to Governors Island on July 31st. See all the flyers below. [[{"fid":"615519","view_mode":"media_original","type":"media","attributes":{"height":620,"width":620,"class":"media-element file-media-original"}}]] [[{"fid":"615521","view_mode":"media_original","type":"media","attributes":{"height":1240,"width":1240,"class":"media-element file-media-original"}}]] [[{"fid":"615520","view_mode":"media_original","type":"media","attributes":{"height":620,"width":620,"class":"media-element file-media-original"}}]] [[{"fid":"615517","view_mode":"media_original","type":"media","attributes":{"height":620,"width":620,"class":"media-element file-media-original"}}]] * Russia not OPEC member but regularly holds consultations * Russia's Novak thinks Saudi Arabia to stick to balanced policy * Qatari minister sees market heading toward rebalancing (Releads with Russia comments, adds details, quotes, background) By Vladimir Soldatkin and Olesya Astakhova MOSCOW, June 3 (Reuters) - Russia, the world's top oil producer, plans to continue its consultations with OPEC and may hold a meeting with the group this autumn, Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, of which Russia is not a member, failed to agree on output targets on Thursday, at its first meeting since April when Saudi Arabia refused to sign up to an oil output freeze without Iran - which is trying to recover market share after the lifting of sanctions - ruining a wider global agreement. "We will continue our relations with OPEC ... We have an energy dialogue format which we will continue. We will for sure do a related meeting this year," Novak said, referring to consultations on the market situation between Moscow and OPEC. Brent oil prices held at around $50 a barrel on Friday although OPEC did not agree on output targets, supported by Saudi Arabia's pledge not to flood the market with more fuel. Novak said Saudi Arabia had the capacity to increase output but he thought that Riyadh would stick to a "balanced" oil production policy. Saudi Arabia was pumping at an average of 10.25 million barrels of oil per day (bpd) in May, slightly up from 10.15 million bpd in April, a Reuters survey showed. Russian output was slightly down to 10.83 million bpd in May. REBALANCING Having been pessimistic over the timing of the market's imbalance receding, energy ministers, including Novak, have started to note signs of it heading back towards rebalancing. The International Energy Agency said in May that unplanned disruption to output in Canada, Nigeria and Libya could help run down a global overhang of unused crude this year, while demand will benefit from growing gasoline usage. Story continues "It was a successful meeting, it was full harmony among members. We reviewed thoroughly market's status of oil supply and demand. The worst was over," Qatari Energy Minister Mohammed Al-Sada told reporters in Moscow, referring to the OPEC meeting. "The market is heading towards rebalancing." Al-Sada said he saw "huge shrinkage in investments" in the oil industry because of the recent price weakness - down to as low as $27 per barrel in January - "which can lead to shortage down the road." "Investment is needed to come back so that we can sustain production and satisfy the market medium to long term," he said. On Thursday, OPEC decided unanimously to appoint Nigeria's Mohammed Barkindo as its new secretary-general after years of friction over the issue. Novak, who was meeting al-Sada on Friday in Moscow as a part of a regular inter-governmental commission, told reporters that he saw the appointment of a new secretary general as a key OPEC decision. He reiterated that Russia did not expect any new actions from the cartel and said he kept his forecast of an average oil price for 2016 at between $40 and $50 per barrel. (Writing by Katya Golubkova; Editing by Adrian Croft and David Evans) By Vladimir Soldatkin and Olesya Astakhova MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia, the world's top oil producer, plans to continue its consultations with OPEC and may hold a meeting with the group this autumn, Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, of which Russia is not a member, failed to agree on output targets on Thursday, at its first meeting since April when Saudi Arabia refused to sign up to an oil output freeze without Iran - which is trying to recover market share after the lifting of sanctions - ruining a wider global agreement. "We will continue our relations with OPEC ... We have an energy dialogue format which we will continue. We will for sure do a related meeting this year," Novak said, referring to consultations on the market situation between Moscow and OPEC. Brent oil prices held at around $50 a barrel on Friday although OPEC did not agree on output targets, supported by Saudi Arabia's pledge not to flood the market with more fuel. Novak said Saudi Arabia had the capacity to increase output but he thought that Riyadh would stick to a "balanced" oil production policy. Saudi Arabia was pumping at an average of 10.25 million barrels of oil per day (bpd) in May, slightly up from 10.15 million bpd in April, a Reuters survey showed. Russian output was slightly down to 10.83 million bpd in May. REBALANCING Having been pessimistic over the timing of the market's imbalance receding, energy ministers, including Novak, have started to note signs of it heading back towards rebalancing. The International Energy Agency said in May that unplanned disruption to output in Canada, Nigeria and Libya could help run down a global overhang of unused crude this year, while demand will benefit from growing gasoline usage. "It was a successful meeting, it was full harmony among members. We reviewed thoroughly market's status of oil supply and demand. The worst was over," Qatari Energy Minister Mohammed Al-Sada told reporters in Moscow, referring to the OPEC meeting. Story continues "The market is heading towards rebalancing." Al-Sada said he saw "huge shrinkage in investments" in the oil industry because of the recent price weakness - down to as low as $27 per barrel in January - "which can lead to shortage down the road." "Investment is needed to come back so that we can sustain production and satisfy the market medium to long term," he said. On Thursday, OPEC decided unanimously to appoint Nigeria's Mohammed Barkindo as its new secretary-general after years of friction over the issue. Novak, who was meeting al-Sada on Friday in Moscow as a part of a regular inter-governmental commission, told reporters that he saw the appointment of a new secretary general as a key OPEC decision. He reiterated that Russia did not expect any new actions from the cartel and said he kept his forecast of an average oil price for 2016 at between $40 and $50 per barrel. (Writing by Katya Golubkova; Editing by Adrian Croft and David Evans) London (AFP) - Southampton manager Ronald Koeman is to hold talks over filling the vacancy at Premier League rivals Everton, British media reported on Friday. Last month saw Everton sack Roberto Martinez, with Dutch boss Koeman immediately suggested as a candidate to replace the Spaniard at the Merseyside club. But Koeman has a year left on his Southampton contract, having taken charge in August 2014, and the south coast club are believed to have put a new offer to him as well. Southampton were sixth in last season's Premier League and have qualified for the Europa League. By contrast, Everton finished in 11th place. But the Daily Telegraph reported on Thursday that Koeman, having returned from holiday, was interested in what Everton had to say. Koeman is regarded as the favoured target of new Everton majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri and could command an increased salary at Goodison Park. He could also be given greater funds in the transfer market than those currently available to him at Southampton. That could tempt the Dutch great to move to Everton, with Koeman having made it clear he would be unhappy to oversee the sale of key Southampton players following major upheavals in each of the past two years at St Mary's. Koeman, asked if his future was at Southampton, said last month: "Yes... (I can tell you) nothing, because I am the manager of Southampton. "Everybody knows I have one year left on my contract and we will sit together and analyse this season and we will talk about the future and that is what the news is today," the former Netherlands international added. "What is good is that the club are happy with the work, together with the technical staff and the players, that we have done. "There is a very good understanding between the manager and the players and that is good because it is important to continue. "So let's do our job this weekend and there is time enough before I go on holiday to have a talk about the future of the club. "Everything can happen very fast and that is no problem." From Esquire The security guards at Salon HQ are all passed-out sockless drunk again. Crazy people are coming in through the windows and posting. Did you know that the "increasingly restive mainstream media" is giving Hillary Rodham Clinton a pass on the whole email business, including the "punishing report" produced by the office of the Inspector General of the Department of State? Did you know that there is one person in the world who believes in the analysis of Douglas Schoen, the Chicken Little-est of all Chicken Littles? Did you know that Camille Paglia once gave an interview to the Italian press in which she praised the musclebound incompetent that was Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger? Did you know that the absurdist, Dada-esque He, Trump, that transgressive hero, is really coming from the same place as the Yippies and Groucho Marx? Of course, you didn't. You live lives of peaceful bliss, uninterrupted by the ravings of crazy people. From Salon: He goes straight as an arrow to the forbidden and repressed-as when he recently fearlessly raised the long hushed up case of the 1993 suicide of Vince Foster, the deputy White House counsel whom the Clintons had brought to Washington from Little Rock. Unfortunately, Trump mixed it up with baseless murder-conspiracy rumors, because there are already enough unanswered questions about the incident (such as possible illegal interference by Hillary's staff in the official investigation and even the ambiguous issue of exactly where Foster died). You see, there was no "murder-conspiracy." That would be "baseless." But, hey, there was "possible legal interference," and maybe the body got moved to Fort Marcy Park. (I am not insane.) Of course, this particular outburst of "fearlessness" on the part of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee was debunked 20 years ago by two special prosecutors and several Congressional committees. All of the "unanswered questions" were answered long ago. Story continues And this, in the immortal words of the late Charlie Skinner While I would love to see a Trump-style chief executive say "You're fired!" to half the parasitic Washington bureaucracy, I have high anxiety about Trump's shoot-em-up attitude toward international affairs. Exactly how long would it be after a Trump inauguration before the nuke-horned bull would be crashing around the Red China shop? is some huckleberry bad writing. There are reports that Salon may be up for sale. I have serious doubts whether the transaction ever will take place. The costs of padding all the walls in the offices might prove prohibitive. Click here to respond to this post on the official Esquire Politics Facebook page. Officially recognized by the Kentucky state legislature as the "Father of Newgrass" for his influential musicianship, Sam Bush will release his latest album, Storyman, on June 24th. It's the mandolin icon's seventh LP for Sugar Hill Records, and his first solo studio project since 2009's Circles Around Me. Dylan Fest: Rolling Stone Country's Best Backstage Photos Many of the 11 original tunes on Storyman are true tales and each was written with longtime friends including Guy Clark, Jon Randall Stewart and Emmylou Harris. One of the tracks, "Handmics Killed Country Music," features a guest appearance from Harris, who led the acoustic Nash Ramblers band which featured Bush on mandolin and Stewart on guitar. Also featured as guest vocalist (on "Lefty's Song") is Alison Krauss. A native of Bowling Green, Kentucky, Bush was a three-time fiddle champion as a teenager. Inspired by the progressive bluegrass movement of the late Sixties, he joined the band Bluegrass Alliance which morphed into New Grass Revival by 1971. Bush remained throughout numerous personnel changes, then disbanded the group in 1989, just after they scored their sole Top Forty country hit, "Callin' Baton Rouge." Four years later, New Grass Revival would back Garth Brooks on his Number Two remake of the song. Bush plays the John Hartford Memorial Festival in Morgantown, Indiana, on Saturday, June 4th. Other upcoming shows include Chicago's City Winery on June 9th, and Bonnaroo Music Festival, in Manchester, Tennessee, on June 12th, followed by a four-day stretch at Telluride Bluegrass Festival (where he's regarded as "the King" of that long-running event) June 16th to 19th. Storyman track listing: "Transcendental Meditation Blues" "Play By Your Own Rules" "Everything Is Possible" (w/ Deborah Holland) "Greenbrier" "Lefty's Song" (w/ Alison Krauss) "Carcinoma Blues" "Bowling Green" "Handmics Killed Country Music" (w/ Emmylou Harris) "Where's My Love" "It's Not What You Think" "I Just Wanna Feel Something" Related For everyone who loves Lucy, a more lovable depiction is coming. An accomplished sculptor is hard at work on a new statue of comedy legend Lucille Ball to show her in a more flattering light than the slightly Frankenstein-like sculpture that now sits in a park in her hometown of Celoron, N.Y., and appalled so many fans when pictures of it went viral last year. Carolyn D. Palmer is putting the finishing touches on the life-size bronze figure, which will be unveiled in a public ceremony on Balls birthday, Aug. 6. I wanted to portray Lucy beautifully, glamorous with confidence, showing playful, whimsical movement. I wanted to bring forth Lucys spirit and joy, Palmer told Yahoo News. A committee in Celoron, just outside of Jamestown in western New York, unanimously selected Palmer for the project in a national competition of more than 60 artists. She started with the armature (the frame around which a statue is built) in October 2015. Artist Carolyn Palmer works on the new Lucille Ball statue, which will be unveiled in Celoron, N.Y., in August. (Photo: Courtesy of Carolyn Palmer) I consider it my baby. A nine-month process! she joked. Palmer, who is based in New Yorks Hudson Valley, has been commissioned to create sculptures of historical and public figures for prestigious museums, public venues, and private collections including one of Pope Francis for New Yorks St. Patricks Cathedral but she says she felt the most pressure not to disappoint with the Lucy project. Upon seeing the negative press for the original statue, she said, her heart went straight out to its creator. I felt bad because every sculptor does not bat a thousand, she said. Determined to get it right, Palmer rewatched episodes of I Love Lucy and had models wear 50s dresses to understand Balls appeal. She emphasized the importance of movement in bringing the TV icons personality to the fore. A bronze sculpture of Lucille Ball is displayed in Lucille Ball Memorial Park in Celoron, N.Y. (Photos: Courtesy of Tom Andolora) You could get her proportions just right her eyes, her nose, her mouth and still say, Where is Lucy? So I worked on moving some of the muscles around her features to really bring her out, she said. Story continues The original statue, by New York sculptor Dave Poulin, has been derided as Scary Lucy and Ugly Lucy since it was unveiled in 2009. It shows Ball holding a bottle of Vitameatavegamin, a fictional elixir from a famous episode of I Love Lucy. Poulin, who has numerous public commissions to his credit, mostly in upstate New York and Pennsylvania, has apologized for how the work turned out and had offered to redo it. In 2012, Jamestown native Tom Andolora took two college friends to see the statue, and they shared a good laugh over its appearance. He came home with two pictures of the sculpture and created a Facebook page called We Love Lucy! Get Rid of this Statue in about 30 seconds without giving it a second thought or imagining it would capture national attention. It took three years, but in 2015, local media, including the Jamestown Post-Journal, picked up the story, and Yahoo News covered it shortly after helping to send the story viral. Tom Andolora, who was raised in Jamestown, N.Y., started the Facebook page called We Love Lucy! Get Rid of this Statue. (Photo: Courtesy of Tom Andolora) Once it hit Yahoo News, everyone picked it up and it went all over the world, Andolora said. Until now, Andolora, a playwright who lives in Long Island City in the borough of Queens in New York, had chosen to remain anonymous. He turned down several requests to appear on television, saying that he was simply a Lucy fan who thought she deserved better. It was crazy. For about six days, there were hundreds of people writing me. But I didnt want to do anything that would make people think I was out for myself, out for publicity, Andolora said. The Facebook page still has more than 10,000 fans awaiting the new statue. He attributes the success of his call for change to Balls legions of fans. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in the pilot episode for I Love Lucy in 1951. (Photo: CBS/Getty Images) Both Andolora and Palmer credited Celoron Mayor Scott Schrecengost for bringing the project this far. Schrecengost put together the committee of locals which included artists, businesspeople, a representative from the Lucy Desi Museum & Center for Comedy and one person who knew Ball personally to select an artist for the new statue. They chose Palmer, who studied sculpture at Nazareth College in Rochester, N.Y., and recently made sculptures of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt for the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, N.Y. The unveiling ceremony will be the centerpiece of a larger celebration of Ball, featuring a Dragon Boat Festival, arts and crafts, and food from local restaurants. Although Schrecengost is excited about the new statue, he said the Scary Lucy will most likely stay in Celeron probably in the same park. Since the story went viral, the botched statue has become a tourist attraction, with people stopping by every day for pictures. It put Celoron back on the map. Its kind of iconic now, he told Yahoo News. Its part of our history. Its been quite a roller coaster ride since day one. This article is the first time Tom Andolora, the creator of the Facebook page that started this commotion, has revealed his identity. He explained to Yahoo News why he wished to remain anonymous until now. His statement: An artist's conception of a quantum membrane that reflects huge almost all the light that hits it and is highly isolated from its surrounding environment. Such a device could provide a way to finally test quantum eff The quantum absurdity that leads to the notion of Schrodinger's cat in which a cat can exist in two states simultaneously could finally be tested in an object visible to the naked eye, a new study demonstrates. Scientists have created a pendulum-like membrane that is so perfectly isolated from friction and heat "that it would just keep going for 10 years with a single push," said study co-author Simon Groblacher, a physicist at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. "If you create a quantum state in this object, it will not go away." This tiny, flea-size swing could allow scientists to finally test whether the quantum effects behind the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment do indeed exist at large scales. [How Quantum Entanglement Works] Cat in trouble In 1936, physicist Erwin Schrodinger proposed a now-famous thought experiment meant to highlight the bizarre implications of quantum mechanics. In his formulation, a cat is trapped in a box with a radioactive atom. If that atom decays, the cat will be poisoned and die, but if the atom has not decayed, the cat lives. The so-called Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implied that the radioactive atom is in two states at once, simultaneously decayed and undecayed, until some brave soul opens the box and measures or perturbs the atom. By extension, the cat would be both dead and alive at the same time, until the box was opened. The weird phenomenon, known as superposition, has been demonstrated time and again with tiny, subatomic particles. Yet scientists have never observed a cat, or any visible object, that was simultaneously in two states or places at once. Exactly why isn't clear, but scientists have a few hypotheses. One is that the laws of quantum mechanics simply break down at larger scales. However, that would mean current quantum theory is incomplete, Groblacher said. "Quantum theory itself doesn't have any mass or size limit," at which its laws stop working, Groblacher told Live Science. Story continues Most scientists instead believe that superposition is ephemeral; perturb it just a bit, and the whole state collapses. As objects get larger, they are much more likely to exchange heat with the environment, disturbing this delicate state. But hypothetically, at least, even very large objects could display these quantum effects, assuming you could isolate the objects well enough from their environments. Cloistered environment To create such a cloistered quantum object, Groblacher and his colleagues used a relatively simple mechanical design: a small membrane that acts similar to a pendulum, placed inside a vacuum, so no heat can be exchanged with the environment. The membrane itself looks a bit like a paddle tethered at the ends by two tiny points of contact. Though it is about 0.04 inches (1 millimeter) long, it is also exquisitely thin, just "eight times the thickness of DNA," Groblacher said. The tiny tether points are also essentially the only spots at which this membrane interacts with the environment. The material itself, called silicon nitride, is used as a coating inside spacecraft components, and can sustain incredibly high internal stress. The high stress in the pendulum provides the internal stored energy needed to propel the near-perpetual swinging. The team then etched a pattern on the surface of the teensy object, turning it into a supermirror that reflects almost all of the incoming light particles. As such, the membrane absorbs almost no heat, which would disturb fragile quantum effects. This incredible reflectivity allowed the researchers to run their system at room temperature, whereas past systems relied on supercold setups just a few degrees away from absolute zero (the lowest possible temperature). The team then hit the quantum membrane with laser light. Sure enough, it reflected almost all the lifht. The membrane was so well-isolated from the environment that the researchers believe it can illustrate the weird quantum phenomenon called superposition; with the pendulum essentially in two swing positions simultaneously, the researchers reported in April in the journal Physical Review Letters. The new device is finally good enough that researchers could detect large-scale quantum effects, Groblacher said, adding that the jury is still out on the question of why such effects are generally not seen at larger scales. "What mechanisms destroy quantum physics in large objects: That's an open question," Groblacher said. "There are a bunch of theories. We're just trying to disprove and test these theories." Original article on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Selena Gomez will donate proceeds from her upcoming North Carolina concert to charity, and says she hopes "there will be a day soon when laws like HB2 won't be a consideration." The Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act (HB2) law -- often referred to as the "bathroom bill" -- is widely perceived as being anti-LGBT. It requires that transgender people only use bathrooms that correspond with their sex at birth. Demi Lovato, Dave Matthews & Maroon 5 Lead Growing List of Artists Speaking Out on N.C. Bathroom Bill "I am very fortunate to have grown up in a home where I learned from an early age that everyone should be treated equally," Gomez says in a statement, ahead of her June 7 concert at Charlotte, North Carolina's Time Warner Cable Arena. "I went back and forth on whether I should cancel my concert in North Carolina and ultimately I think what is right for me is to move forward with my show and donate a portion of the proceeds to Equality North Carolina and their effort to defeat this act of discrimination. I've been reassured the venue I will be performing in has gender neutral bathrooms as I want everyone coming to my show to be welcomed. I feel like my generation is the most progressive one yet and believe there will be a day soon when laws like HB2 won't even be a consideration." Gomez's Revival Tour launched in Las Vegas on May 6 and continues through December with dates scheduled in North America, Europe and Asia. Proceeds from each ticket sold to the tour will benefit the Alliance for Lupus Research, a national voluntary health organization whose mission is to find better treatments and ultimately prevent lupus. The pop princess' latest single, "Kill Em With Kindness," rose 22-19 on the Pop Songs airplay chart dated June 11, and follows three No. 1 hits from the Revival album: "Good for You," "Same Old Love" and "Hands to Myself." PARIS (Reuters) - Garbine Muguruza's chances of winning her maiden grand slam title -- and achieving the rare feat of beating Serena Williams twice in three years at Roland Garros -- may well depend on which version of the world number one turns up on Sunday. Will it be the seemingly indifferent Williams who steps onto Court Philippe Chatrier for the French Open final -- or the hard-hitting, steely Serena? Williams is looking for her fourth Roland Garros singles title and her 22nd overall in grand slams, which would equal the record of Steffi Graf and place her two behind all-time record holder Margaret Court. After her semi-final win against Dutchwoman Kiki Bertens, Williams did not seem overexcited at the prospect. "I guess it's how you look at it. The same with 21 and trying to get to another one. Nothing I can do about it," she told reporters. "The only thing can I do is just play to win the tournament and that's it." While the American looks in a different league on paper, that may not be the case on court. If the blips Williams suffered en route to labored wins in her last two matches resurface, the 22-year-old Muguruza is well placed to take advantage. The fourth seeded Spaniard was the last player to beat Williams at Roland Garros, crushing the American 6-2 6-2 in the second round in 2014 for her only win in four encounters. "It was a really unbelievable lesson for me. It propelled me to many, many, many wins after that," said Williams. The 34-year-old, who hopes to become the first woman to retain her title here since Justine Henin in 2007, won their grand slam confrontation 6-4 6-4 at Wimbledon last year in Muguruza's first appearance at that level. The Venezuelan-born player says she has been on a learning curve since then. "I have learned a lot how to control my emotions inside the court and outside the court," said Muguruza, who hopes to become the first Spaniard to lift the Suzanne Lenglen Cup since Arantxa Sanchez Vicario in 1998. Failure to take a deep breath at key moments may have been a factor at Wimbledon last year. "It was difficult for me to manage stress. I remember three points that I missed and she took advantage of this, but otherwise I wouldn't say I made a very big mistake," she said. She may also draw hope from the fact that Williams could be suffering from a groin problem. Asked if she was injured, Williams said: "I have had some issues, but, you know, it is what it is." (Reporting by Julien Pretot; editing by John Stonestreet) A seven-year-old Japanese boy was found alive on Friday nearly a week after his parents left him in a bear-inhabited forest as punishment for misbehaving, hungry but unharmed in a hut on a military base. A soldier discovered Yamato Tanooka who had apparently walked some 5.5 kilometres (3.4 miles) from the spot where he was abandoned last Saturday, finding shelter in the hut where he huddled in a pair of mattresses. During his ordeal, in rugged terrain on the northern island of Hokkaido, he drank from a tap near the corrugated-iron hut, and was immediately given food when he was found. Yamato's parents have been severely criticised by the Japanese public for forcing him out of their car on a mountain road to teach him a lesson for throwing stones at cars and people. After the emotional discovery, the contrite father appeared before the media outside the hospital where the boy was taken for a check-up, bowing as he apologised for his "excessive" actions. "The first thing I said to my son was, 'I'm very sorry to have caused you to face this suffering because of me,'" said Takayuki Tanooka, adding that the child nodded in reply. "I deeply apologise to people at his school, people in the rescue operation, and everybody for causing them trouble," he added, thanking those including military and police who spent days searching in cold and difficult conditions. Self-Defense Force spokesman Manabu Takehara said the boy "looked in good health" but had been taken to hospital by helicopter as a precaution. - 'He didn't look scared' - The parents originally told police that their son got lost while they were out hiking to gather wild vegetables along with their daughter, but later admitted they had become angry with him for throwing the stones. They ordered him onto the road, bounded on both sides by thick mountain forests, and quickly returned only to find him missing. Days of frantic searching found no trace of the child. Story continues The boy told police that he walked to the military base that Saturday night, finding shelter in the hut located in the complex, according to the local Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper. Temperatures in the area dipped as low as 4.6 degrees Celsius in the past week. The soldier who found the boy told reporters that he found him when he happened to open the door of the hut. "I asked, 'Are you Yamato?'" said the soldier, who was not identified, adding that the boy nodded as if saying yes. "He stood still," the soldier added. "He didn't look scared. He seemed relieved." A still image of the rescue on TV showed the boy wearing a baseball cap and T-shirt, holding some food and drink. - A 'miracle' - Japanese media interrupted regular programmes to broadcast news of Yamato's discovery in the case which has drawn huge attention. The stunning development was the top trending item on Twitter in Japan, with many expressing amazement at the boy's survival skills. Ken Noguchi, a renowned alpinist who has climbed Mount Everest, tweeted: "If he survived by himself, it's an unbelievable miracle." Others were concerned about the impact of the ordeal on the young boy and even whether his parents should regain custody. "I wonder if his heart was broken as he was discarded in the mountain," read one tweet. Police have reportedly said they are considering filing neglect charges against the parents, and many in Japan have called for punishment. "Missing boy was found and that's all wonderful, but the parents must be disciplined such as being abandoned on an uninhabited island," one person tweeted. Naoki Ogi, a noted education expert who has been strongly critical of the parents, said the entire family now needs psychological care as they start the healing process. "How much distrust is Yamato feeling toward his parents?," Ogi asked in a post on his influential blog. "I hope experts will offer adequate care and careful counselling to all members of the family." NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / June 3, 2016 / Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Sunrun Inc. ("Sunrun" or the "Company") (RUN) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Northern District of California, and docketed under 16-cv-02480, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons or entities who purchased or otherwise acquired Sunrun securities pursuant or traceable to the Company's Registration Statement and its Prospectus issued in connection with the Company's Initial Public Offering (the "Offering" or "IPO"), which commenced on or about August 5, 2015. This class action seeks to recover damages against Defendants for alleged violations of the federal securities laws under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the "Exchange Act") and the Securities Act of 1933 (the "1933 Act"). If you are a shareholder who purchased Sunrun securities pursuant to the Company's IPO, you have until July 5, 2016 to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll free, ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased. Click here to join this action. Sunrun is a provider of residential solar electricity and purports to operate the "second largest fleet of residential solar energy systems" in the United States. On or about March 27, 2015, Sunrun filed with the SEC its registration statement on Form S-l (Registration No. 333- 205217), which was amended and later declared effective by the SEC (the "Registration Statement"). Meanwhile, lawmakers in the Nevada Legislature rejected a call by rooftop solar companies, including Sunrun, to increase the cap on the number of consumers who can participate in net metering solar programs from 3% to a higher level. On August 5, 2015, Sunrun sold 17.9 million shares at $14.00 per share as part of its IPO. The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about Sunrun's business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (a) Sunrun's actual historical operating costs were being understated by not identifying and disclosing the fixed grid costs being borne for it by public utilities where net metering programs were being employed; (b) Sunrun had been charging well above wholesale rates for the electricity it was selling to its net metering customers; (c) contrary to having listed customers dispersed across 15 states and the District of Columbia in its Registration Statement, Sunrun had a substantial 20% customer concentration in Nevada alone; (d) Sunrun's ability to continue to convince customers to sign 20-year contracts - which lowers the fixed costs for installing solar systems on those customers' houses - was in jeopardy due to the ongoing regulatory review of net metering programs in 20 of the 40 states that then permitted net metering; (e) because Sunrun was employing an unreasonably low discount rate of 6% in calculating the value of its retained assets, it was overstating their value; and (f) as a result of the foregoing, at the time of the IPO, the Company's business and financial prospects were not what defendants had led the market to believe they were in the Registration Statement. In the eight months since the IPO, as the market learned that Sunrun relied on complex debt arrangements to fund its growth and could not sustain the revenues the Company forecast leading up to the IPO, Sunrun stock fell as low as $4.86 per share, and closed at $7.50 per share on May 6, 2016. The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com. SOURCE: Pomerantz LLP NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / June 3, 2016 / Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against NewLink Genetics Corporation ("NewLink" or the "Company") (NLNK) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Southern District of New York, and docketed under 16-cv-03545, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons or entities who purchased NewLink securities between September 17, 2013 and May 9, 2016 inclusive (the "Class Period"). This class action seeks to recover damages against Defendants for alleged violations of the federal securities laws under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the "Exchange Act"). If you are a shareholder who purchased NewLink securities during the Class Period, you have until July 11, 2016 to seek appointment as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll free, ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased. Click here to join this action. NewLink, a biopharmaceutical company, focuses on discovering, developing, and commercializing immunotherapeutic products to enhance treatment options for patients with cancer. Among the Company's product candidates is algenpantucel-L, a pancreatic cancer treatment. The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about Alere's business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) the Company's algenpantucel-L treatment was ineffective and potentially harmful to patients; and (ii) as a result of the foregoing, NewLinks public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. On May 9, 2016, post-market, NewLink announced that algenpantucel-L did not meet the main goal in the Company's Phase 3 IMPRESS study. Patients treated with algenpantucel-L lived for a median of 27.3 months in NewLink's Phase 3 trial, compared to median survival of 30.4 months for patients treated with standard therapy, suggesting that patients were actually harmed by NewLink's treatment. On this news, NewLink's stock price fell $5.05, or 30.61%, to close at $11.45 on May 10, 2016. The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com. SOURCE: Pomerantz LLP When Saran Kaba Jones returned to her native Liberia in 2008, after spending nearly two decades abroad as an ambassadors daughter, she was unprepared for the mayhem wreaked by years of civil war. I had seen it on TV, but seeing kids on the street, selling snacks to support their families instead of going to school, that made it real, she says. A 26-year-old investor with the Singapore Economic Development Board at the time, Kaba Jones thought she could spend a month in country, launch an educational scholarship fund and leave knowing she had done something for a nation that had nurtured her until she was 7. But the more time she spent on the ground, the more complicated her mission became. I went thinking education was the solution, but when I talked to people, it was water, water, water, says Kaba Jones, now 34. Most rural areas had no access to clean running water, and kids were missing school so they could haul water home. So she abandoned her scholarship idea in favor of building systems designed to provide safe access to clean water for rural Liberians. Her organization, FACE Africa, has built 50 systems over the past seven yearsand every single one of them is still in use today. First I had to listen to what people wanted, she says. Then I had to figure out how to make those systems last. FACE Africa also trains community technicians so repairs can be done quickly and cheaply. Kaba Jones has spent just as much time building up her local staff, so that if she ever wants to move on, FACE Africa can continue without her. Thats how Ill know I was successful, when I can leave and no one will notice. Yenagoa (Nigeria) (AFP) - Shell's Nigerian subsidiary said on Friday it was investigating a claim by the Niger Delta Avengers that it had struck another pipeline in the restive oil-producing south. "We are investigating reports of an attack on our pipeline in the western Niger delta," Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) spokesman Precious Okolobo told AFP, without elaborating. The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), blamed for a wave of bombings on Nigeria's oil infrastructure since the beginning of the year, earlier claimed responsibility for the attack. "At 3:00 am today (0200 GMT Friday), @NDAvengers blow up the SPDC Forcados 48" export line," it said on its Twitter account. The attack was carried out because Shell had refused to heed earlier warnings not to repair the pipeline, which was damaged in February, it added. The NDA, which says it is seeking a fairer share of Nigeria's oil wealth for the Niger delta people and has asked oil majors to leave the region, also said it had struck Agip facilities. "At about 3:30 am today (0230 GMT Friday), strike team blow up the Brass to Tebidaba crude oil line in Bayelsa (state)," it said on Twitter. Desmond Agu, commandant of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) in the state, confirmed the second attack and said the pipeline had been shut down. "We have dispatched our men and we have intensified patrols in the area. We are working round the clock to protect critical infrastructure in Bayelsa," he added. There was no immediate word from Agip's parent company, Eni of Italy, when contacted by email. - Output cut - The NDA has been attacking facilities operated by subsidiaries of Shell, Eni, US firm Chevron, and the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). The army said on Thursday that six people, including two soldiers, were killed when militants attacked a boat belonging to the NNPC in the region, but the NDA denied involvement. Story continues The deadly attack happened at about 5:50 pm (1650 GMT) on Wednesday in the Warri area of Delta state, which has seen a spate of attacks recently. That followed two claimed NDA attacks on two supply pipelines in Bayelsa state on Wednesday and a warning it would bring oil production to a standstill in Nigeria unless its demands were met. The upsurge in violence has seen Nigeria's oil production fall to 1.4 million barrels per day -- well below the budgeted for 2.2 million bpd. The Avengers are believed to have sympathy for a former oil rebel leader who commanded militants in the region in the 2000s and who is now wanted on money laundering and corruption charges. The Nigerian military, which has slammed the NDA as "economic terrorists", has deployed gunboats and fighter jets to the creeks and swamps of the delta in search of the militants. Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari last week ordered enhanced security in the delta, adding: "We have to be very serious with the situation... because if threatens the national economy." Tension, in three quotes. Some time later this month, a court in The Hague will hand down a ruling that seeks to settle long-simmering territorial disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea. But the decision which the Chinese have already said theyll ignore will probably only inflame tensions in the strategic waterway. FPs Dan De Luce and Keith Johnson go long on the controversy, and three important quotes from their story sum the problem up nicely: All the islands, where we are doing reclamation, are Chinese islands, are Chinese territory, Wang Xining, a deputy director-general at the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a recent interview. The Philippines maintains that the decision of the tribunal, once rendered, will be legally binding and should be accorded due respect by everyone, including China, said Jose Cuisia, the Philippine ambassador in Washington, told FP. I think its incumbent on us to insist were not going to recognize the Chinese claims, said (ret.) Adm. Jonathan Greenert, who stepped down as Navy chief last year. However, a sluggish U.S. response has allowed Beijing to create facts on the ground with its large-scale reclamation and construction of military harbors and airfields, he said. We did not get out ahead of it, Greenert said. Its a fait accompli; they are there. It is unfortunate. Over there. Defense Secretary Ash Carter has landed in Singapore, and will deliver the keynote address at the Shangri-La Dialogue June 4. Watch for some South China Sea talk. Fallujah, Part III. Iraqi forces continue to push into the outskirts of the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah, albeit slowly. Liberating the city from the terrorist group would be a huge victory for the government in Baghdad, but its also important for the Jordanian government, as well just maybe not in the way you think. Saddled with 14 percent unemployment and with exports to Iraq flatlining, Jordan desperately needs a critical highway that runs from the border, and right through Fallujah, to be reopened, FPs Paul McLeary writes. And Baghdad, struggling with its own economic malaise, also needs the trade spigot turned back on. And retaking Fallujah is the key to that, say military officials and experts on the regions dynamics. Story continues ISIS, by the numbers. This is sobering. The Islamic State has been linked to the deaths of more than 500 civilians in countries including Belgium and the United States in the past six months alone, and the months ahead could be even bloodier, FPs Colum Lynch and John Hudson report. Thats the conclusion of a new review of the groups rise by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which notes that the Islamic State has inspired or carried out the killing of civilians in 11 countries, not counting the groups attacks in its strongholds of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Clinton vs. Trump. Donald Trumps ideas arent just different; they are dangerously incoherent. Theyre not even really ideas just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies. Thats Hillary Clinton on Donald Trumps foreign policy ideas, and a preview of whats to come this summer. Going after Trump on his lack of foreign policy cred also opens up Clintons long record to more scrutiny, writes FPs Molly OToole: The Clinton camp sees some retired military officers, GOP elected officials, and former Republican national security officials who have vowed Never Trump as potential recruits, an unlikely alliance that underscores how her doctrine, in many ways, is more hawkish than Obamas or Trumps. Rumble in Capitol Hill. A top Pentagon public affairs official has been placed on administrative leave after being charged with harassing a neighbors nanny over a parking spot in his Capitol Hill neighborhood, and getting caught on a surveillance camera ripping off the womans licence plates. Bryan Whitman, the highest-ranking career civilian in the Defense Departments public affairs office kicked off the odd dispute in April, first by leaving threatening notes on the nannys car and then tearing off her tags on multiple occasions. Whitman apparently and mistakenly believed that the car was illegally using a visitor parking permit. He was caught defacing the car by the neighbors surveillance cam, and subsequently charged in May with three counts of misdemeanor theft. As a result, hes been put on leave and theres a good chance hell lose his top secret sensitive compartmented information security clearance. Over a parking space that wasnt his. Not really the kind of community outreach that the Pentagon usually has in mind Hey there, good morning, and thanks for clicking on through for the summer 2016 edition of SitRep. As always, if you have any thoughts, announcements, tips, or national security-related events to share, please pass them along to SitRep HQ. Best way is to send them to: paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or on Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley South Korea South Koreas defense ministry says there wont be any talks on the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system to the country at the upcoming Shangri-La Dialogue, but the Pentagon is promising an announcement on the deployment soon. Reuters reports that an anonymous South Korean defense official said that separate talks on Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) are continuing between Washington and Seoul outside the Asian security summit. China has strongly objected to the prospect of a U.S. THAAD system in South Korea, saying its radar system can reach into Chinese territory. South Korean and U.S. officials counter that the growing ballistic missile threat has made the deployment critical for South Korean security. Syria Russia is considering whether to send more ground troops to Syria to join the fight for the Assad regime, according to a scoop from Al Jazeera. Former deputy minister for foreign affairs Andrei Fyodorov says Russian President Vladimir Putin is reviewing plans to send special operations forces to Syria to help the regime capture a larger percentage of Syrian territory from rebels. Russia announced a withdrawal of some forces from Syria in March, sending some fighter jets back home. But operations have continued and Russian special operations have carried out operations since then, participating in the fight against the Islamic State in Palmyra. Bouthaina Shaaban, an adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad whom the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned in 2011 for her links to the Syrian government, spoke via Skype at a National Press Club event on Thursday to press the regimes case to a Western audience. The event, which included a question and answer period, verged on shouting matches, according to the Washington Post, as reporters and activists challenged Shaabans description of events in Syria. Shaaban denied that residents in Darayya are starving. On Wednesday, humanitarian groups had to remove food aid from a convoy headed to the city as Assad regime officials will not allow food to reach the city. 2016 Intelligence officials tell Reuters that theyre nervous about having to offer the customary intelligence briefing to presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. The intelligence community generally offers a top secret briefing to the Democratic and Republican party nominees once confirmed, but Trumps unpredictable nature is a concern for those officials wire service spoke to. Weve never had a situation like this before. Ever, one intelligence official said. State Department The State Department deleted a section of video at a 2013 press briefing in which a Fox News reporter pressed then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki on a predecessors denials about the administrations secret talks with Iran, and now Congress is looking into the issue. The Hill reports that Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) is requesting documents from the State Department on the incident. In 2013, Fox News reporter James Rosen asked Psaki about previous denials that the White House had engaged in secret backchannel talks with Iran over its nuclear program. The department deleted a portion of the video in which Psaki responds that diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. Aviation A pilot from the Navys elite Blue Angels was tragically killed in a crash on Thursday. Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss died when his F/A-18 Hornet crashed in Tennessee after takeoff, Navy Times reports. In a statement, the Navy says during the crash took place during the beginning stages of an afternoon practice at the Smyrna, Tenn., Airport. The incident marks the third F/A-18 crash this week, with the loss of two other Hornets in an incident off the coast of North Carolina on Sunday. The crew of both aircraft were rescued and brought to safety shortly after that incident. Separately, an Air Force F-16 fighter jet crashed in an empty field near Colorado Springs, Colorado on Thursday after flying over the Air Force Academy graduation ceremony at which President Obama spoke. The plane was from the services Thunderbirds, an elite Air Force air demonstration squadron similar to the Navys Blue Angels. Pilot Maj. Alex Turner ejected after successfully maneuvering his aircraft away from nearby homes. Turner survived the crash unhurt and met with President Obama briefly after the incident, according to the Denver Post. Army Five soldiers were killed and four remain missing following the rollover of their Light Medium Tactical Vehicle at Fort Hood, Texas, Army Times reports. The incident took place at a low-water crossing while training on convoy operations. Texas has experienced heavy rains and floods in recent days and an Army spokeswoman tells the paper that the low water crossing the soldiers were at was not marked as such and doesnt usually flood. Three soldiers were rescued in the incident and are receiving medical treatment. Egypt Egypt has taken ownership of the first of two Mistral-class helicopter carriers from France, after Paris decided not to sell the warships to Russia. Egypt agree to the $1 billion deal. The handover was made during a ceremony in the French city of Toulouse.The deal is part of a slew of agreements between the two countries which included a $2.26 contract inked in April for military gear, including a military telecommunications satellite expected to be built by Frances Airbus Space Systems, and last years $5.7 billion contract for 24 Rafale warplanes, and a French frigate. The ship will be named after Egypts second president, Gamal Abdel Nasser. A conversation with markedly self-aware, often irreverent Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee Elvis Costello can launch into any number of tangents. For this songwriting-focused exchange, he goes deep into the conflict of loyalties that fueled hit "Oliver's Army," his time-tested writing process, and why the identity of the subject of "Alison" shall remain a mystery. This year's Songwriters Hall of Fame ceremony, June 9 at the Marriott Marquis in NY, also honors Marvin Gaye, Nick Jonas, Tom Petty, Lionel Richie, Nile Rodgers & Bernard Edwards, Chip Taylor and Seymour Stein, who will receive the Howie Richmond Hitmaker award. Performer/presenters at the event, among the industry's hottest annual tickets, include the B-52s, James Corden, Kenneth Gamble & Leon Huff, Jennifer Hudson, Marcus Mumford, Roger McGuinn, Rachel Platten, Sister Sledge, Jussie Smollett and Jon Voight. Nile Rodgers To Be Inducted Into Songwriters Hall of Fame, Remembers 'Le Freak' & More Who's that girl?: "It's a complex relationship people have had over a 30-odd-year period with the song 'Alison,' of what I might say the song was to me when I wrote it and that being somewhat different from what their memory of it is. I think it's a great mistake to be too specific. I'm not about to underline the identity of the person I was musing on because then it becomes something in a box in an interview in Billboard magazine and that follows me around for the rest of my life. I would never need to sing the song again because I would've wholly defined it. So if you want me to answer the question, I can announce I'll never sing the song again but I think you might get some people upset." "A terrible conflict of loyalties": "The underpinning of 'Oliver's Army' was my observations of going to Belfast for the first time and seeing young men in British army uniforms, many of whom were really no different than the people they were guarding. I pretty much wrote it on the plane back to London. My grandfather was actually in a British army regiment despite being a full-blooded Irishman. So there are all of these contradictions, which are repeated throughout history. People join the army for a lot of reasons. Frankly, some have no other choice. That was the one that faced some of my friends when I was 17. A lot of people joined the army in England when I was a teenager to get training in a trade -- to become a mechanic or an electrician. And the idea that you ever had to actually shoot somebody was much, much further down the list of enticements that got you to sign up. That's the conundrum the song reflects upon. You find yourself in parts of your own country, which is under semi-martial law, and being asked to aim your rifle at somebody who's basically the same as you. This is not a question of empathizing with one side or the other, so much as accepting it's a terrible conflict of loyalties." Story continues I could talk all night: "The common sense of it to me is that we have much more to gain in working together than looking for the divisions. That's my view about pretty much every conflict. The whole job of writing a song like that, particularly in those days in England, was just to get a song like that on the radio that was about something a little less obvious than the songs of the moments. There were lots of people singing song about the usual pop concerns, and this certainly isn't that." Here to stay: "When I wrote that song, I guess it was about 37 years ago you would have thought by now we would've moved beyond conflict, but it only seems to get worse. Like a lot of the songs I wrote a long time ago, I find there are new reasons to sing them. Like this one, and 'Shipbuilding,' that are about more somber subject matters, you find they seem to echo off more recent events. Unfortunately the repetition of conflict and the repetition of conflict within an individual -- that's all still there." On "Wise Up Ghost": "The whole album I did with the Roots the nature of our collaboration was really spontaneous and should probably rightly [be] credited to [co-producer] Steven Mandel as being the conduit for musical ideas between myself and Questlove, and then the members of the Roots contributed their instrumental part. When it came to the lyrics, they left that to me entirely. We never had any consultation about the fact that the lyrics would largely be outward-looking commentary as opposed to introspective, inward-looking commentary about the ways of the heart. Some were retellings of songs I had already set with different music and that was very much, people want to say 'political,' but I call it bulletin commentary on what we're all seeing out the window, and this is my perspective on it." Every day I write the book: "I used to carry a notebook all the time. I still do, but now it's mostly electronic. In those days it was lots of little notebooks that could fit into my pockets and I would write drafts of songs over and over and I suppose that was as close to editorial work as I'd ever really acknowledged. When I was writing my book [2015's Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink] I went back and found my old notebooks and discovered there are differences between these different drafts, it wasn't just an obsessive thing to write the lyrics out, there are whole verses that got taken out." By Stella Mapenzauswa JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Standard & Poor's will probably not cut South Africa's credit rating into "junk" territory on Friday, analysts say, but it may warn that any signs of political upheaval undermining economic policy could trigger a downgrade later in the year. S&P, which rates the sovereign debt of Africa's most industrialised country one notch above speculative grade at BBB- with a negative outlook, has previously warned that a weak economic outlook also poses a risk to the country's rating. S&P is due to announce the results of its latest review on Friday, following meetings with policymakers in Pretoria. A cut to below investment grade would push up South Africa's borrowing costs, making it harder to plug a budget deficit projected at 3.2 percent of GDP in the 2016/17 financial year. The move would lump South Africa with emerging market peers Brazil, Russia and Turkey, who have also been downgraded by the ratings agencies. Fitch, which like S&P rates South Africa one step above subinvestment grade, is expected to issue its own review next week, according to Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan. Pretoria last month dodged a downgrade from Moody's, which held its rating at Baa2. Gordhan has expressed optimism that Pretoria's history of fiscal discipline should come to the rescue. Some analysts agree. "We think S&P will give South Africa the benefit of the doubt for now," BNP Paribas Securities economist Jeffrey Schultz said. "Nevertheless, S&P is likely to give a clear warning that, without better policy formation and implementation, a downgrade to junk remains on the cards." Ratings agencies are worried the Treasury could be distracted from efforts to rein in the budget as it grapples with the political turmoil seen since President Jacob Zuma changed finance ministers twice in less than a week in December. Gordhan, reappointed in December to calm jittery markets after a previous stint in 2009-2014, has set out to reassure ratings agencies and investors that he is committed to stabilising public debt at below 50 percent of national output. Following a roadshow to the United States and Britain by Gordhan to reassure investors, the Treasury successfully issued a $1.25 billion 10-year international bond overseas to help finance its medium-term foreign-currency commitments. Gordhan said the successful outcome was a sign of investor confidence despite the political upheaval, which has included President Jacob Zuma surviving an impeachment vote called after the Constitutional Court said he breached the law by ignoring an order to repay state funds spent on renovating his home. Zuma is also hoping for a ratings reprieve from both S&P and Fitch, with local elections due in August. His African National Congress party faces a strong challenge from opponents seeking to capitalize on what they see as his economic and political missteps. "Avoiding a downgrade yet again would be an important confidence-booster, especially for ... Zuma, who would no doubt seek to exploit the outcome as a means of silencing critics who accuse him of being a key obstacle to restoring investor confidence," Teneo Intelligence analyst Manji Cheto said. (Editing by James Macharia and Hugh Lawson) CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Gold mining firms will appeal against a South African court ruling allowing class action suits seeking damages for up to half a million miners who contracted the fatal lung diseases silicosis and tuberculosis, a lawyer for the miners said on Friday. "We can confirm that they will appeal the ruling," said Charles Abrahams, an attorney who acted on behalf of the miners. A High Court decision last month set the stage for protracted proceedings covering cases dating back decades in the largest class action suits yet in Africa's most industrialised country. Silicosis is an incurable disease caused by inhaling silica dust from gold-bearing rocks. It causes shortness of breath, a persistent cough and chest pains, and also makes people highly susceptible to tuberculosis. The court's upper estimate of potential claimants is significantly higher than previous estimates at 500,000 claimants. "Assuming a conservative claim of $6,500 per claimant, this approximates claims in the total amount of $3.25 billion," said Max Ebrahim, South African based insurance partner at law firm Clyde & Co. Anglo American, Africa's top gold producer AngloGold Ashanti, Gold Fields, Harmony Gold, Sibanye Gold and African Rainbow Minerals, which were defendants in the judgment handed down May 13, have formed the Occupational Lung Disease (OLD) group to deal with such issues. The group declined to comment and will respond later on Friday, OLD spokesperson Charmane Russell told Reuters. (Reporting by Wendell Roelf; editing by Adrian Croft) PRETORIA (Reuters) - South Africa's National Union of Mineworkers will demand a wage increase of 20 percent per year for the next two years in upcoming talks with Anglo American Platinum, according to an internal document seen by Reuters. According to Amplats, NUM represents about 20 percent of its workforce. The majority belong to NUM's arch rival, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union. But NUM has the majority at Amplats' key Mogalakwena mine, the company's cash spinner and most profitable asset. The existing three-year wage deal between the companies and unions expires at the end of June. AMCU's wage demands are not yet known, but will also likely be double digit. Wage demands in South Africa are being driven in part by soaring food prices triggered by a drought. Platinum firms are still reeling from the effects of a record five-month strike in 2014 led by AMCU when it sought a more than doubling in wages to 12,500 rand ($802). In the end, the workers settled for raises of around 20 percent annually. ($1 = 15.5892 rand) (Reporting by Ed Stoddard; Editing by James Macharia) SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea said on Friday the deployment of an advanced U.S. missile defense system to counter the growing threat from North Korea would not be discussed when defense chiefs meet at an Asian security forum at the weekend. The United States and South Korea began talks on deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system after North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and launched a long-range rocket a month later. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said en route to the Shangri-La Dialogue, a three-day Asian security meeting being held in Singapore from Friday, that recent North Korean missile tests showed the need for improved missile defenses, even though the latest test launch on Tuesday was a failure. "There is no plan for discussions on THAAD at the Shangri-La Dialogue," a South Korean defense ministry official said. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said separate talks on the missile defense system were continuing between South Korea and the United States. "When the issues are coordinated, there will be an announcement," the official said, without indicating when that might be. A senior U.S. defense official said earlier there were still "a lot of technical issues to get through" but a public announcement would be made "soon. China and Russia oppose the deployment of THAAD, which operates powerful radar capable of penetrating deep into their territories. South Korea and the United States say it is needed in response to the heightened missile threat from North Korea. Carter waved aside concerns expressed by China that deployment of the THAAD systems radars on the Korean peninsula could upset the balance of power by reducing the strategic deterrence of China's ballistic missile system. "The implementation will be a series of decisions that we take together and its for our own protection against North Korea. Everybody should understand that," Carter said. North Korea's attempt to fire an intermediate-range missile on Tuesday failed, South Korea and the United States said, following three earlier failures to launch a Musudan missile, which has a design range of more than 3,000 km (1,800 miles). In February, a North Korean rocket launch put an object into space but that was seen as a cover for intercontinental ballistic missile development. The North has conducted a series of tests since then, claiming to have made progress on missile technology. (Reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Paul Tait) MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish police visited Santander's headquarters (SAN.MC) on Friday as part of a money laundering probe triggered by leaks of sensitive tax information from HSBC'S Swiss private bank. A High Court spokesman said police, acting on the instruction of the court, had sought documents related to a number of accounts during a visit to Santander's Madrid headquarters, but did not elaborate. Police confirmed the visit but declined to comment on the nature of the investigation. The probe is linked to tax avoidance but how much money is involved is unclear at this stage, a court source said. Santander did not return several calls to seek comment. An HSBC spokeswoman in London declined to comment. The Spanish investigation began after Herve Falciani, a former IT employee at HSBC's Geneva private bank, leaked information on clients and their tax situation. The French daily Le Monde has said it identified more than 106,000 clients. Falciani has said he is a whistleblower trying to help governments track down citizens who used Swiss accounts to evade tax. France, Austria, Belgium and Argentina have also launched their own investigations. Swiss authorities say Falciani is a thief who betrayed his employer. He was sentenced to five years in prison for in a Swiss trial last year aggravated industrial espionage. However, he may not serve time in Switzerland since he lives in France and there are no legal proceedings against him in there. France does not typically extradite its own citizens. (Reporting By Maria Vega Paul and Sonya Dowsett; Editing by Julien Toyer and Jon Boyle) W local media may have covered from the beginning, But activists in the Windy City had spent more than a year seeking justice for 17 -year-old Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times by Officer Jason Van Dyke in October 2014. Indeed, developments in the case came quickly after a court in November ordered the release of dashcam video that showed officers had lied about the circumstances leading up to the shooting. Van Dyke and other officers claimed in reports that McDonald, who had a knife, lunged at officers before they shot. The video showed that the claim was false. City officials who fought to keep the video sealed from public view were accused of a cover-up. Throught grassroots organizing, meetings with politicians and protests, a : for officials to for withholding the McDonald shooting video, for Van Dyke and other officers to be c in the case and for an to handle the officers' criminal cases. Source: Charles Rex Arbogast/AP They got nearly everything they fought for. On Thursday, Cook County Circuit Judge Vincent Gaughan announced that he would find an outside prosecutor for the case against Van Dyke, the Associated Press reported. The officer was charged with first-degree murder within hours of the release of the shooting video that shows him firing round after round into McDonald as the teen lay motionless on the ground. Anita Alvarez, the Cook County state's attorney, speaks to journalists in Chicago . Here are three other developments in the case that were spurred by local activism: The Cook County state's attorney lost bid for re-election. The c harges against Van Dyke were filed by Anita Alvarez, the embattled Cook County state's attorney whose loss in a March primary election was influenced by a coordinated grassroots campaign against her. Activists questioned her decision to wait more than a year to charge Van Dyke, and only after a court ordered the shooting video to be released. Story continues Alvarez, who will leave office next December, asked last month to step aside in Van Dyke's prosecution. Eddie Johnson is sworn in as Chicago police superintendent in April . C mayor and police officials vowed policing reforms. Alvarez wasn't the only official accused of a cover-up in the McDonald case. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who faced heavy criticism from activists over his role in the investigation, of white police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. In April, the City Council approved Emanuel's replacement, 27-year Chicago police veteran Eddie Johnson, who is African-American. Johnson, along with a policing oversight task force, will administer sweeping police reforms that officials believe address longstanding complaints about street officers' overly aggressive tactics, Emanuel has said. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, pictured with a U.S. attorney for Chicago, answers questions about Justice Department investigation . F law enforcement officials investigate Chicago police In December, the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation into Chicago's police " " of excessive uses of force against civilians. "Building trust between law enforcement officers and the communities they serve is one of my highest priorities as Attorney General," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement about the probe. T By Pritha Sarkar PARIS (Reuters) - It was not just Serena Williams who looked like she did not want to be at Roland Garros on Friday. The American seemed listless, bored and completely out of sorts as she finally clipped the wings of flying Dutchwoman Kiki Bertens 7-6(7) 6-4 to reach her 27th grand slam final. There the world number one will meet Spanish fourth seed Garbine Muguruza, who ended the run of 2010 runner-up Samantha Stosur with a no-nonsense 6-2 6-4 win in the other semi-final that had to be staged on the secondary Court Suzanne Lenglen after a week of rain derailed the tournament's usual schedule. "I feel like you have to be still mentally alive, and obviously you need to be physically alive and ready for everything," said Williams, who on Saturday will meet the rival who holds the distinction of being the last woman to have beaten the American on Paris clay. While Williams could be forgiven for feeling rather fed up at having to play a match for the third day running on Friday, since day 13 of the claycourt major is traditionally a rest day for the women finalists, global TV viewers were left wondering "Where the hell are all the fans?" Twitter went into overdrive with comments such as: "It's an absolute disgrace to see a women's semi-final at a grand slam tournament take place in front of so few people" or "women's semi-final played out in half empty stadium. Should move it to Spain!" Organizers pointed out that the severe weather conditions in the region, with some parts experiencing flooding after one of the wettest weeks on record, have played a part in keeping fans away. However, according to the official Roland Garros website, tickets for Friday, usually reserved for the two men's semi-finals, were sold out weeks ago. Those who did bother to turn up on Friday were left wondering if the "real Serena Williams" would turn up as she appeared to move in super-slow motion between the points, surrendered her opening service games in both sets and sprayed 31 unforced errors long and wide. "Sometimes Serena doesn't look like she wants to be out there. I think today is one of those days.... You're tired and sore and you have a grand slam semi-final," former French Open champion Mary Pierce said while commentating on the match. It was not vintage Williams but then again she did not need to produce her best to beat a woman who was ranked 58th in the world and was making her debut appearance in a grand slam semi-final. Bertens, covered from neck to toe in a long-sleeved white shirt, a blue skirt and skin-tight black leggings on yet another chilly day, had two set points in the first set but missed both with forehand errors. While Williams grimaced, groaned and growled louder and louder with each passing minute of the contest, Bertens looked like she was having plenty of fun despite failing to win the points that mattered. A forehand error ended Bertens's day out on Philippe Chatrier Court, leaving Williams one win away from a 22nd grand slam singles title. (Reporting by Pritha Sarkar, editing by Julien Pretot) It's not news that teens are repeatedly sent home from school for violating dress codes. Prom gowns to casual wear are being policed for being "too tight" or "too revealing." For Kaitlyn Juvik, it was her lack of bra. A student at Helena High School in Alabama, Juvik was given two options: Cover up or put on a bra because "someone in the building" was uncomfortable. Here's how she looked: Source: KRTV /Facebook "You definitely can't tell I'm not wearing a bra unless you're looking VERY hard," she wrote on her Facebook page. Juvik along with fellow students staged a silent protest and started a "No Bra, No Problem" Facebook page. Here they are in action: Source: Mic/KRTV Source: Mic/KRTV Source: Mic/KRTV "I'm not going to check student's undergarments," the school's principal Steve Thennis said to MTN News. "We are going to ask them to dress appropriately and if we feel it is inappropriate, male or female, we are going to ask them to cover up." The big Q: Should unsupported breasts in their natural state under a black top should not be considered "inappropriate"? No. At least according to Juvik, who shared this epic meme her Facebook page after the incident. It perfectly sums up why she should be allowed to have a choice to cover up or not. Source: Facebook "Different things empower different women and it's not your place to tell her which one it is." Simple rule: When a woman is unconscious and lying on the ground near a dumpster, you don't sexually assault her. Brock Allen Turner, a 20-year-old swimmer at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, did just that early last year. Turner was convicted of assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated person, sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object and sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object on March 30, according to the Huffington Post. The verdict was delivered after two Stanford students found Turner raping the woman outside a frat party on Jan. 18, 2015. Now, instead of the six-year sentence prosecutors initially recommended, Turner is getting just six months in county jail because prison could have a "severe impact" his well-being, according to Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky, who presided over Turner's sentence hearing Thursday. "A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him," Judge Persky explained, according to the Guardian. "I think he will not be a danger to others." Turner's victim, meanwhile, has no memory of the attack. While testifying in court on March 21, the victim who is not a Stanford student and had a blood-alcohol level of 0.24 at the time of the assault said her only memory was waking up in a hospital with "pine needles in her disheveled hair, [and] dried blood on her hands and elbows." Stanford University. In justifying his decision, Judge Persky claimed Turner's young age and lack of a prior criminal record were grounds to reduce the suggested six-year sentence. Santa Clara County district attorney Jeff Rosen later criticized the move, according to the Guardian. "The punishment does not fit the crime," he said in a press conference. Story continues The outcome of Turner's hearing is a grim reminder of how dangerous rape culture and sexual violence against women at America's colleges and universities is. According to a study released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 21% of students from nine unnamed colleges surveyed told researchers they have experienced sexual assault on college campuses in the U.S. In another study, researchers at Brown University's School of Public Health discovered 15% of undergraduate freshman women at one private university in New York state experienced rape while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. And according to Newsweek, approximately 32% of college men would consider "[forcing] a woman into sexual intercourse" if they knew no one would find out about it. All this contributes to a culture where women are routinely sexually assaulted on college campuses. The results of Turner's hearing reveal how heavily our justice system is stacked against these women and in favor of their attackers. Starz president Glenn Curtis will retire from the company effective July 1. Curtis is a longtime Starz veteran, having spent more than 20 years at the company. According to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, Curtis will receive a lump-sum payment of $828,750 upon retirement. He will also receive monthly payments based on his current salary from January, 2017 to December, 2017. Those payments are set to equal his monthly base salary, minus any compensation he receives from any other employer. According to additional SEC filings, Curtis total compensation in 2015 was $2.72 million, up 26% from the year prior. Curtis was named president of Starz in 2012, reporting to CEO Chris Albrecht. He was CFO of Starz Encore Group from 1995 to 2002. He then served as vice president of Starzs then corporate parent Liberty Media, before returning to Starz as executive vice president and CFO in 2006. He relinquished the CFO title in 2012 with the addition of current CFO Scott Macdonald. Starz has no plans to fill Curtis position. The role is set to be retired. Curtis, who had been based in the networks Colorado office, had also served as president of Starz LLC and Starz Entertainment. Related stories 'Outlander' Renewed for Seasons 3 and 4 Anthony Hopkins on 'The Dresser,' 'Westworld' and Why He Hates Car Chases Starz Moves 'Power,' 'Survivor's Remorse' to Sundays This Summer Dayshen McKenzie spent the last few moments of his life running away from a group of men spewing the N-word, at least one of whom was armed, the New York Daily News reports. McKenzie had an asthma attack while running May 27 at around 4:15 pm. He died two hours later. A mer New York Police Department officer, Diane Fatigati, was nearby and rushed to help McKenzie. "To me, it's murder," she said to the Daily News. "They were chasing him that's a crime. You're hunting them because they're black ... You're calling them a n*gger." Aside from yelling racial epithets, Fatigati said one person in the group which she described as consisting of several white men and one Hispanic man screamed "I got a gun!" at McKenzie as he ran. The Daily News did not report the number of men who were following him and his friends, but described the number as "carloads." "The sadness turns to anger," McKenzie's mother, Tisha Richardson, told the Daily News. "I want justice for him. Somebody should be held accountable." According to Richardson, McKenzie forgot his inhaler when he left the house earlier that day. The Rev. Al Sharpton posted a statement Friday on Facebook, comparing it to the 1986 murder in the New York City neighborhood of Howard Beach that ended the life of young, black New Yorker Michael Griffith. Source: Facebook McKenzie's death bears similarities with the death of Eric Garner in July 2014. Both happened on Staten Island and both men lived with asthma and suffocated. Garner's famous last words "I can't breathe" became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter. Like Garner, McKenzie lost his ability to breathe in his last moment. Friends of McKenzie's who spoke to the Daily News said they were chased after two groups of youth confronted each other in the parking lot of fast-food restaurant Checker's. "They were calling us n*ggers," Harry Smith told the Daily News. "I just heard a lot of racial slurs. They were mixed some white, some of them were Hispanic. But nobody was black." * Redstone criticizes Viacom CEO, doctor's report says * Viacom CEO's attorney says exam doesn't answer key questions (Adds details from doctor's report, statement from Viacom CEO's attorney) By Lisa Richwine June 2 (Reuters) - A psychiatrist who examined Sumner Redstone twice last month found the 93-year-old retained the mental capacity needed to remove Viacom Inc Chief Executive Philippe Dauman from the trust that will eventually control the company, according to a spokesman for the media mogul. Dr. James Spar said Redstone displayed only a "mild degree" of age-related cognitive impairment when he saw the mogul at his Los Angeles area home on May 20 and May 24, according to a statement issued by Redstone's spokesman on Thursday. Spar concluded Redstone had the "legal mental capacity" required when he removed Dauman and Viacom board member George Abrams from the Sumner M. Redstone National Amusements Trust on May 20, the statement said. The trust will determine the future of Viacom and CBS Corp when Redstone dies or is declared mentally incapacitated. Redstone is the controlling shareholder of both companies, and his mental status is a subject of dispute. Dauman and Abrams have sued to reverse their removal from the trust, arguing that Redstone is under undue influence of his daughter, Shari Redstone. She has called that allegation "absurd" and said her father made his own decisions. The outcome of the court case, and who ends up with control over the trust, will have wide-ranging implications for shareholders of CBS and Viacom, the owner of cable TV networks such as MTV and Nickelodeon. Redstone told Spar he felt Dauman had "done a bad job running Viacom" and he was upset with Dauman's decision to sell part of movie studio Paramount Pictures, according to the statement from Redstone's spokesman. Spar is a specialist in geriatric psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles. The doctor has examined Sumner Redstone numerous times since 2014, according to the mogul's spokesman. Story continues Les Fagen, an attorney for Dauman, said in a statement that Spar's evaluation was the work of a "paid medical expert" and did not answer whether Sumner Redstone "had sufficient capacity to make complex decisions impacting the governance of billion dollar publicly held corporations" or "acknowledge that undue influence was exercised". Fagen said a "complete and objective" examination was needed. Regarding Paramount Pictures, Fagen said there is not yet a deal to oppose. "Such a deal if it matures will be the subject of evaluation and review by all board members," Fagen said. (Reporting by Parikshit Mishra in Bengaluru and Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles; Editing by Bill Rigby and Muralikumar Anantharaman) Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman not only lacks the confidence of controlling shareholder Sumner Redstone, he has lost the support of the trust established to manage the empire if Redstones deemed incompetent, Redstones lawyers said today in a Massachusetts court filing. (Read it here.) Redstones camp wants the states Probate and Family Court to reject a plea by Dauman and Viacom director George Abrams to hold an expedited trial to determine whether the 93-year-old mogul is competent to manage his affairs. The filing comes ahead of a hearing on Tuesday. A motion to dismiss will be made within two weeks. Dauman and Abrams specifically want to overturn Redstones May 20 decision to fire them from his family trust and the board of Redstone-controlled National Amusements which has 80% of the votes at Viacom and CBS. The duo are engaged in an acutely self-interested effort to secure their tenuous positions with Viacom, todays filing from Redstones lawyers says. But even if Dauman and Abrams win their case to have Redstone deemed incompetent, they may not be able to hold on to their jobs. Four of the seven members of the trust he established to control his empire when hes unable to do so have voted to ratify Sumners actions. Plaintiffs are proceeding solely in their individual (and highly self-interested) capacities, and therefore lack standing to prosecute this action. Exhibits with the court filing show that CBS and National Amusements director David Andelman who was seen as a potential swing vote sided with three family representatives to remove Dauman and Abrams from the trust. He also joined three directors on National Amusements six-member board in voting to replace the Viacom execs. Former Wall Street analyst Jill Krutick and National Amusements General Counsel Tad Jankowski were picked to replace Dauman and Abrams on the trust. Krutick and Redstones granddaughter Kimberlee Ostheimer replaced them on National Amusements board. Story continues In response to the filing, Dauman and Abrams lawyer Les Fagen referred to one of their key arguments that Redstone is being manipulated by his daughter Shari, whos President of National Amusements and Vice Chair of Viacom and CBS. There are many undisclosed facts that will emerge concerning the conduct of Shari and her representatives, Fagen says. Even their own papers filed today reveal that the Trustees as stated in the affidavits have not seen Sumner for as long as many years. We look forward to a full hearing on Tuesday when we will seek expedited discovery and an independent review of the facts in order to resolve this matter as quickly as possible. Redstones court filing says that Dauman had good reason to be concerned about his tenure as Viacoms stock price plummeted: Although Sumner had long supported Dauman, his longtime friend and business colleague, against calls for his ouster, Dauman recognized that friendship would carry him only so far. Sumner had removed prior CEOs for far less, and even under the best circumstances, Sumnerthen 92 years oldcould not protect Dauman forever. If Dauman controlled the Trust, however, he would effectively be Chairperson, CEO, and controlling shareholder of Viacom and would be accountable to no one. At least four of the seven trusteesa majoritysupport Sumners decision to remove Plaintiffs from the Trust and National Amusements board. As a result, they are off the Trust, and off the [National Amusements] board, even if they could somehow prove the allegations in their complaint (which they cannot). Plaintiffs miscalculated not only Sumners resolve, but also the commitment of their fellow Trustees to do the right thing. The trust Redstone established says that he can only be deemed mentally incapacitated if thats determined by a court of proper jurisdiction, or if three doctors agree based on medical evidence presented to each of them as each shall deem sufficient. The filing includes information disclosed last night that geriatric psychiatrist James Spar examined Redstone on the days when he fired Dauman and Abrams from the trust and theater chain board, and named replacements. Spar found that Redstone understood and appreciated the rights, duties, and responsibilities affected by [his] decisions; the probable consequences for himself and the other persons affected by the decisions; and the significant risks, benefits, and reasonable alternatives involved in those decisions. Dauman and Abrams bald assertion that Sumners health and mental condition are rapidly declining is simply false. The filing alleges that in late January, Dauman, Abrams, and Andelman hired a leading Boston law firm to tell them what to do if Redstone tried to remove them, In early February 2016, the firm rendered its advice: Although the Trust afforded Sumner almost unfettered discretion to remove and replace Trustees, the three might successfully avoid or contest removal by seeking a declaration that Sumner was incompetent and/or that he was being unduly influenced [by Shari Redstone]. Plaintiffs therefore felt no compunction acting against Sumners wishes. They unceremoniously removed him as Viacoms Chairperson. They shrugged off Sumners opposition to their shopping [a minority stake in] Paramount. They ignored his requests for information regarding a potential Paramount transaction, as well as longterm strategic plans (if any) for Viacom as a whole. In short, Plaintiffs treated Sumner as though he was already gone. Redstone has asked a California court to validate his decisions against Dauman and Abrams, and says in todays filing that the Massachusetts court is not the appropriate venue for a case. Sumner long ago moved away from Massachusetts, and has for many years resided in California. Related stories Philippe Dauman Lawyers Cite "Grave Risk" To Delay In Challenge To Sumner Redstone Sumner Redstone Doctor: Exec "Retains The Legal Mental Capacity To Make The Decisions" - Update Peter Bart: Sumner Redstone Crisis Is Good News For Ailing Viacom, Where Any Change Is Welcome UPDATED with statement from counsel to Philippe Dauman and George Abrams below: A geriatric psychiatrist who examined Sumner Redstone twice in the past two weeks affirmed today that the executive retains the legal mental capacity to make the decisions. Dr. James Spar, a professor at UCLAs David Geffen School of Medicine who specializes in issues of capacity and undue influence, said Redstone told him that CEO Philippe Dauman has done a bad job running Viacom and that company director George Abrams is not listening to him. Mr. Redstone clearly communicated to me that he understood and appreciated the rights, duties, and responsibilities affected by those decisions; the probable consequences for himself and the other persons affected by the decisions, and the significant risks, benefits, and reasonable alternatives involved in those decisions, Spar concluded after their two sessions. Moreover, the changes he made seemed appropriate to me in light of recent events, and seemed to reflect his own, authentic wishes and preferences, and not the influence of any of the individuals in his environment. He noted that during their May 20 meeting, Redstone was well dressed and groomed, alert and in no distress, and quite cooperative with the examination. RelatedViacom Watchers Wonder: Whod Step In If Sumner Redstone Cleans House? In his written evaluation of their May 24 sit-down, Spar who has examined Redstone numerous times since 2014 wrote: I asked Mr. Redstone why he was removing Mr. Dauman as Trustee and Director, and he said, Hes done a bad job running Viacom. I asked the same question about [Director George] Abrams, and Mr. Redstone said, Hes not listening to me. The psychiatrist added that he had a follow-up talk with Redstone later on May 24. Several times during this discussion Mr. Redstone reminded me that he makes all the decisions about Viacom and CBS. Mr. Redstone emphatically indicated that he no longer trusts Mr. Dauman or Mr. Abrams. Story continues Spar added of the May 24 meeting with the exec, who turned 93 last week: I asked Mr. Redstone to explain his belief that Mr. Dauman had done a bad job running Viacom. He indicated that he had been following the value of Viacom stock over the past year, and knew that it had declined significantly. He spontaneously added that the value of the stock had gone up since his decisions about Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams had become public. Mr. Redstone was particularly displeased with Mr. Daumans decision (supported by Mr. Abrams) to sell part of Paramount Pictures (a company which Mr. Redstone acknowledged is his baby), and several times expressed his emphatic disapproval of that move. Mr. Redstone said that he had clearly expressed his feelings about the Paramount sale to both Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams, but in his view they ignored his wishes. Spar said he administered a Mini-Mental State Exam, a widely used test of cognitive functions, and determined that Redstone had only a mild degree of cognitive impairment, given his age and advanced education. RelatedRedstone Civil War As Moguls Granddaughter Promises Legal Action Naturally, counsel to Philippe Dauman and George Abrams disagreed with this assessment vociferously. Once again Mr. Redstone is heard only through carefully crafted remarks distributed by his advisors, said Les Fagen of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton and Garrison. This evaluation was conducted by a paid medical consultant and does not answer the question of whether Sumner Redstone had sufficient capacity to make complex decisions impacting the governance of billion dollar publicly-held corporations, nor does it acknowledge that undue influence was exercised to manipulate his views. It is clear more than ever that a complete and objective examination of Mr. Redstone will be required to answer these important questions. As for Dr. Spars report on Paramount, evidently neither the Dr. nor his patient understand that as yet there is no Paramount deal to oppose. Such a deal if it matures will be the subject of evaluation and review by all Board members. Related stories Sumner Redstone Filings Show Family Trust Voted To Oust Philippe Dauman Peter Bart: Sumner Redstone Crisis Is Good News For Ailing Viacom, Where Any Change Is Welcome Redstone Civil War As Mogul's Granddaughter Promises Legal Action Sumner Redstone's attorneys on Friday made the latest move in the war over Viacom, asserting that a lawsuit filed in Massachusetts by chief executive Philippe Dauman and board member George Abrams over the duo's ouster from Redstone's Trust is not something that should be expedited nor even treated to resolution by the judge. "Rather than acting as Trustees and in the best interest of the Trust's beneficiary, Plaintiffs filed this action as part of an acutely self-interested legal strategy that they began plotting months earlier to secure their tenuous positions with Viacom," states court papers. Dauman and Abrams sued on May 23 with the allegation that Redstone has been manipulated by his daughter Shari Redstone. The two have convinced a Massachusetts probate court to hold a hearing next Tuesday on their request for fast-track status. Redstone has filed his own petition in Los Angeles Superior Court to validate the Trust changes, and in his opposition to Dauman's, asserts that because of standing issues - it's argued that only the beneficiaries of the Trust can sue - the lawsuit is improper and any dispute should be heard in California. Redstone's court papers on Friday also argue that he has rightfully removed Dauman and Abrams from the entity that will have control over National Amusements, which has about an 80 percent stake in Viacom. It's further said that at least four of the seven Trustees - a majority - supported the decision to remove Dauman and Abrams. According to the latest filing, "Plaintiffs miscalculated not only Sumner's resolve, but also the commitment of their fellow Trustees to do the right thing." An entire section of Redstone's legal papers comes under the banner, "Plaintiffs' Betrayal of Sumner." According to this part, Dauman has grown increasingly concerned he might be terminated as CEO due to a sinking stock price that wiped out more than $15 billion of Viacom's value as well as weak earnings reports and the decision to sell the "crown jewel" of Paramount Pictures. Story continues "Sumner had removed prior CEOs for far less, and even under the best circumstances, Sumner - then 92 years old - could not protect Dauman forever," states the court papers. "If Dauman controlled the Trust, however, he would effectively be Chairperson, CEO, and controlling shareholder of Viacom and would be accountable to no one." The Redstone filing continues by claiming that in January, Dauman, Abrams and (Redstone Trustee and CBS board member) David Andelman were talking with lawyers about what to do in the event that Sumner Redstone - then tied up in a healthcare dispute with his ex-companion Manuela Herzer - made a move to fire them. The Dauman camp was supposedly told then that removal could be contested by seeking a declaration of Redstone's incompetence and taking the position that Shari was unduly influencing her father. "Roadmap in hand, Plaintiffs no longer felt accountable even to Sumner as Viacom's controlling shareholder," states Redstone's brief, adding that Dauman and Abrams "unceremoniously removed" Redstone as Viacom chairman in February and since then have "ignored his requests for information regarding a potential Paramount transaction, as well as long-term strategic plans (if any) for Viacom as a whole. In short, Plaintiffs treated Sumner as though he was already gone." Dauman's complaint alleges something different. He maintains he's been cut off from communications with Redstone. The inclusion of Andelman is particularly notable because he's been considered a "swing vote" on the Redstone Trust. In an exhibit with Friday's filing, Andelman has signed a ratification of the removal of Dauman and Abrams. It is his support that gets a majority of Trustees favoring the ouster of Dauman. If this is any indication that he has switched sides, it marks a pretty important development. Overall, Redstone's attorneys object to the conclusion of incompetence and nod to a report by psychiatrist James Spar, who recently interviewed Redstone and came to the opinion that decisions related to the Trust "seemed appropriate to me in light of recent events, and seemed to reflect [Sumner's] own, authentic wishes and preferences, and not the influence of any of the individuals in his environment." For now, Redstone opposes expedited status for this lawsuit because of an asserted lack of irreparable harm, but his lawyers also believe that Dauman's suit lacks merit and say they will be filing a forthcoming motion to dismiss. A judge will consider the arguments at a hearing on Tuesday. Les Fagen, attorney for Dauman and Abrams, responds: "There are many undisclosed facts that will emerge concerning the conduct of Shari and her representatives. Even their own papers filed today reveal that the Trustees as stated in the affidavits have not seen Sumner for as long as 'many years.' We look forward to a full hearing on Tuesday when we will seek expedited discovery and an independent review of the facts in order to resolve this matter as quickly as possible." BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian Islamist insurgents attacked government forces and their allies in the country's northwest on Friday where the same factions recently waged a fierce assault that inflicted heavy losses, monitors said. The insurgents, including fighters from the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, had already captured one village just two hours after beginning the latest attack southwest of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Government forces were responding with shelling and heavy air strikes in the area, near the town of Khan Touman, the British-based monitoring group said. Nusra Front spearheaded an attack on Khan Touman last month, delivering one of the biggest battlefield setbacks yet to a coalition of foreign Shi'ite fighters, including Iranians and the Lebanese Hezbollah fighting in support of Syrian government forces. It was a rare success in recent months for rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad. Government forces and their allies have advanced against insurgents, and separately against Islamic State, in a number of other areas. Russia's military intervention in support of Damascus in September has helped turn the war Assad's way. The al Qaeda affiliate's battlefield allies in Friday's assault included the powerful Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham and the Turkestan Islamic Party, the Observatory said. (Reporting by John Davison; Editing by Tom Heneghan) Aleppo (Syria) (AFP) - Syria's regime killed dozens of civilians with air strikes in and around Aleppo city on Friday, even as it agreed to allow access for ground convoys to deliver aid to 12 besieged areas. The raids on Aleppo were the most intense in more than a month, with dozens of barrel bombs -- crude, unguided explosive devices -- dropped on rebel-held eastern districts of the city, an AFP correspondent said. Fourteen people were killed when a bus they were travelling in was hit on the Castello road, a key rebel supply route out of Aleppo, the civil defence said. At least 43 other civilians were killed in regime strikes on neighbourhoods in the city's rebel-held east, said the civil defence, known as the White Helmets. "There are people under the rubble and we're still looking for the missing," said a volunteer who gave his name as Khaled. AFP footage showed a building in the city's east whose front had been blown off and bulldozers clearing debris from the roads. A man wearing medical gloves stood in a room surrounded by white body bags, one with blood seeping through. Official news agency SANA said rebel rocket fire killed two children in the regime-controlled west of the city. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Castello road was now "effectively cut". "All movement is targeted, be that buses or bystanders," its head Rami Abdel Rahman said. The observatory later said that regime air strikes killed at least 15 civilians in the Boleel area controlled by Islamic State outside Deir Ezzor city in eastern Syria. It added that rebel shelling on Friday killed 10 civilians, including a woman and two children in Aleppos regime-controlled western districts. - 'Security challenges' - Nearly 600,000 people are estimated to live under siege in Syria, most of them encircled by forces of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, whose approval the UN says is needed to deliver aid by air. Story continues Last month the UN said that if it did not see an improvement on aid access to besieged areas by June 1, it would task its food agency to carry out drops. Syria on Friday agreed to partial aid deliveries to Moadamiyeh, Daraya and Douma, which are besieged by regime forces, the UN office of humanitarian affairs said. Some diplomats however dismissed the move, saying such approvals had been granted in the past and failed to materialise on the ground. The UN will on Sunday present a formal request to the Syrian government to approve airdrops where land access has been denied, diplomats at a closed UN Security Council meeting said. Officials have stressed the challenges and risks of aid operations in the skies above a country at war. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said helicopters would have to be used to transport aid to 15 of 19 besieged areas that include densely populated towns. - Advance on IS - Allowing aid into areas under siege is key to the resumption of peace talks on ending the five-year war that has killed 280,000 Syrians and displaced millions. A truce brokered by Russia and the United States between the government and non-jihadist rebels has been violated nearly continuously around Aleppo. More than 300 civilians were killed in Aleppo in two weeks from April 22 as rebels pounded regime-controlled neighbourhoods with rocket and artillery fire and the regime hit rebel areas with air raids. In north Syria, meanwhile, regime forces backed by Russia on Friday advanced towards a bastion of the Islamic State group east of its Syria de facto capital of Raqa city, the Observatory said. The advance came after a US-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance pressed an offensive last week towards the same town of Tabqa from the opposite direction. The alliance is also advancing towards the strategic IS-held town of Manbij north of the town. The US military said the Syrian rebels advancing on Islamic State fighters in Manbij have seized more than 40 square miles (100 square kilometres) this week. A rebel victory there would inflict one of the largest strategic defeats on the IS group since it proclaimed its rule over territory in Iraq and Syria two years ago. The US-led coalition since Thursday has dropped ammunition, light weapons and anti-tank weapons to Syrian rebels, as they try to prevent IS jihadists from entering the town of Marea north of Aleppo city, the Observatory said. A US official confirmed the ammunition drops, but denied that they also contained weapons. T. rex may have had lips. Yes, you read that right. Lips. Robert Reisz, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto, is challenging the long-standing image of meat-eating theropod dinosaurs such as T. rex. Specifically, Reisz suggests that theropods' teeth were not bared all the time, extending outside their mouths and fully visible whether their jaws were open or closed. Rather, these teeth were kept hidden, covered by scaly lips, he said in a presentation May 20 at the Canadian Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's annual meeting in Ontario. [Gory Guts: Photos of a T. Rex Autopsy] Reisz told Live Science in an email that he had always been bothered by the typical "permanent smile" portrayal of theropod dinosaur teeth. He first looked to the closest living relatives of theropod dinosaurs crocodiles for clues about tooth exposure. At first glance, it could seem like the expectation for large theropods to have exposed teeth was on the right track. Crocodiles' teeth are covered by gums for about one-quarter of their length, but lips are absent and the tooth crowns are permanently exposed, Reisz explained. However, if you look closer at tooth structure, a different story might emerge, he noted in his presentation. The hard enamel of animals' teeth has low water content, and is typically kept hydrated by saliva. Without lips to keep moisture in and prevent the teeth from drying out, the tough enamel would become brittle and more prone to damage and wear, Reisz told Live Science. Crocodiles live in watery environments and would rely on their habitat to keep exposed teeth hydrated. But land-dwelling theropods' large teeth which are known to have enamel could have been compromised by perpetual exposure, and likely needed to be covered by lips in order to stay moist, Reisz said in the presentation. What about elephants? But crocodiles aren't the only animals with exposed teeth elephants, for instance, have exposed teeth as well, and many extinct saber-toothed predators had very long canines that were also exposed when their mouths were closed. Wouldn't their teeth have been vulnerable to serious drying out, too? Story continues Not necessarily. A mammal's tooth structure is actually quite different from a reptile's, said Zhijie Jack Tseng, a paleontologist who studies bite-force biomechanics in extinct carnivores at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. "Mammalian teeth are prismatic they have a crisscrossing structure," Tseng told Live Science. He explained that when mammal teeth grow, the enamel emerges from the root area and "races outward in all directions," creating a 3D shape that may be better at keeping water inside. In reptile teeth, the enamel grows in one direction, creating a different type of structure that may not retain water as effectively potentially making their teeth more likely to chip or crack, Tseng suggested. But for reptiles and theropod dinosaurs damaging or losing a tooth simply isn't as big a deal as it would be for a mammal, Tseng added. Mammals typically grow a set of baby teeth followed by a set of adult teeth, whereas reptiles and likely many, if not all, dinosaurs replace individual teeth throughout their lifetimes, scientists have found. "Each tooth relatively speaking doesn't have as much value to the animal as in mammals," Tseng said. "T. rex could chip a tooth or get one stuck in prey, and just replace it. Evolving protection for teeth is not a critical component of how they eat." The dinos, they are a-changin' Reisz suggested in a statement that people may be reluctant to abandon the terrifying but familiar image of a "ferocious-looking" T. rex with bared teeth. But now more than ever, scientists are challenging traditional ideas about how dinosaurs may have looked and behaved. New fossil evidence, computer modeling and comparisons with living creatures are helping scientists to paint a clearer picture of these extinct animals, overturning many historic conceptions of their postures, gaits, skin coverings and colors. Long gone are the days when dinosaurs were almost uniformly pictured as grayish-green, ponderous reptiles with scaly skin. Contrary to their portrayal in popular films, dinosaurs are now widely accepted by scientists as having been covered in feathers, possibly in a range of colors, much like the colorful plumage of modern birds, which are a living dinosaur lineage. Is it really so far-fetched to suggest that T. rex's toothy grin should also be relegated to the past? Time and further research will tell, Reisz said. Original article on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Taipei (AFP) - Taiwan held the island's first ever commemoration in parliament Friday of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown as lawmakers urged the new government to address human rights issues in its dealing with China. It comes weeks after China-sceptic Tsai Ing-wen was sworn in as president, succeeding Ma Ying-jeou who oversaw an unprecedented eight-year rapprochement with Beijing. Ties have rapidly cooled since Tsai won the presidency in January, with Beijing highly distrustful of her traditionally independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). In the past, Taiwan's government has repeatedly urged China to learn lessons from the Tiananmen crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, in which more than 1,000 were killed according to some estimates. But parliamentarians have never before gathered to voice their views. A day ahead of the June 4 anniversary, senior lawmakers from the DPP and the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) were joined by human rights activists and exiled Chinese dissident Wu'er Kaixi as they observed a minute's silence. They also signed a motion proposed by DPP lawmaker Yu Mei-nu to demand the government "express Taiwan's serious concerns over redressing the June 4 incident at the appropriate time" in future interactions between the two sides. "Taiwan and China have very close ties, so the suppression of human rights that happened to Chinese citizens could also threaten human rights in Taiwan," Yu said. KMT lawmaker Chen Shei-saint broke partisan ranks to voice his support, saying democratisation in China was "the biggest assurance for Taiwan's security." Taiwan is self-ruling after splitting with China in 1949 following a civil war, but Beijing still sees it as part of its territory to be reunified. Since Tsai took power Beijing has been pushing her to adhere to its "one China" concept. Taiwan was left furious after its citizens were deported from Kenya and Malaysia to the mainland as part of fraud investigations, a move seen as a pressure tactic on Tsai. Story continues For its part, the DPP this week dropped what were criticised as "China-centric" changes to the high school curriculum that triggered major protests last year while the KMT were still in power. The repealing of the curriculum changes was criticised by Beijing, which warned Taiwan it would "shoulder the consequences for repeating the history of provoking tension and instability". Activists urged parliament to hold the Tiananmen commemoration every year. "Please send a message to China's authoritarian government that... you are standing beside pro-democracy campaigners and that you are different from the Chinese government," said Wu'er, a prominent student leader in 1989 now living in exile in Taiwan. Also speaking in parliament, Yang Sen-hong, chairman of Taiwan Association for China Human Rights, said Taiwan should "bravely tell (China) to stop the terror and end the disaster, otherwise Taiwan will suffer too". Every woman has a period story. Take the 34-year-old who remembers her 14-year-old self sitting on a boys lap at a pool party and leaving her mark, literally, on her crushs pants. Or the 58-year-old who leaves a pair of pants at her desk to avoid the embarrassment of being caught off guard by a surprise visit from Aunt Flo. Or the homeless women across the nation who face the humiliation of having to substitute old rags and newspaper for menstrual products. For too many women in prison, a former inmate wrote in the Guardian, pads and tampons are a rarity. Every woman, indeed, has a story. Over the past year and a half, the global public has heard a great deal more of them, creating an ideal environment to push tampon tax bills through the state legislatures. On May 25, New York State voted to eliminate a luxury tax on menstrual products, which the goods had been subject to as non-necessities (think medicine, food), joining a handful of states and cities that have done the same. The next day, similar legislation passed in Illinois. These are the most recent wins in what has become a global movement over the past 18 months to change not only the way tampons and pads are taxed and distributed, but also the openness with which we talk about a biological process that for centuries was cast as a curse and a source of shame. Linda B. Rosenthal, the assembly member who introduced New York States bill last May, estimates it will save women in New York City $416.52 over their lifetimes. But money isnt the only issue, she says: While this is about a tax on tampons, its also about women seeking and gaining their voice. Mentions of periods tripled in mainstream media outlets between 2010 and 2015, according to NPR. And all that visibility has helped fuel reform. According to Jennifer Weiss-Wolf of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, who has been at the forefront of the push, 14 states and three major cities have introduced legislation, amendments or budget lines this year to nix the tax. In July 2015, Canada ended its sales tax on these items. And earlier this year, the United Kingdom proposed a resolution to do the same. Story continues When the period went public last year, there was an incredible array of forces that brought it to the fore, says Weiss-Wolf. Take, for instance, the work of Naama Bloom, the CEO and founder of HelloFlo, a feminineproduct delivery service responsible for a viral video that pokes fun at the way young girls learn about their periods and the shame surrounding them. I think its much to do with the culture we live in, Bloom told TIME last year. Part of what has been so radical is that Im not ashamed. Neither were the thousands of women who tweeted the hashtag #PeriodsAreNotAnInsult, which sprang up thanks to a comment about Fox News debate moderator Megyn Kelly by presidential candidate Donald Trump. YouTuber Ingrid Nilsen, who stumped President Obama with a question about tampon taxes in January, wasnt ashamed either. I dont know anybody that has a period that would consider it a luxury, Nilsen told TIME. The next battle is to distribute free tampons and pads in public restrooms. On Thursday, the New York City council will host the first hearing on a package of bills aimed at expanding access to free tampons and pads in public schools, shelters, and jails. Nancy Kramer, an advertising executive, has been advocate for freeing the tampon since her 2013 TEDx talk in which she argues that they should be as available as toilet paper. Tax repeal is a step in the right direction, she says, but universal accessibility would be the real win. Its the final month of the Supreme Courts current term, and heres a look at the remaining big cases and whats scheduled for the first full week of June. On Monday, June 6, orders from Thursdays conference and opinions from the Justices are expected. Orders are released at 9:30 a.m. and opinions will be released starting at 10 a.m. in Washington. Among the cases considered in private in Thursday were those involving race and redistricting, capital punishment, and religious liberty and pharmacists compelled to disperse abortifacient drugs. For now, the Court hasnt announced what other days, if any, it will announce more opinions next week. The Court will announce those extra opinion days in advance. Traditionally, the Courts term ends in the last week of June. Usually, the terms final cases are among the Courts biggest- and potentially landmark decisions, and also those cases heard late in the term. But this year, after the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia in February, an eight-person Supreme Court has conducted its business in a different fashion, with several major cases returned to lower courts after a tie vote or a unanimous decision to remand a case. Four high-profile major cases remain outstanding this term. The oldest-pending major case is Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, which was heard on December 9, 2015. The case is a challenge to affirmative action at Texas flagship public university. The University of Texas was required to admit all high school seniors who rank in the top 10 percent of their high school classes. Candidates for any remaining spots underwent a holistic evaluation process in which race is among the considered factors. The Court in 2013, the Court indeed issued a decision in the case, sending it back to the lower courts to be reviewed under a tougher constitutional standard. In Whole Womens Health v. Cole on abortion, which was heard on March 2, 2016. a Texas law enacted in 2013 would force about 75 percent of the states abortion services to close. The law requires that doctors at clinics have hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of the clinics, and that clinics have facilities equal to those of an outpatient surgical center. The Court is considering is an appeals court properly handled a question about if the new restrictions would actually work to protect the health of women, and if the law imposes an undue burden on women who seek abortions. Story continues The Court is also considering a challenge to President Obamas executive orders on immigration in United States v. Texas, which was heard on April 18, 2016. The dispute between the Obama administration and 26 states and includes questions about the ability of the states to sue the administration and the alleged unwillingness of President Obama to honor the Constitutions Take Care Clause to execute laws passed by Congress. And then there is the later-term corruption case of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. In United States v. McDonnell, the public corruption verdict against McDonnell could be struck down and a new trial ordered. The case pivots on the definition of alleged official acts undertaken by McDonnell to benefit a businessman, and if those acts were actually bribes. McDonnells prison sentence is on hold while the Court considers the case. Recent Stories on Constitution Daily Louis Brandeis confirmed as Justice, 100 year ago today Video: Jeffrey Rosen debuts new book on Louis Brandeis Constitution Check: Is plea bargaining a step toward closing Guantanamo? In an age where high school students communicate primarily through texts and emoji, an English teacher at Rampart High School in Colorado Springs, sent each of her 130 pupils off for the summer with a personalized, handwritten note. The project began two months ago when Brittni Darras, 25, had an eye-opening meeting with one of her student's mothers during a parent-teacher conference. The student's mother revealed the reason for her daughter's extended absence: police had received a tip through the Safe2Tell app and stopped her from committing suicide. "She had deleted her social media accounts and left goodbye letters; she was ready to leave the world," Darras shared on Facebook. "As her mom sat across from me, we both had tears streaming down our faces." Darras asked the mother if she could write a note to her student. After reading what her teacher wrote about her academic achievements and personality, the student was touched by the act. "She started crying and turned to her mom and said, 'I didn't think anyone would say such nice things to me. I didn't think anyone would miss me when I'm gone.' " Darras told ABC News. "It's devastating. I think, as a teacher, that's the worst thing you could hear, is that one of your students feels like they don't belong on this earth. I had no idea she was having a hard time. She was always smiling and happy coming into class." After realizing the impact of her letter, Darras decided each of her 130 students deserved one to tell them how unique and important they are. Need a little inspiration? Click here to subscribe to the Daily Smile Newsletter for uplifting, feel-good stories that brighten up your inbox. Over the next two months, Darras wrote notes to each of her students. She handed them out after finals, right before they left school for summer. "I handed them out just minutes before the bell rang and they were about to go on vacation," Darras told ABC News. "I think the message that I'm trying to get across is you never know who's hurting. Just a few simple words of encouragement can not only change somebody's life; as a matter of fact, it can save somebody's life." BebopRocksteadyhumans Paramount Its important to review films on their own terms, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows terms are, essentially, thats its a giant commercial aimed at 11-year-olds. Now, all tentpole movies are commercials, to some extent, but this is a sequel, to a reboot, of a movie adaptation, of a cartoon from the 80s, which was designed mostly to sell toys in the first place, produced by the Transformers guy (Michael Bay) and financed through a partnership between Paramount and the Chinese company Alibaba. Were used to giant commercials, but this is sort of the apotheosis of giant commercials, designed to appeal to the broadest cross-section of international youth while promoting the most brands (Mattel, Carmelo Anthony, Tastykake, Dodge, etc.). In one scene, Michaelangelo wanders through a Dia De Los Muertos parade and compliments a guy on his Bumblebee costume. You know, Bumblebee from Transformers. Because if theres one thing kids like, its corporate synergy. Now, accepting those terms, and in comparison to Transformers, its closest cinematic relative, TMNT: Out Of The Shadows actually isnt half bad. In fact, parts of it are pretty damned good. But first I should qualify. Its very dumb. And often in that particular Michael Bay way, where its gross and pandering and kind of porny while trying to look cool and macho like a cinematic barbed wire tattoo. Leonardo actually has a tribal arm band tat in this movie. A few of them have tats, in fact as teenagers, you wonder if the tattoo artist had to get permission from Splinter. Anyway. Michael Bay only produced this time, while the directing job went to Dave Green, previously of the quietly successful Earth to Echo, and writing duties fell to Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec (both of whom also exec produced). Nonetheless, its hard not to assume Bays influence in an opening scene where Megan Fox (as TV reporter April ONeil, who does almost no reporting in this movie) goes undercover as a nerd, in a blonde wig and glasses, to investigate an evil scientist played by Tyler Perry (who, credit where credits due, acts the hell out of this role when he couldve just showed up and collected a paycheck). Theyre fake bonding over some nerd stuff, as bespectacled weaklings do, when she notices that hes passed off the MacGuffin, and has to ditch him. Story continues Next thing you know, shes tearing off her wig and glasses, and transforming into a slutty Catholic school girl, complete with plaid miniskirt and low-cut white shirt tied off at the waist. Theres that other thing kids love, uh, beer commercial makeovers. The whole thing feels like a shampoo ad from the 90s, and not just because Megan Fox has stolen Britney Spears outfit from the Baby One More Time video. Strangely, a lot of Out of the Shadows exudes a similarly 1998 idea of cool, with a soundtrack featuring all manner of bygone Jock Jams, from Fatboy Slim to Rumpshaker to Run-DMCs Its Tricky. You get the same sense of surreal randomness seeing which cultural artifacts get thrown into this media porridge as you would hearing someone sing Ricky Martin in a North Korean karaoke bar, or seeing an Angolan villager wearing a Dukakis shirt. Likewise, the plot is this kind of discount superhero slurry, featuring the full house of cliches, from transformative serum, to giant portal above New York, to bad guy (Krang) rushing to complete an ersatz Death Star. Theres also a conformity vs. proud outcast subplot by way of a serum that can be reverse engineered to maybe turn the turtles into humans, a la two or three X-Men movies. But again, I mostly expected plot slurry. And the way Out of the Shadows blatantly yadda yaddad anything too expository actually had a goofy charm. Its at its best when it allows itself to be silly, like a foreign cartoon that doesnt entirely translate. Its at its worst when it feels like its trying desperately to be hip and current. Like nu Rafael, and the fact that he has a full do-rag instead of his old Lone Ranger eye strip now. Oh, and he also walks with an urban limp and talks like a black jock stereotype. This despite being voiced by Alan Ritchson, who looks like Hitlers ideal Aryan. He ends up sounding like old tapes Howard Stern used to play of Bubba the Love Sponge when he was working at a hip-hop station in the 90s and trying to sound black, only more painful. Thing is, hes still not as bad as Mudflap and Skids, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallens possibly illiterate B-boys. And in the Transformers movies, once you accepted the dumb plot and kind of offensive character design, what did you get for your troubles? A painfully long movie with too much plot and bad action sequences. The set pieces in Out of the Shadows, from a slide down the Chrysler building at the beginning to an airplane-to-airplane skydive to a tumble down a giant waterfall in the Amazon, are actually pretty good. Its virtually all CGI, but the shots arent hacked to pieces, and it maintains a spatial awareness as it jumps from slow-motion to regular speed and does a brilliant job manipulating perspective to create scale. Which is to say, unlike Transformers, it actually delivers on its most basic promise, fun action. And I havent even gotten to the best part: Bebop and Rocksteady. I unabashedly loved these characters. Played by Gary Anthony Williams and Stephen Farrelly, they are essentially an inseparable, interracial couple of gay, leather daddy bikers, one a jive-talking soul brother with a purple mohawk, the other a ginger Irish neer-do-well with a forked beard. They find themselves stuck with Shredder in a paddy wagon and eventually end up his lackies, running his errands and becoming his guinea pigs for a serum that brings out their essential animal nature, turning Bebop into a warthog and Rocksteady into a rhinoceros. Youd think theyd be pissed about being turned into anthropomorphic animal monsters, but nope, theyre stoked, high five-ing and bumping bellies. In fact, theyre always stoked, even when Casey Jones is locking them inside a container and blowing them up with a hand grenade. It doesnt much matter what task Shredder forces them to do or whos trying to kill them or what serum is forever altering their DNA, as long as theyre together. Do I look fat? Bebop asks, and Rocksteady farts on him and they high five. Soon as they regain consciousness from the grenade blast, they headbutt, and Bebop yells My man! They celebrate each others difference, refuse to let adversity tear them apart, and take pleasure in whatever theyre doing, as long as they can share it. Its adorable. Bebop and Rocksteady are an inspiration to us all. And frankly, thats a pretty beautiful and surprising thing to find in a movie thats otherwise the artistic equivalent of the gruel you use to feed toothless refugees. Vince Mancini is a writer, comedian, and podcaster. A graduate of Columbias non-fiction MFA program, his work has appeared on FilmDrunk, the UPROXX network, the Portland Mercury, the East Bay Express, and all over his moms refrigerator. Fan FilmDrunk on Facebook, find the latest movie reviews here. From Seventeen An Idaho father drove his 14-year-old daughter to Missouri in order to have her marry the 24-year-old man who raped and impregnated her, according to ABC News. The 24-year-old was a family friend and the rape occurred in 2015. The pregnancy was discovered that summer after the teen complained of stomach pains. According to a testimony by the girl's stepmother, a "family meeting" was then held at which the teen and her rapist reportedly told her parents that they wanted to get married. In August, the father therefore drove his pregnant daughter and her rapist to Kansas City, Missouri, where 14-year-olds are allowed to marry with parental permission in certain circumstances. According to court documents, the pair got married and lived together for about four months before returning to Idaho. Once they returned, her mother filed for an annulment. Her pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. Last week, the father pleaded guilty to injury to a child, and Seventh District Judge Gregory Moeller sentenced him to four months in jail and three years of supervised probation. "I would note that the 120 days is approximately how long this vile farce of a marriage lasted," Judge Moeller told him at the sentencing. "While you sit in jail, you will sit and think about the 120 days your daughter was in a vile farce of a marriage to a rapist because of you." According to court documents, the father said that he made a mistake but that he did it because he believed a man should marry the girl he gets pregnant. The 24-year-old rapist was sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to felony rape in April. Tel Aviv (AFP) - Tens of thousands of homosexuals, transgender people, gay activists and sympathisers thronged the streets of the Israeli city of Tel Aviv on Friday for the annual Gay Pride parade. Scantily clad revellers streamed alongside a procession of floats through the Mediterranean coastal city in stifling heat, ending up at a beach where a massive rave party was held. Among the crowd were thousands of tourists, many of them holding the flags of their country of origin, as they paraded through Tel Aviv, known as a rare oasis for the LGTB community in the Middle East. Helicopters circled above the crowds and thousands of police officers and security personnel were stationed along the route. A 16-year-old girl, Shira Banki, was stabbed to death by Yishai Shlissel, an ultra-Orthodox Jew, during Jerusalem's Gay Pride march in August 2015. Shlissel had called the march an "abomination" and described his attack, in which five others were also wounded, as a religious duty. Palestinian attacks on Israelis since October have resulted in the deaths of over 200 people from both sides. Since its launch in 1998, the Tel Aviv Gay Pride march has become an important event for the LGTB community worldwide. The city's municipality, which organises and funds the event, said this year's was the largest, drawing 200,000 participants. "It's my third gay pride here," said kilt-clad Drew Ruthford, 37. "For me it's almost a tradition, people here are so friendly, so relaxed, yes the opposite of the image that Israel might have," he said. Israel is widely seen as having liberal gay rights policies, despite the hostility shown by the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community towards homosexuals, particularly men. Culture Minister Miri Regev who attended the event with gay members of her ruling Likud party said on her Facebook page to participants: "I'm proud of you ... We need to do more for you because you deserve as much as anyone else." At a dedicated testing ground in California, Honda is demonstrating how close it is to arriving at its first self-driving car milestone -- a practical automated highway driving system. With input from research centers across Europe and Japan as well as in the US, Honda's aim is to hit that target by 2020. "Automated vehicles have the potential to significantly improve safety and expand access to mobility," said Jim Keller, senior manager and chief engineer, Honda R&D Americas. To this extent, spaces like the GoMentum Station in Contra Costa county, California are vital. It has 20 miles of roadway and infrastructure within a 5,000-acre site for realistic testing. Likewise, in Michigan the 32-acre Mcity site has been up and running for almost a year, enabling car companies to undertake real world' inner-city testing. "We believe that safe and secure sites like GoMentum provide a unique opportunity to accelerate technology development and the advent of a cooperative car society," said Keller. Honda's showcase also highlights the road blocks that are still in the way for all carmakers. Existing technologies are capable of driving a vehicle without human input, but until they have been tested over the equivalent of 1 million miles, there is no clear idea of how reliable they truly are. The angle of the sun could be enough to confuse a sensor, for example. But before any car can drive itself, it will need to be able to communicate with other vehicles and infrastructure -- V2X technology. "V2X is a key requirement," said ABI Research Vice President Dominique Bonte. "With it, vehicles can be proactive and capture and share critical events happening locally with each other, ultimately ensuring safer driving practices." At the Honda demo, communication was via the 5.9Ghz radio spectrum for Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC), and there's a risk the spectrum is under threat. "DSRC-enabled vehicles can make the nation's roads safer for all users," said Edward Cohen, vice president, Government and Industry Affairs, Honda North America. "To accomplish the goal of enhancing road user safety, we need the support of policymakers to preserve 5.9 GHz radio spectrum." Singapore (AFP) - Thailand on Friday urged China and rival claimants to the South China Sea to look beyond border disputes and find ways of cooperating in order to ease tensions in the region. "Countries in the region should think of sovereignty in less traditional terms in order to support collective security in the long term," Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha said in a speech opening Asia's largest security forum in Singapore. "If we look at everything from the standpoint of conflict, we will never be able to see a way out," said the Thai leader, a former army chief who seized power two years ago. "If we focus solely on borders, some of which are still in dispute, then again, we'll never find a way out," Prayut told the annual meeting known as the Shangri-La Dialogue. The three-day gathering is being attended by defence ministers and military officials including Pentagon chief Ashton Carter. Beijing's claim to nearly the entire South China Sea has angered Southeast Asian neighbours and pitted it against the United States, which has conducted patrols near Chinese-held islands to press for freedom of navigation. The Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam have competing claims in the area, which encompasses key global shipping lanes and is believed to have significant oil and gas deposits. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague is expected to issue a ruling soon on a Philippine submission challenging Chinas claims and activities in the region. Beijing says it will not abide by any ruling. Ahead of the Singapore conference, US Defence Secretary Carter and his Singapore counterpart Ng Eng Hen flew over the busy Strait of Malacca in a demonstration flight of a US P-8 maritime patrol plane stationed in Singapore, a close military partner of Washington. "The American approach is an inclusive one in which everyone participates in the collective defence of our peoples from today's threats," Carter said at a joint news conference after the brief flight. Story continues "That's the objective of the US military presence out here, and it's been that way for decades." - Heated US-China exchanges expected - Carter did not speak out against China, but has previously condemned Beijing's island building and last week said it risked creating a "Great Wall of self-isolation". He is scheduled to address the meeting on Saturday, while China's delegation chief Admiral Sun Jianguo will speak on Sunday. Past editions of the Singapore meeting were marked by heated exchanges between the two sides. Several US lawmakers were attending the summit as part of a Congressional delegation, including Republican Senator John McCain, who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said in a lecture before the forum that China must decide if it is going to engage in "coercion and intimidation" or follow a "better path". "It could cooperate with its neighbours and manage disputes peacefully, consistent with the same international rules that have benefited China so greatly," he said. Tensions on the Korean peninsula are another concern to be addressed at the forum organised by the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS). The UN Security Council on Wednesday strongly condemned North Korea's latest attempted missile launches and urged world governments to ramp up efforts to impose sanctions on Pyongyang. Tim Huxley, the IISS Asia head, also said there has been renewed concern over "jihadist terrorism", particularly the threat from organisations and individuals in Southeast Asia who have associated themselves with the Islamic State. Tensions in the South China Sea are expected to drive up Asia-Pacific defence spending by nearly 25 percent from 2015 to $533 billion in 2020, security think-tank IHS Jane's wrote in a research note issued Thursday. By Michel Rose and Morade Azzouz PARIS/LONGJUMEAU, France (Reuters) - Torrential rain forced thousands of people from their homes south of Paris while the River Seine surged to its highest level for over 30 years in the French capital, shutting down the famed Louvre and Orsay museums and a metro line. In Evry-Gregy-sur-Yerre, south of Paris, a man on horseback drowned on Thursday, the prefecture said in a statement. Le Parisien newspaper said the 74-year-old had been trying to cross a flooded field. The horse survived with minor injuries. He was the second victim of the torrential rains that have caused the Loire and Seine rivers to burst their banks. An 86-year-old woman was found dead in her flooded house in a small town southwest of Paris late on Wednesday. "Since yesterday it's just been a deluge," said Jerome Coiffier, an inhabitant of Longjumeau, less than 20 km (13 miles) south of Paris, where firemen wading thigh-deep in water rescued inhabitants using inflatable boats. At least 3,000 out of 13,000 inhabitants were evacuated in Nemours, 75 km (45 miles) south of Paris, as floodwaters crept towards the second story of buildings in the town centre. Prolonged heavy rain also pounded parts of neighbouring Germany and at least five people have died in floods in Bavaria state in the south of the country, officials said. [nL8N18U1US] In Paris, the Seine rose above 5 metres (16 feet), forcing the SNCF rail operator to close the RER C commuter line that runs along the river and is used by tourists to reach the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame Cathedral and Versailles. The Louvre museum shut down and said it would remain closed on Friday to keep its priceless art safe. The Orsay museum of Impressionist art will also be shut on Friday. Both are located right by the Seine in central Paris. The Seine could peak at six metres in Paris on Friday, officials said, stressing that this was still well below the level where it would pose danger to residents. The river reached a record high of 8.6 metres in 1910, when thousands of Parisians had to flee flooded low-lying areas of the city. President Francois Hollande declared a state of emergency in the worst affected areas and promised funding to help local authorities deal with flood damage. Unusually heavy rains in June showed the urgency to curb climate change, he said. In the Loire Valley, Chambord castle, a UNESCO world heritage site, found itself surrounded by water. The national weather service said the greater Paris region had in May endured its wettest month since 1960. In the Loiret region, where local officials called on the army to help evacuate motorists trapped on the A10 motorway, the floods were the most severe in a century. (Additional reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide, Geert De Clercq and Emmanuel Jarry in Paris; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Richard Lough and Mark Heinrich) MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - Three Minnesota men were convicted on Friday of conspiring to commit murder in Syria on behalf of the Islamic State militant group, the U.S. Justice Department said. Jurors convicted Guled Omar, 21, Abdirahman Daud and Mohamed Farah, both 22, on multiple counts in Minnesota federal court. All three could face life in prison. U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger told a news conference after the verdict the evidence showed the men, part of a larger group of Somali-American men charged in the case, were not wayward kids who just got caught up in a fantasy. They wanted to fight for a brutal terrorist organization, kill innocent people, and destroy their own families in the process, Luger said. The men accused of making multiple efforts to leave the United States for Syria were convicted on all but one of the charges against them including conspiring and attempting to provide material support to Islamic State. Farah was also found guilty of lying to a grand jury and FBI agents and Omar of attempting to use $5,000 of student financial aid in the plan. Jurors acquitted Daud of a perjury charge. Prosecutors put on more than two dozen witnesses, secret audio recordings and terror videos in the trial that went to the jury on Wednesday afternoon. Farahs attorney, Murad Mohammad, said he and his client were disappointed in the verdict. They had argued that Farahs actions did not rise to the level of conspiring to murder anyone or provide material support to Islamic State. Farah fell victim to ISILs slick marketing campaign, dusted with enough misrepresentations of Islam to make it appear to be a legitimate Islamic organization, Mohammad said, using a different acronym for Islamic State. Lawyers for Daud and Omar did not immediately return requests for comment on the verdicts. Prosecutors brought similar charges against 10 men - including the three convicted on Friday - whom they said were part of a group of friends and extended family who planned to go overseas to fight for Islamic State. IS has been designated by the United States as a terror group. Story continues Six of the 10 pleaded guilty to providing material support to Islamic State and a seventh man is believed to be in Syria. The trial has exposed tensions in Minnesotas Somali community, where some believe the men were entrapped by a former group member turned paid FBI informant who testified at trial. Luger said the jury rejected the idea of entrapment. (Reporting by Eric Beech in Washington, Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago, David Bailey in Minneapolis and Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Matthew Lewis) (Adds background, detail on Dropcam, new quotes from Fadell) June 3 (Reuters) - Tony Fadell, a well-known Silicon Valley executive who was once expected to play a central role in Alphabet Inc's hardware efforts, has stepped down as chief executive of the search giant's Nest unit, the company said. Fadell will remain an adviser to Alphabet and Google co-founder Larry Page. He will be replaced at Nest, which makes smart thermostats and smoke detectors, by Marwan Fawaz, who had prior stints at Motorola Mobility and Charter Communications Inc . Google bought Nest in 2014 for $3.2 billion, one of the company's largest acquisitions ever. In a blog post announcing his departure, Fadell said Nest's revenue is growing 50 percent a year and boasted that "the connected home went mainstream because of Nest." "We've created a hardware + software + services ecosystem, which is still in the early growth stage and will continue to evolve to move further into the mainstream over the coming years," Fadell wrote. (http://bit.ly/1r5SIvV) Fadell started Nest in 2011 after a high-profile run at Apple Inc, where he was an important player in the development of the iPod and the iPhone. Top-tier venture capital investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and Google Ventures backed Nest, which set out to build a smart thermostat and related products. But Fadell and Nest have had a bumpy ride under Alphabet. Nest had to recall a smoke detector in 2014 for a software defect that caused a safety risk, and critics said it was slow to roll out new products. The $555 million acquisition of webcam startup Dropcam did not go well, with Fadell openly criticizing the quality of the team in a news report earlier this year in the trade publication The Information. The story aired numerous complaints about Fadell's allegedly abrasive leadership. Dropcam co-founder Greg Duffy responded with a blistering blog post in which he accused Fadell of "blatant scapegoating" and said he regretted selling the company. Duffy also said there had been a huge exodus of employees from Nest. Story continues Fadell said in his blog that he had been planning to leave since late last year. He did not say what he intended to do next, though he recently unveiled a new company, Actev Motors, that makes a smart go-cart for kids. In a statement Friday, Page called Fadell a "true visionary" and praised his accomplishments at Nest. (Reporting by Narottam Medhora in Bengaluru; Writing by Jonathan Weber; Editing by Maju Samuel and Cynthia Osterman) A powerful Republican lawmaker wants the State Departments inspector general to launch a formal investigation into why the recording of a three-year-old press conference about the Iran nuclear talks was deliberately doctored and to find out who gave the order to do so. The request from Rep. Ed Royce, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, comes just days after the department admitted that the digital recording of the press conference included the deliberate omission of an exchange about the negotiations which eventually led to Washingtons landmark nuclear accord with Tehran. In tampering with this video, the Bureau of Public Affairs has undermined its mission to communicate timely and accurate information with the goal of furthering U.S. foreign policy, wrote Royce. Royces letter comes in response to an embarrassing State Department admission on Wednesday that it deliberately cut several minutes from the tape of a 2013 press briefing in which a Fox News reporter asked if the State Department had lied about the existence of secret talks with Iran over its nuclear program. During the exchange, reporter James Rosen asked then-State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki why officials hid the fact that the U.S. and Iran were involved in the talks. Is it the policy of the State Department, where the preservation or the secrecy of secret negotiations is concerned, to lie in order to achieve that goal? Rosen asked. Psaki seemed to acknowledge that this was the case, saying: James, I think there are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that. The State Department originally said the deletion of that portion of the video was due to a technical glitch, but spokesman John Kirby confirmed this week that an unnamed official in the department had been deliberately ordered to cut the segment. This wasnt a technical glitch, this was a deliberate step to excise the video, Kirby told reporters. Story continues Kirby said the deletion was made by a technician who was called by an individual in the press office, and said neither would be punished. The State Department says it is now implementing a new policy expressly prohibiting the deletion of press briefing videos except in the cases where privacy or national security concerns are paramount. It has also noted that the full written transcript of the exchange with Psaki was always publicly available on its website. But Royce and other Republicans are demanding to know who ordered the deletion of the video and for what purposes. How is it not possible to determine who in the administration ordered that the video be altered, as the current spokesman has asserted? asked Royce in his letter. Will there be no accountability? Have there been other instances where the State Department has altered the public record? Kirby, who was not at the State Department when the deleted exchange occurred, appeared on Fox News on Thursday and thanked the news outlet for uncovering the incident. I want to thank James Rosen, your correspondent, for bringing this to my attention. Because if he hadnt a couple of weeks ago I would have never known this occurred, he said. He insisted that there is no cover-up but has given no indication that the individual responsible will be identified or disciplined. The State Departments inspector general, Steve Linick, has held the post since 2013 and is largely respected by both Republicans and Democrats. From Country Living A woman visiting Yellowstone National Park this weekend got more than she bargained for when trying to take a photo of the wildlife there. She was caught on camera ignoring warnings to stay away from an elk, when the animal charged at her. "She was practically stomping up to it," tour guide Jody Tibbitts told EastIdahoNews.com. "Honestly I'd say she was probably 25 feet away from the elk as opposed to the 25 yards (mandated by Yellowstone National Park)." A man in Tibbitts' tour group took video while Tibbitts called out at her to get back. But she doesn't, and the elk is seen charging at her. The camera pans away, but she apparently tripped and luckily the elk didn't trample her-but she could have been seriously injured. "I was just going to tell you you're standing too close to that elk," Tibbits says in the video. "It's been a long time. Thank you," she replied. "It won't happen again." "I bet it won't," Tibbitts quipped. This is only the latest in a string of incidents in which tourists have acted irresponsibly at Yellowstone. In May, a pair of tourists took a baby bison from its natural habitat and placed it in its car out of a sincere concern that it was cold; sadly, because it was rejected from its herd afterward, it had to be put down. And later that month, four Canadian travelers, who posted their stories on a site called High on Life, face criminal charges after walking on the Grand Prismatic Spring. According to Tibbitts, tourists have been "out of control" lately, and he blames smartphone cameras for making it too easy for people to take pictures every second of the day. "Imagine a stranger coming into your home and whistling and staring and taking photos," he said. "You'd be pretty upset too." TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp on Friday said it has suspended production at three plants affected by an explosion earlier this week at a supplier factory, adding that it expected production to fully resume by the beginning of next week. The blast on Monday was at a factory of Aisin Advics Co, a major maker of breaking systems majority owned by Toyota group supplier Aisin Seiki Co. Toyota said it would cancel one of two production shifts on two lines at a plant operated by group company Hino Motors Ltd. Earlier in the day, it scrapped shifts on a line at its Toyota East Japan plant and at a plant operated by group company Daihatsu Motor Co Ltd. The suspensions would be the third this year. They follow supply-chain disruption caused by earthquake damage to a factory operated by an Aisin Seiki subsidiary, and a fire at a steel plant owned by supplier Aichi Steel Corp. "We will continue to monitor the parts supply status and decide on how to proceed with operations on each line as necessary," a Toyota spokeswoman said. "We expect a full-scale recovery on June 6." Toyota did not disclose the estimated impact of the suspensions. (Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Chris Gallagher and Christopher Cushing) Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald may have buried the hatchet after months of public tension last month, but that isn't stopping Kelly from criticizing Trump. On Thursday's Kelly File, the 45-year-old journalist threw some hard punches at the 69-year-old businessman, after he continued his attack on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, telling The Wall Street Journal that the American-born judge has "an absolute conflict" with his case because he is "of Mexican heritage." Trump claimed his campaign stance against illegal immigration and his pledge to seal the U.S. / Mexican border with a wall was in conflict with Curiel's background (he was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants). "I'm building a wall," Trump said. "It's an inherent conflict of interest." This isn't the first time Trump has publicly gone after Curiel. During a San Diego speech last week, he called the judge "a hater of Donald Trump" and "a total disgrace." But the comments struck a chord with Kelly, who said as a journalist who has been doing legal commentary for 10 years, she feels his comments were "out of line." RELATED VIDEO: Megyn Kelly Presents: Exclusive Interview with Donald Trump "He has no conflict of interest," Kelly said, pointing out that Curiel is neither Mexican nor a member La Razza, the California latinos lawyers association who have previously protested Trump. "Now Trump is saying the judge needs to be investigated, someone should look into him, just because he's ruled against Trump in this case repeatedly? That doesn't make you biased. It doesn't." " 'A Hispanic cannot judge a case against me.' That's what Trump is saying explicitly," she added. Kelly went on to say she had planned to spend her segment talking about House Speaker Paul Ryan's recent endorsement of Trump, but sidelined the segment after Trump attacked the sitting federal judge based on his ethnicity. Judge Gonzalo Curiel is prohibited by the judicial code of conduct from responding to Trump's allegations. Earlier this week, Curiel refused to dismiss a pair of civil lawsuits in California against the now-closed Trump University, unsealing documents that support claims that the controversial for-profit university's students were tricked into paying more money to learn Trump's secret for success. The documents include playbooks that directed school reps to persuade people who couldn't afford the courses to sign up for them, and showing that the training program's aggressive sales force promised would-be students they would learn "the technique of using OPM ... other people's money." Trump criticized Curiel on Twitter, saying he was confident his would be victorious in the pending litigation. "Even though I have a very biased and unfair judge in the Trump U civil case in San Diego, I have thousands of great reviews & will win case!" he wrote. Even though I have a very biased and unfair judge in the Trump U civil case in San Diego, I have thousands of great reviews & will win case! -- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 2, 2016 At Thursday's rally in San Jose, Trump avoided mentioning the Trump University scandal, but did go on to say, "We love the Hispanics." Trump has yet to respond to Kelly's broadcast. The two first clashed when Kelly asked him a question about his treatment of women during August's first G.O.P. debate. For months following, the former Celebrity Apprentice star spoke out against Kelly, calling her "sick," "a lightweight," "the most overrated person on television," and suggesting she came after him that day because she was menstruating. He encouraged his Twitter followers to boycott her show. "I just wanted to stop," Kelly told PEOPLE of the harassment. "You'd get past an incident and then it would start again. It was really shocking." Just ahead of the Iowa caucus, Trump pulled out of a debate because Fox News executives refused to remove Kelly as a moderator after he felt she not had treated him "fairly." "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," a Fox News spokesperson told PEOPLE at the time. Kelly says she fears Curiel would face similar vicious attacks. "Let me tell you, I guarantee you right now that this judge is getting threats, and vitriol and who knows what else," she said. Kelly ended her tirade by trying to clear up Curiel's reputation. "There's no conflict of interest whatsoever based on his ethnicity, just to clear up this man's reputation, who is a sitting federal judge and has served the country for four years in that capacity." By Steve Holland WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump defended his attacks on a Mexican-American judge on Friday, resisting pressure from top Republicans to moderate his tone out of concern he is hurting his chances to win the White House. Trump's bomb-throwing rhetoric helped him defeat 16 Republican rivals for the party's nomination for the Nov. 8 election. But facing a tough fight with expected Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, many Republicans want him to present a more disciplined image. Feeling confident his method has been a winner, Trump so far has waved off some of the advice from Republicans who support him but want less loose talk. In a CNN interview, Trump escalated his attacks on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the son of Mexican immigrants who is the presiding judge in lawsuits involving fraud allegations against Trump University, the New York businessman's defunct real estate training school. Trump suggested Curiel's Mexican heritage was influencing the judge's opinion about the case because Trump has campaigned on a platform of building a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico to stop illegal immigration. "He's proud of his heritage," Trump said. "He's a Mexican. We're building a wall between here and Mexico. The answer is, he is giving us very unfair rulings, rulings that people can't even believe. This case should have ended years ago on summary judgment," Trump said. The judge a week ago unsealed documents related to the case. Comments from the two top elected U.S. Republicans, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, reflected continued worries among establishment Republicans about Trump. 'OUT OF LEFT FIELD' Ryan, who endorsed Trump on Thursday, said the comments from Trump about the judge were "out of left field." "He clearly says and does things I don't agree with. And I've had to speak up ... (from) time to time when that has occurred. And I'll continue to do that if that's necessary. I hope it's not," Ryan told a Milwaukee radio station. McConnell, speaking on MSNBC, raised concerns about Trump's criticism of New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez, a rising star in the Republican Party who can appeal to Hispanic voters. After attacking her record last week, Trump on Thursday moderated his tone and said he would like her endorsement. "We ought to be trying to unify, he ought to be trying to unify the party behind him," McConnell said of Trump. "Most of us are committed to supporting him and trying to bring the party together, and I think he needs to play his role on all of that as well." Trump received 32 percent support from Latino voters in an NBC News/Survey Monkey poll this week, a respectable number given his critical comments throughout the campaign about illegal immigrants, most of whom come from Mexico and other Latin American countries. But the specter of Trump as the nominee has worried some Hispanic Republicans. This week, Ruth Guerra, who is a Mexican-American, resigned as the Republican National Committee's chief of Hispanic media relations. A source familiar with her departure said she was not comfortable with Trump as the nominee. More broadly, Reince Preibus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, has been trying to persuade Trump to moderate his tone as a way to heal fissures in the party, at a time when Trump will need to rely on deep-pocketed Republican loyalists to finance a $1 billion campaign. "He needs one thing and one thing only: discipline," said a senior party official, speaking on condition of anonymity. But if a Trump rally in Redding, California, was any indication, the candidate feels his method is working. "Temperament is a very important word," Trump said, referring to Clinton's charge that he is temperamentally unfit for the White House. "We need toughness in tone. We need toughness in temperament." Stung by attacks on him from Clinton on Thursday, Trump dredged up scandals from the 1990s to hit her and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, saying they are dishonest. He cited Bill Clinton's affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. "First of all, she's always got problems: Whitewater (a controversial real estate deal), impeachment, lies. He 'didn't have sex with that woman,'" Trump said. "These are lying people. We don't need, folks, another four years of the Clintons." (Additional reporting by Emily Stephenson; Editing by Will Dunham) Washington (AFP) - Donald Trump on Friday again lambasted the judge handling a pair of lawsuits over his defunct online university, insisting that the jurist's Mexican heritage makes him biased. The Republican presidential frontrunner slammed Judge Gonzalo Curiel in a speech last week as a "hater" and a "total disgrace" whose Mexican parentage poses an "absolute conflict" in the cases. He doubled down on those comments in an interview published in The Wall Street Journal, saying Curiel -- a US-born native of Indiana -- might be "biased" by Trump's controversial campaign vow to build an anti-immigrant wall on America's southern border with Mexico. "I'm building a wall. It's an inherent conflict of interest," Trump told the daily, noting that Curiel also had belonged to an organization of Hispanic judges -- another disqualifier in his eyes. Reminded on CNN that Curiel is American, Trump doubled down: "he's of Mexican heritage, and he's very proud of it." The developer and reality television host has enthused supporters and enraged many others with his calls for building a wall on the US-Mexican border and alleging that Mexico sends its criminals to the United States. "I've had terrible rulings (by Curiel), I've been treated very unfairly. I've been treated very unfairly by this judge," Trump said on CNN. In addition to questioning Curiel's impartiality, Trump said that if elected president, he would consider changing free speech laws to make it easier to sue journalists. Many see that as a plan to restrict basic US rights. Newly unsealed court documents in the case against Trump's "university" reveal allegations that it preyed on the uneducated and misled consumers with aggressive marketing that amounted to fraud. - 'Outrageous' - The revelations come as the 2016 presidential race shapes up as a contest between Trump and the likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, who sharply criticized his remarks. Story continues "I think it's terrible. I think it's outrageous," Clinton said on MSNBC after a rally in California. "Judge Curiel and his family epitomize the American dream," Clinton Hispanic outreach staffer Lorella Praeli said. "His parents worked hard to give their US-born children a better life." Curiel and one of his brothers became successful lawyers, while another brother served in Vietnam. "The fact that Donald Trump doesn't see Judge Curiel and his family as Americans makes him unfit to be president of this great nation, a nation of immigrants," said Praeli. Trump's statements are also highlighting the Republican Party's difficulty uniting around the brash billionaire. A day after having endorsed Trump for president, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan criticized him again on Friday. Speaking on WISN radio in his home state of Wisconsin, Ryan called Trump's attacks against Curiel "out of left field." "I think I'm going to do very well with the Hispanics because I'm going to bring back jobs and they are going to get jobs right now," Trump told CNN. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump raised eyebrows while addressing one of his fans at a Friday rally in Redding, Calif. Trump pointed at someone in the audience and urged people to look at my African-American over here. The remark drew an instant reaction on social media. Trump singled out the crowd member after talking about demonstrations that occurred after his Thursday speech in San Jose, Calif., where protesters attacked his some of supporters. He dismissed the anti-Trump demonstrators as thugs and contrasted their violent behavior with his supporters, who he claimed are gentle with opponents. When we have a protester inside, which isnt even very often, I say, Be very gentle. Please dont hurt him. Take care of him. If he wants to shout, if he punches you in the face, smile as your nose is pouring blood out of it. Be very, very nice, Trump said. Trumps campaign does play announcements at events urging his supporters not to be violent with protesters. But there have been multiple incidents in which Trumps backers got physical with demonstrators. After contrasting his audiences with the thugs, Trump began to recount one of the incidents where one of his African-American supporters slugged a protester. After starting to tell the tale, Trump stopped to point out the African-American in the audience. We had a case where we had an African-American guy who was a fan of mine great fan, great guy. In fact, I want to find out whats going on with him. You know what? Im Trump began before stopping himself. Trump pointed into the crowd. Oh, look at my African-American over here. Look at him. Are you the greatest? Do you know what Im talking about? OK, Trump said. The remark quickly attracted attention on Twitter. Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale called it the most memorable line of Trumps speech. Please, please tell me this did not just happen, wrote journalist David Freedlander. Story continues Did he really say that? asked former Democratic National Committee spokesman Mo Elleithee. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures at a town hall meeting, Dec. 12, 2015, in Aiken, S.C. (photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images) After pointing at the audience member, Trump then continued his story. He seemed to be describing an event that occurred at one of his rallies in March in Arizona. At that event, an African-American Air Force staff sergeant named Tony Pettway was arrested and charged with assault after he was filmed punching and stomping on a protester who was being escorted out of the event. The man who was punched had accompanied another protester who was wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood. So, we have an African-American guy at one of the rallies a month ago and hes sitting there behaving and we had protesters inside the arena and they were dressed in a Ku Klux Klan outfit, Trump said. And theyre running around dressed as Ku Klux Klan and the place is booing and booing. This African-American gets up and, man, he slugged these guys. He slugged them. Many of Trumps critics have accused him of racism and highlighted support he has received from white supremacists including former Klan leader David Duke. Trump and his team have maintained he has strong support from African-Americans, though there is little data indicating he would perform any better with black voters than past GOP hopefuls. Some initial reports about the March incident did not include the detail that the man who was punched was protesting with someone in Klan garb. Trump, who has repeatedly accused the media of bias against his campaign, argued the reporting around Pettways arrest was an example of reporters trying to smear his supporters. This guy, a great guy he slugged this guy wearing the Ku Klux Klan outfit, but by the time he got up you couldnt see it was a Ku Klux Klan outfit. So, when the African-American cold-cocked this guy everyone thought the African-American was against me, [but] it was the opposite, Trump said. Trump concluded the tale by claiming he has tremendous African-American support. The reason is, Im going to bring jobs back to our country. Were going to bring jobs back, but when these sleazy people, these dishonest people who never show the crowds. When they showed that event, it made it look like the white guy was on my side, Trump said. Trump rally San Jose The scene outside a Donald Trump campaign rally in the San Francisco Bay Area apparently got out of hand on Thursday night. Some anti-Trump protesters appeared to taunt people who attended the event at the San Jose Convention Center at times shouting down attendees who were passing by. Reporters on the ground indicated that many of those attacked were Trump supporters. A woman was hit with an egg: Protestors are getting out of hand #DonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/Rxica3eMuB Courtney Bennett (@courtbmedia) June 3, 2016 One man was apparently bloodied. That exchange was caught on video: NOW: #Trump supporter attacked and left bleeding in San Jose pic.twitter.com/kC2GVz9JcZ Tim Pool (@Timcast) June 3, 2016 Others appeared to be followed by the crowd and then ambushed: I called 911 but no one answered. Donald trump protest in San Jose, CA pic.twitter.com/LwaWyeYZfq Marcus DiPaola (@marcusdipaola) June 3, 2016 Some of the anti-Trump protesters declared "no room for hate in the 408," referring to a San Jose area code: "In the 408 no hate:" Trump protesters stage mini protest at #SanJose rally. pic.twitter.com/PxgZhbBuT3 Riya Bhattacharjee (@loislane28) June 3, 2016 Others chanted "no hate in our state:" San Jose Police chief Eddie Garcia told reporters at a press conference Friday afternoon that at least four people were arrested. "What happened last night was disgraceful," Garcia said, adding that the violence "will not go unchecked," and saying that video evidence from the incident was being reviewed. The police chief said that roughly 250 police officers were on scene during Thursday night's unrest, but acknowledged that more help was needed. Story continues California rallies for Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, have largely been upended by groups of protesters opposing his candidacy. San Jose Trump protests The state boasts one of the largest Latino populations in the US, and it is the first large state without a white plurality, according to state officials cited by the Los Angeles Times. Among other things, that has made Trump's controversial immigration platforms deeply unpopular in the state. "At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign," San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo told The Associated Press. John Podesta, the Hillary Clinton campaign chair, tweeted: "Violence against supporters of any candidate has no place in this election." NOW WATCH: 'Youre a sleaze!': Here are all the insults Trump hurled at the press during a bizarre press conference More From Business Insider Trump rally San Jose The scene outside a Donald Trump campaign rally in the San Francisco Bay Area apparently got out of hand on Thursday night. Some anti-Trump protesters appeared to taunt people who attended the event at the San Jose Convention Center at times shouting down attendees who were passing by. A woman was hit with an egg: Protestors are getting out of hand #DonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/Rxica3eMuB Courtney Bennett (@courtbmedia) June 3, 2016 One man was apparently bloodied. That exchange was caught on video: NOW: #Trump supporter attacked and left bleeding in San Jose pic.twitter.com/kC2GVz9JcZ Tim Pool (@Timcast) June 3, 2016 Others appeared to be followed by the crowd and then ambushed: I called 911 but no one answered. Donald trump protest in San Jose, CA pic.twitter.com/LwaWyeYZfq Marcus DiPaola (@marcusdipaola) June 3, 2016 Some of the anti-Trump protesters declared "no room for hate in the 408," referring to a San Jose area code: "In the 408 no hate:" Trump protesters stage mini protest at #SanJose rally. pic.twitter.com/PxgZhbBuT3 Riya Bhattacharjee (@loislane28) June 3, 2016 Others chanted "no hate in our state:" Four people were taken into custody, though police didn't release specific arrest figures, according to The Associated Press. California rallies for Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, have largely been upended by groups of protesters opposing his candidacy. The state boasts one of the largest Latino populations in the US, and it is the first large state without a white plurality, according to state officials cited by the Los Angeles Times. Among other things, that has made Trump's controversial immigration platforms deeply unpopular in the state. Story continues "At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign," San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo told The Associated Press. John Podesta, the Hillary Clinton campaign chair, tweeted: "Violence against supporters of any candidate has no place in this election." NOW WATCH: 'Youre a sleaze!': Here are all the insults Trump hurled at the press during a bizarre press conference More From Business Insider Donald Trump is a gift to Hillary Clinton. And a trap. Because as good as it was (and as satisfying as it was to hear), it fell into the pattern of every other phase of this campaign so far, which is making everything about Trump. For Clinton to win, she needs to energize the electorate about what she is for and not just what she is against, or the outcome may well be very much like that experienced by Trumps opponents thus far. Clintons foreign-policy address in San Diego Thursday was certainly effective as far as it went. In fact, it was so effective at enumerating Trumps flaws as a potential commander in chief it revealed a somewhat different challenge Clinton and her speechwriters face: Figuring out how to keep such speeches short enough so that audience members could get home in time to tuck their kids into bed. Donald Trumps ideas arent just different, she said in one of her many effective, slashing assaults on the Republican Partys presumptive nominee. They are dangerously incoherent. Theyre not even really ideas just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies. In those brief couple of lines, you can see the beauty of opposing a human toxic waste dump like Trump: No hyperbole is necessary. Just tell it like it is, and it should be clear to any listener with a third-grade education that Trump has no more business being president than he would have teaching a course on humility. When she said Trump is temperamentally unfit to hold office, no one who has watched him can doubt it, but listing his idiocies from suggesting more countries have nukes to actually arguing it wouldnt matter to us if they used them, from singing the praises of the North Korean regime to suggesting we hand over Syria to the Islamic State drove home the point with precision. And if her onslaught wasnt enough, a day or two earlier that same North Korean regime actually endorsed Trumps candidacy, an act that on its own speaks volumes about just how unfit Trump really is. North Korea wants to bring down America, folks. And its leaders know the surest way to do that is to put The Donald into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. No, it was clear Clintons advisors saw giving a foreign-policy speech as a special opportunity because Trump has made himself so stunningly vulnerable in that respect. (Not that his racism, misogyny, and lack of relevant experience doesnt do that on domestic issues as well.) And she delivered it well. So well that we are sure to hear these lines again, and the same case will be made over and over. The prospect of Trumps finger on the nuclear button is so horrifying that it alone makes the case that Clinton must be president because the only way to stop him is by voting for her. The problem with beating Trump to paraphrase Clinton about her former boss Barack Obamas foreign policy is that simply being against him is not a foreign policy. (She once suggested Obamas dont do stupid shit insight was not enough to constitute a foreign policy. And, of course, there is no doubt that electing Trump would be the stupidest shit of all.) But that alone is not a vision for Americas future. Nor and perhaps more importantly is that platform alone likely to inspire more voters to see the positive reasons for voting for Clinton. Voters deserve a better speech than she gave Thursday, and if she wants to counter the wave of irrational emotion that is the only thing that could sweep a man like Trump into office, Clinton is going to have to start making people more passionate about why they should stand and vote for her, rather than why they should be against the creep the GOP now seems to be uniting around. (See: Paul Ryans statement on Thursday one he will certainly live to regret.) In order for Clinton to inspire in voters the same kind of passion, she must make clear how the ideas she stands for are new and different and why she is the right person to be president at this moment, the person with the vision to imagine and realize a new world for our children and our childrens children. We need and she needs a few big, new ideas. And though it was expert in its dissection of Trump, Thursdays speech was workmanlike, bland as oatmeal about her own foreign policy, and ultimately devoid of big, new ideas. There was nothing objectionable in it, of course. The points she raised how the United States needs to be fostering strength at home, cultivating alliances, using diplomacy and development, being wise with our rivals, having a plan to defeat terrorists, and staying true to our values were solid ones. It was just what you would expect from a professional who has years of familiarity with these issues. But as another professional who has been dealing in this space for a while, I have to admit, I wish they werent all so familiar. Once upon a time, many moons ago, when I was a bright young thing in a past Clinton administration, I had a boss who wanted to give a speech. I was his No. 2 and responsible for that sort of thing, so I said I would write it for him. I slaved at it, crafted language carefully, stared off into the middle distance regularly looking for inspiration, and delivered him what I thought was the speech about international economic policy Winston Churchill would have given if he had cared about such things. I handed it in and waited for the praise to start pouring in. Clocks ticked. Birds chirped. And, finally, my boss came back in. Thats a terrific job, he said. Its well-written. Its thoughtful. Its very solid. I cant use it. I looked at him dumbstruck. Where had I gone wrong? Or, more likely, where had he gone wrong? After all, I was pretty sure it was great. Theres nothing new in it, he said. Im not going to give a big talk and not break new ground. Why do it otherwise? I was crestfallen. But he was right. And Ive never forgotten the lesson. Thats what leaders have to do. They have to lead. They have to take us some place we have not gone before. And in her remarks Thursday, Hillary Clinton did not do that. The gap between what we got and what we need was evident on each of her points. Yes, America needs to be strong from within but how do we create jobs in an era of hyper-productivity and new technologies that are upending our old notions of work? How do we create a lifelong learning model of education that takes advantage of new technologies and does not leave behind entire swaths of the population (like inner-city minority students) as we are now doing? How do we undo growing inequality? What kind of infrastructure do we need for a new technological reality, and how do we pay for it? How do we fix our broken tax code so it is both competitive and fair? Yes, we must strengthen alliances. But how do we reinvent the trans-Atlantic alliance for a new era? What is the basis for a new vision for our role in the Indo-Pacific region? How do we remake the alliances Obama has broken in the Middle East? What will they look like? How do we help them lead? How do we ensure they are addressing not just the problems of the recent past but also those of the emerging future from China and Russias involvement in the region to the rise of a new generation of leaders? Of course, refocusing on diplomacy and development is smart. But referring to the Iran deal is probably not the best place to start, given that despite its good intentions it is likely to someday be seen as having been misplayed, having empowered Iran at the expense of the countries we need to counterbalance it and that have a more constructive vision for the future than do the theocrats who still rule in Tehran. When it comes to development, for example, how will we rebuild the Middle East? Its a multibillion-dollar question that must be answered if we are to have lasting peace in the shattered countries of the region. Who will pay? What institutions do we need to ensure that happens? (A regional development bank will be essential.) Being wise with Russia and China makes sense, of course. But we could use specifics and, while were at it, less reflexive China and trade bashing on the campaign trail. It creates a tension that Bill Clinton discovered. Its easy to blame trade problems on foreigners. But it is also wrong, and when in office, he reversed on these issues as his wife is likely to discover she must also do. But we can go further: We need a doctrine of interdependence with China that recognizes it as a vital ally, as well as a potential rival, one that harnesses better our common interests. And we need to find a new path forward to ensure our deteriorating relationship with Russia does not get worse even while sending a message that a new administration will not be as feckless in opposition to displays of raw Russian aggression as Obama has been. Of course, we need to defeat terrorists which means a shift from playing whack-a-mole with an ever-evolving array of terrorist groups to combating extremism more broadly. That means not just knowing what we are against in the Middle East and elsewhere but what we are for. (And that means not only finding models and green shoots in the region to cultivate but stepping away from reflexive campaign trail language in support of an Israel that is drifting ever-more dangerously to the right and toward a demographic crisis with a growing Palestinian population that will soon have our key ally having to choose between being a democracy and being a Jewish state. The Israelis are looking like theyre making the wrong choice on that front, and we need to be frank with them as friends are to one another that we support them, but not always, not unconditionally, and not if their values shift out of alignment with ours as they have been doing the past few years.) As for being true to our values yes, yes, of course. But which values? Obeying international law is a good one, but will that extend to reinventing international institutions and creating new or better ones where they are needed most (the economic and security realities of a connected world, the environment, combating proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, etc.)? One of Americas core values is to assume the responsibilities of leadership that accrue to its role as the worlds most powerful nation. Obama has shrugged off many of these. How will Clinton reassume them? Leadership is about both knowing where to go (this is where new ideas and new faces come in) and getting others to follow (this is where inciting passions is critical). These factors define the parameters of the Trump trap. It may seem like it is enough to simply be against him. But it is not. Because that becomes a distraction, creating the illusion that new ideas (and the risks inherent in them) may not be necessary. It also, consequently, makes it less likely that we will see from Clinton why she will be the transformational president these times require, how she will inspire, how she will go beyond the rhetoric of her predecessor to effectively produce the vital changes and strength America needs on the international stage as well as at home. It is not too late. It is only June. There are still five months left in this campaign. Frankly, thats more than enough time for a whole campaign (or two). Trump is bad and must be stopped. The only way to do that is to vote for Clinton. But if she does not reach for the big ideas, surround herself with new faces, make certain voters know that she is not just the face of an establishment that fears a Trump presidency (for good reason), she may not win the support of enough voters to actually win. Trump is tapping into passion and frustration with Washington. She cant help but be seen as part of the system unless she makes it clear that her experience has not only convinced her massive, fundamental change is needed but that she has the ideas and the people around her to help produce that change. Experience, intelligence, and steadiness are great traits in a president. But they are not enough for a candidate. A candidate needs to inspire, to resonate with the electorate not just in their heads but in their hearts, and to give them real hope, and the one candidate capable of doing this has yet to begin doing so. Perhaps Thursdays speech was a necessary step outlining the Trump threat. If so, good enough, but we cant wait too long for the follow-up speech, one that describes the promise of a Clinton presidency and moves us to stand behind it. Warner Bros/Getty Images/Foreign Policy illustration Paris (AFP) - A Paris meeting Friday on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the latest attempt to tackle one of the world's most stubborn diplomatic issues. Here is a rundown of past efforts. Oslo to Camp David - OSLO ACCORDS: September 13, 1993: After six months of secret talks in Oslo, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation sign in Washington a mutual recognition agreement that allows for five years of Palestinian autonomy aimed at striking a final deal no later than May 1999. Under the deal, Israel is to withdraw from 70 percent of territory it occupies in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and in July 1994, PLO leader Yasser Arafat returns from 27 years in exile. - OSLO II: September 28, 1995: A new interim accord is negotiated in Taba, Egypt and signed in Washington. It foresees a gradual Israeli West Bank withdrawal. But before that happens, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated on November 4 by a Jewish extremist. - WYE PLANTATION: October 23, 1998: A deal signed at Wye Plantation in the US calls for a gradual Israeli withdrawal from 13 percent of the land it still occupies in the West Bank, which would leave the Palestinians controlling 40 percent. Two months later, Israel freezes the deal after pulling back from two percent of occupied territory. An accord signed on September 5, 1999 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, gives the initiative fresh momentum, and targets September 13, 2000 for a final agreement. - CAMP DAVID: July 11-25, 2000: At a summit at Camp David in the US, Palestinians and Israelis remain deadlocked over the questions of a final status for Jerusalem and compensation for Palestinian refugees from 1948. Two months later, the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, breaks out, lasting until 2005. The Israeli army temporarily reoccupies almost the entire West Bank. String of failures - ARAB INITIATIVE of March 28, 2002: After the failure in January 2001 of a summit in Taba, an Arab summit in Beirut adopts a Saudi initiative offering diplomatic relations between Israel and Arab countries in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories and a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue. Story continues - ROAD MAP of April 30, 2003: A diplomatic quartet comprised of the European Union, Russia, United Nations and United States publishes a document dubbed a "road map" towards a Palestinian state in 2005 once Palestinian attacks and Jewish settler activity cease. Israel and the Palestinians commit to its application on June 4, 2003 in Aqaba, Jordan in the presence of US president George W. Bush. - ANNAPOLIS SUMMIT of November 27, 2007: Israelis and Palestinians commit to negotiating an agreement by the end of 2008 during a conference that includes Israel and 15 Arab countries for the first time. The Palestinian group Hamas, which now controls the Gaza Strip following Israel's withdrawal in 2005, rejects the agreement. Palestinian Authority envoys pull out of talks after Israel launches an offensive in Gaza in late 2008. Fresh efforts - ABORTED DIALOGUE: September 2, 2010: After a 20-month hiatus, direct talks briefly resume in Washington with a meeting between Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who accepted the principle of a Palestinian state in June 2009. The talks break down when Israeli resumes construction of West Bank settlements on September 26. - NINE MONTHS from July 29, 2013: US Secretary of State John Kerry announces the launch of nine months of direct talks, the first in three years. They are suspended by Israel on April 23, 2014, a week before term, after the announcement of a reconciliation deal between the PLO's Fatah and Hamas. - FRENCH INITIATIVE of June 3, 2016: Paris hosts a ministerial-level meeting, without Israel or the Palestinians, to prepare an international conference on the Middle East. TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisia's powerful UGTT union, a joint winner of last year's Nobel Peace Prize, on Friday rejected a call from the country's president to work in a new national unity government to help push through economic reforms. President Beji Caid Essebsi called on Thursday for political parties, unions and independents to negotiate a new unity government to help advance a reform package and calm social tensions. The UGTT's refusal will weaken the chances of success of Essebsi's proposal, which aims to include the UGTT and the other trade union, UTICA, as a way to avoid strikes over austerity measures and to push through reforms to revive the economy. "Our policy in the UGTT is to not participate in any government. We will not join in the unity government but we support this proposal," Hussein Abassi, the head of UGTT, told reporters after a meeting with the parliament speaker. Essebsi announced the proposed unity government on Thursday, but said such a government would make no sense without the UGTT and the UTICA. Essebsi's call came as Tunisia's current ruling coalition is struggling to create more growth and jobs after a series of militant attacks battered the North African state's tourism industry and economy. Any talks to form a new government will need to include the resignation of the cabinet and a parliamentary vote. It would also take time to work out a consensus among secular, Islamist and left-wing parties and the UGTT, which has played power broker in politics in the past. Tunisia has emerged as a political model for democratic change in the Arab world since its 2011 uprising against strongman Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. But economic reforms demanded by its lenders to tackle high unemployment and frustration among its young have lagged behind the political progress the country has made. (Reporting by Tarek Amara; editing by Patrick Markey and Tom Heneghan) Tunis (AFP) - Tunisia's President Beji Caid Essebsi said he would support a government of national unity, as long as it included Nobel Prize winning groups the UGTT union and UTICA. Any change of government would require the decommission of the current government, then negotiations between all the groups involved, including political parties, unions and employers. Essid was already forced into a broad reshuffle in January, when the country witnessed its worst violence since the Arab spring uprisings of 2011 that toppled president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The economy has also been hit by several jihadists attacks, including one in June when 38 tourists were killed when gunmen stormed a beach resort. The incident has scared visitors away from its vital tourism industry. Essebsi did not rule out the idea of a new prime minister to replace Habib Essid, who local media has speculated was about to depart after only a year and a half in the job. "From what I have seen (of the current government), the bad points outweigh the positives, which has prompted me to... agree to look at a proposal to create a national unity government," he said in an interview broadcast on public television channel Wataniya 1. He said any government would have to include the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) and the Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA), which were part of a group of bodies that won the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize. The National Dialogue Quartet, made up of four civil society groups, helped save Tunisia's transition to democracy at a sensitive moment in 2013 when the process was in danger of collapsing because of widespread social unrest. But speaking several hours before the president, the secretary general of the UGTT, Houcine Abassi, seemed to rule out his union from any unity government. "We cannot take part," he told radio Mosaique FM. The UGTT remains "the force that unites all the institutions and the place of refuge for a whole spectrum of opinions". Story continues Tunisia's current government is composed of four groups including the party Essebsi founded in 2012, Nidaa Tounes, and the Islamist Ennahda party. Fighting terrorism, corruption and unemployment, as well as addressing regional disparities, would likely remain the priorities for any new government. "The failure of Mr Essid's government is that he did not confess to the people the situation in which he found the country," Essebsi said. ANKARA (Reuters) - A Turkish cleaner at a camp for Syrians fleeing the war was jailed for 108 years on Friday for sexually abusing boys, in a case that has highlighted the vulnerability of child refugees. The 29-year-old man did not deny the charges, but said many employees and managers in the camps were involved, Dogan News Agency reported. He said he paid the children 2-5 lira ($0.70-$1.70) before assaulting them in the toilets. The man, who worked as a cleaner at the Nizip Camp in Gaziantep in southeast Turkey, assaulted boys aged between 8 and 12 for at least three months until the start of this year, Dogan and other media reported. He was convicted of abusing eight Syrian boys whose families had filed complaints, the local bar association said. Local media said the families of other victims had kept quiet out of fear of deportation. The case has caused widespread outrage in Turkey, which prides itself on its humanitarian response to the Syrian civil war, sheltering 2.7 million refugees. The camp, home to about 14,000 people, was visited by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in April. Around a tenth of the Syrian refugees in Turkey live in camps run by the government's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority which said last month it was taking all necessary measures in light of the case. (Writing by Ece Toksabay; Editing by David Dolan and Robin Pomeroy) Teacher, 24, allegedly got pregnant from almost daily sex with student, 13Boy's parents were excited about baby, accused claimsVictor Ferreira, National PostFirst posted: Thursday, June 02, 2016 08:05 AM EDT | Updated: Thursday, June 02, 2016 08:46 AM EDTA Texas middle-school teacher turned herself in to police after allegedly being impregnated by a 13-year-old student whose parents apparently knew she was having sex with him almost on a daily basis.Alexandria Vera, a 24-year-old English teacher at Stovall Middle School, was charged with continuous sexual abuse of a child. The felony charge carries a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison for those found guilty.Montgomery County Sheriffs Office Lt. Brady Fitzgerald confirmed Vera turned herself in around 9 a.m. CT (10 a.m. EST) Wednesday. She was released hours later on a $100,000 bond.She was booked into the Montgomery County jail and upon her meeting the requisites of the warrant that the judge put up for the bond, she was released from this location, Fitzgerald told the Post.Vera allegedly began having sex with the unidentified student in September 2015, and continued doing so until at least January 2016, according to court documents filed by the District Attorneys Office.An Aldine Independent School District peace officer began investigating Vera in April after being tipped off by the schools principal. During an interview with the officer Vera told him she met the student in a summer class she taught and when the regular school year began again in September, he was placed in her eighth-grade classroom.The student, she told the officer, began to flirt with her. When he began to miss class in September, she sent him a message on Instagram to check in on him. This led to the student asking for her phone number, which she provided, and suggested that the two of them hang out after class, the documents say. Vera told the officer she drove the student home one day from school and they kissed in the car. The next day, she allegedly went to his house when his parents werent home and had sex with him.After meeting his parents at a school open house, Vera told the officer, she was invited to their home for dinner and was introduced as the childs girlfriend. She said the parents accepted her and invited them to family events.The boy frequently slept over at Veras house, she said. In the morning, she drove him home so he could catch his school bus.She stated that she and the complainant had sex almost on a daily basis at her home and that they love each other, the court documents say.In January, Vera allegedly found out she was pregnant with the boys baby. She told the police officer that the family was made aware of the pregnancy and that they were very supportive and excited about the baby.Vera ended up having an abortion, she told the officer, because Child Protection Services showed up at the school to question her about the student.According to her Facebook profile, Vera has a young daughter from another relationship.Vera had been teaching at Stovall Middle School for two years before she started having sex with the student, police say. She was removed from the school in April, according to a statement from the Aldine Independent School Board."Aldine ISD has been made aware that charges have been filed against a former Stovall Middle School teacher involved in inappropriate behavior with a male student," the statement reads. "When the allegation was made in April, the teacher was immediately removed from the school and placed on administrative leave. Aldine ISD Police investigated the incident and turned their findings over to the Harris County District Attorneys Office. The safety and security of Aldine ISDs students and staff remains a priority of the school district."Vera is currently on administrative leave and the school board will be meeting in June to approve her termination.Alexandria Vera turned herself in to police. She allegedly had a sexual relationship with a student. (Facebook/Handout)Alexandria Vera allegedly had a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old student. (Facebook/HO)Texas teacher, 24, allegedly impregnated by 8th grade student after almost daily sex: CopsAlexandria M. Vera says boy's parents ecstatic, supportiveKatie Mettler, Washington PostFirst posted: Thursday, June 02, 2016 10:11 AM EDT | Updated: Thursday, June 02, 2016 11:02 AM EDTAlexandria M. Vera, an eighth grade English teacher at Stovall Middle School in Houston, told police in April that the relationship she had with one of her students started through messages on Instagram - and had evolved into a great love.On Wednesday, two months after the police investigation began and nearly eight months after 24-year-old Vera started having sex with the eighth grader, authorities issued a warrant for her arrest on a felony charge of continuous sexual abuse of a child. The student is under the age of 14.Vera turned herself in at a suburban jail in Montgomery County and later bonded out on $100,000, reported the Associated Press.Court documents filed last week in a Harris County District Court offer a detailed look into Vera's account of their blossoming relationship, which she told police was not only approved, but celebrated by the boy's parents. It wasn't until April, when Stovall principal Elsa Wright got a tip about Vera, that the school district's police department began investigating.The English teacher admitted to both the principal and a police officer that she'd been having an ongoing relationship with the boy for months, court documents show.The bizarre and layered saga began nearly a year ago, Vera told police, when she met the boy during summer school in 2015. She said at first he was rude, asking for her Instagram account name and sending her a follow request after she refused to provide it or accept his invitation, according to court records.But their interactions picked back up in the fall, when the regular school year began and the boy was assigned to one of her eighth grade English classes. Vera described for police a period of flirting that she claims she initially resisted, until the month of September. The teacher said she became worried when the boy didn't show up to class, so she sent him a message on Instagram and reminded him to turn in an upcoming assignment.He replied, according to court documents, and asked for her phone number. Then the boy asked his teacher if they could hang out.She said yes.Vera drove the boy around in her car, she told police, and they kissed. The next day, when the boy's parents weren't home, she returned and the two had sex for the first time, according to the documents.After that, the sexual encounters occurred almost daily, Vera told police."She stated that she and the Complainant had sex on almost a daily basis at her home and that they love each other," police wrote in the documents.In January, Vera said she discovered the boy had gotten her pregnant. When the couple told the boy's family, according to the teacher, they were ecstatic and supportive.His parents had known about the relationship since October, Vera told police, when they came to the school for an open house. Afterward, she was invited back to their home and introduced to the family as the boy's girlfriend, documents show. They were "accepting of the relationship," Vera told police, and she was welcomed to family gatherings thereafter.Things began to deteriorate in February, when an unannounced visit and questioning from Child Protective Services about the relationship spooked her. Vera denied the relationship and the pregnancy at the time, documents show, then chose to abort the baby. She did, however, hand over her cellphone and gave police permission to search it.Police said they found "many messages" between the boy and his teacher, confirming much of the story Vera had revealed. In a separate interview, the boy also admitted to the sexual relationship, police said.The Harris County District Attorney's Office told ABC 13 News that the parents could be charged with failure to report child abuse if they did indeed know about the relationship. The boy's mother is being investigated by Child Protective Services, the TV station reported.The Aldine Independent School District issued the following statement: "Aldine ISD has been made aware that charges have been filed against a former Stovall Middle School teacher involved in inappropriate behaviour with a male student. When the allegation was made in April, the teacher was immediately removed from the school and placed on administrative leave. Aldine ISD Police investigated the incident and turned their findings over to the Harris County District Attorney's Office. The safety and security of Aldine ISD's students and staff remains a priority of the school district."Wearing a Golden State Warriors t-shirt, Vera was captured on video leaving the jail Wednesday. When asked about the allegations, she told reporters she had a lawyer and did not want to comment.Parents told various local media outlets they were appalled and shocked by the news."When you send your kid to the school you think everything will be safe for them and everything," Gerson Bonilla told KPRC 2 Houston. "But I think this is something that is serious that needs to be investigated."One student told ABC 13 News that there was chatter among the student body about "suspicious behaviour" between Vera and the boy, and that once he saw him grab the teacher's butt.Another parent, Mary Claycomb, told the TV station she just couldn't believe the teacher would do this."I have chills because of this," she said. By Orhan Coskun and Ercan Gurses ANKARA (Reuters) - As he battles to cling to power after nearly two decades as leader of Turkey's nationalist opposition, Devlet Bahceli is arguably more important to the future of Turkish politics than ever before. The dour 68-year old, who took over the leadership of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in 1997, has done little to move it from the political margins ever since, its popularity declining over the years despite growing nationalist sentiment. But as he fights an increasingly bitter leadership challenge in the twilight of his career, Bahceli has been thrust center stage in the main political saga of the day: President Tayyip Erdogan's effort to accumulate greater powers. Should he stay, support for the MHP could drop to the point that it is forced from parliament, all but guaranteeing Erdogan the backing he needs for a referendum on changing the constitution and forging a stronger presidency. Should he be ousted, his main rival Meral Aksener could take over, a 59-year old woman seen by pollsters as having the mettle needed to revitalize the MHP and increase its support. That could make Erdogan's ambitions harder to push through parliament. "Some time ago a Bahceli victory was seen as definite, but now every possibility is there," said one source close to the ruling AK Party, which was founded by Erdogan and is watching the leadership battle in the MHP with increasing trepidation. Bahceli appears on the back foot. His supporters have tried to block a special party congress called for June 19 by several hundred MHP members at which he could be ousted, but Turkey's court of appeals has ruled it can go ahead. Hakan Bayrakci, head of pollster SONAR, said Aksener, who served as interior minister in 1996-97, would have the support of around 750 of the 1,241 delegates, enough to force him out. But Bahceli's allies are fighting a rearguard action, launching an investigation by the MHP's Central Disciplinary Board - which has the power to ban members from the party - into Aksener and three other challengers. "Our dissident colleagues deserve a punishment for their activities against the party. The board may prevent their candidacy (in a leadership bid)," said one senior MHP official loyal to the veteran leader. Bahceli himself has said the party can go ahead with a congress in July at which he will stand again for the leadership. By then, the disciplinary board may have ruled, but a second Bahceli ally said he would still be taking a risk. "He risks losing his seat by taking the decision to go to the congress," the ally said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of undermining Bahceli's position. "INEVITABLE DESPOTISM" Pollsters estimate that should Bahceli hang on, support for the MHP could drop to below the 10 percent threshold needed for representation in parliament, down from a peak of 18 percent in 1999 and from 12 percent at the last polls in November. That could prompt Erdogan to call a parliamentary election and strengthen the majority of the ruling AK Party by enough to guarantee support for a referendum on constitutional change. Erdogan served as prime minister until 2014 when he became Turkey's first directly elected president, with the hope of quickly transforming what had been a largely ceremonial role into one with executive powers. Even without constitutional change, he has already overhauled the role, regularly chairing cabinet meetings in his new palace and largely ignoring the constitutional requirement for him to renounce his affiliation with the AKP. Of all of Turkey's opposition parties, the MHP is the most likely to have some sympathy for Erdogan's ambitions. The AKP also has a deeply nationalist strain, and the two parties have of late been on the same page when it comes to crushing by force a Kurdish militant insurgency in Turkey's southeast. Askener is strongly opposed to an executive presidency. But some AKP officials hope that, if she takes over the leadership of the nationalists, angry Bahceli supporters in parliament might retaliate by helping Erdogan enact his changes. "If Bahceli loses and Aksener gets in ... at least 15 MHP deputies who are unhappy with this may support the presidential system. We have this expectation," a senior AKP official said. But such backing from Bahceli supporters is far from guaranteed. Speaking in parliament late last month, Bahceli said a presidential system would inevitably lead to despotism and be costly for Turkey in the long-run. A third senior MHP official said the ruling party was exploiting the leadership battle by suggesting factions within the MHP might support the executive presidency, in a bid to deepen divisions. It was a strategy destined to fail, he said: "There is no way they can get a brick out of this wall." (Additional reporting by Ece Toksabay; writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Peter Graff) Bogota (AFP) - Two people were killed and dozens injured Thursday in Colombia as more than 30,000 farmers joined a growing anti-government protest, blocking roads and clashing with police, officials said. The farmers, who launched their protest Monday, complain that free-trade agreements with Europe and the United States are flooding the country with cheap food imports, exacerbating rural poverty. Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas announced the "death of two indigenous persons during the day's protests" in a tweet. In a subsequent posting, he said there was no evidence yet that the deaths were the result of police action. The National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) said the two victims were from the western department of Cauca and died from gunshot wounds. Some 135 people were injured, according to ONIC. Earlier, at midday the government ombudsman reported 21 civilians wounded. The Defense Ministry reported that 31 members of the security forces were injured. The farmers accuse President Juan Manuel Santos's government of breaking its promises to them, and are demanding land reform and increased state spending in rural areas. Protests have now erupted in 24 of Colombia's 32 departments, shutting down at least 14 roads, the government rights ombudsman's office said. Police have broken up 11 other roadblocks, in some cases sparking clashes. The key Pan-American Highway was cut off in several spots by farmers wielding sticks and stones. The government calls the protests unfair and has asked the farmers' organization, the Agrarian Summit, to hold talks. Interior Minister Juan Fernando Cristo traveled Thursday to the department of Cauca, where one of the largest protests was being held, to try to broker a deal for negotiations. Rural poverty and land tenure are explosive issues in Colombia, where peasant uprisings more than half a century ago morphed into an armed conflict that is still ongoing. The conflict, which has drawn in leftist guerrilla groups, right-wing paramilitaries and drug gangs, has killed 260,000 people. By Junko Fujita TANGO, Japan (Reuters) - Ride-hailing app Uber has finally cracked Japan - approved to offer its service in Tango, part of Kyotango city on the west coast, with a population of just 5,560 and abandoned by the local taxi firm eight years ago. Tango is one of Japan's almost 800 designated depopulated communities, and about 40 percent of the population is aged over 65, well above the national average ratio of 27.1 percent. For public transport, residents have to rely on an on-demand bus operated by a non-profit group, but bookings have to be made by the evening before travel and the bus doesn't go beyond the town. Uber, valued at over $60 billion, hopes to tap that demographic demand to ferry around the elderly. "Finally, we were able to make our very first step," said Masami Takahashi, president of Uber Japan Co. "This service can be a solution for Japan's ageing society." The U.S. firm, one of the pioneers in the "sharing economy", has faced resistance and restrictions in some cities as established taxi operators complained of unfair competition. In Japan, Uber was blocked by authorities from setting up in two cities as Japan bars non-professional drivers from offering taxi services. In Tokyo, Uber operates as a travel agent, connecting users to established taxi company drivers through its ride-hailing app. Non-professional drivers can only operate where public transport is not readily available - like in Tango, where rice paddies surround a main street dotted with old, wooden houses. TABLETS, TREKKING Among the challenges Uber faces in Tango are persuading seniors to use mobile devices and credit cards. Residents will use tablets, such as iPads, to book Uber rides. Uber is making available 50 tablets - easier for the elderly to read than smartphones - for free for six months to book one of 18 registered cars. "What a great service," said 84-year-old Miyoshi Azuma, brandishing one of the tablets. "With this, we can call the car by just clicking the button." She did add that locals may need simpler instructions on how to use the tablet and Uber app. Story continues "I think it will take time to judge whether this service will be a success because people here are sensitive to money," said Takashi Ose, a 79-year-old head of a senior people's club. Uber charges half the rate of the taxi firm in central Kyotango city. Takuo Nakanishi, 66, who drives for Kyotango's sole taxi operator Mineyama Taxi, worries that Uber may hurt his business. "I can't afford to live on just my taxi salary. I can be a driver only because I receive a pension. That's how small demand is here for taxis," he said, adding it is not viable for his company to offer a full taxi service for Tango. Uber hopes to roll out similar services in other depopulated areas in Japan. It's global UberASSIST platform already caters for seniors and people with disabilities, and it provides transport services for elderly care homes in Florida, for example. "There are many communities which cannot respond to people's need to go somewhere when they need," said Takahashi. "Uber can be a sustainable business model in such places because we can provide services using existing assets." One of those assets, 68-year-old Uber driver Yoshihiro Hatanaka, welcomed the flexibility of Uber's service. "I love trekking, so I'll probably only drive when it's raining," he said. (Reporting by Junko Fujita; Editing by Ian Geoghegan) Washington (AFP) - Two US military aerobatic planes crashed in separate incidents, one occurring shortly after flying over a speech by President Barack Obama and the other resulting in a death. A plane from the US Air Force's elite Thunderbird team crashed in the state of Colorado shortly after performing at a graduation ceremony for the US Air Force Academy, where Obama addressed the audience, an official said. The pilot ejected safely from the aircraft and was unharmed, according to the Air Force official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Following the incident, Obama met with the pilot at nearby Peterson Air Force Base and expressed relief that the pilot was not injured, before heading back to Washington aboard Air Force One. Later in the day a F/A-18 aircraft from the US Navy's Blue Angels aerobatics team crashed as it "was taking off to start the afternoon practice" at the airport in Smyrna, Tennessee, according to a statement from the Naval Air Forces. "The pilot died from injuries sustained during the crash," it said, adding that the other five jets at the scene were not involved and landed safely. Both the Air Force and Navy said investigations are underway. The Blue Angels will not perform in an airshow that had been scheduled for this weekend, the Navy said. Obama used his graduation speech at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs to defend his approach to the Syrian conflict, warning against allowing the United States to become drawn into a new civil war in the Middle East. (Reuters) - U.S. fighter jets on Friday launched the first strikes against Islamic State targets from an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean Sea since the start of the two-year campaign against the militant group, the U.S. Navy said. The jets flew from the USS Harry S. Truman after the ship moved into the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal, marking the first air strikes conducted by a carrier group in that region since the Iraq war began in 2003, Navy officials said. Previous strikes were launched solely by U.S. and allied pilots from carriers in the Gulf or from land bases in Bahrain, Turkey and other countries. The Navy said the raids targeted Iraq and Syria, but gave no details on how many and what type of targets were hit. The United States is increasingly concerned about Russia's growing military presence in the region, and the air strikes also send a message to Turkey that the U.S. military has other ways to conduct its air war over Syria than from the Turkish air base at Incirlik. Navy officials said the actions were also meant to dispel concerns raised by some lawmakers about the Navy's decision in recent months not to maintain a constant carrier presence in the Gulf. Currently, the U.S. Navy is operating three carriers: the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which will head to the Gulf in late June or early July, the USS John C. Stennis, which is operating in the South China Sea, and the Truman, which just left the Gulf. The Truman and other ships in its strike group served as the principal asset in the U.S. fight against Islamic State targets while it served in the Navy's 5th Fleet area of operations, which includes the Gulf, and they will continue that support role from the Mediterranean, the Navy said. This shows that one carrier strike group can cover two areas of operations, said one senior U.S. Navy official. It also adds an element of unpredictability. Were going to do our best to spread the presence we have and take advantage of the reach that our naval assets give us. Similar actions could be taken by other ships in the strike group, for instance with Tomahawk missiles, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly. The Navys decision to launch the strikes from the Mediterranean, or its 6th Fleet area of operations, also positions the carrier group for any potential action in Libya. It sends a message to friends and foes alike that we can affect both theaters at the same time because of the reach of the naval assets that we have, said the official. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Tom Brown and Alistair Bell) By Heather Somerville and Dan Levine SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft sought approval from federal judges on Thursday for proposed multi-million-dollar settlement agreements in separate class-action lawsuits brought by drivers, which would keep the drivers classified as independent contractors. Neither company got an answer. The proposed $27 million settlement in the lawsuit against Lyft took an unexpected detour when U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria deferred a decision on the deal so he could consider whether drivers in a separate Lyft lawsuit should get some of the money. The proposed agreement would settle a lawsuit between the company and 150,602 drivers who claimed they should be treated as employees. The deal came before Chhabria on Thursday for preliminary approval. He said he would make a decision at a later date. Meanwhile, Uber sought approval from another federal judge in San Francisco, Edward Chen, for its proposed settlement, which includes a payout of up to $100 million. After a hearing went on for nearly four hours, Chen said he would make a ruling at a later date. The Uber settlement would affect roughly 385,000 current and former drivers in California and Massachusetts. Both agreements would keep drivers classified as independent contractors. A ruling that drivers are employees would affect the profits and valuations at both companies. Drivers who brought the lawsuits contended they should be deemed employees and entitled to reimbursement for expenses, including gasoline and vehicle maintenance. Those expenses are now borne by the drivers. The proposed Uber settlement has faced staunch objections from drivers, particularly because the proposed amount is well below the total potential damages in the case of $852 million. "It's basically a sellout," Edward Escobar, a driver and member of advocacy group United Drivers, said following the hearing. Chen raised concerns about the proposed deal, including a two-year sunset on some non-monetary concessions for drivers and Uber's refusal to include a tipping feature in its app. "It seems a simple answer is to put it in the app," he said. There is a tipping feature on the Lyft app. Uber lawyer Theodore Boutrous argued that tipping is an inconvenience to riders, saying that drivers who want tips in the app can go work for Lyft. The Lyft settlement faced an unexpected detour when plaintiffs in a separate Lyft class action, known as the Zamora case, for plaintiff Alex Zamora, made a motion requesting a portion of the $27 million be reallocated to them or that money be added to the settlement and earmarked for them. The Zamora plaintiffs say they are owed reimbursement up to about $75 million for commissions Lyft took from their fares. (Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Leslie Adler) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The pilot from the Navy's Blue Angels flight demonstration squadron who died in a crash has been identified as Marine Captain Jeff Kuss of Durango, Colorado, the Pentagon said on Friday. Kuss, 32, was killed on Thursday when his F/A-18 fighter crashed in Smyrna, Tennessee. Kuss had taken off to start a practice ahead of a weekend air show when he went down about 2 miles (3.2 km) from the runway. The cause of the mishap is under investigation, the Navy said in a statement. Kuss was in his second year on the Blue Angels and his first year as a demonstration pilot. The other five Blue Angel jets in the squadron were not involved in the accident and landed safely, the statement said. The Tennessee crash was the second involving a U.S. military demonstration team on Thursday. In Colorado, a pilot with the Air Force's Thunderbirds squadron was unhurt when his F-16 jet crashed in a field 5 miles (8 km) south of Peterson Air Force Base, the Air Force said. (Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Richard Chang) NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. private employers added 173,000 jobs in May, below economists' expectations, a report by a payrolls processor showed on Thursday. Economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast the ADP National Employment Report would show a gain of 175,000 jobs, with estimates ranging from 105,000 to 200,000. Private payroll gains for April were revised up to 166,000 from an originally reported 156,000 increase. The report is jointly developed with Moody's Analytics. The ADP figures come ahead of the U.S. Labor Department's more comprehensive non-farm payrolls report on Friday, which includes both public and private-sector employment. Economists polled by Reuters are looking for U.S. private payroll employment to have grown by 152,000 jobs in May, down from 171,000 the month before. Total non-farm employment is expected to have risen by 162,000 jobs. The unemployment rate is forecast to tick down to 4.9 percent from 5.0 percent recorded a month earlier. (Editing by Meredith Mazzilli) By Nate Raymond NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors have agreed to a rare settlement refund of $6 million to hedge fund Diamondback Capital Management LLC after a ruling by a 2014 federal appeals court made pursuing insider trading cases tougher, according to court papers. In documents filed on Friday in federal court in Manhattan, the office of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said it had agreed to return the money Diamondback paid as part of a 2012 non-prosecution deal in light of "legal developments." The deal, approved by a federal judge, followed a similar agreement earlier this year in which the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission agreed to pay back $3 million that the shuttered hedge fund had paid as part of a related settlement. Diamondback thanked authorities in a statement for setting aside the judgments, which while "highly unusual" would "bring fair and final closure to the matter." The development came after a former Diamondback portfolio manager, Todd Newman, won a federal appeals court ruling in December 2014 that reversed his conviction for trading on inside information about Dell Inc and Nvidia Corp. The ruling limited the scope of insider trading laws, resulting in charges being dropped or dismissed against 14 defendants, including eight other individuals charged as part of the same conspiracy as Newman. It marked a major setback for Bharara, who has overseen an insider trading crackdown that has resulted in 104 people being charged and 79 being convicted since 2009. Stamford, Connecticut-based Diamondback, which at one time had roughly $5 billion of assets under management, announced its closure in December 2012, two years after the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided its offices in November 2010. Another hedge fund raided at that time, Level Global Investors LP, in January obtained a refund of a $21.5 million settlement with the SEC. Its co-founder Anthony Chiasson was a co-defendant with Newman in their successful appeal. The case is U.S. v. $6,000,000.00 in United States Currency, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-06023. (Editing by Bernadette Baum) Three convicted in ISIS recruiting network with ties to Edmonton.Guled Ali Omar, Abdurahman Yasin Daud and Mohamed Abdihamid Farah were convicted by a federal jury today of conspiring to commit murder in Syria on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and to provide material support to the designated foreign terrorist organization. Omar was also convicted of one count of attempted financial aid fraud, and Farah was also convicted of one count of perjury and providing a false statement.The convictions were announced by Assistant Attorney General for National Security John P. Carlin, U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger of the District of Minnesota and Special Agent in Charge Richard T. Thornton of the FBIs Minneapolis Division.In the first multi-defendant ISIL-related trial, Mohamed Farah, Abdirahman Daud and Guled Omar were convicted of conspiring to provide material support to the foreign terrorist organization and other federal offenses, said Assistant Attorney General Carlin. The defendants conspired with a larger group of individuals to travel to Syria to fight on behalf of ISIL. Countering terrorist threats remains the highest priority of the National Security Division. We will continue to work to disrupt the recruitment and radicalization of Americans by terrorist organizations, and bring to justice those who conspire to provide material support to terrorists. I would like to thank the many agents, analysts and prosecutors who worked tirelessly to secure these convictions.mo Ride-hailing rivals Uber and Didi Chuxing continue to battle for market share in China, both announcing new funding this week. But Didi Chuxing's president, Jean Liu, downplayed any competition. "I find it quite cute because I've never seen a company put their competitor's brand on their own homepage," Liu told CNBC's " Squawk Alley " at the Code Conference outside of Los Angeles on Friday. Liu quickly pulled out her smartphone and opened the Chinese version of Uber's app to explain. Uber advertises that its prices are 30 percent lower than Didi's, with rides at five yuan, less than one U.S. dollar. There is no clear expiration on the deal. "This is a very strong proof to show that we have better service, and I'd like to see this more often," she said. In response to questions of Didi Chuxing, formerly known as Didi Kuaidi, needing to buy market share, Liu said the company already dominates 87 percent of the market in private car services, and almost 100 percent in taxis. "Have you seen in other places market leaders buy market share?" Liu said. "Normally it's always the smaller player with smaller scale, lower efficiency and in most cases worse service that need to buy market share to heavily subsidize." The Beijing-based company recently announced a $1-billion dollar investment from Apple (AAPL) and unveiled another batch of funding that's larger than Uber's recent round, Liu said on stage at the Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, on Wednesday. The same day, Uber revealed a $3.5-billion injection from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which Zhen Liu, senior vice president of Uber China, told CNBC was "a vote of confidence in Uber and the ride-sharing market." Zhen Liu happens to be the cousin of Didi president Jean Liu. "On the Uber news I have to say our industry is actually very early stage, so the more capital that goes into it, the faster it grows, so it benefits every one of us," Jean Liu said at the Code Conference on Wednesday. Story continues Didi has already raised $5 billion, and said it has completed 14 million daily rides. "Fundraising can go on forever, but at the end of the day you still need to figure out. If you want to win the market, it's really to win the heart of the user," the Didi Chuxing president said at Code on Wednesday. "That is what we are focused on." Jason Calacanis, CEO of Inside.com and an early Uber investor who does not have an operational role in the company, responded to Liu's comments, saying it's more of a killer-animal type of cute. "They are cute, like a pack of orcas is cute," Calacanis said. "They're nice to look at, but you may not want to get in there and swim with a pack of orcas. It may not turn out well for you." He added that the ride-sharing competition in China is going to be a "dog fight." "It's going to be hard for Uber to win there. No American company has won in China," he said. "But Uber is doing very well, and I think there is a good chance they could win." Uber did not immediately respond for requests for comment. By Amy Tennery (Reuters) - The Minnesota woman shot to death by a one-time UCLA graduate student was married to her killer, but her online presence shed little light on their life together. Ashley Hasti was a medical student with a penchant for selfies with her cat and goofy science jokes. She once composed a rap about med school stresses and posted it to YouTube. She was killed in her Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, home by her estranged husband, Mainak Sarkar, before he drove to Los Angeles to shoot a former professor, then take his own life. In a Facebook post early Friday morning, Alex Hasti called her sister "the smartest, coolest, and funniest person." "She could do anything she dreamed of," the sister wrote. "Her life was cut short much too soon by her estranged husband." Minnesota records show she married Sarkar in June 2011, and images from social media indicate they knew each other as far back as August 2008. Neighbors on her block in suburban Minneapolis said Sarkar had lived with her in the past but they had not seen him for some time. State records did not show there had been a divorce. Hasti earned an undergraduate degree in Asian languages and literature at the University of Minnesota before enrolling in a post-baccalaureate, premedical program at Scripps College in Claremont, California. She began medical school at the University of Minnesota in 2012. She was going to begin a summer semester next week. Prezi, an online education platform, showed academic presentations written by Hasti on pregnancy and prenatal care. Hasti lived in Brooklyn Park, a Twin Cities suburb with curling, tree-lined streets. Her house had a tuck-under garage with a long, unkempt lawn. Hasti's neighbor, Terry Andrew, 68, said she seemed to fit in the community, but added he did not know her well. "I have daughters so the idea of a young person losing their life like that, its tragic," he said. On social media, Hasti appeared vibrant and gregarious. She peppered her Facebook page with science-related jokes and selfies taken with a black-and-white short hair cat. Story continues A month earlier she added an image of American painter and television host Bob Ross photo-shopped to look as though he was painting a white blood cell that appeared to be smiling. "I'm studying, I swear," Hasti wrote in a caption. "But one needs a break sometimes." Photos posted on another woman's Facebook page showed her meeting celebrities like actor Kumail Nanjiani from the HBO comedy "Silicon Valley" and comedian Ari Shaffir. Then there are the photos of her with Sarkar. Her sister's Facebook profile contained images of Ashley Hasti and Sarkar. The pictures show the couple at a theme park and on a beach. One image, posted on the social media site on Aug. 25, 2008, shows Hasti and Sarkar forming a heart with their arms. (Reporting by Amy Tennery; Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York, Curtis Skinner in San Francisco, David Bailey in Minneapolis and Ben Klayman in Detroit; Editing by Dan Burns and Jeffrey Benkoe) By Amy Tennery (Reuters) - The Minnesota woman shot to death by a one-time UCLA graduate student was married to her killer, but her online presence shed little light on their life together. Ashley Hasti was a medical student with a penchant for selfies with her cat and goofy science jokes. She once composed a rap about med school stresses and posted it to YouTube. She was killed in her Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, home by her estranged husband, Mainak Sarkar, before he drove to Los Angeles to shoot a former professor, then take his own life. In a Facebook post early Friday morning, Alex Hasti called her sister "the smartest, coolest, and funniest person." "She could do anything she dreamed of," the sister wrote. "Her life was cut short much too soon by her estranged husband." Minnesota records show she married Sarkar in June 2011, and images from social media indicate they knew each other as far back as August 2008. Neighbors on her block in suburban Minneapolis said Sarkar had lived with her in the past but they had not seen him for some time. State records did not show there had been a divorce. Hasti earned an undergraduate degree in Asian languages and literature at the University of Minnesota before enrolling in a post-baccalaureate, premedical program at Scripps College in Claremont, California. She began medical school at the University of Minnesota in 2012. She was going to begin a summer semester next week. Prezi, an online education platform, showed academic presentations written by Hasti on pregnancy and prenatal care. Hasti lived in Brooklyn Park, a Twin Cities suburb with curling, tree-lined streets. Her house had a tuck-under garage with a long, unkempt lawn. Hasti's neighbor, Terry Andrew, 68, said she seemed to fit in the community, but added he did not know her well. "I have daughters so the idea of a young person losing their life like that, its tragic," he said. On social media, Hasti appeared vibrant and gregarious. She peppered her Facebook page with science-related jokes and selfies taken with a black-and-white short hair cat. A month earlier she added an image of American painter and television host Bob Ross photo-shopped to look as though he was painting a white blood cell that appeared to be smiling. "I'm studying, I swear," Hasti wrote in a caption. "But one needs a break sometimes." Photos posted on another woman's Facebook page showed her meeting celebrities like actor Kumail Nanjiani from the HBO comedy "Silicon Valley" and comedian Ari Shaffir. Then there are the photos of her with Sarkar. Her sister's Facebook profile contained images of Ashley Hasti and Sarkar. The pictures show the couple at a theme park and on a beach. One image, posted on the social media site on Aug. 25, 2008, shows Hasti and Sarkar forming a heart with their arms. (Reporting by Amy Tennery; Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York, Curtis Skinner in San Francisco, David Bailey in Minneapolis and Ben Klayman in Detroit; Editing by Dan Burns and Jeffrey Benkoe) By Alex Dobuzinskis LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A former University of California, Los Angeles, graduate student shot dead his estranged wife at her Minnesota home before driving halfway across the country to UCLA, where he killed a professor and himself, authorities said on Friday. Gunman Mainak Sarkar's first victim was Ashley Hasti, a 31-year-old medical school student with a love of acting and stand-up comedy, her sister, Alex Hasti, said on Facebook on Friday, two days after Sarkar's attack sparked a two-hour lockdown of UCLA's sprawling urban campus. Sarkar fatally shot 39-year-old engineering professor William Klug and intended to kill a second professor, police said. The native of India was convinced that Klug had stolen software he had developed, according to police, who called Sarkar's claim unfounded. So far no motive has emerged to explain why he killed Hasti in the home they had shared in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, some 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from Los Angeles. Hasti was found dead early on Thursday morning of multiple gunshot wounds, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Office said in a statement. "Because this was an unwitnessed death, a more accurate date and time of death cannot be determined," the statement said. Sarkar is believed to have forced his way into Hasti's home through a window, which was found broken, Brooklyn Park police said in a statement. Police only decided to check on Hasti after finding a note at the Los Angeles crime scene written by Sarkar, 38, asking authorities to check on his cat at his home in St. Paul. The bizarre hint led to the discovery of a "kill list" that included Klug, Hasti and the second professor, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck told reporters on Thursday. Alex Hasti on her Facebook post offered no indication of what might have provoked Sarkar. "My sister, Ashley Hasti, was the smartest, coolest, and funniest person I knew. She could do anything she dreamed of," the sister said. "Unfortunately, she won't get to see that last dream come true as her life was cut short much too soon by her estranged husband ... I'm still in a state of shock right now." Sarkar was armed with twin 9mm semiautomatic handguns and multiple extra clips of ammunition, authorities said. The two guns were legally bought in Minnesota, according to Meredith Davis, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. She declined to say who bought the weapons. Investigators on Friday were still searching for Sarkar's car, a 2003 Nissan Sentra, said Los Angeles police spokesman Aareon Jefferson. The shooting drew a massive response of heavily armed police. Students hid in classrooms behind doors, some of which did not lock, according to social media posts. It was just the latest in a long string of deadly shootings at U.S. schools, including an October attack at an Oregon community college that killed nine and a 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech, in which a gunman killed 32 people, was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. PAIR WED IN 2011 Ashley Hasti married Sarkar in 2011, according to a copy of a marriage license obtained by Reuters. An active Facebook page belonging to Hasti shows pictures of Sarkar, none more recent than May 2011. A page apparently belonging to Sarkar, with no public posts since 2011, prominently displayed several photos of them together. Sarkar came from India's eastern state of West Bengal, where he graduated from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur in 2000 after studying aerospace engineering, according to an ex-classmate and the university's alumni list. Staff at his secondary school in the industrial town of Durgapur remembered him as an able student who passed his exams with good results. "My initial reaction was one of shock and disbelief," said Gautam Biswas, who taught Sarkar in the 9th and 10th grades at St. Michael's School in Durgapur, West Bengal. "How could he do this? That was the question that racked my mind for long hours." (Additional reporting by Amy Tennery in New York, Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee and Sujoy Dhar in Kolkata; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and David Gregorio) From Cosmopolitan Police have identified Mainek Sarkar, 38, as the gunman who killed a UCLA professor on campus yesterday before killing himself, the Washington Post reports. Sarkar had a "kill list" with other names on it, including that of an unnamed Minnesota woman who, after police found her name on the list, was found dead of a gunshot wound in her home yesterday. Police Chief Charlie Beck told the paper after Sarkar allegedly killed the woman, he then drove more than 2,000 miles to California with two guns and extra ammunition. According to the L.A. Times, Sarkar was a doctoral student who graduated from UCLA in 2013. He believed Professor William "Bill" Klug, 39, whose name was on the list, of stealing his computer code and passing it along. Police found Klug and Sarkar dead in a UCLA Engineering office yesterday. There was a second professor on the list as well, but that person has been contacted and is reportedly unharmed. The Times reports Sarkar posted angrily about Klug on social media numerous times over the past few months. "William Klug, UCLA professor is not the kind of person when you think of a professor. He is a very sick person. I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy," Sarkar reportedly wrote recently: "He made me really sick. Your enemy is my enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust." In 2014, Sarkar thanked Klug for being his "mentor" in the UCLA doctoral commencement booklet acknowledgments. Though not much is known about the woman Sarkar allegedly killed in Minnesota, UCLA and the El Segundo community are mourning Klug through Facebook posts: A GoFundMe was also started in Klug's name to raise money for his son and daughter to go to college. "His family was the most important thing to him," the site reads, "and our goal is to make sure they are taken care of now and in the future." Follow Tess on Twitter. By Sujoy Dhar KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - The former student who killed his estranged wife and then drove 2,000 miles (3,200 km) to shoot dead a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, was known at home in India as calm, smart and unassuming by former teachers and classmates. Mainak Sarkar, 38, shot himself dead after this week's killings. He studied at one of India's elite engineering institutes where admission is fiercely competitive and there is huge pressure to excel, and may have been demoralized by the long struggle to earn his doctorate in the United States. "My initial reaction was one of shock and disbelief," said Gautam Biswas, who taught Sarkar in the 9th and 10th grades of St. Michael's School in Durgapur, West Bengal. The industrial township lies just over two hours' drive northeast of the state capital Kolkata. Biswas, shaken, said he was also a private tutor to Mainak and remembered him well. "How could he do this? That was the question that raked my mind for long hours," Biswas said. "In school days, Mainak was a very level-headed, intelligent student and never did give any indication of abnormal behavior." FRIENDLY, NICE The woman shot dead in her Minnesota home by Sarkar was identified by her sister on social media on Friday as Ashley Hasti. The sister, Alex Hasti, said Ashley Hasti's "life was cut short much too soon by her estranged husband." Sarkar shot her dead before driving to Los Angeles to kill Professor William Klug, 39, police said on Thursday. Police found a "kill list" at his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, that included the name of another professor, who was unharmed. Sarkar graduated in aerospace engineering in 2000 from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur - also in West Bengal. Like Sarkar, many of his IIT "batchmates" went on to study and work in the United States. "When I knew him in IIT he was a very friendly, nice, smart and ambitious guy with dreams to go for higher studies to the USA," said Manish Kumar, who studied with Mainak in Kharagpur and now works in the United States. "Nothing in his behavior indicated that he would ever contemplate or carry out anything like this. Something has to have drastically impacted his mental balance in later years during his PhD for him to become so unhinged." Intense competition among students to succeed in India has drawn social criticism and even featured in Bollywood movies like "3 Idiots", starring Aamir Khan, in which a sadistic professor drives an engineering student to attempt suicide. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said that UCLA faculty members were aware that Sarkar, who graduated in 2013, harbored a grudge against them. "There was some harsh language - but certainly nothing that would be considered homicidal," Beck told reporters on Thursday. Local police said they have not been able to trace Sarkar's immediate family in Durgapur. At St Michael's School in Durgapur the double murder-suicide cast a shadow over plans to celebrate its forthcoming 50th anniversary with an alumni reunion. "It's difficult to believe actually because he was a very good student and was working abroad," said Sumita Mukherjee, a former teacher at the school. "He should have been a pride for Durgapur and the students of this school." (Removes extraneous word 'a' in first paragraph.) (Additional reporting by Promit Mukherjee, Tommy Wilkes and Reuters Television; Writing by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Frances Kerry) Kiev (AFP) - The United Nations on Friday accused both the Ukrainian authorities and pro-Russian rebels of torturing fighters and their sympathisers captured in the separatist east. The condemnation came with violence once again flaring after a period of relative calm in the 25-month war. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said 9,371 people have been killed and 21,532 wounded since the revolt against the pro-Western government in Kiev began in Ukraine's industrial heartland in April 2014. Kiev and its Western allies accuse Russia of plotting and backing the conflict in order to keep its former Soviet neighbour in its historic sphere of influence. Moscow denies the charges and accuses the United States of fomenting three months of bloody protests that brought down Ukraine's Russian-backed administration in February 2014. The latest update on the human rights situation in the European Union's backyard came nine days after a UN torture prevention group suspended a visit to Ukraine because it was denied access to requested government detention sites. "Enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment remain deeply entrenched practices, both in the territories controlled by the armed groups and in the territories controlled by the government," the report said. Yet much of the criticism in the 53-page study was directed against the Kiev authorities and its SBU security service. "Individuals detained by Ukrainian authorities in connection with the armed conflict have been tortured and ill-treated, and continue to face systematic violations of their due process and fair trial rights," the report said. It accused the Ukrainian authorities of "restricting access to fundamental freedoms and socio-economic rights to persons living in the conflict-affected area." The OHCHR said the self-declared leaders of the separatist Donetsk and Lugansk regions were also undermining the rights of the estimated 2.7 million people living under their control. Story continues "They have imposed an arbitrary system of rules, established a network of places of deprivation of liberty where detainees are tortured and ill-treated, and cracked down on dissent," the report said. There was no immediate response to the accusations from Kiev or the insurgents. - Sexual violence - "After two years of conflict, the human rights picture in eastern Ukraine remains extremely grim," UN assistant secretary-general for human rights Ivan Simonovic told reporters in Kiev. "This crisis started with demands for human rights and freedoms, and these demands remain today on either side of the contact line." Some of the most graphic details in the report describe cases of sexual and gender-based violence in both government and rebel-controlled regions. A man detained by the insurgents in Donetsk said a militia commander tried to blackmail him into surrendering his house by threatening to rape his wife and daughters. A woman arrested by Ukranian police described similar harassment. "They asked me if I had given birth. When I replied 'yes, three times', they said that it meant I was able to endure pain," she was quoted as saying. The police then "beat me with their fists and with a heavy flat object," she said. Bamako (AFP) - The United Nations mission in Mali on Friday said two people not four had died in the latest jihadist strikes on the country. A Chinese peacekeeper and a French explosives expert working for the mission, known by its acronym MINUSMA, died on Tuesday in separate attacks claimed by Al-Qaeda's North African affiliate AQIM. Two Malian security guards were also thought to have been killed in the attacks on the mission's camp. In fact, the security guards "were badly wounded and not killed as initially reported by a MINUSMA statement released on the evening of the attack", the mission said on its official Facebook page. "They are currently in a regional hospital in Gao where they are receiving treatment. MINUSMA wishes them a prompt recovery." The MINUSMA camp was targeted in a mortar or rocket assault followed by a second armed attack on a UN de-mining unit. It was during this second assault that the two Malians were hurt. The last month alone has seen three attacks on MINUSMA's operations, fuelling concern over its future with 65 peacekeepers killed in under three years. Northern Mali has been the scene of repeated attacks since it fell under the control of three radical Islamist groups, including AQIM, in 2012. The rebels were largely ousted by an ongoing French-led military operation launched in January 2013, but they have continued to mount attacks on security forces from desert hideouts. When Oklahoma chose oil subsidies over educating childrenThe victims are Oklahomas children. In 2014, oilmen in the state struck a sweet deal with politicians for a package of tax breaks and subsidies totaling $470 million in just one year. But now that oil prices have fallen, the state has found itself short of cash to pay for services like public education. As a result, Oklahoma has cut its education budget by $58 million so far and more cuts should be expected for next year.The lesson here is that when politicians give out special deals to businesses, the public ultimately suffers. In this case, kids may not get a proper education because state politicians chose to subsidize oil drilling. Oil and gas production tax revenue in Oklahoma dropped over 30 percent even though oil prices and output soared. The tax subsidies to oil companies account for this staggering loss. United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The United Nations will on Sunday present a formal request to the Syrian government to approve airdrops of humanitarian aid to besieged areas where civilians are at risk of starvation, diplomats said. UN aid chief Stephen O'Brien told a closed meeting of the Security Council on Friday that consent from the Damascus regime was needed to carry out the airdrops of food and medicine, diplomats at the meeting told AFP. The 15-member council was discussing UN plans for airdrops to reach areas under siege where trapped civilians face dire shortages in the five-year war. World powers decided last month that if aid continued to be blocked, the United Nations would begin airdrops on June 1, although such an operation would require Syrian approval and pose high risks. "What is at stake here is the necessity to put an end to a humanitarian disaster," French Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters ahead of the meeting. "The Syrian regime is continuing to systematically starve hundreds of thousands of civilians and use them as weapons of war. These are war crimes," said Delattre, who holds the council presidency this month. Diplomats said they expected the Syrian regime to take some time to respond to the request and UN officials have said the airdrops are not imminent. Delattre called on Russia, Syria's ally, to ratchet up pressure on Damascus to allow aid to reach civilians by land, which the United Nations has said is the most effective way to deliver aid. "The top priority is to get those who have influence over Damascus, starting with Russia, to strongly increase their pressure on the regime," he said. France, Britain and the United States are calling on the United Nations to forge ahead with plans for the airdrops, even if the operation presents major security challenges. "There should be airdrops where access is being denied by land," said British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft. Story continues The United Nations said Thursday that helicopters would have to be used for air bridges to 15 of the 19 besieged areas because they are densely-populated. According to the United Nations, a total of 592,000 people live under siege in Syria -- the majority surrounded by regime forces -- and another four million live in hard-to-reach areas. Peace talks to end Syria's five-year war stalled in April after the opposition walked out over escalating fighting on the ground and lack of humanitarian aid. Unconventional is Yahoo News complete guide to what could be the craziest presidential conventions in decades. Heres what you need to know today. 1. Inside the brewing Democratic convention battle over Israel Could the man aspiring to become Americas first Jewish president spark a war at the Democratic convention over Israel? Last month, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced that she had allowed Bernie Sanders to pick five members of the partys 15-person platform drafting committee only one fewer than likely nominee Hillary Clinton. Usually, the DNC chair chooses the committee herself (in consultation with the White House or the winning candidate); for the partys upcoming convention, however, Wasserman Schultz struck a deal with both campaigns to make this the most representative and inclusive process in history by awarding Sanders more power over the platform than any previous runner-up. At the time, we noted how this unprecedented arrangement could cause some friction in Philadelphia, with Sanders openly planning to push for planks and positions that Clinton & Co. disagree with: a $15-per-hour federal minimum wage, a European-style tax on carbon emissions to curb climate change, a hard asset cap on the big banks (which would force them to shrink themselves), a single-payer health care system and tuition-free public colleges and universities. On each of these issues, Sanders should have enough delegates behind him to start a public spat on the convention floor, if he so chooses. But since then, one issue in particular has emerged as the most likely to disrupt the proceedings and divide the party in the City of Brotherly Love: the Democratic establishments staunch and long-standing support for the government of Israel. The first sign of coming conflict was Sanders platform appointees: Cornel West, the public intellectual, and James Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute, both told the New York Times last week that they oppose Israels occupation of the West Bank and believe rank-and-file Democrats feel the same way. A third Sanders pick, Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, is a Muslim who has long spoken out in favor of Palestinian rights. Story continues Justice for Palestinians cannot be attained without the lifting of the occupation, West declared, accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of war crimes and vowing to battle for a platform that would elevate the plight of an occupied people. Wests views represent a sharp break with previous Israel-centric platforms, which called in 2008 and 2012 for final status negotiations designed to produce a just and lasting peace that would contribute to regional stability and help sustain Israels identity as a Jewish and democratic state. Initially, however, it seemed as if Clintons platform drafters might play along. In an interview last week with the Chicago Sun-Times, Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois who was then on his way to the West Bank and Jerusalem, where he would meet with Palestinian Authority officials, Palestinian members of the Israeli Knesset and Palestinian students and businessmen revealed he was open to a platform that elaborates more clearly the wishes, the desires, the aspirations of the Palestinian people and their hope for justice and for peace and equality. Absolutely, added the Clinton appointee. I think we can do more. But other Clintonites were quick to push back. I am sure the Democratic Party platform will reflect long-standing, strong support for Israel, said Clinton appointee Wendy Sherman, a former top State Department official. Secretary Clintons views in support of Israels security and an unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel are well-known. Clintons senior foreign policy adviser, Jake Sullivan, seconded Sherman, arguing that Hillary Clintons views on Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship are well-documented and that her delegates will work to ensure that the party platform reflects them. Meanwhile, in Thursdays major foreign-policy address in San Diego, the candidate herself insisted that Israels security is nonnegotiable and rebuked Donald Trump for saying that he would stay neutral on the issue. In some ways, the whole Democratic debate over Israel boils down to semantics. Platforms are aspirational documents; they dont bind a presidents behavior. Both Clinton and Sanders support Israels right to exist in peace and security, and both favor the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state. Unlike West, neither candidate backs the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and Sanders is reportedly disinclined to lobby for the inclusion of contentious terms such as Israeli occupation, direct negotiations or continued settlement activity. Yet its clear that Sanders, who has repeatedly called for a more balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, picked West, Zogby and Ellison for a reason. His goal is likely to send a message and to get some concessions from Clinton in return. At the 2012 Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C., party leaders afraid of offending Jewish donors and swing voters and rewarding Republicans with a ready-made attack ad called for a floor vote to reinstate language, previously removed by the platform committee, that described Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. After three voice votes, the ayes and nos seemed evenly matched but convention chairman Antonio Villaraigosa called it for the ayes anyway. He was roundly booed as a result. The New York Times called it a minor spectacle that provided an unruly start to an evening meant to showcase attacks on Mitt Romney by former President Bill Clinton and others. The incident demonstrated two things. First, that establishment Democrats like Clinton are terrified of tinkering with the platforms Israel plank, lest they, say, lose votes in Florida. And second, that rank-and-file liberals more of whom sympathize with Palestine than Israel, according to an April Pew Research Center poll are now increasingly willing to push back. Any amendment that fails on a majority vote during the full platform committee meeting can still be brought to the convention floor as a minority report if 25 percent of the committee supports it which should be an easy bar for the Vermont senator to clear. If Sanders team were to force an Israel vote on national TV, what may follow wouldnt be a minor spectacle, and the papers would probably use stronger words than unruly to describe it. Already, Clintons people are jittery about Sanders going the minority-report route. As one Democrat close to the platform committee told the Jerusalem Post, the platform has to be a practical document that doesnt hurt the chances of the nominee come November. It has to do no harm, and the most well-written words and best intentions mean nothing if they get Donald Trump elected. In the end, this may be what Sanders is counting on: Clinton getting so skittish about Bernie harming her on Israel that she agrees to make other platform concessions to prevent it. On the minimum wage. On carbon. On something, anything else. _____ 2. #NeverTrump? Never gonna happen (Vol. 3) or, What the search for a Trump alternative is really about An occasional Unconventional series exploring the latest news about the ongoing shadow convention to nominate a conservative #NeverTrump candidate and why the effort is doomed to fail. What are Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol & Co. really trying to accomplish by drafting conservative lawyer David French to run to the right of Donald Trump as an independent presidential candidate in the fall? Not win the White House, says Yahoo News National Political Columnist Matt Bai. In his latest column, Bai points out a few problems with Frenchs potential bid. The logistical hurdles to an independent campaign, no matter who lends his name to it, are probably insurmountable at this point. A right-leaning alternative with access to ballot lines virtually everywhere already exists, and thats Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party nominee. And then theres the book French wrote with his wife, Nancy, in which they describe the rules they devised together while he was stationed in Iraq: namely, that she wasnt allowed to have phone conversations with other men, or to have email exchanges with men about politics or any other subject, or to use the kind of social media where a man might contact her. So, yeah, you can really see how French is well positioned to peel off that large segment of women voters who dont like Hillary Clinton but who cant stomach Trumps blatant sexism, Bai writes. But the most interesting part of Bais piece is when he delves into what he believes to be Kristols real motives and explains what they say about the larger culture of conservatism in Washington, D.C.: Heres what a campaign by French or some other socially conservative, strong-military Republican might actually achieve: It might siphon just enough votes in just enough states to ensure Clinton a victory. And, truth be told, thats probably what Kristol and a lot of other Republican insiders are hoping for at this point. Thats not because they think Clinton will be a good president, or because they think Trump would raze the monuments and suspend habeas corpus, necessarily. Its because if Trump wins, the Republican establishment in Washington will lose its entire reason for existing. For more or less 25 years now, governing Republicans like Kristol (who was once chief of staff for Vice President Dan Quayle) have positioned themselves essentially as professional enablers. For all that time, increasingly furious conservative voters, whipped up by antigovernment rhetoric, have been sending ever more extreme leaders to Washington, where inevitably they meet up against the immovable reality of budgets and bureaucracies. And the main job of the advisers and lobbyists we loosely refer to as the Republican establishment has been to navigate the divide between these two worlds to somehow tutor and moderate the elected leaders who arrive in Washington raging against the machine while figuring out how to exploit the grassroots intensity they need for the next election. The establishments main role has been to make governance look like resistance, and vice versa. Except that Trump really doesnt seem interested in being tutored or moderated or not in any way that lasts for longer than the next news cycle. He may not even govern as a conservative. If Trump somehow wins (and, as Ive written, I dont find this so implausible), the whole professional apparatus of the Republican Party will as likely as not become irrelevant, replaced by the geniuses who ran Trump University and the Taj Mahal. Game over. I dont doubt for a second that Kristol sees Trump as a genuine threat to the country, self-interest notwithstanding. But I also think hed rather endure four or even eight years of another Clinton than a nominally Republican White House that has only contempt for the governing class, and hes not alone. Make sure to read the rest of Bais column here. _____ 3. The Trump Veepwatch, Vol. 5: Rick Scott In which Unconventional examines the presumptive Republican nominees possible and not-so-possible vice presidential picks. Previous Trump installments: Newt Gingrich, Jan Brewer, Bob Corker and Mark Cuban. Name: Richard Lynn Rick Scott Age: 63 Resume: Two-term governor of Florida; former hospital CEO and venture capitalist Source of speculation: Another Monday, another ambitious Republican politician tromping to Trump Tower in Manhattan to meet with the Donald in his 25th floor office. First it was Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker; now its Florida Gov. Rick Scott. The Washington Post got the scoop. In a statement to the paper on Thursday, Melissa Sellers, a spokeswoman for Scotts political operation, confirmed the get-together and said, as the Post put it, that Scott and Trump plan to look ahead to the general election in the Sunshine State, which is expected to be a crucial battleground. Gov. Scott looks forward to meeting with Mr. Trump to discuss his campaigns in Florida and how he thinks Mr. Trump will have a big win in the state in November, said Sellers. Still, when a presumptive nominee summons a swing-state governor to his private lair, theres no way to stop the political press Unconventional included from buzzing about the veepstakes. Even the timing is conspicuous. On Fox News Sunday, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski who is leading the vice presidential search process revealed that Trumps vetting team has started to shrink down that pool, settling on a very small list. A conversation about Floridas electoral topography, in other words, can wait. A conversation about the VP gig cannot. Backstory: Scott refused to formally endorse any of his fellow Republicans before Floridas March 15 primary. But in January, he penned an op-ed for USA Today headline: Donald Trump has Americas pulse that left little doubt where his allegiance lay. Political pundits are shocked that Donald Trump is leading in the polls, Scott wrote. The same thing happened in 2010 when I entered the Florida gubernatorial race against the already anointed and establishment-endorsed sitting Republican attorney general. One establishment member even said to me, How can you be governor? I dont know you. I dont think [Trumps] ability to give the most interesting interviews or speeches is the only thing that has him leading in the polls, Scott continued. I think he is capturing the frustration of many Americans after seven years of President Obamas very intentional government takeover of the U.S. economy. But it didnt take Scott long to sign on with Trump after the Manhattan mogul clobbered his rivals in Florida (and Sunshine State Sen. Marco Rubio suspended his campaign). Im asking all Republicans today to come together and begin preparing to win the general election in November, Scott wrote in a Facebook post the following day. I believe it is now time for Republicans to accept and respect the will of the voters and coalesce behind Donald Trump. The veep rumors started right away. In a late April interview with the New York Times, Trump declined to discuss potential picks in any detail but briefly praised three governors as possible contenders and Scott was one of them. A few days later, the Washington Posts Chris Cillizza ranked Scott as Trumps second likeliest pick (after Chris Christie). Scott has been consistently supportive of Trump for months, Cillizza argued. Scotts profile is also probably appealing to Trump a wealthy businessman who ran against and beat the Republican establishment to get elected governor. Plus, hes from a big swing state. Odds: Low but Trump has been known to defy them before. For his part, Scott insists hes not interested. I like my job, Scott told CNNs Erin Burnett in May. I worked hard to get this job. Im going to stay in this job. Of course, thats what they all say. Scotts selling points are easy enough to see: both business and governing experience; antiestablishment attitude; fundraising prowess; Sunshine State address. Plus, Trump has known Scott for years they run in the same fat-cat Florida circles and he likes to surround himself with familiar faces. But Scotts negatives are even more apparent. He consistently ranks as one of the least popular governors in America, with approval ratings that rarely crack the 50 percent mark; its unclear if he would help Trump overcome Clintons current lead in the Florida polls. Hes largely unknown outside of Florida. Hes a robotic campaigner. He has zero Washington, D.C., experience (which Trump has said he wants.) And he carries a ton of baggage, as the Sun Sentinels Dan Sweeney recently put it, from the massive Medicare fraud case that ended his reign as CEO of the Columbia/HCA hospital chain to the recent settlement of seven public records lawsuits that saw Scott agree to pay $700,000. There may be worse choices for Trumps vice presidential nominee, but I struggle to think of many, writes top Florida political reporter Adam C. Smith. Okay, Bill Cosby. Still, Trump may not care. He doesnt need another showboat. Approval ratings are irrelevant. And scandals dont seem to hurt him. Having a running mate hes comfortable with might matter more. _____ 4. Video: Barbara Boxer tells Bernie Sanders how to step aside On Thursday, Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric sat down with retiring California Sen. (and top Hillary Clinton supporter) Barbara Boxer to discuss her new memoir, The Art of Tough: Fearlessly Facing Politics and Life. But eventually the conversation turned, as all conversations do these days, to this years wild presidential contest. The most intriguing part of the exchange at least to obsessive convention-watchers like us was when Boxer, who said she feared for her safety when Bernie Sanders supporters got rowdy at the Nevada convention last month, started offering Sanders advice about how to run the final leg of his campaign. Asked if the Vermont senator should bow out after California primary on June 7, Boxer demurred. Im not saying when he steps aside, she said. Thats not the issue. The issue is how he steps aside. What is his message? Whether he decides after California to look at the numbers or he waits for awhile whatever he does is fine with me. But its the way he conducts himself. Its what he says. And the way he leads the people who will follow [him]. Boxer added that she was OK with Sanders campaigning all the way to Philadelphia provided he campaigns as a uniter, not a divider. If hes taking it to the convention in order to bring about unity between the two sides, thats fine, she explained. If hes taking it to the convention to exacerbate the split, thats a bad thing. The Californian even hinted that a job in a possible Clinton administration could be waiting for Sanders after the election. Hillary and Barack Obama had a closer race, Boxer said. But for the good of the country, to unite the party, she was so strongly for Barack Obama. She brought her people along. She joined the administration. She really spared him a lot of very difficult work. He needed a superstar to take on that job. And she stepped up and did it. So to me, shes the role model for bringing us together, and I hope Bernie will reflect upon that. What do you think? Is Boxers advice sound? Or is she just delivering Clinton campaign talking points? Drop us a line on Twitter (@andrewromano) and let us know. _____ 5. The best of the rest Ill be voting for @realDonaldTrump this fall. Im confident he will help turn the House GOPs agenda into laws. https://t.co/LyaT16khJw Paul Ryan (@PRyan) June 2, 2016 New USC/LATimes poll finds a battered Hillary Clinton and ascendant Bernie Sanders in a tight race in California https://t.co/ZtmgPAiCYE Cathleen Decker (@cathleendecker) June 2, 2016 Bernies hand-picked NY delegates envision chanting, mass walk-outs at convention if they dont feel heard: https://t.co/ckCFXmtFVF Annie Karni (@anniekarni) June 3, 2016 My latest: @BernieSanders says he has the money to campaign beyond California primary, via @nytimes https://t.co/6ulFjMVDss Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) June 1, 2016 Bernies superdelegate moon shot https://t.co/yIzRqpjYwZ Daniel Strauss (@DanielStrauss4) June 2, 2016 RNC chairman Priebus: David French on suicide mission https://t.co/pqBTfzxZIk Will Rabbe (@WillRabbe) June 3, 2016 _____ Countdown For the latest data, make sure to check the Yahoo News delegate scorecard and primary calendar. BIALOWIEZA, Poland (Reuters) - Inside Poland's ancient Bialowieza Forest, birds chirp and bison graze as visitors explore the lush green surroundings, a home to boars, beavers, lynx - and beetles. Occupying almost 580 square miles of woodland, Bialowieza is a UNESCO World Heritage site sprawling across the border with Bielorussia. But Europe's last primeval forest is under attack, from bark beetles eating its spruce trees. Foresters working in Bialowieza and the government say the solution is to cut down more trees, to save other trees. In March, the environment minister said he would approve increasing the harvest. The new limit would be about 188,000 cubic meters, up from the current 63,000 cubic meters for 2012-2021, which is already close to being exhausted. Last month, authorities began sanitary logging, chopping infested trees along routes used by tourists. The decision has infuriated environmental campaigners, who have complained to the European Commission, saying the logging threatens natural habitats. Scientists also argue that at 8,000 years old, the forest has survived two world wars as well as past outbreaks of the bark beetle, or Ips typgraphus. "Even if in some areas of the forest the trees will die, they will be replaced in a few years time, sometimes in 10, 20 years, by other trees," said Rafal Kowalczyk, of the Polish Academy of Science. "This forest is very dynamic and the changes we have observed, for examples (with) outbreaks of bark beetles, show the natural adaptation of this forest to the changing climate." Around a sixth of the forest in Poland is a national park, and trees there cannot be cut. The rest is operated by three forest units, supervised by the state-owned National Forest Holding. Some in the local communities agree with environmentalists. Many others support the foresters; they say campaigners are attacking the source of their livelihood. "The problem is that several years ago there was an outbreak of bark beetle and it got worse," said Anna Malinowska, a spokeswoman for the National Forest Holding. "The only way to solve the problem is to cut down affected trees. This was not done and so the (infestation) spread." A UNESCO delegation will visit the forest over coming days to inspect the government's logging plans. For pictures from Bialowieza Forest: http://reut.rs/1Wzh6ns (Reporting By Reuters Television, editing by Larry King) Just like many consumers, the airline industry has benefited from the low price of oil. Over the course of the last couple years its generated a ton of profits in cash for the airline industry as a whole, and so thats been very positive. Its frankly allowed us to reinvest in the business in a significant way, United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz told the FOX Business Networks Maria Bartiromo. Munoz responded to claims that long TSA lines plaguing airports across the country were an unintended consequence of baggage fees. The bag fees have been in place for some time, A. B, over the course of last summer we had a record amount of travelers and we got through TSA lines fairly quickly. And so, what has changed since then is some governmental changes in how they manage TSA, and we have to sort of regroup and rework, said Munoz. He said terrorism concerns were a factor weighing on the industry in Europe. We are seeing some softening and ever since the tragic Brussels event, weve clearly seen some of that. As our seasonal summer program works up were actually not seeing as much of a drop off since, so were hopeful, said Munoz. On the other hand, Munoz was more optimistic about Asia, and China in particular. We are long on China, it is a terrific business market for us, its expanding greatly and anytime theres a billion people, theres people that are going to want to fly, Munoz said. Munoz said he was happy to return to his CEO post after receiving a heart transplant in January. What brought me back is the great spirit of the United family. The outreach and outpouring of affection to me and my family was terrific and thats the energy were capturing so we deliver caring service to all our customers, said Munoz. He also said he feels consolidation has made the industry stronger. I used to be in the railroad industry for a long time and consolidation there over the many years I think did help the business and economic model. It allows us, again, to generate some funds we can reinvest in the business, theres plenty of competition, truly. And I think all of that combined makes for a better product for our customers, Munoz said. Story continues Munoz predicted that consolidation will continue, There is a lot of capacity out there and eventually I think youll see some more consolidation. Related Articles Author and former NASA engineer Homer Hickam is suing Universal for north of $20M over its October Sky musical. In a breach of contract, fraud and multi-claim jury-seeking complaint filed today, the Rocket Boys memoirist claims that Universal Pictures has taken the completely fallacious position that Hickam gave over all the rights to the source material to the studio. Its 1999 film October Sky was based on Rocket Boys, and the musical premiered onstage last year. Universal has demanded that Hickam cease and desist in developing, producing and performing the Rocket Boys musical [which is titled October Boys] and accept a complete gag order that would punish him if he ever said a word about Universals wrongful and improper conduct, says the deeply detailed 39-page complaint filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court (read it here). In order to induce Hickam to do so, Universal has taken the completely fallacious position that Hickam has optioned all the rights to Universal to make any and all motion pictures or live stage productions arising from any and all stories he may write about his life, no matter when they happen or even if they happened not to him but to family members and other characters portrayed in his memoir Rocket Boys, in order to serve as a veiled threat to Hickam that if he continues with the Rocket Boys musical or opposes Universals musical in any way, Universal will put a cloud on title and seek to tie up his ability to option all his other novels and memoirs for use in motion picture, television or stage productions, and hinder his ability to reap the financial rewards of his lifes work. The suit adds: After witnessing the success of the Rocket Boys musical, as well as sending its executives to view and experience Hickams musical first hand, Universal decided to create and produce its own musical called October Sky, purportedly based upon the motion picture and Hickams memoir. It claims the studio has attempted to shut down his musical and has used Hickams name and Rocket Boys characters along with motifs and patterns of the music from the Rocket Boys musical for its project without his consent. A Universal spokesperson told Deadline they do not comment on ongoing litigation. Hickam also has written several other memoirs and novels, but October Sky is his only film credit. It told the story of Hickam, a coal miners son who was inspired by the 1957 Sputnik launch to take up rocketry against his fathers wishes. The October Sky musical, based on Hickams Rocket Boys and the feature film, had its world premiere last year at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, IL, and will make its West Coast debut as the 2016-17 season-opening production at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. Hickam is repped in the suit by attorneys David Tarlow and Alexandra Gilinsky of Ervin Cohen & Jessup of Beverly Hills. Related stories Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith Re-Team In 'Girl Trip' For Universal 'Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping' Review: Andy Samberg Might Have Been Better Off Making This A Digital Short 'Warcraft' Builds $16.3M Overseas War Chest Through Friday - Intl B.O. Update Tehran (AFP) - Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lashed out Friday at the United States, Britain and Israel as the Islamic republic's "main enemies", accusing Washington of procrastinating over Tehran's landmark nuclear deal. "It's the US, the evil Britain, and the damned and cancerous Zionist regime. These are the main enemies," Khamenei said in a televised speech marking the 27th anniversary of the death of his revolutionary predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The supreme leader mentioned the nuclear deal with world powers that came into force in January, and accused Washington of breaking its promises. "We sat down and negotiated with the P5+1 group and even separately with the Americans over the nuclear issue," he said during a televised speech to thousands gathered at Khomeini's extravagant mausoleum in southern Tehran. "The other side, the Americans, made some commitments. The Islamic republic completed its commitments but the other unfaithful side is procrastinating." "Whoever trusts in the United States is committing a big mistake and will be hit with a slap," he added. Khamenei's address was met with chants from the crowd of "Death to America", a common cry during his anti-Western speeches. After the nuclear deal entered into force in mid-January, some international sanctions on Iran were lifted by the United Nations, the US and the European Union. But the US and EU have kept sanctions related to Iran's missile programme, its human rights situation and support for groups like the Lebanese Hezbollah, which Washington categorises as a "terrorist" organisation. Khamenei said it was "impossible" that Iran would enter into negotiations with the US over such issues. "First they enter with a smile and (soft) language but later in practice they will not do what they should do and will not keep their commitment," he said. Story continues Iran accuses President Barack Obama's administration of not taking the required steps to reassure big international banks who are reluctant to do business with Iran for fear of punitive measures. More than a decade of nuclear-related sanctions hampered Tehran's economy. President Hassan Rouhani told Tehran's newly elected parliament last week that Iran needed $30-50 billion (27-45 billion euros) each year in foreign investment in order for it to hit its 8 percent growth target. Khamenei went on to emphasise the importance of a domestic "resistance economy", rather than reliance on foreign investment. "To think that the economic boom of the country can be merely reached through foreign investment is a mistake," he said. "More important than foreign investment is activating domestic potential. For a country to integrate its economy into the world economy is not an honour, it's a loss and defeat." Washington (AFP) - The US Congress has launched an enquiry into computer security at the Federal Reserves after a reported series of breaches in recent years, including hacking and potential espionage. In a letter to Fed Chair Janet Yellen on Friday, a House of Representatives committee requested the central bank provide full information about more than 50 cyber breaches between 2011 and 2015 reported recently by the media. The incidents ranged from hackers using malicious code or software to try to enter the Fed's systems, to unauthorized persons accessing data. "These reports raise serious concerns about the Federal Reserve's cybersecurity posture, including its ability to prevent threats from compromising highly sensitive financial information housed on the agency's systems," Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Science Committee, wrote. Smith requested the Fed's cybersecurity team, the National Incident Response Team (NIRT), to produce all related documents "in unredacted form." The committee has jurisdiction over the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which develops cybersecurity guidelines and standards for government operations. Smith cited in the letter a Reuters report this week on the breaches, based on redacted internal Fed records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. He said the committee wants to know how the NIRT responds to security incidents and works to protect its information. Data stored by the Fed "could be extremely valuable in the hands of foreign governments and those who seek to threaten the stability of the US financial system," he said. A Federal Reserve spokesperson said the central bank would respond to the letter. The United States marked the 27th anniversary of China's crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square on Friday with a call for Beijing to end human rights abuses. Just days before the start of the annual US-China strategic dialogue, the State Department urged China to allow peaceful commemorations of the incident. "The United States government continues to call for a full public accounting of those killed, detained or missing," spokesman Mark Toner said. US Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will be in China next week for high-level talks on relations between the world's two biggest economic powers. But US officials say relations between the countries are now on a strong enough footing to allow Washington to speak out about its concerns without triggering a crisis. Toner said China has seen many changes in the quarter-century since June 4, 1989, when the government "violently suppressed peaceful protests" in the heart of Beijing. But, the US spokesman added, Washington continues "to have serious concerns with ongoing violations of human rights in China." He cited the detention of human rights activists, lawyers, journalists and civil society leaders. And he condemned "increased restrictions on media content, expression, association, and religious practice." "We urge the Chinese government to respect the universal rights and freedoms of all its citizens," he concluded. June 3 (Reuters) - Troubled Canadian drugmaker Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc said it received another notice of default from bondholders for the delay in filing its first-quarter report. However, the company reiterated that it would file the report with U.S. and Canadian regulators on or before June 10, ahead of a July 31 deadline. Valeant has lost more than half its value since mid-March, after it said a delay in the filing of its annual report could put it at risk of a default on its borrowings. The Laval, Quebec based company is also facing mounting scrutiny from the U.S. Congress, prosecutors and regulators over its drug pricing, business practices and accounting, issues that have pushed its shares down nearly 89 percent since August. (Reporting by Natalie Grover in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva) Caracas (AFP) - A Venezuelan court has ruled to allow jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez to appeal his 14-year sentence for inciting violence at anti-government protests in 2014, his lawyer said Friday. The ruling comes as embattled President Nicolas Maduro faces growing tension over severe shortages of food, medicine and electricity, as well as opposition maneuvers to oust him in a recall referendum. Lopez, who calls himself a political prisoner, will have his first appeal hearing on June 20, said his lawyer, Carlos Gutierrez. The US-educated economist turned himself in to the authorities on February 18, 2014, amid a wave of pro- and anti-government protests that swept the country and left 43 people dead. The government accused Lopez, the radically anti-Maduro leader of the Popular Will party, of inciting the violence. He denies the charge, calling his arrest an act of political repression. His sentence, handed down last September, was strongly condemned by the United Nations, the United States and the European Union. Gutierrez said international pressure may have convinced the courts to finally allow his client's appeal, which had been in limbo since he filed it in October. He cited the call by the Organization of American States this week for Maduro and the opposition to hold talks as a "fundamental element" in the court's decision. Oil-rich Venezuela has slid into crisis as global crude prices have plunged over the past two years, threatening Maduro and the socialist economic model he inherited from his predecessor and mentor, the late leftist firebrand Hugo Chavez. The center-right opposition, which won control of congress in elections last December, has passed an amnesty for scores of jailed activists it calls political prisoners, including Lopez. But the law was struck down by the Supreme Court, which the opposition condemns as pro-Maduro. CARACAS (Reuters) - President Nicolas Maduro's legal team lodged a formal complaint in Venezuela's Supreme Court on Friday against the National Assembly's opposition leaders for allegedly "usurping" his role in international affairs. Maduro's legal adviser Elvis Amoroso said documents were delivered to the court accusing the assembly's heads of violating the constitution by requesting support from international bodies including the Organization of American States. The government views the 35-member OAS as a puppet of hostile U.S. policy. "It's unacceptable that bodies like the OAS ... receive these men when they know they are usurping a constitutional provision that international relations are exclusively managed by the president," Amoroso told state TV from the court. While the measure was an attempt to stop leaders of the congress from addressing foreign bodies such as the OAS, there are wider fears in opposition circles that the president may seek to close down the legislature altogether. Thanks to public ire over a brutal economic crisis in the OPEC nation of 30 million, the opposition won control of the assembly in a December election and is pushing for a recall referendum this year to oust Maduro. Maduro, 53, is already winning a power conflict with the National Assembly, whose measures have been repeatedly struck down by the Supreme Court, but he said recently that the legislature could soon "disappear". Simon Calzadilla, the congress' third in command, said Friday afternoon that the Supreme Court cannot prosecute a lawmaker without the authorization of the National Assembly, according to the country's constitution. "The only ones usurping here are the Supreme Court judges in not following the constitution," he told reporters. OAS head Luis Almagro, a former Uruguayan foreign minister and now a bitter enemy of Maduro, sought this week to begin proceedings at the hemispheric body that could lead to Venezuela's suspension on grounds of violating democracy. Congress head Henry Ramos, a veteran opposition leader, may address an OAS session. (Reporting by Girish Gupta and Eyanir Chinea; Writing by Girish Gupta and Daniel Kai; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and James Dalgleish) Venezuela protests Caracas Social unrest has simmered in Venezuela for the last few years, at times breaking out in widespread protests, and tensions have mounted this year, as an opposition-led legislature leads an effort to recall President Nicolas Maduro. But a protest that broke out near the presidential palace in Caracas on Thursday indicates that the strife has reached a segment of the country critical to the government's popular support. A group of Venezuelans waiting in line at a supermarket in Caracas made a run for Miraflores, the presidential palace, after they saw what appeared to be people affiliated with the government taking food they had been waiting for hours in the heat to buy. According to The Associated Press, over 100 people ran down the city's main street, chanting "No more talk. We want food," before encountering riot police less than six blocks from Miraflores. The protesters clashed with the police, striking their shields, as other Venezuelans leaned out of windows to yell insults at police and bang pots. Police eventually deployed tear gas against the demonstrators. "We have needs, too. We all need to eat," Jose Lopez, a 23-year-old, told the AP. Lopez said he and other demonstrators were neither supporters nor opponents of the government, "just people trying to feed themselves." Downtown Caracas, the area around the presidential palace, is "territorio chavista," or government-supporter territory, the government has said. Antigovernment protests are rare in that area, the Latin America Herald Tribune noted. The AP called the demonstration a "rare, apparently spontaneous outburst of anger." DISTURBIOS CARACAS | Reportan intentos de saqueo en la Av Urdaneta, San Jose y La Candelaria. #QueremosComida pic.twitter.com/0XLFLDtGDt Saverio Vivas (@saveriovivas) June 2, 2016 "CARACAS DISTURBANCES | Looting attempts reported at [Avenue] Urdaneta, San Jose and La Candelaria. #WeWantFood," this tweet reads in English. Story continues "I'm protesting because we're tired of the lines, of not finding products," another protester, 21-year-old Francis Marcano, told AFP. Jorge Rodriguez, the mayor of Caracas and ally of President Maduro, said the protests was initiated by black-market vendors, who resell scarce goods at what he called "blood prices." He said the government was working to put them out of business. Chuo Torrealba, the opposition leader of the National Assembly, said the protests were "a country acting in self defense." Venezuela police riot protest Caracas Venezuela which has suffered under rolling power blackouts, rampant shortages of food and medicine, widespread violence, and lacking access to running water has seen "near-daily spontaneous" protests over the last few weeks, according to the AP. Looting and attempted looting incidents have also risen this year, from about 20 incidents in January to more than 70 in May, according to a local nongovernment organization. But Thursday's protests seem to indicate that the government is losing support among poor residents in and around the capital people it has long relied on for support. The opposition's formal, organized marches tend to attract middle-class Venezuelans, and tend to take place in middle-class areas of the city. Venezuela police protest Caracas riot Thursday's protests in the streets near Miraflores appeared to be driven by a different group poor Caraquenos, generally considered to be governments supporters, who had spent hours waiting to buy food at subsidized prices. The lines, which have become commonplace in Venezuela in recent years as the country's economic crisis inhibits the government's ability to import food, exposes poor Venezuelans not only to heat and hunger, but also makes them "easier targets for violence," Alejandro Velasco, a professor at New York University, told Business Insider in an interview earlier this year about violence in Caracas. Shops closed in the capital Thursday as police clashed with protesters, and opposition leaders, who are waiting on the National Electoral Commission (CNE) to rule on signatures gathered in support of a presidential recall referendum, have warned that Venezuela "faces an explosion of unrest" if the referendum doesn't happen this year. Venezuela police protest riot Caracas Recall-referendum backers gathered nearly 2 million signatures, well more than the roughly 200,000 needed to initiate the process. Despite that response, the opposition has had trouble rallying its supporters, and its legislative efforts have been stymied by government resistance. Moreover, the referendum-approval process is complex, and political analysts have told AFP that the CNE could delay a referendum until next year. At that point, if Maduro lost, he would be replaced by his vice president. Amid the partisan political wrangling, tensions in the streets have stirred memories of the weeks long riots and protests in spring 2014 that left 43 dead, as well as to the Caracazo a week of protests in the capital city in 1989 that left hundreds, thousands by some accounts, dead. Venezuela protests Caracas police The head of the Organization of American States alleging "graver alterations of democratic order" has called for an emergency meeting to considered suspending Venezuelan from the regional body, something the government has condemned as a possible prelude to an "intervention." The government and the opposition took the rare step of meeting through proxies last week in order to mediate the political crisis, but it's not clear how much patience many Venezuelans about 70% of whom want Maduro out this year have left. "Everyday people [are getting] closer to Miraflores demanding food, soon they will be at the door of the palace Nicolas Maduro!" opposition leader Henrique Capriles tweeted on Thursday. NOW WATCH: Watch legislators in Brazil scuffle during a vote to impeach their president More From Business Insider Country Music Hall of Fame songwriter Bobby Braddocks illustrious career includes penning classics like Tammy Wynettes D-I-V-O-R-C-E; discovering, signing, and producing Blake Sheltons first hits; and, most notably, writing (with fellow country legend Curly Putman) what is regularly voted greatest country song of all time, the George Jones epic tearjerker He Stopped Loving Her Today. While a staff writer at Tree Music in the mid-1960s, Braddock got the attention of Variety when he inked an artist deal with MGM Records. Last year he published a richly detailed memoir, Bobby Braddock: A Life on Nashvilles Music Row (Vanderbilt University Press), and recently in Nashville, Braddock was honored by his publisher, Sony/ATV, for his 50 years on staff, a stretch that includes 13 No. 1 hits. By 1966 you were well on your way to prominence as a songwriter. Was performing your ultimate goal? That MGM deal was one of five record deals I signed, which tells you a lot about how easy it was to get a record deal. But youd been performing before you signed with Tree. Down in Florida I was in a band called Big Johns Untouchables, and I played keyboards in Marty Robbins band. You must have had pretty good chops to play with a superstar like Robbins. Well, it was a great experience. He was such a down-to-earth guy. Older women would bring him cakes and pies, and hed ride on the bus with the rest of the band. He had a little Martin guitar and used to sing songs he learned from Mexican workers in Arizona. And hed sing Hawaiian songs. Is that where you got the songwriting bug? My first important cut was Matilda, which Marty turned into a sort of Sons of the Pioneers song with a jazz melody. And he had a Top 20 hit with my song While Youre Dancing. It wasnt long before you had a smash hit with Tammy Wynettes D-I-V-O-R-C-E. That got even more attention when they put it in that Jack Nicholson movie, Five Easy Pieces. How did that go over down in Nashville? My mother was excited to see the movie and took my sister-in-law. And because of all the sh**ts and f**ks in the film, they stomped out. Im not sure they ever heard the song in the movie. Story continues Do you recall Nicholsons character saying that if his girlfriend plays her Tammy Wynette records one more time, Im going to melt them into hairspray? It was kind of a corny, stereotypical country song. Billy Sherrill produced Tammy Wynette, and he also produced the George Jones classic you wrote with Curly Putman, He Stopped Loving Her Today. Not a bad collaborator to have in your corner. You know, it took Nashville about 40 years to finally put Billy in the Country Music Hall of Fame. I understood why even if I didnt agree with it because Billy had an acerbic sense of humor, and, to be honest, he didnt like a lot of people. I called him the Don Rickles of Nashville. He was certainly one of the greatest record producers in the business. What he did was amazing. I think my favorite thing on any of our records was the way he handled the strings on He Stopped Loving Her Today. You could literally see the guys body ascending into heaven when you listen to the song. With five record deals, you clearly had some intention of breaking through as an artist. I would have loved for that to happen, but the truth is, I doubt if I would have survived. I had an addictive personality, and by the time I was 19, I was already doing a lot of speed. You might have had a lot in common with many of the country stars of the period. I was thinking about that when Merle Haggard died. Country music today is so slick and programmed, I wonder if the Nashville today would be on board for someone like Merle. Same with Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash. They were kind of badasses. Country fans back then were perhaps a little more forgiving, and so the way they lived, it didnt hurt them a bit. Related stories Merle Haggard, Country Music Legend, Dies at 79 Kenny Rogers Remembers His Days as a Teenage Guitarist Country Music Producer and Songwriter Billy Sherrill Dies at 78 Three days shy of his 23rd birthday, rapper Vic Mensa gifted his new EP There's Alot Going On to every fan who pledged to vote on Friday (June 3). In partnership with the Hip Hop Caucus, the new 2016 Respect My Vote! spokesperson zooms into the present while sometimes venturing into his dark past on the seven-track offering. The fiery yet pensive rhymer, who unleashed the Kanye West-assisted track "U Mad" and was signed to Roc Nation by Jay Z last year, tackles topics ranging from the Flint, Michigan, water crisis to self-inflicted wounds. A flurry of his memories play out like a big-screen drama on the title track as he recalls his Roc Nation coronation. On the emotional "Shades of Blue," he contemplates a series of race-related issues plaguing the country. Flashes of his fun side also appear, especially with the sure-to-be summer jams like "New Bae" and "Liquor Locker." Previously heard songs like "Danger" and "16 Shots" -- the latter inspired by the Laquan McDonald shooting case in Mensa's hometown -- also made the cut. Below, the Chicago MC breaks down his EP, political mission and why he thinks America needs to vote against Donald Trump. Vic Mensa Joins Chicago Protests Over Laquan Mcdonald Murder [[{"fid":"615450","view_mode":"media_original","type":"media","attributes":{"height":1240,"width":1240,"class":"media-element file-media-original"}}]] Billboard: Why name this project There's Alot Going On? Vic Mensa: The name was inspired from a Guns N' Roses music video. At the end of "Don't Cry," they write "There's alot going on. P.S. thanx" and it just felt like it encompassed and represented the state of my life and the lives of the people around me. Just with the world we live in today, especially when I was making the music, it seemed like every week, there was just a new groundbreaking event. We got Prince passing, David Bowie passing away -- major influences of mine -- and at the same time, you got Flint, Michigan [water crisis] going on, black kids being shot dead in the street by police. You can't even count the names [of people who have died]. So, yeah, when I saw that Guns N' Roses video, it kind of just clicked. Story continues How long ago was this? It was probably the top of this year. I've been working on my album for some time so in the process of working on it, there were a lot of records that didn't make it or I felt like had to come out right now. I feel like if I didn't put out this song "Shades of Blue" about Flint, Michigan, right now then I could potentially miss my biggest opportunity with that piece of music to reach people, and inform and help the situation. I felt the same way about the record "16 Shots" about Laquan McDonald. It's very much rooted in the present. When you were younger, did you consider yourself an activist? You know, I think the idea of activism, more so a revolutionary mindset, is something that has been with me for most of my life, especially since I was about 16 years old. That's when a friend of mine named Aja Monet, a really dope poet, started feeding my brain and gave me Malcolm X's autobiography. I still have that copy she gave me. She also gave me Huey Newton's Revolutionary Suicide and I got this Free Huey tattoo on my shoulder when I was 16. From around that time, I just started reading and started teaching myself. Those books shaped a lot of my world views. Also, that's the same time when a black boy in Chicago starts turning into a black man in Chicago. I'm bi-racial. My father's from Ghana and my mother's from upstate New York, so when I was a small child I didn't feel so racial [conscious]. I had white family members, black family members, white friends, black friends by the time I was 16. Now I've been in my teens for a couple of years and that's when the world started to tell me "you're black." That's the first time when police started to harass me and tell me, "Take your hands out of your pocket or I'm gonna punch you in the f--king face." And so as I've just really harnessed this identity racially, then along came Aja Monet, Malcolm X and Huey Newton and shit like that. I think that's when the idea of activism just revolution came into my mind. On this project, you unpack a lot of memories and emotions but what was the most challenging song to write? [Long pause] Sometimes things are really hard for me to write but nothing was really hard for me to write on this project. All of this music was made in February of this year because [my producer Papi Beatz and I] have just been making a lot of music for the album. We made so much that we fell in love with. We were just going through tough times. I was not right mentally. It was just a lot going on, literally, like in my head. A lot of anxiety and depression but events that transpired led me to just really start knocking shit out in February. We just changed our entire perspective on how we get shit done and we started making one full song from start to finish, the music, the lyrics, everyday so all these songs were made in one month or in one day, But "16 Shots" was the most difficult to make because that one took time from its original state to encompass everything I wanted to say. I did have to work on fine-tuning that. You rap about battling your inner demons and like you just mentioned, you went through depression and weren't right mentally before making this project. What triggered that? That's what I used to wonder. That would be my approach to trying to figure out what happened. Where did I take this turn? I think that it's a chemical thing. It's anxiety that led to a depression that I've been dealing with since I was 16, 17. That was the first time I was ever prescribed medication for either of those disorders I guess you would call it. I kind of talk about it a lot in the outro song, "There's Alot Going On," just the way people would view my position or see things I'm doing and people I'm with [who are like], "You're on top of the world. What would you ever have to worry about?" It's kind of like a gift and a curse that I'm hardly ever satisfied with anything because I just believe in myself so f--king much that I'm always thinking I should be there or trying to get there even if I'm somewhere where the grass is green. Keeps me on my toes but it can be difficult sometimes. Vic Mensa Almost Died Trying to Sneak Into Lollapalooza How do you prevent doubts from getting in the way of your creativity? The fact that I've dealt with so many of these things has put me in a position where I have a lot of experience and influence to pull from on a lot of different planes. I've been to a lot of different places, met a lot of different people, read a lot of books, have life experience but then I have an emotional depth to it because I been to that point where I don't give a f--k if I live till tomorrow. I've just been close to that point. The fact that I've been so low and been so close to that point gives me just a deep insight emotionally to speak on the things I feel and not just emotional in the way that people think about relationships or girls. Emotion is a broad spectrum and I just been to a lot of sides of my own emotions. "New Bae" is one of the more lighthearted songs on TAGO. How did you create the vibe? We just made "New Bae" in one day. It was just fun. My manager's brother -- we call him Sex Mob Seth -- was playing some Spanish guitar and then it sounded fresh so I recorded it on my iPhone. We chopped it up later and we figured it out. We had to put it in a 4/4 tempo which was kind of hard. What's your stance on relationships? I got a girlfriend. They always talking about why I always have a girlfriend and it's not that like I need to or just plan to have a girlfriend. I just met somebody that I'm really into and so I'm with her. You recruited Ty Dolla $ign for "Liquor Locker." How did that collaboration come about? Ty Dolla $ign is my homie. I was thinking about doing a song with him. We had been talking about putting something together so I just told Papi Beatz like "Let's make some shit we can put Ty Dolla $ign on." Ty is so fresh to me because he's a phenomenal musician. He plays the bass. Some of the dopest Ty Dolla $ign music I've heard is just him over guitars, over some more musical shit like "Horses in a Stable" on his album Free TC. That's what I was thinking about [while making "Liquor Locker"]. We had already been jamming that in the crib in L.A. when his album dropped so I was like let's make some shit for me and Ty. That's just what Papi Beatz came up with. Charlamagne Tha God & Reverend Lennox Yearwood on 2016 Respect My Vote Campaign, Hip-Hop's Political Influence Do you feel like your best music comes when you're most transparent? Yeah, that's my entire approach. It's just trying to be as truthful as possible. That's what I'm most interested in. That's what I feel like sets me apart from a lot of people -- how much I'm willing to reveal about myself on a record. On that same song, you discuss Kanye West and Jay Z getting into it over a joint venture. Was a joint G.O.O.D. Music and Roc Nation deal on the table for you at one point? G.O.O.D. Music and Roc Nation, that's all family. So it wasn't a formal business opportunity that could have happened. [Shrugs with a smile] What has changed from the Vic then who was signed by Jay Z to Roc Nation in 2014? I'm less trusting and forgiving. I'm more in tune with speaking the way I really feel in music and I've distanced myself from a lot of people and grown closer to people that had my back. So my circle is just smaller and my focus is a thousand times more precise. How will the content of your album differ from this EP? The album expands upon a lot of themes and ideas that I bring up in There's Alot Going On. I wanted to have some new records like "New Bae" and "Liquor Locker" for the summertime because to me, the music is just a representation of the size of the man. Me being the man. You know, I've got those days when it's like late night, I'm calling up Liquor Locker, this liquor delivery place in L.A., and that's my focus or "New Bae," that's my focus. I wanted to have those records for the summertime because those are records that are still honest to me as a person but the album and content is a lot more serious. It doesn't do anything like that. There are smiles on the album but it's not party records like that. There's skits. The album is really, really story-based. You were named the 2016 Respect My Vote! Campaign and partnered with the Hip Hop Caucus to release this for free. Why is it important to get the youth to vote? Through pledging to vote, you can have this music for free. That's something I wanted to give to the people. It was dope to do it through Respect My Vote! and tie in that piece of action because it's so overwhelmingly important that we utilize the power that we have in our hands. I was having conversations with people I knew about what's going on with the prison system and police forces nationwide. When the Illinois primaries came around, we were going to vote for the district attorney and nobody but me voted. Seeing that, I realized I gotta do more to encourage the people around me and the people that I can to use their voice and vote on a local level for real. [The justice system] don't want us to harness our power in this society. That's why they keep shooting us down with impunity and not catching any jail time for it because they view us as powerless. One piece of power that we do have is the right to vote. As we assemble and come to center and put our f--king minds together, there are real things that we can accomplish by voting, especially voting for the people in our local municipalities because those are the people who can make decisions that can change lives of people on my momma's block. Those are the people that really make that decision, whether they're gonna spend that $2 million on a fancy light fixture by the University of Chicago or if they're gonna fix the roads in the hood. That's why I wanted to connect Respect My Vote! to this project 'cause I want it to be a gift to the people and I also wanted it to be a wake up call and something that doesn't just make you listen to music, it makes you think about the power that you have. Not just thinking about what I'm saying but thinking about what you could be saying. YG & Nipsey Hussle Discuss Their Anti-Donald Trump Track 'FDT' & Why 'Trump Is Not the Answer' Is there anybody you're looking to vote for in this year's presidential election? That's tough, right? I just don't want Donald Trump to be president so I would vote against him because he's a candidate championing racism, bigotry, just hateful ideas everywhere. White supremacists rally around him. He takes a week to denounce the Ku Klux Klan, acts like he doesn't know who they are. He calls all Mexicans rapists, murderers and thieves and some I assume are good people. He wants to ban Muslims from coming to America. This shit is ridiculous. Overall, [the election] is just a huge media circus but it's getting dangerous. I don't think he's going to get into office, at all but it definitely is ridiculous and you gotta f--kin' vote against this man. You gotta get him completely out of the picture. He charges up all those people that felt personally let down by America because they had a black president for eight years. All those people are standing behind Donald Trump and he's got them ready to do all the hateful shit that they've been thinking about this whole time. The way [critics] talk about Obama, they never talk about any other president like that because Obama's a black man so it's more accepted for you to ridiculously disrespect him than if he was a white president. All the racists have a champion in Donald Trump and we have to vote against him. If you're not voting against Donald Trump, you're f--king up. Pledge to vote and listen to Vic Mensa's There's Alot Going On here or buy it on iTunes or Amazon. The EP can also be streamed on Tidal, Google Play or Spotify. From Popular Mechanics India is ready to sell the world's fastest anti-ship cruise missile to Vietnam. The BrahMos uses ramjet engine technology to achieve speeds of up to Mach 3, making it a deadly addition to Vietnam's arsenal. BrahMos was developed jointly by India and Russia, its name a mashup of the Brahmaputra and Moscow Rivers. The missile was developed through the 1990s and early 2000s from the Russian P-800 Oniks anti-ship missile. It is in service with the Indian Armed Forces. This is the fastest low-altitude missile in the world. The missile has two stages. The first, consisting of a solid-fuel rocket, accelerates BrahMos to supersonic speeds. The second stage, a liquid-fueled ramjet, accelerates the weapon to Mach 2.8. BrahMos flies as low 32 feet above the wavetops, making it what's known as a "sea skimmer." This, combined with its blistering speed, makes BrahMos very difficult to intercept: most warships will detect the missile only as it crests the horizon at a distance of 16 miles, giving them just 28 seconds to track and shoot down this hotrod of a missile. Land and ship-based versions of the missile have a range of 180 miles and pack a 440-lb. warhead. The aircraft-based version is even bigger, with a range of 310 miles and 660-lb. warhead. Even without a warhead, at Mach 3 BrahMos would impart tremendous kinetic energy on its target. In 1987, an Exocet missile slammed into the frigate USS Stark and, although the warhead failed to explode, the missile still did considerable damage to the ship. One country that won't be happy about this deal? China. China and Vietnam are longstanding rivals who fought a brief shooting war in 1979 and have active territorial disputes in the South China Sea. If the two countries ever come to blows again, BrahMos would give China's admirals real pause. Via USNI News A thousand years after Viking explorer Leif Erikson set foot on the American continent, centuries before Christopher Columbus, a modern reconstruction of a longship has reached the Canadian coast after a five-week voyage. Created according to archaeological remains and ancient texts, the Draken Harald Harfagre (Dragon Harald Fairhair), complete with carved wooden dragon head prow and impressive red sail, docked in Newfoundland on Wednesday, the crew said via Facebook. The 35-metre (115-foot) long, eight-metre wide vessel, the largest Viking ship built in modern times, set sail from Haugesund in southwest Norway on April 26, with a crew of 33 aboard along with some rather un-Viking modern navigational equipment. Along the way it made an unscheduled stop in Scotland's Shetland Islands as well as well as docking in the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland. It docked in the port of St Antony, Newfoundland, and from there will sail on to Quebec city before visiting several US ports. "It has not been easy, we have faced a lot of problems along this voyage but the crew have been in good spirits and worked hard all the way," the ship's Swedish captain Bjorn Ahlander said on the expedition's website. According to many historians, Icelandic seafarer Leif Erikson, son of Norwegian explorer Erik the Red, reached the American continent in the year 1000, almost five centuries before Italy's Christopher Columbus initiated the European colonisation of the "New World". In 1960, vestiges of a Viking presence were found in Canada at L'Anse aux Meadows, the northernmost tip of the island of Newfoundland. The archaeological remains dated from 900-1050 AD. Probably the nicest thing she calls Hillary Clinton is an "alcoholic." Vonna Husby, a Donald Trump delegate from Alaska to the Republican National Convention, has a Twitter feed filled with slams on Islam and immigrants and retweets of neo-Nazi images popularized by the alt-right. Husby's account alternates standard pro-Trump material with tweets and retweets that include an image of Taylor Swift, who has become an iconic figure for white supremacists who consider her an "Aryan goddess." She also retweeted an image of anti-Trump protesters that urged viewers to "Like and Share to Say California Belongs to the USA, Not Mexico." Husby, a financial advisor whose Twitter bio describes her as "DAR, Rotary, Soroptimist, UWA, NEB, 390th Museum, Asst Secy Dist 4, & Fairbanks Rep. Women; Downtown Assn. Board. Fin. business owner. TRUMP DELEGATE Cleveland," declined comment via a Twitter direct message. Muslims, refugees and the media are also targets of Husby's Twitter ire: Politico is funded by George Soros, anti American and Nazi.https://twitter.com/kimincalifornia/status/738595611696496641 ... She has a particular taste for attacking Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee even going so far as to call her thief and a killer: The first woman president should not be liar, thief or killer. Vote Trump.https://twitter.com/pitbullnana/status/738562363302006784 ... Imagine Hillary with her finger on the button with one hand and her alcohol bottle in the other hand. Clinton is an alcoholic; she is incoherent most of the time and result Benghazi. Trump does not drink.https://twitter.com/nbcnightlynews/status/738498364505915395 ... https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cj-sRUSUoAA6yLL.jpg:large The tweets were flagged online Friday by @StopTrumpPAC, just weeks after the campaign of the presumptive GOP nominee who is famous for his own inflammatory rhetoric got called out for naming white nationalist leader William Johnson as a California delegate. Team Trump later attributed the Johnson pick to a "database error." Story continues Additionally, just Thursday Mother Jones reported on a Trump delegate from Tennessee who said U.S. leaders who violate the Constitution may have to be "killed." Via direct messages, Stop Trump PAC described itself as "a conservative grassroots effort to save the movement of Lincoln & Reagan from what would be total destruction under a Donald Trump presidency." The Stop Trump feed also lays into Clinton as a bad choice for president: Note: Pointing out Hillary's history of lies & deceit is legitimate & important, but don't think it takes away from Trump's frauds & racism. The person responding to the messages would not supply his or her name and said the group is not officially registered as a PAC with the Federal Election Commission. The website associated with the Twitter feed also does not identify the organizers. "To avoid intimidation & harassment (which we are already facing daily) we can't go public at this point," one message said in response to a request for a name. A Trump spokeswoman did not respond to multiple requests for a comment. The Clinton campaign and the head of the Alaska GOP also had no immediate comment. (UNITED NATIONS) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed shock at the escalating recruitment and killing of children in conflicts last year especially in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia and South Sudan. The U.N. chiefs annual report on children and armed conflict released Thursday said the scale and increasing severity of grave violations included continuing large-scale abduction of children and aerial attacks by some governments and international coalitions which killed and maimed many youngsters. Ban called on all parties to conflicts to immediately end violations against children and take measures to prevent the recruitment, killing, abduction and sexual abuse of children caught in conflicts. He warned that combatants who violate childrens rights will find themselves under scrutiny by the United Nations and stressed that accountability remains a key priority. The U.N. Security Council took the first major step to prevent the victimization of young people in war zones in 2005 by approving a resolution to identify governments and armed groups that recruit child soldiers. In 2009, the council voted to name and shame countries and insurgent groups engaged in conflicts that lead to children being killed, maimed and raped. Last June, the council voted unanimously to name and shame governments and armed groups that abduct children. Thursdays report names nine government security forces and 51 armed groups that committed grave violations against children last year. New additions to the list include the Saudi Arabia-led coalition and Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen for killing and maiming children and attacking schools and hospitals, and South Sudans government forces known as the SPLA for carrying out more than 100 incidents of sexual violence against children. The Civilian Joint Task Force in Nigeria, who are local residents fighting Boko Haram extremists, was listed for recruiting and using children, with more than 50 verified cases in 2015, and Raia Mutomboki 5, a large rebel group in eastern Congo, was listed for recruiting, using and engaging in sexual violence against children. Story continues In response to last years council resolution, the report for the first time lists six armed groups for abducting children al-Shabab militants in Somalia, Nigerias Boko Haram, the Lords Resistance Army in Central African Republic and Congo, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and South Sudans SPLA. The report said children were disproportionately affected by the intensifying conflict in Afghanistan, which recorded the highest number of child casualties in 2015 since the U.N. began documenting civilian deaths and injuries in 2009. The U.N. said it verified 1,306 incidents resulting in 2,829 child casualties 733 killed and 2,096 injured. The casualties included 42 percent attributed to armed groups including the Taliban, 23 percent to Afghan forces and pro-government militias, and 55 to international forces, mainly from airstrikes, the report said. In Syria, the report said Islamic State extremists continued the massive recruitment and use of children and the anti-government Free Syrian Army recruited and used children as young as 9. Airstrikes and indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas were the primary cause for the killing of 591 children and injuries to 555 others, the report said. In Yemen, the U.N. verified a five-fold increase of children recruited by the warring parties following the start of Saudi airstrikes on March 26, 2015, compared with the previous year. In Somalia, the U.N. said there was a 50 percent increase in violations against youngsters with many hundreds of children recruited, used, killed and maimed. And in Iraq, the U.N. recorded 268 incidents resulting in 809 child casualties 338 killed and 471 injured and documented 90 attacks on schools and education personnel. During Beth Laitkep's final days in a Virginia hospital, she made her good friend Stephanie Culley promise her one thing: to make sure her daughters always have bows in their hair. Laitkep, a single mother of six, had breast cancer and died on May 19 at the age of 39. Culley, Laitkep's close friend since high school, agreed to raise her three sons and three daughters after she passed away. "And I always, always, put a bow in the girls' hair," Culley, 39, tells PEOPLE. "For Beth." Virginia Mom of 3 Adopts Dying Friend's 6 Children: 'We Love Them Like Our Own'| Adoption, Death, Kids & Family Life, Cancer, Real People Stories Will, 15, Selena, 14, Jaxson, 11, Dallas, 10, Lily, 5, and Ace, 1, joined Culley, her husband Donnie and their three children in their Alton, Virginia, home in April after Laitkep received news that her breast cancer had spread to her spine and brain. Laitkep knew she didn't have much time left and she wanted her kids to grow up with someone she trusted. "She said to me, 'If a miracle doesn't happen and I don't make it, can you take my children as your own,' " says Culley. "And I immediately said yes." Virginia Mom of 3 Adopts Dying Friend's 6 Children: 'We Love Them Like Our Own'| Adoption, Death, Kids & Family Life, Cancer, Real People Stories Laitkep was diagnosed with cancer while she was pregnant with Ace in 2015. She had an emergency C-section so that she could begin chemotherapy treatments. As her condition worsened, the father of her children abandoned the family leaving Laitkep to rely on friends like Culley for support. "We grew very, very close during that time and Beth's children became best friends with mine," Culley says of her kids Cole, 10, Hayden, 6, and Calen, 2. "We became a family while Beth was still alive and we love them like our own, so it made sense for me to take the kids in when she died." Virginia Mom of 3 Adopts Dying Friend's 6 Children: 'We Love Them Like Our Own'| Adoption, Death, Kids & Family Life, Cancer, Real People Stories The kids continued to visit their mom in the hospital for a month after they moved in with Culley. When Laitkep died, Culley says they were "heartbroken," but had new parents and siblings to rely on for support. Culley's family of five soon became a family of 11. "Beth's last words to me were, 'Tell my babies I love them. And you know I love you too, Stephanie,' " says Culley. Story continues Virginia Mom of 3 Adopts Dying Friend's 6 Children: 'We Love Them Like Our Own'| Adoption, Death, Kids & Family Life, Cancer, Real People Stories The transition for the children after Laitkep's death has been "smooth," and the kids are seeing a grief counselor. Donnie, a construction worker in Alton, built their family home 10 years ago with multiple bedrooms enough to house everyone. "There was some higher power working here, everything just sort of fell into place like us having a big enough house for nine kids," says Culley. "It had to be someone up above looking out for us, protecting those kids and making sure they had a place when Beth died." Virginia Mom of 3 Adopts Dying Friend's 6 Children: 'We Love Them Like Our Own'| Adoption, Death, Kids & Family Life, Cancer, Real People Stories Adoption paperwork is currently being processed, and Stephanie and Donnie have a final court date on June 19 to finalize the case. "Our kids already consider themselves true brothers and sisters," says Culley. "If they're sad, they cry to us and we cry with them. They let their feelings out and we are all here to support them." FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) has received regulatory approval for technical fixes on some models, it said on Friday, meaning it could now recall more than 800,000 of the 8.5 million cars affected by its diesel emissions scandal in Europe. Germany's motor vehicle authority KBA has approved the proposed fixes for Passat, CC and Eos models with 2.0 litre TDI EA 189 engines, Volkswagen said on Friday. The German carmaker, which triggered the biggest scandal in its history with last year's admission that it rigged U.S. diesel emissions tests, has said that software updates on the affected 1.2-litre, 1.6-litre and 2.0-litre vehicles, as well as hardware fixes for about a third of the 8.5 million cars, would be completed by the end of the year. It started a European recall of models in late January, but by late May only 50,000 cars had been fixed. A source at VW had told Reuters that the KBA was concerned that the proposed fix to make the cars comply with emissions regulations would lead to an increase in fuel consumption for the Passat. But VW said on Friday that the KBA had confirmed that the fixes would not result in any changes to fuel consumption, performance or noise emissions of the vehicles. It said it expected to receive the approval for further high-volume models with the affected 2.0 litre TDI engine in the near future. The launch of recalls of affected cars with 1.2 litre TDI engines, initially planned for the second quarter, will however be delayed, it said, without providing further details. (Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Balazs Koranyi and Georgina Prodhan) By Nandita Bose and Arathy S Nair June 2 (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc will partner with ride hailing services Uber and Lyft to trial online grocery deliveries, as it looks to speed up shipment times and better compete with rivals like Amazon.com Inc The world's largest retailer said it would begin test deliveries within the next two weeks in Denver and Phoenix. Wal-Mart's warehouse unit Sams Club began a pilot in March with startup Deliv to dispatch groceries to business customers in Miami. Improving delivery times is seen as a way to appeal to busy inner-city workers who do not own cars and for whom grocery trips are often limited to what they can carry home. Amazon already operates Prime Fresh, a same-day "fresh produce and grocery" delivery service. Wal-Mart said it will charge customers a $7 to $10 delivery charge for its new delivery service, and will also alert customers when their order is being delivered. The largest grocer in the United States is already expanding its online order options to offer grocery deliveries within two days for a $49 minimum annual fee. It also comes at a time when Wal-Mart is betting big on its online grocery pick-up service. In April, Reuters reported that Wal-Mart was expanding free curbside pickup of groceries into eight new cities including Kansas City and Austin. On Thursday, it said it would expand that service to 14 new markets by late June. Online groceries are a $10.9 billion industry in the United States, and the market is expected to grow 9.6 percent annually through 2019, according to a December report by market research firm IbisWorld. One of the largest players in the segment is Amazon, which delivers groceries in Seattle, New York, Philadelphia, and northern and southern California. For Wal-Mart, the move in online grocery follows a $2.7 billion investment over the past two years boosting worker wages and training, steps that it hopes will improve its customer service and help boost sales. (Reporting by Nandita Bose in Bentonville, Arkansas and Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru) A driver displays Uber and Lyft ride sharing signs in his car windscreen in Santa Monica, California, U.S., May 23, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/Files Walmart's latest expansion of its online delivery services will include the option to get your groceries delivered by an Uber or Lyft driver in certain markets, the company announced ahead of its shareholders meeting Friday. "We've been working on convenient new ways to make shopping easier for our busy customers and members," EVP and COO of Walmart Global eCommerce Michael Bender wrote on the company's blog. Within two weeks, Walmart is launching a pilot program with Uber in Phoenix and with Lyft in Denver. Customers buying their groceries online will have the option to get their order delivered to them by a ride-sharing driver, at the existing delivery fee of $7-10. It's an extension of a program that has been quietly tested at Sam's Club stores in Miami since March with the service Deliv. Walmart has been heavily pushing its latest tech offerings, from Walmart Pay to its $49 free shipping membership, which is a response to Amazon Prime. The company also said that it will be expanding its online grocery services to 14 additional markets by the end of June. The service is currently available in 40 markets, or roughly 200 stores. While it would not release specific data on users, Walmart said that 90% of shoppers using the online grocery service are repeat customers. Editor's note: Walmart's initial press release incorrectly stated where the company will work with Uber and Lyft. This post has been updated to reflect the change. NOW WATCH: Walmart is making a major change that will impact more than 5,000 stores More From Business Insider Doug McMillon Walmart is preparing for a new era of retail with major new partnerships and investments in technology. "We have the opportunity to reimagine retail again," Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said in a keynote speech at Walmart's annual shareholders meeting on Friday. Walmart may have fallen behind in the e-commerce race, but, at the shareholders meeting, McMillon and other executives have been eager to forecast a new, digitally focused future for Walmart. Top on the list in reimagined retail is Walmart's partnership with Lyft and Uber. Within two weeks, the retailer is launching a pilot program with Uber in Denver and Lyft in Phoenix. Customers buying groceries online will have the option to have their orders delivered for the existing delivery fee of $7 to $10. Walmart Pay The Lyft and Uber partnerships are far from the only examples of new technology that Walmart is eager to promote. By the end of June, Walmart plans to offer Walmart Pay in every store in the US. Additionally, the company has recently announced unlimited two-day shipping from Walmart.com, as the retailer expands its online inventory. The company is growing its online-grocery business, too, expanding services to 14 additional markets by the end of June. Online grocery is currently available in 40 markets, or roughly 200 stores. Walmart is even developing a drone, intended to replace the jobs of inventory quality-assurance employees at massive distribution centers. Walmart grocery pickup "We're connecting all the parts of Walmart into one seamless shopping experience with great stores, easy pickup, fast delivery, and apps and websites that are simple to use," said McMillon. But even as Walmart increases its sometimes futuristic investments in tech, the company is also doubling down on employees. In his speech, McMillon outlined three steps for Walmart's reinvention: supporting Walmart employees, serving customers, and serving communities. Story continues "As the world becomes more digital, it will be the humanity of Walmart that differentiates us and wins with customers," McMillon said. "Our investments in education and training, store structure, wages, hours, and sales-floor technology are to support you and enable you to serve your customers and members." walmart Since Walmart committed last year to investing $2.7 billion over two years in wage increases, scheduling improvements, and employee training, the retailer's customer-service scores have increased for 79 weeks straight. Keeping up with the competition in terms of tech and customer service have been two of Walmart's biggest hurdles. The company may be investing big in tech, but it is also now seeing results in investing in employees. Right now, it looks like Walmart's chance to "reimagine retail" will require both. Richard Feloni contributed to this story. NOW WATCH: Walmart is making a major change that will impact more than 5,000 stores More From Business Insider Tijuana US Mexico border crossing Numerous reports over the last few months have indicated that the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels have started to clash in Tijuana, a city in northern Baja California, just over the border from San Diego. Now a report from Mexican newspaper El Universal, based on insight from experts and government officials, indicates that the clash may have spread throughout the peninsula. Violence in Baja California Sur, a state considered to be solidly controlled by "El Chapo" Guzman's Sinaloa cartel, has likely been caused by clashes between Guzman's cartel and the fast-growing Jalisco New Generation cartel. According to government statistics, there were 232 homicides in Baja California Sur between February 2014 and February 2016 nearly double the 129 homicides recorded between 2011 and 2013. According to sources El Universal spoke with, this spike in killings is linked to the drug trade and has been driven in recent months by Guzman's capture and the perception of vulnerability it has created. "A war broke out between cartels without the state, municipal, and federal governments being able to do anything about it," Victor Martinez de Escobar, a businessman and former local representative for the conservative National Action Party, told El Universal. With Guzman's extradition, "there will come a very strong reshuffling and the entry of small cartels," he added. Mexico cartel map The Jalisco cartel, one of Mexico's fastest-growing and most violent cartels, "is wanting to enter La Paz, Ensenada, and Tijuana," a police official told El Universal, referring to three cities in Baja California and Baja California Sur. "All this derives from after they arrested El Chapo. [Nemesio Oseguera] El Mencho is returning to attack the plazas," the source continued, referencing the Jalisco cartel's well-known leader and drug-trafficking territories known as plazas. Story continues According to El Universal, as Baja California Sur developed into a tourist area between 2002 and 2013, Guzman had relative freedom of movement in the area. The Sinaloa kingpin was able to use a Cessna likely part of a fleet of aircraft to travel throughout the state, reportedly with the aid of civil aeronautics, police, and military personnel. Violence in the state worsened after Guzman's 2014 arrest. And with his recapture in January this year after his 2015 jailbreak Baja California Sur turned into "a battlefield," Martinez de Escobar told El Universal. "Drugs, arms, and hit men arrived in ferries from the coasts of Sinaloa" state, he said. Shifting alliances A spike in violence in Baja California Sur related to cartel competition would mirror a reported trend in Tijuana, where it's believed that the Jalisco cartel and local allies have made efforts to move in on Sinaloa-cartel territory, with a number of deaths as a result. Mexico Tijuana cartel battle violence The arrest of a suspected Jalisco cartel member with about 112 pounds of cocaine in Tijuana in May adds weight to rumors about that cartel's expansion into the northwest corner of the country. The dynamics of this possible cartel clash are complicated by the nature of the organizations involved. Sinaloa and Jalisco are believed to have cooperated to some extent in the past. Their clash in Baja California and Baja California Sur, however, may be part of a larger shift toward an antagonistic relationship, evidenced by conflicts in Colima, a state on Mexico's southwest coast, and in Acapulco, a tourist haven riven by violence. Moreover, Sinaloa's opaque structure makes it harder to parse how it operates on the ground. Acapulco Mexico homicide murder killing "El Chapo" Guzman is the most visible Sinaloa leader, but the organization is believed to be structured horizontally rather than vertically, with several allied factions cooperating and sharing trafficking routes, government contacts, and information. "It's kind of like a corporation that has hundreds of subsidiaries, and the subsidiaries are semiautonomous from the Sinaloa cartel even though they deal with the cartel," Mike Vigil, a former chief of international operations for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, told Business Insider earlier this year. "So when 'Chapo' Guzman goes to jail, these subsidiaries continue to function." But those allied factions don't seem to be immune to conflict. As Vice reported late last year, factions of the Sinaloa cartel one led by "El Mayo" Zambada, Guzman's equal in the cartel were believed to be fighting in La Paz and throughout Baja California Sur. A heavily factionalized cartel fight Sinaloa against Jalisco and Sinaloa against itself would not only be hard to track and examine. Shifting alliances between powerful but fragmented groups make it even harder for already weak law-enforcement agencies and judicial bodies to end the bloodshed. NOW WATCH: There's a terrifying reason why people are warned to stay inside at 5:45 p.m. in parts of Mexico More From Business Insider Paul Ryan The Washington Post slammed Paul Ryan in a scathing editorial on Thursday evening, hours after the House speaker endorsed Donald Trump. "On Thursday Mr. Ryan capitulated to ugliness," The Post's editorial board wrote. "It was a sad day for the speaker, for his party and for all Americans who hoped that some Republican leaders would have the fortitude to put principle over partisanship, job security or the forlorn fantasy that Mr. Trump will advance a traditional GOP agenda." Ryan published an op-ed Thursday in his hometown Wisconsin newspaper, The Gazette, explaining why he was now willing to announce his support for the presumptive GOP nominee. "Donald Trump and I have talked at great length about things such as the proper role of the executive and fundamental principles such as the protection of life," Ryan wrote. "The list of potential Supreme Court nominees he released after our first meeting was very encouraging." He continued: "Through these conversations, I feel confident he [Trump] would help us turn the ideas in this agenda into laws to help improve people's lives. That's why I'll be voting for him this fall." The Post called Ryan's confidence in the Manhattan billionaire "fanciful." "Judging by his wild swings of position over the years, Mr. Trump does not believe in much of anything," The Post wrote. "The convictions that he does hold against free trade and U.S. leadership abroad, for dividing the nation by religion and ethnicity are antithetical to the principles Mr. Ryan has said guide him. Having secured the nomination without Mr. Ryans help, a President Trump certainly would not feel bound by any assurances that Mr. Ryan believes he has heard from the candidate." Ryan fueled speculation over whether he would support Trump after he said in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper last month that he was not yet ready to make that commitment. It was an unprecedented stance for the party's highest-ranking elected official to take on its presumptive nominee. Story continues "To be perfectly candid with you, Jake, I'm just not ready to do that at this point. I'm not there right now," Ryan told Tapper on May 5. "I hope to, and I want to. But I think what is required is to unify this party. And I think the bulk of the burden on unifying the party will have to come from our presumptive nominee." The speaker called on Trump to "set aside bullying, set aside belittlement," but noted that "no Republican should ever consider supporting Hillary Clinton. Let me make that clear." Trump shot back that he was "not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda" either. "Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people," Trump said at the time. Ryan and Trump met to discuss areas of common ground one week later, on May 12, but Ryan said afterward that it was still too soon for an endorsement. Ryan's spokesman, Brendan Buck, tweeted on Thursday after Ryan's column was published that "we're not playing word games, feel free to call it an endorsement." donald trump Clinton's spokesman, Brian Fallon, tweeted during her major foreign policy speech that "Hillary Clinton is standing up to Trump in the way that the other Republican candidates and Paul Ryan never had the backbone to do." The Post said Ryan had a clear choice to abstain from supporting Trump and was not simply backed into a corner. It asked Ryan how he could explain his choice to his kids. The Post wrote: Now Mr. Ryan has endorsed a man whose solutions include banning Muslims from entering the country, who casts aspersions on judges because of their ethnicity, who mocks people with disabilities, who lies repeatedly, who would muzzle the free press. Each one of these is disqualifying particularly for anyone who believes in conducting the nations politics in a constructive, reasonable manner or who claims to have the long-term interests of the nation, rather than a short-term win at the ballot box or in Congress, in mind. Following Mr. Ryans endorsement, some insisted that the speaker had little choice. This is false. My dad used to say, If youre not a part of the solution, youre a part of the problem, Mr. Ryan said in March. When he has a comparable conversation with his children, how will Mr. Ryan explain the decision he made in this campaign? Trump tweeted on Thursday that it was "so great" to have Ryan's endorsement. Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report. NOW WATCH: Watch the Secret Service jump to protect Sanders after 5 protesters rushed the stage More From Business Insider By Jonathan Barrett SYDNEY (Reuters) - Parents in Western Australia's most expensive suburbs are pulling their children out of pricey private schools and enrolling them in the state-funded system. Others are abandoning WA altogether as wages tumble and jobs disappear in what was the epicentre of a once-in-a-generation mining boom that pushed Australia high up global growth charts. But as the downturn in WA illustrates: Strong iron ore and LNG exports that underpin impressive headline growth figures are of little comfort to most Australians suffering stagnant pay. WA is Australia's dominant iron ore state, and home to Port Hedland, the world's largest bulk commodity port. Hundreds of exploration, miners and mining services companies are headquartered in Perth, the state capital. And waning demand for private schools in Perth reflects the state's difficult transition from being the nation's jobs creation capital to economic laggard. State-run school enrolments in WA have grown at a faster rate than private schools for the past five years, reversing a long-term trend away from public education in the mineral-rich state. This change is particularly evident in Perth's upmarket western suburbs, according to the state government, where house prices have been hit. "Undoubtedly private schools are no longer the price-makers they were a few years ago," said businessman John Poynton, who is the council chair of the exclusive Christ Church Grammar School and co-founder of Perth-based advisory firm Azure Capital. "There's obviously been some movement to the government sector but there's also been families leaving Perth altogether." Christ Church charges annual tuition fees of A$26,200 ($18,950), plus an enrolment fee of A$6,550, for a high school student; and almost A$50,000 for a boarder. Public schools are funded by the government. Business investment is falling dramatically, down a forecast 19 percent next financial year, state budget papers show. The state's economy is predicted to contract by 4.25 percent in 2015-16 when imports and exports are excluded from growth figures. Story continues Western Australia would be in recession, if it weren't for high iron ore exports giving the impression that state economy is expanding. "SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE" Those same iron ore exports coupled with the busy liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade are also propping up growth nationally, with data released this week showing the Australian economy expanded in the first quarter by 3.1 percent from a year ago. Mines and plants commissioned during better times are producing ore and gas at record levels even if the operators are exporting into a weak market. "Here's the rub - we are seeing strong volume growth but it's not the sort of growth that generates lots of employment or wage rises," said AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver. "People aren't seeing any change in their pay packets." The state has recorded the lowest quarterly private sector wages growth of all states and territories for every quarter since September 2014. At a national level, the wage price index rose a mere 0.4 percent in the first quarter, the smallest increase since records began in 1997. And some people have lost their jobs. Official figures show that on a net basis almost 2,000 people left WA for other parts of Australia in 2014-15. The pressure on WA's private schools is evident despite efforts to curb fee increases. Between the start of 2015 and 2016, public school enrolments increased by 3,425 while private school numbers fell by 435. One parent in Perth's western suburbs, who requested anonymity, said state schools had improved and parents were also accepting the "new economic reality". "It seems to be more socially acceptable now to say we are going to Churchlands," the parent said, referring to a local state-run school. "It used to be more about keeping up with the Jones." (Additional reporting by Sonali Paul in MELBOURNE and Ian Chua; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore) Weiner-Mic-Feature IFC films Weiner would be valuable enough solely for serendipity, the kind of right time/right place documentary that only fate couldve planned. For me and probably most non-New Yorkers, Anthony Weiners wiener scandal (I feel like this whole fiasco may have been avoided if only hed just pronounced his name Why-ner, like every other Weiner Ive ever met) was one of those stories I didnt fully understand. I understood enough to get the jokes, but not enough to know why people were so angry. And just when the whole thing had finally died down, it turns out directors Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg had been there filming him the whole time. Talk about a hook. Finally, a chance for some perspective. It turns out, Weiner is about a lot more than serendipity. I went in expecting to see a movie that explained whats wrong with Anthony Weiner and instead saw a movie about our fickle and shifting expectations of politicians. Even if you think hes a monster, Anthony Weiner seems to be exactly the kind of monster our political system creates the sort of needy attention whore you need to be in order to succeed. The qualities for which people come to hate passion, theatricality, a desperate need for both attention and having the last word are exactly what made him popular in the first place. And eventually the public abandons him in favor of exactly the kind of dull milquetoast he was supposed to be the antidote to (or at least thats how the movie depicts it). Whos the star of the Greek tragedy here, Anthony Weiner or the people of New York? The film opens with the famous YouTube clip of Anthony Weiner grandstanding, with near psychotic intensity, on the floor of Congress, over Republicans refusing to vote on a bill to fund healthcare for 9/11 first responders. They try to shout him down, and it just pisses him off even more. Its like a scene from Crimson Tide. We see politicians in other countries looking this passionate, but rarely ours. Finally! We think. A liberal who fights back, and who doesnt look like a giant whining condom filled with oatmeal like Joe Lieberman. It makes him a star. Of course, it doesnt hurt that hes married to Huma Abedin, a Clinton campaign strategist so indispensable that Hillary Clinton calls her a second daughter. Story continues And then he accidentally tweets a picture of his embonered underpants, and it all goes down in flames. He resigns in disgrace, because we cant very well have our political leaders having boners, and sending pictures of their boners, and having names synonymous with boners, now can we? Weiner has already encapsulated the inherent hypocrisy of politics, and thats just the prologue. We want our politicians to be vibrant and sexy and the good ones naturally feed on that. But if they ever reveal the sexual pleasure they derive from the political stage, theyre ruined. Is Weiners sin deviancy or just bad bullsh*tting? Thomas Jefferson owned human chattel while writing all men are created equal, but he also never accidentally tweeted some naked pictures of his slaves in the middle of the Continental Congress. Then again, its not as if Anthony Weiner campaigned on a platform of outlawing dick pics, or understanding Twitter. The non-flashback portion of Weiner begins with Anthony Weiners comeback bid, a run for the mayorship of New York. Its also a revealing look at the nuts and bolts of a political campaign, which mostly seems to involve checking polls and cold calling rich people to beg for money. Before you can whore yourself out to the voters, you have to whore yourself out for the money you need to get in front of the voters. At first, things go well. Shockingly well. Restoring-your-faith-in-humanity well. Weiner wants to take responsibility, and he seems genuine. About the sexting, he says, Well, I did the thing, which becomes an unlikely, but straightforward mantra. And New Yorkers seem ready to forgive him. Anthony Weiner! Thats my man right there! shouts a random passerby as a crowd swarms him on the street. Man, they all fulla sh*t, says another, waving dismissively and moving on. The question of whether the second comment is a rejection or an endorsement goes to the heart of modern politics. (In either case, Weiners use of crowd reaction shots is excellent.) At a public debate, another candidate tries to bring up Anthony Weiners values. Its scummy, and the crowd boos him! They actually shout him down and the politicians have to move on to, you know, talking about actual issues and stuff. Its enough to warm your heart. But it doesnt last. Because just when the public seems ready to move on and Anthony Weiner is rising in the polls (illustrated by a jaunty, kissin-hands-and-shakin-babies montage set to New York Groove a little on the nose, but a great montage song), the world discovers Sydney Leathers, and Carlos Danger, and more pics Anthony Weiner sent from the congressional gym shower, and blah blah blah. Weiners polls take a nosedive, and this is the part thats baffling to me: You already knew this dude liked to sext strangers. How does knowing he sent chode pics to more than one internet lady somehow change your opinion of him? He lied about how many dick pics he sent! He lied about when he sent the dick pics! He sent dick pics even after he got caught sending dick picks! He sent dick pics from places we didnt know that he sent dick pics from before! I understand why it became a news story that wouldnt go away, because of the undeniable SEO value of dick pics, and the Carlos Danger coda just made it a search term again. At one point during Weiner, a scummy New York Post reporter even asks him if he has a favorite Post headline. (You might be shocked to learn how many interview questions boil down to the interviewer asking the subject Can you please validate me? Tell me Im good). Weiner tries to steer the conversation, to control the damage, but things just get worse and worse. Aside from the Shakespearian angle, where pride leads to a fall, surely there must be a lesson about damage control to be learned here. Was he not open enough about the dick pics when he apologized the first time? Should he have just volunteered more information about the dick pics? Are the people angry at Anthony Weiner for the dick pics, or just angry that their election has become a circus? Hard to say, but the righteous indignation starts to become self-sustaining. Anger over his sexting turns to anger over his lies (I guess?) turns to anger that he wont drop out of the race. This all culminates in a difficult-to-watch interview with MSNBCs Lawrence ODonnell, an empty blazer with a haircut in the classic cable news mold, who just asks, over and over, What is wrong with you? ODonnell, clearly believing hes speaking for the populace, wants to know what kind of crazy person would keep running for public office, while illustrating why a person would have to be crazy to run for office. I mean is fame and the opportunity to influence public policy really worth being pop psychologized by some smug, eel-skinned man-bot on national television? It wouldnt be for me. The beauty of Weiner is that it shows us exactly the kind of person it would be worth it for, in the very next scene. Anthony Weiners wife, who can barely stand to look at the video, tries to pry Weiner away from his computer, where hes been watching the interview over and over. Abedin, as our stand-in, leaves the room shaking her head, seeming to wonder what kind of person is this? And again I would point out, this is exactly the same guy you liked in the first place. Hes the guy who refuses to be shouted down, who desperately needs to have the last word. If he didnt back down when Republicans wouldnt fund healthcare for 9/11 first responders, why would he disappear because of Sydney Leathers? Why would he let a random heckler in a bagel shop get the last word? Why cant he let go? Watch the goddamned video that made you love him in the first place again, thats why he cant let go hes the guy who cant let go! Hes lives to grandstand. Throughout it all, the one strand of the Anthony Weiner story that remains utterly inscrutable is his marriage. Whereas hes a pathological oversharer, Abedin doesnt drop her guard or lose her polish for a second. Cagey poise seems to be her only speed. I still know nothing about her. Maybe she should be the one running for office. Trouble is, she wouldnt. Because she doesnt have the disease that makes a person want to. Meanwhile, in the waning days of the campaign, news stories abound about Hillary Clinton trying to force Abedin to choose between keeping her job with Clinton and staying with her political liability husband. Weiner implies that the story is true without ever quite coming out and saying it. There are enough strands of hypocrisy here to make a French braid. Weiner is a brilliant watch because it tells a story thats a tragedy on so many levels. And its one thats still ongoing. In a story about the fickleness of public opinion, even our takeaway from it seems to be wrong. Vanity Fair: Whats Wrong with Anthony Weiner? We Asked Some Psychotherapists. Experts weigh in on the real reason the sexting is so disturbing. Disturbing to whom? Are we trying to elect policy makers or surrogate dads? Ill tell you whats wrong with him: hes a politician. Anyone whos willing to put himself through this moron circus just for a little love and fame is dangerously in love with love and fame. If this is the way our political system works, a guy who sends dick pics is the least of our worries. Vince Mancini is a writer, comedian, and podcaster. A graduate of Columbias non-fiction MFA program, his work has appeared on FilmDrunk, the UPROXX network, the Portland Mercury, the East Bay Express, and all over his moms refrigerator. Fan FilmDrunk on Facebook, find the latest movie reviews here. Citing staffing costs for upcoming negotiations on its master contract, the Writers Guild of America West is projecting a 42% decline in operating surplus from $4 million to $2.3 million in its current fiscal year. Secretary-Treasurer Aaron Mendelsohn made the disclosure at the May 2 meeting of the guilds board of directors in a discussion about the budget for the current fiscal year ending March 31. The current three-year minimum basic agreement expires May 1. The budget projects a smaller operating surplus next year as the Guild expects to be fully staffed heading into MBA negotiations, the minutes said. The minutes were recently posted in the member section of the http://www.wga.org web site. The guild has not yet set negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The WGA West board sent a message to its 8,000 members on May 10 that it plans to seek a bigger cut of the $49 billion in 2015 profits from the top six media conglomerates. Mendelsohns review of the most significant capital expenditures included the ongoing elevator rehabilitation and other building improvements at the Third Street headquarters, the implementation of an upgraded phone system, various IT-related projects, and legal and professional fees associated with Tri-Guild audits and bankruptcies. Mendelsohn presented the financial statements for the fiscal year ended March 31 with the operating surplus of approximately $4 million attributable in part to increased dues revenue from television employment and initiation fees from a record number of new writers who qualified for guild. He said screenwriter dues revenue saw a slight increase after several years of decline and that operating expenses remained under budget, though slightly higher as the result of expenditures for planned improvements and maintenance. The WGA West reported last July to members that it had an operating surplus of $4.5 million on operating revenues of $30 million for the fiscal year ended March 31 due to steady growth in writer compensation, led by the television and new-media sectors, and increased investment income. Annual expenditures grew 6.7% to $25.5 million due to routine maintenance and depreciation expenses, and increased expenditures related to the guilds public policy program. Story continues The WGA reached a historic deal in 2014 with minimum terms covering high-budget new media made for subscription video-on-demand, such as Netflix. The successor deal also modified the option and exclusivity requirements for TV writers amid seasons that have become shorter than the traditional 22 episodes. Hollywoods labor negotiations have been relatively low-key since the bitter 100-day strike by the WGA in 2007-08. The key gain in the 2008 agreement that ended the work stoppage involved expansion of the new media provisions of the master contract. Related stories Aaron Mendelsohn Wins Writers Guild Secretary-Treasurer Post WGA Update: Scribe Tribe Focuses On Organizing New Media, Reality TV Lisa Kudrow to Host Writers Guild Awards Show The Detroit Tigers knew they had little choice to put Jordan Zimmermann on the disabled list if he missed more than one start, but a unique method for a pitcher to test his injury seems to have worked. He'll be back on the hill Friday night against the visiting Chicago White Sox in the first meeting between the AL Central rivals this season. Zimmermann (7-2, 2.52 ERA) certainly lived up to the expectations early after signing a $110 million contract in the offseason, posting a 0.55 ERA while winning his first five outings. He's leveled out with a 4.88 ERA over his last four, including giving up two runs in 5 2/3 innings of a win over Tampa Bay in his last start May 22. The right-hander suffered a strained right groin in that contest, though, and was forced to miss Saturday's start against Oakland. Rather than focusing on his motion on the mound, Zimmermann went through multiple fielding drills earlier this week to test the groin and came away feeling good. A solid bullpen session confirmed he would be good to go against the White Sox (29-25). Manager Brad Ausmus said there won't be any pitch restrictions and would let Zimmermann decide how he feels as he goes along. "The big test was (the drills)," Zimmermann said. "I came out just fine, so I'm sure I will be a little sore but nothing to be concerned about." Zimmermann has a 1.29 ERA in two starts against the White Sox, who head to Detroit with a little more life after winning the final two of three-game series with the New York Mets. Chicago had dropped seven in a row before winning Tuesday, then Todd Frazier's tying homer in the seventh and relief pitcher Matt Albers' unlikely winning run gave the White Sox a 2-1 victory in 13 innings Wednesday. It gave Chicago its first road series victory since April 25-27 at Toronto. "We battled the whole game, made key plays, pitchers came up big, shutting everybody out every time," said Todd Frazier, whose 17 homers lead the majors. "We were focused and determined. Story continues "I told everybody, 'Keep battling. We have an off day (Thursday). Keep going.'" The White Sox hit a low point the last time Carlos Rodon was on the mound, blowing a six-run lead in the ninth and losing to Kansas City on Saturday. They'll send Rodon to the hill again for this one as they shoot for their first three-game winning streak since a four-game run May 6-9. Rodon (2-4, 4.24) has pitched much better over his last three, posting a 2.55 ERA to bring his season mark down from 4.99. He allowed one run in five innings and was in line for the win before the bullpen imploded. The left-hander faced Detroit once as a rookie last year, giving up four runs and eight hits in five innings. Ian Kinsler and J.D. Martinez homered off Rodon in that contest. Ausmus gave Kinsler the day off for rest Thursday as the Tigers (25-28) played a makeup game against the New York Yankees. They fell 5-4 for their fifth loss in six tries despite Miguel Cabrera going 3 for 4. Former Tiger Austin Jackson's status for this series is unclear. Jackson missed the White Sox's entire series against the Mets with turf toe, and if he's not ready he'll likely head to the disabled list. In the summer of 1997, U.S. marshals in San Diego picked up alarming intelligence: A convicted gunman for the Tijuana drug cartel was overheard saying he had put a hit on the federal prosecutor who had sent him to jail. The claim, made to a fellow inmate turned government informant, was no idle threat, the marshals quickly concluded. After the jail cell was wired, the gunman repeated it, boasting he had gotten approval to assassinate the prosecutor by one of Mexicos most powerful drug lords, Tijuana cartel chief Benjamin Arellano-Felix. As a result of that threat, the prosecutor, Gonzalo Curiel, was placed under 24-hour protection by the marshals for a year. He was moved to a naval base, and later, for a while, to Justice Department headquarters in Washington. When he came back to work, so did the gun toting marshals, trailing him wherever he went. It was unsettling, said Gregory Vega, Curiels oldest and best friend, who later became his boss as U.S. attorney in San Diego. That threat was taken very seriously. But Vega says Curiel never wavered from his commitment to put Mexican drug traffickers behind bars. He stayed focused on his job, said Vega, who later promoted Curiel to chief of the U.S. attorneys narcotics enforcement division, putting him in charge of all the offices cases against the drug cartels. The soft-spoken Curiel, now a federal judge in San Diego, has suddenly found himself in the public spotlight thanks to Donald Trump. In a startling 13-minute digression during a speech last week in San Diego, the presumptive Republican Party nominee tore into the judge, referring to him as a Mexican and a hater who showed bias against him because he has allowed fraud lawsuits against Trump University to proceed. Im getting railroaded by the legal system, Trump said. They ought to look into Judge Curiel. On Thursday, Trump doubled down on his attacks, telling the Wall Street Journal in an interview that Curiel had an absolute conflict in presiding over the Trump University cases because of his Mexican heritage. Story continues Hes a Mexican. Were building a wall between here and Mexico, he asserted again Friday afternoon to CNNs Jake Tapper. Donald Trump and Judge Gonzalo Curiel. (Photo Illustration: Yahoo News; photos: AP, U.S. District Court, Southern District of California, Thos Robinson/Getty Images) Curiel, for his part, has declined through a clerk to respond to Trumps attacks; late Thursday, he refused to permit a court filing from an outside party alleging contemptuous statements presumably by Trump to become part of the official record in the Trump University cases. But for Vega and other lawyers who have worked with Curiel or appeared before him, Trumps comments were offensive and wildly off the mark. And they are certain nothing Trump says outside of court will affect the judges handling of the lawsuits. Whats so ironic is that Gonzalo gave so many years of his life to protecting America from drug traffickers, said Vega. He had a credible threat on his life. Do you really think being called [names] by Mr. Trump is going to frighten him? How silly. (Trumps comment also drew a rebuke Friday from Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Appearing on a radio show the day after he endorsed Trump, Ryan said: Look, the comments about the judge the other day just was out of left field to my mind. I completely disagree with the thinking behind that.) Its laughable, said Jeremy Warren, a San Diego defense lawyer who represented some of the drug traffickers that Curiel prosecuted, about Trumps comments. He was a prosecutor in an office where 80 percent of the defendants are Mexican or of Mexican descent. If Trump were an attorney and he made these comments, hed be sanctioned. As for Curiel being a hater, Trumps charge makes no sense, added Thomas McNamara, a former colleague of Curiels in the U.S. attorneys office and now a defense lawyer in San Diego. Hater and Gonzalo Curiel in the same sentence dont even compute. Its ridiculous, said McNamara, describing the judge as incredibly measured and gentlemanly in his courtroom demeanor. That measured approach was on display last month during a pre-trial conference in the Trump University case when lawyers for the plaintiffs who alleged they were defrauded by Trump University asked Curiel to set a trial date in the 6-year-old case for this summer, right after the Republican convention in Cleveland. Justice delayed is justice denied, argued plaintiffs lawyer Jason Forge (another former colleague of Curiels at the U.S. attorneys office.) There are people who are still paying their debts from the money they paid to Trump University. For his part, Trumps lawyer, Daniel Petrocelli, asked Curiel to put the trial off until next February so it wouldnt become an unwarranted intrusion on the electoral process. Curiel listened carefully to both sides and then split the difference: He set the trial date for Nov. 28, three weeks after the election but nearly two months before the inauguration. He wanted to accommodate Trumps political schedule, he told the parties, but in the event Trump was elected president, he didnt want the leader of the free world to have to take time out from his Oval Office duties to take the witness stand in his courtroom. (Both sides took note of the Supreme Courts unanimous 1997 ruling in a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by Paula Jones against Bill Clinton that presidents are not immune from civil litigation.) What struck Curiels friends and former colleagues about Trumps remarks is that the judges background seems like a classic American immigrant success story: He was born in East Chicago, Ind., in 1953, one of four children of Mexican immigrants. His father worked in one of the two steel mills in town, owned by Youngstown Sheet and Tube. (Vega was born the same day in the same hospital in East Chicago; his father worked for the towns other mill, Inland Steel.) Curiel attended Indiana University and Indiana University Law School; after a few years of private practice, he landed a job as an assistant U.S. attorney in San Diego where, as the top deputy and later chief of the narcotics division, he targeted the Arellano-Felix organization, otherwise known as the Tijuana cartel, then one of Mexicos most-feared drug organizations, responsible for one-fifth of all the cocaine smuggled into the United States. Vega recalls a crucial meeting in Mexico City in 1999 when he, Curiel and the top DEA agent in San Diego met with the Mexican attorney general and other senior Mexican officials. At the time, cooperation between Mexican and U.S. law enforcement had stalled, and cartel leaders faced little threat of extradition to the U.S. Conducting the meeting in Spanish, Curiel made the case that it was in Mexicos interest to work with U.S. law enforcement against the cartels. Mexico is the country of our parents, they told their opposite numbers. We are neighbors. Lets work together. The meeting proved a breakthrough, and led two years later to the extradition of Everardo Arturo Paez Martinez, one of the Tijuana cartels top deputies, Vegan said. It was the first time Mexico had extradited a major drug trafficker to face trial in the U.S. It did open the door to extraditions, said Vega. Gonzalo was the one who got the ball moving. (In 2011, 10 years after Paez, cartel boss Arellano-Felix was extradited and is now serving a 25-year sentence in a U.S prison.) In 2006, Curiel was appointed by California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as a Superior Court judge in San Diego County. He was nominated by President Obama in 2012 to the federal bench and confirmed by the Senate without dissent. As part of Trumps evidence that Curiel is biased, one of the candidates surrogates has pointed to his membership in La Raza Lawyers of San Diego a local bar association for Hispanic lawyers, suggesting the group was aligned with the National Council of La Raza, which has organized rallies to oppose Trump over his stand on immigration. But Luiz Osuna, president of the La Raza Lawyers of San Diego, said his group had no connection to the National Council of La Raza and we havent been involved in organizing any rallies against Trump. Curiel, he said, had been a longtime member of the San Diego La Raza organization, and was actually just honored by the group at a reception last week. Curiel was being honored, in part, for helping to organize a program in San Diego to teach poor children about the justice system. He took the lead on that, Osuna said. At last weeks reception, Osuna said, I gave a speech about his career as a prosecutor, about his prosecution of the Arellano-Felix organization, about his record as a judge appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger, Osuna said. The subject of Donald Trump, he added, never came up. Happy at work In terms of employer quality, the West is best, according to one study. Employees in the Western part of the United States rated their bosses higher than average in a CareerBuilder survey conducted by Harris Poll among 3,031 adult workers. An impressive 32% of Western-based bosses garnered an "A." In comparison, only 23% of workers in the Northeast gave their bosses an "A." In total, 62% of all survey respondents gave their employer an "A" or a "B" grade. So, what's the reason behind this regional difference of 10 percentage points? Are bosses in places like California, Arizona, and Oregon really better? Or are their employees just nicer on surveys? CareerBuilder chief human resources officer Rosemary Haefner says that the data shows a correlation between high ranks for bosses out West and reduced face-to-face employer-employee interaction. More workers in the West only meet with their boss in person once a week or less, and more employers in the West are based out of a different office than their employees. "Our workforce may be shifting toward a preference for bosses that take a more hands-off approach and those in the West seem to have picked up on that," Haefner says. In the West, 69% employees also feel that their bosses provide useful feedback, ten percentage points up from the Northeast, where a third of employees "believe their boss should not be in a leadership role." Only 23% of Western workers agree with this sentiment. The survey also found that bosses are crucial in employee retention. About a third of respondents blamed their manager for causing them to leave a job. Fortunately, only 6% of respondents gave their boss an "F" in the survey. NOW WATCH: At Sam Adams, its OK to tell your boss f--- you More From Business Insider From Cosmopolitan Before a mom of three named Amber Bowers graduated last week from Clary Sage College in Tulsa, Oklahoma, she asked her school if she could bring her daughter Luna with her to the ceremony. The college said OK, and now, a pretty, candid photo of Bowers in her cap and gown and breastfeeding her little girl is going viral. Bowers wasn't allowed to take Luna up on stage as she accepted her diploma, but she managed to breastfeed her through the rest of the ceremony. She talked to the online community Breastfeeding Mama Talk about the experience, sharing, "I didn't feel like I was doing anything out of the norm, but as I was walking around backstage before the ceremony I started to get compliments as well as eye rolls from people who saw me nursing Luna. Right before I was heading to the main floor, a few women were gushing over the sight of me nursing her and snapped a photo of me. I didn't really think anything of it." But Bowers continued to get praise for breastfeeding, even during the ceremony. "I received texts and notifications that someone had posted the photo in a local mom group as well as on their page!" she said. "I was blown away by the kind words, I instantly started receiving and have not stopped receiving since that evening." Breastfeeding Mama Talk's Facebook post on Bowers has racked up 1,500 likes and many supportive comments, as well. One follower summed up the overwhelming sentiment: "Go mama. Breastfeeding is such a special experience. You're doing amazing and congratulations on graduating and having the courage to [breastfeed] Luna there." Follow Maressa on Twitter. When Amal Clooney and husband George met Pope Francis earlier this week, the couple exuded the elegance we've come to expect of them, with George in a dark suit and Amal in an Atelier Versace dress and Jimmy Choo heels. Though the couple nailed their Vatican styling, their visit raised the question - how does one decide what to wear to meet the Pope? "The basic rule is modesty and respect," says associate professor of theology at the Catholic University of America Chad Pecknold. One aspect of this respect is shown by wearing appropriately formal looks, like a dark suit for men. "The Pope is the head of a very small city-state," Pecknold notes, "but it's a pretty influential one. He also happens to be the Successor of Saint Peter, and has some pull with God. So wear a tie." Looking nice for the Pope doesn't mean peacocking with funky colors or patterns, according to Rocco Palmo, editor of Catholic news site Whispers in the Loggia. Read More: The Amal Clooney Effect: Hollywoods Love Affair with Her Power Style "It's amazing how all sorts of people - even Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple who famously never wears a tie - wore a black suit, white shirt and black tie to meet the Pope," Palmo points out. "It doesn't matter if you're Leonardo DiCaprio or George Clooney. Nobody messes with this." Besides lending an air of appropriate formality, suits for men offer the added benefit of keeping the wearer covered up - another important concern in the Vatican. For women, the right combination of formality and modesty is most commonly achieved by wearing long sleeves and a skirt or dress that's at least knee-length. Traditionally, this would be accompanied by a lace or silk head covering called a mantilla, as a nod to the centuries-old custom of women keeping their heads covered in worship settings. Modern alternatives to the mantilla include wearing a hat, as Amal Clooney did, or foregoing a head covering altogether, as Angelina Jolie did in her 2015 meeting with the Pope. Story continues Interestingly enough, while the celebrity media was slightly critical, Catholic and religious commentators noted that the length of Amal's dress was appropriate for the occasion. FORMAL WEAR: George and Amal Clooney attended "Un Muro o Un Ponte" Seminary held by Pope Francis at the Paul VI Hall in Vatican City, Vatican on May 29. (Photo: Getty Images) Even though head coverings are no longer required by the papacy, they offer a way to express respect, according to Religion News Service national reporter David Gibson. "That was always the tradition, that women covered their heads and that men uncovered their heads. Even today, you can't wear a hat into a Catholic church as a layman. You'll be told to take it off," he notes. And lest the rule seem suspiciously gendered to modern ears, Gibson points out that like all Catholic bishops, "the Pope is wearing a skull cap to cover his own head." While no footwear guidelines are specified, both men and women would be well advised to wear dressy shoes rather than sneakers or flip-flops. Palmo notes, however, that the cobblestones and numerous grand staircases around the Vatican mean that "stilettos are probably not the best choice" for women. Read More: Pants! Flats! Red-Carpet Rebels Rule at Cannes Perhaps the most unexpected norm surrounding papal-appropriate garb is that pertaining to color. Guests are expected to show up in head-to-toe black, as if in mourning garb. "The black was so that no one in the room, even the greatest of the royal ladies, would outshine the Pope," explains Palmo. The intriguing exception to this rule comes in the form of the privilege du blanc, a tradition that allows for a select handful of Catholic queens or princesses to wear white when visiting the Pope. According to Palmo, this tradition originated as a way to distinguish Catholic royalty from their non-Catholic counterparts during the Reformation. "This tradition was geared specifically toward women, because men - whether kings or other heads of state - would always be in military uniform when attending the Pope," he says. This exclusive privilege has been exercised by royals like Princess Charlene of Monaco and Queen Paola of Belgium. Transgressing the norms around who gets to wear white in the Pope's presence, as former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair's wife Cherie Blair did on her visit to Rome in 2006, is a faux pas that some can read as taking too high a view of one's status. However, both Palmo and Gibson agree that these transgressions seem to be one more vehemently opposed by the Pope's traditionalist followers than the Holy Father himself. "Though the papal house was always very punctilious about these things, that's changing," says Gibson. "Pope Francis hasn't dispensed with everything, but he's certainly more relaxed about the dress code." MEET THE POPE: Angelina Jolie greeted Pope Francis at the Vatican on Jan. 8, 2015. (Photo: AP Images/L'Osservatore Romano Pool) Read More: Pope Francis Honors George Clooney, Richard Gere and Salma Hayek wolf psaki CNN's Wolf Blitzer grilled White House Communications Director Jen Psaki over reports that footage of a press briefing about the Iran deal was intentionally deleted by someone at the State Department in 2014. The deleted footage an eight-minute exchange between Psaki, then the State Department's spokeswoman, and Fox reporter James Rosen was potentially embarrassing for the State Department. Psaki had essentially admitted to Rosen that nuclear talks with Iran had taken place as early as 2011, two years before the Obama administration publicly acknowledged that the talks were ongoing. Her predecessor, Victoria Nuland, had told Rosen months earlier that nuclear negotiations did not begin until 2013. Blitzer called that a "flat-out lie." Blitzer told Psaki: It's one thing to be discreet and not release all the information if it's classified ... but it's another thing to flat-out lie to the news media and to the public, which is what your predecessor [Nuland] did in 2013 when she was asked whether secret bilateral negotiations were going on and she said no. That was a lie, right? Psaki said that Blitzer would have to ask Nuland about that. "I was supportive of and involved with the press," Psaki said, noting that she "talked through every aspect of the back-channel [negotiations] at the State Department briefings" throughout 2013. "There's a long history, for decades, of not being able to provide information when it's at a sensitive time when it could have an impact," Psaki said. "And that certainly was the case earlier that year" of 2013. jen psaki Blitzer said that Psaki's response to Rosen at the 2013 press conference when he asked if it was "the State Department's policy to lie to keep negotiations secret" made it seem like Psaki was defending "that earlier lie" from Nuland. Psaki's response to Rosen at the time was that "there are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress." Story continues Her response was later edited out of the final video at the request of someone within the State Department, department spokesman John Kirby admitted on Wednesday. Psaki said again that she did not know what information Nuland had in early 2013 about the timeline of the negotiations. She repeated: I do believe that there are times when negotiations and important diplomatic discussions require not briefing the public on what's happening. Not because we don't want to have that conversation with you, Wolf, but because it then becomes a public debate instead of a private negotiation, and that is often what is needed to make progress. Blitzer wasn't having it. "It's one thing not to release sensitive information," Blitzer said. "It's another thing to lie to the media and the public. Is it ever justified for a US government spokesperson to lie to the American people?" "A fundamental value I've always followed is not to," Psaki said. NOW WATCH: These are the US State Departments 5 most wanted terrorists More From Business Insider By Gilles Guillaume and Arno Schuetze PARIS, June 3 (Reuters) - China's Wolong Electric , Japan's Nidec and other Asian firms are seen as possible buyers of U.S. automation equipment maker Emerson Electric's alternator unit Leroy Somer, two sources with knowledge of the situation told Reuters. Other potential buyers could include sector peers such as Brazil's WEG, U.S.-based Regal Beloit and Chinese groups Shanghai Electric and Harbin Electric , the sources said. The sources said Emerson hopes to sell France-based Leroy Somer to an Asian company as it expects Asian firms will be willing to offer a higher price than investment funds or European and US industry peers. "Only if they're unable to find that sort of Chinese player will they open up the auction to European strategic (partners) or to private equity," one of the sources said. The second source said that several private equity funds have looked at Leroy Somer but none got access to the company's data room. In April, Emerson - which wants to focus on heating and air conditioning - launched the sale of its Motors and Drives unit, made up mainly of Leroy Somer and which could be valued at up to $800 million. Leroy Somer, which sells sophisticated alternators for the industry and the military, is one of the unit's most important assets. The two sources also said that given Leroy Somer's exposure to military activities, the French government may need to give its green light before any deal can be completed. Nobody was immediately available at Emerson for a comment. (Writing by Matthias Blamont; Editing by Geert De Clercq) (Adds Emerson's comment) By Gilles Guillaume and Arno Schuetze PARIS, June 3 (Reuters) - China's Wolong Electric , Japan's Nidec and other Asian firms are seen as possible buyers of U.S. automation equipment maker Emerson Electric's alternator unit Leroy Somer, two sources with knowledge of the situation told Reuters. Other potential buyers could include sector peers such as Brazil's WEG, U.S.-based Regal Beloit and Chinese groups Shanghai Electric and Harbin Electric , the sources said. The sources said Emerson hopes to sell France-based Leroy Somer to an Asian company as it expects Asian firms will be willing to offer a higher price than investment funds or European and US industry peers. "Emerson has received interest and is in discussion with several well-qualified, global industrial companies. We expect to have more to say in coming months," a spokesman said in an email. "Only if they're unable to find that sort of Chinese player will they open up the auction to European strategic (partners) or to private equity," one of the sources said. The second source said that several private equity funds have looked at Leroy Somer but none got access to the company's data room. In April, Emerson - which wants to focus on process automation as well as heating and air conditioning - launched the sale of its Motors and Drives unit, made up mainly of Leroy Somer and which could be valued at up to $800 million. Leroy Somer, which sells sophisticated alternators for the industry and the military, is one of the unit's most important assets. The two sources also said that given Leroy Somer's exposure to military activities, the French government may need to give its green light before any deal can be completed. (Writing by Matthias Blamont; Editing by Geert De Clercq) Sarah Tyson, left, did not have a good salon experience. (Photo: Facebook/Sarah Tyson) A New Zealand woman is calling for stricter licensing for beauticians after she claimed her eyelids were superglued shut during an eyelash-extension procedure. Sarah Tyson visited Hairport Hair and Beauty in New Lynn, a suburb of Auckland, and said she could not open her eyes at the end of the treatment. When I couldnt open my eyes, the lady pulled my eyelids apart with her fingers, and when she couldnt pull them apart with her fingers she cut my eyes [sic] open with scissors, Tyson wrote on her Facebook page on Monday. After that she said your done [sic], she wrote. (Photo: Facebook/Sarah Tyson) Tyson said she expressed her concern to the salons manager, Winnie Teo, who responded by telling her to let the glue sit. In a detailed Facebook post, Tyson said that on the following day, the glue had dried so hard she could no longer close her eyes completely. Her eyelids started to swell, and she claimed puss was weeping out of her tear ducts. Tyson took multiple photos of her puffy eyelids and the uneven eyelashes before enlisting the help of a professional eyelash technician to remove them. The removal process took two hours, with the unidentified technician expressing her disgust at the botched extensions. Teo denied Tysons claims of unprofessional service and told the Daily Mail the customer was happy when she left the salon. After she left the shop, she was happy and had her eyes open, she said. Teo said her salon had never received a complaint, despite a website featuring multiple negative comments. (Photo: Facebook/Sarah Tyson) Absolutely appalling customer service!! one woman wrote. If there was an option for zero stars, I would, another said. I will not be returning. Under New Zealand law, beauty salons do not require a license for eyelash extensions. Tyson is hoping to raise awareness of unregulated salons and is urging women to seek the help of a trained professional for any kind of cosmetic work. Lets keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. The woman shot dead by UCLA gunman Mainak Sarkar, in Minnesota, has been identified as the shooter's wife, Ashley Hasti, according to multiple reports. Sarkar, 38, a former doctoral student who fatally shot a UCLA professor before turning the gun on himself Wednesday had a "kill list" inside his apartment that led police to a woman in Minnesota who had also been shot dead, PEOPLE confirmed earlier. CNN affiliate WCCO reports that Sarkar's wife Hasti was found dead on Thursday in Brooklyn Park, a suburb of Minneapolis. Officials in Hennepin County said Hasti and Sarkar were married on June 14, 2011, but it is unclear if they were still married at the time of their deaths. A Los Angeles Police Department spokesperson previously told PEOPLE that authorities did a follow-up investigation after Sarkar gunned down professor William Klug on campus Wednesday, and discovered " kill list" that included Klug's name, another UCLA professor's name and the name of a woman in Minnesota. The spokesperson says the woman in Minnesota was found with "multiple gunshot wounds." Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck spoke to KTLA Thursday and said Sarakar's "kill list" was found in his Minnesota apartment, and included the name of a woman who lived in a nearby Minnesota town. 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. The unidentified victim was found deceased by gunshot wound at the residence, Beck said. He did not state her relationship to Sarkar. Multiple outlets report that Sarkar targeted Klug because they believe he stole a computer code. In March, Sarkar wrote a now-deleted blog post that accused Klug of being a "very sick person." Woman Shot Dead by UCLA Gunman in Minnesota was Shooter's Wife: Report| Crime & Courts, Shootings, True Crime Sarkar reportedly graduated from UCLA in 2013. Beck declined to tell KTLA the name of the other professor on Sarkar's "kill list," but did confirm that the professor is safe. He also told the news station that Sarkar drove from Minnesota to the Los Angeles area with two handguns, multiple rounds of ammunition and several magazines in a backpack. Woman Shot Dead by UCLA Gunman in Minnesota was Shooter's Wife: Report| Crime & Courts, Shootings, True Crime He shot Klug with multiple rounds after entering his fourth floor office. Beck said police are still searching for the car used to make the west coast journey, and are asking for the public's help. He described the car as a gray 2003 Nissan Sentra, with Minnesota license plate 720KTW. Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f106105%2f2015-12-01-d5-ducttapedog.55913 A woman who taped her dog's mouth shut was found guilty of animal cruelty Friday, ABC 11 reports. The woman, Katharine Lemansky, posted the photo to Facebook in November with the caption, "This is what happens when you dont shut up!!!" The post immediately received backlash from animal lovers and activists on social media. (Lemansky went by the name Katie Brown on Facebook when she posted the photo.) SEE ALSO: Stolen doggie finally gets returned to owner after two years The 45-year-old woman was charged by Cary, North Carolina police with one count of Class 1 Misdemeanor Cruelty to Animals, which could have landed her up to 150 days in jail. Lemansky pled not guilty to the charges in court on Friday, however the judge found her guilty. This is one of those cases where a pictures worth a thousand words," District Judge Jackie Brewer said in court, according to the News & Observer. Lemansky will not serve any time behind bars as an initial 60-day jail sentence was reduced to 12 months of supervised probation, the newspaper reports. She was, however, ordered to pay court fees, according to WNCN. In court, an animal control officer said Lemansky admitted to taping the dog's mouth shut because it was barking. The officer also says Lemansky did not mean to post the photo to Facebook, she meant to send it to her son. Lemansky says the incident was a joke that got out of hand, and the animal control officer says the dog was not afraid of Lemansky and was well cared for. Lemansky says she taped the dog's mouth for 15 to 20 seconds, according to ABC 11. The police decided in November that Lemansky would be able to keep the dog. A Change.org petition that was started shortly after the incident received over 38,000 signatures in support of prosecuting Lemansky. Investigators in North Carolina are scratching their heads this week after a Goldsboro woman reported finding the remains of an elderly woman in a deep freezer she'd purchased a month ago at a neighbor's yard sale, PEOPLE confirms. According to a statement from the Goldsboro Police Department, the dead body was discovered on May 27 by the freezer's new owner. Police have yet to reveal the deceased woman's identity, but an autopsy on the remains reveals she died from natural causes. Police received a call last week from a woman who told them she'd purchased the freezer more than three weeks ago for a steal just $30, law enforcement officials tell PEOPLE. The woman told detectives she bought the freezer from her neighbor, who has since moved to Virginia. Prior to the transaction, the freezer's seller told the woman she'd promised to loan the unit to her church for an upcoming event. 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. The seller told the buyer members of the church would soon swing by to retrieve the freezer, which had been secured with duct tape, police claim. But when the church members failed to show after three weeks, the woman told police she decided to crack open her newly acquired freezer. Inside, she found the woman's body wrapped in a sheet. Police confirm the freezer was sold by a woman who lived with her elderly mother. Neighbors told investigators they hadn't seen the older woman since last September. According to the medical examiner, the body showed no signs of foul play, but police are investigating how the woman's remains ended up in the freezer. A police spokesman tells PEOPLE the freezer's previous owner could face charges including abuse of a corpse or concealing the death of a person. It is unclear whether detectives have yet interviewed the woman who sold the freezer. If I say Naxalite, whats the first thing that comes to mind? For most Westerners, the answer is likely akin to an incoherent Google search query: No results found. Unless you live in India. For former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, its Indias biggest internal security challenge. For policemen in the countrys southwest, its synonymous with terror. And for some forgotten tribal villagers, its their only hope for a better future. But what, or who, are these Naxalites? They are the countrys Maoist insurgency. The so-called Naxalite rebellion began about 50 years ago across central and eastern India a belt comprising almost a third of the country, which has been dubbed the Red Corridor. It was imported from Nepal, and the government seemed to have squashed the rebellion in the 90s, but violence has surged since two Maoist guerrilla groups merged in 2004 to create the Communist Party of India. Their goals seem admirable on paper: to protect the rural poor from the social oppression of a semifeudal state and the eco-imperialist exploitation of foreign mining firms. So they enjoy large support in rural tribal areas where the Indian state (whose economy is growing at a staggering 7.5 percent) has failed to share its wealth. The government has been failing these tribal areas for decades, says Daniel Wagner, CEO of consultancy company Country Risk Solutions, so the Naxalites are stepping in and providing for them. Yet the Maoists methods often look more like terrorism than Robin Hood-style justice. Since 2004, the estimated 11,500 Naxalite fighters have spread their territorial reach one bomb at a time, murdering policemen and kidnapping villagers all in the name of liberation. In 2013, they attacked a convoy of Indian National Congress leaders, killing 27. Their attacks are doing significant damage to the economy of this mineral-rich region, where electricity and running water are but a dream for many of its 84 million inhabitants. The central governments response has historically been inefficient and heavy-handed, to say the least. Human Rights Watch has accused it of using draconian measures such as arbitrary arrests and torture of suspected Naxalite associates which, understandably, have only added fuel to the already-raging fire. That all could come to an end soon, though. I think the government has finally learned its lessons, says Harsh V. Pant, professor of international relations in the Defence Studies Department at Kings College London. We could see a real softening of the conflict in the next decade. Indeed, Narendra Modi, the current prime minister, campaigned extensively in the region and has spoken a lot about the importance of taking a fresh, development-first approach to the situation, undercutting support of the rebellion by providing better education, health care and access to land to locals. But the road to progress isnt so smooth. You see, there cant be development without security, but its hard to have security without prosperity. The only real chance at success is to do both simultaneously, explains Pant. Fight the military element of the insurgency while developing the region economically. Sounds simple enough. Related Articles "A&X, El Orfanato, Danza Kuduro!" That's the shout-out that kicks off "Danza Kuduro," the 2010 reggaeton mega-hit by Don Omar featuring Lucenzo. The reference is to El Orfanato, Don Omar's label, and A&X, the producers that gave the track its global, danceable flavor. It clicked. To date, the video for "Danza Kuduro" has nearly 800 million views on YouTube and is on the service's list of 100 most-watched videos of all time. So who exactly is A&X? It's not a person, but the production team of Alcover (Milton "Alcover" Restituyo) and Xtassy (Juan "Xtassy" Abreu). Don Omar's Top 10 Hot Latin Songs Born in Dominican Republic and raised in New York, the pair hit the jackpot when they signed with El Orfanato in 2009 and produced "Danza." A string of other international hits followed, including "Taboo" (featured on the Fast Five soundtrack) and "Dutty Love." Now the pair is trying out new horizons with their first album as lead artists. The Rise: Latin Street Hits (Universal Music Latino), which features tracks by a broad range of acts produced by A&X, debuted at No. 10 on Billboard's Latin Rhythm Albums chart. And while urban compilations are commonplace, The Rise focuses on mostly up-and-coming Dominican acts, including Mozart La Para, Dynasty, Mark B and Natti Natasha. "We had a lot of tracks done," says Alcover. "And we met with Universal and they gave us the opportunity to make a compilation. These were all artists who are on the rise but who have their fan base. They just needed that last link." A&X were signed until 2013 with Don Omar's Orfanato, with whom they remain close. At that point, they connected with peermusic, which was looking for urban producers to sign to their boutique roster. "We look for specific skill sets," says Yvonne Drazan, peermusic's VP for the Latin Division, West Coast. "Alcover played us different kinds of music: tribal, pop, some bachata. So we knew there was real diversity in the talent, and that was really important to us." Story continues Drazan also liked the fact that the pair was planning to use their advance money to finish their studio in the North Bronx, which she describes as a "little talent incubator." The Rise was recorded there, and the focus, says Alcover, was making urban music with an international sound and Dominican roots. "We've lived all our lives in New York," says Xtassy. "But we have our culture and our Caribbean roots, and that comes across in the music." Up next is a possible The Rise tour in the fall, and new tracks for Natti Natasha, Jencarlos Canela, Taboo (from the Black Eyed Peas) and, of course, Don Omar. "Don Omar really was the one who introduced us to the world, and I'm thankful," says Alcover. "Maybe I was going to be more or less without him, but I wouldn't have lived that moment." The high levels of plastic debris in the world's waters have become the aquatic equivalent of greasy burgers and French fries, according to a new study. The researchers found that more young fish are becoming addicted to the smell of tiny plastic particles, which makes up food packaging and eating it is making them slower, smaller and in essence, stupider. For the study, scientists examined the European perch, whose population in the Baltic Sea has been noticeably declining. The scientists put baby perch and perch eggs into habitats with varying levels of micro-plastics to observe how they grew up. They found the fish in the water with the highest concentration of plastic were not only smaller but were also slower to respond to predators. Source: Wayne Parry/AP The fish also began to prefer plastic over real food sources. "It seems like there's a chemical cue, a smell about these plastics, that triggers a feeding response in the fish," lead author Oona Lonnstedt said, according to the W "They think that the plastic is this high-energy resource that they need to feed on in high levels." But it's not, and it leaves them inactive and in danger. Scientists estimate that there was up to 12.7 million metric tons of plastic waste entering our oceans in 2010. And that stuff doesn't really decompose; instead it breaks down into smaller pieces for fish and other maritime species to gobble up. The researchers hope their study will eventually help identify which plastics are the worst for the environment, although "we can't eliminate plastic from our society we are a plastic society," according to Lonnstedt. At least before the Rolling Stones asked him to knock it off, Donald Trump's standard campaign rally playlist included the band's classic ballad, "You Can't Always Get What You Want." For young Republicans who backed other candidates mowed down in the Republican presidential primaries by the Trump Train, the song turned out to be all too ironic. The candidates they preferred are gone. The general election is looming. Where do they go from here? R , who e in Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio during the GOP primary while still a student at the Citadel in South Carolina, said he's still getting his head around Trump's impending nomination. "I knew that it was a possibility that [Trump] could gain the nomination, but needless to say, it is quite surreal. ... Unfortunately, he might be my only choice," Malouff, now a s , said in an interview. "Bernie Sanders is not looking to be fiscally conservative, so I don't think I could vote for him. Hillary Clinton [has] lost my trust and support after the events in Benghazi," he said. Ryan Malouff preferred Bush or Rubio to Trump. Malouff said he's toyed with the idea of getting around the Trump problem by supporting someone outside the GOP entirely: "I would consider voting for [Libertarian] Gary Johnson, but he [won't] have the support to win it all." As to how this all happened, he said, "The only way I can truly explain [it] is the fact that the people are angry at the system and needless to say, Mr. Trump has changed or maybe broken that system." Work to do: Trump managed to put away a herd of competitors with a formula that drew on his worldwide celebrity, bellicose talk about fighting terrorism and illegal immigration, unapologetic populism and a deep understanding of just how fed up Americans are with Washington. Story continues But that was in a primary cycle that often limited participation to registered party members a dynamic that's a considerable hurdle for many young voters. Trump has undoubtedly captured the minds of young people with his rhetoric and reality show persona, but the battle isn't over. The main-event fight will now shift to courting independent and undecided voters, and research suggests Trump's got work to do with millennials even within his own party. The Pew Research Center noted in a Thursday report that youthful GOP voters aren't as cozy with him as are their older counterparts. Younger Republicans less likely to feel "warm" about Trump http://pewrsr.ch/1VzkFce pic.twitter.com/4Zom06xWkL https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cj9dCWCWEAged9l.jpg:large Trump can certainly be expected to capture base Republican voters in a fight against likely Democratic nominee Clinton. That should become more true as more marquee Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan say they'll unite behind Trump but young conservatives are pledging their allegiance to him through gritted teeth. Turning point: Take as an example G who threw herself into campaigning for Rubio, only to see her hopes dashed when the senator canned his bid after a stinging defeat to Trump in his home state of Florida. "As hard as it has been to accept it, I've now boarded the Trump Train," said Jochimsen, a conservative activist with Turning Point USA, a student-focused nonprofit that promotes limited government. Gina Jochimsen campaigned for Marco Rubio in Iowa. The decision, Jochimsen said, didn't come without an internal struggle... and a psychological flirtation with the #NeverTrump movement. "I did originally think that was idea and agreed with the fact that Donald Trump was not fit or principled enough to be [president]," she said, but as it became clearer that the ultimate November choice is likely to be between Trump and Clinton, Jochimsen said she had to stick with the GOP's pick. "I know that his conservative record isn't the purest," she said of Trump, "but if I can prevent Hillary Clinton, who allowed four Americans to die in Benghazi and then lied to the families of those Americans, [from becoming president], I will absolutely do so." There is a degree of mental bargaining here: As Jochimsen justifies it, "At the end of the day, it won't be a vote for Trump it will be a vote for whoever he decides to choose for his VP." Specifically, Jochimsen would like to see Trump put a woman on the ticket. She personally favors South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, although given Haley's endorsement of Rubio in the primary and very publicly stated distaste for the Trump brand of politics, Jochimsen concedes that's a long shot. No w : After investing time, energy and deep belief in other vanquished candidates, some young Republicans simply do not accept that the Donald deserves to be commander-in-chief and will not support him for any reason. One of these is Melissa Jane Kronfeld, a New Yorker who served as p Jewish leadership coalition. Melissa Jane Kronfeld and Ted Cruz. "I strongly in the civic duty to vote. Billions of people around the world don't ever get the chance to do so, and I wouldn't sacrifice my vote for anything," the activist and consultant said. While she wouldn't reveal whom she'll support in November, "there is absolutely nothing that Donald Trump could ever do to get my vote," Kronfeld insisted. "Regardless of how the party or the GOP voters feel, Donald Trump doesn't represent me as Republican, as an American or as a human being." For Immediate Release Chicago, IL June 03, 2016 Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. (JKS), Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA), Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS), JA Solar Holdings Co., Ltd. (JASO) and JD.com (JD). Today, Zacks is promoting its ''Buy'' stock recommendations. Get #1Stock of the Day pick for free. Here are highlights from Thursdays Analyst Blog: China Stock Roundup Markets rebounded during the week, powered by Chinese stocks would become part of MSCI Inc.s global benchmarks. The benchmark index closed nearly flat on Monday following uncertainty among investors regarding Chinas monetary policy. The Shanghai Composite Index surged on Tuesday, posting its largest increase in percentage terms in nearly three months. The benchmark index moved lower on Wednesday after manufacturing data failed to assuage investors about the state of the countrys economy. The benchmark index gained on Thursday, closing at its highest level for the month till now. JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. (JKS) reported first-quarter 2016 non-GAAP earnings per American Depositary Share (ADS) of $1.68, well ahead of the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.11 by 51.3%. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. ( BABA) announced a share purchase deal with Softbank Group on May 31. Last Weeks Developments Last Friday, the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.1% on Friday suffering its sixth consecutive weekly decline. This was the longest such series of losses since 2012. Consumer staples, industrials and pharma stocks were the worst performers for the week. Additionally, fresh data revealed that profit growth of industrial companies had declined to 4.2% for April. The benchmark lost 0.2% over the week and 4% over the month. The CSI 300 moved 0.1% lower, taking the weeks decline to 0.5%. The Hang Seng gained 0.9%, adding 3.7% over the week. The Hang Seng China Enteprises Index increased 0.8%, advancing 3.5% over the week. Story continues Markets and the Economy This Week The benchmark index closed nearly flat on Monday following uncertainty among investors regarding Chinas monetary policy. Such speculation increased despite signs that the economy was improving. The CSI 300 gained 0.1%. The Hang Seng advanced 0.3%. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index also increased 0.3%. The Hang Seng China AH Premium Index lost 0.2%. The Shanghai Composite Index surged 3.3% on Tuesday, posting its largest increase in percentage terms in nearly three months. Gains were largely a result of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.s (GS) announcement that Chinese stocks would become part of MSCI Inc.s global benchmarks. Turnover also increased for the day, which had slumped to lows last witnessed in 2014 when brokerages experienced gains. According to Goldman Sachs, new regulations which seek to reduce trading halts and clarifications issued by Chinas securities markets regulator regarding beneficial ownership rules had raised the odds of an MSCI inclusion from 50% in May to 70%. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index and the Hang Seng both gained 0.9%. The CSI 300 surged 3.4% with all of its 10 sub-indexes closing in the green. The benchmark index lost 0.1% on Wednesday after manufacturing data failed to assuage investors about the state of the countrys economy. The official manufacturing PMI came in at 50.1 for May, in line with Aprils reading. Non manufacturing PMI declined to 53.1 from Aprils reading of 53.5. Meanwhile, the Caixin-Markit PMI reading declined from 49.4 in April to 49.2 in May. Banks and utilities were the largest decliners during the trading session. The CSI 300 declined by 0.3%. The Hang Seng moved 0.3% lower while the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index closed flat for the day. The benchmark index gained 0.4% on Thursday, closing at its highest level for the month till now. Tech and consumer staple stocks were the leading gainers for the day. Trading turnover plunged 22% from the level witnessed on Tuesday. The CSI 300 advanced 0.2%. Sub-indexes of consumer staples and tech shares gained a minimum of 0.6%. The Hang Seng moved up 0.5% while the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index added 0.6%. Stocks in the News JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. reported first-quarter 2016 non-GAAP earnings per American Depositary Share (ADS) of $1.68, well ahead of the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.11 by 51.3%. In the year-ago quarter, the company reported earnings of 88 cents per share. In the quarter under review, JinkoSolars total revenues of $848 million surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $714 million by 18.7%. On a year-over-year basis, the top line increased 98.8% primarily on the back of higher shipments as well as electricity revenues from solar projects. In the first quarter of 2016, total solar product shipments were 1,600 megawatts (MW), up 102.7% year over year primarily due to higher shipments of solar modules, silicon wafers and solar cells. Out of total shipments, nearly 166 MW were used in its downstream projects. JinkoSolar expects second-quarter 2016 total solar module shipment in the range of 1.61.7 Gigawatts (GW). For 2016, the company expects total solar module shipments in the band of 66.5 GW. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. announced a share purchase deal with Softbank Group on May 31. Per the deal, Alibaba will buy from Softbank $2 billion worth of Alibaba Group shares outright using balance sheet cash. Another $5 billion worth of shares will be exchanged for securities that will convert to Alibaba shares in three years. In addition, $400 million in stock will be sold to an Alibaba partnership apparently comprising governing members of Alibabas board. Another $500 million worth of shares will be sold to an unknown sovereign wealth fund. As part of the deal, Softbank also agreed that it will not transfer any Alibaba shares held by it for six months. Softbank Group also disclosed this deal in a statement on the same day citing capital structure reforms and de-leveraging as the main objectives behind the deal. It will pay down debts from the capital obtained from the sale. Softbank expects the deal to improve its interest-bearing debt/EBITDA ratio, increase its liquidity cushion and enhance efficiency of financial management. This is the first time that Alibaba has purchased any of its shares owned by Softbank. Softbank is one of the earliest and the largest shareholders in Alibaba though, with this sale, its stake is now down from 32% to 28%. JA Solar Holdings Co., Ltd. (JASO) has won a contract to supply solar modules for Front Runner, a national advanced photovoltaic (PV) technology demonstration project in Datong, China. Per the contract, JA solar will supply 420 megawatts (MW) of modules, including 150 MW of high-efficiency monocrystalline Percium modules. The first phase of the Front Runner project has a total installed capacity of 950 MW, of which 44% of the modules will be supplied by JA Solar. The National Energy Administration commenced the Front Runner program to promote the development of advanced solar PV technology by domestic suppliers. The first phase entails an investment of approximately $1.6 billion for 13 PV power stations. Upon completion, the facility is expected to generate 1.5 billion kilowatt-hour (kWh) of on-grid energy annually, which will cut the burning of 480,000 tons of coal on an annual basis. JD.com (JD) launched its annual summer sale on Jun 1 which will continue till June 20. This includes a sales event scheduled to be held on Jun 18 for 24 hours to mark the companys 13th anniversary. Today, Zacks is promoting its ''Buy'' stock recommendations. Get #1Stock of the Day pick for free. About Zacks Equity Research Zacks Equity Research provides the best of quantitative and qualitative analysis to help investors know what stocks to buy and which to sell for the long-term. Continuous coverage is provided for a universe of 1,150 publicly traded stocks. Our analysts are organized by industry which gives them keen insights to developments that affect company profits and stock performance. Recommendations and target prices are six-month time horizons. Zacks "Profit from the Pros" e-mail newsletter provides highlights of the latest analysis from Zacks Equity Research. Subscribe to this free newsletter today. About Zacks Zacks.com is a property of Zacks Investment Research, Inc., which was formed in 1978. The later formation of the Zacks Rank, a proprietary stock picking system; continues to outperform the market by nearly a 3 to 1 margin. The best way to unlock the profitable stock recommendations and market insights of Zacks Investment Research is through our free daily email newsletter; Profit from the Pros. In short, it's your steady flow of Profitable ideas GUARANTEED to be worth your time! Register for your free subscription to Profit from the Pros. Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/zacksresearch Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Zacks-Investment-Research/57553657748?ref=ts Zacks Investment Research is under common control with affiliated entities (including a broker-dealer and an investment adviser), which may engage in transactions involving the foregoing securities for the clients of such affiliates. Media Contact Zacks Investment Research 800-767-3771 ext. 9339 support@zacks.com https://www.zacks.com Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release. 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 JINKOSOLAR HLDG (JKS): Free Stock Analysis Report ALIBABA GROUP (BABA): Free Stock Analysis Report GOLDMAN SACHS (GS): Free Stock Analysis Report JA SOLAR HOLDGS (JASO): Free Stock Analysis Report JD.COM INC-ADR (JD): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Shares of Zumiez Inc. ZUMZ dropped 9.4% in the after-hours trading session following the companys first-quarter fiscal 2016 results, wherein both the top and bottom lines fell on a year-over-year basis. Moreover, this Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) company posted dismal comparable store sales (comps) data for May and issued a drab second-quarter outlook. Zumiez posted a loss of 8 cents per share for the first quarter, narrower than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of a loss of 12 cents, thereby keeping its positive streak alive for the third time. However, in the year-ago period, the company had recorded adjusted earnings of 12 cents per share. Falling prey to a tough retail environment, net sales declined 2.6% year over year to $173.0 million, while marginally surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $172.6 million. Further, quarterly comps tumbled 7.5%, as against a 3% increase registered in the year-ago quarter. Concurrent with the first-quarter results, Zumiez reported dismal sales data for the month of May, which marked its 14th consecutive month of negative comps. Comps for the month fell 7.6%, compared to a 2.2% drop recorded in the same month a year ago. Net sales for the month ended May 28, 2016, declined 2.9% year over year to $50.0 million. Quarter in Detail In the reported quarter, gross profit slumped 11.5% to approximately $50 million, with the gross margin contracting 290 basis points (bps) to 28.9%. Zumiezs selling, general and administrative expenses climbed 2.9% to $53.9 million and as a percentage of sales, the same escalated 170 bps to 31.2%. The company posted an operating loss of $3.9 million in the quarter, as against an operating income of $4.1 million recorded in the year-ago period. Financial Update As of Apr 30, 2016, cash and marketable securities were $62.1 million, down 58.8% year over year owing to share buybacks and capital expenditures, offset by cash flow from operations. Total shareholders equity at the end of the quarter was $289.3 million. Store Update In fiscal 2016, Zumiez intends to introduce nearly 29 new stores, which include around 7 stores in Europe and up to 6 stores in Canada. Guidance While comps witnessed some improvement toward the end of the quarter, the overall retail environment remained challenging, mainly owing to weak consumer demand. In the face of such headwinds, Zumiez remains on track with its expansion strategies, which are aimed at placing the company on the growth track and generating profit in the near term. Among the several initiatives, the company is in the process of enhancing its merchandise assortments, optimizing supply chain and implementing a completely integrated new point-of-sale system. Management believes that these efforts are likely to improve brand experience through all networks and boost market share over the long haul. Based on the current scenario, management issued a subdued outlook for the second quarter of fiscal 2016. The company envisions net sales for the quarter in the $172$176 million range, while comps are expected to decline 6%8% over the same period. Further, for the second quarter, the company expects to post a loss of 913 cents per share. The Zacks Consensus Estimate is currently pegged at earnings of 7 cents per share. Stocks to Consider Better-ranked stocks in the same space include The Children's Place, Inc. PLCE and Destination XL Group, Inc. DXLG, each with a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Another stock worth considering in the related textile-apparel industry is Delta Apparel Inc. DLA, with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). 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 ZUMIEZ INC (ZUMZ): Free Stock Analysis Report CHILDRENS PLACE (PLCE): Free Stock Analysis Report DESTINATION XL (DXLG): Free Stock Analysis Report DELTA APPAREL (DLA): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research That's the latest news regarding the status of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which has been making headlines all week after a report from Page Six claimed that Disney executives weren't satisfied with the first cut of the spinoff film. SEE ALSO: Matt and Kim just released one of the best music videos of 2016 In the original report, sources told Page Six that Rogue One would need significant revisions after failing to connect with audiences in test screenings. Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter were quick to follow up on the story, confirming the need for reshoots, but debunking the existence of test screenings altogether. Now, the Making Star Wars blog is weighing in with its own report. Speaking with crew members on the film, Making Star Wars editor-in-chief Jason Ward found out that the crew expects to reshoot 40% of the film over the summer. They will work six days a week for eight weeks in order to complete the revised cut of the film that Disney asked for after seeing the first cut. The crew also claims that Christopher McQuarrie, the final writer of the Rogue One script, will be on hand to help director Gareth Edwards during the reshoots. McQuarrie's draft wasn't completed when Edwards began shooting the film, but his version of the story is considered to be superior to what ended up on the screen. Basically, Rogue One was always going to have reshoots, but for a multitude of reasons, those reshoots will be far more extensive than originally planned. Yikes. UPDATE: Slashfilm reached out to McQuarrie about his supposed supervision over the reshoots, and he promptly denied being involved: "If there are any reshoots on Rogue One, Im not supervising them. For any outlet to say so is not only wrong, its irresponsible. Gareth Edwards is a talented filmmaker who deserves the benefit of the doubt. Making a film let alone a Star Wars chapter is hard enough without the internet trying to deliberately downgrade ones years of hard work. Who does that even serve? Let him make his movie in peace." Story continues Related stories Everything you need to know about the 'Star Wars: Rogue One' disaster We finally know when the Han Solo 'Star Wars' spinoff movie will premiere 'Star Wars: Rogue One' is reportedly a hot mess More from BGR: Hackers are using remote-control software Teamviewer to hijack PCs and drain PayPal accounts This article was originally published on BGR.com Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most influential people in tech remember how the crowd went nuts when he stole Samsungs Galaxy S7 show a few months ago? but hes not going to be in charge of the most popular social network on Earth. And when he does step down from day-to-day management operations, he shouldnt be able to dictate the future of the company. At least, thats what Facebooks board thinks. DONT MISS: Amazon's 15 best daily deals: $10 Google Cardboard, Bose home theater, a free HDTV and more According to Reuters, Facebooks board proposed removing Zuckerberg's majority voting control of the company in the event he should retire from managing the business. The CEO currently has 4 million Class A shares and 419 million Class B shares. The latter give him control over 53.8% of the company, meaning that he can do pretty much what he wants with Facebook regardless of whether hes running it or not. The board explained in a proxy filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that itll ask shareholders to vote on a proposal to convert Zuckerbergs Class B shares to Class A if hes no longer in a leadership position. "These new terms thus ensure that we will not remain a founder-controlled company after we cease to be a founder-led company," the board said. Under current provisions, Zuckerberg could simply pass over his voting rights to his descendants, who could control Facebook long after he's gone, regardless of who's going to be CEO. We cant but wonder how Zuckerberg will vote on this proposal. You can read the full SEC filing at this link. Related stories Facebook might force you to install Messenger on Android How to stop Facebook from using your iPhone or Android to listen to everything you say Facebook might start encrypting all your chats More from BGR: Why Google Home has a lot of catching up to do This article was originally published on BGR.com BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany denied interfering in Chinese home appliance maker Midea's 4.5 billion euro ($5 billion) bid for industrial robot maker Kuka on Friday, saying it was not organising a rival offer. German media have reported that German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel wanted to forge an alliance of German or European firms to prevent a sale to the Chinese company, but the economy ministry denied this. Kuka has become the latest and biggest German industrial technology group to be targeted by a Chinese buyer as the world's second-largest economy makes the transition from a low-cost manufacturer to a high-tech industrial hub. "The minister is not organising a consortium for an alternative offer in the Kuka case," ministry spokesman Andreas Audretsch told a regular news conference. German government sources have said Berlin would examine how critical Kuka's technology is for the digitization of industry, an economic priority for Chancellor Angela Merkel's government. China said on Thursday the deal should not be politicized. The spokesman said that Gabriel would appreciate a German or European bid, but added: "To make this clear: Such processes are corporate decisions and the government is not interfering." On Wednesday, Gabriel said there were efforts to formulate an alternative offer, but it was unclear whether those efforts would materialize. Michael Fuchs, deputy leader of the coalition group in Germany's lower house of parliament, indicated shortly after the bid was announced in mid-May that the government would not intervene to stop it. Midea will not be able to control Kuka fully unless unlisted mechanical engineering group Voith and another investor, Loh, sell their stakes, totaling just over 35 percent of Kuka's capital, or strike an agreement with the Chinese firm. Voith CEO Hubert Lienhard has criticised as premature Kuka management's positive stance toward Midea's bid. (Reporting by Michael Nienaber; Editing by Noah Barkin and Alexander Smith) Android fans are eagerly waiting for Android N to come out, as that means new Nexus hardware is due. Multiple reports said this year that HTC will build no less than two devices for Google, with some rumors even claiming that the Taiwanese smartphone maker has scored some sort of Nexus exclusivity deal for the coming years. That doesnt seem to be the case, as Huawei just seemed to confirm that its working on at least one more Nexus-branded device after last years Nexus 6P. DONT MISS: Amazon's 15 best daily deals: $10 Google Cardboard, Bose home theater, a free HDTV and more A Huawei exec for South Africa confirmed the detail in an interview with Gearbeast. While discussing last year's Nexus 6p, the news slipped out. It's not quite a confirmed detail (although we have reached out to Huawei for comment), but it's doubtful that an exec would say that in an interview unless plans were reasonably settled. The Nexus product is a very niche product the techies love it, but theres a very small number of people that buy it. Hence, Cellucity only brought 300 into the country, Huaweis general manager for the Consumer Business Group in South Africa Charlene Munilall explained to GearBurn when asked why the Nexus 6p was not launched in the region. The operators generally dont take up the Nexus device, she continued, seemingly confirming what we already knew, that Google and wireless carriers dont really play along. That said, the distributors, our open market, do bring in the device, thats how Cellucity got it and that will still be the same this year. Were doing the Nexus again this year, by the way, she said. Thats definitely a surprising comment to make, especially since Google has not announced any new Nexus hardware yet. However, a few days ago Googles Sundar Pichai said in an interview that Google will continue to release Nexus devices. The software giant will not manufacture its hardware, but Google plans to be more involved with Nexus device. Pichai also said that future Nexus devices may not run stock Android, but rather Google would focus on building in more software tweaks to Nexus devices. Story continues In a different interview, Huawei director Richard Yu told The Wall Street Journal that Huawei will offer customers a Daydream-ready phone by the end of the year. Daydream is Googles recently announced Android VR platform. Its not clear at this point whether the upcoming Nexus handset from Huawei will have Daydream capabilities. Related stories Android will now tell you which apps you should uninstall Google Nexus phones won't run pure Android anymore Google can help you track down your lost iPhone and Android devices More from BGR: Amazons 15 best daily deals: $10 Google Cardboard, Bose home theater, a free HDTV and more This article was originally published on BGR.com By Heather Somerville (Reuters) - Job aggregation website Glassdoor Inc said it has raised $40 million in a new financing round, led by funds advised by T. Rowe Price Associates Inc along with existing investors including Google Capital and Tiger Global. While Glassdoor declined to specify its exact valuation after the round, a company spokeswoman told Reuters it was "around $1 billion". Glassdoor has raised about $200 million since 2007, and the new financing will fund investments in products and marketing, the company said. Glassdoor's sales have risen 100 percent each year on average for the last four years, Chief Executive Robert Hohman told Reuters. Hohman declined to provide revenue figures for the company, but said it has 4,000 paying customers. The Mill Valley, California-based Glassdoor generates revenue through job advertising, display advertising and enhanced company profiles. (Reporting by Heather Somerville in California and Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair) Virtual reality may not be a huge market on its own yet, but it clearly helps to sell other devices. Case in point: Samsung is bringing back the Gear VR promotion it first ran when it introduced its new line of flagship phones earlier this year. Just in time for Fathers day, Samsung is offering anyone who buys a Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy S7, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6, or Galaxy Note5 from a participating retailer a free Gear VR headset as well as virtual reality content worth $50. The promotion began earlier this week, and will run through June 19. Gear VR has been a bit of a hit for Samsung; the device was sold out for weeks when it got first introduced last fall, and Samsung saw more than one million active Gear VR users in April. However, that isnt stopping Samsung from hedging its bets with regards to the future of VR. Its own Gear VR headset is powered by Facebook-owned Oculus, but Samsung also is also joining a number of other handset manufacturers in supporting Googles competing Daydream VR platform. Related stories China's Huace Raising $300 Million for U.S. Investment, Buys Stake in Magic Leap Bjork Teleports Fans to Iceland With New Virtual Reality Experience NBA, Twitter Ink First 360-Degree Video Ad Deal With Samsung for Finals Amazon acquired two rounds of live Premier League matches for three years from the 2019/2020 season, the league announced (AFP Photo/John MACDOUGALL) (AFP/File) San Francisco (AFP) - Amazon on Friday boasted that its virtual assistant Alexa is capable of 1,000 "skills," as the online retail giant bolsters defenses against rivals such as Google and Apple. The Seattle-based company said in a blog post that the programs were developed specifically for the voice-commanded Alexa software used in Amazon devices such as Echo and Fire TV. Amazon released voice-enabled wireless speaker Echo in late 2014, infusing it with virtual assistant smarts that enable it to answer questions or control linked devices upon command. A kit lets outside software developers create "experiences," similar in concept to apps, for Alexa. Alexa director Rob Pulciani said tens of thousands of developers are learning about and crafting programs that introduce users "to the magic and simplicity of hands-free, voice-driven interactions." Amazon is out to put Echo and Alexa at the heart of the connected home. Alexa's skills include selecting music, appointment reminders, checking bank balances, ordering food, summoning Uber rides and more. Amazon has not disclosed sales figures for Echo, but the device appears to be having success in the market due, in part, to beating rivals out of the starting gate. - Google Home coming - Google last month unveiled a virtual home assistant device that will challenge Amazon Echo as the Internet giant laid out a future rich with artificial intelligence. Google Home, about the size of a stout vase, will hit the market later this year, vice president of product management Mario Queiroz said at the opening of the Internet giant's annual developers conference. Home devices will incorporate new Google virtual assistant software introduced by chief executive Sundar Pichai. "Our ability to do conversational understanding is far ahead of what other virtual assistants can do," Pichai told a packed audience at the conference. "We are an order of magnitude ahead of everyone else." Story continues Home devices combine machine learning, online search, voice recognition and more to allow people to get answers to questions, manage tasks, or control devices by speaking naturally, demonstrations showed. Home will synch with Chromecast devices that allow remote control of televisions or stereo systems, and with "smart" devices made by Google-owned Nest and other companies. Google did not disclose pricing on Home devices. "Google Home could be a major force and could also dramatically decrease the sales potential of Amazon Echo," said analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights and Strategy. Apple is expected to enter the market with a home assistant device of its own, perhaps unveiled at its annual developers conference taking place later this month in San Francisco, according to rumors swirling ahead of the event. To say that Sarah Leeper has been busy for the past 10 months would be an understatement. Since being crowned Miss International Jobs Daughter queen in early August 2015, the 2015 Fremont High School graduate has traveled across the United States, Canada, Brazil and Australia sharing about the organization and making sure that other Jobs Daughter chapters are operating the way they are supposed to. Founded in 1920, Jobs Daughters International is a Masonic youth organization that has members all throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, the Philippines and Brazil. Jobs Daughters is committed to providing girls ages 10-20 with an atmosphere full of fun and learning, Leeper said, while also cultivating important social and leadership skills. After being selected as queen from a pool of 33 pageant members in Lombard, Ill., Leeper immediately hit the road, traveling to Michigan to meet with her three travel companions. Over the past months, Leeper has navigated her way across 30 American states in addition to her international travels. Traveling to so many destinations enabled Leeper to forge bonds with hundreds of Jobs Daughters while also having the opportunity to evaluate their organizations. States like Nebraska have so many members that the organization can govern itself internally, but other places dont. But then you take states like Montana and Delaware, who dont have as many members, she said. Its our responsibility to go in and visit each chapter and make sure they are doing the things they are supposed to be doing, while also giving them advice on how to grow their local bethels. We were there to get to know them and guide them. While the primary goals of her travels were work related, there was a never-ending amount of fun to be had. Traveling in the States, Leeper saw places she had only witnessed on television and in magazines. She saw the sprawling landscape of California filled with a variety of beautiful landscape and crops a nice change of pace from Nebraska corn and soybeans, she said. She also visited three Olympic Parks, one of which was located in Salt Lake City, Utah, home of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. It was one of my favorite cities that Ive been to this year, she said. Its just an absolutely gorgeous city. They kept telling me that I needed to come back during the winter, but I live in Nebraska so I know what snow looks like, she joked. Abroad, she experienced some things most people only dream about. She witnessed the scenic view of Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada, held a kuala bear at a zoo in Australia and even took a selfie with the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio De Janeiro. Along they way, she was also able to tell people about where she comes from Nebraska, a state that suffers from a never-ending list of misconceptions. People really think that all we are about is corn, which is so far from the truth, she said. While interacting with and guiding different Jobs Daughter chapters, Leeper said that people were initially a little intimidated having her and her cohorts there, however, that feeling quickly dissipated. They think these fancy international people are coming, but they learn that we are just real people, she said. We started in the organization just like them, and we are just fortunate enough to end up where we are now. Now we are here to serve and help people become leaders. On July 28, Leeper heads to Grand Rapids, Mich., to give a speech and hand her crown over to the next Miss International Jobs Daughter. Following her time there, she is prepared to start college at Columbia University in Chicago, where she will study journalism. Handing over her title is bittersweet, but Leeper is ready for what is in store for her next. When its all said and done I know that Im really going to miss it, all the traveling and everything else associated with it, she said. But I just get to know that theres another girl out there who will have the opportunity of a lifetime. Ive given a lot of myself this year, but I feel like Ive also gained so much too. Im excited to take what Ive gained and carry that over into the next adventure in my life. MURRAY Two Cass County teenagers and a Columbus man were taken to the hospital late Wednesday night after they were involved in a two-vehicle accident. Cass County Sheriffs Office deputies, Cass County Emergency Management paramedics and members of Murray Fire and Rescue all responded to the intersection of Highway 1 and 84th Street for the accident. Emergency personnel arrived at the scene at 11:37 p.m. CCSO deputies said Beaver Lake residents Cody Pryor, 16, and Isabel McKim, 15, were northbound on 84th Street in a 1998 Ford F-150 pickup. Deputies said Pryor was driving the pickup and McKim was in the passenger seat. Both teenagers are students at Conestoga High School. Deputies said they found evidence in their initial investigation that revealed Pryor did not stop at the stop sign for the intersection with Highway 1. Pryors vehicle struck a westbound 2000 Ford Expedition driven by Columbus resident Theron Bornemeier, 71. The collision caused both vehicles to roll over and come to rest on the northwest side of the intersection. Deputies said Bornemeier was trapped in his vehicle after it landed with the roof on the pavement. First responders found McKim outside of the pickup truck. Deputies said emergency personnel believe she was ejected from the truck due to the location they found her at. A medical helicopter flew McKim to Nebraska Medicine in Omaha with a head laceration, neck and back injuries and a possible concussion. Murray Rescue transported Pryor to Nebraska Medicine with a concussion, facial injuries and abrasions on his body. Murray Rescue transported Bornemeier to Nebraska Medicine for a concussion and other injuries. Deputies said their initial investigation revealed that Bornemeier was wearing his seat belt at the time of the collision. They said McKim had not been wearing a seat belt at the time. Deputies are continuing to investigate the accident. They said speed and failure to yield are the most likely causes of the crash. They said alcohol and drugs are not believed to be factors. It began with an elementary school program. Twenty-three years ago, my daughters fourth-grade teacher asked me if I could portray a pioneer, because Im a fifth generation Nebraskan, said Omahan Darrel Draper. Draper took up the challenge. I said, yes, and I got together a program called, The History of Nebraska as told by Peter Sarpy, Draper said. From there, Draper would go on to portray other historical figures, eventually becoming one of the most requested speakers for whats now called Humanities Nebraska. Area residents are invited to a free event in which Draper will portray Daniel Freeman, Americas first homesteader. The 45-minute program starts at 2:30 p.m. Saturday in the Swedish Heritage Center on U.S. Highway 30 in Oakland. Freeman, who lived from 1826-1908, spent most of his life on the western frontier. He was a doctor, Civil War officer, coroner and county sheriff. In his costumed presentation, Draper will describe life as a pioneer and the changes that Nebraska and America were experiencing during the 19th century. Drapers own journey as a historical re-enactor began after the presentation at his daughters class. The teacher thought it was very good and insisted that I do it for the Peter Sarpy school, Draper said. Thats where the wife of Adm. Henry Chiles of the U.S. Strategic Command saw the program. After that, Draper then in the U.S. Navy was asked to perform for Gov. Ben Nelson and other officials in a series of seven dinners. He was a four-star admiral and I was a lieutenant commander. I thought Id better say, Yes, Draper said. After Draper retired in 1997, he started getting requests for school performances and conventions. He joined the Nebraska Humanities Council (now Humanities Nebraska) in 2000. For the last 16 years, Ive become their most requested speaker, he said. As time passed, Draper added J. Sterling Morton and Lewis and Clark expedition member George Drouillard to his repertoire. He has staged the Drouillard performance from coast to coast. He then received a request to write and perform a program about Freeman, which he added to his repertoire. Draper previously portrayed Sarpy, Morton and Roosevelt in Oakland. Now, hes preparing to bring Freeman to the Swedish town. He likes portraying Freeman, whom he said was a Civil War spy and frontier doctor. Freeman also managed to become the first homesteader in American history in a unique way. President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Homestead Act, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 1863 New Years Day. All government offices were closed that day, but Freeman went to a New Years Eve party and got a federal agent, whom he got to imbibe, to sign his request to homestead at the stroke of midnight, Draper said. Thus, Freeman became the first person to file a claim under the Homestead Act. Freemans wife, Agnes, who was a midwife, studied his medical books and passed an exam to become a doctor. Daniel and Agnes became a husband and wife doctor team. Draper makes note of the unique relationship with one spouse as a midwife and the other as a county coroner. In portraying Freeman, he notes: We had customers coming and going. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, the Fremont Family YMCA is always looking for new opportunities to get local youth involved. One of the latest additions to the Ys dozens of youth activities is the inaugural Youth Fishing Derby, held June 18 at the Christensen Family YMCA Camp, 3402 W. Military Ave. From 8:30 a.m. through noon, area youth have the opportunity to learn what fishing is all about, get a line in the water and also compete in a casting competition toward the end of the day. The event is $20 for Y members and $25 for non-members. Registration must be completed by June 10, and can be completed by calling the YMCA at 402-721-6952 Angie Wyle, program director, said that when the land was donated to the Y seven years ago it opened up a whole new set of activities and camps that youth can be involved with. Its really been great, she said. We do summer camps out there all summer for kids ages four through 15. Its a great place for them to be outdoors, and it gives us the opportunity to expose them to lots of things they may not have done before. The derby consists of three age brackets: 6-and-under, 7-10 and 11-15. Participants in each division who catch the biggest fish as well as those who win the casting contest will receive medals at the end of the day, Wyle said. Experience is not required to sign up for the Youth Fishing Derby. We have a committee of 15 people who are passionate about fishing, and who help with the lake and watch over it, she said. Primary species that will be targeted are bass, blue gill and catfish the most populated lake species. Anybody in attendance should have a memorable experience, Wyle said. Fishing is really great out here, she said. We have lots of fish so its a great place to teach kids to fish because its pretty much guaranteed that they will catch a fish while they are out there. Fremont Police are again warning area residents to be cautious of phone scams in which callers claim to be from the Internal Revenue Service. In these scams, callers claim that back taxes are due. They say that if immediate action isnt taken, a warrant will be issued and the person will be jailed. This scam is very old and rears its ugly head every so often, said Lt. Kurt Bottorff. This is not how the IRS conducts business. Bottorff said those receiving such a call should stop talking and hang up the phone. Dont reply back with another phone call or email to the individual, Bottorff said. If there are any questions, always contact a government agency like the police. A Kazakh activist who protested against the government's land reforms has been released from detention. Twenty-one-year-old Moldir Adylova was met by her family and supporters as she left jail in Almaty on June 2. She served 15 days for 'inciting the public to attend illegal gatherings' during an unprecedented wave of protests throughout Kazakhstan at the end of April. (RFE/RL's Kazakh Service) DES MOINES Gov. Terry Branstad said Thursday he thinks state lawmakers crafted a difficult but responsible $7.35 billion state budget to which the governor gave rare, full approval late last week. Branstad also said his budget vetoes from the previous year, which sparked strong backlash and a call for state lawmakers to override the governor, did not factor into his decision this year to make light use of his veto pen. In fact, Branstad suggested those 2015 vetoes made clear what kind of budget state legislators were to send him in 2016. Maybe the message got across that were not going to accept one-time expenditures, Branstad said Thursday at the Iowa Capitol. And thank God we didnt. Branstad said if he had not vetoed the extra spending in 2015 including $56 million for public school infrastructure projects, $6.3 million for the states three public universities and $8 million to keep open two state mental health institutes the budget crafted this year would have been even more difficult. If we hadnt done that last year, we would have been in real trouble, Branstad said Thursday. Last year, I recognized the bird flu situation and the (falling) farm income and made the tough decisions, and I think that made it a little easier this year. The Legislature, themselves, I think came to that realization this year. Branstad, who approved the proposed budget without vetoing a single dollar, credited legislators for making tough decisions in the budgeting process. We spent a lot of time and we carefully reviewed and scrutinized everything, but there were less item vetoes than weve had for some time, Branstad said. The governor also said he felt comfortable approving all of the new Medicaid oversight measures proposed by legislators, despite saying previously he did not think additional oversight was necessary. The state on April 1 shifted management of its $5 billion Medicaid program to three private health-care companies. State lawmakers, mostly Democrats, expressed concerns with the move, and after a failed attempt to stop the transition they insisted on additional oversight. Branstad said some of the new oversight measures already were agreed to when his administration worked with the federal government to get approval of the Medicaid management transition. Were going to have, I think, the most transparent and greatest amount of oversight that any state in the whole nation has, Branstad said. "I think thats fine. I just want to make sure that its done in a fair and equitable way." Branstad once more lamented the Legislatures failure to provide more funding for water quality programs, one of his top priorities. Branstads proposal to share future school infrastructure sales tax revenue with water quality programs never gained traction with legislators. Republican lawmakers proposed moving some money from existing funding streams, a water metering tax and the states gambling-funded infrastructure budget, to water quality programs. That was rejected by Democratic legislators, who failed to offer a plan of their own. Another option, not considered by legislators this year, is passing a three-eighths of 1 percent sales tax increase to fill a natural resources fund approved by voters in 2010. I really believe that we need to address (water quality) without raising taxes, Branstad said. SIGOURNEY -- Sen. Chuck Grassley expects his refusal to hold hearings on President Obamas Supreme Court nominee to continue to be an issue in his re-election campaign but believes the issue is losing steam on the national level. Folks at a Sigourney town meeting with the six-term Republicans seemed to agree with his position to let the next president fill the vacancy on the nine-member court. But I think it would be wrong to draw conclusions from my town meetings because I tend to have a larger share of Republicans than Democrats coming to my town meetings, Grassley said after the meeting with more than 50 people at the Keokuk County Courthouse. However, he believes attitudes have changed since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February created the opening. Early on, in March and April, there was a lot more support for having hearings than not having hearings, Grassley said. The trend lately has been in the other direction. He expects his Democratic opponent, who will be chosen in the June 7 primary election, will continue to try to make it an issue, but based on calls received by his office Iowans very definitely are coming around in my favor, he said. Thats also the conclusion of a poll conducted for the Judicial Crisis Network, which agrees with Grassleys position. According to the statewide poll of 500 registered voters consistent with current party registration, North Star Opinion Research found that Iowans are not following the issues closely. Obamas nominee, Judge Merrick Garland has 31 percent name recognition 11 percent favorable and 9 percent unfavorable with a margin of error of 4 percent. The poll found 47 percent unsure whether Garland should be confirmed while 28 percent said the Senate should confirm him and 25 percent disagreed. In terms of the Iowa Senate race, the issue seems to have little impact, according to the poll. Among undecided voters, 34 percent say the decision about Scalias replacement is their single most important issue or very import in determining who they will vote for in the November general election. Only 5 percent said it is one of their top three issues. Regardless of Grassleys impressions and the poll findings, Americans United for Change had its billboard truck outside the courthouse with a message asking Iowans to Tell your senators: Do your job and fill the vacancy. According to AUFC, May 30th marked 75 days since Obama nominated Garland. On average, it has taken the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Grassley chairs, 42 days to begin hearings on Supreme Court nominees. If history was followed, Garland would have already gotten a hearing, according to AUFC spokesman Blake Williams. MASON CITY | After a high school career filled with ups and downs, even making it to commencement was a sweet accomplishment for Breana Krominga. During her first three years at Mason City High School, she felt she didn't fit in socially and carried grades well below a 2.0 GPA. School became a daily struggle where she fell further behind in classes like geometry. Midway through her junior year, she knew she needed a change. "Something's got to be done," Krominga, 18, reflected. "I pretty much failed everything that I was doing." After meeting with Principal David Ciccetti, she transferred to the alternative school for her senior year. She felt the smaller school with about 80 students would help her get more personalized attention from teachers while getting on a plan to finish high school on time. Mason City Alternative High School graduates 48 MASON CITY Mason City Alternative High School grads marked the beginning of a new chapter "At the alternative school, they actually care about you and want to get back to the point of passing grades," she said. When she first met Krominga, teacher Heather Kropp said she needed a confidence boost to make it to graduation. With a solid attendance record, Krominga flourished at the alternative school, bringing her grades up to Bs. In December she was named the Rotary Club's student of the month. "I think that those opportunities were a challenge at first, but they gave her an opportunity to grow and get some self-esteem," Kropp said. Mason City Alternative High School graduates list MASON CITY The following are graduates of the Mason City Alternative High School Class of 2016: "She wanted that high school diploma," said Kropp. Her path was set "once she realized she could do it." At graduation, she received a $750 scholarship from the River City Sunrise Rotary Club. "She's a good example. The alternative school has great students here," Kropp said. "We have kids that are willing to work, they are willing to show up. "I'm excited to see what she does with her future," she said. Krominga said she plans to study photography at NIACC after graduation, then potentially make her way to Los Angeles. CLEAR LAKE | A 19-year-old Clear Lake man who police say pulled in front of a motorcycle rider on Thursday has been cited. Jackson Finn drove a 2006 Ford Taurus into the path of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle driven by Eddie Bergman, 58, about 5 p.m. Thursday at 275th Street and Grouse Avenue north of Clear Lake, according to a Cerro Gordo County Sheriff's Office statement. Deputies say Bergman avoided hitting Finns car by intentionally sliding the 2013 Harley onto the pavement. Bergman, of Clear Lake, was taken to Mercy Medical Center-North Iowa for evaluation. His was still being evaluated early Thursday evening. Finn was cited for misdemeanor failure to yield. -- Molly Montag MASON CITY | A Garner woman who pleaded guilty to stealing $8,782 from Opportunity Village clients has been given probation. Former Opportunity Village employee pleading guilty in theft case CLEAR LAKE | A former Opportunity Village employee is pleading guilty in a case involving th Amy L. Palmer, 41, received a deferred judgment Thursday in Cerro Gordo District Court. The judgment includes three years probation, mental health treatment and a $750 fine. Palmer, a former Opportunity Village employee, was originally charged with commission of a specified unlawful activity, a Class B felony, and three counts of dependent adult abuse, Class D felonies. Ex-worker accused of stealing from Opportunity Village residents CLEAR LAKE | A former employee of Opportunity Village is accused of stealing money from the One of the dependent adult abuse counts was amended to second-degree theft. Palmer filed a written guilty plea in March for the theft charge, a Class D felony. The other charges were dismissed. Palmer was accused of taking money November 2014 to September 2015 from 15 adults served by the organization. The money was returned to the residents. Ashley Miller MASON CITY | Mason City police arrested a man Friday accused of possessing multiple stolen bikes. Jacob Raymond Shafer, 25, is charged with second-degree possession of stolen property, a Class D felony. In a statement, police said on Friday officers recovered stolen items, including multiple stolen bikes, bike frames and other parts from a garage on the 200 block of Sixth St. N.E. Included were two bicycles and an iPad police believe were taken during a Mason City burglary on May 12. Shafer was booked at the Cerro Gordo County Jail Friday morning. He is currently being held on a $5,000 bond. MASON CITY State Sen. Rob Hogg of Cedar Rapids says Democrats want somebody who can win and that gives him an edge over his three opponents in the Democratic primary Tuesday. Hogg is opposed by former Lieutenant Governor and Agriculture Secretary Patty Judge of Albia and former legislators Tom Fiegen of Clarence and Bob Krause of Fairfield. Tuesdays winner will try to unseat U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley in November. Ive won five elections in a row, said Hogg, 49, pointing out that each of his opponents lost their last election. Hogg was in Mason City on Friday to participate in a campaign event at North Iowa Area Community College and spoke with the Globe Gazette prior to his NIACC appearance. He has been endorsed by state Sen. Amanda Ragan and state Rep. Sharon Steckman, both of Mason City; state Rep. Todd Prichard of Charles City; and former legislator and now Floyd County Supervisor Mark Kuhn of Charles City. Hogg points to several successes in the Legislature in which he took part, notably flood recovery bills following the floods of 2008. I would say that was my signature issue, he said. He helped pass JumpState legislation which provided funding for flood recovery and he also helped create the Iowa Flood Center, a research and resource center. We wanted to help people recover, but we also wanted to do some things for prevention, said Hogg. He is a strong advocate of renewable energy and is proud of his work that led to solar energy tax credits. He said North Iowans should know he is a strong supporter of family farms, funding for rural schools, conservation as part of rural revitalization, and locally-produced foods. Looking beyond Tuesdays primary, Hogg said Iowans are looking for new leadership in Washington, someone who can uplift democracy. He said Sen. Grassley has been in public office since 1958 and in the House and Senate since 1974. He is currently chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that oversees Supreme Court appointments. His refusal to hold hearings on (Obamas) Supreme Court nominee is a game-changer, said Hogg. It puts him in the middle of the dysfunction of Congress. iStock/Thinkstock(BENTONVILLE, Ark.) Walmart is going to the drones. Specifically, Business Insider reports, the retailer recently held a demonstration of its new drone technology for reporters at a Bentonville, Arkansas distribution center; the devices, it is claimed, will replace inventory quality assurance workers and cut inventory checks that ordinarily take a month to a single day. According to the article, Walmart is working with the FAA and NASA to develop internally autonomous drone technology which would allow a camera to take 30 images per second over Walmart's 190 US distribution centers. The camera scans for tracking number matches, empty spaces and mismatches while an employee monitors the drone's progress via computer. The massive distribution center in Bentonville is 1.2 million square feet. Walmart's VP of Emerging Sciences, Shekar Natarajan, tells the trade that the technology is 6 to 9 months from maturation. Because it is still in the early development phase, there is not yet a specific launch plan, but Walmart noted that inventory checkers will be given new jobs. Walmart also noted that future applications of the drone, as well as other artificial intelligence and virtual reality projects, are in the works at its Emerging Sciences division. Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. MASON CITY A Mercy Medical Center-North Iowa helicopter was the target of three lasers Thursday night, aimed by someone on the ground. The pilot was distracted but neither he nor two crew members were injured, according to Chief Flight Nurse Bryan Williams. The incident occurred about 9:30 p.m. The copter had just taken off and was over the north end of downtown Mason City, said Williams, en route to pick up a patient. Contrary to social media reports, there was no patient aboard, he said. It is very dangerous, said Williams. It has the potential of blinding someone or at the very least distracting the pilot or crew. Williams has been with Mercy for 20 years and chief flight nurse for 17. This is the first time in his career an incident like this has occurred, he said. As per law, a report has been filed with the Federal Aviation Administration and will be turned over to the FBI for investigation because it is a federal offense, said Williams. Anyone arrested and convicted is subject to a $250,000 fine and 20 years in prison. Also, said Williams, there is a $10,000 reward for anyone providing information that leads to an arrest and conviction. MASON CITY Mason City Alternative High School grads marked the beginning of a new chapter as they celebrated their road to commencement on Thursday. Forty-eight students graduated from the school this year. The main commencement speaker was Jaque Hanson, a former graduate and the current director of operations for DealerBuilt, a Mason City-based consulting and accounting firm for car dealers. MASON CITY City and economic development officials expressed regret Friday at the news that Prestage Foods of Iowa is no longer interested in locating in Mason City. And a North Iowa pastor, one of the vocal opposition, urged opponents not to gloat but to help the city heal. Mayor Eric Bookmeyer and Chad Schreck, head of the North Iowa Corridor EDC, said they are ready to move on with other projects. Prestage officials expressed their decision Thursday night. Since the announcement March 21 that the North Carolina-based company wanted to build a $240 million pork-processing plant in Mason City, employing close to 2,000 workers, citizens have been divided on their views. After initial support, the Council followed suit. Proof of the division in the community was a 3-3 council vote on May 3 which defeated the citys development agreement with Prestage. Proponents saw the opportunities for more jobs, a broader tax base and chances for further economic and population growth. Opponents raised mostly environmental concerns. Bookmeyer, who strongly backed the project, said Friday he wanted to extend the citys best wishes to the Prestage family and staff, and he regrets the results in Mason City. There is a city in Iowa that is going to get a tremendous family company and community partner, Bookmeyer said. He said he was also disappointed for members of the city staff, economic Corridor and Chamber of Commerce members and he saluted their efforts. I am also thankful for the three ayes and Mr. Schickel for having the courage to continue to seek solutions, Bookmeyer said. Council members Janet Solberg, Travis Hickey and Brett Schoneman voted in favor; Bill Schickel, John Lee and Alex Kuhn voted against the deal on May 3. Bookmeyer said, We have six great council members that will move forward together. We are already on to the next projects and will continue to sell Mason City as a great city in North Iowa. Schreck said Friday, We respect their decision and wish them success in finding the best location for their new venture. It was important for the company and our community to have closure on this issue, and now we can all move forward and evaluate where we go from here, he said. North Iowa is an incredibly attractive area for business and lifestyle, and the recent interest from companies big and small proves it. We will all learn from this experience, regroup, and build for the future, he said. Rev. Nathan Gann, of the Rhythm Church in Mason City, who opposed the project, said Friday, Our community is fractured, hurting and angry. Healing is what is most important, which will mean seeing past the disagreements and moving forward. That wont be easy. The people who were against this, please dont gloat. All of us can focus on the positives in our community going forward. Our city is not dying. And all of us can help our city leaders, who were on both sides and displayed so much courage in the face of daily criticism, to keep this community exceptional. Rep. Sharon Steckman, D-Mason City, who also opposed the project, said, I have been continually impressed by the involvement of the citizens of Mason City in this entire process. When they spoke in front of the City Council they were articulate, had researched their facts, and showed how strongly they cared about our community. I am looking forward to seeing that energy bring our community together in a positive manner. Steve Noto, head of the Chamber of Commerce board of directors, said, Throughout this process, we found the Prestage family and Prestage Farms to be honest and forthright. While it was our preference for the economic growth and viability of our community to see this plant built in Mason City, we continue to hope it will be built in North Iowa, so our region can benefit from the associated economic and population growth, including increasing our diversity. He said Chamber goals have been and will continue to focus on population growth and increasing the skill sets of the labor force. In announcing its decision on Mason City Thursday, Prestage said in a press release, While we appreciate the outpouring of support and efforts made on our behalf to secure support for our project, it is our belief that additional efforts are counterproductive to our company as well as Mason City. It is clear to us that this project exposed deep divisions among the citizens of Mason City. MASON CITY | The Mason City School Board will discuss its superintendent search during a special session on Monday. The meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. in its administrative building at 1515 S. Pennsylvania Ave. Last month, the board reached an agreement with Superintendent Anita Micich to leave her post a year early with a buyout of at least $285,000 in salary and benefits. Since then, the board has discussed appointing an interim replacement. Micich's last day in the district is June 5. She will be placed on administrative leave from June 6 to 29. Lewis Junior Jackson KANAWHA Lewis Junior Jackson, 88, of Kanawha, died Wednesday, June 1, 2016, at the Kanawha Community Home. Memorial services will be held at 2 p.m. on Saturday, June 4, at the Kanawha Lutheran Church in Kanawha, with Pastor Geoffrey White officiating. Burial will be held at Amsterdam Township Cemetery in Kanawha. Visitation will be held from 57 p.m. on Friday, June 3, at Ewing Funeral Home, Kanawha, and will continue one hour prior to services at the church on Saturday. Mason City officials were informed Thursday night that Prestage Farms has withdrawn the town from consideration as a possible site for a $240 million pork plant. Jere Null, chief operating officer for Prestage, made the Prestage family's decison known in a letter to Mason City and Cerro Gordo County officials. "We are grateful to the local and state elected officials, city and county employees, business and education leaders, farmers, and everyday citizens who offered their support," said Prestage Foods in a statement to the media. "Obviously, we did not adequately address the misinformation campaign that our opponents effectively used to influence public opinion. We will learn from this experience; we hope that Mason City will do the same." An Associated Press article in the Globe Gazette this week highlighted poll results indicating 55 percent of Americans feel helpless with regards to the 2016 presidential election. The numbers indicate most Americans, regardless of political affiliation, believe politicians are unresponsive to ordinary voters. Not surprisingly, a majority of the same respondents said they lack faith in the institutions of government. Other polls say presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and likely Democratic standard-bearer Hillary Clinton are viewed unfavorably by more than half of Americans. No doubt the fact that one of these unpopular politicians will almost certainly become the next president is driving the sense of helplessness many are feeling. Yet all this angst about our leaders and potential leaders doesnt motivate most Americans to seek change. Less than half of our citizens vote in general elections and far fewer take part in primaries or caucuses. Only a handful do anything more to support their candidate of choice. Contrary to the views of some, the people are not rendered powerless by a rigged system. Rather, they render themselves insignificant by deferring political decision-making to those doing the rigging. Taking action is a great antidote for a feeling of helplessness. Too bad more folks dont try it. * * * Speaking of polls In a recent letter to the Globe regarding the Prestage pork plant, Mason City Councilman Bill Schickel said, I believe a silent majority wants their local elected officials to continue to listen, sift through the information, weigh the pros and cons, and do what they believe is right for the community as a whole. A few days later Prestage opponent Kris Plank wrote, The majority of people in Mason City, as well as our friends and neighbors in the surrounding communities, are against the Prestage proposal. This should be over. It seems likely Plank hasnt spoken to the majority of area residents, but rather a select group of like-minded individuals. And if the silent majority has truly been silent, Schickel can do nothing more than postulate as to what they think. Some have called for a referendum on the Prestage proposal, but a physical vote would be costly and not necessarily representative of overall public sentiment. The poll cited in the segment above, conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, relied on data collected from 1,060 randomly selected adults. It would be interesting to have an unbiased third party conduct a similar poll here in North Iowa with regard to Prestage. Subsequent discussions about what the people want could then be based on scientifically derived numbers rather than speculation and wishful thinking. * * * In the same letter, Schickel wrote (a) Bloomberg News article said that the Internet creates a sense of universality that makes it easy to think your bubble is more representative than it actually is. I think thats true. My column in this space on Nov. 1, 2013 headlined No political middle? Blame technology included the following: More than ever there are liberal and conservative networks, newspapers, magazines and websites. From the comfort of home folks can view publications, programs and images catered solely to their point of view, and then link with others who feel likewise. Over time groups across this balkanized landscape develop an exaggerated sense of their own size and importance. Members of each small and intellectually closed community exchange affirmation and tune out dissent, convincing themselves theirs is the mainstream view while those who think differently are a lesser but radical faction seeking undue influence. Im not sure whether to feel validated because a major news organization is offering analysis in keeping with my own or disheartened because its Bloomberg. * * * Just in time for Memorial Day, Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald offered a foot-in-the-mouth gem to reporters in which he seemed to make light of excessive waiting time for appointments at VA medical centers. When you go to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? McDonald quipped. Or whats important? Whats important is, whats your satisfaction with the experience? And what I would like to move to, eventually, is that kind of measure. Other public officials and veterans advocates were quick to condemn the remarks, noting that comparing the receipt of timely medical care to an opportunity to enjoy a theme park ride was flippant and disrespectful. Although McDonald quickly backtracked, the damage was done. This latest VA black eye has me again pondering a question Ive often asked: Do we really need a government medical system just for veterans? Dont get me wrong: Those who have served deserve every benefit theyve been promised, including first-rate medical care. Its just that time and again, some facilities within the VA system have proven unable to provide it, while some administrators have shown questionable commitment to making this right. Some conditions such as traumatic brain injury, PTSD, multiple limb loss and the like are much more prevalent among vets than within civilian population. VA specialty centers dealing with these types of injuries are likely needed to assure appropriate treatment. Many more patients, however, suffer from universally encountered conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, etc. Instead of forcing these vets to use VA facilities, often far away, overburdened and underfunded, why not simply provide them with government-sponsored insurance to seek care within their own communities? * * * Finally, a belated thank-you to all veterans and to the families of those lost while serving, as well as a shout-out to Dr. Steven Allgood for another poignant piece reminding us all to be grateful. Had you not chosen to become a surgeon and a soldier, colonel, you would have made a pretty good writer. Sen. Chuck Grassley's no-holds-barred takedown of the U.S. military's rape culture is a reminder that politicians are complex human beings. Welcome back, senator. You've been missed. Last week, Grassley railed against cover-ups that protect rapists within the Armed Forces and systematic reprisals against victims who report the inexcusable violation. He blasted generals who "lied" to the Senate while downplaying an internal system that punishes victims who speak out. He signed on to desperately needed legislation that would remove sexual assault investigations from internal military purview. The proposed amendment to National Defense Authorization Act would create an independent judicial system to investigate reported sexual assault. In short, Grassley stood up for women who, too often, are twice victimized: Once by a peer and again by an institution that favors machismo and public relations over justice. His justifiable anger followed an inspector general's report that detailed an instance where a female officer reported being raped and was greeted by a career-scuttling evaluation by her commanding officer, Brig. Gen. Charles Viet. This is a perfect example of why it needs to come out of the chain of command and set up a separate prosecution unit for these rapists," Grassley told reporters last week. We share his rage. Five percent of women and 1 percent of men in the Armed Forces -- some 20,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen -- reported a sexual assault in 2013, says a study conducted in 2014 by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's office. Of 329 cases sampled, just 22 percent went to trial and conviction rates were flirting with single digits. Clearly, justice is of no concern to the generals, and they've proven unworthy of the investigatory oversight the system now permits. Politically, Grassley's unequivocal support is a significant boost for the long-languishing amendment. Gillibrand, D-New York, has for years pushed the overhaul of the secretive, victim-blaming military justice system. But her minority status and a general unwillingness among congressional Republicans to condemn the military has doomed it to the dust pile. Blasting civilian bureaucrats at the Veterans Administration is a gimme for members of Congress. Criticizing the military itself is tantamount to heresy in some sects. It takes guts to lambaste a sacred cow. Now, a member of leadership is carrying the bill. Now, a prominent member of the Senate GOP majority is openly denouncing rampant misogyny in the U.S. military. Now, Gillibrand's amendment has a real shot. Now, justice might be had for men and women in uniform. The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman has, for months, been under constant election-year fire for blocking President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. We've pulled no punches when criticizing Grassley's willingness to join the absurd Republican campaign to delegitimize Barack Obama's presidency. But Grassley's strident call to action to end the military's systematic patronage and victim blaming highlights why he's been respected for so long in Iowa and Washington alike. The Garland instance aside, Grassley isn't some partisan hack. He's no one-trick pony. He's an independent, introspective leader who is willing to use his power when it's most effective. That willingness to bring influence to bear just might provide justice for thousands of men and women in uniform who, for too long, were compelled to remain silent. -- By the Quad-City Times, another Lee Enterprises newspaper. NEW YORK, June 02, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Oracle Corporation (Oracle or the Company) (NYSE:ORCL) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Northern District of California, and docketed under 16-cv-02966, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons or entities who purchased or otherwise acquired Oracle securities between September 16, 2015 and June 1, 2016 inclusive (the Class Period). This class action seeks to recover damages against Defendants for alleged violations of the federal securities laws under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the Exchange Act). If you are a shareholder who purchased Oracle securities during the Class Period, you have until August 1, 2016 to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll free, ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased. [Click here to join this class action] Oracle develops, manufactures, markets, sells, hosts, and supports database and middleware software, application software, cloud infrastructure, hardware systems, and related services worldwide. Oracle is among the worlds largest software makers by revenue. Through its Oracle Cloud offerings, the Company purports to be a leader in the core technologies of cloud information technology environments, including database and middleware software as well as enterprise applications, virtualization, clustering, large-scale systems management and related infrastructure. The Companys Oracle Cloud offerings include Software-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service offerings. The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Companys business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Oracle used improper accounting practices to inflate the Companys cloud computing revenues by millions of dollars; (ii) in violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (the Sarbanes-Oxley Act) and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the Dodd-Frank Act), Oracle had terminated a Senior Finance Manager for raising the Companys improper accounting practices to the attention of her supervisors; and (iii) as a result of the foregoing, Oracles public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. On June 1, 2016, after the market closed, media outlets reported that a former Senior Finance Manager at Oracle, Svetlana Blackburn (Blackburn), had sued the Company for terminating her for complaining about improper accounting practices in Oracles cloud services business. In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Blackburn accused Oracles upper management of trying to push her to "fit square data into round holes" to make Oracle Cloud Services' results look better. Blackburns lawsuit accused Oracle of violating the anti-retaliation provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Dodd-Frank Act and alleged that Blackburn was terminated on October 15, 2015, just one month after the alleged wrongdoing began, and two months after she received a positive performance review. On this news, Oracle stock fell $1.60, or 3.97%, to close at $38.66 on June 2, 2016. The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com SAN FRANCISCO, June 02, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced the award of the 2016 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience to Dr. Michael Merzenich for his work in discovering adult brain plasticity and applying its principles to improve the human condition. Dr. Merzenich shares the million-dollar prize with two other neuroplasticity research pioneers Dr. Carla Shatz of Stanford University and Dr. Eve Marder of Brandeis University. Dr. Merzenich is Professor Emeritus at the University of California San Francisco where he ran a government-funded research lab, and is also Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer of Posit Science Corporation, which develops and distributes brain-plasticity-based training programs and assessments. Dr. Merzenichs career arc has repeatedly exemplified the story of a revolutionary scientist. Again and again, he has made break-through discoveries that challenge scientific orthodoxy resulting in skepticism and controversy, followed by rigorous and prolific scientific studies by Merzenich and others, that ultimately create a paradigm shift in the field. As a result of his groundbreaking brain-mapping experiments thirty years ago, Dr. Merzenich overturned the conventional wisdom that plasticity ends in adolescence, and showed that the adult brain remains plastic (or malleable) at any age. Lifelong plasticity is now an accepted scientific fact, but it took more than a decade and hundreds of publications to convince the neuroscience community. In recent years, Dr. Merzenich has been widely honored for his pioneering work in lifelong plasticity and his ongoing application of plasticity across a wide variety of conditions. He is among a small number of scientists elected by his peers to both the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine, and is a recipient of many honors, including the Ipsen Prize, Zulch Prize, Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award, Purkinje Medal and Karl Spencer Lashley Award. Dr. Merzenich first applied principles of plasticity to address a human disorder as a co-inventor of the cochlear implant an invention that has restored hearing to more than 300,000 people with deafness. Making a cochlear replacement that was implantable was viewed as impossible because the natural cochlea uses over 3,000 connections to send information to the brain. Dr. Merzenichs key insight was that an artificial cochlea could work with just 8 connection points, and that the brains plasticity would be able to fill in the missing information to restore hearing. In 2015, he was a co-recipient of the Russ Prize from the National Academy of Engineering, the highest honor in Bio-Engineering, for this invention. In 1995, Dr. Merzenich took a sabbatical from UCSF to co-found Scientific Learning Corporation, a company that has helped millions of school children with language learning and reading, through computerized exercises based on principles of brain plasticity. This work challenged assumptions about how we learn to read, and showed that the root cause of most reading impairment is in how the brain processes information, and is reversible through computerized training. Dr. Merzenich received the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions from the American Psychological Association for his work in childhood learning. In 2003, Dr. Merzenich co-founded Posit Science Corporation to distribute brain training programs and assessments (shown effective in university-based laboratories around the world) to improve cognitive performance in adults. The conventional wisdom held that cognitive decline was an inevitable part of aging, and that other cognitive disorders were not reversible just conditions to which people needed to adapt as best they could. There are now more than 130 peer-reviewed articles on the results of using Posit Science exercises and assessments. Randomized controlled trials have shown a wide range of benefits, including gains in standard measures of cognitive performance (eg, speed of processing, attention, memory, executive function), in standard measures of quality of life (eg, health outcomes, health-related quality of life, mood, feelings of control) and in standard measures of real world performance (eg, functional independence, driving, balance, gait). These and many other results have led to a sea change in the way scientists view aging and cognitive disorders with plasticity-based training offering a new way to improve cognitive function. Posit Science exercises and assessments are available to consumers at BrainHQ.com. Science is driven by the efforts of teams all over the world, Dr. Merzenich told his colleagues when the prize was announced. The key is to work with really talented people so this honor really belongs to all of you and to everyone else from whom weve learned and with whom weve collaborated. His work at Posit Science currently has Dr. Merzenich collaborating with hundreds of university-based scientists around the globe, producing one or two peer-reviewed articles, on average, per month. One of those collaborators is psychiatrist Sophia Vinogradov at UCSF. Science is very siloed, Dr. Vinogradov observed. Part of Mikes genius is that he reaches across silos to talk with experts outside his field about how plasticity may apply to their work. When we started talking about how plasticity might apply to schizophrenia, it opened my eyes to a completely different way of looking at the condition and how it might be treated. When we finally got to run some of the experiments Mike proposed 15 years ago, we learned it was not just a novel way of looking at things, it was a better way. LOS ANGELES, June 03, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Provision Holding, Inc. (OTCQB:PVHO), today announced that it will be presenting at the 6th annual LD Micro Invitational on June 7 at 4:30 p.m. PDT. Curt Thornton, CEO of Provision Holding, Inc. will be giving the presentation and meeting with investors. The conference will be held at the Luxe Sunset Bel Air Hotel and will feature 195 companies in the small / micro-cap space. About Provision Interactive Technologies, Inc. Provision Interactive Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of the publicly traded company Provision Holding, Inc. (OTCQB:PVHO), is the leading purveyor of intelligent interactive 3D holographic display technologies, software, and integrated solutions for both commercial and consumer focused applications. Provision's 3D holographic display systems represent a revolutionary technology that provides the projection of full color, high-resolution videos into space detached from the screen, without any special glasses. Provision is currently the market leader in true 3D consumer advertising display products being implemented by innovative, consumer-focused companies. Provision Holding, Inc. (OTCQB:PVHO) trades on the OTCQB venture stage marketplace for early stage and developing U.S. and international companies. Companies are current in their reporting and undergo an annual verification and management certification process. Investors can find Real-Time quotes and market information for the company on www.otcmarkets.com. For more information, visit www.provision.tv. About LD Micro LD Micro was founded in 2006 with the sole purpose of being an independent resource in the microcap space. What started out as a newsletter highlighting unique companies has transformed into an event platform hosting several influential conferences annually (Invitational, Summit, and Main Event). In 2015, LDM launched the first pure microcap index (the LDMi) to exclusively provide intraday information on the entire sector. LD will continue to provide valuable tools for the benefit of everyone in the small and microcap universe. For those interested in attending, please contact David Scher at david@ldmicro.com or visit www.ldmicro.com for more information. TULSA, Okla., June 3, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Cherokee Nation, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians are partnering again to host the third annual Cherokee Days at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. The three-day event is June 10-12 and free to attend. Cherokee Days showcases a timeline of historical milestones, live cultural art demonstrations and scheduled cultural performances. Among the activities is a make-and-take experience, which allows children to create traditionally inspired Cherokee items. "Cherokee Days at the National Museum of the American Indian has grown into something truly special," said Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Bill John Baker. "This three-day collaboration between the Cherokee and the Smithsonian is easily one of the best showcases of tribal culture and history in the world. Since starting this annual partnership in 2014, we have enlightened and educated thousands of people about who the Cherokee people were in our historical homelands in the Southeast, and who we are today, in the 21st century." Cherokees originally inhabited the lands in what are now present-day Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Georgia. Following the 1838 forced removal of about 16,000 Cherokees to present-day Oklahoma, a few Cherokees were able to evade relocation and settled permanently in North Carolina, forming the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. The Cherokees forced along the Trail of Tears were led by Principal Chief John Ross and established Tahlequah, Oklahoma, as the Cherokee Nation's new capital in 1839. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, headquartered in Cherokee, North Carolina, became federally recognized in 1868. The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians also calls Tahlequah home and became federally recognized in 1946. Leaders of the three federally recognized tribes continually work together and meet annually to advance language preservation and cultural policies. "Cherokee Days is a unique opportunity for visitors and guests to experience the rich culture and history of the Cherokee people," said Principal Chief Patrick Lambert of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. "At a time where there is increasing demand to learn more about the First Americans, working together the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee weave an incredible experience in the heart of the nation's capital. This special festival will continue to spark the interest and warm the hearts of all those who join." "When folks hear the word Cherokee, many think of the Trail of Tears or Sequoyah, who developed the written language, but there is so much more to our collective and intertwined histories. The Keetoowah people left our homelands in the East and inhabited present day northeast Arkansas nearly a decade before removal, prior to settling into Indian Territory," said United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Principal Chief Joe Bunch. "Cherokee Days at the Smithsonian promises to be a highly informative and enlightening learning experience. We have a wonderful opportunity to share our unique story and our culture with thousands of visitors in Washington, D.C." A diverse and multifaceted cultural and educational enterprise, the National Museum of the American Indian is an active and visible component of the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest museum complex. The NMAI cares for one of the world's most expansive collections of native objects, including photographs, paper and photo archives, and media covering the entire Western Hemisphere, from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego. For more information, visit www.AmericanIndian.si.edu. Those unable to attend the event in person can still take part in the Cherokee Days experience through a new interactive website by visiting Anadisgoi.com/CherokeeDays. The site provides a detailed agenda of daily activities and performances, access to information and photos from each tribe's social media accounts, and live streaming throughout the event. Editor's note: Find all the latest Cherokee Nation news at www.anadisgoi.com. Re: However much United States voters may agree that there is waste in [ #permalink x2suresh wrote: However much United States voters may agree that there is waste in government and that the government as a whole spends beyond its means, it is difficult to find broad support for a movement toward a minimal state. (A) However much United States voters may agree that (B) Despite the agreement among United States voters to the fact (C) Although United States voters agree (D) Even though United States voters may agree (E) There is agreement among United States voters that Meaning is crucial to solving this problem: Concepts tested here: Meaning + Parallelism + Grammatical Construction + Awkwardness/Redundancy A: Correct. regardless of the degree to which B: despite the fact that regardless of the degree to which C: despite the fact that regardless of the degree to which D: despite the fact that regardless of the degree to which E: and regardless of the degree to which Hence, A is the best answer choice. Dear Friends,Here is a detailed explanation to this question-Understanding the intended meaning is key to solving this question; the intended meaning of this question is that regardless of the degree to which United States voters may agree that there is waste in government and that the government as a whole spends beyond its means, it is difficult to find broad support for a movement toward a minimal state. Two elements linked by a conjunction ("and" in this sentence) must be parallel. Semicolons and the comma + conjunction construction are used to link two independent clauses; commas are used to link an independent clause with a dependent one; comma cannot be used to join two independent clauses.This answer choice uses the phrase "However much United States voters may agree", conveying the intended meaning - thatUnited States voters may agree that there is waste in government and that the government as a whole spends beyond its means, it is difficult to find broad support for a movement toward a minimal state. Further, Option A correctly uses a comma to join the dependent clause "However much United States voters...its means" and "it is difficult to find broad support for a movement toward a minimal state". Additionally, Option A maintains parallelism between "that there is waste in government" and "that the government as a whole spends beyond its means". Besides, Option A is free of any awkwardness or redundancy.This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "Despite the agreement among United States voters"; the construction of this phrase incorrectly implies thatUnited States voters may agree that there is waste in government and that the government as a whole spends beyond its means, it is difficult to find broad support for a movement toward a minimal state; the intended meaning is thatUnited States voters may agree that there is waste in government and that the government as a whole spends beyond its means, it is difficult to find broad support for a movement toward a minimal state. Further, Option B fails to maintain parallelism between "there is waste in government" and "that the government as a whole spends beyond its means"; remember, two elements linked by a conjunction ("and" in this sentence) must be parallel. Additionally, Option B uses the needlessly wordy phrase "Despite the agreement among United States voters to the fact", leading to awkwardness and redundancy.This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "Although United States voters agree"; the construction of this phrase incorrectly implies thatUnited States voters may agree that there is waste in government and that the government as a whole spends beyond its means, it is difficult to find broad support for a movement toward a minimal state; the intended meaning is thatUnited States voters may agree that there is waste in government and that the government as a whole spends beyond its means, it is difficult to find broad support for a movement toward a minimal state. Further, Option C fails to maintain parallelism between "there is waste in government" and "that the government as a whole spends beyond its means"; remember, two elements linked by a conjunction ("and" in this sentence) must be parallel.This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "Even though United States voters may agree"; the construction of this phrase incorrectly implies thatUnited States voters may agree that there is waste in government and that the government as a whole spends beyond its means, it is difficult to find broad support for a movement toward a minimal state; the intended meaning is thatUnited States voters may agree that there is waste in government and that the government as a whole spends beyond its means, it is difficult to find broad support for a movement toward a minimal state. Further, Option D fails to maintain parallelism between "there is waste in government" and "that the government as a whole spends beyond its means"; remember, two elements linked by a conjunction ("and" in this sentence) must be parallel.This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the clause"There is agreement among United States voters"; the construction of this phrase incorrectly implies that United States voters agree that there is waste in government and that the government as a whole spends beyond its means,it is difficult to find broad support for a movement toward a minimal state; the intended meaning is thatUnited States voters may agree that there is waste in government and that the government as a whole spends beyond its means, it is difficult to find broad support for a movement toward a minimal state. Further, Option E incorrectly uses a comma to join the independent clauses "There is agreement among United States voters...its means" and "it is difficult to find broad support for a movement toward a minimal state"; remember, semicolons and the comma + conjunction construction are used to link two independent clauses; commas are used to link an independent clause with a dependent one; comma cannot be used to join two independent clauses.To understand the concept of "Comma Splices and Run-Ons" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~6 minutes):All the best!Team_________________ Hi @InskoogI see your profile below and will provide some general thoughts here:White, Female, 28 yrs old, 29 when matriculating (sweet spot in terms of age and experience, female provides some edge)School:BS Chemical Engineering from a top 10 Engineering school (excellent academics)Clubs: Officer of Alpha Chi Sigma (professional Chemistry fraternity)Member AICHE (American Institute of Chemical Engineers)GPA: 3.58Deans ListSemester honors multiple semestersBlack mark: Disciplinary Probation my senior year for being intoxicated on campus. I am not sure exactly what the charge was and will attempt to contact the University to determine this. (You will need to address this but not as an excuse but simply be upfront that you made a mistake and that you learned from it and in the many years that have passed it has not happened again. simple, quick, no excuses, learned lesson and moved on.)Work Experience: (work is good but from this profile not necessarily something that will set you apart- however it will be how you tell the story that matters and that's where can help you)Company 1 - Top Tier Consumer Products company June 2010 - July 2011Title: Process EngineerInvolvement in Work Groups:Led the community service organizationMember of the Women In Business GroupMember of the Young Professionals group - Community serviceCompany 2 - Number one Chemical CompanyTitle - Process Engineer Aug 2011 - Dec 2015Title - Quality Management Coordinator Dec 2015 - PresentInvolvement in Work Groups:Officer for Toastmasters (and founding member)Vice President of Professional Development for LGBT group (new position) (Many schools want to make sure they can show leadership and inclusivity in the area so providing details on how you've made a contribution in the club keeps the focus on your results while also indirectly letting them know that you can be an active part of LGBT groups at their school too)Member of the community service organizationMember Women in BusinessCommunity Service post-CollegeVolunteer for a local produce cooperative for the past 2.5 years with more than 60 hours per year- Retail/product handling experience- took over the shop table last yearVolunteered for a few months at the Humane Society before I moved for my second job - very small amount of serviceGMAT: 760, V44, Q49, AWA-8, IR-6 (Certainly this score will get some attention for overall result) You will have the opportunity to make your case heard.MBA Goals:Consulting - initially with a large firm (MBB or Deloitte)Long term - move to industry to do internal consulting for a major company in Oil and Gas, Manufacturing, or ChemicalsLORs:I am unable to get one from my current or previous supervisors from Company 2 - in this climate for chemical engineers it is not worth it to let them know that I am considering leaving the company. Also my previous supervisor here is very much anti-MBA.I have requested one from a mentor who acted as the Engineering Manager on my last project (where I was Lead Process Engineer)I am also trying to get a previous supervisor from Company 1 (supervised me over 3 years ago)If I can't get him, I have a mentor from when I first started at Company 2 and a colleague who has been mentoring me in my new position - Any advice here? (When people find that their job is at risk by revealing MBA plans the best way to handle is to simply put this in an optional essay why you chose the recommenders that you did. The person you choose, if not your direct boss, should be someone in a supervisory role who can speak to your accomplishments.)Target Schools: Booth, Wharton, Kellogg (All worth pursuing and again- Stratus has expertise guiding people to acceptances at all these schools)Back ups: McCombs, Anderson (yes and possibly look for scholarship options here)Thanks for your help_________________ KingKREEP wrote: trahul4 wrote: Do it. It will take you a step above most of the applicants. You really think so? Most of the people I know applying to B-school are dropping student and alumni names in their essays. I personally think dropping names won't add anything to the essay (to make it stand out from the others), but without it, your essay would be weaker. You really think so? Most of the people I know applying to B-school are dropping student and alumni names in their essays. I personally think dropping names won't add anything to the essay (to make it stand out from the others), but without it, your essay would be weaker. Dropping names for the sake of dropping makes no sense watsoever. You have to show what you gained from the conversation. And to really separate urself from others, show how the club will affect ur future or make b-school more endearing to u.Ex.I met with Angeline Jolie and talked to her - no purpose solvedI met with Angelina Jolie, the chairwoman of the hot lips club. We talked how hot lips brings about diversity and fashion intelligence in GSB Hollywood.I was amazed to know how the members of the club work together to determine the correct techniques to make pouty lips and lissome poses. - purpose solveddisclaimer(I am positive there is nothing as Hot Lips club, but if sufficient interest is generated, will open one if admitted to b-school) For the third year in a row, the Macys 4th of July Fireworks will be situated over the East River. Sorry, New Jersey! This year's display will be the 40th anniversary of the show, and a press release explains, "The show, which begins at approximately 9:25 PM, will be fired from two locations along the shorelines of Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn, giving more than three million spectators front row views to the explosive action in the night sky... Set to commemorate the nations 240th birthday with an unparalleled spectacle of color, light and sound, the 40th Anniversary Macys 4th of July Fireworks will feature more than 52,000 shells and effects during a 25-minute tightly choreographed spectacle. Designed and executed by Macys, the show will be centered in midtown on four barges positioned between 23rd and 37th Streets and from one double-barge positioned below the Brooklyn Bridge in the Seaport district." Mayor Bill de Blasio brought the fireworks back to being a NYC-centric affair in 2014, and this year, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney acknowledged his efforts, "There is nothing more beautiful than 4th of July fireworks over the East River where the display can be seen by New Yorkers in three boroughs. I am delighted that the de Blasio administration is once again bringing fireworks to viewers along the East River." Every so often, a newspaper will publish a Rich Person Real Estate Trend piece so horrifying I am certain I will keel over at my desk and die. Usually the Times is responsible for these monstrosities. But somehow, today the Wall Street Journal managed to top even the couple that moved to Williamsburg because it was "exotic," diving into the world of Manhattan homeowners who purchase second vacation homes...in Manhattan. Indeed, the WSJ's strip of real estate discharge introduces one Eric Straus, who, along with wife Varinda Missett, purchased a $1.988 million two-bedroom "weekend home" in Tribeca, which is located a mere 50 blocks from their regular home in Midtown. What I love is that unlike the Hamptons, its a quick subway ride down there, and it totally feels like youre on vacation, Straus told the WSJ, adding that Tribeca is "quietit feels like a country home." And while this may sound insane to people whose rental apartments are so crappy they were inspired to rank their bug infestations, it is apparently a "trend" for homeowners to purchase vacation homes in the same cities as their primary residences, so they have crash pads when they go out late downtown, and/or want to experience the "new restaurants and art galleries" opening slightly farther from the boring neighborhoods in which they already live. "Different neighborhoods have different experiences, one real estate agent told the paper. If you walk on the street in the West Village, its like a different world to the Upper East Side. It is unclear whether these folks are aware you don't have to purchase a $2 million home in a neighborhood to be allowed to visit it, but no matter. Some homeowners profiled in this fairy tale at least seemed to "staycation" in places that take slightly more effort to reach than a 10 minute subway ride, which, as the piece points out, makes sense for people who need to stay close to home for work purposes, etc.. The WSJ mentions people in Brooklyn and Manhattan who rent vacation homes in the Far Rockaway in the summer, but at least there's a beach there, and an historical precedent set by the and the All-of-a-Kind family, who went there to escape the Spanish flu. There's also a couple who live in the Hollywood Hills and have a loft in Downtown L.A., which is technically only 8 miles away but in Los Angeles that's like a 12 hour drive; another couple who live in South Miami and weekend on Key Biscayne get a mention, but since the entire state of Florida is a beach full of armed alligators waiting on line for Harry Potter Land, that means nothing. But, again, Manhattanites are purchasing vacation homes in Manhattan. "Im so in love with Manhattan, and my wife is too, the aforementioned Straus told the paper. We wanted another Manhattan experience. Anyway, the moral of the story is that soon this town will be full of folks purchasing a different Manhattan apartment for each night of the week. ("Monday is Murray Hill night!" one apartment-hopping couple laughingly divulge in the Style story that will finally break me completely.) Good thing we keep building more luxury towers, huh? The man suspected of shooting 16-year-old Shemel Mercurius inside her Brooklyn home on Tuesday was in police custody as of last night, having turned himself in after it was reported that Mercurius told police his name before she died. According to the NYPD, Taariq Stephens, a 24-year-old Brooklyn resident, has been charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon, and will be arraigned today. Mercurius was babysitting her three-year-old cousin when she was shot multiple times Tuesday night. Surveillance video showed a suspect entering and leaving her apartment building, apparently rushing into her apartment with a weapon. According to the NYPD, that weapon was a 40-caliber Kel-Tec submachine gun, which NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce described as "very dangerous." The NYPD confirmed today that there was indeed damning surveillance footage, and that when police found Mercurius semi-conscious, she was able to tell them the first name of the suspect: Taariq. According to the NY Daily News, Stephens, who has six prior arrests, turned himself in last night after his name was released. Though initial reports suggested that he was Mercurius's boyfriend, the NYPD is now saying those reports were inaccurate: Boyce told reporters yesterday that "From what we can read of the texts, it is not a romantic relationship. There's lot more to go in this case, a lot to figure out." Mercurius moved to Brooklyn four years ago from Guyana, where her mother still lives and is currently scrambling to get a visa so that she can attend her daughter's funeral. Speaking with the Daily News, she remembered her daughter as "peaceful, loving, and inspirational." In a statement released last night after Stephens's arrest, Mercurius's family said that "We would like to thank the NYPD for their quick apprehension of the suspect in the murder of Shemel Mercurius. We are now focused on making final arrangements to bury one of the most loving, friendly, and kind 16-year-olds. We are asking for the public's support to help with her homegoing service and burial arrangements. A scholarship in her memory will also be established. Our sincere appreciation and thanks for all your generous gifts and prayers." The family of the man accused of trying to rape a Bronx woman is speaking out about his death. Earl Nash, 43, was killed by the victim's husband, who beat him with a tire iron in their Bronx apartment building, on Monday. Police say that Nash forced his way into an apartment at 1240 Washington Avenue and ripped off Nenegale Diallo's clothes. She said that he threatened her ("I don't want anything. I don't want money. I'm going to rape you") and beat her. At one point, she managed to call her husband, Mamadou Diallo, who then rushed back into the building and, upon seeing Nash, beat him to death. Diallo was initially charged with manslaughter but prosecutors later lowered the charges to assault. A judge released him without bail and Diallo later explained he was defending his wife, "Im not a hero. If anyone touches my family, Im fighting for my family and myself, thats it... Im not happy because I know a man died." Nash has been described as a career criminal, with over a dozen past arrests. He had recently served prison time for bribery and drug possession. Now, Nash's family has released a statement: "We, the family of Earl Nash, are deeply devastated and saddened by the recent events surrounding the attack of Mrs. Diallo on May 30, 2016. Earl has been labeled as a "career criminal" by those in the media. And while it's true he has been in and out of jail for the past 15 years, he had also been diagnosed with and untreated for schizophrenia. "In his early interaction with law enforcement it was identified that he needed serious medical treatment, however the only treatment available was through the correctional system. The Earl we knew and loved was a compassionate man, had a passion for life, loved his family and was a talented and promising actor. After his diagnosis, we watched him become unrecognizable and felt helpless, untrained and therefore unable to give him the support he needed. "As his family who knew him best, we have been mourning losing him to severe schizophrenia for years. We pray that Mrs. Diallo and family will recover from the unfortunate trauma they've experienced. It is evident by the lack of support for mental health treatment, suffered by Earl and many others, that incarceration alone is not the answer. There is much work to be done in the area of mental health reform and its place in the justice system. "We would like to be clear that our family is very empathic concerning this tragic event as we also mourn the loss of our loved one. It is our hope that the District Attorney's Office will review both incidents fairly and in accordance to the law. As you can imagine, this is a very difficult time and we asked the media to respect our family's privacy." A coordinator with the Rockaway Nassau Safety Patrol told WABC 7 that Nash had followed a woman in the Rockaways last Friday, and tried to break into multiple homes: "There was another house he was trying to break in and as we were going, he was constantly on the move and we were here with the police looking for him." Nash was arrested, but was released. At a press conference yesterday, Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce commented about the incident, "Were not faulting [Diallo]l with responding to his wife of course not, [but] call 911." He added: "I have video evidence of him striking this individual with a tire iron alright inside the elevator directly after the assault," said Boyce. "We found the wife to be very believable, gave a very good story we believe that did happen this individual did try to rape her. [Nash] burglarized the apartment, pushed her and assaulted her all of that is true. However we do see this individual take a tire iron and hit him over the head several times we have that on video, he said. So that was presented that will go before a grand jury, well deal with it that way." Boyce reiterated, Call 911 and let us do our job." It's been six months since 30-year-old Victoria Nicodemus was killed in Fort Greene by an unlicensed driver who jumped the curb and ran her over on the sidewalk as she shopped with her boyfriend. The SUV driver, 39-year-old Marlon Sewell, was apparently swerving to avoid hitting a bus, and was charged only with two misdemeanors, which enraged Nicodemus's family and safe streets activists. Since then, her family has been seeking justice for her death, and is now petitioning the Brooklyn District Attorney's office to open a grand jury investigation into the crash, which it has so far been reluctant to do. "We tried to remain hopeful and buy into what the DA's office was telling us, that it was being investigated thoroughly, but we're getting the impression now that they're willing to stand pat with the misdemeanor charges," said Nicodemus's brother, Hank Miller. Those charges carry a fine of up to $500, or up to 30 days in prison. Miller said that the assistant DA handling the case, David Pan, is quite helpful and has been advocating on the family's behalf to take the case to a grand jury investigation, but has been getting pushback from his superiors. Though Miller wouldn't say whether he thinks that's coming directly from DA Ken Thompson himself, he did note that Thompson's been weathering heavy criticism since recommending that Peter Liang, the former cop who shot and killed innocent Akai Gurley in 2014, not receive any prison time. "I hate to have the impression that they fear taking a loss in court, and that's why they don't want to aggressively prosecute this case," Miller said. "If the DA keeps saying it's a difficult case to prove, it's unacceptable. If it's difficult, then work harder, or make the extra effort to prosecute.. It would help us feel better if we were confident that the DA's office was pursuing this aggressively and really considering the fact that it was a life taken." When contacted for comment, a spokesperson for the DA's office said only that the case is "under an active investigation." According to a report from the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, drivers who failed to yield caused nearly 6,000 crashes resulting in death or injury in 2015, and fewer than 40 of them were prosecuted for it. Homicide charges are brought against drivers in less than 7% of cases where pedestrians or cyclists are killed. Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, has joined Nicodemus's family in urging further action, saying today that "this was a felonious act. Any driver behaving that brutally, that deadly, that recklessly, should be charged with a felony. Period. That requires a grand jury investigation. Ken Thompson, please do your job." Nicodemus had been shopping for Christmas decorations in Fort Greene with her boyfriend when she was struck and killed by the vehicle. She'd moved to New York with her boyfriend in 2013 and soon got a job as an art curator at a company called Indiewalls. In her free time, she loved exploring art, film, and music in the city. Since the petition to the Brooklyn DA was posted online two weeks ago, it's garnered over 1,100 signatures, and is nearing its goal of 1,500. Though many of those signatures have come from Brooklyn, Nicodemus's family has also seen signatures from people in Germany, Japan, Iceland, and the United Kingdom. That support, Miller said, has been helpful as the family continues to reel from the sudden loss. "My mom still cries every day," Miller said. "A piece of her heart was torn out and she'll never get that back. But the support's been really fantastic." Whether you're blessed with summer Fridays or not, Midtown's Ocean Prime is hooking you up with discounted seafood and hooch to ease into the weekends. Fridays beginning today and running through September, they'll be doing $1 oysters and $10 sushi rolls beginning at 2 p.m. for the early crowd and ending at 11 p.m. for anyone chained to their desks through happy hour. They're also pouring $10 classes of Veuve Clicquot or Moet Imperial champagne and they'll offer one special cocktail each Friday for $10 also. Ramen Lab's mission to bring unique styles of noodle soups from a rotating cast of chefs continues with this week's YouTubers Fung Bros collaborating with Sun Noodle for a two day pop-up. Today and tomorrow beginning at noon, slurp down Cantonese Sausage Dumpling Ramen with pork dumplings, chicken broth and thin wavy noodles; Chilled Beef Ramen with a beef broth and thin noodles; and Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken Mala Tsukemen, a dipping ramen with a pork tonkotsu broth with mala spicy oil and popcorn chicken. Only 50 bowls of each will be served daily, so factor that into your arrival time. Capizza from Lincoln Ristorante from 2013's event (Nell Casey/Gothamist) One of the city's best food celebrations, Best of the West, returns to the Upper West Side on Saturday at the O'Shea schoolyard at Columbus Avenue and West 77th Street. Beneath the enormous tent, sample bites from UWS restaurants like Crave Fishbar and Olma Caviar Boutique, joining returning favorites Dovetail, RedFarm and Rosa Mexicano. All told, there'll be over 45 restaurants in attendance, plus booze and music. The event runs from 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.; tickets $135 each or two for $250. To recuperate from the weekend's festivities, head over to Precious Metal in Bushwick for a Vegan Waffle Brunch Saturday and Sunday beginning at sleep-in friendly 2 p.m. They'll have both sweet and savory waffle options, which can be paired with the bar's house cocktails and bloody marys. They'll also be selling assorted vegan baked goods if waffles aren't your jam. The brunch, which is run in partnership with Brooklyn Whiskers, runs every other weekend until 6 p.m. 2 hours ago Saudi Arabia is not the same as it was 5 or 10 years ago, says Princess Reema Princess Reema said in an interview with CNN, "It is clear that we have reached a point of contention (with Washington), and many people have tried to politicize this... It is not political, but rather purely economic, based on 40 or 50 years of experience setting trends." Jun 03, 2016 1:00 AM Author: Libby Mitchell Prince was an extraordinary musician and performer. Unfortunately, the cause of his deathan overdose of the opioid fentanylis all too ordinary. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is used to treat chronic pain, says Jennifer Plumb, MD, a pediatrician with University of Utah Health. Now an illicit version of the drug is available and is being used by those addicted to painkillers or heroin. According to the National Institute for Drug Abuse, fentanyl is the strongest opioid approved for medical use in the United States. It is more than 50 times more potent than morphine and 30 times stronger than heroin. Some research estimates that as little as a quarter milligram of fentanyl can be a fatal dose. That makes it extremely hard to reverse an overdose, says Plumb, who also is co-founder of Utah Naloxone, an opioid rescue program. Whereas one dose of naloxone is enough to reverse a heroin or morphine overdose, several doses may be needed to reverse an overdose of fentanyl. That is, if it can reversed at all, she adds. Despite the danger of fentanyl, its prevalence and popularity is growing. Known on the street simply as fent, its users often mix it with heroin or cocaine. That is, if they know they are taking fentanyl at all. Many times, the drug is sold as heroin. That makes it even more dangerous, because people are taking fentanyl without knowing the amount that can cause an overdose, says Plumb. In cities all over the country, this has led to widespread overdose deathssometimes dozens or hundreds of people in a very short time span. Such widespread deaths have not been seen in Utah, but that does not mean the drug is not present in the state. I can say with certainty that fentanyl is being used here, says Plumb. The question is not if deaths will occur, but when. The threat is not just to users of fentanyl either. An alert sent out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year warns first responders and law enforcement that fentanyl exposure can happen through inhalation or skin contact. These are people who are trying to save lives, now having their lives put at risk, says Plumb. There havent been any reports of accidental overdose among these professionals, but the threat is real. There were an estimated 700 deaths from fentanyl nationwide between 2013 and 2015, according to the CDC. That number is misleading though, because often it is unclear that fentanyl was the cause of death. Instead, another opioid is blamed. They will test for opioids, but not specifically for the illicit form of fentanyl, says Plumb. Until those tests are done, we wont know the full reach of this epidemic and be able to educate people and medical providers about it. Princes death, while tragic, will hopefully shine light on the growing fentanyl problem, Plumb says. Fentanyl is frightening. If we dont start understanding its reach and looking for ways to stop it, there is no way to estimate how many lives will be lost. I have owned 240 acres in the Smith River Valley of Meagher County since 1990. I have a beautiful cabin and a bunkhouse on it. Its my summer retreat and, to me, the most special place in the world. Recently, I have seen the Meagher County Commissioners come out in full support of Tintinas proposed Black Butte Copper project on Sheep Creek, the headwaters of the Smith River. They said they are convinced that Tintina is taking extra steps to ensure responsible mining and questioning the messaging of outside groups who are opposed to the mine as scare tactics. Several years ago, when I first heard about the mine, I felt the same way. I thought it would be good for the economy of a depressed area and that modern mining techniques could eliminate the possibility of pollution. I actually bought 20,000 shares of Tintina Resources Inc. I still own them. I am no tree hugger or rabid environmentalist far from it. A substantial amount of my net worth is invested in Exxon Mobil Corporation and BP, plc. I also have a huge investment in a petroleum pipeline operator: Magellan Midstream Partners, and I own shares in a Russian nickel, platinum, and palladium miner (MMC Norilsk Nickel). One of my ancestors was a large investor in a bituminous coal mining operation in Tazewell County, Virginia (Jewell Ridge Coal Corporation). My fathers people were anthracite coal miners in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. So, mining and natural resource investments are in my blood. Unfortunately, after considerable research and due diligence, consultation with industry experts, carefully reading Tintinas application for a mine operating permit, and consulting with some of those outside groups, I have reluctantly concluded that there is no way that Tintina, nor its Australian parent and backer, Sandfire Resources, can categorically guarantee that their mining operations will not harm the Smith River watershed and its fishery. I have researched the history of hard rock mining in Montana and other western states and was surprised to find that even todays mines inevitably pollute. Often, the worst problems occur after the ore body is exhausted or becomes uneconomic, and the mine is abandoned. Physical deterioration then sets in and no one is really there to care. The Smith River, being so iconic, and valuable to Meagher County as a sustainable resource enjoyed not only by floaters and fishermen, but by elk, deer, bird and bear hunters as well, should not be gambled. I think that is the position of responsible conservation groups. It is a tough choice. I know White Sulphur Springs can use jobs and the county can use revenue. But this is not the way. Those jobs, at least the higher paying mining jobs, will go to those with the requisite mining skills and those people dont currently live in White Sulphur Springs. I dont doubt that the mine would create some indirect jobs: hotel maids, restaurant and bar staff, etc., but I would not count on too many and, worse still, these will be low paying. The mine will have only a limited number of jobs, but drifters and homeless types wont understand that. There will be substantial population inflows of unemployed oil field workers and others. These people wont find jobs in your community, but they will surely find their way to drugs, violence and public assistance. So, when you think about it, the economic impact of the mine isnt as positive as one first assumes. Having done the research, I am totally convinced the mine will eventually pollute the Smith. Beyond the impact on the fishery, the impact on landowners property values could be devastating. Especially in the Smith River Canyon, property values reflect not only farming and ranching use, but recreation use. My own property, were it just ranch land, might be worth $200,000; but, given its location on the Smith, has been appraised at $2,000,000. What would it be worth 10-15 years from now in the likely event the mine pollutes the river? I guess maybe half of its present value. Would Tintina or Sandfire reimburse me for these damages? Finally, I, and every other landowner on the Smith in Meagher County, pay a substantial property tax to Meagher County for having the privilege of owning these properties on the Smith River. I have absolutely no issue paying this tax, from which I receive no County services. However, being Meagher County property owners, we expect to be involved in Meagher County issues. The County, nor the Tintina for that matter, has ever approached me or any landowner I have spoken to about our feelings toward this project. Pollution wouldnt affect White Sulphur Springs wells or drinking water, but it would ours. A mine spill wouldnt affect property values in White Sulphur Springs, but it would affect Smith River property values. These are serious concerns that are not being addressed by the county or the mine company. The mine is not at all the panacea Tintina purports and it most likely will harm the Smith River and its long-term economic value as a mecca for fishermen and hunters. We shouldnt gamble that. Robert D. Carl III of Atlanta is a landowner in the Smith River Valley of Meagher County. I listened to a local call-in show recently. There was an emergency room or trauma surgeon discussing and supporting the expansion of the current seat-belt law in Montana to make it a primary offense where you can be stopped and cited for not wearing a seat belt. Some callers railed about their liberties or their rights, insisting on the right to be stupid. We live in a civilized society where the populace can impose reasonable limits on what citizens can do. When you were young you could sit in the outhouse and shoot tin cans off the porch. When you moved to the city, the neighbors in the form of local laws or statutes said that specified actions will not be allowed in the neighborhood, city, state or country. To drive a vehicle on public roads, you must have a valid license, carry insurance, obey laws relating to speed and operation of the vehicle. The restraint systems in today's vehicles help ensure that the driver maintains control and reduces serious injury and death in case of an accident. Several of the callers insisted that troopers, police and local sheriffs have nothing better to do than pull over malcontents who insist on not wearing their seat belts. If you feel infringed upon, do not drive. If you do drive, buckle up. John Horn Helena The high profile campaign finance trial against State Rep. Art Wittich confirmed my worst fears about the use of state power in the hands of the current Commissioner of Political Practices, Jon Motl. His aggressive conduct during this case confirmed for me that he is transforming his office and abusing his power. The commissioner is asking Judge Dayton to fine Mr. Wittich more than $144,000 and remove him from office. Commissioner Motl has also asked the court to award his office more than $30,000 in court costs to cover the prosecution of Wittich. To my mind this is extreme! I fear a chilling effect on Montana free speech in our elections. Public statements against Mr. Wittich by Mr. Motl created media reports portraying him as being involved in some kind of pay-to-play corruption scheme. Mr. Wittich is not corrupt. Just recently Motl took the issue of corruption away from Judge Dayton as well, explicitly abandoning the claim altogether and saying that corruption has no bearing on the case against Mr. Wittich. The real reason for this corruption smear is simple: Motl's office was defending the state in a federal lawsuit to strike down Montana campaign contribution limits, and he stated publicly a finding of corruption would help his defense. Notably, Motl's best "evidence of corruption" by conservative legislators was just roundly rejected recently by Federal Judge Lovell. Nonetheless Mr. Wittich's reputation is now collateral damage. When I served as commissioner of political practices, my staff and I made it our mission to work to ensure they understood the rules. In these cases, our investigations, decisions and subsequent fines were issued with an even, nonpartisan hand. I hope Third District Judge Ray Dayton keeps all of this in mind when, on June 17, he decides whether or not the Office of the Commissioner should be able to continue to be used as a political weapon against hard-working legislators that try to do right for the people of Montana. Ed Argenbright served as Montanas commissioner of political practices from 1993-1999. The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks and the Montana Fish & Wildlife Commission are two different critters. Our FW&P Department presents wildlife management proposals to five, governor appointed F&W Commissioners. Commission meeting minutes regarding wolves, 2007 through 2015, are available, 406-444-7826. Get a copy, its interesting history. At their July 14, 2011 meeting, Schweitzer appointee Bob Ream moved and Moody seconded, establishing a three wolf quota north of Yellowstone National Park. On July 9, 2015, Bullock appointee Gary Wolfe moved and Stuker seconded reducing their quota to two wolves. Yellowstone Buffer Zone wolf quotas were instituted by F&W Commissioners at final season setting meetings. They were not proposed by the FW&P Department or sent out for comment. On May 12, 2016, Department biologists proposed a six wolf quota and a Montana trapping quota of seven fisher. Commissioners rejected the departments proposal and put out two wolf and zero fisher quotas. Department biologists made no Yellowstone wolf quota proposals before their six wolf quota that was shot down by a commission majority. Do wolf advocacy groups and their "green decoys" masquerading as sportsmen try to influence Montana politicians? Could Montana hunters and trappers be "sold down the river" to placate national wolf advocacy outfits who couldnt care less about Montanas hunting heritage? Are environmental activists seeking more federal control over Montana resources, pouring political action cash (PAC money) into our governors reelection campaign? Does wolf predation impact Montanas ungulate populations? Edwin Johnson, licensed Montana outfitter Gardiner Republican candidate for governor Greg Gianforte again dipped into his own pockets to loan his campaign $50,000 on May 24. That's according to the last campaign finance report before Tuesday's primary election. Gianforte raised $37,395 without the loan between May 19-27. Incumbent Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, raised $62,520 in the same period. Gianforte had previously loaned his campaign $272,000; the total is now $322,000. Gianforte reported spending $110,122 between May 19-27, with the biggest chunks of money spent on media airtime, almost $69,000, and a little more than $25,000 on a townhall telecast and a 15,000-piece mail campaign. Bullock reported spending about $6,000, with $4,500 going to digital and fundraising consultants. Gianforte's report includes wages for some staffers, while Bullock's does not. Bullock's report also showed he received $3,300 from political action committees, while Gianforte has said he will not accept money from PACs and called on Bullock to do the same. Bullock staffers have pointed out Gianforte, who sold his tech startup RightNow Technologies to Oracle in 2012 for $1.8 billion, has the ability to self-fund his campaign. On paper, both men face challengers. Republican Terry Nelson reported raising $300 between May 19-27 and had $1,300 cash in the bank. Democrat Bill McChesney reported having no money in the bank, having raised none and spent none, in the same period. Having a primary opponent allows a candidate to raise more money. Late register Polling places are open June 7 for those who have not voted absentee. A current ID is required to vote. People can find their polling place or check to see if they are registered online at https://app.mt.gov/voterinfo/. People can register to vote at their county election office up to and including on Election Day, except for from noon until 5 p.m. the day before election day. Push to the primary Crisscrossing the state is the theme for both candidates for governor in the next week, with Bullock and Gianforte ending their swings in Helena on Monday. Bullock has announced stops in Bozeman on Friday, Billings and Great Falls on Saturday, Butte on Sunday and Helena on Monday. Gianforte has a bit more aggressive schedule, with stops in Billings, Livingston, Bozeman on Wednesday, Hamilton and Missoula on Thursday, Polson, Kalispell and Columbia Falls on Friday, Conrad, Valier and Havre on Saturday, Malta and Lewistown on Sunday and Big Sandy, Great Falls and Helena on Monday. Both are traveling with their running mates, Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney for Bullock and Phillips County Commissioner Lesley Robison for Gianforte. Gianforte's pretrip press blitz repeated themes common in his campaign so far Montana's wages and need to grow an economy focused on tech jobs. Earlier this year Gianforte went to 60 communities on what he called a Regulation Roundup tour, but this is his first swing with Robinson. Bullock will open field offices during the stops on his tour, including one in Missoula and one in Kalispell. BUTTE -- A Butte district court judge revoked a Butte mans six-year deferred sentence Thursday and then reinstated it, telling him if he failed to complete a correctional boot camp that he would be sent to prison. Cody Richards, 20, received the deferred sentence in July 2015 after he pleaded guilty to negligent homicide in a 2013 Halloween crash that killed his best friend, 19-year-old K.P. Kiel Podgorski. A former Butte Central High School athlete, Podgorski was thrown from the vehicle after it careened down a steep embankment off Moose Creek Road. Butte-Silver Bow prosecutors filed a petition to revoke Richards deferred sentence based on a December 2015 report that he failed to complete the Knights program at WATCh, a state Department of Corrections DUI treatment program. On April 21, Richards admitted violating the terms and conditions of his probation as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, who recommended he complete the Treasure State Correctional Training Centers boot camp at the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge. State Probation and Parole Officer Tara Billteen testified Thursday that Richards would benefit from the rigorous program, which focuses on accountability and teaching life skills. She said placement could begin June 8. Deputy county attorney Michael Clague argued that both the state and Billteen recommended the deferred sentence be reinstated. I still believe Mr. Richards is a good candidate for a deferred imposition, he said, adding that the defendant needed an attitude adjustment. Defense Attorney Gregory A. Jackson concurred with the states recommendation, arguing that the guilt and shame of that tragic night weighed heavily on his client. He noted a remarkable change in Richards. Frankly hes very much aware that this would be his last chance, Jackson said. Presiding Judge Kurt Krueger admonished Richards for not working hard to face his substance abuse issues, including testing positive for methamphetamine. Before handing down his sentence, the judge asked Richards where he would go if he failed to do the necessary work, whether he agreed with the requirements or not. Richards answered, To prison. I guarantee youll go to prison, Krueger said as Richards mother wiped her tears. If youre not going to take your addiction seriously, the only thing youre going to graduate with is the Montana State Prison. Standing next to Jackson, Richards thanked Krueger and left the courtroom in the embrace of family members. I continue to preach to the choir on this one, and my little voice holds no sway in the face of any number of loud people who don't think things through. I recently again came across a comment asking, Why don't we hear about (this issue I'm talking about now)? It was in a broadcast, after five minutes had been spent on the topic about which we allegedly never hear. I asked the commenter, What were you doing for the last five minutes? Didn't we just hear about this? There was no reply to my question. But when I pose it on social media, the lack of responses are just as deafening. Someone posts a link to an article and writes, We never hear about this ... Yes, but we have now. You just referenced someone else's story in your post. (I have yet to see a reporter post a link to a story and ask, Why don't we ever hear about this? Because we are hearing about it at that exact moment.) Why don't we hear about things? A lack of interest from the masses. A fragmented audience that works hard at selecting only the news it wants to receive. The phrase mainstream media makes me laugh. What media is so mainstream that a majority of people get their news from it? There isn't one anymore. That's why we don't ever hear about some of these things. It's probable someone has been reporting on them, but the information has been passed over or ignored. If I had a dollar for every time I've posted links to large media conglomerates covering political events my social media acquaintances say are being ignored, I'd have Well, I'd have about five bucks, because I just gave up in frustration. Why don't we ever hear about the people who just give up in frustration? The wait is nearly over. Sonic Drive-in will begin serving its vast selection of burgers, hot dogs, sides, shakes, cones, sundaes, slushes and all-day breakfast to the general public at 10 a.m. Monday. We'll be ready, co-owner Gary Haines said, who is anticipating a huge wave of eager diners to welcome the restaurant to town. It is located at 4851 E. Prosperity Place in front of the Walmart on the city's southeast side. Haines said he has plenty of extra food on hand, and a small army of workers to serve it. In preparation for a busy opening week, some of the 130 workers have been training at nearby locations and seasoned employees from other locations are there to help, too. We know Decatur wanted it, said co-owner Kim Haines, who will oversee the restaurant. I hope everybody comes out to see us. Decatur officials have repeatedly stated that surveys placed Sonic at the top of many wish lists, which helped the couple decide which restaurant to pursue. For those who can't wait until Monday, there will be a special Facebook invite-only event from noon to 7 p.m. Saturday. Hours on Monday will be 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.. Regular hours will be 6 a.m. to midnight Monday through Saturday and 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday. If the opening goes as well as the construction completed in about two months Gary Haines said it could pave the way for a second Decatur location in the very near future on the north side of town. He's already prepared to be bombarded with questions about when and where. *** Dr. John Kefalas, orthopedic surgeon, and the Central Illinois Bone and Joint Center relocated this week from East Lake Shore Drive. Bill Kefalas, practice administrator, said the bone and joint center's new home at 2905 N. Main St., Suite G, is more spacious and offers more parking. He added that Dr. Kefalas also will continue to serve patients at HSHS St. Mary's and Decatur Memorial hospitals in Decatur, as well as Dr. John Warner Hospital in Clinton and Pana Community Hospital. Hours are 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday. For more, go to www.cibjc.com or call (217) 425-2600. *** The Kirlin's Hallmark greeting card and gift shop at the Cross County Mall in Mattoon is scheduled to close for business after June 19, according to staff at the store. The shop is scheduled to hold a 40 percent off sale Tuesday through June 7 and then a 50 percent off sale from June 8 through June 19, a Sunday, before closing down. Kirlin's Hallmark has been part of the Cross County Mall since the shopping center opened in 1971 at 700 Broadway Ave. East. The shop relocated to a larger storefront within the mall and expanded in 1999. BLOOMINGTON Area lawmakers and Gov. Bruce Rauner expressed a commitment on Thursday to continue to work for an agreement to persuade Exelon to keep its nuclear plants open in Clinton and the Quad Cities. There's still time to do this, state Rep. Dan Brady, R-Bloomington, said Thursday after Exelon's announcement that it would close the Clinton plant June 1, 2017. State Sen. Chapin Rose and state Rep. Bill Mitchell, in whose districts the Clinton plant is located, expressed similar sentiments during a news conference on Thursday. Rauner, speaking during a visit to the East Moline Correctional Center, expressed hope that a solution can be found. I'm trying to work with Exelon to keep these plants open, he said. We need to protect those jobs. About 700 people work at the Clinton nuclear plant. Legislation that would provide subsidies for the plants has not been brought to a vote. Exelon has said the subsidies are essential for continued operation, as it competes with other forms of energy. But Brady seemed to question whether the the subsidies sought would work. I don't know if we can level the playing field in the arena of power enough, said Brady, in reference to other forms of energy competing with nuclear power, including wind, solar and natural gas. That's something that's driven by the market. Nevertheless, Brady said, I will do everything I can. Rauner placed the blame on an unwillingness by Illinois Democrats to act on tough votes, and Brady said, The speaker of the House (Democrat Mike Madigan) decides the flow of legislation. But a Democrat from the Quad Cities area, state Rep. Mike Smiddy of Hillsdale, called Rauner's comment disingenuous and told the Quad-Citiy Times that he was willing to work for a compromise to make sure we do have a vote to keep that plant viable. Although this is primarily a state issue, federal lawmakers expressed concern and called on their state counterparts to act. U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Channahon, said he was deeply saddened by Exelon's announcement. In a statement issued Thursday, he urged quick action on a solution to ensure the rest of our nuclear fleet does not meet the same fate as that of the Quad Cities and Clinton plants. U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, a Republican from Taylorville, said in a statement, It's time to set politics aside and find a solution that recognizes the benefits of nuclear energy and the economic opportunities it provides to our state. Exelon's announcement came two days after the final shift of workers left the Mitsubishi Motors auto assembly plant in Normal. This is another devastating blow in terms of jobs, coming right on the heels of Mitsubishi, said Brady. The Quad-City Times contributed to this article. CLINTON On his way to a 7 a.m. meeting in the Nuclear Support Annex, a big conference room with seating for all of the 700 employees of the Clinton Power Station, Christian Small, the manager of the Reactor Engineering Group, at the plant knew what was coming. At that meeting, Brian Hanson, the president and chief nuclear officer at Exelon Nuclear Partners, announced the news that the employees had been preparing for over the course of the past year: The Clinton Power Station would move forward with plans to shut down June 1, 2017, given the lack of progress on Illinois energy legislation. We tried to hold on to hope that there would be some hope for us, but we all knew the closure was inevitable, Small said. The employees would be offered jobs at other Exelon Nuclear sites, but that was little consolation Thursday morning. I went to the University of Illinois and had two internships at the plant before I was hired, Small said. The people that work here took me under their wing 15 years ago. The staff has been so supportive and this plant has really been accepted by the community. Its a somber feeling. Small lives in Champaign, but 143 employees or about 21 percent of the Exelon workforce, live in Clinton. This is devastating news to us, said Clinton Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Marian Brisard. We knew it was inevitable, but when I got a call this morning at about 7 a.m. and it was like a punch in the gut. Other local leaders and residents told similar stories. I was not surprised, but I was mad, said DeWitt County Board Chairman Dave Newberg. As we move forward, it will be very difficult. We are going to lose jobs in this county. Good county employees. Our citizens are going to see reduced services from everything including sheriff patrols. What type of effect is this going to have on the safety of our people. Business people will be hurt. Property values will drop. The loss of 700 jobs is terrible, but when you take a county of 15,000 people and start totaling the jobs up that are affected by this, its massive and it will not be good. I feel bad for the families that have to suffer through the job loss, said Clinton Mayor Roger Cyrulik. The city of Clinton will get by. But its going to be hard. Clinton Public Safety Commissioner Dan Ballenger said he has concerns about police and fire protection in the city with the loss of that many jobs from the community. For tax year 2014, the Clinton Power Stations tax payments to taxing districts totaled $13 million. With this type of a cut coming to us, we will have to cut our police staff, he said. They pay a sum to the fire department and that helps keep our equipment up, but with that said, we have one of the oldest fire stations probably in the state. Just to cut peoples safety, I am concerned about that. When you take $14 million out of economy, we are going to suffer. Clinton residents also were disappointed in the news and many were worried what impact the closure of the plant would have on the city and county. Property taxes from the plant provide 43 percent of the property tax revenues of surrounding local governments and in some localities, substantially more. The Clinton School District, for instance, currently receives $8.3 million, making up about 53 percent of the districts budget. As of now, we dont rely much on state aid, however, we are going to have to more in the future, and that is scary, said Clinton Superintendent Curt Nettles. We are extremely worried. Our community will have to determine what kind of tax rate they are comfortable with and what services they are comfortable with having cut at the schools. There will be big-time cuts. Obviously losing an employer the size Exelon is a concern for the entire area, said Maroa-Forsyth School Superintendent Mike Williams. "I do know we have several families from the Maroa Forsyth School District that are employed there. We would like to wish those families the best of luck as they deal with this difficult time. The true effect of this loss will be determined by the number of families that choose to relocate in order to find employment. We will not know the true effect on Maroa Forsyth for some time," Williams said. Local resident Joe Alexander said he is worried about the ripple effect of losing so many jobs in a town of about 7,000 people. The power plant has been good for the economy of Clinton and DeWitt County and there is going to be a long-lasting, trickle-down effect which is going to be very tough on this community, he said. The immediate loss of jobs is troubling, but so are the long-term problems, such as what happens to that 5,000-acre lake. Ryan McCrady, president of the Economic Development Corporation of Decatur and Macon County, said it was likely that some workers live in Macon County, as well as McLean, Piatt and others besides DeWitt. Regionally, he said there would be opportunities for the displaced workers. Richland Community College and Workforce Investment Solutions are among the entities that could help those workers learn new skills to transition, he said. They'll definitely have some good work experience and good skills to bring into play, McCrady said. Sometimes the exact skills you need to move to another type of industrial manufacturing type of environment require some specific training, but we have very good partners that do that for a living. McCrady said the Decatur-Macon County EDC would prepare to support its counterpart in DeWitt County. If there's any good news, it's that we do have a year to work on this and start seeing what we can do to help, he said. Overseas bank transfers to Armenia amounted to US$104.5 million in April of this year. According to Armenias Central Bank, this amount is 31% less when compared to April 2015. Bank transfers in the opposite direction amounted to $68.5 million, up 11.5% when compared to April 2015. 60% of the total transfers entering Armenia in April of this year originated in Russia, and 13.5% came from the United States. In the case of Russia, this percentage is down 15% from April of 2015. The percentage of transfers from the U.S. remained basically unchanged from April of last year. 40.5% of the total transfers from Armenia in April went to Russia - up 32% when compared to April of 2015). 11% went to the United States in April of this year down 12% from April of last year. By Emma Petrosyan Armik Avetyan, a resident of the village of Shnogh in Armenias Lori Province, lost two of her sons within a span of twenty days in 1992, during the Artsakh War. My Vachagan died first, he was already in the army. My Armen went in 1988. Both perished in the intense fighting of 1992, says Mrs. Avetyan. Vachagans body was the first to be brought back to the village for burial. The family waited for four days, thinking that Armen would return to attend his brothers funeral. He never showed up. Twenty days later, after the funeral, we were reading the letter sent by Vachagan. Suddenly, we saw a bunch of cars in the yard. It was my Armen. When he found out that his brother had been killed, he wanted to take revenge and left. I lost two sons within twenty days, said a teary-eyed Mrs. Avetyan. Her only solace are her other two sons and a daughter who share their parents grief. Mrs. Avetyan has resigned herself to the loss of her two sons, but is quite concerned about losing Valentin, her third son, who suffers from a number of medical ailments. The mother says that Valentin experienced a ton of stress over the death of his brothers and thats when his health started to deteriorate. We took him for treatment here and there. He was alright. But ever since last December, hes gotten worse. I dont know what exactly happened. He complained of shortness of breath and leg pain, Mrs. Avetyan said. Valentin was forced to leave work and stay home, under the care of his parents. While married, Valentin has no children. The extended family of seven, none who work, live in a two room apartment. Mrs. Avetyan has health issues of her own. Shes been operated on six times and needs another. But her sons health is a priority for her. We took him to a doctor in Alaverdi who sent us to Vanadzor, who then sent us to Yerevan. From there we were sent to Nork-Marash. They took x-rays and found water had collected in his lungs and that one of his heart valves was closed and another was in poor shape, Valentins mother said. Valentin was prescribed medications and scheduled for surgery. Due to a lack of family finances, the operation has been delayed. Varouzhan Avetyan, Valentins father, has knocked on all possible doors for assistance. Ive gone to the defense and health ministries and have petitioned the chief cardiologist. Ive asked that Valentin be put on a list for state-financed surgery. They said it was impossible and that the best they could do was give us a 200,000 AMD discount. I even hired a lawyer to draw up some letters to be sent to the appropriate agencies. None have yet to be answered, said Mr. Avetyan. The father of two dead Artsakh soldiers has given up any hope on receiving assistance from the government. He was told by a deputy minister at the defense ministry that the country is now at war and that many are being killed. We cant help you and thats final, was what he told me, says Valentins father, who cant remember the name of the official. Mr. Avetyan even went to see the president of Armenia but was turned away. He was told the president doesnt see people off the street. Valentins mother is placing her hope on the kindness of strangers. I cant bring my two sons back. I can only be proud that I had two hero sons. I just want for this other son to get better, she says. Heart surgery for Valentin will cost 3.4 million AMD (US$7,200). Bank accounts for those wishing to donate have been opened by the Avetyan family. VTB-Armenia Bank, Alaverdi Branch AMD 16019032720700 USD 16019032720701 EUR 16019032720702 RUR 16019032720703 AMD 16019032720700 USD 16019032720701 EUR 16019032720702 RUR 16019032720703 Top photo (from left): Valentin and his father Varouzhan Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less. The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalisms reporting on criminal justice issues is supported by a grant from the Vital Projects Fund. The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates. Johnice Miller, left, of the Madison-based LGBT band Color Me Once, sings during a rally in front of the Capitol after the OutReach Pride Parade in August 2015. A Racine man accused of trying to break into parking meters who told police he was plugging them with pennies because hes a nice guy will be spending some time in prison for the alleged caper. Nicholas D. Craft, 28, was spotted at about 10:15 p.m. on July 27 by a Racine police officer as he was trying to force open a parking meter on Seventh Street at Wisconsin Avenue, according to his criminal complaint. However, parking meters on Seventh Street and Wisconsin Avenue in Racine do not accept pennies as payment. And two parking meters that a police officer reported seeing Craft trying to manipulate with a long, slender hand tool had no vehicles parked in those corresponding spaces, the complaint states. Racine County Circuit Judge Eugene Gasiorkiewicz sentenced Craft on Thursday to one year in prison plus one year on extended supervision. Craft pleaded no contest on March 15 to a sole count of possession of burglary tools, a felony. It was punishable by a maximum of 1 years in prison plus no more than two years on extended supervision. Gasiorkiewicz also ordered Craft not to consume any alcohol or illegal drugs, obtain therapy and a full-time job, and undergo alcohol and drug abuse counseling. Gasiorkiewicz said he is eligible for the Challenge to Incarceration and substance abuse programs, which if successfully completed could knock time off his prison stint. The officer stated Craft was holding a padded manila envelope, with what appeared to be heavy objects inside, the complaint states. Inside that envelope were wire snips, several screwdrivers and a large steel hammer, according to the officer. There were scratches and pry marks on both meters, the complaint states. A man being arrested for loitering in a Southwest Side pharmacy parking lot Thursday night got into more trouble when police looked inside his backpack, allegedly finding a handgun and a bag of oxycodone pills. Chandler Eaton, 19, Waunakee, was tentatively charged with possession of a firearm by a felon, possession of Schedule I or II narcotics and unlawful trespass, Madison police said. The incident happened at about 8 p.m. in the Walgreen's parking lot at 5702 Raymond Road. "Officers were doing surveillance on the parking lot because of past drug trafficking problems there," said police spokesman Joel DeSpain. After watching Eaton for awhile, officers approached him to arrest him for trespassing, before allegedly finding the gun and drugs. A Madison man stopped by police on the Beltline Thursday was arrested for allegedly stealing the car he was driving, taken during a burglary in Illinois. James Champlin, 34, was tentatively charged with operating a motor vehicle without consent, and could face other charges in both Illinois and Wisconsin, Madison police said. The car was stolen from a Rockton, Illinois residence. "Rockton police indicated the stolen car was taken during a burglary that occurred while a family slept," said police spokesman Joel DeSpain. Police recovered items taken in the burglary from the car; police also found stolen credit and identification cards and other items linked to criminal activity in the car. 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. GREEN BAY --In a party split between presidential candidates, two things brought Wisconsin Democrats together Friday at their state party convention: a dislike of Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump and cheers for their likely U.S. Senate nominee, Russ Feingold. The party's annual showcase event runs through Saturday afternoon. The tension underlying the convention centers on differences between backers of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who convincingly won the Wisconsin Democratic primary, and Hillary Clinton, who has a solid delegate lead in the national nomination process and support from many elected Democratic office-holders. The reaction of Democratic delegates Friday night showed both sides could rally behind Feingold -- and a running criticism of Trump that was part serious, part humorous. Keynote speaker and U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who has been floated as a possible vice presidential pick for Clinton, praised both Democratic presidential candidates in equal measure. Then he implored Democrats to unite to defeat Trump. "In the face of a demagogue, to be divided is to be defeated," Perez said. Other speakers picked up the theme, albeit in lighter terms. U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin sought to link Trump to Wisconsin Republicans, ridiculing him as Scott Walker with a spray-tan. U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore used a Trump bobblehead doll as a prop in her remarks. Rep. Mark Pocan's introductory video montage drew one of the night's biggest laughs with a clip of former GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush saying of Trump: "He needs therapy." Feingold is vying to return to the U.S. Senate by challenging Republican Sen. Ron Johnson. In his speech Friday, Feingold called for raising the minimum wage, preserving and strengthening Social Security, and making broadband Internet service a public utility. Feingold frequently invoked his recent tour of all 72 Wisconsin counties -- saying no one at those tour stops urged him to build a wall on the Mexican border, as Trump has vowed to do. He also focused on the changes brought to Wisconsin by Walker and GOP state lawmakers, while rejecting the notion that the state has been hopelessly divided by the political battles of the last five years. "What I hear from most Wisconsinites is that we are ready to unite again," Feingold said. Feingold, speaking in a press conference after the convention, blasted Trump for his recent remarks that a California federal judge should recuse himself from lawsuits concerning Trump University over which he has presided due to a conflict of interest because that judge is of Mexican ancestry. I think the language (Trump) is using in the context of this judge, the language he has used in other contexts, is disqualifying for him to be President of the United States, Feingold said. Day two of the convention on Saturday is when Democratic delegates will debate resolutions and elect Wisconsin's four Democratic National Committee members for terms beginning after the Democratic National Convention in July. In a sign that party officials may be skittish about the Sanders-Clinton dynamic, the website wispolitics.com reported Thursday that Wisconsin Democrats are banning the site from buying a table at the convention to conduct a straw poll of Democratic delegates -- which it has done regularly at conventions of both parties for 16 years. A few Sanders supporters held a press conference at the convention Friday afternoon to charge national Democrats have "stacked the deck" in favor of Clinton winning the nomination. Sanders supporters say they plan to propose resolutions Saturday urging the national party to end the system of so-called super-delegates, or party leaders who vote, as delegates, for the party's presidential nomination. Super-delegates are not bound by the results of states primaries or caucuses as most delegates are, leading critics to say they do not reflect the will of voters. Some super-delegates to this year's convention have not signaled which candidate they will support, but the overwhelming majority of those who have are backing Clinton. Internal divisions notwithstanding, members of both camps gave a warm greeting to Feingold, who served in the Senate from 1993 to 2011. Speaking Friday morning before the convention, Pocan, D-Black Earth, said the enthusiasm for Feingold stems both from the candidate and the role he could play in Democrats retaking the U.S. Senate this fall. Wisconsin is considered a virtual must-win state for Democrats if they are to do so. Russ is going to be the star of the convention," Pocan said Friday morning. "Clearly the path to taking back the US Senate starts in Wisconsin. Check back for updates Friday and Saturday as the convention continues. Wisconsins water quality regulators failed to follow their own policies on enforcement against polluters more than 94 percent of the time over the last decade, the states nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau said in a report released Friday. From 2005 to 2015, there was a general decline in state Department of Natural Resources enforcement activity to protect lakes, streams and groundwater from large livestock farms, factories and sewage treatment plants that discharge liquid waste, according to the bureaus 124-page report. During a period when elected officials from both political parties have decreased DNR staffing, notices of violations were issued to polluters in just 33 of 558 instances serious enough for such citations under DNR policies, the audit found. The DNRs record of meeting its goals for inspections of polluting facilities every two to three years has been uneven, with the standard being met for fewer than half of the places many years. And some inspections of concentrated animal feeding operations 6.5 percent of the total took place after the agency reissued the farms permits instead of before, a violation of state and federal law aimed at ensuring CAFOs keep their huge quantities of manure out of water, auditors said. Much enforcement is based on compliance reports polluters are supposed to file annually, but auditors found that DNR staff didnt have time to fully review the reports. Only 36 of 1,900 CAFO reports were electronically recorded as having been received by DNR field offices, making it impossible for supervisors to spot problems. The report provides a pretty damning assessment, said Sarah Geers, a staff attorney for Midwest Environmental Advocates, a public interest law firm that has challenged the DNR to improve its performance. A lot needs to be done. A co-chairman of the Legislatures audit committee said he wants to know how much funding the DNR needs to set things right, and the audit bureau called on the DNR to report in November on recommended changes in nine areas. Adequate, consistent, and timely enforcement action is important to ensuring the integrity of the (water quality protection) program, the audit report said. Heavy workloads and high turnover of DNR employees may have contributed to inaction when excessive toxins that are human health hazards were detected in wells set up at five CAFOs to check for groundwater pollution, auditors said. Years later, one farm closed a manure pond and another shut down completely, but not because of any documented DNR action. In the three other cases the department said it was still evaluating the situation as many as 11 years after pollutants were found. In pointing out that the DNR didnt follow its own enforcement policies, the audit appears to contradict previous DNR statements defending dwindling enforcement action in recent years by saying the agency was working hard to obtain voluntary compliance from polluters through informal negotiations. The DNR can no longer hide behind the implication that facilities are just doing a better job of complying with their permits, said Jimmy Parra, a Midwest Environmental Advocates attorney. The reality is that DNR isnt inspecting facilities as it should be and isnt taking enforcement action in accordance with its own policy. Auditors also examined how quickly the DNR renewed five-year pollution permits, legal documents that establish limits for waste water discharges, and found the agency usually missed its goal of renewing 85 to 90 percent of permits before they expire. Over the 11 years the audit covered, the goal was missed six times for municipal waste water operators, twice for CAFOs and every year for industrial polluters. The audit found 41 incidents, or 2.9 percent of the total, in which it took the DNR six or more years to renew an expired permit. Permit holders continue to operate under the conditions of the expired permit until a new one is issued, which means they may not be subject to new limits that are set based on the latest scientific research, Parra said. A good example can be seen in the exacting phosphorus standards for waste water the DNR adopted in 2010 to control unnatural weed and algae growth that afflicts hundreds of lakes and streams, Parra said. Because of the backlog many facilities still do not have permits that incorporate those standards, Parra said. DNR spokesman Jim Dick said the audit covers several areas the DNR has been working on. The DNR has recognized many of the issues identified by the audit bureau, and has already, or is in the process of, establishing systems to address them, Dick said in a statement. In 2011, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency listed 75 deficiencies in state laws and administrative rules on water pollution. Among those were 64 deficiencies related to waste water regulation the audit reviewed. Of those, 33 had been addressed by the DNR as of April and the remaining 31 were in the process of being addressed, according to the audit report. The EPA said Friday four of the 75 deficiencies are resolved. The DNR spokesman on Friday said the agency adopted six of eight planned regulatory rules packages designed to account for many of the 75 deficiencies. Dick said enforcement activity related to the states growing number of industrial farms, or CAFOs, has increased from 2005 to 2015, and only 24 percent of municipal and industrial pollution permit applications were considered backlogged as of April, down from over 35 percent four years earlier. DNR consistently meets its inspection commitments agreed to with EPA, Dick said. In addition, DNR appreciates (the) audit report finding that pointed out DNR performs more frequent inspections of CAFOs with previous violations an example of how staff time is prioritized to focus our inspection efforts. A member of the Legislatures Republican majority who has taken a leading role on environmental issues said he was troubled that DNR wasnt following its own enforcement policies. This finding is troubling and I am awaiting further explanation from the agency on how they plan to address inspections and noncompliance Sen. Robert Cowles of Green Bay said in a statement. Cowles, co-chairman of the Legislatures Joint Audit Committee, which requested the audit, said he wants the bureau to determine how much funding the DNR would need to address the issues. In 2015 Gov. Scott Walker and the Legislature cut the DNRs two-year budget, and department executives are currently conducting an internal realignment study to allocate staff to the agencys core mission at the urging of top elected officials and in anticipation of further reductions in 2017. Walker and legislators havent said publicly what the core mission should be, but in the 2010 campaign season that brought Republicans to power, Walker promised to tame an out-of-control DNR, saying that regulators and scientists had slowed job growth. The reality is that DNR isnt inspecting facilities as it should be and isnt taking enforcement action in accordance with its own policy. JIMMY PARRA Midwest Environmental Advocates attorney Wayne Bender, whose quest to donate his organs despite having ALS was featured in a series on transplants in the Wisconsin State Journal last year, died last week without donating his organs. The State Journal article that featured Bender July 6 focused on imminent death donation, a controversial proposal to allow people to donate organs just before life support is removed. Bender, 57, of Madison, was diagnosed with ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrigs disease, in 2014. Shortly afterward, he asked doctors at UW Hospital if he could donate a kidney before his health deteriorated too much. They said no because the procedure could speed up his death, and if he died within six months afterward it would be a black mark on the hospitals transplant program, said Dr. Josh Mezrich, a UW Hospital transplant doctor. Bender then told Mezrich he wanted to donate as many organs as possible upon his death. It was unlikely Bender was going to be able to donate in the most common way, after declaration of brain death, because he almost certainly wasnt going to become brain dead as people often do after brain injuries. If he had tried another method circulatory death donation, or donating after the heart stops he might not have died quickly enough for the organs to be usable. That is why he and Mezrich discussed imminent death donation. Mezrich wrote about the situation in The Atlantic. In the end, however, Bender said he wanted to try circulatory death donation, which would have required him to be admitted to the hospital and hooked up to a ventilator before the breathing tube was removed to control the timing of his death. Instead, he was admitted to Agrace HospiceCare May 26 before dying there May 30, his longtime girlfriend said. Bender decided it would be too hard to get to the hospital, from home or Agrace, in order to donate, she said. If he had needed to go to the hospital for another reason, he would have proceeded with his desire to donate his organs, she said. Bender had three adult children, including two whose weddings he attended out of state last summer despite his condition. Longtime Madison journalist and alternative media leader Norman Stockwell has been named publisher of The Progressive Magazine. Stockwell, whose local activist roots go back to the Mifflin Street Co-op of the 1980s, will join the 107-year-old magazine July 1, according to editor-in-chief Ruth Conniff. She described Stockwell as extremely well-respected in the broader alternative media world. Maribeth Batcha, who had been serving as interim publisher, remains at the publication as circulation director. She replaced Matt Rothschild, who left in 2015 as editor and publisher to become executive director for the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Stockwell spent the last 33 years at Madisons WORT Community Radio, where for the past 21 years he has been operations coordinator. His background includes running a folk music school, working at the co-op, a print shop and as an archaeologist. As a journalist he has covered national and international issues in a variety of media. The Progressive describes itself as a monthly magazine of investigative reporting, political commentary, cultural coverage, activism, interviews, poetry, and humor. Dont look for leadership from Gov. Scott Walker on getting people and products where they need to go in Wisconsin. The governors Department of Transportation is requesting a state budget that pretends roads dont cost more money to repair and improve. DOT Secretary Mark Gottlieb, at the direction of the governor, said Wednesday he wont seek any major tax or fee increases a move he acknowledged would delay projects across the state. That leaves it up to the Republican-run Legislature to press for a fiscally responsible transportation budget, rather than stalling badly needed work and borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars to get by. The good news is GOP leaders in the state Assembly are showing some political courage by considering an increase in the states gas tax, which hasnt been raised in a decade. The 30.9-cent-per-gallon tax is really just a user fee that charges motorists for driving on roads. Gas tax revenue has been basically flat since 2006, at about $1 billion a year, while the cost of road maintenance and construction has soared. The governors irresponsible approach has been to borrow and delay. He sought $1.3 billion in borrowing for transportation in the current state budget, which the Legislature wisely reduced to $850 million. In the previous budget, the state borrowed $1 billion for roads. Thats unsustainable and short-sighted, costing taxpayers more in the long run. When the state puts off maintenance, such as replacing asphalt on the base of a road, the base wears out faster. That shortens the lifespan of the road, causing more frequent and costlier reconstruction. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, gets that point. He says the Assembly is willing to consider a higher gas tax or vehicle registration fee after an audit of the highway program this fall. Raising needed revenue through reasonable user fees will allow the state to maintain good roads, saving taxpayers money over time. Vos offers a powerful case for higher road revenue to fellow Republicans: It is not more conservative to borrow and spend than it is to actually raise the revenue and allocate it efficiently, he told the State Journal editorial board in March. Hes right. Another option worth pursuing is tolling some of the states interstate highways. The idea enjoys bipartisan support because it would bring in more revenue from Illinois tourists and over-the-road trucks. Illinois drivers are accustomed to paying tolls on major roads in their state. The tolls dont require cars to stop. The federal government would have to give its blessing to tolls in Wisconsin. Vos and others have urged Wisconsins congressional delegation to support the option. Some states have been granted waivers for tolling. If they dont use those waivers, other states will have a chance. The Assembly wisely pushed for a study of toll roads, their impact and potential income in the current state budget. Without more revenue from motorists, two Dane County projects face delay the ongoing reconstruction of Verona Road, and the expansion of Interstate 39-90 from Madison to Beloit. Iowa and Michigan have increased their gas tax to help pay for roads. Wisconsin should similarly raise user fees to cover increasing cost. Donald Trumps presidential candidacy presents decent people everywhere with a dilemma: Sprayed with an open fire hose of schoolyard insults, locker-room vulgarities and bizarre policy pitches by the presumptive Republican nominee, they must make hard choices. Is this latest comment so outrageous, so much worse than all the others, as to require its own response? Speak up too often and you risk sounding like a car alarm, so urgent and yet so familiar that residents no longer hear it. But dont speak up often enough and you risk turning the unacceptable into the unremarkable. At a rally in San Diego, Trump again steered his pirate ship into uncharted waters, firing off personal and racially tinged attacks against a federal judge hearing a case in which Trump is the defendant. The judge, Gonzalo Curiel of the Federal District Court in San Diego, is presiding over a class-action lawsuit that accuses Trump University of defrauding and misleading customers who spent $1,500 for three-day seminars that promised to teach Trumps secrets of success in real estate. Shortly after Trumps rally, Judge Curiel ordered the unsealing of about 1,000 pages of the companys internal documents. The release, which came in response to a request by The Washington Post, was standard procedure for a civil suit. But Trump doesnt do standard procedure. In a rambling, 11-minute stream of vitriol, Trump, who has attacked Judge Curiel before, called him very hostile and a hater of Donald Trump, and said he should be ashamed of himself. I think its a disgrace that hes doing this. One would think Trump, whose sister is a federal appellate judge, would know how self-destructive it is for any litigant anywhere to attack the judge hearing his or her case. But Trump is not any litigant; he is running to be president of the United States a job that requires at least a glancing understanding of the American system of government, in particular a respect for the separation of powers. When Trump complains he is getting railroaded by a rigged legal system, he is saying in effect that an entire branch of government is corrupt. The special danger of comments like these however off the cuff they may sound is that they embolden Trumps many followers to feel, and act, the same way. For good measure, Trump added that Judge Curiel happens to be, we believe, Mexican. False. The judge is from Indiana. But facts are, as always, beside the point for Trump, who reassured his audience that the Mexicans are going to end up loving Donald Trump when I give all these jobs. (Presumably he was not referring to those he has promised to deport if he is elected.) In a masterpiece of understatement, Judge Curiel, who is prevented by ethical rules from responding directly to comments like these, noted in his order that Trump has placed the integrity of these court proceedings at issue. Trump turned his fire back to the media in addressing news reports he had failed to give a $1 million gift to a veterans charity as he had promised in January. He said the donation had now been made, called one reporter a sleaze and complained that the news media make me look very bad. Trump has said so many irresponsible or dangerous things so often and in so many settings that there is a real risk that many voters will simply tune out and his campaign will somehow be normalized. So it is particularly important to note when Trumps statements go beyond the merely provocative or absurd and instead represent a threat to Americas carefully balanced political system. This is such a moment. It is not too late for Republicans who revere that system to question how they can embrace a nominee who has so little regard for it. Gov. Scott Walker's attempt to be a hero to the American Legislative Exchange Council and conservative supporters is taking Wisconsin down a dangerous path. He has discredited public education and has cut funding for education from elementary schools to the University of Wisconsin System. He pushed through a tax cut that benefits a segment of the electorate over the common good. The Department of Natural Resources is losing its ability to oversee the building of high capacity wells, and water quality and supply will suffer. We will see the shortsightedness of his plans a few years down the road as Wisconsin's quality of life is eroded. Also, the open records law that Gov. Walker had tried to gut has revealed our governor to be dishonest. When legislation to rewrite the Wisconsin Idea was exposed, Walker attributed that to a drafting error. The records that were finally released recently showed Gov. Walker led the effort to make those changes. We have a dishonest governor with misguided policies and legislators who do what they are told by donors. This is not the Wisconsin way. -- Gene Bier, Milton Motorists will be detoured off of Highway 14 at Interstate 39/90 in Janesville on Monday and Tuesday nights, so girders can be set for the newly widened southbound interstate bridge. The Wisconsin Department of Transportation said westbound Highway 14 will be closed from 10 p.m. Monday to 6 a.m. Tuesday, and eastbound Highway 14 will be closed from 10 p.m. Tuesday to 6 a.m. Wednesday. Traffic on Highway 14 will be directed to the signed detour route using Deerfield Drive and Highway 26. Ramps at the interchange will stay open, but left turns from I-39/90 to Highway 14 will be restricted during the respective closures of Highway 14 under the interstate. Motorists should drive with caution through the work zones; the planned placement of girders is weather dependent and subject to change. SPRINGFIELD - After trying and failing to approval from the state of Illinois for a financial plan that would have included a rate hike, Exelon announced Thursday that it would shut down its nuclear plant in Clinton in 2017 and another in the Quad Cities in 2018. U.S. Congressman(IL-13) said he hopes there's a chance to keep the plant open, but it will take action from the state legislature. Depending solely on "renewable energy sources" is short-sighted. "I think the key point that many lose sight of when a large baseload generating plant like Clinton would close is how much of an impact that has on the overall power grid and what that does to the supply, and what that does to prices for consumers," Davis told the News-Gazette. "Renewable energy sources have their place but renewables like wind and solar and even hydropower cannot power the American economy. Nuclear energy does not get the credit it deserves for zero emissions and generating a lot of capacity. Nuclear energy gets a bad rap because of the waste." UPDATE x1: Congressman Adam Kinzinger (IL-16) issued the following statement: Im deeply saddened by Exelon's announcement today that they intend to close the Quad Cities and Clinton nuclear plants. Illinois energy depends heavily on these facilities and will suffer greatly from their closing, but that is only part of the story. Todays announcement is a tragedy for those workers and their families that have dedicated their professional lives to providing clean and reliable power to our region for decades. In a time where the Illinois economy is stagnant, the State Legislature should be leading the effort to modernize our energy policies to provide an environment in which these sources of clean, baseload energy are able to survive. I urge those in the State Legislature to quickly find a solution to ensure the rest of our nuclear fleet does not meet the same fate as that of the Quad Cities and Clinton plants. Exelon said today it will undertake the following actions in reference to the two plans: Making permanent shutdown notifications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission within 30 days. Terminating capital investment projects required for long-term operation of Clinton and Quad-Cities, which will affect more than 200 workers. Immediately taking one-time charges of $150 million to $200 million for 2016, and accelerating approximately $2 billion in depreciation and amortization through the announced shutdown dates. Canceling fuel purchases and outage planning, which will affect more than 1,000 outage workers. The Clinton plant just completed what may have been its last refueling. Retiring the plants will have a significant economic and environmental impact on the region, Exelon told the News-Gazette. The Clinton and Quad-Cities plants support approximately 4,200 direct and indirect jobs and produce more than $1.2 billion in economic activity annually. But this time, it looks like more than the Illinois Republican base is catching on RealClearPolitics writes today that even at the national level, Republicans are zipping their funding wallets closed for Kirk: One of the 10 most vulnerable Republicans , the senator - who has done almost everything possible to turn off the conservative voters he despises - seems determined to push his campaign down to the November election wire. This time, conservatives will yawn when he and his envoys will once again attempt to heap tons of guilt on the Illinois Republican base for the U.S. Senate losing a seat to the Democrats. CHICAGO - The outlook for Illinois' U.S. Senator Mark Kirk's bid to be re-elected in 2016 is looking gloomier and gloomier - despite the cheery emails his campaign sends out about funds coming in. Republican outside groups have spent tens of millions of dollars in competitive Senate races this year, eager to protect GOP incumbents in a difficult cycle with the chambers majority up for grabs. But as that spending has ramped up in recent weeks, next to none has gone to bolster Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk, widely viewed as the most vulnerable of them all... ... For some of these Republican groups, its a simple calculation: Illinois is a deeply blue state in presidential election years, and with so many other competitive races in battleground states, investing there may not be the best use of resources. It is an enormously difficult state to be a Republican running statewide in a presidential year, said one party operative who works for an outside group and who requested anonymity to discuss strategy. I think you could bring Abraham Lincoln back from the dead to try for the Senate seat and he would have trouble in 2016, or he would be a decided underdog in 2016. Then Thursday, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) announced their decision to house the new NGA West headquarters in St. Louis, Mo., rather than on the Illinois said, adjacent to Scott Air Force Base in St. Clair County. Although the senator is chairman of the subcommittee overseeing the NGA relocation funding, he couldn't get them to pick Obama's home state over its neighbor to the west. "This isn't the first time NGA has deliberately used bad information to make a bad decision, which is why I have asked the top government watchdog to ensure this decision is best for the warfighter and taxpayer, said Senator Kirk. And Right Side News reports that Senator Kirk is making a "sneaky" maneuver to open the amnesty doors in a year when the head of the ticket is using illegal immigration as a hot button issue: Senator Kirk Trying to Use NDAA as Amnesty Vehicle Again Pro-amnesty Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) is trying to sneak amnesty into the Fiscal Year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a bill meant to fund our troops. For the second straight year, Sen. Kirk has introduced an amendment modeled off of Rep. Jeff Denhams (R-CA) ENLIST Act that requires the Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary to issue green cards (legal permanent resident status) to certain illegal aliens just for enlisting in the military. (SeeFAIR Legislative Update, June 16, 2015) Specifically, the Kirk amendment makes all illegal aliens with work authorization through President Obamas unconstitutional Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) eligible for military service. And, because of an Executive Order still in effect from the Bush administration, these amnestied illegal aliens are immediately eligible to become U.S. citizens once they receive their green cards. (SeeFAIRs Military Amnesty Policy Statement) The amendment also makes aliens with two years of lawful status eligible to enlist, meaning aliens who were lawfully admitted for a temporary basis (e.g., student visa) could circumvent the proper procedure established by the Immigration and Nationality Act in order to get a green card and U.S. citizenship. All this, despite his Democrat challenger faces a court date in August, accused of mistreating whistleblowers while Tammy Duckworth served the Quinn Administration heading up the state's Veteran services. Among other questionable expenditures, Mautino reported spending over $200,000 in campaign contributions at a local garage over a ten-year time period. SPRINGFIELD - State lawmakers - from both chambers and on both sides of the aisle - are calling for Auditor General Frank Mautino to temporarily step aside without pay after his office confirmed his campaign spending records are being investigated not only by the State Board of Elections but the U.S. Attorney's office. One Democrat - state Sen. Laura Murphy of Des Plaines - called for Mautino to go on leave until more is determined. "I believe a leave of absence would be in the best interest of state government and the taxpayers of Illinois," Murphy wrote in a letter reported by the Daily Herald. "Once the probe is complete and only after the cloud over your office has lifted would it be appropriate for you to return to work as auditor general." A group of Republicans held a press conference Thursday calling for Mautino to "step aside" pending the investigation findings. The Auditor General is charged with being the taxpayers watchdog against fraud and waste, and Frank Mautino cant possibly fulfill those duties while hes under numerous investigations, state Rep. Grant Wehrli (R-Naperville) said. Illinois taxpayers have seen enough scandal. They need government they can trust. For the integrity of the office of Auditor General, we are demanding Frank Mautinos immediate assurance that he will step aside until the investigations are concluded. The letter from Rep. Wehrli's office with signatures of 21 Republicans: After the press conference, state Senator Sue Rezin (R-Morris) added her name to the call for Mautino to "step aside": In the short time I have been in the Illinois Senate, then State Rep. Frank Mautino and I developed a good working relationship, as we both represented the same constituents. With that said, the Office of Auditor General is supposed to be the states watchdog, responsible for making sure state government is accountable, transparent, and honest to taxpayers. But with this now public federal investigation, I believe Auditor General Mautino can no longer serve in this capacity. So, I am calling for him to step aside without pay while the investigation continues. The people of Illinois deserve honest government. So, until the investigation is resolved, I believe the best course of action for the people of Illinois is for Auditor General Mautino to take an unpaid leave of office while the federal investigation is under way. Mautino's campaign finances were first brought under scrutiny by the Edgar County Watchdogs. WASHINGTON - U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan announced Thursday after a month of talks with presumed GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump that he's endorsing the businessman for president in 2016. More HERE. Now, will Illinois' Republican U.S. House members follow Ryan's lead? Your digital subscription includes access to all content on our agricultural websites across the nation. Access unlimited content and the digital versions of our print editions - This Week's Paper. The new sporty KUV100, available in petrol and diesel, is the smallest vehicle in Mahindra South Africa's product range. Mahindra will be launching three new products in the South Africa in the next three months. By India Today Web Desk: Indian automobile manufacturer Mahindra's South African subsidiary has launched a new compact utility vehicle here with the company trying to reach out to the youth with its latest offering and capture a bigger market share in the country. The new sporty KUV100, available in petrol and diesel, is the smallest vehicle in Mahindra South Africa's product range. advertisement ALSO READ: Did you know these 10 things about Mahindra e-Verito electric sedan? "We have been here for 12 years in a market of more than 500,000 vehicles, yet we sell only about 4,000 vehicles, which is less than one per cent of the total market. So what we are trying to do with this launch is to address a much larger segment of customers," Executive Director and Group President (Auto and Farm Sector) Dr Pawan Goenka said here yesterday. He said the current product range of Mahindra in South Africa addressed about a third of the market, with the five variants of the new vehicle expected to double this. Since its launch in India four months ago, as a new entry for Mahindra in the compact SUV segment of the automobile market, the KUV100 has found favour among younger buyers. ALSO READ: Mahindra launches e-Verito electric sedan; prices start at Rs 9.50 lakh Local research has shown similar interest in such a vehicle among South Africans. "We believe that this vehicle is very well poised for the South African market as we enter the second phase of our journey here after the success of our bakkies (small open vans) here," Goenka said. "In the financial year ended March 2016, Mahindra SA saw a four per cent growth in sales volume against a backdrop of a 6.7 per cent decline in the industry for the same period," Chief Executive of Mahindra South Africa Sanjoy Gupta said. He said that the new range would appeal to the lifestyle of the young as well families with children because of its strong value proposition. ALSO READ: Mahindra launches TUV300 with mHAWK 100 engine; prices start at Rs 8.87 lakh The KUV100 is priced much lower than similar models from competitors in South Africa, while boasting more extra features than most of them. Gupta also said three new Mahindra vehicles will be launched in South Africa within the next three months. --- ENDS --- First unveiled at the Auto Expo 2016, the Triumph Thruxton R is the third bike in the company's line-up, after the Street Twin and the T120. The Thruxton R sets itself apart from the barrage of other bikes by being not as hardcore. By India Today Web Desk: Triumph India has launched its latest produce in the Indian market with a new cafer, the Thruxton R, with prices starting at Rs 10.90 lakh ( ex showroom, New Delhi). With this, Triumph completes the new Bonneville range in India. First unveiled at the Auto Expo 2016, the Triumph Thruxton R is the third bike in the company's line-up, after the Street Twin and the T120. advertisement ALSO READ: Triumph Thruxton R is a cafer for today The new Triumph Thruxton R comes with an all new 1,200cc, parallel-twin engine churning out maximum power output of 96bhp and maximum torque of 112Nm. First up, the Thruxton R looks just so good. Up front there is a small fender fitting snug with the 17-inch aluminium spoked wheels. The single round headlamp looks classic but houses new-age tech and also a LED daytime running light. The twin-pod instrument panel also looks good and displays riding modes and trip details apart from the usual. The 22mm clip-on handlebars also get fancy bar end mirrors. ALSO READ: Triumph Bonneville T120: A classic reborn The 14.5-litre tank is a work of art. It is further chiselled to allow for knee recesses and it also comes with a Monza style filler cap and even a stainless steel tank strap. Triumph claim that the current liquid-cooled motor offers 68 per cent more power and 62 per cent more torque than the outgoing model. Thanks to drive-by-wire tech, it has been possible to infuse three riding modes namely Rain, Road and Sport. Now all three modes do offer max power, but the throttle response is different. The Thruxton R sets itself apart from the barrage of other bikes by being not as hardcore. Sure you get a racy riding position but without being too hardcore. ALSO READ: Triumph launches updated Bonneville T120; priced at Rs 8.7 lakh The new Triumph Thruxton R will compete against the likes of Kawasaki Z1000 and the MV Agusta Brutale 1090. --- ENDS --- The king of Bollywood Shah Rukh Khan is quite famous for his motivational speeches in various universities. At a recent graduation ceremony event at the Dhirubhai Ambani International School in Mumbai, he not only gave a speech but also turned out to be career mentor for all the students present at the event. By India Today Web Desk: The king of Bollywood Shah Rukh Khan is quite famous worldwide for his motivational speeches in various universities. He was invited as a Chief Guest at a recent graduation ceremony event at the Dhirubhai Ambani International School in Mumbai. Students of the school were moved by his mesmerizing words, as he did not give a boring speech, but showed a career path to the students. He mentioned about his struggle, how he was raised up in a very humorous manner. advertisement Moreover, he spoke about the time he wrote "rubbish poetry" even took a dig at the US presidential candidate Donald Trump. A look at previous speeches by the actor: In 2012, Shah Rukh Khan became the first Bollywood personality to be honoured with the prestigious Chubb Fellowship at Yale University. During the ceremony, SRK left everyone in awe when he started his inspiring yet entertaining speech . He said, "I believe that the true path to success is through the fear of failure" Also, in 2015, Shah Rukh Khan was presented with the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa from the University Chancellor HRH The Princess Royal in Edinburgh where, his speech was a perfect combination of knowledge and humour Here are 10 inspiring life lessons that Khan gave: And when King Khan speaks, there can't be a speech without giggle all around. So, check out his speech at the event (Source : DAIS Mumbai) Read: Exclusive! Six Indian students awarded at International Science and Engineering Fair, US: Meet the Einsteins Read: Intel India announces new initiatives supporting Digital India Click here , for education related news. --- ENDS --- It's holiday time. These three healthy and wholesome recipes will keep both you and your little Masterchef happy. By Rishibha Gupta: It's summer time and the inane fight over what's for breakfast might be hounding you like it does most moms. The battle to mishmash health and flavour is another tirade with most of you folks trying your best to please the kids with what's on offer from your recipes repertoire. If you are not the cereal and milk mom and believe in rustling up a nutritious platter for breakfast, then go no further. We got Chef Rakhee Vaswani, author of Picky Eater and founder Palate Culinary, the premium cooking institute that can boast of celebrity students like Malaika Arora Khan and Arjun Kapoor to give us three outstanding breakfast recipes. advertisement Also read: Two healthy and easy smoothies to make sure you NEVER miss breakfast again If you harp on providing wholesome nourishment than you too must have not made the carcinogenic packaged bread a breakfast staple at your home. A recent study by the environment think tank, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) had discovered that 84 per cent of bread and bakery samples in the capital contain bromate, potassium iodate or both which can lead to thyroid cancers and disorders. "Parents can use many substitutes for breads like home-made wheat rotis, soya rotis, rye bread, corn tortillas. In fact, lettuce and other leafs can also be used to wrap veggies instead of breads. Sweet potatoes can be great substitutes for bread buns too," said Chef Vaswani. Now, that is a novelty for bun substitutes. In the meanwhile, you can get the sous chefs in your own house ready to create up a storm in the kitchen with these super healthy recipes along with a calorie control tip from the Chef to ensure that you too can indulge in the same without any guilt. Eggs Benedict with Hollandaise Sauce Serves: 6 Picture courtesy: Chef Rakhee Vaswani; The buns with the dish can be replaced with sweet potatoes. Ingredients: " 3 Buns " 2-3 bacon strips " 2 tsp white vinegar " 6 eggs " 51/2 tbsp clarified butter " 2 egg yolks " 1/2 tsp salt " Few drops lime juice " 1/4 tsp pepper powder " Butter to spread " Fresh chopped parsley, for garnish Method " Take 80 gms of butter and heat in a deep pan. This helps the solids separate. Remove the scum from the top. Switch off the gas and let it settle down. What you are left with is clarified butter on top. " Beat the egg yolks on a double boiler and add the clarified butter little by little, stirring constantly with a wire whisk or wooden spoon. Gradually add the lime juice. Keep stirring until it thickens. Your hollandaise sauce is ready. Add salt and pepper before serving. " Brown the bacon in a medium pan. Toast the buns and butter them. " Take a 10-inch non-stick pan and fill with water till it is half full. Add white vinegar. This will make the egg white cook faster so it does not spread. Bring to a slow boil. Gently break one of the eggs into the water (using a ring mould) taking care not to break it. Repeat with remaining eggs. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer. Cook for 3 minutes until the egg white is set and yolk remains soft. Remove with a slotted spoon, allowing the egg to drain. " Lay a slice of bacon on top of each buttered bun, followed by a poached egg. Season it with salt and pepper. Spoon hollandaise sauce over the eggs. Garnish with chopped parsley. advertisement Chef's tip Using a ring mould helps the eggs poach better in a circle and not spread all over. Calorie control The chef recommends using Nutralite instead of regular butter and add a touch of creamy spinach to enhance the nutritional value. Alternatively, you can serve some smoked salmon with this. Banana Pancakes Serves: 2 Picture courtesy: Chef Rakhee Vaswani; In the pancakes, you can drop the egg yolk to make it healthier. advertisement Ingredients: " 100 gms flour " 100 gms oats " 1 tbsp baking powder " 1/2 tsp baking soda " 1/2 tsp salt " 30 gms sugar " 1 egg " 1 cup/200 ml skimmed milk/buttermilk " 1 tbsp butter " 2 mashed bananas " Maple syrup as required " Whipped cream as required Method " Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and oats. " In another bowl mix the milk, butter, egg and mashed. " Add the flour mixture, taking care not to over mix it. " Heat a flat griddle or pan over medium-high heat. " Spoon drops of the batter on the hot griddle and when bubbles appear on the surface of the little pancakes, flips them over to make them golden brown on both sides. A minute or so on each side should do it. " Serve hot with maple syrup and some whipped cream. " Add milk according to the size of the bananas. The batter should have a thick consistency like dosa batter. Alternatively, you can use a handful of blueberries instead of bananas. advertisement Calorie control The chef recommends using egg white instead of the whole egg. Also you can opt for skimmed milk or buttermilk, or even almond milk-the latest healthier option rich in protein and less on calories. Try this switch and trust me, they won't even know the difference. In fact they may like it better. Also read: Drool It: These 'symmetrical breakfast' posts have made this Instagrammer a phenomenon Healthy Muesli Serves: 10-15 Picture courtesy: Chef Rakhee Vaswani; The home-made muesli is any given day more nutritious than the store-bought variety. Ingredients: " 250gms oats " 100 gms cranberries " 100 gms almond flakes " 25 gms sunflower seeds " 25 gms pumpkin seeds " 50 gms raisins " 25 gms walnuts " 25 gms black currants " 100 gms brown sugar " 8 tbsp honey " 50 gms butter, molten Method " In a bowl, mix the oats, almonds flakes, raisins, blackcurrants, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, cranberries and walnuts. " Add the brown sugar and honey. " Mix well. Add the melted butter. " Put it in a greased tin/silicon mold. " Bake it at 140-160 degrees for 35 minutes or till the muesli is nice and golden. Calorie control Using brown sugar is healthier than white sugar as brown is raw and unrefined. Honey can also be substituted with molten jaggery (the quantity would be 2 tbsp less). --- ENDS --- The BSF convoy comprising 23 vehicles was coming from Jammu to Srinagar ferrying jawans who were returning to join their duties after their leave. Security establishment believe the attack could be the handiwork of cadres of banned Hizbul Mujahideen group led by Burhan Wani. By Ashraf Wani: Three BSF men died while six others were injured, three of them critically, after militants ambushed a convoy near Goriwan in Bijbehara town of south Kashmir's Anantnag district. The BSF convoy comprising 23 vehicles was coming from Jammu to Srinagar ferrying jawans who were returning to join their duties after their leave. MILITANTS HIDING There was a heavy exchange of gunfire between the two sides that lasted over 15 minutes. In the exchange, three soldiers were killed while six others were wounded, militants are believed hiding in some residential houses in area which had been cordoned off and massive search operation is going on. advertisement Officials said that three BSF personnel identified as Head Constable Girish Kumar Shukla, Constable Mahinder Ram and Havaldar Dinesh were killed while four others were injured in the incident which took place at 4.30 pm near a government hospital, 52 kms from Srinagar. The injured are being treated while one of them, who was critically injured, was airlifted to 92 Base hospital in Srinagar. ADDITIONAL FORCES DEPLOYED The injured are being treated while one of them, who was critically injured, was airlifted to 92 Base hospital in Srinagar. BSF Director General K K Sharma is rushing to the spot to take stock of the situation. Additional forces have been rushed to the area which has been cordoned off by CRPF and Rashtriya Rifles. "Its an unfortunate incident. The BSF convoy was attacked on the national highway by terrorists who fired at it from the by-lanes near Bijbehara," Director General of Jammu and Kashmir Police K Rajendra said. No terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attack but the security establishment believe that it could be the handiwork of cadres of banned Hizbul Mujahideen group led by Burhan Wani. The attack comes 10 days after the Hizbul Mujahideen had killed three policemen in two separate incidents in Srinagar city. They had threatened to carry out similar attacks. ALSO READ: Army commences certified training programme with Tata Motors for Kashmiri youth --- ENDS --- Hundreds of Dal Khalsa activists took out a march today under the nomenclature of 'Genocide Remembrance Parade' on the streets of Amritsar displaying photographs of damaged Golden Temple and those killed in the army action. By Manjeet Sehgal: A radical Sikh outfit Dal Khalsa on Friday organised a protest parade in the holy city Amritsar to mark the 32nd anniversary of Operation Bluestar. DAL KHALSA STAGES PROTEST Hundreds of Dal Khalsa activists took out a march under the nomenclature of 'Genocide Remembrance Parade' on the streets of Amritsar displaying photographs of damaged Golden Temple and those killed in the army action. advertisement Carrying saffron flags and placards, the participants marched from the organisation's office near the Railway station, passed through the major lanes of the city and concluded at the Akal Takhat-highest Sikh temporal authority- after performing prayer. The protesters also shouted pro-Khalistan slogans. DAL KHALSA SEEKS SUPPORT FOR BANDH Dal Khalsa has launched a campaign to garner support for its shutdown call for June 6 to mark the Operation Bluestar anniversary. Several Sikh organisations have supported the call. They have however said that the bandh would be peaceful and road and rail traffic would not be disrupted. Medical stores will also be allowed to open. Meanwhile, paramilitary forces and police commandoes have been deputed at key locations, especially around the Golden Temple complex. Police and paramilitary forces are also conducting a flag march from last two days. FROM INDIA TODAY MAGAZINE: The league of shadows PREVENTIVE ARRESTS MADE The police have also made preventive arrests of radical leaders including Sikh Youth Federation Bhindrawale president Gurjinder Singh. Police sources said more arrests were likely to be made ahead of the Operation Bluestar anniversary. Dal Khalsa on Friday made a fervent appeal to Sikhs worldover to observe June 6 as 'Khalistan Day'. Party spokesperson Kanwar Pal Singh reiterated their groups call for Amritsar shut down on June 6 to protest against the 'Army assault' on Darbar Sahib some 32 years ago. CM BADAL URGES PEACE Meanwhile Punjab Chief Minister, Parkash Singh Badal has urged the people of the state to exercise restraint and peacefully observe Operation Bluestar anniversary. "The government was keeping a strict vigil over the entire situation and every effort will be made to maintain law and order in Punjab. No one will be allowed to disturb the hard-earned peace in the state at any cost," Parkash Singh Badal said. FROM INDIA TODAY MAGAZINE: The untold story --- ENDS --- Donors were arranged for needy patients for Rs 25 to 30 lakh. However, the donors were paid just Rs 3 to 5 lakh. By Chirag Gothi, Nitin Jain: The Delhi Police today busted a kidney racket gang operating in a leading private hospital in the national capital. The police have arrested five people, including two staff members of the Indraprastha Apollo Hospital. Three of those arrested are believed to be touts, who arranged donors. TOP DELHI HOSPITAL UNDER SCANNER The two arrested Apollo staff members - Aditya and Sukesh - worked with the hospital's senior nephrologist Dr Ashok Sarin. advertisement The Delhi Police has constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the case. Investigations have revealed that the members of the gang were also active in Jalandhar, Punjab. MODUS OPERANDI The donor was shown as a relative or spouse of the recipient on the basis of forged documents. A board set by the hospital certifies that that donor and recipient are genuine or not. The mastermind of the racket has been identified as Anish. The Apollo Hospital staff used to inform him about the needy patients and Anish arranged for donors. Donors were arranged for needy patients for Rs 25 to 30 lakh. However, the gang paid the donors just Rs 3 to 5 lakh. The racket has been operating since February, police said. HOSPITAL'S CLARIFICATION A statement issued by Apollo Hospital said that it is cooperating with the police in the case and that it has been "a victim of a well-orchestrated operation to cheat patients and the hospital." "We are co-operating and providing to the police all information required to help them in their investigation. This matter is of grave concern and our teams are extending all support to the police," the hospital said. "The police in their investigation have identified secretarial staff of some doctors, who are not employees of the hospital, who have been involved in the alleged racket. While all due precautions were conducted, the use of fake and forged documents was used for this racket with a criminal intent. The hospital has been a victim of a well-orchestrated operation to cheat patients and the hospital. We urge the police to take the strictest of action against all those involved," it added. A case has been registered in the Sarita Vihar police station and the people accused of running the kidney racket are being interrogated. --- ENDS --- By Indrajit Kundu: A day after India Today revealed how a female student was facing the worst kind of victim shaming and intimidation at one of country's premiere film schools in Kolkata, the Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute (SRFTI), college administration finally reached out to her on Thursday. After much delay, the institute handed over the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) report to the rape victim while its chairman personally promised full support. advertisement Responding to the victim's allegations SRFTI Chairman Partha Ghose wrote, "Let me assure you that I have all sympathy and support for you." He also said that the final year student had misunderstood him. OPEN LETTER AGAINST AUTHORITIES The victim had earlier shot a letter to the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, accusing Chairman Partha Ghose of being insensitive. In her open letter, she wrote, "I am writing this letter to report the harassment that I had to face from the chairperson of the institute, Mr Partha Ghose. After the ICC had found two professors guilty of sexual harassment, the violence from the students to me, other complainants and our supporters have shot up. I am writing this to bring to your notice how a girl who spoke up against sexual harassment is constantly being harassed by students, faculty and the highest of authorities. The Internal Complaints Committee, set up in accordance with the Vishakha Guidelines, had submitted its report in April. The report has indicted two faculty members and seeks strict action against them. However, it had not been shared with the complainants though a copy was provided to the accused. Complainants, who had charged three professors with sexual harassment, have been crying foul over the SRFTI administration's reluctance to share the report with them." PROFESSOR VS STUDENTS Narrating her ordeal to India Today TV on Tuesday, the final year film student had explained how she was facing an extremely hostile environment at the institute. Claiming that she was being openly threatened and intimidated by a section of students in connivance with the accused faculty members, the victim sought immediate action against those professors who have been indicted in the ICC probe report. In the meantime, SRFTI Director Debanjan Chakraborty, who had taken over the position on an ad-hoc basis resigned from his post. Speaking to India Today Chakraborty said, he wanted to close the matter promptly but hinted at the possibility of a resistance against the complainants. Claiming that there were several stakeholders, Chakraborty lamented how fissures had appeared within the students community with those that supported the cause of the victims while others who support the accused professors. "I can only hope that the issue is resolved before the two belligerent sides reach a point of no return," he added. --- ENDS --- Actor Amal Sehrawat, who played Sangram Singh in Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai, will play a gay character in a short film titled Gay Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai. By Indo-Asian News Service: Actor Amal Sehrawat, known as Sangram Singh of popular soap opera Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai, will next portray a gay character for an upcoming short film titled Gay Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai. In the special video, Amal will be joined by his Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai co-star Alok Nath. "My character's name is Vimlesh in the film and Alok Nath is playing my father-in-law. This film has a positive message on gay marriage. The film takes a dig at what obstacles are faced during gay marriages in India. It has been told in a very entertaining and refreshing manner. advertisement Asked about his opinion on gay rights in the country, Amal said: "We have over-hyped the whole issue. In India, sex is still a taboo. Physical intimacy and sexual preference are two different things. "What is important is the inner feeling. I know so many wonderful people who have different sexual preferences." The short film will be released on the YouTube channel Nazar Battu Productions on Friday. --- ENDS --- Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi may have his reasons to avoid meeting Jogi but he must now ensure that the damage caused by Jogi's departure is minimized. And he has two years to do that. By Kaushik Deka : It's widely acknowledged that BJP's massive victory in the recently concluded Assam Assembly polls would not have been possible without the strategic expertise of former Congressman Himanta Biswa Sarma. He was the chief architect of three consecutive Congress victories in the state. But when he had a serious political rift with his former mentor Tarun Gogoi and sought intervention of Congress high command, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi ignored his appeal. The Gandhi scion firmly backed Gogoi and rejected Sarma's last appeal to make him, at least, Assam Congress chief. When Rahul finally met Sarma, he gave his dog more attention than Sarma, alleges the now BJP strongman in Assam. advertisement Late last year, dissident Congress MLAs of Arunachal Pradesh camped in Delhi for nearly two hours to get an audience from Rahul Gandhi. But the Congress vice-president ignored them advising them to sort out their differences by consulting the general secretary in-charge. The disgruntled MLAs eventually toppled their own government and formed another with help of rival BJP. Almost the same story was replicated in Uttarakhand, but the intervention of Supreme Court saved the day for the Congress. CHHATTISGARH CRISIS In all three cases, there is a common thread-Rahul Gandhi's reluctance to meet party leaders with grievances. All three states were Congress stronghold, it has lost two and the third one is a struggle for survival. Now another top leader has threatened to leave Congress with the same set of allegations. Ajit Jogi, Congress stalwart from Chhattisgarh has drawn another animal parallel about Congress high command. If Sarma found Rahul more interested in his dog, according to Jogi, speaking to Congress is like reading a book to a buffalo. Ajit Jogi had been doing rounds of Delhi to get his son Amit's expulsion from the party revoked but was not given an appointment by Rahul Gandhi. Amit was dismissed from the party when a newspaper report published a tape featuring him and Ajit Jogi fixing the Antagarh by poll. JOGI TO FLOAT NEW PARTY The electoral success of Jogi, who is planning to float a new party, is debatable but his defection will certainly cause a huge damage to Congress fortune in the state. The anti-incumbency against the BJP government headed by Raman Singh is too high and the victory margin in last Assembly polls in 2013 was too close for comfort. BJP won 49 seats as against Congress's 39 seats but both parties almost had identical vote share-BJP 41.04 per cent and Congress 40.29 per cent. A united and rejuvenated Congress will certainly pose a serious challenge to the BJP in 2018 assembly polls. If Jogi breaks away, he would need the support of 12 Congress MLAs to form a new party. Though the political scenario is still very vague, the former Chhattisgarh CM may have the numbers. He also commands strong support from Satnami community, which is around 12 per cent of the electorate. The Congress vice president may have his reasons to avoid meeting Jogi but he must now ensure that the damage caused by Jogi's departure is minimized. And he has two years to do that. ALSO READ: O bhains: Ajit Jogi says speaking to Congress is like reading a book to a buffalo --- ENDS --- advertisement India is now ranked third - after the US and China - as a source of "malicious activity" on the internet. By Indo-Asian News Service: Cyber crimes reported in India rose 19 times over the last 10 years (2005 to 2014), from 481 in 2005 to 9,622 in 2014. India is now ranked third - after the US and China - as a source of "malicious activity" on the internet, second as a source of "malicious code" and fourth and eight as a source or origin for web attacks and network attacks. advertisement Arrests involving cyber crimes also rose nine times from 569 in 2005 to 5,752 in 2014, according to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, even as more Indians logged on to the internet. Internet subscribers in India crossed the 400 million mark, and are expected to reach 462 million by June 2016. As many as 9,622 cyber crimes were reported in 2014, an increase of 69 per cent over 2013. Of these, 7,201 were reported as offences under the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2,272 under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and 149 under Special and Local Laws (SLL). Under the IT Act, the most - 5,548 cases - reported were computer-related offences, of which 4,192 were under Section 66A, which allows for jail terms up to two-three years for sending "offensive messages through communication service" and related offences. Section 66A of the IT Act was struck down by the Supreme Court in March 2015, saying: "Such a law hit at the root of liberty and freedom of expression, the two cardinal pillars of democracy." Also Read: Hacked! Business bank accounts vulnerable to cybercriminals IndiaSpend previously reported how India was following Turkey and Russia in restrictive internet laws. India ranked 136th, Turkey 149th and Russia 152nd in the 2015 Press Freedom Index, issued by Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based non-profit. Obscenity, cheating, sexual exploitation-India's leading cyber crimes As many as 758 cases were registered for publication or transmission of obscene or sexually explicit content under the IT Act. Cheating (1,115) was the most reported crime, accounting for nearly 50 percent of IPC crimes. Under SSL offences, copyright violation was the most reported crime (118 of 149). "Greed/financial gain" were the major motives behind cybercrime cases in 2014 with 1,736 cases, followed by "insult to modesty of women (599)", fraud or illegal gain (495), sexual exploitation (357) and "personal revenge/settling scores (285)". Maharashtra reported the most cyber crimes (1,879) in 2014, double the cases (907) of the previous year. Uttar Pradesh was second (1,737), followed by Karnataka (1,020), Telangana (703) and Rajasthan (697). The top five states accounted for 63 percent of all cases in 2014. advertisement As many as 5,752 people were arrested for cyber crimes in 2014 - 5,744 Indians and eight foreigners. As many as 95 persons were convicted and 276 acquitted for cyber crimes in 2014. Uttar Pradesh reported the most (1,223) arrests in 2014, followed by Maharashtra (942), Telangana (429), Madhya Pradesh (386) and Karnataka (372). More than 8,000 websites were hacked in the first three months of 2016, and as many as 13,851 spamming violations were reported, according to a Lok Sabha reply on May 4, 2016. Cyber security crimes, such as phishing, scanning, introducing malicious code, website intrusion and denial of service, rose 76 percent over the last five years, from 28,127 in 2011 to 49,455 in 2015. As many as 13,083 and 11,997 cases related to automated teller machines (ATMs), credit/debit cards and net banking frauds were reported by banks during 2014-15 and 2015-16 (till December 2015), respectively, according to a Rajya Sabha reply on April 29, 2016. Cyber frauds - ATM/credit/debit cards and net banking - cost Rs 226 crore ($38 million) over the last three financial years, 2012-13 to 2014-15. Cyber crimes cost India $4 billion (Rs 24,630 crore) in 2013, according to a report commissioned by the Delhi High Court. advertisement The global cost of cybercrime was estimated between $375 billion (Rs 2,512,500 crore) and $575 billion (Rs 3,852,500 crore), according to a World Bank 2016 report, quoting a 2014 study. The average per person cost of data breaches ranged from $51 in India to $201 in the United States, it said. --- ENDS --- Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said almost 95 per cent of vultures have disappeared from the country due to the widespread use of diclofenac - a pain killer drug used to treat cattle. By Manjeet Sehgal: The Haryana government on Friday launched Asia's First 'Gyps Vulture Reintroduction Programme' at Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre, Pinjore. VULTURE CONSERVATION The Centre has become prominent vulture breeding and conservation centre in the country-after successfully breeding Himalayan Griffon Vultures-an old world vulture in the family of Accipitridae-in captivity. Releasing two Himalayan Griffon Vultures-Union Minister of State for Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Prakash Javadekar said that with this achievement, country will 'have four crore vultures in the next 10 years," he added. advertisement The Himalayan Griffon is closely related to the critically endangered resident Gyps species of vultures but is not endangered. Two Himalayan Griffons-released on Friday - have been in captivity for over a decade and have been in the aviary with resident Gyps vultures. These birds were wing-tagged and were leg-ringed for identification. DICLOFENAC KILLED VULTURES "Breeding and conservation of vultures is a significant step in the direction of saving the species. It is a matter of concern that some vulture species have become endangered. Almost 95 per cent vultures have disappeared and the reason is diclofenac, a pain killer drug given to cattle which can kill them," Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said. Khattar said that the behavior and movement of the birds will be closely monitored. Having been in captivity for many years, it will be interesting to see how they adjust to wild conditions. "Himalayan Griffon Vultures were kept in the release aviary which is just outside the vulture centre. The birds had been released in the aviary on November 13, 2015. When they lifted the front netting giving the captive Himalayan Griffons the option of joining the wild Griffons, the released vultures readily stepped outside and joined the wild vultures," a Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre official said. JAVADEKAR HAILS PROGRAMME Prakash Javadekar later handed over 10 captive bred vultures, which have siblings at the centre, to Field Director, Van Vihar National Park, Madhya Pradesh, A K Srivastava, as a part of the genetic management of captive vulture population. Javadekar lauded the support extended by the Haryana Government in reintroduction of the programme. While releasing captive vultures in pre-release aviaries close to the breeding centre, he gave one the name 'Jodh Singh'. --- ENDS --- Arts topper Ruby Rai's family members on Friday submitted an application to the Chairman of the Bihar School Examination Board, Lalkeshwar Prasad Singh, seeking exemption from the exams on health grounds. By Rohit Kumar Singh: In an unprecedented move, 13 Bihar toppers appeared for re-examination to secure their position as toppers barring Ruby Rai, the Arts topper who opted to skip the examination. The Bihar School Examination Board had convened re-examination of Science and Arts stream toppers on Friday after an India Today expose showed how the toppers of Arts and Science, Ruby Rai and Saurabh Shrestha, respectively, were clueless about their subjects in which they had topped. advertisement Ruby Rai's family members who on Thursday had expressed inability of Ruby appearing for re-examination on Friday submitted an application to the Chairman of the Bihar School Examination Board, Lalkeshwar Prasad Singh seeking exemption from the exams on health grounds. The Deputy Director, Nand Kishore Yadav of Bishun Rai College of which Ruby and Saurabh are students said that post the expose, Ruby was depressed and her mental condition was not fit to undertake the examination. Nand Kishore Yadav said, "Ruby is undergoing treatment outside Bihar as she is mentally depressed. We have given application to the Board that Ruby would appear in examination only after she is healthy". On the other hand, 13 toppers including Saurabh Shrestha appeared for the examination which lasted almost six hours during which two students at a time were interviewed by the team of 15 expert professors and teachers separately. According to information with India Today, the students were asked 25 questions each relating to their stream and also asked to write a small paragraph to cross check their handwriting with the handwriting in the answer sheets. The Chairman of the Board said that once the re-examination was over, the Board would be sending the report of their finding to the Bihar govt for further action. "Experts from Patna and Magadh University have been called to examine the toppers. Once the exams are over, we will send our report to the state govt", said Lalkeshwar Prasad Singh. As the toppers got over with their re-examination, their hurriedly rushed out of the Board office premises to escape the media. Saurabh Shrestha, the Science topper along with his father Ajay Singh too tried to make his way outside the Board campus but the media chased him with flurry of questions. An embarrassed Saurabh, however, said that his re-examination had gone well and truth would be out soon. "My re-examination had gone well. The truth will be out soon", said Saurabh. As a red faced Bihar govt conducted re-examination as a damage control after India Today's expose, all eyes are on the finding of the re-examination and also what will be the next move of the Bihar govt as far as Ruby Rai is concerned, whether she would be given another chance to appear for the exams or whether the govt chooses to cancel her result. The question is also whether the State govt will act on Bishun Rai college which had earned the dubious distinction of producing topper for last one decade repeatedly. advertisement ALSO READ: Clueless Bihar toppers unsure to sit for re-exam after India Today expose --- ENDS --- Graphic novelist Blake Leibel, known for the gory murder scenes in his comic books, has been charged with brutally murdering his girlfriend and draining her body of blood. By India Today Web Desk: Blake Leibel is a graphic novelist. He is from Canada and belongs to one of Toronto's wealthier families. But why are we talking about him? A writer fascinated with gory details, Leibel has been accused of bringing the grisly acts of his comic books to life with the murder of his girlfriend, Iana Kasian. Kasian, who had given birth to their son three weeks earlier, was found dead in their West Hollywood apartment last month, reports AP. But that wasn't it; mangled and tortured, her body had been "drained" of blood. advertisement Leibel has been charged with first-degree murder and could face the death penalty if convicted. The bloodless corpse One of Leibel's critically-acclaimed graphic novels, Syndrome, had a scene where a 'serial killer hangs a couple from their ankles and slashes their throats, draining them of blood'. SYNDROME: A Graphic Novel. HCDJ 1ST, 2010. Created by Blake Leibel https://t.co/rRbkgVKsJ5 pic.twitter.com/GkZk1y6H3t bid elegant items (@elegant_items) May 15, 2016 Earlier, Leibel described Syndrome as a novel "that grappled with the questions surrounding what provokes a person to commit evil acts." Kasian had moved out of their apartment apartment earlier in May after Leibel was arrested on suspicion of sexual assault. Later, she had gone back to the house to talk things out and never returned. LA Times reports that after Kasian's mother reached out to the police with a missing complaint, officers visited Leibel's apartment to find the door jammed shut with furniture and bedding. To top that, Leibel stood out as "agitated and uncooperative". However, the scene beyond the door was much worse. Kasian's mangled body was found in the bedroom; she had "sustained blunt force trauma to her head" and was lying in a bloodless state. How can blood be drained from a body? Certified Medical Illustrator Michael Konomos writes in Quora that in case of "organ donor procedures", the aorta is cut open; the blood then fills the abdomen, from where it is suctioned out. In case of wound, Konomos says it "depends on the severity of the wound." "Every bit of blood is not going to drain out unless it is somehow flushed out using another fluid. But enough will drain out for the person to die of course," he adds. Exsanguination is the process of blood loss that results in death. It depends on a person's age, health and fitness level as to how much bleeding can cause it. Usually, people can die from losing half or two-thirds of their blood volume. A single deep cut into a major artery or vein can lead to exsanguination if not treated properly. --- ENDS --- Villagers cite colourful 'first hand' accounts of having seen 'night turn into day from the explosion', felt the earth shake, buildings kilometres away vibrate and heard the roar of self-made anti tank mines detonate. By Jugal R Purohit: On a white board inside the administrative block was a neatly drawn line in black ink. It segregated officers 'Posted In' from those 'Posted Out'. The latter, featuring Colonel Ghaninder Singh, Lt Col RS Pawar and Major K Manoj Kumar, consisted of those who'd received their new orders and were wrapping up. However, 'wrapping up' meant little when in the early hours of Tuesday a Defence Security Corps (DSC) jawan reported a fire in a ammunition-holding shed located near the southern boundary of the 'Delta' block. It was 1:10 am when the trio, the installation's Deputy Commandant, Administrative Officer and Internal Security Officer respectively, charged with their troops towards the fire in a bid to ensure it did not graduate to an explosion. But it did. advertisement The Central Ammunition Depot (CAD) in Pulgaon is located about 120 kilometres from Nagpur. Outside its perimeter, little has changed since the threat of a Japanese invasion forced the British rulers of India to hurriedly create a centre which could logistically support the war in entire Southeast Asia. An aerial survey tipped the scale in favour of Pulgaon over neighbouring Bhusawal and Itarsi. In 1942, Lieutenant Colonel WV Atkins became the CAD's first Chief Ordnance Officer. When dawn arrived on June 1, those at the CAD had already counted nineteen of their colleagues as dead, further seventeen as injured and the permanent shed where the fire was detected as having been completely destroyed. "I have lost too much," said the senior officer, nearly choking, as he hugged his colleague, a qualified specialist dispatched to CAD Pulgaon by army's Pune-based Southern Command. He was right. In its league, Tuesday's accident is the worst to have ever occurred. Villagers cite colourful 'first hand' accounts of having seen 'night turn into day from the explosion', felt the earth shake, buildings kilometres away vibrate and heard the roar of self-made anti tank mines detonate. In many ways the earth continues to shake. Unending curiosity even among well wishers, flagging usual suspects like poor maintenance, reporting based on 'assumptions', social media conversations as well as expert opinions 'from air conditioned television studios' are all being silently suffered. "An inquiry has been ordered by the army', is all a spokesperson in New Delhi offered when asked about the cause. WHAT COULD HAVE GONE WRONG? Facts tell you the depot holds close to 99 per cent of the army's ammunition. As the sole receiver of ammunition from the Ordnance Factory Boards (OFB), the CAD keeps all the depots stocked. The army has deputed a Major General and two Brigadiers to probe the disaster. That however does not stop those in the know from swearing allegiance to procedures. "It is science actually," said an officer. From storing ammunition on plinths, a few decades ago, the army now stops at nothing short of permanent structures built by Military Engineering Services (MES). The planning and construction of sheds is audited by third parties. The compatibility of storing different forms of ammunition keeping the individual hazard quotient in mind is mandated by United Nations guidelines which the army claims to follow to the 'T'. (Photo: Jugal R Purohit) (Photo: Jugal R Purohit) advertisement The explosive zone, a 7000-acre exclusive facility within the CAD, has at least six check points that an individual needs to cross before being able to enter. Apart from hosting the ammunition-laden sheds, this region also hosts the remedies should they be required. For example, the army maintains 30 million tonnes of water at all times. Grass can help the fire spread. Thus thirty tractors churn in a radius of 50 metres from all the sheds to pick even the youngest blade of grass that may have grown. Roads inside are not made of tar, cement is used. Each shed has a dedicated pond which can be a handy source of water for fire fighters. The zone has nearly ten fire substations with dozens of tenders available. Electricity is forbidden unless a must for moving wares. "No wall of a shed can have even a single crack," explained an insider. In response to a set of questions over the quality of upkeep, a source said, "CAD is the most modern, adequately funded and staffed installation." advertisement Inside CAD, roads, residences and offices wear a desolate look. At the administration block though, the activity is peaking. The phones won't stop ringing. From Kerala to Uttarakhand and in between, everyone has a thing or two to discuss. Quietly, the army is booking flights to transport mortal remains. It will sponsor the travel of a relative along and provide a representative as an escort too. This, they say, is the 'easy' part. "How do we face their wives? How to reconcile with the fact that your friend and colleague who was there on Monday will go forever on Tuesday? We really don't know what went wrong but everyone else, it seems has already drawn conclusions," someone vented out. At 'ground zero' in the Delta block, effort materialises in excavating severed limbs and body parts. Samples are being extracted for DNA testing. In the process, there is risk as well, from unexploded ammunition. To not invite further trouble, the digging will be done using with bare hands for as long as it takes. Amidst the gloom, the 'mother depot' can hardly grieve. There are wagons waiting to either be loaded or unloaded, every day. Ammunition has to be sent, received or simply held. The gigantic base does all of its transactions online. When it comes to physical movement, over 80 per cent is done on rails. advertisement Normalcy is returning, it has to Deputy Commandant Col Ghaninder Singh has undergone a surgery. Doctors recommend one more and the army flies him to Command hospital in Pune. As for the other two on the white board, a wipe with a duster says their story. - Writer is a senior special correspondent with India Today TV and tweets @jrpur ALSO READ | Pulgaon blast: 130 Tonne ammunition gutted down, sabotage angle seriously investigated Pulgaon ammunition depot fire: Two more bodies recovered, toll climbs to 18 --- ENDS --- Laughing Chewbacca Mom and her entire family gets full college scholarships from Florida's Southeastern University. Her life just keeps getting better! By India Today Web Desk: Candace Payne known to the internet world as "Chewbacca mom" shot to instant popularity with her contagious laugh while donning a quirky Chewbacca mask. Now she is the lucky recipient of a full college tuition scholarships for her entire family by Florida's Southeastern University. Her Facebook Live video went so viral that she turned into an overnight celebrity. The Texas mom and mega huge Star Wars fan's video is reportedly the most viewed Facebook videos of all time. advertisement Watch the hilarious video below: And after this unexpected popularity, Candance has been showered with unanticipated and truly exhilarating surprises. She received a special invitation from Mark Zuckerberg himself. The force was certainly with Payne who got to spend a whole day with the 'Star Wars' Wookie. Since the time she's become an internet sensation, Payne has got a wide range of exciting opportunities. She also showed up in a skit with TV host James Corden in which "The Force Awakens" director JJ Abrams appeared in the back seat. All three had Chewbacca masks on and were laughing hysterically. Watch the video below: And now, after the finding unexpected fame, her husband and two children have each been offered full college scholarships. Florida's Southeastern University has sent out an offer to the family, said in a press release, "Candace has inspired us and others with her joy, and we want her and her family to experience some of that same joy through this gift," Candace toured the Southeastern University campus with the university mascot Scorch. "This is such an amazing gift for our family, I'm blown away," Payne said. "I mean, my kids' college is paid for!" --- ENDS --- The Shiromani Akali Dal has made representation to the Centre for raising the paddy MSP to Rs 1,400 quintal to ensure adequate returns to the farmers in view of the rising input costs. Ramesh Vinayak reports. By RAMESH VINAYAK: Faced with a worsening paddy procurement crisis in Punjab, the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal today made a strong plea with the Centre to immediately announce a bonus of Rs 300 per quintal over and above the minimum support price to mitigate the sufferings of the state farmers. In a strongly-worded letter to the Union Agriculture and Food Minister Sharad Pawar, the SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal said that Punjab's farmers had risen to the nation's clarion call and put in their blood and sweat to produce record harvests of wheat and paddy this year. advertisement In response to the Centre's exhortation, the Punjab farmers had contributed over 30 lakh tonnes extra wheat to the Central pool over the last year. Likewise, the paddy production has touched an all-time high of 165 tonnes, as compared to 149 tonnes last year. "This extra procurement from Punjab had contributed significantly in ensuring the nation's food security at a time when we are witnessing global food shortages and very high international food grains prices" Badal said, lamenting that the Punjab farmers have not been given commensurate returns by the central government. The SAD has made representation to the Centre for raising the paddy MSP to Rs 1,400 quintal "to ensure adequate returns to the farmers in view of the rising input costs "- a demand the Union government is yet to address having fixed the MSP at Rs 850 per quintal. Meanwhile, Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal has rushed to Delhi to meet Pawar on Monday in Delhi to press for the farmers' demands. --- ENDS --- Here are five shocking quotes from former prime minister and JD(S) supremo HD Deve Gowda on India Today's sting on MLAs asking for money to back Rajya Sabha nominees. By India Today Web Desk: It has been more than 24 hours since India Today Television aired the sting on the 'Rajya Sabha Bazaar'. The special report exposed how MLAs in Karnataka asked Rs 5-10 crore to vote in favour of candidates who are contesting Rajya Sabha elections. Since the special report was aired, there has been a deluge of reactions from people including former election commissioners, current chief election commissioner and political parties. But the most shocking reaction of all came from former prime minister and Janata Dal (Secular) chief HD Deve Gowda. advertisement Deve Gowda, speaking exclusively, asked if India Today thought it can clean up the political system? The former prime minister thought that the sting was a political conspiracy against his small party. He also asked what was the big deal in his party members asking for money to vote. MLAs need money to fight elections, he said. Here are 5 quotes from his interview: "Don't unnecessarily go on harassing as if you are going to clean up the system in this country." "In this country politics itself involves corruption." "I was waiting, because I have got patience. People should not think that Deve Gowda has taken harsh decisions." "What is your (India Today's) intention and all those who are on panel discussion?" "They think that JD(S) can be destroyed by this type of foul method?" Here's the full report and panel discussion: --- ENDS --- Radhika Apte has taken on another horror film, this one set in a military interrogation centre. Her dark side Basking in the glory of the unanimous acclaim she has garnered for Phobia, Radhika Apte has taken on another horror film, this one set in a military interrogation centre. To be directed by Phir Se's Patrick Graham, the film will see her pair up with Manav Kaul of Kai Po Che fame. You know him as the online dude who rips apart dud Hindi flicks. Now Kanan Gill is being considered as the lead in Noor, opposite Sonakshi Sinha. Here's hoping it doesn't land up in the Pretentious Movie Reviews list. advertisement Guru cool Shekhar Kapur's The Science of Compassion on Mata Amritanandamayi (Amma) is up on YouTube while a docu-drama on Paramahansa Yogananda, featuring a number of greats, releases on June 17. February 2017 will see Kareena's ex Shahid Kapoor and hubby Saif Ali Khan together in Rangoon. And now we hear Kapoor's brother Ishaan Khattar and Khan's young 'un Sara will be launched by Karan Johar in 2018. Hero of the week Richa Chadha For coming out on her battle with bulimia to keep up with the"gruelling" beautystandards of Bollywood Villain of the week Ram Gopal Varma For making disparaging remarks about a woman critic in response to herpanning his latest film, Veerappan Go figure 11 The age of Nihar Janga, a fifth standard student from Texas, who became National Spelling Bees youngest winner --- ENDS --- Although our country is perennially in election mode, there is always an extra edge to the poll drama in UP, which has traditionally been the nerve-centre of Indian politics. With the recent assembly elections behind us-giving the BJP a boost, highlighting the continuing might of regional satraps, and pushing the Congress further into the abyss-the 2017 Uttar Pradesh polls are now on the radar of the major political parties. This was the state from where the NDA stormed to power in the 2014 general elections with 71 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats. Any Opposition front against the Narendra Modi government will have to treat it as the semi-final before the big fight in 2019. Although our country is perennially in election mode, there is always an extra edge to the poll drama in UP, which has traditionally been the nerve-centre of Indian politics. It elects almost 15 per cent of the Lok Sabha, and eight of our 14 prime ministers have called it their home. But Uttar Pradesh has also been synonymous with bad governance, extreme poverty, and deep caste and religious divisions. Of the two principal regional parties in the state, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) led by Mayawati is scoffed at for its alleged corruption scandals, just as the Samajwadi Party (SP) led by Mulayam Singh Yadav is derided for its alleged 'goonda raj'. advertisement That is why the 2012 assembly election results were seen as a watershed. On the back of a huge victory, Mulayam promoted his 38-year-old son Akhilesh as chief minister. An engineer by education, Akhilesh had run the campaign on a development platform, turning the ideology of his party on its head by embracing modernity and promising law and order. He sidelined candidates who had criminal cases against them, and even his big dole idea of distributing free laptops to meritorious students had a hi-tech twist to it. Over the next few years, however, the state waited in vain for Akhilesh to assert himself. Kept on a tight leash by his father, and hemmed in by a party too set in its ways to embrace change, his government seemed no different from other SP regimes. Law and order deteriorated, and several appalling crimes broke the spirit of an electorate craving for development. The chief minister was regarded as too soft, disinterested in policy matters, and unable to stamp his personality on the government. It seems to have taken the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, in which SP won just five seats, to finally jolt Akhilesh into action. With defeat looming in 2017, he suddenly changed gears by pushing big-ticket projects. These include a 320 kilometre Lucknow-Agra expressway, four-lane highways connecting 44 district headquarters, the Lucknow metro and an IT City. Akhilesh is getting the work done at double-quick speed. He desperately wants something to showcase from his first term in office to keep the marching armies of the Opposition at bay, and to establish his primacy within a Yadav family that has more than a dozen members in various levels of politics. For this week's cover, Executive Editor Kunal Pradhan and Group Photo Editor Bandeep Singh went to Lucknow to analyse Uttar Pradesh's complicated political equation. Pradhan travelled with Akhilesh to Saifai and, for the cover photo, Singh shot him after a hard day of monitoring projects in the afternoon sun. "He woke up late, but for a man who had been virtually written off in 2014, Akhilesh seems much more in control now," Pradhan says. A lot of water will flow under the bridge before the elections. BJP president Amit Shah is looking to use the state as a gateway for Modi's 2019 re-election campaign, and Mayawati is on the comeback trail after four years on the margins. In the face of these challenges, the state's young chief minister seems to have realised-even if belatedly-that development, and development alone, is the calling card that matters. Whether he will succeed or not is another matter, but a battle royale is in the offing. advertisement --- ENDS --- Between polite forbearance and malicious deceit, oblique words that shade the truth, cloud meaning and cloak unpleasant facts. And we can't seem to get rid of them. Twitter criticised MP Hema Malini for her apparent lack of sensitivity when she tweeted pictures from her shooting even as her constituency Mathura remained embroiled in violence. By Lasyapriya Sundaram: Members of a religious sect illegally occupying a public park in Mathura attacked police officials on Thursday with swords, knives, guns and grenades. The authorities had only recently won a court order for their eviction. The carnage that followed led to the death of two police personnel - the Superintendent of police and the Station House Officer - and 22 members of the sect. Mathura's nerves remained tense on Friday morning. But, local MP Hema Malini was apparently in a completely different zone. advertisement Bollywood's dreamgirl took to Twitter to share pictures while she was en route to her shooting location. "Hoping for an early release of this film," she wrote, inviting the anger of many users. Twitter criticised Hema for her apparent lack of sensitivity and opposition parties pointed out how her tweets were inappropriate. In light of all the flak she got, the actor deleted her tweets and shared her views about the ongoings in Mathura, but the damage was already done. I just came bk frm Mathura & got the news of the violence tht has taken place there in which policemen have lost their lives. Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) June 3, 2016 So so upset by ths news frm a place which is so dear to me Will go there again if my presence is required.My heart goes out to the bereaved Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) June 3, 2016 I am a very sensitive person.I am deeply pained on the Mathura incident but Law & Order of U.P is the core issue. Let's not divert. Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) June 3, 2016 THE JUSTIFICATION "I am an artist, I have to shoot on dates that are already fixed for me," she said while talking to India Today. She said she was completely unaware of the situation until two months ago. "I'm told this has been happening for the past two years, but I came to know only two months ago that these people have encroached on the place," she said. "When I go, they take me to some villages and say please rectify the drainage system or rectify the roads or please provide electricity. These are the issues they come out with," she added. She blamed the UP government for not supporting police. "The death of the police personnel could have been avoided. Administration had been told to give more forces, but UP government did not give a go-ahead. For two months the police was fighting with the encroachers and yesterday, the issue erupted in a manner which was not expected at all," said Malini. REPEAT OFFENDER This is not the first time the actress has received criticism for seemingly insensitive tweets. After television actress Pratyusha Banerjee committed suicide, Malini took to twitter to criticise people who commit suicide. In July 2015, Hema Malini's Mercedes collided with another car in Rajasthan's Dausa district. A four-year-old girl died in the accident. The 66-year-old actor faced flak for not helping the child. advertisement An angry Hema Malini criticised the media for trying to malign her, and went on to bash the child's father on Twitter for not following traffic rules. Those tweets weren't received very well either. Just going thro ur replies!The accident has shown me how much u ppl love me & care for my welfare. All my years spent in the entertainment..Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) July 7, 2015 As for the sensation-hungry media & a few members of the public who had a field day maligning me even when I was helpless &in deep trauma..Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) July 7, 2015 ...who actually & unbelievably stooped to the lowest levels of human decency, I can only say "Shame on u" &"God Bless"!Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) July 7, 2015 My heart goes out to the child who unnecessarily lost her life and the family members who have been injured in the accident. ContdHema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) July 8, 2015 (Contd) How I wish the girl's father had followed the traffic rules - thn this accident could have been averted & the lil one's life safe! Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) July 8, 2015 advertisement Talk about bad timing. --- ENDS --- On July 31, 2015, slain SHO Santosh Yadav, who was an SO at that time, chased three robbers and managed to capture two of them while a third one managed to escape. This act of bravery earned Yadav the title of Mathura's Singham. By India Today Web Desk: Santosh Yadav, SHO Farah police station, who was killed in the Mathura violence last evening, was known for his bravery and was popularly known as Singham. Yadav died in an armed clash with the devotees of Baba Jaiguru Dev in Mathura when he along with a team of police and administrative officials had gone there to discuss and end a three-year-long "satyagrah" by the deceased Baba's devotees. advertisement Yadav died on the spot when a bullet hit him in the head in a planned attack on the police team by the so-called satyagrahis. THE COP WHO COULD'VE BECOME A DOC Santosh Yadav had earlier planned a career in medicine. However, in 2001, he joined the ranks of the police force and over time rose to his current rank. In 2013, he was transferred from Agra to Mathura where his bravery in foiling a robbery attack earned him the sobriquet of Mathura's Singham. HOW SANTOSH YADAV BECAME SINGHAM According to media reports, on July 31, 2015, an incident of carjacking of a Tata Indica was reported from the expressway outside Mathura. A motorcycle was also reportedly robbed. Santosh Yadav, who was an SO at that time, immediately got into action and chased the robbers. The robbers couldn't get too far as the rain and mud hampered them from driving both the vehicles away. Desperate to flee from the police, the robbers abandoned the vehicles and fled on foot at the same time, opening fire on the police force which was following close behind. So Santosh Yadav, not worried about his own life, opened fire at the robbers and chased them. He managed to capture two robbers while a third one managed to escape. This act of bravery earned him the title of Mathura's Singham. CRACKING BANK ROBBERY CASES Earlier in Agra, he had cracked a bank robbery in five days which had led to him receiving awards from the IG and DIG. Yadav was known for his ability to solve complicated cases. Santosh Yadav who hailed from Uttar Pradesh's Jaunpur district was appointed as SI. His first posting was that of in-charge Shergarh. However, due to his work, he was soon appointed as head of the SWAT team. Under him, the SWAT team solved many cases which led to him being appointed the PRO to SSP. He was later moved to Yamuan Paar as station officer. From Yamuna Paar, Yadav was moved to Farah as SHO. advertisement It had only been 20 days that Santosh Yadav had taken charge as SHO Farah before he undertook the operation to clear the 280-acre land in Jawaharbagh where he was killed. ALSO READ: Mathura clash: 1 policeman killed, several others injured during anti-encroachment drive --- ENDS --- External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said Italian authorities admitted it was a "mistake" on their part to detain the three IITians. By India Today Web Desk: Three IIT students were detained by Italian police in North Italy's Ventimiglia town on Monday during checking for illegal immigrants but were released after 10 hours following the intervention of the Indian mission in Rome. HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED Akshit Goyal and Deepak Bhatt, from IIT Delhi and Uday Kusupati from IIT Bombay were visiting Italy and carrying valid passports with Schengen visas but they were still they were detained by mistake during checking for illegal immigrants at Ventimiglia railway station. advertisement The three IITians were then flown along with other detainees to Bari, a town almost a 1000 km away in south of Italy. The three students were released after almost 10 hours. MISSION INTERVENTION SAVES THE DAY External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said Italian authorities admitted it was a "mistake" on their part to detain the three as their documents were in order. Swarup said the Indian Mission in Rome, after coming to know of the incident from a relative of Akshit, swung into action and contacted Italy's Ministry of Interior Affairs and police authorities in Ventimiglia. The students were first brought to Indian Embassy in Rome on May 31 and the mission had made arrangements for their onward journey to Nice in France the same day, where they are enrolled for an internship programme at a university, Swarup said. "The embassy has strongly raised the issues with the Italian authorities and is in touch with them to ensure that adequate steps are taken to ensure that such unfortunate incidents involving Indian nationals do not recur," he said. --- ENDS --- The Modi government has cleared sale of BrahMos supersonic cruise missile to Vietnam. By Manjeet Negi: To take on China's increasing hegemony in Asia, the Modi government has cleared sale of BrahMos supersonic cruise missile to Vietnam. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar begins a five-day visit to Singapore and Vietnam from today. The main highlight of the visit would be talks on sale of BrahMos missiles to Vietnam. Vietnam had been eyeing the missile for over five years now but the UPA government had been reluctant to give the nod fearing Chinese objections. advertisement The BrahMos Diaries BrahMos is a supersonic anti-ship missile, developed jointly by New Delhi and Moscow. It is considered one of the most effective and lethal anti-ship missiles in any nation's inventory, almost entirely due to its speed While the current BrahMos launch vehicles are surface and aircraft based, India is testing a submarine-launch version that could conceivably be used in Vietnam's Kilo-class submarines Highly placed defence sources said both PM Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar were in favour of exporting the missile system to Vietnam Beijing has expressed reservations against any plans by New Delhi to supply weapons to Vietnam China and Vietnam are already locked in a tense face-off over maritime boundaries in the South China Sea Praveen Pathak, spokesman for BrahMos Aerospace, told India Today: "We expect friendly nations-with whom neither India nor Russia have a conflict - to show an interest in buying these missiles." --- ENDS --- For the past five years, India and Iran have engaged in an irate correspondence over an Iranian firm. Iran's largest fibre optic manufacturer, Sim Noor Pooya Co., bagged a 2010 contract to work with India's Power Grid Corporation. The deal went sour after contractual disagreements. Power Grid is yet to pay the Iranian firm for services rendered because they didn't get approvals to pay the Iranian company in India and refused to pay in a third country (as Iran was still under sanctions). The Iranian firm claims to have lost about 2 million euros in the dispute, which is yet to be resolved. "This is a typical example of business getting lost in systemic, procedural issues. Without solving banking issues, how can anybody do business in a country?" asks Pervinder Singh Chandok, vice-president of the Tehran-based India-Iran Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Chandok represents one of the oldest Indian families in Iran and has been witness to the peaks and troughs of Indo-Iran relations. The latest high was Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Iran between May 22 and 23, where he signed 12 deals with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani. The centrepiece iswathe Chabahar port agreement. India is to invest about $500 million (Rs 34,000 crore) in developing a port and related infrastructure over 10 years. The strategically located Chabahar, just 1,000 km from Gujarat, will be India's gateway to the land-locked Central Asian countries and Afghanistan. Currently, over 80 per cent of India's total imports from Iran comprise mineral products. Agro and allied products, including processed food, make for about 40 per cent of India's exports to Iran. The growth potential lies across these sectors, including textiles, pharmaceuticals and services such as consultancy and telecom. advertisement Traders say that Chabahar provides a much required trading route with Central Asia, bypassing a hostile Pakistan. The Federation of Indian Exporters Organisation (FIEO) estimates a 30 per cent reduction in freight costs through this new route. The first phase of the Chabahar port will become operational within 18 months. "Once you have the proximity to Chabahar, Central Asia and Afghanistan, we can look at a quantum jump in exports and a big boost in services," says Ajay Sahai of the FIEO. India's trade with Central Asia is less than two per cent of its total exports. The FIEO hopes to more than double trade with Central Asian countries like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to about $10 billion in the next five years (from $3-4 billion today). Of course, all this will depend on India's relationship with Iran, which till now can at best be characterised as ambivalent. Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution explains: "There were problems in the mid-2000s- practical negotiating issues. Iranians are tough negotiators. To implement the port agreement, three countries (Iran, India and Afghanistan) have to be interested at the same time." Prasanna Sarambale, group vice-president, Sterling and Wilson Private Limited, recalls the enthusiasm Iranians displayed during his visit there as part of a CII delegation, about 20 days before the prime minister's visit. "Iran has a huge deficit of automobiles and is looking at Indian firms to set up base there." In May this year, India and Iran reached an agreement to use European banks to clear the $6.4 billion of pending oil payments to Tehran. However, the two countries are yet to negotiate details on how funds will flow in and out of Iran for bilateral trade. Many exporters have received orders and even advances in euros and other foreign currencies in the past, but in the absence of RBI instructions, the money has had to be remitted and orders were lost to the advantage of India's competitors. Exporters worry that if the issue of receipt of payment in foreign currency for exports to Iran is not resolved, trade could actually come to a complete halt. The fact that Indian banks don't have a presence in Iran doesn't help much. Grant of credit lines is another important issue for a country struggling with the impact of sanctions. Italy and South Korea have already extended cheaper, longer duration credit lines to Iran. India's Exim Bank has extended buyers' credit under the NEIA (National Export Insurance Account) but only for steel plates and rails for the economic corridor India is building in Iran. This needs to be extended to other items of trade. Clearly, India has some distance to go before it realises the potential of its Central Asian gateway. advertisement Follow the writer on Twitter @shwetapunj --- ENDS --- Ousted Kerala police chief TP Senkumar, who is currently on leave, has alleged that the government removed him from the post by violating the police act. "In Jisha murder case, the public perception is that investigation is not heading towards the right direction. There has been a procedural lapse" -- these were the first words of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan addressing the media after the newly sworn in LDF government's first Cabinet. This was followed by the announcement that ADGP B Sandhya will head a new team to investigate the case that had not seen a single arrest after more than a month after the law student was brutally raped and murdered. advertisement RESHUFFLE IN POLICE DEPARTMENT Within days, as is the ritual of any new government that takes office, top cops were reshuffled. TP Senkumar, the state police chief was shunted out. Jail DGP Loknath Behera got his post. Immediately after Behera took charge, Senkumar on Thursday went straight to the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) challenging the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front government's decision to remove him from the post of the state police chief. Senkumar, who is currently on leave, has alleged that the government removed him from the post by violating the Kerala Police Act. SENKUMAR'S FACEBOOK POST Soon after the reshuffle, Senkumar in a Facebook post had indicated his discontent on his transfer, saying during the last 35 years he had always kept honesty, integrity and justice. "I still have all my vertebras intact. I have never appeased anybody for any posting. I have always tried to be impartial and fair", Senkumar had said in the post. With a year left to retire, TP Senkumar has been posted as the MD of Police Housing Corpriation Board, a post forced upon DGP Jacob Thomas in November last year by the previous UDF government after he had locked horns with them several times. Following this, TP Senkumar had published copies of the All-India Services (Conduct) Rules, 1968, considered a reply to Jacob Thomas. Copies of which he can now refer to before publishing his own Facebook posts. ALSO READ: Politicians play blame game over murder of young woman in Kerala --- ENDS --- Matt Preston, Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris are participating in the World On A Plate food festival that's to be held on June 4 and 5. Our favourite MasterChef judges, Matt, Gary and George with chefs Anthony and Saji at the JW Marriott in Bengaluru. Photo courtesy: Instagram/jwmarriottblr By Shreya Goswami: This weekend, Bengaluru is the place to be for all foodies in India. It's the first time the international food festival, World On A Plate, is coming to India. You might think that over 50 pop-up restaurants in the same place would be the main highlight of the fest. But you will get more than that if you were to attend the fest this weekend. advertisement Also read: Nidhi Mahajan To Rishi Desai: Know all about the Indian contestants on MasterChef Australia A fine breakfast spread this morning for the MC Au judges. Photo courtesy: Instagram/gcalombaris Because your favourite MasterChef Australia judges, the amazing Matt Preston, Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris, will also be there, offering you food they've cooked, and a masterclass each! Gary Mehigan and Matt Preston flew to India yesterday. Photo courtesy: Instagram/mattscravat The trio has travelled to Bengaluru in the middle of the ongoing season of MasterChef Australia, just to be a part of this festival. Matt Preston and Gary Mehigan travelled to Bengaluru on a Singapore Airlines flight yesterday, where they were joined by George Calombaris. They are staying at the JW Marriott, and, as is evident from their Instagram uploads, are having a great time. At a press conference in Bengaluru earlier today. Photo courtesy: Instagram/gcalombaris The MC Au judges, checking out the beautiful produce in Bengaluru's markets. Photo courtesy: Instagram/mattscravat Apart from interacting with chefs Anthony and Saji at the JW Marriott, Matt, George and Gary also took an interesting tour of the city's markets. The things that caught their eyes were everything from vegetable stalls to knife sharpeners and the amazing South-Indian food they got to taste. Also read: What this Indian MasterChef Australia contestant did on being eliminated will make you proud Matt Preston was surprised to find kundru or tiny cucumbers in the market. Photo courtesy: Instagram/mattscravat Matt Preston was surprised to find kundru or tiny cucumbers in the market. Photo courtesy: Instagram/mattscravat Gary Mehigan posted a photo of this stuffed or bharwa karela that he found delicious. Photo courtesy: Instagram/garymehigan While the rest of the country will have to be satisfied with Instagram updates, the residents of Bengaluru and those travelling to the city for the weekend must get a glimpse of the MC Au trio during the fest. It's only occasionally that Matt, George and Gary come to India together! Tiny aubergines or baingan in Bengaluru's markets. Photo courtesy: Instagram/mattscravat This is not an opportunity to be missed, so be there at the World On A Plate festival, June 4 and 5, 2016, UB City and JW Marriott, both on 24, Vittal Mallya Road, 8 am onward. --- ENDS --- advertisement When Hema Malini's indifference to the Mathura clashes was noted and slammed on Twitter, the BJP leader promptly deleted the tweets. By India Today Web Desk: Even as her Lok Sabha constituency, Uttar Pradesh's Mathura, remained on the edge following the death of 24 people in clashes with encroachers, actor and BJP MP Hema Malini was in Mumbai's Madh Island, tweeting pictures of her shooting for a film and hoping for its early release. In a series of images the 67-year-old veteran actor posted on Twitter, she could be seen in a maroon sari and salwar-kurta, posing for the camera and gushing about how convenient it has become to reach Madh Island from mainland Mumbai by motorised boats. advertisement "Hoping for an early release of this film," she captioned one of the photos, without revealing the name of the film. Life's good. Photo: @SmokingKills_ (Twitter) HEMA MALINI RETRACTS TWEETS? However, within moments, Malini's indifference to the Mathura clashes, which had been the headline since late on Thursday night, was noted on Twitter, the BJP leader quickly deleted the tweets and instead posted, "I just came bk frm Mathura & got the news of the violence tht has taken place there in which policemen have lost their lives." "So so upset by ths news frm a place which is so dear to me, Will go there again if my presence is required. My heart goes out to the bereaved," she said in another tweet. But well.. Hema ji finds new boats cool. Photo: @SmokingKills_ (Twitter) WHAT HAPPENED IN MATHURA? 24 people, including Mathura's Superintendent of Police Mukul Dwivedi and Station House Officer Santosh Yadav, have been killed in the massive clash between police and encroachers that broke out yesterday, forcing Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav to order an inquiry. The violence erupted when police tried to evict illegal occupants, believed to be from an outfit called Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi, from Jawahar Bagh on the directions of the Allahabad High Court. Also read: Mathura clashes LIVE UPDATES: 21, including SP, killed; Akhilesh Yadav orders probe --- ENDS --- Uttar Pradesh DGP Javeed Ahmad said that the police is preparing to slap the National Security Act (NSA) against the leaders of the protesters along with others who have been illegally occupying Mathura's Jawahar Bagh for the last two years. Several hutments put up inside Jawahar Bagh in Mathura caught fire during the clashes. (Photo: PTI) By India Today Web Desk: The Mathura Police has launched a massive manhunt for Ramvriksh Yadav, who is believed to be the mastermind of yesterday's violence in the city in which 24 people, including two cops were killed. According to official sources, it was Yadav who had provoked people inside Jawahar Bagh to attack the police contingent. Twelve teams have been formed to nab Yadav, however, the police has had little success so far. advertisement Over 2500 people were inside Jawahar Bagh when the police launched the anti-encroachment drive to push out the illegal occupants who have been living there for the past two years. Police and local administration had tried to clear the place but failed. INTELLIGENCE FAILURE Sources said the state government may take action against top police officers stationed in Mathura as they failed to gauge the situation. The Mathura Police also failed to gather any information about the number and strength of the people inside Jawahar Bagh. A probe panel has been formed under supervision of the Commissioner of Aligarh whowill submit report on the whole incident. "Will see the (UP government's)report. This shouldn't have happened, UP government should look into why this happened. Bahut badi chook hui hai (There has been a big lapse)," Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju said. POLITICAL SUPPORT While locals in Mathura have blamed the police of deliberately turning a blind eye towards the issue in Jawahar Bagh due political pressure, the cops have denied it. Baba Jai Gurudev, the godman whose followers are behind the Mathura riots Police action came only after a high court's deadline to evict the land grabbers. At least 24 people, including an SP and an SHO, were killed in clashes between police and encroachers yesterday. Among those killed in the firing are SHO Santosh Kumar and Superintendent of Police (SP) Mukul Dwivedi. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav expressed grief over the incident and announced an ex-gratia of Rs 20 lakh to the family of the deceased policemen. Over 360 people have been arrested in violent eviction drive in Mathura. Watch: All you need to know Mathura violence "The police committed a mistake by launching the operation to evict the illegal occupants without full preparation. There was so much danger involved. No one knew how many explosives were inside," Akhilesh told reporters. Mathura burns, MP Hema Malini fiddles with shooting pics on Twitter, quickly deletes them Uttar Pradesh DGP Javeed Ahmad said that the police is preparing to slap the National Security Act (NSA) against the leaders of the protesters along with others who have been illegally occupying Mathura's Jawahar Bagh for the last two years. Nearly 3,000 people had illegally set up a camp on an over 260-acre plot for last two years. advertisement "Our two young officers laid down their lives while protecting the law and with a heavy heart we bid adieu to them," the DGP told reporters. Huge cache of arms recovered in Mathura 45 arms of 315 bore, two 12 bore one factory made 315 bore rifle, one 12 bore rifle, four 315 bore Javeed (@javeeddgpup) June 3, 2016 HERE'S WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: The clashes broke out when police were trying to evict illegal occupants of a land in Jawahar Bagh by activists, believed to be of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi, on the directions of the Allahabad High Court. Home Minister Rajnath Singh has spoken to UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and expressed anguish over the loss of lives.The minister has assured all necessary help to the state government. The Union Home Minister said he has reviewed the situation in Mathura. "I have spoken to the Chief Minister of Uttar Pardesh and reviewed the situation in Mathura. I have assured him of all possible help from the Centre," he said. "I am anguished over the loss of lives in the incident in Mathura. May God give strength to the bereaved families," Rajnath Singh added. The Uttar Pradesh chief minister has ordered a magisterial inquiry. "The wrath of people against encroachers was such that when they were retreating, they were severely beaten by the public," an official said. The activists used not only hand grenades but also opened fire from automatic weapons after taking position on tree tops, DM Rajesh Kumar had said. Over two years ago, activists of splinter group of Baba Jai Gurudeo had occupied hundreds of acres of land of Jawahar Bagh on the pretext of 'dharna'. Their demands included "cancellation" of election of President and Prime Minister of India, replacement of existing currency with 'Azad Hind Fauj' currency, sale of diesel at the rate of 60 litres for one rupee and petrol at the rate of 40 litres for one rupee. In April, Mathura district administration had issued a notice to the protesters asking them to vacate the land. advertisement --- ENDS --- A little-known outfit called the Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi is behind the violent clashes in Mathura. Here is who they are, the godman they follow and what they want to achieve. By Vivek Surendran: A violent clash between the Police and activists of two outfits we've not heard much about, the Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi and the Swadheen Bharat Subhash Sena, have left 24 people dead in Mathura, including an SP and an SHO. Also read: Mathura clashes LIVE UPDATES: 24, including SP, killed; Akhilesh Yadav orders probe The activists of these outfits had illegally occupied 280 acres of Jawahar Bagh since 2014 on the pretext of a 'dharna'. Police who tried to evict these illegal occupants, after a directive from the Allahabad High Court, were welcomed with violent attacks that started as stone pelting but soon escalated to use of swords, knives, guns, grenades and even automatic weapons. advertisement Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi An outfit claiming allegiance to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, this sect have engaged in violent protests in the past as well. The outfit is a breakaway faction of Swadheen Bharat Vidhik Satyagrahi, followers of Baba Jai Gurudev. They've been occupying the Jawahar Bagh on the pretext of 'dharna' for over two years now. The police have been able to identify only one of the group's leaders, Ram Vriksha Yadav. Here's a video of Ram Vriksha Yadav TheLallanTop posted today: Why are they protesting? What are their demands? Make all documents related to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose public. Scrapping of electoral process to appoint President and Prime Minister. Make available 60 litres of diesel and 50 litres of petrol at Re 1 each. Replacement of current Indian currency with what they call "Azad Hind Fauj" currency. Who is Baba Jai Gurudev? Jai Gurudev was a self-styled godman who died in 2012, allegedly at the age of 116, leaving behind assets worth Rs 1,200 crore. Baba Jai Gurudev. Photo Source: kumarsushilkumar.wordpress.com Jai Gurudev had luxurious ashrams on the Delhi-Mathura Highway and in Uttar Pradesh's Etawah district. He had land worth Rs 4,000 crore and cars worth Rs 150 crore. It is said that his followers make a donation of not less than Rs 12 lakh daily at his ashrams. One of Jai Gurudev's ashrams. Photo Source: panoramio.com His followers occupied Jawahar Bagh in 2014 to claim his property through protest and make the above stated demands. "I am Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose" said Baba Jai Gurudev On 13 January, 1975, a rally was supposed to take place in Kanpur's Nanarao park, and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose himself was allegedly supposed to take part in it. Despite knowing and believing that Netaji died in a plane crash 30 years ago, there was a huge crowd in the park with people eagerly waiting to catch a glance of their hero. What happened next? Jai Gurudev took the stage, raised both his hands to a baffled crowd and said "I'm Subhash Chandra Bose". Before he could finish saying that people rained slippers, rotten eggs and tomatoes on him. The police had to order a lathicharge to control the angry crowd. advertisement No solid information is available on Gurudev's early life. There are rumours that say he lost his parents as a child, and left home at the age of seven in pursuit of a perfect spiritual master and that the search ended when he met Saint Ghurelal Sharma in Aligarh. Another story claims that Gurudev used to perform sadhana for over 18 hours every day. Within a short span, he set up ashrams that looked grander than the Taj Mahal, and lured in many followers from backward classes who hailed him a hero. When we say he's got following, we mean it. See this photo - Photo Source: brajdiscovery.org He entered Indian politics in the 80s and 90s with his Doordarshi party, contested in hundreds of elections but never won any. That may explain why his followers are against elections. Cases against Gurudev and his followers Uttar Pradesh State Industrial Development Corporation has filed 16 cases in the Mathura court accusing the ashram and his followers of encroaching on hundreds of acres of industrial land. advertisement Mathura district magistrate received 23 complaints from farmers accusing Gurudev's followers of forcefully taking over their farmland. Now that explains the sect's fascination with encroachment. Here's a video of the riots: --- ENDS --- Questions are being raised on why the police and administration continued to ignore the assembly of over 3000 armed civilians in the Jawahar Bagh compound since the past 30 months, a negligence which resulted in such a disaster. Talking to India Today on this matter, UP Director General of Police Javeed Ahmed said that 22 rioters died in the violence apart from the Station House Officer of Farah and Superintendant of Police Mathura City. (PTI photo) By Siraj Qureshi: Following the outbreak of mob violence in Mathura in which two senior police officials lost their lives apart from 22 civilians, the entire district remains under strict police vigil and a state of tension-filled peace prevails there. INTELLIGENCE FAILURE? In the aftermath of the incident, questions are being raised on why the police and administration continued to ignore the assembly of over 3000 armed civilians in the Jawahar Bagh compound since the past 30 months, a negligence which resulted in such a disaster. advertisement Talking to India Today on this matter, UP Director General of Police Javeed Ahmed said that 22 rioters died in the violence apart from the Station House Officer of Farah and Superintendant of Police Mathura City. Out of the 22, 11 died in the fire that the rioters had set to their own shacks built inside the compound, while 11 died in the police lathicharge subsequent to a blatant attack on the police force by the rioters from all sides. He said that the rioters had accumulated massive volume of arms, ammunition and other types of bladed weapons and a tunnel inside the compound still contained a large number of bombs and grenades so that section of the compound has been cordoned off by the police as attempts are being made to defuse the bombs. PROBE ORDERED UP Principal Secretary (Home) Debashish Panda said that the inquiry of the incident has been deputed to the Agra divisional commissioner Pradeep Bhatnagar. Spread in 280 acres of horticulture department land, the Jawaharbagh incident could easily become the nail in the coffin for the Samajwadi Party as local BJP leaders are alleging that Ramvriksh Yadav, the leader of this ragtag army of rioters had close association with a senior Samajwadi Party leader and UP Cabinet minister and it was the minister's protection that allowed the so-called Satyagrahis to capture valuable horticultural land and squat on it for almost three years and no action was taken on them. SAFE HAVEN FOR MAOISTS? Sources indicated that the compound also acted as a shelter for several Maoists who had disappeared over the past couple of years in Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand and Bihar and they had provided training to the rioters for combating the police force effectively. Several of the so-called Satyagrahis have dozens of criminal cases registered against them. ALSO READ: 1 policeman killed, several others injured during anti-encroachment drive in Mathura --- ENDS --- The Mathura Police has launched a massive manhunt for Ramvriksh Yadav, who is believed to be the mastermind of yesterday's violence. By Anindya Banerjee: A lesser known 'Netaji cult' group called Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi fired upon police when a huge continent of forces reached Jawahar Bagh area of Mathura resulting in death of 2 cops, including the SP City and an SHO and injuring many. Total 24 people were killed in the unprecedented violence the temple town witnessed yesterday. advertisement PROTESTERS WERE WELL PREPARED, ARMED When police resorted to retaliatory firing it killed as much as 22 activists who have been illegally occupying hundreds of acres of government land. The UP Police, emboldened by a court order to evict them, reached with 25 companies of PAC, the paramilitary wing and 4 companies of Rapid Action Force. But children and women were used as shields, which made their job difficult. Baba Jai Gurudev, the godman whose followers are behind the Mathura riots Sources say first firing happened from the splinter group of Jai Gurudev organisation that resulted in a death of SHO Santosh Kumar Yadav on the spot and the city SP Mukul Dwivedi who succumbed to his injuries later. The police party that went to clear the area night long say there have been towers erected where the 'activists' positioned themselves with pistols. ADG Law and Order has said there have been use of crude bombs and land mines as well. MASTERMIND IDENTIFIED The Mathura Police has launched a massive manhunt for Ramvriksh Yadav, who is believed to be the mastermind of yesterday's violence. According to official sources, it was Yadav who had provoked people inside Jawahar Bagh to attack the police contingent. Twelve teams have been formed to nab Yadav, however, the police has had little success so far. Watch: All you need to know Mathura violence Over 2500 people were inside Jawahar Bagh when the police launched the anti-encroachment drive to push out the illegal occupants who have been living there for the past two years. Police and local administration had tried to clear the place but failed. AKHILESH ADMITS LAPSES Acknowledging that the police was ill-prepared to tackle the land grabbers, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav said no guilty will be spared. He said that the police should have been "more prepared" before trying to evict the protesters. "There were some lapses. Police should have gone with full preparation and after holding talks, but there was no information that they would be having so much (arms and ammunition)," Akhilesh told reporters. A probe panel has been formed under supervision of the Commissioner of Aligarh who will submit report on the whole incident. advertisement "Will see the (UP government's)report. This shouldn't have happened, UP government should look into why this happened. Bahut badi chook hui hai (There has been a big lapse)," Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju said. DGP REFUSES TO ADMIT INTELLIGENCE FAILURE Today morning DGP of Uttar Pradesh Javeed Ahmed said, "Huge cache of arms recovered in Mathura 45 arms of 315 bore, two 12 bore one factory made." Later in an interview to India Today he refused to accept it was an intelligence failure. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has ordered him and the Principal Secretary(Home) to visit Mathura to access the situation. POLITICAL SLUGFEST OVER RIOTS The BJP has upped the political heat on the ruling Samajwadi Party government over this incident terming the Akhilesh's rule as 'Maha Jungleraaj'. How SHO Santosh Yadav came to be known as Mathura's Singham BJP national secretary Shrikant is in Mathura and will submit a report on Thursday's violence to party president Amit Shah. Speaking to India Today, he demanded a CBI inquiry into the matter and has alleged role of a 'top SP leader' in the land grab. With Assembly elections slated next year, even the otherwise insignificant players like Aam Admi Party is sending a delegation to Mathura tomorrow. advertisement But probably amid this discourse the most noticeable perceived insensitivity was shown by local MP Hema Malini who tweeted about her upcoming movie . After being criticised for this she deleted all her tweets and planning to visit the city tomorrow to undo the damage. Also Read: Mathura burns, MP Hema Malini fiddles with shooting pics on Twitter, quickly deletes them Mathura violence: 11 rioters died in fire set to their own shacks --- ENDS --- Emilia Clarke admitted she and Sam Claflin failed previous auditions together before being cast in Me Before You. Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin in a still from Me Before you By Bang Showbiz: Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin were previously deemed not to have enough chemistry to work together. ALSO READ: Emilia Clarke's love for Leonardo DiCaprio: I want to breathe Leo's air ALSO READ: After Priyanka Chopra, Emilia Clarke wants to be the first female James Bond The pair may star together as Louisa Clark and Will Traynor in new movie Me Before You but they previously auditioned to be co-stars on another project, only for neither of them to get the parts. advertisement Speaking on BBC Radio One, Emilia recalled, "We met six years before and it was just a series of a couple of chemistry reads together - and then neither of us getting the job! Then it worked out for us (on Me Before You). We were so happy we were employed!" The 29-year-old actress admitted she loved working with her pal but they struggled to remain serious because they are such good friends, though director Thea Sharrock didn't seem to mind because it made the love between Lou and Will seem real. She said, "I just got to be goofy. Then amazing director Thea Sharrock - who's my favourite person on the planet - was just encouraging of it. She was like 'Yeah, do more'. And there was some stuff that I definitely just improvised.... we'd be just causing havoc. But it worked out in the end." They shot the movie on stunning locations which made the project feel more like a "holiday" than work. Emilia added, "Everybody is so nice in the movie and we had so much fun. We went to Majorca and went filming and I was like, 'This is a holiday'. I am not working, we are having a giggle." The movie, which is based on Jojo Moyes' 2012 novel of the same title, follows Louisa, whose cheerful attitude is put to the test when she becomes a carer for Will, a wealthy young banker who is determined to end his life after he was left paralysed in an accident two years earlier. His cynical outlook starts to change when Louisa shows him that life is worth living and their bond deepens, changing their lives and hearts forever. --- ENDS --- Seven-year-old Yamato Tanooka was found earlier today in a one-storey wooden hut located 5km away from where he went missing. By India Today Web Desk: After being missing for six days in the bear-inhabited forests of northern Japan, 7-year-old Yamato Tanooka has been found alive. Military personnel rescued him from a hut around 5km away from where he supposedly went missing. Doctors say he has sustained only cuts and was not in a state of panic: "He was incredibly calm considering he had been missing for seven days. He didn't panic at all." advertisement Tokyo-based news agency Kyodo reports the boy was found at about 7.50am on Friday, lying "curled up" in a one-storey wooden hut in an exercise area in Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island. "There was no conspicuous external injury, and the boy introduced himself as Yamato Tanooka," said a police spokesman. Members of the search party applauding onr finding the boy. Source: Reuters During these six days, the area of forest where he went missing experienced heavy rainfall and temperature dropping to 7 degree Celsius at night. Visibly not injured, the soldiers then fed the boy rice balls and bread when he said he was hungry and thirsty. He is said to have been without food all this while. Tanooka told the police he had reached the drill area after walking around alone in the forest. How he got lost? Last Saturday, Tanooka's parents made him get out of their car and abandoned him on a mountain road as punishment because he was misbehaving The parents originally told the police they lost Tanooka while hiking to gather wild vegetables. Later, they admitted to have punished him for throwing stones at other cars and people. In a tearful telephonic interview with TV Asahi, Tanooka's father said he had apologised to his son as soon as the family were reunited at a hospital in Hakodate on Friday morning. --- ENDS --- The Army does not allow any soldier to sport a permanent beard, except in the case of Sikhs. By India Today Web Desk: A Muslim soldier terminated by the Indian Army for insisting on growing a beard on 'religious grounds', plans to move Supreme Court to challenge the order, an English daily reported. According to a report by The Hindu, Maktumhusen, a 34-year-old Muslim soldier from Karnataka, was discharged and termed an 'undesirable soldier' over the issue. HISTORY OF LEGAL TUSSLES advertisement In 2001, Jawan Maktumhusen requested his Commanding Officer (CO) to allow him to grow a beard on religious grounds. After permitting him initially, the CO realised that the rules allow only Sikhs to sport permanent beards. Citing his findings, the CO withdrew the permission and asked Maktumhusen to comply. The soldier called the order 'discriminatory' and moved Karnataka High Court, still refusing to shave off the beard. He was then transferred to Command Hospital, Pune where his new CO also asked him to shave off the beard. Maktumhusen however, remained adamant. A show-cause notice followed, after which he was sent on detention for disobedience for 14 days. As the Jawan continued to ignore instructions, he was discharged him from service and termed an 'undesirable soldier' after an inquiry. According to his lawyers, Maktumhusen may move the Supreme Court. WHAT THE RULES SAY The Armed Forces do not allow any soldier to sport a permanent beard, except in the case of Sikhs. The Army explains this is because having a beard is among their 'fundamental tenets'. Sikhism forbids its followers to cut hair - the religion believes by doing so they honour god's gift of hair. "The Army is a disciplined force and denominational differences among its members based on religion, caste cannot be permitted. Practice of wearing a beard on the basis of religion by the applicant goes against Regulation 665 of the Defence Service Regulations and is not conducive to the discipline of the Force," said the Armed Forces Tribunal while terminating Maktumhusen. DIFFERENT FORCE, DIFFERENT RULES The Army, Navy and the Air force have different rules when it comes to facial hair. The Army allows non-Sikhs to grow temporary beards only for soldiers in certain regiments and for covert operations - temporary being the operative word. The Air Force does not allow any display of religious symbols on duty or at parades. The Navy allows beards, but only with the CO's permission. Some exceptions are only granted on medical grounds. Sikhs, meanwhile, are permitted to keep untrimmed hair and a well-maintained beard across all services. MUSLIMS vs THE RULES advertisement This is not the first time a Muslim jawan has kicked up a legal storm on the issue of growing beards. In 2008, Aircraftsman Ansari Aftab Ahmed was discharged from service for demanding permission to grow a beard. Four years after joining the IAF, he had sought permission to grow a beard. Denied, he went on 40 days' leave, and returned wearing a beard, said the IAF case file. Around the same year, two more petitions were filed on the same issue -- one by IAF Corporal Mohammed Zubair and another by Maharashtra policeman Mohammad Fasi. Interestingly, IAF allows Muslims who had a beard at the time of enrolment before January 1, 2002, to sport facial hair. They do have rules regarding its length and maintenance. Bollywood Buzz Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan is known to have angered the Army by sporting a beard in his role as an Army officer in the film Major Saab. Actor Shah Rukh Khan also sported a beard in the film Jab Tak Hai Jaan but many officers in field areas in Kashmir are allowed beards for operational reasons. --- ENDS --- advertisement By India Today Web Desk: Amitabh Bachchan's granddaughter Navya Naveli Nanda is nothing less than a star as far as social media is concerned. The young diva pretty much owns Instagram, thanks to her numerous pictures on the photo-sharing site. ALSO READ: Post graduation, Aryan Khan and Navya Nanda dine out with friends ALSO READ: Shah Rukh's son Aryan and Amitabh's granddaughter Navya are graduates now advertisement Navya just graduated from the Seven Oaks School in London, and there has been much speculation about her Bollywood debut. So when Navya's grandfather Amitabh Bachchan was asked about her plans of stepping into Bollywood, the veteran actor was pretty surprised. Big B was at a media interaction for his upcoming film TE3N when he was asked this question. "I have no idea, I am hearing this from you. I don't think she will work in Bollywood any time soon. She is still studying," Bachchan was quoted as saying by Deccan Chronicle. Amitabh Bachchan's TE3N is all about a grandfather's struggle to find his missing granddaughter. The film stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Vidya Balan apart from Bachchan. Directed by Ribhu Dasgupta, TE3N is slated for a June 10 release. --- ENDS --- Sources in Congress said Ajit Jogi has been thinking of breaking away from the party ever since he didn't receive positive signals from Rahul Gandhi about re-entry of his son Amit in the party. By Rahul Noronha: Former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi has raised the banner of revolt against the Congress, hinting he will form a separate party, the announcement for which will most likely be made on June 6. Jogi's announcement came immediately after signs within the Congress pointed towards vice-president Rahul Gandhi's take over. Jogi's relationship with Gandhi has been strained for some time. advertisement Sources say Jogi has been mulling a break ever since he didn't receive positive signals from Gandhi about the re-entry of his son Amit Jogi to the Congress. THE SINS OF THE SON Amit was dismissed from the party when a tape featuring him and Ajit Jogi 'fixing' the Antagarh by poll was made public in January. Amit dismissed by the state unit of Congress but the central unit of the party had not taken a call on the dismissal. Also, the state unit had asked the party's disciplinary committee for Ajit Jogi's expulsion too, but the central unit had not taken a call on that either. THE RIFT WITH RAHUL Ajit Jogi had been making rounds of Delhi to get Amit's expulsion revoked but is learnt to have not been granted time to meet Rahul Gandhi. Finding himself hemmed in, on Wednesday, when news about Rahul's elevation as Congress president started doing the rounds, Ajit Jogi announced his decision to move away from the Congress. When he was asked if he would go to Delhi to iron out differences, Jogi Sr. said 'not anymore' and he will decide what is to be done in Raipur and retorted by saying, "Speaking to the central leadership was akin to 'bhains ke aage been bajana' or playing a flute to a buffalo (pointless exercise). The father son duo have been touring Chattisgarh the last 2 months, gauging the response of the people and assessing the viability of an independent political outfit. A POINTLESS EXERCISE? The jury is still out on whether Ajit Jogi forming a new political party will adversely impact the Congress. Ajit Jogi's game plan, in the immediate term, say political analysts, is to mar the chances for the Congress' return to power in 2018 although officially he has maintained that the reason for him forming his own political party is to challenge the Raman Singh led BJP government which the PCC president and leader of opposition have failed to do. In the long term, Jogi hopes to become a viable state level leader on the lines of Mamata Bannerjee or Sharad Pawar. Jogi is said to enjoy widespread support among the Satnami community which is around 12% of the electorate. He needs the support of 12 of the 36 Congress MLAs to be recognized in the assembly as a separate party. He does have the support of more than 12 MLAs but what remains to be seen is whether they would join him on June 6 . advertisement A number of former MLAs are likely to join Jogi's new outfit. The action will shift to Marwahi, Amit Jogi's constituency where on June 6, Ajit Jogi is expected to announce the new political party. --- ENDS --- The driver waited for two minutes and then started shouting and allegedly threw her bag out and abused her. By Tanseem Haider: An Ola cab driver has been arrested after allegedly molesting a woman in Delhi's Roop Nagar area. IMPATIENCE According to the complaint lodged by an Additional Session Judge of Tis Hazari court, she booked an Ola cab at a market place in Roop Nagar where she asked the driver to wait. The driver waited for two minutes and then started shouting and allegedly threw her bag out and abused her. advertisement The case was filed at Roop Nagar police station in north Delhi under sections 354 (making sexual remarks), 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult modesty of a woman) and 427 (mischief causing damage to the amount of fifty rupees) of Indian Penal Code. "The driver threw the judge's bag out from his cab and made sexual remarks against her," a police officer said, citing the complaint. The driver was arrested from Gurgaon following the complaint. --- ENDS --- On the first day of the 15th Tamil Nadu Assembly, DMK leader MK Stalin said he and his party will cooperate completely with the ruling AIADMK. By Akshaya Nath: "In a democracy ruling and opposition parties are two sides of the same coin. If one side was right and the other was mangled, it will become invalid," said Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa quoting the Dravidian ideologue CN Annadurai, today. June 3, 2016, on the first day of the 15th Tamil Nadu Assembly, it was a moment of celebration for many. While the AIADMK had their second consecutive victory to rejoice, the DMK had their leader M Karunanidhi's 93rd birthday to celebrate. advertisement P DHANAPAL ELECTED SPEAKER FOR 2ND CONSECUTIVE TERM The Assembly session began with the unanimous election of the speaker - P Dhanapal. Dhanapal has the honour of becoming the first speaker to be elected for a consecutive second term in Tamil Nadu's legislative history. Praising Jayalalithaa and her party for their hard-work and victory, Dhanpal opened the house. Further he assured that he will ensure a fair chance for all the parties during debate in the assembly. While addressing the house, CM Jayalalithaa said that Dhanapal's re-election is reflective of his good work and said that he got this opportunity because of his, "competence, ability and experience." WILL RESPECT CONSTRUCTIVE OPINIONS: JAYALALITHAA Speaking about the open-mindedness and straightforward attitude of her party, Jayalalithaa said, "I can assure that we will respect the constructive opinions of the Opposition, seeing their views and how they reflect the people's views." During the session, Jaya also thanked the people of Tamil Nadu for having faith in her and her party and re-electing them for a second consecutive time and creating history. DMK WILL COOPERATE GOVT COMPLETELY: STALIN M K Stalin, Leader of Opposition, after greeting Speaker Dhanapal and Deputy Speaker Jayaraman assured that he and his party will cooperate completely with the ruling party and said that the DMK and its allies were only Opposition party and not an enemy party. He also pointed out that the speaker should be neutral to all parties before concluding. While Dhanapal has been elected as the Speaker (He is the first Dalit speaker after 1955) and Pollachi Jayaraman has been elected as the deputy speaker. Dhanapal later adjourned the House to June 16. ALSO READ: Post-poll Tamil Nadu sees the rise of MK Stalin --- ENDS --- By India Today Web Desk: Meet 43-year-old Jan Mohammad from Pakistan, a doctor by profession, who is already a father of 35 children and is steadfast to fulfill his goal of having 100 children. He strongly believes that fathering 100 children will ensure a spot for him in heaven, and he's already a third of the way there. Sardar Jan Mohammad Khilji already has three wives and is on the look out for the fourth. advertisement The practice of polygamy in conservative Muslim countries is rare but still prevalent. According to Islam, men are allowed to marry up to four women. Speaking to AFP, Rafia Zakaria, a women's rights activist, said the Koran dictates that a man can have more than one wife provided he can mete out 'perfect justice' among them. However, this idea of 'perfect justice' is utopic to say the least. According to Rafia Zakaria, "Perfect justice is impossible, and for this reason polygamy is never a good situation. Someone always suffers and almost always it is the women and children" "The bigger the family, the better," he told Dawn, a Pakistani daily. His family lives in a 12 room mud house in the outskirts of Quetta. Jan who makes a living from an unregulated clinic, treats patients for minor ailments, and gets paid rupees 250 per session. He treats the poor for free. He says, "I want to have 100 children, as the prophet had said that those who increase the number of followers (of Islam) will never go to hell," he said. "With the grace of God, my children will help me go to heaven." Facebook marriage in the offing With whatever he earns, he fulfills all the needs of each one of his children (or so he believes) and does not discriminate between his sons and daughters. In fact, his favorite child is his eldest daughter, Shagufta Nasreen, who studies in the ninth grade. The only downside, he confessed, is that he sometimes forgets all his children's names. Ever since his story aired in Pakistani media, Jan Mohammad has been flooded with marriage proposals via social media. He might just land up finding his next match through Facebook. --- ENDS --- PM Modi is scheduled to visit Washington next week. This will be Modi's seventh meeting with US President Barack Obama. Modi will address both houses of Congress, considered a rare honour. This will be Modi's seventh meeting with Barack Obama since taking over as PM in May, 2014. (File Photo/Reuters) By Reuters: Two years ago there were questions over whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi could get a visa to enter the United States. Next week, he visits Washington as one of US President Barack Obama's closest international partners. Obama invited Modi for one of the last big visits by a world leader before his term ends in January. Although the trip won't feature a lavish state dinner, Modi will address both houses of Congress, considered a rare honour. advertisement This will be their seventh meeting since Modi became prime minister in May 2014, an impressive tally for a US president and a leader who is not a formal ally, said Ashley Tellis at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. Modi's hour with Obama: Climate change and a warm hug "The personal relationship between the president and the prime minister ... is really one of the unanticipated surprises of the past two years," said Tellis, an expert on India. The developing relationship is seen as an Obama foreign policy success. Washington views India as an important part of its rebalance to Asia and as a counterweight to China. WHAT'S ON THE CARDS? The two countries are finalising agreements that would make it possible for their militaries to cooperate more closely, and for US defence manufacturers to both sell and make high-tech weaponry in India. A deal on logistics would govern issues such as how the two countries account for costs of military exercises. Another involves encrypted communications and geospatial data transfer. A history of colonial rule followed by decades of non-alignment has, however, made New Delhi wary of an embrace by the more powerful United States, which has overtaken Russia as India's top arms supplier. "It is neither a strategic partnership nor an alliance," said Nitin Gokhale, founder of defence portal Bharat Shakti. "It can be a long-term arrangement, but to call it a strategic partnership would be premature." There are frustrations, too, on the US side. The two countries reached a civil nuclear agreement in 2005, but it has yet to yield any contracts for US-based companies. Only now is Westinghouse, a unit of Japan's Toshiba, approaching the finish line on a deal to build six reactors in India. GETTING TO KNOW YOU The visit gives Modi a chance to network with US lawmakers who may feature in a Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton administration but, as it coincides with the California primary, he is not expected to meet either. Modi is generally popular with US lawmakers, who extended his invitation to address Congress. But they criticise what they see as lingering unfriendliness to US firms and a stifling bureaucracy, and question New Delhi's record on human rights. advertisement "The economic engagement between our two countries should increase and it should be more accessible for US companies," Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a telephone interview. NSG MEMBERSHIP LIKELY TO BE DISCUSSED Obama and Modi are expected to discuss India's desire to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 48-member club of nuclear trading nations. India was shut out for decades because of its weapons programme, and the civil nuclear agreement with the United States gave it access to foreign suppliers without giving up its arms. Obama administration officials have said they backed India's desire to join the group, but the idea faces resistance among some on Capitol Hill, as well as from China, an ally of India's arch-rival Pakistan. "Existing NSG guidelines were established to guard against nuclear proliferation, and we should not create exceptions for particular countries," Corker said. GUJARAT 2002 HAUNTS MODI There is lingering concern in Washington over Modi's handling of communal riots in 2002 that killed at least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, in Gujarat. advertisement Modi was chief minister of the state at the time and, though a court-ordered inquiry found insufficient evidence to prosecute him, the issue prevented him from getting a US visa for years. Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, raised human rights on a visit to New Delhi this week, saying the two largest democracies had "special obligations" to set the highest standards. Congress' Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission has scheduled a hearing on India for June 7, the day Modi arrives in Washington and the day before his address to the combined House of Representatives and Senate. He leaves the United States on June 8. Corker promised to asked Modi about India's record on human trafficking, which he brought up recently in an emotional Senate hearing with Obama administration officials. "The country we believe has 12-14 million slaves, which is close to half the number we believe exists worldwide," Corker said. "It's obviously a very significant issue and when he's here, it's one I certainly plan to raise." Also Read: Ahead of Modi visit, US lawmakers slam India on slavery, religious intolerance Why US is worried after PM Modi's Chabahar port deal with Iran --- ENDS --- advertisement PM Narendra Modi will also have the rare honour of addressing a joint sitting of the US Congress. By India Today Web Desk: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a busy schedule ahead as he begins his five-nation trip starting today, including his fourth visit to the United States, where he will have the rare honour of addressing a joint sitting of the US Congress. Here is all you want to know: ALSO READ: PM Modi goes to Washington as partner, but is India yet a full US ally? PM Modi will leave for Afghanistan today, where he will, jointly with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, inaugurate a 'friendship dam' reconstructed with India's assistance. Originally constructed in 1976 on the Hari river basin, the Salma Dam suffered extensive damage during the civil war in Afghanistan. On December 25 last year, Modi and Ghani jointly inaugurated a new building of the Afghan parliament in Kabul built with India's aid. PM Modi will then leave for Qatar later on Saturday evening and meet business leaders and the Emir on Sunday, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said. Qatar is an emerging tourism market for India with over 6,300 arrivals in 2015. Besides, it offers vast opportunity for India in terms of medical tourism. On Sunday evening, Modi will fly to Switzerland for a day. "Modi and Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann will discuss bilateral, regional and multilateral issues of mutual interest," MEA said. PM Modi then arrives in Washington on Monday and meet US President Barack Obama for a bilateral meeting and lunch on Tuesday. This will be their seventh meeting since Modi became prime minister in May 2014. Obama's term ends in January next year. On June 8, PM Modi is expected to address the joint session of the US Congress, a rare honour for a foreign leader. He will also meet NRIs and American Indians that day. On the same day, PM Modi will leave for Mexico on a brief working visit on June 8 at the invitation of President Enrique Pena Nieto. He returns to India on June 9. advertisement --- ENDS --- Inside the 7000 acre 'explosive zone' located within the CAD, the situation is now under control. However, clearing the affected area from unexploded ammunition and debris will take weeks, if not months. By Jugal R Purohit: INDIA TODAY has confirmed that the fire reported in one shed of the southern sector of the Central Ammunition Depot (CAD), Pulgaon which caused the explosion had an impact on at least nine more sheds in the vicinity. While the damage to these nine sheds is varied in nature, the response ensured the damage was limited and no further explosions took place despite the widespread impact. It was also reliably learnt that the original shed where the fire was detected has been completely smashed and will be rebuilt for usage. advertisement DEBRIS WILL TAKE MONTHS TO CLEAR Inside the 7000 acre 'explosive zone' located within the CAD, the situation is now under control. However, clearing the affected area from unexploded ammunition and debris will take weeks, if not months. While it still isn't known what triggered the incident, the credit for containing it within the CAD is certainly due to inherent planning, drills perfected over the years and a little luck. The magnitude of the incident was such that those in charge did not rule out a mass evacuation situation, reaching even the outskirts of Nagpur which is located 120km away. As the dust settles, inside the stricken-Central Ammunition Depot (CAD) at Pulgaon, a narrative is evolving. Inside 'Mecca of ammunition', the ground still shakes MOMENTS BEFORE DISASTER UNFOLDED Post midnight, upon receipt of information, Major K Manoj Kumar, CAD's Internal Security Officer (ISO) charged towards the location of the reported fire from his residence close to the main gate 'Shakti Dwar'. He was also the officer in-charge of the base's fire fighting units. He was followed by his neighbour and senior, Lieutenant Colonel RS Pawar, CAD's head of administration and the Deputy Commandant, Colonel Ghaninder Singh. All three had nearly completed their tenures and figured on the base's 'Posted Out' list. Major Pawar's replacement, a younger officer was in fact called a day in advance. He too reached the site. Within ten minutes of commencing their operation, a massive roar erupted, emitting shock waves and releasing mind-numbing amount energy in a relatively smaller region. Estimates say nearly 60,000 metric tonnes of explosives went up. Major Manoj, Lt Colonel Pawar and seventeen others did not survive this outburst. Three army gypsies, three fire fighting trucks, a water bowser and a private vehicle were blown away too. Many, even within the army, have wondered if these men should have waited instead of taking the situation head on. Responding to this, a source said, "A fire was reported and it had to be nipped in the bud before it caused an explosion. These officers led the operation but were unfortunately outpaced. We won't have anyone like them anymore." advertisement Pulgaon: 130 Tonne ammunition gutted down, sabotage angle seriously investigated MASSIVE EVACUATION WAS PLANNED By the time the first explosion rocked the base, virtually everyone had reached the site. "Most of us were there by then. We have practiced the drill and that morning was the time to put it to use," said a source. Abundant water supply (30 million litres of water is available at all times), a well-spread network of fire sub stations and planning ensured that within a few hours, the assessment yielded positive news. The damage was contained within though peripheral villages also took a hit. "In the early hours, based on our calculations, things could have gone drastically wrong. Our planning was to even evacuate population right up to Nagpur," said a senior officer. Outside the CAD, a civilian employee said, "This was the impact with anti tank mines detonating. Not too far is where we store shells for artillery guns. It is anybody's guess what would've happened." A total of nineteen men and officers perished while seventeen were injured in the tackling the situation. advertisement The neighbouring residences of Maj K Manoj Kumar and Lt Col Pawar wear a desolate look. Barring support staff, there was no one there. Said a colleague, "Not many know Major Manoj had joined the army as a jawan and then underwent rigorous examination to re-enter the army as an officer." A Defence Security Corps (DSC) jawan who had worked under K Manoj Kumar and Pawar said, "They knew this place so well. It was a pleasure to have people with such clarity." All the three officers who mattered the most after the Commandant of CAD were consumed by the accident. As a result, juniors have been asked to take their place. New to their jobs, nothing but the best is required out of them and immediately so. "With such a loss, you can't possibly run the show but you can't possibly run away. All I can say is that the Commandant's is an unenviable position," said a veteran ordnance officer. WRITER IS A SENIOR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT AND TWEETS @JRPUR --- ENDS --- By Bhavneet Singh Aurora: Every once in a lifetime you embark on a journey that will remain with you forever. For some, it's a trip to the hills and for others it's going deep sea diving. I've been to the hills and I've been to the sea, but the journey that shall remain with me forever is the trip to tiger country--the Ranthambore National Park. advertisement For us, it was the only choice left. We'd been to the hills, the sea was too far away, plus it was--and still is--too damn hot outside. With electricity playing hooky in Gurgaon, we asked the kids if they wanted to go on a short trip to Ranthambore which would possibly be warmer than Gurgaon. Their reply, "It's hot here, it's hot there, might as well go see tigers than sit around waiting for electricity to come", clinched it for us. A little bit of asking around put me in touch with tigerwalah.com's Anurag Sharma. A phone call to him and we were all set up. All we needed to do was turn up and bring our own booze. The journey So, camera ready, bags packed, early on a Sunday morning, we began our six-hour, 356km drive to Ranthambore. The drive is a beautiful one considering that once you cross Manesar, the roads are wide and beautiful and in some parts, quite scenic. The route we took was: Bhiwadi-Alwar bypass-Sikandra-Dausa-Sawai Madhopur. If after reading this you are planning to go to Ranthambore, here's a pointer: the last decent place to eat before Sawai Madhopur is Bhiwadi where you have all the major fast food joints. After that all you'll get are signboards pointing to some dhaba or the other. I would suggest carrying refreshments and munchies with you if you are driving down to Ranthambore. With two kids in the car, we made a couple of pit stops for sundry reasons and finally reached around 2.30pm. Perhaps the most beautiful stretch of the route is from Manoharpur to Dausa which is a 40-odd-km road which cuts through the Aravali Hills and barely has any traffic so you can actually put the pedal to the metal and let the car zip along while you listen to your favourite music. The first day we decided to rest and laze around. Our host, Anurag had already checked on tigers and which of the 10 zones in the sanctuary were reporting sightings. So he booked us on a canter for Zone 2 for the next day. An encounter with Pacman, the lazy tiger Now, Zone 2 is a zone given to little water and more uphill and downhill--basically a bumpy track in a bumpy vehicle. Barely two minutes into the zone and we spotted our first tiger. Our guide told us that his name was Pacman. The crown prince that Pacman is, he had his belly full and was in the mood to sleep. So, he lumbered out of the waterhole, grunting all the while but alert to his surroundings and slowly, majestically made his way to a nearby thicket where he went off to sleep. Leaving him sleeping, we headed deeper into the zone, but were disappointed. Of the 60-plus tigers in the sanctuary, we had seen one, and that too was a tiger that had the reputation of being one of the laziest tigers around. Picture courtesy: Bhavneet S Aurora Picture courtesy: Bhavneet S Aurora advertisement The rest of the safari consisted of spotting a baby crocodile, an army of langurs--or Bandar log, as my daughter put it--a herd of Sambhar and Spotted deer. On the way back from deep inside the zone, we ran into our friend Pacman again--and he was making his way to another watering hole. Pacman passed within 10 feet of our canter. Slowly, he made his way past us and slinked into the undergrowth. That was the last we saw of any tiger in that safari. We saw Pacman again the next day and true to his reputation, he had found himself a comfortable spot under a tree by the lake and was sleeping. Also read: Machli tales: The 20-year-old tigress from Ranthambore is the world's most photographed advertisement Time for the evening safari and we were told that our booking is again for zone 2. We were disappointed but our tigerwalah friend assured us of a fantastic sighting. So, still doubtful, we got into the canter with a bunch of men. Our canter driver had probably seen some F1 races an hour before the drive began and was in just that mood. We bumped and flew all over the canter. At one point, I even asked the accompanying guide to ask the driver to go slow. His reply, "Sa'ab, jungle hai, yahan dheere bhi aise hi hota hai." So, we resigned ourselves to our bumpy ride and held on for dear life. Ten minutes later, on the very edge of the path the driver stood up on the brakes and brought the canter to a standstill. Picture courtesy: Bhavneet S Aurora "Tiger, wahan neeche. (Tiger. Down below.)" All of us peered into the murky depths of a water drain and sure enough, our friend from the morning, Pacman was dozing away peacefully. Only his head was out of the water, the rest of him was partially submerged. Five minutes later, without warning, our driver decided he'd had enough and started the canter and took off. That was the day I realised that I have bones in places which could possibly hurt. For the next 30 minutes, he drove through the forest as if he was being chased by an angry and hungry tiger. Towards the end of zone 2, he slowed down, we breathed deep and then he let the canter inch ahead slowly and sure enough, there on our left was a tigress, T60. She was marking her territory and was a little fretful. When she disappeared into the undergrowth, our canter looped around the bushes and headed in the other direction and stopped. The guide told us that the "tigress will cross the road in front of our canter." advertisement A minute passed, no tigress. Another five minutes passed, no tigress. I decided I'd had enough of waiting and thought I would shoot something else. I spotted a paradise flycatcher and began training my camera on that when I spotted some movement in the bottom right corner. Focussing on that area, I spotted the tigress heading our way, but slowly. Beside her were three young cubs, all sprightly and jumping around like naughty children, but within eyesight from the tigress. T60 waiting for her third cub to cross the road. Note the way she is standing and looking at the camera and her ears. Her left ear is tuned to her two cubs who have already crossed the road, her right ear is listening for her third cub while she is looking at the assortment of vehicles standing there as if warning the people to not come any closer. Picture courtesy: Bhavneet S Aurora In Ranthambore, they say spotting a tigress with cubs is very difficult. And were we lucky! The tigress and her three cubs posed happily for nearly half an hour with us shutterbugs shooting away to glory capturing every moment the tigress and her cubs were visible. The tigress sat there in all her glory, surrounded by her cubs, looking at our canter and the 20-odd jeeps that were lined up behind us. Then she led her cubs towards us and veered off to the right. Circling around us, she came out right where the guide had told us she would. The cubs followed suit and quickly crossed over to the other side and disappeared into the thicket. After that we only saw flashes of bright orange as the four made their way away from us. Happy with the sighting, we returned to our resort and discussed the tigress and her cubs and the lazy Pacman. A tale of Ranthambore's three tiger siblings The next morning, we decided to sleep in and take the evening safari. Our host had organised a jeep for us and his own guide to take us into Zone 3, where canters aren't allowed. About 15 minutes into the safari, our guide, Arvind, told us that we were heading to tigress Arrowhead and Lightening zone. A word about these two tigresses: Arrowhead, Lightening and Pacman are siblings. Arrowhead and Lightening are the two fierce ones from the same litter and can't stand the sight of each other. As the story goes, their mother, T19 or Krishna, was quite frustrated at the never-ending fights between Arrowhead and Lightening. Arrowhead broke away from the family and went independent quite early. Lightening followed suit a little later. Pacman, the laziest of the three is a pampered mama's boy and usually wanders off into either Arrowhead or Lightening's zones and is often reported to freeload off them. Tigress Lightening. She walked past the jeep within touching distance. Picture courtesy: Bhavneet S Aurora Back to our safari. So there we were in Zone 3 and our guide told us to wait. Sure enough, out of the tall grass on the left a blaze of dark yellow flashed out on to the road and with slow, measured steps and head low tigress Lightening began walking towards us. But before she could reach us, she turned and made her way down the hill. Our driver decided he wanted to place us in the best spot possible for photos and raced ahead of the remaining gypsies. Suffice to say that 15 minutes later, Lightening had once again walked towards us and at the last moment, she had turned a little and had passed within touching distance of our jeep. An adult and a juvenile Collared Scops Owl. Picture courtesy: Bhavneet S Aurora That was the last of our sightings of Lightening. Apparently, she crossed over into Arrowhead's zone and went and lay down near a cactus thicket which the guide said was her "bedroom". That was the end of our tiger sightings. The next morning, we retraced our steps and headed back to Gurgaon. Good to know Distance from Delhi: 380km. Best time to visit: November to May for tiger sightings. Monsoon season the sanctuary is closed. Things to do: Ranthambore National Park is an ideal place for wildlife photography. A walk up to the Ranthambore Fort will give you a picturesque view of the park. The 10th century fort stands 700 ft high atop a hill. Relax! Must-visit: The Trinetra Ganesha Temple inside Ranthambore National Park. Shop: Dastkar is a stone's throw away from the sanctuary. --- ENDS --- Balika Vadhu's Neha Marda took some time off for a fun vacation in Thailand with hubby Ayushman Aggarwal. By India Today Web Desk: Neha Marda, who played Gehna in Balika Vadhu, recently took some time off for a fun and leisurely vacation with hubby Ayushman Aggarwal in Thailand. The holiday lasted for a good one week and the lady had the time of her life visiting Phi Phi Islands, Phuket, Krabi among other destinations. The actress who loves beach vacations also posted a bikini pic from Phi Phi Islands. From rife shooting, to relaxing, to eating out, to spending some quiet moments with the love of her life--Ayushman, Neha seemed to have loads of fun. advertisement Check out her holiday pics: Amazing combination of the sky and sea ... Seems both are partying together on a joy of success and I am lucky to witness this ...loving it ???????????????? A photo posted by Neha (@nehamarda) on May 31, 2016 at 2:06am PDT It's so windy that my umbrella doesn't listens to her master .... And looks like even I am gonna be flown away ... ???????????????? A photo posted by Neha (@nehamarda) on May 29, 2016 at 10:53am PDT My name ur face is equal to my introduction ??????????... Meet new Neha in Aayushman A photo posted by Neha (@nehamarda) on May 28, 2016 at 11:01pm PDT Thinking which way to explore now ... It's beautiful to an extent of infinity .... Nui island ... Completely unexplored ???????? A photo posted by Neha (@nehamarda) on May 26, 2016 at 11:27am PDT Wanna float all my life ... Years after years sailing on life ... Beautiful at it .. Phi phi island ... Thailand A photo posted by Neha (@nehamarda) on May 26, 2016 at 12:41am PDT Crazy dinner ... Amazing sea food ... Oasis ?????????? A photo posted by Neha (@nehamarda) on May 24, 2016 at 11:12pm PDT Love my favourite white chocolate mocha tall in a long journey ... Bag pack to krabi then phi phi and then to Phuket ... ???????????? A photo posted by Neha (@nehamarda) on May 24, 2016 at 3:06am PDT My new venture of sport.. "Rifle shooting"...enjoying it .. Loving it ... A photo posted by Neha (@nehamarda) on May 22, 2016 at 9:36am PDT --- ENDS --- By Suhani Singh: Anurag Kashyap has seen the National Award-winning Kannada film, Thithi, four times, saying he can't get enough of the tragicomedy. The Raman Raghav 2.0 filmmaker also organised a special screening for the film in Mumbai. Aamir Khan praised Thithi on Twitter in four back-to-back tweets, and his wife-filmmaker Kiran Rao also held a screening for the film industry. Raam Reddy, 26, is overwhelmed with Bollywood glitterati and elite's approval and appreciation as well as the response of the audiences from his home state, Karnataka, where the film released in the first week of May. advertisement ALSO READ: Thithi gets a thumbs up from Aamir Khan, Anurag Kashyap Seated at a cafe in Mumbai, where he has been devising the national release strategy for Thithi, Reddy is eagerly waiting for the rest of India to discover his film which releases with English subtitles in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi/NCR and a screen in Chennai on June 3. Co-written by his friend Eregowda and co-produced with his father, Pratap Reddy, the film, set and shot in Eregowda's village Nodekoppalu, follows the lives of three male members from three different generations who are brought together after the demise of the family's oldest patriarch. Sweet, funny, poignant with many endearing characters including the wandering Gadappa, Thithi won two awards at the Locarno International Film Festival. Born in Karnataka, Raam Reddy studied economics at St Stephen's College in Delhi and then headed to Prague for studies in filmmaking. A fan of Austrian auteur Michael Haneke ("for his command of craft"), German-Turk filmmaker Fatih Akin ("for his balance between narrative and art), acclaimed TV series, The Wire, and Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy ("it proved the magic of cinema"), Reddy directed shorts in Telugu, Czech, English, Hindi and even a silent one. Thithi though is Reddy's first project in his home tongue and also his first feature. Edited excerpts from the interview: You come from a political family. Your grandfather was the first Chief Minister of Karnataka. Was your family supportive of your career in filmmaking? I have heard how great my grandfather was but I never got to meet him as he passed away before I was born. After my grandfather became Chief Minister, he strictly told his children to not get into politics. So the next generation - my father and his siblings - no one's in it. We are not an art family at all. We are a business-oriented one. My immediate family is really different. My father's a businessman, mother a social worker, sister has a PhD in linguistics and my brother is in stock market and also into wildlife photography. I was never ever told by anyone in family on what I should pursue. There was no pressure of business. It was that whatever you take up, just try and do your best at it. Be your own perfectionist. It's the best kind of upbringing. advertisement Tell us a bit about your stint at the Prague Film School. What made you pick it? I am very rebellious against the teaching of art and I still maintain you shouldn't be taught art. Post Stephen's and before I went to film school, I had made eight shorts already. I was very stubborn about not going to film school. I said that I'd save the money that I spent for film school to make a feature instead. Then I went to Eregowda's village. I was thinking that if I start a project then I had to keep it intimate. But once I was there, I realised it had to be an ambitious project. Now to achieve this, I wasn't technically confident enough. I had to search for a place that didn't teach me art but technically honed my skills and improve my networking. advertisement Prague Film School is the best template for practical learning in the world. During my nine months there, I was in the crew of 34 films and made six shorts of my own. I got exactly what I wanted from there. Eregowda has done a series of jobs for your family. How did the collaboration with him happen? Did you always notice i a creative spark in him? Eregowda can do whatever he puts his mind to. He is sharp and talented. He learns quickly. Both of us got along really well. [Like him] Even I don't like to put myself in a cubbyhole. It's just a way of treating the world. His background and upbringing gave him a sense of reality which was very far removed from mine. We grew up challenging each other. I think I introduced him to art, starting with photography. He did the production for my short, Ika (Feather). He started to like filmmaking when he documented my mother's works. He has formatted my English novel too. Personally, he is interested in camera than writing. Most of the cast is from the village. Kashyap is impressed with how you have directed the non-actors. Did having Eregowda, who was known to them, help? Absolutely. I am used to working with non-actors because I made all my shorts barring the last, a Czech one, with them. A humanistic way of working with non-actors is something I developed through my shorts. I'd take takes quickly to get them into rhythm. With Thithi, it was little difficult. Of course, everyone got frustrated at points. My quality control level is very high. You have to stay calm while everyone is getting cranky around you. You have to get your shot. Patience is required. advertisement Thithi's shoot was tailored to [accommodate] non-professionals. I told my crew that performance is the leader of the film. The characters are the soul of the script. The actors were king on sets. The simplest visual, editing and sound design approach was taken. It was a very observational process of filmmaking. Our equipment was geared towards quick reactivity. Eregowda's relationship with the people in the village was key in getting us [the crew] comfortable. He was the dialogue coach, getting the non-actors to remember lines. He ensured the cultural references are correct. All the four male characters have shades of grey. What kind of family portrait you and Eregowda had in mind? I wanted to have two characters which are materialistic in a way typical to their generation. So there is a pubescent teen, Abhi, who is running after a girl, and a middle-aged man, Thamanna, who wants to better his position in society. There is lot of myself and my family in Gadappa. We are very spiritually oriented. My mother's father sold off his business and lives in an ashram. These little things made me want to create a story that makes people reflect on materialistic pursuits. In terms of nuances, the film itself is based on the actors' personalities in some way. The complexities came from Eregowda's insight into village life. The intention was to create an authentic film without altering the reality in anyway. Thithi also makes you reflect on our obsession with rituals and their relevance in today's age. I come from a spiritual zone of thought where any sort of systematised ritual is regressive for freedom of thought. As Gadappa says at one point, 'Will the dead get to know?' Morality is an egoistic thing. When you say this is right or wrong, you are creating boundaries, you are limiting yourself. Gadappa is a symbol of free-flowing life from the heart. He just lives life in the moment. There are also some very strong female characters which aren't afraid to speak their mind in front of the men. It was not easy to get women from the village to agree to play large roles in this film. You had to get permission from the rest of family. In that sense it is still a patriarchal society. I knew this film would be male-dominated film because it is a character study of three generations. So the idea was to have them not play big but memorable roles and strong in terms of particularity. I personally am of the opinion both genders are equal. In my personal life, I have grown up around strong women in my mother and sister. I'm also very irritated with how women are treated in cinema. What are you working on next? I have an idea but it is in nascent stages. I believe language is one of the characters of your film so my next may not be in Kannada. I don't want to stick to any genre. I want to make something more personal, something I am in more control of. I'd like to make it with professional actors. --- ENDS --- Authorities went to check up on the woman and found her dead from a gunshot wound. She had reportedly been dead for a couple of days. By India Today Web Desk: Los Angeles police on Thursday identified the man who killed a professor before committing suicide at the University of California, Los Angeles as Mainak Sarkar, a former doctoral student and an IITian. Meanwhile, the 'kill list' police discovered through his suicide note led them to a Minnesota woman who was found dead in her home. "CHECK ON MY CAT" advertisement In his suicide note, Sarkar wrote "check on my cat" and gave his Minnesota address. Los Angeles chief of police Charlie Beck said the note made them highly suspicious and uneasy. "That made me uneasy about what we would find when we got to Minnesota," he said, according to Los Angeles Times. At Sarkar's home, police found a 'kill list' with three names - two UCLA professors (including the one he shot later) and one woman from Minnesota. A cat named Kitty was also found, according to the LA Times report. Authorities went to check up on the woman and found her dead from a gunshot wound. She had reportedly been dead for a couple of days. AN ACADEMIC WHO SNAPPED In 2000, Sarkar graduated from Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur with a degree in aerospace engineering. Before enrolling at UCLA, Sarkar earned a master's degree from Stanford University, according to his LinkedIn page. The profile is now unavailable. He also worked as a research assistant at the University of Texas and worked as a software developer. At UCLA, Sarkar was a former doctoral student of William Klug - the professor he shot dead. Before going to the US, Sarkar worked for Infosys in Bengaluru from 2000 to 2001. After UCLA, he worked as an engineering analyst for an Ohio-based rubber company, Endurica LLC, until August 2014. BEEF WITH THE PROFESSOR On Wednesday, Sarkar shot dead engineering professor William Klug, 39, in a small office on the campus. The attack appeared to be provoked by Sarkar's belief that Klug had stolen computer code from him, according to a March blog post by a person of the same name. "Your enemy is my enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm," Sarkar wrote in the post. "Be careful about whom you trust." The authenticity of the post is yet to be verified. The Los Angeles Times quoted an unnamed university source as saying the claims made in the blog were "untrue" and "absolutely psychotic." advertisement In 2013, however, Sarkar had in his doctoral dissertation expressed gratitude to Klug for his help and support. "Thank you for being my mentor," he had written. STUDENTS GRIM Students are leaving flowers and cards in front of the engineering building at UCLA, to pay respects to the slain professor. There's a memorial at the Bruin Bear today in honor of professor William Klug. #UCLAShooting #UCLAStrong pic.twitter.com/l9C9NRehLuMatt Joye (@mattjoye) June 2, 2016 "Our hearts are heavy this evening as our campus family mourns the sudden and tragic deaths of two people on our campus earlier today," said university chancellor Gene Block in a statement. University officials said classes would resume on Thursday and counselors will be available for students, faculty and staff. Klug, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, specialized in biomechanics, including the workings of the human heart, according to UCLA's website. "You cannot ask for a nicer, gentler, sweeter and more supportive guy than William Klug," professor Alan Garfinkel told the Times of his colleague. (With inputs from Reuters) Also read: UCLA shooting: Gunman who killed professor, self, identified as Indian origin student --- ENDS --- Vishal and Lingusamy, who were not in good terms after the later dropped the film Sandakozhi 2, have now planned to join hands and revive the project. By India Today Web Desk: Tamil actor Vishal and director Lingusamy have finally decided to end the conflict between them and revive the shelved project - Sandakozhi 2. ALSO READ: Dharmadurai teaser - Vijay Sethupathi shines in Seenu Ramasamy's film ALSO READ: Achcham Yenbadhu Madamaiyada - The trailer of Simbu, Gautham Menon's film is finally out advertisement Few months ago, Vishal took to Twitter to announce that his upcoming film with Lingusamy, Sandakozhi 2, has been shelved. The actor blamed the director and questioned his commitment towards work. It was rumoured that Lingusamy dropped the project without notifying the actor. The director then went on to collaborate with a leading Telugu star for a film. In a turn of events, Vishal and Lingusamy have decided to bury the hatchet and revive the project, according to a report published in Behindwoods. Lingusamy is currently busy with the Telugu project with Allu Arjun. On completing the project, he might join hands with Vishal for Sandakozhi 2. Vishal is currently basking in the success of the commercial actioner Marudhu. He will be next seen in Sundar C's Madha Gadha Raja and Mysskin's suspense thriller Thupparivalan. --- ENDS --- By India Today Web Desk: A lot of drama is in store in the upcoming episodes of Yeh Hai Mohabbatein. So far, Raman and Ishita have only been fighting since they met after a gap of seven years. The bone of contention between the two was Ruhi. Raman held Ishita responsible for handing over Ruhi to Nidhi. Following their fights, Raman announced his wedding with Shagun some episodes back. However, soon after the announcement, the misunderstanding between IshRa got cleared out after the two met at a party. advertisement Both confessed to their feelings after a drinking session and ended up sleeping on the same bed. No prizes for guessing that Shagun walked into the hotel room, and reprimanded Raman. Shagun then asked him to tie the knot with him the same day. Also read: Yeh Hai Mohabbatein: Here's the reason Karan Patel walked out of sets According to reports, both Shagun and Ishita will dress up as brides on the wedding day and Raman will choose to marry Ishita. What will happen next? As reported earlier, Shagun has already turned negative. She's expected to spoil IshRa's relationship again in the upcoming episodes. Also read: Yeh Hai Mohabbatein spoiler: Raman and Ishita to reunite in the most dramatic way Yeh Hai Mohabbatein that airs on Star Plus stars Divyanka Tripathi, Karan Patel and Anita Hassanandani. --- ENDS --- By Javed Anwer: Galaxy S7, launched in March this year, has done well. But it is also now the old news. The next big thing from Samsung is going to be the Galaxy Note 6. The phablet, which is likely to have a screen with size between 5.5-inch to 5.8-inch, will possibly launch in August. And, according to the leaks, it will likely look very similar to the existing Galaxy Note 5. advertisement Although, this is not a bad design at all. The Note 5, with its metal and glass body, is one of the best designed large phones. It is also a very compact phone for its size, utilising a screen with thin bezels and slim profile. Renders based on the leaked blueprint of the Note 6 shows that it will be similar to the Note 5 size. Although there are likely to be some tweaks. The new Note will possibly have a more curvier and sleeker body. For now, there is not much clarity on the other aspects of the phone. However, traditionally, the Note series has followed the Galaxy S series in hardware and features. So, we can expect the Note 6 to have the hardware that is similar to what users get in the Galaxy S7. This means, the Note 6 will use either the Exynos 8890 or Snapdragon 820 processor. It will also have at least 4GB RAM, 32GB internal storage and a similar 12-megapixel camera, considering the camera in the Galaxy S7 is the best ever seen in a phone. Also Read: Samsung Galaxy Note 6 rumours: Snapdragon 823, 8GB RAM and more However, just like other Note series devices, the Note 6 will also come with a stylus. It will also have a screen made of Super AMOLED panel with the 1440p resolution. Similar to other Galaxy devices, the Galaxy Note 6 will also launch in India a few weeks after the global unveiling. It will possibly have the Android Marshmallow, modified with the TouchWiz users interface. It is safe to assume that the device, when it launches in India, will cost around Rs 55,000. For Samsung, the top-end Note devices has always been one of the best selling phones. These have also been devices in which Samsung puts the best of the hardware it can manage. In fact, the Note 5 is so good that recently a consumer research organisation in the US found that it was more trustworthy and reliable than even the iPhone 6S for majority of consumers. You can expect that with the Galaxy Note 6 too Samsung will take aim at the numero uno position. Also Read: Samsung to launch Galaxy Note 6 in August: Report --- ENDS --- Even as Micromax fights to defend its turf here in India from Chinese firms, the company is planning to enter China in 2017. By Javed Anwer: There are times when offense can be a good defence. Micromax, which is India's biggest phone maker, believes for it that time is now. Even as it fights to defend its turf here in India from Chinese firms, the company is planning to enter China in 2017. The announcement was made by Micromax co-founder Vikas Jain at RISE conference in Hong Kong on Thursday. advertisement Jain reportedly said that the firm Micromax believes China to be an important market in future given the size of the phone business in that country. Also to ensure that it is well-equipped to take on the companies like Vivo, Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi and Lenovo, Micromax would raise additional funds in the next two years, either privately or by going public. Although it sounds like a plan, for Micromax China may not turn out to be an easy market even though it is the world's biggest phone market. Nearly 500 million phones were sold in China in 2015 and Micromax definitely believes that it can get a slice of this burgeoning market. While there are a lot of similarities between the Chinese and Indian market - value conscious buyers and same set of companies - the software and the hardware that goes inside the phones in China can vary significantly compared to phones sold in global markets. Entering China is also tricky for an Indian company like Micromax because the Android phones sold in China don't have the Google Play store installed on them. Instead the version of Android on most Chinese phones is heavily modified and has many local components. In comparison, it is easier for Chinese companies to enter other markets such as India. In the last few years a lot of Chinese phone makers, including Xiaomi and Lenovo, have focussed heavily on India and have managed to make inroads into the segment of market that were once ruled by Micromax. Entering China is also tricky for an Indian company like Micromax because the Android phones sold in China don't have the Google Play store installed on them The Indian company is still the second biggest in the country, behind Samsung but its growth has slowed down steadily in the last couple of quarters. "Micromax retained second position in Q1, 2016 with 6.9 per cent growth over the same period last year. However, shipments fell 17.9 per cent sequentially for the second consecutive quarter as volume dipped sharply in the entry level sub- $75 segment," IDC had noted recently in its market report for India. Micromax, according to IDC, has 12.6 per cent market share in India. advertisement The company knows this. In April, the company publicly announced that it was re-branding itself and was changing the business strategy to deal with challenges in a better way. Since then Micromax has launched several new products across categories - phones tablets, laptops etc - to rekindle the growth. Yu, which is a sub-brand of the company looked after by co-founder Rahul Sharma, has also launched the Yunicorn, a new device aimed at competing with the likes of Xiaomi and Lenovo in India. Also read: Yu Yunicorn: Full specifications, top features, India price & everything you need to know However, if Micromax is finding it difficult to compete with Chinese companies in India, in China it may find the market even more challenging. Such is the nature of the Chinese market that even companies like Xiaomi and Lenovo are finding it difficult to stay among the top firms. Success in one quarter doesn't mean zilch in the Chinese phone market and the companies on an upswing may find their fortunes take a tumble within weeks. In the market report for the first quarter, IDC had noted that Xiaomi and Lenovo were no longer among the top 5 companies in the world, mostly because of the hit they took in China. advertisement "Along China's maturing smartphone adoption curve, the companies most aligned with growth are those with products serving increasingly sophisticated consumers. Lenovo benefited in 2013, and Xiaomi (won in) 2014 and 2015. Now Huawei, OPPO, and Vivo, which play mainly are positioned for a strong 2016," said Melissa Chau, senior research manager with IDC. "These new vendors would be well-advised not to rest on their laurels though, as this dynamic smartphone landscape has shown to even cult brands like Xiaomi that customer loyalty is difficult to consistently maintain." Also read: Micromax says people are loving 'Nuts. Guts. Glory' --- ENDS --- By Reuters: An unconventional horror movie made from hundreds of 10-second clips shot for and published on Snapchat has been released for sale after drawing millions of views on the popular social media site. Entitled "Sickhouse", the made-for-mobile film follows social media celebrity Andrea Russett and her friends as they head into the woods to explore an abandoned cabin. It was shot on iPhones over five days and released via her Snapchat account. advertisement Snapchat, a mobile app where posts disappear within 24 hours, has more than 100 million active users, most under the age of 25. The clips blending real life and fiction were compiled into a 68-minute film now available on the online service Vimeo. "I don't think people are ever going to lose interest in sitting down and watching a movie but I think it's interesting to try out these new different things," Russett, who has 2.5 million subscribers to her YouTube channel, told Reuters. --- ENDS --- Later on Thursday, Maritime Executive corroborated that view, saying that Iran had maintained the same defiant tone during the meeting itself, which ran its course without leading to an agreement. The Saudis promised to not shock the market with any major increase in output, but they fell short of following through on plans to set a collective ceiling, owing to the fact that Iran would not agree to such a proposal. Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh instead insisted that the organization should set separate, individual quota for each member state. Such a system was rejected by OPEC years ago, according to Maritime Executive. And whats more, the specific arrangement put forward by Zanganeh would have allowed Iran to raise its output by nearly a million more barrels per day, to levels well above the output that the Islamic Republic had achieved prior to the imposition of large-scale economic sanctions related to the countrys nuclear program. Previously, Iranian officials had argued that they should be allowed to grow output at their own chosen pace, with an eye toward recovering from those sanctions. The same officials continued to reject imposed restrictions in the context of the OPEC meeting on Thursday, but they appeared to have moved the goal posts, relative to prior statements suggesting that they would consider cooperating with the oil cartel once pre-sanctions output had been reclaimed. According to the Iranians themselves, this output of approximately four million barrels per day has already been achieved during the first few months after implementation of the Iran nuclear deal. Some independent analysts have corroborated those figures, though some have also suggested that the output increase is largely attributable to long-held stockpiles, which are now vanishing. In this context, Tehran may be hoping for larger short-term output to compensate for later shortfalls that would otherwise raise questions about the strength of the Iranian oil industrys recovery. The Iranian-Saudi contest of wills at the OPEC meeting may be seen by Iranian officials as an opportunity to project an image of both economic and political strength. Indeed, Tehrans refusal to participate in an output freeze was matched by statements indicating broader opposition to Saudi requests and demands. Such recurring statements continue to undermine the expectation that the Saudis and Iranians may reconcile some of their differences. Last week, the two sides met for a second attempt at resolving differences over the hajj pilgrimage, but that meeting ended as unsuccessfully as the previous one. Both sides came away from it blaming the other for intransigence, thus indicating that the political conflict between them was still running strong. Along similar lines, Trend pointed out on Thursday that a Lebanese television news network had claimed that Tehran had recently received a Saudi mediator, implying that the Islamic Republic was open to resolving its differences with it regional adversary. Specifically, it was claimed that the meeting dealt with the Yemeni Civil War, where Iran backs the Houthi rebels and a Saudi-led coalition backs the countrys elected government. However, the Iranian Foreign Ministry responded to these reports by denying that any such meeting took place, suggesting either that the reports were erroneous or that Tehran does not want to appear as though it is wavering until such time as an agreement has been reached. There have been many other indications that the two countries remain strongly at odds, not only over oil outputs and Yemen, but also over a range of other regional conflicts and issues, which the Saudis claim Tehran has been inappropriately involved in. Early this week, Iran led major offensives against the Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, leading to renewed discussions of where Iranian and Western interests in those conflicts aligned and diverged. Riyadh has been a leading voice in arguing that Iranian involvement in the conflicts will only threaten to deepen the sectarian nature of the conflict, owing to its empowerment of Shiite militias, some of which have been accused of human rights violations matching those of the Islamic State. But Iran has responded defiantly to Saudi Arabias calls for an end to that Iranian involvement. But those indicators are contradicted by various reports indicating that many Western businesses remain wary of doing business with Iran, out of fear that it could open them up to penalties based on restrictions related to the countrys money laundering, support for terrorism, and human rights violations. Iranian officials themselves, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei have repeatedly complained that the US is scaring off would-be investors with these restrictions, although some commentators have also observed that certain businesses and state entities are keeping their distance from Iran in part because of potential reputational consequences. These sorts of consequences are routinely underscored by statements calling attention to Irans human rights abuses and other such issues. And these statements are just as likely to come from European-based human rights organizations or from European government spokespersons as they are to come from individuals and organizations based in the United States. For instance, the London-based human rights organization Amnesty International routinely issues urgent calls to action in response to the cases of Iranian political prisoners or other citizens whose lives appear to be in danger from repressive and abusive actions by the Iranian authorities. For instance, on Thursday, Amnesty reported upon the case of Iranian Kurdish political prisoner Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand, who has been hospitalized due to the extreme health consequences of a month-long hunger strike aimed at calling attention to attempts at arbitrarily extending his sentence. Having already served 10 years for peaceful human rights advocacy, Kabudvand should be scheduled for imminent release, but authorities are instead attempting to charge him with spreading propaganda from within the prison, thereby justifying a last-minute addition of more time to his sentence. Such tactics are often observed in the Islamic Republic, as the regime strives to prevent activists from returning to their former activities once they have served a prison sentence. Many opponents of Iran sanctions relief worry that increased investment in the Islamic Republic will help to enable more such repressive activities, or that it will encourage European powers to turn a blind eye to such abuses in favor of promoting trade relations. Meanwhile, other critics emphasize the danger of providing additional wealth for Irans military interventions and expanded sectarian influence in the broader Middle East. The latter danger was highlighted by British Foreign Minister Phillip Hammond on Thursday, when the Scotsman reported that he had urged Iran and Russia to use their influence over Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in order to compel him to allow humanitarian air-drops into the war-torn country. This comes after Assad repeatedly refused to cooperate with international relief efforts, thereby underscoring one of the apparent effects of Irans unwavering support for the embattled dictator. Although Russia has joined Iran in fighting on behalf of the Assad regime, there is some indication that Moscows resolution on this matter is wavering. Meanwhile, virtually all other participants in international negotiations over the Syrian crisis have called for Assad to be removed from power as part of a negotiated solution. Most military analysts have indicated that his ouster would have been certain early in the conflict, if not for Irans support. Consequently, many of Tehrans critics insist that the Islamic Republic is responsible for a major portion of the quarter-million casualties in the five-year civil war. Many of those same critics worry that that destructive influence will only worsen if Iran gains access to significant financial resources from Western sources. Irans influence in Syria and Iraq also highlights the Islamic Republics well-recognized support for international terrorist groups, including Hezbollah and dozens of Shiite militias that are fighting alongside the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps on those foreign battlefields. The financial sponsorship of such groups is frequently cited by American lawmakers and others in criticism of expanded trade relations with Tehran-linked entities. Whats more, recent developments have also recalled attention to the fact that Irans sponsorship of terrorism is not limited to Shiite groups or potential adversaries of the Sunni militants affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Breitbart pointed out on Thursday that the death of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour shortly after his latest trip to Iran has helped to call renewed attention to the expanding relationship among Shiite Iran, the Sunni Taliban, and by extension various other potential Sunni threats to Western interests. [June 02, 2016] Crestron Technology Enables Orbis's Mission to Prevent Blindness ROCKLEIGH, N.J., June 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Crestron, a global technology company, today announced that it has teamed up with Orbis International, a nonprofit humanitarian organization that works in developing countries to fight blindness. Donated by the company, Crestron's state-of-the-art technology is embedded throughout Orbis' next-generation Flying Eye Hospital, and will play an instrumental role in training eye care professionals across the globe. The new Flying Eye Hospital, on board an MD-10 aircraft will be unveiled June 2nd at an exclusive press event at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), the first leg of a month-long tour of the United States, including stops in Sacramento, Memphis, Newark, Washington, D.C., and Dallas-Fort Worth. The Orbis Flying Eye Hospital travels to underserved areas to treat patients at risk of losing their sight, while also offering local doctors the chance to be trained from the plane. The mobile teaching hospital features an onboard ophthalmic training center, which hosts a 46-seat classroom, full surgical suite, operating theater, laser treatment room, communications center, recovery room, and audiovisual/IT room. As an Orbis partner, Crestron has provided over $300,000 in A/V and automation solutions, in addition to integration services, to enable the medical staff to operate on their patients, while allowing other local doctors to observe procedures from the classroom. Crestron touch screens located throughout the aircrat create a fully integrated solution, including audio and visual distribution systems, multimedia processors, cameras and monitors. All of the inputs and monitor outputs are connected using Crestron DigitalMedia technology allowing for any camera picture to be routed to any display. This provides total flexibility in the communication from room to room all over the aircraft. In addition, a Crestron Sonnex multi-room audio system and Crestron speakers provide audio throughout the plane. From switchers to video systems, everything can be seamlessly controlled through a single, user-friendly, Crestron touch screen. "It is estimated that up to 80 percent of blindness is preventable and 90% of those who are affected live in developing countries where they can't get the treatment they need," said Bob Ranck, President & CEO of Orbis. "The Orbis model is to train local doctors, nurses and medical technicians to manage blindness in their own communities long after the Flying Eye Hospital has departed. Through Crestron's incredibly generous donation we are able to enhance the teaching capabilities on our plane. Their technology enables a level of collaboration, communication, and learning that we would never have thought possible." "We are proud that Crestron's technology is at the backbone of this extraordinary teaching facility, and that we are able to make a difference in so many lives," added Randy Klein, CEO of Crestron. Continuing a partnership that began back in 2013, Crestron's work with Orbis was the passion project of the late George Feldstein, its founder and former Chairman, whose intense interest in both aviation and philanthropy made the Flying Eye Hospital a natural fit. A team from Crestron Services Provider, ControlWorks Consulting, led by Lincoln King-Cliby, provided programming, user interface design, consulting and commissioning services. Crestron's advanced and scalable solutions make the world's top enterprises and luxury homes even more extraordinary. Media who would like more information, or a chance to see the technology behind the Flying Eye Hospital firsthand, should contact Dina Khiry, Creston, at (201) 367-1048 or [email protected] About Crestron At Crestron we build the technology that integrates technology to deliver exceptional environments and experiences. Our automation and control solutions for homes and buildings let people control entire environments with the push of a button, integrating systems such as AV, lighting, shading, security, BMS and HVAC to provide greater comfort, convenience and security. All of our products are designed and built to work together as a complete system, enabling you to monitor, manage and control everything from one platform. Our products are backed by more than 90 fully-staffed offices that provide 24 x 7 x 365 sales, technical, and training support across the globe. In addition to its World Headquarters in Rockleigh, New Jersey, Crestron has sales and support offices throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Australia. Discover the world of Crestron by visiting www.crestron.com. About Orbis Orbis is an international non-profit that brings the world together to fight blindness and equip developing nations with the skills, resources and knowledge they need to deliver quality eye care to all their people. Orbis spans the globe to bring people togetherexpert surgeons and village doctors, community nurses and traditional healers, health ministers and community activists, global foundations and individual donorsso that we can work as one to make sure no one loses their sight to a preventable, treatable disease. For more information visit www.orbis.org All brand names, product names, and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Certain trademarks, registered trademarks, and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Crestron disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. Crestron is not responsible for errors in typography or photography. 2016 Crestron Electronics, Inc. Media Contact: Dina Khiry (201) 367-1048 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160119/323824LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/crestron-technology-enables-orbiss-mission-to-prevent-blindness-300278836.html SOURCE Crestron [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [June 02, 2016] Binary Tree Announces NeedToMeet 3.0 KENDALL PARK, N.J., June 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Binary Tree today announced version 3.0 of NeedToMeet, a tool that helps you quickly schedule meetings with people outside your organization including merged or acquired teams, clients, vendors, job candidates and more. You can access the latest from www.needtomeet.com. Updates in Version 3.0 Introduces levels of premium access, including NeedToMeet Premium for $19 /per person and NeedToMeet Advanced for $12 /year per person (learn more) /per person and NeedToMeet Advanced for /year per person (learn more) Syncs meetings and contacts across your devices, including the web, mobile apps (Coming soon for calendar sync) and the Outlook add-in Standardizes interface behaviors across all devices People spend an average of 75 minutes a week playing phone or email tag to schedule meetings with colleagues whose calendars they can't see. That's around $1,750 per person each year. Companies can reduce this cost with the Microsoft Outlook add-in available with NeedToMeet Premium, which helps people schedule meetings 6 times faster. With the add-in, people who are on different calendar domains can see each other's availability right within Outlook. According to Steven Pivnik, CEO of Binary Tree, "We often support companies who are going through a merger or acquisition, which can be challenging. NeedToMeet is one more way we help smooth this process. Companies can use it to share calendars with each other immediately. So from day one, they collaborate more smoothly, saving timeand money and avoiding the headaches of email tag and time zones." About NeedToMeet NeedToMeet, a Binary Tree company, is a global provider of meeting scheduling service and software that allows individuals and businesses to find a time that works for everyone. NeedToMeet makes it easy to schedule meetings or poll attendees, while removing the hassles of lengthy email chains, time zone conflicts, and phone tag. Its powerful administrative features allow a meeting organizer to manage the details of all their meetings in a single dashboard. You can use NeedToMeet with any browser, can download the mobile app (for iOS, Android and Windows Phone), or can install the Microsoft Outlook add-in to fully capitalize on the Exchange and Office 365 environment. For more, visit www.needtomeet.com. Binary Tree provides organizations with the most direct and predictable path to a successful technology transformation. We offer software and services to integrate and migrate corporate email, directory and server environments. Our technology, methodology and expertise is uniquely suited to provide fast and manageable migrations, with low risk, little to no user downtime, and adapted to each customer's environment and requirements. Since 1993, Binary Tree has enabled thousands of enterprise customers to migrate more than 35 million users, including 5 million users to Office 365 alone, and facilitated some of the most complex technology transformations on the planet. Binary Tree is a Microsoft Gold Partner and a globally preferred vendor for Microsoft Office 365 migrations and solutions. The Company is headquartered outside of New York City with offices in Hong Kong, London, Paris, Stockholm and Sydney. For more information, visit us at www.binarytree.com. Binary Tree Social Media Resources LinkedIn: Binary Tree Inc. Facebook: Binary Tree and NeedToMeet Twitter: @BinaryTreeInc and @NeedToMeet Blog: www.binarytree.com/blog and www.needtomeet.com/blog Binary Tree Media Contact AmyKelly Petruzzella, Global Marketing Director Tel. (215)278-9628 [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/binary-tree-announces-needtomeet-30-300279013.html SOURCE Binary Tree, Inc. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] ARTHUR (JG-TC) -- The annual Strawberry Jam Festival is scheduled to be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and Saturday in downtown Arthur. The Village of Arthur reports that the festivities will include free strawberry give-a-ways all day long, merchant sidewalk sales, craft and food vendors, live music, and more. As part of the Strawberry Jam, the annual Touch a Truck Family Fun Day will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday along Hickory Street downtown. Children are invited to touch and learn about emergency response, construction and other large vehicles. Touch a Truck organizers report that the Family Fun Day also will offer games and other activities for children of all ages, as well as giveaways of prizes such as bicycles and riding toys. In addition, the annual Strawberry Social is slated to start at 9 a.m. Saturday at the Otto Center in Arthur. More information about the Strawberry Jam is available by calling the Arthur Welcome Center at 217-543-2242 or visiting http://www.arthurfestivals.com/. MATTOON -- The organizers of the ongoing Mattoon Civil War Memorial Ellipse project have announced plans to eventually create a Camp Grant Municipal Park north of this memorial. Members of the project steering committee report that the new park would be used to help tell the Civil War history of Mattoon and enhance the appearance of the neighborhood. The park would be created on approximately a block and a half of property that was once part of Camp Grant, a Union Army muster camp that was named after Ulysses S. Grant after he commanded this site in May 1861. The L-shaped park would sit north of the Civil War Memorial Ellipse, located along east Shelby Avenue. Plans call for the park to include a small amphitheater for history presentations and other events, an interpretative area with sign panels about local Civil War history, green space for re-enactor activities and general recreation, and a picnic area. Committee member Steve Thompson said the park could host field trips from local schools. He said this site could be used as part of lessons on Grant, the infantry regiments that mustered at the camp, Abraham Lincoln, and the Civil War in general. "This is where Civil War history happened right here in Mattoon. When you teach about local history, that makes the kids stakeholders in the community," Thompson said, adding that the finished site would draw tourists interested in Civil War history to Mattoon. Thompson said the park also would help beautify the surrounding neighborhood. He said part of the property that would become parkland has been used as a dumping site for broken concrete and other demolition materials, and is now overgrown with grass and weeds. Camp Grant Municipal Park would be bordered on the south by a one-block section of Shelby from North Second Division to North First Division streets, and on the north by a two-block section of Moultrie Avenue from North First Street to North First Division. City Administrator Kyle Gill said the city will accept the Camp Grant project area as a city park if the steering committee can get the funding in place to acquire the needed lots and to develop the property as parkland. Steering committee members have raised private donations to create the memorial stones, paved walkway and landscaping that are in place at the ellipse. Thompson said they still need approximately $125,000 to create the Last Sentry sculpture that will be the ellipse's centerpiece and approximately $475,000 to develop the park. Thompson said they plan to apply for a federal Land and Water Conservation Fund grant, adding that an Illinois Open Space Land Acquisition & Development grant would also be a option if the state's finances were not in disarray. He said both grants require local matching funds for 50 percent of the project costs. Committee member Sandy Graven said donations of money or land to the project are tax deductible and are accepted through the nonprofit Mattoon Area Community Foundation. Prospective donors can contact Thompson at 217-234-6004 or Graven at 217-234-8801, or visit the Mattoon Civil War Memorial Ellipse page on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Mattoon-Civil-War-Memorial-Ellipse-1034342933253471/?fref=ts . In the wake of recent severe storms that caused property damage, the Nebraska Department of Labor on Friday urged caution for people hiring contractors to do remodeling or repair work on homes and businesses. The Labor Department is responsible for enforcing Nebraskas Contractor Registration Act, and Commissioner John Albin said that while the vast majority of people are satisfied with their contractors work, "there are also property owners who suffer financial losses due to being victimized by a dishonest contractor. The Labor Department recommends that people check contractor references, get everything in writing, including estimates and warranties, and be wary of contractors who make unsolicited offers. For more information and a searchable listing of registered contractors, go to dol.nebraska.gov or call 4024712239. Q: I am struggling with my business. I have five employees, and it seems we are all busy doing things all day but still have trouble keeping up. What should we do? -- Plattsmouth A: I would suggest you stop looking at your business as a job and begin looking at it as a machine. Most business owners seem to spend their days putting out fires." Similar to most jobs, employees use varying skills to manage tasks that come up throughout the day. I would assume these tasks vary drastically, and no one employee is responsible for any one task. All employees, including you, are responsible for everything in real time as the issues come up. This can lead to a very stressful, inefficient and unstable work environment. Try to look at your business as a machine. The designer or engineer of this machine is the owner. This machine has an array of parts. Some of these parts are more important than others, but each part has a defined purpose. Employees can be viewed as pistons. Each piston in the machine should have a very specific purpose. Each piston knows what it is doing, what it is capable of doing and how to perform its purpose. You may or may not be a piston, but as the owner you are responsible to test the machine, tinker with it and figure out how the machine, including all its pistons, is able to function at the ideal level. It sounds like currently this is not the case. I would suggest you begin to view your business in a different way and allow yourself the processing time to do so. If the business is busy, that means it has customers. If the business has customers, that means that there might be an opportunity to tinker with the machine, making it function better than other machines. This can be an advantage to your business. Q: I am part of a three-person ownership team. When we first started the business, each of us got along." Now we dont. What do you suggest? -- North Platte Allowing each ownership member to explain his or her vision of the business is highly important. No matter how close the ownership members are, each member is a different person. That means they will have different views on what the business is, how it is going to function and where it is going. These views can be drastically different depending on the business and situation. What might have started as a hobby or side business can quickly become a very significant business venture, and members can quickly have varying views on the next steps of a businesss life cycle. It is important for all members involved in the business to be very clear on their individual visions and goals of the business. If not, conflicts will happen, conversations will occur and the business may suffer and dissolve. The successful ownership teams tend to be very clear with each other on how the business is going to function, what overall direction the business is heading, the purpose of the business and the members' involvement in the business. Many ownership teams have designated communication meetings with very specific times to discuss these matters. Some use this meeting for strategic purposes; others use it as a consistent reminder of why they started the business and how the market is reacting to that purpose. The overlying theme is consistent communication with all ownership members. The re-emphasizing of the purpose of the business is extremely important in this meeting. Clearly stating how and why the business exists can help explain a vision or mission. Allowing each member to have input on this statement will clearly set the purpose. Allowing each member a designated time to communicate these ideas can allow each person a role in the business. Jeff Korbelik Features editor Jeff Korbelik is the features editor and covers dining, performing arts, TV and local media. Follow him at @LJSjeffkorbelik. Follow Jeff Korbelik 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 Ask Nader Farahbod about the history of Billys Restaurant and youll get a tangent-filled tale, with a few jokes thrown in for good measure. As owner and executive chef of one of Lincolns most successful restaurants, Farahbod is personality-plus, which is a big reason Billys celebrated its 30th birthday in May, making it, according to my research and memory, the citys ninth-oldest full-service restaurant. Those older include Lees (1942), Valentinos (1957), Mistys (1963), Virginias Travelers Cafe (1965), Tico's (1976), Piezanos (1982), The Isles (1984) and Imperial Palace (1984). Born and reared in Iran, Farahbod came to Nebraska in 1977 and to Lincoln in 1979. He worked at the Lincoln Exchange downtown, starting out as a kitchen helper before ending up as the restaurants primary chef. One by one, everybody left, Farahbod said, explaining his ascension. I ended up being the last hope by default. People call me chef, but I dont have a chefs license. In 1986, three lobbyists hired him to be the chef (and face) of their new restaurant at 1301 H St., once the home of Charles G. Dawes (1865-1951), the countrys 30th vice president under Calvin Coolidge. The eaterys namesake is William Jennings Bryan, who, along with fellow politician George Norris, spent time with Dawes at his home rehashing events at the nearby state Capitol. They put me in front of the TV cameras and radio microphones, Farahbod said of the owners. They let me take the blame and credit. He paused and then added: They gave me ALL the credit, but took ALL the cash. Then he laughed. In 1998, Farahbod made Billys his own, and in 2014 he bought the house. The fine-dining restaurant is known for his menu -- hes a master at cooking lamb, steaks and seafood -- and superb service, with many employees having been with him for years. Nader will do anything to make a person happy with the experience at Billys and the food, said server Ramona Hyde, whos worked at the restaurant for 10 years. Hes very hands-on, and he genuinely cares. The biggest draw may be Billy's unique atmosphere. Its the only full-service restaurant in Lincoln operating out of an actual house. Billys occupies the main level, with the upstairs rented out as offices. Just about every table is a corner table, Farahbod said of the many-roomed restaurant. It offers you some privacy. He hopes Billys will continue for another 30 or more years. His son, Jordan, a 20-year-old sophomore studying business at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, works the front of the house. Farahbod wouldnt mind if the restaurant stayed in the family. I dont want to put any pressure on him, Farahbod said. I would like to have him follow in my footsteps, but I know how taxing and demanding this business is. I dont wish that on anybody. And he has no plans to retire anytime soon. He's still got jokes to share with customers and wonderful dishes to serve. In his movies, Greek writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos sets up surreal, outlandish premises and then pulls you inside, so the nonsensical takes on weighty, emotional import. In 2007s Oscar-nominated Dogtooth, the lives of the members of a screwed-up family served as an exploration of misbegotten parenting and the perils of strict idealism. In 2011s Alps, a group of eccentrics hired themselves out to people mourning the recent death of a loved one, examining the ways in which we all sometimes take on different personas when we think that is what is expected of us. The Lobster, Lanthimos English-language debut, is another strange, sometimes harrowing exercise in absurdity that resonates despite its weirdness. The movie is set in a near-future in which being single is not an option its illegal. After his wife leaves him, David (Colin Farrell) is forced to move into a hotel-prison governed by strict rules. He has 45 days to find a romantic companion. If he fails, he will be turned into an animal of his choice. This is not something that should upset you or get you down, the hotels officious manager (Olivia Colman) tells him. David should think of becoming an animal as a second shot at true love. But he should choose carefully, because not all animals play well with others. For example, a wolf and a penguin would never work out. Neither would a hippo and a camel. That would be absurd, she says dryly. Think about it. Although he knows most people choose dogs, David settles on a lobster, because they live for 100 years, stay fertile and are blue-blooded, just like rich people. He is congratulated for making such a wise choice. Except for David, none of the other characters in The Lobster have names. Instead, they are known by their peculiarities: The man who limps (Ben Whishaw); the guy who lisps (John C. Reilly); the heartless, cruel woman (Angeliki Papoulia); the woman prone to nosebleeds (Jessica Barden). Reducing people to a single trait makes it easier to navigate the treacherous waters of dating: To woo the Nosebleed Woman, Reilly smashes his face until his nose, too, is bloody. Instantly, they have something in common to bond over. That might sound like a weak substitute for love. But it sure beats turning into a donkey. The Lobster argues that the kind of pressure society places on us to find a soulmate can lead to reckless choices. But the movie gives the alternative people who are happy being single the same radical treatment. Outside the hotel, in the surrounding woods, roam Loners unattached people who refuse to play along and defy society. Their leader, Lea Seydoux (Blue is the Warmest Color), is just as intolerant as the authority figures she despises. Pity the member of her tribe who dares to fall in love with someone else. Told in the same cool, deadpan manner of Lanthimos previous films, The Lobster is a droll, bizarre fable that demands to be taken seriously. The film isnt a comedy, but its often quietly hilarious, at least until Rachel Weisz enters the story as Short Sighted Woman and catches Davids attention. The relationship that ensues between them raises the pictures emotional stakes to devastating heights (or lows, depending on your perspective on romance). The first half of The Lobster establishes the rules and logic of its alternate universe. The second half of the movie is about what happens to a man who is stuck inside of it, and his struggle achieves a surprising level of poignancy, culminating with a scene that is either an expression of love in its purest form or a distillation of amour fou. You thought relationships are complicated these days? Compared to the protagonists of The Lobster, weve got it easy. The Vaquejadas is a traditional rodeo in Brazil in which a two-man team on horseback tries to bring down a bull by grabbing and twisting its tail, hoping to flip the animal over before it crosses a line in the arena. The bulls are transported from rodeo to rodeo, forced into chutes, their tales dusted with sand before the gate opens. Thats the work of the group that serves as a kind of family in Neon Bull, writer/director Gabriel Mascaros gritty, documentary-like film. At the center of the picture is Iremar (Juliano Cazarre), a bull handler who sands the tails before slapping the bulls to send them charging out the gate. But as we see him walk through a dump outside an arena, picking up pieces of cloth and salvaging broken mannequins, it becomes clear hes not your regular rodeo roughneck. Iremar wants to be a fashion designer and spends his off-time coming up with ideas for outfits, then cutting and sewing the materials, using the back of the truck that transports the bulls as his makeshift studio. The skimpy outfits are for Galega (Maeve Jinkings), an exotic dancer whos the groups truck driver, having taken over from her husband, who left her with their spirited daughter Caca (Alyne Santana), who spends her time bantering with the boys in the back of the truck and dreaming of owning her own horse. Neon Bull follows the group, which includes a couple of more guys, including the fat Ze (Carlos Pesina), from place to place, stopping at a developing fashion mall for Iremar, taking some downtime at a large rodeo and visiting a high-end horse auction. Along the way, details and histories emerge, sometimes clearly revealed, sometimes only hinted at. We never learn, for example, why Galegas husband left or the extent of the relationship between Galega and Iremar. But things turn up, like Iremars use of and knowledge of cologne, and Cacas curiosity and need for a father figure. Everything in this slice-of-life picture is vividly captured by the camera of cinematographer Diego Garcia, whether thats showing the guys in the shower, watching a bull get branded or capturing the action in the dusty arena. Neon Bull is unrated. But had it been submitted for rating, it would have definitely received an R and, perhaps, an NC-17. That comes not just from the rodeo scenes -- twisting the bulls down by the tail seems cruel to me, but also from the nudity and a couple of rather explicit sex scenes. The latter, however, arent exploitative. Rather, they fit with the tone Mascaro sets throughout the picture -- a mixture of sexuality and desire to find a more fulfilling life for all involved and a connection with the animals that almost prohibits that desire from becoming real. Neon Bull doesnt tell much of a dramatic story -- the group is still on the circuit when the picture ends. But it superbly shows the The Vaquejadas through characters who seem very real and who we want to continue to follow. BEATRICE A 53-year-old man is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 3 in Gage County for stealing cattle. Cork Tyan has taken a deal in which he pleaded guilty to theft and attempted theft. Prosecutors lowered one of the theft charges in exchange for Tyan's pleas Wednesday. Authorities say Tyan went to a Gage County sale barn and tried to sell some calves that later proved to have been stolen from a rancher in Hayes County. Authorities also said Tyan admitted stealing barbed wire from a Beatrice store. Tyan has been living in Lincoln. A proposed resolution critical of the Obama administrations guidance on bathroom use by transgender students drew an emotional crowd to Friday's Nebraska Board of Education meeting, where arguments of fairness, safety, federal bullying and discrimination dominated the testimony. In the end, the resolution failed on a tie vote, as did a motion for a committee to further review and discuss the proposed resolution before bringing it to a vote. The votes on both motions were 3 to 3, and failed for lack of a majority. Two board members were absent. A technicality that results in a win is still a win, said JohnCarl Denokovich, a member of a Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network group in Omaha. Its less about the win than it is about protecting transgender students, he said, and he didnt buy arguments that the resolution was just supporting local control by school districts. If (the resolution) is about local control, they shouldnt be using transgender youth as a pawn (in the debate), Denokovich said. The packed boardroom included a group of Omaha residents who took a bus to Lincoln to attend the board meeting in support of the proposed resolution drafted by Omaha board member Pat McPherson. Many wore anti-Common Core stickers and have been active in opposing portions of the state social studies standards and efforts by Omaha Public Schools to revise its sex education curriculum. On Friday, proponents of McPhersons resolution railed against the guidelines as federal overreach and urged the board to support local control on the issue. Let the local districts wrestle with these issues directly with their students and their parents, not outside forces pushing a position, not big money donors and grants that have their own motives, said Gina Miller. McPherson drafted the resolution in reaction to guidelines on Title IX recently released by the Obama administration that say schools that receive federal education funding must allow transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms according to their expressed gender. The guidelines have created a furor nationally and spawned a lawsuit filed by 11 states against the Obama administration over the mandate. In Nebraska, Gov. Pete Ricketts has urged schools to reject the guidelines and Attorney General Doug Peterson has written federal officials promising his office would do everything in its power to resist them. McPhersons proposed resolution enumerates concerns being raised by critics of the federal guidelines: that they constitute federal overreach, that they may unconstitutionally broaden Title IX law and that they create a more threatening environment for sexual assault victims. The failed resolution supported local control and urged school districts to use their best discretion in deciding whether to adopt the guidelines, and to do so only after gathering input from teachers and parents whose children will be affected. School districts that violate provisions of Title IX, the 1972 law that prohibits discrimination against girls and women in federally funded programs and activities including athletics, risk losing millions of dollars in federal money. Still, McPherson said his resolution had nothing to do with taking federal funds from school districts, because the state doesnt control distribution of federal funds. (The resolution) doesnt really allow anything, he said. Its a feeling of the board that the guidelines are an overreaching threat to withhold Title IX funds from schools. McPherson and fellow board members John Witzel of Papillion and Glen Flint of Springfield voted for the resolution. Board members Rachel Wise of Oakland, Lillie Larsen of Lincoln and Pat Timm of Beatrice voted against it and instead favored moving the proposed resolution to a committee to further review it. Board members Molly OHolleran of North Platte and Maureen Nickels of Chapman were absent. Larsen, a former Lincoln Public Schools board member, said she supports local control, but it also is important that the board realize it has a constitutional obligation to support all students, and the two issues are separate. Whether its 1 percent or 2 percent (of students), we have an obligation to young people ... to not only nurture their interests and develop their potential but to recognize their individual needs, she said. Tyler Richard, with the ACLU of Nebraska, urged the board to reject the resolution, saying Nebraska has one of the strongest constitutional protections of all students. More than 3,000 people have signed an ACLU petition supporting transgender people, he said. The federal guidelines, he said, do not create new law but make use of an existing framework to provide guidance. Eli Rigatuso of Omaha, a transgender man, shared his story with the board Friday and said fear-mongering around the issue is illogical, including the concern that sexual predators will use the guidelines to get into girls bathrooms. He didnt begin to transition until last year, he said, because he was afraid of the hate from people who dont understand. Back when I was 5, I wanted to be a boy and knew I was a boy and told my mom every day I am a boy, I dont want to wear dresses, this is not who I am, and she kept saying no you cant, you cant, you cant, Rigatuso said. So for 50 years I tried to live that life. I put forth an identity that you could all accept. But at the same time I was so unhappy. Maris Bentley, who unsuccessfully ran for the Millard school board, invoked Hitlers indoctrination of youth and said the state board must protect children from the LGBT agenda. The prevailing idea we must not offend anyone or hurt their feelings must be disavowed. It is folly. It is sentimental rubbish. It is insanity to pretend two men can have a normal healthy sexual relationship or that a man can be a woman just because he feels like he is one. Eris Koleszar of Omaha cited suicide and assault statistics of transgender people, and appealed to the board to reject the resolution. Every last resolution and piece of legislation that comes from our government that tells transgender folks that their safety and well-being is less important than the unfounded fears of their representatives is another finger pulling on the trigger of the collective gun that is pointed at each and every transgender person they serve, she said. Nebraska students would not take a statewide writing exam next year if the Nebraska Board of Education approves a pared down contract with the company that administers state assessments. Education department officials are recommending the board approve a $4.3 million contract with Data Recognition Corp., the Minnesota company that oversees the state tests -- including writing exams that have been plagued with problems in recent years. The board will vote on the contract Friday. The one-year contract with the company would be substantially less than the $7.2 million contract for the current year. Discontinuing the online writing tests for eighth- and 11th-graders was a foregone conclusion, said Valorie Foy, director of statewide assessment for the Nebraska Department of Education. Recurring problems with the online writing test -- students getting kicked offline, losing work or being unable to log on -- were severe enough two years ago that the state chose not to submit them to the U.S. Department of Education. There were less severe, problems last year, but they cropped up again this year, prompting the state to rethink its contract with DRC. Fourth-graders, however, take the test with paper and pencil, so state officials considered giving that test again. But after a survey of teachers and principals revealed no real mandate to continue the test, state education officials changed their minds and recommended eliminating the fourth-grade exam as well. Instead, the department will meet the writing test requirements with new reading assessments that include questions where students must write answers, not just fill in a multiple-choice bubble. The state also recommends saving money by using college entrance exams in place of statewide tests for 11th-graders. A new law requires the state begin using the entrance exams beginning in the fall of 2017. Education department officials will start a year early, Foy said. Education Commissioner Matt Blomstedt said new federal education law guidelines will allow states to use more than one entrance exam, so the state hopes to use community college entrance exams and a traditional college entrance exam, such as the ACT. Students post-high school plans would determine which test they take, he said. The state also would save money on the contract with DRC by not field testing some new assessments. Kristopher Schaaf has been here before. And he knows that what lies ahead is hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer panic or fear. Schaaf referred to that old wartime description as he prepared Friday to embark on his fourth overseas deployment, this time to Afghanistan, where he will be on duty as a Medevac helicopter pilot for the Nebraska Army National Guard. "You learn a lot about what you can handle," he said. "Enjoy the road you're on." Schaaf, who will turn 36 next month, was among about 35 soldiers who were given a big sendoff Friday by fellow soldiers, a small military band and a stage full of dignitaries with their families on hand for the ceremony. The event was held in an open, wind-swept hangar at the National Guard base on a sunny June afternoon with three choppers parked in the back below a "Fly Army" sign. Another helicopter was parked outside and open for inspection. Chief Warrant Officer 3 Schaaf has been deployed to Kosovo and to Iraq twice as well as domestically on Southwest Border patrol. The overseas deployments were 12 months, 15 months and 12 months. This one might be closer to 10 months. "Down time is the worst," he said. That's when he will most miss his wife, Amber, and the kids. They have two daughters: Harlow, 6, and Portia, 4. "And that's when you also realize how much you miss the smell of fresh-cut grass," he said. Schaaf and his wife were married two weeks before the deployment to Iraq in 2006. "I volunteered for this one," he said. "We are a tight group." These are the soldiers of Company G, 2-104th General Support Aviation Battalion, based out of Lincoln. Their mission in Afghanistan will center on medical evacuation. "I admire you so much," Sen. Deb Fischer said during the farewell ceremony. All across the state, Sen. Ben Sasse said, Nebraskans say thank you to members of the military and promise to pray for them. "We are their messengers to tell you thank you," Sasse said. "Your actions speak louder than words," Lt. Gov. Mike Foley said. Reps. Jeff Fortenberry and Adrian Smith also joined in saluting the soldiers. Combating and discouraging gang activity and participation by Lincolns youth is the focus of the free Connect the Hood event 1-3 p.m. Sunday at the F Street Recreation Center, 1225 F St. The event is sponsored by Operation Tipping Point, a collaboration of more than 20 community groups. Connect the Hood will showcase community organizations that provide resources to families during the summer. The event also includes food, fun activities for children, prizes and police and fire displays. Operation Tipping Point provides youth ages 11-15 with alternatives to gang involvement through mentoring and positive, productive activities. One of the organizations involved in the Lincoln Police Department, which employs a full-time gang outreach specialist funded through a grant from the Lincoln-Lancaster County Human Services Office. Other partners include The Bay, Boys & Girls Clubs of Lincoln-Lancaster County, Lincoln Public Schools, CEDARS Youth Services and YMCA of Lincoln. More information on Connect the Hood and other LPD community events is available at police.lincoln.ne.gov (click on community events from list on the left). Dear Roz: OK, I think I have an answer for you. But I must say, your email, which I highlighted in this space a few weeks back, had me stumped for awhile. Thats why I asked readers to weigh in on the question you posed: Namely, how should you, a self-described left-wing progressive and supporter of gay rights, respond if ever you find yourself sharing the locker room at the public pool with a transgender woman who still has male reproductive equipment? You wrote: I have no problem with trans people of whatever biology or stage of transition in bathroom stalls, but what about locker rooms, where nudity is normal? I would be very uncomfortable if I was unclothed and someone two feet away from me took off their clothes and a penis appeared. Roz, the response from many readers can be summed up as follows: Relax. You have nothing to worry about. John from Butte wrote, Please tell Roz that the estimated 700,000 to 2,000,000 transgender people in the USA are using showers and locker rooms very well today just as they have for many years and she doesnt even know about it. The fact she doesnt know is proof that transgender people are discreet, sensitive and careful. Robyn, a transgender woman from greater Richmond, said that, Revealing the mysteries that lie beneath the surface is not something Im even remotely inclined to consider. Until the day arrives that I am comfortable my naked appearance will seamlessly blend in with the other ladies present, you will not find me in a locker room. To do so would undermine every other effort I make to be normal. A reader named Lindsey agreed: As a transgender woman (albeit one beginning her transition to womanhood), I can tell you there is not one pre-op transwoman that will willingly expose herself to others in a locker room or fitting area. Reading their emails, Roz, it struck me how obvious the answers seemed in hindsight. But then, when a thing is alien to your experience, its often hard to think past the newness of it. And that can leave you vulnerable to demagogic lawmakers who see potential votes in your anxiety and irresolution. Thats the story of North Carolina and other states where new laws raise the specter of police officers stationed outside every public toilet to look up your dress or down your pants to ensure your sex parts correspond to the gender of the restroom. We are told theyre passing these laws to deter child molesters. But, Roz, how many children have you heard about being targeted by cross-dressing rapists? Statistically, wouldnt those kids be in greater danger from priests and, well, demagogic lawmakers? While were on the subject, which would be more disruptive: the person who presents as a man in every visible aspect who enters the mens room, or that same person strolling into the ladies restroom? Again, things have a way of becoming obvious if you just stop and think. Thats why we are often encouraged not to. After all, thinking people are less likely to let themselves be stampeded into sweeping, vote-getting restrictions based on vague, unfounded fears of what could happen. Not has happened, mind you. Not even will happen. Could happen. What conservative advocates of, ahem, small government never seem to appreciate is that, left to their own devices, good people usually find ways to figure this sort of stuff out, to make accommodations that allow locker rooms, restrooms and other public facilities to function smoothly without heavy-handed government guidance. So, Roz, in the unlikely event you ever encounter that penis you fear, I am confident you and its owner will work something out. And Ill bet you wont need any lawmakers help to do it. Gov. Pete Ricketts seems to want state senators in Nebraska to act more like members of Congress, who expend more time and energy on political games than lawmaking. Thats a really bad idea. About four out of five Americans disapprove of the way that Congress is handling its job, according to the most recent Gallup poll. Nebraskas Legislature stands in sharp contrast to the dysfunctional legislative body in Washington., where the public good is all but forgotten. In Lincoln state senators debate honestly, openly, vote their convictions and formulate effective government policy. Congress ought to emulate Nebraska, not the other way around. President George Washington warned of the danger of party politics as he left office in 1796, stating, The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. The wise people of Nebraska heeded that advice in 1934 when they voted that candidates for the Legislature should appear on the ballot without party identification. But Gov. Ricketts said at the GOP state convention that he wants Republican members of the Legislature to vote lock-step in accordance with his wishes and the party platform. The pressure could not have been more obvious. He called senators out by name. And some Republicans members of the Legislature with the courage to stand up to him found themselves targeted by robocalls, mailing and radio ads from organizations with shadowy sources of funding. The tactic was a page ripped from a playbook that has been circulated for years by the likes of Grover Norquist. And what does Norquist want? "We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals--and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship," Norquist told the Denver Post in 2003. Norquist and his ilk seem to be getting their way. When Republicans are threatened within their own party, it goes beyond the usual Democratic-Republican split. The governor's insistence that GOP state senators follow the state party platform is an odd notion in light of the blindingly obvious fact that the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee doesn't adhere to the party's national platform. If Ricketts and Nebraskas party bosses get their way, GOP senators might as well check their brains in at the door when walk into the unicameral chamber. They can just watch their cell phones for a message on how Ricketts and the bosses want them to vote. Its encouraging that a small bipartisan band of state legislators, including Republicans, Democrats, a Libertarian and an independent took issue with Ricketts strong-arm tactics, objecting in a letter: Our nonpartisan unicameral Legislature has lasted for 80 years and, barring the will of the people for a new legislative experiment, we will not surrender our non-partisan and constitutional duties. We support the Nebraska constitution and not any particular political party. Somewhere, surely, President George Washington is cheering for them. We hope Nebraskans are too. As an informed Republican, I take seriously the impending nomination of Donald Trump. He doesn't seem to know how to be a decent man or respectful. Here is my view. Trump has been a predator of women for years, sometimes bragging about this questionable trait. Has he reformed or is he just hiding it better? Women, beware. We are not cupcakes! Trump is a typical bully. You don't agree or do as he says, he doesn't want to hear it. He appears to promote violence at his rallies yet he shouts to throw out dissenters. Trump is a national security risk. He has no filter, no compassion or no apparent vision for a better USA. Just because you are rich, doesn't mean you can flaunt it or threaten others. People, open your eyes, ears and minds. Is this the best we can do? I pray not. Dark days are ahead if this callous, bigoted bully succeeds in his march to the White House. People, stand up to the bully and show gumption, character and morality. Choose wisely. Be prepared to be bullied, called names and denied freedoms if this man succeeds and you don't care for him and his bully mentality. Go out and vote for your conscience. Please, it's not too late. I know this isn't popular. Audrey J. Keebler, Sterling Democratic State Chairman Vince Powers of Lincoln has agreed to seek re-election on a party unity ticket that would bring Bold Nebraska's Jane Kleeb, finance chair Andy Holland and former state Sen. Steve Lathrop into top leadership positions. The foursome have "unified around a shared vision to successfully continue building our party at every level," Powers said Friday. Powers originally had declared his intention to step down from the chairmanship, prompting 2014 gubernatorial nominee Chuck Hassebrook to announce his intention to be a candidate for the post at the party's state convention in Kearney later this month. Hassebrook said he will remain in the race. "Cutting a backroom deal in a closed process" is not the way to determine Democratic party leadership, Hassebrook said Friday. "We need to get everybody working together to advance our values." Powers said agreement on the unity ticket was reached earlier this week. "Jane came to talk to me," Powers said. "I agreed that she had the votes to be elected chairman. At the end of the conversation, she stunned me by asking whether I'd consider running for re-election." That would clear the way to build a unity ticket, Kleeb told Powers. "I said 'whoa,' and then I said OK," Powers said. "I can't remember a time when I was so completely caught off guard." Kleeb, founder and head of Bold Nebraska, is a strong supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who won Nebraska's Democratic presidential caucus in March. Sanders supporters will hold the most delegates at the state convention and are in position to control its decisions. Powers did not take sides in the Nebraska contest between Sanders and Hillary Clinton and is an uncommitted superdelegate to the Democratic national convention. "We have come together with a united determination to serve our party and to elect more Democrats up and down the ballot in Nebraska," Powers said. And, he said, "we are determined to succeed." Kleeb, who will be a candidate for party vice chair, said "we have put together the leadership that is necessary to keep building the party with both the grassroots and fund-raising experience needed to recruit and elect Democrats up and down the ballot." Hassebrook said he believes delegates will consider his record and "what I've stood for" in reaching their decision. "I was the leading voice on the Board of Regents to make college affordable," he said. "I have fought against corporate takeover of agriculture." And today, he said, he is actively engaged in development of wind and solar energy. Holland, who has been finance chair for the state party for three years, will be a candidate for national committeewoman. Lathrop, who served eight years in the Legislature, is seeking the post of national committeeman. Holland and Lathrop hail from Omaha; Kleeb resides in Hastings. Reacting to Friday's Democratic announcement, Republican National Committeeman J.L. Spray of Lincoln said Lathrop should resign as the newly hired legal counsel for the Legislature's committee investigating the Department of Correctional Services. "The (presumptive) national committeeman for the Nebraska Democrat Party issuing subpoenas and interrogating agency directors at hearings for the Legislature, paid for with taxpayer dollars, is patently inappropriate and unprecedented," Spray said. "Regardless of party, we agree taxpayer dollars should not be used by the nonpartisan Unicameral to pay Democrat officials for political theater," Spray said. Any changes in leadership positions would be effective following this summer's Democratic National Convention. National Committeewoman Patricia Zieg and National Committeeman Ron Kaminski, both of Omaha, are Democratic superdelegates who have announced their commitment to Clinton. Democratic vice chair Maureen Monahan of Omaha pledged her superdelegate vote to Sanders on Thursday. A summer staff member at Carol Joy Holling Camp near Ashland has the mumps. A spokesperson for the camp said the virus was identified quickly when symptoms were noticed and the staff member was seen by a doctor and immediately quarantined at home. The male staff member was vaccinated and will return to the camp when it is determined to be safe. The first summer camp session is to begin Sunday. Health care staff at the camp have worked with the camps medical director, the Sarpy/Cass Health Department and the Nebraska Department of Healths Office of Epidemiology to ensure the safety of staff and campers. The viral infection's symptoms include swollen salivary glands, fever, jaw pain and muscle aches. Carol Joy Holling Camp, owned and operated by Nebraska Lutheran Outdoor Ministries, serves 1,600 campers and 20,000 other guests each year. DAVID CITY A 51-year-old Omaha man has been given probation for causing a collision that fatally injured two brothers from Rising City. Christopher Pokorny was sentenced last week in Butler County to two years of probation, 400 hours of community service and was told to pay two $500 fines. He'd pleaded guilty to two counts of misdemeanor vehicular homicide. Authorities say Pokorny was driving east on Nebraska Highway 92 on May 2 last year when his pickup ran into the back of an eastbound minivan that was slowing to turn left. Authorities say two van passengers, 8-year-old Caleb Prellwitz and his 18-year-old brother, Joshua, were injured and died later at a Lincoln hospital. WAKEFIELD -- Out of 60 random drug and alcohol tests conducted at Wakefield High School and Wakefield Middle School this academic year, zero came back positive. "I was tested late last fall," said senior Megan Miller, who graduated with 29 fellow members of the Class of 2016. "The nurse told me the (negative) result right away. I had nothing to hide." In short, that's what educators are after in Wakefield; they're hoping students have nothing to hide. "I've seen the positives in that kids are saying they have to be careful, we might have a random test and I don't want to jeopardize my ability to perform," said Mark Bejot, superintendent of schools at Wakefield. Having random tests, in fact, has given Wakefield students another powerful reason to say "no" when it comes to peers pressuring them to use alcohol or drugs. "It's been good for our kids," Bejot continued. "Sometimes kids get stuck and they don't know how to get out of it. Our counselor says to use your random drug test as an excuse to not do it." The Wakefield Board of Education last fall discussed the implementation of a random drug testing program. The district followed the lead of 15-20 schools in Nebraska, including nearby Homer, which had tested students at random since the fall of 2012. Randy Pirner, principal at Homer High School, said the program came about during a time when Homer High had several students who had gained a reputation for partying. It caused a school board member at that time to remark, "It'd be nice if we could test (random drug test) our students," Pirner recalled. Bejot arranged for a public meeting on a Sunday last fall in Wakefield. The board gathered input before approving the program, which coincides with a drug education program in grades 5-12 that consists of four sessions of 45-60 minutes each. One test during the past school year wasn't random. Principal Jason Heitz noted that administrators learned of a party where drugs and alcohol may have been present. Administrators followed up by conducting tests based on reasonable suspicion. "We had enough reasonable suspicion based on county deputies that it (the party) was busted," Heitz said. "The kids confirmed being there and we checked with our attorney." Twelve students were tested in the aftermath, and all the tests, which detect the presence of alcohol, amphetamines, barbiturates, cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana and opiates, came back negative. Other tests have taken place about once a month during the school year. "It's totally random. We ask our testing agent and they give us a series of numbers and we pull them," Bejot said. "We don't know who they are until they come to the office." "I think it's a good idea," said Sara Lorenzen, the senior class president and a student who has not been tested. "There's no harm in it. When you get a job, you'll have to do it. This is preparing us for the real world." "This gives you a reason to say 'no' and not be called a coward," said Efren Godinez, a senior who has not been tested this year. Early in the school year, Lorenzen said, students feared these random tests. Now, however, they've become part of the culture at Wakefield. And, maybe, saying "no" has also become more of the norm. "It was a big thing (in the fall) and it scared people," Lorenzen said. "And now we've adjusted to it." Bejot said he's heard of students who have talked about the random tests, saying they don't want to become ineligible for an activity, such as a sport or band -- privileges extended to middle school and high school students who observe the good conduct policy. "It's been good for our kids," he concluded. "They talk about resisting peer pressure." Horizon Holding and Tri City Foods, two local Burger King franchises in Nebraska, partnered to help raise money for the Nebraska Vietnam Combat Veterans Flight held in early June. Together the two Burger King franchises raised $14,266.67 for Patriotic Productions, the non-profit organization that coordinates the honor flights to honor veterans and their loved ones. On D-Day, June 6, 2016, 500 Nebraska Vietnam combat veterans took part in a one-day, all expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., where they visited the Vietnam Wall. All Vietnam Combat Veterans across the state of Nebraska were welcome to apply to participate. Of the total raised, more than half was generated in Lincoln: Burger King stores in Lincoln raised $3,691 through $1 guest donations; and The Lincoln stores generated $3,779.04 by donating 10% of their sales on May 4. The total raised in Lincoln: $7,470.04. Youre invited to share in NeighborWorks Lincolns 30th anniversary celebration at the House Warming from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday (June 9) at 2530 Q St. In honor of this milestone, 30 local artists will display and sell work that reflects home. There will be photos, paintings, sculptures, stain glass, quilts, and doll houses, as well as a brief program at 6 p.m. While strolling through the grounds, you can tour the historic Reynolds House (now home to NeighborWorks), learn about the past work and impact of NeighborWorks, enjoy food and drinks, listen to the music of John Turner (aka Honeyboy Turner), and watch the childrens activities of face painting and chalk art. Adsmission is free. NeighborWorks Lincoln is part of the national NeighborWorks network, an affiliation of more than 240 nonprofit organizations located in every state, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Last year, the NeighborWorks network helped nearly 356,000 individuals and families with affordable housing and counseling. The NeighborWorks network was founded and is supported by NeighborWorks America, which creates opportunities for people to live in affordable homes, improve their lives and strengthen their communities. As summer weather spreads across Nebraska bringing warmer temperatures and rain, pest control can become an issue for residents. Whether the culprits are ants, cockroaches, stinging insects, termites or flies, the rising temperatures and stagnant water can mean problems controlling them. Your Better Business Bureau serving Nebraska, South Dakota The Kansas Plains and Southwest Iowa has some advice for consumers selecting a trustworthy pest control company. Choosing an exterminator If pests do get in, or even if you want to initiate a schedule of professional extermination to assure that they are controlled, then comes the time to find a company to keep your residence insect-free. These tips will make the job of choosing an exterminator easier: Check out companies you are considering by going to bbbinc.org and reading their BBB Business Reviews. Get bids from at least three pest control companies before making a decision. Find out if they are licensed and have liability insurance. Get references. Ask friends and family which companies they use and ask the company itself for references. Follow through on the references by contacting them. Ask about a warranty. Find out specifically what it covers, for how long and what happens if the pests come back. Ask about safety. Are the chemicals used dangerous to your family and your pets? Get everything in writing. This includes the contract and all guarantees. Be sure you understand what is stated. Dont be afraid to ask questions and dont take anything for granted. Hopefully the only things that will spring up around your home are flowers. But if insect pests emerge as well, take the steps listed above to make sure they dont enter your residence. If you have questions or concerns regarding pest control issues, contact your BBB by calling (800) 649-6814, 402-436-2345 or visit our website at bbbinc.org. Have you ever wanted to travel around the world and learn about different cultures? DASH Exchange Student Programs would like to invite you to see the world by sharing your heart and home with a foreign exchange student from South America, Europe or Asia for the upcoming school year. The students are arriving in August and the program would like to identify American host homes early on to provide ample time to correspond before arrival. Each year, the placement organization provides high school age exchange students the opportunity to travel to the US, live with a warm and caring volunteer host family, and attend a semester or academic year at a public or private high school. The students have full medical coverage and their own spending money. The host family provides room, board, and a once in a lifetime opportunity for some lucky foreign teen. DASH is also offering American teens the opportunity to spend two weeks in New Zealand as exchange students. Students travel in July and attend school during their stay. Teens must be 15 -18 and in good academic standing. For more information, contact the DASH regional office at 1 (844) 528-1145 or e-mail: sandra@dashf1.com The page may have moved, you may have mistyped the address, or followed a bad link. Visit our homepage, or search for whatever you were looking for RACINE It might have been the most pleasant discussion about wastewater infrastructure in the history of city government. On Thursday evening, about 40 College Avenue residents gathered on a sunlit corner at the roadways intersection with 17th Street to learn about a pending $349,000 sanitary sewer project. Planned for this summer, the project would address deficiencies in the 120-year-old sewer in the 1500, 1600, and 1800 blocks of College Avenue, mostly by lining the sewer main, city public works staff have said. Some point repairs might also be needed, but that work would be minimal, as would any disturbance to the roadways treasured brick pavement. We heard what you had to say. We found out doing the visuals on this that we have a couple of spots, but outside of that we dont have to dig up the street, Mayor John Dickert told those gathered. Easing concerns Residents of the historic street first raised concerns about threats to the roadways bricks in February and March after some began asking questions about a future earmark in the citys capital improvement budget that called for spending $2.5 million to repave College Avenue from 14th Street to DeKoven Avenue in 2018. At a neighborhood meeting in March, Dickert assured attendees the item was merely a budgetary placeholder, but he also noted the issues with the aging sewer line. On Tuesday, with the birds chirping overhead, Dickert, Public Works Commission Mark Yehlen, and Jason Herzog, a civil engineer with the city, laid out the details of the project that would address those issues. If approved by the City Council, the work would be tacked onto an existing $1.06 million sewer lining contract the city has with Musson Brothers Inc. In addition to the fixes along the sewer main itself the project also calls for reinforcing and/or relining anywhere from 50-60 lateral connections. Some of those lateral fixes can be done via the sewer main, Herzog said, while others will require crews digging down into the grass parkway between the sidewalk and the roadway. Other than a resin smell from the lining, and a little noise from the trucks, residents should be bothered little by the project, Herzog said. Praise Residents in attendance seemed mostly pleased with the plan. Bob Hartmann, a semi-retired architectural/industrial designer and preservationist praised Dickert and public works staff for their efforts. I think this incredible the change in attitude and the communication. This is in fact a remarkable change in the way the city has worked with residents. And, I mean, for me, you get five stars for doing this, The City Council will vote on the proposed project when it gathers at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, June 7, in Room 205 at City Hall, 730 Washington Ave. RACINE A Mount Pleasant man faces two charges for allegedly passing counterfeit $20 bills at the Speedway gas station in Caledonia last month. Benjamin A. Baumann, 33, of the 1600 block of Bryn Mawr Ave., appeared in Racine County Circuit Court Thursday to face a felony charge of uttering a forgery and a misdemeanor charge of attempted theft in connection with the incident. According to the criminal complaint, Baumann attempted to use counterfeit $20 bills at the Speedway, 4960 Douglas Ave., Caledonia, on May 26. The Speedway employee told Baumann the bills appeared to be fake and was going to call the police, the complaint said. Baumann said he would stick around, but needed to get to work, the complaint said. Baumann then left the gas station and headed north on Douglas Avenue, the complaint said. On Wednesday night, Baumann appeared at the Caledonia Police Department to speak to officers about the incident, the complaint said. He told police he found out on Facebook that police wanted to speak with him, the complaint said. Baumann told police an unknown black male paid him $500 all in $20 bills for a set of rims in the first week of May, the complaint said. Baumann said he did not know the bills were counterfeit until the Speedway cashier told him, the complaint said. Bauman also said he had thrown away the rest of the money because he did not want to be caught with the fake bills, the complaint said. Baumann was in Racine County Jail Thursday, jail records showed. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for June 9, court records showed. Caledonia police earlier this week asked for the publics help identifying Baumann from images captured from a Speedway surveillance film. The Caledonia Police Department would like to thank the media and community for their quick action in resolving the identification and apprehension of the suspect, police said in a release Thursday. Reporter Mark Schaaf contributed to this story. RACINE Sometime in 2011, Antonio Guerrero decided he wanted a better life for himself, for his two small children, and for his beloved parents. Guerrero, who was born in Mexico and came to America about 25 years ago, always worked hard, but drank harder, a relative said Thursday. At the end of the summer in 2011, Guerrero packed a suitcase and told his family in Cicero, Illinois, that he was heading for a rehabilitation center in Wisconsin to defeat his drinking demons. He felt like he needed to change his life, remembered Mereyda Santillan, Guerreros 23-year-old niece who lives in Cicero, a western Chicago suburb. He told us he was going to stop drinking. He had his problems, but he always, always came back home. It wasnt like him to not come back home. Guerrero, whose last address was listed as Berwyn, Ill., never did come back. At some point, somehow and some way, Guerrero ended up in Racine. On Nov. 12, 2011, a passerby discovered some decomposed skeletal remains wedged in rocks along the Lake Michigan shore near the Fifth Street boat launch. A forearm and hand were found three weeks later and those parts were matched to the remains. On Wednesday, more than four years after the initial grisly discovery, Racine Police and the Racine County Medical Examiners Office said they had identified those remains as Guerrero, who was 31 at the time. While the identification provided some comfort to Guerreros family, they now want to find out what happened to him in 2011 and why. We understand that he is at peace now and the family knows where he is, said Santillan, reportedly the only member of Guerreros family who speaks English. We know hes not suffering, and we know hes not out on the street somewhere alone. But its still a mystery for us. Thats hard for us. Answers sought Santillan and the rest of her family are asking for any help they can get from anyone who might know details about what happened. Whatever anyone can offer would help so much, she said. Anything can help. For local officials, the identification also was just the first step in what could be another long investigation. Now we know who this person is and that is just the starting point, said Racine County Medical Examiner Michael Payne. The next part is to find out what exactly happened. Guerrero was the second youngest of six children born to Antonio Guerrero and Maria Lupe Guerrero. He attended high school in Mexico, Santillan said. In America Guerrero held a string of jobs over the years cutting grass, pouring concrete and cement, helping at construction sites, Santillan said. He drank too much, she said, but didnt have any enemies. He also didnt have any friends in Wisconsin as far as the family knew, Santillan said. When we first went up there, we actually didnt know where it was, she said. He didnt know anyone at all up there. The family plans to cremate Guerrero and have a small, private memorial ceremony, Santillan said. Anyone with information about Guerrero can contact his niece, Mereyda Santillan at 708-745-8570. RACINE In his endorsement Thursday of Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan said he would continue to speak out against him if necessary. It didnt take long. In a meeting Friday with The Journal Times Editorial Board, Ryan, R-Wis., criticized Trumps recent statements on a judge of Mexican descent. Trump reportedly said federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel has an inherent conflict of interest presiding over a Trump University case because of Trumps desire to build a wall on the Mexican border. I disagree with that statement. I dont think its productive. That is not how we unite Americans, Ryan said. Such is the new norm for Ryan. The speaker of the House will likely spend the next several months answering for Trump after he ended his weekslong endorsement holdout in a Janesville Gazette column on Thursday. Ryan, whose district includes all of Racine County, said he is trying to unify the party so it can win the White House. He noted the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy and said critical things need to get done in the next four years or else these problems in our country are going to get out of control. Ryan plans to roll out the House GOP agenda beginning Tuesday and reiterated his belief that it had a better chance of succeeding with Trump in the Oval Office than likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Was he my first choice? No, Ryan said. But are we more likely to advance these ideas with a Trump than a Clinton? Yes. Work to be done Ryans endorsement of Trump came despite differences between the two on many issues, ranging from immigration and trade to entitlement programs. His inflammatory rhetoric is also a huge departure from the polished, well-mannered Ryan, something Ryan said he has discussed with Trump. We spoke about the tone, we spoke about the need to have a campaign going forward that people are proud of, that ... is inclusive, Ryan said. Theres work to be done on that. Still, Ryan is hopeful the House GOP agenda, which will include measures addressing health care, entitlements, poverty and the tax code, can influence the Republican presidential race. He believes it can appeal to moderates and even some Democrats, in addition to conservatives. We can add sort of a keel and a rudder to this ship and give it direction and substance, he said. So that in the fall, people arent just picking among two personalities fighting each other. Theyre picking two paths, two visions, two directions. SOMERS The joint nursing program between the University of Wisconsin-Parkside and UW-Milwaukee will admit 25 percent more students to meet demand in the region, officials announced in a news release this week. The increase will begin with the fall 2016 semester after UW-Milwaukees undergraduate program committee approved increasing the number of students admitted each year from 32 to 40. Kim Litwack, dean for academic affairs in the UWM College of Nursing, said community partners asked the university to respond to the growing need for nurses in southeastern Wisconsin. Our limits on admission are dependent on the availability of clinical learning sites, Litwack said in the release. If health care agencies step up with the additional committed clinical sites, we can increase our admission rate. Those partners did step up, and we did increase our enrollment. This is a perfect example of industry listening and supporting education, and education listening and supporting industry. The increase is the second since 2014, when UWM raised the admission limit from 27 to 32. About 55 to 60 students apply for the nursing program each year, officials said. By the start of the fall 2017 semester, 80 students will be enrolled in the program, according to the release. As part of the Milwaukee-Parkside partnership, faculty from UW-Milwaukee travel to Parkside to teach. Parkside also hosts clinical sites and has students work with United Healthcare, Aurora Health Care and Wheaton Franciscan-All Saints. The advantage we have is that students in the region who find it inconvenient to drive to Milwaukee do not have to attend classes at UW-Milwaukee, said Emmanuel Otu, dean of the UW-Parkside College of Natural and Health Sciences, said in the news release. He added the university is always looking to find ways to increase the capacity we can offer. The Parkside/UWM nursing program began in 1980. BURLINGTON Dozens of relatives, friends and supporters gathered in Burlington Thursday evening to celebrate the lives of Kimberly Howe and Nicholas Chaulkin. They were kind, they were generous, family friend Pat Hahn said. They extended their love to everyone. They included me as their family. The vigil, hosted by the Womens Resource Center in Burlingtons Echo Park, honored the lives of Howe and Chaulkin, who died in a house explosion in the Town of Burlington on May 14, according to the Racine County Sheriffs Office. Authorities believe Craig Lambert, Howes boyfriend, is responsible for the deaths. The vigil featured poems and support offered to grieving family members, as well as remarks from Rev. Sue Ott-Holland and Rev. Ebenezer Insor from Burlington United Methodist Church. When I think about this situation, I think that there are multiple victims, Ott-Holland said. They are two victims Nicholas and Kimberly that were honoring tonight. There are victims who have been touched by domestic violence in their own lives that when they heard the news, it shook them. There are victims like you and I who, our world view, our image of what we would hope for in this world is no longer what it used to be. Ott-Holland also referred to the alleged perpetrator, Lambert, who also died in the explosion, as a victim, something Hahn said as well. I knew Craig too and I loved him as much as I loved the victims, she said. As far as I am concerned, he was also a victim. Hahn said Lambert was going through some problems, including depression, prior to the explosion. It wasnt him doing this, it was his depression, she said. And I shall always remember him in that way. Insor said he got to know the family, especially Nicholas, over the past few years. I remember the humor he brought and a youthful innocence, he said. He said he loved chess, so we developed a relationship and played chess together. Insor also said the funeral for Howe, Chaulkin and Lambert will take place at Community United Methodist Church in Waterford on Sunday, June 12. I have two words for the community: love and forgiveness, he said. We have two families involved in this...if theres love, then forgiveness will come in. We as a community should give them the support that they need to go through this time of their grief. And love is what the situation boils down to for Hahn. Were just family, she said. We loved each other. For Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling, the lesson to be drawn is the need to speak up when something seems awry. This situation sheds a bright light on the need for our entire community to speak up when they notice yourself, a friend or family member in a toxic relationship, he said. Waiting just one day could be too late. Anyone who needs assistance on a domestic violence issue can call: 262-633-3233 MADISON Wisconsins top Republicans, who have failed in recent years to find a solution to the states transportation funding woes, remain divided over how to best repair and build roads. The fissures surfaced again Thursday, a day after the Wisconsin State Journal reported that Transportation Secretary Mark Gottlieb said he would propose a spending plan for the 2017-19 budget cycle that offered no major tax or fee increases. Gottlieb acknowledged the move would threaten major road projects in the Madison and Milwaukee areas as well as repairs across the state. Speaking to reporters Thursday, Gov. Scott Walker echoed Gottliebs comments, which were also consistent with his own previous position, while Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told the State Journal in a statement that the state needs more transportation revenue. Walker said he wont increase transportation-related taxes without a corresponding decrease in other taxes a difficult proposition given the states tight fiscal situation. Were not going to add a gas tax or a vehicle registration fee increase in this next budget, Walker said. Well try to figure out ways that we can be efficient and effective in providing local assistance to keep our county municipal roads and highways and streets in decent shape. Gottlieb told the State Journal that not raising revenues will mean more projects are delayed including possibly the Verona Road project in Madison and the expansion of Interstate 39/90 south of Madison and that available funding will focus on the backbone of the states transportation system at the expense of smaller, more rural projects. Walker said there probably wont be a whole new wave of major projects. He said safety will be the top priority for funding already scheduled projects and maintaining existing roads. Vos, R-Rochester, pointed to a January 2013 report by the Wisconsin Transportation Finance and Policy Commission, a bipartisan group charged with studying the states transportation funding system, that recommended increasing the states gas tax by 5 cents per gallon, annual registration fees for commercial vehicles by 73 percent and the eight-year drivers license fee by $20 to $54. The panel also recommended eliminating the sales tax exemption on the trade-in value of a vehicle and adopting a mileage-based registration fee system for passenger vehicles and light trucks. The bipartisan commission reported that if Wisconsin wants to maintain current service, traffic flow and road condition levels under the existing funding system, the state will be short $15.3 billion over the next decade. It is unfortunate that the Department of Transportation seems to be ignoring its own comprehensive review that stressed the need for additional revenue, Vos said in a statement. I look forward to working with Governor Walker on a long-term funding solution for our roads in Wisconsin. Walker also wouldnt rule out or set a limit on another round of borrowing to pay for roads, an option that has irked many Republican lawmakers who have raised concerns about the long-term fiscal impact of incurring increasing debt to pay for transportation. Walker said there isnt a set amount, but that it will probably be similar to what has been sought in the previous budget. Transportation fund a special case Wisconsins transportation system mostly is funded by dedicated revenues primarily from the gas tax and vehicle registration and other fees federal funding and borrowing. Former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle used dedicated transportation funds to pay for other state programs a practice outlawed by a recently adopted constitutional amendment while Walker has used general state tax revenue to help pay for transportation projects. The current budget authorizes $850 million in transportation borrowing, down from $1.3 billion that Walker requested. Two years ago Gottlieb proposed raising $750 million from higher fees and taxes, but Walker rejected those proposals. According to the fiscal bureau, 20 percent of every dollar raised by state transportation taxes and fees pays for debt service used to build and repair roads. Thats almost double what it was a decade ago. Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, co-chairman of the Legislatures budget committee, said Republicans are concerned about the debt-payment-to-revenue ratio going up. We as conservative Republicans dont believe its more fiscally responsible to borrow than to pay for it even if it means an increase in a tax or a fee, Nygren said. Its more of a mindset that paying as you go is a better position. Nygren also said its premature to commit to raising revenues or borrowing because the Legislative Audit Bureau is conducting a review of DOTs state highway program. That report is due out in the fall. Sen. Duey Stroebel, R-Saukville, lauded Gottlieb for not proposing a gas tax increase. He said Gottlieb should include other proposals in his budget, such as allowing local projects to swap out federal funds for state funds, so that they can reduce the cost of following federal regulations. Legislators should not support any increased tax burden on Wisconsin families and businesses before all DOT efficiencies are exhausted, Stroebel said in a statement. Holding the line on transportation taxes ought not to mean more borrowing or delayed projects. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, and Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, co-chairwoman of the Joint Finance Committee, didnt respond to requests for comment. 8-yr-old Kantipur subscriber wins Rs1m Eight-year-old Shreya of Manthali, Ramechhap has won Rs1 million as part of Kantipur Karodpati Yojanaa subscription campaign of Kantipur Media Groupfor this month. Army airlifts equipment to drain Imja water by 3 metres Preparations are under way to lower the water level of Imja Glacial Lake in the Khumbu region to mitigate the risk of glacial lake outburst flood (glof). Budget pledge breathes life to stalled project The announcement of Outer Ring Road in Kathmandu Valley in the budget has rekindled hopes for the project first proposed in 2005 that fell into a moribund state three years later due to disagreement over compensation amount proposed for land acquisition. Child trafficker in net Rupandehi Police have arrested a person while he was trafficking children of below 16 to India on temptations. Fish eat plastic like teens eat fast food, researchers say Young fish become hooked on eating plastic in the seas in the same way that teenagers prefer unhealthy fast food, Swedish researchers have said. Five hurt in road accident Five persons were injured when a west-bound ambulance skidded off the road and overturned at Lahan in the district on Friday morning. Five Nepali boys who fled homes for India rescued Five boys of the same village in Baitadi district who fled their homes have been rescued and brought back home. Govt pushing for pre-emptive amnesty for war crime accused The government is working to enact a law allowing the Cabinet to recommend amnesty on the war-era cases pre-emptively without ascertaining the truth surrounding the crime. In the eye of the beholder It is a matter of satisfaction to hear Ambassador Teplitz say that the US will look at Nepal with its own eyes India extends financial assistance for construction of 25 community buildings India has extended a financial assistance of Rs49.98 million for the construction of 25 community buildings in 24 VDCs of Sarlahi district. Infrastructure and development Fast-track road can be completed on time if the political parties do not interfere Japan officials raid Suzuki headquarters Japanese authorities have raided the headquarters of Suzuki, as part of an ongoing probe into the carmaker's use of improper fuel economy tests. Japanese missing boy Yamato Tanooka found alive in Hokkaido A boy missing in remote woods in Japan since Saturday after being left alone by his parents as a punishment has been found alive and well. Kalo Pothi leaves audiences enthralled After winning the Best Film title, under the Critics Choice category, at the prestigious Venice International Festival and having participated in dozens of film festivals around the world, Kalo Pothi (The Black Hen) is slated for release in Nepali theatres on June 3. Man vs wild Nepal needs more resources to deal with animals straying into human settlements Marilyn Monroe's 90th celebrated in photo show Marilyn Monroe is being celebrated in a pop-up photo exhibition marking what would have been her 90th birthday. NEA, China Three Gorges close to signing JV deal The Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) and China Three Gorges Corporation (CTGC) are close to signing a joint venture (JV) agreement to develop the West Seti Hydropower Project as the Chinese company has agreed to arrange equity funding for the NEA, Investment Board Nepal (IBN) said. Anil Giri is a reporter covering diplomacy, international relations and national politics for The Kathmandu Post. Giri has been working as a journalist for a decade-and-a-half, contributing to numerous national and international media outlets. One held with 3.5 kg hashish in Capital A man was arrested with 3.5 kg hashish from Balaju bypass in the Capital on Friday. Plastic bag manufacturers urge govt to rethink ban Plastic bag manufacturers have urged the government to rethink its decision to impose a blanket ban on the use of toxic plastic and propylene bags. Ruling coalition and opposition tug-of-war over budget continues At Friday's Legislature-Parliament session, both the ruling coalition parties and the opposition engaged in another round of tug-of-war over the budget proposal for the forthcoming Fiscal Year 2073-74 BS. UML-tied civil service union gets most votes The CPN-UML-affiliated Nepal Civil Servants Employees Association (NCSEA) has got the most votes in the Civil Servants Trade Union election held on Wednesday. US State Department: Global terror attacks down 13% in 2015 There was a marked fall in the number of terror attacks around the world in 2015, the US State Department has said. Wont accept PMs post without natl consensus: Dahal CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal has remarked that he will accept the prime ministers post only if a national consensus government is formed. 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 Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister Kahinda Otafire has expressed reservations about Uganda attaining a middle income status by 2020. Speaking at the launch of the Uganda Registration Services Bureau Mbale regional office, Otafire said it is impossible with the current poor attitude of Ugandans towards work. He says if this dream is to be realized Ugandans must change their attitude towards work and work ethics. Minster Otafire now challenges the leaders to spear head this and ensure citizens get out of politics and work. While delivering his inaugural speech last month, President Yoweri Museveni committed to getting Uganda to a middle income status by the end of his 5th term. Story By Benjamin Jumbe Today, the Uganda Martyrs are celebrated yet again at Namugongo, an event that draws thousands of pilgrims every year. This years celebrations are organized by the diocese of Kiyinda Mityana under the theme; The Truth Will Set You Free. Over one million pilgrims are attending the Martyrs Day celebrations at Namugongo Shrines. These are drawn from within Uganda and other African countries including 4000 from Kenya, 4,500 from Tanzania, 300 from Burundi and 1,500 from Rwanda. At the Catholics shrine the prayers have started and are being led by Bishop Joseph Anthony Zziwa of Kiyinda-Mityana Diocese. Meanwhile at the Anglican Shrine where the guest of honor is the Prime Minister Dr Ruhakana Rugunda, the prayers are being led by the Archbishop of the Church of Uganda Stanley Ntagali. The main celebrant is Rt Rev Dr.Samuel Chkwudi Ezeofor from Nigeria. Motorists using roads leading to the Namugongo have been advised to use alternative routes to avoid inconvenience as pilgrims throng the shrines. Kampala Metropolitan Traffic Commander Norman Musinga said earlier that according to the traffic guidelines to be followed today, there will be no parking at the venue for the general public and only invited guests are allowed to park vehicles at both shrines VIPs with vehicles bearing RED Stickers going to the Catholic Shrine are accessing Namugongo via Kyaliwajjala and park at Namugongo Primary School playground, while those with BLUE Stickers will park at Vienna College Namugongo. VIPs going to the Protestants Shrine can access the venue via Bweyogere and Seeta to park at the Protestant play ground as shall be guided by the Police. Pilgrims using buses to the Catholic shrine shall be dropped at Kyaliwajjala then the buses will proceed to park at Namboole via Naalya. Pilgrims accessing the venue from the Northern Bypass from areas of Ntinda, Hoima road and Bwaise will park at St. Peters S.S and Hill Side Nursery & Primary School as shall be guided by the Police. Private vehicles, commuter taxis and motor cycles will not be allowed beyond Kireka trading center. Relatedly, the health and sanitation department at Namugongo shrine is overwhelmed by the huge number of pilgrims who do not know how to use flush toilets. Ronald Kasibante, a health and sanitation supervisor at Namugongo says it is difficult to control the pilgrims since they are all coming from different cultural backgrounds. He says some find it normal to litter the compound with human waste. In a sseperate development atleast 50 people have so far been arrested bay police at Namugongo for various offenses. Story By KFM reporters Army researchers are working on what could become a black box for paratroopers designed to prevent future jump accidents. The Suite of Senors, as it's nicknamed now, is a concept leaders in the airborne community hope to develop into a device to place on a paratrooper during a jump to gather a range of data, such as body position and altitude during an aircraft exit, according to a story on Fayobserver.com. The data could help investigators precisely piece together fatal airborne mishaps, review procedures to mitigate future deaths and determine which paratroopers need extra training. Currently, investigators rely on eyewitness accounts or evidence, such as torn parachute canopies, to piece together what they believe occurred. Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Farnsworth, director of Army Safety and commanding general of the U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center at Fort Rucker, Alabama, set the concept in motion several months ago. He said findings from fatal airborne operations would be more accurate - and used to mitigate deaths - if investigators could review solid data to reconstruct the mishap, according to the Fayobserver.com. The concept for the suite of sensors will continue to be refined as the manufacturers work it toward a demonstration phase, which could determine how the technology will be created and put into the testing phase, the Fayobserver.com reports. It will be tested through the Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center laboratory in Massachusetts. The KNX National Group of New Zealand held a successful and popular KNX Day in Auckland in May. Visitors from manufacturers, installers, engineers, and facilities management, joined together to discuss and learn more about KNX, the only worldwide standard for Home and Building control. Exhibitors from ABB, basalte, EasyLux, iRidium mobile, Steinel, Theben and others presented a range of new KNX products, showing the range and depth of KNX alternatives available to engineers and specifiers, from highfunction sensors, to beautiful switches and KNX training options. Speakers from Australia and New Zealand discussed topics such as KNX Security, KNX+IoT, and regional standardisation. The association was delighted to present the 2016 KNX New Zealand awards to: 1. Best Residential project using KNX in the last year: Futureproof Electrical for a fully controlled home in Remuera, Auckland 2. Best Commercial project using KNX in the last year: Aotea Electric Christchurch for comprehensive control of the Christchurch Art Gallery 3. Best New KNX product in the last year: ABB for the All Blacks motion sensor For more information contact: Colin Price (President KNX NZ) president@knxnz.org www.knxnz.org A Wisconsin court of appeals has finally put to rest some of the questions over what information must be withheld under the federal Drivers Privacy Protection Act, or DPPA. Its recent decision ends years of confusion in a way that squares with the states traditions of openness and with common sense. The DPPA was enacted more than two decades ago to restrict the release of personal information from DMV records. It was never meant to prevent police from releasing basic information in accident reports and other law-enforcement records. But that was how the law was interpreted in much of Wisconsin. In recent years, following a federal court ruling in an Illinois case, concerns over liability have led some law enforcement agencies to heavily redact (black out) reports before releasing them limiting their news value and hampering public oversight of police. In its May 10 decision, Wisconsins 3rd District Court of Appeals held that accident reports need not be redacted to comply with the DPPA, because state law expressly mandates their disclosure. Personal information obtained from other sources and merely verified with DMV records may also be released. I was one of the attorneys, along with Bob Dreps, who represented a newspaper that filed the lawsuit that led to this ruling. The case was brought by the New Richmond News against the city of New Richmond. Congress passed the DPPA in 1994 after a television actress was murdered by a stalker who obtained her home address from a local DMV. The laws intent is clear: DMVs, with their vast repositories of personal information, cannot disclose that data except for one of 14 permissible uses. The same restrictions apply to other agencies that use DMV data. But then, in 2012, the village of Palatine, Ill., was threatened with liability for printing vehicle owners personal information obtained from DMV records on parking tickets placed on car windshields. The Palatine case caused some police departments in Wisconsin to start redacting records, prompting the New Richmond News to file suit. In the end, reason won out in Palatine. The courts ultimately ruled that disclosing personal information on parking tickets was allowed because the police department used the information in carrying out its functions one of the 14 permissible uses. Reason should also win out in Wisconsin, although this may not happen right away. Whereas the court of appeals ruled accident reports must always be accessible, it also concluded that personal information obtained from DMV records and incorporated into incident reports can only be disclosed if doing so serves a function of the police department a question the case was remanded to the circuit court to resolve. The public has a legitimate right to law enforcement records, which are of little value if scrubbed of names and addresses. How can the public know if laws are enforced equally and appropriately if the identities of the people involved are obscured? Ideally, the common-sense approach adopted by the court of appeals will serve as a blueprint for addressing the questions that remain without further litigation. A proposed $45 million renovation of the La Crosse Center garnered unanimous support Thursday after a public hearing during the Finance and Personnel Committee meeting. The committee approved a trio of resolutions in support of the project, which will allow city staff to request proposals for architectural bid and construction design services and hiring a project manager, and to proceed with borrowing to fund the citys portion of the project, with none opposed. The resolutions will go before the La Crosse Common Council next week. The resolution calls for the city to bond for $35 million for the project, which would add a 40,000-square-foot raised ballroom enclosed in glass to the back of the building and renovate the lobby and hallways to make it more welcoming and visitor-friendly, as well as include office space for La Crosse County Convention and Visitors Bureau staff. The city is also working on plans to ask the Wisconsin Building Commission for about $10 million in funding for the project following the commissions similar contribution to a performing-arts project in Eau Claire. The timing is right, the need is there, the project is right, La Crosse Center Board chair Brent Smith told the committee. Supporters of the project anticipate paying back the debt through a combination of hotel room tax dollars, ticket surcharges and other city funds. Thats what we did in the late 90s when we did that project, and that would be part of this project as we look at paying back the debt, Smith said. The previous $14 million expansion, completed in 2000, was paid off with similar funds. Council member Francis Formanek, who represents the council on the La Crosse Center Board, called the project a huge piece of the puzzle when it comes to keeping downtown La Crosse vibrant. We need to be visionary and think about the future. We cant be static in this business, Formanek said. Formanek said the project will bring more conventions and events to the La Crosse Center, which hosts more than 200 events per year, and grow downtown La Crosse with its estimated $40 million per year economic impact. The downtown growth especially would benefit local taxpayers, according to Formanek, who said the project would allow the citys property tax base to grow, lowering each individuals share. On the citys side, Formanek believes it will be money well-spent. They say youve got to spend a buck to make a buck, Formanek said. In this case, were going to spend a buck to make two bucks. The project also garnered support from La Crosse business leaders, including representatives from Weber Holdings LLC and Kwik Trip. Don Weber, founder and chairman of Logistics Health Inc. and chief executive officer of Weber Holdings LLC, praised the project and the people behind the La Crosse Centers success. The center is one of the few profitable city-run convention centers. Its run and managed well, and its important for us make the investment and continue to support their success and what it brings for the whole community, Weber said. He said supporting the renovation and expansion will boost area businesses, especially those in the retail and food service sectors, allowing them to hire more people. I look at it as an investment not just for La Crosse, but for this whole region, Weber said. David Ring, community relations manager at Kwik Trip, added that it would be a smart investment for the city, making money not only in tax revenue, but also for businesses like Kwik Trip. The La Crosse Center really provides a catalyst for other businesses, Ring said. Ring agreed that the timing was right for the project, saying the center was at a critical crossroads following the private development of hotels, apartments, condominiums and retail space downtown. It needs to be updated, it needs to be approved and additional space needs to be created in order to be competitive with other areas around the state, Ring said. Ring added that the proposed design with its glass ballroom facing the Mississippi River would take advantage of one of our greatest natural resources. Sometimes its just fun to share some of the letters I get. Keep in mind when I say letters, I dont mean the kind my mom would write to me in longhand, but other more modern letters emails, Tweets, Facebook comments and, of course, the very rare handwritten letters I get. Here is a sampling. This first letter is from the article I did on marijuana. Dear Dr. Z: As an ER nurse for many years, I have seen more adverse health issues from legal medications. For example, it is totally disgusting to pull a used, chewed up fentanyl patch from the mouth of a nearly dead patient. And dont get me started on cigarettes and alcohol how much do we spend on these perfectly legal items! The legal system is totally arbitrary. First thing I plan to do when I retire is bake some special brownies. TM Dear TM: Yes, the system is arbitrary. As of now, 24 states have legalized medical cannabis. And if you think theyre all the so-called more liberal blue states you are wrong. Red states such as Georgia and Arizona have done so, too. Is there a risk with legalizing it? Of course. But then again, we do allow the risk of alcohol, dont we? The Centers for Disease Control estimates there are nearly 90,000 deaths related to booze each year in the U.S., with an estimated cost of $250 billion. And there are an estimated 25,000 annual deaths from the legal genie in the bottle, opioids. As I said in my article, how many people die from marijuana? If we kept statistics on this, which we dont, I bet its not as many as booze and pills. This next letter was from my article on how doctors choose to die often with less intervention, less chemotherapy, fewer tubes and drains. Most health-care professionals choose comfort and hospice over too much intervention and treatment. Dear Doc: Most of us do not fear dying as much as we fear the torture that precedes it. The horror stories about lack of care by hospital personnel is appalling. SH Dear SH: Yes, there are hospitals where the care is abysmal, but in my experience these are the exception. Most try to do a good job, attend to a patients needs and help them. The problem is the system. So many nurses and health care folks complain that they have to spend too much time documenting and not enough time with the patient. We need to use electronic health care records the right way to improve patient care and not stand in the way of it. That means a smart allocation of time. Now, as for suffering, many who are dying do not get the opioids they need. I have had patients dying in pain saying they dont want a narcotic because theyre afraid theyll become addicted. And this is when the outlook is dismal. This is where opioids have a definite place. And the final letter is from a radio listener it made me smile. Dr. Z: I just wanted to commend you on your syndicated column that I read in our Tuesday newspaper, the Spokesman Review (Spokane, Washington) for your freshness, honesty and forthrightness. Normally, I hold little esteem for the media gurus, pop psychologists and medicine men who proffer their brand or spiel Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, Dr. Drew, Dr. Who, Dr. You. I dunno, maybe its your name, and that I like your demeanor when I have seen you on the tube (rare), maybe its the Z, as in Zorro, or Zorba the Greek. I dont have the same affinity for your compatriot, Dr. Oz, partly because Im originally from Kansas and the name Oz sticks in my craw, plus I think Dr. Oz comes across as a charlatan at times. I mean, in his focus on women and weight-loss issues come on, eat green bananas to help lose weight?! I like what you said about the paradoxical unhealthy lifestyles of the medical community Im a survivor of that scene, and its true. One thing thats stuck with me over the years is something I learned in a nutrition class back in the early eighties: One of the most important things we can do to eat healthy is to eat a variety of foods. I dont hear that emphasized enough. I was raised by ex-farm family parents, so we always ate whatever was given to us and we grew up liking most all foods, especially vegetables and fruits. Somethings changed in our society, but Ill spare you my further rant on that. One last parting comment: I suspect theres becoming an overuse of the referencing of research and recent studies in articles and books well-meaning and important to validate making pronouncements or educated opinions on subject matter. The skeptical doubting part of me starts perking up my ears, though, when data numbers become profuse and at the hint of uncertainty of what the research really stated who done it and has it been verified in a consummate way? Miguel de Unamuno, the Spanish philosopher/poet, made a remark to the effect that science is a cemetery of ideas. He was not anti-science, just a profound instigator of independent thinking. Of course, this is paraphrased, translated from Spanish to English and taken out of context, like his statement, Consciousness is a disease. In any case, my take is that he meant that the truth is not absolute and ever-evolving. Anyway, keep up the good work, and thanks for being a man I can respect without hesitation. Best wishes. PS, M.D. Dear PS: Now thats some letter. Stay well. Prosecutors say an Onalaska man accused of beating his infant son cut off his GPS monitor, stole a shotgun, broke into the boys mothers home and confessed days after being released from jail. Chad Parker, 29, was arrested May 26 after his 3-month old son was taken to the hospital with skull fractures and a possible brain injury. According to court documents the child had bruises on his chin, neck, chest and back. Parker told police he had been drinking and passed out with the infant on the couch; he said he woke up on top of the boy but denied shaking him, according to court documents. Parker was released from jail May 27 after posting bond. The boys mother called police early Thursday to report that Parker had climbed through a bedroom window in her residence shortly before 5 a.m., saying he was upset and wanted to talk. He left on foot after giving her a letter, according to a criminal complaint. According to the complaint, Parker wrote that he was feeling overwhelmed and had gotten little sleep when he flipped out and threw the boy on the couch, started smacking him on the butt really hard, and then bit him really hard on the hand. After me doing something like that, I cant live the rest of my life, I dont deserve to live, Parker wrote. Police went to the home where Parker had been staying. His parents had found his GPS ankle bracelet and a note saying he couldnt live like this anymore. They later discovered they were missing a 12-gauge shotgun, according to the complaint. Parker was arrested Thursday in Jackson County with a loaded gun in the back seat of his vehicle. He was charged later that day in La Crosse County Circuit Court with physical abuse of a child, intentionally causing great bodily harm, which carries a maximum 40-year sentence. Prosecutors charged him Friday with two counts of felony bail jumping for removing his bracelet and violating a no-contact provision of his bond. A US-based expert suggests regular wake-up time and lifestyle changes to handle insomnia, Liu Zhihua reports. Sleep problems are common, especially in a fast-paced society where people are stressed about work. Almost everyone has trouble falling asleep from time to time. But if someone has difficulty with it at least three times a week for more than three monthsand if that interferes with the person's daily routinethen he should take the matter seriously, says Nalaka Gooneratne, associate professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Gooneratne was in Beijing in late May to deliver a speech on insomnia at Peking University, as part of an exchange forum between the two universities. About 5 to 15 percent of people have significant insomnia worldwide, with depression, such anxiety disorders as obsessive compulsive behavior, and sleep apnea being the most common causes, he says. People with such health conditions should get the disorders treated first, he says. The most important thing is to have a regular bedtime and wake-up time. In fact, having a regular wake-up time is more crucial than having a regular sleeping time, he says. "It is very hard, because if you have insomnia, you want to sleep in the next morning, but you should not. It is better to have a schedule," Gooneratne tells China Daily. "Your brain will learn when to go to sleep, because your brain learns when to wake up, if you have a regular wake-up schedule." Everyone has a "brain clock" that helps people feel sleepy and rise on time. For example, if you wake up at 8 am daily for several weeks, your brain programs this and urges you to begin the day at the same time every day. Then your brain naturally helps you feel tired and fall asleep around midnight, he explains, saying several studies have shown that having a regular wake-up time is helpful for insomnia patients. ELKADER, Iowa A county auditor accused of shirking his duties while caring for his ailing wife has retired. Dennis Freitag left a note on his desk Thursday morning that said he had decided to retire and that "the Clayton County auditor position is hereby vacated by me as of May 31, 2016." He'd been the county's elected auditor for nearly 40 years. County supervisors will meet Monday to discuss filling Freitag's position until the Nov. 8 election. Freitag had said he'd been his wife's full-time caregiver for years and that her condition was such he had to work from home. She died in February. The Iowa attorney general's office investigated Freitag, and in January officials announced they wouldn't seek his removal. EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. The Minnesota Vikings will report to training camp on Thursday, July 28. The team announced Friday the start date for their 51st consecutive trip to Mankato. The first practice will be Friday, July 29 at Minnesota State University, with a Saturday evening workout under the lights at Blakeslee Stadium on Aug. 6. The remainder of the on-field sessions will be revealed later. The first preseason game for the Vikings is at Cincinnati on Friday, Aug. 12. The Vikings and the university have two years remaining on their contract through the 2018 season to hold camp on campus. The Vikings have purchased land in Eagan for the purpose of shifting their headquarters there from Eden Prairie in two years, creating the possibility that their training camp site would eventually move too. SPARTA A Sparta High School teacher had her head shaved Thursday to recognize the fundraising efforts of students during a week-long promotional event organized by the schools DECA Chapter. Students met their $5,000 goal to support the Sparta Area Cancer Society with additional donations from Maplewood Elementary and Sparta High School Student Council. I lost one of my closest friends to cancer on April 2, and I still miss her every day. SACS helped her family and has helped family members of mine when they were in treatment as well, teacher Wendy Bernett said. If the students at Sparta High are motivated to raise extra money for cancer research just because I might be bald at the end, I am more than happy to go under the clippers. Its totally worth it for me, she said. The annual SACS walk will be Aug. 5 at Memorial Field. Wisconsins public colleges and universities could see their funding increase in the next state budget based on how they do in certain performance measures, Gov. Scott Walker said Thursday. Additional funding for the University of Wisconsin System would reverse a trend that has seen money cut from UW in the last four state budgets, most recently by $250 million in the 2015-17 budget. The performance-based funding would expand on a program in place for the Wisconsin Technical College System since 2013. If we do anything additional for the University of Wisconsin System were interested in looking at it wed probably try and figure out ... some performance-driven components as a possibility going forward, Walker told reporters. Its not clear what aspects of the institutions performance could determine the funding. Walker did not specify any criteria and his spokesman declined to provide details. But the governors office pointed to outcomes-based funding for technical colleges that ties a growing percentage of their budgets to how well they perform in categories such as graduates job placement and the number of degrees colleges award in high-demand fields. I think that makes sense, Walker said. Its certainly what we hear from employers who are looking to fill critical positions. Walkers comments, made after a luncheon for the United Negro College Fund in Madison, came a day after Wisconsin Public Radio reported he indicated UW and the technical colleges could receive additional support in the budget. Asked about that report prior to Walkers comments about performance-based funding, UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank, who also attended the UNCF luncheon Thursday, said, Id be delighted to be talking about investment in the university. System spokesman Alex Hummel said officials are not aware of the specific performance metrics that state officials could seek for higher education funding. But he said UW officials were pleased to hear Walker talk about increasing their funding, and noted the Systems efforts to track student success and administrative efficiency. Were open to working with the governor and legislature on any new concepts that might come forth, Hummel said. Its encouraging to hear the governor refer to the UW System as a priority. The American Cancer Society Relay For Life of the Viroqua Area will take place at the Vernon County Fairgrounds, Friday, June 10, from 6 p.m. to midnight. This years theme is Wizard of Oz. Relay For Life events are community gatherings where teams and individuals camp out at a school, park, or fairground and take turns walking or running around a track or path. Teams raise funds in the months leading up to the event. The public is invited to join the ACS and relay teams on the yellow brick road to hope, to find a cure somewhere over the rainbow. Join local volunteers and participants from the community and celebrate cancer survivors, remember those lost to this devastating disease, and take action to save more lives from cancer. The Relay For Life movement unites communities across the globe to celebrate people who have battled cancer, remember loved ones lost, and take action to finish the fight once and for all. The Relay For Life movement is the worlds largest fundraising event to fight every cancer in every community, with four million participants in 6,000 events worldwide in 2015. Since 1991, the cancer death rate has dropped by 22 percent, contributing to more than 1.5 million lives saved. Relay For Life of the Viroqua Area helps contribute to the work the American Cancer Society does to fight cancer. Last year, 230 people participated in the Relay For Life of the Viroqua Area and raised $53,201. Here in Viroqua, funds raised through our Relay For Life event are making an impact on so many lives, Lindsey Purl, community manager from the American Cancer Society, said. Dollars raised fund groundbreaking cancer research, free information, and vital American Cancer Society programs and services that support those in our community facing a diagnosis. The American Cancer Society has selected Jamie Lockington as honorary chair for this years Relay For Life of the Viroqua Area. At the age of 13, Jamie was diagnosed with Optic Nerve Glioma and underwent chemo. He is now 26-year-old survivor, and will lead this years survivors lap. Others serving on the Relay For Life leadership team include Heidi Rastall and Sarah Niemyjski. Local cancer survivors and their caregivers will take the celebratory first lap. The survivors lap will begin at approximately 6:25 p.m., following the opening ceremony, which begins at 6 p.m. Anyone who has ever been diagnosed with cancer may participate. As the survivors walk, other participants will cheer them on in a demonstration of support and celebration. The five-year survival rate for all cancers has risen to 68 percent, and there are an estimated 14.5 million survivors in America. The Relay For Life of the Viroqua area is a community event where teams and individuals set up campsites at the fairground and take turns walking or running around a track or path. Last year, 4 million people participated in more than 6,000 events worldwide. The money raised supports groundbreaking cancer research, education and risk reduction efforts, and free information and critical services for people with cancer who need them. While anyone who has ever been diagnosed with cancer is welcomed to attend, survivors are encouraged to register for the relay. It is so important to have survivors register each year, Purl, said. Not only will you be sure to get your 2016 event shirt in your requested size, but The American Cancer Society needs this information to know where people are experiencing cancer, where services may be needed, what types of cancer are prominent in our community, and other valuable information. Registering as a survivor helps identify where ACS needs to focus its program areas to best serve the survivor community. So much is gained from survivors sharing this information and registering each year for their local event. Cancer survivors or caregivers who would like to be part of the Relay For Life should visit www.relayforlife.org/viroquawi to register online, call the American Cancer Society at 1-800-227-2345, or mail in a registration form to the ACS office at 1285 Rudy St., Onalaska, WI 54650. If a cancer survivor or caregiver does not have a paper registration form, they can request one by calling 608-783-5001 or fill one out at the event June 10. Those who register before the June 10 event will be entered into a drawing to win a special survivor bag with a survivor ribbon wristlet keychain and other special survivor/relay items. Visit relayforlife.org or www.relayforlife.org/viroquawi to learn more about the event. For information about joining the leadership team or participating in the event, visit relayforlife.org/viroquawi or contact Purl at 608-783-5001 or lindsey.purl@cancer.org. Every Memorial Day weekend, I go to Vang Lutheran Cemetery located between Westby and Coon Valley to visit my parents graves, Clarence T. Role and Marie R. Role. I also visit my grandparents graves, Andrew and Agnetta Role, and my great-grandparents graves, Ingelret and Karn Role. Ingeleret and Karn came to Vernon County on June 24, 1874. They settled on a farm in the town of Coon and lived there all their lives. My grandpa and grandma spent their lives on the same farm and raised their 12 children there; seven are buried at the Vang church cemetery. My parents began their married life on this farm. This is where I was born. Two sons of Grandpa Andrew and Grandma Agnetta served in the U.S. Army Louis Role in World War I and Alf Role in World War II. Louis Albert Role was a private and in the 56th Infantry Division in France. He returned to the United States and a short time later committed suicide on the family farm. His tombstone has his picture, write-up and has a flag there. Alf Alvin Role was a corporal in the 79th Infantry Regiment in World War II. Alf, who played the accordion, was a prisoner of war in Germany. On April 4, 1945, the day of Grandma Roles funeral, a letter was received telling of Alf Roles release from prison in Germany. This letter was written by Chaplain Grant. A. Wacker and read to family and friends at Grandmas funeral by Pastor Holum. Pastor Holum said the letter was too late for Grandma to know, but read the letter from family and friends as follows: Im sure youll be made to rejoice when I tell you that your son Alf A. Role was released from a German prison camp recently. His health appeared good and his spirits were very high. I rejoice with you in Alfs liberation. Let us all continue to pray that God will hasten the day when the world will again be free from the bondages of the enemy. Respectfully Yours, Grant A. Wacker Chaplain (1st Lt.) U.S.A. Ill always remember that day and all the tears that were shed by everyone in that quaint country church. Grandpa and Grandma Pedar and Karn Mathison are also buried at Vang cemetery. Grandpa and Grandma Mathison raised a family of 10. Six of them are also buried in the same cemetery. Grandpa and Grandma Mathison had three sons, Clarence, Leonard and De Verne, who served in the U.S. Army. All three were in the European area at the same time and all returned from overseas duty. T4 Sgt. Clarence Mathison was awarded medals with citations on three occasions for heroic achievements. Clarence got married while in California and occasionally returned to Wisconsin to visit his parents, brothers and sisters, and their families. He was buried with military honors in Modesto, Calif. Pfc. Leonard Mathison was inducted into the service on March 25, 1942. He trained at Camp Chaffee, Arkansas, Camp Cooke, California, and Camp Young, California. He arrived in England in 1944, and entered France shortly after D-Day. He was wounded three times in the European theater during the war. Leonard received the Purple Heart in August 1944. He was wounded the second time in November and was hospitalized for some time. He was wounded the third time again on Jan. 22 in the battle for Strasbourg. A letter from Lt. Kenneth Allister was sent that Leonard was convalescing from wounds in the arms and thighs in a hospital in England. Leonard was buried at Vang Cemetery with military honors. Sgt. De Verne Mathison was inducted into the army March 16, 1943, and trained at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and Camp Hale, Colorado. He went overseas, arriving in England in August 1943. I remember a letter he wrote to my mother when he came to Camp Hale, Colorado: Marie, it was like stepping into a bar in Westby everyone was talking in Norwegian. Imagine that I bet he through about his home, too. De Verne fought through the European campaign invasion of France and continued with the victory of the Allies. In Norway, he was a color bearer for the great homecoming event when the King of Norway returned to Oslo. Sgt. De Verne Mathison was presented the Bronze Star for meritorious service while in service with the 99th Battalion in Belgium while the section he commandeered was occupying a defensive embankment. Sgt. Mathison risked his own life to observe the fire from the top of the embankment, thus saving many lives. The effective fire that he directed contributed to stopping the attack and inflicted heavy losses on the enemy. De Verne never saw his parents or loved ones from the day he was inducted into the army until he came home from Norway. De Verne was a flag bearer in Norway and also had the honor of seeing Grandmas relatives and sights in Norway. I always thinking of Grandpa and Grandma having three sons in World War II at the same time and having all three sons return home again from their military duties. De Verne is buried at Stoughton, Wis. On Nov. 24, 2014, my husband Arnold W. Manske passed away at his home with his loved ones at his side. Arnold was a corporal and served in the Korean War. He was buried at Vang Cemetery with full military honors. I was an only child and all those memories of my grandparents and their loved ones are cherished. I wanted to share these memories with my loved ones and their families. You have the power to keep local news strong for the coming months. Your financial support today keeps our reporters ready to meet the needs of our city. Thank you for investing in your community. Stories like these are only possible with your help! Start your day with LAist Sign up for How To LA, delivered weekday mornings. Subscribe The Minnesota woman suspected to have been killed by UCLA gunman Mainak Sarkar was married to the gunman, reports the Star Tribune.On Thursday morning authorities discovered the body of Ashley Hasti at her home in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. Police went to do a welfare check on her home after her name was found on a "kill list" at Sarkar's St. Paul apartment. Hasti was identified by her neighbors to reporters, and public records show that Hasti and Sarkar were married on June 14, 2011. Also on the list was UCLA professor William Klugwho Sarkar shot and killed on Wednesday morning in Klug's officeand another UCLA professor who remains unharmed. Sarkar turned the gun on himself after shooting Klug. According to LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, Sarkar left a note at the scene of the UCLA shooting, leaving the address of his St. Paul address and asking someone to "check my cat." "Immediately, we were highly suspicious," Beck said, reports the L.A. Times. "That made me uneasy about what we would find when we got to Minnesota." In the apartment they found the cat and Sarkar's supposed hit list. The third person on the list was a UCLA professor who was not on campus at the time of the shooting, but Beck believes Sarkar also intended to kill him or her, reports the Star Tribune. The third target has not yet been named by authorities. Brooklyn Park's deputy chief of police Mark Bruley said Hasti was "deceased prior to the UCLA shooting," but said it was too early in the investigation to determine when she was killed. Investigators believe Sarkar killed Hasti before driving to Southern California and shooting Klug. Authorities are still on the search for Sarkar's vehicle, which is described as a gray 2003 Nissan Sentra with the Minnesota license plate 720KTW. Hasti was a student at the University of Minnesota Medical School when she was killed. Sarkar earned his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from UCLA in 2013, where he had Klug as his advisor. In a now-deleted blog post from March, Sarkar accused Klug of stealing code that he wrote and giving it to another student. On 2 June Hondurass President Juan Orlando Hernandez publicly offered his backing to members of the new special commission for police reform. End of preview - This article contains approximately 407 words. Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article Not a Subscriber? Choose from one of the following options Biddeford-Saco-OOB Courier The board earmarked $1.54 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds for the dredge, designed to keep channels open and supply sand to nourish eroding beaches up and down the York County coast and beyond. Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Democratic candidate for president, gave a foreign policy speech Thursday that challenged the Republican candidate, Donald Trump. Clinton is a former U.S. Secretary of State and the leading candidate for the Democratic Partys presidential nomination. Trump, a Republican, is her likely opponent in the presidential election. Clinton spoke during a visit to San Diego, California. She said that, if elected, her foreign policy as president would greatly differ from Trumps. Clinton said she believes in a smart and principled foreign policy. She said that Trumps approach to foreign policy and other serious issues is dangerously incoherent. I believe the person the Republicans have nominated for president cannot do the job, Clinton said. She said that electing Trump would be a historic mistake for the United States. She also called Trump temperamentally unfit to be commander-in-chief. Clinton criticized Trump for his plans to build a wall to keep illegal immigrants out of the U.S., and try to make Mexico pay for it. Clinton said this would only turn Mexico into an enemy. Were still the last best hope for earth. We are not a country that cowers behind walls, she said. Clinton also spoke about Trump's call to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States. She said the plan would be a huge propaganda victory for Islamic State. Clinton said that when Trump insults Muslims and Mexican-Americans, he is insulting many U.S. military members from those groups. Trump has criticized the NATO alliance as obsolete and requiring too much money from the United States. Clinton said that if NATO is weakened, the U.S. will be increasingly isolated, and countries like Russia will be celebrating. In his usual way, Trump reacted quickly to the speech on social media. The Republican hopeful sent out tweets live as Clinton spoke. Crooked Hillary no longer has credibility -- too much failure in office. People will not allow another four years of incompetence! one tweet read. Bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton! Reading poorly from the telepromter! She doesn't even look presidential! said another. Im Bryan Lynn. Bryan Lynn reported this story for Learning English. George Grow was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story principled adj. having morally correct behavior incoherent adj. not clear, expressed in a confusing way temperamentally adj. the act of behaving angrily or emotionally brag v. say in an arrogant or boastful way mock laugh, tease or mimic cower v. bend down in fear obsolete adj. no longer produced or used credibility n. the quality of being trusted or believed teleprompter n. device used to provide text to someone giving a speech China is using travel as an important tool to help strengthen its economy. China also hopes to increase its influence on world events by sending more travelers overseas. This hope was evident at the recent First World Conference on Tourism. There, a Chinese official spoke about the government's plan for using tourists and the money they spend. The head of Chinas National Tourism Administration, Li Jinzao, said the country is expecting some big numbers from tourism. Li told the conference that China plans to send 150-million travelers along what he called the One Belt, One Road." In the next five years, these tourists are expected to spend $200 billion, he said. This spending estimate is likely to raise expectations among countries along the ancient Silk Road, which links China to its neighbors. Li predicted that total Chinese spending on tourism would increase up to three times from the present level of $460 billion by the year 2020. State media reported his comments. Some observers say that travel will have a small impact on the Chinese economy. But there is no denying the government's excitement to enlarge the role of the tourism industry. Linking Tourism and Foreign Policy China has reasons to feel it can use tourism to influence foreign policy. Governments across the world are changing their immigration rules to welcome the growing numbers of Chinese tourists. Japan recently announced it would offer 10-year visas to Chinese businessmen and artists. The desire to attract tourists has led Nepal and Sri Lanka to change their relationships with China, too. Chinese citizens are now going to places where in the past Chinese rarely went. Their decisions are often based on political sensitivities or the desire to buy luxury goods. Michel Gutsatz is a marketing expert. He says that among Chinese travelers, South Korea and Thailand are popular destinations. Outside of Asia, he said, Chinese are more likely to visit Europe than North America. These changes, he said, are the result of young Chinese travelers, who spend more and travel independently. Spending by Chinese tourists has lifted the economies of several Asian countries, including Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam, according to a new report by HSBC, a bank. HSBC expects the number of Chinese traveling overseas to reach 242-million by 2024. In a single year, that number would be equal to the total number of tourists received by Germany, Iran, Indonesia and Egypt combined. Chinese tourists are responsible for more than 15 percent of all arrivals in Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand and Japan, the bank's report said. Business Travel China is now the biggest business travel market in the world. The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) recently announced that China has overtaken the United States in business travel. Chinese spent just over $291 billion on business travel last year. Americans spent just over $290 billion. This year, GBTA predicts that the Chinese business travel market will grow over 10 percent, while the U.S. business travel market will grow less than 2 percent. Saibal Dasgupta wrote this story for VOANews.com. Jim Dresbach adapted it for Learning English. George Grow was the editor. Have you been to China? Tell us about it in the Comments section or visit our Facebook page. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story tourism n. the activity of traveling to a place for pleasure sensitivities n. the quality of being easily affected by something in a bad or unpleasant way luxury n. a condition or situation of great comfort, ease and wealth role - n. a part that someone or something has in an activity or situation Today on our national parks journey, we explore the Everglades in South Florida. When many people think of Florida, images of sandy coasts, theme parks and rocket launches come to mind. But it is also home to a natural wilderness different from any other in the United States. Everglades National Park is the largest subtropical wilderness in the U.S. Several rare and endangered species live in the park. It is a huge place, covering more than 600,000 hectares of wetlands. It is also a popular park. More than 1 million visitors pass through the official entrances every year. But, others enter the park on water and go uncounted. Irreplaceable nature In 1947, President Harry Truman spoke at the official opening of Everglades National Park. He said the goal of creating the park was to protect forever a wild area that could never be replaced. The Everglades is considered one of the biological wonders of the world. It is a place where plants and animals from the Caribbean Sea share an ecosystem with native North American species. Nine different environments exist within the Everglades. They include mangrove and cypress swamps, estuaries and coastal marshes. River of grass In the 1940s, reporter and environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas wrote a book called, The Everglades: River of Grass. She described the area as, the liquid heart of Florida. Everglades National Park was created to protect an ecosystem from damage. The Everglades is home to about 30 species that federal officials say are threatened or endangered. They include the Florida panther, the American crocodile and the West Indian manatee. More than 350 bird species and 300 species of fresh and saltwater fish live within the park. The Everglades is also home to 40 species of mammals and 50 reptile species. Unique flora Visitors to the Everglades will see many exotic plants. They include what is said to be the largest growth of mangrove trees in the Western world. Gumbo-limbo trees, known for their peeling red skin, strangler figs and royal palms are also among the areas plant life. The countrys largest living mahogany tree also lives in the Everglades. Sawgrass grows in some areas of the park. Be careful sawgrass is very sharp, with teeth just like a saw. It can grow up to 4 meters tall. With about one and one-half meters of rainfall each year, plants and trees never stop growing in the Everglades. The dry, winter season is the favorite of most visitors, when insects like mosquitoes are less of a problem. The rainy season lasts from June to November. Hiking, biking and boating There are many ways to explore the Everglades. Visitors can see alligators while hiking the Anhinga Trail. The park is one of the only places in the world where freshwater alligators and saltwater crocodiles live in the same area. Visitors using canoes are likely to observe large groups of wading birds like the wood stork or the great blue heron. Bright pink flamingos also thrive in the Everglades. Some visitors might enjoy riding bicycles through Shark Valley. Others might want to take it more slowly. The boardwalk walking trail goes right over the slow-moving water. Visitors can take a close look at insects and other wildlife. The park also offers tram rides for guided tours. Dark history The National Park Service says that early Colonial settlers and land developers believed the Everglades had little value. The settlers had plans to remove water from the area. In the 1880s, developers began digging canals to reduce water levels. At the time, they did not understand the complexity of the Everglades ecosystem. As a result, they were not prepared for all the work. They caused environmental problems. Larger efforts to drain the wetlands continued between 1905 and 1910. Farms were built on large pieces of land. More people began to move to the Everglades. More changes came midcentury. The federal government built roads, canals and water-control systems throughout South Florida. The project was aimed at providing water and flood protection for people and farms. Workers built a huge system of waterways and pumping stations to control the overflow of Lake Okeechobee, north of the Everglades. The Everglades today and tomorrow In more recent years, environmental experts learned about the damage to the Everglades. Some experts say the balance of nature in the area has been destroyed. Today, some of South Floridas early wetland areas no longer exist. Populations of wading birds have been reduced by 90 percent. Whole populations of animals are in danger of disappearing. In 2000, Congress approved a plan to restore and improve the Everglades. Federal, state and other organizations are partners in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. The future is not clear for the wild and beautiful Everglades. But, efforts are under way to protect this biological treasure. The hope is that people may continue to visit the extraordinary Everglades National Park long into the future. Im Caty Weaver. And Im Anne Ball. Jerilyn Watson wrote this report for Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor. Have you been to the Everglades? Would you like to? Please leave a Comment, and post on our Facebook page, thanks! ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story subtropical - adj. an area close to tropical parts of the world ecosystem - n. everything that exists in a particular environment swamp - n. land that is always wet and often partly covered with water estuary - n. where a river flows into the sea marsh - n. soft, wet land that has many grasses and other plants exotic - adj. very different, strange, or unusual comprehensive - n. including many, most, or all things restoration - n. bringing back something that existed before From Washington, this is VOA News. Im Dave DeForest reporting. A second mass kidnapping within a week in Afghanistan Afghan provincial officials say the Taliban Wednesday abducted at least 17 bus passengers in the north of the country. A government spokesman says residents of the Balkhab district were traveling to the capital of Sar-e-Pul province when the Taliban kidnapped them. The spokesman said tribal elders are negotiating their release. Three of the gunmen who attacked a Mogadishu hotel Wednesday were killed today (Thursday) in a shootout with authorities. A fourth attacker was killed the day before. Security forces rescued 57 hostages being held by the gunmen at the Ambassador Hotel. The death toll in the incident has been put at 24. Efforts to get aid to victims of Syria's civil war are being hampered by the Syrian government. The regime of President Bashar al-Assad has yet to agree on a broad opening of certain areas to humanitarian convoys. The government is also continuing a siege on regions held by opposition groups. U.S. officials say nearly 20 towns have been deprived of food and humanitarian shipments. The U.S., Britain, and France have issued an urgent call for the United Nations to begin humanitarian airdrops. U.N. officials, however, were quoted as saying airdrops are not imminent. German lawmakers voted overwhelmingly Thursday to recognize the World War One-era killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the action will have a serious impact on relations between Germany and Turkey. He recalled Turkey's ambassador to Germany for consultations. This is VOA News. We want to hear from you. Please leave us a Comment, and post on our Facebook page, thank you! For VOA Learning English, this is Everyday Grammar. This week we are going to show you how to give advice using modal verbs. Modal verbs (called modals for short) are auxiliary verbs that express a speaker's attitude and the strength of that attitude. For example, "He should visit Prague." In this sentence, should is the modal verb, and visit is the main verb. The simple form of a verb goes after a modal. Do not add the third person "s" to a verb after a modal. It would sound strange to say, "He should visits Prague" or, "He should to visit Prague." The correct way is, "He should visit Prague." There are about 17 modals in English grammar experts do not agree on an exact number. Today we will focus on three common modals used for giving advice: should, ought to, and had better. Using should Let's start with should. Should has multiple meanings. It can be used to express certainty, such as, "He should be here by 5 o'clock." Should can be a substitute for the conditional word if. You might hear someone say, "Should you need help, just ask me." But more often, we use should to give suggestions and friendly advice, such as, "You should apply for that job," or "You should try that new restaurant." The past form of the modal should is should have + the past participle. For example, "I should have brought my wallet." Notice that the main verb brought is in the past participle form. Use should have to express regret, or a negative feeling about the past. Imagine you trusted someone and that person later cheated on you. You could say, "I should have known better than to trust him." The Beatles used the expression in a popular song. I should have known better with a girl like you That I would love everything that you do And I do Hey hey hey Using ought to The next modal we will talk about is ought to. Ought to is another modal for giving advice. Sometimes ought to sounds more like "otta" as in this romantic song by Al Green. Sit back down and talk to me About how you want to be You ought to be with me Yeah you ought to be with me Ought to is similar in meaning to should, but it is not used as often. In modern American English, ought to is seldom used with the past tense or in the question form. Using had better Let's move on to had better. Had better is stronger than should and ought to. Had better carries an indirect threat. For example, if you said, "You had better finish the report," you are not making a polite suggestion. You are making an indirect threat. In other words, if you don't finish the report, you are in trouble. Authority figures sometimes use had better when speaking to people below them. Parents also use this form often. Listen to cartoon character Malory Archer. Malory is the head of a spy agency. People think she is arrogant and heartless. Listen to her tone when she uses had better. Oh for I'll send up some help. And Missy, you had better watch it! As you can hear, Malory is not making a polite suggestion. She is threatening someone in a lower position. Had better is not always impolite, it could express a sense of urgency as in, "Your plane is leaving! You had better run!" In other words, "If you don't run, you will miss your flight." Had better has no past tense or question form. Modals in rapid speech Should, ought to, and had better can be difficult for English learners to hear. Native speakers often shorten these words in casual conversation. In rapid speech, modals seem to disappear because they are shortened and often fall on unstressed syllables. We will read some examples for you. The first sentence will be in slow, careful speech. Then we will read it again in rapid, informal speech. I should have been listening to what she had to say. I shoulda been listenin' ta what she had t' say. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You otta be ashamed of yourself. You had better decide what you want to do. You'd better decide whatcha wanna do. That's all the advice we have for you today. There is much more to learn about modals. We will cover them in more detail in future episodes. Until then, you should practice modals with British punk band, The Clash. Darling you've got to let me know Should I stay or should I go? If you say that you are mine I'll be here till the end of time So you've got to let me know Should I stay or should I go? I'm Pete Musto. And I'm Jill Robbins. Adam Brock wrote this story for Learning English. Dr. Jill Robbins was the editor. Now it's your turn. Think of a friend whom you would like to give advice. Write to us in the Comments section. Write two sentences - using should, ought to, or had better - giving advice. We'll give you feedback. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story modal verb - a verb (such as can, could, shall, should, ought to, will, or would) that is usually used with another verb to express ideas such as possibility, necessity, and permission auxiliary verb - a verb (such as have, be, may, do, shall, will, can, or must) that is used with another verb to show the verb's tense, to form a question, etc. attitude n. the way you think and feel about someone or something certainty n. the state of being or feeling about how likely it is that something will happen conditional adj. showing or used to show that something is true or happens only if something else is true or happens past participle - the form of the verb that is used with "have" in perfect tenses and with "be" in passive constructions arrogant adj. having or showing the insulting attitude of people who believe that they are better, smarter, or more important than other people unstressed adj. not having an accent syllable n. any one of the parts into which a word is naturally divided when it is pronounced It's a long way from the Bosselman Travel Center to France, but a film that was partially shot at the Grand Island location did well at this year's Cannes Film Festival. "American Honey," which stars Shia LaBeouf, won the Jury Prize and an official commendation from the Ecumenical Jury at the festival on May 21. The Ecumenical honor, established by Christian filmmakers in 1973, honors spiritual works that reveal "mysterious depths of human beings." The crew spent 10 days in Nebraska, including three in Grand Island in June 2015. One scene involved a cattle truck in the diesel aisle behind the Bosselman Travel Center. During the visit, the crew's location manager expressed thanks to Grand Island Express. Another scene was shot near Grand Island's railroad tracks. The film crew purchased clothing in the thrift shop at St. Mary's Cathedral for use in the film. "American Honey," which runs two hours and 42 minutes, is expected to be released in the U.S. this fall. It is described as a comedy and drama. A pool scene in "American Honey" was filmed in Bennington. The road picture was also shot in Kansas City; Muskogee, Okla.; Mission Hills, Kan.; Missouri Valley, Iowa; and Williston, N.D. According to the IMDB website, "American Honey" revolves around a teenage girl who has nothing to lose. She "joins a traveling magazine sales crew and gets caught up in a whirlwind of hard partying, law bending and young love as she crisscrosses the Midwest with a band of misfits." Sasha Lane plays Star, the teenage girl. In addition to LaBeouf, other stars are McCaul Lombardi, Arielle Holmes and Riley Keough. The latter is the granddaughter of Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley. The film's writer and director, Andrea Arnold, lives in England. Students from Lincoln County spent Wednesday and Thursday at Maranatha Bible Camp near Maxwell, learning about activism and awareness of underage substance abuse. They took what they learned to a rally on the corners of Dewey Street and Philip Avenue in North Platte Thursday afternoon, holding signs and chanting at passing vehicles. Theyll finish their training at Community Connections Youth Leadership Camp on Friday, where theyve learned about public speaking, making posters, working with media and chanting. Dana Mitchell, a prevention coordinator with the Youth 2 Youth program in Dover, New Hampshire, helped train the 65 participants. He brought five trained students from the Dover area with him. I can teach a class about press releases, said Mitchell, who began his work after retiring as a captain in the Dover Police Department. But its much more effective to actually make one. After one group of students wrote their own press release, they rehearsed it out loud to prepare for a public reading at the rally. Mitchell interjected with critique speech speed, volume and telling students to find opportunities to pause. What they want to create is an empowerment program, he said. To be empowered, you have to understand what youre talking about. Another group of students created the rallys signs. When asked what they learned, they called out a number of strategies. They made letters big, so theyd be visible. They didnt use too much color, so their message could be kept clear. Messages were kept short and simple, so that people could read them when passing by. Another group created and rehearsed the chants. Wednesday, some recorded a public service announcement for radio. This was the first year for the camp, said Marlo Roberts, a substance abuse prevention coordinator with Community Connections, which first came across Mitchell and his group at a national meeting. Through their advocacy, youths will address the tobacco industrys targeting of youths as well as underage alcohol, prescription and drug abuse, Roberts said. Students rode buses to the rally, where they held their signs and performed their chants about the tobacco industry for anyone passing by. Volunteers reminded them not to heckle smokers it was the industry they were protesting. In the back, the public speaking students read their press release for family members and spectators. Many vehicles, including a semitrailer truck, honked. The students went straight to cheers. The rumble of motorcycles traveling down Front Street on Thursday afternoon made several people stop and look toward the road. The riders looked stern as they parked their bikes in front of the Eagles Club. Behind one bike, a black flag danced in the wind. Neon letters read: Pony Express Ride. While mail is involved, the rides purpose isnt to recreate the famed Pony Express or to teach a history lesson its to raise awareness for childrens mental health issues. The Pony Express riders traded horses for horsepower and began their journey across the state in Gering on Wednesday. At each stop, the group will pick up letters written by youth, their families and supporters, which will be delivered to the State Capitol on Saturday. The ride is presented by the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services Division of Behavioral Health and several organizations, including Families Center for Advocacy, Resources and Education (Families CARE), Magellan Healthcare and Nebraska Families Collaborative. The bikers, primarily members of the Fraternal Order of the Eagles, stopped in North Platte Thursday to pick up letters and have lunch. Between bites of a sandwich, Bill Stretch Primrose explained that the group is trying to spread the word about mental illness in children, but the right people arent listening. He said mental illness in children is often not taken seriously. While a doctor would be called immediately for a broken leg, children are often left without medical care for depression, fits of rage or anxiety. The problems are sometimes cast aside as just a phase. People think theyll grow out of it, but they wont, Stretch said. Courtney Phillips, chief executive officer of the Department of Health and Human Services, said it is vital that mental health challenges be treated with the same urgency and respect as physical health challenges. Community members across the state agree. Several signed letters at the Eagles Club on Thursday that said as a state, Nebraska struggles to have an open, honest conversation about mental health. The topic is surrounded by fears or social consequences, misconceptions and discrimination. The letter also said children with mental health challenges are at increased risk of academic failure, alcohol and substance abuse, bullying, conflict with their families and authorities, unemployment and suicide. The purpose of the awareness campaign is to say, Here we are, we can give help, your kids can survive and thrive, said Karla Bennetts, executive director of Kearney-based Families CARE, a nonprofit family organization providing services in central Nebraska to parents of children with emotional, behavioral or mental health challenges. Primrose has mapped the ride for the last seven years and considers it a commitment he cant back away from. Hes developed a reputation for his dedication to the ride, even hitting the road in near-freezing temperatures or during rainstorms to deliver thousands of letters to the Capitol steps. We cant drop the issue, he said. It has got to be a top priority. Weve got to get them help. These kids are our future. Vizeum ended 2015 on a high, being named Financial Annual Adfocus Media Agency of the year. During 2015 it also passed the R1bn billings mark for the first time, had its fifth consecutive year of double-digit revenue growth and won a number of awards for media innovation. It is this momentum, together with Vizeum's belief in empowering its staff, that has allowed for growth opportunities within the existing management team and its staff. Tanya Schreuder Richard Procter Kelvin Storie Shihaam Abrahams Tanya Schreuder and Richard Procter, former shareholders, launched the Vizeum brand into South Africa in a joint venture with Aegis Media at the time, will both be taking on group roles within Dentsu Aegis Network SA. Tanya will start her new role in June as Group Managing Director Media Brands and Richard will be taking a sabbatical from May and return to a group role in 2017. After an incredible journey of over eight years, both are excited to take on new challenges within the group. This will also allow for a full and comprehensive handover to the new Vizeum leadership team. On that note we are very excited to announce that Kelvin Storie has been promoted to Group Managing Director of Vizeum as of March 2016. Kelvin has been with Vizeum since the brand launched back in 2007 and has worked across Vizeum clients, in both Cape Town (CPT) and the Johannesburg (JHB) offices. He spent the last few years running the Vizeum JHB office as Managing Director JHB, with Shihaam Abrahams, Media Director JHB. The Johannesburg office is almost the size of our already large CT office, with key clients like BMW, MINI, Tracker, Total and BBC Worldwide. Kelvin has also won numerous awards for media innovation and was instrumental in the recent pitch wins for both BMW/MINI and BBC Worldwide. He will be based in our JHB office, with Shihaam as Media Director JHB. A new appointment will be announced shortly as the Media Director for the Cape Town office starting from July16. We are confident that Kelvin and the new leadership team are up for the challenge to continue the success of Vizeum SA into its next chapter. Noted actor Tom Alter has resigned from his post as head of the acting department in the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). Tom emailed his resignation, citing preoccupation with other commitments that prevented him from devoting time to the FTII assignment, FTII director Bhupendra Kainthola told PTI today. He, however, said that the resignation of the eminent actor had not been accepted by the FTII management so far. "I am trying to persuade him to withdraw his resignation," Kainthola added. According to sources in the premiere institute which has witnessed unrest on the campus on various issues during the last one year, a strained relationship with the students also contributed to Alter's decision to resign. This Indian Express report reveals that following a heated exchange between students, Alter decided to resign. The students claim that he was not a good administrator, even though they have immense respect for him as an actor. Alter reportedly approached the students with three conditions and refused to teach or interact with them unless they agreed to all three. a) There had to be 100 % attendance in the class, b) all students had to attend his classes with "joy and excitement" and c) students were not allowed to interfere with the functioning of the department. Alter joined the institute as HOD of the Acting Department in November 2014. (With Inputs from PTI) It's been a tiring couple of days for Deepika Padukone. But that is what you sign up for when you become an international star. Padukone landed in Mumbai on Thursday early morning after being away from India for four months, shooting for xXx with Vin Diesel. She was coming from Budapest, where she shot a song for the film Raabta starring Kriti Sanon and Sushant Singh Rajput. Predictably so, Deepika looked stunning on her arrival at the airport: Pictures of her shoot in Budapest have also appeared on Instagram: #DeepikaPadukone with dance crew on the sets of Raabta. A photo posted by Deepika Padukone FC (@deepika.padukone.fanpage) on Jun 2, 2016 at 5:49am PDT However, Padukone must be relieved to be back home. According to this DNA report, she says, "My team my brand managers, personal assistant, hair, make-up, stylist and spot boys is my extended family in Mumbai. I have been away for a while and I cant wait to spend time with all of them. Homecoming is a lovely feeling. And now, if reports are to be believed, Deepika will be taking out some time from her busy schedule to vacation with rumoured boyfriend Ranveer Singh, who is about to wrap his Befikre shoot in Paris. NDTV reports that the trip will be a short one. Writer director Shane Black has been previously responsible for the first two Lethal Weapon movies, and the uproarious Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. With his new film The Nice Guys, Black demonstrates with much panache that there can never ever be such a thing as too many buddy cop comedies. Ryan Gosling plays Holland, a struggling and clumsy private eye affectionately referred to by his daughter as the worst detective in the world. Russell Crowe plays Jackson Healy, who is also in the business of following people, but also into roughing them up in exchange for money from wealthy clients. When Holland is contacted by an old woman who claims she saw her dead niece alive, he connects this case to another missing woman named Amelia (Margaret Qualley). Things take a turn when he gets to know that Amelia pays Jackson to keep Holland away from her. As Holland and Jackson crash into each other theyre hurled into the hilariously debauched world of Hollywood and many scumbags connected to it. As you can guess by the plot, the rules of the buddy cop genre remain exactly the same two mismatched cops forcibly teaming up to solve one unsolvable case, a few half naked ladies, bizarre coincidences, a tinge of meta Hollywood commentary and a glorious action packed finale with a solid dose of rib tickling humor. The Nice Guys has every single one of those elements and pretty much serves as a checklist of Buddy Cop cliches. The magic is in the execution. Blacks grasp on comic timing is as impeccable as ever. The filmmaker milks Goslings good-looking moron personality, and Crowes impatient grump traits beyond superficial levels. The smartass lines come thick and fast and the plot moves at such a breakneck pace its hard to keep up at times. Theres no room for predictability either youll seldom have any idea what is going to happen next. The 70s setting also adds a refreshing sheen to the film, and the pornography boom during the era provides a nice salty layer to the already cooky storytelling. What really works is the balance between the misogynist and the misandrist humour. Nothing is spared everything is made fun of and you just coast along with the insult comedy buoyed by script with a heart of gold. The uncorrupted anchor in the movie is, surprisingly, Hollands 13-year-old daughter who seems to be way more mature than the two dolts. The reveal of the mystery is so ridiculous you cant help but think there could be people out there stupid enough to actually do that kind of thing. Theres plenty of ludicrous blood splattering violence as well to keep the genre nuts entertained. Ultimately The Nice Guys is a reminder that smaller, old school style of filmmaking is a good antidote to the postmodern big budget cinema culture. Its the kind of film that is tailor made for both those who enjoyed the Lethal Weapon movies and for newcomers who will eventually jog back on Blacks filmography and check out his earlier movies. Without the kinetic energy of Robert Downey Jr its definitely not an all time classic like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang but its still a crazy amount of fun. With such quality cinema out in theaters its silly to pass on an opportunity to get tickets. The only difficult thing here is the two year wait for Blacks next film, a sequel to the legendary Predator. Raising the minimum support price for pulses is hardly a solution to a growing problem. Earlier this week, the Cabinet raised the MSP of tur (also called arhar) by Rs 425 a quintal, which also included a bonus of Rs 200. MSP of moong and urad was increased by Rs 375 a quintal each. After the increase, the MSP of tur will be Rs 5,050 a quintal, while that of moong and urad will be Rs 5,225 and Rs 5,000 a quintal, respectively. The hike for pulses is bigger than for some other commodities like paddy and the government thinks this alone will encourage more cultivation of pulses as farmers get incentivised. The only trouble is, if it procures less than a percent of pulses being produced, how can the government think an increased MSP will make any difference to pulses production or prices to end consumer? One, despite the latest hike in MSP, there is a wide gap in what the farmers make by selling pulses in the open market and through the government procurement. As per data provided by the Agriculture Ministry in Lok Sabha last month, there was an over 40 percent gap between wholesale prices and MSP of tur daal at February 2016 prices. In this scenario, a mere single digit increase in MSP would make little difference to farmers lives. Two, our obsession with wheat and rice is killing the pulses story. These two commodities are widely procured by the government which means farmers across UP, Punjab and Haryana are assured of their marketability and therefore depend largely on these two crops. Pulses production is of course not prioritised. Instead of an endless cycle of wheat and rice cultivation, farmers should be encouraged to do crop rotation pulses also bring benefits to soil besides helping the alarming depletion of the water table in these states. Three, we are hugely dependent on imports for meeting our demand of pulses. Remember, India is the largest producer, consumer and importers of pulses in the world. About a third of the demand for pulses was met through imports last fiscal. India produced 17.5 million tonnes and imported another 5.2 million tonnes. And for the second year in a row (2014-15 and 2015-16), India suffered a two million tonne decline in pulses output. Four, the government needs to take more steps to curb hoarding of this scarce commodity, which is the easiest source of vegetarian protein to large swathes of Indians, specially the poor. And five, the MSP announcement has simply come too late in the day. It should have come at least a month earlier for farmers to plan their cropping. The dissemination of such MSP change announcements is also slow, it robs the farmers of crucial time needed to plan their crops. Niti Ayog member Ramesh Chand has already been vocal about the need to find a multi pronged solution to the pulses problem and why raising MSP alone is no solution. According to an agency report in the Financial Express, Chand said, There should not be blind faith on MSP. Already market rates are 50 percent higher than MSP, so any increase will not have much impact. Farmers will grow pulses taking market prices into account. Chand said that the per capita consumption of pulses has declined due to non-availability while consumption of cereals has not increased despite sufficient stock. The per capita pulses consumption has come down to 38 grams from 60 gram 15 years back. If we have to restore to 60 grams, we need to increase production from the current 17-18 million tonnes to over 40 million tonnes. Pulses output is estimated to be 17.33 million tonnes this year, marginally higher than the previous years production of 17.15 million tonnes, but much below the record 19.25 million tonnes achieved in 2013-14 crop year. Agri business and commodities expert G Chandrashekhar said it was difficult to fathom the governments reluctance to start procurement of pulses. He dismissed the governments version about having begun procurement, saying what this means is the government is just filling up a buffer stock, not really starting procurement similar to wheat and rice. The procurement from the government should be around 10 percent of the total domestic production of pulses for farmers to feel incentivised, he said. This means annual procurement of anywhere between 1.7-1.8 million tones. The Shanta Kumar Committee Report on the subject had focused on why the government needs to revisit its MSP policy. It had said MSP is announced for 23 commodities but effectively price support operates primarily in wheat and rice and that too in selected states. This creates highly skewed incentive structures in favour of wheat and rice. The government then agreed to procurement of pulses and oilseeds through FCI. According to a reply Consumer, Food and Public Distribution minister Ram Vilas Paswan gave in Lok Sabha during the budget session, the government felt this step would not put any additional burden on food subsidy and FCI will create a separate fund for this procurement with the assistance of Department of Agriculture & Cooperation. Paswan said till now, a total of 50,424.07 million tonnes of tur and urad from Kharif Marketing Season (KMS) 2015-16 and 11,754.06 million tones of chana and masur from Rabi Marketing Season (RMS) 2016-17 have already been procured. In addition, imports have been contracted for about 13,500 million tonnes of tur and 12,500 million tonnes of urad respectively. The Indian Pulses and Grains Association welcomed the latest hike in MSP while noting that cultivation and procurement of pulses, especially tur daal, has seen a dramatic decline over the last few months. It said that to encourage production of pulses, the government needs to build a favourable environment for the entire value chain of pulse cultivation, production and consumption. Vice-Chairman Bimal Kothari said, While the announcement of an increase in MSP is one of the steps, it is also important that the government ensures consistent and strict implementation of the incentive across the country. He emphasised that this increased MSP incentive be extended all-year round, saying there should be direct procurement by the government and pulses should be introduced into the PDS distribution stream. The head of India's financial markets regulator visited Silicon Valley this week to promote rule changes in his country protecting minority shareholders and encourage more investment in his country's thriving technology startups. UK Sinha, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), said improved regulations make it much easier for investors in the country's over-4,000 technology startups to eventually cash out through initial public offers in Asia's third-largest economy. "The technology startup scene in India has picked up dramatically," Sinha told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. "A lot of investment has taken place in those companies from Silicon Valley. The question is how they exit, and what is the minority shareholder protection available to them?" A 2013 overhaul of India's corporate governance rules clamped down on related-party transactions benefiting majority shareholders. It also beefed up the role of independent directors and audit committees on company boards. Minority shareholders in India now have stronger rights than in the United States, Sinha said. In Silicon Valley, corporate governance can be a thorny issue. In April, Facebook said it would create a new class of non-voting shares so that Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg could give away his wealth without relinquishing control of the social media juggernaut he founded. Alphabet has its own widely traded non-voting shares. In a recent World Bank report, India ranks among the top 13 countries for protecting the rights of minority investors, with the United States lagging in 35th place. Still, IPOs in India's tech sector remain extremely rare, partly because investors in the country are unaccustomed or even skeptical of how venture capitalists value cash-burning companies with no physical assets, Sinha said. In March, Indian online retailer Infibeam became country's first e-commerce company to list its shares, raising $67 million. There are hopes of potential listings from major competitors Flipkart and Snapdeal. To encourage more startups to go public, India has created an alternative set of regulations they may choose to follow. Comparable to the Jobs Act introduced in the United States four years ago, Indian startups may elect to follow rules requiring less disclosure ahead of their listings, but which also restrict their share sales to sophisticated investors. "We are encouraging these companies to go public. We have met most of their requirements," Sinha said. "They will get listed because their private equity investors have to have an exit." In view of recent increase in online attacks on financial institutions' information systems, Reserve Bank of India has advised commercial banks to immediately put in place a cyber security policy in order to counter threats arising from the internet. "Banks should immediately put in place a cyber-security policy elucidating the strategy containing an appropriate approach to combat cyber threats given the level of complexity of business and acceptable levels of risk," the Reserve Bank of India said in a notification to all commercial banks. "It is essential to enhance the resilience of the banking system by improving the current defences in addressing cyber risks," it said. The central bank asked all scheduled commercial banks to specify potential risks as "low, moderate, high and very high" and said they must report all "unusual cyber-security incidents" to the RBI. It also said the new cyber security policy should be separate from the bank's broader information technology policy. "The number, frequency and impact of cyber incidents/attacks have increased manifold in the recent past, more so in the case of financial sector including banks, underlining the urgent need to put in place a robust cyber security/resilience framework at banks and to ensure adequate cyber-security preparedness among banks on a continuous basis," the notification said. Tasked by markets regulator Sebi to sell land parcels of Sahara, HDFC Realty and SBI Capital Markets will e-auction a total of 10 properties owned by the beleaguered group at a reserve price of nearly Rs 1,200 crore. HDFC Realty has been asked to auction a total of 31 land parcels at Rs 2,400 crore, while SBI Cap has been tasked to auction another 30 land properties with an estimated market value of about Rs 4,100 crore. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) roped in HDFC Realty and SBI Cap after being asked by the Supreme Court to initiate the process of selling Sahara properties whose titles have been deposited with it by the group. Following a go-ahead from the Court, the two entities have put in place a mechanism to auction these properties. In a public notice issued on Thursday, HDFC Realty said it will e-auction as many as five land parcels on July 4 between 11 am and 12 pm. These properties will fetch around Rs 722 crore at reserve price. SBI Cap will also e-auction five land parcels on July 7 between 10.30 am and 11.30 am at a reserve price of Rs 470 crore, it said in a separate notice. These properties are located in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh. The assets being sold include both agricultural and non-agricultural land. Interested bidder can inspect these land parcels between June 8 and June 10. As per the court directions, these properties cannot be sold at less than 90 per cent of circle rates. After spending two years in jail, Sahara chief Subrata Roy is currently out on parole. He was sent to jail on the orders of the Supreme Court in a long running dispute with Sebi. Chennai: Twelve persons died and several others were injured on Friday in a multiple vehicle collision involving a passenger bus, truck and a car in Krishnagiri district, police said. Police and fire fighting personnel rushed to the accident spot and undertook rescue operations. The injured have been admitted to a nearby government hospital. Krishnagiri district is around 260 km from here. According to police, the passenger bus was travelling from Krishnagiri to Hosur while the truck was coming in the opposite direction. The truck driver lost control of his vehicle on the downward slope and hit the bus and also a car that was coming behind the bus. The bus and the car were severely damaged. Most of the deceased were travelling in the bus. Mumbai: After bagging the strategically important Chabahar Port in Iran, the government is looking eastwards and is in discussions with Bangladesh to develop a similar facility in Paira. India Ports Global, the joint venture between state-run JNPT and Kandla Port for overseas ports, is interested in the expressions of interest which have been invited for construction of Paira/Payra port in Bangladesh, the Shipping Ministry said in a release on Friday. "...talks are on between our Foreign Ministry and them (Bangladesh). Dhaka also wants us. We have sent a team there for studies," Union Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari told reporters, but did not disclose the port's location. A media report in February had said China had evinced keen interest in building the Paira port. In what was taken as a reflection of the growing Indo-Bangladeshi ties, Dhaka had cancelled the deal and was about to award it to New Delhi. The Narendra Modi government has been talking about an 'Act East' policy, as against the previous regime's 'Look East' policy, and the moves to build maritime infrastructure in Iran in the West and Bangladesh in the East seem to be part of that approach. The move can also be construed as a reply to the aggressive play by China, which is developing a port in Colombo and Gwadar in Pakistan. "The Shipping Ministry is closely following the developments in regard to the Paira port so as to secure our national and strategic interests," the release added. It can be noted that China has embarked on what is referred to as 'string of pearls' strategy, under which it is creating such assets across the circumference of the Indian Peninsula in the Indian Ocean Rim region. Gadkari's comments come days after New Delhi secured a deal to build the strategic Chabahar port in Iran with an initial capex commitment of $500 million, which will help serve our interests in the Gulf country coming out of sanctions, and in the broader region as well. The minister on Friday said an immediate benefit of developing the Chabahar port will be cheaper gas availability, which can help reduce the urea subsidy bill by Rs 45,000 crore. There is also a possibility of investments of up to Rs 1 trillion in the Chabahar port region jointly by the ministries of petroleum and fertilisers, and the private sector, Gadkari said. He said Chabahar will benefit both the state-run Kandla Port Trust as well as Mundra Port in Gujarat through higher cargo volumes. The Mundra Port is owned by the Adani Group. The minister said his ministry is also planning to build a major port at Belekeri near Karwar in Karnataka, which will entail an investment of Rs 4,000 crore. Work on the ports at Wadhvan off the Dahanu coast in Maharashtra, Sagar in West Bengal and Colachel in Tamil Nadu will begin this year, he said. At present, the country has a dozen state-run major ports and is targeting to add eight more, including these four. Without giving the exact locations or investment details, Gadkari said of the remaining projects, two ports each will come up in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, and one in Karnataka, which will be a major port. He said the government is planning to channel investments of Rs 12 trillion into shipping, ports and allied sectors over the next five years, which will create 10 million direct and indirect jobs. To smoothen the finances for these ambitious projects, Gadkari on Friday met top bankers in the financial capital but refused to elaborate. At the state level, Gadkari said Tamil Nadu will get Rs 90,000 crore investments in ports, Karnataka and Goa will attract Rs 10,000 crore investment each, and over Rs 95,000 crore investments will be made in Maharashtra. He also said a meeting of heads of major ports is scheduled tomorrow in Goa to deliberate on various issues affecting them. On Mumbai port land redevelopment, he exuded confidence of presenting a draft plan before representatives of the local people and the state administration over the next 20 days. He added the Mumbai Port Trust will be making a presentation on the same before the ministry in eight days. Gadkari said his ministry is targeting to increase the profits of state-run Dredging Corporation, Shipping Corporation and Cochin Shipyard to Rs 8,000 crore this fiscal, from Rs 6,000 crore registered in 2015-16. Puducherry: The opposition AIADMK on Friday appealed to the new Lt Governor Kiran Bedi to come out with a firm measure to ensure that a new government was formed in the Union Territory. "It is indeed a sad commentary on democracy that despite lapse of more than 15 days since the results of 16 May assembly polls were announced, Congress could not form the Ministry," AIADMK's legislature party leader A Anbalagan told reporters. He urged Lt Governor Kiran Bedi to come out with a firm step to ensure that a new government was formed here. "She can in the alternative ask the next single largest party to go in for formation of the ministry," he suggested. "We are not in a position to do our democratic duties in our constituencies as we are yet to be sworn in as members of the House," he said. Anbalagan said he would lead an AIADMK delegation to meet the Lt Governor and seek her intervention to break the deadlock. The road to real estate is the shortest through so-called spirituality. If further proof is required for this very Indian axiom, look no further than the violence unleashed by followers of Jai Gurudev in Mathura. Old-timers will recall the ubiquitous promise of the 1980s and the 1990s: Jai Gurudev aayenge, promised graffiti plastered on walls across several cities, towns and villages of India. Before he died in 2012, at an unconfirmed age of 116 years, Gurudev aka Tulsidas Maharaj was a curious mix of politics and preaching. By day, he worked on the success of his fledgling Doordarshi party and by night, he preached peace and penance to followers. A few years ago, he turned his attention to the cow. "As long as the blood of cows continues to flow, there can't be peace on earth," he preached, railing against almost every politician for allowing the butchery of bovines for meat. Gurudev has a temple to himself in Mathura, dozens of ashrams, assets and cash worth crores of rupees and thousands of followers. But, it seems, before shuffling his mortal coil, which he compared to a house on rent, Guruji forgot to tell his bhakts the perils of spilling human blood for the petty purpose of grabbing land. For the past two days, a splinter group comprising followers of Guruji, who posthumously rules over a multi-crore spiritual market by preaching peace, have been clashing with cops with swords, country-made pistols and, allegedly, grenades in Mathura. According to news reports, at least 21 persons died in clashes that began when police tried to evict the followers from Mathura's Jawahar Bagh. Nearly 3,000 followers, organised under the banner of Swadheen Bharat Subhash Sena, had encroached upon the park two years ago after raising outrageous demands, like a ban on elections for prime minister. They have also been demanding that the government issue currency notes in Subhash Chandra Bose's name and supply petrol and diesel at highly-subsidised rates. But, behind the facade of all this hokum was the intention of grabbing land and usurping it as the headquarters of the group that had splintered from the cult founded originally by Jai Gurudev. A few days ago the Allahabad High Court had ordered their eviction from the park. But, when the administration tried to drive them out, the supporters turned violent. This thuggish behaviour is typical of cults operating in the market of spirituality. First, they rally around a self-proclaimed godman with a sacred sounding name suffixed with a pious sounding title Bapu (Asaram), Maa (Radhe), Maharaj (Ashutosh), Baba (Rampal and many others), Sri and Jai Gurudev. Then, in the name of spreading peace and happiness, many of them amass huge chunks of land, through donations, gifts and forceful occupation. Since their followers are politically significant, politicians fail to act against these land sharks with swiftness and strictness. In the case of the Swadheen Sena, for instance, the UP government allowed the followers to squat on public land for more than Two years. Why? Consider two facts: Tulsidas Maharaj was believed to be a Yadav from Etawah, home turf of Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav and his family. Two, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle are believed to be followers of Jai Gurudev. It has been proven time and again that most of these cults around babas are organised mafias, with their hands in shady deals, wheeling and dealing. In fact, the only factor that drives their success is the profit motive. Both the babas and their bhakts feed off each other, in a loosely organised multi-level marketing scheme sold in the name of spirituality. As argued by Firstpost earlier, most of the bhakts want something in life, preferably without too much effort or pain: Money, fame, job, security, health, marriage, sex, babies et al. These self-anointed messengers of god specialise in providing short-cuts to desires of their devotees. A majority of them are either service-providers, facilitators, brokers, networkers or heads of crony clubs that serve each other's interests. Some are more subtle; instead of material desires, they sell yoga, natural remedies for ailments ranging from homosexuality and cancer, or peace of mind through lifestyle-mantras masquerading as spiritual wisdom. A rare few, like Rajneesh, offer everything under the sun from sambhog (sex) to samadhi (enlightenment/nirvana/peace) To understand their modus operandi, next time you think of a godman/woman, imagine Don Vito Corleone, or a Bhai, sitting in his chamber, offering everyone a deal they can't resist. Just replace the clean-cut suit with a saffron langot (loincloth) or frock and tilak, or garish bridal attire with lots of sindoor. Initially, when the stakes are low, these cults thrive beneath the surface, in dark corners of so-called spirituality where the gaze of the law doesn't go usually. But, when the spiral of greed grows, most of the Babas and their cults get outed for what they are. So, a Rampal gets arrested after violent clashes in Hisar, a Sukhvinder Kaur (Radhe Maa) gets exposed for her alleged sleaze and an Asumal Sirumalani (Asaram Bapu) gets jailed for allegedly exploiting minors for sex. In the end, most of the Indian Babas turn out to be black sheep. And when they die, their bhakts start grappling for their immense wealth, sometimes going to the insane extent of retaining the dead bodies of their gurus, spreading the myth that they are in a samadhi and will return to life again. Indians, of course, refuse to learn from experience. Their greed, superstition and servile attitude the belief that even God can be pleased with an offering help the Babas and their cults to grow. And keep grabbing land. Patna: The 13 rank holders in Arts and Science streams of Bihar Board on Friday appeared before an experts team for authentication of the marks obtained by them in the wake of a media expose pointing fingers at their merit. Ruby Rai, the infamous Humanities topper who pronounced Political Science as 'Prodigal Science' and described it as a subject related to cooking in a video, did not make it to the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) for the test, BSEB chairman Lalkeswar Prasad Singh told PTI. He said Ruby's father had sent an application stating that she was under "depression" and so could not turn up. "She has gone outside for treatment for her mental depression prior to the publication of the board's advertisement which asked her and other 13 rank holders to appear for the test on 3 June," the chairman said. In the application, Ruby's father sought more time for her appearance. "She will prove her ability once she recovers," he said in the application. Nand Kishore Yadav, deputy director of Bishun Rai College, where the student had studied carried the letter to the board. Both Ruby and Science topper Saurabh Kumar hail from Bishun Rai College in Bhagwanpur in Vaishali district which is in the eye of a storm after the media expose. Some news channels had earlier shown the girl, who topped the state government's plus two examination in Humanities,purportedly pronouncing 'Political Science' as 'Prodigal Science' and describing it as a subject related to cooking. Similarly, the boy who topped Science stream was purportedly unaware of electron and proton. Following the expose, the BSEB put on hold the results of the toppers of Arts and Science streams of class-XII examination and called 14 toppers of Arts and Science streams for a test before subject experts on Friday. Science topper Saurabh Kumar whose knowledge of the subject is under a scanner attended the test. "Those appearing for test today were subjected to a fresh written test and were interviewed on their subjects," the BSEB chairman said. On being asked when will the results of the authentication test come out, the chairman did not specify any time. "The expert committee will first give its report after that it will go to a committee dealing with use of unfair means in examination before the final results," he said. PTI New Delhi: Amid concerns by parents over increase in school fees, HRD Minister Smriti Irani on Friday said CBSE has asked affiliated schools not to effect any raise arbitrarily and take into confidence parent-teacher associations before initiating any hike. The CBSE sent an advisory on Friday to schools saying they should not burden the child and parents and should run as a "community service and not as a business enterprise". It also directed schools not to hike fees in mid-session, saying fee should be in line with the facilities and no capitation fee should be charged, failing which, it threatened of action like fine and disaffiliation. "We have through CBSE written to all schools saying that for hiking of fees in affiliated schools you have to take into confidence the parents-teacher association. Till such time they don't agree to a fee hike, and the fee hike is not in proportion to facilities that you are giving in schools," she told a press conference. She was responding to a query on the concern by parents in cases of a steep hike in fee structure without informing them and which is uncalled for. "You are not allowed to hike fees in the middle of the year and you are not allowed to keep away receipts which are rightfully to be given away to parents. These are the initiatives and instructions that are going through the government to schools and states so that the interests of the students can be protected," she said. The CBSE advisory later said, "It has been observed recently that there is a growing tendency among some of the institutions to make profit by raising fees under various heads. A large number of CBSE schools are not adhering to the provisions concerning tuition fees laid down in the Affiliation Bye-Laws of the Board which are mandatory in nature." It further said, "Taking a very serious note of the complaints being received from parents regarding fee hike, capitation fee, the board has issued an advisory to all affiliated schools for strict adherence of the relevant Bye-laws of the Board." As per the advisory, the CBSE has asked schools that the fee charged should be commensurate with the facilities provided and fees should normally be charged under the heads prescribed by the Department of Education of the State/U.T. for schools of different categories. "No capitation fee or voluntary donations for gaining admission in the school or for any other purpose should be charged/collected in the name of the school. In case of such malpractices, the Board may take drastic action leading to disaffiliation of the school," it said. Gurgaon: Bracing up for the renewed agitation by a section of Jats from 5 June, Gurgaon district authorities on Friday appointed 22 duty magistrates and issued orders prohibiting any gathering of five or more persons in the district for the next 60 days. Besides 22 duty magistrates, three sub-divisional magistrates have been put in overall charge of their respective areas. The district administration has already held a coordination meeting between civil and police officers, Gurgaon Deputy Commissioner TL Satyaprakash told the media at the mini-secretariat here. Satyaprakash said any group resorting to unlawful activities will be dealt with sternly under the National Security Act, enforced in the state. He said the preventive steps have been taken even though representatives of a majority of Jat organisations in Gurgaon have assured of deferring their protest till 21 July, by when the state government is expected to file its reply to the Punjab and Haryana High Court notice in a case. On 1 June, the Jat Sangharsh Samiti said the community will not protest for quota in government jobs and education institutions till 21 July. The deputy commissioner said that messages on the social media were also under surveillance and those found sending inflammatory messages would be taken to task. Meanwhile, Satyaprakash, who is also the district magistrate, has issued orders under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code, prohibiting all activities like any gathering of five or more persons, and blocking roads, passages, railway tracks, water channels, power houses etc. No firearms, swords, lathis, knives and other sharp-edged weapons of offence likely to cause injury or obstruct the maintenance of peace would be allowed to be carried. New Delhi: The Centre on Friday asked all states and Union territories to implement the law in letter and spirit to curb incidents of atrocities against Scheduled Castes, saying it is the need of the hour. Presiding over a meeting of principal secretaries of states/UTs of social justice departments in New Delhi, union minister Thawar Chand Gehlot said that the government has made amendments in the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act providing for more stringent punishment and enhanced quantum of relief amount to the victims. "I would call upon the states and UTs to implement the act in letter and spirit so that atrocities against the Scheduled Castes are curbed," the Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment said. He said states should expedite implementation of the provisions of the amended Act and work for awareness generation and sensitisation of police and other officials about its provisions. Expressing concern over the practice of manual scavenging, Gehlot asked states to ensure the inhuman practice is eradicated. The minister said the government has been implementing various schemes for educational, economic and social empowerment of SCs, OBCs and added that to ensure effective delivery of the schemes, the Centre and the states should join hands. Scholarships for SCs, OBCs and denotified tribes are part of the flagship programmes of the ministry, he said. To ensure speedy and transparent delivery of benefits for these categories, the Direct Bank Transfer (DBT) mode has been launched by the ministry, he said. Gehlot said the government is also launching the National Scholarship Portal and asked states to come on board and take up Aadhar seeding in right earnest so that delivery can be ensured to genuine beneficiaries. He said the ministry is implementing Integrated Programme for Older Persons (IPO) as there is a need to play a more pro-active role to ensure that the ageing population has a dignified and safe life. On the menace of drug and alcohol abuse, he said the Centre is implementing a scheme through Regional Resources and Training Centres (RRTCs) and non-governmental organisations to create awareness and rehabilitate the addicts. He called upon the states/UTs to play a more active role in curbing the menace and supplement the Centre's efforts with their own schemes. Transgenders, beggars and destitutes are the other groups which need greater attention and initiatives should be taken up for their welfare, Gehlot said. He released a report prepared by DNT Commission about the issues related to Denotified, Nomadic and Semi Nomadic Tribes in the presence of commission's chairman Biku Ramji Idate. Chandigarh: Defying Punjab and Haryana High Courts direction of stay on the reservation, Jats have threatened to relaunch their agitation for reservation in Haryana from 5 June. Wary of the fury of violence unleashed by the agitators in the state three months ago, Haryana government is taking all precautions to prevent a repeat of the incident, but the agitators are determined. The government has deployed 10 companies of the paramilitary forces along with the state police to deal with the situation. A tense situation prevails in Haryana currently. It is surprising that the Jat leaders in Haryana have not learnt any lesson from the recent violence as a result of their violent agitation. When the reservation issue is in the court, was there any need to re-start the Jat agitation? Why do these leaders want to disturb the social harmony again after peace has been established in Haryana with such great difficulties? Talking to Firstpost, Yashpal Malik, president of the Akhil Bhartiya Jat Aarakshan Sangarsh Samiti who is the most prominent Jat leader in the state, says there is a wrong impression among the people that the 5 June agitation is for demanding reservation for the Jat community. The protest is to ask for the release of innocent people from jail. According to him, the agitation will be peaceful. "The reservation issue is in the court. We know that the Punjab and Haryana High Court recently stayed the reservation for Jats and five other communities provided by the Haryana Government under a newly carved Backward classes (BC) category. We have not called the 5 June agitation over that issue. We are actually demanding release of innocent people from the police custody and taking back false cases against Jats who were falsely implicated by the police in Haryana, said Yashpal Malik. Incidentally, sedition charges were slapped against Yashpal Malik and hundreds of other Jat agitators.They were booked for trying to provoke people to protest against state government in a speech on 25 May during a rally. Yashpal Malik said he wanted to assure people that this time the agitation will be totally peaceful. "We would only hold dharnas in 15 districts of Haryana. We will not block roads or rail tracks. I would like to clarify that even last time it was not Jats who indulged in violence. The anti-social elements and the other groups that people know very well, (hinting at OBC Brigade of Rajkumar Saini) were the people behind all the trouble, but the Jats got all the bad publicity and the entire blame, he said. "We want to tell people that we will be holding peaceful dharnas in only rural areas of 15 districts in the state. We have left out Rohtak, Jhajjar, Bhiwani, Hisar, Sonepat, Ambala and Faridabad, Bawal, Dadri because last time in the urban areas of these places the trouble was more. This time we will avoid any agitation in the urban areas," he added. Demands of the Jats Listing the demands of the Jats, Yashpal Malik said the main demand was the release of all the innocent people from jail in connection with the Jat agitation. "Around 350 people are in jail. Most of them are innocent and must be released by the government. Secondly the Haryana government must take back all the false charges against the innocent people. They have become victims of the police excesses. Then we want proper compensation for all the people who were killed during the agitation. We want the state government to immediately stop everybody from instigating Jats and keep an eye on the trouble makers," he said. Prominent Jat leader, Dr Santosh Dahiya, Women's President of Haryana Sarv Jatiya, Sarv Khap Panchayat, told Firstpost that another agitation at this point of time was not required. "There is a stay on the reservation order. The Haryana government is filing a reply to the court. What is the need for another agitation from 5 June? she said. However, she said that the government knew beforehand that the grant of reservation will face trouble "The government should have put the reservation issue in the Schedule nine. Then there would be no hindrance to the reservation for the Jats, she said. Leaders of the Khap Panchayats have now decided not to participate in the 5 June agitation. Leaders of the various Jat organizations including Dharampal Chhot, Nafe Singh Nain, Ashok Malik, Sukhbir Singh Hooda who met Haryana Agriculture Minister OP Dhankar and Haryana BJP chief Subhash Barala, said they have decided now not to participate in the agitation. "We met Dhankar and Subhash Barala who told us government was serious about providing reservation to the Jats. They said they will fight the reservation case seriously and have appointed advocate jagdeep Dhankar to defend the case," Sukhbir Singh Hooda, Vice president All India Jat Mahasabha told Firstpost. "The committees report is an eyewash. The report is not fair at all. I heard two of the three people in the committee did not even sign the report, which proves there was some dispute among themselves. Sedition charge hs been put on me. What about some highly vocal Jat leaders of the BJP and other parties whose role in the agitation remained unquestioned," said Yashpal Malik, questioning the committee report. Meanwhile Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar told media in Chandigarh that the representatives of the AIJASS have assured there would be no trouble and violence this time and their agitation will be totally peaceful. "In a democratic set-up everyone has a right to express their views in a peaceful manner and the administration has to adopt the required procedure to maintain law and order," he said. US foreign policy and economic chiefs (Left) and their Chinese counterparts sit for the sixth annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue between the two countries at the Diaoyutai State Guest House in Beijing on July 9, 2014. [Photo/IC] The eighth China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Beijing on June 6 to 7 will be a great opportunity to show not just the next US administration, but also the world, that the two largest economies are expanding cooperation and effectively managing their differences. There have been too many headlines, too much attention and obsession on a few thorny issues such as the maritime territorial disputes in the South China Sea or on the issue of what the United States claims to be freedom of navigation. The action/reaction spiral that has emerged on these issues reflects a lack of effective management of the differences between the two countries, despite some positive confidence building measures on air and sea encounters. At the S&ED, China and the US need to find away to improve their dynamic so there is a downward spiral of tensions and an upward spiral of cooperation. It may be true that much of the US' posturing is just a show, away for President Barack Obama to appease hawks like Senator John McCain or to show its allies in the region that the US is still a reliable security guarantor. But the US military-industrial complex, whose influence former president Dwight Eisenhower warned of in 1961 in his farewell address, has been happy to see the upward spiral in tensions, as it has boosted US arms sales in the region. If you go to US Congressional hearings, browse US newspaper headlines or attend seminars at think tanks in Washington, it seems that the South China Sea has become the largest issue between the two nations. It should not be. Yet an unhealthy geopolitical mindset has prevented China-US relations from achieving their full potential, which if realized would benefit the two peoples and the world. Robert Zoellick, the former World Bank president, noted in a May 23 talk in Washington that he sees common interests for China and the US in the Belt and Road Initiative, the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. In his view, the initiative, which will help bring stability in Central Asia, serves US interests. Zoellick, along with people such as Larry Summers, a former top economic advisor for Obama, and Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 2009 to 2013, has criticized the US response to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The four European members of the G7, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy, have all joined the AIIB, while the three Pacific nations, the US, Japan and Canada, have not. It's a surprise to see the US has not changed much on this. A Tuesday report by Michael Fuch and Brain Harding from the Center for American Progress recommended that the US should prioritize cooperation with China. It advised the US not to rigidly defend the status quo, citing US knee-jerk opposition to Chinese-initiated regional projects such as the AIIB. It should be a US priority to find ways to complement China's initiatives that have the potential to enhance regional prosperity and connectivity, such as its Belt and Road Initiative, the report said. The Obama administration is desperately trying to get Congress to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, a trade agreement for the Asia-Pacific that does not include China, as part of his presidential legacy. If leaders of the two nations really mean it when they call the bilateral relations "the most consequential" and "the most important" in the world, they need to show more wisdom and courage. A positive and strong US-China relationship would be a major legacy for Obama. The author is deputy editor of China Daily USA. chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com New Delhi : Teachers from various universities across the national capital including JNU, Jamia, IGNOU and Ambedkar on Friday joined the ongoing agitation by DU faculty members in protest against the new UGC criteria to ascertain their academic performance. DU teachers have been boycotting the evaluation of undergraduate exams for last eleven days against amendments to UGC regulations that, they argue, will lead to job-cuts to the tune of 50 percent and drastically increase pupil-teacher ratio in higher education. Joining the protest today were teachers Associations of Jamia, IGNOU and Ambedkar University besides JNU Students Union along with other students organisations such as AISA, AISF, CYSS, DSU, NSUI, and SFI. "A fund-granting authority has no right to effect unilateral changes in the number and proportion of lectures, tutorials and practicals as it constituted an attack on the academic autonomy of the varsities. "Moreover, each university has its own special character and needs and the mindless, bureaucratic mechanism laid down in the Academic Performance Indicators (API) could not be applied to all," Gopal Pradhan, member of Ambedkar University Teachers Association said at a joint press conference. Musser Ahmad from Jamia said, "the sharp increase in the workload by excluding tutorials and counting only half the practicals in the teaching hours, that would lead to massive retrenchment and degradation in the quality of teaching, learning and research". Ajay Mahurkar(IGNOUTA) alleged "the UGC amendment is an attack on academic freedom and creativity by the stipulation of publishing only in UGC-prescribed journals. This would adversely affect research in critical, non-mainstream areas, and could be used to manipulate content and suppress inconvenient and dissident voices". The new gazette notification has increased the workload for assistant professors from 16 hours of "direct teaching" per week (including tutorials) to 18 hours, plus another six of tutorials, bringing the total up to 24 hours. Similarly the work hours of associate professors have been increased from 14 to 22. While the HRD Ministry had last week defended the new UGC criteria for Academic Performance Indicators for college and university teachers, saying it provides "more flexibility" even as it ruled out any possibility of reduction in number of teaching jobs, it has instructed the UGC to review the same. The University Grants Commission has decided to organise a consultation with stakeholders including representatives from teachers associations across the country over the issue on 6 June . Mathura: Twenty four people, including two police officers were killed and over 40 people were injured in clashes during a drive to evict illegal occupants of a land in Mathura district. Over 320 people have been arrested in connection to the clashes, including 124 for creating disturbances, and 196 under Section 151 CrPC, which deals with preventive arrests. The BJP has lashed out at the Samajwadi Party government for patronising goons and asked for a judicial inquiry into the matter. An ill-prepared police operation to chase away squatters in a park in Mathura led to a massive exchange of fire between the police and the squatters, leading to the death of at least 24 persons, including two senior police officers. The squatters had stopped in the citys Jawahar Bagh park in January 2014 while coming from Sagar (Madhya Pradesh) on way to Delhi in support of their various demands. They had initially sought permission for two days to stay in the park premises but they continued to stay there over the last two years, their numbers having increased from an initial 200-odd to more than 3,000 today. Their aggressive behavior had earned the wrath of the locals and they were not even allowing entry to employees of the horticulture department, whose office was within the park premises. The squatters were led by Ram Vriksh Yadav, a follower of Baba Jai Gurudev, and his group had been raising several demands, such as demanding petrol at the rate of Rs two per litre, an inquiry into Baba Jai Gurudevs death etc. The Allahabad High Court had ordered the administration to get the park vacated but there had been no action so far. However, it is learnt that around two months ago, the district administration had decided to forcibly evict the squatters. The operation was expected to begin on Saturday (4 June), but for some reason it was on Thursday afternoon that a small police force reached the park and started demolishing one part of the parks boundary wall. The policemen were just not prepared for the response their action elicited they were attacked with stones, petrol bombs, swords and finally, firearms. Uttar Pradesh's director-general of police Javed Ahmed admitted to CNN News18 afterwards that they did not have an assessment that the protestors would fire at them. "After two shelters were vacated, the protesters set afire gas cylinders and munition stored there which led to several explosions", the DGP said, and added, "We have recovered 47 guns, six rifles and 178 hand grenades from the area." Several rounds were fired at the first level of policemen that tried to enter the park, and among them were the station officer of Farah police station Santosh Yadav, and the Superintendent of Police (City) Mukul Dwivedi. Both were hit on their faces and head. Both were rushed to hospital in critical condition, but died soon afterwards. The squatters in the meanwhile set fire to police and administration vehicles, boards, hoardings etc, and anything else that was there. In the melee that ensued, the policemen found it hard to enter the park premises and many of the attackers and squatters fled the spot. The police then resorted to unrestrained firing, shooting anything and anyone that moved, and at the last count, 24 persons had died. Bodies of many of them were lying amidst the debris and rubble, and many of the escapees were manhandled by the people who had gathered in large numbers outside the park. According to the police, the squatters appeared well-trained in the use of firearms of all kinds, and quoted eye-witnesses as saying that even women and elderly persons were helping load the weapons and handling ammunition. Many of them had climbed atop trees and were firing from there, targeting policemen. There was mayhem in the area which continued well past midnight. Many of the injured had taken shelter on the roadside and at the bus station and railway station. Additional police forces were also requisitioned from adjoining districts. According to local sources, the police and administration had not anticipated such a fiery response from inside the park, and were not at all prepared for the kind of firing they had to face. They had planned to enter the park after demolishing the boundary wall and then chase away the squatters, but there was no intelligence input about the collection of firearms and ammunition with the inmates of the park. What followed after the death of two police officers was more of panic reaction by the police in which men, women and elderly were among those hit. More than two dozen policemen have also been injured, some of them seriously. The state government has rushed senior police officials to the site and prohibitory orders have been imposed at the site. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav expressed grief over the incident and announced an ex-gratia of Rs 20 lakh to the family of the deceased policemen. He directed the Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) to rush to the spot and bring the situation under control. UP CM Akhilesh Yadav instructs PS Home & DGP to personally inspect #Mathura at the earliest and take stock of the situation. ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) June 3, 2016 Home Minister Rajnath Singh is said to have spoken to CM Akhilesh Yadav and expressed his condolences to the families of the deceased police officials. Ram Vraksha Yadav, leader of the activists, and the security officer of the group Chandan Gaur managed to flee along with thousands of their supporters, DM Rajesh Kumar said. Meanwhile, Mathura MP Hema Malini expressed shock and anguish over the incident and questioned why UP police "did not" take action in the matter during the last two years. She has also favoured a CBI inquiry into the incident. "It is very sad and I was very, very shocked that policemen and people lost their lives. For the last two years I had heard that they had occupied land," the BJP MP said. "Uttar Pradesh government has to be made accountable for this. It is answerable. I will ask the chief minister about it and they should have looked into the matter two years back.... Why this kind of thing has happened now? I will write to the Centre as well," Hema added. BJP Secretary Shrikant Sharma, who also belongs to Mathura, said that over 900 such incidents had happened where police had been targetted ever since the Akhilesh Yadav government came to power in Uttar Pradesh. With inputs from agencies New Delhi: Criticising the ruling Samajwadi Party for violence in Mathura, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati on Friday sought resignation of the state's Akhilesh Yadav government, and demanded a time-bound judicial probe into the matter. The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said the violent incident in the "religious city" of Mathura was "extremely sad and worrying". "Wrong policies and lawlessness of the Samajwadi Party government is responsible for such a shameful incident. Taking moral responsibility of the incident, the government should resign immediately, Mayawati said in a party statement. In order to reach to the bottom of the incident and bring the truth out, there should be a time-bound judicial inquiry into the matter. It is a very serious matter and a commissioner level probe will only be considered as a formality, Mayawati added. She accused the Samajwadi Party government of patronising goons in the state. Illegal encroachment at Jawaharbagh proves that the encroachers had been given high level government patronage and it is an example of Jungle Raj (misgovernance) in the state. This a matter of detailed probe, she said. The toll in the Mathura violence stood at 24 on Friday. At least 250 people have been detained for their involvement in the clash. Mathura: The members of a sect who had encroached on government land at Jawahar Bagh area and indulged in violent clashes with police will be booked under the stringent National Security Act, Uttar Pradesh DGP Javed Ahmad said on Friday. "The leaders of the sect 'Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi' Ram Vraksha Yadav, Chandan Gaur, Rakesh Gupta and others will be booked under the NSA Act," he told a press conference here. A total of 24 people, including an SP and an SHO, were killed in clashes between police and members of the sect who had encroached on government land on Thursday. Tension prevailed in the area with police seizing a large cache of ammunition from the site and arresting 320 people. "Among the 24 killed, two policemen were shot dead and 11 were burnt to death due to cylinder blasts. The encroachers had set on fire the huts where bombs, explosives and gas cylinders were stored, before retreating from the site," Ahmed said. "After the blast, few encroachers were hurt and finally succumbed to their injuries. Since people of neighbouring area were fed up with the activities of the encroachers, they were severely beaten by the residents of the area when they were retreating," he said. The UP DGP said efforts were on to arrest the absconding encroachers. He said the identity and other important data about the encroachers can be determined from their registration certificates. "While 124 people have been arrested for the clashes under relevant sections of IPC, 80 men and 116 women were booked under CrPC section 151 (arrest to prevent the commission of cognisable offences)," he said. The DGP said 47 countrymade pistols, six rifles, 178 live cartridges, 15 four-wheelers and 6 two-wheelers were recovered from the site of the clashes. Ahmad said the police party had gone to the site on a recce, but the encroachers, who were climbing on the trees, started indiscriminate firing and lathicharging on the police. "The encroachers have been dispossessed from Jawahar Bagh," he said. Principal Secretary Home Debashish Panda, special secretary Mani Shankar, ADG Law and order Daljeet Chaudhary and SSP Mathura Rakesh Singh were also present in the press conference. The UP DGP said all help will be provided to the bereaved families. The unprecedented violence in Mathura on the night of Thursday 2 June has once again raised questions on the intelligence-gathering ability of the Uttar Pradesh police which has resulted in policemen being targets of mob violence in dozens of cases in the past two years. While in Mathura, the district police appeared to have taken the operation quite lightly in the beginning, the scale of preparedness of the squatters took the cops completely by surprise, leading to 24 deaths, including of two police officers. In fact, initial reports have suggested that the operation was planned for 4 June and the 2 June move was more of a rehearsal. The police team had tried to break a part of the boundary wall and move in to see if they could chase away the squatters. The response they received was unprecedented. The squatters, calling themselves the members of the Swadhin Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Satyagrah, have been demanding abolition of elections and cheaper fuel. They had under their control nearly 280 acres of land in Jawahar Bagh which used to be a vast green park having fruit trees and flower beds. However ever since the Satyagrah followers started living there, most of the trees had been cut down and temporary sheds had come up. The entry of horticulture department employees too had been stopped by the squatters who had been caught in many a fracas with local citizens. Mathura is a bustling temple town with thousands of pilgrims visiting the Krishna Janmabhoomi and other temples every day round the year. There is a big presence of policemen in the temple area where a mosque stands adjacent to the Krishna Janmabhumi temple. It is also headquarters of the Baba Jai Gurudev organization from which the Mathura squatters leader Ram Vriksh Yadav had broken away some years ago. It had been hit by a severe Hindu-Muslim riot in Kosi Kalan in June 2012, a few months after the Samajwadi Party government headed by Akhilesh Yadav had taken over the state. The riots had been sparked off by a minor altercation between youths of the two communities and at the end of the three-day violence the death toll had risen to five. More recently, there was a clash between youths from Dalit and Thakur community in which many people were injured. Thursdays incident has caused widespread alarm in Mathura, with locals expressing their anger over the prolonged inaction by the district administration and the police in evicting the illegal occupants in the park for more than two years. It took a court order to lead the administration to launch the operation. It could well have been rounded off with a massive show of strength by the police and hundreds of arrests. But the police strategy had three major flaws: -There was no intelligence input about the presence of arms such as guns, pistols, rifles, and ammunition, swords, knives, bombs and grenades within the park premises. It is learnt that the local police avoided going inside the park started even after complaints from neighbouring residents, and on the other hand armed youths from among the squatters used to patrol the park at nights. -The police started their operation initially with a small team, and it was expected that they would succeed in chasing away the inmates after entering the park. But there was no clarity even on how many people were inside the park at that time early last evening. According to the police the squatters appeared well-trained in the use of firearms of all kinds. Eye-witnesses were quoted as saying that women and elderly persons were also helping to load the weapons and handling ammunition. Many of them had climbed atop trees and were firing from there, targeting policemen. Reinforcements were summoned after the situation appeared going out of hand. -There was considerable delay in ordering the policemen to open fire on the attackers. Locals say that the policemen were waiting for orders even after being attacked, and it was only after the station officer Santosh Yadav was hit on his face by two bullets that the police started firing. There have been many incidents of policemen being attacked by criminals in the past two years, and many policemen have lost their lives and several injured while facing attacks. But the Mathura incident is the most serious where the police had to face firing and attack from people apparently trained in guerilla attacks. Attacks on police have increased during the present Samajwadi Party regime in the state. According to statistics tabled before the UP Assembly recently, attacks on police have increased by more than three times in the last eight years and doubled during the present government as compared to similar incidents during the Bahujan Samaj Party rule. The number of attacks on police shot up to 300 in 2014-15. In many incidents, policemen have been murdered while discharging their duty. Such killings have taken place in Varanasi, Kunda in Pratapagrh, Pilibhit and Badaun, Agra and Ferozabad. The state government has decided to slap the National Security Act (NSA) on those involved in such cases. The states Director General of police Javed Ahmed has said that NSA would be invoked against those attacking cops and police stations. The issue is now open to political allegations and counter-allegations and the state government has little defense. In any case, charges of inaction on the law and order front, rising crime and helpless police have frequently been leveled against the Samajwadi Party government. New Delhi: The Centre on Friday blamed the Uttar Pradesh government for the violence in Mathura in which at least 24 people, including an SP and SHO, lost their lives. "Definitely there was lapse," Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju told reporters in Delhi. He was replying to a question on whether there was lapse on the part of the Akhilesh Yadav government in handling the situation on Thursday. Rijiju said the "unfortunate" incident in Mathura was a matter of "grave concern" and condemnable and action must be taken to improve the situation. "It was a big incident and there was setback," he said. The minister said the Home Ministry was awaiting a detailed report from the Uttar Pradesh government about the circumstances leading to the incident and reasons. The Home Ministry has already sought a report from the state government about the incident. Home Minister Rajnath Singh has also spoken to Akhilesh and reviewed the prevailing situation. New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday filed a chargesheet before a Delhi court against a suspected Islamic State supporter accused of motivating people to join the terror outfit. According to court sources, during in-camera proceedings the NIA filed a chargesheet before district judge Amarnath, who listed the matter for 9 June for further hearing. NIA has chargsheeted Mohammed Naser and booked him under terror charges and criminal conspiracy of the Indian Penal Code. Naser, 23, a resident of Chennai, Tamil Nadu, who was on his way to join the IS was arrested on 12 December, 2015 after being deported from Sudan. New Delhi: In a novel gesture to honour armed forces personnel, national carrier Air India will allow recipients of war and peace time gallantry awards to upgrade to the the business class if vacant seats are available at the time of boarding. According to Air India, the soldiers who have been bestowed with military honours such Param Vir Chakra (PVC), Maha Vir Chakra (MVC), Vir Chakra (VC), Ashok Chakra, Kirti Chakra and Shaurya Chakra, will get an upgrade to business class from economy at the time of boarding in case seats are available in the aircraft from this month. "If seats are available, we will upgrade these awardees to business class at the boarding gate," an Air India official said. The decision to upgrade these recipients of various gallantry awards to a higher class, which is effective from this month, is an initiative of Air India chairman and managing director Ashwani Lohani, he said. The Indian Armed Forces are eligible for various military decorations, which are awarded for extraordinary bravery and courage, as well as distinguished service during times of war and peace. Domestic carriers including Air India already provides a 50 percent discount on basic fare on select classes on their domestic network to active Military personnel of Indian Armed Forces and their family members travelling at their own expense. The upgrade scheme, according to Air India, can be availed on the production of identity cards at the airline's check-in counters. PTI New Delhi: Amid controversy over a media report quoting National Investigating Agency (NIA) chief Sharad Kumar on a Pakistani link to the Pathankot attack, the Ministry of External Affairs on Friday asserted that "involvement of Pakistan's nationals in the Pathankot Air Base attack is an accepted fact". The Indian government has also asserted that "enough information" on the involvement of Pakistanis has been provided to Islamabad. "I understand that DG NIA has issued a clarification that his words are being misinterpreted. Let me clarify the position. The involvement of Pakistan's nationals in the Pathankot Air Base attack is an accepted fact," MEA spokesman Vikas Swarup said in a statement. "I would remind you that investigations are ongoing. Foreign Secretary had conveyed to his Pakistani counterpart when they met in New Delhi in April that it was time for review of progress in investigation in the attack after return of Pakistan's JIT, which had gathered all evidence that it had wanted when it visited India," the spokesman said. He further said "enough information" has also been provided to Pakistani authorities through two Letters Rogatory to conduct investigation in Pakistan so that "all those associated in Pakistan with planning, support and execution of the attack are brought to justice". "At this stage, we await further response and information from Pakistan. It would be injudicious to speculate in this situation," the spokesman added. According to a TV channel, DG NIA had given clean chit to Pakistan government but the top NIA official later denied making any such statement. Last month the Interpol has issued a Red Corner Notice against Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorist Shahid Latif who has been termed as "one of the crucial handlers" of the Pathankot airbase attackers by the NIA. A five-member joint investigating team (JIT) from Pakistan visited India in March to probe the Pathankot attack in which Jaish-e-Mohamed militants attacked the Indian air base on 2 January and killed seven security personnel. The attack has led to a downslide in bilateral ties. Shimla: Expressing concern over poor healthcare, mainly in the country's rural areas of the country, President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday favoured its expansion to ensure equitable and quality services. He said there was a huge shortfall of nurses and para-medical staff. "In our country, the healthcare system faces a number of challenges. There is an urgent need to expand physical infrastructure in the health sector in order to ensure equitable and quality healthcare services to all," the president told graduate and postgraduate students of Indira Gandhi Medical College and Hospital (IGMCH) in Shimla. Nearly 75 percent of India's population resides in rural areas, he said. "Therefore, the doctors serving in rural areas are an important aspect, which needs to be looked into collectively by both the centre and state governments." Underlying the need to prepare more nurses and para-medical staff, he said: "We require more nurses and para-medical staff to serve the huge population of our country." Mukherjee advised the students to remember what the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi had said about being the change they wanted to see in the world. He also reiterated what Gandhiji had said about thinking about the welfare of the weakest and poorest person in order to arrive at correct decisions. Delivering the convocation address, Mukherjee told the students that while entering the new phase of life they should remember that the skill and knowledge they have acquired over the years will help them overcome future hurdles. Governor Acharya Devvrat, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and Health Minister Kaul Singh Thakur were among the dignitaries present at the golden jubilee convocation. Amongst those who received the gold medals were Ritu Rani, Meenakshi, who received five gold medals in her graduation, Neha Singh, Shipri Sharma and Tanvi Katoch. Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh appealed to all the students to serve the suffering humanity with compassion, dedication and love without any monetary greed. He said it was matter of pride for any institution to complete a long successful journey and celebrate its 50 years of its existence. He said the IGMCH had produced 2,899 graduates and 1,337 postgraduates. Srinagar: Three BSF troopers were killed and 11 others, including three civilians, were injured on Friday in a guerrilla attack at a security forces convoy in south Kashmir's Bijbehara town, police sources said. According to CNN News18, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the attack. The BSF convoy comprising 23 vehicles was coming from Jammu to Srinagar ferrying jawans who were returning to join their duties after their leave. Following the attack, heavy exchange of fire was underway in the town situated on the 300-km Jammu-Srinagar National Highway No 1A, according to eyewitness. The injured BSF troopers have been shifted to a Srinagar hospital, the police sources added. Officials said that three BSF personnel identified as Head Constable Girish Kumar Shukla, Constable Mahinder Ram and Havaldar Dinesh were killed while four others were injured in the incident which took place at 4.30 pm near a government hospital, 52 kms from Srinagar. The attackers were holed up inside the government sub-district hospital building. The eyewitness said security forces immediately cordoned off the area after the attack which sparked panic in the area. Traffic on the busy national highway was also suspended. The attack comes 10 days after the Hizbul Mujahideen had killed three policemen in two separate incidents in Srinagar city. They had threatened to carry out similar attacks. BSF convoys have often been the target of terrorist groups. Last year in August, a BSF convoy was attacked by Lashker-e-Taiba terrorists at Udhampur in which two of its personnel and a terrorist were killed. Another terrorist Mohammed Naveed was captured alive after the terror strike. Agartala: At least two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters and a Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) member were injured in a clash in South Tripura district, police said on Friday. The BJP organised demonstrations and protest rallies in Belonia in South Tripura and Agartala on late Thursday night immediately after the incident. The party also held demonstrations across the state on Friday. During a sit-in in front of police headquarters in Agartala, agitated BJP workers shouted slogans against the "inaction of police" and demanded the immediate arrest of those involved in the attack on party leader Subal Bhowmik and workers in Belonia. South Tripura police chief Bhanupada Chakraborty told IANS over phone: "At least two BJP supporters and a CPM member were injured following a clash at Belonia in southern Tripura. The police is probing the incident and attackers would not be spared whatever be their political identity." State BJP President Biplab Deb told reporters here: "CPM cadres attacked a meeting held by state BJP Vice-President Subal Bhowmik in Belonia on Thursday night. Seven of our party members were injured." "We would first protest all CPM attacks and then prevent the assault on BJP workers, and finally we would urge upon the party members to retaliate such attacks. We have given 24 hours time to the Left Front government to arrest the culprits involved in the Thursday's incident," said Deb accompanied by Bhowmik, a former Congress legislator who joined the BJP. "Such goondaism would not be able to stop the growth of BJP in Tripura. We would continue our organisational work. We would also apprise Governor Tathagata Roy of the situation," said the BJP state chief. The CPM Belonia Divisional Secretary Tapas Datta, on the other hand, accused the BJP supporters of attacking and injuring two of his partymen during a rally organised on Thursday by the CPM members and supporters to protest a hike in petrol and diesel prices. Two other CPM supporters were missing after the incident, he added. Demanding arrest of BJP leader Subal Bhowmik, Datta said: "Bhowmik was giving a hate speech in a communally sensitive area Thursday night. His speech might create trouble in the mixed population in bordering areas." Heavy security arrangements were made both in Agartala and bordering Belonia to prevent any further trouble. Kolkata: Indian-American researcher Mainak Sarkar, who allegedly killed his wife and a professor at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) before turning the gun on himself, was a very brilliant student, but reserved, said his school teacher. Sarkar passed his ICSE exam from St. Michael's School in Durgapur town of West Bengal's Burdwan district, before clearing his plus-two from another shcool. He later got an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and then went to the US where he earned a Master's degree at Stanford University. Lily Chowdhury, biology teacher at St. Michael's, described the news of the shootout as "very shocking". "He was a very brilliant student, meritorious student, I should say. He was one of the toppers of the class. He was a pride of our school," said Chowdhury. She remembers Sarkar as "very well behaved". "I knew him till his ICSE. He was reserved, not the very outgoing type. I should not say that he was an introvert. But yes, he was not the type who would go around and make friends very quickly," she said. "We never had any problems with him. So, the news that I got is very shocking," said Chowdhury. One of his friends in Durgapur recalled that Sarkar was good in sports. "He was a good student, a good boy. He was good in sports. But he did not venture out of home often. He was absorbed in his studies," said the friend. Sarkar, 38, fatally shot engineering professor William Klug, 39, in his office at the UCLA on Wednesday. Klug had refused to give him a passing grade. Before killing Klug, he killed his wife Ashley Hasti, who was found dead in Brooklyn Park, in Minnesota. WHY DONT YOU READ THESE? Bengaluru: For the first time, under the impetus of Isro and the French Space Agency (CNES), space agencies of over 60 countries have agreed to engage their satellites, to coordinate their methods and their data to monitor human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. The COP21 climate conference held in Paris last December acted as a wake-up call in this context, according to a statement released by Isro here on Friday. Without satellites, the reality of global warming would not have been recognised and the subsequent historic agreement at the UN headquarters in New York on 22 April, 2016 would not have been signed, the space agency said. Out of the 50 essential climate variables being monitored today, 26 - including rising sea level, sea ice extent and greenhouse gas concentrations in all layers of the atmosphere - can be measured only from space, Isro said. The key to effectively implementing the Paris Agreement lies in the ability to verify that nations are fulfilling their commitments to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Only satellites can do that, it said. Invited to New Delhi by Isro and CNES on 3 April, the world's space agencies decided to establish "an independent, international system" to centralise data from their Earth-observing satellites through the 'New Delhi Declaration' that officially came into effect on 16 May, Isro said. "The goal now will be to inter calibrate these satellite data so that they can be combined and compared over time. In other words, it is to make the transition to closely coordinated and easily accessible big space data," it said. "It is overwhelming to see the unilateral support of all space agencies to use space inputs for monitoring climate change" Isro Chairman AS Kiran Kumar said. "Earth observation satellites provide a vital means of obtaining measurements of the climate system from a global perspective. Isro is committed for the continuity of earth observation data, through the thematic series of satellites, with improvements en-route, to meet contemporary as well as future needs," Kumar said. "Isro is also engaging with CNES, JAXA and Nasa for realising joint missions for global climate observation with advanced instruments, he added. CNES President Jean-Yves said this is a historic event that reaches far beyond the space sector and is a perfect example of the kind of success that can only be achieved through international cooperation. "With this consensus among space agencies from more than 60 nations, including the world's leading space powers, the international space community and scientists, now have the tools they need to put their talent, intelligence and optimism to work for the good of humankind and our planet", he said. London: A long-term memory test combined with a brain scan could help in early diagnosis of people with Alzheimer's disease, a new study suggests. Scientists say testing memory over a long timescale shows early deficits in the brain's ability to remember. These are not detected by checks for short-term forgetfulness, which is the current practice for diagnosis. The study also suggests that a brain scan in combination with a memory test could identify early abnormalities in the brain activity of Alzheimer's patients that would be otherwise undetected. Researchers said that the type of memory loss shown by such tests could potentially be reversed by the development of new treatments. A team at University of Edinburgh in the UK, in collaboration with colleagues in the US, studied long-term memory in young mice, some of which had the equivalent of very early stage Alzheimer's disease, and some of which were healthy. Scientists taught both groups of mice to locate a hidden platform in a pool filled with water, using signs on the wall of the room to navigate. The results showed that when tested shortly after the initial task, both groups of mice were able to remember the way to the platform. However, when tested one week later, the mice in the Alzheimer's group had significantly more difficulty in remembering the route. Tests showed that brain activity was normal in both groups of mice at this young age, when no task was involved. However, the brain activity in the Alzheimer's group was significantly decreased compared with the healthy mice when tested as they tried to remember the way to the platform. Scientists said the results show that when short-term memory is used to diagnose Alzheimer's disease as is currently the case it may not show the true extent of memory loss at the onset of the condition. The team said that by testing long-term memory, it may be possible to detect the earliest signs of Alzheimer's disease and offer interventions sooner. "We recognise that tests with animals must be interpreted with caution, but the use of these genetic models in conjunction with appropriate testing is pointing at an important dimension of early diagnosis," said Professor Richard Morris from Edinburgh's Centre for Cognitive and Neural Systems. The research was published in the journal Nature Communications. The BJP on Friday attacked the Akhilesh Yadav government, claiming that an intelligence failure led to Mathura violence in Uttar Pradesh which broke out on Thursday evening. They alleged that the killers of the two police officers enjoyed 'protection' of ruling Samajwadi Party and the incident highlighted 'lawlessness' in the state. In a press conference, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra criticised the UP government, and said that the state administration was responsible for law and order. "Why was the government missing?," he asked. Party President Amit Shah sent national secretary Shrikant Sharma to take stock of the situation after clashes broke out during a drive to evict illegal occupants in Jawahar Bagh in Mathura, leaving 24 people dead including an SP and an SHO. Sharma said killing of policemen was "height of anarchy" and alleged that the policemen were ill-prepared to control the mob as "they were under pressure from the administration to go easy as land-grabbers had links" with the ruling party. "The ruling party first had over 280 acres of land captured by these criminals. The main conspirator in the case has full protection of the Samajwadi Party. Policemen were sent to the spot with their hands tied and this is why two of them died," he said. The clashes broke out when police were trying to evict illegal occupants of the land in Jawahar Bagh by activists, believed to be of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi, on the directions of the Allahabad High Court. "Criminals in UP are highly-motivated due to their protection by the ruling party and that is why there have been almost 900 cases of police personnel being attacked by them under its rule," he said and cited incidents in Tunda, Allahabad and Bareilly. "This state government has become a blot and people will wipe it away during the polls," he said. The state is going to elections early next year. "Mathura incident is entirely because of intelligence failure. Timely assessment was not done as to how many people were present at the spot and what fire arms they possessed," UP BJP spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak said in Lucknow. He said people present at Jawahar Bagh collected fire-arms over a period of time. "Weapons have not come overnight. Local intelligence unit keeps a close watch on small agitations, but what was it doing there," he asked. Pathak said it should be found out as to whose political patronage the encroachers were enjoying. He said BJP had been raising the issue of "deteriorating" law and order but it fell on deaf ears. "Mathura incident has proved there is no semblance of law and order in the state," Pathak claimed. BJP also defended Mathura MP Hema Malini, saying that she would soon reach Mathura. The party also questioned why chief minister Akhilesh Yadav did not reach the scene of the violence. Hema Malini had come under fire when she posted a series of tweets about her latest film release shortly after the clashes took place in her constituency. The violence erupted during an operation to evict members of a religious group 'Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi' from government land. Police had to resort to teargas to deal with the violent agitators in the Jawahar Bagh area. With inputs from PTI Vijayawada: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday expressed displeasure over Centre not completing the division of government institutions listed under Schedule 9 and 10 of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014, even two years after the bifurcation of the state. "This has been creating trouble between the two neighbouring states," Chandrababu said, adding it was the Centre's responsibility to resolve the issue expeditiously. The Chief Minister addressed a teleconference with 5,600 officials, people's representatives, including TDP MLAs and others from his residence in Vijayawada and discussed the bifurcation-related issues, a release from his office said. Chandrababu also vent his ire at the Centre for releasing "only Rs 2,300 crore" for bridging AP's revenue deficit caused by the bifurcation. "Our revenue deficit in the first year (after bifurcation) is Rs 16,000 crore but the Centre released only Rs 2300 crore for bridging the gap. The 14th Finance Commission clearly stated that we will still be reeling under a huge fiscal deficit even in 2019-20, than the northeastern states," he pointed out. With great difficulty, AP could increase its income from 47 percent to 50.33 percent in the last two years, he said. But the state recorded an economic growth rate of 10.99 percent that was three per cent more than the national average. In terms of per capita income, however, AP lagged behind all other southern states, the Chief Minister said. "Hence, the Centre should extend all support to us till we grow equally with other states. We should not rest till we achieve that," he told the officials and people's representatives. "We are at a turn in history. If we are careless, we will go back but if we go ahead with a determination, we can achieve unimaginable results," Chandrababu said. Kohima: Asserting that the North East is central to the BJP-led NDA government's idea of national integration, BJP national vice president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe on Friday said, overall development of the region is one of the top priority of the government. "The more efforts are made to integrate the North East itself, the more people of the region will speak in one voice with an integrated approach, impetus will be given on the overall development of the region, which is one of the top priority of the government," he said. Interacting with media-persons at the Raj Bhavan in Kohima, he said, in order to push development in the North East, the leadership at the apex level has to be very conscious for the measures to be undertaken, because of which the Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently presided over the meeting of North Eastern Council for first time in 40 years, he said. The PM, he said, wants to make all the institutions very effective. The central government, he said, is strictly against the politics of populism but believes in performance. Accusing that Congress government had neglected the Union DoNER (Development of North East Region) Ministry to such an extent that it had become a "defunct ministry", he said the PM has revived the DoNER ministry and appointed a Minister in Charge to take development to the doorstep of the people of the NE. The BJP vice president also affirmed that the BJP-led NDA government would continue with "unblemished performance without any scandal". He listed the basics of the policy approaches of NDA for good governance as its sensitivity to the agonies of the poor and commitment to the welfare by reaching the prime sections through the fruits of development. The government puts greater emphasis on people's participation, connectivity and dialogue, he said. Mumbai: Even before the party acts against Maharashtra Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse for alleged dubious land deals and suspected underworld links, cracks have already started surfacing within the state BJP, particularly between the Brahminical and OBC factions. Khadse, who is the senior most minister in the Fadnavis cabinet and commands enormous clout, of late has been mired in controversies with a questionable land deal in Pune and an alleged demand for bribe by his close aide Gajanan Patil for a land allotment case in Kalyan. Apart from these doubtful real estate transactions, his mobile phone number allegedly appeared in the call records of most wanted gangster Dawood Ibrahim. For a state like Maharashtra, where caste politics rules the roost in power games, it won't be an easy road ahead for Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to exercise his authority on the matter. Fadnavis is from the Brahmin community, while Khadse belongs to the Levedar Patil community, which is part of the OBC list. After Gopinath Munde's death, there is no senior OBC leader like Khadse in the party. Munde belongs to Wanjara community. Earlier Maratha strongman and Education Minister Vinod Tawde and Pankaja Munde Palwe were in race for the post of the chief minister but corruption allegations against the duo have somewhat stemmed their pace. After Gopinath Munde's untimely death in a road accident in the National Capital around two years back, Khadse emerged as the OBC face both in the BJP and the Maharashtra government. Apart from Khadse, state BJP president Raosaheb Danve, Pankaja, Tawde and MLC Pandurang Phundkar are all Munde loyalist. In the Brahmin camp, Fadnavis, Food and Civil Supplies Minister Girish Bapat are among the prominent faces. Water Resources Minister Girish Dattatray Mahajan is from the Gurjar community but very close to the chief minister. Speculations over Khadse's fate went to a crescendo on Thursday after Fadnavis submitted a detailed report to BJP chief Amit Shah and also met Prime Minister Narendra Modi late in the evening. Despite mounting pressure from the central leadership and BJP ideologue RSS, Khadse would be a tough nut to crack as the initial signals indicate. "Khadse has done nothing wrong or committed any irregularity. These are all baseless allegations against him. The party is with him but if the government or the party central leadership wants an enquiry then we have no issue. But at this stage Khadse will not lose anything. These are all speculations that the report is against Khadse. It might be positive on Khadse as well," BJP state president Raosaheb Danve told reporters in Jalna on Friday. Danve said that he has a meeting scheduled with the chief minister later on Friday to discuss the Khadse issue. Leaving no doubt that the Khadse chapter is gradually snowballing into a huge internal crisis for the Maharashtra BJP, another source, who refused to be named, said, "It is for the prime minister and the party president to decide if they are with the party cadres or whether they want to sack Khadse." On Thursday, after meeting Shah for 20 minutes at the party headquarters in New Delhi, Fadnavis had said, "I have submitted a factual report to Amit Shah on Khadse. The party will take necessary action." The Maharashtra Chief Minister also briefed the Prime Minister on the preliminary findings on the charges that Khadse faces, sources said. Earlier in week, Shah had sought a report on Khadse from Fadnavis in keeping with what the BJP stresses as its "zero-tolerance for corruption" policy. Sources indicated that the party is likely to act against Khadse only after the legislative council elections to be held on 10 June as it wants to avoid dissent from the minister's loyalists. Khadse has strong support in the north Maharashtra district of Jalgaon. According to sources, the Chief Minister gave a clean chit to his ministerial colleague in the Dawood call record issue but the suspicious land deal involving a Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation plot in Pune has pushed the state Revenue Minister into a corner. The sources said that prima facie it appears that Khadse might have earned some unethical profit in it. Sources within party said the "minimum action" that Khadse faces is losing his revenue portfolio. With the controversy raging a storm over the last few days, Khadse stopped using his official red-beacon vehicle since Monday and also stopped attending cabinet meetings. In April this year, the alleged sale of government-owned land to Khadse's wife and son-in-law for about Rs 3 crore, at a time when the market value of the plot is estimated to be Rs 40 crore has raised eyebrows. However, Khadse has maintained that the land is not owned by the government and that bought it from a private party. The minister also said he paid the stamp duty on the market value of the plot. Earlier Khadse denied any links with Dawood, stating that though the cellphone number that crops up in Dawood Ibrahim's records does belong to him, it was not in use for the last year, and that phone records can be manipulated through software. In an eventuality, if Khadse quits the cabinet, it would be interesting to watch how the BJP would fare in the Zila Parishad and Nagar Panchayat polls scheduled next year. Panaji: Against the backdrop of Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar's remarks against Nigerians, the Congress on Friday underlined the need to exercise caution before singling out any country and said an 'intemperate' remark could have an adverse bearing on international relations. Parsekar had stated that people are "annoyed" with Nigerians because of their "different attitude" and that his government was looking for a place to detain foreigners illegally staying in Goa. His remarks came at a time when a number of African nationals were attacked in a spate of incidents in Delhi. "We cannot single out a person or a nation. We need to be very careful when we make a statement. We need to be very careful in these days of globalisation," said Leader of Opposition in the Goa Legislative Assembly Pratapsinh Rane. He said targeting a particular country is not right. "We have so many Indians residing in Africa. I agree that a law breaker is a law breaker and should be punished, but you cannot single out a person," the former chief minister said. Advising caution, he said, "We need to be responsible about what we speak. Whatever is being built up (in the field of international relations) can be spoiled overnight." Before Parsekar, state Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar had sparked a row when he said that Nigerians are "problems not only in the coastal state but also across the country." Thursday's conviction of 24 people involved in the Gulbarg Society massacre should tell us how integral a vibrant civil society is to the functioning of a democracy, especially when political systems that are supposed to protect us are instead complicit in such violence. If partial justice has finally been delivered in case of the massacre of 69 people in Gulbarg Society, it is because of the survivors dogged perseverance as well as activist Teesta Setalvads relentless efforts to not let the case fall by the wayside. Fourteen years of painstaking work in the face of innumerable risks and threats have finally delivered to the survivors some sense of justice. If active civil society intervention is worthy of attention, the political classs indifference and continued passivity is equally condemnable. That the BJP which has ben in power in Gujarat for over two decades might throw a spanner in the wheels of justice, was predictable from the very start of the trials. The killings took place on the watch of Narendra Modi, then the chief minister of the state. But also striking is the role (or rather the absence of it) of the Congress, the BJPs main political adversary. The main Opposition did very little by way of helping or standing by the survivors, other than indulging in cheap electoral rhetoric. Other secular parties the Samajwadi Party or the Left parties, for instance also followed in the Congress footsteps. Even as the entire political system failed the survivors, the judiciary and civil society organisations have stood by them over the years. Without them, the survivors of Gulbarg Society would not have seen the day they did. We might ask then, what the Modi government achieves by weakening civil society organisations especially when our political system is so badly broken. Political parties in this country do not protect human rights. If anything, they have an infamous record in violating them. Civil society organisations have always stepped in to fill this vacuum and speak for the victims of human rights abuse. Rather than strengthen these non-state actors, why does the government appear so determined to drive them out of public space? One apparent answer seems to be the autonomy that so many of these organisations enjoy and the challenges they pose to the government through their work and contrarian views. Their activists direct contact with the underclasses, usually leveraged as captive vote-banks by political parties, renders them suspicious in the eyes of the government. One of the Modi governments stated grouses against these organisations is their intervention in politics, policy-making, and society at large. No such bar however seems to apply to BJP-friendly organisations, particularly cultural and social organisations like the RSS. In going after activists and critics like Teesta Setalvad or Greenpeace member Priya Pillai, the ruling BJP is deliberately shrinking the public space for civil society organisations that dissent from its political views. We need non-state and non-party actors to go where political parties usually prefer not to tread. Political parties have both failed to and often actively exploited the lives of the most vulnerable sections of the Indian population: Minorities, women, tribals, landless labourers, workers. Civil society organisations have a vacuum to fill precisely because the political class has actively overseen processes by which millions of Indians have been pushed to the brink of poverty, immiseration, and death. The track records of most such organisations has been beyond reproach. Civil society organisations formed the backbone of the movement of survivors of the 1984 massacre of Sikhs. Human rights organisations like the Peoples Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), Peoples Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), have unfailingly visited innumerable sites of riots over the decades, chronicling narratives of victims and survivors and petitioning the courts for justice. These are virtually the only non-mass-based organisations in the country that repeatedly even in the face of constant threats investigate major events like massacres and relatively minor, everyday ones like the violation of labour rights around the country. Left to the will of political parties, justice would perhaps rarely see the light of day for many who have been violated and wronged. Without vigilant civil society organisations, India would be a poorer democracy. Thiruvananthapuram: CPM's P Sreeramakrishnan was elected as the Speaker of the 14th Kerala Assembly on Friday. Sreeramakrishnan (LDF), who represents Ponnani constituency, secured 92 votes against UDF's candidate V P Sajeendran, who got 46 votes in the 140-member House. A member of CPM-state committee, 48-year-old Sreeramakrishnan, known for his pleasant personality and soft-spoken nature, has already proved his talent during his tenure as MLA in the last assembly. After the election, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala jointly led him to the Speaker's dais. The House also witnessed certain politically significant events with BJP's lone member O Rajagopal opting to vote in favour of Sreeramakrishnan. Justifying his decision to favour the LDF candidate, the BJP leader said one of the reasons was that UDF had openly stated that they did not want the BJP MLA's vote. Rajagopal also said BJP would not blindly oppose all government policies but would take decisions on 'merit basis' in the House. "BJP is committed to exposing the mistakes of both ruling LDF and opposition UDF in the House," he told reporters during a press meet in the Assembly media room later. On why he voted for CPM's candidate which the saffron party opposed at the state and national level, he said, "It's my personal vote for Sreeramakrishnan who is a good public worker and also a friend of mine." To a question, he said the party had not discussed the matter. The UDF faced embarrassment as its candidate secured only 46 votes though they have 47 members in the House. Stressing that UDF would examine the issue as it was a serious one, Chennithala told reporters that he did not think that it was deliberate cross-voting from the front's side. Taking a dig at BJP and LDF, he said Rajagopal's vote in favour of LDF candidate exposed the "secret tie-up" between the CPIM and the saffron party, which Congress was stressing on throughout the election campaign. "BJP MLA voting for CPM candidate is unethical. It shows BJP's leaning towards LDF," the former Home Minister said and maintained that Congress-led UDF did not want any cooperation with BJP in the House. Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday hit out at the Centre for "increasing tax burden" on people and making Aadhaar card mandatory for getting benefit of government schemes. Banerjee said expenses were increasing for the people by means of service tax and cess. Even the bill for mediclaim has increased from Rs 17,000 to Rs 30,000, she said and criticised the Centre for Aadhaar cards, saying that 20-30 per cent people still did not have the cards. She said poor people would be deprived of the benefits and money from government schemes if they don't have the card. After the first administrative review meeting of the new government, Banerjee said she had given instructions to restart all development work which had remained stalled for the last few months due to the Assembly polls. In the last financial year 2015-16, the state plan expenditure budget was Rs 49,507 crore but the actual expenditure was Rs 53,010 crore. "In other states the total amount of planned expenditure funds is not spent but we exceeded by 15 per cent," she said, adding there is no such instance of actual plan expenditure surpassing the budgeted figure in the last 20 years. For the new financial year 2016-17, the finance departmenthas released Rs 11,573 crore for which directions were issued to take steps for their immediate utilisation. In 2010-11, the plan expenditure was around Rs 14,000 crore which has increased by nearly four times to Rs 53,010 crore now. Moreover, the budgeted figure of Rs 49,507 crore was itself higher than the actual of previous year i.e. Rs 39,444 crore by over 25 per cent. The budgeted figure is projected higher than the actual of the previous year to target a higher growth trajectory for overall growth. By achieving the state plan expenditure of Rs 53,010 crore, the state has achieved a year-on-year growth of nearly 35 per cent from the previous year's expenditure of Rs 39,444 crore. It is becoming increasingly hard to take Hema Malini seriously as a politician. While her Lok Sabha constituency Mathura remained on the edge following the death of 24 people in clashes with encroachers, Hema Malini was in Mumbai's Madh Island, tweeting pictures of her shooting for a film and hoping for its early release. BJP MP (Mathura) Hema Malini uploads shoot pictures on her Twitter even as death toll from Mathura incident rises. pic.twitter.com/CCilzxReCZ ANI (@ANI_news) June 3, 2016 In a series of images which were uploaded on Twitter, Hema Malini, dressed in a maroon sari, could not stop gushing about how easy it has become to reach "Madh Island from mainland Mumbai by motorised boats." "Hoping for an early release of this film," she captioned one of the photos, without revealing the name of the film. However, minutes after TV channels picked on Hema Malini's misplaced sense of priority, the actor deleted the tweets and out of the blue, began tweeting about the Mathura clashes and how she was 'so so upset'. The fact that the Madh Island tweets wer deleted was reported by ANI. #UPDATE BJP MP (Mathura) Hema Malini deletes the aforementioned tweets. ANI (@ANI_news) June 3, 2016 I just came bk frm Mathura & got the news of the violence tht has taken place there in which policemen have lost their lives. Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) June 3, 2016 So so upset by ths news frm a place which is so dear to me Will go there again if my presence is required.My heart goes out to the bereaved Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) June 3, 2016 So so upset by ths news frm a place which is so dear to me Will go there again if my presence is required.My heart goes out to the bereaved Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) June 3, 2016 Heartfelt condolences to families of SP City Mukul Dwivedi & SHO Santosh Kumar who laid down their lives in the line of duty. Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) June 3, 2016 I fervently appeal to the people of Mathura to remain calm & not get misguided by violent elements Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) June 3, 2016 She later exclusively spoke to CNN-News 18, where she criticised the Samajwadi Party-led government in UP. "This illegal encroachment was happening for a long time but SP government did not do anything", the MP lashed out. I did not realise that this will turn out to be such a serious matter," said Hema Malini. Twitter has obtained Hema's deleted tweets from earlier on Friday. #MathuraViolence MP @dreamgirlhema Ist tweets abt her film shooting.Srcs say party was upset & askd them 2 b removd pic.twitter.com/Aj8T4GgbWC Kirandeep IBN7 (@raydeep) June 3, 2016 We are as curious as Twitterati on how Malini managed to be at Mathura and Madh Island at the same time? Why delete posts? #HemaMalini is allowed to go on shoots, but when #Mathura is burning, priority is constituency & its ppl! @dreamgirlhema Arunoday Mukharji (@ArunodayM) June 3, 2016 Hema Malini tweets about film shoot, deletes it, then tweets about Mathura. For politicians there is a parellel universe, far from reality! Anshu Chhibber (@AnshuChhibber) June 3, 2016 While everyone's sad about horrific events in #Mathura, BJP #Mathura MP busy promoting her movie @dreamgirlhema pic.twitter.com/yzHjpnIHI6 Sir Chetan Bhagat (@chetan_bhaqat) June 3, 2016 Speaking in defence of the actor, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra asked the media not to divert from the issue. Addressing the media on Friday, Patra said, "Im sure Hema Malini ji will go to Mathura, she has expressed her grief over what has happened. Let's not divert from the issue." Im sure Hema Malini ji will go to Mathura, she has expressed her grief over what has happened. Let's not divert from the issue: Sambit Patra ANI (@ANI_news) June 3, 2016 But law and order is a state issue; why has UP CM not reached the site of violence as yet?: Sambit Patra ANI (@ANI_news) June 3, 2016 Meanwhile in Mathura, 24 people, including two police officers were killed and over 40 people were injured in clashes during a drive to evict illegal occupants of a land in Mathura district. Over 374 people have been arrested in connection to the clashes, reported CNN-News18. The group pelted stones and opened fire at the police officers. In retaliation, the police had to fire after using batons and tear gas at them. Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police admitted to CNN-News18 that they did not have an assessment that the protestors would fire at them. The clashes broke out when police were trying to evict illegal occupants of a land in Jawahar Bagh by activists, believed to be of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi, on the directions of the Allahabad High Court. There are deep fault lines in the Uttar Pradesh administration along allegiance of officers to factions within the Mulayam Singh Yadav household. The violence in Mathura appears to be a direct manifestation of that. The manner in which the district magistrate and the superintendent of police handled the situation speaks volumes. In the higher echelons of administration, it is no secret that they were working at cross-purposes. The reasons are not far to seek. The DM owed allegiance to Ram Gopal Yadav and the SP belonged to the Akhilesh Yadav camp. Ram Vriksh Yadav, who squatted on the governments 240-odd acre horticulture land in Jawahar Bagh and occupied even defence land, derived his power from his proximity to one of these factions. As a result, the DM was wary of taking action against the encroachers, whose number had swelled to over 2,500 since 2014. Similarly, the SP was driven to action to put down the rival camp, not to uphold the rule of the law. An incoherent and clueless administration responded to the situation in a clumsy manner despite reports that Yadav and his associates had amassed arsenal to thwart the police. For the first time in the violent history of the state, an additional superintendent of police - Mukul Dewedi - was dragged inside by criminals and ruthlessly beaten up before being shot in the forehead. For his colleague Santosh Yadav, death came quick as he was shot in the eye. As of now 22 bodies of members of a breakaway sect of Baba Jai Gurudev have been recovered from the spot. The whole episode has exposed a deep-seated malaise that afflicts the Akhilesh Yadav government. It is beset by various factions within the Mulayam clan. In this context, the story of how the situation in Mathura came to this pass bears relevance. A senior police officer who served in Mathura for many years pointed out that in 2014, two years after the death of Baba Jai Gurudev, his disciple Ram Vriksh Yadav descended on Mathura under the banner of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrah along with 250-odd followers from Madhya Pradesh. They were allowed to hold a one-day dharna at Jawahar Bagh, a piece of land belonging to the horticulture department. However, Yadav pitched tents and started mobilising supporters from other parts of the country to encroach the piece of land. Within two years, the 240-acre land turned into a huge tenement of aggressive inhabitants owing allegiance to the splinter sect of Jai Gurudev. The area developed a parallel network of water supply and other facilities like sewerage, roads and schools. Since Yadav claimed to have the blessings of the Mulayam household, the administration chose to ignore the development till the issue was taken to the high court by a local lawyer, Vijay Pal Singh. The administration found its ostrich-like approach untenable when the high court gave it specific instruction to clear the area of squatter lest it would be taken as contempt of court. Finding themselves in a piquant situation, senior officials discussed the situation in detail but did not reach any concrete decision or draw a define action-plan. Given Ram Vriksh Yadavs proximity to a faction in the Samajwadi Party chiefs family, senior officials dithered and let junior level officials to take charge of the situation. On Wednesday when Dwivedi and his SHO Santosh Yadav reached the area, they were just pushed into a situation of intense violence which they had not anticipated. They were immediately deserted by police constables who too were taken off-guard by the attacks and ran for their lives. Ironically, while Dwivedi and Yadav were killed in the most brutal manner, all top ranking officers seem to have suitably firewalled themselves by swearing allegiance to factions in the Mulayam household. It would be naive to see Mathura violence as an aberration. There have been umpteen number of instances in UP where police personnel surrendered meekly to criminals and even allowed them to lynch their officers. This is a new trend with sinister portends. It can further deepen the fault lines that already exist and create an unbridgeable chasm between vital arms of the government. Srinagar: Opposition National Conference on Friday gave a privilege notice against Jammu and Kashmir Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu accusing him of making "untrue and baseless" statement on the floor of the Assembly. NC MLA Mohammad Shafi Uri said party leader Omar Abdullah had on June one raised the issue of notifications on budget proposals issued by the government without discussion in the House. "In response, the Finance Minister made the statement that he followed the practice of other states and the central government," the NC leader said. He claimed that the statement made by Drabu was "untrue and baseless" and requested that the matter be refered to the Privileges Committee. Speaker Kavinder Gupta said he has received the notice and would examine it before giving a ruling on it. New Delhi: Senior Congress leader and the first Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, Ajit Jogi may just have kickstarted a round of rebellions in the beleaguered Congress. Recently, he expressed his intention to separate from the grand old party and float a new one in the state to take on the Raman Singh-led BJP government. The 70-year-old bureaucrat-turned-politician will reveal the name of his outfit after a referendum in his hometown Marwahi in Bilaspur district on 6 June. In a telephonic interview with Firstpost, Jogi spoke about his future plans. Excerpts from the interview: You have been a loyal Congress worker for decades. What compelled you to launch a new party? For quite some time I have been under tremendous pressure from my well-wishers, a section of party workers, supporters and the people of my constituency to make Chhattisgarh free of Dr Raman Singhs government. If he is not stopped, Raman Singh will make it for the fourth time as chief minister and theres no hope from the Congress. Now I feel free and happy. Its my commitment to people who have been supporting me for years to provide them a better alternative. What is the agenda of your new party? As I said our intention is to free Chhattisgarh from the Raman Singh regime. We have to get rid of the BJP by next election. Chhattisgarh is the richest state in terms of mineral resources, forest produce, biodiversity, and is the largest producer of steel, but the common man on the street has failed to get the benefits. People with no concern for Chhattisgarh are reaping the fruits, and its solely due to the failure of Dr Singh as chief minister. The state is facing the serious problem of Naxalism, the worst in the country. This was not the case during my tenure as chief minister. Corruption is rampant in every level. Why did you need to leave the Congress for that? Many leaders in the Congress in Chhattisgarh are in Raman Singhs pocket. The Leader of Opposition TS Singh Deos family was given land in Ambikapur by a previous government, and hes under obligation. Thats the reason why Deo, as PAC chairman, gave a clean chit to Raman Singh and his son in the AugustaWestland scam. The present PCC chief Bhupesh Baghel, who was a minister in my Cabinet, was then accused of an illegal land deal, and I had referred the case to the Lokayukta in 2003. But no chargesheet has been filed yet. This clearly speaks about the status of these Congress leaders in the state. What can be expected from them? There are lots of corruption cases against the Raman Singh government. The Congress party in the state is not equipped to take them head on. What was the immediate provocation? For the last 13 years I havent been given any role by the party not even at the block level and Ive been rendered an ordinary party worker. The party workers who are with me have not been given any responsibilities, forget any bigger role, even at the booth level. I know it has been manoeuvred by some people (read Congress leaders) in Delhi. They cant tolerate regional satraps coming up, like it happened in the case of Mamata Banerjee, Jagan Reddy and Himanta Biswa Sarma. They want weak people and sycophants like Baghel and others in the party. The result is before us Congress today is left with only 44 seats. So the only option was to move out and form a new party. I always had the highest regards for the top leadership in Congress, whether it was Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi. And even today, I have the highest respect for Sonia Gandhi. Are you going to get support from your Chhattisgarh Congress party colleagues in this venture? Yes, there are Congress MLAs who have expressed their desires to join me, but at present Ive advised them to remain where they are. Ive been receiving tremendous support, both from within a section of the party and from outside. What is your opinion on Rahul Gandhi, who is rumoured to be taking over as Congress party president? Its not my concern anyway. Its the Gandhi family that has to take decision on what role Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi will perform. I dont want to comment on Rahul Gandhi. Its the performance of the party that ultimately speaks. Have you decided any name for your new party? Yes, we have a few names in mind. Were going to have a meeting with the supporters and people in Marwahi on 6 June where issues related to name, party symbol and flag related to the new party will be discussed and finalised. What role will your son Amit Jogi play in the new party? First, the allegations are baseless. Amit is working hard to create a strong base for the new party. He has been touring across the state, meeting people by visiting villages and telling them about our agenda. I too have faced several false allegations against me right from an alleged murder charge of an NCP leader to my identity as a tribal leader. But, Ive come out clean in all these cases. These are conspiracies, weve been fighting. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi sets off on a five-nation visit to Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland, the US and Mexico on Saturday during which the focus will be to broaden India's trade, energy and security cooperation with them and inject a new momentum in ties. Modi is likely to seek support of Switzerland and Mexico for India's membership of the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group as both these countries are key members of the elite group. The issue is likely to figure during Modi's meeting with Obama in Washington. During his talks with the leadership of Switzerland, the Prime Minister is also likely to raise the issue of black money stashed by Indians in Swiss banks. The Prime Minister will first travel to Afghanistan where he will inaugurate the Afghan-India Friendship Dam, earlier known as Salma Dam, in Herat province, along with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Both the leaders will also hold talks on a range of issues including current situation in Afghanistan. From Afghanistan, Modi will travel to energy-rich Qatar on Saturday itself and from there he will leave for a two day visit to Switzerland on Sunday. Asked at a press briefing on PM's visit whether the issue of black money will be raised by Modi during his talks with Swiss leaders, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said both the countries are in touch on the issue. "We are in touch with the Swiss government under the DTAA (Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement) mandate and we have had some discussions on this and we have a few planned in the near future. We have received support from the Swiss authorities on exchange of information on tax data between the two countries. "We do hope to engage as early as possible in the automatic exchange of information with Switzerland and this has been conveyed to Swiss tax authorities," he said. On India's bid for NSG membership, Jaishankar said India has been eyeing membership of the premier group for many, many years and that it has made "lot of progress" on that. "I think we have made lot of progress and that has led us to formally apply for the NSG membership some days ago. We are engaged with all NSG members regarding this issue and Switzerland is definitely an important member and definitely, I would expect it to come up," he said. India has formally applied for membership of the NSG on 12 May. From Switzerland, the Prime Minister travels to Washington on 6 June where he will have a packed schedule including an address to a joint session of the US Congress. He will be the fifth Indian Prime Minister to do so. Modi will begin his US visit on 6 June by paying tributes at the Arlington National Cemetery. He will then meet heads of a number of American think tanks and will attend an event to repatriate Indian antiquity by the US. On 7 June, the Prime Minister will hold wide-ranging talks with President Obama on the entire gamut of bilateral ties. The meeting will be followed by a launch to be hosted by Obama for Modi. In the afternoon, Modi will meet business leaders and address the US-India Business Council during which he is expected to highlight measures taken by his government to ensure ease of doing business. On 8 June, Modi will address the a joint meeting of the US Congress which will be followed by a lunch to be hosted by the Speaker. A reception is also being organised for Modi by the House and Senate Committees on foreign relations and the India Caucus. The Prime Minister will attend a community reception as well. The Prime Minister will be staying at Blair House, the President's guesthouse. "The US visit is sort of a consolidation visit...They (Modi and Obama) have work together to take forward the relationship," said the Foreign Secretary while highlighting progress of bilateral ties in the last two years including in areas of trade and defence. The two countries will come out with a joint statement. Asked whether PM's visit to Mexico and Switzerland was added at the last minute, the Foreign Secretary said the idea of visit to Switzerland arose from a meeting the Prime Minister had with Swiss President on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit earlier this year. He said visit to Mexico was being considered since September last year. On Modi's visit to Afghanistan, Jaishankar said the dam built at a cost of over Rs 1,700 crore will irrigate nearly 75,000 hectares of land in Herat province. The dam was first conceived by Afghanistan in 1976. Jaishankar said completion of the dam project is "monumental" and the priority for India now is to complete all pending projects in Afghanistan. Issues relating to security cooperation are also likely to figure during talks between Modi and Ghani. About Qatar visit, the strategically important Gulf region was key for India's energy security and that the country supplies 60 per cent of India's total LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas). In Qatar, the Prime Minister will hold talks with his counterpart Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani and Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani on a host of issues which may include trade and security. The Prime Minister of will host a dinner for Modi on Saturday. The Prime Minister will also visit a workers' camp in Doha. On Sunday, he will meet business leaders before holding talks with the Emir. He will also interact with the Indian community. The size of annual bilateral trade between India and Qatar is around USD 10 billion and both the countries would like to expand it significantly. Qatar has a major sovereign wealth fund and India was eyeing to attract investment from it. During his visit to Switzerland, the Prime Minister will hold talks with President of the Swiss Confederation Johann Schneider-Ammann on bilateral, regional and multilateral issues of mutual interest. Switzerland is India's fifth largest trading partner of India. The European country is also the 11th largest foreign investor in India. Jaishankar said a raft of issues to bolster trade partnership will be discussed by the Prime Minister with the Swiss leadership. The Prime Minister will arrive in Maxico from the US on 8 June. He will have extensive talks with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on key bilateral issues including India's membership bid at the NSG. This will be the first bilateral visit by an Indian Prime Minister after 1986 when then PM Rajiv Gandhi had visited that country. Then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had visited Mexico in 2012 to attend G 20 summit. The Prime Minister will leave for India on the evening of 8 June. Bengaluru: A political slugfest erupted in Karnataka on Friday over a "sting operation" that purportedly showed MLAs negotiating a money deal in exchange for their votes in the biennial elections to four Rajya Sabha seats from the state. A demand was also made that the Election Commission take appropriate action over the alleged money deal. As the videos of the "sting operations" aired by two private TV news channels on Thursday brought discomfiture to him over allegations about the ruling Congress' moves to win over MLAs including from the JD(S) to add up to its numbers, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah put up a brave face, saying,"...Congress has never done such things, they will never do it also." The BJP and JD(S) charged that the Chief Minister was behind the attempts to woo MLAs. The footage of "sting operation" by one channel showed a JD(S) MLA purportedly talking about money in crores of rupees for supporting a candidate while the one by another channel showed Congress candidate KC Ramamurthy and independent MLAs purportedly speaking about getting enhanced development funds for the constituency by the government in return for votes. Reacting to the sting operations, BJP state President and former Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa called Siddaramaiah an "architect" behind these activities. He said "Chief Minister himself is behind it. They are saying Rs 100 crore package will be given to those supporting supporting Congress along with other benefits...Chief Minister is trying to lure, no one else." Yeddyurappa demanded that the Election Commission take appropriate action on this issue. Hitting back, Siddaramaiah reminded that Yeddyurappa was the brain behind "operation Kamala" that was used to weaken opposition parties when BJP was in power in the state. "Operation Kamala" saw BJP winning over several Opposition MLAs who resigned from their party, joined BJP and won elections on its ticket that helped it secure comfortable majority in the Assembly. "Such things were started by Yeddyurappa, who did operation Kamala? It is he who started such things. Congress has never done such things, they will never do it also," Siddaramaiah told reporters. He said "no such thing has happened from our side...all of them whose names have appeared in the sting operation have denied it. Whether such thing has happened or not I don't know. How can I react." Former Prime Minister and JD(S) supremo HD Deve Gowda said "Chief Minister who has grown from my party (JDS) is doing this to finish the party." JD(S), which is facing embarrassment as its MLAs and in some cases their relatives are purportedly seen discussing about money ranging from Rs 5 to 10 crore in exchange for votes, alleged that Siddaramaiah is behind the stings to "finish" the party. Deve Gowda also blamed party's dissident MLAs Zameer Ahmed and Cheluvarayaswamy for hobnobbing with Siddaramaiah. "The intention of Siddaramaiah is to destroy JD(S), this is the intention of D K Shivakumar (Power Minister) also...." Deve Gowda's son and Former Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy said JD(S) MLAs were only testing those who had come to negotiate money in exchange for votes. He said "Mallikarjuna Kuba (JD(S) MLA) discussing about Rs 5 crore and 10 votes....after looking at the discussion (in the video) my opinion is he purposely said that to fool media persons who had gone for the sting operation. "If some one comes and asks an MLA will you get me 10 votes and money in exchange for it....I think he was aware about the sting operation and spoke the way he did purposefully," he added. Kumaraswamy said similar is the case with (JD(S) MLA) G T Devegowda's video, as those who had come for sting operation had introduced themselves as reporters from Delhi. Congress has fielded three candidates Jairam Ramesh, Oscar Fernandes (former Union ministers) and former IPS officer Ramamurthy for the Rajya Sabha polls scheduled for June 11. BJP and JD(S) have fielded Union Minister Nirmala Seetharaman and BM Farooq, respectively. Congress decision to field the third candidate, Ramamurthy, has given tense moments to JD(S), which needs five additional votes to see its candidate through, as it has 40 members. The required strength for victory is 45 votes. To the JDS discomfiture, five of its MLAs, including Zameer Ahmed, have reportedly decided to back the third candidate of Congress, which is sure of two seats but falls short of numbers for the third candidate. Congress has 122 MLAs and needs extra 13 votes to ensure the victory of its third candidate, with Chief Minister seeking the support of 11 independents and five JD(S) rebel legislators. BJP is also short of one vote but is confident of making up the shortfall. The Jawahar Bagh conflict in Mathura proved to be a kind of 'Jalianwala Bagh' for Superintendent of Police Mukul Dwivedi, SHO of Farah police station Santosh Yadav, and several others. Twenty four people, including the two police officers, were killed and over 40 people were injured in clashes during a drive to evict illegal occupants of the land in Mathura district. The deceased police officers, alongside other fellow servicemen were pitted against an armed murderous mob that owed its allegiance to a hitherto unknown outfit the Swadheen Bharat Subhash Sena (SBSS). There could not have been a worse manifestation of lawlessness than this in the most populous state of the country. Worse still, was the fact that the response from the Akhilesh Yadav government was simply pathetic. All it could do, was to announce an ex-gratia payment of Rs 20 lakh per family of the deceased, and to order a magisterial probe. An otherwise mighty minister, Shivpal Yadav Akhilesh's uncle and ruling Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav's younger brother appeared to be completely clueless at the media briefing held on Friday, and was unable to convey the state government's position to the public at large. He didn't speak even a single sentence of substance that could instil confidence among the people of Uttar Pradesh a state where not even the lives of senior police officers like the SP and the SHO could be protected, that too when they were on duty carrying out orders of the high court and the state administration, to evict the 'outfit'. This so called spiritual-social outfit had actually been a nuisance in the area using violence as means to browbeat lowly officials and staffers of various government departments they are one of the most blatant examples of unauthorised occupation, of around 200 acres of green space. Shivpal's sole defence was that the miscreants were outsiders, but the fact remains that the leader of this outfit, Ram Vriksh Yadav, was from Azamgarh in eastern UP. The only noteworthy thing Shivpal Yadav did in his media briefing was to shift the blame for this shameful incident to the "communal forces" an allusion to the BJP for supporting the Arajak Tatv (miscreants). The magisterial probe will look for lapses, if any, he said. The fact that the SBSS members charged on the police, not hesitating even a bit in aiming and shooting bullets at SP Dwivedi and SHO Yadav, and that they charged at other policemen with various firearms, is an indicator that the outfit are not like any ordinary encroachers, and are a murderous group with sinister designs. The SBSS also claimed a spiritual connect with Baba Jai Gurudev. The outfit made some of the most irrational and outlandish demands, which no government worth its name would negotiate even for a moment. Two years ago, in April 2014, this group had come to occupy parts of Jawahar Bagh on the pretext of resting for two days, while marching from Satna in Madhya Pradesh to New Delhi. But then they never left the place, and captured the whole of the Bagh and turned it into the headquarters with some kuchha-pucca structures. The state administration did nothing to evict them. The matter reached the high court and appropriate orders for eviction were first issued in May 2015. Again, the state government didn't fulfil its obligation to carry out the higher court's order, both in letter and in spirit. The question remains, however, that how could the law enforcement agencies and the state allow this over-ground Sena to grow, store arms and ammunitions to use against the state machinery in the heart of the holy Mathura city. Even the loss of 24 lives, including two senior police officers, have not stirred the conscience of the Samajwadi Party-led state administration. UP is preparing to go to Assembly polls early next year, and the politics from now on is bound to be played around this incident. But, it's time that the Akhilesh Yadav government spared a thought on how it has run the state so far, particularly in the law and order scenario where the police force attaches greater importance to locating the stolen buffaloes of Azam Khan, than on intelligence gathering and upgrading itself as a force. Hundreds of armed hooligans were, after all, squatting at the Jawahar Bagh for over two years. It is simply not possible that the police were not aware of their retaliatory intentions and capacity. Either the UP Police is grossly incompetent, or someone at the top in the government was giving it tacit patronage till things got out of hand. As a political party, the BJP is free to make as much noise as it wants, but the fact remains that both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his designated number two in the union government, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, represent UP and thus they can't merely keep questioning the Samajwadi Party government. The BJP, too, had a duty to perform. Agartala: The Trinamool Congress (TMC) will defeat the ruling Left Front in Tripura in the 2018 assembly polls and form the government, party Vice President Mukul Roy said in Agartala on Friday after meeting seven disgruntled Congress MLAs. Roy arrived in Agartala on Friday morning as an emissary of TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee and held a series of meetings with seven Congress legislators led by suspended leader Sudip Roy Barman and top leaders of the tribal-based Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT). "Trinamool Congress would come to power in the next assembly polls in Tripura in 2018. Ending of Left Front's misrule is a matter of time. TMC would be a major opposition group in the state assembly soon," Roy told reporters before leaving for Kolkata. Currently, Congress is the main opposition group in the state assembly with 10 legislators. Sudip Roy Barman, who was the opposition leader as head of the Congress legislator party (CLP), recently resigned from the post, protesting against Congress-Left electoral alliance in the recently held West Bengal assembly elections. Following Barman's resignation, state Congress working president Ashish Saha, Youth Congress' state chief Sushanta Chowdhury, women's front state head Kalyani Roy and scheduled caste front chief Prakash Chandra Das and many party leaders and workers quit their posts on the same issue. The party high command last month suspended Barman and Youth Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Brar took similar action against 14 Youth Congress leaders including Chowdhury for an indefinite period. Barman, Saha and Chowdhury recently went to Kolkata and met both Mamata Banerjee and Mukul Roy and discussed the possibility of joining TMC. Mukul Roy, who also met INPT leaders, said: "If we voted out the Left Front in West Bengal, we would be successful in Tripura too. Anti-Left alliance would be stronger in Tripura soon to oust the ruling Left parties." Senior Congress leader Gopal Roy, who was recently appointed as the CLP leader by the party's central leadership, said: "Trinamool Congress instead of ideology based politics has been doing politics of splitting of other political parties." The TMC retained power in West Bengal in the recent assembly elections, drubbing Congress-Left alliance. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Friday assured "strict action" against the perpetrators of the Mathura violence, which claimed 24 lives, including those of two policemen. "Uttar Pradesh government will ensure the strictest action under law against the perpetrators in the Mathura incident, speedy prosecution of the accused," said the Chief Minister. He said that a commissioner-level probe will investigate the incident and all those found guilty will be brought to justice. He also admitted that despite many discussions, the land was not evacuated. Matter will be investigated at Commissioner level, all those found guilty will be brought to justice: UP CM Akhilesh Yadav #Mathura ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) June 3, 2016 Police should have gone there with full preparation, but they had no idea about the arms & ammunition possessed by the encroachers: UP CM ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) June 3, 2016 Many attempts were made to hold discussions,warnings were issued, but they still didn't evacuate land. There has been a lapse as well-UP CM ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) June 3, 2016 Everything will come out in the inquiry, All those found at fault will also be dealt with: UP CM Akhilesh Yadav pic.twitter.com/Du2O6oV1QR ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) June 3, 2016 The Chief Minister also announced ex-gratia relief of Rs 20 lakh each for the families of the two police officers. Meanwhile, the Akhilesh Yadav government on Friday came under attack over Mathura violence from Opposition parties which questioned the law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh, where elections are due next year, and alleged that encroachers were enjoying political patronage. BSP supremo Mayawati said the SP government should resign taking responsibility for the "unfortunate and painful" incident and demanded a time-bound judicial inquiry. BJP sought a CBI probe and claimed the incident reflected the "lawlessness" in the state. Congress said that it was time that Samajwadi Party government "came out of its slumber" but added that "there should be no politics over the dead." "Mathura incident is entirely because of intelligence failure. Timely assessment was not done as to how many people were present at the spot and what firearms they possessed. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav cannot escape moral responsibility," state BJP spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak said, adding "this state government has become a blot and people will get rid of it." BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma alleged, "The main conspirator in the case has full protection of the Samajwadi Party. Policemen were sent to the spot with their hands tied and this is why two of them died." Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said Samajwadi Party government should take steps to address the serious situation. However, he asserted that it was not the time "to score political brownie points" and efforts should be made to swiftly bring the guilty to book and provide succor to the affected. "BJP should remember that instead of playing politics over dead, the important thing is to ensure peace is restored, that people who have occupied government land are punished, murderers are brought to book and Akhilesh government wakes up from its slumber and takes decisive action," he said. Senior Uttar Pradesh minister Shivpal Singh Yadav said there should be no politics over the incident. "Politics should not be done over the dead," Yadav said, even as Samajwadi Party MP Naresh Agarwal said it was easy to blame any government. "It is very easy to blame a government. But this government is doing its job," Agarwal, whose son is a minister in the Akhilesh Yadav government, said. Meanwhile, Governor Ram Naik, who is in Mumbai, sought a detailed report on the matter from the Chief Minister and a proper inquiry to nail the culprits. Twenty-four people, including an SP and an SHO, have been killed in the massive clash between police and encroachers that broke out in Mathura yesterday when police were trying to evict illegal occupants, believed to be of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi, from Jawahar Bagh on Allahabad High Court orders. Mayawati said it was a serious incident and an inquiry by divisional commissioner was just a mere formality. "The criminal mentality of SP government is directly responsible for violence, therefore a time bound judicial probe should be conducted so that truth is revealed," she said. "The incident is painful and serious. It is shameful for the SP government. SP government's policy of anarchy is responsible for this unfortunate incident," the BSP chief said. She claimed that the death of two policemen proves that due to lax policies of the government, departments especially police, were finding themselves helpless in executing their legal duties. The BSP supremo said the biggest fault of SP government was as to how it allowed such encroachment for two years. "Will giving ex-gratia compensate the families of two officers killed in the violence? If SP government thinks so, it is wrong," she said. With input from agencies BRASILIA Interim Brazilian President Michel Temer will press ahead with ambitious plans to balance the budget, reform pensions and draw private money into the energy sector despite the loss of two ministers to a corruption scandal, his chief of staff said on Thursday. Presidential chief of staff Eliseu Padilha said in an interview the government enjoys a solid two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress to push through legislation needed to plug a record deficit inherited 20 days ago from suspended President Dilma Rousseff. Padilha said the Temer government is very confident the Senate will vote to convict Rousseff for breaking budget laws in an impeachment trial, and it hopes this will happen as quickly as possible to remove any doubt about Temer's legitimacy. "The government will then have more political authority to act," Padilha said. He hoped the vote could come as soon as the end of July, before Brazil's holds the Olympic Games in August. "I am not worried about the impeachment vote, but we have to work hard to make sure the economy starts to grow again, which appears to be the case," Padilha said. The Temer plan to revive the economy includes a ceiling on public spending, a reduced role for the state and more room for private investment. Latin America's largest economy shrank for a fifth straight quarter in early 2016 as political turmoil and the sweeping corruption scandal centered on Petrobras weighed on activity. Gross domestic product fell 5.4 percent from a year earlier and unemployment has hit 11.2 percent. Within the space of one week, Temer had to drop Planning Minister Romero Juca, a key figure in getting austerity measures approved by Congress, and the minister in charge of fighting corruption, Fabiano Silveira, after leaked recordings suggested they had tried to derail the Petrobras investigation. Passage last week of the 2015 budget, authorizing an unprecedented deficit of 170 billion reais ($47.1 billion) this year, was a signal that Temer's government does enjoy the majority it needs to push through austerity measures. Brazil could balance its budget by 2018 without having to raise taxes, according to Padilha. Brazil has one of the heaviest tax burdens among emerging economies and the government has ruled out any increases for now that would be very unpopular. Padilha said only piecemeal changes are possible, such as simplifying complex taxes. The biggest item weighing on government accounts is Brazil's generous pension system, which Temer is committed to tackling. Pension reform will be enacted before the end of the year, even though a proposal that is being drawn up with labor unions has been delayed for an additional 15 days, he said. The sale of assets and greater involvement of the private sector in Brazil's oil and gas industry will come soon once legislation is enacted reducing the role of Petroleo Brasileiro (PETR4.SA), as Petrobras is called, Padilha said. Infrastructure concessions to private companies will focus on roads, airport and ports, with an auction of Belem ports set for next week, he said. Brazil's largest power utility Eletrobras (ELET6.SA) will remain in state hands, Padilha said. He would not comment on the privatization of Eletrobras subsidiaries, but said the injection of government funds in the utility in an emergency is not out of the question. Temer's government has no objection, in principle, to opening up agricultural land ownership to foreign investors again, but there in no plan for this on the drawing board as yet, he said. The new government also favors allowing foreign companies to hold a controlling stake in Brazilian airlines. "Where the capital comes from does not matter, as long as the airline remains a Brazilian company," Padilha said. Plugging Brazil's massive fiscal deficit could be done more rapidly than some in the market expect, but the new government is now focused on long-term reforms, Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles told Reuters on Thursday. (Editing by Alistair Bell) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. United Nations: India has called on the Security Council to "proactively" sanction terrorists involved in conflict-related sexual violence while asserting that there is a need to finalise a global treaty to counter the growing scourge of terrorism. India's Permanent Representative to the UN ambassador Syed Akbaruddin said while in the last two decades there had been a considerable strengthening of the normative framework around various aspects relating to women, peace and security, sexual violence in situations of armed conflict was yet to abate. He attributed this to the proliferation of armed conflicts and their evolving nature involving various non-state actors and the spread of terrorism in such situations across large parts of the world. "The more vulnerable sections, especially women suffer ever more in such violent conflicts," he said on Thursday at the Security Council's open debate on women, peace and security. Akbaruddin said the rapidly expanding trans-boundary nature of terrorist financing, supply of arms, recruitment and training of foreign fighters have led to a situation where whole regions are impacted and no country is in a position to effectively counter this menace alone. Lamenting the lack of unity in the international community to tackle complex challenges posed by terrorism, Akbaruddin said large trafficking networks run by transnational criminal groups compound the misery of vulnerable communities, especially women. "Tackling such complex challenges demands closely coordinated and collaborative efforts among nations," he said. "Sadly, we remain far from being able to come together to overcome such challenges collectively," Akbaruddin said, citing the "glaring example" of the lack of progress on the issue of finalising a Comprehensive Convention to Counter International Terrorism that can strengthen the global counter-terrorism strategy. Sanctions Committees of the Security Council need to address the issue of "proactively listing terrorist individuals and entities involved in situations of conflict related sexual violence," he said. "While the evolving normative framework suggests a number of short term measures, only a comprehensive approach facilitated by a supportive international environment can help sustain peace and security and build prosperous societies," he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to Afghanistan on Saturday to inaugurate the Salma Dam, in the first leg of a tour which will take him to Qatar, Switzerland, US and Mexico. The Afghan Parliament and the Salma dam are two of India's showpiece projects in Afghanistan. The Prime Minister was present for the inauguration of the Parliament building last December and he will now also be personally present for the commissioning of the Indian built hydel power and irrigation project. At around $275 million, this is the one of India's most expensive projects. India has extended an aid of over $2 billion to Afghanistan. The dam made by Afghan and Indian engineers and workers will irrigate nearly 44,000 hectares of land and add around 30 megawatts of power to the Herat grid. Afghan sources say that the project in Hari Rud river will benefit 50,000 families in four districts of Herat province. The dam is 20 kilometers long and three kilometres in width and has a storage capacity of 640 million cubic meters. With the commissioning of the Salma dam, now renamed the Afghanistan-India Friendship dam, Delhi will have completed its major commitment to Afghanistan. India has done well in Afghanistan, and its projects have touched the lives of ordinary people. This is why India has remained popular in Afghanistan, though its aid package is much below that what the US and other Western countries have contributed. Apart from this, India has also built the Delaram to Zarang highway, restored transmission lines from Pul-e-khumri to Kabul. Indians were under attack while building the Delaram highway and had to have the Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force escorting the men at the work site from the camps to the construction site. However, with Saturday's inauguration of the dam, India would have completed all the projects it undertook in Afghanistan. Should India invest more in Afghanistan right now? Many believe that with Taliban gaining ground, India must be much more careful and choose smaller projects with care. "The quantum of assistance should not go down, but projects must be selected with the ground situation in mind," said Vivek Katju, a former ambassador to Afghanistan. "In foreign policy we cannot look for short term gains but for long term strategic interests," said Katju. So far India has been on the right track. India's growing friendship with Afghanistan has always been a major worry for Pakistan. The ISI and the army want to make certain that Afghanistan remains under its sphere of influence. During Hamid Karzai's term at the helm, his closeness to India was a major irritant and Rawalpindi worried that Delhi was spreading itself out in its backyard. The fact that besides the embassy in Kabul, India had consulates in Kandhar, Herat, Jalalabad and Mazr-e-Sharif irked Pakistan. When Karzai's successor, Ashraf Ghani took over he kept aloof from India. Reconciliation with Pakistan was on the top of Ghanis agenda since his inauguration in September 2014. Ghani sought to soothe Pakistani concerns about Indias footprints in Afghanistan. He relegated India to the periphery of his foreign policy. He also began sending his army officers for training in a Pakistani academy unlike Karzai who sent his people to India. Bent on peace talks with the Taliban, he knew that Pakistan was the only country which could get the Taliban to come to the table. He visited Pakistan in November soon after he took office. He broke protocol to personally call on the army chief Raheel Sharif at his headquarters in Rawalpindi. For a while it was all hunky-dory between the two neighbours. For Ashraf Ghani, it was Islamabad, Beijing, London, Saudi Arabia and Washington. India had to wait till April 2015 before the Afghan President was ready to visit. It seemed with the new equation, India was completely out of Afghanistan. It would complete the projects it had undertaken during Hamid Karzai's term and back out. India had no role either in the talks or in further projects in Afghanistan. But Indian officials were not unduly concerned about it. "We are not worried," was the refrain from the Indian establishment. Indian officials were confident that Pakistan would continue using the Haqqani network to further their long term strategy of gaining strategic depth in Afghanistan. Sooner or later the equation between Afghanistan and Pakistan would sour. And finally that did happen. President Ghani is sounding more and more like his predecessor Hamid Karzai and accuses Pakistan of backing a resurgent Taliban. Peace talks between the Afghan government and Taliban, with Pakistan, US and China is going nowhere. President Barak Obama had said after a American drone killed Mullah Mansour the Taliban chief that he was opposed to talks with the Afghan government. The new Taliban leader Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada is an Islamic scholar and no one yet knows his views on talks.. His two deputies are Mullah Omar's son Mullah Yaqoob, and Sirajuddin Haqqani son of Jalaluddin Haqqani. The Haqqanis are a lethal group and close to Pakistan's ISI. The Haqqani network is suspected to be responsible for the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul where an Indian diplomat and the defence attache was killed in 2008. Meanwhile, Taliban continues to launch deadly attacks across Afghanistan. Peace at the moment seems a distant dream.Yet India's strategic interests dictate that it continues both aid and political ties with Afghanistan. India is playing the right cards here. Washington: Terrorist safe havens not only continue to exist in the tribal areas of Pakistan, but also militants are able to openly raise funds from heavily populated areas, the US today said alleging that Islamabad is not taking action against terror groups like Haqqani network and Lashkar-e-Taiba. As a result, Pakistan-based terrorist groups continue to conduct terrorist attacks inside India and Afghanistan, the State Department said in its annual 'Country Reports on Terrorism 2015', which is mandated by Congress. "In 2015, an assortment of terrorist groups, to include the Haqqani Network, attempted to hide in or operate from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, a mountainous region along Pakistans northwest border with Afghanistan," the State Department said. It said some UN-designated terrorist groups, such as Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) affiliates Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation, were able to raise funds and hold rallies in Pakistan. LeT and JuD leader, Hafiz Saeed, who is also a UN-designated terrorist, was able to make frequent public appearances in support of the organization's objectives, which were covered by the Pakistani media, for much of the year. "In September, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Agency prohibited media coverage of LeT and affiliated groups, although the groups continued to recruit and operate around the country. Despite JuD and FiF's proscription under UN sanctions regimes, the Pakistani government affirmed in December that neither organization was banned in Pakistan," the State Department said. India, the State Department said continued to experience terrorist attacks, including operations launched by Maoist insurgents and transnational groups based in Pakistan. Indian authorities continued to blame Pakistan for cross-border attacks in Jammu and Kashmir. In July, India experienced a terrorist attack in Gurdaspur, Punjab; the first in Punjab state since the 1990s, the report said. Over the course of 2015, the Indian government sought to deepen counterterrorism cooperation with the US. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi continued to prioritize counterterrorism cooperation during Obama's visit to India in January and Modi's visit to Washington in September. The Indian government closely monitored the domestic threat from IS and other terrorist organisations, it said. The State Department said Pakistan is slow in taking action against 2008 Mumbai attack perpetrators. "Anti-Terrorism Courts had limited procedures for obtaining or admitting foreign evidence. The trial of seven suspects accused in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack was ongoing at year's end, with many witnesses for the prosecution remaining to be called by the court," it said. "Security concerns and procedural issues resulted in a slow pace of trial proceedings," the State Department said. In December 2014, the court granted bail to the lead defendant, alleged Mumbai attack planner and LeT operational commander Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi. Lakhvi was released from prison on bail in April 2015 and the government of Pakistan reports he remained under house arrest at the end of 2015, it added. According to the State Department, money transfer systems persisted throughout much of Pakistan, especially along the border with Afghanistan, and may be abused by drug traffickers and terrorist financiers operating in the cross-border area. While Pakistani authorities did report having frozen assets of UN-designated entities during 2015, the amount was unclear. The US government was not informed of any successful terrorism financing prosecutions in 2015. Singapore: Islamic State jihadists in the strategic northern Syria town of Manbij "aspire" to directing international terror plots, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said on Friday. Anti-IS fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed alliance of Kurds and Arabs, this week launched an offensive to capture Manbij. The town is on the north-south axis between Jarablus, on the border with Turkey and controlled by Islamic State fighters, and Raqa, the Islamic State group's self-proclaimed capital in Syria. Its capture has long been seen as key in stemming the flow of foreign fighters into and out of Syria. "There are people there, and I can't go into any details, who aspire to inspiring or even directing plots outside of Syria," Carter said at a news conference in Singapore, where he is attending a regional security summit. "That, along with that fact that it is a transit hub for foreign fighter flows in both directions, is a reason why it is an important objective and we are pleased to work with local forces ... who basically want to take back their own territory from ISIL ... and they are making progress," he added, using an acronym for the Islamic State group. Carter is in Singapore until Sunday for the Shangri-La Dialogue, a meeting of Asian security chiefs to discuss regional security. Tokyo: The abandonment of a seven-year-old Japanese boy on a mountain road for misbehaving has sparked a national debate, with some expressing anger and others sympathy for the pressures parents face in disciplining their children. Yamato Tanooka was discovered alive and well early on Friday after spending nearly a week sheltered alone on a military base just a few kilometres from where he was forced out of the family car for misbehaving. While views outside Japan persist of a hard-working people raised under a tough samurai-style discipline, the reality is far more nuanced. As in much of the developed world, Japanese parents too have become more indulgent towards their children in recent decades, to the point that older generations complain the country has gone soft. Japanese reacted with outrage on social media after news emerged of what happened last Saturday, with the actions of the parents roundly condemned as "abuse" and them being described as "stupid" for what they had done. And though there was a national sigh of relief after the boy's rescue, opinions remained harsh. "Missing boy was found and that's all wonderful, but the parents must be disciplined such as being abandoned on an uninhabited island," read a Japanese-language tweet. The father, Takayuki Tanooka, admitted that what he did was wrong, apologising in front of reporters after being reunited with his son, and decrying his own action as "excessive". He and his wife had originally fabricated a story that the child got lost on a family outing in the mountains, not wanting to own up to having meted out such a harsh punishment. Among the most notable opinion leaders critical of the parents was prominent education expert Naoki Ogi. "The parents who put him in this situation must be harshly condemned," Ogi wrote earlier this week on his widely followed blog. "Surely, they will be arrested soon," he added. But he also said that many adults had told him they too as children were abandoned by their parents as a form of punishment. "This is apparently not unusual!!" he wrote. While many social critics, television personalities and others have condemned the parents, some were quick to sympathise over frustration related to child-rearing and discussed their own experiences of tough parental love. "Should we call all forms of strict disciplining abuse?" said one tweet. "If you were his parents, would you never keep a distance from your child or even abandon them? "This case could be a chance to think about how we engage with children." Cambridge, Massachusetts: Matt Damon spoke to Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduates Friday and passed on a little advice he got from former President Bill Clinton. The actor, who grew up near the MIT campus and played a mathematically gifted MIT janitor in Good Will Hunting, listed what he described as some of the world's greatest problems, including income inequality, a corrupt banking system and a broken political system. Then he told graduates: "Turn toward the problems you see. You have to engage." More than 1,000 undergraduates and almost 1,800 graduate students received their degrees at Friday's ceremony. Damon, who dropped out of Harvard to pursue his acting career, said being keynote speaker was an honour he didn't deserve. He questioned why he was selected when previous commencement speakers have included Nobel prize winners and presidents. "And who did you get? The guy who did the voice for a cartoon horse," referring to the 2002 animated movie Stallion of the Cimarron. He even let his politics shine through, taking a swipe at presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump while discussing simulation theory the notion that the world is part of an advanced alien species computer simulation. "If there are multiple simulations, how come we have to be in the one where Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee for president? Can we transfer to a different one?" he asked. The actor and filmmaker best known for his roles as Jason Bourne also borrowed a line from his latest movie, The Martian, to caution graduates: "Not every problem has a high-tech solution. We can't science the you-know-what out of every problem." He added: "You've got to go out and do really interesting things, important things, inventive things, because this world has problems that we need you to drop everything and solve." New Delhi: When Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits the US on 7-8 June in the course of his five-nation tour starting on Saturday, he will be among the few close world leaders that President Barack Obama is inviting in the last year of his presidency. President Obama spoke to the Prime Minister and mentioned to him that this year he was inviting some leaders with whom he had a very close and productive working relationship to visit him in the United States, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said at a pre-departure media briefing here on Friday. This will be Modi's second bilateral visit to the US after his visit in September 2014. Jaishankar said that in many ways it would be a sort of consolidation visit after Obama and Modi working on the US-India relationship in the last two years. After departing on Saturday morning, Modi will stop over in Herat in Afghanistan where he will, jointly with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, inaugurate the India-Afghan Friendship Dam, earlier known as Salma Dam, that has been rebuilt with Indian aid. Originally constructed in 1976 on the Hari river basin, the Salma Dam suffered extensive damage during the civil war in Afghanistan. It was built at a cost of approximately Rs 1,700 crore, Jaishankar said. He said that three turbines on the dam will provide 42 MW of electricity and the water will irrigate around 75,000 hectares of land. After attending a lunch to be hosted in his honour by Ghani, Modi will leave for Doha, Qatar, where he will meet Qatari Prime Minister Abdullah Bin Nasser Bin Khalifa Al Thani on Saturday evening. He will also visit a camp of Indian workers. Qatar is home to around 630,000 expatriate Indians, many of whom are blue collar workers. Modi will become the first Indian prime minister to visit four Gulf countries after having visited the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Iran. On Sunday, he will begin his engagements in Qatar with a meeting with business leaders following which he will hold a restricted meeting with Emir of Qatar Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani. Jaishankar pointed out that trade between India and the Gulf region stood at $112 billion and two-thirds of India's energy supplies come from that region. Bilateral trade between India and Qatar stands at $10 billion. It (Qatar) can also be a large economic partner as it has a large sovereign wealth fund, the foreign secretary said. After signing of bilateral agreements and an interaction with the Indian community, Modi will leave for Geneva, Switzerland, on Sunday evening. On 6 June, the prime minister will hold a meeting with President of the Swiss Confederation Johann Schneider-Ammann and also interact with business leaders. Jaishankar said that Switzerland was India's fifth largest trade partner and the 11th largest investor in India. The country is strong in the areas of renewable energy and vocational education. After concluding his engagements in Switzerland, Modi will leave for Washington on 6 June where he will meet heads of think tanks. On 7 June, he will be hosted for lunch by President Obama at the White House after which he will attend a business meeting. The highlight of Modi's US visit will be his address to a joint sitting of the US Congress on 8 June. Today, the Congress is very much at the heart of our relationship with the United States, Jaishankar said. It has been very supportive of India, he said. After attending a lunch and a reception at the US Congress and an Indian community reception, Modi will depart for Mexico City on 8 June afternoon where he will hold a meeting with President Enrique Pena Nieto. This will be the first prime ministerial bilateral visit from India to Mexico in 30 years after then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's visit in 1986. Manmohan Singh visited Mexico in 2012 to attend the G20 Summit. Jaishankar said that two-way trade between India and Mexico stood at $6 around billion. Within Asia, India is the largest importer of crude oil from Mexico. India exports pharmaceutical products and automobile parts to Mexico. We expect the focus of the discussions will be on bilateral cooperation, specially bilateral economic cooperation, Jaishankar said. After attending a dinner that will be hosted for him by President Pena Nieto, Modi will leave for India on 8 June. ABUJA Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday said fraudsters have asked the government for money to negotiate the release of more 200 girls abducted by Boko Haram militants over two years ago from their school in the northeastern town of Chibok town. The first of the 219 girls held captive since the mass kidnapping in April 2014 to be found alive was discovered last month. A second girl was rescued days later, although campaigners said she was taken in a separate abduction. "While the rescue and safe return of the remaining Chibok girls remains a top priority of his administration, he will not fall for the antics of fraudsters," Buhari's spokesman, Femi Adesina, said. Adesina said the president stated this during a meeting with archbishops of the Church of Nigeria. "President Buhari said that his administration will continue to insist on a thorough authentication of the identities and bona fides of any persons or groups claiming to have custody of the girls before entering into negotiations with them," he said. Boko Haram, which has tried to create an Islamic caliphate in northeast Nigeria over the last seven years, captured 276 girls in the Chibok raid but 57 escaped in the melee. Under Buhari's command, and aided by Nigeria's neighbours, the army has recaptured most territory lost to the group. (Reporting by Felix Onuah, Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram, Editing by Angus MacSwan) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to strongly push for India's membership at the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) during his visit to Switzerland, Mexico and the US countries that are part of the elite group that looks after critical issues relating to the atomic sector. India has been pushing for membership of the 48-nation bloc for last few years and had formally moved its application on 12 May. "This has been the objective we pursued for many many years. I think we have made lot of progress and that has led us to formally apply for the NSG membership some days ago. We are engaged with all NSG members," Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said. He said India was looking at a very major domestic expansion in nuclear power sector besides at a "very large" international collaboration with different countries and its entry into the NSG would help its objective of having clean energy. Insisting India not signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty should not be linked to its bid for NSG membership, he said India fulfilled all its commitments relating to atomic sector. "We have a very solid record with which much of the world is comfortable. The NSG has already made one exception for us. In a sense, our credentials have been examined, a judgement was arrived at in 2008. "In 2008, we gave some commitments, we gave commitments on separation of our nuclear programme, between civil and the strategic side. We agreed to accept and implement additional protocol... we faithfully followed up," he said. The Foreign Secretary said granting NSG membership to India is a "logical next step". During his talks with the leadership of Mexico, Switzerland and the US, Modi is likely to seek support for India's membership bid at the NSG. Lahore: The Pakistan police on Friday claimed to have arrested all five suspects involved in torturing and setting a teenaged girl on fire in Punjab province for refusing to marry a divorcee twice her age and booked them for murder. Maria Sadaqat, 19, was attacked on Monday in Upper Dewal village of Murree hill resort. She was admitted to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences with 85 per cent burn injuries. Before her death, Maria recorded her statement to the police and told them that she was pressed for marriage by the owner of a local private school where she used to teach. "We have arrested all five people including prime suspect Master Shaukat named in the FIR," senior police officer Rawalpindi Wasal Fakhar Sultan told reporters. He said the suspects have been booked for murder and some other sections of the Pakistan Penal Code. "Anti-terrorism sections will only be included on the direction of the court," he said. In her statement, Maria has said the five persons had entered her house when she was with her little sister and beat her. They doused her in petrol and set her on fire. Maria has alleged the five men burnt her alive because she had refused the marriage proposal of Master Shaukat's son. Violence against women is common in Pakistan where every year hundreds of women are killed for honour. Last month the gutted body of a young girl was found from a vehicle in Abbottabad. Police investigation into the case showed a class 9 girl was kidnapped from her house, sedated, murdered and set on fire after a decision of a local Jirga. In April, a disabled 22-year-old girl from Swat was allegedly raped by a male nurse at PIMS. Nearly 1,100 women were killed in Pakistan last year in so-called honour-killings, the country's independent Human Rights Commission says. Campaigners say most "honour killings" are not reported in Pakistan. Washington: The US has said it views India as a vital partner in the region, adding that the relationship between the two countries is of "incredible significance" to the world, days ahead of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Washington. "We're very much looking forward to Prime Minister Modis visit. The US-Indian relationship is of incredible significance, not only to the region but to the world," State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner, told reporters in Washington. "The breadth of the US-Indian relationship is wide. It addresses security. Its got a strong economic component. We're looking to build closer relationships across the board with India, because we see it as a vital partner in the region," Toner said. Modi is scheduled to arrive in Washington on 6 June on a three-day visit. The Prime Minister is scheduled to meet US President Barack Obama at the White House on June 7 and address a joint meeting of the US Congress on 8 June. "We have a broad bilateral and multilateral relationship with India and look forward to engaging on all those issues," he said. Singapore: India and Singapore on Friday held the first dialogue between their defence ministers as they agreed to enhance the scale and complexity of existing bilateral military interaction, at a time when freedom of navigation in international waterways has emerged as a major concern. The first Defence Ministers' Dialogue (DMD) between Manohar Parrikar and his Singaporean counterpart Ng Eng Hen marked raising of bilateral defence cooperation to the highest level. "We had very detailed discussions. We have agreed on expanding the interaction between the armed forces and defence R&D and industry participation under (the) 'Make in India' (initiative)," Parrikar told reporters after the dialogue. "I am very hopeful that this association with Singapore is going to build up to a much more than the strategic partnership," said Parrikar, who also called on Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong this morning before the DMD. "We have agreed (that the) scope and complexity of the interaction between the armed forces would be further enhanced," he said. Parrikar further said the two sides also agreed to collaborate between industries. "Under (the) 'Make in India' initiative, the industry-to-industry cooperation has already begun and it is showing positive response," he said. The agreement will also see Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) working with a Singapore research agency on research-oriented projects. Responding to questions, Singapore Minister Ng said: "We both agreed that we will work towards renewal of agreements" for training of Singapore armed forces in India from 2017 and 2018. Singapore and Indian armed forces interact frequently and "it is a not a new relationship", stressed Ng. "Both countries would also want to deepen the complexity and engagement between our two militaries under the revised defence cooperation agreement," he said. A joint statement issued after the meeting said both ministers committed to enhance the scale and complexity of existing bilateral exercises between the militaries. The minister emphasised the importance of internationalcooperation in tackling transnational security threats. In particular, both ministers strongly condemned terrorism, and renewed their commitment to cooperation in counterterrorism efforts besides emphasising the importance of safeguarding maritime security in international waterways, said the statement. Freedom of navigation in international waterways like the disputed South China Sea has emerged as a concern for many countries including the US, which has sent warships and military planes to challenge territorial claims by China over the strategic waters. In response, China has deployed fighter jets and ships to track and warn off US ships. Taipei: Taiwan held the island's first ever commemoration in parliament Friday of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown as lawmakers urged the new government to address human rights issues in its dealing with China. It comes weeks after China-sceptic Tsai Ing-wen was sworn in as president, succeeding Ma Ying-jeou who oversaw an unprecedented eight-year rapprochement with Beijing. Ties have rapidly cooled since Tsai won the presidency in January, with Beijing highly distrustful of her traditionally independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). In the past, Taiwan's government has repeatedly urged China to learn lessons from the Tiananmen crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, in which more than 1,000 were killed according to some estimates. But parliamentarians have never before gathered to voice their views. A day ahead of the 4 June anniversary, senior lawmakers from the DPP and the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) were joined by human rights activists and exiled Chinese dissident Wu'er Kaixi as they observed a minute's silence. They also signed a motion proposed by DPP lawmaker Yu Mei-nu to demand the government "express Taiwan's serious concerns over redressing the June 4 incident at the appropriate time" in future interactions between the two sides. "Taiwan and China have very close ties, so the suppression of human rights that happened to Chinese citizens could also threaten human rights in Taiwan," Yu said. KMT lawmaker Chen Shei-saint broke partisan ranks to voice his support, saying democratisation in China was "the biggest assurance for Taiwan's security." Taiwan is self-ruling after splitting with China in 1949 following a civil war, but Beijing still sees it as part of its territory to be reunified. Since Tsai took power Beijing has been pushing her to adhere to its "one China" concept. Taiwan was left furious after its citizens were deported from Kenya and Malaysia to the mainland as part of fraud investigations, a move seen as a pressure tactic on Tsai. For its part, the DPP this week dropped what were criticised as "China-centric" changes to the high school curriculum that triggered major protests last year while the KMT were still in power. The repealing of the curriculum changes was criticised by Beijing, which warned Taiwan it would "shoulder the consequences for repeating the history of provoking tension and instability". Activists urged parliament to hold the Tiananmen commemoration every year. "Please send a message to China's authoritarian government that... you are standing beside pro-democracy campaigners and that you are different from the Chinese government," said Wu'er, a prominent student leader in 1989 now living in exile in Taiwan. Also speaking in parliament, Yang Sen-hong, chairman of Taiwan Association for China Human Rights, said Taiwan should "bravely tell (China) to stop the terror and end the disaster, otherwise Taiwan will suffer too". Toronto: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday his government has expressed its dissatisfaction with China after the country's foreign minister berated a Canadian journalist this week for asking a question about China's human rights record. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said it was "irresponsible" of the reporter to ask about human rights and appeared visibly angry as he delivered the scolding in the lobby of Global Affairs headquarters at a joint news conference with Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion on Wednesday. Wang said the human rights question was "full of prejudice" about China and "totally unacceptable." Wang also asked the reporter if she'd ever been to China. "Don't ask questions in such an irresponsible manner," he said. The question from the journalist from the web outlet IPolitics was agreed to by a number of journalists representing several news organizations at the event. Trudeau said Friday both Dion and officials from Global Affairs "have expressed our dissatisfaction to both the Chinese foreign minister and to the ambassador of China to Canada our dissatisfaction with the way our journalists were treated." "Freedom of the press is extremely important to me," Trudeau said. "We know that the job of the media is to ask tough questions." Dion didn't say anything about Wang's outburst at the news conference on Wednesday and opposition parties have criticized him for it. Earlier, in response to the question that offended his counterpart, Dion said he brought up the jailing of a Canadian, Kevin Garratt, who is charged with espionage in China. Garratt was indicted by prosecutors in Dandong, a city on the North Korean border where he and his wife ran a popular coffee shop and conducted Christian aid work for North Koreans. He and his wife Julia were arrested in August 2014 by the state security bureau. His wife was later released on bail. TUNIS Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi on Thursday called for negotiations among political parties, unions and independents to form a new unity government to help advance economic reforms in an attempt to calm social tensions. Essebsi's call came as Tunisia's current ruling coalition is struggling to create more growth and jobs after a series of militant attacks battered the North African state's tourism industry and economy. "It is time for a change, and for audacity," Essebsi said in a televised interview. "We need a more courageous alternative that can apply the law and fight against unemployment." He said he would meet with the powerful UGTT president to invite him into a new unity government. The UGTT has been one of the main opponents of some of the government's austerity programmes and had recently threatened to call strikes. Any negotiations to form a new government will need the current cabinet to resign and a parliament approval. But it would also take time to find consensus among secular, Islamist and left-wing parties and the powerful UGTT. Tunisia has emerged as a political model for democratic change since its 2011 uprising against Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, but economic reforms demanded by its lenders to tackle high unemployment and frustration among its young have lagged behind. (Reporting by Tarek Amara; writing Patrick Markey) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. ANKARA A Turkish cleaner at a camp for Syrians fleeing the war was jailed for 108 years on Friday for sexually abusing boys, in a case that has highlighted the vulnerability of child refugees. The 29-year-old man did not deny the charges, but said many employees and managers in the camps were involved, Dogan News Agency reported. He said he paid the children 2-5 lira ($0.70-$1.70) before assaulting them in the toilets. The man, who worked as a cleaner at the Nizip Camp in Gaziantep in southeast Turkey, assaulted boys aged between 8 and 12 for at least three months until the start of this year, Dogan and other media reported. He was convicted of abusing eight Syrian boys whose families had filed complaints, the local bar association said. Local media said the families of other victims had kept quiet out of fear of deportation. The case has caused widespread outrage in Turkey, which prides itself on its humanitarian response to the Syrian civil war, sheltering 2.7 million refugees. The camp, home to about 14,000 people, was visited by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in April. Around a tenth of the Syrian refugees in Turkey live in camps run by the government's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority which said last month it was taking all necessary measures in light of the case. (Writing by Ece Toksabay; Editing by David Dolan and Robin Pomeroy) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. UNITED NATIONS United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon slammed the Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting in Yemen for killing and maiming children by adding it to an annual blacklist of states and armed groups that violate children's rights during conflict. The coalition was responsible for 60 percent of child deaths and injuries last year, killing 510 and wounding 667, according to Ban's report released on Thursday, which also said the coalition carried out half the attacks on schools and hospitals. The Saudi-led coalition began a military campaign in Yemen in March last year with the aim of preventing Iran-allied Houthi rebels and forces loyal to Yemen's ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh from taking control of the country. "Grave violations against children increased dramatically as a result of the escalating conflict," Ban said in the report. "In Yemen, owing to the very large number of violations attributed to the two parties, the Houthis/Ansar Allah and the Saudi Arabia-led coalition are listed for killing and maiming and attacks on schools and hospitals," he said. The Houthis, Yemen government forces and pro-government militia have been on the U.N. blacklist for at least five years and are considered "persistent perpetrators." Also appearing again on the list is al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The Saudi Arabia mission to the United Nations was not immediately available to comment on the report. The U.N. report blacklists groups that "engage in the recruitment and use of children, sexual violence against children, the killing and maiming of children, attacks on schools and/or hospitals and attacks or threats of attacks against protected personnel, and the abduction of children." The report cited a deadly U.S. air strike on a hospital run by medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres in Kunduz, Afghanistan, although it said the attack was carried out by "international forces" and did not blacklist the United States. Along with warring parties in Yemen, the United Nations named armed groups in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Iraq, Mali, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Colombia, Nigeria and the Philippines. Government forces in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Myanmar, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria were named on the blacklist. Ban urged the 193 U.N. member states to ensure engagement in hostilities and responses to threats to peace and security comply with international law. "It is unacceptable that the failure to do so has resulted in numerous violations of children's rights," Ban said. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Dan Grebler) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Los Angeles: "Check on my cat," was the last message left by Mainak Sarkar, the Indian-American gunman who shot dead his wife and his former college professor before turning the gun on himself, Los Angles police said. When detectives arrived at professor William Klug's office in the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) on Wednesday morning, they found two bodies besides a note from Sarkar listing his home address in Minnesota and asking someone to "check on my cat." "Immediately we were highly suspicious," LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said on 38-year-old Sarkar's note. "That made me uneasy about what we would find when we got to Minnesota," he said. The LAPD worked with the FBI and Minnesota authorities and served a search warrant at Sarkar's home, Beck said. Inside the home, they found extra ammunition and a box for one of two pistols found at UCLA, as well as the three-name "kill list," that included the names of Klug, another UCLA professor and Ashley Hasti, he said. Authorities then went to the woman's (Hasti's) home in Brooklyn Park, a Minneapolis suburb, and found her body, Brooklyn Park Police Deputy Chief Mark Bruley said. "We have multiple detectives working on this case," Bruley said. Beck said it appeared the woman had been dead of a gunshot wound for "maybe a couple of days." The woman killed by Sarkar is thought to be Ashley Hasti. Local records confirmed that Hasti was married to Sarkar on 14 June, 2011. It was unclear if they remained married at the time of the shooting, the Times said. Sarkar drove some 3,200 km from Minnesota to Los Angeles, according to Beck, but it was unclear how long he was in the city before Wednesday's shooting. Police are now searching for the grey 2003 Nissan Sentra Sarkar, an alumni of the IIT-Kharagpur, drove from Minnesota to California, Beck said. On Wednesday, a "heavily armed" Sarkar carried a backpack, two semiautomatic pistols and extra magazines to Klug's fourth-floor office, where he fatally shot the professor before turning the gun on himself, Beck said. Sarkar, he said, "was certainly prepared to engage multiple victims." A note from Sarkar included language about the second professor, Beck said. "We believe that he went to kill two faculty from UCLA," Beck said. "He was only able to locate one." The second professor, whom Beck did not name, was not on campus at the time of the shooting. Police have been in contact with that person, who "is fine," he said. That professor "knew Sarkar had issues with him," Beck said. Klug, 39, was a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Sarkar had accused him of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else, police said. Los Angeles: Hundreds of heavily armed officers swarmed the sprawling UCLA campus on Wednesday following a shooting that forced thousands to barricade themselves in classrooms and offices, some using belts and chairs to secure doors, until authorities determined the gunman and the professor he shot were dead. About two hours after the first 911 call came in around 10 am, with the centre of campus still saturated with officers, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said it was a murder-suicide and declared the threat over. Two men were dead, and authorities found a gun and what might be a suicide note, he said. William S Klug, a professor of mechanical engineering, was gunned down in an engineering building office, according to a law enforcement official. The official has knowledge of the investigation but wasn't authorized to publicly discuss it. The shooter has not yet been identified. Colleagues of Klug's tell The Associated Press he was a married father of two and a kind, gentle person. UCLA biology and chemistry Professor Charles Knobler said those who knew Klug are in shock. He described the professor as "a very lively, lovable, likable guy." The response to the shooting was overwhelming: Teams of officers in helmets and bulletproof vests looking for victims and suspects ran across the normally tranquil campus tucked in the city's bustling west side. Some with high-powered rifles yelled for bystanders to flee. Groups of officers stormed into buildings that had been locked down and cleared hallways as police helicopters hovered overhead. Advised by university text alerts to turn out the lights and lock the doors where they were, many students let friends and family know they were safe in social media posts. Some described frantic evacuation scenes, while others wrote that their doors weren't locking and posted photos of photocopiers and foosball tables they used as barricades. It was the week before final exams at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose 43,000 students make it the largest campus in the University of California system. Classes were canceled Wednesday, but they are expected to resume Thursday. Olivia Cabadas, a 22-year-old nursing student, was getting ready to take a quiz in the mathematics building when her classmates began getting cellphone alerts. Through a window, they could see students rushing down the hallway. An officer yelled that everyone should get out. "It was just a little surreal this is actually happening," Cabadas said. "It was chaos." Those locked down inside classrooms described a nervous calm. Some said they had to rig the doors closed with whatever was at hand because they would not lock. Umar Rehman, 21, was in a math sciences classroom adjacent to Engineering IV, the building where the shooting took place. The buildings are connected by walkway bridges near the center of the 419-acre campus. "We kept our eye on the door. We knew that somebody eventually could come," he said, acknowledging the terror he felt. The door would not lock and those in the room devised a plan to hold it closed using a belt and crowbar, and demand ID from anyone who tried to get in. Scott Waugh, an executive vice-chancellor and provost, said the university would look into concerns about doors that would not lock. Overall, he said, the response was smooth. Tanya Alam, 19, also was in the same classroom with about 20 other students. She said she saw an alert on her phone that warned of police activity near Engineering IV. Then, several minutes later, an alert said there was an active shooter. "I let that sink in. Then I realized there was a shooter on campus and Engineering IV is right here! So I said it out loud," she said. The teacher's assistant told students to shut their laptops, turned out all the lights and switched off the projector. They were ordered to be quiet and got under their desks. Sitting on the ground, Alam cried. Students were told to put their phones away, too, but no one did, she said. In the darkened room, the glow of screens illuminated many faces. "On one hand, yes, this is an emergency. But on the other hand when your mother is calling from miles away ..." Alam said, trailing off. Their entire classroom was finally allowed to leave. Students were greeted by a phalanx of SWAT team members but were not searched. SWAT officers cleared occupants one by one at the mathematical sciences building. One man walked out with his hands up and was told to get on his knees. An armed officer searched him and his backpack, then sent him on his way with his hands still in the air. London: Leaving the European Union would be an act of "economic self-harm," British Prime Minister David Cameron said during a televised grilling that saw him challenged on the emotive topic of immigration and accused of scaremongering about the impact of quitting the 28-nation bloc. Three weeks before British voters decide whether to stay in the EU, Cameron on Thursday was pressed on the repercussions for immigration, security and the economy as he fielded questions from a journalist and audience members during a lively Sky News program. Cameron's Conservative government says it aims to reduce net annual migration to less than 100,000 but last year it was more than 330,000, roughly half of it from other EU nations. He insisted that Britain can use curbs to welfare benefits and other measures to control migrant numbers while remaining in the bloc, even though citizens of all EU nations have the right to live and work in other member states. "There are good ways of controlling migration and there are bad ways," Cameron said. "It would be madness to try to do that by trashing our economy and pulling out of the single market." The referendum campaign is growing increasingly heated as widely varying polls suggest an unpredictable result. The "leave" side is stressing the pressure that EU immigrants have put on British jobs and public services, while "remain" campaigners seek to keep the focus on the economic uncertainty that UK exit known as "Brexit" would wreak. Many voters have expressed frustration at all the claims and counterclaims, and Thursday's studio audience selected to include pro-and anti-EU voters, as well as undecideds was sometimes vocally skeptical of Cameron. One young woman accused the prime minister of "waffling" in response to her question about whether Turkey would join the bloc. Cameron said leaving the EU's single market of 500 million people with which Britain does almost half its trade would hurt the British economy, and negotiating new trade deals could take a decade. He said tumbling out of the single market "would be an act of economic self-harm," and rebuffed claims that he was scaremongering. "I am genuinely worried about what would happen if we leave," he said. Cameron also denied using hyperbole when he claimed last month that a Brexit would increase the risk of European war. "On our continent in the last century, twice we had an enormous bloodbath between our nations," he said. "Can we be so confident that we have solved all of Europe's problems and all of Europe's tensions?" The Vote Leave campaign said the audience's skepticism "showed the public doesn't trust Cameron." "All he had was a single bogus argument that we have to be in the EU to trade with Europe, which is simply untrue," chief executive Matthew Elliott said. Other members of the EU are also weighing in as referendum day looms, with a mix of entreaties to stay and warnings of the risk of a Brexit. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday that Britain would get better results from the EU "when you sit at the bargaining table," rather than if it were lobbying from outside. Cameron conceded that he often found dealings with the EU frustrating. "Sometimes this organization drives me crazy," he said. "But do I sit there thinking Britain would be better off if we left? Are we quitters? ... Absolutely not." United Nations: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has placed the Saudi-led military coalition supporting Yemen's government on an annual blacklist over the deaths of hundreds of children in airstrikes. Yemen's Shiite Huthi rebels who seized the capital Sanaa in September 2014 were also added to the list of children's rights violators released yesterday, detailing offenses in 14 countries. "Emerging and escalating crises had a horrific impact on boys and girls," said a statement from the office of the UN envoy for children and armed conflict. "The situation in Yemen was particularly worrisome with a five-fold increase in the number of children recruited (by armed groups) and six times more children killed and maimed compared to 2014," it said. The Saudi-led coalition is responsible for 60 percent of the total 785 children who were killed and 1,168 wounded last year in Yemen, said the report. The coalition launched its air campaign to push back the Huthis in March 2015, but the rebels still control the capital and many parts of the country. "In Yemen, owing to the very large number of violations attributed to the two parties, the Huthis/Ansar Allah and the Saudi Arabia-led coalition are listed for killing and maiming and attacks on schools and hospitals," the report said. Of the 762 verified cases of recruitment of child soldiers, 72 percent were attributed to the Huthis, 15 percent to pro-government forces and nine percent to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, according to the report. "In several situations of conflict, aerial operations contributed to creating complex environments in which large numbers of children were killed and maimed," said Leila Zerrougui, the UN envoy for children and armed conflict. "State-allied armed groups and militia have also increasingly been used to fight in support of government forces, in some cases recruiting and using children," she said. More than 6,400 people have been killed in Yemen since the coalition began its campaign and some 80 percent of the population is in dire need of humanitarian aid, according to the UN. Washington: Ahead of the 27th anniversary of Tiananmen crackdown, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers has asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to lift restrictions on public discussion of the protests and release individuals detained for commemorating the event. "In addition to allowing uncensored, public discussion of the Tiananmen protests and the government's response, we ask that you end efforts to retaliate against those who participated in the protests, particularly the former student leaders and those, such as the Tiananmen Mothers group, seeking information about family members who died or disappeared on or after June 3-4, 1989," the lawmakers said. The letter was signed by Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) Chairman, Representative Chris Smith, CECC Cochair, Senator Marco Rubio and CECC Commissioners Senator Tom Cotton, Senator Ben Sasse, Representative Timothy Walz, Representative Randy Hultgren and Representative Marcy Kaptur. CECC was created by Congress in 2000 to monitor human rights and the development of the rule of law in China, and to submit an annual report to the President and the Congress. In the letter, the lawmakers said they have grave concerns about those who remain imprisoned or detained in connection with their attempts to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen protests. "We urge their immediate and unconditional release," the lawmakers said in the letter dated June 2. The spirit of the 1989 protests, the sacrifices made by the protestors, and their peaceful demands for reform and universally recognized freedoms continue to inspire international admiration and respect," the letter said. "We solemnly commemorate the Tiananmen massacre each year because of the lives lost and persons permanently injured, because of the profound impact the event has had on US-China relations, because so many former student leaders have made important and lasting contributions to global understanding of China, and because the Chinese people themselves are unable to mark this event," the lawmakers wrote. For every high-profile visit that Prime Minister Narendra Modi makes to the United States, his supporters repeatedly stress on the fact that he had earlier been denied a visa by that very country over the Gujarat riots. The official welcome that he received as prime minister is cited as evidence of the claim that the United States has now accepted his popularity as a leader. However, as he gears up to address US lawmakers in Capitol Hill at Washington DC, the prickly issue of human rights in India has cropped up again. Days ahead of Modi's address, US lawmakers have raised the red flag on a number of issues, including extra-judicial killings, the government crackdown on civil society organisations and religious violence, as per a report by Washington Post. Recent statistics which indicate that India has the highest number of slaves were also a point of discussion. The lawmakers' criticism is a stark contrast to the narrative of an emerging, aspirational India that Modi seeks to project in his speeches abroad. Among his many foreign tours, Modi has arguably emphasised this narrative the most in his visits to the United States, which has a high number of expatriate Indians. When he visits the US next week, it will be his seventh meeting with the country's president Barack Obama since he took as the Prime Minister. A report by Reuters quotes an expert from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as saying the personal relationship between the two leaders is 'one of the unanticipated surprises of the last two years.' In recent years, relations between India and the US do appear to have taken a turn for the better. An article on CNN points out that when Obama visited India's Republic Day parade last year, he did not focus on Pakistan, indicating India's emergence as a global player. Yet, the power imbalance between the two countries remains visible. The Washington Post article mentioned above quotes a US diplomat as saying that it is 'increasingly incumbent' on India to secure the rule of law. However, the Indian ambassador to the US said, "We don't believe any society has the right to preach to another society." Modi's visit to the United States comes in the middle of hectic campaigning for the Presidential elections in that country. With relations between the two countries on the upswing, India will be following the developments closely. The visit is seen as an attempt to further improve bilateral relations just before the new US president takes over, as pointed out in a report by The Indian Express. Historically, such speeches have been greatly influenced by the political context at that particular time. An article in The Indian Express points out while Jawaharlal Nehru's address in 1949 was in the context of a policy of non-alignment and freedom from colonial rule, while Atal Bihari Vajpayee's address at Capitol Hill was in the backdrop of India conducting nuclear tests. However, with US elections round the corner, Modi may well have a keen eye on the future, and not just the past. CHICAGO -- Hyatt announced today the opening of Hyatt Centric Montevideo, the brand's first hotel to open outside of North America, and the second Hyatt-branded property in Uruguay. The 178-room hotel is located in the bustling Pocitos neighborhood, a prime destination for guests to explore and discover the heart of Montevideo. Hyatt Centric Montevideo is in close proximity to many of the area's business and leisure districts, including the World Trade Center, Montevideo Shopping and Ciudad Vieja, as well as La Rambla, the coastal avenue where locals meet daily to exercise, socialize and take in the city's best sunsets. "We are delighted to welcome the first international Hyatt Centric hotel to the charming city of Montevideo," said Myles McGourty, senior vice president of operations for Hyatt in Latin America and the Caribbean. "Hyatt Centric Montevideo was designed to make guests feel welcome and connected with the heart of the destination. We are confident that this contemporary new hotel will allow for exploration and discovery, while introducing Hyatt's well-known hospitality to both guests and residents." Arrival Experience Guests can begin their journey cruising the Uruguayan coastline along La Rambla, the 19 mile (30km) waterside promenade near Hyatt Centric Montevideo. Upon entering the hotel, a large lounge welcomes guests as they make their way to the stylish lobby area. A stained-glass inspired ceiling invites natural light into the space and marks a central point that integrates the hotel's restaurant, lobby and bar. The hotel design sets the stage for an authentic Montevideo experience and includes mosaic floors, eclectic ambiance and local artwork combined with modern luxury design, creating a touch of local culture. Large windows from the bar, deli and library offer sweeping views of the Rio de la Plata. "We are thrilled to open our doors in Montevideo and present a hotel that truly captures Montevidean culture and innovative design," said Guillaume Paupy, general manager of Hyatt Centric Montevideo. "Our team is ready to welcome guests and share their insider knowledge to help guests explore the best of the destination." Guestrooms The hotel's 178 spacious guestrooms, including 14 suites, balance the energy of the city with a calm, inviting respite. The minimal yet upscale features include contemporary furniture, destination-inspired artwork and modern colorful touches. Guestrooms offer impressive views of Rio de la Plata or the serene cityscape, and combine amenities to meet the needs of the millennial-minded traveler, including a luxurious plush bed, 47-inch LED TV (55-inch in suites), mini bar, large walk-in shower (additional bath tub in suites), generous work desk with enhanced lighting, complimentary high-speed Wi-Fi, premium bath amenities, JBL Horizon alarm clocks, a salon-grade hairdryer, concierge service, and 24 hour in-room dining. Executive rooms and suites also have access to special services and amenities such as the rooftop lounge, which offers 180-degree waterfront views, continental breakfast, and evening cocktails, among other services. Dining and Drinking Hyatt Centric Montevideo features distinct dining options including breakfast, business lunches, intimate dinners, quick drinks or casual dining experiences designed to inspire food lovers during their journey to explore the best of local flavors. The hotel's signature restaurant Plantado features a regionally inspired menu offering locally sourced produce and classic Uruguayan favorites for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Behind the culinary concept and menu is the talented Executive Chef Federico Ferrari, formerly of Palacio Duhau - Park Hyatt Buenos Aires. When the sun sets over the city, guests can retreat to the hotel's vibrant Moderno Bar. Eclectic decor and scenic views complement creative signature cocktails, gourmet small plates and a unique selection of acclaimed local wines and artisan beers. Additional food and beverage amenities include the Deli, a specialty market featuring Uruguayan olive oils and gourmet cheeses, freshly baked goods, local pastries, coffee and teas service, organic juices, to-go foods and other local goods. Meetings and Events Hyatt Centric Montevideo's event facilities total more than 18,700 square feet (1,700 square meters), with each meeting room named after an influential female Uruguayan poet, a tribute to local literature. The fully integrated area features an elegant, multi-purpose ballroom and six sophisticated meeting rooms that provide an extensive range of options for upscale meetings, conferences, social events such as quinceaneras and weddings of all sizes, complete with state-of-the-art audio visual services and dedicated staff to assist in planning and execution. Wellness and Recreation Hyatt Centric Montevideo features a 24-hour fitness studio with the latest high-tech cardio and strength training equipment from Life Fitness, and offers a massage treatment suite to relax and unwind, as well as a heated indoor pool. Guests that like to take their workout outdoors will have the perfect opportunity to do so along La Rambla, the ideal spot for a walk, jog or to take one of the hotel's custom-designed vintage bicycles for rides. Hyatt Centric Montevideo is offering a special opening rate of USD $190 plus taxes for standard guestrooms, including breakfast. For full offer details, including terms and conditions, or to make a reservation, please visit hyattcentricmontevideo.com or call +598 26211234. The term "Hyatt" is used in this release for convenience to refer to Hyatt Hotels Corporation and/or one of its affiliates. About Hyatt Hotels Corporation Hyatt Hotels Corporation, headquartered in Chicago, is a leading global hospitality company guided by its purpose to care for people so they can be their best. As of June 30, 2022, the Company's portfolio included more than 1,150 hotels and all-inclusive properties in 72 countries across six continents. The Company's offering includes brands in the Timeless Collection, including Park Hyatt, Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Regency, Hyatt, Hyatt Residence Club, Hyatt Place, Hyatt House, and UrCove; the Boundless Collection, including Miraval, Alila, Andaz, Thompson Hotels, Hyatt Centric, and Caption by Hyatt; the Independent Collection, including The Unbound Collection by Hyatt, Destination by Hyatt, and JdV by Hyatt; and the Inclusive Collection, including Hyatt Ziva, Hyatt Zilara, Zoetry Wellness & Spa Resorts, Secrets Resorts & Spas, Breathless Resorts & Spas, Dreams Resorts & Spas, Vivid Hotels & Resorts, Alua Hotels & Resorts, and Sunscape Resorts & Spas. Subsidiaries of the Company operate the World of Hyatt loyalty program, ALG Vacations, Unlimited Vacation Club, Amstar DMC destination management services, and Trisept Solutions technology services. For more information, please visit www.hyatt.com. Forward-Looking Statements Forward-Looking Statements in this press release, which are not historical facts, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the use of words such as "may," "could," "expect," "intend," "plan," "seek," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential," "continue," "likely," "will," "would" and variations of these terms and similar expressions, or the negative of these terms or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable when made, are inherently uncertain, and are subject to numerous assumptions and uncertainties, many of which are outside of Kiraku, Inc. or Hyatt's control, which could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such statements. Forward-looking statements made in this press release are made only as of the date of their initial publication and neither party undertakes an obligation to publicly update any of these forward-looking statements as actual events unfold, except to the extent required by applicable law. If one or more forward-looking statements is updated, no inference should be drawn that any additional updates will be made with respect to those or other forward-looking statements. Karina Faber Hyatt Hyatt The seven-year-old Japanese boy, left by his parents in bear-infested woods last weekend after he misbehaved on a day trip, has been found safe and well. Japanese media have reported that Yamato Tanooka, who went missing on Saturday, has been found. Broadcaster NHK reported that police said the boy was "in relatively good health". Missouri municipal utilities have signed up for space on the Grain Belt Express, a 780-mile transmission line that would carry wind power from western Kansas to population centers further east. The Missouri Joint Municipal Electric Utility Commission said Thursday that it had signed an agreement for as much as 200 megawatts of transmission space on the cross-state line. The group represents municipally owned utilities in the state that pool their resources to buy power and is administered by the Missouri Public Utility Alliance. The contract could bolster Grain Belts case with the Missouri Public Service Commission, which single-handedly blocked the project last summer on a 3-2 vote. While members acknowledged it may benefit other states, they werent convinced it was worth it for Missouri ratepayers. Clean Line, which is proposing the transmission line, has said it would deliver up to 500 megawatts of power into Missouri, but about 3,500 megawatts of electricity would be shipped through the state to a grid further east where prices are higher. Faced with vocal opposition from rural landowners who dont want to sell easements to the company, a majority of the commission felt that the benefits to Missouri ratepayers werent large enough to grant the company utility status and the right of eminent domain that comes with it. Clean Line President Michael Skelly said the new agreement, however, gave Missouri municipal utilities low-cost access to really the best wind resources in the country. We heard the commissions concerns loud and clear, and one of them was they wanted to know there were actual Missouri customers for the line, and weve now proven that out, Skelly said. The new contract, which is contingent on Clean Lines winning approval from Missouri regulators, would replace an electricity contract with Dynegy coal plants expiring in 2021, the year Grain Belt is supposed to be operational. From an analysis we have based on the offer they gave us, we believe its going to save us about $10 million annually, said Ewell Lawson, who manages government relations and member services for the Missouri Public Utility Alliance. About 35 of the Missouri Joint Municipal Electric Utility Commission members are part of the contract now to procure from 50 to 100 megawatts of space, Lawson said. But more of the groups 67 members can join and reserve space up to the 200 megawatts outlined in the contract. The costs, including transmission, would be below what the municipal utilities are paying for coal now, Lawson said. Kind of what were seeing in the market right now for wind would bring it to Missouri at about 3 cents per kilowatt hour, he said. Skelly acknowledged opposition from landowners who arent interested in selling easements to the company will probably remain. But hes hopeful the state will see enough local benefit to approve the final leg of the transmission line. Grain Belt Express has already won approval from Kansas, Indiana and Illinois regulators. Weve had opposition in the past and we may in the future, Skelly said. But we think this agreement is a very positive development for the project. The late Eli Schulman had a mantra. My Dad would always say, 'Charity will never bust you.' Its how Marc Schulman says his father Eli ran his restaurants in various locations in Chicago, and eventually the company that today bears his name - Elis Cheesecake which remains a popular dessert to the stars. I proudly wear the Cartier watch the Sinatras sent my father in 1987, says Schulman, who recalls the popular crooner Frank Sinatra as a regular customer to Elis through the years. We also did Hillary Clintons 50th birthday cake when she was in Chicago with then-President Clinton, adds Schulman, who serves as Elis president. The list of celebrities doesnt stop there. Pictures that hang on the walls of his Chicagoland bakery show President Barack Obama, comedians, actors and politicians - all with one thing in common: the subject smiling in front of, behind, or over one of Elis famous cheesecakes. Weve evolved from a restaurant company to a cheesecake thats now available in most of the United States and around the world, Schulman explains. While many of his products are found on restaurant menus and in grocery store freezers, few who enjoy them realize one of the secrets to his companys success isnt just how they are made they are all made by hand its whose hand has a hand in each dessert's creation. People always say, you know, youre such a good company because you hire refugees, Schulman told VOA in an interview from his corporate headquarters. I say, no were a smart company. Refugees represent about 15 percent of Elis work force of roughly 220 employees. Among them is Elias Kasonga, who arrived at the bakery in 1994 after fleeing unrest in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1990. I was a student at the University of Lubumbashi, and Mobutu and his regime came and massacred the students and I had no choice but to flee. For Kasonga, a job at Elis was all he had starting his new life in the U.S. I had no degree, I had no experience, basically I had nothing I had no skills at all. A company like Elis Cheesecake took a chance on me and so I personally had to do the best I could. Thanks to Elis, Kasonga said he got experience, skills and eventually a degree. Hes now a purchasing manager at the company, and serves on the board of directors of Refugee One, a non-profit group helping refugees start new lives in the U.S. Over the last 25 years, with the help of job placement services through organizations such as Refugee One, hundreds of refugees have found gainful employment at Elis Cheesecake. The companys history of hiring refugees earned recognition from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Felippo Grandi, during his visit to the bakery earlier this year. Schulman says the floor of his bakery in some ways represents the floor of the United Nations. You see different waves, you know if it was from Bosnia, or from the Congo, or from Iraq. Schulman says he is prepared for the next wave from Syria, should they desire - and qualify - for work at his bakery. I think to the credit of the State Department to the credit of Refugee One, when you are picking people to be in this program, theres a lot of vetting and other things that go on, so were going to put all the politics aside. Since 1975, more than 3 million refugees have resettled in the U.S. It now has one of the largest refugee resettlement programs in the world, and is growing as more people flee violence, unrest and war in the Middle East. An important part of the U.S. refugee resettlement program is self-sufficiency, and Elis is one of the companies that provide some refugees that key component in their resettlement. President Obama plans to resettle about 10,000 Syrian refugees in the U.S. by October, and even more in 2017. Hundreds are expected to come to Chicago in much the same way as Eli Schulmans family over 100 years ago. Marc Schulman says working with refugees is about more than just charity its in his DNA. Thats a great reason for our success, says Schulman. We watch individuals who have been here and theyve become citizens, and they make a real contribution to Elis. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Somalia's capital Friday, a rare instance of a foreign head of state visiting the war-ravaged country. Erdogan went ahead with the visit despite al-Shabab's attack late Wednesday on the Ambassador Hotel in Mogadishu. The assault left 24 people dead, including the four attackers. During the president's brief stay, Turkey and Somalia signed bilateral agreements on police training, education and energy. Erdogan also inaugurated Turkey's new embassy. The embassy, one of Turkeys largest worldwide, overlooks the Indian Ocean and stands next to the Abdulaziz Mosque built by the Ottoman Empire some 10 centuries ago. This was the third visit by Erdogan to Mogadishu since August 2011, when his visit helped turn attention to the deadly famine that ravaged much of southern Somalia at the time. Turkey has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to war-ravaged Somalia since 2011, according to Turkish officials. Last week, the Turkish Cabinet approved $24 million in budgetary support to Somalia for this year. Prior to his stop in Somalia, Erdogan visited Uganda and Kenya. A U.S. congressional committee is investigating how hackers managed to divert USD101 million from Bank of Bangladesh accounts held at the Federal Reserve in New York. The February theft led the Bangladesh central banks chairman to resign, and added to worries about the security of online bank data. In a letter to the Feds president dated Tuesday, the Science Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives asked for all documents and communications about the cyberattack and the security of the Feds SWIFT Alliance Access money transfer system. In the attack, the hackers tried to steal a total of $1 billion through 35 international money transfer orders, 30 of which were stopped. The Bangladesh Bank later recovered some money from a Sri Lankan bank and from a Chinese casino junket operator based in the Philippines. Weaknesses existed within the computer network of the Bangladesh Bank and based on research done by a third party, cyber criminals were able to exploit these vulnerabilities, says the letter, posted on the committees website. Then, the cyber criminals covered their tracks using malware that was able to manipulate money transfer request records as well as account balances as shown in logs, as well as to intercept messages verifying transfer orders. Bangladesh authorities had said earlier they were considering suing the Reserve Bank over the loss of the funds. The Fed has said it found no evidence its own systems were compromised in the attack, and attention increasingly has focused on suspected vulnerabilities in Bangladesh Banks cybersecurity. But any international cyber system is only as strong as its weakest link, said the letter signed by the committees co-chairmen, Lamar Smith of Texas and Barry Loudermilk of Georgia. This is deeply troubling, and it is Congress responsibility to ensure, through its oversight, that the NY Fed is taking all precautions to protect American finances and aggressively execute its own role as overseer of SWIFT, the letter says. Amid the fallout, the Bangladesh Bank Governor Atiur Rahman resigned in March, saying he had tried after the theft to close loopholes and boost the banks online security, but that the banks team lacked experience. Authorities in the Philippines, meanwhile, are also investigating how some $81 million of the stolen funds were transferred online to four private accounts at a branch of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., or RCBC, and who could be criminally liable. And in Sri Lanka, a court banned six people from traveling abroad after their foundation allegedly received some of the stolen money. The private bank where the foundation had an account alerted the Bangladesh central bank about the transfer and returned the funds. AP The Israeli ambassador to Britain is critically ill in hospital after being shot on a London street. Shlomo Argov, 52, was leaving a diplomatic function at the Dorchester Hotel in Mayfair when a young man who had been seen loitering outside the building attacked him. The gunman fired two shots with a machine pistol one narrowly missing Mr Argovs police protection officer and the other hitting the envoy in the head. The assailant was shot by the bodyguard and also has serious head injuries. Two other men fled the scene in a car but were later stopped and arrested by police in Brixton. Pergamon Press chairman Robert Maxwell was in the hotel when the shooting occurred. It happened so suddenly and so unexpectedly that we really only noticed the consequences after it was over we came out, there were shots and a man fell, he said. Assistant Commissioner Gilbert Kelland a senior police officer also at the party said Mr Argovs protection officer had then pursued the assailant into nearby South Street and shot him. Both the injured men were taken to Westminster Hospital and a witness told BBC correspondent Peter Snow they were in a very serious state. Mr Argov a career diplomat who is married with two daughters was later transferred to a specialist unit at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Bloomsbury, for an emergency operation. Courtesy BBC News In context Shlomo Argov survived the attack but was permanently paralysed. Two Jordanians and an Iraqi linked to Palestinian extremist Abu Nidal were convicted of the attempted murder of the envoy in March 1983. Israeli Prime Minister Menachen Begin retaliated with Operation Peace for Galilee, a full-scale invasion of Lebanon. The war lasted for 11 months and Israeli forces did not begin to withdraw from the country until June 1985. Shlomo Argov died on 23 February 2003, aged 73, in Jerusalem. by Rachel Richardson 513-556-5219 June 3, 2016 Alan Marrero had no idea of the legacy hed leave when, on a Sunday morning in the winter of 2005, he stole up a ladder and placed a life-sized sculpture of himself on a high ledge in the University of Cincinnatis Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) building. Marrero, then a senior planning student, created and positioned the statue he dubbed Ethan as part of an Installation Art course that required students to create a sculpture and display it for one week in DAAP. He chose the location 15 feet above the colleges main entryway for the four distinct vantage points it offered of his artistic doppelganger, who appears to sit hunched in concentration over a laptop. Since then, Ethan has taken on a life of his own, becoming not only a piece on permanent display in DAAP as part of the University of Cincinnati Fine Arts Collection, but a beloved pop culture icon revered by students, faculty and staff alike. Ethan is the patron saint of DAAP, said Robert Probst, the colleges dean. Hes a fixture here now. This month, Marrero returned to his alma mater and he wasnt alone. With him was Violet, a life-sized sculpture of another DAAP graduate, Mary Fialko, who married Marrero earlier this year. The true-to-life figure, clad in jeans and a black jacket, sits relaxed in a nearby corner sketching the seemingly oblivious college student, Ethan. The story of Violet and how she came to join Ethan in the permanent installation is a testament not only to DAAPs top-ranked design and architecture programs, but to its strong college alumni network that connected two unlikely graduates half a world away in what will stand, at least in the colleges halls, as a love story for the ages. TWIN FALLS FedEx is moving ahead with its new air cargo facility at the airport. Earlier this year, the company expressed interest in developing a nearly 18,000 square-foot facility for its air express division for high-priority parcels. City Council approved the land use in March and the building permit was approved last month. The estimated valuation of the sorting, office and shipping center is $1.7 million. FedEx says the building will replace its existing facility on Addison Avenue. The new facility is located on airport property, which will make our operations more efficient and help us better serve our customers, FedEx Express spokeswoman Ann Saccomano said. The Joslin Field, Magic Valley Regional Airport advisory board will discuss moving ahead with a preliminary design at its meeting next week, Airport Manager Bill Carberry said. In the design phase, the airport will examine how to expand its taxiway to grow the airport while accommodating other businesses. At a March City Council meeting, Precision Aviation owner Mark Doerr said he was concerned the proposed taxiway extension would use property hed hoped to have for his own businesss potential expansion. Carberry said the design process will involve the public. Its an exciting project, he said. Saccomano said the expected facility is set to be complete in early winter. For now, FedEx has to offload its cargo at a ramp area and take it in vans to the Addison Avenue facility to be shipped out, Carberry said. FedEx has signed a lease for about three acres of property for about $20,000 a year, he said. The 15-year lease comes with five, five-year options. FedEx has already provided infrastructure improvements for the access road and utility systems, Carberry said. Theyve brought a lot of things that will help the airport grow in the future, he said. TWIN FALLS | Southern Idahos high desert is prime for exploring on ATVs and side-by-sides. The recent advent of the new side-by-side trail vehicles is getting a lot more couples out because they can ride together in one machine instead of on separate ATVs. My wife and I have ridden together with motorcycles and ATVs, but the Razor (Polaris RZR) is much easier to drive. Its just like driving a Jeep, said Stan Mai, a member of Magic Valley ATV Riders, a group that promotes responsible trail riding. He says its the coming thing and so does Troy Elmore, Off-Highway Vehicle program manager for the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation. The agency oversees a lot of motorized trails in Idaho. Side-by-sides or ROVs (Recreational Off-Highway Vehicles) are the fastest growing segment of the off-highway vehicle market nationwide. Idaho defines them as utility type vehicles (UTVs). Basically, the biggest differences between an ATV and an ROV are the ROVs non-straddling seating, steering wheel and side-by-side seating. A year ago in Idaho, there were about 140,000 registered OHVs (including trail motorcycles, ATVs and UTVs). About 68 percent were ATVs, 23 percent dirt bikes and 9 percent UTVs or ROVs. The number of UTVs had doubled in the past five years, Elmore said. Mai and many members of the Magic Valley ATV Riders have gone to ROVs. Because of their suspension, they provide a lot more comfortable ride like in a pickup truck except, as Mai puts it, You dont beat the tar out of your truck. No matter what off-highway vehicle riders choose, now is the time. Here are a few spring places to ride, suggested by the Magic Valley ATV Riders and other ATV groups: 1. Magic/Thorn Creek Getting there: From Twin Falls, go north on U.S. 93 to Shoshone, then north from Shoshone about 18 miles on Idaho 75. Turn left on West Magic Road and go 5.5 miles until you see Dam Road on the right. Turn left, go past the corrals and thats the start of the ride. Trail: Late-spring or fall ride depending on trail conditions. Do not ride if muddy. High desert with good views of the mountains. Lots of elevation changes. Ride in and have lunch at Thorn Creek Reservoir. Length: About 45 miles. 2. Grindstone Butte Getting there: From Buhl, follow U.S. 30 toward Hagerman. Just before crossing the Snake River, turn left on River Road to Bell Rapids. Follow the road along the river and up the hill. At 5400 North, turn left and go about five miles until the corrals on the left. This is the starting point. Trail: You can ride here all year depending on conditions. Its very hot and dry in the summer. Length: Many different routes can be followed. 3. North Rim/Clay Cave Getting there: Trail riding very close to Twin Falls. From Twin Falls, go north on U.S. 93, cross the Perrine Bridge and continue for 1/4 mile to a stoplight. Turn right and go onto U.S. Bureau of Land Management land. Trail: Theres lots of land for riding on various trails. Clay Cave, a long lava tube, is one of the places to aim for in a ride. If you go into the cave, take good flashlights and take care not to damage the cave. This area is a convenient place to ride after work or if you have only a few hours on the weekend. Many ATV dealers take customers out here for test rides. The area can be ridden most of the year, but its very hot and dry in the summer. Length: Several routes to follow. OVERNIGHT CAMPOUT RIDES 4. Owyhee Uplands National Backcounty Byway Getting there: Take Interstate 84 west from Twin Falls to the main exit for Mountain Home (the one with the truck stops). Head south on Idaho 67 to Grand View, then go south on Idaho 78 for about a mile to Mud Flat Road. Head out on Mud Flat Road until you find a good spot to unload or camp. Trails: The byway is 103 miles long from Grand View to Jordan Valley, Ore. Theres plenty of riding on the gravel road but lots of two-track roads going off into the high desert. The byway makes for a great overnight camping trip. Set up a base camp and go exploring. The byway offers high-desert scenery from expanses of sagebrush and grasslands to sheer, red-walled river canyons. Length: Unlimited. 5. Cow Creek/Jordan Craters Road Getting there: Take I-84 west of Twin Falls to Idaho 55 (Karcher exit) and head south on Idaho 55 to Marsing. Continue on U.S. 95 to about eight miles north of Jordan Valley and turn right on Jordan Craters Road. Trails: The main road goes almost 30 miles to Jordan Craters, and ATVers like to ride it to places like the craters or the Birch Creek recreation site on the Owyhee River. Plenty of two-track roads head out into high desert areas with expansive scenery, including Oregons Steens Mountain. Length: Unlimited. To connect with Magic Valley ATV Riders, go to Mvatvr.org. The club promotes the sport and teaches the safe and proper use of ATVs on public lands; brings together riders who enjoy meeting and riding with others; and represents ATV riders with local, state and federal lawmakers and land-management agencies to keep lands accessible. Twin Falls | A federal grand jury indicted a Washington mother and Buhl man arrested in an April investigation involving undercover agents, confidential informants, secret tracking devices and an impromptu sting operation. That investigation, involving officers from six agencies in Idaho and Washington, resulted in the seizure of more than 10 pounds of methamphetamine bound for the Magic Valley, half a dozen guns, two pounds of heroin and several thousand dollars of cash, police said. It also resulted in the arrests of a Buhl man who police say is not a U.S. citizen and a Washington woman accused of trafficked drugs with her 12-year-old son in her car. Brenda Trinidi Jaime-Sainz, 34, of Yakima, Wash., was indicted on charges of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute and distribution of methamphetamine. She faces up to 20 years in prison on each count. Mauro Morales-Jimenez, 32, of Buhl, was indicted on charges of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute and possession of a firearm by an alien. He faces up to 20 years in prison on each drug count and up to 10 years on the gun charge. If convicted, Morales-Jimenez would likely face deportation and would be required to forfeit a Glock handgun, a .22-caliber rifle and a 12-guage shotgun police found during his April 23 arrest. The pair would also be required to forfeit more than $71,000 in cash, which federal prosecutors say was the proceeds of the charged offenses. Morales-Jimenez pleaded not guilty to all three counts Thursday in a Boise federal court and is in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Services. A trial is set for Aug. 1 in Boise. Details patched together from three court cases in Twin Falls and Gooding counties paint Jaime-Sainz and Morales-Jimenez as large-scale providers of methamphetamine to the Magic Valley, with Jaime-Sainz bringing the drugs from Washington to sell at whole-sale prices to Morales-Jimenez, who stored drugs, money and guns in a Wendell storage shed. Police say Morales-Jimenez is not a U.S. citizen who was deported at least once before, while Jaime-Sainz is a native of Sinaloa, Mexico, with ties to a drug cartel. The duo is not the first group with local ties to be indicted on federal drug charges this year. In April, a federal grand jury indicted two Twin Falls men, a Filer man and a Rupert man on charges of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance. The investigation An undercover investigation into Jaime-Sainzs drug activities began in early April when Idaho State Police detectives asked a confidential informant to contact the Washington woman about buying methamphetamine from her, court documents said. During the conversation, Jaime-Sainz agreed to deliver two pounds of the drug April 17 and referenced a previous deal made April 1. During the controlled purchase April 17, an undercover ISP detective and confidential informant each paid $5,000 for a pound of methamphetamine, court documents said. Jaime-Sainz made the sale with her 12-year-old son in her car outside a restaurant on Blue Lakes Boulevard North and agreed to sell four more pounds to the detective and informant the next week. That same night, detectives attached a GPS tracking device on Jaime-Sainzs car before she left Twin Falls, and when she called the informant a few days later to say she was on her way from Yakima with four pounds of methamphetamine, officers monitored her movements using the GPS device, court documents said. Police stopped Jaime-Sainz on April 23 in Payette County shortly after she crossed from Oregon into Idaho on Interstate 84 and found 10 pounds of methamphetamine in the trunk of her car, court documents said. She was again accompanied by her son, who was taken into custody by child protection services. After her arrest, DEA agents in Washington raided the Yakima home where she was staying and seized more than two pounds of heroin, one pound of methamphetamine and three guns, court documents said. Jaime-Sainz was taken to ISP headquarters in Jerome where she told detectives four pounds of the drug found in her trunk were bound for the informant and detective in Twin Falls, and the other six pounds she planned to deliver to Morales-Jimenez, a regular customer whom she typically met in Wendell. Jaime-Sainz agreed to help police in a sting operation and follow through with the sale of the drugs to Morales-Jimenez under the supervision of undercover detectives. Accompanied by an undercover Blaine County Sheriffs detective April 23, Jaime-Sainz met with Morales-Jimenez at a Wendell storage facility and exchanged six pounds of methamphetamine for a large amount of U.S. currency. After the purchase was complete, the undercover Blaine County detective alerted other officers who raided the storage shed and arrested Morales-Jimenez. Inside the shed, officers found $16,500, a drug ledger, a Glock .40-caliber pistol, a Marlin .22-caliber rifle and a 12-gauge shotgun with the serial number removed, court documents said. Officers said Morales-Jimenez does not have a permanent residence but was living in the Siesta Motel in Buhl. In federal court documents, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was named as the lead investigating agency, but local court documents also outlined the participation of the DEA, ISP, Twin Falls Police and the sheriffs offices in Gooding and Blaine counties. TWIN FALLS | High school juniors and seniors are still welcome to apply for Discover Science, a four-day series of workshops June 13-16 at the College of Southern Idaho. All costs are being covered by a grant from the NASA Idaho Space Grant Consortium. Theres no cost to the students. The deadline for applications is June 10, but since the program can accommodate a total of only 32 students, interested participants should apply as soon as possible. The program is open to current high school juniors and seniors who are planning to go to college and major in a STEM field: science, technology, engineering or math. Applicants must have a current GPA of at least 3.0. Girls, under-represented minorities and first-generation college students are urged to apply. All sessions will be made available in English and Spanish, as needed. Sessions will be held at two locations on the CSI campus in Twin Falls, as well as the CSI veterinary technology small animal lab downtown and at a Snake River site in Hagerman Valley. Students will interact with their peers, CSI professors and science professionals. Morning or afternoon sessions can be selected on Monday and Tuesday, June 13 and 14. The sessions on June 15 and 16 will run from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. and will include lunch. If six or more students from the Burley/Rupert area are interested in participating, free transportation will be arranged to Twin Falls from the CSI Mini-Cassia Center in Burley. For more information, Heidi Campbell at 208-732-6429 or hcampbell@csi.edu. TWIN FALLS | The Twin Falls YMCA has hired an accounting firm to help clean up its finances, but the beleaguered organization is still reeling after its former director squandered hundreds of thousands of dollars and put the Y at risk of losing its national charter. In a written statement Thursday to the Times-News, YMCA board chairman Andy Barry said the nonprofit had failed the community and wants to restore public trust. Barry declined to be interviewed in person and agreed to answer questions only in writing. The Twin Falls YMCA is on probation with its national parent organization after years of mismanagement and misappropriation of nearly $700,000 in donations, the newspaper reported last month after a whistle-blower supplied the paper internal YMCA documents. The group which serves about 7,000 Magic Valley residents says it is taking steps to improve its financial situation and is committed to overcoming obstacles. We ultimately failed the community by allowing the financial operations of the YMCA to become unbalanced and putting the organization at risk, Barry's statement said. The primary goals of our recovery efforts are to restore community trust in the Twin Falls YMCA and provide a framework for ongoing financial security. The YMCA will restore trust by being transparent and meeting financial commitments, he wrote. We understand that the community has a lot of questions. Unfortunately, we dont have all of the answers right now. Were working to get them, and as soon as we do, we will share what we can with the community. The local board asked for help when it realized then-chief executive officer Gary Ettenger was providing false financial information to them, according to a February assessment conducted by the national YMCA. Ettenger was asked to resign in March. His phone number is unlisted and reporters have been unable to reach him for comment. If problems arent addressed soon, the organization is at risk of losing its charter with the national YMCA organization and its nonprofit status. The Twin Falls YMCA owns gyms on Elizabeth Street and Pole Line Road, and it manages the YMCA/Twin Falls City Pool on Locust Street under a contract with the city. According to Barry, over the past three months the YMCA has: Cut or reduced overhead and operating expenses Cut staff Evaluated the need for some service contracts Ordered a temporary 10 percent pay cut for senior staff Temporarily replaced the chief executive officer with Barry, a volunteer Created an executive board to oversee finances and management. The board includes Barry (chief executive officer), Steve Everton (chief volunteer officer), Scott Standley, Roy Prescott and Hattie Zobott. The YMCA has hired a local accounting firm to establish a system of checks and balances, Barry wrote. Our primary focus at this point is to determine our current cost, revenues, and accounts payables and receivables. The cleanup of the accounting system is an ongoing project. The firm is examining six years of information but hasnt done any forensic analysis, he wrote. We do not know at this time if donations and contributions were restricted or unrestricted. The YMCAs local board will begin receiving monthly financial updates from its outside accountant. The national YMCA has been a big help in our recovery, Barry wrote. A recovery team has created a list of compliance issues and a repayment plan for past-due amounts. And a retired YMCA chief executive officer will spend two weeks on site helping with management and facility issues, Barry wrote. He didnt specify when. Repairs to the Canyon Rim gym roof are slated for this month, he wrote, and general maintenance issues are being addressed as money becomes available. Board members are also undergoing governance training prepared by the Boise YMCA resource director. The YMCA is submitting audit information to the national organization and is working on the 2015 audit, Barry wrote. We will continue to work with the YUSA and work our way out of our current probationary status. Twin Falls City Manager Travis Rothweiler met with YMCA board members May 25. The YMCA requested the meeting. They wanted to get the city more into the loop, Rothweiler said last week. Taxpayer money supports the operation of the YMCA/Twin Falls City Pool. The city has about $137,000 budgeted this year for pool expenses. Rothweiler said he shared the citys expectations during the meeting to ensure the pool remains operational and in compliance with requirements. The city of Twin Falls provides a monthly management fee to the YMCA, Mayor Shawn Barigar said last week. YMCA has the responsibility for operating the pool and ongoing operational costs. But the pool is a city asset, he said. We as the city want to make sure its being operated and maintained in a fashion thats a good expenditure of tax dollars. Some pool vendors are paid by the city and others are paid by the YMCA, Barry wrote in an email to the Times-News. Money paid by the city is then deducted from the monthly contract payment made to the YMCA." Rothweiler and his staff are reviewing the pool agreement with the YMCA. The City Council didnt have a meeting this week and hasn't been officially briefed on the Y's troubles. YMCA board members are really working through this issue, Rothweiler said, referring to the organizations financial problems. The city will have additional conversations with the YMCA about the pool agreement and what that looks like." The city is obviously going to monitor the situation, he said. But the city will support the YMCA as a partner in whatever appropriate ways those may be. As a community nonprofit organization, the YMCA provides services to residents regardless of their ability to pay. YMCA members and residents alike were shocked to learn of the scope of the Y's financial troubles, even as it attracted hundreds of thousands of dollars from private donors over the past two years. Holly Carlson, a Jerome resident who owns a business in Twin Falls, said Ettengers actions impacted not just the YMCA but the entire community. Ettenger covered up what he was doing, allowing the board members to believe everything was good, she wrote in a letter to the newspaper. She noted the board is just as guilty for lying to the community about the factors behind Ettengers resignation. They all should be removed from the positions they hold and should face prosecution. In March, Barry said Ettenger was not asked to resign and reassured that the YMCA was in good shape. Carlson called the situation an insult and slap in the face to us as a community saying the deception shouldnt be allowed to be swept under the rug. Idaho voters in 1938 created a commission to oversee hunting and fishing. The aim from the beginning for the Fish and Game Commission was to keep politics out of wildlife decisions, to allow the commission to manage wildlife independent of politicians for the benefit of sportsmen and all residents and specifically not special interests in Boise. Gov. C.L. Butch Otter and a handful of lawmakers are now forsaking that mission. Otter has decided not to reappoint two members to the commission, a highly unusual move sportsmen say is politically motivated by revenge. The governor, they say, is ousting commissioners who wont back controversial hunting proposals and is aiming to stack the commission with appointees who will do his bidding. We see through this charade, governor, and so do the sportsmen of Idaho. Its time to stop playing politics with Fish and Game after 74 years, one of the nations most respected and successful wildlife boards and let the board continue to manage game for the benefit of all Idaho residents, not the governors wealthy friends. The hubbub started earlier this year when the governors office told Mark Doerr, who represents the Magic Valley and is the boards chairman, and Will Naillon of Challis, that he was accepting nominations to fill their seats. Both men were welcome to reapply, Otter said, but both men said in protest they would not. On June 2, Doerr issued a scathing statement to the Times-News announcing his decision, blasting Idaho lawmakers for trying to turn the independent commission into their political puppet. The issue here is hunting tags. Otter and several lawmakers have proposed allowing landowners to sell special tags they receive for opening up their private property to hunting. Lawmakers have also proposed expanding auctions for hunting tags and changes to how tags are drawn for controlled hunts. All told, the proposals could have the effect of taking tags out of the hands of regular hunters and putting them into those with the most money you know, the wealthy friends of Idaho politicians. Fish and Game has resisted the measures, yet lawmakers keep bringing them up. When the 2017 legislative session begins, it would be a welcome change if, for the first time in over 10 years, leadership would avoid any legislation involving auction tags, bonus points and (Landowner Appreciation Permit) tags, and instead engage in the apparent long-forgotten expectation of those elected to public office ... represent your constituents and not yourself, Doerr said in his biting farewell statement. The personal, political and financial gain offered by special interests must be intoxicating for those in leadership in the Idaho Legislature because they continually ignore the will of the majority of their constituents, in this case, the sportsmen of Idaho. Sportsmen can no longer afford to be ignored. If politicians succeed in taking control of Fish and Game, all bets are off for it being an independent commission. And that could have devastating consequences for Idahos hunting and fishing legacy, especially under Otter, a governor who stays loyal to his friends even when they foster corruption. Otter and the Legislature have been unable to pass their radical wildlife measures through conventional means, and so now theyre trying to rig the system. It is a scandal in the making unlike all the others in the Otter administration. Shady state contracts, futile gay marriage lawsuits and health care boondoggles arent unique to Idaho but our fish and wildlife are. Our state is one of the last truly wild regions left in North America, a hunting and fishing paradise. Idahoans have a proud legacy of wildlife as public resources that belong to the state, not the wealthiest sportsmen. To be sure, Otter isnt doing anything illegal, yet. And lawmakers have been quick to point out that the Legislature sets policy and the boards job is to administer it, giving lawmakers rights to seat commissioners and pass legislation however they see fit. But why even have the commission, some sportsmen groups have asked, if politicians are simply going to strong-arm the board? Ousting the commissioners who even by Otters accounts have been doing a good job, until they crossed his friends flies in the face of everything Idahoans treasure about wildlife management here. Our wildlife programs are controlled by Idahoans, for Idahoans. And so Otter must choose: Honor the legacy of the independent Fish and Game Commission, or abjure these long-held beliefs to satisfy a handful of politicians and wealthy sportsmen. Were confident most Idahoans would make the righteous choice. We are not nearly as confident in Otter. A terror suspect is brought to the committing magistrate at the Federal Supreme Court (BGH) in Karlsruhe, Germany, June 2, 2016. [Photo/IC] BERLIN - Three out of four men from Syria planning to launch a terrorist attack in Germany on behalf of the Islamic State (IS) were arrested on Thursday, German media Spiegel Online reported. According to the report, the attack was supposed to have taken place in the old town of the western German city of Dusseldorf. The alleged plan had been that after two suicide bombers had blown themselves up near an avenue in the center of Dusseldorf, more terrorists would use guns to shoot people. The chief federal prosecutor in Karlsruhe confirmed to local media that four men from Syria were suspected of involvement in the terrorist plot. Two of them traveled in 2014 from Syria to Turkey and came through the Balkan route in 2015 to Germany where they are suspected of recruiting another Syrian. The fourth man who had been residing in Germany since 2014 is believed to have formerly worked for a Syrian terrorist organization as an explosives expert. Three of the arrested suspects had resided in the German states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Wuerttemberg and Brandenburg. The fourth member is being held in custody in France. Three of the suspects are also accused by the German Federal Prosecutor's Office of membership in a foreign terrorist organization, while the fourth man is under investigation for supporting a terrorist organization. Credit: shutterstock A recent study by the National Institutes of Health found that more than one in three people in the United States have experienced pain of some sort in the previous three months. Of these, approximately 50 million suffer from chronic or severe pain. To put these numbers in perspective, 21 million people have been diagnosed with diabetes, 14 million have cancer (this is all types of cancer combined) and 28 million have been diagnosed with heart disease in the U.S. In this light, the number of pain sufferers is stunning and indicates that it is a major epidemic. But unlike treatments for diabetes, cancer and heart disease, therapies for pain have not really improved for hundreds of years. Our main therapies are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen or aspirin, which are just modern versions of chewing on willow bark; and opioids, which are derivatives of opium. In 2012 259 million prescriptions for opioids were filled in the United States. It is not clear how many of these prescriptions were for chronic pain. And indeed, new CDC guidelines on the use of opioids to treat noncancer chronic pain caution physicians to consider the risks and benefits of using opioids when prescribing them to patients. The fact is, however, that opioids are used to treat chronic pain not because they are the ideal treatment, but because for some patients, despite their drawbacks, they are the most effective treatment available at the moment. The problem, as I see it, is this: we are not investing enough in researching and teaching what causes pain and how to treat it. Pain can have a purpose I study the processes that trigger and maintain chronic pain. One of the first things I teach my students is that pain is a biological process that is critical for life. Pain protects our bodies from injury and by reminding us that tissue is damaged and needs to be protected it also aids in repairing the injuries we do acquire. This is graphically illustrated by individuals who are congenitally incapable of feeling pain. People with these conditions typically succumb to infections or organ failure at a young age due to multiple injuries that go unattended. Because they cannot feel pain, they never learn to avoid hazards, or how to protect still-healing injuries. For the most part, physicians and scientists are not particularly concerned with pain from everyday bumps, bruises and cuts. This type of acute pain typically does not require treatment or can be treated with over-the-counter medication. It will resolve itself when the tissue heals. What concerns those of us who treat and study pain, however, is chronic pain. This type of pain that can last for weeks, months or even years serves no useful purpose for survival and is actually detrimental to our health. There isn't one type of chronic pain. In many cases chronic pain persists after an injury has healed. This happens relatively often with wounded veterans, car accident victims and others who have suffered violent trauma. Chronic pain from arthritis is telling the person about the damage in their body. In this respect it is similar to acute pain and, presumably, if the body healed the pain would subside. But, at the moment, there is no treatment or intervention to induce that healing so the pain becomes the most troubling aspect of the disease. Chronic pain can also arise from conditions, like fibromyalgia, which have an unknown cause. These conditions are often misdiagnosed and the pain they produce may be dismissed by health care professionals as psychological or as drug-seeking behavior. When pain is the disease. Credit: www.shutterstock.com How do we experience pain? The human pain experience can be divided into three dimensions: what pain researchers call the sensory-discriminative, the affective-motivational and the cognitive-evaluative. In acute pain there is a balance between each of these dimensions that allows us to accurately evaluate the pain and the threat it may pose to our survival. In chronic pain these dimensions are disrupted. The sensory-discriminative dimension refers to the actual detection, location and intensity of the pain. This dimension is the result of a direct nerve pathway from the body to the spinal cord and up into the brain's cortex. This is how we are aware of the location on our bodies of a potential injury and how much damage may be associated with the injury. Knowing where it hurts is only part of experiencing pain. Is your injury life-threatening? Do you need to run away or fight back? This is where the affective-emotional dimension comes in. It arises from the pain circuitry interacting with the limbic system (the emotional centers of the brain). This adds an emotional flavor to the incoming pain signal and is part of the fight-or-flight response. This pathway evokes the anger or fear associated with the possibility of physical harm. It also provokes learning so that in the future we avoid the circumstances leading to the injury. The third dimension, the cognitive-evaluative, is the conscious interpretation of the pain signal, combined with other sensory information. This dimension draws on the different aspects of pain processing allowing us to determine the location and potential severity of an injury and to come up with survival strategies based on all available information. When it always hurts The pain sensory system is designed for survival. If a pain signal persists, the default programming is that the threat to survival remains an urgent concern. Thus, the goal of the pain system is to get you out of harm's way by ramping up the intensity and unpleasantness of the pain signal. To increase the urgency of the pain signal, the sensory-discriminative dimension of pain becomes less distinct, leading to a more diffuse, less localized, pain. This pathway also amplifies the pain signal by rewiring spinal cord circuits that carry the signal to the brain, making the pain feel more intense. If there is a threat to survival, the increasing intensity and unpleasantness of pain serves a purpose. But if the pain signal persists from, let's say, arthritis or an old injury, the increased intensity and unpleasantness is unwarranted. This is what we define as chronic pain. In chronic pain, as compared to acute pain, the affective-motivational dimension becomes dominant, leading to psychological consequences. Thus suffering and depression are much worse for chronic pain patients than it would be for an individual with an equivalent acute injury. The multifaceted nature of pain is why opioids are often the most effective agents for both moderate to severe acute and chronic pain. Opioids act at all levels of the pain neural circuitry. They suppress incoming pain signals from the peripheral nerves in the body, but importantly for chronic pain patients, they also inhibit the amplification of the signals in the spinal cord and improve the emotional state of the patient. Unfortunately, patients rapidly develop tolerance to opioids, which significantly reduces their effectiveness for chronic therapy. Because of this as well as their addictive nature, potential for abuse and overdose, and side effects such as constipation, opioids are less than ideal agents for treating chronic pain. It is critical that we find alternatives. But that's easier said than done. Funding for pain research lags In 2015 the National Institutes of Health spent US$854 million on pain research, compared to more than $6 billion for cancer. It is no wonder that pain patients muddle through with what amounts to centuries-old therapies. The competition for funding for pain researchers is intense. In fact, many of my friends and colleagues, all highly experienced midcareer scientists, are leaving research because they cannot sustain the funding necessary to make any significant progress in finding treatments for pain. I, myself, spend up to 30 hours per week preparing and writing research proposals for funding agencies. Yet, less than one in 10 of these proposals are funded. The dearth of funding is also discouraging young scientists from doing pain research. With tenure at major universities becoming more and more difficult to attain, they can little afford to spend all of their time writing research proposals that do not get funded. In addition, many medical and dental programs in the United States devote as little as one hour in their curriculum to teaching pain mechanisms and pain management. Thus, most of our health professionals are poorly prepared to diagnose and treat chronic pain, which contributes to both the under treatment of pain and the abuse of opioids. Unrelieved pain contributes more to human suffering than any other disease. It is time to invest in research to find safe effective therapies and on training health care providers to appropriately diagnose and treat pain. Explore further Terminology of chronic pain published This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. (HealthDay)A new report from France suggests that the Zika virus can be transmitted through oral sex. Zika is typically spread through the bite of the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, but the new case adds to building evidence that the virus may be transmitted through sexual contact more readily than thought. Zika symptoms are typically mild in most people. However, the virus can cause a catastrophic birth defect known as microcephaly in babies born to women who become infected while pregnant. These infants are born with abnormally small heads and underdeveloped brains. In the face of the growing reality of sexual transmission of Zika, U.N. health officials announced updated guidelines this week. The advisory urges that women planning to become pregnant wait at least eight weeks before trying to conceive if they or their partner live inor are returning fromareas where the Zika virus is active. The guidelines had previously recommended a four-week waiting period. And if the male partner has had symptoms of Zika infection, couples should wait six months before trying to have a baby, the World Health Organization officials added. In the new report, doctors said a 24-year-old woman in Paris came down with Zika symptoms after having sex seven times with a 46-year-old man. The man had developed Zika symptoms just before leaving Brazil and arriving in Paris last February. Each time, the couple had vaginal sex without ejaculation and oral sex with ejaculation, according to the report. Dr. Yazdan Yazdanpanah, report co-author and an infectious disease specialist at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris, told The New York Times that the couple was using oral sex as a method of birth control. The woman became sick shortly afterwards, and both she and the man were tested for presence of the Zika virus, according to the report. The man had high levels of the virus in his semen and urine, but none in his blood or saliva. The woman had the virus in her urine and saliva, and antibodies to the virus in her blood. However, the doctors noted that they found no sign of Zika in a vaginal swab taken from the woman. The French doctors added they can't rule out vaginal transmission or even infection during deep kissing, since the man's saliva was not tested while he had symptoms. The report was published June 2 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The vast majority of Zika infections have occurred in Latin America, with Brazil the hot zone with an estimated 5,000 cases of microcephaly. There have been no reports of Zika-induced microcephaly contracted in the United States. But two babies have been born in the United States with the birth defect after their mothers contracted the virus while traveling during pregnancy in countries where Zika is active. And U.S. health officials have said they expect to see Zika infections in Gulf Coast states such as Florida, Louisiana and Texas as the summer mosquito season picks up. Earlier this month, U.S. health officials reported that the number of pregnant women in the United States infected with the Zika virus had tripled because cases were now being counted in a more comprehensive way. So far, an estimated 280 infected women are being followed in the United States and its territories, according to two registries that have been created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Previously, only cases of pregnant women who had Zika-related symptoms or pregnancy complications were being tallied, CDC officials said. But recently published reports have found that some pregnant women show no symptoms of Zika infection, yet still give birth to babies with microcephaly. To limit any potential spread of Zika virus via mosquitoes, health officials on the federal, state and local level are deploying a three-pronged strategy: improving mosquito control; expanding their ability to test for Zika; and urging the public to protect themselves against mosquitoes. Women of child-bearing age who live in an active Zika region should protect themselves from mosquito bites by wearing long-sleeved shirts and long pants, using mosquito repellent when outside, and staying indoors as much as possible, according to the CDC. Explore further Zika-related microcephaly cases reach five in Colombia Copyright 2016 HealthDay. All rights reserved. The HTLV-1 provirus, like any retrovirus, escapes immune system detection by integrating its DNA with cellular DNA. Credit: Dr. Yorifumi Satou Joint research between scientists from Kumamoto University, Japan and Imperial College London, UK has revealed the mechanisms of persistent latent infection of the human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1). This is an important achievement that may contribute to the prevention of refractory leukemia, a form of leukemia in which leukemic cells do not respond well to treatment. HTLV-1 is a type of retrovirus that has co-existed with humans for several thousand years, and is thought to be transmitted either through sexual contact or from mother to child through breastfeeding. It is currently estimated that there are at least 30 million infected people in the world. Most are asymptomatic HTLV-1 carriers who won't be affected by further disease, but a few (3-5%) will develop leukemia or chronic inflammatory disease. The main trait of a retrovirus infection, simply put, is that the virus DNA integrates with the original DNA of a host cell, thereby making it extremely difficult to recognize and treat. Virus DNA that is incorporated into a host cell's DNA is able to avoid the immune mechanism and the actions of antiretrovirus drugs since the host cell considers the virus DNA as its own. This is a major obstacle in attempting to completely eliminate the virus from the body of an infected person. A recent collaboration between researchers from Kumamoto University and Imperial College London has revealed that the key factor in HTLV-1 infection is CTCF. CTCF is a type of cell-derived protein with the important function of determining how genes are sterically folded into DNA. The research collaboration revealed that CTCF binds directly to the already integrated viral DNA of HTLV-1 and controls the mechanisms that promote persistent infection. "When the virus enters the human body the immune system begins working," said lead researcher Associate Professor Yorifumi Satou of Kumamoto University. "However, to escape the immune system, HTLV-1 integrates with human DNA and uses the original folding system of the human cells. Thus, the virus is able to stealthily survive in the body of infected person." "Adult T-cell leukemia developed from HTLV-1 is an intractable blood cancer with a low incidence rate but poor prognosis," Dr. Satou continued. "The results of our study illustrate an important mechanism used in the persistent latent infection of HTLV-1 and should contribute to the development of new forms of prevention and treatment." Although HTLV-1 is one of the oldest retroviruses, it was not discovered until 1980. Since then, researchers from Kumamoto University have been contributing to HTLV-1 research, working toward prevention and eventual cure of the disease. More information: Yorifumi Satou et al, The retrovirus HTLV-1 inserts an ectopic CTCF-binding site into the human genome, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2016). Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Yorifumi Satou et al, The retrovirus HTLV-1 inserts an ectopic CTCF-binding site into the human genome,(2016). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1423199113 Provided by Kumamoto University (HealthDay)Mindfulness meditation seems to help breast cancer patients better manage symptoms of fatigue, anxiety and fear of recurrence, a new study suggests. Previous research has found that mindfulness meditation can reduce stress and anxiety in the general population as well as in breast cancer survivors. But, there hadn't been many large, clinical trials to test the value of the practice among breast cancer patients, said study author Cecile Lengacher, director of the predoctoral fellowship program at the University of South Florida, in Tampa. In her study, those who took part in the six-week program had less anxiety, fear of recurrence and less fatigue compared to those who did not take the program, she found. The effect was small to moderate, she added. "It works right away," Lengacher said of the program, known as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. The results also seemed to last through 12 weeks of follow-up. "Even after they completed the program, the benefits continued through the 12 weeks," she said. "It is a program that once you learn it, you have it for life." For the study, Lengacher and her colleagues randomly assigned 322 women who had been treated for breast cancer to the six-week mindfulness program or to a comparison group that did not learn the technique. At the study's start, and again at six and 12 weeks, the researchers assessed the participants' symptoms. In all, 299 women completed the study. The instruction helped reduce fear of recurrence and fatigue the most, the study found. The effect was small to moderate, Lengacher added. At the core of the program are four techniques. They include: meditation with a focus on breathing, yoga, a body scan technique (where participants learn to become aware of the entire body) and walking meditation. The instruction trains people to be aware and pay attention to the present. "We teach them to attend to the breath and to bodily sensations," Lengacher said. Through the practice, "by this constant attention and concentration, the person learns to self-regulate their emotions." Being in the present, she said, "reduces the amount of worrying about the past, worrying about the future." The study findings rang true with Susan Castledine, 71, of Los Angeles, who was diagnosed with breast cancer two and a half years ago. "I did tai chi all the way through, which I consider a form of meditation," said the former school administrator and journalism instructor. More recently, Castledine completed an online mindfulness program. "Not only did they talk about mindfulness and how they used it in their lives, they would do meditation with you," she said of the program leaders. These days, she tries to meditate every night, "anywhere from 2 to 15 minutes," she said. Castledine also incorporates the mindfulness techniques into daily activities. She said she finds it stress-relieving. "If I had been doing meditation at the time [of her treatment], I think it would have relieved my stress," she added. One cancer care expert was more cautious in interpreting the study findings. The effects of the meditation "were meaningful, but they were moderate," said Matthew Loscalzo, the Liliane Elkins Professor in Supportive Care Programs at the City of Hope Cancer Center, in Duarte, Calif. "They were largest for the fear of recurrence problems," he said. One limitation of the study, he said, was that the follow-up was relatively brief, just 12 weeks. It's also not possible to know whether the improvements in stress and other areas were completely due to the meditation, or also to the social support provided by the group. Experts do know, Loscalzo said, that mindfulness meditation "can be helpful for anxiety and stress." Less research has been done in cancer patients, he added. The study was published online May 31 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Explore further Coping with active surveillance anxiety in prostate cancer Copyright 2016 HealthDay. All rights reserved. A study of almost 49 000 obese patients shows that those who do not have obesity surgery are much more likely to die from any cause than those who do have surgery, after an average of 5 year's follow-up. The study, presented at this year's European Obesity Summit, is by Christina Persson, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and colleagues. Obesity is associated with increased mortality in numerous diseases. Bariatric surgery has shown to prevent obesity related mortality and morbidity. However, there is a lack of population-based prospective studies examining overall mortality in patients who undergo gastric bypass. The objective of this study was to assess overall mortality in obese individuals undergoing bariatric surgery compared to non-surgical obese patients. From the Swedish Patient registry, a person-based register of all hospitalisations and hospital-based outpatients' visits in Sweden, the authors created a cohort including all patients with a principal diagnosis of obesity (meaning this was the main cause of their hospital visit) in Sweden from 2000 until 2011. The study population comprised 48,693 patients 18-74 years of whom 22,581 underwent bariatric surgery (gastric bypass 92.8%) while there were 26,112 obese patients who did not undergo surgery. The mortality rate was higher in the non-surgical group (4.21%) compared to the surgical group (1.11%) (7.7 vs. 2.1 deaths per 1000 people per year). Mean follow-up time for the surgical group was 5.4 years and 5.5 for the non-surgical group. The overall mortality decreased by 57% in the surgery group (age adjusted hazard ratio 0.43) compared with the non-surgical group. This 57% reduction was the same when adjusting for age alone or age and previous comorbidity and other factors (including sex, coronary heart disease, valvular disease, cancer, hypertension, diabetes, heart failure, stroke and atrial fibrillation). The most common cause of death in the non-surgical group was cardiovascular disease, followed by cancer. In the surgical obese patients, the most common cause of death was external causes of mortality (such as accidents and suicide), followed by cardiovascular disease and cancer. Although accidents and suicide were the main causes of death in the surgical group, the incidence of death from these causes was still lower than in the non-surgical group. The authors conclude: "This population-based cohort observational study indicates that the overall all-cause mortality is considerably lower among obese individuals who undergo bariatric surgery compared to non-surgical obese individuals, and the differences lies mainly in cardiovascular disease and cancer." Explore further Study shows bariatric surgery better than intensive lifestyle and drug interventions at reversing diabetes Provided by European Association for the Study of Obesity If you work in a hospital these days, you've probably gotten the invitation: Take a survey about how well you, your team and your hospital do at protecting patients from harm, and how empowered you feel to do the right thing. In fact, you've probably gotten many invitations and reminders to take the survey, as your hospital tries to get employees to respond. It's all in the name of gauging something called "patient safety culture." But a new study questions whether such surveys actually measure how well a hospital is doing at keeping patients safe. A team of researchers based mainly at the University of Michigan Medical School and VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System did the study using data from hundreds of hospitals. They've published their findings in the journal BMJ: Quality & Safety. What they found surprised even them. Overall, hospital units' patient safety culture scores didn't match up with how well the units did on a key patient safety goal: reducing two risky infections that patients can catch during their hospital stay. Big disconnect - big implications This disconnect - between safety culture survey results and actual safety improvementhappened in hospital units around the country that had signed on to a national patient safety project. All the units were working to reduce two kinds of infections that patients can get during a hospital stay: one called central line associated blood stream infection (CLABSI) from devices used to deliver medicine into their bloodstream, and another called catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI), from devices used to collect urine. The hospitals gave staff technical helptools, training, new procedures and other support to help reduce these infections. They also fostered cultural changes aimed at improving teamwork and encouraging staff to speak up to stop an unsafe situation. And, they surveyed employees about patient safety at the start, and toward the end. "We hypothesized that those that did better on survey measures of safety culture would achieve better infection rates, especially given that there had been so much effort put into trying to improve safety culture in these collaboratives," says lead author and assistant professor Jennifer Meddings, M.D. But, she explains, "In the data from both collaboratives, there was no connection between the safety culture scores derived from the surveys, and the actual decline in infection rates on the units. We think this indicates it's much more difficult to detect and measure safety culture than has been thought." She also hopes that new or revised surveys will get tested for their ability to measure real change on a small scale - a process called validationbefore they're launched on a large scale. Survey says... Many hospitals put a lot of resources behind trying to get employees to take the surveys that form the basis for the safety culture scores. Even so, less than half of the hospital staff on the units in these projects took them. The length of the survey - 42 questions for each staff member - may have contributed to this. But with survey results from only a portion of employees, the score that comes from those results may be inaccurate. A previous study that looked at baseline data from the CLABSI-reduction project found that performance on a measure dubbed 'safety climate profile' generated by researchers using some combinations of the individual measures did correspond with reductions in infections. But Meddings and her colleagues wanted to use the safety culture data that hospitals actually receive back once in feedback their employees have taken the survey, as recommended by the survey tool instructions, without creating any new types of composite scores. They looked at how well hospital units' scores on each one of the 42 questions in the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPS) survey corresponded with rates of CLABSI and CAUTI in those units. Though the hospital units in the study managed to reduce CLABSI rates by 47 percent and CAUTI rates by 23 percent overall, the changes in HSOPS score were minor. For some, hospital safety scores worsened despite improvements in infection rates. Meddings says the findings should give the patient safety community reason to evaluate how patient safety culture surveys get used as part of larger safety-focused efforts, which are often routine components for participation in collaboratives. "Unexpectedly, the data from these collaboratives showed no association of better infection rates for hospitals with better safety culture scores," she says. "These data suggest that either the infection rates were improved by improving other aspects of care than safety culture such as improving skills in catheter use, or that these surveys simple do not capture safety culture well." She adds, "We hope these analyses inform future collaboratives to be designed in way to better assess which components of multi-component interventions are most important to reduce infection and to reduce the routine use of culture surveys for busy clinicians until there are clearer links between the surveyed measures and culture observed on the units." Explore further Hospital safety culture critical in improving surgical results More information: Jennifer Meddings et al, Evaluation of the association between Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPS) measures and catheter-associated infections: results of two national collaboratives, BMJ Quality & Safety (2016). Jennifer Meddings et al, Evaluation of the association between Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPS) measures and catheter-associated infections: results of two national collaboratives,(2016). DOI: 10.1136/bmjqs-2015-005012 Frances famous wine city of Bordeaux announces 2017 as the Year of Georgia One of the most eagerly-anticipated wine venues in Bordeaux, France is opening next week and has invited Georgia to be an honourable guest to showcase the history and culture of Georgian wine at a special exhibition in 2017.The new Bordeaux Centre for Wine and Civilisations will open on May 31 in Frances famous wine region. For the first year, the centre will promote a range of international wines, but in mid-2017 Georgia will present a solo exhibition celebrating its traditional winemaking and viticulture.Georgias exhibition will be named Vineyard-Georgia and take place at the Bordeaux Centre for Wine and Civilisations in July-August 2017.France decided to host Georgia as its first international exhibition in February this year when a delegation from Georgias Ministry of Agriculture paid a working visit to France.At the time of the visit, Georgias Agriculture Minister Otar Danelia and the chairman of the French wine culture and civilisation, Sylvie Cazes, signed a Cooperation Agreement.Once the agreement was signed, France announced 2017 as the Year of Georgia in Bordeaux to recognise Georgia as a country with old traditions and a vast wine culture.The first exhibition held in the new centre in France will be dedicated to Georgia, said Cazes.Georgia is known as the cradle of wine. It will be an important and, at the same time, historical event. The exhibition fair will be accompanied by an extensive professional program including tasting, conferences, seminars and other cultural events which will allow French people to learn more about Georgian wine and about your magnificent country Georgia, Cazes added.The Bordeaux Centre for Wine and Civilisations will co-organise and finance the exhibition with Georgia.Construction of the new centre was initiated by Bordeaux City Mayor, Alain Juppe. The centre, which is 14,000m2, will feature modern architecture and technology and will present the latest achievements in the field. Azerbaijani gas export to Turkey up in Q1 Azerbaijan exported 1.71 billion cubic meters of gas to Turkey in the first quarter of 2016 as compared to 1.69 billion cubic meters exported in January-March 2015, said a report of the Turkish Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EPDK).Azerbaijan supplied 6.17 billion cubic meters of gas to Turkey in 2015 versus 6.07 billion cubic meters in 2014.The report also said that Turkey imported 13.17 billion cubic meters of gas in Q1 2016, out of which 10.24 billion cubic meters were imported via pipelines and 2.93 billion cubic meters accounted for the liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports.Azerbaijan's share in Turkey's total gas imports was 13 percent in January-March 2016.Turkey imports gas from Azerbaijan via the South Caucasus Pipeline (Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum).Turkey has a contract for the annual purchase of 6.6 billion cubic meters of gas from Azerbaijan's offshore Shah Deniz gas and condensate field. US condemns Tskhinvali initiative By Messenger Staff An official representatives of the United States (US) Department of State has stressed that America would never respect or recognise the attempt of Georgias eastern de-facto Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) region to conduct a referendum whether to join Russia or not.US Department of State Spokesperson Mark Toner stated at last weeks briefing his country supported Georgias sovereignty and territorial integrity within its international recognised borders and never discussed breakaway Abkhazia and Tskhinvali as separate, independent republics.Our position to Georgia is the following: we support Georgias sovereignty and territorial integrity, which also covers South Ossetia. Consequently we dont recognise the attempt of South Ossetia to gain independence or demand sovereignty: we simply dont support this, Toner said.The leader of Tskhinvali, Leonid Tibilov, has stated the breakaway area planned to hold the referendum next year.The entirety of the civilized world considers Tskhinvali and Abkhazia as integral parts of Georgia.Russia and Nicaragua recognised the breakaway regions as independent republics in 2008 in the wake of the Russia-Georgia war. In 2009, Venezuela, Nauru and Tuvalu took the same step.Russia needs the breakaway regions as levers to exercise pressure against Georgia at will.Of the two, Tskhinvali is always more obedient to Russia and directly fulfils Moscow's demands without protest.The situation in Abkhazia has always been different, and Russias policy towards the region differs too. Many Abkhazians believe that Russia is trying to directly dominate the region rather than recognise their independence.Gradually, the number of Abkhazians is decreasing while the number of Russians rises; when native Abkhazians realise that Russia wants their land but not their people it might well be too late to do anything about it.Georgia should stick to its policy of reconciling its people; this is the only sensible way of reintegrating Georgia's lost territories. via @learyreports Gov. Rick Scott will meet Monday in New York with Donald Trump, as the GOP nominee turns to the general election and crucial Florida. "Governor Scott looks forward to meeting with Mr. Trump to discuss his campaigns in Florida and how he thinks Mr. Trump will have a big win in the state in November, the governor's political consultant, Melissa Stone, said in a statement first obtained by the Washington Post. Scott endorsed Trump the day after the Florida primary but had already made his support clear. Appearing earlier today on Fox News, Scott said he and Trump spoke late last week. "My goal is I could have hopefully a positive impact on how he wins Florida," Scott said. "He can win this state, he should win this state. I won both times, but you've got to work at it, you've got to go out there and make sure you get the votes, tell your story. It's still about jobs. That's why I think Donald Trump could have a big win because he's a business person that knows how to create jobs." Michael Auslen contributed to this report. --ALEX LEARY, Tampa Bay Times @JeremySWallace A leading candidate in the U.S. Senate race to replace Marco Rubio said Friday that he thinks it is all but certain that Rubio is getting back into the contest under increasing pressure from Senate leadership. I think all signs are pointing to him running, U.S. Rep. David Jolly, R-Indian Shores, said in an interview with the Times/Herald. Those signs he said includes Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell going on national television to talk about his efforts to draft Rubio to run for re-election, plus Rubios refusal to outright endorse his personal friend Carlos Lopez-Cantera in the Senate race. Jolly said he has no direct knowledge from Rubio himself, but said he expects the pressure on Rubio to only increase when the Senate is back in session next week. He said by next Friday, he expects Rubio will signal what he plans to do. He has to decide by June 24, the last day to qualify in Florida to be on the ballot. If Rubio gets in, Jolly said hes dropping out of the Senate race. He said he got into the race originally because it was an open seat. He said he has no interest in taking on an incumbent like Rubio. Other Republican candidates have refused to say they'll step aside if Rubio gets into the race. Manatee County homebuilder Carlos Beruff and Orlando businessman Todd Wilcox have both said they won't get out of the race even if Rubio changes his mind and runs for the Senate again. @PatriciaMazzei Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 3 percentage points in Florida, according to a new poll that shows for the first time that a third-party candidate might draw support away from Trump. Libertarian Gary Johnson garnered 6 percent support in the new Mason-Dixon poll, mostly from white Republican and independent voters. Clinton is ahead of Trump 45-42 percent, with 7 percent undecided. Clinton is backed by 68 percent of Hispanics, but both she and Trump remain broadly disliked. Forty-seven percent of respondents view her unfavorably, and 53 percent feel the same way about Trump -- about half the electorate in both cases. Mason-Dixon took a look at whether picking a Floridian as running mate would help either candidate. U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson wouldn't help Clinton much. Gov. Rick Scott, on the other hand, "could be toxic" for Trump, pollster J. Brad Coker said in a statement, with 40 percent of Florida voters declaring themselves less likely to vote for Trump with Scott on the ticket. The poll of 625 registered voters was conducted May 31-June 2. Its error margin is plus-or-minus 4 percentage points. @ByKristenMClark National and state Republicans are casting President Barack Obama's political events in Miami today as the Democratic Party's figurehead intervening in a critical toss-up state. Obama is in South Florida this evening for a couple Democratic fundraisers: one for U.S. Senate candidate Patrick Murphy and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee -- the arm of the Democratic Party that's tasked with electing candidates to the U.S. Senate -- and another for the Democratic National Committee. (The DNC event was being billed as potentially Obama's last visit to Miami as president.) Wadi Gaitan, spokesman for the Republican Party of Florida, said in a statement that Obama was attempting "to calm the rising tide of Democratic disunity through speeches and fundraisers." "Floridians continue to distrust the failed policies that the president and Hillary Clinton are promoting. Voters are ready for a new leader who will turn the page on the last eight years of this broken administration by fighting for real solutions for all Americans," Gaitan said -- without naming the GOP's presidential candidate, Donald Trump. The National Republican Senatorial Committee -- the GOP version of the DSCC -- said Obama was trying "to bail out Patrick Murphy" by fundraising for him in person. Murphy is seen as a front-runner in the competitive race to replace Marco Rubio -- a contest that could determine which party has control of the Senate next year. But Murphy had a rocky month in May, largely in part because of reports by the Miami Herald and the Tampa Bay Times that highlighted inconsistencies in the Democratic candidate's resume. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden endorsed Murphy in March -- an achievement Murphy proudly touts -- and since then, Biden has campaigned and fund-raised for Murphy twice, first in Miami and then in Orlando last month. So it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that Obama might campaign for him, too, at some point. The NRSC said Murphy "is not only watching the bottom fall out of his campaign, but is struggling to gain oxygen in a brutal primary fight against liberal hero Alan Grayson." (Murphy, Grayson and Miami labor attorney Pam Keith are competing in the Aug. 30 primary.) "With Murphy in a tailspin, its hardly a surprise that D.C. Democrats are pulling out all the stops to bail out their chosen candidate," the NRSC said in a statement this morning. Murphy campaign spokesman Joshua Karp told the Herald/Times that "Republicans keep cheer-leading for ethically challenged hedge fund manager Alan Grayson to win the Democratic primary." "Meanwhile, Patrick is proud to be endorsed and supported by President Obama, Vice President Biden, and over a hundred other Democratic leaders. That tells Florida Democrats all they need to know," Karp said in a campaign statement. Some Republicans have, indeed, expressed a desire for Grayson to win the primary -- but that's because it would give their GOP candidate a stronger chance to win the general election (and hold on to the seat for Republicans). Polls of the U.S. Senate race so far have, in general, shown both Murphy and Grayson leading over the five Republican contenders, but with Grayson doing so by a slimmer margin than Murphy. The five Republicans running in that party primary are U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis of Ponte Vedra Beach, U.S. Rep. David Jolly of Indian Shores, Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera of Miami, Orlando businessman Todd Wilcox and Manatee County home-builder Carlos Beruff. UPDATE: 3:40 p.m. Lopez-Cantera's campaign also chimed in about Obama's event for Murphy with a statement this morning, saying in part: "Murphy is bringing in America's most divisive president to fundraise for him today to further try to prop up his flailing Senate bid while he continues to stumble." Photo credit: President Barack Obama arrives at Cecil Airport on Air Force One with Rep. Patrick Murphy, left, and Rep. Corrine Brown, Feb. 26, 2016, in Jacksonville. Rick Wilson / AP Helen Aguirre Ferre, the newly-appointed Hispanic media guru for Donald Trump's presidential campaign, is a long-time Miami journalist and public affairs show host with a couple of noteworthy lines on her resume. Aguirre Ferre was one of 10 journalists named in press accounts nearly a decade ago who received government money from Radio and TV Marti, which beamed anti-Castro propaganda to Cuba. The payments caused a sensation in South Florida media circles and resulted in dismissals of three writers at El Nuevo Herald in Miami. And in the race for governor of Florida in 2006, Aguirre Ferre was an outside-the-box name floated as a possible running mate for Republican Charlie Crist. Crist chose state Rep. Jeff Kottkamp of Cape Coral, and Aguirre Ferre remained in print and on TV in Miami, where she's the long-time host of Issues, a weekly Friday evening roundtable program on WPBT, South Florida's PBS outlet. More background here. MILWAUKEE As Wisconsin farmers plant crops this spring, perched in the cabs of big tractors rolling through their fields, the words "capturing data" probably wouldn't be used to describe the bucolic scene. Yet increasingly, that is what's happening as farmers monitor in real time the planting and harvesting of their crops capturing data that is analyzed for the purpose of boosting production and profits. Modern agriculture, like other industries, is plugged into the world of big data. Moreover, some farmers are capitalizing on the information gleaned from their fields by selling it to agribusinesses such as seed and chemical companies. "That's probably the main reason we are on board with this, to try and figure out how to market our data," said Lee Bushman, who plants and harvests about 6,000 acres of crops for farmers in Buffalo County near the Minnesota border. That's where the Farmobile Data Store enters the picture. The Overland Park, Kansas, firm collects a farmer's electronic field records and markets the data to agribusinesses splitting the revenue evenly with the farmer. "Our business is built on the conviction that the data farmers generate is inherently valuable," said Jason Tatge, Farmobile's founder and chief executive officer. How valuable are electronic field records that include information such as planting dates, the number of seeds planted per acre and when a crop is ready for harvest? It depends on how much a buyer, such as a seed company, is willing to pay. However, the data could put a few thousand extra dollars into a farmer's pocket, in addition to being a crop management tool. "We believe it will be a significant revenue stream," Tatge said. Getting paid for data that's captured by planting and harvesting equipment anyway is a worthwhile goal, Bushman said. The Farmobile system uses a small device, called a passive uplink connection, that gathers planting and harvesting data from field machinery in real time. Data can include seeding rates, crop yields and other variables. The device, which a farmer leases for $1,250 a year, can be installed on a variety of equipment in five minutes, according to Tatge. It's like a Fit Bit for farm machines. Once plugged in, the device captures information from planting and harvesting for viewing in real time on an iPad. Also, the data can be analyzed later on a computer. A farmer can choose what electronic field records he wants to sell, and to what buyers. Farmobile is the custodian and marketer of the data but never owns it. "We do whatever the farmer tells us. Our contract terms ensure that farmers own their data outright, forever," Tatge said. Farmers can share, rather than sell, their electronic field records. That could be the case if they are working with an agronomist, a business consultant or banker who needs the information to help with the farmer's own business. Farmobile devices also help farmers keep track of multiple farm machines running in various fields at the same time, said Jake Buttles, who uses the technology for his custom manure-hauling operation in Manawa, about 45 miles west of Green Bay. *** For a variety of reasons, some farmers won't sell their data. They will use it for their own management purposes, however, such as negotiating land rent prices based on the profit that is expected from a particular crop. Privacy, and how field records are used by others, are concerns. Some farmers worry that GPS-linked data could be obtained by government agencies and environmental groups or that a hedge fund could use planting and harvesting information to speculate in commodities markets. So farmers are careful about how they release their information, said Tom Thieding, spokesman for the Wisconsin Corn Growers Association. "If you are a grower, you are always kind of peeking over the fence to see what your neighbor is doing. This is a little more sophisticated way of doing it," Thieding said. Earlier this year, the American Farm Bureau Federation launched an online survey to collect feedback from farmers about field data. When the Farm Bureau did a similar survey in 2014, nearly 3,400 farmers responded. That survey found that 77 percent of farmers were concerned that their data could be used for regulatory purposes. More than 80 percent said they were unaware of all the ways a company intended to use their data and with whom it was being shared. *** Still, harnessing farm data has the potential to be the next big driver in agriculture productivity gains, similar to the transition more than a century ago from horses to tractors. The number of new equipment and data technologies deployed by farmers is going to more than double in the near future, according to Caledonia Solutions, a Minneapolis research and consulting firm. "This is not what you would expect to see, with farm incomes projected to stay low for the next few years. Farmers aren't waiting to make moves for improving their operations," Robert Hill, principal of Caledonia Solutions, said in statement. Farmobile is in its third growing season, with about 400 farms enrolled in the system, including 56 in Wisconsin. Tatge says farmers are like authors, using land instead of paper, and crop inputs instead of ink, to create something that's unique to their operation. He grew up on a farm in Minnesota and through his business has visited more than 200 farms in the last couple of years. "They all have these unique recipes ... and the data being collected is an insight into their recipe," Tatge said. Come Friday, the Clay Studio of Missoula will finally have room to spread out. The nonprofit ceramics center is finishing up a long-awaited expansion of its sales gallery, where member artists and residents display their work, and its exhibition gallery, where it hosts monthly solo and group shows. With a large window and glass door, the gallery space is roomy, where it used to be more like a hallway, said Shalene Valenzuela, the studio's executive director. In its previous configuration, visitors walked through a narrow hall into the sales gallery, which was often cramped during receptions and allowed only limited access to people with mobility issues. "This will allow people to mingle and spend time amongst the work," Valenzuela said. Lee Stuurmans, the studio manager and a ceramic artist as well, said the larger room offers more flexibility between the two galleries, depending on a particular show. "An artist comes to look at the space, and they know immediately what they have to work with," he said. "The biggest limitation is that we used to have a 30-inch door to the space, so there couldn't be any work bigger than that, but now pretty much any work can get through." He mentioned two residents, Koral Halperin and Crista Ann Ames, who are building pieces that likely wouldn't fit into the gallery as it was. The grand re-opening is set for Friday with a group exhibition, "Small Works from a Big State," a show curated by Montana Clay, a statewide collective that connects ceramic artists with resources like ceramics centers, university programs, galleries and more. Valenzuela said the site, montanaclay.org, is an impressive venture that shows the volume and diverse range of ceramic art in Montana. The show was designed to travel to a national educators' conference in Kansas City earlier this year, hence the title. *** The Clay Studio isn't done with additions for the summer yet. At its annual Potsketch fundraiser earlier this year, the studio raised enough money thanks to a matching offer from an anonymous donor to build another kiln. The car kiln, a front-loading model with a track system, will give artists a chance to fire larger, figurative works. "This opens a great range of possibilities for our community and our residents," Valenzuela said. With its other kilns, ceramicists could build large works in pieces to be assembled after firing, but that method doesn't work with all artists' visions. The car kiln also requires less of a time commitment that the studio's large wood-fired kilns. ** On First Friday, the new gallery will be open from 5:30-9 p.m. at the Clay Studio, located at 1106 A Hawthorne St. on the Westside with live music by Aaron Jennings. The studio is also taking part in the Northside/Westside Bike Challenge. Participants can get a passport stamped at the studio, Real Good, the Missoula Community Food Co-op, Zootown Arts Community Center, Imagine Nation Brewing and Draught Works. After getting a fully stamped passport, you can enter a drawing to win prizes from those participating organizations. SEELEY LAKE The country song "Cowgirls Dont Cry has eerie connections to Kim Kelloggs life. The Seeley-Swan High School senior is graduating Sunday, a feat that comes after years of heartache. At 2 years old, her father died of a heart attack. At 6, her mother died of breast cancer. Soon after, she moved from Texas to Montana, a culture shock for the big-city little princess. It was hard for me to understand the true impact of someones death at that time, because I was so young, she said. It sunk in when at 13, her uncle Mike died of throat cancer. The next morning, Kellogg got another call: her grandmother had died of a heart attack. Her death came three months after her husband also died of a heart attack. Four months later, another grandmother, Mikes mother, died. Two of her aunts also got cancer, one of whom she lives with today in Condon. He (Mike) was one of my biggest motivators in life, never handed me a list of principles, how to live my life or any of that, she said. You have your best friend not with you anymore and all those thoughts of what could I do, those suicidal everything, all came into play. I began losing my faith and then I just started trying to realize, what would they want me to do? They wouldnt want me to quit. *** Cowgirls Dont Cry, performed by Brooks & Dunn and Reba McEntire, has strong connections to Mikes final days. Its almost exactly what happened the day that he had his voice for the last time, Kellogg said of his battle with throat cancer. The third verse is nearly identical to this time in Kelloggs life: Phone rang early one mornin' Her momma's voice, she'd been cryin' Said it's your daddy, you need to come home This is it, I think he's dyin' She laid the phone down by his head Last words that he said Cowgirls don't cry, ride, baby, ride It was almost word for word what my uncle Mike said, Kellogg said. I remember getting a phone call in elementary school. My aunt said, Do you want to come up to Missoula and visit with him? It was pretty much her phone call telling me, This is your chance. *** Kelloggs faith, her animals and knowing her family would want her to succeed were her big three motivators. Ive always loved animals, she said. Theyve always been there for me when some people havent. When I ride my horses I have 10 when I just ride out in the back country, its peaceful. Im not a video-gamer. Im a hard worker. I cant just sit around. Thats why this fall, shes headed to Carroll College to major in anthrozoology and minor in business. Anthrozoology studies the human and animal relationship, she said. Ill get to work with animals, either dog or equine, and use them for therapies. Her path to graduation has had fits and starts. She was advanced as a child, but after losing her mother and father, she fell behind. By sixth grade, she had caught up, and then was homeschooled. She was taught at a fourth-grade level, so I didnt really learn anything. In seventh grade, she attended Stillwater Christian School in Kalispell, but she was taught at a high school sophomore level. Finally, she entered high school at Seeley-Swan. Im a realistic person and I dont let the drama and all those (things) get to me, she said. I was bullied for awhile and I just rise above it. I see the better in people and try not to let it get to me, cause sometimes you look at people and its like, while you play your little high school game, Ill be a realistic person and I will go somewhere with my life. You have that decision if you want to or not. I try not to let it bother me. Shes worked hard, vying for straight As her senior year. Im excited to see what everything has in store for me, she said. HAMILTON Former Ravalli County Treasurer Valerie Stamey said Thursday that she will not file a legal response to the civil lawsuit summons served on her last month. Stamey made that statement in an email sent to the Ravalli Republic on Thursday morning that promised a legal challenge of her own if the county continues to proceed with its lawsuit. The county commission filed a lawsuit against Stamey in June 2014 after suspending the interim treasurer on charges of official misconduct. It took the county six separate summons and two years of looking before it finally tracked Stamey down in South Carolina where she was served with papers ordering her to answer a civil lawsuit seeking thousands of dollars. Stamey had 21 days to respond to the court. That time period ended earlier this week. Instead of responding to the court, Stamey said she both emailed and faxed a letter to Ravalli County Attorney Bill Fulbright on Sunday. On Thursday, Ravalli County Deputy Attorney Howard Recht confirmed the office had received a letter, but since it wasnt filed with the court, it had no impact on the pending case. Stamey emailed a copy of that letter to the newspaper Thursday. In the letter to Fulbright, the former treasurer called the summons constitutionally invalid and said the district court did not have jurisdiction over her because she now lives out of state. This letter serves notice to you that if you continue in this action against me, I will seek legal remedies, Stameys letter read. I have made you aware of the flaw in your continuing to waste tax dollars to try and illegally serve me. In the letter, Stamey took Fulbright and other county officials to task for the events that led up to her ouster as treasurer. She claimed that the standard of operation that was in place prior to her taking the position led to the troubles the treasurers office faced under her tenure. I was framed using an existing standard of operation that I was not allowed to change and direct sabotage from my staff, Stamey said in her letter. In particular, Stamey claimed that as county auditor, Fulbright had failed to file quarterly reports showing that Montana Code was being followed by the treasurers office and confirming that receipts were to be kept in other offices. If these reports had been available, I would have been able to perform my duties as county treasurer, Stamey wrote. Stamey also claimed the countys chief financial officer, Klarrysee Murphy, had refused to allow monthly reports be generated because she claimed the funds were not balanced between the treasurer and finance offices. She previously allowed other treasurers to print monthly reports, but would not allow Valerie Stamey to simply print and distribute these reports, the letter read. Thus, the summons for fines for the resulting failure to generate reports is not valid. Failure to submit monthly reports was one of the charges included in the 58 instances that the county claimed that Stamey had failed to complete her official duties included in the lawsuit. What is conveniently left out of your attacks on me is that all funds were accounted for and no funds were missing in the Treasurers Office, Stameys letter read. The omission of this clear finding continues to point to your deliberate and malicious attacks on me. *** Fulbright disagreed with Stameys contention that she was no longer under the jurisdiction of the court simply because she had moved out of state. One can not commit an alleged wrong in Montana and then run away from it by moving to a different state, Fulbright said. Stameys letter is not a legal response that will be acceptable to the court, he said. This letter seems to go back to the same strategy of finger pointing that she employed back in 2014 after she was suspended from her position, Fulbright said. Stamey also referred to claims about checks being found in her office in box tops. In her letter, Stamey said it was a long standing practice to use box tops to carry each employees daily work. Stamey said she when questioned the practice, she was told thats how its always been done. The reason payments were in my office was because staff literally refused to deposit the processed batches I gave them for deposit, Stamey wrote. After Stamey was placed on administrative leave, officials found about $780,000 of checks piled on her desk and on the floor in box tops. They also found a deposit of $5,367.34 in checks and currency lodged behind the desk and office wall. During Stameys short tenure as interim treasurer, the office fell months behind in its workload after employees left after citing a hostile workplace. An audit from a private Butte firm found the treasurers office in disarray, but no evidence of fraud. Stamey sued the accounting firm, saying their report caused her to be shunned and exposed to hatred and contempt. She later dropped the lawsuit. Stamey was placed on administrative leave by the commission after she refused to answer questions about a civil lawsuit she faced in South Carolina, where she allegedly cashed an $18,149 check twice after refinancing her home. It cost the county more than $120,000 in expenses to correct and reset the treasurers office after Stameys departure. Earlier this week, Recht said he plans to send Stamey letters to let her know the county plans to move forward with its lawsuit. If Stamey continues to refuse to respond to the summons, Recht said the county will ask a judge to issue a default judgment. In its lawsuit, the county asked for $29,000, plus interest for the 58 instances where Stamey allegedly failed to complete her official duties. Recht said county is also seeking damages. It could end up be considerably more than $29,000, Recht said. Graduation season is the best time of year. Its a time when our students are celebrated for their hard work, dedication, and perseverance. Its a time for reflecting on the very best moments, and the challenges along the way that surely could have derailed anyone. High school graduation is the bittersweet closing of one door, and opening of a whole new set of possibilities. This year marks my final graduation season as Montanas superintendent of public instruction. Over the last seven years, Ive watched our students grow and achieve in ways that makes me immensely proud to lead our public schools. More students are now graduating from high school than ever before, giving those students an opportunity to build a bright future for themselves and their families. A record-high 86 percent of Montanas students graduate from high school. Our states dropout rate has been cut by one-third since 2009. That achievement hasnt happened by accident. Its thanks to the parents, students, educators, community leaders and business partners in 58 Montana communities who have joined Graduation Matters Montana, placing an emphasis on the importance of a high school diploma. Graduates across this state who are about to receive their diplomas have the potential to earn, on average, $8,000 more each year than a high school dropout. In fact, the Alliance for Excellent Education estimates Montana will see a $6 million annual boost to the states economy because 540 more students graduated in 2015 than in 2009. The Class of 2016 is ready for their next challenge. These graduates have met higher academic standards than students who came before them. These graduates have had more access to college readiness and job training opportunities. These graduates are engaged with their communities and ready to be leaders on the job, in college or in the military. The most important piece of paper I ever received was my high school diploma. It led to college, graduate school, law school, job opportunities and elected office. My high school diploma made me who I am today, and presented opportunities I didnt even think possible. Congratulations, Class of 2016. As you walk across that stage on graduation day in front of all your friends, family, and community members whove cheered you on along the way, know that all of Montana is so proud of what youve accomplished. When our students succeed, each and every one of us benefits. Here is my promised column about the hot topic of superdelegates in the Democratic Partys presidential delegate selection process. Nationally there are 715 superdelegates, 15 percent of all delegate slots at the upcoming nominating convention. Those folks are superdelegates because of their positions within the party. All Democratic governors, U.S. senators and representatives are superdelegates, as are all members of the Democratic National Committee. Montanas superdelegates are Gov. Steve Bullock, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and the four Montanans on the DNC. As our Montana Presidential Preference Primary approaches, national political emotions have been intensified, with superdelegates becoming a bone of contention, especially with Bernie Sanders supporters since most superdelegates have pledged support to Hillary Clinton. By the way, none of Montanas six superdelegates has yet to pledge support to either Secretary Clinton or Senator Sanders. Superdelegates who seem to be a problem or concern today were actually created to solve some problems of the past. As is often the case, todays problem was yesterdays solution. After superdelegates were added following the 1984 election, I was a superdelegate in 1988, 1992 and 1996. There was nothing super about me personally. I was just an experienced party official as a Montana member of the Democratic National Committee, where I served from 1984 to 1996. I added my vote and my experienced judgment to the nominating process to supplement the collective votes and judgments of those who had come through the primary or caucus process for choosing delegates. In authorizing experienced and credentialed superdelegates, the hope was to add some experienced wisdom to the election year passion that emerges from the grassroots caucus and primary processes. Why it important to add experience to balance passion? Back in the mid-1980s, the evidence was that a passion-only process had produced poor electoral results for the Democratic Party. Lets look at the history. Over a five-election period between 1972 and 1988, George McGovern lost 49 states to Richard Nixon in 1972; Jimmy Carter lost 44 states to Ronald Reagan in 1980; Fritz Mondale lost 49 states to Reagan in 1984; and Michael Dukakis lost 40 states to George Hebert Walker Bush in 1988. The only Democratic win over that period was in 1976, when Jimmy Carter narrowly defeated Gerald Ford right after the Watergate scandal. Those terrible results led the Democrats to rethink their delegate selection processes. It was apparent that being locked in to a passion-driven primary and caucus process alone did not produce winning Democratic nominees. Over the years the national Democratic Party has regularly modified and adjusted its rules to try to make the presidential nomination process both fair and smart. There have been eight different delegate selection commissions since 1968. After the 1984 election, superdelegates were a major change that was made and they have remained part of the mix since then. That appears to have been helpful as Democrats have won the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, a stark contrast to the previous disastrous results, where the GOP won five of six races and often by gigantic margins. Is the system perfect? Is the number of superdelegates too high or too low? Should there be any superdelegates at all? Should they declare their candidate support early or should they wait? Should they continue to reflect their own judgement or reflect the results of the states primary or caucus? There are other important questions. Should caucuses which have small numbers of participants be scrapped for primary elections with large numbers of participants? Should primaries or caucuses be open or closed? The Democratic Partys delegate selection process has been well-served in the past by a constant adjustment and improvement of the rules by reform commissions. I hope that the upcoming national convention passes a resolution creating another reform commission where the passionate partisans of Hillary and Bernie can gather together with some less passionate but experienced folks like superdelegates to seek answers to the questions before us, including superdelegates. Some of Bernie Sanders approaches might end up as part of the 2020 delegate selection process or they might not. But they deserved to be discussed. And they could and should be addressed by a new Democratic Delegate Selection Reform Commission. Huckleberries to the organizers of the many Memorial Day events held last Monday and throughout last weekend. Each event offered an opportunity to remember and pay respects to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. With solemn parades, ceremonies of thanks and special tributes, communities throughout western Montana showed we havent forgotten the real reason for, and meaning of, Memorial Day. Chokecherries to Mineral Countys commissioners for failing to resolve a contract dispute with the union representing some 16 deputies, dispatchers and detention officers who are now on strike. While we understand the budget is tight and there is not enough money to pay the employees as much as they would like, commissioners should have continued negotiating toward a long-term contract. Employees have been working under year-long contracts for several years now, and with no contract at all since July 1, 2015. With the countys sheriff and undersheriff sharing triple duty, commissioners should resume negotiations again with urgency. Huckleberries to the University of Montana and Missoula College for serving some of the tastiest food in the nation. UM Dining, The Iron Griz bistro, The Galloping Griz food truck and Missoula College culinary student Katie Barnes have all recently won prestigious awards for cooking up exceptionally creative and delicious dishes. Chokecherries to the clueless tourists who insist on getting to close to Montanas wildlife, despite numerous warnings and high-profile news stories. Last week Brett French of the Billings Gazette took photos of a woman in Yellowstone National Park who was way too close to a mama black bear and her two cubs. Jody Tibbets took a video of a woman who approached an elk in Yellowstone and got knocked down by the animal. Last month, a park visitor who thought a bison calf was too cold put the animal in his car, which forced park officials to euthanize it after several unsuccessful attempts to reunite the calf with its herd. And the month before, a woman tried to pet a bison. Park rules clearly state that people should stay at least 100 yards from wildlife at all times, which is just plain common sense. Huckleberries to the Missoula County Attorneys Office for using mediation to resolve the case of an Evaro man who drove directly at a Missoula County sheriffs deputy. The Montana Legislature approved the use of mediation in certain criminal cases during the 2007 session, yet the Missoula County Attorneys Office had yet to make use of this tool, which can save significant time and taxpayer money. Hopefully, this wont be the last time and the office will continue looking for opportunities to use mediation. Kristen Juras has my vote for Montana Supreme Court. From the head to the heart, she is ready and well qualified to sit on our states highest court. I have known Juras as my advocate, my law professor and my friend. Juras is an amazing woman and I am honored to know her. What strikes me most about Juras is her integrity. What I have observed in the classroom, have seen in action in her legal advocacy and have cherished in her friendship, is her constant willingness to stop for the one. She gives countless hours of her time to help others in need, simply because she loves people. I have witnessed and personally encountered Juras's generous spirit time and again. In addition to her stellar heart, Juras brings a well-balanced perspective to the law. With 34 years of legal experience, Juras has represented individual small-business owners, ranchers, farmers, and people like you and me. On the Montana Supreme Court, she will bring the knowledge and know-how to work well with others and to represent us fairly. In a day when so many Americans are discouraged by politics, I am encouraged to see a shining star like Kristen Juras running for Montana Supreme Court. Now more than ever, we need a restorative voice in our justice system. Knowing Juras both professionally and personally, I trust her to be our fair and equitable voice on the Montana Supreme Court. I hope youll join me in voting for Kristen Juras for Montana Supreme Court. Allie Harrison, Missoula I find it funny and outdated that there is discussion going on about "robo calls." These disruptive calls were outlawed in 1992, the year before I was born. This was when most phones were hung on a wall and tethered with a cord. Answering machines were big and bulky. People didn't like their dinner interrupted by these recorded calls, and understandably so. It is a different time now. I, for one, prefer to get my political messages on my iPhone or through social media. I get messages daily by phone, Twitter, Facebook, etc. If I don't like the message, I can delete it gone forever. If I do like the message, I can save it and forward it to my friends who may think likewise. Today we constantly complain about costs associated with political campaigns, yet we don't update laws that will help candidates get their messages out at reasonable costs using current technology. I am not offended by a 3- second message delivered directly to my answering machine. I actually appreciate the information. I will be supporting Mark Sweeney for the Montana Public Service Commission because I believe he will work hard to keep my natural gas, electricity and water rates low. Jacob Courtney, Missoula BOZEMAN (AP) Gallatin County jail inmate Justin Ricker is suing the detention center's medical provider, saying his finger had to be partially amputated because of improper care. According to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Ricker said he had an infection in his finger that was not properly treated. He blamed the jail's medical staff, saying he had surgery in an unlicensed medical facility, and didn't get anesthesia and proper medications. Ricker had a portion of his right index finger amputated. BILLINGS A French Canadian received six months of probation after pleading guilty Thursday to putting a bison calf in his car at Yellowstone National Park because he thought the animal was cold. Shamash Kassam should pay $500 to the Yellowstone Park Foundation Wildlife Protection Fund, federal magistrate Mark Carman ordered at the Yellowstone Justice Center. Kassam will also serve six months of unsupervised probation, as well as pay a $200 fine. Park officials cited Kassam on May 17 for disturbing wildlife. According to the citation, Kassam put the bison calf in his car because it was wet and shivering and drove to a ranger station. Yellowstone officials later euthanized the bison calf after the human interaction caused the animal to be rejected by its herd. Kassam told a park ranger he saw the baby bison in the middle of the road near Buffalo Ranch, according to the citation. He said he did not see any other bison in the vicinity and he waited 20 minutes to see if any adult bison would come back for the calf. Kassam said the animal appeared to be seeking warmth from his cars engine. Kassam told the park ranger he picked up the calf because otherwise it would have been roadkill, the citation states. When the ranger made contact with Kassam at the Buffalo Ranch, he saw the calf lying in the back of Kassams Toyota Sequoia. The park ranger told Kassam that park visitors are not permitted to intervene with wildlife and that by removing the calf he was preventing the mother from locating it and possibly altering its ability to survive in the wild. Kasam stated that he understood what he did was wrong, and he would never pick up or disturb any wildlife again, the citation states. The ranger located a bison herd near where Kassam had picked up the calf and released the calf back into the herd, according to the citation. The ranger then notified National Park Service bison management. Rangers repeatedly tried to reunite the calf with its herd, according to a statement released by Yellowstone. The efforts failed, and the calf was later euthanized because it was abandoned and approaching people and cars along the road. Human interference can cause mothers to reject their offspring, the park said. Yellowstone released a statement after receiving criticism for euthanizing the calf. For the calf to leave the park, it would have had to spend months in quarantine to be monitored for brucellosis, a disease that causes bison, elk and cattle to miscarry. No approved quarantine facilities exist, and the park said it doesnt have the capacity to care for a calf thats too young to forage on its own. Nor is it the mission of the National Park Service to rescue animals: our goal is to maintain the ecological processes of Yellowstone, the statement said. Even though humans were involved in this case, it is not uncommon for bison, especially young mothers, to lose or abandon their calves. Those animals typically die of starvation or predation. The park has repeatedly advised visitors of late to respect wildlife and to know and follow safety regulations. A woman taking a picture of an elk during a recent Yellowstone visit was charged by the animal when she got too close. The elk knocked her to the ground before backing away. Visitors should stay at least 100 yards from bears and wolves and at least 25 yards from all other wildlife, the park said. Police reports HUNGRY THIEVES Garry Courtney Jr., 23, and Thomas Kinsey, 22, both of Butte, were arrested Thursday for shoplifting two trays of sushi and packages of cheese wrapped with salami and pepperoni from Safeway, 2500 Massachusetts Ave. A clerk reported asking one of the suspects if he had a receipt; he said he wasnt given one. The men entered a blue 2002 Dodge Intrepid and fled. The clerk took a photo of the car and called police. The suspects were caught by police in the area of Texas and Shields avenues. Police say a pistol in the glove box was seen from the outside of the vehicle. The men tried to hide the food items. This is their second arrest in two days. CAR VS. POLE Jace Leikam, 20, of Butte faces misdemeanor charges of reckless driving, DUI, and possession of alcohol after police say his 1999 Chevy Silverado struck a utility pole Thursday in a Thriftway parking lot on the 1900 block of south Montana Street. He failed field sobriety tests. A blood draw was done at St. James Healthcare. The pole was sheared at its base but remained attached to the power lines. SNOOZING WOMAN Patricia Matt, 54, was arrested early Friday for misdemeanor criminal trespass to property at the Uptown U.S. Post Office. The homeless woman was found sleeping on the floor after police had earlier asked her to leave. ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL Crystal Lanch, 36, of Butte was found passed out behind the wheel of a Ford Ranger about 2 a.m. Friday on the 300 block of south Arizona Street. The engine was revving due to her foot being on the accelerator. She was holding a bottle of Mountain Dew. Police say she smelled of alcohol and failed sobriety tests on scene and at the jail. She refused a Breathalyzer test. She faces misdemeanor charges of DUI and no liability insurance. A Butte district court judge revoked a Butte mans six-year deferred sentence Thursday and then reinstated it, telling him if he failed to complete a correctional boot camp that he would be sent to prison. Cody Richards, 20, received the deferred sentence in July 2015 after he pleaded guilty to negligent homicide in a 2013 Halloween crash that killed his best friend, 19-year-old K.P. Kiel Podgorski. A former Butte Central High School athlete, Podgorski was thrown from the vehicle after it careened down a steep embankment off Moose Creek Road. Butte-Silver Bow prosecutors filed a petition to revoke Richards deferred sentence based on a December 2015 report that he failed to complete the Knights program at WATCh, a state Department of Corrections DUI treatment program. On April 21, Richards admitted violating the terms and conditions of his probation as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, who recommended he complete the Treasure State Correctional Training Centers boot camp at the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge. State Probation and Parole Officer Tara Billteen testified Thursday that Richards would benefit from the rigorous program, which focuses on accountability and teaching life skills. She said placement could begin June 8. Deputy county attorney Michael Clague argued that both the state and Billteen recommended the deferred sentence be reinstated. I still believe Mr. Richards is a good candidate for a deferred imposition, he said, adding that the defendant needed an attitude adjustment. Defense Attorney Gregory A. Jackson concurred with the states recommendation, arguing that the guilt and shame of that tragic night weighed heavily on his client. He noted a remarkable change in Richards. Frankly hes very much aware that this would be his last chance, Jackson said. Presiding Judge Kurt Krueger admonished Richards for not working hard to face his substance abuse issues, including testing positive for methamphetamine. Before handing down his sentence, the judge asked Richards where he would go if he failed to do the necessary work, whether he agreed with the requirements or not. Richards answered, To prison. I guarantee youll go to prison, Krueger said as Richards mother wiped her tears. If youre not going to take your addiction seriously, the only thing youre going to graduate with is the Montana State Prison. Standing next to Jackson, Richards thanked Krueger and left the courtroom in the embrace of family members. A pretrial hearing for ex-Navy SEAL Rob ONeill, who denied driving under the influence in April, has been continued for two weeks, according to Butte city court records. A hearing date was not scheduled as of Friday, when a pretrial hearing had been scheduled. ONeill, 40, told Butte-Silver Bow police that he took a prescribed sleep aid before he was found sleeping behind the wheel of a Nissan Sentra at a Town Pump convenience store on April 8. Several customers had alerted a clerk that a man was asleep in the running vehicle. A police report stated that the Butte native was hazy about whether he had imbibed or taken Ambien, a prescription drug used to treat insomnia, and where he had traveled from to his hometown. ONeill was arrested and later refused a Breathalyzer test. He pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor DUI, a first offense, the day of the incident. In a statement released by his public relations firm, ONeill said he took a prescribed sleep aid to help with long-standing insomnia. While the timing was bad and I highly regret this decision, I am innocent of the charge and have entered a plea of not guilty. I am confident I will soon be cleared of this matter, he said. Montana State University canceled a speaking engagement after ONeills arrest, citing unforeseen circumstances. His speaking fee of $28,000 was paid from a taxpayer-supported general fund. ONeill has claimed he killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden during a U.S.-led attack in Pakistan in 2011. The McCarthy Family Irish Music Concert starts at 7 p.m. Friday, June 3, at the Clark Chateau ballroom, 321 W. Broadway St. No tickets will be sold; the band will play for donations from the audience to offset expenses. The family consists of Tommy McCarthy, Louise McCarthy, their daughter Rose, and nephew Peadar. They own the Burren Pub in Boston, which is a destination of world-class Irish musicians across the globe. On tour from Boston, the family has been on tour in Australia and are heading west across the United States this summer. As part of the Miners Union Day celebration, the World Museum of Mining hosts the free Humanities Montana Speakers Bureau program, Singing the Westward Legacy with Neal Lewing at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, June 11. Lewing offers a performance on Americas musical legacy from Lewis and Clark to Custer, with traditional and original folk songs, history, and a few laughs. The show contains many traditional tunes, such as Shenandoah, Down in the Mine and 160 Acres, plus a few from Lewings internationally acclaimed albums, like Milwaukee Road, Riverboat, and The Irish Sing and Dance. The negotiators framing Butte's Superfund cleanup have reached "conceptual agreement" on five main issues including the removal of the Northside Tailings and Diggings East and the creation of storm-water retention ponds in their place, The Montana Standard learned Thursday. The negotiators include the Environmental Protection Agency; the state Department of Environmental Quality; the state's Natural Resource Damage Program; Butte-Silver Bow; and BP, the parent company of the Atlantic Richfield Company. The five core issues include: Removal "and/or capping" of mine wastes known as the Diggings East and Northside Tailings in addition to the Parrot Tailings along the reach of Upper Silver Bow Creek. The need for storm-water retention basins along that corridor. Removal of contaminated soils from the Blacktail berm and more work along Blacktail Creek. Connectivity between upper Silver Bow Creek and the restored Streamside Tailings Operable Unit encompassing lower Silver Bow Creek. Several major issues are implicitly included in providing such "connectivity," including cleaning up the slag wall and Butte Reduction Works areas. Capping some unremediated or "under-remediated" areas on the Butte Hill. The Standard learned of the negotiating progress during a Thursday morning interview with visiting EPA Region 8 Administrator Shaun McGrath and DEQ director Tom Livers. In addition, McGrath and Livers announced that the negotiators had agreed to what they termed an unprecedented change in the structure of the negotiations to accommodate greater input from the public. McGrath said that as the five main points are negotiated in detail to full agreement, the tentative agreements would be individually shared with the public for the purpose of allowing citizens to weigh in. That is a marked departure from previous confidential negotiations here and elsewhere in which comment was solicited from the public only after the entire consent decree agreement was reached. McGrath said a comment period would be retained for the whole document as well. "In addition," he said, "When an organization like Restore Our Creek has a vision" for a restored upper Silver Bow Creek "that they want to share with negotiators, we welcome it. We want that. We want to be building toward something the community really wants." "Butte deserves a lasting cleanup and restoration, and I am working with all the parties involved to deliver it," Gov. Steve Bullock said Thursday. "This marks a turning point in this whole process," BSB Chief Executive Matt Vincent said Thursday. "We've seen a marked improvement in the response to what we're bringing to that table which is the voice and the needs and concerns of our public." McGrath, who met with the Restore Our Creek group Wednesday night, said he intends to take the group up on its invitation to come back to Butte and personally receive the community group's completed vision, which will be the product of multiple public forums that Restore Our Creek and The Montana Standard are conducting. Completion is expected around September. Livers said, "Credit goes to the Butte community" for having a strong voice that has helped to shape the new direction of the negotiations and add weight to the push for making them more open. He also praised the quality of collaboration between the EPA, the state, and Butte-Silver Bow. "Our two agencies" EPA and DEQ "have never been closer in sharing a perspective on what needs to be done," he said. McGrath echoed that, saying, "I'm encouraged about where we are today. We are committed to getting this done, getting beyond the historical confrontations. I know the community is ready to see things happen." He said that in order to help change the old paradigm of entrenched positions, EPA has "changed how we're staffed up and the structures we have." He said that "we've made some changes in our office" to "get Joe (Vranka, state Superfund coordinator) some help." McGrath added that "Tom (Livers) and I don't come into this with history. We didn't fight the battles that sometimes put us in opposite corners. So while we want our agencies to work out issues at the local level, if they can't, that's okay; bump it up to us." Of the plans to remove mine wastes along Upper Silver Bow Creek and also create storm-water retention ponds, McGrath said, "There's synergy to looking at those two goals together it makes sense to put a basin in the place where you're digging a hole." He said that "there's a lot of recognition that this provides us the opportunity for some pretty nice aesthetics along the corridor." McGrath stressed that "conceptual agreement" does not mean there is not the need for much more negotiation on each of the points being discussed. "The devil is in the details," he said, adding that "all of the points are being discussed concurrently" in the negotiations. "When we have agreement on one, we will share it with the public." Vincent said that the "conceptual agreement" means that "the real negotiations are starting now." McGrath said, "Governor Bullock has spoken very clearly" of his interest in more openness, and "Butte-Silver Bow deserves a lot of credit on this too. They have been frustrated that we couldn't say more." "I am grateful to our partners in Butte-Silver Bow for urging more transparency in the process and to ARCO and EPA for committing to this important step of ensuring public disclosure and involvement," Bullock said Thursday. BSB's Vincent said, "I'm excited that we've reached a point where we're going to be more open. In my opinion it's always public comment period we want to hear from the community at any time about what they want." Asked to estimate when a draft of the consent decree might be finished, McGrath said, "We're shooting for the end of 2016." Livers said that his understanding from the Natural Resource Damage Program is that work on removing the Parrot Tailings is projected to start in late summer or early fall. McGrath said his visit had several purposes "to visibly show EPA's level of interest, concern and commitment; to hear and understand concerns and issues and to see opportunities; and to help deliver a message to the community that we are taking a different direction." Wednesday night he fielded questions and comments from the Council of Commissioners, and Thursday he also met with BSB officials including Vincent and Superfund Coordinator Jon Sesso. HELENA The operator of a coal-fired power plant in Colstrip is merging with a private investment firm. Talen Energy announced Friday it has entered into a merger agreement with Riverstone Holdings for $1.8 billion in acquisition costs. It's too early to say what the sale means for Colstrip, which is run by Talen. Last month the company told the plant's five owners they would need to find a new operator by 2018, if not earlier. Talen owns half of two of the older units at Colstrip and 30 percent of a third unit. The other owners include Washington utilities Avista Corp. and Puget Sound Energy; Oregon utilities Portland General Electric and PacifiCorp; and NorthWestern Energy, a South Dakota company that is Montanas largest gas and electric utility. Todd Martin, spokesman for Talen, said Friday morning he couldn't speculate on what the sale means for the plant's future. "Right now our mission is a very simple one, which is to continue to grow value for this company, and the way we do that is carefully operate these plants," he said. "We want to deliver reliable energy to our customers knowing that over the next several months there are going to be a lot of processes that are taking place." Talen has been continuing to communicate with Gov. Steve Bullock and other stakeholders as well as employees, Martin said. Representatives from Talen will also attend an interim legislative committee in July to discuss its role in Colstrip. "It would be premature to speculate about the future, because we don't know," Martin said. "When we do, we will do that in a transparent and forthright way, but what we don't want to do is speculate. When we have facts and information, we will discuss them." Earlier this year Talen CEO Paul Farr said his company will lose millions in terms of operating Colstrip through the balance of the year. Cheaper natural gas as well as states and the federal government pushing toward other power sources has significantly hurt the coal industry. Martin said what happens next is a long process to get regulatory and shareholder approval. Riverstone, which already had a 35 percent stake in Talen, developed the merger plan and took it to the board of directors. A spokeswoman for Bullock said Friday that Talen called to inform the governor about the news before the release went out. Thats the extent of communication weve had with them about this particular acquisition, she said. The Energy and Telecommunications interim committee has invited Talen and Puget Sound Energy to its July meeting to discuss the future of Colstrip. In May, Kimberly Harris, CEO of Puget Sound Energy in Washington; Paul Farr, CEO of Pennsylvania-based Talen Energy; and Bob Rowe, CEO of NorthWestern Energy, sat down with Bullock to discuss the future of the plant. Any Talen stock not already owned by Riverstone will be sold for $14 a share. The agreement provides for a "go shop" period, during which Talen can enter into negotiations with parties that offer alternative proposals. The go-shop period is 40 days. The parties currently expect the transaction to be completed by the end of 2016. BILLINGS A French Canadian received six months of probation after pleading guilty Thursday to putting a bison calf in his car at Yellowstone National Park because he thought the animal was cold. Shamash Kassam should pay $500 to the Yellowstone Park Foundation Wildlife Protection Fund, federal magistrate Mark Carman ordered at the Yellowstone Justice Center. Kassam will also serve six months of unsupervised probation as well as pay a $200 fine. Park officials cited Kassam on May 17 for disturbing wildlife. According to the citation, Kassam put the bison calf in his car because it was wet and shivering and drove to a ranger station. Yellowstone officials later euthanized the bison calf after the human interaction caused the animal to be rejected by its herd. Kassam told a park ranger he saw the baby bison in the middle of the road near Buffalo Ranch, according to the citation. He said he did not see any other bison in the vicinity and he waited 20 minutes to see if any adult bison would come back for the calf. Kassam said the animal appeared to be seeking warmth from his cars engine. Kassam told the park ranger he picked up the calf because otherwise it would have been roadkill, the citation states. When the ranger made contact with Kassam at the Buffalo Ranch, he saw the calf lying in the back of Kassams Toyota Sequoia. The park ranger told Kassam that park visitors are not permitted to intervene with wildlife and that by removing the calf he was preventing the mother from locating it and possibly altering its ability to survive in the wild. Kasam stated that he understood what he did was wrong, and he would never pick up or disturb any wildlife again, the citation states. The ranger located a bison herd near where Kassam had picked up the calf and released the calf back into the herd, according to the citation. The ranger then notified National Park Service bison management. Rangers repeatedly tried to reunite the calf with its herd, according to a statement released by Yellowstone. The efforts failed, and the calf was later euthanized because it was abandoned and approaching people and cars along the road. Human interference can cause mothers to reject their offspring, the park said. Yellowstone released a statement after receiving criticism for euthanizing the calf. For the calf to leave the park, it would have had to spend months in quarantine to be monitored for brucellosis, a disease that causes bison, elk and cattle to miscarry. No approved quarantine facilities exist, and the park said it doesnt have the capacity to care for a calf thats too young to forage on its own. Nor is it the mission of the National Park Service to rescue animals: our goal is to maintain the ecological processes of Yellowstone, the statement said. Even though humans were involved in this case, it is not uncommon for bison, especially young mothers, to lose or abandon their calves. Those animals typically die of starvation or predation. The park has repeatedly advised visitors of late to respect wildlife and to know and follow safety regulations. A woman taking a picture of an elk during a recent Yellowstone visit was charged by the animal when she got too close. The elk knocked her to the ground before backing away. Visitors should stay at least 100 yards from bears and wolves and at least 25 yards from all other wildlife, the park said. Lois Jane Rider Schuler, longtime resident of Dillon, died peacefully Monday, May 30, 2016, at Parkview Acres Rest Home in Dillon. She was born on September 22, 1922, in Harding County, South Dakota, to Dean and Leota (Elliott) Rider and moved to Dillon in her teen years. After graduating from Beaverhead County High School Lois attended Butte Business College, receiving training as a stenotype operator. She worked as a dental assistant in Dillon and also served on the Beaverhead Election Board. Lois worked for the Dillon public schools lunch program for many years. She was a wonderful cook and homemaker. She also loved to read and do word puzzles. Lois loved music, coming from a musical family, and her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren have continued that legacy. Her greatest happiness was spending time with her family. She was preceded in death by her husband of 68 years, John L Schuler, her parents Dean and Leota Rider(Peterson), sisters Doris Nerison and Marion Keenan, brother Wyman Rider, daughter-in-law Sheri Schuler, son-in-law Larry Daggett and great-granddaughter Hanna Cashell. She is survived by her daughters, Marianna (Gary) Knowlton of Port Ludlow , Washington, and Linda Daggett of Great Falls; sons, John C. (Katherine) Schuler of Dillon, Robert (Rayanne) Schuler of Billings and James (Lorene) Schuler of Dillon; 12 grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren and four great-great grandchildren. Lois devoted her life to her home and family with her quiet strength and steadfast love. Graveside services will be held at Mountain View Cemetery in Dillon at 11:30 a.m. on July 1. We will gather at Brundage Funeral Home at 11 a.m. Express condolences at www.mtstandard.com. This letter is in response to the article in last weeks edition concerning the GOP Party Bosses. As a candidate for the Montana Senate District 36, it has been interesting to watch the established or self-named Responsible Republican candidates behave to protect their territory. I filed to run as a Republican candidate because I feel the values represented by the Republican Party line up with the values that I hold as to how to implement the Constitution in governing a society. When I studied the Montana Republican Party Platform, I found it to be very precise as to what a Republican believes. In the preamble of the Platform, it states the following: This Platform is meant to communicate what the Party stands for; to instruct local, state and federal GOP officeholders; and to serve as a basis for crafting strategies in legislative and civil action. The document then goes on to list the values and beliefs Republican hold concerning over 60 state issues. This Republican Party Platform is drafted by citizens of Montana who gather every two years at the Republican Party Convention to discuss and vote on what defines the values and beliefs of a Republican. These citizens that gather are from all across the state and represent the entire diverse society that form our great state. In other words, it is - We the People who form this guiding document. In filing to run as a Republican candidate, I made a public commitment to the citizens of District 36 that I would be honest and ethical in upholding my duty to fulfill the requirements of being a Republican. I could have chosen to run as a Democrat or an Independent candidate, but I wanted to run as a Republican and so I made that commitment. I have become quite upset by the political double talk of my opponent, Mr. Welborn, and others in the established category that do not want to be honest with the citizens of this state. They read the same platform that I did and filed to run as Republican candidates as I did, but then they say they do not want to follow the values and beliefs of the Party. They even create new terms like Party Boss to try to validate their newfound righteousness for the cause. Let me be clear here what in reality these established politicians are truly saying. They are saying they do not want to be held to a standard of behavior, but instead want to be free to decide on their own with no accountability to anyone but themselves. What makes this line of thinking worse is that they are insulting you, the citizen, by calling you a Party Boss and say they will not listen to you. That is right! You, the citizen, are the responsible party that discusses, drafts and votes on the Party Platform that is supposed to guide us as elected officials as to how to operate. Do not fall for the double talk of these established politicians that are only looking out to protect themselves. This is what we, the people, are tired of - politicians who say one thing to our faces and then do something different once they get elected. And dont think it stops at the election. This group of so-called Responsible Republicans continues to change the rules in Helena, as was demonstrated last session when they voted to change the house rules to pass the CSKT Water Compact and Medicaid Expansion bills. What else are they willing to change and compromise on in the future? I am running for the Montana Senate District 36 as a true Republican candidate and I plan to fulfill my commitment to you and be held accountable to you the citizens whom I will serve. You may like that or you may not like that, but at least you will know for sure what I stand for and how I will conduct myself at the Capitol as your representative in the Senate. -- Dale Stewart, Dillon, Republican candidate Senate District 36 Ministry of National Defense spokesman Yang Yujun briefs Chinese media in Singapore on Friday morning. [Photo by ZHANG YUNBI/CHINA DAILY] Senior Chinese military official Sun Jianguo will meet with defense and military leaders from Russia, Singapore, Australia, Vietnam and Thailand during the 15th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Ministry of National Defense spokesman Yang Yujun told Chinese media in Singapore on Friday morning. The dialogue, organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, will be held from Friday through Sunday in Singapore. Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, will lead the Chinese delegation attending the dialogue from Friday to Sunday. The spokesman said Sun will deliver a keynote speech during a plenary session on Sunday and answer questions from the attending delegates. During his speech, Sun will elaborate on China's policies and practices regarding strengthening Asia-Pacific security cooperation and promoting regional security governance, Yang said. Throughout his attendance at the dialogue, Sun will elaborate on China's positions on international and regional security issues and introduce the contributions made by the Chinese military to champion peace, security and stability in the world and in the Asia-Pacific region, the spokesman added. Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha is scheduled to give the keynote speech on Friday evening at the influential gathering of senior defense officials from within and outside the Asia-Pacific region. SIOUX FALLS, S.D. Mike DeVries wasn't sure what to make of the precipitous drop in sales. DeVries and his wife run an eBay business from their home just southeast of Sioux Falls in Alvord, Iowa, selling farm, automotive and machinery parts, the Argus Leader reported. Everything else sold as it always had, but two smaller items 12-volt solenoids and lawn mower bearings stopped moving altogether a little over a year ago. The solenoids went for $10 apiece, plus around $3 shipping. "They just stopped selling altogether," DeVries said. His curiosity led him to do what business owners have done for hundreds of years: Check the competition. What he found were 12-volt solenoids from China selling for $3.29 on eBay. Not only were prices lower, the items were offered with free shipping through an "ePacket." "I can't even ship across the United States for free," DeVries said. A google search for ePacket turned up a Washington Post article about the small shipping bags and their impact on the U.S. Postal Services' bottom line. He also found websites highlighting complaints from domestic shippers angry about an unfair field of play. The United States Postal Service lost $75 million in 2014 thanks to the UPU deal with China, according to the testimony of David Williams, inspector general of the USPS, and the Postal Service received 27 million ePackets in fiscal year 2012. Each packet lost the post office $1.10 on average. The losses caused by the entrance of Chinese sellers into the online marketplace are something that needs attention in the next round of negotiations, Williams said. "The UPU's mission is as relevant as when the institution was created. But, like many enterprises, the UPU system has been greatly disrupted by globalization and the digital age," Williams told the committee. An Amazon executive named Paul Misener told the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Government Reform last summer that the rates were unfair and illogical. The deal creating the ePacket system with China Post makes it cheaper to ship from thousands of miles away than within the same state. Shipping a one-pound parcel from Greenville, South Carolina, to New York would cost the domestic shipper nearly $6, Misener said, while a Beijing seller would pay $3.66 in postage. "At high volumes, especially for low-priced items, such dramatic shipping cost differences can make or break a small ecommerce business," he said. DeVries didn't worry about the downturn in solenoid and bearing sales much at first. The family sustains itself with a mix of farm income and sales of larger, more expensive items on eBay. "I just threw them in the trash," DeVries said. Even so, the discovery of the imbalance made him uneasy, and he wanted to get the word out. He hopes more people will take note, take action and do as he did: Email their Congressional delegation and ask for a level playing field. If no one speaks up, DeVries fears, the next deal could involve the approval of low cost, international flat-rate boxes for larger items, impacting more businesses. "People need to know about this," DeVries said. "It's not about me." ORIGINAL NOTICE OF PUBLICATION (Dissolution of Marriage) Upon the Petition of Norma Hernandez, Petitioner, and Concerning Isaac Hernandez, Jr., Respondent. TO THE ABOVE, NAMED RESPONDENT: You are notified that a petition has been filed in the office of the clerk of this court naming you as a respondent in this action, which prays for dissolution of marriaqe. The attorney for the petitioner is Jean Pfeiffer of Muscatine Legal Services, whose address is 122 East Second Street, Muscatine, Iowa 52761. That attorney's telephone number is 563-263-8663; facsimile number 563-263-8667. You must serve a motion or answer on or before the 23rd day of June 2016, and within a reasonable time thereafter, file your motion or answer with the Clerk of Court for Muscatine County, at the courthouse in Muscatine, Iowa. If you do not, judgment by default may be rendered against you for the relief demanded in the petition. Jeff Tollenaer Clerk of the District Court Muscatine County Courthouse Muscatine, Iowa 52761 YOU ARE ADVISED TO SEEK LEGAL ADVICE AT ONCE TO PROTECT YOUR INTERESTS. If you require assistance of auxiliary aids or services to participate in court because of a disability, immediiately call your district ADA coordinator at 563-263-6511. (If you are hearing impaired call Relay Iowa TTY at 1-800-735-2942). STATE OF IOWA JUDICIARY Case No. CDCD037093 County Muscatine Case Title HERNANDEZ NORMA VS. HERNANDEZ ISAAC JR THIS CASE HAS BEEN FILED IN A COUNTY THAT USES ELECTRONIC FILING. Therefore, unless the attached Petition and Original Notice contains a hearing date for your appearance, or unless you obtain an exemption from the court, you must file your Appearance and Answer electronically. You must register through the Iowa Judicial Branch website at http://www.iowacourts.state.ia.us/Efile and obtain a log in and password for the purposes of filing and viewing documents on your case and of receiving service and notices from the court. FOR GENERAL RULES AND INFORMATION ON ELECTRONIC FILING, REFER TO THE IOWA COURT RULES CHAPTER 16 PERTAINING TO THE USE OF THE ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: FOR COURT RULES ON PROTECTION OF PERSONAL PRIVACY IN COURT FILINGS, REFER TO DIVISION VI OF IOWA COURT RULES CHAPTER 16: http://www.iowacourts.state.ia.uslEfile Scheduled Hearing: If you require the assistance of auxiliary aids or services to participate in court because of a disability, immediately call your district ADA coordinator at (563) 328-4145. (If you are hearing impaired, call Relay Iowa TTY at 1-800-735-2942.) Date Issued 05/16/2016 08:05:26 AM District Clerk of Muscatine County /s/ Traci Harper Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, as Trustee for NovaStar Mortgage Funding Trust, Series 2007-1 Nova Star Home Equity Loan Asset-Backed Certificates, Series 2007-1 Plaintiff, vs. John A. Fuller; Janet L. Fuller; Parties in Possession; Unknown spouse, if any, of John A. Fuller; Unknown spouse, if any, of Janet L. Fuller; State of Iowa - Child Support Recovery Unit; State of Iowa - Child Support Recovery Unit; State of Iowa; State of Iowa, et al. Defendants. You are notified that a petition has been filed in the office of this court naming you as a defendant in this action. The petition was filed on April 1, 2016, and prays for foreclosure of Plaintiffs mortgage in favor of the Plaintiff on the property described in this notice and judgment for the unpaid principal amount of $86,671.42, with 5.125% per annum interest thereon from September 1, 2015, together with late charges, advances and the costs of the action including (but not limited to) title costs and reasonable attorney's fees, as well as a request that said sums be declared a lien upon the following described premises from December 15, 2006, located in Muscatine county, Iowa: A part of Lots 8 and 9, of Thayer Lodge Subdivision, in Muscatine County, Iowa, more particularly described as follows: Beginning at the Northeasterly corner of said Lot 8; thence South 34 22' 00" West 38.00 feet on the Westerly right-of-way of U.S. Highway # 61 and Iowa Highway # 92; thence North 55 38' 00" West 237.05 feet to the Easterly meander line of the Muscatine Slough; thence North 36 21' 00" East 25.93 feet on said Easterly Slough Line; thence North 27 10' 00" East 15.67 feet on said Easterly Slough line; thence South 6430' 23" East 85.50 feet; thence North 72 05' 08" East 178.77 feet; thence South 62 38' 00" East 44.60 feet to the Westerly right-of-way of said highway no. 61 and no. 92; thence South 34 22' 00" West 163.50 feet on said Westerly highway right-of-way to the point of beginning, containing 0.61 acres, more or less. SUBJECT TO ALL EASEMENTS, RESERVATIONS, COVENANTS, CONDITIONS, AGREEMENTS OF RECORD, IF ANY., commonly known as 2095 Highway 61, Muscatine, IA 52761 (the "Property") The petition further prays that the mortgage on the above described real estate be foreclosed, that a special execution issue for the sale of as much of the mortgaged premises as is necessary to satisfy the judgment and for other relief as the Court deems just and equitable. For further details, please review the petition on file in the clerk's office. The Plaintiffs attorney is Halley Ryherd, of SouthLaw, P.C.; whose address is 1401 50th Street, Suite 100, West Des Moines, IA 50266. NOTICE THE PLAINTIFF HAS ELECTED FORECLOSURE WITHOUT REDEMPTION. THIS MEANS THAT THE SALE OF THE MORTGAGED PROPERTY WILL OCCUR PROMPTLY AFTER ENTRY OF JUDGMENT UNLESS YOU FILE WITH THE COURT A WRITTEN DEMAND TO DELAY THE SALE. IF YOU FILE A WRITTEN DEMAND, THE SALE WILL BE DELAYED UNTIL TWELVE MONTHS (OR SIX MONTHS IF THE PETITION INCLUDES A WAIVER OF DEFICIENCY JUDGMENT) FROM THE ENTRY OF JUDGMENT IF THE MORTGAGED PROPERTY IS YOUR RESIDENCE AND IS A ONE-FAMILY OR TWO-FAMILY DWELLING OR UNTIL TWO MONTHS FROM ENTRY OF JUDGMENT IF THE MORTGAGED PROPERTY IS NOT YOUR RESIDENCE OR IS YOUR RESIDENCE BUT NOT A ONE-FAMILY OR TWO-FAMILY DWELLING. YOU WILL HAVE NO RIGHT OF REDEMPTION AFTER THE SALE. THE PURCHASER AT THE SALE WILL BE ENTITLED TO IMMEDIATE POSSESSION OF THE MORTGAGED PROPERTY. YOU MAY PURCHASE AT THE SALE. You must serve a motion or answer on or before 1st day of July, 2016, and within a reasonable time thereafter file your motion or answer with the Clerk of Court for Muscatine County, at the county courthouse in Muscatine, Iowa. If you do not, judgment by default may be rendered against you for the relief demanded in the petition. If you require the assistance of auxiliary aids or services to participate in a court action because of a disability, immediately call your District ADA Coordinator at 563-326-8783. If you are hearing impaired, call Relay Iowa TTY at 1-800-735-2942. By:Jeff Tollenaer CLERK OF THE ABOVE COURT Muscatine County Courthouse 401 East 3rd Street, Muscatine, IA 52761 IMPORTANT: YOU ARE ADVISED TO SEEK LEGAL ADVICE AT ONCE TO PROTECT YOUR INTERESTS. DES MOINES, Iowa Turkey hunters reported harvesting nearly 12,200 Iowa birds this spring, which is highest harvest total since hunters were required to report their harvest in 2007. Hunters can help the DNR with collecting population information during its annual turkey count in July and August. Hunters are asked to make a note of the date and county in which they saw the turkey(s), if it is an adult female or adult male (males have beards on their breast), and whether there are young poults (baby turkeys), and then report the number online at http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/2115256/Iowa-Wild-Turkey-Reports. MUSCATINE, Iowa On Wednesday, June 1, a shooter situation unfolded at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Muscatine-designed safety product, The Sleeve, kept students and staff safe. Dan Nietzel, of Fighting Chance Solutions in Muscatine, received an email on Thursday from Art Rocha, the Preparedness and Safety Coordinator at David Geffen School of Medicine in the Neurobiology Department at UCLA saying the Sleeve had been used during the shooting, and it worked. The Sleeve was developed by Nietzel and four other teachers in the Muscatine School District: Edwin Colon, John Lawrence, Jame Hayes and Mike Morgan. The small piece of 12-guage carbon steel is designed to slip over the arm at the top of the door that allows the door to close by itself, and prevents the door from being opened. Rocha said he used The Sleeve during the tense lockdown on UCLA's campus. "It worked great and there was no way anybody was going to get in. Watching the news I saw students tying belts and whatever they could to try to secure the door, if they had that they wouldn't have to worry," Rocha said. He said they received a text message that gave specifics of where the event was occurring and that there were possibly two shooters, and because the building was located across from the engineering building, Rocha immediately began directing the department to go into lockdown. "And then you start thinking how many shooters and where are they. Unfortunately, the engineering building is across the street from us, and I remember The Sleeve, so I put it up there and we're all sitting here, our boss happened to be outside of the office, so he was in a rush to get into the office. So he pushed it and, wham, it didn't open. It made us feel a lot more comfortable," Rocha said. He said that his boss was able to enter the room through the back entrance, for which an order has already been placed to provide another Sleeve. Nietzel said that although they always hope The Sleeve will not be needed, the tragic event showed it could withstand a shooting situation. "We've tested it we know that it works and we know the concept behind it but until it's in that situation someones using it and it's tested you wonder how it's going to react," he said. He and the other teachers developed The Sleeve in response to what they felt were inadequate safety measures taught to them in an active shooter training in the district. Nietzel said the email from Rocha reminded him that the work they put into it was worth it. "Sometimes you wonder why you're doing what you're doing and then you get an email like this," Nietzel said. And that, Nietzel said, is what Fighting Chance Solutions is all about. "To think that this small town, Muscatine, Iowa, company was able to be there in that situation and give them that level of comfort....it's pretty cool affirmation out of a really unfortunate event," he said. WAPELLO, Iowa A proposed ordinance amendment that passed its first reading Thursday would expand and combine Wapellos existing urban revitalization tax exemption programs into one package. Mayor Shawn Maine explained the city currently has one program that offers incentives to businesses and another that provides property tax exemptions for renovations completed on older homes. However, property owners who build new residences or construct or renovate apartments are ineligible for the tax breaks under either program. The exemptions also differ in percentage of taxes abated and the number of years the exemption would continue. Under the new proposal those differences would disappear and new residences and apartments would become eligible for the exemptions. (The amendment) brings it all in line so everything is on the same page, Maine told the council. Under the old program, if a home constructed prior to Jan. 1, 1960 was rehabilitated and its value increased at least 15 percent, the owner would be eligible for a three-year, 100 percent property tax exemption on the increased value of the property. A five-year, graduated property tax exemption was provided for rehabilitated commercial property that increased in value by 15 percent. Maine said he used the commercial program a few years ago when he added another building to his auto restoration and repair business. Officials also said several other businesses had also used the program. (The old program) did not include new homes or apartments, (but the amendment brings) everything under one umbrella. It will be standardized for everything, Maine pointed out. The new program will include all building classifications and cover the entire town, including tax increment financing districts. The 15 percent increase in value will continue to be the threshold for receiving the exemption, which will be a five-year, graduated program. The first year will be a 75 percent exemption; 60 percent in the second year; 45 percent in the third year; 30 percent in the fourth year; and a 15 percent exemption in the final year. Maine said the city might initially lose some tax revenue from the expansion, but in the long run would benefit. The end result is the town will get newer and better buildings, he predicted. The city council must pass two additional readings before the amendment goes into effect. In other action, the council voted 4-1 to accept a $79,740 bid for the citys annual insurance from Earnest Insurance and also award a three-year contract to the firm. Council member Kenny Marlette voted against the measure after questioning the three-year contract. During a discussion earlier this year, insurance agent Lorrie Thompson, Mills-Thompson Insurance, Wapello, had requested the council identify her firm as the citys agent. She pointed out during that earlier meeting that Earnest Insurance had provided the citys insurance for over 20 years. However, Steve Earnest said Thompsons company had provided the insurance for almost the same time prior to his firm assuming the coverage. Thompson told the council Thursday she had been unable to obtain a competing bid because the city is currently experiencing a high workers compensation claim period. 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 [] In February, finance minister Pravin Gordhan said the government needs to curb spending on state-owned enterprises (SOE). Looking at executive salaries at SOEs, it is easy to see why. Financial reports from the SABC, Sentech, Broadband Infraco, and ICASA show that their employees earn much higher salaries than most private companies in the tech space. The 14 top managers at the SABC, for example, each earned an average salary of R2.671 million per year. The 69 senior managers at the state broadcaster also did not struggle, with an average salary of R1.586 million per year. Former Acting SABC CEO Anton Heunis took home the most money, with an annual salary of R4.1 million. He was followed by SABC COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng on R3.784 million. Not to be outdone, Sentech CEO Setumo Mohapi the highest-paid executive at a tech SOE received an annual package of R5.045 million. The table below shows the best-paid executives at South African tech-related SOEs. SOE Executive Salaries Person Company Position Annual salary SJ Mohapi Sentech CEO R5,045,000 KS Matabane Sentech COO R2,565,000 R Rasikhinya Sentech CFO R2,140,000 A Heunis SABC Acting CEO R4,110,000 G H Motsoeneng SABC COO R3,784,000 J R Aguma SABC CFO R2,358,000 P Kwele Broadband Infraco CEO R2,373,000 G Zowa Broadband Infraco CTO R2,251,000 V Maharaj Broadband Infraco Special Projects R2,027,000 PK Pongwana ICASA CEO R2,441,670 S Mncube ICASA Chairman R1,580,909 More on salaries 2016 Engineering salaries in South Africa South African software developer salaries ranked best in the world Just the other day, a twitter user took to social media to complain about Brooksides Dairy Best Whole Milk after finding a strange black substance. Well, it appears there is something very wrong with the milk Kenyans are consuming. Another consumer has taken to Facebook to expose the Gold Crown brand of milk by KCC. As the story goes, the consumer was boiling the milk when it suddenly changed in texture and color. The milk was purchased in Ngumba Estate. Check it out: In the presence of Baba and other top Cord leaders, Babu Owino was under threat of going unnoticed on Saturday during Cords Madaraka Day rally at Uhuru Park. However, he is not one to go down without a fight. What better way to have cameras pointing at you than by dressing differently. The controversial student leader chose jungle green attire, more associated with Fidel Castro. Do you think he nailed it? Award winning Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina was subjected to a physical racial attack in Berlin, Germany. According to Binyavanga, he was attacked by a taxi driver as he sought to get directions to a clinic where he was to get prescription medicine as he is recovering from a stroke. The cab was waiting. I got in, sat down carelessly and started to look for the address for where was going on my phone. And the website of the clinic i was going to was one of those that maybe dont fit a phone so well. Anyway it took a long for me to get the address, he says. The taxi driver was however not patient and that is when he subjected Binyavanga to a beating. So he gets out of the car and comes across to my side, and opens the door. I am clueless what is going on because he is beating me, my bag is on the ground, we scuffle but he is stronger, I am crying now. Loud. In front of my neighbors, he laments. Binyavanga narrated the ordeal on his official Facebook page on Wednesday. This was his full post: Berlin chronicles. Am in Berlin as one of the writers on a Daad Fellowship.. This is one of the most prestigious fellowships in the world. Berlin is a city of bikes. I live in Charlottenburg. You dont see black people in Charlottenburg. Today I was out shopping on my bike. I came out of Peek and Somethingburg all excited because I am off to dar es salaam tonight to see my in -love. Anyway am busy rushing about. My gorgeous apartment is a mess. Anyway, I am walking as carelessly as usual heading to unlock my bike when i see her a black woman looking at me. She says, I saw you the other day, cycing carelessly, on Saturday we buried 4 Ghanaians. They kill you just like that you are nothing to them. Me-you cant see me on bicycle they are supposed to remain 4 metres from you, but they dont. They kill you. I dont need a degree to say she meant Germans. But I am careless,and Berlin is a city designed for careless people. Except her and I suspect they are many others like her. Anyway, I left her carelessly and rushed home, put my new clothes on top of my suitcase and called a cab. I had finished my prescription medication the day before so I had called the cab company I like because they dont mind that i dont speak German and since my stroke I have a few speech defects I mangle 22..stuttgarter platz ..and they dont mind. The cab was waiting. I got in, sat down carelessly and started to look for the address for where was going on my phone. And the website of the clinic i was going to was one of those that maybe dont fit a phone so well. Any way it took a long to me to get the address. Clearly the taxi driver was not a patient guy. He asked me several times to hurry it, but si the meter is running, and i am paying him? So he gets out of the car and comes across to my side, and opens the door. I am clueless what is going on because he is beating me, my bag is on the ground , we scuffle but he is stronger, I am crying now. Loud. In front of my neighbors , it is fiveissh the lady at the shop who makes it a point never to say hello to me is relishing everything, nobody comes to my aid. I feel black, dirty. I feel as if this kind of thing is supposed to happen to somebody like me. Am in Zurich writing this, on my way to see my inlove.(sic) Tanzanian hitmaker Rich Mavoko will not be renewing his management contract with Kenyan label Kaka Empire. The Roho Yangu star has instead signed with Diamond Platnumz Wasafi Records. According to King Kaka, Rich Mavoko is no longer with Kaka Empire that also houses Avril and Femi One because our contract ended. I was aware of Rich Mavoko signing with Wasafi. I have even congratulated him on my Instagram, he said. Despite Rich Mavokos move being a major blow to his label, King Kaka congratulated Rich on his new career move. This is what he posted on the gram: Congratulations to my brother and friend @richmavoko for Joining @diamondplatnumz s Wasafi Records all the best, wishing you nothing but greatness, we had great times at Kaka Empire and looking forward to making more Hits and inspiring our generations. Kubwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa (sic) Meanwhile, Diamond Platnumz unveiled his newest signee on Thursday. He posted: Welcome to the Family @richmavoko Lets take Bongo fleva to the world! The Hottest Stories on the Internet Today (Friday June 3) One of Kenyas most revered and celebrated gospel musicians, Reuben Kigame has issued a stern warning to CORD principals, Raila Odinga, Moses Wetangula and Kalonzo Musyoka for bulldozing the Prayer Beyond Boundaries Ministry prayer rally at Uhuru Park. According to Reuben, the CORD leaders did wrong by belittling Reverend Lucy WaNgunjiri and her followers who wanted to talk to their Maker. He advises the politicians to repent and do something about it, failure to which they will be in a bad place. This was his full warning on Facebook: WARNING TO RAILA, KALONZO AND WETANGULA!!! By Reuben Kigame Kenyas Opposition, CORD, may be feeling bolder, louder and more popular after yesterdays Madaraka Day rally at Uhuru Park, but someone needs to warn them all that if you ever find yourself or your agenda pitted against the agenda of a people who wish to meet and pray to the Living God of the Bible, you need to immediately pull back and let Gods people talk to Almighty God. I assume that CORD has some religious people and leaders close to the decision-makers who should clearly advise Raila, Kalonzo and Wetangula on this. Kalonzo who has always evoked the Bible, Christ and prayer, should have warned his co-leaders, Raila and Wetangula, but clearly he did not. Raila who frequently quotes the Bible should know enough to have taken the warning of Mzee Gamaliel in the book of Acts to the effect that you should never find yourself fighting against God. If the facts we have are true, i.e. that Mama Lucy Wa Ngunjiri and the Prayer Beyond Boundaries Ministry had booked Uhuru Park for a prayer rally, only to be bulldozed out by a political machine that feels invincible, unstoppable and untouchable, my warning is as was in the book of Daniel Chapter 5: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin (your rule has been put on the balance and found wanting). CORD: Dont do that. You cannot belittle, despise or fight a people who want to talk to their Maker (and your Maker too) and win. My advice is simple: Repent and go back to the drawing board on this matter. You did wrong and if you dont do something about it, you will be in a bad place. This warning is not just for you. It would also be for Uhuru and Ruto if they did anything like that. It is for anybody and everybody including me. Dont fight prayer to Almighty God. You will not win! MOGADISHU, Somalia Somali security forces Thursday ended an overnight siege by extremist gunmen at a hotel in the capital which killed least 15 people, including two members of parliament, officials said. The assault started when a vehicle laden with explosives detonated outside the Ambassador Hotel Wednesday evening and three militants stormed inside the building, said the African Union (AU) Mission in Somalia. The AU multinational force is bolstering Somalias weak government against an insurgency by the Islamic extremist group al-Shabab. Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack, which sheared off the front of the luxury hotel and left blood spattered on bullet-marked walls. The twisted remains of dozens of vehicles ringed the site. One militant was killed at the entrance to the hotel while two others entered and shot at residents, the AU force said in a statement. All the attackers were killed in the siege. Nine bodies were removed from the hotel after troops killed the remaining assailants, Capt. Mohamed Hussein, a senior Somali police officer, told The Associated Press. Six out of 40 people injured in the attack died from their wounds, Ahmed Mohamed, a nurse at Madina hospital in Mogadishu, said. Victims screamed in pain in overwhelmed hospitals, and there were fears the death toll could rise. The two members of parliament killed in the attack had dual British citizenship, a statement from British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammonds office said as he visited Somalia for security talks. Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud condemned the attack, saying extremists launched it after suffering major blows from the countrys security forces in rebel-held towns in recent months. The hotel attack came on the eve of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, during which extremists often step up attacks in this volatile East African country. BENTON, Ky. Pastor Richie Clendenen stepped away from the pulpit, microphone in hand. He walked the aisles of the Christian Fellowship Church, his voice rising to describe the perils believers face in 21st-century America. "The Bible says in this life you will have troubles, you will have persecutions. And Jesus takes it a step further: You'll be hated by all nations for my namesake," he said. "Let me tell you," the minister said, "that time is here." The faithful in the pews needed little convincing. Even in this deeply religious swath of western Kentucky a state where about half the residents are evangelical conservative Christians feel under siege. For decades, they say, they have been steadily pushed to the sidelines of American life and have come under attack for their most deeply held beliefs, born of their reading of Scripture and their religious mandate to evangelize. The 1960s ban on prayer in public schools is still a fresh wound. Every legal challenge to a public Nativity scene or Ten Commandments display is another marginalization. They've been "steamrolled," they say, and "misunderstood." Religious conservatives could once count on their neighbors to at least share their view of marriage. Those days are gone. Public opinion on same-sex relationships turned against conservatives even before the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide. Now, many evangelicals say liberals want to seal their cultural victory by silencing the church. Liberals call this paranoid. But evangelicals see evidence of the threat in every new uproar over someone asserting a right to refuse recognition of same-sex marriages whether it be a baker, a government clerk, or the leaders of religious charities and schools. America's divisions right-left, urban-rural, black-white and more spill daily into people's lives, from their relations with each other, to their harsh communications on social media, to their decisions in an acrimonious presidential election campaign. Many Christian conservatives feel there is another, less recognized chasm in American life, and they find themselves on the other side of the divide between "we" and "them." Clendenen, preaching on this recent Sunday, reflected on the chasm between his congregants and other Americans. "There's nobody hated more in this nation than Christians," he said, amid nods and cries of encouragement. "Welcome to America's most wanted: You." ___ For evangelicals like those at Christian Fellowship, the sense of a painful reckoning is not just imagined; their declining clout in public life can be measured. The turnabout is astonishing and hard to grasp for them and for other Americans since the U.S. remains solidly religious and Christian, and evangelicals are still a formidable bloc in the Republican Party. But a series of losses in church membership and in public policy battles, along with America's changing demographics, are weakening evangelical influence, even in some of the most conservative regions of the country. "The shift in the last few years has really been stunning," said Ed Stetzer, executive director of Lifeway Research, an evangelical consulting firm in Nashville, Tennessee. "Nobody would have guessed the pace of change. That's why so many people are yelling we have to take our country back." The Protestant majority that dominated American culture through the nation's history is now a Protestant minority. Their share of the population dipped below 50 percent sometime after 2008. Liberal-leaning Protestant groups, such as Presbyterians and Lutherans, started shrinking earlier, but some evangelical churches are now in decline. The conservative Southern Baptist Convention lost 200,000 from its ranks in 2014 alone, dropping to 15.5 million, its smallest number in more than two decades. The trend is reflected in the highest reaches of public life. The U.S. Supreme Court is now comprised completely of Jews and Roman Catholics. In the 2012 presidential election, the Republican nominees were a Mormon, Mitt Romney, and a Catholic, Paul Ryan. "We've lost our home field advantage," Stetzer said. At the same time, the Bible Belt, as a cultural force, is collapsing, said the Rev. Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist public policy agency. Nearly a quarter of Americans say they no longer affiliate with a faith tradition. It's the highest share ever recorded in surveys, indicating the stigma for not being religious has eased even in heavily evangelical areas. Americans who say they have no ties to organized religion, dubbed "nones," now make up about 23 percent of the population, just behind evangelicals, who comprise about 25 percent, according to the Pew Research Center. Christians who have been only nominally tied to a conservative church are steadily dropping out altogether. When Moore was growing up in Mississippi, any parent whose children weren't baptized by age 12 or 13 would face widespread disapproval, he said. Those times have passed. "People don't have to be culturally identified with evangelical Christianity in order to be seen as good people, good neighbors or good Americans," Moore said. Politically, old guard religious right organizations such as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition are greatly diminished or gone, and no broadly unifying leader or organization has replaced them. In this year's presidential race, the social policy issues championed by Christian conservatives are not central, even amid the furor over bathroom access for transgender people. Clendenen said many in his church backed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who had positioned himself in the Republican primaries as the standard bearer for religious conservatives. Chris Haynes, a church band member and communications professor, said he voted for Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Some congregants now support presumptive nominee Donald Trump a thrice-married, profane casino magnate with a record of positions at odds with social conservatism. "It's like we're scraping the bottom of the barrel," for candidates, said Haynes' wife, Brandi, who teaches at the Christian Fellowship school. White evangelical voters remain very influential in early primaries. About two-thirds of Iowa caucus voters this year said they were born-again Christians. In Mississippi, eight in 10 primary voters were evangelical. And they turn out at high rates in general elections. But white evangelicals can't match the growth rate of groups that tend to support Democrats Latinos, younger people and Americans with no religious affiliation. In 2004, overwhelming evangelical support helped secure a second term for President George W. Bush, a Christian conservative who made social issues a priority. In 2012, evangelicals voted for Romney at the same rate yet he lost. This is a far cry from 1976, which Newsweek declared the "Year of the Evangelical," when born-again candidate Jimmy Carter won the presidency and more conservative Christians were drawn into politics. Four years later, Ronald Reagan famously recognized the emerging influence of the religious right, telling evangelicals in Dallas, "I know you can't endorse me, but I endorse you and what you're doing." No issue has more starkly illuminated conservative Christians' waning influence than the struggle over same-sex marriage. Evangelicals were "all in" with their opposition to gay rights starting back with the Moral Majority in the 1980s, said Robert Jones, author of "The End of White Christian America." In the 2004 election, Americans appeared to be on the same page, approving bans on same-sex marriage in all 11 states where the measures were on the ballot. When President Barack Obama was first elected in 2008, just four in 10 Americans supported gay marriage. But three years later, support rose to more than five in 10. And now the business wing of the Republican Party is deserting social conservatives on the issue, largely backing anti-discrimination policies for gays and transgender people. Younger Americans, including younger evangelicals, are especially accepting of same-sex relationships, which means evangelicals "have lost a generation on this issue," Jones said. "This issue is so prominent and so symbolic," said Jones, chief executive of Public Religion Research Institute, which specializes in surveys about religion and public life. "It was such a decisive loss, not only in the actual courts, the legal courts, but also in the court of public opinion. They lost legally and they lost culturally." Clendenen said he saw "a lot of fear, a lot of anger" in his church after the Supreme Court ruling. He said it made him feel that Christians like him had been pushed to the edge of a cliff. "It has become the keystone issue," he said, sitting in his office, where photos of his father and grandfather, both preachers, are on display. "I never thought we'd be in the place we are today. I never thought that the values I've held my whole life would bring us to a point where we were alienated or suppressed." Trump uses rhetoric that has resonance for Christian conservatives who fear their teachings on marriage will soon be outlawed as hate speech. "We're going to protect Christianity and I can say that," Trump has said. "I don't have to be politically correct." ___ If culture wars and the outside world once felt remote amid the soybean and tobacco farms around Marshall County, Kentucky, change of many kinds is now obvious to Clendenen's congregants. Latino immigrants are starting to arrive in significant numbers, drawn partly by farm work. Muslims are working at chicken processing plants in the next county or enrolling at nearby Murray State University. On a recent weeknight, a group of women wearing abayas shopped in a Dollar General store near campus. Some gays and lesbians are out in the community, and Clendenen says he occasionally sees them at Sunday worship. It was on the other side of Kentucky, in Rowan County, where clerk Kim Davis spent five days in jail last year for refusing on religious grounds to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples since the licenses would include her name. Gov. Matt Bevin recently tried to defuse the conflict by signing a bill creating a form without a clerk's name. In New Mexico and Oregon, a photographer and a baker were fined under nondiscrimination laws after refusing work for same-sex ceremonies. Daniel Slayden, a Christian Fellowship member and owner of Parcell's, a popular bakery and deli near the church, has never been asked to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple but already knows how he'd respond. "If a homosexual couple comes in and wants a cake, then that's fine. I mean I'll do it as long as I'm free to speak my truth to them," said Slayden, taking a break after the lunchtime rush. "I don't want to get (to) any point to where I have to say or accept that their belief is the truth." The problem, many religious conservatives say, is that government is growing more coercive in many areas bearing on their beliefs. They say some colleges citing a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that required school groups to accept all comers are revoking recognition for Christian student clubs because they require their leaders to hold certain beliefs. Some faith-based nonprofits with government contracts, such as Catholic Charities in Illinois, have shuttered adoption programs because of new state rules that say agencies with taxpayer funding can't refuse placements with same-sex couples. And religious leaders worry that Christian schools and colleges will lose accreditation or tax-exempt status over their codes of conduct barring same-sex relationships. A 1983 U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowed the IRS to revoke nonprofit status from religious schools that banned interracial dating. In the Supreme Court gay marriage case, U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, representing the government, was asked whether something similar could happen to Christian schools, which often provide housing for married students. He responded, "It's certainly going to be an issue," causing a meltdown across the evangelical blogosphere. It has come to this: Many conservative Christians just don't feel welcome in their own country. They say they are either mocked or erased in popular culture. "When was the last time you saw an evangelical or conservative Christian character portrayed positively on TV?" Stetzer asked. "The idea of what we call biblical morality in our culture at large is completely laughed at and spurned as nonsense," said David Parish, a former pastor at Christian Fellowship and the son of its founder. "The church as an institution, as a public entity we are moving more and more in conflict with the culture and with other agendas." How to navigate this new reality? Most conservative Christians fall into one of three broad camps. There are those who are determined to even more fiercely wage the culture wars, demanding the broadest possible religious exemptions from recognizing same-sex marriage. There are those who plan to withdraw as much as possible into their own communities to preserve their faith an approach dubbed the "Benedict Option," for a fifth-century saint who, disgusted by the decadence of Rome, fled to the forest where he lived as a hermit and prayed. There is, however, a segment that advocates living as a "prophetic minority," confidently upholding their beliefs but in a gentler way that rejects the aggressive tone of the old religious right and takes up other issues, such as ending human trafficking, that can cross ideological lines. Clendenen is cut from this mold. Now 38, he came of age when the religious right was at its apex, and he concluded any mix of partisan politics with Christianity was toxic for the church. A congregant once lobbied him to participate in Pulpit Freedom Sunday, an annual conservative effort to defy IRS rules against backing politicians from the pulpit. Clendenen stood before the congregation and endorsed ... Jesus. He prays for President Barack Obama, considering it a Christian duty no matter his opposition to the president's policies. But Clendenen believes few Americans who support same-sex marriage would show him or his fellow evangelicals a similar level of respect. "On any front that we speak on, we're given this label of intolerance, we're given this label of hate," Clendenen said. (He said evangelicals are partly responsible for the backlash, however, because of the hateful language some used in the marriage debates. "I don't see the LGBT community as my enemy," he said.) He uses the word persecution to describe what Christians are facing in the U.S., even though he feels strange doing so. He has traveled extensively to help start churches in other countries, and knows the violence many Christians endure. A map of the world is posted in his office with pins in the places he's visited, including Romania and Kenya. And yet, he feels the word applies here, too. He ruminated on all of this as he prepared to head into his sanctuary to lead the Sunday service. Some good may come of these hard times, he believes. Conservative Christians who have been complacent will have to decide just how much their religion matters "when there's a price to pay for it," he said. Christianity has often thrived in countries where it faces intense opposition, he noted. Preaching now, Clendenen urged congregants to hold fast to their positions in a country that has grown hostile to them. And as the worship service wound down, he issued a final exhortation. "Don't give up," he said. "Don't let your light go out." Friday will be another Spare the Air day, with air quality forecast to be unhealthy for the second day in a row, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District said Thursday. Another day of high temperatures and light winds in the Bay Area is expected. These conditions, combined with motor vehicle exhaust from traffic, are expected to generate unhealthy ozone accumulation in the region, the district said. With inland temperatures projected to be near 100 (Friday), smog levels will remain high for the second consecutive day, said Jack Broadbent, executive officer of the Air District. Bay Area residents are advised to avoid outdoor activities during the hottest part of the day and to find alternatives to driving alone to reduce overall air pollution. Nearly 40 percent of Bay Area smog pollution and greenhouse gases are from passenger vehicles. Bay Area employers with 50 or more full-time employees are now required to offer commuter benefits to their employees. For more information about the Commuter Benefits Program, visit 511.org and click on Bay Area Commuter Benefits Program. To improve air quality, residents are encouraged to walk, bike, carpool or take transit instead of driving alone, not just on Spare the Air days, but every day. Residents can visit www.stacommutetips.org to find a list of commute programs and incentives available where they live and work. Justin-Sienas braves went from high schoolers to graduates on Thursday night, taking their first steps into the next chapter of their lives. Salutatorian Kristina Reyna, 17, of Fairfield said she feels going to college will be like entering a new world because she wont know many people. But shes excited shes attending Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo to study civil engineering. As salutatorian, Reyna planned on giving a speech on the North Lawn of Justin-Siena. Mostly, my message is how the people that Ive met in high school have inspired me to be the best that I canand have really helped me become the person I want to be. Valedictorian Joseph Bosetti, 17, of Napa had a positive message planned for his classmates as well, one that expressed how close the students had become over the years. This class has incredible potential to be a positive force of good in the world, he said. I want them to remember how extraordinary they are and how well loved they are. Bosetti was nervous to give the speech, but only because it means so much to him, he said. Bosetti will be attending Stanford University in the fall, and is excited to find out what he is passionate about. He, like many other students, expects that he will miss his high school days. Theres nothing like Justin-Siena. Ill never be able to come back and repeat these four years here. Everything about the school is great he said, but mostly hell miss the people. Everyone wants to see you succeed, everyone wants to support you to realize and actualize your own particular vision, he said. Catherine Cromwall, 17, of St. Helena moved from San Francisco just before high school. I didnt know how this whole thing would go, but Im happy that I ended up finding my place (at Justin-Siena), she said. She looks forward to attending Gonzaga University in Washington where she will be majoring in finance. All 148 graduates will be attending college students were accepted into 183 colleges around the world, some of them as far as Madrid and Paris. Graduates were awarded $6.22 million in scholarships based on academic achievement, leadership and service. This is a class exceptionally loving toward one another, said principal John Bordelon. This was Bordelons first year as principal at Justin-Siena and he said that he couldnt have had a better welcoming class. The commencement featured mostly student speakers because they deserve to be honored, Bordelon said. We want this to be about the kids, he said. They deserve it. In the beginning of January 1924, Reverend Robert Fighting Bob Shuler of Trinity Methodist Church and head of the Los Angeles Church of Federation opened with a series of sermons titled McPhersonism: A Study of Healing Cults and Modern-Day Tongues, attacking Aimee Semple McPherson of the Angelus Temple from his downtown pulpit. Shuler claimed that the Foursquare doctrine was leading good people astray. Furthermore, he said that Sister McPherson was a hypnotist. According to him, sick people who stated that they were miraculously healed at her mid-week prayer meeting were suffering from mass hysteria. He accused Mrs. McPhersons mother, Minnie Kennedy, of charging money to the cured people who experienced the physical healing miracles. After the series of sermons were concluded, Shuler printed the series up in pamphlet form and sold the item for a quarter. Aimee Semple McPherson was attacked prior in print in an earlier 1923 pamphlet Divine Healing: Is it of the Lord? (Divine Healing was a Pentecostal term used to describe sick that were miraculously cured by the Holy Ghost through prayer.) Later, he attacked her in print again in his political publication, Bob Shulers magazine. In the meantime, Aimee Semple McPhersons professional relationship with her KFSG radio chief engineer was in actual question. Mrs. Ruth Ormiston took her unfounded suspicions about her husbands affair with the evangelist to Minnie Kennedy. Disturbed by the accusation, Mrs. Kennedy questioned her daughter Aimee about her involvement with Kenneth Ormiston. She didnt want a scandal. People in the congregation were already speculating about the pairs romantic relationship. However, Sister McPherson denied that she was having any extra-marital affair with her male employee. Shuler wrote about the Angelus Temple float entered in the 1926 Rose Parade in his political magazine: A score of beautiful girls were in their leaders signature color. He was referring to the white cotton gowns and long navy cape that these young women wore while they waved from the top of the flowered float. He was applying with his snide statement that Sister McPherson was getting rich off her working-class congregation and buying new sedans. Kenneth Ormiston quit KFSG. He couldnt take the ongoing rumors that he and his boss, Sister McPherson, were involved in an affair. Meanwhile, the evangelist grew emotionally and physically fatigued from her work responsibilities. Temple staff noticed that she might be heading for a nervous breakdown. It was suggested she take some time off, and another minister step in temporarily. Finally, she announced to her congregation that she and her 15-year-old daughter, Roberta Semple, would be taking a vacation to the Holy Land. On Jan. 11, 1926, Aimee Semple McPherson and teenage daughter boarded a train at the Southern Pacific Railroad station. A crowd of thousands came out to the train station to wish them a bon voyage. Meanwhile, Ruth Ormiston met with Minnie Kennedy and informed her that she planned to divorce her husband. She made it clear that she would name her husbands affair with the evangelist the main reason for the divorce. Minnie Kennedy wired her daughter with the ugly details. Upon her return, Sister McPherson hoped the nasty rumors of her and her radio engineer had been squelched. However, an unforeseen event brought the rumors back into the public eye. On May 18, 1926, Aimee Semple McPherson was reported missing by her personal secretary, Emma Schaffer, after she failed to return from her swim at Ocean Park (Venice Beach). The next day, the police searched the ocean for her body with no results. It was presumed that the female evangelist had drowned. A memorial service was held for Sister McPherson five weeks later. Three days later on June 23, an American woman wandering the desert of Agua Prieta was found by Mexican authorities. She was taken to a hospital in Douglas, Arizona, where the police learned that the lost woman was none other than Aimee Semple McPherson. Sister McPherson explained to the police that she was kidnapped by three assailantstwo men and a woman. They kept her hidden away in an abandon shack somewhere across the border. However, the Los Angeles District Attorneys office didnt believe her kidnapping story, but exaggerated newspaper accounts that said she and Ormiston were seen together at Mount Carmel during the five week period shed gone missing. Aimee Semple McPherson was charged, and a lengthy court trial was held. During the trial, Shuler printed up his Miss X pamphlet that detailed Sister McPherson having a secret love affair with her former radio engineer. Carl G. White lives in Napa. The Progressive Women of Napa Valley would like to respond to the letter from Madeline Thomas dated May 30, 2016 in which Ms. Thomas puts into question the Don Saylors standing on womens issues. First and foremost the PWNV understands Don Saylor to consider these human issues, not just womens issues. Don Saylor was strongly influenced by his own mother to run for public office long ago so that hed be able to fight for human issues, not just womens issues. Don Saylor, who has held public office for more than 20 years, has a perfect record of support from Planned Parenthood and has stood up for access to reproductive health care for decades. His son, Aaron has served on the board of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland and his wife, Julie joined the demonstration at the Supreme Court steps earlier this year as the court was considering the Texas case. Don Saylor was the chair of the First 5 Yolo for five years, working to ensure that every child has access to health care and is supported through the critical developmental 0-5 years. Ms. Thomas stated that Don Saylor hasnt provided sufficient evidence that he will fight for gender equality in the State Assembly. However, she stated that Dan Wolk is very prepared to do that at the state level -- but provides not a single example how it is that he is prepared. As the chair of the PWNM endorsement committee, I would like the readers to know that both candidates are committed to womens issues. However, the candidate who committed to fighting for human issues won the endorsement on the Progressive Women of Napa Valley. That candidate is Don Saylor. Carol Whichard Napa Editor's note: The Register's deadline for election-related letters was Tuesday, May 31. Between now and June 7, we will run only letters that are answers to previously published letters or commentaries that, in the case-by-case judgement of the editor, require a response. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with French President Francois Hollande in Paris on Friday (3 June 2016) to discuss current security challenges and the Alliances agenda for the Warsaw Summit in July. Mr. Stoltenberg commended France for being a strong NATO Ally, building security in Europe and beyond - from Mali to Syria. Mr. Stoltenberg thanked France for its contributions to NATOs deployment in the Aegean Sea and for its important role in the Global Coalition against ISIL. He also welcomed that France will take the lead of NATOs high-readiness Spearhead Force in the coming years. Mr. Stoltenberg further expressed appreciation for Frances efforts, along with Germany, to find a peaceful solution to the crisis in Ukraine. The Secretary General and President Hollande reviewed the Alliances agenda for the Warsaw Summit, including plans to enhance NATOs forward presence in the eastern part of the Alliance. This is a defensive and proportionate response to Russias actions in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, Mr. Stoltenberg said. Defence and dialogue are the two tracks of NATOs approach to Russia, and we are moving forward on both tracks. The leaders also discussed how NATO could do more to project stability in the Alliances neighbourhood. Turmoil and extremism in our neighbourhood can have a direct impact on our security here at home, as the barbaric terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels have recently shown us all, said Mr. Stoltenberg. Mr. Stoltenberg and President Hollande also addressed the Alliances plans to take cooperation with the European Union to the next level at the Warsaw Summit. This should include increased cooperation in supporting partners, countering hybrid and cyber threats, and increasing maritime security. During his two-day visit, the Secretary General also met with the French Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Development Jean-Marc Ayrault. On Friday, he is also meeting Patricia Adam, President of the National Defence and Armed Forces Committee, and with parliamentarians. The NATO Secretary General, Mr. Jens Stoltenberg will be speaking with Politico in Brussels at 18:00 on Monday, 6 June 2016, in a conversation webstreamed online. The Secretary General will discuss how NATO is addressing current security challenges and preparing for its summit in Warsaw next month with Politicos senior EU correspondent Ryan Heath. Follow the event online at www.politico.eu from 18:00 CET and join the conversation @EventsPOLITICO using #PlaybookCocktails. Follow us on Twitter (@NATOPress and @jensstoltenberg) (As delivered) Thank you so much, President Francois Hollande, and thank you for welcoming me. And thank you for your strong support to the NATO Alliance. I know how focused you are now on the effects of the devastating floods in Paris and across France. And my thoughts go to all those affected. And to the men and women of the emergency services. France is a strong country. And France is a strong NATO Ally, building security in Europe and beyond - from Mali to Syria. You are contributing to NATOs deployment in the Aegean Sea, which helps cut the lines of human smuggling. You play an important part in the Global Coalition Against ISIL, to which all NATO Allies contribute. And you will take the lead of NATOs high-readiness Spearhead Force in the coming years. You also support our partners. In particular I appreciate your efforts, along with Germany, to find a peaceful solution to the crisis in Ukraine. We just had excellent discussions on NATOs response to the challenges we face. From terrorism, to instability in the Middle East and North Africa, to a more assertive Russia. And we reviewed our agenda for the Warsaw Summit. Including our plans to enhance our forward presence in the eastern part of the Alliance. This is a defensive and proportionate response to Russias actions in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. Defence and dialogue are the two tracks of NATOs approach to Russia. And we are moving forward on both tracks. Dialogue between NATO and Russia is even more important when tensions are high. Because we must avoid accidents and incidents spiralling out of control. A new Cold War is in nobodys interest. We also discussed how NATO could do more to project stability in our neighbourhood. We are already helping partners like Iraq, Jordan, and Tunisia strengthen their own security. We are now working with the Iraqi government to see how we can expand our training activities in Iraq. NATO can, and must do more. Because in the fight against terrorism and state failure, helping our partners boost their own security is one of the best weapons we have. Turmoil and extremism in our neighbourhood can have a direct impact on our security here at home, as the barbaric terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels have recently shown us all. When our partners are more stable, we are more secure. In projecting stability beyond our borders, NATO and the European Union are complementary. And at the Warsaw Summit, we will take our cooperation to the next level. Not just in supporting our partners, but in areas such as countering hybrid and cyber threats, and increasing maritime security. To ensure strong defence and deterrence, and to project stability beyond our borders, we need sufficient resources. In an unpredictable world, European nations must do more to protect our citizens. France is investing significant resources in defence and security. And showing the political will to use them for our common cause. And I thank you for doing exactly that. So these are the challenges we face and we are facing challenging times. But we are rising to the challenge. So President Francois Hollande, thank you once again. I look forward to working with you and to meet you again at the Summit in Warsaw. India fines Google for $113 million Biden says Russia would make 'serious mistake' if it deploys tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine Romania plans to intensify talks on Black Sea and military purchases Karekin II and Aram I refuse to participate in World Armenian Forum IMF Director: Ukraine's need for external financing could reach $5 billion month Turkey continues to beat out gas discount from Russia and payment deferral from Gazprom Alen Simonyan refuses to participate in fifth meeting of Russian-Armenian Lazarev Club UN Security Council to meet at Russia's request over accusations that Iran is supplying drones to Russia Leading Wall Street bankers warn of recession in US and Europe Armenian FM tells Vatican secretary of state about Azerbaijani aggression Secretary of Armenian Security Council holds telephone conversation with Biden's aide IEA head: World still needs Russian oil to flow into the market Norwegian police arrest man on suspicion of spying for Russia Ambassador-at-Large meets with Personal Representative of OSCE Chairman-in-Office EU to offer banks to offer mandatory instant payments in euros Ambassador: Active efforts of Armenian authorities are registering regress in Armenian-Russian relations Saudi minister: Saudi Arabia and US will overcome unjustified spat Zatulin: My ban on entering Armenia coincides with trilateral meeting planned in Russia Rishi Sunak vows to fix 'mistakes' of Liz Truss MFA comments on information about meeting of special envoys of Armenia and Turkey Daily Sabah: Armenian, Turkish special representatives next meeting planned in Turkey The Telegraph: US President Biden mispronounces Rishi Sunak's name Zelenskyy proposes creating platforms for the 'de-occupation' of Transnistria and Abkhazia 'Armenia' bloc deputy: Nikol Pashinyan and Suren Papikyan are lying Dollar falls, euro rises Stanislav Zass discusses with Lavrov situation in CSTO zone of responsibility New British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his wife are richer than royalty Klaar: EU actively engaged in Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process at all levels Nissan reveals updated Juke crossover FM briefs Sovereign Order of Malta Grand Chancellor on Armenia position on normalizing relations with Azerbaijan Azerbaijan prepares for peace with Armenia but dramatically increases military budget North Korea completes preparations for nuclear test Azerbaijan manipulates facts, creates information pretext to encroach on Lachin corridor Azerbaijan military aggression against Armenia is discussed at Francophonie Parliamentary Assembly conference (PHOTOS) Peskov says details of gas hub with Turkey were being worked out Konstantin Zatulin on ban on his entry into Armenia: I see it as insulting move Putin's spokesman says building wall on Russian-EU borders is nonsense Turkey begins its part of work on gas hub agreement with Russia Kremlin responds to Macron's appeal to Pope to negotiate with Putin Millliyet: Turkish and Finnish delegations hold talks on NATO membership in Ankara Zelenskiy: Ukraine receives not 'a single cent' on $17 billion rapid recovery plan Rishi Sunak takes office as Prime Minister of Great Britain Indonesian armed woman tries to break into presidential palace Pashinyan's family newspaper writes that Konstantin Zatulin is forbidden to enter Armenia from now on President Raisi accuses U.S. of information terrorism, organizing riots in Iran AraratBank and 4090 Charity Foundation team up for the education of war participants Ursula von der Leyen: EU to provide Kyiv with 1 billion for urgent restoration of energy supply World Bank to provide Armenia with EUR 22.6 million of additional credit funds Macron asks Pope to call Putin to solve Ukraine crisis PM: Azerbaijan hinders search of Armenian soldiers' bodies in occupied territories German president assures Ukraine of his full support Armenia ruling force MP: Major powers have told us You should sign that agreement by the end of the year WSJ: Saudi Prince Bin Salman mocks Biden in private talks OSCE needs assessment mission is briefed on situation in Armenias Jermuk after Azerbaijan military aggression (PHOTOS) Armenias Pashinyan to Kazakhstans Tokayev: Mutually beneficial cooperation corresponds to our countries interests Driver, 41, dies in hospital 2 days after Armenia car accident US: Former student opens fire at school Turkish Finance Minister says he would seek gas discount from Gazprom US State Dept.: We are interested in seeing stable Caucasus where we work both with Armenia and Azerbaijan US plans to allocate $25M to project to strengthen Armenia economy Copper prices decline Armenia premier: Italy is friendly country, important partner for us Pashinyan to Xi: We will succeed in qualitatively raising Armenian-Chinese political dialogue to new level World Bank allocates Ukraine additional $500 million Zelenskyy: If Moscow says Ukraine is making dirty bomb, then Russia made it Newspaper: Anti-CSTO consolidation initiative group of Armenia sends petition to parliament speaker World oil prices going up Newspaper: Armenia PM forbids political teammates to say anything about Karabakh Azerbaijan opens fire at Armenia positions Largest cruise liner in world 'Icon of the Seas' presented U.S. police officers mistake pet cat for mountain lion Joe Biden gets another Covid-19 booster shot US imposes sanctions on Nicaragua's gold mining industry Kremlin says Russian, Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents prepare to meet Leading Party Sponsor: Conservative Party is not fit to run Britain 'From Old Memory': Drivers can't see road signs on section of North-South highway under construction in Yerevan Russian MFA: We are sure that attempts of external forces to split Moscow and Yerevan will not succeed Yair Lapid: Israel is deeply concerned over Russia and Iran's military ties Another school shooting in U.S.: 3 dead, including shooter Azerbaijani Armed Forces shell Armenian positions Kenyan police shoot and kill prominent Pakistani journalist OSCE representatives visit villages affected by Azerbaijani aggression in Syunik Province US presidential adviser calls OPEC's decision to cut oil production political move Lavrov: Russia and Iran gave comprehensive answers about alleged use of Iranian drones Netanyahu's comeback dominates Israel's elections Georgian president complains that she was not informed about Aliyev's visit S&P Global Market Intelligence: Recession in Eurozone looks increasingly inevitable Benny Gantz tells his Ukrainian colleague that Israel will not supply weapons to Kiev Greek Armed Forces can effectively respond to any provocation by Turkey Qatar urges to depoliticize oil and gas General Staff of Armed Forces head discusses Ukraine with his British colleague Zelenskyy: Russia wouldn't cooperate militarily with Iran if Israel had not denied air defense systems to Kyiv Azerbaijan sends note in connection with 'anti-Azerbaijani statements' on Channel One Goldman Sachs foretells European business worst year since global financial crisis Artificial intelligence leads political party in Denmark Aliyev says Baku-Tbilisi-Kars route should be increased U.S. State Department official expresses support for Armenia's sovereignty Iranian MFA: IRGC exercises on borders with Azerbaijan are not directed against any neighboring state Pashinyan: Damage caused to country by corruption must be restored Rishi Sunak to become UK PM Representative Adam Schiff, the lead sponsor of the Armenian Genocide Truth and Justice Resolution in Congress, as well as the co-chairmen of the Congressional Armenian Issues Caucus, representatives Frank Pallone and Robert Dold released a statements Thursday following the German Bundestags historic vote to recognize the Armenian Genocide. Also applauding the Bundestag decision was California Congressman Jim Costa, reported Asbarez Armenian daily newspaper of the US. I commend the overwhelming vote by the German Bundestag to recognize the Armenian Genocide. With this acknowledgement of the facts of the genocide, Germany joins a host of other European countries in recognizing and condemning the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923. The German vote is particularly courageous as it comes in the midst of negotiations with Turkey regarding the flow of refugees and migrants into Europe. It sends a clear message that the truth of genocide cannot be silenced and that temporary expediency can never justify complicity in genocide denial, Schiff said. Our own Congress should demonstrate the same willingness to defy Turkish threats, and the same moral integrity and commitment to principle by following Germanys example, asserted the Congressman. We applaud the German parliament for acknowledging the atrocities committed against the Armenian people for exactly what they were genocide. The German people have had their own internal struggle in dealing with crimes against humanity in their history, and it is a powerful statement that they are now honoring the countless victims of the Armenian Genocide, said Pallone and Dold. Now, it is time for the U.S. government to properly recognize historical fact and pass our bipartisan resolution to recognize the Armenian Genocide. By recognizing these horrific crimes as genocide, we can once again renew our commitment to prevent such atrocities from occurring again. The United States must push Turkey to come to terms with its own history and remove their shrouded policy of denial from covering up one of the most horrific tragedies in world history, added the Armenian Issues Caucus co-chairmen. Critics always say it is never the right time to recognize the Armenian Genocide; however, the German Parliament reaffirms now is the time. Yet the United States continues to fail to stand up and do the right thing said Rep. Costa. I applaud the German Parliament for condemning the horrific genocide that took place over 100 years ago by the Ottoman Empire. I urge the President and Congress to follow the lead of Germany and other brave countries to once and for all adopt a clear policy recognizing the Armenian Genocide. Fernch Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve is seen during a visit on security before the start of the 69th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, May 9, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] PARIS -- France pledged to take in 400 refugees per month from Greece, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced on Thursday. In a statement, Cazeneuve added that 97 refugees arrived this week from Greece and Italy. An additional 253 asylum seekers are due to come next week. The French minister also reiterated determination to honor commitment to help handling migration crisis. France promises to receive 30,000 refugees over the next two years. Last September, European leaders agreed on the EU proposal to redistribute 160,000 refugees across European states in order to help struggling Greece to cope with chaotic flows of migrants at its doors. Escalating wars in Syria and Iraq, adding to persistent political instability in many African countries and in the Middle East, forced millions of people to risk their lives by boarding rickety boats to seek better life on the other Mediterranean rim. On May 25, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev ordered the state-owned gold company AzerGold to buy out four mining companies, including at least two owned by his own family. The deal bails the First Family out of a disastrous failed mining venture that had left gold unsold, workers unpaid and their personal companies in deep financial debt, OCCRP writes. The family controls some of the countrys richest gold, copper and silver deposits. The people of Azerbaijan will now foot the bill for the familys often incompetent attempts to mine the countrys mineral wealth all at a time when the country is suffering a financial crisis. On May 25, Aliyev ordered state-owned AzerGold, formed in February of 2015, to take over the consortium of four companies which were operating in six gold fields worth billions of dollars. The companies include United Kingdom (UK)-based Globex International and three offshore companies:, Londex Resources S.A., Willy & Meyris S.A. and Fargate Mining Corporation. The order followed a request to the government by the consortium to sell themselves after months of seeking a private buyer or new investment. The Panama Papers and earlier reporting by Ismayilova revealed that Globex International LLP and Londex Resources S.A., which control 56 percent of the four-company consortium, are owned by the presidents daughters, Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva. Londex Resources S.A. was the main operating company under the agreement, and has been responsible for negotiations with the government. The two other companies are owned by non-transparent offshore companies and could be owned by anyone, including the First Family. Aliyev tasked the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Finances and the Central Bank to prepare and submit to him proposals for financing the purchase of shares within two months. Azerbaijan has been struggling with massive budget deficit following the global drop in oil prices, and has even consulted with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank about loans to help it cope with mounting currency and budget pressures. The president awarded the six gold fields to the consortium controlled by his own family in late December 2006. The contract was approved by the Parliament in June 2007, even though members of Parliament complained that the consortiums ownership wasnt transparent, that the contract did not follow normal bidding procedures, and that none of the companies had any history of actually mining anything. The parliamentarians complained that the deal worked against national interests. Financial records obtained by OCCRP and RFE/RL show that the daughters Londex Resources S.A. spent nearly US$ 230 million to set up and operate the mining business. A factory was built in the mining town of Chovdar in western Azerbaijan, and the consortium produced as much as US$ 30 million in gold before it abruptly ceased operations in April 2014, leaving more than 300 employees in desperate conditions. Workers were put on leave and havent received their salary since. The mining venture was never able to cash in on the gold it found. An investigation by the OCCRP and RFE/RL published earlier this year showed that the family had trouble selling gold on the world market due to its secretive ownership structure. On June 27, 2014, Arda Arkun, then the chief executive officer of the consortium, emailed workers saying they would not be able to make salary payments due to having no access to funding and he expressed hope they would receive funding in the nearest future so that we can restart producing gold. We are working very hard on getting funding into the company to be able to start operations in the near future. We are meeting with various gold refineries to sell our gold production and to be able to start operations at our Chovdar mine. Workers never heard from the company again. They have been caught in a legal limbo because they were never officially laid off, and are therefore legally unable to take new jobs. Carl Caumartin, a former CEO in the local operating company set up by the consortium and who had mining experience, told OCCRP that the consortium managers clearly did not understand the mining business and were making costly mistakes. In January, February and March of this year, frustrated and desperate workers took to the streets of Baku in protests reaching out to every government institution they could think of - from the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources and the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of Population to the Parliament and the president himself. The government takeover ordered by the president will likely rescue the daughters investment. It is not clear how much money the family will recoup from the failed venture because the terms of the deal are not yet finalized. The Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Finances and Central Bank have two months to set the price. It is unclear whether the government needed to buy the venture in the first place. The original contract required the consortium to pay the government a US$ 2 million bonus, a point trumpeted by government officials in early press reports of the deal. But financial records OCCRP obtained show that the consortium not only never paid the bonus, but is facing a US$ 2.8 million penalty for non-payment. While not paying the bonus represents a breach of contract that would allow the government to terminate the contract, the records show consortium members were not at all concerned about such an event. Auditors who examined the financial statements noted that the government never requested the payment. The bill on lifting the immunity of Turkish parliament deputies is illegitimate and violates the acting Constitution of the country. Nazmi Gur, MP and assistant to the co-chair of the pro-KurdishPeoples Democratic Party (HDP) of Turkey, stated the aforementioned Friday at a press conference in Yerevan. In his words, the final decision on lifting the immunity of deputies must be approved by the Turkish president. We all know very well that the goal of this decision is to exclude the deputies of our party from the parliament. This decision will become legally valid only when the president approves it. Our position is very precise: we will concede to no force and no decision. We will either get back our right to immunity or be arrested; there is no other alternative, Nazmi Gur noted. The Kurdish MP stressed that the HDP will in no case concede. We will use our democratic rights till the end. Of course, during this time some of our friends may also be arrested. In any case, everyone understands that serious problems may emerge in Turkey. This decision has turned into a problem for the president and ruling party of Turkey, the MP said. According to him, the members of HDP are constantly subjected to violence. But our party is not only a party of Kurds. It is the party of all the people residing in Turkey and exactly this is the guarantee of our success, Gur added. HDP is the third largest party of the Turkish parliament according to the number of its deputies. It currently has 60 MPs. On May 20, the Turkish parliament adopted the bill on lifting the immunity of the deputies. The document is aimed at excluding the Kurdish deputies from the parliament, most of the criminal cases having been launched against them. The Emory University Board of Trustees announced today that Claire E. Sterk, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Emory, has been selected as the universitys 20th president. She was elected by a unanimous vote of the trustees during its meeting in Atlanta. Sterk has been a member of the Emory community since 1995, when she was appointed to the faculty of the Rollins School of Public Health. During her tenure at Emory, she has served as the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Public Health, chair of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education, associate dean for research, and senior vice provost for academic affairs. She was named provost and executive vice president for academic affairs in 2013. Sterk will assume the role on September 1. She will succeed James W. Wagner, who announced in September 2015 his intention to retire at the end of August 2016 after 13 years as president. Claire Sterk is a confident leader, an accomplished academic administrator, and a respected researcher, says John Morgan, chair of the Emory University Board of Trustees and chair of the Presidential Selection Committee. She has a sophisticated knowledge and understanding of Emory and is passionate about leveraging Emorys considerable strengths and assets to enhance its global reputation and reach. Sterk was the unanimous choice presented to the Board of Trustees by a 15-member Presidential Selection Committee that has dedicated the past six months to an intensive national and international search. I am deeply grateful to the trustees for this extraordinary opportunity to serve as Emorys president, says Sterk. Emory has earned its place among the worlds premier comprehensive research universities, and is well known for its undergraduate, graduate, and professional education; its leadership in research and scholarship across all disciplines; and an unsurpassed culture of innovation and collaboration. I look forward to engaging with all members of the Emory community to develop a shared vision for future success. Sterk is the first woman to serve as president of Emory. She is a native of the Netherlands, where she earned her Ph.D. in sociology from Erasmus University in Rotterdam and her doctorandus degree in medical anthropology from the University of Utrecht. At Emory, Sterk has held faculty appointments in anthropology; sociology; and women, gender, and sexuality studies. Her primary research interests are addiction, mental health, and HIV/AIDS, with a focus on community-based interventions. She is a leading international figure in the fields of public health and anthropology and the author of three books and more than 100 articles and book chapters. In addition to service on numerous editorial boards, Sterk has held several professional leadership positions, including president of the Alcohol, Drug, and Tobacco section of the American Sociological Association and a board member of the Society for Applied Anthropology. Sterks husband and research partner, Kirk Elifson, serves on the faculty of the Rollins School of Public Health. Together, they have attracted more than $33 million in external research funding to Emory. 00:37 After being re-elected to the Rajya Sabha, Senior Congress leader Ambika Soni on Friday said that the party will decide when the time was right to pass on the baton to Rahul Gandhi. "The fact that Rahul Gandhi has to be the president of the Congress party was a decision which the party entirely with its consent and concurrence took in January 2013 when it had unanimously elected him as the vice-president. You become the vice-president, so that one day in future you will take over as the president. Which day that will be, the party, its leadership, Rahul ji and Sonia ji themselves will take a call," Soni said. The veteran Congress leader was replying to the recent remarks of Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh suggesting Rahul Gandhi to take over as Congress President. She, however, described the current Congress president as a "catalytic force" who united various factions within the party and said the leadership baton will be passed on when the "time was right". "Sonia Gandhi has really been a catalytic force in Congress party, she has united different factions and successfully gave them a direction. Without her, we would have never been able to form UPA-I, UPA-II and governments in so many states. So, whether we acknowledge that publicly or as every Congress worker always pays a silent tribute to her work, that is universal," said Soni. When asked if senior leaders would want Sonia to continue as the party's President, Soni, who is also chairperson of Congress' Campaign Committee for the upcoming Punjab Assembly elections in 2017, said, "look, it's not a question of anyone coming in because we don't want her to continue. Congressmen would like to have all of them (the Gandhi family) in the party in one position or the other." The requested page is currently unavailable on this server. Back to [RTHK News Homepage] Tamms students to enjoy WILD summer program by Christi Mathis CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Unique learning experiences await Egyptian School District students participating in the WILD summer program, led by faculty and staff from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and their partners. The Egyptian School District in Tamms, located in one of the states poorest counties, received a 21st Century Community Learning Center grant to fund Wilderness Inquiry and Leadership by Design (WILD). The program will begin on Monday, June 6. Over a two-week period, up to 50 fifth- and sixth-grade students will enjoy a unique, hands-on learning program involving classroom and field work. The action takes place at their school, in the surrounding region, and at SIUs Touch of Nature Environmental Center, a 3,100-acre outdoor experiential education facility bordered by the Shawnee National Forest, the Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge and Little Grassy Lake. Participants will do some backyard archaeology in the nearby 1800s ghost town of Progress, researching the community and the people who lived there, including those buried in whats now known as Progress Cemetery. The students will hike in the forest and learn its history, study lakes, streams and rivers, and enjoy the wilderness lifestyle. They will bond and learn through team building activities including Touch of Natures exciting high ropes course. SIUs College of Education and Human Services (CoEHS) is partnering with the universitys Center for Archaeological Investigations, Touch of Nature, the U.S. Forest Service and new partner, Bass Pro Shops of Springfield, Mo., for WILD summer. Teachers and aides from the Egyptian School District will work alongside archaeologists from SIU and the Forest Service and other faculty and staff from SIU. The program will be loosely based on the Bass Pro Shops WOLF School, and the company is providing various wilderness supplies for the children including day packs, water bottles, first aid kits, and program access and support, according to David Ardrey, director of school partnerships and outreach for CoEHS. He expressed appreciation to the company for its valuable support of the program and said WILD will give children from a somewhat isolated and poor diverse school a wonderful introduction to the wonders of the outdoors, showing them the many resources and opportunities available there at little or no cost. I am excited about our staff and the high caliber of experts our students will learn from and interact with, Ardrey said. The indirect value of personal growth, enhanced self-esteem and the confidence that the students will gain from this interaction is invaluable and we cannot predict the long-term positive outcome for each student. My experience in managing these programs tells me this will be a great summer for the students and the long-term benefits will be immeasurable. SIU has partnered with the Egyptian School District to offer summer programs for several years now. (Members of the news media can contact Ardrey at 618/924-8218 for more information about the WILD summer program or to schedule a visit.) Restoring the Everglades will benefit both humans and nature UF research professor Peter Frederick explains why rehydrating the Florida Everglades, the largest ecological restoration project in the world, is worth its multi-billion dollar cost. Everglades National Park (ENP) is our only national wetland park, and one of the largest aquascapes in the world. Perhaps more than any other U.S. national park, ENPs treasures are hard to defend. Lying at the southern end of an immense watershed the size of New Jersey, ENP is caught between the largest man-made water project in the world upstream and a rapidly rising ocean downstream. The park and the wider Everglades ecosystem have suffered immense ecological damage from years of overdrainage to prevent flooding and promote development. In 2000 Congress approved the largest ecological restoration project in the world the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, which is expected to take more than 35 years to complete and cost at least US$10.5 billion. In addition to repairing some of the damage to this unique ecosystem, the restoration is designed to ensure reliable clean drinking water supplies for South Florida cities and protect developed areas from flooding. The plan is making progress but the closer it gets to its goal, the more the details matter, and some of those details have become roadblocks. As I complete my 30th year as an ecologist studying and trying to restore this great place, it is increasingly clear that restoration can work and will benefit both wild spaces and people. However, that view rests heavily on the assumption that we will commit to fixing a central problem water storage. Managing water flow The Everglades drainage area stretches over 200 miles, starting near Orlando and reaching south to the Gulf of Mexico. At least 100 miles of it is made up of the wide-open grasslands called the Everglades. Nearly 83 percent of the Everglades lies outside of the national park, mostly on agricultural or state-protected lands. The Everglades landscape is flatter than a billiard table, and water tends to pool on it. Florida has huge swings in annual rainfall, which can vary by as much as 82 percent from average levels year to year, and water evaporates very rapidly during dry seasons. Before the 20th century, the Everglades managed these flows naturally. They were a network of vast marshes that expanded and contracted from wet to dry seasons, populated by plants and animals that evolved strategies for dealing with unpredictable depths. Alligators created ponds to live in and crayfish burrowed into sediments during dry seasons. Sawgrass, which grows throughout the Everglades, can withstand drought, floods and fires and thrives in soils that contain pathetically few nutrients. As development spread across Florida, farmers, ranchers and urban dwellers sought to control floods and manage water supplies during droughts. In 1948 Congress authorized the Central & Southern Florida Project, which would become the largest water works project in the world, with more than 2,000 miles of canals and dikes, 71 pump stations, over 600 water control structures and 625 culverts. This infrastructure, which spans 16 counties, is operated today by the South Florida Water Management District. Engineers rerouted a huge portion of the water that flowed south into the Everglades from Lake Okeechobee, diverting it to Floridas east and west coasts. This enabled agricultural development and a huge western expansion of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. It also destroyed the St. Lucie and Fort Meyers estuaries by flooding them with unnatural pulses of fresh, and often polluted, water. In the Everglades it caused a 90 percent decline in populations of wading birds and repeated seagrass die-offs in Florida Bay and Charlotte Harbor, which in turn led to algae blooms and fish kills. Rehydrating the Everglades The restoration plan seeks to restore some of the Everglades' natural water flow. Models increasingly confirm that it is possible to effectively rehydrate all of the Everglades, including the National Park. But water coming out of Lake Okeechobee is polluted with phosphorus from fertilizer used on farms upstream. Plants in South Florida evolved in soils that were naturally low in phosphorus, so the Everglades is hypersensitive to it. Under natural conditions water flowing into the Everglades would contain 8-10 parts per billion (ppb) of phosphorus. Current levels range between 100 and 300 ppb. Adding so much phosphorus to the system can cause massive shifts from sawgrass plains to dense, oxygen-poor cattail monocultures, which outcompete sawgrass under higher nutrient conditions. Florida is now under federal court orders not to release water to the Everglades until phosphorus levels have been reduced close to natural concentrations. Removing a 300-year supply of phosphorus from Lake Okeechobee waters will require many acres of land to store and treat water by filtering it through beds of aquatic plants and algal mats. This system is partially constructed, but water cannot be released to the Everglades until it is finished, which may not happen for years or even decades, largely because of the cost. Restoration thus is effectively at a standstill. Meanwhile, the Everglades ecosystem south of Lake Okeechobee is rapidly deteriorating. Fish and bird populations are not recovering, alligators are getting skinnier, invasive pythons are ranging unchecked and algal blooms repeatedly devastate Florida Bay. In ecologists' worst-case scenario, the Everglades could reach a condition called an alternative stable state, in which the ecosystem has been altered so drastically that it cannot be restored to its original condition. Seagrass beds and mangrove forests along the coasts are already collapsing, partly due to reduced freshwater flow. Facing these conditions, scientists and managers are privately and off-record debating the formerly unthinkable option of letting water that contains some intermediate level of phosphorus flow into the Everglades. Even mildly relaxing phosphorus standards could make hydrological restoration much more achievable. And the nonprofit Everglades Foundation, which advocates for restoration, is offering a $10 million prize to researchers who can develop a cost-effective technology for removing phosphorus from natural water bodies. Global climate change raises other uncertainties. The Everglades is very close to sea level, and is already being affected by sea level rise. Peat soils in coastal forests are collapsing due to salt water intrusion. And a recent study estimates that hydrological restoration could be stymied if climate change reduces Floridas annual rainfall by as little as 10 percent. An interim goal: water storage Still, progress is possible. In a 2015 report, the University of Floridas Water Institute concluded that nearly all uncertainties and problems associated with Everglades restoration could be markedly improved by building more ponds and impoundments to store water. One million acre-feet (an acre one foot deep) of storage, distributed across several locations both south and north of Lake Okeechobee, could substantially reduce water surpluses and shortages for farmers, tribes, city residents and the Everglades. Building more water storage facilities would also drastically improve our ability to remove phosphorus from the water. But storing water is difficult and expensive in such a flat, porous landscape. Making dikes out of Floridas porous rock is like trying to contain water with walls of Swiss cheese: they have to be very thick, and water cannot be stacked deeply for fear of rupturing those walls. As a result, it takes a lot of land to store water. We have already made huge investments in water distribution and management to buffer ourselves from floods and drought, and to restore the ecology of the Everglades. Water storage is key to the future of cities, agriculture and Everglades restoration - the same structures buffer everyone. If we do not make these investments, all of South Floridas past drought and flooding challenges will intensify as our weather becomes less predictable. Completing an integrated natural and human water system for south Florida will have a payoff comparable to a moon shot. But unlike a space mission, we have already mostly paid for this venture. Going the final miles will be cheap compared to the alternative, and future generations will thank us for it. This article originally appeared in The Conversation on May 29, 2016. Judge Malik Nazir Ahmad from special court central, a lower court, also sentenced Rao Shakeel, Director General (DG) of Haj, to 40 years in prison and jailed Joint secretary for Religious Affairs Aftab Aslam for 16 years, Dawn online reported. The verdict was announced after cross-examination of 60 witnesses presented by the prosecution which was concluded last week. Those sentenced have the right to appeal the decision in Islamabad High Court. Between 2010 and 2012, the Haj corruption scandal rocked the national political scene and led to the exit of both Hamid Saeed Kazmi and Azam Swati from the federal cabinet. The former Religious Affairs minister was slapped with allegations of involvement in the Haj corruption scandal and inflicting huge losses to the national coffers two years ago. After this, a case was registered leading to Kazmis arrest on March 15, 2011. Kazmi was subsequently indicted on charges of corruption in the case on May 30, 2012, to which he pleaded not guilty. They were accused of hiring a substandard building on exorbitant rent (for housing the pilgrims in Makkah) and receiving kickbacks in the process. A total of 35,000 Pakistani pilgrims were affected due to the high charges. --IANS ksk/dg ( 236 Words) 2016-06-03-14:24:03 (IANS) The portable accessory gives on-the-go users the option of having something that offers great depth of field, but does not make their smartphone bulky, technology website TechTimes reported on Friday. 'Eye-Plug' features a reversible lens and since it plugs into the USB Type-C port, it can become either the front facing camera or the rear. It does the 3D capture by using front and rear facing cameras of your smartphone with its own photo-taking abilities. The 3D video can then be viewed in Google Cardboard headset. The device also allows users to switch the focus, adjust the depth of field while taking photos and even apply selective focus after shooting. It is compatible with smartphones running Android 4.4.2 or above. --IANS anuj/na/vm ( 164 Words) 2016-06-03-13:07:45 (IANS) Taking a strong exception to a sting that purportedly shows MLAs ready to sell their votes for the June 11 Rajya Sabha polls from Karnataka, the Janata Dal (Secular) on Friday demanded the Election Commission to cancel the polls for the Upper House. "The JD (S) will definitely say the elections must be countermanded and I hope the Congress and the BJP will also take the same call. As a political party we can't allow this to happen," JD-S leader Danish Ali told ANI. "It is very unfortunate, it is a blot on the face of democracy and institution like Rajya Sabha," he added. Ali also said that candidates should not enter the Rajya Sabha by engaging in horse trading. "I am going to talk to my party leadership today itself and if the Election Commission takes note of it, I think it will be issuing notices to the parties which are in the fray for the Karnataka Assembly elections," he added. When asked to comment on JD-S MLAs found in the sting video, Ali said that the party won't spare the defaulters. "We are not going to spare our MLAs also, actions will be taken against them also," he added. Four seats in the Upper House are up for election from the southern state. A group of MLAs from Karnataka were shown, by a television news channel yesterday, purportedly demanding money in crores of rupees, for supporting a candidate in the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections. The Rajya Sabha elections to four seats, slated for June 11, is witnessing an intense fight between B M Farooq of the JD(S) and K C Ramamurthy of the Congress, as they need votes beyond the numbers of their parties. Karnataka's ruling Congress party has fielded three candidates - former ministers Oscar Fernandes, Jairam Ramesh, and former IPS officer KC Ramamurthy. Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman is the BJP nominee and real estate baron BM Farooq will contest for the Janata Dal (Secular). (ANI) The toll in the Mathura violence rose to 20 on Friday as Superintendent of Police Mukul Dwivedi and others injured in Thursday's clash between police and encroachers during an anti-encroachment drive, succumbed to their injuries, officials said. While 250 people have been detained for their involvement in the incident, the city continues to be tense even as heavy police reinforcement has been deployed in the violence hit region. Dwivedi, a 1995 batch officer had joined as SP (City) Mathura seven months ago and is being remembered as one of the finest in the district police force. He was leading the operations following the orders of the court to clear the park of encroachment when police team was greeted with unprovoked and indiscriminate firing by the encroachers, believed to be part of sect called 'Satyagrahis'. While Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has ordered a probe into the incident, sources say the slain SP many times in the past had shared his frustration about the situation in Jawaharbagh, with friends and family. Close aides said that Dwivedi had spoken to them on how his superiors in the district were dissuading him against acting against the people behind the encroachment, despite a specific court order to do so. He also allegedly told some officials that he was not being provided with adequate police force to clear the encroachment at the sprawling park. The incident has come as a setback to the Samajwadi Party (SP) government in the state which braces for elections early next year and is already faced with charges of lawlessness in the state. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak told IANS that while the incident was very unfortunate it did not come as a shock as "in the past too, policemen have been targetted even as chief minister and his government have been in a state of denial". "It is very sad that on one hand the people of the state are victims of lawlessness and even the police in the last four years has been targetted" he said while seeking action against the Mathura DM and SSP for intelligence failure. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Congress leaders have also slammed the state government for letting the situation spin out of control to such fatal consequences. --IANS md/pgh/ ( 391 Words) 2016-06-03-10:26:11 (IANS) "Spoke to UP CM Shri Akhilesh Yadav and reviewed the situation in Mathura. I have also assured him of all possible help from the Centre," tweeted Singh. He further tweeted: "Anguished over the loss of lives in the incidents of violence in Mathura. May God give strength to the bereaved families to bear the loss." On Thursday, a mob went on rampage after police took action against them for encroaching upon a major part of a government land. --IANS av/pgh/ ( 123 Words) 2016-06-03-10:26:14 (IANS) At least 21 people, including two police officers, were killed and more than 100, including the City Magistrate, were injured in arson and clashes between agitators illegally occupying a prime area and police in the temple city here last night. Police and Official sources have so far confirmed death of 21 people including SP(City) and an SHO. However, unofficial sources claim that casualties could be around 25. Chief Secretary Alok Ranjan and Director General of Police Zaved Ahmad and senior officialsincluding Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Daljit Choudhury and the Home Secretary, have rushed to the spot on directives from Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. ADG Mr Choudhury told UNI here today that of the total deaths, 11 were due to burn injuries following explosion of LPG cylinders and other explosives. He said one person was also lynched to death by mob. Trouble started when the police party attempted to enter the Jawahar Bagh premises by breaking its periphery wall. Sensing trouble, the encroachers resorted to "unprovoked" firing, taking the police party by surprise. Mob also resorted to widespread arson, setting police and other government vehicles and property afire. The ADG said that the situation was under control and 374 arrests have been made so far. Station Officer of Farah Police station Santosh Yadav and SP (City) Mathura Mukul Dwivedi were killed last night when activists of Swadheen Bharat Subhash Sena (SBSS) opened fire at the police party that attempted to evict it from Jawahar Bagh. Mob of encroachers attacked and fired upon police yesterday, they have been identified, he said. There was an unlawful assembly, they had explosives including grenades and pistols, rifles which they used to fire upon police, Mr Choudhury said. He also claimed that huge quantity of illegal arma and ammunition, including country-made guns, rifles, pistols and cartridges were recovered from the Jawahar Bagh area. Search operation is still underway, the ADG added. Over 100 people, including the city magistrate Ram Araj Yadav, were also injured in the clashes that lasted for almost four hours. The situation in the city was tense while more than 500 policemen were camping around the Jawahar Bagh area. Curfew like situation prevailed in the city. Main accused Rambriksh Yadav, who was leading the agitation, has been arrested late last night along with his supporters. The government has announced compensation of Rs 20 lakhs for the deceased police officers. Divisional Commissioner of Agra has been entrusted to probe the entire incident. Chief Minister Mr Yadav has assured of stern action against the culprits. Meanwhile, in Delhi, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh was in touch of the situation. Mr Singh spoke to the Chief Minister over telephone to seek first hand briefing over the situation and assure of all possible help from the Centre. "Anguished over the loss of lives in the incidents of violence in Mathura..,..May God gives strength to the bereaved families to bear the loss", Mr Singh wrote on his official twitter handle today. "Spoke to UP CM Shri @yadavakhilesh and reviewed the situation in Mathura..,..I have also assured him of all possible help from the Centre".Eds rest pick up suitably from earlier.UNI MB-SV-ADG SS -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0089-766573.Xml At least 19 people, including two police officers, were killed in a clash between agitators illegally occupying a prime area and police in the temple city here last night. Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Daljit Choudhury, who along with home secretary, have rushed to the spot and confirmed death of 19 people. However, unofficial sources claim that casualties could be around 25. Mr Choudhury told UNI here today that of the total deaths, 11 were due to burn injuries following explosion of LPG cylinders and other explosives. He said one person was also lynched to death by mob. The ADG said that the situation was under control and 374 arrests have been made so far. Station Officer of Farah Police station Santosh Yadav and SP (City) Mathura Mukul Dwivedi were killed last night when activists of Swadheen Bharat Subhash Sena (SBSS) opened fire at the police party that attempted to evict it from Jawahar Bagh. He also claimed that huge quantity of illegal firearms were recovered from the Jawahar Bagh area. Search operation is still underway, the ADG added. Over 100 people, including the city magistrate Ram Araj Yadav, were also injured in the clash that lasted for almost four hours. The situation in the city was tense while more than 500 policemen were camping around the Jawahar Bagh area. Curfew like situation prevailed in the city. Main accused Rambriksh Yadav, who was leading the agitation, has been arrested late last night along with his supporters. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has ordered strict action against the culprits. The government has announced compensation of Rs 20 lakhs for the deceased police officers. Divisional Commissioner, Agra has been entrusted to probe the entire incident. Meanwhile, UP BJP spokesperson Vijay Bahadur Pathak alleged that the Mathura incident shows the real 'jungle raj' picture in the state with the Samajwadi Party government losing control over the governance. " It is a total intelligence failure as police did not assess presence of firearms ," he said, adding that when the lives of police officers are not secure in the state then how can the common people will be safe. According to the reports, senior district officials, accompanied by a large number of policemen, reached the spot at around 1630 hrs yesterday after the Allahabad High Court rejected SBSS's petition seeking continuation of the dharna and attempted to evict the 3,000 odd encroachers. In retaliation, the encroachers allegedly opened fire at the police party and both SHO and SP(city)sustained bullet injuries on their heads. While SHO was declared brought dead at the hospital, SP too later succumbed to his injuries. The encroachers also allegedly resorted to widespread arson, setting police and other government vehicles and property afire. Trouble started when the police party attempted to enter the Jawahar Bagh premises by breaking its periphery wall. Sensing trouble, the encroachers resorted to "unprovoked" firing, taking the police party by surprise. Subsequently, the police also fired rubber bullets and teargas shells and resorted to cane-charge to disperse the violent encroachers, which included women and children also. About 75 SBSS activists were admitted to hospital with various injuries. After the police officers sustained bullet injuries, the policemen went berserk and they too opened fire on the agitators leading to deaths. The police action on the encroachers, who have been illegally occupying the park since 2014, began hours after the High Court had rejected petition filed by Dalvir Singh, follower of Baba Jai Gurudev, seeking relief against Mathura administration's attempts to evict activists for Swadheen Bharat Subhash Sena, who have been illegally holding a dharna and occupying the Jawahar Bagh for the last two years. The court, while rejecting the petition, also imposed cost of Rs 50,000, as the petitioners had failed to comply with the earlier orders of the district administration to vacate the government property. The SBSS activists have been illegally occupying the public park for the last two and half years and various attempts by the administration to evict them had proved futile. In fact the, High Court had last year directed the administration to take all necessary steps and precautions to ensure that the public park is not encroached upon. On April 15, the administration had given a 48-hour ultimatum to the encroachers but it lapsed too without any action being initiated. While no one from the Sena was available for comment, the Facebook page of Swadheen Bharat Movement stated, "We are true followers of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and we want to find out all the information and the certified documents from all governing bodies, including judiciary, legislative and executive bodies of the nation. We demand all records relating to "Ruler of the Nation", law and order and also the document of citizenship (which shows how we are the citizen of the nation) to be made public".UNI MB SV ADG 0859 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0421-766460.Xml Though they are on opposite sides of the globe, the states of Telangana and California signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to join forces and fight climate change. Telangana is the first Indian State to take up the mantle of leadership to fight climate change through this MoU. This means Telangana and California will share expertise on everything from making power grids more efficient to renewable energy for protecting natural resources and reducing traffic emissions. There is a lot of ambitious work to do, we can all help support and encourage our governments to tackle climate change seriously and urgently. Through the overarching, foundational text of the Under 2 MoU, each region has the opportunity to tailor the agreement via the submission of their unique appendix. This allows each region the flexibility to address their individual energy needs based to their unique condition. By agreeing to the Under 2 MoU, Telangana is demonstrating, in a transparent show of solidarity with the global community, its commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, an official statement from US Consulate General said here today. Climate change presents worldwide challenges and risks to environment and economies, impacting human health, increasing extreme weather events, threatening natural resources and triggering forced migration of populations. Impacts from climate change are already inevitable due to Green House Gas (GHG) emissions already resident in the atmosphere. At the same time, climate change responses and solutions create economic opportunities and benefits through sustainable energy and development. International efforts are necessary to ensure protection of humankind and our planet, and to limit the increase in global average temperature to below 2C. To achieve this will require substantial emissions reductions over the next few decades and near zero emissions of Co2 and other long-lived GHGs by the end of the century, the statement said.UNI VV CS 1028 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0434-766541.Xml To prevent any violence after the Friday prayers following call by separatist organisations to hold protest demonstrations against alleged conspiracy by the centre and state governments against Kashmiris, majority separatist leaders and activists were either put under house arrest or detained in the Kashmir valley. Both the factions of the Hurriyat Conference (HC) and Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) have jointly appealed to people for holding protest demonstrations after Friday prayers in their respective areas against what they alleged conspiracy to change to muslim character of the state by constructing colonies for Sainiks, migrant pundits and allotting land to non state-subjects under new industrial policy. They alleged that after Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) formed a coalition government, agenda of RSS was being implemented in the state. A spokesman of the hardline HC Aiyaz Akbar said security forces and state police personnel remained deployed outside the Hyderpora residence of chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Mr Geelani remained confined in his house since he returned from New Delhi last month, Aiyaz told UNI adding he was not even allowed to offer Friday prayers in a mosque.MORE UNI BAS ASM CJ 1105 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-766533.Xml Acting on a tip-off, police cordoned off the area and arrested former president of Gohad Municipality and BJP Town General Secretary Ramsiya Jatav and others while they were gambling last evening. Bunch of playing cards and Rs 1, 100 in cash were also seized from their possession, police added.UNI XC-BDG CJ 1215 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0044-766640.Xml The Thane Motor Accident Claims Tribunal (MACT) has ordered the MSRTC to pay a compensation of Rs. 44.51 lakhs along with 8 per cent interest p.a. to the kin of a man who died in a roadaccident in the city in November 2012. In his recent judgement the member of the MACT and District Judge KD Vadane held that there was a contributory negligence on the part of the deceased hence his family would get a reduced compensation out of the total eligible Rs. 59.35 lakhs the judge ruled. He said that the MSRTC should bear 75 pc of the compensation out of Rs. 59.35 lakhs which works out to Rs. 44.15 lakhs and the balance 25 pc has been attributed to the deceased which his family has to forgo. The claimants in this case were the widow Vidya Nitin Khisti, 56 and her son Ahlad Nitin Khisti, 31, residents of Charai of Thane city. In their claim they stated that the deceased Nitin Madhav Khisti, then aged 56, was employed with KEC International at Mumbai earning Rs. 9,77,916 per annum. On November 26,2012 at about 1715 hrs when the victim was proceeding on the motorbike from Amberdkar road towards Cadbury signal, when the signal was green, an MSRTC bus came from Old Mumbai-Agra road and took a sudden left turn at the Khopat signal and knocked him down, due to which he suffered injuries and died the claimants said. In their application they stated that the deceased worked as a a project manager and added that he died due to the rash and negligent driving of the MSRTC bus and henc claimed a compensation of Rs. 75,00,000. The MSRTC contested the claim and came out with several arguments and also said that the accident was on account of the negligence of the deceased. In his order the judge noted, the impugned accident occurred due to contributory negligence of both the vehicles involved in the accident. So far as the percentage of contributory negligence is concerned, taking into consideration the manner in which the impugned accident occurred, in my view, there was negligence to theextent of 75% on the part of driver of the S.T. Bus and 25 pc negligence on the part of deceased rider of the motorcycle.UNI XR NV AW1238 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0171-766715.Xml With Uttar Pradesh Chief minister Akhilesh Yadav announcing Rs 20 lakh compensation to the families of the two police officers and claiming that these brave sacrifices would be remembered forever, the families of the two deceased have rejected the government offer of ex-gratia payment and questioned the security cover of the slain officers. The mother of Superintendent of Police ( City) Mukul Dwivedi, who was killed yesterday in clashes between police and encroachers during an anti-encroachment drive in Mathura, today rejected the compensation offered by the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and said she instead wants her son back. "Mujhe paise nahi chahiye, CM mera beta lakar de dein (I don't want money, CM should bring my son back)," slain SP Mukul Dwivedi's mother told reporters in Mani Kothi area of Bidhuna in Auriya district. She also alleged that the DM and SSP were responsible for the death of her son. "Humse le lein Mukhyamantri Rs 20 lakh, par mera beta wapas kar dein (the CM can take Rs 20 lakhs from us but please bring my son back)," the grieving mother Manorama said. The deceased SP, the nephew of former UP DGP M C Dwivedi, is survived by his wife and two sons along with his parents. His younger brother stays in Dubai. Similar views were expressed by the family members of SHO Santosh Yadav in Jaunpur, who also rejected the government's compensation and questioned why such things happened. They said that it is a failure of the government to provide security to my son and now what will happen about the family and small children. Meanwhile, UP CM in his fresh tweet this morning said," My deepest condolences goes to the families of these bravehearts.My govt will ensure every support to the families." 'Sh.Mukul Dwivedi & Sh.Santosh Yadav laid their lives in the service of the nation. Their brave sacrifices will always be remembered," he said. "UPCM @yadavakhilesh announces Rs 20 lakh ex Gratia each to the police Martyrs in the Mathura incident," another tweet says.UNI MB CJ 1245 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-766687.Xml Nine trekkers, mainly officials of the income tax department from New Delhi who are stranded in a remote helmet in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh, could not be airlifted on Friday owing to bad climatic conditions, a government official said. "One helicopter was deployed in the morning to airlift the trekkers who have been stranded in Bara Bhangal village for the past two days," Deputy Commissioner Ritesh Chauhan told IANS over phone. He said the state-run chopper could not land in the area due to high velocity winds and bad weather. "We will definitely again try to evacuate them as the weather gets normal," he said. "I spoke to trekkers a day before yesterday (June 1) on the satellite phone and there is no life-threatening situation. All the trekkers have been provided medical aid, accommodation and foodstuff and all are perfect in health," he said. But the rescue teams sent to evacuate and to provide them eatables and medical help are yet to reach the spot, he added. Bara Bhangal is located at an altitude over 2,800 metre and had no road link. On foot, it is accessible through the Thamsar Pass, located at an attitude of 4,700 metre. The trekkers started trek from Manali to Bara Bhangal last week. The helicopter during its rescue operation also took 11 villagers who were to be dropped in Bara Bhangal. They were also brought back to Palampur town as the chopper couldn't land at the spot. The trek to Bara Bhangal, part of the Dhauladhar Wildlife Sanctuary which remains cut off from the rest of the world for over six months due to heavy snow, is 65 km from the last village connected by road in Kangra district. Bara Bhangal has a population of around 400 people and during winter most of them migrate to Bir village in Baijnath tehsil, near Palampur town, some 250 km from Shimla. --IANS vg/pgh/vm ( 329 Words) 2016-06-03-13:36:03 (IANS) Holding the Akhilesh Yadav government solely responsible for the bloody clash in Mathura where lives of several people including two police officials were lost, Bahujan Samaj Party(BSP) supremo Mayawati has demanded resignation of the Samajwadi Party government responsible for the 'Jungle raj' and misgovernance. Demanding a time bound judicial probe into the incident, Ms Mayawati claimed that such incidents were shameful for the SP government and they should step down taking moral responsibility for the incident. In a statement here today, the BSP president said that the death of SHO Santosh Yadav and SP(City) Mukul Dwivedi proves that even the police officers are not safe in this state and there is threat to their lives as well. She questioned that how the government allowed encroachment of government land for two years and did nothing to remove them." The incident has also demoralised the policemen of the state," she claimed. " The move of the SP government to announce ex-gratia payment to the families of the deceased police has only rubbed salt on one's wound and it showed their deranged mental status," she further commented. The former UP CM also alleged that the criminals are ruling roost in this SP government and are running a parallel government and the discovery of huge quantity of firearms in Jawahar Bagh in Mathura proves that the ruling party was giving patronage to the criminals for using them during the coming assembly elections. " The UP government had failed to do its duty and the incident was a proof of its failure. Why did the government wait for two years for Allahabad High Court to order for evacuation of the illegal people?," she asked. Rejecting the probe of Agra Divisional Commissioner into the Mathura violence, Ms Mayawati said only a time bound judicial probe can find out the real reasons for the violence.UNI MB CJ ADG 1257 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-766730.Xml The Congress Party on Friday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government of weakening the war against terrorism in wake of the NIA giving a clean chit to Pakistan in connection with the Pathankot air base attack and said the ruling dispensation was in the process demoralising the security forces, who lay down their lives for the country. Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said the BJP-led NDA regime has deliberately weakened the fight against terrorism, leaving the entire military establishment, security experts and 125 crore people of India deeply pained and anguished. Taking potshots at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not initiating decisive action against those responsible, Surjewala said, "You are weakening the war against terror. You are dishonoring the memory of those who have laid down their lives for this country." "You are demoralizing India's security forces who lay down their lives against Pakistani terrorists and border incursions day in and day out. You are weakening the resolve of our civilians who fight to protect India's borders sitting on India's borders every day," he added. Surjewala said Pakistan has sponsored terrorism and terror activities against India for decades now. "This is a fact that is well-known in International community as also with plausible evidence to India and evidence that various governments, including previous Congress government, has placed on records, shared with Pakistan and placed on records on international forums multiple times," said Surjewala. "Latest statements of Modi Government giving clean chit to Pakistan establishment, its ISI and military for Pathankot terror attack has deliberately weakened the fight against terror that India has waged both nationally and internationally for many decades now," he added. The Congress leader further said the international pressure that was put at India's instance post 26/11 Mumbai terror attack now stands weakened by successive statements made by the government and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership. "First Modi ji went on an impromptu visit to Pakistan, to attend birthday and marriage celebrations. Net consequence was the loss of seven lives of our Army jawans and attack on Pathankot Air base. Modi ji then permitted a joint investigation team of Pakistanis led by the infamous ISI to visit Pathankot air base as also to visit India. After that, BJP president Shri Amit Shah said that please have faith in Pakistan," said Surjewala. "Despite the caution that Congress Party and other opposition parties as also security experts pointed out to government from time to time. The same JIT went back to Pakistan and instead of punishing Jaish-e-Mohammed, accused India and Indian Government," he added. Surjewala said NIA chief Shri Sharad Kumar's preposterous statement and claim that Pakistan Government or its military establishment or ISI was not responsible in any way or involved with Jaish-e-Mohammed or Maulana Masood Azhar in the Pathankot terror attack is indeed shameful and has weakened the fight against terror. The NIA Director General had earlier said that the investigation agency had not found any evidence to establish the involvement of Pakistan or Pakistani agencies in the attack on the air force base. Four terrorists were killed when they carried out a suicide attack on the strategic Indian Air Force base in Pathankot during the intervening night of January 1-2. Seven security personnel were also killed during the 80-hour-long gun battle. (ANI) She will be covering several areas in her constituency, includingKasimedu, Tiruvottriyur High Road, Veeraraghavan Road,Suriyanarayana Chetty Street, Jeevarathinam Salai junctionand thank the voters, an AIADMK headquarters statement saidtoday. It may be recalled that Ms Jayalalithaa was re-electedfrom RK Nagar by a margin of more than 35,000 votes,defeating her nearest DMK rival Shimla Muthuchozhan, in the Assembly election. Ms Jayalalithaa created a record of sorts by becomingthe first Chief Minister to retain power by winning back toback assembly elections since 1984, after MGR had won three successive polls in 1977, 1980 and 1984. UNI GV CS 1518 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-766910.Xml Expressing anguish and shock over the appointment of an alleged molestation accused as Director Health Services in Kashmir, Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) today said people have lost faith and trust in the system as a tainted official involved in grave crimes was being given prized postings. " It is shocking that despite involvement in serious charges, Dr Saleem-ur- Rehman has been appointed as Director Health Services Kashmir", DAK president Dr Nisar ul Hassan in a statement here today. He said it was ironical that an official who was removed from his position on serious molestation and corruption charges has been called back. On one hand government claims sacking of tainted officials, on the other they are tossed up to privileged postings. We are disappointed with the move and this gives us to understand that misdeeds in J&K have approval of system, he alleged. Dr Hassan said Dr Saleem was accused of molesting a nurse, and an FIR dated 05-06- 2014 was registered under section 354 RPC in police station Shaheed Gunj. However, he alleged police played to the gallery of accused director who was continuing with his position. They played down the ingredients of the complaint and booked accused in a much lighter offence. They hushed up the case and gave clean chit to the accused, he said adding the victim had approached court and the case is pending in the court of law. The DAK president said the court while examining the plea observed that the contents of the complaint disclosed much graver offence and the concerned police station appeared to be under the influence of accused.State Vigilance Organization registered a criminal case bearing FIR under the Prevention of Corruption Act against Dr Saleem for his involvement in multi-crore drug kits scam. There is substantial evidence to prove his complicity in purchase and supply of spurious drugs for government hospitals. Dr Saleem deliberately overlooked fake and fraudulent documents of a firm and facilitated the commission of crime. He has turned health department into an industry of corruption and nepotism. He has posted some of his accomplices at places of their choice who are hand in glove with him and he uses them as stooges, the DAK president said. He said Dr Saleem has engineered protests and press conferences through these stooges to cover up his wrongdoings. It seems there is a deep rooted nexus between this tainted official and some unseen forces who managed his return. People have lost faith and trust in the system as a tainted official involved in grave crimes has been posted as head of a sacrosanct department.UNI BAS SW AS1559 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-766966.Xml In the backdrop of the deadly flare-up over an anti-encroachment drive in Mathura Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has said the violence has put a question mark on the law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh. He also asked the UP government to restore peace and punish the guilty. In a tweet, Mr Gandhi said," unabated violence is a stark reminder of the deteriorating law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh." In another tweet, he said,"hope the Government ensures that peace in Mathura is restored immediately and the guilty are punished." "Deepest condolences to the family members of police officers and others killed in the violence in Mathura," Mr Gandhi said in another tweet. Mathura MP and Bollywood actor Hema Malini, meanwhile, kicked up a controversy when she tweeted the photos of her shooting of a film in Mumbai last night when the entire city was rocked by violence and two police officials were killed. Hema was in Mumbai's Madh Island, tweeting pictures of her shooting for a film and hoping for its early release. But later realising her mistake, she withdrew all the photos and tweeted a series of messages expressing her concern over the violence in her parliamentary constitutency. " I fervently appeal to the people of Mathura to remain calm & not get misguided by violent elements," said one of the tweets of the dream girl while another said," Heartfelt condolences to families of SP City Mukul Dwivedi and SHO Santosh Kumar who laid down their lives in the line of duty". Hema further said in another tweet ,"so so upset by this news from a place which is so dear to me . will go there again if my presence is required.My heart goes out to the bereaved." "I just came back from Mathura & got the news of the violence that has taken place there in which policemen have lost their lives," she added.UNI MB RP1603 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-767044.Xml The Ramzan or Ramadan is the fasting month for religious Muslim community,starting from June 6. "In all the ration shops across the state, Roza food packets will be provided from June 5 to July 6. It will be given twice in the one-month period. The food packets will have each and every ingredient- sugar, flour, chick peas and other food items and will cost lesser than in the open market," according to state Food Supplies minister Jyotipriya Mullick. The government had set a rice procurement target of 45 lakh tonnes during this season, of which 35 lakh tonnes have already been procured. This was the highest ever procurement, Mr Mullick added. Earlier, the state's warehousing capacity was 48,000 tonnes which has now been increased to 5,91,000 tonnes. Construction is on, to increase the capacity by another 1.8 lakh tonnes, the minister said, adding the target is 12 lakh tonnes. Out of the 171 Krishi Bazars in the state, 60 have warehousing capacity and work is on to provide the others with it.UNI PC AKM SDR SW AS1547 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-766958.Xml : AIADMK legislature party leader A Anbazhagan today demanded that the Lt.Governor Kiran Bedi should invite the second largest party to form the government here, as the Congress failed to form the government yet. Talking to newspersons here, Mr.Anbazhagan said the election results were announced on May 19, Model Code of Conduct was withdrawn and even the tenure of the previous Rangasmay government came to a close yesterday. Even then, the congress could not form the government here because of the power struggle and groupism within the party, he alleged. Mr Anbazhagan said Ms Bedi should prescribe a specific time-frame on formation of the government, and if the Congress is unable to do so, she should ensure that the second largest party had formed the government, he reasoned. The AIADMK leader said, it all happened when Mr V. Narayanasamy became the Congress Legislature Party(CLP) leader through "backdoor" ignoring the democratically elected members.The AICC should hold full responsibility for the same, he said, adding, a non-member could be made the chief minister only on "extra-ordinary" circumstances. He said presently, no such emergency is there, adding, in 2001, a similar situation arose and the person concerned resigned after working for six months in the office.At present, legislators are making open statements that they will not resign their posts to pave way for Mr Narayanasamy to contest. This resulted in horse-trading for several crore of rupees, and the All India Congress Committee(AICC) is solely responsible for the gloomy situation here, the AIADMK leader charged. Mr Anbhazghan said, Mr.Narayanasamy opposing the erection of hoardings is only a pretension, as hoardings were erected at several places, including the temple vicinity blocking doors. Police are guarding such hoardings, instead of removing them, he rued. He alleged that the cops are only extending their support to the Congress, even before the government assumes office. Even though the Congress won the polls,they could not serve the people, as they are yet to take oath as members of the assembly, he claimed. The AIADMK leader said after taking the oath, AIADMK would submit a representation to the Lt.Governor, urging her to conduct an enquiry into the "misdeeds" of the previous N R Congress government. He also demanded that Ms Bedi get in touch with the Centre and take steps to ensure Special Category State status for Puducherry, inclusion of Puducherry in the finance commission as member, among other things.UNI PAB KVV AK 1600 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-766876.Xml Security forces burst teargas shells and resorted to repeated lathicharge in the down town and Shehar-e-Khas (SeK) to disperse pro-freedom" demonstrators, protesting against the government proposal to construct separate colonies for Kashmiri pundits and Sainik colonies besides allotting land to non-subjects under new industrial policy. However, the government has time and again reiterated that there is no proposal for constructing of Sainik colony, exclusive colonies for migrant pundits and assured to review the industrial policy. Immediately after Friday prayers were over in historic Jamia Masjid and other mosques in the down town and SeK, people, mostly youths took to the streets. However, at main chowk Nowhatta near the Jamia Masjid, processionists carrying Pakistan and black flags , clashed with security forces deployed to prevent them from moving ahead. Business and other activities came to halt in the area and traffic was diverted through other routes as demonstrator pelted stones on security forces, who resorted to lathicharge which had no impact. Later, security forces burst teargas shells to chase away the demonstrators, who were regrouping and pelting stones from narrow lanes and bylanes. Scores of persons, including some security personnel, were injured in the stone pelting. Similar demonstrations were also held in other parts of the valley. Both the factions of the Hurriyat Conference (HC) and Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) had appealed to people to hold peaceful demonstrations after Friday prayers in their respective areas against the alleged conspiracy to change the muslims character of the state by allowing sainik and migrant colonies and allotting land to outsiders under industrial policy.UNI BAS SW BL1658 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-767126.Xml : Leader of Opposition in Telangana State Legislative Council Mohammed Ali Shabbir today said that Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao was hinting at mid-term Assembly elections in 2017. Talking to newspersons at Congress Legislature Party office here, Mr Shabbir Ali pointed out that the Chief Minister, while addressing the second anniversary celebrations of Telangana Formation Day yesterday at Parade Grounds, promised irrigation of one crore acres of land by 2022. Similarly, Mr Rao promised a drought free State by 2022. "KCR got a mandate only till 2019. Therefore, he should speak about projects or schemes that he intends to complete by 201.. By saying 2022, KCR gave a clear hint that he might go for mid-term elections for State Assembly anytime in 2017. Only by this logic, he would get another term till 2022, if he wins the polls," the Congress leader said. Mr Shabbir said the Telangana was all set to face "mini-elections" soon. Mr Rao has engineered defection of 23 MLAs, two Lok Sabha MPs and over a dozen MLCs belonging to opposition parties to TRS, he alleged. Although Speaker S. Madhusudan Chary has delayed the decision on disqualification petitions filed by the respective parties, the High Court and Supreme Court would certainly render justice in this matter, he reasoned.. "The legislators and MPs have violated the Anti-Defection Law and they are bound to face disqualification as per Schedule 10. Instead of facing by-elections in 23 Assembly and two Lok Sabha constituencies, KCR might prefer mid-term polls for the entire Assembly," the Congress leader said.MORE UNI KNR KVV AK 1802 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-767397.Xml The award was conferred on Dr Palani Periasamy at the concluding session of TNF's National Convention held at Washington DC. The TNF was involved in a wide range of activities such as establishing educational scholarships in Tamil Nadu, recognising people who work for the improvement and welfare of the state, provide technical journals, textbooks and equipment to educational institutions, support in times of disaster and more. The Foundation presented the award to Dr Periasamy for his relentless contribution to the state in educational and industrial fronts through his own ventures, a SICCI release said here.UNI GV KVV AK 1800 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-767487.Xml With deadline for withdrawals of nominations for the Rajya Sabha and legislative council elections coming to end at 1500 hours today, now all political parties are gearing up for the crucial elections expecting rampant cross-voting next week as none of the candidates withdrew their papers. There are 12 candidates for the 11 seats of the Rajya Sabha where polling would be held on June 11 while in the council there are 14 candidates for 13 seats and polling would be held on June 10. Returning officer and state principal Secretary (Assembly) Pradeep Kumar Dubey said here today that as no candidate have withdrawn their names hence elections would be held as per the schedule. Mr Dubey said that the polling would be held between 0900 hours to 1600 hours on both the days and counting would be held on both the days from 1700 hours. The 12th Independent candidate Preeti Mahapatra, supported by the BJP and some smaller groups has forced the elections for the Rajya Sabha while the 14th candidate Daya Shanker Singh of the BJP has done the same in the council polls. The RS candidates in fray are : Amar Singh, Beni Prasad Verma, Kuwar Rewati Raman Singh,Vishambhar Prasad Nishad, Sukhram Singh Yadav, Sanjay Seth and Surendra Nagar (All SP), Satish Chandra Mishra and Ashok Sidharth (both BSP), Kapil Sibal (Congress), Shiv Pratap Shukla (BJP) and Preeti Mahapatra (Independent). The Council candidates are: Yashwant Singh, Bukkhal Nawab, Ramsunder Das Nishad, Balram Yadav, Jagjivan Prasad, Shatrudh Prakash, Kamlesh Pathak and Ranvijay Singh (all of SP), Atar Singh Rao, Dinesh Chandra and Suresh Kashyap (BSP), Bhupendra Choudhury and Dayashanker Singh (both BJP) and Deepak Singh (Congress). Meanwhile, the latest developments in UP has forced the major political parties to appoint managers to make extra effort to keep their flock together. For, the outcome of the RS polls would be a pointer to the tends in 2017 - the party which will be able to keep its MLAs intact will be seen as having an edge while the ones whose MLA would cross over to vote would be considered 'losers'.Senior UP minister Shivpal Yadav, has been entrusted by party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav to keep a close eye on SP MLAs, senior Congress leader and RS member Pramod Tewari has been given the charge of keeping the party's flock together. So far, eight MLAs of Ajit Singh-led RLD are the most sought after by other political parties, as they have not shown their support for any party or candidate, so they are being approached by candidates and managers of all parties which require extra votes. In BSP, Mayawati has not directly entrusted the job to anybody but her command is working, though MLAs of her party are also being approached by rivals. In all the melee, the Congress group appears most vulnerable and some of its MLAs are already in contact with the BJP, sources said. BSP, with 12 votes to spare, might again come to the Congress's rescue as she did in Uttarakhand to save Harish Rawat's government. Congress candidate Kapil Sibal needs five additional votes. Preeti Mahapatra and her BJP managers, on the other hand, are eyeing support of the RLD MLAs , though nothing has so far been finalized. Her presence in the battle is equally worrisome for the SP which is also witnessing rebellion within and a section of the party feels that if the MLAs are not convinced of their victory in 2017 they might switch their loyalties. Despite being an open election, anti-defection law does not apply here. So, even if an MLA violates the party whip he would not lose his membership. In the 403-member Assembly, the ruling SP has 229 MLAs, BSP 80, BJP 41, Congress 29, with the rest belonging to some smaller parties and Independents. In RS there are 403 voters but in the council it is 404 as the nominated member also votes.UNI MB SHK 1740 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-767222.Xml Mainak Sarkar, the gunman who shot dead the University of California-Los Angeles professor William Klug before killing himself, hailed from West Bengal. Through details of the full background of the 38-year-old man, who also killed a woman believed to be his wife, it is learnt that he grew up in the industrial town of Durgapur in Burdwan district, where he studied in St. Michael School and Bidhan Chandra Institution before getting into IIT Kharagpur. He passed out from IIT Kharagpur in 2000 in Aerospace Engineering. Sarkars' one time neighbours told UNI that his father used to do a modest job as a time keeper of ADL, a boiler manufacturing company. "The family was decent though they didn't mix up much with other people. Mainak had a sister, who has been living in some other state after her his marriage," Purnima Maity, one of the neighbours, said. "After Mainak left for the US, he has never visited home. He probably didn't keep contact with his family for which his father often used to complain," she said. Mainak's online profile suggests that he worked for Infosys in Bengaluru between 2000 and 2001. He moved to the US in 2001 where he completed his Masters from Stanford University and then worked as a research assistant at University of Texas. He also briefly worked as a software developer before moving on to enroll at UCLA. Mainka's father Sateyndra Sarkar bought a house at Bidhannagar Housing Estate, but sold it out about 14 years ago. "We have heard that his father died about ten years ago. He often used to complain about his son snapping contact with the family and was in a depressing state. Nobody knows where his mother is now," Champa Mazumder, whose husband had bought the Sarkars' house said. "Though we didn't see Mainak and his sister, we could guess they were passionate about mathematics. After we entered the house, we could see mathematical solutions being scribbled all over the walls and other places of the house," she said. Mainak mentioned Klug's name as a 'mentor' in his doctoral dissertation which he submitted in 2013. Recently he wrote a blog on social media accusing Klug of stealing his codes and passing it on to other students. On Wednesday, he shot dead Klug after killing Ashley Hasit, said to be his wife and travelling 2,000-mile (3,220-kilometer) to Los Angeles from Minnesota, according to reports appeared in local newspapers. He shot Klug multiple times in a small office in UCLA Engineering Building 4 before taking his own life. UNI XC-KDG AKM SDR SW RK1758 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-767270.Xml Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today called for promoting niche tourism activities in the border areas of the state to attract high-end tourists with greater economic value. She, however, stressed the need for making the tourism activities environment and eco-friendly. "Given the distinctive geographical location of Jammu and Kashmir, we have immense potential for developing border tourism in the state to attract high-spending tourists for an enriching experience," the Chief Minister said while addressing a public gathering after inaugurating 'Baitul Zaireen' at the shrine of revered saint Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah at Shahadra Sharief in Rajouri district. 'Baitul Zaireen' has been constructed by the Tourism department at a cost of Rs 4.93 crore to augment the existing accommodation for the pilgrims at the shrine. Ms Mufti said the state has to also fully tap the pilgrim tourism potential given the large number of revered religious places located in J&K. "We have so many shrines of great Muslim saints, famous temples and historic 'Gompas' in our state which can attract large number of pilgrims," she said and added that in her meeting with Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi last evening. She stressed the need for opening more cross-LoC points along the borders in Jammu and Kashmir to facilitate movement of pilgrims into J&K from across the border as well. "Such Confidence Building Measures will not only help consolidate peace efforts in the region, but also boost the local economy due to increased tourism activity," she said. Ms Mufti said she has been time and again reiterating that the people living in and around any tourism destination in the State should be the main beneficiaries of the tourism activity in their area. "I have asked the Tourism department to help the locals build requisite infrastructure in their respective areas in tune with the local culture so that they draw the maximum benefit from the tourism activities in their area," she said. Stressing the need for beautification of the area around Shahadra Sharief shrine, the Chief Minister called for creating additional facilities for the pilgrims. She said a health centre will be setup near the shrine for the pilgrims and the locals. The Chief Minister said her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, who had immense emotional attachment with Shahadra Sharief shrine, was keen to develop it as a key pilgrim tourism destination. UNI VBH JW SW 1826 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0364-767464.Xml : The comments of leader of the Opposition leader Y S Jaganmohan Reddy that Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu should be slapped with slippers, created a political commotion in the state, as the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) vehemently objected stating that the mental health of Jaganmohan was not good. Mr Jaganmohan while addressing farmers in Ananthapuram district yesterday made the controversial comments. Several ministers and senior leaders of TDP took strong exception for the controversial comments. The State Finance Minister Y Ramak Kishnudu addressing a programme in Amalapuram criticised that Mr Jaganmohan did not have minimum common sense. "He does not have not only common sense but also the qualities of leader of the Opposition. The person, who was involved in one-lakh crore corruptions is making absurd comments" he slammed. Talking to newspersons here today, the State Irrigation Minister D Umamaheshwara Rao suggested that Mr Jaganmohan should consult a psychologist and take medicine properly, since his mental health was not good. The Women and Child Welfare Minister P Sujata flayed that the YSRCP chief's comments were reflecting his mental condition, as he has no moral rights to criticise Mr Naidu. The TDP general-secretary Varla Ramaiah deplored that the parents of Mr Jaganmohan failed to bring him up in a proper manner. Mr Ramaiah asked the YSRCP president's wife Y S Bharathi, whether she could justify her husband's comments that Chief Minister should be slapped with slippers.More UNI DP KVV AK 1825 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-767527.Xml "The Prime Minister should own moral responsibility for the massacre and resign as he was then the Chief Minister of Gujarat," deputy leader of JD (U) legislature party Shyam Rajak said in a statement here. He said involvement of a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Atul Vaidya had been found and the BJP could not escape from owning the responsibility since VHP is a frontal organisation of BJP. "BJP cannot befool the people by taking the plea that SIT has questioned Mr Modi in this matter and it has also given a clean chit to him," he remarked. UNI DH AKM SW AN1908 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-767570.Xml Sub Inspector Gopa Kumar today said finger prints of about 2,000 workers from different parts of the country have been collected so far as part of the drive. Plans are also afoot to collect information about their relatives in their respective states, he said. Information about them were also collected from contractors too, he said. Stating the drive has been launched in view of growing crimes linking them in the state, he said they would be issued with identity cards.UNI PCH KVV AK 2053 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0300-767520.Xml The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today observed the second death anniversary of former Union minister and the mass leader from Marathwada, Gopinath Munde, atdifferent places in the region. In a main function held at 'Gopinath Gad', memorial of late Munde constructed on the premises of Vaijnath Sugar factory at Parli, several public utility programmes were launched including the Environment Week, tree plantation, distribution of literature to the disabled as well as deaf and dumb, BJP spokesperson Shirish Boralkar told UNI. Prominent among those who attended the ceremony included BJP state president Raosahb Danve, Munde's daughters State Social Welfare Minister Pankaja Munde-Pallve, Beed MP Pritam Munde-Khade, BJP national joint general secretary V Satish, Amar Sable, MLA Atul Save, Solapur Guardian Minister Vijay Deshmukh, Rashtriya Samaj Party chief Mahadev Jamkar and Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana's Sadabhau Khot, among others. Speaking on this occasion, Mr Danve recallaed his 35-year-long association with Mr Munde and said Munde was a leader of the masses. ''It is unfortunate that he is not with us today, but I am confident that his elder daughter and state Social Welfare Minister Pankaja Munde will carry forward the mission of her late father.'' Ms Pankaja said, ''I will never forget the support given by the public to my father and me, and I have adopted the path of my father for the welfare of people of the state.'' The function concluded after a programme of 'kirtan' and 'mahaprasad'. In Aurangabad city, the party workers this morning garlanded the photograph of late Munde in BJP office and later this evening paid tributes to him on the premises of Government Milk Dairy at Jalna road, party sources said. Reports received here from the rest of the districts in the region also stated that rich tributes were paid to the late mass leader on the occasion of his second death anniversary. The party has organised several week-long programmes including a tree plantation drive, kirtan, bhajans, blood donation camp and environmental week as a mark of respect to their departed beloved leader.UNI VKB SS SW AS1926 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0171-767757.Xml The reports received at the headquarters indicated that out of the 1,060 voters, a total of 1,057 voters cast their votes in the election. The election was held for representation of the local self-bodies into the Council. All the members of the Municipal Corporations, Municipal Councils, Nagar Panchayats and Zilla Parishads cast their votes in the elections. The fight was between four-time MLC and deputy chairman of the Legislative Council Vasant Davkhare and Shiv Sena corporator Ravi Phatak. Both the NCP and the Shiv Sena had made it a prestige issue and the Sena was bent on wresting the seat from the NCP. The counting of the votes will be held on June six, said the district election officer and collector Dr Mahendra Kalyankar. He said the entire poll process was incident free with elaborate security at every polling centre. At the polling stations in Ambernath, Ulhasnagar and Vasai one voter each did not not turn up for voting, he informed and added that in other ten centres cent percent polling was recorded. District Guardian Minister Eknath Shinde has made the election as his prestige issue as it is a prelude to the forthcoming civic elections to the Thane Municipal Corporation. Talking to the media, he expressed confidence that the Sena candidate would surely win the election. UNI XR SS PR RJ AN2135 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-768004.Xml Police said one Arati Barik gave birth to a male child on May 27 in a government hospital at Sohela. She was discharged on June 1. But when they reached their native village in Bagdipali, the child fell sick. The parents instead of bringing the baby to the hospital, consulted the village quack, who assured to cure the baby by branding hot iron plate on his belly. When the condition of the baby turned critical, the parents again brought him to Sohela hospital first and then shifted him to Bargarh district headquarters hospital. Child specialist of Bargarh district headquarters hospital Dr K C Mahakud said the new born is in a critical condition. He said, "we have already treated three such children in recent months admitted to the hospital with hot iron rod branding on belly by the quacks.UNI XC DP BM RJ AN2258 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-768070.Xml BJP has decided to hold demonstration at all district headquarters on June 6, demanding CBI probe into the Mathura incidents, in which 24 people, including two police officers, were killed in a clash between police and encroachers at Jawahar Bagh yesterday. On the direction of state party president Keshav Prasad Maurya, during dharma programmes, the BJP leaders and workers will pay respect to the martyred police officials and submit memorandum to the district authorities, highlighting the 'jungleraj' and misrule in the state, party officials here tonight said.BJP leaders, including MPs, legislators and others, will hold a demonstration in Mathura city tomorrow. Mr Maurya has constituted a seven-member team of the party leaders headed by BJP MP Rajendra Agarwal, which will visit Mathura on June 5 to probe into the reasons behind the incident. Other members of the team are legislator Dharampal Singh, former Mumbai police commissioner and MP Satyapal Singh, Mathura MP Hemamalani, MP Rajesh Diwakar,LA Manish Asija and regional president BL Verma.The team will visit Jawahar Bagh in Mathura and submit its report to the state president. UNI MB PR RJ 2310 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0105-768223.Xml Former Chhattisgarh chief minister Ajit Jogi has gone toe-to-toe with Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh and called for his ouster from the party, describing him as the "prime Agent" of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "Digvijaya Singh is the prime agent of Mr Modi, who dreams of a 'Congress-mukt Bharat (India free from Congress). Wherever he went, he made that state 'Congress-mukt'," said Mr Jogi today. Launching a scathing attack on Mr Singh, Mr.Jogi said, "If any surgery is required in the Congress, Digvijaya Singh must be the first person to undergo it and be thrown out of the party." Visible beneath the surface of Mr Jogi's critique is a personal grinding-axe against Mr Singh. Yesterday, the Congress leader raised his hackles when he stated that Mr Jogi sold Congress nominee Manturam Pawar to the ruling BJP and it was for the good of the party that such leaders quit. Mr Jogi has announced to float a new party being miffed with party leadership. Meanwhile, Mr Jogi's supporters including his legislator wife and expelled Congress leader-son besides a couple of Congress MLAs are working round-the-clock to make the June 6 rally in Bilaspur's Marwahi block successful when the former chief minister is scheduled to announce the name, flag and symbol of his new party to take on Chhattisgarh units of the Congress and the ruling BJP.UNI SS PS RJ AN2314 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0044-768139.Xml All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Digvijay Singh today said that the party took action against former Chhatisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi because he was working to facilitate the victory of BJP candidate in the Baster bypoll. Talking to reporters here, the former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister said, ''There was by-election in Bastar in Chhatisgarh. The Congress gave the seat to a former tribal MLA. That Congress MLA withdrew his nomination, facilitating BJP candidate to get elected. ''We got an audio tape, where Mr Jogi and his son Amit were negotiating with the son-in-law of Chhatisgarh Chief Minister Dr Raman Singh over an amount of money, to which the MLA was not satisfied. If this is the case, should not we take any action?,'' he added. Mr Jogi had yesterday announced to float his new political outfit.UNI AKM SS RJ AN2313 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-768211.Xml All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Digvijay Singh today said that if Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah have any proof against Congress president Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra, they can prosecute him. Talking to reporters here, Mr Singh said BJP had been in power in Haryana for the last one year and in Rajasthan for more than two years, and had levelled only allegations against Mr Vadra. ''They have made the allegations. I just want to ask a question to the BJP what law has Mr Vadra violated. If he had violated any law, let the law of land deal with it. Allegation has been made that he owns a house in London. But the fact is that it belongs to someone else, not Mr Vadra. They say it is 'benami'. Now anybody canmake allegations like this. But the fact remains what proof do they have that the property belongs to Mr Vadra?'' he asked. When asked it the party was not trying to defend Mr Vadra, the former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister quipped, ''Mr Vadra is not a member of Congress.'' ''If he (Mr Vadra) has violated any law, BJP can institute any inquiry, commission or investigation. If Mr Modi or Mr Shah have guts, why do not they prosecute him?'' he added.UNI AKM SS RJ NS2331 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-768212.Xml Police today arrested a 40-year old married man for raping a minor girl at Manitri village under Marshaghai police station. IIC of Marshaghai police station Sukant Kumar Patra said the accused father of four children has been identified as Bangali Mallik, of Hindulia village . Mr Patra said Bangali, who had taken shelter in the house of a person following rain found the four-year-old girl standing on the verandah. He lured the minor, took her to the village school and raped her forcibly. When the girl screamed, he fled from the scene. The villagers and the family members later rescued the girl from the school. Mother of the survivor lodged an FIR against Bangali Mallick at Marashaghai police station. Police swung into action and arrested the accused, who was booked Under Section 378(ii)(i)(n) of IPC; Section 6 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offence (POSCO) Act, 2012.UNI XC DP RJ NS2330 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-768124.Xml Gaya Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Garima Mallik told newspersons here todaythat a joint team of Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and local policed nabbed extremists of PFLI, a breakaway group of CPI (Maoist) from theirhideout in Patulka jungle. The nabbed extremists were identified as PLFI Bihar in charge Arun Yadav alias Singham, Santosh Yadav and Jeetu Yadav alias Jitendra Yadav. Two pistols, mobile phones and motorcycles each and live cartridges were recovered from the spot. Extremists were involved in a large number of unlawful activities in Bihar and Jharkhand. Police are interrogating them, sources added.UNI XC DH RJ NS2303 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-768133.Xml Former Deputy Chief Minister and senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi today sought to counter Deputy Chief Minister and state Road Construction Minister Tejaswi Yadav`s allegations that the Centre was discriminating against the state in road sector. Mr Modi told newspersons here that the state government had failed to implement more than half of National Highway projects during the last financial year and instead of strengthening its implementing agencies was accusing the Centre of not allocating adequate funds to the state. He also demanded an explanation from the state government why only 45 km long NH was constructed in the state during the last fiscal against the target of 75 km. Mr Modi said the Centre had approved a sum of Rs. 1023 crore for construction of NH in the state against the state`s project proposals worth Rs. 1005 crore only. Senior BJP leader said the Centre had already handed over the work to experts for preparing Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) for the construction of a bridge parallel to Gandhi Setu across Ganga river and construction of a bridge across Sone river near Nauhatta. He said the proposals for construction of bridges and railway over bridges (ROBs) at the cost of Rs. 5,482 crore in the state were also under the active consideration of the Centre. He said the state government was making baseless allegations against the Centre for petty political gains only. In a letter to Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on May 27, state Road Construction Minister Mr Yadav had accused the centre of not allocating adequate funds for improving road infrastructure in the state. He had also demanded enhancement of state`s annual plan from Rs 1,203 crore to at least Rs 9,200 crore for 2016-17 onwards over the next five years.UNI DH BM RJ NS2300 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-768147.Xml "The drone strike that killed Mullah Mansour was an ice-breaker. There could be more strikes in Balochistan now. This is a very dangerous situation for Pakistan," warned Marvin Weinbaum, a US scholar from the Middle East Institute, Washington. According to Dawn, a spokesman for the Pakistan Embassy, Ubaidur Rehman Nizami, however, urged members of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group to get together to consider the consequences of the May 21 drone strike that killed Mullah Mansour. The group includes the United States, China, Afghanistan and Pakistan, which was formed last year to seek a negotiated settlement to the Afghan dispute. The Capitol Hill meeting was organised by the Pakistani American Congress. "Forever is a long time but the term of the offer has expired. So for now it is not a viable offer," said State Department official David Ranz. "We are committed to this important relationship with Pakistan. We are committed to getting through the challenges, and to building a stronger relationship," Ranz said. Ranz, however, acknowledged that the United States had concerns about Pakistan's nuclear programme and about terrorist groups like the Haqqani network and Lashkar-e-Taiba. Besides these two long-standing issues, recent short-term issues like imprisoning Dr Shakil Afridi, who allegedly helped the US trace Osama bin Laden, also strained bilateral relations, Ranz said. (ANI) Mainak Sarkar, the Indian gunman who opened fire in a murder-suicide at UCLA, reportedly shot dead his wife, who was on his 'kill list'. According to CNN, a woman named Ashley Hasti, Sarkar's wife, was found dead in Brooklyn Park, a suburb of Minneapolis. Hasti and Sarkar married June 14, 2011, Hennepin County Communications Officer Carolyn Marinan said, however, it was unclear if they were still married at the time of their deaths. The Police who searched Sarkar's Minnesota home found a note with an ominous title named "Kill list," which spelled out the names of three people, in which one of them was William S. Klug, the UCLA professor Sarkar killed. Hasti's name was also apparently on the list and she had a gunshot wound and had reportedly been killed before the UCLA shooting. The third person Sarkar intended to target was another professor at UCLA, but the faculty member was off-campus and was unharmed. The police said that "a dispute over intellectual property" was tied to the UCLA shooting, which put the campus on lockdown for hours. "This is a mental issue, mental derangement, but it was tied to a dispute over intellectual property," the police said. Sarkar reportedly felt the professor he killed had released information "that harmed him," but UCLA has said that this is absolutely not true and it was the workings of his imagination. It had been several years since Sarkar was a student at UCLA, as he had graduated in 2013 with Ph.D. in engineering. Sarkar drove from his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, to Los Angeles, armed with two semiautomatic pistols and multiple rounds of ammunition. He went to his former professor's fourth-floor office Wednesday and shot him dead with multiple rounds, and then killed himself, police say. (ANI) United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon slammed the Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting in Yemen for killing and maiming children by adding it to an annual blacklist of states and armed groups that violate children's rights during conflict.The coalition was responsible for 60 percent of child deaths and injuries last year, killing 510 and wounding 667, according to Ban's report released on Thursday, which also said the coalition carried out half the attacks on schools and hospitals.The Saudi-led coalition began a military campaign in Yemen in March last year with the aim of preventing Iran-allied Houthi rebels and forces loyal to Yemen's ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh from taking control of the country."Grave violations against children increased dramatically as a result of the escalating conflict," Ban said in the report."In Yemen, owing to the very large number of violations attributed to the two parties, the Houthis/Ansar Allah and the Saudi Arabia-led coalition are listed for killing and maiming and attacks on schools and hospitals," he said.The Houthis, Yemen government forces and pro-government militia have been on the UN blacklist for at least five years and are considered "persistent perpetrators." Also appearing again on the list is al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.The Saudi Arabia mission to the United Nations was not immediately available to comment on the report.The UN report blacklists groups that "engage in the recruitment and use of children, sexual violence against children, the killing and maiming of children, attacks on schools and/or hospitals and attacks or threats of attacks against protected personnel, and the abduction of children."The report cited a deadly US air strike on a hospital run by medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres in Kunduz, Afghanistan, although it said the attack was carried out by "international forces" and did not blacklist the United States.Along with warring parties in Yemen, the United Nations named armed groups in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Iraq, Mali, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Colombia, Nigeria and the Philippines.Government forces in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Myanmar, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria were named on the blacklist.Ban urged the 193 UN member states to ensure engagement in hostilities and responses to threats to peace and security comply with international law."It is unacceptable that the failure to do so has resulted in numerous violations of children's rights," Ban said.REUTERS RSD RAI0416 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0129-766419.Xml US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton lambasted Donald Trump's foreign policy platform as "dangerously incoherent" in a speech that cast her Republican rival as both a frightening and laughable figure.In remarks that at times resembled a comedy roast, Clinton yesterday unleashed a torrent of polished zingers and one-liners to attack Trump's policies and character, suggesting Trump might start a nuclear war if elected to the White House simply because "somebody got under his very thin skin.""Donald Trump's ideas are not just different, they are dangerously incoherent," she said to a room of supporters in San Diego, California. "They're not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies."Clinton, the front-runner in the race to become the Democratic presidential nominee, delivered her speech as she seeks to shift her attention to the Nov. 8 election against likely rival Trump and away from Bernie Sanders, a US senator from Vermont, who is continuing his long-shot bid for the nomination.Clinton was speaking in San Diego ahead of California's June 7 primary election.Democratic Party leaders have fretted about how to best oppose Trump, who managed to knock out all 16 rivals for the Republican nomination in part with his uninhibited style of assailing them with personal insults. Trump revels in referring to Clinton as "Crooked Hillary" and dredging up the infidelities of her husband, Bill Clinton, the former president.Clinton's remarks were intended in part to show she would not be cowed and that she could go toe-to-toe with him in scornful put-downs."He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia," she said as the crowd guffawed, and she suggested Trump would run the US economy "like one of his casinos."During her speech, Clinton predicted Trump, who has been deeply critical of Clinton's foreign policy record, would take to his Twitter account to insult her, and he did."Bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton!" ran one posting during the speech, which included a typo. "Reading poorly from the telepromter! She doesn't even look presidential!"Trump has said previously that Clinton is distorting his actual policies.TWO VISIONSAmid the laugh lines, Clinton cited her own experience as secretary of state, in particular her role advising President Barack Obama during the mission to kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, to suggest her approach to foreign policy was the more serious."He praises dictators like Vladimir Putin and picks fights with our friends, including the British prime minister, the mayor of London, the German chancellor, the president of Mexico and the pope," Clinton said, listing some of the allies with whom Trump has verbally sparred in the last year.Obama, who has also been repeatedly mocked by Trump, has criticized Trump as being ignorant or cavalier about world affairs and has said that Trump's rise has "rattled" foreign leaders.Trump has talked tough on foreign policy. He has said he would bring back waterboarding and other brutal interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects that are widely regarded as torture and were discontinued by Obama.Trump has also vowed to renegotiate trade deals, called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, and said he would ask members of the 28-nation NATO alliance to "pay up" or "get out." He has said he would sit down with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to try to stop Pyongyang's nuclear program.Clinton derided these and other positions, promising she would do a better job keeping the United States safe. Standing in front of a backdrop of 19 large US flags, an unusual abundance even by the standards of presidential campaign events, Clinton painted the election as a choice between "two very different visions.""One that's angry, afraid and based on the idea that America is fundamentally weak and in decline," she said, summing up Trumpism. "The other is hopeful, generous and confident in the knowledge that America is great, just like we always have been."Trump has criticized Clinton for her handling of foreign policy during her 2009-2013 stint as secretary of state, including the September 11, 2012, attack by Islamist militants on a US diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the US ambassador and three other Americans.He cites Clinton's support for the war in Iraq, launched by former Republican President George W. Bush, as another example of her shortcomings.Democratic challenger Sanders echoed Clinton's concerns about Trump after her speech, though he also criticized Clinton's foreign policy. "I agree ... that Donald Trump's foreign policy ideas are incredibly reckless and irresponsible," Sanders said in a statement.In criticizing Clinton, Sanders cited her vote for the war in Iraq, calling it "the worst foreign policy blunder in modern American history," and said "she has been a proponent of regime change, as in Libya, without thinking through the consequences."In assailing each other's suitability for the White House, Clinton and Trump are reflecting a negative voter mood ahead of next month's party conventions that will choose the presidential nominees.Both Clinton and Trump are facing record-low favorability ratings. A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken today through Tuesday shows half of Trump supporters say the primary reason they are going to vote for him is "I don't want Hillary Clinton to win," while 41 per cent of Clinton supporters cite their primary reason as not wanting Trump to win.REUTERS RSD RAI0638 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0129-766434.Xml A former University of California, Los Angeles, student shot dead a woman at her home in Minnesota before he drove almost 3,200 km to the school and killed a professor but failed to find a third intended victim, police said.Mainak Sarkar, 38, had intended to kill a second professor in addition to shooting engineering professor William Klug, 39, at a small office on the campus, police said yesterday. He shot himself dead after the killing, police said. The shootings prompted a two-hour long lockdown on Wednesday.Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck told reporters yesterday that a search of Sarkar's St. Paul, Minnesota, home turned up a "kill list" that included the name of the woman found dead nearby, Klug - who was Sarkar's professor at UCLA - and the name of another professor at the school, who was not harmed.Officials would not release the name of the woman, whose body police said they found at a house in the 2400 block of Pearson Parkway in Brooklyn Park near Minneapolis.A marriage license application obtained by Reuters lists a residence on that block as the home of Ashley Erin Hasti and Sarkar, who married in Minnesota in 2011.Neighbors also said Hasti lived at the home.Records do not show whether the couple, who appeared to have been living separately, were divorced.An active Facebook page belonging to a Minneapolis-area woman named Ashley Hasti shows pictures of Sarkar, but not more recently than May of 2011, about two weeks before their marriage.A page apparently belonging to him, with no public posts since 2011, still prominently displayed several photos of them together.According to the birth date listed on the marriage license application, Hasti turned 31 in March."We believe that Sarkar came to the Los Angeles area very recently, within the last couple of days," Beck told reporters at Los Angeles police headquarters. "He went there to kill two faculty from UCLA. He was only able to find one."The other professor was off campus at the time, Beck said.Sarkar was armed with two 9 mm pistols and multiple ammunition clips, Beck said. He killed himself immediately after fatally shooting Klug, he said.Police searched Sarkar's Minnesota home after finding a note at the Los Angeles crime scene asking for someone to check on his cat, Beck said."In the search of Sarkar's residence in Minneapolis, a list was located," Beck said. "The list has been described as a 'kill list.' That was the wording that was put on it."The attack on Klug appeared to be provoked by Sarkar's belief that his former professor had stolen computer code from him, according to a March blog post that appeared to be written by Sarkar, Beck said."Your enemy is my enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm," the post said. "Be careful about whom you trust."Reuters was not able to confirm the authenticity of the blog."UCLA says there is no truth to this," Beck said of the alleged theft of code. "This was a making of his own imagination."The anger reflected in the March blog contrasted with earlier online records indicating Sarkar had gotten along with Klug. In a copy of his 2013 dissertation posted online, Sarkar thanked Klug."I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. William Klug, for all his help and support," Sarkar wrote.'HARSH LANGUAGE'Beck said UCLA faculty members were aware that Sarkar, who graduated in 2013, harbored anger toward them."There was some harsh language but certainly nothing that would be considered homicidal," Beck said, referring to social media postings by Sarkar. His motive for killing the woman was unclear, Beck said.University officials did not respond yesterday to requests for comment on Sarkar's claims.Prior to his time at UCLA, from 2003 to 2005 Sarkar attended Stanford University, where he received a master's degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, university spokeswoman Lisa Lapin said.Police in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, north of Minneapolis, said they discovered the woman's body when they went to check on her. They did not immediately disclose her identity.Klug was a married father of two children, UCLA said in a statement."It was really a pleasure to work with him, from a scientific point of view for his original ideas, but also from the personal point of view," Wouter Roos, a professor at the University of Gronigen in The Netherlands who co-authored several research papers with Klug, said in an email. "He had such a positive attitude."Reports of shots fired, or even sightings of possible gunmen, have sparked heavy police responses and lockdowns at US schools and other places because of the nation's history of mass shootings.Last October nine people were shot and killed at Umpqua Community College in southwest Oregon. The 2007 attack at Virginia Tech, in which a gunman killed 32 people, was the deadliest mass shooting in US history.Classes resumed at UCLA yesterday, with the university offering counselors for students, faculty and staff.UCLA, part of the University of California system, has more than 43,000 students. REUTERS RSD RAI0646 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0129-766438.Xml A former University of California, Los Angeles, student shot dead a woman at her home in Minnesota before he drove almost 3,200 km to the school and killed a professor but failed to find a third intended victim, police said yesterday.Mainak Sarkar, 38, had intended to kill a second professor besides shooting engineering professor William Klug, 39, at a small office on the campus, police said. He shot himself dead after the killing, police said. The shootings prompted a two-hour long lockdown on Wednesday.Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck told reporters yesterday that a search of Sarkar's St. Paul, Minnesota, home turned up a "kill list" that included the name of the woman found dead nearby, Klug - who was Sarkar's professor at UCLA - and the name of another professor at the school, who was not harmed.Officials would not release the name of the woman, whose body police said they found at a house in the 2400 block of Pearson Parkway in Brooklyn Park near Minneapolis.A marriage license application obtained by Reuters lists a residence on that block as the home of Ashley Erin Hasti and Sarkar, who married in Minnesota in 2011.Neighbors also said Hasti lived at the home. Records do not show whether the couple, who appeared to have been living separately, were divorced.An active Facebook page belonging to a Minneapolis-area woman named Ashley Hasti shows pictures of Sarkar, but not more recently than May of 2011, about two weeks before their marriage.A page apparently belonging to him, with no public posts since 2011, still prominently displayed several photos of them together.According to the birth date listed on the marriage license application, Hasti turned 31 in March."We believe that Sarkar came to the Los Angeles area very recently, within the last couple of days," Beck told reporters at Los Angeles police headquarters. "He went there to kill two faculty from UCLA. He was only able to find one."The other professor was off campus at the time, Beck said.Sarkar was armed with two 9mm pistols and multiple ammunition clips, Beck said. He killed himself immediately after fatally shooting Klug, he said.Police searched Sarkar's Minnesota home after finding a note at the Los Angeles crime scene asking for someone to check on his cat, Beck said."In the search of Sarkar's residence in Minneapolis, a list was located," Beck said. "The list has been described as a 'kill list.' That was the wording that was put on it."The attack on Klug appeared to be provoked by Sarkar's belief that his former professor had stolen computer code from him, according to a March blog post that appeared to be written by Sarkar, Beck said."Your enemy is my enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm," the post said. "Be careful about whom you trust."Reuters was not able to confirm the authenticity of the blog."UCLA says there is no truth to this," Beck said of the alleged theft of code. "This was a making of his own imagination."The anger reflected in the March blog contrasted with earlier online records indicating Sarkar had gotten along with Klug. In a copy of his 2013 dissertation posted online, Sarkar thanked Klug."I would like to thank my adviser, Dr. William Klug, for all his help and support," Sarkar wrote.'HARSH LANGUAGE'Beck said UCLA faculty members were aware that Sarkar, who graduated in 2013, harbored anger toward them."There was some harsh language but certainly nothing that would be considered homicidal," Beck said, referring to social media postings by Sarkar. His motive for killing the woman was unclear, Beck said.University officials did not respond yesterday to requests for comment on Sarkar's claims.Prior to his time at UCLA, from 2003 to 2005 Sarkar attended Stanford University, where he received a master's degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, university spokeswoman Lisa Lapin said.Police in Brooklyn Park said they discovered the woman's body when they went to check on her. They did not immediately disclose her identity.Klug was a married father of two children. His wife, Mary Elise Klug, said in a statement released through UCLA that the family was grateful for the support it had received."Bill was so much more than my soulmate. I will miss him every day for the rest of my life," she said.Reports of shots fired, or even sightings of possible gunmen, have sparked heavy police responses and lockdowns at US schools and elsewhere because of the nation's history of mass shootings.Last October nine people were shot and killed at Umpqua Community College in southwest Oregon. The 2007 attack at Virginia Tech, in which a gunman killed 32 people, was the deadliest mass shooting in US history.Classes resumed at UCLA yesterday, with the university offering counselors for students, faculty and staff.UCLA, part of the University of California system, has more than 43,000 students.REUTERS RSD RAI0805 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0129-766449.Xml President Pierre Nkurunziza has given armed gangs in Burundi 15 days to surrender to authorities and hand in their weapons or face unspecified action.Nkurunziza was speaking during a visit to Mugamba district, some 65 km southeast of the capital Bujumbura, where many local officials have been killed in recent weeks.Tit-for-tat attacks between Nkurunziza's security forces and his opponents have escalated since April 2015 when he announced a disputed bid for a third term. He won re-election in July."We give them 15 days to surrender," Nkurunziza said of the armed gangs yesterday. "On the 15th (of June) we will put a stop to (the violence). I came to tell you that we won't rest until security is restored."The government conducted a similar arms mop-up in the capital in November.Burundi police said in early May that more than 450 people had been killed in unrest that began a year ago. The United Nations says over 250,000 have fled the country since last April.A new round of peace talks between the government and its opponents aimed at ending the political crisis was launched in the Tanzanian city of Arusha in late May. Previous discussions in Burundi and Uganda over the past year collapsed or stalled. REUTERS RSD RAI0417 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0435-766411.Xml The US State Department has held that F-16 deal with Pakistan was no longer viable. A US State Department official has told a Capitol Hill meeting in Washington that the deal was no longer a viable offer. The meeting-an annual event-, was organised at the Capitol Hills yesterday by the Pakistani American Congress for presenting Pakistan's case before US lawmakers, Pakistan daily Dawnreported from Washington. "Forever is a long time but the term of the offer has expired. So for now it is not a viable offer," said State Department official David Ranz, when asked if the US offer to sell eight F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan was dead. Mr Ranz pointed out that Congress did not approve the Obama administration's request to use US funds for subsidising the deal and that was why it expired on May 24. Besides preventing the sale, Congress made "a significant portion" of the military assistance toPakistan "conditional to taking action against the Haqqani network", the newspaper report quotedthe official as saying. Pakistan has been receiving about a billion dollars from the US Coalition Support Fund as a reimbursement for its efforts to combat terrorism, the report said. "We are committed to this important relationship with Pakistan. We are committed to getting through the challenges, and to building a stronger relationship," Mr Ranz said. The official pointed out that Pakistan was the biggest beneficiary of the US education assistanceand the United States was also working closely with Pakistan to help the country overcome its energy crisis. "But sometimes, the cooperation is subsumed by the challenges, which get the lion's share in the media", he said. Mr Ranz, however, acknowledged that the United States had concerns about Pakistan's nuclearprogramme and about terrorist groups like the Haqqani network and Lashkar-e-Taiba. Besides this, recent short-term issues like imprisoning Dr Shakil Afridi, who allegedly helped theUS trace Osama bin Laden, also strained bilateral relations, Mr Ranz said. Some speakers at the meeting urged the United States to help improve Afghanistan-Pakistan ties,the newspaper report said. "The drone strike that killed Mullah Mansour was an ice-breaker..,..There could be more strikes in Balochistan now..,..This is a very dangerous situation for Pakistan," warned Marvin Weinbaum,a US scholar from the Middle East Institute, Washington. A spokesman for the Pakistan Embassy, Ubaidur Rehman Nizami, however, urged members ofthe Quadrilateral Coordination Group to get together to consider the consequences of the May 21drone strike that killed Mullah Mansour. The group includes the United States, China, Afghanistanand Pakistan, formed last year to seek a negotiated settlement to the Afghan dispute. Steve Cohen, a scholar from the Brookings Institution, said at the meeting that "roller-coaster" wasan apt description for Pakistan-US relationship and warned that if this "roller-coaster" went on for toolong, it could also break. Mr Cohen said that the US Congress was "deeply concerned" about the possibility of a war betweentwo nuclear-armed countries, India and Pakistan. The renowned American scholar also urged Pakistanis not to blame outside powers like the US andIndia for their internal problems, like the insurgency in Balochistan but also to look at the mistakes they had made in that province. Mr Weinbaum urged the United States to shift its focus from seeking reconciliation with the Taliban to "promoting reconciliation between Afghanistan and Pakistan". He argued that unless relations between the two neighbouring countries improved, there could be no peace in the region.UNI XC SS -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0089-766734.Xml Former Mexican President Vicente Fox has announced that he wants to debate presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump one-on-one. In an interview with New York-based WABC Radio on Thursday, Fox said he "would love to" debate the presumptive Republican nominee, initially stipulating that it should only happen in Mexico, Politico reported. One condition ... that it's done in Mexico ... because I need him to see what Mexico is all about, to see what we Mexicans are all about. He will change his attitude toward Mexico, Fox said. But shortly after, the former Mexican leader softened his home-country requirement, saying he would be willing to meet in the US as long as it was solely with the Manhattan businessman himself. "I'm willing to come here, to come here, to the States, if it's for a debate, direct personal debate with him ... so that we are bringing our arguments and we discuss what can really be the answer to ... how the economy works and how the jobs are created ... Yes, I would debate him here in the States or invite (for) a free lunch in Mexico." Fox, who has called Trump a false prophet", said they have never spoken, but that he hopes he can adopt the attitude of a compassionate leader if they do interact directly. I would expect that he would listen to my arguments, that he would put his arguments on the table, but we both are obliged to document, to sustain with facts and numbers what were saying, and not just lying or cheating to people, he added. Trump has come under widespread criticism after he called Mexican migrants "criminals" and "rapists". He also said that he would build a concrete wall to block Mexicans from entering the US. --IANS ksk/vm ( 301 Words) 2016-06-03-13:46:06 (IANS) Pakistan and China will jointly monitor the USD 46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and its related projects to ensure transparency and fairness and avoid possibility of corruption, for which both the countries will soon sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU). Addressing a seminar on "Transparency in National Projects" here yesterday, National Accountability Bureau(NAB) Chairman, Qamar Zaman Chaudhry said anti-corruption organistaions of Pakistan and China would ensure transparency and fairness in all projects being executed or to be launched under the CPEC. Mr Chaudhry, will fly to China this month to sign the document, Pakistan Daily Dawn said. Almost all road projects of the CPEC are being executed by the National Highway Authority (NHA) and concerns have been raised that in several such projects, alleged irregularities and discrepancies have been committed. The NAB chairman had recently visited China to attend a UN convention on corruption, organised by the International Association of Anti-Corruption Authorities, and met Prof Cao Jianming, Prosecutor General of China, on the sidelines of the convention. During his meeting with Chinese officials, Mr Choudhary said it was agreed that anti-corruption work would be given top priority to curb corruption in the huge development projects being built by the two countries under the CPEC. He stressed on the dire need of transparency in national projects, strong political will and electing honest public representatives to diminish chances of corruption. "Corruption in government funds spending has a negative impact on development programmes and results in perpetual increase in the cost of production of any development project and its maintenance.'' "Eradication of corruption will remain an elusive idea unless we have a strong political will to wipe out the scourge and elect honest public representatives who carry out this gigantic task without fear of the mighty and influential people," the NAB chairman said.UNI XC SV SS -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0103-766728.Xml Influential U.S. Senator John McCain said today he feared for the consequences if China rejected an impending UN court ruling on the South China Sea dispute and called on Asian nations to back US statements that the outcome should be binding.In a speech in Singapore ahead of a key regional security forum, McCain, who chairs the US Senate's Armed Services Committee, said enforcement of the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague would be a major test for the region.The Philippines has gone to the court to contest China's claim to an area of the sea stretching deep into the maritime heart of Southeast Asia, covering hundreds of disputed islands and reefs. Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei also claim parts of the sea. China refuses to recognise the case.McCain urged China to shift from what he called coercion and intimidation of neighbours to co-operation."China can choose to disrupt the rules-based order. Or it can choose to become a vital partner in maintaining it," he said on the sidelines of the annual Shangri-la Dialogue."I fear the consequences if China chooses the path of disruption," McCain added, later saying it could force the wider region to cooperate more closely militarily and economically.The Arizona senator urged Southeast Asian nations to restate their support for a rules-based order."America and the world are counting on the nations of Southeast Asia to recommit their power and resolve to upholding this system on which our shared security and prosperity depend," he said.Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, also speaking on the sidelines of the meeting, said New Delhi supported the peaceful resolution of the dispute."We are very clear about our policy in the South China Sea," he said. "As (far as) India is concerned, we have always been insisting that all parties should resolve this peacefully based on the international laws and various other international norms."McCain said China "would be facing severe criticism from the world" if it opted to ignore the ruling of the court in The Hague, which is expected to rule in coming weeks.U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who is leading the US delegation at Shangri-La Dialogue, is expected to make similar calls to Asian nations attending the meeting.In a speech at the US Naval Academy last week, Carter accused China of attempting to play by its own rules on the high seas, in the global economy and in cyberspace and warned that it could erect "a Great Wall of self-isolation" given regional concerns about its behavior.Today, to emphasize US concerns about maritime security in what is one of the world's busiest waterways, Carter took a flight on a US P8 surveillance aircraft along with his Singaporean counterpart.At a joint news conference, he urged China to participate in the rules-based order that the US presence in Asia had helped maintain for the past 70 years and said Beijing had to make its own choices."Obviously we hope it makes the choice of one that is cooperative with the system of security which has served this region so well for so long," Carter said.REUTERS VS SDR AS1510 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0440-766947.Xml Germany is investigating about 180 terror suspects who have returned from Syria or have links to militant groups there, the Justice Ministry said today, a day after three Syrians were arrested on suspicion of planning attacks in Duesseldorf.An Interior Ministry spokesman said it was still too early to draw conclusions about the seriousness of the threat after the arrests over plans for a large-scale attack in the western city. But the security alert remained high, he said."At present the Chief Federal Prosecutor is conducting some 120 investigations into more than 180 suspects in connection with the civil war in Syria due to membership or support of a terrorist group," a Justice Ministry spokesman said.German media have quoted security officials as saying that the three arrested Syrians were registered at shelters for asylum seekers.Germany's police union chief Rainer Wendt cautioned against any temptation to place all migrants under suspicion after the arrests."We know since the attacks of Paris and Brussels that the Islamic State wants to influence the migration debate in Europe and to whip up sentiment against refugees," Wendt told Reuters."This is part of their strategy. We must not fall into their trap," he said.The influx of more than one million mainly Muslim migrants into Germany last year has raised concerns about both its ability to integrate them and possible security threats especially after attacks in France and Belgium by IS militants who had easily crossed open European borders. REUTERS VS SDR BL1700 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0440-767289.Xml Students and faculty from the University of California, Los Angeles and the surrounding community will hold a second vigil today to pay tribute to a professor who was gunned down in a murder-suicide committed by a former student.Yesterday, hundreds gathered to grieve the loss of engineering professor William Klug who police say was shot and killed in a small office on campus on Wednesday by Mainak Sarkar, 38, who then took his own life."It will take time to cope and overcome the sadness that has cloaked our campus, but we will do it and we will do it together," said Danny Siegel, the president of the student council at UCLA during the vigil.The base of UCLA's Bruin Bear statue on campus was covered with notes paying tribute to the well-liked professor as students completed finals and class work ahead of summer break.Today's vigil will be held outside Boelter Hall where, police said, Sarkar came armed with two 9mm pistols and multiple ammunition clips to kill Klug. He also planned to kill another professor, who was off campus and unharmed.Sarkar, a former UCLA student, shot dead a woman at her home in Minnesota before he drove almost 2,000 miles (3,200 km) to the school and killed Klug, police said.Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck told reporters yesterday that a search of Sarkar's St. Paul, Minnesota, home turned up a "kill list" that included the name of the woman, Klug's name and the name of the other professor.Officials would not release the name of the woman. Police said they found her body at a house in the 2400 block of Pearson Parkway in Brooklyn Park near Minneapolis.A marriage license application obtained by Reuters lists a residence on that block as the home of Ashley Erin Hasti and Sarkar, who married in Minnesota in 2011.Neighbors also said Hasti lived at the home. Records do not indicate whether the couple, who appeared to have been living separately, were divorced.An active Facebook page belonging to a Minneapolis-area woman named Ashley Hasti shows pictures of Sarkar, but not more recently than May of 2011, about two weeks before their marriage.A page apparently belonging to him, with no public posts since 2011, still prominently displayed several photos of them together.Sarkar came from India's eastern state of West Bengal, where he graduated in aerospace engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur in 2000, according to an ex-classmate and the university's alumni list.Staff at his secondary school in the industrial town of Durgapur remember him as an able student who passed his exams with good results.REUTERS VS SDR BL1705 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0440-767316.Xml The Minnesota woman shot to death by a one-time UCLA graduate student was married to her killer, but her online presence shed little light on their life together.Ashley Hasti was a medical student with a penchant for selfies with her cat and goofy science jokes. She once composed a rap about med school stresses and posted it to YouTube.She was killed in her Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, home by her estranged husband, Mainak Sarkar, before he drove to Los Angeles to shoot a former professor, then take his own life.In a Facebook post early Friday morning, Alex Hasti called her sister "the smartest, coolest, and funniest person.""She could do anything she dreamed of," the sister wrote. "Her life was cut short much too soon by her estranged husband."Minnesota records show she married Sarkar in June 2011, and images from social media indicate they knew each other as far back as August 2008.Neighbors on her block in suburban Minneapolis said Sarkar had lived with her in the past but they had not seen him for some time. State records did not show there had been a divorce.Hasti earned an undergraduate degree in Asian languages and literature at the University of Minnesota before enrolling in a post-baccalaureate, premedical program at Scripps College in Claremont, California.She began medical school at the University of Minnesota in 2012. She was going to begin a summer semester next week.Prezi, an online education platform, showed academic presentations written by Hasti on pregnancy and prenatal care.Hasti lived in Brooklyn Park, a Twin Cities suburb with curling, tree-lined streets. Her house had a tuck-under garage with a long, unkempt lawn.Hasti's neighbor, Terry Andrew, 68, said she seemed to fit in the community, but added he did not know her well."I have daughters so the idea of a young person losing their life like that, it's tragic," he said.On social media, Hasti appeared vibrant and gregarious. She peppered her Facebook page with science-related jokes and selfies taken with a black-and-white short hair cat.A month earlier she added an image of American painter and television host Bob Ross photo-shopped to look as though he was painting a white blood cell that appeared to be smiling."I'm studying, I swear," Hasti wrote in a caption. "But one needs a break sometimes."Photos posted on another woman's Facebook page showed her meeting celebrities like actor Kumail Nanjiani from the HBO comedy "Silicon Valley" and comedian Ari Shaffir.Then there are the photos of her with Sarkar.Her sister's Facebook profile contained images of Ashley Hasti and Sarkar. The pictures show the couple at a theme park and on a beach.One image, posted on the social media site on Aug. 25, 2008, shows Hasti and Sarkar forming a heart with their arms. REUTERS VS BL1940 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0440-767840.Xml A delegation of New Zealand scholars and artists are in Beijing to deepen cooperation with their Chinese counterparts. The delegation, including staff of Massey University and filmmakers, visited the People's Liberation Army Academy of Art and the Academy of Arts and Design of Tsinghua University, and signed memorandums of understanding with them to further exchanges. On Thursday, the New Zealand guests were hosted by Peng Liyuan, president of the PLA Academy of Art, as well as China's First Lady. Peng introduced them to the art of Chinese calligraphy, and encouraged universities and art institutes in both China and New Zealand to strengthen exchanges and learn from each other. The delegation also visited the China Scholarship Council, a non-profit organization affiliated to the Ministry of Education that provides financial assistance to Chinese wishing to study abroad and foreigners wishing to study in China. Steve Maharey, vice-chancellor of Massey University, said in an interview on Thursday that his university is "seeing a very good relationship" with Chinese universities through programs of "exchanging students, exchanging staff, and working on areas of common interest". The exchanges between Massey University and China enjoyed a landmark moment when China's First Lady Peng Liyuan visited the university in November 2014. In June 2015, a delegation, including staff of Massey University paid a visit to the PLA Academy of Art. Claire Robinson, pro vice-chancellor of the university's College of Creative Arts, said her college is looking to tapping into cooperation with Chinese universities for creative solutions for world problems such as pollution and sustainability. "The Chinese universities are very interested in what we have to offer, and we are very interested in what a bigger country and its universities have to offer so that we can work together to solve some big problems," she said. Tibetan Buddhist monks and assistants work on the sand mandala on May 12, 2016. (Xinhua/Purbu Tashi) BEIJING, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Remember that feeling of watching the tide lap at a sandcastle you'd made on the beach? A Tibetan Buddhist monk meditates while the assistants making prepareation before start working on the sand mandala on May 11, 2016. (Xinhua/Purbu Tashi) Well, extend the creative side of that work to weeks or even months and you know how a Tibetan Buddhist monk might feel on completing a sand mandala. A Tibetan Buddhist monk and his assistant work on the sand mandala on May 20, 2016. (Xinhua/Purbu Tashi) Unique to Tibetan Buddhism, the sand mandala is created from colored powders, as suggested by its Tibetan name "dul-tson-kyil-khor". A Tibetan Buddhist monk meditates before start working on the sand mandala on May 11, 2016. (Xinhua/Purbu Tashi) Lamas spend weeks on end designing and painstakingly laying millions of sand grains on flat platform to create a mandala - a visual representation of the enlightened mind of the Buddha. A Tibetan Buddhist monk meditates before start working on the sand mandala on May 10, 2016. (Xinhua/Purbu Tashi) To the monks, who must study for years before they even qualify to lay a grain of sand, the process is sacred, so it begins with a ceremonial recital of mantra. An assistant draws blueprint for the sand mandala on May 10, 2016. (Xinhua/Purbu Tashi) The next step is creating a central point on a wooden platform, and from it the outline of the mandala. The platform can be either small or big, like the mandala, depending on the time it takes. An assistant lays sand grains at the center of the sand mandala on May 11, 2016. (Xinhua/Purbu Tashi) Photo taken on May 10, 2016 shows mineral powders used to create the sand mandala . (Xinhua/Purbu Tashi) Photo taken on May 10, 2016 shows tools used to create the sand mandala . (Xinhua/Purbu Tashi) Assistants are doing decoration on the sand mandala on May 11, 2016. (Xinhua/Purbu Tashi) Then the outlines are filled in with colored sands made from crushed minerals. Each monk holds a funnel-like metal device containing sand and scrapes its serrated side with a metal rod, creating a vibration that makes the sand flow like liquid onto the design. Photo taken on May 20, 2016 shows some of the patterns of the sand mandala . (Xinhua/Purbu Tashi) The patterns seem basic, but they are actually extremely complex. They contain traditional icons and ancient spiritual symbols. The structures and layers also have specific meanings. Tibetan Buddhist monks meditate after finishing the sand mandala on May 20, 2016. (Xinhua/Purbu Tashi) Once completed, the mandala is blessed - and then demolished. A Tibetan Buddhist monk is destroying the sand mandala on May 20, 2016. (Xinhua/Purbu Tashi) The entire process is undone methodically, with the sand brushed into the center of the platform and then poured into a nearby water body. A Tibetan Buddhist monk is destroying the sand mandala on May 20, 2016. (Xinhua/Purbu Tashi) And the lesson? To learn not to get attached to the material universe. Photo taken on May 20, 2016 shows the completed sand mandala . (Xinhua/Purbu Tashi) The mandala symbolizes impermanence: some beauty is only meant for this world for a short time. BEIJING, June 3 (Xinhua) -- The door of dialogue between China and the Philippines is always open as long as Manila desires to resolve any dispute through negotiations. Philippine President-elect Rodrigo Duterte said his country would adopt an independent foreign policy from his predecessor. Incoming Foreign Minister Perfecto Yasay also said he would like to resume bilateral talks with China. Bilateral talks between the two countries could help untangle disputes in the South China Sea and break a deadlock in bilateral relations, as Yasay previously said. In fact, since China and the Philippines established diplomatic ties in 1975, bilateral relations had developed a lot with broadening cooperation in a wide range of areas. During a state visit by then Chinese President Jiang Zemin to the Philippines in 1996, leaders of the two countries agreed to establish a relationship based on good-neighborliness and mutual trust toward the 21st century. They also reached an understanding based on "shelving disputes and striving for joint development" in the South China Sea. In 2000, the two countries signed the "Joint Statement Between China and the Philippines on the Framework of Bilateral Cooperation in the Twenty-First Century," which confirmed that the two sides would establish a long-term and stable relationship on the basis of good neighborliness, cooperation and mutual trust. During then Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit to the Philippines in 2005, both countries decided to establish a strategic and cooperative relationship aimed at peace and development. During then Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's official visit to the Philippines in 2007, both sides issued a joint statement reaffirming prior commitments of a cordial relationship between the two countries. On the South China Sea issue, successive leaders of both China and the Philippines had agreed that any maritime territorial dispute should be resolved peacefully through direct negotiations. The same commitment was made through the signing of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea in 2002. It is because of the above-mentioned consensus that China and the Philippines had been able to effectively manage their disputes in the South China Sea for quite some time. However, in 2013, the Philippine government led by outgoing President Benigno Aquino, initiated an invalid arbitration case against China involving the South China Sea, despite criticism from the international community. Furthermore, to consolidate its role as a staunch supporter of the United States in realizing the later's "rebalance in the Asia-Pacific," Manila has relentlessly wooed Washington by allowing the U.S. army to use its military bases and hold joint military drills. The Aquino government's irresponsible and reckless actions have only worsened relations between the Philippines and China and increased instability in the region. It is believed that the new Philippine government will be wise enough not to follow Aquino's path and return to the negotiating table. Doing so will contribute to the sound and stable development of China-Philippines ties. Related: Chinese Society of the Law of the Sea issues statement on South China Sea arbitration initiated by the Philippines BEIJING, June 2 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Society of the Law of the Sea has issued a statement on the South China Sea arbitration initiated by the Philippines. Following is the English version of the statement: Full story China is staunch force for peace, stability in South China Sea: ambassador LONDON, May 20 (Xinhua) -- China is committed to peace and stability in the South China Sea, and desires to solve disputes peacefully through negotiation, Chinese Ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming said Friday. In a speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, Liu said China has long exercised "a high-level of self-restraint and forbearance" regarding the territorial disputes in the region. Full story China calls for bilateral means to solve South China Sea disputes BEIJING, May 20 (Xinhua) -- China on Friday called on the Philippines to settle disputes over the South China Sea through bilateral consultation and negotiation. The Philippines has reportedly claimed arbitration was its last resort after all bilateral means had been exhausted. On the other hand, some people say China and the Philippines have never held negotiations over the Philippines' claims. Full story Arbitration case ticking time bomb against Philippines: columnist MANILA, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The South China Sea arbitration case the Philippines filed is like a ticking time bomb working against the country, a columnist wrote on Saturday. Rod Kapunan, a columnist for the Philippines' daily newspaper The Standard, published an article named "Inciting to War with China." According to Kapunan, bring the case to Permant Court of Arbitration (PCA) was a lose-lose proposition. Full story China values free navigation in South China Sea more than any other country: senior military official BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- China values the freedom of navigation and peace and stability in the South China Sea more than any other country in the world, said Fang Fenghui, a member of China's Central Military Commission (CMC), on Thursday. Fishing boats anchor at the Tanmen port in Qionghai City, south China's Hainan Province, May 16, 2016. China banned fishing from May 16 to Aug. 1 in the South China Sea, a measure taken for the 18th consecutive year. (Xinhua/Meng Zhongde) BEIJING, June 3 (Xinhua) -- It has been widely speculated that the South China Sea will dominate the Shangri-La Dialogue, an Asia-Pacific defense and security summit opened on Friday in Singapore. If so, the three-day meeting, which gathers military brass, intelligence officers and civilian leaders and promises to play a constructive role in regional security, will be another platform hijacked to make a fanfare of the maritime disputes. Around the South China Sea, another negative development is that a few, particularly non-claimants, have been busy expanding presence and flexing military muscles around the South China Sea, as an international arbitration tribunal in The Hague prepares to deliver a ruling in the next few months over a case about the issue unilaterally lodged by Manila in 2013. This adds to the worry that outside interference, which stems from various self-interests, has become an increasingly serious menace to stability in the South China Sea. For example, the United States has conducted several so-called "freedom of navigation" operations by closely flying or sailing past South China Sea islands, blatantly violating China's sovereign and security interests. In the meantime, the U.S. military made a series of harsh rhetoric on the issue. During his speech at the U.S. Naval Academy at the end of last month, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the Pentagon's best weapons will be deployed to the Pacific region. The words and deeds, with an obvious intention to create a volatile situation to help Washington preserve hegemonic presence in the Asia-Pacific region, will embolden certain claimants to make hot-headed moves on the issue. These claimants should be reminded that if a confrontation between the United States and China whose sovereignty over the South China Sea islands is backed by both legal and historical facts should take place, regional countries will face a Cold War dilemma of picking sides between the world's two largest economies. To avoid such agony, they should be work together for common development and prosperity. In fact, before the recent disturbances struck, the South China Sea situation had been generally peaceful thanks to Beijing's exercise of restraint and concerted efforts of most countries in the region. Despite the territorial rows between China and other claimants, freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea has never been a problem. China also views the waters as being vital to global trade and its own development. The good old time has proven that Beijing and other claimants, whose security and development interests are intensely interwoven, are capable of settling the disputes by themselves. Successive leaders of claimant countries have agreed in their meetings and political documents that the South China Sea disputes should be resolved peacefully through direct negotiations. This stance is also stated in the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. What's heartening is that some positive signs have appeared. Among them, the incoming Philippine Foreign Minister Perfecto Yasay has said bilateral talks between the Philippines and China could help untangle the disputes in the South China Sea. "There is no other way but to go bilateral," he said. The remarks were welcomed by the Chinese sides. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said during a visit to Canada that "the door of dialogue between China and the Philippines is always open." It is very true that for the South China Sea disputes to be untangled as soon as possible and for the busy patch of water to remain permanently peaceful, outsiders should withdraw their meddling hands and allow the parties directly involved to give their wisdom and pragmatism a full play. Related: Commentary: Door always open for China-Philippines dialogue BEIJING, June 3 (Xinhua) -- The door of dialogue between China and the Philippines is always open as long as Manila desires to resolve any dispute through negotiations. Philippine President-elect Rodrigo Duterte said his country would adopt an independent foreign policy from his predecessor. Incoming Foreign Minister Perfecto Yasay also said he would like to resume bilateral talks with China. Full story Facts show Taiping Dao is island, not rock, says FM BEIJING, June 3 (Xinhua) -- History and facts show that Taiping Dao in the South China Sea is an island rather than a rock, said a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson on Friday. "China has indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and its adjacent waters, including Taiping Dao. China has, based on the Nansha Islands as a whole, territorial sea, exclusive economic zone and continental shelf," said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying. Full story Admiral Sun Jianguo to expound China's stance on security issues at Shangri-La Dialogue SINGAPORE, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Admiral Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, will deliver a speech elaborating China's stance on international and regional security issues at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a spokesman said on Friday. Yang Yujun, spokesman of China's Defense Ministry, told the Chinese media that Admiral Sun will deliver a speech themed "the Challenges of Conflict Resolution" at the plenary session of the 15th Shangri-La Dialogue on Sunday. Full story China is staunch force for peace, stability in South China Sea: ambassador LONDON, May 20 (Xinhua) -- China is committed to peace and stability in the South China Sea, and desires to solve disputes peacefully through negotiation, Chinese Ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming said Friday. In a speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, Liu said China has long exercised "a high-level of self-restraint and forbearance" regarding the territorial disputes in the region. Full story China calls for bilateral means to solve South China Sea disputes BEIJING, May 20 (Xinhua) -- China on Friday called on the Philippines to settle disputes over the South China Sea through bilateral consultation and negotiation. The Philippines has reportedly claimed arbitration was its last resort after all bilateral means had been exhausted. On the other hand, some people say China and the Philippines have never held negotiations over the Philippines' claims. Full story Arbitration case ticking time bomb against Philippines: columnist MANILA, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The South China Sea arbitration case the Philippines filed is like a ticking time bomb working against the country, a columnist wrote on Saturday. Rod Kapunan, a columnist for the Philippines' daily newspaper The Standard, published an article named "Inciting to War with China." According to Kapunan, bring the case to Permant Court of Arbitration (PCA) was a lose-lose proposition. Full story China values free navigation in South China Sea more than any other country: senior military official BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- China values the freedom of navigation and peace and stability in the South China Sea more than any other country in the world, said Fang Fenghui, a member of China's Central Military Commission (CMC), on Thursday. SINGAPORE, June 3, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Admiral Sun Jianguo (1st R), deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, meets with Vietnam's Deputy Defense Minister Nguyen Chi Yong (1st L) in Singapore, June 3, 2016. (Xinhua/Then Chih Wey) SINGAPORE, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Admiral Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, met with Vietnam's Deputy Minister of National Defense Nguyen Chi Vinh here Friday and the two sides hailed achievements made in bilateral cooperation. Sun said promoting the development of bilateral military relations is in the interests of the two countries and peoples. He hoped that the two countries can step up high-level exchanges, enhance strategic trust, boost cooperation in various sectors, including cooperation under the framework of the United Nations peacekeeping missions. Nguyen Chi Vinh said military ties between Vietnam and China developed smoothly with fruitful achievements being made in various fields of cooperation. He said this is a core factor for the two countries to maintain good relations. The deputy minister welcomed the Chinese side to conduct humanitarian rescue exercises with Vietnam on the sea and strengthen cooperation between coast guard forces of the two countries. The Chinese admiral and the Vietnamese deputy defense minister conducted the meeting at the sidelines of the 15th Shangri-La Dialogue, an Asia-Pacific defense and security summit, which is being held here in Singapore over the weekend. In another meeting held Friday, Sun Jianguo agreed with Gerry Brownlee, Defense Minister of New Zealand, to further promote bilateral military ties. Assyrian Professor and His Wife Awarded Academic Book Prize Professor Joseph Yacoub and his wife Claire Yacoub. ( AINA) Paris (AINA) -- Founded in 1856 by lay people and professors at the Sorbonne University, the Oeuvre d'Orient is a French association devoted entirely to aid Eastern Christians. It works under the auspices of the Catholic Archbishop of Paris. Annually, Oeuvre d'Orient awards outstanding publications on Eastern Christians. The 2016 French Academic Prize of Oeuvre d'Orient was awarded to Professor Joseph Yacoub and his wife Claire Yacoub for their French book Forgotten by All -- The Assyro-Chaldeans of Caucasus, published by Cerf. With this award, the jury praised the work of Professor Joseph Yacoub and his wife Claire who researched intensively to highlight the plight of the Assyrian-Chaldeans in the Caucasus. This nearly forgotten minority of Eastern Christians has suffered persecution, deportation and humiliation, as well as emigration and mass exodus in its history, particularly during the Turkish genocide of Assyrians from 1915-1918, the late period of the Ottoman Empire. While the genocide of Armenians and Assyrians (also known as Chaldeans and Syriacs) unfolded at full speed in Anatolia, it also extended into the Caucasus. The book documents diplomatic and military maneuvers of the great powers, Russia's penetration into the Ottoman and Persian Empires, the Bolshevik Revolution, the rise of the Soviet Union, the Stalinist terror, and Nazi invasion. "A century later, while Eastern Christians again face agony in their ancestral homeland [in Iraq and Syria]," according to a statement by Oeuvre d'Orient, "Claire and Joseph Yacoub complete a book, the first of its kind, which describes the adventure of the Assyrio-Chaldeans of the Caucasus ignored in its continuity. Their book is a document of history, a testimony to this. Today, with the Caucasian independence and the new Russia, the Assyro-Chaldeans regain their freedom, re-establish contacts with their compatriots in the Diaspora and learn to hope." Joseph Yacoub says "my people are religious, ethnic, linguistic, and once a prosperous nation, who, despite the tragic history, kept their Aramaic language, the Eastern Christianity and the memory of the country of their ancestors." Joseph Yacoub is an honorary professor of the Catholic University of Lyon, Christians of East specialist and is author of several articles and books. His recent book on the genocide of 1915 (Year of the Sword: The Assyrian Christian Genocide, a History) will become available in English on August 2016. The French edition, Who will remember? 1915: The Assyrian-Syriac-Chaldean Genocide, was published in 2015. His wife Claire Weibel Yacoub published the The Broken Dream of the Assyrio-Chaldeans: An Elusive Autonomy (in French) in 2012. For the fifth consecutive year, Oeuvre d'Orient awarded such a literary prize to honor two works dealing with the situation of Christians in the East. The Academic Award recognizes a book for its scientific style, quality and clarity of its text. The literary price was awarded to Falk van Angaver and Kassam Maadi for their book "Taybeh, Last Christian village of Palestine." The award ceremony was conducted by Cardinal Andre Vingt III on Sunday, May 29, 2016 after the Mass of the Oeuvre d'Orient at Notre Dame. The Catholic French Televisio TVChannel KTO broadcast the mass and the award ceremony. In his short speech after receiving the award, Professor Yacoub said: CHANGSHA, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Zeng Xianhua has barely enough time to put in a full shift at the piggery these days, not since last week when her son, He Jiang, gave the commencement address at Harvard University. The previously sleepy village of Tingzhongxin in central China's Hunan Province is now besieged by reporters from home and abroad clamoring for interviews, eager for the story of her son's journey from a rural Chinese backwater to center stage at the world's finest university. BITTEN BY THE KNOWLEDGE BUG He Jiang began his address with an anecdote about how, when he was a child, his mother used a traditional remedy to cure a spider bite. An unusual way to begin a speech to world's brightest minds, but an excellent introduction to his the theme: unequal distribution of scientific knowledge throughout the world. Moreover, it is an extremely strange topic to go viral on Chinese social media, especially considering the speech was made in near-perfect English. Acclaim is virtually universal. "I thought it was brilliant," said a village official after watching the speech online. With the speech has come a most unusual kind of fame, as He Jiang's story has captured the hearts of many who know nothing of Harvard University and have precious little scientific knowledge themselves. More than anything, He Jiang is thankful to his parents for not letting him becoming one of the millions of "left-behind" children. "My parents did not use any special tricks in bringing me up," said He Jiang during a conversation on WeChat. "At a time when many people from rural China were leaving their children behind to seek their fortunes in the cities, they gave up that opportunity and stayed home to look after me and my little brother." Even during the years of the one-child policy, rural residents were allowed two children and, as if one brilliant mind in the family was not enough, "little brother" He Jiaolong is a graduate of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, one of the country's finest. All this academic glory was funded from 10 pigs and three fields of rice. NO SECRET Visitors are coming from far and wide, many to pay homage to the parenting skills of Zeng and her husband He Bicheng. "My son is still in school and I wanted to visit the parents to learn how they brought up their son," said a man who had travelled from from another county to pay his respects. Besides the fans, when Xinhua turned up at Zeng's home, we had to take our place in line behind two other media organizations already patiently waiting. "There is no secret to their success," Zeng said, blushing as faced the press. "We never imagined what they have the achieved today." But in eyes of neighbors, classmates and teachers, achievements like theirs are not a matter of chance. "The whole family knows the importance of education," said a neighbor, Zhang Aifang, "and the parents gave up a good income for the sake of their sons." The father, He Bicheng, said, "When they were little, I read them stories every night and I told them how wonderful the outside world would be if they studied hard and went to college." He Bicheng said he never forced them to study, but cultivated a love of learning. The two boys' upbringing was as normal as could be. They shared the household chores and toiled in the paddy fields with their parents from an early age. "We wanted them to understand how hard it is to earn a living as farmers and they wanted to help us," Zeng said. He Jiang said his experience working in the fields was very important to him. "I've seen the difficulties for myself and I wanted to change my own life," he said, but whenever he returns home from the States, he still joins his parents in the fields. "He is diligent, persistent and has a pleasant demeanor," said He Jiang's high school English teacher, Xie Fang. He was also famously stoic, always wearing the same coat throughout the year. Most importantly he was neither sensitive nor ashamed of his rural roots. On the contrary, He Jiang was optimistic and open-minded, Xie said. Long Kunming, another high school teacher described him as quiet, focused and very clear about his goals. MAXIMUM RESPECT Aiming high, they say, and even as he matriculated at the University of Science and Technology of China, He Jiang had his mind set on graduate school at Harvard and his intention never wavered. And when eventually made it, the first thing he did was to set to work on his language skills, striving to improve his spoken English. "I moved to the undergraduate dormitory and lived with the American students. This helped my pronunciation a lot," he said. Chinese students studying abroad often find it hard to mix and their friendship groups are often almost exclusively Chinese. Mini-celebrity that his speech has made him, He Jiang wants nothing so much as to return to the laboratory. Now a Harvard alumnus, his next port of call will be only 2 kilometers away, at MIT for a post-doctoral degree. He says he does not know what will happen after that, perhaps he will return to China, perhaps he will stay in the States, but mother Zeng knows what she wants for her son. "Of course we hope he will come back and marry a Chinese girl, but we will respect his choice," she said. SINGAPORE, June 3, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Admiral Sun Jianguo (L), deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, meets with Singapore's Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen in Singapore, on June 3, 2016. (Xinhua/Then Chih Wey) SINGAPORE, June 3 (Xinhua) -- A high-ranking Chinese military official said here on Friday that he expects host country Singapore to properly guide the process of the ongoing Shangri-la Dialogue, making it conducive to conflict resolution and regional peace and stability. When meeting with Singapore's Minister of Defense Ng Eng Hen on the sidelines of the Shangri-la Dialogue, Admiral Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, said China attaches great importance to China-Singapore relations and hopes to deepen cooperation in all sectors including defense. Sun expressed the wishes that host Singapore would properly direct the dialogue progress, in an effort to decrease conflicts, boost cooperation and help stabilize regional security. The Singaporean defense chief, during his talk with Sun, hailed the Singapore-China relations as in a smooth development run, which sees fruitful cooperation in various sectors. He said Singapore takes an objective stance in international and regional cooperation, with no purpose to harm any side. He expressed the wishes for concerned parties to exchange views and enhance understanding on matters including the South China Sea issue at the dialogue. Sun, on the sidelines of the dialogue, met on Friday with defense ministers, military chiefs and high-ranking defense officials from countries including Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Russia and Brunei. Related: Chinese, Vietnamese military officials hail achievements in cooperation SINGAPORE, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Admiral Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, met with Vietnam's Deputy Minister of National Defense Nguyen Chi Vinh here Friday and the two sides hailed achievements made in bilateral cooperation. Sun said promoting the development of bilateral military relations is in the interests of the two countries and peoples. He hoped that the two countries can step up high-level exchanges, enhance strategic trust, boost cooperation in various sectors, including cooperation under the framework of the United Nations peacekeeping missions. Full Story Regional conflicts should be resolved through cooperation: Thai PM SINGAPORE, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Regional conflicts should be resolved through cooperation, Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said in a keynote speech at the 15th Shangri-La Dialogue which kicked off here Friday. BEIRUT, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon's Army Commander General Jean Kahwagi vowed Friday to never stop fighting the extremist militants until all their networks are eliminated, the National News Agency (NNA) said. "Our battle with terrorism is moving forward and it is uncompromising," Kahwaji said. "We have the utmost confidence in the friendly states, at the forefront being European Union (EU) countries continuing to support the Lebanese Army and security forces," the Army Commander added. His made the remarks at the launch of a multi-million dollar project which aims at strengthening the army and General Security through the EU support and financing. The ceremony at the Officer's Club in Yarze, the headquarters of the Lebanese Army, was attended by the EU Ambassador to Lebanon Christian Lassen and General Security Chief Maj. General Abbas Ibrahim. The EU support program is called the "Security Sector Reform" in the project and is worth 3.5 million euros (3.9 million U.S. dollars). Maj. General Ibrahim said the project comes as Lebanon is facing the most critical and dangerous stages in its modern history. "We have proven the capabilities of our military and security institutions in fighting terrorism. We will continue to push all the dangers away from our nation," he added. He praised Lebanon's efforts, saying it is fighting the war on terror on behalf of Europe and the rest of the world, as it "prevents illegal immigration." While the Lebanese Army fights the IS and the Al-Qaida-affiliated al-Nusra Front along its northeastern border, the General Security along with the Internal Security Forces and the State Security Directorate have arrested hundreds of suspected militants across the country to avoid a spillover of the Syrian crisis. Enditem PARIS, June 3, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (C) attends Peace Initiatives in the Middle East Conference in Paris, capital of France, on June 3, 2016. (Xinhua/Ye Pingfan) PARIS, June 3 (Xinhua) -- China welcomes and supports all efforts conducive to easing tensions between Israel and Palestine and to an early realization of the two-state solution, China's Foreign minister Wang Yi said on Friday during the Middle East peace initiative ministerial conference here. Wang said the question of Palestine is the fundamental issue to the Middle East. "We cannot allow the question of Palestine to be marginalized, we can not allow the Middle East peace process to be stalled, and we cannot allow the implementation of relevant UN resolutions to be delayed indefinitely," he said. Wang added that foreign ministers participating in the conference should speak with one voice and take joint actions in order to make the conference become a new starting point for renewed efforts of the international community to foster peace. During the conference, Wang said China stands for an early implementation of "three stops": stop the violence, stop the settlement expansion, and stop the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, he said China also invites concerned parties and the international community to work together to push for "three explores": explore a wider range of efforts conducive to peace, explore peace talk follow-up measures, and explore an incentive mechanism for promoting peace. China has always supported the just cause of the Palestinian people to restore their legitimate national rights and the establishment of an independent sovereign state, the Chinese foreign minister stressed. Earlier this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping during his speech given at the Arab League Headquarters called for efforts to resume peace talks at the political level and advance reconstruction on the economic front, Wang recalled. The Chinese side has contributed to the capacity building of the Palestinians through humanitarian assistance, training, aid, etc, Wang explained, announcing that China will provide a humanitarian aid of 50 million RMB (7.61 million U.S. dollars) to Palestine. As long as the international community continues to make concerted efforts to foster peace, and the Israeli and Palestinian sides persevere in the choice of peace talks, peace will be achieved, Wang said. by Maria Spiliopoulou ATHENS, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Nine people have lost their lives in the latest refugee boat tragedy unfolding in the Mediterranean Sea since Friday morning, according to the latest information from the Greek Coast Guard. The number of refugees and migrants rescued from the sinking vessel south of Crete island during an ongoing operation stands at 340, officials told Xinhua, as local media expressed concern for dozens missing. The Greek Coast Guard does not confirm earlier estimates by the International Organization of Migration that about 700 people may have been on the vessel when it took water from Egypt 75 nautical miles south of Crete. The rescue operation continues under good weather conditions and is conducted by the Greek Shipping Ministry operation center in Piraeus port. According to Greek Coast Guard sources the survivors will not disembark in a Greek port but be transferred to Italy, Malta, Egypt and Turkey. It is believed that the ship had departed from north Africa heading to Italy. More than 2,500 people have perished in the Mediterranean in 2016, according to the UNHCR, despite international efforts to stem the flow into Europe and address the trafficking networks. XI'AN, June 3, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu addresses the G20 Agriculture Ministers Meeting in Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, June 3, 2016. (Xinhua/Mu Jialiang) BEIJING, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Friday's G20 agriculture ministers meeting in the northwestern city of Xi'an praised China's efforts to promote innovation and sustainable development in agriculture. Han Changfu, Chinese Agriculture Minister, said China was working to increase grain yields, and, with partners around the world, striving for global food security. China's grain yield rose for a 12th straight year in 2015. China's agricultural concepts, including integrated development of agriculture and secondary and tertiary sectors, were written into a communique of the meeting that will be submitted to the upcoming summit for approval. China is willing to work with other countries to achieve a fruitful year in global agricultural development, Han said. As part of a series of meetings prior to a G20 summit in Hangzhou in September, the agriculture ministers' meeting focused on issues including food security, nutrition, rural development and innovation. There are still 795 million people suffering from chronic hunger worldwide and 2 billion in malnutrition, the communique said. The meeting agreed that G20 countries will pay more attention to food security in developing countries, propel the realization of 2030 sustainable development goals and encourage sharing agricultural technologies. G20 countries will also work to tame grain price fluctuations, promote agricultural innovation, support investment in developing countries and help small farms. It was the third such meeting since the establishment of G20 mechanism. PARIS, June 3, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (2nd L) meets with High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini (1st R) in Paris, capital of France, on June 3, 2016. (Xinhua/Ye Pingfan) PARIS, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini during the Middle East Peace Initiative ministerial conference held here this Friday. Wang said China has always been developing its bilateral relations with EU from a strategic height and long-term perspective. Favorable China-EU relations are conducive to the balance of world powers and international strategic stability, Wang told Mogherini. He also said China and Europe should promote pragmatic cooperation, accelerating docking of the Belt & Road initiative with the European Investment Plan. According to Wang, the two sides should also strengthen coordination and cooperation in international multilateral mechanisms, such as the United Nations and the G20, and maintain coordination on issues of Afghanistan and the Middle East. Mogherini acknowledged the China-EU relations are highly strategic. She said Europe is working on new EU Strategy towards China, which will thoroughly plan the all-around bilateral cooperation. Europe is willing to maintain the strategic dialogue, dock development strategies, expand pragmatic cooperation, and further coordinate in international affairs with China, Mogherini said. PARIS, June 3, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (1st R) meets with the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (1st L) in Paris, capital of France, on June 3, 2016. (Xinhua/Ye Pingfan) PARIS, June 3 (Xinhua) -- China is willing to work closely with the United Nations to solve the Palestinian-Israeli issue, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Paris, where the Middle East Peace Initiative ministerial conference was held on Friday. Ban, on his side, said the United Nations is also willing to work closely with China to push for an equitable solution to the Palestinian-Israeli issue. The UN Secretary-General also said he appreciates the constructive role of China in the peace process. Wang said China firmly supports the peace process in the Middle East, the two-state solution as the basis of the Palestinian question, the resumption of the peace talks, and the role of the Middle East Quartet (the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia). VILNIUS, June 3 (Xinhua) -- The Czech Republic plans to deploy rotational forces for training in Lithuania, announced Lithuania's defense minister on Friday. According to Lithuania's defense minister Juozas Olekas, he received confirmation about the plans from visiting Czech Republic's defense minister Martin Stropnicky. The Czech Republic plans to send a rotational company-size unit to train in the Baltic States in 2017, according to a press release from Lithuanian defense ministry. Olekas said the Czech Republic's support is vital for Lithuania. "It demonstrates Czech solidarity and resolve to stand together in finding solutions against the security threats in our region," Olekas was quoted as saying. He highlighted military cooperation between the two countries, such as the Czech participation in the NATO air-policing mission in the Baltic skies and the Czech officers assigned to the NATO force integration unit in Lithuania. On Friday, Lithuanian and Czech Republic defense ministers met in Vilnius to discuss cooperation between the two countries, security situation in the region and the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw later in July. Before the summit, Lithuania tries to secure more military assistance and security guarantees from the allies. During the discussions with his Czech counterpart, Olekas pointed out the need to have multinational rotating battalion group in each of the three Baltic States and "quick NATO response and reinforcement in the event of a crisis," according to the press release. Lithuania has stepped up its defense capabilities and asked for an increased military presence from the allies amid geopolitical tensions in Eastern Europe since the conflicts in Eastern Ukraine in 2014. The Czech Republic's plans to send rotational unit follow the moves from the other allies to increase military presence in the small Baltic State. In March, Lithuanian defense ministry announced that more than 600 rotational troops and several hundred military vehicles of German forces are to be deployed in Lithuania throughout this year. Lithuania already has the U.S. rotating forces since 2014. Enditem JERUSALEM, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Israel slammed on Friday the French-led conference in Paris aiming at reviving the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. A statement released by the Israeli Foreign Ministry following the half-day meeting charged that only direct negotiations could lead to a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "The conference in Paris was a missed opportunity," read the statement. The ministry accused the international community of "yielding" to the demands of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. "Instead of urging Abu Mazen (Abbas) to respond to calls from Prime Minister (Benjamin Netanyahu) to start direct negotiations immediately and without preconditions, the international community responded to Abu Mazen's demand, allowing him to keep avoiding direct bilateral negotiations without preconditions," the ministry said. "It will go down in history that the conference in Paris simply resulted in hardened Palestinian positions and distant peace," the ministry charged. The Palestinians, on the other hand, welcomed the meeting as a "significant step" against Israel's "apartheid policies in occupied Palestine." Foreign ministers of more than 20 Western and Arab countries, including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, attended the summit. Israeli and Palestinian officials were not invited. The gathering failed to achieve an agreement about the French proposal to bring Israelis and Palestinians for an international peace conference by the autumn. Instead, the meeting concluded with a closing communique welcoming the "prospects" of such a conference later this year, without elaborating. The ministers also released a call for "fully ending the Israeli occupation." Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East War and has been controlling it ever since despite international condemnation. The last round of peace talks took place between July 2013 and April 2014 with the mediation of the U.S., and ended abruptly without results. International calls to restart peace talks come amid an ongoing wave of violence which started in mid-September and claimed the lives of 205 Palestinians and 28 Israelis. Enditem PARIS, June 1, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Novak Djokovic (L) of Serbia hugs with Roberto Bautista Agut of Spain after the men's singles fourth round match on day 11 of 2016 French Open tennis tournament at Roland Garros, in Paris, France on June 1, 2016. Djokovic won 3-1. (Xinhua/Han Yan) PARIS, June 3 (Xinhua) -- World No. 1 Novak Djokovic stormed into his 20th Grand Slam final with a 6-2, 6-1, 6-3 win over the French Open semifinal debutant Dominic Thiem on Friday. The 29-year-old Serb, seeking his first Roland Garros title to complete a career slam, almost met no trouble from the outset, breaking the 22-year-old Thiem at the Austrian' s first serving game before breaking twice in the second set. Thiem, however, roared back from the beginning of the third set to break Djokovic and take a 3-0 lead before the top seed reeled off five games in a row to deny the youngster' s effort. Djokovic, who' s already won the year' s opening major at Melbourne, later better proved himself the kind of man with stern mind and steady performance, served out the match for his sixth straight slam final. The Serb rated the semi his "best performance of the tournament" . "As I was hoping after the long fourth round that I'm going to start playing better as the tournament progresses, and that's what's happening now," he said. His match against Thiem was taken to the Court Suzanne Lenglen, which was unusual as the French Open men' s singles semifinalists normally play successively in Court Philippe Chatrier in stead of playing at the same time. After too many rain delays and a washout on Monday for the first time at Roland Garros in 16 years, the clay-court major has been forced to make a compressed schedule in the second week. "It was amazing ambience, atmosphere on the Suzanne Lenglen," he said. "It was the first time I have played the semifinals of Roland Garros on that court." "I'm obviously very glad to win in three sets and against a player that was in-form," he added. "He carries himself very well on and off the court for his age. He's a leader of a new generation, very powerful, and has a lot of strength and variety in his game." And Thiem said Djokovic was just too strong for the day' s match. "But still it inspires me to even work harder. I hope I get a new chance soon in the future," said the Austrian. With Andy Murray seeing off defending champion Stan Wawrinka 6-4, 6-2, 4-6, 6-2 in the other semifinal, Djokovic will try his chances for the straight second year against the Scot on Sunday. If he takes the French title, the Serb would come out the first man since Rod Laver in 1969 to hold all four Grand Slams at the same time. Just hours before his semifinal, Djokovic was fined 5500 U.S. dollars for flinging his racquet in the quarterfinals against Czech Thomas Berdych on Thursday when it nearly bounced at a linesman. A Yemeni tribesman from the Popular Resistance Committees, supporting forces loyal to Yemen's Saudi-backed president, is greeted by a comrade after his release as part of a prisoner exchange with the Huthi rebels in the southwestern city of Taez on June 1, 2016. (Xinhua/AFP) ADEN, Yemen, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Rocket attack killed 18 civilians and injured dozens of others in Yemen's southern province of Taiz on Friday evening, a security official told Xinhua. In the latest violent incident that occurred in a busy market in Taiz, 18 civilians, mostly women, were killed and dozens of others injured while they were shopping, the local security source said on condition of anonymity. "Fighters of the Shiite Houthi group indiscriminately fired Katyusha rockets and mortar shells that slammed into a residential area and a crowded market, leaving many innocent civilians dead and injured," the Yemeni source said. Meantime, media outlets of the Shiite Houthi rebels rejected their involvement in firing any rockets and killing civilians in Taiz. Local medical sources said that more than 35 people were injured when rockets hit a pre-Ramadan Shopping Bazaar in Taiz. Hospitals in Taiz were calling for urgent blood donations and medical aids for the injured civilians, according to the local medics. Yemeni women shout slogans during a rally protesting the recent deployment of US Special Forces to Yemen, amid the ongoing conflict in the impoverished Arab state, outside the UN offices on May 12, 2016, in the capital Sanaa. (Xinhua/AFP) Yemen's province of Taiz, the most devastated by the ongoing conflict, has been besieged for more than ten months by Houthis who prevent the entry of humanitarian aids. The Iran-allied Shiite Houthi group and forces loyal to Saleh advanced from their far north stronghold of Saada province and stormed the capital Sanaa and other cities in September 2014, dissolved the Saudi-backed government and expelled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi on allegations of combating "corruption." Saudi-led coalition air forces intervened since March 2015, vowing to return Hadi to power and Sanaa. So far, Hadi and his government were still in exile in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. The civil war has escalated since then, leaving more than 6,000 killed so far in ground battles and airstrikes, half of them civilians. The ongoing conflict has also displaced more than 2.4 million people in Yemen. The warring parties have been in talks in Kuwait since April under the auspices of the United Nations to end the war, but no tangible breakthroughs have been made. BAKU, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on Friday harshly condemned a resolution passed by Bundestag, lower house of the German parliament, to label the killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as a "genocide." "Anti-Turkish resolution of Germany would have a very negative impact on the German-Turkish relations," said Yildirim in a joint statement with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev here. The Bundestag resolution has no meaning for Turkey, he said, adding that Turkey hopes that Germany will correct its historical mistake. The Turkish government on Thursday described the Armenian genocide bill as "null and void." Also on the day, Ankara recalled its ambassador to Berlin in protest against the resolution. Turkish governments have always rejected the use of the term genocide to describe the killing and expulsion of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians and Christian minorities at the hands of the Ottoman Turks during World War I. Turkey has rejected allegations that it was a bloody massacre. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the events of 1915 were a difficult time not only for Armenians, but also for Arabs, Kurds and representatives of other nations living in the country. Azerbaijan on Friday condemned the German parliament's resolution, calling it "biased." Spokesman for the Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry Khikmet Hajiyev said the German parliament has been indifferent to Armenia's aggression against Azerbaijan and ethnic cleansing of more than a million Azerbaijanis. BRASILIA, May 9, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff reacts during a signing ceremony for new universities at Planalto Palace, in Brasilia, Brazil on May 9, 2016. The acting speaker of the lower house of Brazil's Congress announced Monday the decision to nullify the chamber's vote for an impeachment process against President Dilma Rousseff and called for a new one. (Xinhua file photo/Wilton Junior/AGENCIA ESTADO) BRASILIA, June 3 (Xinhua) -- The suspended Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on Friday categorically rejected allegations that some of the funds embezzled by the Petrobras corruption ring were used to pay for her personal expenses. None of Rousseff's personal costs "were paid through illegal schemes or through corruption," Rousseff's office said in a press release. "Once again, there is an attempt to impugn the president's honor in order to manipulate public opinion and make the impeachment process easier. While attempting a coup, they resort to lies," it said. According to an article published in O Globo, funds embezzled from Petrobas, Brazil's state-owned oil company, in particular from the purchase of a refinery in Pasadena, California, were used to pay bills with Rousseff's personal hair stylist, Celso Kamura. However, Rousseff's press release detailed all services and payments made to Kamura, saying that none were paid illegally. "All the personal costs of the president have a proven origin," it read. Rousseff will seek reparations in the court "for all the defamatory accusations made against her," it said. Rousseff was temporarily removed from office in May for up to 180 days after the Senate agreed to impeach her, and Vice President Michel Temer from the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party took up the presidency on a temporary basis. With no charges of corruption weighing against her, Rousseff is being judged for administrative misconduct and disregard for the federal budget as well as delaying payments to public banks, which is known as "fiscal pedaling." Related: Rousseff's impeachment trial could end in August BRASILIA, May 25 (Xinhua) -- The impeachment trial of Brazil's suspended President Dilma Rousseff could be over in August, the state new agency Agencia Brasil reported Wednesday. "The impeachment effort against suspended President Dilma Rousseff may reach a final decision in August, according to a work schedule presented Wednesday by Senator Antonio Anastasia, rapporteur of the current Procedural Commission for the Impeachment," the agency said. Full Story BRASILIA, May 20 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's suspended President Dilma Rousseff said Friday that the interim government is causing "enormous damage" to the country's social safety system. PARIS, June 3 (Xinhua) -- The flood caused by torrential and prolonged rainfall has left at least two people dead in France where thousands have been evacuated and a state of emergency was declared. In a statement, the French Interior Ministry on Friday said a 74-year-old man on horseback lost his life after being swept away by flood in Evry-Gregy-sur-Yerre, south of Paris. According to the daily Le Parisien, the man had been trying to cross a flooded field. Late on Wednesday, an 86-old-year woman was found dead in her house in the southwestern suburb of Paris. Speaking to state-run France 2 TV, French Ecology Minister Segolene Royal said she feared more victims would be found as waters started to recede in the affected regions. "What will be even more painful for the families who lost their homes, business leaders who lost their business, employees who are going to be laid off, is that water receding will be very slow. It will take several weeks," she added. Parisians have been on high alert as the rising Seine River is expected to reach a peak of 6.50 meters on Friday evening, Royal said, adding that this was still well below the level on which it would pose a danger to inhabitants. The river reached a record high of 8.6 metres in 1910, when thousands of Parisians had to flee flooded areas of the city. A continued rise of river could trigger the evacuation of residents in west Paris, according to the ministry. Due to the high risks brought by floods, Le Louvre Museum closed its door on Thursday earlier than scheduled and would remain shut on Friday. Standing on the banks of the Seine River, the Orsay Museum has launched its emergency plan and cancelled activities till June 7. The SNCF railway company closed RER C train, an underground commuter line which runs along the river. According to data from the Interior Ministry, 20,000 have been evacuated as heavy floods devastated the Ile de-France region. French President Francois Hollande declared a state of emergency in the worst affected areas and promised money to help local authorities deal with the flood damage. Enditem NEW YORK, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Oil prices ended lower on Friday as investors were sifting through the downbeat U.S. jobs data and the outcome of an OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) meeting. The U.S. total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 38,000 in May, well below the market consensus of 158,000 and notching the fewest monthly job gain in almost six years, the Labor Department reported Friday. The soft U.S. jobs data spurred market concerns about the country's economy and its oil demand in the coming months, which weighed on the oil prices on Friday. Moreover, investors were still digesting the news about the OPEC once again failing to set an oil output quota after a meeting on Thursday. This was the second time OPEC has failed to work out an output ceiling at the conference in Vienna, following the meeting last winter. Analysts said this could be a sign the gap between the cartel is getting wider over the market strategy and interest. The West Texas Intermediate for July delivery lost 55 cents to settle at 48.62 U.S. dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while Brent crude for August delivery decreased 40 cents to close at 49.64 dollars a barrel on the London ICE Futures Exchange. Enditem TORONTO, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Police in Canada's biggest city said Friday they have arrested more than 50 people linked with a violent gang in a citywide guns-and-drugs crackdown. A total of 53 individuals associated with violent gang Heart of A King, including a gang leader, were apprehended in the raids that led to 250 charges and the seizure of thousands of dollars' worth of drugs, weapons and jewelry. The raids are part of an ongoing guns, gangs and drugs investigation dubbed "Project Sizzle," an operation carried out at locations across Toronto and Montreal. Police said the dismantled Heart of A King gang, also known as HOK, was responsible for a string of violent crimes that took place mainly in Toronto downtown core, over the past few years including some notorious homicides. Toronto police chief Mark Saunders said they were able to "eradicate" the gangsters as a result of the 43 raids. The majority of the arrests were made in Toronto. Four people were arrested in Montreal. Police alleged that the organization's members and their associates were involved in numerous shootings, firearm possession trafficking, drug trafficking, fraud and prostitution. Toronto police spokesman Mark Pugash said they believed the arrests would have a "significant impact in reducing crime in the city." So far, there have been 19 deadly shootings in Toronto this year, a 137-percent jump from the same time in 2015, according to Toronto police statistics. There were 162 shootings in total, up from 103 over the same period last year. UNITED NATIONS, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Five years after the start of the conflict in Sudan's South Kordofan State, people are still fleeing the region, with most crossing into neighboring South Sudan, a UN spokesman told reporters here Friday. So far in 2016, more than 7,500 refugees have arrived in Yida in South Sudan's northern Unity, Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, said, citing the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Nearly 3,000 people arrived in May alone and "nearly 90 percent of new arrivals are women and children," Haq said. "Refugees speak of escalating violence, including ground attacks and aerial bombings." At the Yida transit center, the UNHCR and its partners were providing immediate assistance to the arrivals. From Yida, refugees were transported after a few days by bus to Ajuong Thok, a camp established in 2013 to help ease some of the pressure. "There they are provided with plastic sheeting and poles to build a temporary home," he said. "They also get cooking pots and pans, mosquito nets, blankets, sleeping mats and food." But with nearly 41,000 Sudanese refugees already living in Ajuong Thok, the camp has almost reached its capacity. The UNHCR and its partners have been expanding camp infrastructure to meet the needs of a growing population. A new camp is underway at Pamir, some 50 km south of the border, to receive new arrivals and refugees who have been living in Yida for the past five years, he said. "UNHCR added that as the refugee influx continues, services are becoming overstretched and only just 17 percent of the agency's operations in South Sudan are funded." The military confrontations between the Sudanese army and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM)/northern sector have escalated since March 2015. In March, the Sudanese army announced controlling of Um Sirdiba area, one of the strongholds of the rebels of the SPLM/northern sector in South Kordofan State. The SPLM/northern sector has been fighting the central government at Blue Nile and South Kordofan areas since 2011. Last March, the peace talks between the government and the SPLM/northern sector rebels failed in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, under the patronage of the African Union. Khartoum unilaterally signed on a road-map deal proposed by the African mediation, while the SPLM/northern sector and other Darfur rebel movements declined to sign the deal. Enditem HAVANA, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez warned here on Friday about the severe threats "oligarchical forces" posed to peace, stability and sovereignty of the region. "The advances in the unity and integration of Latin American and Caribbean states, the strengthening of independence, democracy and social justice in the region, are undeniable. Yet, they are threatened by an imperialist counter-attack and by oligarchical forces who seek to restore the neoliberal order," he said in a speech at the opening of the 7th Summit of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) in Havana. Rodriguez urged ACS foreign ministers present at the meeting to defy these challenges by building up actions of consultation and cooperation within the ACS. The ACS should remember the proclamation made during the 2nd Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in 2014 that the region is a zone of peace, he said. "This was an exemplary and practical guide to ensure unity, harmony, stability, and peace in our region," Rodriguez noted. Rodriguez also hailed that the ACS had become a "strong association, seeking to continue striving toward development, peace and well-being for our people." He added that the ACS' Action Plan 2016-2018, which will be debated during the summit, could help the bloc find common positions and solutions to the main problems facing the Caribbean. "I am certain our debates will allow us to strengthen our consensus concerning the problems we face. This will help deliberations by heads of state and government to find responses to current circumstances and the demands of our people," Rodriguez said. Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, Colombia's Juan Manuel Santos, Panama's Juan Carlos Varela, Costa Rica's Luis Guillermo Solis, Cuba's Raul Castro are among the prominent figures set to participate in the summit on Saturday. During the summit, a new secretary general will be elected to replace Colombian diplomat Alfonso Munera who has headed the organization since April 2012. The ACS was created in July 1994 in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, with the aim of promoting consultation, cooperation and concerted action among all the countries of the Caribbean, comprising 25 member states. HAVANA, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Cuba on Friday reaffirmed its support for the Venezuelan government while criticizing the Organization of American States (OAS) over its move that could have led to Caracas' suspension from the group. The Cuban revolutionary government and people reiterate "once again their full support for the supportive and generous Bolivarian Revolution, President Nicolas Maduro, the civil-military union and its brave people," Cuba's foreign ministry said in a press release published in the daily Granma. Cuba lambasted the OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro who sought this week to begin proceedings at the Washington-based body that could lead to Venezuela's suspension on grounds of violating democracy. Cuban authorities have accused Almagro of "trying to serve obscure interests." The Venezuelan government said on Wednesday the move by the OAS was an "imperialist" scheme to take the OPEC member's oil. The Cuban government noted on Friday that Venezuela "fought a hard and victorious diplomatic battle at the OAS Permanent Council's Special Session, held on Wednesday, June 1, against imperialism and oligarchies' interventionist plan." On Tuesday, the OAS head called for a special meeting to discuss the current situation of Venezuela. Representatives of OAS nations met on Wednesday without taking up Almagro's proposal in an attempt to defuse the tension. Cuba was expelled from the OAS in 1962 due to U.S. pressures allegedly aimed at smothering the socialist revolution. The suspension was lifted years ago but the Caribbean nation refused to return to the organization, seeing it as a launching platform for Washington's attacks and the regional oligarchy against leftist governments in the region. Enditem HAVANA, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Foreign ministers of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) on Friday discussed regional challenges and the action plan for the next two years hours before the 7th Summit of the ACS in Havana. At the inauguration of the meeting, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said the summit takes place at a "complex" moment characterized by a systemic economic crisis and the threats of "outside forces" to the political stability of the region, particularly in Venezuela. "The advances of Latin American and Caribbean integration, democracy, social justice, and independence are threatened by an imperialist offensive to restore neoliberal models that already left unfortunate consequences for our countries," said the Cuban official. Earlier in the day, Havana expressed its support to Venezuela's socialist administration in a government statement which criticized the recent position of the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS) who called for an urgent meeting to discuss the political and economic situation in the South American nation. Rodriguez stressed that the region is posed with the most unequal distribution of wealth and that is a test many nations confront. "We have to face these challenges with joint actions as well as consultation, political concertation and cooperation as it's established in the ACS founding principles," he added. The Cuban minister said the organization has strengthened its regional role in the last four years due to the optimism, energy and political will of its member states in the process of uplifting its presence in the continent. "The final declaration of the presidential summit and the joint action plan will help us face the area's problems and challenges for the next two years and embark on fruitful cooperation in many areas like climate change, transportation and sustainable tourism," he stated. Twelve heads of States and Prime Ministers of the area are already in the Cuban capital and will convene on Saturday at Havana's Presidential Palace for the summit. Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, Colombia's Juan Manuel Santos, Panama's Juan Carlos Varela, Costa Rica's Luis Guillermo Solis, Cuba's Raul Castro are among the prominent figures set to participate in the summit on Saturday. During the summit, a new secretary general will be elected to replace Colombian diplomat Alfonso Munera, who has headed the organization since April of 2012. The Association of Caribbean States (ACS) was created in July of 1994 in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, with the aim of promoting consultation, cooperation and concerted action among all the countries of the Caribbean, comprising 25 member states. Enditem Minister: Cyber security attracts investors Participants included ECLAC, the International Telecommunications Union and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Cuffie said the forum was apt because of a recent Mastercard report, Evaluating the Social Cost of Cash, which said the TT economy could grow by 3.5 per cent if locals increase their use of electronic payments by 30 percent in a fouryear period. He said the report said that a greater use of electronic payments is a key driver of economic development and the reduction of indirect costs such as the informal economy. Cuffie revived the idea of TT as the Caribbeans financial hub through the development of the International Financial Centre (IFC), while lamenting little progress over the decade since it was first mooted. He vowed the Government will do what is necessary for the IFC to meet its mandate to be the financial hub of the region, and help diversify the TT economy. However first is a need to address is cyber-security and information security to build confidence in investors and citizens alike. Increasingly, greater attention will have to be paid to the potential of cyber- crime on the financial systems, he said. If anything the recent exposes dubbed the Panama-Papers have taught us, is the levels to which persons will go, to hide behind their manipulation of the financial sector, using shell companies and a myriad number of electronic transactions to cover their tracks. This episode, like the Wiki-leaks case prior, point to the need for a more robust application of technology to boost cyber-security in the financial sector. Countries like Bangladesh, for example, have suffered tremendously at the hands of hackers who, with seeming impunity, have compromised the integrity of the financial sector. Cuffie said the 2016 Global State of Information Security Survey by the auditing firm PWC, unearthed a more disturbing trend in cyber-crime, of cross-border cooperation amongst the perpetrators. He said TTs vulnerability was shown by both the recent threat to school security made over WhatsApp and by the defrauding of the National Gas Company (NGC) of $60 million via the Internet in an unresolved international crime. Are we truly equipped to deal with the modern versions of cyber-crime? he mulled. He said effective policy, regulations and legislation must be in place. Once there is an understanding and acceptance of the exponential increase in the number of electronic transactions occurring daily, and the speed with which cash is being rendered obsolete by many institutions, then the need for increased protection from cyber-crime becomes a fait accompli, said Cuffie. Schoolboy found hanging According to reports, Aaron Cumberbatch was questioned by his mother about why he did not to attend school at St Georges College, where he was a Form Four student. Told that he had not completed the assignment, Lakshmi Cumberbatch insisted that her son still go to school. However, at about 4 pm on Wednesday, Joshua Cumberbatch a younger brother and his mother Lakshmi went in search of Aaron who had gone missing and found him hanging from an electrical cord in the bathroom. A frantic Lakshmi with the assistance of Joshua took down Aaron from the rafter of the bathroom and alerted the Maloney police. District Medical Officer Dr Sudir Iswaravaka visited the scene and ordered the body removed to the Forensic Science Centre. Yesterday, a relative who did not wish to identify himself said that as far as he was aware, Aarons mother wanted to find out on Wednesday why he was not attending school and Aaron replied that her had not completed an assignment. The relative said that Aaron was a model student and a good person and he was still in a state of disbelief that the teen would end his life. According to the relative, Aaron loved the outdoors and would often go surfing whenever he had the opportunity. He also revealed that Aaron loved rugby and hoped to one day make it to the National team. Yesterday, Aarons mother and father were at the Forensic Science Centre awaiting the autopsy results on his death. While they awaited the outcome they were interviewed by officers of the Maloney Police Station. Also, yesterday at St Georges college, classmates of the teen were deeply saddened on being told the news of his death. It is understood that counsellors from the Education Ministrys Student Support Services department have been speaking to the emotionally affected classmates. Teachers at the school described Cumberbatch as a normal student who did not display any sign of depression. Newsday understands that the Ministry has been informed of the students death and further counselling will be offered to students and teachers in the coming days. Accused said victim was an idol worshipper This was the testimony of State witness Brian Worrel who has been granted immunity from prosecution and is being kept in protective custody. He testified in the San Fernando High Courts, that Roger Greene who is on trial for Dr Maharajs murder, told him that Maharaj was an idol worshipper and that, God dont like that. Worrel further testified that Greene had told him there was a safe in Maharajs house which contained $150,000. He told the court that he had dropped off Greene in his car close to Maharajs home on January 11, 2006. Maharaj, 63, was tied up and beaten to death inside his house at the corner of Chacon and Penitence Streets. His common- law wife Sumatee Enal, on the day, left to go to the gym at about 6.33 am. Instead of immediately returning home, she went to the Plaza store on High Street, then telephoned Maharaj at about 1.30 pm. She went to the house which is a short distance from High Street where she saw him lying dead on the floor. A safe in the house was found opened and jewelry and money were missing. Enal is currently in India, the 12-member jury and Justice Hayden St Clair Douglas has heard and her evidence, which she gave in the Magistrates Court (during the preliminary inquiry) has been read to the jury and admitted into evidence. Yesterday, Senior State attorney Trevor Jones led evidence from Worrel, who said he and 38-year-old Greene both lived in Pleasantville. Worrel said that he dropped off Greene at the corner of Chacon and Penitence Streets. Greene, Worrel added, had a parcel in his hand. At 6 pm on January 11, 2006, Worrel drove down Chacon Street and saw people gathered outside a house. An ambulance was parked nearby. Greene then called out to him and when he picked up the accused and they were proceeding along Agnes Street, Vistabella in his (Greene) car, he asked him something. Jones asked Worrel what he had asked Greene and he replied, I said, like the job you went on, the man dead? Like you kill the man. Worrel told the judge and jury from the witness box, that Greene told him the man was an idol worshipper, a Hare Krishna worshipper and that he didnt serve God. Worrel said Greene became annoyed in the car. Roger said the man (Maharaj) was a Hare Krishna worshipper and he mashed down statues and idols. God does not like those things. Roger took out $500 and said he will bless me with another $500. He said the man does worship idols and the man dont want to show him where the safe was. He then told me, I take an ice pick and chook up he feet, Green said from the witness box. Earlier in his testimony, Worrel said that Greene had asked him if he knew what lanate was and he (Worrel) said he did not know. Worrel added, He said it is poison. He said you could take lanate and mix it with chicken to feed dog to poison them. On the night before the murder, Worrel testified, he drove Greene to KFC in La Romaine where the accused purchased a meal. Worrel added that the accused said he was feeling hungry, but the KFC was to feed a dog. The State had earlier in the trial, read into evidence, medical reports that an autopsy on a dead dog which detectives found in the yard at Maharajs home, was performed but the cause of death could not be determined. The trial continues today. Fireman shot in stomach According to reports, Jason Francois of Mottley Trace, Pinto Road, Arima was plying his car for hire along Cazabon Avenue in Trincity at about 8.30 am on Wednesday when he picked up two male passengers who asked to be taken to Trincity Mall. En route to the mall, one of the men announced a hold up prompting Francois to react by driving his vehicle towards Cane Farm Road where he crashed it into a wall. One of the men pulled out a gun and shot Francois in the stomach before fleeing the scene, empty handed. The fireman was taken to the Arima hospital where he was treated and transferred to the EW MSC in serious condition. A report was made to the Arima police and a search was mounted for the two suspects. Kamla sues Warner over Sunshine article Persad-Bissessars attorneys Anand Ramlogan SC, Kent Samlal, Jayanti Lutchmedial and Douglas Bayley on Tuesday filed a claim for damages for libel against Warners Sunshine Publishing Company. She is also seeking an injunction restraining the weekly newspaper from publishing the allegations made or similar allegations against her. The allegations made by the Sunshine Newspaper were contained in a letter purportedly sent by US presidential candidate and Democratic Senator Bernard Bernie Sanders to former US Attorney General Eric Holder calling for an investigation. Sanders Deputy Communications Director Josh Miller- Lewis confirmed to Newsday that the letter was a fake. The Opposition Leaders lawsuit also noted that Sanders Chief of Staff Michaleen Earl Crowell wrote to her attorneys acknowledging the purported letter published by Sunshine was not written by Senator Sanders and was not sent by his office. Crowell also wrote that the US Department of Justice had no record of having received such a letter. Crowells correspondence to Persad-Bissessars attorneys is included in her lawsuit filed in the San Fernando Sub-Registry of the High Court. The lawsuit said Warner and its reporter Azad Ali ought to have known they were publicising a matter which was likely to attract maximum public attention. It also said the defendants approach to the pre-action protocol letter and the law in general was flippant, without respect and wholly facetious as demonstrated by an article in the Sunshine published on December 11, 2015, in response to the pre-action letter. It also noted that the story was posted online and on Warners Facebook page and was open to comments by the public aimed at ridiculing the former prime minister in the most reprehensible and horrid ways possible. The Opposition Leaders lawyers said the words contained in the article were defamatory and understood to mean she secretly and illegally received money from former Concacaf president Webb and secretly hid the money. The lawsuit also said the story alleged that Persad-Bissessar was dishonest, corrupt, unfit for public office and as a result her reputation has been seriously harmed and she has suffered considerable hurt, distress and embarrassment. Persad-Bissessars list of demands in her preaction letter called on Warner to publish a similar front page exclusive with equal prominence indicating the said letter is fake and apologise for the outrageous defamatory remarks made; agree not to publish any such further defamatory material and statements; admit liability for defamation of character and agree to allow the High Court of Justice to assess and quantify compensation payable to her; and agree to indemnify her for all legal costs incurred as a result of the defamatory publication Beaten so severely, his skull was shattered The autopsy was carried out yesterday by Dr Valery Alexandrov and the findings were later presented to Logans mother Susan Paul. Newsday understands that Dr Alexandrovs examination also revealed a hole at the back of Logans head which was created by a screw that was affixed to the wood used to inflict the wounds. The length of wood was taken to the Forensic Science Centre by CSI officers yesterday which Dr Alexandrov used to demonstrate to Paul how her son was beaten. The results also indicated that the victim appeared to be running away when he was struck the killer blows. Apart from the shattered skull the only other signs of trauma to Logans body were minor cuts to the face which he sustained when he fell face forward to the ground under the blows. Yesterday, Cyndy Megia, demanded justice for her brothers murder. Dr Alexandrov treated us very well today and he explained everything, he showed us photos of everything and said that we will get a copy of report in three weeks time, we got all the documents required to pursue the funeral. Excessive force was used, he was hit multiple times, we want justice and if he was hit once, why was so much force used? That perpetrator has to go down for life, Megia said. Newsday understands the funeral service for Logan will take place today at 3 pm at the Malabar RC church thence to Allens Funeral Home in Arima for cremation at 5 pm. Logan was killed last Sunday shortly after 4 am following a confrontation with a woman police officer with whom he shared a one year relationship. It is alleged Logan and the woman were at a house party in Peytonville, Arima when they began arguing and the two moved across to an unfinished house where the argument escalated. Police reported that when Logan began to assault the woman, a male relative intervened and used a piece wood to beat Logan at the back of the head. The policewomans relative remains in custody assisting Homicide Officers in their enquiries while she is undergoing counselling. On Monday, relatives of Logan secured the services of attorney Gerald Ramdeen who wrote a letter to the Director of Forensic Science Centre asking that pathologist Dr Easlyn Mc Donald Burris not be allowed to conduct the autopsy. In light of this development, Dr Alexandrov initially refused to conduct the autopsy but changed his mind and performed it yesterday. Protective services: Where we money? President of the Prison Officers Association (POA) Ceron Richards and president of the Fire Services Association (FSA) Leo Ramkissoon chaired the conference at the Fire Services Associations office in Port-of-Spain, where they said a promise was made on payment of 50 percent of back pay owed, in some cases since 2008, by the end of this month. However, this promise may not be met because permission has not been given to the Ministry of Finance to release funds to the Fire, Prison and Police Services. Richards yesterday explained that if Minister of Finance Colm Imbert does not release the funds by today, they will not receive the funds owed to them - from previous wage negotiations - by the end of the month, as previously promised. It is games these people are playing, exclaimed a livid Richards. Our accounts department are sitting and waiting on releases which to us seems more and more likely will not come. Let me say, that we have searched high and low and we engaged the permanent secretary and various officials in the Finance Ministry to find out whether the minister had released the funds, and there was no answer, Ramkisoon chimed in. He added that despite several attempts, the could not reach the Finance Minister. Richards added that the process is a simple but important one to have the necessary funds transferred to the coffers of the protectives services so that the officers can be paid. This brings a level of disenchantment and demotivation within the protective services, said Ramkissoon. During the meeting Richards accused Imbert of hoodwinking the protective services and by extension the nation. Questioned later yesterday, Minister Stuart Young said, Today is June 2. The Minister of Finance (Colm Imbert) Im sure will address that, long before June 30. He is aware of the deadline and I know the Ministry of Finance has been working towards keeping that commitment. Howai on ANSA McAl board He will serve for one year in the first instance. Howai said it was an honour to serve on a board as prestigious as ANSA McAL, adding that the group has big plans for the future. I am glad to be able to contribute to whatever the plans that they have and to contribute to the continuing growth of the group as we go forward both in asset base and profitability, he said. The former minister said he had known the group for quite a long time, noting that we were bankers to the group when I was at First Citizens and I am certainly offered the opportunity to develop the relationship in a different way now. I have known Norman (A Norman Sabga, Group Chairman and Chief Executive of the ANSA McAL Group) for quite a number of years and he asked me if I would come on board and I said by all means I would be prepared to assist the group as we deal with the growth prospects as we look forward to the future. He said there were a lot of growth prospects for ANSA McAL which was very forward thinking. He said despite the current recession he thought there were still opportunities for growth. I think some of it may not be organic, some of it might be by way of acquisitions. There are different strategies for achieving growth and I think that they would pursue growth. What I like about the group too is that it has very strong brand names wherever they operate and at the end of the day people will always look for quality. That will continue, I think, the opportunities for growth for them in an organic way but I think the growth also has to come from acquisitions. Also elected as a director was the former managing director of Republic Bank, David Dulal- Whiteway, who retired from the bank in February, upon reaching the banks mandatory retirement age. Dulal-Whiteway, who declined requests for interviews yesterday, retired after a 25- year career at Republic. He will also serve for one year initially. People contribute to flood problem So said chief executive officer (CEO) of the Office of Disaster Preparedness (ODPM) Dr Stephen Ramroop who called on citizens to be each others keeper simply by not littering. During Wednesdays heavy rains, Ramroop said street and flash floods were caused by the huge buildup of garbage dumped by people in waterways, drains and on the sides of the roadways. There was a lot of garbage, it is just too much and it is a really big problem. We have been trying to get the message across to the public with education programmes that are going to continue, he said. Ramroop said even after several appeals to the public because of their indiscriminate dumping of garbage, there has been little or no change in their behaviour. The CEO said there were no reported injuries, although some roofs were blown off in Cocorite and Sangre Grande. Trees were blown down in Sangre Grande, Diego Martin and along the south bound lane in Freeport. There were also reports of street and flash flooding in Sangre Grande and along the East/West Corridor. Chief meteorologist at the Meteorological Office Shakeer Baig, said the heavy rains and strong winds experienced on Wednesday was brought on with the passage of a trough, a feature which he said TT could get anytime. Its a perturbation in the windfield, so we call it a trough of low pressure. In addition to that, we had very strong winds in the lower levels of the atmosphere and both the passage of the trough of low pressure, with the combination of very strong winds in the lower level, got some support from the mid and upper levels of the atmosphere. We had a nice mix of atmospheric features coming in place to produce the development of some thunder showers and because of the strong winds that we had in the atmosphere, we got some strong down drafts, he said. Baig added that wherever heavy and thunder showers occur, there is very gusty winds which could contribute to trees being felled and roofs blown off. Emperor Valley would make same call There are several interpretations of the behaviour displayed by Harambe and while it is known that these animals are gentle giants, the sheer strength of a 400 pound animal versus a 50-60 pound child does not give room for indecision. President of the Zoological Society of Trinidad and Tobago, Gupte Lutchmedial told Newsday: The situation was chaotic and while it appears that Harambe was taking the child away from the noise and also being possessive of a new toy, this situation could have easily been a tragic one for the fouryear old. He added, It was a very difficult call to make considering the endangered nature of the gorilla, but there was no other choice under the circumstances as the life of an innocent child was on the line. Giving a first-hand recall of the very enclosure where the incident took place, Nirmal Biptah who is the curator at the Emperor Valley Zoo stated that the facility is safe and done according to international standards. He added that it would take the child a fair bit of time to have climbed over a fence, walk over a planter and then fall into the moat. The Emperor Valley Zoo has had to deal with an escape incident involving its chimpanzee Sudi in the recent past, but since she was calm, mainly inquisitive about her surroundings and there were few persons around, she was tranquillized and safely returned to her enclosure. However, the Zoos management stressed that they were prepared to put her down if at any time there was a danger to human life. Young: TT, Venezuela repatriation not linked Responding to this question during the post-Cabinet news conference at the Office of the Prime Minister in St Clair, Minister in the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs Stuart Young said, There is no correlation between the two. Young explained that upon his return from security talks in Venezuela on Monday, National Security Minister Edmund Dillon said, there is is a judicial and due process which must take place in Venezuela. Young stated, We have asked them (Venezuelan government) to move as expeditiously as possible with their due process and their judicial system to deal with our nationals of TT which are detained in Venezuela. The Minister continued, We have told the Venezuelan government that we are prepared to repatriate their nationals who are held in our detention centre, which is really an immigration issue. We are ready to do that. He also said Dillon held successful talks with his Venezuelan counterparts on security matters of mutual interest to both countries, Trade and Industry Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon held successful talks with her Venezuelan counterparts on TT manufactured goods going to the South American nation and a Venezuelan energy delegation was in TT this week, seeking to sign further agreements which could see natural gas from the Dragon Field in Venezuela coming to TT. Regarding concerns about an increase in the influx of Venezuelan citizens coming into this country through Cedros, Young said Government has its eye on the ball on this issue. Kamla: AG wrong on assent In a statement, she was sharply critical of Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi for saying President Anthony Carmonas assent to the Bill meant he personally supported its provisions. Persad-Bissessar alleged the AG does not understand basic principles of constitutional law to state the Presidents nod meant he thought it was good law. Presidential assent simpliciter does not mean that the President thought the Bill presented to him for assent is good law, argued Persad-Bissessar. The fact is that whether it is good law or bad law in his thoughts, the President has no choice but to assent to same unless he is advised by Cabinet or a minister authorised by Cabinet to withhold assent. She said the Constitution (Section 61(2) says the exercise of presidential functions to assent or withhold assent to a Bill has nothing to do with whether the President thinks the Bill is good or bad law, but rather pertains to His Excellency following the advice of the Cabinet or line minister as also stated by the Constitution (Section 80). Pe r sad-Bi s s e s s ar quoted a Newsday story in which former chief justice Michael de la Bastide correctly said that Section 61(2) must be read together with Section 80. Therefore, whilst on the face of it Section 61 (2) states a President may withhold assent, this is subject to other provisions of the Constitution that make it plain that the President, generally, acts on the advice of Cabinet. She said de la Bastide said that the drafters of Section 61(2) may have foreseen a situation where the Cabinet advises the President to withhold assent for whatever reason. Persad-Bissessar said that twice in two months the AGs views were allegedly erroneous and had collided with those of de la Bastide, when the AG had said citizens have no right to privacy. Of course, this was rightfully disputed not only by the former chief justice de la Bastide but also by the dean, Faculty of Law, Professor Rose-Marie Belle Antoine. I much prefer to rely upon the views of the distinguished former chief justice and professor. De la Bastide had opined that the Constitutions call for respect for a persons private and family life equates to a right of privacy. Govt not worried about SSA challenge Minister in the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs Stuart Young told reporters yesterday at the post Cabinet news conference at the Office of the Prime Minister in St Clair, Port-of- Spain, This Government is not concerned about any attempts to frustrate the legislation by the Opposition. If they want to go to court, they are free to go to court. Declaring this is a matter which the court will ultimately decide, Young said attorney Gerald Ramdeen (who signalled the Oppositions intent to challenge the legislation once it is proclaimed) is wrong to claim that Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi never advanced legal arguments as to why the SSA Bill did not require a special majority for passage. The Bill was passed in the House of Representatives and the Senate on April 15 and May 10, respectively, with a simple majority. President Anthony Carmona assented to the Bill on Tuesday and it is now awaiting proclamation Young said Al-Rawi advanced arguments in both the House and the Senate as to why the amendments to the SSA Act were five clauses and that all it was, was broadening of the definition of serious crimes. This wide pool includes murder, blackmail, treason and firearm offences. On this basis, Young maintained, Our position is that does not require any special majority for passage. He observed that a lot of confusion was created by the Opposition with respect to this Bill. He added, We are glad that it has been assented to now as it had to be assented. It was our position. The minister said Government will now move towards proclamation because this plays a very important part in the role of fighting crime. As promised, Trump releases a list of names he will consider nominating for the Supreme Court (Trump.news) GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump said following the sudden death of constitutional originalist Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia that he would compile and announce a list of names of people he would consider nominating to replace him, and he has delivered on that promise. As reported by The Associated Press, the list of potential nominees include: Steven Colloton of Iowa, Allison Eid of Colorado, and Raymond Gruender of Missouri. Also on the list are: Thomas Hardiman of Pennsylvania, Raymond Kethledge of Michigan, Joan Larsen of Michigan, Thomas Lee of Utah, William Pryor of Alabama, David Stras of Minnesota, Diane Sykes of Wisconsin and Don Willett of Texas. The announcement comes as Trump works to heal divisions and bring together a fractious GOP following a rocky, testy nomination process in which he bested 16 other candidates to become the presumptive party nominee. Trump first said in March that he planned to release the list of five to ten judges in an effort to ease concerns about his conservative credentials, which had come under attack in the heated Republican primary, the AP noted. I am going to give a list of either five or ten judges that I will pick, 100 percent pick, that I will put in for nomination. Because some of the people that are against me say: We dont know if hes going to pick the right judge. Supposing he picks a liberal judge or supposing he picks a pro-choice judge,' Trump said at an event in Palm Beach, Florida. He said his eventual list would include judges that everybody respects, likes, and totally admires, who are great conservative judges, great intellects, the people that you want. Trump had also said he would like to appoint judges in the mold of an originalist as Scalia, who died in February. Originalist justices tend to rule on cases based on the founding fathers original intent when they wrote the Constitution. In the statement, he described Scalia as a remarkable person and a brilliant Supreme Court Justice. His career was defined by his reverence for the Constitution and his legacy of protecting Americans most cherished freedoms, he added. He was a justice who did not believe in legislating from the bench and he is a person whom I held in the highest regard and will always greatly respect his intelligence and conviction to uphold the Constitution of our country. In a statement, Trump said the list is representative of the kind of constitutional principles I value and said that, as president, he would use it as a guide to nominate our next United States Supreme Court Justices, the AP noted. His campaign said that his list was compiled first and foremost, based on constitutional principles, with input from highly respected conservatives and Republican Party leadership. Many in the Republican rank-and-file as well as the governing establishment have regularly noted that the next president may have the opportunity to fill as many as three Supreme Court vacancies as aging jurists retire. They say a Clinton presidency would be disastrous because she is likely to nominate candidates who are just as activist and liberal as those Obama has named. So Trumps early release of nominees is seen as a way of calming fears that he might do the same. Political watchers say the next few years could see justices nominated and appointed that would shape the high court for a least a generation. Advocates for gun rights, free speech, states rights, and privacy all have said a liberal Supreme Court would allow those rights, and others, to be eroded, while the power of the federal government, via the bureaucracy, would be enhanced. Source: AssociatedPress.org Submit a correction >> Audio Shows Katie Couric Documentary Deceptively Edited Interview with Pro-Gun Activists The makers of a new Katie Couric documentary on gun violence deceptively edited an interview between Couric and a group of gun rights activists in an apparent attempt to embarrass the activists, an audio recording of the full interview shows. (Article by Stephen Gutowski, republished from //freebeacon.com/issues/audio-shows-katie-couric-gun-documentary-deceptively-edited-interview-pro-gun-activists/) At the 21:48 mark of Under the Gun a scene of Katie Couric interviewing members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun rights organization, is shown. Couric can be heard in the interview asking activists from the group, If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorists from purchasing a gun? The documentary then shows the activists sitting silently for nine awkward seconds, unable to provide an answer. It then cuts to the next scene. The moment can be watched here: However, raw audio of the interview between Katie Couric and the activists provided to theWashington Free Beacon shows the scene was deceptively edited. Instead of silence, Courics question is met immediately with answers from the activists. A back and forth between a number of the leagues members and Couric over the issue of background checks proceeds for more than four minutes after the original question is asked. Under the Gun bills itself as a documentary that examines the events and people who have kept the gun debate fierce and the progress slow, even as gun deaths and mass shootings continue to increase. It follows a number of gun violence victims and those who have lost family members to gun violence as they advocate for stricter gun control laws. The 1 hour and 45 minute film was executive produced and narrated by Katie Couric. Under the Gun has been labeled dishonest politicking in the guise of media coverage, loose with the facts, and a full-length assault on guns and the Second Amendment by those in the gun community since its debut on May 15. The Virginia Citizens Defense League labeled the deceptively edited segment featured in the film unbelievable and extremely unprofessional. Philip Van Cleave, the organizations president, said the editing was done deliberately to make it appear that league members didnt have a response to Courics question. Katie Couric asked a key question during an interview of some members of our organization, he said. She then intentionally removed their answers and spliced in nine seconds of some prior video of our members sitting quietly and not responding. Viewers are left with the misunderstanding that the members had no answer to her question. Nora Ryan, the chief of staff for EPIX, the cable channel that is airing the documentary, told theFree Beacon in an email, Under the Gun is a critically-acclaimed documentary that looks at the polarizing and politicized issue of gun violence, a subject that elicits strong reactions from people on both sides. EPIX stands behind Katie Couric, director Stephanie Soechtig, and their creative and editorial judgment. We encourage people to watch the film and decide for themselves. Requests for comment from Couric and the films director, Stephanie Soechtig, have not been returned, though they did speak to The Washington Post. UPDATE 2:25 P.M.: This post has been updated with comment from a spokesperson for EPIX. UPDATE 5:09 P.M.: The Washington Posts Erik Wemple tweeted a statement from Under the Guns director Stephanie Soechtig. UPDATE 5:36 P.M.: The Washington Posts Erik Wemple also tweeted a statement from Katie Couric. Read more at: //freebeacon.com/issues/audio-shows-katie-couric-gun-documentary-deceptively-edited-interview-pro-gun-activists/ Submit a correction >> Congress looking at strengthening ties with Taiwan to counter expansionist China (NationalSecurity.news) By law, the U.S. is required to go to war to defend Taiwan if it is ever invaded the most likely candidate is China, which still considers the island democracy just a renegade province. Its an alliance that should conjure up visions of a close working relationship between the Pentagon and Taipei. But in reality, the Washington Times reports, Washington engages in a relationship that is almost aloof from Taiwan so as not to offend Beijing, which has refused to recognize the Republic of China (which Taiwan is officially known as) and continues to harbor notions about forcibly absorbing the island, which is about 100 miles away, at some point in the future. While in the U.S., American leaders and policymakers are mostly standoffish, discouraging Taiwanese military personnel from even wearing their uniforms. But Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., is trying to life that dress code restriction with an amendment to the 2017 defense budget bill that will be debated on the Senate floor this month. In fact, debating the Coats amendment is one of several steps that Congress is taking to force President Obama and future administration to more openly embrace Taiwan and bolster military-to-military relationships as China becomes more aggressive and assertive in the region by trying to dominate the South China Sea, a waterway in which trillions of dollars worth of trade travels annually. As the Times noted further: Both the House and Senate defense bills contain language that would elevate Taiwan from a second-class to a first-class ally. The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act is the law that requires the U.S. to come to Taiwans defense with arms and services, which analysts interpret as a requirement to fight China. Our defense policies with respect to Taiwan are over 37 years old, Claude Chafin, communications director for the House Armed Services Committee, told the paper. There have been significant developments in the Asia-Pacific landscape since the Taiwan Relations Act passed in 1979. The time is ripe to re-look at those policies, to encourage greater security cooperation and engagement with Taiwans military in areas of mutual security interest, and to continue to meet our commitment to enabling Taiwan maintains a sufficient self-defense capability. Longtime China watcher and expert Richard Fisher, an analyst at the nonprofit International Assessment and Strategy Center, said the law is clear on requiring the United States to arm Taiwan. But, he said, it does not mention military-to-military contacts that would bolster the alliance greatly. Congress is opening new doors by stipulating that Taiwan-U.S. military contacts cover specific areas of concern and allow Taiwan forces to participate in actual exercises with U.S. forces, Mr. Fisher said. It is one thing to sell weapons to Taiwan, but it is just as important that the U.S. transfer knowledge and methods to enable victory with those weapons. This element has been missing in U.S.-Taiwan military relations. The Senate Armed Services Committees legislation would require Defense Secretary Ash Carter to enhance relations between senior U.S. military officers and their counterparts in Taiwan. The proposed law spells out the specific topics: threat analysis, military doctrine, force planning, logistical support, intelligence collection, operational tactics and disaster relief. Such exercises, briefings and meetings are to be carried out in both countries, the Times noted. A second measure a sense of the Senate, which is nonbinding urges the White House to allow Taiwanese pilots participate in advance aerial combat training with the U.S. Air Force. If approved by the president, this would constitute the most substantive congressionally mandated enhancement to the U.S.-Taiwan relationship since the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, said Fisher. Armed services committee chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has said he wants to strengthen U.S.-Taiwan military ties and that he planned to visit the islands new president, Tsai Ing-wen, this month. More: NationalSecurity.news is part of the USA Features Media network. Check out ALL our daily headlines here. Submit a correction >> Violence ERUPTS in California as anti-Trump mob attacks supporters: throwing both eggs and punches Donald Trump supporters leaving the presidential candidates rally in San Jose were pounced by protesters, some of whom threw punches and eggs. Though no injuries were reported, a dozen or more people were hit and car windows were broken, and local media reported several people were seen with bloody wounds. At least one woman was pelted with an egg. The clash between several hundred demonstrators and Trump supporters occurred while police dressed in riot gear formed lines to try to keep the two sides apart. Protesters jumped on cars and threw traffic cones and water bottles at police. Others snatched hats with Trumps campaign slogan Make America Great Again from his supporters and set the items on fire, begging the question whether the protesters dont want America to be great again. Four people were taken into custody, according to the AP, but police had not released final numbers as of late Thursday night. Police stood their ground at first but after about 90 minutes moved into the remaining crowd to break it up and make arrests. The crowd, which numbered more than 300 just after the rally, thinned significantly as the night went on, but those that remained near the San Jose Convention Center were rowdy and angry. In the hours leading up to Trumps speech, protesters and Trump supporters verbally sparred in the street outside the San Jose convention center. But while heated, those exchanges remained relatively civil. As protesters ranks swelled from a few dozen to several hundred, they became increasingly hostile, jeering Trump supporters trickling into the event behind a wall of police. But it wasnt until supporters began leaving the rally that things turned ugly. Trump backers, safe behind the police, tossed taunts back at the raucous protesters, unaware that the line of officers ended only a few yards away leaving them directly exposed. Among the supporters taunting the protesters was the woman who would eventually be cornered by the angry mob. Pinned against the doors of the Marriott hotel next to the convention center, she became the focal point of the crowds anger. Protesters hurled obscenities, spit on her, and ultimately began egging her. Although hotel staff eventually rescued her, police never stepped in a decision that clearly emboldened protesters, who took to the streets, marching, burning flags, and chanting Fuck Trump! Within minutes of the rallys end, the bulk of the crowd spilled into the streets of downtown San Jose, mixing in with protesters and creating a volatile situation. Fights between Trump supporters and protesters began to break out almost immediately. In at least two instances Trump supporters engaged with protesters, chanting Donald Trump and walking directly into the thickest, angriest portions of the protests. But things quickly spiraled, and rallygoers simply trying to get back to their cars were chased down and beaten often at the feet of San Jose Police, who stood by motionless. Sources: //www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/anti-trump-protesters-attacked-all-of-us-in-san-jose/485444/ //www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article81504772.html //www.voanews.com/content/punches-fly-outside-trump-rally-in-california/3360081.html Submit a correction >> First Meeting of Governing Council of National Skill Development Mission held under Chairmanship of Hon'ble Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi New Delhi, Fri, 03 Jun 2016 NI Wire The first meeting of the Governing Council of the National Skill Development Mission (NSDM) was held under the Chairmanship of Hon'ble Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi on 2 June 2016. In his remarks at the meeting, the Prime Minister stressed on the need for proper skill mapping and identification of the future requirements for skills, so that school-children and parents are well aware of the emerging trends in the job market. Further, he said a similar exercise should also be done to map the skilled manpower requirements at the global level, so that India can meet the global requirement of skilled workforce. The Prime Minister also emphasized the importance of imbibing safety norms and soft skills as integral parts of skill development. The meeting was attended by Chief Ministers of Maharashtra, Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir; Shri Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Minister of State (Independent Charge) Skill Development and Entrepreneurship; Smt Smriti Zubin Irani, Minister of Human Resource Development; Shri Kalraj Mishra, Minister of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Communication and Information Technology. Senior bureaucrats, and corporate leaders, including, Shri Cyrus P. Mistry, Chairman, Tata Group; Shri Sachin Bansal, Founder and CEO Flipkart' and Shri Manish Sabharwal, Chairman and Founder, Team Lease Services also participated in the Governing Council meeting. Some of the major decisions taken at the meeting included the following: Skill training to be scaled up to cover at least 1.5 crore people during 2016-2017. The Central Board for Skills Certification to be set up by September 2016 to infuse quality into India's skill development ecosystem. Unutilized infrastructure in existing engineering colleges to be leveraged for skill training courses. Profit making Public Sector Units (PSUs) will be mandated to scale up apprenticeships, upto 10% of total manpower, over the course of this year. Private corporations are also expected to follow suit. 500 Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendras, which will provide skill training free of cost to be opened this year, to impart training to India's aspiring youth. 50 Overseas Employment Skill Training Centres to be opened this year, in migratory pockets of the country. 500 Rozgar Utsavs will be held across Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs), Central Training Institutes, PMKVY training centres, toolrooms etc., to make skill training aspirational amongst youth. A national skills competition, known as India Skills' will be launched during 2016-2017, to recognize the skills of India's youth. This will be an annual event. This year, a national level Convocation will be held for candidates who successfully complete ITI courses, to recognize their success. Over the next one year, the capacity of ITIs to be further enhanced from 18.5 lakhs to 25 lakhs and over 5000 new ITIs will be created. Traditional skills will be recognized, nurtured and promoted through informal apprenticeships, under various programmes. Source: PIB Yes, you can transfer your domain to any registrar or hosting company once you have purchased it. Since domain transfers are a manual process, it can take up to 5 days to transfer the domain. Domains purchased with payment plans are not eligible to transfer until all payments have been made. Please remember that our 30-day money back guarantee is void once a domain has been transferred. For transfer instructions to GoDaddy, please click here. I previously wrote an article about deaths per TWH by energy source, which looked at annual deaths by energy source. This had some cumulative effects worked in as air pollution accumulates and then people have increasing health problems and then die. Air pollution from fossil fuels that were used decades ago can be part of the mix that finally kill people in any particular year. There has also been much concern about how many future deaths there will be from Chernobyl. This will be my first pass at determining what a lifetime impact on deaths is for all energy sources. This will handle deaths from Chernobyl because it will get at expected future deaths. There are several complications to this. Someone could get sick from air pollution or Chernobyl but then they might get killed in a car accident, from some other disease or they die from other causes. I originally wrote the deaths by TWH article and used the ExternE the european study of energy impacts. The ExternE numbers which were for Europe and would underestimate deaths for the world. However, I applied them to the world. I calculated world and China numbers for coal using World Health numbers. I estimated 1 million air pollution deaths from coal for the world and about 800,000 deaths from coal for China. Taking the TWH generation numbers for the World and for China (for the coal.) ENERGY SOURCE DEATHS FATAL/TWH TWH NOTES ----------------- --------- --------- ------- ---------------------------------- Coal world avg. 1,000,000 161.00 6,500 (26% world energy, 50% of elec.) Coal China 278.00 Utilizing heavily-manual practices Coal USA 15.00 Mostly open-pit & u/g machine Oil 342,000 36.00 9,500 (36% of world energy) Natural Gas 23,000 4.00 5,750 (21% of world energy) Biofuel/Biomass 12.00 Peat 12.00 Solar (rooftop) 6 0.44 12 (less than 0.1% of world energy) Wind 22 0.15 150 (less than 1% of world energy) Hydro 290 0.10 2,897 (EU deaths, 2.2% of world energy) Hydro + Banqiao) 3,500 1.40 2,500 (~2500 TWh/yr + 171,000 Banqiao dead) Nuclear 104 0.04 2,600 (5.9% of world energy) ----------------- --------- --------- ------- ------------------------------------- World 1,390,000 55.7 25,000 Terawatt-hours Unaccounted for 83,500 55.69 1,500 TWh = 6.00% fatalities prorated China will use about 3.45 billion tons of coal this year. Almost double what they used in 2005. There are no good numbers for solar and wind. The are not well tracked. Occupational deaths from middle east and Russian oil are easy to find publicly. I have also looked at the occupational deaths (coal mining numbers from China getting relatively better) Minimum life shortening cutoff A concern about the original analysis is about the fact that there are predictions that many more will die from Chernobyl. The credible studies indicate that very few people have died so far (50-200 people). Here we will consider future death anticipation in the comparison. Where we look at lifetime energy risks by source and total expected deaths. With air pollution we are looking at a range from 80 years * 2 million (with 14 year avg life reduction) for 160 million deaths is one calculation. 1 billion lives shortened (World health estimate of 2-year life expectancy reduction. then spread the 14 year avg life reduction by 1/7th to get 2-years. So that would mean about 1 billion lives shortened by 2 years or more. I will estimate 200 million lives shortened from air pollution (half dieing from other causes). I will allocate one third to coal and 50% to oil (including transportation cars and trucks and 10% for natural gas and biomass). I propose a cutoff of 2 years of life-shortening, which equates to being 15% overweight. If we were playing the maximum Chernobyl numbers, then any statistical shortening by days then has the same issue for pilots and stewardesses who lose about 30-60 days from increased lifetime exposure to radiation. I will look at half of the lifetime being in the past and half being a projection into the future (40 years historical and 40 years into the future). I will assume that the current energy generation is the average over the 80 years. Lifetime energy deaths ENERGY SOURCE DEATHS FATAL/TWH TWH NOTES ----------------- --------- --------- ------- ------------------------------------ Coal world 67,000,000 129 520,000 (26% world energy, 50% of elec.) Coal USA/Europe About ten times safer Oil 101,000,000 133 720,000 (36% of world energy) Natural Gas 6,000,000 13 460,000 (21% of world energy) Biofuel/Biomass 12.00 Peat 12.00 Solar (rooftop) 480 0.44 960 (less than 0.1% of world energy) Wind 1,760 0.15 12,000 (less than 1% of world energy) Hydro + Banqiao) 195,000 0.84 232,000 (~2500 TWh/yr + 171,000 Banqiao dead) Nuclear 15,000 0.07 208,000 (5.9% of world energy) ----------------- --------- --------- ------- ------------------------------------- World 180.2 million 60 2,000,000 Terawatt-hours Unaccounted 10.8 million 60 120,000 TWh = 6.00% fatalities prorated There will be a larger ramp up of solar, wind and nuclear power. There will be more natural gas usage and there will be some decrease in oil and coal usage. There will be reduction of indoor fuel usage. However, there would be too many scenarios to analyze and a lot more assumptions to make. There could also be advances in medicine which reduce the number of deaths from cancer and heart disease. Health Risk Est. life expectancy lost Smoking 20 cigs a day 6 years Overweight (15%) 2 years Alcohol (US Ave) 1 year All Accidents 207 days All Natural Hazards 7 days Occupational dose (300 mrem/yr) 15 days Occupational dose (1 rem/yr) 51 days You can also use the same approach to looking at risks on the job: Industry type Est. life expectancy lost All Industries 60 days Agriculture 320 days Construction 227 days Mining and quarrying 167 days Manufacturing 40 days Occupational dose (300 mrem/yr) 15 days Occupational dose (1 rem/yr) 51 days The American nuclear society has an online radiation dose calculator. Top 20 causes of deaths Rank Cause Total deaths (in thousands) % of total 1. Ischaemic heart disease 7,208 12.6% 2. Cerebrovascular disease 5,509 9.7 3. Lower respiratory infections 3,884 6.8 4. HIV/AIDS 2,777 4.9 5. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease 2,748 4.8 6. Diarrheal diseases 1,798 3.2 7. Tuberculosis 1,566 2.7 8. Malaria 1,272 2.2 9. Cancer of trachea/bronchus/lung 1,243 2.2 10. Road traffic accidents 1,192 2.1% 11. Childhood Diseases 1,124 2.0 12. Other unintentional injuries 923 1.6 13. Hypertensive heart disease 911 1.6 14. Self-inflicted 873 1.5 15. Stomach cancer 850 1.5 16. Cirrhosis of the liver 786 1.4 17. Nephritis/nephrosis 677 1.2 18. Colon/rectum cancer 622 1.1 19. Liver cancer 618 1.1 20. Measles 611 1.1 (World health organization 2003 Health report) I have not tried to include any oil war related deaths. World Health Organization has several studies on air pollution (indoor and outdoor) which aggregate studies of city and rural impacts. IEA has a study with different numbers and assumptions. Coal waste impacts go beyond particulate air pollution, however, the particulate studies are the most conclusive. There have been studies that show a daily fluctuation in emergency room visits with increases in smog and particulates. Actual deaths are worse than I indicated. I did not fully include indoor air pollution and did not include deaths beyond particulates because the causality is not as solid. Indoor air pollution is for heating and cooking and not for electricity. However, those are huge numbers 1.9 million per year and produce very little heat in TWH thermal. The 1.9 million deaths per year and divided between coal and biomass. Coal and biomass deaths per TWH would skyrocket if the indoor air pollution effects were included because so little power is made and so many deaths are produced. Wikipedia on indoor air pollution in developing nations. Luong Van Inh is among a neglected group of Asians threatened by an environmental hazard rarely considered: indoor air pollution. Caused by burning wood, coal or other cheap fuels in kitchens, it kills about 1.5 (to 2.0) million people worldwide each year. World Health Organization on indoor air pollution Uranium mining deaths were mainly for uranium mined for nuclear bombs. Uranium mining was corrected by the time commercial reactors were going (starting mainly from 1970 onwards). US Occupational fatalities hint at the deaths in the oil industry for the world. About one hundred per year. Extrapolating to world oil production would mean about 2000 deaths per year from straight immediate worker deaths from accidents. Historical Hydro dam deaths Impacts of Atmospheric Brown Clouds on Human Health A presentation on air pollution deaths in rural China Air Pollution, Infant Mortality, and the Environmental Regulations in China, Oct 2010 (57 pages) I used the higher estimate of 9000 future deaths for Chernobyl, but actually believe a far lower number is the case. World Health Organization Chernobyl impact study from 2006 (167 pages) The report uses empirical studies. The other method would be to use deaths from Hiroshima and Nagasaki where radiation doses were known and use those to project deaths for people effected by Chernobyl. If the method of comparing expected deaths at Chernobyl used the expectation based on what was experienced at Hiroshima and Nagasaki then the number of expected deaths would be far lower than the WHO report. The World Health Organization 2006 study has an estimate of 9000 possible future deaths from Chernobyl. About 47 to 200 people are believed to have died from Chernobyl up to 2011. Understanding how civil nuclear technology is the safe green solution, Oxford Physics Oxford Physics Estimate using the study of survivors of the atomic bombs based on radiation exposure as they were tracked for many decades 28(acute)+3(thyroid)+c.78(solid cancers)+c.3(leukaemia). Crude but unbiased estimate. Anyway less than 200 deaths. Radiation is like other hazards life has defenses Low-dose repair time is on the scale of a day or so Doses below threshold (100mSv) cause no damage. Above threshold, permanent damage (scar tissue) results. Such scar tissue may remain benign, or later become malignant, like other scars In Taiwan, there was an incident where radioactive steel rebar was used in a building and people lived with the radiation for many years. An extraordinary incident occurred 20 years ago in Taiwan. Recycled steel, accidentally contaminated with cobalt-60 (half-life: 5.3 y), was formed into construction steel for more than 180 buildings, which 10,000 persons occupied for 9 to 20 years. They unknowingly received radiation doses that averaged 0.4 Sv a collective dose of 4,000 person-Sv. Based on the observed seven cancer deaths, the cancer mortality rate for this population was assessed to be 3.5 per 100,000 person-years. Three children were born with congenital heart malformations, indicating a prevalence rate of 1.5 cases per 1,000 children under age 19. The average spontaneous cancer death rate in the general population of Taiwan over these 20 years is 116 persons per 100,000 person-years. Based upon partial official statistics and hospital experience, the prevalence rate of congenital malformation is 23 cases per 1,000 children. Assuming the age and income distributions of these persons are the same as for the general population, it appears that significant beneficial health effects may be associated with this chronic radiation exposure. The estimated radiation doses to people in Ukraine 0.02 Sv and Belarus was 0.03Sv. This is 13-20 times less than what the people in Taiwan experienced. Plutonium in perspective was covered earlier here as well. Basically dirty bombs will not actually be that dangerous. I had suggestions for lowering the deaths per TWH. There was a World Bank 2007 study of the economic cost of air pollution on China (151 pages) According to conservative estimates, the economic burden of premature mortality and morbidity associated with air pollution was 157.3 billion yuan in 2003, or 1.16 percent of GDP. This assumes that premature deaths are valued using the present value of per capita GDP over the remainder of the individuals lifetime. If a premature death is valued using a value of a statistical life of 1 million yuan, reflecting peoples willingness to pay to avoid mortality risks, the damages associated with air pollution are 3.8 percent of GDP. These findings differ in two important ways from previous studies of the burden of outdoor air pollution in China. First, they are based on Chinese exposure-response functions, as well as on the international literature; and second, they are computed for individual cities and provinces. Previous estimates by WHO (Cohen et al. 2004) were based on the assumption that increases in PM beyond 100 micrograms/m3 of PM10 caused no additional health damage.( In the base case considered by WHO relative risk does not increase beyond 50 micrograms/m3 of PM2.5, which is approximately equivalent to 100 micrograms/m3 of PM10.) This assumption implies that the WHO estimates cannot be used to evaluate the benefits of specific urban air pollution control policies. Two-thirds of the rural population is without piped water, which contributes to diarrheal disease and cancers of the digestive system. The cost of these health impacts, if valued using a VSL of 1 million, are 1.9 percent of rural GDP. Analysis of data from the 2003 National Health Survey indicates that two-thirds of the rural population does not have access to piped water. The relationship between access to piped water and the incidence of diarrheal disease in children under the age of 5 confirms this finding: the lack of access to piped water is significantly associated with excess cases of diarrheal disease and deaths due to diarrheal disease in children under 5 years of age. Updated analysis of pollution costs for China have been made. A combined paper by researchers from Harvard and Tsinghua universities in 2009 estimated air pollution alone contributed to health damages equivalent to 1.8 percent of GDP. China, the worlds worst polluter, needs to spend at least 2 percent of gross domestic product a year 680 billion yuan at 2009 figures to clean up 30 years of industrial waste, said He Ping, chairman of the Washington-based International Fund for Chinas Environment. Mun Sing Ho, a senior economist at Dale W. Jorgenson Associates and a visiting scholar at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, put the range at 2 percent to 4 percent of GDP. Failure to spend that much equivalent to the annual GDP of Vietnam may cost the Chinese economy half as much again in blighted crops, health costs and pollution-related expenses In recent years, epidemiological studies conducted around the world have demonstrated that there are close associations between air pollution and health outcomes. PM10 and SO2 are chosen in many studies as the indicative pollutants for evaluating the health effects of ambient air pollution. Although the mechanisms are not fully understood, epidemiological evidence suggests that outdoor air pollution is a contributing cause of morbidity and mortality. Epidemiological studies have found consistent and coherent associations between air pollution and various outcomes, including respiratory symptoms, reduced lung function, chronic bronchitis, and mortality. In China, epidemiological studies have been conducted beginning in the 1980s and 1990s in Beijing, Shenyang, Shanghai, and other cities. These include two time-series analyses of the relationship between daily air pollution and hospital outpatient visits/emergency room visits and daily cause specific population mortality in urban areas of Beijing (Chang et al. 2003; Chang, Wang, and Pan 2003), a meta analysis of exposure-response functions between air pollutants and cause-specific mortality derived from Chinese studies, and a regression analysis of environmental monitoring data and population mortality data for over 30 cities of China. Causal Agents in Air-Pollution- Related Disease Although adverse effects on human health from particulate matter, SO2, O3, NOx, and CO are documented, most studies have focused on the relationship between SO2, particulate matter, and respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. After thorough consideration, we decided to choose PM10 as the single air pollutant index for the following reasons: 1) Ambient SO2 concentrations in most Chinese cities have greatly decreased compared with a few years ago, and are in many cities now lower than the WHO Air Quality Guideline (2000) of 50g/m3. The air quality monitoring results from Chinese cities in 2003 showed that, among the 341 monitored cities, the annual average ambient SO2 concentration exceeded the Class-II standard (60g/m3) in 26 percent of the cities. Fifty-five percent of the cities had annual average PM10 (TSP) levels violating the Class-II standard (100g/m3). Annual average NO2 concentrations of all monitored cities met the Class-II standard (50g/m3). This suggests that particulate matter has become the air pollutant of primary concern in China. 2) Different air pollutants may have a synergetic effect on human health. For instance, the combined effect of SO2 and PM10 may be higher (or lower) than the sum of the two components when they occur in isolation. Moreover, a part of PM10 may be sulfate, which is converted SO2. In spite of a large body of studies, the contribution of each of these pollutants to health damage is difficult to disentangle. In our view, adding the health cost from, respectively, PM10 and SO2 may lead to double counting. 3) The trial calculation results showed that the health cost estimated for SO2 (based on the dose-response coefficients in the December 2002 Progress Report of Chinese Environmental Cost Model) represented only about one-tenth of the total health cost due to air pollution. Exposure-Response Relationships : Review of Epidemiological Evidence The effects of air pollution on human health include the chronic effects of long-term exposure and the acute effects of short-term exposure. In the past two decades, a large number of studiesespecially short-term, time-series studieshave reported exposure-response relationships between air pollution exposure and human health. Longterm cohort studies provide the best method to evaluate the chronic effects of air pollution on human health, whereas time-series studies are appropriate for revealing the acute effects of short term fluctuations in pollution levels. Exposure response coefficients from cohort studies of premature mortality are typically several times higher than coefficients reported in time-series studies. We assumed that the short-term effects found in time-series studies are embedded in the long-term effects on mortality rates derived from cohort studies. A large number of time-series studies of mortality have been published in the past 20 years, but only a few cohort studies have appeared. In China, there are some time-series studies and several cross-sectional mortality studies, conducted in cities such as Beijing (Chang et al. 2003; Chang, Wang, and Pan 2003; Dong et al. 1995; Dong et al. 1996; Gao et al. 1993; Xu et al. 1995; Xu et al. 1994), Shanghai (Kan and Chen 2003; Kan and Chen 2004), Shenyang (Wang, Lin, and Pan 2003; Xu et al. 1996a; Xu et al. 2000; Xu et al. 1996b), and Chongqing (Venners et al. 2003). To derive exposure-response functions for air pollution and mortality applicable to the entire country, we undertook a systematic literature review and analyzed the available studies by means of meta-analysis and statistical trend analysis, and made a final selection according to the criteria mentioned above. Cohort studies of long-term exposure Cohort studies take advantage of spatial variation in air pollution concentrations to compare the incidence of disease and death in populations exposed over the long term to differing levels of air pollution. By following large populations for many years, cohort studies estimate both numbers of deaths and, more importantly, mean reduction in life span attributable to air pollution. Evidence from cohort studies of populations in the United States indicates that long-term exposure to outdoor air pollution is associated with an increase in total mortality, cardiopulmonary mortality, and lung cancer mortality in adults. These cohort studies include the Harvard six-city study (Dockery et al. 1993), the ACS cohort study (Pope et al. 1995), and the ACS extended study (Pope et al. 2002). The main background information and results are shown below Ecological studies of air pollution and human health There is no cohort study in China and only three cross-sectional studies that reflect the effects of long-term air pollution exposure on mortality. In China, Jing et al. (1999), Xu et al. (1996a, 1996b, 2000), and Wang et al. (2003) investigated the chronic effects of air pollution on mortality in Shenyang and Benxi. They estimated relative risks by comparing mortality rates in the worst-polluted and the least-polluted areas of each city. Links to the Main peer reviewed epidemiological studies Air pollution 20 most cited papers map Label: POPE-1995 Title: Particulate Air-Pollution As a Predictor of Mortality in a Prospective Study of US Adults Journal: AMER J RESPIR CRIT CARE MED, vol. 151, p. 669-674, 1995 Label: POPE-2002 Title: Chinas J-20 stealth fighter-bomber Aircraft and Y-20 tactical transport plane will be put into service in the near future. The official Chinamil.com.cn website made this assertion while denying reports that the J-20 stealth fighter had entered PLA Southern Theater Command service and that comprehensive training between J-20 and J-10 fighter are already on. The J-20s stealth features has been copied from the US F-22 and the Y-20 transport is a replica of the Boeing C-17. China still has inferior jet engines. On 6 February 2016 the Y-20 was flown for the first time and pictures of the fifth prototype in flight appeared on Chinese military webpages. Other known prototypes carry identification numbers 781, 783 and 785. On 27 January 2016, former Chinese test pilot Xu Yongling had reported in a Xinhua article that Chinese aviation industry officials had stated that the Y-20 completed development at the end of 2015. Xu, who participated in the Chengdu Aircraft Corporation J-10 fighter test programme, suggested that the Y-20 could enter service with the Peoples Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF)in 2016. The first Y-20 prototype is powered by four 12-ton thrust Soloviev D-30KP-2 engines early production units are likely to be similarly powered. The Chinese intend to replace the D-30 with the 14-ton thrust WS-20, which is required for the Y-20 to achieve its maximum cargo capacity of 66 tons. The Shenyang WS-20 is derived from the core of the Shenyang WS-10A, an indigenous Chinese turbofan engine for fighter aircraft. In 2013, Shenyang Engine Design and Research Institute was reportedly developing the SF-A, a 28700-pound thrust engine, for the Y-20 and the Comac C919. The SF-A is derived from the core of the WS-15. Compared to the WS-20, the SF-A is a conservative design that does not seek to match the technology of more modern engine. The J-20 stealth fighter and Y-20 transport plane are undergoing relevant test flights based on schedules The Pentagons latest annual report to the US Congress on Chinas military and security progress indicates that China is closing the military technology gap in several areas. The J-20 and the FC-31 are fifth-generation stealth aircraft with high maneuverability, low-observability and internal weapons bays, capable of operating in a network-centric environment. They could enter service as early as 2018, although the report is undecided on whether the FC-31 is for export only. Both of them have radars with advanced tracking and targeting capabilities, and protection against electronic countermeasures. The PLAAF is rapidly closing the gap with western air forces across a broad spectrum of capabilities, the report assesses. These include command-and-control, electronic warfare and datalinks. The J-10B, the latest version of the indigenous fighter that was unveiled in 2007, is expected to enter service shortly. Four J-11Bs (the Chinese-produced Su-27) have been deployed to one of the islands in the South China Sea that China has been expanding by land reclamation. An indigenous version of the Russian Kh-31P anti-radiation missile is being fielded on Chinese fighter-bombers. The PLAAF has acquired three Ilyushin Il-78 aerial refueling aircraft from Ukraine to augment the domestically produced H-6U tanker. Flight tests of the Y-20 large airlifter continue, and it could also be produced as a tanker, as well as an AEW (airborne early warning) aircraft. A former Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Mohammed Barkindo, has emerged as the Secretary-General of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The post Ex-NNPC GMD, Barkindo, becomes OPEC secretary-general appeared first on Punch Newspapers. Hopes of a deal were dashed after Iran - an OPEC member that is trying to revive its oil industry after years of economic sanctions - refused outright to consider a freeze. "That would be one of the priorities to go forward", Barkindo told reporters. United Arab Emirates Oil Minister Suhail Mohammed Al Mazrouei also said the field had narrowed to just two "credible" candidates. Barkindo replaces Libya's Abdallah Salem El-Badri, who has been in charge since 2007. Barkindo started his career as a member of the Nigerian delegation to OPEC in 1986 when the late Dr. Rilwanu Lukman was Minister of Petroleum Resources (People called him Rilwanu Lukman's right-hand man). As the group meets on Thursday, analysts expect geopolitical tensions between both Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as other struggling OPEC members who are unhappy with low oil prices and the group's direction of travel - to take center stage. He also served for 15 years as Nigeria's national representative to OPEC. He served as the acting Secretary General of OPEC in 2006 after Edmund Dakouru. His candidacy has been supported by Ecuador. Nebraska is facing one of the worst droughts in years. We see the effects of this drought in our everyday lives. When driving down the highway, we see our once verdant landscape replaced with yellowing and desiccated crops and plant life. This dryness provokes hardships for the economy and a The German Bundestag on Thursday approved a non-binding resolution recognizing the 1915 massacre of the Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish forces as genocide with only one member of the parliament voting against it and another abstaining. Turkey reacted by recalling its ambassador in Berlin for consultations and also summoned Germanys Charge daffaires in Ankara. Turkeys Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag lambasted Germany over the resolution saying, first you burn the Jews in ovens and then you come and accuse the Turkish people of genocide. There is nothing that we can be ashamed of when we look back at our history as Turks, he said. Government officials in Germany are trying to calm down the situation after President Erdogan warned ahead of the vote that it would seriously affect bilateral ties. Chancellor Angela Merkel said many things connect the two countries and having a different opinion regarding one particular issue should not overshadow their friendly and strategic partnership. She renewed her governments will to promote dialogue between Turkey and Armenia over the 1915 killings. Foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Ankara reacted as expected after the resolution was passed but he expressed hope that the two governments will succeed in the next days and weeks to avoid any overreaction. Turkey was against the use of the word genocide in the resolution. The president of the Bundestag, Norbert Lammert, said dealing with the dark chapters of history is painful but an honest self-criticism of the past doesnt damage relationships with other countries as he explained that the Turkish government is not responsible for what happened 100 years ago, but it shares responsibility in what happens in the future. The nonbinding draft resolution states that Germany, an ally of the Ottoman Empire at the time, bears partial responsibility for the events that transpired. Meanwhile, Armenia applauded the approval by the Bundestag and its foreign minister Edward Nalbandian described it as a valuable contribution to the universal fight for the prevention of genocides. They claim that more than 1,5million Armenians were killed between 1915 and 1917 but Ankara puts the figures at between 300,000 and 500,000. Turkey claims that many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians rose up against their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian troops. Morocco plays a key role on the regional and international levels in the fight against terrorism, said European MP Gilles Pargneaux during his latest visit to the North African Kingdom. The relationship between Morocco and Europe is very extremely important, he added, voicing European MPs desire to see cooperation between the two sides enhanced further in the war against Islamic extremists, making reference to Moroccos valuable contributions made in counter-terrorism. Following the breakthrough made by the Moroccan intelligence services which helped the French police to pinpoint the hideout of the terrorists responsible for the Paris deadly attacks, several European countries reached out to Morocco seeking assistance and cooperation in the fight against jihadist fighters and Islamic fanatics. Spain, Belgium and other European countries have indeed stepped up their security cooperation with the North African kingdom following the Paris attacks, acknowledging that the Moroccan intelligence input was vital and helped foil further terror plots and save lives. Moroccos counter-terrorism has proven its efficiency in thwarting terror threats at home and overseas. It is based on a global approach including prevention, anticipation, education, rehabilitation, eradication of terrorism roots and international cooperation. Moroccan intelligence services have been guarding against terrorist attacks since 2011, when 15 people were killed in a bombing targeting a cafe in Marrakesh, one of the worlds popular tourist destinations. The Moroccans are waging tireless war against Islamic extremists and fanatics as shown by the numerous Isis cells disrupted in the country. According to newly set up Central Bureau of Judicial Investigation (BCIJ), dubbed Moroccos FBI, over 160 terror cells have been dismantled since 2002, and nearly forty terror plots were foiled the past three years. A woman wearing a Trump shirt (C) is pelted with eggs by protesters while pinned against a door near where Trump holds a rally in San Jose, California. Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images As the Bernie Sanders campaign winds down toward its inevitable demise, one segment of his radical supporters has cast longing eyes upon Donald Trump. It is not that they admire anything about what he stands for so much as what he stands against: Hillary Clinton and Establishment politics. Some people feel Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in then things will really, you know explode, explained Susan Sarandon earlier this spring. The writer Susan Webber has an essay in Politico headlined, Why Some of the Smartest Progressives I Know Will Vote for Trump Over Hillary. Meanwhile, also on the left, another seemingly diametrical response to Trump has taken shape. Various radical groups have staged confrontations intended to shut down Trumps speeches or to provoke street fights with his supporters. Thursday night in San Jose, demonstrators attacked Trump supporters merely for attending his speech. Several left-wing writers have justified these tactics. It is a fascinatingly bifurcated response. Vote for Trump! Or maybe suppress his campaign through violence! Anything other than, you know, just trying to elect Hillary Clinton. This may seem like a contradiction, but it is actually consistent. And not just because the most likely result of violently confronting Trump is to enable his election. It is the expression of a backlash on the left against liberalism with all its maddening compromises and deference to the rights of the enemy which fetishizes success as the by-product of cataclysmic struggle. The defenses of violence revolve around the same point. If Trump poses an extraordinary threat to the sanctity of American democracy, doesnt this justify an extraordinary response? Rioting is a legitimate and useful political tactic. Jesse Alexan' (@JAMyerson) June 3, 2016 Advice: If Trump comes to your town, start a riot. Emmett Rensin (@emmettrensin) June 3, 2016 Listen, if Trump is Hitler then you've got no business condemning rioters. If he isn't, you've got no business pretending normal is better. Emmett Rensin (@emmettrensin) June 3, 2016 It's very simple. If this is the beginning of American fascism, real organized political violence is called for. If it's not, it's not. HR-Compliant Freddie (@freddiedeboer) June 3, 2016 The answer to this superficially appealing logic: Yes, electing Trump would amount to a dire peril for American democracy. But not only is violence unlikely to prevent his election as a practical matter (it makes Trump a figure of sympathy, and at any rate, his supporters are far more heavily armed). It would also be a disaster as a moral matter. Suppose that Trumps election could be prevented by breaking up his speeches and intimidating his supporters. Such a victory would actually constitute the blow to democracy it purports to stop, eroding the long-standing norm that elections should be settled at the ballot box rather than through street fighting. To be sure, the advocates of violence against Trump would disagree with this conclusion. And that disagreement lies at the heart of a deeper ideological fissure that has opened up on the left over the last couple of years. Liberalism sees political rights as a positive good rights for one are rights for all. Democracy means political rights for every citizen. The far left defines democracy as the triumph of the subordinate class over the privileged class. Political rights only matter insofar as they are exercised by the oppressed. The oppressor has no rights. Free speech, while an indispensable principle of democracy, is not an abstract value, as one fairly representative left-wing polemicist explained. It is carried out in the context of power disparities, and has real effects on peoples lives. We can defend freedom of speech particularly from state crackdowns while also resolutely opposing speech that scapegoats the most vulnerable and oppressed people in our society. A liberal sees Trumps ability to deliver a speech before supporters as a fundamental political right worth defending. A radical sees this right as coming at the expense of subordinate classes, and thus not worth protecting. I started writing about this resurgent phenomenon at the beginning of last year. The pushback on the left has evolved from an outright denial that any such trend exists to an acknowledgement that it may exist, but its just the antics of some goofy college kids. But the campus was merely the staging ground for most displays of left-wing ideological repression because it is one of the few places the illiberal left has the power to block speakers and writers deemed oppressive. The now-routine appearance of this illiberal ideology on the presidential-campaign stage (previous displays having occurred in places like Chicago and Arizona) ought to sharpen the irreparable contradiction between two styles of politics. Does the future of the Democratic Party and the progressive movement lie in building a revolution, or in the continued work of (small-d) democratic liberalism? Update: Vox has suspended Emmett Rensin for his pro-riot tweets. Given that Vox has published sympathetic stories about rioting as a political tactic before (see here and here), this seems like a troublesome line to draw as a firing offense. Yeah, some missing white voters may like Trump, but not so much in the states that matter. Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images A big part of the hope and fear partisans have about Donald Trumps general election prospects is that his atavistic message of resentment toward elites and uppity women and minorities will not only win a big majority of white voters, but will boost white turnout as well. Sean Trendes famous missing white voters hypothesis for one of Mitt Romneys fatal defects suggests that marginal white voters tend to be the kind of people who voted for Ross Perot in 1992 a peak year in white turnout. Trende has subsequently confirmed that the same kind of white voters have been turning out for Trump in the GOP primaries. But are there enough of them to make a difference, particularly given Trumps big problems with minority voters? At FiveThirtyEight, David Wasserman takes a close look at this question and arrives at an ambivalent conclusion: The good news for Trump is that nationally, theres plenty of room for white turnout to improve. If non-Hispanic whites had turned out at the same rate in 2012 that they did in 1992, there would have been 8.8 million additional white voters far more than Obamas 5 million-vote margin of victory. But before Democrats panic, heres the catch, and its a doozy for Trump: These missing white voters disproportionately live in states that wont matter in a close presidential race. Between 1992 and 2012, white turnout dropped from 71 percent to 63 percent in the 38 non-Electoral College battleground states. There were huge double-digit declines in relatively Perot-friendly places such as Alaska, upstate New York and Utah. But in the 12 key battleground states, white turnout dropped more modestly, from 69 percent to 66 percent. There was virtually no white drop-off in Pennsylvania, and white turnout increased in New Hampshire and Virginia. This makes sense if you think about it for a minute. If the missing white voters are basically marginal voters, theyre less likely to bother to vote in states where their votes dont count in the sense of affecting the outcome. Meanwhile, the same voters are more likely to show up at the polls in highly competitive states where their votes do count, and where, moreover, they are the object of all the dark arts of base mobilization. The bigger problem for Trump, as Wasserman notes, is that its by no means clear Trumps going to win all the votes cast for Mitt Romney, much less add on many millions of marginal white voters in the right places. Hes got a real problem with college-educated white women, and in some polls isnt doing all that well with college-educated white men. And thats aside from the strong possibility that hes going to do even worse than Romney with minority voters, who in any case are likely to continue to become a larger percentage of the electorate this November. It all goes to reinforce the most important single insight I can offer to those all caught up in slicing and dicing the electorate: a vote is a vote, and running up the score in one demographic doesnt mean squat if its offset by losses in another, especially in battleground states. And its another sign that Trumps angry non-college-educated white men just arent large enough of a group to win the election for him, particularly if turning them out requires the kind of over-the-top borderline-racist-and-sexist histrionics that tend to mobilize the opposition as well. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Hillary Clintons argument for why she would make a better commander-in-chief than her Republican opponent is fairly simple: She is not an emotionally erratic ignoramus who has praised the Tiananmen Square crackdown, refused to issue any plan for combating ISIS, and called on the American military to kill more civilians. On the other hand, she was in the room when President Obama ordered the hit on Bin Laden. And she did a bunch of other great things as Secretary of State. (Youve forgotten about that Libya intervention by now, havent you?) The likely Democratic nominee laid out this case in exacting detail in San Diego on Thursday. Her campaign had billed the speech as an attempt to paint Donald Trump as unfit for the presidency. This is not a terribly difficult task, but she accomplished it with aplomb deploying the old rhetorical trick of reciting all the insane, mutually exclusive proposals her opponent had improvised over the course of a 12-month campaign. He has said that he would order our military to carry out torture and the murder of civilians who are related to suspected terrorists even though those are war crimes, Clinton accurately observed. He says climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese, and he has the gall to say that prisoners of war like John McCain arent heroes. Clinton went on to note that, while Trump has promised to not reveal his plan for defeating ISIS as that would cost our military the advantage of unpredictability he has nonetheless suggested that recognizing ISIS as the legitimate government of Syria and waging nuclear war against the extremist group are both options he would consider. Hes actually said and I quote maybe Syria should be a free zone for ISIS. Oh, okay let a terrorist group have control of a major country in the Middle East. Then he said we should send tens of thousands of American ground troops to the Middle East to fight ISIS. He also refused to rule out using nuclear weapons against ISIS, which would mean mass civilian casualties. Its clear he doesnt have a clue what hes talking about. So we cant be certain which of these things he would do. But we can be certain that hes capable of doing any or all of them. Letting ISIS run wild. Launching a nuclear attack. Starting a ground war. These are all distinct possibilities with Donald Trump in charge. Clinton also noted Trumps praise for Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, his suggestion that America renegotiate its debt, and his support for Japanese nuclear proliferation. That last bit even strikes Donald Trump as irresponsible. At a rally in Sacramento on Thursday, Trump said of Clintons speech, it was such lies about my foreign policy, that they said I want Japan to get nuclear weapons. Give me a break. But Trump did voice explicit support for a nuclear Japan just last month. A fact that the best chyron writer at CNN helpfully noted. This chyron literally added 2 years to my life. Thank you @CNN. pic.twitter.com/yfIGfPlbiP Ben Howe (@BenHowe) June 2, 2016 Clintons overall assessment of Trumps foreign policy doctrine made for her speechs best line: Donald Trumps ideas arent just different they are dangerously incoherent. Theyre not even really ideas just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies. Stating the truth about Trump, in concise English sentences, appears to be a winning strategy. Clinton combined these matter-of-fact indictments with some good old-fashioned American jingoism arguing that Trump sees America as too weak to maintain its global footprint. He believes America is weak. An embarrassment. He called our military a disaster, Clinton said. If America doesnt lead, we leave a vacuum. And that will either cause chaos, or other countries will rush in to fill the void. Then theyll be the ones making the decisions about your lives and jobs and safety and trust me, the choices they make will not be to our benefit. Unlike Trump, Clinton thinks America is already great so great it has an obligation to dictate the terms of geopolitics. Whatever else might be said about it, branding yourself as the candidate of optimism and military dominance has been a pretty safe bet in American politics. And she even managed to cast the Republican nominee as a tool of the Kremlin! The potential Democratic nominee for president says the Republican nominee is backed by the Kremlin. An election like no other. Nick Timiraos (@NickTimiraos) June 2, 2016 Clintons one major misstep was failing to rebut Trumps critiques of her foreign policy record. The word Libya does not appear once in the text of her remarks. (Neither does the phrase Iraq War.) The fact that Clinton didnt even bother to defend the military intervention she fervently backed while Secretary of State suggests that Trumps argument against her foreign policy is quite a bit stronger than the case for his own. But in the land of flawed presidential nominees, the woman with an informed, coherent worldview is queen. Hopefully. Meet the executors of Donald Trumps blind trust. Spoiler: It is not blind at all. Photo: Douglas Gorenstein/NBC One of the more underrated holy crap, is this real? moments of the Donald Trump campaign came during a January debate hosted by Fox News. One of the moderators, Maria Bartiromo, asked Trump if he would place his assets in a blind trust if elected. (Legally, unelected appointees must do so, while mere custom enforces this practice for presidents and vice-presidents.) What followed was this surreal exchange: BARTIROMO: Mr. Trump, your net worth is in the multi-billions of dollars and [you] have an ongoing thriving hotel and real estate business. Are you planning on putting your assets in a blind trust should you become president? With such vast wealth, how difficult will it be for you to disentangle yourself from your business and your money and prioritize Americas interest first? TRUMP: Well, its an interesting question because Im very proud of my company. As you too know, I know I built a very great company. But if I become president, I couldnt care less about my company. Its peanuts. I want to use that same up here, whatever it may be to make America rich again and to make America great again. I have Ivanka, and Eric and Don sitting there. Run the company, kids, have a good time. Im going to do it for America. So I would I would be willing to do that. BARTIROMO: So youll put your assets in a blind trust? TRUMP: I would put it in a blind trust. Well, I dont know if its a blind trust if Ivanka, Don, and Eric run it. If thats a blind trust, I dont know. But I would probably have my children run it with my executives, and I wouldnt ever be involved because I wouldnt care about anything but our country, anything. BARTIROMO: Thank you sir. In this response, Trump affirms that he would place his assets in a blind trust, then proceeds to describe an arrangement that is the exact opposite of a blind trust. The purpose of a blind trust is to prevent a president from being influenced in his decision-making by his personal interests say, if you owned stock in oil companies, any policies that boosted the price of oil would boost your portfolio. In a blind trust, your assets are sold off and controlled by a third party without your knowledge, so you dont even know what you own. Trump was proposing that he would continue to own all the same businesses and his kids would run them for him, creating an enormous temptation for him to make decisions that benefit his own self-interest. In the debate answer, he breezily promised that he would only do whats best for America because he loves America so much. (Bartiromos Thank you, sir response to his non-answer was the final comic touch.) But now he is promising to do essentially the opposite to bully judges and foreign countries whose decisions harm his businesses. Today he pledged to reopen Trump University if elected. This goes way beyond mere conflict of interest, though there obviously is a major conflict of interest between his policy on regulation of for-profit universities and his ownership of one such institution. Trump envisions that, as president, his name would drive customers into his branded businesses. Basically, hes promising to govern like an oligarch in a post-Soviet republic, but without bothering with subterfuge to hide the fact that he and his family are running the government for personal profit. The NYPD is under scrutiny for connections to de Blasios fundraising activities. Photo: Edi Bahler/Getty Images The head of the NYPDs Force Investigation Division has been placed on modified duty after being implicated in an ongoing FBI corruption probe centered around major fundraisers for Mayor Bill de Blasio. According to the New York Daily News, Deputy Chief John Sprague, who had received a subpoena last Friday, informed the U.S. Attorneys office on Thursday that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights if called to testify before a federal grand jury convened as part of the investigation. He was subsequently stripped of his badge and gun. Sprague is willing, however, to answer questions about the matter from the NYPDs Internal Affairs Bureau, his lawyer told the Daily News. The FBI investigation, made public in April, mainly concerns Jona Rechnitz and Jeremy Reichberg, two businessmen who were prominent de Blasio fundraisers and served on his inaugural committee. The Feds are said to be looking into free meals, trips, and even diamonds the men might have given to prominent city cops, possibly in exchange for escorts at funerals and other events. Investigators might be interested in Sprague, the Daily News adds, because he used to command Brooklyns 66th Precinct, to which many of the officers involved in the scandal are linked. A rising star in the force, he was the first officer appointed to the Force Investigation Division, a unit formed last year to investigate all police-involved shootings, and was promoted to deputy chief on March 29, shortly before the investigation was revealed. Sprague is one of several high-ranking cops whose careers have been derailed by the scandal. Since last week, Deputy Chiefs Eric Rodriguez, Andrew Capul, and David Colon, as well as Deputy Inspector James Grant, filed retirement papers after their names came up in the probe. Last month, Deputy Inspector Michael Ameri committed suicide after being questioned in the investigation. For his part, de Blasio doesnt appear to be sweating the scandal: In a press conference held Thursday, the mayor said he and his office feel very comfortable about the investigation and expected to come out of it unsullied. Lee, American Kestrel. Found in Long Island City and treated for head trauma. Photo: Mike Fernandez Two years ago, the photographer Mike Fernandez filmed a traditional Buddhist life release ceremony in Central Park, in which a monk blessed a small spotted woodpecker called a northern flicker before sending it back into the wild. A week earlier, the bird had collided chest-first with a window and been given respiratory treatment at the Wild Bird Fund New York Citys sole wildlife-rehabilitation center. The fund was founded by Rita McMahon, then a television-market researcher, after a sobering incident with a Canada goose. McMahon was driving into the city on Interstate 684 when she noticed the bird splayed, half-dead, on the side of the road. She packed him into her backseat and brought him to her apartment, where she began calling local veterinarians and animal hospitals. None of them would touch the goose, she says. McMahon realized there was no place in New York where you could bring an injured wild bird. After receiving training, McMahon established New Yorks first licensed facility in 2005 and ran the clinic out of her Upper West Side co-op apartment. Eventually, she had 60-some birds convalescing in her home. A seagull swimming in the tub, she says, nine kestrel falcons perched on their cages along the wall, eight baby sparrows in the living room. McMahon continued to hold monthly co-op meetings in her apartment; the neighbors, she says, liked the sounds of the baby birds chirping. By the time Fernandez started making regular visits to the clinic, McMahon had moved the operation to a storefront on Columbus Avenue, which she estimates will treat over 4,000 birds of 130 different species this year. I started taking my camera there every weekend. Id take any excuse to go, Fernandez says. The simple diversity of McMahons patients surprised the photographer, though about half of them are pigeons; the center has also treated a snowy owl shot near La Guardia, a pair of peafowls kept as lawn ornaments in Queens, and a golden pheasant with a scarlet breast and a pair of downy purple wings found ambling streetside in the Bronx. Window injuries are by far the most common: The Atlantic flyway goes right through New York City, says McMahon. There are more than 350 species that have been flying through here for thousands of years. And in the past 200 years weve built this city in their path. So they run into a lot of windows. But theyre not changing their path. Theyre going to come through. And thats where we come in. Katy Schneider Photo: Mike Fernandez Super Northern Flicker Collided with a window at West 71st Street. Treated for broken coracoid. Admitted April 5. Transferred to New Jerseys Raptor Trust on May 17. Photo: Mike Fernandez Hedwig Snowy Owl Found near La Guardia Airport with a gunshot wound in her pectoral muscle. Admitted January 26. Released March 29 in the Shawangunk Mountains. Photo: Mike Fernandez Donald Golden Pheasant Found wandering in Queens and treated for parasites. Admitted April 4. Not yet released. Photo: Mike Fernandez Ben Northern Cardinal Found at 87th Street and Central Park West. Treated for an injured eye. Admitted September 2015. Not yet released. Photo: Mike Fernandez Mulberry Virginia Rail Found on Mulberry Street after colliding with a window. Treated for a luxated shoulder. Admitted April 3. Released April 12 in Millington, N.J. Photo: Mike Fernandez Warrior Canada Goose Found at the shore of the Central Park Lake and treated for lead poisoning and an infected eye. Admitted February 12. Released March 16 in Central Park. Photo: Mike Fernandez Ron Canada Goose Gosling Found in Lindenhurst, N.Y., with an injured leg. Admitted May 15. Not yet released. Photo: Mike Fernandez Cardamom and Anise Peafowls Found wandering in Queens and treated for parasites. Admitted February 26. Sent to a sanctuary in Rensselaer County, N.Y., on April 23. *This article appears in the May 30, 2016 issue of New York Magazine. Photo: Scott Olson/2016 Getty Images Forty-two non-violent federal inmates will soon be free after President Obama commuted their sentences on Friday. Almost all were incarcerated for drug-related offenses and about half of them were serving life terms. Most of the inmates will be released by October of this year, though some may need to wait until next June. This is President Obamas third big wave of commutations this year: In May, he shortened the sentences of 58 offenders, and in March he granted clemency to 61 inmates. The president has now commuted the sentences of 348 prisons, the majority of whom were also locked up for drug-related crimes. Hes now granted more commutations than all the past seven presidents combined. For comparison, Dubya gave just 11 commutations in his eight years; Clinton a total of 61. President Obama is likely to grant quite a few more commutations, and probably more pardons, as his term in office winds down. (Pardons are doled out a bit more sparingly: They amount to exoneration, whereas commutations reduce the punishment.) All of this is part of the presidents pushback against harsh sentencing and mandatory minimums, most of which disproportionately affect low-income people and minorities. In 2014, the administration launched a clemency initiative to help people who were sentenced under harsher guidelines than those that exist now. The Justice Department still has about 9,000 clemency applications pending. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images On Thursday, after weeks of conspicuous hesitation, Paul Ryan endorsed Donald Trump for U.S. president. Hours later, Trump told The Wall Street Journal that the federal judge overseeing two class-action lawsuits against his (bait-and-switch scheme masquerading as a) university was obviously biased against him because said judge has Mexican heritage. The House Speaker once justified withholding his endorsement from the GOPs presumptive nominee by saying, to pretend were unified as a party would be to go into the election at half strength. But Trumps suggestion that no Mexican-American judge can treat him fairly has proven divisive even among his own campaign staff. NEW: Trump aides not happy with Trump's attack on Judge Curiel impartiality, telling me these are the things that will defeat us." Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) June 3, 2016 Trumps previous comments about Judge Gonzalo Curiel and Mexican-Americans more broadly inspired the head of Hispanic media relations at the Republican National Committee to resign from her post on Wednesday. While that resignation made for an ugly headline, Ryan could at least take solace in the fact that the story was largely obscured by a torrent of revelations about the GOP nominees exploitative business practices and apparent attempt to back out of a promised donation to veterans groups. On Friday, Ryan distanced himself from the racist con man whom he hopes to elect this fall. Look, the comment about the judge the other day just was out of left field for my mind, Ryan told WISN radio host Vicki McKenna. Its reasoning I dont relate to. I completely disagree with the thinking behind that. And so, he clearly says and does things I dont agree with, and Ive had to speak up from time to time when that has occurred, and Ill continue to do that if its necessary. I hope its not. Lucky for Ryan, Trump clarified his remarks about Curiel in an interview with Jake Tapper on Friday afternoon. Hes of Mexican heritage. And hes very proud of it, Trump complained, suggesting that he doesnt believe all Mexican-Americans are biased against him just those who arent ashamed of their ancestry. Donald Trump defends invoking a judges Mexican heritage: Ive been treated very unfairly https://t.co/NV7gPiJzUj https://t.co/1CaspahY0R CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) June 3, 2016 After putting out that fire, the Republican nominee proved his chops as a unifier by participating in an African-American outreach effort. Paul Ryan picked a bad week to quit snubbing Trump. No. 45? Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images Earlier this month, Donald Trump held a rally in New Mexico. The states Republican governor, Susana Martinez the first Latina governor in our nations history said she was too busy to attend. The GOP nominee responded to that slight by informing thousands of New Mexican Trumpists that their governor was showering the state in food stamps and Syrian refugees because she couldnt be bothered to actually do the job. But on Thursday night, Trump was in a peace-making mood. The tycoon told the Santa Fe New Mexican that hed like to have Martinezs endorsement because I respect her. I have always liked her. Martinez has yet to oblige, for reasons that may be related to a second interview the GOP nominee gave that same night. Speaking with The Wall Street Journal, the tycoon argued that the federal judge overseeing two class-action lawsuits against Trump University should recuse himself because his Mexican heritage is an inherent conflict of interest, in light of Trumps plan to build a border wall. This isnt quite a mask-slip moment, since Trumps true face has been easy to discern from day one. Nonetheless, on the question of whether the candidates anti-immigration rhetoric is informed by racial animus, Trump no longer has access to even implausible deniability. Judge Gonzalo Curiels heritage and his membership in a Latino professional organization are the only evidence Trump cites for the judges inherent prejudice against him. He has not identified public statements Curiel has made about border policy, only the fact that he is a Latino and that he associates with other Latinos in the legal world. Thus, the mogul seems to be arguing that any American with Mexican ancestry has an interest in opposing a border wall and cant be trusted to be fair-minded not only on that policy question, but on any public matter involving an advocate of restricting immigration. He has also argued throughout his campaign that a border wall is a prerequisite for Americans to have a country. Taken together, these assertions imply the ugliest reading of Trumps messaging, the one his white nationalist supporters claim to hear: If Mexican Americans dont want the United States to be a country, in what sense are they Americans? One might think that Trump would experience some cognitive dissonance in trying to ingratiate himself with a Latina politician the same night he called her demographics patriotism into question. But perhaps the two sentiments arent in tension. Maybe Trump is treating Martinez with more charity because he has realized she cannot help her reluctance to endorse him; its just a defect of her kind. Photo: Getty Images Hours after Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump a thin-skinned loose cannon temperamentally unfit for the presidency, the Republican nominee shot back at his likely opponent on Thursday evening, saying Clinton has got to go to jail for using a private email server during her tenure as secretary of State. I have watched so many lawyers on so many different networks, Trump told a crowd of supporters at a rally in San Jose, California. I have read so much about the emails. Folks, honestly, shes guilty as hell. He went on, The fact that they even allow her to participate is a disgrace to the United States. Its a disgrace to our nation. Trump went so far as to theorize that Clintons support for President Barack Obama, her rival in the 2008 Democratic primary, is merely a matter of avoiding prosecution: Bill Clinton hated him, and Hillary Clinton hated Obama. Now its, Yes sir, Mr. President sir. What would you like? What would you like me to say here, sir? The only reason shes behaving like this and the only reason shes been dragged so far left, believe me, is she doesnt want to go to jail over the emails, okay? Believe me, thats the only reason. One simple reason. The scandal over Clintons emails flared up again last week after a State Department audit came to light that determined her use of a private email server to conduct official business had violated federal rules and would not have been approved had she asked permission. Neither that report nor any other developments in the ongoing FBI investigation indicate Clinton has committed a crime, despite the somewhat sensational coverage the controversy has received. Still, Trump and other Republicans have sought to leverage the investigation to support a narrative of Clinton as dishonest and untrustworthy, or in Trumps parlance, crooked all the while praying for an indictment that the Justice Department seems unlikely to issue. But Trump assured his supporters on Thursday that, if elected, he would not let her get away with this crime. Its called a five-year statute of limitations, he said. If I win, everythings going to be fair, but Im sure the Attorney General will take a very good look at it. Is Trump promising justice well-served or suggesting hell use the presidency to settle a score? If its the latter, well, its not the first time hes hinted at plans to abuse executive power. A protester yells at police in San Jose. Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images Violence at rallies for Donald Trump is nothing new in the last few weeks alone, Trump protesters and police have clashed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in Anaheim, California; in New Mexico, several police officers were injured by rocks and bottles protesters threw, and multiple people were arrested in Anaheim. The scene was similar at a Trump rally in San Jose, California, Thursday night, but this time, instead of tussling with police, Trump protesters reportedly let loose on Trumps supporters. According to the Associated Press, at least a dozen supporters of the presumptive GOP nominee were pulled into brawls and punched, one woman was pelted with eggs and other food, and several Make American Great Again hats were snatched and set aflame. Make America Great Again no more. Photo: JOSH EDELSON/This content is subject to copyright. Police and protesters face off in San Jose. Photo: JOSH EDELSON/This content is subject to copyright. Protesters are spilling into the street and blocking traffic. One is burning an American flag. Others chanting "whose streets?!" Sara Murray (@SaraMurray) June 3, 2016 Protests have moved out onto San Carlos st pic.twitter.com/0JmUTmZP9c john r stanton (@dcbigjohn) June 3, 2016 The rally ended just before 8 p.m. (11 p.m. EST), and attendees of whom there were an estimated 300 began to filter out of the San Jose Convention Center. But a crowd of protesters chanting and holding flags and signs awaited them. One woman wearing a Trump jersey was cornered by the mob, shoved into a corner, screamed at, and hit with an egg. Watch: The moment a Trump supporter, surrounded by protesters, is egged in the face, hit by other food. pic.twitter.com/qYFdwJWvrS Jacob Rascon (@Jacobnbc) June 3, 2016 Protesters cornering Trump supporters as they leave. This woman taunted them. They cornered her & threw eggs at her pic.twitter.com/MiDGDBkKIo Sara Murray (@SaraMurray) June 3, 2016 Trump supporter who was flipping the bird and shaking her ass at protesters just got mobbed and egged at the door of the Marriott john r stanton (@dcbigjohn) June 3, 2016 Woman who supports Trump surrounded by protesters, who taunt her, then throw eggs and bottles at her. pic.twitter.com/nHJ3cgYOfR Jacob Rascon (@Jacobnbc) June 3, 2016 A Trump supporter shields herself from the onslaught. Photo: JOSH EDELSON/This content is subject to copyright. Another Trump supporter was struck in the head from behind; he walked away with blood spattered on his shirt. NOW: #Trump supporter attacked and left bleeding in San Jose pic.twitter.com/kC2GVz9JcZ Tim Pool (@Timcast) June 3, 2016 After the rally, several scuffles broke out between Trump supporters and protesters as riot police stood by, according to reporters on the scene. Raw video: Fighting continues in streets following @realDonaldTrump rally in San Jose. pic.twitter.com/PR9zaAzZKy M. Scott Mahaskey (@smahaskey) June 3, 2016 Big fight breaks out pic.twitter.com/Ld8via9LTF Joe Perticone (@JoePerticone) June 3, 2016 Cops standing by as a trump supporter is chased by protesters pic.twitter.com/dAcImJBwok john r stanton (@dcbigjohn) June 3, 2016 More police standing by as a trump supporter is chased pic.twitter.com/d7nQca1kWH john r stanton (@dcbigjohn) June 3, 2016 Chaotic scenes. A few riot cops not doing much pic.twitter.com/zAcoVOT1aP Nicky Woolf (@NickyWoolf) June 3, 2016 About half an hour after the rally ended, police reportedly declared the gathering an unlawful assembly. Officers moved in to contain the protesters, at which point, fights between police and protesters broke out. Based on video footage from the scene it appears several protesters were apprehended, although the San Jose Police Department has yet to confirm any arrests. Police in riot gear advance toward protesters, apparently to disperse crowd. pic.twitter.com/JMBd79Fkyu Sarah McCammon NPR (@sarahmccammon) June 3, 2016 An officer just told the crowd to disperse over loudspeaker, said, "This is an unlawful assembly" as #Trump protests continue. Sarah McCammon NPR (@sarahmccammon) June 3, 2016 Cops herding protesters pic.twitter.com/M9mIdaWUI8 john r stanton (@dcbigjohn) June 3, 2016 Fights between cops and protesters starting pic.twitter.com/TKkNoHiEBy john r stanton (@dcbigjohn) June 3, 2016 Police rush protesters, plainclothes officer tackles one, who is then surrounded and detained. pic.twitter.com/Zwo05DZMLQ Jacob Rascon (@Jacobnbc) June 3, 2016 Cops are making arrests in San Jose pic.twitter.com/qw101Rsajt john r stanton (@dcbigjohn) June 3, 2016 Although one reporter said police had lost control of the crowd, another in the same area maintained that police didnt let things get out of hand. San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo said he was pleased with the police response. Our officers have done an extremely courageous and professional job so far, he told the AP. Were still holding our breath to see the outcome of this dangerous and explosive situation. But by midnight EST, most crowds had reportedly dispersed. Most have scattered. For the first time since Trump rally began, there are more officers than protesters. Jacob Rascon (@Jacobnbc) June 3, 2016 Protesters are throwing rocks at the cops, even as their numbers dwindle john r stanton (@dcbigjohn) June 3, 2016 Helicopters fly overhead in San Jose. Police have chased the protesters several blocks now. pic.twitter.com/FSMFqFYS2P Sarah McCammon NPR (@sarahmccammon) June 3, 2016 Top aides from both the Sanders and the Clinton campaigns were quick to condemn the violence surrounding Trumps rally, although neither candidate has spoken directly on the matter. Violence against supporters of any candidate has no place in this election. https://t.co/PY4vYYszVf John Podesta (@johnpodesta) June 3, 2016 we cannot stop trump's violent rhetoric with violence only peaceful protest in a voting booth can do that. https://t.co/o82lIVNqcB mike casca (@cascamike) June 3, 2016 Liccardos response was more blunt: At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign. Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Prince died from an overdose of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin, according to a medical examination made public today. Under how injury occurred, the report reads: The decedent self-administered fentanyl. According to a Fusion in-depth report on the drug, fentanyl, synthesized in the 1960s, was first used as a general anesthetic. Today its often prescribed to relieve pain in cancer patients and administered via patch, injection, or lozenge. The drug is stronger than oxycodone or morphine, and its easy to overdose on, the Minnesota Star Tribune reports, since patients might use two or three day-long patches rather than just one. The product design, if you will, of a drug seems to matter with overdoses: OxyContin deaths went down when a new formulation made it harder to crush or dissolve. We need to see the Prince in all of us, Dr. David Kessler, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told the Los Angeles Times. Its a wake-up call for how we view these drugs. You start using drugs like fentanyl because youre advised that it will help with your pain, he said, without being clued into the risks of addiction. Kessler added that its crucial to not scold addicts for their bad behavior; everybody is vulnerable to medications like these. With this news, Prince becomes the most famous face along with actor Philip Seymour Hoffman of Americas opioid epidemic. Opioids killed more than 24,000 Americans in 2014, a report from the Centers for Disease Control says, the most ever. The rate of synthetic opioid deaths just about doubled from 2013 to 2014, and a CDC report finds that the rise of deaths coincides with more and more police reports of illicitly manufactured fentanyl. Since 2000, the U.S. has seen a 137 percent increase in drug-overdose deaths overall. Deaths from opioids have gone up 200 percent. Megyn Kelly on Fox Thursday night. Photo: Fox News Last week, Donald Trump called U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel a hater and totally biased all because Curiel ruled that documents tied to Trump University, which is under investigation for questionable practices, should be released to the public. Those documents werent exactly flattering and, in what appears to be a response to the criticism, Trump has doubled down on his attacks against Curiel, saying the judge has an absolute conflict of interest due to his Mexican heritage. If theres one person who knows what its like to be on Trumps bad side its Megyn Kelly, and during an appearance on Fox News Thursday night, Kelly made sure viewers knew exactly how wrong Trump was to condemn Curiel based on his parents country of origin. To start, Kelly debunked a few myths about Curiel: First of all, people are saying this judge is a member of La Raza, the group that was protesting Donald Trump. He isnt hes a member of a Hispanic lawyers association that has no partisan strength whatsoever. They support Hispanic lawyers and judges thats it so lets be clear on that. Secondly, the man is not Mexican. Donald Trump keeps saying he is; hes American, his parents are Mexican, hes of Mexican heritage. He was born in Indiana. Third, he has no conflict of interest. Now Donald Trump is saying the judge needs to be investigated, someone should look into him, just because hes ruled against Donald Trump in this litigation repeatedly that doesnt make you biased. It doesnt. She went on to explain that shed planned to talk about Paul Ryans endorsement of Trump until Trump decided to take this tack. Donald Trump continues to attack a sitting federal judge, who by the way did a lot to fight the drug cartels when he was a prosecutor, based on his ethnicity, suggesting he has an inherent conflict of interest, she said. A Hispanic cannot judge a case against me. That is what Trump is saying explicitly. And Kelly knows from experience that when Trump turns against you, his supporters tend to follow suit. I guarantee you right now that this judge is getting threats and vitriol and who knows what else, she said. This is what I was trying to ask Trump about when I sat with him. Shes referring to her one-on-one interview with Trump last month in which he did acknowledge shed probably had some pretty nasty things sent her way by his supporters but stopped just short of apologizing to her for repeatedly calling her a bimbo. Photo: Getty Images Prosecutors read pieces of Andrea Constands 2005 police interview aloud in court last Tuesday, during a preliminary hearing to determine whether Bill Cosby would stand trial for a decade-old alleged assault. Now, a little more than a week after the judge agreed enough evidence existed to go forward with the case, more detailed transcripts of both Constands and Cosbys 2005 statements to police have been made public. The court files explain how Constand met Cosby when she was an employee at Temple University, and how the comedian took an interest in her and her potential broadcasting career. (Constand also told police she was gay, and had most recently been in a relationship with a woman.) The testimony outlines the alleged sexual abuse, and Constands own struggle to come to terms with what she says happened to her at the comedians house in the winter of 2004 including why she waited about a year to go to police. I want to say there was an element of fear, she told detectives. Before I was going to say anything to anyone I had to put my own thoughts and feelings together. Constand continues: I was emotionally shocked. I was still traumatized about the whole situation. I had some emotional distress that I was dealing with. I needed to come to terms with this on my own. I had to get clear enough about what happened so when I was ready to talk to someone I would be able to present exactly what happened. Constand, who moved back to Toronto, Canada, not long after the alleged incident, told police she had a flashback about a year later. That prompted her to tell her mother that Cosby had sexually violated her without me consenting. According to the interview, her mother encouraged Constand to go to police. Cosbys attorneys have tried to undermine Constands story by pointing to the year she waited until she spoke out. Its a strategy theyll likely keep pursuing if and when the case proceeds to trial. (Constand isnt allowed to talk about the case publicly because of the terms of her 2006 civil settlement with Cosby.) Constand also told detectives that she had tried to confront Cosby after the alleged sexual assault, where Constand said the comedian gave her three blue pills to take the edge off at his Pennsylvania home. She became woozy and dizzy, and claims that, in that paralyzed state, Cosby fondled her breasts and penetrated her with his fingers. So she decided to approach him, and saw an opportunity when Cosby called and invited her to a group dinner at a restaurant in Philadelphia. She went to his home afterward. I walked in the door and sat down again at the table. I right away said I just need to ask you some questions about what happened. About the encounter that we had. Right away he blew it off and showed no interest in discussing it. He said, I dont understand. He was confused. He didnt catch on that I wanted to confront him about it. She went on, at the detectives prompting: I said, I dont know what happened but Im uncomfortable with what happened? He said, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. He quickly changed the subject. He said, Whats going on? He walked me to the same couch in the sitting room and was clearly confused about what was going on. I never mentioned the pills. I just said, I dont know what you did to me. He sat close to me. Too close to me and I was disturbed by that considering what had happened in that specific place. At that point I didnt think I was going to accomplish what I wanted to do. Constand says Cosby asked to see her again before a comedy show in Toronto, once she was back living in the city. She declined, but did accept tickets to the show. She also says she called Cosby, in December 2014, to call him out, but panicked and hung up. After Constand told her mother about the incident in January 2005, mom and daughter contacted Cosby they recorded at least one conversation to confront him over the phone. Constand says he apologized to both her and her mother separately. Cosbys full 2005 statement is included in the court papers. In it he maintains any sexual contact between the two was consensual. He says he assured Constand and her mom that there was only petting, and the touching of private parts. He tells police Constand, during the encounter in question, never told him to stop, and that she was conscious and awake. Both Cosby and Constand gave their statements to police in 2005, more than a decade ago. The Montgomery County district attorney at the time did not press charges. Constand sued Cosby in civil court; the case was settled in 2006 for an undisclosed sum. The office began reinvestigating the case this summer after close to 60 women came forward with sexual-assault allegations against the comedian and depositions from that civil suit became public. The new district attorney reopened the case last year, and charged Cosby with three counts of aggravated indecent sexual assault in December 2015, just a few months before the statute of limitations was set to expire. she looks pretty i like her makeup Reply Parent Thread Link so do I. Reply Parent Thread Link good lord imagine a night out with kendall, kylie and hailey baldwin. rip everyone's spirit. Reply Parent Thread Link are the boobs real? Edited at 2016-06-03 04:24 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I love this outfit too lol Reply Parent Thread Link hailey was there too?? i'd rather die poor gigi didn't deserve this Reply Parent Thread Expand Link She got her boobs done recently? Reply Parent Thread Link I actually...like...how she looks here... Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I mean, she has a great body and all but that jumpsuit... come on Reply Parent Thread Link kinda looks like selena gomez Reply Parent Thread Link How is it a wardrobe malfunction? Reply Parent Thread Link how do you pee in that Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I don't think I've fully grasped what happened can you maybe post a few more tweets? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link This cheap looking bitch. I'll bet the "wardrobe malfunction" was planned. Reply Parent Thread Link wish I had that bod, but not that wardrobe. Reply Parent Thread Link That looks like the design of the suit. Not a wardrobe malfunction. Reply Parent Thread Link If the zipper is breaking, it's probably too tight, boo. Reply Parent Thread Link Negl, that bandage jumpsuit is super cute and chic as fuck. Reply Parent Thread Link Oh damn. This might be my favorite Kylie look ever. Reply Parent Thread Link that is such a look, i love it Reply Parent Thread Link omg i want that in black! not that i would ever have the guts to wear it out lmao but i love it! i also love her makeup. i wish my mouth was bigger (that sounds weird i know) because i feel like i look silly with lipstick on Reply Parent Thread Expand Link lol the comments I hate this look. Xtina you're not! Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Her makeup is so good here. Love that lipstick. Reply Parent Thread Link she looks so expensive i too would like to look expensive Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I'm not wild about underboob but she does look good here. Reply Parent Thread Link I can't figure out why I like Kendall's outfit Reply Thread Link i went to the source and... Reply Parent Thread Link lmao Reply Parent Thread Link lmaoooo mte Reply Parent Thread Link Mte tbh Reply Parent Thread Link kinda ot, but i was re-watching 'pretty wild' lately (don't ask) & gabby neiers reminded me so much of kendall. Reply Thread Link I've thought that before too!!! Like I think I've made that exact comment here lol Edited at 2016-06-03 04:55 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link damn, that's too bad. ironic that alexis & tess turned their lives around and she's the ~crazy one now... Reply Parent Thread Link I'm gonna ask: WHERE? The day Netflix dropped it was one of the saddest days. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Who has the better style? neither but i like gigi bc at least she has a personality Edited at 2016-06-03 04:16 pm (UTC) Reply Thread Link Gigi bc shes the most down to earth, met her once and she was lovely. Reply Parent Thread Link i'm not surprised at all Reply Parent Thread Link She does seem really nice and chill Reply Parent Thread Link Selena's killing them with her street style lately. I think she's surprised them thanks to Chris. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link ALLEGED breakup !!! u can see the Z&G necklace ok. lmao idk, they both look pretty good, i like their sheer pants. kendall's a bit more maybe oop. idk this entire break up story is so weird, one news outlet (E ? People ?) reported it and now it's everywhere lmao, at least give me a source close to the couple~ Reply Thread Link perrie was wearing her engagement ring the day news broke of their break up lol and even after the report was out it's weird that gigi started trotting out that pendant initials necklace just this week after not wearing it since zayn's bday tho Reply Parent Thread Link lol i was kidding tbh i cant make out shit in that pic let alone 3 pixel initials hew knows, she did post that i love you (or w.e) snap. lmao i just dont want to believe in their break up tbh dont mind me Reply Parent Thread Link i was not expecting these pants Reply Thread Link the only reason anyone is even even claiming these people have 'style' is because they are skinny, rich and white (white passing in gigi's case, but yeah) because their choices look like a mess in at least 50% of their candids. Reply Thread Link I thought the LA clubs got all strict with underage people after the Lohan era Reply Thread Link Nah. Gigi is 21 though, I think. Reply Parent Thread Link Judge me ONTD, but I actually like all of their outfits Reply Thread Link who is that? shes gorgeous Reply Parent Thread Link also apparently selena unfollowed calvin harris both on IG and twitter lmao Reply Thread Link she never followed him Reply Parent Thread Link Bless Reply Parent Thread Link smh shadymusicfacts Reply Parent Thread Expand Link oop Reply Parent Thread Link kendall's pants r disguting omg Reply Thread Link have you got some insider knowledge of what's on their ipods? Reply Parent Thread Link How do you know what they listen to? Reply Parent Thread Link rmfe, as if the Rolling Stones and ZZ Top are obscure bands... Reply Parent Thread Link me neither Reply Parent Thread Link I definitely be feel like these two are pushing the breakup/newly single thing but I still find it funny that all the "sources" are like they could get back together tomorrow? Lol I saw a rumour that zayn's in Jamaica shooting the next video. I wonder if him and kehlani will suddenly be rumoured to be a thing Reply Thread Link I think it's funny that they've allegedly been "off and on" like they were barely together most of the time in the first place. zayn and kehlani need to take time to love themselves and just be single tbh. here for a island getaway-themed wRoNg video tho Reply Parent Thread Link Are they wearing crop tops or just regular t-shirts folded weirdly? Reply Thread Link Russia is set to increase crude oil output by around 8 million tons or 185,000 bpd by then end of this year, according to the Russian Energy Ministry. Speaking to Russian TASS news agency, Energy Minister Alexander Novak said Friday that the countrys crude production forecast to a total of 540-542 million tons, for the 8-million-ton increase. This is compared to Russias 2015 production of 534 million tons or roughly 4.5 billion barrels of oil. Russia managed to surprise analysts by keeping production at high levels throughout what many now see as the bottom of the oil bust. Below chart shows the soaring Russian oil output in the last months and the 7 percent output drop in April confirmed by the Russian Energy ministry. Related: Could A New Type Of Bike Solve Indias Electricity Problems (Click to enlarge) Even though many now expect Russias crude production to remain resilient throughout 2016, especially as oil prices rebounded from February lows. The main question however is how much more crude Russia pump up. Independent consultancy Vygon Consulting expects crude output to grow this year and throughout 2017. Forecasting an output of a whopping 11,3 million bpd, very close to the all-time high reached in 1987. This output level will however only be reached if Russia manages to effectively use enhanced oil recovery techniques to stem decline from its Siberian oil fields and continues to see good results from greenfields. Related: Why $50 Oil Makes Sense Russias refining capacity wont change much in 2016 as Novak said the refinery forecast remained the same, at 275 million tons. Novak conditioned the forecasted increase on dynamics remaining unchanged until the end of the year. Novak also chimed in on oil prices, saying that prices may stick in the range of $40-$60 per barrel through the end of this year, but probably around $50 The Russian energy minister also told reporters on Friday, in the aftermath of the Thursday OPEC meeting in Vienna, that verbal interventions are not likely to play a significant role in oil prices going forward. "I think it is unlikely that verbal interventions play a significant role. Now fundamental factors have already come into force. We see that the supply is not growing now, for the first time, in the first quarter, and sometimes also in the second quarter, and there are many different factors, including, reduction of investments in the industry, which is observed in the last two years. It is certainly not a typical situation that we see now - fires in Canada, diversions at the oil facilities in Nigeria, Iraq. This also affects" TASS quoted Novak as saying. "Of course, this is a short-term factor, however, today we see that there is no imbalance and so the price has been adjusted on the basis of fundamental facts," Novak said. By James Burgess of Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: In this weeks key data for the oil and gas industry, we continue to see a decline in U.S. crude inventories and gasoline stocks while U.S. production keeps on following its downward trend. (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) Friday, June 3, 2016 The OPEC meeting in Vienna ended with no agreement on production targets, despite some rumors ahead of time that Saudi Arabia had floated a reinstatement of those limits. Iran still has no use for OPECs coordinated action, and Irans oil minister says that it still has some lost ground to regain. Iran wont consider any possibility of limiting its production until it reaches 4 million barrels per day (mb/d) of production; its output currently stands at about 3.8 mb/d. As a result, OPEC couldnt agree on anything, but such an outcome was largely expected by oil analysts. Still, prices plunged by more than 1 percent on the news from Vienna. Oil storage levels fall. But the losses were quickly regained on June 2 as the fundamentals continue to provide some reassurance. Storage levels in the U.S. fell by another 1.4 million barrels, the first time that the U.S. has posted consecutive weeks of declines in a long time. Also, U.S. oil production fell by yet another 32,000 barrels per day last week the losses continue to mount and output is down by more than 900,000 barrels per day from last years peak at nearly 9.7 mb/d. The oil markets were buoyed by these figures, pushing WTI and Brent back towards $50 per barrel following the disappointment from Vienna. Related: Dollar Weakness Fails To Stimulate Oil Prices Weak jobs report. On the other hand, the Labor Department released the worst monthly jobs report in years on June 3, revealing that the U.S. added only 38,000 jobs in the month of May. The unemployment rate fell to just 4.7 percent, but largely because of people dropping out of the labor force. The dismal report could put downward pressure on crude oil, but it could also cause the Fed to delay a rate hike, which would be seen as a positive for oil prices. Nigeria output back up. Nigerias oil minister said that his countrys output has climbed to 1.6 mb/d, up from 1.4 mb/d in May. Still, the Niger Delta Avengers continue their aggressive campaign against oil companies operating in the Delta. This week the militant group claimed that it successfully carried out attacks against two oil wells controlled by Chevron (NYSE: CVX). The Nigerian government has had very little success in slowing the attacks and much of the countrys oil production remains offline. ExxonMobil considers $10 billion investment in Argentina. Argentina could be home to the next shale revolution, as the vast Vaca Muerta shale holds large volumes of oil and gas. Several oil majors have had a presence there for several years, but have not yet been able to crack the shale basin in a massive way. ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) announced that it is considering a $10 billion investment in the Vaca Muerta over the next few decades. The oil major has already poured $200 million into Argentina, and is now looking at another $250 million for a pilot project. If that is successful, Exxons CEO Rex Tillerson says that the company would make investments over the next 20 to 30 years that would be well in excess of $10 billion. Banks require more liquidity from oil and gas companies. Lenders are increasingly requiring oil and gas drillers to set aside cash in order to keep a certain level of liquidity. The measures are intended to reduce the banks exposure to debt that might not be paid. Also, the banks are concerned that indebted drillers might exhaust their credit lines ahead of a bankruptcy event. Banks are under their own scrutiny from regulators to minimize their vulnerability to bad energy debt. Related: Why $50 Oil Makes Sense Natural gas inventories rise at slower pace. Natural gas prices jumped to a nearly six-month high on EIA data showing that inventories increased at a much smaller-than-expected rate. Spring typically brings strong gains in natural gas storage levels because of lower demand. The EIA reported that inventories climbed by 82 billion cubic feet last week, lower than the 86 bcf expected by some analysts surveyed by The Wall Street Journal. In the last week of May, inventories stood at 35 percent above the five-year average, down from 37 percent a week earlier. In other words, inventories are still extraordinarily high, but the glut is a bit smaller than was expected only a few weeks ago. Low prices since last year have halted production levels, which should help narrow the supply overhang going forward. Natural gas prices jumped to $2.42 per million Btu (MMBtu), sharply up from the sub-$2/MMBtu range where gas had been trading at for weeks. BP reaches $175 million settlement. BP (NYSE: BP) reached a $175 million settlement related to some outstanding legal claims from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010. The claims were brought by investors that purchased BP shares following the disaster, a class-action suit that was about to go to trial. Petrobras could undergo major changes. The new head of Brazils state-owned Petrobras backs reforms that would scrap the legal requirement that Petrobras operate all of the pre-salt oil fields. If the law is loosened, it would be a huge opportunity for international oil companies, opening up some of Brazils most prized oil fields in the Atlantic Ocean. Petrobras has $130 billion in debt and can no longer afford the expenditures required to develop many of the pre-salt fields. The political crisis and the change of government in Brazil could accelerate market reforms and liberalize Brazils oil sector. ConocoPhillips offers best value. Bank of America Merill Lynch said in a report that ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) offers the best relative value in its peer group. Although its dividend is only 2.2 percent, lower than some of the other oil majors, Conoco offers the top free cash yield idea. BofA Merrill Lynchs Doug Leggate said that Conoco was best positioned to deliver outsize returns to shareholders from share buybacks. By Evan Kelly of Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: If youve been around Milwaukee for a while, you might remember a time when Bryants offered up a cocktail of the month. These very special libations were offered for a special price of just $6 each during the bars Old Fashioned Cocktail Hour. Well, weve caught wind from Bryant's owner John Dye that the tradition is back, just in time to celebrate the arrival of summer. During the month of June, Bryants will feature the Blue Tail Fly, one of about four-dozen ice cream drinks they make daily at the popular classic cocktail venue. According to Dye, the Blue Tail Fly is a Wisconsin-famous ice cream drink that was invented at Bryants during the era when Pink Squirrels were flying off the bar tops at area supper clubs. Since that time although its popularity undeservedly waned over the years the drink has gained increased notoriety in the cocktail world. And, as for the name, its derived both from the drinks bright blue color and quite possibly from an old classic song youll probably recognize when you hear it. "Blue Tail Fly" originated in the mid-1800s and was a mainstay with an 1860s minstrel troupe aptly named "Bryants Minstrels." Over the years, the song was revised (and sanitized); in the 1940s it was picked up by the folk circuit, eventually becoming primarily a childrens song, known as "Jimmy Crack Corn." (PHOTO: Brian West) Here's the song, as performed by Bugs Bunny in 1953. But, speaking of that cocktail, youre probably wondering what it tastes like. And, well, its delicious. Its flavor profile combines the rich flavors of cacao and Valencia orange (thanks to the addition of blue curacao, which also gives it a delightfully blue hue) making it a perfectly cool and refreshing summer drink. And, in the words of Bryants Dye, at $6, "its a true blue bargain!" Enjoy your very own Blue Tail Fly Sunday through Thursday from 5 to 8 p.m. during Bryants Old Fashioned Cocktail Hour. Also available: classic Depression-era cocktails including the Old Fashioned, Cassis, Jack Frost, Hawaiian Eye, Whiskey River, Candle Light and more. The weekend is loaded with events at Five OClock Steakhouse, 2416 W. State St. On Friday, June 3 at 6 p.m., Milwaukee's iconic Five O'Clock Steakhouse will host a book signing with Ron Faiola, author of "Wisconsin Supper Clubs: Another Round" in the restaurants Alley Cat Lounge. The book, which was released in May, is the sequel to Faiola's wildly popular first book, "Wisconsin Supper Clubs: An Old Fashioned Experience." It takes readers on a journey inside 50 additional restaurants across Wisconsin (including Five O'Clock Steakhouse). During the event, guests can enjoy complimentary supper club-inspired appetizers, along with a cash bar and live music by Pierre Live. Meanwhile, on Sunday, June 5 from 12 to 4 p.m., the steakhouse will host a Vintage Car Show in its private lot. During the event, guests can peruse a collection of vintage and custom cars, sipping on Five OClock Steakhouse summer cocktails and beverages while enjoying Mexican fare from the El Comedor food truck. Admission is free; $20 suggested donations are accepted. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to two local veterans organizations: Dryhootch Milwaukee, which provides peer support, employment and assistance for returning military and their families, and the Milwaukee Homeless Veterans Initiative, which helps at-risk veterans obtain housing, medical care, food and necessities. Guests who donate $20 to either veterans organizations at the event will receive a $20 promotional certificate good for a future Five O'Clock Steakhouse visit. 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. George Soros (Image by boellstiftung) Details DMCA There's really no excuse for supporting the NATO/terror position. We've seen the destruction of Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, now Syria, all built on lies, all beneath the guise of "humanitarian interventions". Since people with any sense of historical memory can not legitimately plead ignorance, supporters of the terrorist invasion of Syria fall into the category of "fake humanitarians". They aren't "progressive" or "left" when they support the criminal violation of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Canadian peace activist Ken Stone, recently returned from Syria, expresses similar sentiments in his newly released book, Defiant Syria|dispatches from the Second Tour of Peace to Syria. He explains, "The point for me is to ask why otherwise intelligent people can fall for such sh*t (referring to a 2015 New Internationalist magazine article: "The forgotten revolution of Syria"), and not once but repeatedly. It's not as if Syria is the very first government targeted for regime change by the USA. It's not that people are unaware of the fact that the first casualty of war is the truth. " There is never a shortage of "leftists" in the West who can be either bought or convinced through incredible naivete, warped political outlook, or Eurocentric arrogance, that the motives of Empire are good." People such as Ken, who have visited Syria and have seen with their own eyes the devastation wrought by Western-supported terrorists against civilization, have less tolerance for the lies, the propaganda, and the "fake humanitarians" who enable it all. Stone doesn't mince words when he describes some of his on-the-ground observations of Homs, Syria; observations fortified by his historical memory of NATO's imperial destruction elsewhere: "Judging from the many corpses found buried around the city, some of which were missing eyes and various internal organs, many have speculated that the mercenaries ran a lucrative trade in human organs, besides their human trafficking in Syrian women, boys, and children, and their other rackets such as rapine and pillage " The terrorist organizations were working in accordance with a well-rehearsed imperial script here in Homs. The KLA, NATOs foot soldiers in Kosovo (formerly part of Yugoslavia) also ran an organ smuggling operation out of a house in Pristina in 1999." To their detriment, the fake "humanitarians" and pseudo "leftists" are shielded from such on-the-ground realities. In a later chapter, "Palmyra: Bride Of The Desert", Stone also bemoans the self-proclaimed "leftists" who cast the Russians as "imperialists" and as guilty as the West in the war against Syria -- conveniently forgetting that Russia is legally in Syria, while NATO is not: "It's true," he writes, "that Russia is unfortunately no longer a socialist country. However, it doesn't act like an imperialist country either. Mr. Putin consistently respects the sovereignty of other countries, such as Syria, and speaks up at the United Nations for the observance of international law, which the USA, priding itself as "the exceptional country" and the "sole indispensable country", tramples on almost every day." This resonates with the author's earlier piece, "Western Hegemony vs Russian Sanity", and the "Saker's" observations of the differences between the "Anglo-Zionist Unipolar Imperial Model" and the "Russian Multipolar Model". Sustainable evidence demonstrates, for example, that the current Russian multipolar model respects the rule of international law, ideological and cultural pluralism, and the use of military force as a last resort. The illegal Western war of aggression against Syria, on the other hand, is consistent with the "Anglo-Zionist Unipolar Imperial Model" which defies the rule of international law, negates ideological and cultural pluralism, and uses military violence as a first resort. The West contradicts the rule of international law: Russia is in Syria legally, whereas the West is not; it negates Syria's ideological and cultural pluralism, as it seeks to replace with a Wahhabist stooge government or an assortment of stooge governments in balkanized states; and it demonstrates the West's propensity to use military violence as a first resort -- the invasion, after all, was planned well in advance. Given the fact of the West's criminality, consistent with the "Anglo-Zionist Unipolar Imperialist Model", and the concurrent failures of the "fake humanitarians" and the fake "left" to reconcile themselves to evidence-based findings and historical memory, Stone reiterates some concrete steps that should be taken by those of us who support foreign policy trajectories consistent with peace and the rule of international law, rather than the current reality of war and barbarism. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). A family of a 44-year-old American Indian man killed by Omaha police will be taking criminal and civil action against the City of Omaha and the Omaha Police Department. And on July 7, a demonstration will commence early in the morning outside the statehouse in Lincoln, Neb., and the protest will last well into the night. This protest and civil-awareness event is being sponsored by the family of the victim, Lance McIntire, in conjunction with the Strongheart Warrior Society. Lance McIntire, married to a beautiful, 29-year-old woman, Ashley McIntire, has three grown children. He made his living as a handy man and repairman for rental properties around the Omaha area, family members said. "This young man was taken by senseless violence. Lance was my nephew," said Canupa Gluha Mani, leader of the Strongheart Warrior Society, based in South Dakota. "The police should have more sensitive life-skill training to handle these types of circumstances and we're going to demand that these state legislators come up with laws that make it mandatory for police to handle these situations in a humane and sensible manner by not always just jumping to using the ultimate sanction, killing these victims. Young Native men are the biggest targets," Mani told this writer in a recent telephone interview. Lance McIntire was Native American and was an enrolled member of The Omaha Tribe. He was murdered Thursday, April 7, near the corner of L Street and 31st Street in Omaha, Neb., while inside his car, a red 2002 Toyota Camry. Lance McIntire, slain by an Omaha, Neb., police gang unit in early April, and his wife, Ashley, had a beautiful life together until his murder. (Image by Ashley McIntire) Details DMCA Julia Ramirez, Lance's sister, said there were problems with the police report. "There are all sorts of conflicting stories," she told this writer in a recent telephone interview. "At the crime scene, there was no crime lab present. People who witnessed this say there was no forensics team sent to the scene," Ramirez said. "And there was evidence tampering at the scene. We have pictures of the car's bumper that fell off the car. In the photos taken at the scene, one picture shows the bumper near the car and another picture shows the bumper moved to another area of the parking lot, far away from the car," Ramirez said. Hermus Lone Dog, Lance's brother-in-law, who is married to Lance's sister, Dena, also told this writer in a telephone interview that there is conflicting evidence concerning the police shooting itself. Conflicting reports, even in the media, are muddled. One report claims Lance McIntire was killed by an African-American police officer, while another report claims there were two police officers who shot and killed Lance. All told, media reports claim 16 shots were fired at McIntire and that four shots entered his body. A media report KETV-7 claims that all 16 shots were fired by Omaha Police Department Detective Dale Thomas. It is not certain whether Lance McIntire had a gun in his car. Although the police claim he had a .22-caliber pistol in his vehicle, witnesses at the scene say they never saw a gun. Also, witnesses claim Lance McIntire did not brandish any type of weapon while he was being fired upon. If there was a gun in the car, witnesses and family members agree, it was in the back seat of the vehicle. All shots were fired by police from a Glock .40-milimeter, standard-issue police handgun, or possibly even handguns, in the plural sense, Omaha human rights activist D'Shawn Cunningham told this writer, who added that Lance's vehicle was immediately impounded by the Omaha Police Department but it was released to the family a short time later. This also raises questions concerning alleged evidence tampering possibilities on the part of the Omaha Police Department (in regard to possible evidence within McIntire's Toyota Camry), Cunningham alleges. Inconsistencies of the statement the police gave also differ from the accounts of four witnesses who were at the scene of Lance's murder. Still another inconsistency claims that McIntire was administered CPR at the scene, but all four witnesses say that there was no medical help given after Lance was removed from the vehicle. "Lance wasn't given any medical attention other than an ambulance that transported him to the hospital," Lone Dog said When police removed McIntire from the car, the victim was handcuffed and witnesses nearby said the police had their knees digging into his back as he was being cuffed, Hermus Lone Dog told me in a recent telephone interview. 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). Reprinted from American Conservative A forthcoming report will downplay the bloody consequences. Cities reduced to rubble, schools and hospitals leveled, prisoners tortured and executed, car bombs exploding. Long lines of refugees, their homes in ruins, stumbling along a road to nowhere with their few remaining possessions carried on their backs. Graphic photos and videos from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa continue to show the downside of the "New World Order," the global system operating under American direction envisioned by President George H.W. Bush in 1991. They also demonstrate the enormous perceptual gap between much of the world and the United States, which has not had a hostile force penetrate its borders since Pancho Villa rode into New Mexico in 1916. America does not know and does not understand the reality of war, which renders the bellicose pronouncements made by presidential candidates as so much background noise, little more troubling than their comments about what to do about greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, the drums of war continue to beat, with Pentagon sources revealing that the United States has been bombing so many people in so many places that its weapons stockpiles are running low. Responding to increasing demands for some accountability, President Barack Obama has pledged to bring transparency to the drone wars Washington is waging in at least seven countries. Drone missions have received considerable criticism owing to their lack of any legal framework, but the administration argues they are justified by the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which gives a carte blanche to the armed forces to pursue and kill "al-Qaeda associated" terrorists wherever they might be. The additional drone attacks undertaken by the CIA are "covert actions" made legal by presidential "findings," and both the intelligence services and the military are reported to be guided by the constabulary principle, which means that the U.S. has authority to strike a "threatening" terrorist target if the local government lacks either the resources or desire to do the job itself. Reports in the media suggest that there will soon be a White House report on the numbers of civilians killed since 2009 in drone strikes, but, as is often the case, the devil will be in the details. The government is trying to demonstrate that the civilian death toll is minimal, though it is unlikely to go as far as CIA Director John Brennan, who argued that the agency's attacks had killed "no civilians." It will do that by excluding from consideration "war zones" in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, and also CIA "clandestine" operations. Only Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and possibly Pakistan will be included in the findings, as they are "outside areas of active hostilities." The report will also manipulate its own definitions of what constitutes a terrorist or militant, and it will justify some otherwise inexplicable attacks as "self-defense" due to U.S. special forces operating in the area. Guidelines for firing drones' Hellfire missiles have been somewhat subjective, including, for example, considering any male of military age and carrying a weapon as a likely terrorist and therefore subject to annihilation, even though being an armed male in the tribal areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan is not unusual and hardly equivalent to militancy. In other cases, a tribal gathering where several alleged militants are reported to be present will be considered to be 100 percent terrorist, even though the drone operator has no idea who is on the ground apart from the one or two targets who are plausibly or sometimes not-so-plausibly identified. The document is also likely to include questionable assumptions about the targets of the attacks and, reading between the lines, should raise some serious doubts about the accuracy of the alleged "pinpoint" strikes delivered by drone. If the past is anything to go by, it will be obfuscated by discussion of legal aspects of the use of drones and will tend to dismiss or even ignore the human tragedy playing out on the ground by granting the U.S. government the benefit of the doubt when a target does not fall into any easily discernible category. There's inevitably a political objective behind the report, which is to institutionalize the process of using lethal drones by presidential fiat worldwide. Obama has embraced the drone as his weapon of choice against terrorists, having authorized hundreds of attacks, a vast expansion of the deployment compared to his predecessor, George W. Bush, who approved drone strikes fewer than 50 times in his eight years in office. It is likely that Obama will formalize the procedures for selecting and killing targets by executive order before his term in office ends. Drone warfare aside, Americans should be appalled by how many people their elected government has directly or indirectly killed since the War on Terror began nearly 15 years ago, particularly as the United States has not actually been at war with anyone during that entire period -- and they probably would be appalled if they knew. Bear in mind that there are a lot of ways to die. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright famously declared killing 500,000 Iraqi children through sanctions that limited the import of food and medicines in the 1990s "worth it." More recently, the huge dislocations of populations and refugee flows have killed tens or even hundreds of thousands more. One need not have a bullet in the head to die. Estimates of deaths caused by the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are at best guesstimates and depend on what factors are included or excluded. Is starvation due to disrupted food supplies, or death by an illness that would have been treated if the local hospital hadn't been destroyed, the responsibility of the United States? Some think so, even if the death is "collateral" or occurs some time after the traumatic incident. Tallying the actual death toll ultimately comes down to a reckoning of deaths that would not have occurred but for the military action. Governments will inevitably try to deflate the numbers and dismiss the causal linkages, while other observers will move in the opposite direction. A March 2015 report by the Nobel Prize-winning Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) suggests that there has been considerable, deliberate understating of the true consequences of the U.S.-led response to terrorism. The report claimed that more than 1.3 million people were killed during the first 10 years post-9/11 as part of the so-called "Global War on Terror" in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan alone. A year later, one might reasonably update the numbers and add Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen to the carnage -- and the current total might easily exceed 2 million. Some other estimates go as high as 4 million. The PSR report stresses that the estimate of the dead is "conservative" and based on the most reliable sources, suggesting that there are large numbers of deaths that have been reported but could not be confirmed. It is difficult and probably unfair to consider George Bush and Barack Obama to be mass killers along the lines of a Pol Pot or even a Josef Stalin, as they did not seek or condone the deaths of large numbers of civilians. But the lesson to be drawn from their passages through the highest public office is that leading what is nominally a democracy is no impediment to lashing out largely indiscriminately, without regard for those on the receiving end. We as a country are now reduced to preparing reports explaining that we really didn't kill that many civilians with drones while attacking countries we are not at war with by virtue of a plausibly unconstitutional congressional authorization. The past 15 years have institutionalized and validated the killing process. President Clinton or Trump will be able to do more of the same, as the procedures involved are "completely legal" and likely soon to be authorized under an executive order. And the 2 million or 4 million or maybe eventually 6 million dead will become, as Stalin once put it, not a tragedy but just a statistic. An erratic political primary season full of the unexpected may inspire the curious to extend their search for answers toward the secrets in the firmaments. In the ancient world, astrology was a revered science, although, with the advent of the Cartesian disassociation with symbolism and archetypes, it mostly fell into disfavor. But there are exceptions. Waxing Gibbous Beaver Moon (Image by Chris Hunkeler) Details DMCA We know that the moon has effects on tides and moods. The Effect of the Full Moon on Human Behavior, a report by the American Institute of Medical Climatology, done for the Philadelphia Police Department, showed that "the full moon marks a monthly peak in various kinds of psychotically oriented crimes such as murder, arson, dangerous driving, and kleptomania." The Old Farmers Almanac (Image by Public Domain) Details DMCA Also, the Farmer's Almanac is well known for its predictions based on lunar cycles. Since the first edition was published in 1792, The Old Farmer's Almanac has included an astrology section in every issue. And Descartes' perspective on the divorce of spirit and matter did not convince Carl Jung, who trailblazed a return to the archetypes, and to a world where there was indeed something superior to man's rational mind. Jung on the cover of Time (Image by turrido50) Details DMCA Jung stated that astrology was based on "meaningful coincidence," noting, importantly, that this "synchronicity does not admit causality in the analogy between terrestrial events and astrological constellations." (Italics, mine.) Jung notes a "curious coincidence between astrological and psychological facts" and defines astrology as "projected psychology in which the different attitudes and temperaments of man are represented as gods and identified with planets and zodiacal constellations." Astrological clock, Prague, Czech Republic (Image by stephanie.lafayette) Details DMCA Several experiments in this field have shown intriguing results. In one, astrologers were given an assortment of zodiacal charts for people they had never met, and were asked to identify the serial killers mixed in amongst the average people. They were successful in identifying these serial killers from the information in their birth data, as detailed in a book on this experiment, Destined for Murder: Profiles of Six Serial Killers, by Harrison Young and Edna Rowland. Anyone can be a millionaire, but to become a billionaire you need an astrologer. Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Reprinted from Empire Burlesque Another day, another Trump delegate calling for the violent overthrow of the government. This sort of thing used to be frowned upon, I believe, but now is simply par for the political course. The odd thing, of course, is that if Obama wasn't black, he would be a conservative's dream. He's opened up more offshore drilling than Bush, expanded fracking, deported more people than any president in history, killed thousands of Muslims (and is currently bombing seven Muslim countries), raised military budgets, cut federal taxes to their lowest levels in 60 years, cut social programs, spent almost eight years trying to strike a "grand bargain" with Republicans to cut Social Security and Medicare (until this week when, in his last months in office, he's suddenly decided we should increase Social Security), worked hard to derail public healthcare in favor of a program drawn up by a conservative think-tank and first used by a Republican governor, put troops on the Russian border, beefed up US military presence in Asia to threaten China, supported right-wing coups in Latin America, gave Wall Street trillions of dollars in bailouts and credits, refused to prosecute any CIA officials for torture (despite admitting "we tortured some folks"), jailed more whistleblowers than any other president, pushed fanatically pro-business trade treaties, and so on. Yet there is a mass delusion (carefully and methodically stoked by powerful interests) that he is some kind of socialist peacenik "surrendering to terrorists" and giving away "free stuff" to the lazy poor (when in fact the poor and the middle class are sinking, while the rich have never been richer), etc. Now Trump is deliberately drawing the most frenzied and violent of these delusionals into the center of American politics. The "respectable" bi-partisan establishment has already loosed many demons with its "Terror War" (torture, aggressive war, drones, assassination squads, covert ops, mass surveillance, etc.); now Trump is drawing even more evil from the depths. America has drifted deep into terra incognita -- and "here be dragons." Reprinted from Consortium News Hillary Clinton made a strong case for why handing the nuclear codes over to a President Donald Trump would be a scary idea, but there may be equal or even greater reason to fear turning them over to her. In perhaps the most likely area where nuclear war could break out -- along Russia's borders -- Clinton comes across as the more belligerent of the two. In Clinton's world view, President Vladimir Putin, who has been elected multiple times and has approval ratings around 80 percent, is nothing more than a "dictator" who is engaged in "aggression" that threatens NATO following the U.S.-backed "regime change" in Ukraine. "Moscow has taken aggressive military action in Ukraine, right on NATO's doorstep," she declared. But stop for a second and think about what Clinton said: she sees Russia responding to an unconstitutional coup in Ukraine -- which installed a virulently anti-Russian regime on Russia's border -- as Moscow acting aggressively "on NATO's doorstep." That's the same NATO, whose job it was to protect Western Europe from the Soviet Union, that -- following the Soviet Union's collapse -- added country after country right up to Russia's border. In other words, NATO muscled its way into Russia's face and has announced plans to incorporate Ukraine as well, but when Russia reacts, it's the one doing the provoking. Clinton's neoconservative interpretation of what's happening in Eastern Europe is so upside-down and inside-out that it could ultimately become the flashpoint for a nuclear war between Russia and the West. While she sees Russia as the "aggressor" against NATO, the Russians see NATO moving troops up to its borders and watch the deployment of anti-ballistic-missile systems in Romania and Poland, thus making a first-strike nuclear attack against Russia more feasible. Russia has made clear that it views these military deployments, just kilometers from major Russian cities, as an existential threat. In response, Russia is raising its alert levels and upgrading its strategic forces. Yet, Hillary Clinton believes the Russians have no reason to fear NATO's military encirclement and no right to resist U.S.-supported coups in countries on Russia's periphery. It is just such a contradiction of viewpoints that can turn a spark into an uncontrollable inferno. What might happen, for instance, if Ukraine's nationalist -- and even neo-Nazi -- militias, which wield increasing power over the corrupt and indecisive regime in Kiev, received modern weaponry from a tough-talking Clinton-45 administration and launched an offensive to exterminate ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine and to reclaim Crimea, where 96 percent of the voters opted to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia? A President Hillary Clinton would have talked herself into a position of supporting this "liberation" of "Russian-occupied territory" and her clever propagandists would surely present this "heroic struggle" as a war of good against evil, much as they justified bloody U.S. invasions of Iraq and Libya which Clinton supported as U.S. senator and Secretary of State, respectively. What if the Ukrainian forces then fired missiles striking Russia's naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea, killing some of the 20,000 Russian troops stationed there and inflicting damage on Russia's Black Sea fleet? What if Kremlin hardliners finally got their way and unleashed the Russian army to launch a real invasion of Ukraine, crushing its military, rumbling through to Kiev and accomplishing their own "regime change"? Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressing the AIPAC conference in Washington D.C. on March 21, 2016. (Image by (Photo credit: AIPAC)) Details DMCA How would President Hillary Clinton respond? Would she put herself in the shoes of Russia's leaders and search for some way to de-escalate or would she get high-and-mighty and escalate the crisis by activating NATO military forces to counter this "Russian aggression"? Given what we know about Clinton's tough-talking persona, the odds are good that she would opt for an escalation -- and that could set the stage for nuclear war, possibly starting because the Russians would fear the imminence of a NATO first strike, made more possible by those ABM bases in Romania and Poland. Clinton's Non-Nuclear Wars There are other areas in the world where a President Hillary Clinton would likely go to war albeit at a sub-nuclear level. During the campaign, she has made clear that she intends to invade Syria once she takes office, although she frames her invasions as humanitarian gestures, such as creating "safe zones" and "no-fly zones." by Sen. Doug Whitsett Many of us predicted the passage of the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010 would cause harmful consequences to citizens throughout the country. Those initial concerns have proven to be prophetic during the six years since Obamacare was signed into law. Obamacare was passed on party-line votes by Democrats in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Republicans in both chambers opposed the new law. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) famously stated that we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it. Most veteran lawmakers should have found that remark beyond offensive. Like many others, I make it a point to read and try to understand each piece of legislation before I cast a vote either in committee or on the floor of the Oregon Senate. Voters should expect no less from their elected representatives, regardless of party affiliation. Disgraced former governor John Kitzhaber, along with many other Democratic leaders in Oregon, was determined to make this state the poster child for health care reform. Part of that effort involved the creation of the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) during the 2009 regular session. Through the passage of House Bill 2009, the OHA was spun off from the Department of Human Services (DHS) largely for the sake of implementing the reforms promised under the federal legislation. Although HB 2009 was not a strictly partisan effort, I voted no due to many concerns, including cost and efficacy. The combined budgets of the two agencies has increased more than 130 percent during the six years since that ill-advised division into two agencies. The expense of implementing Obamacare has been the greatest cost driver in that budget-busting expansion, despite the constant assurances of free health care proclaimed by its proponents. My concern regarding how the top-down federal legislation would ultimately leave consumers with fewer and more expensive choices for their health care providers has unfortunately come to pass. The consequences of Obamacare are starting to hit really close to home. An insurance agent who serves the northern part of our large, rural Senate District recently informed my office that multiple providers are discontinuing service to the area. After several phone calls to other area insurance agents confirmed what we were told, I scheduled yet another meeting with states Insurance Commissioner and the Director of the Department of Consumer and Business Services (DCBS) to express my concerns and learn more about the problems. The Director and Commissioner informed me there are now 500 counties in the United States served by only one insurance carrier. The numbers for Oregon and its counties were only marginally better. Several large health insurance carriers are either leaving Oregon or are dramatically curtailing their areas of service and health plan portfolios. We were informed that one company, LifeWise, will discontinue offering plans in Oregon starting next year. Moda will no longer service customers in 23 counties, including three of the five counties I represent in the Legislature. Pacific Source is pulling out of 30 counties and Providence will no longer be servicing 17 counties. This is very bad news for many of the states 36 counties. According to the Commissioner, under current plans, only eight counties will have more than five health insurance providers. The number of insurance providers falls precipitously outside of those more populous counties. We were told that as many as 28 counties will have four or fewer health providers. Approximately 14 of those will have only three, including the more populous Jackson, Lane and Deschutes counties. Nine counties currently have only two identified exchange insurance providers. The more rural district I represent in the Senate includes all or parts of five counties, including Jackson and Deschutes. Four will have three providers and Lake County will have only two. I was assured by the Insurance Commissioner and DCBS Director that the number of remaining providers will be adequate for preserving competition. However, I remain skeptical because virtually all remaining exchange insurance providers intend to ask for double-digit insurance premium increases and one is requesting increases greater than 30 percent. Health insurance is currently being provided by two other companies that are not on the state insurance exchange. It is my understanding that those companies and their clients are prohibited from accessing and taking advantage of the Obamacare tax breaks and incentives. Oregon also spent over $300 million on a website for our state health insurance exchange. That website never worked or signed-up a single person for private insurance coverage. The state and software giant Oracle continue an expensive court battle over who was at fault for the failure. Oregon taxpayers are footing the States legal bills. Last week, Republican members of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform called for a criminal investigation into the Cover Oregon debacle. Not surprisingly, they want to know what happened to their $305 million. What the public is not being told in those discussions is Oregon was not required to build a website from scratch. In December 2012, my chief of staff wrote an article for the Estacada News in which former state Rep. Patrick Sheehan grilled state officials regarding that decision. Those officials appeared to respond they were not too worried about spending other peoples money and could simply ask the federal government for more if they ran out. Sheehan, who has a background in website development, had received live, real-time demonstrations from a company alleging it could have licensed existing software to the state for $6 million and customized the software to fit the States needs for another $6 million. We will never know whether that $12 million investment could have successfully replaced the Cover Oregon tech project. The private sector alternative would have cost only about four percent of what the state eventually wasted building its ill-advised website debacle. Instead, we became a national laughingstock for wasting $300 million to build a website that was never used to sign-up private sector insurance. Worse, when more than 12,000 insurance applications could not be serviced by the website, the state was forced to hire 400 employees to process paper applications by hand. Compensation for the replacement low-tech employees was paid by taxpayers. The controversy surrounding Cover Oregon has yet to subside. While it is true there are now fewer Oregonians without health insurance coverage than before the health care reforms were enacted, the States private insurance market place appears to remain in disarray. Most of the new insurance coverage is due to the expansion of the States Medicaid program through the Oregon Health Plan. The federal government has thus far picked up the tab for paying the premiums on all those new Medicaid participants. However, beginning next year, the federal government will be lowering its contribution towards covering those costs. The states obligation to pay for its share of the greatly expanded Medicaid population may soon be as much as $1 billion per budget cycle. Similarly, the decision to create the OHA will continue to have severe ramifications for the rest of the states budget. All-funds combined spending for OHA and DHS has ballooned to more than $28 billion. No end appears to be in sight for that near exponential spending growth that reduces available funding for public safety and education. In short, federal health care reform has become every bit the disaster that many of us predicted it would be. Our well-founded cynicism was based on our fiscal concerns that further government disruption of the insurance marketplace would result in the restricted availability of medical services and significantly higher costs. Those concerns were met and overridden by derision and allegations that we didnt want our States most needy to have health insurance coverage. Many of the events we predicted would occur have come to pass. Some are even worse than I had initially imagined. Access to medical care is rapidly becoming more difficult. Many care providers are reluctant to service Medicaid patients due to cost and reimbursement constraints. Government regulators are reducing payments for available diagnostic and treatment procedures. Patient wait times and frustration are escalating. Oregonians are already experiencing fewer choices when it comes to health care. Those choices will be even more unaffordable for those who pay for their own health care insurance. This reality is especially true for people living in rural areas. All things tend to become much clearer with the benefit of hindsight. Perhaps all of this could have been prevented had federal legislators, on both sides of the aisle, actually read the Affordable Care Act and attempted to understand its ramifications and potential unintended consequences. Unfortunately, we are left to deal with the Obamacare catastrophe. Senator Doug Whitsett is the Republican state senator representing Senate District 28 Klamath Falls QCG is alive and aimed to bring peace in Afghanistan: FO ISLAMABAD: Foreign Office dispelled the impression that Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) has failed to settle Afghan issue. QCG is still alive and welcomes all efforts aimed to bring peace in Afghanistan and it is aimed to facilitate it, these views were expressed by Nafees Zakaria, Foreign Office Spokesperson during weekly briefing to media here. Pakistan firmly supports Afghan led peace negotiations with various Afghan groups, including different Taliban factions, Zakaria said, adding that in the last 15 years it is proved that use of force is no solution of any problem. While responding to a question regarding the extension of Afghan refugees stay in Pakistan, he said that currently dateline of Afghan refugees voluntary repatriation is 30th June, for the extension of their in Pakistan got request from Afghanistan, which is still under consideration. Pakistan applied for the membership of Nuclear Suppliers Group on solid gourds, Zakaria maintained and said Pakistan has well established security and safeguard for nuclear over decades while for the future of energy and economic development, Pakistan wants fair treatment from international community on it. Zakaria said that after arrest of Indian spy, Kulbhushan Yadav Pakistans international position vindicated that foreign forces hand in disturbance in Balochistan and Karachi. Pakistan briefed international community bilaterally and on international forums and shared with them information, he opined. He said that this case is still under investigation and if any new information comes in, will be shared with international community. Regarding the recent Indian Prime Ministers statement, the spokesman said that Pakistan is most affected country from the phenomenon of terrorism more impacted on Pakistan in world in comparison of other countries on earth. Pakistans economy lost more than 100 billion dollars and more than 60,000 people lost their precious lives. He said Pakistan is ready for talks with India on all issues including Jammu Kashmir and terrorism. He said that Indian PM Modi send flowers and best wishes to PM on his heart surgery. He said water is part of comprehensive dialogue between Pakistan and India and if Ministry of Climate Change highlighted issue of glaciers melting on this issue both countries can talk it. Responding to another question, he said that American Ambassadors meeting with Sartaj Aziz, Adviser to Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs was routine affairs. He said in different statements US State Department and White House spokespersons said that Pakistan is important country for US and have broad based and long standing relations. On registration of FIR against of recent drone strike in which Mulla Akhtar Mansour was killed, the spokesman said that under Pakistani constitution every citizen have right to lodge FIR and any complain against grievances. Pakistans judiciary is also independent to take its own legal course. On Afghan Consulate closure, he said that there are special routes for diplomats travelling in Peshawar and Afghan Consulate official violated the route. He was travelling on other route and security officials searched him. On Pakistans Charged Affairs summoning in Kabul, he said that not aware from the development. He said that CPEC is important game changer and an important economic and development project for Pakistan. Due to this some countries turned adverse to this project creating new groups against it. L-R: Dr James Nessel of NASA, and Heriot-Watt scientists Al Houstin and George Goussetis with the rooftop satellite terminal. Credit: Heriot-Watt University Heriot-Watt University is the only site in Scotland participating in satellite data collection as part of a landmark five-year experiment with NASA and the European Space Authority (ESA). Researchers from Heriot-Watt together with a team from NASA have installed a satellite terminal within the university collecting transmissions from a geostationary satellite to assess the atmospheric absorption of the higher frequency waves. If Q-band communications is to be viable then reliable gateway feeds to transfer data need to be established and this is what the Heriot-Watt installation will help to record. Dr George Goussetis, Professor of Antenna and Microwave Engineering in the University's School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, said, "Using the Q-band frequency for a wide-range of communications will rely on continuous and reliable availability. However the Q-band is a higher frequency than those currently in commercial use and that makes it more susceptible to breaking up due to weather conditions or similar. "That's why it is likely that multiple locations are needed to ensure a continuous 'gateway' for transmission. This is the start of an experiment to discover just how reliable the Q-band might be and whether it has a commercially viable future for telecommunications companies to use." Researchers hope that the experiment will result in higher frequencies (40 GHz, also known as Q-band) being used for future higher capacity satellite communication systems. This in turn may eventually release high bandwidth satellite links and improve broadband communication on planes, trains and other fast-moving platforms. The Q/V Band communication experiment hosted on Alphasat registers the impact of cloud coverage on its beam, and adjusts the data rate accordingly. The beacon is monitored in several locations and the influence of weather is recorded. Explore further Satellite communication of the future D. Sarah Stamps, assistant professor, and Josh Jones, a graduate student, both in the Virginia Tech Department of Geosciences' Geodesy and Tectonophysics Laboratory, pre-test GPS sensor equipment that will be placed around Tanzania's Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano. The equipment will help predict and monitor movements of the volcano, as well as possible tectonic motions along the Natron fault near the volcano. Tanzania's Ol Doinyo Lengai is unique for two reasons: It's the only active volcano that erupts natroncarbonatite lava, and it's within a region where the Earth's surface is just beginning to rift apart. This month, Assistant Professor D. Sarah Stamps of the Virginia Tech Department of Geosciences is launching an observatory there to track activity of both the volcano and the continental rift. The journey, taking place from June 2 to June 30, brings Stamps and graduate student Josh Jones to a remote village in the Arusha Region, Tanzania. There, Stamps, who has been to the area several times, and Jonesthis trip will be his first to Africaalong with researchers from the region and Korea, will place five high-precision GPS sensors around the volcano. The sensors will have the capability to send data in near-real-time from the volcano to Stamps upon her return to Blacksburg. The volcano is known as the "Mountain of God" in the local Maasai language. Stamps has been to the volcano many times, first traveling to the region in 2006 as an undergraduate in earth sciences while at the University of Memphis, Tennessee, and again as a doctoral student at Purdue University. In 2008, she witnessed the volcano erupt. Stamps is a leading expert on the tectonics of the East African Rift System, in which Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano resides. The June trip with Jones will further Stamps' knowledge of the area, and provide other experts and locals with a better warning system of volcanic activity and tectonic movement along a nearby fault. The relationship between the two does volcanic activity lead to plate movement or the opposite, or neitheris a key component of Stamps' work. Additional trips to Tanzania will follow in this multiyear project. "Our goal is to advance scientific knowledge in the field of plate tectonics," said Stamps. "We will understand, for the first time, the link between present-day volcanism and the long-term tectonic development of continental rifts. To do so, we are employing state-of-the-art sensors and cybertools that allow us to monitor deformation of the volcano and fault movement along the Natron fault in real-time." Among the tools in Stamps' employ is CHORDS that's short for Cloud Hosting for Real-time Data in the geoSciences developed through EarthCube, the National Science Foundation (NSF) cyberinfrastructure program. The NSF has funded many of Stamps' trips to Tanzania, including a portion of this trek. When Stamps and Jones place high-precision GPS sensors around the perimeter of the volcano they also will install an internet satellite system nearbyroughly 5 miles away While a doctoral student at Purdue University, D. Sarah Stamps was in Tanzania to see the Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano erupt. This is among the many photos she took during her trip in 2008. She has been back several times since, and is returning this month as part of a research expedition. Credit: Virginia Tech to serve as a local base. Their work will provide locals with the open access to the internet for the first time. Language barriers have abounded in previous research efforts, with English-speaking researchers working with Swahili translators, who then translate requests, questions, and the like into the local Maasai language, and back again. "Many petrologists and geochemists have studied the volcano, but no one has developed a volcano observatory at Ol Doinyo Lengai," added Stamps. "The lack of a volcano observatory is due to the remoteness and challenges of working in a developing region. There is no electricity in the area and all access to the region is limited to unpaved roads. We are bringing open access to the area for the first time. There is closed-access internet restricted to tourists and employees of the Tanzania Tourism Board." Stamps' previous research trips to Tanzania also involved sensors and GPS markers, but real-time data collection was not an option. "Real-time data transmission and visualization of GPS data is truly at the cutting-edge of technology," said Stamps. "The capacity to do this has only been developed in the last yearreally just in the past few months." Her goal is to make monitoring data from Ol Doinyo Lengai as effective as tracking information from the Yellowstone Volcano observatory in Wyoming. The research project at Ol Doinyo Lengai is truly international, with Stamps working with Tanzania's Ardhi University and the Korea Institute for Geosciences and Mineral Resources. Jones, of Yorktown, Virginia, who earned his bachelor's degree in geosciences from Virginia Tech in 2015, called the research trip a dream of a lifetime. "I am very excited about exploring and studying the only active carbonatite volcano in the world," he said. "I have always been drawn to the beauty and awe of volcanoes throughout my time as an undergraduate at Virginia Tech. The chance to climb and study an active volcano is a dream come true. Hopefully, I will be able to explore more of the volcano than just what our research requires and, if at all possible, reach the summit." The natroncarbonatite lava rock that is produced by Ol Doinyo Lengai may be familiar to Virginia Tech. It is the compositional equivalent of Hokie Stone. While not an exact match to limestone, its coloring is near identical when cooled. Older carbonatite volcanoes, such as Homa Mountain are nearby, but extinct. The nearby fault is young for Earth, roughly 5 million to 10 million years old, whereas other rifts in Africa date back 25 million years and older. "This volcano is the best place on Earth to study how volcanism influences continental rifting in its early phases of development," said Stamps of her work. Research efforts for Stamps and Jones reach out far beyond tectonics. With high-precision global navigation satellite systems and sensors that can detect earth movement with millimeter precision, both researchers will be using computational modeling and big-data mathematics to study seismic activities. Explore further New lava flows open on active Hawaii volcano Energy leaders from countries that pump out 75 percent of the world's climate-changing emissions talked Thursday on the nitty-gritty of putting last year's Paris climate accord into action, including funding the needed global technology overhaul. The annual gathering of energy leaders representing 23 countries and the European Commission was one of their first since December, when heads of 195 countries committed to a deal meant to limit fossil-fuel pollution that is making global weather hotter and more extreme. With the world already about 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times, nations have committed to limiting warming to another degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) from now, half that if possible. Convened up the road from Silicon Valley, the session was part cheering session for the clean-energy investment and successes so far, part dire warning for the work yet to be done. "The urgency of this threat keeps growing," President Barack Obama said in a videotaped message for the energy officials of China, India and other countries in the Clean-Energy Ministerial, a global energy-leaders forum meant to push reductions in carbon emissions. "The Paris agreement has to go into force as soon as possible." The United States and China both have signed but not yet ratified the climate accord. U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and others pointed to the potential miracles of the mundanelike more energy-efficient air conditioners for the 8.5 billion sweaty, crowded residents that Earth will hold in 2030. That change alone would save the annual outputs of thousands of power plants, energy experts said. Summit participants lauded a determined national push for LED lights across India, and applauded a number of other countries launching their own LED campaigns. "It's the government-private sector partnership that will actually get the work done on the Paris accord," Moniz said. Members pointed to successes so far. That includes the global economy managing about 3 percent growth last year without seeing the usual accompanying jump in carbon emissions. And countries in the clean-energy ministerial alone invested more than $300 billion in clean-energy investment in the same year. With 2016 on pace to follow 2015 as the warmest years on record, however, "don't think you've got a handle on it. Because you don't," California Gov. Jerry Brown warned the international political and business leaders and technology mavens. As much as the world needs cleaner-burning gear, Brown said, it also needs a grim coming-to-terms with what he said should be a World War II-style mobilization to cut carbon pollution. "The political mind is not there yet," the California governor, an international figure in the climate-change fight, said. "The hour is late." Explore further UN's Ban says time to scale up action on climate change 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. OLED with the composite structure of TiO2/graphene/conducting polymer electrode in operation. The OLED exhibits 40.8% of ultrahigh external quantum efficiency (EQE) and 160.3 lm/W of power efficiency. The device prepared on a plastic substrate shown in the right remains intact and operates well even after 1,000 bending cycles at a radius of curvature as small as 2.3 mm. Credit: KAIST The arrival of a thin and lightweight computer that even rolls up like a piece of paper will not be in the far distant future. Flexible organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), built upon a plastic substrate, have received greater attention lately for their use in next-generation displays that can be bent or rolled while still operating. A Korean research team led by Professor Seunghyup Yoo from the School of Electrical Engineering, KAIST and Professor Tae-Woo Lee from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) has developed highly flexible OLEDs with excellent efficiency by using graphene as a transparent electrode (TE) which is placed in between titanium dioxide (TiO2) and conducting polymer layers. The research results were published online on June 2, 2016 in Nature Communications. OLEDs are stacked in several ultra-thin layers on glass, foil, or plastic substrates, in which multi-layers of organic compounds are sandwiched between two electrodes (cathode and anode). When voltage is applied across the electrodes, electrons from the cathode and holes (positive charges) from the anode draw toward each other and meet in the emissive layer. OLEDs emit light as an electron recombines with a positive hole, releasing energy in the form of a photon. One of the electrodes in OLEDs is usually transparent, and depending on which electrode is transparent, OLEDs can either emit from the top or bottom. In conventional bottom-emission OLEDs, an anode is transparent in order for the emitted photons to exit the device through its substrate. Indium-tin-oxide (ITO) is commonly used as a transparent anode because of its high transparency, low sheet resistance, and well-established manufacturing process. However, ITO can potentially be expensive, and moreover, is brittle, being susceptible to bending-induced formation of cracks. The new architecture to develop highly flexible OLEDs with excellent efficiency by using graphene as a transparent electrode (TE). Credit: KAIST Graphene, a two-dimensional thin layer of carbon atoms tightly bonded together in a hexagonal honeycomb lattice, has recently emerged as an alternative to ITO. With outstanding electrical, physical, and chemical properties, its atomic thinness leading to a high degree of flexibility and transparency makes it an ideal candidate for TEs. Nonetheless, the efficiency of graphene-based OLEDs reported to date has been, at best, about the same level of ITO-based OLEDs. As a solution, the Korean research team, which further includes Professors Sung-Yool Choi (Electrical Engineering) and Taek-Soo Kim (Mechanical Engineering) of KAIST and their students, proposed a new device architecture that can maximize the efficiency of graphene-based OLEDs. They fabricated a transparent anode in a composite structure in which a TiO2 layer with a high refractive index (high-n) and a hole-injection layer (HIL) of conducting polymers with a low refractive index (low-n) sandwich graphene electrodes. This is an optical design that induces a synergistic collaboration between the high-n and low-n layers to increase the effective reflectance of TEs. As a result, the enhancement of the optical cavity resonance is maximized. The optical cavity resonance is related to the improvement of efficiency and color gamut in OLEDs. At the same time, the loss from surface plasmon polariton (SPP), a major cause for weak photon emissions in OLEDs, is also reduced due to the presence of the low-n conducting polymers. Under this approach, graphene-based OLEDs exhibit 40.8% of ultrahigh external quantum efficiency (EQE) and 160.3 lm/W of power efficiency, which is unprecedented in those using graphene as a TE. Furthermore, these devices remain intact and operate well even after 1,000 bending cycles at a radius of curvature as small as 2.3 mm. This is a remarkable result for OLEDs containing oxide layers such as TiO2 because oxides are typically brittle and prone to bending-induced fractures even at a relatively low strain. The research team discovered that TiO2 has a crack-deflection toughening mechanism that tends to prevent bending-induced cracks from being formed easily. Professor Yoo said, "What's unique and advanced about this technology, compared with previous graphene-based OLEDs, is the synergistic collaboration of high- and low-index layers that enables optical management of both resonance effect and SPP loss, leading to significant enhancement in efficiency, all with little compromise in flexibility." He added, "Our work was the achievement of collaborative research, transcending the boundaries of different fields, through which we have often found meaningful breakthroughs." Professor Lee said, "We expect that our technology will pave the way to develop an OLED light source for highly flexible and wearable displays, or flexible sensors that can be attached to the human body for health monitoring, for instance." Explore further New OLED findings move flexible lighting technology toward commercial feasibility More information: Jaeho Lee et al, Synergetic electrode architecture for efficient graphene-based flexible organic light-emitting diodes, Nature Communications (2016). Journal information: Nature Communications Jaeho Lee et al, Synergetic electrode architecture for efficient graphene-based flexible organic light-emitting diodes,(2016). DOI: 10.1038/NCOMMS11791 Entrepreneurs who show up at AOL co-founder Steve Case's door begging for money better have more to show than an idea for a killer app. In a new book, Case explains that some of the most successful startups in the next few years should enter complex industries such as health care and education. But to survive, they'll need sharp plans for how to both team up with big, bureaucratic institutions and navigate torturous, out-of-date regulations. Policy fights, partnerships and perseverance will be crucial in what Case calls the third wave of startups. Now a venture capitalist at Revolution in Washington, D.C., Case recently discussed his "The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur's Vision of the Future." The interview has been edited for length and clarity. Q: You've done nationwide road trips to better understand entrepreneurism. Did that feed into the book? A: There's increasing evidence of entrepreneurship flourishing throughout the country. In some of the industries most ripe for disruption, including health care, the big players like UnitedHealth or Cleveland Clinic or M.D. Anderson are mostly in the middle of the country. Partnerships are going to become more important, and that will lead to startups closer to where some of these companies are. Agriculture tech in Louisville ... or St. Louis is huge. I'd expect dozens of ag-tech startups in St. Louis in a few years. Q: You partnered with plenty of companies at AOL. How are the partnerships you're calling for now any different? A: The first wave of the internet, which was building on-ramps to the internet and convincing people to get connected, required partnerships. We had hundreds of them with software companies, hardware companies and media companies. The second wave, the real successful companies didn't need partnerships. You can go through the list - Facebook, Snapchat - to get going. In the third wave, the sectors that are going to get disrupted are where partnerships with incumbent organizations like hospitals and universities are important to get significant market adoption. It's not just about the app on your phone. Third wave partnerships will be similar to the first wave. It wasn't just about what you were doing on your own; it was how well you played with others. Q: How do startups find the right partner? A: If it's a young a company, you're asking, "What kind of partnership can give you the scale and credibility you need?" What can get you some acceleration and recognition that you are successful? The challenging thing is staging it so there's clarity on both sides around what the objectives are. We had a partnership in the late '80s with Apple, we thought it was transformative because we could license the Apple brand name. But almost immediately we had several conflicts. We had to tear up that agreement. More clarity going in around the marketing and distribution mechanics would have led us to do it with eyes wide open on both sides. Q: Will we see increasing amounts of mergers and acquisitions if partnerships spread? A: Sometimes it will be M&A, sometimes it will be joint venture, sometimes a business relationship. There will be more M&A, but it won't necessarily be the lead tool. Q: How are some of your portfolio companies representing third wave ideas? A: Revolution Foods, which is focused on healthier school lunches, started small in Oakland, Calif., and is now in 20 states and serving 200,000 meals (a day) and has raised a significant amount of money from us and others. They are emerging as a leader by finding a way to partner with a lot of schools on the policy front. Logistics business Optoro has partnered with retailers to manage their returns process. (Sports data company) SportRadar is working with European leagues and now expanding with the U.S. Q: Is there a way for companies to infiltrate industries without partnerships, like how chat app Slack has become infectious within corporations? A: A backdoor Trojan horse can work and will work. But look at Echo360, it's in 700 universities. It does require schools to install technology and professors to embrace it. There are more examples of things that can be consumer-driven, and in health care, there have been consumer driving things like Fitbit that doesn't need prescriptions or health care reimbursements. But dealing with devices to manage diabetes or dealing with more life-threatening issues, that's when you have to partner with incumbents. There will be instances where companies can't commercialize without that support earlier on. Q: Is what Tim Armstrong is now doing at Verizon to reinvent the company's AOL unit a good example of taking third wave strategies to heart? A: I've been out of it for a while so I can't speak to AOL. But there's a variety of ones. One older company figuring out this new model is General Electric. They're investing in startups and trying to reposition the company to be more open to startups and moving their headquarters to downtown Boston to be closer to where people are doing innovative companies. And the last several years in Detroit, the automotive companies have woken up. Every sector has some company trying to develop a new model. Q: There have been some serious allegations that startups have ignored regulations. Look at Theranos. Are the venture capitalists funding and advising companies to blame for that ignorance? A: There are investors realizing the importance of policy and partnerships and trying to understand those dynamics better. (Silicon Valley venture capital firm) Andreessen Horowitz recently hosted a conference on public policy in Washington, D.C., with 200 or 300 people attending, including their portfolio companies. They are going to be helpful in their companies understanding the environment. Other venture firms are going to start doing that well. The Andreessen conference is an example of growing recognition that investment opportunities in the next decade are going to be sectors that require a different playbook. Firms that are able to add more value are going to be more attractive. There's a recognition that policy creates a lot of uncertainty and extra risk but it unlocks opportunities in new parts of the economy, and iconic companies will emerge. People have a duty to recognize that and broaden their screen in terms of what they invest in. Q: What's wrong with being a jerk as an entrepreneur? Hasn't it led to success for many, like Uber? A: There are some sectors like offering drugs that you can't really wing it. In the case of autonomous cars, you're going to have to find a way to adhere to some standards. Otherwise, you're going to be knocked out of business. Entrepreneurs are always going to push the envelope and try to disrupt the status quo and push with urgency for the world to be different, but they need to marry that with the importance of partners and policy. Uber, now with two floors of offices in D.C., is recognizing they have to look at this closely. They were successful because the regulation is fragmented at the state and local levels, and there's been a public perception that many of the regulations they have fought are more about protecting incumbents than about safety. Q: Has being a jerk actually hurt anyone though? A: In retrospect, companies doing (massive open online courses) were too disrespectful of universities and saying that universities would disappear. But they need the help of trusted brands, and one of them even hired the former president of Yale. There's been plenty of examples in health care where issues around regulation put some companies under pressure. Explore further AOL founder looks to invest outside Silicon Valley 2016 Los Angeles Times Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. A mathematical model explains the explosive dispersal of seeds from the popping cress. The blue lines are computer simulations of the coiling seed pod at consecutive time points. Credit: MPI f. Plant Breeding Research/ A. Hay Plants use many strategies to disperse their seeds, but among the most fascinating are exploding seed pods. Scientists had assumed that the energy to power these explosions was generated through the seed pods deforming as they dried out, but in the case of 'popping cress' (Cardamine hirsuta) this turns out not to be so. Scientists at the the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, found out that these seed pods don't wait to dry before they explode. Since plants do not have muscles; rapid movements, like the exploding seed pods of popping cress, are rare in the plant kingdom. Scientists from different disciplines, led by Angela Hay, a plant geneticist at the Max Planck Institute in Cologne, worked together to discover how the seed pods of popping cress explode. Explosive shatter of these seed pods is so fast that advanced high-speed cameras are needed to even see the explosion. Richard Bomphrey, of the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London, explains: "Because the seeds are so small, aerodynamic drag slows them down immediately." To compensate, the seeds are accelerated away from the fruit and get up-to-speed extremely quickly. In fact, they accelerate from zero to ten metres per second in about half a millisecond. Cells contract Hay's teams of scientists discovered that the secret to explosive acceleration in popping cress is the evolutionary innovation of a fruit wall that can store elastic energy through growth and expansion, and can rapidly release this energy at the right stage of development. Previously, scientists had claimed that tension was generated by differential contraction of the inner and outer layers of the seed pod as it dried. So what puzzled the researchers was how popping cress pods exploded while green and hydrated, rather than brown and dry. Their surprising discovery was that hydrated cells in the outer layer of the seed pod actually used their internal pressure in order to contract and generate tension. The authors used a computational model of three-dimensional plant cells, to show that when these cells were pressurized, they expanded in depth while contracting in length, "like the way an air mattress expands in depth, when inflated, but contracts in width," explains Richard Smith, a computer scientist at Max Planck Institute in Cologne. Cell wall forms a hinge The biology behind seed dispersal by explosion. Credit: Max Planck Society Another unexpected finding was how this energy was released. The authors found that the fruit wall wanted to coil along its length to release tension, but it had a curved cross-section preventing this. "This geometric constraint is also found in a toy called a slap bracelet," explains Derek Moulton, of the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford. In both the toy and the seed pod, the cross-section first has to flatten before the tension is suddenly released by coiling. Unexpectedly, this mechanism relies on a unique cell wall geometry in the seed pod. As Moulton explains, "This wall is shaped like a hinge, which can open," causing the fruit wall to flatten in cross-section and explosively coil. According to Hay, their most exciting discovery was the evolutionary novelty of this hinged cell wall. They had evidence from genetics and mathematical modeling that this hinge was needed for explosive pod shatter, "but the fact that we found this hinge only in plants with explosive seed dispersal was the smoking gun," says Hay. After working out how the seed pods of popping cress exploded, the scientists realised that this mechanism had evolved via tweaking the shape of already-existing cellular components. One implication of their findings is that other movements in plants that were previously attributed to passive contraction by drying, may in fact be active processes, "especially in green, hydrated tissues," says Smith. This study is an example of the potential of interdisciplinary research. The scientists built up a comprehensive picture of explosive seed dispersal by relating observations at the plant scale all the way down to the cellular and genetic scales, and systematically linking each scale. As Alain Goriely, of the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford, says, "this approach was only made possible by combining state-of-the-art modelling techniques with biophysical measurements and biological experiments." Explore further Why do strawberries have their seeds on the outside? More information: Hugo Hofhuis et al. Morphomechanical Innovation Drives Explosive Seed Dispersal, Cell (2016). Journal information: Cell Hugo Hofhuis et al. Morphomechanical Innovation Drives Explosive Seed Dispersal,(2016). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2016.05.002 VANCOUVER, BC(Marketwired June 02, 2016) SHOES.COM today announced it has been awarded with the 2016 Ecommerce Experience Award by the Retail Council of Canada. This award honours Canadas best overall user experience of an ecommerce business including everything from site design, to merchandising, search, content, social, emails, and mobile. The other finalists in the ecommerce experience category included Costco, Walmart, Sport Chek, goeasy, and Surmesur. SHOES.COM was recognized for its innovative and personalized online user experience that integrates the use of AI-powered technology, brand storytelling, and high engagement touchpoints across web, email, blog, social media and mobile. Over the past 12 months, the SHOES.COM team has been committed to building an experience on SHOEme.ca that provides a curated experience for each individual guest. To this end, SHOES.COM introduced Smart Shopper, the first AI-powered visual intelligence technology. As customers click on product images on SHOEme.ca, Smart Shopper rapidly learns which unique attributes the customer is looking for in a shoe, bringing them to a curated collection designed specifically with their personal preferences in mind. This is just one of the revolutionary new ways SHOES.COM is putting customers in control of the endless aisle. We are incredibly honoured to have been selected as the winners of the best ecommerce experience in Canada, said CEO and Co-Founder, Roger Hardy. This award is testament to our consistent focus on the customer from their first visit online, to their experience searching for shoes, to placing an order everything we do is with our customer in mind. Only four years ago, SHOEme.ca was a team of two operating out of a Vancouver basement suite I couldnt be more proud of how far weve come. About SHOES.COM: SHOES.COM began with one simple goal in mind help people discover footwear they love. Since then, the company has been on a mission to innovate and empower people with new and better ways to shop. SHOES.COM is harnessing new technology and people-power to curate a refined collection of shoes for each individual customer. SHOES.COM offers a selection of over 500 brands and successfully serves over 8 million customers across the USA and Canada. The companys online properties include SHOEme.ca, SHOES.COM and OnlineShoes.com. About Retail Council of Canada (RCC) Retail Council of Canada, founded in 1963, is a not-for-profit, industry-funded association. RCC represents more than 45,000 store fronts of all retail formats across Canada, including department, grocery, independent merchants, regional and national specialty chains, and online merchants. Other Point of Sale blogs that may interest you: Point of Sale Case Study: The Container Store Gets Insight Into the POS Journey By Dave Hickey, President and COO of UserReplay The Container Store is the original and leading retailer of storage and organization products, offering more than 10,000 innovative and multifunctional solutions designed to simplify their customers lives. The retailer has nurtured an employee-first culture since its inception in 1978, and couples its one-of-a-kind product collection with a high level of customer service delivered by its highly trained organization experts. The company currently has 79 locations in 29 states. It also offers international shipping to 96 countries. Challenge In addition to putting their employees first, The Container Store is also very focused on providing their customers with an unparalleled point of sale across brick and mortar, online and mobile. The comprehensive levels of employee training means staff can offer customers the best level of customer service. As the business increasingly expands its eCommerce offering, The Container Store wanted to ensure it could replicate this experience online and provide continuity for the customer journey. As The Container Store offers highly unique and customizable storage solutions to solve their customers storage and organization challenges, each journey is individual to the customer. The Container Store already uses OpinionLab as their voice of customer (VOC) solution. However, the feedback provided by the customer to OpinionLab would highlight an issue, but not provide the context required to understand and resolve it. The team would therefore be unable to truly understand the challenge the customer had faced, increasing the resources spent on investigation and resolution. The company had previously been using a competitive product for session replay. It had however proved increasingly unreliable, cumbersome and the fidelity of the playback was limited. It was also installed on-premise, which meant it was complex to manage within the existing architecture. The team recognized the importance of understanding the customer journey but were frustrated by the limitations of drilling down into this detail. Solution After evaluating the alternatives in the market, The Container Store selected UserReplay as their new customer experience management (CEM) solution. The team was immediately attracted to the solution because it could be installed as software as a service, making it much easier to manage and removing the need to create infrastructure to support it. The team found the solution quick and easy to implement and, perhaps most importantly, were able to get their team up to speed quickly. Training time for this type of CEM solution went from a couple of days down to a couple of hours. The session replay capabilities far exceeded their teams expectations. They were now able to take the feedback received from the VOC tool and then drill down into each unique customer journey, replaying the exact scenario that customer experienced. Brad Schneider, Director of Application Development for The Container Store, comments: Once you have the ability to extract the type of information UserReplay provides, you cant live without it. You realize how much information you were missing before when you see the level of data presented to you. As many of our customer journeys are unique, it enables us to understand each scenario and address it accordingly. Over 50% of The Container Stores [online] traffic now comes from mobile devices. The mobile replay capabilities of UserReplay offered fidelity that was absent from the previous solution. Schneider continues: As more and more of our customers use mobile to browse, shop and purchase, understanding their journeys across these devices is key. UserReplay enables us to drill down into the customers experience regardless of the device they are using. Fraud is a key area for brands to manage. The fraud team had previously used the former on-premise solution but found they were limited by the insight it was able to provide. They now use UserReplay for forensic analysis and to diagnose usage patterns that can indicate fraud. This has enabled the fraud team to be more agile in spotting potential fraudulent activity through customer behavior. UserReplay has proven to be much easier to use and operates with a lot less friction. The Container Store has used UserReplay to improve their on-site search. In the past, customers would enter a term that may present no results or didnt match the specific product they were trying to look for. Through the insight provided by their new CEM, IT has been able to work with the online merchandising team to adjust search terms to work more intelligently based on customer input. The CEM solution has also played a supporting role in the online launch of The Container Stores customer engagement program: POP! Perfectly Organized Perks. From a back-end perspective, this has required a number of significant changes which could potentially lead to instability. This, in turn, may inadvertently impact the customers experience. The Container Store is now able to monitor the impact of the changes, and pinpoint whether customer experience has been affected and how. Results UserReplay has delivered above and beyond the initial expectations of the team. The solution is used by IT, fraud, QA analysts and software developers across the business. The future plan is to roll this out to merchandising and marketing to further accrue customer information for strategic business planning. The Container Store is confident this will be easy due to the proven success in quickly training their employees on the solution. Schneider comments: In the past, if an employee had joined the business after or missed the initial launch of a CEM solution it would take a couple of days to train them on how to use it. We were skeptical at first but weve been astonished that we have been able to train people on UserReplay in just a few hours. Weve received a lot of feedback from our employees that UserReplay is considerably easier to use. In the future, The Container Store is keen to focus on session struggle and how to overcome this before it affects the customer. Schneider comments: We recognize that for every customer who comments or complains, there are several that dont. We want to truly understand, as much as we can proactively, to remove any potential challenges before they affect our customers. Our previous solution was not flexible enough to do this but we are excited about how UserReplay can support us with this and the product developments we can take advantage of. About UserReplay UserReplays customer experience management solution enables businesses to discover the truth about their customers digital experience. It combines replay of customer journeys with sophisticated analytics that identify customer struggles and monetize their impact. This helps them improve conversion, resolve technical issues more quickly, recover lost customers and prevent fraud. Aimed at medium to large enterprises with digital channels, UserReplay has the flexibility to be deployed as SaaS or installed software. Leading brands all over the world rely on UserReplay to improve the quality of the website experience for their customers and increase revenue from their digital channel. For more information, go to www.userreplay.com. Dave Hickey is the President and COO of UserReplay. Hes an industry veteran with nearly thirty years experience in the software and technology industry, including leadership roles at Kemp Technologies and Draper Fisher Jurvetson-backed, Lumeta Corporation. He is responsible for leading UserReplays US expansion while overseeing sales, marketing and customer success from the companys new office in Morristown, New Jersey. For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser Criminal arrests listed on the State Police public information website between May 31 and June 3: * Heather L. Lackey, 34, of Greenwich, charged with misdemeanor criminal mischief and endangering the welfare of a child and non-criminal harassment June 2 in Greenwich. * Zachary L. Greenspan, 23 of Queensbury, charged with misdemeanor counts of driving while ability impaired by drugs and criminal possession of a controlled substance and non-criminal unlawful possession of marijuana June 2 on Route 9 in Malta. * William L. Galusha, 51, of Glens Falls, charged with misdemeanor driving while intoxicated June 2 on Woodlawn Avenue in Moreau. * Ashley C. Woodbury, 67, of Saratoga Springs, charged with misdemeanor DWI June 2 on Route 9 in Wilton. * David M. Roberts, 56, of Hudson Falls, charged with misdemeanor petit larceny June 1 on Route 9 in Malta. * Glenn L. Peters, 56, of Lake George, charged with misdemeanor DWI May 31 on Route 149 in Queensbury. * Timothy J. O'Connor, 49, of Malta, charged with misdemeanor boating while intoxicated June 1 in Malta. * Taisiia Iurchenko, 35, of New York City, charged with misdemeanor assault May 31 in Lake George. ARGYLE Argyle Superintendent of Schools Jan Jehring is leaving over the summer to become leader of a school district in Orange County, the district announced Friday. Jehring has accepted the position as superintendent for the Florida Union School District. Her last day is Aug. 7. Jehring has been with the roughly 540-student district since 2004. She started as the districts elementary principal and she was named superintendent in 2009, in addition to serving as the K-6 leader. The Florida Board of Education voted Thursday to appoint Jehring as superintendent of the district, which has about 836 students. She was given a four-year contract at a starting salary of $171,250. Jehring was making $136,895 this year at Argyle. Before her time in Argyle, Jehring worked for Ballston Spa schools as an instructional supervisor and was a counselor at the Windham-Ashland-Jewett Central School District near the Catskills. Board of Education President Pam Ellis said the board has mixed emotions. We wish her tremendous success, but she will be greatly missed by the entire Argyle community. Superintendent Jehring has been an exceptional leader her integrity, compassion and vision have been unwavering during her time at Argyle, Ellis said in a news release. The board is working to find an experienced interim superintendent to fill the job from August until January, at which time it hopes to have a permanent superintendent. The district will work with BOCES District Superintendent James Dexter to conduct the search and involve participation from employees, parents, students and community members. LAKE GEORGE U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, who has made invasive species control a priority issue, visited Lake George on Friday to learn firsthand about local management efforts. Am I doing pretty good? Stefanik asked, as she washed off a boat at the Lake George transfer station, one of seven boat-washing stations in the Lake George basin. Very good, said Rich Collins, one of the boat-washing station staff members. Im hiring you if you ever need a job just part time. Adirondack Council Executive Director Willie Janeway, who was in the audience, paused from a cellphone conversation and shouted, Way to go, Congresswoman stamping out invasives! Stefaniks visit was part of an effort by a regional coalition of environmental, water quality and government organizations to remind boaters at the start of the summer tourism season of the importance of preventing the transport of invasive species into Lake George. Clean, drain and dry thats our mantra, Collins said. Invasive species are plants and animals that are not native to the area. They throw off the balance of the ecosystem when they are introduced into local waters. The Lake George Park Commission has a mandatory boat inspection program to clean and inspect boats before they are put in any waters in the Lake George basin. The Park Commission operates a system of seven boat-washing and inspection stations in Lake George, Queensbury, Bolton Landing, Hague, Ticonderoga and Huletts Landing. A new state law took effect Memorial Day weekend that requires boaters anywhere in New York to take reasonable precaution to prevent the spread of invasive species, said Eric Siy, executive director of The Fund for Lake George. The Adirondack Park Invasive Program and the Save Lake George Partnership, a regional coalition of organizations, has purchased space for five months, beginning next week, on a billboard on the Northway, south of Exit 18, to remind boaters coming to Lake George about the importance of getting boats washed and inspected. The coalition also purchased radio advertising that will air throughout the summer. Stefanik is running for re-election in November against Democrat Mike Derrick, a retired Army colonel from Peru, in Clinton County, and Green Party candidate Matt Funiciello, a bread company owner and political activist from Hudson Falls. Stefanik has been emphasizing her advocacy for controlling invasive species and her support of federal land conservation programs, as her opponents criticize her votes on other environmental issues, such as her vote in favor of resolution to, in essence, prevent the federal Environmental Protecting Agency from implementing new rules on coal-fired power plants without congressional approval. Stefanik has said the new rules circumvent Congress. In February, Stefanik received a 9 out of a possible 100 points on a League of Conservation Voters scorecard, based on her voting record in 2015. The Nature Conservancy, a separate group, awarded Stefanik its Supporter of Nature Award, based on Stefaniks support of land conservation and environmental issues. Stefanik voted in support of extending the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund program that provides grants for conservation projects, and she co-sponsored legislation to make the program permanent. She also co-sponsored legislation to extend the North Country Scenic Trail, which runs from North Dakota to Crown Point in Essex County. Under the plan, the trail would extend from Crown Point to Middlebury, Vermont. She recently introduced a resolution to emphasize the importance of controlling invasive species, and legislation to direct the U.S. Postal Service to issue a premium stamp, with a portion of the price going to the federal Department of Agriculture and Department of Interior for invasive species control programs. Environmental leaders at the event Friday praised Stefanik for introducing the legislation. Unless we are fighting this war and it is a war that were fighting against aquatic invasive species at all levels of government and across all sectors, we cannot hope to win, said Siy, of The Fund for Lake George. A premium stamp for breast cancer awareness has raised $83.5 million since 1998 and an endangered species awareness stamp has raised $3.2 million since 2011, said Tom Flanagin, the congresswomans spokesman. Stefanik said invasive species control is a national issue. Every congressional district across the country has invasive species, she said. Stefanik said she also co-sponsored legislation that passed the House in April to amend and extend authorization for the federal Environmental Protection Agencys Great Lakes Restoration initiative through the federal governments 2020 fiscal year. The legislation includes language requiring the program to prioritize the prevention and control of invasive species. A number of states throughout the country have reduced funding to public universities. In trying to cut costs, some university systems are taking a hard look at their presses. While one university is considering shutting down its press, others continue to support theirsbut expect them to rely more on their own resources and less on institutional funding. Illinois, which has a Republican governor and a Democratic legislature, has been hobbled since July 2015 by a budget stalemate with no end in sight; without a budget, the state cannot release funds to its nine public universities, including the three housing scholarly presses, forcing them to trim budgets to deal with the shortfall. Laurie Matheson, director of the University of Illinois Press, at the states flagship campus in Champaign, said that UIP continues to publish the best books we can with the resources we have available. UIP publishes more than 120 titles and 33 journals each year. Barb Martin, the director of Southern Illinois University Press, in Carbondale, echoed Mathesons sentiment, but was more forthcoming about the cuts to its budget. SIU Press has lost 60% of its funding from the university in the past six or seven years, Martin said; 12% was cut this past year. About 17% of SIU Presss budget, or $170,000, comes from a university subsidy. SIU Press, which had about $1.1 million in revenue last fiscal year and publishes about 40 titles annually, has cut back on staff since 2010, down from 16 to 11, and because of a hiring freeze, it will lose another position when its typesetter retires this fall. SIU wants to keep its press, Martin said, but she added that she wasnt sure if it will be able to. SIUs situation, however, is not as bad as that of its smaller sister publisher, Northern Illinois University Press, in DeKalb. In trying to deal with a $30 million budget shortfall, NIU implemented a campus-wide program prioritization process this spring, which determined that NIU Press is an inessential part of the university. A reprioritization report stated that since NIU Press, which publishes 2025 titles each year and receives over 40% of its $750,000 budget from the university, is unlikely to generate outside revenue and rely less on university resources, it should be eliminated. No final decision has been made by administrators. According to Joe King, associate communications director at NIU, the press is being given an opportunity to make a case for why it should not be shut down. The University Press of Kansas also faces financial questions. The states higher education system has been hit with budget cuts since Sam Brownback became governor in 2011 and promised lower taxes to its residents. Last month the state announced that it was cutting $30.7 million from the states higher education system for fiscal year 2017, with its flagship campus, the University of Kansas in Lawrence, losing more than $7 million. University Press of Kansas director Charles Myers declined to respond in detail to questions from PW asking what impact the budget cuts might have on the publisher. Its so uncertain right now, he said. I dont think this is something I want to address at this time, as it would be pure speculation on my part. Since being elected governor of Wisconsin in 2010, Scott Walker has made repeated cuts to that states system of 13 universities; $250 million in cuts are included in the 201517 state budget. It all trickles down, University of Wisconsin Press director Dennis Lloyd admitted, disclosing that the state previously funded about 10% of the presss $3.6 million budget, but cut that sum by 2% in 201517. It could have been better; it could have been worse, Lloyd observed. Though Lloyd speculated that there were conversations at high levels regarding whether to keep the press, he said that he has been reassured that the university is committed to UWP, which typically nets about $1.5 million in revenues from book sales; the press publishes 50 titles and 14 journals each year. In order to strategize more effectively on generating revenues and cutting expenses, UWP recently added a business manager to its 21-person staff. The North Carolina legislature has cut $64.4 million from its 17-campus university system in its 20162017 budget, on top of approximately $500 million in cuts to the UNC system since 2010. But John Scherer, director of the University of North Carolina Press, said the latest round of cuts have had only an indirect effect on the press, which has received a $440,000 subsidy from the state for the past 20 years. It never has gone up when times are good, and it hasnt gone down when times are bad, Scherer noted. UNC Press publishes more than 100 titles and nine journals each year. University support accounts for about 5% of its $8 million budget. If anything is a detriment to the presss finances, Scherer explained, its cuts in academic library budgets resulting in fewer purchases. Were the press for the UNC system, Scherer said. The clarity of our role as a system press helps our existence. The subsidy, Scherer said, is a tool that allows the press to do innovative things, including providing fulfillment and other publishing services for nine other presses under its Longleaf Services division. In fact, $2 million of it annual $8 million in revenue comes from Longleaf. Overall, we feel well taken care of, Scherer said. The university press is where a university meets the public. This press has endeared itself to the region. Were seen as spreading the word of whats happening at UNC. The idea that a university press can build bridges between an institution of higher education and the public was just one reason the University of Cincinnati, in Ohio, announced last week that it is going to launch an academic press. The University of Cincinnati Press is intended to pursue, university officials stated in a release, a dual publishing focus on social justice and community engagement and to cultivate and disseminate scholarly works of the highest quality for the enhancement of the global community. The press will be a part of the UC Libraries system, which is engaged in a nationwide search for a director to begin the process of hiring employees and acquiring manuscripts. According to John McNay, chair of UCs department of history, philosophy, and political science, and a member of the task force that recommended that UC launch the press, there were a number of factors influencing the committees decision. When it came down to it, however, was the idea that a university press builds and strengthens relationships beyond the campus. Our committee was impressed by the support that was expressed by both the faculty and the public at Missouri and Akron, McNay said, referring to those two university administrations that rescinded decisions to shut down their presses. There was nationwide concern about the fate of those presses. I think the UC community looks forward to creating a press that peopleboth in academia and the publicwill care just as much about and that is also a valuable part of our academic mission. Many have blamed the location of the filling station in the densely populated Kwame Nkrumah circle as the major reason why 150 people lost their live in the fire disaster on June 3. One year on, what has changed in the NPAs policy on the granting of permits to filling stations. The NPA says it has taken concrete steps to avert a recurrence of June 3 by revising its criteria for the location and operation of filling stations across the country. In an interview with Pulse.com.gh the Head of Communications of the NPA, Yaro Kasambata, said the NPAs policy and criteria for issuing permits for the situation of filling stations has since been drastically revised to minimize the recurrence of the oil spill that caused the fire on the fateful day. According to him, the NPA has undertaken a comprehensive mapping exercise that has helped in the classification of geographical areas across the country according to population density. This he says now helps in the proper allocation of places for filling stations. Under this method therefore, filling station will not be granted permits to operate in red zones or densely populated locations. The June 3 disaster was an eye-opener for all of us. But to be fair, the NPA was already in the process of redefining our policy on how permits are granted to filling stations. Initially, the applicant goes to the Assembly for a permit, then to the Fire service, and then finally to the NPA. However, Yaro Kasambata revealed the process has been totally reversed where the applicant starts from the NPA and ends up at the assembly. We have demarcated the whole country into population zones, labelling them according to the colours red, amber and green. Red representing densely populated, amber being relatively dense populated and green been not densely populated. Yaro said permits are not granted for operation of filling stations in densely populated locations. When quizzed on a particular incident of a filling station situated by a hotel at Mile 7 in a Accra, Yaro conceded that the NPA had gotten numerous complaints from customers on the location of that particular filling station and has been investigating the issue. Yes. That case has come to our attention, and we are investigating the issue. READ MORE: Hypocrisy Mile 7 filing station rebuilt months after June 3 flood disaster When he was questioned on the fact that the filling station is currently in operations, the Head of Communications of the NPA said swifts actions will be taken to address the issue. I am unable to say why they are currently operational and as to whether the have the permit to or not. I will have to check to be categorically sure. However, I know they were seeking permission from the assembly as well. As I said we will have to investigate to find out the circumstance under which they are operating. This station became the talk of the nation on June 8 2015, just five days after the flood and fire disasters which killed so many. The station was demolished shortly after irate residents of the area attacked it. However, checks by Pulse.com.gh, seven months on, revealed that the station had been reconstructed. Some of the residents who could not explain exactly why the station is being reconstructed told me there is nothing they can do about it. Well you can see for yourself. We have complained severally and now we dont know what to do so we are here watching, a gentleman who sells close to the station told pulse.com.gh's Betty Kankam-Boadu. Another resident, Larmi, 72, who has been living in his house 50 meters away from the filing station since 1982, old man told Betty when it (referring to the filling station) catches fire, we will all be in trouble. Derick Appiah, a beverage vendor at the Kwame Nkrumah circle tells Pulse Business Abu Mubarik that the disaster has somewhat made customers apprehensive about the Kwame Nkrumah Circle. There is been a vast difference in the performance of my business before the June 3 disaster and after. Many people who used to ply the Circle route have stopped. They would much rather use other routes now instead of circle. This has really hampered patronage of business. According to him even those who still ply the circle route do so with little ease. Currently, most people who pass through Circle do so with so much apprehension that they do not stop to do business. My revenues have taking a serious dip, I tell you, Derick lamented. Derrick believes he was fortunate to have missed the disaster because he was in his shop on that fateful day when the rains started in the late afternoon of June 3. He waited a while expecting the rains to subside, but it wouldnt. So he left for home by 5pm only to hear the sad news that night that the place had gone up in flames claiming over one hundred lives. Manager of the Honest Chef cafeteria at Kwame Nkrumah Circle also complained bitterly that business has dwindled tremendously due to the disaster. According to him, the trend is contributing to indiscipline among students, as such students gain unlimited access to the internet. Addressing the 10th Conference of Heads and Managers of Ahmadiyya Muslim Education Institutions in Ghana (CHAMEIG) held in Wa in the Upper West Region, the GES boss said the situation is worrying. I will not buy the gadget [phone] for my child until he or she completes the secondary school. All they do now is Whatsapping and Whatsapping deep into the night instead of studying.Manufacturers of mobile phones implore users to limit the extent they use the gadget but this is not adhered to in this country, he observed. There is still a raging debate over whether or not mobile phone usage should be banned among senior high school students. The boxer sang further sung what he considers the hook of the song and added that he will continue bleaching to the extent that President Mahama and his ministers all see him as a very fresh guy. According to Shatta Wale, many Ghanaians would love to hear them on a song and that has informed his decision to collaborate with Bukom Banku. You know Bukom Banku is part of the arts. I always tell people I like working with people in the arts. Hes called me; Ive called him and we are planning on a day to record. Im getting calls from all over Ghana so I feel what the people want is what we give them. People should watch out for the African Mayweather and the African Dancehall King he said on Pluzz FMs AM Pluzz. Bukom Banku has been making headlines for a number of reasons. The boxer before trending for bleaching his skin had been in the news for physical assaults. In 2010, he allegedly assaulted his wife with whom he has two children and his brother-in-law, Theophilus Osei Duodu. The boxer confirmed in an interview with Delay that he beats his wife when she misbehaves. He is also said to be intimidating residents of Bukom and assaulting women who offend him or refuse his sexual advances. On a balcony overlooking the settlement of Old Fadama, Joseph Obeng laments about his life a year after he was involved in a national tragedy. The June 3 flood and fire disaster in 2015 was the single largest loss of Ghanaian lives to a disaster since independence. A government committee set up after the disaster to determine the cause and suggest recommendations put the death toll at 150 people with an estimated equal number suffering various degrees of injury. Read Also : Artist remembers disaster with all plastic sculpture However, behind the national wailing, political blame game and accusations of an inefficient city authority are the personal stories of those who survived the night the spirit of Accra drowned and burned. Joseph, 33, used to work as a second-hand clothes seller. He had been at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle trying to help a policeman push his car out of the floods to the fuel station when the fire begun. He spent six months at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospitals Burns Centre. I have not been able to work for a year, Joseph says with a crackling in his voice. During his interview with Pulse News, he agonizes about the lost time and income that the disaster beset him with. Joseph cannot stretch his arms to lift very basic things which means he simply cannot return to his job or even start a new one. Josephs story is like that of many others, such as Ernestina Addo, a 29 year old woman who worked as a waitress at a local restaurant known as Honests Chef. She suffered burns on her face. My life has been greatly changed by what happened. A lot of things have changed in my life. I would have moved a lot more forward in life by now. Before the disaster, I was active and productive. All that I have strived for and acquired have been lost because of this disaster. My finances and other factors have greatly diminished. A year after making a miraculous recovery, Ernestina is unemployed, cash strapped and her situation has further been compounded following a hit and run incident on her way to church that has made walking difficult. For those who have been able to return to work, business is a tiny fraction of what it used to be. Apart from suffering burns to the legs (leaving her paralyzed for two months), Joyce Asamoahs booming drinks bar was reduced to a humble hut and a table following a demolition by city authorities after the disaster. The 30 year old single mother of two boys has also been left traumatised by the experience. Since I returned to work, I have not passed by the road where the fuel station is because I am afraid. Sometimes when I am in the dark and I see light, I get scared. Even when I see fire while cooking, I get scared. When we go to the hospital, they advise us not to harbour such fears because it was an accident. Trying not to harbour such fears will be difficult for Joyce because a year after the disaster the site is yet to be cleared. Accras position as a rapidly growing African city means it is a magnet for migrants seeking better opportunities. Uchenna Akpoxioha, like many of his compatriots is a Nigerian businessman who works in the bustling technology industry at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle. He was at a bus stop near the fuel station trying to catch a ride home when the fire began. Akpoxioha suffered burns to his face and hands and his home was demolished by city authorities. After scraping together enough money to rent a new house he is now trying to rekindle his business. Compensation Government announced that it would be footing the medical bills of survivors; which survivors confirmed it did. However, they say they have not received any form of compensation since coming out of hospital. Pulse News gathers that compensation of 10,000 cedis was rather given to the families of those who died and not survivors. Compensation was handled by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) and the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO). Read Also : Burned and abandoned: June 3 disaster survivor recounts story Alex Mensah, who used to work as a driver, is still nursing wounds a year later after suffering severe face and hand burns. According to Alex, he met a manager at Goil who directed him to the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) where victims were supposed to get compensation. However, the AMA told him the compensation was rather for families who lost relatives in the disaster. When I was discharged, I went to the AMA and I was told the money was for the families of those who died. I went back and then met a secretary called Mama Jane. I was told to exercise patience. I call her regularly but I have not got anything. No money. While government paid for all the medical expenses, many of these survivors were productive people and the disaster gravely affected their ability to return to work or destroyed their sources of income. With their livelihoods gone, these survivors have been living on the benevolence of groups and individuals and not the state. What happens to those such as Alex and Joseph who have been maimed forever and may never be able to return to work again? Pulse News reached the AMA for a comment on compensation and on other matters concerning the disaster but those interview requests were repeatedly denied. Responsibility Joseph Obeng is disappointed about the fact that no government official took responsibility for a disaster that has changed his life forever. I feel really bad seeing that all those people who were supposed to prevent the disaster are still in office. They are still enjoying the benefits of office. If they had cleared the drains and done their jobs, the disaster would not have happened After the disaster, there were intense calls for the resignation or dismissal of officials whose duties it was to prevent the disaster including the Mayor of Accra; Alfred Oko Vanderpuijie. In an interview after the disaster, the mayor said he did not owe people like Joseph an apology for his offices failure to institute measures to stop this disaster from happening. I owe them support to ensure that these things do not happen, but I dont owe anyone an apology. Not one official of the AMA, the Ministry of Science and Environment or NADMO took responsibility for this disaster. 12 months later, Mayor Vanderpuijie is overseeing activities to commemorate the disaster. This situation presents a sharp contrast to the resignation of New Orleans police chief Eddie Compass and the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (US version of NADMO) Michael Brown in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 What has changed? Not much has changed since the disaster. Accra is still incredibly filthy and the knee-jerk demolition of buildings in waterways ceased and squatters have either moved back or have found new informal settlements. A proposed ban on certain kinds of plastics is yet to come into force. On Thursday, the mayor said the dredging of the Korle Lagoon and the Odaw channel will ensure that flooding in Accra will belong to history. However, the rains of May 21, 2016 sadly exposed what has not changed. Major parts of Accra including Dome, Kaneshie, Ashaiman and Mallam experienced flooding bringing fears of imminent flooding when the rains intensify in June through to August. Ghanas Preparedness for Disaster Last years disaster exposed the unpreparedness of emergency service providers such the fire service, the ambulance service, hospitals and NADMO. The Korle Bu, 37 Military, Police and Ridge hospitals appeared overwhelmed by the scale of victims that needed care after the disaster. There were shortages of basic hospital materials such as gloves which prompted a massive donation drive from the public. The public relations officer of the Ghana National Fire Service Timothy Osafo-Affum told Pulse News that the service lacked modern fire-fighting equipment. We still need more support in terms of additional fire tenders. We also need rescue tenders, fire boats and even helicopters (fire bombers) to help us achieve our aim. We need ambulances too. Fire departments around the world operate fire as well as ambulances but here, we cannot boast of five ambulances across the country. Which is not good. It is our wish to get ambulances to complement our jobs as fire fighters. The situation is no different at the Ghana Ambulance Service which announced in February 2016 after the Kintampo bus accident that, the country had only 165 ambulances instead of a required 1,000 for a population of 25 million. The winners list was announced on social micro-blogging platform, Twitter on Friday 3rd June. Entries were received from across the continent for the following categories: Best African Blog, Best African YouTube Channel, Best African Instagrammer, Best African Twitter profile, Best African Facebook page and 21 other categories. Here is the list of the 2016 winners The African Blogger Awards is a platform that continues to acknowledge top African talent in the world of bloggers and social media influencers. According to organizers, the awards scheme provides opportunities for the most successful online influencers in Africa to be recognized for their hard work in growing and keeping their communities active and engaged. The fire which started at 3 a.m. burnt to death a man and his four children who were asleep in the house number WU279, Accra-based Joy FM reports. The cause of the fire is not yet known. Personnel from the Ghana Fire Service were at the scene trying to douse the flame as at the time of filing this story. We still have bodies to be identified. And we must all work and act together. If there are any families that have lost some individuals in the last one year and they cannot find them, they should come so we can work together and identify everybody so we can give them a befitting lasting rest, he said. The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has so far given about 25 families of the victims of the June 3 flood and fire disaster GH10,000 per head as a form of cash support from government. Mr Vanderpuije noted that 108 families have also received some other forms of support from government. He said other dependents will soon get financial support as soon as the Assembly is able to identify bodies that are still at the morgue. We have thus far identified 15 severe injured disfigured individuals and government supports have been paid to them. More will soon be acknowledged, he added. Over 150 people lost their lives in a tragic flood and fire accident which many have said could have been prevented if city authorities had done their job by ensuring the city is kept clean. There were reports that only 30 per cent of work has been done dredging the Odaw drain and Korle Lagoon, one year after disaster. The AMA boss however rubbished those claims, adding that work done so far is 45 per cent. He explained that 420,000 metric tonnes of silt have been dredged out of the Korle Lagoon. His comment comes on the wake of the commemoration of the June 3 flood and fire disaster which claimed about 169 lives last year. As a form of cash support from government, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has given about 25 families of the victims of the June 3 flood and fire disaster GH10,000 per head. So far, 71 families have received cash support from government. The Mayor said other dependents will soon get financial support as soon as the Assembly is able to identify bodies that are still at the morgue. But, in an interview with Pulse.com.gh, Mr. Okudzeto said government could have done better. ...If you have hundreds of people who have been displaced and you go and give them 10,000 for hospital bills and it ends there?, the NPPs Deputy communications director asked. According to him, the problem is not with how much to give as compensation, but how to find an amicable solution to the flooding menace. He believes the flyovers at the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange is the cause of the persistent floods around the area. The issue is that a disaster has taken place. There is a government in power. A government has contracted a contractor to build a flyover that has blocked drainage and causing the nation 200 lives. So the government should take responsibility and do something about it, he added. The project which is being undertaken by M/S Queiroz Galvao Constucao from Brazil, is to facilitate traffic flow and help control flooding in the area. But many have said that the flyovers, which lack effective drainage system, have rather caused an inconvenience for motorists and might cause a disaster any time it rains in the near future. So far, only 30 per cent of work has been done dredging the Odaw drain and Korle Lagoon, one year after disaster. But the Mayor has assured that his outfit has put in place measures to ensure that such a disaster does not repeat itself. "On this occasion like many others the question more often that not is who shall we turn to? And the answer always will be we must turn to the Lord," the AMA boss said. He urged families to praise God regardless of the situation. "Those who wait upon the Lord we are told will alway renew strength they shall mount up with wings as ealgles." he quoted. The memorial service will be followed with a wreath laying ceremony at the venue of the disaster. The site is being cleared completely for the first time despite several calls after the disaster for the AMA to lead an exercise to clear the site. Although 2016 is half-gone, the GNPC is struggling to get its budget approved as the Minority in parliament rejected the Mines and Energy committees report on the budget. According to the minority, the GNPCs budget lacks adequate information on allocations in the budget. The minority maintained, even in the face of stiff opposition from the majority, that they will boycott the approval process, until a full disclosure is done. This led to the Speaker of Parliaments suspension of the approval process. Member of Parliament (MP) for Atwima-Mponua in the Ashanti Region, Isaac Asiamah who pushed for the cancellation of the approval, urged the house to cancel the motion until GNPC makes a proper account of its finances to Ghanaians. "I am unable to support this motion because GNPC is becoming a monster and we need to discipline it", he said. He indicated that although the minority is not against the construction of the new office, information such as the identity of the and the basis for which the contract was awarded has to be scrutinized. 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! I visited the Tema Mantse, Nii Adjetey Kraku II to officially seek his blessings and prayers before proceeding to tour the Metropolis. At the Palace of the Tema Mantse, I stated that the policies of an NPP government under Nana Akufo-Addo will revamp the economy for jobs and prosperity and that the people of Tema will be major beneficiaries of such policies since Tema is the heartbeat of Ghana's economy. He also has visited among others, the Tema Newtown Market, Canoe Beach and Fish Market. Bawumia was recently in the Ho Central Constituency in the Volta Region to address a lecture at the E.P College of Education, Amedzofe. There, Bawumia launched a tirade over government tax policy, saying it will hurt the economy. His rant comes hours after the finance minister made comments that suggested government may tax pensions. He noted that a lot of the 'harsh' taxes imposed by government will be scrapped should the NPP win this year's elections. An NPP government will build the most business friendly and most people friendly economy in Africa. This means that job creation will be at the heart of economic policy. A lot of the other taxes we are seeing today will be scrapped. We will reduce the tax burden on our people and businesses so that they can employ more people and introduce a Tax Credit scheme for Companies that employ fresh graduates so that we will increase the employment of fresh graduates, he said while addressing students and lecturer of E.P. College of Education, Amedzofe in the Volta region on Wednesday. The former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana also mocked government style of taxing, saying anything they think they can impose taxes on, they are imposing taxes on it even if they think they could impose taxes on the air we breathe today, they would have imposed taxes on it. The government imposed taxes on condoms, cutlasses, savings; today they are imposing taxes on pensions and allowances. Bawumia pointed out that the government is resorting to taxes to enable it generate revenue to fill the deep hole their incompetence and corruption had dug. In their desperation to fill the hole they have dug. According to him, government is failing to realise its tax policy is hurting the economy. Mr Crabbe who was suspended in 2015 after refusing to appear before the National Disciplinary Committee of the NPP to respond to misconduct charges leveled against him by some members, dragged the party to court, citing a breach of procedure. But an Accra High Court on Thursday dismissed the suit on the basis that there had not been any violation on the part of the Disciplinary Committee. According to the court, the committee has the jurisdiction to hear and punish anyone who breaches the party's rules. Mr Crabbe is quoted by citifmonline.com to have told Citi News he will appeal the courts decision because he disagrees with the judge. Basically, I disagree with the judge so I shall appeal on the grounds that, I pointed to the fact that as an elected officer, if anybody had any petition against me, Article 43 (D) states very clearly that the person has to go to the national council and not the national disciplinary committee. Nobody is above discipline in the party but processes have to be followed. And I dont think he ruled on that. There are other things I disagree with him so my lawyers will look at that and we will go on. Elected officers in the party enjoy a certain degree of security of their tenure. Its very important to their motivation and I believe that is under threat so thats what I am going for. Others are saying that I went to seek reinstatement as a suspended officer; which is not so because I dont even recognise that so-called suspension because they dont even have jurisdiction to do that, he said. Mr Crabbe however stated that his decision to seek redress was not to distract the party as some have asserted. In a recent sermon, Pastor Otabil asserted that the development is among the reasons businesses have not seen growth. According to him, the situation has become serious to the extent that it becomes difficult for countries, companies and individuals to extend a helping hand to those in need. He has urged all to desist from acts like fabrication, deception and theft which lead to people losing trust in others. Investors dont care about human rights. What they care about is whether the people can be trusted. Do you know that if I trust you, I can deal with you? You can help me; I can help you. If I trust you, I dont need any document, I dont even need a collateral from you. You cant get a loan, you cant get a job because people cannot be trusted and when we lie, we lie comfortably. We must deal with it. Dr Mensah Otabil further urged all to share their success stories with people rather than keeping it to themselves. He believes many will be encouraged should they be told. When God gives you an opportunity, think of the future and think of your friend too. Because if you share your success with somebody, you multiply the effects of success and very soon, you get a critical mass of successful people and that becomes the momentum for mass success. Dont be greedy, he said. According to Amplats, NUM represents about 20 percent of its workforce. The majority belong to NUM's arch rival, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union. But NUM has the majority at Amplats' key Mogalakwena mine, the company's cash spinner and most profitable asset. AMCU's wage demands are not yet known, but will also likely be double digit. Wage demands in South Africa are being driven in part by soaring food prices triggered by a drought. Platinum firms are still reeling from the effects of a record five-month strike in 2014 led by AMCU when it sought a more than doubling in wages to 12,500 rand ($802). In the end, the workers settled for raises of around 20 percent annually. Basketmouth whose real names are Bright Okpocha took a photo with Orisaguna who went viral early this year after she stumbled on the photoshoot of UK rapper Recently Orisaguna refuted claims that she used some fetish substance on the day her life changed. Orisaguna in an exclusive interview with Punch Newspaper addressed the notion that she rubbed something on her body the day she was discovered. She told Punch, "Me? Olajumoke rubbed something? Never! People are just insinuating. I thank God for that particular day because I didnt rub anything, even common cream before rushing out of the bakery. Where would I have had time for that when customers would be waiting for my bread? I have never used fetish things in my life and never had the tiniest incision on my body. I hate having marks on my body. My parents are good Christians and I am sure the photoshoot took place just because of me. I dont use anything; spiritual or physical. I just pray to God and thank Him, she said. Yesterday, June 2, 2016, the Yoruba actress shared a photo of herself in traditional attire on her Instagram page. An Instagram user by the name Monialliangle wasnt feeling DaSilvas outfit and wrote Ur style is funny ooo in the comment section. Liz DaSilva did more than reply the comment. ALSO READ: Liz DaSilva opens fashion store She took a screenshot of Monialliangles photo and shared it on her Instagram page and wrote I don't know what young girls of nowadays are turning fashion into... Madness or what??? @monialliangle your makeup is funny tho! DaSilva is one out of many actresses to lash back at people who write negative things about them on Instagram. Caroline Danjumadropped expletive bombs on an Instagram troll for calling her husband her husband a dog. Veteran Nigerian actress Kate Henshawclapped back at a fan who mocked her on Twitter. The screen goddess told him to practically shut the hell up. When you get to 10,000 followers, come back and holler at me, she replied him, and in another tweet, she added, Your mates are not even here! Wait for twitter to validate you, you hear??! Long hisssssssss!!!! Salling was reported to have been caught in possession of child porn, found on his laptop, hard drive and a USB flash drive, by the Internet Crimes Against Children LAPD task force. This led to his arrest in December 2015 after a tip-off, according to TMZ. Salling's involvement in child pornography has been met with huge consequences for his acting career, as he has now been removed as a cast in the upcoming film, "Gods and Secrets". According to Us Magazine, Adi Shankar, who is one of the directors of the movie, said Salling will be removed from the movie and his scenes reshot. Shankar said, I will personally be paying for the reshoots, and I hope that Mark finds inner peace, Furthermore, a percentage of profits from the project will go to a charity for abused children. Child Pornography is considered a very serious crime in the United States of America, as it poses threats to the well-being of children. Eileen M. Decker, a US Attorney, who spoke to Us Magazine, said, Those who download and possess child pornography create a market that causes more children to be harmed." "Young victims are harmed every time an image is generated, every time it is distributed, and every time it is viewed. Previous reports concerning Salling's Child Pornography role said he was seen leaving Chase Bank on Thursday, June 2, 2016, with a $100,000 check made payable to the Clerk of the U.S. District Court. Fox, who will be having her third child, disclosed this in an interview on Chelsea HandlerNetflix series, Chelsea. She said, "It's very soon, any minute!" "I knew I was always going to be a mother; I felt like that was always a big part of my path. But I never knew I was going to have three in such rapid succession." She will be having the child with her estranged husband, Brian Austin Green, a former cast on Beverly Hills, 90210 series. According to Us Magazine, Fox filed for divorce from Green in August 2015, after five years of marriage, but have been seen looking happy together in recent times. They already have two sons together, Noah, 3, andBodhi, 2. The expectant mother has hinted that she will be moving house as soon as she delivers her new baby. Fox made this known on Tuesday, May 31, 2016, in an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live. She said, "You dont hear an audible voice, but you hear messages, if youre open to it," she told the late-night host." "For instance, this baby wanted me to live somewhere else. So were moving to a whole different place in Los Angeles because I feel like thats where this baby wants to be raised." Fox began a romantic relation with actor, Brian Austin Green, in 2004, after meeting each other on the movie set for "Hope & Faith". Set to hold on 1st July 2016 at The Eko Hotel the conference will bring industry experts together under one roof to talk about maximizing the potentials within the fashion industry for greater economic benefits of Nigeria. With topics like 'Job Creation in the Garment Manufacturing Industry', 'New Channels of E-commerce in the Fashion Industry', 'is Textile Manufacturing a Viable Option?', 'Retailing and Setting up a Fashion Business in Nigeria (The Dynamics) and Different Financing Options' and more lined up for the conference, budding designers and creatives in the fashion industry stand to gain a lot of knowledge at the first ever conference. ALSO READ: the conference will have astute industry professionals and entrepreneurs from across the globe, covering such professional sectors as marketing, banking, e-commerce and manufacturing to those in attendance. The textile and garment manufacturing conference will open in Lagos to kick start Africa Fashion Week Nigeria 2016. The fashion industry has the capacity to provide jobs, promote creativity and individualism, channel useful energies to productive use, provide social security, build export capacity and industrial base, create a massive economic base of micro, small and medium scale enterprises, that can lift a social sector or a whole nation, from poverty and obscurity to wealth and global relevance. Fashion is vast, with correlated industries such as styling, cosmetics, textile manufacturing, photography and costuming as well as retailing and designing. And unlike most industries, the skills required to participate in the fashion sector, are not necessarily obtainable in a higher institution. Other topics to be covered at the conference includes, 'Is Nigeria ready to become a manufacturing hub for textiles and garments?', 'How do manufacturers deal with the infrastructure issues and still make profit', 'How can we tap into the skills of the foreign market' and 'Different funding options'. Africa Fashion Week Nigeria, founded by Ronke Ademiluyi, has conquered the whole of Europe of with the London Version of the project: Africa Fashion Week London, rising since 2011 to become the biggest fashion platform in Europe promoting fashion inspired by Africa. The Nigerian Edition, Africa Fashion Week Nigeria, which will celebrate its third anniversary in July, is perhaps the countrys best sustained and most anticipated fashion runway of international standard, featuring designers from all over Africa. It will be recalled that Africa Fashion Weeks greatest value contribution to the world of African fashion, is its ability to provide subsidized runways giving visibility to talented but indigent fashion designers of African origin, thus giving them much needed visibility and enabling them to convert their talent into economic self-sustainability. Confirmed speakers for the conference include Dr Mustapha Akinwunmi (Hon. Commissioner For Finance Lagos State), Mr Dapo Adelegan (President, Nigerian-British Camber of Commerce), Mr Akintunde Oyebode (Executive Secretary Lagos State Employment Trust Fund), Mr Hamma (Industrial Regional Manager, Nigeria Textile Manufacturers Association), Mrs Jennifer Ayonika ( The DG, Nigerian-German Business Association), Mrs Doris Onwugamba (MD, Manufacturing Resource Centre), Mrs Chioma Nwagboso (Director, Delegation of German Industry and Commerce) Others include Dr Peter Kondricz (Commercial Diplomat/ First Secretary Embassy of Hungary) and Mr Johannes Flosbach (TGI Group) Details: Date: July 1st 2016 Venue: Eko Hotel & Suites Time: 9am Kehinde, who is on Instagram as kennyrhoda2, posted the image two days ago, Wednesday, June 1, urging the company to grant her an endorsement deal as a reward for her loyalty, as she has never received "any better thing" from them despite having recharged several times. ALSO READ: Olajumoke Orisaguna lands another endorsement "My Love for network no be today oh, but I never receive any better thing from Glo "All [these] recharge cards are mine, everything loaded on my phone . [Please] people help me push it till it [gets] to Glo, I want endorsement ooooh" She then proceeded to tag some media houses and personalities, obviously to make the post go as far as possible, and eventually reach the right quarters. The image has now started to gain awareness on social media, as it is being shared repeatedly. Fingers are crossed as regards what would be the outcome of this plea. ALSO READ: Woman in Oyo State to be arraigned before court by EFCC over N9m fraud New York Post reports that The High School for Enterprise, Business and Technology in Brooklyn received a cheque for the huge sum and, as a matter of protocol, forwarded it to the Department of Education, which went on to provide funds from the generous 'gift' to the 1000-student school, enabling them go on a spending spree. Shortly after his donation, Diaz Romero was brought in, when teachers were being trained on using smart boards, and was introduced to them as our benefactor Dr. Diaz. Sources said he claimed to be related to one of the students, explaining his philanthropy. At his urging, the school also started a stock-market game to hone students financial skills. After the initial cheque was bounced, officials of the school were confident their donor was the real thing. After two more cheques were bounced, that prompted schools officials to contact authorities. Principal Holger Carrillo called an emergency meeting with members of staff last week to let them know of the grand scam. A complaint was then forwarded to Schools Commissioner of Investigation Richard Condons office on May 27, and the commissioner referred the case to the NYPD on the suspicion of fraud, a spokesperson said. Disappointed teachers and students now fear that they will face budget cuts because of the philanthropic scandal. Saraki said In 2008, thousands of Nigerian children started taking a teething medicine that contained toxic chemicals. By February 2009 over 90 Nigeria babies had died from consuming the mixture. This is despicable and to say the least unacceptable. He said the move by the lawmakers will ensure that those found guilty will pay a N2m fine. Punch reports that the Senate President said this at the public hearing on a Bill for an Act to Amend the Counterfeit and Fake Drugs and unwholesome processed Foods Act. He also said the properties and assets of those convicted will be seized by the Federal Government. The Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) has announced that the trial of Senate President, Bukola Saraki will resume on Thursday, June 7, 2016. Reports say the police arrested leaders of the Oyo state chapter of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) while they were protesting over the governments plan to privatise public schools in the state. The President of NLC, Ayuba Wabba said the decision to privatise the public schools is unjust, adding that the children of the poor will not have access to education if the plan falls through. Wabba also said These public schools were built with the blood and sweat of the people and not a few, including Your Excellency and members of your cabinet, were grand beneficiaries of this public school system. To auction out these schools, lock, stock and barrel, to the highest bidders offends moral decency and social justice as it denies generations of the children of the poor access to education guaranteed by the 1999 Constitution as amended. History, we dare say, will be reluctant to forgive you, if you impose it on the people using garrison powers. The NLC President said the Governors decision to privatise the public schools without consulting the people is a breach of trust. Adding that We wish to express our dismay at the harassment, arrest and detention of our members for peacefully protesting against governments policy of giving away public schools to individuals or organisations in the guise of Public-Private Partnership. Please do permit us to state that the right to peaceful protest against a wrong is guaranteed by the 1999 Constitution (as amended), Labour Laws, ILO Conventions to which Nigeria is signatory, and Human Rights Laws and cannot be abridged by government. Human rights lawyer, of the labour leaders. Usman also added that the troops have continued with their clearance operations of the remnants of Boko Haram terrorists within the Sambisa forest. The Army spokesman said "In a related development, earlier this morning, troops of 112 Battalion on patrol from Mafa to Dikwa were ambushed at Ajiri village, by Boko Haram terrorists. Although they successfully cleared the ambush, one soldier died in the process, an officer and 3 soldiers sustained various degrees of injury. One of the civilian JTF accompanying the patrol team was also injured. "The team killed 8 Boko Haram terrorists and recovered arms and ammunitions at the ambush site. The recovered items include, 1 Rocket Propel Grenade (RPG), AK-47 Rifles, 2 Rocket Propel Grenade bomb, 3 AK-47 Rifle Magazine and 120 rounds of 7.62mm ammunition." Adding that "The troops also discovered 3 Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) concealed by the edge of the road which were safely detonated by the Explosive Ordnance Device (EOD) team. "The body of the late soldier and the injured have since been evacuated to 7 Division Medical Services and Hospital, Maiduguri." 77 members of the Boko Haram sect recently surrendered to men of the 122 Task Force Battalion. According to the Presidents Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, President Muhammadu Buhari said Friday in Abuja that while the rescue and safe return of the remaining Chibok girls remains a top priority of his administration, he will not fall for the antics of fraudsters who have been asking the Federal Government for money to negotiate the release of the girls. Buhari also said he wants the girls to be rescued, but he was not going to fall for the dubious plan. Buhari said this while hosting Bishops from the Anglican communion in Nigeria. He also assured the clergymen that his government will ensure the completion of the Ogoni clean-up project. undefinedthe administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan. He said the fake sect members were paid millions of dollars to secure the release of the Chibok girls. President Muhammadu Buhari has said on different occasions that his government would not rule out the possibility of negotiating with Boko Haram, if it would indeed secure the release of the abducted Chibok girls. The clergyman said Its time to remind the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration that fighting corruption is not equal to progressively improving the lives of Nigerians. To be clear, we endorse the war against corruption. Infact, it should be widened and faithfully prosecuted. However, the current administration needs to remember that spending all the time on yesterdays crime today, means abandoning the seeds for tomorrows development. He also called on the government to focus more on the pressing needs of Nigerians. Adding that the Buhari-led administration should put more effort in fulfilling its campaign promises. Adedokun also called on public office holders to show some sacrifice and cut down on what he called frivolities. He also said Finally, Nigerians must take charge. We must become more than partisan commentators, tribal affiliates, and religious exponents. Its time to turn our collective oppression into passion for true freedom. We must transcend our political induced fences to close ranks against those who use our votes, our offices, our resources and our goodwill against us. It is time to turn our collective frustrations into collective actions that will turn the tide. The minister of information and culture, undefinedin one year. Buhari stated this during the 35 Annual General Meeting (AGM) and International Symposium of Shelter Afrique held at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja on Wednesday June 1, 2016 with the theme . The president, who was represented by the FCT Minister, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello, said the Federal Government has earmarked N40 billion in the 2016 capital budget to implement a comprehensive housing programme in the country. The government intends to directly supply housing stocks in urban areas across all the geo-political zones under its Comprehensive Housing Programme, Buhari said. The Minister of Power Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) thanked the delegates for attending the conference and urged them to brainstorm and find lasting solution to housing challenges in Africa. This is contained in a statement signed by Mr Wilson Uwujaren, the Head, Media and Publicity of the commission and made available to News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Abuja. The statement said that the Acting Chairman of EFCC, Mr Ibrahim Magu, stated this at the reopening of the of the commission's zonal office in Maiduguri. Magu had expressed concern over complaints of corruption in IDPs Camps. ``We want to be sure that there is transparency, accountability and judicious use of the money allocated to IDPs in Maiduguri and elsewhere. ``What we are doing is gathering intelligence but the culprits behind the sufferings in the IDPs camps will be invited sooner or later by the EFCC, he said. The EFCC boss further said plans were underway to sensitise women and children in Borno on the ills of corruption. ``I will bring in civil societies and women groups in Borno in the fight against corruption and we will equally organise a workshop for them similar to the one we held for children in Abuja. The Deputy Speaker of the Kaduna state House of Assembly, John Audu, on Thursday ordered policemen to arrest two of the electricity staff who disconnected power supply to his residence. In a statement signed by KEDCO head, corporate communication, Abdulazeez Abdullahi the company called on the governor of Kaduna state, Malam Nasir Elrufai to urgently intervene and help release their staff and caution the public against such overzealousness. "Electricity supply to the deputy speaker's residence located in Sabon Tasha, Kaduna, was cut off for non-payment of his bill on Wednesday, May 25, 2016. He went ahead to illegally restore supply to the property." "On discovering that the house had been reconnected without following due process, our men disconnected it again. This led the Deputy Speaker to order their arrest," Abdulazeez said. He said the two detained staff; Danjuma Stephen and Olabode Olaborede of the Sabo Service Centre have been in detention at the Sabo police station for doing nothing wrong. Speaking on the development, Falana said the action of the police was a gross violation of the labour leaders rights. He also slammed the Nigerian Army saying they have unleashed mayhem at Onitsha, Anambra State, to prevent the members of the indigenous People of Biafra from embarking on a peaceful rally to commemorate the 30th Anniversary of the declaration of the Republic of Biafra. Adding that A couple of days earlier, the Ekiti state government had incited some artisans to attack striking workers for protesting the non payment of arrears of salaries owed them by the state government. Since the Buhari Administration is not prepared to protect the human rights of the traumatised Nigerian people, we have instructed a team of human rights lawyers to challenge the increasing wave of human rights violations in the country. In this regard, we commend Mr. Femi Aborisade who has offered his pro bono services to the detained teachers in Oyo State. undefinedprohibiting people from smoking in public places, into law. In a recent statement by the Minister's spokesman, Timothy Oyediji, the Minister said the FG lacked moral right to penalise the coys because many government agencies - especially Military, Departments and Agencies - are heavily indebted to the various coys. Fashola argued further that the government cannot act arbitrarily when dealing with the power coys saying a due process must be followed, hence, it would have to contend with multiple court cases. Speaking through his special assistant on public communications and new media, Lere Olayinka, the of Ekiti State governor said it is shameful and embarrassing to see that the President could succumb to ordinary threats from militants. It is shameful and embarrassing that a retired military general could succumb to threat from militants despite what he told Nigerians that he was going to lead from the fronts, read the statement. ALSO READ: Ekiti Governor accuses Buhari of lying about his vacation Continuing, he said, 'By not going to Ogoni today, because of threat from the NDA, our president has shown that he is actually afraid of the militants and the best thing to do in a situation like this is to dialogue with the militants so as to save Nigeria economy from imminent collapse. 'It also shows that the presidents ability to secure Nigeria and its people is doubtful, because if the president could succumb to threat from militants and abandon his official function for his deputy, ordinary Nigerians should seek help elsewhere. 'The president should therefore save Nigeria the agony of military misadventure in the Niger Delta by holding dialogue with the militants with a view to resolving their grievances. He should emulate late President Umaru Musa YarAdua by having a roundtable talks with the Niger Delta militants,' he said. So far, what has come out, what has been recovered in whatever currency from each ministries, departments and individuals, I intend on the 29th to speak on this because all Nigerians are getting from the mass media because of the number of people arrested either by the EFCC, DSS. But we want to make a comprehensive report on the 29th, Buhari said on May 14 while attending an anti-corruption summit in London. Buhari had also said in December 2015 that the names of the looters would be published by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). I have heard it said that we should disclose the names of the people, and the amount returned. Yes, in due course, the Central Bank of Nigeria will make information available to the public on the surrendered funds, but I must remark that it is yet early days, and any disclosure now may jeopardize the possibility of bigger recoveries. But we owe Nigerians adequate information, and it shall come in due course, the president said during the 15th session of the Anyiam-Osigwe Foundation lecture at the International Conference Centre in Abuja. However, according to Mohammed, Buhari was advised against revealing the looters names for legal reasons. We will get the list but not today; before the end of the week. But I must say not with the names. Of course for obvious legal reasons. The president said he was going to release the amount recovered and where the recovered assets are, Mohammed said during a programme on Channels TV. Yes he initially said so (naming looters), but he was advised against doing so for legal reasons. Of course, he has a right to reverse himself on that, he added when queried on Buharis earlier promise to name the looters. Every Nigerian would like to know the names of everyone who has looted public funds, but the truth is they are too many to name. Buhari might be able to identify some of the thieves on the federal level, but how will he identify the local government chairmen who robbed their constituencies blind and refused to carry out any projects? How will Buhari account for all the money looted by senators and governors who are beyond his reach? The president owes it to Nigerians to inform them about funds looted and those who looted them. However, since corruption has been a national problem since Nigeria became a country, it would be almost impossible to bring everyone who has stolen public funds to book. These include two rural electricity projects located at Tapo, Heipang district of Barkin Ladi Local Government Area and Duei, in Du district of Jos South Local Government Area. During the occasion, Lalong called for peace among the communities, especially Barkin Ladi, Riyom and Jos South Local governments which had been flash points in the past 10 years. The governor said the projects were initiated and completed due to the return of peace and urged the people to sustain the peace effort. "During the campaigns I told you that if there would be peace, we would provide all that you need because peace is everything. "Where there is no peace, there will be no development but you have given peace a chance and today we are here to inaugurate projects that we have executed for your benefit. "This is beginning of our inauguration of projects after one year in office; this shows that those who are saying that we are doing nothing are liars. "I want to stress that this is made possible because of the available peace and I implore you to maintain it," he said. The governor, who also inaugurated a modern JAMB-approved Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Centre in Riyom, said that the centre would generate revenue and empower the youth with ICT knowledge. He urged the youth to make maximum use of the centre which had the capacity to change their lives for better. Lalong also inspected the level of work on the Accident/Trauma Hospital, Riyom, started and abandoned nine years ago which his administration had remobilised the contractors to complete. He said that his administration was determined to complete the hospital located along the Jos-Abuja highway to serve its purpose of catering for road accident victims. Mr Bitrus Doro, Caretaker Committee Chairman, Barkin Ladi council, in his remarks, described the Tapo electricity project as a top priority of communities in the locality. Doro expressed delight that the project, spanning three kilometres, had been completed. The chairman urged people of the area to remain peaceful and continue to support the current government to enjoy more dividends of democracy. Mr Mafeng Gwalson, Riyom Local Government Caretaker Chairman, said the ICT Centre was to mitigate challenges faced by youths in traveling out to register for JAMB Computer-based examinations. Gwalson said the centre had accommodation for no fewer than 300 candidates per time and was equipped with well over 300 computers. He also disclosed that his committee built and equipped a VIP guest house in Riyom to address the issue of accommodation particularly for visiting dignitaries. Mr Agustin Pwakim, Chairman, Jos South Local Government, said that apart from the Duei electricity project, the council had an ongoing project in Kwata. The House took the decision after considering the recommendations of its committee, which studied the bill to amend the Price Control Act, to provide for concessions and waivers, stiffer penalties and to enforce implementation. The bill sponsored by Rep. Gabriel Onyeama (APGA Anambra) seeks to amend "the first schedule of the principal Act" by deleting the existing list and substituting it with a new list in the schedule". Based on the recommendations by the committee of the whole house at plenary, 14 commodities were approved under the new price control legislation. The commodities are bicycles and spare parts, flour, matches, milk, motorcycles and spare parts, motor vehicles and spare parts, salt, sugar, rice, grains, cereals, electrical/electronic equipment, computers and computer accessories and cement. Dr Friday Omolei, Chairman of the state chapter of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) and Secretary, Dr Peter Attah said at a news briefing on Friday in Lafia. The doctors said that the strike was due to alleged government failure to correct their salaries in tandem with the Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS). The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the association had issued a one-week strike notice to the state government on May 26. Omolei said the association took the "painful'' decision, as the government had failed to respond to the doctors demand since 2014. The chairman said that the association was open to dialogue, but would not return to work until its demands are met. "From January 2016 till date, there has been mass exodus of doctors from the employment of Nasarawa state government due to poor remuneration and high tax regime. NAN reports that other issues that prompted the strike include non promotion of some doctor for upward of 14 years, and their demand for allocation of 15 per cent of the state budget to the health sector. Punch reports that over 30 people were shot dead by security agencies, during the protest that reportedly turned violent. IPOB Media and Publicity Officer, Comrade Emma Powerful, said The Indigenous People of Biafra, under the leadership of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, cries out over the deaths and the mass burial of Biafrans during the remembrance of Biafra heroes and heroines on Monday, 30th May, 2016. We discovered that the Nigerian Army and police decided to kill those they arrested alive and bury them with the dead bodies they carried on the same day. The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) also slammed the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Solomon Arase for ordering the disarming of Biafra supporters in the South-East. The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) have been active in attacking oil platforms and installations in the last few weeks, thereby reducing the revenue capacity of the country. Arkwright, in Abeokuta said there is the need to protect the investments in the region from acts of criminality that are going on in the region. The British High Commissioner was speaking in the Ogun state capital, immediately after his visit to the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo. He also advocated dialogue as part of a comprehensive approach that should be adopted by the government to address the situation, saying force alone may not bring about a lasting solution to the Niger Delta issue. The British High Commissions political Counsellor, Ben Llewellyn-Jones and former Commonwealth Secretary-General Dr Emeka Anyaoku, were on the High Commissioners entourage. Arkwright said: We are talking to Nigerian authorities about that, we need to have what we call a comprehensive approach to this, in other words we need to have dialogue and we need to engage the communities down there. We need to understand the grievances of the people down there, we need to ensure the environmental damage is cleaned up. We need to protect the investment there, not just British companies, international companies but Nigerian companies as well. When there is criminal activity, (it) is right that the government should take proactive action against that criminal activity, we strongly support them but we dont think military solution alone is the final solution to handle issues in Niger Delta. And to handle in the North, so we need comprehensive approach and that is what we have been talking to the Nigerian government about. Dr Chris Ngige, the Minister of Labour and Employment, told newsmen in Abuja on Thursday that the committee has had its inaugural meeting. Ngige, also the chairman of the committee, said the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr Babachir Lawal inaugurated the committee with terms of reference predicated on three issues. ``We were asked to look into the enthronement of a frame work of a national committee that will discuss the issue of minimum wage for the entire country. ``We were also asked to look into the suggestions of all parties, both government and the organised labour centre unions on how we can give amelioration to workers and Nigerians in general. `` The third aspect of our work has been substantially done and that is the recommendation on the composition of the Petroleum Product Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), Board. ``As a committee, we have started our work I am happy to report to you that our deliberations are cordial without ruffling of feathers, he said. He said the technical committee would at the end of it deliberations submit its report and recommendations to the committee of the whole house. ``We were asked to make recommendations that will be subject to review by the committee of the whole house. ``This committee of the whole house is also to look at our recommendation in terms of the framework for the national committee on the review of the national minimum wage, Ngige added. Mr Ayuba Wabba, President of NLC, said the organised labour was participating fully in the committees assignment to ensure that the outcome was in the interest of Nigerians. ``The committee was inaugurated today and has gone into addressing its mandates and other associated issues. ``Invariably, we have tried to look at the issues of the framework for the minimum wage and the palliatives on the effects of the hike in petrol price. Arkwright said this on Thursday, June 2, 2016, during a courtesy visit to the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo in Ogun state. He also said We need to protect the investment there, not just British companies, international companies but Nigerian companies as well. We are talking to Nigerian authorities about that, we need to have what we called a comprehensive approach to this, in other words we need to have dialogue and we need to engage the communities down there. The Niger Delta Avengers have launched attacks on various crude oil installations in the oil rich region. The British envoy also called on the Nigerian Army to carry out their operation responsibly. He added that We need to understand the grievances of the people down there, we need to ensure the environmental damage is cleaned up. We need to protect the investment there, not just British companies, international companies but Nigerian companies as well. When there is criminal activity, (it) is right that the government should take proactive action against that criminal activity, we strongly support them but we dont think military solution alone is the final solution to handle issues in Niger Delta. And to handle Boko Haram in the North, so we need comprehensive approach and that is what we have been talking to the Nigerian government about. I was very encouraged to hear Hon Minister Ike Chukwu say about the need for dialogue and we are certainly looking to see what we can do to help in dialogue and bring peaceful outcome to what you say is economic threat to this country, he said. Arkwright said the use of force might not yield the desired result. He also said the government should explore dialogue. He asked the government to understand the grievances of the Niger Delta communities. Also, a new militant group known as the Joint Niger Delta Liberation Force (JNDLF), has emerged. Apparently, the oil giant's technical team were trying to repair the offshore facility which the militants destroyed. The Niger Delta Avengers, in a Tweet, titled: #Agip Dont Dare Us, told the company not to carry out any form of repairs on the pipeline they destroyed. This is coming on the heels of the bombing of the Shell Petroleum Development Community (SPDC) forcados 48" Exportline today, Friday, June 3, 2016 at 3 am. The militants also claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Brass to Tebidaba Crude oil line in Bayelsa state today by 3:30am. The group has vowed to unleash mayhem in the Niger Delta region until the Federal Government meets their demands. undefinedwho were on duty in Delta state, promising families of the dead men to bring the culprits to book. The Niger Delta Avengers also warned other freedom fighters not to shed innocent blood in the pursuit of their agenda. Early on Friday, the group said via its Twitter account that it had blown up a pipeline in Nigeria's Bayelsa state owned by Italy's ENI, hours after attacks on another ENI pipeline as well as one belonging to Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd (SPDC). The pipeline is used to transport Brass River crude, which was placed under force majeure after an attack last month, to an export terminal. Hours earlier, the group said it blew up the Ogboinbiri-Tebidaba and Clough Creek-Tebidaba pipelines in Bayelsa and a Shell Forcados export pipeline. That grade has been under force majeure since an attack on a sub-sea pipeline in February. Because the attacks were on infrastructure for oil streams already under force majeure, the immediate impact on Nigeria's exports was limited. The country's oil minister said on Thursday its production was close to 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd). According to the Presidents Senior Special Assistant on National Assembly Matters, Senator Ita Enang, the move by the government is aimed at restoring peace in the troubled region. Enang in a statement made available to newsmen, said: The federal government officials, at the moment, are in their various states talking not only to their state governors but aggrieved persons on the way of resolving the problems arising from bombing of oil installations in the Niger Delta region. The Minister of Niger Delta, the Minister of Interior, the Coordinator of the Amnesty Office have been taking actions consistent with their powers and what I know, is that almost all the ministers and officers from the Niger Delta region have returned to their respective states. They are in their respective zones and their respective blocs to talk to their leaders and their aggrieved persons on the need for us to maintain peace. That is going on and they are the representatives of Mr. President. So, I will not tell you what Mr. President wants to do in person but these are officers and offices which are dealing with this matter. What I know they have done, which some of us are involved in doing by virtue of coming from that zone and by virtue of working with them, is been telling our people that the economy of the people is bleeding and the nation is hemorrhaging and that we cannot, given the low price of oil, go on certain actions that will further reduce the earnings of Nigeria. We have lost the earnings in terms of price, so we shouldnt lose earnings in terms of production. I am sure that you are aware that we budgeted 2.2 million barrel per day and production few weeks ago, lowered to 1.4 million per day and it is climbing to 1.6 and 1.7 per day million per day and that is capable of affecting the money expected from oil. These are the things we are preaching to our people and preaching to the governors of our respective states. Meanwhile, the Niger Delta Avengers have promised to unleash mayhem in the region till the government meets their demands. Rep. Mohammed Bago (Niger-APC) Chairman and other members of the committee spoke during the review of the five per cent NIMASA fund and other internally generated revenue in the 2016 budget. They threatened to issue a bench warrant against Mr Kayode Adetunji, Head of Bursary ``for misleading the parliament. Rep. Dan Asuquo (PDP-Cross River), queried the acting rector over non-payment of contractors for work completed since 2011. ``We went through the procurement for some of these projects. ``For example, the contract for the construction of a 3-bedroom bungalow was awarded at N34 million. A kobo has not been paid but N20 million was recorded to have been paid. ``If you have anything to show, this committee would like to see it. ``Your accountant or director of finance knows what we are talking about and as a committee we would go to any length to recover this, he said. The committee also queried the N73 million for the cleaning of the academy, N100 million for purchase of 2 units of generators and inverter. ``I think there's a kind of duplication in the budget. After buying generators why do you need to buy inverters?" Mr Anthony Ishiodu, Rector of the Academy, said the committee approved N2 billion for the intervention fund out of which only N1 billion was released in 2013. He added that N500 million was given in 2014 leaving the balance of N500 million expected from NIMASA while the institution needed to train 10 lecturers to PHD level overseas to enable the upgrade of the academy. The Rector added that programmes being run by the academy were not available in the country. On ongoing projects, he explained that the N2.6 billion earmarked depended on the level of job completion. Chairman of the committee explained that five per cent of NIMASAs revenue was supposed to be remitted into the academys account in line with NIMASA Act. President Buhari flagged-off the Ogoni clean-up on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in line with the recommendations of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The minister also said the commissioning of the project is significant to the Niger Delta, adding that it is soul reviving. Usani said There will be no shortcuts because we are aiming to get the best international standard in this clean-up and that is why we have the United Nations Environmental Programme on board. We will have the best hands that will handle all the processes and so the logistical process will be done properly. This, will be a thing that will be handled by experts and there will be no shortcuts and there will be no patronage here. I believe it will be a success. President Buhari was also criticised by a cross section of Nigerians on social media, for cancelling his visit to the Niger Delta region. Gininwa stated this at the flag-off of the clean-up of oil spill in Ogoniland and other areas in the Niger Delta region on Thursday, June 2. He said: I have nothing against Jonathan, he is my son, he is a very quiet boy. I love him very much. But in this case, he made a mistake. He couldnt do what he promised Ogoni people. I want to advise Nigerian leaders, when they make promises, they should be able to keep it. Similarly, the Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, seized the opportunity to tell how former president Jonathan refused to clean up Ogoniland. We did everything possible as a sitting government to get our brother and our leader, the former president, to implement the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) report. We did everything necessary, including going to church to pray, still, the UNEP report was not implemented, Amaechi said. President Muhammadu Buhari who was represented at the event by his Vice, Prof Yemi Osinbajo noted that the federal government had given approval for the constitution of the necessary framework that will drive a hitch-free implementation of UNEP report. Such framework, according to the Minister of Environment, Amina Mohammed, would include setting up a governing council and a board of trustees that will handle the funds to be invested in the clean-up. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the former senior military officer was arraigned on one count charge of bribery to the tune of N166million. The charge alleged that Oguntoyinbo committed the offence while being the Chief of Training and Operations of the Nigerian Air force. The charged held that the act contravened Section 17(a) of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000 and punishable under Section 17(c) of the same Act. The charge reads in part: ``that you, AVM Olutayo Tade Oguntoyinbo while serving as Chief of Training and Operations, Nigerian Air force on July 11, 2014 did accept a gift in the sum (N166,000,000) from Societe D Equipments Internationaux Nigeria Limited. The defendant however, pleaded not guilty to the charge. In view of his plea, counsel to EFCC, Mr Francis Jirbo asked the court for a date for hearing. However, Oguntoyinbos counsel, Mr Henry Ihun prayed the court to grant bail to the accused on liberal terms. The EFCC counsel immediately kicked against application, saying the defendant counsel had served him with the bail application in Court. He said he required some time to prepare his argument against the application. The presiding judge, Justice Olukayode Adeniyi ordered that the accused person be remanded in Kuje Prison pending hearing on the bail application. Kaigama said some governors recently sought for $3.2bn from the World Bank after collecting bailouts from the Federal Government to pay workers but failed to pay. "We are determined to continue to fight for the emancipation of workers and the masses of our great country. It is a major cause for concern that some of our governors recently sought $3.2bn from the World Bank after recently collecting bailouts from the Federal Government. What we are saying is that any governor that cannot pay salaries should resign, Kaigama said. Hogel said that the EU is directly implementing water supply and sanitation sector reform programme Phases II and III as well as the Niger Delta Support Programme which will cost them about N40 billion for it implementation in 14 states of the federation. Hogel said with a population of over 170 million and abundant natural resources, Nigeria has the potential to be the economic and political powerhouse of Africa. The FCT Minister, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello challenged the National Council on Water Resources (NCWR) to come up with practical solutions to the numerous problems facing the water resources sector in the country. ALSO READ: The minister noted that Nigeria is blessed with abundant surface and ground water resources and therefore not water stressed nation, but the resultant effect of rapid population growth, urbanization, increased economic activities, population migration and climate change will pose critical water challenges in the next decade. What better way to ease off the stress of the week than watch a good movie. With that in mind, check out our list of movies currently showing in cinemas across Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt. Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Jessica Chastain, Charlize Theron Synopsis: As a war between rival queen sisters Ravenna and Freya escalates, Eric and fellow warrior Sara, members of the Huntsmen army raised to protect Freya, try to conceal their forbidden love as they combat Ravenna's wicked intentions. Showing: Monday - Thursday: 10:00am Starring: Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson Synopsis: Political interference in the Avengers' activities causes a rift between former allies Captain America and Iron Man. Showing: Fri day- Thursday: 3:00PM, 6:00PM Friday - Thursday: 1:45PM, 8:25PM Friday - Thursday: 5:35PM, 9:00PM Friday - Thursday: 3:45PM, 9:10PM Starring: Synopsis: Showing: Friday & Saturday: 7:20 pm, 9:20 pm, 11:20 pm Sunday - Thursday: 7:20 pm, 9:20 pm Friday - Thursday: 1:40pm, 3:45pm, 5:10pm, 7:00pm, 8:50pm Friday - Saturday: 12:15PM, 3:40PM, 9:10PM Monday - Thursday: 12:15PM, 3:40PM, 8:25PM Friday - Thursday: 11:40AM, 6:15PM, 7:15PM 4. Starring: Synopsis: Showing: Friday & Saturday: 2:45 pm, 6:45 pm, 10:40 pm Sunday - Thursday: 2:45 pm, 6:45 pm Friday - Thursday: 2:20pm, 4:15pm, 6:35pm Friday - Thursday: 1:30PM, 6:30PM, 9:00PM Friday - Thursday: 2:30PM, 6:30PM, 8:20PM Starring: Stan Nze, Rotimi Salami, Ijeoma Agu, Obutu Roland, Brutus Richard Synopsis: Two brothers are on opposite paths. Victor is a recent ex-con who is trying to piece his life together while Duke is a brilliant undergraduate determined to see his mum live. Duke enlists the help of his two friends in stealing cars by decorating the cars and pretending to be married. Despite some unforeseen hiccups, their operation was pretty successful until people got greedy and violent." Showing: Friday - Thursday: 3:40PM Starring: Neel Sethi, Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley Synopsis: The man-cub Mowgli flees the jungle after a threat from the tiger Shere Khan. Guided by Bagheera the panther and the bear Baloo, Mowgli embarks on a journey of self-discovery, though he also meets creatures who don't have his best interests at heart. Showing: Friday - Thursday: 12:00PM Friday -Sunday: 12:00PM, 1:00PM Monday - Thursday: 12:00PM, 4:50PM Starring: Alexx Ekubo, Oyinbo Princess, Francis Odega Synopsis: A young man in his late 20s-Robinson-who believes the only way he can succeed is to travel overseas, and an easy way out is surfing through the internet for an online date. Luck smiles on him as he hooks up with a white prospective lady, Emilia. He starts financial extortion in the pretence that he is preparing the marital rites. Showing: Friday - Thursday: 10:30AM, 7:35PM Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence Synopsis: With the emergence of the world's first mutant, Apocalypse, the X-Men must unite to defeat his extinction level plan. Showing: Fri, Sat & Mon - Wed: 6:40PM, 9:45PM Sun: 9:45PM Thu: 6:50PM, 9:45PM (--VIP SHOWS--) Fri - Wed: 5:00PM Thu: 4:00PM Friday - Thursday: 3:30pm, 6:15pm, 8:15pm Friday - Thursday: 10:45AM, 3:30PM (3D), 8:10PM Friday - Sunday: 5:35PM, 8:50PM Monday - Thursday: 12:45PM, 5:35PM, 8:50PM Starring: Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Tiffany Haddish Synopsis: Friends hatch a plot to retrieve a stolen kitten by posing as drug dealers for a street gang. Showing: Fri - Wed: 3:10 pm, 5:15 pm, 7:55 pm Thu: 3:10 pm, 5:15 pm Friday - Thursday: 12:05pm, 3:00pm, 6:05pm, 8:55pm Friday - Sunday: 2:35PM, 8:45PM Monday - Thursday: 12:55PM, 2:35PM, 8:45PM Friday - Thursday: 12:30PM, 4:30PM Starring: Bimbo Akintola, Kehinde Bankole, Linda Ejiofor Synopsis: 8 Bars and A Clef is the story of musically gifted recording artist with dyslexia and how he battles his anger issues, a troubled past, a budding relationship and competition to stay at the top of the charts. Showing: Daily: 1:00 pm, 5:00 pm, 8:55 pm Friday - Thursday: 10:20am, 2:00pm Friday - Thursday: 10:40AM, 2:10PM Friday - Sunday: 5PM Monday - Thursday: 7PM Genre: Romance Starring: Ice Cube, Regina Hall, Anthony Anderson Synopsis: As their surrounding community has taken a turn for the worse, the crew at Calvin's Barbershop come together to bring some much needed change to their neighborhood. Showing: Friday - Thursday: 8:05pm Genre: Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter Synopsis: Alice returns to the whimsical world of Wonderland and travels back in time to save the Mad Hatter. Showing: Daily: 11:15 am, 1:40 pm, 4:15 pm Fri-Thur: 10:50am, 12:55pm, 1:40pm Friday - Sunday: 12:30PM, 1:30PM, 4:40PM Monday - Thursday: 1:30PM, 2:55PM Friday - Thursday: 11:20AM, 5:25PM Sunday: 5:25PM Starring:Terrence Jenkins, Cassie Ventura, Paula Patton. Synopsis: A playboy named Charlie, convinced that all his relationships are dead, meets the beautiful and mysterious Eva. Agreeing to a casual affair, Charlie then wants a bit more from their relationship Showing: VIP Shows Fri - Wed: 10:05 pm Thu: 9:00 pm Friday - Thursday: 4:05pm, 6:00pm, 8:40pm Friday - Thursday: 11:00AM, 7:10PM, 9:10PM Friday - Thursday: 1:35PM Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Bell, Peter Dinklage Synopsis: A titan of industry is sent to prison after she's caught insider trading. When she emerges ready to rebrand herself as America's latest sweetheart, not everyone she screwed over is so quick to forgive and forget. Showing: Fri: 12:50 pm, 9:00 pm, 11:10 pm Sat: 12:50 pm, 6:00 pm Sun - Thu: 12:50 pm, 9:00 pm Friday - Thursday: 11:40am, 4:30pm Friday - Saturday: 12:10PM, 3:40PM Friday - Thursday: 10:30AM, 9:05PM Starring:Peter Dinklage, Jason Sudeikis, Kate McKinnon Synopsis: Find out why the birds are so angry. When an island populated by happy, flightless birds is visited by mysterious green piggies, it's up to three unlikely outcasts - Red, Chuck and Bomb - to figure out what the pigs are up to. Showing: Daily:11:00 am, 1:05 pm Friday - Thursday: 10:00am, 11:50am Friday - Sunday: 10:30AM, 2:40PM, 6:55PM Monday - Thursday: 10:55AM, 5:10PM Friday - Sunday: 10:30AM, 3:05PM, 3:35PM Monday - Thursday: 10:30AM, 2:50PM, 3:35PM Starring:Chloe Grace Moretz, Zac Efron, Rose Byrne Synopsis: After a sorority moves in next door, which is even more debaucherous than the fraternity before it, Mac and Kelly have to ask for help from their former enemy, Teddy. Showing: Friday - Thursday: 12:30pm Genre: Animation, Action, Adventure Starring: Jack Black, Bryan Cranston, Dustin Hoffman Synopsis: Continuing his "legendary adventures of awesomeness", Po must face two hugely epic, but different threats: one supernatural and the other a little closer to his home. Showing: Friday - Sunday: 10:15am Starring: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba Synopsis: In a city of anthropomorphic animals, a fugitive con artist fox and a rookie bunny cop must work together to uncover a conspiracy. Showing: Friday - Thursday: 10:30am Starring: Funsho Adeolu, Judith Audu, Stan Nze, Tamara Eteimo, and Seyi Hunter. Synopsis: "Gone Grey" is a Nigerian Crime Drama film about Chief Alabamusa (Funsho Adeolu), a popular philanthropist and a man of the people who got kidnapped only to discover that money is not the motive behind his kidnap" . Showing: Friday - Thursday: 12:55PM Details of the meeting remain sketchy, Ynaija reports that sources in the presidency said discussions will hinge on the rising spate of attacks in the Niger Delta and the looters list. Channels Television reports that the former President refused to talk with the press after the closed door meeting. Also, Anglican Bishops led by the primate of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Nicholas Okoh, met with Buhari. After the meeting with Mr. President, Okoh told newsmen that Buhari's response to their discussions was favourable. Cable News reports that he also said We told him (Buhari) many things but part of it is that we are all looking for solution to issues of the herdsmen, issue of vandalism on security in one way or the other. This is because the people are asking us and we want to have explanation for the people whom we lead. He gave us detailed explanations of what he is doing to ensure that these things are solved. So, we have hope, we have message for our people. The Legal Adviser, International Secretariat of Amnesty International, London, Kolawole Olaniyan has criticised former President, Olusegun Obasanjo for saying Justice Mohammed Idris is stupid On Friday, June 3, 2016, Sani and some key APC members in Kaduna state formed a group known as APC Akida (a Hausa word which meansOur interest). The acting publicity secretary of Kaduna state APC, Salisu Wusono said "As a party, the Kaduna State APC stands united behind governor Nasir El-Rufai, in delivering service for our people. Our party was elected to lead change and bring development, not to pander to the ego of people. Those who think that nothing can be right if they are not the drivers and condemn laudable initiatives just because they are not treated as masters should reconsider their conduct. Adding that The APC Kaduna State cannot be factionalised. We will not tolerate indiscipline. We have given people enough time to adjust to the reality that they are not in a position to hold the party or the process of change to ransom just because of their personal interests. Some people lost their bid to occupy the office of chairman; others were soundly defeated in the gubernatorial primaries. Despite this, the party tried to carry them along. But they stood aloof during the campaigns, some even went as far as cooperating with the PDP. We heard that a group of persons sat with a suspended senator to announce an illegal and unrecognized group. They are hereby warned to desist. Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai paid a condolence visit to Senator Shehu Sanifollowing the death of his mother, Hajiya Fatima Abubakar Sani. Enemuo said this while commending the outgoing Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Cyril Chigozie Asiabaka for his effort at the valedictory colloquium in honour of the VC. Professor Asiabaka's tenure will end this month and is expected to hand over to the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Administration), Professor Francis Chukwuemeka Eze as his successor. According to Enemuo, the institution which is the nations premier university of technology established in 1980 by the Shehu Shagari administration now ranked 8th best in the ranking of universities in the country by the National Universities Commission, NUC, as against its former 48th position. Professor Asiabaka has brought about monumental physical development and infrastructure into FUTO and the university is now being governed with strict sense of discipline, there are no more examination malpractices, selling of handouts, sexual harassment and cultism is now a thing of the past in FUTO. On Wednesday, June 1, 2016, the federal government announced the cancellation of the post UTME tests conducted in tertiary institution all over the country. The MURIC, has however rejected this abolition, calling it "reactionary, myopic and irritating' and adding that it us JAMB itself that should have been abolished. In a statement, the organisation said, "Our position is based on the bitter experiences of Nigerian youths and their parents over the years. Post-JAMB examination was introduced after the general public and tertiary institutions lost faith in the national examination body. There were allegations of bribery and corruption being rampant among staffers of JAMB who swapped candidates marks for the highest bidders. ALSO READ: UK Muslim group drags President to ICC over Shiite killings "There were also alleged cases of impersonation whereby parents who could afford it merely bought high scores for their children who never wrote any examination. Many brilliant candidates allegedly got low marks. Excellence was compromised on the altar of mediocrity. JAMB was ruining the future of Nigerian youths. Prof. Ishaq Akintola, the Director of Muslim Rights Concern, in the statement also added that the fact that JAMB candidates who scored amazingly high marks but could not justify the results once they gain admission into tertiary institution was what prompted the government to find a solution. He said, "They performed woefully after gaining entry into institutions and it was natural for the schools to do something about it since it was obvious that JAMB was dumping dullards in the universities and polytechnics all over the country." It was due to this that the Post-JAMB examinations emerged as a way to curb the issue. The universities and polytechnics had to re-screen candidates to be sure that they were admitting the right people. ALSO READ: The statement then called on the federal government to "grant tertiary institutions some level of autonomy particularly in the area of admission requirements." Akintola concluded by saying the post -UTME was part if the war against corruption. Olayinka said this at a training organised by West Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF/WECARD) in collaboration with Cat Fish Farmers Association of Nigeria (CAFAN), Oyo State chapter. He added that the desire was to contribute to the development of the society and surrounding communities, stressing that if UI wished to be the best, its immediate environment must benefit from it. The Dean, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, UI, Professor Eustace Iyayi, said agriculture programmes should be strengthened now that the country was set to diversify the economy. ALSO READ: FG scraps post UTME exams at tertiary institutions Iyayi emphasised that value addition was good in production to create more market and income for farmers. Nigeria is in need of food security, we need good nutrition and have food security now; so, we need to produce and empower people to get products, he said. Also, Professor Bamidele Omitoyin, the Head of Department, Fishery and Aquaculture, said the goal was to get research results across to farmers to develop them. Omitoyin said UI fish had been in circulation since 2010, assuring that there would be improvement in the quality of fish the department was distributing. We have made several breakthroughs including sending some members on training outside the country just to get the best for the farmers; this training will help farmers to use fish in different dimensions, he said. Earlier, Professor Emmanuel Ajani, the Regional Coordinator, CORAF Project, said the project, sponsored by the World Bank, was a regional one covering West/Central African countries including Nigeria and Cameroon. Through it, we distributed half a million fish finger lings supplied to 1,500 farmers in Nigeria; we also designed and distributed smoking kinks to 200 farmers. We want to explore more on value addition on fish that is why we organised the training, this is the first of its kind in Nigeria since the project started in 2012, he said This is according to a ranking by Milescards.com which ranked US airports by delays for the summer season. A Misery Score is earned by having the lowest on-time ranking (on average, only 68.4%of flights flying into Newark arrive on time) having one of the longest wait-times for takeoff, and being one of the slowest airports for getting to the gate after landing. Newark nabbed the top spot by scoring 95 out of a 100% while close seconds - LaGuardia, Chicago OHare, and New Yorks Kennedy Airport all tied for second with a score of 94. On the flip side, San Jose and Portland emerged the least miserable airports. In general however, June is widely regarded as the worst month on the calendar for flight delays at US airports, owing to thunderstorms and the massive influx of travelers. Most men will put on their cologne right before they walk out the door just so that it will last. Whats most annoying is that you spent good naira on the cologne and then the scent runs out in thirty minutes. Well, here are things you can do to make the scent of your favorite designer fragrance last longer: Timing is key: It may make sense to spray right before you walk out the door but you are wrong. Actually, the right time to apply is as soon as you are done with your shower because at that point your pores are most enlarged, which allows cologne to seep into the skin and last longer. Moisturize first: Its hard for dry skin to retain anything wet. This means you have to moisturize before application so that the cologne will absorb effectively. Moisture traps the cologne in. Be a brand whore: Most of these fragrances come in sets, with accompanying soaps, aftershaves, body balms, and more. When you stick to using the full set, you eradicate any foreign scents, which could take away from that of the cologne. Wrists matter too: The one tradition that has stuck with most men as far as cologne culture goes is spraying on the wrist. This is because the wrists contain pulse points, with veins and arteries close to the skin surface, making them warmer than the rest of the body. This warmth helps lock in scents for a long-lasting period of time. Now that we have the dos, there are a few things you should make sure not to do. Dont leave your cologne in a warm, wet or bright place because they speed up the breakdown of the scents. In remarks that at times resembled a comedy roast, Clinton unleashed a torrent of polished zingers and one-liners to attack Trump's policies and character, suggesting Trump might start a nuclear war if elected to the White House simply because "somebody got under his very thin skin." "Donald Trump's ideas are not just different, they are dangerously incoherent," she said to a room of supporters in San Diego, California. "They're not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies." Clinton, the front-runner in the race to become the Democratic presidential nominee, delivered her speech as she seeks to shift her attention to the Nov. 8 election against likely rival Trump and away from Bernie Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, who is continuing his long-shot bid for the nomination. Clinton was speaking in San Diego ahead of California's June 7 primary election. Democratic Party leaders have fretted about how to best oppose Trump, who managed to knock out all 16 rivals for the Republican nomination in part with his uninhibited style of assailing them with personal insults. Trump revels in referring to Clinton as "Crooked Hillary" and dredging up the infidelities of her husband, Bill Clinton, the former president. "He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia," she said as the crowd guffawed, and she suggested Trump would run the U.S. economy "like one of his casinos." During her speech, Clinton predicted Trump, who has been deeply critical of Clinton's foreign policy record, would take to his Twitter account to insult her, and he did. "Bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton!" ran one posting during the speech, which included a typo. "Reading poorly from the telepromter! She doesn't even look presidential!" Trump has said previously that Clinton is distorting his actual policies. TWO VISIONS Amid the laugh lines, Clinton cited her own experience as secretary of state, in particular her role advising President Barack Obama during the mission to kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, to suggest her approach to foreign policy was the more serious. "He praises dictators like Vladimir Putin and picks fights with our friends, including the British prime minister, the mayor of London, the German chancellor, the president of Mexico and the pope," Clinton said, listing some of the allies with whom Trump has verbally sparred in the last year. Obama, who has also been repeatedly mocked by Trump, has criticized Trump as being ignorant or cavalier about world affairs and has said that Trump's rise has "rattled" foreign leaders. Trump has talked tough on foreign policy. He has said he would bring back waterboarding and other brutal interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects that are widely regarded as torture and were discontinued by Obama. Trump has also vowed to renegotiate trade deals, called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, and said he would ask members of the 28-nation NATO alliance to "pay up" or "get out." He has said he would sit down with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to try to stop Pyongyang's nuclear program. Clinton derided these and other positions, promising she would do a better job keeping the United States safe. Standing in front of a backdrop of 19 large U.S. flags, an unusual abundance even by the standards of presidential campaign events, Clinton painted the election as a choice between "two very different visions." "One that's angry, afraid and based on the idea that America is fundamentally weak and in decline," she said, summing up Trumpism. "The other is hopeful, generous and confident in the knowledge that America is great, just like we always have been." Trump has criticized Clinton for her handling of foreign policy during her 2009-2013 stint as secretary of state, including the Sept. 11, 2012, attack by Islamist militants on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. He cites Clinton's support for the war in Iraq, launched by former Republican President George W. Bush, as another example of her shortcomings. Democratic challenger Sanders echoed Clinton's concerns about Trump after her speech, though he also criticized Clinton's foreign policy. "I agree ... that Donald Trump's foreign policy ideas are incredibly reckless and irresponsible," Sanders said in a statement. In criticizing Clinton, Sanders cited her vote for the war in Iraq, calling it "the worst foreign policy blunder in modern American history," and said "she has been a proponent of regime change, as in Libya, without thinking through the consequences." In assailing each other's suitability for the White House, Clinton and Trump are reflecting a negative voter mood ahead of next month's party conventions that will choose the presidential nominees. Malaysians were shocked when news broke on Thursday that Richard Huckle, 30, had raped and sexually abused numerous Malaysian children from impoverished families while he worked in the country as a freelance photographer for nearly a decade. "The victims have not been identified and the NCA only informed about the incident about one month ago, but no information had been given because the case is still on trial," Ong Chin Lan, a senior officer in the police's Sexual, Women and Child Investigation Division, told the Bernama news agency. The NCA is the London-based National Crime Agency. "We have asked for the information repeatedly and will continue to press them for more information for follow-up action," she said. Huckle, who was arrested in London when he was returning home for Christmas in 2014, began exploiting children and documenting his activities in 2005 when he first visited Malaysia. His victims were aged between six months and 12 years, according to a British court document. He was charged with 91 offences, including 14 counts of rape of a child under 13 years old. His victims included five children aged between 3 and 12 at the time of the abuse, and a baby believed to be six months old, the document said. He is believed to have abused up to 200 children, the BBC reported. 'PREVALENT' PROBLEM Huckle pleaded guilty to 71 offences and his sentence hearing will be concluded on Friday. "Hopefully, after the court judgement on Friday, the authorities in the United Kingdom can provide us with more information," Ong said. While the police sought more details the government had set up a special phone line for information, Women, Family and Community Development Minister Rohani Abdul Karim said in a statement. The government was also setting up a sex offenders' registry, she said. A child rights group said the Huckle case was the tip of the iceberg. "Sadly, child sex abuse is very prevalent in Malaysia," said Sharmila Sekaran if the advocacy group Voice of the Children. Sekaran said child sex tourism was also a problem. The U.N. Children's Fund said the case highlighted a global problem and it wanted to help drafting laws to protect children in Malaysia. The minister was alleged of smuggling her late sons girlfriend, Michelle Wege, from Kinshasa to South Africa. The minister is embroiled in a fresh scandal after details emerged that she used an air force jet to transport Michelle Wege, a Burundian national, to South Africa last year. She denied she had flown there specifically to fetch Michelle. Shortly after Michelles arrival, her son Chumani was stabbed to death in a brawl in Johannesburg. It is unclear who leaked the information which was published by the Sunday Times, but the Ministers office described the story as a political plot. President Jacob Zumas office said he is studying a preliminary report he has received from Mapisa-Nqakula on the matter. DA MP Kobus Marais said his party will lay the charges at the Cape Town police station on Friday. The ANC has for long misused their political power for their own benefit. ``The absolute disregard with which ANC Ministers treat the law, as well as their Oath of Office is a slap in the face of our democratic dispensation. The assault around the Syrian city of Manbij, backed by U.S.-led coalition air strikes and a contingent of American special forces, aims to cut off Islamic State's last 80 km stretch of the Syrian-Turkish frontier by seizing territory in northern Syria west of the Euphrates River. If successful, that would achieve a long-standing aim of Washington and amount to one of the biggest strategic defeats inflicted on Islamic State since it proclaimed its rule over all Muslims from territory in Iraq and Syria two years ago. "We confirm that this campaign will continue until the liberation of the last inch of the land of Manbij and its rural areas," said a statement read out on the banks of the Euphrates by Adnan Abu Amjad, a commander of a group called the Manbij Military Council, allied to the U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces. "Oh brave people of Manbij, our forces are coming to liberate you from the shackles of the Daesh terrorist torturers," said the statement, using an acronym for Islamic State also known as ISIS or ISIL. Washington has been leading an international campaign of air strikes against Islamic State for two years in both Syria and Iraq. It has long been in search of reliable allies on the ground in Syria, where it also opposes the government of President Bashar al-Assad in a multi-sided civil war that has ground on for five years. The SDF, set up last year, includes a powerful Syrian Kurdish militia and what Washington says are growing numbers of Arab forces that have been persuaded to join it. It has swept into villages west of the Euphrates since launching its offensive on Tuesday. That advance comes as Iraqi army forces have separately begun an assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja, 750 km down the Euphrates at the opposite end of Islamic State's sprawling caliphate. The Iraqi troops held their positions without advancing for a third straight day on Thursday, after pouring into the besieged city's southern outskirts on Monday. A Reuters reporting team in Saqlawiya, a village near Falluja, saw Iraqi Shi'ite militia fighters in control of a complex of well-fortified trenches and tunnels captured from Islamic State. In other separate campaigns, Iraqi Kurds have also been advancing in villages near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, and Russian-backed forces of the Syrian government have fought Islamic State in other parts of Syria. The fighting amounts to some of the biggest pushes against the militants by their disparate enemies across a variety of fronts. TURKISH SUPPORT Washington hopes the assault near Manbij will be a turning point in the two-year conflict by choking off Islamic State's last major link to the outside world. The militants have used the frontier for years to receive supplies and manpower, and more recently to send back fighters for attacks in Europe. "We know that there is external plotting from Manbij city... against the homelands of Europe, Turkey, all good friends and allies of ours, and the United States as well," U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said. Of the SDF fighters, he said: "This is a capable force. They are doing all the things we can always do with able and motivated local forces to fight ISIL." Kurdish fighters allied to Washington have already captured much of northeast Syria near the Turkish border, but their advance west of the Euphrates to close off the frontier once and for all was limited by strong opposition from U.S. ally Turkey, which considers the Kurdish YPG its enemies. However, Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan signalled his apparent tacit support for the latest advance on Thursday, saying he had been informed that most of the fighters involved would be Arabs rather than Kurds. Turkish military sources said Turkey had shelled Islamic State positions across the border at Azaz, west of where the advance was taking place, killing five militants. Medical charity Medicins sans Frontieres says 100,000 people are trapped near Azaz and in peril as the battle lines draw near. A Kurdish source, speaking on condition of anonymity to Reuters in Beirut, predicted the Syrian militias would reach Islamic State-held Manbij within days, after advancing to within 10 km (6 miles) of the town. It was too early to say how the battle for Manbij would go, the source said, but added that IS defences on the west bank of the Euphrates River had collapsed at the start of the campaign. However, Naser Haj Mansour, an adviser to the SDF general command, told Reuters Islamic State was still putting up a fight: "In general, the progress is at a good pace and performance, keeping in mind that Daesh still has the capability to fight." FALLUJA ASSAULT PAUSED In Iraq, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the assault on Falluja 11 days ago, veering from the strategy sought by Washington which wants its Iraqi allies to concentrate on Islamic State's de facto Iraqi capital Mosul. Falluja, where U.S. forces fought the biggest battles of their 2003-2011 occupation of Iraq, has long been a bastion for Sunni Muslim insurgents and was the first Iraqi city where Islamic State raised its flag in 2014 before storming through the north and west of the country. It is just an hour's drive from Baghdad, and seizing it would give the government control of the main population centres of the fertile Euphrates valley west of the capital for the first time in more than two years. But the mission in potentially hostile Sunni territory is also fraught with risk. Abadi repeated calls on Thursday for Iraq's fractious politicians to unite behind the army in its advance on Falluja. On Wednesday he announced a pause in the advance to reduce the threat to civilians still trapped in the city. Although most of Falluja's population has fled, the United Nations has expressed deep concern over the fate of tens of thousands of civilians still there, including hundreds of families held by Islamic State fighters as human shields in the city centre. U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said 4,380 people had fled Falluja so far during the offensive and it was searching for places for them in camps. It estimates 10,000 families could be displaced during the assault. Akal Takht Jathedar calls for Panthic unity, seeks release of Bandi Sikhs, warns against conversions We are following the footsteps of Lord Vishwakarma to overhaul entire system in Punjab : says CM If visiting Yosemite National Park, California is on your bucket list and it should be now through fall is a good time to go. If visiting Yosemite National Park, California is on your bucket list and it should be now through fall is a good time to go. You can access the park via its eastern entrance, Tioga Road, (SR 120). This extremely scenic high-elevation route, best known as Tioga Pass, reaches an elevation of 9,945 feet, and because of snow is usually closed from November to late May. It is now open and the fastest way for Nevadans to reach the park. This entry route saves hours over the less-interesting drive to the other entrances on the western and southern sides of the park. Yosemite Valley, the location of Half-Dome, Yosemite Falls, and other scenes which became American icons through the photographs of Ansel Adams, is naturally the most popular location in the park. To reach it from the small town of Lee Vining, which lies along US-395 and is the jumping-off place for those bound westward through Tioga Pass, you will need to allow about two and a half hours. However, it will take most people much longer than that because there are so many irresistible places to stop along the way lakes, meadows, granite domes and scenic overlooks. In fact, you could easily spend several days or longer just checking out the trails and sights along Tioga Road. For first-time visitors to the park, Yosemite Village is a good place to start. Here you will find not only the main visitor center, but restaurants, gift shops, a market, post office and medical clinic. The elevation in this area is approximately 4,000 feet. Expect summer temperatures in this part of the park to be in the high 80s during the day and overnight lows in the 50s. You can also sign up to take a horseback or mule ride, swim, go birding or perhaps take a guided hike or a ranger program. If youre more comfortable being your own guide, there are more than 750 miles of hiking trails in the park, something for every age and ability. A couple of easy trails to hike in Yosemite Valley are Bridal Falls and lower Yosemite Falls, but hit those early in the day to avoid the crowds. Biking is also quite popular in Yosemite Valley and there are more than 12 miles of mostly flat, paved bike paths to ride. Seasonal bike rentals are available at Yosemite Lodge and Curry Village. A variety of lodging can be found in the park. www.yosemitepark.com. Also the surrounding towns have quite a few choices, including Lee Vining. There are many choices of campgrounds in and the surrounding areas of the park as well. Some are open year-round while others at the higher elevations close in September. Some are available on a reservation basis while others are on a first come, first serve basis. For complete camping information in and around the park, www.yosemite.com/ For more detailed information on camping, lodging and the park in general, www.nps.gov/yose. Deborah Wall is the author of Base Camp Las Vegas, Hiking the Southwestern States, Great Hikes, A Cerca Country Guide, and co-author of Access For All, Touring the Southwest with Limited Mobility. Wall can be reached at Deborabus@aol.com. Just in time for summer! Never have two ingredients made so many people so happy. This is premium ice cream at half the cost of name brands. Just in time for summer! Never have two ingredients made so many people so happy. This is premium ice cream at half the cost of name brands. So easy to make no ice cream maker needed. If you can whip cream, you can make this decadent dessert. And youll love doing your Diva strut when you tell your amazed guests you made the ice cream from scratch. Just dont tell them how easy it is. Shh! We love everything about our Vermont made or Danish-sounding brands except the price. At the time of this writing premium ice creams cost about 25 cents per ounce and this recipe costs about 11 cents per ounce. Bargain! If youre trying to limit your sugar and fat intake you may wish to avert your eyes. When you combine sweetened condensed milk with whipped cream something magical happens. However, its a special occasion treat not meant to be consumed every day. But I wont blame you if you do, so dont blame me! This is seriously good stuff, not to be served at childrens parties alongside confetti birthday cake. No, this is meant to be the star of its own show. Served simply with a spoon and a smile. Or if you must, a handful of fresh berries or a drizzle of amaretto. TWO-INGREDIENT ICE CREAM Time 5 minutes active plus 6 to 8 hours to freeze Yield 12 ( cup) servings What Youll Need: 2 cups (one pint) heavy whipping cream 1 (14 oz.) can sweetened condensed milk Heres How: In the mixing bowl of a stand mixer or with a hand mixer, whip the cream to a stiff peak stage. With a spatula, fold in the sweetened condensed milk in stages and gently combine. Place the mixture into a freezer-safe container and freeze for 6 hours or overnight or until frozen. Freeze, covered, up to one week. Voila! Want to add some goodies? Extraordinary in its simplicity youd do well to choose additional ingredients that complement rather than upstage this pure sweet milky flavor. A teaspoon of good vanilla is all you need. If you like crunchy bits I suggest some chopped nuts, preferably pecans, walnuts or if youre feeling decadent macadamias. If youd like to add a swirl of color and flavor you can add dulce de leche, caramel or fudge sauce. Some good quality fruit preserves would do nicely, too. Just pour the cold add-in over the ice cream before its frozen and delicately swirl the ribbons of goodness into the mixture and freeze as directed. If youve been reading my column you know I love simple combinations that can be enjoyed in a variety of ways. This Nectar o the Gods is no exception. So what else can we do with it? Enjoy it unfrozen as a dip or topping for fruit or sliced pound cake. Add to well-cooked rice for a crazy good no-bake rice pudding. Use in place of custard in a trifle. Or just eat it with a spoon and tell yourself youll be good starting next week. Fabulous Food contributed by Patti Diamond from Divas On A Dime Where Frugal, Meets Fabulous! www.divasonadime.com The numerous vehicles parked along Gamebird Road near Money Street meant only one thing this past weekend. The numerous vehicles parked along Gamebird Road near Money Street meant only one thing this past weekend. Memorial Day observances have returned to the Pahrump Valley once again. Upward of sixty residents, consisting of veterans and their families, converged on G.G. Sweet Memorial Park, where guest speakers, prayers and a benediction from Pastor John Biggs from Saved By Grace Lutheran Church highlighted the late morning ceremony. During the service, a eulogy and committal ceremony was conducted for the surviving family members of USMC Sgt. Joe Moreno Jr., USMC Cpl. Robert Hunn and USAF Airman Donald Walsh, followed by a rifle salute and the playing of taps. Following retired USMC Major Roger Chaputs welcome remarks, retired USMC Major Tim Callahan spoke about his time serving in the Middle East, where in the fall of 2002, he and 60 Marines under his command, were deployed to Kuwait as an advance party. We established and built Camp Commando from scratch, he said. This camp became the footprint 1 Marine Expeditionary Force. The numbers swelled to around 10,000, which included British forces. During that time, Callahan said he was eventually responsible for and led 165 Marines and sailors, which included a Motor Transport Platoon, where he received brand new seven-ton trucks. Two of those trucks served as a backdrop during the Memorial Day service on Monday. Callahan said he and his platoon stood fast in northern Kuwait as they awaited the start of their operation. The convoy consisted of more than 50 vehicles, including last-minute attachments from the U.S. Navy Seals and additional governmental organizations. In early 2004, Callahan was operating out of the Green Zone in Baghdad where he led private security contractors. In March of 2004, Iraqi insurgents attacked a convoy containing four American contractors from the private military company Blackwater USA, who were conducting a delivery for food caterers. The four armed contractors were killed and dragged from their vehicles through the city streets before being hung over a bridge crossing the Euphrates River. Callahan said the Blackwater incident in Fallujah necessitated a Regional Operations Center, which enabled coordination between coalition forces and the private security companies. The first successful coordination occurred in the Anbar province with the 1st Marine Division. Shortly thereafter, his convoy came under fire by the enemy. Insurgents attacked my convoy and we executed immediate counter-ambush, he said. Insurgents were observed moving into a compound and unlike before, I was able to call in close air support and lead a counter-attack. The assistance and aggressive response, represented a change in the way things were done. The methods, Callahan said were replicated in many other areas, as insurgent activities became better documented. Even still, Callahan said things went from bad to worse as the level of insurgent attacks increased. In the Haditha Dam area, one convoy was completely destroyed with no survivors, he said. With my convoys, 40 percent of the time, an attack occurred. From 2004 to 2007, the regional operations center reported 132 security contractors and drivers had been killed, with 416 wounded, two missing and 208 vehicles destroyed, which included two from my convoys. Like so many other U.S. military personnel, my deployment had been a dangerous year for me. Following Callahans remarks, retired Army Lt. Col. Patrick Nary spoke about the lives lost during conflicts and wars dating back to the Revolutionary War, where shoeless and starving soldiers refused to abandon their posts. In that eight-year war, we lost 25,000, he said. During the Civil War, in the four years of brother against brother, we lost 625,000 soldiers. Thats 156,250 a year, 428 a day and 17.8 lives an hour. In our first 100 years of existence as a nation, the Civil War accounts for 91.2 percent of lives lost in battle. Nary went on to point out that 116,516 lives were lost during the First World War, while WWII saw more than 405,000 casualities, where a soldier died every six minutes of the war. During the Vietnam conflict 58,220 died in the line of duty. These are numbers that many will never know, never understand or never think about as they celebrate this day with barbecues and parties, he said. Over 1.3 million men and women, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandfathers and grandmothers have lost their lives defending the freedoms we so love and enjoy today. After recounting sage quotes from Greek General and Statesman Pericles, and President Abraham Lincoln, Nary closed his remarks, in part, with the following words: May the pain felt today ease over time and may their memories always bring a smile to your heart, he said. God bless those that have died in conflict and defending our freedoms, and God bless America. BEATTY The weather for the last weekend of October may or may not be chillier than normal, but it is certain to be chili weather for Beatty Days this weekend. The annual event runs Oct. 28-3o at Cottonwood Park. After a fairly mild May, temperatures are soaring as June begins, so much so that an excessive heat warning goes into effect today. After a fairly mild May, temperatures are soaring as June begins, so much so that an excessive heat warning goes into effect today. The National Weather Service put out the warning, which begins at 10 a.m. today, alerting area residents that a period of dangerously hot temperatures will occur, which will create a dangerous situation, where heat illnesses are likely. There is an excessive heat warning, which essentially means it is going to be really hot, said Dan Berk, National Weather Service meteorologist. Temperatures will be up to 15 degrees above normal for this time of year, topping out at 107 degrees today, 110 degrees tomorrow and 105 degrees Sunday, where the heat warning ends at 8 p.m. when the high temperature drops to 100 degrees Monday. Desert heat can pose serious health risks to anyone, especially the children, the elderly and people with poor circulation and weight problems. The homeless, without easy access to air conditioning and water are also at risk. With the unseasonably hot temperatures, especially being the initial burst of summer heat in the area, everyone is urged to take precautions. Were warning people that they should take precautions when theyre going out, since this is the first big heat wave of the year, he said. Were expecting temperatures approaching record heat, so were just encouraging everybody to drink enough water and wear some light clothing. Other precautions that could help prevent heat-related illness according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services are: spending time in locations with air-conditioning when possible, drinking plenty of fluids, good choices are water and diluted sport electrolyte drinks (one part sport drink to two parts water) unless told otherwise by a doctor, and limiting outdoor activity to morning and evening hours. Nevada led the nation in heat-related fatalities in 2015, with 25 of the 45 nationwide deaths from heat-related incidents in the Silver State. Of the 25 deaths, about 60 percent of those were adults between the ages of 60 and 89 years old. Southern Nevada also lead the nation vehicle deaths related to heat with three, up from two in 2014. The valley saw its first 100-degree day Wednesday where the high was 100 degrees, which is later than usual, but nowhere near the record, as the latest day to reach the years first 100-degree day in Pahrump was June 28 in 1998. One way in town that residents of all ages can cool off is taking a dip in the Pahrump community pool, which opened prior to Memorial Day. The pool is open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. until 11 a.m. for adult swim (21 years and older), then reopens at noon until 6 p.m. for open swim. Weekend pool hours are noon until 6 p.m. Daily admission is 50 cents, while a single person annual pass is $20 and a family annual pass can be purchased for $30. Additional precautionary measures that can be taken during extreme heat are:Use sunscreen with a high SPF to protect against sunburn and skin cancer. Check in on friends and family, especially the elderly who may need help adjusting to the heat. Always assign a designated child watcher when children are near a pool or any body of water. Close and lock all doors, windows and gates leading to pools when not in use. Keep a phone near the pool to ensure children are not left unattended if the phone rings. Never swim when thunder or lightning are present. Animals are also susceptible to succumbing to heat if left outside or in cars, where temperatures can reach 120 degrees quickly. Contact reporter Mick Akers at makers@pvtimes.com. Find him on Twitter: @mickakers. CARSON CITY Nevadans love their open space and public lands, favor renewable energy and are less likely to vote for a candidate who supported Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy in his 2014 standoff with federal authorities. CARSON CITY Nevadans love their open space and public lands, favor renewable energy and are less likely to vote for a candidate who supported Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy in his 2014 standoff with federal authorities. Those were the findings of a poll released Wednesday by the Center for Western Priorities, a nonpartisan conservation and advocacy group. The survey found Nevadans overwhelmingly agree public land issues use should be prioritized collaboratively rather than through conflict with the federal government. With each election cycle weve seen the growing influence of states like Nevada, Montana and Colorado in national elections, Jennifer Rokala, director of the center, said in a conference call with reporters. Voters in these states and throughout the region care deeply about access to the outdoors and public lands, she said. Regardless of political party, voters in Nevada favor balance and pragmatism and reject the extreme public lands agenda of Cliven Bundy and his supporters, Rokala said. Bundy and armed supporters confronted the Bureau of Land Management and law enforcement when agents moved to confiscate his cattle in April 2014 over unpaid grazing fees. The BLM later abandoned the roundup over fears of violence. Bundy, four of his sons and 14 others are under federal indictment on standoff-related charges. The telephone survey of 700 likely Nevada voters was conducted May 2-5 by Purple Strategies, a national research firm. The survey has a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points. Brian Gottlieb, the firms managing director, said 57 percent of those surveyed disagreed with a statement that Nevada has too much public land, while 31 percent agreed. Forty-six percent disagree with the rancher and his supporters, based on what theyve heard, while 34 percent agree and 20 percent said they dont know. Negative responses rose to 51 percent when the question was asked after explanations of the dispute over public lands and the role of the federal government. Additionally, 71 percent support national monument status for Clark Countys Gold Butte, with 11 percent opposed. Other key findings show: Nevadans, by a 74 percent to 12 percent margin, are more likely to support candidates who encourage development of solar, geothermal and wind energy on public lands. Respondents favor continuing mining and oil and gas drilling on public lands, 55 percent to 24 percent, but with added environmental protections. Additionally, they are less likely to support candidates who propose prohibiting energy development on public lands. Nevadans are evenly split when asked if they are more or less likely to support a candidate espousing opening of wilderness areas to motorized vehicles, though Republicans, by a margin of 45 percent to 34 percent, view the idea more favorably. Half of all respondents are less likely to support someone who proposed selling off public lands to reduce the national deficit. Voters, regardless of party, were more likely to vote for a candidate who espoused blocking the storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain by an overall margin of 51 percent to 23 percent. More than 95 percent of Nye County land is controlled by the federal government. Contact Sandra Chereb at schereb@reviewjournal.com. Find her on Twitter: @SandraChereb In the Nye County District I debate last Friday, incumbent Commissioner Lorinda Wichman sought to fend off her main opponent, Scott Mattox of Amargosa Valley. In the Nye County District I debate last Friday, incumbent Commissioner Lorinda Wichman sought to fend off her main opponent, Scott Mattox of Amargosa Valley. In the hour debate at Rosemary Clarke Middle School, the two Republicans touched on some of the issues that prevail in the sparsely-populated District I that covers predominantly rural parts of the county and the northern portion of Pahrump from Bell Vista Road. Among the issues were the countys relationship with the BLM, the lack of jobs, abatement and water rights. Mattox said he wants to get involved in the political process, while Wichman, who is nearing her second term, said that she isnt done yet. Im not for term limits, Wichman said. When asked about the role of county commissioners in the northern part of the county, Mattox said: Our needs in rural communities are not being met. He added that county commissioners are county commissioners, not district commissioners. They are a county commissioner, and they need to address the needs of the entire county, he said. Mattox said the big challenge that rural parts of the county face is jobs, whereas Wichman said the only place that has an unemployment problem in Nye County is Pahrump. Tonopah doesnt have enough available housing to accommodate its existing workforce, while other towns in the county have large concentrations of retirees, she said. The two candidates agreed that roads were one of the most pressing issues in the county. Wichman and Mattox however were on two opposite sides when they talked about the recent 5-cent gas tax increase. Wichman stood by her vote for the five-cent gas tax increase. The gas tax is strictly for roads, she said. Im categorically opposed to new taxes, Mattox said. Mattox also said that the county needs to bring more jobs to address the budget issue. Wichman meanwhile, attributed the problem to property taxes. She said that she intends to encourage the Nevada Legislature not to give tax abatement to large companies that come in. If elected, Mattox said the countys budget will get the most attention from him. Mattox said about abatement: The county commissioners should get involved if the issue involves the health and the safety of others. Wichman said that officials should determine the difference between public and private nuisance. If theres a safety issue, officials should follow it as the public nuisance rather than private nuisance for the safety of the public. Speaking about the BLM and other government agencies that have a heavy presence in Nye County, where the federal government controls 92 percent of the land, Wichman said its absolutely essential that as a commissioner you establish a personal relationship with government agencies. Mattox spoke about some of the difficulties when dealing with government agencies. The problem with that metric we have in a lot of these cases is that the people that you have to deal with, especially at the federal or at the state level, think that in a hierarchy of things, that they are more powerful, he said. Both agreed that the county and towns within Nye need to be proactive when it comes to preparing for Interstate 11, which is planned to follow U.S. Highway 95 north. The three Republican candidates, Wichman, Mattox and Pahrump resident Alex Jones are in June 14 primary for the seat. The primary winner will take the seat because no one from another party registered to run. District I Commission precincts are in Beatty, Currant Creek, Duckwater, Gabbs, Ione, Amargosa Valley, Manhattan, Mercury, Round Mountain, Sunnyside, Tonopah, Pahrump, Smoky Valley and Forty Bar. Contact reporter Daria Sokolova at dsokolova@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @dariasokolova77 If theres a group of people more thin-skinned than dark-skinned race-baiters and race-hustlers, Id love to know who they are. Seriously. Talk about people who can dish it out but not take it. Sheesh. If theres a group of people more thin-skinned than dark-skinned race-baiters and race-hustlers, Id love to know who they are. Seriously. Talk about people who can dish it out but not take it. Sheesh. Case in point: Nevada State Senate Minority Leader Aaron Ford. First, I have to say Ive found Sen. Ford to be an intelligent man, a decent man and a heckuva father. But hes got a one-way blind spot when it comes to race thats impossible to ignore and difficult to excuse. For example, back in December in the midst of the Black Lives Matter circus, Ford linked to a racially inflammatory column in the liberal Huff-and-Puffington Post titled 27 Things Every Black Person Must Learn Before Age 12. Among the absurd pearls of wisdom bestowed upon black kids in the totally irresponsible, anti-cop column was an assertion that your blackness will always be the main thing that makes you a threat and a warning that theres a chance you could be shot dead by the police before youre even arrested for anything. Outrageous. Of course, better lessons would be along the lines of Dont break the law and When a police officer says stopSTOP. Oh, and maybe refer to officers as sir rather than mother-#$%&. Im just saying. Anyway, if black leaders such as Sen. Ford really want us to become a society that judges a person by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, maybe they should stop the counter-productive practice of self-segregation. Case in point: Sen. Ford recently tweeted, Join the SoNV Black Elected Officials this Saturday! Super Walk. To which I replied I can only imagine the howls of outrage if there was a SoNV White Elected Officials Super Walk. Such hypocrisy. Naturally, exposing such a clear and obvious racial double-standard didnt sit very well with Sen. Ford. He replied by linking to a 2-second YouTube video featuring a black guy saying, Bye, Felecia. Now, if youre a cracker like me and not from the hood, you probably dont know what that phrase means. So heres a definition, courtesy of the Urban Dictionary When someone says that theyre leaving and you could really give two (expletive that rhymes with spits) less that they are, their name then becomes Felicia, a random (expletive that rhymes with witch) that nobody is sad to see go. Their real name becomes irrelevant because nobody cares what it really is. Instead, they now are Felicia. So, um, I think its safe to say the thin-skinned Sen. Ford got his tighty whities in a twist over my calling him on the carpet for playing the racial segregation card yet again. You see, these folks are so used to having it both ways they really get bent out of shape when confronted with their hypocrisy. But confront them we must or well never even approach the nirvana of a color-blind society. As for the senators dismissive Bye, Felecia response, Im sure it came off as cute to his fellow racial segregationists, but Im disappointed. Not exactly a dignified manner in which to conduct oneself as an elected official and party leader when discussing such a powder-keg of a public policy issue. I expected better. Oh, well. Bye, Senator. Chuck Muth is president of Citizen Outreach and publisher of NevadaNewsandViews.com. You can reach Chuck at ChuckMuth.com POLK CITY, Iowa U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Cuban Agriculture Minister Gustavo Rodriguez Rollero spent Friday touring highlights of Iowa farming and searching for common ground with agriculture as a starting point for normalizing relations between two countries at odds for decades. Vilsack and Rollero made stops at DuPont Pioneer's Johnston operations, an organic farm near Polk City, Iowa State University's Ames campus and a renewable fuels plant near Nevada to showcase Iowa's agricultural diversity and discuss closer ties dependent on Congress lifting an embargo on trade with Cuba. "International relations are critically important to American agriculture," Vilsack told reporters during a briefing he and Rollero held at Lehman's organic farm, noting that 30 percent of everything grown in America is sold somewhere outside the country. "There is a tremendous opportunity for us to have a solid relationship between our two countries beginning with agriculture," he said. Rollero, through a translator, agreed that the two nations have "a great deal to learn from each other" and he hoped a memorandum of understanding now in place with usher in cooperation in areas such as education, technology, research, genetics, science, water resources and climate change that would lead to a "deeper and fluid" relationship. Vilsack, a former Iowa mayor, state senator and governor, drew parallels between Friday's event and a 1959 Iowa visit by former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, and quoted Abraham Lincoln for saying "the best way to eliminate an enemy is to make a friend." Vilsack said President Barack Obama is convinced that nearly 60 years of strained relations with Cuba's communist regime has produced "little success" and the time has come for a "different approach." The president has visited the island nation, eased some financial and travel restrictions and reopened the U.S. embassy in Havana. Vilsack, who also has visited Cuba as part of his previous two meetings with Rollero, said he is "optimistic and hopeful" that Congress will lift the U.S. embargo and that "hopefully, those who want to trade and invest in Cuba will see the benefit of eliminating barriers" such as advance payments and other restrictions that hamper commerce. "We are currently hampered by federal legislation that makes it more difficult for us to have that solid relationship," he said during a joint news conference with Rollero. "I sincerely hope that at some point in time in the near future Congress sees the wisdom of ending the embargo that allows us to have an even closer relationship." Vilsack's comments were echoed Friday by members of a newly launched Engage Cuba Iowa State Council made up of agriculture, business, manufacturing, education, energy, health care, government and religious leaders among others. James Williams, president of Engage Cuba, said the council hopes to build statewide support for congressional action to end the travel ban and trade embargo on Cuba "that is costing Iowa jobs and preventing economic development for the Cuban people." Council member Craig Hill, president of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, said Cuba needs to import 80 percent of its food for the island nation, which presents a new market for a state ranked No. 1 in corn, soybean, hogs and egg production. "We all win by having this discussion," he said. Moline native Stacy Krones was thrilled to be coming back home when she got the call to interview at Exelon's Quad-Cities Generating Station. Two years ago, the wife and mother of two boys landed a job at the Cordova plant where she works as a performance improvement accreditation and evaluation specialist. The 35-year-old Bettendorf woman, who helps train Exelon's trainers, expected to retire from the nuclear plant. But the news Thursday that the plant will close in 2018 has her future and that of 800 other local Exelon employees in doubt. "The Illinois legislature is pretty dysfunctional. They've not had a budget for two years," she said. "Public schools are talking about closing because we don't have a budget.'' So Exelon and the energy reform legislation "probably are not at the top of their agenda," she added. It is young employees like Krones who Ed Pannell, the plant's training director, is most concerned about. "I'm not as worried about my future; I'm near the end of my career," said Pannell, a 32-year plant employee. "But I'm worried about the younger folks who are trying to start families, buy their first home." Pannell, 52, of Fulton, Illinois, said the mood at the plant was somber Thursday. "The saddest part is what is going to happen to the economy," he said. "We're one of the best running plants in the industry," he said. "Quad-Cities is known for its people and how we do business. A lot of other plants are looking at us and saying 'Holy cow, if it can happen to them ...'" Plant spokesman Bill Stoermer said Exelon recently imposed a hiring freeze to have jobs to offer workers displaced when the Quad-Cities and Clinton plants close. "Our goal is to ensure every employee has an opportunity in Exelon if they so choose," he said. "Our employees are trained and qualified in a very special field," Stoermer said. "They're not just going to go to work in Rock Island County or DeWitt County (Clinton plant's site)." But relocating in the nuclear industry is not a simple process. "Just because you're licensed to be an operator at these units doesn't mean you can go operate another unit," Pannell said, adding that it takes two years to earn an operator's license. According to Pannell, about a third of the workers may be able to retire and about half are expected to transfer within the company. "There will be others who will choose not to stay," he said. For those, information and resources are already being offered. "Many employees are fed up with Illinois and have indicated they are going to go to another state," said Stoermer, who vowed to keep fighting to save the plant. "This is my life. These people are who I am. I love everyone of them and I'm going to fight every day for them," Stoermer said, tearing up. Krones applauds Exelon for its transparency through the process. "It's not our station (to blame). It is the market and the way energy is bought and sold on the market. That is why Exelon is fighting so hard for energy reform." She plans to stay with Exelon. "I will have to uproot my family, my children," she said. "But there is no better place than the Quad-Cities to raise a family. I will be sad to leave." A Davenport woman accused of trying to flush her newborn baby down the toilet before leaving the child in a trash can at an Iowa City hospital now faces an attempted murder charge. Ashley R. Hautzenrader, 22, initially faced one charge of child endangerment, an aggravated misdemeanor, in Johnson County. The attempted murder charge was included in the trial information, which lays out the formal charges Hautzenrader faces, on Tuesday, according to online court records. Hautzenrader will be back in court June 9. According to a university Department of Public Safety criminal complaint: Hautzenrader entered a bathroom in the Colloton Pavillion at University Hospitals, Iowa City, about 9:24 p.m. May 8 and delivered a baby into the toilet. She told police she didnt know she was pregnant before entering the bathroom. The newborn was not crying, Hautzenrader said, leading her to think the child was dead. Police said she attempted to flush it down the toilet. Failing that, Hautzenrader then placed the child in a pillow case and put it in a trash can, police said. She cleaned the bathroom and left. Hospital employees later found the baby alive in the trash. Officers confronted Hautzenrader, who admitted to putting the child in the trash can, according to the complaint. Attempted murder is a Class B felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison. If convicted, Hautzenrader would have to serve 70 percent, or 17 years, of the sentence under Iowa law. -- Tara Becker A twice-convicted sex offender is back behind bars after police say he sexually abused a teenage girl in East Moline. David Chad Ash, 41, of Silvis, was arrested Wednesday and charged with aggravated criminal sexual abuse. He remained in the Rock Island County Jail on Friday on a $100,000 bond. Police say Ash committed an act of sexual conduct with a girl between the ages of 13 and 17. The case was investigated by the Mercer County Sheriff's Department and East Moline police. East Moline Police Lt. Darren Gault said Friday in a news release that the sheriff's department learned of suspicious text messages in early May and that Ash had contact with the teen in East Moline. Ash was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2000 after pleading guilty to two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse. He was sentenced to 36 months probation and 60 days in jail after pleading guilty to aggravated criminal sexual abuse in 1995. Ash faces a Class X felony, punishable by six to 30 years in prison, because of his prior sex abuse convictions. A preliminary hearing is slated for June 14. Even as Exelon Corp. announced definitive plans Thursday to close two of its Illinois nuclear power plants, including the Quad-Cities Generating Station, the sentiment was that the fight is not over. For 2 years, Exelon has sounded the alarm that its Cordova and Clinton plants could close prematurely without energy reform legislation. With no movement on a proposed Next Generation Energy Plan in the Illinois Legislature, Exelon announced it has made the decision to close the Quad-Cities station in Cordova on June 1, 2018, and the Clinton Power Station on June 1, 2017. But Exelon leadership, employees and Quad-City community leaders vowed to continue to push for the legislation and intensify their efforts. An email obtained by The Associated Press indicates the company is enlisting employees in an ongoing, full-steam lobbying effort. "We need the legislation passed, and there is absolutely no reason it shouldn't be passed," said Bill Stoermer, a spokesman for the Quad-City plant, which employs 800 people. "It's a consumer protection issue, it's a job issue, and it's an economic impact issue." Exelon has said the plants employ a combined 1,500 workers, support 4,200 direct and indirect jobs and produce more than $1.2 billion in economic activity. In addition to the economic impact in their regions and across the state, if the plants close, consumers will see electricity costs increase in Illinois, the company said. Although the reality is that the plant now has a closing date, Stoermer said he remains "cautiously optimistic" that the Legislature could still act on the proposed legislation. "If we can get the legislation done in short order the next two to three months there still is an opportunity for us to reverse that decision," he said. "We will continue to fight." The bill, which Exelon has said would give it an equal playing field with subsidized energy such as wind power, failed to advance in the spring legislative session. According to Exelon, the plan would nearly double energy-efficiency programs, provide $1 billion in funding for low-income assistance, jump start solar development with rebates and $140 million in new funding as well as reduce the fixed customer charge for energy delivery by 50 percent. But critics objected to the plan, calling it a bailout for a profitable company. "This is an extremely difficult day for the 1,500 employees who operate these plants safely and reliably every day, and the communities that depend on them for support," Exelon president and CEO Chris Crane said in a news release issued early Thursday. "We have worked for several years to find a sustainable path forward in consultation with federal regulators, market operators, state policymakers, plant community leaders, labor and business leaders, as well as environmental groups and other stakeholders. Unfortunately, legislation was not passed, and now we are forced to retire the plants." Noting that "the path forward for consideration of the Next Generation Energy Plan is not clear," Exelon said it has begun taking steps to shut down the plants. In an emailed statement, Exelon spokesman Paul Adams said the company's decision can be reversed "but only in narrow circumstances and as weeks pass a reversal becomes more and more difficult ... legislation would have to be sufficient from an economic standpoint to warrant ongoing operations and in a time-frame that would allow reversal." Among the initial steps Exelon is taking toward early closures for the plants are: Making permanent shutdown notifications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission within 30 days. Terminating millions of dollars in capital investment projects slated for the two plants, impacting 200 construction workers. Taking a one-time charge immediately of $150 million to $200 million for 2016 and accelerating about $2 billion in depreciation and amortization through the shutdown dates. Canceling fuel purchases and ceasing outage planning, a move that alone will affect an additional 1,000 contract workers that Exelon traditionally employs during an outage. Stoermer said top officials from Exelon Corp. were at the Cordova plant to announce the news to employees during every shift beginning Wednesday night and throughout Thursday. "We're telling them we're not giving up the fight," said Stoermer, a 35-year employee at the plant. "This plant has come too far to let the state Legislature decide their fate." Meanwhile, local leaders were blaming the Legislature's inaction for Exelon's decision, while politicians were pointing fingers at one another. Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, who was in East Moline on Thursday, said he had been in discussions for weeks with Exelon officials and is working "to keep these plants open." He blamed Democrats' unwillingness to act on "tough votes," including the Next Generation bill. Rep. Mike Smiddy, D-Hillsdale, said he is "very willing to work and find a compromise." He said the loss of Exelon would "devastate" his district's economy. Cordova Village President Dean Moyer put the blame on Springfield. "I blame them for not having a budget," he said. "I'm almost surprised that something couldn't be worked out. I know Exelon tried very hard to." Moyer vowed to continue writing letters, making phone calls and anything else he can do for a company that he said "provides lots of benefits to the area that are unseen." "There is a drop dead point, where they wouldn't have a choice (but to close down)," he said. "You can't just buy uranium off the shelf. They have to order things in advance." The Quad-Cities Chamber of Commerce, which has helped lead the charge in fighting for Exelon in Springfield, also vowed to continue its work. "We're going to fight right up until they close the plant," said Henry Marquard, the chamber's director of government relations. "It works out well for us now that we're moving into election season and people will be talking about the issues and will have an opportunity to hold lawmakers accountable." He said the chamber will "double down" its efforts, not only lobbying local elected officials but taking its message across the state to lawmakers and state officials. Marquard said advocates know critics question whether the state "should be sending money to a profitable company." But he added, "We already do subsidize ... that's why we have the renewal fuel standard to promote biofuels, why we have huge wind energy tax credits. But if we're going to promote clean energy, we need to be promoting all clean energy." The Quad-City and Clinton plants, two of Exelon's six Illinois plants, were targeted for early retirement because they have continued to lose money despite being two of the company's best-performing plants. They have lost a combined $800 million in the past seven years, Exelon said. A state of Illinois report found that closing the two plants would increase wholesale energy costs for the region by $439 million to $645 million annually. In addition, the report found that keeping the plants open would avoid $10 billion in economic damages associated with higher carbon emissions over 10 years. "The premature closures of Clinton and Quad-Cities continue an alarming trend our nation is losing top-performing nuclear power plants due to flawed electricity market conditions," Marvin Fertel, president and CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, said in a statement. Calling the closings a "tragedy," he added that the "pending legislation would have advanced the state's clean air goals while making it possible for Clinton and Quad-Cities to continue operating." The Scott County Auditor's Office says voters in five precincts will go to new polling places for the primary on Tuesday. Two of them, in Bettendorf, are because of a water pipe that flooded portions of the city's public library, the auditor's office says. Voters from Bettendorf Precinct B-23 will vote at Paul Norton Elementary School, 4485 Greenbrier Drive, and people in B-32 will go to Bettendorf Middle School, 2030 Middle Road. In a news release, Scott County Auditor Roxanna Moritz said that although parts of the library will be open to the public, the areas used for voting will be closed, so new locations were sought. She said post cards were sent to the nearly 2,800 active voters in the two precincts to let them know of the change. Meanwhile, voters from Bettendorf precinct B-42 will vote at Bettendorf High School, 3333 18th St., rather than at St. John Vianney Church. This is a temporary change because of a scheduling conflict with the church, the auditor's office said. Also, voters in two Davenport precincts will go to new polling places. Voters in Davenport precinct D-61 will go to St. Ambrose School of Social Work, 1950 E. 54th St., rather than Harvest Bible Chapel. This is a temporary change because of a scheduling conflict, the auditor's office said. People in Davenport precinct D-72 will vote at Faith United Church of Christ, 1630 W. 38th St., rather than Trinity School. This is a permanent change at the school's request, the auditor's office said. Post cards also were mailed to voters in those precincts. Signs also will be posted at the old locations. Primary voting will be from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday. For more information, go to scottcountyiowa.com/auditor. A Sterling, Ill., man was transported to an area hospital after a vehicle crossed into the path of a motorcycle he was driving Thursday. The crash occurred at 5:45 p.m. at Illinois 40 and Science Ridge Road just north of Sterling. Whiteside County deputies say a vehicle driven by 16-year-old female from Lyndon, Ill., was eastbound on Science Ridge Road when she failed to stop at the intersection and crossed into the path of a northbound motorcycle driven by James L. Hans, 51, of Sterling. Hans was transported to an area hospital. The extent of his injuries are unknown at this time. The teen and her passenger were treated on scene and released to their parents. She was cited for disobeying a stop sign. Deputies were assisted by Sterling fire, Sterling police, and CGH EMS. 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 With the closing of the Quad-Cities Generating Station, Rock Island County will see the loss of 800 jobs from a facility with an annual payroll of $75 million and a property tax bill of nearly $8 million. Bill Stoermer, communications coordinator for the station in Cordova, said Thursday that money earned by those workers is spent on goods and services throughout the Quad-Cities. The closing of the Cordova and Clinton, Illinois, plants is expected to have a combined $1.4 billion annual impact on the state, Stoermer said. The county faces a real challenge with this," Rock Island County Board member Kai Swanson, of Rock Island, said. Workers many of whom who live in smaller communities such as East Moline, Cordova, Port Byron, Coal Valley, Hampton, Silvis and Erie will move to other places where they can find jobs, Swanson added. And the monetary ripples will be felt beyond station workers, he added. Think of how many folks in the Plumbers and Pipefitters union whose livelihoods depend on the Cordova plant, Swanson said. "Thats one small slice of the economy, but the number of plumbers and pipefitters this would displace is unconscionable." While some people are focused on the property taxes paid by Exelon, owner of the Cordova plant $7,993,660 for 2015 the real issue is the jobs that will be gone, said county board member Drue Mielke, of Coal Valley. Exelon will still own the property, he said, and the taxes will still be collected, although that number will get smaller as the land value depreciates. Everyone else's property taxes may rise in response to lower revenue from the plant, Mielke said. This is bad for the county and bad for the Quad-Cities as a whole. While most of the energy produced by the Cordova plant goes to Chicago, he said the plant is a vital part of the Quad-City infrastructure that attracts businesses to the area. Rock Island County is going to get hit hard, Mielke said. This is coming at the worst time for the county. Were paying the price for decisions beyond our control. Swanson says he is hopeful the Illinois General Assembly will act to keep the plant open and its 800 jobs in the county. "We really need to look to our friends in Springfield to do us a solid and make this happen, he said. A daily look at what did well on the web while you were working ... and what's on tap for the evening. Most popular story of the day Even as Exelon Corp. announced definitive plans to close two of its Illinois nuclear power plants, including the Quad-Cities Generating Station, the sentiment was that the fight is not over, Jennifer DeWitt reports. Most popular photo gallery of the day #SneakPeeks + A Davenport woman accused of trying to flush her newborn baby down the toilet before leaving the child in a trash can at an Iowa City hospital now faces an attempted murder charge. Tara Becker has more. + Becker also reports an Eldridge couple has pleaded not guilty in Scott County District Court to charges accusing them of failing to properly feed and seek medical care for a boy over a three-year period. + A woman arrested in Chatham County, Georgia, in connection with the shooting death of a Rock Island teen has agreed to waive extradition and return to Illinois to face charges. + A Davenport man is among 42 people convicted of drug offenses who were given commutations Friday by President Barack Obama. + Have you ever ventured to Rapids City to catch dramatic views of the bend in the Mississippi River or explored the 200-plus acres at Indian Mounds State Historic Site in Albany? Jack Cullen takes you there. #ICYMI Editorial: Exelon blackens Rauner's eye https://t.co/MnAdxniC5y Q-C Times Opinion (@QCTopinion) June 3, 2016 Arsenal rescue boat assists a boater whose motor failed in the river above Lock and Dam 15. pic.twitter.com/Qk8hHjLgUN Dan Bowerman (@DBowerman1) June 3, 2016 Great start to Illinois state softball today as the first game of the day went 17 innings. Game 2 delayed two hours Bobby Metcalf (@BobbyMetcalf88) June 3, 2016 Porubcin avenges MAC finals loss to beat Feldman 6-3, 6-3 for third at 2A state tourney. Second straight top 4 finish in singles for both. Matt Coss (@mattcoss78) June 3, 2016 And Rivermont grads throw their hats in air to celebrate accomplishment pic.twitter.com/ibK4aBTBpP Deirdre Baker (@deirdrebaker) June 3, 2016 Central base runner Oscar Rios gets back to1st before the tag during fifth inning aciton against North. #qctimes pic.twitter.com/DPULzZzMFd John Schultz (@JohnSchultzQCT) June 3, 2016 #qctimes In addition to reinstating its FB title game, the Big 12 announced revenue distribution of $30.4 mil per school, a 20% increase Steve Batterson (@sbatt79) June 3, 2016 Hoops fans: 50-40 Shootout to celebrate reunion of Rocky's title team on Saturday https://t.co/yZg8hyw87D pic.twitter.com/m42Xk27FSt Matt Dahlseid (@QCTMattD) June 3, 2016 Robert Fitzgibbons, of Toronto, remembers 1977 "Smokey and the Bandit" movie cars at show in LeClaire, Ia. @qctimes pic.twitter.com/cPSV98JoDP Jeff Cook (@jeffcook58) June 2, 2016 #CubsCoronation The Cubs are off to their best 52-game start since 1907... when the Chicago Cubs (!) won the World Series. And that was before they beat Arizona 6-0 on another beautiful Friday afternoon at Wrigley Field. #ontap #qcweather Overnight rain and a low of 62. Isolated thunderstorms Saturday with a high of 82. Maybe even gusty winds and small hail. #qctraffic Heading out? Check the bridge cameras. Trust me. #Smile When Megan Steinecke gave birth to her second child, the midwife who helped her made an observation: She has a perfect body for giving birth. The Davenport woman now is expecting her fifth baby. The first two children are her own little girls, and the three others are children for other couples. Working through the Chicago-based Family Source Consultants, Steinecke, with the blessing of her husband, Jeramy, has given birth for two more couples: A pair of bankers from Spain and two physicians based in Chicago. Steinecke receives a base payment of $25,000, as well as compensation for pregnancy-related expenses, for each birth. She has used the funds for her family's expenses. "Pregnancy is something I enjoy," she said from her rural Davenport home. She and Jeramy are raising their daughters, Jolee, 8 and BeaJae, 5, in a modest home on five acres of rolling Iowa land. They married 10 years ago, and it took time to find the bucolic rural setting. Jeramy Steinecke was raised on a farm, and the couple has strong values on how involved they are with family and how they want to raise the children. Megan, 33, was working with babies and toddlers in Head Start when she met Jeramy. She has a bachelor's degree in music education from St. Ambrose University, but she got the job at Head Start while substitute teaching in the Quad-Cities. The Steineckes first lived in Davenport as they searched for a home in the country, and they found the perfect site just west of the city. It is the only home their children know; the girls attend Buffalo Elementary School. Both Megan and Jeramy have extended families, and Megan has a sister-in-law who wasn't expected to have children. Also, a girlfriend went through a tough infertility experience. The two women's experiences prompted Megan to investigate surrogacy. She started by using Google and found two clinics in Chicago. She made contact with the surrogate agencies right before the Labor Day weekend in 2012 and expected to hear back after the holiday. Instead, Family Source representatives called her on the weekend, and the Steinecke family made arrangements to travel to Chicago. Jeramy Steinecke has been supportive of his wife from the beginning. He accompanied her on the trips to Chicago and has been with her in the delivery rooms. Megan chose the first couple, two bankers from Spain, because she saw they share the same family values. An embryo was transplanted into her uterus in January 2013, and a healthy baby girl was born in October. A fertility clinic in Highland Park, Ill., was the setting for the embryo transfer. The procedure takes about five minutes. Before the transplant Megan went through a strict 30-day hormonal routine, as well as ultrasound tests and blood work. She did some of the procedures at the University of Iowa's satellite clinic in Bettendorf and delivered the babies at Trinity Moline. She also uses a gynecologist in Moline. Megan is considered an Illinois surrogate as she lives in a county that adjoins the state. The first baby was born in a crowded delivery room: Jeramy was present at his wife's side; the two fathers had flown in from Spain and had a translator; and there was an obstetrician and nurses. "It was pretty interesting but well worth it," she said. Giving the baby to the fathers was easier than Megan anticipated. "It was because I knew, from the very beginning, that this baby was in no way genetically connected to me," she said. The Steinecke girls did form a bond with their mom's growing belly and easily accepted the explanation: Some people cannot have babies, and Mommy can, so she will help them. The Spanish fathers asked Megan to give them a sibling to the first baby, and she agreed. Eight months later, she started the process for a second time and a baby girl was born in 2015. In the meantime, Megan has gotten a job with Family Source Consultants and works to coordinate surrogates with prospective families. She decided to get pregnant a third time when she spotted a profile of two doctor fathers. She does not keep in close contact with the doctors, as she did, and continues to do, with the fathers from Spain. But she describes the relationship as good, overall. The third baby, a boy, is due June 16. She would consider one more surrogacy if this couple wants a sibling for their child, but she also sees the end of her pregnancy journeys. "I'm hesitant to start with a brand new couple," she said, noting it took her a full week to decide to go ahead and work with the Chicago physicians. At first, the money involved was needed. "Those medical bills just never go away," she said, noting Jeramy had a motorcycle accident but is now recovered. The Steineckes also decided that two girls is all they need for their family. Megan appreciates surrogacy for the impact on all involved. "My kids see what it's like to give of yourself, and they are into helping others," she said. "That helps to inspire me." CORDOVA At Mr. Blues BBQ, the talk around the lunch table on Thursday zeroed in on Exelons announcement that it will close the nuclear power plant that has been in the backyard of this Mississippi River town of 750 people for more than 40 years. Mr. Blues customers say the impact will be catastrophic. Its going to hurt, big time, said Bill Genung, who grabbed lunch with his wife, Penny. They have a farm right outside of town. Theyve been a good neighbor, said Penny Genung, a local volunteer firefighter. Their son worked as a security guard at the plant out of high school. The facility employs about 800 people. Rod Wolter of Edwardsville, Ill., who stopped in Mr. Blues for lunch, thinks nuclear energy ought to be subsidized like green energy. I have a problem shutting that down while the government subsidizes all those windmills, Wolter said. Behind the counter, Mr. Blues owner, Shawn Sivels, was serving up the daily special, barbecue beef sandwiches. He said he opened his restaurant on Illinois 84 four months ago, hoping to attract customers from the plant. Now, Exelon employees make up half of his business. This town will turn into a ghost town, Sivels said of the plants closure. What are the two most popular things here? The nuke plant and drag racing, and both are going to be gone. He referred to the announcement earlier this year that after a 61-year run at the Cordova International Raceway, the World Series of Drag Racing will be moving to Memphis for this summer. Illinois lawmakers failed to pass an incentive package this week to save both the Cordova plant and Exelons facility in Clinton, Illinois. Exelon responded Thursday with the announcement that it plans to close the two plants. It will be devastating to this community and the Quad-Cities as a whole if the plant closes, Steve Francisko of Cordova said while filling up his vehicle at Shell Express Lane on Illinois 84 at the entrance to town. Inside the convenience store, manager Julie Ray was shaking her head about the consequences she foresees. I think the impact on Cordova and all the businesses on Route 84 will be catastrophic, Ray said. Just think of the tax base and the money Erie schools get. It will be terrible when they dont get that. Outside the Cordova Public Library, dozens stood in line at an ice cream truck following the library's annual Paint the Road event. Jade Crisp was in line with her family and said she moved to the community because of the schools. The plant brings jobs and revenue, Crisp said. It is disappointing to see the government cannot get it together. Cordova Trustee John Haan, also waiting to get ice cream with his daughter, Gracie, 3, said he is bracing for the loss in tax revenue. The Erie school system, the parks, the Cordova library, the fire department we wouldnt have any of this without the plant, Haan said. It provides the largest tax base in Rock Island County. Haan also thought the incentive issue was unfair. Given the energy credits to wind, I think it should be fair across the board, Haan said. You cant subsidize the one and not the other. Sonya Patterson said her father began working at the plant when he was 18 and now, at 52, is about to retire. Hes close to retirement, but I feel bad for all the other families with young parents who will lose their jobs, Patterson said. Tammy Lockaby of Port Byron said her cousin works at the plant and has described the mood as very anxious and on edge. I think its really sad, Lockaby said. Too many people will lose their jobs and property values will go down. Library director Sue Hebel lamented the future without the nuclear plant. Exelon is almost 90 percent of my budget, Hebel said. If they close and we lose Exelon, its huge for the library. Really, its huge for Rock Island County and Scott County. It would be devastating for all the workers who live here. Hebel said the 14th annual Paint the Road day Thursday afternoon attracted 170 people. She said that without the nuclear plant, that program and many others will be gone because of the loss of tax revenue. The library board has been meeting about the future. We do not want to raise taxes, Hebel said. We will have to cut some programs. We will not be able to do as much for this community as we do now. 1966: Construction begins on the Quad-Cities Nuclear Generating Station on the banks of the Mississippi River in Cordova. Feb. 10, 1972: The station operates at 90 percent of capacity. April 12, 1972: Station produces electricity for commercial consumption for the first time. June 4, 1973: Station becomes the first nuclear power plant in the nation to be considered for a federal permit and state certification to discharge condenser cooling water and waste water. May 29, 1974: Eleven abnormal incidents involving the release of radioactive material occur at the station during 1973, according to a report by the Atomic Energy Commission. Jan. 11, 1975: Station shuts down after cracks in the cooling pipes were discovered in the second of two units. March 26, 1976: Commonwealth Edison Co., owner of the station, announces that more than 4,000 gallons of wastewater was inadvertently released into the Mississippi River. Feb. 22, 1977: The cost of $2 million worth of tightened security is passed on to consumers in increased utility rates. Jan. 4, 1980: Six of the reactors at ComEd's three nuclear power plants in Illinois, including the Quad-City station, pass upgraded Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations imposed after the Three Mile Island accident. Aug. 21, 1982: Station ranks third in the nation in total employee exposure to radiation, according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission data. Nov. 4, 1983: Station begins to fix cracks in pipe joints. Feb. 16, 1984: Unit 2 at the station restarts after a six-month shutdown for inspections and repairs. January 1991: Concern about terrorism stemming from the Persian Gulf crisis results in added security at the station. June 1995: Station corrects safety problems and gets off the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission watch list. October 2000: The Commonwealth Edison name on the station is replaced by Exelon Nuclear with the completion of the merger between Unicom Corp., ComEd's parent company, and PECO Energy Co. November 2001: Illinois National Guard deploys around the station in response to updated security measures after the 9/11 attacks. January 2003: Rock Island County assesses the value of the station at $65 million. October 2004: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission extends the operating license for the station to 2032. June 2005: Exelon agrees to a $100 million assessed value for the station with Rock Island County. October 2007: Station receives $11 million in upgrades. December 2009: The station generates $4.7 million in taxes distributed to 11 local taxing districts. March 2010: $300 million upgrades slated for station. September 2015: Exelon announces it is committed to operating the station through at least May 2018. March 2016: Station removes Unit 2 reactor from service for a scheduled refueling and maintenance outage. During a typical outage, the plant brings in nearly 1,700 supplemental workers to support the stations 800 permanent employees. During Unit 1's outage in 2005, the station spent more than $37 million with local vendors and payroll for its supplemental workers. May 31, 2016: A bill aimed at helping Exelons money-losing nuclear plants in the Quad-Cities and Clinton, Illinois, fails to make it out of the Illinois legislatures spring session. June 2, 2016: Exelon announces it is beginning the shutdown process for the station. Shutdown is slated for May 31, 2018. - Compiles by Roy Booker Talk is cheap, Gov. Rauner. Make no mistake, the announced closure of Quad-Cities Generating Plant is a nasty black eye for Illinois and its allegedly pro-business governor, Bruce Rauner. "I'm in there fighting hard," Rauner said Thursday, hours after Exelon announced the closure of the Cordova nuclear plant and its sister in Clinton, Illinois. "Hopefully, we can find a solution." Well, that's nice. It sure would have been useful weeks ago, when Exelon officials said they'd close the facilities if legislation didn't get done. It would have been helpful back then when we repeatedly asked the governor's office where it stood on Exelon's controversial bailout. Rauner could have fought for some semblance of compromise as the legislation received only a kangaroo-court hearing in the Senate and the House's cold shoulder. Eight-hundred jobs are slated to leave Rock Island County in 2018. Clinton will lose 700 jobs in 2017. Saying you are "pro-business" and all about jobs is all well and good. The proof is in the outcome. Look, we weren't in love with the bill Exelon dropped on the Legislature before demanding immediate action. The company wanted guaranteed profits backed by the taxpayer and the ratepayer. The massive firm tried to pull a fast one on wind and solar producers through a proposed change in rate structure. Exelon wanted the rewards without the risk. And it wanted it in a time when Rauner and the General Assembly couldn't even hash out a deal to fund public schools. Exelon got greedy, and it asked one of the least effective governments in the country to come through in a matter of weeks. But for-profit entities hand lawmakers broken bills all the time throughout the country. A functioning government works through it. It holds legitimate hearings. It negotiates with stakeholders. The governor's office makes clear policy statements and greases the gears of progress. Nuclear must be part of the country's energy future. Battery technology is terrible. Wind and solar are unreliable. Coal is baking the planet. Nuclear is the only viable means of long-term energy production, if reducing carbon emissions is really the goal. But no one in Springfield took the issue seriously. They were too concerned with not passing a budget for the second consecutive year. They were too busy sniping. They were too occupied positioning themselves for election season. Illinois: The land of inept government. Exelon CEO Chris Crane wasn't bluffing this time. His recent announcement that put the Legislature under the gun probably triggered federal Security Exchange Commission regulations. Crane's words influenced shareholders and altered the market. Backing out would have, at that point, been nearly impossible. Democrats in the General Assembly should have done more. But the coming economic collapse of Cordova and Rock Island County are Rauner's babies. Why would lawmakers put in the time to salvage the nuclear plants if Rauner was just going to whip out his veto pen? Why would they spend weeks amending and tweaking the bill to save hundreds of union jobs if the anti-union Rauner wasn't on board? And that's the problem. Rauner refused to state his position when his voice was the most needed. Instead, Rauner's office said it was "under review." That's it. So much for an actual policy position. Rauner has spent 18 months talking about jobs. He's spent a year locking horns with Speaker Mike Madigan over his "pro-business" agenda. Come 2018, an 800-job exodus will be under way in Cordova, all while Rauner is campaigning for a second term. Again, he'll talk about jobs. Again, he'll talk about taxes. Again, he'll offer blistering, often correct, criticism of Madigan's Democrats. But his words will ring a bit more hollow in western Illinois. After all, Rauner didn't act when 1,500 jobs were on the line. JOHNSTON, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad on Friday defended his meeting with a new appointee to the state board that governs Iowas three public universities before the opening was official. Branstad discussed the issue with reporters Friday after taping an episode of Iowa Press that will appear on Iowa Public Television on Friday, June 10, and Sunday, June 12. Mary Andringa on April 27 announced her resignation from the state Board of Regents, and on May 6, Branstad announced the appointment of Mike Richards, a longtime friend and political ally of the governor, to replace Andringa. Branstad met with Richards on April 22, five days before Andringas resignation, according to a report Thursday by The (Cedar Rapids) Gazette. Branstad said Friday that he did not ask Andringa to resign, and he defended his meeting with Richards before the public was aware of a pending opening on the Board of Regents. When I heard from Mary Andringa that she was intending to resign at the end of the month, I started thinking, Who would be really good? And I wanted somebody that I felt that the universities would respect and that would be able to represent the people of Iowa and had the right kind of temperament, could work with the other members of the board, Branstad said. I just felt that he would be a good choice. Thats why I invited him in for an interview. Branstad said he was not concerned by the optics of meeting with a potential appointee before the opening was public, even after the regents last year were criticized for holding private meetings with businessman Bruce Harreld before naming him president of the University of Iowa. Branstad also does not think his early meeting with Richards will jeopardize his confirmation by the Iowa Senate, the governor said. No, I dont see a problem because I know Mike Richards so well, Branstad said. "I know what a great temperament he has and what a great commitment hes got to public service." Branstad called Richards a good friend who is the godfather to the governors son Marcus. Branstad said he likes Richards experience in medicine and business; Richards is a retired physician who also worked with the Iowa Health System and now is a partner in a manufacturing business in Orange City. I just think the fact hes got this medical background, got this business experience, hes got this really good temperament, Branstad said. And hes also a very dedicated individual thats willing to put in the time that it takes. During taping of Iowa Press, Branstad said he did not ask Andringa to resign. She informed me before it was announced publicly that she intended to resign, Branstad said. She just felt it was a bigger undertaking than she wanted. DEADWOOD | After listening to gut-wrenching testimony from the husband and five children of a North Dakota woman killed last August on the first day of the 75th Sturgis motorcycle rally, a judge on Thursday sentenced 20-year-old Nickolas Ryan Hartwell of Belle Fourche to seven years in prison. Hartwell was driving recklessly on Interstate 90 three miles north of Sturgis Aug. 1, 2015, when his Pontiac Grand Prix struck a Honda Gold Wing ridden by Roger and Rose Ann Richard, both 63, of Belfield, N.D. Both were thrown from the motorcycle and later transported to a hospital for treatment of injuries. Meanwhile, Hartwell was charged at the scene with reckless driving and zero tolerance, indicating he was a minor who had consumed alcohol but was not over the legal limit. He pleaded guilty to the reckless driving charge and received a 15-day jail sentence, according to Lawrence County States Attorney John Fitzgerald. But on the same day, Rose Ann Richard died and results from blood tests conducted by the South Dakota Highway Patrol revealed the presence of MDMA in Hartwells system at the time of the accident, Fitzgerald said. That led investigators to reconstruct the accident scene and interview witnesses, all of which indicated Hartwell had been driving very recklessly, Fitzgerald said. The young man was indicted on second-degree manslaughter and possession of a controlled substance last Oct. 21, and pleaded guilty to the manslaughter charge on March 3. On April 3, Hartwell was again arrested, this time in Pennington County on a possession of marijuana charge, Fitzgerald noted. At Thursdays sentencing hearing, the court heard testimony from Roger Richard and the five children Rose Ann left behind. It was very emotional, and it was a sad situation to see how much pain and suffering occurs when someone commits a crime like this and people lose a loved one, Fitzgerald said. You cant go back and undo what happened. Following the testimony, Fourth Circuit Court Judge Michelle Palmer-Percy sentenced Hartwell to the maximum seven years in the state penitentiary, with three years suspended. In addition, Hartwell lost his drivers license for three years and faces additional probation violation charges in Butte County stemming from an identity theft conviction, Fitzgerald said. Sen. John Thune is seeking college students to serve as fall interns at his offices in Washington, D.C., Aberdeen, Rapid City and Sioux Falls. Interns in Thune's state offices will participate in constituent service and state outreach activities, while students in the D.C. office will witness the legislative process, give Capitol building tours and attend Senate votes and hearings. Students interested in interning in Thune's Washington, D.C., office should submit a resume and cover letter by July 1 to: Sen. John Thune, Attn: Adam Wek, 511 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20510, or by email to adam_wek@thune.senate.gov. Those interested in Thune's South Dakota offices should submit a resume and cover letter by July 1 to Sen. John Thune, Attn: Robin Long, 5015 South Bur Oak, Sioux Falls, S.D., 57108, or by email to robin_long@thune.senate.gov. For more information, call 202-224-2321. State Duma committee supports bill on tightened criminal liability for corruption Context President Putin suggests tightening criminal liability for corruption MOSCOW, June 3 (RAPSI) The State Duma Committee for civil, criminal, arbitration and procedural legislation has recommended that the lawmakers pass the Presidential bill that would toughen criminal liability for corruption-related crimes, RIA Novosti reported on Friday. The State Duma is expected to review this bill on June 7. Under the bill, cases when people funnel money or property not directly to an official but to another individual or company on the officials instruction would be regarded as crimes. Criminal liability is proposed for commercial bribery mediation. The bill in particularly introduces punishment for bribery in amount of up to 10,000 rubles ($150). According to the Kremlin, from 2012 to 2015, the overwhelming majority of corruption cases were opened over bribes not exceeding 10,000 rubles. The draft law also toughens criminal penalty for minor corruption offences committed by a person who had been earlier convicted for such crimes. This measure is aimed to prevent repetition of crimes. The legislation is expected to boost efficiency of corruption-related crime prevention, according to an explanatory note to the bill. May is the busiest month for the Montana State Hail Insurance program, according to Jana Merton, Montana Department of Hail Insurance.Producers have until Aug. 15 to get coverage, but most get their hail insurance now so they are covered in case of adverse weather, Merton said.The coverage does not kick in until the crop reaches a certain stage, but most crops are getting close to that stage.This is also the 100th year celebration of the program. It officially began in 1917, but producers with winter wheat were actually insured in the fall of 1916 for the 1917 harvest.Producers in this state along with producers in several states known as the hail block, lobbied the Legislatures for hail insurance to fill coverage gaps, Merton said, adding at that time, some regions of the state did not have any type of federal crop insurance, and most wanted at least some coverage.As the saying goes, It hails somewhere every year, and hail insurance provides that needed coverage.Producers were successful in their lobbying efforts and the Montana State Legislature passed legislation establishing the program.Today, many producers in the state count on the program to protect their acres from hail.In 2013, the hail board covered 1,046 losses totaling more than $14 million from hail events, a record for the program up to that point.In 2014, producers received increased coverage from the State Hail Board and also had a 5 percent raise in premiums.The Montana State Hail Insurance Program was established 100 years ago by producers to fill coverage gaps in hail insurance. Because of the support of Montana producers, the program is still going strong to this day and is an effective tool to provide hail insurance for crops, said Ron de Yong, director of agriculture.Producers can insure crops against hail damage at the maximum coverage rate of $75 per acre for dryland and $114 for irrigated land. Rates charged are a percentage of the insured amount and vary by county depending on the hail loss history of an area. A detailed list of rates by county and crop can be found on the programs website.Montana producers can access and fill-out applications for state hail insurance online by going to www.hail.mt.gov, or producers can call the program toll free at 1-844-515-1571. Art City, an artist cooperative in Hamilton, is hosting the work of fabric artist Heidi Zielinski and will have an artist reception June 4. The display by Zielinski is called A Few of My Favorite Things. She has shown her art in the Bitterroot Valley for nearly eight years and this presentation is a collection of her favorite works. Art citizen Vivian Yang said Zielinskis work is inspired by Montana. These pieces are reflective of Heidis love of Montana and the nature that we are surrounded by and inspired by, Yang said. Heidis abstract collage style of painting with fabric uses color and form to echo the beauty to be found here where we live in western Montana and communicates a sense of being in and part of the natural world. Art City will also display several watercolor paintings by Zielinskis father, Sid Frissell, who also lives in the Bitterroot. His images portray birds in their natural habitats. Join other art citizens for an artists reception from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on June 4 at Art City in Hamilton. The artists would love to share their work, past and present, and visit with you about this wonderful place we live in, Yang said. Art City is an art gallery managed co-operatively by local artists and displays their work. Art City is located at 407 W. Main St. in Hamilton. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays and other days by chance or appointment. For more information about the artwork of Sid Frissell visit the website natureartists.com/sid_frissell.asp or contact Art City at 406-363-4764. Former Ravalli County Treasurer Valerie Stamey said Thursday that she will not file a legal response to the civil lawsuit summons served on her last month. Stamey made that statement in an email sent to the Ravalli Republic Thursday morning that promised a legal challenge of her own if the county continues to proceed with its lawsuit. The county commission filed a lawsuit against Stamey in June 2014 after suspending the interim treasurer on charges of official misconduct. It took the county six separate summons and two years of looking before it finally tracked Stamey down in South Carolina where she was served with papers ordering her to answer a civil lawsuit seeking thousands of dollars. Stamey had 21 days to respond to the court. That time period ended earlier this week. Instead of responding to the court, Stamey said she both emailed and faxed a letter to Ravalli County Attorney Bill Fulbright Sunday. On Thursday, Ravalli County Deputy Attorney Howard Recht confirmed the office had received a letter, but since it wasnt filed with the court, it had no impact on the pending case. Stamey emailed a copy of that letter to the newspaper Thursday. In the letter to Fulbright, the former treasurer called the summons constitutionally invalid and said the district court did not have jurisdiction over her because she now lives out of state. This letter serves notice to you that if you continue in this action against me, I will seek legal remedies, Stameys letter read. I have made you aware of the flaw in your continuing to waste tax dollars to try and illegally serve me. In the letter, Stamey took Fulbright and other county officials to task for the events that led up to her ouster as treasurer. She claimed that the standard of operation that was in place prior to her taking the position led to the troubles the treasurers office faced under her tenure. I was framed using an existing standard of operation that I was not allowed to change and direct sabotage from my staff, Stamey said in her letter. In particular, Stamey claimed that as county auditor, Fulbright had failed to file quarterly reports showing that Montana Code was being followed by the treasurers office and confirming that receipts were to be kept in other offices. If these reports had been available, I would have been able to perform my duties as county treasurer, Stamey wrote. Stamey also claimed the countys chief financial officer, Klarryse Murphy, had refused to allow monthly reports be generated because she claimed the funds were not balanced between the treasurer and finance offices. She previously allowed other treasurers to print monthly reports, but would not allow Valerie Stamey to simply print and distribute these reports, the letter read. Thus, the summons for fines for the resulting failure to generate reports is not valid. Failure to submit monthly reports was one of the charges included in the 58 instances that the county claimed that Stamey had failed to complete her official duties included in the lawsuit. What is conveniently left out of your attacks on me is that all funds were accounted for and no funds were missing in the Treasurers Office, Stameys letter read. The omission of this clear finding continues to point to your deliberate and malicious attacks on me. Fulbright disagreed with Stameys contention that she was no longer under the jurisdiction of the court simply because she had moved out of state. One can not commit an alleged wrong in Montana and then run away from it by moving to a different state, Fulbright said. Stameys letter is not a legal response that will be acceptable to the court, he said. This letter seems to go back to the same strategy of finger pointing that she employed back in 2014 after she was suspended from her position, Fulbright said. Stamey also referred to claims about checks being found in her office in box tops. In her letter, Stamey said it was a long standing practice to use box tops to carry each employees daily work. Stamey said she when questioned the practice, she was told thats how its always been done. The reason payments were in my office was because staff literally refused to deposit the processed batches I gave them for deposit, Stamey wrote. After Stamey was placed on administrative leave, officials found about $780,000 of checks piled on her desk and on the floor in box tops. They also found a deposit of $5,367.34 in checks and currency lodged behind the desk and office wall. During Stameys short tenure as interim treasurer, the office fell months behind in its workload after employees left after citing a hostile workplace. An audit from a private Butte firm found the treasurers office in disarray, but no evidence of fraud. Stamey sued the accounting firm, saying their report caused her to be shunned and exposed to hatred and contempt. She later dropped the lawsuit. Stamey was placed on administrative leave by the commission after she refused to answer questions about a civil lawsuit she faced in South Carolina, where she allegedly cashed an $18,149 check twice after refinancing her home. It cost the county more than $120,000 in expenses to right the treasurers office after Stameys departure. Earlier this week, Recht said he plans to send Stamey letters to let her know the county plans to move forward with its lawsuit. If Stamey continues to refuse to respond to the summons, Recht said the county will ask a judge to issue a default judgment. In its lawsuit, the county asked for $29,000, plus interest for the 58 instances where Stamey allegedly failed to complete her official duties. Recht said county is also seeking damages. It could end up be considerably more than $29,000, Recht said. Kathmandu, Nepal: Chairman of CPN Maoist Center Pushpa Kamal Dahal has said that he is consulting with political parties including the main opposition Nepali Congress (NC) to form a national consensus government under his leadership. I have begun consultations to form a national consensus government under my leadership, Dahal made the revelation while speaking at a program in Dlakha on Friday. I have been discussing with Nepali Congress, UML and Madhes based parties for a national consensus government he said. During the function he also revealed that the nine-point deal reached between UML and his party was to support him to form a national consensus government after presenting the budget for the fiscal year 2072/073. RUPANDEHI, June 3: Rupandehi Police have arrested a person while he was trafficking children of below 16 to India on temptations. A patrol police squad on Thursday netted a convict and nine children from Bhairahawa-based Bus Park. The police squad took him under control while he was trafficking nine children including seven from Chitwan and two from Gorkha to India. Spokesperson of Rupandehi District Police Office Rameswor Karki shared the information that the police arrested Dil Bahadur BK, 38, of Manakamana-3 of Gorkha district, who has been in employment in India, and started investigation into the incident. Police apprehended BK on suspect of his involvement in trafficking of children to India and a case of human trafficking has been registered against BK. Police had handed over all nine children who were narrowly escaped from being trafficked to India. RSS National Doughnut Day: Why we have it and how to get free stuff If you are currently a print subscriber but don't have an online account, select this option. You will need to use your 7 digit subscriber account number (with leading zeros) and your last name (in UPPERCASE). What is a "very appropriate" sentence for sexual assault of animals? | Main | SCOTUS takes up two plea bargaining cases and another ACCA January 7, 2011 Newt Gingrich says "criminal justice system is broken, and conservatives must lead the way in fixing it" The quoted phrase in the title of this post comes directly from this potent Washington Post op-ed authored by Newt Gingrich and Pat Nolan, which is headlined "Prison reform: A smart way for states to save money and lives." Here are excerpts: With nearly all 50 states facing budget deficits, it's time to end business as usual in state capitols and for legislators to think and act with courage and creativity. We urge conservative legislators to lead the way in addressing an issue often considered off-limits to reform: prisons. Several states have recently shown that they can save on costs without compromising public safety by intelligently reducing their prison populations. We joined with other conservative leaders last month to announce the Right on Crime Campaign, a national movement urging states to make sensible and proven reforms to our criminal justice system policies that will cut prison costs while keeping the public safe.... The Right on Crime Campaign represents a seismic shift in the legislative landscape. And it opens the way for a common-sense left-right agreement on an issue that has kept the parties apart for decades. There is an urgent need to address the astronomical growth in the prison population, with its huge costs in dollars and lost human potential. We spent $68 billion in 2010 on corrections 300 percent more than 25 years ago. The prison population is growing 13 times faster than the general population. These facts should trouble every American. Our prisons might be worth the current cost if the recidivism rate were not so high, but, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, half of the prisoners released this year are expected to be back in prison within three years. If our prison policies are failing half of the time, and we know that there are more humane, effective alternatives, it is time to fundamentally rethink how we treat and rehabilitate our prisoners. We can no longer afford business as usual with prisons. The criminal justice system is broken, and conservatives must lead the way in fixing it.... Some people attribute the nation's recent drop in crime to more people being locked up. But the facts show otherwise. While crime fell in nearly every state over the past seven years, some of those with the largest reductions in crime have also lowered their prison population. Compare Florida and New York. Over the past seven years, Florida's incarceration rate has increased 16 percent, while New York's decreased 16 percent. Yet the crime rate in New York has fallen twice as much as Florida's. Put another way, although New York spent less on its prisons, it delivered better public safety. Americans need to know that we can reform our prison systems to cost less and keep the public safe. We hope conservative leaders across the country will join with us in getting it right on crime. People long involved in sentencing law and policy reform efforts should not be too surprised to see Pat Nolan's name on a op-ed of this nature. But Newt Gingrich until recently has never been known to speak out on these issues and he remains a leading voice for many on the right. Moreover, Gingrich has seriously hinted that he may run for president in 2012 (which I am now rooting for because it will bring added attention to these important issues). Gingrich's loud voice in this arena, especially given that he is saying now exactly what folks at FAMM and The Sentencing Project and other left-leaning groups have been saying for some time, may indeed help engineer a "seismic shift in the legislative landscape." I wonder what Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, the new chair of the House Judiciary Committees subcommittee on crime, terrorism, and homeland security, thinks about this op-ed. And what might the new head of the Judiciary Committee, Representative Lamar Smith, who was the only loud voice this summer complaining about Congress's decision to reduce crack sentencing terms, have to say in reponse. Interesting times. Some recent and older related posts on the modern politics of sentencing issues: January 7, 2011 at 05:58 PM | Permalink TrackBack TrackBack URL for this entry: https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451574769e20148c7668453970c Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Newt Gingrich says "criminal justice system is broken, and conservatives must lead the way in fixing it": Comments Finally! For months, I've been telling clients in prison who received enormously long sentences for nonviolent offenses related to drug addiction that maybe the Republican electoral gains will result in some sort of a "Nixon to China" effect. Republicans took control of both houses of the NC legislature and now they have to grapple with a 3.7 billion dollar budget shortfall. I'm on the local school board and we have been talking about the impending "budget cliff." The conservatives are immune from soft on crime criticism and maybe now there will be some real sentencing reform. bruce Posted by: bruce cunningham | Jan 8, 2011 7:32:45 AM Has anybody in this ,USA, government ever heard of the researches of Nils Christi? One wonders. Solutions have been found - just not utilized in 'America'. Posted by: Tim Rudisill | Jan 8, 2011 8:05:43 AM so, Bill and federalist, where are your suggestions? Posted by: anon12 | Jan 8, 2011 11:51:01 AM I know that if I were to move to a Hezbollah area of Lebanon, within a week, I would begin to understand their point of view. Within a month, I could feel some sympathy for their arguments. Within a year, I would become a member. We will always adopt the beliefs of the majority around us. Gingrich has spent a lot of time in Washington. Nothing he says has the slightest validity. First, those plea deals make it impossible to know if the non-violent adjudicated charge is real or is fictional substitute hiding an ultra-violent, career criminal. Say, the 18 year old criminal is in for drug possession and selling. How is it possible to persuade him to learn a trade and obey the law, when his income as a drug dealer had 6 numbers in it, with the full time Roman Orgy lifestyle to match? What does Gingrich have to offer that can beat the full time Roman Orgy? Again, I demand that all released prisoners be moved to halfway houses on the street where Gingrich lives. If he objects, he should shut up about prison costs, the hypocrite. Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jan 8, 2011 1:27:44 PM There are serious minds on the conservative side that can be used to change the mind-set on this issue just as some on that side realize changing drug laws can have a conservative result. But, I find it pretty hard to take this guy seriously. I guess you take what you can get. Posted by: Joe | Jan 9, 2011 12:47:35 PM summary: Inasmuch as this government and the culture that supports it has become over time a murderous oppressor of people and nations and at the same time continue to engage in high crimes and misdemeanors against all of the world's inhabitants, I cannot in good faith consent to its rule. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Consent of the Governed At one time in my life when I was younger and more trusting in those leaders who ruled the nation, I consented to the governments handling of social, political, and economic affairs and my role in such activities. I impliedly accepted the idea that authority vested in the agencies of government was somewhat sanctified in that all of the people must for the benefit of the world and in pursuit of peace recognize law and public policy standards as outlined by all appropriate agencies of government. Inasmuch as government has now become unduly oppressive, murderous and inhumane (as evidenced in part by an uninterrupted string of local and global atrocities and crimes against humanity over the past century) I can no longer give my consent to be ruled by the illegitimate authority that calls itself the United States of America. From my personal experience I find that the criminal and civil laws of this nation (and the cultural standards that support them) are impossible to honor in many instances because they are secret in their making, arbitrary in their enforcement and insufferably oppressive in their application. Such obscure laws, standards and secret rules are used by political fiat to imprison and to destroy lives of people in a kind of game where prosecutor, defense attorney, judge and citizenry all conspire to ruin, imprison or kill the individual for alleged offenses that do not approach in severity the crimes and unlawfully brutal tactics used against them by their detractors; neither do the actual offenses alleged against a person generally compare in degree of severity to the crimes committed against him by the accusers. Those government agents (and their paid killers in uniform or in the private sector) who seek to selectively apply their contrived and illegitimate rule of law against unsuspecting citizens now advance against the people with unwarranted malice, tortuous brutality, and advanced cruel weaponry. No free man who yet has an ounce of will power and self-respect may therefore submit to the completely out of control government of the United States of America. Any judgment or levy against any citizen or resident of the United States by any current officer of the three branches of government, or by any administrative agency thereof, is by definition corrupt, devoid of legitimacy and intolerable to men and women of good conscience because those who (with evil intent, malice aforethought and wickedly selfish heart) wield the bloody ax of law against our people are the real criminals far more dangerous and threatening to humanity than the millions of men and women imprisoned under Nazi like orders of this hideous regime. In good conscience and by the remaining will power afforded by Providence I do not give my consent to be ruled by the present United States government because it is a global murderous and criminal enterprise bent on world inhumane domination at any cost. geral sosbee Posted by: geral | Aug 17, 2011 8:41:28 PM How do you feel about the felony murder doctrine? I suspect you feel the same as I do with it's unfair, unjust way the doctrine allows many innocent people to be convicted of crimes they did not commit...I would like to be at the forefront of this doctrine being abolished in NC and everyone who has been convicted by means of the felony murder rule be not only freed but have their records eradicated, not to mention monetary awards to help them get back on their feet. Do you think this will ever happen? How can a private citizen like myself do anything to help this cause?...thank you..Roberta... Posted by: Roberta | Nov 6, 2012 2:16:32 PM Post a comment "A Biblical Value in the Constitution: Mercy, Clemency, Faith, and History" | Main | Recent commentary on this election season's criminal justice initiatives We did some dumb things as teenagers that might have caused a lot of harm. You probably did, too. Fortunately, we didnt hurt anyone too badly, but we cringe now at how clueless we were about the possible consequences of what we did. Teenagers often dont make very good decisions. Our laws take this into account in many ways: We dont let young people drink until they are 21, and they cant sign contracts, vote or serve on juries until they are 18. But there is one area in which we ignore teens youth and impulsiveness: our criminal laws. Our laws often ignore the difference between adults and teens, and some youngsters are sentenced to life in prison without parole (LWOP). Despite urban legends to the contrary, this law has no exceptions: A teen sentenced to LWOP will die in prison as an old man or woman. No exceptions for good behavior, no exceptions period. No hope. You might expect that these LWOP sentences are limited to the worst of the worst, but that is not the case. A young teen can be a bit player in a crime, e.g., act as a lookout while his buddies go in to steal beer from a convenience store.... About 45 percent of the inmates serving LWOP for a teenage crime were not the person who caused the death. Yet they will die in prison of old age, with no chance for release. But should these youngsters die in prison for something they did when they were so young? Wouldnt it be better to re-evaluate them after serving a long stretch in prison and consider whether they have matured and improved themselves? We are conservative Republicans, and we believe that some people are so dangerous that we must separate them from our communities. That is what prisons are for. But sometimes we overuse our institutions. Californias teen LWOP is an overuse of incarceration. It denies the reality that young people often change for the better. And it denies hope to those sentenced under it. Of course, not every young person going through the system turns his or her life around. But wouldnt it be better to at least consider whether these inmates have matured and improved themselves after a long stretch in prison? SB 9, which is now on Gov. Jerry Browns desk, would allow the court to give this narrow group of inmates convicted of a crime while a teen a chance to apply for parole -- after serving 25 years in prison. That is no easy stretch. And even then, they will not be automatically released. They must show the parole board that they have participated in programs that prepare them to support themselves and stay on the straight and narrow when they are released. They must convince the parole board that they are remorseful and have changed so they no longer pose a threat to the community. Only then might they be given a parole date. Jesus told us to Do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Shouldnt we give the kids and grandkids of others the same second chances that we would want for our own families? An inherent principle of justice is that the punishment should never exceed the harm done by the crime. It is wrong to condemn these inmates to die in prison for being the teenage accomplice to the terrible acts of another. We urge Gov. Brown to sign SB 9, and thereby restore the chance for these inmates to transform their lives and become good citizens. Has the ugly execution in Oklahoma succeeded in slowing US machineries of death? | Main | Tennessee adopts electric chair as back-up execution method Not only has CNN brought together a 2012 Republican presidential candidate and a former advisory to President Barack Obama as co-hosts of "Crossfire," but it now has published this interesting joint commentary under the headline "Prison system is failing America." Here are excerpts from an interesting opinion piece that goes a bit beyond just the usual standard points about the various problems with modern mass incarceration: Thirty-eight U.S. states are home to fewer people than live under the corrections system in this country. There are about as many people behind bars as live in Chicago. That's one in every 108 Americans. One in 35 are under some form of correctional supervision. Among African Americans, the numbers are even more horrifying. According to the NAACP, one in three black males born in the United States today is likely to spend time in prison at some point in his life. That's compared with one in six Hispanic males or one in 25 white males. It would be hard to overstate the scale of this tragedy. For a nation that loves freedom and cherishes our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the situation should be intolerable. It is destroying lives and communities. Our corrections system is not correcting. Within three years of being released from prison, nearly half of prisoners are convicted of another crime with one out of every four ending up back in prison. When a typical bureaucracy does its job this badly, it wastes money, time and paper. The corrections bureaucracy, in failing to correct the large majority of inmates in its charge, not only wastes money but also wastes lives, families and entire cities. The current system is broken beyond repair. It's a human, social and financial disaster. We need a radical strategy of replacement of these huge bureaucracies that lack any meaningful oversight.... We need to rethink prisons, parole and probation for the 21st century. At a time when high-quality education is increasingly digital and in many cases free, shouldn't we provide opportunities for prisoners to learn skills that will enable them to support themselves as upstanding citizens when they are released? We know that inmates who earn a GED while incarcerated are substantially less likely to return to prison. There are readily available online tools that our prisons could use extensively for a minimal cost to increase the number of inmates receiving valuable education and skills training. Khan Academy has replicated virtually the entire K-12 curriculum online for free. Udacity and other online education sites offer introductions to software programming for free. Our prisons should be using tools such as these extensively. They offer the opportunity to interrupt the cycle of poverty, a failing education system, crime and incarceration.... Technology should revolutionize more than just the prisons' rehabilitation programs. It should completely transform the corrections and criminal justice systems.... [T]echnology should enable much more effective probation and community supervision, especially new options that could allow nonviolent offenders to remain with their families living productive lives under an appropriate level of restriction. Almost any activity to which we might sentence low-level offenders --apprenticeship programs, school, literacy or computer science boot camps, community service -- would be a better use of taxpayer dollars than sticking them idle in prison with hardened criminals. Unfortunately, the current corrections bureaucracy has embraced none of this innovation -- in part because it is captive to the prison guards' unions or the private prison lobby, and in part because it lacks any incentives or sufficient competition based on the right metrics.... Years ago, Van proposed that states give wardens a financial incentive to cut the rates of recidivism for inmates leaving their prisons. More than 65% of inmates in California return to prison within three years of their release, where they will again cost taxpayers an average of $47,000 each year. Surely it is worth giving wardens a substantial portion of the savings for every inmate that leaves their prison and does not re-offend. Such incentives would spark dramatically more innovation and investment in rehabilitation, job training and job placement programs for prisoners. That would be a revolutionary change from prison administrators' current incentives, which are often to keep as many people in custody as possible. Finally, we need real market competition that rewards success at every step of the process -- in probation and parole offices as well as prisons. That doesn't just mean privatizing prisons or rewarding probation services with the same failed metrics. We need competition of methods and ideas based on the right criteria: When we send prisoners home, do they have the skills to reintegrate in their communities as working, law-abiding citizens? Or do they end up coming back?... We should start by opening our prisons and probation offices to innovation to save money, achieve better outcomes for individuals and ensure better safety for us all. Former House Speaker (and future Trump running-mate?) Newt Gingrich helps make the case for "raising the age" for adult prosecutions | Main | "Conservatives should celebrate Obamas commutations" June 3, 2016 Appellate judges certify to Florida Supreme Court whether state sentencing scheme violates Due Process Clause or Eighth Amendment A helpful reader alerted me to a remarkable decision handed down earlier this week by the Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeals. The reader provided this helpful summary that I could reprint here (with my emphasis added): The Fourth District Court of Appeal wrote a decision that (in essence) asks our Supreme Court to revisit the constitutionality of our sentencing scheme, a scheme that gives judges complete discretion to sentence a defendant anywhere between a calculated "lowest permissible sentence" and the statutory maximums stacked end to end. This system of nearly unlimited sentencing discretion is everything Judge Frankel decried, and the sentence the court reviewed is a case in point: the defendant was 55 years old, he had no prior record, and his "lowest permissible sentence" was 23.7 months in prison. For trying and failing to steal three boat motors he was sentenced to 35 years in prison (the statutory maximums stacked end to end), effectively a life sentence. Judge Gross wrote a thoughtful and scholarly concurring opinion that begins with the history of sentencing in Florida, talks about the evils of unfettered sentencing discretion, and ends with Judge Frankel and his modest proposal that judges be required to explain their sentencing decisions (at present they need say nothing). Here is the question the court certified to Florida Supreme Court as one of great public importance: Does a sentence within the statutory maximum under the Criminal Punishment Code violate either the Due Process Clause or Eighth Amendment when it is significantly greater than the lowest permissible sentence on the defendants scoresheet or the offered plea and grossly disproportionate to the median sentence imposed for similar crimes within the jurisdiction? Alfonso-Roche v. Florida, No. 4D13-3689 (Fla. 4th DCA June 1, 2016) (available here). I do not know enough about Florida's appellate procedures to know if the Florida Supreme Court will now have to, or at least is now very likely to, take up these important constitutional issues. But for anyone and everyone working in state or federal systems worried about the exercise of unfettered sentencing discretion, this Alfonso-Roche decision is today's must-read. June 3, 2016 at 10:13 AM | Permalink Comments Meanwhile, in LA: http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/06/five_louisiana_executions_barr.html Posted by: Joe | Jun 3, 2016 10:19:45 AM It seems to me that the underlying problem is the entire concurrent vs consecutive distinction. Imagine a world where that distinction did not exist and all sentences were to run concurrently. It strikes me that such a world would have two salutatory effects. First, it would reduce the incentive of prosecutors to stack charges because there would be no real world impact to doing so (there still might be some symbolic impact so I don't think it would eliminate the practice entirely. Second, it would prevent judges from stacking sentences. We see this exact same problem in child porn cases where some prosecutors view every single picture as a separate charge leading to hundreds and sometimes thousands of separate charges which then lead to--in some rare cases--thousand year sentences. The more I have tossed the idea around in my head the firmer my conclusion becomes that there is no genuine public policy basis for the consecutive vs concurrent distinction. It's a pure power grab by the judges and the prosecutors at the expense of the rule of law. Posted by: Daniel | Jun 3, 2016 10:49:51 AM I think the issue is the length of sentences overall and the over-emphasis on "general deterrence" and focus on "what's to stop a defendant from doing it again?" In the US, sentences of decades or even centuries (think Madoff) are not unheard of. We are, simply put, more punitive. But we lack any sound empirical or theoretical justification for this punitiveness, save for its good politics. General deterrence sounds good in theory but no one really has a handle on when/whether/how it works. There were nearly 11.7 million arrests last year and 2 million more people will carry the life long stigma of being called a "convicted felon." Yet, crime still happened. Let's talk about economic crime because its usually committed by the more educated folks: Milken got a 10 year sentence, at the time the longest sentence handed out to a white collar offender. The early-to-mid 1990s saw a host of SNL prosecutions. And remember this is when the statutory max on bank/mail/wire fraud and other offenses was less than half of what it is today (today 30 years back then was closer to 5, 10 or 20). The early 2000s saw a host of corporate prosecutions. Followed by Madoff and Stanford Allen and many others. The sentences range from a few decades to a few centuries (Sholam Weiss -- 845 years for insurance fraud). One has to wonder if there should simply be an overall cap for sentences non-violent offenders. Really, are consecutive or even concurrent sentences of such a long duration serving any purpose other than getting good headlines for judges and prosecutors alike? Posted by: Ex-Economist | Jun 3, 2016 1:22:36 PM There can be a solid basis for consecutive sentences (of course, as with most other things about sentencing, it is left to judicial discretion). One reason for consecutive sentences is to represent the distinct harm caused by multiple acts, particular when there are multiple victims or multiple acts. To use a non-violent example, somebody who goes to multiple businesses passing forged checks probably deserves more punishment than the person who goes to one business. Admittedly, some statutes are written in a way that allows for the arbitrary multiplication of counts (which could be fixed by re-writing the statute, perhaps making it an enhancement to possess more than a certain quantity of child porn). Hard to do a legitimate analysis of deterrence without admitting two major flaws in our criminal justice system, the lack of certainty in punishment and the lack of swiftness (both thought by many to be key components of deterrence). When punishment is neither sure nor swift, there is a tendency to impose newsworthy sentences to compensate. Posted by: tmm | Jun 3, 2016 2:52:51 PM "One reason for consecutive sentences is to represent the distinct harm caused by multiple acts, particular when there are multiple victims or multiple acts." Is the best way to effectuate your concern through lengthier sentences? In other words, I agree with you that distinct harms need to be recognized in distinct ways. But why do those distinct harms need to be embodied in distinctive sentences? One can imagine a system where a prosecutor is allowed to still stack charges and a jury can still convict the person of such charges but the judge cannot impose consecutive sentences. In such a system a distinct harm is still validated via the judicial system in a symbolic and forma sense but not in a substantive form. If *recognition* of the harm done is the primary point why wouldn't such a system satisfy? Posted by: Daniel | Jun 3, 2016 3:30:39 PM I agree with Daniel. Also, that is normally what happens. A conviction for multiple counts does not necessarily mean the sentences will be consecutive (or stacked). As for certainty or swiftness, I think certainty trumps swiftness. In the Enron investigation alone, there were more than 100 participants who were not charged. And in every offense there are offenders who are either not charged, due to limited prosecutorial resources, or who get a deal due to cooperation. General deterrence in the day and age of the internet should be the least important concern -- the average man cannot absorb the thousands of daily sentences passed down each day. The rest, retribution (usually served through the MVRA in economic offenses), and incapicitation etc (jail term), are legitimate but need to be scaled down. There is no justification for a 30-40-50 year sentence for theft offenses. Posted by: Ex-Economist | Jun 3, 2016 3:59:19 PM Recognition in a different sense -- the retribution component of criminal punishment, committing two forgeries is worse than committing one forgery and merits a longer punishment. When the sentencing range is broad enough, there is no need for consecutive sentences. A narrower sentencing range, on the other hand, limits the ability to increase the punishment to reflect multiple distinct criminal acts. If a judge could impose life without parole for each count, there would be no need for consecutive sentences. While their is a legitimate cap on the maximum for theft, I am not sure that the same applies to violent offenses. Faced with a serial child molester who molested multiple children on multiple occasions, is it inappropriate for a judge to stack five or six fifteen-year sentences to require the offender to serve thirty years before he becomes eligible for parole. Not allowing consecutive sentences permits offenders to commit multiple additional acts with no additional consequences. Posted by: tmm | Jun 3, 2016 4:24:24 PM Post a comment Appellate judges certify to Florida Supreme Court whether state sentencing scheme violates Due Process Clause or Eighth Amendment | Main | Prez Obama commutes 42 more federal prison sentences The title of this post is the headline of this new Dallas Morning News commatary. The piece is authored by Tom Giovanetti, president of the Institute for Policy Innovation, a group that explains its focus to be "on approaches to governing that harness the strengths of individual liberty, limited government, and free markets." Here are excerpts: The White House recently announced that 58 federal inmates, mostly non-violent drug offenders, would have their sentences shortened through commutation. This brings the total number of commutations during the Barack Obama years to 306, more than any recent administration. And word out of the White House is that there will be more to come during President Obamas final months in office. Many conservatives will be initially inclined to see Obamas commutations as the act of a liberal who is soft on crime. But conservatives should celebrate President Obamas commutations. In fact, as people who prize liberty and individual rights, and who are skeptical about government power, conservatives need to do a rethink on criminal justice. Its becoming clear that something has gone very wrong with the justice system in the United States. Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Too many crimes have been federalized, as opposed to being handled more locally by state and local courts. Excessive punishments are being meted out for non-violent crimes because of mandatory sentencing requirements. And its dawning on people that the justice system is plagued by the same careerism and corruption that characterize other branches of government.... Taking reasonable discretion away from judges was a mistake, and it caused a shift in power from judges to prosecutors, who can select and stack charges involving mandatory minimums. While judges are appointed or elected to consider both sides of a case, prosecutors are hired to convict. It should trouble conservatives that the government side of the equation has been awarded such disproportionate power, which has clearly led to abuses. Consider the case of Weldon Angelos, who at age 24 was arrested in Utah for selling marijuana and possessing a firearm. Because of stacked charges with mandatory minimums, Federal Judge Paul Cassell had no choice but to sentence him to 55 years in prison. Judge Cassell has ever since been pleading for a commutation to Angelos sentence, pointing out that far worse crimes, such as hijacking, rape, and second-degree murder, have lighter sentences. But the judge, who clerked for Antonin Scalia, was appointed by President George W. Bush, and who favors the death penalty, was powerless in the face of a prosecutor armed with federal mandatory minimum sentences. Yes, our justice system should be about public safety first. But all too often it is about careerism, government revenue and corruption. Stephanos Bibas, professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, reminds us that the criminal justice system and prisons are big-government institutions. They are often manipulated by special interests such as prison guards unions, and they consume huge shares of most states budgets. Social conservatives should understand the need for criminal justice reform, since we believe that every human life has inherent dignity and value, and we believe in the possibility of redemption. Non-violent offenders can be punished and make restitution while keeping families intact and offenders productive. Economic conservatives should recognize that non-violent offenders are better deployed working in the private sector than incarcerated in expensive government facilities. And libertarians well, libertarians already get it. There are many pieces to the justice reform movement, including giving judges more sentencing leeway, eliminating civil asset forfeiture, and prioritizing drug treatment and in-home monitoring of incarceration. But commuting sentences for non-violent offenders that are far in excess of the crime is a great place to start. "Rich Defendants Request to Judges: Lock Me Up in a Gilded Cage" | Main | Appellate judges certify to Florida Supreme Court whether state sentencing scheme violates Due Process Clause or Eighth Amendment June 3, 2016 Former House Speaker (and future Trump running-mate?) Newt Gingrich helps make the case for "raising the age" for adult prosecutions Regular readers know that Newt Gingrich has become a notable and frequent "right on crime" commentator calling for all sorts of criminal justice reforms in all sorts of settings. And here we have another example: this new commentary authored by Gingrich and Pat Nolan, headlined "Dont train kids to be felons in adult jails," makes the case for limiting the prosecution of teenagers as adults in Louisiana. Here are excerpts: The noted tough on crime criminologist John Dilulio once commented that jailing youth with adult felons under Spartan conditions will merely produce more street gladiators. Louisiana should heed Dilulios caution against locking up young petty criminals alongside violent adult criminals. The Bayou State is one of only nine states that prosecutes 17-year-olds as adults, often for the most minor of crimes (stealing a bag of potato chips, for instance). We all can agree that breaking the law is wrong and that these teens deserve to face consequences for their actions. But tossing them into adult jails with hardened criminals just makes those bad situations worse. The research and data are clear: Adult jails are no place for teenagers, who with the help and guidance of parents are likely able to turn their lives around. Placing youngsters in adult jails makes them more likely to be victims of rape and assault, and more likely to commit suicide. They also are likely to learn a lot more about leading a life of crime from the hardened criminals. There is a lot of truth in the notion that jails and prisons are graduate schools of crime. In addition, the damage of this policy continues long after they are released. By treating teens differently from the majority of the country, Louisiana makes it harder for them to grow into successful adults.... Fortunately, the Legislature is working on a bill to Raise the Age of juvenile jurisdiction. It would assign most 17-year-olds who commit offenses to the juvenile justice system, where they would be held accountable, continue their schooling, learn critical skills and be prepared to live productive and healthy lives as law-abiding members of society. Prosecutors still would be free to choose to prosecute youth accused of more serious offenses as adults.... Raising the age would make society safer and stronger by doing away with the destructive one-size-fits-all punishment system we have now. Adult jails and prisons can turn teens into career criminals, and taxpayers are stuck with the bill. By raising the age of how we punish and reform young people who make minor mistakes, Louisiana will help these kids turn their lives around, will make neighborhoods safer and in the process will save taxpayers money. This is being smart on crime. As the headline of this post highlights, I think Gingrich's continued advocacy for all sort of criminal justice reform is especially notable and important in light of the fact that he name is being brought up repeatedly as a possible running mate for GOP Prez nominee Donald Trump. As detailed in a number of posts linked below, Gingrich has had his name on many commentaries in the last few years vocally supporting a wide array of modern state and federal sentencing reform efforts. If Trump were in fact to select Gingrich as his running mate, I would have to rethink my belief (and fear) that the Trump campaign will be actively opposing most criminal justice reform efforts. Prior related posts about Gingrich's criminal justice reform advocacy: June 3, 2016 at 08:50 AM | Permalink Comments The problem, of course, is that any age chosen is somewhat arbitrary. Different people mature differently (putting to the side the arguments loosely based on brain science). Historically, the dividing line between adult and juvenile for different purposes has been all over the map and still is today. You can drive at sixteen, but can't smoke or join the military until eighteen, or drink until twenty-one (with different states having different ideas about when you are old enough to have consensual sex). Should the decision that one is an adult for criminal prosecution be linked to whether the state considers you to be an adult for other purposes? I also don't know many states that are locking up first time offenders for stealing a bag of potato chips -- whether that first time offender is seventeen, nineteen, or thirty. For the most part, non-violent offenders (particular for misdemeanor offenses) get probation or a small fine. (In my state, which also is one of the ones with seventeen as the dividing line, we have recently made some of these minor offenses into "fine only" offenses, reflecting the actual practice of most prosecutors in the state.) So arguing about seventeen year olds being locked in prison for minor offenses is really a straw man. Posted by: tmm | Jun 3, 2016 10:37:16 AM The attorney I now work for has been a criminal defense lawyer for 42 years. He says that jails are just "crime schools" for young offenders, and that no one under 18 should spend more than a week in jail, except for the most serious of offenses, like rape and murder. There are alternative punishments besides incarceration for juveniles. Posted by: Jim Gormley | Jun 3, 2016 10:56:49 AM "If Trump were in fact to select Gingrich as his running mate, I would have to rethink my belief (and fear) that the Trump campaign will be actively opposing most criminal justice reform efforts." Ever the optimist. Anyway, yes, "the decision that one is an adult for criminal prosecution be linked to whether the state considers you to be an adult for other purposes" in some fashion. Line drawing will always lead to various "arbitrary" decisions, but that does seem consistent. And, I do think there is a reasonable argument that some hard and fast line for constitutional purposes is problematic. Chief Justice Roberts' concurrence in one opinion there was a fair position, however one comes down on it. As to small time offenders, mixed bag there. Teens are sometimes somehow put into "the system" and it turns out to be but the beginning. It need not be "prison" though can be reformatories, suspension from normal schooling and other troublesome things. The potato chip thing is a case of citing the most extreme example, a usual trope by both sides, but once something is possible there, it turns out to be true that extreme cases can be cited. Posted by: Joe | Jun 3, 2016 12:00:39 PM One thing that would be interesting to know is if there are any good studies about the differences in recidivism rates for similar offenders (i.e. same number of priors and same type of offenses) for those placed into juvenile system and those placed into adult system. My impression is that juvenile system is even less functional at rehabilitation than the adult system, at least in my state. Posted by: tmm | Jun 3, 2016 12:44:10 PM The problem with letting prosecutors discern, is that there is no discernment, either you should try them as juveniles or not. Race,gender,bias,etc may play a role as well as politics and publicity. Posted by: pat | Jun 4, 2016 4:12:34 AM Post a comment A Berkeley doctor has launched a new practice that aims to offer aid-in-dying guidance for terminally ill patients under a new California law set to take effect next week. KQED News reports that Dr. Lonny Shavelson, an emergency room physician in the East Bay for many years, is looking ahead to the implementation of the End of Life Option Act which, with many conditions, allows a patient to decide to end his or her own life with the help of a doctor. "This is a major change [that] very, very few people know anything about and how to do it, Shavelson told the publication. "[It's] something that has to be done right. In addition to his 29 years as a doctor, Shavelson also wrote a book in 1995 titled A Chosen Death that focused on five terminally ill patients' decisions regarding whether or not to end their lives. The new law requires that, for a doctor to assist in dying, the patient must have less than six months to live and be mentally competent. The law was passed in October of 2015, and makes California the fifth state to legalize aid-in-dying. According to KQED, the other states are Montana, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. Related: Brittany Maynard, 29-Year-Old Planning Assisted Suicide, Makes It To The Grand Canyon Oakland Muralist Antonio Ramos was painting an anti-violence mural in West Oakland when he was shot and killed last September with a gun stolen from the car of a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Removal Operations officer. It was a theft that was reported after it occurred, earlier that month in San Francisco at 2nd Street and South Park. Today, attorney Frank Pitre of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy announced that he is filing and administrative claim against ICE on behalf of Ramos's family alleging that the agency "failed to train their employees and follow mandatory regulations, policies and/or procedures for securing and storing a firearm. Unfortunately, this is a rampant, agency-wide problem for ICE that has been well- documented for nearly a decade," reads Pitre's statement. "Despite ICEs knowledge and awareness of the problem and despite recommendations by other government agencies for corrective action, ICE agents continue to have their unsecured firearms stolen at alarming rates." As you've likely noticed, auto burglaries and unsecured weapons have been in the news with alarming consistency: Yesterday, for example, we learned that although an FBI agent's stolen gun had been retrieved, three more firearms had been taken from a car near Japantown. In February, another ICE agent left a loaded gun atop a vehicle and drove off, losing it. The alleged Golden Gate Park Killers obtained the gun they may have used in two killings last fall from an unlocked car. And, not a week ago, the family of Kate Steinle the woman slain at Pier 14 announced a federal lawsuit against several parties including the Bureau of Land Management, as it was a gun stolen from the car of an officer from that agency that was used to kill her. That suit was also filed by Frank Pitre. In the case of Ramos's murder, a suspect was arrested in November, Maquise Holloway. The Oakland Police Department believes that an altercation between Holloway and Ramos led Holloway to pull the trigger on the ICE agent's gun, a Glock. "According to reports, the firearm was left in a bag in an unattended vehicle along with the agents badge, a pair of handcuffs, three fully loaded ammunition magazines, and a baton," the filing alleges. "The bag was left in the vehicle by one or more ICE agents and/or officers who were visiting the City and County of San Francisco. Later, a parking lot attendant in the 500 block of Howard Street discovered the other paraphernalia belonging to the ICE agent(s) and/or officer(s), but not the firearm or handcuffs." Related: Parents Of Kate Steinle, Woman Shot And Killed At Pier 14, File Federal Lawsuit A judge with the California Public Utilities Commission yesterday issued a $24.3 million dollar fine against PG&E for keeping faulty or inaccurate records regarding natural gas lines in more than a dozen cities across California. The San Francisco Business Times reports that this fine, which the company may appeal, followed the explosion of a Carmel home in 2014 which regulators blamed on PG&E's poor record keeping. The wrongdoing implicates the safe operation of a natural gas system, which is by its very nature dangerous, explained CPUC judge Maribeth Bushey. Complete compliance with safety requirements is essential. According to Bay City News, faulty record keeping by the company led to pipeline damage, gas releases, as well as service outages in cities including Mountain View, Castro Valley, and Milpitas. This is entirely separate from the infamous 2010 San Bruno blast which killed eight people, injured 66, and destroyed 38 homes. A criminal trial regarding potential violations of pipeline rules resulting in the explosion was scheduled to begin in April of this year. Speaking of yesterday's CPUC decision, PG&E spokesman Donald Cutler said that the company has yet to decide whether or not to appeal. "Were currently reviewing [it], he explained in a statement. Weve made significant improvements to our distribution records to promote safety, reduce risk and enhance reliability. We have more work to do and we are dedicated to doing it right. Fortunately, no one was injured in the 2014 Carmel explosion as the house was empty at the time. Related: PG&E's Criminal Trial Over Deadly San Bruno Explosion Begins In Two Weeks Flappers, dandies and fetishists for all things 1920s will have their Wurlitzers in a bunch all weekend long for the 21st annual Silent Film Festival, kicking off tonight and running through Sunday at your favorite old-time movie palace The Castro Theatre. (You know Leonard Maltins gonna be there!) This years line-up of 19 programs promises all the bees knees, cats pajamas, and wooden nickels of 1920s cinematic gems. Fans who love the old silent movies know these films can often be troublingly racist and sexist, but this years Silent Film Fest features some remarkably progressive works that address race, homelessness and transgender issues. The Oldest US Film Directed By An African-American We have the oldest existing film by an African-American director, Within Our Gates, Silent Film Festival artistic director Anita Monga told SFist. Oscar Micheauxs 1920 epic is considered a response to D.W. Griffiths outrageously racist Birth Of A Nation, and shows a brutally honest depiction of lynchings, harassment, and hard life in the Jim Crow era. The print is from the Library of Congress, Ms. Monga said. Theres a new composition by Adolphus Hailstork that combines classical and gospel elements that will be performed with seven strings and 20 voices and will be conducted by Michael Morgan. Thats Oakland Symphony conductor Michael Morgan, who will have members of the Oakland Symphony Chorus on hand to belt out the gospel truth. Saturday, June 4, 5:15 p.m. 'Beggars Of Life', image courtesy SilentFilm.org A Frank Depiction of 1920s Homelessness After winning the first-ever Academy Award for Best Picture, Wings director William Wellman followed up with the hard-hitting homeless drama Beggars of Life that kicks off the festival tonight. The eras reigning sex symbol Louise Brooks stars as a fugitive on the run forced to disguise herself as a man to blend in with a gang of train-hopping hobos. Audiences hated seeing Brooks in unsexy male attire and were turned off by the films co-mingling of the races. Beggars of Life was widely panned at the time, but is now considered Ms. Brooks greatest American film. Thursday, June 2, 7 p.m. 'What's The World Coming To?', image courtesy SilentFilm.org Cross-Dressing in the 1920s Laura Horaks acclaimed book Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908-1934 has been a hit on the queer academia circuit and serves as the inspiration for this program of jazz-era gender fluidity. This screwball comedy double-feature starts with I Dont Want To Be A Man, a wacky Weimar comedy about a woman who cross-dresses so she can drink, smoke, and play poker. We then transition to The Little Rascals producer Hal Roachs gender-bending comedy Whats The World Coming To?, a full-drag howler that should be right at home on the Castro screen. Sunday, June 5, 12 Noon 'When The Clouds Roll By', image courtesy SilentFilm.org Wizard of Oz Directors Debut Film The festival closes Sunday night with the Douglas Fairbanks comedic crowd-pleaser When The Clouds Roll By. Its a crazy, surrealistic film, Ms. Monga said, and the directorial debut of Victor Fleming. He is, of course, the director of Gone With The Wind and The Wizard of Oz. Featuring several visually experimental comedic scenes, the film is perhaps best-known for a wall-walking special effects segment that was famously duplicated in 1980s music videos. The 2016 Silent Film Festival begins Thursday, June 2 and runs through Sunday, June 5 at the Castro Theatre. Tickets and the full schedule are available at SilentFilm.org. Nick Denton, the Gawker founder whose suspicions were confirmed last month that a thin-skinned Silicon Valley billionaire offended by unflattering coverage was bankrolling Hulk Hogan's devastating case against his media company, spoke out on the subject at Recode's conference yesterday. Questioning Denton was the no-kiddding-for-serious future mayoral candidate and Recode co-founder Kara Swisher, and beside them sat an empty chair for Hogan's benefactor slash Gawker's malefactor, Peter Thiel, the Paypal co-founder and filthy rich out gay Trump delegate. Thiel declined requests from the publication and Denton to debate ideas of free speech, third-party litigation funding, etc. There's empty chair next to @nicknotned. Peter Thiel never responded to our email inviting him to debate. #codecon pic.twitter.com/M5qoZrjMXG Recode (@Recode) June 2, 2016 On stage, Denton deftly buttered up Silicon Valley's elite: "A Silicon Valley billionaire is a hundred times, a thousand times more powerful than a congressman," CNet quotes him . Then, Denton continued, parlaying that praise into a call to action for journalists: "For the good of society, there needs to be a counterbalance, even if the billionaires don't like it." That sentiment echoes one expressed by New York Times writer Stephen Marche, a man who has twice been included in Gawker's list of "least important writers" rankings and once achieved the pantheon of the worst 100 white men, yet still defended the media company's tabloid streak. "Whether Gawker should have posted the Hulk Hogan sex tape I will leave to the care of finer souls than mine," Marche wrote. "I will say this: No one could possibly object if that were the tape of a congressman. But even a pathetic D-lister like Hulk Hogan has more power to shape the world today than most congressmen. The world we live in has made a presidential nominee out of a reality television star. This is the world that Gawker predicted and took up arms against." Incidentally, one detail lacking from much coverage of the Gawker coverage of Hogan is that Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, made a number of racist remarks on the sex tape in question, aired by Gawker, and those statements prompted his removal from the WWE. Hmm. Related: Sheryl Sandberg Says Peter Thiel Will Remain On Facebook Board Despite Attack On Gawker A massive Mission District housing development was approved last night by the Planning Commission, bringing the contentious project one crucial step closer to completion. Nicknamed the "Beast on Bryant" by those opposed to the Bryant Street development, Mission Local reports that the hearing on the 355-unit, two-building development went late into the night before securing the 5-to-2 vote of approval. The development, which when completed will take up Bryant Street between 18th and 19th, is divided into two separate buildings: A 196-unit market-rate building with three below-market units, and an adjacent 136-unit below-market-rate building (the San Francisco version of a "poor door"?). Our overriding goal has been to maximize the amount of affordable housing on our site, thats what weve heard over and over, Mission Local quotes developer Nick Podell as telling those gathered last night. Were the highest percentage of affordable housing thats been achieved in the city without additional benefit of height and bulk. Presently the block is home to arts space Inner Mission, and before that Cell Space. Although the project overall has just over 41 percent below-market-rate units, under the agreed upon deal the city, and not the developer, is responsible for constructing the 136-unit affordable building. This fact has upset some opponents to the project, who vow to keep fighting the development. I believe that the Mission should be able to chose its own destiny," one such opponent, SF resident Jordan Davis, told Mission Local, "and that does not include luxury housing for techy manchildren." Previously: 'Beast On Bryant' Gets Stalled After Community Pushback Though we try at SFist to make a point of not recognizing the National ___ Days that were invented by trade groups and publicists to get the media to cover their products, but I'm making an exception today, because: doughnuts. It's National Doughnut Day, and yes we still spell it that way, and yes there are good ones to be had around San Francisco. Old Fashioneds, cake doughnuts, crullers, and beignets even. This top ten list from a couple years back still stands, but for a few important must-haves: The Jelly Donut This old-school spot at 24th and South Van Ness is a neighborhood mainstay where, almost without fail, the lady behind the counter will toss in an extra doughnut hole or two no matter what you order and do with a little smile. Sometimes she just throws in entire free doughnuts. The maple old-fashioned is always a good bet, as is the crumb cake doughnut. 3198 24th Street at South Van Ness Bob's Donuts Surely you know about Bob's by now. But if you do not, this family-run operation on uppper Polk Street makes, quite possibly, the best doughnuts in town and continues to put the more hipster-ish places to shame. The basic glazed are to die for and refreshed 24-7, the apple fritters are amazing, and the jelly is the bomb. And a little bit of local trivia: Bob's and its onetime owner-manager, the late Eleanor Ahn, gets a shout-out in the Sun Kil Moon song "Glenn Tipton." Photo: xmatt on Flickr. Dynamo Donut + Coffee Speaking of hipster spots, this place, along with Humphry Slocombe ice cream nearby, presaged the gentrification of 24th Street in the last decade, but nobody can deny they make a decent doughnut, and in some original and usually delicious flavors. Best known for the maple glazed bacon apple doughnut pictured above, they do a whole ton of other notable flavors like chocolate rose and lemon thyme, and today you'll even find three gluten-free varieties: I'm Not a Gluten Carrot Cake, I'm Not a Gluten Chocolate with Raspberry, and I'm Not a Gluten Lemon Buttermilk. 2760 24th Street between York and Hampshire Photo: souldoubt on Flickr. Happy Donuts With multiple locations around the city, you can't really go wrong with this old-school chain, though a lot of people will tell you the Noe Valley location is the best. Old-fashioneds are the safest bet, but the chocolate glazed aren't half bad. via Instagram Mr. Holmes Bakehouse Mr. Holmes, which made itself Insta-famous because of its cruffins, makes all kinds of amazing filled doughnuts daily. The obstacle: You generally have to wait in line, and they often sell out by noon. The website even has a countdown to the next batch of cruffins, which appear at 7 or 8 a.m., depending on if it's a weekday or weekend. Doughnut filling flavors change daily, but expect things like boysenberry, peanut butter, and guava. 1042 Larkin Street Photo: bittermelon on Flickr. Brenda's French Soul Food If you want a sit-down doughnut experience with some New Orleans flair that maybe ends with shrimp and grits, head over to Brenda's for some of her famous beignets, which are arguably the closest you'll get to Cafe du Monde here in the Bay. 652 Polk Street at Eddy Honorable East Bay Mention: Doughnut Dolly, with two locations in Temescal and Berkeley, will be headed soon to mid-Market, but until then you need to cross the bridge to taste some fine, filled-to-order doughnuts in seasonally changing flavors. A rendering has just arrived for one of a gaggle of proposed high-rises that are set to transform the area of mid-Market at the busy intersection of Van Ness. This one is separate from several other high-rise proposals for the corners at Market Street, but it is part of what's called the Market Street Hub, which is the easternmost section of the Market and Octavia Area Plan. This parcel, at 30 Otis Street, is currently home to several low-rise buildings including a carpet store (across South Van Ness from the Goodwill), and an auto glass repair shop. As The Registry reports, architecture firm Gould Evans has just submitted the plans to the Planning Department, and the tower will include 418 rental units in a 250-foot (~26-story) building, with 18,000 square feet in the building podium reserved as instruction space for the City Ballet School. There will also be an additional 4,000 square feet of retail space. In total, the Market Street Hub is supposed to become home to 7,000 new residents in 3,700 new residential units. Socketsite notes that if the Hub project plan is approved, it would allow for an even taller tower here, up to 320 feet, if more affordable units are added. 30 Otis Street joins the nearby One Van Ness, being designed by SFMOMA architects Snhetta, which will be 37 stories and also residential, and a proposed 39-story tower on the Goodwill site across the street being designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill. Add to that plans for a 40-story tower at 30 Van Ness, across from One Van Ness, on city-owned property, and plans for two towers at 10 South Van Ness, a.k.a. the current Honda dealership that faces Market Street. If you're keeping count, that's a total of six high-rises, all within a block of each other, which is going to make this part of town look very, very different in the coming decade. Related: This Is What Market And Van Ness May Look Like In A Few Years A driver in the Outer Richmond District of San Francisco was killed Thursday afternoon, after he collided with a street pole. According to the San Francisco Police Department, an 80-year-old man was driving near the intersection at 34th Avenue and Geary Boulevard at 2:29 p.m. Thursday when he apparently lost control of his vehicle and struck a pole at the side of the street. The man was transported to San Francisco General Hospital, where "where he expired," police say. No other vehicles were involved in the crash, according to police, nor was anyone else injured in the collision. The editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle announced yesterday that they will not be endorsing a candidate in California's June 7 presidential primary. The reason? Basically, none of the candidates are good enough. The paper addresses the three major-party candidates one at a time, dismissing Donald Trump as "a nonstarter" before moving onto the classic Bernie vs.Hillary struggle. Of the heavily favored Clinton (Five Thirty Eight has her at an 86 percent chance of winning the California primary), the paper writes that her backing out of a pledge to debate Sanders in California this past May "only feeds into the perception (established through the years) of the Clintons sense of entitlement and their presumption that they can set their own rules. The nations most populous state deserves better," they add. What's more, Clinton's decision to not sit down with the editorial board seems to have irked someone over at the Chron. "[There] remain serious questions about her judgment and ethics," they write. "Our editorial board would have liked to have pressed her on some of those issues, including myriad questions about her email server and those six-figure speeches to Goldman Sachs." OK, so, no Clinton and no Trump. What about Sanders? Is the paper's editorial board feeling the Bern? Not so much, it turns out. While the senator "has had a profound impact on the debate," they argue that "there is a certain disconnection with reality in Sanders aggressively progressive promises." I guess Bernie's love of Sightglass wasn't enough to sway them. Related: Bernie Or Hillary? This Bernal Hill Rock Remains Undecided Police are telling people to stay away from the 900 block of Pacific Avenue in SF's Chinatown. pic.twitter.com/KIW2efJoJP Kimberly Veklerov (@KVeklerov) June 3, 2016 A 911 call to police regarding an attempted burglary of an apartment has led to a standoff with an armed suspect in Chinatown. The Chronicle reports that the 900 block of Pacific Avenue is blocked off as hostage negotiators attempt to convince the suspect now barricaded in the apartment to surrender. When police arrived at the scene of the reported crime, a single shot was reportedly fired by the suspect although it is unclear if the shot was directed at police. "The shot fired was not from the officer, it was from the suspect, SFPD spokesperson Officer Grace Gatpandan told the paper. So now were dealing with a hot prowl burglary with a suspect armed with a gun. This is a very dangerous situation and were advising everyone to stay away from the area. According to KRON4, no one was injured by the gunshot, and the suspect appears to be barricaded in the apartment alone the resident was able to escape. Burglary suspect apparently got into apartment thru roof, fired gun when cops arrived. SWAT, crisis negotiators here pic.twitter.com/nsFXylRKW6 Kimberly Veklerov (@KVeklerov) June 3, 2016 Update: According to the San Francisco Police Department, the suspect is in custody. There is no word yet on whether he (or she at this time the gender is unknown) gave himself up, or if police were forced to raid the apartment. .@SFPD SUSPECT IN CUSTODY. SWAT conducting safety sweep of the area. San Francisco Police (@SFPD) June 3, 2016 Second Update: According to the Examiner, multiple officers were injured today in the process of taking the suspect into custody although a police spokesperson declined to describe the nature of the injuries. The suspect was reportedly arrested just after 2:30 p.m., and was transported to a local hospital. A police spokesperson on scene says six officers were injured with non life-threatening injuries. Per SFPD: 6 officers injured, non life threatening. Suspect hit with bean bag round. pic.twitter.com/z5NwhvYiSZ Christie Smith (@christies_nbc) June 3, 2016 Six @SFPD ofc's suffer minor injuries taking barricade suspect into custody. Suspect jumped thru skylight during melee, fought officers KPIX Assignment Desk (@KPIXDesk) June 3, 2016 Third Update: A police spokesperson has released the nature of the injuries. "Six #SFPD officers were slashed, bit and spat on by armed burglary suspect, who was taken into custody after being hit with bean bag rounds," writes a Chronicle reporter on the scene. Six #SFPD officers were slashed, bit and spat on by armed burglary suspect, who was taken into custody after being hit with bean bag rounds. Kimberly Veklerov (@KVeklerov) June 3, 2016 SFPD: This happened after the suspected burglar crashed through a sky light and into a hair salon, where he fought with people inside Kimberly Veklerov (@KVeklerov) June 3, 2016 Related: Elderly Woman Dies Following Chinatown Beating Protesters outside a Trump rally in San Jose Thursday evening got out of control shortly after a rally for Trump supporters let out around 8 p.m. As the Washington Post and multiple news sources report, Trump fans wearing Trump gear were quickly descended upon, pelted with eggs and water balloons, and otherwise harassed. According to KRON 4, about 300 people gathered outside the rally, and some banged on the cars of Trump supporters and even broke car windows. After 90 minutes, police reportedly moved into the thinning crowd of protesters and made at least four arrests. Meanwhile Politico newshound Ben Schreckinger tells the Washington Times that he was ejected from the event by Trump staffers "for practicing journalism without the campaigns permission." Similarly, Politico's Carla Marinucci was told not to "disrupt the rally." Strange: Trump staffer approaches & says, "I've been told you are here to disrupt this rally.." @CAGOP vice chair @pnjaban vouched for me. Carla Marinucci (@cmarinucci) June 3, 2016 2/2 @realDonaldTrump staffer then orders me not to talk to people or interview them in general area where we sit. 1st Amendment suspended? Carla Marinucci (@cmarinucci) June 3, 2016 And while Fox News of course paints this as Trump supporters being victimized at the hands of evil liberals, highlighting the video below of the blonde woman getting egged, Salon argues that Trump is a "political arsonist" who has courted this kind behavior and stoked the flames of partisan ire for his entire campaign. And, they write, "the sense of white victimhood and paranoia has been a feature of movement conservatism (and the broader American right-wing) since at least the 1950s." As NBC News reports, "Hillary Clinton's campaign chair John Podesta condemned the violence, saying that 'violence against supporters of any candidate has no place in this election.'" Watch: The moment a Trump supporter, surrounded by protesters, is egged in the face, hit by other food. pic.twitter.com/qYFdwJWvrS Jacob Rascon (@Jacobnbc) June 3, 2016 And here's a video of protesters taking a Trump supporter's "Make America Great Again" hate and setting it on fire. Protesters set a Make America Great Again hat on fire pic.twitter.com/8Bss1GBfTH Sara Murray (@SaraMurray) June 3, 2016 Regardless, it's hardly a banner day for PR for the left, with protesters coming off as violent buffoons, and videos like this one below showing a Trump supporter calmly trying to walk through the protest as one hits him with an object and draws blood. The Atlantic calls all of the San Jose violence an "attack on democracy," however they also point out that Trump supporters have been prone to violence themselves. Trump actually encouraged people to "rough up" one vocal dissenter, and he commented to a journalist that his people were considering paying the legal fees of one supporter who sucker-punched a protester in the face. Previously: Five Arrested, One Injured At Anti-Trump Protest; Stanley Roberts Does Segment About It Political entities increasingly over the last decade have sent hired staffers out with cameras to monitor and take video of candidates who typically hold opposing stances on the issues. They are essentially looking for a gaffe or gotcha moment to share, or perhaps to use for opposition research. I've seen more and more so-called trackers, running small digital video cameras on tripods, working campaign events in Siouxland, and wrote a feature on the trend in 2011. I've witnessed some candidates alert audiences that political trackers were working among them. People who like a candidate sometimes don't like the presence of trackers. Thursday marked the first time I've witnessed a tracker questioned by a person taking in the event. Rob Hogg, one of four Democrats running in the party primary to become the nominee to oppose U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley in November, spoke to 20 people at Pierce Street Coffee Works in Sioux City. Hogg wrapped his 10 minutes or remarks, then pivoted to take questions. He pointed to his own campaign staffer and his son. Hogg then cautioned the crowd that as they readied to air questions, they should know that a tracker from America Rising Political Action Committee was present. "You know what they are looking for, they are looking for a little five- or six-second clip that they can then spend millions of dollars to smear me with...So, with that cautionary note, does anybody have a question or comment for the good of the group?" Hogg said. The America Rising website reports the "PAC was set up in Spring 2013 to serve as an organization on the right for the sole purpose of exposing the truth about Democrats through video tracking, research, and communications. By cataloguing every Democrat utterance we have the data to ensure they are held accountable for their words and actions." The first question then came from a man, who directed a query to the tracker. Hogg apparently knew the American Rising staffer, as he called her by the first name Grace, saying the question was for her. "This man would like to know how much money you are getting paid," Hogg said. The attention of the people pivoted to the tracker. "I'm not going to answer that," Grace responded. The man followed up by saying people had a right to know her salary, contending it was a public interest, so she should answer. "I don't work for the government," she said. "But this is a public trust, the election, you're involved in the election," said the man, who did not identify himself. Grace confirmed that she works for America Rising, and Hogg added that the PAC was formed by the campaign manager of 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Hogg brought the episode to a close, saying he believes in campaign transparency and that the role of PACs demonstrates the need for campaign finance reform to get rid of "dark money" organizations. The following two questioners asked Hogg about climate change and how to keep young Iowans in the state. Screenings Sloan Community Blood Drive, 3:30-6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Community Hall, 423 Evans St. Schedule an appointment at lifeservebloodcenter.org or call 800-287-4903. Free blood pressure screenings, 9:30-11 a.m. Wednesdays at Countryside Senior Living, front lobby. No appointment necessary. Programs/Self-Help Groups Al-Anon Information Center, call 255-6724. Al-Anon and Alateen, meetings locally. For times, dates and locations of area meetings, call 255-6724. Alcoholics Anonymous, beginners information, call 252-1333. Arc of Woodbury County, serving the mentally challenged, 5:15 p.m. meeting, second Monday of the month at Mid-Step Services, 4303 Stone Ave. For families and interested persons. Child Care Resource and Referral, provides resources, education and advocacy for children, parents, and child care providers. Assists in child care needs. For more information, call 712-277-1180. Co-Dependence Anonymous, 7 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays at First Lutheran Church, Fireside Room. Co-Dependents Anonymous (CODA), 10 a.m. Saturdays at Hawkeye Club, 420 Jones St. Compassionate Friends, 7 p.m. fourth Wednesday of each month (third Thursday in November and second Sunday December) in Mercy Medical Center's Leiter Room. For families who have lost children. Contact Nancy Webb 712-212-4032 or Don Mulder 712-541-5512. Children of Divorce, to help children cope with the challenges of parental separation or divorce. Call 712-279-2373 for more information. Clinics Siouxland District Health immunization clinics, call for appointment, 712-279-6119 or 1-800-587-3005. Information Family and Addictive Illness series, for more information, call 234-2300. Iowa Fathers, 6 to 8 p.m. fourth Tuesday of each month at Hope Lutheran Church, Education Building, 218 W. 18th St., South Sioux City, Neb. Support group to help single, divorcing and divorced parents residing in the state of Iowa. Mercy Pathways Outpatient Program, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, on the third floor, Mercy's Central Medical Building, 801 Fifth St., Suite 360. Provides hope, help, opportunity to connect through group therapy for individuals experiencing personal, relationship, psychiatric issues. For more information, call 712-279-5991. Narcotics Anonymous, meetings daily, various times, dates and locations. For more information, call 712-279-0733. Overeaters Anonymous, 7 p.m. Mondays at Floyd Valley Hospital, Lower Level, 714 Lincoln St. NE, Le Mars, Iowa; 1 p.m. Tuesdays at Wesley United Methodist Church, 3700 Indian Hills Drive; 6 p.m. Tuesdays at St. John's Lutheran Church, 402 Lane Ave., Storm Lake; 7 p.m. Tuesdays at Church of the Nazarene, 226 N. Main St., Viborg, S.D.; 5:30 p.m. Thursdays and 9 a.m. Saturdays at Newman Center, 320 E. Cherry St., Vermillion, S.D.; 10:30 a.m. Saturdays at Hawkeye Club, 420 Jones St. A 12-step recovery program for people who have problems with food and weight. No fees. St. Lukes Outpatient Behavioral Health Program, 9 a.m. to noon Monday, Tuesday and Thursday on fifth floor of St. Luke's, located at 2720 Stone Park Blvd. Offers several levels of outpatient care including partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient, and group therapy. This program provides support and integrated treatment to individuals experiencing personal or relationship issues as a result of their mental illness. For more information and admission criteria, call 712-279-3906. Sobriety By Faith, 8:30 a.m. Saturdays at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 1421 Geneva St. For more information, call James Mothershead at 712-577-9715. The Link-Recovery and Freedom, at PMA Building, 6000 Gordon Drive; 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Saturday workshop, and Christian 12-step meeting 7 to 8 p.m. Tuesday. For all ages. Call Dee at 389-7432. Women in Recovery, meets monthly at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 1421 Geneva St. For details, call 712-255-4623. Tarahouse Meditation Center, 8 a.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 6:30 p.m. Fridays; 10 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays, all at 3112 Rebecca St. Three easy 10-minute sessions in small group; beginners welcome. For more information, call 490-6410. Blood pressure and blood sugar screening, 9 to 11 a.m. Wednesdays in the lobby at Westwood Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Free to public. Support Groups Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous, 7-8:30 p.m. Wednesdays at Hawkeye Club basement, 420 Jones St. For more information, call 277-5935. Celebrate Recovery, Bible-based 12-step recovery group. Thursdays at 6:30 at Sunnybrook Community Church, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive. Daycare provided. 712-490-3343. PFLAG of Siouxland, (Parents & Friends of Lesbians and Gays), 7 p.m., fourth Monday of January, March, May, July, September and November. St. Mark ELCA Church, 5200 Glenn Ave., in the upstairs meeting area. 712-258-3116. Singles widowed and divorced, all ages, 4 p.m., Sundays. McDonald's at Sixth Street and Lewis Boulevard. 712-252-2675. HIV/AIDS Support Group, meets weekly. For more information, call Darla or Teri at Siouxland Community Health Center, 712-252-2477 or 888-371-1965. La Leche League of Siouxland, breastfeeding support group meets every third Thursday at 11 a.m. at Morningside Lutheran Church. Children are welcome. For more information, call Mary at 712-546-7280 or Jacquie at 712-255-2998. Living Each Day Cancer Support Group, 7-8 p.m. second Thursday of the month, Floyd Valley Hospital, Conference Center Room 2, Le Mars, Iowa. Open to all cancer patients, cancer survivors and family members. No charge. Pre-register by calling 712-546-3441 or 800-642-6074, ext. 441. Mom and Baby Support Group, 10-11 a.m. last Monday of the month at the Orange City (Iowa) Hospital, lower level. For new moms and babies. 712-737-5260. Tri-State Sober Project, 12-step meeting, 7:30-8:30 p.m., Tuesdays, Friendship Community Church, 305 Sergeant Square Drive, Sergeant Bluff. 6-7 p.m., Thursdays, Transitional Services of Iowa, 1221 Pierce St., Sioux City. Doug's Donors Support Group, information for organ donors and recipients, 12:30-1:30 p.m. Wednesdays, 5:15-6:30 p.m. second and fourth Thursdays of the month at Mercy Cafeteria Woodbury Room. 712-277-1050. Divorce Care, noon Sundays starting Jan. 10; GriefShare, 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays starting Jan. 12; Single & Parenting, 6:30 p.m. Thursdays starting Jan. 14; all at Sunnybrook Community Church, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive, Sioux City. 712-276-5814. Multiple Sclerosis Support Group, 1:30-3:30 p.m. first Saturday of the month at the CNOS, Dakota Dunes. For anyone with MS and/or their families. Call Janet Limoges at 605-217-2726 prior to attending. NAMI Siouxland, (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Support Group meets 6:30 p.m., second Tuesday of the month at Friendship House, 1101 Court St. For individuals and family members dealing with mental illness. 712-255-4209. New Life Life Support Group, 3:30 p.m. every Saturday at 2929 W. Fourth St. Spiritual 12-step program. For more information, call Donald at 712-574-1744 or James at 712-255-7624. Post Polio Support Group, 11 a.m. first Thursday of the month at Perkins Restaurant by Menards. 712-490-8213. Relationship Support Group, 7 p.m. Fridays at Marketplace Mall. For more information, call 239-3129. Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, Individual and Support Groups. For more information, call CSADV in Sioux City at 712-258-7233; Plymouth County at 712-546-6764; Monona County at 712-423-3443. Advocacy and support available 24 hours a day at 1-800-982-7233. All services free of charge and confidential. Sickle Cell Disease Support Group, 11 a.m. third Saturday of each month at St. Luke's Hospital, meeting room 1. For patients, their family and any concerned member. Call La'Keshia Rainey at 712-203-2019 for more information. Sioux City Association of the Deaf, 7 p.m. third Saturday of the month at Morningside Church of Christ, 5015 Garretson Ave. Regular meeting, September-May; no meeting, June, July, August and December. Siouxland Autism Support Group, second Thursday of the month at Northwest Area Education Agency, 1520 Morningside Ave. For more information, call Julie Case at 712-490-8939. Siouxland Epilepsy Support Group, 5 p.m. third Tuesday of the month at Prestwick Apartment Clubhouse, 4230 Hickory Lane. For anyone diagnosed with seizures or epilepsy and family or friends. For more information, call Steve at 274-6927. Siouxland IC support group, meets quarterly in Sioux City. For patients struggling with interstital cystitis. For more information, call Jacque Dundas 316-641-9766. Siouxland Informational Group for the Blind, 2-5 p.m. second Tuesday of the month at Northern Hills Retirement Community, 4002 Teton Trace. For more information, call 712-266-8926 or 258-8151. Grief support group, 5:30-7:30 p.m., beginning Oct. 5 for 13 weeks (may join at any time), Crescent Park United Methodist Church, 2826 Myrtle St., Sioux City. Scott, 712-899-6315. Siouxland Ostomy Association, 2 p.m. first Sunday of each month (except September, which will be second Sunday; and no meetings June, July, August), in Room 300 at Mercy Medical Center, 801 Fifth St. For more information, call Dick Lindblom at 251-2453. Siouxland Parkinson Disease Support Group, 1 p.m. fourth Monday of the month at Siouxland Center for Active Generations, 313 Cook St. For more information, call at Jack Scherrman at 712-277-9337. Sojourners, support group for families of persons with life-threatening illness, 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays at St. Luke's Regional Medical Center, Room 416. For more information, call Marjorie Jarvill at 402-241-8637. South Sioux City Weight Support Group, 8:30 a.m. Wednesdays at St. Paul United Methodist Church, South Sioux City. For more information, call 494-1401 or 494-2133. Disabilities Resource Center of Siouxland, 520 Nebraska St., Suite 101: Women's Support Group, 1:30 p.m. first Wednesday of the month; LGBT Support Group, 1:30 p.m. first Friday of the month; Adult ADHD, 6 p.m. second Tuesday of the month; Advocacy Group, 1:30 p.m. third Tuesday of the month. For more information, call 712-255-1065. Take Off Pounds Sensibly, group meetings various times, days and locations in Siouxland. For information on the chapter in your area, call 1-800-932-TOPS. Voice Disorder Support Group, meets as needed at Mercy Medical Center, Buena Vista Room. 712-279-2686. Women's Peer Support Group, in Wayne and South Sioux City, Neb., for those who have experienced domestic abuse. For more information, call the Wayne office at 402-375-4633 or 1-800-440-4633; in South Sioux City, call 402-494-7592. Help and support available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Services free and confidential. Woodbury County D.M.D.A., noon-2 p.m. first Saturday of the month at Country Friendship Acres, 4501 West St.; 7-8 p.m. first Tuesday of the month at 515 Court St. in the Community Room; 7-8 p.m. second Tuesday of the month at 441 W. Third St. in the Community Room; 7-8 p.m. third Tuesday of the month at 409 W. Third St. in the Community Room. Support group for people with disabilities and mental disorders. Natural Mamas in Siouxland, 1 p.m., third Tuesday of each month in the Garretson room of the Morningside Public Library. All ages of children are welcome to come with moms. For sharing natural living tips, recipes, natural remedies and health, homemaking, mothering, etc. For more information, call 402-913-0038 or visit their Facebook page. A Step Beyond support group, 3:30 p.m. second Tuesday of the month, except for August, November and December when it meets at 5:30 p.m. (no meeting in January) at the Christy-Smith Resource Center, 1819 Morningside Ave. For more information, call 712-276-7319. Divorce care, 5 p.m., Sundays. Fireside room, Morningside Lutheran Church, 700 South Martha St. Gamblers Anonymous meetings, 4 p.m. Thursdays at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 315 Hamilton Blvd.; 7 p.m. Wednesdays, Morningside Presbyterian Church, 4327 Morningside Ave.; 7 p.m. Tuesdays, St. John Lutheran Church. 712-277-2901. Art therapy support group, 5:30 p.m. second Thursday of the month at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center. Registration required, call 252-9387. After Breast Cancer Support Group, 5:30 p.m. third Tuesday of the month at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center. For more information, call Brenda, 252-9370. After Prostate Cancer Support Group, 5:15 p.m. first Tuesday of the month at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center. For more information, call 252-9426. Alzheimer's Association, Big Sioux Chapter Support Group, 2 p.m. second Tuesday of the month; 4 p.m. third Tuesday of the month (under age 65) at 201 Pierce St., Suite 110 (Famous Dave's building); and 6 p.m. first Tuesday of the month at the Barnes and Noble Cafe. For more information, call Emily Lord at 712-279-5802. Christy-Smith Funeral Homes of Sioux City, extensive grief library at the Morningside location. Open to the public during weekday hours. For more information, call 276-7319. Chronic Pain/Chronic Illness Support Group, 7:30 p.m. fourth Wednesday of the month in the lower level of the Orange City Hospital. For more information, call 712-737-5260. Connections Area Agency on Aging, and Mercy Medical Centers Older Adult Services Welcome to Medicare, 1:30-4 p.m., the first Friday of every month at Connections Area Agency on Aging, 2301 Pierce St. To pre-register, or for more information, contact Connections Area Agency on Aging at 712-279-6900. SIOUX CITY | The Most Reverend R. Walker Nickless will ordain Andrew Galles and Matthew Solyntjes to the transitional diaconate at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Cathedral of the Epiphany, 1000 Douglas St. Galles is a native of Remsen St. Mary's Parish and graduated from St. Mary High School. He studied architecture at Iowa State in Ames, Iowa, and philosophy and theology at Conception Seminary in Missouri. He is currently studying for his bachelor of sacred theology and master of divinity degrees at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver. Solyntjes, a native of St. Andrew Parish in Sibley, Iowa, graduated with a bachelor of science degree in management information system from Iowa State University. The following fall he started in the seminary. He is currently in the third theology at St. Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology in Indiana. Seminarians are called to be ordained as transitional deacons after five to seven years of rigorous study, formation and prayer. They serve as deacons in parishes and return to seminary for one further year of study before being called to be ordained as priests. Heather Cherrys vision was fairly good, but the stay-at-home mom in rural Nevada was tired of reaching for her glasses when she wanted to see into the distance during a hike or fully enjoy the sight of wild horses grazing at the side of the road. Lasik vision correction surgery offered the hope of 20-20 vision, and when she went to an eye surgery center in January, she was told she was an excellent candidate. But then came the consent form, with warnings about possible side effects such as diminished night vision and eye irritation. Cherry went online, found the patient website Lasik Complications and saw complaints of chronic eye pain and severely impaired vision. I dont feel good about this, she said when she canceled her surgery. I dont feel like this is the right choice for me. Potential patients are less likely to opt for Lasik than in the procedures heyday of 2000-2007, when ads flooded the airwaves and more than a million of the outpatient surgeries were performed each year. The number of laser vision correction surgeries per year a category including Lasik and the closely related PRK procedure has dropped more than 50 percent, from about 1.5 million surgeries in 2007 to 604,000 in 2015, according to the eye care data source Market Scope. Explanations for the decline in volume vary widely, with eye surgeons blaming the economic downturn and noting that some practices have seen increases in the last few years. I cant tell you exactly why Lasik volumes are down, but there are some ideas and theories says Dr. Kerry Solomon, president of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery. One is that the economy hasnt fully recovered. Two, were dealing with a different generation, millennials, and millennials make decisions differently, maybe they have different priorities. Maybe the millennial generation wont adopt Lasik to the same extent the baby boomers did. Maybe they will, and we have to reach out to them differently. Theres also less marketing going on than there was in 2006 and 2007, Solomon says, and not as many doctors are doing Lasik. Anti-Lasik patient advocates say potential patients are finding websites such as Lasik Complications and reading sobering stories about patients who endure debilitating side effects. Word of mouth may also be having an effect, says Paula Cofer, an administrator of the Lasik Complications Facebook Group. Interest in Lasik, in which a surgeon uses a laser to reshape your cornea, exploded in the late 90s. Back in the cowboy days, as I call them, people were doing this (surgery) in the mall, with people watching, recalls Dr. Daniel Durrie, a clinical professor of ophthalmology at the University of Kansas Medical Center who says hes very happy thats no longer happening. We used to have an entity that rolled a truck into the Hy-Vee (grocery) store, and people would walk in one area, and get their Lasik, and walk out the other, like they were at the state fair. Cofer, who had Lasik 15 years ago, says she began experiencing disturbing side effects within days. At night, ordinary lights transformed into massive starbursts, with rays radiating outward from a bright center. The visual distortions continue, she says, swallowing large portions of her field of vision and making night driving impossible. I can see eight moons in the sky at night all smeared and overlapping, says Cofer, who lives near Tampa, Fla. She also experiences daily eye pain, which she describes as a burning sensation similar to having soap in your eyes. Theres little question that Lasik complications occur, but the magnitude of the problem is a matter of debate, with anti-Lasik advocates saying serious complications are common, and eye surgeons, who cite patient satisfaction rates of 95 percent and higher, saying serious complications are rare. The FDA is taking steps to address the complication-rate issue with its Lasik Quality of Life Collaboration Project, the results of which havent yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. In a presentation of preliminary findings, available at the FDA website, the FDAs director of the Division of Ophthalmic and Ear, Nose and Throat Devices, Malvina B. Eydelman, reported on more than 400 patients who had Lasik and filled out questionnaires at three months post-Lasik. Up to 4 percent of Lasik patients in the study experienced very or extremely bothersome visual symptoms at three months post-Lasik (without visual correction), according to Eydelmans presentation. Up to 45 percent of patients who had no visual symptoms before Lasik had developed new visual symptoms at three months post-Lasik, she reported. Durrie, a clinical investigator for the FDA study, says that, according to his calculations, presented at the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery annual meeting earlier this month, only 1 out of 551 patients in the study reported visual symptoms that caused them difficulty in performing their usual activities at the three-month mark. Thats 0.2 percent. Durrie also says that only 1.4 percent to 2.3 percent of patients said they were dissatisfied with Lasik at the three-month mark and that 64 percent of patients who had visual symptoms before Lasik had no visual symptoms at the three-month mark. By his calculations, 23 percent of patients who reported no visual symptoms before Lasik had at least one visual symptom at three months post-Lasik. Asked about the discrepancy between that figure and the FDAs, Durrie says his figures are more up-to-date than Eydelmans. An FDA spokesperson says Eyedelmans 45 percent figure is correct but applied to only part of the study. SIOUX CITY | Spurred by warm, rainy weather, mosquitoes soon will be ramping up their numbers in Iowa as summer begins. Could some of these pesky insects be carrying Zika virus? A revised map released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention places nearly the entire state in the potential range of Aedes albopictus, a species of mosquito that can transmit Zika virus. The virus has been scientifically linked to babies born with microcephaly, an abnormally small head, and Guillain Barre Syndrome, a rare and potentially life-threatening condition in which the immune system attacks the nerves causing paralysis. Since February, six people -- two men and four women -- have been confirmed to have Zika virus in the state, according to the Iowa Department of Public Health. All of those cases were travel-related. Tyler Brock, Siouxland District Health Department deputy director, said West Nile virus, a mosquito-borne virus that infects the brain and spinal cord, is a much bigger concern in Northwest Iowa than Zika virus. Over the years, he said Aedes mosquitoes very rarely have been found in the state. Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are more likely to spread Zika virus than Aedes albopictus. "It just means that they've found a mosquito of that type in that region. It's not necessarily an indication that the mosquitoes are established and expected to be normal in those areas," said Brock, who contends Aedes mosquitoes previously identified in Iowa could've hitched a ride in a traveler's luggage. "We've been doing mosquito surveillance for 45 years in Iowa and there's not been more than a teeny, tiny handful of those types of mosquitoes." Siouxland District Health Department collects mosquitoes and tests a flock of chickens at Snyder Bend Park weekly for West Nile virus from summer through fall. Peak season for West Nile virus typically hits in August. Brock said Woodbury County surveillance efforts haven't expanded to include Zika virus. He said health officials in southern Iowa are using different forms of trapping to catch Aedes mosquitoes that travel north. "Every year they monitor and identify and count the mosquitoes. They're going to be looking for the types of mosquitoes that carry Zika virus," he said. "That is going on, but we're not involved in that." Local transmission possible Since last May, people living in more than 40 countries and territories mainly in Central and South America and the Caribbean have been infected with Zika virus, which was discovered in the Zika Forest in Uganda in 1947. There is no vaccine to prevent infection or medication to treat the virus. One in five people who are infected with the virus develop symptoms, which include fever, rash, joint pain and red eyes. Zika is most often transmitted through the bite of infected mosquitoes, but it can also be spread through sexual contact. The CDC says no local mosquito-borne Zika virus cases have been reported in U.S. states. Iowa's first case of Zika virus, which was reported on Feb. 19, was contracted by a woman between 61 and 80 years of age with a history of travel to Central America. Two more women living in the state were identified with Zika virus that month. One of them, between 61 and 80 years of age, had traveled to South America. The other, between 41 and 60, had visited the Caribbean. In March, an Iowa man between 18 and 40 years of age tested positive for Zika virus after traveling to South America. Another woman between 41 and 60 years of age, who traveled to Central America, was diagnosed with Zika virus in April. A month later, a man between 18 and 40 years of age contracted Zika after traveling to Central America. Daniel Lamptey, an infectious disease specialist at Mercy Medical Center, said local transmission is possible in Iowa and that residents should be cautious. He recommends closing windows and running air conditioners this summer to keep mosquitoes out of homes, and draining standing water that may be accumulating in barrels, flower pots and pools to prevent mosquitoes from breeding. If you're going to be in a mosquito-infested area, Lamptey advises wearing a long-sleeved shirt, long pants and a mosquito repellent containing DEET or oil of lemon eucalyptus. "We do have the mosquitoes in this part of the country. If you have the mosquitoes, all you need is one person or a few people with the infection to come into the state," he said. "When the mosquitoes bite those who have the infection, then they can transmit it to other people." A pregnant woman can pass Zika virus to her fetus during pregnancy or at delivery. According to the CDC, 157 pregnant women in the continental United States and 122 in U.S. territories, primarily Puerto Rico, have been infected. A girl, who was born Tuesday in New Jersey to a Honduran woman, is the second baby to be born in the United States with Zika-related microcephaly. The first baby with the condition was born in Hawaii earlier this year. In addition to microcephaly, fetuses and infants infected with Zika virus before birth have developed eye defects and hearing loss and their growth has been impaired. In February, Brock said the Siouxland District Health Department was receiving a few calls daily from asymptomatic people who traveled to an affected country and wanted to be tested for Zika virus. Since then, he said those calls have dropped off. Lamptey said a woman who travels to a Zika-affected area and comes back healthy could still have been exposed to the virus. "We're only beginning to see how devastating (Zika) is. We know that Zika virus causes babies to be born with small heads -- that is now an established fact," he said. "Until you get tested and it comes back negative, you have to be careful whether or not you're going to get pregnant." FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. Jeff West, his kidneys failing, was dreading having to quit his job and spend years tethered to a dialysis machine. But shortly before treatments even began, the Boynton Beach man received an unexpected gift a kidney donated by a volunteer whom he had never met. It happened through whats called a transplant chain: a set of surgeries, stacked like dominoes, that depend on people willing to literally give a part of themselves to someone they dont know. A growing trend in kidney donation, the coordinators of transplant chains say they aim to get kidneys to more renal patients, and do it faster. They also say they can sometimes make better medical matches than through traditional one-on-one donations between friends or relatives. They do it by signing up hundreds of renal patients and their loved ones who are willing to donate to them but are incompatible due to blood type or other issues. These programs then use sophisticated computer software to generate new donor-recipient pairs between strangers. Its sort of like medical speed-dating. The bigger the dating pool, the better the chances for a great match. And chains involve live kidneys that have a much longer potential life span than a deceased donation. It can open up an option for a kidney that people otherwise might not get, said Michael Spigler, vice president of patient services and kidney disease education for the American Kidney Fund. Wests chain started in December when Heather Sherman, a 41-year-old software support technician from Jacksonville, agreed to donate to anyone in need through the nonprofit National Kidney Registry. That person ended up being a 47-year-old mother of two who received Shermans donation on Dec. 9 at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. Wests transplant happened a month later, at the end of the chain, when he received a kidney removed from a 53-year-old anonymous person in Atlanta and flown to South Florida. In between was a tightly choreographed dance involving five hospitals in five states, eight recipients and donors, kidneys being flown or driven hundreds of miles and four lives saved, or even more when you consider those successful transplants moved other people up on wait lists. It literally gave me my life back. Its a reaffirmation that there still is good in the world, that we can impact others in a positive way, said West, 52, still emotional four months after his successful surgery at Cleveland Clinic Florida in Weston. Shermans kidney also was removed there. It was the first time Cleveland Clinic Florida one of nine Florida hospitals certified to do living kidney transplants, and one of two in the state currently affiliated with the registry had participated in a chain. Its an emerging option for people with serious renal disease who, depending on their blood type and medical condition, could wait five years or more for a lifesaving donation. West, who loves his job as a technical representative for a heating and air conditioning manufacturer, said his doctors had told him last spring he would wait at least two years for an organ and probably could not work as his kidneys deteriorated. I accepted my career was over, although I thought dialysis would be like a death sentence, said West, who has genetic polycystic kidney disease. Then suddenly, they said: We have a donor for you. Are you available in January? I was blown away. Improving the odds for renal patients is critical, Spigler said. About 100,000 people nationwide are waiting for kidneys, including 4,500 in Florida. With only about 18,000 transplants done annually, Spigler said the average wait is about two years but goes up to five years for patients with rarer blood types. Its a remarkable process. People are connecting around it. We are seeing a dramatic improvement in our ability to take patients off waiting lists and (get) better quality kidneys, said Dr. Diego C. Reino, a transplant and hepatobiliary surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic Floridas transplant center. Paired donations, or swaps between strangers, within a single hospital began about 15 years ago. Expanding on paired exchanges, the first chains involving multiple hospitals came about six years later. The number of good Samaritan, or non-directed, donors grew 27 percent over the past four years to 209 in 2015, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), a nonprofit with a federal contract to oversee donations and transplants. The number of people involved in chains or paired exchanges has changed little during that time, UNOS statistics show, with 578 recipients and donors last year. Still, anonymous donations between people who were not related comprised only about 4 percent of all living kidney transplants last year, according to UNOS, which operates the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network that also coordinates chains. Ruthanne Leishman, director of the UNOS network, said kidney transplant chain registries remain largely unregulated, although there have been calls for drafting policies or forming one national network. This is a new world, and things are sorting themselves out, Leishman said. The nice thing about having competing kidney paired donation programs is it fosters innovation. A year ago, Cleveland Clinic Florida became one of 77 transplant centers nationwide affiliated with the Long Island-based National Kidney Registry, one of the three main U.S. nonprofits involved with transplant chains. It was started in 2008 by a software and data processing entrepreneur, Garet Hil, after his family struggled to find a kidney donor for his 10-year-old daughter. In eight years, the registry has generated more than 1,700 transplants, with 88 percent of them through chains, said Joe Sinacore, the registrys director of education and development. Most people enter the registry as pairs someone who needs a kidney and a friend or relative who did not match with the patient but still is willing to donate with between 200 to 300 pairs in the system. Donors and recipients are not charged, but transplant centers pay a fee for the registrys services, Sinacore said, which is billed back to the recipients insurance. He declined to say how much. The registry generated the nations longest transplant chain last year, involving 35 transplants at 25 hospitals in 15 states and the District of Columbia, and spanning 3 1/2 months. Most chains, however, run about five transplants long, Sinacore said. All of them start the same way, with whats called a good Samaritan donor, someone who simply wants to give the gift of life and enters the system alone. In the case of Jeff West, that person was Heather Sherman. As per registry protocol, West and Sherman were told nothing about anyone in the chain prior to the transplants. Sherman knew little about renal disease and first heard of the registry through a news story. Its the first time it occurred to me that I could donate to a stranger, Sherman said. It was unbelievable that I could make that kind of difference, that I could give life to someone. Good Samaritan donors are carefully screened psychologically as well as physically, to make sure they understand what they are doing, and not just trying to fill some hole in their lives, Sinacore said. Sherman said her family initially questioned why a healthy young woman would want to give one of her organs to someone she didnt know. Yet Sherman said she never had any doubts a feeling confirmed when she began corresponding with the woman who received her kidney in Ohio in December. Sherman said her recipient had been on dialysis for several years but now was able to attend her sons track meets and go to church again. Although Shermans kidney is not the one nestled in his body, West said he considers her a lifesaver along with his own anonymous donor because she started the chain that ended with him. Meeting Sherman three weeks after his surgery was very emotional for me, he said. I was very moved by her altruism. CHARLOTTE, N.C. Amanda Rosen is a 24-year-old mother of two who has never had cancer. But when she heard about a problem some cancer patients were having, she came up with a solution to make their lives a little more comfortable. With help from donors and volunteers, she has produced and distributed more than 1,000 free port pillows small wallet-size cushions that give patients relief from the pressure of across-the-shoulder seat belts. The need arises when patients who are having chemotherapy get a port a catheter through which drugs are delivered. The port is usually installed in the chest, beneath the skin and near the shoulder, and stays there throughout therapy so patients dont have to get needle-sticks each time they get infusions. But placement of the port can make wearing a seat belt uncomfortable. The port sticks right out where the seat belt goes, said Lynne Holcomb of Charlotte, who is undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer. To avoid the rubbing, Holcomb would tuck the seat belt under her right arm not very safe. Knowing that Holcomb was a Clemson fan, Rosen made her friend a 7-inch-by-4-inch pillow in an orange and purple chevron pattern. A Velcro strap wraps around the seat belt to keep the pillow in place. Holcomb said it allowed her to ride comfortably on a recent 10-hour drive. Im amazed at her ingenuity and her kindness to want to do this for people, Holcomb said. We are taking another trip tomorrow so Im going to be using it again. I have it packed in my pocketbook. Rosen, who works part time for Carolinas HealthCare System and runs a monogramming business from home, said her volunteer venture exploded recently after she and Holcomb appeared on the local news. Now shes getting 20 to 30 requests a day for pillows from across the country. On her Facebook page, people ask how to get them. Do you sell these? I am always complaining how my seat belt rubs my port, one visitor asked. And Rosen gladly responds: They are free! Her goal is to give them to everybody who has a port. When she started four months ago, Rosen made a couple of pillows with fabric, stuffing and Velcro she bought herself. Her mother, Jamie Lambert, has also bought material and covered other expenses. But now, theyre getting the materials donated. One woman sent $20, which can buy 10 pounds of stuffing to make 300 pillows. Susan Gordon, who works at Springs Creative Distributors in Rock Hill, South Carolina, donated about 50 yards of fabric and has promised more. The Wal-Mart in Indian Land, South Carolina, agreed to donate fabric scraps regularly after Rosen gave one of her pillows to a store manager, whose sister had a port. Other volunteers are doing the sewing. Robin Harris, who learned about Rosens project through Facebook, has sewn about half the 3,000 port pillows theyve made so far, using up about 30 spools of thread. Harris said the owner of a Monroe upholstery shop gave her a bag of scrap fabric, enough to make 60 or 70 pillows. At her sewing machine, Harris completes each pillow in about four minutes. How else could I help people while sitting at home in my pajamas watching Netflix? she said. The choices of colors and patterns seem endless. There are Ninja turtles, butterflies, kittens and puppies. Characters from Disney movies and Shopkins toys. Team colors for the Carolina Panthers, the North Carolina Tar Heels and the Louisiana State Tigers. Rosen has given hundreds of pillows to patients at Carolinas HealthCare and plans to expand to other groups. And shell send them in the mail to anyone who asks. She doesnt require much verification. Its pretty much the honor system. Rosen, who is bald from an autoimmune condition called alopecia, said she empathizes with some of the trials that cancer patients face. As a child, she resisted pressure to wear a wig. It would have been expensive and uncomfortable, she said. She said she doesnt think patients with ports should have to pay extra for comfort. The pillows she saw online sell for $20 to $50 each. What is important are the little things in life, she said. Port pillows are one of those little things that make a big impact on peoples lives. SIOUX CITY | An informational program to highlight racial disparity in the child welfare system is scheduled for Tuesday. Katy Swalwell, assistant education professor at Iowa State University, will present "History of Anti-Black Racism and Struggles Against It in Iowa" at the program, which begins at 9:45 a.m. at the Stark Student Center at Briar Cliff University. The program ends at 3 p.m. Swalwell will speak in the morning. A panel/group discussion will be facilitated after the presentation. Lunch will be provided. Iowa's 3rd Judicial District and the Iowa Department of Human Services are collaborating on the program, part of a continuing effort to address disparity in the child welfare system. Tuesday's program is aimed at reducing disproportionality and disparate outcomes for children and families of color. For more information, call the DHS at (712) 255-2913, extension 2107. SPENCER, Iowa | Eaton Corporation has announced layoffs of 23 employees here within the next 60 days, and a total of some 70 of about its 180 employees within the next 12 months. Eaton laid off 20 employees in February, and announced then that further evaluation of the product lines would take place. While no announcement was made about the future of the line that will be idled in Spencer, Eaton had been training Chinese nationals here in recent months. Scott Schroeder, Eatons manager of external communications, said the company decided to "expand some of our restructuring and cost-reduction activities this year." Kelly Jasko, director of communications for Eatons Industrial Center in Cleveland, Ohio, said late Thursday that eligible employees will be offered Eatons severance package, which includes outplacement services. This decision is not a reflection on Spencer employees who have worked very hard over the years to meet our customers' needs. This decision is the result of an ongoing review of our manufacturing processes to ensure that Eaton is well-positioned for the future and that our businesses operate as efficiently as possible, Jasko continued. Hydraulic pumps and motors for use in mobile and industrial hydraulic applications have been manufactured in the Spencer plant since 1974. Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, Eaton Corporation is a power management company with 2015 sales of $20.9 billion. Eaton has approximately 99,000 employees and sells products to customers in more than 175 countries. SHELDON, Iowa | Community college officials in Northwest Iowa say modest tuition increases are needed to counter higher expenses and minimal growth in state aid. Gov. Terry Branstad on Friday signed legislation providing an extra $3 million, or 1.5 percent, in state funding next year to be split by the state's 15 community colleges. The state contributed no increase in aid the previous year. Last week, the Northwest Iowa Community College board of directors voted unanimously to raise tuition 4.6 percent, from $150 to $157 per credit hour for in-state students and $160 to $167 per credit hour for out-of-state students. Mark Brown, vice president of operations and finance for the Sheldon-based school, said the increases reflect the range necessary to fund operations in the next academic year while factoring in state aid and property tax revenues. He said the rate helps keep tuition as low as possible, but also addresses institutional needs. The financial models we use to monitor the ongoing financial health of our institution reflected that a tuition adjustment in the 4 percent range would be necessary to properly fund operations for the upcoming year, he said in an email to the Journal. In the last two academic years, Brown said NCC raised in-state tuition by 2 percent. The Western Iowa Tech Community College board will consider a slight increase in its tuition for next year at its June meeting, President Terry Murrell said Thursday. Murrell said no number has been proposed, but annual increases are usually held to $2 to $5 per credit hour. WITCC's current in-state tuition is $139 per credit hour, with out-of-state students paying a dollar more. WITCC has its main campus in Sioux City, with satellite campuses in Cherokee, Denison, Le Mars and Mapleton. Murrell said tuition increases help the college meet expenses during a time of limited state aid. WITCC recently approved 3.5 percent increase on salary and benefit packages for faculty and staff. Last year, we didnt get any increase in state funding and this year, we got a percent and a half, he said. With salaries, we have to be able to pay the bills or else we are in trouble on that. To decrease the burden on students, he added the board prefers to increase tuition little by little each year instead of having one large, one-time increase. Community college officials point out that tuition remains a bargain, even with a rate increase. We also think our new tuition rate will continue to keep NCC competitive with community colleges both in Iowa and neighboring states, Brown said. The Iowa Board of Regents approved a measure to increase tuition at the three state universities -- the University of Iowa, University of Northern Iowa and Iowa State University -- by 4.4 percent, or nearly $300 per year. SIOUX CITY | Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Rob Hogg on Thursday said his record of supporting both environmental causes and business growth makes him the best candidate to try to oust 36-year Republican U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley. "I want to be the leader for clean water, clean energy and climate action, just like I have been in the Iowa Legislature. I think those issues are increasingly important to Iowans," said Hogg, a state senator from Cedar Rapids. Hogg spoke to more than 20 people at Pierce Street Coffee Works as part of a swing through 11 towns in his final push to get voter support prior to the Democratic primary Tuesday. The other three Democratic candidates are Patty Judge, a former Iowa lieutenant governor and secretary of agriculture, of Albia, and former state legislators Bob Krause of Fairfield, and Tom Fiegen, of Clarence. Hogg noted his opponents each lost their most recent bids for public office, so he's best suited to take on Grassley. "I've also won five elections in a row, and I am the only candidate who can say that," Hogg said. Hogg said he's raised more than $250,000 for the senate race and 90 percent of that money came from Iowans. Hogg also pointed to the fact that 90 current and former legislators have endorsed him. Hogg said he's been hearing from Iowans primarily concerned about clean water, climate change, immigration and mental health issues. The Hogg stop came the day after the four candidates participated in a debate in Des Moines. Hogg said the debate may not have helped Democrats make their voting decision, so he's using the numerous public appearances to give people a chance to see him. He pointed to holding 18 other events recently, including Northwest Iowa stops in Spencer and Sac City. Hogg contrasted his campaigning approach to that of Judge, who Iowa Republicans have cited for holding few public events, throwing out the barb of Where's Patty? Judge, who has backing from Senate Democrats in Washington, has scheduled a series of stops up to the Tuesday primary, but none are in Siouxland. Fiegen and Krause have not announced public campaign stops in the area. "Iowans need to sit down and figure out who is going to be our best nominee against Senator Grassley. Primaries are always the hardest vote, because you not only have to look at who do I agree with most, but who do I think will have the best chance of winning," Hogg said. SIOUX CITY | Iowans will get one chance to see U.S. Rep. Steve King and his fellow Republican challenger debate issues for an hour Friday night in Sioux City. King, a seven-term incumbent from Kiron, and Bertrand, a state senator from Sioux City, accepted an invitation to the Friday debate, which is co-sponsored by the Journal, KSCJ radio and KTIV, the NBC affiliate in Sioux City. The debate, which starts at 7 p.m. in Eppley Auditorium on the campus of Morningside College, will be broadcast live to much of the 4th District's 39-county by KTIV and its sister stations. The Journal will live stream the debate at www.siouxcityjournal.com. The debate comes just four days before Tuesday's 4th District primary vote that will determine which Republican candidate advances to the November general election to face Democrat Kim Weaver, of Sheldon. Iowa State University professor Steffen Schmidt said he expects the debate will be more about issues than personalities, "which is a disadvantage for Bertrand, since King knows the issues and can rattle off years of his work" in Washington. Schmidt said King will likely use the debate to show himself as "the tea party outsider who has worked hard to keep Washington elites and bureaucrats in check." Buena Vista University professor Bradley Best said "King is a candidate with some weaknesses, but debate performance is not among them. Hes remarkably able to defend himself -- a result of much practice." Best said Bertrand's best strategy is to set himself apart "as a candidate with a better temperament, a uniter, perhaps, and better able to build relationships in the U.S. House essential to the long-term interests of the Fourth District." Best said one issue that drew Bertrand to run will undoubtedly come up in the debate, as the professor expects Bertrand to press on the difficulties King created for himself on renewable fuel and energy issues. 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 biofuels such as corn-based ethanol. That caused Gov. Terry Branstad and others to publicly criticize King's choice, and the Iowa 4th District campaign talk has included assertions from Bertrand and King on which has been more supportive of the ethanol industry. Journal Editor Bruce Miller said the event will be a boon for people still making up their minds on the 4th District GOP primary. "Fridays debate will give voters a rare opportunity to learn just how the two candidates differ on the issues. Were glad to be part of the process, adding one more layer of our coverage of the Fourth District Congressional race. We think it will be an exciting evening and a good way to learn how they best plan to represent us," Miller said. Shortly before the vote on last year's gas/diesel tax hike was taken in Iowa, I contacted, via emails, my state representative at the time, Democrat David Dawson, and my state senator, Republican Rick Bertrand. I wanted to know their respective positions concerning this issue. Mr. Dawson replied promptly while I did not receive a reply from Mr. Bertrand. I sent another email, but received no reply. I have on occasion sent my U.S. representative, Republican Steve King, emails asking for his positions on various topics. I have always received replies that addressed my concerns, and that's the point of this Letter to the Editor. To me, if a constituent calls upon their representative, either in Des Moines or Washington, D.C., they should get a reply. I will vote for the person who responds to my questions. Probably even if the response is not to my liking. Why? Because I think most people want to be listened to. - Scott Bowman, Sioux City Stephanie Holmes is founder and CEO of The Money Finder, a financial services training company, based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. After a decade-long career as a financial advisor, Holmes discovered that her real passion was to make cash flow planning a standardized process in financial services. Upon this discovery, she sold her book of business and now shares her expertise with financial advisors across Canada. In an interview with Small Business Trends, recorded in April 2016 at the Infusionsoft ICON conference, Holmes talked about her passion for providing clients with expert financial advice. She also shared other valuable tips for small business owners and entrepreneurs, to impact their bottom line. A Passion For Financial Services Training When she became a financial advisor, Holmes had high hopes she would provide exactly that, advice, only to be sorely disappointed. When people see a financial advisor, what ends up happening is that they leave with products, which are also important, but thats not financial advice, she said. I was an advisor for ten years and became extremely frustrated by the fact that, although my managers said I was going to help people, all they taught me was how to sell life insurance. Holmes went to her managers, telling them that she was encountering clients with $100,000 or more in annual income but who did not know where their money was going. To her dismay, the response she received was less than supportive. [My managers] patted me on the head like a Cocker Spaniel and said, Dont be so naive. If people dont know where their money is going, its not your problem,' she said. The response proved to be the catalyst Holmes needed to pursue a career path that more closely aligned with her goal of providing cash flow advice to clients. I determined that, if I couldnt find a course, structure or method to make it a regular thing for my clients to come to me for advice about how to manage their cash flow, then I would create one myself, she said. Holmes then sold her book of business and built what eventually became The Money Finder, a financial services training firm that provides online training for financial advisors. When we started The Money Finder, we thought we would focus on helping the public directly, she said. What we discovered, however, was that financial advisors serve as accountability partners for the person, so we made them our client instead. Cash Flow Planning Advice Through her financial services training products, Holmes created a way for every financial advisor to provide their clients with cash flow planning advice. We give advisors the tools to do what they were recruited to do: fund peoples dreams, she said. I cant tell you how many times financial professionals send us emails or come up to us at conferences and say This is what I thought I was going to do when somebody told me I should be a financial advisor, yet I had never been given the tools until today. You changed my life. The change in direction not only resulted in a payoff for Holmes emotionally but also financially. This year, her company will earn nearly $3 million in recurring income. Weve grown our revenue by 750 percent in two and a half years, Holmes said. From early 2013 to early 2016, we went from very little income to tracking toward $3 million in recurring revenue. Also, during that time, we went from just me and a virtual assistant that I used a few hours a week to 17 full-time employees. Advice for Small Business Owners, Entrepreneurs During the interview, Holmes shared three pieces of advice for small business owners and entrepreneurs that, although not directly related to financial matters, could impact the bottom line if put into practice. Stop Doing and Delegate Holmes advised that business owners stop doing busy work and learn to delegate, focusing instead on activities that grow the company. All the things you do in your day where you tell yourself No one but me can do this or I can do it better or I cant trust anyone else to do it, if youre doing a lot of tasks you have to stop, Holmes said. Instead, what you should be doing is setting the vision, removing barriers and turning people into leaders. Create Space in Your Schedule She also advises business leaders to make space in their calendar and appointment book for time to think. To be a great entrepreneur, founder of a great company or a great CEO who grows your business and multiplies your people, you need time to think, Holmes said. Make room in your calendar and appointment book and protect it like your life depends on it. Make sure your team protects it as well, as the most valuable revenue-producing time in your entire schedule. Learn to Decide Decide to succeed, Holmes advised. The word decide in Latin means to cut off, to let go, to stop and move in a particular direction, she said. You should decide with a maniacal focus to only do those things that positively impact your life, your purpose, your mission, your clients, family and team. If thats not what the task youre doing at the moment offers, it doesnt belong there. Last week was quite eventful for PPC marketers. Google announced a number of changes coming to AdWords and Analytics during the Google Performance Summit, with mobile being the huge focus. Google revealed several incredible mobile statistics. We were introduced to Expanded Text Ads. We got a sneak preview of the new Google AdWords interface. And so much more. Another big change was what Google described as the next generation of local search ads. So what exactly are these new Google maps ads? Whats changing? Here are answer to the top 10 questions youre asking (or should be asking!) about the new local search ads on Google Maps. 1. How are Local Search Ads on Google Maps changing? The new local search ads on Google Maps are designed to help businesses be more visible at moments when consumers are searching online (especially on a mobile device) for somewhere to eat or shop. In the coming weeks and months, Google will be revealing several new Maps ad formats and features that are designed to drive more foot traffic to your physical location. These include Promoted Pins (including brand logos), in-store promotions, customizable business pages, and local inventory search. Googles goal is to optimize the Google Maps experience so that users actually see the ads but without going so far as to become obtrusive and become a distraction to users who may be driving (e.g., there are no plans for interstitials or audio). Google introduced local ads to the Google Maps app in 2013. 2. Where will the New Ads be Shown? The new local search ads on Google maps will appear within the app, on the Google Maps mobile, desktop, and tablet sites, and on Google.com Expanded Maps results. In the Google Maps app, which has more than 1 billion downloads, a single ad with a purple ad label will be featured in the top spot above the organic results. For searches within Google Maps, Google will show a maximum of two ads with a purple ad label at the top of the search results. For Google.com location-related searches (officially known as Google.com Expanded Maps Results), users who click on the More places link at the bottom of the Local 3-Pack will first see a Google Maps ad in the top position with a yellow ad label, above the other map results. 3. Why is Google Making These Change? During the Summit, Google revealed some insane statistics that should make all marketers stand up and take notice. Here are seven mind-blowing mobile stats that explain why you must bridge the gap from the mobile world to the physical world: Around 90 percent of all global sales will happen in stores, as opposed to online. Nearly a third of mobile searches are related to location. Location-related searches have been growing 50 percent faster than mobile searches overall in the past year. Over a billion people now use Maps. Google searches (on Google.com and Maps) guide consumers to 1.5 billion destinations every year. 84 percent of consumers conduct local searches. Three out of every four people who search for something nearby using their smartphone end up visiting a store within a day, and 28 percent of those searches result in a purchase. If your business has a physical location and you want to grow, then its extremely important that you make it ridiculously easy for people to find you online when they pull out their smartphone to search for what you sell. 4. What are Promoted Pins? Google will soon bring Promoted Pins to Maps. These branded pins are designed to help your business stand out to people who are nearby or who will walk or drive right by your business. Its your opportunity to be a unicorn in a sea of donkeys. For example, if you run a restaurant, your ad might convince someone passing by to grab a bite to eat. Or if you want people to stop at your gas station, your Promoted Pin could convince people to pull in and fuel up. Heres what Promoted Pins look like: So if you were in need of a pharmacy, Walgreens ad might appear at the top of your search results (assuming there is one near you). In addition to highlighting details about Walgreens, youll see an in-store promotion ($3 off contact lens solution). The right promotion could help your business drive more store visits. For example, lets say youre on your way back from successfully buying contact solution at Walgreens. Theres a Starbucks a couple blocks away and youre a regular customer. To entice you to visit, Starbucks might use a Promoted Pin on Google Maps to offer you $1 off any beverage if you use your rewards card. 5. How does Google Maps Choose Which Ads to Show? There could be hundreds of stores near your location but only a few precious ad spots. How does Google know which listing is the most relevant to the searcher? Google says it is using a variety of signals, including: Query context. Location. Search/browsing history. Interests. Behaviors. Time of day. Demographics. What Google Maps is doing is similar to the ad serving used on the Google Display Network. So if Google knows that you dont often go to Starbucks, Google Maps wont show you Starbucks ads. Pretty smart, eh? 6. What Else is Changing with Google Maps? Local pages are getting a new look, all designed to increase foot traffic to your store. When someone taps on a local search ad, theyll be taken to a page that advertisers can customize. The local pages will include important business details such as store hours, phone number, address, and driving directions. Businesses can also highlight offers that are unique to that promoted location (e.g., 10 percent off an item) and allow people to search for items in your stores local inventory. Google will only show local inventory if it is relevant to your business. 7. How can I Display Local Inventory? According to Google data, one in four people avoid visiting stores because they dont know whether a specific product is in stock. Thats why you should bring local inventory information into your customizable local page, along with ability to search through that inventory. How do you display that information? You need to provide Google with your inventory feed. You can see Googles specifications here. 8. How Much will the New Local Search Ads Cost? Advertisers are currently charged on a cost-per-click basis for Google Local Search ads. These clicks include: Get location details. Get directions. Click-to-call. 9. When will the New Local Search Ads Roll Out? The new local search ads are currently in beta. Google hasnt revealed an exact date when the ads will become more widely available, but its a safe bet they will start rolling out to more advertisers within the next three months. 10. What Do Location-Based Businesses Need to Do? While you wait for access to the new ads, there are a couple things you can do now. First, and most important, you must enable location extensions. Only ads with location extensions enabled will be eligible to show. Location extensions are proven to positively impact your performance. You can advertise with local search ads on Google Maps right now. Just check that all your information in Google My Business is complete, accurate, and up to date. Any inaccurate information will make it that much harder for people to find you when theyre ready to buy. Which could be right now. Republished by permission. Original here. Google now shows third party hotel reviews in a quest to provide the best hotel reviews to travelers. Previously, a search for hotel reviews on Google would show you Googles own hotel reviews only, but now a quick search for hotel reviews brings up Googles reviews as well as third party reviews. Google Now Shows Third Party Hotel Reviews Google has added an additional section on its reviews page, highlighting reviews from other websites such as Agoda, Priceline, and Booking.com, among others. One of the reasons that might have forced the tech giant to add third-party reviews on its site is credibility. Many people who are searching for hotels online are now accustomed to reading reviews from different websites. Google adding third party hotel reviews to their search results might have as well solved the longtime problem where travelers had to search for reviews from a whole lot of websites. The new feature is also linked with Google maps so you get to kill so many birds with a single click. This additional search feature will probably rub hoteliers the right way. Every hotelier wants direct bookings and now that customers can read a whole lot of reviews from one place then the chances of direct online bookings are going to increase. Third Party Hotel Reviews And More! Besides adding third party reviews, Google has also gone ahead to provide suggestions of other hotels that people frequently searched for within the area. Keep in mind that all this is happening within your Google Maps interface, so you can see directions, read reviews, see nearby hotels and get to compare a variety of reviews across the board. Both businesses and customers benefit when a service or business is reviewed on Google. Businesses get the chance to directly strengthen their relationship with customers by responding to reviews while customers are able to make informed decisions based on reviews from past customers. Google has even gone a step further to show you how you can encourage reviews for your business. Go ahead and read a great tutorial on how to maximize and optimize your Google places via google maps marketing New technology like 3D printing is having a major impact on quite a few industries. But some small businesses still havent been able to access the technology as much as theyd like. Those businesses got some welcome news recently when UPS announced a new 3D printing service. In addition, Google and many others also made announcements this week that could be relevant to small businesses. Read on for a list of headlines in this weeks Small Business Trends news and information roundup. Services Order 3D Printing Jobs Online with New UPS Service Whether it is a toy or a hair clip, creating a product is a complicated process involving many people and just as many resources. In the past this meant hiring designers, engineers, a company to do the molding and eventually a manufacturer. If you are a small business with a great idea, you can see how the cost and process can be discouraging. Google Launches Free Tool to Test Website Performance on Mobile and Desktop In a world thats gone mobile, having a website that isnt mobile-friendly can hurt your business. If a site loads slowly or people cant find what they need immediately, they are likely to leave and continue their search elsewhere. Business Travelers, Click on Google Maps for Third Party Hotel Reviews Google now shows third party hotel reviews in a quest to provide the best hotel reviews to travelers. Previously, a search for hotel reviews on Google would show you Googles own hotel reviews only, but now a quick search for hotel reviews brings up Googles reviews as well as third party reviews. Tech Soon Youll be Taking Business Calls on Your Smart Jacket Seriously The barrier between us and the digital connectivity we need to work, play and live has been reduced by another factor with the announcement of the Levis Commuter Smart Jacket. So if you see someone walking down the street talking to themselves and swiping and tapping their clothes, no need for alarm, they could be wearing this Commuter smart jacket. Smart Locks Provide Easier Access to Offices of the Future Basic security is crucial for any small business. Yet, as non-traditional work patterns become more and more commonplace, the inconvenience of cumbersome and old-fashioned security methods is turning out to be a major hindrance for more forward-thinking business owners. A solution to that problem seems to have emerged with the launch of the second-generation August Smart Lock. SAP Ariba For Small Business Provides Technology to Connect With Customers One of the biggest challenges small businesses face is access to resources. Whether it is getting funded, acquiring the best talent or developing the necessary networks to help their company thrive and grow, they have to work that much harder compared to large enterprises. Waverly Labs Earpieces Translate Other Languages Almost Instantly Real-time translation used to be the domain of human beings, but machine translation has evolved to the point it can now deliver highly accurate results instantly. Watch this video that shows you how the new Pilot real-time translation earpiece works if you really want to be impressed. Office Prefer Chai to Coffee in Your Office? Check Out Chime Coffee makers are essential parts of most office kitchens. They can help to keep your employees energized and motivated throughout the day, increasing both productivity and morale. Warning New Money Transfer Scam Asks For Payment Through iTune Gift Cards The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has warned of a new scam where criminals dupe people into paying fraudulent claims through iTunes gift cards. The FTC said that scammers are pretending to be agents from the IRS or U.S. Treasury and demanding that you pay back taxes via an iTunes gift card. Yes, an iTunes card. Survey Bank of America Study: 95 Percent of Entrepreneurs Built or Acquired Setting up a business is difficult, but thats not deterring entrepreneurs from pursuing their passion probably because most of them have done it on their own. Thats what a new study has revealed. According to U.S. Trusts annual survey of high net worth entrepreneurs, the majority of business owners (95 percent) have founded or acquired their companies. Small Biz Spotlight Spotlight: BookScouter Offers a Platform for Comparing Book Prices For college students and others who want to resell books, the process of finding the best price can be time consuming. There are several different platforms available to actually sell those books and textbooks. But to make sure you get the best possible price, theres BookScouter. Read more about BookScouter and its price comparison tool in this weeks Small Business Spotlight. Mobile Ooma Office Adds IP Phones to Analog, Mobile Lineup for Small Business Ooma, a cloud-based phone service provider for small business, just announced on its blog that it intends to include IP phone support for its Ooma Office phone system, which means that businesses can now use analog phones, fax machines, mobile and IP phones in combination. FreedomVoice Phone Service Coming to GoDaddy: Why Should You Care? Small Business Trends recently reported that GoDaddy is in the process of procuring cloud-based FreedomVoice phone service to add to its suite of small business marketing communications products. Pebble Introduces Three New Devices on Kickstarter The Pebble project has been one of the most successful funding drives on Kickstarter. The company was able to raise $10 million and $20 million in its first and second drives, respectively. This resulted in the introduction of some innovative smartwatches with each consequent round of funding. What is Gboard for iPhone and What is it For? The rift between Apple and Google is well documented, but in reality they need each other more than they let on in order to give their customers the solutions both companies provide. The latest evidence of this is the new Gboard for iPhone keyboard app Google just announced. With tens of millions of customers on the line, the Gboard is a no brainer for Google. Social How Can Businesses Use Facebook Continuous Live Video? When it comes to social media, Facebook is undeniably king. Thats why businesses bend over backwards to try and engage with users via the social media platform and its also why theyve been working hard to take advantage of Facebooks video capabilities. With the launch of the new Facebook continuous live video API, those capabilities have drastically expanded. Startup Microsoft Gives Grants to Businesses Providing Affordable Internet As much as the world seems to be so connected online, more than half of the worlds population still doesnt have access to the Internet and now Microsoft wants to reduce that number through Microsoft Internet access grants. Microsoft Internet Access Grants Awarded Microsoft Internet access grants seek to increase affordable Internet access in communities in underserved markets. Get the latest headlines from Small Business Trends. Follow us on Google News. 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 LA PLATA, Md. (June 3, 2016)The Charles County Sheriff's Office today released the following incident reports.DEATH INVESTIGATION: On June 2 at 11:35 p.m., Corrections Officers at the Charles County Detention Center entered the cell of a 30-year-old woman to escort her to a routine medical screening when they observed her lying on a mattress and unresponsive. Officers, along with medical staff and EMS, immediately initiated life-saving measures to include CPR and activation of an AED; however, the woman was pronounced deceased. In accordance with agency operating standards, detectives assigned to the Criminal Investigations Division responded. A preliminarily investigation revealed the woman was inside her cell, with a cellmate, and lying on a mattress with her face down. According to witnesses, it appeared the woman had been sleeping. There were no signs of trauma, no signs of foul play, and no signs of a suicide. A Forensic Investigator responded and the woman was transported to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore where an autopsy will be performed. The investigation is continuing.CORRECTIONS OFFICERS RESCUE INMATE ATTEMPTING SUICIDE: On May 19 at 5 p.m., a Charles County Correctional Officer was conducting a security round when he discovered a 27-year-old female inmate attempting suicide by hanging. The officer called for immediate help, and he and responding officers lowered the woman and accessed her condition. At the time, the woman was not breathing. Officers began CPR, and the inmate began to breathe on her own. She was flown to a hospital where she was initially admitted in critical condition. In accordance with operating standards, investigators assigned to the Criminal Investigations Division responded. A preliminary investigation revealed the inmate was in her cell alone and had earlier in the day made comments to other inmates that she wanted to go to the hospital instead of being incarcerated. None of the inmates reported the comments to detention center staff. The woman had been arrested four days earlier for violating her probation. Since the incident, the woman's health has improved and her condition is no longer life-threatening. The investigation is continuing.CORRECTIONAL OFFICER SENTENCED TO 90 DAYS IN JAIL AFTER PLEADING GUILTY TO HAVING UNLAWFUL SEXUAL CONTACT WITH INMATE: On June 1, Jason Arnolda suspended Correctional Officer at the Charles County Detention Center (CCDC)was sentenced to 90 days in jail after pleading guilty to having unlawful sexual contact with a female inmate. The charge stemmed from an intensive investigation led by detectives assigned to the CCSO's Criminal Investigations Division and the CCSO's Office of Professional Responsibility. The investigation was initiated after command personnel were made aware of a rumor of inappropriate conduct between an inmate and Arnold.The investigation revealed that in July 2015, a supervisor at the CCDC learned from a third-hand party about a possible relationship between Arnold and the inmate. Upon learning of the allegation, Arnold was immediately suspended. The State's Attorney's Office was contacted and detectives launched both a criminal and internal investigation, which revealed Arnold and the inmate had a relationship while she was incarcerated. Further, the investigation revealed that the relationship briefly continued after the inmate was released from the detention center. As part of the investigation, detectives reached out to other inmates who had contact with Arnold and determined no one else had unlawful relations with him. Arnold was criminally charged on March 2, 2016, with having unlawful sex with an inmate. In Maryland, it is a misdemeanor for a correctional officer to have a sexual relationship with an inmate.Charles County Sheriff Troy Berry stated, "Trust is such an important factor between law enforcement and our community. When we heard about this rumor, our staff took immediate actions to investigate the allegations, even though a complaint was never made. It took months of hard work to thoroughly interview all of the female inmates who had contact with Arnold to ensure no other unlawful sexual contact had occurred. Arnold broke the trust that our community places in our correctional officers, and he broke the trust of his fellow officers. For this, Arnold being sentenced to a period of incarceration is justice served." Retired Boston Circuit Court Judge Dermot Meagher spends a considerable amount of leisure time at Floridas Haulover nude beach looking at naked men. Unlike many other regulars at that beach, Meagher is surreptitiously at work drawing the men who appeal to his artists eye. Many of the drawings previously glimpsed in galleries are now compiled and presented as a stylish book titled Naked. Naked is a sublime collection of voyeuristic ink drawings of unclothed men relaxing at the beach. In it, Meagher, with a minimum of strokes and no colors, delivers white-hot images of skin and sand that suggest an intersection between the aesthetic and the erotic. A snowbird who divides his year between homes in Fort Lauderdale and Provincetown, Meagher describes his process, his subjects and his materials. I draw at the beach, with the subject in front of me in natural light. He is on the sand near me. I am in a beach chair under an umbrella because I don't want to get sun burnt and I don't want him to see what I'm doing. I want to capture a pose, attitude or the moment. Meagher likes the fact that he does not know his subjects. One man I drew from afar once last year and twice this year without his ever acknowledging it came by our little outpost last week and my husband started chatting him up, he said. They had known each other for years. I was very irritated by this. I decided I can't draw him anymore even though he has a wonderful big curvy body. Does Meagher concentrate only on men he finds sexually appealing? About eroticism, I don't know what to say, he said. Some of the men strike me as very sexy and others are not my type at all but they grow on me -- you should pardon the expression -- as I draw them. How does he achieve the elegant restraint and clarity that mark his pictures? I work with pen and ink on small watercolor pads that wont attract much attention. I bring Sumi ink either in a bottle or dried in a block. Sumi makes a very strong black and when diluted, beautiful grays, he said. Its a balancing act, with me anchored in the beach chair, brushes stuck upside down in the sand, and a couple of bottles of water for drinking or for adding to the ink to make mixtures held in shells or bottle caps. The whole set up is precarious and the guys dont stay still for very long so I have to work fast. Meaghers husband Renato is his most frequent model at the beach, partially because he will obey when told to stay still. The drawings defy the coolness often presumed inherent in black and white work. They instantly convey baking and basking men sandwiched between hot sun and sand. They suggest observations, speculations and passions hidden by sunglasses, while they reveal that odd propriety to which gay men at nude beaches subscribe. This book and other projects of Dermot Meagher are produced with the assistance of Charles L. Ross who has endowed a gallery at the Stonewall National Museum and Archives in Wilton Manors. His life and his novel INSIDE have been profiled and reviewed in SFGN. Naked is available on Amazon, at Amazon.com/gp/product/1523201703 For more about Dermot Meagher, check out these SFGN links: Southfloridagaynews.com/Tony-Adams/the-confessing-and-romping-of-dermot-meagher.html Southfloridagaynews.com/Tony-Adams/dermot-meagher.html For more about Charles L. Ross, check out these SFGN links: Southfloridagaynews.com/Tony-Adams/the-fairy-tale-life-of-charles-l-ross.html Southfloridagaynews.com/Columns/inside-charles-l-rosss-new-novel.html Our Expanding Universe NASA Astronomers using NASAs Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the universe is expanding 5 percent to 9 percent faster than expected. This surprising finding may be an important clue to understanding those mysterious parts of the universe that make up 95 percent of everything and dont emit light, such as dark energy, dark matter, and dark radiation, said study leader and Nobel Laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute and The Johns Hopkins University, both in Baltimore, Maryland. The results will appear in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal. Riess team made the discovery by refining the universes current expansion rate to unprecedented accuracy, reducing the uncertainty to only 2.4 percent. The team made the refinements by developing innovative techniques that improved the precision of distance measurements to faraway galaxies. The team looked for galaxies containing both Cepheid stars and Type Ia supernovae. Cepheid stars pulsate at rates that correspond to their true brightness, which can be compared with their apparent brightness as seen from Earth to accurately determine their distance. Type Ia supernovae, another commonly used cosmic yardstick, are exploding stars that flare with the same brightness and are brilliant enough to be seen from relatively longer distances. By measuring about 2,400 Cepheid stars in 19 galaxies and comparing the observed brightness of both types of stars, they accurately measured their true brightness and calculated distances to roughly 300 Type Ia supernovae in far-flung galaxies. The team compared those distances with the expansion of space as measured by the stretching of light from receding galaxies. The team used these two values to calculate how fast the universe expands with time, or the Hubble constant. The improved Hubble constant value is 73.2 kilometers per second per megaparsec. (A megaparsec equals 3.26 million light-years.) The new value means the distance between cosmic objects will double in another 9.8 billion years. This refined calibration presents a puzzle, however, because it does not quite match the expansion rate predicted for the universe from its trajectory seen shortly after the big bang. Measurements of the afterglow from the big bang by NASAs Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and the European Space Agencys Planck satellite mission yield predictions for the Hubble constant that are 5 percent and 9 percent smaller, respectively. If we know the initial amounts of stuff in the universe, such as dark energy and dark matter, and we have the physics correct, then you can go from a measurement at the time shortly after the big bang and use that understanding to predict how fast the universe should be expanding today, said Riess. However, if this discrepancy holds up, it appears we may not have the right understanding, and it changes how big the Hubble constant should be today. Comparing the universes expansion rate with WMAP, Planck, and Hubble is like building a bridge, Riess explained. On the distant shore are the cosmic microwave background observations of the early universe. On the nearby shore are the measurements made by Riess team using Hubble. You start at two ends, and you expect to meet in the middle if all of your drawings are right and your measurements are right, Riess said. But now the ends are not quite meeting in the middle and we want to know why. There are a few possible explanations for the universes excessive speed. One possibility is that dark energy, already known to be accelerating the universe, may be shoving galaxies away from each other with even greater or growing strength. Another idea is that the cosmos contained a new subatomic particle in its early history that traveled close to the speed of light. Such speedy particles are collectively referred to as dark radiation and include previously known particles like neutrinos. More energy from additional dark radiation could be throwing off the best efforts to predict todays expansion rate from its post-big bang trajectory. The boost in acceleration could also mean that dark matter possesses some weird, unexpected characteristics. Dark matter is the backbone of the universe upon which galaxies built themselves up into the large-scale structures seen today. And finally, the speedier universe may be telling astronomers that Einsteins theory of gravity is incomplete. We know so little about the dark parts of the universe, its important to measure how they push and pull on space over cosmic history, said Lucas Macri of Texas A&M University in College Station, a key collaborator on the study. The Hubble observations were made with Hubbles sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), and were conducted by the Supernova H0 for the Equation of State (SH0ES) team, which works to refine the accuracy of the Hubble constant to a precision that allows for a better understanding of the universes behavior. The SH0ES Team is still using Hubble to reduce the uncertainty in the Hubble constant even more, with a goal to reach an accuracy of 1 percent. Current telescopes such as the European Space Agencys Gaia satellite, and future telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an infrared observatory, and the Wide Field Infrared Space Telescope (WFIRST), also could help astronomers make better measurements of the expansion rate. Before Hubble was launched in 1990, the estimates of the Hubble constant varied by a factor of two. In the late 1990s the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project on the Extragalactic Distance Scale refined the value of the Hubble constant to within an error of only 10 percent, accomplishing one of the telescopes key goals. The SH0ES team has reduced the uncertainty in the Hubble constant value by 76 percent since beginning its quest in 2005. Reference: A 2.4% Determination of the Local Value of the Hubble Constant, Adam G. Riess et al., 2016, to appear in the Astrophysical Journal [http://apj.aas.org, preprint: http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.01424]. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C. Images and more information about the Hubble constant finding and Hubble: http://hubblesite.org/news/2016/17 Get to New Orleans before summer, one Louisianan cautioned me when I shared my goal of visiting the city at some point this year. Summer arrives in NOLA early, she warned meand theres nothing easy about it. With that urging, I found myself hurtling across three states in the dead of night via rental car at the end of this Aprils Specialty Coffee Association of America Expo in Atlanta, Georgia. Waking up in New Orleans early the next morningthe weather notably temperate and not-yet-too-humidI really needed coffee. It was time to meet the Mammoth. Mammoth Espresso serves coffee, espresso, tea, and pastries in the Warehouse/Arts district of New Orleans. Jonathan and Darlene Riethmaier moved here in 2014 and opened their cafe in late March of this year. Mammoth is part of a recent coffee explosion in NOLA; it joins the citys established coffee scene alongside fellow newcomers Revelator (opened last June) and Stumptown (opened after Mammoth this April). Jonathan Riethmaier is also one of the founders of the New Orleans Barista Social Club, the organizing force behind latte art throwdowns and other coffee events around town. The space is a cool mid-century, retro-futuristic dream. The floor and tables are a palette of neutrals, with pops of yellow and black in the seating and wall treatment. Millwork on the wood elements in the shop was done by Nelu Sorocaniuc, and Joseph Lazarri created the custom speaker covers. Above the bar, menu design was done by Jonathan Lopez. The coffee counter is front and center at the entrance. A two-group La Marzocco Linea Classic is crowned with Acme blue ceramic cups, and two Curtis Seraphim brewers are positioned close by, awaiting orders for coffee brewed in Kalita Waves. Mahlkonig K30 Twin and EK 43 grinders round out the coffee arsenal; Hario Largo globes and Bonavita Variable Temperature Kettles are on the backbar for tea service. And behind the counter the morning I arrive is Jonathan Riethmaier, longtime coffee fanatic turned coffee professional. His navigation toward a life in coffee from the periphery to dead center included stops in PR, running DC coffee blog District Bean, working behind the counter as a barista (most recently at Washington, DCs The Coffee Bar), and finally, to owning his own coffee shop. I was constantly fighting to get more involved at the barista level, but I was working full-time in PR, so it was hard, Riethmaier told me. It meant never ever having days off, because I would take barista shifts at The Coffee Bar on the weekend to get hands-on with the things you cant geek out about and learn at home, explained the cafe owner, taking a break at the table outside Mammoth, but still keeping an eye on the shop through the window. When the Riethmaiers had an opportunity to move from DC down to New Orleans, Jonathan Riethmaiers transition to working in coffee full-time finally happened right back where he started. Im very much from the South; Ive lived in Arkansas and Texas and Georgia. I was ready to come back down, to the nice food, the nice people, and the great weather. To do something in the culinary field in a town like New Orleans, its exciting to take part. The name Mammoth was chosen to evoke the huge potential of flavor, taste, and story in something as small as an espresso. Mammoth Espresso exclusively retails Madcap Coffee, relying on their Third Coast espresso blend alongside seasonal offerings for single-origin espresso and drip coffees. Exquisite, tiny pastries from Scout Bakery, including caneles and blueberry buckles, a formidable tea menu from JoJo Tea, and chocolate from Acalli Chocolate are also on the menu. Everything is served with intention and care, make no mistake; Jonathan Riethmaier sells teas by the cup that retail for $300 per pound and can speak with as much detail and knowledge on tea as he does on coffee. Jonathan Riethmaier gets a ton of support from co-owner and wife Darlene Riethmaier (shes really the backbone, keeping me grounded and motivated) and inspiration from their young son Jack. Its great to know hell continue to grow up around coffee, he tells me. Before this started, I had a nine-to-five job, which was never really nine-to-five because I love to work, but then we had this little kid. I wanted to create a space that embraces families, and Jack can come to where I work all the time and watch me in my professional element, doing what I love, instead of me just appearing at home after being gone at work all day. As we sit and talk, Jonathan Riethmaier calls out hello and chats with patrons and passersbyhes already fully immersed in what he calls the meandering pace New Orleans sometimes encourages. Our conversation drifts to the weather; he shrugs off that best-intentioned caveat about arriving in town early. We moved down here in June, he explains, and that is when the summers really start to get as bad as they can be. Darlene and I agreed if we could make it through the rest of the summer, wed be fine down here. And we made it. Dawn Shanks (@DawnShanks) is an American coffee professional based in Washington, DC. Read more Dawn Shanks on Sprudge. Top photo courtesy Mammoth Espresso. Other photos by Caroline Richter. ANKARA (Sputnik)Turkey intends to open its embassies in all 54 African countries, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday. "Thirteen or fourteen years ago, our embassies worked in 12 African countries, now there are 39 of them. Our goal is to open embassies in all 54 African countries. Embassies should not be located in the rented premises so we started to buy [land]," Erdogan said at the opening ceremony of a Turkish embassy in Somalia, as quoted by the NTV channel. The Turkish president arrived in Somalia after visiting Uganda and Kenya, where he pledged to improve security and economic ties between East Africa and Turkey. They once helped handle a criminal case in which some Chinese journalists from a domestic TV station had their luggage stolen from their car after windows were broken. Now the case is still under investigation. Another time, they provided assistance to an elderly French couple. One of them sprained their ankle. Pang and his colleagues brought them an ice bag for pretreatment and called an ambulance. Most of the time, they served as a source of information rather than dealing with cases. "Our colleagues in Milan answered about 100 enquiries. Most people asked the way, some asked for the help, and some just wanted to chat or take photos with us," said Pang. On the first day, Pang was not familiar with the way. But on the second day, he took a map with him. When asked, he would point the way on the map. For example, the Krasnodar Region now has five high-class travel agencies catering to the Chinese clientele, and offers numerous tourist programs, such as "Olympic Sochi" and "Russia's South." The representative of Volgograd also said during the meeting that the city has a rich history and perhaps many Chinese tourists would like, for example, to witness the Mamayev Kurgan memorial with their own eyes and to explore the site of one of the deadliest and pivotal battles of World War II. The Chinese reporters covering the event were very impressed by how the presentations were conducted, especially by the fact that all of the promotional materials were available in Chinese, Xinhua points out. Head of the Russian Federal Tourism Agency Oleg Safonov also said that the government has launched a program to train more Chinese-speaking tour guides, and to ensure that major restaurants and hotels offer menus and other information in Chinese. Also, Russia may consider easing the existing visa regime for Chinese tourists so that tour groups of as few as three people wont require a visa to enter the country, he added. All in all, the forum results were very positive, at least as far as the tourism industry is concerned, and Russias regions should expect a lot more Chinese tourists in the coming years, Xinhua concludes. Local Swede Uffe Rustan and his two teenage sons Rasmus (15) and Linus (17) are about to be evicted from their home in Lidingo Municipality. The reason? The house they live in will be taken over by new arrivals. Rustan has to move out of the house he has rented on a short-term basis from Lidingo Municipality since February no later than August. Instead, the house will be rented as a temporary accommodation for a newly-arrived family of asylum-seekers. The contract was extended once, and the municipality has been 'generous,' property manager Thorsten Lorich told the news outlet Mitt i Lidingo. Lorich admitted to some ethical deficiencies in his treatment of the Rustans with respect to the termination of the contract. "The Minister of Education wants to introduce Arabic language courses in schools. Will French be taught optionally," Nicolas Bay, General Secretary of the National Front, inquired. .@najatvb veut instaurer l'enseignement de l'arabe des le CP... Et le francais c'est en option ? pic.twitter.com/Q5HtzhJJ7i Nicolas Bay (@nicolasbayfn) 31 2016 . "Young people do not need this heresy, but [need] more lessons in French and History for successful assimilation," echoed another member of National Front, Louis Aliot. @JJBourdin_RMC Les jeunes n'ont pas besoin de cette heresie mais de cours renforces de Francais et d'Histoire pr reussir l'assimilation Louis Aliot (@louis_aliot) 31 2016 . "Apparently, you do not like France," Jean-Frederic Poisson of the Christian Democratic Party said, calling the minister to resign. Robert Menard, one of the founders of Reporters Sans Frontiers NGO was also less then amused by the proposition. "Madame minister encourages teaching Arabic in primary schools. Were witnessing an evident de-Francization," he wrote on Twitter. Mme @najatvb encourage l'enseignement de l'arabe des le CP ! Nous sommes dans un processus de defrancisation evident https://t.co/vkPJQ8nbsj Robert Menard (@RobertMenardFR) 31 2016 . It should be noted that France has probably the largest Muslim community in Europe, and that the majority of French Muslims come from Arab-speaking countries. The French right-wing parties have long criticized the governments integration policy, and the current migrant crisis appears to have exacerbated the situation, though exactly how it will affect these proposed innovations in the education system remains to be seen. In 2006 German conceptual artist Peter Kees founded the first Embassy of Arcadia, on one square meter of land at the Havana Biennal. Over the past decade, he has spread Arcadia across Europe, and opened embassies in Berlin, Rostock and Naples, among other places. In an interview with Sputnik France, the artist said the idea for Arcadia originated in antiquity, and was depicted by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. The name refers to a peaceful civilization which lives in harmony with nature. "I was thinking about whether there is a place for Arcadia today, in our world. There is no place in our world for something like Arcadia," Kees said. TOKYO (Sputnik) Yamato Tanooka was found in military barracks in Shikabe, a town in Oshima Subprefecture on the Hokkaido Island, the newspaper said on Friday. JUST IN: Missing Japanese boy left in the woods by his parents found unharmed, police say. https://t.co/mGxk27Mmq4 pic.twitter.com/W5dzEPwJw6 CNN (@CNN) 3 2016 . The barracks are located about four miles from the spot where the boys parents left him on Saturday, to punish him for throwing stones at cars and other people. The parents made Yamato get out of the car on a mountain road going through a forest. They claim that they were only gone for five minutes before returning to the spot to discover that the boy had disappeared. With a storage capacity of 640 million cubic meters of water, the water reservoir is expected to produce 42 megawatts of electricity. It will also provide water to up to 80 hectares of agricultural land in nearby areas. Prime Minister [Modi] and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani will jointly inaugurate the Afghan-India Friendship Dam on June 4, Saturday, in Herat province. The completion of the dam project represents the culmination of work by 1500 Indian and Afghan engineers and other professionals in very difficult conditions, said Vikas Swarup, spokesperson for Indias External Affairs Ministry, in a statement. India remains a key foreign force in Afghanistan, which has been reeling under intense pressure in the wake of withdrawing NATO forces and an increasing Taliban insurgency. New Delhi has been involved in several key infrastructure projects, including a new parliament building. During the press conference, Swarup added: The real image that India has in Afghanistan is as a partner which has stood by through its difficult times, a partner which has contributed immensely to Afghanistan's development, unlike some partners who have contributed to instability and terrorism, in a thinly veiled remarks directed at Pakistan. Modi visited Afghanistan in December 2015 to inaugurate the Indian-built parliament complex in capital Kabul. The building was attacked by the Taliban in March of this year. New Delhi (Sputnik) As part of its elaborate preparations for the International Day of Yoga on June 21, India has eased its visa policy, keeping a firm eye on the estimated USD 80 billion market for yoga worldwide. The government has decided to include attending a short-term yoga program in its list of activities warranting the issuance of a Tourist Visa. Additionally, the government has decided to include attending a short-term yoga program and short-term medical treatment via Indian systems of medicine in its list of activities which would qualify visitors to receive an e-Tourist Visa. The Ministry of Home Affairs says the government has decided to include short-term yoga programs in its Tourist Visa and e-Tourist Visa [programs]. 21st June2nd International Day of Yoga is approaching. In the run up to the 21st will share details on various Asanas & Pranayam. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 1, 2016 Presently, a Tourist Visa is granted to foreigners seeking to visit India if their objectives are limited to recreation, sight-seeing and casually meeting friends or relatives. The e-Tourist Visa is granted to foreigners whose travel objective is limited to recreation, sight-seeing, casual visits to meet friends or relatives, short-term medical treatment or casual business visits. BEIJING (Sputnik) Beijing is working on a bill establishing national oil reserve fund to be used in emergency cases, Chinese National Energy Administration said Friday. "The bill on national oil fund aims at control over national oil reserves, provides measures in emergency cases leading to breach of oil supplies, ensures national energy security and social stability," the draft bill released by Chinese energy agency says. The work on a bill has been started in 2006. It envisages that state-owned oil refineries as well as oil suppliers will contribute to the fund with crude oil and fuel. The energy agency called for public feedback on the draft to be submitted before June 18. . 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. The meeting between Parrikar and Hen was held on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, currently underway in Singapore. In a joint statement issued after the meeting, both nations reaffirmed Indias vital role in the security of the Asia-Pacific region, in particular through the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting (ADMM)-Plus platforms. Both Ministers also emphasized the importance of international cooperation in tackling transnational security threats. In particular, both Ministers strongly condemned terrorism in all its forms, and renewed their commitment to cooperate in counter-terrorism efforts. They also stressed their shared commitment to maintaining freedom of navigation in international waters, the right of passage and overflight, unimpeded commerce and access to resources, in accordance with recognized principles of international law, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The Micra Transcatheter Pacing System (TPS), the smallest pacemaker in the world, was successfully implanted in a 92-year-old man at Medanta The Medicity Hospital. The pacemaker, which is comparable in size to a vitamin capsule, was inserted in the patient's body through a catheter in a 30-minute procedure, which was painless and left no visible signs of a medical device under the skin, doctors said. The new pacemaker weighs just 2 grams, a lot less than the conventional 25 grams other mechanisms weigh. A pacemaker is a medical device which uses electrical impulses, delivered by electrodes contracting the heart muscles, to regulate the beating of the heart. Pacemakers are the most common way to treat bradycardia, a condition in which the heart beats slowly, usually fewer than 60 beats per minute. The heart of a patient suffering from bradycardia is unable to pump enough oxygen-rich blood to the body during normal activity or exercise, causing dizziness, fatigue, shortness of breath or fainting spells. The protesters occupied the park in late 2014 and a court has ordered the government to clear the area only recently. Local reports suggest followers of the group's late spiritual leader or 'godman', Baba jai Gurudev, have been linked the episode. Gurudev owned opulent residences and other facilities in the northern Indian state. The federal administration urged the local government authorities to take stringent action against the perpetrators. Amid the violence, the administration admitted that they had underestimated the strength of the park's occupants and said the police forces were taken by surprise. Meanwhile, the Twitterati vented their fury on actress Hema Malini, who is the Member of Parliament from the Mathura constituency, for posting images from a film-shoot while there was violence. Heres a list of social media posts which heap scorn on the parliamentarian. #Mathura burns, Hema Malini tweets on film. Watch what she said when asked about the same #ITVideohttps://t.co/WzllocL4Eo India Today (@IndiaToday) June 3, 2016 I however, have a diff problem with the likes of Hema Malini. Being n MP cant b a part time job when you call acting ur full time profession Vande Mataram (@UnSubtleDesi) June 3, 2016 BJP MP (Mathura) Hema Malini uploads shoot pictures on her Twitter even as death toll from Mathura incident rises. pic.twitter.com/CCilzxReCZ ANI (@ANI_news) June 3, 2016 Someone pls enlighten me What's the utility value of #HemaMalini as a politician? Why does the #BJP even tolerate her? kamlesh sutar (@kamleshsutar) June 3, 2016 According to the police, the members of the network first sought information on the patients requiring kidneys and then lured poor donors based outside Delhi with the help of middlemen. While the donors got only Rs 300,000-400,000 (US $4470-5960) as compensation, the kidneys were sold at Rs 2.5-3 million (US $37,250-44,700) to their wealthy recipients. The middlemen made a cut of Rs 100,000-200,000 (US $1490-2980) per deal. The arrests were made around 9:00 pm local time on Thursday at the Apollo Hospital in southeast Delhi. Hopefully, saner heads will prevail, as Pentagon operations in the region have pushed Beijing to establish an air defense identification zone around their territory. "It is known only too well, that American, Japanese, and South Korean jets continuously annoy China by flying into airspace very close to its borders. It means that an argument on the ground is currently growing into an argument in the air, and it escalates the situation even further," military expert Viktor Baranets told Sputnik. Regional politicians stress that a peaceful solution must be pursued to bring an end to the tensions in the South China Sea. "We have always been insisting that all parties should resolve this peacefully, based on international laws and various other international norms," Indias Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar said, ahead of a meeting with his Singapore counterpart, Dr. Ng Eng Hen, on Friday. Prior to the meeting, widespread doubts have been cast on whether it would have any impact in swaying the cartel's members toward restricting output over the need to raise prices. Previously, Iran refused to take part in a potential output freeze deal, driving Saudi Arabia to pull out. Also before the meeting, on Thursday, Iraq's Deputy Oil Minister Fayyad Nima said that OPEC would discuss capping oil production at 32.4 million barrels per day, instead of the current 30-million-barrel limit, which the organization has not been upholding in recent years. Shortly after the conference, Iranian Minister of Petroleum Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said that OPEC did not discuss the possibility of introducing quotas for oil production for several member states of the cartel. "I said that the ceiling [limiting of oil production by OPEC members] without country quotas does not mean anything, and OPEC itself without country quotas is nothing. But, as I said, this was not the right time to finalize this discussion. Time is needed to discuss this and all OPEC member states should accept the creation of this model. We used to have it once, and I do not know why OPEC countries decided not to have the system of state quotas," Zanganeh told reporters. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak on Friday proposed to work out the possibility to increase volume of bilateral trade between Moscow and Doha up to $500 million. "I propose to set an ambitious goal to work out the possibility to increase the volume of bilateral trade up to $500 million," Novak said at the meeting of Russian-Qatari intergovernmental commission for trade, economic, scientific and technical cooperation. He added that the bilateral trade in the first three months of 2016 had more than quadrupled in comparison to the same period of the previous year due to Russia's deliveries of ferrosilicon and wheat to the Gulf state, as well as Qatar's supplies of insulating oil to Russia. MOSCOW (Sputnik)The Russian Helicopters company has signed a roadmap with the Kazakh partners to expand the after-sales service of Russian helicopters, including modernization of the Mi-8 and Mi-17, the manufacturer's press service said in a statement on Friday. "The signed roadmap envisages coordination between the three companies on the comprehensive servicing of Russian-made helicopters in the Republic of Kazakhstan, including the development of overhaul of Mi-171Sh, as well as work on the modernization of Mi-8T helicopters, Mi-17-B5 and Mi 171Sh for installation of new equipment and improvement their performance characteristics," the statement said. The road-map was signed at the international KADEX-2016 military exhibition, which is hosted by the Kazakh capital of Astana on June 2-5. The signing sides were Russian Helicopter chief Alexander Mikheev, Director General of Kazakhstan Engineering National Company Erlan Idrissov and CEO of Aircraft Repair Plant 405 Konstantin Ushakov. The center, unveiled during the Startup Village 2016 conference, will be used for training aircraft pilots and technical personnel, as well as for conducting scientific research and developing digital solutions for commercial aviation. The facility has already been outfitted with Next-Generation 737 and 777 full flight simulators, and more of them will be added in the future. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, who was attending the opening ceremony, said that he was proud to take part in the event. Is it POSSIBLE that India could one day catch up to China's oil demand? #oil #crude #asia pic.twitter.com/o1bz0Dwk8x Oil Gas Innovation (@OGIEmery) June 3, 2016 Indian automakers across vehicle segments see smart sales growth in May '16 | Facts & stats https://t.co/tnYkN1PzIa pic.twitter.com/fZML7rYIew Autocar Professional (@autocarpro) June 3, 2016 During a discussion through government portal, Pradhan said that British Petroleum has procured a new license for ATF from India and is soon going to open retail outlets. Shell officials also met him and discussed their expansion plans of their retail network in South India. Pradhan says, "I am upbeat because many companies will come to India and the consumers will benefit the most. An increase in competition will lead to increase in quality, thus making the consumers the king." Energy Expert Narendra Taneja says, "It will change the picture of the retail sector completely and help India to modernize the retail sector. This would bring more technology, investment and this will open up the sector for more competition. This will also bring new practices into the retail sector which will benefit consumers the most because our retail sector needs better technology. We are still using a slightly old technology." Taneja stated that India needs to invest more money into the retail sector to modernize it in order to take it to the next stage, which would be fast-tracked when India can attract investment from international players. India decontrolled the prices of gasoline and diesel only a few years back. Currently, government controlled entity Indian Oil Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum & Bharat Petroleum are the major oil retailers in the country while, Reliance Ind & Essar have begun to expand in the market. Moreover there is nothing to suggest that Hillary Clintons views have changed or that she entertains any doubts about her stance. On the one occasion when she has appeared to retract her earlier support for a war the 2003 invasion of Iraq it has been impossible to avoid the impression that she did so for purely political reasons because she realised that she would never become US President unless she did so. This contrasts with the position taken by Donald Trump who not only says the Iraq war was a mistake but who has spoken however vaguely and inconsistently of a need to reach out to other states and to look for compromises. Unsurprisingly Hillary Clinton has the enthusiastic support of those like the neocon ideologist Robert Kagan who can be relied upon to call for war whenever the opportunity arises and who have made clear they prefer her to Donald Trump. The first test for a statesman should be their commitment to peace. At a time of heightened international tension, international terrorism and proliferation of nuclear weapons that ought to be obvious. Everything known about Hillary Clinton suggests that as President she would fail that test. To say therefore that she is the right person to be US Presidency because of her previous experience despite her previous actions and her known views on foreign policy is not merely wrong. It is irresponsible. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik. MOSCOW (Sputnik) According to the Thursday decision, Hamza may be transferred to France to stand trial, but he will have to serve his sentence in Belgium, RTBF said. According to investigators, Hamza was one of the four accomplices of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Paris attacks. Abdeslam was arrested on March 18 along with four other individuals during a special anti-terrorist police operation in the Molenbeek district of Brussels. MOSCOW (Sputnik) According to UN assistant secretary-general for human rights Ivan Simonovic, Kievs "disregard for human rights" has become systemic and needs to urgently addressed. SBU has been detaining and torturing suspected opponents of the Kiev regime, those who sympathize with the self-proclaimed peoples republics of Donetsk and Luhansk (DPR and LPR) in Ukraines southeast. A delegation of the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) visited Ukraine in May to inspect the countrys detention sites. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The fighting on the Aegean Sea island broke out late on Thursday and resulted in 25 arrests, with six people injured, the newspaper Kathimerini reported, citing the police. The clashes involved some 150 Afghan, Pakistani and Syrian migrants, reports said. Two houses were torched before police got involved and firefighters put out the blaze. The violence comes after a fire broke out at a detention facility on the Aegean island of Lesbos, where over 70 people were injured and around 300 left without shelter. MOSCOW (Sputnik) In February 2015, a peace agreement was signed between Kiev and east Ukrainian pro-independence militias . The Minsk accords include a full ceasefire, a weapons withdrawal from the line of contact, an all-for-all prisoner exchange, constitutional reforms, including a decentralization of power in the country, and granting special status to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. "So far, the Verkhovna Rada has not carried out a single reform stipulated by the Minsk II accords. This is why we back the lifting of sanctions against Russia. Excuse me, but logically, there are two ways. First, anti-Russian sanctions must be lifted, and second, sanctions must be introduced against Ukraine. Because right now, Kiev is showing disrespect by failing to implement the Minsk accords. The main responsibility is with the Ukrainian side," Mariani said in an interview with the Russian Izvestia newspaper, published on Friday. MOSCOW (Sputnik) With a total of 13,000 foreign national offenders currently in the United Kingdom, 5,789 of these not in prison and living in UK communities, most for over two years, the Home Office must draw up plans on the numbers it plans to deport, the committee said in a statement after releasing the latest The work of the Immigration Directorates quarterly report and revealing its findings. "Despite repeated warnings, the Home Office is still unable to remove foreign offenders from the UK. We agree with the Prime Minister that the Home Office should have done betterThe public would expect our membership of the European Union to make it easier to deport European offenders, but this is clearly not the case," Committee Chair Keith Vaz was quoted in the statement as saying. The supporters of the exit from the European Union are trying to alarm their countrymen by speculating which country would be next to join the block. Brexit supporters, Vote leave movement led by top campaigner, the former Mayor of London Boris Johnson, are spreading the scary leaflets that these are Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey who are waiting in line for the membership. It echoes the recent remarks of Defense Minister Penny Mordaunt who referred to the residents of the Balkan states as criminals, terrorists and gangsters who will flood the UK when Turkey, Serbia, Albania, Montenegro and Macedonia join the EU. She was backed up by user Mace, who left a caustic commentary. "Yeah, let's dispatch those 150 soldiers as soon as possible, since they will be capable of containing all them evil Russians (who dream of invading at least Virum, Spjellerup and most certainly Tryggevelde [all minor towns in Denmark]). This will never aggravate the relationship between Russia and NATO, as the Russians will never deem this a provocation worthy of a response. Also, this will never trigger an arms race, which is a pity, as it is obviously the best way to spend money. What a capital idea! <> How happy we are to have such clever and gifted politicians we should be proud of Well, it's medicine time again. Cheers!" wrote Mace. Many users expressed a strong anti-American sentiment. "After the pack of lies on Iraq, even the most naive realized that the US is never to be trusted," Sekretstian K wrote. "The Russian mentality and the Russian culture are much closer to those of Europe, than American cowboy mentality and lack of culture. It's high time the UN started sending cultural humanitarian help to the US, as they only have money and power on their minds," user robert f commented. A subsequent survey among Extra Bladet's readership revealed that approximately 43 percent of the Danes believe the country's engagement in NATO's enterprises in the Baltic is a bad idea. Some 6 percent are undecided, whereas 50 percent are positive towards military expansion in the Baltic. VIENNA (Sputnik) Ukrainian authorities have yet to present the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe with concrete proposals for the deployment of an armed mission to the countrys eastern regions, OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier said Friday. This is still not discussed in the Hofburg, it is discussed let's say in the corridors. It seems to me it's getting complicated. I've seen statements, rather skeptical, by [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov, some of the separatist also say they are not welcoming any armed component, so this is obviously a complicated issue. There are ideas, there are no formal proposals on the table of the Hofburg. President Poroshenko is talking about it, but he still hasn't presented proposals on the table," Zannier said. He said that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has also not presented any proposals to the OSCE. MOSCOW (Sputnik)The deployment of NATO missile defense systems in Europe is not directed against Russia, focusing instead on threats from beyond Europe and north Atlantic region, French President Francois Hollande said Friday. "NATO's missile defense is not directed against Russia, it will not impact Russia's strategic deterrence capacity. Its sole purpose is to defend the alliance against potential threats arising from outside the Euro-Atlantic zone. This is something that we should say once again ahead of the Warsaw meeting," Hollande said during a joint press conference with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. MOSCOW (Sputnik) According to the Proto Thema newspaper, some 700 migrants were aboard the boat , when it started to drown about 70 nautical miles south of Crete. The newspaper added that the rescue operation was underway and some 250 migrants had already been rescued by the coast guard of Greece. Europe has been beset by a massive refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants fleeing their crisis-torn countries in the Middle East and North Africa to escape violence and poverty. The majority of them cross the Mediterranean Sea and arrive in the European Union using southern EU nations as transit points. Speaking to the Russian newspaper Vzglyad, Ukrainian political commentator Vladimir Skachko warned that the measure, if passed, "will be another step in transferring Ukraine toward being externally controlled." "By and large, the EU has been completely disillusioned in Ukrainian authorities' ability to do what they are told and what they have been paid for," the commentator noted. "Therefore, they are now trying to take complete control into their hands." "At first they attempted to implement a Georgian-American-Baltic [style management. Now they've decided to create a 'council for reforms', inviting Poland's Leszek Balcerowicz and Slovakia's Ivan Miklash" to manage it. If in the past, it was considered trendy to think that Ukraine was ruled from Moscow or from Washington; now, Skachko explained, it's the "Brussels' Obkom's" turn. "There's nothing to be surprised about here," the commentator suggested. "Ukraine's political elite does not have a statist instinct. They are only capable of fulfilling someone else's orders. This is an attempt to apply the Georgian option, where the police was funded by George Soros, onto Ukrainian soil. But Georgia is a country with 3 million people, while Ukraine has 40 million. It's true, the country is down and almost out, but we have enormous infrastructure, which has yet to be finished off. It seems this is the purpose" of such efforts. BRUSSELS (Sputnik)According to L'Echo, the lawyer of the Belgian Foreign Ministry will defend a Muslim woman Samira A. who sued her ex-employer G4S Secure Solutions for prohibiting headscarves at work. Earlier the case was considered by labor tribunal in Antwerp which ruled in favor of G4S citing the right of enterprises for dress-code. The Belgian government condemned the court decision as discriminating. VIENNA (Sputnik) The Co-Chairs of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group on the Nagorno-Karabakh proposed the establishment of a group for the investigation of incidents, OSCE said in a statement Friday. The proposal was made during OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov and with Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian. "The Co-Chairs delivered to the Ministers for the consideration of the sides draft documents on expanding the existing office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and establishing an OSCE investigative mechanism," the statement read. "There have been lots of incidents in the last few days, mainly conflicts between nationalities, including riots." Afghans & Pakistanis have historically bad relations. They shouldn't have been housed together #refugeesgr #moria #lesvos Omaira Gill (@OmairaGill) June 3, 2016 "Glass was smashed in the windows of one of our medical points luckily no one inside was hurt as everyone had been evacuated." Papandreou told Sputnik. "There is a matter of safety for the NGOs volunteers and staff, also for the people living inside the camp which is overcrowded. Many NGOs left, which meant that those like us who decided to remain, have more things to do, more responsibilities and more problems." However, Papandreou was keen to stress that Medecins du Monde is still providing its services at the Moria hotspot. "There is a security issue these days but I strongly believe that NGOs volunteers and staff are not a real target and that safety was not the reason that some NGO's left." "We strongly believe there is a need for a medical NGO to be present at the site. We don't agree with the common EU-Turkey statement and especially with the detention centers policy but we have decided to remain in Moria because our main goal is to continue supporting refugees who are in bigger need under the current situation. At the same time through MdM presence in Moria our aim is to underline every possible incident of human rights violation." When Queen Margrethe of Denmark lands in Istanbul with an official visit later this year, many expect her stay to turn political, as her royal presence may be used as a PR-stunt by Turkey's political establishment, despite the Danish royal family's pronouncedly apolitical character. Her Majesty's visit is expected to help polish Erdogan's tarnished international image as an autocrat and a war-monger. "Erdogan's international contacts do not grow on trees these days, so there is no doubt that the Queen's visit will be used to the max to paint a positive picture of Erdogan," Pola Rojan Bagger, journalist and author of several books on Turkey, told Danish newspaper Berlingske. Naser Khader, foreign affairs spokesman for the Conservative Party, advocated for stronger international pressure on Erdogan. EU pretends Turkey is "safe" 4 refugees. Amnesty report exposes this is fiction https://t.co/3MJGKDRBaZ #DealBreaker pic.twitter.com/bwULgDGZNq Fotis Filippou (@Fotis_Filippou) June 3, 2016 Sputnik spoke with Ana Shea a researcher with Amnesty International who wrote the briefing, and she said that Europe wasn't doing enough to fulfill its obligations to refugees fleeing from war torn countries in the Middle East: "Under international law, they are obliged to respect the right to claim asylum, so there's realpolitik but there's also international law. Let's look beyond Europe, to countries like Canada, which have taken tens of thousands of people in a very short amount of time, so what's lacking in this situation is not the ability or the funds to address the inequality and the responsibility. What's lacking is political will, and European leaders have to face up not only to their own populous, but also to international law." Responding to the argument that European Governments faced a great deal of political resistance internally regarding refugees, Shea insisted that "there is an appetite for welcoming refugees", and said mainstream opinion throughout Europe was not being properly reflected. "There are elements within each population that welcome refugees. An Amnesty International poll from a few weeks ago showed that leaders in Europe, and beyond, might be pandering to the wrong parts of their population." Given the EU's track record with regards the refugee crisis accepting only a tiny fraction of those fleeing into Europe Amnesty's advice could well fall on deaf ears. However, Shea fears that such inaction could have disastrous and life threatening consequences, arguing that Turkey would be placed under further strain and more people would take to boats crossing the Mediterranean and subsequently, more people will drown. "There's a humanitarian veneer over this deal, where the goal is to save lives, but that's not going to happen. People will take more dangerous routes. You can't stop the boats, you can change where they're leaving from but the [EU-Turkey refugee] deal is really a disaster for human rights on all levels." MOSCOW (Sputnik)Spain finds it necessary to maintain a dialogue with Russia on major international issues, including Mideast conflicts and terror threat, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation told Sputnik. It is necessary to maintain a dialogue with Russia on major international questions, especially threats to peace and international security. The rise of terrorism, Libya, Syria or the Iranian nuclear question are the topics, which are on the table and on which we need to speak to Russia, the ministrys press office stated. The press office added that Russia is a first-class global actor and Madrid has always favored a dialogue with Moscow, stressing also that the sanctions regime had a negative impact on the EU economies. France's Interior Minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, announced on Thursday 2nd June, that the country plans to take in 400 refugees a month under the European Union plan for distribution of asylum seekers. This means that France is increasing their intake substantially, hoping to live up to their commitments to take in 32,000 additional refugees over the next two years. Reunion de travail a Athenes avec Alexis Tsipras: la France soutient la Grece qui fait des efforts considerables. pic.twitter.com/N1OpEYl2ls Manuel Valls (@manuelvalls) June 3, 2016 (Tweet: 'Working meeting in Athens with Alexis Tsipras: France supports Greece and its considerable efforts.') Speaking at a joint news conference in Berlin, with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg , Merkel said it would be "desirable" to hold a NATO-Russia Council meeting before the main NATO summit in Warsaw in July. In particular, she referred to the NATO-Russia Founding Act from 1997, which states that "the alliance will carry out its collective defense and other missions by ensuring the necessary interoperability, integration, and capability for reinforcement rather than by additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces." Merkel said the Founding Act was an "important document" that Germany would "not violate". Her comments come amid divisions within NATO over the deployment of four rotating battalions in Eastern Europe. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Lithuania maintains fruitful and intensive cooperation with Turkey despite the recognition of Armenians genocide by the Lithuanian parliament back in 2005, a spokesperson from the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry told Sputnik. On Thursday, Germany joined the ranks of European countries recognizing the 1915-1916 mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as genocide. Before the vote, proposed by lawmakers from the ruling coalition of Conservatives and Socialists together with the Green Party, Ankara said its relations with Germany would deteriorate in case the resolution was passed. "Parliament of Lithuania has adopted a similar resolution back in 2005. On a number of occasions this issue was raised during bilateral meetings with Turkish officials on different levels. Currently we enjoy very intensive, constructive and fruitful cooperation between our countries," the spokesperson said. EU lawmakers have decided to renew links with Russian representatives in Russia's Lower House of Parliament, having previously cut ties, and put some Russian deputies on their sanctions list, in March 2014 after Crimea's reunification with Russia On March 20 2014 Russia's parliamentarians ratified the agreement between the Supreme Council of Crimea and the Russian government for the peninsula to rejoin the Russian Federation. This followed a referendum in which over 96 percent of Crimea residents voted to secede from Ukraine and reunify with Russia, in the aftermath of the Maidan coup in Kiev which overthrew the unpopular but democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych. On Thursday, Deputy Foreign Minister Gigi Gigiadze said that the issue of liberalization remains on the agenda of the meeting of the European ministers of justice and the interior scheduled for June 9-10, adding that he hopes a decision will be made then, despite the fact that the EU's permanent representatives have not been able to agree on the issue ahead of the meeting. At the same time, Vzglyad recalled, Tbilisi has deployed officials to meet with French and German leaders to try to soothe their concerns. Earlier this week, Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili met with French President Francois Hollande in Bordeaux to discuss the issue, saying that he was pleased with the results of the meeting. Meanwhile, Interior Minister Giorgi Mgebrishvili visited Germany late last month, where he discussed the visa issue with German federal and regional officials. Nonetheless, Georgia experts are not as optimistic as the country's leaders. Speaking to the newspaper, Soso Tsintsadze, a political and legal expert and professor at the Georgian-American University, recalled that at the moment, "after the recent terrorist attacks, politicians in countries like Belgium or France have been forced to take the views of their citizens into account; their societies do not want new migrants, however large or small the influx will be." Their position, Tsintsadze suggested, is one of "once burned, twice shy. It's possible that European officials are prepared to give Georgia a visa-free regime, but the people of their countries are afraid." At the same time, the analyst noted, "in addition to fears over migrants, there are also questions regarding domestic issues," both in Georgia and in other former Soviet states. "Ukraine is a mess in terms of corruption and other issues, in Moldova the communists could return to power. And all of this also affects European decisions," he stressed. "They are afraid of opening this door, since slamming it shut again would be very difficult." MOSCOW (Sputnik) The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage said that the population of the United Kingdom (UK) will reach 80 million by 2040 current levels of immigration continue, the British media reported Friday. According to the BBC, Farage said that the "continuing flood of people" to the United Kingdom has resulted in "a great divide" between the ruling classes and "everybody else," and if it continues the UK population will reach 80 million by 2040. Earlier in the day, The Guardian reported that Farage would be leading a flotilla of fisher boats up the Thames to central London, which is aimed to call for the UKs exit from the European Union, known as Brexit, which Farage advocates. KIEV (Sputnik) Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) denies committing any torture, ill-treatment and detention in the Donbass region conflict zone, press-secretary of the department Elena Gitlyanskaya said on Friday. Earlier on Friday, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic said that SBU was responsible for hundreds of illegal detentions and torture and that Kievs disregard for human rights had become systemic and needs to urgently addressed. He specified that the SBU has been detaining and torturing suspected opponents of the Kiev regime, those who sympathize with the self-proclaimed peoples republics of Donetsk and Lugansk (DPR and LPR) in Ukraines southeast. "We committed no torture there. Security Service of Ukraine adheres to the norms of the Ukrainian legislation and all the international conventions and treaties on human rights. I think that during the today's meeting between SBU head Basil Gritsak and Simonovic all the points that have been mentioned in the report will be addressed, and after that we could comment in more detail," Gitlyanskaya told RIA Novosti. Despite the confrontational rhetoric, Sweden's defense outlay has been shrinking steadily since the mid-1960s, reaching a record low of 1.2 percent of the country's GDP at the beginning of the 2010s. In 2014, however, a significant military budget increase was bulldozed by Sweden's saber-rattlers on account of Russia's "aggression." Last year, Sweden allotted no less than one billion kronor (120 million dollars) to rebuilding some of the decrepit Cold War defenses of the strategically-located Baltic Sea island of Gotland. Sweden's grandiose war plans include posting hundreds of soldiers on the island by 2018 and setting up a new garrison as an ominous return to the Cold War era. However, despite the generous military outlay and the overall bellicose air, Sweden does not stand any real chance of defending its precious Gotland, should the island be invaded by foreign forces, experts claim. I have been clear on my views & they remain unchanged. Our abstention respected the moratorium which ensures no fracking can take place here Ash Denham MSP (@ashtenRD) June 2, 2016 With the SNP holding a great deal of public support ever since the Scottish Independence referendum many have taken to Twitter in support of the governing party, with their own theories as to why the supposedly anti-fracking party abstained from a vote in parliament on the subject. One of the most common theories amongst SNP supporting tweeters is that the SNP cant bring in an outright ban as they would open themselves up to legal challenges which may actually result in the current moratorium being overruled. Supporters of a ban on fracking have questioned why the SNP havent just confirmed this theory if it is indeed the case. It would certainly help put an end to the social media speculation. Also, to everyone on TL who thinks fracking moratorium is legal, but ban not. SNP minister didn't use that argument. Because it's rubbish. Iain Gray (@IainGrayMSP) June 2, 2016 Sputnik News asked the SNP if this concern of legal challenge was responsible for the surprising abstention. Minister for Business, Innovation and Energy, Paul Wheelhouse MSP said: "We are deeply skeptical about fracking and, through our moratorium, we have ensured that no fracking can take place in Scotland. Our abstention in this parliamentary vote respects and is in line with that moratorium. In stark contrast to the gung-ho approach of the Tories, we are being rightly cautious." "We have set out a full research program to be followed by a full consultation of people in Scotland, so that future decisions on fracking are informed by scientific evidence and the views of the people who live and work here. KIEV (Sputnik) The Normandy Quartet, comprising Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine, have agreed to deploy the OSCE police mission to East Ukraine, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Friday. "Today, we have a serious diplomatic success as not only in Normandy format on a high level we agreed on what we insist a common agreement on the OSCE police mission deployment, but also in Vienna, in the OSCE, under the German chairmanship, our German partners have launched a discussion on deployment of the police mission," Poroshenko said at the press conference in Kiev. "The new inquiry committee will build on the work of the special tax committees set up 18 months ago but with a larger mandate. It will address issues such as money laundering and the impact on third countries," he said. The Special Committee on tax rulings by Member States (TAXE) was set up in February 2015, following the LuxLeaks scandal to shed light on all Member States' tax rulings and examine ways to end unfair tax practices and combat tax evasion in the European Union. 'Scratching the Surface' The Committee finished its work in November 2015 with a report saying that tax evasion was a "structural problem due to the lack of cooperation in tax matters among Member States", which many lawmakers saw as not going far enough. Parliament installed a second Special Committee ("TAXE2") to look further into the Council's past activities when dealing with controversial tax practices and to monitor the implementation of Parliament's recommendations on how to tax companies. 80% globally want their govt to BAN secret companies make it hard for the corrupt. RT if you agree #AntiCorruption pic.twitter.com/7IR5sIbRO1 Transparency Int'l (@anticorruption) 12 May 2016 Greens/European Free Alliance co-president Philippe Lamberts said: "Panama Leaks shows we have so far just been scratching at the surface of the odious tax avoidance practices employed by individuals and businesses around the world and Europe. The Panama Papers have shown that obligations under existing EU anti-money laundering legislation are not enforced by EU governments and authorities. "It would appear that, as with the revelations in Luxembourg Leaks, EU institutions and governments have failed in their duty to enforce the law. With authorities and policy makers in Europe continuing to drag their heels in their response to the pre-existing evidence, it is clear that this void needs to be filled," he said. Four ships, helicopters and airplanes had to be scrambled to rescue 340 people after the boat was found 75 nautical miles south of the Greek island of Crete. The capsized vessel was 25 meters long and was used to carry around 700 people, according to the International Organization for Migration. "We've heard that there were 400 or 500 people on board, but we cannot confirm that number," Nikos Lagadianos, spokesperson for the Greek coast guard said. Meanwhile, the bodies of at least 100 people have washed up on the shores of Libya's coast, including two children who were found on beaches near Zuwahra. Over 100 bodies recovered after boat capsizes off the coast of Libya#refugees #migrantshttps://t.co/idt0z68lhp pic.twitter.com/G0jNxfpXhy Brendan McDonald (@7piliers) June 3, 2016 "I think it's only going to get worse it's going to happen more regularly," Dhan, who also trained on a Swedish rescue boat, told Sputnik. At least 880 refugees and migrants have lost their lives on route to Europe this year. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) the odds for dying on route to Europe are now one in 81. "Some 2,510 lives have been lost so far compared to 1,855 in the same period in 2015," William Spindler, UNHCR spokesperson, said. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The European Commission praised the commitment by the G20 Agriculture Ministerial meeting to support sustainable agriculture for ensuring global food security, the EU body said in a press release on Friday. G20 Agriculture Ministerial meeting was held in Chinese Xian earlier on Friday. "I welcome the G20 conclusions as a sign of our common commitment to tackle the global challenges of food security, sustainable agriculture, innovation and ICT use in farming," EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Phil Hogan said as quoted in the press release. KIEV(Sputnik) Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Friday that he would persuade Ukrainian Parliament to adopt constitutional amendments on decentralization. "I remain optimistic on the amendments to the Constitution on decentralization. I have a set of constructive proposals to the Parliament that will bring additional convincing public, political arguments for voting in favor of the amendments on decentralization," Poroshenko said at the press conference in Kiev. He added that constitutional amendments on decentralization would be accompanied by another additional law in analogy with the constitutional amendments on judicial reform. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Imposing sanctions against Ukraine over its failure to implement the Minsk agreement, and mishandling of Odessa massacre investigation, would be the "honest" solution, a Czech member of the European Parliament told Sputnik Friday, regretting that the move was unlikely amid Rusophobic moods in Europe. If the world were honest, there would have been sanctions, and even international tribunal to judge what happened in Odessa and other places in Ukraine, would have already taken place. But unfortunately, the international community uses double standards, Jiri Mastalka said. But in the Rusophobia that has set in the European Union, it is very unlikely to happen, he added. Earlier in the day, French lawmaker Thierry Mariani suggested imposing sanctions on Kiev as it failed to implement reforms stipulated in the Minsk accords on Ukrainian settlement. MOSCOW (Sputnik) A specially dedicated observer group should be formed to investigate into illegal detentions and torture of the detainees by Ukraines Security Service (SBU), a Czech member of the European Parliament told Sputnik Friday. Earlier in the day, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic said that SBU is responsible for hundreds of illegal detentions and tortures, adding that Kievs "disregard for human rights" has become systemic and needs to be urgently addressed. I am afraid the situation might be even worse than he is describing it, Jiri Mastalka said. The way out is to create an observer group in charge of investigating the situation because there are rules of how to treat the detainees. We have Geneva conventions, and I think the Ukrainian authorities must be interested in such observer group that will prove or rule out the tortures, he added. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Ukraine and the Netherlands are close to the solution which will allow for the Dutch ratification of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko said at a press conference on Friday. The Ukrainian Association Agreement with the EU was signed in June 2014 and ratified by the parliaments of all 28 EU member states. The Netherlands decided to hold a referendum on the agreement in April 2016, the results of which were negative, although they were advisory in nature and not binding. The following week, the Dutch parliament rejected a proposal by the opposition to withdraw the ratification, providing the government with more time to consider the issue. "Regarding ratifying, we have the full support of the Netherlands. Once again, I want to note that the results of the referendum are advisory in nature. The Dutch prime minister and I have thoroughly discussed this situation, and I am convinced that we are very close to the model or an algorithm which will allow us to finish the ratification of the Association Agreement," Poroshenko said. KIEV (Sputnik)A Ukrainian website published in May private details of 4,000 journalists working for CNN, Reuters, AFP, BBC, and Al-Jazeera, among others, in the breakaway Donetsk province. Some of them received threats, according to the EU delegation in Ukraine. "The publication of details of foreign journalists on the Mirotvorets website was a big mistake," the president was quoted as saying by his administration on its Facebook page. Speaking at a press conference in Kiev, Poroshenko assured Western journalists they "have nothing to fear in Ukraine." "I made corresponding orders to security chiefs and law enforcement agencies." According to the statement, the deal was signed by Estonian Culture Ministry Undersecretary Anna-Lee Reimaa and Russian Deputy Culture Minister Alla Manilova in the Estonian city of Narva. "After the signing ceremony, which was also attended by Russian Ambassador to Estonia Alexander Petrov, Alla Manilova and Anne-Lee Reimaa, at a ceremony held at the Geneva Cultural Center, opened the Days of Narva and the Fifth International Festival of Contemporary Art Most Drujbi [Bridge of Friendship], which will be attended by artists from Estonia and St. Petersburg," the statement said. Despite an overwhelming belief that a Brexit vote would not impact negatively on the EU economy, a sizable majority of Germans want the UK to remain inside the European Union. Thirty-nine percent of those polled thought things would get worse if the UK voted to leave the EU in the upcoming referendum on June 23rd. Whether this sort of polling will benefit the Remain side however, is difficult to say, given that German influence over UK matters is one of the major bones of contention for those who advocate a split from the EU. A spokesman for the UK Independence Party which supports a Leave vote told Sputnik: "Whilst it is rather charming that the majority of German's would like the UK to stay in the EU, one wonders why. Could it be that post Brexit, Germany will have to pick up an even bigger tab for subsidizing the failings of the EU economic system?" MOSCOW (Sputnik) A plan to rein in tax avoidance by EUs highest-grossing corporations will be voted on by the European Parliament next Wednesday, the EU body said in a statement. The six-point plan penned by the European Commission proposes new measures that seek to reclaim $180-215 billion a year in lost revenue. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Germanys proposed legislation on migrant integration is seeking to allocate refugees in places easier for adaptation, avoiding the formation of disadvantaged residential areas populated by refugees, a German Interior Ministry spokesman told Sputnik on Friday. Earlier in the day, the German parliament discussed the First Integration Act, which was presented by German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere on May 25 and aimed at integrating refugees settled in the country. "One idea is to avoid the formation of ghettos by allocating refugees to places where integration is easier for them, naturally in conformity with European and public international law," Tobias Plate said. He shed doubt on the level of adequate police preparation, including a failure to gain intelligence from other police forces abroad. "In some branches of this club 80- 90 percent of members have a criminal record, for serious crimes like murder, robbery, assault with weapons, extortion, drug trafficking and people trafficking. Someone has to control them, because if there is any conflict, they will stop at nothing," he said. A possible confrontation between the Hell's Angels and other motorcycle groups in Poland would end in "bloody carnage," he warned. "That took place in the Czech Republic two years ago. There was even gunfire between conflicting clubs, in which a Polish Hell's Angel's member died and several people were shot." "The police got there late, but when they did, they found a lot of dangerous items like firearms, knives and cleavers. That happened right at out border, so you to have consider that it could also happen to us." MOSCOW (Sputnik) Sir John Chilcots 12-volume report into the United Kingdoms part in the Iraq war is expected to be published on July 6, seven years after it was initiated and came through repeated delays in publication. The members of the public would have to pay nearly 800 pounds to assess the report, which was condemned by those who lost their loved ones during the operation in Iraq. "There is no question of families of service personnel who died in Iraq having to pay for copies of the Chilcot report," the spokesman for the prime minster's office was quoted by The Telegraph as saying. He did not specify how the costs would be covered, to issue a free copy for the families of 179 British soldier, who died in the Iraq War. MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) Aeromexico currently operates one direct flight to Caracas per day. According to Conesa, Venezuelas government has not authorized any repatriation of funds this year. The Aeromexico CEO stressed, as quoted by Reportur on Thursday, that "the situation in Venezuela is unsustainable." WASHINGTON (Sputnik) "There are many US companies active in Iraq right now," Pennington said. "As security improves and the situation normalizes there will be more opportunities." Pennington noted that US businesses respond to commercial prospects so the effort needs to be focused on creating opportunities that are attractive. Commercial opportunities, he continued, will depend on the circumstances, the location and field of operation. The Iraqi Army and PMF, backed by US airstrikes, launched the offensive to retake Fallujah on May 22. The advance was stalled into its second week so the armed forces can be certain "whoever is left is only 100 percent ISIS [Islamic State]," Hussaini explained. "If we free Fallujah, we are going to probably contain Daesh in Iraq, at least 33-40 percent," Hussaini said, anticipating the liberation of the city will be "a great victory." Asked about the strategic importance of the Iraqi government retaking the city from the Islamic State, Husseini stated, "I think they will collapse." Hussaini noted that rebuilding the city and reconciling the people with the government in Baghdad after Daesh is exiled "is going to take a lot of time." "Fallujah has been an obstacle to the government and to the American forces," Husseini said of the city where US forces faced the bloodiest combat following the 2003 invasion and overthrow of the Saddam Hussein government. Fallujah is one of the last remaining stronghold for the Islamic State in Iraq, followed by Mosul, the countrys second largest city. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) "We have recently had our ambassador, new ambassador, sent to Ankara about last week, so we have given another sign to Turkey that we are serious about discussions and dialogue," Faily said on Thursday. In December, Turkey deployed about 150 troops and 25 tanks to a base in the Iraqi Nineveh province, without Baghdads approval. The ambassador noted that Iraq consults with the United States and other countries regarding support from the international community. WASHINGTON (Sputnik), Michael Hughes, Liudmila Chernova Parks said that a shared market is "natural" for Iraqis "be they Kurds, be they Shia, be they Sunni, be they from Basra or from Irbil." He noted that the common economic space needs to be developed to reap the scale and diversity of larger markets while avoiding balkanization. Parks also outlined his views on economic development of the territorial entities within Iraq.The Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) wants to attract investors to develop its electricity sector, which has the capacity to generate and sell power to the entire country, he pointed out. "Theres some really interesting investment projects that wed like to develop including this electricity sector, right, where the potential to sell power from Kurdistan, power thats generated based on gas, to the rest of Iraq, is real and I think would be very profitable business," Parks said on Thursday. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The conference is set to address the issues of Palestinians, who seek diplomatic recognition for their independent state on the territories of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which have been partially occupied by Israel, and the Gaza Strip, as well as the Israeli stance. The conference is due to be convened at the initiative of the French authorities. According to French Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal, a total of 28 delegations have confirmed their participation in the upcoming conference. "Tomorrow in Paris, France will greet 28 delegations attending the ministerial meeting, which will be the first stage of the Middle East peace initiative," Nadal said Thursday. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Russian servicemen have delivered a record amount of humanitarian aid to Hama province, a spokesman for the Russian Center for Syrian Reconciliation at Hmeimim airbase said. "We have delivered a record amount of humanitarian aid 16 [metric] tons. Flour, grain, canned fish and bread baked at a government bakery in the city of Hama from our [Russian] flour," Col. Sergei Ivanov told reporters. The aid also included candy for children. According to Ivanov, despite terrorists attempts to disrupt the ceasefire in Hama, the reconciliation process continues. MOSCOW (Sputnik) One of the main Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition partners, Naftali Bennett, promised to leave the government if Palestinian state is created. The Jewish Home party leader's Naftali Bennett announcement came as a response to Netanyahu's Tuesday statement that Israel is ready to discuss the Arab Peace Initiative to reach a settlement of the conflict with Palestine which involves the 'two-state solution.' "While we're here, there will be no Palestinian state on the highway number 6. We will become a wall against the historical mistakes. If it comes to the 1967 borders and the division of Jerusalem, we will not only leave the government, but will collapsed it," Bennett said in the interview with the Israel's Arutz 2 TV channel. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Recent high-level contacts between Russia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have made a substantial contribution to bilateral relations between the two countries, UAE Federal National Council President Amal Qubaisi said Friday. Earlier on Friday, Qubaisi met with Russian lower house speaker Sergei Naryshkin, discussing issues of bilateral relations, trade, economic and investment ties. Recent high-level official visits, including Russian upper house speaker Valentina Matvienko's visit to the UAE in early April, have served to greatly strengthen bilateral ties and boosted political and economic relations, Qubaisi said. MOSCOW (Sputnik)Israel does not provide medical assistance to militants in Syria, Israeli ambassador to Russia Zvi Heifetz told Sputnik. Syrias Foreign Minister Walid Muallem earlier accused Israel of treating al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front fighters in Israeli clinics. "We once had a situation when the wounded were stranded on our side [of the border], but they were Syrian military personnel. The most humane thing we could do was to help the wounded, treat them and return them home," Heifetz said. PARIS (Sputnik) The international community needs to recreate conditions to begin Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Friday. On Friday, an international ministerial meeting on Israel-Palestinian conflict is taking place in Paris, with representatives of neither Israel nor Palestine set to attend. "The duty of the international community to recreate conditions to start the negotiation. That is why we are here," Mogherini told a press conference on the sidelines of the conference. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces freed five villages on the outskirts of the city of Manbij in Syrian Aleppo province from the Daesh terrorists Friday, a Kurdish source told Sputnik. At least 12 terrorists were killed in Friday fights, the source said. SDF, backed by the US-led coalition, launched an offensive on the north-west of Aleppo on Wednesday province against the IS and released six villages near Manbij on Thursday. The incident comes two days after a roadside bomb explosion in the neighboring Mardin province injured 12 people. Tensions between Ankara and the Kurds escalated in July 2015 when a ceasefire between Turkey and the PKK collapsed, prompting a government military operation. Several round-the-clock curfews were imposed in Kurdish-populated towns, trapping civilians. MOSCOW (Sputnik)Radicals are trying to use the lack of dialogue between Israel and Palestine to antagonize one another and this practice seems to be working, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said Friday. "Radicals are trying to use the lack of dialogue between Israel and Palestine. Unfortunately, this is working. According to opinion polls, the antagonism between the Palestinians and Israelis has been steadily growing," Bogdanov said. He also noted that there are not favorable conditions so far for holding peace talks between Palestine and Israel. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The US-led coalition against the Islamic State terrorist group, also known as Daesh, conducted 29 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria on Thursday destroying the terrorists positions and infrastructure, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a press release. "In Syria, coalition military forces conducted 14 strikes using bomber, ground-attack, attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft against ISIL [Islamic State] targets," the release stated on Friday. "Additionally in Iraq, coalition military forces conducted 15 strikes coordinated with and in support of the Government of Iraq using bomber, attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft against ISIL targets." The coalition airstrikes in Syria took place near cities of Raqqa and Mara, with particular focus on Manbij, where the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by the United States, have begun an offensive against the terrorists. MOSCOW (Sputnik)According to the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, the Syrian authorities began the new operation after they rejected a plan to advance toward the city of Deir ez-Zor in northeastern Syria. The primary target of the Syrian army is the city of Tabqa near Raqqa, the daily specified. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) also announced the launch of the operation to free Raqqa, the newspaper noted. The Syrian troops are currently in the Hama province, preparing for an offensive, Al-Akhbar reported. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Russia and Germany will hold a meeting in mid-July on how to restore Syrias ancient city of Palmyra after it was ravaged by Islamist militants, a Russian presidential representative said Friday. The Roman-era ruins were recaptured in March by Syrian troops with air support from Russia. Islamists destroyed two of Palmyra's 2,000-year temples and the landmark Arch of Triumph. "The St. Petersburg Forum will focus on how Russian and German archeologists and restoration artists can work together to restore the world heritage site," Mikhail Shvydkoi, the president's special representative for cultural cooperation, told reporters in Moscow. BAGHDAD (Sputnik) The Iraqi Army and militias, backed by US airstrikes, launched the offensive to retake Fallujah on May 22. The city has been under the control of the Daesh militant group since 2014. The group is outlawed in the United States and Russia. "In the first day of the operation to liberate Fallujah, the terrorists put up the toughest resistance Now it [the resistance] is waning. According to our intelligence data, the terrorists are running out of food and ammunition," Yahya Rasul Zubaidi told RIA Novosti. BAGHDAD (Sputnik) The Iraqi forces and the local militias have liberated 27 settlements since the beginning of the anti-extremist operation in the city of Fallujah, a spokesman for the Iraqi Joint Special Operations Command said. The Iraqi Army and militias, backed by US airstrikes, launched the offensive to retake Fallujah on May 22. The city has been under the control of the Daesh terrorist group since 2014. The group is outlawed in the United States and Russia. "The Federal police and the Popular Mobilization Forces managed to liberate 27 villages and settlements including Saqlawia. This region is very important because it was the first defense line of the terrorist organization approaching Fallujah. The Karmah region was also liberated, it was used by IS as a springboard for attacking military convoys and was a terrorist threat for the capital city of Baghdad," Yahya Rasul Zubaidi told RIA Novosti. It is for this particular purpose that they blocked the Sputnik website, the retired admiral said. What was it writing about? About the governmental circles being involved in the smuggling of Syrian oil. This is an absolute truth, from the first until the last word, he said. And the mass media source which reveals the evidence of cant does nothing but anger the leadership. So, what do the authorities do in such a situation, he wonders. They block the access to the website to silence it. As the authorities become more and more scared, they take more and more radical steps. But when taking these steps they become even more scared. It is a vicious circle. BAGHDAD (Sputnik) The Russian-made helicopters used by the Iraqi army have demonstrated their effectiveness during the offensive in the city of Fallujah, a spokesman for the Iraqi Joint Special Operations Command said. "The Mi-28 NE Night Hunter [NATO reporting name Havoc] and Mi-35 [NATO reporting name Hind] helicopters, used by the Iraqi army now, have shown their high effectiveness. They played a great role in the latest offensives," Yahya Rasul Zubaidi told RIA Novosti. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Attempts to use deliveries of humanitarian aid as a precondition for the resumption of intra-Syrian proximity talks is wrong and immoral, Russian envoy to UN Vitaly Churkin said Friday. "It is wrong and immoral to say that the real [intra-Syrian] talks will not start until all humanitarian issues have been resolved," Churkin said following a closed-doors UN Security Council meeting on situation in Syria. "Real talks must continue [ without any preconditions]," Churkin stressed, expressing concern that some UNSC members attempted again to shift the focus of attention to a single issue of airdrops of humanitarian aid to besieged areas in war-torn Syria. Host Brian Becker commented that "the Merkel Administration positioned itself in the beginning as being welcoming and sympathetic, but since then theres been a right-wing opposition against the influx of refugees into Germany," and asked Whiteman about the terms of Turkeys migrant deal with the EU. "Human Rights Organizations have been outraged by it," Whiteman said, adding, "The whole principle behind it is that Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan refugees, people who are fleeing conflicts, who have managed to reach Turkey, are now being traded with people who are fleeing North Africa and the Middle East from countries where there arent conflicts raging. Theres been a report saying that very few refugees have actually changed hands. Essentially, this is just [an obstacle to] the flow of refugees and migrants who are attempting to cross into Europe." Whiteman suggested that the initial positive response in Germany to refugees has been countered by right-wing media stoking racism by painting the influx as part of an "Islamization"of Europe. Adding to this pressure, the Balkan states have closed their borders to refugees. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Over 200 Nusra Front terrorists attacked units of the Syrian army after crossing the border from Turkey, the Russian Defense Ministry said. "More than 200 terrorist from the Nusra Front terrorist organization illegally crossed the Syrian-Turkish border near the town of Beisun and attacked positions of the units of the Syrian armed forces," the ministry said in a daily bulletin posted on its website. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) Iraqi Kurds are engaged in talks within their government as well as with the Iraqi administration on the return of Kurdish lawmakers to Iraqs parliament in Baghdad, Rahman said. "Frankly, we really have to see what is the role of our members of parliament the Kurdish members of parliament in Baghdad," Rahman said. "The violence that was shown toward some of them really was very worrying for all of us." Rahman pointed out that the lawmakers are the Kurds elected representatives and must be respected and treated with the respect. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The Turkish forces deployed to northern Iraq can help in the fight against Daesh (ISIS) despite Baghdads concerns over foreign troops on its soil, "Iraq has many other problems, and the most important is to defeat ISIS [Islamic State]. If the Turks and Turkish trained troops can help, that is a very positive contribution," Jeffrey said on Friday. UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik) The United Kingdom and France are guilty of doing little to stop the flow of foreigners to Syria and of sabotaging peace negotiations by failing to respect the countrys sovereignty, Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations Bashar Jaafari told reporters. "If those states were keen on the well-being of the Syrians, they would have exerted genuine efforts to stop the flow of terrorists into the country and assisted in reaching a Syrian-led political solution to the crisis, instead of supporting certain Arab and regional parties in an attempt to sabotage the political process in its entirety," Jaafari said on Friday. Jaafari cited the UN Charter, which he said requires the world body to respect of sovereignty of member states. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Russia will not supply advanced S-400 Triumf air defense systems to China before 2018, head of Russias state technologies corporation Rostec Sergey Chemezov said. "We have a rule: first we supply our own army with weaponry and then we sell weaponry abroad. A lot of customers ask for earlier deliveries for their orders, but we warn them of the time frames and delivery order right away," Chemezov said in an interview with the Russian Kommersant newspaper. In April, a military source told RIA Novosti that Russia could start delivering S-400 air defense systems to China by the end of 2016. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) "Northrop Grumman Systems Corp., San Diego, California, is being awarded $62.4 million contract for operation and maintenance services in support of the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrator (BAMS-D) program," the announcement said on Thursday. The contract option provides for logistics support, organization, intermediate and depot level maintenance as well as field services representatives to ensure the BAMS-D drones are mission-capable, according to the Defense Department. The drones are used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. However, if such a deal was approved, both US aerospace contractors and Ukrainian companies partnering with them were likely to try and take full advantage of opportunities for cost overruns and loopholes in agreements, Spinney predicted. "There is still a huge problem of corruption by Ukrainians obviously, but also by US contractors," he noted. "As usual, US contractors and their neo-conservative consultants will make out like bandits exploiting this honeypot. No doubt so will the Ukrainian oligarchs." Spinney cautioned that any such move could face major legal obstacles because the Ukrainians would be offering engine designs probably largely based on earlier Russian ones. "I am not sure it is feasible We would be teaming with the Ukrainians to build the same engine the Russians are selling us. Even if this arrangement is legal under the terms of the breakup of the Soviet Union, it is another slap in the Russians face," he observed. "The F-35 program will be well-represented at Farnborough by the Marine Corps and our F-35 program industry partners," said an Air Force spokesperson. This is the second time an F-35A has failed to make it to the Farnborough show. In 2014 the entire F-35 (both Air Force and Marines) fleet was grounded after an engine fire in one of the aircraft. The jet fighter, with development costs estimated at over $56 billion, and likely to rise to about $1.5 trillion over its intended 55-year lifespan, has suffered numerous software failures causing various systems, including engines, to shut down mid-flight, threatening the aircraft and the pilot. Other notable and ongoing problems with the high-tech aircraft include flaws in its fuel and hydraulic systems, poor cockpit visibility, software glitches and freezes, faulty radar and ejection seats that do not work. In addition, the aircraft features a networking system which, according to GAO report, could render the entire fleet offline if one link in the networking chain fails. The Pentagon acknowledged that the F-35 fighter jet will not be ready for its final test phase until 2018, while the Project On Government Oversight made a more pessimistic estimation of 2022, by which time many of its systems may be obsolete. MOSCOW (Sputnik) In 2011, the UN Security Council imposed an arms embargo on Libya amid the Arab Spring revolution, citing government violence against civilians. In May, Russian Ambassador to Libya Ivan Molotkov said that Russian arms supplies to the Libyan government would only be possible if the embargo is lifted. "We had a package of contracts worth $7 billion there [in Libya]. But as of now we cant talk of a significant rise in orders: there is an official government there that has no funds and theres the opposition that we cannot supply arms to. If purchases do occur, it would be minor ones," Chemezov said in an interview with the Russian Kommersant newspaper. ASTANA (Sputnik) Astana is negotiating with Moscow the purchase of Russia-manufactured military transport aircraft, General Director of Russia's Ilyushin Aviation Complex Sergey Velmozhkin said Friday. "The Kazakh side expresses interest to our new products, especially to Il-76MD-90A, to Il-78, as well as to Il-112. Today we have conducted preliminary negotiations," Velmozhkin told reporters at the KADEX-2016 military hardware exhibition in Kazakhstan. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The Russian Defense Ministry will reconstruct 19 polygons in 2016, some of which will be used for the 2016 International Army Games competition, the head of the lead training center for the Russian Armed Forces said Friday. "We are not creating polygons for the competition, but we are using this opportunity of the competition taking place to put in order and reconstruct these polygons. If last year 11 polygons were reconstructed and now meet modern requirements, then this year 19 polygons will be added to these," Lt. Gen. Ivan Buvaltsev said on the Rossiya 24 television channel. Herve Ladsous, UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, was quoted during an interview on Sunday, ahead of his visit to China in early June. China's contribution to the UN peacekeeping operations budget will rise from 6.6 percent to 10.3 percent, surpassing Japan for the first time, Wang Min, China's deputy permanent representative to the UN, said in December. Meanwhile, the country will also pay 7.92 percent of the total UN regular budget from 2016 to 2018, making it the third-largest contributor among 193 member states, following the United States and Japan. MOSCOW (Sputnik)The Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport has held talks on supplying Russian defense systems to the Co-operative Republic of Guyana with the country's leadership, the corporation said Friday. "Talks between the Rosoboronexport delegation, headed by deputy chief executive Sergei Goreslavsky, and the political and military leadership of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana were held in Georgetown with the aim of establishing and developing contacts in the area of military and technical cooperation," the corporation said in a statement. The Russian delegation met Prime Minister and First Vice President Moses Nagamootoo, Second Vice President and Minister of Security Khemraj Ramjattan, Guyana Defence Force Chief of Staff Mark Phillips and Assistant Commissioner of Police David Ramnarine, according to the statement. RIA Novosti recalled that at the moment, the US has limited its official military assistance to Kiev to non-lethal equipment, including uniforms. Additionally, American instructors have provided training for National Guardsman at the Yavoriv training ground in the western Ukrainian region of Lviv. Intrigued by the diplomat's remarks, Russia's Svobodnaya Pressa online newspaper asked the obvious question: "what, in fact, does the Ukrainian defense industry have which would be of interest to the Americans today, if, as Chaly says, the two sides are talking about 'mutual arms trade'? And what can the Ukrainians offer to third countries?" This is especially interesting in light of the recent scandals around the faulty Ukrainian military equipment provided to countries including Croatia, Iraq and India, the resource added. Asked to comment on the ambassador's sensational announcement, Vladimir Evseev, the head of the department of Eurasian Integration and Development of the SCO at the CIS Institute, told the online newspaper that in practice, Ukrainian defense contractors are pretty limited in what they can offer the Americans. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) Chinas decision to participate in the RIMPAC is a signal of common security cooperation in the Pacific, Carter stated. "China will be participating in RIMPAC. Thats a perfect example of countries working together, their militaries working together for common purpose," Carter stated during a press conference in Singapore. Allowing China to take part in the exercise caused mixed reaction in Washington, with some lawmakers, including Senator John McCain (R-AZ), stating that the United States should bar China from participating until the ongoing South China Sea dispute is resolved. However, others argued that it would be beneficial for China to see the naval power of the US and its allies firsthand. "Direct exposure to US equipment, personnel, and capabilities should give the Chinese a more realistic assessment of what the US and its allies are capable of doing," said Nicole Forrester, formerly with the Pacific Forum Center for Strategic and International Studies, earlier this February. This year's exercise includes forces from Australia, Brazil, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, China, Peru, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Tonga, the United Kingdom and the United States. Russia took part in RIMPAC in 2012, but canceled its participation in 2014, due to interrupted military cooperation between Moscow and Washington over ongoing territorial disputes in Ukraine. The woman now says that she was in a consensual relationship with the child, who himself is below the age of consent, and that the story of rape was a fabrication developed by her family in an attempt to put an end to the relationship. The young man and a second individual, who purportedly filmed the incident, were both charged under Israels sex-crime ordinance, and for entering Israel unlawfully. Police have requested that a court in Tel Aviv release both individuals and the public defenders office is expected to seek the release of the second suspect, since the absence of a rape precludes his alleged recording of a crime. The fate of Brazil now rests in the hands of the countrys sporadically violent senate, which will vote in six months following the completion of the upcoming impeachment trial on whether to oust Rousseff from office permanently. Rousseffs opponents will need a 2/3 vote (54 of 81 members) to complete their coup, with the results of those proceedings expected to be decided by a razor thin margin. In May, Brazilian senators voted 55 to 22 to advance impeachment proceedings against President Rousseff. The vote was taken under a circus-like atmosphere, with senators using their speaking time not to discuss impeachment proceedings, but rather to beg Brazilians to support reelection bids. In an absurd debate that featured fistfights, references to God, the Devil and gangrene, a highlight of the proceedings was Renan Calheiross tooth falling out of his mouth on live television. The senate vote was nearly canceled after former lower house leader Eduardo Cunha, recognized as the chief architect of the impeachment effort, was ousted by the Brazilian Supreme Court on corruption charges. His successor, Waldir Maranhao, called for an annulment of the lower house vote during his first day in office, citing procedural irregularities, although many believe his opposition was traced to rumors that Cunha bribed legislators to support the impeachment vote. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) Blinken is travelling to China on Sunday to lead the US delegation in a scheduled bilateral security dialogue, the Department of State announced in a media note. "Blinken will travel to Beijing, China, on June 5-6, 2016, to lead the US delegation to the sixth US-China Strategic Security Dialogue (SSD) and to participate in the eighth US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED)," the note said on Thursday. The discussions on easing the anti-Russian sanctions have been going on in Germany for a long time. Apart from the left and ultra-right opposition parties which have been against the punitive measures from the very beginning, similar calls are now being heard from one of the members of the ruling coalition, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), notes the Deutsche Welle website. Some of the first to speak on the topic were Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the chairman of the SPD, Minister of Economic Affairs Siegmar Gabriel. Both politicians noted that sanctions are not an end in themselves and that the global issues could not be solved without Russia. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Israel doubts that there will be any success in the Palestinian-Israeli ministerial meeting in Paris since the issues at hand need to be decided on a bilateral basis between the opposing sides, Israeli Ambassador to Russia Zvi Heifetz told Sputnik. "The issues need to be resolved in Jerusalem and Ramallah and it seems unrealistic that they would be solved in Paris or anywhere else. Our position is well-known, we are in favor of bilateral relations because we see expediency in this," Heifetz said. An international ministerial conference on the Israel-Palestine conflict settlement kicked off in the French capital on Friday. The conference is set to address the issues of Palestinians, who seek diplomatic recognition for their independent state on the territories of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which have been partially occupied by Israel, and the Gaza Strip, as well as the Israeli stance. PARIS (Sputnik) The European Union is not against the Egyptian initiative as means of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which entails a direct meeting of the leaders of the conflicting sides, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Friday. On Friday, an international ministerial meeting on Israel-Palestinian conflict will take place in Paris, with representatives of neither Israel nor Palestine set to attend. Egypt, meanwhile, has been trying to organize a summit between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi, with the latter acting as mediator. "For the Europeans it doesn't matter where the initiative will take place. It is not about the labels of who owns the process. The important thing is about the process and to have it started and have it meaningful because what I am worrying about is security of the Israel and sustainability of the solution on the ground," Mogherini told a press conference. On June 6-8, Netanyahu will visit Russia to meet Russian leadership and to sign a number of agreements on bilateral cooperation. "In addition [to the agreements], a joint statement on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations between our states," Heifetz said. PARIS (Sputnik) The Middle East Quartet, comprising the European Union, the United Nations, Russia and the United States, will release the final communique of the ministerial meeting on the Palestinian-Israeli settlement in the coming days, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Friday. On Friday, the ministerial level meeting will be held in Paris aimed at the Palestinian-Israeli settlement at the initiative of the French authorities. It is expected to take place without representatives of the conflicting sides and to help preparation for the international summit involving Israel and Palestine. "We are finalizing the work within the quartet, so together with our friends the Unites States and Russia and the UN on the report that will be ready in the coming days that not only underlying the trends and the situation on the ground that puts at risk the situation on the ground but also includes some substantial recommendations on what the parties cannot do to get to the solution, and what the regional and international community can do to support this process, to create guarantees for the parties to engage into the process," Mogherini told reporters. PARIS (Sputnik) French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault stressed Friday the importance of devising a clear timeline to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Earlier in the day, foreign ministers of some 30 states met in Paris to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian settlement. "The decisions that are taken by the international community should be a backdrop for this [peace] process. That mean that UN resolutions, Madrid conclusion and Quartet reports should be respected and we also need to have a clear timeline. Time is running out. The idea of having this timeline is framework is shared by many of us," Ayrault told reporters. "Erdogan can make whatever proposal he wants, but the model of the United Nations and its Security Council, with five permanent members, was formed by the victorious powers at the end of the Second World War. In spite of everything, this model works. Since 1945, it has allowed nations to avoid large-scale military conflicts on our planet. Therefore, it is inappropriate to make fundamental changes to it." As for proposals to expand the body, "that's a separate issue," Pilko explained. "It might include countries like Brazil, India, Japan and Germany. Such discussions have been held for quite some time. The present model is not without its drawbacks. But it serves to prevent major conflicts between the great powers, and this is important." At the same time, the analyst suggested, the Turkish government "can talk all it wants about the Security Council's lack of representation for Muslim countries. The bottom line is that the body is not formed on a religious basis, but based on the most powerful countries in the world. These are the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China. These are the countries that have a decisive influence on the international agenda. Turkey does not belong to this group." Ultimately, Pilko noted that "the reform of the UN is necessary, but not drastically so. The expansion of the list of permanent members should be discussed; the time for this has come. But even in its present form the Security Council is able to perform its main function to ensure global security." In any case, so far as any possible daydreaming in Ankara or Kiev about kicking Russia out of the body, the expert emphasized that this is simply an impossibility. "Russia is the legal successor of the Soviet Union, one of the founders of the UN. We cannot be excluded from the Security Council in the same way that the United States, Great Britain, France or China cannot. How would this even be done? By abolishing the UN altogether? No one would ever agree to this. By disbanding the Security Council? All its members, including Russia, have the right of veto. I'm convinced that even the other permanent members of the Security Council, the United States included, would not support such an initiative. This is a model that works, and breaking it would be very dangerous." The expert also paid attention that this criticism has become even more vocal nowadays in the run-up to the presidential elections. In the run-up to the presidential elections the presidents foreign policy is receiving more attention than the domestic which, its assumed, is of more interest to the American voters, he said. Shatrov then gave his own definition to a US president it is an office manager or a general director of some front-office of Trans-National Corporations (TNC). He is elected by TNCs and large businesses, and not by voters. And the corporations are not satisfied with such an ignorant foreign policy of the US president. His task was to create a comfortable environment for the activities of the TNCs and American business. However, all his attempts to complete this task have failed. The political analyst cited, as an example, the presidents remarks about Russias economy: it is not in tatters, even though Russias ties with Europe have been severed. Among other failures is the Ukrainian crisis, which has become an endless problem. Also mentioned is the situation in the Middle East. The strategy of chaos is a good one for catching fish in muddy water, but this chaos has got out of control, he finally stated. Remarkably, unlike the world's petroleum producers, which are currently engaged in a fierce competition, the two companies have co-existed peacefully for decades. Furthermore, the Anglo-American cartel stepped in ready to cooperate with the Soviet government when the USSR entered the diamond market in the 1950s. To prevent market turbulence, De Beers struck a deal with the Soviet Union to purchase more than 90 percent of Russia's annual diamond output. In response to China's slowdown and an ongoing recession in the West which resulted in gem prices slumping in 2015, Alrosa and De Beers simply choked off the supply "to bolster prices, leading to shortages of some stone types and helping to boost demand this year," Bloomberg narrates. "While De Beers cut prices for gems this year before raising them for the first time in more than a year at its April auction, Alrosa has kept them stable in all its 2016 trading sessions," the media outlet explains, citing Alrosa's Chief Executive Officer Andrey Zharkov. According to Zharkov, "price competition isn't the driver for this market." "However, the president did not elaborate on the nature of such a mistake or whether it belonged to a Russian or Turkish pilot," the Turkish media outlet added. "I do not understand what kind of first step is being expected from us," Erdogan concluded. But is Ankara really seeking to improve relations with Moscow? During a meeting of the chiefs of general staff of Balkan countries in Istanbul in early May the Turkish president complained that the Black Sea has become a "Russian lake." "We should enhance our coordination and cooperation in the Black Sea. We hope for concrete results from the NATO summit in Warsaw on July 8, 9 The Black Sea should be turned into the sea of stability. I told the NATO secretary general that you are absent in the Black Sea and that is why it has nearly become a Russian lake," Erdogan said. Commenting on the issue Joshua Kucera of Eurasianet.org suggested that Erdogan referred to a Romania-led proposal to create a sort of NATO Black Sea Fleet. The Turkish leader's words have caught international observers by surprise. "Turkey historically has tended to be wary of any outside presence on the Black Sea, even by its NATO allies And while this new NATO proposal doesn't necessarily envisage changing the Montreux Convention something Russia would block anyway it would still represent a substantial shift for Turkey," the journalist underscored. The first goal is to immediately cease using military power to kill people Washington doesn't like. Although the Pentagon cannot just close down all its military campaigns en masse, "each mission must be independently examined for utility, consideration for promises the US government might already have made to friendly regimes, and the consequences of rapidly drawing down must be identified." Secondly, the days of US endless war must end. Washington should open its eyes to a broader set of solutions. Thirdly, the US mission in Afghanistan should be step-by-step reduced to just a diplomatic presence and limited security contingent. Washington should explain to Kabul that the US "cannot permanently provide security for any nation." The fourth step is to reinforce US domestic security. It is vitally important to focus on continuous improvement of the FBI, state, and local law enforcement services work. And the fifth goal is to protect the US' own borders. "There are many valid and difficult issues that need to be resolved, but the best way to prevent future attacks is to prevent terrorists from gaining entry to the US in the first place," the retired US officer emphasizes. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called Friday for "courage and legitimacy" in reaching peace in Israeli-Palestinian conflict at a French Ministerial Conference meeting in Paris. "Meaningful negotiations require leadership on both sides with the courage and legitimacy to reach an historic compromise, and the political will to implement it," Mr. Ban said. "If we are talking about the legal side of the issue, and respect for the letter of the law, let Turkey turn to the International Criminal Court, or the Court of Human Rights in The Hague let the court decide on the matter. But we must take some steps. Simply condemning the decision of the German parliament makes no sense." For his part, Faruk Logoglu, the former First Deputy Foreign Ministry, ex-MP and former Turkish Ambassador to the United States, told Sputnik that he believes that the timing of this particular resolution has to do with the foreign policy of Turkey's current leadership. "In my opinion, the main responsibility for the adoption of this resolution is held by the current government," Logoglu said. "Today Ankara is carrying out a failed foreign policy, which fails in literally every direction. And this resolution is the price to pay for our foreign policy failures." According to Armenian estimates, about 1.5 million ethnic Armenians were systematically killed, and over 600,000 more 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 we also among the victims. The massacre has been recognized as genocide by 27 countries around the world, including Russia. Reason.com described why the story about Clinton was important .the inspector general of the State Department completed a year-long investigation into the use by Hillary Clinton of a private email server for all of her official government email as secretary of state. The investigation was launched when Secretary of State John Kerry learned that Clinton paid an aide to migrate her public and secret State Department email streams away from their secured government venues and onto her own, non-secure server, which was stored in her home. Ok, we all knew that already, but here is the kicker The migration of the secret email stream most likely constituted the crime of espionage. So, there you go. A possible massive crime against the state. But nary a word about this, because to Clinton supporters, she can do no wrong. And what about Trumps other accusation? That the media was being dishonest? Well, could it be because they dont know exactly what they are doing? That they are just doing what they are asked by their higher-ups? It should be noted here that former President Bill Clinton pushed hard for the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that basically deregulated TV station ownership and other kinds of media. Since then, as Business Insider has pointed out 90% of American media is owned by 6 mega-corporations, down from 50 companies in 1983. Thats right. If you dont do what is asked of you, then hey there is the door, or hey- here is the invisible ceiling. C.S. Lewis described the more subtle nuances of this process in The Inner Ring. In that short essay, he discusses what it takes to be accepted into a clique and how you might end up doing things you might not otherwise, because, essentially, the fear of being left out coupled with the congratulatory nod of acceptance that only insiders get is what motivates us. Or could it because the political insiders in general have an agenda to push? Lets not forget the recent article in the NYT with Ben Rhoads, the White House Spokesman/Insider who recently said The average reporter (the White House) talks to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. They literally know nothing. Later on, Rhodes went on to acknowledge that the (Obama) administration was deceptive about the (Iranian) talks, creating a "narrative" that they did not take place. So, there you have it. Duplicity at the very top. But this hasnt been the only recent example. CNN noted that This past week saw part of a video of a State Department press briefing addressing secret talks between the U.S. and Iran was deliberately deleted before it was posted online. Later, Fox News reported that current State Department spokesman Kirby said someone had censored the video intentionally. He said he couldn't find out who was responsible, but described such action as unacceptable. So, there you have it. It is like that old axiom Everything is permissible, until you are caught. As the fabric of American society begins to tear itself apart during this election cycle, one thing is becoming clear. The hypocrisy from the press, the exposure of Beltway insiders lying, the use of rent-a-mobs to push an agenda, the use of fear to manipulate voters and the fact that the American style of democracy is a hollowed-out semblance of what it once was. Next week will be huge, as California decides Hillary or Bernie? And while we dont know yet who will win (probably Hillary due to trickery and backroom deals), we do know this no one really cares how a toilet works, until it becomes too clogged to function. Then it becomes a big, big problem. This election cycle is flushing out the toilet that politics in America has become. So, what do you think dear listeners, Will you be the one to pull the handle? Next up we discuss the Savchenko effect, or how the swapped Ukrainian prisoner is shaking up her countrys politics. Coming up after that is some insight on the Eurasian Unions international trade agreements and the recent decision to launch talks with Serbia. The following topic that we address is the Iran-Ukraine gas talks and what they mean for the future of Russian gas supplies to Eastern Europe. Finally, we wrap everything up by analyzing the multibillion-dollar cobalt deal that was just signed China and the Congo and how its slated to make Beijing the undisputed global leader in electric car technology. Turkish President Erdogan has said the vote will have serious consequences for relations with Germany. Will this resolution derail the EU-Turkey refugee deal? Foreign ministers meet in Paris for talks aimed to resuming the Middle East peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis. But is this about peace or a fig-leaf for the status quo of Palestinian displacement? Becker is joined by peace activist and author Miko Peled and independent political analyst Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich. President Obama addressed the graduating class of the Air Force Academy yesterday. Now in his final year in office, what is the true legacy of Obamas military and foreign policy 8 years after he campaigned as an anti-war candidate? Political analyst and author Eugene Puryear joins Becker. MOSCOW (Sputnik) According to the Rostec head, Rosoboronexport gets no more than 4 percent of the total transaction amount. Depending on how new the technology is, the percentage drops even lower, sometimes to just over 1 percent. "Rosoboronexport has about 50 offices around the world, not a single company in Russia could or can cover such a number of countries. In 15 years we supplied arms worth $115 billion to 116 countries. Not long ago, our export order portfolio was $45 billion, now it is already $48 billion," Chemezov said in an interview with the Russian Kommersant newspaper. Rosoboronexport is responsible for over 85 percent of Russian arms and military technology export. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Russia's military infrastructure located on the Kuril Islands in the Pacific Ocean will be equipped with an advanced Strelets-Chasovoy security system, the Russian Federal Agency for Special Construction (Spetsstroy) said Friday in a press release. "The central design group of Spetsstroy of Russia use new technologies, during the design process of the facilities located at the Kuril Islands. Particularly, the newest security system, Strelets-Chasovoy, aimed at provision of servicemen's safety is introduced," the press release said. The press release added, that guards of the military infrastructure would be equipped with special devices that would inform their commander about any emergency situations within 45 seconds. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Fire erupted on Friday at a transforming station located in Zarechnaya coal mine in Russia's Kemerovo Region, the evacuation of miners is underway, a source in the emergencies services told RIA Novosti. "Fire broke out at the transforming station at a depth of 100 meters [109 yards], at the moment there were 103 miners. Twenty five [miners] have already been brought out of the mine, four of them have already asked for medical treatment," the source said. The source added that mine-rescuers had already headed for the mine to estimate the scale of an accident and to evacuate the rest of miners. KRASNOYARSK/NOVOSIBIRSK (Russia) (Sputnik) All the miners from burning Zarechnaya coal mine located in the town of Polysayevo of Russia's Kemerovo Region have been evacuated, a source in Polysayevo administration told RIA Novosti on Friday. Earlier in the day, fire erupted at a transforming station located in Zarechnaya mine, at the moment when 103 workers were in the mine. "All the people have been evacuated from the mine, there are no injured among them," the source said. MOSCOW (Sputnik)Spain has not yet made a decision on prolongation of anti-Russian sanctions, which are due to expire next month, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation told Sputnik. Spain has not yet adopted a position on this issue, the ministrys press office said. The ministry added that Spanish decision would depend on the compliance with the Minsk agreements on the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis. Therefore, it is small wonder that these craft are often used as airborne listening posts and monitoring stations by many agencies, including the US military. Russian newspaper Izvestia points out that blimps were, and possibly still are, employed by the Russian Aerospace Forces during the campaign against Daesh (ISIL/ISIS) in Syria, as at least one aerostat was deployed over Hmeymim airbase, and at least one other "balloon" was spotted over Palmyra during a classical music concert performed there by St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra, led by Valery Gergiev. Arkadiy Syroyezhko, chief of the UAV directorate of the Vega Radio Engineering Corporation (a subsidiary of Rostec), told Izvestia that a new type of fabric which is extremely suitable for aerostat construction is already being produced in Russia, and that it will drastically improve the military blimps technical characteristics. "It took us several years to get to this moment. And now, working with the representatives of Russias Defense Ministry, were running tests on a new state-of-the-art aerostatic system developed for the Aerospace Forces," Syroyezhko said. He also added that several types of Dozor-class aerostats and a DP-29 unmanned blimp are also undergoing final tests and may well be adopted by the military in the near future. Scientists from the Samara National Research University have started developing a multirole atmospheric pseudo-satellite that would hover 20 kilometers above the ground and be used to implement various long-term research and practical programs. The project is being implemented at the Universitys Aviation Technology Institute under a long-term strategic program: Aerospace Engineering and Technology. This program is among the three basic growth points guaranteeing Samara Universitys enhanced competitiveness for a global academic and education status. The project has teamed up with the Samara aerospace cluster as a co-executor. Todd Richmond, director of advanced prototypes at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies, expressed his optimism about the mobile VR's future. He said in an interview with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers this March: "VR/ augmented reality is likely to develop into the next smartphone it will replace a smartphone or incorporate its features, but it will take 10 years." Kevin Curran, head of the British Ulster University's Ambient Intelligence and Virtual Worlds Research Team, agreed that there's still a long way to go for VR equipment to become must-have. Curran said: "After experiencing a long period of development, VR may become standard smartphone interface, the two being combined is not impossible. Tan Ying, industry analysis of market research company GfK China, told China Daily that the reasons behind the smartphone-driven VR investment fever are the relatively low tech threshold to access the terminal device mass production and the potential stimulation that enables to boost the sales of the existing smartphone production lines." "VR is one of the future trends that's still in its early days and requires years of improvements to become mature. It cannot replace smartphones overnight," said Ying. From both the supply side and demand side of the mobile VR, "the smartphone-driven VR goggles will become a proper market access point for companies to educate their VR early adapters and it is a low-cost and efficient approach as most of the domestic buyers are not hardcore console players who are willing to purchase a high-end VR device," said Ying. "The cost is a big worry for users." Ying said that a group of small VR manufacturers will not survive in near term and the market may witness a slowdown in the coming two years until a well recognized technology matures and user-friendly products pop up in the market. By Liu Zheng (chinadaily.com.cn) The object, presumably with a mass of tens of tons and with the kinetic energy of some 10 kilotons, exploded in the atmosphere, turning night into day for some 4 or 5 seconds and severely saturating the image receptors of cameras watching the sky. According to Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, "there are no reports of any damage or injuries just a lot of light and a few sonic booms." Water departments in New Hampshire and Michigan were told to draw out testing as long as possible so they could conceal and resample results revealing high levels of lead. Some cities would not release lead pipe maps, denied knowledge of the location of lead pipes, or neglected to test the required number of homes. City employees in Chicago and Philadelphia were asked to do their own household testing. Some cities claim that the Environmental Protection Agencys (EPA) testing guidelines are unclear. The EPAs instructions currently read: "If lead concentrations exceed an action level of 15 (parts per billion) in more than 10% of customer taps sampled, the system must undertake a number of additional actions to control corrosion. If the action level for lead is exceeded, the system must also inform the public about steps they should take to protect their health and may have to replace lead service lines under their control." Flint resident Melissa Mays is part of a group lawsuit with the Natural Resources Defence Council and the American Civil Liberties Union claiming that the citys misleading water-testing instructions exacerbated her and her familys medical issues. "These tests are unrealistic" She said, "who runs their faucet for five minutes before going to bed if they want to drink the water the next morning? They have been using a loophole and people have got poisoned," she said. "The city has changed the testing but the state hasnt. We want the state to knock it off and do the right thing. The EPA also needs to close these loopholes in the lead and copper rule. All of my family are anaemic. Weve tested positive for lead and copper. We have liver problems because of the toxins in our systems and breathing issues, too, because metals are released when we have showers." GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE (Sputnik), Joanne Stocker On Thursday, Zubaydah was scheduled to testify in front of the US military commission at Guantanamo Bay, but defense counsel cancelled his testimony at the last minute, citing the possibility that a government prosecutor would ask incriminating questions. "I think he has a positive outlook and thinks someday his chance to speak will come forward," Flor stated on Thursday. "How long thats going to take is a question that neither one of us can answer, but he does maintain a certain level of optimism, which you have to. Theres no other way you can keep your sanity." Zubaydahs lawyer would have objected to such questions, possibly causing his clients entire testimony to be struck from the record. LA PAZ (Sputnik)It is irrelevent which presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, wins the upcoming elections because the country is controlled by industrialists and bankers, not the president, Bolivian President Evo Morales told Sputnik. "Unfortunately, nothing will change, it doesn't matter who the US president becomes. Unfortunately, the American people are being cheated, they are forced to vote. Will their chosen one rule? Does [current President Barack] Obama rule? Industrialists, bankers rule, they are the ones who are in control. In my opinion, it doesn't matter who becomes the US president, he [or she] would still not rule," Morales said in an interview. MOSCOW (Sputnik)Bolivian President Evo Morales told Sputnik in an interview that the Republican candidate for the United States Presidency Donald Trump is a wrong choice due to his mental health problems. "I think, pardon me, but he [Donald Trump] needs psychiatrist. I doubt if such a candidate would be beneficial for the United States. I doubt that," Morales said. During his campaign, the Republican frontrunner has been making controversial statements, including in relation to immigrants, Muslims and women, which have triggered sharp criticism among politicians and public worldwide. Without going into detail, the former senator says that the 28 classified pages outline a substantial network of support for terrorism in the US originating in Saudi Arabia. This is what enabled the hijackers to carry out the attacks. "The history (of 9/11) will have to be re-written, to say that there was a support group which made 9/11 possible," Graham told the program. "The 28 pages are primarily about the question of who financed 9/11, and the evidence points the finger at Saudi Arabia," Graham said. The former senator was asked if the source of the funding came from individuals, the Saudi government or Saudi Arabian charities, and answered, "All of the above." "I believe that these 28 pages will help provide additional evidence that there was systematic support, and that this support system has its primary origin in Saudi Arabia." In April, Graham told US CBS News, "I think it is implausible to believe that 19 people, most of whom didn't speak English, most of whom had never been in the United States before, and many of whom didn't have a high school education could've carried out such a complicated task without some support from within the United States." NEW YORK (Sputnik) The US government should investigate the death of a New York City resident who died while being chased by a group of men yelling racist epithets, civil rights group National Action Network founder Al Sharpton said in a statement on Friday. "We will call on the federal government to investigate this incident as a possible hate crime," Sharpton stated. Last week, 16-year-old African American Dayshen McKenzie, who died of an asthma attack after allegedly fleeing a group of mostly white men yelling racist remarks at him, according to local media. WASHINGTON (Sputnik)The Russian embassy in the United States has requested official information from the US authorities regarding the recent arrest of a Russian national in Chicago, the press office told Sputnik on Friday. "The fact is that Russian citizen Olga Pimanova is under house arrest in Chicago. We do not have official information about her detention," the press service stated. The press office noted that "requests were sent to the competent US authorities to present the official information." "Countries like Russia and China often work against us," Clinton added, emphasizing that she has had experience going "toe-to-toe with Russia and China, and many other different leaders around the world." Trump, meanwhile, according to Clinton, "praises dictators like Vladimir Putin and picks fights with our friends including the British prime minister, the mayor of London, the German chancellor, the president of Mexico and the Pope. He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia." Commenting on the speech, Buchanan suggested that the logic behind Clinton's strategy of painting Trump as unfit to lead is pretty obvious. "As Donald Trump is splitting off blue-collar Democrats on issues like America's broken borders and Bill Clinton's trade debacles like NAFTA, Hillary Clinton is trying to peel off independents and Republicans by painting Trump as 'temperamentally unfit' to be commander in chief." "In portraying Trump as an intolerable alternative, Clinton will find echoes in the GOP establishment and among the Kristol-Kagan neocons, many of whom have already signed an open letter rejecting Trump," the commentator added. However, "if Clinton means to engage on foreign policy, this is not a battle Trump should avoid," Buchanan emphasized. "For the lady has an abysmal record on foreign policy and a report card replete with failures." "It was not a submarine," Ola Truedsson, commander of the naval division of Swedens armed forces said in a statement released in 2015. "We are doing this to clarify what was perceived to be a submarine in a photograph, but what we know with certainty was a civilian working ship." Notwithstanding the sober judgment of the Swedish commander, Russian submarine paranoia appears to have spread to the United States. In an article for Proceedings Magazine, US Vice Adm. James Foggo III claimed that Moscow has increased its sub presence in the Atlantic Ocean, in an effort to study Americas submersible capabilities. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) A US jury in Minneapolis has found three Somali-Americans guilty of conspiring to support the Islamic State and commit murder, US Attorney's Office for the District of Minnesota said in a Twitter message on Friday. "[Defendant] Abdirahman Daud conspiracy to murder outside the United States guilty," the US Attorneys Office tweeted. "Conspiracy to provide material support to ISIL [Daesh] guilty." MOSCOW (Sputnik) Last month, Russian citizen Olga Pimanova was arrested as she left the plane, on which she arrived in Chicago, allegedly for kidnapping her own child. Earlier on Friday, the Russian Embassy in Washington told Sputnik that according to preliminary information, the United States had no grounds for her detention, and the embassy had requested official information from the US authorities regarding her arrest. "We are working to clarify situation with arrest of Olga Pimanova in USA, ensure her rights are not violated," the embassy said via Twitter. Commenting on the woman's arrest, Russian Children's Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said that the Russian Foreign Ministry and the embassy in the United States would provide assistance to the Russian citizen who was arrested for taking her daughter out of the country two years ago. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) A control board to sort out the debt crisis in the US territory of Puerto Rico will be stacked with Republicans and will saddle the bankrupt island with an additional $370 million in debt, Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders charged in a statement issued on Friday. "It is bad enough for Republicans in Congress to take away the democratic rights of US citizens living in Puerto Rico by setting up a neocolonial control board empowered with the authority to slash pensions, fire teachers and close hospitals," Sanders said. Sanders was commenting on legislation approved by the US House of Representatives in an attempt to avoid a taxpayer bailout of Puerto Rico, which has debts of more than $70 billion that it is unable to repay. The cost estimate came from the Congressional Budget Office. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The Oregon Transportation Department has confirmed two train cars are on fire, according to reports. #OILTRAIN #MOSIER Incredible look at oil train derailment near Mosier, Oregon, about 70 miles from Portlandhttps://t.co/YUVralOVSR NorthWest Cable News (@NWCN) June 3, 2016 "A train fire in the Columbia River gorge has evacuated schools in the nearby town of Mosier and shut down Interstate 84 between Hood River and The Dalles," KATU TV reported. The US Federal Railroad Administration has tweeted that it knows about the derailment and investigators are on the way to the scene. "So this missile is really flexible in that it allows the pilot to sometimes be engaged or track the target the entire time or to leave the engagement and let the missile finish its engagement on its own," Romero said. This is the seventh JAGM test, and while the missile has been fired from attack helicopters, this marks the first time it was fired from a UAV. Additional tests are slated through 2017, and the Pentagon hopes the JAGM will service-ready by 2018. JAGM will be used by the US Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, with each planning to buy thousands, once the project reaches completion. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) Earlier on Friday, Bolivian President Evo Morales told Sputnik in an exclusive interview that his countrys relations with the United States were strained, but an improvement was desirable. "Our desire is to construct a positive bilateral relationship based on trust and mutual respect," the stated on Friday when asked about Morales claiming that US-Bolivian relations were strained. Morales told Sputnik that Bolivia had dignity and rights despite being a small country. Adam Green and Stephanie Taylor, who cofounded the Progressive Change Campaign Committee said, "Progressives led, the people spoke out, and the politicians are now embracing change we can believe in: Expanding Social Security benefitsnever cutting them. This will be a defining issue in the 2016 election." After the chained-CPI proposal was made in 2013, Vermont Senator and US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said he would "do everything in my power to block President Obamas proposal to cut benefits for Social Security recipients through a chained consumer price index." Sanders was one of 70 House members to sign a letter to the White house calling for Social Security expansion. "Social Security is the most successful program in our nation's history. At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, we have got to demand that the richest people in this country pay their fair share," Sanders said in a statement. Alex Lawson, who directs the pro-expansion nonprofit group Social Security Works, says this change in Obamas policy was inevitable, and that Social Security is too important an issue to be ignored. While intellectual property protection is vital to the success of any fashion tech company, building a culture with sound privacy and cybersecurity policies is also important to the success and long-term growth of both emerging and established fashion tech businesses. For these reasons, the FIA recommends that IP protection, privacy, and cybersecurity be the largest focus of the IoT innovation center, the letter stated. Fashion and technology have been colliding at an increasing pace, with celebrities during a Met Gala and models at fashion week events draped in internet-connected fabrics that can do a number of things, including react to social media or change to fit the wearer's mood. IBM Watson (@IBMWatson) May 4, 2016 "Many fashion tech entrepreneurs and organizations have designed and launched smart apparel and accessories to not only help push humanity forward, but also to help make consumers lives more efficient, enjoyable and overall more productive," Wiley told NextGov. In 2013, defense teams found microphones hidden in smoke detectors and other devices in the interview rooms at Camp Echo, the former CIA facility at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay where lawyers and detainees meet. Moreover, when a hurricane damaged the cables outside Camp Echo, the defense was instructed to move to different facilities until the equipment was repaired, Sowards said. The US government has acknowledged the eavesdropping capabilities exist, but claims it does not use them to monitor attorney-client conversations in the September 11 cases. Cheryl Bormann, an attorney for accused September 11 financier Hassan bin Attesh, told Judge James Pohl that the evidence points to a history of the US government breaching attorney-client privilege, and that it would affect how the defense goes forward in the case. FAMILIES OF SEPTEMBER 11 VICTIMS SEE PROGRESS IN GUANTANAMO COURT PROCEEDINGS Some family members of the September 11 victims said on Tuesday that they are hopeful the trial will begin soon, after government prosecutor Ed Ryan told Judge Pohl that certain family members should be permitted to testify in open court during pretrial hearings in October. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Improving trade and economic ties between Russia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) remains a priority for Russia, the speaker of Russias lower house of parliament Sergei Naryshkin said Friday. "The priority, of course, is with the task of continuously expanding trade, economic and investment links between our countries. We are assuming that the small reduction in trade volume recorded in 2015 and early 2016 in due to a negative global economic situation," Naryshkin said during a bilateral meeting with UAE Federal National Council President Amal Qubaisi. The speaker noted that Qubaisi's visit to Russia indicates a commitment to inter-parliamentary dialogue between the Russian State Duma and the UAE Federal National Council, which acts as a representative body in the Gulf monarchy. Lavrov noted that Russian and the UAE citizens have warm feelings for each other, as well as that the flow of Russian tourists to the UAE is increasing. "The successful development of our relations in all the spheres is actively promoted by the contacts between the parliaments. We are glad that those they are developing intensively. We appreciate the opportunity to meet with you at the Foreign Ministry, and I am looking forward to a fruitful discussion regarding, first of all, the situation in international affairs, and how our countries can coordinate their efforts to promote solutions to the many problems," Lavrov said. Earlier on Friday, Qubaisi met with Russian lower house speaker Sergei Naryshkin, discussing issues of bilateral relations, trade, economic and investment ties. Russia-UAE relations stand out for their high level of political dialogue and intensive exchange of delegations. In September 2007, Putin paid the first official visit to the UAE in the history of the two countries' bilateral relations. Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan visited Russia in September 2006, June 2009, October 2012 and September 2013. On October 11, 2015 President Putin met with Prince Al-Nahyan on the sidelines of the Formula-1 races in Sochi. MOSCOW(Sputnik) Israel believes that Russia will do everything in its powers to prevent arms falling into the hands of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, the ambassador in Moscow told Sputnik Friday. "Russia has repeatedly stated that it was not delivering arms to Hezbollah, and as far as I understand it has no intentions to do so in the future. I believe that Russia would to everything in its powers to prevent arms falling into the hands of Hezbollah terrorists," Zvi Heifetz said. According to the diplomat, it is "vitally important" for Israel to rule out presence of Iran and Hezbollah on the countrys northern borders. LA PAZ (Sputnik)Relations between the United States and Bolivia are strained, but an improvement is desirable, Bolivian President Evo Morales told Sputnik. "This is desirable, this [the deterioration of relations] for Bolivia is not the end. Our culture is a culture of dialogue But let's not have the US ambassador return to us to build plots against us. We, Bolivia, have dignity and rights, despite the fact that we are a small country," Morales said in an interview. KIEV (Sputnik) The United States and Ukraine have signed an agreement on granting Kiev a third tranche of a guaranteed loan of $1 billion, the Ukrainian Finance Ministrys press service said Friday. On June 3, there was a signing of an agreement on providing a credit guarantee in the amount of $1 billion between the governments of Ukraine and the United StatesThanks to this agreement, Ukraine will receive additional possibilities to support and protect the more vulnerable [strata] of Ukrainians from the influence of economic factors, the press service said. On March 11, the IMF approved a four-year program of financial aid to Ukraine, which stipulates a $17.5 billion loan over the next four years. The Ukrainian government has to implement new economic policies for the IMF to disburse the funds. LA PAZ (Sputnik)Bolivian President Evo Morales told Sputnik that he did not own any off-shore accounts. "Some people say that Evo has a bank account abroad. Let them prove it, and if not, they should be tried and then put into prison," Morales said in an interview. Morales also shared information on his salary as the Bolivian president. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The third US $1 billion loan guarantee will enable the government of Ukraine to proceed with economic and governance reforms, US Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew said in a statement on Friday. "The third $1 billion loan guarantee from the United States provides direct support for Ukraine's continued progress in implementing critical economic and governance reforms," Lew stated. The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road is designed to go from China's coast to Europe through the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean in one route, and from China's coast through the South China Sea to the South Pacific in the other. "As China is thirsty for energy resources to fuel its projects, Beijing clearly sees the benefits of strengthening ties with the gas-rich Persian Gulf emirate," wrote the experts, who see scope for Doha to establish petroleum and petrochemical facilities in China, helping the kingdom to acquire a greater share of the energy market there. "China and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are at the moment undertaking negotiations for a free-trade agreement, which will likely have positive implications for both Beijing and Doha," including the abolition of custom duties and an increase in their trade partnership. "Throughout recent years, China has become the Gulf's largest trading partner, and their partnership continues to thrive." In addition, China plans for a growing share of its trade partnership with Qatar to be cleared in renminbi, through the RMB clearing center and currency swap agreements. "As Qatar's second top LNG export partner, China has and will continue to offer Doha an opportunity to counter-balance the geopolitical interests of its Western allies, giving more important players in the international arena higher stakes in Qatar's future," the analysts concluded. WASHINGTON (Sputnik)Tunisia has signed a loan agreement with the United States worth up to $500 million, the State Department said in a press release on Friday. "Tunisia signed a loan guarantee agreement with the United States that will allow Tunisia to access up to $500 million in affordable financing from international capital markets," the release stated. The loan is aimed at supporting Tunisia as it pursues economic reforms and ensure the countrys ability to access global capital markets, the release noted. PARIS (Sputnik)The Arab Peace Initiative, also known as the Saudi Initiative, is a 10-sentence proposal for an end to the ArabIsraeli conflict that was endorsed by the Arab League in 2002. The initiative calls for normalizing relations between the Arab region and Israel, in exchange for a complete withdrawal by Israel from the occupied territories and a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. "The Arab Peace Initiative was never taken off the table. It was endorsed and supported by all the Arab countries and all the Islamic countries. It is on the table and we believe that it is a solid basis for resolving this longstanding dispute," Adel Jubeir told reporters at the a Paris-initiated international ministerial conference on the Israel-Palestine conflict settlement. The French capital currently hosts the conference aimed at the resumption of the stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. YEREVAN (Sputnik)The purpose of the agreement is to improve the air defense system in the Caucasus region. The main command of the troops will be administered by Russia, while separate special divisions will be headed by Armenia. "In the time of peace, the parties can make their own decisions about how to use troops under their control. They shall notify each other on these decisions and actions," Armenian Deputy Defense Minister Ara Nazaryan said. The Russian and Armenian defense ministers signed an agreement on creating a joint regional air defense system in the Caucasus in late 2015. WASHINGTON (Sputnik)The United States is worried that China still violates human rights of its citizens nearly three decades after the pro-human rights protests at Tiananmen Square, the US Department of State said in a release on Friday. "While China has seen many changes in the intervening years, we continue to have serious concerns with ongoing violations of human rights in China," the release stated. In May and June 1989, student-led demonstrations took place in Beijing, triggered by the death of deposed former Communist Party General Secretary and liberal reformer Hu Yaobang. The protests were forcibly suppressed by hardline Chinese leaders who deployed the military to enforce martial law in the countrys capital. WASHINGTON (Sputnik)US anti-submarine surveillance aircraft P-3C Orion flew two missions over the Black Sea from the Romanian port of Constanta last week to support maritime domain awareness in the region, the US Navy announced in a press release on Friday. These routine operations and interactions with our allies are a vital part of our mission to enhance maritime safety and stability in the Black Sea, Mission Commander Lt. Greg Syers said in the release. The two missions took place between May 26 and May 30 as part of US and Romanian bilateral training to improve anti-submarine warfare capabilities. MOSCOW (Sputnik)In December, Turkey deployed about 150 troops and 25 tanks to a base in the Iraqi Nineveh province, without Baghdads approval. Earlier on Friday, Iraqi Ambassador to the United States Lukman Faily told Sputnik that Baghdad has recently sent a new ambassador to Ankara to discuss the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Iraq. "The US is strongly in favor of Iraqs territorial sovereignty and integrity. The US has previously asked Turks to withdraw from Northern Iraq. President Obama told President Erdogan this directly six months ago. So I think the United States will be sympathetic to the Iraqi position," Pearson said. "However, there is some concern that Iran may be using this tactic [US position] as the way of weakening Turkish influence in the area in its competition with Turkey over the outcome of events in Syria. That issue will be the one that the United States will pay close attention to," he added. WASHINGTON (Sputnik)The US Icebreaker Healy will leave port in Seattle, Washington on a mission for scientific research and to map underwater extensions of land bordering the Arctic Ocean, the US Coast Guard announced in a press release on Friday. "The Healy crew will primarily conduct three missions focusing on the biology, chemistry, geology and physics of the Arctic Ocean and its ecosystems, as well as perform multi-beam sonar mapping of the extended continental shelf," the release stated. Researchers from the University of New Hampshire will use sonar mapping and bottom dredging in the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean to further support the demarcation of the extended continental shelf. "Under the agreement, Beijing will allocate Tbilisi gratuitous aid amounting to 60 million yuan [$9.1 million]. The funds will be used to improve the health infrastructure in the regions of Georgia, where the outpatient and inpatient services will be introduced, the center of crisis intervention, as well a psycho-social rehabilitation department for children and adolescents," the statement read. China is one of five major trading partners of Georgia. In February, the negotiations between the two countries were launched on the establishment of a free trade zone. The parties expect to finalize them by the end of the year. Hambletonian eligibles dominated the Pennsylvania Sire Stakes events at Harrah's Philadelphia on Thursday, June 2. Twenty-five entrants were scattered throughout the four divisions, and 17 of those starters were Hambletonian eligibles. The races were for three-year-old colt and gelding trotters. Each divisions carried a purse of just over $41,000. In the first division, it was Marvin Katz and Al Libfeld's Hollywood Highway (driven by John Campbell) that went all the way for the win. The son of Muscle Massive got to the front and made every call a winning one. He won by three lengths and stopped the clock in 1:56. It was the third career win for the Staffan Lind charge. The Hambo eligible now has over $87,000 in career purse earnings. He paid $4.20 to win. Last season's Pennsylvania State Champion, Lagerfeld (Yannick Gingras), got the job done in Division 2. The son of Yankee Glide sat a perfect trip behind the speedy Truemass Volo (Eric Goodell) and got by in the stretch for the 1:56.3 victory, which was his second win in a row. The score was the fifth of his career. He is trained by Jimmy Takter and now has over $372,000 in purse earnings on his card. Lagerfeld ($3.20) is owned by Christina Takter, Jim and John Fielding, and Herb Liverman. Division 3 was the fastest of the four, as Stroy Incorporated's Milligans School (Andy Miller) came roaring up the passing lane to win. The son of Yankee Glide tracked the speed of Reigning Moni (Yannick Gingras) the entire way and made his move to win by three-quarters of a length in 1:54.4. It was the seventh win of his career, putting his career earning total just under $350,000. Milligan's School ($3.60) is trained by Julie Miller. The fourth division was won from off the trot by Love Matters (Brett Miller). The son of Explosive Matter tracked the cover of Tyson (Trond Smedshammer) and was able to use a :28.3 final quarter to gun down his competition in 1:56.2. It was the seventh win of his career. The win pushed his earnings to over $196,000. He is owned by Christina Takter, John Fielding, Brixton Medical, and Herb Liverman, and is trained by Jimmy Takter. He paid $12.60. (Harrah's Philadelphia) It isnt every day when you see a 15-year-old reinsman scheduled to race against adult drivers, but that will be the case this weekend. After the Harness Horse Youth Foundation finishes its 40th celebration brunch at the Harness Racing Museum and Hall of Fame this Sunday (June 5), the festivities will move next door to the Goshen Historic Track. That is where HHYF graduate Justin Irvine, 15, will be competing against adults in a matinee event, although it wont be Irvines first time over that surface. Last summer Irvine attended HHYFs leadership program that was held at the track. The significance is not lost on the third-generation horseman. Irvine will head postward in the Open Pace and will be driving the four-year-old Cruzing Hill. Mark and Kelly Ford, who operate a training centre in Middletown, NY, co-ordinated finding Justins mount with the blessing of the horses owners, George and Rose Bonomo. Finding a horse to drive when you are not right there is tough, so I thank the Fords and the Bonomos. It will be different driving at Goshen, Irvine said of his second career start. On a bigger scale. The Hall of Fame is right there and with all the celebrations, there may be a bit of pressure. Justins father, Don Irvine Jr., has over 7,000 wins and is enshrined on Northfield Parks Wall of Fame in Ohio; as is Justins uncle, William Irvine, with over 3,000 driving wins. I have never felt obligated because of my familys success. It is just what I always wanted to do. That is why HHYF is so great. For me, I want to be a driver and a trainer and I can learn that at the camps. But I also enjoy listening to other people and their dreams. If they want to be a vet, whatever, you can learn all aspects of the sport. You meet people from so many different backgrounds who love harness racing, he says. My first camp was 2014 at Pocono Downs in Pennsylvania, and it was eye-opening. The Goshen leadership program just built on that initial experience. (HHYF) School Calls Sheriff to Stop 7-Year-Old from Handing Out Bible Verses PALMDALE, Calif., June 3, 2016 / Standard Newswire / -- Liberty Counsel has demanded that Desert Rose Elementary School correct an outrageous violation of a first grader's constitutional rights. The situation started with an encouraging note and Bible verse from mom Christina Zavala, tucked into a packed lunch for her little boy ("C"). The seven-year-old boy read the note and verse, and showed them to his friends during lunch time at school. Mrs. Zavala's daily note for her son soon turned into an expectation by the other children during lunch, who excitedly begged C for copies of the notes, which grew to include short stories from the Bible to provide context for the verses. However, when one little girl said "teacher - this is the most beautiful story I've ever seen," "separation of church and state" was the response, and the notes were banned from lunchtime distribution. C was told that the school gate was the only location at which he could give the Bible verses to his friends, and only after the bell rang. On April 19, 2016, Mrs. Zavala wrote the school to correct its misinformation, but the only response was that C was reprimanded again, in front of the whole class, and again told to stop talking about religion or sharing his mother's notes. C returned home in tears. The Zavalas and C complied with the school gate directive, and soon, as many as 15 fellow students looked forward to the after-school Bible notes. However, on May 9, 2016, Principal Melanie Pagliaro approached Mr. Zavala at that location, and demanded that C only hand out the notes on a public sidewalk, far from the exit, off school property. The family immediately complied. Later that day, however, a Los Angeles Deputy Sheriff knocked at the door of C's home, demanding that C's note sharing cease altogether because "someone might be offended." C's family then asked Liberty Counsel to help protect their child's constitutional freedoms. "This is a clear, gross violation of the rights of a child," said Horatio "Harry" Mihet, Esq., Vice President of Legal Affairs & Chief Litigation Counsel of Liberty Counsel. "Students do not check their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate," he added. "If students are permitted to pass out Valentine or birthday cards at school, or to talk about Superman and Captain America at lunch, they cannot be prohibited from sharing Bible verses and discussing their faith during their free, non-instructional time," Mihet said. That the school district enlisted a police officer to intimidate C and his family makes this case even more outrageous. "I would expect something like this to happen in Communist Romania, where I went to elementary school, but cops don't bully 7-year-olds who want to talk about Jesus in the Land of the Free," Mihet concluded. Liberty Counsel is an international nonprofit, litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family since 1989, by providing pro bono assistance and representation on these and related topics. An Oregon mayor plans to ban camping on Portland streets in the next year and a half. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said the aim is to gradually move people from street encampments to campsites designated by the city. Wheeler said his goal is to open at least three such sites, with the first opening within 18 months of securing funding. It's unclear when funding will be allocated. The sites will initially serve 125 people and provide access to basic services such as food and hygiene. The announcement comes as Portland grapples with a growing homelessness crisis. Wheeler said there are 700 homeless encampments across the city. Nash David Somewhere in October 2013, a bunch of friends working at Oppo sat together at a cafe in Shenzhen. Interestingly, they realised that they all used an iPhone. In fact, it dawned upon Pete Lau, Carl Pei and the rest of the group that there existed immense potential for an Android device with promise to carve its own niche of providing a superior experience to users. Since there wasnt a device that existed around that time, they needed to create one. The team of 5 were kicked about setting up a company with this vision and rolling out a device that fulfilled this much needed customer requirement. And that is how OnePlus was born. OnePlus One The origins in Oppo continued into a strategic partnership. Oppo continues to be a contract manufacturer and technology partner for OnePlus. In fact, the two companies also have common investors between them. With the launch of the OnePlus One its first flagship the company discovered an important trend. The insight was that most attention was from India. Given the nature of the core team, which has been lean since it came together, online data and analytics played a vital role in crafting strategy. And the numbers pointed towards one direction. India was the place to be. People from India were among the most active on the OnePlus forums. And a significant amount of interest from the country made it difficult to ignore. October 2014 saw the team rope in its first India hire Vikas Agarwal who is General Manager at OnePlus India. The India plan A few months before that, Agarwal was dabbling in the world of startups and ecommerce. His company bulbtiger.com specialised in lighting products. I met Agarwal who shared how those early days truly were. Consider it as a product similar to Urban Ladder. While they specialised in furniture, we did lights, he said. As is the case with most startups, everyone was pretty much a jack-of-all-trades. Agarwal was finance, admin and customer service all rolled into one. The initial plan was to work towards a Diwali 2014 launch in India October 22, 2014. However, Agarwal didn't quite expect the ideal welcome in a startup. Still, being optimistic, coming on board only in early October, timelines didnt seem very conducive. Considering that he was the only employee in India, he didnt consider an office among his top priority. In fact, his classmate Aurvind Lama gave him a corner with seats in his office at Travelyaari. October to December 2014 was quite eventful. A lot was happening around OnePlus although it was just starting out. Gearing up for India With the OnePlus One, the company had an exclusive agreement with Cyanogen on the use of its software on the OnePlus One its debut flagship device. That wasnt meant to be complicated. Pretty straight forward. Only, Cyanogen incidentally had another exclusive agreement with Micromax which also allowed the India-based mobile manufacturer to use Cyanogen on its devices in India. Soon it became a full fledged legal battle that was distracting the OnePlus India team. Frequent court visits and dealing with lawyers to be able to sell the product you have developed isnt the ideal case scenario a startup looks forward to. More so, when the average age of the team is somewhere in the 20s. All this at a crucial time with product launch in the run up to New Years. When every day matters. Never Settle Since Agarwal was taking a breather in the run up to the launch of the OnePlus 3, when I met him, I started out by asking about the mention of Never Settle in the Steve Jobs commencement speech. He was quick to comment it is a pleasant coincidence. No wonder I thought to myself. A quick stroll around the OnePlus office and I could find some familiar management books with references to Steve Jobs. And MacBook Air computers are a familiar sight at the young companys India headquarters in Bengaluru. Apples co-founder is definitely held in good regard here. But I learn, thats where the parallels between Never Settle ends. Explaining the deeper meaning of the brands tagline, Agarwal adds, Never Settle is a bold statement. Its meant to be. Its meant to make you stop and think about what you want from your technology and what youre actually getting. OnePlus was founded by a small group of tech enthusiasts who did just that; we took a look at the smartphone market and knew we could do better. The frequent court visits in the initial days in India have only reinstated that belief among the team. December 02, 2014 is when OnePlus officially started operations in India. Back then, the team worked out of the Travelyaari office based in Bangalore. And soon enough, between December 16 and December 21, the company had to halt sales of the OnePlus One. The court in this instance, did refer to Cyanogen as the villain. Things could have been far worse. Cyanogen is a US-based company, and had this case gone to the US it would have impacted OnePlus badly. Agarwal adds, The whole thing made us stronger. In fact, since it happened so early on, we focused on the product and the user. We knew the rest will be taken care of. Even the global team was young. We lacked experience in these matters. But now even they feel stronger. A forum thread on XDA Developers summarises the nature of events in the Micromax-Cyanogen case. In another thread, users reactions on the case highlights the sense of disappointment with Cyanogen. Growth with the team Miguel, an ex-colleague from the OnePlus Shenzhen office traveled to India to oversee and set up the fan community. In addition, he also took on the responsibility of evangelism for the brand. He was officially the first employee in India. His focus was on building the community here, not so much on marketing. This included multi-city fan meets, with a lot of travel. In fact, within the first three months, OnePlus organised about 5-6 fan meets. VR launch of devices According to Agarwal, the global team came up with the idea for a virtual reality launch. And it's based on a simple idea. When OnePlus launches a device in China, typically around 510k fans participate. But the idea is to have all fans participate. And the best way, as Agarwal explains, is to do it via VR. That way, everyone can participate. He adds, "We believe VR is the technology of the future. We will identify emerging technologies and continue to adapt them. The last time we did a VR launch, Samsung and Google did as well. This year, we are doing VR shopping and setting the trend again. We look forward to do so in the years ahead as well." This month, OnePlus plans to launch the OnePlus 3 with a VR event. The way forward There's a simple mantra that is followed at OnePlus. As Agarwal puts it "Do not ask for permissions. Seek forgiveness. Keep trying, at least try." That's a simpler elongation of the popular expression of a call to fail fast. Agarwal believes that the community is important. He says, the best aspect of our community is that of users helping other users with queries. In fact, it reduces the need for a large customer support team. This year, OnePlus has further narrowed down its focus improving its connect with users. In fact, OnePlus is looking to hire towards building on this community advantage. Earlier the company used to focus on its technology blog, but over the next year, forums would be the priority. Agarwal adds, "that's where our users are!" With the upcoming OnePlus 3, Oxygen OS is expected to take centre stage. In the future, Oxygen will be a key differentiator, and by end of this year, OnePlus hopes its operating system would be one of the best operating systems on smartphones. To achieve these goals, OnePlus is focussing heavily on testing. It expects to do few things, but ensure those few things do really well. Meanwhile as I was wrapping up for the day, I noticed 'Laila' the Happiness Office at OnePlus. She joined the OnePlus team as a little fur ball weighing two and a half kilograms. She didn't seem too keen on interacting with me, probably because I didn't have any food, and she didn't seem keen on parting with her bone. hidden Ride-hailing app Uber expects to continue on a "rapid growth" path in China, hoping to surpass market leader Didi Chuxing in 2017, Uber China's head of strategy said on Friday. The company has been in fierce competition with Didi Chuxing, which is backed by internet giants Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd, across China. Uber's market share in China has grown to about 30 percent now from 1 percent in 2015, Liu Zhen said at The Wall Street Journal's Converge technology conference in Hong Kong. Both companies have spent heavily to subsidise fares to gain market share in the country, raising speculation in local media that they might ultimately join forces. Didi itself teamed up with a former local rival last year. "I heard the noise a lot and got asked that a lot about this (a tie-up with Didi)," Liu said. "When you look at the growth we have, market share growth of 1 percent to one-third, and the efficiency we have achieved, our business is in a greater than ever position to continue the rapid growth." Asked when Uber would overtake Didi, she replied: "I hope next year." Uber on Wednesday said it had raised $3.5 billion in capital from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, bulking up its resources to expand services in markets including China, the Middle East and North Africa. Reuters tech2 News Staff At Recode's Code conference this year, it was all about Artificial Intelligence (AI). Leading executives from major tech companies all predicted how disruptive self-aware computers would become in the short term future. Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla said humans need to put in neural laces, or USB cables into human brains to keep up with artificial intelligence. This seems to be more like the Pandoran neural network than any of the machines we know of that exist today. Musk also said that there was only one company that had truly disruptive artificial intelligence companies, but did not name the company directly. On a bit of prodding, Musk appeared to imply that this company was Google. Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed more plans for Google Home. Google Home is Google's smart voice controlled smart home hub, a product to compete with the Amazon Echo. Pichai revealed that Google Home would have an incognito mode, where no interaction is logged or kept track of, similar to the mode available in the chrome browser. Pichai also revealed the reason why Google Now does not have a personality like Siri or Cortana. This personality would emerge personally, for every user, making a distinct artificial intelligence assistant for each user. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty prefers the term "cognitive system" instead of "artificial intelligence". Rometty said that cognitive systems could be anywhere that uses computers right now. Healthcare, financial services and education were some important examples. IBM's Watson has a long track record of achievements, including being hired by a law firm, working as a personal fitness trainer and perhaps the most challenging one, going to college. According to Rometty, Watson would be plugged into systems invisibly without the end user even being aware of its presence. It would be a component of a bigger system, instead of a monolithic intelligent system in itself. The AI is being nurtured for increased capabilities. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed that Alexa and the associated hardware platform Echo, is being worked on by over 1,000 developers. Bezos said that they have been working behind the scenes for years, and that the data of large corporations can be better used to leverage artificial intelligence applications. This would also allow for huge advances in the field. What we are seeing in artificial intelligence right now, is apparently only the tip of the iceberg. Facebook's engineering director for machine learning Hussein Mehanna, talked about how Deep Text is going to understand the content of posts, and leverage that understanding to better deliver the content where it is required. Instead of a set of tags and keywords, the metadata attached to content would now be context. Right now Facebook Messenger understands when users want to hire a taxi, or when users want to sell something. Facebook wants to add to the list of actions it can take based on contextual understanding of interpersonal communication. Even Bill Gates showed up, and said that artificial intelligence applications were what years of Microsoft work was leading up to, and that the dream was finally arriving. He noted a couple of major issues with the advent of artificial intelligence. One was that humans would lose jobs and we would need to change what kind of training we give to people right from schools. The other was keeping the machines in control. hidden US chipmaker AMD has agreed to partner with VLSI Academy, proposed to be set up by the government of Telangana. Telangana's Information Technology and Electronics Minister K.T. Rama Rao, who is currently on a visit to the United States, met AMD officials at the company's headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. The delegation led by the minister held a meeting with AMD's Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster and Senior Vice President Ruth Cotter, a statement from the state government said on Friday. As AMD plans to focus on graphics, virtual reality, gaming and manufacturing, the IT minister briefed the officials about the state's initiatives in these sectors. He invited the company to partner with IMAGE, the gaming and animating city being developed by the state government here and explained why Hyderabad is an ideal destination for gaming and animation. He also urged the chipmaker to partner with the premier academic institutions in Telangana like International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hyderabad and Bits Pilani for research. Explaining the incentives being offered by the state for electronics manufacturing, Rao urged the AMD to manufacture their products in Telangana. The AMD executives briefed the delegation about the existing chip design facilities in Hyderabad. They said their latest chip Zen was also designed in the Hyderabad facility. They hoped that more such innovations would come out of the centre. The AMD officials pointed out that AMD with its chip technology designed graphics for Telugu blockbuster "Bahubali". They said they were ready to design graphics for more movies in Telugu and other languages. Earlier, Rama Rao, who is son of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, met California Governor Edmund Jerry Brown. The government of Telangana and California State entered into a memorandum of understanding for mutual cooperation in the field of non-conventional sources of energy. Rama Rao elaborated on the new industrial policy ATSiPASS and also on information and communication technology policy of Telangana. The minister also met with cloud computing company Salesforce's team led by Srinivas Tallapragada at its head office in San Francisco and explained to them the opportunities Telangana presents for the IT companies. In the meeting with Reid Hoffman, co-founder and Executive Chairman of LinkedIn, the minister sought to know the professional social networking site's expansion plans in India and extended invitation to the company representatives to visit Telangana. Reid accepted the invitation and said that his team would visit Hyderabad next year. IANS Bus-truck collision kills 10 in Bogra Bogra, June 3 (UNB) -Ten people were killed and 25 others injured in a head-on collision between a bus and a truck on the Dhaka-Bogra highway at Dhankundi in Sherpur upazila on Friday. Identities of the deceased could not be known immediately. Ehsan Ali, officer-in-charge of Sherpur Police Station, said the accident occurred around 6am when a Dinajpur-bound bus of Rekha Enterprise from Bogra collided head-on with the Dhaka-bound stone-laden truck, coming from the opposite direction, leaving seven people killed on the spot and 28 others injured. The injured were taken to different local clinics and hospitals. Of them, one was declared dead at Sherpur Upazila Health Complex while physicians found two more dead at Bogra Shaheed Ziaur Rahman Medical College Hospital. On information, police and firefighters rushed in and recovered the bodies but were yet to salvage the vehicles. Indian police clash with park squatters from obscure sect, 22 dead Reuters: Violence erupted in India when police tried to clear squatters belonging to an obscure sect from a city park and at least 22 people were killed including two policemen, officials said on Friday. Police began the operation to clear the park in Mathura, 140 km (85 miles) southeast of the capital, New Delhi, on Thursday after a court ordered about 3,000 people out of the area. The court had directed authorities to clear the squatters, who had lived in the park since 2014, after they ignored orders to leave. Squatting on public land is common in Indian cities, where poor people often have nowhere else to live. Authorities often let squatters stay because they are backed by powerful, well-connected people who offer politicians votes in return for leaving the squatters alone. Debashish Panda, the principal home secretary in Uttar Pradesh state, where Mathura is located, told Reuters police had initially responded to gunshots with teargas and rubber bullets but returned fire when the two police officers, including a superintendent, were killed. Other officials said it was not immediately clear how the squatters were killed. Domestic media reported that at least 11 died in a blaze during the clashes. Officials believe the squatters belong to a sect which media described as a self-styled revolutionary group with a bizarre list of demands including the axing of the position of prime minister, replacement of the Indian currency and cheap fuel. The group emerged from among followers of a powerful religious figure who died four years ago, according to reports. Uttar Pradesh police chief Javeed Ahmed told reporters at the scene the group had set fire to their tents before abandoning the camp after the clashes. "Subsequent searches by the police revealed that the activists of the group ... had stored firearms and other weapons, including grenades," he said. About 200 of the squatters were arrested. The Uttar Pradesh chief minister ordered an inquiry. Clashes erupt during eviction drive in North India; 24 dead Indian police carry a colleague injured during clashes with members of a sect said to have been living illegally at the Jawahar Bagh park in Mathura on Thursday. AP, Mathura : Police efforts to evict thousands of people squatting in a makeshift protest camp in the heart of a north Indian city ended in bloodshed as people opened fire from treetops and police retaliated, leaving at least 24 people dead, police said Friday. More than 370 people have been arrested for alleged involvement in the violence, during which gas cylinders being used by the protesters for cooking exploded and ignited a fire that killed 11 people, according to a top state police officer, Daljit Chaudhary. He said the victims included two officers who were gunned down when the violence began late Thursday in Mathura, an ancient Hindu temple city on the Yamuna River, about 300 kilometers (200 miles) southwest of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh state. More than 100 people were injured in the melee, including 23 police officers who were hospitalized with injuries including bullet wounds. "We knew they had firearms, but we didn't expect them to fire at us the way they did," state police Chief Javed Ahmed said. "They appeared to be well trained in handling arms." The standoff had been building for about two years, during which thousands of people occupied a 268-acre (108-hectare) patch of government land while demanding a raft of drastic reforms including abolishing the nation's presidential and prime ministerial posts, changing the Indian currency, building public facilities and providing steep discounts on petrol prices, now at about $1 per liter (about $4 per gallon). The protesters said they were part of an independence force that followed the example of Subhash Chandra Bose, one of India's independence leaders who went missing during a military operation in 1945. Over time, the protest camp grew with makeshift tents, thatched huts, cooking gear and thousands of men, women and children camping out. In April, the High Court in Allahabad ordered the occupiers to leave. When they refused, police obtained a court order for eviction and on Thursday sent about 30 officers to survey the situation. They were met with fierce resistance as a few hundred protesters "surrounded them and attacked them with sticks and stones. Protesters hiding on treetops started firing simultaneously," said city resident Ravi Thakur, 24, a cable television technician who witnessed the clashes. The protesters had strung up barbed wire at the park entrances and refused to be evicted. Police sent in about 500 reinforcements, who fired rubber bullets and tear gas canisters to clear the area and evict the squatters by Thursday night, he said. France urges Israel and Palestinians to make `courageous choice` Diplomats try to revive Mideast peace process in Paris French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault (L), French President FranAois Hollande (C) and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Paris, on Friday. AFP, Paris :French President Francois Hollande urged Israel and the Palestinians to make a "courageous choice" for peace as he opened a conference on the conflict in Paris on Friday.The meeting is aiming to lay the ground for a fully-fledged peace conference to be held by the end of the year but few believe that genuine progress will be made.Neither Israel nor the Palestinians have been invited to the talks and Israel has angrily compared the French initiative to the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement to draw up the region's borders.And although US Secretary of State John Kerry is attending the conference, Washington has made it clear it believes little or nothing will be achieved.Hollande said a solution would have to come from the Middle East region, but in the end it was up to the Israelis and Palestinians "to make the courageous choice of peace"."The discussion on the conditions of a lasting agreement between Israelis and Palestinians must take into account the whole of the region," he told representatives of some 25 countries, as well as the United Nations, European Union and Arab League.While scepticism over the new peace bid is high, the consensus among some diplomats appears to be that any effort is better than none at all.After decades of failed negotiations, few believe the climate is right to bring together Israelis and Palestinians for another shot at solving one of the world's longest-running conflicts.Direct negotiation "doesn't work," French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault insisted Friday."Currently everything is blocked. We don't want to act in the place of the Israelis and Palestinians but we want to help them," he told France Info radio ahead of the conference.One French diplomatic source told AFP that without a new drive to find peace, "we risk heading towards even more violence in an international context where there is no visible American effort on the case."The United States, the traditional mediator in the conflict, has not moved the two sides towards a new peace process since talks collapsed in April 2014 and Washington has been decidedly cool on the French initiative."We're not bringing any specific proposals to this meeting tomorrow," a senior State Department official said.But senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said France's bid offered "a flicker of hope" for a resolution to the conflict. A human chain was formed in Chittagong Press Club premises protesting conspiracy against ICT Advisor to the Prime Minister Sajeeb Wazed Joy by a Israeli party leader yesterday. Bangladesh Jatiya Hindu Mahajote brought out a procession in the city on Friday in protest against repression on Hindu community people all over the country. Media cooperation in exploring potentials for uplift emphasised BNP Vice-Chairman Shah Moazzem Hossain, among others, at a rally organized by Jatiyatabadi Desh Banchao Manush Banchao Andolon at Jatiya Press Club on Friday demanding withdrawal of false cases filed against BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia. City Desk : The mass media can play the most vital role in exploring unexplored potentials in various sectors to further speed up the current pace of development in the process of building a middle income Bangladesh. Deputy Commissioner of Rangpur Rahat Anwar made these observations while addressing a press briefing organised by the District Information Office (DIO) at Raja Ram Mohan Club auditorium in Rangpur as the chief guest.The DIO organised the briefing for informing the people about various e-services being provided under the access to information (a2i) programme of the Prime Minister's Office and inspiring their participation in implementing digital Bangladesh. Senior District Information Officer Humayun Kobir Kabir delivered keynote presentation narrating the huge successes achieved in all sectors in implementing Vision 2021, Charter of Changes and digitisation programme to accelerate development. He especially mentioned laudable development achieved in education, agriculture, health, poverty alleviation, social safety-net, power generation, road communication, women and children development, women empowerment, digitisation, ICT and other sectors. Kobir also discussed successes achieved in improving diplomatic relations with international organisations and foreign countries, disaster management, research works and rehabilitation of disabled with job quota and prevention of child labour. The participating journalists narrated as how the union digital centres (UDCs), upazila and district web portals have been reaching all government services easily to the peoples' doorsteps to accelerate uplift making civic life easier. They said successful functioning of UDCs and other web portals at upazila and district levels have turned the digitisation process into an irreversible part of civic life making every citizen dependant on ICT and internet facilities available everywhere. The chief guest asked the journalists for exploring unexplored development potentials in different sectors, focusing on the government's successes and huge positive changes taken place in the life and livelihoods of the common people properly. He thanked the journalists for their active participation in the press briefing and sought their continuous cooperation to further accelerate uplift activities in every sector in the process of building a middle income Bangladesh by 2021. Trump `dangerously incoherent`: Hillary BBC Online :Hillary Clinton has called Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump "dangerously incoherent".The Democratic front-runner said Mr Trump was unfit to be president and his election would be a "historic mistake". Mr Trump hit back, saying Mrs Clinton "no longer has credibility - too much failure in office".Outside Mr Trump's rally in San Jose, California, anti-Trump protesters clashed with his supporters in one of the worst such confrontations so far. Several Trump supporters were punched, one was pelted with eggs and others were spat at, reports said.But in a boost for the presumptive Republican nominee, US House Speaker Republican Paul Ryan said he would back his candidacy. Mr Ryan had previously refused to back Mr Trump and his support is the latest sign Republicans are unifying around their nominee. He wrote in a column in his hometown Gazette newspaper in Wisconsin "we have more common ground than disagreement", and he attacked Mrs Clinton saying: "A Clinton White House would mean four more years of liberal cronyism." In her speech Mrs Clinton, who is fighting Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination, rejected Mr Trump's foreign policy points, and called him thin-skinned, irrational and unprepared. She defended the Iran nuclear deal and said a Trump presidency could start overseas wars and ruin the US economy. "This isn't reality television, this is actual reality," she said.Hillary Clinton's speech in San Diego on Thursday lived up to its billing as a spirited frontal assault on presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. The former secretary of state mixed humour and an occasionally mocking tone with a line-by-line refutation of Mr Trump's foreign policy views, which she said were reckless and "dangerously incoherent". The address, which was confidently delivered, will likely ease the concerns of Democrats who have worried that their candidate may be unable to go toe-to-toe with the unconventional Trump. At one point she quipped that Mr Trump was likely preparing angry tweets in response to her criticisms - and it wasn't long before her predictions were proven accurate.Last year I spoke with a number of Republican foreign policy experts who expressed excitement that the 2016 presidential race would be centred on international affairs. This probably isn't the kind of debate they were expecting - or wanted, for that matter. Mrs Clinton's speech seemed crafted to try to draw in independents and disaffected moderate Republicans who are concerned about Mr Trump's bluster. While his supporters have repeatedly said they like his tough talk, Mrs Clinton is betting that the broader US electorate will not.Mrs Clinton also said someone like Mr Trump could not be in charge of the country's nuclear codes and that his proposals were vague and often nonsensical. She said his anti-Muslim rhetoric and talk of American isolationism bolstered the so-called Islamic State and argued against his disdain for Mexico and Mexican immigrants coming into the country. Questioning his relationship with Russian president Vladmir Putin, she said: "I'll leave it to a psychiatrist to explain his affection for tyrants." Manna must get bail or be tried : Barrister Mainul Staff Reporter :Eminent personalities at a discussion on Friday demanded immediate release of Mahmudur Rahman Manna, Convener of the Nagorik Oikkya, or he should be tried. "Manna has been in the jail for more than one year without any trial. It is clear violation of human rights. The government should release him immediately or hold his trial," said Dr. Zafrullah Chowdhury, founder of Ganoshasthya, at the discussion in the city.Organised on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the Nagorik Oikkya at Dhaka Reporters Unity, the advisor of the Nagorik Oikkya, ASM Akram, presided over the programme.Dr. Zafrullah said that BNP observed Ziaur Rahman's death anniversary but the party could not make people conscious about their rights and the government's misrule. Barrister Mainul Hosein said that Mahmudur Rahman Manna must either be released on bail or tried. The courts are not for keeping anybody in jail without trial for political convenience.The government alone does not enjoy constitutional power, the courts are above the government, he said. The people empowered the judiciary with constitutional authority to protect their (people's) fundamental rights. The Supreme Court can declare any act of the government unconstitutional and illegal.Barrister Mainul Hosein emphasized the awareness that judiciary is not helpless or weak. As the allegation against Manna is treason, it is important that he should be tried so that the people know the truth. No allegation is true unless proved in court. He highlighted the need of the judiciary not to be used politically. Denying bail has made the rise of false cases easy and sheltering the dangerous criminals easier.It is a terrible weakness of the government that anybody can overthrow it. It is not too late for the government to change politics and have confidence in the peoples government. Khalequzzaman, General Secretary of Bangladesher Samajtantrik Dal, said that the national unity could not be formed despite Manna's effort. He said that a political programme of Hefajat-e-Islam foiled the move.Saiful Haque, General Secretary of Biplobi Workers' Party, said that the government had presented a glamorous budget in order to loot the public money, and sending democracy and good governance on exile. Elections in Bangladesh have become farce nowadays, he added.Asif Nazrul, a professor of Dhaka University, demanded immediate release of Mahmudur Rahman Manna, adding that detention without trial is nothing but sign of repression. This practice should go. Steve Oubre, of Architects Southwest, presents findings and ideas generated from public design charrettes held in May. Photo by Robin May [Editors Note: A response late Thursday from DOTD spokewoman Deidra Druilhet appears to indicate that officials will consider the 20th refinement concept favored by some TIGER team members, telling this newspaper in an email, in part, Even though the proposed revisions were not consistent with the stated goals of the TIGER grant and were outside of the responsibilities of the ECI as outlined in the ECI public information flyer entitled: Whos Doing What & Why, the DOTD/Lafayette Connector Partners (LCP) Team will be investigating the feasibility of these ideas in the coming weeks should one or more of the 4 or 6 series options advance in the process.] Whether DOTD likes it or not, a 20th refinement concept to borrow their term to the proposed I-49 Connector through Lafayette is on the table. Since the idea to nudge a buried mainline eastward floated out of a week of design charrettes organized by city governments TIGER team, its slowly gained buy-in and generated some buzz. City-Parish Councilman Bruce Conque officially requested that the concept be included in the first round of evaluations with the other 19 refinements currently on the big board, even though DOTDs May 15 deadline for concept submission had come and gone. As of this writing, we still wait with bated breath DOTDs answer to the councilmans request. Backed up against yet another potential PR nightmare, DOTD and its team of consultants have little choice but to take it up. For one, its a pretty good idea despite its arguably unsanctioned provenance (more on that in a graph or two). To catch you up, 6F would mark the sixth in a series of cap and cover concepts included in DOTDs Tier 1 evaluation matrix. The general notion for the series is to build the interstate bed 10 feet under ground, with some manner of a bulging cap constructed over to abate noise and unsightliness and improve surface street connectivity. Its not really a new idea. A fully-depressed version of this concept was vetted in the 90s and was ruled out for a variety of reasons not worth getting into here. What differentiates 6F from the other cap and cover ideas in the series is that it moves the mainline structure east away from the railroad tracks. The extra distance from the tracks, roughly 150 feet away from the conventional mainline plan and still within the projects right of way, allows for all railroad crossings to be made at grade. Gradual, gentler-sloped berms can be built over the semi-depressed mainline which gives broader space for plazas, parks and development. TIGER planners ran with the concept at the charrettes, sketching verdant public parks and multi-story developments resting tranquilly above a subterranean interstate. Considering DOTDs skittishness about major changes to the alignment cemented in 2003s federally approved Record of Decision, the document which effectively governs design on the project, this would seem like heresy. But such a dramatic suggestion was actually made possible by DOTDs own problem solving. DOTD produced refinement concept 6E, in response to a CWG request, which shifted both the mainline and the railroad east to allow enough clearance to bury both routes. Taken from that perspective, 6F is just 6E without moving and burying the railroad, with the added benefit of removing overpasses and allowing at-grade crossings. Refinement concept 6E was the first time DOTD designers moved the alignment of the mainline of the Connector, in effect setting the stage for concept 6F. Photo courtesy lafayetteconnector.com Some transportation commentators, many of those generally opposed to urban freeways, see underground freeways as a much better alternative to oft-maligned elevated structures, which weve more or less assumed would be in place along the current US 90/Evangeline Thruway alignment since late last year. Even Conques fellow CWG member, architect Eddie Cazayoux whom I once watched write Go Around on a dry erase board as a refinement suggestion to the CWG has voiced support for the idea, even if his preference remains a bypass. Thats a pretty good bellwether for the accessibility of the concept. So if this is such a good idea, then why is there even a question about including it? Well, as noted, Conques official request was registered after a previously set deadline of May 15. When tens of millions of dollars in consultant contracts are in play, deadlines are more than just arbitrary lines in the sand. Currently, CWG members are working to evaluate the 19 sanctioned concepts and turn in their scores by June 3. From there, the 19 concepts will be culled based on community preference reflected in those scores. Following the emergence of 6F during the TIGER charrettes, project manager Toby Picard has reported some confusion among CWG members as to whether they ought to consider the concept when scoring their Tier 1 evaluations. Picard instructed confused members to focus on the 19 official refinements at hand, noting that, There is no requirement... to view the conceptual ideas being developed by the TIGER team. Its a mess to be sure, and one a fairly long time in the making given the 6F refinements provenance in the muck of a relationship between DOTD planners armed with a federally approved ROD and the city-based planners waving the banner of a federal TIGER grant. Theres been talk of TIGER consultants over-stepping their boundaries by conceiving 6F or prejudicing their charrettes toward series 6 and series 4, the constellation of ideas orbiting around a signature bridge. Its a territorial dispute. From DOTDs point of view, TIGER has no place commenting on the structure of the Connector. Respective scopes of work for contractors with both organizations overlap considerably. Its DOTDs official charge to design the Connector with additional attention paid to the Corridor the adjacent neighborhoods that will be immediately impacted by its construction through its Context Sensitive Solutions process. Its the TIGER teams charge to study the Corridor in reaction to the Connectors design. According its scope of work, TIGER was always intended to comment on the Connectors structural design. To boot, that scope of work was developed in 2014 and viewed by both the FHWA and DOTD. Back in late 2015, the two teams set out to draft a Memorandum of Understanding, which would define how they would interact. Part of the scope of work contracting Stantec DOTDs prime consultant on the project, is to reach such an agreement with the TIGER team. Ideally, such an agreement would have avoided the back channel bickering thats muddying the waters under an already controversial bridge. From the city teams perspective, there is but one ace in the hole here and that's TIGERs role as an appendage of a Lafayette Consolidated Government. The Purpose and Need for the project, enshrined in the ROD, stipulates that the Connector has local agency support. That should put more pressure on DOTD to heed TIGER ideas, provided they have the political will of Mayor-President Joel Robideaux behind it. For his part, hes played his cards close to the vest, and it looks like wont weigh in till more smoke is cleared off the battlefield. But even given political meanderings, if DOTD is interested in getting community buy-in, it simply cannot be perceived to throw out an ostensibly city-proffered idea on a technicality. To be sure, 6F may not turn out to be a panacea. As TIGER team chief consultant Steve Oubre said in his presentation of the idea, its still got a lot of engineering devils to be exorcised. DOTDs process is designed to gather ideas that are structurally feasible at face-value, and vet the technical stuff as they go. Ostensibly, thats what would happen to any idea that makes it past Tier 1. Sure, 6F is not yet ready to be stamped as shovel-ready. But neither are the other 19 ideas on the table. If the council approves the measure, Stutes will be back in court seeking to have the finalized ordinance set aside and preventing LCG from amending the budget to reflect the funding reduction to his office. District Attorney Keith Stutes, trailed by Assistant District Attorney Daniel Landry, leaves the Lafayette Parish Courthouse Friday afternoon. Photos by Wynce Nolley District Attorney Keith Stutes agreed Friday to await the City-Parish Councils vote Tuesday on an ordinance that would strip his office of nearly $681,000. If the council approves the measure Stutes will be back in court before Judge Dennis Waldron seeking to have the finalized ordinance set aside and preventing Lafayette Consolidated Government from amending the budget to reflect the funding reduction. The district attorney had gone to court Friday morning with a goal of convincing Waldron a retired New Orleans judge appointed by the state Supreme Court to preside over the case after judges in the 15th Judicial District recused themselves to block the council in the first place from voting on the ordinance. But, after a more than two-hour conference in chambers with his team and with attorneys for LCG led by Steve Oates essentially an executive session away from public view it was announced that the matter will wait. Following the courts adjournment, Stutes said an efficient handling of the courts time would be to defer the matter, but he declined comment beyond that. On Friday following the court development the council added an executive session to the top of Tuesday's meeting. (Technically, it was added as a separate "special meeting" agenda.) Steve Oates, lead counsel for LCG, enters the parish courthouse Friday morning. Regardless of whether the council approves the ordinance, Stutes and LCG will be back in court on June 14. If the council approves the ordinance, the first order of business will be the district attorney seeking a mandamus to block enactment of the ordinance; if the ordinance fails it will be on to the crux of the case: deciding which interpretation of the Home Rule Charter is correct Stutes or LCGs. The former argues that LCG, irrespective of whether its parish funds or city of Lafayette funds or a combination of the two, is responsible for funding his office. LCG argues that only the parish side of city-parish government is responsible for funding parishwide obligations like DA, sheriff, the jail and the parish courthouse. Parish government, however, cant pay its bills, hence the budget amendment ordinance on the council agenda Tuesday. Because Stutes agreed to wait, on Tuesday the council will vote for final adoption on Ordinance 095, which notes that Parish General Fund sales tax revenue is projected to fall short of the current budget by 32.6% ($2,055,207). The ordinance amends the LCG budget by slashing $575,144 in expenses currently budgeted in the District Attorney Division of the Criminal Court Fund and $105,743 in the District Attorney Division of the Parish General Fund. The preamble to the ordinance is a head-scratcher in that it plainly acknowledges that Stutes notified the Lafayette City-Parish Council that he will no longer reimburse these expenses. In fact, Stutes informed the council soon after he was sworn in as DA in January of 2015 that he intended to stop paying the reimbursements to LCG, breaking with a long-standing custom of his predecessor, Mike Harson. And although Stutes paid the reimbursements in protest in 2015, he stopped making the payments this year just three months into the fiscal year. Nonetheless, the previous council still approved a budget last August for the 2015-16 fiscal year that factored in Stutes making the nearly $700,000 in reimbursements, even though he had told the council the payments would stop. Stutes stopped making the payments as promised, the budget fell into imbalance, so the council will vote Tuesday to amend the budget to reflect that shortfall in revenue. Arguably, the previous council four seats on the nine-seat panel changed following last falls council election failed in its duty by budgeting almost $700,000 in revenue it had already been informed would end. For more on the underlying issues exposed in Stutes suit against LCG, read Unintended Consequences in the June issue of The Independent. District Judge Jules Edwards instructed The IND to amend its original public records lawsuit to include the new public records requests at the heart of latest court battle. Marshal Pope's criminal defense attorney, Kevin Stockstill, talks to reporters outside of the parish courthouse Friday. At right is Pope, who did not speak to reporters. Photo by Wynce Nolley An air of disappointment filled 15th Judicial District Judge Jules Edwards courtroom Friday morning, a day after the judge ordered Lafayette City Marshal Brian Pope to appear and take the stand in the marshals latest public records battle with The Independent. In the end, Popes highly anticipated testimony was not to be at least not today. Thats because before Pope could make it to the witness stand, procedural wrangling between Popes criminal defense lawyer, Kevin Stockstill, and The INDs attorney, Gary McGoffin, resulted in Edwards siding with Stockstill in deciding that the newspaper must amend its original lawsuit to include the latest records it is seeking unredacted legal bills between Pope and one of his attorneys, Chuck Middleton. Specifically, the paper aims to answer whether a Nov. 17 motion Middleton prepared and billed to the marshals office is the motion Broussard resident Troyce Thorla filed in district court that same day to open the sealed divorce file of Sheriff-elect Mark Garber. The IND obtained Pope's legal bills via public records requests. Middleton's invoices are the only ones that were redacted. IND attorney Gary McGoffin tells reporters he will amend the paper's original petition to address new public records requests that aim to reveal whether Marshal Pope used public funds to open the sealed divorce file of Sheriff-elect Mark Garber late last year. Photo by Wynce Nolley For obvious reasons (see Louisiana Revised Statute 42:1116 - Abuse of Office), using public resources for Pope's political grudge against the sheriff-elect has harsh implications for the city marshal, who is already under criminal investigation by District Attorney Keith Stutes office and, potentially, attorney Middleton himself. Middleton, who was also supposed to testify Friday, now has his own attorney, Leslie Schiff of Opelousas. McGoffin confirmed to the court that he will file the amended petition within the next two weeks. Edwards who in January ruled that Popes responses to The INDs public records requests on Oct. 8 and Nov. 30 violated the state's public records law and then in March held him in contempt of court yesterday ordered both Pope and Middleton to court today to testify about the bills and mysterious motion before halting the proceedings based on Stockstills argument. The original lawsuit sought email records related to the bizarre press conference Pope held in October at the marshal's office to lodge false accusations against then-candidate Garber and Sheriff Mike Neustrom. The INDs current push for the unredacted attorney bills and the unexplained Nov. 17 motion are the latest in this newspaper's ongoing battle to prove the lengths the marshal went to last year to advance the campaign of Garbers opponent and Popes longtime friend, Scott Police Chief Chad Leger. Pope has appealed Edwards January decision that he failed to adequately respond to The INDs public records requests and is also appealing Edwards February criminal contempt of court ruling ordering him to serve jail time, make public presentations and pay thousands in fines. Those appeals formed the basis for Stockstills argument that The IND must amend its original petition or file a new public records lawsuit. The case is over, Stockstill said. The case is at the Third Circuit. The Advocates Billy Gunn captured the attitude of the courtroom and the judge himself shortly after the proceeding: Its so painful to move forward, lamented Judge Jules Edwards, who sat back, rubbed his face with both hands and granted another continuance in a case that has dragged on for months. In the meantime, Popes attorneys he now has four (five if you include Middletons legal consultations with attorney Clay Burgess, who records show is not billing Pope for his advice) must by Monday at noon provide to the court Popes legal bills and accompanying privilege log, an explanation by each entry noting justification for the redaction based on claims of attorney-client privilege. Along with that, they must submit the unredacted bills to the court so that the judge can decided whether attorney-client privilege was properly invoked. At last count, Marshal Pope had run up more than $81,000 in legal/consulting bills, including the $750 his office paid Middleton for the motion at the heart of the latest court battle, all of which he has paid from the City Marshal Expense Account. Additionally, he is personally liable for the more than $100,000 in legal/expert fees, court costs and penalties the judge ordered him to pay The IND for failing to turn over the emails requested by the paper on Oct. 8 and Nov. 30. 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. President Joe Biden has decided to ban Russian oil imports, toughening the toll on Russia's economy in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine. The United States generally imports about 100,000 barrels a day from Russia, only about 5% of Russia's crude oil exports, according to Rystad Energy. Last year, roughly 8% of U.S. imports of oil and petroleum products came from Russia. Gas prices have been rising for weeks due to the conflict and in anticipation of potential sanctions on the Russian energy sector. The U.S. national average for a gallon of gasoline soared 45 cents a gallon in the past week and topped $4.06 on Monday, according to auto club AAA. Should the US ban Russian oil imports over Ukraine war? You voted: The sextoy market is growing quite rapidly in India right now. Although it is not a big trend, it is a hot topic on the internet as it is secretly expanding its market. In this article, we will focus on sextoy and introduce recommended sextoy for Indian beginners of sextoy by gender. India, the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, is very strict about sex. Also, premarital sex is basically not allowed. Therefore, there are many people who are sexually restricted. But what happens when you continue to be sexually restricted? Frustration may build up and you may end up taking your sexual stress out on your partner. If you are able to adopt sextoy in a timely manner, you can get rid of those problems. I want to have more exciting sex than Im having now. I want more variation in masturbation I want to get even stronger pleasure than I do on my own. If you have any of these problems, please stay with me until the end. What is sex toys for Indian? Sextoy, as the name implies, is a toy used during sex and masturbation. It is a generic term for vibrators, Egg-vibrators, Electric massagers, dildo, handcuffs and condoms. They are used to make regular sex more exciting or to make masturbation more pleasurable. Because sextoy is very stimulating, it can help you to get rid of the problems and frustrations of being in a rut of sex with your partner for a long time, or if you are unhappy with the lack of pleasure in sex with your partner. The ability to satisfy your desires with movement, texture, and size, which cannot be done by a normal human being, can help you to be satisfied with sex and, as a result, improve your relationship with your partner. It is also said to help improve sexual dysfunction (inability to get an erection or ejaculate) and difficulty in feeling during sex (insensitivity), which is attracting more attention than in the past. In recent years, the demand for sextoy has increased due to the spread of smartphones and the Internet and the increasing number of people using online shopping. Even those who are concerned about the appearance of sextoy (and find it difficult to purchase) can now easily obtain it by using mail order. In the case of online shopping, most of the stores have taken steps to ensure that the contents of the products delivered to you are not revealed, so you can purchase them without your family members knowing. Until a while ago, you had to go to the store where the adult goods were sold to buy them, so it was quite a hurdle to overcome. Also, many people may have an image that sextoy is somehow embarrassing to own. But nowadays, some of them are so stylish and cute that you cant believe they are sextoy at a glance. More and more people are using them for travel and outdoor use because they are not too bulky and are suitable for carrying around. Sextoy situation in India Before introducing the recommended sextoy for Indians, lets talk about one of the sextoy situations in India in recent years. In India, due to the high concentration of population, the following six cities have particularly high sales of sextoy in India. Mumbai Kolkata Bangalore Delhi Chennai Hyderabad These cities account for roughly 70 percent of sextoy sales in India. In the future, the percentage of sextoy use will gradually increase in other cities in India as well. If you never talk about sextoy publicly, that girl in your neighborhood might be a sextoy user too. If you are interested in sextoy, you dont have to suppress your desire for it. What are Sextoys for beginner? Among all sextoys, sextoy for beginners are vibrators, dildo, masturbators, Sex Lubricants, and condoms. Sex Lubricants and condoms, which are familiar to people who have had sex, are also a great beginners sextoy. I will explain the details of each toy later, but there are many sextoy products that are painful to use and can only be used after some anal expansion. I assume that the Indian readers of this article are people who have not had much experience with sextoy. If such people use professional sextoy suddenly, they are at risk of injury or trauma. Therefore, to introduce sextoy, you need to start with a beginners version and gradually become familiar with it. Advantages of using sextoy for Indians There are three advantages of using sextoy for Indians You can masturbate in a wide variety of ways. Can have stimulating sex Can develop new sexual zones If you try to masturbate with your own fingers or hands, it tends to be a pattern. However, with sextoy, you can easily masturbate in a variety of ways. You will definitely be fascinated by the attraction of new stimulation. Also, your daily sex life will be more exciting than ever. There are many things in sextoy that are visually stimulating and give you a strong and intense feeling of pleasure. This allows you to see your partners promiscuity in a way that you wouldnt normally see it. When you are in a relationship, sex with your partner may become a pattern, but it can also eliminate these problems. It can also lead to the development of new sexual zones (which is the training of sexual stimulation to allow you to feel orgasms). For more information on the development of new sexual zones, see the following articles [Women's Erogenous Zone]How to find and develop, 7 hidden sexual zones !![In India] In this issue, we will dissect the female erogenous zone! ..." Many of you may be like that. Men, in particular, shou... Thus, the use of sextoy can only be a good thing for the men and women of India. Sextoy for beginner men in India So, lets continue with the recommended goods for Indian sextoy beginners. For ease of understanding, we will introduce them by gender. Lets start with the men! The following five goods are recommended for novice Indian sextoy men Masturbator Cock rings Love Doll Sex Lubricants Toys for the prostate Lets check each one in detail. Masturbator The masturbator is a sextoy for men that elaborately reproduces a womans vagina, mouth, and anus, and is one of the most popular sextoy products. It is used by men to masturbate, and it is popular because it provides stronger stimulation and pleasure more easily than using hands. Most are made of good quality silicone, and their softness is something that cannot be achieved with ones own hands. They can provide stronger pleasure than a real womans vagina, so be careful not to overuse them. (You wont be able to have an orgasm in a womans vagina anymore.) Again Male masturbators are a wonderful toy. I do not need any favourite timing, bothersome bargaining. You do not have to worry too much. Revolutionize your masturbation time! ! ! Made in Japan is a wonderful kinky toy.#sextoysindia #SexToyIndia #Japanhttps://t.co/4k70QGzoTP pic.twitter.com/tRVdxTKPpa SEXToys India PR (@SextoysIndia) November 12, 2018 Some of them are disposable, while others can be washed and used over and over again, so its fun to buy a few to use depending on your mood. If you want to know more about masturbator, please click here Really pleasant male masturbation and how to do it Are you in a rut with your daily masturbation routine? I'm going to show you five ways men masturbate that you might ... [For Beginners] How to choose and use a male masturbator without fail Gentlemen.Have you ever used a masturbator? The person who sees this article is probably the one who has not experien... Cock Ring A cock ring is literally a ring-shaped sextoy that is worn on a mans penis. It maintains an erection by binding the penis with a ring of rubber and blocking blood flow. It is sometimes used as an accessory to be worn on the penis, and may be made of metal or plastic as well as rubber. In some cases, cock rings have parts or vibrators attached to them that stimulate the vagina, so they kill two birds with one stone, giving a woman pleasure while maintaining an erection. Cock rings are also sometimes used to treat erectile dysfunction. It can help with erectile dysfunction, where the penis doesnt get hard when you get an erection or doesnt last long when you try to insert it. Men who are prone to breakage or who are unsure of the hardness and size of their erections can use a cock ring to increase the size of their penis and maintain an erection for a longer period of time. Cock rings vary in price from around RS700 to over RS2000 with a vibrator function. Some of them do not fit your penis, so you should check the size of the cock ring before you buy. You should know the size of your partners or your own penis when it is erect. [Penis enlargement] What is a cock ring? Types and usage Cock rings can make your penis bigger and harder. It also makes sex with women more fulfilling and increases your sat... Love Doll Love dolls, also known as Dutchwives, are dolls with the appearance of a woman who can experience simulated sex. There are dolls that look like a woman, but they have no face and only have their breasts and lower torso cut off, and some dolls are so realistic that they can actually be mistaken for real women. Some expensive dolls can cost more than 1 million yen, and the quality of the doll is easily influenced by the price. The higher the price, the higher the quality of the doll will be, the closer it will be to the real woman, and the cheaper the doll will be, the less elaborate it will be, making it look like a real doll! Something is wrong! That is also true. You cant go wrong if you choose a balance between price and taste. There are stores that allow you to make custom-made love dolls, so you can create a girl of your choice. You can make a girl of your choice. You can start with inexpensive love dolls at first, and once you get used to it, you can try custom-made love dolls. If you want to know more about Love doll, please click here Thorough explanation of the charm of sex dolls! Have you ever heard of sex dolls that are used primarily for pseudo-sex purposes? It is a doll that is quite close to... Sex lubricants Sex lubricants are used as a substitute for lubricating fluid during sex or as a lubricant for men to use masturbator rules. It is not uncommon for women to have difficulty getting wet, depending on their physical condition, or to have difficulty getting wet due to their constitution. Forcing the penis into the vagina at such times can cause painful intercourse. There are various types of Sex Lubricants, some with a warming effect, some with a cooling effect, and some with a scent. Changing the Sex Lubricant used during play is recommended as a good sex accent. If you want to learn more about Sex Lubricants, click here. What is sex lubricant?Explain the difference and usage of each ingredient The word "sex toy" may seem like a hurdle to overcome, but lotion is actually one of the most familiar sex toys. Many... Toys for the Prostate Another sextoy for men is prostate toys. The most famous prostate toys include Enemagra, which was originally a prostate massager developed by an American urologist to treat an enlarged prostate line. Modern prostate toys are imitations of Enemagra that have spread as sextoy for men. Many people think of prostate toys as being used by gay men, but in fact they are often used by straight men. What is the prostate? The prostate is an organ found only in men. It is a walnut-sized organ located deep in the pelvis, just below the bladder, and its primary role is to protect and nourish sperm. You cannot touch the prostate gland from outside the body, but you can touch it by inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus. By inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus and touching the prostate and developing it, you can feel intense orgasms. Orgasms felt in the prostate are mainly dry orgasms, which are orgasms that do not involve ejaculation. (You can also feel orgasms with ejaculation through prostate stimulation.) The prostate is called the male G-spot, and dry orgasms can be much more intense than ejaculation. Therefore, men who are able to develop a prostate can become addicted to the pleasure. sextoy for beinner women in India The following are the recommended goods for Indian women who are new to sextoy. The following three are recommended for use by women who are new to sextoy. Vibrator. Dildo Electric Masserger Lets check out what each one is in detail. If you want to check out womens toys, click here. [BEST25]Sex Toys for Women in IndiaThat Can Help You Have an Orgasm There are many women who pretend to feel orgasm during sex. But don't worry, you don't have to pretend to feel orgasm... Vibrators A vibrator is a sextoy that vibrates with an Egg-Vibrator to provide stimulation and is often referred to simply as a vibrator. Some vibrate as well as rotate, and there are many variations of sextoy. It is quite a popular sextoy, and is well recognized by people who do not know much about sextoy. Its usage is similar to that of a massager, but it is more compact and easier to carry than a massager, and many of them look as cute as a lipstick or a macaroon, so they are popular among women. For a while, a famous influencer on twitter said, This is good! You may have heard of the topic of this article by introducing the recommended vibrators. Vibrators are great for women to use on their own, but they are also recommended for men who have difficulty satisfying women with sex. Since it is powered by electricity, it is far less tiring than moving your hands by yourself. This makes it easier to satisfy a woman with sex because you can caress her for longer than usual. Vibrators are mainly used on the female side, but they can also be used on men. When used on men, they are used to attack the nipples and glans, and in both cases it is recommended to wear a condom for hygiene reasons. Introducing how to use the vibrator, its purpose, and how to choose it! Vibrator uses the vibrations caused by the rotation of the motor to provide stimulation. It is one or two of the most... Dildo A dildo is a model sextoy made to mimic a male penis. It can be made of silicone, elastomer (think of it as a material similar to PVC), metal or glass. A dildo can be used by a man for his female partner during sex, or by a woman for masturbation to get pleasure from it. They are mainly inserted into women, but some can be used in the male anus as well. It is sometimes used synonymously with vibrators, but the vibrator is not the same thing as a vibrating device. A model of a penis that does not vibrate is a dildo. Some of them have suction cups that can be attached to the floor or wall so that you can enjoy realistic masturbation without using your hands. For fun, there is a dildo made in the shape of your partners penis. This one is also popular as a gift, and if youve been together for a long time and are having trouble finding a gift for your partner, you might want to pick one. To learn more about dildo, please click here. What is Dildo: Orgasms with Dildos for Men and Women A dildo is a model of a male organ that is used by women for masturbation and by men to stimulate the prostate gland. Th... Electric Masserger A Electric Masserger is a hand-held electric massager, also known as a handheld massager, and can usually be purchased at electronics stores. It was originally designed to relieve stiff shoulders and back pain, so the hurdle of buying one in a physical store is quite low. Many people may have seen or used it in some form or another, as it is often installed in leisure hotels. Such a massager is highly recommended for beginners because it is easy for women to get pleasure from it when they use it during masturbation. It is larger than Egg-Vibrator and vibrations are stronger than those of Egg-Vibrators and vibrators, so even just hitting the clitoris can give you a great deal of pleasure. For those women who have never had an orgasm during sex with their man, the massager may be a good way to get a feel for what it feels like to have an orgasm. It looks and feels like an electric massager, so you wont have to feel awkward if your roommate finds out. If you are in a rut of having sex with your partner, if you want to feel an orgasm through masturbation, or if you are thinking of using a sextoy, why dont you try it from a simple massager? To learn more about Electric Masserger, click here. What is a massager? Introducing types, selection methods, and usage Originally, the Magic-wand vibrator and the massage machine were sold as a home massage machine used for the back and th... How to choose a sextoy for Indian Now that weve covered the different types of sextoy, heres how to choose one. Especially if you are trying sextoy for the first time, pay attention to the following three points: Does the size fit you (the partner)? Does the size fit you (your partner)? Is the environment able to produce sound without problems? Price range First of all, the choice of size is quite important. Most sextoy are used against or inserted into the genitals, but the genitals are very delicate organs for both men and women. For this reason, using an inappropriate size may cause damage. Secondly, the environment should be able to produce sound without problems. Some sextoys not only wear, but also rotate and vibrate. Its easier to get pleasure from something that moves than something that doesnt, but the fact that it moves means that the internal rotors make some noise. If you live in a house with thin walls or if you have roommates, you may not be able to concentrate because of the noise, so it is best to choose one that is silent or has a low noise level. Especially in India, where many people live with their families, it is very important that you dont have to worry about sound when you use it. Finally, there is the price range. The price range of sextoy ranges widely, from around RS500 at the cheapest to RS10,000 or more at the highest. Its good to consider how much money you can afford and how much you want to buy. Do you want your family to not find out about sextoy? I live with my family and want to use sextoy without them finding out! If you are a man, you should buy a camouflage sextoy that does not look like a sextoy at first glance. For men, there are many masturbators that do not look like a sextoy, and for women, there are vibrators that only look like cosmetics. If you choose such a type, youll be safe in case your family members find out. How to buy sextoys in India The best way to purchase sextoy is through online shopping. For more information on how to purchase sextoy, please see the article below. Sextoy is one of them. Therefore, you can easily get sextoy in India by using online shopping. SexToysINDIA is a long established and stable sextoy store and you can have sextoy delivered to any place in India. They also offer cash on delivery, so those who are worried about shopping with a credit card do not have to worry. Of course, the latest security is in place, so your information will not be taken out when you use your credit card. To begin with, many people may be concerned about whether they are legally allowed to purchase sextoy. ikmAs it turns out, its not illegal. Right now, it is not open to the public because the Indian adult market is still in the development stage, but it will gradually spread from now on. Take advantage of sextoy and open the door to new pleasures and culture. Cautions for Indians using sextoy When using sextoy, keep the following three things in mind Keep sex toys clean Watch out for electrical leakage Beware of the heat generated by the body while using a sex toy As I mentioned earlier, many sextoy products are used for the delicate zone. Therefore, it is most important to keep the sextoy itself clean. It is very important to keep the sextoy itself clean, because if a slight scratch is created by friction, bacteria can enter and breed there. It is safe to wear a condom when using the masturbator, just in case. In addition, many sextoy devices are powered by a power source, so if they are not waterproof, there is a possibility of electric shock or malfunction due to wetness. Some may even develop heat during continuous use. If the fever becomes too much, you may get burned, so be careful. If you get a fever during use, stop driving the sextoy immediately and refrain from using it. You will enjoy sex more if you keep it safe and use it correctly. Summary What did you think? In this article, we have introduced the recommended sextoy for the beginners of sextoy in India. The sextoy market is growing rapidly in India and it will continue to grow steadily in the future. As India is a rather closed-minded country, it can be difficult to be open about ones sexual habits and values. However, being faithful to ones desires by properly dissolving ones sexual desire is very effective for ones physical and mental health. If this is your first time to learn about sextoy, or if you are interested in using sextoy, why not give it a try? Indian Sextoys for ur best! will introduce you to sextoy and other trivia about sextoy, sexuality, and sexuality for men and women. I want to read more! If you think its a great idea, please bookmark it. CARBONDALE Mary O'Hara, a member for the Small Circles Neighborhood Group in Carbondale, said the disaster preparedness program, Map Your Neighborhood, could be more productive than it has been. O'Hara said numbers for the self-reliant program which prepares neighborhoods during the first, or golden, hour of a disaster when traditional respondents are overwhelmed by demands are low. "If I were to talk about Carbondale, (and) how many actual blocks in areas (have successfully participated), I would say between 15 and 20, which we consider low," she said. The program, O'Hara said, was implemented statewide in 2006 by the State of Washington's Emergency Management Division after LuAn Johnson, the executive director of SPAN Disaster Services, developed the program in Sunnyvale, California, and Seattle. Carbondale's Neighborhood Action Group, a collaboration stemming from the city's Human Relations Commission, adopted the program in 2004 as a result of the city's Study Circles Project. "We started looking for something that was neighborhood based disaster preparedness," O'Hara said. "Ours is based more on the idea that in a disaster the first responders are going to be the people that are right around you, in your neighborhood." The city's Study Circles Neighborhood Action Group, O'Hara said, hosts a regional training for the Map Your Neighborhood program twice a year. "(We) do the training and train people, and then the idea is that they go to their block and do the program," O'Hara said. Unfortunately, O'Hara said, those who receive the training struggle to follow through. "What happens is you end up training 10 or 15 people to go back to their block and do the training, but you won't have follow through on it in the way the program wants to have follow-up," she said. MARION High-speed Internet isnt just available in Carbondale. Futiva has recently purchased property on Halfway Road in Marion, and entered into a tax increment financing agreement with the city, according to General Manager Kevin Pyle. He said Marion business owners already have access to gigabit speeds. We already have about 40 miles of fiber cable buried in Marion that people can access, Pyle said. Futiva, a private firm, is a subsidiary of the Hamilton County Telephone Co-op. The cooperative has been in the telecommunications business for more than 50 years and has been providing Internet since about 2000. Pyle said there are some differences between the fiber cable in Marion and the cable in Carbondale for gigabit access. He said in Carbondale, the cable is laid along one road and the people who access it have to live or own a business along Illinois 13. In January, Cory Draper, technical supervisor for Frontier, said the service provider is only providing gigabit speeds to those areas along Illinois 13 from Reed Station Road to North Cedar Court and also on Beadle Drive. He said expansion is on the radar, but there are no plans at the moment. In Marion, Pyle said, fiber cable is buried throughout the business district. We have fiber all throughout the core of Marion, which gives about 80 percent of the businesses an opportunity to get fiber, he said. Futiva isnt just serving Marion customers either, he said. The Internet company reaches seven counties Williamson, Franklin, Jefferson Saline, Hamilton, White and parts of Wayne. Pyle said the company is working on getting technology to Carterville. The company also has a few customers using its hosted communications capabilities in Carbondale and Murphysboro. Pyle said gigabit service is another way for businesses in Southern Illinois to be on the same playing field as anybody else. We look at it as an economic engine to help businesses in our area compete with businesses in cities like Chicago and St. Louis, he said. They are going to have the same access as those folks would have in those larger communities. It also gives us in Southern Illinois the ability to compete on a worldwide market. For more information, visit www.futiva.biz or call 618-736-2901. MARION Students in junior high and high school will have new technology to learn mathematics on this coming fall. The Marion Community Unit School District No. 2 School Board voted unanimously to approve the use of new technology for teachers to use in math classrooms at the May school board meeting. Assistant Superintendent Amy Sanders said the technology will be for the core curriculum for the junior high and high school students. Marion Math Teacher Mary Jo Pritchard, who teaches algebra, pre-calculus, and statistics, said it's the same program that the social studies program is using and will also be a continuation of the math program the students in the younger grades are using. The program will be part of the 1:1 program in Marion schools. The textbook for the math classes will be available on the students' Chromebooks a laptop and tablet hybrid. Pritchard said the interactive software will allow the students plenty of opportunities to learn different ways to solve math problems. While working out problems, if a student doesn't understand why the answer is what it is, there is an elaborate section that will break down step-by-step how to get an answer. She said the most beneficial part of the program is the homework. The teachers can teach a lesson on Friday and assign homework over the weekend, but if students wait until Sunday to do the homework, they may forget, Pritchard said. This technology will be able to reteach the lesson at home, and it gives parents the option to help their children, she said. The program also tells the students if they are right or wrong on a question immediately, and the teacher can see how long a student is spending on a particular issue. If they are struggling, it allows us the next day to be able to pinpoint more accurately what the issue is, Pritchard said. Lisa Clark, also a math teacher in the district, said she worked with the program at the end of the school year, and the students who were trying increased their grades. You can see how long a student has been logged in and what they are doing, she said. It eliminates a lot of excuses, but for the students who are trying, they are really excelling with it. Pritchard said there is also a reassessment at the beginning of each unit. She said it will build an individualized study plan that will help them strengthen their weaknesses. It frees up teachers to help the students who are struggling a bit more, she said. For those students who are doing well, the program automatically creates enriched questions for those students, she said. It is not only helping our lower level students, it is helping our upper level students, too, she said. So they are not just sitting there doing nothing. Pritchard said she is welcoming of this new technology and the math books the district is currently using havent been updated since 2003. PINCKNEYVILLE Perry County commissioners are trying to ascertain how much in property taxes the county is owed by Peabody Energy and Arch Coal, coal companies whose owners have filed for bankruptcy. Both coal companies owes the county at least $50,000, said Matthew Benson, private counsel who said he was asked to look into what the county is owed. The process is continuing, he told the county board at its meeting Thursday night, because he is still discovering subsidiary corporations through which Peabody conducted business in the country. Benson said he believes that the coal companies will settle their tax bill with the county. "So we are going to get our money," he told the board. "It's just a matter of when." Both coal companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Arch Coal in January and Peabody in April. Peabody filed, in part, due to debt it incurred trying to expand in Australia, according to published reports. That type of bankruptcy filing allows a company to reorganize its business and assets. The board also voted to authorize $200,000 in tax anticipation warrants, which allows county officials to borrow that much money to cover outstanding bills. County Clerk Josh Gross noted that the county has already borrowed $200,000 this year, which brings it total to $400,000. The loan will come from First National Bank at a rate of .75. Last year, he noted, the board had to borrow $600,000 in tax anticipation warrants to get through the year. The board is authorizing the loan while they await the income of property tax monies in the fall. "That shows we've improved financially this fiscal year," he said. The board also approved a federal aid agreement to put a two-inch layer of asphalt pavement over a 2.4-mile stretch of Shamrock Road. County engineer Brian Otten said that road is a county road that was built with federal money and the new work is to be financed by $280,000 from the federal government and a match of $60,000 from the state and as much from the county. Otten said he did not expect the project to exceed $400,000; work would begin in September and last about a week, he said. A gorilla has taken control of your TV set. What an apt metaphor for the past year. In fact, of course, I refer to the actual gorilla that was (if you take the word of some of the more unhinged commenters on social media) "assassinated" by zoo officials in Cincinnati. I nearly wrote "who," but that would be to commit the error so many are making in this case -- confusing animals with people. To recap: A family visited the gorilla exhibit over Memorial Day weekend. A 3-year-old child managed to slip into the gorilla enclosure while his mother was distracted. Zoo officials explained that under these circumstances, they could not risk attempting to tranquilize the animal, because 1) tranquilizer darts take time to work; 2) the dart could have angered the ape; and 3) it would have taken only a matter of seconds for the gorilla to kill the child. One criticism of the zoo seems entirely sensible and understandable: Why was the enclosure not childproof? At every zoo I've visited, visitors are kept safely away from dangerous animals. So if the fence wasn't secure enough to prevent a 3-year-old from squeezing through, someone should lose his job. Thank God a tragedy was averted by the quick action of zoo officials, who did the only thing they could do by shooting the gorilla (and good shot, by the way), but it could have been much worse. But wait. In an avalanche of moral confusion, many people seem to have their heads screwed on wrong. The death of the animal -- a shame, to be sure -- is being called a "tragedy." Oh, yes, the White House spokesman himself said so. A string of silly celebrities wailed that the gorilla had been killed due to poor parenting. Actor Trevor Donovan tweeted, "'17 yr old Harambe the gorilla was shot dead after boy falls into Ohio zoo enclosure' Where were the parents?!" Donovan must not have children. Those of us who do are aware that as watchful as we are, children can still put themselves in danger sometimes. Where are all these parenting police when parents do truly awful things, like giving their children drugs, or guns, or letting them watch TV 10 hours a day? I have no idea whether Michelle Gregg, the boy's mother, is a good parent or not, but I do know that the fact that he was out of her sight for a few seconds doesn't answer that question. Actress Kaley Cuoco posted, "Once again, another animal being killed over people not using their brains. If you watch the footage, you see this gorgeous animal holding the child's hand. Do with that what you will." Here's what I do with it: I look at what happened after the first few seconds. Harambe, the 450-pound male gorilla, at first treated the little boy gently, but then, perhaps agitated by the crowd's cries, dragged the child by the ankle through the water and into another section of the exhibit. The boy's head was banging on concrete. It was not a scene from "Curious George." An online petition calling for "Justice for Harambe" has received 100,000 signatures. CNN informs us that the name Harambe is Swahili for "come together for a common cause." And the Cincinnati police are reportedly investigating the little boy's family. "Cincinnati police said Tuesday that their review will focus on the actions of the boy's parents and family," CNN reported. "It is not related to the operation or safety of the Cincinnati Zoo, authorities said." Well, that's completely backward. Concern for animal welfare is not decadent. Some serious people argue that zoos and aquariums are inherently cruel, and they deserve a hearing. What's so off about the reactions to this sad tale is the confusion about who has moral standing. "Justice" is not something to which animals are entitled, because animals are not moral agents. Those demanding "justice" for a gorilla are saying something nonsensical. Suppose the gorilla had climbed out of the enclosure and grabbed the boy? Would his advocates demand that he be tried for assault? Of course not. The gorilla cannot be held legally or morally liable for his actions because he is a dumb beast. By the same token, he cannot receive "justice" from anyone. Animals can and should be treated humanely not because they are humane but because we are. After serving one term in the South Carolina House, Rep. Justin Bamberg is being challenged by fellow Democrat Evert Comer Jr. Democratic primary voters will decide between the two on June 14. The winner of the House District 90 Democratic primary will face Republican Dan Lawrence in the fall. House District 90 includes Bamberg, Barnwell and Colleton counties. Rep. Justin Bamberg Bamberg attended the public schools of Bamberg County and graduated from Bamberg-Ehrhardt High School. He obtained a bachelors degree in sociology at the University of South Carolina, with a minor in criminal justice. Bamberg then graduated from the University of South Carolina School of Law. Bamberg is an attorney with Lanier and Burroughs Law Firm in Orangeburg. He became the first freshman legislator appointed to the House Operations and Management Committee and is the parliamentarian to the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus. He also serves as the whip for the House Democratic Caucus. Bamberg noted that during his first year in office, House Speaker Jay Lucas appointed him to serve on the Human Services and Public Safety Committee of the Southern Legislative Conference, which includes 14 states. I have been an advocate for fully funding the local government fund. I am one of only a handful of members in the General Assembly who has been publically thanked by the S.C. Association of Counties for my efforts, he said. Bamberg said he, Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter and others fought to get a pay raise for state employees. He said hes also fought for a sustainable road plan. Bamberg said hes also supported education, including working to secure $1.4 million for Denmark Technical College building renovations. He noted Bamberg County has a new manufacturer: Black Water Barrels. Bamberg says he is also working to pave the way for two additional manufacturers to locate in Bamberg County. I care about people and what happens in their lives. Im an honest leader not just intellectual to come up with creative solutions but Im able to articulate those plans, he said. If re-elected, Bamberg says he plans to continue working to address inequities in public education, to reverse the population decline in rural South Carolina and to seek not just jobs, but the types of employment that people need to provide a better life for their families. Evert Comer Jr. Comer has worked in Denmark for more than 30 years as an attorney at the Law Office of Evert Comer Jr. Comer earned a bachelors degree in English from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia; a bachelors degree in ministry from the Carolina Theological Institute in Bowman; a masters degree in journalism from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and a law degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law in Columbia. Comer has served on Denmark City Council for six years and on Bamberg County Council for six years. During his tenure on Bamberg County Council, Bamberg Countys courthouse received renovations, the county received a AA credit rating that will help with loans and grants, and the county recently received a clean audit. Were trying to provide a high level of constituent service to all the citizens of Bamberg County, Comer said. He says his many years of experience will help with his legislative responsibilities and duties. Comer has also worked as a public information officer at Denmark Technical College and has adjunct teaching experience at Denmark Tech and Voorhees College. I believe in a high degree of constituent service, he said. If elected, Comer says he plans to work closely with the three county councils, school districts, municipalities and others in House District 90. He also plans to focus on rural healthcare. I believe I have the most experience in being a public servant. I would devote my time and efforts to matters of District 90 in the state of South Carolina, Comer said. The board tasked with helping to distribute grants to farmers hurt by last years flooding met for the first time on Thursday at the Phillips Market Center in West Columbia. Committee members discussed the application process, the criteria for eligibility and an implementation and training plan. Members of the advisory committee are: Martin Eubanks (ex-officio) S.C. Department of Agriculture Meredith Cleland S.C. Department of Revenue Dr. Kathy Coleman Clemson University Dr. Delbert Foster S.C. State University Neal Baxley S.C. Farm Bureau representative Kelly Wiseman ArborOne Farm Credit Matthew Flemming Midland Agency Insurance Walter Dantzler Agricultural commodities representative South Carolinas Farm Aid legislation provided for the formation of an advisory board to make recommendations to the S.C. Department of Agriculture in the administration of the grant. The advisory board will dissolve within 45 days of the completion of grant awards, but no later than June 30, 2017. To be eligible for the grant, farmers must have: Experienced a verifiable loss of affected agricultural commodities of at least 40 percent as a result of the October 2015 flooding. A farm located in a USDA disaster-declared county. A U.S. Department of Agriculture-Farm Service Agency issued farm number. Applicants will also be required to sign an affidavit, under penalty of perjury, certifying that loss information is accurate. Clemson Extension will host regional training sessions. Over the next few months, we will work together to get funds in the hands of farmers as quickly and equitably as possible, S.C. Agriculture Commissioner Hugh Weathers said. This effort is an outstanding example of collaboration between the leading agricultural organizations in our state. After two hours of deliberation Thursday, a jury acquitted two men accused of robbing the Applebees in Orangeburg at gunpoint. Gordon Brown, 20, and Christopher Nesbit, 24, were cleared on each of the 12 charges against them. Craig Conner, the father of Browns girlfriend, said hes glad the jury saw through the prosecutors case. Hes been fretting this for two years, Conner said. Law enforcement tried time and time again to get him to plea, but he knew he was innocent, he added. The two men faced six charges each: one count of armed robbery, four counts of kidnapping and one count of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. Authorities claimed the two put on masks and robbed Applebees on Sept. 30, 2014. The manager claimed he recognized the two. Brown had been terminated from the restaurant about two weeks before and Nesbit was an employee at the time. Officers claimed they found the gun used in the robbery on Browns bed in the apartment he shared with Nesbit. Nesbits attorney, Steve Christopher Davis, and Browns attorney, Melissa Gay, told the jury that their clients fingerprints werent on the handgun. Prosecutors said that footage obtained from a hotel surveillance system near Applebees showed Nesbit walking to and from a black Dodge Charger just before the robbery took place. Witnesses said a black Dodge Charger sped away from the Applebees area shortly after the robbery occurred. Orangeburg Department of Public Safety Sgt. Kevin Dukes testified that he knew the person in the video was Nesbit because they each had the same build and a large cubic zirconium earring in their left ear. Isnt it true this was a rush-to-judgment scenario? Davis asked Dukes under cross-examination. No, Dukes replied. Davis also stated, Its common for a lot of African-American males to have those large earrings. Closing arguments began at 1:15 p.m. Thursday. By 3 p.m., the jury began its deliberations. Forty-five minutes later, the jury foreman submitted a written question to the judge asking if the case could be heard at a later time with different evidence if there was a mistrial. Circuit Court Judge Maite Murphy responded in writing to the jury stating that it was tasked with reaching a verdict based on the evidence produced in the trial. By 5 p.m., the jury reached a unanimous verdict, clearing both defendants of all charges. Conner said that none of the evidence presented in court pointed to Brown. He had no time between his work and girlfriend and school. He had no time to get involved in this, Conner said. Smith receives doctoral degree Dr. Ramona Smith received her doctor of business administration degree in international business from Argosy University Graduate School of Business and Management. The ceremony was held in the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Ga. Smith is a graduate of Claflin University, with bachelors of science and masters degrees in organizational management and business administration. Jackson elected Howard Jackson, a native of Orangeburg, has been elected the 40th district representative of the Sixth District of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc. The Sixth District includes graduate and undergraduate chapters in North and South Carolina. Jackson is a graduate of South Carolina State University, with a bachelors degree in criminal justice, and the University of South Carolina, with a masters degree in public administration. H is a member of the U.S. Air Force Reserve, with the rank of senior master sergeant. He was the first vice district representative and keeper of finance for the Sixth District, and is a co-founder and chief executive officer of Hojack Enterprises. LSPSC installs state officers Legal Staff Professionals of South Carolina conducted the installation of its 2016-2017 executive officers and board of directors during its annual meeting and educational conference in Greenville. LSPSC serves as the state chapter of NALS, the association for legal professionals headquartered in Tulsa, Okla. NALS is dedicated to enhancing the competencies and contributions of members in the legal services profession. NALS provides opportunities for continuing legal education, networking, a commitment to high standards of ethics and professional standards, and obtaining professional certification and designations. For more information regarding LSPSC, go to www.lspsc.org or Legal Staff Professionals of South Carolina on Facebook. Thompson wins top award Orangeburg native Natalie Moorer Thompson received the 2016 Young Technical Professionals National Member on the Move Award at the National Society of Black Engineers Convention in Boston. Thompson, an automation engineer for Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. in Savannah, Ga., graduated from Orangeburg-Wilkinson High School in 2004 and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2009. She is the chair and co-founder of the Savannah Coastal Empire Professional Chapter of NSBE. The NSBEs mission is to increase the number of culturally responsible black engineers who excel academically, succeed professionally and positively impact the community. Older adults honored The senior adult ministry of Mount Pisgah Baptist Church celebrated Older Americans Month by recognizing 80 of its members, ages 70 and older, during a worship service and Trailblazers Luncheon. Orangeburg City Councilwoman Liz Zimmerman Keitt presented the church with a proclamation marking May as Older Americans Month during the event. As Barack Obamas presidency takes a backseat to the psychodrama known as the 2016 election, historians, speculators and revisionists are busy writing his presidential epitaph. Not least of the revisionists is Obama himself. At a recent commencement address at historically black Howard University, Obama noted that his election did not, in fact, create a post-racial society. I dont know who was propagating that notion. That was not mine, he said. This remark stopped me for a moment because, well, didnt he? Wasnt he The One wed been waiting for? Wasnt Obama the quintessential biracial figure that would put racial differences in a lockbox for all time? This was the narrative, to be sure. But, if not Obamas, then whose? In retrospect, it was mine, yours, ours. White people, especially in the media, created this narrative because we loved and needed it. Psychologists call it projection. We made Obama into the image of the right sort of fellow. He was, as Shelby Steele wrote in 2008, a bargainer, who promised white people to never presume that you are racist if you will not hold my race against me. Obama wasnt so much the agent of change as he was the embodiment of a post-racial America as whites imagined it. But Obamas message, beginning with his 2004 address to the Democratic National Convention in Boston, has always suggested that he would be at least a messenger of unity, which sounded an awful lot like post-racial. Theres not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; theres the United States of America, he said. Most in the media listened to those words and were spellbound. Up in the press section, swaddled in hope and powdered with the pixie dust of change, we were teetering dangerously close to clasping hands and singing Kumbaya over post-racial smores of milk chocolate and marshmallows. I remember turning to my colleague and saying, Weve just heard the first black president. Little did I know. We ran into Obama later that night in the lower lobby of a hotel. He was talking to a solitary fan in an otherwise empty area. We introduced ourselves. Obama was polite, gracious and, yes, flattering in a knowing way. We three parted company and my first impression of the president remains unchanged. He reads people well and gauges precisely what they want to hear. All good politicians do, but some are better at it than others. That many interpreted Obamas message as post-racial made some kind of sense. The divide between red and blue states may be seen as also splitting along racial lines in some cases. Eight years after being elected as the first black president of a white-majority nation, Obama is shrugging off any responsibility for having contributed to the post-racial expectation. Is this because, racially, things actually seem worse? But what if they werent? What if there had been no Black Lives Matter movement, no Trayvon Martin, no Freddie Gray, or any of the others who were killed by police in the past few years, or, in Martins case, by a vigilante? Im guessing hed have grabbed that narrative in a bear hug and given it a great, big, sloppy kiss. His remarks to a graduating class, instead of disavowing that silly post-racial thing, would have celebrated his greatest achievement the healing of America. How lucky are you, class of 2016?! Here you are about to launch your life in a post-racial era, heirs to a heroic legacy and a future of sun-drenched days. When you want the tides to come in, you let me know. Heh, heh, the truth is, I wasnt able to pull that one off. But I did end racial disharmony! Not too bad. One can dream (and joke). But all those awful things did happen. And perhaps having a black president gave communities the strength and courage they needed to raise their voices. And maybe hearing a black president speak to the bravery of police officers, the majority of whom act in good faith, was helpful to whites feeling the stigma of racism attach to their own innocence. Did Obama do enough to make good on his intentions, if not promises? Well know in a generation or two, perhaps. In the meantime, the real truth is that Obama sized up the electorate and, in the ultimate act of flattery, imitated their projections. Then he gave them precisely what they wanted, not a post-racial world but a pre-post-racial one a custom-designed, rainbow-hued, streamlined fantasy of hope and change. Lawmakers predicted during Januarys annual South Carolina Press Association Legislative Workshop that 2016 would be the year for significant action to improve the states education system. They expressed a sense of urgency in the wake of the S.C. Supreme Court decision in the 20-year-old Abbeville vs. State of South Carolina lawsuit. The court ordered the Legislature to make education improvements, particularly in poor, rural school districts. Orangeburg Democratic Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter was skeptical. She said shed believe it when she sees it regarding a major education initiative. With all due respect to my colleagues as a Legislature for me, the signal that we are not as serious as Id like us to be about Abbeville came with the response to the Supreme Courts simple request to the Legislature that we put a deadline on coming up with a plan, Cobb-Hunter said referencing reaction contending the court overstepped its authority with the ruling. The Orangeburg lawmaker was right, although the House approved borrowing $200 million to help rural school districts build new facilities. The funding failed to get Senate approval and dies with the end of the two-year session. Lawmakers say they will try again when the Legislature returns for a new session in January. The Legislature did make progress, however, regarding a key aspect of improving education. Barring rejection by Gov. Nikki Haley, the state budget for 2016-17 includes a 2 percent raise for public school teachers. Teachers will also see a step increase for experience, through 23 years in the classroom. Also, $9 million is budgeted to help recruit teachers to poor, rural districts, where attracting and retaining teachers is a major issue. More must done regarding teachers, a point reinforced by a study released recently by the Rock Hill-based Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention, and Advancement, and the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education. In the face of real and projected shortages, lawmakers mandated the study to estimate the number of additional teachers needed annually in public school classrooms for grades K5 through 12 for school years 2016-17 through 2027-28. For several years, CERRAs Supply and Demand Survey Reports have indicated South Carolina is experiencing a teacher shortage in certain subject and geographic areas. More teachers are leaving the classroom, causing more vacancies and more new hires to fill those positions. The number of teachers leaving each year is significantly higher than the number of students graduating from South Carolina institutions each year who are eligible for teacher certification. According to CERRA, the number of teachers expected to be needed was compared to the number of teachers expected to be available during this same time. Based on the comparison, seven core subject areas are projected to experience a teacher shortage over the next 12 years: art, business/marketing/computer technology, mathematics, sciences, social studies, special education and Spanish. Looking at mathematics, in particular, in order to eliminate the projected teacher shortage by 2021-22, the state will need to produce approximately 459 new math teachers. This number rises to 527 in the 2027-28 school year. These figures incorporate new hires available, teachers leaving and new demand for teachers from the increasing student count. Overall, South Carolina does not produce a sufficient number of teachers through the states teacher education programs to fill current and anticipated vacant positions, according to CERRA. Graduates from in-state teacher-education programs are the largest source of newly hired teachers each year. CERRA sent a survey to the deans of teacher-education programs in 30 South Carolina public and independent colleges/universities to determine whether the institutions have the capacity and infrastructure to fulfill the projected teacher needs. The results indicate the colleges and universities have the willingness and ability to accommodate more teacher candidates in several subject areas that are projected to have teacher shortages. According to the deans, however, there is a lack of student interest in entering the teaching profession, particularly in these core areas: sciences, social studies, mathematics and special education. Unfortunately, these areas are the ones with the greatest need for teachers and are projected to have the most significant teacher shortages over the next decade. The challenge for lawmakers and the states education system is to make teaching in the states schools more attractive, with compensation, better facilities and improved technology being key ingredients in the recipe to make the career more attractive. Education will never be any better than the people our state has teaching its young people.Teachers top S.C. agenda for education OUR VIEW: Improving rural schools means getting, keeping good teachers Lawmakers predicted during Januarys annual South Carolina Press Association Legislative Workshop that 2016 would be the year for significant action to improve the states education system. They expressed a sense of urgency in the wake of the S.C. Supreme Court decision in the 20-year-old Abbeville vs. State of South Carolina lawsuit. The court ordered the Legislature to make education improvements, particularly in poor, rural school districts. Orangeburg Democratic Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter was skeptical. She said shed believe it when she sees it regarding a major education initiative. With all due respect to my colleagues as a Legislature for me, the signal that we are not as serious as Id like us to be about Abbeville came with the response to the Supreme Courts simple request to the Legislature that we put a deadline on coming up with a plan, Cobb-Hunter said referencing reaction contending the court overstepped its authority with the ruling. The Orangeburg lawmaker was right, although the House approved borrowing $200 million to help rural school districts build new facilities. The funding failed to get Senate approval and dies with the end of the two-year session. Lawmakers say they will try again when the Legislature returns for a new session in January. The Legislature did make progress, however, regarding a key aspect of improving education. Barring rejection by Gov. Nikki Haley, the state budget for 2016-17 includes a 2 percent raise for public school teachers. Teachers will also see a step increase for experience, through 23 years in the classroom. Also, $9 million is budgeted to help recruit teachers to poor, rural districts, where attracting and retaining teachers is a major issue. More must done regarding teachers, a point reinforced by a study released recently by the Rock Hill-based Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention, and Advancement, and the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education. In the face of real and projected shortages, lawmakers mandated the study to estimate the number of additional teachers needed annually in public school classrooms for grades K5 through 12 for school years 2016-17 through 2027-28. For several years, CERRAs Supply and Demand Survey Reports have indicated South Carolina is experiencing a teacher shortage in certain subject and geographic areas. More teachers are leaving the classroom, causing more vacancies and more new hires to fill those positions. The number of teachers leaving each year is significantly higher than the number of students graduating from South Carolina institutions each year who are eligible for teacher certification. According to CERRA, the number of teachers expected to be needed was compared to the number of teachers expected to be available during this same time. Based on the comparison, seven core subject areas are projected to experience a teacher shortage over the next 12 years: art, business/marketing/computer technology, mathematics, sciences, social studies, special education and Spanish. Looking at mathematics, in particular, in order to eliminate the projected teacher shortage by 2021-22, the state will need to produce approximately 459 new math teachers. This number rises to 527 in the 2027-28 school year. These figures incorporate new hires available, teachers leaving and new demand for teachers from the increasing student count. Overall, South Carolina does not produce a sufficient number of teachers through the states teacher education programs to fill current and anticipated vacant positions, according to CERRA. Graduates from in-state teacher-education programs are the largest source of newly hired teachers each year. CERRA sent a survey to the deans of teacher-education programs in 30 South Carolina public and independent colleges/universities to determine whether the institutions have the capacity and infrastructure to fulfill the projected teacher needs. The results indicate the colleges and universities have the willingness and ability to accommodate more teacher candidates in several subject areas that are projected to have teacher shortages. According to the deans, however, there is a lack of student interest in entering the teaching profession, particularly in these core areas: sciences, social studies, mathematics and special education. Unfortunately, these areas are the ones with the greatest need for teachers and are projected to have the most significant teacher shortages over the next decade. The challenge for lawmakers and the states education system is to make teaching in the states schools more attractive, with compensation, better facilities and improved technology being key ingredients in the recipe to make the career more attractive. Education will never be any better than the people our state has teaching its young people. Vincentians will learn, all things being even, which international airline is the first to agree to fly into and out of the Argyle International Airport. Vincentians have to wait until the end of June to learn the name of the United States International Air Carrier that is expected to be the first to agree to conditions for operating flights in and out of the Argyle International Airport. Executive Director of the SVG Tourism Authority had, some time ago, purported that discussions were ongoing, but nearer successful closure with a number of international carriers. Prime Minister and Political Leader of the Unity Labour Party (ULP) - Dr Ralph Gonsalves, confirmed last Sunday at the partys 22nd Convention, that the process of getting airlines to operate here was still on-going, but that negotiations had already been completed with a carrier from the United States. "Before the end of June, I will be signing the agreement. In fact, I was just waiting for one or two items of feedback from the Attorney General (Judith Jones-Morgan) and the Director General of Finance and Planning (Maurice Edwards), he said. The document was okay, in Gonsalves estimation, but he wanted to get the final input of the two senior public officials. There were other airlines showing interest in operating here, he said, including carriers from Canada, Britain and from across the region, and he alluded to one charter company wanting to get involved in the process. A number of air service agreements had also been signed, including ones with Chile and Qatar. It is anticipated that similar agreements will be entered into with the United Arab Emirates, Canada, the US and Turkey. Left: The SLPs supporters - young and boisterous. (Credit: loopslu.com) Right: Some say that Allen Chastanet of the UWP leads a new era of politics in St. Lucia. There is no reason why the St. Lucia Labour Party (SLP) will not be returned to government . This is the clear indication coming from the partys leader Dr Kenny Anthony, as he spoke with HTS Television after filing his nomination papers last week Wednesday. He assured St. Lucians that the SLP was R-e-d-d-y, playing on words as he highlighted his partys official colour. He further assured that his ruling "Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) was confident and ready for the June 6, 2016 general elections. Dr. Anthony is also confident of retaining his Vieux Fort South, citing that "We (constituents and I) have a wonderful relationship. Meanwhile, the main opposition United Workers Party (UWP) is also in top gear. And according to reports, both parties have gone to great lengths to keep the political drama alive both on and off the platform. In one constituency, Gros Islet, supporters of the UWP paraded a portrait of the ruling Saint Lucia Labour Party Castries Central candidate Stanley Felix, in a make shift coffin complete with flowers, with an inscription above the cutout that read "R.I.P Stanley Felix. On the other side, a woman is reported to have showed up at a ruling Labour Party rally in a wedding dress, bearing a placard with the message: "Married to Labour! Other candidates have been hanged in effigy indicating that their political prospects are dead, a practice well known to most Caribbean societies. St. Lucians go to the polls on June 6, 2016 on the heels of having returned the Labour Party with eleven of the 16 seats up for grabs. The UWP is being led by businessman Allen Chastanet for the first time. Attorney Kay Bacchus Browne (centre), assisted by Attorney Israel Bruce (right), subjected Prosecutions witness Cpl. Cuthbert Morris to a thorough drilling on behalf of their client Benjamin Exeter (left). These were some of the words defence lawyer Kay Bacchus-Browne used during her cross-examination on Tuesday, to describe prosecution witness Corporal Cuthbert Morriss action of running towards New Democratic Party (NDP) candidate Benjamin Ben Exeter, and pulling Exeters licensed firearm out of the holster, which was in Exeters waist. According to Morriss evidence, he had resorted to this action on noticing the gun in Exeters waist, during an NDP protest outside the House of Assembly on December 29 last year, while Members of Parliament were taking their oath of office. The Unity Labour Party (ULP) had been returned to political office for a fourth consecutive term, but the NDP had mounted a series of protest actions, claiming that the elections were not free and fair. The Charges Bacchus-Browne and attorney Israel Bruce are representing Exeter and Shabazaah George, who are being tried together on a number of charges stemming from the December 29 action. Exeter has been charged with being present at a public meeting outside the House of Assembly on December 29, 2015, had in his possession an offensive weapon, to wit, a firearm, otherwise than in pursuance to lawful authority, contrary to section 14 (1) of the Public Order Act, chapter 396 of the Revised Laws of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Exeter is also charged with assaulting Constable Granvil De Freitas causing him actual bodily harm, he being a police officer acting in the due execution of his duties. In addition, he is accused of assaulting Corporal Morris, a police officer acting in the due execution of his duties, and resisting arrest. George has been charged with obstructing Morris during execution of his duties, and that without lawful excuse, had in his possession an offensive weapon to wit, a zapper. The trial commenced on Tuesday, May 30 at the Kingstown Magistrates Court before Magistrate Bertie Pompey. The Prosecution is led by Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions Colin John. Action leading up to arrest Corporal Morris, a member of the Rapid Response Unit (RRU), and the only witness to have testified so far, told the court that on the day in question, his duty was to maintain law and order, as the NDP was staging a protest outside the House of Assembly, where opposing ULP supporters had also gathered, both factions positioned on either side of the road separating the Vegetable Market and the House of Assembly. Morris testified that he saw Corporal Irackie Mayers speaking to Exeter in what appeared to be a calm manner. "I kept them under observation for about a minute and a half. "I saw Mr. Exeters shirt raised, and I saw the black handle of what appeared to be a firearm. "I ran and I pulled it. While pulling it, I shout out to Corporal Mayers, Boy the man have a firearm. Corporal Morris admitted that he pulled the firearm from the holster which was in Exeters waist, but explained that he did so because he was fearful that the same way he pulled it from Exeters waist, other persons could have done the same and used it. He also admitted that he was not sure if Exeter had a licence to carry the weapon. "I asked Mr. Exeter if he had a licence to carry a firearm, and he didnt respond. As a result, I told him that I am arresting him on suspicion for having an unlicensed firearm, Morris told the Court. He recalled that around that same time, Assistant Supt of Police Timothy Hazelwood arrived. He told Hazelwood what had transpired and handed over the firearm to the senior officer, who then gave instructions to take Exeter to the nearby Central Police Station. Morris said he held Exeter by the waist, but Exeter collared him with both hands, and Constable De Freitas had to pull away the defendant. The officer recalled that when they were taking Exeter to the station, George positioned himself in front of them and proceeded to take photographs with a cellular phone and shouting, "Man you cant lock up the man, resulting in the party having to side-step him to continue their journey. On reaching in front Jax Enterprises, Morris said Exeter pushed De Freitas onto a parked vehicle and he heard De Freitas say, "Man, you want to break my hand. Once at CID, Morris made a report to Corporal Colin May. Cross examination But Bacchus-Browne, during cross-examination, told Morris, a police officer of 21 years, "I am putting it to up that it is an idiotic thing to run up to a man and pull his gun away. You are a disgrace to the uniform. She also advanced that Morriss action was dangerous, illegal, political, and malicious, with intent to harm her client. The RRU officer denied the allegations, insisting that he was performing his duty to maintain law and order. "I am putting it to you that Mr. Exeter said he had a licence for the firearm, and you ignored him. He pleaded with you saying, Look Sergeant Samuel there, he is my firearm trainer, Bacchus-Browne stated. Corporal Morris again denied what Bacchus-Browne was putting to him. He also denied that he assaulted or struck Exeter, as put to him by the lawyer. When Bruce asked Morris if he knew whether or not he was authorized to arrest someone on suspicion of having an unlicensed firearm, he said the law gives him that authority. The matter has been adjourned to today (Friday) at the Kingstown Magistrates Court. Seven more witnesses are expected to testify for the prosecution. Baker extraordinaire and Overall winner Joanne Layne receives her award of distinction from Osmond Davy CEO/ECGC. Joanne Layne, Chef at the Ultra Marine Villa on the Grenadine island of Mustique, has some skills that other persons would like her to pass on to them. She expressed herself in that manner last week Thursday when she copped the title of overall winner of the East Caribbean Group of Companies 2016 National Baking Competition, and walked away with a $3,000 cash prize among others. Layne, a native of Yambou and the proud holder of a Diploma in Catering and Gourmet Cooking, with a speciality in Cake Decorating and Sugar Art, won the Specialty Category with her creation Roasted Breadfruit Fish Pie, which made use of Garlic and Herbs Flour, one of ECGCs products. Layne also put the heat on the other competitors in the Cake Category, winning with her Caramelized Banana Chocolate Cake. Layne confident endorses ECGC products Layne is no stranger to success in the Competition. She won the Cake Category last year, when she entered the competition for the first time. One with 15 years baking experience, Layne expressed her satisfaction with her accomplishments. For her, it was a matter of self-belief. "I know I can do it, Layne outlined. She attributed her result to "hard work, and was satisfied that it paid off. Laynes entry to the ECGC National Baking Competition has raised the bar. Others are agreeing with the Judges assessment that Laynes cakes are a cut above the rest. For that reason, persons keen on baking are turning to Layne for tips. "A lot of people are asking me to teach them, Layne confessed. She thinks that the National Baking Competition is "good for St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and rates products from the ECGC as "of the best. She spoke highly of the different brands of flour, and noted that "you get it fresh all the time. You could use their products to do anything, Layne outlined. Other winners/competitors Sabrina Marks-Dasent, owner of the Plum Tree Baking Enterprise, was second in the Overall Category. She was propelled to that position, having placed second in the Specialty Section with her Plum Tree Independence package. And as if to suggest that the Speciality Section carried some significance, Saverin Samuel, Chef of Palmyra, another Mustique based operation, placed third in the Overall category with a Citrus Pinocolada Cake. In the Cake category, Kettline Williams placed second and Michelle Bacchus-Barbour took the third spot. The Bread Category saw Sabrina Marks-Dasent at the top with her Christmas Bread. She was followed by Saverin Samuel and Zoe Millington in that order. Ricardo Gordon, representing Rems Bakery with a Carnival Flaky Pastry, was adjudged to have had the best entry in the Pastry Category. Janell Lavia was second. A separate category of competition for schools saw entries from six students. Daniel Bess of the St. Josephs Convent Kingstown, with her Breadfruit Cake, took first place. Shania Gumbs, Thomas Saunders Secondary, placed second, and Kenville Munroe, Georgetown Secondary, third. Next year, 2017, marks the 40th anniversary of ECGC, and Chief Executive Officer, ECGC, Osmond Davy, is already anticipating a step up in the competition. Benedict Benny Sam was said to be well known in the area and liked by many. (Facebook Photo) Police in New York say a 46-year-old Layou father of two was fatally shot early Tuesday morning in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Television Station News 12 New York said Benedict Benny Sam, a livery cab driver, who lived in the area, was killed in the shooting, at about 2:00 a.m. The shooting occurred at the intersection of St. Johns Place and Schenectady Avenue, the station said. Family members told the station that they had heard about five gunshots. New York Daily News reported that Sam was fatally shot following a heated dispute at a block party. The paper said Sam was blasted in the chest. "Its hard, man, Sams cousin Phil Sam told the Daily News. "I cant function. I cant think. "They killed my cousin last night, he said somberly. "They shot him dead. Neighbors said that a Memorial Day block party was winding down when the married father was gunned down, according to the Daily News. "I talked to his wife, Phil Sam said. "Shes alright. Its my responsibility to take care of the kids now. A group of people were heard yelling at each other before gunfire rang out, the Daily News said. It said Phil Sam admitted that his cousin was arguing with someone before the shooting, but didnt know what the spat was about. Firefighters returning from a run happened across Sam sprawled on the ground before anyone could respond to 911 calls, officials said. Paramedics worked on him at the scene then took him to Kings County Hospital in Central Brooklyn, where he died about 2 a.m., the Daily News said. It said cops were looking for the gunman Tuesday. "Wed like to catch the person who did it, Phil said. Resident Luis Gomez, 38, told the Daily News that there were about 250 people partying and drinking when the shooting took place. "There was more liquor than beer, Gomez said. Cuban Ambassador to SVG, H.E. Vilma Reyes Valdespino visits with Cuban workers at the site of the Centre of Integral Diagnosis, Georgetown. (Photo Credit: Cuban Embassy SVG) There are only two Cubans currently working at the international airport site at Argyle, who have Vincentian citizenship. They are a highly trained and qualified engineer and his wife. This was the confirmation that Dr Ralph Gonsalves gave when he addressed his Unity Labour Party (ULP) convention last Sunday, May 29. He was, on all counts, responding to an earlier claim by Arnhim Eustace, Leader of the New Democratic Party, that some 250 Cubans had been granted Vincentian citizenship. He told party supporters on Sunday at the convention in Campden Park that the records indicate that there are in fact 33 individuals of Cuban nationality who have ever been granted Vincentian citizenship. Ninety percent of Cubans who had been granted Vincentian citizenship received the status before 2001 when the Unity Labour Party (ULP) came to office. A number of the Cuban passport holders had not renewed the document and no longer live here, Dr. Gonsalves said. Dr Gonsalves went on further to dispel the popular belief that there were a substantial number of Cubans working at the international airport construction site. According to Dr Gonsalves, there were not as many as many persons purport. Notwithstanding, Dr Gonsalves, Prime Minister and Leader of the ULP, held out the hope that more skilled Cuban national would opt to remain here, because the country stood to benefit from their knowledge. (DD) The Ministry of Commerce, Business Development, Investment and Consumer Affairs with the assistance of an independent Consultant David Jordan a regional Trade and Economic Policy Specialist and a former Director of International Trade and Investment in Saint Lucia, concluded the Evaluation of the Saint Lucia Trade Licensing Regime 1984. The Commerce Minister, Honourable Emma Hippolyte, who commissioned the study, formally received the copies of the Report from the Consultant on Wednesday 25th May 2016, following the acceptance of the finalized document by the Ministry officials. The ministers formal receipt of the Report followed deliberation over the final draft document by Ministry and public sector officials. Commenting on the need for the review and in welcoming Mr. Jordans report, the Chairperson of the Trade Licence Advisory Board Dr. Alison Plummer, cited "the need to maintain a strengthened World Trade Organisation (WTO) compliant Trade licensing Regime. Toward this end, she recognized "the need to revise the existing Trade License Act and develop supporting regulations to allow for greater compliance with international trade law as well as for improved effectiveness of its administration, i.e. monitoring, data collection and dispute settlement mechanism. The fifty ( 50) page Report, assessed other complementary and related legislation and regulations including the Fiscal Incentives Act and the Economic Areas Reserved for Nationals and which came in for critical review. The Report calls for a more appropriate Investment Act in light of recently adopted Investment Policy by the Ministry. The Director of Investment Coordination in the Ministry notes that the report highlights the distinct " need to include Services as a trading area, given recent developments that has national significance which must also be considered . (L-R): Sen. Deborah Charles, Min. Luke Browne, Lady Lynda Straker, Sir Louis Straker, President Tsai Ing-wen, Min. David Lee - Deputy Secretary General of President Office, Amb. Harry Tseng - Director General of the Latin American and Caribbean Affairs, and Amb. Li-jey Tsao). On May 21 in Taipei, the capital city of the Republic of China (Taiwan), Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sir Louis Straker led a SVG delegation that met with Dr. Tsai Ing-wen, the new president of the country. During the meeting, Sir Louis Straker conveyed a congratulatory message to President Tsai on behalf of the people and the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Noting that this year the two countries celebrate the 35th anniversary of the establishment of the bilateral relations, Sir Louis expressed the appreciation of cooperation which benefits both countries. He further stressed that St. Vincent and the Grenadines is fully committed to the continual collaboration with Taiwan. President Tsai welcomed the delegation led by Sir Louis, and congratulated him on his successful return to politics last December. The President expressed Taiwans appreciation for the solidarity and unwavering support rendered by the Vincentian people and government over the years, especially as it concerns Taiwans participation of international organisations. She registered her delight to see that both countries share a strong commitment towards building stronger and closer political, economic and cultural relations, and she committed her administration to further strengthening the ties between the two countries. In addition to Sir Louis, the SVG delegation that visited Taiwan from May 18 to 22 included Lady Lynda Straker, Senator Luke Browne - Minister of Health, Wellness, and the Environment, and Senator Deborah Charles, Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Reconciliation and Ecclesiastical Affairs. The government of Venezuela says many queues (for basic food items) are artificially created by unscrupulous businessmen. This country is expected to enter into a trade arrangement with Venezuela, which will allow this country to service the debt for oil purchased from Venezuela, under the PetroCaribe arrangement. The agreement was reached at the 16th Ministerial Council meeting of Petrocaribe which took place in Venezuela on May 27, at wich SVG was represented by Dr. Jerrol Thompson, who has the responsibility for Special Projects including Petrocaribe. All this and more was disclosed by Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves on Tuesday during a Sitting of the House of Assembly. According to Dr. Gonsalves, it was understood that St Vincent and the Grenadines will supply Venezuela with flour, rice and toilet paper.Dr. Thompson has already started talks with members of the management teams at ECGC and the Container Corporation here, the prime minister continued, "and there are plans to proceed in these respects. "There are still details to be worked out, but there is real prospect where the circumstances in Venezuela have created these opportunities, Gonsalves said. Dr. Gonsalves drove home the point that both President Nicolas Maduro and Minister of Petroleum and Mining Eulogio del Pino had reaffirmed Venezuelas commitment to PetroCaribe, despite some concern expressed that since the victory of a coalition of opposition political parties in the December 6, 2015 Elections in Venezuela, combined with ongoing economic problems, that the government there might have to end the oil alliance with many Caribbean and Latin American states. In a related matter, Dr. Gonsalves told the Parliament that this countrys debt to Venezuela now stood at EC$175 million, up from EC$145 million some two years ago. Leader of the Opposition, Arnhim Eustace had said that based on a document he had read, the overall debt by members of Petrocaribe amounted to EC$29.7 billion, of which this country owed EC$900 million a figure Gonsalves denied. He explained that the EC$175 million was confirmed by the International Monetary Funds (IMF) consultation report. "They simply confirmed it because it is the truth we have been saying all the time, Dr. Gonsalves declared, adding, "The debt is being serviced from the on-going flows from Petrocaribe, and nothing has been coming to service the debt from the consolidated fund, he said. Of the 16 homicides committed for the year so far, 13 are said to be gun-related. The police are currently engaged in a mission to rid the streets of as many illegal guns as possible. So said Prime Minister and Minister of National Security Dr Ralph Gonsalves, on Tuesday in Parliament. According to Dr. Gonsalves, statistics revealed that in 2015, eleven of the 25 homicides were committed with the use illegal firearms. The count for this year was 13 of the 15 homicides committed so far. (That number rose from 15 to 16 a day after the Prime Minister addressed the Parliament.) The police mission has so far turned up two 9 mm weapons one recovered in New Montrose and the other in Stubbs. But while he said that he could not give any further details about the police activities, he warned criminals and those in possession of illicit firearms. "This government has taken a strong position against firearms in trying to seek them out, and we have come here (Parliament) and amended the law. "And there are a number of persons who are discovering that, who did not know the law, when they go before the courts, they are now learning that the penalty is much more severe, Gonsalves said. The maximum sentence for conviction for being in possession of a firearm is now 7 years, up from one. "So I just want to make that point to those listening, and particularly the young and not so young men, who hold illicit firearms, Gonsalves said. As far as the process of obtaining licensed firearms was concerned, the Prime Minister said that that has been re-visited, making it less cumbersome and protracted. "It is no longer the Commissioner (of Police) alone who decides, its a wider committee with community interest represented on that licensing board, Gonsalves told those in Parliament. But there were still some complaints filtering through, he admitted, "and I want to assure everyone that I have spoken to the chairman of the committee to make sure that for law-abiding persons, that the process is expedited. A shooting range and attendant services were now available to licensed firearm holders who are desirous of being trained in the proper use of their firearms. 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. /By Azernews/ By Fatma Babayeva OPEC member states gathered in Vienna, Austria for 169th meeting of the organization on June 2 has a new failed to reach a consensus on oil production ceiling. The move was a next attempt to return the organizations role as an oil cartel which determines supplies and prices in the global market. Failure of Vienna meeting was expected to revive market fears that the largest producer of OPEC, Saudi Arabia - which pump oil near record highs- will increase its oil production to punish its rivals and gain additional market share, reported Reuters on June 2. Nevertheless, Saudis were milder in its stance and said that they do not plan to flood the market. The geopolitical tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which also caused OPECs previous Doha meeting on April 17 to founder, still were in place during the meeting. Oil freezing plan, developed in February 2016, envisaged limiting oil production to levels at the volumes produced in early 2016 in order to prop up sinking oil prices since-mid 2014. Saudi Arabia has kept requiring commitment from Iranian side to the oil freezing plan since early 2016, whilst Iran insisted on reserving its right to bring its oil production and export to pre-sanctions levels, respectively 4 million and 2.2 million barrels per day. A day before Vienna meeting, Irans Petroleum Minister Bijan Zanganeh said to Reuters that Iran would not support any new collective output ceiling and wanted the debate to focus on individual country production quotas. He insisted that Iran deserved a quota based on historic output levels, making up 14.5 percent of OPECs overall production. Previously in May, Irans officials said that Iran will be ready to join OPECs quota within one or two months of reaching pre-sanctions level of oil production and export which is expected to happen by late summer in the longest. However, OPEC ceased setting production quotas for individual members in 2011 and abandoned an output ceiling entirely in December 2015 by allowing its members to pump oil at will. Moreover, proxy war in Syria and Yemen and the security for Muslim pilgrims in Mecca were other factors contributing to the intensification of relations between these two countries. The major outcome of the meeting was the appointment of the new Secretary General of OPEC Nigerian Mohammed Barkindo. The secretary general acts as a mediator among OPECs divided factions. Gabon was also readmitted to OPEC during the meeting extending the number of members to 14 countries. Decision allowing the countrys rejoin to the organization will be effective from July 1. Gabon left the organization about two decades ago. Last year, OPEC readmitted Indonesia as well, which were net importer of oil. The first minister turning up in the Austrian capital three days prior to the meeting was Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister Khalid Al-Falih which was assessed by the media as a sign of taking OPEC seriously. Speaking to Bloomberg TV, Khalid Al-Falih said that the worst is clearly behind us", adding that Saudi will continue to play its role in the global market. In his turn, Qatari Energy Minister Mohammed al-Sada also expressed positive approach towards the oil market which is heading towards balance at the moment. Unlike previous meetings, OPEC was more open-minded during Vienna meeting, said Nigeria's Oil Minister to reporters. This time, Russia did not attend OPEC meeting which proves the assertion that oil freezing plan is not possible under the current circumstances. Earlier, Edward Chow, senior fellow at CSIS said to Azernews via email that without any realistic possibility of agreeing to a production freeze or production cut, Russia's meeting with key OPEC countries risks raising and then disappointing market expectations and would have the opposite of intended effect on prices. Many experts think that the oil freezing deal is not topical anymore. The current situation in the global oil market, namely increase in oil prices during recent months does not necessitate the urgent need for such a deal. Oil prices began dipping in mid-2014 after shale revolution in the U.S. as the country could meet its domestic demand, and oil previously imported by the U.S was redirected to other markets causing the oil glut which pressed down oil prices in the global market. It is not a secret to anyone that OPEC has lost its role as oil cartel controlling oil prices in the market via adjusting quotas. Now, it only produces more than third (40 percent) of the global oil output compared to decades ago when it generated the biggest chunk of the total production in the world. Currently, OPEC is pumping 32.5 million barrels per day. Moreover, OPECs member states in Gulf increased their oil exports, especially to Asia in a fight to grab more market share. By holding meetings, the organization attempts to demonstrate its unity, which actually does not exist in reality anymore. The fourth Congress of World Azerbaijanis has kicked off at the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku. Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev attended the opening ceremony of the congress, Azertac reported. The head of state addressed the event. More than 500 diaspora delegates from 49 countries are attending the congress. The participants also include prominent foreign politicians, public figures, scientists, officials and parliamentarians, who have a friendly attitude toward Azerbaijan. A 360-man delegation comprising representatives of Azerbaijan`s state and government bodies, non-governmental organizations, scientific, educational, culture institutions, and political parties. After the official opening ceremony the congress featured panel meetings. The congress will feature meetings between diaspora representatives and heads of Azerbaijani state and government bodies, and they will discuss the governments role in solving the problems facing Azerbaijanis abroad. /By Azertac/ Azerbaijanis have great business opportunities in various countries, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev said addressing the 4th Congress of World Azerbaijanis in Baku June 3. "I welcome this, it is a very positive factor. It expands our people's economic opportunities," said the president. "At the same time, businessmen residing abroad help their relatives in Azerbaijan. It is very important for those living here." "Of course, I would like the Azerbaijani businessmen residing abroad to make investments in Azerbaijan," said President Aliyev. "Currently, the investment climate in Azerbaijan is very positive and all influential international financial organizations mention this." He pointed out that over the last 20 years, since 1995 to date, over $200 billion was invested in Azerbaijan's economy. "Approximately half of those investments are foreign investments. There is a good investment climate in Azerbaijan and the business environment here is improving day after day," said the president. "Especially, as a result of the decrees and orders I have signed since the beginning of the year, there has been a very serious turning point in this sphere. All bureaucratic obstacles are being eliminated and full transparency is ensured," President Aliyev added. "We see the results of all of this in everyday life, in the statements and reports of influential international financial organizations," he said. "Therefore, Azerbaijan is one of the most attractive countries for investments on a global scale." President Ilham Aliyev further stated that extensive information about the Azerbaijani realities should be presented to the international community. "We try to do that as a state. But much depends on the diaspora organizations as well," said the president. "Our access to foreign media is very limited," said President Aliyev. "It is clear that the diaspora organizations of Armenia, of Armenians have been formed over decades. They have penetrated into the world's leading media structures by various means and are represented there," said the president. "Armenians are seen behind the vast majority of the publications discrediting Azerbaijan, distorting the Azerbaijani realities and slandering us," he said. "We should even more improve our activities in this sphere." First of all, there should be carried out work with media, according to the president. The president noted that a layer of Azerbaijani journalists should be established, which would be represented in various media outlets. "They will defend their homeland and will convey the truth, because the 21st century is the century of information and currently, the information wars exist as a tool and as a weapon." Azerbaijan's president pointed out that currently, bloody clashes are taking place in various parts of the world. "How can we know while being in Baku, or in another city about what is happening there, who is right or who is wrong, who is on the offensive and who on defensive? We can know about this only through media outlets," said President Aliyev. If a coordinated dirty campaign is carried out against any country, the public opinion will eventually also follow the same path, according to the president. "Therefore, it is our weak spot. It is a priority. I think that this issue should be seriously discussed during the congress," he added. The president noted that there should be held talks, discussions on taking necessary measures in various countries in order to convey the Azerbaijani realities and a program should be worked out. "If the Azerbaijani state can in any form provide its support in this issue, we are ready," said President Aliyev. "The main thing is that we should do it in a planned manner, and perhaps, it should be the primary issue in all countries where Azerbaijani diaspora organizations operate," he added. "Naturally, extensive information about the Azerbaijani realities should be presented to the international community." "By taking the advantage of our weakness in the first years of independence, the Armenian diaspora was carrying out a very dirty campaign against us," said President Aliyev. "The integral part of this campaign was to present Azerbaijan as an anti-democratic country, while Armenia as a miserable country living under the conditions of 'blockade', as well as to spread false, fictitious information about the history of Nagorno-Karabakh. To some extent, they managed to do it," said the president. /By Trend/ /By Azernews/ By Gunay Camal The Azerbaijani and Armenian ministers confirmed the Presidents agreement on the next round of talks to be held in June with an aim to resuming negotiations on a comprehensive settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The OSCE Minsk Group, a mediation group established to solve the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, announced about it in its statement released on June 3. MG co-chairs, including Ambassadors Igor Popov of the Russian Federation, James Warlick of the United States of America, and Pierre Andrieu of France met with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov in Brussels on May 31 and with Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian in Paris on June 2 to discuss implementation of the decisions from the 16 May summit in Vienna. The Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, also participated in the meetings. The Co-chairs stated that the ministers reaffirmed their commitment to a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The Co-Chairs delivered to the ministers for the consideration of the sides draft documents on expanding the existing office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and establishing an OSCE investigative mechanism, the statement reads. The May 16 meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sargsyan in Vienna was their first face-to-face encounter since the April hostilities. The presidents agreed on following of ceasefire, as well as on a next round of talks, to be held in June at a place to be mutually agreed, with an aim to resuming negotiations on a comprehensive settlement. For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict, which emerged over Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions. The bloody Nagorno-Karabakh war left 700,000 civilians of Nagorno-Karabakh and the regions adjoining it, as well as the regions bordering with Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh without homes. Moreover, 250,000 Azerbaijanis were expelled from Armenia and became refugees due to Armenia's ethnic cleansing policy after the emergence of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan. Despite the official ceasefire, each year the conflict becomes a cause of the deaths of dozens of civilians and military. The latest outbreak of violence on the contact proved that it is impossible to resolve the conflict by keeping a status quo. An official welcoming ceremony was held on June 3 for Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey Binali Yildirim, who is on an official visit in Azerbaijan, Azertac reported. A guard of honor was arranged for the Turkish Premier in the square decorated with the national flags of the two countries. The chief of the guard of honor reported to President Ilham Aliyev. President Aliyev and his spouse Mehriban Aliyeva welcomed Prime Minister Binali Yildirim and his spouse Semiha Yildirim. The chief of the guard of honor reported to the Prime Minister of Turkey. The national anthems of Turkey and Azerbaijan were played. President Aliyev and Premier Yildirim reviewed the guard of honor, then the PM saluted the Azerbaijani soldiers. State and government officials of Azerbaijan were introduced to Binali Yildirim, and members of the Turkish delegation were introduced to President Aliyev. The guard of honor marched in front of President Aliyev and Prime Minister Yildirim to the accompaniment of a military march. President Aliyev, his spouse Mehriban Aliyeva, Binali Yildirim and his spouse Semiha Yildirim posed for official photos. Later, President Aliyev and Premier Yildirim held a one-on-one meeting. Successful development of brotherly and friendly relations between the two countries in all spheres was noted at the meeting. The importance of Yildirim's visit to Azerbaijan - his first as the Turkish PM, was highlighted. It was also noted that this visit will contribute to the further development of relations. During the meeting the sides exchanged views on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, economic cooperation and issues of mutual interest. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Turkish PM Binali Yildirim met in the expanded format June 3 in Baku. Azerbaijani president welcomed the Turkish delegation. ""First of all, on behalf of the Azerbaijani people I'd like to once again cordially congratulate you on your appointment to such a high post of prime minister. I wish you great success on your post," Ilham Aliyev said to Binali Yildirim. "I am very glad that you are making your first official foreign visit to Azerbaijan," the president said. "It makes us very happy, and it is natural. That's a great tradition. This shows once again that the Turkish-Azerbaijani relations are at the highest level," said the president. The president further noted that at the one-on-one meeting the sides had an exchange of views on the settlement of bilateral issues, and as usual, there were no differences in opinions. Our goal is to strengthen and further enhance the Turkish-Azerbaijani unity, said Ilham Aliyev. Azerbaijan, yesterday, immediately condemned the German parliament's unfair and biased resolution, which is based on the historical lie, said President Aliyev. "Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry had issued a statement, and today, I, as the country's president, once again condemn that provocation, which was built on the lies. That is an injustice, double standards and distortion of the history," said President Aliyev. /By Azernews/ By Nigar Abbasova ARETI International Group of companies is interested in joining projects implemented in different spheres of Turkmenistans economy. During his meeting with President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, Chairman of the ARETI International Group of Companies Igor Makarov mentioned that ARETI is highly interested in the increase of mutually beneficial contracts concerning different spheres of the Turkmen economy. The sides discussed the opportunities realizing new mutually beneficial joint projects. Main business areas of ARETI are projects in fuel and energy complex, in particular, offshore mining in Turkmenistan (the Caspian Sea), trading, engineering, real-estate development, and investment to the real economy. The company was also engaged in the implementation of the Central Asia Center gas pipeline system project which runs from Turkmenistan via Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to Russia. ARETI was created as a result of rebranding of ITERA International Group of Companies which is considered to be Russias large independent oil and gas producer. The company is currently consolidates most of the ITERA projects. The company launched its operations in Turkmenistan in 2009. ARETI is currently involved in the works on the 21 block of Turkmen offshore area of the Caspian Sea. Being established in 1992, the company is also engaged in natural gas deliveries. GlassPoint Solar, a leading supplier of solar to the oil and gas industry, was recently honoured at the Middle East & North Africa Solar Conference and Expo 2016 (Menasol) held in Dubai, UAE. GlassPoint Solar received the title of CSP Technology Innovation for Middle East and North Africa (Mena) for the second year in a row, said a statement from the company. The award was presented to GlassPoint for making significant contributions to the industry through its drive for innovation and cost reduction that exceeds all others, it added. The companys concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies seals the mirrors and other vulnerable components inside a greenhouse that protects them from high winds, dust and sand. Its structure enables the use of lightweight, readily available materials that are a small fraction of the cost of those used in exposed systems. The greenhouse roof is cleaned each night with a proven automated washing unit that eliminates manual cleaning and conserves water. Research shows that soiling can reduce performance by an average of 2.5 per cent every day, demonstrating the need for automated washing in desert environments, it stated. Daniel Palmer, vice president of sales at GlassPoint, said: Being recognised by the regions principal solar conference for the second year in a row is truly an honour. The award reinforces the success and economic viability of our enclosed trough design even in todays challenging conditions. When prices are high, oil producers concentrate on increasing output. However, when prices are low, the focus shifts to reducing costs. At a typical heavy oilfield, 60 per cent of operating cost is fuel purchase for steam generation and our companys solution can reduce gas used in thermal enhanced oil recovery by up to 80 per cent, he added. TradeArabia News Service The head of Dubai-based airline Emirates expressed concerns on Friday about the impact on the rest of Europe if Britain votes to leave the European Union in a June 23 referendum. Noting forecasts about economic disruption in the UK in the event of a vote to leave the EU, airline president Tim Clark said he was also worried about political and economic volatility in the rest of the 28-nation bloc. "My concern is what will happen in the rest of the EU," Clark told reporters at an airline industry meeting in Dublin. "This will lower demand and mean less people traveling on planes. How long that would last, I dont know," he said, adding: "It is not good for business". Emirates says it operates in 32 cities across 18 EU countries.-Reuters Help Yourself Computer basics The Library will offer a Computer Basics class at 2 p.m., on Monday in the Tech Center. This class is designed for computer beginners and will take participants through a series of exercises to help learn how to use the keyboard and mouse, how USB drives work, and basics of navigating your computer. Feel free to bring your computer or use one of the library computers. Call 577-READ ext. 2 for more information. Call 577-READ ext. 2 or email reference@natronacountylibrary.org for more information. Housing info shared Effects of the energy industrys downturn on central Wyoming housing and economy will be described at a free public session in Casper on Tuesday from 6 to 7 p.m. at the Natrona County extension office at the Agricultural Resource and Learning Center, 2011 Fairgrounds Rd., according to Hannah Swanbom, community development educator with UW Extension. The Wyoming Multiple Listing Service and Casper Board of Realtors are joining with UW Extension to provide the session. The number of houses on the market and in foreclosure has shifted. Swanbom said a variety of speakers will attend the session to help provide information. Contact Swanbom at 235-9400 or hswanbom@natronacounty-wy.gov for more information. Free writing workshop June 13 The Natrona County Library will sponsor a free writing workshop, "All the Water in Wyoming," by Lori Howe at 5:30 p.m., on Monday, June 13, in the Crawford Room. Join Wyoming landscape poet, Lori Howe, in writing on the meanings of water in Wyoming. Whether via poetry or personal essay, your knowledge, memories, and thoughts are the ink on the page in this workshop, which features a dedicated issue of "Clerestory: Poems of the Mountain West." Lori Howe is the author of "Cloudshade: Poems of the High Plains" and "Voices at Twilight: A Poet's Guide to Wyoming Ghost Towns." She has taught English and creative writing workshops for the last decade at the University of Wyoming and Laramie County Community College (Laramie and Cheyenne campuses). She holds a Bachelor's degree in English and Spanish, a Master's degree in English, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from UW, and is a doctoral candidate in Literacy Studies at UW, with a focus on critical thinking skills and creativity for struggling writers. Training for community educators In conjunction with the Wyoming Center on Aging, the Wyoming chapter of the Alzheimers Association is presenting a class to train volunteers to take information about Alzheimers disease back to their communities. After attending Training the Trainer: Alzheimers Instruction for Volunteer Community Educators, attendees will be able to present classes like The Basics of Alzheimers and Know the Ten Signs in their own communities. The Training the Trainer program will be held on Tuesday, June 14, 2016 at the Agriculture Resources and Learning Center, 2011 Fairgrounds Road in Casper. The free class runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Continental breakfast and lunch will be provided and scholarships may be available to help defray travel costs. No prior experience is required to attend, although participants are asked to take what they learn back to their communities and present programs provided by the Alzheimers Association. The Association programs include PowerPoint presentations, class handouts and teaching guides. Community Educators from more rural areas are especially encouraged to attend. Space is limited, so those interested should register soon at http://www.uwyo.edu/wycoa Those with questions can also call 307.766.2829 or 307.316.2892 Tips from a tech guru The Library will offer a Tips from a Tech Guru class on Wednesday at 4 p.m. in the Tech Center. Come to learn some of the tips and shortcuts that make your computer work for you. This class will discuss password management, data backup, security settings, and more. Come learn how to use keyboard shortcuts, how to make the most of your mouse, and when to use cloud storage. Call 577-READ ext. 2 for more information. Call 577-READ ext. 2 or email reference@natronacountylibrary.org for more information. Prayer Walk June 11 Casper Vital Network hosts a Prayer Walk on June 11, 2016, at the Crossroads Park Gazebo. All activity levels are accommodated. Walk as you are able. Take a sack lunch and join the fellowship after the walk. Buddhist teaching June 11 American Buddhist Monk, Gen Kelsang Rinzin, returns to Casper from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., on Saturday, June 11, at the Healthy Life Yoga Studio in the Sunrise Shopping Center, 4200 South Poplar St. to teach on Buddhist Tantra; Creating a Pure World. Tantra is the graduate level of Buddhist practice. This introductory lesson will not make us expert practitioners, but it is designed to introduce us to and spark our interest in this centuries old practice of creating a Pure World. Everyone of any religion or no religion is welcome. The class includes a guided meditation, the teaching and a Q & A period. A $15 donation is requested. No pre-registration required. Just come join us. Questions? Call Joe at 315-1987. Family continues suicide support Good Grief, Support will continue at 5:30 p.m. on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month at the 12-24 Club, 500 S. Wolcott, by request of attendees. The family of J.R. Hunter, who died from suicide in June 2015 began the support before the especially tough holiday season. Anyone who is grieving a suicide, death, or considering suicide is encouraged to attend. Attendance at the meeting, as well as the content, will be strictly confidential. The Fresh Start Cafe will be open, and you can eat during the meetings. This meeting place was offered by Dan Cantine of the 12-24 Club. You need not be a member to attend. Plaster workshop at Art 321 We have great workshops lined up this June at ART 321/ Casper Artists Guild. The first of two workshops, "Plaster and Found Objects, will be presented by Linda Ryan. Linda is well known for her art and also as Casper College art instructor. This workshop will be held on Friday, June 10, 2016, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at ART 321/ Casper Artists Guild, 321 West Midwest Avenue. The fee is $65 for members/ $85 for non-members, plus a $15 supply fee. Open to all levels. Sign up by phone, in person, or on-line on our website: art321.org Handgun/self defense class offered Randy Cain is offering Handgun 101 at the Stuckenoff's Shooting Complex June 11 to 13. Cost is $600 each. Randy Cain is a world renowned self defense instructor and one of the last disciples of Jeff Cooper and the original Gunsite Academy. Handgun 101 is designed to drill down to the very basics of firearm safety, manipulation and marksmanship. It is suitable for the complete novice up through expert. A second follow-on class, Close Quarter Tactics, is offered June 17 to 19. CQT focuses on what really happens if a weapon is drawn. The class focuses on avoiding dangerous situations, but if Murphy has his way, then deflecting the initial attack, re-positioning and meeting the threat. Randy combines his lifetime of martial arts and firearms training to give his students the best chance for survival. Information and registration www.guntactics.com. Local contact Joe MacGuire 307-333-3653. Class enrollment is limited. Portrait workshop at Art 321 Another great June workshop offered at ART 321: Drawing the Portrait in Pan Pastel and Charcoal. What a great opportunity to take this workshop by Justin Hayward, well known artist and art instructor at Casper College. This workshop is offered on Saturday, June 25, 2016, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., ART321/ Casper Artists Guild, 321 West Midwest Ave. The fee for this workshop is $65 for members, $85 for non-members. Open to all levels. Goedickes will have a list of needed supplies for this class. Parkinson's monthly support Join us at 5:30 p.m. on the second Tuesday of each month at Rocky Mountain Therapy, 2546 E. Second St., Building 500, Casper. The support group is open to anyone with Parkinson's or caring for someone with Parkinson's. To RSVP, call 577-5204 and ask for Jerri or Shannon. Upcoming meetings will be June 14 and July 12. Parkinson's exercise Rocky Mountain Therapy is offering a Parkinson's exercise program. Join us from noon to 1 p.m. Thursdays at Rocky Mountain Therapy, 2546 E. Second St., Building 500. These classes are open to anyone with Parkinson's or caring for someone with Parkinson's. Thursday's class is tailored for the individual with more advanced Parkinson's and focuses on improving endurance, safety and managing symptoms. We are open to all ages and can tailor the class to meet varying exercise needs. The cost of the class is $5. To RSVP, call 577-5204 and ask for Jerri or Shannon. Dog manners obedience class Dog Manners Obedience Classes/STAR Puppy Classes will be held at the Central Wyoming Fairgrounds, sponsored by the Central Wyoming Kennel Club. Cost ranges from $40 to $100. The Central Wyo Kennel Club is hosting classes for puppies and adult dogs focusing on Socialization, Training and Responsible Dog Ownership. For more information go to centralwyomingkennelclub.org or call Charlene at 473-1614. Celebrate Recovery every Friday Looking for a nontraditional approach to recovery from your hurts, habits and hangups? Celebrate Recovery meets at 5:30 p.m. every Friday at Highland Park Community Church, just south of Elkhorn Valley Rehabilitation Hospital on East Second Street. We start with a family meal, followed by praise and worship. At 7 p.m., there's either a lesson from Celebrate Recovery's planned curriculum or a testimony by a person who has found recovery through Christ. Then, people go to gender-specific small groups until 8:30 p.m., when dessert and fellowship conclude the evening. Child care is available at no cost. For more information, contact Chris at 265-4073. Self-transformation class set Conscious Co-Creation/Self-Transformation & Healing, taught by Cathy Hazel Adams, is 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, June 25 and 26, at the Agricultural Resource Learning Center, 2011 Fairgrounds Rd. Adams is an Intuitive Quantum Transformation & Energy Healing Practitioner and Certified Matrix Energetics Practitioner. The class is also offered live via webinar. For more information, go to www.cathyhazeladams.com or call 797-9677. Saturday morning watercolor Art 321, Casper Artists Guild Saturday morning watercolor classes are 10 a.m. to noon, with the following lineup of classes: June 11, practice session; June 18, Holly Bryson, including figures in your paintings; June 25, practice session. For more information, please call Ellen Black at 265-6783. Here and Now: Dementia-focused monthly art class Classes are every third Tuesday of the month from 1 to 3 p.m. There is no charge. Here and Now is a program made possible through a collaboration between Wyoming Dementia Care and the Nicolaysen Art Museum. It is designed to provide a supportive environment for people with dementia and Alzheimers and their loved ones. To register, contact Dani with Wyoming Dementia Care 265-4678, ext. 106, or at wyodementia@casperseniorcenter.com or Zhanna Gallegos at 235-5247 or at zgallegos@thenic.org Most people familiar with black-footed ferrets know the story. Meeteetse ranchers John and Lucille Hogg heard a ruckus in their yard one night, and woke the next morning to find their sheep dog Shep with what looked like a weasel. It was 1981, and theyd never seen anything like the masked creature, so they took it to a local taxidermist. He knew what it was immediately, said their daughter-in-law, Kristine Hogg. He said it was a black-footed ferret and of course they had no clue what a black-footed ferret was. Immediately the feds came in and said it was an endangered species. The familys Lazy BV Cattle Ranch flooded with what Kristine Hogg called ferret hunters, researchers studying the animals once thought extinct. But when a combination of plague and distemper swept through the population, those researchers collected the remaining few ferrets and carted them off to facilities around the country. Thirty-five years after they were first discovered, black-footed ferrets roam countryside in Shirley Basin, South Dakota and Colorado, but not that original stretch of land in Meeteetse. But that is about to change. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Friday plans to relocate 35 black-footed ferrets to two ranches, including the Hoggs land. The release will likely be July 26, as long as no severe outbreaks of plague hit between now and then. I cant really think of many other species that have been that close to extinction and have experienced this same kind of cycle, said Zack Walker, the Wyoming Game and Fish Departments nongame bird and mammal program supervisor. If this reintroduction proceeds, it will be the first in about a decade in Wyoming. The Cowboy State needs about 340 adult black-footed ferrets covering about 70,000 acres to meet requirements for removal from the endangered species list. Right now, Wyoming has a minimum of about 40 adult ferrets, though chances are high there are more, Walker said. Because ferrets are nocturnal, and spend most of their time underground in prairie dog colonies, tracking exact numbers can be tricky at best. For a delisting nationally, the feds require 3,000 adults in 30 populations in nine of the 12 states where ferrets originally lived. While the numbers seem high, biologists are optimistic they can reach that goal. Getting there will require two things: landowners like the Hoggs, willing to allow large colonies of prairie dogs on their land with black-footed ferrets, and a way to manage the Sylvatic plague. Researchers from Wisconsin began testing a possible new way to vaccinate prairie dogs from the plague on the Pitchfork Ranch near Meeteetse. The vaccine comes in a little square that tastes a bit like peanut butter. If it works, it likely wont eradicate plague, but it could make the disease manageable in select locations, researchers said in July. Prairie dog colonies are also being dusted to kill fleas that spread the plague, Walker said. Ideally, the 35 ferrets planned for release in July could turn into a population of about 100. One of the things were trying to do with this is make sure all of our eggs arent in one basket, Walker said. We want to create enough colonies to connect up to the Shirley Basin site in the future, but also want to make sure we have enough black-footed ferret populations in other parts of the state. For Kristine Hogg and her family, the thought of a reintroduction on their land is like a dream come true. She moved to the ranch in 1982, the year after ferrets were discovered. Even though her family didnt see the ferrets very often, they knew they were there. It was always in the back of your mind, when you see other states getting ferrets, that we could get them, she said. Game and Fish has really been working to help our prairie dog numbers so one day we could get them back. But I really didnt believe it would happen. The operator of the Salt Creek oil field is offering lodging to Midwest residents as work continues to find and repair an unidentified gas leak. Fleur de Lis Energy announced Thursday it would provide housing in Casper for residents who do not feel comfortable staying in Midwest, according to the Casper-Natrona County Health Department. A gas odor was detected by staff May 25 at Midwest School and students were moved to another portion of the building. The school closed the following day. Trace amounts of methane and carbon dioxide were identified, according to a spokesman for Fleur de Lis Energy, the company that owns the nearby Salt Creek oil field. State regulators said there was no threat to public safety. Tests performed on May 26 and May 30 detected volatile organic compounds and showed higher than normal levels of carbon dioxide, said Audrey Gray, public health preparedness manager for the Health Department. But locally, we dont have the expertise to interpret what those readings mean, she said. Thats why we are reaching out to some of our federal and state partners (for assistance.) Carbon dioxide can create a low-oxygen environment. Health risks associated with volatile organic compounds depend on the specific substance, which has yet to be determined in this case. The Health Department said the leak was discovered after school employees noticed dying grass near the building and took steps to evacuate the building. Chasity Taylor, the mother of two elementary-aged children who attend Midwest School, expressed concerns about what she considers a lack of information shared with parents prior to the schools closure last week. Taylor said her 9-year-old son has complained of a headache and lack of appetite throughout the school year. Her 6-year-old son, meanwhile, had experienced repeated grogginess. I am angry, she said Thursday. There are quite a few people looking at lawyers. They should have given us the option and not sent kids into that poison every day. Kelly Eastes, spokesman for the Natrona County School District, said he was not aware of any reports of health concerns at the school. School staff reacted at the first sign of the leak to move students out of the area, Eastes said, with students leaving their class materials behind. The minute that got reported, thats when we evacuated the whole school, Eastes said. If a parent reported a heath concern about a school in the district, the principal would start an investigation and contact maintenance staff if testing or monitoring were required, according to Eastes. He said he was not aware of any Midwest parent coming forward to the administration. We cant address it if we dont know about it, Eastes said. As of Thursday, three workover rigs were attempting to locate the leak, according to the Health Department. Crews will evaluate every well bore within a quarter mile of the leak. A repair rig was positioned over a closed oil well directly in front of the school. Signs were standing at both ends of the road leading to the school with a warning related to hydrogen sulfide, a lethal gas that smells of rotten eggs. A green flag was attached to the sign, indicating there was only a potential danger, and officials have said crews have not detected any trace of the gas. The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality has taken air readings and is providing technical help to the Health Department and Natrona County emergency management officials. We are working diligently on finding and stopping the source of the leak and to address any health concerns of the residents of Midwest, said Dr. Kelly Weidenback, executive director of the Health Department. Gray was aware of one person who accepted Fleur de Lis Energys offer of housing in Casper over the weekend. She does not know if the person is still in Casper. Two years ago, county health and district officials investigated reports of illnesses among staff members at Midwest School. The investigation was exhaustive, but inconclusive, according to the Health Department. The cause of the 2014 illnesses remains unknown, and no scientific evidence links the reported staff illness in 2014 to the current situation at this time, the Health Department said in a statement. The statement did not specify the nature of the illnesses, or which employees fell sick. The schools kitchen was closed in November 2014, while authorities investigated why two workers there became ill. One kitchen staff member required an emergency medical flight to Casper. Employees had noticed problems in the kitchen since September of that year. They described a strong order that made them sick. Air quality tests performed at the time came back clean, district officials stressed at the time. People called it an urban legend. They said the time capsule didnt really exist. Then, construction workers at Kelly Walsh High School reached behind a granite foundation stone at the school and felt the copper box. Kelly Walsh officials opened the 1964 time capsule Friday morning before a full complement of Kelly Walsh teachers gathered in the school courtyard for their annual picture. Its just a lot of historical stuff, deadpanned instructor Duane Reimer as he looked into the box and teachers laughed. The first item pulled out was a Sunday edition of the Casper Star-Tribune dated April 12, 1964, with a headline reading LBJ Reports Red Troops Leave Cuba. What made the teachers cheer, however, was a full-page advertisement announcing the original ceremony to place a time capsule at the then-brand new school. Kelly Walsh Principal Brad Diller was surprised to find the container, he said, after months of tearing down much of the school as part of Kelly Walshs reconstruction. Its a once-in-a-lifetime thing, I mean for old guys like me, Diller said. To be moving into a new school and finding something that somebody was a part of 50 years ago is kind of fun. Other items in the box ranged from the valuable a 1963 Franklin and 1964 Kennedy half-dollar and a piece of Natrona County jade stone, cut and polished by Glenn Goss to the purely reminiscent a budget book of the Casper schools and Natrona County School District Board of Trustees policies. The Kelly Walsh staff cheerfully booed when a Mustang handbook from Natrona County High School came out of the time capsule. They expressed interest in the coins. When they found the business card of Tim Force Tin Shop in Casper, Diller noted the shop that made and sealed the original time capsule was still in business in Casper. Maybe we will reclose it, and maybe well see who we can get to make another one, Diller remarked. A former Dean Morgan Junior High campus supervisor charged with manslaughter will go to trial on Halloween, a Casper judge decided Friday. Jon Patrick Freiberg caused a mans death last year by putting methamphetamine in his drink, court documents allege. Freiberg, who appeared in Natrona County District Court dressed in orange jail scrubs, is being represented by public defender Jared Holbrook. District Attorney Michael Blonigen is prosecuting the case. Freibergs trial is set to last five days. Authorities also allege Freiberg sold meth to young men in Casper and once sold the drug during a school lunch break. Court documents do not identify the school, but Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation Director Steve Woodson said it was Dean Morgan. Freiberg worked for the Natrona County School District until Feb. 3, when he resigned, district spokesman Kelly Eastes said. Authorities had searched his car two days earlier and reported finding methamphetamine, court documents show. Freiberg, 53, pleaded not guilty last month to involuntary manslaughter. Freiberg also entered not guilty pleas to multiple charges of possession and delivery of meth. Court documents allege Freiberg killed 46-year-old Richard Serafin in August after putting meth in a cup Serafin was drinking from at the Days Inn in Casper. The documents indicate Serafin consumed the drugs accidentally. Investigators spoke with multiple people who said Serafin never used drugs. DCI agents interviewed young men who said they had gone to motel rooms with Freiberg to buy methamphetamine, according to the documents. The young men said Freiberg became sexually aggressive toward them, the documents state. An autopsy revealed Serafin died of cardiac arrest due to acute stresses of methamphetamine intoxication, the documents state. Serafin had a heart condition that was apparently unknown at the time. Police found Serafins body Aug. 28 inside a hot car parked outside the Days Inn, according to the documents. Investigators later spoke to a teenager who said he saw Freiberg carrying Serafin and putting him into the car. The 14-year-old told authorities Serafin needed help moving and appeared intoxicated. A DCI agent reviewed text messages Freiberg had sent to another person that day, which stated a man Freiberg was with was overdosing, the documents state. In January, an unnamed informant told DCI agents Freiberg wanted to sell him meth, according to the documents. Officials gave the informant money to buy drugs from Freiberg and put the man under audio and visual surveillance. When the man met Freiberg at the Natrona County Public Library to buy meth, Freiberg was heard saying he had put meth in a cup and Serafin had consumed it. Freiberg also said Serafin did not use meth and had acted very messed up, the documents state. He said he did not call 911. The informant told DCI that Freiberg offered to sell him meth during Freibergs lunch break at school on Feb. 1, according to the documents. Freiberg and the informant met at McDonalds on F Street and Freiberg sold him meth, the documents state. Officials searched Freibergs car that same day and found two baggies of meth, as well as prerecorded funds DCI agents had given the informant to buy drugs, according to the documents. Prosecutors filed charges against Freiberg on April 4. Involuntary manslaughter carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years. BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) The Air Force is set for another large-scale exercise in the massive Powder River Training Complex in the Northern Plains. The training area covers nearly 35,000 square miles of airspace in the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming the largest over the continental U.S. Officials at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota say multiple types of aircraft will take to the skies Tuesday through Thursday, and cautioned that could cause loud noises, including sonic booms. Some ranchers have complained that the training exercises disrupt their operations, and the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association in February petitioned Air Force officials to provide more information to ranchers. But the group is pleased with steps the military has taken to better inform ranchers, such as posting notices in local newspapers, said Executive Director Silvia Christen. More work needs to be done to improve communication between the military and ranchers who experience problems from low-level flights, she added, but "for the most part I think we're on the right track." After years of consideration and public comment, the Federal Aviation Administration approved quadrupling the training airspace in March 2015. The expanded complex officially opened in September, with flying operations commencing that included B-1 bombers from Ellsworth and B-52 bombers from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. The first large-scale exercise was last December. Next week's exercise will include six different types of aircraft, from fighter jets to refueling tankers, and will involve several hundred personnel from multiple bases, according to Lt. Col. Lanny Anaya, assistant director of operations for the 28th Operations Support Squadron at Ellsworth. "Honestly, it is a team effort," he said. Such training is limited to 10 days each year, once every three months, with no exercise lasting more than three days. The first large-scale exercise this year was in late March. The Air Force cautions non-military aircraft to review the FAA notice of the exercise and avoid areas and altitudes where military planes will be practicing. MIDWEST Frustrations continued to mount here Friday as the search for an elusive odor that closed Midwest School stretched into its second week and residents reported a spate of unexplained illnesses. An 18-year-old mother, who graduated from the school last week, said she was suffering from hives and expressed concerns for the health of her newborn son. Another woman said she too had hives and said her daughter, a Midwest student, had been complaining of headaches since the beginning of the school year. And a longtime resident, who reported no health woes, said he was considering a move from this community of 418 out of fear over its air quality. It seems to me no matter what you do youre getting some kind of contamination all the time, said Eolus Linville, an 18-year-resident of Midwest, in reference to the nearby Salt Creek oilfield. State and local officials have said there is no threat to public health since Midwest School closed its doors May 26. The school has remained shuttered while its roughly 150 K-12 students finish the academic year at the former North Casper Elementary building. No health problems had been reported to county health officials or school staff, they said Friday. There hasnt been anything brought to Dennis attention or my attention, or those we work with, Natrona County School District Superintendent Steve Hopkins said, referring to the districts business and facilities director Dennis Bay. Unexplained leak The problems began May 25, when school staff first reported a gaseous odor. Half of the building was closed, with students and staff sent to the other side of the school. Natrona County School District officials and representatives of Black Hills Energy, a utility, investigated and determined the odor was not the result of a natural gas leak. The school then called FDL Energy, which owns and operates the adjacent Salt Creek field. The company took an air quality sample that identified abnormal levels of carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds. The schools windows had been opened at the time to allow the building to air out. On Monday, the Department of Environmental Quality conducted a second test, which showed higher levels of carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The school windows had been closed throughout the weekend, said Audrey Gray, health preparedness manager at the Casper-Natrona County Health Department. It was definitely higher than wed expect for normal carbon dioxide, and wed obviously do not want to see any VOCs, Gray said. However, local and state officials dont have the ability to fully interpret those readings. It is unclear what type of VOCs might be present or the amount of exposure to students or staff. Local officials were meeting with their federal counterparts Friday in hope of finding more answers. VOCs are a collection of chemicals that are emitted from solids and liquids as a gas. Sources can range from household items such as paints and aerosol sprays to industrial activities like oil and gas wells. Some can be highly toxic, while others have no known health effects. Air quality monitors were also set up in the area around the school by a third-party contractor hired by FDL. Those monitors have not recorded any abnormal readings, said Justin Westmoreland, FDL health and safety director. Three repair rigs continued to probe closed wells Friday in attempts to locate the source of the odor, he said. Were working diligently to finding the source, Westmoreland said. That proved little consolation to some residents, who pointed to a 2014 incident where two of the schools kitchen staff fell ill after smelling an unidentified odor. One had to be flown to Casper for medical treatment. Local, state and and national health officials conducted what they described as an exhaustive investigation. They searched for methane, mold and VOCs, among other things. We couldnt find anything, Gray said. It was inconclusive. A news release from county and school officials late Thursday said no scientific evidence links the 2014 case with the present one. Hopkins said the odors were detected in different parts of the school. Residents fearful Yet the situation underpinned many of the worries expressed by parents and former students. Skylar Baeriswyl gave birth four months ago and graduated from high school last week. She is upset about the potential of having spent the past year studying amid poisonous gases. It is very frustrating that they let things go on as long as they did, she said. Baeriswyl has suffered hives and worries about the health of her infant son, who has not experienced any unexplained ailments. She buys bottled water from Casper rather than allowing her family to drink the water in Midwest. She said shell pursue legal action if her son starts to become sick. She found out about FDLs temporary housing offer in Casper through a Star-Tribune article. Company officials say they went door-to-door to homes near the school shortly after the odor was detected and offered to put residents up in a hotel if they felt uncomfortable with the situation. As of Friday, only one person had. But Baeriswyl said FDL should hold a community meeting so locals can ask questions and gain a better understanding of what is happening. They just need to make people aware of whats going on, she said. Standing not far from the school, a woman blotted tears from her eyes with a tissue as she spoke about the situation. The woman, who declined to give her name, has suffered saucer-sized hives on her skin for the past two years. They show up on her arms, legs, back, chest, stomach. They itch and they hurt to touch. She isnt allergic to anything that would cause them, she said. Shes afraid its the water in Midwest. Theyre not telling everybody whats going on here for a reason, she said. The woman knows many parents who are seeking legal counsel after the gas leak was discovered in the school. She said on the day of the leak, she was notified about the situation by school officials at noon. However, they kept students in the building. Our kids stayed in there the rest of the day, she said. Though the energy company has offered to house Midwest residents in Casper, the woman said she doesnt want to move her family. This is my home, she said. Thats what stresses me out about it the most. My daughter wants to go to school here. She doesnt want to go to school in Casper. She doesnt want to go to school in Kaycee. She wants to go to school here. That has been taken away from her at this point. Chasity Taylor, the mother of two Midwest School students who often felt sick over the past year, said she had discussed her sons lethargy with their teachers. Though her 9-year-old and 6-year-old had complained of headaches, grogginess and a lack of appetite, she did not report it to the school because she didnt think it was due to the school environment. I just thought it was normal afterschool things, Taylor said. But now that I know whats in there and the way that theyve been acting, it makes a lot more sense. Oldest oilfield The Salt Creek field is among the oldest and most productive in Wyoming. But more than a century of production has left a bevy of closed and abandoned wells in and around Midwest, which has long served as the heart of the field. A closed well in the front yard of the Midwest School was drilled in 1925 and plugged in 1993, according to state well files. A repair rig has been working on that well since last Friday, said Westmoreland, the FDL health director. There are at least four other closed wells in the immediate area around the school, Oil and Gas Conservation Commission records show. The earliest was drilled in 1921, the latest in 1987. All reported their last production in 2005 or 2007. The OGCC does not conduct inspections of wells once they are plugged, said Kimberly Mazza, a spokeswoman for the commission. The well on the schools front lawn, for instance, was inspected at its closing in 1993, she said. A lot of seemingly contradictory information has emerged out of Midwest in recent days. After a gaseous odor was detected, Midwest School was closed May 26. State regulators said low levels of hydrocarbons were detected in the air, but there was no threat to public safety. A week later, the source has yet to be found. News has emerged about another mysterious odor from two years ago. FDL Energy, the operator of the nearby Salt Creek Field, is offering temporary housing to any residents who feel uncomfortable with the situation. Midwest students are finishing up their year in Casper. And at least one parent is angry and feels like the situation should have been dealt with earlier. Many questions remain unanswered. This is what we know right now: The School Closure: How it happened The odor was reported on Wednesday afternoon. One half of the building was closed, with students and staff sent to the other side of the school. Natrona County School District officials and representatives of Black Hills Energy, a utility, investigated and determined the odor was not the result of a natural gas leak. So they called FDL Energy, the company that operates the nearby Salt Creek oilfield. The school's doors and windows had been opened by the time FDL arrived. They conducted an air quality sample and, early Thursday, identified abnormal levels of carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds. The decision was made to close the school and bus students to Casper. What additional air quality monitoring found, and what it didn't On Monday, the Department of Environmental Quality conducted a second test, which showed higher levels of carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The school windows had been closed throughout the weekend, said Audrey Gray, health preparedness manager at the Casper-Natrona County Health Department. "It was definitely higher than wed expect for normal carbon dioxide, and wed obviously do not want to see any VOCs," Gray said. However, local and state officials don't have the ability to fully interpret those readings. It is unclear what type of VOCs might be present or the amount of exposure to students or staff. Local officials are meeting with their federal counterparts today in hope of finding more answers. Volatile organic compounds, or VOCs as they are often referred to, are a collection of chemicals that are emitted from solids and liquids as a gas. Sources can range from household items like paints and aerosol sprays to oil and gas wells. Some can be highly toxic while others have no known health effects. Air quality monitors were also set up in the area around the school by a third-party contractor hired by FDL. Those monitors have not recorded any abnormal readings, said Justin Westmoreland, FDL health and safety director. The 2014 incident Midwest School closed its kitchen in November 2014 after identifying an odor and two kitchen workers became sick. One had to be flown to Casper for medical treatment. Local, state and and national health officials conducted what they described as an exhaustive investigation. They searched for methane, mold and VOCs, among other things. "We couldnt find anything," Gray said. "It was inconclusive." The school did subsequently replace the old kitchen appliance, according to Dennis Bay, who leads the Natrona County School District's Business and Facilities Service Division. A press release from county and school officials released late Thursday said no scientific evidence links the 2014 case with the present one. Steve Hopkins, Natrona County School District Superintendent, said the odors were detected in different parts of the school. Parental concerns and school response Chasity Taylor, the mother of two Midwest School students, questioned whether the school had been forthcoming with information about the situation. She pointed to the situation where the two kitchen workers fell ill and said her 9-year-old and 6-year-old have complaining of headaches, grogginess and a lack of appetite. I am angry, she told the Star-Tribune Thursday. There are quite a few people looking at lawyers. They should have given us the option and not sent kids into that poison every day. District officials were adamant Friday they had received no reports of sick students or suspicious odors. "There hasnt been anything brought to Dennis' attention or or my attention, or those we work with," Hopkins said. Old oil wells in the area The Salt Creek oilfield is among the oldest in Wyoming. A closed well in the front yard of the Midwest School was drilled in 1925 and plugged in 1993, according to state well files. A repair rig has been working that well since last Friday, Westmoreland said. It is unclear if that well, or others near the school, are regularly inspected. School officials said they were unaware of regular inspections. The Star-Tribune is awaiting comment from the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. There are at least four other closed wells in the immediate area around the school, Oil and Gas Conservation Commission records show. The earliest was drilled in 1921 and the latest was drilled in 1987. All reported their last production in 2005 or 2007. Three repair rigs, often called workover rigs, have been assessing closed oil wells in the area to help identify a potential source to the odor. As of Friday morning, a source had not been found. Officials of Tucson-based Raytheon Missile Systems are again praising Rep. Martha McSallys aim. This time it isnt the retired Air Forces colonels performance in a cockpit, but instead her targeting of an amendment on the House floor. Missile Systems President Taylor Lawrence said the freshman congresswoman killed the amendment that would have hurt the companys ability to build the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, known as the AMRAAM. Taking the stage at a town hall with Raytheon employees on Thursday, McSally said fighting the proposal ranks as one of her favorite moments since taking office. I had one of my most satisfying moments on the floor of the House a few weeks ago, she told the crowd. Labeling it a very bad amendment, McSally explained how the measure sought to require defense contractors to have two production sources when key parts, in this case a rocket motor, are supplied by a third party. Raytheon shifted suppliers several years ago to a Norway-based supplier after a domestic supplier began to have some quality control issues, McSally said. Thankfully our NATO partner Norway came on board to support the program and keep the AMRAAM program on track, she said. The amendment could have delayed production of new missiles as a second party was brought on board and certified, she said. Behind the scenes, McSally said, the fight to pass the legislation turned ugly. She called the political back and forth a knife fight, noting she went to the floor to push back on the proposal. The measure was defeated by two votes, she said. McSally also took a handful of questions from the audience at the end of the town hall, but sidestepped a question on which presidential candidate would be best in terms of protecting national security. The Tucson Republican instead said she is focusing on her own race in Congressional District 2, where Democrats Victoria Steele and Matt Heinz also are running. The hearing was dragging on, but Justice of the Peace Jack Peyton wanted to be sure the young woman accused of a probation violation got his point. This is going to get better, Peyton said Thursday morning in his courtroom at Pima County Justice Court. I promise you this is going to get better. All you have to do is meet us halfway on this. It was typical Peyton known in the Tucson area for his compassion and toughness in dealing with domestic-violence defendants. And its a performance that will be going away soon, as Peyton joins the ranks of departing justices of the peace. Four departures have unleashed an uncommonly competitive set of races this year for the $101,000-per-year judge jobs. Not only is Peyton declining to run for re-election, but so is longtime JP Carmen Dolny. Paul Simon is retiring at the end of this term, and Jose Luis Castillo retired part way into his four-year term. This year, the only justice of the peace running for re-election to her seat is Maria Felix. Ten other candidates are running for the other four seats up for election this year. The five additional JP seats will be up for election in two years. A split that runs through most of the races is attorneys vs. non-attorneys. In Arizona, you dont have to be an attorney to run for justice of the peace and about half of them are not, statewide, but traditionally in Pima County most of our JPs have been members of the bar. And the attorneys like it that way. Even now I get calls from non-attorney judges all over the state asking for advice, Castillo told me Thursday. If you have the gumption to run for office, you ought to be able to handle it. In April, Vince Rabago, chairman of attorney Jeff Rogers campaign for justice of the peace, sent out a fundraising letter to lawyers, asking them to support Rogers. The need for a Justice Court judge to be a lawyer has never been greater, he wrote, explaining how complicated the state law has become. It is simply unrealistic to expect a person who lacks significant legal training and experience to master and apply this vast body of Arizona law. Rogers, a former Pima County Democratic Party chairman, is running against Paula Aboud, a former Democratic state senator and non-lawyer in a heavyweight primary that will determine the winner. She told me that in seven years as a senator, she was acting as a judge in a way that some attorneys never do. Two other non-attorneys running for JP seats are serving now as elected constables. Vince Roberts is a retired University of Arizona police officer, and Jim Driscoll is retired from the Tucson Police Department. Youve got a group of attorneys fighting against non-attorneys being on the bench, Driscoll said. He argued that as a retired law-enforcement officer, hes better trained to view facts in an unbiased way, as opposed to attorneys who are trained to advocate. Roberts decided to enter the race for Peytons seat in January, despite having told Peyton before that he wouldnt challenge him. What changed Roberts mind, according to emails sent between Peyton and Roberts that month, was a bill introduced by state Rep. Darin Mitchell that would have eliminated the elected position of constable. The bill went nowhere, but Peyton decided he didnt want to fight for his seat. He explained the decision this way in an email forwarded to me by his wife, Laura: We are not political animals and are unwilling to stoop to the level required to engage in a contested race for Judicial Office that should not be subject to political machinations in the first place. We understand your ambitions, though, and harbor no ill will. The ill will appears to have ramped up since then, though. Justice of the Peace pro tem Ron Newman decided to challenge Roberts for the Republican nomination, and Laura Peyton publicly endorsed him on Facebook. That led Roberts to file a complaint with the Commission on Judicial Conduct against Jack Peyton, arguing essentially that his wifes involvement suggested Peyton himself was involved. The commission rejected the complaint last month. Roberts also has a pending complaint against Newman, his opponent, arguing that Newman told a Republican gathering that Peyton had endorsed him. Newman denies he said that and says he sought legal counsel, who said hes on solid ground. Im comfortable the complaint is as frivolous as the one filed against Jack Peyton, Newman told me. And he argued that his 30 years of practicing law, including his time as a temporary judge at Justice Court, make him the better candidate. Roberts, on the other hand, said his life experience, especially his career in law enforcement, has prepared him. You can expect to hear a similar argument from Priscilla Frisby. I ran into her Thursday while observing Peytons courtroom she had a few clients with hearings. Frisby told me she got into the primary race against Driscoll and Democrat Charlene Pesquiera at the suggestion of Castillo, the recently retired presiding judge at Justice Court. Castillo was concerned about the lack of an attorney in the race, she said. A contract attorney handling mostly misdemeanor cases, Frisby spends most of every day at the court, she said. Thats what gives her the experience to handle the JPs seat, she said, and shown her how a judge like Peyton can make a huge difference to defendants. For some of her clients, she said, he has changed their lives. Two people were arrested in connection with a dog who was shot last month on the southwest side, authorities said. On May 21, deputies responded to the 3700 block of South Reno Road to a report of shots fired, said Pima County Sheriff's Department spokesman, Deputy Ryan Inglett. Upon arrival, deputies learned that the caller's dog had been shot by her neighbor, Marvin Christy, Inglett said. Detectives found several guns in the house and discovered that Christy, 57, was a prohibited possessor. His wife, 50-year-old Rebecca Christy, who is also a prohibited possessor, was found at the house in possession of firearms, Inglett said. Marvin Christy was arrested on suspicion of animal cruelty and possession of a weapon by a prohibited possessor. Rebecca Christy was arrested in connection with her prohibited possessor status, Inglett said. The couple was booked into the Pima County jail. PHOENIX Attorney General Mark Brnovich hired a special investigator Thursday to determine if Secretary of State Michele Reagan broke any laws in the recent special election. Michael Morrissey, a former federal prosecutor, will review the failure of Reagans office to ensure pamphlets describing the issues on the May 17 ballot were delivered to the homes of all registered voters before the early ballots went out. That should have happened by April 20. Reagan does not dispute that at least 200,000 of the 1.9 million pamphlets were not mailed on time. And each of those was to go to a home with more than one registered voter, meaning at least 400,000 people may not have had the descriptions of the two measures before they mailed back their early ballots. She said, though, the blame lies with others, including a contractor and a consultant. But Ryan Anderson, spokesman for Brnovich, said the scope of the foul-up was actually larger than Reagan let on. He pointed out that Reagan was responsible for preparing the mailing list for the brochures solely for the 13 rural counties, as Maricopa and Pima counties had prepared their own. Anderson said that left only about 533,000 brochures to mail; she got out about 328,000 on time. You dont get to take credit for the list you didnt prepare, he said. In his appointment of Morrissey, Brnovich wants to know exactly what went wrong and why. And the attorney general wants Morrissey to determine whether any criminal or civil laws were broken. The attorney general also is interested in the delay between the time Reagan discovered her office had not complied with the law and actually disclosing that. He wants Morrissey to take a closer look in any undue delay in remediating and publicly disclosing the failure to voters and county election officials. Brnovich has promised Morrissey complete independence, saying no one from his office will direct or control the inquiry. And he essentially empowered Morrissey with the same abilities as any other prosecutor in the office. It is understood that you may speak to anyone you deem appropriate to gather facts in relation to the inquiry, Brnovich wrote to Morrissey. Brnovich did not give Morrissey a deadline. But Anderson said his boss is hoping for some quick answers. We have an election thats coming up in less than 90 days, Anderson said. We recognize this is an investigation thats going to take time, possibly for records and things like that to be produced, he continued. But we would like him to begin his investigation and come to an ultimate conclusion as soon as possible. Anderson said Brnovich hopes that what Morrissey turns up will be useful in preventing similar problems at the Aug. 30 primary so we can learn from any potential mistakes that were made and make sure we dont repeat them in the future. Well welcome any inquiry or investigation, said Reagan spokesman Matt Roberts. And we look forward to visiting with Mr. Morrissey. Eric Spencer, Reagans elections director, prepared a 100-plus page report last month acknowledging the failure to meet the legal deadline for getting all the pamphlets into the homes of voters as well as the fact Reagan did not immediately inform voters and others. But Brnovich, in a separate letter Thursday to Reagan, said that answer was unsatisfactory. Overall, the response left some unanswered questions about how nearly 40 percent of the households for which the secretary of state produced the mailing list received their pamphlets weeks after the statutory deadline and why appropriate election officials and the public were not immediately notified of the issue, Brnovich wrote. The scope of the failure has taken on political overtones. Proposition 123 to provide $3.5 billion in new funds to schools was approved by a margin of fewer than 20,000 votes out of more than a million cast. And proponents had more than $5 million to spend on the campaign, versus about $16,000 that state Treasurer Jeff DeWit, a leading foe, said was available to those trying to kill the measure. Opponents have suggested the election might have turned out different had all the voters had the pamphlets and been able to read all the arguments for and against the measure. Aside from launching the probe, Brnovich is urging Reagan not to wait until Morrissey completes his investigation to make changes. First, he wants her to notify each county recorder, in writing, after completing any legally mandated election filing. That would require Reagan to effectively check and certify by the deadline that the law had been followed. He also wants Reagan to review any complaint she gets from any county election official that residents were not receiving what should have been sent. And if it turns out that a substantial number of mailings in any county or statewide were not completed in time, Brnovich wants Reagan to make a statewide announcement to inform voters and further notify the affected counties regarding the details of the failure. Roberts acknowledged that his office did not issue any sort of a statement on discovering the missed mailings. But he said thats because it was more focused on fixing the problem and getting the pamphlets out to those who still needed them. Morrisseys bio says he has been practicing law for 29 years, including 22 with the U.S. Attorneys Office in Arizona. Now with the firm of Mitchell Stein Carey, Morrissey said he has represented individuals, licensed professionals and corporations in criminal matters. PHOENIX A new lawsuit filed Thursday is rebutting claims by Secretary of State Michele Reagan that she bore no blame or responsibility for the fiasco during the presidential preference election. The claim filed in Maricopa County Superior Court details the problems that resulted in people standing in line for up to five hours during the March 22 election. Attorneys for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and other law firms said the blame can be laid at the feet of County Recorder Helen Purcell and the county board of supervisors who approved only 60 polling places. But the lawsuit also seeks to undermine Reagans claim that she had no control over the countys decision. It says state law requires the secretary of state to provide through her procedures manual the maximum allowable wait time for any election. And the lawsuit says that manual sets the maximum allowable wait time at one hour. Another section of election law requires the secretary of state to provide for a method to reduce voter wait time at the polls in the primary and general elections. It specifically requires her to consider the number of ballots voted in prior elections, the number of people who voted early, and the number of election board members and clerks as well as the number of rosters at each polling place that will reduce voter wait time at the polls. The section of law being quoted specifically refers to elections held on certain specified dates. But the lawyers contend those requirements extend to the presidential preference election. An aide to Reagan said she had no immediate comment, saying her elections staff will review the lawsuit after they are formally served. But she has repeatedly insisted that she had no legal role to play in the decision by Purcell, ratified by the county supervisors, to have only 60 polling locations. Reagan said she had no ability to override that conclusion. Reagan does not dispute that she knew the county had set up only 60 centralized polling locations for the presidential primary, a race which had both Republican and Democrat contests. That compares with about 200 in 2012, when there was only a Republican primary, and more than 400 in 2008 when both major parties had contested presidential primaries. The lawsuit does not let Purcell off the hook. Aside from the decision to have just 60 polling places, it says Arizona law requires election marshals to check wait times throughout the day. And if the wait is 30 minutes or more, the marshal must inform the officer in charge of elections and shall request additional voting machines, voting booths and board workers, as appropriate. The attorneys noted the publicity throughout the day on March 22 of the long lines, saying none of this should have been a surprise to Purcell. Darla Sidles, superintendent of Saguaro National Park for the past seven years, will leave that post to accept a position as superintendent of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. A board member with the Friends of Saguaro National Park described Sidles as a superb superintendent. Its a great loss for Saguaro, but its a great opportunity for Rocky Mountain Park, said Kevin Dahl, a member of the Friends board and Arizona program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association. Sidles, 52, said she is looking forward to her new role at one of the National Parks systems most visited sites but added that she will miss Tucson and Saguaro Park. Rocky is an amazingly beautiful park with incredible landscapes, natural and cultural resources, staff, and partners, she said. Its the fifth-most-visited national park in the system, and so I am truly honored to have been chosen for the position. I am excited to go there and embrace new challenges, although simultaneously sad to leave here. Rocky Mountain Park, with more than 4 million visitors last year, attracts more than four times as many visitors as Saguaro Park. Of Tucson and Saguaro Park, Sidles said, I love this place, and its going to be difficult to leave. This has been my third time to live in Tucson over the past 30 years, and I seem to keep coming back. Its such a unique place due to Saguaros proximity to the city remote wilderness so close to a thriving urban area. Its really hard to beat that. The saguaros, the park staff, the community all have had an incredibly positive impact on me, and I hope that I have been of service during my time here as well. Sidles said she expects to move to Colorado in early August. She said in an email to members of the Friends board that she doesnt yet know who will take over as acting superintendent of Saguaro Park when she departs. An F/A-18 Hornet belonging to the Blue Angels, the U.S. Navy's flight demonstration team, crashed in Smyrna, TN Thursday leaving one dead. It is unclear whether the person killed was the pilot at this point in time. The crash came only hours after an Air Force F-16 crashed after a flyover at the U.S. Air Force Academy's graduation ceremony in Colorado. Photo editor Rick Wiley is the photo editor of the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson. From 1995-2004, he was director of photography at the East Valley Tribune in Mesa. From 1988-94 he was a photographer at the Tucson Citizen. He is a graduate of ASU (yes, that ASU). Help India! By Asma -Nama I know, it must sound odd to you. Support TwoCircles A woman giving a piece of advice to men? Whats more, asking them to be good husbands? (Arent we already) Charity, reading and pondering over the Creators words, visiting relations, etc. are few of the things we generally do in Ramzan. What about being a Good Husband? (But.) Yes, but. You work hard and bring home a salary. Yes, you pick up the children from school. But are you a good husband? (What else can we do?) For a change, you can try being gentle towards your wife, caring and soft, bring her flowers. What? I am making you laugh? Now this is what I am talking about. While we are reminded of charity, almost non-stop during Ramzan; there is little about being cheerful. And being (genuinely) cheerful is the biggest gift, for the people around us. [Reference: Smiling is charity, A Hadeeth] Last week social media ,buzzed with the problem of domestic abuse or wife beating , after The Council of Islamic Ideology CII, of Pakistan allowed for, a light beating of wives by the husbands. So Shehzada Salim was beating his beloved lightly in that epic scene from that epic film Mughal e Azam , with a feather, stroking Anarkalis soft cheeks? Apologies. My filmi subconscious instantly gets to work, without prior notice. But even before that we had a Saudi cleric literally demonstrating how to beat your better half. You can watch the < a href="http://exed.ozock.com/saudi-cleric-demonstrates-how-to-beat-your-wife-the-islamic-way/?utm_source=foreviral.com&utm_medium=fb&utm_campaign=1265&ytm=1265&sp=2">video here. A Muslim man beats his hijabi wife in public. In this video, you find a sturdy Muslim male repeatedly slamming the head of his wife. Tragic is the response of the wife, who takes it calmly, as if nothing much has happened. This may be a sign of her being used to such violence. The responses of some Muslims were telling. People prayed for the husband and his reform. Why didnt they think of getting the abuser arrested first? [Prayers could happen, once he goes to jail.] Watch the video here And seeing all this, I got my theme for Ramzan: Increasing domestic abuse cases: Now for the light beating part, all I can say is, it beats the light out of me. Light, or not so light, its hard for the wife. The scars, physical violence leaves behind, on the psyche of the wife, are permanently damaging. Those with a little light in their heads, would know: Light or hard, its hard for the wife. I am no expert to talk on this. But isnt it a fact that Prophet Muhammad PBUH never had raised his hands on a woman? At home or at the war front. Dont we know he had said, the best among you are those, who are best (in behavior) to their wives? Has he PBUH not, on the complaints of women of Madina severely reprimanded their husbands for being harsh and violent? For a further in-depth and perhaps the best analysis on domestic abuse, watch this video of Nouman Ali Khan. Solutions and Remedies for Domestic Abuse: Cases of worst sort of domestic abuse are increasing. Recently, a 17-year-old girl from my city was divorced within a year of marriage, as her in laws suspected , she was possessed. The young girl would be beaten black and blue, not just by the husband but his mother and sisters as well. [Wonder why didnt the genie in her hit them back?] The following suggestions can be useful, an attempt to stop the abuse and are meant especially for the young women. I: The first rule of stopping domestic abuse is Stop it when it Begins. If you take it for the first time, then in all probability, you will be getting it for the rest of your married life. Say no to it, right on his first punch. If you fear breaking up of marriage, then let me tell you, getting abused for the rest of your marital life, is no marriage at all. No life, as well. We women are born with dignity granted to us, by our Creator and its our duty to protect it. Yes, marriage indeed is nothing but a series of adjustments but these should be from both the partners and remember there just cant be no adjusting or accommodating with physical violence, by anyone. This includes your good husband who deems it fit to give you a nice thrash, as he likes. II: Seek counseling, involve family, elders of the community, and other good community organizations. As a last resort you can even seek legal help. III: If the thrashing continues, despite your peaceful efforts, and you are physically harmed by the assault, there is one fine way to stop it. Start shouting at full volume. Jump out of your lungs. Remember your ice cream outings with Papa and your noisy insistence on, one more? Or those cat fights with your brothers? Come on, girls, you can do it. This is only for self defence. Your shouts can embarrass him and may compel a rethinking. Of course, its only a desperate attempt on the part of a helpless woman. Which cop, lawyer or family will rush to her quick rescue once the beating starts? Only insecure and vain men, who find their power to control, slipping away from them, resort to violence against women. Their biggest support is your silence and your putting up with it. Once you speak up, they lose it all and fail miserably. Its only you, who can stop this abuse. Lets now come to being a good husband part. There is another kind of abuse; of the tongue, a weapon that can make or break a relationship. The common scenario during Ramzan is that of people flaring up, getting high and fly in temper. Such tempests, especially near the time of breaking fasts are common. Aah, those iftars! Missing them already! The tempting images of food , all around Facebook and Twitter, makes one wonder if Ramzan is a month of fasting or been transformed into a Food Festival? I am digressing. Why is it difficult for men to understand what women go through in their daily ordeals at home? Try imagining [try hard if you must] the hard work she has put up the whole day, for you and your kids /parents. And all you can give her is a sneer here, a scorn there and a trump taunt about something as insignificant as, she not coming up with a dish as per your expectations. Yes, you are tired after the office but your wife is tired too. If Ramzan is the best month for the charity and smile in itself is a charity, then why deprive that single person from your generosity, who is the back bone of your life? While granting everyone else, a share of your smile, you forget the one, who easily is the one most devoted to you and to every cause closer to your heart. Being good and smiling for the world outside home is easy enough. Difficult is being good and nice and cheerful at home and further more for/to your wife. Period. Try as good as you can. We women are happy in little things of life. Talk to us about your day, lend us your ears. Difficult, I know, but this is the single most important thing to do, if you want to be a good husband. If you want to do better, then help us out in the kitchen. Chop those cucumbers in neat slices, shake up that juice, you all are going to have at iftar or clean up the table, after dinner. But dont forget to wear that smile, first. Your smile is her world. Coming next: This Ramzan Be A Good Wife (Dr. Asma Anjum Khan teaches English and talks a lot, read her more stories Asma Nama) It's a query most of the corporations are examining as the requirement for an old-style workspace gets ever-more outdated through technology. Work-from-home policies can save establishments substantial money; however some still repel the idea that creative professionals can yield more working from home than working from the office. Corporations are worried about their employees being saggy and nonproductive once they're out away from the vision of their managers. Ingredients of creation Creativity habitually flourishes in solitude for numerous reasons. For instance, creativity needs attention and concentration, which is more easily attained when there are no distractions, or when there is no background noise. In any kind of workplace, the interruptions are usually unplanned and not apprehended by the worker. You can always use headphones and pin your ears to the Beatles, but that's just a halfway measure which cannot be resorted to every time. We all know that inspiration is a very personal thing. When we have a task cut out which requires us to provide newer and innovative ideas and variations, we always try to draw on our atmosphere and surroundings for traces and propositions. In the office you can have an X-Men poster on your workstation pin board or a Mercedes-Benz miniature over the desk, still its not the same as having the personal library or the Beatles concert DVDs in your reach. Environment matters a lot. Final thoughts For some, too much luxury at work could be an interference in getting their work done. This is one of the many other reasons why the work from the home subject is so fascinating and deserves more of such research. Finally, few of the people may have lacked the much-required discipline or the wish for moving their work to their homes. The Ctrip research study was certainly a revealing and also an encouraging stride on the correct track, particularly for its importance on employee-focused decision making. More of such new research, study, experiments and testing of different other job categories will provide us with even more clarity. Trump always in hot water While it would be very unusual for a judge to do it, Donald Trump has already said enough nasty things and accused him of being biased that he could easily be charged with contempt and required to either appear in court and apologize publicly or face jail time.This is all happening because Mr.Trumps Trump University (which was far from meeting the requirements to be a U.S. University) has been accused of essentially being a fraudulent enterprise where elderly and desperate people were pressured to buy course material and the main goal wasnt actually to teach them anything, but to get them to charge more and more on their credit cards. This is a class action suit on behalf of thousands of consumers who it is alleged were basically scammed out of up to $35,000 for real estate training.Of course Mr. Trump is no stranger to court actions, having over the years been the subject of more than 3,500 lawsuits.Among other things Mr. Trump has told rallies that the judge in the Trump University case has an absolute conflict of interest because he is Mexican, and a member of the Latino Lawyers Association (a group of U.S. lawyers and judges.)Trump also said, who we believe is a Mexican of Judge Curiel who is an American citizen who was born in the U.S. state of Indiana but is of Hispanic heritage, just as Mr. Trump is of European and Scottish ancestry. What the judge can do That said, Trump is in a unique position and has a unique kind of forum for his insults and accusations. If he keeps them up, the judge may be forced to take action.What the Judge has done, despite the vehement protests of Mr. Trump and his representatives, is to order the documents in the case unsealed, meaning they can be seen by reporters and the public.Another thing which foreigners and even many Americans dont know is that while Mr. Trump says he cant release his taxes as every other candidate always does, it's because he is under audit.But while it is true he is being audited, the tax returns are already filed and the Government has them all so there would be no additional exposure to Mr.Trump in the audit by making them available to the public.Unless, that is, his returns would show he isnt nearly as wealthy as claimed or that he hasnt been a big supporter of Veterans groups in the past as he also claims. Mr. Trump tends to get extremely agitated and go into incoherent rants when reporters or anyone ask him for some facts they can double check, such as the names of the Veterans groups he says he has donated so much to. He finally did so and at the same time berated and showed his contempt for the reporters who had simply ask for a list of the people who got donations, many of which were apparently only made within a day or two of his announcement. All this could begin to crimp his Trump's Social media image.His comments about the fact that the amount was less than initially claimed being due to reluctant or slow donors when it came to actually sending him the pledged money is perfectly reasonable. All of this controversy gives fuel to his potential opponents, either Clinton or Sanders whom he has declined to debate.. With the aid of the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers discovered that the universe is expanding at rates that range from five to 10 percent faster than it was thought. A team performed new measuring techniques, in three steps, to distant galaxies. Its believed that these findings might allow getting a better understanding at the part of the cosmos that cannot be seen, such as dark matter, dark energy, and dark radiation. Measuring technique Astronomers use Cepheid variables, a type of star whose luminosity and pulsation period indicates distance, within the Milky Way. Knowing their true and apparent brightness, they are able to determine distance using the parallax technique. Cepheids are used as benchmarks against which distance to other galaxies is calculated. The rate at which Cepheids pulsate reveals their true luminosity; slower pulses indicate more luminosity. True brightness is then compared against their apparent brightness, as observed from earth, to find their exact distance. Now, the measurements move out of the Milky Way to other galaxies. There, scientists search for Cepheids and type 1a supernovae, another yardstick for determining distances in the universe. Type 1a supernovae produce consistent luminosity. In this galaxy, Cepheids are utilized to determine the true luminosity of supernovae and these combined analyses provide the distance of the galaxy. Now, astronomers search for supernovae in more distant galaxies. Here, astronomers only use type 1a supernovae, which contrary to Cepheids, their luminosity is more distinguishable from greater distances. Scientists compare the true and apparent luminosity of supernovae to determine the distance where the expansion of the universe is occurring. The measurements are contrasted at how the light from the supernovae is redshifted by the enlargement of space. These values are used to calculate the rate at which the universe is expanding with time. Explanation for the expansion of the universe Scientists believe that dark energy could be pushing galaxies away from each other with greater force. Dark radiation, which could have travelled at the speed of light since the big bang, could be putting additional energy into the expansion of the cosmos, and dark matter -- which does not emit light or energy -- could be acting strangely in the empty space of the universe. The new upgraded constant value is calculated at 73 km/s/MPEC (1 Mpc= 3.26 million light years). Its estimated that at this rate of expansion, the distance in the universe will double in 9.8 billion years. All of this adds up to another big paradox as it would render Einsteins theory of relativity incomplete. Grosvenor Launches a Casino in a London Cab June 03 2016 Matthew Pitt Editor Gambling companies are always looking for gimmicks to promote their products, something that makes them stand out from the crowd. Some hire movie stars, others use humour, while Grosvenor Casinos is using a London cab. Grosvenor Casinos Worlds Smallest Travelling Casino can be seen driving around the busy streets of London before it heads north to Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, and stopping in Glasgow. The fully working London cab will take passengers to their local Grosvenor Casino for free, or anywhere within the city limits for an optional donation to the Carers Trust. Inside the cab is a gaming table where a dealer gives lessons in blackjack and online gaming using a tablet. It also has television screens showing sporting events, and a bar. Anyone can request a ride in the Worlds Smallest Casino by tweeting at Grosvenor Casinos Twitter account, and stating where they are and where they want to go. Were thrilled to announce the launch of what we believe to be the worlds smallest travelling casino and reward our loyal customer base with some complimentary rides, as well as welcome some new faces it is truly a unique experience, said Sales and Marketing Director at Grosvenor Casinos, Jo Blundell. Business has been going well for Rank Group Plc, the owners of the Grosvenor Casinos brand. Its half yearly report, released in late January, showed group revenue had increased 3 percent to 374.2 million (its casino arms revenue increased 7 percent to 219.0m), with adjusted profit before tax increasing 4 percent to 37.4 million (its casino arm profit increased 7 percent to 33.3m). Its digital arm saw revenue growth of 14 percent. Get all the latest PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us on both Facebook and Google+! Working toward a greener China Updated: 2016-06-04 02:26 By WANG YING in Shanghai(China Daily USA) Wenzhou-Kean University holds inaugural graduation ceremony A total of 187 undergraduate students attends the first graduation ceremony of Wenzhou-Kean University on May 28. Ninety two students have received offers from the worlds top 100 universities while 38 have secured job offers. The first Sino-US joint education institute in Zhejiang province, Wenzhou-Kean University started accepting its first batch of students from around the world in 2012. provided to china daily Ecolab Inc, a United States-based water, hygiene, energy technologies and services provider, has teamed up with the local government in Changzhou, Jiangsu province to facilitate its water treatment technology. During the Sino-US Environmental Protection Summit in Changzhou on May 18, the two parties agreed to create a platform for resource sharing, mutual communication and knowledge sharing in order to improve sustainable development of the city. The cooperation marks a new example for a city government to improve water treatment and environmental protection with the help of foreign technology. Ecolab was one of the 24 firms that came to China in April 2015 as part at the US presidential delegation that aimed to further Sino-US clean energy cooperation and help US companies launch or expand businesses relating to green buildings, energy efficiency technologies, clean air and water technologies. The delegation was led by US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz. "It was during those trips to major Chinese cities that Ecolab realized China has attached unprecedented importance to environment protection, and the demand for green technology in China is huge," said Wang Tie, executive vice-president of Ecolab. According to Wang, Ecolab spent several billion yuan in June 2015 to gain the controlling stake in Jianghai Environmental Protection Co Ltd, one of Chinas largest industrial water treatment companies. Located in the south of Jiangsu province, Changzhou has in the past decades been well-known for its manufacturing as well as steel and chemical industries, all of which are in need of greener technology and better water treatment solutions. "As one of the major cities along the Yangtze River, Changzhou has developed a keen focus on environmental protection and pollution control in the past few years. We expect to help the environment industry take off during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020)," said Changzhou mayor Fei Gaoyun. Having entered the China market four decades ago, Ecolab is excited about Chinas growing focus on environmental protection which is backed by the Chinese governments plan to invest 3 trillion yuan in water-related projects in China, according to Wang. Song Guoyou, a professor at the Center of American Studies of Fudan University, estimated that 100 billion US dollars worth of GDP would be generated by clean energy cooperations between China and the US in the future. "The cooperation will be a win-win strategy on one hand it helps China cut emissions and on the other, US businesses are presented with more opportunities in the country," Song said. wang_ying@chinadaily.com.cn Zhu Wenyu, chairwoman of the country's largest piano seller Best Friend Music Culture, believes that encouraging people to love music is more important than cultivating musicians. zhou wenting / china daily The chairwoman of Best Friend Music Culture Co Ltd shares how the piano has always been an integral part of Shanghai life since the 1980s Zhu Wenyu still fondly remembers her days as a salesperson in the mid-1980s and how she and her colleagues would rejoice if their store managed to sell just one piano in a month. It was considered a feat during those days as owning the musical instrument was considered a sheer luxury Zhu said that a piano back then would cost about 1,000 yuan ($153), which was equivalent to two years worth of wages for the average worker. "A piano was considered a very extravagant thing to have in addition to the 'three big items' which all Shanghai residents needed to buy when they got married a watch, a bicycle and a sewing machine," said the chairwoman of Shanghai Best Friend Music Culture Co Ltd. The 61-year-old today oversees the operations of 21 retail stores in Shanghai and Jiangsu province that sell domestic and imported pianos. The company is China's largest domestic piano seller. Furthermore, the small and crowded living spaces during those times made it difficult for most people to own piano. "Average families needed to think twice about making such an investment. It was hard as three generations of a family would usually be cramped in a room measuring less than 20 square meters. There was simply no space for a piano," said Zhu. "Also, when you start practicing after supper, you can surely expect your neighbor to be knocking on your door." All these factors meant that those who decided to buy their children a piano had only one purpose in mind to cultivate a musician, or at least someone who would be good enough to be enrolled in the country's music conservatories. "Back then, parents paid extra attention to the qualifications of the piano teacher and how diligent their children were during practice. They would always have a ruler by their side as they monitored their child. Through the piano, we can get a glimpse of the colossal expectations that a Chinese family in the 1980s had of their only child," said Zhu. Zhu, who majored in mechanical engineering in college and was working in a factory before becoming a salesperson in the piano shop, said the domestic piano market and the interest levels in the musical instrument have been growing in tandem with the country's progress. According to her, consumers were willing to pay an average of 10,000 yuan for a piano in the early to mid 2000s. Today, the figure is almost double. "The local market began to take shape and then matured rapidly around 1986. During the past 30 years, the attitudes of parents who have been spending money on pianos and lessons for their children have changed over time as the country entered the age of material sufficiency. This was when parents started to pay more attention to the overall development of their next generation," said Zhu. By the start of the 1990s, Best Friend Music stores were already selling about 10 pianos per month. The production yield of the musical instrument in the country had also grown about 10-fold from a decade ago to 100,000. Learning the piano gradually became popular among families. Zhu recalled how the store she worked in had three rooms, each measuring 4 square meters, allocated for piano lessons. To tap into the growing demand for piano lessons, Best Friend established its amateur music school in 1998. Zhu, who was steadily climbing the ladder at the company during that period, realized that most parents had utilitarian expectations of their children. Learning the piano had become nothing more than a way to secure a spot in an elite school. There may have been a steady flow of children entering the school to learn how to play the piano, but not many of them were enjoying it. "It was normal to see children drop out after learning for a year or two. Others never touched the piano again after passing the highest grade an amateur could get," she said. Zhu is heartened that parents today have adopted a different mindset when it comes to playing the piano and have viewed it as more of a self-enrichment tool. "Parents are now paying more attention to their children's feelings instead of forcing them to walk the path of music. Parents today make their children learn the piano to improve their overall temperament," she said. In 2015, Best Friend Music's amateur school, which currently has 14 branches in Shanghai and two in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, launched a three-stage piano course to promote the love of music. Children who are at least three years old can sign up for the first stage of the course which comprises more than 20 lessons that teach them how to sing and dance. In the second stage, children will learn the basics of the keyboard, rhythm and the stave through a host of interactive lessons. Those who complete the first two stages can then choose whether to continue with one-on-one piano lessons in the final stage. "Here at Best Friend Music, we don't want to cultivate piano players who obsess over every detail in a musical score. Instead, we want to encourage more people to love music and life," said Zhu. "Helping others lead a good lifestyle through learning the piano is what I consider to be social responsibility. This should be the ultimate goal of doing business," Zhu said. zhouwenting@chinadaily.com.cn Govt's environmental efforts cause for cautious optimism Updated: 2016-06-03 08:45 By CECILIA TORTA JADA/ASIT K. BISWAS(China Daily) A farmer leans on his shovel as he takes a break from turning soil to plant crops in the town of Tianying, Anhui province, in this file photo dated November 19, 2012. [Photo/Agencies] On Tuesday, the State Council, China's cabinet, released a timetable to deal with the country's severe soil pollution, which is another important step in the fight against pollution. Until recently, China's development model followed that of Western countries, being focused on development first and taking care of pollution later, and it did not give enough attention to protecting its environment. And as China's development has been much quicker than that of developed countries, the contamination of its air, water and soil is greater compared to other major countries in terms of per unit of product manufactured. Environmental degradation, however, now threatens China's food security, public health economic growth and international trade. In terms of food security, surveys conducted by the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Land and Resources between 2005 and 2013 found that 20 percent of arable land was unfit for food production because of serious contamination by heavy metals. This is primarily because of the inadequate treatment and disposal of industrial and mining liquid wastes. The food that could have been produced from this loss of productive land could support the entire population of Australia. Similarly, higher standards of living, rapid urbanization and inadequate policy attention have meant that the generation of urban municipal solid waste increased by 3.1 percent per year between 2001 and 2012. In contrast, in the United States, during the same period, it increased by only 0.2 percent per annual. In addition, according to official statistics, 10.4 percent of grasslands, 11.4 percent of unused land and 10 percent of woodlands in the country are severely polluted. At the same time, air pollution is already a serious problem in all China's mega cities. It is estimated that 1.6 million people prematurely die each year in China due to air pollution. Several CEOs of Fortune 500 companies have mentioned that they face serious problems in recruiting good international staff to work in China because of concerns about the air pollution. Over the long-term, unless this situation changes, it may affect the level of foreign direct investment in China. And that is not all. In April 2016, the Ministry of Water Resources reported that samples from 2,103 groundwater wells in the country's heavily populated eastern watersheds are seriously contaminated. Some 32.9 percent of the samples were suitable only for industrial and agricultural use. Another 47.3 percent of samples were unfit for any type of human consumption. This means 80 percent is unfit to use for domestic purposes. The severity of the air, water and soil pollution have also resulted in increased social costs. However, the extensive media coverage of environmental pollution has been beneficial. Such coverage and the public concern ensured pollution issues have remained high up the political and economic agenda in recent years. China's leadership has repeatedly stressed the importance of the "war on pollution". In 2010, China's expenditure on combating pollution was 2 trillion yuan. By 2015, it had more than doubled to 4.5 trillion yuan, nearly 40 percent of which was to combat water pollution. In 2014, 1,188 pollution control criminal cases were brought to court: 7.8 times the number of such cases the year before. These are all encouraging signs. And because of these developments, we are cautiously optimistic that over the next one to two decades, China will be able to halt and reverse its environmental pollution. Cecilia Tortajada is senior research fellow at the Institute of Water Policy of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore; Asit K. Biswas is distinguished visiting professor at the same School. Blame lack of comprehensive law, not dogs, for split in society Updated: 2016-06-03 08:45 By Zhang Zhouxiang(China Daily) An expressionless dog sits in a cage with other dogs that will be killed in Yulin. Many dogs are killed in front of other dogs. Peter Li, China policy specialist for the Humane Society International who paid a visit to Yulin from March 29 to April 2, says many dogs die many times, both physically and psychologically. [Photo provided to China Daily by the Humane Society International] The funeral music began playing and someone lit a candle, as people lined up to bow before a photo of the deceased. But the burial held in Minhang sporting park, Shanghai municipality on Monday was not for a person, but for a dog beaten to death by the park keeper. Not surprisingly, this sparked fierce debate online. Dog lovers blamed the guard for being too cruel. Others pointed out dogs are not supposed to be in parks without an owner and the guard had done his duty. Especially, as the annual Yulin dog meat festival, which is held on summer solstice in Southwestern China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, approaches, the debate is becoming intensified. One thing is certain, the support for animal rights is a sign of social progress. Research results show that animal rights promoters in general care more about people's livelihoods, too. So now one animal rights protection organization after another has emerged in China that means we have become more civilized and care more about the overall well-being of society. . You cannot blame those who criticized the fuss made over the death of a dog, either, because some people don't like dogs and others say we should show more compassion for the needy in society. And there are those who dislike dogs because they are a threat in their daily lives. Two months ago, in Kunming, capital of Southwest China's Yunnan province, a dog attacked a guard and some residents in a community and the owner did not show up until hours later. The guard received six wounds on the face, and when he tried to sue the dog owner for compensation, he found the legal process is so long and complicated that he could not afford the time and energy to go to the court. Similar news makes headlines almost every month. Sometimes a dog gets killed, and sometimes a person gets bitten. More frequently, people find dogs have left a mess in their communities and are angry about it. The problem lies in lack of a proper law that both protects animal rights and regulates those who own pets. When somebody walks an aggressive dog in the community, there is no law that requires him keep it on a lead; no law that requires him to clean the dog's mess up, and no law that requires him to keep the dog a set distance away from children. Equally, there is no law that helps a dog owner when his or her dog gets stolen or intentionally hurt. He cannot ask for compensation because the law simply does not support this and the police won't help him because that's not their jobs. As a result, the relationship between dog owners and their neighbors can be fraught. Worse, the existing laws that try to regulate pets are not well implemented. For example, the law says all dog owners should register their animal with the police. However, in Beijing for example, the police require owners to provide five kinds of supporting materials, which must be obtained at three separate agencies, and pay 1,000 yuan ($151.6) a year to keep a dog registered. Do they mean to discourage people from registering? Analysts estimate that less than 20 percent of the dogs in Beijing are registered and many dog owners simply don't bother because of the complicated procedures and high cost. To sum up, it is not the dogs' fault for the split in society; it is the lack of a comprehensive legal framework for animal rights and dog ownership. Thus the cure lies in accelerating the introduction of an animal rights law and better enforcing the existing laws that regulate pet owners. The author is a writer with China Daily. zhangzhouxiang@chinadaily.com.cn Arbitral tribunal abusing its power Updated: 2016-06-03 08:45 By Jia Yu(China Daily) A formation of the Nanhai Fleet of China's Navy on Saturday finished a three-day patrol of the Nansha islands in the South China Sea. [Photo/Xinhua] The United States and some of its allies are using international forums to sensationalize the South China Sea disputes, especially the arbitration case initiated by the Philippines in January 2013. Although China rejected the notice of arbitration by the Philippines in February 2013 and made it clear that China will neither accept nor participate in the arbitration, the Philippines handed in a request for arbitration to the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration in March 2014 with 15 submissions. Despite China's strong opposition, the arbitral tribunal announced in late October 2015 that it can judge on seven of the 15 submissions, and linger over some other submissions. However, the truth is that the arbitral tribunal has no jurisdiction over this case according to international law. China's 2006 Declaration on Optional Exceptions made in accordance with Article 298 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, clearly excludes disputes on maritime delimitation from compulsory arbitration. At the heart of the disputes between China and the Philippines is the latter's illegal occupation of Chinese reefs and islets in the South China Sea. Categorizing maritime features is in essence subject to territorial sovereignty, which is beyond the scope of UNCLOS. Hence the arbitral tribunal has accepted submissions over which it does not have jurisdiction in the first place. Manila claims China's Meiji Reef, Ren'ai Reef, and Zhubi Reef are low-tide elevations that can't claim territorial sea, an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. However, to judge whether a maritime feature is an island, reef or low-tide elevation is an inseparable part of territorial sovereignty. Terra nullius is not entitled to any maritime rights, so it will be nonsense to discuss the maritime rights of a feature if the sovereignty is not made clear first. That the arbitral tribunal has turned a blind eye to the Philippines' self-evident attempt to muddle the issue constitutes an abuse of power that may deal a blow to its credibility in settling international disputes under the Convention. As for their disputes over maritime delimitation in the South China Sea, Beijing has repeatedly informed Manila that it will not accept the arbitration case in accordance with Article 298 of the Convention. Should the court's ruling touch upon relevant appeals by Manila, such as the one including Meiji Reef and Ren'ai Reef as part of its continental shelf and exclusive economic zone, the arbitral tribunal will inevitably be judging on the sovereignty of the islands and reefs involved in this case. Should the arbitral tribunal make a judgment on this, it would in fact not only arbitrate the sovereignty of the Meiji Reef and Ren'ai Reef, but also delimitate the seas of China and the Philippines. However, any territorial dispute is far beyond the arbitral tribunal's jurisdiction. The Chinese government has consistently called for candid negotiations with the Philippines, which is in line with several bilateral agreements between the two countries, as well as the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea signed by China and ASEAN countries in 2002. In other words, Manila has failed to fulfill its commitment to rule-based dispute management, and placed a ticking time bomb in regional stability. The arbitral tribunal is conniving in the Philippine's attempt to violate agreements. The final ruling, if it's a result of well-orchestrated misinterpretation of international laws including UNCLOS, will inject more uncertainties into the regional order and serve as an unwanted precedent that may "inspire" other countries to take articles out of context while dealing with similar maritime disputes. China has every reason to dismiss the unlawful arbitration case. The author is deputy director of the China Institute for Marine Affairs attached to the State Oceanic Administration. Long delayed apology for WWII slave labor Updated: 2016-06-03 08:46 (China Daily) James Murphy, a US POW who survived working at Mitsubishi's Osarizawa Copper Mine and the infamous Bataan Death March in the Philippines, reacts after a Mitsubishi news conference apology in Los Angeles on Sunday. [Photo/Agencies] The apology and compensation offered on Wednesday by Mitsubishi Materials Corp to the survivors or the families of 3,800 Chinese nationals forced to work as slave labor during World War II is a case of justice being donefinally. More than 70 years have passed since about 40,000 Chinese were brought to Japan to work as forced labor. Around 7,000 died there because of the harsh working conditions, malnutrition and mistreatment. The survivors were haunted by their experience, suffering not only from psychological trauma, but also a lasting sense of humiliation and injustice, as their attempts to file lawsuits to have their woes redressed were invariably rejected by Japanese courts. The 100,000 yuan ($15,200) in compensation to be paid to the survivors or the families of Chinese laborers forced to work in the mines and factories of Mitsubishi Mining, as the company was then called, by no means fully makes up for the lives lost or the sufferings of the survivors. But it reflects contrition of some sort by the company, and also indicates a willingness to seek reconciliation. The compensation and the apology it has offered, as well as Mitsubishi's promise to build memorials for the Chinese who died in the labor camps, will help soothe the pain still felt by the families of the deceased and the few remaining survivors, whose number is now less than 20. Mitsubishi has set a good example for other Japanese companies, such as Mitsui Mining, to follow. They should know only by taking a responsible attitude toward history and paying off their moral debt can they win forgiveness for their wartime actions. The Japanese courts have always rejected claims for reparation by former Chinese laborers on the grounds of state immunity and the country's statute of limitationsa 20-year limit on the filing of such lawsuits. They have also insisted the Chinese have no judicial right to ask for compensation, because they claim it was renounced in a Sino-Japanese joint communique in 1972 when the two countries normalized ties. But, while China waived reparation claims by the state, it never waived such claims by Chinese nationals as individuals. It is both legally and morally justified for Japan's war victims to demand the country right its wrongs. By refusing to take any responsibility for the wartime forced labor, the Japanese courts have continually rubbed salt into the wounds. However, justice may be delayed, but it will not be denied. Brave death for peace Updated: 2016-06-03 08:46 (China Daily) The terrorist attack that killed one and injured four other Chinese peacekeepers in Mali on Wednesday should be strongly condemned and the perpetrators brought justice. A total of 17 Chinese peacekeepers have sacrificed their lives since the 1990s when China joined UN peacekeeping missions. Among the five permanent UN Security Council members, China now has the largest peacekeeping team abroad and the expenditure China will undertake for UN peacekeeping missions in the next three years will account for 10.2 percent of the world body's total expense for this purpose, ranking second. The terrorist attack in Mali did not seem to be targeted at Chinese peacekeepers in particular, but rather at the UN. For those who want a chaotic situation in the African country, UN peacekeepers whose mission is to maintain peace are the "largest enemy". Developing countries such as China and India have gradually replaced developed countries to become the backbone of UN peacekeeping operations in recent years. China announced last year the establishment of an 8,000-personnel standby peacekeeping force, more than half the force the UN hopes to organize as a reserve. That an increasing number of Chinese soldiers are sent to the most turbulent regions to make contributions to world peace on behalf of China, with some losing their lives, should win the respect of all people in China and indeed the rest of the world. China's growing contributions to world peace through the UN peacekeeping operations also testify to its accelerated integration into the world system as a responsible power and its willingness to shoulder more global responsibilities. However, China's undertaking of such responsibilities has been interpreted by some in the West as its "geopolitical ambitions". Those holding this distorted view should think carefully about why Western developed countries have reduced their personnel presence and expenditures for UN peacekeeping missions. Ford's Fields again heads US-China Business Council Updated: 2016-06-03 11:31 By Niu Yue In New York(China Daily USA) Ford Motor Company President and CEO Mark Fields will again serve as chairman of the US-China Business Council, the organization announced Thursday. The US-China Business Council (USCBC) is a private, nonprofit organization of more than 200 American companies that do business with China. "The US-China Business Council has been a valuable and trusted leader in building commercial relations with China for four decades, and I'm proud to continue as chair of its board," Fields said in a statement. "Working with businesses and governments in both nations is critical to strengthening the US-China relationship and addressing challenges within it. USCBC works effectively to eliminate market barriers and build opportunities for American companies in China, and I look forward to furthering these goals in the year ahead." "USCBC is delighted with the re-election of Mark Fields and other outstanding officers and board members selected by the membership," USCBC President John Frisbie said in a statement. "Our organization is truly privileged to have a dynamic board of American business leaders with a balanced view of our important commercial relationship with China. I am confident that under Mark's leadership, USCBC will continue to expand business opportunities and knock down barriers so that American companies can make the most of cooperation between the world's two largest economies." The USCBC also announced the election of other officers and board directors. The vice chairs are Robert Iger, chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company; Doug McMillon, president and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores; and Keith Williams, CEO of UL LLC; will serve as secretary-treasurer. Andrew W. Shoyer, partner of Sidley Austin LLP, is counsel. Shoes, a dream and the next 'big thing' Updated: 2016-06-03 11:43 By Jiang Hezi(China Daily) Ali Ma (right), co-founder and CEO of Vixole, discusses the virtual reality potential of their shoe line with co-founder Jackson Dong (left) and senior designer Soohoung Lee at their office in Lower Manhattan on May 23. HEZI JIANG / China Daily Many Chinese students who graduate from US colleges are showing a willingness to take risks and are staying in the country to create startups, Hezi Jiang reports from New York. In the 100-square-foot office space in Lower Manhattan there is a foldable massage table that was found on a sidewalk and is now used as a bed. And shoes. They are never worn. Many are taken apart, dissected to study their design. This is the space of Vixole, a startup committed to making fashion a contemporary art form. Its would-be first product line: shoes containing digital LED screens whose designs can be changed using a smartphone. Vixole is the dream of Ali Ma. Born and raised in China's Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region, Ma, 25, received a bachelor's degree in marketing from St. Johns University in New York last month. Upon graduation, he never looked for a job, turning instead to that dream he initiated while in college. Driven by the startup frenzy in their home country, Ma and many other Chinese students in the US are staying here after graduation and seeking funding so they can discover the next big thing. There are no definitive numbers on how many are doing it, but that they are increasing is mirrored in the increasing number of sources of venture capital and the amount of money available through Chinese firms and others. Visa extension International students starting a business in the US face numerous challenges beyond funding, with a visa extension being prime. If they graduate with a major in science, technology, engineering or mathematics, they can remain in the US for an additional three years of training. But those in other majors are limited to a one-year extension. That causes many Chinese who graduate from US colleges to start their projects in China, while others start in the US and later shift to China with help from Chinese investors and incubators. Ma has six others on his team, including co-founder Jackson Dong, who also graduated from St. John's University in May. They take turns on the massage-table-turned-bed when they have to work through the night so they can talk to shoe manufacturers in China who make their project's prototype. Ma and Dong initially self-funded their project. As their money was running out and in a hurry to get a prototype made, they paid $3,000 to a company in India. That company disappeared. They then managed to get a $50,000 investment from a Chinese student in the US in exchange for 2 percent of their company. "We have to push ourselves. We are just at the start of our career, so we've got nothing to lose," said Ma. "If you don't give it a try now, there will be more things to stop you from taking risks." That willingness to take risks is fed by Chinese investors who go to US colleges looking for doable - and winnable - projects, as well as a steady stream of ads about competitions and social events for startups on Wechat and Facebook. Everything changed "When I graduated in 2010, I had no idea of how to launch a startup. I probably didn't even know the Chinese word for startup," said Xuan Ao, 30, co-founder and COO of Liaoyuan, a Boston-based social-networking platform mainly for Chinese startups. "Then we did our first startup project in 2013, it was still very hard to find any guidance on the China side. It was so hard to see a Chinese investor in the US. When we heard that a Chinese investor would show up at an event, we had to fight to get in," said Xuan. "But everything has changed." Xuan and three partners launched Liaoyuan in April and received an investment of $1.5 million from a Chinese firm. The platform connects entrepreneurs, investors and industry professionals and provides them with tips, potential partners and industry news. Xuan said Liaoyuan, has more than 20,000 registered users in the US. Working with Liaoyuan now is free. Eventually, Xuan said, the platform will find a suitable model to make money. As for venture capital, there are Chinese incubators in the US like Hanhai Investment, which has offices in Boston, Los Angeles and San Jose and Burlingame, California. Incubators also will occupy space at the Shanghai Zhangjiang Boston Enterprise Park that is being constructed and will cover more than 785,000 square feet. More competitions are being held for Chinese startups. In April, the Chinese University Alumni Alliance held an entrepreneurship competition and the winner, a PhD student at Harvard, received a $100,000 cash award for his company BrainCo, which is developing ways to translate brainwaves into electronic signals, with the goal of helping people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder enhance concentration. Zhang Yiwen, a recent graduate of Columbia University in New York, initiated a startup competition for fellow Chinese students at the university. "More and more students are interested in starting their own companies after college, and we want to provide them a platform to experience and decide for themselves that if it's really what they want," said Zhang. "We offer classes and networking opportunities. We let them practice pitching at training events. We also invite the experienced entrepreneurs to share tips. It's not only a competition, but also a full workshop for many people's little ideas," she said. Xuan said that many of the student entrepreneurs he met are people who could easily find a decent job at large companies, "but it's not their life's goal." Zhong Jiaming, a Beijing native who earned double degrees in mathematics and computer science from Emory University, is one of them. He co-founded Studypool, an online marketplace that connects students with tutors on a per question basis. Studypool has raised more than $2 million in a seed round, mainly from US investors. Now the Silicon Valley-based company makes about $10,000 per day, with a 30 percent profit margin, Zhong said. Not about money "It's not really about money, but about achievement. I want to do something meaningful for the world. Spending my years in a big tech company does not align with my goals," he said. "Studypool is not what I ultimately want to do, but it takes me a step closer to my goal. It helps me financially, and I have gained skills and experience," he said. He has already started his second project, Timi, a mobile application matching friends for meals and night activities. "Most entrepreneurs have a dream of making changes to the world. That's why they do startups," said Jia Yong, a recent graduate in electrical engineering from Boston University (BU). "But it's so hard and the chance is so small. It takes lots of commitment to opt for that road." While at school, he worked for IntelliMonitor, a BU-graduate-founded startup focusing on the development of a smart monitoring system for hospitals in China. Now, upon graduation, Jia is faced with a difficult decision: taking an offer from a big company or working with the startup team fulltime. "For most of us who decided to study abroad for a skill like engineering, we didn't imagine ourselves starting a company. We wanted a stable job," said Jia. "But in a startup, you get to make the things you want to make, and then sell them to people. This whole process gives an engineer so much joy." Ali Ma of Vixole said he is prepared for failure, but right now he has two goals: Pre-sell 4,000 pairs of shoes next month in a launch to a crowdfunding campaign, and lose some weight for a video shooting next week for the funding platform Kickstarter. China's HNA eyes two South American airlines: Sources Updated: 2016-06-04 05:08 (Agencies) HNA Group, the parent of Hainan Airlines, the largest independent air carrier in China, has expressed interest in acquiring the South American airlines Avianca Holdings and Avianca Brasil, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Both airlines are working with investment banks to explore options, said the sources who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are confidential. Avianca's CFO, Gerardo Grajales, has flown to China, according to a source at the airline. The structure of an eventual deal remained unclear, said the sources familiar with negotiations. The two airlines have also attracted interest from US peers United Continental Holdings Inc and Delta Air Lines Inc, the sources said on Friday. "We continually evaluate opportunities to strengthen our relationships with partners that will enable us to provide better and more convenient services to our customers. However, we won't discuss rumors or speculation," United said in a statement. Delta declined to comment. If HNA makes the deal, it would be the second major Latin American investment for the aviation, tourism and logistics conglomerate, which has also snapped up air cargo handlers Swissport and Irish aircraft leasing company Avolon. The Chinese group agreed in November to pay $450 million for a 23.7 percent stake in Azul SA, Brazil's third-largest airline, which is controlled by Jet Blue founder David Neeleman. In May, HNA Group agreed to pay $159 million for a 13 percent stake in Virgin Australia, he country's second-biggest airline, and to form a strategic commercial alliance. HNA plans to progressively increase its stake in Virgin to 19.99 per cent, the Australia carrier said in an announcement. Avianca Holdings and Avianca Brasil are controlled by Bolivian-born entrepreneur German Efromovich's Synergy Group. Efromovich has Colombian and Brazilian citizenship. The foreign interest in Avianca shows that even as Latin America's largest economy reels from its worst recession since the 1930s, airlines see the broader region as a key growth area and one their route networks must embrace. Depressed asset values there also make this a tempting time for acquisitions. The market is down," said Joel Chusid, US executive director for China's Hainan Airlines, speaking as an aviation industry veteran without any knowledge of parent company HNA's interest in the transaction. "That's the time to buy. Efromovich's Synergy Group separately controls Avianca Brasil, the fourth-largest airline in Brazil, where the government is reconsidering laws requiring domestic control of its airlines. Efromovich has Colombian and Brazilian citizenship. Chinese president vows to boost green, low-carbon development Updated: 2016-06-03 04:24 (Xinhua) SAN FRANCISCO -- China will constantly boost green and low-carbon development in an effort to promote harmony between human and nature, according to a congratulatory letter sent by President Xi Jinping to the 7th Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) and inaugural Mission Innovation Ministerial on Thursday. In the message read by Yin Hejun, Chinese vice minister of science and technology, Xi called the meetings crucial high-level forums in the area of clean energy held after the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris. The meetings show the international community's common concern about the development and application of clean energy, Xi said. Going forward, China's growth philosophy will be driven by innovation, coordination, green development, openness and sharing, Xi said. While implementing a series of policies and measures, China will gear up clean energy development with major efforts, optimize its industrial structure, set up low-carbon energy system, promote green buildings and low-carbon transport and establish national carbon emission trading market, said the president. The meetings, held by the US Department of Energy on Wednesday and Thursday, have drawn the participation of delegates from 23 countries and relevant international organizations. US President Barack Obama sent a video message to the attendees. Xi also extended a warm invitation to all attendees to visit China next year for the 8th CEM, where they can exchange their understanding and experience on the development and popularization of clean energy and jointly push forward global sustainable development. 'Kill list' found in UCLA campus shooter's residence: Police Updated: 2016-06-03 10:35 (Xinhua) Mainak Sarkar, who killed a UCLA professor and took his own life, also killed a woman found at this house pictured in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, north of Minneapolis, police said on June 2, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] LOS ANGELES - Los Angeles police announced on Thursday the shooter who killed a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) appears to have also killed a woman in Minnesota and more than one UCLA professors are on the gunman's "kill list". Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Chief Charlie Beck said the list found in the home of the shooter, Mainak Sarkar, in St. Paul, Minnesota, included three names: the woman in Minnesota; UCLA professor William Scott Klug, who was killed Wednesday; and another UCLA professor, who was not injured. Beck declined to give the names of the woman or the other professor. A neighbor in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, identified the dead woman to local newspaper as Ashley Hasti, who may have been Sarkar's ex-girlfriend. The newspaper published a photo on its website of Hasti and Sarkar together. Beck said Sarkar, 38, likely killed the woman in Minnesota several days ago, then drove to California in a 2003 gray Nissan Sentra with the Minnesota license plate. The car is still being sought in the UCLA area. He said although he believes the car does not present any danger, he urged anyone who recognizes it to report to the authority. Beck said Sarkar was heavily armed at UCLA, carrying two semiautomatic pistols -- one that was used in the murder-suicide, and another in his backpack. He was also carrying multiple ammunition magazines and loose rounds of ammunition, indicating he was prepared to carry out more violence. According to Beck, a note found by the bodies of Sarkar and Klug in a small office in UCLA's Boelter Hall "doesn't refer to suicide", but it included an instruction to check on Sarkar's cat -- leading authorities to his Minnesota residence and the "kill list", ultimately leading to the discovery of the woman's body. Beck said investigators have spoken to the other professor on the list, and that person was aware of the online postings but did not believe they were an indication of any impending violence. Sarkar was a Ph.D student and a current member of the Klug Research Group; Computational Biomechanics, at UCLA, according to a Klug Research Group publication. The victim was identified as 39-year-old William Scott Klug, a father of two and associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, students and his colleagues told Xinhua on site Wednesday. Sarkar had accused the victim of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else, according to an online blog post he wrote on March 10, 2016, as "William Klug, UCLA professor, is not the kind of person when you think of a professor. He is a very sick person. I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy", and "My name is Mainak Sarkar. I was this guy's PhD student. We had personal differences. He cleverly stole all my code and gave it to another student. He made me really sick." However, some inside source told Los Angeles local newspaper that the gunman's claims about killed professor Klug were untrue and Klug helped a lot to make gunman whose work was not stellar to graduate. The shooting happened shortly before 10 a.m. local time on Wednesday in Boelter Hall, which is part of the Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, according to the university. The entire UCLA campus was placed on lockdown, along with three Los Angeles Unified School District elementary and middle schools nearby. The UCLA authority canceled all the classes and activities Wednesday. Scott Waugh, UCLA vice chancellor and provost, said on Wednesday campus operations would return to normal Thursday -- except for engineering classes, which will be canceled for the rest of the week. This weekend's and next week's final exams would not be disrupted, he said. UCLA officials said the university was offering counseling services to students and staff affected by the shooting. The university has designated "healing spaces" on the campus where students can gather, and counselors will be available for students at the Counseling and Psychological Services office. France pledges to welcome 400 refugees per month from Greece Updated: 2016-06-03 11:33 (Xinhua) Fernch Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve is seen during a visit on security before the start of the 69th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, May 9, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] PARIS -- France pledged to take in 400 refugees per month from Greece, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced on Thursday. In a statement, Cazeneuve added that 97 refugees arrived this week from Greece and Italy. An additional 253 asylum seekers are due to come next week. The French minister also reiterated determination to honor commitment to help handling migration crisis. France promises to receive 30,000 refugees over the next two years. Last September, European leaders agreed on the EU proposal to redistribute 160,000 refugees across European states in order to help struggling Greece to cope with chaotic flows of migrants at its doors. Escalating wars in Syria and Iraq, adding to persistent political instability in many African countries and in the Middle East, forced millions of people to risk their lives by boarding rickety boats to seek better life on the other Mediterranean rim. China pledges clean energy development, deployment Updated: 2016-06-03 12:23 By LIA ZHU in San Francisco(chinadaily.com.cn) From left to right: Ambassador of Morocco to the United States Rachad Bouhlal, Laurence Tubiana, Special Representative for the 2015 Paris Climate Conference and French Ambassador for Climate Negotiations, Jonathan Pershing, US Special Envoy for Climate Change, and David Sandalow, Inaugural Fellow, Columbia University, Center on Global Energy Policy at a panel discussion on "Road from Paris and the CEM" during the Seventh Clean Energy Ministerial in San Francisco on Thursday. [Photo by LIA ZHU/CHINA DAILY] China will implement a series of policies and measures to drive clean energy development and deployment in an effort to promote harmony between peopled and nature, the Seventh Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM7) was told on Thursday. Hundreds of energy policy-makers, business executives and investors from around the world convened in San Francisco at the CEM7 Action Summit to discuss implementation of the initiatives of the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris last December. The summit represented the international community's common concern about clean energydevelopment and deployment, said Chinese President Xi Jinping in a letter to the summit read by Yin Hejun, China's vice-minister of science and technology. Going forward, China's growth philosophy will be driven by innovation, coordination, green development, openness and sharing, Xi said. While implementing a series of policies and measures, China will gear up clean energy development with major efforts, optimize its industrial structure, set up a low-carbon energy system, promote green buildings and low-carbon transport and establish a national carbon emission trading market, he said. As a major energy producer, consumer and investor, China has put clean energy high on its agenda to achieve substantial development, Wan Gang, Chinese minister of science and technology, told the summit via a video. He said China is in a transition towards clean and renewable energy and China has become the world's leader in wind, hydro and solar PV power generation. New Zealand cultural delegation visits Beijing Updated: 2016-06-03 15:13 By Wang Qingyun(chinadaily.com.cn) A delegation of New Zealand scholars and artists are in Beijing to deepen cooperation with their Chinese counterparts. The delegation, including staff of Massey University and filmmakers, visited the People's Liberation Army Academy of Art and the Academy of Arts and Design of Tsinghua University, and signed memorandums of understanding with them to further exchanges. On Thursday, the New Zealand guests were hosted by Peng Liyuan, president of the PLA Academy of Art, as well as China's First Lady. Peng introduced them to the art of Chinese calligraphy, and encouraged universities and art institutes in both China and New Zealand to strengthen exchanges and learn from each other. The delegation also visited the China Scholarship Council, a non-profit organization affiliated to the Ministry of Education that provides financial assistance to Chinese wishing to study abroad and foreigners wishing to study in China. Steve Maharey, vice-chancellor of Massey University, said in an interview on Thursday that his university is "seeing a very good relationship" with Chinese universities through programs of "exchanging students, exchanging staff, and working on areas of common interest". The exchanges between Massey University and China enjoyed a landmark moment when China's First Lady Peng Liyuan visited the university in November 2014. In June 2015, a delegation, including staff of Massey University paid a visit to the PLA Academy of Art. Claire Robinson, pro vice-chancellor of the university's College of Creative Arts, said her college is looking to tapping into cooperation with Chinese universities for creative solutions for world problems such as pollution and sustainability. "The Chinese universities are very interested in what we have to offer, and we are very interested in what a bigger country and its universities have to offer so that we can work together to solve some big problems," she said. China to enhance cooperation with Cambodia: Xi Updated: 2016-06-03 19:48 By AN BAIJIE(chinadaily.com.cn) China would like to enhance cooperation with Cambodia in areas including production capacity, investment, agriculture, and infrastructure, President Xi Jinping said on Friday. The two countries should speed up signing the cooperative documents on Belt and Road initiatives proposed by China, and enhance people-to-people exchanges to benefit Cambodian people, Xi told visiting Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni. Leaders of the two countries should keep communicating with each other, Xi said, adding that the two sides should enhance a strategic dialogue. China cherishes their special friendship with the Cambodian royal family, and attaches great importance to developing the relationship with Cambodia, and supports Cambodia to develop in accordance with the country's situation, Xi said. Sihamoni is paying a two-day state visit to China on Friday and Saturday. Sihamoni said that China is a great friend of Cambodia. The Cambodian side speaks highly of the friendship with China, which is cultivated by generations of leaders of two countries, he said. The Cambodian king expressed gratitude to China's long-term support and help, and he agreed with President Xi's proposal of deepening Cambodia-China relations. Manila urged to return to negotiating table over S. China Sea dispute Updated: 2016-06-03 20:18 (Xinhua) BEIJING, June 3 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese scholar on Thursday urged the Philippines to engage in bilateral talks with China to resolve their South China Sea dispute as its incoming administration expressed willingness to bring the maritime issues back to the negotiating table. The attitude of the Philippines' new administration over the handling of the South China Sea dispute could serve as a start for seeking a bilateral solution to relevant issues, Zhou Yongsheng, professor with China Foreign Affairs University, told Xinhua in an interview. On Tuesday, Perfecto Yasay, the Philippines' incoming foreign minister, stressed the new administration's willingness to pursue bilateral talks with China to resolve their dispute in the South China Sea. On a separate occasion, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who was on a visit to Canada, expressed China's welcome if Manila sincerely wants to come back to the track of dialogue and negotiations. The positive signals sent by the two sides could be used to help bring the South China Sea dispute back to the negotiating table, said Zhou. He urged Manila to withdraw its unilaterally-initiated arbitration at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague regarding the South China Sea row. Neither does the tribunal have the right to hear the case nor exercise jurisdiction, said the expert on Asia affairs. He illustrated his view by citing a declaration China made in 2006, which excludes a compulsory arbitration under the Article 298 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The invalid arbitration case, which was brought up by outgoing President Benigno Aquino in 2013, has stirred up tensions in the South China Sea, in the Philippines' bid to cooperate with Washington's Asia-rebalancing strategy. Aimed at building closer ties with the United States and Japan, Aquino's "tricks" by seeking arbitration over the maritime dispute have not helped solve the South China Sea row, but added risks to regional peace and security, Zhou said. In contrast to the Aquino administration's reluctance to engage in dialogue with Beijing, the Philippines' incoming president Rodrigo Duterte has said on several occasions that he wanted to cultivate friendly relations with China, and confirmed that he was open to direct talks over the row in the South China Sea. Duterte's policies are more open and pragmatic than those of his predecessor, Zhou said. "Such kind of policies should be welcome," the scholar said. As dialogue and negotiations are conducive to breaking the deadlock in Manila-Beijing relations, the professor suggested that the two sides step up engagement so as to resolve their dispute through dialogue as soon as possible. China, Russia vow to boost military ties Updated: 2016-06-03 23:45 (Xinhua) SINGAPORE -- Admiral Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, met with Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov here Friday and the two sides pledged to step up military cooperation. Sun, who met Antonov on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, said that the two countries have seen a sound development trend in military cooperation, as the overall relations between the two sides are running well. He said the two sides are both facing with a more complicated international security situation and closer mutual cooperation is in need. Antonov praised the effective cooperation between the two defense ministries and expressed the willingness to join hands with China in the fight against security threats including terrorism. Antonov also vowed to deepen the mutual military cooperation under the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. He said the Russian military is keen to launch more joint maritime drills and anti-terror exercises with the Chinese side. The 15th Shangri-La Dialogue, an Asia-Pacific defense and security summit, runs here from Friday to Sunday. Sun, on the sidelines of the dialogue, met on Friday with defense ministers, military chiefs and high-ranking defense officials from countries including Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and Brunei. Countries at key forum support properly tackling maritime issue Updated: 2016-06-03 23:52 By ZHANG YUNBI in SINGAPORE(chinadaily.com.cn) Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, shakes hands with Nguyen Chi Vinh, Vietnams deputy minister of national defense, ahead of their meeting in Singapore on Friday. By Zhang Yunbi / China Daily Senior defense officials attending a high-profile security forum echoed China's call for nations to properly tackle disputes in the South China Sea while maintaining peace and stability. One of the officials, Nguyen Chi Vinh, Vietnam's deputy minister of national defense, said his country "warmly welcomes" Chinese warships to visit one of its harbors and is ready to boost cooperation between the two countries' coast guards. He made the remarks on the sidelines of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, which opened in Singapore on Friday. Experts said the move will improve interaction for regional security and help ease tensions. Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, elaborated on the country's position on the South China Sea while meeting with senior defense officials from other countries. The Vietnamese deputy defense minister told Sun that visiting Chinese vessels are welcome to conduct joint drills with the Vietnamese Navy in humanitarian relief and maritime search and rescue programs. Although he did not name the harbor, experts said it might be Cam Ranh Bay in southern Vietnam, a key stronghold that received two Japanese warships on May 29. Jia Duqiang, a researcher of Southeast Asian studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said Vietnam is "sending a positive signal" amid lingering tension in the South China Sea. It is meant as "a gesture to ease a confrontational situation and expel China's doubts", Jia said. The recent tension, fueled by an international arbitration case filed by the Philippines against China over the South China Sea issue, "has prompted some countries, including Vietnam, to rethink", he said. "As arbitration serves no good purpose in resolving the issue and maintaining peace, it is necessary for countries to return to the negotiating table," Jia said. Indonesian Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu told Sun that the South China Sea is a "common home" for all countries in the region, and they should jointly secure regional security. Ryacudu said disputes over maritime sovereignty should be resolved gradually, taking into consideration many factors, such as the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, UN charters and historical backgrounds. New Zealand Defense Minister Gerry Brownlee said all parties involved should boost dialogue and communication, seek common ground and properly tackle disputes. Mark Binskin, chief of the Australian Defence Force, said both Australia and China are committed to ensuring regional prosperity and development, and Australia is ready to maintain dialogue and communication with China. Zhang Junshe, a senior researcher at the PLA Naval Military Studies Research Institute and a delegate attending the dialogue, said the talks on Friday show widespread support for direct dialogue and negotiation by countries directly involved to solve their disputes, which Zhang said is the "only correct and feasible way". 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. Deputy minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology Tran Viet Thanh said that intellectual property (IP) was an unlimited resource and the result of peoples innovation, unlike limited resources such as labour, capital and land. Photo tuoitre.vn HCM CITY Protection of intellectual property will be an essential factor to further innovation and economic growth of the country, an official with the Ministry of Science and Technology has said. Speaking at the International Innovation Business Forum held in HCM City yesterday, deputy minister Tran Viet Thanh said that intellectual property (IP) was an unlimited resource and the result of peoples innovation, unlike limited resources such as labour, capital and land. Protection and trading of IP rights would bring great benefits not only to businesses but to the entire economy, he said. The role of IP is critical as Viet Nam integrates more deeply in the global economy. Thanh said that IP would be a decisive factor in strengthening the competitive capacity of enterprises as well as the entire economy. Around 1,500 patents, 15,000 industrial designs and 160,000 trademarks of businesses in Viet Nam are protected currently. By trading their own intellectual property, businesses could recoup their expenses for creating, developing and protecting IP, and, at the same time, increase IP value, Thanh said. He noted that foreign organisations had recognised the value of several Vietnamese companies intangible assets. For example, the Vinamilk brand last year was valued at US$1.1 billion, accounting for 22 per cent of the companys wealth. The Viettel brand was valued at $580 million and Vinhomes at $343 million. A recent survey by the ministry showed that in the 2000-14 period there was an increase in the number of intellectual asset licenses among businesses in Viet Nam, he said. The number of Vietnamese intellectual assets transferred to foreign investors was also on the increase, with sales in 2014 rising by 20 times over the figure in 2006. Sales of intellectual property mainly occur in industries such as pharmaceutical, pharmaceutical chemistry, processing, food preservation, garment and textile, engine manufacturing, electrical equipment and medical equipment. The entry of foreign investors from South Korea, the US, China, Thailand, Japan and other countries had contributed to the promotion of commercialisation of intangible property of Vietnamese firms, he said. Lai Tien Manh, director of Mibrand Viet Nam, noted that brands were the most important intellectual asset of a business. Products with a good brand name can command prices 10 times higher than one with a weak brand, even though the product may be similar, he said. Total brand value in Viet Nam, however, remains very low compared to other countries. The total value of the countrys 50 leading brands is only $5.5 billion, slightly higher than a Singaporean brand (BBS bank valued at $4.4 billion), he said. Many local firms had not protected their intellectual property, he said. Without IP protection, a companys investment in research and development, product differentiation, and marketing could be stolen or copied. He said that Vietnamese companies should focus on improving their brand value and become more aware of intellectual property rights. The Government should also develop a legal framework that allows adding a companys brand value to its total asset value, he said. Thanh said that the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement would set high standards on intellectual property protection. But the enforcement of such regulations would be a challenge for many Vietnamese firms, he added. In the long run, however, better protection of intellectual property is expected to provide stronger incentives for businesses to invest in creative industries that Viet Nam is seeking to develop, Thanh said. The forum was organised by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Business Association of High-Quality Vietnamese Goods, Business Studies and Assistance Centre, and Leading Business Club. - VNS On the occasion of the Swedish National Day, 6 June, Viet Nam News presents an article written by Camilla Mellander, Swedish Ambassador to Viet Nam. Sweden, Viet Nam to promote bilateral relations Swedes all over the world celebrate the Swedish National Day on June 6. On this occasion, allow me to share a few highlights of the Swedish-Vietnamese relations as well as on Swedens position in the international arena. Today, we face new emerging challenges and conflicts are more complex and multidimensional. Managing these requires multifaceted solutions. Swedens candidacy for the UN Security Council for the period 2017- 2018 is an expression of our readiness to take responsibility for promoting peace, security and sustainable development in the world. More than 80,000 Swedish women and men have served in UN peacekeeping operations, we are the number one per capita donor to the Green Climate Fund, the sixth largest donor to the UN globally and our development assistance exceeds 1 per cent of our Gross National Income. We are the sixth largest provider of assessed and voluntary contributions to the UN. We act in solidarity, stand for transparency, talk with countries rather than about countries, and maintain a proud tradition of giving refuge to those in need. Sweden is also a very innovative country found at the top of global innovation indexes year after year. Sweden is the birthplace of many successful companies such as ABB, Electrolux, Tetra Pak, AstraZeneca, SKF, Volvo, Ericsson and IKEA. More recent innovations are Skype, Spotify and Bluetooth and we are also big in the gaming sector with well-known games such as Minecraft and Candy Crush Saga. Swedish products are known for long lasting, excellent quality and for low life-cycle cost. Around 60 Swedish companies are already well-established here, but we see a new surge of interest from Swedish companies that are now looking at Viet Nam, from big multinational to medium and small-sized enterprises. The Embassy together with Business Sweden is working actively to support those entering or expanding into the Vietnamese market, and the EU-Viet Nam Free Trade Agreement entering into force in 2018 will open up further trade opportunities. Sweden is the country of the Nobel prize and has a proud history of academic research and excellence. I am happy to see that the number of bright and talented Vietnamese students studying in Sweden is increasing. In Sweden you are not only able to study in English but also encouraged to think critically and outside the box. University teachers encourage students to seek new perspectives and come up with new solutions. This Sunday (June 5) will be World Environment Day. For all countries the crucial question is how to balance economic growth with environmental sustainability and how to protect the quality of air, land and water. Sweden has a very good international reputation for innovative and sustainable solutions in the environmental field. As a way to inspire environmental solutions, the Embassy of Sweden this year launched a nationwide Smart Water Innovation Contest. The aim was to motivate Vietnamese students in higher education to take on sustainable development and climate change challenges and to come up with water related innovations. We received many good proposals and identified a winning team which will be awarded with a trip to Sweden to attend the World Water Week in Stockholm in August this year. Sweden is also one of the world leaders in gender equality and the Swedish government is promoting a feminist foreign policy to see to that women have equal representation, the same resources and the same rights. Many chairs of Swedish municipalities, country councils, businesses and NGOs are women, as well as around 50 per cent of the members of Swedish government and parliament. My term as ambassador of Sweden to Viet Nam is coming to an end this summer. It has been an honor for me to serve in Viet Nam and its been four very rewarding years. We have achieved great results and have deepened our bilateral relationship significantly. Im very happy to see the increased interest from Swedish companies looking at Viet Nam and I have witnessed a remarkable transformation of the country. I have come to know many Vietnamese friends and partners from government agencies, institutions, universities, private sector, art scene and civil society. I have also travelled extensively and fallen in love with the natural beauty of Viet Nam. I recently participated in an expedition to the Son oong cave and this place is the probably the most unique and beautiful place on earth. I sincerely hope the Vietnamese government will save Son oong cave for generations to come. Sweden will remain as Viet Nams close friend and partner. Thank you! --VNS by Gia Loc For a brief moment, I thought Id been transported to the majestic Big Sur Highway in California: stunning scenery, shimmering blue water, a rugged, rocky coastline and pristine beaches as far as the eye could see. But we were a world away from that famed stretch of highway. Together with business colleagues, my husband, daughter and I were travelling by car on a 500km-long trip from HCM City to our destination: the resort city of Nha Trang in south-central Khanh Hoa Province. We had hit the road at 6:30am sharp in HCM City to ensure that there was enough daylight for our planned detours along the way, which included well-trodden tourist sites as well as unspoiled landscapes. All of us were already familiar with well-developed Nha Trang, known internationally for its lively atmosphere full of restaurants, bars and beach life. So we were eager to visit nearby Ninh Thuan Province, one of the driest areas of the country with long hours of sunshine. We had heard that the province had remained largely untouched and that it had world-class coastal scenery. After hours of driving and a few stops along the way, we finally reached the 106-km Ninth Thuan Coastal Road, which opened to traffic just last year. The road, which winds through the Chua Mountain range, is bordered by majestic forested hills on the left and long stretches of sandy beaches on the right. Local authorities had decided to build the road, which links the provinces Thuan Bac District bordering Khanh Hoa and Thuan Nam District in Binh Thuan, to take advantage of the tourism potential of the area. In recent years, the number of tourists in Ninh Thuan has risen annually by 16 per cent. Last year, more than 1.4 million tourists visited. As we passed by salt fields in Thuan Nam District, we decided to stop at orchards to sample the areas grapes, which had a lovely sweet and sour flavour. Along both sides of the road in the district, we noticed fields of sheep. Our city children, who had never seen the animals, were so fascinated that they did not want to return to our car. The farmers explained to us that the fleece of the sheep was not sufficiently white and thick to use as wool, so the animals were raised for meat. The sheep fields became famous after being included the film Dau Chan Du Muc aired on VTV3 channel in 2014. The film featured the nomadic people who sometimes live in the province. As we drove along the coastal road, we were astonished by the breathtaking beauty of the area and the luminous green and yellow colours of the trees on the mountain range. On this section of the road we stopped at the Rai (Otter) caves, Binh Tien beach and Binh Hung Island, all highly photogenic sites. Home to otters, the Rai caves are small openings along the rocky coastline. Many large rocks of different shapes and sizes, worn smooth for hundreds of thousands of years by sea waves, surround the caves. Nearby are coral reefs under the transparent blue sea. When we arrived at the caves at noon, we had unfortunately missed the sunrise, which is said to turn the sea and rocks an otherworldly red colour. Our friend, Pham Nguyen Quang Duy of HCM City, who loves this area, had told us about Ninh Thuan before our trip. He had travelled by motorbike to the area even before the coastal road was built. He recommended that on a future trip we stay at Binh Hung Island, a serene place off the coast known for its delicious seafood. The regions beauty has become more well-known in recent years, with many actors and actresses coming here, especially to the Rai caves, Binh Tien beaches and sheep fields, to take wedding photos. Duy and his wife still cherish their memories of their visit. We came here, too, for our wedding photos. How wonderful they are! VNS QUANG NAM A humble village by the seashore at Tam Ky City in central province of Quang Nam will become full of art in June, with wall paintings as part of the Korea Foundation Community Art Exchange Programme. The Korea Foundation has introduced wall paintings to Viet Nam in an effort to contribute to life with art and culture in the international community, joining forces with the UN-Habitat Vietnam which has helped Viet Nams cities develop sustainable urban environments. Thus, they co-hosted a workshop in Ha Noi on community art with over one hundred participants in September 2015. Experts on community art and urban development from the country and Korea got together to share ideas, experiences, and expertise to find ways of implementing community art in Vietnam. Tam Ky will implement a community art exchange programme with Korea to develop eco-cultural tourism at Tam Thanh Commune, which is known for its beautiful beach and Song am Lake. Tam Thanh is also well-known as a source of fish for local residents. Along with the wall painting project at Tam Thanh, Tam Ky Peoples Committee plans to renovate the embankment road from the beach to Tam Thanh Village as part of its efforts to develop eco-cultural tourism. Between April 11 and 13, 2016, a joint team composed of Korean experts in community art and officers of the Tam Ky Peoples Committee conducted field research to investigate the condition of walls and house surfaces and to make a master plan. They have concluded that Tam Ky PC will have the surfaces cleaned in May, because having a clean wall is a prerequisite to painting it and preserving the painting. After that a group of Korean artists and college students will assemble with Vietnamese counterparts to draw and paint in accordance with the master plan in June. The people of the village will be asked to take part in the cleaning and painting of walls. Concurrently, photographers from Korea, the Philippines and Turkey will visit Tam Ky to take photos of Tam Thanhs beautiful scenery and create a visual record of the wall painting process. Photographers will also visit Hoi An and My Son Sanctuary in Quang Nam Province. Their photographs will be exhibited in Seoul, Korea and other international cities later this year. Wall paintings contribute to the promotion of tourism by attracting people to the community and making the people of the community satisfied and proud to be surrounded with art. Its hoped that the project will reinforce coherence and identity in the community through their efforts to create community art. VNS Last week, Viet Nam News asked readers what they want to learn about Viet Nam if they visit the country on a short trip, as well as what they have learned about Viet Nam if they have stayed here longer. We also would like to know which they prefer: self-exploring Viet Nams features through homestays with locals and learning Vietnamese in order to read literary works in their original language, or learning via translated literary works and by attending cultural events conducted in foreign languages. Here are some of the comments: Pim Verweij, Dutch My name is Pim, Im from the Netherlands and currently live in Viet Nam to study tieng Viet (Vietnamese). Three years ago, I lived with the local Hmong community in the villages near Sa Pa to conduct research for my masters study. Im a cultural anthropologist and have a great passion for Northern Viet Nam. When I visited the country for the first time in 2006, I immediately fell in love with the former French hill station called Sa Pa. The combination of the green valleys, the fresh air and the rich cultural variety of the ethnic groups attracted me very much. After my first visit, I kept returning to Sa Pa every time I got the chance. And during the time of my masters research I was very lucky to stay with a local Hmong family for a period of three months. They welcomed me into their village as if I were a son of the family. Never before had I felt so at home outside my own country. They were proud to show me how to cook traditional food (including the famous Sa Pa black chicken!) and how to pay respect to their ancestors. I also learned a lot about traditional herbal medicines and local farming techniques. The lives of the ethnic minorities in the mountains have been unchanged for many generations, but now, since the area is opening up to tourism, everything is changing quickly. For my research, I looked at these changes and how it affects the daily lives of the locals. I tried to observe these changes through the eyes of the local people, to see how they experience the daily influx of tourists to their village. What are the benefits of tourism for the village and are there any side effects? My time with the local Hmong family was a time Ill never forget. Since then, I am happy to visit the family every time Im in Viet Nam. One important reason why I am currently studying tieng Viet in Ha Noi is that I would like to talk with locals without experiencing a huge language barrier. Around Sa Pa, some locals speak English (they learned from the tourists), but how interesting it would be to speak in Vietnamese with them! But until then, there is still a long way to go... Andrew Burden, Canadian, Ha Noi Viet Nam is like an iceberg where you can only see a little above the surface. With your long, interesting and unique history, a good local guide is essential. I am endlessly fascinated whenever I turn off a main road into an alley. I would love access to an English-speaking professor, a graduate student or a high level IELTS student who could explain the nuances of Vietnamese culture. Quality, educated tourists could exchange ideas and making lifelong bonds. Im planning an extended motorbike victory tour across Viet Nam during my last year here. I will visit a honey farm, a coffee farm and stay in ethnic homestays. I do not need pricey, pushy or greedy travel agents. I know that if there were a regional office in each provincial government co-ordinated by a local university (business management department), quality tourists could meet and enjoy a life-changing experience. Combining social media with a checklist of interests, you will find a perfect match. I have read for years about the worsening problem of sea saltwater encroaching into the Mekong rice fields and, ironically, the closing of sea salt factories. High-end tourists are older, educated and worldly. Tap into this niche market to encourage their attendance. Learn from them about business, marketing and perhaps discover new methods to fight climate change. Invite me back in 10 years. Seng Hour, Cambodian If I am a visitor on a short trip to Viet Nam, I would like to learn about famous foods and cultural heritage. I would love to self-explore more than attending cultural events, because it looks more fun and creates a lot of good memories for me and local people. Yusup Solihin, Indonesian If Im a visitor on a short trip to Viet Nam, I would like to learn about culture, language and traditional food of Viet Nam. And I think it would be really nice if I could live in the house of a local citizen, accompanied by a friend who is fluent in English to serve as a mediator between me and the host. Then Id like to go shopping to the traditional market, eat local cuisine cooked at home and learn daily phrases in Vietnamese language. But other than being directly involved in the community, I think it would be necessary to learn more about Viet Nam via translated literary works and by attending cultural events conducted in foreign languages. Nara Kwan, Thai There are many things that I would like to learn from Viet Nam. The first is culture. I think that Viet Nam is a country that has a long history, so there are many interesting cultures, architecture, ancient arts and more. I really like all of these things because they are of great value and grandeur. The second is tourist attractions. There are interesting places in Viet Nam that are both natural and cultural tourist attractions. As for natural attractions, I am interested in Ha Long Bay, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. As for cultural tourist attractions, I like Hoan Kiem Lake, Ho Chi Minh Museum and Hoi An ancient city because I would like to learn about the history of these places. The last is food in Viet Nam. I love food prepared with many vegetables, and in Viet Nam, many kinds of food are healthy. So I would especially like to learn how to cook Vietnamese food. VNS Deputy Prime Miniser Trinh inh Dung meets with Malaysian PM Najib Razak in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Photo VGP KUA LUMPUR Deputy Prime Miniser Trinh inh Dung held bilateral talks with Malaysian PM Najib Razak, World Economic Forum (WEF) Managing Director Philipp Roesler, and Asian Development Bank (ADB) Vice President Stephen Groff in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. At the meeting with the Malaysian Prime Minister on Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister Dung lauded developments between the two nations, especially after they established strategic partnership relation in August 2015. Dung expects the two nations functional agencies will work closely to launch specific programmes to deepen their relations and to realise agreements reached by the two nations leaders. He suggested Malaysia co-operate with Viet Nam in the labour sector and facilitate Vietnamese citizens lives in Malaysia. He proposed co-operating and advocating for each other at multilateral forums. He thanked Malaysia for supporting Viet Nams candidacy as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council in the 2020-2021 period. The Malaysian prime minister said he will encourage Malaysian investors to pour more investment money into Viet Nam. At a meeting with WEF Managing Director Philipp Roesler on the same day, Deputy Prime Minister Dung thanked WEF leaders for their support and assistance in accelerating Viet Nams initiatives to organise the WEF Conference on the Mekong Region in Viet Nam. It is the first time the nations along the Mekong River will co-operate with WEF to hold a regional conference, creating opportunities and prospects for further co-operation. He suggested WEF consider the possibility of organising a WEF-ASEAN Conference in Viet Nam by 2018. Philipp Roesler expressed hope that Viet Nam will actively join new initiatives of WEF so it can become a connection between the global business community and Viet Nam. At the reception, ADB Vice President Stephen Groff and Deputy Prime Minister Dung affirmed that the Vietnamese Government always ensures the effective use of Official Development Assistance (ODA) for national socio-economic development. He proposed ADB continue its ODA provision in the coming years, to help Viet Nam realise its economic restructuring, industrialisation and modernisation goals. Besides infrastructure development projects, the Deputy PM asked ADB to support Viet Nam to promote Public-Private-Partnership model, climate change adaptation, economic restructuring, environmental protection and social welfare projects. ADB is completing a national strategy in Viet Nam, focusing on technical assistance and human resources, said Stephen Groff, adding that ADB expects to increase capital commitments for Viet Nam in the future. VNS HA NOI Politburo member and permanent member of the Party Central Committees Secretariat inh The Huynh asked the Japanese Ambassador to Viet Nam to continue working closely with Vietnamese agencies and localities to strengthen multifaceted cooperation between the two countries. During his reception for Ambassador Hiroshi Fukada in Ha Noi yesterday, the Vietnamese official highly valued Japan for its provision of official development assistance (ODA) for Viet Nam in recent times, affirming that Viet Nam considers Japan as its important and long-term partner. He said he hopes the two nations will promote efforts to effectively implement agreements signed between their leaders, especially those reached during General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trongs official visit to Japan in September last year. Viet Nam and Japan should enhance political trust through maintaining regular high-level visits and meetings, while improving the efficiency of bilateral cooperation mechanisms, boosting economic links and fostering coordination at regional and global forums, Huynh said. For his part, Hiroshi Fukada expressed his joy at the fine development of the Viet Nam-Japan intensive strategic partnership, stressing that the Japanese Government attaches special importance to relations with Viet Nam. He hoped to further forge bilateral ties, particularly links between the Communist Party of Viet Nam and Japanese parties. VNA HA NOI Ministries of Finance, Industry and Trade have announced the number of administrative procedures they expect to remove or simplify this year as part of their efforts in realising the Governments Resolution 19 about improving the business climate. Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh said that by the end of the year, the ministry would remove ten administrative procedures imposed by central Government. Another 19 procedures imposed by local governments at the provincial level and two procedures imposed by the central Government would be simplified. The procedures are in fields that include heavy industry, business competition management, issuance of licences for the liquor trade, liquor production, trade of tobacco and materials, tobacco production, industrial explosives and materials for explosive production. Head of the ministrys Planning Department Vu Ba Phu said that 32 new legal normative documents relating to administration were proposed last year. Such new documents led to the addition of 82 new administrative procedures, the amendment of 32 procedures and the removal of 51 relating to the industry and trade sector. Phu said that changes to administrative procedures also helped in compliance with new laws such as Law on Investment and Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents. All the changes would be public by the end of this month. Minister Tuan Anh also urged relevant agencies to establish a system to receive feedback from citizens and businesses on issues of administration via the Internet. The ministry would also speed up receiving and delivering administrative documents through online channels or by post rather than time consuming face-to-face transactions. Meanwhile, Minister of Finance inh Tien Dung also approved the ministrys action plan to implement the Governments Resolution 19 on improving the business climate. The plan concentrates on measures for further administrative reforms, particularly in taxation and customs, information and technology; and increase in transparency and accountability. The ministry planned to reduce the total time for tax payment to 110 hours per year by 2020, time for customs clearance on exported goods to less than 36 hours and imported goods to less than 41 hours. The tax sector reduced the total time for tax payment to 117 hours last year or 50 hours lower than that of 2014. VNS The Vietnam News Agency (VNA) and Turkeys Anadolu Agency (AA) inked a new co-operation agreement on information exchange in Ha Noi yesterday. VNA/VNS Photo HA NOI The Vietnam News Agency (VNA) and Turkeys Anadolu Agency (AA) inked a new co-operation agreement on information exchange in Ha Noi yesterday. The agreement, which replaces the 2007 co-operation agreement, was signed by VNA deputy general director Le Duy Truyen and his AA counterpart Mustafa Ozkaya, in the presence of Turkish Ambassador to Viet Nam Akif Ayhan. Under the document, the two sides will increase sharing photos and exchanging TV news, aside from the existing exchange of English-language stories, to meet the growing demand for news updates in their respective nations. Speaking at the talks prior to the signing, Truyen said the enhanced news exchange will help the two agencies diversify stories and report objectively on regional and international issues, along with their countries domestic affairs. He added that VNA has continually strived to provide neutral information in a timely manner, in conformity with Viet Nams foreign policy of being a friend, a reliable partner and a responsible member in the international community. Mustafa Ozkaya said VNA is a large and important partner of his agency in Southeast Asia. He also thanked VNA for supporting AA during activities of the Organisation of AsiaPacific News Agencies. Founded in April 1920, AA currently has about 3,000 employees, as well as representative offices in 86 countries. It provides some 2,200 news stories and 1,900 photos for Turkish and foreign press outlets every day. VNS Scene of a bus accident in Lao that killed eight Vietnamese guest workers and injured three others on board early yesterday morning. Photo zing.vn QUANG BINH Deputy Prime Minister Truong Hoa Binh has asked related agencies to investigate a bus accident in Lao that killed eight Vietnamese guest workers and injured three others on board early yesterday morning. Deputy PM Binh, who is also head of the National Committee on Traffic Safety, requested the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Vietnamese Embassy in Laos to work closely to provide assistance to the victims and repatriate the deceased. He demanded an urgent investigation by the transport ministry and local authorities of the central provinces of Quang Binh and Nghe An towards bus operators that run bus services between the provinces and Lao localities. He emphasised that prompt reviews on current cross-border traffic regulations and keeping bus operators updated with those regulations would be necessary to reduce similar traffic accidents. Early yesterday morning, a bus bearing Laos license plates exploded and caught fire while en route to Viet Nam, killing and injuring eleven Vietnamese, 15km from central Quang Binh Province. According to officials at the provinces Cha Lo Border Gate, a blast and ensuing blaze had taken place at around 4am, incinerating the vehicle. The bus reportedly departed from Laos Khamouane Province, heading to central Nghe An Province in Viet Nam. The bus was driven by the Khanh on bus operator from Nghe An, the head of the provinces Nghi Loc District Police, Major Nguyen Trong Tue, confirmed. Tue told Viet Nam News Agency that the deceased were residents of Nghe An Provinces Dien Chau and Nghi Loc districts, who were guest workers in Lao and on the way home. Three injured people were transferred from Lao to Nghe Ans 115 Hospital for emergency medical care. Senior Lt. Col. Ha Trong Viet, head of Cha Lo border guards said the accident scene investigation showed that the 36-seat bus was loaded with wooden beams and fire crackers. He suspected the blast had been caused by the crackers and sparked the fire on board later. Pham inh Tu, 28, a victim, said the rear part of the vehicle was full of timber. I woke up and found the timber beams on my injured body until I was rescued by someone else, he said. Tu added that the blast had woken him up. The bus driver and his assistant were unharmed but fled the scene. They were later apprehended in Khamouane for questioning. Related agencies in Nghe An Province have managed to establish contact with and provide support to the families of the victims. VNS HA NOI Many workers have not been able to access healthy and nutritious meals at their workplaces, causing massive food poisoning. In the meantime, enterprises have shown little interest in improving the situation. Figures from the Ministry of Health showed that on average, 17 food poisoning incidents occurred in the canteens of industrial and export processing zones annually since 2010, forcing thousands of workers to be hospitalised for treatment. The country is home to 256 industrial and export processing zones, creating jobs for over three million people. In the first quarter of the year, eight food poisonings have been reported. The latest case was on April 21, when more than 300 workers of Minh Hung-Korea Industrial Park in southern Binh Phuoc Province were taken to hospital after they fell ill with food poisoning symptoms. Most of the food poisoning happened when enterprises hire an outside business to cook meals for their workers. Up to 70 per cent of the total cases were from poor-quality food supplied by private businesses that prepared meals for workers. Vu Quang Tho, director of Viet Nam General Confederation of Labours Workers and Trade Union Institute said that few enterprises cared about the quality of workplace meals. Most hired a business to cook meals for their workers and ignored the origin and safety of the food provided. Some even paid money, usually a small amount of VN10,000 (US$0.4) for workers to go and eat lunch elsewhere. In the meantime, many businesses purchased poor-quality and substandard meat and vegetables at low cost to prepare meals. Phan Minh Ly, a worker at Bac Giang Industrial Zone, where a large-scale food poisoning occurred two months ago and put 60 workers to hospital, said that she, as well as other workers, were so worried about the quality of the food they ate everyday. However, they did not know how to resolve the situation. Ly said many workers tried to leave jobs or go on strike, but it made little difference as enterprises would hire replacement workers. Ly said they really hoped that the enterprises trade unions would organise a team to cook meals for them and manage the origin of the food they consume. Tran Ngoc Tu, head of Ha Nois Department of Food Safety and Hygiene, said that there was a high risk of food poisoning at industrial zones as the transport of substandard food from other cities and provinces to the capital city remained complicated while enterprises paid little attention and money on workers meals. According to experts, it is necessary to improve the awareness of both enterprises and workers to increase the quality of workplace meals. Trade unions need to take responsibility for the preparation of meals for workers and managing the quality of food to ensure its safety. Workers should care about their health, they said. In fact, many enterprises considered increasing the value of meals for workers, but taking that amount from their salaries. Obviously, workers refused this proposal and accepted the lower value meals, which fail to meet good standards. -- VNS HA NOI The municipal Peoples Committee chairman, Nguyen uc Chung, has ordered the establishment of five inter-sector inspection teams on food safety and hygiene. The teams will conduct unscheduled inspections on workshops which process, manufacture, import and sell food, food for special health use, ingredients, and additives, as well as food packages. Each team is in charge of six districts. The inspections will continue until the end of this year. The citys Department of Industry and Trade, Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and Health Department have been assigned to manage the inspections. The hotline numbers of these departments are 043.7757.277 (Health Department), 190.0585.826 (Department of Industry and Trade) and 043.3800.115 (Department of Agriculture and Rural Development). The municipal Peoples Committee chairman asked inspectors to immediately suspend violators and report them to relevant authorised agencies to determine penalties. In case of criminal offences, reports must be sent to the police for further investigation. According to new criminal code, which will come into effect shortly on July 1, the use of banned substances in animal husbandry will face harsher punishment of up to VN200 million (US$8,900) or a jail term from one to 20 years. Leading officials of the concerned departments and the municipal Peoples Committee will be regularly apprised of the inspection results. Ensuring food safety and hygiene is one of the primary targets of the Ha Noi authority following the outflow of contaminated food discovered in the city and across the country recently. As of May 31 this year, the citys Department of Agriculture and Rural Development presented food safety certificates to 264 business bases of agriculture, forestry and aquaculture products. Last month, as part of the citys efforts to provide safe food to residents, the safe farm produce market at 489 Hoang Quoc Viet, Ha Noi, was launched. The market is open from Friday to Sunday in the second and the last weeks of each month. VNS HA NOI Two 220kV-electric poles, which were built with concrete mixed with soil, in Vu Ban District of the northern province of Nam inh will be demolished, the Song a Stock Company 11 said. A few days ago, Viet Nam News had reported that a case of cheating was discovered in the companys construction section. At a meeting held yesterday, the companys deputy general director, Pham Lap, admitted the wrongdoings in the construction section and announced strict punishments would be given to six employees connected with the incident. After evaluating the results of the concrete quality tests, we confirmed that the peoples accusation of cheating was completely right, Lap said. We have given strict punishment to the staff that indulged in the cheating, he added. Lap said the wrongdoing was very serious and it had badly affected to companys reputation and the lives of thousands of employees. The loss caused by the cheating will be compensated by the employees who were directly involved, he said. Subsequently, Nguyen Van Toan and Nguyen Van uong, heads of the construction section, were suspended from their posts. Complaints were also lodged against two leaders of the Nam inh branch of the Song a Company for loose supervision and management of the construction. Meanwhile, Vu Ngoc Hoi, one of the people who had denounced the cheating in public, was given an apology and thanked by the company. Earlier, Hoi had been accused to making up the story to take revenge against some people in the companys construction section. VNS There will be no government funding for Adanis $21.7-billion coal mine project, Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Friday as he sought to assure a protester in fish costume that he took climate change "as seriously as you". Turnbull made these remarks during an election campaign in South Australia. An environmental protester dressed as a clown fish from animated movie Finding Nemo asked him to commit to no public funding for Indian mining firm Adani's controversial project. "Adani's plan to build one of the world's biggest coal mines in Australia has been hampered time and again. A federal court in August last year had revoked the original approval due to environmental concerns. In October last year, the project got a new lease of life after the Australian government gave its re-approval. An email to Adani on Friday did not get any response. Analysts said the prime ministers statement was a major policy shift by the Australian government as until now it had been looking at all sorts of angles to get financial support to the proposal, including the idea of the A$117-billion Future Fund stepping in. A$ is Australian dollar. Adanis pivot into Australian solar project development is looking like a clear insight into how they are going to react. At least with the solar projects, they will have a multi-decade tax holiday in Australia, given they will probably end up having to write off their entire A$1.3-billion ($940 million) investment in Adani Mining Australia profit and loss to-date. This would have a major impact on shareholder equity of the listed Adani Enterprises Ltd, which stood at $2.03 billion on March 31, given Adani Mining Australia represents 46 per cent of the net book value of equity of the entire group, said Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). The admission from the minister that Adani's proposed Carmichael coal mine project will receive no government money removes one of the final remote funding options for the beleaguered project, he said. Buckley said Adani Enterprises remained relatively heavily geared, with net debt of $2.6 billion representing 1.3 times book value of shareholders equity. And taking into account the 2015 accounts filed with Australian authorities, Adani Mining Australia Pty is entirely debt-funded and is operating with negative shareholder funds. Hence, financial leverage remains an insurmountable barrier to develop the Carmichael coal proposal. Adani appears to have no capacity to undertake the high risk A$10-billion Carmichael coal proposal, particularly since the company is now well underway on its new $5-10-billion solar investment programme in India and abroad," said Buckley. Apart from Adani, GVK group and Lanco group are also stuck after buying coal mines in Australia. The Adani group had said they would go ahead with the Australian project to supply cheap coal to Indian power stations. At the same time, Coal Indias production has touched a record high to provide coal to Indian power plants. Besides, with coal-based power plants now shutting down due to high pollution in the developed world, the future of coal mines look uncertain. In its quest to build a global empire, has turned to the West Asia for its biggest infusion of cash from a single investor. When a US guided missile destroyer sailed within 12 nautical miles of a Chinese-claimed island in the disputed South China Sea last month, it set off a volley of protests from Beijing. "The US is challenging and provoking the new maritime order by wielding its military power," Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said. China's defense ministry said it would bolster its capabilities in the area as needed. The resumption of US "freedom of navigation operations" in the South China Sea - with three since October after a three-year hiatus - reflects the global focus on a ... Burkina Faso police have arrested six "foreigners" suspected of being behind jihadist attacks in January that left 30 people dead, the government and police has said. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed it was behind an assault on a top hotel and a cafe, both popular with foreigners, which also left 70 people wounded. "Six individuals of foreign nationalities were arrested on Monday May 30 in Ougadougou," the national police said in a statement. These people are believed to have "sheltered and aided the perpetrators of the attack in Ougadougou, and worked with the ringleader of the attacks (who is) still being tracked down". Burkina's Minister of Internal Security, Simon Compaore, told reporters the arrests were made thanks to intelligence shared by other West African security forces. Security forces have already detained a 38-year-old local man in connection with the attacks on the four-star Hotel Splendid and the nearby Cappuccino cafe. Until this year, Burkina Faso had largely avoided the attacks and hostage-taking by jihadist groups that have wracked other Sahel countries since 2008. Yesterday, unidentified gunmen killed three police officers in northern Burkina Faso near the Malian border -- the second attack on a police station near the frontier in less than a fortnight. The day after the January attacks, an elderly Australian couple were kidnapped in the north of the country where they had lived for more than four decades. The woman, Jocelyn Elliot, was released in early February, but her 82-year-old husband Kenneth Elliot is still being held. Keep connected with Sky News Australias live audio simulcast on iHeartRadio with direct access to breaking news and Australias award-winning journalists and commentators. If you've missed your favourite Sky News show on Foxtel or would prefer to catch up in a podcast, a selection of programming is available here or on your favourite podcast app. WATERLOO The family of longtime Waterloo barber and business owner Joe Squiers Sr. will hold a candlelight vigil at 8 tonight in the parking lot of the College of Hair Design, 722 Water St. Squiers, 73, was hospitalized after suffering a brain hemorrhage Tuesday at the college, which he had owned for many years before selling it to a daughter several years ago, son-in-law Kent Larsen said. Larsen said the family took Squiers off life support at Covenant Medical Center Thursday night. Past and present students of the college will hold the vigil in honor of Squiers years of service to the barber industry. WATERLOO The Waterloo Municipal Band, under the direction of Bill Shepherd, will celebrate its 90th season with a concert at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the RiverLoop Amphitheatre downtown. The2016 season includes a series of free concerts every Thursday throughout June and July. A childrens march and free Tootsie Pops are handed out at the concerts. In the case of rain, the concert will be moved inside the Waterloo Center for the Arts. For more information, go to www.waterlooband.org. CEDAR FALLS Fire Chief John Schilling is leaving Cedar Falls to become fire chief at a similar-sized city in the Chicago suburbs. Schilling, Cedar Falls fire chief since January 2009, is resigning effective June 23 to become fire chief at Carpentersville, Ill., a city of almost 37,000 people in Kane County. Its a fantastic opportunity for my family and my career, Schilling said. He has a sister who lives in Wisconsin 50 minutes away, his wife has family in the area and he still has friends there from his youth, having grown up in third though 10th grades in the northern suburbs. This fulfills my career aspirations and meets my family needs, Schilling said. He aspires to be involved in city government at a directors level and, as a fire department, continually reduce the incidence of fire and be involved in public education and provide emergency medical services. Thats my background. The Cedar Falls Fire Department has not provided ambulance service for more than 30 years. Those services are provided through Sartori Memorial Hospital. Hes been a good fire chief, and we hate to see him leave, said Public Safety Director Jeff Olson, also the citys police chief. He noted Schilling has been extensively involved in an overhaul of Black Hawk Countys public safety radio communication system with Black Hawk County Sheriff Tony Thompson. Well have to pick up that job on this end. Thats pretty important. Olson said city department heads will meet this week to discuss filling Schillings position. Olson and interim City Administrator Ron Gaines will meet with Fire Department battalion chiefs and union members seeking their ideas. No interim chief has been named, and the permanent hiring would have to go through Civil Service procedures. Under city code, a fire chief is recommended for appointment by the director of public safety services to the city administrator, and by the city administrator to the mayor for City Council approval. Schilling, with nearly 30 years in the fire safety profession, came to Cedar Falls from Ankeny, where he had worked for a decade as deputy chief and interim chief for a time. He had previously worked eight years as a lieutenant in the Eufala Fire Department in Eufala, Ala. WATERLOO The court is reconsidering the release of a Waterloo man pending trial on charges he killed his father in 2015. Rashod Develt Aldridge, 28, was arrested in April 2015 for second-degree murder in the stabbing death of Roosevelt Aldridge, and he was released without having to post bond about two months later and placed under the supervision of pretrial services, a program of the Department of Correctional Services. Since that time, he crashed a SUV into a residential porch in April 2016 and meandered into a cordoned-off crime scene a month later. Rashod Aldridges run-ins with authorities one of which resulted in a misdemeanor arrest for interference and providing a false name spurred prosecutors to ask the court to impose a $25,000 bond and GPS monitoring for Aldridge to remain free. We feel pretrial supervision is not working the best for the defendant at this time, Assistant Black Hawk County Attorney Israel Kodiaga said Thursday during a hearing. Defense attorney Ted Fisher said Aldridge isnt a flight risk and explained his recent encounters with law enforcement. He said the collision occurred when Aldridge lost consciousness because of medication he was taking for a seizure disorder. And Aldridge, who also suffers from an intellectual disability, simply didnt know any better when he crossed into the crime scene at a Franklin Street convenience store where a violent shooting had happened hours earlier, Fisher said. He doesnt know what crime scene tape is, said Fisher, who called the incident a freak occurrence. He said Aldridge was simply trying to buy gas at the store, and when police started yelling at him, he panicked and gave a fake name that was similar to his own. Fisher also noted Aldridge is already on GPS monitoring, and corrections officials havent filed any violations since his release. Judge Joel Dalrymple asked pretrial services officials to provide a report on Aldridge before making a decision on the matter. When Aldridge was first arrested in April 2015, bond was set at $500,000, and corrections officials twice recommended he not be released to pretrial supervision. Judge Richard Stochl ordered his release from jail in June 2015 because of concerns over treatments for sickle cell anemia, Fisher said. WATERLOO The owner of a Waterloo home that is the latest target of the citys chronic nuisance property ordinance has told the police chief she intends to address his concerns. Last week, the city cited Marlene Luloff of Sumner because of numerous complaints many of them for loud music and disorderly conduct centering on the home at 337 S. Hackett Road, which served as the finish line for a November vehicle chase that included a police shooting. The nuisance citation came after Luloff failed to respond to Public Safety Director Daniel Trelkas request for an abatement plan. After the citation was issued, Luloff responded, Trelka said Thursday. Trelka said he received a letter apologizing for the late response and indicating Luloff had talked to her son-in-law who lives at the address about keeping the noise down. Trelka said he will wait to see if that solves the problem. Under the ordinance, if the property owner is found guilty in court, the city can collect a $100 judgment, and police can bill $50 per officer per hour spent handling future nuisance-type calls at the address. The city has cited about 20 or 30 properties since the ordinance passed in 2013. In November, Brandon Seeley, a friend of a resident at the Hackett Street home, drove to the home during a lengthy chase with authorities. Officers had attempted to stop Seeley in downtown Waterloo as part of a drug investigation, he allegedly drove at a plainclothes officer who was on foot on Wellington Street. The officer fired, injuring Seeley, who then fled to Hackett Street where he ran into the garage and was Tasered. Trelka said that incident counted as one of the required three nuisance calls under the ordinance. More typical complaints regarding the address involve loud music, Trelka said. He said it appears the resident installs car stereos in the garage and cranks up the radio to test his work. FAYETTE Upper Iowa University recently recognized longtime Fayette residents Bill and Sue Dohrmann during ceremonies at Robertson Woods Field in Fayette. Former Fayette Mayor Bill Dohrmann and his wife, Sue, have long served the community and have been supporters of Upper Iowa University. For many years, the avid Peacock fans have allowed Upper Iowa to use a piece of their Fayette property as a portion of Robertson Woods Field. Recently, the Dohrmanns donated the land on which left field is located to the university. The longtime Fayette residents also donated six additional acres of property to the west of Robertson Woods Field. This area will be developed into single family housing, benefiting the Fayette community for years to come. In honor of the couples generosity to UIU and further commitment to the community, UIU has renamed the left field line at Robertson Woods Field Dohrmann Alley. WAVERLY The two Democrats vying for the party nomination for Iowa House District 63 squared off in a forum in Waverly Thursday evening. Eric Stromberg, a substitute teacher in Waverly, and Teresa Meyer, a registered nurse, are vying to unseat two-term incumbent Rep. Sandy Salmon of Janesville. Both candidates expressed frustration and disappointment over Salmons position in the House Education Committee as school funding has dropped. Our state government is failing to protect education, Meyer said. Stromberg noted Salmon has said she has educational experience, but that experience was home schooling her children. Stromberg said theres nothing wrong with home schooling, but it doesnt qualify someone to guide education issues in the state. She does not understand the problems that face our (school) districts, Stromberg said. He added Salmon tried to influence science standards to include religion-based theories. We severly do incalculable damage to our students, to our reputation, to our communities if we allowed that, Stromberg said. Meyer identified medical marijuana and living wages as two of her other key campaign issues. We have people suffering from cancer and debilitating illnesses, and Iowa doesnt recognize marijuana as a medicine, she said. Stromberg said he also would support a minimum wage increase, pointing at minimums passed in Iowa, including in Johnson and Polk counties. The state is ready for this, he said. Its been decades. Meyer touted her public experience on the Hawkeye Community College board of trustees and helping other candidates campaign over the years. That is such a beautiful moment when you talk to the people face-to-face, Meyer said. Stromberg said while he has some catching up to do on door knocking, Meyer lost handily in her 2014 campaign against Salmon. It was a Republican wave, but Sandy did beat Teresa by more than 2,000 votes, he said. Meyer attributed that to low voter turnout. People didnt show up to vote, and that was across the country, she said. People feel their government doesnt represent them. Stromberg said one of his main goals would be to reverse the privatization of Iowa Medicaid programs. It didnt need to be completely overhauled, he said. Meyer added she would work to provide property tax relief by closing state corporate tax loopholes. People are being taxed out of their homes, she said. Meyer further distinguished herself from Stromberg, saying she supports abortion rights for women. Stromberg said abortion goes against his religious views but wouldnt work to reverse what he called settled law. Stromberg cautioned the district leans conservative. Its not an issue thats going to move voters into the Democrats camp, he said. Meyer said it should not be a political issue at all. These social issues do not need to be discussed at the government level, she said. Its a waste of time and taxpayer money. The two are on the June 7 ballot for the Democratic nomination to face Salmon in the November general election. WATERLOO -- Democratic 1st District congressional candidate Monica Vernon scored a new endorsement, just days before the June 7 primary. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund announced Friday their endorsement of Vernon's bid for the Democratic nod. "Monica is a strong leader who will be a champion for Iowa's hardworking women and families in Congress. Monica will continue to stand up for Planned Parenthood and fight for women's health, access to birth control, and protecting reproductive rights," said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. The group did not endorse during the 2014 primary election, where Vernon, a former Cedar Rapids City Council member, and her primary opponent Pat Murphy were in a five-way contest. Murphy, who is her sole primary opponent in this year's contest, won the 2014 primary and secured the group's endorsement in the general election. Both Vernon and Murphy, a long-time state legislator from Dubuque, are hoping to take on first-term incumbent U.S. Rep. Rod Blum, R-1st District, in this year's general election. Vernon said she was "proud" to have the support of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. She has regularly criticized Murphy for his past anti-abortion stances, though he now is an abortion rights supporter. Murphy has also talked about his years working on women's health issues while at the state Capitol, noting that during that time Vernon was a registered Republican. She became a Democrat in 2009. WATERLOO The community is welcome at the Mutt Hutt dog and cat boarding open house planned for 3 to 7 p.m. June 9 at 1136 W. Airline Highway. The Mutt Hutt is situated on the same campus as the Cedar Bend Humane Society. There will be refreshments for pets and people. The community is encouraged to bring along furry friends. The facility features indoor and outdoor climate-controlled private suites and a variety of services and amenities. The facility can accommodate 32 dogs and has a separate, quiet area for feline guests. Proceeds from Mutt Hutt will support animals at the humane society. WATERLOO The Liberty Park Neighborhood will have an association meeting at 6:30 p.m. June 7 at Unity Presbyterian Church, 1149 Hammond Ave. Guest speaker will be Waterloo At-Large City Councilman Steve Schmitt. Those who attend the meeting can take part in a raffle for Irish Fest tickets. The Liberty Park Creative Sale will be from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. June 18 with several vendors selling a variety of things. For information on becoming a vendor, email galatians518@gmail.com. A neighborhood cleanup will be from 9 a.m. to noon July 9. All residents will be allowed to bring one truckload of junk to the park to be put in provided refuse containers for disposal. CEDAR FALLS A union local representing some Cedar Falls Utilities employees and CFU have made a donation for a security camera for the Freedom Rock after it was vandalized last weekend. Also, Cedar Falls Public Safety Director Jeff Olson said a reward is being offered for information leading to the apprehension of suspects responsible for the vandalism. Those interested in contributing to a reward fund may call 268-5139. The 175-member Cedar Falls Fraternal Order of Eagles lodge donated $1,000 to start the fund. A lot of our members are veterans, and theres a lot of mad people about this, said Eagles member Gary Klodt, a retired Cedar Falls firefighter. Then, of all times, to have it happen over Memorial Day. AFSCME Local 3576, which represents about 70 CFU workers, is donating a security camera to monitor the rock near Veterans Park along Waterloo Road. The donation was being planned prior to the vandalism. The rock, a CFU utility box and a nearby residential property were spray painted on Memorial Day weekend. City crews removed the paint from the rock, and Freedom Rock artist Ray Bubba Sorensen II plans to touch up the rock while working on another project in Conrad in nearby Grundy County. The Black Hawk County Freedom Rock bears the likenesses of Waterloos five Sullivan brothers killed during World War II; quad-amputee Cedar Falls sailor Taylor Morris, wounded in Afghanistan in 2012; and Robert Hibbs, a U.S. Army officer killed in Vietnam in 1966 and posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. It is one of a series of rocks Sorensen hopes to locate in each of Iowas 99 counties. INDEPENDENCE Up to 10 jobs at the Independence Mental Health Institute will be cut by the states decision to close a 15-bed unit at the facility, a state Department of Human Services spokeswoman said Friday. But an Iowa union leader and a former congressman said the larger issue is the loss of services to troubled adolescents. Layoff notices were issued Thursday to 10 state staff members at the 15-bed Psychiatric Medical Institution for Children Unit. DHS public information officer Amy McCoy said some affected staff may transfer to other positions based on their contract rights and qualifications. McCoy said the closure will not impact acute psychiatric services for adults or children and adolescents. There are no patients being served in the PMIC unit, which has seen a 50 percent reduction in utilization over the past 5 years and had only 26 admissions in the 2015 fiscal year, she noted. In addition, there are no children in the MHIs Acute Inpatient Unit needing placement in the PMIC unit, which was established in 1999. We understand that this is a difficult time for our staff that provided quality care to PMIC patients, and we thank them for their dedicated service, McCoy said in regard to the layoff notices. Despite McCoys statements, Waterloo attorney and former U.S. Rep. Dave Nagle, who represented displaced workers at the now-closed Iowa Juvenile Home in Toledo, said Friday this most recent move only compounds the problem of providing acute psychiatric care to youths. I wish now theyd have have kept the Iowa Juvenile Home open, because that facility would have handled kids in an acute condition that needed stabilization and long-term care, Nagle said. That decision is now coming back to haunt us. This is a tragic, tragic decision, Nagle said of the Independence MHI cutback, which he said will further burden the limited number of pediatric psychiatric care beds locally and in the state, potentially forcing those youths out of state for care. Regarding McCoys statements about under-utilization of the PMIC unit, Nagle the need is there and suggested the beds are under-utilized because patients simply arent being admitted. Its a self-fulfilling prophecy resulting from a very bad decision, he said. The pending closure is due to the fact no state funding was recommended for the PMIC unit in the 2017 fiscal year that begins July 1, McCoy noted. There was no appropriation for continued operation of a unit that received a combination of state general fund dollars and federal Medicaid payments. Nagle suggested Gov. Terry Branstad would have vetoed the funding even if it had been included in the budget. Half the employees affected are members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Yeah we lost five jobs; another five jobs, AFSCME Council 61 President Dan Homan told the Courier. But the said thing is, what about the people and the kids that need the services? This unit was created to provide treatment to a particular age group of young adolescents that were struggling, Homan said, suggesting admissions rules were tightened. Apparently this governor and the lieutenant governor (Kim Reynolds) and the director of DHS (Charles Palmer) dont believe we have any troubled kids in the state of Iowa that need that kind of treatment. Just as when he closed the Iowa Juvenile Home and the MHIs in Clarinda and Mount Pleasant, this governor has shown he really does not care about mental health treatment in this state, Homan said. The average cost at a private psychiatric medical institution for children is about $215 per day, McCoy said, while the average cost at Independence was more than $1,000 per day. Closing the unit would save about $820,000 in the coming fiscal year, she added. McCoy also noted community providers in Iowa currently offer more than 475 comprehensive, licensed PMIC beds and 385 of those receive Medicaid funding for mental health services. Branstads administration previously closed state-run mental health institutions in Clarinda and Mount Pleasant with a stated goal of providing better services in a more modern setting. Courier News Editor Pat Kinney contributed to this report. Bernie Sanders is playing a selfish, dangerous game. He has no chance of winning the Democratic nomination none, zero, zilch. Yet he persists in attacking Hillary Clinton, and his supporters threaten to disrupt the Democratic convention in a way that can have only one effect: helping elect Donald Trump president. Does he want that to be his legacy? Apparently he doesnt care. Sanders ego has swelled to Trumpian proportions, and he has rejected numerous and increasingly desperate appeals from senior Democrats to recognize reality and back off. Sanders and his wife, Jane, we are told, feel disrespected by party leaders and have somehow decided Clinton and the Democrats are his real enemy, not Trump and the Republicans. The New York Times recently reported his strategy was aimed at inflicting a heavy blow on Hillary Clinton before the end of the primaries. Even if Sanders doesnt win the nomination, he would arrive at the Philadelphia convention with maximum political power. Tad Devine, a senior Sanders strategist, told the Times the candidate was not thinking about the damage he was inflicting on Clinton. The only thing that matters is what happens between now and June 14, he said. We have to put the blinders on. Exactly. Blinders is the right word. Team Sanders is so consumed by its own self-righteousness it has become one of Trumps top assets. And Republicans are ecstatic. Just to acknowledge the obvious, veteran GOP strategist Ed Rogers wrote in The Washington Post, Clinton and the Democratic ticket become weaker the longer Sanders stays in the race. Trump himself understands how useful Sanders has become, taunting in a tweet Bernie Sanders is being treated very badly by the Democrats the system is rigged against him. Many of his disenfranchised fans are for me! In the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal survey, Clintons favorable rating among Democrats has dropped from 84 percent last June to 65 percent; her negatives have jumped from 7 percent to 21 percent. Just 66 percent of Sanders supporters say they will back Clinton against Trump. Sure, Clintons missteps have aggravated her problems; and sure, those numbers will change once shes nominated. But Sanders is not losing gracefully. He is planting seeds of long-term grievance, particularly among younger voters, calling Clinton the lesser of two evils and arguing somehow the system is rigged and she is stealing the nomination unfairly. That is false. Sanders claims to be a pillar of integrity, but hes deceiving his supporters. Clinton has won fair and square. She has 3 million more votes and 271 more elected delegates 766 more, when superdelegates are included. Sanders has been deeply deceitful in another way as well. He has promised his followers a leftist revolution that was never, ever going to happen. He set them up for the bitterness and disappointment that is now infecting their ranks. He is the liberal version of the tea party, which told conservatives if they were sent to Washington, they would change the basic nature of the capital, repealing Obamacare, curtailing abortion and heralding a new conservative era. That was a lie from the beginning. With a Democrat in the White House, the tea party agenda stood no chance of ever being achieved. But the resulting frustration in Republican circles helped drive Speaker John Boehner and his chief deputy Eric Cantor into premature retirement. Sanders is fomenting the same kind of frustration among his supporters. They have been promised a Fantasy Land of liberal proposals that stand no chance of passage none in modern America. This is a center-right country. In 2012 exit polls, only 25 percent of voters identified as liberals (35 percent identified as conservatives, and 41 percent as moderates). Ted Cruz was flat-out wrong to say Republicans have failed to win the White House because their candidates were not conservative enough. And Sanders is just as misguided to say what the Democrats need is a more purist liberal as their standard bearer. Sanders animosity toward Clinton would not matter so much if she were running against an extreme conservative like Cruz, or even a conventional Republican like Mitt Romney. Geography and demography heavily favor the Democrats, who have won the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. But Clinton is running against Trump. Trump is different. Trump is unpredictable. Trump can shuffle the deck and scramble expectations. 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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. 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You can test drive various casinos completely risk-free, so you can feel confident about your choice before you make a single penny deposit. Jun 3, 2016 | By Tess What do dogs, cats, ponies, penguins, and parrots have in common? Well, they are all species of animals that have benefited from 3D printing technologies in some way or another. The technology has been used by resourceful and determined veterinarians who are able to use additive manufacturing to create custom fitted and functional prosthetics, often helping to give the injured animals a higher quality of life. Most recently, a team from the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Illinois was able to perform a complicated orthopedic surgery on the nations official animal, the bald eagle, thanks to a 3D printed prosthetic bone. The bald eagle in question was brought to the Wildlife Medical Clinic in May after having been shot by a gun a few months earlier. The gunshot had severely damaged the eagles humerus, which had then healed out of alignment, inhibiting the bird of prey from properly flying. Fortunately, the injured bird was left in the hands of one Dr. R. Avery Bennett, a well respected and accomplished avian surgeon who was confident he could realign the shattered bone with the help of some 3D printed models. Before the surgery could take place, CT scans of the eagle had to be processed, a task which was done by veterinary radiologist Dr. Stephen Joslyn, who analyzed the data remotely from Australia. The shattered bone then had to be made into a 3D printable file, which was done by medical illustrator Janet Sinn-Hanlon, who was able to thicken and link certain parts of the shattered humerus. In the end, two version of the eagles bone were to be printed, the injured model, and the good model (the right humerus), which would serve as a point of comparison. For the printing itself, the team of vets partnered with the University of Illinois College of Engineering. The process, however, did pose on challenge, as the 3D printer that was to be used to make the bones was fully booked the day before the surgery was to take place. Fortunately, Ralf Moller, the director of technical services at the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, arranged to have the bones printed overnight to be ready in time for the surgery. In the end, the eagle bones were sent to the labs 3D printer just after 5pm and finished printing just before midnight, a process which was supervised by undergraduate student Nick Ragano. The surgery itself, which took place on May 5th was a success, as with the 3D printed models of the broken and healthy bones, Dr. Bennett was able to properly align and set the eagles humerus. The eagle is currently recovering and the hope is that the bird will once more, fly like an eagle. Ralf Moller and Nick Ragano This is not the first time that the College of Veterinary Medicine and the University of Illinois Rapid Prototyping Lab have collaborated, as the lab has 3D printed a number of teaching models for the vets in training as well as other bone models to help as surgical guides. Posted in 3D Printing Application Maybe you also like: Annette Kryske, wrote at 6/4/2016 11:06:53 PM:How lucky some of our animals today are with people like Ralph & Nick helping to use their knowledge to save many animals who are in need of assistance. Bless you both for your hard work. Jun 3, 2016 | By Alec 2015 was a wild ride for Carbon, a young startup from Redwood City, California, and it looks like 2016 wont be any different. They burst onto the scene with their extremely fast and high quality CLIP resin 3D printing technology after a TedTalk in March 2015, and quickly began working with a number of industrial partners. And following the release of their commercial Carbon M1 3D printer this spring, more and more industrial partners are set to benefit from CLIP technology. One of the first to adopt this commercial CLIP M1 3D printing platform is automotive part developers Delphi, who has just revealed that they have begun using the M1 to develop functional prototypes and small end-use batches. Its just the latest success story for Carbon, which will doubtlessly be followed by a lot more. Even before the release of the M1, their technology was adopted by Hollywood special effects company Legacy Effects and Ford to 3D print parts and props, as well as by Kodak and Johnson & Johnson. The M1 3D printer will doubtlessly continue this trend, as it fills a perfect niche in the 3D printing market for its excellent speed (100 faster than some competitors) and the high quality surface finish and mechanical properties of its creations. Delphi is now experiencing this for themselves. A high-end developer that specializes in the creation of safer, greener, and connected components and integrated systems for the global automotive industry, it sees 3D printing as a solution for modern design environments and increasing demands. The company has actually been using 3D printing for a variety of prototyping tasks for years, and initially adopted the Carbon M1 3D printer as another prototyping tool. But as they revealed, the sheer making power of the M1 is changing their whole development process since first receiving a model in the fall of 2015. As Delphis manager of additive manufacturing development Jerry Rhinehart explained, they discovered that the M1s excellent results enabled them to start 3D printing functional prototypes for the first time. Rhineharts team typically designs prototypes for electrical connectors, grommets, housings and a lot more similar parts, and has been working with additive manufacturing for two decades already. This new M1design application gives them, Rhinehart explained, a fantastic opportunity to meet the demands of a modern design environment. With the product development timelines tightening constantly, designers in the automotive industry are in desperate need for time-saving opportunities that quickly achieve the desired results. Were excited to expand our work with the M1 to functional prototyping something we havent been able to do until now and to explore new manufacturing opportunities as a whole, Rhinehart said. While the M1s speed is refreshing, Rhinehart and his team are especially pleased with the component quality it produces. Its all about the materials and mechanical properties that we can achieve with Carbons technology. Traditional materials only provided about 50 percent of the mechanical properties we need to produce functional and final parts. Were currently using the M1 on a project to install a batch of connectors and other electrical components into a 25-car fleet this June for road and validation tests, he says. As it turns out, 3D printing is a perfect option for these kinds of parts. Electrical connectors are particularly interesting for their intricate geometric shapes that require extensive product design to incorporate all primary and secondary locking mechanisms. These parts are also exposed to engagement and disengagement retention forces. Previously, layered 3D printed structures were not at all suitable for these components, but CLIPs high resolution results are. Whats more, prototype revision can be done at lightening speeds as well. The promising results of these initial tests has already convinced Delphi to start exploring the possibilities of 3D printed low-volume batches, that can be marketed towards small businesses unwilling to fund injection molding. Thanks to Carbons engineering-grade materials, they feel that the economics of part production can be completely altered through the 3D printing of end-use parts. Engineers can start to re-design parts from the ground up without being constrained by the design rules associated with traditional manufacturing technologies. They can consider lighter weight parts using internal mesh structures, single assembly parts that will better address sealing needs and reduce overall complexity of product assembly, and ultimately decrease part and product failure modes because of this new design freedom, Rhinehart said. Carbon, finally, added that they are thrilled to work together with Delphi and use their M1 3D printer to uncover new manufacturing opportunities across the automotive industry. Posted in 3D Printing Application Maybe you also like: Jun 3, 2016 | By Alec The 3D printing revolution has been expanding at an incredible speed, and the technology is quickly being adopted by innovative makers from the far corners of the world. But perhaps the biggest testimony to the incredible impact of 3D printing technology, is that it has now even reached North Korea. Technology is traditionally slow to reach the almost completely sealed-off communist state; even the internet is only available to a handful of users. That makes it extra remarkable that reporters have caught a glimpse of a 3D printer being advertised by a North Korean university during a trade show in Pyongyang. To clarify, no 3D printer was actually spotted during the event. Instead, the booth of the Pyongyang Machinery and Technology Exchange was simply using a brochure to advertise the product. Footage of the brochure and 3D printer was captured by the DPRK 360 project, an initiative to capture the many aspects of North Korean life through interactive virtual tours, videos and photography. Set up by Singapore-based photographer Aram Pan, it offers a remarkable view of life in the worlds most unusual state. But this wasnt just any 3D printer. As you can see in the image above, the brochure displayed a 3D printer model that bears an uncanny resemblance to the first generation MakerBot Replicator 3D printer. The shape, color (down to the black trim) and body seem to be completely identical; even the MakerBot three-pronged M logo is visible. In fact, only the MakerBot name is absent. This obviously casts a shadow of doubt over the legitimacy of the advert, which also doesnt mention where the 3D printer is made. The accompanying text describes the functionality of the 3D printer. This equipment divides a 3D digital copy of an object into many different layers and later structures the layers in a designated order to produce three dimensional solid objects. This equipment is used for producing precise casts or molds, the advert reads, further indicating that it can make objects with a minimum resolution of 0.1 mm. It even claims it can reduce certain production costs by 30 percent. According to the DPRK 360, the staff at the booth argued that their technological venture is related to the Pyongyang University of Mechanical Engineering. In North Korea, university professors are sometimes hired to share their technical expertise, but research is rarely commercialized. But this is changing. University professors with relevant expertise love getting pulled over to companies to consult (either on language or something technical) as it is a chance to earn decent money. The Academy of Sciences is trying to set up an incubator to start new companies to develop marketable products. The Choson Exchange is trying to support them in that effort, explained Andray Abrahamian from the Choson Exchange, a Singapore-based non-profit that has been training North Korean entrepreneurs since 2009. Whats more, it is claimed that this 3D printer is not the only one in use in North Korea. The Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a private university in Pyongyang, also supposedly has one in operation. PUST has a 3D printer used in the R&D center to make prototypes such as a solar lamp, PUST Chancellor Chan-Mo Park told NK News. As North Korea has been bogged down by industrial setback, it could certainly benefit from the small scale production opportunities offered by 3D printing. Posted in 3D Printer Maybe you also like: Jun 3, 2016 | By Alec Mountain biking is fantastic, but exposes bikes and riders to a lot of wear and tear. Especially if youre using a standard bike that doesnt fit your size perfectly, you and your mountain bike could be in for a nasty surprise. Fortunately, UK-based startup Robot Bike has found an solution. Drawing inspiration from aerospace 3D printing applications, they are now offering completely bespoke R160 mountain bikes that incorporate carbon fiber tubes and 3D printed titanium lugs that can be completely customized to fit you. The company even goes as far as arguing that these are the best mountain bike frames possible. Of course, while custom mountain bikes do exist, they are typically reserved for professional athletes. Additionally, all carbon fiber mountain bike frames have been produced with mold casting, and can cost thousands. Fortunately, the Robot Bike team might have found a cheaper and more accurate solution. Founded in 2013 by veteran mountain bikers Ben Farmer, Ed Haythornthwaite, Andy Hawkins and Ben Robarts-Arnold, they have teamed up with renowned suspension designers Dave Weagle to offer a completely bespoke digital manufacturing alternative. While the R160 isnt cheap either, Robot Bike has essentially set up a digital production line for full-suspension R160 mountain bikes that are lightweight and completely customized to match your shape and riding preferences. We use cutting edge manufacturing technologies because we know how and when to best apply them. Our design & engineering is grounded in years of experience in the cutting edge world of aerospace, F1 and automotive, and our DW6 suspension design has been developed and tailored in partnership with Dave Weagle to provide the ultimate suspension, they say. With an aggressive geometry and 27.5 wheels, the company says that the R160 has been purposefully designed for steep and technical terrain, but can also be perfectly used for all-day rides and climbs. The unique DW6 suspension system plays a key part in this versatility. The progressive leverage ratio provides the suppleness you need for grip at the start of the travel, support in the middle, and a bottomless feeling at the end for when youre really pushing things, perfect no matter what situation you find yourself in, says the company. The R160 is as efficient as they come. The R160 also features a 12x142mm rear axle and a top quality threaded bottom bracket. Talking of threads, apart from the bottom bracket ones you wont find a single thread anywhere else on the titanium parts of the frame. Weve seen too many frames written off by damaged threads, so all of ours are easily replaceable should that ever be required, says the company. But most importantly, each and every bike has been custom-made for the rider. As company founder Ed Haythornthwaite explained, this service grew out of a frustration with the relatively limited selection of size options, despite the fact that top-level materials are being used. If you are trying to produce the very best frame it makes no sense to then only offer it in a small number of sizes when the people you are selling it to come in all shapes and sizes. Think of Robot Bike Co. as the Savile Row of the bike world, he said. To enable that custom service, clients provide the British startup with their measurements and details about the type of riding they intend to do. To make things easier, a database with hundreds of geometric possibilities has already been set up, with an algorithm selecting the perfect fit for you. While it would normally take months to complete tooling, retooling and testing, the Robot Bikes method can be completed in just an hour or so by completely removing molds from the equation. The precise angles of the final lugs determine the custom geometry of each and every bike. The lug designs themselves have been optimized by simulation specialists Altair. The selected lugs are subsequently 3D printed in aerospace grade Ti6Al4V titanium using Selective Laser Melting technology by 3D printing specialists HiETA a UK company that offers commercial laser metal 3D printing services. The 3D printers themselves have been developed by local partners Renishaw, and the Robot Bike team argues that their hardware ensures an optimal mechanical performance for all parts. Our double lap pi joint design is made possible by this manufacturing process, along with the ability to make every lug set bespoke to order, they say. The same technology is also currently being used by Airbus, Boeing, GE and Rolls-Royce for critical aerospace parts. The final bespoke lugs are not only very lightweight, but also use a minimal number of components without compromising performance. Carbon fiber tubes are cut to size to fit the lugs, with the final carbon/titanium frame weighing just around 29 lb (13 kg), depending on the special preferences. Additive manufacturing literally opened up a whole new playing field for us. Without this advancement in technology we simply wouldnt have been able to create such a high performance custom frame, said Haythornthwaite. Aside from allowing us to create custom frames the AM process also gives us a distinct advantage when it comes to product development and reacting to new trends and standards, as we arent constrained by expensive tooling. The final designs should leave any mountain biking enthusiast drooling. But of course aerospace-quality bike frames dont come cheap. The R160 frame (not including wheels or other parts) will cost a massive 4,395 (about US$6,364) still cheaper than conventionally made custom bikes. Posted in 3D Printing Application Maybe you also like: Robert J House wrote at 8/4/2016 10:34:12 AM:3 D printing will soon be 4 D from my understandings and research of the available programming about to hit the mainstream. My wonder is why are we not 3 D cutting diamonds yet if we are at aeronautical standards now?MJK wrote at 6/10/2016 7:20:20 AM:" with the final carbon/titanium frame weighing just around 29 lb (13 kg)"... Thats extremly heavy for a frame. I dont think its the frame alone, seems to be the complete bike. Frame weigth would be intresting.Richard wrote at 6/3/2016 9:02:00 AM:Since when was "HiETA the only UK company to offer commercial laser metal 3D printing services." ? The are a number of UK based AM metals providers such as 3TRPD, CRDM, Materialssolutions. Check your facts..... Governor Jerry Brown endorses Hillary Clinton plus other news you might have missed this week From $4.5 Billion to Nothing: Forbes Revises Estimated Net Worth Of Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes, Forbes Last year, Elizabeth Holmes topped the FORBES list of America's Richest Self-Made Women with a net worth of $4.5 billion. Today, FORBES is lowering our estimate of her net worth to nothing. Theranos had no comment. At such a low valuation, Holmes' stake is essentially worth nothing. Theranos investors own preferred shares, which means they get paid back before Holmes, who owns common stock.Read more. Governor Jerry Brown Endorses Hillary Clinton Before Primary, ABC 7 News California Gov. Jerry Brown is endorsing Hillary Clinton just a week before the state's June 7 primary.The governor says that while he's impressed with how well Bernie Sanders has done, he believes a Clinton candidacy is the only path forward for Democrats to win the presidency.Read more. Which Animal Can Swim Up Your Toilet?, BBC News A man in Thailand got a shock this week when he went to the toilet and a python sank its teeth into his penis. The python had slithered through the plumbing and up into his toilet. Stories of snakes navigating domestic plumbing are quite common, says Geoff Jacobs at Queensland Wildlife Solutions in Australia, who has run a snake-catching business in Brisbane for 20 years. Read more. Howard Johnson, 'The Best-Dressed Crossing Guard in Town,' Retires Today, Hoodline [rebelmouse-proxy-image https://media.rbl.ms/image?u=%2Fuploads%2Fstory%2Fimage%2F21686%2Fhowardjohnsonretires1.jpg&ho;=https%3A%2F%2Fhoodwork-production.s3.amazonaws.com&s;=407&h;=116a38596c2042099aaf0330b10b58ccee4e23edd0bb30d98a6acff4cbd4d899&size;=980x&c;=3510614069 pin_description="" caption="" image-library="0" expand="1" photo_credit="(Photo courtesy of Steve Bracco)"] (Photo courtesy of Steve Bracco) Today, after 16 years of helping schoolchildren and pedestrians cross the street safely for the San Francisco Unified School District, "the best-dressed crossing guard in town" is set to hang up his stop sign. Johnson has spent the past four years as the crossing guard for McKinley Elementary School, at 14th and Castro. Before that, he worked for 12 years as the crossing guard at Rosa Parks Elementary School in the Western Addition.Read more. Trump Tells California 'There Is No Drought', SF Gate Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told California voters Friday that he can solve their water crisis, declaring, "There is no drought." Speaking at a rally in Fresno, Calif., Trump accused state officials of denying water to Central Valley farmers so they can send it out to sea "to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish." The comments came a day after Trump outlined an energy policy plan that relies heavily on expanding U.S. fossil fuel exploration and reducing environmental regulations. Read more. A Whole New Emoji World for Facebook Messenger, AdWeek Messenger users can now choose from a group of skin colors, and a set of emojis for redheads is among the new offerings, as are female emojis representing things like police officers, runners, pedestrians, surfers and swimmers, with more to come. Facebook also announced in a post on the Messenger page that emojis for Messenger are now standardized, so they will display consistently and properly across Android, iOS or other platforms. Read more. Deep Yellow Limited (ASX:DYL) (OTCMKTS:DYLLF) (Namibian Stock Exchange:DYL) is a differentiated, advanced uranium exploration company, in predevelopment phase, implementing a contrarian strategy to grow shareholder wealth. This strategy is founded upon growing the existing uranium resources across the Company's uranium projects in Namibia and the pursuit of accretive, counter-cyclical acquisitions to build a global, geographically diverse asset portfolio. A PFS has recently been completed on its Tumas Project in Namibia and a DFS commenced February 2021. The Company's cornerstone suite of projects in Namibia is situated within a top-ranked African mining destination in a jurisdiction that has a long, well-regarded history of safely and effectively developing and regulating its considerable uranium mining industry. Company Secretary Appointment Perth, June 2, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - In accordance with ASX Listing Rule 3.16.1, Taruga Gold Limited ( ASX:TAR ) (the "Company") advises of Ms Sylvia Foong has been appointed joint company secretary. The Company advises Mr Daniel Smith will retain his position with the Company as joint company secretary alongside Ms Sylvia Foong. Ms Foong has a background in accounting and finance, and has experience in bookkeeping, corporate accounting, financial report preparation, and assisting with daily company secretariat duties. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce, and has completed the Governance Institute of Australia's Certificate of Governance Practice. About Taruga Minerals Limited Taruga Minerals Limited is a mineral exploration company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX:TAR) with a focus on acquiring and developing highly prospective Gold, Copper and precious metals exploration projects in Australia. Taruga's highly experienced management team led by Mr Mark Gasson and key advisors Ashanti Capital, has provided the Company with exposure to the exciting, under explored, High-Grade Flinders Copper-Gold-Silver Project on the margin of the Gawler Craton, South Australia. Taruga has an exclusive, 12-month option to acquire the Flinders Project from Strikeline Resources Pty Ltd. Completes US acquisition of TNZI voice business Sydney, June 3, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - The Board of Australian telecommunications provider MNF Group Limited ( ASX:MNF ) is pleased to announce that it has completed the US purchase of the global wholesale voice business of Telecom New Zealand International ("TNZI"). The purchase of the US based international voice business is now concluded following receipt of US government approvals. MNF Group paid AU$22.0m (NZ$22.4m) to purchase the global wholesale voice business of Telecom New Zealand International ("TNZI") from Spark New Zealand ( ASX:SPK ) on 23rd April 2015. About Symbio Holdings Limited Symbio Holdings Limited (ASX:SYM) is a software company changing the way the world communicates. Symbio's technology replaces old-fashioned telecom networks with software, making it faster and easier to deliver modern cloud-based communication services, unlocking endless new applications for calling, messaging and phone numbers. Symbio is the backbone for the global cloud communication industry. Over 500 service providers - from telecom start-ups to the world's biggest software companies - rely on Symbio for the connectivity, quality and expertise they need to solve complex communication challenges. Headquartered in Sydney, Symbio powers billions of calls and messages each year, owns networks in three countries and employs over 450 staff worldwide. For more information about Symbio visit www.symbio.global Lithium Exploration Update High Grade Lithium in Sampling Perth, June 3, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - The Directors of Venus Metals Corporation Limited ( ASX:VMC ) are pleased to announce that initial exploration on its lithium-tantalum project areas in Western Australia (Figure 1 in link below) has returned high-grade lithium results in surface sampling at Poona. 1.0 Introduction Venus Metals Corporation Limited ('Venus ' or 'Venus Metals') has now made applications over six strategic lithium-tantalum project areas in Western Australia - the Pilgangoora Northeast, Wodgina South & Tambourah projects in the Pilbara, the Nardoo project in the Capricorn, the Poona Project in the Murchison and the Greenbushes project in the Southwest of Western Australia. Recent exploration by Venus has highlighted the potential of these projects, with a significant number of pegmatite targets being identified at Pilgangoora and high-grade (>2% Li2O) assays being returned from samples at Poona. 2.0 Venus Metals Lithium-Tantalum Projects - Update Venus has recently completed initial reconnaissance work on several of its project areas. A summary of these activities is detailed below: 2.1 Pilgangoora Northeast Lithium-Tantalum Project, Pilbara Region The Pilgangoora Northeast Project (ELA 45/4630 & 4684) covers over 350 km2 and is located 72 km to the southeast of Port Headland in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The Project lies close to Pilbara Minerals Pilgangoora exploration area which hosts a substantial lithium-tantalum resource. In February 2016, Venus initiated a joint venture with Lithium Australia to explore both the Pilgangoora and Stannum projects for their commercial potential. Recent targeting and reconnaissance by Venus, through the Pilgangoora project area, shows the presence of extensive granitic and pegmatitic stratigraphy, in particular two large target areas in the vicinity of McPhees Range. These target areas show strong similarities to the lithium-tantalum mineralisation reported by Dakota Minerals Ltd at Lynas Find, to the northwest of the target area (Figure 2). Venus Metals is planning a program of helicopter-based mapping and sampling across these substantial target areas, in the coming weeks, to facilitate the identification of prospects for drill testing. 2.2 Tambourah Lithium Project, Pilbara Region. The Tambourah Project (ELA 45/4753) covers over 30 km2 and is located 160 km to the southeast of Port Headland in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The Project overlies recognised pegmatitic stratigraphy and the lithium-tantalum occurrence at Tambourah North. Venus looks forward to updating shareholders on exploration on this project area as the tenement moves towards grant in the coming months. 2.3 Poona Lithium Project, Murchison Region. The Poona project area now covers more than 249 km2 following the identification of further targets to the east of the original application area (ELA 20/885) and the subsequent application for a second lease - ELA 20/896 (Figure 3 in link below). The Poona is located in the Murchison Mineral Field, approximately 560 km to the north-northeast of Perth. The tenement overlies a number of known lithium and tantalum occurrences including Patons Lode and Poona Reward (Figure 3). Venus has recently completed a program of reconnaissance mapping and sampling in the region of Poona Reward. This exploration has outlined a northwest trending zone of mineralisation more than 1,000 metres long, extending through a number of the prospect areas, including Poona & Poona Reward (Figure 3 & 4 in link below). Sampling at Poona has confirmed the presence high-grade lithium mineralisation within the project area, associated with metasomatically altered pegmatites (Figure 5 & 6). Results returned from Poona (above 1% Lithium Oxide - Li2O) include: Sample P347B 6,999,168 N/ 542,701 E 2.01% Li2O & 1.54% Rubidium Sample P345B 6,999,124 N/ 542,634 E 1.21% Li2O & 1.31% Rubidium Sample P362A 6,998,702 N/ 543,436 E 1.08% Li2O & 1.08% Rubidium *A full tabulation of sample locations and results is included in Appendix A. These results confirm the data provided by previous explorers, while a wider sampling program covering both pegmatitic and basement stratigraphy. The primary Poona tenement (ELA 20/885) is scheduled to be granted in the coming weeks, following which a detailed program of geological mapping and sampling will be undertaken with a view to testing the extensive Poona Lithium Trend (Figure 3) and to highlight targets for drill testing. In addition Venus has identified additional targets to the east of the primary tenement area, and has applied for a new exploration licence (ELA 20/896). 2.4 Nardoo Lithium-Tantalum Project , Pilbara Region The Nardoo tenement (ELA 09/2156) covers over 131 km2 and is located in the Capricorn region of Western Australia. The Nardoo project overlies the historical Nardoo & Morrissey Hill workings, in a pelitic and gneissic terrain that has been extensively intruded by pegmatites, which host the tantalum-lithium mineralisation. The Nardoo tenement is scheduled to be granted in the coming weeks, and a program of reconnaissance geological mapping and sampling is in progress. 2.5 Greenbushes Lithium-Tantalum Project, Southwest Mineral Field Venus Metals Corporation Limited ('Venus Metals') has made applications for two strategic exploration licences in the Greenbushes region of Western Australia. These new applications cover an area of adjacent to, and east of, the world-class Greenbushes Lithium-Tantalum mine. The tenement areas contain outcropping pegmatitic stratigraphy, the host rock for lithium-tantalum mineralisation in the region. The region hosts Talison Lithium's world-class Greenbushes Lithium-Tantalum mine, with other tenement holders in region including Lithium Australia NL ( ASX:LIT ) and Metalicity ( ASX:MCT ) - Figure 6 in link below. Venus is presently undertaking a detailed study of the region and is in the process of acquiring the regional geophysical dataset to assist in targeting in this high prospective terrane. 3.0 Conclusion Exploration within a number of Venus Metal's Lithium project areas has now commenced. Reconnaissance exploration & studies have confirmed the presence of lithium-tantalum mineralisation within the project areas, with high-grade lithium assays (>2% Li2O having already been returned from reconnaissance sampling at Poona. Venus Metals continues to extend and add to its Lithium project portfolio and looks forward to updating shareholders as exploration continues within its project areas. To view tables and figures, please visit: http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/25M6VL6A About Venus Metals Corporation Limited Venus Metals Corporation Limited (ASX:VMC) is a West Australian based Company with a focus on gold, base metals, vanadium and lithium exploration projects. The Company aims to increase shareholder value through targeted exploration success on its projects. The Company's major gold project is the Youanmi Gold Mine, located 500km north-east of Perth. The Youanmi Gold Mine is now jointly owned by Venus Metals (30%) and Rox Resources Limited (70%); Indicated and Inferred Resource of the mine is in excess of 3 million ounces of gold. Altech generates interest at International Battery Fair Perth, June 3, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Altech Chemicals Limited (Altech/the Company) ( ASX:ATC ) is pleased to advise that it generated strong interest as an emerging high purity alumina HPA) producer during its recent attendance at the 12th China International Battery Fair (CIBF) in Shenzhen, China (May 24-26, 2016). The CIBF is held every two years and is a significant event for the lithium-ion battery industry. Highlights - Interest generated by Altech as emerging HPA supplier for lithium-ion battery separators - Electric vehicle manufacturers are demanding lithium-ion batteries with 99.99% HPA-coated separators - HPA-coated separators improve battery safety and stability - HPA supplied to China is priced in the range of US$27 to US$30 per kilogram - Altech's bankable feasibility study HPA price assumption is US$23 per kilogram There is a growing application for HPA in lithium-ion batteries, where it is used as a coating on the ceramic separator sheets that divide the cathode and anode electrodes within the battery. The lithium-ion battery separator sheet membrane acts as a critical safety barrier inside the battery. HPA-coated separators withstand unusually high temperature incursions, increase battery separator shrinkage temperatures, reduce flammability during thermal runaways and thus make lithium-ion batteries much safer. HPA-coated separators also increase battery discharge rates, lower self-discharge, and lengthen battery life cycles. The use of HPA lithium-ion battery separators is growing rapidly. Based on discussions with various lithium-ion battery separator sheet manufacturers at the CIBF, electric vehicle manufacturers are demanding lithium-ion batteries with 99.99% (4N) HPA-coated separators. These manufacturers are reporting usage of between 40-120g of HPA per battery kilowatt-hour (kWh). According to CIBF delegate sources, 99.99% (4N) HPA is currently being supplied to Chinese lithium-ion battery separator sheet manufacturers at RMB180 to RMB200 per kilogram (US$27 to US$30 per kilogram). This confirms the long-term price assumption for HPA in Altech's bankable feasibility study (BFS), which adopted a conservative estimate of US$23 per kilogram. The particle size of the HPA product is required to be ultra-fine, less than 2 microns, which Altech's proposed HPA plant in Malaysia is designed to achieve. Given the global push for electric vehicles and energy storage, lithium-ion batteries are expected to be increasingly significant for HPA demand. Altech managing director Mr Iggy Tan said, "The timing for construction of Altech's proposed HPA plant in Malaysia appears perfect, with two parallel streams of near-term HPA demand growth now apparent. "HPA demand growth in the LED sector has long been acknowledged and understood; this growth is however now complemented by HPA demand growth in the lithium-ion battery industry, specifically from battery separator sheet manufacturers. This is an extremely exciting development for Altech. The Company expects that HPA from its proposed Malaysian plant will be a highly sought after product," Mr Tan concluded. To view tables and figures, please visit: http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/P6Q16127 About Altech Chemicals Ltd Altech Chemicals Limited (ASX:ATC) (FRA:A3Y) is aiming to become one of the world's leading suppliers of 99.99% (4N) high purity alumina (Al2O3) through the construction and operation of a 4,500tpa high purity alumina (HPA) processing plant at Johor, Malaysia. Feedstock for the plant will be sourced from the Company's 100%-owned kaolin deposit at Meckering, Western Australia and shipped to Malaysia. HPA is a high-value, high margin and highly demanded product as it is the critical ingredient required for the production of synthetic sapphire. Synthetic sapphire is used in the manufacture of substrates for LED lights, semiconductor wafers used in the electronics industry, and scratch-resistant sapphire glass used for wristwatch faces, optical windows and smartphone components. Increasingly HPA is used by lithium-ion battery manufacturers as the coating on the battery's separator, which improves performance, longevity and safety of the battery. With global HPA demand approximately 19,000t (2018), it is estimated that this demand will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30% (2018-2028); by 2028 HPA market demand will be approximately 272,000t, driven by the increasing adoption of LEDs worldwide as well as the demand for HPA by lithium-ion battery manufacturers to serve the surging electric vehicle market. FARMINGTON The New Mexico Court of Appeals has ruled on an appeal by Lawrence Branch, a 60-year-old father convicted in June 2013 of shooting his son in the leg with a pistol in San Juan County. The court overturned Branchs conviction for negligent use of a deadly weapon, a petty misdemeanor, and vacated two firearm sentencing enhancements Branch faced for convictions on charges of aggravated assault and aggravated battery, both with a deadly weapon, according to the courts May 23 order. The court also found the district judge erred in his finding that Branch was guilty of a serious violent offense on the aggravated assault charge. It remanded the case to the Eleventh Judicial Court in San Juan County so the error could be fixed, the order states. The appellate court upheld Branchs aggravated assault and aggravated battery convictions. San Juan County Chief Deputy District Attorney Dustin OBrien said today that he has not yet reviewed the appellate courts decision, but if the court vacated the firearm enhancements, that could reduce Branchs prison sentence. Branch was convicted in May 2013 after a two-day trial in which jurors heard evidence he shot his then 32-year-old adoptive son on May 7, 2012, at the familys property on County Road 6255, according to the Daily Times archives. The bullet broke the sons femur and struck an artery, causing him to undergo five surgeries to salvage his leg, archives state. Branchs wife was standing next to the son when the shot was fired and testified she thought her husband was also going to shoot her, according to the courts order. Judge William Birdsall, now retired, sentenced Branch on June 19, 2013, to four years in prison, according to court records. One year of the four-year sentence resulted from the firearm enhancement, records state. Branch is currently projected to be released from prison on Jan. 7, according to New Mexico Department of Corrections spokeswoman Ashley Espinoza. A new court hearing in the case has not yet been scheduled, according to court records. Steve Garrison covers crime and courts for The Daily Times. He can be reached at 505-564-4644. 2016 The Daily Times (Farmington, N.M.) Visit The Daily Times (Farmington, N.M.) at www.daily-times.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. _____ Donald Trumps highly personal, racially tinged attacks on a federal judge overseeing a pair of lawsuits against him have set off a wave of alarm among legal experts, who worry that the Republican presidential candidates vendetta signals a remarkable disregard for judicial independence. That attitude, many argue, could carry constitutional implications if Trump becomes president. U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is handling two class-action lawsuits against Trump University in San Diego, has emerged as a central target for Trump and his supporters in recent weeks. The enmity only escalated after Curiel ordered the release of embarrassing internal documents detailing predatory marketing practices at the for-profit educational venture; that case is set to go to trial after the November election. I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. Hes a hater, Trump said at a campaign rally in San Diego, adding that he believed the Indiana-born judge was Mexican. He also suggested taking action against the judge after the election: They ought to look into Judge Curiel, because what Judge Curiel is doing is a total disgrace. OK? But we will come back in November. Wouldnt that be wild if I am president and come back and do a civil case? Where everybody likes it. OK. This is called life, folks. The courtroom proceedings come with high stakes for Trump, whose likely tough general-election fight against Hillary Clinton will leave him open to intense scrutiny of his character, business practices and temperament. Clinton said Wednesday that the allegations at Trump University is just more evidence that Donald Trump himself is a fraud. Trumps strikingly personal attacks on Curiel are highly unusual and have prompted questions about how he would react to adverse judicial decisions should he become president. Trumps remarks also stand out because he has a personal financial stake in the case. Having a presidential candidate embroiled in litigation totally unrelated to the political system . . . that is what is so novel about this. And then you add to this the personal criticism, said Arthur Hellman, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Its personal all the way, and thats what makes this different. Conflicts between the courts and the political branches are common and, to some degree, expected. The Constitution mandates lifetime tenure for federal judges who serve in good behavior and protects them against recrimination by forbidding that their salaries be diminished. Judicial appointments are among a presidents most lasting legacies, and in the current presidential campaign, candidates from both parties have gone beyond the comfort level of many legal experts by issuing litmus tests. On the Democratic side, Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vermont) have said overturning the Supreme Courts controversial Citizens United ruling should be a priority, while Republican candidates went after Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. for his votes upholding the Affordable Care Act. President Barack Obama prompted outrage among conservatives in 2010 when he blasted the Citizens United ruling in his State of the Union address. Republican members of Congress criticized the president for attacking the decision with members of the court seated just feet away from him, while Democrats defended the comments as within the bounds of policy debate. Trumps attacks on Curiel stand out for their personal nature, for the racial remarks and for the suggestion by a potential president that someone ought to look into the judge. Charles Gardner Geyh, a professor at Indiana Universitys Maurer School of Law, said he has no problem with presidents or presidential candidates criticizing judges or judicial decisions. But, he said, theres a line between disagreement and sort of throwing the judiciary under the bus that I think is at issue here. One of Trumps earlier jeremiads came in February, when he told Fox News that Curiel was biased against him because of his controversial immigration comments and proposals, including his promises to build a giant wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and deport 11 million illegal immigrants. I think it has to do with perhaps the fact that Im very, very strong on the border, Trump said then. Now, he is Hispanic, I believe. He is a very hostile judge to me. Trump returned to ethnicity at last weeks San Diego rally, where he erroneously suggested Curiel was from Mexico: The judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great. I think thats fine. You know what? I think the Mexicans are going to end up loving Donald Trump when I give all these jobs, OK? Curiel, who through his office declined to comment, was born in East Chicago, Indiana, and is a 1979 graduate of the Indiana University law school. He gained acclaim prosecuting drug traffickers along the Tijuana corridor and was reportedly targeted for assassination by the Felix cartel; he joined the federal bench in 2012 after being nominated by Obama. Katrina Pierson, a spokeswoman for Trump, has expanded on the accusations of bias, wrongly suggesting Curiel is part of a group organizing protests at Trump rallies around California. Curiel is a member of the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association, a professional group that she appeared to confuse with the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy group. Luis Osuna, the president of the lawyers association, said the group is not an advocacy group and supports candidates on both sides of the aisle. He said Trumps attempts to discredit Curiel should give voters serious pause, not least because his comments reduce Hispanics in the legal profession to their heritage. Every time there is a comment like this, it is disheartening, Osuna said. It is not, unfortunately, surprising, given the source of the comments. But it displays a complete lack of understanding of the role that we have as attorneys and judges and the role that we have in upholding the Constitution. Hes definitely using it as a dog whistle to this supporters, he added. Obviously, I dont know what is in his heart. I can only judge based on the way he has acted in the past, but this has been a recurring theme in his campaign. Trump is not without recourse if he thinks that Curiel has engaged in misconduct. Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Trump could file a complaint with the federal court of appeals. He said Trump would have to provide evidence that Curiel was biased in his behavior against the real estate mogul and could then proceed with a disqualification motion. But Wheeler added: I see no evidence that this judge has been nothing but fair in this case. As part of the ongoing class-action lawsuit against Trump University that he is overseeing, Curiel ordered the release of internal documents that showed Trump played a key role in the marketing for the business and how staff members were guided to push customers to purchase expensive follow-ups costing up to $35,000 after taking free introductory courses. The order came in response to a request by The Washington Post, which argued that Trumps presidential bid made the documents a matter of public interest. In the order, Curiel said that Trump had placed the integrity of these court proceedings at issue. Robert Barnes contributed to this report. Duel Brewing is teaming up with the New Mexico Foundation for Literary Arts to celebrate the written word and encourage people to read. Books & Beer will be held the first and third Tuesday of each month at Duels Santa Fe location and on the first and third Wednesday of the month at Duels Albuquerque location. The event is the brainchild of the foundations executive director, Alisa Valdes, and Duel events manager Cari Griffo. Duel is amazing because of the people who own it, Valdes said. Cari and Trent (Edwards) are artists. Trent is a painter, and Cari is a poet. Ive been really excited to see the brewery culture kind of popping up and doing so well all over Albuquerque and Santa Fe. I thought it would just be really fun to try to incorporate that into what I want to do with the foundation. I met Cari and talked to her about what were doing, and she is completely onboard and wants to do it so we came up with this idea. Books & Beer will showcase a featured performer, have an open mic session and hold a book exchange. Featured performers will do readings of poetry, prose as well as nonfiction works from the realm of journalism or screenplays or rap. As long as it is a celebration of the written word, it is welcome, according to Valdes. Books & Beer WHEN AND WHERE: 6-8 p.m. the first and third Tuesdays of each month at Duel Brewing, 1228 Parkway Drive, Santa Fe; 6-8 p.m. the first and third Wednesdays of the month at Duel Brewing, 606 W. Central, Albuquerque. HOW MUCH: Free admission, $10 suggested donation to benefit the New Mexico Foundation for Literary Arts. Information, visit 6-8 p.m. the first and third Tuesdays of each month at Duel Brewing, 1228 Parkway Drive, Santa Fe; 6-8 p.m. the first and third Wednesdays of the month at Duel Brewing, 606 W. Central, Albuquerque.Free admission, $10 suggested donation to benefit the New Mexico Foundation for Literary Arts. Information, visit readnewmexico.org The first 20 minutes will be an introduction about what the foundation is doing and then well have our featured performer, Valdes said. Well have the book exchange and merriment going on in the background and after that were having open mic for up to 16 readers. Were thinking at five minutes each. So anybody who is an aspiring writer or an accomplished writer who wants to get a gauge on how their work is going to come across, they can come and sign up. Its first come, first serve. No fee. The mission of the foundation, which is relatively new, is to raise awareness of reading and books in central New Mexico. It has big plans ahead. In the fall, it will launch a program to have authors go into Albuquerque and Santa Fe public schools to read to children and talk to them about writing as a career, according to Valdes. In April, the foundation plans to launch the Albuquerque Books Festival International on Johnson Field and the Student Union Building at the University of New Mexico. Albuquerque is kind of the last city its size to not have a major book festival every year, and we are stepping in to start doing that, Valdes said. Were hoping to emulate what theyre doing in Tucson, where they get 150,000 people a year. New Mexico State Police have charged 58 people after a four-month investigation into drug trafficking in Socorro County, a spokeswoman announced Thursday night. Operation Roadrunner involved several different drug trafficking organizations operating in the area selling various types of narcotics, including methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, marijuana and prescription drugs, said Sgt. Elizabeth Armijo in a news release. Police have arrested 42 suspects, and the remaining 16 are still at large. Armijo said 40 of the defendants are charged with drug-related offenses, and 18 face other charges, including possession of a stolen motor vehicle, felony probation and parole violations, misdemeanor narcotics charges, bench warrants and more. Also during the course of the investigation a 2009 Volvo Dump truck, which had been stolen out of Albuquerque, was recovered, Armijo said. She said several of the defendants have prior felony convictions and extensive criminal histories. The successful investigation and prosecution of these offenders and their criminal organizations impacts not only the availability of illegal narcotics in the area, but other related crimes as well, including property crimes, Armijo said. When standing today at Hadrians Wall in northern England, everything appears indistinguishably affluent and serene on both sides. It was not nearly as calm some 1,900 years ago. In A.D. 122, the exasperated Roman emperor Hadrian ordered the construction of an 80-mile, 20-foot-high wall to protect Roman civilization in Britain from the Scottish tribes to the north. We moderns often laugh at walls and fortified boundaries, dismissing them as hopelessly retrograde, ineffective or unnecessary. Yet they still seem to fulfill their mission on the Israeli border, the 38th parallel in Korea and the Saudi-Iraqi boundary, separating disparate states. On the Roman side of Hadrians Wall there were codes of law, habeas corpus, aqueducts and the literature of Cicero, Virgil and Tacitus and on the opposite side a violent, less sophisticated tribalism. Hadrian assumed that there was a paradox about walls innate to the human condition. Scottish tribes hated Roman colonial interlopers and wanted them off the island of Britain. But for some reason the Scots did not welcome the wall that also stopped the Romans from entering Scotland. The exasperated Romans had built the barrier to stop the Scots from entering Roman Britain, whether to raid, trade, emigrate or fight. Today, the European Union has few problems with members that do not enforce their interior borders. But European nations are desperate to keep the continent from being overwhelmed by migrants from North Africa and the Middle East. Like the Romans, some individual EU nations are building fences and walls to keep out thousands of non-European migrants, both for economic and national security reasons. Many Middle Easterners want to relocate to Europe for its material and civilizational advantages over their homes in Algeria, Iraq, Libya, Morocco or Syria. Yet many new arrivals are highly critical of Western popular culture, permissiveness and religion to the extent of not wanting to assimilate into the very culture into which they rushed. Apparently, like their ancient counterparts, modern migrants on the poorer or less stable side of a border are ambiguous about what they want. They seek out the security and bounty of mostly Western systems whether European or American but not necessarily to surrender their own cultural identities and values. In the case of Hadrian, by A.D. 122 he apparently felt that Romes resources were taxed and finite. The empire could neither expand nor allow tribes to enter Roman territory. So his solution was to wall off Britain from Scotland and thereby keep out tribes that sometimes wanted in but did not wish to become full-fledged Romans. The same paradoxes characterize recent, sometimes-violent demonstrations at Trump rallies, the controversy over the potential construction of a fence on the Mexican border 25 times longer than Hadrians Wall, and the general furor over immigration policies. Mexico is often critical of the United States and yet encourages millions of its own people to emigrate to a supposedly unattractive America. Some protestors in turn wave the flag of the country that they do not wish to return to more often than the flag of the country they are terrified of being deported from. Signs at rallies trash the United States but praise Mexico in much the same manner that Scots did not like Roman Britain but were even less pleased with the idea of a fortified border walling them off from the Romans. What are the answers to these human contradictions? Rome worked when foreigners crossed through its borders to become Romans. It failed when newcomers fled into the empire and adhered to their own cultures, which were at odds with the Roman ones they had ostensibly chosen. There were no walls between provinces of the Roman Empire just as there are no walls between the individual states of America because common language, values and laws made them all similar. But fortifications gradually arose all over the outer ring of the Roman world, once Rome could no longer afford to homogenize societies antithetical to their own. If Mexico and other Latin American countries were to adopt many of the protocols of the United States, their standard of living would be as indistinguishable from Americas as modern Scotland is from todays Britain. Or if immigrants from Latin America were to integrate and assimilate as rapidly as possible, there would be less of a need to contemplate walls. Historically, as Hadrian knew, walls are needed only when neighboring societies are opposites and when large numbers of migrants cross borders without necessarily wishing to become part of what they are fleeing to. These are harsh and ancient lessons about human nature, but they are largely true and timeless. Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; email: author@victorhanson.com. Mark Pavia is a fan of the horror genre. Thats why the director jumped at the chance to work with Shout! Factory and TV network Chiller on his latest project. And thanks to his producers Joshua Bunting and Carl W. Lucas the film also landed in New Mexico. Josh and Carl had both worked on projects in New Mexico and they swayed me to do the film there, Pavia said. What I wanted to do with the film is showcase Albuquerque as something different. On TV Fender Bender will premiere at 9 tonight on Chiller, channel 257 DirecTV and channel 199 on Dish Network. The production for the film took place in New Mexico. Pavia spent nearly a month in Albuquerque shooting Fender Bender in November. The film will premiere at 9 tonight on Chiller. The network shows all types of horror films. The film follows 17-year-old Hillary Diaz, played by The Good Wife alum Makenzie Vega, who gets into her first fender bender. As most innocently do, she exchanges her personal information with the apologetic stranger, played by Hap and Leonards Bill Sage. Later in the day, she is joined by her friends at home, only to be visited by the stranger she gave her information to. Turns out hes a serial killer, who pulls the same fender bender on other victims. I got the premise for the film when a friend of mine got in an accident in LA, Pavia said. After he gave all his information to the other driver, I told him, What if hes a killer and stalks you. Once I said it, I knew it was going to be a movie. Pavia was able to snag Vega, Sage, Dre Davis and Longmires Cassidy Freeman for the film. Rounding out the cast are New Mexico actors Lora Martinez-Cunningham, Steven Michael Quezada, Kelsey Leos Montoya, Harrison Sim and Gus Krieger. The production filmed in Old Town and in the Country Club area. It was stunning, Pavia said of his time filming. What was exciting about New Mexico was that the crews were terrific. They are incredibly supportive and were excited about the project. I would definitely come back to the state to do more productions. Vega was attracted to the role because of the script. Hillary is a very strong character who doesnt give up, Vega said. The script was also scary in that it could be a real-life situation. The underlying fear of this happening is what drew me to the project. Vega is also a horror film fanatic, though when she walks into her house, she turns on all the lights. I get suckered into it, she said. I enjoyed my time in Albuquerque and it was beautiful. We went up to Sandia Peak and then I got to see the mountains change color at sunset. New Mexico also had an impact on Sage, who plays the villain in the film. Ive been out there before, he says. Its to the point where my wife and I talk about moving there. The industry has changed so much that you can live just about anywhere. I dont have to be in New York anymore to book projects. A funeral will be held today to remember Albuquerque Public Schools Chief Operations Officer Ruben Hendrickson, who collapsed and died on the La Luz Trail on Monday. The memorial service is set for 1 p.m. at French Funerals, 7121 Wyoming NE. Hendricksons family has asked for donations to the APS Education Foundation in lieu of flowers. District spokeswoman Monica Armenta told the Journal that administrators are still in a state of shock at the loss of the fit 58-year-old COO. Hendrickson had a medical issue near the top of the Sandia Mountains at the Y section of La Luz Trail around 10 a.m. Monday. Emergency responders removed his body that afternoon. Armenta said she didnt have any information about Hendricksons cause of death and privacy law precludes her from sharing details about an employees health. Superintendent Raquel Reedy has not named an interim COO, but is considering the options, according to Armenta. She has already begun that work and knows there is some urgency there, she said. (Hendrickson) had a big voice and an enormous role. As COO, Hendrickson oversaw the Facilities Design and Construction, Food & Nutrition Services, Maintenance & Operations, Risk Management, School Police and Student Transportation offices. Reedy called him the linchpin of the Albuquerque Public Schools administration in a letter to district employees posted online Tuesday. Ruben wasnt just respected; he was loved, she wrote. Eventually, we will have to find someone to take over the COO job, but no one will ever replace Ruben in our hearts. In a first of its kind in the nation, a memorandum of understanding was signed Thursday at Kirtland Air Force Base that enhances awareness and dialogue between the 19 pueblos in New Mexico and all branches of the military that conduct low-level overflights across tribal lands. New Mexico Indian Affairs Department Cabinet Secretary Kelly Zunie, several high-ranking pueblo leaders and a number of military officers, including Brig. Gen. Andrew Salas, adjutant general of the New Mexico National Guard, signed the MOU against a backdrop of military aircraft being readied for this weekends air show. The document will provide a framework to ensure that vital aerial military training conducted in New Mexico can proceed in a respectful and mindful manner around the pueblo communities, Salas said. He referred to the roar of aircraft engines in the distance as the sound of freedom and said the aircraft would be of little use without the year-round training afforded to military personnel in New Mexico, a state renowned for its favorable weather, magnificent ranges and wide open clear skies. Zunie, who spearheaded the effort on behalf of New Mexicos pueblos, said a website has been created that allows pueblo leaders to report inappropriate low-level flyovers, or to request in advance that the military avoid low-level flyovers on specific days or times because of feasts, burials, religious ceremonies and sacred events. Zunie said that a high percentage of Native Americans serve in the armed forces, so we understand the need for training and the need for these beautiful machines that fly and keep our freedom. At the same time, those who fly military aircraft were tasked with addressing questions of importance to the pueblos: Can you understand our way of life, our culture, can you help us preserve who we are? she said. The process in place right now is the answer to that, Zunie told the crowd assembled for the signing. It creates the balance between defense and cultural preservation. Low-level flyovers in the past have also been blamed for cracking and crumbling damage to adobe homes and buildings on pueblos. Tribal members can now report this and ask that aircraft avoid areas where there are vulnerable structures, Zunie said. The landmark document with the protracted title Memorandum of Understanding Between State and Federal Military Flying Organizations and the New Mexico Indian Affairs Department for Military Low-Level Overflights on Tribal Lands could serve as a template for military and tribal relations in other states, Zunie said. Members of Albuquerques Police Oversight Board say they are being ignored by the police officials rewriting numerous department policies as part of a years-long reform underway aimed to curb excessive force. The concerns were reignited at a recent oversight board meeting when a former U.S. Magistrate Lorenzo Garcia told board members that much of the policy development process going on within Albuquerque police was privileged. He said that like any member of the public, board members could send police policy suggestions. But he said the policies were being written behind closed doors among attorneys with the city and DOJ. There is an issue of privileged, Garcia told board members. Were in the milieu of litigation. If you are not a party to the litigation or have not been allowed intervention by (U.S. District Court ) Judge (Robert) Brack, I would surmise that is why you are not on the list. DOJ officials, however, reached out in an email to the oversight board and several community organizations shortly after Garcias presentation and said the monitoring team wanted to have a meeting with several community groups, including a separate meeting with the oversight board members, to discuss policy development. The meetings will take place during the monitoring teams upcoming site visit this month, according to emails. Garcia was hired in March to help Albuquerque police rewrite certain policies after Albuquerque polices policy development was blasted by the independent monitor overseeing the reforms. James Ginger, the monitor, said the policy-writing process was confusing and disjointed, and Garcia was hired to help the department. Oversight board members were not pleased with his take on the policy-making process. We were really disappointed with what he had to say, board member Joanne Fine said. Weve been very frustrated with our role and our access to policy making, and its supposed to be the majority of what we do. Albuquerques civilian oversight system was revamped last year as part of the reform effort that stemmed from a DOJ investigation, which found Albuquerque police had a pattern of excessive force. The DOJ said weak civilian oversight contributed to that pattern. Currently, the department is having to rewrite about 30 policies and start to train officers on those policies as part of the years-long reform effort. Oversight board members have continually said they are being ignored by police officials. The ordinance that created the board instructs it to spend more than 50 percent of the time analyzing and making recommendations about police policies. But members said thats not happening. APD feels like they can simply ignore us. We write letters, we submit policies and we hear nothing back, Beth Mohr, the chair of the board, said during a recent meeting. Were just trying to get our foot in the door. Mohr specifically raised concerns in a letter to Police Chief Gorden Eden that the oversight board members were not allowed to comment on Albuquerque polices new use-of-force policy, on which officers are being trained. Mohr sent a letter to Eden that recommended several specific changes to the policy, such as using reasonableness instead of feasible when guiding officers on what level of force to use. But that change wasnt made. City Attorney Jessica Hernandez, however, said the board is actively involved in the policy-writing process more so than any other entity outside of the DOJ, the city and the monitoring team. She said many new policies, including the use-of-force policy, will soon be reviewed and possibly modified as a term of the settlement agreement. She said board members will be able to give comments during that review. Hernandez said board members recommendations also are being considered during the policy development phase. I think we could look for ways we can improve communication from the department on what is being done with (the boards) suggestions, she said. Copyright 2016 Albuquerque Journal When a man known as Machete Bob disappeared and was presumed murdered last year, his group of friends blamed the woman who had claimed he raped her. So the group took 29-year-old Tiffany Boyer to a Northeast Albuquerque house last August, lined the floor with plastic and the windows with cardboard, and bludgeoned her to death with a hammer, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court. Her body was found dumped in Torrance County in November. It was so decomposed, it took a forensic anthropologist nearly six months to determine how she died. On Wednesday, Shawna Cannon, 38, William Alexander, 56, Joshua Taramasco, 30, and Stephanie Stepp, 26, were arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping and a slew of other charges in Boyers death. They are being held in the county jail on a no-bond hold. A disappearance, then a beating death Robert Machete Bob McGuire was reported missing under suspicious circumstances in late August. Police say he was last seen on Aug. 15 at his home and his belongings were left behind. A couple days later, a confidential source told a Bernalillo County Sheriffs deputy that McGuire, 44, may have been murdered and his body may be in the trunk of a vehicle in Los Lunas. Los Lunas officers searched but were unable to find his body, according to the complaint. Boyers boyfriend told police he had been hanging out at a friends house on Aug. 19 when Boyer arrived with Cannon and several other people. He said the group was angry with Boyer because they thought her rape allegations against McGuire had led to his disappearance, and they believed he had been murdered. One of the suspects told police Boyer had made false allegations that Machete Bob had raped her. Police are still investigating McGuires disappearance, said officer Tanner Tixier, an APD spokesman. We have not found him, he said. We believe he is deceased, but we have no evidence. The group took Boyer, and her boyfriend asked to go, too, so he could attempt to calm the situation, according to the complaint. Instead the situation escalated when they all arrived at a house on Palomas NE, near San Mateo and Constitution. The boyfriend said he watched Stepp beat up Boyer, and then Stepp and Taramasco put a plastic dropcloth on the floor and lined the windows with cardboard, according to the complaint. The boyfriend said the group bound his hands with zip ties and put him and Boyer who was also bound and gagged in a closet. Eventually someone took Boyer from the closet and he could hear her screaming, the boyfriend said. Stepp later told police she tried to strangle Boyer, but it didnt work, so Alexander struck Boyer with a hammer. Cannon told police she left the house before Alexander arrived. He (the boyfriend) heard sounds that led him to believe Ms. Boyer was being thrown against the walls and being severely beaten, the officer wrote in the complaint. When her boyfriend was taken out of the closet, Boyer, the plastic dropcloth and the chair she had been sitting in were gone. He said he was dropped off near Pennsylvania and Chico NE. Boyers mother reported her missing 10 days later, telling police it was unusual for her daughter to go so long without contacting her. Left for coyote food Robert Rose told police he lives in the house on Palomas and watched the pair kill Boyer. He said he put on latex gloves and helped the group roll up Boyers body in a carpet, put her in a car and drive to a remote area south of Albuquerque. Rose told Stepp that Boyers body was now coyote food, according to the complaint. At this time the District Attorneys Office is not pressing charges against Rose, Tixier said. In early October, a landowner in southern Torrance County told the sheriffs office he found a garbage bag stuffed with blood-stained items, including clothing, a plastic sheet, latex gloves, a cellphone and towels, according to the complaint. A little over a month later, police found Boyers remains dumped about a mile and half from where those belongings were found. On May 26, a forensic anthropologist with the Office of the Medical Investigator determined Boyer died of blunt force injuries of the head and the manner of death is homicide. Deputy U.S. marshals, members of the marshals fugitive task force and APD officers rounded up Cannon, Alexander, Taramasco and Stepp from around the city Wednesday. They were still all in Albuquerque, Tixier said. They were secure in thinking we didnt have a body and thinking we couldnt go forward with the case. LAS CRUCES An argument over a double homicide case might have flared tensions between two Santa Fe County sheriffs deputies shortly before a shooting left one man dead, according to witnesses who testified Thursday. Ex-deputy Tai Chan is being tried in 3rd Judicial District Court on first-degree murder charges after he fatally shot fellow deputy Jeremy Martin after midnight on Oct. 28, 2014, in a Las Cruces hotel. Chan has pleaded not guilty and his attorneys are arguing that he shot his co-worker in self-defense. Prosecutors argue Chan murdered Martin deliberately. Chans then-girlfriend, now-wife, Leah Tafoya-Chan also gave emotional testimony of being on the phone with Chan during the minutes leading up to shots being fired inside Hotel Encanto room 711. An acquaintance of Chan, Ian Robles, and a longtime friend, Joshua Sexauer, testified to jurors about the argument between the two men earlier that evening at a local pub. Chan and Martin had stopped in Las Cruces overnight after transporting a prisoner to Arizona. Chan called Sexauer to join him and Martin at the pub, Dublins. Robles tagged along and stayed sober. The two deputies were arguing about a Santa Fe double homicide case in which two kids were found dead in a car, Robles said. Chan joked to Martin, Its your fault, Robles said. Something about the exchange angered Martin and at one point he walked away from the table. Robles did not provide details, but the double homicide in question could have been the murder of 13-year-old AnaMarie Ojeda and her 18-year-old boyfriend, Venancio Venny Cisneros, just two days prior. Santa Fe County Sheriffs Office spokesman Juan Rios confirmed that Martin was called to the scene of the execution-style slayings. His role was to secure the crime scene, Rios said. Chan, at the time a warrant agent and SWAT team member, had no connection to the case, according to Rios. The argument between Martin and Chan at Dublins never escalated beyond raised voices, Robles said. Also on Thursday, Tafoya-Chan told the jury she and Chan had been dating for more than a year and she was nine weeks pregnant with his child at the time. Chan called her around midnight, she said. Tai called and he was rambling, she said. Thats when I started getting scared. He said a lot of things that werent making sense to me. One of the things he told her: They are framing me for murder. Tafoya-Chan said she was yelling, asking what was happening then the line disconnected. Then, on another call shortly after, Tafoya-Chan told jurors she heard an echo as if Chan was in the hotel bathroom. There was banging on the door. Chan told her, He punched me in the face and kicked me in the balls. She told the jury she heard the door open and then fisticuffs or a fight, then Chan yelling strong verbal commands: Sit down, sit down. Then, a pow, like something being hit against a wall. Then I heard two shots, she said. Tafoya-Chan told her husbands defense attorney, John Day, that she heard a muffled please no, please no and she believed it was Chan speaking. Later, she told Deputy District Attorney Davis Ruark that she couldnt be sure whose muffled voice it was. Chief Judge Fernando Macias told the jury that arguments could wrap up today. WASHINGTON Defense giant Lockheed Martin announced Thursday that it will bid to retain management of Sandia National Laboratories. Matt Kramer, director of external communications for Lockheed Martins Space Systems division, told the Journal that the company is proud of its 23-year partnership with the Department of Energys National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees work at the nations nuclear weapons labs, including Sandia. Lockheed Martin intends to submit a bid for the Sandia National Laboratories Management and Operations contract competition, Kramer said. Lockheed Martin has helped Sandia maintain a steadfast focus on its core nuclear deterrence mission, delivering on-time and on-budget performance for five major life extension programs. At the same time, Sandia has advanced its role as a premier research and development institution, leading cutting-edge efforts in cybersecurity, energy technologies, nonproliferation and advanced computing. The Department of Energy first announced in 2011 that it planned to open the Sandia contract to new bidders but then granted a series of extensions to Lockheed Martin and its wholly owned subsidiary Sandia Corp. A new Sandia contract must be in place by April 2017 under the current schedule. Sandia labs, based at Kirtland Air Force Base, is one of the Albuquerque areas largest employers, with more than 10,500 workers on its current payroll and an annual budget of $2.9 billion. Sandias primary task is research, development and maintenance of U.S. nuclear weapons, but in the past decade its workload has broadened to include a range of other missions, including more work for the Department of Defense and U.S. intelligence agencies. The University of New Mexico last month announced it would join in a bid to manage the lab with Battelle, The Boeing Co., the University Texas System and the Texas A&M University System. Critics of Lockheed Martin have said the company should be disqualified based on a 2014 report by the Department of Energys Office of Inspector General that concluded the firm wrongfully used federal funds for lab operations to lobby for the no-bid contract extension it received several years ago. Sandia Corp. and its parent company, Lockheed Martin, paid the federal government a $4.8 million fine for using tax dollars to lobby Congress and federal agencies for renewal of its then-$2.4 billion Sandia contract with the Department of Energy in violation of federal law. How can Lockheed Martin be entrusted to run the countrys biggest nuclear weapons lab when it intentionally violates established U.S. law? asked Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, which scrutinizes budgets and operations at Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories. Sandia got an outstanding overall performance rating in its annual federal evaluation, released last month, and the lab was awarded a $27.3 million fee, almost the full amount available based on performance in 2015. However, in the leadership category, Sandia Corp. was dinged because of the results of the Justice Department investigation. The allegations and subsequent settlement damaged the reputation of the Laboratory and the parent company, the fiscal year 2015 NNSA evaluation said. Undeterred, Kramer said Lockheed Martin and its subsidiary, Sandia Corp., are eager to continue their work in New Mexico. Sandia Corporation agreed last year to settle with the Department of Justice to put the matter behind it, learn from it and focus on its important national security mission, Kramer said. We believe we have successfully addressed the issue, and were focused on the future. ATHENS, Greece Frances prime minister promised Greece on Friday more help in overcoming its financial crisis, with investment and assistance with administrative reforms. Manuel Valls met Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras before the two countries signed agreements to continue Frances assistance in reforming central and regional government. Greece is hoping to restart its long-delayed privatization program after eurozone countries assured the country that they will continue to pay bailout money and will improve the repayment terms of past loans. Valls visit came a week after a trip to Greece by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said Russian companies were also interested in Greek privatization projects. France played a lead role last year in easing a dispute between rescue lenders and Tsipras left-wing government that had threatened Greeces place in the eurozone. France used all its influence and all its weight to make sure that the Greeks remained in the large family of the eurozone, Valls said. To have the eurozone or (passport-free) Schengen area without Greece that would be a different kind of Europe that we dont want Bailout lenders are expected Monday to approve the next bailout installments to Greece, worth 10. 3 billion euros ($11.5 billion). MUNDS PARK, Ariz. The Latest on an Arizona freeway being closed for destruction of old dynamite (all times local): 6:40 a.m. A 32-mile stretch of Interstate 17 in northern Arizona is closed while explosive-disposal experts burn a nearby shed to destroy old dynamite found by a rancher. The closure between the southern outskirts of Flagstaff and a highway connecting I-17 with Sedona began at approximately 5 a.m. Friday and may last up to four hours. Arizona Department of Public Safety Capt. Damon Cecil says a DPS explosive-disposal team soaked the dynamite in diesel fuel and then set the shed on fire. It then burst into flames, and Cecil says the team will examine the remnants once the fire is out. Cecil say a rancher discovered 50 pounds of 47-year-old dynamite north of Munds Park and that it was safest to destroy it in place because the dynamites nitroglycerine had crystalized and become unstable. The shed is about 250 feet from I-17. Northbound traffic is closed at State Route 179. Southbound traffic is closed at Kelly Canyon Road. 6:05 a.m. A 32-mile stretch of Interstate 17 in northern Arizona is closed while authorities destroy old dynamite found in a ranch shed near the freeway. The Arizona Department of Transportation says the closure between the southern outskirts of Flagstaff and a highway connecting I-17 with Sedona began at approximately 5 a.m. Friday and may last up to four hours. Officials say a rancher discovered about 50 pounds of old dynamite on north of Munds Park and that officials decided it was safest to destroy it in place. The blast is not expected to damage I-17 and officials say the closure is a precaution. Northbound traffic is closed at State Route 179. Southbound traffic is closed at Kelly Canyon Road. LAS CRUCES Former President Bill Clinton on Thursday addressed an energized crowd of about 500 Hillary Clinton supporters at Picacho Middle School in Las Cruces. In a speech tailored to the needs of southern New Mexicans, Clinton addressed immigration, student debt, education, veterans issues and the importance of affordable childcare. Throughout the rally, Clinton never mentioned the names of his wifes opponents, and never uttered a line that elicited boos from the crowd. Instead, he spoke against what he called the politics of personal destruction. On one occasion, Clinton reflected on his many visits to Las Cruces. I first came here almost 30 years ago, Clinton said. I was governor of Arkansas, and the chancellor of our state university became president of New Mexico State. So I came to his inauguration. Then I came back in 1996, and I was the first sitting president since William Howard Taft to come to Las Cruces. An excited crowd awaits At Thursdays rally, no protesters of any stripe could be found. Waiting in line two hours before the start of the speech, an estimated 500 supporters waited for doors to open. Overhead, the sign at the school scrolled, Welcome to Picacho Middle School President Clinton. Rosalinda Carreon Altamirano, a retired teacher who taught for nearly 40 years and a Hillary Clinton supporter, said she was excited to see the former president. Im glad that he is out here campaigning on behalf of his wife, Altamirano said. I want for Hillary to win, because she will be the first U.S. President that is a woman. When Bill ran for president, we worked his campaign and I supported him and I support Hillary. She often speaks about early childhood and womens rights. As a former early childhood educator, I know how important it is to start early with those children. Altamirano said she hoped to hear Bill Clinton talk about his wifes platforms on immigration, education and womens rights. Matthew Leahy, of El Paso, traveled to Las Cruces to hear Clinton speak. I came to hear President Clinton someone who was elected a year before I was born, the 22-year-old said. Ive read his autobiography and, from my perspective, I feel like he did great things for our country. Leahy hoped to hear Clinton speak about immigration. We have a lot of people here who care very deeply about family members, Leahy said. Ive volunteered at a citizenship fair, and have witnessed the people who have worked so hard and given so much already, and they just want to be citizens in return. They work hard, pay taxes and contribute to our local economy. We need someone who not only has great ideas for reform, but can also get it done. Frank Duran served in the U.S. Army from 1995 to 2008 a year and a half of which he served in Iraq. Early in the staff seargents career, President Clinton was his commander in chief. Duran showed up Thursday to hear Clinton speak about his wifes policies affecting veterans. I want to see if hes going to say anything about what Hillary Clinton is going to do to help the veterans, Duran said. Thats mainly what I want to hear. Id like to hear plans for more doctors, more nurses. There are a lot of veterans, and wait times are ridiculously long. Something has to be done to address that. Azadeh Osanloo called Bill Clinton one of her longtime heroes. Education is my top issue, as a professor of education, Osanloo said. Id like to hear a plan to deal with this binationality we have here on the border, and how were going to better educate our kids for a more civically-minded, democratic, diversity-based world. Clintons speech Clinton touched on all of the points the crowd wanted to hear. He outlined his wifes five-point economic plan for New Mexico, and drew contrasts between Hillarys plan to address student debt and that of her Democratic primary opponent, Bernie Sanders. He talked about the importance of improving the nations infrastructure, including access to broadband internet and safe drinking water. In addressing immigration reform, Clinton noted that there hasnt been a net-positive immigration from Mexico since 2010. We have 11 1/2 million undocumented people here that are either in school or working, he said. And they live with more than five million of your fellow Americans, who wake up every day worried about whats going to happen to the kids, or whether the adults are going to be separated from the kids. We need to just FIX this. Clinton said that veterans would be among Hillarys top concerns. Veterans have access to education and training, but the unemployment rate for returning veterans is still higher than the population as a whole, Clinton said. Part of that is that we still dont have the continuing support that we need for veterans who are good in the workforce, but still occasionally suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome. They need to have that support, so they can go to work and support themselves, and know that we appreciate the work they do. Clinton discussed the need for better mental and physical health care for veterans, noting that Hillary was on the Armed Services Committee during 9/11 and is familiar with the needs of veterans. We also have too many young people in prison for nonviolent offenses that should be out here in the workforce, Clinton said. But look, you cant just open the prison doors to people whove been kept in prison. Youve got to get them education, training, job placement, and they cant be discriminated against when they apply for a job. We need these young people back making America stronger so we call all rise together. Clinton then turned his attention to his wifes education policies. By the way, her education policy is good. She thinks we ought to spend our federal dollars on not quite so much on testing and rule-making, but more on helping teachers be better teachers, Clinton said to loud applause. After the rally I thought it was amazing, said Judy Garrett of Las Cruces, leaving the gymnasium. As a speaker, he is really stumping wonderfully for his wife. He talked about jobs, schools, and about New Mexico being able to grow because we do have so much here. And he talked about our local veterans. I think that he addressed most of what I was listening for. Beverly Harrelson of Las Cruces said she was impressed with Clintons speech. Hes a wonderful speaker, and I thought he did a great job, Harrelson said. My only question is where is all of the money going to come from to support all that Hillary wants. I think its wonderful and great, and Id vote for her but Id like to know where the moneys going to come from. After the rally, Clinton made an unannounced stop at Milagro Coffee, where he visited and took selfies with customers and ordered a smoothie. The presidents appearance came as quite a surprise to the unsuspecting crowd. He stopped to chat with Jenny Fitzgerald, a wildlife conservationist who lives in Casas Grandes, Mexico. How are the conservation programs down there, Clinton asked her. Not good, she answered. Thats what were working on. Its very different from the U.S. Well, theyre beginning to build a more complete economy, Clinton responded. Normally, that means that people get more concerned about conservation. When Fitzgerald told Clinton she was working to reintroduce Mexican gray wolves in Mexico, Clinton responded, Good for you. Keep it up. When I reintroduced them in Yellowstone, everyone gave me grief for it. Now they all think it was a good idea. Later, Clinton settled into the well-worn, red leather sofas at Milagro to take a selfie with a mother and her young daughters. Ive got a grandkid of my own, he told the Lopez family. I know the routine. Visit the Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, N.M.) at www.lcsun-news.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. A woman who police believe was on drugs drove southbound in the northbound lanes of I-25 Friday morning and collided head on with a pickup truck, killing both herself and a passenger in the pickup truck, according to New Mexico State Police. The interstate was shut for hours while State Police reconstructed the accident and tried to piece together what happened. State Police spokeswoman Elizabeth Armijo said the Sandoval County Sheriffs Office responded to the crash, which was just south of Algodones on I-25, around 5 a.m. State Police took over the investigation and learned a woman in a passenger car illegally drove southbound into oncoming northbound traffic and collided head-on with a Dodge pickup truck carrying three people. Armijo said police believe she was under the influence of drugs, and neither car was speeding. The driver of the passenger car was killed, as well as a passenger in the pickup truck. Two other people who were in the pickup truck were taken to a local hospital and were in stable condition Friday afternoon. Armijo didnt identify either of the women who were killed. During Thursdays regular meeting the Clovis City Commission passed a voter ID requirement for municipal elections by a vote of 7-1, with the lone dissenting vote cast by Commissioner Robert Sandoval. The voter ID ordinance was introduced during the May 5 meeting, following the March municipal election in which 72.7 percent of Clovis voters favored creation of the ordinance. As approved, city code 1.06.010 was a mixture of similar voter ID regulations from Albuquerque, Rio Rancho and Hobbs. Sandoval said voters taking a stance against the voter ID initiative were not heard by the commission, hence his decision to be the sole dissenter. I invited about 50 people to a meeting on Nov. 30, he said. They were very eloquent in expressing their displeasure with the voter picture ID proposal. The commission paid absolutely no attention to them and one of the commissioners chewed (out) one of the taxpayers who had a difference of opinion. You dont talk to your constituents that way and I still feel they were owed an apology. I voted the way I did as a matter of principle. All of the people I brought were completely ignored and that is why I voted the way I did. Clovis Mayor David Lansford extended kudos to the commission members who crafted the finer points of the ordinance in the form of Commissioners Ladona Clayton, Sandra Taylor-Sawyer, Chris Bryant and Sandoval. I think this has been reviewed by a number of people and even reviewed against other cities that have an ordinance similar to this, Clovis Mayor David Lansford said. I appreciate the committee. Thanks to all of you for getting this done expeditiously. The ordinance reads, in part: * A voter who approaches the polling place must identify himself or herself audibly. The clerk for that site will then locate the name and ask for one current identification card with the voters name and photograph. * Acceptable identification includes any card issued by a government agency, a passport, drivers license, student identification card, state-issued identification card, insurance card, union card, professional association card or a voter identification card issued by the city clerk, so long as it includes a photograph of the voter. * Voters unable to provide photo identification shall vote on a conditional ballot. They must affirm in writing, under penalty of perjury, their identification and provide either their birthdate or last four digits of their Social Security number. Conditional ballots must be checked during canvassing to make sure no person voted multiple times. * City-issued voter identification cards will be available without charge to any voter who provides two documents that show the voters name and address. Acceptable documents include paychecks, utility bills and bank statements. * The voter identification requirement only applies to municipal elections. In other meeting actions: * The commission voted unanimously to promote Claire Burroughes and Vicki Reyes and add some responsibilities for LeighAnn Melancon, following the May retirement of Budget and Internal Operations Director Don Clifton. Burroughes is now the assistant city manager the first since Joe Thomas, who was promoted to city manager in 2004. Her former position was legislative and community development director. Burroughes annual salary increases from $78,686.40 ($96,595.40 with benefits) to $94,460 ($116,156.10 with benefits). Reyes remains an administrative assistant but takes over Burroughes responsibilities and title as assistant city clerk. She receives a raise from $29,120 ($43,488.03 with benefits) to $31,116.80 ($45,936.31 with benefits) Melancons salary increases from $92,227.20 ($120,863.77 with benefits) to $93,600 ($122,46.96 with benefits). With the elimination of Cliftons salary of $100,924.40 ($131,549.48 with benefits), the city will see annual savings of $107,857.30, officials said. Specific job duties are yet to be finalized. * On behalf of the City Commission, Lansford presented keys to the city to Miss Rodeo America Katherine Merck, Miss Rodeo New Mexico Staci Trehern and Miss Rodeo Arizona Alanna Hamilton in recognition of the Miss Rodeo New Mexico Pageant. 2016 the Clovis News Journal (Clovis, N.M.) Visit the Clovis News Journal (Clovis, N.M.) at www.cnjonline.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. _____ The University of New Mexico Hospital on Friday said it sent medical information for more than 2,800 patients on invoices to the wrong addresses. In a news release time stamped 7:23 a.m., the hospital said, Names of the patients, their providers names, service dates and a brief description of medical services they received such as a flu shot or X-ray were included in 33 invoice documents that were erroneously mailed to 18 addresses between Dec. 22, 2015 and April 2, 2016. While the number of names on each document differed, the total number of names released was 2,827. No financial, date of birth or social security information was included in the documents, according to the release. UNMH is sending letters to the patients affected. 2,827 names were released. UNM Hospital is committed to protecting the privacy and confidential health information of all of our patients, and we take this incident very seriously, said Sarah Morrow, chief privacy officer at the UNM Health Sciences Center. We have thoroughly investigated and identified the technical issues that lead to the erroneous mailings, and we are monitoring the system to ensure this does not happen again. Those with questions about the incident can call 877-216-4023 on Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Those who call should provide the reference number 59300051916. SANTA FE Donald Trump says he holds Gov. Susana Martinez in high regard after all. And Martinez says she hopes to meet soon with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, whose immigration-related remarks she has criticized in the past. Just over a week after Trump blasted Martinez at an Albuquerque campaign rally attended by 8,000 people, Trump abruptly changed his tune about New Mexicos two-term GOP governor, who is the nations lone Hispanic female chief executive. Trump told the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper in a Thursday telephone interview that he would like to have Martinezs support. I respect her. I have always liked her, Trump was quoted as saying, while adding that New Mexicos military bases and national laboratories would be totally protected under a Trump administration. A Trump campaign spokeswoman did not respond Friday to a request for additional comments and details. In response, Martinez told reporters Friday that she would like to have a conversation in person with the New York billionaire, whom she has only met briefly, but didnt indicate she was any closer to endorsing him. Im at the same place where I was before, Martinez said after a news conference in Albuquerque. I wanted to hear about our military bases and our national labs, and his intentions in reference to that to strengthen them, to make sure we have national security we can rely on. We have a great dependence on those labs and military bases here in New Mexico. He did mention it (Thursday) in his interview with a Santa Fe newspaper, so I am encouraged, but I do want to have a sit-down conversation with him about that and other issues that impact New Mexico, Martinez said. Martinez did not attend Trumps May 24 campaign rally, where some protesters rioted outside and others exchanged insults with Trump supporters. She told reporters in the days leading up to it that she was really busy and focused on New Mexico affairs. That slight apparently angered Trump, who lashed out at Martinez during the event. He criticized the states economy specifically an increase in food assistance benefit recipients and an alleged influx of Syrian refugees being resettled in New Mexico. You have to get your governor to get going she has to do a better job, Trump said at one point during his hourlong speech, before musing about the possibility of launching his own New Mexico gubernatorial bid. Some of Trumps tirade appeared to be factually off base. For example, there have been just four Syrian refugees resettled in New Mexico so far this year. A Martinez spokesman responded to Trumps criticism by saying Martinez would not be bullied into supporting a candidate. A number of high-profile national GOP figures came to Martinezs defense in the days immediately after the Albuquerque campaign rally. But with Trump having effectively clinched the Republican Partys nomination, some of those same prominent Republicans have in recent days endorsed Trump, including U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. The governor herself has remained noncommittal about whether shell support Trump in the November election, though she publicly has ruled out voting for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton or former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a one-time Republican who recently won the Libertarian Partys presidential nomination. Martinez had frequently been mentioned by national television pundits as an ideal vice presidential candidate on a Trump ticket, and longtime New Mexico political observer Brian Sanderoff said Friday that it was just a matter of time before Trump extended a political olive branch to Martinez, given her standing in the party and position as chairwoman of the Republican Governors Association. He also described Trumps initial criticisms of Martinez as political payback for criticizing his immigration comments and not attending his rally. Donald Trump is a counter-puncher, Sanderoff told the Journal. Thats how he plays. Thats how he works. Meanwhile, Martinez will likely continue to face questions about Trump in the buildup to the Republican National Convention, which will be held in Cleveland in July. The governor is the chairwoman of New Mexicos 24-member convention delegation. Journal staff writer Rick Nathanson contributed to this report. Eleven students graduated from the first Cultivating Coders bootcamp class in Farmington on Friday. Cultivating Coders, started in Albuquerque, is the first coding bootcamp to take its classes to the Navajo nation, according to the company, and it plans several more bootcamps throughout the year in both urban and rural areas. The companys goal is to bring coding bootcamps to rural areas and under-served populations. Were looking forward to continuing the program in rural communities throughout the country, Cultivating Coders President Charles Ashley III said in a news release about the graduation. We hope to finish three more classes, and launch more exciting apps, by the end of the year. The graduates are forming the new Cheiis Development Shop to do web development work on the Navajo Nation. Student Krieg Benally said the students chose the name Cheii because its the Navajo word for maternal grandfather. I did healthcare for 15 years. This is my first time getting hands-on experience and seeing how it works. Im pretty excited about where my life will take me now. I can actually say I do this as a web developer. Opportunities in this field are endless, Benally said. Ten of the 11 students graduating are from the Navajo Nation. The 11th student moved from Albuquerque to Farmington just to attend the bootcamp. The Episcopal Church in Navajoland fully-funded the scholarships for the first students. The projects the students presented include: www.FastCasualFine.com, the new Cheiis Dev Shop and a new site for the network of Episcopal churches that make up Episcopal Church Navajoland network. FastCasualFine.com is a new restaurant site designed to rank restaurants on their speed as well as their quality. SANTA FE Presbyterian Healthcare Services planned new medical center won approval from the city Planning Commission this week as Presbyterian provided more detail on the facility that will be located in the expanding Las Soleras development in south Santa Fe. Construction is expected to start this summer on an initial 285,000 square-foot phase of the project, with plans to open in early 2018, representing a $135 million investment, according to Helen Brooks, Presbyterians administrator of health care services in Santa Fe. The center, near Cerrillos Road and Interstate 25, will have 30 beds and a 24-hour/seven days a week emergency room and will also provide urgent care services, Brooks said. Presbyterian estimates the new medical center will create about 295 jobs, including provider and support staff, and that about 214 people will be hired during construction. The commission approved the project Thursday night despite objections from representatives of Christus St. Vincent Medical Center. The existing 268-bed Santa Fe hospital has no plans to appeal the Planning Commissions decision to the City Council, Christus St. Vincent spokesman Arturo Delgado said Friday. Christus St. Vincent representatives maintain Presbyterian should have provided a more detailed market analysis of the need for more hospital services in Santa Fe. A presentation prepared by Christus said there are already physician and nurse shortages and that the community will lose $23 million in federal funding that now goes to Christus St. Vincent as a sole community provider in the Santa Fe market. Presbyterian, which already has a clinic on St. Michaels Drive near Christus St. Vincent, says the new facility will provide expanded behavioral health services, lab and imaging services including CT scans and MRIs, as well as additional surgery services, focused on outpatient and short-stay surgeries The medical center also will offer physical, occupational and speech therapies on an outpatient basis. SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. A former Air Force colonel who was one of 52 Americans held hostage in Iran for 444 days has died in Arizona. A family member said Friday that Thomas E. Schaefer died of congestive heart failure Tuesday at a hospice in Scottsdale at age 85. Schaefer was a military attache at the U.S. embassy in Tehran when militants seized the compound and its occupants in November 1979 and 66 people were taken hostage. He was among the last 52 hostages who were released in January 1981. His family says he spoke to more than a quarter-million students and adults about his experience. Schaefer is survived by his wife of 63 years, Anita; two sons, six grandchildren and three great grandchildren. He will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery this fall. A 41-year-old Chaves County man was confirmed to have New Mexicos third travel-related case of Zika, state health officials said said Friday. The man acquired the viral illness while traveling to Central America, the New Mexico Department of Health said in a written statement. Zika is spread primarily through the bite of an infected mosquito. Two Aedes mosquito species known to transmit Zika virus have been found in Chaves, Dona Ana and Eddy counties. But in this case, there was no risk of local transmission because there was no mosquito activity when the case occurred, DOH said. Zika is especially dangerous for pregnant women because it can cause a rare birth defect called microcephaly, marked by a small head and cognitive disabilities. Zika virus usually causes a mild illness, often accompanied by a rash, joint pain and fever. This case should serve as a reminder to people in Chaves County to start taking precautions to reduce mosquito breeding sites on their property, said Paul Ettestad, the departments public health veterinarian. The Aedes albopictus mosquito that can transmit Zika virus has been found in Chaves County in past years, Ettestad said. Everyone in Chaves County should be looking around their home and emptying out and scrubbing containers that have water in them to reduce breeding sites for this mosquito. The CDC has issued travel warnings for anyone headed to specific countries where there is active mosquito-borne transmission of Zika virus. Visit the CDC website for a list of affected countries. BULLHEAD CITY, Ariz. Authorities say an Arizona elementary school teacher has been killed in a personal watercraft accident on the Nevada side of the Colorado River. Fort Mojave tribal police say 29-year-old Erin Ballard of Bullhead City was pronounced dead at a hospital Thursday night. They say surveillance video show Ballard was operating a personal watercraft alone Thursday afternoon when it struck a bridge pillar in the river. Police say the accident remains under investigation although impairment isnt suspected. Ballard had worked for the Bullhead City Elementary School District for three years. District officials say she had recently resigned her fifth-grade teaching position at Coyote Canyon School to relocate closer to her family in California. 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. The average length of time between a new computer being hooked up to the Internet and its being targeted by hackers is six minutes, experts warn -- so its critical to establish a defense in depth against cyber-invasion. Set up a computer, and within six minutes your computer will be attacked, said Paul Horn, chief information security officer at HD Vest, in a session at the companys annual meeting for its financial advisors, Connect2016, being held this week in the Washington, D.C., area. So its important that you get your security set up quickly. Whats more, financial services businesses like accountants, tax professionals and financial planners are particular targets, according to Horns co-presenter, Vest security architect Sonny Mauldin, who cited data on security breaches that showed that financial services was by far the No. 1 attacked industry, accounting for 30 percent of attacks across 21 industry categories, with 795 confirmed security incidents of data loss in the most recent year studied. Between the growing sophistication of black hat data thieves and the enormous incentives they have to steal, its more important than ever that organizations protect themselves, and with that in mind, Horn and Mauldin offered a number of tips. 1. Keep up to date. Make sure your operating systems, browsers, applications and antivirus solutions are current with the latest updates and patches. Almost 100 percent of exploited software vulnerabilities have had a patch available for over a year, Mauldin pointed out: If you could do one thing to protect yourself, it would be to patch your software. 2. Dont rely just on anti-virus software. Anti-virus is only good against 40 percent of vulnerability attacks -- its not the be-all and end-all, Horn said. Its about defense in depth. 3. Have a business-class firewall. Note that an ISP-provided DSL/cable modem is not an adequate firewall, Horn said, so youll want to add something extra to whatever comes with your basic Internet service. 4. Have current backups of your systems and data. Also, make sure the backup is stored somewhere hackers cant get at it -- and test your back up from time to time to make sure its working. 5. Never update from a page prompt. If a Web site tells you that you need to update an application like Acrobat or Java, log out of the browsing session and go to a trusted Web site and download the update from there. 6. Ensure detailed logging is enabled on your firewall and systems. If theres an invasion, this will give you valuable information about what specific information was accessed, and what clients or systems, if any, were affected. 7. Remove local administration rights from your employees accounts. Mauldin also suggested that if you have administrator rights yourself, you should have a separate account without rights for everyday use so if your account is compromised, the hacker wont have administrative power. 8. Have a cyber-insurance policy. Eventually, everyone will get breached, and the recovery costs can be significant. 9. Never use the same passwords for different applications or financial institutions. From a criminals standpoint, once they have the one password, theyll go try it for everything else, Horn said. 10. Stop and think, dont click. E-mail is the root of all evil, Horn said. Dont trust anyone or anything in an e-mail. A roundup of recent expansions, additions, new services and other news from firms across the country. FLORIDA Hancock Askew & Co. LLP opened a new Miami office in February, with Carlos F. Garcia as office managing partner; Patricia M. Siles as tax principal; Alfredo Reynoso as audit manager; Brian Quintana as tax senior accountant; and Christine G. Cox as marketing and client relations supervisor. ... The State of Florida has recognized June 9 as Accountant / Attorney Appreciation Day, and the Accountant / Attorney Networking Group of Florida will celebrate the day with an Accountant/Attorney Appreciation Affair at DCOTA Cay Atrium Bistro in Dania Beach. The event is free for members of the Florida Bar, the Florida Institute of CPAs or the American Institute of CPAs. RSVP to coordinator@aangfl.com by June 8. MISSISSIPPI Nail McKinney PA, Tupelo, has joined CPAmerica International, an accounting association of independent CPA firms. Founded in North Mississippi in 1951, Nail McKinney provides accounting, assurance, tax and employee benefit plan services to individuals and businesses in virtually every industry, as well as business services, including bookkeeping, payroll and QuickBooks. NEW YORK Anchin, Block & Anchin, New York City, launched a redesigned Web site, with an upgraded design. The new site will feature client testimonials, industry-specific news and alerts, and other enhanced resources, and includes responsive design that optimizes the site for whatever device a visitor is using. RWANDA Nambiar Associates has joined Grant Thornton as a new member firm in Rwanda. With three partners and 30 additional staff, the firm will operate as Nambiar Grant Thornton and provide audit, tax and outsourcing services. Send your firm announcements to AcToday@SourceMedia.com. Moss Adams LLP has agreed to combine with Morse Wittwer Sampson LLP, a firm based in Fresno, Calif., effective June 30, 2016. The combination will establishes a Fresno location for Seattle-based Moss Adams, strengthening the firms presence in one of the biggest food and agriculture regions in the country. Moss Adams ranked 14th on Accounting Todays 2016 list of the Top 100 Firms, with $477 million in annual revenue. Established in 2008, Morse Wittwer Sampson is a full-service accounting and consulting firm providing professional services to the agriculturally rich Central Valley. The firm specializes in tax and assurance services for agriculture, manufacturing and real estate clients, among other industries. The new Fresno location will work closely with Moss Adams offices in Sacramento and Stockton to serve the firm's clients through the region. "Combining Moss Adams and Morse Wittwer Sampson allows us to better meet the accounting and advisory needs of the business community in the Central Valley and throughout California," said Kerry Gordon, the Central Valley regional managing partner at Moss Adams, in a statement. "We're pleased to expand our footprint in the region with the presence of this Fresno location, and we're excited to welcome the talented staff of Morse Wittwer Sampson to Moss Adams." Morse Wittwer Sampson's 18 professionals, along with three Moss Adams professionals already in the area, will combine to form the Fresno location. Morse Wittwer Sampson partners, Christopher Morse, Kenneth Wittwer, Sheryl Morse and Doug Sampson, will join Moss Adams as partners, continuing work within their current client roster as well as pursuing further growth opportunities. Christopher Morse will serve as partner in charge of the new Fresno location. The Fresno team will be joined by four former Deloitte employees, who officially started with Moss Adams on May 1. Director Nada Barrett, along with two senior managers and a senior, will bring the Fresno employee count to 25. "This combination with Moss Adams felt like a natural step in the evolution of our firm," said Morse Wittwer Sampson founding partner Christopher Morse. "Both firms share the same commitment to client service and have complementary goals, values and overall company culture. We're excited to become part of one of the industry's leading accounting and business advisory firms on the West Coast." Huawei and Vodafone Spain have introduced today Madrid Tech City, a joint project to position Madrid as one of the most advanced cities around the world, from the technological point of view. Thanks to Madrid Tech City initiative, Madrilenians already have 4G+ mobile network peak data rates of 600 Mbps in the areas of Puerta del Sol, Plaza del Callao and Opera, and in a future in Santa Ana Square. In addition, Retiro Park has been covered with a state-of-the-art active antenna solution, in order to extend the coverage and improve in this way the mobile experience of the citizens. The 45% of the stations located at the M-30 highway have rates of 250 Mbps. Moreover, Chamartin railways station will have an indoors connected solution that will improve the coverage and capacity and will offer new location-based services. In this way, services such as indoors navigation, user-adapted advertising and people concentration map could be offered, combining all these services with the potential of Big Data analytics. Likewise in crowd areas, concretely in Santiago Bernabeu and Vicente Calderon stadiums, new technologies will be implemented to improve the user experience. In Real Madrid stadium, a Cloud RAN-based radio access network has been deployed, which will allow thousands of fans to have high data rates and high-quality 4G mobile connections during the matches, avoiding in this way the typical congestion situation of any stadium. On the other hand, in Vicente Calderon stadium the enhanced Multiple Input - Multiple Output (MIMO) 4X4 technology will be set-up, for the purpose to improve the network capacity and maximize the downloading indices. In both stadiums, the 70% of traffic data are covered through 4G networks. Finally, Vodafone and Huawei have opened the door of NB-IoT (Narrowband - Internet of Things). In this way, via devices sensors, new services could be offered to the citizens and the city, such as intelligent parking, that provides a higher space management efficiency and allows to pay before the vehicle arrives, including navigation to the location; a power-saving intelligent lighting system; an application to locate objects, children or pets; a more efficient waste collection; pollution sensors; water, gas and electricity meters, etc. The NB-IoT technology provides a sensor battery duration up to more than 10 years, massive connections, and a price reduction of its processors. In addition, it offers a better coverage, reaching places that could not be reached until now via the mobile network, such as underground zones. Diego Torrico, Public Administrations Director at Vodafone Spain, commented: "We are delighted at seeing how Madrid Tech City project allow citizens to enjoy one of the fastest 4G networks in the world and an unprecedented mobile Internet experience in the most iconic areas of Madrid. With this initiative, together with Huaweis support, we want to transform Madrid into a city with intelligent services, taking advantage of the possibilities offered by new network technologies in space management." Once considered as utopia, this is today a reality. The technological cities can be already clearly perceived, but there is still a long way to have a significant impact in the local management and the quality of life of the citizens. With ICT as main driving force, the future of urban societies will be redefined via innovating intelligent systems. For that reason, in order to help them face the new challenges and cover the increasing demand, Huawei and Vodafone Spain have joined forces to turn Madrid into a reference technological city. During his intervention, Tony Jin Yong, Huawei Spain CEO, has thanked the Government and Madrid City Council for their presence in the event, and Vodafone Spain for its collaboration. In addition, he said: This project promoted by Huawei in other 12 cities of the world, positions Madrid as one of the most technological cities of the planet and at the forefront of the race to optimize the user experience. The effort made by our company, with the strong support and cooperation from Vodafone, in the development of Madrid Tech City reaffirms, once again, the commitment of our company in the digital transformation of Spain and its capital. Yang Chaobin, CMO of Huawei Global Wireless Network Product Line, highlighted that, "Huawei is pleased to collaborate with Vodafone, one of our strategic partners, to launch the TechCity project in Madrid. This project aims at employing innovative mobile communication solutions to address urban challenges together with industry partners, to improve urban operation efficiency, and to provide a better mobile communication experience. Huawei and Vodafone have developed successful cooperation in joint innovation and we believe that the TechCity project to be launched in Madrid will effectively improve the quality of daily lives through innovative technological achievements. We are looking forward to a better future." Try as much as you will but it is going to be very difficult for anyone to disagree to what this young, funny and vivacious girl has to say. Her one-liners are a reflection of almost every young minds mantra of life! Meet Anokhi Tilak Mehra, a never seen before, quirky female character, all set to debut on Indian television with the new show Humko Tumse Ho Gaya Hai Pyaar Kya Karein Star Plus has always created memorable iconic characters; be it a Sandhya, Pratigya, Suhana, Ishita or Titu; every character has left their unique mark and has been widely loved by viewers. From the same stable comes a truly Anokha character Anokhi who strongly believes that Money can buy happiness. A smart girl of todays generation, she is effervescent, pragmatic, witty and street-smart. She is a warm and sensitive person who just has a very practical view on why money is important in life after-all at the end of the month you need money to pay your bills! Set in Delhi, the show tells the story of two unconventional families with their distinct Delhi flavours. Anokhi belongs to the lower middle class Mehra family while the male lead Tushar belongs to the affluent Mallik family. Anokhis role is being essayed by Ishani Sharma, a fresh face from Himachal Pradesh who gave up engineering to follow her passion for acting. Joining Ishani is Varun Toorky as Tushar. The show features an ensemble cast with veteran actors Sudhir Pandey and Abha Parmar in key roles. The show is produced by Suzana Ghai of Panorama Productions. Ishani, who is making her debut with the show says, Im nervous yet excited to enter this industry. Im playing the character of Anokhi whose thoughts are reflective of todays generation so I can completely connect with her. Her character is very edgy and unique, her philosophy and beliefs are very different from what is seen on Hindi GEC and that is what attracted me to this role. Despite being a newcomer, the channel and the producers have displayed immense faith in me and I consider myself extremely lucky to make my debut with Indias favourite channel Sharing her thoughts about the concept, producer Suzana Ghai said, Anokhis character has been on my mind for very long time and I have been working to get just the right characteristics and nuances in place. I am extremely happy that we are finally able to bring this distinctive and unusual character alive who is in many ways the face of todays youth. The entire team, especially the actors have worked very hard and we are looking forward to presenting Anokhi to the viewers." As Anokhi would say, Whoever says money cant buy happiness didnt know where to shop! Humko Tumse Ho Gaya Hai Pyar Kya Karein, coming soon on STAR Plus. Thunderbird F-16 crashes after Academy graduation; pilot unhurt One of the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds crash landed June 2 in a field near Colorado Springs, Colorado, following the U.S. Air Force Academy commencement, which was attended by President Barack Obama. The F-16 Fighting Falcon, the #6 jet in the formation, crashed about 5 nautical miles south of Peterson Air Force Base at approximately 1 p.m., according to a Air Combat Command news release. The pilot ejected safely and is with medical personnel undergoing evaluation as a precaution, the release said. My thoughts are with the pilot, their family and friends and all (of the Thunderbirds personnel), Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James wrote in a tweet. Glad to hear pilot is safe. The Air Force will perform a thorough investigation into the causes of the mishap, and those findings will be released when the investigation is complete. Video of the Thunderbirds flyover at the U.S. Air Force Academy commencement June 2. U.S. fallen remembered at Madingley Hundreds gathered May 30, 2016, at Madingley American Cemetery in Cambridge, England, to honor thousands of U.S. Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen who made the ultimate sacrifice. The cemetery contains 3,812 headstones and a Wall of the Missing, which stands nearly 500 feet in length and contains the names of more than 5,000 men from the U.S. Army, Army Air Corps, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard, who are still listed as missing in action, buried at sea or unaccounted for. (U.S. Air Force photo/Tech. Sgt. Matthew Plew) 455th AEW welcomes new Vulture lead Brig. Gen. James R. Sears Jr. took command of the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing from Brig. Gen. David Julazadeh during a change of command ceremony, here, June 3. Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Taliaferro, commander of the 9th Air and Space Expeditionary Task Force-Afghanistan, presided over the change of command ceremony. Taliaferro talked about the proud heritage of the 455th AEW and extended his praise to General Julazadeh. General Julazadeh has met and exceeded all challenges, Taliaferro said. He has provided a vision for the 455th to move into the future and should hold his head high for a difficult job extremely well done. Taliaferro went on to talk about the future of the 455th under Sears. As each command ends, another begins. The 455th is lucky to have another incredibly, capable leader, Taliaferro said. You are the right officer to keep this wing moving into the future. You have my complete confidence and Im excited about where you are going to take it. Julazadeh, who has been selected for reassignment to MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, as deputy director, operations, J3, U.S. Central Command, reflected on his time at the 455th AEW and commended the Airmen. A special thanks to the Airmen of the 455th, what a tremendous year we have had, Julazadeh said. Your dedication is amazing, innovation is impressive, compassion is astonishing and your resilience is remarkable Julazadeh went on the welcome Brig. Gen. Sears to the 455th AEW and conveyed his confidence in Sears, as he characterized him as a Phenomenal leader. General Sears comes to the 455th AEW from the Headquarters Air Force Personnel Center, Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas, where he served as Director of Assignments and Air and Space Expeditionary Force Operations. He is a command pilot with over 3,200 flight hours, including combat over Afghanistan and Iraq. Sears expressed his gratitude toward Julazadeh and thanked him for his leadership. Sears then addressed the men and women of the 455th. This wing has carried on a tradition of excellence upon which our nation, joint and coalition partners have grown to depend, Sears said. Together we will continue this tradition of excellence and be ready to meet the threat, and defend America, freedom and our way of life. Idaho deployment to push F-35 limits Eight F-35A aircraft and 160 personnel from Hill Air Force Base will depart this week for rigorous operational testing at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, through June 17. This marks the first time Hill's operational F-35s will travel out of state for training. The F-35A pilots and maintainers from Hill's active duty 388th Fighter Wing and Reserve 419th Fighter Wing will push the aircraft to their limits to simulate deployed operations and ensure the Air Force's newest fighter aircraft are performing as expected. "Mountain Home is an ideal location for our first off-base exercise because it allows us to fully test the deployment capability of the unit and the aircraft while remaining close enough to Hill for home station support if needed," said Lt. Col. Curtis Pitts, commander of the 419th Operations Group, detachment 1. "We're going to do our best to stress our entire system while at Mountain Home," said Maj. Luke Harris, deployment project officer and F-35A pilot with the 34th Fighter Squadron. "Our biggest focus areas are the number of sorties we can generate, the number of sorties that may be lost, loading and employing our weapons, and finding any unique issues with the F-35A." The Air Force's first operational F-35 arrived to the 388th FW's 34th FS in September 2015. The 419th OG, detachment 1 is a contingent of Reserve F-35 pilots who fly in partnership with the 34th FS. During roughly eight sorties a day, three key F-35A mission sets will be tested: suppression and destruction of enemy air defense, air interdiction missions, and basic close air support to include alert launches. Each is required to reach Initial Operational Capability, Harris said. A declaration of IOC means the Air Force has deemed the F-35A combat-capable. Right now, all indications point to the aircraft reaching IOC at Hill later this year. "Since the aircraft's arrival last fall there have been too many milestones to count and we're making great progress," said Lt. Col. George Watkins, 34th FS commander. "The Mountain Home deployment marks another significant milestone in validating the F-35A's capabilities as we pursue IOC." In February Hill F-35 pilots dropped laser-guided bombs at the Utah Test and Training Range in Utah's west dessert, marking the first time these weapons were employed by a combat-coded unit. In May, Hill's F-35 pilots began flying routine four-ship configurations. More than 500 F-35A sorties have been launched from the Hill AFB runway to date. Hill's fleet of F-35 aircraft has also received lightning protection and anti-ice modifications, and pilots are now using the lightweight "Gen-3" helmet. In addition to its advanced stealth capability, the F-35A is designed to gather, fuse, and distribute more information than any fighter in history. The base will be home to three operational F-35 fighter squadrons with a total of 78 aircraft by the end of 2019. The 388th and 419th FWs fly and maintain the Air Force's newest fighter aircraft in a Total Force partnership, which capitalizes on the strength of both components. Editors note: On June 3, 1916, Congress signed the National Defense Act of 1916, which created the nations first air reserve program. In honor of this historic event, the Air Force Reserve is celebrating 100 years of reserve air power throughout the month of June. The following story looks at the National Defense Act of 1916 and how it set the wheels in motion for the organization that would become todays Air Force Reserve. Most of the information for this story was taken from The First Wings of War: Air Force Reserve in World War I, a special study written by Air Force Reserve historians Paul H. Larson, Kevin I. Burge and Keith L. Barr. Throughout history, military leaders have always searched for the high ground, the place where they could see everything around them, take the surprise out of surprise attacks, and effectively and accurately put ammunition on targets. When daring men started taking to the skies in gas-filled balloons during the 19th and early 20th centuries, it didnt take long for some military men of the day to realize the sky could be the ultimate high ground and give them an incredible strategic advantage over their adversaries. During the Civil War, between June 1861 and June 1863, the U.S. Army and the Confederate States Army successfully operated a balloon corps for observation purposes, and the idea of using objects in the air to help win battles on the ground started taking off. A few forward-thinking military leaders paid close attention when word started to spread that Wilbur and Orville Wright had achieved the first self-powered flight in the history of the world on Dec. 17, 1903, on the outer banks of North Carolina near the town of Kitty Hawk. After the Wright Brothers historic flight, as the fledgling aviation industry began to take off, military leaders across the globe started incorporating aviation into their armies. When World War I, the Great War, started on Aug. 4, 1914, countries throughout Europe scrambled to rapidly build up their air forces by manufacturing airplanes and training air crews. The top military brass from the countries fighting in this conflict quickly learned that one aviator could be worth a whole battalion of infantry soldiers. Unfortunately, things didnt progress quite as quickly on this side of the Atlantic. On July 18, 1914, the Aviation Section (of the U.S. Signal Corps) had 19 officers and 101 enlisted men, Air Force Reserve Command historians wrote in The First Wings of War: Air Force Reserve in World War I. By December 1914, the Aviation Section had grown to 44 officers, 224 enlisted men and 23 aircraft. Still, those numbers paled in comparison to the size of the air forces fielded by Germany, Great Britain, France, Russia and other powers fighting in Europe. Worse yet, the Aviation Section had no Reserve or National Guard officers or enlisted men who could quickly enter the fight, the historians wrote. That all changed with the signing of the National Defense Act of 1916, which created the nations first air reserve program. The comprehensive legislation defined the roles and missions of the active-duty U.S. Army, the National Guard and the Reserve. Also, it solidified the concept of the Reserve Officer Training Corps. Brig. Gen. Hal C. Pattison, who served as the Armys chief of military history from 1962 to 1970, said, The National Defense Act of 1916 is viewed as providing for the immediate ancestor of our reserve system in its present form. The War Department knew it would be impossible to maintain sufficient strength in aviators and skilled technicians in the peacetime Army, the AFRC historians wrote about the National Defense Act of 1916. The air reserve program provided the needed hedge in case of war. The Signal Officers Reserve Corps and the Signal Enlisted Reserve Corps added more than 2,200 officer and enlisted positions to the Signal Corps Aviation Section. "Flying training schools were established in Florida, Virginia, Illinois and Tennessee. However, they were unable to keep up with the rapidly expanding Aviation Section. In June 1916, the First Reserve Aero Squadron, which still exists today (at Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado) as the 26th Space Aggressor Squadron, had 26 officer pilots and 12 flying sergeants trained and volunteering for the punitive campaign against Pancho Villa in Mexico. When Congress declared war on Germany in April 1917, the total number of military aviators was less than 200. By November, that number had jumped to 9,000, and it continued to increase as the war went on. Of course, with that substantial of an increase in aviators came lots of growing pains. A number of early Air Force Reservists played key roles in helping the United States manage these growing pains. Maj. Raynal Bolling, who led the Bolling Mission to Europe, played an instrumental part in procuring the aircraft and equipment U.S. aviators used during the war. Maj. Hiram Bingham, who rediscovered the Incan city of Machu Picchu, Peru, in 1911, helped establish the training curriculum that U.S. aviators followed throughout the conflict. Capt. Phillip Carroll played a key role in building up the first U.S. training bases in France. Capt. Douglas Campbell, Lt. Frank Luke and Lt. Charles DOlive earned the coveted title of ace as a result of their daring exploits in the cockpits of some of the worlds most advanced aircraft of the day. The U.S. military entered World War I mostly unprepared for the enormity of the task it faced, the AFRC historians wrote. The U.S. Army did not have the active-duty, National Guard or Reserve aviation forces it needed to accomplish the immense task before it. Fortunately, many talented and ingenious men stepped forward to do their part to win the war in the air. Commissioned into the Signal Officers Reserve Corps and enlisted into the Signal Enlisted Reserve Corps, men such as Maj. Raynal Bolling, Maj. Hiram Bingham, Capt. Phillip Carroll, Capt. Douglas Campbell, Lt. Frank Luke and Lt. Charles dOlive proved that talented civilians could do great things in uniform. Their important contributions paved the way for future generations of U.S. military aviators. Ready to receive: B-52s touch down in England With the sharp screech of rubber meeting asphalt, two B-52 Stratofortress bombers from Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, touched down June 2 at Royal Air Force Fairford. For the third year in a row the bombers have deployed to RAF Fairford to participate in bilateral training exercises. This year marks an integration with allied military forces through U.S. European Commands exercises Baltops 16 and Saber Strike 16, as well as U.S. Africa Commands exercise Just Hammer. During this short-term deployment, the strategic bombers are scheduled to conduct training flights with ground and naval forces around the region and participate in multinational exercises, said Air Force Col. Kieran Denehan, the 5th Expeditionary Operations Group commander. The bombers will integrate into several exercise and real-world activities, including air intercept training, mining operations, inert ordnance drops and close air support. Using RAF Fairford, which normally operates as a lean base within the scope of the 501st Combat Support Wing, as a strategic hub for these exercises, the bomber crews have a unique opportunity to integrate and train with U.S. service members, allies and partners in a multitude of operations. The ability to integrate strategic bomber forces in a variety of missions is key to ensuring the U.S. is able to honor our security commitments, Denehan said. This deployment to RAF Fairford is about participating in long-standing exercises and conducting necessary training within the region. RAF Fairfords unique strategic location, capabilities, facilities and ability to transform from a lean base to an active, operational installation, makes it a key location for large-scale exercises and readiness operations. With the second longest flightline in the United Kingdom, we have an airfield that can accommodate a B-52 with no stress on the pavement, said Frank Dailey, the 420th Air Base Squadron site director at RAF Fairford. Out of our 55 wide-body parking spots, 43 have the ability for on-the-spot hydrant refueling, which allows for quicker sortie turnarounds. Throughout the exercises, RAF Fairford will host the bombers, along with about 250 Airmen from Air Force Global Strike Command, and U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa. The training is designed to build and strengthen partnerships across the continent, as well as ensure interoperability with NATO allies and partners to remain strong and focused on a shared commitment to peace and global security. U.S. Strategic Command routinely deploys bombers to both the EUCOM and U.S. Pacific Command areas of responsibility to train and integrate with allies and partners, while also demonstrating the ability to maintain command and control of the bomber force anywhere in the world. The most recent deployment of B-52s to Europe was in March in support of exercises Cold Response and Serpentex. Obama addresses Academy graduates President Barack Obama shared with the graduating cadets of the U.S. Air Force Academy some of the lessons he has learned in more than seven years as president and commander in chief during a June 2 commencement ceremony in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The president addressed the 812 new second lieutenants and discussed lessons he had learned about national security. The president also saluted Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, whos slated to retire as the top officer in his service. Obama told the new Air Force officers to continue to be guided by honest and clear-eyed assessments. Remember what you learned at this Academy, the importance of evidence and facts and judgment, he said. And here is a fact: The United States of America remains the most powerful nation on Earth and a force for good. Challenges remain The president said there are challenges that must be addressed, but the U.S. still has the worlds strongest economy -- one noted for innovation and the nation still attracts and retains the best minds in the world. Our values -- freedom, equality, opportunity -- inspire people everywhere, including immigrants who come here ready to work and integrate and help renew our country, the president said. Americas standing in the world is high, Obama said, something he said he notices wherever he travels. Make no mistake, the United States is better positioned to lead in the 21st century than any other nation, he said. Another fact, he said, is that the U.S. military remains the strongest in world. Our military is the most capable fighting force on the planet, Obama said. It is not close. He continued, And as for our Airmen: with your unequaled vigilance and reach, unrivaled fifth-generation fighters, a new generation of remotely piloted aircraft pilots, astonishing precision that calls to mind your actual class motto, On target, on time, nobody can match America's Air Force. Joint force provides advantage But its the joint force that provides the American military its advantage, the president said. He described an operation against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in Syria last year as an example. Air Force aircraft provided surveillance. Navy (fast attack) teams provided close air support. Army aviation assets delivered as special operators an assault force of Marines and Soldiers to the target, he said. And one of ISIL's top leaders, Abu Sayyaf, was eliminated. The U.S. must maintain that advantage, the president said. Another fact is that even with all the turmoil in the world, this is a most peaceful and prosperous era in history, he said. For decades there have been no wars between major powers, Obama said. Wars between nations are increasingly rare. More people live in democracies. More than 1 billion people have been lifted from extreme poverty. He added, From the Americas to Africa, to Southeast Asia, there is a new generation of young people connected by technology and ready to make their mark. I've met them. They look up to America. They aspire to be our partner. That is the progress and the hope that we have to build on. The U.S. is well positioned, but there are serious threats still out there, the president said. Terrorist networks, ISIL, Russia, disputes in the South China Sea, North Korean nuclear threats, Iran, all these are testing an international order that we built, where the sovereignty of nations is respected and all nations abide by the same rules, Obama said. How to meet these threats while also seizing the incredible opportunities of this moment in history, that is going to be your challenge, the challenge of your generation. Living in a complex world American leadership is needed in todays complex global environment, the president said. As we navigate this complex world, America cannot shirk the mantle of leadership. We can't be isolationists. It's not possible in this globalized, interconnected world, Obama said. Embracing isolationism provides a false comfort, he said. Allowing problems to fester over there makes us less secure here. The president noted that one of the most effective ways to lead and work with others is through treaties that advance U.S. interests. He deviated a bit from his prepared remarks and told the cadets that there has been a mindset in Congress that just about any international treaty is somehow a violation of American sovereignty, and so the Senate almost never approves treaties anymore. Treaties govern many things, including international phone calls and mail service. The treaties that established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and limit nuclear weapons, help keep us safe, the president said. So, if were truly concerned about China's actions in the South China Sea, for example, the Senate should help strengthen our case by approving the Law of the Sea Convention, as our military leaders have urged, Obama said. Its time for the Senate to do its job and help us advance American leadership, rather than undermine it. The U.S. has many alliances and they provide the foundation for global stability and prosperity, the president said. On just about every issue, the world looks to us to set the agenda, he said. When there is a problem around the world, they do not call Beijing or Moscow. They call us. Perceiving threats Leading widely also means seeing threats clearly, the president told the new officers. Ebola hemorrhagic fever was a serious threat and U.S. leaders took it seriously. But in the midst of it, there was hysteria, he said. The thing is, when we panic, we don't make good decisions, he said. So, with Ebola, instead of responding with fear, we responded with facts, and responded with science and organization. And thanks to a coordinated global response enabled by the American military and our medical workers who got in there first, we stopped the spread of Ebola in West Africa and saved countless lives and protected ourselves. The U.S. must engage with the rest of the world, but that doesnt mean intervening militarily every time there is a problem or crisis, he said. History is littered with the ruins of empires and nations that overextended themselves, draining their power and influence, Obama said. And so, we have to chart a smarter path. He told the cadets that they must be hard-headed and big-hearted, guided by realism and idealism. And even when these forces are sometimes at odds, we have got to have the realism to see the world as it is, where sometimes uncomfortable compromises are necessary, where we have the humility to recognize that there are limits to what even a nation as powerful as ours can do. Fighting terrorism There will be times when military force is necessary, the president said. As commander in chief, I have not hesitated to use force unilaterally where necessary to protect the American people, he said. Thanks to our military, intelligence, and counterterrorism professionals, (Osama) bin Laden is gone. Anwar al-Awlaki, a leader of the al Qaida-affiliated Yemen, is gone. Ahmed Abdi Godane, the al-Qaida leader in Somalia; he's gone. Ahmed Abu Khattala, accused in the attacks in Benghazi; captured. Mohamed Mansour, the leader of the Taliban; gone. The president has a message for those who seek to terrorize America: If you target Americans we will find you, and justice will be done and we will defend our nation, Obama said. It is right to celebrate the courage service members demonstrate in war, but it is not right to celebrate war, the president said. We have a solemn responsibility to these Americans who sacrifice in our name, Obama said. We have a responsibility to be guided by intelligence and not ideology. And to never rush into war and explore other options first, because sending our troops into harms way must always be a last resort. While the U.S. will act unilaterally if necessary, allies are tremendously important, the president said. The United States, he said, works with coalitions in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These terrorists are learning the same lesson as others before them: You will never be strong enough to destroy America or our way of life; You are going to lose, and part of that is because we're on the right side of history and part of it is because we can mobilize others to work with us, Obama said. American values Finally, the last lesson the president had for the new officers was to remember that threats to American security cannot be solved by military force alone. Weve got to draw on every tool, all elements of our national power, he said. When we invest in the development that promotes education and opportunity around the globe, it can make conflicts and military interventions less likely later. So, if you want to support our military, he continued, you also have to be in favor of foreign assistance that helps some young person learn in a very poor country, because it may end up making it less necessary to send our sons and daughters somewhere to fight. You cant separate the two. American values provide the most important weapon in the U.S. arsenal, Obama said. That is how we won the Cold War -- not just with the strength of our arms, (but) with the power of our ideas, the power of our example, he said. It is how we defend our nation because America does not just insist that other countries respect human rights, we have to uphold them as well and lead the way. The president said it is really impossible to know what the future may bring. In the not-too-distant future, when I'm no longer president, I will sleep well at night because I know that men and women like you serve to keep us free, Obama told the Airmen. Take care of each other. Take care of those under your command. And, as long as you keep strong that long blue line, stay true to the values that youve learned here: integrity, service before self, excellence. The toll in the [inlinetweet prefix=null tweeter= suffix=]Mathura violence rose to 24 on Friday as Superintendent of Police Mukul Dwivedi and others injured in Thursdays clash[/inlinetweet] between police and encroachers during an anti-encroachment drive, succumbed to their injuries, officials said. While over 374 people have been arrested in connection to the clashes, the city continues to be tense even as heavy police reinforcement has been deployed in the violence hit region. Dwivedi, a 1995 batch officer had joined as SP (City) Mathura seven months ago and is being remembered as one of the finest in the district police force. He was leading the operations following the orders of the court to clear the park of encroachment when police team was greeted with unprovoked and indiscriminate firing by the encroachers, believed to be part of sect called Satyagrahis. Akhilesh Yadav orders probe While [inlinetweet prefix= tweeter= suffix=]Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has ordered a probe into the incident[/inlinetweet], sources say the slain SP many times in the past had shared his frustration about the situation in Jawaharbagh, with friends and family. @UPGovt will ensure the strictest action under law against the perpetrators in the Mathura incident. Speedy prosecution of the accused-CM CM Office, GoUP (@CMOfficeUP) June 3, 2016 Close aides said that Dwivedi had spoken to them on how his superiors in the district were dissuading him against acting against the people behind the encroachment, despite a specific court order to do so. He also allegedly told some officials that he was not being provided with adequate police force to clear the encroachment at the sprawling park. The incident has come as a setback to the Samajwadi Party (SP) government in the state which braces for elections early next year and is already faced with charges of lawlessness in the state. Rajnath Singh reviews situation [inlinetweet prefix= tweeter= suffix=]Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday reviewed the situation in Uttar Pradeshs Mathura city[/inlinetweet] where a police sub inspector and superintendent of police among 22 others were killed. Spoke to UP CM Shri @yadavakhilesh and reviewed the situation in Mathura. I have also assured him of all possible help from the Centre. Rajnath Singh (@BJPRajnathSingh) June 3, 2016 He further tweeted: Anguished over the loss of lives in the incidents of violence in Mathura. May God give strength to the bereaved families to bear the loss. On Thursday, a mob went on rampage after police took action against them for encroaching upon a major part of a government land. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Congress leaders have also slammed the state government for letting the situation spin out of control to such fatal consequences. Activists use grenades, automatic weapons The activists not only used hand grenades, but also opened fire from automatic weapons after taking position on tree tops, District Magistrate Rajesh Kumar had said. The area was filled with smoke following explosions from hand grenades and LPG cylinders and several huts caught fire, he said. Over two years ago, activists of splinter group of Baba Jai Gurudeo had occupied hundreds of acres of land of Jawahar Bagh on the pretext of dharna Their demands included cancellation of election of President and Prime Minister of India, replacement of existing currency with Azad Hind Fauj currency, sale of diesel at the rate of 60 litres for one rupee and petrol at the rate of 40 litres for one rupee. The High Court had, acting on a PIL, directed the authorities to vacate the land. In April, Mathura district administration has issued a notice to the protesters asking them to vacate the land. The land falls under the Horticultural Department of the U.P. government, and attempts by its officials to evict the people had failed. (With Agency Inputs) Bangkok: Thai authorities uncovered a trove of animal parts and intercepted a monk trying to leave a controversial tiger temple with skins and fangs Thursday, the latest discovery to fuel accusations that the zoo is involved in the illegal wildlife trade. Dozens of police and park officials have been stationed at the Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua temple in western Kanchanaburi province since Monday after receiving a court order to remove over 100 adult cats from the complex. For decades the infamous temple has been a popular stop for tourists who pay a steep fee to pet and be photographed with the predators which animal rights groups say are heavily sedated. Today we found tiger skins and amulets in a car which was trying to leave the temple, Adisorn Noochdumrong, the deputy director of Thailands parks department, told AFP. He said around 10 tiger fangs were also found in the truck, and that some of the hundreds of amulets contained tiger parts. In addition to skins that were later found in monks quarters, officials discovered a living lion, hornbill, sun bear and banteng (an endangered species of wild cattle) inside the temple compound, he said. They also uncovered around 20 containers of preserved tiger parts holding both whole bodies and organs to be used for medicines, Adisorn told AFP. The discovery comes after authorities found dozens of dead tiger cubs inside a freezer at the temple Wednesday. Animals rights groups and conservationists have long accused the temple of secretly acting as a tiger farm and reaping huge profits from selling animals and tiger parts on the black market for use in Chinese medicine. The temple has always denied trafficking allegations and says it provides higher quality care for the animals than official park facilities. Repeated efforts to shut down the site over the years have been delayed and complicated by the fact that secular Thai authorities are often reluctant to intervene in the affairs of the clergy. Park authorities said they have removed 84 tigers so far this week and are transferring the animals to nearby breeding centres. Police said they have not filed any criminal charges yet and are still investigating the temple. Previous raids of the temple revealed that dozens of hornbills, jackals and Asian bears were also being kept at the sanctuary without proper permits. (AFP) Under Fire From All Sides: Syria's Assyrians Assyrians wave their community's flag, as they march past a church damaged during the Lebanese civil war. They were protesting in solidarity with Christians abducted in Syria and Iraq by Islamic State militants, in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, Feb. 28, 2015. ( AP/Hussein Malla) The precise significance of the Kurdish authorities' declaration in March of a "federal region" in northeastern Syria remains to be seen. But what is absent from much of the discussion surrounding the ascent to power of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the People's Protection Units (YPG) is its effect on the non-Kurdish peoples that the self-administration has sought to absorb into its dominion. A closer examination of the Assyrian people can help illuminate the more complicated reality of the overlap between and transition from government rule to that of the self-administration. The majority of Assyrians in Syria are concentrated in the province of Hassakeh, an area known to Assyrians as Gozarto. Refugees fleeing Ottoman genocides in the early 20th century built the cities of Qamishli, Tel Tamer and 35 villages along the Khabur River from scratch. But since the start of the war in Syria, the Assyrian population across the country has been cut in half. Caught between Islamist forces and a steadily growing Kurdish regional power, thousands of Assyrians in the northeast have fled the country. Recent incidents illustrate their plight. On December 30, a coordinated bombing attack targeted three Assyrian restaurants in the neighborhood of Wusta in Qamishli. Fourteen Assyrians were killed and dozens injured. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but their intent was clearly to terrorize Assyrians and force them out. The Gozarto Protection Force (GPF), a local Assyrian group, subsequently tightened its control over checkpoints in the neighborhood. Early on January 12, members of the Asayish, a police force loyal to the Kurdish administration, approached the checkpoints and demanded they be dismantled. When the GPF refused, the Asayish opened fire on the Assyrians, killing one and wounding two others. When the Asayish returned with YPG fighters in stronger numbers, the majority of civilians in Wusta took up arms against what was universally perceived by locals as an invasion of their neighborhood. Another three bomb attacks, similar to that in late December, have since been carried out in Wusta, along with a dual suicide and grenade attack on May 21 -- suspected of having been carried out by the so-called Islamic State group (ISIS) -- which claimed the lives of three Assyrian civilians. While the PYD has used its relationship with the Assad regime to advance its partisan interests, at the same time benefiting from the disintegration of the Syrian state, it has marginalized and persecuted Assyrians who have attempted to organize independently of Kurdish leadership and anchor themselves in some notion of a unitary Syria. After regime forces withdrew from the Khabur River in 2012 to focus on more strategically significant areas, Assyrians seeking to establish independent security forces in Khabur were met with harassment, intimidation and even murder. David Jindo, the leader of the Khabur Council of Guardians -- one force that sought to coexist with but not serve under the command of the YPG -- was assassinated by the YPG last April. The biggest priority for Assyrians in Syria remains having stable proprietorship and rights of security and administration over land they have inhabited since the inception of the Syrian state. In February 2015, ISIS attacked the villages along the Khabur, which were perilously located between the YPG-controlled areas in Hassakah and ISIS beyond the river. The extremists took 253 civilians hostage, three of whom were publicly executed. All but six have now been freed. But as residents of the deserted Khabur villages are slowly returning, local inhabitants' wish to navigate a course leading to the sustainability of the Assyrian populations, independent of the Kurdish self-administration, must feature in deliberations on the future of the region. A law proposed by the self-administration legalizing the expropriation of Assyrian property in late November was only kept at bay following enormous resistance from Assyrian organizations. However, instances of expropriation by the Kurdish self-administration are still taking place, such as the public seizure in January of an Assyrian mini-bus company in Hassakeh, which was struggling for business because of the war. According to Assyrian organizations and churches, 35 of real estate in Hassakeh is Assyrian-owned. Its community in Syria is deeply worried by the precedent set by Kurdish nationalists in Iraq, who have repeatedly taken advantage of moments of unrest, added to outright aggression, to take over Assyrian property and land, permanently preventing the return of their original inhabitants. And while Assyrians do participate in self-administration via the Syriac Union Party (SUP) and its military wing, the Syriac Military Council (MFS), their inclusion is largely symbolic. These bodies are contemporary versions of the Dawronoye (Syriac for Revolutionaries) movement, founded in the 1990s under the auspices of the PKK in Turkey and Iraq, who have since consolidated in northeastern Syria in parallel with the ascent of the PYD. The PYD uses the presence of the Dawronoye in the self-administration to claim, at almost every opportunity, that the endeavor involves participation from non-Kurdish groups such as Assyrians, and is therefore not a project of ethnic partition. Assyrians seeking to control their affairs independently are often told that the SUP, as the official representative of the Assyrian community within the self-administration, can perform those functions on their behalf, despite deep-set mistrust widely felt by Assyrians toward the body. According to Armenia Online reports, harassment of young Assyrian men by the YPG is frequently cited as a reason for the continuing emigration of Assyrians from Syria, in addition to detailing how the MFS has been used as a proxy vehicle to conscript Assyrians into YPG command. The YPG, along with ISIS and the MFS, has taken part in the looting of empty Khabur villages. In a February report from Assyria TV, which describes the imprisonment and severe beating of a Khabur Guards fighter by an MFS commander following a dispute, one Assyrian woman expressed her fears over the MFS presence in Khabur: "Not a single Dawronoye should remain in Khabur. They do not accept us as brothers of the same blood. They wish to create enmity between us, to annex Khabur, and to get us out of there." The much vaunted ethno-communal participation promulgated by the Kurdish self-administration has quickly transformed into a device for the infiltration, division and control of Assyrians. Unless it begins to respect the rights of communities and people who wish to remain independent of it, it will render its rule another form of occupation in all but name. In light of the authoritarian and expansionist tendencies of the self-administration, and given the absence of a legitimate Syrian state, Assyrians are in urgent need of support to remain independent. Support should include projects to rebuild and repopulate Khabur, according to the needs and desires of its inhabitants; the creation of local forces with community support that protect Assyrian areas at risk of incursion or theft; an the empowerment of civil society organizations that unite and represent Assyrians with fidelity. Only a commitment to Assyrian-led security and administration can protect Assyrians from current regional threats and the pull of emigration, and thereby work to secure this ancient people a future in Syria. June 2, 2016 Many people were surprised by comments that new Minister of Defense Avigdor Liberman made to the Israel Defense Forces General Staff this week, just a few hours after a reception in his honor at the Defense Ministry on May 31. When there is a clash of values between the unity of the people and territorial integrity, the people are more important, Liberman said. While Liberman was addressing the General Staff, Israeli mayors were meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Palestinian Authority (PA) headquarters, the Muqata, in Ramallah. At that meeting, they were treated to a no less surprising statement. If Liberman truly supports the two-state solution, nothing will prevent us from negotiating with him, said Abbas. If Liberman really means that, the Palestinians will forget that he accused them of being diplomatic terrorists and will judge him on his future actions. These moderate statements by the two leaders, which were made almost simultaneously, were no coincidence. Al-Monitor was informed that the tempered remarks were preceded by a series of messages sent by the Palestinians, saying that they do not reject the idea of a meeting between the Palestinian president and Israels new minister of defense. After word began circulating May 18 that Liberman was to replace Moshe Yaalon as minister of defense, a brainstorming team was created at the Muqata to work out where Israel is headed. The conclusion was that Liberman, after facing sharp criticism surrounding his appointment as minister of defense, would attempt to shatter his image as an extremist, regardless of whether he himself is responsible for that image or whether it was built by others. During their discussions, this team of senior Palestinian officials decided that Liberman is very different from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and that he would have no problem taking back any harsh statements he made in the past about the PA and Abbas. He doesnt have to face the Likud Central Committee, and he can only benefit politically if he pushes a new diplomatic initiative forward, going over the head of Netanyahu the rejectionist, one Palestinian who was present at the discussions told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. The Palestinians received indications that their assessment was correct much faster than they anticipated. It happened almost immediately, when Liberman was being sworn in to his new position in the presence of Netanyahu on May 30. Not only did Liberman announce that he supports a two-state solution, but he also surprised everyone by saying that the recent speech on Middle East peace delivered by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi offers a real opportunity, and that we must try to pick up the gauntlet. While the meeting between the Israeli mayors and Abbas at the Muqata this week was actually planned several weeks ago, the mayors reported that they found the Palestinian leader to be optimistic and determined to move a diplomatic peace process forward. I told Abbas that Liberman is very different from the person that is portrayed among the Israeli public. He is very moderate, Maalot Mayor Shlomo Bohbot told Al-Monitor. Abbas responded that he would be happy to meet with Liberman. Bohbot said that all that was left for the mayors delegation to do was to offer support to the Palestinian leader, who hadn't lost hope. I told Abbas that [Israeli Prime Minister] Menachem Begin shook hands with [Egyptian President] Anwar Sadat and withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula, and [Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin shook hands with [PLO leader Yasser] Arafat and began the peace process. We believe that Liberman will surprise everyone and follow the path set by these leaders who were inspiring in the ways they changed their worldviews. I want to say that the man I found in Ramallah is completely different from the man that the Israeli leadership depicts to the public. Abbas told us, We want peace so that we can bring good tidings to our people and to yours, said Bohbot, whose city is in the north of Israel. Abbas is determined to test Liberman, one Palestinian senior diplomatic source told Al-Monitor. If there is a meeting [between them], and they exchange statements and improve the atmosphere between the two peoples, it would be excellent for everyone. If, on the other hand, Liberman rejects all of our appeals, we will know that he is all talk. While Abbas did ask to open a channel of communication with Libermans office, using the mayors as a conduit, it would not be the only channel open to him. Ever since Libermans appointment was announced, messages have been relayed to Israel by way of a military channel, i.e., the defense coordination committees that exist between Israel and the Palestinians. These messages, sent via the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Maj. Gen. Yoav (Poli) Mordechai, focused mainly on the Palestinians desire to maintain and preserve the close cooperation that exists between the parties. The Palestinians even advised the Israelis to brief the new defense minister about the current state of this cooperation and to emphasize its achievements in curbing the intifada. Among other things, Mordechai was asked to relay the message that in order to maintain the current state of affairs and advance the diplomatic process, Abbas does not reject the idea of holding a public meeting with Liberman, even though Abbas knows that he will come under severe criticism for it from his own constituency. Palestinians associated with Abbas believe that the Palestinian president can overcome this criticism if Liberman provides a positive milieu to the idea of such a meeting. As aforementioned, Liberman indeed gave that positive milieu to Abbas. Based on Libermans public remarks, we take away a few things, one Palestinian diplomatic source told Al-Monitor. Liberman supports a two-state solution, the adoption of the Arab Leagues initiative with the necessary emendations, a withdrawal from the territories and acceptance of the Egyptian presidents initiative, who is [Sisi] the key to progress. Former Knesset member Taleb el-Sana, an Arab who works with the Palestinian Integration Committee, told Al-Monitor that the PA plans to get everything it can out of the possibility of advancing a diplomatic initiative through Liberman. Abbas is willing to meet with anyone who is willing to meet with him, and to speak to anyone who is willing to speak to him. When it comes to Liberman, this is the time to see if he is serious or not. June 3, 2016 Most Islamist movements, including Hamas, adopt an ideological principle that does not separate between religion and state, because Islam addresses societys issues, be they political, social or economic. This has given the mission of these movements a comprehensive character. In their meetings, the Muslim Brotherhood reiterate the idea that their founder, Hassan al-Banna, uttered: Islams teachings are comprehensive. They encompass the affairs of the people in this world and the next. Islam is a faith and a ritual, a nation and a nationality, a religion and a state, spirit and deed, holy text and sword. But the Islamist Ennahda movement in Tunisia, which is one of the largest Islamist movements, issued a historical decision May 9 to separate political work from religious activities, to focus on politics and for preaching to be limited to civil societies. The decision raised important questions on the goal behind it. Why now? Is Ennahda scared to face the same fate as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, after the Egyptian armys coup against it in July 2013? It is noteworthy that Egypts Muslim Brotherhood members are either locked up in Egyptian prisons, pursued by Egypts security or living in exile for fear of arrest and pursuit. Will the decision motivate other Islamist movements such as Hamas to do likewise, despite the different circumstances and political environment? Saleh al-Raqab, the former minister of religious affairs and endowments in the Hamas government and a prominent Sharia scholar, told Al-Monitor, To evaluate Ennahdas decision designed to separate politics from preaching, we must know the truth behind this step. If the movement means to separate religion and the state, it is catastrophic. But if this is just a matter of procedure, then it is possible. When Hamas ruled between 2007 and 2014, it decided that none of its ministers would be a member of its political bureau. But Ennahdas decision is clearly due to the developments of the Muslim Brotherhood's experience in Egypt and the subsequent Western pressure. It seems that Ennahda had to take this decision, not out of political conviction or intellectual progress. But Western states are not naive, and they will not believe that Ennahdas decision came out of real progress rather than a tactical measure to overcome the pressure. The West wants them to give up everything ultimately. A European diplomatic source commented on condition of anonymity on the latest Ennahda developments, saying that Ennahdas decision to separate religious from political action was due to the lack of political meetings regarding cultural and religious issues. According to the source, Ennahda is obsessed with convincing the West that it is not the same as the Muslim Brotherhood. Ennahdas move preoccupied intellectual and media circles within Hamas. Dozens of posts and discussions were shared on social media, especially on Facebook. Some advocated Ennahdas decision and considered it a chance for Hamas to follow, while others strictly opposed this move and accused Ennahda of giving up on Islam gradually. A third party voiced its conditional support out of fear that this step might be a prelude to Ennahdas relinquishing its Islamist program. A fourth party that is close to Hamas expressed concerns that Ennahda might be aiming at abandoning the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the mother group of all Islamist movements in the world. Zied Boumakhla, a member of Ennahdas Shura Council, told Al-Monitor, Ennahdas decision to separate religious activities from political ones is a result of long discussions rather than pressure. The best move is to separate religious from political action. We are a political party with an Islamic authority. We implement our programs by distributing our human resources across several work sectors without merging politics with preaching and religious activities. We called on representatives of Islamist movements, including Hamas represented by the head of its international relations, Osama Hamdan, to attend our conference on May 20-22. Political work should have some space to move in, far from narrow ideological approaches. Although Hamas has its particularity, it can benefit from experience. We cannot discuss the repercussions of Ennahdas decision without pointing out the fact that several Hamas figures were impressed with the character of its leader, Rachid Ghannouchi. Some view him as more progressive than his fellow leaders of Islamist parties, as he puts the local national discourse before the partisan one. In July 2013, Ennahda stepped down in Tunisia to spare the country strife similar to that in other Arab states such as Egypt and Libya. Yet Ghannouchi went too far in his discourse May 20 when he openly called for distancing religion from political battles, and keeping mosques away from political rivalries and partisan interests so that they unite people instead of separating them. Yahia Mousa, the Hamas chairman of the Legislative Council's Oversight and Human Rights Committee in the Gaza Strip and head of the National Islamic Salvation Party that Hamas established in 1996 and that was disbanded following the Al-Aqsa intifada in 2000, told Al-Monitor, Ennahdas step is tailored to Tunisias situation. Even if it happened under foreign pressure, that does not make it wrong. The school of thought in the Maghreb among Islamist parties in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco is more developed than its Eastern counterpart in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and Egypt. Intellectuals in the Maghreb are more in contact with the West as they lived there for years. The Palestinian situation necessitates a general command for the Islamist party, and under this command, the subcommands would be included be they economic, political, military, social or religious. Each subcommand would have its own methods. Sari Orabi, a Palestinian expert on Islamist parties, told Al-Monitor, Palestines Islamists, especially Hamas, who followed up the updates on Ennahdas situation stopped at the slogan of separating the religious from the political rather than delving in its deeper meaning, regardless of their support for or opposition to this decision. "The counter-revolutions took Islamists by surprise and put them in intellectual and political dilemmas. When Hamas members discuss the direct effect of Ennahdas decision, they have to focus on the confrontation with Israel and the liberation of the Palestinian territories rather than on favoring the secular or Islamist state. This can be discussed later after the liberation. The discussions over Ennahdas decision did not stop in Hamas circles, and it does not seem that they are even close to ending. Ennahda threw a stone in still waters among Hamas cadres and supporters who were raised to believe that religion is the main point of reference for politicians. However, this perspective might have narrowed down Hamas options at times due to Sharia jurisprudences that perhaps did not engulf the political situation from all its aspects. June 2, 2016 WASHINGTON Over two dozen foreign ministers, including US Secretary of State John Kerry, will convene in Paris June 3 for an international conference on advancing a two-state solution in the Middle East, but neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority will send envoys. While Kerry agreed to attend, the United States has expressed ambivalence about the French initiative, saying without the will of the two parties, the peace process wont succeed. France, for its part, said it was well aware of the difficulties, but something must be done to break the deadlock and get the parties back to the table. The first and most important thing is that the leaders themselves in the region have got to make some tough decisions, State Department spokesperson John Kirby told journalists at the State Department press briefing May 30. And they have to show in real ways, not just rhetoric, that theyre willing to take the steps necessary to get us to a two-state solution, and to date they havent done that. Kerry is not going to turn up his nose at any good ideas that could get us closer to seeing a two-state solution in place, Kirby said June 1. And so he looks forward to discussing all manner of options and alternatives that might come up on Friday. The Israelis and Palestinians will resolve their differences when they sit down face to face and actually engage in constructive conversations about resolving their differences, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said May 31. But nobody in the international community, including the United States, can make those difficult decisions for the parties. Ultimately, the parties themselves have to make those decisions. Frances Foreign Ministry said the June 3 ministerial meeting is a first step to try to revive collapsed Middle East peace negotiations and the effort deserved attention because the situation on the ground is deteriorating. France wanted to take this political initiative because the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories is worsening due to the lack of prospects for negotiations, the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement. It is up to us to take action to recreate a political outlook which encourages renewed bilateral negotiations between the two currently deadlocked parties. Each of us is well aware of the difficulties, but we cannot afford to do nothing, the ministry statement read. All our partners agree that the two-state solution is falling apart and that the current situation is dangerous. Our aim is to mobilize the entire international community so that it can actively support relaunching the peace process. Ilan Goldenberg, who previously worked on Kerrys State Department Middle East peace team, said whatever misgivings the United States may have about the French initiative, it was better to attend than skip it. Probably the administration decided it is worth going, and better to be in the room than out of the room, Goldenberg, now director of Middle East programs at the Center for New American Security (CNAS), told Al-Monitor June 1. The French have a couple different visions for it. Some things can be productive, some things can be unproductive, said Goldenberg, who hosted a CNAS/Israel Policy Forum conference on security measures for a two-state solution. If they want to use it to build consensus for parameters for a two-state UN Security Council resolution, that would seem to me a terrible idea. You are not going to be able to get everyone to agree, with so many countries, on parameters to set up negotiations. Its a pipe dream. Alternatively, If they want to use it to lay out some incentives for the parties, practical steps for the parties to take practically right now positive steps, or incentives or disincentives that is more productive, Goldenberg continued. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has angrily denounced the French initiative as unwelcome international meddling and said that the only way to proceed is to hold direct bilateral talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, without preconditions. "The path to peace is not via international conferences that attempt to force a settlement, that make the Palestinian demands more extreme and in the process distance peace," Netanyahu said June 1, Haaretz reported. "If the countries gathering this week in Paris really want to advance peace, they should join my call to Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] to come to such direct negotiations. That's the path to peace. There is no other way." Netanyahu added, "The path to peace is via direct negotiations and without preconditions between the parties. That's how it was in the past when we achieved peace with Egypt and also with Jordan and that's how it needs to be with the Palestinians. But perhaps partly in a bid to deflect pressure from the Paris peace conference and propose an alternative, this week Netanyahu expressed support for a modified Arab Peace Initiative, under which Israel would hold parallel discussions with the Arab League alongside Israeli-Palestinian talks. I take this opportunity to make clear that I remain committed to making peace with the Palestinians and with all our neighbors, Netanyahu said in the Knesset May 31. The Arab Peace Initiative contains positive elements that could help revive constructive negotiations with the Palestinians. He added, We are willing to negotiate with the Arab states revisions to that initiative so that it reflects the dramatic changes in our region since 2002 but maintains the agreed goal of two states for two peoples. Netanyahu made his statement first in Hebrew and then repeated it in English, the Times of Israel noted. While prospects for a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks seem dim at the moment, the attitude of the parties could change and provide an opening at a future point. Practical steps and a phased approach could be key to build trust in the interim. The Palestinians see the end game, 10 years from now, Ghaith al-Omari, a former member of the Palestinian negotiating team, said at a May 31 CNAS/Israel Policy Forum conference on security measures for advancing a two-state solution. They have no belief in this process. A phased approach, with visible change early on this is the key to building trust. What can be done now. June 2, 2016 On the anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iranian officials and the media typically release statements and make speeches about the legacy of the leader who led the 1979 Islamic Revolution. This year, for the 37th anniversary, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) conducted a rare interview for the occasion with Khomeinis grandson Hassan, who is often referred to as the remembrance of Khomeini and is tasked with carrying the legacy of the Khomeini name. In the interview, the grandson made controversial remarks about Islam, the hijab and a former president currently under a media ban. Hassan Khomeini, who registered to run in the Assembly of Experts elections but was controversially blocked by the hard-line Guardian Council, has had a difficult relationship with hard-liners. His political and religious views have mostly been in line with Reformists, though his avoidance of partisan politics and his position as custodian of Khomeinis mausoleum and thus his legacy has shielded him from the harsh attacks other Reformist-minded clerics received. That the hard-line IRIB would interview Hassan Khomeini on the anniversary of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeinis death is also a rare occurrence. According to Hassans website, the last time IRIB interviewed him for the occasion was in 2007. Hassan Khomeini even joked with the IRIB interviewer about this, saying, Finally you stopped avoiding [me] and after years invited me to a TV [interview]. During the two-hour interview, Hassan Khomeini was mostly invited to discuss his memories of the final years of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeinis personal life, and his religious and political views. However, Hassan Khomeini took the opportunity on a few occasions to present his own views on controversial domestic issues. When we say piety, we say the hijab, prayers, fasting, non-mixing between unrelated men and women these are certainly parts of religion but religion is not only this, said Hassan Khomeini when asked about his grandfather's contribution to religion and its importance for Iranians today. Religion is the rights of the people. Religion is fighting oppression. Religion is that one institution that must not take away someones rights. Religion means that everyone can speak freely. Religion means that there is no poverty in society. When asked by the interviewer to discuss how Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was aware of the peoples demands, Hassan Khomeini, without mentioning the name of former President Mohammad Khatami, discussed the media ban on the Reformist politician. Today you realize you cannot prevent someones words from reaching people, he said. Meaning you cannot ban someones images, ban them from speeches or ban someone from speaking to someone else. In reality this is mocking ourselves. Many believe that Khatamis position on the 2009 contested presidential elections caused his media ban. However, the popular former president is still influential; his video-recorded message urging Iranians to vote for Reformist candidates in the February parliamentary election was one of the most popular of the election period. Hassan Khomeini also criticized the so-called newcomers who joined the government after the revolution, mostly hard-liners today, who have now consolidated power under the slogan of continuing the revolution. I was there and I saw who was there and who wasnt, he said. Who sat down after the table was set and those who suffered from the beginning. I was part of the struggle and I know who took a beating for the revolution. I know who came to the table only once the rice was served. He added, Of course, the table of the revolution belongs to everyone everyone should sit, but dont make it a tight space for others. June 3, 2016 Washington Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton found her footing in a major foreign policy speech in San Diego June 2, offering voters a clear choice on the question of who is more qualified to be US commander-in-chief, her or Donald Trump. Americans arent just electing a president in November. Were choosing our next commander in chief the person we count on to decide questions of war and peace, life and death, Clinton said in a foreign policy speech in San Diego on June 2. And like many across our country and around the world, I believe the person the Republicans have nominated for president cannot do the job. Donald Trumps ideas arent just different they are dangerously incoherent, Clinton charged. Theyre not even really ideas just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies. He is not just unprepared he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility. This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes because its not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin, Clinton said. We cannot let him roll the dice with America. Clinton contrasted her national security experience traveling to more than 100 countries as President Barack Obamas first-term secretary of state, helping negotiate the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia and pursuing the diplomacy that led to tough international sanctions that helped bring Iran to the table to negotiate the nuclear deal with Trumps resume pursuing real estate deals, running the Miss Universe contest and hosting The Apprentice reality television show. And while using humor to mock Trumps more frivolous resume and angry tweets, Clinton more seriously charged that the Republican front-runner betrays American values by cozying up to dictators and strongmen such as Russias Vladimir Putin, by promoting torture, with his rhetoric against Muslims and Hispanics and by his casual disregard for maintaining historic US alliances in Europe and Asia. He has said that he would order our military to carry out torture and the murder of civilians who are related to suspected terrorists even though those are war crimes, Clinton said. He praises dictators like Vladimir Putin and picks fights with our friends including the British prime minister, the mayor of London, the German chancellor, the president of Mexico and the pope. He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia, Clinton mocked. Making Donald Trump our commander in chief would be a historic mistake, Clinton concluded. While billed as a foreign policy speech, Clinton actually delivered a political speech that offered voters a clear and necessary choice between presidential candidates, said Joel Rubin, a former State Department official. This is a political speech by a political leader, Rubin, now president of the Washington Strategy Group, told Al-Monitor on June 3. That is the point. She is not secretary of state. She is not a senator. She is a candidate competing to be elected. And what she is doing is creating a clear choice for voters. It was a political speech to make sure voters understand what the stakes are and that this is a candidate who has a clear plan for dealing with those stakes when contrasted with the alternative, Rubin said. In that binary choice, decision box, who do you think has the right grasp of the key issues that we have to confront, and who do you think can deal with them? And that is what she is trying to describe. While Republican members of Congress, some of whom have reluctantly endorsed Trump, have tried to frame the 2016 election as being about preventing Democrats from winning and being able to pick liberal justices to serve on the Supreme Court, Clinton effectively reframed the debate on the 2016 stakes to be about the commander in chief test essentially war and peace, life and death, Rubin said. What Hillary did yesterday was reframe that and tell people that the biggest risk, danger spot, is this choice about whether [we are going to] have someone drop a nuclear bomb on our heads, Rubin said. Its no small thing when [Trump] suggests that America should withdraw our military support for Japan, encourage them to get nuclear weapons, and [he] said this about a war between Japan and North Korea and I quote If they do, they do. Good luck, enjoy yourself, folks. I wonder if he even realizes hes talking about nuclear war, Clinton said. Clinton also defended the landmark Iran nuclear deal, noting her role in helping support Obamas efforts to pursue a diplomatic resolution to the Iran nuclear issue, and saying as president she would work to vigorously enforce it. We brought Iran to the table. We began talks. And eventually, we reached an agreement that should block every path for Iran to get a nuclear weapon, Clinton said. Now we must enforce that deal vigorously. But there is no question that the world and the United States, we are safer now than we were before this agreement. And we accomplished it without firing a single shot, dropping a single bomb or putting a single American soldier in harms way. Donald Trump says we shouldnt have done the deal. We should have walked away, Clinton continued. So then what? War? Telling the world, good luck, you deal with Iran? Of course Trump doesnt have answers to those questions. Donald Trump doesnt know the first thing about Iran or its nuclear program. Ask him. Itll become very clear, very quickly. Former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas assessed that Clintons speech offered a clear and experienced foreign policy worldview that would be well-received by US allies in the Middle East. Hillary Clinton presented a clear, coherent and realistic foreign policy vision that exudes confidence, re-emphasizes American commitments and dismisses the prevalent nonsense about US declinism, Pinkas, the former Israeli consul general in New York, told Al-Monitor by email. Notably, several US Republican commentators and former officials praised Clintons remarks, in particular her contention that America is already great, in contrast with Trumps contention that America is weak and in decline. I have to say, Hillary is giving a hell of a good speech on national security taking down the Donald while making a convincing case, Eliot Cohen, former State Department counselor during Republican President George W. Bushs second term, wrote on Twitter. What made HRC's speech work: clever sarcasm, knowledge, patriotism, optimism & enough taunts to ensure the Donald erupts & makes her case, Cohen added. In sum, her purpose was to paint Trump as a menace to the country and herself as an experienced, sober leader, conservative Washington Post Right Turn blogger Jennifer Rubin wrote. She succeeded entirely with the former, and to the surprise of many of her critics, made a strong argument for the latter. That should be of comfort to the millions of Republicans and independents who cannot bring themselves to vote for Trump. Hillary Clinton just gave the speech of her life in attacking Donald Trump on foreign policy, John Podhoretz, the editor of conservative Commentary magazine and a former Reagan speechwriter, wrote. Indeed, in its most stunning moment, she went after Trump for attacking Ronald Reagan in 1987 in terms similar to those in which he talks about Americas standing in the world now. Trump says over and over again, The world is laughing at us. Hes been saying this for decades, he didnt just start this year, Clinton said in San Diego. He bought full-page ads in newspapers across the country back in 1987, when Ronald Reagan was president, saying that America lacked a backbone and the world was you guessed it laughing at us. He was wrong then, and hes wrong now and youve got to wonder why somebody who fundamentally has so little confidence in America, and has felt that way for at least 30 years, wants to be our president. The truth is, theres not a country in the world that can rival us, Clinton continued. Its not just that we have the greatest military, or that our economy is larger, more durable, more entrepreneurial than any in the world. Its also that Americans work harder, dream bigger and we never, ever stop trying to make our country and world a better place. Trump, speaking in San Jose the evening of June 2, called Clinton's speech a "hit job" against him, and defended his temperament. "My temperament is so much tougher, so much better than hers," he said, adding "Hillary Clinton has to go to jail." June 2, 2016 TEHRAN, Iran Among the many delegations that have visited Iran since the Jan. 16 lifting of nuclear-related sanctions, India has been among the few that have managed to actually secure a major economic deal with the Islamic Republic. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed 12 agreements, including a deal to develop Chabahar a port city on the Gulf of Oman shortly after he paid an official visit to Iran in late May. India committed to immediately invest about $500 million in the Iranian free trade zone, while it also vowed to spend an additional $20 billion to develop the port city with roads and railroads running inland to the north. Expressing satisfaction with the agreement, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called it a political and regional deal that could connect India through a reliable route to landlocked Afghanistan and Central Asia. Iran sees Chabahar as an opportunity to diversify its trade partners, as it practices a macroeconomic policy strongly supported by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who gives preference to Eastern partners who act rather independently when it comes to the United States' Iran policy. During a meeting with Modi on May 23, Khamenei expressed satisfaction with the Indian governments policy not to join Western and American coalitions to the so-called campaign of the war on terror. He added that the Islamic Republic welcomes further cooperation with India, which is one of the emerging economies in the world, adding that Tehran has been serious in implementing its bilateral agreements with New Delhi. The supreme leaders approval of the agreement could be why the Indian premier succeeded in inking such a key deal in Tehran very quickly, though some pundits argue that Tehran is now seeking to use its deal with India as a motive to encourage other regional nations namely Pakistan and China to get involved in the Chabahar project. New Delhi has been sitting on the project since 2003, but an Iranian official recently unveiled that Tehran first asked rival Pakistan to help develop the port city. Sanctions on Iran had posed a big obstacle, but now that they are gone New Delhi can push ahead, outflanking Pakistan and challenging Chinese dominance in the region. Iran is the only way for India to access Central Asia and Russia, Indias key regional partners, Quartz India reported May 24, citing Christine Fair, an associate professor at Georgetown University. Fair also noted that India has significant hydrocarbon needs and Iran will remain an important source, an issue also pointed out by Khamenei in his meeting with Modi. Chabahar port is being developed to facilitate trade between the two countries, but the deal will definitely also have political benefits for both sides. The Islamic Republic seeks to foster its ties with Eastern nations to avoid external pressures such as the US-led nuclear-related sanctions in the future. In this vein, the two sides also agreed to cooperate on terrorism and consult each other on regional stability, according to a report published May 24 by Times of India. Khameneis official website said that in his meeting with the supreme leader, the Indian prime minister criticized certain countries for dividing terrorism into good and bad and accused them of paying lip service in their campaign against terror. Despite Irans endeavor to get closer to India, which also has close ties with the United States, Tehran does not seem to be willing to sacrifice its long-term relationship with Pakistan and China to an economic project with India. What both the conservatives and incumbent moderates in Tehran are looking for is to create an economic hub with the support of India, China and Pakistan. A source who has close ties with the conservative Islamic Coalition Party told Al-Monitor that top conservative leaders already backed the idea to turn the country into a hub for trading with Central Asian markets. This is a definite plan. The government must take an approach to make it happen, he said. And without Pakistani and Chinese support, Iran will fail to achieve this strategic goal. What the Iranian government is trying to do is find common interests among regional rivals. Indias relationship with Iran could be boosted in the upcoming decade, as Rouhani said that their relationship starts with Chabahar today, but its end will be an all-out comprehensive development, economic and cultural cooperation. However, closer ties with India do not mean that Iran will stop negotiating with regional countries to absorb further investment in Chabahar. India is only developing a couple of container terminals at the port itself, and Tehran is still trying to engage other countries for its development. Irans ambassador to Islamabad, Mehdi Honardoust, gave a signal to Pakistani officials within a week after Modis visit that his country welcomes Pakistans engagement in Chabahar. Citing the Iranian diplomat, the Indian news website Scroll said that Tehran first offered Chabahar to Pakistan and China, but that they were not interested. Honardoust met with officials at Pakistani think tanks and tried to persuade them that Chabahar is not a rival to Pakistans Gwadar port. He said Irans offer is still open to Pakistan, our brotherly neighbor, and China, a great partner of the Iranians and a good friend of Pakistan to help develop Chabahar facilities. Given the close ties Tehran already has with Beijing and Islamabad, Tehran will sooner or later be able to engage China and Pakistan for the development of the Chabahar port the type of cooperation that would get Iran closer to its ambition of becoming an influential trade hub in the region. June 3, 2016 TEHRAN, Iran On May 29, Ali Larijani was overwhelmingly re-elected parliament speaker for the third time. However, on a closer look, it appears that moderate President Hassan Rouhani is the victor. The election only featured two candidates: moderate Principlist Larijani and Reformist Mohammad Reza Aref. Given their shared views on many matters, the Reformists tried to reach an agreement with Larijani. Yet the other side was apparently not willing to negotiate. On May 25, just four days before the vote, Aref said, We didnt reach a conclusion on having interaction with the other side about the speakership. When voting was finally held, it became apparent that Aref had obtained the votes of 103 of parliaments 290 members 70 votes less than cast in favor of Larijani. This means that aside from losing the support of independent parliamentarians, even a number of Reformist lawmakers refrained from voting for Aref. Aref knew this would happen and had warned about it. Im surprised, and I should state that all List of Hope [members of parliament] must remain loyal to the Reformists, Aref said. Yet Arefs warning as the head of the List of Hope, which was the primary Reformist ticket in the parliamentary elections was not heeded. In addition, some prominent figures within the Reformist camp believed that Larijani would be a better choice given the present situation. Gholamhossein Karbaschi, the secretary-general of the Executives of Construction party, said, It is possible that the parliament may not be able to go on with its plans due to the harsh manners of the hard-liners. History shows that Mr. Larijani can do better in managing the hard-liners. Moreover, 70 of the 81 independent members of parliament reportedly voted in favor of Larijani. With Reformists and conservatives only having secured 121 and 83 seats, respectively, no side has the majority in parliament. As such, the independent parliamentarians were the final decision-makers in the speakership vote. As always, after Larijanis victory, the hard-liners attempted to portray the Reformists as the losers who claimed they had the majority. The hard-line Kayhan newspaper ran the headline Almost nothing is the achievement of the [List of] Hope in parliament. However, the hard-liners applause and jubilation may not be real, as it is crystal clear that Larijani is the last person they ever wanted to see as speaker. In fact, the number of hard-liners in parliament is now so low that they had no option but to back Larijani. If they had at least 120 members of parliament among their ranks, they would have certainly rather chosen someone such as hard-line parliamentarian Mehdi Zolnour. In fact, Larijani is the least favored candidate among hard-liners. Proof of this lies in their interruptions of one of his speeches and throwing shoes at him at a meeting only two years ago. In addition, Larijani has consistently been a target of hard-liners in past years over his support for Rouhani and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. For instance, Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of Kayhan newspaper, publicly slammed Larijani for backing the nuclear deal. Moreover, in 2012, Morteza Agha-Tehrani, the secretary-general of the influential hard-line Endurance Front, said, We are completely against choosing Larijani as parliament speaker. Less than a week before the speakership vote, on May 23, prominent hard-liner and former member of parliament Rouhollah Hosseinian revealed the hard-liners intentions for backing Larijani, If we had a figure who had the grounds for gaining the votes for the speakership, we would have chosen him. Thus, currently, we dont have anyone, and we have to back Larijani for the first year, Hosseinian said. Larijanis Reformist deputies In the speakership vote, Reformist Masoud Pezeshkian and moderate Ali Motahari who won 158 and 133 votes, respectively were elected as Larijanis deputies. In the voting, Pezeshkian and Motahari, whose names were both on the List of Hope, had two main rivals: hard-liners Hamid-Reza Haji Babaei and Mohammad Dehghan. It should be noted that Motaharis victory was a big blow to the hard-liners, who consistently criticize him harshly over his repeated public speeches in favor of the release of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the two 2009 presidential candidates who have been under house arrest since 2010. In this vein, the two hard-line newspapers Kayhan and Vatan-e-Emrooz kept silent after Motaharis election as deputy speaker, as if no election had taken place at all. Most of all, the May 29 election showed several important development related to parliament. After months of speculation about who has the majority, it is now clear that pro-Rouhani parliament members consisting of both Reformists and moderates are the majority and that the hard-liners are the minority. Additionally, the chief winner of the speakership vote appears to be Rouhani, while the losers despite much analysis to the contrary are the hard-liners, not Aref. In sum, it seems that Larijani is at present the most appropriate choice for Rouhani as he can better deal with the hard-liners than Aref. Perhaps, if Aref had won, there could have been further tensions instigated by hard-line lawmakers. In the words of Sadegh Zibakalam, a prominent political analyst, Arefs victory would have meant that hard-liner attacks against parliament, through different tribunes, would have begun, and then it would have been difficult for the parliament to take a step forward in helping the government. June 3, 2016 Faced with what has been often described as the worlds most resourceful and sophisticated terror organization, Iraqs news media outlets have stumbled in how to cover the Islamic State (IS). The countrys news media appear to have unwillingly assisted IS in disseminating some of its gruesome propaganda releases, thus enabling it to achieve broader reach and possibly even impact. IS brutality and its dramatic expansion in Iraq over the last couple of years has posed a major challenge for Iraqi media outlets. Is covering the groups activities a legitimate public service or an extension of its own jihadi propaganda? While media editors and managers at major Iraqi news outlets are aware of the ethical debate surrounding the use of propaganda materials by terrorist groups, and especially graphic content, a combination of political agendas and lack of rigorous editorial oversight appear to hamper the translation of that knowledge into practice. IS media products are a new and grave challenge for the Iraqi media, Ali al-Sarayi, the editor-in-chief of Iraqi Media House, an organization that monitors Iraqi media outlets' performance, told Al-Monitor. Iraqi media has to craft a new language and a new strategy to confront IS propaganda and its big media machine. He lamented the use of IS propaganda as a widespread phenomenon in Iraq's news media and said disseminating such materials is insensitive or plain traumatizing at times. A quick search on websites and YouTube channels of some of the mainstream Iraqi news outlets shows they have failed, to varying degrees, to exercise the due level of editorial diligence when dealing with graphic IS propaganda content. Alsumaria, an Arabic-language media network that runs a popular TV channel and online operation, appears to have been largely lax in terms of its approach to IS propaganda. On May 30, 2015, Alsumaria ran a video on its YouTube channel showing in full detail IS' execution of a minor somewhere in Syria. In its coverage of IS' massacre in June 2014 of allegedly around 1,700 Shiite military personnel near the city of Tikrit, Alsumaria has repeatedly shown distressing images of IS herding the captured military cadets in highly humiliating conditions. Hameed Qassim, who served as Alsumaria network's news supervisor until the end of 2015, plays down the outlets use of IS propaganda. Qassim told Al-Monitor, Maybe in the beginning such things happened But we tried to resolve this issue. Of course we are a big institution and it is not easy to control everything. Our criteria were complying with human values and journalistic and professional codes of ethics. Qassim and other Alsumaria editors say they are aware of IS terrorist agenda and how it seeks to plant fear and create major psychological impact on the public. But despite statements by Qassim and other senior editors, the outlet still appears to be inconsistent in its application of ethical and professional guidelines with regard to IS propaganda. Efforts by terrorist organizations to exploit media to seek attention, recognition and legitimacy in the eyes of the public are nothing new and have been the subject of much research. Attempting not to fall behind in covering what might attract the public's attention, traditional and digital media outlets sometimes end up unwillingly acting as a force multiplier allowing IS to reach millions more. Similar to Arabic-language news outlets, many Kurdish outlets have, albeit unintentionally, ended up serving IS propaganda goals. In the autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Rudaw, a major news network that launched in 2013 and is funded by Kurdistan Regional Government Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, for months aired and published scenes from IS' graphic propaganda materials. When the jihadi organization released a gruesome video in February 2015 showing how it burned alive Muath al-Kaseasbeh, a downed Jordanian pilot, Rudaw ran highly graphic portions of it on TV and its popular websites. (It later deleted a video with graphic content from its website.) Hemin Lihony, the head of Rudaw's digital service, justified their decision to show Kaseasbeh's burning by saying at the beginning of the report that they wanted Kurdish audiences to know the true face of IS. In October 2015, Rudaw revised its editorial policy on IS, deciding to no longer run graphic content that might be deemed by audiences as disturbing and offensive propaganda. Lihony said they initially ran graphic IS-produced content to show the barbaric nature of the group to Kurdish audiences. If Kaseasbeh's video was released today, we would not run those images or would blur them because people now know what a brutal group IS is, Lihony told Al-Monitor. There is indeed evidence that suggests Rudaw has stuck to its editorial policy with regard to graphic materials produced by IS. For instance, while the network ran disturbing images of a member of the Kurdish peshmerga forces moments before he was beheaded by a masked IS militant in January 2015, it has in more recent cases refrained from showing images of peshmerga prisoners being executed by IS or opted for not showing their faces. Sarayi said the country's news outlets have largely had the wrong approach to IS propaganda. When it comes to IS propaganda, the Iraqi media's approach is mostly emotional rather than strategic and farsighted, he said. They think by running such propaganda they will gain more sympathy for IS victims and demonstrate IS atrocities and violence to the audiences. But the outcome is perhaps the opposite because at the end they are propagating IS' power and viciousness. This, Sarayi said, was apparent in the widespread sense of fear among many sections of Iraqi society when IS expanded into the country in mid-2014. Many civilians fled and members of the security forces did not put up much resistance as IS' reputation for brutality had preceded it. Even outlets with direct links to the government have been fluctuating in their strategy in dealing with IS propaganda material. The Iraqi Media Network (IMN) was designed as Iraq's public broadcaster with the intent that it would one day become Iraq's BBC. However, the outlet has become more of a state broadcaster reflecting the government or ruling coalition's views and interests. IMN-affiliated outlets have run graphic and insensitive scenes taken from IS showing mass executions of Shiite military personnel in Salahuddin province or snapshots showing beheadings. Reflecting a common thinking among Iraqi media managers, the network's editors say the aim has been to show the true nature of IS to the world. IMN's managers say they do not have an all-encompassing rule for IS propaganda and deal with each case according to its traits and how it serves the network's mission. In the case of the Jordanian pilot's execution by IS, we showed it so that the Arab public opinion would learn the truth of what IS is and what it stands for, Jafar Wanan, IMN's former chief news editor who served until late last year, told Al-Monitor. We did this to provoke Arabs against IS and to show the group targets everybody." Among major news media institutions in the country, the Kurdish-language NRT TV and digital service stand out for having approached IS propaganda with a clear-cut policy from the beginning that prohibited the use of graphic IS-produced materials. Twana Osman, the chairman of the Nalia Media Group that owns NRT, said shortly after IS occupied large parts of Iraq in mid-2014 that new guidelines were set for the newsroom. We generally have a policy not to run scenes from graphic videos produced by IS because these are obviously meant for psychological warfare, Osman told Al-Monitor. We are in a state of war with IS. If we run those materials, we will assist IS to achieve its political and psychological objectives. Osman said the policy is about videos, but even if a graphic photo initially makes it to the website, it will be likely removed after the staff notice it. Multiple searches on NRT's website for major IS atrocities did not render any results that contained graphic images. For instance, when reporting IS' execution of a number of Kurdish peshmerga forces in late September, NRT only ran an image containing the channel's logo. It also did not show any scenes from IS' burning of the Jordanian pilot. Before IS' expansion in Iraq, the group had already won the media [war] by making us all so scared of them. We had contributed to that victory unknowingly by spreading their propaganda, Osman concluded. June 3, 2016 BEIT LAHIA, Gaza Strip A street cleaner during the day and a circus acrobat at night this is the life of 25-year-old Youssef Khoder. It's not unusual for young Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to work in public sanitation. What is odd, however, is for young men to work as circus acrobats. Temporary jobs are based on six- or three-month contracts provided by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees or civil society institutions for the unemployed. Khoder seems satisfied with both his jobs. Today, I took the broom and started performing some acrobatic moves with it, which made my [sanitation] colleagues laugh, he told Al-Monitor. He has little regard for how Gazan society views him, in either job. I love my job as a street cleaner. I live off this job. But I am also thankful that I have the work of the circus in my life, as it has rid me of negative energy and made me interact with people in a positive way, he said. It's not all positive, though. Khoder also described how he is sometimes "beaten" and tugged on by children and adults when he puts on the clown and other character costumes. Everyone wants to gauge how real the character is. Khoder was trained for acrobatics at the private circus school, which is the only one of its kind in the Gaza Strip. He is older than his colleagues, but says he feels very flexible when he steps up to the trapeze and flies through the air. The school includes 20 other young people, who perform acrobatics, juggling and rope walking. One of the trainers, Muhyi al-Hilou, told Al-Monitor, They come every day except during their exams. They are trained for free, and they perform without any payment in return. They enjoy spending time doing their hobbies and making people happy. Certainly their performances aren't the same as Cirque du Soleil, given their poor equipment and lack of enough props such as colorful circles, long rods and aerial silk. They train in what looks like a spacious garage with a high ceiling. The annual rent is $1,200, which is donated inconsistently by friends and some European circus schools. The school is located in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, where the jugglers and acrobats live except for one: Ibrahim Abu Nada, 19, lives in Zeitun in eastern Gaza. Abu Nada juggles with three balls. I had heard a lot about the circus school," Abu Nada told Al-Monitor. "Ever since I went to the Egyptian circus in Gaza four years ago, my dream was to become a circus performer." Mohammed Obeid, 22, climbed up the aerial silk until he was able to touch the ceiling, while his friends gave him a round of applause. I am originally a gymnast. I joined the circus because I can perform acrobatics and other strength performances, given my flexibility, he told Al-Monitor. Indeed, Obeid seems to have mastered the acrobatic performances. Although it has been only four months since he joined the circus, he looks professional and has already put on many shows. Majid Kalloub, the school's founder, was adjusting the boys positions during the training. Before the school was founded, he said, they were just a small group, trained at the hands of international circus trainer Babou Sanchez in the Belgian Al-Jabal Institution, which was hosted by the Qattan Foundation for Children in 2011. There had been two circus workshops until 2012, when Israel banned the Belgian delegation from the Gaza Strip without explanation. However, this did not stop us. We have taught the others what we learned, and we also checked out some moves online. The young men who are standing here today used to be children back then. We continued training and performed in schools and hospitals without having a place where we could train, Kalloub told Al-Monitor. He said that things improved when the members of the circus school became partners in the Spanish Carampa circus school in 2013 and received training from the schoolteachers when they visited Gaza the same year. The Spanish school provided them with tools and juggling material in addition to other equipment offered by institutions and friends who helped them to finally rent a place for their school. As might be expected, some members said their parents weren't thrilled with the idea of their children joining the circus. Sharaf Muslimi and Assem Omar, both 17, and Asil Abu Halub, 16, said when they decided to join the circus in 2011, they were told, The circus is good for nothing. However, the parents changed their minds once they saw the children perform. They were even proud, the students said. Mohammad Muslimi, Sharafs twin brother, told Al-Monitor that the circus was a turning point in his life. I used to feel like an outcast at school, but after I learned juggling and acrobatics in the circus, I became more self-confident and I made a lot of new friends. I perform acrobatic moves in front of them that no one else can perform, and now I feel like I am somehow famous among them, he said. Mustafa Omar, 19, a trampolinist, told Al-Monitor he dreams of becoming an international circus performer, which might be his best bet, rather than just hoping for a proper circus tent in Gaza for their shows. Khoder no longer has time to entertain his colleagues with the broom, as the circus school is in demand to perform at festivals and celebrations. With all their makeup and escapades, it can be hard to tell whether the circus folk are truly happy. But it's obvious that with his juggling, acrobatics and clowning, Khoder brings joy to other peoples hearts. June 3, 2016 PARIS ''We feared that we might receive just lip service approval; that our partners would agree, but not really engage. But at the end of the day, the partners present here and also several others have shown enthusiasm and commitment to this initiative,'' a French diplomat told Al-Monitor today, while waiting for the final June 3 Paris conference communique to be published. Indeed, enthusiasm was the word repeatedly mentioned today in the corridors of the French Foreign Affairs Ministry. After deliberating for many weeks over a 50-something page draft, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault presented a short, clear and concise communique sketching the framework (UN Resolutions 242 and 338, and the Arab Peace Initiative) and the timetable (an international conference for the two-state solution by the end of the year) agreed upon by the 29 participants. The Israelis and the Palestinians were not present at the French Ministry's hall while French President Francois Hollande made his speech inaugurating the conference, yet Hollande's words were directed at both Jerusalem and Ramallah. With US Secretary of State John Kerry sitting to his one side and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the other, Hollande specified that a void always fills up, that evidence to this effect can be seen in Iraq, Syria and Libya, and that the status quo only strengthens extremism. "The threats and priorities [in the Middle East] have changed. The changes make it even more urgent to find a solution to the conflict, and this regional upheaval creates new obligations for peace," Hollande said. Trying to reassure Israel, Hollande also stressed that, ultimately, the two sides must be the ones to make the courageous decision of peace, and that France has no ulterior motive apart from advancing peace. In a specific message to Israelis, Hollande mentioned the speech by late French President Francois Mitterrand at the Knesset in 1982, warning against any unilateral steps that Israel could envisage. The French kept insisting throughout the conference about using the Arab Peace Initiative as a basis for a future arrangement a basis that should benefit Israel greatly on the economic and regional cooperation fronts. Yet Jerusalem is not reassured. Far from it. Since the beginning of the Paris initiative, the Palestinians were onboard. Israel for its part rejected the conference idea all along, a message that was relayed unequivocally to French envoy Ambassador Pierre Vimont on his numerous contacts with Israeli officials and later to Ayrault and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, when each visited Israel recently. Paris did not really expect that Israel would embrace the initiative, but a French diplomatic source indicated on condition of anonymity that both Israel and the Palestinians agreed that ''perhaps starting without them would actually be beneficial.'' Israel, he added, did not ask to be invited as an observer, and the French didn't offer. An Israeli diplomatic source feels differently, stating that the French as a habit translate every absence of a clear no into a perhaps, a maybe or a yes, ''which was probably the case this time around as well.'' In an attempt to counter the anticipated Israeli rejection, the French developed a pre-emptive strategy by inviting ''both sides'' without inviting Israel and the Palestinians. They invited 28 countries and entities (the United Nations, European Union and the Arab League were the nonstate participants), including South Africa and Sweden, which advocate strong pro-Palestinian lines on the one side, and Canada and Italy, which are considered closer to the Israeli position on the other. Thus, they tried to get everyone on the wagon, committed, before there was actually a proposal to be committed to. Israel was actually caught unprepared for the Paris initiative. The former French initiative launched by former Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius for a UN resolution recognizing a Palestinian state and forcing a two-year deadline was destined to fail. Even Paris came to realize that. But the current Paris conference seems to be a different story altogether. With the Americans engaged in presidential elections and following Kerry's unsuccessful mediation efforts in 2014, Ayrault recognized an international diplomatic void and charged forward. With only a year and a half before elections in France, this was his great chance, and he grabbed it. Jerusalem thought the Paris conference would slowly fade away, much like the UN resolution idea, but Jerusalem was wrong. The fact that the United States was not really willing to engage in this French adventure did not deter France. Hollande changed the pre-scheduled date, just so that Kerry could participate, and managed to convince Ban to come. These two personalities offered the initiative an international stamp of approval, transforming it from ''just another French initiative'' to the real thing. A source at the French Foreign Ministry said that the Egyptian enthusiasm and willingness, alongside Palestinian support, encouraged the French in their efforts to move forward. When Jerusalem understood that the conference was indeed going to happen and that the French had managed to get the representatives of the Security Council on their side, it was too late. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to belittle the conference, saying that the countries participating in Paris cannot force a solution which must emerge through direct negotiations only. Gen. Dore Gold, director of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, summoned a hastily prepared press conference June 2, declaring that the initiative will fail ''similarly to the Sykes-Picot'' agreement a secret agreement made during World War I between the British and French governments pertaining to the partition of the Ottoman Empire. According to Gold, that agreement was at the apex of the era of colonialism in our area. Their effort failed as we see today in the deserts of Iraq and Syria. But now Jerusalem understands that it must cope with a process that has started rolling and won't be easily stopped. It must now position itself differently ahead of the practical part of the French initiative, which should begin before the end of June when the French will distribute the tasks to different working groups. The Quartet report on the obstacles ahead of a two-state solution and the main themes to be tackled should be published very soon and used as a main tool of work for the French initiative. Israel will not be able to keep ignoring such a broad international engagement. June 2, 2016 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has become a leader nobody in the West is eager to host, has decided to steer toward countries with leaders he thinks might understand him: Uganda, Kenya and Somalia. His government is trying to increase its foreign policy options and find new openings after upsetting all its neighbors with interventionist and aggressive policies. Of course, there is also an economic dimension to Turkeys interest. As China, the United States and Iran are active in Africa, Turkey also thinks there are serious economic opportunities on that continent. It's become a tradition for Erdogan to begin his foreign travels with much fanfare and overdone public relations campaigns. His four-day trip, which began June 1, was preceded by statements and articles that spoke of grandiose ambitions that made going to Africa sound like a conquest. His most repeated line was Turkey has no colonial past, as he portrayed Africa as an exploited, oppressed, dark continent that is awaiting its savior. Yigit Bulut, a senior adviser to the president, in a recent appearance on TRT News actually uttered these words: People in the Balkans, Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East are asking how they, too, can be governed from Istanbul. According to him, people in Greece, Romania and Bulgaria are saying, Never mind the European Union. What new scenario can develop with Turkey? He is so removed from reality that if it weren't for gravity, he would be flying high. In an article Erdogan wrote for Al Jazeera before embarking on his trip, he said that during this historical visit to Uganda, Kenya and Somalia he would encourage closer cooperation among regional allies, seek solutions to common problems and discover mutually beneficial opportunities. Erdogan said although many people in the world equate Africa with poverty, conflict and hopelessness, Turkish people dont feel that way. Turkey will be a friend, a compatriot and a partner of Africa, he said. Much was made of his hosts' politely welcoming gestures. For example, Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni tweeted that Erdogan had turned Turkey into a developed country and Uganda should learn from it to achieve the same goal. Museveni was being modest. He has accumulated vast and rich experience that could enlighten Erdogan on his path toward authoritarianism and lifelong presidency. Museveni has ruled Uganda for 30 years the first 10 without elections. He won the February election amid accusations of fraud and suppressing the opposition. Another minor detail: He imprisoned the main opposition leader under the guise of maintaining stability. We should not ignore Erdogans efforts to close the gap between Turkey and Uganda. Turkey is immediately behind Uganda on The Economist Intelligence Unit's latest Democracy Index, in which Turkey occupies the 97th slot. In the 2016 Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders, however, Turkey lags far behind Ugandas 102nd standing, at a dismal 151st. Erdogans cohorts have called the first visit of a Turkish president to Uganda "a historic mission to restore the ties severed after Emin Pasha." In his joint press conference with Museveni, Erdogan said, In those days, an Ottoman pasha named Mehmet Emin was serving in Uganda. Although his real profession was medicine, Emin Pasha also discovered hundreds of species of animals and plants and contributed significantly to the world of science. Emin Pasha was martyred in this land in 1892 by a tribe that was engaged in the slave trade in Congo. On this occasion, I respectfully pay homage to Emin Pasha, who had an important role in Turkey-Uganda brotherhood and left behind such a clean legacy. Actually, the pasha Erdogan gratefully remembered as a symbol of Turkey-Uganda brotherhood to his Ugandan audience was none other than the German-born Eduard Schnitzer, who had opted to serve the Ottoman pashas because his Jewish heritage had not allowed him to work as he wanted in his own land. In those years he entered the service of the governor of Egypt, worked with the British and as a colonialist agent and sold the animals, plants and historic objects he collected to European museums. He was killed by the anti-colonial Islamic Mahdi movement. If there were any Africans who didn't smile bitterly at Erdogan's narrative, they aren't familiar with the history. Leaving aside the public relations gimmicks, did such ambitious openings to Africa produce any worthwhile results? Turkey had declared 2005 as the Year of Africa to signal its openness to the continent. At that time, there were 12 Turkish embassies in Africa, a number that has since risen to 39. Turkey opened an embassy in Uganda's capital, Kampala, in 2010. Uganda opened its own embassy in Ankara in 2011. According to data provided by the Statistical Agency of Turkey, the country's trade volume with Africa increased sixfold from 2002 to 2015, starting at $2.9 billion and rising to $17.5 billion in 2015. Turkeys exports to Africa increased sevenfold between 2002 and 2015, starting at $1.7 billion and rising to $12.4 billion. Turkey's trade volume with Uganda was $1.2 million in 2002 and reached $29.1 million in 2015. In the same period, Turkey's trade volume with Kenya started at $10 million and reached $144.5 million. How significant are these increases to Turkey? In 2015, trade with Africa accounted for less than 10% of Turkey's total of $184.7 billion. About 78% of that total, or $143.9 billion, was with Europe. These are modest numbers, but Turkey sees both Kenya and Uganda as major potential partners. Erdogan also wants to add military dimensions to relations with Africa. After Turkey set up a base in Qatar, it is now establishing a base in Somalia to train 10,000 Somali soldiers. A prominent Turkish businessman who did not want to be identified made this assessment to Al-Monitor: Erdogans African opening is an external reflection of the struggle with the Gulen movement. The Gulen movement is quite powerful in Uganda and Kenya. Erdogan wants to break that apart. Sure, Uganda has major economic potentials. Because of its rich gold and oil reserves, China and the United States are in competition there. Furthermore, it is one of the most stable countries of the region. Uganda plans to start exploring its oil in 2017. Turkey has made significant strides in its soft-power approach to the continent. The official Cooperation and Development Agency of Turkey has been active in Uganda and other African countries. Several major Turkish nongovernmental organizations (NGO) have expanded Turkeys sphere of influence, among them is Is Anybody There, an NGO linked to the Gulen movement. Erdogan's Justice and Development Party government is now after it. June 3, 2016 On May 30, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans remarks recommending restraint on the usage of birth control angered yet again womens rights activists around the country. In an address he gave to the Service for Youth and Education Foundation of Turkey in Istanbul, President Erdogan stated, I am saying this clearly: We will increase our posterity and reproduce generations. As for population planning or birth control, no Muslim family can engage in such a mentality. We will follow the road that my God and blessed Prophet [Muhammad] say. Opposition party leaders, health associations and activists released statements of disapproval soon after the presidents remarks. Ozgur Ozel, the deputy parliamentary leader of the main opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP), denounced Erdogans comments relating to womens bodies. CHP spokesperson Selin Sayek Boke accused the governments regime of denigrating women. We dont commit to who makes how many children, but to a good future to children who come to the world, she said. The Turkish Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology emphasized in a statement that reproductive rights are the most natural right of women in Turkey, which is a democratic country. Moreover, they pointed to illegal abortions and under-the-counter methods as negative consequences of abandoning birth control. Along similar lines, Turkish Womens Union head Sema Kendirci expressed her discontent of the presidents usage of religious references, and further objected, Who on earth could have the right to pressure families into having more children than they can provide for? On the other hand, there were those who stood in Erdogans defense while reaffirming freedom of individuals in their decisions. Health Minister Recep Akdag spoke to NTV television, Our esteemed president is indicating the right concepts in reference to our peoples health. [The] presidents statements are suitable for our society, culture and belief. Akdag reaffirmed Turkeys risk of speedy ageing, but clarified, No one should be said or forced to give birth or not. Similarly, Dr. Fatma Zehra Gunes from the Womens Rights Organization Against Discrimination, known for being close to the government, said on BBC Turkey that statements from highly ranked politicians are being evaluated within society, after which individuals make their own decisions. This is not the first time that Erdogan voiced his opinion on birth control, calling it treason in the past, while he also described abortion as murder. Since 2008, he has been urging women to have at least three children, so his remarks should not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the governing Justice and Development Party's pronatalist agenda. In that light, in January 2015 then-Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced the new Program for the Protection of the Family and Dynamic Population Structure. Protection of the young population is not an ethic, but a strategic goal for us, he stated at the time, while also announcing new measures for encouraging womens employment. New reports show that Turkey has paid more than 450 million Turkish liras ($155 million) since May 2015 as part of a government program to encourage women to have more children. The economic side of the governments pronatalist agenda has remained the same as it has been repeated numerous times that an increase in population secures more economic growth. Consequently, academics like Zeynep Korkman suggested, The contemporary politics of intimacy in Turkey seeks to regulate the realms of sexuality and reproduction in line with the intersecting rationales of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Another probable yet less publicized rationale for encouraging more children could be more security oriented. As David Goldman, author of How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too), observes, When he talks about Turkeys failing demographics Erdogan is speaking from the heart. Goldman sheds light on the Kurdish populations greater fertility, as they have one of the worlds highest birth rates that reflects within Turkey, too. In 2015, among the provinces having the highest total fertility rates, most had a majority Kurdish population, like Sirnak with 4.01 children per female, Agri 3.80 and Siirt 3.55; while the lowest rates were in provinces in the north and northwest of the country, like Edirne and Canakkale 1.53, and Kirklareli 1.54. Moreover, the trend that women marry less and marry older, which results in lower fertility, continues. Hence, Erdogan wishes for the ruling government to reverse trends that seem difficult to stop, as poverty remains the biggest obstacle in the way of efforts to increase the birth rate. Birth statistics from 2015 show total fertility rate was 2.14 children, while it was similarly 2.18 in 2014. Feminists and secularists will continue to be unnerved by Erdogans comments whenever he restates his already known stance on the topic. Yet some Islamic feminists like theologian Hidayet Sevkatli Tuksal suggest that those who get alarmed by birth control rhetoric dont know the Islamic camp that well. Tuksal stated in last years interview for daily Hurriyet, Everyone is using birth control, hence the number of kids remains static. In the Islamic camp, if women didnt use birth control, we would all have had 10 kids by now. So what are we talking about? There is abortion in the Islamic camp, cesarean, birth control there is everything. This time, the debate took several additional turns, notably whether the presidents words signal some future legal undertakings that might prohibit abortion or his usage of religious references, particularly for private matters. No new legal steps are to be undertaken, and Erdogans policy in this regard remains conservative, but it may not be Islamist. According to Diyanet, Turkeys highest religious authority, as explained in the Ilmihal guidebook for Islamic daily practice, it was agreed in 1988 that under Islamic law one may voluntarily plan parenthood before pregnancy if both spouses agree. And while he is a savvy politician who is aware of the impact of religious referencing to practicing Muslims in Turkey, it would be better if the president refrained from arguments that are both incorrect under Islamic law and dont resonate with the entirety of citizens in the country. June 3, 2016 ANKARA, Turkey Soon after he forced Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to quit last month, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan turned up rhetoric against the European Union, bringing relations to the brink of rupture. Having worked hard to warm ties with the EU, Davutoglu stepped down just as the European Commissionr recommended the introduction of a visa-free travel regime for Turkish nationals, provided that Ankara fulfilled five outstanding criteria. Erdogan lashed out at the EU for a condition requiring Turkey to amend its anti-terror law, describing it as an unfair fiat at a time when the country is facing serious terrorist threats. They say, I am going to abolish visas and this is the condition. I'm sorry, we're going our way, you go yours. Agree with whoever you can agree, he said May 6. Yet visa-free travel for Turks in Europe was something that Erdogan himself had pushed hard for during his years as prime minister. In December 2013, he and Davutoglu, then foreign minister, oversaw the signing of a protocol that laid the groundwork for the visa waiver, simultaneously with a readmission agreement, under which Ankara pledged to take back illegal immigrants who reach the EU via Turkey. Speaking at the signing ceremony in Ankara, Erdogan hailed the accords as a genuine milestone in Turkey-EU ties, promising Turks visa-free travel to Europe in about three years time. In March, the readmission accord was compounded with a deal to stop the Syrian refugee flow to Europe. Under Turkeys anti-terror law, individuals and entities can easily be accused of being terrorists or collaborating with terrorism. Erdogan has come to handily use it as a tool to bully his political opponents, critical media, academics and intellectuals. Many agree the EU-sought amendments in anti-terror laws do not suit Erdogans book politically, emboldening him to rebuff the EU and jeopardize the visa waiver. Indeed, his calculations on the issue are firmly based on political gains and losses. The collapse of the deal will not really mean big trouble for Erdogan, observers note, as his electorate and supporters will be little affected. In the Nov. 1, 2015, elections, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) got 49.5% of the vote, or 24 million votes. Only about 10.5 million Turks are passport holders, meaning that the visa waiver concerns roughly one out of seven Turks, given the population stood at 78 million at the end of 2015. The total number of passport holders includes up to 1.5 million Turks with privileged passports who are already exempt from visa requirements in many countries, including the EU. Besides diplomatic passports, those include the "green passports" issued to senior public servants, bureaucrats and their families and the gray passports granted temporarily to government employees when they go abroad on official duties. All in all, the fate of the visa waiver deal concerns about 8-9 million Turks who hold normal passports, a relatively small group in a population of 78 million. According to the Turkish Statistics Institute, the number of Turks who traveled abroad in the first quarter of the year dropped to about 1.83 million, down 2.1% from the same period last year. In other words, less than one-fourth of passport holders traveled abroad. Earlier this week, a lawmaker from the main opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP) submitted a draft law proposing that the mukhtars the elected village and neighborhood headmen whom Erdogan convenes regularly in his palace for televised speeches become eligible for the visa-free green passports so they could go abroad frequently to increase their knowledge and skills. If the proposal is passed, more than 50,000 Turks will join those exempt from visa requirements. All figures mentioned above point to one reality: The EU visa waiver is of little concern for tens of millions of Turks who do not travel abroad, do not even have passports and lack the economic means to afford such trips. This state of affairs strengthens Erdogans hand in his showdown with the EU. Lale Kemal, a journalist and writer specializing in defense and diplomacy, points out that individuals from middle- and high-income groups make the overwhelming majority of Turkish passport holders who are currently subject to visa requirements. She estimates their number at 6.5 million and describes them as urbanites who are already outside the AKPs voter base. So Erdogan can easily afford to ignore them and threaten a showdown with the EU on the visa waiver and refugee deals. By doing so, many believe, he is seeking to strengthen his bargaining hand and maximize the political concessions and financial support he hopes to extract from the EU. To use such a grave humanitarian tragedy for domestic politics and money bargaining and to make all this a pretext for pulling Turkey away from the West is unacceptable, senior CHP member Erdogan Toprak said in a statement last week. Government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus blamed the opposition for delaying the reforms the EU seeks. Turkey tried to speedily enact the reforms concerning the visa liberalization. But, unfortunately, the parliament failed to work on the pace we desired because the process was often met with obstructions by the opposition, he said. June 2, 2016 It is no secret that in the midst of the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East, Tunisia has emerged as the brightest spot. It is also no secret that Tunisia's success has been made possible in part by the moderate stance of its main Islamist party, Ennahda, which on May 21 at its party congress announced that it was officially abandoning political Islam. The longtime leader of the party, Rachid Ghannouchi, who was re-elected at the event, vowed to keep religion far from political struggles and announced that Ennahda would abandon all its religious activities, including preaching in mosques. Naturally, this news reminded some of the founding of Turkeys Justice and Development Party (AKP) 15 years ago. At that time, the AKP, which came from an Islamist political tradition, had also declared a major change in perspective. Similar to Ennahdas new self-identification as Muslim democrats, the AKP's founders called themselves conservative democrats. The term conservative in Turkey is often another way of saying practicing Muslim. Moreover, Ghannouchi had in the past spoken about the Turkish experience and pointed to it as a positive frame of reference. It is also no secret, however, that the so-called Turkish experience has not been going well lately. The AKP of today, heavily criticized for authoritarianism, is a far cry from the AKP of the early 2000s that was widely praised for its reforms. The common perception of the party, especially its iron-willed leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is that it was moderate when weak but turned autocratic after consolidating power. One could therefore argue that if Ennahda is really following in the footsteps of the AKP, it is not a reassuring step. It appears, however, that Ennahda is not now following in the footsteps of the AKP, and it probably never will. One reason for this is because of structural differences between Tunisia and Turkey. In Turkey, checks and balances on the executive historically were mostly made by the military, which is an illegitimate actor in that capacity in any democracy. Therefore, the AKP pushed the military aside in a process that looked like democratization, but ended up enabling a totally unchecked government. In Tunisia after the 2011 revolution, however, a system of checks and balances was established in the form of the National Dialogue Quartet, which consists of civil society actors and won the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize. Pushing the quartet from the political scene is unfeasible, because such a move would not have legitimacy, which the anti-military actions in Turkey had. Moreover, there are key differences between Ennahda and the AKP, especially between the men who lead them. Erdogan is famously a patriarchal and assertive politician whose natural instinct is to expand authority and extract obedience. That is why and how he was able to create one-man rule within the AKP and a cult of personality as the savior of the nation, a kind of Ataturk II. In contrast, by all accounts Ghannouchi is a modest and temperate scholar who is interested less in accumulating personal power than in making his decades-old theories about Muslim democracy work. It is really hard to imagine him turning into an all-dictating ruler, dominating not just politics but media and business as well, as is the case in Turkey. Furthermore, in its five years of democratic experience, Ennahda has already rung up an impressive accomplishment that the AKP has never seriously tried in the past 15 years: meaningful reconciliation with the more secular forces in society. This was most evident in the constitution-making process, during which Ennahda worked with secular politicians and civil society. As a result, the Tunisian constitution, the most liberal charter the Muslim world has ever produced, was ratified by the parliament in January 2014 in a 200-16 vote. Back in Turkey, such a constitutional consensus is unthinkable. In fact, the AKP strives for a new constitution, but it hopes to introduce it by maximizing its own seats in the parliament and mainly for the sake of implementing the presidential system that Erdogan dearly wants. In other words, whereas Ennahda supported a truly Tunisian constitution through consensus, the AKP seeks an AKP constitution through triumphalism. All this suggests that one could be more optimistic about Tunisias democratic future and Ennahdas contribution to it than the case of Turkey and the AKP. Of course, Tunisia faces many challenges, among them a weak economy and Salafi jihadis. It also remains to be seen whether Ghannouchis progressivism will be fully internalized by Ennahda or whether there will be a conservative resistance, which some observers, including Shadi Hamid, view as a distinct possibility. Still, at least at this point, Ennahdas post-Islamism seems to be a better story than that of the AKP. One should resist thinking of the two parties as the same phenomenon, and in fact, Ennahda should avoid identifying with the Turkish model. June 2, 2016 I was on holiday in Bodrum in July 2014 when at about 5 p.m. a strange, bright object appeared in the sky. My first thought was that this was a balloon, but a balloon would not appear so large from that altitude. Moreover, the object was emitting a bright light and moving faster than a balloon. It disappeared in 10-15 seconds. It had taken me by surprise, and I was uncertain if I had just seen a UFO. Bodrum is one of the most popular resort towns in Turkey, where foreign and local tourists flock to in the summer months. Announcing in public that I had just seen a UFO would have surely resulted in responses mocking my observation. Since I wasnt sure of what I had seen, I didnt make a fuss out of it and just told my wife, who replied, It could be something else such as a laser show. But two days later, the newspapers carried reports that a UFO had been seen from Bodrum. The Sirius UFO Space Sciences Research Center that studied the photos taken by three people in Bodrum asserted that it was indeed a UFO and posted the photos on its website. Skeptical citizens came up with explanations such as It could be the Ramadan cannon (marking the end of the fasting day) and The end of the world must be near. Then started a flow of reports from citizens who recounted having seen UFOs, the latest of which was taken rather seriously when two Turkish Airlines pilots from the same plane reported having seen one. On May 20, pilots of a Turkish Airlines Boeing 737 flying from Bodrum to Istanbul reported seeing an unidentified object emitting green light at an altitude of about 17,000 feet crossing over them as they approached the airport around 11:30 p.m. The following is what the pilots reported to air traffic control at Istanbul Ataturk Airport: An unidentified object emitting green light crossed in front of us at a distance of 2,000-3,000 feet and disappeared. We think it is a UFO. Both pilots saw the object. Airport officials, however, reported no such detection on their radars, and Turkish Airlines Flight 2525 landed at the airport at 00:37 a.m. A senior Turkish Airlines pilot commented on his colleague's report to daily Hurriyet, saying, They were able to report a UFO because they were in Turkish airspace. They couldnt have said this in European airspace to avoid embarrassment. The news spread fast globally. British newspapers Daily Mail and Daily Mirror gave it headline coverage and reported that 500 miles away an Egyptian plane had crashed into the Mediterranean Sea about an hour after the pilots had reported seeing the UFO. However, both papers mixed up the days as the Egyptian plane had crashed a day before the UFO sighting. Turkish newspapers mocked the British papers for trying to start a conspiracy and said it was the British newspapers that had veered off course. While the report of the Turkish Airlines pilots was not confirmed by the authorities, a Turkish tourist from the Dead Sea-Fethiye resort in the south of the country offered new evidence. On the day of the sighting, Celal Toprakci who was photographing his daughter paragliding around 5 p.m. noticed an object emitting green light moving east to west. Toprakci could not understand what he had seen, but after returning to his hotel he heard on TV the report by the two pilots. I looked at the four frames I had photographed and noted a green object had moved from my right to my left and then disappeared over the horizon, Toprakci said. Hakan Akdogan, the chairman of the Sirius UFO Space Sciences Research Center, insisted the pilots had actually seen a UFO. He told Al-Monitor, Two pilots saw the object simultaneously. These are people who can distinguish what they see in the sky and they say it passed close to them. In UFO literature, a 600-meter proximity is not easily encountered. This report does mesh with conventional technology. Anyhow, there shouldnt be any other object in the landing path of a plane. The fact that the object was not detected by radar means it was an extraterrestrial object. Moreover, the photographs taken by a tourist at Fethiye confirms the sighting of the pilots. Last year, Ibrahim Bilir a Turkish Airlines pilot with 40 years of flight experience said that in 2010 returning from Osaka his team had seen a UFO at an altitude of 11,000 meters. We were flying with three pilots. Four other planes were flying in the same direction. In front of me was a Turkish Airlines flight from Shanghai and behind me was a Lufthansa flight. We saw a bright light approaching that came very close. It was silver-colored, very bright and was extremely powerful; it burned our eyes. All three pilots on our plane saw it; it came toward us and flew over us, all in 30-45 seconds. If I had been the only witness, you could say it was a hallucination. But the crews of all four planes saw it. In Turkey, UFO events are monitored by the Sirius center. According to their records, last year between April 1 and Oct. 28 there were 3,640 reports of UFO sightings; 526 of them were recorded on camera, and 468 of them could have been satellites, Chinese lanterns, birds, balloons, photoshopped photos, light reflections or simple mistakes. A total of 79 were confirmed as UFOs. In 2012, UFO reports went up by 35% compared to the year before, and that trend continued with a 45% increase in 2013 and a 60% increase in 2014. Akdogan said, We predict that UFO sightings will seriously increase in Turkey and internationally in the coming years, and 2016-2020 will be a turning point in UFO sightings. We believe that governments will then have to reveal the realities they have been concealing. The world has been witnessing these kinds of sightings for many years; reports keep piling up but governments are yet to acknowledge the phenomenon. Akdogan added, The states know about it. They have evidence, but their citizens have to be prepared for this reality on a psychological level with appropriate information. This is what films accomplish right now. AX196_5A9A_9.JPG Wish You Were Beer in Huntsville, Ala. (Bob Gathany /bgathany@AL.com) The founders of Wish You Were Beer are taking their craft brew concept to the next level this year with a new location near downtown Huntsville. Damon and Laura Eubanks will launch a 2,773-square-foot suite this fall at Campus No. 805 at the old Stone Middle School campus. It will replace the couple's nearly 3-year-old store on U.S. 72 in Huntsville-annexed Madison County. The new facility will feature a 40-tap tasting room, 40-seat patio and a large selection of home brewing and wine making supplies and ingredients. "We want to position ourselves for future growth and plan to be part of the north Alabama craft beer scene for the long haul," Damon Eubanks told AL.com. "The Campus No. 805 location gives us a great shot at long term success by placing Wish You Were Beer in the very heart of north Alabama's craft brewing culture. We also look forward to additional retail and taproom space along with a great patio area." The craft beer bottle shop, taproom and home brew supply store will open in early October near the soon-to-open Rock-N-Roll Sushi at Campus No. 805, which is also home to Yellowhammer Brewing, Earth and Stone Wood Fired Pizza, Lone Goose Saloon, Bubba's Silver Spoon Catering and Stone Event Center. Straight to Ale is set to launch at the project in late June. Eubanks, an alumnus of Stone Middle School, said he is looking forward to being a part of the rejuvenation of west Huntsville. Damon and Laura Eubanks operate Wish You Were Beer, north Alabama's first craft-only beer store. (Courtesy) "We plan to bring our current staff of five, not including me and Laura, of course," he said. "I suspect we will need to hire at least another three to five folks once we are at Campus No. 805." The U.S. 72 location will close when they finish build out and receive all permits and licenses for the new location. While they hope to return to the Madison area in some capacity, Eubanks said their main focus now is the Campus No. 805 expansion. The Eubanks originally planned to open a home brew supply shop, Sweet Liberty, inside the Straight to Ale facility at Campus No. 805, but those plans fell through. Joyce Skinner, a spokeswoman for Campus No. 805, said Wish You Were Beer will be a valued member of the Campus community as its own entity. "Their presence amplifies the craft brew scene along with their expanded services," she said. About-The-Vet-Life.jpg Dr. Diarra Blue, Dr. Aubrey Ross and Dr. Michael Lavigne (Animal Planet) Three Tuskegee University graduates will soon make their small screen debut as the focus of Animal Planet's new series called "The Vet Life." The show, which premieres Saturday, will follow the day-to-day operations of Dr. Diarra Blue, Dr. Aubrey Ross and Dr. Michael Lavigne at their newly opened, full-service veterinarian hospital and animal shelter in Houston, Texas. Dr. Blue, Dr. Ross and Dr. Lavigne became friends while attending Tuskegee University's College of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Blue graduated from the college in 2009 while Dr. Ross and Dr. Lavigne were part of the class of 2007. Animal Planet offered the following summary for the new series: "The series captures the doctors' lives as they juggle running a new business while managing their family life filled with spouses, parents, in-laws, children, pets and friends, as well as their intense moments saving the lives of animals at their clinic." "The Vet Life" will premiere at 9 p.m. CST on Animal Planet. You can watch a sneak peak of the show click here. Bryan.png Ruepert Don Bryan (SCSO) Shelby County Sheriff's Office says this man is Dr. Ruepert Don Bryan, an Alabaster physician. (Shelby County Sheriff's Office) An Alabama physician was arrested early Friday afternoon on multiple charges against juveniles. Dr. Ruepert Don Bryan, 80, of Calera is being held in the Shelby County Jail on $500,000 bond, according to the sheriff's office. He is charged with three counts of production of obscene matter and one count of sexual abuse first degree. Bryan is a practicing ear, nose and throat physician in Alabaster. Shelby County Sheriff John Samaniego said the victims in this case are juveniles. He wouldn't say how many victims have been identified. He said there's no evidence at this time that the alleged crimes occurred at Bryan's medical practice. In a Friday afternoon press conference, Samaniego called Bryan a pedophile that had likely been victimizing children for many years. The Shelby County Sheriff's Office opened an investigation on Thursday after a member of the community came forward with "an abandoned videotape." Samaniego said he doesn't know how long ago the video was produced. Investigators sought the help of the community through media outlets on Thursday afternoon to identify the man seen in the video using a screenshot from the video evidence, Samaniego said. At that time, authorities didn't say why the man was wanted. Bryan was identified hours later and taken into custody, Samaniego said. "We learned of this horrible crime from evidence left behind by the accused and we have reasonable suspicion to believe there may be other victims," Samaniego said. "We urge anyone with additional information to contact us. The nature of these crimes prevent us from releasing more details, but what we can tell you is we would not have been able to solve this without the help from all those involved. We greatly value the partnership we have with everyone involved, especially the community and the media," he stated. According to the Alabama Board of Medical Examiners & Medical Licensure Commission of Alabama, Bryan has an active license to practice medicine. He has never been disciplined by the board. Samaniego said the sheriff's office had never received a complaint about Bryan's medical practice. A Madison County man convicted of sex abuse charges in February 2015 but free during his appeal reported to the county jail Thursday evening to begin his three-year prison sentence. Brian Lucas (Madison County Jail) Brian Frederick Lucas, 34, of Huntsville was booked into the jail shortly after 4 p.m. Thursday, jail records show. Lucas is serving a sentence on charges of sex abuse and attempted sexual misconduct. He was initially convicted of sex abuse and attempted sodomy, but the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeal reversed the attempted sodomy conviction and remanded the case back to a Madison County judge for sentencing on the lesser charge. Lucas was sentenced to six months in jail for attempted sexual misconduct, the sentence to run concurrently with his sentence for sex abuse. The appeals court found that the state failed to prove the "forcible compulsion" aspect of the attempted sodomy charge because testimony showed no evidence that he threatened the teenager and, when she awoke and pulled away from him, he pulled his pants up and left the room. "Lucas' actions, while reprehensible, did not subject (the victim) to sexual contact by forcible compulsion because Lucas stopped touching (the victim) when (she) pulled back and covered her mouth," the court's decision reads. Lucas' January 2014 arrest drew nationwide attention because his twin brother had been arrested in Colorado in 2012 on multiple child sex charges. Aaron Gregory Lucas' defense lawyer eventually told the court they planned to offer an "evil twin" defense arguing that Brian Lucas, not his client, was the offender in the case. DNA evidence linked Aaron Lucas, then an Army officer assigned to Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, to the crimes. Identical twins have virtually identical DNA profiles. That defense was ultimately dropped. Aaron Lucas pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 years to life in a Colorado prison. Aaron Lucas (Colorado Department of Corrections) Brian Lucas was convicted of charges stemming from an incident that occurred early one morning in December 2013 at the home of a former family member, where a then-16-year-old girl awoke to something brushing her face. When she opened her eyes, she realized it was a man's penis. Though she testified at trial that she couldn't see the man's face, she said she followed him into another bedroom and there, she found Lucas with his young son, who was spending the night at the home. Lucas was arrested in a second incident involving a former family babysitter about a week after he bonded out on the charges from the December 2013 incident, but the prosecution dropped those charges - with the victim's consent - after his conviction in the first case. Severe Weather Texas Streets along the Brazos River are closed, Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Rosenber, Texas. Parts of Texas have been inundated with rain in the last week, and more than half of the state is under flood watches or warnings, including the counties near Fort Hood. At least six people died in floods last week in Central and Southeast Texas. (Mark Mulligan/Houston Chronicle via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT (Mark Mulligan) Five Fort Hood soldiers are confirmed dead and four others remain missing Thursday night after a tactical vehicle overturned in a creek, according to the Army. The search for the missing four soldiers from the 3rd Battalion, 16th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division remains ongoing in Fort Hood, Texas. Multiple agencies using aircraft, dog teams and boats are participating in the rescue and recovery effort which began at around 11:20 a.m. The bodies of the three deceased soldiers were recovered downstream from the vehicle by the late afternoon. The bodies of two additional soldiers were recovered later Thursday night. Three soldiers were rescued from the water and are in stable condition. According to Ford Hood, a tactical vehicle overturned at the Owl Creek Tactical low-water crossing and East Range Road. Texas is experiencing widespread flooding, according to The Weather Channel. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster across 31 counties. Flooding caused the closure of some roads on Fort Hood's large base. Updated at 10:41 p.m. with new information from the Army. A Cleveland man whose daughter was the victim of a serial killer attacked the murderer in court on Thursday when he smirked as the grieving father gave a victim impact statement. Video of Michael Madison's sentencing hearing - during which the killer received a death sentence - shows Van Terry introducing himself to the court before telling Madison, "You've touched our family, you've taken my child." Terry turns toward the three-time killer in the video and, when he sees the man grinning at him, he lunges across the defense table and grabs at Madison's face. Family members scream and cry as courtroom security subdue Terry. Madison grins as the guards struggle with the angry man. Cleveland.com reports that Madison, 38, was convicted after a two-month trial of raping and killing 18-year-old Shirellda Terry, 28-year-old Shetisha Sheeley and 38-year-old Angela Deskins. Their mutilated and decomposing bodies were found in July 2013 in trash bags near Madison's East Cleveland apartment complex. Shirellda Terry was Madison's last victim before he was arrested for the murders. Cuyahoga County prosecutors will review the incident to determine if Terry will face charges for the courtroom attack, the news site said. A Colorado man found himself in jail Wednesday night after he allegedly pointed a gun at his daughter and challenged her to a duel. Robert Williams, 38, is charged with menacing, prohibited use of a weapon and child abuse, according to KRDO out of Colorado Springs. The girl's age has not been released. The El Paso County Sheriff's Office responded to Williams' home around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday on a report of a shooting, the news station reports. Investigators learned that a fight between Williams and his wife and daughter got out of control when he pointed a gun at the daughter and told her to go get a gun from another room in the house so they could "duel." During a struggle, both Williams and the daughter fired shots. No one was injured. Williams then went to the shed and got another gun, which he pointed at his wife, the news station reports. The wife grabbed the gun and her children and went to a neighbor's home for help. A man arrested in Mississippi after allegedly planting a bomb outside of a Tuscaloosa apartment has been returned to Alabama, according to the Tuscaloosa County Metro Homicide Unit. Clinton Poores, 43, "waived extradition and was transported to Tuscaloosa where he was booked in the Tuscaloosa County Jail pending bond. He was also served a bond revocation for violating his bond conditions from an arrest from last year," said Captain Gary Hood. Poores is charged with attempted murder. Tuscaloosa Police Chief Steven D. Anderson on Thursday said that police responded to a call of a suspicious device at 6:30 that morning at the Stone Creek Apartments at 5100 Old Birmingham Highway. Hood said bomb squad units, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents, and investigators from Tuscaloosa County Homicide Unit determined the device was an improvised explosive device and cleared the scene. Poores was arrested Thursday evening in Fulton, Miss. "Investigators believe that Poores created an improvised explosive device using 2-by-4 boards, shotgun shells, wiring, batteries and other items," The Tuscaloosa News reported. Authorities say the device was built in an effort to kill his estranged wife, according to that report. A Phoenix, Ariz. mother is accused of stabbing her three young sons to death early Thursday before turning the knife on herself. Two boys, ages 8 and 5, were found in the bedroom closet of a north Pheonix home, police told the Arizona Republic. A 2-month-old boy was found in a suitcase in the same closet. He was partially dismembered. Their mother, Octavia Rogers, 29, is currently in critical condition for self-inflicted stab wounds to the abdomen and neck. She is expected to survive her injuries. The children's grandmother, Tanella McCoy, told the newspaper that her daughter was a "good mother. "She didn't go out, she didn't party, she didn't do any of that," she said. McCoy owns the house where the boys' bodies were found. She identified the boys as 8-year-old Jaikare Rahaman, 5-year-old Jeremiah Adams and 2-month-old Avery Robinson. She said nothing appeared to be wrong with her daughter when she last saw her Wednesday night. "My daughter knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would take her kids ... because there were times she would talk to me about leaving for the summer," McCoy said. Phoenix police said Rogers' brother called 911 at around 2 a.m. after finding his sister in a bathroom with multiple stab wounds. He said she also tried to drown herself. Earlier that night, he said his sister was talking about "religion and how she had found the answer," the Arizona Republic reported. She attempted to lock him out of the house. Rogers had no history of mental illness, police said. Yesterday's recommendation that up to 100,000 people in north Alabama not drink water from their taps due to elevated levels of man-made chemicals PFOA and PFOS sent understandable waves of concern through the community. Here are some frequently asked questions that north Alabama residents need to know about the situation. What areas are affected? The recommendation was made by the West Morgan-East Lawrence Water and Sewer Authority, in response to an EPA health advisory issued on May 19. The water authority serves the area south of the Tennessee River and west of the city of Decatur, with about 10,000 direct customer households but provides water for up to 100,000 people in western Morgan County and eastern Lawrence County. The West Lawrence Water Co-op in Moulton also uses water from West Morgan-East Lawrence system. VAW Water System in Vinemont and Falkville Utilities had previously gotten water from WMEL, but announced that they have obtained water from other sources due to the health advisory. Decatur Utilities, which serves the city of Decatur and surrounding areas, is not affected by this contamination, according to DU spokesman Joe Holmes. Holmes said the utility's latest water tests show no detectable levels of PFOA or PFOS. Hartselle Utilities water is also not listed on the advisory. What is PFOA, PFOS? PFOA stands for perfluorooctanoic acid. PFOS is short for perfluorooctyl sulfonate. Both are man-made chemicals that are part of a group of compounds called PFCs, or perfluorinated compounds. PFOA and PFOS are extremely resistant to breaking down in the natural environment and were used in a wide range of consumer products to make them stain-resistant or non-stick. The chemicals were also found in food packaging and a wide range of other products. The compounds are prevalent throughout the United States and remain in the bloodstream for years after exposure and continue to accumulate over time if the exposure continues. What health risks are associated with PFCs? The EPA health advisory was based on laboratory studies on animals and epidemiological studies of human populations that have been exposed to PFOS and PFOA. Those studies indicated that the chemicals may be associated with negative impacts, including "developmental effects to fetuses during pregnancy or to breastfed infants (e.g., low birth weight, accelerated puberty, skeletal variations), cancer (e.g., testicular, kidney), liver effects (e.g., tissue damage), immune effects (e.g., antibody production and immunity), thyroid effects and other effects (e.g., cholesterol changes)." However, John Guarisco, a toxicologist with the Alabama Department of Public Health said that not enough is known to definitively say the substances cause cancer or other problems. "There's no information so far that says it definitely causes cancer, Guarisco said. "There's some out there that suggests it causes cancer. Nobody knows." Guarisco said the animal studies have limitations because of the differences between laboratory animals and humans. "You shouldn't dismiss animal studies because sometimes they are very valuable that way, but sometimes you have to take those with a grain of salt because there are differences between humans and animals," he said. Guarisco said the epidemiological studies also had issues because the researchers did not control for smoking or other human behaviors that can cause cancer. Is the contamination new? No. The water authority says they have been aware of the chemical in the river for years. 3M voluntarily stopped producing the chemicals in 2002. According to the EPA, drinking water contamination is primarily an issue near the facilities where the chemicals were made or used to manufacture other products. The 3M facility in Decatur is one such location. The EPA issued the final updated health advisory on May 19 because, according to their fact sheet "the science has evolved" since the agency's provisional advisories were published in 2009. How is it still here? Even though 3M stopped producing the chemicals long ago, the chemicals persist in the river. Environmental group Tennessee Riverkeeper has alleged that the chemicals are still being discharged into the river through landfills along the river that store waste. According to a notice of intent to sue 3M and others that the group filed last year, the liquid waste or leachate from these landfills is collected and sent back into the river after going through a standard wastewater treatment process that does not specifically address PFCs. The EPA's 2009 provisional advisory also noted that sewage sludge containing the chemicals was applied to agricultural fields in Lawrence and Morgan Counties, though at that time the agency said "EPA believes these levels are not of concern and residents may rely upon public water systems." What does 3M say? 3M has said that the company does not believe the materials are harmful to human health at the levels commonly found in people. The company said that its own employees who worked in close contact with the substances have not shown increased risk of health problems and the presence of these substances in the environment is not necessarily harmful. Is it harmful to bathe or swim in the water? The EPA advisory only covers ingestion. There is no suggestion that bathing or swimming in the water is harmful. Can I filter the water myself? Some types of in-home or point-of-use water filters can remove some PFCs from the water before consumption, according to recent studies. Filters that use reverse osmosis or granular activated carbon media have been shown to reduce the amounts of chemicals in the water. However, most household filters are not routinely tested to see how effective they are at removing PFCs. Activated carbon filters must also be replaced frequently, and become less effective after use. Be sure to check the packaging on water filters and make sure the filters are changed regularly. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- East Cleveland serial killer Michael Madison smirked as the father of his final victim took the podium in a Cleveland courtroom to read a statement about his daughter's life and her gruesome death. Judge Nancy R. McDonnell sentenced the convicted killer of three to death Thursday for the rape and murders of 18-year-old Shirellda Terry, 28-year-old Shetisha Sheeley and 38-year-old Angela Deskins. Thursday's hearing was their first chance for friends and family members who sat through the two-month trial to address the man convicted of killing those women. "Right now, I guess we're supposed to, in our hearts forgive this clown, who has touched our families, taken my child," Shirellda Terry's father Van Terry said. He then turned toward Madison, just as the killer sprouted a grin. Van Terry bolted from the podium and lunged across the hardwood table where Madison was seated. He grabbed at Madison's face as his momentum carried him back into the packed courtroom gallery. "He was upset. He's telling you that he lost his baby, that's a slice of his heaven, and (Madison) is sitting over there smiling," Van Terry's sister Sonya Richardson said after the hearing. "It's like, enough." A court officer tackles Van Terry, father of one of three victims of Ohio serial killer Michael Madison, left. Terry was giving testimony about the loss of his daughter when he turned, paused and lunged toward Madison, who was grinning. A spokesman for the Cuyahoga County prosecutor said the office will review the incident and decide whether to charge Van Terry with a crime. Madison's sentence was a moment of closure for the families and friends of his victims who watched and listened to the vivid details of Madison's mutilation of the three young women whose bodies were found decomposing in trash bags around his apartment complex. For nearly two months they watched as photos of the womens' mangled and mutilated bodies flashed onscreen before a jury of 12. They listened as police detectives and forensics experts described how they were choked, beaten and in at least one case raped. The judge considered some mitigating factors that Madison's defense attorneys, led by David Grant, raised at trial. Madison was abused throughout most of his childhood, he came from a home where "no one here would allow their child to spend a single night," Grant said. Experts in corrections testified that Madison could be safely held in the state's prison system for the rest of his life. It was the only other sentence that McDonnell could have granted. The judge was not persuaded. "I believe there is some value in capital punishment, this is one of those cases." Outside the courtroom following the trial, Marie Padgette, mother of Angela Deskins, expressed outright gratitude at McGinty's side. Belinda Minor, Shirellda Terry's mother, forgave Madison from the courtroom podium, but did not express any reservation about his death sentence. "If you get injection, you take the easy way out," Shetisha's Sheeley's sister Samara wrote in a letter to the court. "It's a lose-lose situation here, and it makes me think selfishly. Thinking that your family will get to see you behind bars, makes me want to see you die." A suburban Atlanta woman was attacked by another woman wielding an American flag, police say. Lawrenceville police say a woman removed the flag from Dami Arno's mailbox and hit Arno with the flag and pole on Tuesday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The suspect, Amina Ali Ahra, 30, was arrested and charged with simple battery. According to the report, Ahra was wearing a head scarf that covered most of her face and approached Arno in a "threatening manner." The motive behind the attack wasn't released. On her Facebook page, Arno is calling for Ahra to be charged with a hate crime. Publix final MAB screenshot.jpg A portion of the site plan for the Publix shopping center proposed for Midtown Mobile. A proposed Midtown Mobile shopping center featuring a Publix supermarket cleared a major hurdle Thursday afternoon when the Mobile Planning Commission voted to approved the project. The plan has generated considerable public interest, partly because the development would transform the crossroads of Florida Street and Old Shell Road, redeveloping the site of the former Augusta Evans School. But it also has generated criticism from neighbors and at least one community group, who have argued that it doesn't fit the character of the neighborhood and doesn't fit the Map for Mobile, a new plan providing some guidelines for citywide development. Interest clearly was high: because Government Plaza's main auditorium is being renovated, the meeting was held in a smaller multipurpose room. Due to an overflow crowd, Planning Commission Chair James Watkins had to announced that some of the crowd would have to wait outside. Speakers at the meeting mainly held to established positions: On behalf of the developers, attorney Casey Pipes said that the plan had undergone extensive changes to accommodate community concerns. Ashley Dukes, president of the Midtown Mobile Movement advocacy group, said those changes had failed to address some substantial concerns, and that the group continued to propose alternatives. The plan before the commission recently received a favorable report from city staff, recommending approval. Among other things, the report says the developers have made a credible effort to comply with the city's new Map for Mobile development guidelines: "The revised plan now before the Commission may not check every box for everyone, but certainly represents the applicant's diligence in working towards a site plan that reflects many of The Map for Mobile guidelines given the constraints of the site, the utilities and infrastructure located under the vacated service road, and the irregularly shaped property." Notably, some speakers were area residents and business owners who favored the development. Other nearby residents said they remained worried that buffer zones were insufficient, meaning noise and smells from the site would affect the quality of life for nearby homeowners. The commission's approval does not mean work can start immediately. The Mobile City Council must approve zoning changes that are part of the plan. Perhaps significantly, it was the City Council's representative on the Planning Commission, Joel Daves, who made the motion to approve the development on Thursday. Montgomery police are asking for help locating a missing 19-year-old man. Rickem Dewon Samuels was last seen entering a black Nissan Versa four-door car at around 1:30 p.m. on April 2, 2016, according to Central Alabama Crime Stoppers. He may have been heading to the area of Chase Street in Montgomery. Samuels is 6-foot 1 inches tall and weighs about 163 pounds. He was last seen wearing a blue Polo shirt, blue jeans and high-top Oxford type shoes. Anyone with information on Samuels' whereabouts is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 215-STOP. Walmart Scooter Gang.jpg The "Little Debbie Disciples" keeping watch over their territory earlier this week. Matt Mitchell is the creator of The Ostrich, Walker County's least trusted news source, and was the 3rd round draft pick of the Denver Nuggets. Roughly half of what he writes is untrue. Jasper police are once again warning residents about local scooter gangs roaming the aisles of Walmart and blocking every access point to the only item you came into the store for. Jasper Police Chief J.C. Poe told reporters his officers are making daily patrols from the bakery to the beer sections in an effort to keep shoppers safe. "Too many innocent bystanders have lost toes to drive-bys," explained Poe. "I won't stand for it. And neither will they, literally and metaphorically." Incidents like the one described by Poe have increased rapidly after a second scooter gang formed in the Jasper Walmart's frozen food section earlier this year. Tensions between the two gangs finally reached a boiling point last week when Willy, the leader of the "Little Debbie Disciples," issued a hit on a rival leader via his personal Facebook page. "No one takes the last bag of powdered donuts without going through me," wrote Willy. "I'm taking 2 boxes of Little Debbie Christmas Tree cakes out of my hiding spot and giving them to whoever brings me the metal basket of Big Dave's scooter." The post was immediately shared by every member of the Little Debbie Disciples and has 12 likes, 2 angry emoji faces, and 1 presumably accidental laughing-out-loud emoji face. Despite the impressive bounty placed on his precious basket, Big Dave and his "Blue Bell Boyz" are refusing to retreat. "Willy don't own this store," stated Big Dave. "I heard the only reason Willy won't leave the Little Debbie aisle is 'cuz his scooter battery is dead. He can act tough all he wants, but the truth is he's stranded." According to Whitney Sims, a sociology professor at nearby Bevill State Community College, scooter gangs are not unique to Jasper's Walmart, but it is uncommon to see multiple gangs fight for territory within the same store. "These scooter-people rarely have to worry about each other," explained Sims. "The largest threats to their existence tend to be flat tires, fire evacuations, and diabetes. But that's simply not the case here in Jasper. A turf war is underway and as long as these two groups refuse to make amends, these streets, or rather aisles, ain't safe." Until the two gangs agree to a ceasefire, customers like Courtney Sides are stuck in the crosshairs. "I just need to buy bread. That's it," said a visibly frustrated Sides. "I should've stopped at Dollar General instead. They've probably built 5 more in Walker County since I parked my car." As of press time, Willy was sleeping peacefully by the Oatmeal Cream Pies and every scooter in Jasper Walmart was in use, leaving none for the customers who are actually disabled. The fertility industry is big business but just what are the emotional, physical and financial costs? It is the year 2027 and mass global female infertility leaves humankind facing extinction. It sounds like the plot of a film and it is. The 2006 production Children of Men tells the story of an infertile human race struggling to survive with little hope or chance for new life. And with regular reports lamenting growing rates of infertility, and fertility clinics popping up with greater frequency than Starbucks coffee shops, it is easy to believe that a global fertility crisis looms. But what is the reality, and just how far are people prepared to go to conceive? National Health Service (NHS) figures from the UK show that one in six couples is classified as infertile, and it is the same in the US. Figures from Qatar suggest that 16 percent of couples are infertile, and in India 30 million couples, which accounts for 10 percent of the population. The result is a booming fertility business. And with a range of expensive assisted reproductive technologies on offer, for many, the cost of a human life is priceless. At any cost Take Dina Salam, for example. A successful Palestinian businesswoman in her 40s, Dina married her American husband, Hisham, six years ago. The newlyweds then in their late 30s were full of hope. Living and working in Qatar, they had a beautiful home, home-help, individual cars and frequent holidays abroad. I was 38, and my husband and I were very keen to have kids and raise a family, so six months into our marriage I visited a doctor here in Qatar to find out why I hadnt conceived. The doctor referred us both to a fertility specialist who suggested we try IUI artificial insemination. So we did. Three attempts later, and still nothing, Dina explains. My doctor advised us to go for IVF, and I was totally convinced that this would be our solution. In the Salams case, Hisham has weak sperm. The doctor suggested the only way they could conceive would be to remove Dinas eggs from her ovaries and fertilise them with Hishams sperm before transferring the embryo back into Dinas uterus a process known as in-vitro fertilisation, or more commonly as IVF. Thats when we started our IVF journey first to Florida, then Doha, Jordan, Bahrain, and lastly New York. Each attempt failed. Like most women undergoing IVF, Dina had to have several rounds. On average, a patient falls pregnant only one out of three times, so IVF often has to be done repeatedly, and it is a costly business. Weve spent close to $100,000, she says. Fertility clinics in the US alone are thought to be part of a $4.5bn industry which is still largely unregulated. And that figure is set to rise to $4.8bn within the next four years. It is a simple supply-and-demand model, but the product on offer is a baby something many seem willing to spend their last penny on. World-renowned IVF expert Professor Lord Robert Winston says couples are often exploited. The combination of desperation [at] being infertile and the fact some couples are prepared to pay large sums of money for fertility treatment leads to exploitation. It didnt use to be like this. When I first started in the field of IVF, clinics would only charge what was felt appropriate. We need reasonable ethical standards applied, but the problem is that private medicine is very expensive, and medicine in the commercial market is at risk of being treated as a commercial commodity. It is exactly because patients such as Dina and Hisham are willing to invest thousands of dollars in treatments that fertility programmes continue to compete fiercely for patients, advertising high pregnancy rates and sometimes even offering patients financial incentives. The competition for patients worries those who fear that doctors will use risky medical practices to try to boost pregnancy rates, or that clinics will mislead patients about their chances of conceiving, let alone carrying to term. Risky business S Lochlann Jain, a professor at Stanford University in the US, thinks the IVF process is itself a risky business. She says that transferring three or more embryos in an IVF procedure standard practice in many clinics in the US is a flawed and dangerous precedent. She refers to a study in The Lancet medical journal which states that transferring three embryos instead of two makes no difference in the rate of live births in older women. But three or more embryos in any age group significantly increases the risk of complications, such as premature birth and low birth weight. In Jains upcoming book, Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us, there is a chapter linking some forms of fertility treatment to cancer. The fertility industry is very careful about what data it keeps and what data it does not, Jain says. Therefore, it is easy to say that the data does not suggest that fertility drugs increase rates of cancer when, in fact, no one has done the research to see what correlation does exist. Niloofar Rezai, a UK-registered, Qatar-based homeopath and complementary therapist, says: Research, unfortunately, does exist to show cancer rates in mothers and children of IVF, alongside other diseases which include polycystic ovaries [PCOS], a small risk of mental deficits in children, and a much disputed 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer. Jain herself has a personal tale. In 2000, she took fertility hormones to produce enough eggs to donate. Four years later, Jain had cancer. She remembers asking the doctor conducting the procedure if there were any links between cancer and egg extraction, but says her question was dismissed. She went on to study the link and looked at the long-term effects of hormone drugs on fertile women who have undergone egg extraction. Donated eggs account for over a quarter of IVF live births, even though only about 12 percent of IVF procedures use them. In other words, while donated egg cells account for a mere three in every 200 births in the United States, the practice underpins the very viability of a multibillion-dollar industry whose success rates would be too low without them. Jain discovered that there was no protocol in place for clinics to contact women after egg extraction, and that no agency collects data on subsequent health issues a woman may encounter. The IVF industry portrays the procedure as generally successful and extremely safe. IVF advertisements peddling motherhood portray sweetly swaddled babies, and the IVF clinic welcomes would-be patients with pastel pink and blue walls replete with large framed pictures of chubby little hands and feet, Jain writes in chapter six of her book. In the US, clinics administer about 120,000 IVF cycles annually, but with no central agency to collect this data, numbers are estimates. This unregulated free-market approach to fertility is nothing short of human experimentation based on financial incentive and medical hubris, says Jain. Hope and faith Sarah Howard has been trying to conceive for five years and says hospitals benefit from couples infertility issues: They prey on couples who are desperate to have children. They often give you a small amount of hope. I can tell you first-hand that the small amount of hope is enough to hand over large amounts of money. I will guarantee that people will continue to give them money because we put all our hope and faith in them as professionals. We let ourselves believe that they have our best interests at heart. It is a costly business, both financially and emotionally, but Hannah Walker, a 39-year-old American designer, believes the time and money she has spent on trying to conceive a child has been worth it. It was part of my life experience and led me to where I am today. The issue I had is that I was undiagnosed for so long. I wish I had done more research before going to these people. I counted on them to diagnose me or send me to someone who could, and they didnt. Fertility doctors have a one-track mind and whether thats right or wrong, thats the way it is. I kept every lab report, ultrasound, and carried my own file with me to these different doctors. I made sure that I was informed and even suggested to doctors the therapy I needed after doing my own research. They didnt take well to that and really have a God complex about them Theyre pretty arrogant. When all facts are not created equal It is a widely reported fact that many women now wait too long to start a family. Dina was told by doctors in the US that her inability to conceive was due to her age. But Dr Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, says all may not be as it seems. She says that we are told that womens fertility levels take a significant drop once they hit 35 and that one in three women between the ages of 35 and 39 will not fall pregnant after a year of trying. But Twenge says this data is based on research that was conducted in France between 1670 and 1830. A time, as she puts it, before electricity, antibiotics or fertility treatment. She says that while fertility does decline with age, many women in their late 30s do have children. And in Julys edition of The Atlantic magazine, Twenge reminds us that most fertility problems are not because of a womans age. She cites blocked Fallopian tubes and endometriosis as key factors that can affect a woman at any age, while stressing that in half of all infertile couples, it is the man who has fertility problems. Professor Lord Winston, Emeritus Professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College London, says the media is responsible for presenting an inaccurate picture of current levels of fertility: Newspapers do not give a fair reaction; they tend to write what they think people want to read. British national statistics for 2011 show there were 905,000 pregnancies in Britain. That has never been surpassed since the 1950s. Figures show fertility levels are not decreasing nor remaining static; they are higher than ever before. The number of actual births not pregnancies was around 760,000, much more than in the 1990s. RELATED: Motherhood on Ice The World Health Organization (WHO) concurs, saying that despite media hype suggesting growing infertility rates, figures have stayed pretty much constant since 1990. A study led by WHO looked at infertility levels in 190 countries between 1990 and 2010. The study found that in 2010, 1.9 percent of women aged 20 who wanted to have children were unable to have their first live birth (referred to as primary infertility), and 10.5 percent of women who had previously given birth were unable to have another baby (referred to as secondary infertility) a total of 48.5 million couples. Gretchen Stevens, the lead author of that study, says: Unfortunately, there are not many studies that directly measure infertility in general populations; those studies that exist often use inconsistent definitions of infertility and are not comparable so they dont tell us anything about trends in infertility. The only country which carries out repeated studies to determine infertility prevalence is the US, and the data from the US do not show any significant change in infertility prevalence. Stevens and her team used widely collected demographic data to infer the prevalence of infertility in different countries over time. They used the demographic definition of infertility, which differs from the standard clinical definition of infertility, which is failing to conceive after a year of trying. In the definition we used, a couple was considered infertile if they did not have a child after five years of trying so a couple that quickly goes for infertility treatment might be considered fertile. We do not think this had a large effect, though, since the US data would not consider such a couple fertile and also did not show any change in infertility prevalence, she explains. We concluded that globally, infertility prevalence is unchanged; some types of infertility may be increasing in high-income countries; and infertility is clearly decreasing in sub-Saharan Africa. We did not determine the reason for these changes or lack of change. Tick tock Winston reminds us that we should not believe everything we hear in the media: Women have now gained equality in the workplace, which is a great thing, and they are tending to leave babies until later. But with the media writing terrible scare stories about leaving it too late, many women are being frightened into turning to IVF. In the UK, the average first birth is at 31 but fertility rates dont start dropping until after 40 and 42. There is a long way to go before they are seriously doomed. The whole ticking biological clock theory does not apply to 25-year-old Sarah Howard either. Her and her husband, Shaun, have been trying to conceive for five years. As a couple we are put in the category of being young so we have plenty of time. I always get so annoyed when people tell me this. It doesnt matter how old I am because we are all on the same fertility journey. Someone elses need for a child isnt greater than mine because they are older. Our fertility journey began in Ireland when I was 20 but ultimately it started when I was 16. I was in England and visited my doctor concerned about my irregular cycle. He put me on the contraceptive pill and said it would sort itself out in time. Sarah met Shaun four years later. They decided to start trying for children, so Sarah came off the contraceptive pill. But she noticed that her menstrual cycle was even more irregular than before, and PCOS was soon diagnosed. I was shocked to think I was only 20 and something that was meant to be natural for a woman I couldnt achieve. I was referred to the fertility clinic in our local hospital for further investigations and for my husband to also be investigated. We found out that my husband had a low sperm count with poor mobility. After four months of investigations Sarah was prescribed Clomid and Metformin the first to induce ovulation and the second to treat her PCOS. She was sent on her way with no follow-up appointments. It didnt work and I couldnt bring myself to go back to the hospital. At that point it had not cost me anything financially, but mentally it was stressful, she says. Sarah and her husband moved to Qatar, where they have been continuing their quest for a baby. We were expecting long waiting times here in Qatar, but at my first appointment at a private hospital I had multiple tests done straight away and my husband scheduled for the week after. I couldnt believe how quick the process was in comparison to England and Ireland. Before we could even mentally digest what was happening I was scheduled for an IUI. The IUI didnt work and we had a further two over the following five months until February this year. The couple was referred to the countrys general hospital, Hamad, which performs around 1,200 IVF cycles a year. But they decided to take a break and save some money before starting IVF. Although treatment is cheaper here than in Ireland and England, we were living month to month on our money and even ended up borrowing on credit cards to pay for treatments. Amy Hudson, an editor for a Gulf-based research centre, and her husband Khalid, a pilot, had been trying for a baby since 2007 when Amy was 28. We were living in Seattle at the time and I found out that I had endometriosis, so in the spring of 2008 I had surgery to remove it, she says. We tried for four years before considering IVF. I was managing to get pregnant but kept miscarrying. I remember one was at eight weeks and one was at 12 weeks. In total, Amy had five miscarriages. As she headed into her early 30s, a family friend who was also a doctor advised her to start thinking about fertility treatment. Physical costs Rezai says that once conception and birth occur, the hardships of trying to conceive often seem worthwhile, but the long-term physical assault of repeated IVF cycles are still under-investigated, both for the mother and child. For Sarah, fertility treatment was physically and emotionally painful. The hormonal medication injections almost daily made me very emotional and I would often cry for no reason and shut my husband out. He would try to be patient but I felt like he didnt understand how I felt. I would have terrible pains in my sides; my back would cause me the most pain, leading to restless nights. I would sometimes vomit and feel nauseous most of the time during the medication. Emotionally I would be moody, sad, crying and often dwell on the fact that we were not getting pregnant. It was also hard going to any of the shopping malls in Doha as you often see a lot of pregnant women. I would think how easy it was for them and feel jealous. My relationship wasnt really affected because my husband is patient but at one stage all I talked about was fertility [and] babies and it got to a point when my husband told me to stop talking about it. Hannah and her husband Ahmed started trying to conceive a year into their marriage. After trying for a year they decided to get help. Hannah says: When the second IVF pregnancy terminated, we drew the line. It was incredibly difficult emotionally, physically and spiritually. Without the right support I found that I couldnt do it any more. And after injecting myself X amount of times a day with God knows what, we decided that we needed to take a break. I was only 31 at the time and figured I had some time. I resented my partner, I resented everyone I just didnt want to go through the poking and prodding any more. Infertility treatments also took their toll on Dinas marriage. I think were done, she says. I need to spend time now working on my relationship with my husband. It was really affected by our IVF journey. Over the past five years we have been trying and trying, and in each try Im paying from my relationship with my husband. I had feelings of guilt that I couldnt get pregnant, and then I also felt angry towards my husband that he couldnt give me the family Ive always dreamt of. There was just too much negativity in our marriage when we were trying to conceive. To accept the fact that we may never become parents is hard, but we have to live with this fact and work on our marriage. Medical approaches Although the fertility industry is big business worldwide, approaches differ from clinic to clinic and country to country. In Ireland I was happily given my drugs without follow-up appointments. In Doha I was given fertility drugs straight away but was closely monitored, says Sarah. When we were in England we tried the local health service to see if it would be different. We were put on a six-month waiting list for our first appointment, then had six months of investigations before IVF would even be considered. We found out that one round of IVF would be free on the NHS but the wait was so long. Free fertility treatment is offered in England under the NHS. If the woman is aged between 23 and 39 and the couple has been trying for a baby for two years, they are entitled to at least one free cycle of IVF treatment. But this depends on where in the country you live as not all health authorities are able to provide NHS fertility services. Rezai says: Private clinics in the UK are becoming more and more selective in offering repeated IVFs depending on age and infertility causations. Some will even offer a form of nutritional supplementation before initiating the process. In some areas of the Middle East the models used are lagging behind their sister models [and are] still dependent on dated medical methods that have proved to be inefficient. I have had several patients in Qatar who were fortunate enough to conceive but only after seven to 10 IVF cycles. This would be very unlikely in the West; both because of financial restraint and health issues. Amy says she researched IVF in the US but decided against undergoing treatment there: Not only is it overly expensive but I found they take a somewhat more obsessive approach I just did not want to be in that system. There wasnt much research out there on the risks of IVF at the time and I wasnt made aware of any risks by the doctor I saw. But I personally know many women who have gone through IVF and have not had any serious medical issues. Amy had her first and only cycle of IVF in Qatar in June 2011. I was in a group of five women who were undergoing the same treatment. I clearly remember the day when we had to return to the hospital to find out whether we were pregnant. I was walking in the hallway, passing by to see some of the medical staff who had been treating us, when I was told I was pregnant and with twins! It was a weird moment as I was extremely happy, but didnt feel comfortable being told in the hallway in front of some women who hadnt yet conceived. I had to control my joy. Amy and her husband returned to the US as they prepared to move to Saudi Arabia. As she was already pregnant, she was not entitled to health insurance there so had to pay for pre-natal treatment. I had heard that after 20 weeks I should go for check-ups every two weeks because I was carrying twins, she says. I remember the day clearly it was November 9, 2011. I went for my 24-week appointment at 9am. I found out my cervix had begun to open. By 4.30pm my twin boys were born premature at six months. Ziyad weighed 700 grams and Adam 800 grams. Two days later we lost Ziyad and on day three we lost our other baby boy, Adam. Hannah and Ahmeds quest for a child led them to the US, Qatar and Jordan. They noticed different approaches in each country. Our California-based doctor was interested in finding and exploring less invasive options and starting slow. In Qatar, they wanted to go straight for IVF when there was an alternative; they werent willing to consider it. In Jordan, they were open to trying less invasive techniques before suggesting IVF. However, I wasnt comfortable with their labs and the technique of egg retrieval, and others didnt sound as good as in the US. It was not until I went to a reproductive immunologist in the US that I understood what my condition was and how to treat it. Like Amy, Hannah was diagnosed with endometriosis. I had surgery and underwent hormone therapy for six months. After which the doctor prescribed Clomid and we conceived that very same month. Sadly, however, the pregnancy naturally terminated at about six weeks. The doctor suggested we wait a few months before trying again, and we did. When we didnt conceive that month, we decided to seek advice from a reproductive endocrinologist. Human need So, if infertility rates have remained largely the same for the past 20 years, why is the business of treating infertility booming? Stevens from the WHO says: I would guess that if treatment centres are increasing, its due to improved treatment technologies and infertile couples increased ability to pay for these treatments. But Jain proffers a different explanation: Many people are committed to a genetic idea of reproduction: that their own biological child will better reflect their values, goals and biology. With doctors underplaying the dangers of fertility treatments and adoption being a difficult process, especially for gays and lesbians or older people, fertility clinics will prosper. We live in a society that values reproduction for its own sake, and so many people need that, they need to have children to feel whole. Most couples will go to any extent to have a baby, adds Rezai. Reproduction and child rearing is an instinctive mechanism within all of us. It is up to the medical community to discuss the risks of conventional methods and perhaps some information about alternatives. Priceless Sarah and Shaun have spent just over $9,500 on treatments, and have no regret about doing so. We now have more answers and insight into our fertility issues and options than we ever had before. For us, a child is worth all the money, time or effort it takes to achieve our dream of a family. I will continue until we get pregnant doing whatever it takes. I still have faith in the doctors; I think I need to keep positive for my own sanity, to let myself believe that I can put my fertility path in someones qualified hands. Hannah and Ahmed spent around $30,000. She says: We would do it all again, but I would be more insistent and do more research. But do they still have faith in the fertility experts? I have more faith in God than in the fertility experts. But I think they understand how to use technology to help people conceive. However, if you dont have a standard case, I believe youre on your own. I think the answer to your question is no. Is IVF the only way? Rezai thinks there needs to be greater awareness of alternative approaches. She cites The Foresight Institute, which provides pre-conception care. The institute uses nutritional deficiency and heavy metal toxicity screening, among other tests, to form a prescription for health. The bonus being, says Rezai, that if no child is conceived the couple will be guaranteed better health at the end of the process. Such programmes may even ensure that if the couple does select IVF for conception, the amount of cycles may remain slight compared with their peers because of the superior health. She says this is where the focus needs to be placed and where a void exists in the modern medical approach. You need to work on improving the overall health of the couple; the quality of the egg, sperm, ovaries and uterus can definitely be addressed holistically, which in itself may result in natural conception at best and, as a last resort, a higher rate of success with IVF at one or two cycles. Hannah and Ahmeds story has a happy ending. Although they gave up on IVF, they did not give up on wanting a child of their own and are now the proud parents of three-year-old Hasan. He was two months old when we met him and I moved to Morocco to take care of him until he was released for adoption. For legal reasons we had to wait three months before taking him home, says Hannah. For Dina, after five tries at IVF in the US and the Middle East she now feels rested and refocused. Hisham has suggested one more attempt, but Dina is undecided. Im glad we investigated and tried our best, and since it did not happen then it wasnt meant to be maybe there is a greater reason behind this As much as we want a child its really difficult to put my body through all of that again. Amy says she would recommend fertility treatment to others hoping to conceive: That is the only way I had my sons [and] they were a huge blessing in our lives. But, she adds, I would recommend IVF as a last resort [and would] suggest not getting overwhelmed and caught up in the conceiving process as it can be all-consuming, which is good for no one, especially the couple. Amy and Khalid welcomed their daughter Miriam into the world last December. She was conceived without the aid of any fertility treatment. As for Sarah, she says: For us the day we stop trying is the day we are told that we have no other options. We will continue down our fertility path, spending every penny we have, until that day comes. Some names have been changed to protect privacy. This article first appeared in the August 2013 issue of the Al Jazeera Magazine. How many Palestinians are imprisoned by Israel? Palestinians are marking Prisoners Day to highlight the plight of thousands being held in Israeli jails. Smallholder farmers can overcome the negative effects of the climate change by using new varieties of seeds. Edward Mabaya is an agricultural economist and Associate Director of the CIIFAD in Cornell University. Southern Africa is undergoing the worst drought in more than three decades. More than 30 million people in South Africa, Malawi, and my home country Zimbabwe are facing hunger. While this years drought is largely attributed to the El Nino effect, rains have been increasingly erratic over the past two decades. This could be the new normal as climate change models forecast less rainfall and more extreme weather for much of East and Southern Africa. Moreover, experts project that we may be entering a time of global weather uncertainty, or a dark age. Game changers Recently I have seen numerous images of smallholder farmers standing helplessly next to wilted crops, dying cattle, and sun-scorched earth. Having grown up on a small farm in rural Zimbabwe, I know full well how mother nature can destroy livelihoods for one of the worlds most vulnerable populations smallholder farmers. I also recognise the look on many of those farmers faces: helplessness. Yet, the narrative does not always have to end badly. Plant breeders, working through publicly funded research institutes, are developing new crop varieties with traits that allow them to withstand extreme weather and not just drought, but also flooding, and frost. People like me who work in agriculture call them climate-smart crops, because they offer a fast and affordable way for farmers to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. Nothing can fully protect crops from extreme weather. Crops still need water to grow, but not too much of it. Climate-smart seed can reduce the impact of extreme weather, but it cannot to eliminate it. by For a number of reasons, such as restrictive seed laws and government monopolies, lack of money and a limited number of rural seed outlets, many smallholder farmers in Africa still rely on seed from outdated seed varieties saved over many generations. That may sound quaintly self-reliant. But actually, most of these saved seeds are for crops that long ago became vulnerable to pests and disease and produce poor yields even when the rains do come. Less than 30 percent of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa use improved seed that has recently undergone a formal breeding process. Seed varieties But it does not have to be that way. Consider the Drought-Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) project, which was launched in 2007 and has been implemented in 13 African countries. This partnership of national and international agricultural research institutions has to date released about 200 distinct drought-tolerant maize varieties. The new varieties are bred to match growing conditions in a particular region and, along with drought tolerance, their yields are equal to or higher than other commercially available varieties. In other words, they offer some protection against drought without sacrificing yield. Farmers are noticing the difference and voting with their wallets. DTMA varieties have been adopted in each of the 13 target countries. In Nigeria and Zambia, two of the drought-tolerant varieties had become the most popular commercial varieties by 2013. This is especially impressive given how slowly most smallholder farmers adopt new varieties. Breeders are also working on the other extreme, developing crops for when climate change produces heavy rains. The International Rice Research Institute has developed rice varieties that can withstand being submerged under water for two weeks. Rice varieties with the so-called scuba gene are currently being grown by more than five million farmers in Asia. The trait is now being transferred into popular varieties in Africa. For legumes, increased precipitation often results in root rot a disease that that significantly lowers yields. OPINION: Eradicating poverty in Africa The Pan-African Bean Research Alliance has released more than 450 new bean varieties since 1996 (PDF). All of these varieties were bred to be more resilient to extreme weather while offering higher yielding and better nutrition than their ancestors. Farmers planting the improved bean varieties in Rwanda have seen yields rise 53 percent, while productivity among farmers using the beans in Uganda has increased by about 60 percent (PDF). For the sceptics, it should be noted that none of the technologies cited above has anything to do with genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Moreover, they were all produced by public research institutions and commercialised by small, locally owned seed companies. From subsistence farming to surplus The benefits of improved seed are not new. Growing up in the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe during the 1980s, rain was both abundant and consistent. For many families in my village including mine the adoption of hybrid maize varieties transformed rural livelihoods from mere subsistence to surplus production. I owe my education, and consequent escape from poverty, to improved seed varieties. OPINION: How Africa can feed itself in the face of climate change Nothing can fully protect crops from extreme weather. Crops still need water to grow, but not too much of it. Climate-smart seed can reduce the impact of extreme weather, but it cannot eliminate it. Further, smallholder farmers in Africa face many other challenges, such as depleted soils, limited access to extension services, high post-harvest losses and poor access to markets. Those problems cannot be solved by improved seed alone. However, improved seed offers perhaps the cheapest way for farmers to adapt to climate change because farmers can use the seed without any need for additional training. Moreover, while most agricultural technologies favour big commercial farms, improved seed is scale-neutral it can be used with the same efficiency on big or small farms. Challenges ahead It is wrong to imagine that African farmers are reluctant to adopt the new breed of climate smart crops. With rapid uptake of mobile phones, Africa has demonstrated an appetite for adopting useful technologies. Yet, while almost every farmer has a mobile phone, the continent lags behind in an area that is most critical for survival agricultural productivity. We live in a fast-changing world. All farmers now have to produce more food and fibre with fewer natural resources than they had in the past while facing new challenges from extreme weather, along with an increase in plant pests and diseases. These challenges are particularly hard on smallholder farmers, which is why they need to be equipped with effective, affordable technologies that are easy to use. For small farmers especially those facing extreme weather changes, it doesnt get much easier than improved seed. Edward Mabaya is an agricultural economist and Associate Director of the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture & Development. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. It is a place where most nations deeply distrust their neighbours, and where old-style nationalism still reigns supreme. Andrei Lankov is professor of Korean Studies at Kookmin University, Seoul. He is the author of "The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia". Recently, news from the Korean Peninsula has been dominated by missiles: as satellite images confirmed, the North Koreans have been busy preparing another test launch of BM-25 Musudan, their intermediate-range missile. The launch ended in failure, the fourth such failure in this year. Nonetheless, North Korean engineers and scientists are busy developing both long-range and submarine-based ballistic missiles, capable of hitting the United States. There has been much hype about the recent Musudan launch, but few people noticed another piece of news that came from South Korea a week earlier. A high-ranking official, speaking on condition of anonymity but clearly authorised to make such statements said that the South Korean navy is also developing its own submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM), so the new South Korean submarines will be equipped with a launchpad. This statement was a reminder of another possible challenge associated with the North Korean nuclear and missile programmes: The threat is that its programmes will provoke a symmetrical response from the countries in the region, triggering a missile and, perhaps, even a nuclear arms race. Strategic balance Such fears were much expressed a decade ago, after the first nuclear test that the North Koreans conducted in October 2006. Then there was a talk of both South Korea and Japan going nuclear. Subsequent events seemingly dispersed such fears, but now they might be resurfacing again. Partially, this might be a reaction to a possible turn towards isolationism in the US, on whose nuclear umbrella both South Korea and Japan have relied on for decades. Donald Trump has already stated that he would not rule out a US withdrawal from East Asia, and would consider the possibility of both South Korean and Japan going nuclear so they would be able to defend themselves without American assistance. North Koreans are determined to maintain and improve their nuclear deterrent, and given their strategic situation, they can hardly be blamed for such an attitude. by Admittedly, this is merely the opinion of a rather eccentric (to say the least) presidential candidate, but to a degree it reflects steady changes in the American mindset. On the other hand, in South Korea, the idea of acquiring its own nuclear weapons has gained some traction as well unlike Japan, once a victim of nuclear attack, Koreans are not allergic to nuclear weapons per se. In January 2016, a poll indicated that 54 percent of South Koreans theoretically would like their country to acquire nuclear weapons and this figure has remained in excess of 50 percent for at least two decades. Thinking the unthinkable Recently, the idea of going nuclear has been expressed by South Korean mainstream politicians with increasing frequency. So far, such remarks have largely been either part of pre-election rhetoric aimed at winning the votes of rather jingoistic sections of the public, or a way to exercise pressure on the US, ensuring that the American nuclear umbrella would remain at hand. OPINION: Japans two-track North Korea policy in a shambles But now things might be changing growing uncertainty about the US commitments make some South Korean strategists pause and think the unthinkable. Trumps signature antics are only a part of the problem. It is also important as North Korean nuclear and missile programmes are advancing fast that some South Koreans now wonder if the US will be willing to get involved in a war with a fully nuclear North Korea to protect its ally or, as South Koreans often put it, to risk San Francisco to save Seoul. The decision to equip submarines with SLBM launchpads given that SLBMs make perfect sense only if armed with nuclear warheads is a serious sign of change, since such a decision, unlike rhetoric outbursts, does cost money. OPINION: Now North Korea has nothing to lose And then what? If the nuclear and missile arms race starts in East Asia, where will it stop? East Asia today is eerily reminiscent of Europe in the early 1900s, before the outbreak of World War I. It is also a place where most nations deeply distrust their neighbours, and where old-style nationalism still reigns supreme. So far, age-old hatreds have been controlled by the US hegemony Koreans and Japanese, in spite of their historical animosities, have been prevented from confrontation by their alliances with the US as well as by the record high economic growth. But will such a state of things continue indefinitely? This looks increasingly unlikely. Nuclear arms race? And, surely, there is the China factor the rising superpower is, to put it mildly, quite unpopular among its neighbours, from Vietnam to Japan. In the changing strategic situation, many such countries can choose nuclear weapons as a way to deter China which due to its sheer size and economic might can hardly be deterred by conventional weapons. Indeed, the eventual deployment of the North Korean nuclear-armed missiles, combined with signs of US indecisiveness, might easily push South Korea towards acquiring its own nuclear deterrent. Technically, acquiring nuclear weapons would not cost much money or take much time for a highly developed nation such as South Korea. If it happens, the probability of a nuclear Japan will increase, and Taiwan, as well as more advanced countries of South East Asia, might start wondering why they should be left behind. Usually, such columns are supposed to end with some positive suggestions, but in this case there is hardly anything optimistic to say. North Koreans are determined to maintain and improve their nuclear deterrent, and given their strategic situation, they can hardly be blamed for such an attitude. However, their actions increase the risk to security in this vital region, and perhaps the entire world. REPORTERS NOTEBOOK: Chinas strategic play with nuclear North Korea Andrei Lankov is a professor of Korean Studies at Kookmin University in Seoul. He is the author of The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. Gaza Strip Eight-year-old Yousef al-Najjar sits quietly on the bus, his hands folded, eager to see his father for the first time. It is 4am, and Yousefs mother has taken him to visit his father, who is serving a 23-year term in Rimon, a notorious Israeli military prison in Israels southern Negev Desert. I am yearning for a glimpse of my dad, said the boy. Yousefs father was detained in the occupied West Bank and convicted of having links with the Palestinian resistance groups. Yousef hopes that the visit will be worth the weeks of restless nights he spent waiting for this day to arrive. I want to have a long time, as I wish to let him know about all the important family moments when we missed him. Compared with his 14-year-old sister Arwa, Yousef is fortunate: The Israel authorities prohibited children aged 14 or older from visiting their imprisoned fathers. Families who manage to get the permits are allowed to visit once every three months. Permits are granted only to parents, spouses and young children; other relatives such as siblings and cousins cannot visit. Our harsh realities prompt us to wait more impatiently for the visit's date rather than the actual release of our sons. Never losing hope is a struggle in itself. by Um Awad al-Seidi, mother of a Palestinian detainee Following Hamas capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in June 2007 that family members of all Palestinian prisoners from Gaza would be banned from visiting, citing security reasons. This ban lasted five years, and contradicted the International Human Rights Law to which Israel is legally bound. In April 2012, a massive hunger strike launched by the Palestinian prisoners from Gaza pressured the Israeli Prison Service to abolish this policy. In practice, however, the visits were to take place every three months instead of two weeks; which is how often visits were permitted before the 2007 ruling. Visitors are escorted to the prison by a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the sole organisation permitted to coordinate family visits with the Israeli authorities. To obtain permission to visit, families must undergo long procedures that usually take two months. Many prisoners families are denied permission, often without explanation from Israeli authorities. The decisions to grant permits often appear arbitrary. For example, Jamal al-Dagma, 67, and his wife both applied for permits to visit their imprisoned son. He was granted the permit, but his wife was not. The ICRC informed the couple that the wife was rejected based on security grounds which Jamal dismissed as a baseless excuse.They go as far as they can in their malicious systematic process in tormenting us, along with our sons, he said. I left my poor wife in tears at home. The most difficult part of the family members journey to the prison is the Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing, where they often complain of inhumane and degrading treatment. Yousefs mother, Suhair, has become accustomed to such procedure, but she had to warn her son about it before his first visit. We are subjected to a lengthy body search by the Israeli female officers, who treat us contemptuously, Suhair explained. Personal possessions are often confiscated during the meticulous inspection, and items intended to be given to the prisoner, such as a pair of glasses or a nebuliser, might be taken or broken before they reach their destination. Suhair said that she twice tried to bring her husband warm clothes and blankets, but was not permitted to do so. Even books are often not allowed to be given to detainees. Inside the prisons visiting room, family members can only see their relatives through a layer of thick glass that separates them. Physical contact is generally prohibited, and they speak to each other using headphones, which are often damaged. My husbands voice reaches me muffled through the lines, said Suhair. We endure all this agony from 4am to 7pm, for just 45 minutes spent on phones. That is particularly painful for all of us. Children under the age of eight are sometimes granted five minutes of physical contact, which is not long enough for Yousef to express all that he wishes to his father. Um Awad al-Seidi, 64, recalled that during the visitation ban, she was denied all means of communication with our sons, including visits, letters, and they even blocked the use of cell phones between us. The use of cell phones is extremely restricted. A prisoner is only allowed to speak with his family using a cell phone in a bereavement case (for a father or a brother) in his or her family. Awads father died in distress without meeting his son. He passed away during the ban and was unable to visit his son, who has served 13 years of his 19-year sentence, for four years. His son was detained when he was attempting to cross the borderline between Gaza and Israel. Bahha al-Madhoun, deputy minister of Gazas Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Ministry, leads a gathering of the ministrys staff and officials in front of the ICRC every Monday when a visit is held to support the families who are about to initiate their visit. Madhoun, a former prisoner himself, said that 370 prisoners from Gaza are currently being held in Israeli prisons. He complained of Israeli intransigence regarding family visits. The harrowing testimonies we collect from our families after the end of the visit should propel all sides to exert efforts to pressure the Israeli occupation to improve the visits conditions, he said. The official said the biggest complaints concern the humiliating strip searches and the permanent bans placed on certain families from visiting. But Madhoun noted that no progress is achieved in this regard owing to the lack of response at the Israeli side. Meanwhile, prisoners family members continue to suffer. Um Awad fears that her health might deteriorate to the extent that she becomes unable to bear the long, tiring visitation process. Our harsh realities prompt us to wait more impatiently for the visits date rather than the actual release of our sons, she said. Never losing hope is a struggle in itself. US sends arms to rebel units in Aleppo province while UN considers dropping food and medicine to besieged areas by air. The US has reportedly dropped weapons to rebel fighters in Syria as the UN Security Council considers dropping food and medicine by air to civilians. Witnesses say the US delivered the weapons to armed units battling the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group in Syria. The developments come as a former Russian diplomat tells Al Jazeera that his country is seriously considering putting boots on the ground in Syria. The weapons supplies were airdropped to rebels in Marea, a town in the northern province of Aleppo, on Friday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said. Coalition airplanes dropped ammunitions, light weapons and anti-tank weapons to rebels in Marea, Rami Abdel Rahman, the SOHR head, said. He said it was the first time the coalition had made such a drop to rebel fighters other than the Kurds. A US defence official confirmed to the AFP news agency that the airdrop took place but denied that they included light weapons or anti-tank weapons. In recent days, fighting has intensified near Marea, with the UN sounding a warning over the fate of an estimated 8,000 Syrians trapped by the violence. READ MORE: In Raqqa, support ISIL or die About 2,000 people had managed to leave Marea and Sheikh Issa before the closure of a main road between Marea and Azaz, two main rebel bastions in the province. The airdrops come as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) a US-backed coalition of armed groups led by the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) mobilises in Aleppo around the border town of Manbij, a suspected supply route for ISIL. The US sees the SDF which was founded in Syrias mainly Kurdish northeastern region in October 2015, and is made up of at least 15 armed factions, mostly fighters from the YPG and the Free Syrian Army as the most effective group challenging ISIL in Syria. Meanwhile, there is speculation that Russia might deploy ground forces in Syria. This is under discussion; there are plans for this, Andrei Fyodorov, a former Russian deputy minister for foreign affairs, told Al Jazeera. INTERACTIVE: Whats left of Syria? The reinforcements could be special forces or volunteer soldiers who are willing to fight alongside the Syrian army and its allies. In a separate development, Syria has given the UN and the Red Cross approval to send humanitarian aid convoys into at least 11 of 19 besieged areas. In a statement on Thursday, the Syrian Mission to the UN named the besieged areas of Kafr Batna, Saqba, Hammura, Jisrein, Zabadin, East Harasta, Zamalka, Madaya, Fouaa, Kefraya and Yarmouk on its approved list, along with some 25 other areas. It also named two other besieged areas Daraya and Douma on a list of eight places approved to receive medical assistance, school supplies and milk for children. Daraya has not received food since 2012 and was not on the Syrian list of approved destinations for humanitarian relief convoys. However, there are serious concerns about how plausible the Syrian plan is. On Friday the Security Council is due to hold an emergency meeting to discuss airdrops to besieged areas as the UN faces more delays in getting aid to civilians. The International Syria Support group, which includes Russia and the US, has said airdrops should start if land access is denied. Across Syria, an estimated 1.9 million people live in besieged areas, according to the aid group Doctors Without Borders. Syrias conflict started with mostly unarmed demonstrations against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011. It has since evolved into a full-on civil war that has killed at least 270,000 people, according to the SOHR. Force blamed for 60 percent of child deaths and injuries in 2015 for inclusion in list which also features Houthis. The UN has blacklisted the Arab coalition in Yemen for causing deaths and injuries to hundreds of children. The coalition of 10 Arab countries, assembled by Saudi Arabia last year, was blamed for 60 percent of the child deaths and injuries in 2015 in air strikes that killed 510 and wounded 667. In Fridays report, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, called the situation on the ground worrisome, adding that Yemen had witnessed six times more children killed and maimed [in 2015] compared to 2014. Owing to the very large number of violations the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition are listed for killing and maiming and attacks on schools and hospitals, Ban said. The report also noted a five-fold increase in the number of children recruited [by armed groups]. Of a list of 762 verified cases of recruitment of child soldiers, 72 percent were attributed to the Houthis, 15 percent to pro-government forces and 9 percent to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Life-threatening malnutrition The Houthis have been on the UN blacklist for at least five years and are considered persistent perpetrators. The 15-month conflict in Yemen has taken a horrifying toll on the countrys youth, with UNICEF warning that an estimated 320,000 children face life-threatening malnutrition. It also estimates that 82 percent of the population is now in desperate need of humanitarian aid, with nearly half of Yemens 22 provinces on the verge of famine. The coalition launched its air campaign to push back the Houthis in March 2015, but the rebels still control the capital and many parts of the country. The Houthis, who hail from the northern highlands and champion the interests of the Zaidi Shia community, insist they are fighting to defend themselves against government aggression and marginalisation. There has been mounting international pressure to end the Yemen war, which the UN estimates has killed more than 6,400 people and displaced 2.8 million. Other countries The UN report blacklists groups that engage in the recruitment and use of children, sexual violence against children, the killing and maiming of children, attacks on schools and/or hospitals and attacks or threats of attacks against protected personnel, and the abduction of children. Along with warring parties in Yemen, the UN named armed groups in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Central African Republic (CAR), Iraq, Mali, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Colombia, Nigeria and the Philippines. The report cited a deadly US air strike on a hospital run by medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Kunduz, Afghanistan, although it said the attack was carried out by international forces and did not blacklist the United States. Government forces in Afghanistan, DRC, Somalia, Myanmar, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria were named on the blacklist. Somali ambassador to the US warns Kenya against plans to close complex home to more than 300,000 mostly Somali refugees. The Kenyan governments plan to close the Dadaab refugee camp is logistically impractical, according to Somalias ambassador to the US. Ahmed Awad sounding the warning on Thursday, saying that shutting the complex which is home to at least 340,000 people could damage relations between Kenya and Somalia. I think Kenyans and Somalis have developed closeness throughout the years, Awad told Al Jazeera. This issue should not undermine the progress that our countries have made together. He called on the Kenyan government to reconsider its plans to close the complex by November. To force 340,000 people to a place where they have nothing, to go back after 25 years of absence, you wipe out all the goodwill that you have got from these refugees, Awad said. Largely Somali camp Dadaab is the worlds largest refugee camp. It consists of five camps and its population is largely Somali. The complex opened in 1991 as a temporary shelter for Somalis fleeing civil war, but prolonged violence and insecurity have turned the vast area into a virtual city. Kenya now says Dadaab has become a hive for the al-Shabab armed group, and that it is a strain on the countrys economy. However, Somalias Awad says: The Kenyan government should respect the call of the international community, the humanitarian community and the sister country of Somalia. If you have tolerated 25 years of Dadaab refugee camp, it doesnt take much with the help of the international community, with cooperation from Somalia, to give a time, as we have already agreed, for a voluntary return of these refugees in a very humane way. Kenyas response In response, Mwenda Njoka, Kenyan interior ministy spokesperson, denied that Kenya would be dumping refugees back in Somalia, saying it had made arrangements with the local government of Jubaland to resettle them on 10,000 acres north of Kismayo. Awad also suggested that the Jubaland resettlement plan would violate a 2013 tripartite agreement with Somalia and the UN refugee agency on the voluntary repatriation of Somali refugees to their homeland. Its a little bit disappointing for the spokesperson to disclose that they are trying to talk to some Somali individual authorities when there are agreements in place, there are systems in place, to address the concerns of the Kenyans in a very transparent way, he said. Two killed in France after River Seine reaches highest water level in 35 years, while Germany reports 10 deaths. Torrential rain and flooding have killed at least 14 people in parts of Europe, with France declaring a natural disaster after the River Seine in Paris burst its banks in some places displacing thousands of people. French President Francois Hollande made the announcement on Friday, saying compensation would be paid to those affected by the worst flooding to hit the French capital in 35 years. When there are climate phenomena of such seriousness, we must all be conscious that its on a world scale and that we must act, Hollande said. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has ordered some parks to close, and gymnasiums to open to homeless people amid the flooding, which city authorities said could take weeks to recede. The French interior ministry said the homes of some 20,000 people have been evacuated. Another 20,000 homes in the south of Paris have lost power. Authorities are bracing themselves for a couple of more weeks of possible flooding. Theres a lot a panic in Paris, Al Jazeeras Mohamed Vall reported from the city. French environment officials said the Seine will reach its maximum level late on Friday as rainfall across the country begins to taper off. The flooding has also forced many museums in the French capital, including the Louvre, to shut down, as a protective measure. Fatalities in three countries As the flooding continues, French authorities said on Friday that a second person had died in the flooding. The 74-year-old man fell into a river in the Seine-et-Marne region east of Paris. He was riding a horse at the time of the accident on Thursday evening. Earlier in the week, an 86-year-old woman died in her flooded home in Souppes-sur-Loing, southeast of Paris. In Germany, 10 people have been killed, including four in Baden-Wuerttemberg, to Bavarias west, in flooding that hit Sunday and Monday. The German Insurance Association estimated that this weeks flooding has caused some $500m in damage in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg alone. Two other people were reported to have been killed in eastern Romania. Paris meeting of foreign ministers of key powers aims to find common ground to bring the two sides back to direct talks. France is hosting foreign ministers from major powers to put Israel-Palestinian peacemaking back on the international agenda and to bring the two sides back to direct talks by the end of the year. With US efforts to broker a deal on a Palestinian state on Israel-occupied land in cold storage for two years, France has lobbied the key players in the peace process to attend the Paris conference. However, neither Israel nor the Palestinians have been invited. In his opening speech on Friday, French President Francois Hollande urged Israelis and Palestinians to make a courageous choice for peace, adding that the solution had to involve the whole region. READ MORE: Palestinians sceptical of French-led peace talks The discussion on the conditions for peace between Israelis and Palestinians must take into account the entire region, he said. The threats and priorities have changed. The changes make it even more urgent to find a solution to the conflict, and this regional upheaval creates new obligations for peace. We must prove it to the international community. France has grown frustrated over the absence of progress towards a two-state solution since the collapse of the last round of talks in April 2014, arguing that letting the status quo prevail is like waiting for a powder keg to explode. Chronic differences The gathering of ministers in Paris includes the Middle East Quartet which comprises the US, Russia, the EU and the UN as well as the Arab League, the UN Security Council and about 20 countries. Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French foreign minister, said direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians do not work. Currently everything is blocked. We dont want to act in the place of the Israelis and Palestinians but we want to help them, he told France Info radio. The Paris meeting, the first international conference on the issue since Annapolis in the US in 2007, will not touch on any of the chronic core differences between the two sides. Its initial focus is to reaffirm existing international texts and resolutions that are based on achieving a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip co-existing with Israel. The Palestinians say Israeli settlement expansion in occupied territory is diminishing any prospect for the viable state they seek, with a capital in Arab East Jerusalem. Israel has demanded tighter security measures and a crackdown on Palestinians it claims attacked Israeli civilians. It also says Jerusalem is Israels indivisible capital and cannot be divided. While objecting to the French initiative, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has stopped short of saying Israel would boycott the conference. Flicker of hope Al Jazeeras Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from al-Ram, a Palestinian town north of Jerusalem, quoted Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, as remarking in an opinion piece in the Israeli media that the Paris meeting offers a flicker of hope. The Palestinian leadership is welcoming this Paris conference, she said The hope is that this conference will get some sort of framework back on the table of the previous accords. The Paris meeting will try to establish working groups comprising various countries that would meet in the coming months and tackle all aspects of the peace process. SPREAD MORE: Sykes-Picot Lines in the sand Some groups would strive to create economic incentives and security guarantees to convince both sides to return to talks. Others would focus on trying to find ways to break deadlocks that scuttled previous negotiations or look at whether other peace efforts such as a 2002 Arab initiative remain viable. A senior US state department official said John Kerry, the secretary of state, would bring no specific proposals to the conference. US delegates will be in Paris to listen to the ideas that the French and others may have, and talk through with them what might make sense going forward, the official said, dampening expectations. There is a lot of pushback from the Israelis that this meeting is taking place at all, said Al Jazeeras Neave Barker, reporting from Paris. The French are playing a key role in trying to bring Israelis and Palestinians together. Observers say this is more about French politics than geopolitics. France is the main diplomatic powerhouse at the moment and observers say they could be trying to show off what they can achieve. The Palestinians have meanwhile shelved plans to push for a UN Security Council resolution condemning settlements to see how the French initiative pans out. Erdogan says relations will be seriously affected after Germany identifies 1915 Ottoman era killings as genocide. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said bilateral relations between Germany and Turkey will be seriously affected, after the German parliament labelled as genocide the 1915 killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire. Erdogan, speaking during a visit to Kenya on Thursday, said, as a first step, Turkey was calling its ambassador to Berlin for consultations and other steps against Germany would be discussed soon. Turkey agrees that many Armenians died in ethnic fighting and the deportation process between 1915 and 1917 during World War I, putting its estimate at 300,000 casualties. Armenia says 1.5 million died in the process in what it calls a genocide. Three largest Turkish political parties condemned Thursdays German resolution in a joint declaration. OPINION: Remembering the Armenians The statement by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), the main opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP) and the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) was read out at the parliament. The pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) did not take part in the declaration. We strongly denounce the resolution which is based on baseless Armenian claims. It has no historical or legal legitimacy, read the statement. Speaking at an event in Ankara, Binali Yildirim, newly appointed Turkish prime minister, called the resolution fallacious, saying there was nothing in Turkeys past to be ashamed of. The German motion, which was put forward by Chancellor Angela Merkels governing coalition and the opposition Greens, was passed with support from all the parties in the parliament. The vote on Thursday came at an awkward time for Merkel as Germany and the EU rely on Turkey to help check the flow of refugees into Europe. Awkward timing Merkel, who did not take part in the vote due to public engagements, spoke later about the close ties between the two countries, saying that Germanys relations with Turkey remain broad and strong. There is a lot that binds Germany to Turkey and even if we have a difference of opinion on an individual matter, the breadth of our links, our friendship, our strategic ties, is great, Merkel said. READ MORE: Turkey recalls envoy to Austria as genocide condemned She said Germany supported dialogue between Turkey and Armenia and sought good relations with the former. Edward Nalbandian, Armenias foreign minister, said the German parliaments decision was a valuable contribution to the international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian genocide. Moral decision Huseyin Bagci, a professor of International Relations at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, told Al Jazeera that he expected further fallout to affect Turkey-Germany ties following the vote. The decision of the German parliament is a moral decision, not a political one, he said. This decision has no binding consequences for Turkey. Bagci said: The Turkish side will show a great reaction to this. On the centenary of the events, which was commemorated on April 24, 2015, the European Parliament published a non-legislative resolution in which they urged Turkey to recognise the genocide. Democratic candidate says Republican rival unprepared to be president and temperamentally unfit to hold the office. Hillary Clinton has described Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, as dangerously incoherent and accused him of peddling outright lies. The Democratic presidential hopeful criticised her election rival as never before on Thursday, questioning Trumps foreign policy and calling the him unfit for office. He is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility, Clinton told an audience in San Diego, California, escalating the rhetoric in what is already a deeply acrimonious election season. READ MORE: Donald Trumps world views make world less safe: Poll Donald Trumps ideas arent just different they are dangerously incoherent, she said. Theyre not really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies. This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes. Democratic and Republican presidents have been generally consistent on policies affecting China, Russia, North Korea, nuclear proliferation, trade, alliances and many other issues but Clinton and Trump offer starkly different visions of US foreign policy. Grasp of world affairs Trump has questioned the utility of NATO, appeared indifferent to the prospect of nuclear weapons proliferation and expressed admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. I will leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants, Clinton said at her first major foreign policy address, while trying to highlight her own grasp of world affairs. Even if I werent in this race, Id be doing everything I could to make sure Donald Trump never becomes president because I believe he will take our country down a truly dangerous path. Clinton, who formerly served as secretary of state, first lady and US senator, is seeking to become the first female president in the United States 239-year history. For his part, Trump, speaking at a rally in San Jose, California, on Thursday night ridiculed Clintons speech. It was pathetic. It was so sad to watch, he said. She was up there, supposed to be a foreign policy speech, it was a political speech, had nothing to do with foreign policy. Paul Ryans backing Clinton and Trump are all but assured to be the Democratic and Republican party nominees. In a boost for Trump, Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, said that he would back his candidacy. But even as Trump wins the backing of Republicans in Congress, many party leading lights who take pride in Republicans traditionally strong national security credentials are hostile to Trump leading the party. WATCH: How would a Donald Trump presidency affect the world? Trump has angered many with his rhetoric against Hispanics, women, Muslims and others. At a rally in San Jose, Trumps critics scuffled with his supporters as fistfights erupted and one supporter was hit by an egg. Crowds had earlier chanted No hate in our state and carried signs that read Dump Trump as they marched near the convention centre where Trump was speaking. Americans will go to the polls on November 8 to elect a new president, replacing Barack Obama who steps down after eight years in office. French president hosts international meeting aimed at finding common ground to revive peace process between two sides. French President Francois Hollande has said there is an urgent need to find a peaceful solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, warning that the absence of a deal would only benefit extremists. Foreign ministers and diplomats from the Middle East Quartet, the UN, Arab League and more than 20 countries attended Fridays meeting in Paris aimed at reviving the peace process but neither Palestinian nor Israeli representatives were present. INSIDE STORY: Can France revive Israeli-Palestinian talks? Terrorists could benefit from the Israel-Palestine conflict. We have seen this in Iraq, Syria and Libya, Hollande said. The only winner of a status quo would be extremists, he added. At the same meeting, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault warned that hopes of a two-state solution were in serious danger, with Israelis and Palestinians getting further away each day. READ MORE: Palestinians sceptical of French-led peace talks We must act, urgently, to preserve the two-state solution, revive it before it is too late, Ayrault said after announcing that world leaders would be presenting a series of incentives to bring the two sides to the table. Clear message France portrayed the meeting, the first international conference on the issue since Annapolis in the US in 2007, as a first step by the international community to weigh different options. Al Jazeeras Neave Barker, reporting from Paris, said there was a tremendous drive by France to revive of the peace process. Participants discussed ways in which the international community could help advance the prospects for peace, a short joint statement from the attendees said after the meeting. Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, hailed the Paris meeting as a very significant step that sent a clear message. If Israel is allowed to continue its colonisation and apartheid policies in occupied Palestine, the future will be for more extremism and bloodshed rather than for coexistence and peace, he said in a statement. But Israel condemned the French initiative, saying the international meeting pushed peace further away. The international community accepted [Palestinian President] Mahmoud Abbass demand and enabled him to continue to evade direct and bilateral negotiations without preconditions, foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said in a statement. Egypt a better broker The Palestinians say Israeli settlement expansion in occupied territory is diminishing any prospect for the viable state they seek, with a capital in East Jerusalem. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Erekat said 20 years of bilateral negotiations have failed because of those settlements. How can you convince Palestinians that the land that would be their state is being eaten up, stolen for settlements, he said, adding that the Paris meeting produces an opportunity for peace. But David Keyes, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, defended his governments decision to boycott the Paris meeting, saying the best way to settle that would not be to fly to another continent. Keyes also told Al Jazeera that Egypt would be a better broker between Israel and Palestine, because it has a better sense of the difficult issues that we need to work out. Theres a real possibility for normalisation with many countries in this region, and that kind of framework makes a lot more sense, he said. The Palestinians seek to establish a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, lands Israel captured in 1967. In 2012, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly recognised a state of Palestine in these boundaries, though setting up an actual state would require a deal with Israel. But unlike his predecessors, Netanyahu refuses to recognise the pre-1967 lines as a starting point for border talks, with agreed upon land swaps the internationally backed formula for a peace deal. Palestinians criticise efforts to revive negotiations that assume a symmetry between them and Israel at the table. Frances initiative to revive peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis will not produce a just and effective resolution for Palestinians, activists and analysts told Al Jazeera. The fundamental reason why the two-decade long talks have failed is that they assumed there is symmetry between Israelis and Palestinians at the negotiating table, when in fact theres no such symmetry, said Tareq Baconi, a policy fellow at Al-Shabaka Palestinian Policy Network. But [the process set in motion by France] is unlikely to result in a just resolution. It regurgitates the same things that have failed over the past two decades to produce any effective resolution, he told Al Jazeera. Top representatives from 28 countries, the United Nations and the European Union convened in Paris on Friday in the first effort to revive talks between Israelis and Palestinians in two years. OPINION Peace is war: After the Oslo Accords The French-led initiative is designed to lay the groundwork for a peace conference to be held later in the year with the participation of both Palestinian and Israeli negotiators, who are not attending the first meeting in Paris on Friday. Leaders, including US Secretary of State John Kerry who led the last round of direct negotiations, will attempt to set out the parameters to resolve the core issues to work towards a final deal including borders, security, refugees, Jerusalem, settlements and water. While Hamas opposed the move, the French initiative received a warmer response from other segments of the Palestinian leadership. We are moving from a failed bilateral approach for negotiations, to a multilateral scheme whereby the international community must assume a responsibility, Dr Saeb Erekat, Palestine Liberation Organizations Secretary-General and chief Palestinian negotiator, wrote in a statement to Al Jazeera. What is needed is to define a mechanism and a clear timeframe to end the Israeli occupation as well as the implementation of international law and relevant UN resolutions for the solution of all final status issues, including the refugee issue, the statement continued. Palestinians, however, remain largely sceptical of the French move. Mahmoud Nawajaa, a spokesman for the Palestinian BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) National Committee, expressed his concern at Frances hosting of a meeting to pave the way for talks, while at the same time criminalising and persecuting BDS activists, whose strategy is to call on global civil society to exert pressure on Israel and Israeli society. If it wishes to take meaningful action towards a just peace, the French government should start by ending its severe repression of the BDS movement that it has implemented in order to shield Israel from being held to account, Nawajaa told Al Jazeera, adding that any international initiative that ignores the Palestinian right of return as well as equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel is, in his view, doomed to fail. A document disseminated by France on Tuesday said that leaders should agree on strict deadlines for the negotiations. Time is not a neutral factor given the steady erosion of the two-state solution. An open-ended approach would be oblivious to the reality on the ground and the constant risks of escalation, the document, obtained by Israeli daily Haaretz, stated. In the document, France called for renewed international engagement and the need for a common assessment, that the two-state solution is the only option, that it is severely threatened and needs to be preserved. However, even peace activists such as Sulaiman Khatib, appear to pay little attention to Frances efforts saying the timing is bad. As a peace activist in the non-violent movement, of course I want to see leaders getting together [to discuss peace], but I dont see an international, regional momentum for a real change here, said Khatib, a member of Combatants for Peace, a group of Israelis and Palestinians founded by former soldiers and political prisoners. Peace with the Palestinians is not on the Israeli governments agenda, he told Al Jazeera. For Nasser al-Barghouti, a 55-year-old businessman from Ramallah, the problem is the ghettos and the privileges granted to settlers. We have been waiting 23 years. What took the French so long? If they can do it, then I welcome any solution. But I need to see something happening on the ground to convince me, al-Barghouti said. Fayrouz Sharqawi, a long-term resident of Jerusalem originally from Nazareth, a Palestinian city in northern Israel, and coordinator at Grassroots Jerusalem, an NGO that promotes alternative tourism in the city, also believes France has little to offer. I have no faith in peace initiatives that are so similar to previous ones, based on the two-state solution which is impossible now that Israel is already implementing one Zionist state in all of historic Palestine, she argued. Baconi shares the grim view. Even if the meeting [on Friday] produces some sort of agreement about how to move forward with the negotiations, I am still sceptical it will result in an actual effective meeting [with the parties] in September, he said. Israel is not seeking an agreement and the Palestinians need to figure out a strategy before they sit down at the negotiating table or history will repeat itself. Diplomats say airdrops to besieged areas is a last resort, accusing government of obstructing aid delivery by land. The United Nations has said that it will ask permission from the Syrian government on Sunday to airdrop or airlift humanitarian aid to besieged areas. During a closed-door meeting of the Security Council on Friday, diplomats described airdrops as a last resort to reach thousands of civilians in need of aid. Nearly 600,000 people are besieged in 19 different areas in Syria, according to the UN, with two-thirds trapped by government forces and the rest besieged by armed opposition groups and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS) group. UN humanitarian chief Stephen OBrien said that out of 34 requests in June to deliver aid to besieged and hard-to-reach areas by land convoys, the Syrian government had turned down five. We continue to insist that we have absolutely, as a matter of law, a need to get to those people without hindrance, he told Al Jazeera. The United States, the UK and France have long been calling for air operations, given the reluctance of Damascus to allow relief into rebel-held areas. Syria announced on Thursday that it gave the UN and the Red Cross approval to send humanitarian aid convoys into at least 11 of the 19 besieged areas during June, as a response to the call for humanitarian airdrops. But, several Western diplomats said the Syrian announcement is simply a ploy to deflect discussions on airdrops, noting that President Bashar al-Assads government did not agree to permit full access to all besieged areas. READ MORE: Catalogue of horror reported in besieged Syrian towns A very high number of humanitarian access requests made by the UN have been denied by the Syrian authorities, the French ambassador to the UN, Francois Delattre, told reporters after the Security Council. For the month of June, Syrian authorities did not accept all the access requests made by the UN. So, on Sunday, the UN, in accordance with the ICRCs [International Committee of the Red Cross] request, will ask Damascus to authorise humanitarian airdrops to reach localities for which the land access was denied by the Syrian regime, he said. And of course we call for the complete lifting of all sieges. Matthew Rycroft, the UKs ambassador to the UN, said the Syrian government has done too little too late regarding the humanitarian crisis in the country and the international community will no longer tolerate stalling tactics. Airdrops are complex, costly, risky, but we have now all agreed that they are the last resort and we must use them to relieve the human suffering in so many besieged areas in Syria, he said. Al Jazeeras diplomatic editor, James Bays, said the important development is that the UN has said that it is going to make a formal request for airdrops to the Syrian government. He explained that the UN has airdropped humanitarian aid to several besieged rural areas in Syria in the past by plane, but such high altitude airdrops are not suitable for urban areas . So instead they are going to send the aid in by helicopter. For this, they need the permission of the Syrian government, he said, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York. They dont want those planes and helicopters to be shot down. READ MORE: Aid convoy reaches besieged Daraya Bashar Jaafari, Syrian ambassador to the UN, rejected accusations that the government was preventing aid deliveries. Humanitarian assistance or the humanitarian aid has never been denied by the Syrian government to any part of the country. Syrian opposition activists have circulated a list of the UN aid that has gone into rebel-held Daraya, a town besieged by government forces. They said that the aid included mosquito nets, lice shampoo, wheelchairs and a small number of medical and nutritional packages for infants. The head of the Media Council in Daraya, Hosan Ahmad, said more cars were guarding and protecting the aid convoy than were actually delivering supplies. He said people felt angry, humiliated and let down by the UN. These are luxury goods, not basic necessities for people that are desperate and eating grass. The UN said the aid convoy that reached Daraya earlier this week was part one of a two-part delivery and the second part, which has food on it, is being delayed by Damascus. Bays said he does not expect Damascus to change its attitude towards humanitarian aid to besieged areas, just because the UN is now talking about aid delivery by air. Towards the end of Bashar Jaafaris speech, I asked him repeatedly, yes or no, are you going to give permission? He didnt answer the question. As diplomats met at the UN on Friday, volunteer rescuers said Syrian government air strikes killed dozens of civilians in and around the northern city of Aleppo. Government air strikes leave more than 30 civilians dead, including 10 when their bus was hit, rescue workers say. Syrian government air strikes have killed dozens of civilians in and around the northern city of Aleppo, volunteer rescuers have said. At least 28 people were killed in raids on several neighbourhoods in the rebel-held east of Aleppo, the civil defence, also known as the White Helmets, said on Friday. Dozens of barrel bombs crude, unguided explosive devices were dropped in the strikes, described by an AFP news agency correspondent as the most intense in more than a week. INTERACTIVE: Whats left of Syria? Ten more people were killed when a bus they were travelling in was hit on Castello road, a key rebel supply route out of Aleppo, the White Helmets added. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Castello road was now effectively cut. All movement is targeted, be that buses or bystanders, Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the UK-based monitoring group, said. Nowhere to go Separately, the Observatory said on Friday that the US had air dropped weaponsto rebel fighters in Aleppo province, who have been battling the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group. In recent days, fighting has intensified near Marea, with the United Nations sounding a warning over the fate of an estimated 8,000 Syrians trapped by the violence. Al Jazeeras Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Gaziantep, on the Turkish side of the Turkey-Syria border, said thousands of people stranded in Aleppo and elsewhere have nowhere to go as fighting rages on. They cant go back to urban areas because they are afraid of the intensified air strikes by the Russians and the Syrian government, and they cant go to the border with Turkey because Turkey has been sealing its borders, he said. Its a very delicate situation. Later on Friday, the UN said it would ask permission from the Syrian government on Sunday to airdrop or airlift humanitarian aid to besieged areas. During a closed-door meeting of the Security Council, diplomats described airdrops as a last resort to reach thousands of civilians in need of aid. At least two people are shot and injured in protest over arrests of 11 schoolchildren for insulting Pierre Nkurunziza. Police in Burundi opened fire and injured at least two people during a protest by schoolchildren against the arrest of fellow students for defacing a photo of President Pierre Nkurunziza, residents and pupils said. A police official told the AFP news agency that 11 high school pupils in Muramvya, about 50km east of the capital Bujumbura, were arrested on Friday for insulting the head of state. The children, six girls and five boys aged over 14, were placed in custody in Muramvya central prison in mid-afternoon, the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity. The information was confirmed by several witnesses, including a parent who saw his daughter being taken off to the prison, and a lawyer who helped the students, AFP reported. About a dozen others, aged under 14, the age of criminal responsibility in Burundi, were released. Following the arrests, hundreds of local pupils immediately rallied to demand the release of their colleagues, witnesses said. The demonstrators, aged between 12 and 17, were marching on the highway between Bujumbura and Gitega. We were in the streets to ask for the release of our colleagues who were unjustly arrested, then some police officers who were in a pick-up vehicle of the intelligence office opened fire on us, a colleague was hurt by one bullet and was taken to hospital for treatment, one pupil told the Reuters news agency. A police officer confirmed to Reuters that a pupil, along with a taxi driver, had been shot, while witnesses told AFP that two demonstrators and a passing motorcyclist had been injured. Plunged into crisis Burundi has been mired in a year-long crisis in which more than 450 people have been killed since Nkurunziza pursued and won a third term. Opponents said his move violated the constitution and a deal that ended a civil war in 2005. Nkurunzizas camp says a court ruling had declared the former rebel-turned-president eligible to seek another term. INSIDE STORY: Can talks lead to peace in Burundi? In a separate incident two weeks ago, more than 300 pupils from a school in Ruziba were sent home after staff found a picture of the president had been defaced in textbooks. Insulting the president carries a potential jail term of five to 10 years, according to Burundis penal code. In a special UpFront, we ask our panel if there can be a balance between liberal values and Islamic beliefs. Tunisias Islamist Ennahda party announced last month that it was moving away from so-called political Islam. The announcement is seen as a move to broaden its following by a party that has been labelled moderate Islamist for 30 years. While the move is welcomed by many, others raise questions: Can Muslim-majority countries strike a balance between faith and democracy? Or, is there an irreconcilable tension between liberal values and Islamic beliefs? In a special edition of UpFront, recorded before Ennahdas announcement, Mehdi Hasan speaks to a panel of experts, analysts and activists about whether there can be a balance between Islamic and democratic values. Guests: Mustafa Akyol, Turkish columnist and author of Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty. Mona Eltahawy, Egyptian-American writer, activist and author of Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution Soumaya Ghannoushi, British-Tunisian writer, commentator and member of Tunisias Ennahda party. Shadi Hamid, senior fellow at the Brookings Institutions Center for Middle East Policy and author of Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World. Husain Haqqani, former Pakistani ambassador to the US and author of Pakistan: Between Mosque And Military Editors note: We apologise to our viewers for the technical issues with Mona Eltahawys connection. Follow UpFront on Twitter @AJUpFront and Facebook. 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] A recent American Banker opinion piece was misleading in some parts and completely untrue in others about some of the issues related to authenticating new EMV cards. The post by the Electronic Payments Coalition seemed aimed at making readers believe that Visa currently embroiled in a legal battle with Walmart over whether PIN authentication should be mandated is focused on developing the strongest EMV authentication policies possible. But in supporting Visa's insistence on having the anachronistic verification technology of signatures as an option, the coalition asserted a number of industry-spread myths in trying to argue that a PIN mandate isn't necessary. I dispel each of them below. Myth: PIN doesn't prevent online or mobile fraud. That is flatly untrue. There are in-market e-commerce PIN solutions that prevent fraud for e-commerce as effectively as traditional brick-and-mortar stores' PIN verifications. Acculynk, for instance, sells such technology that is used by companies like Sears, LendUp and American Airlines. Myth: PINs were compromised in the Target and Home Depot data breaches. In both of those breaches, the PINs weren't compromised. Yes, the criminals involved obtained encrypted PINs. But they were unable to decrypt them, which means that any card requiring PIN was not compromised and banks did not need to reissue the cards. A data breach, such as the ones suffered at Target and Home Depot, would have been far less harmful to consumers if all cards required PIN security at the point of sale. Myth: Consumers are harmed more when PINs are compromised. The EPC's Molly Wilkinson wrote, "If a PIN is stolen from a retailer's system, it is possible that a criminal could access the customer's entire account and commit fraud." It's unclear how this could happen, but I assume Wilkinson means that fraudsters would use the card and stolen PIN to withdraw cash from an ATM. Not only is it hard to imagine this scenario, but it conceals the real issue. A PIN still provides a strong layer of protection both from criminals using cards to make purchases or to access bank accounts that a signature does not. If a PIN is not required at the point of sale, the thieves can buy merchandise with only the card. Whether the money is fraudulently withdrawn as cash or used to purchase merchandise (which is easily liquidated), the customer's funds are gone. That's less likely if the point of sale, like bank-owned ATMs, is secured with PIN verification. Even Visa knows PIN provides enhanced security. Throughout the rest of the world, Visa has touted the benefits of PIN. In Canada, Visa told consumers, "Because your Personal Identification Number (PIN) replaces your signature, the transaction is more secure." In the United Kingdom, Visa said in a submission to the Australian Competition Commission that "the decline in Lost/Stolen and NRI [Not Received as Issued] fraud ... is considered by Visa to be substantially, if not entirely, attributable to mandatory PIN@POS." The company cannot have it both ways. Myth: American consumers cannot remember multiple PINs. Wilkinson argues that American consumers carry, on average, four cards and shouldn't be asked to remember different PINs for all of these cards. But this is obfuscation in the shroud of consumer convenience. First, I believe the EPC is selling American consumers short. Most people have numerous passwords and access codes, which they manage effectively. Further, it's probably not necessary for a consumer to have different PINs on all of their payment cards. Indeed, consumers only have two thumbs to use for biometric authentication, and it's far easier to change a PIN than to change one's thumbprint. Finally, while the Merchant Advisory Group staunchly supports the implementation of PIN on all cards in the United States, this dispute between Walmart and Visa is limited to debit cards. It is rare for people to have more than one debit card. Myth: The chip alone is sufficient to verify the cardholder. Wilkinson makes the claim that "the technology preventing fraud is the actual chip." At best, that is half true. The chip authenticates the card. In other words, the chip allows the merchant and the bank to know that the card being presented is the authentic card, not a counterfeit. The chip does not and cannot authenticate the cardholder. Only something that is not contained on the card i.e. something only the cardholder knows, like a PIN can authenticate the cardholder. In fact, consumers are most affected by the types of fraud that PIN would address, but that are not addressed by the dynamic elements on the chip. Indeed, Federal Reserve data from 2013 shows that 88% of fraud losses incurred by debit cardholders are either "card not present" or "lost and stolen" types of fraud that are not prevented by chip alone but would be prevented with PIN security. The card networks won't hear any of this, though, because it's not in their financial interests. Visa and its issuers are letting profits get in the way of common sense security solutions. Merchants can see it. Consumers will see it too. Mark Horwedel is the chief executive of Merchant Advisory Group. So people aren't as fee averse as bankers believe. The banking industry has struggled to get customers to pay for basic banking services. Leave it to nonbanks, however, to find a way to make it happen. Aspiration, a Marina Del Rey, Calif., firm that offers online checking accounts and investment products, is getting a majority of its clients to voluntarily pay fees by letting them decide what they think is a fair price for its products. Such customer participation is an intriguing concept, particularly at a time when the banking industry is experimenting with checking account models while looking at noninterest income as a way to offset hits taken from low loan yields. "Banks are trying to innovate their checking accounts; we certainly are," said Ciaran McMullan, president and chief executive of Suncrest Bank in Visalia, Calif. "Checking accounts have been boring and uneventful for a long time," McMullan said. "Now, from the biggest banks to Suncrest, we are focused on building core banking relationships. To do that, we have to get more creative." At Aspiration, customers can choose to pay a fee on checking accounts, which the company calls a tip, ranging from nothing up to $6 a month. Over two-thirds of Aspiration's checking account customers pay a fee, said CEO Andrei Cherny, though he declined to provide the average amount paid. More than 90% of customers pay a fee for the firm's investment services. "We think this is a [fairer] way to treat customers," Cherny said. "It just creates a different relationship with the customer and they know we're working hard for them." Aspiration attracts consumers who are willing to voluntarily pay a fee due to its customer service, added perks such as free access to any ATM worldwide and decent interest rates 1% for balances over $2,500 without "onerous and unfair fees," Cherny said. The company frequently waves overdraft fees, he said. Currently banks are tinkering with checking accounts with various features and fee structures to satisfy customer needs, while at the same time generate noninterest income. Bank of America for instance, offers a checking account with a $4.95 monthly fee; the account doesn't have overdraft protection or checks. "There are small but subtle changes banks are making to checking accounts," said Tim Scholten, founder of the consulting firm Visible Progress. "Margins have continued to compress. Mortgages have been really good source of fee income for some community banks but that business tends to be cyclical. If you see a drop there, that will put pressure on other areas of fees." Questions abound, though. The biggest challenge would involve offering customers a choice where they would actually opt to pay a fee rather than defaulting to zero. There are no straightforward answers, industry observers said. Other financial services firms have tried and abandoned that model, said Sam Maule, director and senior practice lead of digital and fintech at NTT DATA Americas. Green Dot initially used a pay-what-you-want model with its GoBank product but later switched to a flat monthly fee that it waives if certain requirements are met. "I don't see this revenue model flying off the shelf," Maule said. "I think you get a group of early adopters that are technology savvy and want to have the latest and greatest and that will pay for these solutions." An ala carte model might work better, allowing customers to select the features they want, such as paper checks, then charging a nominal monthly fee to cover the bank's expenses, said Lynn David, CEO of Community Bank Consulting Services. "I can't see having the option to pay nothing," David said. "You're getting into giving away things that have a hard cost to the bank. Why would you do that?" The $296 million-asset Suncrest has launched two checking accounts that provide consumers with options. Its free account pays 1.5% interest on balances up to $25,000 if the customer meets certain requirements; otherwise, interest defaults to a lower rate. A separate account has a monthly $5 fee and gives consumers access to a national database of discounts on products and services. "People are prepared to pay, and the more savvy people understand it does cost money to provide these services," McMullan said. "I think people are willing to pay for something if the service is good, if all of the features are there that they need and those features work and if there is some kind of emotional attachment or other value added on." Banks, especially smaller institutions, "can't afford to ignore the rise" of companies such as Aspiration, Maule said. Bigger banks tend to have more options, such as an ability to buy fintech firms, he said. Radius Bank in Boston has taken that message seriously. Radius Aspiration's processing bank has also partnered with an online marketplace lender and a mobile payments firm, said Christopher Tremont, the $790 million-asset bank's executive vice president of virtual banking. The bank, which has also collaborated on a rewards product that pays down student loan debt, could join one or two more partnerships in the next year, Tremont said. Radius gets two to three offers a week about possible partnerships with new fintech firms, though it turns down the vast majority of those pitches. "At Radius, we have always been more about how do these two industries become friends rather than it being fintech versus the banks," Tremont said. "I don't have a crystal ball" on how Aspiration's pay-what-you-want model will turn out, "but early on the signs are very promising," Tremont said. "It's about attracting a client base that is proving they will pay for good products and good services and compensate an organization for that." The 2016 presidential season may foretell the end of the two major political parties. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are not really members of the two parties whose nomination they have run so effectively to win. Indeed, both reflect as much as anything else frustration and anger against the parties whose nominations they seek. The two major political parties are seen by most Americans not as a path to the solution of those difficult issues we face, but rather as a major sickness in our system of government. Do we need these parties? Not really. Party labels allow politicians to mask the reality of policies behind the fog of partisan rhetoric. This is compounded by the ugly fact that instead of having two national political parties, we really have the Party of Washington (A) and the Party of Washington (B), with all the goodies that come from controlling the White House and Congress providing the real motivation to win national elections. What are the alternatives to our system of two national political parties? State governments could make all elections nonpartisan: all candidates for congressional and state offices, perhaps even including presidential electors, would run on their own good names and arguments, and no candidate would have a "Republican" or "Democrat" by his name. Nebraska already has a nonpartisan state legislature, and a number of cities have nonpartisan city councils. If enough states did that, then the number of nonpartisan members of Congress would be a majority in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, and the whole rotten system of party control of committees, with endless opportunities for mischief, would end. The Speaker of the House would actually represent the House and not the majority party in the House, and such drab offices as "Minority Floor Leader" and "Majority Whip" would vanish. This reform would also make it simpler to require runoff elections for all state and federal offices so that every senator, congressman, and governor won with a majority of the vote and not simply a plurality. This change in elections further dilutes the political party system by compelling the two runoff candidates to present themselves not as candidates of a particular party to voters. (Indeed, today, it is not uncommon for the two runoff candidates to belong to the same party.) If we keep political parties, then there is nothing that requires that these parties should be national. Regional parties are common in Europe, and these parties serve a vital purpose in providing a natural counterweight for regions that would otherwise feel subject to an unsympathetic national party leadership. Britain, Belgium, Germany, France, and Spain all have significant regional parties whose purpose is largely to protect those regions from overbearing behavior by a national government. In fact, our nearest neighbor, Canada, has a major party dedicated entirely to the regional cultural interests of Quebec. America is really a land of many regions with divergent cultural values and economic interests. The Constitution was intended to protect those regions through the sovereignty of states, but the crushing of states under the heel of Washington has destroyed that balance. Regional political parties could do much to restore regional and state power. What might this mean? What about a "Rocky Mountain Party" to unite voters in those eight states who support prudent land use and profitable energy production? This party could send sixteen senators to Washington whose purpose would be to bring sanity to those federal agencies that today treat this region as London once treated colonies. Another regional party might be a "Heartland Party" of the Great Plains and Deep South to send senators and congressmen whose purpose was to prevent the imposition from the federal bench of secular humanism on those states that rejected this particular religion. The "Great Lakes Party" could agitate for fair trade with nations like China and sane environmental rules. The effect of regional parties that actually represented regional interests would force attention to be continually focused away from Washington and back toward the fifty states. These parties could exercise a veto on federal judicial appointments within the region as well, which would provide another practical check on rogue federal power. We ought to view the chaos in this nominating cycle as an opportunity to replace the old, vested national political parties with political institutions and processes that serve us better. Washington Party (A) and Washington Party (B) are broken beyond repair. There is a specter haunting America. It is the specter of the common working man and woman. The person who does the daily work that keeps the society moving. The person who inhabits the rungs of the working class and the lower middle class. The person whose absence from the workplace would be felt immediately and profoundly. They are the people who do not have to be shown how to swipe a card at the MTA. They get paid by the hour, or at modest salaries, and have to save all year to take their two-week vacations, usually by car. Their children go to deteriorating public schools swarming with children who do not speak English as a first language. If fortunate, they will go on to a community college overrun with students and not enough course offerings. If they make it through that, they will incur excessive debt to meet the usurious costs of even a four-year public college. Part of that debt will be incurred for tuition for courses that are a mixture of social engineering and indoctrination, useless ideology known as diversity requirements. These are required courses because almost no one who could exercise a choice would ever take them. Even then, other courses are often falsely advertised. A history of World War I becomes a history of women ambulance drivers in WWI. English literature becomes a course on animal rights complete with mandatory duty at the local SPCA cleaning out cages. A full five percent of each tuition dollar goes to fund an ever-expanding diversity and opportunity bureaucracy whose real function is to create an artificial minority middle class made up of people who faced head-on the intellectual challenges of getting a degree in higher education administration. And after the debt and surviving all of the bullshit, most of these degrees will be as worthless as the courses were boring and irrelevant But what is worthy and relevant is the debt that will be packaged like so many mortgages in a prior decade and sold on the financial markets. Loans can now be extended from 15 to 25 and even 30 years, and the sale of the loans provides money for new loans and new indenture. But how do you repay the debt when the job you ended up with does not really require a college education, not that you learned any marketable skills while you were getting English literature credit for cleaning out animal waste at the SPCA? And the diversity requirement fulfilled by a course in the lesser lesbian poets did not really hone your economic skill set. In the day of the Internet a real education need not be expensive and could be delivered anywhere, especially in fields that do not require laboratories. After all, the British did correspondence education throughout the Empire in the 19th Century. No ivy-covered buildings, beer parties, and orgies came with those courses, but then too there was an absence of student debt and no cleaning cages at the SPCA. So when young, working people follow Bernie Sanders because he promises them debt relief, they do not care who is going to pick up the tab because the system screwed them, and they want to screw it back. When conservative talk show hosts bellyache that Donald Trump is not a real conservative, the common person sees that as an advantage. How can you talk about individual initiative and hard work in an era when Saudi Arabia can lower the price of oil to a point of destroying tens of thousands of jobs in North Dakota and Texas? The common person does not have to think twice about how Hillary Clinton, who never ran a business, never made a payroll, and rarely held a job outside of government is worth not just millions but tens of millions. Politicians on both sides of the aisle promised to do good and ended up doing right well, for themselves. The common person has had it with the elites and their promises, with Democrats who can find funds for illegal immigrants but not for the working poor, and with Republicans who preach individual initiative in an economy that is tossed about in the stormy seas of international crises. Sanders and Trump are two sides of the same coin. The common person does not care about their ideology. They care about sticking it to a political and economic system that has abandoned them. And as absurd as it might sound, if Sanders loses, a fair amount of his supporters will run to Trump because this election is not about ideology but about payback. This year marks the 62nd anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, in which a unanimous Supreme Court held that segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. There is much to celebrate looking back on 1954 from 2016. Primarily, we should be thankful that it is unthinkable today for any level of government to create or maintain separate facilities for Americans based on the color of their skin. Brown was an extraordinary case that sought to tackle sins of historic proportions. Unfortunately, society has not viewed Brown as exceptional. Instead, the case has inspired lawyers and laypeople, in the words of Harvards Mary Ann Glendon, to imagine that wise judges in black robes could cure social ills. Professor Glendon notes that perhaps even more dangerously, Brown has motivated many unwise judges down the line to begin to believe that they had the magic touch. Gerald Rosenberg, a professor at the University of Chicago School of Law, rightly complains that post-Brown, various causes were hijacked by a group of elite, well-educated and comparatively wealthy lawyers who uncritically believed that rights trump politics and that successful arguing before judges is equivalent to building and sustaining political movements. Individuals and interest groups no longer seek, in the first instance, to change public policy through the political process, but instead craft litigation strategies. Lawyers picture themselves walking in the shoes of Thurgood Marshall, who argued the case before the Supreme Court and later became a justice, and judges covet the power of the Warren Court as they enter the arena of the courthouse to make policy. The virtue of a democratic system with a First Amendment is that it readily enables the people, over time, to be persuaded that what they took for granted is not so, and to change their laws accordingly, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote. That system is destroyed if the smug assurances of each age are removed from the democratic process. Democracy is much like our muscles. If we do not use them and rely on them, the muscles weaken and atrophy. The people lose the ability to debate, think critically, and respect an opponents victory wrought by persuasive arguments. When judges make policy, the losing side is embittered because it was not afforded a fair fight in the court of public opinion. Moreover, when unelected officials make public-policy decisions, the people cannot exercise the franchise to express their approbation or disapproval. They become spectators rather than participants in the decision-making. Same-sex marriage and transgender access are two of the most recent examples of a preference for law courts over legislatures. Despite enjoying much success in various state assemblies, proponents of homosexual marriage resorted to the federal courts and won in Obergefell v. Hodges. Rather than the matter being settled, the Supreme Courts decree has only served to invigorate the opposition and spawn fights about religious liberty and public accommodations. Just last month a divided panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Title IXs prohibition of discrimination based on sex requires schools to provide transgender students access to restrooms congruent with their gender identity. Thus questions about transgender access have already reached one of the highest courts in the land before most ordinary Americans have been given an opportunity to learn what exactly what it means for a person to claim transgender status. Debate was never allowed, and resentment grows because of judicial activism. While there is much to applaud about Brown, we would be disingenuous to deny that the wrong lessons have been drawn from the decision. Lawyers, judges, and laypeople do not see the landmark case as extraordinary, but rather as a template for bringing about change. Such a conclusion undermines our democratic society and the value of the political branches of government. William J. Watkins, Jr. is research fellow at the Independent Institute and author of the book Reclaiming the American Revolution. Alan Grayson, the attack dog former congressman now running for the Senate in Florida, got married a couple of days ago. Not for the first time. Between March 2014 and April 2015, Floridians were entertained by the contentious divorce of Democrat congressman Alan Grayson and his wife of 25 years, Lolita. Grayson is widely considered one of the wealthiest members of the House of Representatives. One of Grayson's litigation tactics was to make the five children from this marriage illegitimate by arguing that Lolita Grayson had never been free to marry him, as the divorce of her first husband had not been finalized when the couple wed. At another point, Mrs. Grayson asked for a continuance because of a leaking breast implant. In between came allegations that Grayson was so stingy with support that his family had to go on food stamps, reports of leaking cesspools, and claims that Grayson no longer legally resided within his district. It was the multimillionaire version of The Jerry Springer Show. The case finally ended with an agreement to annul the marriage. On May 31, 2016, Grayson, now a candidate for the U.S. Senate, remarried. His new bride is the former Dena Minning, one of four Democrat candidates for the congressional seat Grayson is giving up in pursuit of the U.S. Senate seat. Dr. Minning, who is said to have low name recognition in Florida's 9th Congressional District, was quick to adopt her husband's famous last name in her social media accounts. What does it say of our crony-ridden political system that high name recognition becomes a valuable wedding present? For many voters, the presidential election choice is no and no none of the above. But as voters see pictures of rioters (and no, their violent activities don't deserve the gentle euphemism of protesters) at Donald Trump events, which go beyond burning American flags while waving Mexican flags, voters will turn to Donald Trump in disgust. While the increasingly irrelevant mainstream media won't cover these aspects of the riot and will blame Trump's rhetoric rather than the protesters uh, rioters the reality is seeping out, as here at American Thinker. Don't rioters understand that voters across the country hearing chants of "Make America Mexico again" in English and Spanish reinforces Trump's message? Apparently not. But notice how the media commentators explode when a Hillary or Bernie event is interrupted by Trump supporters. Uh-oh hasn't happened, but the talking heads are still whining about Trump supporters as haters. And those "haters," who are expressing their constitutional rights, are increasing in number. Welcome to the riotous summer election season of 2016. It just might surpass the historic Democratic convention riots of 1968. Despite being approved by two committees, a bill that would have criminalized opposition to climate change died in the California Senate. The bill would have targeted fossil fuel companies, think-tanks, and individuals who, in the eyes of prosecutors, deceived or misled the public on the risks of climate change. Washington Times: The measure, which cleared two Senate committees, provided a four-year window in the statute of limitations on violations of the states Unfair Competition Law, allowing legal action to be brought until Jan. 1 on charges of climate change fraud extending back indefinitely. This bill explicitly authorizes district attorneys and the Attorney General to pursue UCL claims alleging that a business or organization has directly or indirectly engaged in unfair competition with respect to scientific evidence regarding the existence, extent, or current or future impacts of anthropogenic induced climate change, said the state Senate Rules Committees floor analysis of the bill. Leading the fight against the measure was the Civil Justice Association of California, joined by pro-business groups such as the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Business Roundtable. Justice association President Kim Stone said she was pleased that the state Senate realized this bill was extreme. "Our concern about the bill is that by eliminating the statute of limitations and reviving claims from forever in the past, its fundamentally unfair, said Ms. Stone. The statute of limitations under the Unfair Competition Law is now four years. As originally introduced, the bill would have allowed climate fraud lawsuits extending back 30 years, but later was amended to provide no time limit, she said. This bill would be as if the IRS now said that we could audit you for the first year you filed your taxes, or your parents taxes, or even for your grandparents taxes. Would you have the documentation required to defend yourself if you were accused of having done something wrong? Ms. Stone said. No, nobody would have saved their papers because everyone knows the IRS has three years to audit you. The measure was introduced amid a national push by Democrats and activist groups to use the legal system to prosecute climate change fraud, prompting a backlash from skeptics who have denounced the campaign as an assault on free speech. A coalition of 17 state attorneys general, including California Attorney General Kamala Harris, have joined forces to pursue climate change skeptics. At least four prosecutors reportedly have launched investigations into Exxon Mobil for climate change fraud. Introduced by state Sen. Ben Allen, Santa Monica Democrat, S.B. 1161 had strong support from environmental groups, led by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The group, which had no immediate comment on the bills failure, had argued that the measure was needed to challenge efforts to confuse consumers and fend off competition from lower-carbon energy sources. The chilling effect on science and speech that this sort of legislation leads to is dangerous not only to the First Amendment, but also to the free exchange of information that is so vital to the scientific method. Science itself is under attack as climate hysterics seek to validate their theories over the dead bodies of their political and scientific opponents and not in the arena of free scientific inquiry. This is an extremely anti-science outlook on the issue. It can hardly be called a debate when so many reject the notion that there is anything left to discover about global warming except how really, really bad its going to get. Any information contrary to that implausible position is considered denial, and California will not be the last state looking to criminalize and stifle dissent on global warming. Even a surrealist painter like Salvador Dali would have trouble capturing an image of the courting of the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Obama administration while the State Department has designated Tehran as the #1 state sponsor of terrorism. Despite freeing tens of billions of dollars in assets that the U.S. admits will partly be used to fund terrorism, paying ransom for our captured sailors, and resisting calls from Congress to sanction Tehran for illegal missile tests, the Iranians continue on their merry way, sowing terror and fear through their proxies while dismissing the U.S. as "the enemy." CNN: The department's acting coordinator for counterterrorism, Justin Siberell, briefed reporters Thursday on the report's content, saying the document was used to assess the effectiveness of the effort to combat terrorism and to determine where to best place resources. On Iran, the report said that country "remained the foremost state sponsor of terrorism in 2015, providing a range of support, including financial, training, and equipment, to groups around the world." The report also said that Iran was continuing to provide arms and cash to terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Iraqi Shia terrorist groups, including Kata'ib Hizballah (KH). Both groups are designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations in the report. Iran is one of three listed state sponsors of terrorism, the others being Syria and Sudan. Cuba was removed from the list last year. Siberell added that the department was "concerned about a wide range of Iranian activities to destabilize the region." Iran's designation and continued sponsoring of terrorism is bound to fuel criticism of the Iran nuclear deal. Critics of the deal have charged that the removal of economic sanctions would allow Iran to increase its support of terror groups. During an interview in Davos, Switzerland, Secretary of State John Kerry admitted in Januarythat some of the money made available to Iran by the removal of sanctions would "end up in the hands of the IRGC or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists," referring to Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. The report also described the global terrorist threat in 2015 as "increasingly decentralized and diffuse," noting that ISIS once again was "the greatest threat globally." It included a statistical annex prepared by the University of Maryland, which said that worldwide there were 11,774 terrorist attacks in 92 countries in 2015 which resulted in more than 28,300 total deaths. Talking with your enemies is one thing. Assisting them in their nefarious actions is quite another. It is beyond belief that the Obama administration is bending over backward not to "offend" the Iranians while throwing money at them to carry out their terrorist agenda. This is especially true when you consider that our relationship with the Iranians is one of unrequited love. Like a teenager who has a crush on a supermodel, the Obama administration can't quite seem to understand that no amount of forebearance on our part will get the Iranians to like us. In another sign that the historic nuclear deal can only go so far in rebuilding ties frayed by decades of mistrust, Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei slammed the U.S. and the evil U.K., calling them his countrys main enemies. In a speech marking the 27th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini the founder of Irans Islamic Republic Khamenei also ruled out cooperation with the U.S. on regional issues. We have many small and big enemies, but foremost among them are America and this very evil Britain. America has continued its enmity toward Iran since [the 1979] revolution. ... It is a huge mistake to trust evil Britain and the Great Satan [the United States], Khamenei, known for his vitriol-laced speeches deriding the West, said Friday. Considering that the nuclear agreement will not prevent Iran from building a weapon if the Iranians are determined to do so, the sole reason for the attitude by the White House toward Iranian aggressions and hate is to keep Tehran from backing out of Obama's "signature" foreign policy achievement: the nuclear deal. In other words, the president's "legacy" trumps national security and the honor of the United States. About what we've come to expect from the man who cares more about "making history" than protecting the country. I think this is outrageous. Mark Hosenball of Reuters reports: Some U.S. intelligence officials are concerned that Donald Trump's "shoot from the hip" style could pose national security risks as they prepare to give him a routine pre-election briefing once he is formally anointed as the Republican presidential nominee. Eight senior security officials told Reuters they had concerns over briefing Trump, whose brash, unpredictable campaign style has been a feature of his rise as an insurgent candidate. Despite their worries, the officials said the "Top Secret" briefing to each candidate would not deviate from the usual format to avoid any appearance of bias. Most of the officials asked for anonymity to discuss a domestic political issue. No kidding! They are speculating about a presumptive presidential nominee, slurring him as unreliable, probably unfit to protect national security secrets. Behind the cloak of anonymity, of course. Trump's lack of foreign policy experience, his volatile style, and his little known team of foreign policy advisers make him a unique case, the officials said. "People are very nervous," said one senior U.S. security official. Intelligence and other security and foreign policy officials are also trying to determine "who on (Trump's) team are trustworthy, the official added. "We've never had a situation like this before. Ever." The club protects its own. Trump has, I am certain, protected many secrets in his day. He has needed to assemble parcels of land for major construction projects, for instance, and wrote about this in The Art of the Deal. I am reasonably certain that prior to any briefings, he would sign documents promising to guard their security, as would his advisers the sort of docuemnts Hillary and her aides signed at the State Department and violated with her home-brew server. To be sure, the anonymous officials acknowledged this in a pro forma way: Current and former officials said that the scandal over Hillary Clinton's use of emails also raises concerns about her handling of sensitive information. Did any of them worry about Hillary disclosing information, since she is so careless with top-secret documents? Make no mistake: the national security apparatus of the United States is a huge business, very comfy in its ways, and fears disruption from an outsider. The riot last night in San Jose, California was outrageous on its face political violence committed with ethnic animus. The San Jose police largely stood by as Trump supporters were violently assaulted. But the mayor of San Jose made it even worse, blaming the victims and raising suspicions about the orders that were issued to police. The Los Angeles Times: Our police officers have done an extremely courageous and professional job so far, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo told the Associated Press by phone. Were all still holding our breath to see the outcome of this dangerous and explosive situation. This woman, being pelted with eggs, bottles, rocks, and other debris, as police stand behind a locked glass door and watch, might disagree with this assessment: Watch: Trump supporter showing off her Trump jersey taunted by protesters right before they egg her in the face. pic.twitter.com/3wt0UqLq9j Jacob Rascon (@Jacobnbc) June 3, 2016 The mayor, a Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter, criticized Trump for coming to cities and igniting problems that local police departments have to deal with. At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign, Liccardo said. There was irresponsible behavior aplenty, but it came from the San Jose Police and the anti-Trump rioters. Mayor Liccardo is implying that the violence was justified and that a presidential candidate has no right to take the positions he has run on. I know about Godwins Law, but it seems to me that in Germany, they also blamed the Jews for violence against them. San Jose has a large Mexican-America and outright Mexican community (including a large but unknown number of border violators), so the mayor may feel he can vioate the civil rights of Trump supporters with impunity. I hope some means (a civil rights lawsuit?) can be found to subpoena the orders given to the San Jose Police. Yesterday, following a Trump rally in San Jose, California, demonstrators became unpatriotic and violent. They wave the flag of a foreign country. They burn the American flag. They attack Trump supporters. Woman who supports Trump surrounded by protesters, who taunt her, then throw eggs and bottles at her. pic.twitter.com/nHJ3cgYOfR Jacob Rascon (@Jacobnbc) June 3, 2016 They interfere with the presidential nomination process. They injure police. They care not for free speech. These are they who appear at Donald Trump rallies to display, to reveal their inherent unpatriotic nature. But the media seems sympathetic. It is the Trump rallies that are violent. It is Trump who is divisive. One must deduce for oneself that it is they who come to break up the Trump rally that are dispensers of violence. Unassimilated multiculturalism yields unpatriotic behavior, and we have it in spades now in the transformed United States of America. The president seeks to increase the condition with his short-circuiting of our immigration enforcement, the encouragement of visas, and Central American and Syrian inflows. We are not distant from the point where those elected from such communities will refuse to swear their allegiance to the Constitution and will be given a pass. The rationale will go something like this. He (she) was elected by this minority group and it is understandable that he/she would be uncomfortable pledging allegiance to the Constitution. Earlier this week, an elected lawmaker, Louisianas Barbara Norton (D-Shreveport), had a problem with the Declaration of Independence. Louisiana lawmaker Barbara Norton (D-Shreveport), argued that Americas founding document was racist[.] For the Declaration of Independence only Caucasians (were) free[.] This attitude is a close cousin to the attitudes of those who appear at Trump rallies to burn the American flag and disrupt the process. Both are steeped in hatred for the history of this nation. Supporting this feeling is a president who apologizes to the world for the actions of this nation and who has himself disregarded the nature of the Constitution. Immigration officials say that a criminal network of smugglers are bringing people from MIddle East hotbeds of terrorism to our borders via Mexico. The network is based out of Brazil, and at least one of the men who crossed our border was part of a terrorist plot in North America. Washington Times: Immigration officials have identified at least a dozen Middle Eastern men smuggled into the Western Hemisphere by a Brazilian-based network that connected them with Mexicans who guided them to the U.S. border, according to internal government documents reviewed by The Washington Times. Those smuggled included Palestinians, Pakistanis and the Afghan man who Homeland Security officials said had family ties to the Taliban and was involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. and/or Canada. He is in custody, but The Times is withholding his name at the request of law enforcement to protect investigations. Some of the men handled by the smuggling network were nabbed before they reached the U.S., but others made it into the country. The Afghan man was part of a group of six from special-interest countries. The group, guided by two Mexicans employed by the smuggling network, crawled under the border fence in Arizona late last year and made it about 15 miles north before being detected by border surveillance, according to the documents, which were obtained by Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican. Law enforcement asked The Times to withhold the name of the smuggling network. Its unclear whether the network succeeded in sneaking other special interest illegal immigrants by border officials, but the documents obtained by Mr. Hunter confirm fears of a pipeline that can get would-be illegal immigrants from terrorist hotbeds to the threshold of the U.S. Just as troubling, the Border Patrol didnt immediately spot the Afghan mans terrorist ties because the database that agents first checked didnt list him. It wasnt until agents checked an FBI database that they learned the Afghan may be a danger, the documents say. Its disturbing, in so many ways, said Joe Kasper, Mr. Hunters chief of staff. The interdiction of this group validates once again that the southern border is wide open to more than people looking to enter the U.S. illegally strictly for purposes of looking for work, as the administration wants us to believe. Whats worse, federal databases werent even synced and Border Patrol had no idea who they were arresting and the group was not considered a problem because none of them were considered a priority under the presidents enforcement protocol. Thats a major problem on its own, and it calls for DHS to figure out the problem and fast. DHS has no interest in "figuring out the problem." They know what the problem is and know how to solve it. The real problem is that there is a lack of will and commitment to doing what's necessary to protect us. They would never say it out loud, but the prospect of a couple of terror attacks on U.S. soil killing a few dozen Americans doesn't faze them. It's no reason to stop the flow of illegal aliens into the U.S., because that would upset Hispanic activists and open borders supporters. After all, there is very little chance that it will be they or their family members who die in a terrorist attack, so what's the big deal? The last few months of the Obama administration have seen an almost total lack of enforcement of immigration law. And with the number of illegals spiking once again, the flood of aliens entering the country and released threatens to overwhelm more communities, who are forced to pay for them. To be fair, Bernie Sanders went to the USSR as part of an official trip as mayor of Burlington, Vermont. He really did not go there for a honeymoon, as some of us have joked on social media. Nevertheless, he did set up close city-to-city ties with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and was very fond of their brand of socialism. In other words, Bernie Sanders has always been fond of socialists, especially the ones who hate the U.S. Bernie Sanders has gotten a free ride from the media and the GOP so far. I guess most of us just think Bernie will fizzle out after Hillary Clinton clinches the nomination. We shouldn't be so optimistic. No, Sanders won't get the nomination, but he has lit up a left-wing movement that we will see the next time the Democrats choose a president. Add to this what we are seeing in colleges, and these anti-American lefties will be around for a while. We can say Trump is tapping into frustration, from free trade deals to illegal immigration to a sense that that we don't recognize the country anymore. On the other hand, Sanders also is tapping into ignorance. He is misleading masses with promises that we can't afford and promoting a sense of entitlement that will frustrate his supporters the morning after they finally grow up. We need to start calling out Sanders, and more specifically his crazy ideas. I saw this editorial, and I wish more of us would take its message seriously: Let's face it. Sanders isn't a Democrat in the traditional sense. He is a socialist who has based his entire run on a four letter word, "free." And that's what irritates me more than anything else...free stuff, free stuff, and more free stuff! It's one thing to promote socialism and the taxes or loss of personal freedom that come with it. It is utterly disingenuous to sell socialism by saying we will raise taxes on the rich. Memo to the GOP: Sanders won't be around by Labor Day. His movement will, and it may even push Hillary Clinton to the left. We need to win this ideological debate, or we won't recognize the country for sure. P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter. The Motorola Moto X has been on a pretty rocky road since it debuted in 2013. Then again, so has Motorola. After being sold by Google to Lenovo in 2014, and then the Motorola brand becoming extinct but keeping Moto around. The Moto X line of smartphones has been pretty successful for Motorola though. Many have called them a souped up Nexus smartphone, since they run stock Android. With the rumors of the new Moto X which is rumored to be the Moto Z coming fast and furious and were expecting to see it announced on June 9th at the Lenovo Tech World, we thought we would take a trip down memory lane and see how far the Moto X line has come since 2013, and more importantly, how far the smartphone industry has come since then. Motorola Moto X Advertisement The first smartphone from Motorola that had input by Google. Leading up to the release, many were excited to see what Motorola had up their sleeves. Leaks and rumors pointed to a somewhat mid-range smartphone, however. Motorola announced the device in August of 2013, and reviewers fell in love with it. The Moto X was a 4.7-inch smartphone, in a world where most smartphones were around 5 to 5.5-inches or larger. That was a 720p panel too, as that was before QHD panels really became popular. The Moto X sported a modified Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro, which was named the Motorola X8 Mobile Computing System. It was paired with 2GB of RAM, 16GB/32GB/64GB of storage along with a 10MP ClearPixel camera on the back. There was also a 2200mAh battery inside, which Motorola claimed would get you all day battery life. It launched on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, and was priced at $579. The software was perhaps what stuck out the most for Motorola. It was stock Android with a few changes made on top. Motorola debuted Active Display in 2013, where notifications would breathe on your devices screen to let you know that you had notifications. Touchless Control also debuted, allowing you to say OK Moto and basically have access to Google Now even with the screen off. These were just some of the tweaks that Motorola added on top of stock Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. Advertisement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGbEVfACpm4 Read More Moto X on Android Headlines Advertisement Motorola Moto X (2nd Gen) In September 2014, Motorola held an event at their new headquarters in downtown Chicago. They took the wraps off of the Moto X (2nd Gen) or some referred to it Moto X (2014). It was a slightly larger smartphone, coming with a 5.2-inch 19201080 resolution display. Bumping both the size and resolution this time around. Motorola also dropped the Moto X8 processor and opted for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chipset. However they did stick with the same 2GB of RAM and 16GB/32GB/64GB storage models. We got a better camera, which was bumped to 13-megapixels, as well as a slightly larger battery with a 2300mAh capacity. Advertisement Motorola changed up the software with the Moto X in 2014. Although it was mostly in name. Gone was Active Display and replaced with Moto Display. It was the same thing with Touchless Control being renamed to Moto Voice. Motorola also debuted Moto Actions. One of the more popular actions was the ability to wave your hand over the display and wake Moto Display to see the time and your notifications. This was done using IR Blasters in each corner of the Moto X 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSAs0-ur6sc Read More Moto X (2014) on Android Headlines Advertisement Motorola Moto X Play Fast forward to 2015, and Motorola unveiled two members of the Moto X family. Well start with the Moto X Play. This was their first release under Lenovos management, which could be why we saw two phones announced. The Moto X Play featured a 5.5-inch display, which was 1080p once again. It was powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor along with 2GB of RAM and either 16GB or 32GB of storage. However, Motorola did add in a micro SD card slot this time around. Allowing you to expand that storage up to 200GB. The camera got improved once again, jumping to a 21-megapixel sensor, which received glowing reviews. The Moto X Play was powered by a 3630mAh battery, which was slated as lasting all day long. The Moto X Play launched on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, which was the current version of Android at the time of release. Advertisement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tsv2BESgLW4 Read more Moto X Play on Android Headlines Motorola Moto X Style Advertisement Along with the Moto X Play, Motorola announced the Moto X Style or as it was known in the US, the Moto X Pure Edition because it worked with all four US carriers seamlessly. The Moto X Style was a bit more high-end than the Moto X Play. Featuring a larger 5.7-inch 25601440 or QHD display. Also featuring the Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor with 3GB of RAM and the choice of 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of storage. Like the Moto X Play, it also featured a micro SD card slot, along with the same 21-megapixel camera around back. However it did feature a slightly smaller 3000mAh battery. Like the Moto X Play, the Moto X Style also launched on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. Software for both devices were largely the same. Motorola kept their features like Moto Display, Moto Actions and Moto Voice. Motorola didnt really add anything new to the software in 2015, however they did refine it. Adding a few more actions to Moto Actions, more functionality to Moto Voice and features to Moto Display. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOu81pFn4u8 Read more Moto X Style on Android Headlines If youre at all interested in smartphones, youve probably heard of the Honor brand already. This is Huaweis sub-brand, a subsidy if you will, and that company is actually quite successful on its own. According to the latest market research data, Honor is actually the second-placed company in China. Honor currently holds 15.7% of market share, and is trumped only by Xiaomi (26%). Now, if you combine Huawei and Honor, you get a market share of 23.7%. That being said, Honor has released quite a few interesting smartphones in the last year or so, and it seems like another one will land soon, read on. Huawei UK has started sending out invites for the June 20th event the company will host. Now, this will be a virtual launch, which means the company wont host an actual physical event anywhere in particular. The event will kick off at 2PM BST (9AM EST, 6AM PST), and as you can see in the provided image, the company is using the Be who you are, not who the world wants you to be slogan. The company also said that the event will last around 20 minutes, and that they will unveil a new smartphone which will be fast, robust and affordable, all in one. Now, we cannot confirm that the Honor plans to introduce the Honor 8 handset, but were quite confident they will. The Honor 7 was announced back in June last year, and that handset was quite a success for the company. It was made out of metal, quite affordable, and its performance was really good as well. We didnt exactly see many Honor 8 rumors / leaks, but one such rumor surfaced two days ago. Advertisement According to the leaked info, the Honor 8 will ship in two variants, one variant will sport 3GB of RAM, while the other will ship with 4GB of RAM on board. The device will be made out of aluminum, and will, reportedly sport two 12-megapixel cameras on the back. Huaweis HiSilicon Kirin 950 64-bit octa-core SoC is expected to fuel this handset, though we wouldnt be surprised if Honor included the Kirin 650 instead, well see. The Type-C USB port is rumored to be a part of this package, and Android 6.0 Marshmallow will almost certainly going to come pre-installed on this device. That is pretty much everything we know, stay tuned in case new info surfaces before the launch event. Huawei is currently the third largest smartphone manufacturer in the world. This China-based company was quite successful last year, and their sales are still going strong. Huawei has introduced quite a few interesting phones this year, including their P9 and P9 Plus flagships, and theres much more to come before the end of 2016. That being said, the companys CEO, Richard Yu, was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal quite recently, and during that interview, he shared some interesting news with us. The companys CEO confirmed in his interview that Huawei plans to launch a VR-ready smartphone this Fall. Now, this smartphone will be compatible with Googles Daydream standard which was talked about during Google I/O last month. Now, in addition to this, Mr. Yu also confirmed that the company plans to keep on cooperating with Leica, a Germany-based camera and optics manufacturer. As most of you know, Huawei partnered up with Leica in order to improve cameras on their phones, Leicas lenses are utilized in the Huawei P9 and P9 Plus flagships which have been introduced earlier this year. The companys CEO said that Huawei plans to continue cooperating with Leica for at least the next five years. Huaweis CEO also talked about Huaweis smartphone segment, heres what he had to say: We want to be the number-one smartphone maker in the world. Its a long distance race, and we have the patience. Our growth is mainly coming from the high-end, premium segment. If you want to be the leading vendor you have to lead in the high-end. Advertisement So it seems like Huawei intends to keep on pushing their premium offerings in order to maintain their position and keep on growing. This company doesnt exactly have a large present in the U.S., but theyre very strong in Europe, Asia and Middle East. It seems like Huawei plans to focus on the U.S. more though, Mr. Yu said that the company has talked with the U.S.-based carriers in order to bring more Huawei products to the country, but he did not share any details just yet, unfortunately. We do expect to hear more about Huaweis U.S. plans soon, so stay tuned for that. Indias second-largest smartphone vendor, Micromax Informatics, announced on Thursday that it plans to enter the Chinese market next year. The company started selling its smartphones in Russia back in January 2014, and is already reportedly the third-largest vendor there with a market-share of around 9%. The company also sells its smartphones in Nepal, and multiple rumors over the past several months have actually indicated that the company is interested in trying its luck in the highly-lucrative U.S. market, although, nothing concrete has come of it thus far. Now that Micromax is looking to fight it out in what is arguably the single-most competitive smartphone market in the world, it looks as though the company has its job well and truly cut out. Once in China, Micromax will not only have to compete against some of the largest multinationals like Huawei, Lenovo and Xiaomi, but also against dozens of smaller and yet, incredibly efficient brands that are able to churn out low-cost, high-performance devices seemingly at will. The company is already facing increasing competition from not just home-grown vendors at the entry-level, but more importantly, from a whole host of Chinese brands at the mid-range, which is where the lions share of the profits are for most of these companies. On top of that, the worlds largest smartphone market has been seeing sluggish sales over the past few quarters, mirroring the global slowdown in the overall market. Advertisement With all those factors seemingly stacked against Micromax, some analysts and market observers have expressed their disbelief at the companys latest move. According to IDC analyst Ms. Kiranjeet Kaur, Im not sure why theyre doing this. The Chinese market is not growing and its really competitive. I dont know how they will survive there. Micromax, however, believes it will not just be able to survive, but thrive in the highly-competitive environment in China. According to Micromaxs co-founder, Mr. Vikas Jain, the company wants to become the fifth-largest smartphone vendor in the world by volume in four years time, which simply would not be possible without access to the Chinese market. He also revealed that the company hopes to raise money within the next couple of years either from private investors, or through an IPO (Initial Public Offering). While the OnePlus 3 is set to arrive in the next couple of weeks, last year saw a fairly substantial amount of chatter on the possibility that the company would introduce a new line of wearables. In short, a OnePlus smartwatch. In fact, at one point during the year, it seemed extremely likely that the company would introduce their first smartwatch. Although as time went on nothing actually materialized on that front and the rumors and talk subsequently subsided. Today at the Converge technology conference in Hong Kong, Pete Lau of OnePlus, revealed some more details on why a OnePlus smartwatch never made it to market. First up, Lau did confirm today that it was the companys plan to introduce a smartwatch and even going as far to note that they had completed the design. However, in spite of the design being finished, OnePlus decided to scrap it anyway. While that might be disappointing for those who were hoping to pick up a OnePlus smartwatch, the reason behind the scraping was a logical one, as OnePlus wanted to be focused on their product selection and portfolio. In explaining this, Lau points to the current domestic climate for smartphone makers in China and noting how the market overall is in a race to the bottom. One which means that companies who are as small as OnePlus, compared to the likes of Huawei, have to be more selective on what devices they bring to market in order to survive. Lau notes that currently the Chinese domestic market is a very cruel market and one which requires them to be extremely focused in what they are doing. As a result, OnePlus opted to forgo the smartwatch industry for now and instead, continue to focus on establishing their presence within the smartphone market. Advertisement Of course, this does not necessarily mean that OnePlus will not enter the smartwatch market at some point. However, the comments made today by Lau do suggest at the moment it is certainly not something that is high up on their agenda. More to the point, it seems extremely unlikely that any additional products like a smartwatch will be announced or unveiled along with the OnePlus 3. Were just a few months out from Android N becoming official, even though we dont have an official name for the next version of Android just yet. When Google launches a new version of Android, that also means new Nexus hardware. Typically we get a new smartphone or two, and sometimes a new tablet, or a new set-top box like the Nexus Player. Theres been plenty of rumors floating around that HTC is supposedly making two Nexus devices for Google this year. But the rumor mill just got thrown a curveball. According to Gearburn, Huawei is making the Nexus again this year. In an interview, general manager for Huaweis Consumer Business Group in South Africa, Charline Munilall stated Were doing the Nexus again this year, by the way while answering a question about why the Nexus 6P didnt become widely available in the region. While she was talking about the Nexus 6P when she stated that the company is doing the Nexus again this year, that doesnt mean that they are doing a Nexus smartphone. It could be another device, and well likely wont get confirmation until Google officially unveils the device later this summer with Android N. Advertisement Huawei made the Nexus 6P last year, with Google. It was the first time that Google went to China to get a partner for the Nexus program (after using the likes of HTC, Samsung, ASUS, LG and Motorola), and Huawei created a fantastic device with Google. The Nexus 6P received great reviews from just about everyone. Much like when LG made the Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 for Google, it wouldnt be surprising to see Google head back to Huawei for another device this time around. This doesnt mean that the rumors about HTC making the Nexus this year are untrue. For all we know, Google could be planning a slew of Nexus devices this year. Including two new smartphones, perhaps an upgrade to the Nexus 9 which debuted in 2014, and an upgraded Nexus Player. But this is a rumor, so well have to take it with a grain of salt, at least for now. When it comes to ZTE, a majority of consumers are likely to be more familiar with their smartphones than anything else. However, they do have a number of different products in their portfolio and one of the more novel items is the ZTE Spro 2, which the company first introduced very early in 2015. For those unfamiliar with this, the ZTE Spro 2 is essentially a projector. However, this is smart projector and one which runs on Android. As well as being one which can be used with a data plan and one which can be used as a dedicated hotspot for up to ten connected devices. As there is data involved, after the initial launch, Verizon and AT&T both began to stock and sell the Spro 2 on their respective networks. While T-Mobile was not one of the carriers who have stocked the Spro 2, that does look likely to be changing this month as support pages for the ZTE Spro 2 are now live on the T-Mobile website. Which is typically a good sign that a device is about to arrive. While there are no availability information on those pages, TmoNews is reporting that they have it on good authority that the Spro 2 will become available to buy through T-Mobile on June 7th, which is next Tuesday. However, at present, there are no firm details on what the likely cost will be if and when it does become available. Advertisement Of course, if you are not a T-Mobile customer or have already owned the Spro 2 through one of the other carriers or the Wi-Fi only model directly from ZTE, then this wont be of much interest. Not to mention, for those looking for a newer model, ZTE has since announced their latest Spro family member in the form of the ZTE Spro Plus, which was introuduced at this years MWC event. As you might expect, this one comes with a number of improved features including the video output resolution, as well as boosts in RAM and internal storage. Those interested in checking out the support pages and seeing what else will be on offer with the Spo 2 through T-Mobile, can do so by heading through the source link below. Six-year-old boy calls police on dad who raced a red light (audio) No-one likes a grass. But no-one told 6-year-old Robbie Richardson from Quincy, Massachusetts. When young Robbie saw his dad drive through a red light on their journey home, he vowed to call the police. When they arrived home Robbie did as promised, dialling 911 and grassing up his father, Michael Richardson. My dad went past the red light and I told him that I was going to call the police, Robbie told the police. Red means stop, green means go, yellow means slow. YouTube link. Anorak Posted: 3rd, June 2016 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink BBC censors suicide from Shakespeare but Kim Kardashian should play Bottom Did you know that watching William Shakespeare on the telly is dangerous to any young minds tuning in? As part of the years Shakespeare celebration, the BBC is going large on the Bard. In the Times, Russell T Davies, executive producer of the BBCs new adaptation of A Midsummer Nights Dream, explains why hes censored the original script. It is wonderful nonsense, entirely in keeping with the kind of bilge people in the arts spout when they talk about Will. Invariably, they make it all about themselves: Russell T Davies said that he had excised the scenes in which Helena threatens suicide over her love for Demetrios because he believed that they were not fit for broadcast in the modern day. He said that he did not want the suggestion that a young woman would commit suicide because of thwarted love When a member of the audience at the Hay Festival asked whether he would change the ending of Romeo and Juliet, so that a young woman did not herself over love, he described the question as trite, and said he was offended that the comparison had been drawn. Shakespeare is not set in stone. Adaptation keep it all alive an relevant, not least of all the pupils in class forced to study it, who seek shortcuts to the tricky texts through TV and video. But when you start cutting out the bits you dont like it all smacks of censorship: I dont care what Shakespeare was thinking, I dont care, it is my name on it. It was standard in 1590 for a woman in a love story to say that I am about to kill myself. It is not standard now. I am deliberately hoping to get young girls watching. I will not transmit lines in which women are so much in love that they are threatening to commit suicide. Exit, pursued by a chicken. PS if you want young girls to watch, hire Kim Kardashian to play Bottom. Paul Sorene Posted: 3rd, June 2016 | In: Reviews, TV & Radio Comment | TrackBack | Permalink (ANSA) - Trento, June 3 - Quaestio Capital Management president Alessandro Penati said Friday Italy needs a market for non-performing loans (NPLs). "The key is not leverage, but creating a market," Penati said. "As long as there are investments of 300-400 million they are not liquid and there is no market. We need very large-scale, very liquid issues. The benchmark must be a very very big issue - at least two billion euros". Quaestio and the Cariplo Foundation earlier this year set up the Atlante fund to shore up ailing Italian lenders while avoiding violating EU rules against State aid. The financial industry in April approved a government-backed plan to set up the privately financed fund to buy up shares in struggling Italian lenders and to take on their NPLs. Cariplo Foundation President Giuseppe Guzzetti said at the time that Atlante would put an end to what he called a speculators' "bonanza" in snapping up NPLs at as much as 18-20% interest. (ANSAmed) - LAMPEDUSA, JUNE 3 - President Sergio Mattarella visited the Sicilian island of Lampedusa on Friday. The island in the Strait of Sicily lies closer to North Africa than to Italy, and is often the first landfall - along with the Greek island of Lesbos - for asylum seekers fleeing across the Mediterranean. "Italy and Europe owe a debt of gratitude to Lampedusa for the lives saved, for the aid extended, and for the hospitality given to migrants," Mattarella said. "Lampedusa is the gateway to Europe...it has exemplified Europe's best aspect to those who arrived and feel it is a second homeland". Mattarella also met with a policewoman who has been looking after an orphan nine-month-old baby girl who was rescued off an asylum seeker vessel and whose mother died during the crossing. "She is necessarily an Italian," the president said of the little girl, who arrived on Lampedusa on May 25 and is named Favour. Mattarella also presided at the opening of the first exhibition at Lampedusa's Museum of Trust and Dialogue for the Mediterranean, featuring dozens of works on loan from major museums. The Uffizi Galleries sent a Caravaggio painting in remembrance of Aylan, the three-year-old who died while fleeing the Syrian civil war and became a symbol for all refugee victims. The painting is of Sleeping Cupid, an angel in a deep sleep - a tribute not only to the little boy who washed up dead on a Turkish beach but to all the children who died, who were were born, and who were rescued during the perilous crossing to Europe. (ANSAmed). Cairo - The bodies of 117 drowned migrants including 70 women and five children have been recovered since Thursday on beaches in western Libya, the spokesman for the Libyan Red Crescent, Mohamed Misrati, told ANSA Friday. Operations are continuing to recover more bodies. "The nu,ber of bodies found so far is 117, including 70 women and five children, all African," the spokesman said on the phone. "The bodies started to emerge at Zuara, in western Libya near the border with Tunisia, at nine in the morning on Thursday," said Misrati. "Operations to recover the bodies continued until 23:00 and the Red Crescent started again this morning," he said. There has been a surge in migrant departures from Libya recently due to good weather and the recent closure of the Balkan Route. ROME - Nearly nine years since it began, the blockade placed by Israel on Gaza continues to destroy the lives of 1.8 million people, depriving them of the most basic sustenance, said Oxfam on Friday in an appeal to the international community to put an immediate end to the Israeli blockade on Gaza. The NGO said the blockade is a collective punishment and denial of rights that, without ensuring increased security to Israel, is plunging an entire population into a spiral of poverty to which there's no end in sight. "The very limited possibilities for movement of goods and people have paralyzed Gaza's economic growth, and as a result the life of the Palestinians, who by now for nearly a decade practically don't have access to essential services and see their fundamental rights denied," said Riccardo Sansone, Oxfam Italy's director for humanitarian emergencies. "The blockade is worsening an already extremely grave situation," he said. "While 75,000 people still can't go home, only half of the 10% of destroyed homes have been rebuilt, and 80% of the population depends on international humanitarian aid for survival". The effects of the Israeli blockade on everyday life have been heavy: non-existent trade, families divided, and people unable to travel for health care, study or work. Oxfam Italy said that by 2020 it will be practically impossible to live in Gaza due to the lack of electricity, the highest unemployment rate in the world and lack of access to basic essentials like food and clean water. The NGO is therefore asking the international community to put pressure on the Israeli government for an immediate end to the blockade on Gaza. PARIS - There is complete stalemate between the Israelis and the Palestinians, Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said at a Paris conference to relaunch the Mideast peace process Friday, calling for an international push to get the process back moving. Gentiloni reiterated that the two-State solution was the "only one possible" and said terrorism could feed on the "vacuum" created by the stalemate. Gentiloni stressed that "peace can only be achieved via direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but today these direct talks are in absolute stalemate, they're not going anywhere". Therefore, he said, "either there is an international push by the United States, Russia, the United Nations, Europe and the Arab world to resume this path, or limiting oneself to saying 'there must be direct negotiations between the two sides' only means acknowledging a stalemate that, I repeat, is very dangerous". He added: "I we lose what was achieved in Oslo 20 years ago, that is the idea of a two-State solution, I think it will be very difficult to make it up afterwards". Istanbul - An Amnesty International report said Friday that the EU's deal with Turkey to send back migrants should be scrapped because it is illegal. Refugees in Turkey are living in poverty with their rights violated and integration denied, it said, urging the EU to "immediately interrupt the plan under which asylum seekers are being sent back on the basis of the false claim that it is a safe country". John Dalhuisen, Amnesty director for Europe and central Asia, said: "The EU-Turkey accord is ill-considered and illegal". He said it was an "invention" that Turkey is able to respect refugees' rights. We owe Lampedusa debt of gratitude says Mattarella Rescued nine-month orphan 'necessarily Italian' says president (ANSAmed) - LAMPEDUSA, JUNE 3 - President Sergio Mattarella visited the Sicilian island of Lampedusa on Friday. The island in the Strait of Sicily lies closer to North Africa than to Italy, and is often the first landfall - along with the Greek island of Lesbos - for asylum seekers fleeing across the Mediterranean. "Italy and Europe owe a debt of gratitude to Lampedusa for the lives saved, for the aid extended, and for the hospitality given to migrants," Mattarella said. "Lampedusa is the gateway to Europe...it has exemplified Europe's best aspect to those who arrived and feel it is a second homeland". Mattarella also met with a policewoman who has been looking after an orphan nine-month-old baby girl who was rescued off an asylum seeker vessel and whose mother died during the crossing. "She is necessarily an Italian," the president said of the little girl, who arrived on Lampedusa on May 25 and is named Favour. Mattarella also presided at the opening of the first exhibition at Lampedusa's Museum of Trust and Dialogue for the Mediterranean, featuring dozens of works on loan from major museums. The Uffizi Galleries sent a Caravaggio painting in remembrance of Aylan, the three-year-old who died while fleeing the Syrian civil war and became a symbol for all refugee victims. The painting is of Sleeping Cupid, an angel in a deep sleep - a tribute not only to the little boy who washed up dead on a Turkish beach but to all the children who died, who were were born, and who were rescued during the perilous crossing to Europe. (ANSAmed). Once it has been established, four aircraft will overnight at the base to enhance operations. The base will cover catering, MRO and ground-handling services. "It's an ongoing process. Maybe in a few days there could be a good announcement," Mosallam told Arabian Aerospace on the sidelines of the IATA AGM in Dublin. "Until we finish negotiations we cannot announce." EgyptAir originally planned to order up to 70 aircraft in 2016, but re-assessed its needs following the bombing of Metrojet Flight 9268 in Sinai last October. Two subsequent incidents - the hijacking of EgyptAir Flight 181 in March and the crash of EgyptAir Flight 804 in May - heaped further pressure on the flag-carrier, tainting its reputation amid a wider downturn in travel to the country. An order for eight Boeing 737-800s was announced in December. Despite the challenges, Mosallam said the airline's ten-year plan to grow from about 70 to 120 aircraft remains on-track. "We already took the decision and we will stick with this plan,"he said. It is too early to know whether the recent safety incidents have impacted traffic at the flag-carrier, he added. "To say that there is a reduction in demand or an increase in demand takes time, but all Egyptians are supporting EgyptAir and there is no reduction in services until this moment. We are on normal operations." Mosallam conceded that charter operations to Sharm el Sheikh and Hurghada have suffered since the Metrojet bombing, but he said scheduled traffic appears to be "normal". EgyptAir is a predominantly a scheduled carrier, although subsidiary Air Cairo operates as a low-cost/charter hybrid. Asked about the investigation into the crash of Flight 804, the chief executive said it would be premature to draw any conclusions at this stage. He took aim at media reports suggesting that terrorism was the most likely cause. Within hours of the plane being lost, civil aviation minister Sherif Fathy had told a televised news conference that "the possibility ... of having a terror attack, it is higher than the possibility of having a technical [failure]". Egyptian authorities quickly accused journalists of taking the remarks out of context. "He didn't say that," Mosallam said, referring to the incident as an "accident" several times. "He said all the options are open - even the terrorist option. ... He didn't confirm that it is one option." The two are Sudan and Egypt. IATA also named Nigeria, Angola and Venezuela as being among the worst offenders. Air connectivity is vital to all economies. The airline industry is a competitive business operating on thin margins. So the efficient repatriation of revenues is critical for airlines to be able to play their role as a catalyst for economic activity. It is not reasonable to expect airlines to invest and operate in nations where they cannot efficiently collect payment for their services, said Tony Tyler, IATAs Director General and CEO. IATA monitors blocked funds globally, the sum of which exceeds $5 billion. The top two countries blocking the repatriation of airline funds are Venezuela and Nigeria. Blocked funds are a problem in a diverse group of countries, some of them undergoing significant economic challenges particularly with a fall-off in oil revenues. But one thing all five nations have in common is the urgent need for robust air connectivity that is being hampered by airlines difficulty in repatriating funds. Strong connectivity is an economic enabler and generates considerable economic and social benefits--something that struggling economies need more than ever. It is in everybodys interest to ensure that airlines are paid on-time, at fair exchange rates and in full, Tyler said. Top Five Countrys Blocking Repatriation of Airline Funds: Country US$ Months held Venezuela $3,780m 16 Nigeria $591m 7 Sudan $360m 4 Egypt. $291m 4 Angola $237m 7 The MoU extends their cooperation on the integration of 70mm Laser Guided Missile CIRIT on TIGER UHT helicopters. The ceremony was witnessed by officials from the Turkish Undersecretariat for Defence Industries. Le CBD, cette molecule active du cannabis a aujourdhui le vent en poupe. Et cela est en grande partie du au fait quil permet... YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. The Defense Ministry of Armenia says the situation remained calm in the Armenian-Azerbaijani state border. The Ministrys announcement reads: Overnight June 2-3 the Armenia-Azerbaijan border situation was calm. In the northeastern part of the border Azerbaijani forces once again opened sporadic fires from various caliber weapons. The Armenian Armed forces are operating according to usual daily routine. YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. The Investigative Committee of Armenia has identified the perpetrators of the June 2 armed robbery which took place on the Yerevan-Gyumri highway. According to preliminary investigation data, around 23:15, June 1, two cadets of the Military Institute of Armenia took a cab to Gyumri from Yerevan. At 00:05, June 2, near the Lanjik village, the cadets used knives to intimidate the driver, threatened his life and stole his golden ring, golden necklace, cash, and even his car. The driver was left behind unharmed. The Investigative Committee of Armenia launched an investigation, identified and apprehended both cadets. YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. The United States and Ukraine have signed an agreement on granting Kiev a third tranche of a guaranteed loan of $1 billion, the Ukrainian Finance Ministrys press service said, reports Sputnik News. On June 3, there was a signing of an agreement on providing a credit guarantee in the amount of $1 billion between the governments of Ukraine and the United StatesThanks to this agreement, Ukraine will receive additional possibilities to support and protect the more vulnerable strata of Ukrainians from the influence of economic factors", the press service said. On March 11, the IMF approved a four-year program of financial aid to Ukraine, which stipulates a $17.5 billion loan over the next four years. The Ukrainian government has to implement new economic policies for the IMF to disburse the funds. Best Finance Products and Services Would you like to submit an article in the Finance category or any of the sub-category below? Click here to submit your article. Would you like to have your product or service listed on this page? Contact us. Kicking off PrideFest this weekend is the 10 th Annual Candlelight Vigil honoring and celebrating all those who have fought for LGBTQI rights in Albuquerque and all over the world , particularly transgender people. Prior to the vigil, the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico will be marching to Morningside Park (where the first Pride March was held in 1976) from their offices (149 Jackson NE) at 6pm. The vigil at the park will begin when the TRCNM at 7:30 . (Megan Reneau) Commemorate and honor those the people who began this great LGBTIQ Pride movement in Albuquerque over the past 40 years while a celebrating diversity. Join us as we honor the people who began this great Pride movement in Albuquerque for our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer/questioning (LGBTIQ) community. This years Candlelight Vigil will be a remembrance of our past 40 years and a celebration of our diversity; creating a future in unity and love. Experience an evening of community, sharing and music. This is a free event where nearly 500 people gathered last year. Morningside Park is an important part of our local LGBTIQ history. This park is where the first Pride March in 1976 started and many Pride events took place. Here is the place where, before the advent of Internet and mobile communications, we came together to meet one another and to find out that we were not alone. The City of Albuquerque has honored our movement and our people by dedicating two metal art sculptures and presenting corresponding plaques. These sculptures and plaques are permanent to Morningside Park and have become the third place in our nation to commemorate the LGBTIQ movement. All the latest Ashbourne news. Ashbourne is an historic market town in Derbyshire. Situated on the southern edge of the Peak District, it is known as the 'Gateway to Dovedale' and the 'Gateway to the Peak District'. Ashbourne is famous for the annual Royal Shrovetide Football Match, which has been played since at least 1667, although its origins may date back centuries earlier. Ashbourne became a Fairtrade town in March 2005. The popular Tissington Trail, which follows the route of the former Ashbourne to Buxton railway, starts on the edge of town. Keep up to date with the latest news from the town by signing up for our newsletter. The Archbishop of Yangon celebrated the Jubilee for priests in St Marys Cathedral with clergymen from various dioceses. In a country hurting from poverty, exploitation, violence and disease, we bring "the message of Jesus Christ, which for a modern man [. . .] looks so impractical. Yangon (AsiaNews) As part of the celebrations for the Jubilee of Mercy, Card Charles Maung Bo, archbishop of Yangon, spoke last Wednesday in St Mary's Cathedral, in Yangon, at a service dedicated to priests. "Become the bread of mercy, broken and shared among all our brothers, he told the priests present who came from the Archdiocese as well as the dioceses of Pathein, Mawlamyine, and Hpane Pyay. In his homily, he urged them to start the revolution of mercy" brought by Christ. At the beginning of his speech, the cardinal mentioned US President Barack Obamas recent visit to Hiroshima, where the US leader thoughtfully noted that the bomb was the by-product of a scientific revolution. By contrast, "What we need today is a moral revolution. Yes, the year of Mercy is a year of moral revolution and the leader of this revolution is Jesus Christ." Looking at the history of mankind, he added, it seems that "hatred was born with us [. . .]. Open the Bible, and in the first five pages there's already blood. Not the blood of a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu or a Buddhist. After Cain and Abel, centuries of violence followed. Out of 5,000 years of recorded human history, we have had only 120 without war. Against this background of heinous crimes, "Christ appeared with his great message: Be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful to you. Pray for those you hate you and pray for those who persecute you. Forgive seventy times seven. For a modern man it looks so impractical, but Pope Francis has been showing us by his deeds how mercy is the core of the human identity. For the prelate, His identification with the poor, disfigured people, his visit to prisons, his welcoming refugees, his fellowship with sinners and those are at the margin: he is really the prophet of mercy and the world has been attracted once again to the message of mercy. As priests we are called upon to forgive, the cardinal said. In this season, we need to use the confessional as the field hospital as the pope says, of people wounded by sin. For all the religious I have only great respect for the works of mercy you are doing. You are involved with the poor, with the sick, with HIV people, with the rural and urban poor. You have seen poverty spread faster in democracy. You have seen our youth being trafficked. You have seen thousands of our children subjected to inhuman child labour. Be present among them. According to Card Bo, the work of mercy is not the prerogative of priests. " I call upon families to be the epicentre of mercy. To have a family at this time is a great challenge. But families need mercy more than ever. Hence, for husbands, be merciful to your wife, appreciate her hard work, do not magnify minor mistakes. Finally, speaking about his countrys plight, he said, Myanmar offers a thousand ways for us to become messengers of mercy. We have our poor, we have our slums, we have our sick people, we have our homeless people, we have our trafficked people. We have our youth without any future. Let us visit these people, [. . .] and Always remember: If you give a cup of water to a thirsty man in my name, you will merit the Kingdom of heaven." by NAT da Polis The Bundestag vote allows that German authorities of that time knew of the genocidal plans and did nothing to stop it. Historians tell us that the solution of the elimination of Armenians, Greeks and other minorities responded to the geopolitical demands of Western powers. For Angela Merkel, who was absent from the vote on the Armenian Genocide the "single fact" should not affect alliance between Ankara and Berlin. Istanbul (AsiaNews) - The German parliament has unanimously recognized the Armenian genocide 100 years ago under the Ottoman Empire, the same empire that the current Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan dreams of reviving. Chancellor Angela Merkel (engaged in a scientific conference); her deputy, the Social Democrat Sigmar Gabriel (who was also engaged in a congress of German manufacturers) and Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeir, on a mission to Argentina were absent from yesterdays vote. Several MPs and German authorities criticized their absence. Erdogan, who was traveling to Kenya, immediately reacted by recalling the Turkish ambassador to Berlin. It echoes Ankara's decision, when Pope Francis had condemned the Armenian genocide last year. Erdogan said that this decision is serious and will have repercussions in the bilateral relations between the two countries. In recent times within the European Union Berlin had promoted and supported significant political economic support to Ankara on the issue of emigration, an acceleration of its EU integration process, along with giving the green light to Ankara's request for the liberalization of visas for Turkish citizens in Europe. Binali Yildirim - the new Turkish prime minister who has replaced the recently exonerated Davutoglu, the theoretician behind Erdogans Turkish neo-Ottoman policy - spoke of serious historical mistake by the Bundenstag. The prime minister believes the German parliament was pressured into making the decision because of the racist pressures of the Armenian lobby, adding that the Turkish people are a proud people and that there is no fact of the past that "can force us to bow our heads." Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu intervened saying that "they cannot cover the faults of their own past [to Germany], throwing mud on the history of other countries, with the irresponsible decisions made by the parliament". The Turkish component of German society is beginning to have a very specific political weight, counting about 4 million, largely naturalized German. In the motion approved by the German parliament, express mention is made of a very important fact: the behavior of the then German Reich, which did nothing to stop the Armenian genocide, although it had full knowledge of the will of the then Turkish leaders . The Bundestag's position confirms the thesis, now discharged even by historical studies, that the Reich at that time with its various military advisers sent to Asia Minor (now Turkey), in support of the then Turkish ally, considered the Armenian element an obstacle to its geopolitical plans in the Middle East, while the Ottoman empire was in the process of disintegration. For this reason it preferred the quick solution of extermination, created by the Turkish rulers and perpetrated by the Kurds, on the back of a vague promise of a future autonomy. In the context of the geopolitical interests of the powerful of the time, the same later happened to the Greeks on the Black Sea and other Christian minorities. German Prime Minister Angela Merkel later commented on the vote: "The breadth of strategic ties between the two countries are far stronger than a single fact." Such a "single fact" would in this case be the Armenian genocide, which killed more than 1.5 million people. The convictions relate to the death of 69 Muslims in Ahmedabads Gulbard Society, victims of retaliation by Hindu extremists. The incident sparked three months of fierce violence, in which more than 1,000 Muslims died. Premier Modi has always been criticized for failing to stop the massacres. Ahmedabad (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Ahmedabad court has recognized the culpability of 24 people, including a local leader of the VHP (Hindu ultra-nationalist Vishwa Hindu Parishad), in one of the most violent episodes of the 2002 Gujarat massacres against Muslims. 36 people were however acquitted for lack of evidence. Activists and relatives of the victims have rejoiced at the verdict, but they have also stated that they will appeal against this "incomplete justice." The ruling was issued yesterday and the sentences are expected to be handed down next 6 June. Judge PB Desai upheld the charge of murder against only 11 of the 24 people found guilty, who now face the death penalty. The culprits are accused of having planned and carried out the attack on the residential complex of Gulbarg Society in the city of Ahmedabad, during which 69 Muslims were mutilated and burnt. The attack was in retaliation for a previous act of violence the day before carried out by some people of the Islamic faith. On February 27, 2002 in Godhra, a group of Hindus was assaulted by a group of Muslims aboard the Sabarmati Express train. The attack left 59 dead and sparked violence by Hindu fundamentalists. In the massacre of Gulbarg Society the politician Ehsan Jafri, at the time the leading member of Congress, also died. It is estimated that within three months more than 1000 Muslims were massacred in different cities of Gujarat. Prime minister Narendra Modi, who in 2002 was chief minister of the state, has been criticized for his failure to stem the violence. He was accused of conspiring in the fighting, not taking any action to stop them and not having instituted any investigations. Although in 2012 a court acquitted him of all charges, the criticisms are still alive today. Lee Cheuk-yan, secretary of the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, predicts as many people to take part in the vigil. Beforehand, Card Zen and Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Ha will lead a moment of prayer for Catholics. More and more Hong Kongers believe that it is their duty to fight for democracy in mainland China. Hong Kong (AsiaNews) Over 100,000 people will take part in the annual candlelight vigil in Victoria Park to commemorate the Tiananmen Square crackdown on 4 June, this according to Lee Cheuk-yan, secretary of the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China. Speaking about last weeks rally, Lee said the number of people 1,500 could not be used to predict how many would show up at the vigil, as the two events were different. A Catholic source told AsiaNews that the low turnout means very little. It was pouring rain, and for most people what counts is the Victoria Park vigil. Tomorrows rally will be held at 8 pm. Following established practice for 27 years, Catholics will gather at 7 pm to pray. Card Joseph Zen, Hong Kongs bishop emeritus, and Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Ha Chi-shing will address the gathering. Until then, memorial Masses will be celebrated for the victims of the massacre in the churches of the former British colony. This year, the decision of the Student Federation, one of the most active pro-democracy movement, not to take part in the rallys organisation has proven controversial. For the students, fighting for democracy in mainland China is futile; instead, they want to carry on a separate battle for Hong Kongs independence. Speaking on a radio programme, Lee said that the students decision will be duly noticed but Hong Kongers participation in the 1989 pro-democracy movement on the mainland was an important part of local history as well as Hong Kong identity. A recent survey by Hong Kong 01 shows that the pro-democracy movement has the support of the population, especially among young people between 18 and 29, who believe that Hong Kong must get Beijing to admit its responsibility in the massacre, For 78 per cent of respondents, it is "necessary and important" to make that acknowledgment. Among 18-to-29, 68.2 per cent said that it is also their duty to see China become democratic. Among all respondents, only 32 per cent believe that in the next three years, the human rights situation in the country will improve. Veteran China watcher Johnny Lau Yui-siu said Hong Kongers held a grim view on human rights prospects in the mainland because of its tough and disappointing policies. Since President Xi Jinping took office, many people believe that China has been backsliding on human rights . . . especially after it made a law on internet safety and amended its national security law, Lau said. Indeed, the frequent use of large protest banners in symbolic places at sensitive moments highlights Hong Kongers disappointment with Chinese rule. After Beijings third most important leader Zhang Dejiang was recently welcomed in Hong Kong in such a way, a white banner bearing the words Never Forget June 4, See You in Victoria Park appeared on a slope in Kowloon on Friday morning. Within an hour, firefighters had it removed. by Mathias Hariyadi Jakarta (AsiaNews) - The Pancasila "is the nation's iconic platform that encourages the unity of Indonesians - despite the various differences of ethnicity, language, culture, religion - and the value of Indonesia as a country. It is thanks to the Pancasila that everyone can live in peace". With these words Msgr. Suharyo, Archbishop of Jakarta, welcomed the government's decision to make June 1, the anniversary of the drafting of the "five pillars" of the secular Constitution, national holiday. Already in the weeks before President Joko Widodos announcement, the Church had launched a special prayer campaign among all Indonesian faithful, to strengthen national unity. The program, called "How to apply the Pancasila", will last for five years. A "white and red rosary" was distributed and prayed in all parishes, in homage to the colors of the flag. On June 1st thousands of faithful attended the Mass in the Jakarta Cathedral. Fr. Harry Sulistyo, head of the Archdiocese communications office said that 65 parishes of the district held Masses to pray for national unity. Speaking to the faithful gathered in the church, Msgr. Suharyo urged the community to return to the historical and philosophical-political reasoning that led to the birth of the nation on August 17, 1945 according to the principles of Pancasila. These five pillars are: belief in one God; justice and human civilization; unity of Indonesia; democracy guided by wisdom; social justice. They are included as a preamble to the Constitution, forcefully desired by the first president Sukarno. June1st was made a national holiday in the 1970s at the behest of Suharto (1967-1998), who wanted to boost the patriotic spirit of the younger generation. The children celebrated the day at school, with the hoisting of the flag and the singing of the national anthem "Indonesia Raya" (Great Indonesia). After more than 30 years, Joko Widodo announced that from 2017 the date will again be celebrated. According to many analysts, this choice reveals the will of the President to latch on to the figure of Sukarno, the first president and "creator" of Pancasila. by Alexandria Caputo The safest country in the region, its youth consider the Islamic state as the biggest obstacle. Its ruler, Sultan Qaboos has encouraged infrastructural development and education, creating an environment resistant to radicalism. The country plays the role of mediator in local and international crises. Courtesy of the Jamestown Foundation. Muscat (AsiaNews) Omani youth, according to one recent poll, see the ideology of Islamic State (IS) as the largest obstacle facing their Gulf nation (Times of Oman, April 16). The survey, conducted by international polling firm Penn Schoen Berland, found that young Omanis and indeed many Arab youth across the Middle East are far from open to the violent organization that has increasingly exploited vulnerable populations on a global scale. Despite the fears of IS violent ideology, peaceful Oman scored a zero on the on the 2015 Global Terrorism Index (GTI), a survey that looks at four indicators: the total number of terror incidents, fatalities caused by terrorists, injuries produced, and the measure of total property damage from terrorist incidents within a given year (Institute for Economics and Peace, 2015). Qatar was the only other Gulf nation to score similarly. The GTI, however, makes no determination of how many people have been radicalized and recruited to militant causes within a state. Qatar has seen at least 15 of its nationals joined IS, leaving Oman as the Gulf States safest nation (Gulf News, November 2015). This article looks at the reasons for Omans success and asks if the oft-overlooked Gulf State can, under Sultan Qaboos bin Said, serve as a counter-terrorism model for other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Modernization Drive Sultan Qaboos came to power in 1970 in a British-backed coup. His rise ushered in what has been described as Omans modern era (IBT, November 28, 2015). Prior to this, Omans southern Dhofar Governorate had adopted the Marxist-style ideologies of South Yemen, but Qaboos takeover took the country in another direction. He worked to modernize the nation. He bolstered the countrys infrastructure and tackled the under-development, poverty, and ethnic divisions that had existed under his father, Said bin Taimur, eroding the conditions that might have allowed radicalization to find purchase. The education sector was reformed and properly funded, and the countrys then-separate northern and southern regions were brought together and sealed under the Sultanate of Oman (Country Studies, 1993). Such reforms have created an environment where it is tough for radicals to take hold, despite the presence of militant groups in neighboring Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Despite economic and structural reforms, Oman remains a socially conservative nation, whose citizens strive to protect their values and traditions in marriage and religious practice. Nonetheless, Omanis expect equal treatment and pay, regardless of gender. State interference in citizens lives is limited, particularly in terms of employment and expression of faith, in contrast to, for example, the mutaween of Saudi Arabia. The Omani government does not record statistics regarding the religious practice of it population, although in this case noninterventionism in the personal affairs of citizens appears to arise largely a result of a lack of interest (Gulf State Analytics, June 17, 2015). The Ibadi Influence The dominant school of Islam in Oman is Ibadism, an Islamic religious philosophy that predates both the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam and is known for its tolerance of other faiths. Sunni and Shia minorities exist in Oman without the tension seen in other Middle Eastern and North African nations (Gulf State Analytics, June 17, 2015). As a 75 percent majority population, the Ibadi faith and teachings has affected the formation of law, ranging from forbidding proselytization to moderating the application of the death penalty. Ibadism is also reflected in Omans foreign policy, giving the country a distinctively tolerant position on the global stage. As a result of the Ibadi tradition, Oman works to prevent radicalization by promoting freedom of thought and belief, although this remains marred by social pressures and state censorship of the media (The US-Middle East Youth Network, March 18). Opinions on God and the government, and Sultan Qaboos in particular, remain taboo subjects to criticize since such views can be seen as aggressive (Human Rights Watch, 2016). This month an Omani journalist was arrested for expressing his political beliefs, sparking debate over the Sultanates real views on freedom of speech (Gulf News, May 13). Anti-Terrorism Laws Despite a high degree of tolerance for religious expression, Oman has put in place robust anti-terrorism legislation. In April, the Shura Council approved amendments to the Anti-Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism Acts, which target money laundering and the financing of terrorism (Gulf News, April 4). The move is an attempt to confront terrorist activity at a grassroots level, tackling financiers of criminal activity and bolstering the ability of law enforcement to track down offenders. Heavier penalties and longer jail sentences have also been put in placed under the amendments (Gulf News, April 4). With violent radical groups harbored in neighboring countries, Oman is also concerned with the protection of its own borders. The crisis in Yemen, however, demonstrates that the Omani leadership would prefer to act as a mediator than institute military force. Oman is the only GCC nation that has yet to join the Saudi coalition in Yemen. Instead, it has taken a role in critical negotiations between the Yemeni government and rebel forces, as well as talks between the United States and representatives of Yemens Houthis. The Sultanate has even brokered the release of hostages held in the country (Al Arabiya, May 23). While Oman is not a proponent of hard power on the international stage, its diplomats continue to play a role in counterterrorism in the international arena. This was affirmed recently by the Sultanates presence at an international conference on the subject in Geneva last month (Time of Oman, April 10). Stable Foundations Despite being situated in a conflict-prone region, Oman, through persistent initiatives to bolster education, boost societal development and maintain in the integrity of its borders, has avoided terrorist attacks and the radicalization of its nationals. Modernizing efforts have helped meet the populations social and economic needs without uprooting Omanis from their culture and heritage. Non-interventionist foreign and domestic policies are at the forefront of Omans security policies. It has forged a position as a mediator, not only for the GCC but for Western nations as well, recently hosting talks between American and Iranian officials in relation to the Iran nuclear deal (Al Monitor, April 29). While not every nation can effectively play the role Oman has carved for itself, Omans success in maintaining domestic stability in a troubled region should make other Gulf nations take note. (Courtesy of the Jamestown Foundation) by Nirmala Carvalho Islamic marriages are governed by a 1937 law adopted under British rule, which applies to marriage, divorce, inheritance, and property. Women are discriminated against and exploited. The Indian Constitution calls for a uniform civil code, but the power lies with parliament. New Delhi (AsiaNews) About 50,000 Muslim women have petitioned the National Commission for Women and asked the Indian Supreme Court to declare unconstitutional the triple talaq, or Islamic repudiation. Muslim women complain that the archaic marriage system leaves them at the mercy of their husbands, who can repudiate them by simply saying Talaq (I divorce you) three times, thus freeing themselves from any marital obligations. Some Islamic scholars have denounced the practice, which discriminates against women and exposes them to exploitation. The Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (Indian Muslim Women's Movement, BMMA), which spearheaded the petition, is against instant divorces. This practice is commonplace among Muslims. By uttering the word talas three times, men can end their marriage. India is one of the few countries in the world where Islamic law still governs marriage among Muslims. Even Islamic countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh have abolished the practice. Indias current Islamic marriage legislation is based on the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act of 1937, which was adopted under British rule. This law governs all issues relating to womens marriage, divorce, succession, inheritance, and personal property. Approved to protect Islamic cultural tradition, the law has provided justification for discriminatory practices. For many Muslim women, verbal divorce is abusive. Nowadays, it can even be delivered via text messages or in the mail. This is what happened to 25-year-old Afreen Rehman, who received her husbands divorce declaration by priority mail. Other women have similar stories, many posted on social media, some dreading divorce by WhatsApp. Marriage law in India is very complex with many different rules. The Indian Constitution provides for different civil codes to protect the countrys various religious communities. Under Article 44 of the Constitution, The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India. However, this leaves a lot of leeway to the various communities. Women have now challenged the article because of its vagueness, demanding greater dignity and respect for their rights. A woman who was repudiates after having her second child brought the case to the Supreme Court. Her case is bound to last a long time because the justices, whilst acknowledging the injustice of her situation, referred the matter to parliament, deeming it a legislative prerogative. Implementing Article 44 was part of Prime Minister Narendra Modis election platform. During the campaign he pledged to act on the matter. Beijing (AsiaNews) - Arrests, "forced vacations", obsessive controls on the internet and in real life. Dissidents and democratic activists from across China are being subjected to the excessive controls by the communist authorities that characterize the lead up to politically sensitive anniversaries. June 4 it is one of the most sensitive: the memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre, which occurred 27 years ago. Amid attempts to silence any memories of it until it fades away. Guangdong activist Bu Yongzhu, denounces: "Our young people and future generations know very little of the events of 1989. They must face the 'Great Firewall' [the" wall "of the Chinese online censorship ed] before they can read what happened in Tiananmen square. It's a sensitive topic, but I wanted to commemorate it, because if we don't, maybe young people, or future generations, will forget about it altogether. And if memory fades, it will have been useless". On the night between 3 and 4 June 1989, the Chinese army "Peoples Liberation" put an end to the movement of about one million students and workers who for over a month occupied Tiananmen Square to demand more democracy and less corruption among members of the Chinese Communist Party. According to best estimates, between 200 and 2 thousand people were killed by gunfire or crushed by army tanks; tens of thousands arrested in the following days and condemned as "counter-revolutionaries" because they were threatening the hegemony of the party. From that day on a silent internal battle has begun between the authorities who want to forget what happened and a large group who instead carries the memory of the movement. One of the fixed appointments over the years is the one with the "Tiananmen Mothers" group, which brings together the families of the victims of Tiananmen, which every on June 1 publishes an open letter asking for the truth, punishment for perpetrators and compensation. Because of the almost complete gag imposed by the authorities on the issue, the manner in which the Democrats remember 1989 often changes and become more imaginative. This is the case of Qi Zhiyong, Li Xiaoling, Jiang Jianjun and Wang Fulei: the four wore t-shirts that read "June 4th. Never forget "and got close enough to Tiananmen Square to take photographs. In addition to the slogan, they wrote: "When the government fears the people, then comes the tyranny." Even if you are not able to access the "political heart" of Beijing, given the imposing security cordon set up in view of the anniversary, they managed to get close enough to take pictures. Qi is a survivor: his legs were crushed by a tank on the night of June 3, and he is now crippled. Speaking to Radio Free Asia says: "Now I am under surveillance, because my health does not allow me to 'go on vacation' as requested by the State. The police put me under investigation". In the company of security agents Bao Tong and Gao Yu, two of the most critical voices of the current government, have gone on vacation. The first was personal secretary and friend of Zhao Ziyiang, communist secretary at the time of repression, and who along with his superior, took to the streets to beg the young people to leave before the arrival of the soldiers. The second is one of the most famous Chinese political journalists admired worldwide. Both were taken away. The authorities in the southwestern province of Sichuan also arrested a "the tea master" Fu Hailu and the poet Ma Qing, who tried to sell a new liqueur called "June 4, 1989". The two wrote on the label: "Never forget, never surrender" and drew a man sitting in front of advancing tanks. The liquor, always reads the label, "has aged 27 years." The Saudi led Arab coalition fighting in the country included among the black list of countries that violate children's rights. According to the United Nations 785 children have died in the conflict in Yemen, 60% because of Riyadhs air raids. Houthi rebels have recruited 72% of the 762 child soldiers. Sanaa (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Saudi led Arab coalition has been included on the UN blacklist of nations that violate children's rights. The secretary general of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon made the announcement yesterday, accusing Riyadh - and its allies - for the death of hundreds of children. The Shiite rebels, who control the Yemeni capital Sanaa, are also responsible for violence, as is clear from the annual UN report on the fate of children affected by armed conflicts in 14 countries in the world in 2015. Leila Zerrougui, the UN special representative for children and armed conflict, said that "in many cases of conflict, the airstrikes have helped to create a complex environment, where many children were killed or injured." The situation in Yemen, added the United Nations official, has proved "particularly worrying, with a five-fold increase in the number of children recruited [to take part in the fighting] and six times in respect of children killed or injured, compared to 2014" . According to the UN report the Saudi-led coalition engaged in the conflict are responsible for 60% of the 785 children killed and 1168 injured in 2015 in Yemen. In addition, out of about 762 cases of child soldiers recruited in the fighting, 72% is attributable to the Houthi rebels, 15% to government forces and 9% is the work of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqpa). In January 2015, Yemen plunged into a brutal civil conflict opposing the countrys Sunni leadership, backed by Saudi Arabia, and Shia Houthi rebels, close to Iran. In March 2015, a Saudi-led coalition launched air strikes against the rebels in an attempt to free the capital For Saudi Arabia, the Houthis, who are allied to forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, are militarily supported by Iran, a charge the latter angrily rejects. Groups linked to al Qaeda and jihadist militias linked to the Islamic State group are active in the country, which adds to the spiral of violence and terror. According to sources of the World Health Organization (WHO) at least 6,400 people have been killed in the war; for the United Nations there is a strong risk of "humanitarian catastrophe" in Yemen. King & Wood Mallesons has advised Brookfield on the $1.3bn Wynyard Place project. The successful unsolicited proposal has taken more than 10 years to complete and will deliver a 27 storey office tower, including 74,000 square metres of commercial, retail and restaurant space, integrating Sydneys light rail project. This has provided a stimulus for major infrastructure development and urban renewal projects that have been designed to meet demand for greater connectivity both within and between cities, lead partner Felicity Savage told Australasian Lawyer. The development will provide major improvements for the public in the form of a new entrance to Wynyard Station from George Street and connecting the station with George Street and the new Light Rail line. Savage predicts a strong outlook for the property and real estate sector for the next 12 month period, saying capital flowing into the Australian market from Asia will keep the sector steady. A renewed commitment by government, at both Federal and State levels, to develop world class infrastructure to support the growth of Australias gateway cities, is a sign of strength, she said. Another pillar has been the steady increase in the amount of foreign flowing capital into Australias real estate markets, particularly from Asia. Record levels of foreign investment in Australian real estate in 2015 have resulted in demand for Australian real estate assets remaining strong. International human rights lawyer Amal Clooney and high-profile Kiwi lawyer Mai Chen have been announced as the keynote speakers at this years Women World Changers conference in Sydney and Melbourne in October. This premier summit, designed to drive a dialogue focused on the importance for greater workplace diversity and equality, features a line-up of speakers never seen before on one stage, a statement said. The event is designed to drive a dialogue about workplace diversity and equality. Clooney, an Oxford-educated barrister, frequently advises governments on international law. She is a visiting professor at Columbia Law School where she teaches Human Rights and is the author of a soon to be released book on the subject, Scout reported. She has worked on a number of milestone cases including former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Canadian Al-Jazeera journalist Mohamed Fahmy, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed. She will encourage women to push themselves and put themvelves forward to take on difficult and challenging jobs in non-traditional careers, a spokesperson for the conference told Womens Day. Chen, the inaugural chair of NZ Global Women which includes the top 200 women lawyers in New Zealand, founded the NZ Asian Leaders, which connects business leaders with New Zealand companies doing business in Asia. She is a constitutional and administrative law expert and managing partner at firm Chen Palmer, is also an author and professor at the University Of Auckland School Of Law. Clooney and Chen will be joined by a panel of accomplished women at the events. A High Court judge in the UK has taken a leave of absence after he sent a barristers chambers a letter that implied he would do them over. Justice Peter Smith was the subject of an investigation by the judicial watchdog last year after he hijacked a 3 billion British Airways case to rant about his lost luggage, calling himself the victim after his luggage wasnt loaded onto his flight home from a holiday in Florence, Roll on Friday reported. Raising the lost luggage over 40 times during the tantrum, Smith asked John Turner QC, counsel for British Airways, Right, Mr Turner, here is a question for you. What happened to [the] luggage? Leaked transcripts reveal that Turner doesnt want to get involve in the lost luggage at the hearing when the judge persists and then finally, Smith said: In that case, do you want me to order your chief executive to appear before me today? British Airways asked Smith to recuse himself from the long-running competition case after he disclosed that he was engaged in a personal dispute with the airline. In an article published in the times last month, Lord Pannick QC, of Blackstone Chambers, criticised Smiths behaviour in the case. How we laughed. But the case raises serious issues about judicial conduct that need urgent consideration by the lord chief justice, the article said. In response, Smith sent a letter to Anthony Peto QC, the head of Blackstone Chambers, saying the article has caused me a lot of grief and trouble and that Pannicks opinion is not worth the paper it is printed on. Continuing his spat, he vows to no longer support barristers from the chambers in their applications to become Silks as he has done in the past. I will no longer support your chambers, he wrote. I do not wish to be associated with Chambers that have people like Pannick in it. The letter came to light when Smith ruled against a Saudi prince Blackstone was representing in a case before the High Court. The prince then accused the judge of ruling against him as revenge for the article and is now seeking to have Smiths decision quashed in the Court of Appeal, where Lorde Gabiner QC has said Smiths letter is evidence of possible bias. Smith is understood to not be hearing cases. Following an issue that has arisen during civil proceedings, Mr Justice Peter Smith has agreed to refrain from sitting until those civil proceedings are resolved, a spokesperson from the Judicial Office said. By Peter Roger Alsop, Research and RHD Coordinator & Lecturer in Sound, Production, Lecturer in Interactive Art Media, VCA., Univer Flickr/cornishdave, CC BY-NC-ND The latest in our Computing turns 60 series, to mark the 60th anniversary of the first computer in an Australian university, looks at how the emerging technology helped unleash the imagination of creative artists. The greatest tool of artists is their imagination but it is limited by their knowledge (try imagining something you dont know). But the diversity computing offers may address this problem. For the creative artist, computers supply three basic tools: access to information, software, and new ways to interact. In 1945, the American engineer and inventor Vannevar Bush predicted a world where: [] all forms of intelligence whether of sound or sight, have been reduced to the form of varying currents in an electric circuit in order that they may be transmitted. Now, information at the click of a finger can expand the artists imagination, letting them know about the existence of things they may never have found. In 1949, Australia got CSIRAC, its first computer, and in 1951 it played the worlds first computer music, preceding the first computer image by five years. Computer animation followed in the 1960s (see video, above) and computer music developed apace. Over the past 60 years, the creative capacity and availability of computers has developed faster than any other creative tool in history. This has had three main effects: anyone with the right software can be creative; the tool is constantly evolving; and it is difficult to develop tradition or generational history, as aesthetic and conceptual paradigms are constantly subverted by the newest tools. Software In the arts, computers have a variety of uses, based on software, that range from implementing the artists ideas to creating ideas. Adobe, Avid and word processing software suites represent the artists ideas. While they offer convenient ways to test ideas, they mostly implement the artists imagination, and are based on pre-computer processes. OneManBand and Band-in-a-Box help make artworks using generative algorithms that semi-independently create, based on the artists input therefore contributing to the creative outcome. AARON and Experiments in Musical Intelligence extend this by independently creating new artworks based on historic approaches and/or the artists input. These tools collaborate under the artists instruction. Nodal, Bloom, Silk and Context Free offer new ways of seeing, and generating artworks. Max and PureData integrate audio and vision, and programming languages such as Processing and Python allow artists to create bespoke expressive tools. These generative tools are often used as creative, albeit somewhat independent, collaborators in art making. Open source- and FLOSS-based (meaning free software and open source software) approaches offer tools artists can make and remake themselves or with help from a large, collaborative community. Computing is used extensively for scheduling sound and visual effects in the performing arts, often created in the programs above. 3D animation programs are used in visualising choreography or blocking in drama performances, but are rarely used to generate new creative outcomes, Merce Cunningham being an occasional exception. But it is possible to computer-generate cohesive text (follow the link this application) that can be used in developing work. This list is cursory, indicating the main approaches to computers in the arts. These may merge at their edges, and by being responsive, contributory, or generative, range from proto/mesa-creative to meta-creative tools. Interaction Computers can blend things that may not have any obvious relationships, and can make real things not thought of, or thought possible, such as using sound to track share trades. The artist may experience what was previously unimaginable, and be able to share it with their audience. The potential diversity of expression through computer programs and processes available puts the artist in an enviable position. Current computer systems also make it possible for the audience to co-create the experience of an artwork, more than ever before, creating works the artist may not have imagined. Computer creativity is very diverse. Computer-generated Rembrandt, fractal art and mathematical art are examples of meta-creative computers making beautiful and fascinating images, indicating new ways to understand Jackson Pollocks work. Similar processes have been used in the creation of music and images in many styles. Machines that imagine can provide a process for completely original outcomes with minimal human contribution. To stand out, the human artist must be more creative, diversified and willing to take aesthetic and intellectual risks. They can, and must, know the field they are creating in practically and philosophically, and confidence in their position and contribution to it is essential. Their work is seen in an almost infinite universal context. Comparisons are easily drawn, and their field is in constant flux. Uniqueness is almost impossible, yet novelty is anticipated and valued. Computer systems offer ways to create but can retard creativity. Many artists believe that the next tool will improve their art; this is particularly problematic in music. But while new immersive technologies such as the Hololens or RoomAlive offer new tools, they also require new ways of considering art thinking and art making. Artists inhabit a most fertile time, with new possibilities crowding the horizon. They should, as always, use that fertility to enhance culture and society. Roger Alsop receives funding from Melbourne Univesity. He is affiliated with Melbourne University and Box Hill Institute. Originally published in The Conversation. As the issue of immigration continues to be a point of discussion around the world, the head of Australia's Department of Immigration and Border Protection has looked at how the country's mission has changed to cope with the 21st century.A year on from when the former immigration department and was merged with the Customs Service and the Australian Border Force was created, DIBP secretary Michael Pezzullo said issues are very different from when the department's mission was to focus on permanent migration and settlement after the second world war."Strong borders underpin more open global economic linkages and social cohesion and trust. If a community has high levels of confidence in the security of its borders and reasonable assurance about who and what is entering and leaving its territory, then its willingness to engage in the processes of globalisation, and therefore the benefits of globalisation, is heightened," he told an international conference in Melbourne."In those days, the exclusive focus of the former Department was on permanent migration and settlement after Australia had decided to embark on the remarkable post-war programme of nation building. The former Department undertook all of the relevant functions that were required to fulfil this mandate such as migrant selection and travel facilitation, housing, language training, employment readiness and cultural orientation," he explained."Everything was done to settle-in the New Australians as we were called in the post-war years, although sometimes the names that we were called on the streets, in school yards and on sporting fields were rather more pungent and colourful," he pointed out."Today the focus of the Department has long moved on to other areas of migration and mobility, which have long dwarfed the permanent migration function in areas such as temporary skills based migration programme, tourism and visitation, international students and working holiday programmes," said Pezzullo."While we should appreciate and indeed celebrate our history which, in our case, stretches back seven successful decades, history can also become a trap if its blinds you to the present, and more importantly, blinds you to the future. This is the trap of sentimentality, which seeks to create the comfort of yesteryear in the face of today's challenges," he added.He told the audience that in the 21st century the Department has to deal with very high volumes, at massive scale and at high tempo and he gave an idea of the workload. By the end of June, for example, the Department will deliver up to 190,000 places as part of the permanent migration programme and 13,750 visas under the regular permanent Refugee and Humanitarian Programme.It will grant 7.6 million temporary visas, including 4.6 million visitor visas, 1.9 million special category (NZ) visas, 345,000 air and sea crew and transit visas, 300,000 student visas, 213,000 temporary resident visas including 84,500 skilled labour visas and 217,000 working holiday maker visas.On top of this it will confer Australian citizenship on 140,000 people, process more than 40 million international air and sea travellers and manage around 2.5 million client interactions, inclusive of call centre inquires.Looking ahead Pezzullo said that the aim is to seek to build ever less intrusive, more seamless and faster processing processes and systems for the legitimate and law-abiding majority of travellers and traders. This will mean automated departure and arrival gates at airports."As we look to the future, we need to reimagine and redevelop Australia's visa and citizenship systems, by reducing overlapping visa pathways, deregulating visa requirements, cutting red tape for businesses and clients, using technology to improve the application process, and incorporating new policies that are set by governments to attract skilled individuals who will assist to meet Australia's future labour market needs, or who will study here or who will visit us, with hopefully an intention to return at some point in time," he explained."To prepare itself for the challenges of the 21st century and manage the growing volumes of people and goods crossing our borders, we have to focus on improving our core capabilities, systems and processes, particularly with regards to intelligence, data analytics, biometrics and visa processing," he added. shanx1996 said: Thanks! Do you know if it's hard to become a sponsor, My fiance has a good job but he doesn't have a lot of savings because it will be going to rent, plane tickets, visa fees and credit card repayment? Click to expand... I was the opposite. No job, as i was staying in her country for some time, but i had savings.I assume you would just need to prove you can support the applicant by one or the other, or a combination of both. Hi all I have just picked up our marriage certificate today but realised my mother's first name was spelt wrong (should have been Nelva, not Melva) We are just going to apply for my wife's 820 visa (partner visa as we got married two weeks ago) this weekend. But I'm worry if the wrong mother's name will have affect on applying for 820 visa? Thank you in advance TDI kW This means that over 800,000 cars that feature that engine and are therefore illegal will be recalled in the following months. Owners should start receiving official letters from Volkswagen concerning the matter in the following days.The 2.0version of the EA 189 engine can be found in various Volkswagen models, including the Passat CC and the recently discontinued Eos convertible.The launch of the retrofit campaign for the Passat, CC and Eos models involves a large number of cars that will now be recalled to the workshops. I am pleased that the retrofitting of over 800,000 of our customers' cars can now begin. Our dealerships and service partners are well prepared for the campaign. said Jurgen Stackmann, member of the Board of Management of the Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand responsible for Sales, Marketing and After-Sales.Three power output versions of the mentioned 2.0 TDI engine are affected: the 81(110 PS), 100 kW (136 PS) and 103 kW (140 PS). Apparently, all German TDI owners that are affected have already been sent a letter agreed with the KBA, which informed them that their vehicles will be part of a retrofit campaign.Now that the KBA has approved VW's latest fix, the ones with the power outputs mentioned above will receive a second letter that will ask them to make an appointment with an authorized Volkswagen service of their own choice.While a recall campaign for the smaller, 1.2 TDI EA 189 engined vehicles, was supposed to start in the second quarter of 2016, it will now be delayed, since VW's fix for those hasn't been yet approved by the KBA yet. Other models fitted with affected 2.0 TDI engines are also waiting for a retrofit kit to be approved by the German regulator. As some of you already know, the Wolfsburg carmaker has only managed to fix approximately 50,000 cars affected by the Dieselgate cheating scheme in Europe so far, so it may take a while to repair approximately 8.5 million vehicles. Sure, such a Prancing Horse might just make Enzo roll in his grave, but, truth be told, such custom incarnations of the now-retired V8 Fezza aren't as special as they used to be one or two years ago.You see, it's all a bit like the let's-grow-a-beard trend that has dominated men's faces over the last few years - the first who do it might be weird, with some extra people jumping the bandwagon making the whole deal look cool. However, as more and more guys follow the trend, this slowly but steadily becomes a normal one, so its followers are no longer special.Translated into 458 language, strapping a Liberty Walk widebody kit to your Italia has almost become the norm for owners who want to stand out these days. And the same goes for custom exhaust hardware, such as the Novitec goodies we can see here.Nowadays, if you want to stay ahead of the other you'll have to come up with an insane wrap and maybe go for yellow headlights that remind the world of the 458 racecar - here's a street car that serves as an example Don't get us wrong, installing a Liberty Walk kit is no easy task. For one thing, you'll have to cut into the fenders of your precious Ferrari in order to add those custom elements.And it's interesting to observe how different the... afterlives of the 458 and the Gallardo are. While the Ferrari follows the path mentioned above, if we had to name a pattern for the Lamborghini, we'd probably talk about all those twin-turbo examples that pack anywhere between 800 and 1,500 hp and come with stock, or near-stock exteriors.However, make sure you check out the all-custom 458 Italia discussed here in the video below. Every car enthusiast fears the day when he/she will have a large family and ultimately will have to drive the dreaded MPV. A brick-shaped car with tiny wheels, large spongy seats and the occasional smell of baby puke coming from the back seats. Whod like to be seen driving such a thing? Well, theres hope for you, as the second generation Citroen C4 Picasso is here to at least make you look like the most stylish mom or dad around because this thing redefines the segment. The original egg shape got squared a bit, but the 2016 Citroen C4 Picasso still manages to turn heads with its alien(ish) design. The seats wear a modern design, are comfortable on the long run and offer decent side support. ISOFIX ABS HP HDi Driving on twisty secondary roads is a pleasure thanks to the fantastic view of the scenery you get from all those windows. MPV Depending on where you live, you can get the new Citroen C4 Picasso in up to four or five trim levels. The Picasso nameplate came around in 1999, when Citroen introduced the brand new Xsara Picasso, and even back then the car was quite an odd thing to drive.An egg-shaped vehicle with five individual seats, more windows than a cable-car, folding tables for the rear passengers and a digital instrument cluster sitting in the middle and on top of a dashboard the size of a bar counter. Kind of ugly-looking for your average Joe, but very stylish for someone who knows a thing or two about design and fashion.It pretty much remained like that up until 2007, when it got completely overhauled and rebadged as a C4 Picasso. It also received a sharper design and more technology. Then, in 2013, it got changed again to put it in line with Citroens latest design language and in 2015 it received more tech and upgraded engines.The front of the car is dominated by a large hexagonal lower grille and two chromed lines sticking out from the chevron badge towards the corners, along with two LED strips on each side acting both as daytime running lights and indicators. Another interesting thing to note here is the large panoramic windscreen, which arches up over the head of the front row passengers, a carryover from the previous generation.On the sides, the new C4 Picasso still has four individual windows to offer excellent visibility. A chromed C-shaped element embraces them from the D-pillar onwards while a deep carving in the doors and intricately-cut alloy rims provide a more refined and modern look.Arriving at the rear section, youll notice the exhaust is hidden away, not to mess with the smooth lines, and that theres a massive hatch with a very low loading area, perfect for large boxes and heavy things. LED taillights are offered on high-end trim levels and, thanks to their unique geometry, their tiny little dots appear to be repeating infinitely.All in all, the new Citroen C4 Picasso looks modern and high-tech, despite its moderate price as youll see later. And all this new-age design is even better on the inside, where youll spend most of the time.Somehow, the French designers made sure the driver feels like commanding a futuristic airship instead of a family car. As soon as you step in, youre welcomed by an asymmetric dashboard with lines that are being smoothly continued onto the door cards, embracing and making you feel snug and secure.Then you got the massive 12-inch TFT display on the top of the dashboard, which shows you key parameters and functions in clear, sharp graphics and is also customizable, having three layouts and even wallpapers to choose from. A smaller touchscreen display sits lower on the dash, within hand reach, and allows control over functions like air conditioning, infotainment and driver assist systems.The steering wheel is another air-ship-feel inducing element by having its bottom flatten while also being decorated with polished chrome inserts on each side. It also comes with shortcut buttons for the radio, cruise control, and phone connectivity, all being nicely designed, flat and having a touch-friendly texture.Rear passengers will also feel like flying business class thanks to generous leg room, separate air vents, individual reclining seats, a perfectly flat floor and trays folding down from the rear seats. I doubt your kids will feel spoiled by that, but at least, they have a place to put their tablets or whatever tech gizmos they play with nowadays.Speaking of storage space, remember the previous model with the dashboard having two top lids that shielded extra room for your stuff to go in? Well, thanks to the asymmetry here they are gone and you only get a small glovebox, which is even smaller on the right-hand drive models because the engineers were too lazy to replace the fuse box over to the other side.To somehow compensate this, theres a small lid on the center under the dash, guarding all the connectivity ports and another cubby hole. Once folded down to reveal the storage compartment, the actual cover is soft padded and even has a rectangular indent in it so you can place your phone there.The door storage space is suitable for small bottles, and the hidden trap compartments under the front seats and those in the floor under the rear occupants feet are still on the menu, thankfully. An extra storage compartment is located in the center console between the front seats, and is surprisingly big. You could easily store a suppressed MAC 10 and two ammo clips in there if the car would be sold in the U.S.The front ones come with individually adjustable armrests, internal heating and even massage on high trim levels.Further at the back, the trunk floor is flush with the loading edge making it easy to put your luggage and bulky stuff in. It offers 537 liters (19 cu ft) of useful space which could be extended to 630 liters (22,2 cu ft) if the rear seats are pushed forward, or up to 1,709 (60,3 cu ft) if you fold them down and form a flat floor. All these say the C4 Picasso is the most spacious in its class, even with all the seats in place.With a 5-star Euro NCAP rating safety wasnt left aside and the 2016 C4 Picasso comes with a lot of features. Six airbags, threeseats, ventilated disc brakes on all corners,, emergency braking assist, Electronic Stability System and traction control to name only a few.Tipping the scales at only 1,280 kg (2,822 lbs) in standard form, the car does indeed feel light driving around. With an electrically-assisted power steering and smaller turning circle compared to previous models, the new Picasso also feels maneuverable, especially in crowded cities. Parking is easy thanks to the excellent visibility and on higher trim levels you also get a rear-view camera and even park-assist which do its job pretty well.Our tester was the top trim level (minus some optional features) powered by a 1151.6-liter e-diesel unit bolted to a 6-speed manual gearbox, which is an optimal choice for daily driving. Thanks to the 270 Nm (199 lb-ft) of twist, the engine pulls smoothly, and you get from 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) in just under 12 seconds.The shifter feels quite precise but most of the times I stumbled upon a clunk when throwing from first to second gear as a reminder this is French engineering after all. The clutch, on the other hand, works like a charm and is very easy to modulate and not jerk the car each time you start from a stand still.The suspension is a bit on the hard side but still does well in absorbing small road irregularities and keep body roll to a minimum for this kind of vehicle.The steering feel stiffens the faster you go but doesnt provide much info on whats happening with the wheels, and you should expect the car to understeer if pushed a bit more around a corner. All of which are normal for anso nothing to worry about. I cant picture myself a dad taking a C4 Picasso on track days anyway...Citroen says the average fuel consumption for this model is 3.9 l/100 km (60.3 mpg). In the real world, we got 5.7 l/100 km (41.2 mpg) with the air conditioning on. The other figures we got were 6.1 l/100 km (38.6 mpg) in the city, 6.2 l/100 km (37.9 mpg) on the highway doing the speed limit and 4.1 l/100 km (57.4 mpg) on country lanes.The most basic one starts at 21,640, for which you get 16-inch steel rims with plastic hubcaps, LED daytime running lights, electrically operated mirrors and windows, cruise control and speed limiter, push-start button, electric parking brake, air conditioning, the 7-inch touchscreen infotainment system with 6 speakers and multiple connectivity, tire pressure monitoring and Hill Start Assist.The mid-range trim level is priced around 24,200 to 26.390 and adds automatic headlights and wipers, the massive 12-inch TFT display, dual-zone automatic climate control, folding rear trays, rear parking sensors, the additional rearview mirror and rear sun blinds, leather wrapped steering wheel, adjustable rear seats, 16-inch alloy rims, and fog lights.Ticking all the boxes will get you the park assist system, active safety, electrically operated tailgate, keyless entry system, steering-linked bi-xenon headlights, electrochromic interior rearview mirror, blind spot assist, LED interior illumination, electrically adjustable front seats with lower leg support, heating and massage functions as well as 17-inch alloy rims. But for all of these youll need to fork up to 31,300.As far as we can tell, a medium-ranged C4 Picasso with a few options represents the best choice to go with, especially if youre inclined more towards style and fashion. Choose a nice color like Ruby Red Metallic or Teles Blue out of the catalog and it will become an instant head-turner.Looking at the competition in this segment we can conclude that the 2016 Citroen C4 Picasso is the most accessible and better-looking model for now. The only real threat in the funky-looking mid-size MPV range is represented by the all-new Renault Scenic, but at the moment of writing the automaker hasnt released the models specs and pricing. Hyundai Motor Co. will add a battery-electric vehicle to its Genesis brand as a way to build out the lineup for the luxury unit it spun off in November, a senior executive told Reuters. The model is "definitely on the map," Senior Vice President Manfred Fitzgerald told the media outlet at an auto show in Busan, South Korea. Genesis is launching the G90 and will follow with the gasoline-powered G80. Hyundai plans to offer a diesel version of the G80. Three men end up in London together on business, of course, and their various sexcapades with the locals make up this release. London Love Affairs offers a soft feel, with an opening that resembles a cute, campy sitcom that is well-balanced with hot performers and hardcore action. Cover girl Misha Cross is stunning in her opening scene. Her co-star puts her worries that she might not see him enough to ease with a healthy deep-dicking. Stella Cox takes two gentlemen at once in her scene, including some anal action and a sloppy, comedic money shot. French hottie Tiffany Doll gets some backdoor attention from her German visitor, and Karlie Simon entertains in true Euro-fashion. The finale scene features fiery redhead Amarna Miller taking a messy cream pie. Director Disanto serves up a flirty, dirty flick chock full of accents and fuckery. The girls are gorgeous, and their teases and introductions are beautifully shot. Cheers! A Navy Blue Angels pilot was killed Thursday when his jet crashed inSmyrna, Tennessee.Meanwhile, a USAF Thunderbirds pilot ejected safely from his F-16 after a flyover performance at the Air Force Academy in Colorado. NewsChannel 5 in Nashville identified the Blue Angels pilot asCaptain Jeff Kuss, a member of the team since 2014 and a decorated serviceman. The Navy said all six F-18s were practicing for an upcoming airshow at Smyrnas airport when Kuss jet crashed soon after takeoff about 3 p.m. The other aircraft landed immediately, the station reported. Witnesses in the area captured images of a fireball and black smoke billowing from the ground. The Thunderbird crashed in an open area near the Air Force academy after the annual graduation ceremony, which was attended by President Barack Obama. The Thunderbirds are saying their pilot, who was flying the No. 6 jet, was unhurt. The mishap occurred around midday Colorado time. The Thunderbirds Web site identifies the No. 6 pilot as Maj. Alex Turner, of Chelmsford, MA. The No. 6 jet is the opposing solo. Turner is an F-16 instructor with more than 270 hours of combat experience in Libya and Iraq.Twitter images show the aircraft lying intact in an open area, reported to be south of the Colorado Springs Airport. Obama, who delivered the commencement address to the Academy graduates, is said to be planning to meet with the pilot. The pilot was taken to hospital for evaluation but early reports said he was seen walking around unhurt after his parachute landing. SocialFlight has a busy Weekender schedule lined up with airplane and helicopter rides, cars and bikes, and a two-day airshow.Bakersfield Municipal Airport in California will host an Open House & Fly-In on Saturday, featuring Harmon Rocket kit creator John Harmon, Young Eagles airplane rides and plenty of airplanes to view. Fly in and tie down behind the Rocket Shop Cafe and stop in for breakfast or lunch. Also Saturday, Wakefield Municipal in Virginia will host a fly-in, car and bike show. More than 20 vendors will offer food and more; airplanes, cars and bikes will be on display and there will be live music and door prizes. The Great Tennessee Air Show will take place all weekend at Smyrna/Rutherford County Airport,featuring the U.S. Navy Blue Angels, Breitling Jet team, an F-22 demonstration, Sean Tucker and many more performers. The Save Our Flying Heritage organization will sponsor a fly-in and display day in Meridianville, Alabama, on Saturday. See static displays of a UH-1 Gunship and other military aircraft, and meet Army astronaut Brigadier General Robert Stewart, who will be signing autographs. Free airplane rides will be on hand, along with military helicopter rides for purchase. 3 June 2016 10:00 (UTC+04:00) Rashid Shirinov Armenia has anew surprised with its crazy calls to change the direction of transboundary rivers so that not to allow water to flow the enemy country - Azerbaijan. Armenia, which keeps under control over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory for over 20 years as a result of bloody broken out in 1990s, stages ecological terror against its neighbor in an unneighborly way. Armenian officials recently attempted to realize a project and direct the water from the Azat River in the Garni town to the territory of the Ararat region, where lands belonging to Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan are located. Residents of the Garni town managed to defend their river after a long and painstaking fight against the authorities. The project was suspended, and now the authorities should decide what to do with the World Banks loan of 10 million, allocated for this project and probably which has been wasted already. But the inappropriate use of loan is not something new for Armenia, as the country is already in mire of corruption and nation-wide thievery. The surprising fact is that now authorities accuse the residents of Garni of unpatriotic behavior and even betrayal as it turns out that the aim was not to irrigate lands of the prime minister, but to deprive Azerbaijan of water. Instead of flowing into Nakhchivan, the Azat river could irrigate the Ararat valley, said Rubik Abrahamyan, Governor of Ararat, Tert.am reports. "Of course, I wish the project was implemented. Currently, we release 15,000-25,000 cubic meters of water out of the Azat reservoir, which, through Azat river, flows to Nakhchivan. The reservoir contains 70 million cubic meters of water with a useful part of 60 million cubic meters, the governor said, voicing regret that the water is wasted mentioning "that flows to Azerbaijan". Aramayis Grigoryan, the minister for nature protection, also stated that Armenia vainly allows the water of the Azat river to flow in Azerbaijan That is, the inhabitants of Garni were accused of pouring water into the enemy's watermill while they were trying to rescue their lands and ecology. The residents of Garni believe that through the project the authorities were trying to solve the problem of irrigation of their private lands. The scenario maybe repeated in case of the Gegard lake, waters of which, through the construction of artificial irrigation systems, are expected to be supplied to neighboring communities which belong to Ishkhan Zakaryan, head of Control Chamber of Armenia. That is, the Armenian officials are ready to do anything in pursuit of their interests. And it is best to do, by summing their intentions into allegedly patriotic purposes. Obviously, the authorities has been thinking about personal benefits, not forgetting to take advantage of its geographical position to harm Azerbaijan. The fact is that Armenia and the occupied Azerbaijani territories are above sea level in relation to the adjacent Azerbaijani lands. So, many rivers flowing through Azerbaijan, originate in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan or Armenia. So on the other hands, Armenian officials are trying to turning Caucasian rivers backwards. However, Armenian should not forget that cross-border rivers are not water resources of any state, they are resources of all the countries through which they flow. To assign them, and especially make the subject of bargaining and blackmail, is an international crime. Rivers are flowing from Armenia to Azerbaijan not by the grace of Yerevan, but by the laws of nature. And these laws are fair, unlike the laws, which Armenian policy is lead. -- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 10:49 (UTC+04:00) Baku has announced that a so-called Armenian genocide resolution adopted by the German Bundestag on June 2 is prejudiced and biased. Falsification of history and using it for political aims is unacceptable, said Hikmat Hajiyev, spokesman for Azerbaijan`s Foreign Ministry. The controversial resolution was submitted by the parliamentary groups of the ruling Christian Democrats, its coalition partner Social Democrats, and the opposition, Green Party. The Left party also backed the resolution. Angela Merkel, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel and senior ministers did not attend the vote. Armenia and the Armenian lobby claim that Turkey's predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, committed the so-called genocide against Armenians living in Anatolia in 1915. While strengthening the propaganda of "genocide" in the world, Armenians achieved its recognition by parliaments of some countries. Hajiyev has reminded that the Bundestag remained negligent to Armenias occupation of Azerbaijani lands, Khojaly genocide, bloody ethnic cleansing against more than one million Azerbaijanis in the occupied territories of the country and Armenia. The German parliament adopted a resolution on falsified historical issue that allegedly took place more than a century ago. This is a vivid example of double standards. This step is aimed at confusing the German society and the international community, Hajiyev said. The resolution recognizing the deaths of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 as genocide drew a fierce reaction from Ankara. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim announced the recall of Turkey ambassador to Berlin. We do not hesitate to take necessary steps, not even a second after seeing the resolution text comprehensively, he said at an event in Ankara. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu posted: The way [for those] to close dark pages in their histories is not to defame the history of other countries through parliamentary resolution. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 12:35 (UTC+04:00) By Gunay Camal The Azerbaijani and Armenian ministers confirmed the Presidents agreement on the next round of talks to be held in June with an aim to resuming negotiations on a comprehensive settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The OSCE Minsk Group, a mediation group established to solve the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, announced about it in its statement released on June 3. MG co-chairs, including Ambassadors Igor Popov of the Russian Federation, James Warlick of the United States of America, and Pierre Andrieu of France met with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov in Brussels on May 31 and with Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian in Paris on June 2 to discuss implementation of the decisions from the 16 May summit in Vienna. The Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, also participated in the meetings. The Co-chairs stated that the ministers reaffirmed their commitment to a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The Co-Chairs delivered to the ministers for the consideration of the sides draft documents on expanding the existing office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and establishing an OSCE investigative mechanism, the statement reads. The May 16 meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sargsyan in Vienna was their first face-to-face encounter since the April hostilities. The presidents agreed on following of ceasefire, as well as on a next round of talks, to be held in June at a place to be mutually agreed, with an aim to resuming negotiations on a comprehensive settlement. For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict, which emerged over Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions. The bloody Nagorno-Karabakh war left 700,000 civilians of Nagorno-Karabakh and the regions adjoining it, as well as the regions bordering with Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh without homes. Moreover, 250,000 Azerbaijanis were expelled from Armenia and became refugees due to Armenia's ethnic cleansing policy after the emergence of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan. Despite the official ceasefire, each year the conflict becomes a cause of the deaths of dozens of civilians and military. The latest outbreak of violence on the contact proved that it is impossible to resolve the conflict by keeping a status quo. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 11:43 (UTC+04:00) Armenian armed forces have 38 times violated the ceasefire with Azerbaijan on the line of contact over the past 24 hours, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry reported on June 3. Armenian army violated ceasefire from the positions near the Chilaburt village of Azerbaijan's Terter district, the Sarijali village of the Aghdam district, the Kuropatkino village of the Khojavand district, and the Garakhanbayli, Gorgan, Ashagi Seyidahmadli villages of the Fizuli district. Armenians also opened fire upon the Azerbaijani army positions from nameless heights in the Khojavand, Fizuli and Jabrayil districts. 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 us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 17:16 (UTC+04:00) By Gunay Camal Much of modern geopolitics seems to be following the plot from Hollywood movies, with many countries keeping blind eye to the truth and supporting the fictions hoping that they will get away with this attitude. So their governments and parliaments distort the history not knowing for the sake of what. Germany became the latest country who joined the list of countries who declared the 1915 events in the Ottoman Empire as the "Armenian genocide". The vote was almost unanimous in supporting the resolution with just one MP voting against and another abstaining. The resolution recognizing the deaths of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 as genocide drew a fierce reaction from Ankara. Azerbaijan also immediately condemned the German parliament's unfair and biased resolution, which is based on the historical lie. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim announced the recall of Turkish ambassador to Berlin. We do not hesitate to take necessary steps, not even a second after seeing the resolution text comprehensively, he said at an event in Ankara. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu posted: The way [for those] to close dark pages in their histories is not to defame the history of other countries through parliamentary resolution. The resolution also triggered tensions with Germany's roughly 3.5 million-strong Turkish community. Over a thousand Turks protested against the resolution on Saturday in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin. The Turkish Foreign Ministry has rightly commented that Turcophobia and Islamophobia reaching to the level of racism may be among the reasons behind this policy of Germany. Only one MP Bettina Kudla, representing the Christian-Democratic Union party, was wise enough to realize that parliaments are not courts or institutions of historical research. Kudla stated that the Bundestag is not tasked with giving a historical assessment of the events that occurred in other countries. This should make the affected country, in this particular case - Turkey, she said. Ankara agrees that many Armenians died in fighting and the deportation process between 1915 and 1917 during World War I, putting its estimate at 300,000 casualties. Turkey objects to the presentation of the incidents as "genocide," but describes the events of 1915 as a tragedy for both sides, and repeatedly voiced readiness to open historical achieves. But, the Armenian resolution has illustrated a biased attitude of Europe, and double standards that predominates in Europe in relation to the history. While 11 of the European Unions 28 members have recognized the Armenian killings as genocide despite the falsified facts and over a hundred years left from it, these countries turn blind eye to the Khojaly massacre that took place only 22 years ago. Baku has announced that a so-called Armenian genocide resolution adopted by the German Bundestag on June 2 is prejudiced and biased, assessing it as another manifestation of double standards. The German parliament adopted a resolution on falsified historical issue that allegedly took place more than a century ago. This is a vivid example of double standards. This step is aimed at confusing the German society and the international community, the Foreign Ministry announced. Novruz Mammadov, deputy head of Azerbaijani presidential administration, chief of the administration's foreign relations department, in turn reminded that such steps taken in the current situation are leading to further worsening of international relations. "Such steps in no way serve to strengthening of peace, security and stability," said Mammadov. "From this point of view, I'd like to say that surely such a policy, which is being currently pursued, is wrong." "I think the fundamentals of such a policy were laid with the adoption of the Section 907 against Azerbaijan by the US Congress in the early 90s, and that was also ridiculous," he added. Novruz Mammadov said that the events of a hundred years ago must be studied by historians. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 10:25 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova Civil society dialogue in Azerbaijan, a joint project of the Council of Europe and European Union, has been launched in Baku on June 2. Azerbaijani President`s Assistant for Public and Political Affairs Ali Hasanov, addressing the event, expressed hope that the project would yield the expected results. He highlighted the key functions of NGOs in democratic societies, and noted the importance of close cooperation between government bodies and NGOs. Azerbaijan has always attached great importance for the creation and development of civil society institutions, including the NGOs operating in the country, said Hasanov. "The Azerbaijani state plays a role of the biggest donor for the civil society institutions and allocates grants not only to the local NGOs," said Hasanov. "Starting from 2013, the Council of State Support to NGOs under the President of Azerbaijan has been financing the projects presented by foreign NGOs on peace, democracy, protection of rights, development of social pluralism, conveying the Azerbaijani realities to the world and other topics," he said. Commenting on the concern of some representatives of the public sector and international organizations over the amendments made to the legislative acts in recent years, the top official noted that in reality, the practice shows that those amendments were made to increase the transparency, accountability and orderliness in this sphere and to simplify the communication of NGOs with the state bodies. "The reasonable proposals of NGOs on improving the mechanism of cooperation between the state and public organizations, alternative ways of resolving the problems in various spheres of the social life, will be in the limelight," he added. The NGOs will be involved in the process of preparing important state programs and their active participation in the work of state commissions will be ensured, Hasanov said. "I believe that our support to the Civil Society Dialogue project fully corresponds to this policy," he said. "I am confident that the cooperation with the Council of Europe and other international structures in this sphere will bring positive results." Further, addressing the presentation, Director of the Directorate of Democratic Governance, Culture and Diversity at the Council of Europe Claudia Luciani noted that the Civil Society Dialogue project is important for Azerbaijan. She said one of the goals of the project is to expand the potential of state structures that take part in the relations between the government and civil society organizations. Azerbaijan's Deputy Justice Minister Togrul Musayev for his part said that the large-scale reforms were carried out and very important results were achieved in Azerbaijan as a result of the country's cooperation with the Council of Europe. The deputy minister said a legislative framework has been created in Azerbaijan for the free operation of NGOs, adding that the implementation of the Civil Society Dialogue project will contribute to increasing the potential of NGOs. Addressing the event, Head of the Council of Europe's Office in Baku Dragana Filipovic noted that the creation of the Council of State Support to NGOs under the President of Azerbaijan is the embodiment of a dialogue between the government and the NGOs. She added that the active media and independent court are the integral parts of the dynamic democracy. This project is a good platform for the joint work of the Council of Europe, the EU and other partners, said Filipovic. Further, Head of the EU Delegation to Azerbaijan Malena Mard said that an open society is very important for the sustainable development. She pointed out that Azerbaijan is a successful member of the Council of Europe and is an important part of the Civil Society Dialogue project. Mard also expressed hope that over the two years, during which this project is to be implemented, it will be possible to share the experience and move forward. Rauf Majidli, deputy executive director of the Council of State Support to NGOs under the President of Azerbaijan, for this part noted that after Azerbaijan's gaining independence, the country's civil society institutions came a way of continuous development. "The adoption of the concept of state support to NGOs in Azerbaijan should be assessed as a new stage in the development of civil society organizations," he said. "The work to be carried out within the presented project will also make contribution to this." The project would be implemented in partnership with the Presidential Administration, Ministry of Justice, Council for State Support to NGOs under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and NGOs. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 10:34 (UTC+04:00) By Amina Nazarli Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) is an important and strategic project, Turkey's Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on the eve of his visit to Baku on June 3. He noted that TANAP is important not only for Turkey, but for the whole region, the TRT Haber news channel reported. "Turkey considers Azerbaijan's success in politics and economy as its own success," said Yildirim. 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. The 27th Prime Minister of Turkey also touched upon the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, saying that the country must refrain from occupational policy and begin good neighborly relations with Azerbaijan. The minister said that occupational policy of Yerevan led Armenia to being isolated, adding that it is well known that Armenia shows aggression towards its neighbors, in particular towards Azerbaijan. "Response to Armenia on the line of contact is a bright example of Azerbaijan's success," said Yildirim. 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. Yildirim further said that Turkey, from the first day, has been supporting Azerbaijan and will continue to do so. Earlier, Turkish Prime Minister informed journalists about the issues to be discussed during his visit between Ankara and Baku such as energy sector including TANAP and Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway. -- Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz The 4th Congress of World Azerbaijanis kicked off in Baku on June 3, with participation of the country's President Ilham Aliyev. President Aliyev noted that addressing the May 31 meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Astana, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan lied four times. "Everyone is aware of the results of the April battles. It is very surprising that in this situation, the Armenian leadership tries to deceive the world. It tries to deceive its people, and the international community as well," said the president. "Now, as a result, Armenia put itself in a laughable position. First they said that they haven't lost territories, then said that on the contrary, they occupied the Azerbaijani lands, further they said that they have gained victory, then said that they have lost those territories and those lands have no value," said President Aliyev. "Then they said that these territories have value and Azerbaijan should return those lands. If those territories have no value, then why should Azerbaijan return them? They got completely confused," added the president. President Aliyev pointed out that the Armenian leadership exposed itself with its remarks. "The latest example for this was the remarks made by Armenia's president during the recent meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Astana. He said that Azerbaijan carried out these activities in April, the "army of Nagorno-Karabakh" took control of the situation and Azerbaijan asked Russia to ensure the suspension of fighting. He lied four times in one sentence," said President Aliyev. The president pointed out that Armenia was the instigator of the April battles, because it doesn't want peace. When Armenia saw increasing pressure on it regarding the peaceful settlement of the conflict, changing the status quo which means the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied lands, it resorted to provocations, said President Aliyev. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 15:33 (UTC+04:00) An official welcoming ceremony was held on June 3 for Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey Binali Yildirim, who is on an official visit in Azerbaijan, Azertac reported. A guard of honor was arranged for the Turkish Premier in the square decorated with the national flags of the two countries. The chief of the guard of honor reported to President Ilham Aliyev. President Aliyev and his spouse Mehriban Aliyeva welcomed Prime Minister Binali Yildirim and his spouse Semiha Yildirim. The chief of the guard of honor reported to the Prime Minister of Turkey. The national anthems of Turkey and Azerbaijan were played. President Aliyev and Premier Yildirim reviewed the guard of honor, then the PM saluted the Azerbaijani soldiers. State and government officials of Azerbaijan were introduced to Binali Yildirim, and members of the Turkish delegation were introduced to President Aliyev. The guard of honor marched in front of President Aliyev and Prime Minister Yildirim to the accompaniment of a military march. President Aliyev, his spouse Mehriban Aliyeva, Binali Yildirim and his spouse Semiha Yildirim posed for official photos. Later, President Aliyev and Premier Yildirim held a one-on-one meeting. Successful development of brotherly and friendly relations between the two countries in all spheres was noted at the meeting. The importance of Yildirim's visit to Azerbaijan - his first as the Turkish PM, was highlighted. It was also noted that this visit will contribute to the further development of relations. During the meeting the sides exchanged views on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, economic cooperation and issues of mutual interest. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 10:20 (UTC+04:00) By Nigar Abbasova Law enforcement agencies helped to return bad loans worth around 400 million manats ($ 268 million) to the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), Finance minister Samir Sharifov said in his interview with Voice of America. Special measures are taken to return the bad loans, the minister said. "In some cases, the law enforcement agencies participate in these measures, because sometimes we face fraud," added Sharifov. "As a result of this intervention [the participation of law enforcement agencies], it was possible to return around 400 million manats." As for the IBA's privatization, the minister said the process will begin after the bank's recovery. "The bank's recovery will take some time," the minister said. "Financial advisors, most likely influential investment companies, will be involved immediately after this process. Thus, the bank will be prepared for privatization." President Ilham Aliyev ordered rehabilitation measures for the IBA, in a decree on July 15 that should be completed within the next six months. The presidents order also mentioned that the bank's privatization plan should be submitted to his office for review. President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on the measures for rehabilitation related to the preparations for privatizing the state-owned shares of the International Bank of Azerbaijan JSC in July 2015. Under the decree, to maintain the banks financial stability, uninterrupted fulfillment of the obligations, in particular, eliminating the negative impact of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis on the banks financial position, the relevant state bodies rendered constant support to the bank. IBAR was established in 1992. -- Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 12:57 (UTC+04:00) By Fatma Babayeva A new economic model, which envisages the development of the private and non-oil sector, will lead to diversification of Azerbaijans economy. The statement was made by head of the IMF mission to Azerbaijan Muhammad al Gorchi during the meeting with Rector of Azerbaijans State University of Economics (UNEC) Adalat Muradov. Discussions on macro-economic situation, as well as the reforms implemented in the field of improving the business and investment climate were made within the meeting Mohammed al-Gorchi praised the support of private sector by the government in the current situation and said the IMF highly appreciates the steps taken. He stressed the positive trend related with balance of payment. Noting that the economic situation in the country is being changed rapidly, Head of the mission evaluated it as a result of the realization economic and political events Muradov, in turn, pointed that the current challenges in the economy of Azerbaijan, is mainly related with the volatility in oil prices. He said the successful policy realized in Azerbaijan previously provides the opportunity of responding these challenges. The rector mentioned the expansion of Azerbaijans relations with Turkey and Iran and drew to attention the implementation of relevant project via Silk Road. Speaking about the improvement of business and investment climate, Muradov noted that the inspections have stopped in this field to stimulate the entrepreneurship and the number of licenses and permits decreased abruptly. He also highlighted the establishment of Appeal Boards, strengthening supervision of financial markets and the implementation of measures in the field of promotion of investment. Azerbaijan is one of the few countries that is rich in oil and have made effective use of income generated from the expense of high oil prices. Azerbaijan has a clear and could be seen as positive political vision on the future economic development. Most importantly, hundreds of young people are studying at the prestigious overseas universities at the expense of oil which is the policy to transformation of oil capital into the human. I am confident this human capital will make significant contribution to Azerbaijan economy, he said. --- Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 13:42 (UTC+04:00) By Nigar Abbasova So far the United Kingdom has invested $25 billion in Azerbaijan's economy, said the Azerbaijani minister. Shahin Mustafayev, Azerbaijans economy minister and co-chair of the Azerbaijani-British Intergovernmental Commission, made the remark as he met with Baroness Emma Nicholson of Winterbourn, the trade envoy of the UK Prime Minister on June 2. The minister underlined the importance of further developing the UK-Azerbaijan ties saying that mutual visits are of great importance for the strengthening of the cooperation. Currently the countries cooperate in different spheres of economy including energy, trade, investments. The minister emphasized that Azerbaijan is highly interested in the expansion of economic cooperation with the UK in non-oil sectors such as tourism, agriculture and investments. British companies operating in the sphere of industry have great opportunities for investing in Azerbaijans petrochemical sphere, he added. Baroness Emma Nicholson, in her turn, mentioned that the two countries have a great potential for the development of relations in various directions of economy. She mentioned that cooperation between the National Farmers Union of Great Britain and local organizations of such kind will give a stimulus for the expansion of the export of Azerbaijani agriculture products. The trade envoy did not rule out a possibility to realize the opportunities in agriculture and tourism and underlined the importance of mutual visits for the research of opportunities in the spheres of agriculture and tourism. Azerbaijan is currently engaged in the diversification of its economy by means of developing the non-oil sector. The government places particular emphasis on the growth of non-oil sector and minimization of oil dependence as well as increasing the volume of foreign investment in this field. The cooperation in energy sector is currently the primary factor of the bilateral economic ties between the UK and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan cooperates with the United Kingdom in the field of exploration and transportation of oil and natural gas from the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea. BP as a leading oil company which has launched its operations in Azerbaijan in 1992 participates in the main production sharing agreements such as the Contract of Century (Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli) and the Shah Deniz project. Azerbaijan's State Customs Committee reported that the trade turnover between the UK and Azerbaijan totaled $169.5 million in January-April 2016, some $166.9 million of which falls to a share of imports from the UK. The United Kingdom is considered to be the largest foreign direct investor in Azerbaijan followed by the U.S. and Japan. The United Kingdom recognized the independence of the Republic of Azerbaijan on 26 December 1991. The diplomatic relations between two countries were established on 11 March 1992. The British Embassy was opened in Baku in September 1993 and the Azerbaijani Embassy in London in January 1994. -- Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 16:37 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov Customs services of the Turkic Speaking countries will eye issues of accelerating and expanding the cargo transportation through the Silk Road, said Aydin Aliyev, the head of the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee. He noted that negotiations will be held during the 5th meeting of the Cooperation Council of Turkic Speaking States heads of customs services, which runs in Baku. Aliyev said that there will be meetings in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan this August, and checkpoints on Kazakhstan-China and Kyrgyzstan-China borders will be viewed. Following the inspections and meetings, proposals for the extension of transportation will be discussed. The Baku meeting of the Cooperation Council of Turkic Speaking States, heads of customs services will also discuss the four-party Protocol between Azerbaijan, Turkey, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan on the issue of preliminary information exchange between the countries. Gosman Amrin, Deputy Chairman of State Revenue Committee of the Kazakh Ministry of Finance, attending the meeting in Baku, spoke about recent achievements of Kazakhstan, its intentions and cooperation suggestions. "Kazakhstan can use the experience of Azerbaijan for a complete transition to electronic declaration," he said. Amrin mentioned the recent implementation of many reforms in the customs system of Azerbaijan. He expressed the desire of Kazakhstan to develop its customs sector, and the experience of other countries, including Azerbaijan, could help the country to reach that goal. Kazakhstan has adopted the decree of the Prime Minister for the further simplification of customs procedures in the country. We also want to upgrade to full e-declaration by the example of Azerbaijan. I hope it will happen next year, Amrin said. He noted that the delegation of Kazakhstan is interested in discussing the establishment of a transit corridor through the countries to simplify customs control. In conclusion, Amrin expressed his hope that today's meeting will deliver specific agreements and solutions for the near future activities of the countries custom committees. -- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 16:31 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov Roughly 53 container trains are expected to move along the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR) moving from China to Baku, Tbilisi and Istanbul in 2016, Askar Mamin, the head of Kazakhstan Railways told Ekspress-K on June 3. Nomad Express container service was launched on the TITR, and pilot container trains from China to Azerbaijan, Turkey and backwards, and from Ukraine to China were organized. It is scheduled to set up to 53 container trains on the China-Baku, China-Tbilisi and China-Istanbul routes in 2016. The routes will pass through Kazakhstan, Mamin noted. Moreover, container trains from the Baltic countries to Central Asia, Kazakhstan and China are expected to be launched soon. The cargo will be carried through the Black sea ports, with integration to Nomad Express container service. Mamin said that optimal transit corridors on Kazakhstan-China-Europe-China, North-South routes and TITR were organized. The general potential of traffic on these corridors is expected to reach 2 million twenty-foot containers per year by 2020. TITR is designed to provide transport connections between the East and West of Eurasia. It will enable the countries to reduce the costs of international cargo transportation. The Trans-Caspian International Transport Route intends to become the most efficient way of economic connection of the continent's two sides. It will transport approximately 300,000-400,000 containers by 2020, enriching Azerbaijani income. TITR runs through China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and then to Europe via Turkey and Ukraine. The first test container train on route Shihezi (China)-Dostyk-Aktau-Alat, arrived in Baku international sea trade port on August 3, 2015. Growing interest in the transport infrastructures passing through Azerbaijan's territory is expected to make the country a major transport hub in the region. Locating in the center of this route, Azerbaijan is keen to create favorable conditions to increase the importance of the project. In order to increase the transportation volume through the route, in May, delegations of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Ukraine signed a protocol providing competitive preferential tariffs on the Trans-Caspian route. The tariffs came into force from June 1. -- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 12:15 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova Baku Museum of Modern Art hosted a solo exhibition entitled Landscapes" by prominent national painter Huseyn Aliyev, Trend Life reported. Rector of Baku branch of the Lomonosov Moscow State University , founder and artistic director of the Creative Scene "UNS", board member of the charitable foundation "Azerbaijan Culture Friends" Nargiz Pashayeva, President of the Lider TV company Adalat Aliyev, famous fashion designer Fakhriya Khalafova as well as prominent public figures and family members of the artist attended the event. Executive Director of the Museum Khayyam Abdinov and Chairman of the Board of the Union of Architects of Azerbaijan Elbay Gasimzada, addressing the event, stressed an outstanding contribution made by Huseyn Aliyev in the national fine art. The guests were also presented a book about the life and creativity of Huseyn Aliyev, published in France. Due to unusual sense to paints and splendid reality of images, he was famous as a painter of lyrical and romantic landscapes. The mountains, trees, rivers are favorite theme in his creativity. The landscapes attract special attention by its unusual coloring created by the great painter. The landscapes of the master differ by monumentality. All of his works speak about his big love to motherland. Its not by accident Huseyn Aliyev used to repeat: The nature itself is my teacher. The artist whom the childhood was spent in Zangezur and Nakhchivan was in love with multicolored scale of motherland nature. This love is felt in each artwork. His artistic insight allowed him to create beautiful landscapes, magically inspiring many art lovers. Huseyn Aliyev was born in Jomardli countryside of Zangezur district in 1911. Since 1927 to 1932 Huseyn Aliyev studied at Baku Art College. In 1922-1931 his series of caricatures was published in Molla Nasreddin magazine which he has collaborated with. He was the first Azerbaijani who graduated Leningrad (Saint-Petersburg) Academy of painting (1932-1935). For 50 years Huseyn Aliyev has worked as a painter then as the main painter at Communist newspaper (Xalq qazeti). Being the participant of The Great Patriotic War, he was awarded with medals For the defense of Caucasus, For a valiant labor at the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945, 30 years of Victory at The Great Patriotic War 1941-1945 and with the Order of Peoples Friendship. The talented artist was awarded with the honor certificate of Supreme Soviet: 3 times of Azerbaijan and 1 time - of Ukraine. Huseyn Aliyev has been a member of the Artists Union since 1940, an Honored Artist since 1977; he was awarded the honorary title of National Artist in 1982. The artist died on May 21, 1991. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 13:26 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova Tashkent has hosted an event titled 'Azerbaijani Kelagayi art and its presentation', Trend Life reported. The event held at the initiative and with the organization of the Azerbaijani embassy in Uzbekistan and Cultural Centre named after Heydar Aliyev. Azerbaijani Ambassador to Uzbekistan Huseyn Guliyev, addressing the event, spoke about Azerbaijani women's national headscarf kelagayi, which was included in UNESCO representative list of intangible cultural heritage under name of 'Kelagayi symbolism and traditional art'.He also spoke about works carried out by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation in this regard. Uzbekistan-Azerbaijan Friendship Society CEO, professor Erkin Nuriddinov named Kelagayi as a work of art of Azerbaijani people, preserved for centuries. The ceremony featured a documentary film 'Azerbaijani Kelagayi'. Kelagayi made from fine and soft silk in a four-cornered shape. For many centuries, it was an integral part of Azerbaijani women's national costume that protects them from both the hot sun and cold wind as silk is cool in summer and warm in winter. The color of the headscarves has symbolic meaning often tied to specific social occasions such as wedding, mourning ceremony, daily activity or festivities. In a traditional Azerbaijani wedding ceremony, the bride wears a red kelagayi, which covers her face and embraces her body. The bridegrooms shoulders are also covered with a kelagayi. The older women wore a dark kelagayi, mostly black and dark blue, whereas younger women preferred the brighter ones, such as white, beige, etc. Traditional Kelagayi has various botanical, isomorphic and geometrical ornaments; buta, peacock, rose, daffodil, carnation, tulip, lily, pomegranate, quince, plum blossoms and various shaped leaves on it. The composition consisting of botanical and geometrical ornaments has symbolic and mysterious characteristics. The main figure used in kelagayi is buta, a twisted teardrop that has been a symbol of the divine fire, which has been worshipped in Azerbaijan since ancient times. The most famous kelagayis are "Shah buta", "Saya buta", "Khirda buta", "Heyrati", "Soghani", "Istiotu", "Albukhari", "Abi", "Gonshuchatladan", "Baghdadi", "Shamakhi", "Bestenigar", "Gelinlik", "Gizili", "Mikheyi", "Yemishani", "Zeytuni" and "Yelani". National headscarves are especially famous in Sheki. Since the Middle Ages, the city, located on the Great Silk road, attracted merchants and traders for its handicrafts, especially silk scarves. This art is thriving here for centuries. Nowadays kelagayis are manufactured in Basqal, a picturesque village near Shamakhi. Basqal is also known for its Silk Center and Kelagayi Museum, which provides visitors and tourists with a comprehensive picture of this ancient Azerbaijani art. In the museum visitors are told about the history of kelagayi making as well as the patterns and their meanings. Although the days when kelagayi were so popular among women left behind, the tradition of covering head with kelagayi is still preserved in some regions of the country, mostly among older generations of women. Being a symbol of beauty, grace, and honor, kelagayi remains a vibrant element of Azerbaijan national women's clothing. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 14:04 (UTC+04:00) By Amina Nazarli The 6th Conference of culture ministers of member States of the Islamic Conference Organization held in Baku in 2009, declared Nakhchivan the Capital of the Islamic Culture in 2018. Awarding one of the most ancient cities of Azerbaijan with such a significant status in fact shows the significance the Islamic world attaches to the country. Nakhchivan, one of the centuries-old cultural center of the world with its five-thousand-year history, played an important and invaluable role in the development of Islamic culture. It is one of the cradles of human civilization and a popular trade, art, science and cultural center of the East. The region had been admired and viewed by many travelers and poets of the past as one of the most beautiful and prosperous cities in the East. To hold the event on the high level President llham Aliyev signed an executive order establishing the Organizing Committee that will deal with preparations for the events. Under the presidential order, chairman of the Supreme Assembly of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic Vasif Talibov was appointed head of the Organizing Committee. In 2009, Baku was awarded the capital of Islamic culture, which successfully held several interesting events. Nakhchivan, the central city of Azerbaijan's Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, remains to be an attractive destination for social scientists, architects, historians and those who are interested in world culture and archeology. The region is closely linked with ancient Eastern civilizations like the other regions of Azerbaijan, and has left a deep trace on the course of historical development. Archeological research conducted in the territory has revealed samples of material culture dating back to the 2nd and 1st millennia B.C.E. The region abounds with historical monuments, including ancient Gamigaya, Farhad house, Ajhabi-Kahf, Yusuf ibn Kuseyr tomb, Momina Khatun tomb, Tomb of the Gulistan, Khanagah tomb, Qazanchi bridge, Nakhchivan Juma Mosque, and Qesariyya monument. Momina Khatun Tomb is one of the most popular places, representing a grand monument of the national architecture of Azerbaijan and a pearl of Oriental architecture, which was built in 1186. Nakhchivan Juma Mosque, an architectural monument of the Middle Ages, is another significant architectural site. -- Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 13:03 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova The Slovak State Philharmonic in Bratislava has hosted a solemn gala concert, dedicated to the Republic Day of Azerbaijan, organized by Honorary Consulate of Azerbaijan in Slovakia with the support of Slovakian Cultural Ministry. The event was attended by Azerbaijan`s honorary consul to Slovakia Jalal Gasimov, Azerbaijani Ambassador to Austria Galib Israfilov, Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Adalet Valiyev as well as rector of Baku Music Academy named after Uzeyir Hajibeyli, people's artist Farhad Badalbeyli. The speakers informed the audience about achievements in strengthening cultural and diplomatic ties between Azerbaijan and Slovakia. The ceremony was followed by a concert of the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of a conductor of Azerbaijan Academic Opera and Ballet Theater, Presidential prize winner, laureate of international competitions Eyyub Guliyev. Azerbaijan's People's Artist, laureate of the State Prize, professor, laureate of international competitions, winner of 'Glory' order tar player Ramiz Guliyev, Azerbaijan's Honored Artist, soloist of Academic Opera and Ballet Theater Theatre Afag Abbasova (soprano) and doctoral candidate of Bratislava State Conservatory Farhad Ashumov (violin) mesmerized audience with their performances. The event ended with 'Koroghlu' opera Overture by Uzeyir Hajibeyli. After the concert, the audience invited Azerbaijani performers on the stage again and applaud them standing. The Slovak Republic recognized the independence of the Republic of Azerbaijan on 24 January 1992. Diplomatic relations between two states were established on 23 November 1993. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 17:41 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova The 100th anniversary of the outstanding scientist and well-known political figure of Azerbaijan, academician Veli Akhundov was marked at Azerbaijans State Philharmonic on June 2, Trend Life reported. The event, organized in accordance with the presidential decree, informed the guests about the life and activity of the politician. Chairman of Azerbaijan Writers' Union, national writer Anar Rzayev, addressing the event, emphasized his merits in the development of the countrys socio-political life. Further, the audience was presented documentary Veli Akhundov : Look from the 21st century by Yavar Rzayev. In the documentary, daughter of the outstanding politician Nigar Akhundova tells about his life and activities. In the end, the guests enjoyed a concert with participation of People's artist Samir Jafarov, Azer Zeynalov, honored artists Afag Abbasova, Ramil Gasimov and Aytaj Shikhalizade, accompanied by Azerbaijan State Symphony Orchestra. The musicians performed music pieces by such prominent Azerbaijani composers as Niyazi Hajibeyov, Khayyam Mirzazadeh, Fikret Amirov, Jahangir Jahangirov, Tofig Guliyev and Gara Garayev. Veli Akhundov was the 10th First Secretary of Azerbaijan Communist Party, politician and scientist. Working for many years in the most senior positions in the public administration, Veli Akhundov contributed to the organization of a health care in the country. He graduated from Azerbaijan State Medical Institute and completed his research in 1964 receiving PhD in Medical Sciences and obtaining a title of a Professor and academician in 1964 and 1966, respectively. From 1946 through 1949, V.Akhundov served as the Chairman of Committee of Trade Union of Medical Workers. He served as the Chairman of the Council of Ministers for a period of one year and was eventually appointed the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan SSR until 1969. Veli Akhundov died on August 22, 1986. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 14:07 (UTC+04:00) By Fatma Babayeva OPEC member states gathered in Vienna, Austria for 169th meeting of the organization on June 2 which was a new failure on reaching a consensus on oil production ceiling. The move was a next attempt to return the organizations role as an oil cartel which determines supplies and prices in the global market. Failure of Vienna meeting was expected to revive market fears that the largest producer of OPEC, Saudi Arabia - which pump oil near record highs- will increase its oil production to punish its rivals and gain additional market share, reported Reuters on June 2. Nevertheless, Saudis were milder in its stance and said that they do not plan to flood the market. The geopolitical tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which also caused OPECs previous Doha meeting on April 17 to founder, still were in place during the meeting. Oil freezing plan, developed in February 2016, envisaged limiting oil production to levels at the volumes produced in early 2016 in order to prop up sinking oil prices since-mid 2014. Saudi Arabia has kept requiring commitment from Iranian side to the oil freezing plan since early 2016, whilst Iran insisted on reserving its right to bring its oil production and export to pre-sanctions levels, respectively 4 million and 2.2 million barrels per day. A day before Vienna meeting, Irans Petroleum Minister Bijan Zanganeh said to Reuters that Iran would not support any new collective output ceiling and wanted the debate to focus on individual country production quotas. He insisted that Iran deserved a quota based on historic output levels, making up 14.5 percent of OPECs overall production. Previously in May, Irans officials said that Iran will be ready to join OPECs quota within one or two months of reaching pre-sanctions level of oil production and export which is expected to happen by late summer in the longest. However, OPEC ceased setting production quotas for individual members in 2011 and abandoned an output ceiling entirely in December 2015 by allowing its members to pump oil at will. Moreover, proxy war in Syria and Yemen and the security for Muslim pilgrims in Mecca were other factors contributing to the intensification of relations between these two countries. The major outcome of the meeting was the appointment of the new Secretary General of OPEC Nigerian Mohammed Barkindo. The secretary general acts as a mediator among OPECs divided factions. Gabon was also readmitted to OPEC during the meeting extending the number of members to 14 countries. Decision allowing the countrys rejoin to the organization will be effective from July 1. Gabon left the organization about two decades ago. Last year, OPEC readmitted Indonesia as well, which were net importer of oil. The first minister turning up in the Austrian capital three days prior to the meeting was Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister Khalid Al-Falih which was assessed by the media as a sign of taking OPEC seriously. Speaking to Bloomberg TV, Khalid Al-Falih said that the worst is clearly behind us", adding that Saudi will continue to play its role in the global market. In his turn, Qatari Energy Minister Mohammed al-Sada also expressed positive approach towards the oil market which is heading towards balance at the moment. Unlike previous meetings, OPEC was more open-minded during Vienna meeting, said Nigeria's Oil Minister to reporters. This time, Russia did not attend OPEC meeting which proves the assertion that oil freezing plan is not possible under the current circumstances. Earlier, Edward Chow, senior fellow at CSIS said to Azernews via email that without any realistic possibility of agreeing to a production freeze or production cut, Russia's meeting with key OPEC countries risks raising and then disappointing market expectations and would have the opposite of intended effect on prices. Many experts think that the oil freezing deal is not topical anymore. The current situation in the global oil market, namely increase in oil prices during recent months does not necessitate the urgent need for such a deal. Oil prices began dipping in mid-2014 after shale revolution in the U.S. as the country could meet its domestic demand, and oil previously imported by the U.S was redirected to other markets causing the oil glut which pressed down oil prices in the global market. It is not a secret to anyone that OPEC has lost its role as oil cartel controlling oil prices in the market via adjusting quotas. Now, it only produces more than third (40 percent) of the global oil output compared to decades ago when it generated the biggest chunk of the total production in the world. Currently, OPEC is pumping 32.5 million barrels per day. Moreover, OPECs member states in Gulf increased their oil exports, especially to Asia in a fight to grab more market share. By holding meetings, the organization attempts to demonstrate its unity, which actually does not exist in reality anymore. --- Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 14:59 (UTC+04:00) By Fatma Babayeva Nearly 400 million tons of Azeri Light oil and more than 120 billion cubic meters of associated gas has been produced in Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) block of fields in Azerbaijan during less than 20 years. The statement was made by Khoshbakht Yusifzade, first vice president of Azerbaijan's state oil company (SOCAR) at the Caspian Oil & Gas 2016 conference held in Baku on June 3, Trend reports. Earlier, Yusifzade said that 220 million tons of this volume accounted for Azerbaijan's profitable oil. Oil production at the ACG field, which is being developed by Azerbaijan together with its foreign partners, currently stands at 90,000 tons of oil and 36 million cubic meters of associated gas per day. In January-May 2016, 13.5 million tons of Azeri Light oil was produced from the ACG. The proven oil reserve of the block nears one billion tons. The operator of the block of fields is BP. The State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) received $1.493 billion in January to April 2016 as part of the implementation of the ACG project. The shareholders of the project are BP (35.78 percent), Chevron (11.27) percent, Inpex (10.96 percent), AzACG (11.65 percent), Statoil (8.55 percent), Exxon (8 percent), TPAO (6.75 percent), Itochu (4.3 percent) and ONGC (2.72 percent). Yusifzade also noted that 72 billion cubic meters of gas and 16 million tons of condensate were produced from Azerbaijan's another large gas field Shah Deniz, which is being developed by Azerbaijan together with its foreign partners. At the moment, 30 million cubic meters of gas per day is being produced at the Shah Deniz field. Moreover, 7,000 tons of condensate is being produced daily from eight wells. In January-May 2016, 4.5 billion cubic meters of gas and about one million tons of condensate were produced from the Shah Deniz offshore field. The field's reserve is estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas. The contract for Shah Deniz field was signed on June 4, 1996. Yusifzade further added that almost one billion cubic meters of gas has been produced since the beginning of development (2011) of the largest gas field Umid in the Azerbaijani section of the Caspian Sea. SOCAR conducts extraction at this field using its own funds, said the first vice president of the company adding that during this period, 153,000 tons of condensate was produced at the Umid field. He also said that the extraction is being conducted from two wells at the field. Currently, the third production well is being drilled, according to Yusifzade. SOCAR's first vice president noted that the construction and installation of four new platforms are planned within the Umid field development. "Drilling of 19 production wells is planned from these platforms," he said. SOCAR reported the discovery of the Umid field in 2010. The field has reserves in the volume of more than 200 billion cubic meters of gas and 40 million tons of condensate, according to SOCAR's estimates. Reserves of the perspective Babek field are assumed to equal to 400 billion cubic meters of gas and 80 million tons of condensate. Azerbaijan holds 0.4 percent of the worlds total proved oil reserves and produced 1 percent of the global petroleum output in 2014, according to the BPs statistical review of world energy 2014. In the meantime, the country owns 0.6 percent of the worlds total proven gas reserves and generated 0.5 percent of the global total gas production in 2014. --- Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 18:16 (UTC+04:00) By Fatma Babayeva Oil prices will keep rising next year but at a slower pace, according to the forecasts of Saxo Bank. Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank stated that recently, price of WTI and Brent crudes fluctuated at the price range between $45 and $50 per barrel. Depending on the type of the demand in countries of the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in the U.S. during this summer, it will be possible to project that oil prices will continue increasing till the end of the year, he told Trend, adding that the figure will be within a range of $50 to $55 per barrel by the end of 2016. At the moment, Saxo Bank does not expect Brent price to exceed $65 per barrel by the end of 2017, he added. Hansen further said that significant disruptions in supply were the main drivers enhancing growth of oil prices during May. Some of them will still be in place during June as well. The market will closely watch on the developments in the U.S. industry. The recovery in the crude oil sector during the last three months can delay freezing the output volumes. In case of any changes, a short-term negative impact may be observed on prices, which will draw all attention again to OPEC countries that keep expanding oil production recently, said Hansen. Other crucial factor will be decision of the U.S. Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on tariffs and possible impact of this decision on USD. The violations in Libya and Venezuela will also be under supervision, where production is deemed to rescue the countries that are on the verge of chaos, emphasized the expert. The U.S. demand for gasoline and petroleum products during the summer will be key factor, taking into the account its potential impact on oil demand and capability to reduce highest stock level of 80 years, said Hansen. In mid May, the U.S. bank Goldman Sachs lowered its U.S. crude price outlook for 2017 to $52.50 from $57.50 per barrel as it said markets would return to surplus by the first quarter of 2017. In the meantime, after failure of OPECs Vienna meeting, Capital Economics retains its end-2016 forecast at $45 a barrel for Brent, a few dollars lower than current prices, rising to $60 only 12 months later. --- Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 16:16 (UTC+04:00) By Nigar Abbasova Kazakhstan is currently engaged in the construction of a new Kuryk port on the Caspian shore, which will be similar to Azerbaijan's Baku International Sea Trade Port. Gosman Amrin, deputy chairman of the State Revenue Committee of the Kazakh Finance Ministry announced that the new port, which is being built near the Aktau port, will be similar to [Azerbaijan's] Alat port. The Azerbaijani delegation has already visited the area and got acquainted with the construction process. The new port will be similar to Bakus Alat port and will provide opportunities for the acceleration of freight transportation from Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan, he told reporters in Baku on June 3. Amrin mentioned that capability of the new port will be higher in comparison to the port of Aktau. All necessary conditions for the fast and smooth transshipment of freight will be provided in the port. The official further added that Kazakhstan has by five-six times reduced the time spent on customs inspection of cargo arriving from the Baku International Sea Trade Port in Azerbaijan's Alat settlement. He said that if earlier the customs clearance of cargo at the Kazakh port of Aktau city took up to 10-12 hours, now the process of verification of cargo takes an average of about two hours. "In early 2016, Kazakhstan hosted a meeting between former Prime Minister of Turkey Ahmet Davutoglu and President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, and the parties agreed to maximally ease transit conditions," Amrin said. "Of course, we met with our Azerbaijani colleagues, visited the Baku International Sea Trade Port in Azerbaijan's Alat settlement, got acquainted with the organization of work at this port.Then an instruction was given to create the same conditions in the Kazakh port of Aktau city. As a result, we have almost reached the standard of the Azerbaijani port in Alat settlement." He added that this became possible through obtaining preliminary information regarding the cargo departing from the Alat port. "As a result of joint actions we began to receive information on arriving cargo, which allowed us to carry out preliminary preparation of the necessary documents long before the cargo arrival," said Amrin. Being located at the distance of 100 kilometers from Aktau, Kuryk ports main objective is transportation of transit cargo from China to Iran, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Turkey and further to Europe. The construction process of ferry complex in Kuryk port which is considered to be a strategically important object as it will allow transporting goods to neighboring countries without unloading cars is currently underway. The new ferry terminal is expected to allow the country to export oil, polyethylene, iron ore and concentrates to world markets through Baku, Azerbaijan. The ferry complex is due to be commissioned in December 2016. The capacity of the port is expected to reach the amount of 4 million tons of freight per year. For now transshipment by ferries from Kazakhstan to the ports of the Caspian Sea littoral states is possible only through the port of Aktau. The Aktau terminal which is currently considered to be the main gate of Kazakhstan in the Caspian Sea implements its operations at the breaking point of its carrying capacity. Kazakhstan plans to increase transit transportation from the current 18 million tons of cargo to 33 million tons in 2020 and to 50 million tons in 2030. -- Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 16:10 (UTC+04:00) All the Iranians should act in line with the revolutionary principles and revolutionary spirit, said Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei made the remarks addressing the nation June 3 at an event commemorating the 27th anniversary of the death of Imam Khomeini, former supreme leader and founder of the Islamic Republic, according to his official website. During his speech, Khamenei claimed "the US is pursuing its own goals in the region", adding the cooperation with Washington in regional issues would only help the US to realize its own interests in the Middle East. He also said Iran has many enemies, "but foremost among them are America and this very "evil" Britain." --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 16:45 (UTC+04:00) By Fatma Babayeva The Swedish Trade Council seeks to set up an office in Tehran with a view to facilitate development of the economic relations between the two countries. The statement was made by Mohsen Jalalpour, Head of Iran's Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mine and Agriculture following his meeting with Ilva Berry, head of the Swedish Trade Council, Fars News reported. The opening of the office is expected in September 2016. Also Iran's Chamber of Commerce and the Swedish Trade Council plan to develop a joint road map for the two countries' businesspersons and traders, according to Jalalpour. Jalalpour noted that five Memorandas of Understanding (MoU) were signed between Iran and the Swedish Trade Council during Irans Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarifs recent visit to Sweden. During the meeting with Swedish Minister for Enterprise and Innovation Mikael Damberg, Zarif stated that Iran hopes economic ties between the two countries would return to its previous conditions after the nuclear deal in July. Renovation of Iran's heavy transportation system, eradication of air pollution, development of new energies and waste management are the spheres in which the two countries can expand cooperation, added Zarif. Damberg, for his part, welcomed boosting cooperation with Tehran, and expressed the hope that the Iran-Sweden economic forum which is due to be held in Stockholm today would pave the ground for more economic cooperation between the Iranian and Swedish governments and companies. Iran's exports to Sweden are mainly comprised of saffron, fruit juice, carpet, and light industrial products, while Sweden's exports to Iran are mainly services. After most of the international sanctions imposed on Iran were lifted in mid-January, Tehran began boosting relations with the EU. Iran's President Hassan Rouhani traveled to France and Italy in late January and signed dozens of MoUs, while several top European officials also visited Iran during the post-sanctions era. --- Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 18:07 (UTC+04:00) By Nigar Abbasova Kazakhstan has signed a number of significant contracts with defense establishments of the foreign countries within the framework of the 4th KADEX 2016 International Armament and Military-Technical Equipment exhibition held in Astana. The country has also launched talks on the further development of the countrys defense sector. In the course of the exhibition Kazakhstan has signed a memorandum on the supply of the missile ship by the German Abeking&Rasmussen Company to the naval forces of Kazakhstan, Tengrinews.kz reports. Kazakhstan Engineering Company, engaged in providing uniform financial, production and technological policy at the largest military enterprises of the republic, has signed 3 significant contracts with Ukraine and Belarus. KazTechnologies Company has signed 3 memorandums on the supply of ammunition to UAE, the United Kingdom and Bulgaria. The company also signed a number of deals with Chinese Norinco Corporation on the technology and equipment transfer on the manufacture of large-caliber ammunition. The country has also signed a memorandum with Turkish Diarsan company on the purchase of missile ship. Sergei Velmozhkin, the director general of the Ilyushin Aviation Complex, talking to reporters mentioned that Kazakhstan shows interest in the companys production and is currently in talks with Russia on the purchase of military transport airplanes. Particular interest is attributed to IL-76 MD90A, converted fuel tankers IL-78 as well as IL-112. We have already conducted preliminary talks on this issue, he added. More than 300 companies including 200 foreign participated in the exhibition. Among the main objectives of the exhibition are widening of opportunities and perspectives of domestic enterprises in accordance with the necessities of the Armed Forces, attraction of foreign developers and manufacturers of military production to the sphere of military equipment production of the republic as well as creation of favorable conditions for establishment of mutually beneficial contracts between manufacturers and consumers of defence industry production. KADEX-2016 exhibition is considered to be an important platform for demonstration of the latest achievements in defense industry and exchange of opinions in this sphere. -- Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 June 2016 18:08 (UTC+04:00) Turkey hopes that Germany will correct its historical mistake, said Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim while making a press statement jointly with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Baku June 3. Yildirim said the members of the German Bundestag (parliament) openly admitted a historical lie, which has not been confirmed to be true. "Germany's anti-Turkey resolution had a very negative impact on the Germany-Turkey relations," he said. Yildirim added that the Bundestag's resolution has no significance for Turkey. Germany's Bundestag (parliament) adopted a resolution on recognizing the so-called Armenian genocide June 2. Earlier, Turkey's Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that Berlin-Ankara relations can worsen, if Germany's Bundestag adopts a resolution recognizing the 1915 events as "Armenian genocide". "Turkey hopes that Germany will show common sense with regard to the events of 1915," Yildirim said. The prime minister added that there has never been genocide in the history of Turkey. 3 June 2016 16:23 (UTC+04:00) Euronews, a European, multilingual news television channel, has broadcasted a video footage highlighting the region of Guba in the northeast of Azerbaijan and the stunning landscape around the village of Khinalig. "This is one of the highest and most remote villages in the Caucasus and the inhabitants here even have their own language," Euronews reported. "And part of the magic is that sense of isolation." "The scenic route to Khinalig from the city of Guba takes visitors up to more than 2,000 metres above sea level, providing impressive views at every turn," Euronews reported. "If you're looking for a place to really get away from it all this could be it, with breathtaking scenery all around Khinalig and the chance to do some serious hiking," Euronews reported. "I love it here, even for short trips, because we can let go of the thoughts that bother us in the city, enjoy the beauty of the surrounding nature and go on great walks," Metleb Shikbabayev from the Guba Tourism Office said. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz A new project is aiming to give prisoners a second chance by turning them into professional bakers. The Oswin Project is a charity that helps ex-offenders in the north east of England move out of a life of crime. It gives prisoners the chance to learn new skills, as well as offering general support and helping them find employment. According to the charity, between 48-58% of prisoners are reconvicted within one year, with 60% of those having no qualifications, a statistic the charity aims to improve. Now, in partnership with bakery training agency Gaining Food Training, it will offer inmates at HMP Northumberland the chance to gain Level 2 bakery qualifications at a purpose-built bakery in the prison. The charity says it will work up to having 10 inmates in training and, depending upon ability, some will be offered Level 3 training. Bakin Free The bakery, which goes under the working name Bakin Free, is hoping to open in the autumn and the inmates will be taught by second-generation baker Ian Thompson. The bakery space has been furnished with the help of companies such Brook Food Processing Equipment, which has provided a large quantity of equipment on preferential financial terms, and RedBlack software, which has donated hardware and software to run the bakery programme. The bakers-in-training will sell their products to Sodexo, which runs HMP Northumberland, with the aim of supplying the prison with its entire bread requirement. The prisoners will be able to earn a small wage for their work, some of which will be saved in a general account to pay for needs on release, such as transport costs and victim support. The Oswin Project said it hoped to extend the programme to other prisons run by Sodexo in the future. Shocking Fiona Sample, founder of the Oswin Project, said: When people ask why I founded the Oswin Project, I always ask have you visited a prison? It is shocking that Britain imprisons more people than anywhere else in Western Europe (currently over 85,000 people are in prison) and purposeful activity is at the lowest level inspectors have ever recorded. Yet 68% say a job would stop them re- offending. The Oswin Project has now sourced work for 27 Oswinners and, as far as we are aware, only one has re-offended. The ripple effect on families and communities is incalculable. We have already saved the tax payer over 1 million. In setting up Bakin Free, we will be able to get Oswinners qualification- and work-ready, as most of those reading this will know the touch, smell, feel and sense of achievement of baking bread is good for everyone. The case for setting up a bakery in HMP Northumberland is irrefutable. Recently, ex-offender Francesca Barker opened her second artisan bakery in Manchester. The Worshipful Company of Bakers has commissioned a new dinner play to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London. The Great Fire of London Remembered - An Evening with Samuel Pepys takes place at Bakers Hall from Monday 20 to Friday 24 June. Tickets for Monday and Tuesday have already sold out. The piece itself is a site-specific performance with elements of promenade theatre. It will begin on the Charter Gallery during the drinks reception and continue between courses in the Hall, where the performers will share the stage with diners. The meal will be provided by The Cook and the Butler, one of the Citys best catering companies, matched with a selection of fine wines supplied by Tanners of Shrewsbury. This new dinner play has been commissioned especially by the Company to commemorate the 350th Anniversary of the Great Fire, which started in the bakery in Pudding Lane of Thomas Farynor, the Kings Baker who was a Liveryman of the Company. To book, please visit www.bakers.co.uk/Booking/Great-Fire-Booking-Form.aspx. Tickets cost 110 per person. Here are steps you can take to establish your independence after financial abuse and help ensure long-term financial health. 9 min read Apr 09, 2020 Theres a relatively new invention out there that promises to keep sharks away from you in the water. Its called the Shark Shield. Shark Shield gives off electric field that keeps sharks away Product being marketed to "professional adventurers" In theory, the Shark Shield gives off an electric field that keeps sharks away. The lightweight device consists of two electrodes which emit a three-dimensional protective field around the user. When a shark comes within a few meters of the device, the strong electrical field triggers the shark to experience muscle spasms in the sensitive electrical receptors in their snout. The discomfort should cause the shark to swim away. But does it really work? According to the companys website, its the only product scientifically proven to get results. However, Shark Shield is also very expensive, with devices starting at $600. As such, the company behind the Shark Shield, which has offices in St. Petersburg and also in Australia, markets the product towards professional adventurers, not the average swimmer who gets in the ocean in the summer. Shark Shield is also finding users in the film making industry. Recently, the devices were used to keep curious sharks away during the filming of U.S.S. Indianapolis: Men of Courage, starring Nicholas Cage and Tom Sizemore, which was partly shot in the Gulf of Mexico. "So anytime you're out fishing in the water, a lot of the sharks have learned to follow the boats out. So they listen for the motors and then as soon as you start bringing in fish, they take the fish off your line," said Shark Shield manager Amanda Wilson. "So we even have deep sea fishermen that use it, commercial fishermen that use it, anywhere you want to avoid sharks. I mean there are plenty of scuba divers that are recreational that use our product because they have a fear of sharks, but not everybody does. For more information about the Shark Shield, visit sharkshield.com. Heavy showers and thunderstorms continue across the Bay area today as Tropical Storm Colin approaches the Gulf coast. The Flood Watch for all of our counties has been extended until Tuesday evening. We expect the best chance of heavy rain to be through tonight into very early Tuesday then decreasing chances throughout the day tomorrow. On the forecast track, the center of Colin will move across northern Florida and southeastern Georgia for the next few hours, and then move near or over the southeastern coast of the United States later today. However, it's important to note that the strongest winds and heaviest rains are well removed from the center. Significant coastal flooding has been reported in the Tampa Bay area. High tide is occurring or has occurred. Water levels should be dropping slowly into the evening. Low tide in most areas is just after midnight. Gusty showers with heavy rain and high wind gusts will still continue on and off through tonight. Tomorrow morning's high tide is not nearly as high astronomically as today's was. Florida Gov. Rick Scott has declared a state of emergency in 34 Florida counties as Tropical Strom Colin approaches the state from the Gulf of Mexico. The counties included in the governor's declaration include the Tampa Bay region, much of the Panhandle, central Florida and the counties along the Atlantic beaches in northeast Florida. Latest warnings: T.S. Warning is in effect for all coastal areas until further notice Concerns with high tides coming in the a.m. hours across Bay area Tuesday morning Flood Watch EXTENDED for all of our counties until Tuesday evening Current and predicted weather conditions: Main threats on Monday: heavy rain, gusty wind, potential for few isolated tornadoes/waterspouts Winds reported Monday morning: 40 mph (Pinellas Point); 44 mph (Albert Whitted Airport); 43 mph (Downtown St. Pete) Showers and storms become widespread quickly early Monday Some storms will be strong and will repeat over same locations Water spouts will be possible Heaviest rains, strongest winds will affect the region Monday afternoon through Monday night At its peak so far, storm caused 12,000 power outages for Tampa Electric customers, many of which have been restored Boating conditions will deteriorate quickly late tonight Hazardous winds and seas along with thunderstorms will be across the Gulf and Tampa Bay all day Monday into Tuesday EOC status: Hillsborough County partially activated its Emergency Operations Center in response to Tropical Storm Colin. Sandbags being made available at locations across Tampa Bay State Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee activates to Level 2 The Latest (2 a.m.): At 2 a.m., the center of Tropical Storm Colin was located near latitude 30.2 North, longitude 82.6 West. Colin is moving toward the northeast near 23 mph (37 km/h). A continued northeastward motion at a faster forward speed is expected over the next 48 hours. On the forecast track, the center of Colin will move across northern Florida and southeastern Georgia for the next few hours, and then move near or over the southeastern coast of the United States later today. However, it's important to note that the strongest winds and heaviest rains are well removed from the center. Reports from an Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft indicate that maximum sustained winds are near 50 mph (85 km/h) with higher gusts. These winds are occurring mainly over the Atlantic waters well to the east of the center. Some strengthening is forecast after Colin moves into the Atlantic later today. Tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 230 miles (370 km) from the center. The estimated minimum central pressure is 1003 mb (29.62 inches). Power Outages At its peak so far, the storm caused 12,000 power outages for Tampa Electric customers, many of which have been restored. As of 4:30 p.m., more than 99 percent of Tampa Electrics customers had power, with the following weather-related power outages remaining: Hillsborough County: 6,627 Pasco County: 4 Pinellas County: 10 Polk County: 13 The company expects strong winds to continue overnight, with the potential for localized flooding. More than 100 out-of-state utility workers are expected to arrive this evening to supplement Tampa Electrics crews and to help restore power overnight. A Tropical Storm Warning has been issued from Sarasota County northward, including Tampa Bay. A Tropical Storm Watch has been issued for the coast of Georgia and northeast Florida from Altahama Sound, Georgia to Flagler Beach, Florida. A Flood Watch is posted for all of our counties until Tuesday evening. Rainfall of 3-6 inches is possible with isolated totals of 8 inches due to deep tropical moisture. This includes: Citrus, Hernando, Pasco, Hillsborough, Pinellas, Manatee and Polk counties. Rain totals (through 5 p.m. Monday) Citrus: Beverly Hills: 1.09 Crystal River Airport: 2.09 Inverness: 1.06 Hernando: Shady Hills: 1.35 Weeki Wachee: 1.13 Hernando Beach: 0.34 Spring Hill: 0.85 High Point: 1.06 Pasco: Holiday: 2.76 Port Richey: 2.48 Land O' Lakes: 1.11 Dade City: 0.74 Blanton: 0.99 Pinellas: Seminole: 5.4 Harbor Bluffs: 3.88 St. Petersburg: 4.24 Kenneth City: 4.8 Pinellas Park: 3.55 Clearwater Air Park: 4.41 Tarpon Springs: 2.40 Manatee: Bradenton: 3.25 Anna Maria Island: 2.59 Palmetto: 2.49 Sarasota - The Meadows: 2.83 Sarasota/Bradenton International Airport (SRQ): 1.33 Lakewood Ranch: 1.31 Hillsborough: MacDill AFB: 1.98 Tampa International Airport (TPA): 2.08 Downtown Tampa: 1.27 Lutz - Cheval: 2.12 Odessa: 1.82 Valrico: 1.42 Thonotosassa: 0.57 Ruskin: 1.69 Polk: Lake Wales - Country Oaks: 1.35 Davenport: 1.06 Lakeland - Kathleen: 0.84 Winter Haven Airport: 0.61 Gov. Rick Scott: "Floridians should remain vigilant" The State Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee activates to Level 2. As we continue to closely monitor this tropical depression, Floridians should remain vigilant and have an emergency plan for their families and businesses in place today," said Gov. Rick Scott. "The level two activation at the State Emergency Operations Center will help state and local emergency management officials work together to ensure our state is ready to respond to any impacts of this weather event. Scott, who was scheduled to fly to New York today to meet with presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, is staying in Tallahassee to monitor Tropical Storm Colin. Located in Tallahassee, the SEOC is the operational and logistical coordination headquarters for the State Emergency Response Team (SERT). The SEOC has three activation levels, with Level 1 being the highest: Level 3: Normal daily active monitoring Normal daily active monitoring Level 2: Activation of mission-specific emergency support and planning functions Activation of mission-specific emergency support and planning functions Level 1: Full activation of all emergency support functions The 2016 Atlantic Hurricane season runs from June 1 November 30. The new traffic shift on Ulmerton Road is causing delays and congestion for morning drivers in Pinellas County. Ulmerton Road lane shift caused traffic headaches Friday Contractors are moving the SB Roosevelt Bridge Bay News 9's Real Time Traffic Westbound traffic on Ulmerton shifted south between 38th Street and 49th Street on Friday. Florida Department of Transportation officials say the shift is temporary and will allow contractors to move the southbound Roosevelt Bridge. New westbound lanes will also be constructed, as well as an at-grade intersection of Ulmerton and Roosevelt south of the St. Pete-Clearwater Airport. According to officials, the single southbound Roosevelt ramp will be replaced with a temporary single left-turn lane. As part of the traffic shift, driveways on the north side of Ulmerton between southbound Roosevelt and Automobile Drive will share a temporary access point. The traffic shift is part of the upcoming Gateway Expressway Project, which will connect U.S. 19 and the Bayside Bridge to Interstate 275 in Pinellas County. Sen. Marco Rubio and other Florida lawmakers are urging Congress to pass funding to fight the Zika virus when they return to session next week. Sen. Marco Rubio is pushing for more federal funding to fight Zika in Florida The Senate approved $1.1 billion, while the House approved $662 million Florida is expected to be ground zero for the virus as early as July Many are concerned about the virus because, with the warm weather in Florida, mosquitoes will be swarming. Health official say steps should be taken now to prepare. The increased funding would go toward mosquito population control, testing and helping homeowners get rid of mosquito breeding grounds. However, the money has not been approved by Congress and that is why Rubio plans to hold a news conference Friday, demanding Congress pass a spending package before Zika shows up in local mosquitoes. Florida is expected to be ground zero for the first mosquito-borne cases of Zika and experts say that could be as soon as early July. Although many Florida health departments have resources in place to fight Zika, the amount of money they have will play a large role in how aggressively they can fight it. President Barack Obama requested $1.9 billion in funding to fight Zika, but the Senate only approved $1.1 billion while the House only approved $662 million. Centers for Disease Control Director Thomas Frieden says it will take more money than that to develop tests to diagnose infections and, ultimately, a vaccine that would protect pregnant women. Im hopeful, in the end, theyll do the right thing with Zika, Frieden said. But, the sooner the better. The sooner we get started on these long-term projects, the sooner we can protect women better. The threat of Zika spreading in the U.S. has not been a big enough threat, however, to get the House to provide more funding. Its caused Rubio to push for more funding, even fighting some in his own party. Earlier this week, Governor Rick Scott said that if Zika funding isnt approved, it would be disastrous for the state of Florida. Frenchs Food Company has struck a deal with Select Food Products Ltd. at 120 Sunrise Ave. in the Bermondsey Rd. and OConnor Drive area to make Frenchs ketchup in Canada. Select Foods is an established maker of condiments and gravies, many of which are sold under the Hornes brand name. Its plant is close to the East York boundary. Work will begin on the all Canada ketchup the tomatoes will come from Leamington next year. We are thrilled to be partnering with Frenchs on this opportunity, said Select Food Products president Andrew Mitchell in an interview. Weve been talking to Frenchs for a little while. They have come to visit us, too. We wanted to make sure its a right fit because this is a long-term partnership, Mitchell said. I like them. I can work with them. Our values align with their values. The move comes after Canadians rose to Frenchs defense when Loblaws decided to delete it from the chains shelves. Related Several boys are accused of sexually assaulting a girl inside a restroom at Alief Middle School, Alief ISD spokesman Craig Eichhorn said. Because the investigation is ongoing by Alief ISD police, Eichhorn said, he could give limited information about the incident. However, Eichhorn said the district's police department is expected to present the case to the Harris County District Attorney's Office. SHOCKING CASE: Teacher who was allegedly pregnant by teen turns herself in "I do know that once the investigation is concluded, we are going to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law," Eichhorn said. The Alief ISD police declined to comment. The alleged attack was reported in early May, KTRK says, and involved students in the seventh and eighth grades. At least three boys are accused in the case, according to KTRK. KPRC reports that the boys allegedly lured the girl into a restroom and assaulted her. Parents were informed of the attack in a letter. The boys accused have been removed from campus, KPRC and KTRK say. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The Texas Supreme Court will decide whether a Beaumont construction company can sue the South East Texas Regional Planning Commission for money it says it is still owed for rebuilding homes after Hurricane Ike. Byrdson Services, one of several contractors hired by the commission after the 2008 storm, seeks to settle a two-year dispute about payment of a portion of $3.5 million it says the planning commission made in profit. The state's highest civil court will decide whether the commission was in breach of its contract, an accusation the commission claims it is immune from because of the local government code. Attorneys for the planning commission also reject Byrdson's claim that it earned a $3.5 million profit, saying all the government funds were intended to be used on rebuilding efforts. Byrdson Services was responsible for delegating work to subcontractors on five of about 700 Texas Gulf Coast homes damaged in the hurricane. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funded construction projects through a block grant program, which brought $60 million to the South East Texas Planning Commission for rebuilding efforts in Jefferson, Orange and Hardin counties. Byrdson's attorneys say the commission refused to pay the contractor after the work was finished and filed suit. In April 2014, a Jefferson County district court judge denied the commission's governmental immunity claim. In January 2015, Beaumont's Ninth Court of Appeals reversed the lower court's ruling. The appeals court also denied Byrdson's request for a rehearing. Last Friday, however, the Texas Supreme Court announced plans to review the case. A date for oral arguments has not been set. Instead of paying Byrdson a portion of the remaining $3.5 million from the block grant, the commission redistributed the money for other projects and services, according to the contractor's brief to the Supreme Court. Byrdson alleges the commission withheld evidence of its profit during initial discovery exchanges, before the Ninth Court of Appeals decision. Information provided by the state auditor's office through an open records request showed the commission made a $3.5 million profit from the home rebuilding program, the brief states. The money used to rehabilitate damaged homes came from a limited public fund, the commission argued in a response filed last September. The commission "was merely a conduit of the federal funds, disbursed by (the commission) on behalf of the State of Texas," the Sept. 2 brief states. Any excess of remaining project funds would have been transferred by the Texas General Land Office, potentially for the commission's other programs, according to the brief. "Byrdson's argument at (the commission) received a $3.5 million profit by administering the program is merely an improper, last-ditch attempt to conjure a direct benefit where none exists," the brief stated. BScott@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/BrandonKScott This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Southeast Texas' trial by water shows no signs of ebbing, with another half-foot of rain possible through Saturday, which could worsen flooding from swollen rivers and other waterways. Thursday's downpours closed roads, knocked out power and forced some schools to release students early. More flooding is possible in several areas today, with higher levels anticipated on the Neches River near Town Bluff in Jasper County. Jefferson, Orange, Hardin, Jasper, Newton and Tyler were among the dozens of Texas counties under flood warnings most of Thursday. An additional 2-6 inches of rainfall is expected through Saturday, with up to 10-12 inches possible in spots. The first game of the Class 4A high school baseball regional final series between Little Cypress-Mauriceville and Waco Robinson was moved from North Houston to the University of Houston in hopes of being played. The first pitch went out at 9:08 p.m., 98 minutes after the scheduled start. Jefferson County schools canceled afternoon activities. Some schools in Hardin, Jasper, Newton and Tyler counties canceled class for today, the last day of school for most school districts. School and after-school activities are expected to resume on Monday in those schools open for summer school or with athletic camps for younger students. Silsbee ISD released students at noon Thursday and moved high school graduation, scheduled for 7 tonight inside the auditorium. U.S. 96 at Buna in Jasper County was temporarily closed with water over it, the largest local road affected by flooding. Jasper and Tyler were among 31 counties included in a disaster declaration by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. At least six people, including a 10-year-old boy, died in floods last week in Central and Southeast Texas. This week's storms are the latest in a string of torrential rains since May 2015, including historic flooding in Deweyville in March, that have put swaths of the state underwater. Some areas now overwhelmed by water had run dry two years ago because of drought conditions. Parts of Texas have been inundated with rain in the last week. Storms dropped more than 8 inches of rain in parts of Harris County within 24 hours, once again unleashing bayous and rivers, flooding streets and stalling cars, the Houston Chronicle reported. Dozens of streets were closed because of high water, including many sections of frontage roads along Interstate 45. "We didn't come here to live in the river," Mona Falcon, 58, told the Houston Chronicle. "We moved here to live on the river." Similar fatigue was heard in northwest Harris County, where the Cypress and Little Cypress creeks flooded homes in April and once again last weekend, the Chronicle reported. Thursday, the area picked up over an inch of rain in 15 minutes. "Every time it rains a drop, I start to cry," Tina Hearn, who lives in a subdivision on Telge Road, told the Houston Chronicle. "I don't know what's going to happen next. You're not comfortable anymore. You can't be - ever again." Hearn had watched a contracting team make progress in replacing and repairing floors, drywall and cabinets, only to have much of it undone by last week's storm, which brought a few inches of water into the first floor. In the latest weather-related tragedy, three soldiers were killed and six were missing after a U.S. Army truck was washed from a low-water crossing and overturned Thursday in a rain-swollen creek on Fort Hood, officials at the Army post said. The accident happened about 11:30 a.m. in an area near Cold Springs and Owl Creek, Fort Hood said in a statement. Three soldiers were rescued from the swift water and were in stable condition Thursday afternoon at Coryell Memorial Healthcare System in Gatesville, Fort Hood said in the statement. Army aircraft, canine search teams, swift-water rescue watercraft and heavy trucks were being used in the search for the six missing soldiers. Fort Hood spokesman John Miller said the low-water crossing of the creek was flooded by two days of intermittent heavy rains when the swift water swept the truck, called a Light Medium Tactical Vehicle, from the road. SFlores@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/saraeflores Authorities are searching for a suspect in connection to a string of storage unit burglaries in Beaumont, Beaumont Police Department announced Thursday afternoon. A warrant was issued for the arrest of William Wayne Burns, 28, of Vidor. Burns was charged on three counts of burglary and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, according Sgt. James Cody Guedry. The Houston Police Department is searching for Robert Michael Toker, diagnosed with a Cognitive Impairment, He is: A white male 76 years old HEIGHT 5' 9" WEIGHT 198 lbs Balding Grey Hair Hazel Eyes Wearing a two piece Mechanic Suit He has a Scar on his left knee and burn scars on his right hand The senior citizen was last seen on Thursday at 10:00 AM driving a black, 2008 4 door Hyundai Azera, with TX License Plate 3LMBH. If you have any information regarding this missing senior citizen, contact the Houston Police Department 832-394-1818. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate San Marcos, once a hidden gem in the Hill Country, was once merely a stop along the way to Austin or San Antonio. But now, with the help of Texas State University, the city has become a destination and one of the fastest-growing in the nation. RELATED: Swimming with an education, San Marcos through the years Since 1899, the university has grown from Southwest Texas Normal School to the fourth largest university in Texas. With a rapidly expanding campus community, Texas State has contributed to the San Marcos' title as fastest growing city in the nation for three years in row. In the gallery above, photographs from the Texas State Archives show San Marcos and the university through the years. The name of the university has changed seven times since 1899. Dr. S.M. "Froggy" Sewell was swimming in the San Marcos River near campus in 1916 when he decided the university needed it's own park. In 1917, Sewell Park was created. RELATED: San Marcos, other Texas cities along I-35 among fastest-growing city in the U.S. In 1984, the park received a $1 million renovation complete with stairs into the river and six acres of grass. To this day, students lay out on unofficially named "Bikini Hill" at the park and go swimming in the San Marcos River. Sometimes, they head to the river instead of class. Allegedly. And in 2008, President Barack Obama made a campaign stop at the park. RELATED: Texas State '80s photos show big hair prevailed with Bobcat pride Old Main, a castle-like building, was the first and only structure on campus until 1908. The building now houses the College of Fine Arts and Communication and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. President Lyndon Baines Johnson graduated from the university in August 1930. Texas State is the only university in the state to have graduated a U.S. President. In 1927 and 1928, Johnson served as editor of the College Star newspaper, now called the University Star. His desk sits in the LBJ Student Center in the Student Government office. A statue of the 36th President of the United States stands in the center of the Quad. Johnson remained an active alumni, visiting the campus to sign the the Higher Education Act of 1965. And legend has it, that while in office, Johnson had Manske Rolls, a popular dessert from Gil's Broiler in San Marcos, shipped to the White House. Despite the ever-changing campus landscape, one constant remains the hills. And the stairs. kbradshaw@express-news.net Twitter: @kbrad5 Private equity firms Blackstone Group and Carlyle Group have withdrawn their bids for Corncordia Healthcare over concerns the Food and Drug Administration's efforts to curb drug prices may hurt the Canadian pharmaceutical company's earnings in the U.S., reports Wall Street Journal. Concordia, based in Oakville, Ontario, focuses on orphan drugs and legacy pharmaceutical products and has $1.58 billion in market capital, according to the article. But potential investors wonder if the company can maintain current profitability as the FDA implements new regulations to spur market competition. In March, for instance, the FDA said it would expedite the approval process for certain drugs, particularly for generics made by a single manufacturer. This kind of competition could harm profits for some of Concordia's most lucrative products, investors told Wall Street Journal. Final bids for Concordia were due Tuesday. Danbury, N.C.-based Pioneer Hospital of Stokes will receive $250,000 in emergency bridge assistance to keep its doors open at least until June 24, according to The Stokes News. The funding from Stokes County, authorized as part of an emergency memorandum of understanding, comes with conditions. Under the agreement, Pam Tillman must remain the hospital's CEO and the funds must be used solely for ordinary expenses incurred during hospital operations. The hospital's parent system, Magee, Miss.-based Pioneer Health Services, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April. To receive the emergency funding, PHS must guarantee that no services or operations of the hospital will be terminated prior to a bankruptcy court hearing June 24, unless directed to do so by the county. "This funding was essential to keep the hospital open," Stokes County Board Chair Leon Inman told The Stokes News. He added that without the funding, the hospital would have already closed. More articles on healthcare finance: Florida hospital's future uncertain as owner struggles to keep utilities on Novant Health sees operating income jump 115.2% 11 recent hospital outlook and credit rating actions Editor's note: This story was updated June 6. A previous version of this story incorrectly listed the name of the facility as Pioneer Hosptial of Scott. Houston-based University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is one of the latest health systems to go live on Epic's EHR. After selecting the software in November 2013, the health system flipped the switch March 4. It was the second time Chris Belmont, vice president and CIO of MD Anderson, led an organization through an Epic EHR implementation he oversaw the Epic go-live at New Orleans-based Ochsner Health System starting in 2010 when he was system vice president and CIO. With two successful go-lives under his belt, Mr. Belmont has a seasoned and unique perspective on these enterprisewide projects. He spoke with Becker's Hospital Review about MD Anderson's go-live, the financial fluctuations of a project of this scale and lessons for other healthcare leaders embarking on similar projects. Editor's note: Interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Question: About three months have passed since MD Anderson Cancer Center went live on its Epic EHR. How have the past three months gone? Chris Belmont: They've gone very well, very predictable. It's the second time I've done an Epic implementation at a large institution. It's scary how so many of the events are predictable, it's almost like deja vu. You have to go through certain phases and experiences and adjust to the new norm. We're about 90 days in, and the easy wins are over. Now what we're going through is figuring out how this settles into the normal business. Our volumes are back up, everybody's live. Patients are being scheduled in the new system and aren't just appointments we carried over from the previous world. How do I readjust my day that I've been doing for the last decade? How do I rewire myself to do things? And that'll probably continue here for a few months. That doesn't mean that patients won't be seen, that productivity is off or that we won't perform well financially. It's just that we've disrupted the day-to-day flow and how we do work. Q: What has been the biggest challenge post go-live? How are you mitigating this? CB: The biggest challenge is fatigue. We've been at this journey for three years. We introduced a tremendous amount of change in one weekend. The team that got us here and the operations group, the institution in general was sprinting toward this go-live data. Now that we're live, we still have a lot of work. People are trying to get back to their day job and kind of recover from this. Another challenge is managing the noise level, and what I consider noise is the misinformation. Employees will make a couple of comments not based on fact, but it's the grapevine effect. By the time it makes it around to the project team or the president, it kind of has taken on a life of its own. Someone might say, 'Boy, it took me two hours to have my transfusion done.' By the time it makes it back around, it's, 'Epic caused us to be two hours late for a transfusion,' but in reality it might have been a delay in getting lab results back. People make assumptions, and it's easy to blame the system because that's the most obviously change that occurred. Managing he noise level and boiling it down to what's real is kind of our biggest challenge. Also, remember, we went live in March with Epic. We also did a Cerner lab upgrade in December. In October of last year we did ICD-10. We have introduced significant change over the last year here. While Epic was the last major project in that chain, we have seeing a great deal of confusion and at the same time trying to treat a tremendous number of cancer patients. Q: For the seven-month period ended March 31, MD Anderson recorded adjusted income of $122.9 million, a 56.6 percent drop compared to the previous year, but this was expected as a result of the Epic project. How does a healthcare organization plan and prepare for these financial fluctuations that come along with EHR implementations? CB: Our dip was much less than expected. One of the mistakes we made is wethought [the drop] would be a little more gradual. It occurred very quickly in the February and March timeframe as our physicians went to training. We aggressively reduced schedules. Just like every other institution, you're supposed to cut back on patient volumes. Unfortunately at MD Anderson when you're in cancer treatment, you can't just skip treatment in March. In a lot of areas, we cut back as much as 50 percent. If you extrapolate that, it should be a reduction of 50 percent of your revenue, and we didn't have anything near that. We went live in a naturally slow time here we did that intentionally. During that week, it's within two weeks of spring break in Houston, a time which would be a naturally slower point. All those influences came into it, and then climbing back out and getting back up at full speed, we are very close. Last month's financials haven't come out, but the preliminaries look positive. You just plan for it. We budgeted for it. We managed any change. Q: Looking forward, what does MD Anderson's post-implementation strategy look like to ensure clinical productivity, operational efficiencies and leveling finances? CB: For three years we've been in implementation mode. How do we get out of implementation mode and into service mode? How do we put the term 'Epic' in the rearview mirror and see it as a tool in the toolbox to optimize operations? How do we transition ourselves to be more of a service provider and less of an implementer? It's a big shift, and our organization has to recognize it. From here forward, [information services] will slide back into more of a support role, but not too far back. We also have quite a few modules from the Epic platform we did not implement intentionally. We felt we were going to introduce too much change. Some of the mobile apps will be coming out in the next month. We're also going to be looking at the ability to do more patient self-service around check in, check out and registration through the portal. Q: How is MD Anderson evaluating ROI? What metrics are you looking at to measure outcomes? CB: The first thing we've noticed is the transparency and the access to information. We saw in one of our areas long wait times. Looking back, we've always had them, but now they're a little bit longer than expected. Because we had total access to information, we've been able to rally around that and reduce those wait times because we knew where the bottleneck was. In the past, that information was spread out over three, four or five systems. Now we have it at our fingertips in real time. We're also safer. One of the things we implemented was a barcode medication administration check, which we didn't have fully deployed prior. Medical errors are more transparent, and there's better visibility into near misses. In a self-reporting world, that's more difficult. If it's safer, we can start focusing on quality. As far as direct measurements go, we should have increased charge capture and reduced duplicate services being done. On the revenue cycle side, we should see things like reduced denials, much shorter accounts receivable timelines. That's how we're going to measure it. Q: Having overseen two Epic implementations now, what advice would you offer other healthcare leaders embarking on a similar implementation project? CB: Get your customers involved early and often. Make sure you do everything you can to prevent this from being a software implementation project and more of an organizational transformation project. One way to do that is not to dwell so much on the software but to dwell on the processes and desired outcomes. That was one of the reasons we were so successful. Our operations team just stepped up and owned it. They never pointed fingers and never came back and said the software is broken. They said this is what we have to do to take care of our patients. The other thing is if you're doing Epic, follow the script. Their methodology works. I've seen it work twice, and it gets better each time. Don't try to buck the system, don't try to reengineer it. More articles on Epic: Judy Faulkner ranks No. 3 on Forbes' 'America's Richest Self-Made Women' list An Epic go-live, the opioid crisis and more: Mass General's CNO weighs in St. Luke's completes Epic go-live on time, under budget Lakewood, Wash.-based Western State Hospital has had a rough year. In early April, two patients deemed "dangerous" escaped from the facility. Although one was found the same day and the other was located the next day, their escape was just one incident in a string of problems at the 800-plus-bed psychiatric hospital. In addition to severe staffing shortages, Washington state officials have amped up safety and security measures at Western State. Less than a week after the patients' escape, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) fired Western State Hospital CEO Ron Adler and replaced him with Cheryl Strange, who formerly headed up Washington's public mental health system. The Seattle Times recently checked in with Ms. Strange to uncover how she was chosen for the job and discuss her turnaround plan for Western State Hospital, which is currently at risk of losing both its accreditation and its yearly $64 million in federal funding. Ms. Strange wasn't looking to take the position as Western State CEO in fact, she had multiple friends tell her not to take the job. Instead, she was hoping to become secretary of the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services. But her prior experience mental health nurse, assistant director of DSHS' mental health division, deputy secretary at the Washington Department of Corrections and administrative and advocate skills led her to be tapped for the top executive position. She took the position with enthusiasm and hasn't looked back since. A few of her turnaround plans are already in the works. Ms. Strange and a few other top administrators are each adopting a patient ward "Like adopt-a-highway," she said and visiting with patients and staff. Others will take longer to implement. Ms. Strange wants to create better relations between administrators and employees; upgrade security and training; update the facilities; improve patients' overall quality of life; and let senior-level managers have more authority. "I would like to see a nimble management team that feels like they can engage in debate without fear of retaliation," said Ms. Strange, according to the report. "I think the management team, for whatever reason, did not feel empowered to make decisions." Since beginning her tenure earlier this year, Ms. Strange has had to face her fair share of challenges at the hospital, which, in 2011, The Seattle Times called "the single most violent workplace in the state" of Washington. Just last month, she had to deal with yet another patient escape. But Ms. Strange hasn't given up hope on what Western State Hospital can become. "I walk these wards. I watch the patients and the interaction and the humanity that I see on those floors, regardless of the chaos of the operating environment, [and it] is really astounding," she said, according to the report. From a judge ordering Cigna to pay a physician-owned hospital $13 million to a New Jersey hospital agreeing to pay $450,000 to resolve false claims allegations, here are the latest healthcare industry lawsuits and settlements making headlines. 1. Mississippi health system to pay $150M over failed pension plan Pascagoula, Miss.-based Singing River Health System entered into a federal settlement that releases it from liability over its failed pension plan. 2. Lee Memorial wants to evict another patient Lee Memorial Hospital in Fort Myers, Fla., is suing to evict a patient with dementia and Parkinson's disease who has remained at the Fort Myers, Fla.-based hospital for nearly three months after physicians cleared him to leave. 3. Officer accused of pepper spraying restrained patient at Seattle hospital pleads not guilty Nicholas Hogan, 35, pleaded not guilty to a criminal civil rights violation for allegedly pepper spraying a restrained patient at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. 4. BCBS of North Carolina sues feds over $147M in ACA payments Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina is suing the federal government, claiming the U.S. failed to pay the insurer $147 million in payments owed under the Affordable Care Act's risk corridor program. 5. Cigna ordered to pay $13M to physician-owned hospital A Texas federal judge ordered Cigna to pay more than $13 million to Humble (Texas) Surgical Hospital, concluding that the Bloomfield, Conn.-based insurer breached the terms of its policies by refusing to cover out-of-network services provided by the physician-owned facility. 6. Patient claims self defense in choking, death of roommate at Mount Sinai in Miami Beach Andre Brown, 23, was charged with second-degree murder in the death of his roommate at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, Fla. 7. Physician gets prison time for writing Oxycodone prescriptions to drug dealer John Terry, MD, of Wellsboro, Pa., was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison for writing fraudulent prescriptions for Oxycodone. 8. Investigation into Cooper Health CEO's death linked to criminal charge against his son Nearly two years after they were found unresponsive in their home, questions remain regarding the deaths of John Sheridan, president and CEO of Cooper University Health System in Camden, N.J., and his wife Joyce. The investigation is now at the center of a criminal case against the Sheridans' 42-year-old son Matthew. 9. NJ hospital to pay $450k for allegedly billing Medicare for unnecessary heart procedures Saint Michael's Medical Center in Newark, N.J., agreed to pay $450,000 to resolve false claims allegations. 10. Dermatologist sues Anthem Blue Cross for 'unethical' narrow network A dermatologist from Los Angeles is bringing Anthem Blue Cross to court over its narrow networks for plans sold on Covered California the state's Affordable Care Act exchange. 11. Romania charges 77 physicians for taking bribes Dozens of Romanian physicians were charged with taking bribes after a pharmaceutical company paid for their vacations in India in exchange for promoting anti-cancer medications to patients. 12. Consulting firm president gets 5-year prison term for role in kickback scheme Carlos Rodriguez Nerey, owner and president of a Miami-area consulting and staffing company, was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in a $2.3 million Medicare fraud scheme. 13. Washington, California file suit against Johnson & Johnson over vaginal mesh implants The attorneys general of Washington state and California filed lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson, claiming the healthcare giant misinterpreted the severe risks of vaginal mesh implants for years. 14. Judge orders Washington Medicaid to cover lifesaving hepatitis C drugs for all A federal judge ordered Washington state's Medicaid provider to cover expensive drugs that can cure hepatitis C infections for all patients with the liver-destroying disease, not just the sickest. More articles on health law: Calif. law would require drugmakers to notify purchasers of price hikes Massachusetts hospital pricing compromise signed into law 15 latest healthcare industry lawsuits, settlements A Texas federal judge has ordered Cigna to pay more than $13 million to Humble (Texas) Surgical Hospital, concluding that the Bloomfield, Conn.-based insurer breached the terms of its policies by refusing to cover out-of-network services provided by the physician-owned facility. Humble Surgical Hospital opened in August 2010. Soon after, the hospital began submitting claims for reimbursement to Cigna. For a few months, Cigna paid Humble's claims based on negotiated agreements between the hospital and Multiplan or Viant, two third-party repricing entities that determined "allowable" amounts. However, in October 2010, Cigna opted to review Humble's claims in-house and began submitting claims to its special investigation unit for investigation, processing and payment. Cigna said it made the change after discovering Humble was submitting claims for exceedingly large amounts. In its suit, Humble alleged from December 2010 to April 2014, its claims continued to be sent to Cigna's investigation unit and, for the most part, remained unpaid. If the hospital submitted a claim to Cigna and the patient had not fully paid their co-pay or co-insurance, the insurer would deny the claim or only pay a portion of it. According to the judge, Cigna's claim denials were based on the insurer's flawed interpretation of exclusionary language in self-funded plans it administered. "Cigna's interpretation of 'exclusionary' language as rejecting covered services, was improper and violative of the plans' terms," the judge concluded. The judge ordered Cigna to pay $11.4 million in damages and $2.3 million in penalties under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. The insurer will also pay the hospital's attorney fees, which will be determined at a later date. Humble filed suit against Cigna after the insurer sued the hospital alleging it had inflated its bills. The court dismissed all of Cigna's claims. More articles on healthcare industry lawsuits: Investigation into Cooper Health CEO's death linked to criminal charge against his son 15 latest healthcare industry lawsuits, settlements Former healthcare CFO charged with bribery, fraud Los Angeles-based Martin Luther King Hospital has filed suit against Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia, alleging the insurer sends reimbursement money for emergency room services directly to patients as a means of retaliation against out-of-network hospital prices. The hospital said these practices are in direct defiance of customary industry practices, where an insurer sends reimbursement directly to the hospital, according to Courthouse New Service. MLK said many patients who receive checks from Blue Cross for out-of-network emergency services are "unaccustomed to receiving payments in such large amounts," according to the complaint. The hospital has found many patients instead use the money for personal expenses and are unable to pay their medical bills. To date, MLK said it has identified more than $350,000 in payments BCBSG sent to patients rather than the hospital, according to the lawsuit. The hospital alleges BCBSG has adopted this practice as a way to strong-arm out-of-network hospitals into signing contracts with unsatisfactory reimbursement terms, according to the report. Nicholas Hogan, 35, has pleaded not guilty to a criminal civil rights violation for allegedly pepper spraying a restrained patient at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, according to The Seattle Times. In 2011, while on the Tukwila, Wash., police force, Mr. Hogan took a man who had been in a fight to Harborview to get stitches before booking him in jail. When they arrived at the hospital, Mr. Hogan allegedly kneed the handcuffed man in the head multiple times while pulling him from the back seat of the police cruiser, according to Tukwila police reports. While in the emergency room waiting area, Mr. Hogan allegedly shoved and tackled the man, who is identified in court documents only as "M.S." Nurses and security officers at Harborview complained about the officer's actions. The patient was subsequently placed in four-point restraints on a gurney. Mr. Hogan sat on a stool next to the gurney in a small area enclosed by curtains. While the patient was restrained, Mr. Hogan sprayed him in the eyes with pepper spray. Mr. Hogan reported that he responded with pepper spray after M.S. threatened him and lunged at him, according to the report. After the incident, the city of Tukwila fired Mr. Hogan for using excessive force. A grand jury indicted Mr. Hogan May 19 on a single count of violating the civil rights of M.S. Mr. Hogan's trial is scheduled for Aug. 8, according to The Seattle Times. More articles on healthcare industry lawsuits: Investigation into Cooper Health CEO's death linked to criminal charge against his son 15 latest healthcare industry lawsuits, settlements Former healthcare CFO charged with bribery, fraud A group of French scientists have raised the possibility that Zika could be transmittable through oral sex and maybe even deep kissing, according to a recent letter to the editor detailing the account of a likely case of Zika transmission through sexual contact published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The case relayed in NEJM involves a 24-year-old French woman who became infected with Zika after engaging in seven sexual encounters with a 46-year-old man who had recently traveled to Brazil. The man had experienced symptoms related to the virus while in Brazil, but they had dissipated when he reached France. After the woman became sick, both were tested for Zika. The man had high levels of the virus in his urine and semen, but not in his blood or saliva. The virus was detected in the woman's urine and saliva, and antibodies generated by the virus were also detected in her blood. Indications of the virus were not detected on a vaginal swab. During their seven sexual interactions the two engaged in vaginal sex without ejaculation and oral sex with ejaculation. The study's authors write, "These data support the hypothesis of sexual transmission (either oral or vaginal)...we cannot rule out the possibility that transmission occurred not through semen but through other biologic fluids, such as pre-ejaculate secretions or saliva exchanged through deep kissing." William Schaffner, MD, head of preventive medicine at Nashville, Tenn.-based Vanderbilt University Medical School, told The New York Times he agreed with the assessment that the most likely method of transmission in this case was oral sex, but stated, "I don't think this changes anything, but it shows you how elaborate the number of avenues of possible transmission can be." John T. Brooks, MD, an epidemiologist at the CDC studying sexual transmission of the Zika virus, told the Times he wasn't surprised to see likely transmission of the virus through oral sex, but countered that transmission through kissing wasn't likely. Dr. Brooks said, "Casual kissing has got to be safe because, if it weren't, don't you think we'd see a lot more Zika? Every mom who kissed her baby would pass it on...to be sure, we'd have to look for deep kissing in the absence of sexual contact, and that's hard to find." More articles on the Zika virus: Detroit Tigers pitcher contracted Zika during offseason The problem with how Congress is funding Zika response efforts Infant with Zika-related microcephaly born in New Jersey To continue following the latest news and information for Bedfordshire and surrounding areas, simply enter your full postcode below Administrators announced last night that the department stores will go into liquidation Up to 200 workers are expected to lose their jobs with all four BHS stores in Northern Ireland set to close. Administrators announced last night that the department stores will go into liquidation. Administrators Philip Duffy and Benjamin Wiles, managing directors of Duff and Phelps, announced they would begin to wind down BHS. In total, up to 11,000 jobs are expected to be lost across the UK as all 163 stores will close, including the chain's branches in Belfast, Holywood, Newtownabbey and Lisburn. The department store chain went into administration in April. Closing sales will be held in all stores in the next few weeks. The firm had traded in the UK for 88 years. A statement from the company's administrator's read: "Despite the considerable efforts of the administrators and BHS senior management it has not been possible to agree a sale of the business. Although multiple offers were received, none were able to complete a deal, due to the working capital required to secure the future of the company. "Our thoughts today are with the employees. We thank them for their professionalism and hard work. We would also like to thank the great British public for helping us in our efforts to save BHS, resulting in several weeks of significant sales." Mr Duffy said: "The British high street is changing and in these turbulent times for retailers, BHS is another victim of the seismic shifts we are seeing. The tireless work and goodwill of the existing management team and employees of BHS with the support of my team were not enough to change the fortunes of the company." As the shutters came down at the BHS store in Belfast's Castle Junction last night, city centre shoppers had mixed feelings. "It's awful," said Karen Stewart from Armagh "It's been here so long. "It must be only six months since I was last in BHS - the homewares section is very good." Meanwhile, Gill McGuigan, visiting from Wigan in Lancashire, said: "It's sad that BHS is closing. " She added: "I didn't shop there very often." Pals Katie McLernon and Amy Wilson from Lisburn said: "We've never shopped at BHS. There's nothing in it for our age group." Belfast teenagers Holly McGookin and Bethany Martin agreed: "We won't miss BHS, because we never went into it. It's not really our sort of shop." Ulster University retail analyst Donald McFetridge said: "Administrators Duff and Phelps were unable to find a suitable buyer for the iconic brand due to problems with potential suitors not being able to demonstrate that they had sufficient working capital to invest in the company in order to ensure its survival. "The rumours of a requisite investment of 300m of working capital seem modest to me. In my opinion, it would have taken at least twice that amount in order to give the business any sort of chance for survival in the very competitive retail fashion world where other major players are similarly struggling to keep their doors open." Aer Lingus boss Stephen Kavanagh said airports such as Dublin could take business away from the UK in case of Brexit (Jason Clarke/PA) Scrapping air passenger duty for Northern Ireland flights is a significant gamble worth taking, according to the boss of Aer Lingus. Stephen Kavanagh, chief executive of Aer Lingus, told the Belfast Telegraph at the Iata annual general meeting in Dublin, that with Northern Irelands geographical disadvantage, the air tax on departures is continuing to hold the region back. The Republic brought an end to the duty back in 2013, and airlines and airports have argued it continues to make Northern Ireland less competitive. Its such an important industry (aerospace) on the island, from Bombardier to Thompson Aerospace, Mr Kavanagh said. Its a significant gamble, particularly for Northern Ireland, in terms of domestic travel. Its a region in which geography disadvantages it, and its being further disadvantaged by APD. Even within the UK context, its unfair. Anything that adds to the cost of a ticket for consumers, dampens demand. If the input price is too high for access, its dampening economic activity. He added: Whats the worst that can happen? You can always put it back. Its up to those who are calling for its abolition to demonstrate why. Newly appointed Finance Minister Mairtin O Muilleoir says he wants the Executive to have full control over the tax here. Cutting it in Northern Ireland, if possible, would mean a reduction in the Block Grant from Westminster. I think the market is very efficient. The experience of the Irish government in 2013 was significant, Mr Kavanagh said. Now, particularly that there is such a wide variety of airlines with access to Northern Ireland, I think you can assume that there will be enough competition within the airlines to see that stimulus being responded to with capacity. Speaking about APD, Mr Kavanagh also told journalists during a separate briefing that given the experience in Ireland, the positive political situation to remove departure taxes... has been very much rewarded. Belfast International Airports Graham Keddie said the zero-rate tax in the Republic of Ireland hands Dublin a great advantage over our airports in Northern Ireland. It is not fanciful to say that thousands of new jobs would be created if APD was consigned to history, he added. Willie Walsh says he is having discussions with Bombardier boss Alain Bellemere about buying its C Series passenger jets. Praise for the C Series by the British Airways boss came as existing Bombardier customer WestJet confirmed it would buy another nine of its Q400 propellers in a $300m (207m) deal. At the high-profile Iata (International Air Transport Association) agm in Dublin yesterday, Willie Walsh told the Belfast Telegraph: "I had a chat with him (Alain Bellemare) at lunchtime... Alain, who I know very well, wants to have a chat with me and we've said it's an aircraft we did look at." Thousands descended on Dublin yesterday for the start of the Iata annual general meeting. It's the first time it's been held in Ireland in more than 50 years, and Dublin man Willie Walsh - chief executive of British Airways and Aer Lingus's parent firm IAG - will take over as incoming chairman of Iata this month. In an interview with the Belfast Telegraph following a private airline leaders' lunch at the nearby luxury InterContinental Hotel, Mr Walsh said the C Series was "definitely one we are prepared to look at". Other orders, including deals with Delta Airlines and Lufthansa subsidiary SWISS, were all encouraging. "The fact they have had the significant orders (is encouraging), the Delta order on the back of the Lufthansa one," he said. "I think everyone looking at the aircraft wanted to see a commitment from major operators to it. You don't want to be the only person operating the aircraft. "A critical issue for airlines with an aircraft like that, is you want to make sure you have technical support in all of the airports, or as many of the airports (as possible)." Bombardier, which employs more than 5,000 staff here, secured a deal in April to sell 75 of its CS100 jets, part-made in Belfast, to Delta Airlines, with the potential for a further 50 orders. And while there were no confirmed fresh C Series orders yesterday, Bombardier did land a fresh order for more of its smaller Q400 propeller aircraft, which are also part-made in Belfast. The Canadian firm revealed that WestJet Encore is adding another nine planes to its fleet in a deal that is worth around $300m (207m). Speaking about the growing success of Bombardier's C Series, Willie Walsh said: "I think it's a big achievement for them as Delta and Air Canada are two very significant (airlines). "It puts that aircraft into play now, and I suspect that you will see a lot more airlines (looking at it). "The critical issue with them, as it always was, is how competitive can you be on price." "They had to get a scale of order to make them relevant for the industry." Speaking about his new role as Iata chairman, Mr Walsh said one of the newest key proposals was establishing a resolution on climate change. "I see my role as chairman to make this comfortable and seamless for the organisation." Bombardier's boss Alain Bellemare had said he is "confident that we will continue to see orders from the likes of Delta in the future". Meanwhile, Northern Ireland holidaymakers and air passengers across the globe are likely to reap the rewards of a 7% drop in air fares over the next year, the Iata conference heard. A concerted effort is required to ensure Scotland's vital North Sea oil and gas industry enjoys a bright future, the Economy Secretary has said. Keith Brown, who was recently appointed to the role by Nicola Sturgeon, was speaking ahead of a meeting with key figures from the industry in Aberdeen. Mr Brown, along with Energy Minister Paul Wheelhouse, will meet members of industry body Oil and Gas UK and regulator the Oil and Gas Authority, together with representatives from companies Nexen and EnQuest, and trade unions. He will argue that while the Scottish Government is doing everything in its powers to support the sector, the "key economic levers" lie in the hands of Westminster. Speaking ahead of the visit, he said: " The Scottish Government strongly believes that the North Sea oil and gas sector can have a bright future for years to come. Given the considerable challenges faced by industry, this will require a concerted effort by all stakeholders and today's visit will help me to play as strong a role as possible in that process." He said the Scottish Government had put in place a 24.5 million support package, as well as having established the Energy Jobs Taskforce in 2015 and a 12 million fund to help workers with retraining. "We are working to do all that we can within our powers to support the industry," he said. "The UK Government, however, retains the key economic levers affecting the sector." Mr Brown said the UK Budget this year had included a commitment to " consider proposals for using the UK Guarantees Scheme for oil and gas infrastructure where it could help secure new investment in assets of strategic importance". But he said: "We are yet to see the progress that is crucial in this area. Sustaining critical infrastructure in the North Sea is a key priority and the UK Government must act quickly and decisively to deliver this commitment. "The oil and gas industry is an important part of the Scottish economy and the downturn has had a significant impact on the industry and its workforce. "Today's visit, so soon after having been appointed in my new role, demonstrates that both Paul Wheelhouse and I will continue to engage closely with the industry, trade union and regulator to overcome the current challenges and secure a long-term future for the sector." There is a strong argument for allowing Northern Ireland power over air passenger duty (APD), a high profile economist has said. PwC Northern Ireland chief economist Dr Esmond Birnie spoke out as new Finance Minister Mairtin O'Mueilloir said he would carry out a review into obtaining power over APD - which currently amounts to a 13 surcharge on short-haul flights out of NI. Stormont has already axed APD on long-haul flights. Dr Birnie said: "APD is a tax where strong consideration should be given to going beyond the existing part devolution. "This is because there is a considerable body of evidence (both for the UK and internationally) that cuts in APD could stimulate private sector output and employment growth - hence delivering some so-called 're-balancing'." And he said the devolution and abolition of APD would also result in lower costs to consumers from cheaper holidays. But he added that the measure would have to be paid for. "There are considerations as to the impact on the Northern Ireland Block grant from the Treasury - analogous to, but on a smaller scale from, the corporation tax cut proposal for 2018 - which need to be carefully weighed." Last year, a report by the NI Centre for Economic Policy at Ulster University suggested that although removing the 26 charge from return flights could generate over 500,000 more airline passengers annually, it could ultimately come at a cost of over 7m per year to the block grant. A separate report by Mott MacDonald said that a 50% reduction in APD "might support around 3,800 additional jobs and 200m per annum in GVA (gross value added) by 2020". The Department of Finance and Personnel (DFP) sided with the first report. Economy Minister Simon Hamilton has praised the hard work of Northern Ireland manufacturers during a visit to Canyon Europe. The Newtownabbey company employs nearly 90 people and is the UK's only manufacturer of a plastic trigger sprayer, which is used by pharmaceutical and animal health firms. It was the first Japanese business to set up in Northern Ireland when it was established here in 1987. The minister praised the work of manufacturing companies like Canyon Europe during a tour of its factory. "Manufacturing provides around 11% of all jobs in Northern Ireland and almost 16% of total economic output of the region," he said. "The sector makes a significant contribution to export levels and research and development, both of which are central to wealth generation. "I am pleased that in spite of many challenges, our local manufacturing sector has seen its output grow by 2.4% in the last year and that employment in manufacturing firms has grown to approximately 80,000." Canyon Europe reported pre-tax profits of 7.6m in its latest set of results. It trades in 50 markets around the world. Along with another in Vietnam, Newtownabbey is one of just two of the company's sites outside Japan. Mr Hamilton said: "My department's key objectives are to stimulate innovation and research and development, improve the skills of the workforce, and to enable businesses to compete successfully in global markets. "These are all areas that the manufacturing sector has embraced." He also claimed that a cut in the rate of corporation tax to 12.5% from 2018 would be "a powerful lever that can stimulate economic prosperity". But he added that the Government also needed to work with the private sector to create a "highly skilled workforce". The London market struggled to remain in positive territory as European markets took a hammering following a dismal economic update from America. The FTSE 100 Index gave up earlier gains but remained 21.3 points higher at 6206.9, as a major slowdown in the US jobs market dealt a blow to a possible June interest rate hike from the US Federal Reserve. The worse-than-expected US non-farm payroll figures showed 38,000 new jobs were added in May - the lowest amount for more than five years. The unemployment rate also tumbled to its lowest point since November 2007, dropping to 4.7% from 5%, according to the United States Department of Labour. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.4%, while Germany's Dax and the Cac 40 in France dropped more than 1%. Sterling rose 0.8% against the dollar at 1.453, as the US currency weakened in the wake of the disappointing employment data from the US. It was also helped after Britain's services sector regained some strength last month, but remained under pressure from Brexit fears. The closely-watched Markit/CIPS services purchasing managers' index (PMI) showed a reading of 53.5 in May, up from 52.3 in April when activity rose at its slowest pace for more than three years. A reading above 50 signals growth. The pound was 0.8% down against the euro at 1.282. In stocks, silver and gold miners were in the ascendency after investors sought out safe havens when the US dollar took a tumble. Silver miner Fresnillo was the biggest riser on the market, up 79p to 1123p, while gold miner Randgold Resources came in 400p higher at 6250p. Mining giants Glencore and Anglo American also raced ahead, stepping up 7.1p to 135.7p and 30.4p to 617.9p respectively. But Britain's biggest supermarkets took a tumble following Thursday's "sell" rating from Deutsche Bank. Tesco was down 7.5p to 162p, Sainsbury's dipped 10.7p to 246.2p and Morrisons fell 7.5p to 188.9p. BP rose 5.5p to 358.6p, as price rises signal that outages in Canada and Nigeria continue to eat into oversupply across the industry. The oil giant also said it will pay out 175 million US dollars (121.3 million) to investors over claims that its management misled them about the severity of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Royal Dutch Shell lifted 17.5p to 1683p. Broker ICAP jumped up 6.4p to 42p, after it said it had won a 65 million US dollar (45 million) contract to provide technology for China's main fixed income and foreign exchange trading system, giving it a major break in the world's second-largest economy. The firm said its electronic foreign exchange and fixed income business - EBS BrokerTec - would provide technology to China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS). The biggest risers on the FTSE 100 Index were Fresnillo up 79p to 1123p, Rangold Resources up 400p to 6250p, Glencore up 7.1p to 135.7p, Anglo American up 30.4p to 617.9p. The biggest fallers on the FTSE 100 Index were Tesco down 7.5p to 162p, Sainsbury's down 10.7p to 246.2p, Morrisons down 7.5p to 188.9p, and Standard Life down 6.4p to 327.2p. Matt Damon said he wondered what Europe would look like in 25 years Bourne Identity star Matt Damon has described Brexit as an "insane" idea and questioned what Europe would look like in 25 years time. The actor used a speech to students graduating from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to raise concerns about a "buffet" of problems facing the world. Damon, whose film Good Will Hunting was set at MIT, included Brexit on the list of issues facing the planet. At the commencement ceremony he told the students: "This world has some problems that we need you to drop everything and solve. "Go ahead and take your pick from the world's worst buffet." He listed problems including economic inequality, the migrant crisis, climate change and institutional racism before adding: "Or the Brexit, for God's sake, that insane idea that the best path for Britain is to cut loose from Europe and drift out to sea. "What is Europe even going to look like in 25 years?" The Hollywood star used the speech to take a swipe at Republican White House hopeful Donald Trump. Referring to Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom's theory, which suggests humanity could be living in a "computer simulation" run by an advanced form of intelligence, Damon said: "What if this, all of this, is a simulation - it's a crazy idea, but what if it is? "If there are multiple simulations, how come we had to be in the one where Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee for president?" Thomas Copeland, Eddie Izzard, Jim Fitzpatrick, Sammy Wilson and Sian Barker during the debate at Whitla Hall Sammy Wilson is renowned for his joke-filled speeches at the DUP's annual conference. And he famously traded one-liners with Sacha Baron-Cohen's Ali G character for a Channel 4 show. Last night the affable East Antrim MP - sporting a deep tan - went head-to-head on the issue of the EU referendum with comedian Eddie Izzard, who was sporting a pink beret and matching lipstick. The debate, hosted by Methodist College in Belfast, was a good natured exchange of views. There were facts and figures, claims and counter-claims, a few laughs and a poignant moment when Izzard fought back tears as he reminisced about his childhood in Bangor. "We lived in Ballyholme for three years, leaving in 1967," he said. "My mother died a few months after we left. I loved Bangor. It was a beautiful time, the memories are locked in." The comedian, who describes himself as transgender, and who's taking part in 31 debates in 31 days across the UK, said he was "positive about Northern Ireland and positive about Europe". Read more Read More He pointed out that the region benefits from 100m of European funding per year and claimed "there will definitely be Customs checks and more bureaucracy" if the UK votes to leave the EU. This point was disputed by Wilson. "It won't be necessary to restore border controls. The Common Travel Area existed long before we joined the EU. For 40 years of a terrorist campaign, the Irish Government told us it could not seal the border. Now, suddenly, gun turrets can be put up." In response to pupils' questions about security, Izzard said that working together within the EU alongside the other member states to push back against terrorism was the "logical thing to do". To a resounding cheer from the audience, he added: "Despair is the fuel of terrorism, hope is the fuel of civilisation." Mr Wilson countered that there would always be close co-operation between European security agencies. He added that the free movement of people was allowing "jihadists to rove across our continent like terrorist nomads, committing atrocities". Although Izzard and Wilson were poles apart in their views on Europe, the MP revealed that they had at least one thing in common. "As a child I also lived in Bangor," Mr Wilson said. "And I delivered newspapers around Ballyholme, but unlike Eddie, I don't speak French. "I'll challenge him to speak Ulster-Scots." The BBC has been criticised after refusing to reveal how much it pays controversial commentator Jude Collins for appearances on its programmes. Mr Collins came under fire this week after drawing comparisons between the Boys' Brigade youth group and dissident republicans. He has regularly appeared on the BBC, leading to calls for the publicly-funded broadcaster to sever its ties with him. The UUP said it was writing to BBC NI director Peter Johnston demanding to know if the licence payer is "sponsoring his diatribe", saying the BBC "needs to offer clarity on its support or otherwise for this unelected spokesperson". The Belfast Telegraph questioned the BBC on how much licence fee payers' money was being used to pay for Mr Collins' appearances. However, the broadcaster refused to answer. A statement from BBC Northern Ireland said: "It wouldn't be appropriate for us to comment on the remuneration received by an individual contributor. "We can, however, confirm that freelance journalists and others who are invited, or commissioned, to take part in our programmes are entitled to payment in line with our normal guidelines." DUP MP Gregory Campbell believes the BBC must be more open and transparent when it comes to how much it pays staff, presenters and contributors. "This is a long-running issue about the lack of openness on the part of the BBC," he told the Belfast Telegraph. "Given that they get over 3bn per year from the licence fee payer, the public purse, they should be much more transparent about expenditure. Even more so when we are talking about someone as controversial as Jude Collins." On Sunday, photographs were posted on Twitter with the comment, "Shocking images of children at masked march in Lurgan". Belfast artist Brian John Spencer then shared the image on the social media site and Mr Collins replied with a photograph of a Boys' Brigade display and the comment, "A bit like this, then..." Mr Campbell described Mr Collins' Twitter remarks and his subsequent contributions on BBC radio and television as "totally unacceptable". TUV leader Jim Allister has also urged the BBC to stop providing Mr Collins with air time. "As Collins demonstrated on Talkback (on Wednesday) that he is incapable of apologising even when he gets something so glaringly wrong, it is incumbent upon the BBC to stop providing him with a platform," he said. Charlene Pierce, who was given a twelve month sentence today, (six months in jail and six months on license), for 'Misconduct in a public office'. A former Housing Executive employee who researched the details of three people living on a PSNI witness protection programme has been sent to jail. Handing Charlene Pierce a 12-month sentence, Judge Gordon Kerr QC told her that her actions not only had the potential to affect the public's confidence in the scheme, they also put the three people in question in fear. The 34-year old mother of two, from Harmin Park in Newtownabbey, was informed she will spend six months in prison, with the remaining six months of her sentence on licence upon her release, after she admitted a charge of misconduct in a public office. Passing sentence at Belfast Crown Court, Judge Kerr said that whilst he accepted Pierce's offending occurred over a short period - from June 25 to 28, 2014 - and there was "no evidence" the information was passed on, he nonetheless said what she did was serious. At that time, Pierce was working for the Northern Ireland Housing Executive as a claims builder but 'wilfully misconducted herself' by unlawfully obtaining information about the identities and addresses of three people on the PSNI Witness Protection Scheme. As a result of her actions, the three protected people had to be moved to new addresses at a cost of 35,000 to the public purse. Pierce was arrested on Monday, July 28, 2014, by detectives from the PSNI's Organised Crime Branch at her place of work in the Housing Executive's offices in Belfast's Great Victoria Street for an "unrelated matter''. At that time, she was employed as a claims builder for individuals seeking benefit in the Belfast area and had permission to do research on them - but not on the three people whose details she was found to be in possession of. Detectives found her handbag under her desk and inside was a document containing the personal details of the three people on the witness protection scheme. When police found the document, Pierce was re-arrested under the Terrorism Act. Judge Kerr said the research she conducted on the three people was "deliberate, targeted and unrelated to her work." The court heard Pierce accessed information on the Housing Executive's internal computer system on June 25 and June 26, 2014, relating to the names and addresses of three people who cannot be named by a court order to protect their identities. A further examination showed traces of researching having been carried out on the computer on June 27, 2014. Police accessed her Facebook account which showed she had been in contact with an individual about the three people on the PSNI witness protection scheme and this person was listed as a "friend''. When her phone was examined, it also showed a phone number for the same person. Her barrister accepted that it was "quite wrong" for Pierce to access the information, branding it a "forbidden act." Thick plumes of smoke rise from the gorse fire in the Dunnyboe area of Co Tyrone Fire crews have saved a forest after they brought a massive gorse fire in Co Tyrone under control. The blaze took hold at Stroanback in the Dunnyboe area, and firefighters worked along a two-mile front as smoke billowed high into the sky. Fire and Rescue Service Group Commander Alan O'Neill said around two square miles had been damaged, with the fire expected to be extinguished before midnight. Mr O'Neill added that no property had been affected. No cause of the blaze has yet been established. He added: "Firefighters were able to put measures in place to stop the fire spreading from the wild land to a forested area." After a hot, sunny day, "the elements supported us for a while" added the firefighter chief, with a change in the weather finally helping the crews control the flames. Six fire appliances and 45 firefighters dealt with the inferno, using beaters to dampen down the blaze. Crews rushed to the scene from Strabane, Omagh, Newtownstewart, Cookstown, Crescent Link in Londonderry and Maghera. A PSNI helicopter provided aerial support. There were other more minor incidents throughout the day, including one on Belfast's Cave Hill. Mr O'Neill warned people to take care while out and about - particularly when using barbecues in the hot, dry weather - and to dial 999 immediately if a fire is spotted. Health Minister Michelle O'Neill with John O'Doherty from The Rainbow Project at the organisation's offices in Belfast A controversial lifetime ban on gay men donating blood in Northern Ireland is to be lifted. The decision by Stormont Health Minister Michelle O'Neill comes after a long campaign by gay-rights activists in the region and a series of court battles over the contentious prohibition. A similar ban was ended in England, Scotland and Wales in 2011 and replaced with rules that allowed gay men to give blood 12 months after their last sexual encounter with another man. The lifetime ban had been retained in Northern Ireland by successive Democratic Unionist health ministers, who cited blood safety concerns. The announcement comes only eight days after Sinn Fein assumed the health ministry in the wake of May's Assembly election. While Ms O'Neill made the decision, it was not opposed by her DUP colleagues in the Stormont Executive. "I think it is a good news story for the Executive to have taken this position," the minister said as she announced the move in Belfast at LGBT health organisation the Rainbow Project. "I think it is a good news story for the LGBT community. It is a decision I have taken based on medical evidence that was put before me, which clearly shows that this was the right decision to take." Ms O'Neill said evidence from the rest of the UK showed the risks around blood safety reduced with the introduction of the one-year deferral policy. The lifetime ban will officially be removed in September. John O'Doherty, director of the Rainbow Project, described the announcement as "absolutely fantastic". "We knew when minister O'Neill was appointed she was going to remove the blood ban, we didn't necessarily expect it so soon, but we very much welcome it," he said. The blood ban was one of a number of LGBT issues that have stirred controversy at Stormont. The most high profile remaining dispute is over the ongoing ban on same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. Mr O'Doherty said he hoped progress could be made on that issue and others in the new Assembly term. "This is a new opportunity with a new executive," he said. "We are taking nothing as read, we look forward to engaging with all ministers as we have done with the health minister today." In the most recent court judgement on the gay blood ban, the Court of Appeal decided the decision on whether to lift the ban rested with Stormont, not the UK Health Secretary. A previous ruling that had found former DUP health minister Edwin Poots had acted with pre-determined bias, based on his Christian beliefs, in retaining the ban was overturned. DUP councillors objected to a leisure committee recommendation to approve funding for a proposal by the Friends of Glenarriff community group for the 600,000 centre A row has erupted in the Glens of Antrim over the names of IRA men on gates leading to a GAA ground and a new community centre. The uproar has resulted in a block being put on a proposed 180,000 Causeway Coast and Glens Council grant to help fund a community facility on land the gates give access to. DUP councillors objected to a leisure committee recommendation to approve funding for a proposal by the Friends of Glenarriff community group for the 600,000 centre. The delay is likely to mean the group will also miss a deadline for funding under the Spaces and Places programme. The community group has already raised more than 100,000 towards the construction of the 600,000 centre. The organisation has leased a part of the GAA's grounds, but two IRA men killed in 1922 are named on the gates which lead into the ground, and it is that republican link which has annoyed the DUP. DUP councillor Sam Cole said that the commemoration of IRA men Charlie McAllister and Pat McVeigh on the gates was offensive to unionists, and meant that the facility could not be fully cross-community. He felt that there was a Section 75 equality issue at stake, which is why the DUP had asked for the grant to be referred to the council's legal team. Independent councillor Padraig MacShane, who represents the area, said passions were running very high in the Glens over the issue. "Filibustering and stalling by the DUP means that there is now very little chance of the community group meeting the deadline for Spaces and Places funding," he said. On the matter of the IRA men's names, Mr MacShane said: "The two boys that were shot dead by British forces were central characters within the organisation in that area. It's asking people to give up their identity, their history, their culture." The council's legal team is checking to see if the proposal meets legal and policy guidelines. Convicted double killer Hazel Stewart is to take High Court action over being refused funding to defend a bid to reclaim police pension benefits inherited from her murdered first husband. Lawyers for the former Sunday School teacher are set to argue legal aid was wrongly denied on the basis of her second husband's financial means. Her solicitor, Kevin Winters, confirmed today that judicial review proceedings will be brought against the authorities who took the decision. He said: "As a life sentence prisoner my client's financial status ought to be considered on a stand-alone basis. "She should be entitled to defend her case." The National Crime Agency (NCA) is seeking an order that Stewart must repay money gained following the death of Trevor Buchanan. The 53-year-old is serving a minimum 18-year jail sentence for murdering Constable Buchanan, 32, and 31-year-old Lesley Howell, the wife of her ex-lover Colin Howell. Efforts to recover money from her under proceeds of crime legislation have been hit by a series of delays. A trial due to get underway last month had to be put on hold after it emerged that Stewart has been left without funding because of the legal aid refusal Her second husband, retired police superintendent David Stewart, is a joint respondent in the proceedings despite facing no allegations of any wrongdoing. He is defending the action as a personal litigant without legal representation. With Mr Stewart acknowledged to be "entirely blameless", legal aid authorities concluded that he should pay his wife's bills in defending the claim. The case centres on finances which have since been tied up in the couple's family home. But Mr Winters insisted that Hazel Stewart should be given the proper means to fight the NCA bid to recover assets. "These are serious matters that are being faced," he added. "In order to deal with a complex set of proceedings plainly she is entitled to legal aid. "Her application was refused on the basis that her husband's financial means ought to be taken into consideration. That is contested." The bid to recover money from Stewart comes as she continues to try to clear her name. She was unanimously convicted of both killings by a jury at Coleraine Crown Court in March 2011. The victims were found in a fume-filled garage in Castlerock, Co Londonderry back in May 1991. Police originally believed they had died in a suicide pact after discovering their partners were having an affair. They were in fact murdered before their bodies were arranged to make it look like they had taken their own lives. Nearly two decades passed before dentist Howell, 57 suddenly confessed to both killings. He pleaded guilty to the murders in 2010 and was ordered to serve at least 21 years behind bars. Howell also implicated his former lover in the plot and gave evidence against her at her trial. In October last year she lost her appeal against being convicted of murdering her policeman husband. She has since applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission in A further challenge to the guilty verdict. Her lawyers have also approached the body which examines suspected miscarriages of justice in an attempt to have her conviction for killing Lesley Howell referred back to the Court of Appeal. New rules will enable people to hail private taxis in Belfast, but only at certain times and within a two-mile radius of the city centre The opening shots have been fired in the latest battle in Belfast's taxi warfare. New regulations mean that this weekend there will be more taxis the public can flag down on Belfast streets than ever before. A change to the law means that previously private hire only cabs will be able to pick people up straight off the street, as opposed to customers needing to have booked a cab first. Previously private hire taxis can now operate as public hire from midnight on Friday and Saturday until 6am each following morning. Belfast's newest taxi operator, the global giant Uber, does not have a licence to operate as public hire at anytime. Therefore customers still need to book. Instead the company is offering free rides to people over the weekend, which also marks the sixth month anniversary since its launch. Since launch the company now boasts of over 200 drivers on its books and that one in 10 Belfast people use its app. From 6am today until 4am Monday, Uber users will get 10 off their ride, meaning most short distance journeys could be free. It's the latest bid for custom in the increasingly tense battle ground that is the city's taxi industry. Taxis have been seen around the town advertising that they "don't do surging" in response to Uber's controversial policy of increasing the price as demand rises. Social networks are also a buzz with rival drivers keen to highlight each others' failings. Previously Fona Cab owner William McCausland has said the arrival of Uber was a "big threat" however, was confident his 600-strong fleet could match the competition. He told the Belfast Telegraph his firm had invested some 300,000 in preparation for the new taxi laws which also see cars being fitted with meters and printers as well as advertising fixed prices. He was unavailable for comment yesterday. Some in the industry believe the new regulations will lead to confusion among the public. Belfast Public Hire Taxis spokesman Gerry Maxwell said: "It it ain't broke don't fix it. "Chaos and havoc are maybe too strong words to use, but you will have everyone vying for a fare. "When they wrote the new laws, it was fit for purpose then, but not now in 2016. It was rushed "I've been taxing for 32 years, both as private and public hire. I'm a believer that everyone should stick to their own rules. "That the public hire can pick people off the street and the private hire are supplied work from their depot - that's what their drivers pay for. "Drivers are also out of pocket around 1,500 to pay for the equipment, which will increase fares at a time we are trying to reduce ours. "People think our fares are more expensive than private hire - but they are wrong, we charge exactly the same as a private hire taxi. "There's no winners in this, the drivers, the firms and the punters all lose out." The Irish government is fighting compensation claims by children who developed an incurable sleeping disorder after getting the Pandemrix swine flu vaccine. This is despite a Government-commissioned report saying the Pandemrix jab left susceptible children at 14 times greater risk of developing the condition. It said other "unspecified factors" may also have played a role. The first legal stage of the cases will come before the High Court next week when an order for discovery of documents from the Department of Health and the vaccine manufacturer GlaxoSmithcline (GSK) will be sought. Solicitor Michael Boylan of Augustus Cullen Law, who represents 60 of the children, revealed yesterday that he is shocked the State is denying liability and fighting the families. It is denying it owes a duty of care to the children who received the vaccine. "They are denying everything and putting us on proof of everything. Denying a duty of care is very radical." Mr Boylan said the Irish expert group found a 14-fold increase in the incidence of narcolepsy among children vaccinated, compared to those who did not get the jab. The untested vaccine was rushed out during global panic over the swine flu pandemic in the winter of 2009 and 2010. Read more Read More The pandemic turned out to be much milder than feared but parents were strongly urged by senior medical officers in the Department of Health and public health experts to have children, who were a risk group for the virus, vaccinated. However, some 80 children who received the vaccine went on to develop the sleeping disorder narcolepsy. The rare disorder causes people to feel drowsy or to suffer spontaneous 'sleep attacks'. They can sometimes experience loss of muscle power and fall. This can be triggered by stimulus like laughter. All of the young people, many of whom are now teenagers or young adults, are on medication to stay awake during the day or sleep at night. Mr Boylan said the children allege negligence by the State and GSK in the circumstances where they were administered an untested vaccine and/or that the vaccine was a defective product. Parents were not made aware of the fact that it was untested, he added. At the time the vaccine was issued, GSK got the then government to grant the drugs giant indemnity from any potential compensation claims. Mr Boylan said: "Other countries like Switzerland, America, Poland and Australia would not give a licence to the vaccine. "They were afraid it was not fully tested." He said boosters were included in the vaccine, which increase the body's immune response to the jab. "It is not clear why the manufacturing process for the vaccine in Quebec in Canada, where no cases of narcolepsy followed, was different to that of the drugs plant in Dresden." Children in several other countries have been compensated; some through no-fault vaccine redress schemes. In the Netherlands, some children have got payouts of nearly 1m and the sums demanded here are likely to be in seven figures, he added. "If you look at the public health leaflets at the time they state 'it stops with you.' "People were made to feel they had a civic duty to get the vaccine to stop the plague." He said the health effects are devastating for many of the children. Most also have cataplexy, in which they "collapse like a puppet" and have suffered accidents like falls down stairs or crashes through glass panes in showers. Mairead Hilliard, whose son Alex (11) developed narcolepsy after the jab, said yesterday the condition has left the young people on life-long medication and at risk of never meeting their full potential. The compensation is needed because of the debilitating effect it has on their ability to live a normal life, she said. They are all growing up now and some are students who find they are fighting the illness all the time, and there is no cure for it, she added. Irish Independent Background Pandemrix, a vaccine used in response to the swine flu pandemic that began in 2009, increased children's risk of narcolepsy - a chronic disorder which causes excessive daytime sleepiness, research suggests. For every 55,000 doses delivered around one child developed the condition, said health experts. The research, published in the British Medical Journal, examined 75 children aged between four and 18 who were diagnosed with narcolepsy from January 2008 and who attended sleep centres across England. Researchers from the Health Protection Agency (HPA) and Papworth and Addenbrooke's hospitals in Cambridge found that 11 of these had received the vaccine before their symptoms began. After adjusting for clinical conditions, the authors associated the vaccination with a 14-fold increased risk of narcolepsy. In absolute numbers, this means that one in 52,000 to 57,500 doses are associated with narcolepsy, said the authors. Since 2011, the use of the vaccine in people under the age of 20 across Europe has been restricted following reports of increased cases of the sleep disorder - which is characterised by periods of extreme drowsiness, sudden naps, and paralysis attacks. David Cameron was accused of 'scaremongering' and 'hypocrisy' by the Sky News studio audience Prominent Brexit campaigner Michael Gove has issued a call to British voters to send a message to the "arrogant" Brussels elite: "You're fired. We're taking back control." In an hour-long TV grilling ahead of the June 23 EU referendum, Mr Gove claimed that " the majority of people in this country are suffering as a result of our membership of the European Union". Repeatedly blaming the EU for the collapse of his own father's fish merchant company, he branded Brussels a "job-destroying machine" and said employment would rise and salaries increase if the UK left. Speaking on Sky News's EU: In or Out?, Mr Gove denied that Vote Leave was running a "Project Lies" campaign, and said he was happy to allow independent auditors to test its widely-criticised claim that the UK sends Brussels 350 million a week. The Justice Secretary accused David Cameron's Remain camp of relying on "pessimism" about Britain's future, and insisted that Brexit was a "Project Hope" which would allow the next generation to "make this country once more truly great". He insisted he was "absolutely not" using the referendum campaign as a means to seize the prime minister's job, saying voters should "count me out" from any bid for the Conservative leadership. Under intense questioning from Sky News political editor Faisal Islam, Mr Gove was unable to name any independent economic authorities which backed Brexit, but insisted he was "glad" that organisations like the Bank of England, IMF and OECD were not backing EU withdrawal. Organisations that supported EU membership had in "many cases" received money from Brussels, had "consistently made errors" on issues like the euro and the 2008 crash and had an "agenda", he claimed. "I am glad that all these organisations are not on my side," said Mr Gove. "The organisations that many people are citing in this debate are organisations that have been wrong in the past and I think they are wrong now." In an increasingly tetchy exchange, Mr Islam branded the Justice Secretary an "Oxbridge Trump" and suggested that the Leave camp shared with the US presidential candidate a disdain for expert opinion. Asked why voters should trust him over all of the experts and leaders who had spoken out in support of the UK staying in, Mr Gove replied: "I'm not asking the public to trust me, I'm asking the public to trust themselves." He added: "The people who are backing the Remain campaign are people who have done very well thank you out of the European Union." The Sky political editor challenged him to name a single international ally who backed Brexit, adding: "You can't name one, can you? I'll give you half a point for Donald Trump." Mr Gove won applause as he accused the Remain camp of "sneering condescension" for suggesting that those who want to withdraw from the EU were "following in the footsteps of Trump". And when Mr Islam said that his father's experience of losing his company gave him "no special moral authority", the Justice Secretary hit back: "I'm absolutely not unique. I'm one of many who have seen their parents and their friends lose their jobs, lose their income, lose their livelihood because of the European Union. "Do not skate over their misery. Don't dismiss the pain that they've had. Don't belittle the hurt that has been caused by the job-destroying machine that is the European Union." He accused the broadcaster of being on the side of the "elites", while he was on the "side of the people". But he came under fire from some audience members, including Andrew Carnegie, who compared him to a First World War general ordering his troops "over the top" while having "no idea what's on the frontline or what the casualty rate will be in the conflicts to come". Asked whether he could guarantee no-one would lose their job as a result of Brexit, Mr Gove said: "I can't guarantee every person currently in work in their current job will keep their job." To loud applause from the studio audience, he added: "Seventy-three members of the European Parliament will be losing their job. Our European Commissioner will be losing his job and as far as I'm concerned I wish them well in the private sector." And he added: "It's the invincible arrogance of Europe's elites that gets me. "These are people who have seen the euro collapse. These are people who are presiding over a migration crisis on their borders, and yet do they ever acknowledge that they need to change? No. "They say they need more integration, more of our money, more control over this country. "I think it's time that we said to people who are incapable of acknowledging that they've ever got anything wrong: 'I'm sorry, you've had your day.' "Unelected, unaccountable elites, I'm afraid it's time to say 'You're fired. We are going to take back control'." Sinn Fein of Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness (centre) visiting the Island of Ireland Peace Park with Minister-President of Flanders Geert Bourgeois in Flanders, Belgium. PA Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, back, laying a wreath alongside minister-president of Flanders Geert Bourgeois at the First World War monument in Belgium (Sinn Fein/PA) The deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness is pictured with Minister President Geert Bourgeois at the Island of Ireland Peace Park, Messines. Pictured left is Conor Heaney special advisor to the deputy First Minister who lost his great grandfather and two great uncles in World War 1. Photo by Press Eye. Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness lays a wreath with Minister-President of Flanders Geert Bourgeois at the Island of Ireland Peace Park, Messines The Deputy First Minister with Teddy Colligan, who is custodian of the Ulster Memorial Tower Martin McGuinness lays a wreath at the Ulster Memorial Tower yesterday for those who lost their lives in World War One Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness has paid tribute to Irish soldiers from all parts of the island killed at the Somme after laying a memorial wreath at the First World War battlefield. Speaking from Thiepval Wood in France yesterday, the Sinn Fein MLA said he hoped his visit would promote reconciliation. "It was very important for me to come here and to demonstrate respect and to remember those who died in the Battle of the Somme and the millions from all nations killed in a catastrophic imperialist war," he said. The Battle of the Somme holds special significance for many in the unionist community after more than 2,500 soldiers from the 36th (Ulster) Division were killed in the conflict's opening days. "Thousands of nationalists also fought at the Somme in the 16th (Irish) Division. "We have a shared and complex history on the island of Ireland. "As we move forward, we all have a responsibility to conduct ourselves in a way that is respectful and encourages reconciliation among our people. "I hope that my presence here contributes to that reconciliation process in a positive and constructive way." After being invited by the Flemish government, Mr McGuinness also laid a memorial wreath on Wednesday in Belgium close to Flanders Field. In 1917 the Battle of Messines there saw more than 40,000 men lose their lives. Speaking after the ceremony, Mr McGuinness said: "I come here as a proud Irish republican to recognise the deaths of thousands of Irishmen during the course of the catastrophic imperialist First World War, which claimed millions of lives." He added: "Tens of thousands of Irishmen from across the island died in the First World War, and it is important to recognise that. They are part of who we are." "It is an opportunity to remember the past in a mature way and to build a better future for everyone." Last month the Belfast Telegraph reported Mr McGuinness declined an invitation to attend the official ceremony marking the centenary of start of the Battle of the Somme on July 1, saying his presence might upset some participants. Mr McGuinness was accompanied by Sinn Fein vice-president Mary-Lou McDonald and party chair Declan Kearney on the trip. Discovering a personal connection to the visit, Mr McGuinness said his special adviser Conor Heaney had recently learned his great-grandfather Patrick had been killed at the Somme. "More and more republicans have been coming forward to tell me that their relatives were also killed and are also buried here," he said. "So I think this is part of our shared and complicated history in Ireland." DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson had previously described the visit an important step. "The timing of this visit is particularly significant, happening in the run-up to the centenary," he said. "The events of that day and the service and sacrifice of those men are of utmost importance to the Protestant, unionist and loyalist communities in Northern Ireland. It is extremely significant this is being recognised by Mr McGuinness and his colleagues." It has been a great couple of weeks for tax dodgers and an expensive fortnight for the rest of us, who have been left to pick up their bill. Despite all the talk of action to address tax dodging, recent meetings - the G7 in Japan and EU finance ministers in Brussels - failed to deliver the necessary steps to ensure global tax justice. By completely missing these opportunities to act on the dramatic revelations of the Panama Papers, world leaders have shown the world they remain on the side of tax dodgers and not the general public. The handful of measures which were agreed by the G7 are welcome, but what is really needed are straightforward and easy-to-implement rules that target companies' subsidiaries in tax havens. The widespread funnelling of wealth to tax havens defrauds governments in developing countries of at least $100bn per year. This is a denial of the rights of millions of people and why Oxfam is calling for an end to the destructive era of tax havens. Companies must pay their fair share of tax. Until then, ordinary people across the globe will continue to pay the price. JIM CLARKEN Chief executive, Oxfam Ireland In order to celebrate the summer solsticethe beginning of summer, and the time of the longest day of the yearyou have to understand how it works. During the summer solstice, the Earths northern or southern hemisphere tilts towards the sun. While this happens twice a year overall, it only occurs once a year in each hemispheresometime between June 20 and June 22 in the northern hemisphere and between December 20 and December 23 each year in the southern hemisphere. The summer solstice day has the longest period of daylightexcept in the Polar Regions, where daylight is continuous, from a few days to six months around the summer solstice. The significance of the event varies depending on the culture. However, most countries recognize the event in some way with holidays, festivals and rituals. The themes varyanywhere from religion or fertility. Pagans were one of the first religions to celebrate the summer solstice. During this period of time, Pagans celebrate Midsummer, also known as St. Johns Day. However, Christians associate the summer solstice with the nativity of John the BaptistCatholic Orthodox and some Protestant churches recognize the same. In the United States each state observes the summer solstice differently: Tucson, Arizona: Has an inaugural Earth walk solstice celebration, with other events in San Francisco, Jerusalem, and other communities around the world. The event features a walk through a giant labyrinth, musicians, healers, ceremony, etc. Has an inaugural Earth walk solstice celebration, with other events in San Francisco, Jerusalem, and other communities around the world. The event features a walk through a giant labyrinth, musicians, healers, ceremony, etc. Santa Barbara, California: Hosts an annual celebration that typically occurs on the weekend of, or the weekend after the actual solstice, and includes a festival and parade. Hosts an annual celebration that typically occurs on the weekend of, or the weekend after the actual solstice, and includes a festival and parade. Geneva, Illinois: Hosts a Swedish Day festival on the third Sunday of June. The festivities features maypole-raising, dancing, and presentation of an authentic Viking ship that dates back to 1911. Hosts a Swedish Day festival on the third Sunday of June. The festivities features maypole-raising, dancing, and presentation of an authentic Viking ship that dates back to 1911. Kaleva, Michigan: A gathering occurs by the Village Roadside Park. At the celebration, pannukakku which is a finished, oven baked pancake is eaten, along with strawberry shortcake followed by a bonfire. A gathering occurs by the Village Roadside Park. At the celebration, pannukakku which is a finished, oven baked pancake is eaten, along with strawberry shortcake followed by a bonfire. New York: The NYC Swedish Midsummer celebration that occurs in Battery Park, New York City brings 3,000 5,000 people annually. The event has taken place, each year, since 1941. The Swedish Midsummer is also celebrated in other places that have a large Swedish and Scandinavian population, such as Rockford, Illinois, Chicago, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Lindsborg, Kansas. The NYC Swedish Midsummer celebration that occurs in Battery Park, New York City brings 3,000 5,000 people annually. The event has taken place, each year, since 1941. The Swedish Midsummer is also celebrated in other places that have a large Swedish and Scandinavian population, such as Rockford, Illinois, Chicago, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Lindsborg, Kansas. Seattle, Washington: The Fremont neighborhood puts on a very large parade and pageant. The festivities are considered to be very controversial because it includes painted naked cyclists. The Fremont neighborhood puts on a very large parade and pageant. The festivities are considered to be very controversial because it includes painted naked cyclists. Wyoming:The summer solstice celebration is held on Casper Mountain in Wyoming at Crimson Dawn Park. The majority of the community, and even some people around the world, come to partake in the large bonfire. During the bonfire, everyone is invited to throw a handful of red soil into the fire in hopes that they get their wish fulfilled. Other well-known countries partake in the celebrations differently: Austria : Each year, a procession of ships sail down the Danube River. Up to 30 ships sail down the river in line as fireworks fill the sky and bonfires along the hill tops are blazed. The festivities, that include the ships and fireworks, usually last for 90 minutes. : Each year, a procession of ships sail down the Danube River. Up to 30 ships sail down the river in line as fireworks fill the sky and bonfires along the hill tops are blazed. The festivities, that include the ships and fireworks, usually last for 90 minutes. Brazil : Most participants celebrate with typical clothing, food and square dancing. : Most participants celebrate with typical clothing, food and square dancing. Canada : In Quebec fireworks light the night sky. : In Quebec fireworks light the night sky. Denmark : Early in the 1770s the celebrations began by men and women gathering special herbs that they would need for the rest of the year to cure people. Still now the same overall perception is still practiced however, participants gather near healing waters and a large bonfire is made to ward away evil spirits. : Early in the 1770s the celebrations began by men and women gathering special herbs that they would need for the rest of the year to cure people. Still now the same overall perception is still practiced however, participants gather near healing waters and a large bonfire is made to ward away evil spirits. France : Traditionally summer solstice is celebrated with bonfires. In some French towns, a tall bonfire is built by the inhabitants in order to be lit on St Johns Day the huge bonfire is named chavande. : Traditionally summer solstice is celebrated with bonfires. In some French towns, a tall bonfire is built by the inhabitants in order to be lit on St Johns Day the huge bonfire is named chavande. Greece: Midsummer celebrations are referred to as klidonas which mean sign or oracle. During this time unmarried women would discover their potential mates through a ritual. Its also customary to burn Mayday wreaths that are used to decorate the doors of the houses for the previous two months, in large communal bonfires. These celebrations are accompanied by music, dancing and jumping over the flames. Midsummer celebrations are referred to as klidonas which mean sign or oracle. During this time unmarried women would discover their potential mates through a ritual. Its also customary to burn Mayday wreaths that are used to decorate the doors of the houses for the previous two months, in large communal bonfires. These celebrations are accompanied by music, dancing and jumping over the flames. Norway: In most areas of Norway, everyone participates in a large bonfire. In Western Norway, it is customary to arrange mock weddings between adults and children. The wedding is meant to symbolize the blossoming of new life. Other customs include a girl putting flowers under her pillow that night because it is believed that shell dream of her future husband. Other holidays and celebrations are shared with summer solstice. All in all, some of these special days relate their festivities directly with that of summer solstice. Some of the holidays shared and observed are: Day of Private Reflection celebrated primarily in Northern Ireland celebrated primarily in Northern Ireland Guru Purnima celebrated only in India celebrated only in India Christmas celebrated in correlation with summer solstice in the southern hemisphere celebrated in correlation with summer solstice in the southern hemisphere International Surfing Day International Yoga Day Juhannus celebrated primarily in Finland celebrated primarily in Finland National Aboriginal Day celebrated primarily in Canada celebrated primarily in Canada Tiregan celebrated only in Iran celebrated only in Iran World Music Day celebrated worldwide Even though summer solstice traditions vary depending on the locale, there is no doubt that the holiday is still celebrated worldwide. Its the kickoff for the summer season and is recognized through various celebratory events. Shutterstock.com As followers of Christianity, one of our biggest goals in life is to be a good Christian. We ask Angel of Lord, to guide us into the right direction and to help us make the right decisions. Christians strive to make Jesus Christ their center and build their life around worshiping him. However, no matter how many times you read the Bible or attend Sunday service, there is no definitive play-by-play that will provide you with instructions on how to be a better Christian. The only thing you can really do is ask your Angel of Lord to help you over the course of your journey and to pray that youre doing justice to God. Its important to listen and be receptive when theyre taking control or moving you in a different direction. Becoming a better Christian begins with you. Here are the first steps. 1. Read the Bible The Bible is a Christians blueprint and official resource on any questions a Christian may have. One of the defining purposes for the Bible is to act as a foundation for help for those who need answers. If youre struggling with comprehending the Bible, and the message behind the words, then sign up for a Bible study group. Participating in a Bible study can be a fun and enjoyable activity that will hold your attention and be a long term solution for any issues or concerns a Christian may have. Keeping the Bible a constant in your life will be a great way the Angel of Lord and the word of God will live on. 2. Pray Prayer is the best way to communicate with Jesus Christ. Even though He knows what is within your mind, body and soul its important that prayer be an element that is carried out daily. Being a better Christian means having an intimate relationship with the Lord. You should communicate with God every day versus only when youre experiencing a hardship in your life. Youll discover a renewed sense of purpose when youve prayed to God and expressed to your Angel of Lord how youre truly feeling. Furthermore, part of being a Christian is having a charity heart which means youre looking out for your brothers and sisters. Youll find that through prayer will be your outlet to getting help delivered to those in need. 3. Praise the Lord Christians should always look for ways to praise the Lords name. Let God live through your life by achieving goals and succeeding within the life youve been blessed with. God is great and His greatness should be flourished. However, because he sacrificed His own life so that we can live ours we must be His voice and sing loud with praise. Its important for Christians to understand that nothing can happen without their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Therefore, everything that happens is because of His actions. Dont be afraid to sing out loud the blessings that embody our lives because of Jesus. It is shameful to be ashamed of someone so great that you cannot discuss. 4. Forgiveness No matter how much we pray or call upon our Angel of Lord, there are going to times when we become angry and get upset. Its normal. However, despite the normalcy that is associated with a disagreement its even more important to forgive each other. In the Bible and at church, Christians read scriptures and vow to live a life as their God. Though at the end of the day practicing what you preach can be somewhat difficult to swallow and carry out. If you want a closer relationship to God and to be a better Christian, you must be willing to put in the effort of forgiving yourself and others around you. Do your best to not react to things with anger or malice. Look for ways you can be a better Christian and help the other one in the process. Ephesians 4:32 says, Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. 5. Rid Yourself of an Overwhelming Ego When youre in pain or feeling overwhelmed ask the Angel of Lord for help. Strive to never be arrogant. In the book of Peter, it says, Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you. God is aware of your humble nature and knows when youre bring arrogant. God never possessed an overpowering ego He remained humble and allowed His faith to be bigger than Him. Never the other way around. Its important to always keep God in your center. 6. Contribute to Society Even though giving tithe to the church is your Christian duty, its important to also view the bigger picture of charity. If youre in question of how to contribute to society, then call upon your Angel of Lord for guidance. Allow your angel to help you discover where you are needed. Ask yourself, how you can give back to your community whether it be your time or energy. Look for ways you can spread the word of Jesus Christ through your actions versus your wallet. Is there a soup kitchen in your area that could use a helping hand? Perhaps theres a child at a local YMCA that needs tutoring assistance? Or maybe a struggling single mother needs clothes to begin a career opportunity. As a Christian, its your job to contribute to society and look for ways you can insert yourself to do well. Whenever you find yourself in desperate need of guidance on becoming a better Christian, turn non-other than to your Angel of Lord. Youll find the answers that youre desperately in search of and even a glimpse of a road map that could point you into the right direction. Its important to always be willing to listen and be receptive to whatever Jesus Christ has in store for your journey in life. Angela Guzman is a Writer at Large for Beliefnet. Shutterstock.com Muslims across the world celebrate Ramadan which occurs in the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. Ramadan is deemed as one of the Five Pillars of Islam. The month lasts 29 30 days depending on the visual sightings of the crescent moon. Majority of society associates the celebration directly with fasting however, there are so many other rituals that go hand-in-hand with the observation. The ultimate goal of Ramadan is to care, share and develop a closer relationship with Allah. Through prayer, reciting invocations, reading the Quran and donating to charity more often are all general practices. Recitals are the most common ritual of Ramadan. During the observance, Muslims attempt to recite the entire Quran at least once during the month if multiple recitals are possible then the goal is increased. Depending on the individual and their lifestyle, group recitals may take place with family and/or a group of friends. Even though the recitals can take days or the entire month, Muslims are dedicated and allot time to partake in this ritual. Ramadan is also known for the element of fasting. Muslims fast from dawn until dusk. Instead of having the three regular meals of the day, an individual participating in the Ramadan celebration will only partake in two suhour and iftar. Suhour is the meal that is eaten before sunrise and prior to Al Fajr prayer also known as the prayer that takes place at dawn. It is the last meal before the fast begins. However, all fasts do come to an end. After sunset, iftar is the meal that ends the fast and is usually immediately after. Iftar is considered to be the larger meal of the day. Some Muslims associate the end of a fast by drinking water and eating dates. However, modern practices do not always implement dates and water with the process. Muslims participate in the fast when they turn 12-years-old. The intention of fasting is known to Muslims as niyyah which translates to the word intention. Muslims try to achieve niyyah which correlates the definitive personal need for a Muslim to reaching a deeper connection with their religion and Allah. The entirety of Ramadan promotes quality time with loved ones. Therefore, people often times come together for meals and mend quarrels that have occurred throughout the year. Whenever possible, during Ramadan, friends and family are usually together sharing a meal and its not unusual for multiple meals throughout Ramadan to be shared. Another type of prayer that is considered a Ramadan ritual are Taraweeh prayers. These prayers are special evening prayers that are only conducted in Ramadan after the Isha prayer. During this practice, long portions of the Quran are recited. All of these praters vary in length. Even though these prayers are not considered mandatory, they are highly recommended by Prophet Mohammad. Most of the Taraweeh prayers are held in congregation within the mosques however, some large groups of family and friends do get together for the religious celebration. An older tradition is the Ramadan cannon. Two cannon shots are fired and these shots are considered as the official announcements for the beginning of Ramadan and the morning of Eid Al Fitr which is the festival of ending the month of fasting. During the beginning of Ramadan, Muslims keep the aspect of charity even closer to their hearts. Charity iftar meals are served throughout various locations. The idea is that these meals will be catered to those who otherwise wouldnt be able to afford a meal. Most mosques also provide dates, water and sometimes juice to the congregation waiting to offer Al Maghreb prayers. Families are encouraged to donate food and drinks to mosques so that they can contribute to their congregations efforts. Charity is further emphasized by the idea of giving more than the prior year. The Prophet Mohammad is known for saying, Save yourself from hellfire by giving even half a date-fruit in charity. During Ramadan there are an influx of donation boxes and booths around the communities. Clothes, books and non-perishable food are the top three items that are needed and at the top of donation received lists. Not specifically in the United States, but restaurants in countries that are predominately Muslim oriented close during the daylight hours of Ramadan. Many restaurants serve konafa which is a cake made of wheat, sugar, honey, raisins and nuts. Another popular dessert option is a similar cake known as qatayef. This cake is smaller and is folded to encase the nuts and raisins. All in all, there are a number of rituals that are recognized during the Ramadan holiday. Rituals range from fasting to charity however, no matter what element is carried out the idea behind serving Allah and achieving fulfillment through religion is the ultimate goal of the Ramadan observance. Angela Guzman is a Writer at Large for Beliefnet. Ibby Piracha is one of many regulars at his local Starbucks in Leesburg, Virginia. However Ibby isnt like the other regulars hes also deaf. Krystal Payne, a newly hired employee, knew after she first took Ibbys order that she wanted to do something to make him feel more welcome at the store. The barista spoke with other employees about Ibby, learning he was a frequent customer and they did what they could to show him exceptional service while he was at the shop. Payne, however, wanted to take it a step further. The barista went home and spent over three hours that night learning American Sign Language so she could better communicate with Ibby. Ive been learning ASL, just so you can have the same experience as everyone else. The next day, she wrote him a small note stating: Ive been learning ASL, just so you can have the same experience as everyone else. Ibby, overwhelmed with emotion for this small act of kindness, now has the note framed in his home. Ibby was so moved by Krystals gesture that he posted it on Facebook to share with his friends. He never expected his post to go viral, but he is happy that Krystal is getting the recognition she deserves. A Starbucks spokeswoman even got wind of the kind gesture, and said the company was very proud of Krystals actions. In his post, Ibby shared a photo of the note with the caption: Oh, I gotta love this place. Starbucks woman cashier, she wrote it to me and she knew I am deaf. I am surprised she learning sign language because I attend to Starbucks 3 times in a week. She asked me "what you want drink?" in sign language. I am so blessed with her. I think she realized Leesburg, VA have deaf people. Please share this post to everyone. I want hearing people would understand about hearing community support for the deaf community. The next morning, Krystal heard about the post when her district manager complimented her and mentioned that there were many requests from reporters to interview Krystal. My job is to make sure people have the experience they expect and thats what I gave him, Krystal said. It took her a few days to adjust to her new fame, saying she didnt understand what all the fuss was about. Ibby hopes that the gesture will lead to a better understanding of the deaf community. He was inspired by Krystals act of kindness and believes others will be as well. It shows she respect deaf people, shes an inspiration, Ibby shared. Today, Krystal now knows everything she needs to take Ibbys order. Before she took it upon herself to learn American Sign Language, Ibby would have to order his drink through text messages to the staff. She learned ASL through simple YouTube videos. Piracha still loves to frequent the coffee shop, saying it is something that gave me genuine happiness even now, Im still smiling. Megan Bailey is a former Social Media Specialist and Content Producer for Beliefnet. She attended James Madison University where she received a degree in psychology. Daljinder Kaur, 72, and her husband Mohinder Singh Gill, 79, hold their newborn son Armaan at their home in Amritsar, May 11, 2016. More than six weeks have passed since a baby boy blessed the lives of Mohinder Singh Gill and his wife Daljinder Kaur, first-time parents who are in their 70s. But visitors, including curious strangers, keep coming by to their home in the northwestern Indian state of Punjab to catch a glimpse of the newborn and his septuagenarian mother and father. Most parents have to wait for their children to grow up to make them famous. But our son has brought us fame right at birth, Kaur joked as she glanced at the crowd of people inside her home in Amritsar citys posh Ranjit Avenue locality. On April 19, when Kaur gave birth at the age of 72, she possibly became the oldest woman in the world to have a baby through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Her case has spurred a debate among Indian medical experts on the ethics of reproducing beyond a certain age. With her wispy grey hair, Kaur shrugged off her critics as she looked down at her newborn son, Armaan. I dont want to think about all this. At this time, my focus is just our son, Kaur told BenarNews. This was Gods plan. So it is all up to him. Had things been in my hands, I would have had a kid long ago. But it wasnt purely parental instinct that made Kaur and her husband Gill, 79, undergo IVF to have a baby, Gill told BenarNews. One of the reasons they chose IVF after 46 years of marriage was to have an heir to stake a claim in his ancestral property, which is valued at $750,000. Since we had no children, my (late) father wanted to give my share of his ancestral property to my younger brother, who was only interested in selling it off. But I went to court and got a stay on the matter. But now, I have an heir, so the property will remain in the family, Gill said. Lives are complete Having spent the greater part of their married life in litigation, the couple said they had little time for anything else. Look at this house, Gill said, pointing toward his sparsely furnished living room. Before Armaan, we had nothing to look forward to. We didnt even buy a sofa set in the 46 years weve been married. But now, we feel our lives are complete. Kaur said she came across the idea of using IVF to conceive a baby six years ago, while watching a television program that featured an Indian embryologist who had helped a 60-something woman give birth. Within days, Kaur and Gill were on a train to the embryologists clinic in Hisar, Haryana state, about 327 km (203 miles) from Amritsar. Dr. Anurag Bishnoi of the National fertility and Test Tube Baby Center initially refused to take up the couples case. At first, I tried to avoid the case because she [Kaur] looked very frail. [Subsequently] we made her undergo all the tests and once all the results were OK we went ahead [with the procedure], Bishnoi told Agence France-Presse. Kaur went through two cycles of unsuccessful IVF before finally conceiving in July 2015. The process was painful and tiresome. But I am happy it all worked out well, she said. Armaan, which means desire or wish in Hindi, was born at 37 weeks through a normal delivery and weighed a healthy 2 kg (4.4 pounds) at birth. A month and a half since his birth, Kaur said she was still getting used to the babys erratic routine. At times, I am up for four hours in the middle of the night nursing him. It feels as if I am sleep-walking through my days and nights, said Kaur who is nursing the infant. Medical community divided But while many see Kaurs case as a medical marvel, it has attracted criticism from experts in medicine and lawmakers. Against this backdrop, a draft bill that recommends a cut-off age for couples opting for IVF has been stuck in the pipeline for years. Dr. Sudha Prasad, chief of the gynecology department at New Delhis Maulana Azad Medical College, described Kaurs case as a horrible situation. There are many implications of having a child. Are the parents capable of taking on the physical and emotional responsibility of bringing up another human being? That is one question, Prasad told BenarNews. Pregnancy, even in normal cases when the mother is over 35 years of age can lead to high blood pressure, gestation diabetes, eclampsia. Government regulations do not even allow people over a certain age to adopt, and here they are putting a 72-year-old woman through childbirth, the physician said. Prasad, a member of the Indian Council for Medical Research Committee of Artificial Reproduction Treatment (ART), said she had recommended 45 as the age limit for using the IVF method for the ART Bill 2016, but eventually agreed to 50 as the cut-off age. The bill, which has been in the draft stage for several years, is expected to be tabled for discussion in parliament this year. A health ministry official who requested anonymity declined to give an estimate as to when the bill would be tabled, saying, We are still studying the feasibility of the recommendations mentioned in the draft. Nanu Bhasin, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Women and Child Development, declined comment. As for Kaur, she expressed her hopes for Armaan. God has given him to us. God will take care of everything, she said. The National Palace is seen through its main gate in Kuala Lumpur, Aug. 14, 2014. Police have opened a defamation case against ex-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad for allegedly remarking in public that Malaysias king had likely been placed under house arrest, Mahathirs lawyer said. Mahathir on Friday was questioned at his office in Kuala Lumpur by four police officers for 40 minutes, including about the remark he is alleged to have made on May 19 while seeking royal intervention in his campaign to remove Najib from office over corruption allegations, attorney Mohamad Haniff Khatri said. There were 37 questions. Two thirds of the questions concerned his statement on the King and house arrest, Haniff Khatri told BenarNews. Mahathir, one of Najibs fiercest critics and a former member of the prime ministers party, since early March has spearheaded a Citizens Declaration campaign which has sought to gather 1.2 million signatures on a petition to oust Najib through non-violent means. Mahathir and the campaigns supporters were hoping to get a royal audience and hand the petition to the king, who is known as the Yang di-Pertuan Agong and who is the head of state in Malaysia. The police also questioned Mahathir about the Citizens' Declaration, the lawyer said. Fridays interview marked the third time in less than a year that the 90-year-old former PM was questioned over public comments related to Najib Razak. False and mischievous Since last year, Mahathir has led calls for Najib to resign over alleged corruption, particularly over a scandal involving the deposit of $681 million into his private banks accounts of money linked to the state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). Najib has refused to resign and has maintained that he never used the money for personal gain. Four days after quitting the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the party that heads Malaysias ruling coalition, Mahathir teamed up with other political figures and civil society leaders to launch a Citizens Declaration demanding Najibs ouster. On May 13, Mahathir announced that the Citizens Declaration had met its target of gathering 1.2 million signatures. He was later quoted as saying in public that the King and other members of Malaysias Conference of Rulers had likely been placed under house arrest in order to prevent them from receiving the signatures gathered on the petition. On May 23, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission adviser Tunku Abdul Aziz Tunku Ibrahim filed a police report against the former prime minister regarding his claims, saying they were false and mischievous. Our Federal Constitution crystalizes the actual position and role played by the Monarchs (Rulers) as the fourth arm in this system, to carry necessary checks and balances on the other three arms of the government, said Mahathirs lead counsel, Haniff. He was referring to the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government as well as Malaysias constitutional monarchy, in which the role of king revolves once every five years among the rulers of the countrys states. Of course, it would then be within the constitutional powers of the monarch to either order Najib to take leave from his office for a certain period deemed suitable in the discretion of the King in order for necessary authorities to carry out investigations or order Najib to resign from his office, Haniff added. Abdul Aziz Bari, a professor of constitutional law, said the Conference of Rulers could play a limited role in checking and balancing power. They can intervene just like monarchs in other countries so long as the end result is promoting democracy and the objectives of the Constitution, he told BenarNews. Hata Wahari contributed to this report. Suspects in the Erawan shrine bombing in Bangkok in August 2015, identified by the ruling junta as Yusufu Mieraili (front left) and Adem Karadag (center), are escorted by police at a military court in Bangkok on April 20, 2016. A man who served as a courtroom interpreter for two Uyghurs accused in a deadly bombing in Bangkok last year is in jail for alleged possession of drugs, a Thai activist said Friday. But Uzbekistan national Sirojiddin Bakhodirov claimed he had been framed and beaten by police for helping the two Uyghur men. Bakhodirov also known as Sergy was arrested on Wednesday in Bangkoks Sukhumvit area, according to Chalida Tajaroensuk, who received a phone call from him later that night from the Lumpini Police Station. Chalida is director of Peoples Empowerment Foundation, which has been assisting Uyghurs in Thailand since 2014. We were worried whether he was framed. But the police had evidence. Then they asked to have his urine test and it was positive. I and two lawyers were there, she told BenarNews. According to the police, a black [market] drug pusher disappeared as Sergy boarded a taxi and they captured him. He was found with marijuana and ice, she added, using a slang term for crystal methamphetamine. Chalida said she would have difficulty finding another person to serve as an interpreter for the two men accused of carrying out the Aug. 17, 2015, bombing at Bangkoks Erawan Shrine. Adem Karadag and Yusufu Mierailis next court appearance is scheduled for Aug. 23 and 24, she said. On those days the court will hear more witness testimony in the bombing that killed 20 people and injured 125 at the popular Hindu shrine. The two men, who have denied the charges against them, last appeared in court on May 17, shackled, barefoot and distraught. Adem Karadag shouted in English to reporters outside the court: Im human! Im not an animal! Were innocent, help us, help us, where are the human rights? Reuters quoted Mieraili as saying. I am innocent Bakhodirov spoke by telephone late Friday to Radio Free Asia, a sister entity of BenarNews, from Bangkok South Court, where police brought him earlier in the day seeking to extend his custody. I am innocent. Ive been jailed for translating for two Uyghurs who are Bangkok shrine bombing suspects, he said, adding that he had been beaten around the waist by police. If I am deported back to Uzbekistan I will face seven years imprisonment for helping courts in a foreign nation. I have a daughter in Uzbekistan and my family is under stress, he said. A reporter then heard him cry out in evident distress before the phone connection was abruptly cut. Chalida said Bakhodirov could face charges of overstaying his visa as well as possession of drugs because immigration clemency extended while he served as court translator would automatically be revoked. If convicted, he is likely to be sent back to Uzbekistan in three months time, she added. Contacted by BenarNews, Pisek Panupat, a press officer at the Thai Embassy in Washington, said he had no information about the arrest, or about 19 Uyghurs reportedly on a hunger strike since May 31 at immigration detention facilities in Thailand. The Uyghurs were protesting their possible deportation to China, one detainee said. Uyghurs have fled unrest in northwestern Chinas Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where hundreds of people have been killed in spates of violence in recent years. Uyghur exiles and rights groups have criticized Chinese authorities heavy-handed rule in the region including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people which, they say, has forced many to flee overseas, often through Southeast Asia. This photo shows a portion of a hand-written appeal sent by a group of Uyghurs held in a Thai immigration detention center, May 31, 2016. Nineteen Uyghurs on Thursday were on a hunger strike at a detention center in Thailand, protesting against their possible deportation to China, according to a detainee. On Tuesday a group claiming to represent more than 70 Uyghurs who are being held at the Immigration Detention Center in Bangkok and other sites in Thailand said they had started a hunger strike because they would rather die there than be sent back to China. If we were returned back to China, we will face physical and emotional torture, and be killed or sentenced to stay in prison for life, a group calling itself For Freedom told Radio Free Asia (RFA), a sister entity of BenarNews, in a hand-written note received (pictured) on May 31. Therefore, we announced a hunger strike and thought it would be better to die from a hunger strike while in here. We will continue our hunger strike until we are freed or relocated to a third country or till we die here. On Thursday, 19 Uyghurs were refusing to take food and water at the Bangkok center, a detainee told RFA. Two members of a group of about 30 being held at the detention facility were taken away to solitary confinement because they spoke English and were suspected of contacting the media, while others were taken to "punishment cells" after falling ill during the strike, the source said. The hand-written note criticized the Thai government and officials at the Immigration Detention Center in Bangkok, saying that they treated detainees as something less than human. Thailand did not give us to Turkey, and they did not treat us Uyghurs in detention as humans either. They inflicted profound suffering upon us, For Freedom wrote. They separated us from our wives and children, parents, and siblings. Other countries did not help us at all. On Thursday Thai government and prison officials could not be reached for comment. One of the detainees, who asked to remain anonymous, told RFA that he and other Uyghurs were seeking a better life. We escaped from Chinas layer upon layers of oppression to free our wives and children detained in the democratic country of Thailand. If Thailand is a democratic country, they should let us go to countries like Turkey, the detainee said. Last year, Thailand forcibly sent more than 100 Uyghurs back to China, where their fate is uncertain. Uyghurs have fled unrest in northwestern Chinas Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where hundreds of people have been killed in spates of violence in recent years. Ties to Turkey are religious, ethnic Uyghur ties with Turkey are religious and ethnic. About 20 million Muslims live in China and many Uyghurs have already immigrated to Turkey. The Uyghurs in Thai custody are hoping that their hunger strike will get the attention of other countries that might be willing to take them in. Uyghur advocacy groups have criticized the international community for turning a blind eye to their plight. Rukiye Turdush, managing director of the Diplomatic and Human Rights Office of Eastern Turkestan Government in Exile based in Canada, told RFA that he was concerned for the Uyghurs safety and doubted they would be allowed to go free anytime soon. We call on Thai police first to treat the Uyghur detainees with human dignity and release them to freedom or let them go to other free countries, he said, adding that refugee organizations in Canada told him there was no room for new refugees. ein Google-Unternehmen Google-Dienste anzubieten und zu betreiben Ausfalle zu prufen und Manahmen gegen Spam, Betrug und Missbrauch zu ergreifen Daten zu Zielgruppeninteraktionen und Websitestatistiken zu erheben. Mit den gewonnenen Informationen mochten wir verstehen, wie unsere Dienste verwendet werden, und die Qualitat dieser Dienste verbessern. neue Dienste zu entwickeln und zu verbessern Werbung auszuliefern und ihre Wirkung zu messen personalisierte Inhalte anzuzeigen, abhangig von Ihren Einstellungen personalisierte Werbung anzuzeigen, abhangig von Ihren Einstellungen Wenn Sie Alle ablehnen auswahlen, verwenden wir Cookies nicht fur diese zusatzlichen Zwecke. 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For Immediate Release, June 2, 2016 Contacts: Jason Weiner, Wishtoyo, Ventura Coastkeeper, (805) 823-3301, jweiner.venturacoastkeeper@wishtoyo.org Mati Waiya, Wishtoyo, Ventura Coastkeeper, (805) 794-1248, matiwaiya@wishtoyo.org John Buse, Center for Biological Diversity, (323) 533-4416, jbuse@biologicaldiversity.org Christopher Sproul, Environmental Advocates, (415) 533-3376 Lawsuit Filed to Restore Santa Clara River Steelhead Trout Runs, Native Birds SATICOY, Calif. Conservation groups today filed a lawsuit in federal court against United Water Conservation District over its operation of a dam that blocks runs of endangered steelhead on the Santa Clara River. The Vern Freeman Diversion Dam near Saticoy prevents virtually any steelhead from returning to prime habitat upstream and degrades habitat downstream, according to the groups, which include the Wishtoyo Foundation, its Ventura Coastkeeper Program and the Center for Biological Diversity. Southern steelhead trout are federally protected, endangered fish that mature in the ocean but return inland to spawn in their birth streams. The Santa Clara River historically supported thousands of steelhead. The 1,200-foot-wide, 25-foot-high Freeman Dam, located about 10 miles upstream from the Pacific Ocean, is now the main obstacle to steelhead migration. Its fish ladder is ineffective, and the dam now blocks almost all access to historic steelhead spawning areas. Southern steelhead have declined dramatically throughout their range, and the species faces a high risk of extinction. The Chumash name for Southern California steelhead is Ishakowoch (the glistening salmon). The Chumash people have a strong cultural interest in the recovery of the Ishakowoch, which for more than 10,000 years have played a significant role in sustaining a healthy Santa Clara River ecosystem that spiritually and physically supported Chumash communities and villages. Experiencing Ishakowoch runs and being able just to honor the harvest of a single Ishakowoch will allow our people to reconnect with our culture and ancestors in ways that will not be possible without the construction of a functional fish passage over the dam and sufficient flow releases that allow for Ishakowoch migration, said Mati Waiya, a ceremonial elder of the Santa Clara River Turtle Clan and executive director of the Wishtoyo Foundation. The dams operation also threatens wildlife downstream. The water districts diversion of almost all the rivers flows, except for large storm events, harms not only steelhead but least Bells vireos, southwestern willow flycatchers and yellow-billed cuckoos rare birds that depend on vegetation nourished by natural river flows. Without changes in how the Freeman Dam is operated, steelhead and other imperiled wildlife in the Santa Clara watershed face a grim future, said John Buse, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. This lawsuit is aimed at getting fish upstream and water downstream at the right time. Not only is steelhead, vireos, flycatcher and cuckoo restoration possible, but it can be accomplished while providing enough water to maintain agricultural and municipal land uses in the Oxnard Plain, said Jason Weiner, general counsel for the Wishtoyo Foundation. Restoring these species to the Santa Clara River is vital to providing nearby residents and the rivers marginalized communities with their right to enjoy and benefit from healthy functioning ecosystems. The groups are represented by Christopher Sproul of Environmental Advocates, San Francisco, Patricia Weisselberg, Mill Valley, and their in-house counsel. The Wishtoyo Foundation is a community-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit with over 700 members consisting of Ventura County residents, Chumash Native Americans, and the general public that enjoys, depends on, and visits Ventura Countys inland and coastal waterbodies. Wishtoyo uses traditional Native American Chumash beliefs, practices, songs, stories and dances to increase awareness of our connection with the environment and to preserve the maritime culture and resources of the Chumash people and coastal communities. Core values of the Chumash include sustainable living and respect for the environment. In 2000, the Wishtoyo Foundation launched Ventura Coastkeeper to protect, preserve, and restore the ecological integrity and water quality of Ventura County's inland waterbodies, coastal waters, and watersheds. 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. For Immediate Release, June 2, 2016 Contact: Jonathan Evans, Center for Biological Diversity, (510) 844-7118 Settlement Forces EPA Decision on Plans to Reduce Soot Pollution in California, Arizona, Idaho, Oregon and Utah OAKLAND, Calif. A federal court in Oakland today said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must decide within a year whether plans in five western states meet Clean Air Act standards limiting dangerous pollution from tiny airborne particles like soot. The court-approved settlement between conservation and public health groups and the EPA helps ensure that communities in Arizona, California, Idaho, Oregon and Utah are implementing air quality plans that meet clean air standards to reduce soot pollution, a health hazard for people and wildlife. The Clean Air Act works to protect us from toxic soot that poisons our air, our lands and waters, and our health, said Jonathan Evans, environmental health legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. This agreement helps ensure that we establish sound blueprints throughout the western United States to clean up our skies from the scourge of soot pollution. Soot, referred to as particulate matter by the EPA, causes serious health problems for people and wildlife, creates regional haze, and harms the environment. The burning of fossil fuels to generate power and drive automobiles has led to soot pollution throughout the country. Particulate matter is made up of tiny particles about 30 times smaller than the width of the average human hair and can lodge deep in the lungs. In addition to causing a range of health problems for people and wildlife, it can also acidify water bodies, which harms aquatic life and water quality. Soot is deadly, and the EPA has acknowledged that soot pollution is linked to premature death, heart attacks and strokes, and childhood asthma and bronchitis, said Caroline Cox of the Center for Environmental Health. People can now breathe easier knowing that a plan will be in place for healthier air in their communities. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to set nationwide, health and public welfare-based standards for particulate pollution and sets mandatory deadlines to develop plans to achieve and maintain air quality standards. The settlement between the Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Environmental Health, Neighbors for Clean Air and the EPA helps ensure plans to reduce dangerous soot levels are established and enforceable. 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. The Center for Environmental Health works with parents, communities, businesses, workers, and government to protect children and families from toxic chemicals in homes, workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods. Neighbors for Clean Air works to create a healthier Oregon through the reduction of air pollution. Johan Flygare and Sandra Capellera. Eight days. That's how long it takes for skin cells to reprogram into red blood cells. Researchers at Lund University in Sweden, together with colleagues at Center of Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona, have successfully identified the four genetic keys that unlock the genetic code of skin cells and reprogram them to start producing red blood cells instead. "We have performed this experiment on mice, and the preliminary results indicate that it is also possible to reprogram skin cells from humans into red blood cells. One possible application for this technique is to make personalised red blood cells for blood transfusions, but this is still far from becoming a clinical reality", says Johan Flygare, manager of the research group and in charge of the study. Every individual has a unique genetic code, which is a complete instruction manual describing exactly how all the cells in the body are formed. This instruction manual is stored in the form of a specific DNA sequence in the cell nucleus. All human cells -- brain, muscle, fat, bone and skin cells -- have the exact same code. The thing that distinguishes the cells is which chapter of the manual the cells are able to read. The research group in Lund wanted to find out how the cells open the chapter that contains instructions on how to produce red blood cells. The skin cells on which the study was based had access to the instruction manual, but how were the researchers able to get them to open the chapter describing red blood cells? With the help of a retrovirus, they introduced different combinations of over 60 genes into the skin cells' genome, until one day they had successfully converted the skin cells into red blood cells. The study is published in the scientific journal Cell Reports. "This is the first time anyone has ever succeeded in transforming skin cells into red blood cells, which is incredibly exciting", says Sandra Capellera, doctoral student and lead author of the study. The study shows that out of 20,000 genes, only four are necessary to reprogram skin cells to start producing red blood cells. Also, all four are necessary in order for it to work. "It's a bit like a treasure chest where you have to turn four separate keys simultaneously in order for the chest to open", explains Sandra. The discovery is significant from several aspects. Partly from a biological point of view -- understanding how red blood cells are produced and which genetic instructions they require - but also from a therapeutic point of view, as it creates an opportunity to produce red blood cells from the skin cells of a patient. There is currently a lack of blood donors for, for instance, patients with anaemic diseases. Johan Flygare explains: "An ageing population means more blood transfusions in the future. There will also be an increasing amount of people coming from other countries with rare blood types, which means that we will not always have blood to offer them". Red blood cells are the most common cells in the human body, and are necessary in order to transport oxygen and carbon dioxide. Millions of people worldwide suffer from anaemia -- a condition in which the patient has an insufficient amount of red blood cells. Patients with chronic anaemia are among the most problematic cases. They receive regular blood transfusions from different donors, which can eventually lead to the patient developing a reaction to the new blood. They simply become allergic to the donor's blood. Finding a feasible way to make blood from an individual's own skin cells would bring relief to this group of patients. However, further studies on how the generated blood performs in living organisms are needed. Source: Lund University Jem's Birding & Ringing Exploits in the Eastern Province and elsewhere in Saudi Arabia The winners of the annual African Blogger Awards have been announced, with the competition receiving over 2,000 entries from across the continent, more than doubling the number of entries from 2015. The awards saw particularly strong growth in entries from West Africa. Entries were open in five main categories including Africas Top Blogger, Top Instagrammer, Top Twitter Profile, Best Facebook Page and Top YouTuber, as well as across 20 sub-categories. Categories that saw the highest growth in entries included the Top Blog in Africa category which grew by 191% compared to 2015, and the Marketing, Media and Brand category, which grew by nearly 80%. This is the third year were running the African Blogger Awards competition, and every year we not only see an increase in the number of entries, but also in the quality of world-class content that the social media influencers are creating and sharing across their various platforms, says Murray Legg, global head of strategy for Webfluential and co-founder of the African Blogger Awards. The winners in the five main categories are: The best blog about Africa is Africa on the Rise from Nigeria. The best Instagrammer in Africa is Gareth Pon from South Africa, for the third consecutive year. The best Twitter personality in Africa is JJ Omojuwa from Nigeria. The best Facebook profile in Africa is Xtian Dela from Kenya, who was the 2015 best Twitter personality. The best YouTube channel in Africa is Chris Rogers from South Africa. The 2016 African Blogger Awards were sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This year saw the addition of three new categories: Women and Girls Empowerment; Public Health and Social Issues; and Active Citizenship. The winners and runners up in these categories came from Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana, emphasising the importance that online and social media play in highlighting social issues across the continent. Winners in the three new categories are: The Gates Foundation extends its congratulations to the winners in these three categories. The work you are doing to highlight both the great successes and continuing challenges facing African development is highly commendable. Your work has sparked conversations around sensitive issues and you have helped increase accountability in critical sectors like public health, said Dr Ayo Ajayi, Africa director for the Gates Foundation. Perhaps the most powerful role that a medium like blogging plays is that it provides a platform for a diversity of voices. People on this continent are now actively sharing their own stories and that's a very positive and powerful thing. The remaining category winners include: Winners in each category receive a commemorative trophy and a web banner announcing their achievement that they can leverage on their winning platform and across their personal social networks. Our hearty congratulations go to the winners of the 2016 African Blogger Awards, all of whom are great examples of how Africans are choosing new ways to communicate and consume content, says Legg. They are leapfrogging traditional media and historical constraints, and setting a new status quo in social commentary, information sharing and interaction across borders, democratising access to information in the process. It is indeed an exciting time to be a part of the digital universe in Africa. The African Blogger Awards provide an impartial measure of the reach, resonance and relevance of an influencer channel, and winners are chosen based on scientific metrics, rather than through peer nominations and voting. Entrants are required to register their online properties on Webfluential, the platform that give brands and the marketing industry, including advertisers, public relations agencies and media buyers, an independent measurement of the most relevant online and social influencers to include in their campaigns. Do SA consumers have an always-upgrading, quick-throwaway culture when it comes to electronic devices? Or is it just that there hasn't been enough reliable service providers around to repair one's precious gadgets? Alex Fourie In 2007, when Alex Fourie's iPod broke and he battled to get it fixed through traditional channels, he consulted the internet and repaired it himself. He soon became the go-to-guy for broken Apple devices at Stellenbosch University, operating out of his dorm room. iFix was born. Nine years later, the company now has more than 25 stores nationwide, with 15 more planned for this year, and employs nearly 200 people. Fourie, a serial entrepreneur, was nominated last year by Forbes magazine as one of the Top 30 Young Entrepreneurs in Africa, and also featured on the Mail & Guardians Top 40 under-40 young South Africans list. We got in touch with the serial entrepreneur to discuss iFix's steady growth. What inspired the creation of iFix? I never set out with the thought in mind to start a national retail chain; I was merely trying to sort out my own issue. Often, business ideas come to life from real life situations and frustrations. iFix has evolved from only fixing Apple devices. What other services are now on offer? We now fix all Apple, Samsung, Huawei and LG products as well as sell our own accessory ranges. Were launching sales and service of DJI drones within our stores within the next few weeks as well. To what/whom do you attribute iFixs growth? I think my team has played a major role in making it a success. There are hundreds of FOH girls and guys that put on a smile everyday and deal with customers and it is thanks to them that we have made such a success of this business. Tell us about some of the other entrepreneurial projects youve been involved in Jeez, many hey. Before iFix I started an online music download store, an events company that did international tours and a stage rental business. Within iFix weve launched Houdt, thats the first organic tech accessory brand as well as RiCharge that offers public charging solutions. Any expansion plans going forward? Sure, youve always got to challenge yourself and see how you can grow and do things better. What practical advice would you give other young and hopeful entrepreneurs? Just go out there and do it. Whatever your idea is, just start with it and it will lead to something great! The Global Awards 2016 competition for the World's Best Healthcare & Wellness Advertising is open for entries until 31 July 2016. The competition receives entries from healthcare corporations, hospitals, advertising agencies, productions companies and design studios that produce communication for medical, pharmaceutical, healthcare and wellness related products and services. The 2016 Global Award winners will be announced on November 17, 2016 and will be showcased at awards ceremonies in New York City and Sydney, Australia. The Global Awards executive jury and grand jury of industry experts represents the top creative minds in the field of healthcare and wellness advertising. Jury members are recruited from more than 20 countries on six continents. The Global Awards jury selection process ensures that renowned international talent with global knowledge and perspective from the industry judges each entry. Annually, in addition to the grand jurys online judging sessions, the Global Awards organises live judging sessions around the globe to review digital based works and collateral materials that support a campaign and which cannot be judged online. These global live sessions are hosted at prominent international healthcare communication agencies and allow jurors to examine in detail multi-paged works including: sales kits, direct mail, brochures, point of purchase displays, and annual reports. Young Global Awards Michael Demetriades, executive director of the Global Awards, says, The goal of the Young Global Awards is to drive awareness of the great work happening in healthcare and wellness advertising, ultimately driving more talented young people into the industry. The Young Globals, the only college/portfolio school competition for healthcare advertising that offers students the opportunity to submit creative work and be recognised with a Global Award and introduces students to the rewards of working in the healthcare and wellness advertising industry, announced three winning teams in 2015. The 2015 Young Globals award-winning teams will be honoured at this years Global Awards ceremony Entry fees for the 2016 Global Awards are $395 for a single entry; $640 for Campaign in Single Media; $740 for a Campaign in Mixed Media; and $40 for Young Globals student entry. Those who enter now and pay before 30 June 2016 can save 10% with the discount code: GPR2016. For more information, go to www.theglobalawards.com. The Design School of Southern Africa (DSSA), a brand of the Independent Institute of Education (IIE), has a midyear intake for its BA Honours Graphic Design programme at the Pretoria and Bordeaux campuses. The course is available on a part or full time basis and mode of delivery will be determined by the interest of the group. Designers, who have been in the industry for a while, run the risk of becoming overly familiar with their own work and losing perspective of what the end user sees and experiences, says Ria van Zyl, head of the honours programme at DSSA. Designers should continually invest in their own professional development. The only constant in design is change; the search for new skills and knowledge is endless. In order to stay relevant and aligned with the times as a designer, it is imperative to learn continuously. You can achieve this through self-study, attending workshops and seminars, attending short courses or through postgraduate studies. Graphic design has become so integrated in the business world today, that one of the challenges facing the new graphic designer is to know and understand more about client businesses and integrate design activity with business operations. We see a new shift towards in-house design teams being employed in all types of businesses where designers have to work alongside other employees to achieve business goals. Contemporary design problems are also known to be complex, and need professionals from various disciplines to work towards solutions. These shifts in the design industry require designers to acquire additional skills and knowledge. As a designer, the focus of your undergrad qualification will be on what to do, where the focus at a postgraduate level is on why or sometimes why not. Designers need to be innovative in enhancing their ability to translate research into solving user needs and be able to provide a well researched argument and evidence as to why your design concepts are the right way to go. In doing this you will be better equipped to communicate your design decisions with your clients who, in todays competitive market, value the integration of graphic design with business strategies and operations. Design entrepreneurship is another exciting area where designers find new and innovative ways to generate income. However, in order to do this, designers need to learn how to target audiences and propose, develop and manage projects, concludes van Zyl. The BA Honours in Graphic Design is an example of postgraduate studies that provide designers with the opportunity to give their career a boost and improve their knowledge and skill-set in the design field. The course is flexible and structured to provide designers with research, visual design and design management skills necessary to continue with a sustainable career doing what they love most - design! For more information, click here. Statistically long-haul drivers are one of the categories of people most at risk of HIV/Aids, so Mercedes-Benz South Africa (MBSA) has reached out to some of its trucking clients - supporting them with a health and wellness education programme for their employees. L-R Enrico Botha and Johan Liebenberg from John Williams Commercial Vehicles Dealership; Kobus van Zyl, executive director of Daimler and Trucks and Buses Southern Africa; Kenne de Kock, CEO: Kelrn Vervoer and Dirk Meyer, brand manager, Freightliner. Holistic approach to wellness The Fleet Owner Workplace Wellness Programme is an extension of the vehicle manufacturers own workplace wellness strategy with its partner organisation, Corridor Empowerment Project (CEP) - to achieve profitable growth and contribute to the socio-economic success of the country. The aim of the programme is to assist fleet owners in taking a holistic approach to employee health and wellness, based on a proven model. "South Africa's trucking industry is at the economic heart of this country, pumping prosperity to our people. Healthy, skilled truck drivers are one of the key issues which we have chosen. As such, collaboration remains an important enabler for MBSA as we strive for the sustainability of the transport sector in South Africa, with employee wellbeing as a key contributor," says Kobus van Zyl, executive director: Daimler Trucks & Buses Southern Africa. Corporate social responsibility Through its corporate social responsibility programme, MBSA has supported the Trucking Wellness project since inception in 2009. This is an initiative of the National Bargaining Council of the Road Freight and Logistics Industry (NBCRFLI) which provides an education and basic healthcare service to truck drivers along the major freight routes in southern Africa. This includes dissemination of information, testing and treatment of HIV and AIDS and other lifestyle illnesses. According to the organisation: The once stable industry of some 70,000 drivers is now challenged by the impact of poor health and shortened life spans on its driving workforce. The effects of HIV and Aids can be felt in the constant search to replace lost drivers, either through high absenteeism or death. These drivers often also infect wives and girlfriends, creating a devastating ripple-effect through whole communities. Programme objectives To reduce the impact/losses due to disease and ill health. To increase understanding of HIV and Aids. To increase capacity to prevent and manage disease, HIV and Aids. To impact positively on health, life expectancy and job retention by employees, especially truck drivers. To increase knowledge of health and wellness through the dissemination of health information, education and screening to all participating fleet owner employees. Driver training MBSA also provides its commercial vehicle customer base with dedicated driver training programmes that equip truckers with product knowledge to enhance safety and reduce cost of vehicle ownership. Newest member The latest addition to the Workplace Wellness lineage, Kelrn Vervoer, a logistics solutions provider with a nationwide footprint, has successfully launched its programme. Kenne de Kock, CEO of Kelrn, says: "We are aware of the value of good drivers as well as employees in good health. We care about the health and well-being of our personnel and are grateful to be a part of the Fleet Owner Workplace Wellness Programme with MBSA. The company is the fifth to join the programme. The others being Aspen Logistics, United Bulk, Bakers Transport and City Couriers. The participating fleet owners receive regular updated health information which can be shared with employees; biannual consultations on the refinement of their programmes; health skills training workshops; and support with Wellness/HIV Workplace Policy development. Thirty employees at the Gupta-owned ANN7 could lose their jobs after they booed ANC Youth League President Collen Maine. The employees were charged with "bringing the good name of the company into disrepute" and hauled before a disciplinary committee yesterday. Communication Workers Union national organiser Tshepo Matlou was initially unable to speak to the workers as ANN7 management locked him out of the premises. Only after Cosatu president Sdumo Dlamini intervened was access to the workers granted. In April Maine went to ANN7 headquarters in Midrand to address staff over the decision by four of the country's biggest banks to close the accounts of Oakbay, a Gupta-owned company. Staff members berated Maine, saying he ignored their complaints of poor working conditions in favour of defending the company. They were captured on camera demanding that "Maine must fall" as he was chased out. ANN7 editor-in-chief Moegsien Williams said he could not comment as he was out of the office. "I am at the Kruger National Park. I'm afraid I can't comment on this matter." Source: The Times Eight years ago, Woolworths introduced its sustainable seafood policy and since then has become South Africa's first retailer to sign the WWF-SASSI Retail Charter. Passion for the environment and deep concern about the impact of over-fishing has driven the company to set and work towards challenging goals. The aim is to provide its consumers with the assurance that all its wild-caught seafood is responsibly sourced and traceable. In 2013 Woolworths made a commitment that by the end of 2015, all its wild-caught seafood would be: WWF-SASSI Green-listed; Or, caught from MSC (or equivalent)-certified fisheries; Or, that in close consultation with the WWF, species are sourced from fisheries that are undertaking credible, time-bound improvement projects. By the end of 2015, Woolworths has reported that 92% of all wild-caught seafood sold, by volume, met these goals. By May 2016, that increased to 97% of its wild-caught seafood being either WWF-SASSI Green-listed, or MSC certified, or in a specific and credible, time-bound improvement project. There are also some seafood species that Woolworths sells that are not currently assessed by either WWF-SASSI or certified by the MSC. Without the resources to assess every fish species, WWF-SASSI prioritises species according to sustainability risk and fishing volumes. Were proud to have achieved these very challenging goals, said Spencer Sonn, Woolworths MD of foods. It would not have been possible without the involvement and commitment from our suppliers, the fishing industry and our sustainability partners, the WWF-SA through their WWF-SASSI programme and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). I take great pride in knowing that Woolies customers can have the peace of mind that the wild-caught seafood products they buy from us have been responsibly sourced. Unique sustainability challenges To date, Woolworths offers consumers 17 species of sustainably wild-caught seafood. Each fishery has its own unique sustainability challenges and tailor-made solutions have had to be implemented by its suppliers to ensure they are properly managed and protected. A major achievement in this journey was the WWF-SASSI Green-listing of South African Hake caught by long-line fishing. With the setting of any ambitious targets, there are always numerous lessons to be learned and shared along the way. The two species that we faced challenges with were kingklip and Mozambican prawns. Kingklip (Genypterus capensis) caught in the South African deep-water Hake Trawl fishery was a major concern. This species was Orange-listed by WWF-SASSI, and there has been an urgency for Woolworths' partners to implement a credible, time-bound improvement project. Woolworths has supported WWF-SA, South African Deep-Sea Trawling Industry Association (SADSTIA) and the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) by advocating the launch of their Bycatch Project aimed at improving the WWF-SASSI status of the 12 key bycatch species caught in the fishery. The fishery has now launched a formal Fishery Conservation Project (FCP) that meets the WWF-SA Fisheries in Transition criteria. Woolworths recognised this positive action and chose to keep supporting this fishery in its efforts to improve the WWF-SASSI outcome of bycatch species rather than remove this species from its procurement streams. It will meet its commitment with the launch of its credible, time-bound improvement project. Mozambican prawns Woolworths needed to take a different approach when it came to the Mozambican prawns. It was procuring the Indian White Shrimp (Fenneropenaeus indicus) caught in the shallow-water prawn trawl fishery in Mozambique. Following unsuccessful attempts at engaging the relevant stakeholders in implementing a credible improvement project, Woolworths decided last year to stop its procurement from this fishery. As this was a frozen product, the stock was available in-store after this decision was made and is currently being sold out. We congratulate Woolworths on the achievement of these significant goals, said Chris Kastern, WWF-SASSIs manager for seafood market transformation, We recognise the commitment and effort that Woolworths has invested in sourcing sustainable seafood options. It is playing a leading role in creating strong market incentives that drive the South Africa fishing industry towards improved sustainability. This is vital to ensure that key fish stocks continue to be responsibly harvested, that over-fished species have the opportunity for recovery, and that vulnerable species are brought back from the brink of collapse. With the achievement of its end-2015 goals for wild-caught species, Woolworths has now focussed its commitments to species sourced from aquaculture. These are that by the end of 2020, all aquaculture species sold by Woolworths will be: WWF-SASSI Green-listed, or; ASC (or equivalent) certified; Or from aquaculture operations that are engaged in a credible, time-bound Improvement Project. We are making good progress towards meeting these commitments as well, concluded Sonn. We achieved another South African first with the launch of our ASC certified farmed Tilapia lines last year, and we are looking forward to launching more sustainably farmed and ASC-certified farm fish choices in 2016. The Distell share price has surged 6% since the Competition Commission ruled that SABMiller had to sell its 27% stake in the cider and spirits group. The strong move in the share price suggests investors are expecting a buy-out offer, or believe that the new control structure will have a positive effect on Distells profitability. On Tuesday, the commission announced it was recommending the conditional approval of the merger between Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) and SABMiller. One of its conditions was that SABMiller dispose of its Distell stake within three years of the beer merger being completed. SABMiller has been one of three controlling shareholders in Distell since a contrived structure was put in place in 1979. The other two are Remgro and Capevin, which have a combined 53% holding. Remgro and Capevin issued a statement on Wednesday, acknowledging their pre-emptive rights and said they were awaiting SABMillers response to the commissions condition, but would "act in the best interest of Remgro, Capevin Holdings, Distell and their respective shareholders". Remgro CEO Jannie Durand said on Thursday he could not comment on rumours about corporate transactions. A Distell statement noted that, as SABMiller did not have any representation on the board and had never been involved in the management of Distell, "The disposal will not impact the way Distell operates." But Chris Logan, a long-term shareholder in Distell, thinks differently. He says the departure of SABMiller can only be positive for the company. "There was essentially a cold war between SABMiller and Remgro for most of the past 37 years. SABMiller did not have any representatives on the board, but with its 27% stake, was able to block any special resolutions the Distell board might have wanted to pass." Ironically, the 2013 appointment of former SABMiller executive Richard Rushton to the top job at Distell has helped to resuscitate flagging shareholder support for the company. Of critical concern for minorities was that the impasse between the major shareholders prevented Distell from using its shares to fund acquisitions. This has meant it has been unable to get to the sort of scale needed to maximise profit margins. Logan says the global spirits industry has been consolidating much like the beer industry has done in the past 20 years. "Theres still time for Distell to pick up some gems." The strained relationship between the three controlling shareholders is also thought to explain why there was no effort to enter into an international distribution deal with SABMiller for Distells market-leading ciders Hunters and Savannah. In 2013, SABMiller signed such an agreement with one of the fastest-growing ciders in the world, Swedens Kopparberg. Shareholders hoping that exercising a pre-emptive agreement will trigger an obligatory offer are likely to be disappointed. While Remgro looks the more likely buyer of SABMillers stake, any exercise of the pre-emptive rights would probably be deemed "a change of control within control", and not require an offer to minorities. However, one analyst, who did want to be named in line with company policy, believes Remgro could take this opportunity to buy out all of the minority shareholders and delist Distell. Allowing for employees and an empowerment scheme, the free float is estimated at about 10%. With full control, the Stellenbosch-based investment company might be more willing to pour in the money needed to realise Distells potential. Communicating across cultures has become one of the most talked about subjects for global communication professionals as they continue to face the challenges associated with communicating with large, geographically spread audiences. I was a speaker at the global 2016 World PR Forum summit, where I presented a paper covering key trends and insights into the communication landscape in South Africa and more broadly into Africa. The Forums focus was on how companies have successfully managed to bridge the gap of cross-cultural communication and improve the global body of knowledge around this field. Speakers came from across the globe to share their experiences, studies, and best practice ideas with over 700 delegates from 30 countries a truly international gathering. Among the speakers was Alex Malouf, vice-chair of the Middle East Public Relations Association in the United Arab Emirates, who presented a paper on how to understand culturally-aware communications. When tasked with ensuring effective outreach with a wide group of publics, especially culturally and linguistically diverse groups, one has to spend more time analysing their stakeholder environment and develop communications concepts that will support effective cultural communications. Malouf spoke about the cultural immersion outreach projects he has been involved in, where marketers and communicators actually spent time in the communities they were engaging with and avoided a purely academic or third-party understanding of their audiences. The results spoke for themselves in terms of sales and reputation. Making local relevant regionally Janet Morgans keynote around bridging the cultural gap was a highly practical presentation of her work with GSK, where they had to land critical messages to audiences in various parts of the world. She is now an independent consultant, and formerly director of global content strategy and planning for GlaxoSmithKline in the United Kingdom. In a global business, what can the central communications team do and avoid to help local businesses tell the same story while appealing to diverse regional audiences, local practices and cultural norms? This is a pertinent question, as companies have centralising many functions to mitigate the downward pressure on budgets. Morgans case studies of cross-cultural work shared the principles and practices of addressing these complexities in global activities. At the same time, global companies have the challenge of conveying a consistent message without being able to maintain a consistent approach or, in many instances, a look and feel. Often, mechanisms have to be different as well. The second keynote was delivered by Paulo Soares, director of corporate communications for Vale S.A. in Brazil. They face the challenges in internal communication across cultures in a company that has a presence in multiple markets from emerging to established, and from laboratory environment to mines. He noted the importance of internal publics as key opinion makers, with a large impact on the dissemination of information regarding a company. With employees having the ability to contribute positively to the reputation of a company, it is even more important to find creative ways of engaging them. Soares spoke about systems they have put in place to leverage their line managers to help staff meet organisational expectations while respecting local cultures. Factoring in customs and tradition Finally, Dr Julie Lyn Hall, head of health at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies from Switzerland, presented an engaging case study about how they communicate across cultures in times of crisis. Given the role of the Red Cross, they have to continuously communicate across cultures and persuade people to abandon long-held beliefs, customs and traditions around illness, death and burial rituals to help control and stop the spread of Ebola in West Africa. In some areas, she says, up to 60 percent of new Ebola cases in the 201415 epidemic were linked to adherence to traditions that involve direct contact with highly contagious bodies. Dr Hall demonstrated how communication across cultures has been a serious challenge, but also has saved lives by getting it right! There are many lessons companies can take out of that in terms of how passion, courage of conviction, and adaptability (not to mention the willingness to adopt and try new ways of doing things), can make a big difference. South Africa was well represented at the 2016 World PR Forum, with two workshop speakers and three research stream presenters from some of our leading academic institutions. The Australian government recently released an ambitious Smart Cities Plan , which suggests that cities should be first and foremost for people: Such statements are a good starting point and should probably become central to Australias implementation efforts. A lot of knowledge has been collected over the past decade from successful and failed smart cities experiments all over the world; reflecting on them could provide useful information for the Australian government as it launches its national plan. What is a smart city? But, before embarking on such review, it would help to start from a definition of smart city. The term has been used and abused in recent years, so much so that today it has lost meaning. It is often used to encompass disparate applications: we hear people talk and write about smart city when they refer to anything from citizen engagement to Zipcar, from open data to Airbnb, from smart biking to broadband. Where to start with a definition? It is a truism to say the internet has transformed our lives over the past 20 years. Everything in the way we work, meet, mate and so on is very different today than it was just a few decades ago, thanks to a network of connectivity that now encompasses most people on the planet. In a similar way, we are today at the beginning of a new technological revolution: the internet is entering physical space the very space of our cities and is becoming the Internet of Things; it is opening the door to a new world of applications that, as with the first wave of the internet, can incorporate many domains. wilgengebroed/flickr, CC BY-NC From a more philosophical point of view, one could refer to the great Xerox-Park computer scientist Mark Weiser, and his idea of non-intrusive or calm technology. Weiser wrote: Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. What should governments do? In the above technological context, what should governments do? Over the past few years, the first wave of smart city applications followed technological excitement. For instance, some of Koreas early experiments such as Songdo City were engineered by the likes of Cisco, with technology deployment assisted by top-down policy directives. In a similar way, in 2010, Rio de Janeiro launched the Integrated Centre of Command and Control, engineered by IBM. Its a large control room for the city, which collects real-time information from cameras and myriad sensors suffused in the urban fabric. Such approaches revealed many shortcomings, most notably the lack of civic engagement. It is as if they thought of the city simply as a computer in open air. These approaches led to several backlashes in the research and academic community. A more interesting lesson can come from the US, where the focus is more on developing a rich Internet of Things innovation ecosystem. There are many initiatives fostering spaces digital and physical for people to come together and collaborate on urban and civic innovations. In the US, the general idea of smart urban space has been central to the current generation of successful start-ups. One of the latest examples is Uber: a smartphone app that lets anyone call a cab or be a driver. The companys operations are polarising Uber has been the subject of protests and strikes around the world (mainly in Europe) yet it was recently valued at a stratospheric US$50 billion. Beyond Uber, the Nest learning thermostat, the apartment-sharing website Airbnb and the recently announced home operating system by Apple, to name a few, attest to the new frontiers of digital information when it inhabits physical space. Similar approaches now promise to revolutionise most aspects of urban life from commuting to energy consumption to personal health. As such, they are receiving eager support from venture capital funds. In such a context, governments could use their funds to develop an organic innovation ecosystem geared toward smart cities, similar to the one that is growing in the US. It is more about bottom-up innovation than top-down schemas. This must go beyond supporting traditional incubators and aim to produce and nurture the regulatory frameworks that allow innovations to thrive. Considering the legal hurdles that continuously plague applications like Uber or Airbnb, this level of support is sorely needed. So, any active smart city role for Canberra? That isnt to say that governments should take a completely hands-off approach to urban development. Governments certainly have an important role to play. This includes supporting academic research and promoting applications in fields that might be less appealing to venture capital unglamorous but nonetheless crucial domains such as municipal waste or water services. The public sector can also promote the use of open platforms and standards in such projects, which would speed up adoption in cities worldwide. Still, the overarching goal should always be to focus on citizens. They are in the best position to determine how to transform their cities and to make decisions that will have as the Australian Smart Cities Plan puts it an impact on their lives. The government remains confident of meeting its target of producing 30,000 artisans per year in line with the National Development Plan, despite the challenges faced by some training institutions. Over the past four years, an average of 15,000 apprentices per year have qualified as artisans. The government has highlighted the dearth of skilled artisans, workers and professionals as a key constraint to growing the economy and reducing SA's unemployment rate. The country thus needs to train more artisans, and to do so, the standards of technical and vocational training colleges need to be improved. Concerns continue to be raised about blunders that have resulted in the failure to provide certificates to more than 100,000 tertiary education students. Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande said this week that colleges had the capacity to provide theoretical training for the required number of artisans. However, he said artisan training did not rely on colleges alone, but more importantly on the workplace-learning component. "The number of workplaces that needs to be secured is therefore critical to meet these numbers," said Nzimande. In a reply to a parliamentary question, the minister said a number of measures had been put in place to ensure the 30,000 target was met. The department was developing a dual system of apprenticeship training with assistance from German and Swiss authorities. The countries would help in standardising the trade curriculum content and improving monitoring and evaluation of what artisans were trained in. The deployment of the dual apprenticeship training system to all accredited training centres was earmarked for April 1 2018, the minister said. Meanwhile, the Congress of the People said it had received requests for help from desperate former college students to assist them in obtaining their certificates, some of which have been outstanding from as far back as 2009. "Students are horribly stuck in limbo. Those wishing to pursue tertiary studies have had to go on twiddling their toes waiting endlessly for the certificates to arrive," said spokesman Dennis Bloem. "They have now lost out on a whole year's study because of the incompetence of the Department of Higher Education. "Other students who sought work were turned away because they could not prove they had cleared the required matriculation hurdle," Bloem said. Source: Business Day Uganda has joined Uber's growing African network. With the launch of the platform, Kampala joins the list of smart transportation hubs in Africa. Alon Lits, (Uber GM SSA), Loic Amado (Head Of Expansion SSA), Bertrand Nembot Launcher and some of the first driver-partners in Kampala Uber Kampala Kampala is a growing city in the heart of Uganda, a country with a fast-growing economy. The World Bank forecasts that the Ugandan economy is growing at a positive and upward trajectory. This is owing to targeting development of Ugandas infrastructure and intensified investment in the private sector. The World Bank also notes that Uganda is one of the worlds youngest populations, with 700,000 new people entering the workforce each year. With its people, energy, innovation, entrepreneurial and rapidly growing economy, Kampala is an exciting place for Uber to bring its services. Alon Lits, general manager for Uber Sub-Saharan Africa says, Were really excited to be launching Uber in Kampala, a world-class African city. We are inspired by the citys rapidly developing infrastructure and spirit of entrepreneurship and look forward to giving people in the city an affordable, easy and flexible choice to move around the city safely and reliably. By offering a friendly and reliable complement to existing transport options, we can help improve urban mobility in Kampala. We are mindful of the citys current traffic congestion, and we aim to be part of the solution in improving it, while creating new, fruitful opportunities for drivers. Ultimately, we hope to reduce the strain on the citys roads, and minimise the environmental impact of traffic congestion that is part of a growing economy. To celebrate Ubers launch in Kampala, Uber will be providing free rides for all Ugandans to enjoy in the city of Kampala. Free rides can be accessed on the Uber app between 1pm Thursday 2 June 2016, and midnight on Sunday 5 June 2016. The fine print (terms and Conditions for free rides) You must download the Uber application and enter the promo code MoveUganda in order to receive the free rides Free rides are available from Thursday, 2 June 2016 at 1pm until Sunday, 5 June 2016 at midnight Users are limited to a total of six free rides and each trip is limited to maximum of USh20,000 each Note that free rides are only valid for trips that start and end in the Kampala in the coverage area. The South African communication, marketing and advertising industry must brace itself for an increased presence of Chinese players in the market. After assessing various marketing trends in the Chinese market, at the face of it, it looks like there will be Chinese agencies that will be looking to expand their network and services into other markets in the not too distant future. Chinese companies are already very active in Africa and it is only a matter of time before Chinese independent agencies start looking into the South African market to collaborate or acquire agencies to provide better services to their clients. SCOPEN Africa recently met with more than 400 senior marketers in China to understand the process, perception and performance of the agencies they work with. This waves report covers more than 250 multinational and local companies, with over 700 client-agency relationships analysed. Push towards integration and digital Marketers desire for digital capabilities is fueled in part by a massive increase in the percentage of marketing budgets spent on digital media in China, which is now 25.4%, up from just 18.6% in 2014. It is not only digital agencies under pressure to improve their offerings; marketers expect advertising and marketing services agencies to have these capabilities as well. For example, nearly 85% of marketers claimed that digital capabilities are very important or important when selecting an advertising agency. Shannon Fagan via 123RF The push towards integration and digital are just two of the several trends identified through the study, with changes occurring in several other areas, including the rise of in-house marketing teams and shifting remuneration models. What South African agencies need to understand is that it is vital to provide integrated services because marketers are demanding more and more agencies that can solve all their needs under one roof, in turn clients also need experience and knowledge because agencies work with multiple clients in a wide range of services where they face various challenges in an environment where it is important to showcase their broad experience and prowess in the industries that they operate in. The power of data is also a critical component as clients have various sources of statistics, facts and figures but sometimes do not know how to use it or often enough do not possess the required tools to take advantage of it appropriately. It is therefore safe to make the deduction that some agencies can help their clients interpret and use their data which is crucial for sales and growth. Key highlights of marketing trends in China Some of the key highlights in the broad Chinese market indicate that players often look for longer relationships which are less project based, coupled with a bigger demand for integrated agencies. With the research that SCOPEN is carrying out in South Africa, the relationship between the two entities is that the methodology being carried out is the same and many of the questions tend to be common which means that the findings will provide for an interesting comparative analysis when the research is finished. However, what the South African market can attain from the Chinese market is that short and project based relationships do not produce the best work, are less effective and are often time consuming for the marketer. At the face of it, what the Chinese are doing differently is that a larger percentage of communications budget is dedicated to BTL functions such as: activation, field marketing, experiential. As China is such a big country, marketers dedicate larger amounts to activate their campaign across 35 major cities with more than two million habitants. From a global stand point On the flip side, the South African market is well known around the world for its big and transversal ideas. Although our research has not yet been completed in this respective market, the country has benefited and garnered immense respect internationally for the famous campaigns that were produced from this region, which have resulted in numerous Cannes awards and other festivals. From a global competitive perspective, based on our research, other markets around the world are indicative of their shorter relationships between agencies and clients. These markets tend to be more competitive, largely due to the fact that there are more agencies greater economic complexity, taking into account all the different media entities that are available in developed markets. The United States is still number one, but the Chinese market is growing and fast approaching in comparison, which is only rivaled by Japan as number two. Many global forecasts and publications state that China will surpass Japan by the end of 2016. This is largely due to a combination of two key factors: population as well as media and technological development. Population is key and that is why US, China, Brazil, Germany, UK or Indonesia are among the largest countries by ad spend. However, India, Nigeria, Mexico, Philippines, Russia are not as large as they should be if one takes into account their population. With that said, if South Africa aims to make the cut, the effective usage of various media and technological development tools will serve as important factors in the growth of the industry which also explains why other markets such as South Korea, Australia and Canada are also leading contenders in our industry. ??Instagram is the fastest growing social platform in South Africa and only made advertising available in the country last year. Instagram is considered to be one of the most authentic platforms out there and it makes sense to tap into the advertising possibilities if you have a niche brand or product with lots of potential. mangsaab via 123RF What you will need to create an Instagram ad: A Facebook account A Facebook page An Instagram account. While this is not a necessity, not having one has its own drawbacks; for example, your Facebook Page name will be your Instagram handle, it wont be clickable, and stands the risk of being truncated. You will also be unable to respond to comments on your ad. Using Facebooks Power Editor is useful if you are already a seasoned Facebook advertiser or are planning to use Facebook and Instagram as your main marketing tools. It allows for the creation of several advertisements and campaigns, and also has more detailed reporting in terms of delivery, cost, click-through rates, and more, allowing the ideal overview for large and numerous campaigns. To create an Instagram ad through Facebooks Power Editor: 1. Visit Facebooks Power Editor. You will need to have a Facebook Ads Account, which you can set up through the Ads Manager. Be sure to set up your payment details while youre at it. 2. Click the +Create Ad tab. 3. In the pop-up under Choose a Campaign, you can choose an existing campaign or create a new one. If you are naming a new campaign be sure to name it specifically, especially if you intend doing more campaigns. You will be purchasing adverts based on your target market and the duration of your campaign. To quickly access your campaign, ad sets, and adverts, click on the little folders on the far left of the Power Editor table. The folder with the tick is your Campaigns section, the four folders together are your ad sets, and the single window contains your adverts. 4. In the same pop-up under Choose an Ad Set, choose an existing Ad Set or create a new one, once again with a specific name. New ad sets automatically have Instagram as an advertising platform. 5. In the same pop-up under Create New Ad, name your new advertisement. 6. The Power Editor will open a new pop-up inside the Ads table. You have the option to rename your ad. Under Destination, select your Facebook page and your Instagram account if you have one. This section will not work if you do not have a Facebook page. 7. Once you have selected the Facebook Page, you can pick the creative aspects of your advertisement. Aspects include whether you want a single image or video in your ad or whether you want multiple images. You can choose to upload the media you wish to use or use images from your Facebook page. You can also select stock images available through Facebook. 8. Enter the URL you wish the advert to promote or create a Canvas instead that will open when your advert is accessed via mobile. This option is better if you have a product to promote and also want the audience to react by clicking. If you select the former, you can type in the URLs display text. 9. Now you can enter the main text of your advertisement and your headline. You can see also what your link clicks through to and select the type of call to action (such as Contact Us, Download, or Sign Up). 10. You can then set your Tracking parameters in order to better translate your analytics. 11. A preview of your advert is available and the entire advert saves automatically. 12. You will need to set the details of your target audience in your ad set. Select your desired audience, taking such things as gender, age, location, language, and interests into consideration. Remember, though, that the more targeted you make your advert, the more you limit your audience. This may not be a negative if you are very certain of your target market. You can also set your daily or lifetime budget and select the start and end dates of the campaign. 13. Once you are satisfied with your advertisement and all its details, click on the green Review Changes button on the top right and your advert will be published. Do you find yourself asking "What would Google do?" in your endeavour to understand Afrillennials (African Millennials) in the workplace? You don't have to unless you're hiring the 1% of the 1% of the 1% of brilliant millennials around the globe. This according to Richard Mulholland, founder of Missing Link and speaker at Y!Con 2016: Heres our take on what he had to say about the elusive millennial market. The world has been lying to you Afrillennials shouldnt be a significant cohort as they were not defined by any significant historical event like the Maturists (born pre-1945), Babyboomers (born pre-1960) or even Generation X (born pre-1980). These young adults face no significant wars, fixed gender roles or post-war booming. Hes not saying that they do not exist, but rather that having young adults in this era alongside evolution is nothing new and special treatment of this generation is not needed. There is no new world of work Graduates appear to have an insatiable appetite to reshape the world of work as we know it, but that shouldnt dictate reality. People used to work for different purposes like home ownership and job security whereas now graduates seek work-life balance and even flexibility, but this is not new. Students want what the world has been working towards. Its a multi-generational desire that increases as life gets busier and more complex. You dont need a hipster workforce You dont need to hire the hipsters of the world to ensure your business moves forward and you dont need to change your brand to fit one generation. There are simple adjustments to make to ensure attraction and retention of the right young talent, however the benefits companies offer are a privilege, not a necessity. Attracting and retaining the very best candidates? Now that requires a bit more exertion, and in this instance Google makes a good example. Their dreams are manageable Younger generations have entered businesses for years with big ideas, hopes and dreams. Theyve also managed to make their picture fit within the puzzle of work life. Employees get paid a salary to do their jobs and its the norm to use the rest of ones time to reach other personal goals beyond a career. Doing only what we love is not a reality that pays. Businesses and Afrillennials need to be realistic and manage one anothers expectations. They need a shot People have spent their lives working towards work-life balance and graduates entering the workplace feel entitled to ask for this benefit because they see that prior generations are achieving this ideal. This is just one of the perks in the limelight today. Its not a requirement that new generations reap the benefits of what other generations worked tirelessly for, but rather that they are granted the opportunity to work toward shaping their ideal world of work. Theyre always growing South Africans express often how annoyed they are by their younger colleagues that think they know better. Its true that Afrillennials think they can do things better than the older generations, but only because they can create better methods and techniques in order to do things easier and faster. Its human nature to find problems and then create solutions in order to work towards improvement. Afrillennials do however need insight, guidance and practical experience to grow, which only prior generations can offer. Tech disruption has been happening Technology seems to be a common solution to many issues in the workplace. The easiest way to resolve spending too much time or money on resources is to automate a process. We hate to break it to you but people have been implementing and surviving tech disruption for years, backdating to the time people used mathematicians to calculate their days takings, to today having calculators to do just that and more. Graduates are practically glued to their phones and other technologies because its what theyve been exposed to and its where they are led by brands every day. A fresh perspective In the words of Douglas Adams, anything that is in the world when you are born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of how the world works. Anything thats invented between the ages of 15 and 35 is new, exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after youre 35 is against the natural order of things. Businesses should embrace graduates as part of the natural order of workplace growth and development, without feeling intimidated by the fact that they are bringing new ideas and attitudes into the workplace. A business isnt defined by its success alone, but how the business has improved society, including the lives of its employees and the legacy it leaves for generations to come. With the support of the University of Cape Town Film and Media Department, African Cinema Unit and Stepping Stones, Sunshine Cinema will screen two of the documentaries from the 18th Encounters Documentary Film Festival. The free screenings will take place in Khayelitsha on 8 June and in Langa on 9 June. The festival runs from 2-14 June in Cape Town. Directorial debut On 8 June, Sunshine Cinema will be showing the directorial debut of Nhlanhla Masondo, Shwabada, about the multi-instrumentalist, historian and philosopher, Ndikho Xaba. Including rare archival footage of his early performances and accolades from some of South Africas greatest musical icons, this is an ode to a man whom jazz is too small to define. The film will be shown free on the solar powered mobile cinema at Lookout Hill in Khayelitsha from 6-9pm. Arms trade exposed On 9 June, the second screening will showcase the film Shadow World, based on the acclaimed book by Andrew Feinstein about the global arms trade. The film masterfully breaks down the global arms trade that has shaped our century. Ever since greedy alchemists figured out how to turn blood to gold, this process has outstripped individuals and regimes, and tarnished us here in South Africa. The film will be shown free on the solar powered mobile cinema at the Langa Quarter in Langa from 6-9pm. After the film, there will be a Q&A session with Andrew Feinstein and members of the Right to Know Campaign. For more information, go to www.sunshinecinema.org or email gro.amenicenihsnus@elledys. DISCOP AFRICA Abidjan welcomed the launch of Digital Lab Africa, a call for projects and a platform for African talent in multimedia, organised by the French Institute of South Africa, in partnership with DISCOP AFRICA and TRACE. Image by 123RF The objective of Digital Lab Africa is to provide a springboard for African talent in multimedia creation and to make their project happen with the support of French leading companies (studios, producers, broadcasters, distributors), such as ARTE (web creation); Okio-Studio (virtual reality); CCCP (video game); and 1D Touch/Believe Digital (digital music). African talent in action combined with French touch at its best, this is the very idea of Digital Lab Africa, says Frederic Chambon, regional head of media, film and music at the French Embassy in South Africa, and producer of DLA. He explains: DLA is a platform dedicated to the African digital content of tomorrow. In the age of digital convergence, TV, film, music and video game content in Africa is increasingly consumed on internet and mobile phones, like everywhere else. Call for projects Digital Lab Africa is calling for projects targeting artists, producers, startups, developers and students in the media and creative industries. It is open to any professional or individual having an innovative project in four categories of multimedia production: web creation/transmedia; virtual reality; video games (serious game); and digital music. The deadline to submit a project is 31 August 2016. From 2 - 4 November, selected applicants will take part in a pitch competition at DISCOP AFRICA Johannesburg. The four winning projects (one per category) will get the chance to win a 3,000 cash prize and a Digital Lab Africa incubation ticket to support the project development during three to six months in 2017. The objective of DISCOP AFRICA is to contribute to the growth of the African TV content market The DLA project incubation will include mentorship and project development support by French reference partners for each category. Additionally, the incubation ticket will comprise residence time in France within digital cluster and participation in benchmark multimedia events. The expected outcome of Digital Lab Africa is market ready content/productions showcasing African creativity at its best. Digital Lab Africa is initiated by the French Embassy and the French Institute in South Africa as part of their on-going industry support and action plan in the media and creative industries. The Digital Lab Africa is organised in partnership with DISCOP AFRICA and TRACE, together with a range of other partners. The objective of DISCOP AFRICA is to contribute to the growth of the African TV content market but also to care for producers and content of tomorrow at the digital age. Thats why we support multimedia dedicated initiatives such as the Digital Lab Africa platform, said Patrick Jucaud-Zuchowicki, founding manager of DISCOP AFRICA. The Africa Business Fellowship, a new US/Africa initiative places young US business leaders with prominent African companies, giving them unique exposure to one of the fastest-growing global markets. The first 14 have been selected for Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. The inaugural class of 14 has been selected for the highly competitive Africa Business Fellowship (ABF) - a joint-initiative of Econet, Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT), the Milken Institute, and the African Leadership Network (ALN). The 2016 ABF Class includes Ashley Company, Corwin Shropshire, Elizabeth Oputa, Gordon Taylor, Ijeoma Emenike, Jeanny David, Jessica Ayana Davis, Mason Mallory, Milagros DuBouchet, Nadou Lawson, Shakir Cannon-Moye, Sky Mangin, Tzviatko Chiderov, and Valentine Dike, Jr. These Fellows possess expertise in financial services, technology, management consulting, and digital marketing, among other sectors. Meeting in New York City for their placement briefing, the Fellows depart this week for Africa where they will spend three-six months working with 13 of Africas premier corporations and startups, including: Atlas Mara, Dangote Foundation and Safaricom. ABF Fellows will be placed in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, as well as the United Arab Emirates. Emerging leadership The Africa Business Fellowship was launched in May 2015 at the Milken Institute Global Conference. Kofi Annan, Chair of the Africa Progress Panel, former Secretary General of the United Nations and Nobel Laureate endorsed the initiative as an innovative approach to brokering links between emerging leaders in the US private sector and some of Africa's most dynamic companies". What makes the Africa Business Fellowship unique is the insight these talented Fellows will gain through their first-hand experience in African-led businesses, said John Rice, founder and CEO of MLT. Knowledge of global economies will help propel these Fellows and those who come after them - to succeed as senior leaders. According to Econet founder and chairman, Strive Masiyiwa, whose vision and investment made the initiative a reality, The Africa Business Fellowship will become a signature effort of Africas private sector to develop a new partnership with the US based on trade, entrepreneurship and investment. MLT conducted a rigorous selection process in which nearly 200 highly qualified applicants were vetted for the 14 Fellowships. The application for the 2017 Africa Business Fellowship will open on June 21, 2016. ALN is proud to play a role in transforming Africa-U.S. business relations. Im confident that this will be a rewarding experience for both our Fellows and our host companies, said Adedana Ashebir, ALN program director for the Africa Business Fellowship. 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 #CheckOut: Anushka Sharma's Exclusive Travel Look, From Bombay To Budapest Bollywood Wardrobe Debanjali Everyone is super excited for Sultan to release on the 6th of July ever since the very intriguing trailer of the film has been released. What most do not know is that the film has not completed shooting. The lead pair Anushka Sharma and Salman Khan have reached budapest today to complete the shoot of the last song sequence. Anushka was spotted leaving Mumbai airport yesterday where her boyfriend Virat Kohli was also there to drop her off. Anushka was dressed in a comfy black crop top paired up with a very sporty looking asymmetrical maxi skirt. Anushka had her hair tied up in a bun and went completely makeup free. The actress also sported cool white sneakers along with the outfit carrying a black leather backpack. After arriving at Budapest, she was seen in John Lennon sunnies looking happy and prepped for the upcoming shoot. What did you think of her all black sporty maxi skirt look? Let us know by commenting below. NEW DELHI (PTI): India on Wednesday joined a global ballistic missile proliferation regime but made it clear that it will not have any impact on the national security as well as country's missile programmes. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup also said that India's bid to enter the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) was "on track" and the process to grant the membership was expected to be completed "soon". While briefing reporters in New Delhi, Swarup said, "India has joined the Hague Code of Conduct (HCoC) against Ballistic Missile Proliferation by notifying the HCoC Central Contact in Vienna through diplomatic channels." The HCoC is a voluntary, legally non-binding international confidence building and transparency measure that seeks to prevent the proliferation of ballistic missiles that are capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction. When asked if India's joining HCoC will effectively mean that country has to shelve its Agni missile programme, he said, "Our national security interest will not be impacted in any manner, whatsoever, by joining HCoC." He also said, "India joining the Code signals our readiness to further strengthen global non-proliferation objectives." Asked about India's bid to become member of nuclear control regimes, Swarup said, "As far as MTCR is concerned, our application is on track and well-received, and we expect that process of India's membership would be completed soon". He also added that the country was in discussions with other control regimes like Wassenaar Arrangement for the membership. Already have an account? Log in here 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! Already have an account? Log in here MONTREAL - A Quebec judge has refused to release Cinar animation co-founder Ronald Weinberg pending his next court appearance Monday. 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 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Weary Liberals limped into June after a bruising stretch punctuated by the apologies of Elbowgate, a lacklustre G7 summit in Japan, backtracking on proposals to control the House of Commons and a blown deadline for the new assisted-dying bill. The resignation of Fisheries Minister Hunter Tootoo and a climb-down on how to handle electoral reform capped off the week. Does any of the turmoil affect how Canadians go about their lives and interact with federal politics, or drown out other issues? Clearly, the developments on electoral reform matter to democracy. But also deserving of attention are new details about how the government regulates cosmetics, and provocative Conservative questions about how new social policy will affect divorced parents. Here are three ways politics affected us this week: ELECTORAL REFORM: The Liberals changed direction on Thursday and decided to accept an NDP plan to restructure a parliamentary committee that will look at how to change the way MPs are elected. On the surface, it sounds procedural. But the NDP plan means the Liberals will lose their majority on the committee. That means a rough ride for the option of a ranked or preferential ballot system said to be preferred by many Liberals especially since the NDP, the Conservatives and Green party Leader Elizabeth May oppose it. But the NDPs inclination to push for proportional representation probably cant garner majority support either. Does a referendum the favoured position of the Conservatives, but an approach the other parties believe to be a path towards keeping the status quo become the default? Even as the NDP celebrates its victory, at least a few Liberal MPs are muttering quietly that their attempts at electoral reform may not materialize. TAKING LIPSTICK OFF A PIG: Environment commissioner Julie Gelfand, who regularly audits the governments environmental policies, has taken a hard look at the regulation of cosmetics. In a report issued this week, Gelfand finds that consumers are pretty much on their own when it comes to figuring out if the makeup and beauty products are safe. Health Canada does not require the industry to report health and safety incidents. Any monitoring of the risks of products bought on-line was almost non-existent. Counterfeit products are not scrutinized. And marketing terms such as hypoallergenic, preservative-free, fragrance-free or unscented dont have any standing with the government in terms of health and safety. Health Canada does issue a list of restricted and prohibited chemicals for the industry to refer to, but its up to the industry to follow the rules. And its up to consumers to know which chemicals may pose risks. DIVORCED PARENTS: The Liberals are hoping public discourse in the month of June will be consumed with talk of their new child benefit. The new benefit will start in a few weeks, and will replace the universal child care benefit and the Canada child tax benefit put in place by the previous Conservative government. The Liberal benefit is income tested, and will start at $6,500 a year for a child under five, or $5,400 a year for children six to 17. Conservative finance critic Lisa Raitt argued this week that the budget that introduced the new benefit was silent on how divorced parents should split the benefit or include it in their support payments a problem that could affect 1.2 million Canadians. Finance Minister Bill Morneau has since responded that there will be no impact on support payments, and the structure of the new benefit will be much like the old benefits. Still, Raitts questions point to a huge demographic divorced parents that is rarely examined on its own when it comes to social policy, experts say. This years census, to be released in 2017, will no doubt show that the divorced demographic is more of a force than ever. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. TORONTO Claims of fraud, owed money and abusive behaviour between a prominent employment lawyer and his former bookkeeper have been withdrawn, a colleague of the lawyer said Friday. In an email to The Canadian Press, Sunira Chaudhri did not elaborate on why the situation changed a day after the news agency published a story on the legal spat between Howard Levitt and Theda Lean. All allegations were withdrawn by both parties, Chaudhri said. Chaudhri did not respond to requests to discuss the issue further, and Leans lawyer refused to comment. Levitt, who writes a column on employment law for the National Post and appears on Toronto radio station Newstalk 1010, had accused Lean, a former auditor for the Law Society of Upper Canada, of being a fraudster involved in criminal activity that he said he reported to police and professional authorities. In his statement of claim filed with Ontario Superior Court which Chaudhri said had now been withdrawn the Toronto-based Levitt sought $25,000 in various damages from Lean for what he alleged was overbilling, fraudulent hours and double-billing during her time working for his new law firm Levitt and Grosman starting last September. In a defence and counter-claim that Chaudhri said had also been withdrawn, Lean also sought $25,000 in damages for unpaid work, constructive dismissal and mental distress, called Levitt a bully and an abusive, incompetent manager. She also denied any fraudulent billing and, in a complaint to the law society, called him a disgrace to the legal profession. Levitt, who bills himself as Canadas best known and most quoted authority on employment law, denied owing any money or that he inflicted any mental distress on his ex-employee. He did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr says he anticipates the federal cabinet will make a decision on the proposed Pacific NorthWest LNG export terminal in Prince Rupert, B.C., by the end of September. The $36-billion project by Malaysian state-owned Petronas is considered a linchpin of B.C. Premier Christy Clarks plan for a provincial liquefied natural gas industry, but has raised the ire of environmental opponents. Carr, speaking to reporters from a clean energy technology conference in San Francisco, said the Liberal governments decision will likely to be some time after the 15th of September. The Trudeau government has promised a decision roughly 90 days after the project submits its final application to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. Im making an assumption about when Petronas will put its final papers in to CEAA. I expect those papers soon, Carr told reporters late Thursday. I expect a decision before the end of September unless for reasons I dont know about today, there is significant delay in the filing of the final application to the regulator. Pacific NorthWest LNG did not respond to inquiries about the ministers timeline. The timing sets up a crucial autumn of decision-making for Canadas long-term energy and climate policy. Sometime in October or November, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is supposed to meet the provincial premiers to finalize a pan-Canadian plan for meeting the countrys international climate change commitments. On Nov. 1, a three-person federal panel is to submit its report on Kinder Morgans Trans Mountain pipeline expansion proposal, which has already received conditional approval from the National Energy Board. Carr says cabinet will announce the fate of that hotly contested oil pipeline from Alberta to tidewater in Burnaby, B.C., no later than Dec. 19. The panel consultations are supposed to be complementary to the NEB deliberations, said Carr. They will go into the mix with a new examination of upstream greenhouse gas emissions associated with the pipeline expansion. The minister has consistently declined to say how those various reports will be weighted for the final call. The cabinet will ultimately decide what, in its view, is in the national interest, he said. The government is under intense scrutiny on the energy file and its flip side, climate change policy. A group of unemployed resource workers from Fort Nelson and Fort Saint John, B.C., arrived by bus in Ottawa this week carrying a 30,000-name petition calling for approval of the Petronas LNG project. The B.C. premier was recently in the capital, where Clark met Trudeau while confirming to The Canadian Press that three-way negotiations on energy resource issues are taking place among her government, Alberta and the federal government. Amid the pro-development push, the climate-conscious Liberals also face an equally determined environmental constituency. Next week, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and three First Nations chiefs will be on Parliament Hill lobbying against Trans Mountain. This week, a government-funded study reported that if Ottawa approves only one large LNG terminal in B.C. and if Alberta sticks to its plan of capping provincial emissions at 100 megatonnes a year, emissions from the rest of the economy will have to shrink by 47 per cent to meet Canadas greenhouse gas commitments under the Paris climate accord. Short of an economic collapse, it is difficult to see how Canada can realistically meet its Paris commitments in the 14 years remaining without rethinking its plans for oil and gas development, lead author David Hughes said in a release The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives published the study along with the Parkland Institute and the Corporate Mapping Project. And an internal federal government draft discussion paper warns decision-makers against betting on fossil fuels. The 32-page paper from Policy Horizons Canada a strategic foresight organization within the federal public service was recently obtained by the CBC and Greenpeace Canada through an access-to-information request. The governments own soothsayers repeatedly assert that the energy future of 2030 is in electrification. (This) plausible future would seem to recommend against long-term investments in oil and gas production, refinement and distribution infrastructure as these could be at high risk of becoming economically unviable as prices in renewable electricity further decline, concludes the study. Follow @BCheadle on Twitter Already have an account? Log in here MONTREAL - Federal Heritage Minister Melanie Joly is inviting all Canadians, including Quebecers, to celebrate Canada Day this year. 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! Already have an account? Log in here MONTREAL - Another candidate is joining the race to succeed Pierre Karl Peladeau as permanent leader of the Parti Quebecois. 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 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed optimism till the final hours, but there is now no way the government can enact doctor-assisted dying legislation before the Supreme Court of Canadas deadline on Monday. Senators gave the controversial legislation, known as Bill C-14, second reading and approval in principle on Friday and sent it to the Senate committee on legal and constitutional affairs. However, after the vote, the upper chamber adjourned until Tuesday the day after the deadline. Sen. Peter Harder, the governments representative in the Senate, said he had always described the Monday deadline as ambitious and dismissed any notion senators had not worked as quickly as they could sitting late into the night and starting earlier than usual the next morning given how late they received it. I think any objective observer would say the Senate is being both deliberate and expeditious, Harder said Friday. Still, only a short while earlier, Trudeau had said he still hoped the bill would make it through in time. Weve been very clear that it is our hope that by June 6 the government legislation on a framework for assisted dying will be in place, Trudeau said Friday in Winnipeg. The Supreme Court delivered a landmark ruling in February 2015 that lifted the ban on physician-assisted death and gave Parliament a one-year window to enact legislation. With the deadline approaching after the Liberals came to power, the court granted the new government a four-month extension. Medical regulators in every province have already issued guidelines for physicians on providing assistance in dying. Those rules impose safeguards similar to and in some cases, even stronger than those proposed in C-14. Justice Minister Wilson-Raybould and Health Minister Jane Philpott issued a joint statement Friday urging the Senate to act quickly, saying there will be a legal vacuum once the deadline passes. While provincial regulatory bodies will provide guidance to physicians, there will be significant variability across provinces and territories, they said in the emailed statement. There will also be inadequate support and protection for health-care providers, including nurses and pharmacists. We trust that the Senate will swiftly, yet carefully, consider Bill C-14, while keeping in mind that Canadians, particularly those that are most vulnerable, need a legal framework in place as soon as possible. Dr. Jeff Blackmer of the Canadian Medical Association also said the guidelines do not provide enough clarity. We are being asked to put our patients to death, said Blackmer, the vice-president of medical professionalism for the association. Its that simple and to be asked to do so without clear legal protections, for most physicians, is simply a bridge too far and I think most people would understand that, he said. But Shanaaz Gokool, CEO of the advocacy group Dying with Dignity Canada, said there was always bound to be some trepidation in the early days. Some doctors will feel more comfortable and others will take some time to come on board, but for the doctors who are able to go ahead, they do have guidelines from their colleges, including pharmacology guidelines, said Gokool. Conservative MP Michael Cooper said the government should have asked the Supreme Court for another short extension. It was preventable, he said. NDP MP Murray Rankin said he always believed the government was exaggerating the urgency of meeting the deadline in order to push C-14 through the House of Commons. Its more important to get it right than get it done right now and I believe that the Senate is taking that to heart, he said. Follow @smithjoanna on Twitter Already have an account? Log in here OTTAWA - An IPolitics reporter asked a question of Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion at a news conference in Ottawa this week attended by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. 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! Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett has released the framework for the inquiry that will begin soon into Canadas missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. Ms. Bennett has not been shy in voicing her opinions on this countrys shameful record of violence against indigenous women and the framework for the inquiry comes loaded with pre-set conclusions. Thats a dicey way to start. The framework is a series of recommendations pulled together after government consultations across Canada that included speaking to women, activists, families, the various aboriginal communities and the provincial governments. The criteria recommended for those who may be selected as commissioners is solid: it should be led by an indigenous woman and the commissioners should be mostly indigenous women from all regions. They must be seen as impartial, respected, well-recognized people in their communities. Thats a good start. The basic concept is to look into the various reasons why aboriginal women are victims of violence, and extreme violence, at vastly disproportionate rates compared with non-aboriginal women in Canada. The inquiry is to review the many factors economic, social, historical, political and cultural that play into the plague of violence against women and girls in their communities, on the streets of Canada and in their homes. Historically, the roots lie in the policies and laws written after settlement that marginalized indigenous people, shunting and isolating First Nations people on reserves and dramatically restricting their movement and civil rights. Indigenous people became, as they say, strangers in their own land. Treated as lesser-thans, they quickly became targets of widespread racism. This is how rage builds, how violence is bred, and women have taken the brunt of it. While indigenous men and women suffer violence and are jailed in numbers disproportionate to their populations in Canada, women are also more likely to be victimized in their own homes and communities. These factors and their consequences are well-documented by numerous studies. This inquiry will give voice to indigenous people those who have been victims, and the families of the missing and murdered. The inquiry framework is careful to note that the fact-finding must cover Inuit and Metis communities, as well. It has recommended that, immediately, the commission establish services for victims of violence, including safe houses and shelters, and that there be services and education funds set up for the children of the women who were murdered or have gone missing. Where the inquiry framework recommendations stray into trouble is in the conclusions it has drawn about the response to violence, to reports of missing women and girls, or those who die. It says the inquiry is to address racism in police forces in Canada and the delay in the response to reports of missing women. Families of victims, and of organizations that have worked with them, have long complained about police racism. It is hotly disputed by RCMP, provincial and municipal police forces, however; they point to near identical homicide solve rates in indigenous and non-indigenous cases, as proof. The recommendations call for the inquiry to be able to open independent investigations into cases of missing women. Thats an ambitious goal, which could dangerously raise expectations of families. And it could tie up the inquirys work for years. The inquiry, however, should also see the value of launching an audit of police cases involving indigenous women and girls, to compare the speed and quality of the response with cases of non-indigenous women. That has yet to be studied in Canada. The point, finally, is to find solutions and prevent violence. It will be a generational fix, no doubt, because it will require the improvement of living standards, but also a cultural shift in Canada. It will demand that indigenous people are recognized as full citizens, not lesser-thans or strangers. They are neighbours, co-workers, founders and leaders, moms and dads, trying to live well and prosper, just like any other Canadian. Winnipeg Free Press Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Weve all likely heard the saying, If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And Ive usually found that sentiment to be pretty accurate. But what Im about to tell you is the exception. A longtime fan of Zinfandel the rich, red, barbecue wine that California has made its own Ive consequently tried several over the years. Im still madly in love with Rodney Strong Knotty Vines Zin, but our Liquor Marts dont carry it. I really adore the 7 Deadly Zins Zinfandel, but I cant afford to pay $24.99 for a 750 ml bottle on a regular basis. Ive tried others I havent really liked, or that have only been OK. I even tried Primitivo, which is the Italian incarnation of Zinfandel well, the Italian original Zinfandel, if you will which has been around much longer than the California grape. Some DNA tests suggest that Primitivo and Zinfandel are the same varietal. Others suggest theyre not. Regardless, Im just not wild about Primitivo either. At least not any Ive tried thus far. A few years back, I tried the Gnarly Head Old Vine Zinfandel from Lodi. I liked it. I mean, I wasnt doing somersaults over it or anything, but I thought it was decent. However, it was about that time that I discovered the Rodney Strong Zin, by which I was hopelessly smitten. However, now that I no longer have access to it friends used to pick up cases of it for me in Medicine Hat, but they no longer go there on a regular basis I needed to find another Zin. And thats because I love, love, LOVE Zinfandel with barbecue-sauced meals, especially pork ribs or beef short ribs. Mmmm! Such a great pairing! Hence my need to find a replacement Zinfandel. So it seemed like kismet last week when staffer Erin Birkhan at the Corral Centre Liquor Mart suggested I try the Gnarly Head Old Vine Zinfandel again. I hesitated, and said Id had it and it was good, but I wasnt completely sold. Heres where Erin is a smart lady and Im, apparently, a cheapskate. She said something to the effect of, Well, you know its on for $16.99. And I said, Well, thats what its ALWAYS been. (Which, to give the Gnarly Head folks their due, is really something, because the price hasnt increased in years.) And then she said and this was what clinched it for me Thats true but this is $16.99 a litre! I think I grabbed that bottle out of her hand at the speed of light. OK, I said. For that price, Ill give it another try. And am I ever glad I did. While its still just a tad sweet, sweet goes exceedingly well with barbecue. And so did the Gnarly Head. With cherries and juniper berries and a hint of fennel and mocha, this was exactly what the doctor ordered for my barbecued ribs. The lingering finish of cedar and spice and blackberry was also very pleasant. Its a bit more medium-bodied than some Zins, but the alcohol content 14.5 per cent makes it seem weightier than perhaps it is. Just in case youre wondering, the Gnarly Head Old Vine Zinfandel is made using grapes from some of the oldest vines in California the heads of these old vines become gnarly with age, hence the name. With its hint of sweetness and its smooth and soft texture, this would be a great and affordable party wine, sure to please almost every palate that appreciates red wine. But heres the kicker. While the 750 ml Gnarly Head Old Vines Zin is always available at $16.99, the litre for the same price is only available while quantities last. It was a one-time special purchase, which means its not likely to be around for very long. So I suggest hightailing it down to the Liquor Mart and grabbing a big bottle while you can. I guarantee you Ill be doing the same thing. Although rather than just one, I might just buy a few bottles while Im at it Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. WINNIPEG The Manitoba Progressive Conservative budget has come down, and some have found it baffling and rightly so. A party elected on change offers a budget little different from the recently departed NDP, but gaps and contradictions abound. One contradiction: the PCs will revamp legislation that makes it illegal to run a deficit, but plan to run a deficit for the next eight years. The deficit this year will be over $1 billion, but this drew muted praise rather than condemnation from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. The conventional wisdom, presented by the finance minister and echoed in the budget itself, is that NDP overspending is to blame. This fits in with the NDPs brand of being big-spending socialists, but is totally at odds with everything the government actually did while in power: they governed like PCs, both economically and socially. On social issues, the NDP largely froze spending related to poverty. The social-housing allowance stayed at 1992 rates ($285 a month) for 22 years. Justice funding, on the other hand, doubled, as successive NDP governments supported Conservative justice measures, resulting in part in an incarceration rate twice the national average. On the economy, by the spring of 2008, the NDP boasted that their tax cuts since 1999 had totalled $1 billion a year. This included cutting the small business tax to zero (even though small businesses are an extremely popular tax-shelter and income-splitting vehicle for the wealthiest Canadians). Other business, income and property taxes were all cut as well. Now, $1 billion in tax cuts is actually $1 billion less in government revenues, but since the economy was OK, revenue matched spending. Then, in the fall of 2008, the worst financial crisis since 1929 hit, and the global economy has yet to fully recover. Debt didnt cause the crisis: the crisis caused debt as governments absorbed losses from a colossal private-sector market failure. Countries all over the world started running deficits, because revenues plummeted. Could governments have cut back and engaged in austerity? Some did, but when governments cut back during a recession it means less money is flowing into the economy, and it makes the downturn longer and deeper. The countries that practised stimulus since 2008 have recovered best, the ones that cut back have foundered. Greece is a case in point: when forced to adopt austerity by its creditors, it managed to balance its budget but its GDP had dropped by 25 per cent (20 per cent more than predicted) and unemployment is at 25 per cent to 50 per cent for people 25 and under. There are serious problems with the PCs misconception that spending, not inadequate revenue, is causing the deficit. It means their diagnosis and prescription will both be wrong. Reducing spending means pulling money out of the economy, and lowering taxes will further drive down revenues and increase the deficit and the debt. Manitoba has not been overspending: in fact, spending has been perfectly aligned with the growing economy. The problem is that revenues keep dropping, partly because the NDP kept cutting taxes in ways that didnt help the economy such as education tax rebates for seniors, even wealthy ones. The overwhelming focus on taxes ignores the more fundamental problem in Manitoba, which is that we have some of the lowest private-sector wages in Canada, and our job market, while stable, is rigid. In Canada, and in Manitoba, personal, business and many property taxes have been significantly reduced in the last 20 years, but most people havent felt it because peoples wages and incomes arent going up even when the economy grows. Nobody moved to Fort McMurray because of low taxes: they moved there because of high-paying jobs and people with high-paying oil jobs allowed provinces like Saskatchewan and Alberta to lower their taxes. But lowering our taxes to compete with Alberta and Saskatchewan will not persuade oil wells or potash mines to relocate to Manitoba. Those provinces also cut taxes in good times: Albertas deficit this year will be over $10 billion, Saskatchewans will be $434 million. Governments role goes far beyond just creating a competitive tax environment for business. All the things taxes pay for also matter to the people who work and invest: quality health care and education, decent roads, and, above all, customers with money in their pockets. The irony of all of this is that the PCs and the NDP have for years been pretending that the NDP is left-wing to the benefit of both. The problem for Manitobans is that the NDP ran a PC government for 17 years, and ironically, Manitobans may now get four more years of the same. Dougald Lamont is a communications consultant. He is lecturing in government and business relations in Canada at the University of Winnipeg. His column was also published by the Winnipeg Free Press. Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/06/2016 (2335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Maguire flip-flops on veteran court case I see our wishy-washy MP is still there. When his Conservative party was in power he did what his boss told him to do back the proceedings to screw the veterans, and he jumped right in. Now the Liberals are in power, and following through with the court case started by the Conservatives. Yet hes now against it and says he will fight for the poor veterans. Some of the top party leaders must have told him to start saying this. I guess it takes longer for Brandon-Souris Conservatives to understand what the rest of Canada has already learned about the Conservatives. Thats great, but Nice to read about the North Hill walking path being paved! What about the Richmond Avenue path between 26th and 34th street, or doesnt anybody from city hall use this? There are other paths In regards to the paving of the walking path on the North Hill. Did they even look at the one on Richmond Avenue? I walk these regularly, and in the spring its under water in places. When was it paved last, 1980-something? Wake up and do something about this or grass it in, as it is nearly to that stage anyway. Driving me crazy Half the Brandon and area drivers should not have drivers licences, or the police should be handing them tickets. They are forever turning right from a left lane or vice versa. They constantly sit at a red light covering both a turning lane and a straight through lane or changing lanes without signalling, even when police vehicles are being cut off, but nothing happens. Cant see the cleaner for the dust We had one side of our street cleaned this morning, by a street-cleaning machine with a huge water tank, to dampen the street, so that dust doesnt fill the neighbourhood. Why didnt the operator spray some water? The neighbourhood was just a cloud of dust. You could hardly see the street-cleaner. Then about lunch time, a different street-cleaner came down the other side of the street, a bigger machine with a huge water tank, but still no water, only dust. They should change the name from Centre Avenue to Dusty Avenue. Update 12.12pm: There is a large Garda presence in Dublin for the funeral Mass of Gareth Hutch this afternoon. The 35-year-old became the latest victim of the ongoing gangland feud when he was shot dead last week. There's a large Garda presence at the funeral of Gareth Hutch in Dublin. The 35-year-old was shot dead last week pic.twitter.com/r2bNZfMc88 NewstalkFM (@NewstalkFM) June 3, 2016 The funeral procession came up Aughrim St behind a lone bagpiper. Around 200 people have gathered for the ceremony. The funeral of Gareth Hutch gets underway in #Dublin Doves are released as the coffin is carried into the church. pic.twitter.com/4Rqgort9oR Zara King (@ZaraKing) June 3, 2016 As his body was brought into the church, a number of white doves were released with applause from the congregation. In his homily Fr Paddy Madden called for peace and asked people to consider the human face behind each tragedy. Fr Madden said the gangs should avoid more disaster and seek a hope filled future. "My earnest prayer today is that we can begin to seek peace and not disaster and for a hope -filled future" - Fr Paddy Madden #GarethHutch Zara King (@ZaraKing) June 3, 2016 He said breaking the cycle of violence is not easy and that both sides need to display courage, restraint and reason. Breaking the cycle of violence is not easy," he said. It needs courage, restraint, goodwill and right reason and a desire for peace. Fr Madden added that Gareth Hutchs main concern in life was the safety of his only son Preston. A large security presence remains in the area with gardai on almost every corner. Gareth Hutch will be buried in Glasnevin Cemetery later. Mourners in tears leaving Aughrim St Church. #GarethHutch pic.twitter.com/MmyPoWlbyN Zara King (@ZaraKing) June 3, 2016 Earlier: The funeral of the latest victim of Dublin's gangland feud will take place this morning. Gareth Hutch was shot dead outside his home in Dublin's north inner city last week. So far two people have been charged in relation to the murder. A tight security presence is expected at the Holy Family Church on Aughrim Street in central Dublin. The nephew of Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch became the seventh victim of this gangland feud when he was murdered last Tuesday. Thirty-five-year-old Gareth Hutch was shot dead while getting into his car outside his home at Avondale House on North Cumberland Street in Dublins north inner city. The feud between the Hutches and the Kinahans has prompted the creation of a new garda task force with the Government also giving extra powers to the Criminal Assets Bureau. Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan said they were also working with international policing agencies to target the offshore assets of these gangs. A heavy garda presence is expected this morning for the 11.30am Funeral Mass of Gareth Hutch. He will be buried afterwards in Glasnevin Cemetery. The Government has been accused of only paying lip-service to their promise to help the elderly stay in their own homes, as they age. A new report claims half of all nursing home residents could still be living at home, if they were given the right support. The research by social workers, Age Action and the Alzheimer Society claims the home care system here is disorganised, fragmented and underfunded. It shows that acute hospitals and nursing homes are being prioritised over community care, at around three times the cost. The most commonly quoted supports to allow them to stay at home were night-time care and intensive home care packages, according to social workers who were surveyed for the report. John Brennan from the Irish Association of Social Workers said family carers needed to be given more help. He said: "Saying people will be supported to live at home with dignity is largely lip service. The State relies hugely on family carers. "We had an instance of two sisters of 84 and 82 living together. The 82-year-old was looking after the 84-year-old and they weren't getting a service because there was a family carer (the 82-year-old)." The report also finds the HSE is spending less on home support services now than in 2008, despite an increase in the number of people with complex conditions including dementia. Justin Moran from Age Action said the report painted a picture of a system in crisis. "We know community care is grossly underfunded and that older people want to stay at home as long as possible. "Many of these people could be at home - where they want to be, where their families want them to be and where government policy says they should be but we are not providing the supports they need." Donald Trump supporters leaving the presidential candidate's rally in California clashed with protesters, some of whom threw punches and eggs. A dozen or more people were hit and car windows were broken. Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground and at least one woman was pelted with an egg. Police stood their ground at first but after about 90 minutes moved into the remaining crowd to break it up and make arrests. At least four people were taken into custody, though police did not release total arrest figures on Thursday night. One officer was assaulted. The crowd, which had numbered over 300 just after the rally, thinned significantly as the night went on, but those who remained near the San Jose Convention Centre were rowdy and angry. Some banged on the cars of Trump supporters as they left the rally and chased after those on foot. Mayor Sam Liccardo, a Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter, criticised Mr Trump for coming to cities and igniting problems that local police departments had to deal with. "At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behaviour of his campaign," Mr Liccardo said. Mrs Clinton and Democratic opponent Bernie Sanders will also make campaign stops in the state on Friday in California as they look to Tuesday's state primary. Mr Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, spoke for about 50 minutes at the rally, sniping at Mrs Clinton and calling her speech on foreign policy earlier in the day "pathetic" and "sad to watch". Protesters before the speech included Adam Rivas, a 22-year-old community college student who was born and raised in San Jose, California. He was holding a spray-painted sign that read "Dump Trump". Mr Rivas said he was particularly disturbed by Mr Trump's remarks about Mexicans. "For any one Mexican here he bashes, there are about 20 Mexicans out there who are hard-working and just doing their job," he said. Trump supporter Debbie Tracey, a US Navy veteran from San Jose, said she came to hear Mr Trump speak, and left his rally with two hats, a t-shirt and a handful of signs that said "Veterans for Trump". Passing in front of a wall of protesters, many chanting in Spanish, she said she supported Mr Trump's call for a wall along the US-Mexico border. "I'll go help build the wall because if you are going to come to this country, land of opportunity, you should be here legally," she said. Water levels in the River Seine in Paris are still rising despite France's unseasonable spate of heavy rain beginning to taper off, officials have said. Traffic in the capital was snarled up as flooding choked roads and several Paris railway stations were shut. The country's environment ministry said the Seine had not reached such levels since 1982. The Louvre Museum was closed on Friday as staff worked to remove artworks from rooms threatened by the rising water. French President Francois Hollande has said a "natural disaster" will be formally declared next week in a Cabinet meeting for areas most affected by the flooding that has hit Paris and France's central regions. French energy company Enedis said more than 20,000 customers were without power on Friday as the result of flooding. In a text message, the company said the blackouts were concentrated in the departments of Seine et Marne and Essonne - to the east and south of Paris, respectively. Meanwhile, German officials have recovered the body of a sixth person who died in this week's flooding in Bavaria, near the Austrian border. Authorities said the 65-year-old man's body was found overnight in the town of Simbach am Inn, which was inundated on Wednesday. Now that floodwater has receded in the area, the search continues for other missing people. Local police told the dpa news agency on Friday that they were still trying to locate an elderly couple in Simbach. That brings the total of people killed in flooding in Germany over the last week to 10 - including four in Baden-Wuerttemberg, to Bavaria's west, in flooding on Sunday and Monday. Elsewhere, authorities said two people died and 200 people were evacuated from their homes as floods swept parts of eastern Romania. The interior ministry said 7,000 firefighters, police and others had been dispatched overnight on Friday to help in flood rescue efforts. The ministry said in a statement that a man died after a torrent of water knocked him off his bicycle in the eastern village of Ruginesti. In Bacau county, in eastern Romania, another man was found drowned. KARACHI: Gold prices on Saturday continued to fall on the local market, traders said. The prices slid by Rs 1000 to... MANILA: The use of LNG imports for power generation in the Philippines next year should not be a disincentive for... Panadol is short in the market and this has been catching eyes of media, politicians, all and sundry. Everyone has ... Stock markets in United Arab Emirates closed higher on Friday, in line with global equities, as higher growth in the... Sorry... ..An error has occured: If you have any queries about this error, try emailing feedback@mirror.co.uk and we'll do what we can to help you. ZID:308457493 A splurge of $20 million on Gungahlin schools will see new classrooms, upgraded halls, expanded gymnasiums, and space for an extra 680 students, the government says. The population explosion in Gungahlin, coupled with an increase in public education enrolments, has put pressure on existing schools in the region. Students at Amaroo Primary School, which will share in a $20 million capital investment to be made in next week's budget. Credit:Rohan Thomson A new school in north Gungahlin is expected to be completed in late 2018, but the package announced on Friday is designed to upgrade existing schools in Harrison, Amaroo, Neville Bonner, and Palmerston Primary Schools. Chief Minister Andrew Barr, in announcing the money on Friday, also said the government was on track to meet a pledge made before its last election to spend $70 million on school infrastructure. Dog-whistling: saying one thing but making it very clear you mean another. Politicians have made an art of it, while corporations sidestep it and commentators relish using it. Now Westpac chief executive Brian Hartzer has called it out, putting journalists and businesses on notice about sexist dog-whistlers. Speaking at the launch of the 2016 The Australian Financial Review/Westpac 100 Women of Influence Awards, Mr Hartzer (father of four girls) emphasised how language perpetuates outdated attitudes. Ann Sherry - keynote speaker - and Elizabeth Broderick at the 100 Women of Influence breakfast. Credit:Janie Barrett "We have seen in the past couple of months a number of cases where there are still unconscious biases and conscious biases, and I would make the observation that language is a really important thing," he said. "My reflection ... would be that we need to watch out for dog-whistlers when it comes to gender equality and inclusion." Mr Hartzer's comments come amid increasing consternation over how language should and should not be used in the push for gender equality. Chairman of the Diversity Council, 2016 Australian of the Year and former Army chief David Morrison is facing ongoing criticism for decrying use of the informal greeting term "Guys" in the workplace. Mr Morrison was making a broader point about raising awareness around the use of gender-based language, or marginalising terms such as "Gay". Friday's launch of the 2016 Women of Influence awards brought together high-profile business and media personalities, including Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs, Social Ventures Australian chairman Paul Robertson, television presenter Melissa Doyle and former sex discrimination commissioner Liz Broderick, who founded the Male Champions of Change program. Keynote speaker Ann Sherry reminded women that influence is something they must actively choose to use, to go outside the everyday sphere of home and work responsibilities. "There is a richness that gives, that you can't really explain until you get to the end of it," she said. "Choosing one or two extra things, that most of us have the power and opportunity to be involved in, is what changes the world." Just minutes after a Supreme Court of NSW jury found Oliver Curtis guilty of one count of insider trading, a senior executive from the corporate watchdog was on the steps of the court house crowing about the regulator's success. "We welcome the jury's decision today. It reinforces ASIC's commitment to pursue complex market misconducts such as these, no matter how long they may take or how vigorously they are defended," Australian Securities and Investments Commission senior executive leader of enforcements Chris Savundra told the gathered media. Oliver Curtis leaves St James Supreme Court after being found guilty of insider trading. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer But how successful is ASIC when it comes to complex insider trading cases? Since August 2009, when ASIC took over the responsibility for market surveillance from the privately owned ASX Ltd, the watchdog has pursued 42 separate insider trading cases. New Zealand billionaire Graeme Hart's car-parts maker UCI International has filed for bankruptcy after losing business from three of its biggest customers. US-based UCI makes pumps and filters for carmakers including Ford and General Motors, and until last year had sold many aftermarket parts through retailers AutoZone and Advance Auto Parts. The company also has private-label deals to make products for brands including Napa, STP and Motorcraft. Self-made billionaire Graeme Hart likes to keep a low public profile. The company has 1800 employees in the US and total assets of about $US435 million ($602 million). Its liailities run to about $US717 million, including $US400 million in unsecured bonds, according to filings in Delaware bankruptcy court. Brian Whittman of turnaround adviser Alvarez & Marsal, who was brought in to act as UCI's chief restructuring officer, called the balance sheet "unsustainable." Consumer electronics business Kogan, Shaver Shop, and online bookseller Booktopia might soon put an end to a drought in retailers listing on the sharemarket. Kogan founder Ruslan Kogan and broker Cannacord Genuity met with fund managers in Sydney this week regarding plans for a $50 million public offering. Booktopia is planning a $175 million stockmarket float, while Shaver Shop is seeking up to $147 million in an IPO. Ruslan Kogan, founder and CEO of retail website Kogan.com hopes to break the drought in Australian retail listings. Credit:Wayne Taylor The new wave of retail listings bucks a global trend, with none of the major bourses in Japan, Hong Kong, the US and UK having had any consumer goods company floats this year. The sector accounted for not a single one of the $US12.25 billion ($16.9 billion) worth of IPOs on the ASX and these markets through to May 24, 2016, Dealogic figures show. And last year, retail made up just $US2.2 billion - or 2.8 per cent - of the $US79 billion worth of new listings in those markets. "If you're stealing your neighbour's fence, best to do it one paling at a time" is a little retail wisdom once given to Paul Simons and now repeated by him. It's how a supermarket chain can steal leadership from another. It also carries an implied warning that it regaining leadership will take time. With news that a trolley-full of groceries at Woolworths is now cheaper than the Coles equivalent, it's possible - just possible that Woolworths is loosening some palings. The reality though is that public perception of prices is more important than the surveyed reality. It will take time for the public to believe that Woolworths is a better place to shop, whatever the survey might say. And that's just the pricing part. We get the same absolute number of dollars [from the state] that we got in 1997, U-M president Mark Schlissel told the Ann Arbor Rotary Club in May. The first question after Schlissels talk to the club was a hardball: would the university consider a payment in lieu of taxes to the city? Schlissels answer was immediate and decisive: No. The answer might be different, the president allowed, if Michigan was a rich school like Harvard or Yale, both of which make PILOT payments. But Michigan, he made it clear, is not in the private schools financial league. On the contrary, when adjusted for inflation, this years $300 million state appropriation is no more than the university received fifty years ago. No adjustment was needed to see Michigans higher education funding cuts during the Great Recession. In 2011, the legislature slashed the overall higher ed budget by 15 percent. For the U-M in Ann Arbor, by far the largest recipient of state money, that meant a $47 million drop, from $316 to $269 million. The state is still catching up. Governor Snyders proposed $55 billion budget for fiscal 2017 calls for an additional $61.2 million for Michigans fifteen public universitiesa 4.3 percent increase that would restore overall state support to its 2011 level. State representative Jeff Irwin is distinctly unimpressed. Doesnt it say something about the space were in that its a positive story that were finally back at where we were before [the legislature] cut it so deeply in 2011? the Ann Arbor Democrat asks. Ultimately it comes down to leadership, Irwin argues. We dont have a governor who can stand up to Tea Party extremists in his own party. Until theres a change in leadership, I dont see a change. Were investing more in prisons than in higher educationand that sums up the poor choices were making in Lansing. The state budget cuts were bad enough, but in Irwins view the subsequent increases were worse because they werent shared equally. For the last five years, theres been a systematic effort to give more funding to certain institutions and less funding to other certain institutions, he says. Five schools are still going to be behind, and two of them are U-M and EMU right here in Washtenaw County. But Grand Valley State University is way ahead of where they were, like 12 percent higher. Cynthia Wilbanks, the U-Ms VP for governmental affairs, confirms that even approval of the governors proposed 2017 budget would not make the university whole: The U-M Ann Arbor would get a 4.5 percent increase, but that still puts us at $312 million, she says$4 million less than it got in 2011. But Wilbanks doesnt endorse Irwins argument that other schools are getting rich at the U-Ms expense. Its always tempting to draw a comparison, she says, but both the U-M and GVSU receive 16 percent of our general operating budget from the state. Like Schlissel, she worries more about the shrinking pie as a whole. Wilbanks offers another perspective on the trend. The recent high-water mark of state support for U-M Ann Arbor was $364 million in 2002, she says. If you had taken the state appropriation in 2002 and just incremented it by the rate of inflation, the appropriation would be $468 million now. Regent Mark Bernstein points out that in 1970, Michigans public universities were about 64 percent supported by the state, 26 [percent] by students, 11 [percent] by indirect cost recoveries [on research grants]. In 2016, its about 71 students, 16 state, and 11 indirects. The line crossed in 1992-93. Thats when the burden shifted to students. And even that doesnt tell the whole story of Michigans waning commitment to higher ed. There are lots of ways that government supports higher education, Bernstein notes. One is direct financial aid to studentsand were at the bottom. The U-C at Berkeleys is $12,000. The U-Ms is $750. Weve seen the state disinvest in higher education when higher education is the most direct predictor of household income. To cope with the outright cuts and diminished buying power of its state appropriation, the university has imposed reductions for various schools and colleges, Wilbanks says. And our expenditures on benefits have been reduced because our employees are paying for more of their benefits now. Wilbanks sees some hope for the future. The trend has been positive, and if the states economy continues to increase I anticipate well see recommendations for increases. But no one expects the state to ever again be the main support of its state supported schools. In his May talk, Schlissel blamed a long-term shift in public attitudes, from a willingness to invest in shared goods to a sense that people should pay for the services they receive. Thats certainly the case at Michigan, which could now most accurately be described as student supported. None of which means that the states $300 million isnt appreciated. It matters a lot, says Bernstein. The state money goes to the general fund of the university, the most valuable money the university has at its disposal. State funding amounts to [the return on] about another $6 or 7 billion worth of endowment. University of New South Wales professor Gabrielle Appleby, who recently published the book The Role of the Solicitor-General, said she was "perplexed" by the direction because Mr Gleeson had gone further than his predecessors and had "put in place a system where he makes the Attorney-General aware of requests for advice". "This is George Brandis seeking to formalise and assert control over the Solicitor-General but it's perplexing, because there is already a high level of control over the advisory function," she said. Asked if the change could damage the independence of the office of Solicitor-General, Ms Appleby said: "It would depend on how the Attorney-General acts on referrals of law.It would be worrying if an Attorney-General took the view that access to the Solicitor-General should be restricted." University of Sydney constitutional law professor Anne Twomey said the changes were impractical because Solicitors-General are often asked to advise on urgent matters. She said that, for example, Quentin Bryce had needed urgent advice when Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd and asked: "Do you seriously have to have someone with a letter go to the Attorney-General and get it signed before the Solicitor-General can advise the Governor-General?" Australians' wellbeing grew 40 per cent faster each quarter under the past two Labor governments equivalent to nearly $11 billion on eight key indicators covering health, education and income distribution, a new report has found. The authors of the Fairfax-Lateral Economics Index of Australia's Wellbeing have evaluated changes in obesity, life expectancy, preventable hospitalisations, early childhood development, schooling quality, post-school education, long-term unemployment and income inequality during the past three federal terms. For seven of the eight indicators the improvement in wellbeing was superior, on average per quarter, during the two Labor terms while the outcome for one indicator was superior during the Coalition's term. A surge in the proportion of adults with a higher qualification during the Labor years meant the wellbeing value of post-school education increased by $10 billion a quarter more, on average, during the Rudd and Gillard governments than under the Abbott and Turnbull governments. Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten's decision not to attend a repatriation ceremony for Australia's Vietnam war dead sparked an increase in radio talkback callers in week four of the election campaign. Analysis by media monitor iSentia this week showed significant increases in mentions of the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader on radio, before both were forced to defend missing the ceremony in Sydney, in attempts not to politicise the occasion. Campaign uptick: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. Credit:Andrew Meares Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove and senior frontbenchers from both sides of politics attended the event in Sydney, but Mr Shorted apologised to veterans groups on Friday for his absence. In a separate note to Mr Turnbull, who married Mr Hughes' businesswoman daughter Lucy 36 years ago, he said "there is room only for improvement and the party's present folly will pass". Not even the highest office in the country is immune to internal politics. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen In a letter to his brother, prominent art critic Robert Hughes, the giant of the Australian legal fraternity said making Mr Abbott leader was akin to putting "the principal lunatic in charge of the asylum" and predicted it would be a "potentially catastrophic decision". Malcolm Turnbull's father-in-law, former attorney-general Tom Hughes, called Tony Abbott a "lunatic" and urged Mr Turnbull to stay in politics after losing the Liberal leadership in 2009, predicting the party's "folly" would pass. The Prime Minister said on Friday afternoon that Mr Hughes had apologised to Mr Abbott for the revelations contained in a new biography of him by historian Ian Hancock, called Tom Hughes QC: A Cab on the Rank, to be published this week. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, former attorney-general and prominent barrister Tom Hughes QC and daughter Lucy Turnbull earlier this year. Credit:Mick Tsikas The scathing commentary and predictions of his son-in-law's return to power from December 2009 would ultimately be vindicated, although the wait was long. Six years after he wrote the letters, Mr Turnbull was back in the leadership after the Abbott government was characterised by chaos and dysfunction. In the letter to his brother, Mr Hughes said that Mr Turnbull "paid the price" for his erstwhile support for an emissions trading scheme in the face of his party's opposition. He said it was "to his great credit" that he stood up for his principles. "To elect Abbott in his place is the equivalent of putting the bull in charge of the china shop or the principal lunatic in charge of the asylum," Mr Hughes wrote. Jamie Bright's body lies frozen in a Kurdish hospital in the centre of one of the most geopolitically fraught places on Earth. Mr Bright, 44, a former sapper in the Australian Army, was shot through the head by an Islamic State fighter on Wednesday last week, after about 16 months fighting with the Kurds during which he disposed of more than 100 booby-trap bombs. Jamie Bright's twin brother Andrew, his mother Faye-Marie Kenny and his sister Leah. Credit:Karleen Minney Now his family want to cremate his remains and spread the ashes over the sea off Western Australia where his 21-year-old son Jake lives. It won't be easy. Speaking for the first time, Mr Bright's family say the cross-border conflict between the Syrian Kurds and Turkey is at an explosive pitch. Actor Debra Messing has defended a selfie she took of herself watching coverage of the murder-suicide on the UCLA campus on Wednesday. The star of Will & Grace and The Mysteries of Laura took the picture of her in an orange T-shirt bearing the slogan "under the gun," for which Twitter users called her out for being insensitive. Later in the day, she explained on Twitter that the photo was part of a pre-planned social media campaign (apparently on behalf of Everytown for Gun Safety) and that news of the shooting broke just as she was posting it. The original photo has since been pulled down. YEREVAN, JUNE 2, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian made an announcement regarding the adoption of the Armenian Genocide resolution by the German Bundestag. As informed by the MFA, the announcement reads: Armenia welcomes the adoption of the resolution by the Bundestag of the Federal Republic of Germany on recognition of the Genocide committed against Armenians and other Christian peoples. President Joachim Gaucks statement on the occasion of the Centenary of the Armenian Genocide together with this resolution adopted by Bundestag are Germanys valuable contribution not only to the international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide, but also to the universal fight for the prevention of genocides, crimes against humanity. While Germany and Austria, as former allies of the Ottoman Empire, are today acknowledging their part of responsibility in the Armenian Genocide, the authorities of Turkey are continuing to obstinately reject the undeniable fact of genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire. The international community has been waiting for 101 years that Turkey would face its history. Mark Scott has been appointed secretary of the NSW Department of Education, following 10 years as Managing Director of the ABC. Credit:James Brickwood His son Mark Scott's new appointment as secretary of the NSW Department of Education has put him at the head of a public service department where reform is glacial and red tape rules. Like father, like son. Maybe. Maybe not. Brian Scott was the architect of reforms aimed at revolutionising the NSW public education system. Brian Scott was at the epicentre of particularly turbulent years in NSW education. His 1989 report, Schools Renewal: a strategy to revitalise schools within the New South Wales state education system, commissioned by the new Greiner government, became the template for reform. It recommended reallocating 600 jobs, breaking up the department's administration process, the sale of the Sydney headquarters and the introduction of a teacher transfer system based on merit, not seniority. The then Education minister Terry Metherell, set about reforming education only to be accused of tax avoidance and his subsequent offer of a public service post resulted in the resignation of Premier Nick Greiner. Then in 1994 Brian Scott resigned in disgust, citing an unworkable relationship with Mr Metherell's replacement, Virginia Chadwick, and excessive bureaucratic meddling in the administration of schools. The Liberal government backed away from Brian Scott's reforms but not before widespread antagonism on the part of parents with children at public schools, the NSW Teachers' Federation and sections of the ALP saw the biggest protest marches since the Vietnam war. Over the years, the Scott family has been an exemplar of private education. The question now is can Mark Scott, having finished reforming the ABC, shake the family hoodoo on public education? "There is a difference. I can implement change. My father was never in a position to do so," Mr Scott said. Heavy rains, gale force winds, flash flooding, dangerous surf and beach erosion. Welcome to Brisbane in June. A low pressure system developing off the Queensland coast is forming quickly and moving fast sending emergency service into action mode and they are asking the community to do the same. "We have been preparing for the last couple of days to ensure our resources are prepared and equipment ready," Queensland Fire and Emergency Services deputy commissioner Mark Roche said. "Not only swift water rescue but also SES volunteers, rural fire staff and also emergency management teams. A retail worker on the Gold Coast has been awarded almost $18,000 after being paid only half her required wage for nearly a year. The 22-year-old woman was given just $12 an hour when her minimum rate was $23.74, according to the Fair Work Ombudsman. A retail worker was offered a pay rise of $1 an hour when she discovered she was being paid half the correct rate. Credit:Michele Mossop The Ombudsman has forced the business to back-pay almost $18,000 after they initially offered her a $1 per hour increase when first told about the underpayment. AAP The Palaszczuk government is being forced to defend its vegetation management legislation not just to farmers, but also the state's legal fraternity. Legal experts have raised concerns the laws would be an "unjustified and a step backwards for justice" comparable to the worst of the LNP anti-bikie laws. Australia's land-clearing rates are unmatched in the rich world - and accelerating again. Credit:Bill Laurance In a statement released on its website on Friday, Queensland Law Society President Bill Potts said the planned changes to vegetation management laws, already shaping up as one of the most controversial bills in front of the 55th Parliament, damaged one of the most fundamental principles of the justice system. The legislation aims to once again tighten Queensland's land clearing laws, after clearing jumped from 100,000 hectares to almost 300,000 hectares in three years between 2010 and 2013. Latrobe City Council has greeted a landmark court win against the Hazelwood Mine operators with "joy and relief". The Court of Appeal win means the regional council will not have to come up with the crippling estimated sum of $100 million to repair part of the mine site, and will not be "lumbered" with the ownership, upkeep or maintenance of the mine infrastructure for generations to come. A view of the Hazelwood open cut mine from Morewell. Credit:Eddie Jim At issue had been which authority was responsible for maintaining the Morwell Main Drain, a 4.9-kilometre channel which, the court said, was built in 1949 by the State Electricity Commission of Victoria as a component of the Hazelwood open cut mine. When the site was privatised in 1994, the area was transferred to Hazelwood Power Partnership. More than $20,000 in donations, many from Liberal voters, have rolled into serial candidate Stephen Mayne's bold bid to unseat veteran Liberal backbencher Kevin Andrews. The Melbourne City Councillor, and long-term political donations reform advocate, is disclosing donations on his website as they come in, and it includes $10,000 from anti-pokies campaigner Paul Bendat. Melbourne City Councillor, anti-pokie campaigner and shareholder advocate Stephen Mayne is challenging Kevin Andrews in the seat of Menzies. Credit:Justin McManus "I'm getting lots of emails of support and some donations from people who vote Liberal but don't like Kevin," Cr Mayne said. The independent candidate has won the backing of high profile figures including Tim Costello and Nick Xenophon and is building a team of experienced campaigners who want to turn him from "serial candidate to serious candidate". Victorians forced to flee their homes during dangerous bushfires will be able to take refuge in vacant properties and rooms listed on Airbnb after the state government struck a deal with the accommodation website. Emergency services workers - such as volunteer firefighters or State Emergency Service members - will also be able to find housing through Airbnb in the event of a natural disaster or emergency. Hundreds of people were forced to flee bushfires along the Great Ocean Road over summer. Credit:Tom Jacobs There are roughly 10,000 Victorian properties listed on Airbnb, a website where people can list a property or rooms for short-term rent. As many of those listed in Victoria are in regional and bushfire-prone areas, the government hopes its partnership with Airbnb will bolster Victoria's emergency response. YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. The Defense Ministry of Nagorno Karabakh informs that overnight June 2-3 the situation was relatively calm in the Karabakh-Azerbaijani line of contact. The Azerbaijani side violated the ceasefire agreement by firing only various caliber weapons. The Defense Army forces refrained from taking counter measures and continued confidently carrying out their military duties. Victorians should prepare for a wet weekend with the possibility of flooding in some areas, particularly in the far east of the state. The Bureau of Meteorology has warned of dangerous weather in Australia's eastern states because of a large and complex weather system, and a developing east coast low. The bureau has predicted rain and possible thunderstorms for Melbourne on Saturday, with falls of 20-40mm in the far east and 5-15mm in the east. Less than 5mm of rain has been forecast for central areas of the city. St Paul's Cathedral and dozens of other buildings in Melbourne's CBD are being defended from graffiti with a coating that repels paint, but authorities are still losing the war against "recidivist" offenders whose tags are verging on household names. One of the newest tools used by the City of Melbourne to tackle graffiti is a shield or guard that stops spray paint penetrating into stone walls and other surfaces. Melbourne City Council graffiti removalist Ben Ivory working in a laneway near Chinatown. Credit:Eddie Jim The coating is used to protect 54 sites around the central city, following persistent attacks on churches, heritage statues and commissioned murals. The council keeps a record of every tag removed from Melbourne's streets, and though the data is yet to be extensively analysed, it reveals the most damaging graffiti vandals go by the aliases Nost, Pork and Lamb whose tags can be seen sprayed all over the state. Victoria's controversial Safe Schools program will be axed if the Coalition wins the 2018 state election, with Opposition Leader Matthew Guy promising to replace it with a "genuine" anti-bullying program. A Liberal policy document provided to Fairfax Media claims the program is "all about pushing one person's radical-Marxist ideology onto other people's children". The state opposition will axe the Safe Schools program if it wins the next election. Credit:Penny Stephens "Victorian schools should provide genuine anti-bullying programs for students, which promote respect for all others irrespective of their circumstances," the documents says. "These programs should not be a Trojan horse for politicising the Victorian education system." The Safe Schools program aims to promote acceptance of LGBTI students and was introduced six years ago by the Brumby Labor government. It continued to receive funding and support under the Baillieu-Napthine governments. Shopping is not in my DNA. If I was a hunter and gatherer I would be left to wither and die by my fellow tribe mates. So the thought of doing a story about a new Aldi Store in Kwinana - the first of a batch to open in Perth - filled me dread. It would be the equivalent of sending a blind person to review an Estonian movie with subtitles. Concerns of an ice epidemic in Esperance continue to grow as police reveal more than half the drivers road-side tested for drugs in the past year returned a positive result. Reports the once vibrant, sleepy coastal town had been overrun by the dark side of drugs and lack of mental health services were first revealed by WAtoday in March. Esperance is a beautiful tourist town, but its growing drug problems are evidenced by driving offences under the influence. Esperance Police officer-in-charge Richard Moore has since told Radio 6PR on Friday more than 100 people had been charged with 207 drug driving offences in the town since May 2015. "One person's been charged 11 times for drug driving and of all the tests conducted, 52 per cent of people provided a positive sample," he said. There is also great admiration for him among Russians too, of course. Some adore him for introducing perestroika, or restructuring, combined with glasnost, or openness, which together helped to jettison the worst repressions of the communist system. Gorbachev led the way, albeit haltingly, toward free speech, free enterprise and open borders. Russian President Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg in April. Credit:AP "Some love him for bringing freedom, and others loathe him for bringing freedom," said Dmitri Muratov, the editor of Novaya Gazeta, one of the few remaining independent newspapers and one in which Gorbachev holds a 10 percent stake. The society at large blames him for losing the Soviet empire and leaving them citizens of a second-class country, even if individuals recognise that he opened new horizons for them and their children. Russian President Vladimir Putin (centre) with Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos (left) in Greece on Saturday. Credit:AP "The society doesn't like him; he is the anti-Putin," Venediktov said. "Putin is the constructor and he is the deconstructor." He called that perception unfair. In the interview, Gorbachev said, "I keep saying that Russia needs more democracy." The hourlong interview took place at his shrinking foundation, where his office is dominated by an oil painting of his wife, Raisa, who died of leukemia in 1999. Moscow's billboards. Credit:AP "We hear, even from people close to Putin, statements that emphasise authoritarianism, that emphasise decisiveness and that suggest that democracy can only be achieved far into the future," Gorbachev said. "I think if democracy is firmly rooted, if it is based on elections, if people have the chance to elect leaders at regular intervals, I think that is what we need. That is the basis for stability in foreign and domestic policy." In his twilight years, Gorbachev has become an isolated figure. Most of his contemporaries are dead. He is just critical enough about the lack of democracy under Putin that state-run television channels avoid him. His death has been announced more than once. Gorbachev closes his resignation speech after delivering it on Soviet television in 1991. Credit:AP Gorbachev does not fault Putin directly for the lack of democracy in Russia, although he was more critical of the president when his book was released in Russia last year. "He began suffering from the same disease from which I used to suffer: self-assuredness," Gorbachev said at the time. "He considers himself deputy-God, I don't know for what matters, though." He and others listed several reasons for muting his criticism. First, Gorbachev enjoys no immunity from prosecution, and hence like many government critics, feels increasingly uneasy as the Kremlin chips away at civil liberties. He said he feared being declared a "foreign agent," a revived Stalinist label that basically means "spy", and that is now being used to shutter dozens of civil society organisations. "There are quite a few reactionary-minded people in this country who are already declaring me a foreign agent - they think that I am working for someone," he said. It is quite a statement from a man, who if he had changed nothing, might still be the supreme leader of the Soviet Union, as previous leaders tended to rule for life. Second, he casts most of the political and economic ills plaguing Russia as the legacy of his hated arch-rival, former President Boris Yeltsin, giving Putin a pass as a necessary correction. Third, he agrees with Putin on many issues, particularly foreign policy. He supported Moscow grabbing back Crimea, for example, calling the public referendum legitimate - despite its being held at gunpoint. That stance just got him barred from Ukraine for five years. As the man most responsible for ending the Cold War, Gorbachev feels betrayed that the West - and the US, in particular - played the victor and treated Russia like a dismissed serf, bringing NATO forces and the European Union to its very borders. "There was a mood of triumphalism at the end of the Cold War that was shared by many Americans," he said. "That was the point of departure for the collapse of everything." He parts company with Putin on domestic issues, however, even if he keeps Yeltsin in the foreground. YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. On June 2 Foreign Minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandian, while on a working visit to Paris, held a meeting with the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs Igor Popov, James Warlick, Pierre Andrieu and Andrzej Kasprzyk, Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, press service of the MFA of Armenia informed Armenpress. The details of the proposals of Co-Chairs on the creation of the investigation mechanism for the ceasefire violations and the enhancement of the capacities of the team of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office were discussed. Minister Nalbandian and the Co-Chairs stressed the importance of implementation of the agreements reached at the summit in Vienna on May 16 on the commitment to the peaceful settlement of the conflict, the strict adherence to the ceasefire agreements of 1994-1995, the steps aimed at more effective monitoring in the conflict zone and the establishment of the mechanism for investigation, which will create necessary conditions for the resumption of the negotiation process. Latest News CBA-owned stockbroker acknowledges court decision relating to systemic compliance failures A total remediation of $6.5 million has been paid to affected customers Interest rate rises weaken home borrowing power 20% fall in just six months, says broker Imposing higher taxes on foreign investors purchasing property in New South Wales will make it more difficult for first home buyers to get onto the property ladder.For domestic investors and first-time buyers, a new tax on foreign buyers could be a challenge. New South Wales right now is building a record number of apartments, and that construction depends to a material degree on foreign off-the-plan sales, Gavin Norris , head of Australia for Juwai.com, the Chinese international property portal, said.Under NSW Treasurer, Gladys Berejiklian s state budget plan, overseas property investors will have to pay more to buy a home. She proposed a 1.5% surcharge for foreigners purchasing a house in the state, citing housing affordability as the reason behind the move.But deterring foreign investors with an extra tax will not only make affordability harder for first home buyers, Norris said it will have rippling consequences on the broader economy.If Chinese buying slows down, it will likely make things harder for first time buyers, for construction workers, and for the education, tourism and retail sectors.We have surveyed more than 30,000 Chinese international property buyers, and 59.5% of those who make enquiries on Australian real estate are motivated by education. Foreign students spend $18 billion on education in Australia. So if New South Wales makes investment conditions less favourable for foreign buyers, its education sector stands to lose revenue.When the government discourages one buyer, Norris said it loses tens of thousands of dollars in other benefits.Foreign investors bring construction jobs, government revenue, retail and services spending, education spending, tourism spending and often ultimately become skilled citizens of Australia who help grow our economy and pay Australian taxes.Some buyers undoubtedly could shift their focus to other states, or countries.With this new tax, NSW would also have more confiscatory foreign buyer policies than Queensland, New Zealand, the US, the UK or Canada, Norris added. Latest News CBA-owned stockbroker acknowledges court decision relating to systemic compliance failures A total remediation of $6.5 million has been paid to affected customers Interest rate rises weaken home borrowing power 20% fall in just six months, says broker Tenants at an apartment complex in Utah were outraged after being asked to sign a new lease agreement requiring them to friend and like their apartment complex on Facebook.Residents at the City Park Apartments complex in Salt Lake City complained that they found contract addendum taped to their doors ridiculous, according to the BBC Facebook is totally optional. For them to force someone's hand to do this is kind of ridiculous, tenant Jason Ring told the BBC.The City Park Apartments Facebook page was then flooded with negative comments but now appears to have been removed, the BBC reported.Community manager Ana Raphael has since apologised to tenants in a statement, saying the Facebook addendum was provided as some protection to its residents and its owners from usage of photos on its Facebook page from all community events, including an upcoming pool party to celebrate the opening of its pool.That addendum went beyond the request and intent of City Park Apartments, and was not carefully reviewed to ensure that it met with their needs and requests, Raphael in a statement to local nes service, KSL.We sincerely apologise for any confusion this may have caused and hope to earn your positive comments through our customer service efforts and not through any perceived obligation.Ring told the BBC that he was pleased with how the situation unfolded.I'm hoping this will bring more light to the fact that this was really inappropriate, he said.They should never have tried this stunt in the first place. YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini's spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic told Sputnik News the European Union calls for normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia, looking for the constructive dialogue between the countries to reach full reconciliation Earlier on June 2, the German parliament passed a near-unanimous resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide. Turkey recalled its Ambassador from Germany after the adoption of the resolution. "The EU encourages further, meaningful steps paving the way towards full reconciliation between Turkish and Armenian civil societies. The EU remains committed to the normalization process of relations between Turkey and Armenia and encourages both sides to continue to engage in this process without preconditions," Kocijancic stated. WAYNE Bennett appreciates the task ahead of the NRMA Insurance Broncos against a dangerous New Zealand Warriors outfit tomorrow. Bennett spoke to the media in Auckland after the team had their final training run this morning. Origin players Corey Parker, Sam Thaiday, Josh McGuire and Darius Boyd all look set to back up after their game one victory on Wednesday night. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams You wont be ignored, Brooklyn! A film festival focused exclusively on the borough of Kings will kick off this weekend with a free outdoor showing on Sunset Parks central lawn. The co-founder of the Art of Brooklyn Film Festival says the Best of the Fest screening on June 4 is a way to reach out to a neighborhood that does not enough attention from arts organizations. Other film festivals ignore audiences and focus only on North Brooklyn, said Anthony DeVito. We reach out so everyone feels included. The Art of Brooklyn festival, now in its sixth year, celebrates independent films that are set in Brooklyn, are about Brooklyn, or are made by creators who live in Brooklyn. The outdoor screening will feature some of the best short films shown during the fests first five years, including the science-fiction comedy The Life and Times of Tommy Chaos and Stacy Danger, the experimental piece Confluence, animated shorts Rhythm of the City (pictured) and How You Doin Boy, and the almost hour-long bloody horror flick Lake Nowhere. Each film won an award at the festival in 2014 or 2015. The screening will start at 7 pm with a block party, with music from DJ Sugarfreebk, food, and drinks, with films starting at sunset. The festival will continue June 812, with films at St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights, at PS/IS 30 Mary White Ovington School in Bay Ridge, and at Pratt Institute in Clinton Hill. The first new film of this years fest comes from acclaimed Brooklyn-native Spike Lee. The short documentary 2 Fists Up: We Gon Be Alright, deals with student protests over racial incidents at the University of Missouri, which led to the resignation of the universitys president. Other documentaries in the festival will examine sex trafficking in Brooklyn, and the travels of a Kings County acrobatic troupe. The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival has grown over the years, attracting almost 2,000 visitors last year and getting an increasingly broad range of the boroughs residents, said DeVito. We dont have a block audience. Were incredibly diverse, said DeVito. We get a lot of younger and newer Brooklynites. Best of the Fest at Sunset Park Center Lawn (Fifth Avenue between 41st and 44th streets in Sunset Park, www.thear tofbr ookly n.org ). June 4 at 7 pm. Free. Festival continues at various locations June 812. CRASH has appointed two new trustees to its Board. Galliford Trys general counsel and company secretary Kevin Corbett (pictured) and Arcadis company secretary Fiona Duncombe bring a wealth of industry knowledge and experience to the charity. Mr Corbett, who first qualified as a civil and structural engineer before qualifying as a lawyer wants his appointment to encourage greater involvement from the industry and related sectors. Fiona Duncombe is company and partnership secretary at Arcadis in the UK. Her role includes governance of the UK board, senior leadership terms of engagement, merger and acquisitions and company statutory compliance. Duncombe has extensive international experience in strategic finance, statutory compliance, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions and transition planning. Norbord has been praised for offering a well-rounded engineering apprenticeship programme that enables students to develop their skills and qualifications while being employed. The wood panel manufacturer has forged strong relationships with MetTech and Falkirk College to offer the trainees a programme that best suits their needs. The apprentices begin with a 26-week period at MetTech in Grangemouth where they learn how to use basic hand tools and the safety skills required before they start work on site. The students then attend Falkirk College one day a week to complete a National Certificate in mechanical or electrical engineering before going on the gaining their HNC in third and fourth year. Throughout the four years, each apprentice is appointed an experienced tradesperson to buddy during the days they work on site to learn the plant layout and safety rules. This stage is followed by small supervised tasks before they are left alone to complete jobs. Scott McGuinness, head of programme, said: "At Norbord we have taken the time to listen to what our apprentices need from our programme in order to develop and become confident within the workplace. "We've developed a robust safety programme across all of our plant and it is imperative that all of our apprentices are familiar with these procedures before coming to work on site. The company has recently employed a number of apprentices at its three UK plants - Cowie in Stirlingshire, Morayhill near Inverness and South Molton in North Devon. New Adjacent Fest to take on Bamboozle next May in Atlantic City music YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. Turkish Justice and Development, opposition Republican Peoples, and Nationalist movement parties represented in the Turkish Parliament issued a statement condemning the adoption of the resolution of the Armenian Genocide by the German Bundestag, Armenpress reports, Anadolu says. Pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party did not join the statement. The parties said in the statement the Bundestag made an unfair and groundless decision. They threatened that the resolution will damage the friendly relations between Turkey and Germany. The German Bundestag adopted the Armenian Genocide recognition resolution, which is entitled "Remembrance and commemoration of the genocide of Armenians and other Christian minorities in 1915 and 1916". Only one MP voted against the adoption, and one abstained. Speakers were unanimously stressing the need of facing the past, also for contributing the reconciliation between Armenia and Turkey. The Bundestag voiced the crime of the Ottoman Turkey, and stressed this step is neither an accusation nor a claim, but a tribute to the memory of the victims. YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. On June 2 Donald Trump called for his likely Democratic rival Hillary Clinton to be imprisoned, reported CNN. "I will say this, Hillary Clinton has got to go to jail," Trump told supporters as he slammed Clinton's foreign policy speech earlier in the day in which Clinton called Trump dangerous and "temperamentally unfit" to be president. "Folks, honestly, she's guilty as hell," Trump said of the Clinton's use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state. Trump has previously accused Clinton of breaking federal law, but his comments on Thursday are his most direct call yet for Clinton to face jail time over her use of private email to conduct official State Department affairs. The FBI is investigating Clinton's use of private emails to determine whether anyone improperly handled classified information. At a news conference earlier this week, Trump declined to say whether he believes Clinton's private email use amounted to a felony. Trump also suggested Thursday that if Clinton is not indicted over her email use, he would direct his attorney general to investigate her. March 4, 1976. The frantic cries of "Brakes, brakes, brakes" were like a silent cacophony that somehow eluded Commander Peter Debrass' ears. As he revved up the engines of his Sea Hawk and prepared to take off from INS Vikrant, somewhere in the Arabian Sea around noon, all Debrass heard was a clattering sound that he could not distinguish. VASUDEO SANTU GAITONDE SONATA OF SOLITUDE Author: Meera Menezes Publisher: Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation Pages: 248 Price: Rs 5,500 For a 248-page hardbound book, Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde - Sonata of Solitude, is a rollicking fast read and a fascinating look at the life of "perhaps the boldest artist of the Progressive generation", as Arun Vadehra, a personal friend of Gaitonde, puts it. Global IT (information technology) services and consulting company Accenture has elevated one of its top executives in India to a senior role at the group level. Manish Sharma, a senior managing director for global delivery and solution development for Accenture Operations or BPO (business process outsourcing) unit, would take up a global role as group operating officer for Accenture Operations. Bengaluru-based e-commerce player is in talks to sell an undisclosed percentage of stake to Bennett, Coleman and Co Ltd (BCCL), which owns a number of media outlets including The Times of India and The Economic Times, according to media reports. The group already owns a minor stake in Kunal Bahl-led online marketplace Snapdeal. 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. is likely to resume its Mumbai-Shanghai flights which were suspended in January 2009 due to economic reasons, a senior official has said. "We are seriously evaluating re-starting flights to Shanghai," said Colin Neubronner, senior vice-president for sales & marketing at . "There is a possibility we may recommence direct flights between Mumbai and Shanghai," he told PTI here yesterday. flew Mumbai-Shanghai-San Francisco from June 2008 to January 2009 but stopped due to economic reasons. Jet Airways is also looking at flights from a number of Indian cities to Singapore, starting with Bangalore from early next year. The plan also includes a Mumbai-Tehran flight. Jet Airways recently started flying to Amsterdam, a new gateway to Europe. "We are doing extremely well on this route," he said. The airlines is also planning to start new flights within the current financial year ending March 2017. Jet Airways has 630 daily flights, 130 on international routes. It carried 22.5 million passengers in the last fiscal year ended March 2016, seven million of which were on international flights. Ola, a taxi-hailing app, is trying to get small taxi operators in its fold with the launch of an app for fleet owners. has expanded its by-invitation trial offer to its retailers. While the company has no immediate plans to open up the Jio service to consumers, it has launched a programme under which retailers will be able to offer a limited number of Jio connections to customers buying Lyf handsets. Tata Steel, India's largest steel producer, is said to be close to striking a deal with the UK government to retain the loss-making operations there, in turn securing the jobs of about 11,000 workers active at the plant. YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. Former Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili says the desire of Georgia to become an EU and NATO member is perceived by Russia as a threat. He stated that the Georgian side needs time and patience in the process of normalizing the relations with Russia. It is a difficult process. Our external political strategy doesnt contradict to the national interests of Russia, but the Russian leadership considers it dangerous for their country. We know about it, however, we will continue to make efforts to reach our goal, Ivanishvili stated. We will definitely become a NATO member, we will make efforts to become a member of the EU, but we need time for it. We must continue to develop our economy and will reach the point where Russia and the partner countries will understand that time has come for Georgia to become a member of the EU and the NATO, he stated, RIA Novosti reported. Union Home Minister on Friday urged the US government to adopt a rational approach regarding its attempt to restrict Indian IT professionals from working in the US. Indias chances of getting into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) have received a huge boost after the US endorsed its membership bid on Tuesday. I indicated support to India being a part of NSG, US President Barack Obama said, even as China has opposed Indias move. The statement from Obama came at a joint address with PM Modi at the White House on Tuesday. The Centre today sought a report from the Uttar Pradesh government even as Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke to UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav after 24 people, including an SP and an SHO, were killed in a massive clash between the police and encroachers in Mathura. In a communication, the Ministry Of Home Affairs asked the state government to provide a detailed factual report as early as possible on the incident that took place yesterday. The incident occurred when the police were trying to evict illegal occupants, believed to be of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi, from Jawahar Bagh on the directions of the Allahabad High Court. Singh has already spoken to Yadav and reviewed the situation in Mathura. "I have also assured him of all possible help from the Centre," Singh said. The home minister expressed his anguish over the loss of lives in Mathura. A day after a massive fire gutted large portions of a commercial-cum-residential building in south Mumbai, cooling operations have been going on at the British-era structure to minimise the impact of the blaze. The blaze broke out at 3.50 PM in the first floor of the ground plus three building on Thursday, located in upscale Colaba, which houses famous Cafe Mondegar and guest houses where some foreign nationals were staying. However, no casualty or injury was reported in the incident as occupants were evacuated swiftly. The blaze has been brought under control and currently cooling operations are underway, Disaster Control Department (DC) of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials said. As many as eight fire and six water tankers along with the police personnel of police station are on the spot since morning, officials said. According to Chief Fire Officer Prabhat Rahangadale the flames were contained soon and were prevented from spreading to adjoining buildings. Locals claimed that the blaze started due to a short-circuit in a hotel on the first floor of the structure. Rahangadale, however, said the exact cause will be ascertained only after a probe. As many has 14 fire tenders were initially pressed into service. Four fire tenders from Naval Dockyard along with fire fighting equipment later joined the operations. Chennai-based Heavy Vehicles Factory (HVF), which manufactures battle tanks under the Indian Ordnance Factories, is expecting a 60 per cent growth in turnover during this year and orders to produce battle tanks till 2035, said a senior official. HVF, which is struggling with availability of quality suppliers, is working with Lucas TVS to develop the company as a second vendor who will manufacture one of the components in its battle tank, said Hari Mohan, senior general manager, HVF-Avadi, Ministry of Defence. Jat community leaders today assured Haryana Government that they will maintain peace during the proposed pro-quota protest from June 5. Haryana Government and the community leaders held a meeting where Jat Sangarsh Samiti and members of various Khaps (caste councils) took part. "We gave patient hearing to the demands raised by the Jat Sangarsh Samiti. We have assured them that the best options available on the legal front will be followed up by us. "On their part, they have said that from June 5, they will hold peaceful dharnas in rural areas and leave out urban localities," Haryana Cabinet Minister Krishan Lal Panwar told reporters. He said the Jats have assured not to block rail tracks or roads. "They have also assured that none of their members will indulge or allow any violence to happen," Panwar said. Jat Aarakshan Sangarsh Samiti chief Yashpal Mali said that a consensus has been reached that government will take appropriate steps with regards to their demands keeping all legal parameters in view. "We also do not want government to take any illegal decision or which is not legally tenable and gets stuck in the courts," Malik said. Commenting on the Jat quota agitation during February, Malik said that as many as 2,100 FIRs have been registered, "most of which are false". "The government has said that it will have grading of all these cases done. They have said whatever can be done within the ambit of law for those found registered against innocent persons will be done. For this our Committee (representing Jat community) and Deputy Commissioners and SPs will also sit and mutually decide on things," he said. Earlier, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said his government will not allow peace to be disturbed as he met BJP chief Amit Shah in Delhi to deliberate on the sensitive issue. At least 30 people were killed and properties worth hundreds of crores of rupees were destroyed during the violent quota agitation by Jats earlier this year. Twenty-four people, including two Uttar Pradesh Police officials, have been killed following clashes between the cops and armed members of an organisation in Mathura yesterday during an anti-encroachment drive. The violence in Mathura during an encroachment drive claimed the lives of 14 people and injured over 40 people. Superintendent of Police (City) Mukul Dwivedi succumbed to a bullet injury late last evening. Along with him, a Station House Officer (SHO) was also killed in clashes. Twelve other encroachers died in the violence that took place, said Daljeet Singh Chaudhary, ADG, Law and Order. The violence occurred in Jawahar Bag when the policemen were trying to remove encroachment upon a land in Mathura by activists, believed to be of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi, on the directions of the Allahabad High Court. "Santosh Kumar, SHO, Farah police station was killed in firing by the encroachers," IG (Law and Order) H R Sharma told PTI. SP (City) Mukul Dwivedi succumbed to bullet injury later, reports say. District Divisional Commissioner, Agra, Pradeep Bhatnagar said a civilian was also killed. Sharma said around 3,000 encroachers pelted stones and later opened fire at the police team as they reached the spot. In retaliation, the police had to fire after using batons and tear gas at them, he said. CMO Mathura Vivek Mishra said at least four dozen people including, two dozen police personnel were injured in the clashes. Search operations were on in Jawahar Bag though activists of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi were dispossessed by the joint operation of civil police, PAC and RAF. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav expressed grief over the incident and announced an ex-gratia of Rs 20 lakh to the family of the deceased policeman. He directed the Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) to rush to the spot and bring the situation under control. He also directed that additional police reinforcement be rushed to the area and the guilty be arrested. Country-made guns, rifles, pistols & cartridges recovered from spot, search op underway: ADG (Law & Order) #Mathura pic.twitter.com/kpEmEIPZGr ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) June 3, 2016 Ram Vraksha Yadav, leader of the activists and the security officer of the group Chandan Gaur managed to flee along with thousands of their supporters, DM Rajesh Kumar said. The activists were offensive from the beginning and used not only hand grenades but also started firing with automatic weapons after taking position at tree tops, he said. The area was filled with smoke due to blast of hand grenades and LPG cylinders following which several huts caught fire which was finally doused by fire tenders, the DM said. Over two years ago, activists of splinter group of Baba Jai Gurudeo, claiming themselves to be member of 'Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi', had occupied hundreds of acres of land of Jawahar Bagh on the pretext of 'dharna'. Their demands included cancellation of election of President and Prime Minister of India, replacement of existing currency with 'Azad Hind Fauj' currency, sale of diesel at the rate of 60 litres for one rupee and petrol at the rate of 40 litres for one rupee. The high court, acting on a PIL, had recently directed the authorities to vacate the land. Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar on Friday said the issue of automatic exchange of tax information between India and Switzerland was likely to come up for discussion when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits that country on June 5. YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. On June 2 the Armenian delegation participated in the 27th session of the inter-parliamentary committee on cooperation between the National Assembly of Armenia and the Federation Council of Russia in Moscow, press service of the NA of Armenia informed Armenpress. The Armenian delegation held a meeting with first deputy chairman of the Federation Council Nikolay Fedorov. Issued related to the existing tense situation in the region and the Azerbaijani aggression unleashed against the Nagorno Karabakh in early April were discussed where the Armenian side once again reaffirmed that the Nagorno Karabakh conflict does not and will not have a military solution. The Armenian delegation members also stressed the urgency of taking appropriate measures towards the strengthening of the ceasefire regime and the creation of trust mechanisms, as well as they expressed their concerns over Russias selling weapons to Azerbaijan. Vice-President of the National Assembly of Armenia Hermine Naghdalyan introduced his Russian counterpart the details of the recent Azerbaijani aggression and emphasized that Armenia does not accept the Azerbaijani any attempt to solve the conflict with military means. She said the Armenian side highlights the importance of strengthening the ceasefire regime and creating a trustful environment after which it will be possible to restart the negotiation process. She once more recalled the words of the Armenian President who said the security is an integral part for the development and prosperity of the economies of our states, thus, every tension in the region cannot derive from the interests of each state, however, the Azerbaijani ruling regime showed that it ignores all these factors. During the April 4-day war Azerbaijan applied its entire arsenal acquired also from Russia against the Nagorno Karabakh. Russia is our strategic partner, and we are in the same security system. We have repeatedly expressed our concern over Russias selling weapons to Azerbaijan which puts a psychological pressure on the Armenian society, Hermine Naghdalyan stated. She also spoke about the unaddressed statements by the international community over this issue. Other members of the Armenian delegation also delivered speeches condemning the Azerbaijani atrocities, aggressions against the civilians of the Nagorno Karabakh in early April. The works of the first part of the inter-parliamentary session were summarized by Co-Chairs of the Committee Hermine Naghdalyan and Nikolai Ryzhkov. Nikolai Ryzhkov said in his speech the Armenian-Russian allied relations are very important and ensured that Russia will support Armenia on every issue once more stating that the Nagorno Karabakh conflict doesnt have a military solution. Hermine Naghdalyan also stressed the importance of the allied relations between Armenia and Russia which is based on the maintenance of the balance of forces in the region, and highlighted the role of the Russian Federation as a strategic partner and the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairing country. The works of the 27th inter-parliamentary session will continue on June 3 in Kazan. Congress on Friday stepped up pressure for the dismissal of the Maharashtra Revenue Minister by asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take decisive action against him to prove his claim of zero tolerance to corruption. "Take action against Khadse, dismiss him forthwith from his ministry. Register a case against him for misuse of office and take decisive action," party's chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala told reporters. Khadse is in a spot over the purchase of 3-acre Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation land in Bhosari allegedly at a low price of around Rs. 3.75 crore from its original owner in the name of his wife and son-in-law. The market value of the land is reportedly Rs. 40 crore. Surjewala attacked Modi for maintaining a deafening silence in the last 24 months on the issue of action against corruption where BJP leaders or the party's governments are involved. This, he said, was evident from the prime minister not punishing the Lalit Modi and the Vijay Mallya, and the culprits of Vyapam scam in Madhya Pradesh, PDS scam of Chhattisgarh, GSPC scam of Gujarat and mining scam of Rajasthan. "People of Maharashtra and India demand that prime minister must break his silence and take decisive action on all these issues including Khadse," he added. For the first time, under the aegis of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) and French Space Agency CNES, space agencies from over 60 countries have agreed to engage their satellites to coordinate their methods and data, in order to monitor human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. Without satellites, the reality of global warming would not have been recognised and the subsequent agreement at the United Nations headquarters in New York would npt have been signed on April 22, 2016. With the long-awaited passage of the GST Constitution Amendment Bill in Rajya Sabha, here is a ready reckoner on the issues surrounding the proposed tax reform and it will mean for the Indian economy. What is GST? The Goods and Service Tax (GST) will be a comprehensive nationwide indirect tax on manufacture, sale and consumption of goods and services throughout India. The aim is to have one indirect tax for the whole nation, which will make India a unified common market. GST will be levied and collected at each stage of sale or purchase of goods or services based on the input tax credit method and would make not just manufacturing but also the inter-state transportation of goods more efficient. How will GST work and what all will it subsume? GST is a single tax on the supply of goods and services, right from the manufacturer to the consumer. Credits of input taxes paid at each stage will be available in the subsequent stage of value addition, which makes GST essentially a tax only on value addition at each stage. The final consumer will thus bear only the GST charged by the last dealer in the supply chain, with set-off benefits at all the previous stages. Read our full coverage on the GST Bill and its impact At the central level, the following taxes will be subsumed: Central Excise Duty, Additional Excise Duty, Service Tax, Countervailing Duty, and Special Additional Duty of Customs. At the State level, the following taxes will be subsumed: State Value Added Tax/Sales Tax, Entertainment Tax, Central Sales Tax, Octroi and Entry tax, Purchase Tax, Luxury tax, and Taxes on lottery, betting and gambling. How will GST be beneficial? The introduction of GST would be a significant step in the reform of indirect taxation in India. Amalgamating several central and state taxes into a single tax will mitigate cascading or double taxation, facilitating a common national market. This would be hugely beneficial for consumers as the tax burden on inter-state logistics will be cheaper. A common tax would mean easy compliance and uniformity of tax rates and structures for industry and would thus contribute to ease of doing business by removing cascading costs. For central and state governments, GST is expected to lead to easier administration and enforcement. From the consumer point of view, the biggest advantage would be in terms of a reduction in the overall tax burden on goods. By when will it be implemented? Assuming the Constitution Amendment Bill does pass in the Monsoon Session, GST will still not be in force before April 1, 2017. And that is putting it optimistically. Apart from the legislative process mentioned above, the states, India Inc, and industries and service providers big and small, will also have to prepare themselves for a completely new nationwide tax regime. How would GST be administered in India? There will be two components of GST Central GST (CGST) and State GST (SGST). Both Centre and States will simultaneously levy GST across the value chain. Tax will be levied on every supply of goods and services. Centre would levy and collect Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST), and States would levy and collect the State Goods and Services Tax (SGST) on all transactions within a State. The input tax credit of CGST would be available for discharging the CGST liability on the output at each stage. Similarly, the credit of SGST paid on inputs would be allowed for paying the SGST on output. No cross utilization of credit would be permitted. All earnings from freight corridors to go to Indian Railways, which would then share 35-40 per cent of it with DFCC as Track Access Charges India will spend Rs 3.3 lakh crore to set up three new arms of the dedicated rail freight corridors, crisscrossing the length and breadth of the country over the next eight years. The 5,500-km-long new corridors would supplement the existing plans to lay 3,300-km-long two dedicated freight corridors (DFC). The government will not come in the way of a possible acquisition by state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) of oil and gas assets of Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC) in the Krishna Godavari basin off the Andhra coast, oil minister has said. The likely deal between the two firms is in the centre of allegations made by opposition Congress party which alleges the Modi government is forcing ONGC to take over GSPC's troubled assets. "This is a matter between two professional firms. If they are able to form a commercial understanding with profit motive in mind, best wishes to them," Pradhan said. Displeased with the performance of public sector (PSBs) in recovering dues during 2015-16, the government has asked lenders to "seriously" speed up efforts to get back money from defaulting borrowers. YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. The Standing Committee of Foreign Relations of the Parliament endorsed to include the Establishment of joint air defense system in Collective security Caucasian region between Armenia and Russia agreement. The aim of this agreement is the establishment of a joint air defense system in the Caucasian region of the collective security, for improving the regional air defense, Deputy Defense Minister A. Nazaryan said. The agreement defines the authorized parties to plan and implement the air defense system, cooperation, and joint training. The agreement was signed in December of 2015 by the Defense Ministers of Armenia and Russia. Russia is also in the process of ratifying the agreement. Chairman of the Parliaments Standing Committee of Foreign Relations Artak Zakaryan said the agreement has been endorsed to be included in the agenda of the Parliamentary session. According to Deputy Defense Minister A. Nazaryan, the agreement does not limit Armenia to develop the air defense system on its own. We solve our own issues, we dont count on anyone else to defend us. I think this agreement should be viewed from a perspective of interests, and indeed it is in our interest, he said. Asia's first Gyps Vulture Reintroduction Programme' launched "With the success the programme has become, I believe we would again touch the number of four crore vultures in the country in the next 10 years" - - Union Environment Minister Shri Prakash Javadekar, speaking of the vulture breeding and conservation programme being carried out by the Government of Haryana in Pinjore. The Minister was speaking after launching Asia's first Gyps Vulture Reintroduction Programme' along with the Haryana Chief Minister, Shri Manohar Lal, at Pinjore today. They jointly released two Himalayan Griffons into the wild from the Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre, Pinjore. When they lifted the front netting giving the captive Himalayan Griffons the option of joining the wild Griffons, the released vultures readily stepped outside and joined the wild vultures. Shri Javadekar lauded the support extended by the Haryana Government in reintroduction of the programme. While releasing captive vultures in pre-release aviaries close to the breeding centre, he gave one the name Jodh Singh. The government has fixed a target to increase the existing forest cover in the country to 33 per cent, he added. The Union Minister described the breeding and conservation of vultures as a significant step in the direction of saving the species. It is a matter of concern that the species of vulture has become endangered. Most vultures have disappeared and the reason is Diclofenac, a pain killer drug given to cattle which can kill birds. When vultures feed on the carcasses of animals with Diclofenac, they also die. Later the drug was banned by the government. As vultures play a vital role in keeping the environment clean, their breeds should be increased and the government is constantly working to increase their numbers. Haryana and other states are also working in the direction of conservation of vultures, he added. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Government of India signed today in the national capital an agreement for $200 million new loan to upgrade 176 Kilometers of State roads in State of Jharkhand. The financing for the Jharkhand State roads II Project will upgrade existing sections of four State roads to two lane standard and will also support improvements in the design, safety and maintenance of the network. . . Speaking on the occasion, Mr Raj Kumar. Joint Secretary (Multilateral Institutions), Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, who signed the agreement on behalf of Government of India said that for achieving faster growth, Jharkhand needs to improve mobility through better roads. Besides upgrading 176 km of roads, the project will help the State develop an international standard road safety master plan for promoting road safety in Jharkhand, he added. He further said that this will enhance the States ability to systematically identify, analyze, develop and prioritize critical road safety measures, which will benefit all road users. . . Ms M. Teresa Kho, Country Director of ADBs India Resident Mission, who signed the agreement on behalf of ADB, said that ADB has been supporting the States goals of improving its road connectivity by providing an initial loan for upgrading 311 km of State Roads in 2009. She said that the new assistance will continue the ongoing physical upgrades as well as increasing the institutional capacity of the State Highways Authority of Jharkhand (SHAJ) as an autonomous road development agency. Together, the two projects are rehabilitating 487 km of state highways, she concluded. . . Ms. Raj Bala Verma, Chief Secretary, Government of Jharkhand also attended the Loan ceremony and spoke about the importance of the project for the State. . . Several safety and environmentally friendly features included in the project design, include over 60 bus stop shelters; 50 km of raised sidewalks in urban areas; 4 km of dedicated bicycle lanes; and solar-powered street lights. The project will also generate employment opportunities for residents of the adjoining areas, including for women, who will get a share of a least 20% of jobs for afforestation work alongside the upgraded roads. . . The total cost of the project, due to be completed by December 2019, is $306.25 million. In addition to ADBs loan, the State Government of Jharkhand will provide counterpart assistance equivalent to $106.25 million. . . The Union Home Minister Shri Rajnath Singh has said that India and USA are natural allies and could transform the world with trade and trust. He was addressing the inaugural session of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerces (IACC) National Conclave-2016 in Hyderabad today. . . Shri Rajnath Singh said the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi and the US President Mr. Barack Obama have added a new and successful chapter in Indo-US bilateral relations. The US-India trade value was $90 billion during 2009-10. It rose to $100 billion in 2014-15. Now we should focus on the goal to achieve the $500 billion Indo-US trade value soon," Shri Rajnath Singh said. India has enormous potential than any other country in this direction and the ongoing IACC Conclave would deliberate extensively on this," he added. . . Shri Rajnath Singh said that under the dynamic leadership of the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, India is now the fastest growing economy in the world. At present, all indicators are in the right direction and the country is the most attractive destination for investments. The government is laying emphasis to achieve double digit growth, by following proactive, holistic and integrated approach. To facilitate US investments under the fast track mode, the government has setup One shop investment platform, he added. . . Shri Rajnath Singh said the recent meetings held by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi with heads of top corporates in the USA were great success resulting in attracting FDIs from these companies. Indian pharma companies are capable of producing affordable generic medicines and the USA needs to permit import of generic medicines to bring down the healthcare costs, he said. India and the USA can explore opportunities in the untapped rural infrastructure development sector. Besides, the youth were being trained under the Skill India programme and the US companies can benefit by utilizing this manpower, said Shri Rajnath Singh. There are ample of opportunities in the Agriculture sector too for both countries to improve economic ties, he added. . . The Union Home Minister informed that he will be visiting the United States next month for the dialogue on Homeland Security. More investments are needed for the Police Modernization programme. Shri Rajnath Singh said Homeland Security is one of the important areas for the nations economic development. If Border Management is proper, then only Internal Security is ensured", he said. There is a need to use technology for Border Management, he added. The redtapism and governmental procedures were minimized to attract FDIs. Earlier the Government used to sanction Security Clearance for only 3 years and now the same has been extended to 10 years, he said. . . The Governor of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, Shri ESL Narasimhan, IACC National President, Dr. Lalit Kanodia and other dignitaries were present. . . The Defence Minister Shri Manohar Parrikar is on a three-day visit to Singapore from June 03, 2016 for his introductory visit and to attend the 15th Shangri-La Dialogue. Shri Parrikar today met the Minister for Defence of Singapore Dr. Ng Eng Hen to co-chair the inaugural Singapore-India Defence Ministers Dialogue (DMD). . . A joint statement issued after the DMD is as follows:- . . Dr Ng and Mr Parrikar commended the long-standing defence ties between Singapore and India, and noted the DMD would take the relationship to new heights. . . Both Ministers welcomed the growth in the defence relationship since the signing of the Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) in 2003 and the revised DCA in 2015. Defence cooperation had been identified as a key sector under the India-Singapore Joint Declaration on Strategic Partnership signed during the visit of Prime Minister of India Mr Narendra Modi to Singapore in November 2015. . . The two Ministers noted that their bilateral defence cooperation has been longstanding. The two navies conducted the first Singapore-India Maritime Bilateral Exercise (SIMBEX) in 1994. SIMBEX has grown more ambitious over the years, incorporating the Republic of Singapore Navys Archer-class submarine and the Indian Navys Kamorta-class corvette and P-8I aircraft for the first time in May 2015. . . The two air forces have also conducted 11 bilateral exercises since 2004, while the two armies have conducted joint artillery and armour exercises since 2005. . . The high degree of complexity of the bilateral exercises between all three Services of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) and the Indian Armed Forces reflects the growing confidence as well as mutual respect for each others professional capabilities. Both Ministers committed to further enhancing the scale and scope of bilateral exercises. . . Dr Ng thanked Mr Parrikar for Indias strong support for the SAFs training in India, covered under the ambit of bilateral agreements for Air Force and Army training. Both sides agreed to work toward the renewal of both agreements in 2017 and 2018 respectively. . . Both Ministers also commended the progress made in bilateral cooperation in defence R&D and technology. Under the India-Singapore Defence Technology Steering Committee, which was set up in October 2006, both sides have undertaken several joint research projects in a wide spectrum of mutually-beneficial areas, and are deepening cooperation in unmanned systems and soldier performance. . . Singapore and India also convened the first meeting of their Defence Industry Working Group in May 2016. Both sides agreed to set up industry level working mechanisms to foster cooperation in aerospace, electronics and other areas of mutual interest. Both Ministers noted that new opportunities for industrial collaboration, including through Joint Ventures, have opened up due to Indias Make in India initiative. . . Both Ministers reaffirmed Indias vital role in the security of the Asia-Pacific region, in particular through the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM)-Plus platforms. Dr Ng thanked India for hosting the ADMM-Plus Humanitarian Mine Action and Peacekeeping Operations Exercise in March 2016, and for participating in the ADMM-Plus Maritime Security and Counter-Terrorism Exercise in May 2016 with one naval ship with embarked helicopter, Special Forces and infantry teams of over 200 personnel. . . Both Ministers also emphasised the importance of international cooperation in tackling transnational security threats. In particular, both Ministers strongly condemned terrorism in all its forms, and renewed their commitment to cooperate in counter-terrorism efforts. . . Both Ministers also emphasised their shared commitment to maintaining freedom of navigation in international waters, the right of passage and overflight, unimpeded commerce and access to resources in accordance with recognised principles of international law, especially the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. . . The two sides agreed on the need to evolve protocols and norms of behaviour in the air and maritime domains aimed at building confidence, defusing tensions and reducing the risks of miscalculations. . . Dr Ng also thanked Mr Parrikar for Indias support for the Information Fusion Centre and the Changi Regional Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Coordination Centre. . . Mr Parrikar extended an invitation to Dr Ng to visit India on mutually convenient dates to continue the bilateral ministerial dialogue. The invitation was accepted with pleasure". . . NW/Nao/RAJ The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee attended the Golden Jubilee Convocation of Indira Gandhi Medical College today (June 3, 2016) in Shimla. . . Speaking on the occasion, the President said that for graduating students Convocation is the culmination of long years of academic work. He told them that while entering the new phase of life they should remember that the skill and knowledge they have acquired over the years will help them overcome future hurdles. He urged them to have commitment and a sense of responsibility towards the society and the country. . . The President said that in our country the healthcare system faces a number of challenges. There is an urgent need to expand physical infrastructure in the health sector in order to ensure equitable and quality health care services to all. Nearly 75 percent of Indias population resides in rural areas. Therefore, doctors serving in rural areas is an important aspect which needs to be looked into collectively by both the Centre and State Governments. Further, he said that we require more nurses and para-medical staff to serve the huge population of our country. He advised the students to remember what the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi had said about being the change they wanted to see in the world. He also reiterated what Gandhiji had said about thinking about the welfare of the weakest and poorest person in order to arrive at correct decisions. . . Among the dignitaries present on the occasion were Acharya Devvrat, Governor of Himachal Pradesh and Shri Virbhadra Singh, Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh. . . is "actively assisting" an investigation into its accounting by the US market regulator, the founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Jack Ma has said. Ma also welcomed the investigation which was seen as a political setback for the well-known Chinese firm that raised the world's largest initial public offering of $25 billion two years ago. is actively assisting an investigation launched by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and has provided all the requested information relating to its accounting practices, he said. "It will help as a company and give it more exposure," Ma told China's state-run Xinhua news agency. "Alibaba has no similar counterpart in the US and some American investors struggle to understand Alibaba's business model," he said. "The best way to settle questioning is transparency and communication," he said. Many have been investigated by the SEC and the process separates the wheat from the chaff, he said. The SEC early this year started probing Alibaba's accounting practices, including consolidation policies and transaction data, for potential violations of federal securities laws. The SEC, however, indicated that the enquiry did not imply any wrongdoing. A logo is seen on the roof of the ArcelorMittal steelworks headquarters in Ostrava, Czech Republic. Photo: Reuters , the world's largest steelmaker, is suspending a major project at its Mont-Wright iron ore mine in northern Quebec due to poor market conditions, the company said on Thursday. The company, which employs some 2,500 workers at the mine, informed the United Steelworkers union this week that it will not start an "offload" project in June as planned. The project, which removals surface layers overlaying the deposit, would have extended the mine's lifespan by 15 years to 2045. The decision was based on the project cost, "fairly high" mine production costs, low iron ore prices and global competition, said spokesman Paul Wilson. Oversupply and waning demand have depressed spot iron ore prices to $49.30 a tonne, down from an all-time high of about $190 in 2011. "Due to the current iron ore market conditions and the resulting need to reduce Mining Canada's operating costs further, one specific project - which was originally due to start this summer - has been indefinitely delayed," ArcelorMittal Mining said in a statement. "ArcelorMittal Mining Canada is in discussions with unions regarding the best way to proceed with this project." Current annual production at Mont-Wright is 27 million tonnes with cash production costs of $25 per tonne, the company said. In 2013, ArcelorMittal sold a 15% stake in Mont-Wright to South Korean steelmaker Posco and Taiwan listed China Steel for $1.1 billion. Champion Iron , which will decide on a plan to restart its northern Quebec Bloom Lake iron ore mine at year end, said the timing of ArcelorMittal's decision "couldn't be better." Chief Executive Michael O'Keeffe said that ArcelorMittal customers will eventually need to replace production and that the Quebec government will be keen to keep supporting development at Bloom Lake, an 830 million-tonne ore body. Champion acquired the asset for C$10.5 million ($8.03 million) last year and expects it will take tens of millions of dollars to restart the mine. Cliffs Natural Resources bought it for $4.9 billion in 2011 and invested more than $2 billion in upgrades. Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal said in February it was launching a new five-year plan designed to improve each of its five business segments. The company, which makes about 6% of the world's steel, said apparent steel consumption in 2016 would be flat to slightly higher, as stronger demand in the United States and Europe would be outdone by declines in China, Brazil and former Soviet states. The Chinese military on Friday sent a specialist medical team to Mali following the terrorist attack on the UN peacekeepers in which a 29-year-old Chinese soldier was killed and several injured. Led by a senior Defence Ministry official, the team will work with the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) and the Mali government to ensure the safety of peacekeepers, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. MINUSMA was attacked on Tuesday evening. On Thursday, the Defence Ministry confirmed that First Sergeant Shen Liangliang, was killed in the attack, and another five soldiers were injured in an attack on UN peacekeepers on Wednesday. Asia's largest annual security forum opens on Friday in with territorial disputes in the South China Sea, North Korea's military provocations and Islamist extremism expected to dominate discussions. The Shangri-La Dialogue, organised by the London-based Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), is to be attended by at least 20 defence ministers led by Pentagon chief Ashton Carter, IISS Asia executive director Tim Huxley said. Beijing's claim to nearly the entire South China Sea has angered Southeast Asian neighbours and pitted it against the United States, which has conducted patrols near Chinese-held islands to press for freedom of navigation. The contested waters encompass key global shipping lanes. The Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam have competing claims in the area, which is believed to have significant oil and gas deposits. "There is much speculation about China's next steps in the South China Sea, particularly in the context of an apparently imminent ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on a Philippine submission that challenges important aspects of China's claims and activities there," Huxley wrote in a pre-conference blog. Ahead of the conference launch on Friday, Carter and his counterpart Ng Eng Hen flew over the busy Strait of Malacca in a demonstration flight of a US P-8 maritime patrol plane stationed in . "The American approach is an inclusive one in which everyone participates in the collective defence of our people from today's threats," Carter said at a joint news conference after the brief flight. "That's the objective of the US military presence out here, and it's been that way for decades." Carter did not speak out against China, but has previously condemned Beijing's island building and last week said it risked creating a "Great Wall of self-isolation". Tensions in the South China Sea are expected to drive up Asia-Pacific defence spending by nearly 25% from 2015 to $533 billion in 2020, security think-tank IHS Jane's wrote in a research note issued Thursday. "By 2020, the centre of gravity of the global defence spending landscape is expected to have continued its gradual shift away from the developed economies of Western Europe and North America, and towards emerging markets, particularly in Asia," said IHS Jane's director Paul Burton. In a scathing attack on Donald Trump, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton has said her Republican rival is "temperamentally unfit" to become President and his foreign policy ideas are "dangerously incoherent". "Like many across our country and around the world, I believe the person the Republicans have nominated for President cannot do the job. Donald Trump's ideas aren't just different -- they are dangerously incoherent," Clinton said in San Diego, California. "They're not even really ideas -- just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies," the 68-year-old former secretary of state said yesterday. During the speech, which was being billed as a major foreign policy and national security address, Clinton minced no words in going after the 69-year-old presumptive Republican presidential nominee on various issues -- from his past statements on affairs to his temperament for the job. "He is not just unprepared -- he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility. This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes -- because it's not hard to imagine leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin," Clinton said. "We cannot put the security of our children and grandchildren in Donald Trump's hands. We cannot let him roll the dice with America. This is a man who said that more countries should have nuclear weapons, including Saudi Arabia," she said. Clinton stated that Trump was someone who threatened to abandon US' allies in NATO -- the countries that work with the US to root out terrorists abroad before they strike us at home. She also took a dig at Trump's past business dealings as well. "He believes we can treat the US economy like one of his casinos and default on our debts to the rest of the world, which would cause an economic catastrophe far worse than anything we experienced in 2008," she said. Referring to some of Trump's recent foreign policy remarks, Clinton said the billionaire does not deserve to be the President of the United States. "Unlike him, I have some experience with the tough calls and the hard work of statecraft. I wrestled with the Chinese over a climate deal in Copenhagen, brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, negotiated the reduction of nuclear weapons with Russia, twisted arms to bring the world together in global sanctions against Iran, and stood up for the rights of women, religious minorities and LGBT people around the world," Clinton claimed. "And I have sat in the Situation Room and advised the President on some of the toughest choices he faced. So I'm not new to this work. And I'm proud to run on my record, because I think the choice before the American people in this election is clear," she said. YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. Catholicos of All Armenians His Holiness Garegin II sent a letter to the President of the German Bundestag Norbert Lammert, and expressed his gratitude and appreciation regarding the adoption of the Armenian Genocide resolution. In the letter, the Catholicos highly valued the good will of the political and public figures and the society of Germany in favor of restoring historic justice. His Holiness Garegin II particularly wrote: This resolution on recognizing and condemning the Armenian Genocide is an important step not only for once again proving the historic truth of the genocide committed against Armenian in the beginning of the 20th century, but also for preventing similar crimes from reoccurring. This decision is a testimony and invitation for the whole world: to revolt and reject the policy of denial regarding crimes against humanity all around the world. We extend our blessings and appreciation to the members of the Bundestag and the whole German people, wishing you unbending will and zeal in the divine mission of protecting universal human values and rights. Republican Party's presidential candidate Donald Trump said that his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, should be imprisoned for her misuse of email when she was the Secretary of State. "I will say this: Hillary Clinton has got to go to jail. Honestly, she's guilty as hell," Trump told his supporters at a rally in San Jose, California, on Thursday where violence erupted as his supporters clashed with protesters. The business mogul had earlier accused Clinton of violating federal law by using her personal email account for official business when she was the head of US diplomacy, the position she held from 2009 to early 2013. Clinton, on the other hand, accused Trump at a rally in San Diego, California, that he lacks the temperament and preparation required to be President. "Donald Trump's ideas aren't just different - they are dangerously incoherent" said former Secretary of State, adding "it's not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin." Clinton is criticised by many Republicans saying that her email misuse could have jeopardised US national security. The Federal Bureau Investigation is investigating her use of an private and unsecured email server during that time. At least four people have died and hundreds are believed to be missing after a migrant boat capsized near the Greek island,Crete on Friday and a desperate effort was underway to find them, the coastguard spokesman Nikos Lagadianos said. The spokesman of Greece coastguard said that at least 340 people had been rescued, and the Organisation for Migration (IOM) said the vessel is believed to have left Africa with at least 700 migrants on board. It was the second migrant vessel found in that area of the southern Aegean Sea since last week, indicating that people smugglers may be forging a new route to avoid North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ships. Meanwhile, the bodies of at least 104 migrants have washed up on a beach in the western Libyan town of Zwara but the toll is expected to rise as an average boat carries 115-125 passengers, the libyan navy spokesman Colonel Ayoub Qassem said on Friday. More information is expected to come regarding this incident in the next few hours. A Greece coastguard spokeswoman told AFP that a major rescue operation was underway, including four ships that were passing through the area, in clear but windy conditions about 75 nautical miles south of Crete. "The number of people in distress could be counted in the hundreds," she said. She informed, it was not immediately clear where exactly the boat had left from or where it was headed, or the nationalities of those on board. The spokeswoman said a passing ship spotted the sinking vessel off Crete and the coastguard rushed two patrol boats, a plane and a helicopter to the scene. About half of the 25-metre-long boat was completely underwater, the spokeswoman added. The deaths are the first in Greek waters since April, as a controversial March deal between the European Union (EU) and Turkey, designed to halt the flow of migrants using the popular Aegean route, has led to a sharp drop in traffic. Nevertheless, some 204,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Europe since January, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday. More than 2,500 people have died trying to make the perilous journey this year, the vast majority of them on crossings between Libya and Italy, as Europe battles its worst migration crisis since World War II. The most recent deadly incident in the Aegean dates back to early April when four women and a child drowned off the island of Samos. Greek tourist islands in the Aegean witnessed the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people crossing in flimsy boats from nearby Turkey last year, many of them refugees fleeing the war in Syria. But the number of people using that route has reduced to a trickle after the EU-Turkey deal, under which migrants landing on the islands can be sent back to Turkey, as well as the deployment of NATO ships in the Aegean. The IOM said its observations supported the theory of a possible new migrant route, reporting a surge of new arrivals to Greece further south, on sea lanes connecting North Africa to the island of Crete. On May 27, the Greek coastguard intercepted a boat off Crete carrying 65 Syrian, Afghan and Pakistani migrants, under the control of two suspected people traffickers a Ukrainian and an Egyptian. Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit here, the United States has expressed its desire to build stronger ties with its 'vital partner' India, based on security and economic stability. "The breadth of the US-India relationship is wide. As we mentioned earlier, it addresses security; it's got a strong economic component. We're looking to build closer relationships across the board with India, because we see it as a vital partner in the region," State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner said in a press briefing. Talking about the Prime Minister's visit specifically, he added that US Secretary of State John Kerry will be involved with the visit and that there will be meetings at the State Department. Asserting that the US is looking forward to the visit, Toner said that the US-Indian relationship is of incredible significance, not only to the region but to the world. "We have a broad bilateral and multilateral relationship with India and look forward to engaging on all those issues," he added. Prime Minister Modi will embark on a five nation tour that kicks off next week, where he will first head to Afghanistan on Saturday and from there to Qatar on Sunday for a bilateral visit. Then the Prime Minister will fly to Switzerland on June 6 and then to the United States for a bilateral visit on June 7 and June 8. He will be addressing a joint session of the US Congress on June 8. According to reports, he is then expected to visit Mexico before returning home on June 10. He will be the fifth Indian Prime Minister to address a joint meeting of Congress, and the first since 2005. The first-ever Indian premier to make such a speech was Rajiv Gandhi in 1985, followed by PV Narasimha Rao in 1994 and Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2000. Prime Minister Modi will be the fifth, speaking 11 years after his predecessor, Congress leader Manmohan Singh. Every full-term prime minister since 1984 has addressed a joint meeting of the House and Senate. Disbelief gripped the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur as news broke that one of its alumni, Mainak Sarkar, killed a professor of University of California, Los Angeles (ULCA) and another woman, whom some reports identified as Sarkar's wife, before shooting himself dead. Mainak Sarkar, the gunman who killed a UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) professor before turning the gun on himself, apparently killed a woman near his home in Minnesota prior to the incident in UCLA, reported the New York Times on Thursday. Asserting that sustainable civil nuclear energy is essential for its future energy security and economic development, Pakistan has said a non-discriminatory approach by the (NSG) is imperative to maintain strategic balance in the region. "Any country's specific exception will not be beneficial for non-proliferation regime and will affect strategic stability of South Asia and credibility of the NSG itself," Dawn quoted Nafees Zakaria, Pakistan's foreign office spokesman as saying. Speaking at the weekly briefing on Thursday, Zakaria said that Islamabad's application for membership of the NSG stood on solid grounds of technical experience, capability and well-established commitment to nuclear safety. Regarding the NSG membership, he said that his country has a principle-based stand of adoption of a non-discriminatory, equitable and criteria based approach, supported by a large number of NSG members. Claiming that Pakistan has been operating secure and safeguarded nuclear power plants for over 42 years, he said that the country's membership of NSG was in the interest of nuclear training countries as it would promote the group's objective of non-proliferation. On referring to an agreement signed between Japan and India on building six nuclear power plants in India's Andhra Pradesh state, Zakaria said that his country's position on the matter was clear that there should not be any discriminatory treatment to a country which was not even a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. "It will further add to the reasons behind disturbing strategic stability in the region," the spokesman said. Speaking about the prospects for the Quadrilateral Coordination Group after the death of Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour, he said the group was still functional. He said that Islamabad has been making consistent efforts for peace in Afghanistan as it was in the interest of both countries, adding that Pakistan believes that a politically viable solution was important for Afghan peace and that the use of military force should be avoided. Regarding the FIR that has been lodged against the drone strike by relatives of the driver who was killed along with Mansour, he said that it was their right to file a complaint and the judiciary was independent to take up the matter according to legal course. Also speaking on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's statement that New Delhi was ready for peace talks provided Islamabad stopped supporting terrorists, he pressed that terrorism had affected Pakistan more than any other country in the world. He added that phenomenon of terrorism had resulted in the loss of lives of 60,000 Pakistanis and cast a huge impact on the country's economy. On China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), he said the project was of great economic significance not only for Pakistan and China but also for the entire region. Zakaria said that CPEC was a flagship project which had six more programmes under the concept of 'One Belt One Road'. In a major boost to Republican party unity ahead of the November polls, House Speaker Paul Ryan has endorsed presumptive nominee Donald Trump, saying that they have 'more common ground than disagreement'. "I feel confident he would help us turn the ideas in this agenda into laws to help improve peoples' lives. That's why I'll be voting for him this fall," Ryan said in an op-ed published in Gazette Xtra. Ryan, citing 'major policy differences', had refused to endorse Trump after he emerged as the presumptive presidential nominee following his win in the Indiana primary elections in May. Thereafter, the two had a series of meetings and phone calls. The Speaker has now insisted that despite differences between the two men, they have more common ground than divergence. "It's no secret that he and I have our differences. I won't pretend otherwise. And when I feel the need to, I'll continue to speak my mind. But the reality is, on the issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground than disagreement," he said. "I'll be voting for @realDonaldTrump this fall. I'm confident he will help turn the House GOP's agenda into laws," he tweeted. His goal from the start, Ryan said, was to unite the Republican party so they could win in the fall. "And if we're going to unite, it has to be over ideas. Donald Trump and I have talked at great length about things such as the proper role of the executive and fundamental principles such as the protection of life," he said "The list of potential Supreme Court nominees he released after our first meeting was very encouraging," he said. He also said he would start introducing a series of policy proposals that address the American peoples' top priorities, starting next week. "To enact these ideas, we need a Republican president willing to sign them into law. That's why, when he sealed the nomination, I could not offer my support for Donald Trump before discussing policies and basic principles," he wrote. Trump welcomed the endorsement that he had been awaiting for weeks now. "So great to have the endorsement and support of Paul Ryan. We will both be working very hard to Make America Great Again!" he tweeted. The two had met face-to-face for the first time in May, where they vowed to unite the party to ensure victory in the November polls. "The United States cannot afford another four years of the Obama White House, which is what Hillary Clinton represents," Trump and Ryan said in their joint statement after the meeting at the Republican National Committee headquarters. In a globalised economy, it is not possible to stop trading goods and services with other nations, President Barack Obama said today in an apparent dig at presumptive Republican presidential nominee . "As we navigate this complex world, America cannot shirk the mantle of leadership. We can't be isolationists. It's not possible in this globalised, interconnected world," Obama said in his commencement address to the Air Force Academy. "In these uncertain times, it's tempting, sometimes, to pull back, to try to wash our hands of conflicts that seem intractable, let other countries fend for themselves. But history teaches us, from Pearl Harbor to 9/11, that oceans alone cannot protect us. Hateful ideologies can spark terror, from Boston to San Bernardino," he added. "In a global economy, it's not possible to stop trading goods and services with other countries. Weak public health systems on the other side of the world allow diseases to develop that end up reaching our shores. So, we cannot turn inward; we cannot give into isolationism," he said. "That's a false comfort. Allowing problems to fester over there makes us less secure here. So, as Americans, we have to keep leading and working with others to build the security and prosperity and justice we want in the world. By the way, one of the most effective ways to lead and work with others is through treaties that advance our interests," he said. Obama said lately, there has been a mindset in Congress that just about any treaty is somehow a violation of American sovereignty, and so the Senate almost never approves treaties any more. "So, if we're truly concerned about China's actions in the South China Sea, for example, the Senate should help strengthen our case by approving the Law of the Sea Convention, as our military leaders have urged," Obama said. He said as powerful as US military is, Americans have to remember that many of the threats to their security cannot be solved by military force alone. "We've got to draw on every tool, all elements of our national power. When we invest in the development that promotes education and opportunity around the globe, it can make conflicts and military interventions less likely later," he said. Even as the US is well-positioned to lead the world, it is facing a major threat from terrorist groups. "We face serious threats. Terrorist networks slaughter the innocent and plot attacks against our nation," he said. "Civil wars, like in Iraq, tear countries apart and create humanitarian catastrophes and havens for terrorists. Russian aggression against Ukraine. Disputes in the South China Sea. These are testing an order that we built, where the sovereignty of nations is respected and all nations abide by the same rules," Obama said. "Nuclear weapons, as in South Korea and the specter of nuclear terrorism still threatens us all," he added. Mentioned below are few intra-day trading strategies from Geojit BNP Paribas for today: VA TECH WABAG LTP : Rs 612.1 Action : BUY on dips Targets : Rs 621 / Rs 628 Stop-loss : Rs 597.5 Comment : The momentum indicators are supporting uptrend. Volumes have moved above the 10 day average. The stock has moved above the resistance of Rs 600. MACD is above signal and zero line. After several years, the mango growers in fruit belt of Uttar Pradesh have reason to enjoy. Unlike previous years the production is set to create a new record this season. YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian community of Madrid on June 3 initiated a rally outside the German Embassy of Spain during which they expressed their gratitude for the adoption of the resolution by the German Bundestag recognizing and condemning the Armenian Genocide, press service of the MFA of Armenia informed Armenpress. The participants of the rally raised the Armenian and German flags, as well as posters with Thank you Germany, We remember and demand, Recognition=prevention, Spain, be the next notes. The participants also gave information brochures to the passers-by, who all were surprised to see that a rally is being held outside the Embassy to express gratitude, rather than to complain. The participants gave the letter of gratitude to the representative of the German Embassy which was signed on behalf of the Armenian community and the representative of the Armenian Apostolic Church of Spain Father Shnorhk Sargsyan. finished the Friday session on a flat note as profit booking emerged following a private survey which indicated slowdown in the country's services sector during May. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will embark on five-nation -Afghanistan, State of Qatar, Switzerland, United States of America and Mexico - visit beginning on Saturday, has said he is looking forward to visit Afghanistan, where he will join President Ashraf Ghani to inaugurate Afghanistan-India Friendship Dam in Herat. "Looking forward to my visit to Afghanistan tomorrow. I will join President Ashraf Ghani to inaugurate Afghanistan-India Friendship Dam in Herat. It is symbol of our friendship and would usher in hope, light up homes, nourish the fertile fields of Herat and bring prosperity to the people of the region," posted Prime Minister on Facebook. "Look forward to meet my friend President Ashraf Ghani and exchange notes on regional situation and setting agenda for bilateral cooperation in the coming period," he said in a series of Facebook post. Speaking about his visit to Qatar on 4th & 5th June at the invitation of the Emir of Qatar, the Prime Minister said, "Look forward to meeting His Highness Sheikh Tamim whose landmark visit to India last year had ushered in a new momentum in our relations. I will have the honour to meet Father Emir who personally guided our relations for nearly two decades. This visit will nourish the historical bonds of friendship deeply rooted in people to people contacts, energy, trade and investment partnership." "I will interact with the Indian workers at the Workers' Camp and some of the members of over Six lakh Indians who have nurtured our relations through their sweat and toil. Will also speak to Qatar business leaders to realise the full potential of our trade and investment cooperation," he added. Prime Minister Modi, who arrives in Geneva in the evening of 5th June on a bilateral visit to Switzerland, said "I will hold talks with President Schneider-Ammann to deepen our bilateral and multilateral cooperation. "In Geneva, I will meet prominent businesspersons. Our agenda will be to expand economic and investment ties. I will meet Indian scientists working at CERN. India takes pride in their contribution to exploring new frontiers of science in the service of humanity." Talking about the next leg of his journey to the U.S., he said, "I will be reaching Washington DC on a bilateral visit in the evening of 6th June at the invitation of President Barack Obama. In my meeting with the President on 7th June, we will seek to build upon the progress achieved in providing new vigour and momentum to our strategic partnership in diverse areas." "Am looking forward to address the 40th AGM of the USIBC and meet US business leaders who have, over the past two years, shown renewed confidence in the India. I will exchange views with US think-tanks and attend a ceremony marking the return of Indian antiques. During my visit to Arlington Cemetery I will lay wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider and Space Shuttle Columbia Memorial, in which we lost an Indian origin astronaut, Kalpana Chawla," he said while elaborating about his programmes in the U.S. "On 8th June, I will address a Joint Meeting of the US Congress. I thank Speaker Paul Ryan for inviting me to speak to Congressmen and Senators. During my visit to the US Capitol, I will also interact with members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, many of whom have been valued friends of India and a strong votary of deepening India-USA ties," said the Prime Minister. Saying that India and the U.S. are natural partners, two vibrant democracies that celebrate their diversity and pluralism, the Prime Minister added: "Strong India-USA ties benefit not only our two nations but also the entire world." The Prime Minister said he is looking forward to meeting President Pena Nieto on June 8 during his visit to Mexico - a privileged partner in the Latin American region. "President Pena Nieto has ushered in far reaching reforms. I look forward to sharing our experiences. This is the first Prime Ministerial bilateral visit to Mexico after 30 years. Though short, the visit has a substantial agenda to take our partnership to new heights," the Prime Minister concluded. Any global forum which does not include India has limited relevance, said Vice President M. Hamid Ansari while speaking on the topic 'India and the World' at Tunisian Institute of Strategic Studies in Carthage here on Friday. "One-sixth of the humanity and in keeping with the growing capacities and aspirations of our people, India has a much larger role to play in charting a more equitable and sustainable future for our world," said the Vice President. Calling the 20th century a period of ''Megadeath and Metamyth", Vice President Ansari said although interstate conflicts have declined, the experience of the past quarter of a century shows that expectations of a more comprehensive corrective have been belied as the traditional security architecture has been slow to respond to these new realities. Ansari said India is not a rejectionist power that stands outside the global order, but her interests lie in working to change reform and improve the global order, which demands increased external engagement within the ambit of a non-intrusive policy. The Vice-President said India had vital stake in the stability, security and economic well-being of West Asia and North African region and was willing to expand its strategic and economic partnership. Flagging terrorism as an area of common concern, the Vice president said even as some countries continued to use terrorism as an instrument of state policy, global terrorism had emerged as a principal global challenge and threat to pluralist and open societies. The Vice-President said International terrorism can only be defeated by organised international action, adding that we need to restructure the international legal framework such as by adopting a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism to deal with the challenges of terrorism. He also called for increased cooperation in intelligence sharing among societies that stand for peace and share values of humanism. The Vice President said relations between India and Tunisia have been friendly and free of discord and the countries share common principles and have a similar approach on many issued that he saw a prosperous and peaceful future as commercial and political interactions deepened. Although interstate conflicts have admittedly declined, the Vice President said, the experience of the past quarter of a century shows the manner in which the expectations of a more comprehensive corrective have been belied: "There has been a phenomenal increase in lower intensity civil conflicts. There has been an increase in violence against unprotected civilians. Some of these conflicts have spilled across state boundaries and their principal victims are civilians. They have dislocated human populations and are endangering human security. They tend to undermine the nation state, and are creating friction between neighbouring countries," he said. "We have witnessed the ease with which regional and sub-national conflicts have spiralled into broader conflict and become a global security challenge. These threats are increasingly emanating from non-state sources such as organised crime, organised terrorist outfits and pirates. Even more disturbing is the trend where non-state armed groups appear as parties in violent conflict," he added. Stating that the traditional security architecture has been slow to respond to these new realities, he said even as the economic prominence of new players is remarkably well understood. "While emerging economies have secured a role in the global economic system, the Security Council of the United Nations remains a captive of its five Permanent Members. This intransigence has constrained the ability of the established security systems to address the evolving nature of security challenges." Maintaining that 25 years of economic liberalisation, beginning in 1991, have transformed India's economy, the Vice President said: "The average annual growth rate of 7 percent has created wealth allowing millions of Indians to take part, and to benefit from, a globalised . Despite this, about one-third of our population lives in extreme poverty and we face formidable challenges of education, training, human and infrastructure development." "Our total global trade grew from US $ 37.3 billion in 1991 to US $ 758.5 billion in 2016, a 20 fold growth in the last 25 years. There has been a phenomenal increase in India's industrial and agricultural outputs. A business friendly India is today one of the leading recipients of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in a range of sectors," he added. Highlighting strong growth in India's maritime and strategic capacity, Vice President Ansari said, "Our defence capabilities have increased; so has our capacity to provide overseas security and humanitarian support to our friends and those in need. We like to resolve our conflicts peacefully through negotiations but at the same time would like to have an effective and credible deterrence capacity to protect our legitimate interests." Pointing at a peaceful periphery which is critical to India's success, he said, "We believe that the entire South Asian region needs to grow with India for our sustainable prosperity. 'Neighbourhood first' has, therefore, been a key component of India's worldview with a strong sense of priority being attached to enhancing cooperation with immediate neighbours. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has been infused with new energy even as we have continued our bilateral cooperation with neighbouring countries." "We have adopted an 'Act East' policy based on enhanced connectivity with maritime neighbours to the East. The deepening of strategic and commercial ties with the Indian Ocean Rim countries have been a priority. Our 'Link West' approach has invigorated cooperation with West Asia and the Persian Gulf littoral," he said. Saying India considers the Middle East Peace Process as the key to resolve long pending issues and prevent further radicalisation of the region, Vice President Ansari said: "We have sought enhanced connectivity with Eurasia through initiatives such as the Chabahar port and related infrastructure, and the Turkmenistan Afghanistan Pakistan India (TAPI) pipeline, a project whose initiation I personally attended last year with leaders from the other partner states." The Vice President said, "We have reached out to our friends in Africa through initiatives such as India Africa Forum Summit, held last year in New Delhi. We convened a conclave of South Pacific islands to explore issues of mutual interest and define India's contribution in their growth and development goals. With other emerging economies we have collaborated, such as under the BRICS forum, to develop more equitable global governance systems." Hailing relations between India and Tunisia as "friendly" and "free of discord", he said, "We share common principles and have a similar approach on many issues. India had extended strong support to the Tunisian struggle for freedom, and today, India stands ready again to provide all possible support as you embark on a path of freedom and democracy." "Tunisia can also be a hub for our trade with both Europe and Africa. Tunisia can leverage our expertise and proven capabilities in production of pharmaceuticals, especially generic medicines at affordable cost, advancement in healthcare sector, science and technology and provision of high quality education at reasonable cost to its advantage," said the Vice President. "I see a prosperous and peaceful future as our commercial and political interactions deepen. It will open a new era of peace and prosperity, not only for our two countries but the entire region," he added. Zimbabwe premier fast bowler Tinashe Panyangara has been ruled out of the forthcoming limited-overs series against India with a back injury. The 30-year-old complained of lower back pain in a training camp in Bulawayo and has been replaced by Taurai Muzarabani in the squad, ESPNcricinfo reported. Hamilton Masakadza retained his place in both sides despite being sacked as captain, while Graeme Cremer has been assigned the task of leading his side in both formats. Zimbabwe will play their first of the three-match ODI series against India in Harare on June 11. India's participation in the recently concluded 23rd Iran Agro Food and Food Bevtech fair held in Iran (May 30 to June 2, 2016) assumes a special significance in the backdrop of recent Iran visit of the Prime Minister of India and the bilateral Chahbahar deal to boost regional connectivity and re-energise the International North - South Trade Corridor (INSTC). The fair was organised by the India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO). These projects aim to bring India closer to Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) comprising Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. After the lifting of international sanctions, Iran is now open for Indian companies for . As many as 36 leading Indian companies highlighted a range of food items including basmati rice, sesame and cumin seeds, cocoa items, whole egg power, yolk powder, dairy products, beverages - included instant drinks, processed and frozen vegetables, whole spices, honey, wheat and its by-products, gums and additives, spices, papad, etc. In the Bev Tech segment, around 12 companies showcase bagging machines, water pump sets for domestic and sewage use, tube ice plant, pasteurizers, inspection mirrors, automatic liquid filling machines, hospitality industry, separators, insert folding and outer systems. The Iranian food market is one of the most important ones in the entire Middle East. According to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Iranian food imports have gone up with an annual growth rate of 9.4 percent between 2009 and 2013 making up for USD 13.14 billion in 2013. Iranian food exports amounted to USD 5.222 billion. Thus, food trade with Iran now stands for an USD 18.362 billion . Hundreds of hotels and thousands of new restaurants are to be opened all over Iran, and tourist travel in meant to escalate in the years to come. Pakistan's former federal minister for religious affairs, Hamid Saeed Kazmi, was sentenced to 16 years in jail for the Haj corruption case on Friday. Judge Malik Nazir Ahmad from special court central, a lower court, also sentenced Director General (DG) Haj Rao Shakeel to 40 years in prison and Joint secretary for religious affairs Aftab Aslam was also sentenced to 16 years, reports Dawn. After the sentence was pronounced, Kazmi and Aftab were arrested from the court premises and escorted to Adiala Jail by Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) officials, while Shakeel is already in custody of the National Accountability Bureau in Lahore, reports Dawn. The verdict was announced after cross-examination of 60 witnesses presented by the prosecution which concluded last week. According to reports, between 2010 and 2012, the Haj corruption scandal rocked the national political scene and led to the departure of both Hamid Saeed Kazmi and Azam Swati from the federal cabinet. Kazmi already spent nearly two years in prison over charges of irregularities in the 2009 Haj operation. He was slapped with allegations of involvement in the Haj corruption scandal and inflicting huge losses to the national coffers two years ago. According to the charge sheet issued to Kazmi, Shakeel and Raja Aftabul Islam, the men were indicted for fraud, cheating, misuse of authority, and causing losses to the national exchequer and the public at large. Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be leaving for Afghanistan tomorrow on the first leg of his five-nation tour where he would be inaugurating, along with President Ashraf Ghani, the 'Afghan-India Friendship Dam', which was earlier called the Salma Dam, in Herat province. Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who divulged details of Prime Minister Modi's five-country tour to Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland, the United States and Mexico beginning on June 4, said President Ghani would be hosting a lunch for the visiting dignitary. "After the inauguration, he will leave for Qatar. In Qatar, the Prime Minister will attend a dinner hosted by Qatar Prime Minister Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani and would also be visiting a workers' camp in Doha," he said. On Sunday, the Prime Minister's day begins with a meeting with business leaders followed by a restricted meeting with the Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Thereafter, several agreements between the two sides would be signed during a lunch hosted by the Emir. And then, there would be a meeting with the father of the Emir. Later, the Prime Minister will have an interaction with the Indian community and thereafter, he will depart for Switzerland in the evening. "His programme in Switzerland on Monday begins with a meeting with the President of the Swiss Confederation Johann Schneider-Ammann, followed by a business meeting," said Jaishankar. The Foreign Secretary said the Prime Minister will then leave Switzerland for the United States, where he arrives directly in Washington on June 6. "On the 6th, he has three programmes- he will be going to the Arlington Cemetery for a wreath laying then he has two events at Blair House, where he is staying. One is a meeting with heads of American think tanks and the other is the function involving repatriation of cultural property, basically Indian antiquities, which are in the U.S. and which are being returned to India," he said. The Prime Minister would be meeting US President Barak Obama on June 7, followed by a lunch in his honour. "In the evening, the Prime Minister will be meeting business leaders in the U.S. and addressing the U.S.-India Business Council," said Jaishankar, adding Defence Secretary Aston Carter will be calling on the Prime Minister between the two meetings,. On 8th of June, the forenoon is devoted to the U.S. Congress, he said. "He would be going to the U.S. Congress and meeting to the Speaker and the Congressional leadership and would be delivering an address to the joint meeting to the U.S. Congress. This would be followed by a lunch hosted by the Speaker in the honour of the Prime Minister. And then, a reception jointly hosted by the House and Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and the India Cocas, followed by a brief community reception," he added. Jaishankar said Prime Minister Modi would be on the afternoon of June 8 flying off the Mexico City, where he would have a meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. "The President would be hosting a dinner for him. And after the dinner, he would be taking off from Mexico to return to India," he said. Clarifying that he would not step down from his post, Nepal Prime Minister has said his nature doesn't permit him to do so, adding that some forces were threatening and exerting pressure on him to quit. Addressing a two-day public dialogue programme organised on Thursday, Oli said that he did not have any excessive desire to remain on the chair and that if he got concrete remedies and roadmap to resolve all the current problems then he wouldn't have any desire to stick to the post, reports Kathmandu Post. Recalling that he was elected to the post during a tough time when the country was facing post quake trauma, border blockade and Tarai agitation, Oli said that he made his best efforts to overcome these problems and gradually acquired success towards the end. The prime minister added that holding any post was just temporary therefore performing on behalf of the nation and people will have permanent meanings. Indicating the protest launched by Tarai-centric parties, Oli called on the agitating parties not to perform circus in the name of protest and urged them to come for dialogue if they have any genuine issues to be resolved. He also claimed that the Tarai protest has calmed down and deadlock with India has ended. He clarified that his party did not have agreement to hand over the government to ruling coalition Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Centre. He termed the previous governments as the scarecrow while claiming that they failed to invest on social welfare sector. In the august presence of Union Minister of Railways, Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu and Chief Minister of Haryana Shri Manohar Lal Khattar a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for Formation of Joint Venture Company for Development of Railway Infrastructure in the State was signed on 3rd June, 2016. Chairman, Railway Board, Shri A. K. Mital, Addl. Chief Secretary to Govt. of Haryana Shri Hardeep Kumar, and other Board Members, and senior officials from both the sides were also present on the occasion. The MoU was signed by Shri Ved Prakash Dudeja on behalf of Railway Ministry whereas it was signed by Shri Hardeep Kumar, Addl. Chief Secretary on behalf of Govt. of Haryana. The MoU was signed in the context of Railway Minister's Budget Announcement regarding setting up of JV Companies with the State Government for developing railway infrastructure in the States. Salient Features of MoU : - In view of the growing demands for railway lines in various states and huge requirement of funds to execute them, Hon'ble Minister for Railways announced in his budget speech regarding setting up of Joint Ventures with states for focused project development, resource mobilization, land acquisition, project implementation and monitoring of critical rail projects. 17 State Governments consented for formation of Joint Venture Companies in collaboration with the Ministry of Railways for development of rail infrastructure in their respective States. Draft MoUs were sent to these State Governments and discussions were also held with them to clarify various provisions of the MoU. MoUs have already been signed by the Ministry of Railways with six State Governments viz. Odisha, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala. Today, MoU is being signed with the State Government of Haryana. This signing of MOU is going to be a stepping stone for formation of JV companies. The MoU envisages formation of a Joint Venture company having 51% stake of the State Government and 49% stake of Ministry of Railways. Thus, the JV company shall be fully owned by the Government. The company will primarily identify projects and possible financing avenues in addition to Govt. of India and the State Government. After finances for a project are tied up, project specific SPVs or special purpose vehicles shall be formed. These SPVs can have other stake holders from Industries, Central PSUs, State PSUs etc. However, the JV companies shall be mandatory stake holders with minimum 26% shares in the SPVs. The ministry of Railways will sign a concession agreement of 30 years with the project SPV for safe and sound operation, revenue sharing and providing technical & marketing logistics to the SPV. The revenue sharing shall be based on already established formula being used for inter zonal apportionment of revenue. The most important aspect of this MoU is that the ownership of the land shall vest with the SPVs which is a departure from previous practice. This will give financial leverage to the company to exploit commercial potential of the land. This is likely to result in making project viable which are otherwise not viable. At the end of concession period, the railways will have option to take over the assets at a nominal price. This is largely in line with average codal life of the assets as most of the assets will need large scale replacement after 30 years. Signing of this MoU will be followed by signing of Joint Venture Agreement for which draft has been made ready. JV Agreements are likely to be signed in next week or ten days time. Indian Railways has been playing a major role in national integration by connecting the remotest places and bringing people closer to each other. Railways receive a large number of demands for network expansion as a railway line acts as an engine of growth for the area it serves. However, Railways have a large shelf of ongoing New Line, Gauge Conversion and Doubling projects needing about Rs 3.86 lakh crores to complete. We have been trying to meet the aspirations of public within limited availability of funds. To expedite the projects, Railways have been trying to mobilize resources through other than Gross Budgetary Support. However, on the initiative of Hon'ble Minister for Railways Sh. Suresh Prabhu ji, Indian Railways have tied up funds for critical capacity enhancement project of doubling, third line, electrification etc. This tied up loan will ensure dedicated and assured funding for such critical projects. Formation of Joint Venture Companies with the State Governments will go a long way in faster commissioning of critical rail infrastructure projects as it will not only help in mobilization of funds but also in facilitating various clearances and land acquisition. Powered by Capital Market - Live News YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. The majority of Germans support the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the Bundestag. According to a survey by Infratest dimap, 74% of Germans expressed approval for the Bundestags decision on recognizing the Armenian Genocide. 91% said Turkey is not a trust deserving partner for Germany. Only 7 % consider Turkey to be a trustworthy partner. According to ARD, perhaps it is for this lack of trust that 89% of Germans say no compromise should be made in the visa-free regime issue. Earlier, within the framework of the migration deal, Brussels announced willingness for a visa-free regime with Turkey, in case Ankara meets certain requirements, in particular revises its anti terrorism legislation. However Turkish President Erdogan refused to change the anti-terrorism legislation, by announcing that Turkey has its own path. Dabur India rose 1.48% to Rs 302.65 at 10:55 IST on BSE after the company said that it incorporated a new step-down subsidiary, DABUR PARS, in Iran. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 2 June 2016. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 66.39 points or 0.25% at 26,909.53. On BSE, so far 39,084 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 81,322 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit high of Rs 303.40 and low of Rs 298.25 so far during the day. The stock had hit a record high of Rs 316.50 on 6 August 2015. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 231.30 on 27 January 2016. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 2 June 2016, gaining 0.81% compared with Sensex's 5.53% gains. The scrip had, however, outperformed the market in past one quarter, rising 22.48% as against Sensex's 10.73% gains. The large-cap company has equity capital of Rs 176.09 crore. Face value per share is Rs 1. Dabur India said that its wholly owned subsidiaries-Dabur UK and Dabur International have incorporated a new subsidiary namely, DABUR PARS, a limited liability company in Iran. Dabur UK holds 99% while Dabur International holds 1% in the subsidiary. Thus, DABUR PARS has become a step down wholly owned subsidiary of Dabur India. DABUR PARS will manufacture cosmetic products including toothpaste, hair oils, hair shampoo and skin care products, purchase, sale, manufacture, packing, import and export of all authorised goods after obtaining necessary licences from competent authorities. Dabur India's consolidated net profit rose 16.6% to Rs 331.93 crore on 10.9% rise in net sales to Rs 2157.31 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. Dabur India is one of the largest FMCG companies in India. The company operates in key consumer products categories like hair care, oral care, health care, skin care, home care & foods. Powered by Capital Market - Live News In the first quarter of 2016, worldwide server revenue declined 2.3 percent year over year, while shipments grew 1.7 percent from the first quarter of 2015, according to Gartner, Inc. "Although revenue declined, the first quarter of 2016 continued with a trend of low-level shipments growth on a global level with a variation in results by region," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. "The drop in revenues in light of shipment increases demonstrates that the servers that shipped during the period had lower average selling prices than those that shipped in the same time frame last year." All regions showed a decline in either shipments and/or vendor revenue except for Asia/Pacific, which posted 9.7 percent growth in revenue and 8.4 percent growth in shipments for the period. Western Europe grew 1.4 percent in shipments and 1.5 percent in revenue. North America posted a 1 percent increase in shipments but declined 5.9 percent year over year in revenue. "The real driver of global growth continues to be the hyperscale data center segment. The enterprise and small or midsize business (SMB) segments remain relatively flat as end users in these segments accommodated their increased application requirements through virtualization and considered cloud alternatives," Mr. Hewitt said. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) continued to lead in the worldwide server market, based on revenue, with a 25.2 percent market share (see Table 1). HPE was the only vendor in the top five to experience growth in the first quarter of 2016. Despite a decline of 1.4 percent, Dell maintained the second spot in the market with 17.3 percent market share. IBM secured the third position with 9.7 percent of the market, but experienced the largest decline among the top five vendors. Table 1Worldwide: Server Vendor Revenue Estimates, 1Q16 (U. S. Dollars) HPE 3,296,591,967 25.2 3,191,694,948 23.8 3.3Dell 2,265,272,258 17.3 2,296,473,026 17.1 -1.4IBM 1,270,901,371 9.7 1,887,939,141 14.1 -32.7Lenovo 871,335,542 6.7 970,254,659 7.2 -10.2Cisco 850,230,000 6.5 890,179,930 6.6 -4.5Others 4,537,261,457 34.7 4,157,871,705 31.0 9.1 In server shipments, HPE remained the worldwide leader in the first quarter of 2016, even with a year-over-year shipment decline of 1.6 percent (see Table 2). HPE's worldwide server shipment share was 19.4 percent, representing a 0.6 percent drop in share from the first quarter of 2015. Of the top five vendors in server shipments worldwide, only Huawei and Inspur produced shipment increases. Table 2Worldwide: Server Vendor Shipments Estimates, 1Q16 (Units) HPE 526,115 19.4 534,559 20.0 -1.6Dell 464,292 17.1 507,433 19.0 -8.5Lenovo 199,189 7.3 220,379 8.3 -9.6Huawei 130,755 4.8 105,803 4.0 23.6Inspur 109,390 4.0 91,847 3.4 19.1Others 1,286,097 47.4 1,209,319 45.3 6.3 Powered by Capital Market - Live News Mahindra & Mahindra rose 1.14% to Rs 1,347.85 at 09:45 IST on BSE after the company announced the launch of new electric sedan eVerito. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 2 June 2016. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 154.26 points or 0.57% at 26,997.40 On BSE, so far 20,424 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 89,670 shares in the past one quarter. The stock had hit a high of Rs 1,351.35 and low of Rs 1,343 so far during the day. The stock had hit a record high of Rs 1,441.45 on 7 August 2015. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 1,092 on 12 February 2016. The large-cap company has equity capital of Rs 310.55 crore. Face value per share is Rs 5. M&M said that the eVerito would be available in key cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Jaipur and Nagpur with immediate effect. It will be priced at Rs 9.50 lakh (ex showroom Delhi, for D2 variant, post state subsidy and FAME incentive). The direct drive single speed transmission eVerito can be charged at home. It can be charged in 1 hour and 45 minutes through fast charging technology. On a full charge, the Mahindra eVerito can travel for up to 110 kms (based on vehicle loading) and can achieve a top speed of 86 kmph. Its running cost is Rs 1.15/km assuming cost of electricity at Rs 7 per unit. The eVerito also features Boost Mode and Telematics which include real time and immediate assistance wherever the vehicle may be. Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M)'s total auto sales rose 11% to 40,656 units in May 2016 over May 2015. Separately, M&M said that total sales of tractors rose 20% to 23,018 units in May 2016 over May 2015. The sales figures were announced during market hours on 1 June 2016. M&M's net profit rose 6% to Rs 583.73 crore on 14.8% growth in net sales to Rs 10666.43 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. Mahindra Group enjoys a leadership position in tractors, utility vehicles, information technology, financial services and vacation ownership. In addition, Mahindra enjoys a strong presence in the agribusiness, aerospace, components, consulting services, defence, energy, industrial equipment, logistics, real estate, retail, steel, commercial vehicles and two-wheeler industries. Powered by Capital Market - Live News MOIL surged 6.07% to Rs 235 at 13:17 IST on BSE after the company scheduled a board meeting on 7 June 2016 to consider the proposal for buyback of equity shares. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 2 June 2016. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 88.72 points or 0.33% at 26,931.86 On BSE, so far 99,000 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 21,247 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 255 and a low of Rs 232.60 so far during the day. The stock had hit a record low of Rs 180.10 on 12 February 2016. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 257 on 25 June 2015. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 186.50 on 22 July 2015. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 2 June 2016, falling 10.68% compared with Sensex's 5.53% gains. The scrip, however, outperformed the market in past one quarter, rising 13.35% as against Sensex's 10.73% gains. The mid-cap company has equity capital of Rs 168 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10. MOIL's net profit declined 79.1% to Rs 21.38 crore on 29.9% growth in net sales to Rs 209.62 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. MOIL operates 10 mines, six located in the Nagpur and Bhandara districts of Maharashtra and four in the Balaghat district of Madhya Pradesh. The Government of India (GoI) held 71.57% stake in the company (as per the shareholding pattern as on 31 March 2016). Powered by Capital Market - Live News Sales decline 1.69% to Rs 20.99 crore Net profit of Tamilnadu Steel Tubes declined 40.51% to Rs 1.85 crore in the quarter ended March 2016 as against Rs 3.11 crore during the previous quarter ended March 2015. Sales declined 1.69% to Rs 20.99 crore in the quarter ended March 2016 as against Rs 21.35 crore during the previous quarter ended March 2015. For the full year,net profit declined 47.29% to Rs 2.53 crore in the year ended March 2016 as against Rs 4.80 crore during the previous year ended March 2015. Sales declined 16.57% to Rs 78.40 crore in the year ended March 2016 as against Rs 93.97 crore during the previous year ended March 2015. ParticularsQuarter EndedYear EndedMar. 2016Mar. 2015% Var.Mar. 2016Mar. 2015% Var.Sales20.9921.35 -2 78.4093.97 -17 OPM %8.674.54 -4.914.27 - PBDT2.360.41 476 3.713.10 20 PBT2.340.30 680 3.452.80 23 NP1.853.11 -41 2.534.80 -47 Powered by Capital Market - Live News Approval of Public Buildings will be given only if it is accessible to Persons with Disabilities The Union Government is ready with Universal Identity cards for the persons with disabilities. All the preparatory work has been done including design of the card by National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. Very soon these will be passed on to the States for the distribution. State Governments have been asked to gear up themselves to identify the persons with disabilities in their respective states, so that within one and half year all the disabled persons can have universal identity cards. This was stated by the union minister for social justice and empowerment Shri Thaawarchand Gehlot while addressing State social welfare monster's conference. He said that these cards will be linked with the Aadhar card and data will be available online which will ensure transparency. The Universal Identity Cards will help the persons with disabilities to avail all Government schemes and reservation. These Cards will be recognisable by all the States. Referring various scholarship schemes for the persons with disabilities started by NDA government in 2014-15, Shri Gehlot said that the Union Government is very keen that all deserving students with disabilities are assisted with these scholarships. He urged the State governments to launch a campaign from next academic year to identify such students, to award them scholarships. He said that to avoid any delay and leakages his ministry has adopted DBT channel to pass on the scholarships. Shri Gehlot said that his ministry has committed to provide skill training to about 25 lakh the persons with disabilities and to arrange finance through NHFDC to economically empower them. He informed that during last 2 years 46000 disabled have been provided skill training and financial support by the corporation for starting their own venture. Shri Gehlot asked the State Government to take advantage of the scheme for providing assistive devices to the persons with disabilities. He said that his ministry will provide all possible support in this effort. He said during last 2 years, 1850 camps have already been organised and 4,40,000 persons have been benefitted. Under Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan, States were advised to give approval for the building plan only when it has accessibility provisions for the persons with disabilities as per recently issued NBCC code. He urged State Governments to identify public utility buildings, to carry out access audit and making it disabled friendly. The minister said that a plan has been prepared to make about 3000 identified Union Government and State Government sites accessible to the persons with disabilities. 650 such sites already have been made accessible for the persons with disabilities. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Bihar's Class 12 'topper' in Arts, Rubi Rai, who said political science is all about cooking, will face stern action for failing to appear in a re-test on Friday, exam board's head Lalkeshwar Prasad Singh said. "We are bound to take action, if possible, as per provisions to cancel her result," Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) Chairman Lalkeshwar Prasad told reporters on a day when 13 other toppers, from Arts and Science streams, did appear for the re-test. The 14 students were called for a re-test by the BSEB after Aaj Tak TV channel showed a sting in which Rubi Rai said: "Prodikal (read political) science is about cooking," and Saurabh Shreshtha, a Science topper, said: "Most reactive element in the periodic table is aluminium." Ruby scored 444 out of 500 marks in Arts stream and Saurabh Shreshtha 485 out of 500 in Science. Both belong to V.R. College in Vaishali district. "All the toppers, except Rubi Rai, appeared for re-examination at the board office here," a BSEB official Hariharnath Jha said. Rubi reportedly informed the board that she is not well and unable to appear for the re-exam. The 13 other students, including four from Arts stream and nine from Science, appeared before a panel of experts and anti-corruption wing of the board which tried to find out if they are toppers for real or they had cheated their way to the top. The results of Rubi and Saurabh had been put on hold following the TV sting which suggested that education in Bihar continues to be a very dubious affair with the possibility that cheating and fraud continue on a large scale. Bihar Education Minister Ashok Choudhary said action would be taken against officials found to be allowing fraud to take place. The BSEB claimed this year that Class 12 exams were conducted free of cheating, citing a drastic fall in the pass percentage as the proof. "Strict measures against cheating, including CCTV cameras and prohibitory orders against unlawful assembly in conducting the exams in February this year, resulted in fall in pass percentage," a board official said. Till last year, mass cheating in board exams was reported. This year it was not reported. --IANS ik/kb/dg The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) on Friday said that the forensic report on meat from Akhlaq's home in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, only exposes the double standards of "secular mafia" and the Samajwadi Party government in the state. The international joint general secretary of VHP, Surendra Jain also lashed out at the likes of actors Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan for maintaining "a mysterious silence" for last three days since the report was made public. "This raises a question mark on their patriotism. They indulged in a senseless debate on intolerance only to serve their selfish motives," Jain told reporters here and demanded that these celebrities should tender apology "for what they have done if they have any sense of shame left". A forensic lab in Mathura recently has claimed that the meat seized in the case from Akhlaq's house was actually beef. "The Uttar Pradesh government had suppressed this report for eight months but now this criminal conspiracy stands exposed," Jain exposed. The 52-year-old Akhlaq and his son Danish were dragged out of their home on September 28, 2015 and brutally assaulted by a mob, following rumours that they had slaughtered a cow. Akhlaq later succumbed to his injuries and the incident has sparked off a major poliical row. However, VHP leader Jain said the Akhilesh Yadav government of Uttar Pradesh "cannot get away" with a mere apology. "He (Yadav) has falsely implicated the Hindus of Dadri and put them behind bars. He must withdraw the false cases against the Hindus and provide adequate compensation to the victims," he said. Jain also said that there was a "conspiracy" to malign the Hindus by implicating them in false cases to suit the "selfish motives" of the secular brigade. "This is nothing new," he alleged. "Under the guise of 'saffron terrorism' a term coined by Sonia, Rahul and the pseudo-secular brigade, Hindu leaders and saints were falsely implicated and many of them put behind bars. Today, even this conspiracy also stands exposed," he claimed. --IANS nd/rn A court here on Friday sent Abdul Wahid Siddibapa, a suspected senior operative of terror outfit Indian Mujahideen, in judicial custody till July 1. Additional Sessions Judge Rakesh Pandit remanded Siddibapa in judicial custody till July 1 after National Investigation Agency (NIA) told him that the accused is not required for further custodial interrogation. Siddibapa was presented before the court after expiry of his earlier seven days' NIA custody. Described as the financial brain of the terror outfit, Siddibapa lived in Bhatkal in Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka. He was arrested last month on the charge of conspiring to stage terror attacks at various places in India. From Dubai, Siddibapa allegedly recruited Indian youth for the Indian Mujahideen and funded their activities. The NIA alleged that Siddibapa had been in touch with other Indian Mujahideen operatives through electronic communication. A Red Corner notice was issued against him in December 2013. Siddibapa was also wanted for his alleged involvement in the July 2006 Mumbai serial blasts, the 2008 Delhi blasts and the 2010 Chinnaswamy Stadium blast in Bengaluru. He allegedly routed the money using both banking channels and Western Union Money Transfer. He left for Dubai much before the crackdown on the Indian Mujahideen started in 2008. He was detained in the United Arab Emirates and arrested in January 2014. --IANS akk/kb/dg Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday recommended convening of a session of the Delhi assembly on June 9 and 10, to discuss urgent public issues. The session will discuss current unsatisfactory state of cleanliness in Delhi due to lax functioning of the three municipal corporations of the city. "Delhi assembly session next week to discuss how BJP's MCD has made whole of Delhi into a garbage bin due to its corruption n mismanagement," Kejriwal tweeted after the decision was taken in a cabinet meeting. "Delhi government has done commendable job in preventing dengue so far. MCD needs to improve its functioning," he said in a series of tweets. --IANS am/ahm/vt YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. The New York Times editorial board has published an article entitled Yes, Its Genocide on June 3, reports Armenpress. In what has become an almost annual exercise, Turkey has thrown a fit because someone has spoken the truth about its dark past. This time, it has pulled its ambassador from Berlin and threatened dire consequences over a resolution, passed overwhelmingly by the German Parliament June 2, declaring that the century-old massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was a genocide. That is what Turkey does every time a foreign government dares to challenge its discredited claim that the Armenians perished in the cruel fog of World War I, and not in a premeditated attempt to eradicate a people, the article says. It was a genocide, the first of the 20th century. Historians have established beyond reasonable doubt that as many as 1.5 million Armenians were deliberately killed or sent on death marches in 1915-16 by the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, fearful that they and other Christian minorities could side with Russia in the war. For Armenians, millions of whom were left scattered around the world, gaining recognition that the slaughter was a genocide a deliberate atrocity, and not collateral damage has been a long and passionate national mission, which has resulted in formal recognition by more than 20 countries, The New York Times writes. The article says the more the world has recognized the Armenian Genocide, the more aggressively Turkey has stormed and shouted. A couple of years ago, when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was still a relatively broad-minded prime minister, he seemed prepared to take a more conciliatory stance on the Armenian issue. But it never happened, and the increasingly autocratic Erdogan warned Germanys Chancellor Angela Merkel in advance that relations with would beseriously damaged by the resolution. According to the article, Erdogans threats are not without effect, and Merkel was not present for the vote, though she did not oppose it. President Obama, who as a candidate in 2008 pledged to recognize the events of 1915 as a genocide, has failed to do so. The damage done to Turkeys relations with the Armenians and its NATO allies is the responsibility of that large majority of Turks who refuse to acknowledge a dark blot on their history, not those who seek to commemorate the tragedy. The Germans, who have admirably confronted the terrible genocide in their own history, did the right thing in defying Erdogans threats, the New York Times editorial board concluded the article. Abu Dhabi, June 3 (IANS/WAM) The United Arab Emirates' (UAE) flag carrier Etihad Airways along with five partner airlines has signed a declaration committing to fight illegal wildlife trafficking and efforts to help protect species. The Declaration of the United for Wildlife International Taskforce on the Transportation of Illegal Wildlife Products was signed at International Air Transport Association's (IATA) annual general meeting in Dublin. Alitalia, airberlin, Air Serbia, Air Seychelles and Virgin Australia signed the declaration following the lead of Etihad Airways, which became a signatory in March. United for Wildlife is an alliance of conservation organisations and the Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry. The initiative aims to address current conservation issues with an initial focus on supporting efforts to prevent the growing trade in illegal wildlife and products around the world. The Transport Taskforce, launched at the World Bank in December 2014, has identified specific actions that the transport industry can take in supporting what the Duke of Cambridge refers to as "the race against extinction". Jet Airways signed the Declaration in April to coincide with the visit to India by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Etihad Aviation Group President and Chief Executive Officer James Hogan said: "Having six of the Etihad equity partner airlines as signatories ensures a more extensive and impactful result over 348 destinations. "Led by our head of sustainability, we are developing a group wide action plan to help prevent this abhorrent practice," Hogan added. The declaration includes 11 commitments developed to support global efforts to prevent illegal wildlife smuggling, which encourage the transport industry to specifically help shut down the routes exploited by wildlife traffickers. --IANS/WAM ksk/vt The discovery of more than 40 dead tiger cubs in Thailand's Tiger Temple represents only a "tiny proportion" of the enormous extent of an illegal trade in wildlife that is "pushing species to the brink of extinction", the UNEP-UNODC said on Friday. "While circumstances of their death remain unclear, sadly, those tiger cubs represent only a tiny proportion of the enormous extent of an illegal trade in wildlife that is pushing species to the brink of extinction. Indeed, only around 4,000 tigers are left in the wild," United Nations Environment Programme-United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a statement. "Until the illegal trade in wildlife is stopped, we are only likely to see more of these types of situations," the statement added. The theme for World Environment Day on June 5 this year is the illegal trade in wildlife to raise awareness of this severe problem. Tigers are one of the key species in the campaign. The illegal trade in wildlife, estimated to profit criminals to the tune of billions of dollars annually worldwide, comprises everything from the lucrative trade in Tiger parts in East Asia to ivory from African elephants, the organisations said. "It undermines our environment, economies, communities and security." "The commendable action by Thailanda's authorities, coordinated by the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, highlights the need for constant vigilance by wildlife law enforcement authorities to the threat posed by traffickers." "Given the extent of the illegal wildlife market in Asia it is important for all countries to unite and eradicate these illegal practices," the statement said. Officials had recovered 40 dead tiger cubs, just one to two days old, from a freezer at Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua temple, known as the "Tiger Temple", on Wednesday, EFE news reported. The cubs were not recorded in the register for wild animals the temple has to maintain by law and that means the protection department will press charges for illegal possession, besides other possible offences. --IANS sgh/ssp/lok/dg India is in talks with Bangladesh to explore the possibility of developing a port in the neighbouring country, Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Friday. "Presently, Ministry of Shipping and Ministry of External Affairs are in talks with Bangladesh government to explore options in Bangladesh to develop a port. Bangladesh government has been showing interest about it and is keen to work with us," said the Union Road Transport and Highways and Shipping Minister, but declined to give the details. India recently concluded the Chabahar port development agreement with Iran. He described the agreement as a 'game changer'. "Gas is cheaper in Iran, while in our country we have a shortage of gas. The proposed Chabahar port will give direct access for Indian goods to the markets in Afghanistan, Central Asia and Eastern Europe, bypassing Pakistan," he said. Gadkari said that new greenfield ports will be set up at Wadhawan, near Dahanu in Maharashtra, Colachel near Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu and Sagar Island in West Bengal. "In Sagarmala project, there will be an investment of Rs 12 lakh crore. Rs 4 lakh crore investment will come in port-led rail and road connectivity and mechanisation of coal. 27 industrial clusters which will be coming up will entail Rs 8 lakh crore investments," he said. "We set a target to create four crore jobs with an investment of Rs 25 lakh crore to roads and shipping sectors," he said. The country is focusing on port-led development. "Currently, logistics costs in India is about 18 percent, while it is in 8 percent in China, 10-12 percent in Europe. Our focus is to bring down to the logistic cost to 12 percent by developing coastal shipping and inland waterways," he added. --IANS bdc/rn Suspected Islamic State member Mohamed Naser, arrested on charges of motivating people to join the terror group, wrote to his family from Sudan saying he was "comfortable" after joining the outfit and also invited them to join him, the NIA said in a chargesheet filed on Friday. Naser, 23, who belongs to Thanjavur, is accused of motivating people to join the Islamic State and to wage war in the Middle East as well as India. According to NIA, Naser's father - the prosecution witness in the case - confirmed that his son, a web developer, had joined the IS. NIA, which filed a chargesheet in the case on Friday, disclosed that during investigation it was revealed that "Naser had confirmed his father that he joined Islamic State and it was not possible for him to return to the mainstream". "The facts discussed above corroborated that the accused (Naser) was in Sudan and conveyed to his father that he was comfortable after joining IS and he also extended an invitation to his family to come and join him," NIA said. "Investigation has revealed that accused Naser was in contact with his father while he was in Sudan and sent an email from his email ID on October 5, 2015." In the letter, he wrote to his father stating that "Take care of Mom and Sumaiya. I am very safe here. What you see in the news is just propaganda. Life here is wonderful ... you all are in my duas (prayers) always." NIA said Naser went to Dubai in October 2014 and joined an Information Technology company as web developer and global designer. He disclosed his desire to join the IS to one of his friends in Dubai. Naser then came across an IS sympathiser on Twitter and on his instruction, he joined a Whatsapp group "Islam Q&A", which is a platform to get news updates and opinions about the IS. Later, he joined Telegram, a web chat application, of like-minded people in April 2015. He came in touch with one 'Mad Mullah' who invited him to come to Sudan and join IS. On September 25, 2015, Naser left for Sudan to join the banned terror group. Naser was arrested on October 5, 2015 by Sudan Police for concealing his identity and trying to proceed to Syria to join IS. Naser was deported to India and was arrested on December 11, 2015. The chargesheet against Naser was filed under section 125 (waging war against any Asiatic Power in alliance with Government of India) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sections 18 (punishment for conspiracy) 18B (Punishment of recruiting of any person or persons for terrorist act), 38 (offence relating to the membership of a terrorist organisation) and 39 (offence relating to the support given to a terrorist organisation) of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. (Amiya Kumar Kushwaha can be contacted at amiya.k@ians.in) --IANS akk/rn/dg Union Environment and Forests Minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday released in the wild two captive Himalayan griffon vultures after tagging them. The griffons have been in captivity at the Bombay National History Society (BNHS) centre near here for over 10 years where the critically endangered oriental white-backed, long-billed and slender-billed Gyps vultures have been bred under the Saving Asia's Vultures from Extinction (SAVE) programme. Before the release of the Himalayan griffons, closely related to the critically endangered Gyps species of vultures but not endangered, SAVE has focused on creating "safe zones" for them to survive in nature, an official involved in the breeding programme told IANS. Lauding the vulture breeding and conservation programme being run by the BNHS in association with the Haryana government, Javadekar said: "With the success of the programme, I believe we would manage to increase the number of vultures in the wild in the next 10 years." He was speaking after launching Asia's first 'Gyps vulture reintroduction programme' under which the captive-bred Gyps vultures would also be later introduced in the wild. While releasing the vultures in pre-release aviaries close to the Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre at Bir Shikar Gah, Javadekar gave one bird the name 'Jodh Singh'. Both the birds were wing-tagged and were leg-ringed for identification. The union minister also handed over 10 captive bred vultures, which have siblings at the centre to Field Director A.K. Srivastava of the Van Vihar National Park in Madhya Pradesh as part of the genetic management of captive vulture numbers. Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar described the breeding and conservation of vultures as a significant step in the direction of saving the species. He said the state government is formulating a scheme to conserve forests in the state. Besides various programmes in the Shivalik hills, the 500-metre area around Mangar Bani has been declared 'no construction zone' by the state. The government is also formulating a scheme to develop a herbal park in 500 acres of land in Morni area. Studies attribute the massive decline of three Gyps species across South Asia to the extensive use of the diclofenac veterinary drug. The vultures that consumed the carcasses of animals treated with diclofenac died with symptoms of kidney failure. The link was firmly established in 2004. In 2006, the drug was banned by the Indian government following a demand by ornithologists. The Britain-based charitable organisation Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is funding three vulture breeding centres in India -- Pinjore in Haryana, Rajabhatkhawa in West Bengal and Rani in Assam -- and one in Nepal. The BNHS breeding centres, including the Pinjore centre, hold the majority of the world's captive stock of the three threatened vulture species. --IANS vg/rn/vt India's close neighbours, Maldives and Sri Lanka have eliminated Lymphatic Filariasis (LF), a disease commonly known as elephantiasis that has been crippling people for decades, the World Health Organisation's (WHO) South-East Asia Region office said in a statement on Friday. However, India is still far away from achieving the target of total elimination, with around six million people still suffering from the disease, spread through mosquito bites. "The achievement by Maldives and Sri Lanka demonstrates the resolve of these countries and the region as a whole to eliminate all neglected tropical diseases," Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia Region, said. Commonly known as elephantiasis, LF occurs when filarial parasites are transmitted to humans through mosquito bites. Infection is usually acquired in childhood which often causes permanent disability later in life. In India, the disease was endemic in 15 States and five Union territories with approximately 600 million populations at risk, according to India's Health Ministry data. Indigenous LF cases were reported from Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Puducherry, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Lakshadweep. From these States/UTs, a total of 250 districts have been identified by the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme to be endemic for filariasis. The WHO has targeted LF elimination by 2020. "The success in Maldives and Sri Lanka follows intensified mosquito control efforts; treatment of the infected population, disability prevention and control; strengthening of surveillance and closely monitoring and evaluating these efforts," the WHO said. "LF is believed to have been endemic in Maldives since the 12th century AD and is traced back to much earlier in Sri Lanka, with mosquitoes transmitting the bug found in abundance across the two countries," it said. --IANS mak/ahm/rn Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Friday assured "strict action" against the perpetrators of the Mathura violence, which claimed 24 lives including those of two policemen. "Uttar Pradesh government will ensure the strictest action under law against the perpetrators in the Mathura incident, speedy prosecution of the accused," tweeted the Chief Minister. Yadav also promised to support the families of the killed police officers. "My deepest condolences go to the families of these bravehearts. My government will ensure all support to the families," another tweet said. The Chief Minister also announced ex-gratia relief of Rs 20 lakh each for the families of the two police officers. On Thursday evening, protesters opened fire at a police team when it went to Jawahar Bagh area in Mathura to get it evicted following the orders of Allahabad High Court. --IANS av/lok/rn/dg A missing seven-year-old boy was found alive and unharmed after searchers spent nearly a week combing dense forest in Japan's Hokkaido island, officials said on Friday. Yamato Tanooka was discovered in a small building at a military exercise ground about 4 km from the spot where he was left alone on May 28 at the roadside for a short time by his parents for being naughty, CNN reported. Takayuki Tanooka, the father of the boy, said he was "very sorry" for what happened to his son and regretted the punishment. "I told my son that I am sorry that I made him go through a very hard situation," Tanooka told Asahi TV on Friday after being reunited with his son. "I never thought the situation would develop in such a way. I thought it would be good for him, but it was too much," he added. Japan's Self-Defence Forces personnel found Yamato on the premises of the military's Kamagatame exercise field early Friday morning, said Satoshi Saito, a spokesperson for the local fire department. An SDF member who found the boy said he was hungry. The member gave him water and a rice ball. The boy told police he reached the building the first night he was missing, local media said. He appeared to be in good condition for someone who had spent seven days without food, Yoshiyuki Sakai, the doctor who examined Yamato, said. --IANS ksk When Prime Minister visits the US on June 7-8 in the course of his five-nation tour starting on Saturday, he will be among the few close world leaders that President Barack Obama is inviting in the last year of his presidency. "President Obama spoke to the Prime Minister and mentioned to him that this year he was inviting some leaders with whom he had a very close and productive working relationship to visit him in the United States," Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said at a pre-departure media briefing here on Friday. This will be Modi's second bilateral visit to the US after his visit in September 2014. Jaishankar said that in many ways it would be a sort of "consolidation visit" after Obama and Modi working on the US-India relationship in the last two years. After departing on Saturday morning, Modi will stop over in Herat in Afghanistan where he will, jointly with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, inaugurate the India-Afghan Friendship Dam, earlier known as Salma Dam, that has been rebuilt with Indian aid. Originally constructed in 1976 on the Hari river basin, the Salma Dam suffered extensive damage during the civil war in Afghanistan. "It was built at a cost of approximately Rs 1,700 crore," Jaishankar said. He said that three turbines on the dam will 42 MW of electricity and the water will irrigate around 75,000 hectares of land. After attending a lunch to be hosted in his honour by Ghani, Modi will leave for Doha, Qatar, where he will meet Qatari Prime Minister Abdullah Bin Nasser Bin Khalifa Al Thani on Saturday evening. He will also visit a camp of Indian workers. Qatar is home to around 630,000 expatriate Indians, many of whom are blue collar workers. Modi will become the first Indian prime minister to visit four Gulf countries after having visited the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Iran. On Sunday, he will begin his engagements in Qatar with a meeting with business leaders following which he will hold a restricted meeting with Emir of Qatar Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani. Jaishankar pointed out that trade between India and the Gulf region stood at $112 billion and two-thirds of India's energy supplies come from that region. Bilateral trade between India and Qatar stands at $10 billion. "It (Qatar) can also be a large economic partner as it has a large sovereign wealth fund," the foreign secretary said. After signing of bilateral agreements and an interaction with the Indian community, Modi will leave for Geneva, Switzerland, on Sunday evening. On June 6, the prime minister will hold a meeting with President of the Swiss Confederation Johann Schneider-Ammann and also interact with business leaders. Jaishankar said that Switzerland was India's fifth largest trade partner and the 11th largest investor in India. The country is strong in the areas of renewable energy and vocational education. After concluding his engagements in Switzerland, Modi will leave for Washington on June 6 where he will meet heads of think tanks. On June 7, he will be hosted for lunch by President Obama at the White House after which he will attend a business meeting. The highlight of Modi's US visit will be his address to a joint sitting of the US Congress on June 8. "Today, the Congress is very much at the heart of our relationship with the United States," Jaishankar said. "It has been very supportive of India," he said. After attending a lunch and a reception at the US Congress and an Indian community reception, Modi will depart for Mexico City on June 8 afternoon where he will hold a meeting with President Enrique Pena Nieto. This will be the first prime ministerial bilateral visit from India to Mexico in 30 years after then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's visit in 1986. Manmohan Singh visited Mexico in 2012 to attend the G20 Summit. Jaishankar said that two-way trade between India and Mexico stood at $6 around billion. Within Asia, India is the largest importer of crude oil from Mexico. India exports pharmaceutical products and automobile parts to Mexico. "We expect the focus of the discussions will be on bilateral cooperation, specially bilateral economic cooperation," Jaishankar said. After attending a dinner that will be hosted for him by President Pena Nieto, Modi will leave for India on June 8. Ahead of embarking on a five-nation tour on Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday that he is looking forward to his visit to Afghanistan where he, along with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, will inaugurate the India-Afghan Friendship Dam, earlier known as Salma Dam, that has been rebuilt with India's aid. "Looking forward to my visit to Afghanistan tomorrow," he said in a series of posts on his Facebook account. "I will join President Ashraf Ghani to inaugurate Afghanistan-India Friendship Dam in Herat. It is a symbol of our friendship and would usher in hope, light up homes, nourish the fertile fields of Herat and bring prosperity to the people of the region," Modi said. "Look forward to meet my friend President Ashraf Ghani and exchange notes on regional situation and setting agenda for bilateral cooperation in the coming period." After inaugurating the dam in Afghanistan, the prime minister will proceed yo Qatar, Switzerland, the US and Mexico. Modi said he would be visiting Qatar at the invitation of the Emir of Qatar. "Look forward to meeting His Highness Sheikh Tamim whose landmark visit to India last year had ushered in a new momentum in our relations," Modi said. "I will have the honour to meet Father Emir who personally guided our relations for nearly two decades." The prime minister said his visit to Qatar would nourish the historical bonds of friendship deeply rooted in people-to-people contacts, energy, trade and investment partnership. Qatar is home to around 630,000 expatriate Indians, many of whom are blue collar workers. "I will interact with the Indian workers at the Workers' Camp and some of the members of over six lakh Indians who have nurtured our relations through their sweat and toil. Will also speak to Qatar business leaders to realise the full potential of our trade and investment cooperation," Modi said. He said, after Qatar, he would he would reach Geneva in the evening of June 5 on a bilateral visit to Switzerland, "our key partner in Europe". "I will hold talks with President (Johann) Schneider-Ammann to deepen our bilateral and multilateral cooperation," he stated. "In Geneva, I will meet prominent businesspersons. Our agenda will be to expand economic and investment ties. I will meet Indian scientists working at CERN. India takes pride in their contribution to exploring new frontiers of science in the service of humanity." The prime minister said he would be reaching Washington DC on a bilateral visit in the evening of June 6 at the invitation of US President Barack Obama. "In my meeting with the President on June 7, we will seek to build upon the progress achieved in providing new vigour and momentum to our strategic partnership in diverse areas," he said. "Am looking forward to address the 40th AGM of the USIBC (US-India Business Council) and meet US business leaders who have, over the past two years, shown renewed confidence in the India." Modi said he would exchange views with US think tanks and attend a ceremony marking the return of Indian antiques. He said would also lay wreaths at the Arlington Memorial. "During my visit to Arlington Cemetery I will lay wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider and Space Shuttle Columbia Memorial, in which we lost an Indian origin astronaut, Kalpana Chawla," he stated. On June 8, he said, he would address a joint meeting of the US Congress. "I thank Speaker Paul Ryan (of the US House of Representatives) for inviting me to speak to Congressmen and Senators," the prime minister said. "During my visit to the US Capitol, I will also interact with members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, many of whom have been valued friends of India and a strong votaries of deepening India-USA ties." He said India and USA were natural partners, "two vibrant democracies that celebrate their diversity and pluralism". "Strong India-USA ties benefit not only our two nations but also the entire world," he said. He also said that he looked forward to meeting Mexiacn President Enrique PeAa Nieto on June 8 during his visit to Mexico, "a privileged partner in the Latin American region". "President PeAa Nieto has ushered in far reaching reforms. I look forward to sharing our experiences... Though short, the visit has a substantial agenda to take our partnership to new heights," Modi added. --IANS ab/vr YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs that on June 3 the USD exchange rate was 478.06 AMD which is an increase of 0.07 drams compared to the previous day. Armenpress reports that the Euro decreased by 2.84 drams forming 532.65 drams. British pound dropped by 1.43 drams forming 688.74 drams, Russian ruble decreased by 0.02 drams reaching to 7.14 drams on June 3. The prices for precious metals are as follows: the price for silver per gram is 245.61 AMD, gold-18,634.57 AMD, and platinum-14,832.03 AMD. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday filed a chargesheet in a Delhi court against suspected Islamic State supporter Mohammed Naser, accused of motivating people to join the terror outfit. According to court sources, the NIA filed the chargesheet before District Judge Amarnath during the in-camera proceedings. The court then listed the matter for June 9. The NIA had booked Naser on charges of involvement in terror and criminal conspiracy of the Indian Penal Code. Naser, 23, a resident of Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu, was arrested on December 12, 2015, after his deportation from Sudan. "Investigation has brought on record the incriminating evidence, including documentary and digital, which include text messages, chats, graphic arts and 'jihadi' literature on IS. The same were recovered from the electronic device as well as social media platforms used by the Naser," said the chargesheet filed in connection with the NIA case dated December 9, 2015, against the IS. The chargesheet has been filed under Section 125 (waging war against any Asiatic power in alliance with the government of India) of the Indian Penal Code and Sections 18 (punishment for conspiracy), 18-B (punishment for recruiting of any person or persons for terrorist act), 38 (offence relating to the membership of a terrorist organisation) and 39 (offence relating to the support given to a terrorist organisation) of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (as amended). The chargesheet further said that the investigation against the other accused persons will continue under Section 173(8) of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC). --IANS rak/tsb/vm Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (JVM) chief Babu Lal Marandi said on Friday that Bihar Chief Minister is the most suitable face as the prime ministerial candidate and he can defeat the BJP in 2019 . Marandi arrived in Patna on a visit and is set to meet on Friday to discuss issues related to development of bordering areas in Jharkhand close to Bihar. "All regional and secular-democratic parties have to unite across the country to ensure defeat of the BJP," Marandi told the media. Marandi's statement came a day after Janata Dal-United (JD-U) general secretary K C Tyagi made it clear that has no prime ministerial ambitions and is only working to unite like-minded parties to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) . "The party has never projected Nitish Kumar as the prime ministerial candidate so far," Tyagi said. According to JD-U leaders, Marandi is likely to join hands with Nitish Kumar in Jharkhand. The Supreme Court on Friday asked Madhya Pradesh Police to pay Rs 500,000 compensation to a mother and her daughter for unlawfully arresting them and taking them from Pune to Bhopal in an alleged dispute over transactions involving computers. An apex court bench comprising Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Shiva Kirti Singh asked the police to pay the compensation to the two for arresting them without following the procedure as laid down under the law. Counsel Sunil Fernandez, who assisted the court as amicus curiae, said the two were arrested in 2014 by the Madhya Pradesh Oolice in Pune and taken to Bhopal by train in handcuffs. He said that police acted on a complaint by a local lawyer and had invoked the Information Technology Act, which was not in order. --IANS pk/kb/vm Six young men travelling in a Ford Ecosport were killed when their SUV rammed into a stationary truck on National Highway 1 in outer Delhi's Badli area early on Friday morning, police said. "We received a call regarding an accident on NH 1 around 4.30 a.m. The Ford Ecosport hit a loaded punctured stationary truck," a senior police official told IANS, adding, "All six people were declared brought dead by the hospital. We are investigating the case." The accident occurred near Outer Delhi's Budhpur Village in Badli area. After the accident the victims were rushed to Babu Jagjivan Ram Hospital but were declared brought dead. All the deceased in their late 20s have been identified as Vivekanand, Amit, Nishant, Vikash, Ansar Ahmed and Deepak Yadav. "Vivekanand, Amit and Ansar Ahmed were residents of Sonia Vihar in east Delhi. Nishant was from Lal Bagh in Loni and Vikash from Ambedkar Nagar in Uttar Pradesh, while Deepak Yadav was from Mahavir enclave in West Delhi," the officer said. It is still unclear where all of them were headed, the officer said. "We have also arrested the truck driver, Shambhu Turi, 35, who fled with his vehicle from the accident site to Bakauli village of Alipur area," the officer added. A case was registered at Badli police station under Section 304A (Causing death by negligence) of the Indian Penal Code. Bodies of the deceased were sent for autopsy and the families were informed. --IANS aks/rn/vm Actress Angana Roy, who has been a part of recent star-studded films like Mahesh Babu-starrer "Srimanthudu" and Udhayanidhi Stalin's "Manithan", feels such films serve as a great platform to garner visibility for other actors in the project. "When you work with a superstar like Mahesh Babu, you're bound to get noticed by a large section of the audience. Even though my portion in the film was limited, I got lot of visibility via the role. Big films give you that kind of visibility," Angana told IANS. In "Manithan", she played Hansika Motwani's sister. "You can look at it in two ways. If you want to reach out to the masses, working in a star-studded films really helps. I think the star power in any project gives one the visibility that other projects don't offer," she said. Angana's latest Telugu release is "Sri Sri", which released in cinemas today. "It's not easy to bag a good role in a male-dominated industry. In 'Sri Sri', where I play a full-fledged role, I consider myself the hero of the film. The story revolves around me and it's in a film like this I get to prove my capability," she said. The film, according to Angana, is a revenge drama based on a Marathi film. "It was an honour to work with veteran actor Krishna, who was Telugu cinema's first superstar. I play his daughter and the film also features his wife Vijaya Nirmala. They treated me like their own daughter and even invited me home," she said. "Sri Sri" features Mahesh Babu's voice-over. He was also supposed to play a cameo. "He got stuck with the shoot and release of 'Brahmotsavam', and hence, he couldn't be part of the project. Instead, the makers roped in his brother-in-law Sudheer Baby has played his part," she said. Angana has a project each in Tamil and Telugu in her kitty. --IANS hp/rb/vm The Trinamool Congress (TMC) will defeat the ruling Left Front in Tripura in the 2018 assembly polls and form the government, party Vice President Mukul Roy said here on Friday after meeting seven disgruntled Congress MLAs. Roy arrived here on Friday morning as an emissary of TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee and held a series of meetings with seven Congress legislators led by suspended leader Sudip Roy Barman and top leaders of the tribal-based Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT). "Trinamool Congress would come to power in the next assembly polls in Tripura in 2018. Ending of Left Front's misrule is a matter of time. TMC would be a major opposition group in the state assembly soon," Roy told reporters before leaving for Kolkata. Currently, Congress is the main opposition group in the state assembly with 10 legislators. Sudip Roy Barman, who was the opposition leader as head of the Congress legislator party (CLP), recently resigned from the post, protesting against Congress-Left electoral alliance in the recently held West Bengal assembly elections. Following Barman's resignation, state Congress working president Ashish Saha, Youth Congress' state chief Sushanta Chowdhury, women's front state head Kalyani Roy and scheduled caste front chief Prakash Chandra Das and many party leaders and workers quit their posts on the same issue. The party high command last month suspended Barman and Youth Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Brar took similar action against 14 Youth Congress leaders including Chowdhury for an indefinite period. Barman, Saha and Chowdhury recently went to Kolkata and met both Mamata Banerjee and Mukul Roy and discussed the possibility of joining TMC. Mukul Roy, who also met INPT leaders, said: "If we voted out the Left Front in West Bengal, we would be successful in Tripura too. Anti-Left alliance would be stronger in Tripura soon to oust the ruling Left parties." Senior Congress leader Gopal Roy, who was recently appointed as the CLP leader by the party's central leadership, said: "Trinamool Congress instead of ideology based has been doing of splitting of other political parties." The TMC retained power in West Bengal in the recent assembly elections, drubbing Congress-Left alliance. --IANS sc/kb/dg Actor Allu Arjun, who is basking in the success of latest Telugu blockbuster "Sarrainodu", will jet off on a holiday to Turkey this weekend. "It will be a week-long trip with his family. Turkey has always been on his mind and he finally made time to visit the place. He leaves over the weekend," a source close to the actor told IANS. Upon his return, Arjun will commence work on his yet-untitled Telugu-Tamil project with filmmaker Linguswamy. Meanwhile, "Sarrainodu", which was dubbed in released in Malayalam as "Yodhavu" last week, is raking in the moolah at the ticket window. Reportedly, the film minted around Rs.5 crore in its first week in Kerala. --IANS hp/rb/vm Indian-American researcher Mainak Sarkar, who allegedly killed his wife and a professor at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) before turning the gun on himself, was a very brilliant student, but reserved, said his school teacher. Sarkar passed his ICSE exam from St. Michael's School in Durgapur town of West Bengal's Burdwan district, before clearing his plus-two from another shcool. He later got an under-graduate degree in aerospace engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology - Kharagpur and then went to the US where he earned a Master's degree at Stanford University. Lily Chowdhury, biology teacher at St. Michael's, described the news of the shootout as "very shocking". "He was a very brilliant student, meritorious student, I should say. He was one of the toppers of the class. He was a pride of our school," said Chowdhury. She remembers Sarkar as "very well behaved". "I knew him till his ICSE. He was reserved, not the very outgoing type. I should not say that he was an introvert. But yes, he was not the type who would go around and make friends very quickly," she said. "We never had any problems with him. So, the news that I got is very shocking," said Chowdhury. One of his friends in Durgapur recalled that Sarkar was good in sports. "He was a good student, a good boy. He was good in sports. But he did not venture out of home often. He was absorbed in his studies," said the friend. Sarkar, 38, fatally shot engineering professor William Klug, 39, in his office at the UCLA on Wednesday. Klug had refused to give him a passing grade. Before killing Klug, he killed his wife Ashley Hasti, who was found dead in Brooklyn Park, in Minnesota. --IANS ssp/ksk/vt Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Washington next week, a senior US administration official has described the US-India relationship as of incredible significance to the world. "The US-Indian relationship is of incredible significance, not only to the region but to the world," US State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner said in his daily media briefing on Thursday. "We have a broad bilateral and multilateral relationship with India and look forward to engaging on all those issues," he said. Describing the breadth of the US-Indian relationship as wide, Toner said it addressed security and has got a strong economic component. "We're looking to build closer relationships across the board with India, because we see it as a vital partner in the region," he said. Modi will visit Washington on June 7-8 during the course of which he will meet US President Barack Obama and address a joint meeting of the US Congress. --IANS ab/pgh/ Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Friday that the US is Tehran's "enemy" and should not be trusted. Despite Iran's fulfilment of its obligations pertaining to the nuclear deal, the US has failed to live up to its commitments, Khamenei said. "If any political trend (group) trusts the US, it will commit a grave mistake," he said. Khamenei made the remarks in a ceremony held to commemorate the 27th death anniversary of the founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Xinhua news agency reported. The ceremony was held at Khomeini's mausoleum in southern Tehran with the attendance of high-ranking officials and foreign diplomats and guests. YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. Preliminary investigation of criminal cases initiated on abuses recorded in the process of purchase of different articles for needs of the armed forces is ongoing in the Department of Investigation of Particularly Important Cases of General Military Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Armenia. Based on the evidence obtained through investigation on June 2 charges were pressed against Major-general Melsik Chilingaryan, Colonels Armen Margaryan and Mher Papyan for abusing power which caused grave consequences. On the same day the investigator submitted a motion to the court to use detention as a pretrial measure against the defendants. Particularly, M. Chilingaryan and A. Margaryan were charged according to the Part 2 of the Article 375 of Republic of Armenia Criminal Code, M. Papyan was charged according to the Part 3 of the Article 375 of Republic of Armenia Criminal Code. There are sufficient evidences that a 145 million AMD worth contract was signed with a private company on the supply of spare parts with artificially high prices. Preliminary investigation is ongoing, large-scale investigatory actions of are conducted to provide the comprehensive, objective and complete investigation of the case. The NIA's clean chit to Pakistan in the Pathankot terror attack was a "monumental failure", Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said on Friday, demanding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should explain "if Pakistan did not have a hand in the attack, then who did". "NIA has given a clean chit to Pakistan in the Pathankot terror attack. Would Narendra Modi and the NSA (National Security Advisor) please tell us, if it was not Pakistan, who were the terrorists who attacked our Pathankot airbase?" Singh asked in Panaji. Terming the development as of monumental failure of diplomacy and internal security handling, Singh demanded: "The Prime Minister and the NSA and Home Minister Rajnath SIngh must come clean on this." The All India Congress Committee general secretary also said that the government did not even know how many terrorists were killed in the attack, citing discrepancy in the figures given by the office of the NSA and the actual dead bodies claimed. --IANS maya/ahm/rn When Murli Deora resigned as minister for corporate affairs in 2011, he gave no reason for stepping down. Weeks later, at his Lodi Estate residence, when asked why he had quit, he exclaimed, as if surprised at being asked the question: Father and son could not both have been ministers. Son Milind Deora was made minister soon thereafter. In Delhi, it is never a good idea to ask a government top boss to show up at The Taj Mahal Hotel on Mansingh Road for a chat. Someone on the way to or back from the assorted Bhawans that house several ministries would inevitably show up to break in on a conversation. So I was apprehensive when Ashok Lavasa, who has just taken over as finance secretary, suggested the House of Ming. I told him what I was expecting. Lets make it a weekday dinner, he advised. Here is a deviously delightful story the late Giani Zail Singh loved to tell us. As chief minister of Punjab, he was concerned that the loaded business community of Patiala didnt contribute to his party. He tasked his favourite khurafati (something between mischievous and resourceful) deputy superintendent of police (DSP) with teaching the Lalas (mostly banias) of Patiala a lesson. The BJP appears to have prepared its mind to seek resignation of Maharashtra Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse, who is facing twin charges of an illicit land deal and alleged connection with underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and also looking at the possibility of removing him in case he doesn't follow the party line. The development took place after Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah seperately over the issue. He also submitted a report to Shah on the charges against Khadse. "I have submitted a factual report on recent developments to Amit Shahji and also held discussions over the issue. Now, the party will direct us on further steps that need to be taken," Fadnavis told reporters here after the meeting. Later, he met the Prime Minister and discussed the situation. Sources in the BJP said that party leadership is of the view that Khadse should resign from his post until he is proven innocent. Fadnavis has been asked to convey this message to Khadse. The BJP has also planned to remove him if he denies to do so. "This matter has come at a time when Modi government is celebrating its two year in office and claiming to have given corruption-free government. Under such circumstances, if Khadse doesn't resign it will send a wrong message among the people," a BJP leader told IANS on the conditions of anonymity. "The party is under moral pressure to ask for Khadse's resignation," he added. Meanwhile, sources also said that Khadse was earlier asked to resign, but he had refused. After his refusal, Shah had summoned Fadnavis to Delhi to discuss the matter. Sources said that Shah and Fadnavis also discussed the possible repercussions in case Khadse doesn't resign and revolts against the party. Khadse, one of the most senior ministers in Maharashtra government, was mired in a fresh controversy this week as a Pune-based businessman accused him, his wife and son-in-law of various irregularities in the purchase of a piece of land. The BJP's ally Shiv Sena and social worker Anna Hazare have been mounting pressure for Khadse's resignation. The Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party has also sought his resignation. Khadse is also facing allegations that mafia don Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar had made calls to him from his landline number in Karachi, where he is believed to be living as a fugitive. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership had brainstormed for days before it picked Saharanpur, the sugar bowl of Uttar Pradesh, to mark two year celebrations of Narendra Modi government at the Centre. The bodies of at least 104 migrants have washed up on a beach in the western Libyan town of Zwara, the navy said today, warning however that the toll could rise. "The number of bodies retrieved Thursday evening was 104 but the toll is expected to rise since an average boat carries 115-125 passengers," said Libyan navy spokesman Colonel Ayoub Qassem. Delhi Women and Child Welfare Minister Sandeep Kumar today ordered termination of two top officials working at a Home in Lajpat Nagar following complaints of child abuse. The Minister has also ordered an FIR against one accused officer under sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act). The move came after Kumar visited Lajpat Nagar Village Cottage Home for children following information that some children had complained that the Home Superintendant misbehaved with them. "It was also brought to the minister's notice that the agitated children had protested against such misbehaviour. On reaching the spot, the minister asked the officials to talk to the children and get their version in presence of women staff members," a senior government official said. "It was reported that the Superintendant had allegedly taken minor girls to an isolated room and tried to physically abuse them," he said. A woman welfare officer was also allegedly involved in misbehaviour along with the superintendant. She was also terminated from service, the official said. "After consulting the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), the minister asked them to register the FIR against the Superintendant under the provisions of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO). He also directed the officials that if the woman welfare officer's role also amounts to an offence, then her name should also be added in FIR," the government said in a statement. Three persons accused of cattle smuggling were assaulted by activists of some Hindu outfits after they intercepted a truck ferrying the animals in Pratapgarh district of Rajasthan, police said today. The three men were rescued by police and arrested on charges of cattle smuggling, while a separate case of assault has been registered against 250 people from Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal and other outfits, they said. The incident occurred on May 31 when activists of Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal and other outfits followed a truck coming from Nimbaheda, Kailash Chandra, SHO, Chhoti Sadadi police station said. The activists assaulted the three men after they found that the truck carried 52 heads of cattle, he said. Four animals died while they were being shifted to a cowshelter irking the activists who set the truck on fire, Chandra said, adding, the rest 48 animals are now in the cowshelter. The three men identified as Rajendra Chaturvedi, the driver, Manohar Kumawat and Dinesh, tried to flee the spot but the activists nabbed and assaulted them. Police, however, managed to free the three from the activists, and arrested them after taking them to a local police station. A separate case was registered against 250 people from the outfits though no one was named in the FIR, the SHO said, adding, all the three accused have been sent to judicial custody. Fifty-six grams of seized heroin, worth Rs 1.8 lakh in the local market, were today taken in the custody of Mizoram Excise and Narcotics department officials and one person apprehended here. Official sources said the accused, identified as Hrangvuana of Khawmawi village in neighbouring Myanmar, was booked under relevant sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985. The heroin was recovered by Central Committee of the Young Mizo Association (YMA)'s anti drug squad volunteers who then informed the Excise authorities. YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. Turkey fails its foreign policy, while domestic issues have become a heavy burden for its authorities, Armenpress reports Armenian MP, member of the Council of the National Congress of Western Armenians Aragats Akhoyan told the reporters. The meeting was also attended by the Vice-President of the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) of Turkey Nazmi Gur and the founder of Green Left Party Ufuk Uras. These are natural developments, as the Turkish society is no longer the same as it was before and the guests sitting with us is the evidence of my words, says the Armenian MP. Speaking about the Bundestag decision to adopt the resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide, Aragats Akhoyan highlighted the fact that Germany took its share of responsibility of the Armenian Genocide. Nazmi Gur, who visits Armenia for the first time, mentioned that there are both domestic and foreign factors influencing Turkish domestic policy. He pointed out the war in Syria above all, as well as the refugee crisis. Besides, he added that the entire region has been involved in wars in the recent years. Turkish domestic atmosphere is always strain and conflicting, HDP Vice President said. Uras mentioned that he visited Armenia a year ago to attend the global forum Against the crime of genocide. Today I noted that the reaction of the Turkish media over the Bundestag decision was extremely negative. But the resolution adopted by the Bundestag condemns the political regime of Turkey, but not the people. Therefore, it is not directed against the nation, Uras added. According to him, it time to realize that the Armenian Genocide is not a standard incident as it was qualified by the Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim . Uras thinks that the decision taken by the Bundestag can accelerate the process for Turkey to face its history. He also hoped that the normalization of Erdogan-Putin relations will foster the normalization of Armenia-Turkey relations. The German Bundestag adopted the Armenian Genocide recognition resolution, which is entitled "Remembrance and commemoration of the genocide of Armenians and other Christian minorities in 1915 and 1916". Only one MP voted against the adoption, and one abstained. Speakers were unanimously stressing the need of facing the past, also for contributing the reconciliation between Armenia and Turkey. The Bundestag voiced the crime of the Ottoman Turkey, and stressed this step is neither an accusation nor a claim, but a tribute to the memory of the victims. Seven persons, including a newborn, were killed and one other was injured when an ambulance collided head-on with a truck on NH 31 in Bihar's Purnea district on Friday. Purnea Deputy SP R K Sah said that the incident occurred when an ambulance in which the victims were travelling in collided head-on with a truck coming from opposite direction near Mewalal chowk on NH 31 of the district. Five persons, who were killed on the spot, included a pregnant woman along with two other women, while two others - identified as ambulance owner Navin Kumar and its driver Vishal Kumar- succumbed to their injuries while being taken to the hospital. The eighth occupant of the car was injured and is currently under treatment at Purnea Sadar Hospital, he added. Sah said that ambulance was carrying a pregnant lady who was returning to Forbesganj after medical check up at Bhagalpur when the incident occurred. The new born child of the woman, having been born on board the vehicle, was among the seven deceased. Police seized the truck while its driver managed to escape. A seven-member-committee headed by the Principal of SMS Medical College has been set up to negotiate with the resident doctors of Rajasthan who are on a strike from May 30 in protest against the decision to send their copies for evaluation to other states. State Health Minister Rajendra Rathore visited the SMS hospital to review the situation and gave necessary directions to the hospital staff to manage things due to the strike. He also held a meeting with senior officials and set up a committee headed by Dr U S Agrawal, Principal SMS Medical College, to have a dialogue with the agitating doctors, a medical department spokesperson said. The minister gave directions to the officials to ensure that patients do not face any problem due to the strike. "All scheduled operations should also take place and doctors who are on duty should work with full capacity to minimise the impact of the strike," he said. Principal Secretary (Medical Education) Mukesh Sharma, Special Secretary Dr Prithvi, Mission Director National Health Mission Navin Jain and other officials were present in the meeting. Nearly 4000 resident doctors are on strike since Monday night against the decision to send their copies for evaluation to other states affecting medical services at government college hospitals. A seven-year-old boy missing since being abandoned in a bear-inhabited forest in northern Japan as a punishment nearly a week ago was found alive today and reunited with his parents, officials said. The boy, apparently unharmed and in good health, was discovered at a military base. Reports said he had taken shelter in a hut and found a tap to drink from but was hungry and immediately asked for food when he was discovered. "A Self-Defence Force official who was on a drill found a boy whose age appeared to be seven," said Tomohito Tamura, spokesman for police in northern Hokkaido island. "There was no conspicuous external injury, and the boy introduced himself as Yamato Tanooka," he told AFP, adding that the boy's parents were reunited with him and confirmed he was their son. The child's sobbing father related the emotional reunion in a television interview. "I apologised to Yamato," his father said in a phone interview aired on TV Asahi, adding that his son nodded in response. "First of all, it's really great he is safe," the father said through his tears. "I can't find words. It's good." Self-Defense Forces spokesman Manabu Takehara told AFP that the boy "looked in good health" but was taken to hospital by helicopter for a check-up as a precaution. He had been missing since Saturday after his parents said they made him get out of their car on a mountain road as punishment for misbehaving -- actions that have seen them severely criticised. The parents originally told police their son had got lost while they were out hiking to gather wild vegetables, but later admitted they became angry and ordered him onto the road because he had thrown stones at cars and people. The local Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper said the boy had told police that on Saturday night he walked some distance to the corrugated metal hut on the military base -- located some 5.5 kilometres northeast of where he went missing. An unidentified Self-Defence Force official told national broadcaster NHK that there were two buildings on the perimeter of an exercise field, and that when the soldier opened the door of one of them he found the boy inside. "When the official asked 'are you Yamato?' the boy said 'Yes, I am'," he said. Another military official told NHK that the boy was hungry so the soldier who found him gave him something to eat. Nippon TV said there was a tap outside the hut and that the boy had been drinking water from it while he sheltered there. Japanese media interrupted regular programmes to broadcast of the stunning development in the case which has drawn huge media attention -- and criticism of the parents' actions. Nine trekkers from Delhi, stranded in remote Bara Bhangalarea of Kangra district, could not be rescued today as inclement weather did not allow helicopter sorties. A chopper was sent to the area in the morning but it could not land due to strongwinds and bad weather and returned, Deputy Commissioner of Kangra Ritesh Chauhan said. "More sorties were not possible as wind velocity was much more in the afternoon and attempts would be made to rescue the trekkers tomorrow," he said. The trekkers, who had gone missing in the high hills, were tracked through satellite phone yesterday and shifted to rest house in Bara Bhangal but could not be airlifted as the choppercould not land due to bad weather. "The trekkers are stranded for past two days and we would make fresh bid tomorrow to airlift them, subject to weather conditions," Chauhan said. The DC said that all the trekkers are safe and he had spoken to them through satellite phone. Located at an altitude of 2,800 metres in Dhauladhar mountain ranges, Bara Bhangal is one of the favourite places for foreign and Indian trekkers. The standard trekkers had reached Bara Bhangal through Manali-Bara Bhangal route. Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), an independent body that provides data on newspaper and magazine circulation, today said it is foraying into measurement of digital properties' readership. "This is the first such initiative to offer industry-accredited digital measurement. The service, which goes live from third quarter of 2016, fills an important gap for digital property owners by offering them precise audience metrics," it said in a statement. The digital measurement is backed by Nielsen's technology and will provide end-to-end measurement across devices. "The rate at which spends are shifting to digital, it has now become imperative to have a transparent system for understanding digital audiences, whether they are accessing information on websites or apps, from their PCs, tablets or mobile phones. "This digital measurement service will add to ABC's existing circulation audit service for publications. We are not restricting ourselves to the print publisher fraternity, but will extend the service to include digital property owners across sectors," ABC Chairman Shashidhar Sinha said. Across media segments, digital media is witnessing the highest year-on-year growth of nearly 30 per cent. While there are some marketers who have allocated over 20 per cent of their marketing budget on digital media, nearly all brand marketers are looking to spend more. The solution deployed by Nielsen measures audiences consistently across PCs and mobile phones and will provide the media industry with highly accurate measurement of online text content, as well as key performance metrics such as reach, frequency and demographics. "We know it is essential to understand digital consumption patterns to truly understand today's consumer. For the digital property owners community, the industry-backed numbers will lend credibility and provide a massive boost to their growing digital presence. "This sophisticated solution will address fragmentation across niche digital properties, user segments of all sizes and most importantly, a complete view across devices - giving advertisers and agencies a comprehensive picture and measure of return on investment for their digital spends," Nielsen India Region Managing Director Prashant Singh said. Relatives of late Malayalam Actor Kalabhavan Mani today met Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and sought CBI probe into the death. Ramakrishnan, Mani's younger brother, said they met the Chief Minister to press for a CBI investigation into the actor's death as they were not satisfied with the probe being carried out by the state police. The 45-year-old actor, who had essayed various roles in south Indian films, had died under suspicious circumstances on March 6 this year at his farmhouse in Thrissur. While a lab at Kochi had found traces of chlorpyrifos, a toxic pesticide, in his viscera sample, a Hyderabad lab had recently stated that traces of methyl alcohol were found in his blood. Mani was undergoing treatment for a liver ailment at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, when the end came. After bagging the strategically important Chabahar Port in Iran, the government is looking eastwards and is in discussions with Bangladesh to develop a similar facility in Paira. India Ports Global, the joint venture between state-run JNPT and Kandla Port for overseas ports, is interested in the expressions of interest which have been invited for construction of Paira/Payra port in Bangladesh, the Shipping Ministry said in a release today. "...Talks are on between our Foreign Ministry and them (Bangladesh). Dhaka also wants us. We have sent a team there for studies," Union Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari told reporters, but did not disclose the port's location. A media report in February had said China had evinced keen interest in building the Paira port. In what was taken as a reflection of the growing Indo-Bangladeshi ties, Dhaka had cancelled the deal and was about to award it to New Delhi. The Narendra Modi government has been talking about an 'Act East' policy, as against the previous regime's 'Look East' policy, and the moves to build maritime infrastructure in Iran in the West and Bangladesh in the East seem to be part of that approach. The move can also be construed as a reply to the aggressive play by China, which is developing a port in Colombo and Gwadar in Pakistan. "The Shipping Ministry is closely following the developments in regard to the Paira port so as to secure our national and strategic interests," the release added. It can be noted that China has embarked on what is referred to as 'string of pearls' strategy, under which it is creating such assets across the circumference of the Indian Peninsula in the Indian Ocean Rim region. Gadkari's comments come days after New Delhi secured a deal to build the strategic Chabahar port in Iran with an initial capex commitment of USD 500 million, which will help serve our interests in the Gulf country coming out of sanctions, and in the broader region as well. The minister today said an immediate benefit of developing the Chabahar port will be cheaper gas availability, which can help reduce the urea subsidy bill by Rs 45,000 crore. There is also a possibility of investments of up to Rs 1 trillion in the Chabahar port region jointly by the ministries of petroleum and fertilisers, and the private sector, Gadkari said. He said Chabahar will benefit both the state-run Kandla Port Trust as well as Mundra Port in Gujarat through higher cargo volumes. The Mundra Port is owned by the Adani Group. The minister said his ministry is also planning to build a major port at Belekeri near Karwar in Karnataka, which will entail an investment of Rs 4,000 crore. Work on the ports at Wadhvan off the Dahanu coast in Maharashtra, Sagar in West Bengal and Colachel in Tamil Nadu will begin this year, he said. At present, the country has a dozen state-run major ports and is targeting to add eight more, including these four. Without giving the exact locations or investment details, Gadkari said of the remaining projects, two ports each will come up in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, and one in Karnataka, which will be a major port. He said the government is planning to channel investments of Rs 12 trillion into shipping, ports and allied sectors over the next five years, which will create 10 million direct and indirect jobs. To smoothen the finances for these ambitious projects, Gadkari today met top bankers in the financial capital but refused to elaborate. At the state level, Gadkari said Tamil Nadu will get Rs 90,000 crore investments in ports, Karnataka and Goa will attract Rs 10,000 crore investment each, and over Rs 95,000 crore investments will be made in Maharashtra. He also said a meeting of heads of major ports is scheduled tomorrow in Goa to deliberate on various issues affecting them. On Mumbai port land redevelopment, he exuded confidence of presenting a draft plan before representatives of the local people and the state administration over the next 20 days. He added the Mumbai Port Trust will be making a presentation on the same before the ministry in eight days. Gadkari said his ministry is targeting to increase the profits of state-run Dredging Corporation, Shipping Corporation and Cochin Shipyard to Rs 8,000 crore this fiscal, from Rs 6,000 crore registered in 2015-16. The opposition AIADMK today appealed to the new Lt Governor Kiran Bedi to come out with a firm measure to ensure that a new government was formed in the Union Territory. "It is indeed a sad commentary on democracy that despite lapse of more than 15 days since the results of May 16 assembly polls were announced, Congress could not form the Ministry," AIADMK's legislature party leader A Anbalagan told reporters here. He urged Lt Governor Kiran Bedi to come out with a firm step to ensure that a new government was formed here. "She can in the alternative ask the next single largest party to go in for formation of the ministry," he suggested. "We are not in a position to do our democratic duties in our constituencies as we are yet to be sworn in as members of the House," he said. Anbalagan said he would lead an AIADMK delegation to meet the Lt Governor and seek her intervention to break the deadlock. Vice President tonight left for home after concluding his five-day visit to Morocco and Tunisia during which he met the top leadership of the two countries and discussed a range of issues of mutual interest. On the last day of his final leg, Ansari today addressed a gathering at the Tunisian Institute of Strategic Studies and called on Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi. Ansari also met with two influential political leaders - President of the Ennahda Party Rached Ghannouchi and Mufti of the Republic of Tunisia Othmane Battikh. Before leaving for home, Ansari also visitedCarthage Ruins situated on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis and Sidi Bou Said - a town located 20 kms from the capital. Secretary (Economic Relations) Amar Sinha said during his visit to Tunisia, the Vice President focussed on India's role in Tunisia whose leadership recalled the visit of former prime minister Indira Gandhi. India's past, including role of Mahatma Gandhi in the freedom struggle and visit of Indira Gandhi to North African region in 1984 has a lot of influence here, Sinha told reporters. He said that the main challenge for Tunisia is to revive its tourism industry. Currently, tourists from Europe visit the region, he said, adding that efforts would be made for Indian tourists to visit the region. Sinha said that India would also help Tunisia in the industry sector. Already Tata, Mahindra and Dabur have started taking interest in the region, he added. He said that Indian doctors and health institutions could also explore setting up their units in Tunisia which has lot to offer in the health sector. Besides the pharma sector can also explore the region to capitalise on those coming to Tunisia for treatment. Sinha said that during interactions, need was stressed for higher level of meetings at the political level. India will like to explore the markets of Tunisia and Morocco, he said, adding that there is a lot of scope for Indian companies in this region. He said that India can also learn from Moroccan capital Rabat as far as cleanliness is concerned. In Rabat, Ansari met Moroccan Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane and others including the Speakers of the two houses. India and Morocco signed two MoUs on cultural cooperation and institutional training. The Vice President and the Prime Minister also launched the India-Morocco Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Andhra Pradesh government today appointed senior IPS officer Anjana Sinha as the state-level officer to deal with crime against women. Sinha is an Additional Director General of Police-rank officer and an order regarding her appointment was issued here this evening. Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu had first promised during his 2000 km foot march in 2012-13, in the aftermath of the Nirbhaya incident in New Delhi, to appoint an Inspector General of Police-rank officer exclusively for prevention of crime against women. After assuming office as Chief Minister on June 8, 2014, he repeated his election-eve promise many a time at various meetings in the last two years. On International Women's Day this year, Naidu made a statement in the Assembly on women empowerment and reiterated his Government's intention to appoint an IG-rank officer at the state level and a Deputy Superintendent of Police-rank officer at the district level to deal with crime against women. Nearly three months after the Chief Minister's statement in the House, Chief Secretary Satya Prakash Tucker issued an order appointing Sinha, a 1990-batch IPS officer, for the state-level job. YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. The world must face the historical reality and recognize the Armenian Genocide. It also should not wait for a century for reacting to what is going on in Artsakh. The world must do it immediately, Spanish writer and author of 4 books on Armenian themes Gonzalo Guarch told the reporters. I saw the happiness among Armenians over the Bundestag adoption of the resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide. The recognition of 1915 events as genocide by Germany is of key importance. It should be regarded as a progress, as nothing could have happened. But here I would like to add something else: if after years Germany remains a country that has merely recognized the genocide I will say that it is too little, Armenpress reports Gonzalo Guarch saying. Germany accepts its part of guilt 101 years later. Is that enough to face only historical realities? Isnt there a necessity to give real assessments to what is happening in Karabakh? For example for the murder of civilians in Talish. Or 100 years is necessary for that? To this remark of the journalist the Spanish writer noted that the reality is always unjust. Not only Germany but the entire Europe must react to all that is happening in Artsakh. We know that young people are killed on the border and we all know that Azerbaijan does not respect the ceasefire and many know about the deep ties between Turkey and Azerbaijan. When one understands and does not initiate anything, it is called inaction. Today the European politics is in the phase of inaction, Gonzalo Guarch said. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan awarded him with the Movses Khorenatsi medal in 2013. He has written 4 books on Armenian theme and has advocated the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has garnered support of the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community which includes Indian Americans, as she ventures to California aiming to snatch the Democratic presidential nomination from rival Bernie Sanders next week. California comprises of a large Asian-American population. It has the largest Indian-American population outside the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. "Asian Americans' growing influence and political power is poised to play a major role in this crucial election. Secretary Clinton has meaningfully engaged with our community and she has strongly advocated for issues of importance to AAPI families, ranging from environmental justice to gun control," Dilawar Syed, co-founder and vice chairman of Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) Victory Fund said. "We repudiate the racial, ethnic and religious prejudices espoused by the presumptive Republican nominee. By mobilising the AAPI electorate across the state on June 7th, we will ensure Secretary Clinton's victory in California," he said. "Presidential candidates must do more than pay lip service to get the support of the AAPI community," Shekar Narasimhan, chairman of AAPI Victory Fund said in a release. He added the Victory Fund will also ensure that Clinton follows her words when she is elected as the next US President. Clinton's campaign is the first to include an AAPI outreach director to specifically target our community and she has also shown her support for the community by both hosting and attending events in Washington and Los Angeles, Tung Nguyen, co-founder of AAPI Victory Fund said. He said this unprecedented level of outreach will continue to resonate with the community, especially on shared policies and priorities. Assam's rivers and wetlands which crisis cross the state may soon lose the much needed protection under the Central Government's new Draft Wetland Rules 2016, a consultation meeting said today. To analyse the impact of the new Draft Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules 2016 on wetlands of Assam, environment groups Aaranyak and ActionAid jointly organised a consultation in Guwahati. Comparing the Wetland Rules 2010 with the Draft Wetland Rules 2016, the consultation found that the new Wetland Rules offers very few protective measures to Assam's wetlands when compared to the 2010 Rules. The consultation suggested a complete revision of the Draft Wetland Rules 2016 to ensure better Wetland management and conservation in Assam. Aaranyak's Wetlands expert Dr Partha J Das stated, "Many important provisions which were included in 2010 have now been removed from the new Draft rules which is alarming from an environmental perspective. For instance, rivers have now been completely excluded from the definition of 'Wetlands'. " Today's consultation recommended that at least those parts of a river or rivers directly connected to wetlands should also be recognised as part of the Wetland ecosystem and provided protection. It was also recommended that in the context of Assam's wetlands, the connecting channels must be accorded similar protection, maintenance and restoration. The new Draft rules fail to mention the list of prohibited activities which were part of Wetland Rules 2010, which must be rectified immediately with the re-inclusion of the list to protect Assam's wetlands, Das said. Stating under the Draft Wetland Rules 2016 only selective Wetland would be accorded protection, the meeting was of the view that the new Rules are therefore considerably weaker when compared to the 2010 version with an added Clause which states that 'under special circumstances' even these protection may be nullified. "Such a clause can easily open a portal of exploitation of Wetlands in Assam, and it is of utmost importance that under no circumstance is the protection diluted," he added. The key note presentation was delivered by Prasanna Barua of Assam Remote Sensing Application Centre, Department of Science and Technology, Government of Assam. Barua provided an overview of the current status of wetlands in Assam and highlighted the challenges in wetland conservation. The conglomeration of environmentalists, academicians, lawyers and activists gathered during the event also proposed the introduction of a Wetland Conservation Act, which would be much more effective than the newly proposed Wetland Rules. Traditional community rights also have to be retained, but without compromising on the delicate eco-system of existing Wetlands, the meeting averred. "Assam has more than 3000 wetlands under different categories and these wetlands are part and parcel of the larger eco-system. Gradual and changing 'development' work has led to degradation of important wetlands which also negatively effects communities around Wetlands", commented ActionAid Programme Manager Swapan Singha. "We urge the Central Government to consider how the new Rules will impact the communities and make these new Rules to be people-centric while keeping in mind protection of the larger eco-system of Wetlands," Singha said. The meeting decided to forward to the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest the recommendations made during the consultation. Aaranyak is a registered society working in the North East region for the past 26 years towards nourishing the area's natural heritage to secure the flora and fauna in the region known as one of the biodiversity hot spots of the world. Against the backdrop of Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar's remarks against Nigerians, the Congress today underlined the need to exercise caution before singling out any country and said an 'intemperate' remark could have an adverse bearing on the international relations. Parsekar had stated that people are "annoyed" with Nigerians because of their "different attitude" and that his government was looking for a place to detain foreigners illegally staying in Goa. His remarks came at a time when a number of African nationals were attacked in a spate of incidents in Delhi. "We cannot single out a person or a nation. We need to be very careful when we make a statement. We need to be very careful in these days of globalisation," said Leader of Opposition in the Goa Legislative Assembly Pratapsinh Rane. He said targeting a particular country is not right. "We have so many Indians residing in Africa. I agree that a law breaker is a law breaker and should be punished, but you cannot single out a person," the former chief minister said. Advising caution, he said, "We need to be responsible about what we speak. Whatever is being built up (in the field of international relations) can be spoiled overnight." Before Parsekar, state Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar had sparked a row when he said that Nigerians are "problems not only in the coastal state but also across the country. Belgium will next week examine France's request for the extradition of Mohamed Abrini, who has been linked to both the Paris and Brussels attacks, federal prosecutors said today. A court hearing will be held in Brussels on January 9 to "examine the request" to transfer Abrini from Belgium to France, the federal prosecutor's office said in a statement. In March, Belgian police arrested the 31-year-old Abrini, a key suspect in the Paris attacks last November 13 in which 130 people were killed. He also turned out to be the so-called "man in the hat" seen in CCTV footage with two bombers shortly before they staged the Brussels airport assault on March 22. The bombings, combined with another an hour later at a Brussels metro station, killed a total of 32 people. The AAP Government will inaugurate its newly-constructed Bhim Rao Ambedkar Medical College in North-West Delhi's Rohini area on June 12 and the admission process to 100 seats will start from the upcoming session in September this year. Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain said that admission will be done through National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET). Jain also said that admission to other medical colleges - Safdarjung, Hindu Rao and Army College, will also be done through NEET. Last month, the Arvind Kejriwal government had announced that uniform medical entrance examination NEET will be applicable in all medical colleges except AIIMS. Chinese authorities have removed the Bible story from secondary school text books, days after its inclusion in the curriculum sparked a controversy in the communist nation. The co-compiler of a Chinese textbook used in Beijing secondary schools said the "controversial Bible story" has been removed from the book after facing criticism that it spread Western values, state-run Global Times reported on Friday. The Beijing Academy of Educational Science (BAES), one of the textbook's two compilers and a textbook selection consultant for capital education authorities, said it had removed the content from the textbook and schools will begin to use the revised version in the upcoming fall semester, the report said. The BAES has included extracts from the Bible's Book of Genesis in its Chinese language textbook for first-year middle school students. The ruling Communist Party of remained largely atheistic and discourages its members from practicing any religion though it permits practice of religion in general. While before the advent of Communist rule in 1949 was predominantly influenced by Buddhism, which was brought to the country by the Chinese monks like Xuan Zang during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), Christianity has taken deep routes in the country in recent decades despite restrictions. Buddhism still remained a dominant faith in but Christianity is regarded as the fastest growing religion. Unofficial estimates say China has over 65 million Christians including Catholics, Protestants as well as other church groups. China has over 21 million Muslims who included Uyghurs in Xinjiang and Hui community in Xinjiang and Ningxia provinces. The Bible story in the text book triggered heated discussion online, as some netizens questioned why the Christian content appeared in a textbook in a secular country. An employee from BAES previously told the Beijing Youth Daily that they had included the Bible story to broaden students' horizons by introducing them to Western mythology. Columnist Wang Xiaoshi published a commentary saying that the textbook violates China's Education Law, which mandates that China adopt the principle of separation of education and religion, the report said. BJP has demanded a CBI probe into the attack on former Khanpur MLA Kunwar Pranav Singh Champion's House in Roorkee. Accusing ruling Congress leaders of instigating a mob to indulge in arson, BJP has submitted a memorandum to the Governor in this regard. Champion is one of the nine MLAs who had rebelled against the Harish Rawat government, plunging the state into a political crisis. He has since joined the BJP. A BJP delegation, led by the party's state unit chief Ajay Bhatt, called on Governor Krishna Kant Paul here last evening. In the memorandum submitted to the Governor, the delegation accused certain Congress leaders of provoking an angry mob to attack Champion's house and indulge in arson by torching vehicles parked there. The BJP delegation alleged that the Chief Minister was "acting out of political vendetta to damage those who had revolted against him". Citing a threat to opposition leaders' lives under the Rawat government, the delegation demanded strengthening the security of all the BJP leaders, including Champion, and dismissal of the government. Thirty-two people, including 12 police personnel, were injured on Wednesday as an alleged forcible evacuation of a scrap dealer's shop and desecration of a religious book kept there by an uncle of Champion and his men sparked tension between two communities in Landhaura area of Roorkee. The groups clashed with each other and allegedly indulged in arson at the former MLA's residence, prompting the police to intervene. Thirteen persons have been arrested in connection with the incident, including Champion's uncle Rajkumar Krishna Singh and section 144 imposed in the area. Britain's UKIP leader Nigel Farage said today he would lead a flotilla up the Thames to campaign for Brexit, seizing momentum after Prime Minister David Cameron endured a bruising television debate. Farage, who heads the UK Independence Party, said he would board a trawler at the head of a 60-boat procession which will sail to the Houses of Parliament on June 15 in a mass protest organised by campaign group "Fishing for Leave". "It will be big, visual and dramatic, and the demand will be clear -- we want our waters back," he told LBC radio, arguing that Britain's fishing industry was in decline because of European Union quotas. The announcement came amid another busy day of campaigning by both sides ahead of the June 23 vote, as polls suggest the "Leave" campaign is getting a boost with its focus on cutting back on EU migration to Britain. Cameron visited a brewery to make the case for staying in, after a challenging performance in a live question and answer session on television yesterday evening. His justice secretary Michael Gove, who backs Brexit, is due to face a similar grilling on Sky later. Guardian/ICM polls published on May 31 showed the "Leave" vote with 52 per cent compared with 48 per cent for "Remain" in a surprise result that immediately sent the pound sinking against the euro and dollar. The "poll of polls" average compiled by the independent WhatUKThinks website, however, still puts the "Remain" camp just ahead with 51 per cent when undecided voters are excluded. In the first live broadcast event of the campaign, Cameron was accused by a 22-year-old student of "scaremongering" and running a "complete shambles" of a campaign. Facing an often hostile audience, the prime minister warned that "Leave" would be an act of "economic self-harm" "Cameron savaged as voters revolt," read a front-page headline in the Daily Telegraph, while the Daily Mirror said he "took far more blows... Than he would like" and The Sun described it as a "tense clash". But the "Remain" camp pressed home his message today with the latest in a string of orchestrated warnings by business leaders about the economic risk of a Brexit. At an event with finance minister George Osborne, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, said leaving the EU could put at risk some of the US bank's 16,000 jobs in Britain. IAS officer Neeraj K Pawan and Rajasthan Administrative Service officer Anil Kumar Agrawal, who were arrested in connection with a bribery case involving Rs 1.5 crore, have been suspended by the state government. The Personnel department issued the orders last night citing their arrest as the "reason" for the suspension. Pawan, a 2003- batch IAS officer, and RAS officer Agrawal were arrested on May 30 by the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) of Rajasthan. Both the accused officials are currently in police custody. Earlier, ACB had conducted raids at 18 premises of five persons including Pawan, one Ajeet Soni, two other officers and a storekeeper in connection with an alleged racket in National Rural Health Mission (NHRM). Pawan was removed as the Commissioner of Agriculture department. Jammu and Kashmir has witnessed over 26,000 cases of cancer in last five years with lung cancer being the most prevalent due to smoking, the Legislative Assembly was informed today. "It is a fact that there has been an increase in the number of cancer patients in the state from last five years. 4556 cases of cancer were reported in year 2011, 4848 in 2012, 5068 in 2013, 5568 in 2014 and 6358 in 2015," Minister for Health and Medical Education, Bali Bhagat said in reply to a question by PDP MLC Firdous Tak in Legislative Council here. He said the summer capital Srinagar reported 898 cancer cases in 2015, the highest in any district of the state, while the winter capital Jammu witnessed 853 such cases. Giving details of other districts, the minister said that in the same year 283 cases were reported from Ganderbal, 452 in Budgam, 451 in Pulwama, 573 in Baramulla, 263 in Kulgam, 489 in Anantnag, 169 in Shopian, 168 in Bandipora, 273 in Kupwara, 205 in Rajouri, 139 in Doda, 172 in Ramban, 118 in Udhampur, 265 in Kathua, 169 in Samba, 113 in Kishtwar, 117 in Reasi and 126 in Poonch. "The lowest number of cases has been reported in Leh and Kargil districts of Ladakh region where it stands at 62," Bhagat said. He said the lung cancer, throat cancer, gastro-internal cancer and lymphomain have been found dominant among males, while in females it was cervical cancer, breast cancer, throat cancer, gastro-internal cancer and lung cancer. "Lung cancer has become the most prominent cancer in the state as the prevalence of the smoking has gone up," he said. Bhagat said the diagnostic facilities and consultation are provided at reasonable costs to patients and in cases of BPL special concession is being provided by the hospitals on merit basis. "Every effort is being made by the Government to help the cancer patients living below poverty line and such patients are being given free investigation, and essential drugs are being kept available in hospitals," he said, adding the radiotherapy treatment is provided free of cost. The Minister said Union Health and Family Welfare has sanctioned two State Cancer Institute's each at Government Medical College Jammu and SKIMS Srinagar at a cost of Rs 120 crore each. "Besides, three tertiary cancer care centres are also being sanctioned by Government of India for Kupwara, Kishtwar and Udhampur districts to strengthen the medical facilities for cancer patients ," he added. YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. Most of the Western partners admit that there should be no excuses to delay the defeat of Islamic State, Armenpress reports, citing TASS, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the 360 television channel. "Dialogue is rather intensive," he said, adding that the situation in Syria is still difficult. "A key thing is that we are confident that more efficient anti-terrorism measures are needed, while all other things are of secondary importance. It is vital to ensure humanitarian access, to observe the ceasefire regime," he said. "Terrorism is a common threat and most of our Western partners admit in our contacts that there should be no excuses to delay the defeat of Islamic State," Lavrov stressed, adding that the United States is falling under the "influence of those who seek to advance pre-conditions." CBI has arrested a Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) of the Delhi government for allegedly receiving Rs 50,000 from a father-son duo for allowing their illegal constructions in Naharpur village here. Rahul Aggarwal, a 2012-batch Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands Civil Service (DANICS) officer, posted at Saraswati Vihar along with a alleged tout Sandeep and builders Vijendra and Ashwani Yadav were arrested by the agency in the alleged bribery case late last night. The agency carried out searches at the residence of Aggarwal in Pitampura but it had to encounter his wife, a radiologist, who allegedly blocked the entry of the team in the flat as she threw away her diamond jewellery on the terrace, CBI sources claimed. They said the agency after lot of hard work managed its entry to gather all the valuable pieces from near a water tank where they were thrown to seize them. Aggarwal, a Chemical engineer, joined DANICS in 2012 and very soon was given the first posting as SDM in the Saraswati Vihar, near Rohini area, in 2015. It is alleged that Sandeep used to get him information about illegal constructions, encroachments by shops in the area on the basis of which notices were issued to erring persons, they said. Sometimes the notices were allegedly delivered by Sandeep himself at the behest Aggarwal, CBI claimed. After getting information, the agency nabbed Sandeep who was collecting Rs 50000 from Yadavs for allowing their alleged illegal constructions of shops at Naharpur village. Sandeep then led CBI to Aggarwal claiming that he was collecting bribe on his behalf, they said. "Searches were conducted at the residential premises of SDM which led to recovery of cash of Rs Five lakh (approx) and incriminating documents. Certain official files along with cash of Rs 1.5 lakh (approx.) were recovered from the residential premises of the tout (middleman)," the CBI spokesperson said here today. "Check on my cat," was the last message left by Mainak Sarkar, the Indian-American gunman who shot dead his wife and his former college professor before turning the gun on himself, Los Angles police said. When detectives arrived at professor William Klug's office in the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) on Wednesday morning, they found two bodies besides a note from Sarkar listing his home address in Minnesota and asking someone to "check on my cat." "Immediately we were highly suspicious," LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said on 38-year-old Sarkar's note. "That made me uneasy about what we would find when we got to Minnesota," he said. The LAPD worked with the FBI and Minnesota authorities and served a search warrant at Sarkar's home, Beck said. Inside the home, they found extra ammunition and a box for one of two pistols found at UCLA, as well as the three- name "kill list," that included the names of Klug, another UCLA professor and Ashley Hasti, he said. Authorities then went to the woman's (Hasti's) home in Brooklyn Park, a Minneapolis suburb, and found her body, Brooklyn Park Police Deputy Chief Mark Bruley said. "We have multiple detectives working on this case," Bruley said. Beck said it appeared the woman had been dead of a gunshot wound for "maybe a couple of days." The woman killed by Sarkar is thought to be Ashley Hasti. Local records confirmed that Hasti was married to Sarkar on June 14, 2011. It was unclear if they remained married at the time of the shooting, the Times said. Sarkar drove some 3,200 km from Minnesota to Los Angeles, according to Beck, but it was unclear how long he was in the city before Wednesday's shooting. Police are now searching for the grey 2003 Nissan Sentra Sarkar, an alumni of the IIT-Kharagpur, drove from Minnesota to California, Beck said. On Wednesday, a "heavily armed" Sarkar carried a backpack, two semiautomatic pistols and extra magazines to Klug's fourth-floor office, where he fatally shot the professor before turning the gun on himself, Beck said. Sarkar, he said, "was certainly prepared to engage multiple victims." A note from Sarkar included language about the second professor, Beck said. "We believe that he went to kill two faculty from UCLA," Beck said. "He was only able to locate one." The second professor, whom Beck did not name, was not on campus at the time of the shooting. Police have been in contact with that person, who "is fine," he said. That professor "knew Sarkar had issues with him," Beck said. Klug, 39, was a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Sarkar had accused him of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else, police said. Ahead of the 27th anniversary of Tiananmen square crackdown, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers has asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to lift restrictions on public discussion of the protests and release individuals detained for commemorating the event. "In addition to allowing uncensored public discussion of the and the government's response, we ask that you must end efforts to retaliate against those who participated in the protests. Particularly the former student leaders and those, such as the Tiananmen Mothers group, seeking information about family members who died or disappeared on or after June 3-4, 1989," the lawmakers said. The letter was signed by Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) Chairman - Chris Smith, Co-chair - Senator Marco Rubio and CECC Commissioners - Senator Tom Cotton, Senator Ben Sasse, Representative Timothy Walz, Representative Randy Hultgren and Representative Marcy Kaptur. CECC was created by Congress in 2000 to monitor human rights and the development of the rule of law in China, and to submit an annual report to the President and the Congress. In the letter, the lawmakers said they have grave concerns about those who remain imprisoned or detained in connection with their attempts to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the . "We urge their immediate and unconditional release," the lawmakers said in the letter dated June 2. "The spirit of the 1989 protests, the sacrifices made by the protestors, and their peaceful demands for reform and universally recognized freedoms continue to inspire admiration and respect," the letter added. "We solemnly commemorate the Tiananmen massacre each year because of the lives lost and persons permanently injured, the profound impact the event has had on US-China relations, many former student leaders have made important and lasting contributions to global understanding of China, and the Chinese people themselves are unable to mark this event," the lawmakers wrote. A delegation of Punjab Congress leaders led by its president Amarinder Singh today met Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi and apprised him of law and order situation in state and brought to his notice the issue of bogus voters being prepared by ruling Akali-BJP alliance. The PCC chief and other state leaders submitted a memorandum to the CEC, demanding the holding of a "free and fair" election to the state assembly due early next year. "Appraised CEC Dr Zaidi of Punjab's pathetic situation and presented a memo on holding free and fair assembly elections," he said after the meeting. Amarinder also brought to the CEC's notice the misuse of official machinery by Akalis during elections and cited the example of the 2012 election when they indulged in such practices. Alleging that Punjab was being pushed to "a state of anarchy" ahead of 2017 assembly polls, he said, "there is a sense of fear and insecurity among people as gang-wars have become norm of the day". He also alleged that policemen and common people were being killed and "political opponents are bullied into submission". Citing recent incidents, Amarinder said religious preacher Ranjit Singh Dhadarianwale was attacked and his associate was killed after his car was chased for four kilometers. The memorandum said about a month ago another prominent sect leader Namdhari Mata was shot dead and the police are still clueless. Drawing the Commission's attention towards the issue of "bogus voters" allegedly by the ruling Akali-BJP combine, he said, "They have assigned the job to Aaganwari workers. They are not even part time employees of government. They are appointed by local Sarpanches. Obviously they will remain under their (the sarpanchs') influence". Urging the Commission to stop the malice, he said, "I request you to call for urgent stop for preparation of voters by Aaganwari workers and the job must be assigned to regular government employees who will be accountable and answerable. As the fate of Maharashtra minister Eknath Khadse who is facing graft allegations hangs in balance, the Congress today piled pressure on the BJP for his dismissal to prove Prime Minister Narendra Modi's claim of "zero tolerance" to corruption. But the BJP's Maharashtra unit president Raosaheb Danve ruled out any "party action" against the minister till the charges against him are proved. The hunger strike of activist and former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Anjali Damania demanding probe into corruption charges against Khadse, meanwhile, entered its second day. "Take action against Khadse, dismiss him forthwith from his Ministry, register a case against him for misuse of office and take decisive action", party's chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala told reporters in Delhi. Surjewala attacked the Prime Minister for maintaining a "deafening silence" in the last 24 months on the issue of action against corruption where BJP Leaders or their own Governments are involved. "People of Maharashtra and India demand that Prime Minister breaks his studied silence and takes decisive action on all these issues including Khadse", he added. Maintaining that Khadse, a Revenue minister, would face action if the allegations against him are proved in a court of law, Danve claimed there was "no pressure from the party high command" to remove him from the state cabinet. Terming allegations against Khadse as "political" in nature, Danve told reporters in Pune that the party has adopted a "cautious approach towards them", adding "we believe that there is no substance in them." Asked about Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis's meeting with party president Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday over the Khadse issue, Danve said, "the chief minister submitted his report to Shah. But that does not necessarily mean that the report was against Khadse. It could be in his favour also." Khadse, who is in his home town Jalgaon in North Maharashtra amid political heat, has denied all allegations against him and said he would abide by the party decision in his case. Khadse, a senior BJP leader, has come under cloud over allegations including irregularities in a land deal in Pune and calls allegedly received from fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim's residence in Karachi on his mobile phone. He is in a spot over the purchase of 3-acre Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation land in Bhosari allegedly at a low price of around Rs 3.75 crore from its original owner in the name of his wife and son-in-law. The market value of the land is reportedly Rs 40 crores. Congress today held protests alleging "total failure of the government to provide basic amenities like drinking water, electricity, ration and hike in prices of petrol, diesel and other essential commodities" in Jammu and Kashmir. The protest held by the District Congress Committee (Urban), Jammu was led by DCC chief Anil Chopra. Terming BJP as "mute spectator", JKPCC Vice President Raman Bhalla said the party's leaders have failed torepresent the people for safeguarding their own interests. He alleged that BJP has been trying to concedeon various matters against the interests of people while maintaining a completely different public posture to throw dust in the eyes of the people. Bhalla said the people have right to know as to what happened to the promises made by the BJP for more than six decades to remove the Article 370, grant citizenship to the West Pakistan refugees, sealing the borders to check any sort of infiltration and crush the militancy by strengthening the security forces. A day after BJP's "Vikash" rally addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Balasore, the Congress today announced to observe June 10 as 'Dhikkar Divas' in the state to highlight the "failure" of both the Centre and the state government. This was announced by Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) president Prasad Harichandan while addressing a meeting here at the district headquarter town of Kalahandi. AICC general secretary incharge of Odisha B K Hariprasad also attended the meeting. Harichandan alleged that both the BJP led NDA government at the Centre and the BJD government in the state have been "unkind" to the people of Odisha. Harichandan said the Congress workers and supporters would observe "Dhikkar Diwas" on June 10 when party workers would stage agitation before all the 31 blocks of the state. Pointing out that Kalahandi has been a victim of negligence by both the BJP and the BJD, the Congress leaders submitted a memorandum to Kalahandi district collector seeking fulfillment of their eight point charter of demands that includes wagon factory in Narla, Jaring medical college issue, compensation to the deceased farmers and the NFSA irregularity issue. "Drought and crop loss have caused immense difficulty for the people. The government failed to provide crop insurance and any compensation to farmers families who lost their kins. Thousands of deserving families have been denied NFSA cards. People have been displaced from their homes for road expansion, but without any compensation. This is what Naveen Patnaik Government has done for the poor of Kalahandi," former Union Minister Bhakta Das said. A councillor of Yavatmal Municipal Council climbed a communication tower installed in the district Collector's office to draw the authorities' attention towards the problems being faced by the residents of his ward. Aman Nirban, who represents ward no. 6, had yesterday climbed the communication tower at the Collectorate office, after several attempts made by him to apprise the district administration of drinking water problem among others, which the residents of his ward are facing. Nirban sat in the way of the tower for over two hours and did not heed to requests of Resident Deputy Collector (RDS) Rajesh Khawale, Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran Executive Engineer Dinesh Borkar and others to come down. The corporator did not budge even when district Collector Sachindra Pratap Singh personally came to the tower and requested him to resolve the problem amicably. When Zila Parishad vice president Balasaheb Mangulkar reached the Collectorate and gave an assurance to Nirban that his concerns will be addressed, he agreed to climb down. The corporator lost consciousness upon coming down, following which he was admitted to GMC hospital and discharged after a while. According to Nirban, Yavatmal MLA Madan Yerawar tried to pacify him. District guardian minister Sanjay Rathod, who was in Collectorate for a meeting, could not find time to hear him out, he said. The councillor said the residents of his ward were facing problems like irregular supply of drinking water, contaminated water being supplied, besides undeclared load shedding, and umpteen complaints and protests made in this regard were not heard. "The city is facing acute drinking water problem for two months and Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran does not take the matter seriously," Nirban alleged. "Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran supplies water at an interval of eight days from Nilona dam to the residents, but there are many areas where it does not reach," he said, adding the agency should adhere to the schedule in totality so that people are able to store water for the eight day-long gap. Collector Sachindra Pratap Singh said, "We will look into the matter. We will make sure that such incidents don't happen again." The incident caused fracas in the Collectorate premises for quite some time. YEREVAN, JUNE 3, ARMENPRESS. A consultation over the draft Tax Code took place at the Government chaired by PM Abrahamyan. The consultation was attended by the representatives of the private sector, including SMEs. As Armenpress was informed from the press service of the Government of Armenia, issues referring to changes in the legislation were discussed. The representatives of the private sector introduced their proposals and remarks. The Prime Minister assigned to organize another discussion with the state agencies and the private sector and to submit its results to the Government. Online education firm Coursera in partnership with the US Department of State today launched a new course 'The Importance of India' on its platform. Launched under the Department's Passport to India Initiative, the six-week self-paced course is designed to bring Indians and Americans together to learn about the world's fastest growing major economy, Coursera said in a statement. The course will starts on June 6 and will be accessible to anyone with Internet access for free, it added. Each week of the interactive course will explore a major theme related to India's impact on the world, ranging from India's ancient trade relations with the Roman Empire to India's rapidly growing startup ecosystem today. The course's final week will explore study, internship, and startup business opportunities in India along with references and advice for how to get a start in India, it said. Over 7,000 students globally have already registered since the US Ambassador to India Richard Verma announced that the course was open for enrollment earlier in the year. Last year, there were 1,30,000 Indian students in the US - a record number reflecting record growth. However, at the same time, the number of American students in India remained relatively flat - 4,500. The US Government's Passport to India initiative is designed to encourage more American students to consider studying in India. "American students of all backgrounds and interests need to learn about, from, with and in India. Our MOOC demonstrates how India's economic and civilisation reemergence has renewed the importance of India," course instructor Nick Booker, Executive Director of Passport to India, said. The course is taught by The Ohio State University University Professor Brian D Joseph along with Nick Booker, Executive Director of Passport to India and co-founder of IndoGenius. Actor Daniel Craig is heading to the small screen for the TV adaptation of Jonathan Franzen's hit novel "Purity". The "Spectre" star will lead the cast in the project for US network Showtime, where bosses have picked up the show for a straight-to-series order, featuring 20 episodes, reported Guardian online. The British actor will portray German businessman Andreas Wolf, who finds himself drawn to young intern Pip in the thrilling drama, which is described as a "story of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder". Craig will also serve as executive producer alongside Scott Rudin and Todd Field, who will also direct. "Jonathan Franzen's Purity is an epic American novel that pulses with the energy of a psychological thriller...," said Showtime President and CEO David Nevins. "His gripping and timely story has attracted a powerhouse team - Todd Field, Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, David Hare, along with Franzen himself, and the brilliant Daniel Craig who is perfectly cast as the charismatic, mysterious Andreas Wolf. Put it all together and PURITY promises to be the kind of taut, long-form, serialized storytelling that is the best of premium television, and is precisely what we at Showtime aspire to deliver. Delhi government has recommended giving a "special power" to junior engineers and PWD officials senior to them to impound vehicles and challan motorists obstructing plying of buses in dedicated lanes under a proposed law sent to Lt Governor Najeeb Jung for his nod. The AAP government had yesterday sent its proposal to create dedicated bus lanes in the city's roads to the LG's office. The proposal advocated a fine of Rs 2,000 on those obstructing plying of buses in these lanes. "We have sent a proposal to the LG under which junior engineers and above ranks of PWD will have the power to impound vehicles of those violating the proposed law. "They will also have the power to prosecute errant drivers and impose a fine of Rs 2,000 on them," PWD Minister Satyender Jain told reporters. The government will also prosecute those who park their vehicles in non-motorised vehicles (NMV) lanes reserved for battery-operated vehicles, including e-rickshaws and others, he said. The minister said the dedicated bus lanes have been marked in 500 km of PWD roads so far. Ruling AIADMK nominee, P Dhanapal was today unanimously elected Speaker of the 15th Tamil Nadu Assembly, the first to be elected for a consecutive second term in the state's legislative history even as Chief Minister Jayalalithaa said her government will respect Opposition's constructive views. Chief Minister Jayalalithaa proposed the names of Dhanapal and Pollachi V Jayaraman as Speaker and Deputy Speaker respectively and Finance Minister O Panneerselvam seconded their names when the Assembly met. Soon after, protem Speaker Semmalai formally announced the unanimous election of P Dhanapal as Speaker. Later, Finance Minister and Leader of the House O Panneerselvam and Leader of Opposition MK Stalin together led Dhanapal to the Speaker's chair in consonance with the tradition of the legislature. Hailing Jayalalithaa for her "historic" electoral victory given by the people, Dhanapal said she fought the election all alone, slogged alone focusing on her achievements, and protected "Dharma." He assured opportunities to all parties in debates in the House. Later, he announced the unanimous election of Pollachi Jayaraman as Deputy Speaker. Dhanapal was elected Speaker in 2002 for the first time in the previous AIADMK regime. Also, he was the first Dalit to become Speaker after 1955. J Sivashanmugam Pillai was the first Dalit Speaker between 1946 and 1955 of the then "Madras Legislative Assembly. In her address lauding Speaker Dhanapal and Deputy Speaker Pollachi Jayaraman, Jayalalithaa said, "as regards AIADMK, we do not devise our activities based on the numbers (strength) of the Opposition." "I can assure that we will respect the constructive opinions of the opposition, seeing their views and how they reflect the people's views," she said. She quoted Dravidian ideologue CN Annadurai's views on ruling and opposition parties. She quoted him as saying, "in a democracy ruling and opposition parties are two sides of the same coin. If one side was right and the other was mangled, it will become invalid." "AIADMK has Anna's name in the party and his image on its flag. Following Anna and party founder MGR's ideals, we will give full cooperation to uphold democratic traditions," she said, adding, opposition parties should express constructive views, useful for the people. Jayalalithaa said it was a double delight for her that Dhanapal was elected unanimously and that he was elected for a second consecutive term for the first time in the history of Tamil Nadu Assembly. "This position came to you (Dhanapal) due to your competence, ability and experience," she said, hailing him and pointed out that he came from humble origins, being born in a poor agriculture family in a backward village. Lauding him for his impartiality, she said there was no doubt that he would continue to be so like "the needle in a weighing scale." She also praised Deputy Speaker Jayaraman as one bestowed with a resonant voice and eloquence and for his rich experience as a legislator, minister and deputy speaker. She said, at a time when several parties could not find a place in the Assembly, both the ruling and opposition parties had a "huge responsibility of working to protect people's interests." She thanked the people of Tamil Nadu for re-electing her regime, a first since 1984 and to the voters of her Dr RK Nagar constituency for electing her again. Leader of Opposition, Stalin greeted Speaker Dhanapal and Deputy Speaker Jayaraman and said his party has faith in them, adding, Speaker should be neutral to all parties. He said DMK will be the "Opposition party and not an enemy party." He also said his party would cooperate with the ruling party and cited issues involving the State's interests. Congress floor leader KR Ramaswamy and IUML member Mohammed Abubacker too greeted the Speaker and Deputy Speaker. Dhanapal later adjourned the House to June 16. He also administered the oath to the Anglo-Indian nominated MLA Nancy Ann Cynthia Francis. After British liquor giant Diageo Plc, Diageo Holdings Netherlandstoday filed an interlocutory application before the DebtRecovery Tribunal seeking vacating of DRT's order barring liquor baron Vijay Mallya from withdrawing USD 75 million exit buyout by it under a deal till disposal of SBI's case against him over loan default. All the parties, including Kingfisher, Diageo Plc and UBHL, pleaded today before the Tribunal to take up their applications on a priority basis. "The Tribunal will decide which applications should be heard on priority basis and also set a timeline for disposingall the pending applications," DRT Presiding OfficerBenakanahalli said and then posted the matter for hearingon June 7. Yesterday, Diageo Plc had filed the interlocutory application seeking vacating of DRT's March 7 order. DRT had barred Mallya from withdrawing USD 75 million exit payment from Diageo till the disposal of the case over the loan default by Kingfisher Airlines. It had restrained Diageo and United Spirits Limited, owned by the UK-based firm, from temporarily disbursing the amount to Mallya who worked out the deal under a severance package. However, USD 40 million of the USD 75 million severance package deal had already been disbursed, following which the bankers' consortium had sought directions from the Tribunal to attach the amount before it. Following a directive of the Tribunal, Diageo Plc and its two subsidiaries submitted the details of severance package deal, in which the bankers figured out that USD 40 million of the USD 75 million was parked in the account held by Vijay Mallya in New York-based J P Morgan Bank. On May 17, DRT directed J P Morgan Bank not to disburse to Mallya USD 40 million and asked it to "attach" (submit) before it statements of accounts held by Mallya in the bank. On the other hand, Vijay Mallya-controlled United Breweries (Holdings) Limited (UBHL) sought time to submit evidenceand substantiate their claim of Rs 594 crore from bankers forcompensating the losses incurred by it due to the sale of USLequity shares by lenders at cheaper rate. The bankers had sought DRT direction to ask UBHL to substantiate their claim of Rs 594 crore loss with documents of proof and evidence. UBHL, in its objections filed in the Tribunal onApril 5, had contended that the lenders sold 26 lakh equity shares of United Spirits Limited (USL) pledged to thembefore maturity. The company, in its objections, had also contended that thelenders' action of selling the equity shares for Rs 1,836.94 per share, instead of a good price, when the shares hit a highof Rs 4,080 per share in April last year, caused loss to it. Subsequently, the consortium of banks led by State Bank of India on April 13 filed counter objections to UBHL's claim of Rs 594 crore from them for compensating the losses incurred by it due to the sale of USL equity shares by lenders at 'cheaper rate'. The bankers also had alleged that the Rs 594-crore claim at this point of time is a clear-cut tactic of UBHL to delay the process of justice, knowing fully well that the caseis on the verge of disposal. Yesterday, UBHL and Kingfisher Airlines Limited had also filed interlocutory applications. UBHL had filed the application for producing evidence pertaining to its claim of Rs 594 crore from bankers for compensating the losses incurred by it due to the sale of USL equity shares by lenders at 'cheaper rate'. Kingfisher had filed application for submitting objections to all the facts pertaining to the case. Mallya, whose now-defunct group company KingfisherAirlines owes over Rs 9,000 crore (Rs 90 billion) to 17 banks,had left the country on March 2 and is in the UK. After Britain recently declined India's request to deport him, government has approached Interpol for issuance ofan arrest warrant against Mallya in connection with a moneylaundering case being probed by Enforcement Directorate. France today hosted top diplomats from the West and the Arab world to work on organising a peace conference by year's end that would launch long-dormant Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, despite slim chances of success. France has said it felt compelled to act because the opportunities for setting up a Palestinian state alongside Israel are slipping away, while the situation in the region is deteriorating. US Secretary of State John Kerry and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon attended, along with representatives from the Arab League, the European Union and key Arab states. Israeli and Palestinian representatives were absent. The participants called on the two sides to genuinely commit to the two-state solution. They "are alarmed that actions on the ground, in particular continued acts of violence and ongoing settlement activity, are dangerously imperiling the prospects for a two-state solution", a joint statement said. The diplomats also reaffirmed "their support for a just, lasting and enduring peace, with two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security" and welcomed "the prospect of convening before the end of the year an international conference". French President Francois Hollande acknowledged that "we cannot substitute for the parties." He told the gathering that "our initiative aims at giving them guarantees that the peace will be solid, sustainable and under international supervision.". Participants decided to set up teams by the end of the month to work on economic and security incentives for the Israelis and Palestinians for reaching a deal, French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said at a conference. Asked if he would support an international conference later this year with the Israelis and Palestinians attending, Kerry told reporters: "We're just starting, let's get into the conversations." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rebuffed the French initiative and said a deal can only be reached in direct negotiations. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has welcomed France's efforts, in part because it could potentially end a two-decade-old U.S. Monopoly on mediation. Palestinians have long complained that the US heavily favours Israel and cannot serve as an honest broker. The Palestinians seek to establish a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in 1967. In 2012, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly recognised a state of Palestine in these boundaries, though setting up an actual state would requires a deal with Israel. For now, chances of reviving negotiations appear remote because of lack of common ground. Distribution of sweets, welfare assistance and blood donation by party workers were among the highlights of celebrations of the 93rd birthday of DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi today. On the occasion, Karunanidhi, who was state chief minister five times, paid floral tributes at the memorials of DMK founder leader C N Annadurai and rationalist leader E V Ramasamy Periyar here. Karunanidhi planted a sapling at his CIT colony residence and later a cake was cut in the presence of his family members, including his son and DMK Treasurer M K Stalin. His daughter and Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi greeted him on the occassion. Party leaders like Duraimurugan and T R Baalu also went to his residence and wished him. DMK West District unit has announced a mega public meeting to be held at the YMCA grounds here later in the evening which will be addressed by Karunanidhi. Karunanidhi, in his birthday message, urged party cadres to continue to work for the welfare of Tamil Nadu. Recalling the "sacrifices" of his party for Tamil language, culture and the people, he said, "Let us work untiringly, I invite you with love." Karunanidhi was Tamil Nadu Chief Minister five times between 1969-71, 1971-76, 1989-91, 1996-2001 and 2006-11. Even though DMK lost the recent state assembly polls, it has emerged as a strong opposition, winning 89 seats. Karunanidhi himself won from his native Tiruvarur, defeating AIADMK candidate R Pannerselvam by clocking the highest victory margin of 68,366 votes. Party headquarters 'Anna Arivalayam' was decked up for the event and has been glittering with decorative lamps since Wednesday night. DMK treasurer M K Stalin had appealed to party functionaries yesterday to engage themselves in welfare activities like organising blood donation camps and planting saplings. DMK district units celebrated his birthday by giving away sweets, welfare assistance like text and notebooks to school students and food and clothes to the poor. (REOPENS MDS1) Later, Karunanidhi arrived at the party headquarters and received a stream of party leaders and workers who greeted him on the occasion. The spacious hall was decked up with a sparkling vinyl hoarding featuring a beaming Karunanidhi with garlands and the number 93 was embossed on it prominently. Party functionaries had a tough time in controlling the crowd as partymen kept pouring in to greet the nonagenarian leader with garlands, bouquets, shawls, fruits, books and a host of other gifts. Former Union ministers A Raja, T R Baalu, party Rajya Sabha MP Tiruchi Siva, former state ministers Duraimurugan, E V Velu were among the party leaders present. Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president EVKS Elangovan, senior party leader Peter Alphonse, party whip in Assembly Vijayadharani were among Congress leaders who called on him. PMK founder Ramadoss and CPI(M) State Secretary G Ramakrishnan greeted Karunanidhi over phone. (REOPENS MES3) Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu Governor K Rosaiah and several other leaders, including Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, greeted Karunanidhi. "Rahul Gandhi spoke over phone to Karunanidhi and greeted him," DMK said in statement. In his birthday message, he also said, "good health should be restored to our democracy's four pillars." Rahul said, "I would like our youth to take a pledge to do all sacrifices to restore democracy's good health, unite democratic-socialist and secular forces so that it could take deep roots and gain influence in our country." "Forces inimical to democracy have infiltrated all stratas of our socio-political set-up and were damaging them," DMK said quoting the Congress vice president. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Madhya Pradesh's Rewa Ultra Mega Solar Ltd (RUMSL) to get green power from the latter to run its trains in the national capital. Managing Director of DMRC Mangu Singh inked PPA with MP New and Renewable Energy Department Principal Secretary Manu Shrivastava on behalf of RUMSL in Delhi yesterday. DMRC will get 150 to 200 MW green power daily from RUMSL from next year, Shrivastava told PTI today. RUMSL is raising the world's largest solar power station of 750 Mega Watt (MW) in Rewa district and its three units of 250 MW each are expected to go on steam by June, 2017, he said. Significantly, the development has come at a time when the Delhi government is battling to arrest pollution levels in the national capital, which is one of the world's most polluted cities, and even experimented the 'odd-even' number scheme to limit vehicular traffic - a major pollutant. The Solar Energy Corporation of India and Madhya Pradesh Urja Vikas Nigam (MPUVN) have joined hands to facilitate setting up of the green power station, christened RUMSL, on 1,500 hectares area at Bandwar region in Gudh tehsil of Rewa district, said Shrivastava, who is also the Managing Director of MPUVN. "World Bank is going to give Rs 250 crore for the project," he said. Shrivastava said that the cost of the set up for 1 MW solar energy comes to around Rs 6 crore. At present, the world's largest solar power project - Ivanpah Solar Power Facility of 392 MW - is at Mojave deserts in the US state of California, officials said. In February 2014, Narendra Modi, as BJP's prime ministerial candidate, had inaugurated Asia's largest solar power project in Neemuch district of Madhya Pradesh. A truck driver, who fled with a consignment of electronic appliances of a Nodia-based company last week, was arrested here, police said today. On May 28, truck driver Rajbir singh fled away with 69 washing machines and air conditioners which was to be dispatched to Meerut, Senior Superintendent of Police K S Emanual said. He was nabbed yesterday and 45 Washing machines and air conditioners were recovered from him and the rest were sold by him by installing the stall of the same company in Kaila Bhatta area, he said. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has said the country's parliament is studying the decision to transfer two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia and will form committees that will decide whether to ratify the move. "Each state body respects the role of the other one. For instance, the Red Sea agreement with Saudi Arabia is now being studied by the parliament, which will form committees to decide whether to ratify it or not, with no pressure at all from any entity," El-Sisi said in a televised interview yesterday. In April, and Saudi Arabia had agreed to maritime borders that handed ownership of the disputed Red Sea islands, Tiran and Sanafir, over to Riyadh. Several activists rallied against the decision as the two islands were under Egypt's control for over 60 years. Many of them are currently facing trial for "illegally protesting" aganist the government's decision. El-Sisi said though the state was not against the right to protest, it should happen in a legal manner. He also said 90 per cent of the people currently in custody are being held for criminal charges. "We are currently studying the cases of the few remaining percentage and soon I will release a fourth batch of prisoners as I did three times before," he added. El-Sisi also spoke on the restive Sinai province, saying terrorism in the region is limited to a very small area and the country has been giving great attention to the peninsula that has been marginalised for decades. "Terrorism is occurring in the area that is located between our borders with Gaza to Al-Arish city of North Sinai, which represents only 2 to 3 per cent of the whole area of the Sinai peninsula," the President said. He also said that is currently managing eight national projects that are being implementing by more than 1,000 companies and about 2 million Egyptian workers. "The cost of those projects is more than EGP 1.3 trillion (USD 146 billion) so that's why we're being very cautious and getting in to details, to avoid any corruption," he said. The President said the military is participating in these projects only to monitor the performance and to make sure that the expenditure is wisely spent. As for the education and health sectors, he said those areas would take "between 12 and 13 years" to be developed and improved. Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's US visit, starting on June 7, India today said "protectionism" was creating hurdles and called for a shift from the conservative mindset to boost the Indo-American trade relations. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said this while addressing a programme organised by the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce here. "There should not be protectionism. Protectionism is one the biggest hurdles between India and US trade relations. There is a need to keep away from it, because the whole world has now become a global village. In order to keep the free flow of trade globally, we should give up our conservative mindset and have an open mindset," Singh said. "On outsourcing policy, I expect USA's approach to be more rational," he said after releasing a report titled 'India-US trade- a formidable economic force' by KPMG. Singh also said that as a part of ease of doing business, the Home Ministry is thinking of replacing the existing 10-year security clearance for foreign investors with one-time clearance. The minister hoped bilateral trade between India and the US to touch USD 500 billion in future as both nations have huge potential. Of late, the industry has been accusing the US and other developed nations of implementing some rules that have become an impediment for Indian traders. The industry has alleged that some of the recent rules by the US including hike in VISA fee and restriction on job visas are part of the "protectionism" being observed by the North American country. Singh said the US can take the advantage of Indian pharma industry's success in reducing its health-care bills. "USA is one the biggest markets for Indian generic medicines. If US allows Indian generic drugs without much restrictions in their market, then definitely the cost of health-care will go down in that country," he felt. He said there has been a lot of upsurge in Indo-US relations during the past 14 years. The bilateral trade was USD 90 billion in 2009, which has now crossed USD 100 billion. "It is a fact the China-US bilateral trade crossed USD 500 billion in 2013 itself. We also hope that the Indo-US trade would reach USD 500 billion. Now India is considered as one of the fastest growing economies due to its strong leadership with a vision," he said. (REOPENS DEL83) On the question of India's most wanted terrorist Dawood Ibrahim, Singh said, "I am confident that Dawood will be brought back to India. Our efforts are continuing. We have told Pakistan where he is hiding. It is a matter of time that we will be able to bring him back sometime in future." Singh said that "it is our efforts that hostilities should not increase with Pakistan as it is our neighbour but Pakistan will also have to think about making relations better." "We made efforts but did not get adequate response," the Home Minister said. Singh said India has no role in Balochistan but only gives its reaction whenever there are human rights issue. "Pakistan will have to think that it was formed on religious lines but failed to keep cultural identities but India does not have any such issue," Singh said. The Home Minister said, "We want to keep Kashmir with us but not by creating fear in their hearts and we keep making efforts like Prime Minister visited Kashmir when there was recent flood." "We do not worry about how a sovereign country keeps its relations with others. Our relations with China are good. Our relations will continue to keep getting better. We are not disappointed. Our efforts are continuing, We are hopeful that some time in future China will come on the same page as far as terror is considered," he said. On the question of on China's decision to block the declaration of JuM Chief Masood Azhar as an international terrorist by the United Nations, he said, "May be there are some situations that they have not supported but we are hopeful that in future they will support us." Singh said demonetisation was a big decision and it was not taken for any political gain. "There is dip not only in black money but also terror funding. Out efforts are that generation of black money should be stopped hence promoting digital payments," he said. Singh said there was no single reason behind the move and discussions were going on implications of demonetising Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes. Asked about why is BJP contesting Uttar Pradesh election without a Chief Ministerial candidate, "We have contested number of elections where we did not declare Chief Ministerial candidate and in many cases we did. We have taken conscious decision not to project a CM candidate." "We have many faces in UP who can be Chief Minister. I am Home Minister I do not think that one should have any problem," he said. In a lighter tone, he said he was the Home Minister and it is not right that he would take all the positions. "Had Congress and SP been confident, they would not have contested together. Mulayam Singh Yadav who promoted SP in his life was pained at this arrangement...," he said, adding that family feud do not give a happy feeling to anyone. Over 30 BJP men, including former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Bhagat Singh Koshiyari, were arrested today when they tried to visit Landhaura area of Roorkee where clashes had erupted recently leaving 32 people injured. Thirty-eight BJP workers and leaders, including Koshiyari, were arrested and taken to the police lines when they insisted on visting the riot-hit area where a prohibitory order under section 144 is in force, Circle Officer, Sadar JP Juyal said. They were later released on personal bail bonds furnished in a local court, Juyal added. Koshiyari, who was accompanied by party workers and MLAs, including Sanjay Gupta and Yastishwaranand, said they wanted to visit the area to make an appeal to the people to maintain calm. However, describing the attack on former Khanpur MLA Kunwar Pranav Singh Champion's house in Landhaura as part of a conspiracy to eliminate him, Koshiyari demanded a CBI probe into the incident. Meanwhile, violating the prohibitory orders, Champion's supporters burnt an effigy of Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat, accusing him of targeting those who had rebelled against his government. Champion was among the nine Congress MLAs who had raised a banner of revolt against Rawat, plunging the state into a political crisis. He has since joined the BJP. Thirty-two people, including 12 police personnel, were injured on Wednesday as an alleged forcible evacuation of a scrap dealer's shop and desecration of a religious book kept there by an uncle of Champion and his men sparked tension between two communities in Landhaura area of Roorkee. The groups clashed with each other and allegedly indulged in arson at the former MLA's residence, prompting the police to intervene. Thirteen persons have been arrested in connection with the incident, including Champion's uncle Rajkumar Krishna Singh. FIFA denied today reports in German media that president Gianni Infantino was under investigation for a possible ethics violation. Die Welt newspaper reported that Infantino had improperly ordered the destruction of the minutes of a FIFA executive committee meeting held at last month's congress in Mexico city. According to the paper, FIFA's independent ethics committee was looking at the issue and could impose a 90-day ban on the new president if the allegation was confirmed. But a spokesman for the ethics committee's investigatory arm, Roman Geiser, told AFP that "there are no formal proceedings going on against Mr. Infantino". FIFA spokeswoman Delia Fischer, in a separate statement emailed to AFP, said the allegations were baseless. "The email exchange that makes mention of the deletion of audio files refers to a copy of the original audio file of the meeting that was improperly stored on a local drive," she said. "This mention does not refer to the officially archived audio file. That file exists and is properly saved at FIFA." The volatile Mexico City congress was the first since Infantino replaced FIFA's disgraced former president Sepp Blatter following a vote during an extraordinary congress in Zurich on February 26. It included the shock resignation of FIFA's audit and compliance chief Domenico Scala, who accused Infantino of trying to compromise the independence of key FIFA bodies, including the ethics committee. Some FIFA insiders have also suggested that Infantino wanted Scala -- who sits on the remuneration committee -- to leave, amid a dispute about the new president's salary. Infantino, who has been in his new job for less than 100 days, has not yet agreed to a contract. He has been widely criticised in the German press for allegedly refusing the salary proposed -- reportedly more than a million euros -- because he considered it insufficient. Die Welt claimed Infantino had asked in emails to have the tape recording of the meeting in Mexico City, in which his salary was discussed, deleted. The FIFA supremo left for Los Angeles on Friday morning and will attend the opening match of the Copa America between hosts the United States and Colombia later on Friday. Fireworks sparked a fire at a luxury beach resort in southern Sri Lanka minutes after it was opened by President Maithripala Sirisena, hotel and local officials said. Police have already begun an investigation into yesterday's incident at the 300-room Shangri-La at Hambantota, the upmarket hotel operator's first hotel in the island. "During the festivities, fireworks sparked a fire on a thatched roof covering a pool installation," the group's Hong Kong-based public relations chief Ilona Yim said. "No one was hurt and we are thankful for the help of the fire brigade, which was onsite and extinguished the fire within 10 minutes." The hotel said the president stayed on for a private dinner that was part of the opening at Hambantota, 240 kilometres south of the capital Colombo. "The president had just walked back to the hotel while the fireworks display was still on," his spokesman Dharmasri Bandara told AFP. Initial reports said the president was immediately evacuated, but his security staff confirmed the president had moved to another location at a different part of the sprawling hotel complex and left the premises after dinner. Local journalist Easwaran Rutnam, who was covering the hotel's opening, said the president was about 50 metres from the structure that was gutted by the fire. A local police officer said no one was injured during the incident, but an investigation had been launched. There had been several breaches of security at functions attended by President Sirisena who came to power in January last year. He has dispensed with much of the tight security accorded to his predecessors. RSS-affiliated Bharatiya Kisan Sangh today asked Union government to determine the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for purchasing onions to insulate farmers from market fluctuations. "Farmers often incur losses due to fluctuating prices of onions, which shoot up and nosedive. To find a permanent solution to this problem, the MSP of onions should be determined," BKS spokesman Laxminarayan Patel said. He also demanded that a policy should be framed on the import and export of the bulb, keeping in view the interest of farmers. Patel praised Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan for announcing that the state government will buy a kg of onion from farmers for Rs 6. Recently, prices of onions reached bottom at Rs 1 to 2 per kg in retail market at some places, prompting farmers in the state to throw away their produce on roads. A private airlines will soon start flights between Chandigarh and Kullu. Himachal Holidays Pvt Ltd, Kullu has started the operations as a non-scheduled airline in collaboration with Hyderabad-based IIC Technology Ltd. It would soon start flights from kullu and Dharamsala also. The airline is currently conducting a test flight from Kullu to Dharamsala and also to Chandigarh and likely to start commercial flights soon, said Vijay Singh Mankotia, Vice chairman of Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Board. The test flight is being conducted with nine-seater Cessna grand master cervan and we are proposing to take up the matter with Ministry of Civil Aviation andstress upon the necessityto link Dehradun-Shimla and Dharamsala-Jammu-Leh-Ladakh, he said. France prepared to host talks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Friday that have received a cool response from Washington, but diplomats say merely shining the spotlight onto the stalemate is a victory. After decades of failed negotiations, few believe the climate is right to bring together Israelis and Palestinians for another shot at solving one of the world's longest-running conflicts. Indeed, neither party has been invited to Friday's talks. Direct negotiation doesn't work, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault insisted ahead of the conference. "Currently everything is blocked. We don't want to act in the place of the Israelis and Palestinians but we want to help them," he told France Info radio. Instead representatives of some 25 countries, as well as the United Nations, European Union and Arab League, will try to lay the ground for a full-fledged peace conference to be held by the end of the year. While scepticism over the new peace bid is high, the consensus among some diplomats appears to be that any effort is better than none at all. "The fear in France is that there is no credible perspective of solving this issue, diplomatically or politically. We risk heading towards even more violence in an context where there is no visible American effort on the case," the diplomatic source in Paris told AFP. The United States, the traditional mediator in the conflict, has not moved the two sides towards a new peace process since talks collapsed in April 2014. Washington has been decidedly cool on the French initiative with US Secretary of State, John Kerry, agreeing to attend merely to listen to ideas proposed by France and others. "We're not bringing any specific proposals to this meeting tomorrow," a senior State Department official said, adding that no one had any real firm ideas on what the outcome was expected to be. "We haven't made any decisions about what, if any, our role would be in that initiative going forward," the official added. Meanwhile, Israel is fiercely opposed to the French initiative. The head of Israel's foreign ministry Dore Gold said on the eve of the talks that they would completely fail, and that the Jewish state would prefer a Middle East-driven process backing direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians. According to diplomatic sources, the French conference will seek to focus on a 2002 Saudi-led peace initiative. Under that proposal, Arab leaders said they would recognise the state of Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied since 1967, and the creation of a Palestinian state. Berlin today denied blocking a Chinese takeover bid for German industrial robotics supplier Kuka, ahead of Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to China. Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel "is not trying to get a consortium to make an offer that is competitive" to that of the Chinese group Midea, a spokesman said. "This is a company decision, the government is not actively implicated," he added. Chinese appliance giant Midea -- best known for its washing machines and air conditioners -- last month launched a takeover offer for Kuka. It is seeking at least a 30 per cent stake in a deal that values Kuka at 4.6 billion euros (USD 5.2 billion). Midea already holds a 13.5 per cent stake in Kuka. But German media reported that top officials in Brussels and Berlin are against the takeover bid, and are seeking an European counter-offer. Gabriel, who is also Germany's vice chancellor, had also voiced concern about the proposed deal at a cabinet meeting last week, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung had reported. Kuka, based in the southern German city of Augsburg, describes itself as one of the world's leading manufacturers of industrial robots and automated systems for manufacturing. Midea is a leading consumer appliances maker as well as China's biggest producer of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems. Its global turnover was more than USD 22 billion last year, according to its website. India has initiated a probe into dumping of a chemical used in several sectors including dyes and pharmaceuticals from three countries including China to protect the domestic industry from cheap imports. The Directorate General of Anti-Dumping and Allied Duties (DGAD) has found "sufficient prima facie evidence" of dumping of "Sodium Chlorate" from China, Canada and European Union. Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Ltd and Teamec Chlorates Ltd have filed an application before the DGAD for initiation of the investigation. "The authority hereby initiates an investigation into the alleged dumping and consequent injury to the domestic industry...To determine the existence, degree and effect of any alleged dumping and to recommend the amount of antidumping duty, which if levied would be adequate to remove the 'injury' to the domestic industry," the DGAD said in a notification. The period of investigation covers October 2014 to December 2015 (15 months). It would also cover the period of 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2014-15. Countries start anti-dumping probes to determine whether their domestic industries have been hurt because of a surge in below-cost imports. As a counter measure, they impose duties under the multilateral regime of WTO. The duty is aimed at ensuring fair trading practices and creating a level-playing field for domestic producers vis-a-vis foreign producers and exporters. India has already imposed anti-dumping duty on several products to tackle cheap imports from some countries, including China. According to a WTO report, India, US and Brazil were the leading initiators of anti-dumping investigations in 2015. It had said that the WTO members initiated 107 new anti-dumping investigations from January to June 2015, just slightly up from 106 in the same period in 2014. The hunger strike of activist and former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Anjali Damania demanding probe into corruption charges against Maharashtra Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse entered its second day today. Damania yesterday sat on a hunger strike at Azad Maidan in the city and demanded Khadse's ouster from the state Cabinet, in the wake of allegations of impropriety over purchase of a land belonging to the government-owned MIDC in Pune against him. A team of doctors today reached the strike site and carried out a medical check-up on the activist. "A team of doctors from nearby government hospital checked her medical condition and found her blood pressure to be 165/83, which we are very concerned about," an aide close to Damania said and requested mediapersons to let her rest. The activist, however, said she was feeling completely fit to fight for the cause. "Yes, doctors found my blood pressure high, but I feel very much alright and in the position to fight for my cause," Damania told PTI. "I am very much sticking to the demand that Khadse be removed from the ministry, besides an inquiry into the charges against him be completed within six months, the case be heard by a fast-track court and verdict to be given within an year," she said. "I won't give up my fast till the Chief Minister gives me a written assurance that the probe against the minister will be completed in six months," she added. Meanwhile, Damania's protest has garnered support of people from all walks of life as several NGOs and social groups have come out in her support. Gopal Patil, president of Uran Utkarsh Samiti, an organisation working for local people in the neighoubouring city Uran, said, "We have come here to support Damania, as she has become a symbol of crusade against corruption. The speaker, Theo Zurenuoc, had ordered their removal after claiming the cultural adornments were associated with a pagan, animist background, and therefore "evil and ungodly". This week, PNG's national court ruled against the speaker of parliament's removal of cultural carvings and a totem pole from the national parliament in 2013. THEY were branded as evil and ungodly, and removed from Papua New Guinea's parliament, but after two and a half years, the carved heads are to make a comeback. The court however concluded the removed objects were protected under the National Cultural Property Act, and ordered they be repaired and restored. The ruling comes in the same week that Port Moresby hosted Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and other leaders in a summit of the European Union-linked African, Caribbean and Pacific group. It also comes at a time when PNG is experiencing one of its relatively frequent periods of political chaos. The prime minister Peter O'Neill is facing mounting pressure to resign, while a cash flow crisis and other court rulings have put him on the back foot - a far cry from the relative comfort of his position in late 2013. He might well wonder if the removal of the heads triggered some sort of hex on him. The lintel above the front face of the building featuring nineteen gargoyle-type carved heads in a row was one of a number of striking features on PNG's majestic parliament building, a massive Haus Tambaran. The anthropomorphic heads originally represented each of provinces in the country at independence, and hinted at the complexity of PNG as a nation of many different tribes, with over 800-plus distinct language groups. However, Mr Zurenuoc, one of a cabal of devout evangelical Christian MPs in the house, ordered the removal of the heads in 2013 as part of his campaign "to restore, reform and modernise parliament". "Papua New Guineans have a very close affinity to the spiritual world," he told RNZI . "We believe in spirits, but there are good spirits and bad spirits." Certainly, some local commentators at the time saw merit in the speaker's claim that the removal of the carvings and art work was a stepping stone to change. But many saw it as an attack on PNG cultural heritage. "The things that are removed, they are representing a culture. So he is trying to remove the culture" said Father Victor Roche of PNG's Catholic Bishops' Conference. Others felt the 19 carved heads were being wrongly blamed for the transgressions of MPs themselves. In light of water scarcity in several parts of Gujarat this summer, Chief Minister Anandiben Patel today called for a state-wide rainwater harvesting by constructing undergrounds tanks at all the primary schools in the state. She was addressing top officials and ministers at a review meeting in Gandhinagar ahead of Shala Praveshotsav (school enrollment) and Kanya Kelavani(girl education) campaigns. The drive will be held in two phases, in rural areas from June 8 to 10 and in urban areas from June 15 to 17, the statement said. Patel directed the officials to construct underground water storage tanks at primary schools to store rainwater, which can be utilised through the year, it said. Local villagers can be roped in for this, she suggested. Shala Praveshotsav drive -- in its 15th edition now -- is aimed at increasing enrollment ratios and curb drop-out ratio in government-run and secondary schools. Under the drive, ministers and bureaucrats will visit schools across Gujarat. Patel also underlined that educating children about martyrs and freedom fighters from the respective regions through preparation of booklets of information to be collected by students. The government schools with poor performance can be handed over to NGOs working in the education sector, she said. Education Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama said in the meeting that the enrollment drive, started by the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi in 2002, yielded desired results. Enrollment ratio increased from 75 per cent to almost 98 per cent over the years and drop out ratio of girls came down to 1.21 per cent from 11.77 per cent over the years, he said. The high courts face a shortage of 458 judges, according to a latest Law Ministry data which comes at a time when the judiciary and the government are divided on various clauses of a document which will guide future appointment of members to the higher courts. According to the statistics, against the approved strength of 1079 judges, the 24 high courts are functioning with 621 -- a shortfall of 458. The June 1 data comes just a day after the Supreme Court Collegium returned to the government the draft of the revised Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) questioning the government's right to reject its recommendation on the ground of interest. The collegium had on May 30 returned to the government the revised MoP -- a document which guides appointment of to the Supreme Court and the 24 high courts -- suggesting changes in certain clauses. The clause on right to reject a recommendation on interest is contrary to the current practice where government is bound to accept a recommendation by the collegium, comprising four senior-most of the Supreme Court and the CJI, if it reiterates the same. The revised MoP further provides that once the Centre has rejected a recommendation it will not be bound to reconsider it even after reiteration by the collegium. The government is likely to take at least three weeks to respond to the collegium on its "observations" on the MoP, sources said. As per the data, the Allahabad High Court has the maximum number of 81 vacancies against the sanctioned strength of 160 judges. The Punjab and Haryana High Court and Madras High Court come second with 37 vacancies each, the data states. The data also states that seven high courts -- Andhra Pradesh/Telangana, Allahabad, Punjab and Haryana, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Patna and Rajasthan -- are functioning with acting Chief Justices. The Madras High Court today granted anticipatory bail to Premlatha, wife ofactor-turned- politician Vijayakant and founder president of DMDK, in connection with a defamation case. Granting the anticipatory bail, Justice S Vaidyanathan said, "on a perusal of the script of the speech by the petitioner, produced by the learned Public Prosecutor appearing for the state, it is seen that pages 13 and 14 of the script contain unwarranted statements against the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Ministers and Election Commission and whether it is defamatory or not has to be decided by the appropriate forum." "Therefore, considering the facts and circumstances of the case, this Court is of the view that custodial interrogation of the petitioner is not necessary. Hence this Court is inclined to grant anticipatory bail to this petitioner", the judge said. Apprehending arrest by Tiruppur police for the alleged offences punishable under IPC sections, including 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot), Premlatha had filed petition seeking anticipatory bail. The prosecution case was that Premlatha during an election speech at Tirupur on April 1, had made defamatory allegations against Jayalalithaa, ministers and the Election Commission. The judge directed her to appear within a period of 15 days from the date of receipt of a copy of the order, before Judicial Magistrate, Tiruppur and execute a bond for a sum of Rs 10,000 with two sureties each for a like sum. The Judge also directed her to report before the Inspector of Police, Virugambakkam Police Station, Chennai, daily at 10.30 am for two weeks and thereafter as and when required for interrogation. Opposing the expansion of a reformed UN Security Council, Pakistan has questioned how adding permanent members will enhance the efficiency of the top world body as it will "usurp" the equal opportunity rights of other nations. "Pakistan has always stressed expansion of the Council's membership that serves the interest of all member-states. Additional permanent seats will usurp the equal opportunity rights of other member-states of the General Assembly to serve in the Council," Pakistan's Permanent Representative to the UN Maleeha Lodhi said at the Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) on Security Council Reform discussions here on June 1. "How can justice, fair play, transparency and accountability be promoted by such an unfair expansion of the Council," Lodhi said. India, along with the G4 nations of Brazil, Germany and Japan, has stressed that the problem of "imbalance of influence" in the Council cannot be corrected if only non-permanent members are added to the powerful UN body as part of its reform and expansion in both categories is essential to achieving equilibrium that reflects current global realities. India's Permanent Representative to the UNSyed Akbaruddin has said that expansion in both categories particularly in the permanent category is essential to reform the Security Council and make it democratic, legitimate, representative, responsive and effective. Lodhi said all member-states need to participate in and be informed about the Security Council's work. "Member-states do not view the Council as the preserve of a few ostensibly powerful states," she said. Lodhi added that while the size of the Council needs to be balanced with the Council's representativeness and its effectiveness, she questioned the concept of "representativeness" in the permanent category. "To date, we have not heard any cogent, much less persuasive answer to this question. How can additional permanent members, with or without veto, enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the Council," she said. She said the size of the Council can not be a good starting point for convergence. "We cannot possibly decide the size of the Council before the need, merit and nature of each additional seat is agreed on. We will examine how every seat in the Council will add to the Council's democratic and representative credentials, its accountability, transparency, efficiency and effectiveness," she added. (Reopens FGN 33) Lodhi said the memberships' stress on ensuring participation of all Council's members in the Council's work relates to a particular manner in which the P-5 (China, France, Russia, the UK and the US) tend to conduct business. "How then can additional permanent members ensure participation of non-permanent members. In fact, if 45 per cent of the Council comprised of permanent members, as some have proposed, the non-permanent seats would become completely inconsequential," she said. "Over the years, the Council is indebted to its non-permanent members for gradual improvement in its working methods. It is therefore safe to assume that more such members will further improve its working methods," she said. After facing flak for sharing pictures from her film shoot here as violence erupted in her constituency, Mathura, actress and BJP MP Hema Malini described herself as a "very sensitive" person. The encroacher-police clash in Mathura has left 24 dead. The 67-year-old actress was called "insensitive" by Twitterati after she posted photos from Mumbai shoot of "Ek Thi Rani", her upcoming film. She later deleted the images and posted a tweet condoling the deaths in the clashes. After the row, Malini took to Twitter again. "I am a very sensitive person. I am deeply pained on the Mathura incident but Law & Order of UP is the core issue. Let's not divert," she wrote. The actress-politician further tweeted, "I will visit Mathura anyway. But the presence of law and order is more important than my presence." In her earlier tweet, Malini expressed condolence over the incident. "I just came back from Mathura & got the of the violence that has taken place there in which policemen have lost their lives," she tweeted. The actress said she will visit Mathura again if required. "So upset by the from a place which is so dear to me. Will go there again if my presence is required. My heart goes out to the bereaved. "Heartfelt condolences to families of SP City Mukul Dwivedi & SHO Santosh Kumar who laid down their lives in the line of duty. I fervently appeal to the people of Mathura to remain calm & not get misguided by violent elements," she further wrote. Some of the tweets criticising Malini read, "@BJP4India As a supporter One thing I don't want to see is giving tickets to hopeless celebrities like Hema Malini. Give chance local guy," and "Why political parties gave tickets for those, who don't have time for their people n still busy in shoots. Alarmed at the growing terrorist threat to aviation, global airlines body IATA has stressed heightened coordination with governments and their agencies across the world for counter-measures and sharing of intelligence and information. Noting that terror threat was a matter of national security in which governments have the overall responsibility to protect citizens, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) also said that airlines have a role to play in the efforts to counter terrorist acts. A resolution to this effect was unanimously adopted at the ongoing IATA annual meeting in Dublin in which the airline CEOs also pledged that their companies would uphold strict aviation security standards, remain vigilant and ensure the highest levels of preparedness against such acts, a press release said. The resolution came in the backdrop of the Brussels airport attack and the bombings of Russia's Metrojet airline passenger plane in October 2015 and an aircraft of Somalia's Daallo Airline in February this year. "These are grim reminders that aviation is vulnerable. Airlines rely on governments to keep passengers and employees secure as part of their responsibility for national security. And we are committed to working with them in that challenging task," IATA Director General and CEO Tony Tyler said. The resolution noted that air transport remained "a target for terrorists, exemplified by a series of recent tragic attacks on aircraft and aviation infrastructure to which terrorists have laid claim," and expressed concern that current conflicts around the world could lead to further terrorist activities, against airlines and the travelling public. It emphasised that "a coordinated approach to countering terrorist threats by governments, airlines, airports and all other relevant industry stakeholders will be more effective than individual actions alone." The IATA asked its member airlines, airports and other aviation industry stakeholders to work in partnership to counter the risk of terrorist threats to aviation and called on governments to work in partnership amongst themselves and with airlines to counter the risk. Indian Banks' Association (IBA) has urged finance ministry to reconsider its order restricting agency-banks, mostly state-owned, from tie-ups with other banks for collection of direct taxes, saying the move has created problems for companies. CBDT recently asked all the agency banks "not to enter" into any tie-ups with non-agency banks for collection of direct taxes. Any agency-bank entering into such arrangement with non-agency banks for tax collection of entities other than FPIs would be deauthorised, it added. Agency banks are those lenders which are authorised by the government to collect taxes. Seeking review of the instructions, the Indian Banks' Association (IBA), in a letter to the Chief Controller of Accounts (CCA), Central Board of Direct Taxes, said existing arrangements have been in place for several years now and have been of "immense benefit" to customers who can use their existing bank accounts towards all their payment obligations including direct tax payments. The restrictions follow a report of Public Accounts Committee of Parliament in which it expressed concern over practice of some agency banks offering facility of collection of direct taxes to some 'non-agency banks'. As per the Department of Financial Services, allocation of government business to private sector banks and use of net-banking facility for e-payment of direct taxes through agency-non-agency bank tie-ups is "unauthorised and irregular." RBI, according to the CCA office memorandum, said that it has not approved any tie-ups arrangements between authorised and non-authorised banks. RBI was of the "opinion" that the non-agency banks were only playing the role of facilitator by aggregating the tax payments of their customers and remitting it to the agency bank like any other taxpayer. In its letter, IBA said banks facilitating the payments do not receive any commission from the agency banks for such facilitation of clients. Furthermore, it argued, the arrangement with agency banks was merely for operational convenience of customers and such should not be "construed as sub-agency tie-ups". "We request your good office to take up the matter with concerned authorities for continuation of the existing operational arrangements," IBA said. India today pledged to provide nearly Rs (Nepalese) 50 million for construction of community buildings in 24 villages in southern Nepal. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed for construction of 25 community buildings in 24 village development committees in Sarlahi district at an estimated cost of NRs 49.98 million (about USD 500,000), said a press release issued by the Indian Embassy here. The MoU was signed between representatives of the embassy and the Local Development Office, Sarlahi district for the project to be funded under Small Development Programme Scheme as part of India-Nepal Economic Cooperation Programme. All 24 villages are situated in Sarlahi district in remote rural areas with over 20 per cent of Dalits. Due to lack of community buildings, the Dalits are not able to celebrate their festivals, cultural programmes and other ceremonies together. The community buildings in each village will help them in improving their social conditions, the embassy said. The new infrastructure will provide much needed space and would create an improved environment for socio-economic development. India has reaffirmed its commitment to pursue a green path to growth as leaders of 20 countries and the European Union gathered here for the seventh and the inaugural Mission Innovation ministerials. At the inaugural Mission Innovation (MI) Ministerial, ministers from all Mission Innovation partners released their respective governments' plans to double research and development funding over five years. The Indian delegation at the ministerial is being led by Science and Technology Minister Harsh Vardhan. Ministers welcomed the European Commission on behalf of the European Union as the 21st partner in the initiative. At the inaugural Mission Innovation, the 21 partners each pledged to seek a doubling in their governmental and state-directed research and development investment over five years, reaching around a combined US 30 billion per year by 2021. These efforts under Mission Innovation represent an unprecedented acceleration of research and development efforts for innovative clean energy technologies. Ministers also met with leaders of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition and other leading energy investors, underscoring the critical link between government innovation and entrepreneurship to bring affordable clean energy technologies to market. "I am pleased to note that Ministers have endorsed the recommendations made by MI countries and subgroups will now work together to lead the objective of Mission Innovation," Vardhan said. "I would like to reaffirm India's commitment to pursue green path to growth through Research Innovation and Joint Collaboration," he said. During the meeting, Vardhan announced India's current investment ($72 million) and doubling plan ($145 million) in Clean Energy Research. A formal announcement on new joint collaborations with Mission Innovation Countries was also made by him. India has launched a number of collaborative research and development efforts to pursue research in solar energy, energy efficiency, advanced biofuels, electrical transmission and storage with the US, the UK, Australia, Norway, South Korea and many other countries. Vardhan also announced expanding India's collaboration with the UK through setting up of a Joint virtual Clean Energy Centre to address the challenges to intermitting solar energy and launching a new Research Track on Smart Energy Grids and Energy Storage under Indo-US PACE-R (Partnership to Advance Clean Energy -- Research). During the ministerial, each government also provided information on national clean energy needs, plans, priorities, and supporting policies and programmes for clean energy innovation. A series of webinars over the coming months will provide an in-depth look on a country-by-country basis. "Our support for Mission Innovation is crucial to funding the basic scientific research and development that will underpin the advanced clean energy solutions needed to combat climate change in the 21st century," said US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz. "These technologies will help drive down adoption costs to grow low-carbon economies and create an entirely new markets for the solutions that will reduce heat trapping emissions," he said. European Commission Vice President for Energy Union Maros Sefcovic said scaling up clean energy innovation is key to the success of the European Energy Union and to the implementation of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. It also represents a major global economic and industrial opportunity. "Mission Innovation, therefore, coheres perfectly with our upcoming research, innovation and competitiveness strategy," he said. Meanwhile, at the seventh Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM7) three new global campaigns were launched -- the Advanced Cooling Challenge, the Energy Management Campaign and the Corporate Sourcing of Renewables Campaign. The countries also agreed to launch a new phase of collaboration -- "CEM 2.0". As the first major gathering of global energy ministers since last December's Paris Agreement, CEM7 and the MI Ministerial brought together clean energy leaders from around the world. This meeting represented a crucial step towards accelerating both the deployment of today's clean energy technologies and innovation for the technologies of the future. Ministers committed to ambitious action on implementing policies and solutions to meet countries' climate and clean energy goals. "CEM7 and MI are major driving forces for how the US and global community can achieve the commitments made under the Paris Agreement," said Moniz. "The outcome of these two meetings can play an important role in deploying clean energy technologies today and developing tomorrow's solutions that will facilitate the world's transition to a clean energy economy," he said. Canada, China, India, Saudi Arabia and the United States announced to join the Advanced Cooling Challenge and are committed to promote greater use of cost-effective, energy efficient air conditioning and refrigeration equipment through appliance efficiency policies and programmes. Further the ClimateWorks Foundation announced a strategic alignment of their philanthropic programmes with CEM programmes that support power sector decarbonisation in Mexico, India, China and other CEM countries. India and Singapore today held the first dialogue between their defence ministers as they agreed to enhance the scale and complexity of existing bilateral military interaction, at a time when freedom of navigation in international waterways has emerged as a major concern. The first Defence Ministers' Dialogue (DMD) between Manohar Parrikar and his Singaporean counterpart Ng Eng Hen marked raising of bilateral defence cooperation to the highest level. "We had very detailed discussions. We have agreed on expanding the interaction between the armed forces and defence R&D and industry participation under (the) 'Make in India' (initiative)," Parrikar told reporters after the dialogue. "I am very hopeful that this association with Singapore is going to build up to a much more than the strategic partnership," said Parrikar, who also called on Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong this morning before the DMD. "We have agreed (that the) scope and complexity of the interaction between the armed forces would be further enhanced," he said. Parrikar further said the two sides also agreed to collaborate between industries. "Under (the) 'Make in India' initiative, the industry-to- industry cooperation has already begun and it is showing positive response," he said. The agreement will also see Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) working with a Singapore research agency on research-oriented projects. Responding to questions, Singapore Minister Ng said: "We both agreed that we will work towards renewal of agreements" for training of Singapore armed forces in India from 2017 and 2018. Singapore and Indian armed forces interact frequently and "it is a not a new relationship", stressed Ng. "Both countries would also want to deepen the complexity and engagement between our two militaries under the revised defence cooperation agreement," he said. A joint statement issued after the meeting said both ministers committed to enhance the scale and complexity of existing bilateral exercises between the militaries. The minister emphasised the importance of international cooperation in tackling transnational security threats. In particular, both ministers strongly condemned terrorism, and renewed their commitment to cooperation in counterterrorism efforts, emphasised the importance of safeguarding maritime security in international waterways, according to an official statement. Freedom of navigation in international waterways like the disputed South China Sea has emerged as a concern for many countries including the US, which has sent warships and military planes to challenge territorial claims by China over the strategic waters. In response, China has deployed fighter jets and ships to track and warn off US ships. Looking at the region, Parrikar also stressed India's stand on disputes in the South China Sea, saying "solutions should be found peacefully. This is our clear view about it. "India will always be insisting that all parties should always resolve this (South China Sea) issue peacefully, based on international laws and norms. "Do it peacefully. We are for free passage for all ships as well sea-lanes and air traffic. We feel that this should be resolve by sitting across the table," said Parrikar, who will also address the annual Shangri-La dialogue, an inter- governmental security forum, tomorrow morning. The ministers commended the progress made in bilateral cooperation in defence technology, formally instituted since 2006 with several joint research projects including unmanned systems and soldier performance, said the statement. The ministers reaffirmed India's vital role in the security of the Asia-Pacific region, in particular through ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus) platforms. Ng noted India's contribution through participation in the ADMM-Plus Maritime Security and Counter-Terrorism Exercise in May this year. Pointing out that Singapore was now India's strategic partner, Parrikar said it was the reason for the DMD to be raised to the minister-level from secretary-bureaucrat previously. He also underlined India's Act East policy, saying that country was now engaged with the countries in East Asia and was constantly in contacts with the countries in the region. Singapore is a "major fulcrum centre" for India as it shifts its attention to the Asia-Pacific and boosts its presence in the region, Parrikar said. "We consider Singapore as a major fulcrum centre for this policy to be initiated, a key component and key friend of India to ensure that peace and tranquillity remains in this region," Parrikar said. My mom, a breathtaking K-Mori from Kairimai village, Baimuru, in the Gulf Province, fell in love with a striking young gentleman originating from a Dagua on the west coast of East Sepik Province. Those marriage decisions were made in completely different places and at entirely different times. These two different women never knew they would be growing old together, nor in their wildest dreams did they imagine they would marry my two dads. They never had the slightest clue of each other. ON THE left is my mother Judy and on the right is my other mother, Elizabeth. Both are married to my dads. The gentleman was in his second year of teaching after graduating from Holy Trinity Teachers College at Mt Hagen in 1977. My other mom, Elizabeth, fell in love with an accountant who rode around on a motorbike for New Britain Palm Oil Development, now NBPOL, and they became the couple on the motorbike. You wouldnt have missed them if you were in the area in the late 1970s and 1980s. Their two husbands, Alex Nara and Simeon Nara, are brothers. They were amongst the first Sepiks to resettle in West New Britain in 1972 where they cut down huge trees to clear the forest and planted the first oil palm under the Land Settlement Scheme. As for my mom, West New Britain has become her home and her husbands people are her family. Thoughts of Kairimai, sweet mangrove crabs and the tasty poi are still with her even though she is many miles away. There are little tales of moonlight and dry weather with warm fires in every hut and meat for everyone. It is only when the smiling face of her mother, my grandmother, crosses her mind that tears run down even as she still smiles. This is when the handsome Daguan digs deep to buy her two tickets, never scared that she will not return as she has proven herself all these years. Maybe its a little touch of a Purari magic but I still do not understand her way of preparing traditional Sepik nangu where the soup drives you to lick your plate. She has given her whole heart to the man she loves and she travels with him to teach and serve some of the many remote schools in West New Britain. My other dad, Simeon Nara, left NBPOL and took his motorbike as well as my mom Elizabeth, an original beauty from Yangoru in East Sepik, and they travelled to Sonoma Adventist College where he undertook theological studies and graduated in early 1981 as a missionary in the Seventh Day Adventist church. With my mother Elizabeth by his side, they served many rural people across West New Britain before he entered Pacific Adventist University in 1991 and graduated as a Bachelor of Theology in 1995. He then continued with a masters at Avondale College in Australia while serving various high profile posts within the church hierarchy. He is now a retired pastor and still rides his bike with his original beauty Elizabeth on the pillion and they reside amongst the grassy plateaux and cool mountain breezes of the Markham Valley, all their children, three girls and two boys, grown up. As for my mom Judy, she now lives with her teacher boy at Haella Primary School in West New Britain, where he is head teacher. She has six grown up children of which I am the first and six grandchildren. Judy spends most of her time around the house making unnecessary noise with her grandchildren. God Bless you both my mothers as you continue to love your two mangi Daguans. India and Tunisia have decided to enhance cooperation in combating terrorism with Vice President of India, Hamid Ansari, saying successfully dealing with such threats requires strong collaboration among like-minded partners. India and Tunisia also signed two Memorandum of Understandings (MoU) to promote handicrafts, and Information Technology (IT) along with digital economy after Vice President Ansari met Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid and discussed a range of issues of mutual and regional interests. The two sides discussed the issue of spreading tide of extremism and terrorism, which is a threat for both the countries, Ansari said at a joint press conference with the Tunisian Prime Minister. "We have discussed the issues related to combating this challenge and decided to enhance our cooperation in the field of counter-terrorism," Ansari said on Thursday. Two MoUs were signed after Ansari and Essid held one-on-one talks which were followed by the delegation-level parleys between the two sides. India will also train 350 Tunisian students in next five years, Ansari said, adding that, "We will be happy to receive 350 Tunisian students for training in our institutions in different streams as our guests". Ansari said their discussion on bilateral relations focussed on ongoing economic partnership and on incorporating newer areas of collaboration like information technology and education. "I conveyed to him the felicitations of the people of India to the people of Tunisia on the successful transformation of Tunisia into a vibrant multi-party democracy and conveyed our good wishes for its continued success," Ansari said. Ansari's remarks on democracy assume significance as it was in Tunisia that the revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests in the Arab world, dubbed 'Arab Spring', began in December 2010 and eventually led to setting up of democratic governments in many Middle Eastern countries. Ansari said he also appreciated Tunisia's support for India's bid for a place in an expanded UN Security Council. Speaking at the joint press meet, Essid said, "Our relations are very strong, our views are similar". "We have relations with India in various fields including auto-sector, agriculture and other fields. We also appreciate India's progress in the IT sector and we will have cooperation with India in this sector," Essid said. Essid said that the meeting of the India-Tunisia Joint Committee will be held later this year. "The visit of the Vice President comes before the meeting of the Joint Committee. The current meetings have paved the ways for identifying keys areas of cooperation and improve further on our relations with India," he said. He said that one of the important issues of today was tourism. "We will work out a mechanism at the Joint Committee meeting for promoting tourism," Tunisian Prime Minister informed. The Vice President also visited Zaitouna Mosque, Bardo Museum and the House of Representatives. Zaitouna Mosque is the oldest one in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, and covers an area of 5,000 sq.mt. It has 160 authentic columns brought originally from the ruins of the old city of Carthage. Ansari will meet Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi on Saturday and deliver a keynote address at Dar Al Dhiyafa. Earlier, Ansari, accompanied by his wife Salma, arrived in Tunisia from Morocco on the final leg of his two-nation trip. He was received at the airport by Essid. India and the United States have signed an MoU to enhance mutual cooperation on conserving wildlife and combating its trafficking. The Memorandum of Understanding was signed by Indian Ambassador to the US, Arun K Singh, and Catherine Novelli, Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment, at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department yesterday. Under the MoU, the two countries agreed to cooperate and strengthen capacity for wildlife conservation and management in India, including efforts to protect critical habitats. India and the US also committed to cooperate regionally and globally for combating of illegal trade in wildlife through capacity building, strengthening cooperation and sharing best practices. "Between India and the US, there is a lot to learn from each other on management and conservation best practices, capacity-building, awareness campaign and law enforcement that contribute to improved environmental health in both our countries," Singh said. "Similarly, there is a desire to cooperate with each other to deny space to poaching and illegal trade in wildlife products," he said, adding that the MoU signed provides an institutional basis for such cooperation. Noting that the memorandum was being signed on the eve of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's official visit to the US next week, Singh said the Indian leader is a champion of the cause of environment, clean energy and sustainable development. "Wildlife conservation is a vital part of our overall agenda. It was during Prime Minister Modi's first visit to the US in September 2014 that leaders of the two countries stressed the importance of conserving the world's precious biodiversity and agreed to explore opportunities for collaboration on national parks and wildlife conservation," he added. The Indian-American gunman who shot dead his former college professor in California had also murdered his wife and planned to kill another faculty member, police said. Local reports said Mainak Sarkar, 38, had killed his wife Ashley Hasti at her Minnesota home, before driving to Los Angeles. According to CBS Minneapolis, they were married in 2011. Sarkar shot his former professor William Klug, 39, multiple times at a small office in the Engineering Building of the University of California Los Angeles on Wednesday, before turning the gun on himself. Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck said Sarkar had plans to kill another UCLA faculty member, but could not do so as he was not able to find him. The faculty member, whose name was not revealed by police, is safe. "We believe that he went to kill two faculty from UCLA. He was only able to locate one," Beck said yesterday. He said police found an extra box of ammunition in his Minnesota home. According to the LAPD chief, Sarkar arrived at the UCLA campus "heavily armed". "He had a backpack, two semiautomatic pistols and extra magazines. It looks like he was certainly prepared to engage multiple victims," Beck told reporters. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is assisting the Los Angeles Police Department in its investigation. In a blog post, Sarkar, an IIT Kharagpur graduate, had accused Klug of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else. "William Klug, UCLA professor is not the kind of person when you think of a professor. He is a very sick person," Sarkar wrote. "I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy. He made me really sick. Your enemy is your enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust." Local media quoted several university officials and students as saying that Sarkar's allegation was not true. "UCLA says there is no truth to this," Beck told reporters in response to a question. Klug graduated from Westmont in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science in engineering physics, completed a master's degree at UCLA and a doctorate at CalTech. He was an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA. "We're deeply saddened by this tragic and send our condolences to his wife, Mary Elise, also a Westmont graduate, and their family," UCLA President Gayle D Beebe said. "Dr Klug was an excellent student at Westmont who conducted student research with two professors during his college years," Beebe said. Two Indian-origin millionaire brothers were today embroiled in a controversy for allegedly exploiting a loophole in Britain's state-run National Health Service's pricing controls to overcharge for the sale of generic drugs, according to a media report. Bhikhu and Vijay Patel, the founders of pharmaceutical empire Waymade Plc, have been named in a special 'Times' investigation for charging "extortionate" prices for drugs by dropping an existing brand name of a medicine and instead selling it under its generic name. The investigation claims that Atnahs, a company the brothers set up in 2013, specialises in buying the rights to older medications that are still used by patients but are no longer of interest to major pharmaceutical companies to be able to overcharge for the same drug, ultimately paid by the UK taxpayer. "Waymade is not commenting on today's news," a company spokesperson told PTI. The Kenya-born businessmen are well-known in the UK's British-Indian circuit for their rags-to-riches story, having arrived in the 1960s with not much in their pockets and going on to set up a profitable pharmaceuticals empire. Bhikhu, 68, and his brother 66-year-old brother Vijay have risen up the ranks of The Sunday Times 'Rich List' over the years, with their personal wealth pegged at 675 million pounds in 2016. The businessmen, based in Essex - a county north-east of England, also have a property portfolio and own a company offering chauffeur-driven cars. They also run the charitable Shanta Foundation, which funds educational and medical projects in Kenya and India. UK's Department of Health said the country's Competition and Markets Authority is investigating abuse of generic medicine pricing, but there is no indication that the Patels' firm is among them. A spokesperson said: "No pharmaceutical company should be exploiting the NHS. The Competition and Markets Authority is already investigating a potential abuse of generics pricing, and as part of a public consultation we have asked for views on government powers to limit the prices of generic medicines where there is no competitive market." According to the latest findings, the NHS is paying an extra 262 million pounds a year for more than 50 drugs for which prices have increased greatly since 2010. The tactics identified are technically legal but come at a time when the NHS budget is already under unprecedented stress. "We are concerned about these type of anomalies at a time when the NHS needs to make significant savings, which suggests further regulatory action may be needed,"an NHS England spokesperson told 'The Times' in reference to its investigation. The procedure typically involves the firms buying the exclusive marketing rights to medicines of no interest to big pharmaceutical companies any more. By then dropping the brand names and selling the medicines under their generic names instead, the companies are able to take advantage of a loophole in NHS pricing controls. The drugs move from Category C, where manufacturers face a profit cap, to Category A, for which the Department of Health sets a reimbursement price based on cost information from two wholesalers. A lack of competition in the market for the drugs means that the companies can charge as much as they like. A few other companies behind major price increases include Amdipharm, previously owned by the Patels, Mercury Pharma and Auden Mckenzie. Two of the companies, Amdipharm and Mercury, were taken over and merged by a European private equity firm in late 2012. There is no indication that any of the firms named by the newspaper are under investigation by the UK's regulator - the Competition and Markets Authority. The fencing of the India-Bangladesh border would be completed by this year end and not a single individual be allowed to illegally cross either side, Union Minister for Law and Justice D V Sadananda Gowda said today. Interacting with reporters at the Raj Bhavan here, Gowda said, "A major initiative has been taken since the last six and a half decades in fencing the border, even to the extent of constitutional amendment being made on both sides." The Union minister is in the state since yesterday in connection with the second anniversary celebration of the BJP-led NDA government. He said the fencing would be completed by the end of December this year to plug any illegal infiltration and immigration on either side without proper passport in future. "Bangladesh infiltration will be stopped within a very short period," he said. Maintaining that safety and security of the country has been the prime concern of the government, he said Prime Minister Narendra Modi held the vision that the boundaries across the country, be it with China, Pakistan or Bangladesh should be properly fenced. Reaffirming that the two major initiatives of the BJP-led NDA government under Modi is "good governance" and "development", he said in the last two years there has been no charge of corruption, scam or scandal against the ministers. He claimed that the NDA had revived 85 major stalled projects, while the government was in the process of providing electricity to 18,000 villages throughout the country. So far nearly 7,000 villages have been covered, he said. Maintaining that cooperative federalism was one of the important areas of good governance, he said the Centre had adopted the policy of devolution of funds of up to 42 per cent to the state government so that the states could plan for themselves and take forward developmental activity. Gowda said the development of the northeast has been the prime focus of the Prime Minister for which a separate ministry has also been formed. Iran's top leader today ruled out any formal cooperation with America against the Islamic State group, their common adversary in Iraq and Syria, insisting that the United States remains a prime enemy of Tehran, despite a landmark nuclear deal with word powers. Trusting the US would be "a big mistake," said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, insisting that cooperation with America goes "against the independence" of Iran. There has been no formal talk of a joint fight or even cooperation between Iran and the United States against the Islamic State group. Nevertheless, Khamenei's remarks were somewhat ironic since the war against the Islamic State has put Americans and Iranians in close proximity. In Iraq, Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards are on the ground, helping Shiite militiamen and Iraqi forces in their offensive on Fallujah, an IS stronghold west of Baghdad. A US-led airstrikes campaign is also backing that battle. But Khamenei said that despite the nuclear deal which went into effect this year, Iran has "many small and big enemies, but foremost among them are America," Britain and Israel. He spoke at a ceremony marking the 27th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought hard-line clerics to power and ousted the US-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Tens of thousands of Iranians attended the ceremony in Tehran while state TV broadcast Khamenei's 90-minute speech live. The deal with world powers eased Tehran's isolation from the international community and removed many economic sanctions in exchange for Iran curtailing its nuclear programme. But the agreement, struck in 2015 with moderate President Hassan Rouhani's administration, has been assailed by Iranian hard-liners, and in the months since its implementation, Iran has conducted missile tests criticised by the US, as well as aired footage on state television of an underground missile base. In Syria, Shiite power Iran is a top backer of President Bashar Assad, along with Russia. Tehran has deployed what it says are military advisers to support the Syrian government and has had casualties in the conflict, though it denies the presence of Iranian combat troops. Meanwhile, the US and its Western allies, along with most Gulf Arab nations, back the Syrian rebels fighting to topple Assad. Jharkhand Government and Asian Development Bank (ADB) today signed a Loan and Project Agreement worth Rs 1,500 crore in New Delhi, an official release said here. While the Centre and ADB signed the Loan Agreement, Jharkhand and ADB signed the Project Agreement under the second phase of the project for construction of 176.6 km road, the release said. The Project Agreement signed under the second Jharkhand State Road Project construction of four proposed roads are Khunti-Tamar (43.7 km), Gobindpur-Tundi-Giridih (43.5 km), Giridih-Jamua-Sarvan (45.2 km) and Dumka-Hansdiha (44.2 km), it said adding, the project would connect the backward regions of the state while helping economic activity and growth. The project would become a mile stone in the development of the state, the release said. Jharkhand Chief Secretary Rajbala Verma and Secretary of Road Construction Department M R Meena represented the state, while Teresa Kho represented ADB and Joint Secretary (Economic Affairs) Rajkumar represented the Centre, the release said. Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar today lauded the vulture breeding and conservation programme of the Haryana government. "With the success of the programme, I believe, we would again touch the number of four crore vultures in the country in the next 10 years," the minister said after launching Asia's first Gyps vulture reintroduction programme, along with Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, at Pinjore. Javadekar and Khattar also released two Himalayan Griffon vultures from Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre, Pinjore into the wild. The birds were released in the pre-release aviaries close to the breeding centre. The Union Minister named one of the captive vultures 'Jodh Singh' before its release. He added that the Centre has fixed a target of increasing the existing forest cover of 20 per cent in the country to 33 per cent. Khattar described breeding and conservation of vultures as a "significant step" towards saving the species from extinction. "It is a matter of concern that vultures have become endangered. Almost 95 per cent of them have disappeared and the reason is Diclofenac, a painkiller given to cattle," he said. When vultures feed on carcasses of animals which had been given Diclofenac, they also die, he said, adding that the drug has now been banned by the government. As vultures play a vital role in keeping the environment clean, efforts should be undertaken to increase their numbers and the state government is constantly working towards achieving the goal, Khattar said. Besides various schemes in the Shivalik hills, a 500-metre area around Mangar Bani has been declared 'no construction zone', the Chief Minister said, adding that his government is also formulating a scheme to develop a herbal park on a 500-acre land in Morni. Javadekar later handed over 10 vultures, bred at the centre and which have siblings, to Field Director, Van Vihar National Park, Madhya Pradesh AK Srivastava, as part of genetic management of the captive vulture population. The Himalayan Griffon is closely related to the critically endangered resident Gyps vultures but has not been declared an endangered species. The mortal remains of Major K Manoj Kumar, who was killed along with 18 others in the massive blaze at the Central Ammunition Depot in Maharashtra's Pulgaon were consigned to flames with full military honours here today. The body of the soldier was brought to his home here this morning from Pangode military hospital to enable the family and public to pay their last respects. The remains were later taken to Shanti Kavadam, the state-owned electric crematorium, where the last rites were held before it was consigned to flames. The late Major's widow Beena, 12-year-old son Vedhant, and other family members were among those present at the crematorium. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan placed a wreath on the body. Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala was also present. The body was brought to Kerala yesterday and kept overnight at the Pangode military hospital. Major K Manoj Kumar was among the 19 army personnel killed in the massive blaze at the Asia's biggest Central Ammunition Depot at Pulgaon on May 31 in Wardha district of Maharashtra. The Democratic Party thinks it's time for Rep. John Katko, a Republican, to endorse presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. No, really. After House Speaker Paul Ryan penned an op-ed Thursday announcing his support for Trump, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee the House Democrats' campaign arm said Katko, R-Camillus, should "end his word games" and endorse the real estate mogul. "Ever since Donald Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination, Katko has dutifully followed Paul Ryan's talking points and delayed his endorsement of his ticket mate Donald Trump," DCCC spokesman Bryan Lesswing said. "Now that Ryan has ended his charade, we can only expect that Katko will also stop playing word games and endorse Trump's toxic campaign, to which he is already inseparably tied." Democrats have been making Trump a major issue in their campaign to unseat Katko, who is seeking a second term in Congress. House Majority PAC, a Democratic super PAC supporting congressional candidates, called Katko "perhaps the most vulnerable New York House Republican." Katko didn't endorse any of the GOP presidential candidates before the New York primary in April. After Trump became the presumptive nominee, he said the GOP presidential contender has to "earn my vote." "He has a lot of work to do in that regard," Katko said in May. "I'm concerned with some of the comments he's made, and with the general tone that he's taken." Despite Katko's comments, Democrats have continued to hammer the GOP congressman and link him to Trump. Chris Pack, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, didn't address the Democrats' anti-Trump campaign strategy. But he did tout Katko's record in Congress. "John Katko has been a strong bipartisan voice for central New York and has had multiple bills signed into law by President Obama," Pack said. "While Washington Democrats loyal to Nancy Pelosi continue with their ultra-partisan rhetoric, John Katko will continue delivering bipartisan results for central New York." The race in the 24th Congressional District is viewed as a potential pickup opportunity for Democrats. But before they take on Katko, there will be a three-way primary for the party's nomination. Colleen Deacon, Eric Kingson and Steve Williams are vying for the Democratic nod. The primary will be held Tuesday, June 28. Miranda Kerr is hoping to raise awareness about premature births in a new Royal Hospital for Women Foundation campaign. The model, 33, experienced the complications surrounding the issue first hand five years ago when her son Flynn was born premature, and she pledged to do what she could to help other new parents cope with the drama, reported Contactmusic. Kerr was named the Australian hospital foundation's ambassador last year, and announced the by praising "the work the doctors, nurses, staff and volunteers do here" on Instagram. Announcing the new campaign role, Kerr adds, "I was a premature baby myself and was saved. Join me in saving the lives of newborn babies everyday... Five persons including two employees of a prominent multispeciality hospital in south east Delhi and three touts have been arrested on charges of running a kidney racket bringing donors from different parts of the country to the national capital. The arrested accused include Aditya Singh and Shailesh Saxena, who worked as personal secretaries of Apollo hospital doctors for 3-4 years, said Mandeep Singh Randhawa, DCP(south east). Information was received that the members of the gang would come to Apollo Hospital on June 2 for holding a meeting with a donor and relatives of the recipient. A raid was conducted and Aseem Sikdar, Satya Prakash and Devashish Moulik were caught yesterday, he said. The touts used to lure financially poor people from West Bengal, UP and other parts of the country for donating kidney in return of Rs 3-4 lakh and were brought to Delhi and accommodated in hotels. "Medical tests of recipient and donor were conducted and once the compatibility match was done, operations were conducted at Apollo Hospital," the officer said. "We are cooperating and providing all information required to help the police in their investigation pertaining to the alleged kidney sale racket," said a press statement by Indraprastha Apollo Hospital. Police was working on information about the gang that was actively involved in illegal trade of human organs. "It was learnt during investigation that the gang members used to prepare forged papers to establish the relationship between the donors and the recipients and the staff of Apollo were also involved in this racket," it said. Interestingly, police got the lead about the gang after a fight involving a man and his wife whose kidney had been sold by the former without her consent, a police source said. One of the arrested tout Devashish Moulik, a native of New Jalpaiguri in West Bengal was active since 2014 and he even made his wife Maumita to donate kidney a month back, Randhawa said. Another arrested tout Satya Prakash, who belonged to Kanpur(UP), had donated his kidney in 2014 and used to target potential donors and bring them to Delhi. Sikdar was the coordinator of the gang and would look after lodging of the donor, laboratory tests, meeting with relatives of recipients and negotiations for money, he said. Five cases of organ sale have been detected with the recovery of large number of original files, CDs and documents seized by the police and further investigation is in progress, Randhawa said. A case under different sections of IPC and Transplant of Human Organ Act (THOA) has been registered at Sarita Vihar police station in connection with the kidney racket. The arrest of the five accused has also led to recovery of fake id proofs such as voter photo identity cards and Aadhaar cards, laptops. The entire documentation and verification process for organ transplant was bypassed by using forged papers related with agreement of donor, relationship with donor, id and address proofs, proof of marriage and clearance of case by Hospital Internal Authorisation Committee, Randhawa said. All the necessary documents were made fraudulently by affixing donor's photo showing the person as recipient's relative using documents of a genuine relative, he added. Apollo hospital denied involvement in the kidney racket emphasising that it was a "victim" of a well-orchestrated operation by the accused. "The police in their investigation has identified secretarial staff of some doctors, who have been accused of being involved in the alleged racket. We reiterate that these are not employees of the hospital. While all due precautions were conducted, the use of fake and forged documents was used for this racket with a criminal intent. The hospital has been a victim of a well-orchestrated operation to cheat patients and the hospital," the statement by hospital stated. The hospital also claimed that in order to ensure compliance with the law and diligence in process, it has an independent body with external members also for according consent for any transplant surgery. This Committee goes through all documents necessary to ensure that requirements under the concerned Act are complied with. Further, the hospital has ensured that all due process as per the law has been followed, added the hospital statement. Sri Lankan security services' focus on a possible LTTE resurgence has affected the government's attention to emerging terror threats like its nationals joining ISIS, according to a US report on global terrorism. The US State Department's terrorism report for 2015, released yesterday, also said that although the Sri Lankan government maintained a comprehensive counter-terrorism stance, counter-terrorism cooperation and training with the US last year was limited. The report said the Sri Lankan government maintained a strong military presence in post-conflict areas and continued to voice concern about the possible re-emergence of pro-Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) sympathisers. However, the Maithripala Sirisena government, which came to power last year, has emphasised its commitment to seek political reconciliation with the Tamil community, including through talks with the Tamil diaspora, the report said. "Sri Lankansecurity establishment's focus on a possible LTTE resurgence affected the government's attention to emerging threats, such as reports of Sri Lankan foreign terrorist fighters joining the ISIL," it said. The report said that in July, Sri Lanka saw the first confirmation that Sri Lankans had joined ISIS when social media announced the death of Sharfaz Shuraih Muhsin, an ISIS fighter from the country, after he was killed in coalition airstrikes in Syria. Thauqeer Ahmed Thajudeen - Muhsin's brother-in-law and fellow Sri Lankan national - was later identified as a member of IS in Syria. Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Karunasena Hettiarachchi had said that although there were reports of Sri Lankans joining ISIS, there was no concrete evidence to suggest the group was operating in Sri Lanka. On the financing of terrorism, the report said although Sri Lanka is neither an important regional financial centre nor a preferred centre for money laundering, the country remained vulnerable to money laundering and terrorism finance. The Thane Motor Accident Claims Tribunal (MACT) has awarded a compensation of Rs 44.51 lakh to the kin of a man who was killed in a road accident in 2012. MACT member and district judge K D Vadane, in a recent judgment, noted contributory negligence on the part of the accident victim and ordered that the wife and son of Nitin Madhav Khisti be paid a reduced compensation of Rs 44.51 lakh. The claimants in this case were Vidya Nitin Khisti (56) and her son Ahlad Nitin Khisti (31), residents of Charai area of Thane city. In their complaint, the claimants told the MACT that Nitin Madhav Khisti, who worked as a project manager with a private company, was heading towards Cadbury Junction from Ambedkar Road on November 26, 2012. Khisti's motorcycle was hit by a Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) bus coming from Old Mumbai-Agra Road near Khopat signal, in which he sustained injuries and died, they said. Stating that the accident was caused by rash and negligent driving of the MSRTC bus driver, the deceased's kin demanded a compensation amount of Rs 75,00,000. MSRTC contested the claim and alleged that the mishap occurred due to negligence on part of the deceased. The judge, after perusing the FIR lodged in the case, noted that in the absence of proper traffic signal, the bus and other vehicles coming from Naupada side towards Cadbury Junction were not noticed by the motorcycle-borne man. However, the judge said the MSRTC bus was also being driven rashly. Noting that there was contributory negligence on the part of the victim, the judge said that his family members are entitled to a reduced compensation out of the total worked out sum of Rs 59.35 lakh. He ordered that the MSRTC should bear 75 per cent of the compensation amount, which stood at Rs 44.15 lakh, while the remaining 25 per cent amount has to be forgone by the deceased's family. The judge, who was asked by the claimants to award a compensation of Rs 91,30,664 considering Khisti's age, profession and salary at the time of the incident, arrived at the compensation amount of Rs 44.15 lakh on the basis of the deposition of the manager of the bank where his salary would get credited, besides his company's Human Resources (HR) personnel. Of the total payable compensation, Rs 15 lakh should be deposited in a fixed deposit (FD) in the name of the victim's wife and Rs 5 lakh in an FD in his son's name, the judge said, adding the claimants should also be paid interest at 8 per cent per annum on the amount. Even as speculations are rife on the fate of Maharashtra Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse amid a host of allegations against him, BJP state unit president Raosaheb Danve today ruled out any "party action" against him till the charges against him are proved. Terming allegations against Khadse as "political" in nature, Danve said the party has adopted a "cautious approach towards them", adding "we believe that there is no substance in them." While maintaining that Khadse would face action if the allegations against him are proved in a court of law, he said there was "no pressure from the party high command" to remove him from the state cabinet. Asked about chief minister Devendra Fadnavis's meeting with party president Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday over the Khadse issue, Danve said, "the chief minister submitted his report to Shah. But that does not necessarily mean that the report was against Khadse. It could be in his favour also." Danve, who was in Jalna to pay respect to the memory of late BJP leader Gopinath Munde on his second death anniversary, told reporters that since there was no "substance" in the allegations against the revenue minister, "there is no need for any action". Khadse, a senior BJP leader, has come under cloud of a host of allegations including irregularities in a land deal in Pune and calls allegedly received from fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim's residence in Karachi on his mobile phone. He is in a spot over the purchase of a three-acre Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation land in Bhosari allegedly at a low price of around Rs 3.75 crore from its original owner in the name of his wife and son-in-law. The market value of the land is reportedly Rs 40 crore. Khadse, who is in his home town Jalgaon in North Maharashtra amid political heat, has denied all these allegations and said he would abide by the party decision in his case. "I will follow my party's instructions and will abide by its decisions," he had said. Fadnavis met Modi and Shah in Delhi yesterday and said the party will decide "appropriate action". (Reopens BOM 4) Meanwhile, speaking to reporters in Mumbai, Danve said, "If there is anything credible found in the investigation then definitely action will be taken. As of now there is no action taken against Khadse within the party." Commenting upon the hoardings put up by Khadse (or his supporters) all over Mumbai and elsewhere paying homage to the late BJP leader Gopinath Munde, Danve said it was only to express his (Khadse's) love and respect for the departed leader, and not a show of strength. To a question, Khadse said BJP was not doing any injustice to the leaders belonging to the Other Backward Classes. Fadnavis, who was at state BJP headquarters to offer homage to Munde, evaded questions on the Khadse issue. Later, the Chief Minister called on Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao at the Raj Bhavan. Raj Bhavan sources said it was not about Khadse. Meanwhile, BJP Lok Sabha MP from Jalgaon and Khadse's daughter-in-law Raksha Khadse today met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi. School teachers and friends of Mainak Sarkar, the Indian-American gunman, who shot dead his wife and his former professor at the UCLA before turning the gun on himself, described him as a reserved but friendly person. "I had good relation with him. He was friendly but his life was limited to studies," said Goutam Biswas, who used to teach him in Durgapur till tenth standard. He said he was shocked to hear the in the media and still can't believe that it was his student who got involved in such a violent act. "I don't recall any negative attitude of him," Biswas said. His another teacher Lily Chowdhury, who taught him at St Michael's School, said he was reserved but an introvert type of person. "The incident is very shocking. We never had any issues with him," she said. One of Sarkar's childhood friends Mithun described him as a "good boy" who was always busy with his studies. Sarkar later on studied aerospace engineering from IIT-Kharagpur before shifting to the US. "We are extremely sad at this senseless loss of life and our hearts go out to the families who lost their loved ones," IIT-Kgp director Partha Pratim Chakraborty said. Sarkar, 38, killed his wife Ashley Hasti at her Minnesota home, before driving to the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) to shoot his former professor William Klug and taking his own life two days ago. Sarkar had accused Klug of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else. A 30-year-old woman was killed after she was pushed into a well allegedly by her husband for being unable to bear a male child, police said today. The incident took place in Bagidol village of Godhra taluka on the night of May 31, 90 kms from here, they said. The victim, identified as Hetal Parmar was a mother to four daughters and her husband Jitendra alongwith the in-laws used to allegedly harass her for not giving birth to a son. According to a complaint filed by the victim's family member Saidaben Chauhan, the accused fought frequently with the deceased over this issue. On the day of incident, the couple again had an altercation after which Jitendra forcibly took his wife to the well and threatened to kill her saying that she does not have the right to live after giving birth to four daughters. Subsequently, he pushed Hetal into the well and she died after drowning, the complaint said. Hetal belonged to Kantharai village of Thasra taluka in Kheda district. After marriage, she was staying with her husband at Bagidol village. Jitendra, who is absconding since the incident has been booked for murder and searches are on to nab him, police added. A 28-year-old man wanted in connection with various criminal cases in Gujarat, including that of murder, was arrested in Amboli area here today, police said. The accused, identified as Rajesh Rawal alias Raju Marwadi, was picked up by officials of Amboli police station, said a senior officer. According to police, Marwadi is wanted under Arms Act, besides two cases of murders and other crimes in Gujarat. The official said the police suspect Marwadi's involvement in a high-profile murder case in Ahmedabad, but did not elaborate further. The accused will be handed over to Gujarat police, he said. Union Ministers Maneka Gandhi and Mahesh Sharma today spoke about the various achievements of the Narendra Modi government at a public gathering in Rohtak. They claimed that while the previous government had spent Rs 36.23 crore under the Mrida Swasthya Prabandhan Yojana for farmers in the first two years, the current government has spent Rs 453.85 crore during the same period. Highlighting funds provided to Haryana in the last two years, they said under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, 2,40,426 toilets were constructed in the state and Faridabad, Kurukshetra and Panipat districts were on top in implementing the scheme. Under the Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana, 52,26,221 bank accounts were opened in Haryana and Rs 1,499.12 crore deposited in different banks by account holders, said Union Minister of State for Culture and Tourism and Civil Aviation Sharma. He further elaborated that 24,84,091 people have benefited in the state by depositing 12 rupees annually under the PM Suraksha Bima Yojana, while 189 people received Rs 2 lakh each as compensation. Sharma added that the annual premium amount of Rs 330 under the PM Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana has benefited about 8,11,251 people in Haryana, while 731 people received compensations under the scheme. Under the PM Gram Sadak Yojana, 952 kms of new roads have been laid in Haryana, the minister said. Besides, last year, 36,000 LPG connections were given to BPL families in the state, Sharma added. Apart from this, Prime Minister Modi has laid foundation stones for the construction of the 135-km, six-lane Kundali- Manesar-Palwal Expressway, the 136-km Kundali Gaziabad-Palwal Expressway and the 70-km, eight-lane NH-1 from Mukarba Chowk in New Delhi to Panipat which will cost Rs 13,802 crore. Union Minister for Women and Child Development Gandhi said Haryana bagged the Nari Shakti Award under the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao scheme for providing the best facilities to women, especially those pregnant. Under the National Krishi Bazar Portal (ENAM) scheme, e-marketing has been introduced in the grain markets (anaj mandi) of Karnal and Ellenabad (Sirsa), she added. Sharma informed that under the Regional Connectivity scheme, which will be launched shortly, three Haryana cities -- Rohtak, Kurukshetra and Hisar -- will benefit. He added that under the scheme, a fixed air fare of Rs 2,500 per person will be charged. Manipur Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh, accompanied by an all-party delegation, today left for New Delhi to apprise the Centre about the need for Presidential assent to convert three Inner Line Permit System-related Bills to Acts. The CM is joined by representatives of BJP, LJD, JD(U), CPI(M), AAP and others including recently inducted State Congress president T N Haokip, a spokesman of the all-party delegation said. The team will be joined by few other Manipuri politicians who are already stationed in the national capital, the spokesman said. The three Bills were passed last year in August after months of mass movement to protect the indigenous populace from the illegal immigrants in the state, including those from neighbouring Myanmar. The delegation will be seeking Presidential assent to have the three Bills converted into Acts. When President Barack Obama announced his support for expanding Social Security benefits, it was music to Eric Kingson's ears. The Democratic congressional candidate is a longtime Social Security advocate. He co-founded Social Security Works, a group which aims to preserve and expand the social insurance program. Obama delivered a policy speech Wednesday and made the case for not only protecting Social Security, but expanding benefits. "Fewer and fewer people have pensions they can really count on, which is why Social Security is more important than ever," he said. "We can't afford to weaken Social Security. We should be strengthening Social Security. "And not only do we need to strengthen its long-term health, it's time we finally made Social Security more generous, and increased its benefits so that today's retirees and future generations get the dignified retirement that they've earned." One way to expand the program, Obama suggested is by asking high income earners to make larger contributions. "They can afford it," he said. "I can afford it." There is a cap in place limiting Social Security taxes to the first $118,500 an individual earns in a year. Any income you collect that's above the cap isn't subject to Social Security taxes. Kingson supports eliminating the cap to help expand Social Security. "With two-thirds of today's working persons, especially those in their late 40s and 50s, facing a personal retirement income crisis, yes, it's time to expand benefits," Kingson said Thursday. "With the Social Security benefits for today's seniors averaging just $14,000, today's older Americans need benefit increases, and they need fairer cost-of-living adjustments. Kingson also suggested other changes to Social Security, including adding paid family and sick leave to the program. He called on Republicans, including U.S. Rep. John Katko, to acknowledge that there's strong support for expanding benefits, not slashing them. "I am proud to play a leadership role in this movement," Kingson said. "Social Security Works and the Strengthen Social Security Coalition of 300 organizations that Nancy Altman and I co-founded in 2009 is widely recognized as playing a central role in stopping cuts, and putting the goal of expanding Social Security on the map. "I am proud of my colleagues at Social Security Works and the many organizations who worked side by side to change our nation's discussion about the future of Social Security." Kingson is vying for the Democratic nomination against two other candidates Colleen Deacon, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's former central New York regional director, and Steve Williams, a Syracuse-area attorney. The winner of the Democratic primary, which will be held Tuesday, June 28, will face Katko, R-Camillus, in the general election. No less than 21 people, including an Superintendent of Police (SP) and an Station House Officer (SHO), have been killed in the massive clash between police and encroachers that broke out on Thursday even as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has ordered an enquiry. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who spoke to Yadav, expressed anguish over the loss of lives and assured all necessary help to the state government. At least 19 people have been killed apart from SP City Mukul Dwivedi and SHO, Farah, Santosh Yadav, Pradeep Bhatnagar, Commissioner, Agra Division. A magisterial probe has also been ordered. The violence had erupted when police were trying to evict illegal occupants, believed to be of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi, from Jawahar Bagh on Thursday on the directions of the Allahabad High Court. In Lucknow, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav ordered a probe by the divisional commissioner of Mathura, an official spokesperson said. DGP Javed Ahmed and Principal Secretary (Home) Debashish Panda have rushed here. The Union Home Minister said he has reviewed the situation in Mathura. "I have spoken to the Chief Minister of Uttar Pardesh and reviewed the situation in Mathura. I have assured him of all possible help from the Centre." "I am anguished over the loss of lives in the incident in Mathura. May God give strength to the bereaved families," Rajnath Singh said. Police said some vehicles bearing Madhya Pradesh registration number have been found. "The wrath of people against encroachers was such that when they were retreating, they were severely beaten by the public," an official said. Questioning Pakistan's stand on Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today asked whether the militant attack on the BSF convoy in Bijbehara was the way to show its love for the people. "First Pathankot airbase attack and then these type of incidents, Pakistan must think over it, if you (Pakistan) love the people of Kashmir, then this is not the way to express it," Mehbooba Mufti said during a function here. "Had there been a retaliatory fire (from BSF), how many innocent civilians would have lost their lives in today's attack," she said. While condemning the attack in which three BSF personnel were killed, the CM said that had the BSF retaliated to the attack, a Handawara like situation would have emerged in Bijbehara. "What did they get by killing the BSF personnel who come to do their duty in the valley? There were civilians in the area, children, old aged, had the BSF retaliated how many civilians casualties would have taken place?" she said. She said that common people in Kashmir do not support such type of attacks. "People might have supported all this post 1987 elections but they do not support it any longer", she said. She said that Pakistan should think over this as such type of incidents won't give anything to it and the common people were bearing the brunt. "Not only people get killed but the economy also suffers. My father Mufti Mohammed Sayeed toiled to bring tourists to Kashmir but such type of attacks also deter tourists from visiting the Valley," she said. Targeting the separatists for opposing the setting up of colonies for retired soldiers and Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley, she said that even when her government has made it clear that no Sainik colony would come up in Kashmir, separatists were giving strike calls. Mehbooba also said that the situation was not conducive to settling the Kashmiri Pandits back to their native villages in the valley. "We cannot ask the Kashmiri Pandits to return to their villages, they need a place to live for sometime in the Valley from where they can later return to their villages. Even the leaders and party workers who are Muslims and have security guards are staying in guest houses. They are unable to live in their villages how can the Kashmiri Pandits be asked to go and live in villages," she said. A Juvenile Justice Board(JJB) today reserved its order on the issue of trying a teenager, who had allegedly run over a 32-year-old marketing executive while driving his father's Mercedes, as an adult in a trial court. The Presiding Officer of JJB is likely to pronounce the order tomorrow on the application filed by Delhi Police seeking transfer of the case to trial court to try as adult the boy who turned major just four days after the April 4 incident. During over hour-long arguments before the JJB, Special Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava said the boy had committed traffic violations earlier also and had "bluffed the court and the police by claiming to be a major". He said the boy belongs to the age group of 16-18 years and this offence comes under definition of "heinous crimes" so his trial should be transferred to the trial court. The Delhi Police had on May 26 chargesheeted the juvenile in the JJB for the offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder entails a maximum of 10 years jail. Initially, a case under IPC sections 304 A (causing death by rash or negligent act) was lodged against the boy but later on he was booked for the alleged offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and he was sent to the reform home. The police had said in its charge sheet that the boy had run over marketing executive Siddharth Sharma with his father's Mercedes when Sharma was trying to cross a road near Ludlow Castle School in north Delhi on April 4. The final report was filed for alleged offences under sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 279 (driving on a public way so rashly or negligently as to endanger human life) and 337 (causing hurt by an act which endangers human life) against him. The police also annexed the statements of witnesses including that of the youth's friends supporting its case. The Board had on April 26 granted bail to the youth who sought the relief to appear in entrance examinations. The police had said that the car was being driven at a speed of at least 80 km per hour and Sharma was flung several feet into the air by the impact of the crash and landed around 15 metres away from where he stood. After the incident, a group of youths stepped out of the vehicle and fled from the spot abandoning the car there, the police had said. It had said the youth was penalized four times for violating traffic rules relating to over-speeding, not wearing seat belt and involvement in a minor traffic accident at Maurice Nagar in north Delhi. The police had earlier arrested a man who claimed to be the actual driver of the Mercedes at the time of the incident but he did a volte-face after he got to know the victim was dead. The driver and the boy's father, who was also arrested earlier, were granted bail by the court. The youth had appeared before a Delhi court to surrender and moved a bail plea which was rejected on the ground that it was a matter of JJB. He was then produced before the board. Six migrants were injured after clashes erupted at a detention camp on the Greek island of Samos, police said, a day after similar violence hit a camp on Lesbos where tents were set on fire. Two barracks at the Samos camp were torched in the unrest yesterday, which was apparently sparked by a brawl between migrants. Their nationalities were not immediately given. Police reinforcements were sent to the scene and six people were taken to hospital "as a precaution", a police source told AFP. The crowded camp houses around a thousand migrants and refugees, including many families with children. "We're surprised because the atmosphere here is usually quite calm," said Samos Dimitris Vouros, who works for the Metadrasi charity active at the camp. Scenes of chaos also broke out at the main detention camp on Lesbos, north of Samos, in the night from Wednesday to yesterday. Over a dozen migrants were injured and hundreds had to be evacuated as rival groups of Afghans and Pakistanis went at each other with clubs and stones, an AFP correspondent at the scene said. The spokesman of the UN refugee agency's mission to the island, Boris Cheshirkov, said a number of tents were set alight during the incident. Three of the wounded -- two Pakistanis and an Afghan -- were hospitalised, two of them with head injuries. There were nearly 3,000 people in the Moria camp ahead of the clash, most of them asylum applicants trying to avoid deportation to Turkey under an EU deal that went into effect in March. Nearly a thousand of them left after the clashes, seeking refuge in the surrounding fields and in another migrant camp, the AFP reporter said. Some 50,000 migrants are currently stranded in Greece after Balkan states began shutting their borders in February to stem an exodus of thousands to northern Europe. Most are staying in overcrowded camps whose poor living conditions have frequently been criticised by rights groups. More than 1,000 members of the Iraqi forces have been wounded since the start of the operation to retake Fallujah from the Islamic State group, a health official said today. "We have received 1,119 wounded since the start of the operation," a senior Baghdad health official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "The wounded fighters were treated at Kadhimiya, Abu Ghraib, Al Karama, Al Karkh and Yarmuk hospitals," he said. The official said the casualty toll included members of the army, police, counter-terrorism service and Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary organisation. Iraqi forces on May 22-23 launched a vast offensive aimed at retaking the IS bastion of Fallujah, a city only 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad that was the first to fall out of government control in 2014. Iraqi military commanders are not divulging casualty figures. The health official could not provide a figure for the number of fighters killed. The bodies of the dead are usually taken to a morgue near Baghdad airport or other locations and then collected directly by the families. The number of funerals held across the country however suggests the Fallujah battle is taking a high toll. The coffins of at least 70 fighters killed in the Fallujah fighting had by Wednesday been brought to Najaf's Valley of Peace cemetery, where many from Iraq's Shiite majority bury their dead, according to a security source there. Officials in Basra said the southern province had lost 26 fighters from the Hashed al-Shaabi force alone. Commanders say that since elite forces backed by police and army moved to the fringes of the city centre, IS has put up fierce resistance. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N on Friday expressed displeasure over Centre not completing the division of government institutions listed under Schedule 9 and 10 of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014, even two years after the bifurcation of the state. "This has been creating trouble between the two neighbouring states," Chandrababu said, adding it was the Centre's responsibility to resolve the issue expeditiously. The Chief Minister addressed a teleconference with 5,600 officials, people's representatives, Telugu Desam Party MLAs and others from his residence in Vijayawada during which he discussed the bifurcation-related issues, a release from his office said. Chandrababu also vent his ire at the Centre for releasing only Rs. 2,300 crore to bridge state's revenue deficit caused by the bifurcation. "Our revenue deficit in the first year (after bifurcation) is Rs 16,000 crore but the Centre released only Rs. 2,300 crore for bridging the gap. The 14th Finance Commission clearly stated that we will still be reeling under a huge fiscal deficit even in 2019-20," he pointed out. With great difficulty, AP could increase its income from 47% to 50.33% in the last two years, he said. But the state recorded an economic growth rate of 10.99 per cent that was three per cent more than the average. In terms of per capita income, however, AP lagged behind all other southern states, the Chief Minister said. "Hence, the Centre should extend all the support to us till we grow equally with other states. We should not rest till we achieve that," he added. "We are at a turn in history. If we are careless, we will go back but if we go ahead with a determination, we can achieve unimaginable results," Chandrababu said. The US today said it would establish sister park relationship between Chitwan, Langtang, and Sagarmatha National Parks in Nepal and Yosemite National Park in the US. This relationship between national parks is aimed at promoting bilateral cooperation for the mutual benefit of these parks by increasing information sharing and direct park-to-park contacts to address common problems such as pollution, invasive species, plant and animal disease and vanishing cultural heritage, said a press release issued by the US Embassy here. "The sister park arrangement also provides a forum for collaboration on shared research and monitoring and enriches the experience and training of park personnel through international exchanges," it said. Through this agreement, Chitwan, Langtang, Sagarmatha and Yosemite will collaborate on the preservation and restoration of natural and cultural resources, visitor education and safety, development of strategies to adapt to climate change; partnership engagement strategies, and implement research, inventorying and monitoring programs necessary to preserve and protect the parks. "Yosemite, Langtang, and Sagarmatha are rooted in dramatic mountain ranges that support diverse ecological communities, immense natural resources, and centuries of human history. These parks in both nations are also strong economic engines for their surrounding communities, but similarly face increased challenges from development, illegal activities, population growth, and climate change," said Alaina B Teplitz, US Ambassador to Nepal. Shares of mining giant NMDC today surged over 5 per cent in early trade after the company scheduled a board meeting next week to consider a proposal to buyback company's shares. Opening on a positive note, NMDC stock gained 5.26 per cent to Rs 91 on the BSE. On the NSE, its shares climbed 5.38 per cent to Rs 91. NMDC yesterday said its Board of Directors will meet next week to consider a proposal to buyback company's shares. The state-run firm, however, did not elaborate upon the number of shares it is planning to buyback. "A meeting of the Board of Directors of the company will be held on June 7, 2016, inter alia, to consider the proposal for buyback of the fully paid-up equity shares of the company of face value of Re 1 each," it said in a BSE filing. The government held 80 per cent stake in the country's largest iron ore miner, as of March 2016. The development comes amidst the government proposing to put up about 39.64 crore shares through Offer for Sale(OFS) which can fetch an estimated Rs 3,600 crore at the current market price. Jammu and Kashmir Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu today said there is no dearth of money for development work but the problem is that the system does not have the "absorptive capacity to utilise the finances", asserting the budget presented by him for 2016-17 is aimed at setting the system right. "There is no dearth of money, the problem is that the system does not have the absorptive capacity. I can give Rs 1,100 crore for (construction of) roads and buildings, but we only have 26 hot-mix plants and even if we make them work continuously day and night for 365 days, the total money that can be spent is Rs 600 crore. So, what will you do by taking Rs 1,100 crore?" Drabu said replying to the general discussion on budget proposals in the Legislative Council. The finance minister said through the budget he has tried to build systems which would serve his successors as well as the government and the society. "I have tried, in the budget, to build systems which will not serve only me, but serve the successors whoever they may be. It will serve the government and...The society," he said. Drabu said the only way for the Jammu and Kashmir economy to grow was public investment. "There is no private investment here and local investment is too little. There is only one rule for the next five years. I will say this openly. The only way for J-K economy to grow is public investment," he said. "We spent Rs 20,000 crore. Our biggest tragedy is that where we have to spend Re one on developmental work, we spend Rs 2.5 for spending that Re one. This is the biggest problem. The only way to restore the balance is by increasing capital expenditure," he said. Hitting out at opposition National Conference (NC) and Congress, Drabu said "everyone is ready to take, but not to give". "You said toll tax has been increased which will lead to increase in prices. You want (implementation of) Seventh Pay Commission but do you realise where will the money come from? It is easy to say that it (seventh pay commission) should be given. Where from will this money come?" he asked. "You are pained if there is even a one per cent increase in the toll tax. Everyone is ready to take, but not to give. How will the state be run? We have to get money from somewhere," he said. He asked the legislators from the opposition parties to not try to score points over the other. "These days NC is raising slogans of autonomy. Based on what? At least have a semblance of financial autonomy first. You are reacting to this (increase in toll tax). There has been no hike in it in the last seven years. "At least the budget is not about parties, it should be about the economy and the society... Let us not get into the issues to score points over the other," he said. Terming the issue of 60,000 casual labourers and daily wagers as a "social problem", the finance minister said the budget would try to put in place a system by virtue of which they be given salary from the wage bill. "You (opposition) engaged casual labourers but did not give them salary, otherwise you would have been caught... The system was that you will give employment but orders will not be issued," he said and accused the opposition of "playing with the lives" of millions of people while in government. "You engaged 60,000 people in this way but they have no claim over it. If they approach the court, they will be told that since you do not have salary, you are not employed... You have destroyed 60,000 families," Drabu charged. "I am not talking of finance here, it is not a finance issue... It is a social problem," he said. "I am not saying stop it, I am saying give them money from the wages and I will manage that. If the revenue expenditure increases, then be it, but some system should be in place. That is the core of the budget," he said. Reacting to the uproar, even from the treasury benches, over tax on aviation turbine fuel (ATF), the finance minister said there was no relation of ATF rates with airfares and the charge that it would impact tourism in the state was wrong. "Many legislators have spoken about this. As I said yesterday that this is not a Tagore Hall but Assembly. It has the sanctity. You should come prepared here. You have talked about (tax on) aviation fuel and that it will impact tourism. How? The tax is 25 per cent in Delhi also. "I had last year rolled it back thinking two things will happen. One that they will do re-fuelling here and two that airfare will be lessened. But nothing happened. It has no relation with airfares," he said. Drabu said the airlines "do not re-fuel here and the airfare did not come down last year". On the issue of waiving of Kisan Credit Card loans, the finance minister said he has made provisions for the same. "I have mentioned in my (budget) speech as to why I could not do it. Because SLBC (State Level Bankers Committee) did not provide the data. I have made the provisions, I shall do it. There are no two ways about it," he said. "We will make a consolidated list of BPL families in six months... The mindset here is that people demand to be included in BPL list when the world is going forward. We will try to take forward the BPL into APL and then more forward, but till they are in BPL, we will support them. But it takes time and money," he said. He said Jammu and Kashmir got economic packages from the Centre on only two occasions in the last 60 years -- first when Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was the chief minister in 2002 and Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister and now under Prime Minister Narendra Modi -- and alleged that the NC "did not have either the intelligence or the capacity to get a package". North Korea has again accused the South of "premeditated" abduction, following the latest defection of North Korean staff working at a Pyongyang-run restaurant in China. The three North Koreans arrived in Seoul on Wednesday, the second such group defection this year after a dozen employees of another restaurant in China defected to the South in April. "This incident, too, was the organised and premeditated abduction by gangsters of the puppet National Intelligence Service of South Korea," a spokesman for the North Korean Red Cross said in a statement. The statement, carried by the official KCNA agency late yesterday, claimed there were "sufficient materials" to prove a well-planned, concerted operation to abduct the workers from the restaurant in Weinan, in the northern Chinese province of Shaanxi. It said members of the South's spy agency had "lured" the three women who were taken south and spirited across the border with Laos and then into Thailand. "The allurement and abduction clearly proves that the puppet forces of south Korea are the most hideous human rights abusers," the statement said, demanding the immediate return of the three women. The South Korean government estimates that Pyongyang rakes in around USD 10 million every year from about 130 restaurants it operates -- with mostly North Korean staff -- in 12 countries, including neighbouring China. Tough United Nations sanctions imposed on North Korea after its January nuclear test significantly curtailed the isolated state's ability to earn hard currency, making the restaurants an even more important source of income than before. There have been reports of staff not being paid, with restaurants pressured into increasing their regular remittances to Pyongyang. Since the first group defection of restaurant workers in April, North Korean state media has repeatedly run emotional interviews with the 12 women's relatives still in North Korea, urging their immediate return. South Korea has rejected the North's "kidnapping" claims and refused Pyongyang's demands to allow the women's parents to travel to Seoul to meet their daughters. Seoul has also ordered its embassies overseas to be extra vigilant to the threat of revenge kidnappings of South Korean citizens living abroad. June 3, 1936 After disbanding four years ago, the Kitchen Band of Trinity Methodist Church has decided to reorganize and will make its debut in its 86th concert at the church as a feature event in connection with the semi-centennial of the church. Every instrument played by the group of women is made of kitchen utensils. The cello is a broom, wire and curtain rod; the flute, a combination of fork and spoon; the trombone, curtain rods; clarinets, rolling pins and fruit press; ukele, a frying pan and picture wire; xylophone, a washbboard and small mallets; hand organ, a bread mixer; accordian, small folding hall rack; tambourine, pie tins and bells; French horn, a large funnel; horns, a coffee pot and large graters; music box, a butter churn. Out of this combination real music emerges. June 3, 1961 The new Emily Howlland Chapter of the National Honor Society inducted its first seven members May 19 at the Sherwood Central School. Achieving membership were seniors John Cooper, Georgena Cotton, Thomas Gans and Susan Hewes, and juniors Martin D'Agostino, Rosemary Leonard and Linda Simkin. Probationary members of the sophomore class are John Knight, Susan Minde and Martha Stearns. June 3, 2006 The invasion of Normandy during World War II took place in 1944, but its impact has stayed with the lives of many for all those years. "No one wanted to talk about the invasion," said Dom DeBenedetto, who fought with his fellow soldiers and friends in the 299th Combat Engineer Battalion with company A on that day 62 years ago. "We were the first to hit the beach that day. It was terrible. We had explosives on our backs and we were diving in the waters." Auburn lost six men on the shores of Omaha Beach in what has gone down in history as D-Day. On the 50th anniversary of the Normandy invasion, a group of residents came together to commemorate the memory of these men and erect a monument on the lawn of the county office building. Each year since, the community comes together the Friday before the June 6 anniversary to honor these men. June 3, 2011 Condemning the call given by Hurriyat Conference for a shutdown in Kashmir today, BJP said the opposition to establishment of a Sainik Colony in the Valley was "unjustified". "We condemn the call given by Syed Ali Shah Geelani and other Hurriyat leaders for a shutdown in Valley today. A soldier while defending his motherland or fellow countrymen does not differentiate between any region and religion," BJP state spokesperson Brigadier Anil Gupta said. The cause of the soldiers should be supported by all irrespective of their individual beliefs. The soldiers deserve to have a piece of land for building a shelter for their families, he said. "Unfortunately, rather than supporting the cause of the soldiers, separatists and Valley-centric politicians are playing divisive politics at their cost which has adverse impact on their morale," he said. "J&K today has a large population of soldiers both serving and retired. There is only one Sainik Colony in the state. A Sainik Colony in the Valley is needed keeping in view the welfare of the soldiers belonging to the state. "Those playing politics with the sentiments of the soldiers will have to pay a heavy price for the same because if soldiers decide to come to streets for their cause, it would be disastrous," he warned. The bodies of more than 100 migrants have washed up on a Libyan beach as a new migrant boat tragedy unfolded in the Mediterranean south of Greece today. Desperate rescue efforts were under way off the Greek island of Crete where at least 340 people were saved after a vessel believed to have left Africa with hundreds of migrants on board capsized. The Libyan navy said meanwhile it had found the bodies of at least 104 migrants on the shore in the western Libyan town of Zwara, warning that the toll could rise. "The number of bodies retrieved last evening was 104 but the toll is expected to rise since an average boat carries 115-125 passengers," said Libyan navy spokesman Colonel Ayoub Qassem. The names and nationalities of the drowned migrants, whose bodies were found on Thursday, were not yet known. In Greece, efforts were under way to find hundreds believed missing after a migrant boat capsized off the island of Crete. Greece's coastguard has already recovered four bodies. Coastguard spokesman Nikos Lagadianos said at least 340 people had been rescued, and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said the vessel "is believed to have left Africa with at least 700 migrants on board". Among the survivors, over 240 are on route to Italy, 75 to Egypt, 16 to Turkey and seven to Malta, the coastguard said. The Friday sinking marked the second migrant vessel found in that area of the southern Aegean Sea since last week, indicating that people smugglers may be forging a new route to avoid NATO ships. A Greek coastguard spokeswoman told AFP a major rescue operation was underway, including four ships that were passing through the area, in clear but windy conditions about 75 nautical miles south of Crete. "The number of people in distress could be counted in the hundreds," she said. It was not immediately clear where exactly the boat had left from or where it was headed, or the nationalities of those on board. The coastguard spokeswoman said a passing ship spotted the sinking vessel off Crete. The coastguard rushed two patrol boats, a plane and a helicopter to the scene. About half of the 25-metre-long boat was completely underwater, the spokeswoman said. The deaths are the first in Greek waters since April, as a controversial March deal between the EU and Turkey designed to halt the flow of migrants using the popular Aegean route has led to a sharp drop in arrivals. Nevertheless, some 204,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe since January, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday. More than 2,500 people have died trying to make the perilous journey this year -- the vast majority of them on crossings between Libya and Italy -- as Europe battles its worst migration crisis since World War II. Pakistan police today claimed to have arrested all five suspects involved in torturing and setting a teenaged girl on fire in Punjab province for refusing to marry a divorcee twice her age and booked them on murder charges. Maria Sadaqat, 19, was attacked on Monday in Upper Dewal village of Murree hill resort. She was admitted to Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences with 85 per cent burn injuries. Before her death, Maria recorded her statement to the police and told them that she was pressed for marriage by the owner of a local private school where she used to teach. "We have arrested all five people including prime suspect Master Shaukat named in the FIR," senior police officer Rawalpindi Wasal Fakhar Sultan told reporters. He said the suspects have been booked for murder and some other sections of the Pakistan Penal Code. "Anti-terrorism sections will only be included on the direction of the court," he said. In her statement, Maria has said the five persons had entered her house when she was with her little sister and beat her. They doused her in petrol and set her on fire. Maria has alleged the five men burnt her alive because she had refused the marriage proposal of Master Shaukat's son. Violence against women is common in Pakistan where every year hundreds of women are killed for honour. Last month the gutted body of a young girl was found from a vehicle in Abbottabad. Police investigation into the case showed the 9th-grader was kidnapped from her house, sedated, murdered and set on fire after a decision of a local Jirga. In April, a disabled 22-year-old girl from Swat was allegedly raped by a male nurse at PIMS. Nearly 1,100 women were killed in Pakistan last year in so-called honour-killings, the country's independent Human Rights Commission says. Campaigners say most "honour killings" are not reported in Pakistan. Pakistan government today raised the country's defence budget by 11 per cent from Rs 776 billion to Rs 860 billion. In his televised budget speech, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar provided details of various aspects of the 2016-17 budget, which he said was growth oriented. "The defence budget will be increased by 11 per cent from Rs 776 billion to Rs 860 billion in the 2016-17 fiscal year," he said while presenting the annual budget in the parliament. He announced to set the 5.7 per cent GDP growth against 4.7 per cent growth which was achieved in the outgoing year. Dar said Rs 800 billion have been set aside in the development budget, which is Rs 100 billion higher than last year. He said that 10,000 MW electricity will be added to the national grid by March 2018 and another 15,000 through major hydro-electric project after 2018. A grand jirga of tribal elders in northwest Pakistan today said they would expedite efforts to protect the region from militants and anti-social elements and pledged full support to the government and security forces in fighting terror in the restive region. The jirga was attended by scores of elders from different areas and tribes of the Bajaur agency bordering Afghanistan. The participants of the jirga said that militant activities in the region were not only against peace and normalcy but also a big threat to the socio-economic development of the region. The militant activities are not only creating law and order situation in the region but also affecting the local customs, traditions and norms, they said. The tribal jirga decided to form an alliance of the elders to counter the militants and other anti-state elements. They said that the intra-tribe alliance was necessary to unite all the elders for foiling the activities of the terrorists. They vowed to support security forces and the local administration for keeping peace and the writ of the government. Pakistan's High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit today said his country will never allow terrorists to use its soil, and advocated continuation of dialogue between the two countries. "The Pakistan government will not allow any kind of terror activities from our soil," he said. India and Pakistan should immediately take up the bilateral dialogue further, he said, while maintaining that Kashmir is an issue for Pakistan. He also assured that Pakistan will bring the perpetrators of the Pathankot terror attack to book. Basit was speaking at a function organised by 'Lokmat' media group here. After the Pathankot incident, dialogue stopped but both countries showed restraint and did not react extremely, he said. Advocating encouragement for cultural exchange, he said Indian films are liked in Pakistan and India too should allow the films from across the border to be screened here. There should be frequent flights between India and Pakistan and as in the past, Air India or private airlines can operate flights to Pakistan, the High Commissioner said. Basit appreciated Prime Minister Narendra Modi's gesture of inviting his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif to the swearing-in ceremony in 2014, saying it was a great "visionary step" and said to accept the invite was a difficult decision for Sharif. Modi's subsequent visit to Pakistan enhanced the hope for dialogue, he said. Though his country was an Islamic state, women did not lag behind in any sector, he said. "Our women are flying fighter aircraft, are specialist doctors and engineers," he said. (REOPENS BOM23) Former Indian diplomat Vivek Katju, BJP leader Sheshadri Chari, Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi and senior journalist Jatin Desai were the other speakers at the programme. Chari said India was in favour of dialogue between the two countries and restoration of peace, but "sometimes we are in a quandary as to whom should we talk to" -- the Pakistani politicians, the army or the non-state actors. The generation born after 1947 was always in favour of good relations between the two counties, he said. Katju said violence, war and hostility can not lead to peace between the two countries. The focus should be on building co-operative relations. Chaturvedi said that dialogue is essential, and it was unfortunate that "our foreign policies are decided at 9 pm TV show. The rain-swollen River Seine in Paris reached its highest level in three decades today, spilling its banks and prompting the Louvre museum to shut its doors and evacuate artworks in its basement. Parisians were urged to avoid the banks of the river which was expected to reach a peak of six metres (19 feet) today, while deadly floods continued to wreak havoc elsewhere in and Germany. In France, a man on horseback died after he was swept away in a swollen river in Evry-Gregy-sur-Yerre, southeast of Paris, local authorities said yesterday. And in Germany, a 65-year-old man was found dead in the flood-hit town of Simbach am Inn, bringing the total death toll in the country this week to 10. Days of torrential rain have only added to the gloomy atmosphere in France, also facing a third full day of train strikes after months of protests and political turmoil. French Environment Minister Segolene Royal said that she feared more bodies would be found as waters recede in French villages which have seen main streets turned into muddy rivers. Mohamed Amine, a tourist from Venice, watched the rising waters from a Paris bridge with amusement. "I am used to having water up to my knees during the Aqua Alta," when the Italian city floods in winter, he told AFP. "But people in Paris are not used to it," he added. Some towns in central have been hit by their worst floods in over a century, with more than 5,000 people evacuated since the weekend and around 19,000 homes without power. In Paris, officials were erecting emergency flood barriers along the Seine and a suburban train line running alongside the river was closed. The riverbanks are home to both the Louvre, the world's most visited museum, and the Musee d'Orsay, which was also preparing for the worst. The Musee d'Orsay, a converted railway station which hosts the world's greatest Impressionist collection, closed early Thursday and was to move its most vulnerable works to upper floors. While the river's swelling has so far caused little damage in Paris and is unlikely to submerge the city centre, public information boards urged those living near the Seine to clear out their basements. Rescuers in the Parisian suburb of Longjumeau were paddling up streets in lifeboats, while in the town of Montargis, only the tops of cars could be seen peeking above the surface. Forecasters in both and Germany have warned of more downpours over the next 24 hours. French President Francois Hollande said that a state of "natural catastrophe" would be declared when the cabinet meets next Wednesday, a necessary step to trigger compensation payments. Centre today urged the new LDF government in Kerala to complete land acquisition for the over Rs 3,000-crore Kochi-Mangaluru natural gas pipeline project, adding that failure to do so may lead to closure of the loss-making Cochin Port. "I am requesting the Chief Minister and people of Kerala that if the line is not completed, then it is a big loss for the Cochin Port. If we complete the line, we will get a profit of more than Rs 150 crore," Union Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari told reporters here from Mumbai via video conferencing. "Today we are in loss. If this situation goes on...If the state government cannot cooperate in completing the gas pipeline project, then we will have to think about closing the Cochin Port," he said. The Rs 3,032-crore pipeline project envisages connecting the Petronet LNG terminal at Puthuvype in Kochi to the northern part of Kerala, from where two separate lines are to join it from Mangaluru and Bengaluru. Petronet LNG has set up South India's first LNG receiving, regasification and re-loading terminal with capacity of 5 MMTPA at Kochi. The terminal area is situated in the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) of Puthuvype near the entrance to Cochin Port. The jetty facility is designed to receive LNG tankers between 65,000 to 216,000 cubic metres (Q-Flex). However, laying pipelines from Kochi to Mangaluru is facing stiff resistance from people in some parts of the state. They argue that such projects are not permitted in densely populated areas. "I request the state government to solve the problem regarding the gas pipeline. It is very important for the state and the country," Gadkari said. The minister also said the Centre is ready to construct national highways in Kerala if the state government provides land. Noting that land acquisition is a big problem in Kerala, the minister said, "If you are ready to give the land, we are ready to construct the national highways. Swaraj Abhiyan leader Yogendra Yadav today said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should reply to the people about what he and his government has done to address the problem of drought. Addressing a dharna held by Suchna Evam Rozgar ka Adhikar Abhiyan here, Yadav said that drought has affected many areas and not only water but also the "heart and mind" of this country has dried up. "PM is holding meetings on the issue but he should reply about what arrangements he made to address the problem of drought. The Centre cannot run away from its responsibility," he said. It is very sad that the Centre and the drought-hit states should have discussed the issue but they did not do this," he alleged. Targeting the BJP government in Rajasthan, he said that the state government has also failed in dealing with the situation. The dharna was held at Shahid memorial on the issue of drought, where people from different areas of the state participated to highlighted the grim situation. The Abhiyan had conducted a survey in seven districts of Rajasthan, the report of which was shared today. "There are 1067 wells in the seven districts which were covered in the survey and of them, only 277 are working," it said. According to the report, only 44 per cent wells of the total working wells supply water which is worth-drinking and in rest of the wells, the water quality is poor. The survey was conducted in the districts of Nagaur, Barmer, Chittorgarh, Udaipur, Jaipur, Baran and Banswara. Prime Minister Narendra Modi sets off tomorrow on a five-nation visit to Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland, the US and Mexico during which the focus will be to broaden India's trade, energy and security cooperation with them and inject a new momentum in ties. Modi is likely to seek support of Switzerland and Mexico for India's membership of the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group as both these countries are key members of the elite group. The issue is likely to figure during Modi's meeting with Obama in Washington. During his talks with the leadership of Switzerland, the Prime Minister is also likely to raise the issue of black money stashed by Indians in Swiss banks. The Prime Minister will first travel to Afghanistan where he will inaugurate the Afghan-India Friendship Dam, earlier known as Salma Dam, in Herat province, along with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Both the leaders will also hold talks on a range of issues including current situation in Afghanistan. From Afghanistan, Modi will travel to energy-rich Qatar tomorrow itself and from there he will leave for a two day visit to Switzerland on Sunday. Asked at a press briefing on PM's visit whether the issue of black money will be raised by Modi during his talks with Swiss leaders, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said both the countries are in touch on the issue. "We are in touch with the Swiss government under the DTAA (Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement) mandate and we have had some discussions on this and we have a few planned in the near future. We have received support from the Swiss authorities on exchange of information on tax data between the two countries. "We do hope to engage as early as possible in the automatic exchange of information with Switzerland and this has been conveyed to Swiss tax authorities," he said. On India's bid for NSG membership, Jaishankar said India has been eyeing membership of the premier group for many, many years and that it has made "lot of progress" on that. "I think we have made lot of progress and that has led us to formally apply for the NSG membership some days ago. We are engaged with all NSG members regarding this issue and Switzerland is definitely an important member and definitely, I would expect it to come up," he said. India has formally applied for membership of the NSG on May 12. From Switzerland, the Prime Minister travels to Washington on June 6 where he will have a packed schedule including an address to a joint session of the US Congress. He will be the fifth Indian Prime Minister to do so. Modi will begin his US visit on June 6 by paying tributes at the Arlington National Cemetery. He will then meet heads of a number of American think tanks and will attend an event to repatriate Indian antiquity by the US. On June 7, the Prime Minister will hold wide-ranging talks with President Obama on the entire gamut of bilateral ties. The meeting will be followed by a launch to be hosted by Obama for Modi. In the afternoon, Modi will meet business leaders and address the US-India Business Council during which he is expected to highlight measures taken by his government to ensure ease of doing business. On June 8, Modi will address the a joint meeting of the US Congress which will be followed by a lunch to be hosted by the Speaker. A reception is also being organised for Modi by the House and Senate Committees on foreign relations and the India Caucus. The Prime Minister will attend a community reception as well. The Prime Minister will be staying at Blair House, the President's guesthouse. "The US visit is sort of a consolidation visit...They (Modi and Obama) have work together to take forward the relationship," said the Foreign Secretary while highlighting progress of bilateral ties in the last two years including in areas of trade and defence. The two countries will come out with a joint statement. Asked whether PM's visit to Mexico and Switzerland was added at the last minute, the Foreign Secretary said the idea of visit to Switzerland arose from a meeting the Prime Minister had with Swiss President on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit earlier this year. He said visit to Mexico was being considered since September last year. Did you attend Owasco Lake Day last June at Emerson Park? Did you take a free pontoon boat boat ride on the lake? Did your kids or grandchildren play games and make crafts? What did you learn about the water quality of Owasco Lake and the other Finger Lakes, the drinking water sources for so many central New Yorkers? Well, you will have another opportunity to take in these many free activities at the ninth annual Owasco Lake Day, organized by the Owasco Watershed Lake Association, from 2 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 22 at Emerson Park. This is a rain-or-shine event. After your free admission to the park, you can look at the park map inside the new Owasco Lake Day program and decide which activity to enjoy first: Go straight to the boat launch for the boat rides, which will run the whole time from 2 to 7 p.m. In addition to the driver, each boat will have a narrator to tell you some details about our beautiful Owasco Lake. Or proceed to the historic pavilion. Outside will be displays such as an antique wooden boat. Inside at the resource fair, you will find many displays, with demos and brochures, from over 20 water-related and environmental organizations, including state and local agencies. These exhibitors possess a wealth of information about the Finger Lakes, their water quality challenges, and how you can help in protecting our lakes. Outside on the south porch of the pavilion, with live music as a backdrop, you will find the family activities and children's games: Animal pelts to touch, a beanbag toss game, making pin-on badges, food chain bracelets and nature collages, painting magnets, face painting, or viewing a sample of lake water under a microscope, as demonstrated by Auburn High School students. Games and activities are aimed at elementary through high school age persons. As you travel between the boat launch and the Pavilion, please stop by for some free yogurt provided by the Cayuga County dairy ambassadors, and the current Cayuga County Dairy Princess. As a fundraiser, local Boy Scouts will be selling some delicious summertime picnic food. Starting at 5 p.m., inside the pavilion, several speakers will detail solutions to protect and restore Owasco Lake's water quality, which is under stress, like many New York lakes, by excessive nutrient inflow and invasive species. First is a video summary of 2015 testing data, Status of the Lake, presented by Dr. John Halfman, Ph.D., Finger Lakes Institute and Hobart and William Smith Colleges, at OWLA's March to Lake Day symposium. Next are six 12-minute overviews of the following efforts: Jim Beckwith, OWLA president: Cayuga County's Owasco Lake Water Watershed Management and Waterfront Revitalization Plan Nick Colas, principal GIS analyst, Cayuga County Department of Planning and Economic Development: Nutrient Pollution: Problems, Plans, and Predictions Peter Rogers, OWLA board member: Owasco Flats Conservation and Restoration Doug Kierst, executive director, Cayuga County Soil and Water Conservation District: Dutch Hollow Watershed Project I will present Enhanced Watershed Actions Program: $600,000 NYS Grant Ken Kudla and Peter Rogers, OWLA board members: OWLA's Water Quality Programs and Initiatives On Wednesday, June 22, please come out to Emerson Park and Owasco Lake to enjoy these jewels in our own backyard and learn how to protect, preserve and restore Owasco Lake and all of our Finger Lakes. Prime Minister Narendra Modi sets off tomorrow on a five-nation visit to Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland, the US and Mexico during which the focus will be to broaden bilateral trade, energy and security cooperation and push for India's bid to become a member of Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). Modi is likely to seek support of Switzerland and Mexico for India's membership of the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group as both these countries are key members of the elite grouping. The issue is likely to figure during Modi's meeting with Obama in Washington on June 7. India has formally applied for membership of the NSG on May 12. During his talks with the Swiss President Schneider- Ammann the Prime Minister is also likely to raise the issue of black money stashed by Indians in Swiss banks. The Prime Minister will first travel to Afghanistan where he will inaugurate the Afghan-India Friendship Dam, earlier known as Salma Dam, in Herat province, along with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Both the leaders will also hold talks on a range of issues including current situation in Afghanistan. "Looking forward to my visit to Afghanistan tomorrow. I will join President Ashraf Ghani to inaugurate Afghanistan- India Friendship Dam in Herat. It is symbol of our friendship and would usher in hope, light up homes, nourish the fertile fields of Herat and bring prosperity to the people of the region," said the Prime Minister. Modi said he will exchange notes with "friend" Ghani on regional situation and "setting agenda" for bilateral cooperation in the coming period. From Afghanistan, Modi will travel to energy-rich Qatar tomorrow itself and from there he will leave for a two day visit to Switzerland on Sunday. About the Qatar visit, Modi said, "This visit will nourish the historical bonds of friendship deeply rooted in people to people contacts, energy, trade and investment partnership." "I will interact with the Indian workers at the Workers' Camp and some of the members of over 6 lakh Indians who have nurtured our relations through their sweat and toil." The Prime Minister will also interact with business leaders in Qatar with an aim seek investment and realise the full potential of trade and investment cooperation between the two countries. In Qatar, the Prime Minister will hold talks with his counterpart Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani and Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani on a host of issues which may include trade and security. From Switzerland, the Prime Minister travels to Washington on June 6 where he will have a packed schedule including an address to a joint session of the US Congress. He will be the fifth Indian Prime Minister to do so. Modi is visiting the US at the invitation of President Barack Obama. "In my meeting with the President on June 7, we will seek to build upon the progress achieved in providing new vigour and momentum to our strategic partnership in diverse areas," he said. Modi will begin his US visit on June 6 by paying tributes at the Arlington National Cemetery. He will then meet heads of a number of American think tanks and will attend an event to repatriate Indian antiquity by the US. Modi will address the 40th AGM of the USIBC (US India Business Council) and meet US business leaders who he said have, over the past two years, "shown renewed confidence in India." "I will exchange views with US think-tanks and attend a ceremony marking the return of Indian antiques. During my visit to Arlington Cemetery I will lay wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider and Space Shuttle Columbia Memorial, in which we lost an Indian origin astronaut, Kalpana Chawla," he said. About his address at the Joint Meeting of the US Congress on May 8, Modi said, "I thank Speaker Paul Ryan for inviting me to speak to Congressmen and Senators." The Prime Minister said he will also interact with members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, "many of whom have been valued friends of India and strong votaries of deepening India-USA ties." "India and USA are natural partners, two vibrant democracies that celebrate their diversity and pluralism. Strong India-USA ties benefit not only our two nations but also the entire world," he said. About his visit to Switzerland, Modi described the country as India's key partner in Europe. "I will hold talks with President Schneider-Ammann to deepen our bilateral and multilateral cooperation. "In Geneva, I will meet prominent businesspersons. Our agenda will be to expand economic and investment ties. I will meet Indian scientists working at CERN. India takes pride in their contribution to exploring new frontiers of science in the service of humanity," he said. Asked at a press briefing on PM's visit whether the issue of black money will be raised by Modi during his talks with Swiss leaders, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said both the countries are in touch on the issue. "We are in touch with the Swiss government under the DTAA (Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement) mandate and we have had some discussions on this and we have a few planned in the near future. We have received support from the Swiss authorities on exchange of information on tax data between the two countries. "We do hope to engage as early as possible in the automatic exchange of information with Switzerland and this has been conveyed to Swiss tax authorities," he said. Dozens of students at an elementary school in the Chinese capital have suffered from nosebleeds, dizzy spells and coughs after running on a synthetic racetrack emitting excessive amounts of poisonous substances, prompting authorities to launch a probe today. The students at the Baiyunlu campus of Beijing No. 2 Experimental School in Xicheng District complained of the health issues after running on the track last month, state-run Xinhua agency reported. Beijing's education authority has launched a probe. Tests on the track this week, nine months after it was put into use, showed excessive amounts of benzene substances and formaldehyde, the report said. The Xicheng education commission has ordered that the track be covered in a protective coating, and promised to track down those responsible. There will be a thorough investigation of facilities in several other schools, it said. Medical staff will be dispatched to the school to provide treatment and support for students. Similar cases have occurred in Jiangsu, Guangdong and other provinces. The Ministry of Education said it has clear requirements for installation of synthetic racetracks in schools. However, the requirements have not been fully implemented in some areas. Wang Dinghua, an official in charge of elementary education with the ministry said lax supervision is the major reason for such incidents. A 35-year-old policeman was shot dead by four suspected criminals in a village in Shamli district, police said today. Ajit Singh was killed at his residence in Dera Bhagirat village yesterday, they said. Police said a case has been registered against Raju, Pritam Singh, Pinki and Rakesh, who are absconding. Meanwhile, a 30-year-old doctor was shot at by unidentified assailants over an old enmity in Haibatpur village here. Wakil Ahmed sustained injuries in the attack that took place at his clinic yesterday, SHO Shoeb Khan said, adding the victim is undergoing treatment at a hospital. Police said efforts are on to apprehend the accused. In another incident, a 60-year-old Dalit woman was shot at while she was sleeping in her house in Behda Sadat village here. Police said some unidentified persons opened fire at Urmila yesterday, leaving her injured. The woman has been admitted to a hospital and a case has been registered in this regard, they said. Establishment of a new Railway Zone, with headquarters at Visakhapatnam, is expected to be a top agenda when Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu meets Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu here tomorrow. Prabhu, who has been just unanimously electedto Rajya Sabha from AP, will attend a high-level "restructured meeting" with the Chief Minister, MPs and top officials from the Railways. This is the first time the Railway Minister will be attending a meeting in the new state along with the CM. The state government has been seeking a new railway line to the Capital region of Amaravati and Naidu has already taken up the issue with Prabhu. Following this, the railways has commissioned a survey for the new line. "The idea is to draw up a plan on how to develop AP and how we can help AP to realise its true potential," Prabhu told reporters after receiving his RS election certificate this afternoon. They would decide, at tomorrow's meeting, "how we can go forward and develop together", the Railway Minister added. Setting up of a new railway zone at Visakhapatnam is a provision made in the AP Reorganisation Act-2014 but technical issues have caused delay in implementing it. The Chief Minister had been repeatedly raising the issue with the Centre while the TDP MPs made a forceful plea in Parliament for the new railway zone. Now that the Railway Minister has been elected to Parliament from the State, fresh hopes have been pinned on him. Similarly, many major railway projects in the state had remained incomplete for several years now. The State Government has come forward to take up these projects on a cost-sharing basis so that they could be completed fast. The AP government, for example, agreed to bear 50 per cent of the cost and provide land free-of-cost for the long-pending Nadikudi-Srikalahasthi new rail line (309km). The railways earmarked only Rs 90 crore for this project in the 2016-17 budget whereas the overall cost has crossed Rs 1314 crore. The State, on its part, sanctioned close to Rs 300 crore for land acquisition for the rail line. The Kotipalli-Narsapuram (via Amalapuram) railway line project remained incomplete since 2000-01 and its cost has now escalated to Rs 650 crore. The railways earmarked Rs 200 crore for this project in the 2016-17 budget while the state agreed to share 25 per cent of the cost. The 21.5-km Kakinada-Pithapuram line had been hanging fire since 1999-2000 and the project cost shot up to Rs 220.3 crore. This year, the railways made a provision of Rs 50 crore for this while the state agreed to give required land free-of- cost, AP Transport Minister Sidda Raghava Rao said. A British serial paedophile who preyed on impoverished Kuala Lumpur slum children voiced deep remorse before a London court today for his "disgusting behaviour". Richard Huckle, 30, who has pleaded guilty to 71 of 91 counts of child sex offences, including rape, targeted children while posing as a volunteer working with Christian communities in the Malaysian capital. More than 20,000 images of child sex abuses were found on his heavily-encrypted laptop. Huckle appeared in the dock at London's Old Bailey criminal court where judge Peter Rook heard mitigation from his lawyer Philip Sapsford. Rook said he would have to weigh up whether a life sentence was appropriate for 22 of the most serious counts before passing sentence at 10:00am on Monday. Sapsford asked for leniency, arguing that in pleading guilty, his client had spared a jury from being exposed to images of his abuse. He accepted it would be "a very long time" before Huckle was released from prison but asked that the sentence give his client "hope" of rehabilitation into society. Huckle had bragged about his abuse online and was snared by an Australian investigation on the dark web -- a hard-to-access part of the Internet often used for illegal activity. In the letter of remorse written on May 23 and read to the court by his lawyer, Huckle acknowledged "the scale of the damage I have caused". "I completely misjudged the affections I received from these children. "My low self-esteem and lack of confidence with women was no excuse to be using these children as an outlet." He said he was "gullible to be easily influenced" by the "pathetic, perverted lust of those who drew me into the dark net". And he said he hoped there would be help for the victims of the "disgusting behaviour I performed on them". "I am open and eager to rehabilitate from this offending behaviour," he wrote. "In no way do I want to be treated as a martyr to child sex tourism in Malaysia. "This was all my own doing as a consequence of my own immaturities. "I am deeply remorseful and regretful of what has happened and will do all I can in being proactive towards rehabilitating myself." The Old Bailey heard earlier that Huckle targeted poor victims and was writing a guide to child abuse that he intended to publish for profit. He posted pictures of the abuse of boys and girls online. Huckle admitted offences against children aged between six months and 12 years, committed between 2006 and 2014. Investigators have identified 23 victims -- 22 Malaysians and one Cambodian. Huckle, who comes from Kent in southeastern England, was arrested at London's Gatwick Airport in December 2014 as he returned from Malaysia to spend Christmas with his parents. Around 1,000 demonstrators gathered in central Baghdad today to demand an end to corruption and a government reshuffle, in the latest in a long string of weekly protests. Unlike the previous week, no violence erupted between the massive deployment of security forces and the protesters, most of whom are supporters of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. "We must keep up the pressure, this is the only way of getting the intended result: ending corruption and giving Iraq back to Iraqis," said Ali Chasseb, a taxi driver who came from the southern town of Amara for the protest. Sadrist protests have twice led to breaches of the fortified Green Zone, where the country's top institutions are located. The demonstrators want Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's plan to replace the government of party-affiliated ministers with a cabinet of technocrats to be implemented. The move is being opposed however by many politicians, including within Abadi's own party, who want to preserve the patronage system that is their main source of power and wealth. Protesters gathered outside a rally for Donald Trump in California, as police braced for violence that has erupted at similar events for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The protesters chanted "No hate in our state" and carried signs that read "Dump Trump" as they marched near the San Jose Convention Centre in northern California. Police were out in force, at one point forming a line to allow Trump supporters access to the rally and prevent clashes that have erupted at a number of the real estate magnate's events in recent weeks. One Trump supporter was egged while others were spit on. A protester was seen burning an American flag. Several fistfights erupted but were quickly broken up. Trump was last in the San Jose area in April, when he spoke at the California Republican Party convention where protesters blocked access to the venue, forcing him to use the back door. San Jose police chief Eddie Garcia said in a statement earlier that he expected 12,000 to 15,000 people at the rally yesterday and that his officers would do their utmost to respect people's right to protest. Union members, community activists and religious leaders had pledged to protest Trump's event. Last week, dozens of protesters were arrested in San Diego after a campaign appearance by Trump, who has angered many with his rhetoric against Hispanics, women, Muslims and others. Protests at a Trump rally in New Mexico last month also turned violent as demonstrators overran barricades and clashed with police in riot gear. Private equity firm Providence Equity Partners today offloaded 3.47 per cent stake in telecom operator Idea Cellular for an estimated amount of Rs 1,383 crore through an open market transaction. According to bulk deal data available with the stock exchanges, Providence sold a total of 12.50 crore shares, or 3.47 per cent stake in Idea through its investment arm P5 Asia Investment (Mauritius). The shares were offloaded on an average price of Rs 110.65, valuing the transaction at Rs 1,383.12 crore. Providence, through its investment arm P5 Asia Investment (Mauritius), held 6.80 per cent stake in Idea as of March quarter. Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley Asia (Singapore) PTE picked in 66,679,132 shares of the telecom firm for Rs 736.20 crore. Following the transaction, shares of Idea plunged by 9.97 per cent to settle at Rs 106.55 apiece on the BSE. In September 2014, Providence had sold 2.4 per cent stake in Idea for about Rs 1,414 crore via open market route. Idea is the country's third largest telecom operator with over 16 crore subscribers. The company's net profit dropped by 39 per cent to Rs 575.6 crore in the quarter ended March 31, 2016. However, the revenue increased by 12.6 per cent to Rs 9,483.85 crore during the period under review. Music maestro A R Rahman has thanked students of Berklee College of Music for their soul-stirring rendition of his song "Kun Faya Kun". The 49-year-old Oscar-winning music director had composed the song for Imtiaz Ali's "Rockstar". "Dear Berklee students, thank you for that very very moving rendition of Kun Faya Kun. May God bless you all," Rahman tweeted along with the link of the video of performance that happened at Symphony Hall in Boston. The video features students from various nationalities, dressed in white and red traditional Indian attire, singing their version of the sufi song which was originally crooned by Rahman and Mohit Chauhan. The group has come up with their version of Rahman's other hits in the past like "Dil se" and "Ye Jo Des Hai Tera". Firming up plans for expansion of the dedicated freight corridor (DFC) network, railways will seek cabinet approval for arranging fund and acquiring land for the new three dedicated corridors. Railway Budget 2016-17 has proposed the total 5769 km long track comprising three more dedicated freight corridors in the country to ensure faster movement of goods. RITES has undertaken the preliminary engineering and traffic system study of the proposed three new routes to ascertain the traffic projection and the report has been submitted to railways, DFCC Managing Director Aadesh Sharma said here today. The proposed new routes are the 2327 km long East - West Corridor connecting Kolkata to Mumbai, the 2328 km long North - South Corridor linking Delhi with Chennai and the 1114 km long East Coast Corridor from Kharagpur to Vijaywada. Railways will go to cabinet for approval of arranging funds and beginning the process of acquiring land for the new corridors, he said. The market share of railways is expected to go up to 50 per cent from the current 18 per cent with the operation of DFC. While railways will earn revenue from freight movement on the dedicated corridors, DFCC will earn access charge which is about 35 per cent to 40 per cent of the revenue earnings. AUBURN City officials are confident federal representatives will heed a request that could restore the Auburn Police Department's disbanded Emergency Response Team. A hurdle exists in a federal spending hold on two APD financial accounts currently under the scrutiny of the U.S. Department of Justice. The accounts monitor the APD's collection of asset forfeiture funds, which are federally regulated proceeds from drug seizures. The DOJ froze those funds in December due to undisclosed issues, at least partially related to accounting procedures, while a federal audit has continued since February. City officials had then met with federal representatives about releasing a portion of the funds to purchase equipment for the defunct Emergency Response Team. The squad has been disbanded for more than a year partially due to the need for new gear to replace their outdated inventory. On Thursday, Auburn lawmakers took more steps to perhaps get the team back online. City councilors voted unanimously to allow the use of forfeiture funds for ERT equipment should the APD receive authorization from the federal government. The council resolution will be sent to the DOJ with a justification letter from the police department showing a need for the team, said APD Capt. Paul Casper. Since the APD's ERT was disbanded in May 2015, Casper said the police department has had to request teams from nine different agencies. "There's justification. That the City of Auburn, the county seat of Cayuga County, doesn't have the resources to address things, they have to go look for help, I think is I hate to use the word criminal," said Councilor Debby McCormick. "We shouldn't have to be doing things that way." The federal audit of the APD accounts remains ongoing, a DOJ spokesperson said on Thursday. Casper, acting chief of the department, said the APD will request the funding needed to purchase 15 ballistics vests, 17 gas masks and chemical munitions at a total cost of $38,639.03, according to price quotes collected by the department. Officials had initially planned to use state grant funding accepted last fall toward the ERT gear. Casper, however, said officials now plan to cover the entire cost with forfeiture funds. The state grant funds which has not yet been received, in any case was identified as an option if the DOJ declined the request, he added. "We're pretty sure it's going to be approved," Casper said. Whether the forfeiture funds could have been used to replace the obsolete ERT equipment had been a point of contention between union leaders of Auburn Police Local 195 and city administration, including former Chief Brian Neagle. "I really look forward to seeing a policy put in place for this," McCormick said. "The police officers that needed this equipment should have had it a year ago." Home Minister Rajnath Singh today directed BSF chief K K Sharma to rush to Jammu and Kashmir to asses the situation after three jawans were killed killed and four others injured when terrorists ambushed their convoy on Srinagar-Jammu national highway. Soon after the attack, the Home Minister spoke to the Director General of the Border Security Force and instructed him to rush to the spot to review the situation. Singh has also expressed deep anguish over the death of the BSF personnel in the ambush and prayed for recovery of the injured, an official said. The attack took place when the BSF convoy comprising 23 vehicles was coming from Jammu to Srinagar ferrying jawans who were returning to join their duties after their leave. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh would visit Udaipur in Rajasthan on June 7 and 8. "The minister will unveil a statue of Maharana Pratap and lay the foundation stone of a hostel followed by an address to a public meeting on June 7," Additional District Collector, O P Bunkar said. He will visit a museum in Rajsamand on June 8 and lay the foundation stone of an indoor stadium before leaving for New Delhi, he said. The US has said it views India as a vital partner in the region, adding that the relationship between the two countries is of "incredible significance" to the world, days ahead of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Washington. "We're very much looking forward to Prime Minister Modi's visit. The US-Indian relationship is of incredible significance, not only to the region but to the world," said State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner. "The breadth of the US-Indian relationship is wide. It addresses security. It has got a strong economic component. We're looking to build closer relationships across the board with India, because we see it as a vital partner in the region," Toner said. Modi is scheduled to arrive in Washington on June 6 on a three-day visit. The Prime Minister is scheduled to meet US President Barack Obama at the White House on June 7 and address a joint meeting of the US Congress on June 8. "We have a broad bilateral and multilateral relationship with India and look forward to engaging on all those issues," he said. Indo-US ties are of "incredible significance" not only to the region but also to the world, an Obama Administration official has said, days ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit here. "We're very much looking forward to Prime Minister Modi's visit. The US-India relationship is of incredible significance, not only to the region but to the world," State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner told reporters here ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit next week. "The breadth of the US-Indian relationship is wide. It addresses security. It's got a strong economic component. We're looking to build closer relationships across the board with India, because we see it as a vital partner in the region," Toner said. Modi is scheduled to arrive in Washington on June 6 on a three-day visit. The Prime Minister is scheduled to meet US President Barack Obama at the White House on June 7 and address a joint meeting of the US Congress on June 8. "We have a broad bilateral and multilateral relationship with India and look forward to engaging on all those issues," Toner said. India has called on the Security Council to "proactively" sanction terrorists involved in conflict-related sexual violence while asserting that there is a need to finalise a global treaty to counter the growing scourge of terrorism. India's Permanent Representative to the UN ambassador Syed Akbaruddin said while in the last two decades there had been a considerable strengthening of the normative framework around various aspects relating to women, peace and security, sexual violence in situations of armed conflict was yet to abate. He attributed this to the proliferation of armed conflicts and their evolving nature involving various non-state actors and the spread of terrorism in such situations across large parts of the world. "The more vulnerable sections, especially women suffer ever more in such violent conflicts," he said at the Security Council's open debate on women, peace and security here yesterday. Akbaruddin said the rapidly expanding trans-boundary nature of terrorist financing, supply of arms, recruitment and training of foreign fighters have led to a situation where whole regions are impacted and no country is in a position to effectively counter this menace alone. Lamenting the lack of unity in the international community to tackle complex challenges posed by terrorism, Akbaruddin said large trafficking networks run by transnational criminal groups compound the misery of vulnerable communities, especially women. "Tackling such complex challenges demands closely coordinated and collaborative efforts among nations," he said. "Sadly, we remain far from being able to come together to overcome such challenges collectively," Akbaruddin said, citing the "glaring example" of the lack of progress on the issue of finalising a Comprehensive Convention to Counter International Terrorism that can strengthen the global counter-terrorism strategy. Sanctions Committees of the Security Council need to address the issue of "proactively listing terrorist individuals and entities involved in situations of conflict related sexual violence," he said. "While the evolving normative framework suggests a number of short term measures, only a comprehensive approach facilitated by a supportive international environment can help sustain peace and security and build prosperous societies," he said. (REOPENS FGN 8) Akbaruddin stressed that the Council should push for greater cooperation on countering terrorism that threatens immediate peace and security. He noted that gender equality and empowerment, access to healthcare, education and employment and strengthening of democratic institutions and processes were all important aspects of a holistic approach to prevent conflict. "The absence, obstruction or protracted pace of justice is unhelpful. The international community has an important role in helping build adequate resources and capacities for criminal investigation, prosecution, justice delivery system, protection of victims and witnesses and legislative reform to improve accountability across countries," he said. Reiterating India's strong commitment to zero tolerance policy on sexual violence and abuse, Akbaruddin said participation of women in peacekeeping and police enables improved intelligence about conflict-related sexual violence and trafficking. He told the Council that India had unveiled a comprehensive draft legislation aimed at prevention and protection of trafficking of persons and the rehabilitation of trafficked persons. Gurgaon Police today said it was extending all help to a Mumbai Police SIT probing the Sandeep Gadoli encounter case. DCP Crime, Gurgaon, Balbir Singh said, "All possible help that was asked for has been extended to them by Gurgaon Police." "The crime branch team camped in Mumbai for almost three weeks in February (when the alleged encounter took place). The evidence that was asked for has been handed over to SIT. The witnesses of Gurgaon Police have also been examined and their statements recorded," he said. "The involvement of some officials of Gurgaon Police Crime Branch was indicated by Mumbai Police for the first time in its status report filed before the Supreme Court on May 35, 2016. This was also the first time that any such information came to the notice of Gurgaon Police. "Though no official intimation was received in this regards from Mumbai Police, the five officials of Gurgaon Crime Branch were put under suspension on May 30 pending a probe into the case," said Singh. An officer of Mumbai Police, however, on the condition of anonymity, rubbished this claim. "We didn't even know who Sandeep Gadoli was, neither did Gurgaon Police approach us for help. This could be their defence to save their skin," he said. The Mumbai SIT team, camping at a hotel in Delhi's Mahipalpur, accused Gurgaon Police officers of evading probe and not submitting blood samples of the accused policemen despite repeated reminders. Gadoli, an alleged gangster from Haryana, was killed by a team of Gurgaon Police at a Mumbai hotel in an encounter in February. His relatives alleged that it was a fake encounter and filed a police complaint. Global oil major Saudi Aramco of Saudi Arabia and Total SA of France has evinced interest in setting up petrol pumps in India to retail fuel in the world's fastest-growing major economy. With India set to replace China as the biggest driver of fuel consumption in the world, the oil majors are eyeing the country's auto fuel market which is expanding by double-digit, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan told reporters here. "Saudi Aramco and Total are interested in getting into our domestic market. They are welcome to invest within our conditions," he said. A license to retail fuel in the country is subject to a company investing Rs 2,000 crore in oil and gas infrastructure - refineries, exploration and production, pipelines or terminals. While Total has a stake in Shell-operated LNG import terminal at Hazira in Gujarat which it can show to claim the retail license, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia so far has not invested any money in infrastructure in India. Pradhan said during his recent visit to Saudi Arabia, Saudi Aramco showed interest to enter the Indian market and his ministry is looking at ways of helping it. Saudi Arabia is the biggest supplier of crude to the world's fourth-biggest oil consumer, India. Pradhan had during his visit offered Saudi Aramco a stake in refineries and petrochemical projects, which it can show to claim a retailing license. With a slump in oil prices impacting its earnings, Saudi Aramco wants to expand into downstream sector globally particularly in countries like Indonesia, India, US, Vietnam and China. Pradhan said India had in 2010 freed petrol price from government control and diesel in October 2014 with a view to attract investments in the sector. "Consumers will benefit with entry of multinationals," he said adding private sector Reliance Industries and Essar Oil are already there in the fuel retailing segment. Further, there is Royal Dutch Shell which is mostly concentrated in south. State-owned fuel retailers Indian Oil Corp (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) own 95 per cent of the nearly 54,000 petrol pumps in the country. Shell, he said, has informed him of plans to expand its retail network in a big way in the southern India. Also, there is BP plc but it is confined currently to only marketing jet fuel (ATF) at airports. Hackers from outside Saudi Arabia seized control of a major newspaper website in the kingdom and published false about its military operation in Yemen, the paper said. The fake report on Al-Watan was picked up by a number of Arabic sites loyal to Shiite-dominated Iran, the regional rival of Sunni Saudi Arabia. Relations between the two countries have worsened this year. "The newspaper online site was subject to hacking at 9:20 yesterday morning (local time) by hostile groups from outside the kingdom," the newspaper said in a statement obtained by AFP. "They were able to control the site for a period of time and published false news" including a fake statement by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, it said. The hacker intentionally "published lies", claiming they were quotes from Prince Mohammed. He was cited as saying the Saudi-led military coalition's operation in Yemen had gone on longer than expected, comments which Al-Watan said were "not based on any reality." The coalition began air strikes in Yemen in March last year to support the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi after Huthi rebels backed by Iran seized much of the country. A fragile truce has been in effect for almost two months while United Nations-brokered talks between the rebels and government take place in Kuwait. Al-Watan is a privately-owned newspaper linked to a member of the royal family and based in the southwestern city of Abha. It said technicians were able to recover the website after "this crime" of hacking. Riyadh cut ties with Tehran in January after demonstrators torched its diplomatic missions there following the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric in Saudi Arabia. In their latest dispute, the two countries have not been able to agree on arrangements for Iranian pilgrims to join the annual Muslim hajj in Saudi Arabia this year. Four years ago, a damaging malware assault hit the state oil company Saudi Aramco. US intelligence officials believed it was linked to Iran. Tehran last month denied supporting cyber attacks against the United States after a New York court indicted seven Iranians over hacking dozens of American banks and a major dam. The Supreme Court today came to the rescue of some tribal families, whose dwellings in a village in Rajasthan's Kota district have allegedly been demolished by some mine owners, by asking the Director General of Police and the Chief Secretary of Rajashtan to ensure their "well being". A vacation bench comprising Justices P C Ghose and Amitava Roy also directed the DGP and the Chief Secretary to conduct an inquiry into the alleged incident and file their respective reports within four weeks. "The Director General of Police and the Chief Secretary are required to ensure the well being of villagers," the bench said when a counsel, appearing for a tribal woman, sought a direction to authorities to ensure that no more dwellings are demolished. The court was hearing a plea filed by Rekha, a tribal who hails from Julmi village of Kherahad in Kota district. She alleged that some mine owners treat the tribal villagers as their bonded labourers and have demolished about 42, out of 60 houses, in the village without even paying them in a bid to usurp their land. The plea also claimed that some unidentified persons have abducted Raniya, husband of petitioner Rekha, on December 4, last year. Besides seeking a direction for state police and others to produce Raniya, the plea has also sought an order for registration of an FIR under the SC/ST Act and other relevant provisions against the mine owners for allegedly demolishing the houses of the tribals. It has also sought an "order directing the respondents to re-construct demolished dwellings and the community temples of the petitioners and to compensate then with sufficient damage for the cutting and destruction of trees and also for their mental harassment". Not only the houses, the community temples have also been damaged by the mine owners, the plea said, adding that several trees have also been felled. Young women enter matrimonial homes with a hope of leading a long and blissful married life "but this hope, invariably, does not last long, nor their life", the Supreme Court observed today while upholding a five-year jail term of a man guilty of compelling his 25- year-old pregnant wife to commit suicide. "The story of the deceased young lady, aged about 25 years who was forced to commit suicide by the unfortunate situation and circumstances surrounding her life, resembles the tale of so many similar young ladies who end their life due to untold miseries and hardships faced by them within the confines of the four walls of their matrimonial home. "All of them enter such home with hope of leading a long and blissful married life but this hope, invariably, does not last long, nor their life," a bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Shiva Kirti Singh said. The apex court's verdict came on the appeal filed by convict Satish Shetty challenging Karnataka High Court's 2007 verdict by which he was sent behind bars for cruelly treating his wife and abetting her suicide in 1993. A trial court had in 2000 acquitted Shetty and his parents of the offences. The high court, however, had modified the order partly by sending the accused husband behind bars for the offences of 498A (subjecting woman to cruelty) and 306 (abetment of suicide) of the IPC. The apex court, while upholding the high court verdict, said, "the High Court has come to a well considered finding that the deceased was being harassed both physically and mentally and in direct as well as indirect ways for non compliance with the demand of the accused for Rs one lakh for investment in his wine business." "The High Court found that such harassment falls squarely under section 498-A of the IPC. We find no good reason to take a different view," it said. The apex court also said the high court was justified in criticizing the trial court for its "hyper technical approach" in blaming the mother of the victim for lodging a delayed complaint. "On the basis of relevant facts the High Court appears to be justified in holding that there is good explanation for the delay in lodging the FIR... "When the deceased died leaving a son of ten months old, the mother of the deceased had many other things to worry for, including cremation of the dead body and in such circumstances the High Court was justified in criticizing the trial court for its hyper technical approach in blaming the victim's mother for lodging delayed complaint," the apex court said. The bench observed that "delay in lodging the FIR or complaint is not fatal in all cases. The Court must show some sensitivity in cases of present nature where the victim's closest relation-mother is a poor helpless lady." "Even a well to do person may suffer a state of mental confusion when struck by such a tragedy...Hence in such cases the factum of delay has to be dealt with sympathetically keeping in mind mental condition of close relations of victim. The trial court miserably failed on this count too," it said. According to the complaint, Shetty married the victim in 1991 and in 1993 she committed suicide due to mental and physical harassment at her matrimonial house. The victim left behind a ten-month-old son and was pregnant a second time. Three days after the death, the victim's mother lodged the complaint with the police and a criminal case for offences under the IPC was registered. Relying on the testimonies of the victim's family members that money had to be arranged during wedding to meet accused husband's demand, the apex court said, "The witnesses on this aspect were found trust-worthy...The trial court on the other hand went into unnecessary details to discuss this issue on the basis of capacity of the complainant to pay, source of money arranged by her and if actually money had been paid at the professed place or not. WASHINGTON So the latest battle for Fallujah has begun. It was, in fact, in its 10th day last weekend. This time, it looked considerably better for America's "interests" in the region, as Iraqi counterterrorism troops paired with Shiite militias (some Iranian), advised by U.S. special forces. Fallujah once had a population of 300,000 people, but today an estimated 500, perhaps 700, fighters aligned with the murderous Islamic State or ISIS are holed up there. It is believed that 50,000 non-ISIS civilians are still trapped inside the city, hopelessness their only banner. Fallujah "is like the Kaaba" for ISIS, Gen. Saad Harbiya, head of Fallujah operations for the Iraqi army, told The Associated Press. In effect, in ISIS' minds, the city is as spiritually valuable as the sacred mosque of Mecca and will be fanatically defended. Thus we see the next and, President Obama certainly hopes, the beginning of the last phase of the president's seven-year struggle with the Middle East. If Fallujah is taken, then Mosul, a huge city by comparison and also held by ISIS, will be next. In time. Meanwhile, Kurdish and Syrian troops are nervously stretching their lines around Raqqa, the ISIS "capital" inside Syria. Thus, the circle will be closed around the Islamic State, but even more, President Obama will have completed his pre-presidential promises to pull America back from the wars the George W. administration so stupidly got us into. At least for the moment. As I ponder all of this today, I find my attention focusing on two questions: (1) Why are these wars, which underlie many of the problems our nation faces today, almost never mentioned in the candidates' speeches? (2) What would have likely happened had we NOT invaded Iraq in 2004? First, the wars we are still losing in Afghanistan, remember, and we're chomping at the bit to hit Libya and Somalia again are seldom mentioned perhaps because they're simply too dangerous. What possible benefit would there be? The problem is, without a serious discussion of America's propensity after World War II to fight in foreign lands whose names we barely know, there will be nothing to hold the next president back from repeating Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Lebanon, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria (did I forget any?) and still others. Will America continue to seek to become an empire, with half-baked but bloody interventions all over the world, or can we bear the "boredom" of being an inspirational example to the rest of the world? Empire or example: That's it, really. Second, where would this misbegotten "country" of Iraq be if we had stayed home and dealt with the 9/11 attacks by individually hunting down the attackers instead of blundering in with tanks and bombs against a historic city that was a treasure house for both the Judaic and Christian faiths? My mind goes back to 1978, on one of my eight trips to Iraq, during which I was the first Western journalist to interview Saddam Hussein. The '70s are still called "the Golden Years" by Iraqis. Yes, even though mass-murderer Saddam was in charge. Then the Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah of Iran in 1979, sowed Shiite Islam everywhere and the "golden" age was over. So now we have American special forces advising the Iraqis one more time. One hopes they take Fallujah again, as they did temporarily in 2004, but meanwhile, I keep thinking about the past because I'm trying to learn from it. The Kochi Bench of the Armed Forces Tribunal has upheld the Army's decision to dismiss a sepoy who refused to remove his beard on religious grounds. Maktumhusen, an Ex-Sepoy in Army Medical Corps, had filed an application before the Tribunal challenging the order of his discharge from military service for refusing to remove his beard. Maktumhusen, who joined as Sepoy in Army Medical Corps, Indian Army in April, 2001 was posted on transfer to 371 Field Hospital during 2010. On his request, the Commanding Officer had granted him permission to grow beard on religious grounds with directions to apply for fresh ID Card imposing conditions that he has to give an undertaking in writing to keep beard for remainder period of his service. But the permission was withdrawn later. The Tribubal said that while so, the Commanding Officer issued him charge sheet imputing that despite repeated verbal and written instructions he had refused to remove his beard. He was tried on such charge, found guilty and sentenced to 14 days imprisonment in military custody. He was then transferred to Command Hospital (SC) Pune. When he reported for joining duty, the Commanding Officer asked him to shave off his beard overruling his submissions that he had been previously granted permission to grow beard and also the pendency of a writ petition filed by him before the High Court questioning the withdrawal of the permission granted to him to keep beard. A preliminary inquiry was conducted in which findings were entered that he had misconducted himself by growing beard, defying the orders given for its removal. His misconduct was held to be unbecoming of a disciplined soldier, and hence he was to be treated as an undesirable soldier. On the basis of the findings in the preliminary inquiry, he was discharged from service as an undesirable soldier under Rule 13(3)III (v) of the Army Rule 1954. The Tribunal, comprising Justice S S Satheeshchandran and Vice Admiral M P Muralidharan, has found that Maktumhusen, who belong to Dharward district of Karnataka, was initially granted permission to grow and keep beard but later it was withdrawn. "The applicant, despite being directed to remove his beard, continued to be adamant and declined to do so. He was rightly discharged from military service as undesirable soldier," the Tribunal ruled. After pronouncement of the order, the counsel for the applicant requested for leave to appeal in the Supreme Court. The Tribunal said that "in our opinion, no question of law of general public importance is involved in the matter. Hence, leave requested for is refused. Uttarakhand Governor K K Paul today asked Indian diplomats in Nepal, Thailand and Madagascar to effectively project the state's immense potential in tourism and micro-hydel sectors to help bring foreign investment. Indian Ambassador to Nepal Ranjit Ray, Ambassador to Thailand Bhagwant Singh Bishnoi and Ambassador to Madagascar Chandra Ballabh Thapliyal called on Paul today in course of their three-day special mission to the state. At a meeting, Paul said if Uttarakhand's immense potential in tourism and micro hydro-electricity sectors was effectively projected and showcased abroad it could attract substantial foreign investment to the hill state, an official statement here said. Paul said there was a 325-km highway from Tughlaqabad Dry Port (Delhi) to Banbasa which was the border area of Uttarakhand touching Nepal's western border and just 30 km from Mahendranagar, the industrial trade centre of Nepal. The highway joining Tughlaqabad and Uttarakhand could be beneficial in Indo-Nepal trade activities, Paul was quoted as saying in a statement. During the discussion on promoting trade between Uttarakhand and western Nepal, Ray said work on strengthening the Sharda river Barrage which has become old is underway in accordance with an agreement between the two countries. Paul also spoke about the "great" scope in Uttarakhand for herbal spas to Bishnoi who expressed Thailand's keenness in investing in pharmaceutical industry in Uttarakhand. Haryana is actively considering to provide land to Army in the National Capital Region for setting up an institute of higher education for children of serving defence personnel and ex-servicemen, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said today. Khattar said this while addressing the gathering in the Veterans' rally after a ceremony of 'Jai Jawan Awas Yojna Project' at Bahadurgarh in Jhajjar district. Army Chief General Dalbir Singh was also present on the occasion. Khattar announced that after Bahadurgarh, the second residential colony under the project would be established at Karnal. Khattar announced that third Sainik School in the State would be opened in Matanhail village of Jhajjar district, according to an statement. He said that the welfare of serving soldiers and ex-servicemen is among the highest priorities of the State Government. The Chief Minister said 3000 posts in Police Department would be filled up under the category of ex-servicemen whereas the recruitment process for 1000 posts is already in progress. He said that apart from this, with a view to bring about a qualitative improvement in the education system in the State, there is a plan to constitute a committee of ex-servicemen at school level. He hoped that involvement of ex-servicemen in education sector would supplement the State Government efforts in developing Model Schools. "There are about 2.82 lakh ex-servicemen in the State and the State Government is committed to make the most of their experiences for the betterment of the State," Khattar said. He said that the Central Government has fulfilled its promise of 'One Rank One Pension' and added that if there is any scope of further improvement in the scheme, he would make all out efforts in their support. While referring to the facilities being given to the ex-servicemen in the State, the Chief Minister said that a provision has been made to give Rs 50 lakh as well as a job, as per the eligibility, to the dependent of the martyr, who had lost his life serving for the country. Apart from this, unprecedented increase has been made in the grant being given to defence personnel, who are the recipient of prestigious awards. Similarly, the ex-gratia amount being given to the dependants of martyrs has been increased to Rs 50 lakh from Rs 20 lakh, he said. While responding to the demand made by the Army, the Chief Minister gave in-principle approval for the construction of 500 flats under the Jai Jawan Awas Yojna. Earlier, the Army had planned to construct 400 flats on about five acres of land under the first Bahadurgarh Rajiv Vihar Jai Jawan Awas Yojna. The Chief of Army Staff said the state government has granted in principle approval for opening the third Sainik School and it would be endevour of the Army to start classes in it from the very next session. He said that Army has made a scheme to open institutes of higher education to provide quality education to the children of servicing defence personnel and ex-servicemen. The Army chief said that Khattar desired that this institute should also be opened in Haryana. He said that an educational campus would soon be opened in NCR area in which education in the field of Law, IT and Management would be imparted. This institute would be affiliated with Delhi University. During the Bhoomi Poojan ceremony, the Chief Minister honoured Paramjeet Joon, brother of martyr Major Rajiv Joon. The Rajiv Vihar Jai Jawan Awas Yojna has been set up in the name of Major Rajiv Joon, the recipient of Ashok Chakra and Shaurya Chakra. Major Rajiv Joon laid down his life fighting with terrorists in an encounter in district Anantnag of Jammu and Kashmir on September 16, 1994, an official statement said. Contemporary artist Sudarshan Shetty has become the first artist from India to be commissioned for the Rolls-Royce Art Programme, aimed at enabling artists from across the world to realise new projects and to explore new areas of their practice. Inspired by a South Indian folk tale, Shetty has created for the programme a two-channel film, and two sculptures, that is slated to be presented here on November 5 this year, a spokesperson for the Rolls-Royce Art Programme said. The new work would be presented alongside the artist's existing 'Flying Bus' public art project at the Maker Maxity in Bandra-Kurla Complex, before it moves to Delhi later. Shetty, who is the Artistic Director of the third edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale set for opening this December, is acclaimed for his artistic practice, which includes enigmatic sculptural installations that reflect on urban contemporary life. "The new commission will take inspiration from a popular South Indian folk tale that is an allegory for artistic expression and the importance of creativity. "Two structures will represent the home and public space featured in the story, whilst the film will depict the tale of a husband and wife, at a moment when the wife envisions a story and a song from her breath whilst sleeping," a spokesperson said. The sculptures would represent key moments in the tale and and shown across two screens, the film aims to convey a sense of unfolding time whilst exploring the narrative as it comes into the world through language and music. "Sudarshan Shetty has been recognised as one of the most innovative artists in India for his generation. I am delighted to welcome Sudarshan to the Rolls-Royce Art Programme. "He is an artist whose work reflects our own striving for perfection. India is an important part of Rolls-Royce's heritage and it gives us great pleasure that Sudarshan will weave Rolls-Royce into the thriving Indian arts scene," Torsten Muller-Otvos, Chief Executive Officer, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, said. The Mumbai-based artist had presented an Art Talk in Sydney to coincide with the 20th Biennale of Sydney in March 2016 for the Rolls-Royce Art Programme and earlier this year he visited Rolls-Royce in West Sussex, UK to observe the marque's artisanal craftspeople. "Rolls-Royce is, for me, a model of craftsmanship and technological advancement. It is a matter of privilege and also a challenge to create a new commission for Rolls-Royce and to be able to try to match its high standards," Shetty said. "Through this new commission, I am seeking to find a meeting point between the innovation of Rolls-Royce and my own imagination as an artist," he said. Shetty joins Emirati artist Mohammed Kazem as a member of the Rolls-Royce Art Programme for 2016. Kazem has been commissioned to create a sculpture for the programme which will be presented late this year alongside a bespoke motor car that has been inspired by the new work. Launched in 2012, the automaker's Art Programme comprises new works commissioned in situ, partnerships with leading organisations, art talks with emerging and established artists, art drives, art walks and art receptions around the world. Previous artists collaborating with the programme include Isaac Julien, Ana Maria Tavares, Morgan Wong, Carlos Rolon/Dzine, Angela Bulloch, Ugo Rondinone, Michael Zavros, Regina Silveira and Will Cotton. A Stockholm court today handed a five-year jail term to a 20-year-old student for plotting a suicide bomb attack. Described by prosecutors as a "lone wolf" jihadist, Aydin Sevigin acknowledged that he supported the Islamic State group and that he sought martyrdom. Sevigin insisted, though, that he had not planned to carry out an attack in Sweden -- an account that was rejected by the court, although investigators were unable to identify the target. Sevigin tried to travel to Syria via Turkey in June last year but was expelled twice by the Turkish authorities, the court heard. Frustrated, he then decided to carry out an attack in Sweden, prosecutors said. He was arrested in February after his mother found bomb-making material, including bottles of acetone, electrical wire, adhesive tape and ball bearings, and tipped off the authorities. Police found a mobile phone whose password was "jihad". Syrian rebels advancing on Islamic State group fighters in the strategic northern city of Manbij have seized more than 100 square kilometres this week, the US military has said. US Central Command spokesman Colonel Patrick Ryder said yesterday that more than 55 air strikes have been conducted since the offencive began on Monday, and that the rebel forces had secured areas on the western bank of the Euphrates River. "They are facing some heavy resistance from ISIL, which was expected" but "are continuing to move forward," he added, using an acronym for the IS group. Manbij is located along a route connecting Raqa the IS group's de facto capital to the Turkish border, a vital conduit for supplies. A rebel victory would inflict one of the largest strategic defeats on the IS group since it proclaimed its rule over territory in Iraq and Syria two years ago. Retaking Manbij would "cut this key route to prevent ISIL from using it to move fighters, weapons, finances, supplies into and out of Syria and Iraq," Ryder said. Some 3,000 local Arab fighters are taking part in the offencive, backed by around 500 Kurdish militia members. "They are from this area, they are liberating their hometown," Ryder said. US special forces are also working "at the command and control level" in the operation, he added. The United States has sought to mobilise Arab groups in the ground offencive against the IS group since the launch of the US-led coalition campaign in September 2014. With little success so far, a victory for Arab rebels in Manbij would provide welcome news for the White House. Telangana government today decided to give guarantee for the State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation to obtain a loan of Rs 784 crore from HUDCO, a central PSU. The loan is to develop National Investment and Manufacturing Zone (NIMZ) at Medak and a pharma NIMZ in Hyderabad. The decision to give guarantee for the Corporation to obtain a loan of Rs 784 crore from HUDCO was taken at a meeting of Telangana cabinet here, a release from the Chief Minister's Office said. NIMZs are mega industrial zones or integrated townships with world-class supporting infrastructure. Government also decided to give guarantee for the Agriculture Department to obtain a Rs 1,000-crore loan from NABARD, it said. The loan is to promote micro irrigation. In other decisions, the cabinet alleged the Andhra Pradesh government is spreading "lies" about the irrigation projects undertaken by Telangana on Krishna and Godavari rivers and decided to approach the Centre over the issue. Alleging that AP government is writing letters to the Centre with "lies" though Telangana is building projects as per its share of water in Krishna and Godavari, the cabinet decided that a team led by Irrigation Minister T Harish Rao should go to Delhi. The team should meet Union Minister (for Water Resources) and the officials of Krishna Board (River Management) to "explain the facts", the release said. The cabinet endorsed the agreement entered into by Telangana with Maharashtra regarding construction of projects on Godavari river, it added. Thailand's junta leader today defended his government's increasing crackdown on social media dissidents, while promising to restore democracy which he suspended in a coup two years ago. Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said Thailand is in a transition toward "a strong and sustainable democracy." "Anything that cannot be completed during this administration will be handed over to the next," he said in a speech at the start of a three-day security conference in Singapore attended by defense ministers from several Asia-Pacific nations, including US Defense Secretary Ash Carter. Prayuth seized power in a military coup in May 2014, saying he needed to end political confrontations that had wracked Thailand for years. He has promised to hold elections next year after several postponements, and wants to hold a referendum on Aug 7 on the draft of a new constitution that has been criticized as undemocratic and designed to keep power in the hands of the military and its allies in the country's traditional elite. His government has banned most public discussion of the referendum, which will be the first electoral barometer of public opinion about the junta. Campaigning for or against the draft is subject to nebulous rules that could land activists in prison for up to 10 years. Even the sale of a "Vote No" T-shirt is considered against the law. In May, authorities arrested eight people on charges of sedition and violation of the Computer Crime Act for material posted on Facebook that mocked Prayuth. The arrests attracted widespread criticism from local activists as well as international human rights groups. There has been an "abuse (of) social media to engage in libel and a distortion of facts," so it is "necessary for the military to take control for a while," Prayuth said, speaking in Thai. His comments were translated into English by an interpreter. "We have enforced the law only when the law is broken ... so taking action is not in violation of human rights," he said. "In creating a new equilibrium for Thailand, many issues need to be addressed." The annual international security conference, known as the Shangri-la Dialogue, includes a session tomorrow chaired by Carter on meeting Asia's security challenges. While the region upholds a general image of peaceful coexistence, the influence of extremists, tensions on the Korean Peninsula and territorial disputes in the South China Sea, principally between China and several Southeast Asian nations, threaten to disrupt the peace. A United Nations arbitration court will soon rule on sovereignty over islands in the South China Sea claimed by China and the Philippines. Three persons, including a former Pakistani religious affairs minister, were today sentenced up to 40 years in prison in a corruption case in which over 85,000 Hajj pilgrims were made to pay extra money for staying in Saudi Arabia. Hamid Saeed Kazmi, a member of the Pakistan People's Party, was sentenced by a local court to 16 years in prison for his involvement in the scandal. He was elected as lawmaker in 2008 and joined the cabinet of Yusuf Raza Gilani as minister for religious affairs. The court also sentenced former Director General Hajj Rao Shakeel for 40 years while joint secretary for religious affairs Aftab Aslam was sentenced for 16 years. The convict can appeal against the sentence in the high court. The convicts were accused of making money while renting residential buildings for Pakistani pilgrims in Saudi Arabia. Kazmi was arrested on March 15, 2011. German-Turkish relations are strong enough to withstand any differences in views, Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman said today, a day after parliament incurred Ankara's wrath by recognising the Armenian genocide. "The relationship between Germany and Turkey is very broad and very deep," Steffen Seibert told journalists, underlining wide-ranging collaboration including on the migration crisis. "Such ties can and will weather any differences in opinion," said the spokesman, who also pointed to the special relationship due to the three-million-strong ethnic Turkish population living in Germany. Carrying a clear message from Merkel to any dissenting ethnic Turks in Germany, Seibert said: "You are and remain a part of our country". "The democratic culture of our country means that there may be contentious disputes but which also means that different opinions can be expressed in a peaceful manner," he said. The Bundestag or lower house of parliament yesterday overwhelmingly approved a resolution that describes the 1915-16 killings of Armenians by Ottoman forces as genocide. Ankara put up fierce opposition before and after the vote, recalling the Turkish envoy to Germany and summoning the German charge d'affaires in Ankara for consultations. German lawmakers of Turkish origin came under particularly strong pressure over the vote. Some had even received death threats in the run-up to yesterday's Bundestag session, said parliament speaker Norbert Lammert. Flagstaff firefighters found themselves battling three separate fires in the Country Club area Thursday afternoon. Flagstaff Fire Captain Kevin Wilson said Thursday afternoon that the cause of the Country Fire east of Abbey Road is under investigation. The main fire and two caused by wind-driven embers burned a total of about four acres but did not threaten any structures. Crews containing 91 personnel from the Flagstaff Fire Department, the U.S. Forest Service, Summit Fire Department, Highland Fire Districts Bear Jaw Fire & Fuels Crew and a hotshot crew from New Mexico helped wrestle the blaze under control. A helicopter was also called in to do a couple of water drops in the area, Wilson said. Trinamool Congress general secretary Mukul Roy today held a close-door meeting with six rebel Congress MLAs here to explore the possibility of inducting them into the party. The MLAs with whom Roy met had fallen foul of the Congress high command after they criticised the leadership for entering into a pre-poll tie-up with the CPI-M in West Bengal, arguing that it reflected badly on the party's position as the principal opposition party in Tripura. In a bid to blunt the revolt, the high command had suspended MLA Sudip Roy Barman who led the pack of six disgruntled MLAs. Coming here as the emissary of TMC chief Mamata Banerjee, Roy, whose brief was likely to test the political water in the state in view of the revolt, was welcomed by Roy Barman and MLAs like Asish Saha, DC Hrangkhawl and Pranajit Singha Roy at the Agartala airport. From the airport, Roy was driven to Roy Barman's quarters where he met the rebel legislators in an effort to rope them in. Later, Roy went to Congress MLA Dilip Sarkar in the Charipara area, on the outskirts of Agartala, to know his 'mind' as he is still undecided over switching over to the Trinamool Congress. Asked about the outcome of his visit, Roy told the media, "Let the child be matured enough, then we tell you everything. What I can say now is that the meeting was fruitful". Roy Barman is trying to gain support of at least seven MLAs to evade the clasp of the anti-defection law as the Congress's strength in the Assembly stands at 10. Although the rebel Congress MLAs were tightlipped over the entire issue, party sources said Roy would brief Mamata Banerjee on the political scenario obtain in the Marxist-ruled state. (Reopens CAL1) "Today we had a meeting with Mukul Roy. I along with six other MLAs will soon join TMC in Agartala. We want to follow the footsteps of Mamata Banerjee. The day of joining TMC is yet to be decided," Barman told Rich tributes were today paid to the former Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde on his second death anniversary here. The BJP leader died in a road accident in Delhi two years ago. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis described him as a leader of the backward classes, who throughout his life worked for their upliftment. "Gopinath Munde was truly a leader of the backward classes. He could understand their difficulties well because he himself came up by working at the grassroot level," Fadnavis said, paying homage to the departed leader at the BJP office here. "He did immense work for people grappling with difficulties in rural areas. The state government is working hard to fulfil his dreams," Fadnavis added. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said the BJP-Shiv Sena combine could come to power in the state for the first time in 1995 due to the mobilisation of masses by Munde. "Gopinath Munde played a very big role in the development of BJP in Maharashtra. He undertook a mass mobilisation programme of 'Sangharsh Yatra' because of which the BJP-Shiv Sena could come to power," he said. Gadkari also said it was Munde's dream to rid farmers of economic problems and making their lives better would be a true tribute to him. At the time of his death in an accident at the age of 64, Munde, an MP from Beed in Maharashtra, was Union Minister of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Drinking Water and Sanitation in the newly elected Narendra Modi-led Government. Amid a debate over triple talaq, State Minorities Commission chairman Abid Rasool Khan today said the practice has been "misused" to discriminate against women and harass them as he then appealed to 'Ulemas' to initiate reforms to protect rights of women. He also favoured a debate on the uniform civil code, focussing not only on the religious practices in Islam but across all religions, including child marriages and 'Sati among Hindus. The Commission serves the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Khan said the Commission has received about 30-40 complaints in the last three years pertaining to desertions after marriage. The complaints include desertions without giving "talaq" or "khulla" thus leaving the women to fend for themselves, not maintaining them or taking care of children, and harassing women when they go out for a job or try to earn their own livelihood. In some cases, triple talaq has been pronounced, and then the women have been left without any maintenance or any sort of support, he said. "Earlier, we had held discussions with all stake-holders, including Ulemas (the body of Mullahs -Muslim scholars trained in Islam and Islamic law) and we were told that the matter is being dealt with by the All India Muslim Personal Law Board and shortly some decisions would be coming. But that has not come. "My opinion is that definitely there is discrimination against women by misuse of this provision under the Islamic act," he told PTI here. Khan said that as per Quran, "triple talaq" cannot be pronounced until and unless there is "mediation" and "time gap" (there is a process of dialogue, reconciliation and mediation) before the divorce takes place. "But subsequently it was amended or it was reformed in such a way (oral/unilateral divorce) that at that time the social requirements were met. But those reforms are today being utilised for harassing women", Khan said. He said in this context the Ulemas have to "open up" their "minds". "So, I think Ulemas also have to open up their minds, talk about this with stake-holders, try to speak to all the commissions and governments...How many women are being persecuted like this, and then reform the laws in such a way that it will also not hinder the Islamic Act as well as give due protection to women because the fact remains that Islam definitely provides equality to and protection for women. "Only by this issue (triple talaq), the whole tenets of Islam should not be questioned", he added. Noting that the Commission is working very seriously on "triple talaq" issue, Khan said it is compiling cases that have come before, the circumstances under which women are suffering, and would like to address them to the All India Muslim Personal Law Board soon. "I would also like to file a petition before the Supreme Court in the instant matter and explain how the situation is there in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana". "And my personal opinion is that Quran has made it clear how talaq can be pronounced. Subsequent amendments came because at that time the social requirements were there but those social requirements do not exist today. So, we should not try to misuse the reform which were brought in that situation 1400 years back or 1300 years back. Just because of those reforms we should not let our women suffer", he said. Donald Trump says the federal judge presiding over a lawsuit brought by former Trump University students has an "absolute conflict" in handling the case because he is "of Mexican heritage." The presumptive Republican presidential nominee tells The Wall Street Journal that US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel has "an inherent conflict of interest" because Trump is "building a wall," a reference to Trump's proposal to build a wall along the border between the US and Mexico. Trump has brought up Curiel's ethnicity several times this year, including last week at a rally in San Diego. Curiel was born in Indiana and served as a federal prosecutor and a judge in the California state judicial system before being nominated to the federal bench by President Barack Obama in 2011. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton launched a searing attack on Donald Trump, saying his foreign policy ideas were "reckless and irresponsible" and terming him "unfit" to become President. "Like many across our country and around the world, I believe the person the Republicans have nominated for President cannot do the job. Donald Trump's ideas aren't just different - they are dangerously incoherent. "They're not even really ideas - just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies," Clinton said yesterday in San Diego, California. During the speech, which was being billed as a major foreign policy and national security address, Clinton minced no words in going after the presumptive Republican nominee on various issues -- from his past statements on international affairs to his temperament for the job. "He is not just unprepared -- he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility. "This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes - because it's not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin," she said. "We cannot put the security of our children and grandchildren in Donald Trump's hands," she said. "We cannot let him roll the dice with America. This is a man who said that more countries should have nuclear weapons, including Saudi Arabia." "This is someone who has threatened to abandon our allies in NATO - the countries that work with us to root out terrorists abroad before they strike us at home," Clinton said. She took a dig at Trump's past business dealings as well. "He believes we can treat the US economy like one of his casinos and default on our debts to the rest of the world, which would cause an economic catastrophe far worse than anything we experienced in 2008," she said. Referring to some of Trump's recent foreign policy remarks, Clinton said the billionaire does not deserve to be the President of the United States. "Unlike him, I have some experience with the tough calls and the hard work of statecraft. I wrestled with the Chinese over a climate deal in Copenhagen, brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, negotiated the reduction of nuclear weapons with Russia, twisted arms to bring the world together in global sanctions against Iran, and stood up for the rights of women, religious minorities and LGBT people around the world," Clinton claimed. "And I have sat in the Situation Room and advised the President on some of the toughest choices he faced. So I'm not new to this work. And I'm proud to run on my record, because I think the choice before the American people in this election is clear," she said. TVS Racing today announced collaboration with the Alisha Abdullah Racing Academy for Women, a training school for women racers, and will support the academy with the racing bikes and technical expertise. The academy has shortlisted 18 women riders who will race exclusively for TVS Racing Team in the first year. The first batch of 18 students at the academy has been selected from 80 entries after clearing rigorous tests. These riders are now being trained to improve physical fitness and hone their racing skills. "We are proud to be associated with TVS Racing as it is India's most professional two-wheeler racing team with the best motorbikes and trainers. This association will help the academy develop the best talent among women racers as they get exclusive access to best in class machines, racers and technology,"Alisha Abdullah, founder of the academy said. Arvind Pangaonkar, Head - TVS Racing Team said, "TVS Racing is strongly committed to promote two-wheeler racing in India and generate interest and improve support for the sport in India. We make continuous efforts to take the sport to as many sections of the society as possible and create the ultimate machine and promote the riders for these machines. Two people were killed and dozens injured in Colombia as more than 30,000 farmers joined a growing anti-government protest, blocking roads and clashing with police, officials said. The farmers, who launched their protest Monday, complain that free-trade agreements with Europe and the United States are flooding the country with cheap food imports, exacerbating rural poverty. Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas announced the "death of two indigenous persons during the day's protests" in a tweet. In a subsequent posting, he said there was no evidence yet that the deaths were the result of police action. The National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) said the two victims were from the western department of Cauca and died from gunshot wounds. Some 135 people were injured, according to ONIC. Earlier, at midday the government ombudsman reported 21 civilians wounded. The Defense Ministry reported that 31 members of the security forces were injured. The farmers accuse President Juan Manuel Santos's government of breaking its promises to them, and are demanding land reform and increased state spending in rural areas. Protests have now erupted in 24 of Colombia's 32 departments, shutting down at least 14 roads, the government rights ombudsman's office said. Police have broken up 11 other roadblocks, in some cases sparking clashes. The key Pan-American Highway was cut off in several spots by farmers wielding sticks and stones. The government calls the protests unfair and has asked the farmers' organization, the Agrarian Summit, to hold talks. Interior Minister Juan Fernando Cristo traveled yesterday to the department of Cauca, where one of the largest protests was being held, to try to broker a deal for negotiations. Rural poverty and land tenure are explosive issues in Colombia, where peasant uprisings more than half a century ago morphed into an armed conflict that is still ongoing. The conflict, which has drawn in leftist guerrilla groups, right-wing paramilitaries and drug gangs, has killed 260,000 people. The two Koreas stepped up an angry war of words today as tensions mounted over a series of North Korean defections and the South's rejection of Pyongyang's repeated offers of military talks. Tensions have been running high on the divided Korean peninsula ever since the North conducted its fourth nuclear test in January followed by a long-range rocket launch. In the past month, a new source of friction has emerged with two cases of group defections by North Korean staff working in Pyongyang-run restaurants in China. A dozen women and their restaurant manager arrived in Seoul in April, and three others from a separate restaurant followed them this week. North Korea insists the staff were duped and effectively kidnapped by South Korean intelligence agents and are being held in the South against their will -- an accusation Seoul categorically denies. "The allurement and abduction clearly proves that the puppet forces of south Korea are the most hideous human rights abusers," a spokesman for the North Korean Red Cross said in a statement. Referring to the latest case of the three women who had been working in a restaurant in the northern Chinese province of Shanxi, the spokesman said they were the victims of a sophisticated, "premeditated abduction". He said South Korean agents "lured" the women away from their work and spirited them across the border with Laos and then into Thailand. Seoul's unification ministry dismissed the "groundless" accusations today, and said North Korea could better spend time examining why its citizens wanted to flee. "We hope North Korea will look back on the continued defections and use it as an opportunity to improve the human rights and livelihoods of its people," ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-Hee said. The South Korean government estimates that Pyongyang rakes in around USD 10 million every year from about 130 restaurants it operates -- with mostly North Korean staff -- in 12 countries, including neighbouring China. Tough UN sanctions imposed on North Korea after its January nuclear test significantly curtailed the isolated state's ability to earn hard currency, making the restaurants an even more important source of income than before. There have been reports of staff not being paid, with restaurants pressured into increasing their regular remittances to Pyongyang. Two loaders working at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) here have been arrested for allegedly stealing USD 2,300 and some cash of a lady passenger who came back to the country from Frankfurt. Officials said the incident occurred yesterday when a lady passenger identified as N Kaur complained to CISF officials that her cash was missing after landing in Delhi. Central Industrial Security Force sleuths soon apprehended two loaders, working with a ground handling agency at the IGIA, identified as Arvind K and Manoj K, for stealing USD 2,300 (about Rs 1.53 lakh) and Rs 800 cash from the check-in baggage of Kaur. A senior CISF officer said the duo has been arrested by Delhi Police even as their employer has terminated their services. India is a leading producer and exporter of vaccines but two-thirds of Indian children do not receive vaccinations on time which makes them susceptible to diseases and contributes to untimely deaths, according to American researchers. A research conducted by the University of Michigan's School of Public found that only 18% of children are vaccinated with the recommended three doses of DPT vaccine, while about a third receive the measles by 10 months under the government-supported immunisation program. "This is a systemic problem," said the study's lead author, Nijika Shrivastwa, who recently finished her doctorate in epidemiology at University of Michigan (U-M) and is now at the South Carolina Department of and Environmental Control. "Immunising a child six months after the recommended time period can have dramatic implications for a child's vulnerability to diseases," Nijika said. Although India is a leading producer and exporter of vaccines, the country has the greatest number of deaths among children under 5, the majority are from vaccine-preventable diseases. "Every year, 26 million children are born in India, the greatest number by far of any country in the world," said Matthew Boulton, senior associate dean for global public at the U-M School of Public Health. "Adding vast numbers of new children who need vaccination, while the older ones remain under or unvaccinated because of immunisation delays, is like walking too slowly on a moving treadmill, you continuously fall further back," he said. According to University of Michigan, the researchers found that only 12% of children are vaccinated with the measles vaccine by the required age of 9 months, although 75% are vaccinated by age 5. This delay in can contribute to frequent outbreaks of measles in India. "Approximately, 95% is required in a population to successfully stop measles outbreaks," he added. India's childhood vaccination rate is simply too low to successfully control transmission of disease and prevent measles-related childhood illnesses and deaths," Boulton said. The study looked at the vaccination rate of nearly 270,000 children in the District Level Household and Facility survey data from 2008, a nationally representative sample. After months of study and $120,000 in testing, Nestle Purina may have a solution to the cooking odors that waft from its plant on the eastside of Flagstaff. Amy Kerr, the factory manager, presented a plan to Flagstaff City Council Tuesday night that could reduce the smell by 70 percent within four years of construction. The company hired the consultants Brown and Caldwell to study the smell at a cost of $120,000 in the fall of 2015. Kerr said that the smell comes from the cooking process at the plant. Its like cooking at home, she said. There are certain ingredients when youre cooking dinner, like fish, that can cause a lingering odor. Brown and Caldwell found the two major sources of smell escaping the plant came from the extrusion and drying processes. The smell also usually drifts to the southeast, but it depends on the weather and the wind, Kerr said. Brown and Caldwell recommended a four-phased approach to help mitigate the smell, she said. Purina is hoping to have to only go through two phases of the plan. The first phase involved spending $430,000 on an exhaust stack for the extrusion area of the plant, which generates most of the smell. The stack will help condense the steam created by the extrusion process, which will help pull the smell out of the exhaust released by the plant, Kerr said. Purina is hoping that first phase will reduce the smell by about 35 percent. The second phase involves installing a similar exhaust stack for the drying area of the plant a year later at a cost of $670,000. That stack will work in a similar way and reduce the total smell by 50 percent. Purina will then restudy the situation and if further help is needed to reduce the smell, it will continue with the third and fourth phases, Kerr said. Those phases will add ionization units to both exhaust stacks at a cost of $1.38 million for the extrusion stack and $1.5 million for the drying stack. With both units in place it should reduce the smell by about 70 percent. All four phases, if implemented, would take about four years, she said. Construction would start as soon as the plant got funding from Nestle Purinas headquarters, which could be as soon as the beginning of 2017. Councilmember Eva Putzova asked if Nestle Purina would consider adding the smell mitigation measures without the approval of the government property lease excise tax agreement the company has with the city. Kerr said the plant would be willing to install the technology but it would be an easier sell to get the funds from the corporate office if the city would renew the tax agreement. Nestle likes to see a return on an investment, she said. The city and Purina first entered the agreement in 2003. Under it, the city accepted the title to the property on which the plant sits and leases the land back to Nestle Purina. This exempts it from property taxes because governmental properties do not pay property taxes. According to city staff, this arrangement saves Nestle Purina around $490,000 a year in property taxes. The lease for the property costs Nestle Purina about $90,000 a year, so the total savings is around $400,000 per year. Kerr pointed out that according to the Arizona Rural Policy Institute, the plant has a $54 million impact on the Flagstaff economy and employs around 300 people. Mayor Jerry Nabours asked if Nestle Purina had installed similar technology on its other plants. Kerr said the company had about 26 plants in the U.S. and only one had a smell mitigation technology installed on it. That plant, which she did not identify, was required by state law to have the technology. The Flagstaff plant would be the first to have this kind of technology installed and would be looked at as a possible test case for other plants owned by the company. Most of Nestle Purinas plants were original built on the edges of communities, like Flagstaffs, she said. But over the years the communities have grown and some now have houses or businesses that surround their plants. Council will consider renewing the agreement at a future meeting. The new development agreement would last six months. At the end of the six months, Nestle Purina would report back to the city on their progress. At that time, a longer extension of the agreement might be signed. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko today condemned the leak of the names and contact information for thousands of journalists who have reported from rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine. The May publication by hackers from a group called Myrotvorets has raised concerns about the safety of the journalists, many of them from international media organizations. Some Ukrainian officials however, including the interior minister, have welcomed the publication of the data, accusing the journalists of being accessories to terrorism. Several journalists have reported threats from unknown people who called on their phones or sent messages to the email addresses listed in the publication. Ambassadors to Ukraine from the Group of Seven countries yesterday expressed concern about the publication. Poroshenko today told reporters that the publication was a "big mistake" and called for a probe into the leak. Poroshenko, however, called on journalists not to write "negative articles" about Ukraine and said some Russian reporters on the lists made "criminal things." He did not elaborate. "I would like to offer guarantees to journalists that there are no threats to you," he said. The hackers said they had gained access to computers used by the Russia-backed separatists to register journalists working in the conflict zone and felt it was necessary to publish the list "because these journalists collaborate with fighters from terrorist organizations. Union Environment Ministry today gave clean chit to builder and developer DLF in a case related to the alleged violation of Coastal Regulatory Zone while constructing an apartment on the banks of backwaters in Chelavannur near here. In an affidavit filed before the Kerala High Court, the ministry informed that the project proponent has not violated the coastal regulation norms. Citing the recommendations of the various state government agencies dealing with environmental issues, the Ministry said, "the project proponent has adhered to the conditions laid down by the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority and have not violated any of the provisions. The said constructions are technically as per the provisions of the CRZ Notification, 1991 and Environment Impact Assessment Notification, 2006," it said. In December 2014, the Kerala High Court had directed DLF to demolish certain portions of its apartment complex, constructed on the banks of the Chilavanoor backwaters here in violation of Coastal Regulation Zone norms. Justice A V Ramakrishna Pillai had issued the direction while disposing of a petition by A V Antony of Kochi against the construction alleging that there was violation of CRZ norms. The court had directed DLF to stop all further construction as per the permit granted by Kochi corporation. The builder challenged the single Bench order and obtained stay from the division bench of the High Court. The High Court had suo-motu made the Ministry of Environment and Forest a party in the case. The is expanding 5-9% faster than expected, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered. "This surprising finding may be an important clue to understanding those mysterious parts of the that make up 95% of everything and don't emit light, such as dark energy, dark matter, and dark radiation," said study leader and Nobel Laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute and The Johns Hopkins University in the US. Researchers made the discovery by refining the universe's current expansion rate to unprecedented accuracy, reducing the uncertainty to only 2.4%. The team made the refinements by developing innovative techniques that improved the precision of distance measurements to faraway galaxies. They looked for galaxies containing both Cepheid stars and Type Ia supernovae. Cepheid stars pulsate at rates that correspond to their true brightness, which can be compared with their apparent brightness as seen from Earth to accurately determine their distance. Type Ia supernovae, another commonly used cosmic yardstick, are exploding stars that flare with the same brightness and are brilliant enough to be seen from relatively longer distances. By measuring about 2,400 Cepheid stars in 19 galaxies and comparing the observed brightness of both types of stars, researchers accurately calculated distances to roughly 300 Type Ia supernovae in far-flung galaxies. They compared those distances with the expansion of space as measured by the stretching of light from receding galaxies. The team used these two values to calculate how fast the expands with time, or the Hubble constant. The improved Hubble constant value is 73.2 km per second per megaparsec. A megaparsec equals 3.26 million light-years. The new value means the distance between cosmic objects will double in another 9.8 billion years. This refined calibration presents a puzzle, however, because it does not quite match the expansion rate predicted for the universe from its trajectory seen shortly after the Big Bang. Measurements of the afterglow from the Big Bang by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe and the European Space Agency's Planck satellite mission yield predictions for the Hubble constant that are 5% and 9% smaller. "If we know the initial amounts of stuff in the universe, such as dark energy and dark matter, and we have the physics correct, then you can go from a measurement at the time shortly after the big bang and use that understanding to predict how fast the universe should be expanding today," said Riess. "However, if this discrepancy holds up, it appears we may not have the right understanding, and it changes how big the Hubble constant should be today," he said. The research appears in The Astrophysical Journal. A plane from the US Air Force's elite Thunderbird team crashed in Colorado shortly after flying over a ceremony where President Barack Obama spoke, an official said. The pilot ejected safely from the aircraft and was undergoing a medical examination, according to the Air Force official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Following the accident yesterday, Obama met with the pilot at Peterson Air Force Base before heading back to Washington aboard Air Force One. Obama expressed relief that the pilot was not injured and thanked him for his service to the country, according to reporters who were traveling with the president. The official said the F-16 Thunderbird crashed "shortly after conducting a flyover in support of the US Air Force Academy graduation commencement ceremony" in Colorado Springs, where Obama addressed the crowd. Obama used the occasion to defend his approach to the Syrian conflict, warning against allowing the United States to become drawn into a new civil war in the Middle East. The accident occurred about six miles (nine kilometers) from Peterson Air Force Base. The cause of the crash was under investigation, the Air Force official said. US authorities have announced a near-total ban on the trade of African elephant ivory, finalising a years-long push to fight the poaching of the threatened animals. Conservation groups welcomed the move by the United States, the world's second-largest consumer of illegal ivory after China, even though it comes with notable exemptions including for antiques. The new rule, which takes effect July 6, "substantially limits" imports, exports and sales of ivory across state lines, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) said yesterday. "Today's bold action underscores the United States' leadership and commitment to ending the scourge of elephant poaching and the tragic impact it's having on wild populations," Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell said. More than 35,000 elephants are slaughtered each year on the African continent from an approximate population of more than 450,000 in the wild. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) hailed the US move to protect the species as historic. "The USA is boldly saying to ivory poachers: You are officially out of business," WCS president and chief executive Cristian Samper -- a member of an Obama task force on wildlife trafficking -- said in a statement. Patrick Bergin, chief executive of the US-based African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), also praised the new rule. "Strong laws around wildlife crime and strong enforcement of those laws are absolutely critical in deterring traffickers and poachers," he told AFP. "All countries -- and especially those that are source, transit or destination countries for illegal wildlife products -- have a role to play in tidying their own house." But the new restriction comes with a series of exemptions, including for documented antiques which are at least 100 years old and meet several additional requirements. Other exempt items include certain musical instruments, furniture and firearms that contain less than 200 grams of ivory. Under the new rules, the import of sport-hunted trophies -- parts of an animal brought back to the United States for display -- will be allowed within a limit of two per hunter per year. People will also be allowed to keep lawfully acquired ivory and are not banned from donating, giving away or receiving ivory as a gift provided "there is no exchange for other goods or services involved," the FWS said. "Limited exceptions" to the elephant ivory ban will also apply to items that are part of a traveling exhibition or "are part of a household move or inheritance when specific criteria are met" as well as "ivory for law enforcement or genuine scientific purposes. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lashed out today at the US, Britain and Israel as the Islamic republic's "main enemies", accusing Washington of procrastinating over Tehran's landmark nuclear deal. "It's the US, the evil Britain, and the damned and cancerous Zionist regime. These are the main enemies," Khamenei said in a televised speech marking the 27th anniversary of the death of his revolutionary predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The supreme leader mentioned the nuclear deal with world powers that came into force in January, and accused Washington of breaking its promises. "We sat down and negotiated with the P5+1 group and even separately with the Americans over the nuclear issue," he said during a televised speech to thousands gathered at Khomeini's extravagant mausoleum in southern Tehran. "The other side, the Americans, made some commitments. The Islamic republic completed its commitments but the other unfaithful side is procrastinating." "Whoever trusts in the United States is committing a big mistake and will be hit with a slap" by them, he added. After the nuclear deal entered into force in mid-January, some international sanctions on Iran were lifted by the United Nations, the US and the European Union. But the US and the EU have kept sanctions related to Iran's missile programme, its human rights situation and support for groups like the Lebanese Hezbollah, which Washington categorises as a "terrorist" organisation. Khamenei said it was "impossible" that Iran would enter into negotiations with the US over such issues. "First they enter with a smile and (soft) language but later in practice they will not do what they should do and will not keep their commitment," he said. Iran particularly accuses President Barack Obama's administration of not taking the required steps to reassure big international banks who are reluctant to do business with Iran for fear of punitive measures. More than a decade of nuclear-related sanctions hampered Tehran's economy. President Hassan Rouhani told Tehran's newly elected parliament last week that Iran needed USD 30-50 billion each year in foreign investment in order for it to hit its 8 per cent growth target. Khamenei went on to emphasise the importance of a domestic "resistance economy", rather than reliance on foreign investment. "To think that the economic boom of the country can be merely reached through foreign investment is a mistake," he said. "More important than foreign investment is activating domestic potential. We have great deal of potential still not activated." The supreme leader also said that Iran re-joining the global economy would represent a "loss and defeat" and accused Iran's "enemies" of seeking to undermine Iran's finances. Semiconductor major Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has evinced interest to work with Telugu movie industry in the field of graphics. According to a government release, Telangana IT Minister K T Rama Rao, who is touring the US, met AMD Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster and Senior Vice-President (Human Resources and Corporate Communications) Ruth Cotter at the chipmaker's headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. "Chip technology of AMD has been instrumental in creating computer graphics for movies like 'Bahubali', the semiconductor company representatives stated. AMD plans to work closely with Tollywood and other cine industries in the graphics sector," the release said. An AMD team explained to the Minister and delegation led by him about the company's activities and products in Hyderabad. When the AMD team stated that it plans to establish and expand their operations in computer graphics, gaming, virtual reality and manufacturing, the minister invited the company to partner with the proposed IMAGE city here. Rao explained key features of Telangana Government's industrial policy, electronics policy and incentives the state offers to industries. He asked AMD to consider manufacturing its products in Telangana and make the state its choice for investments in gaming and animation sector. The minister requested AMD to partner with premier educational institutes of the state like IIT-H, IIIT-H, BITS and NIT for research. According to the release, AMD representatives showed keen interest in VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) Academy proposed by the state government and assured they will consider joining it. In a shocking incident in the US, a woman bought a used freezer for USD 30 from her neighbour's garage sale only to discover parts of a dead body inside. The woman, from Goldsboro, North Carolina, was shocked when she looked into the used freezer she bought and found parts of a dead body inside. "My heart was in my throat and I ran outside, called 911," the woman local channel WNCN. The woman said she bought the freezer from her neighbour, but she did not immediately open it because the neighbour told her it was being used as a "time capsule". The seller of the freezer said it was part of a class project she was doing with her church Sunday School class. "A church was supposed to come, pick up the items inside the freezer. I was supposed to get the freezer back. The church never came. I decided to open it," the freezer buyer said. The buyer called 911 after seeing the contents of the freezer. "I have a serious problem. My neighbour sold me a deep freezer. I just opened it and there's a body in there I think. I am freaking out," she told the 911 dispatcher. Police confirmed that human remains were found. The woman who discovered it said she believes it was the body of the neighbour's elderly mother inside the freezer. "She sold me her frozen mother for USD 30. How do you do something like that?" the woman said. The mother had lived with her daughter for years, but had not been seen since September. "(She was) Just the sweetest lady. I mean quiet, kept to herself, stayed at home. Just unbelievable how she could just stick her mom in a freezer," the woman said. She said the day after she bought the freezer, the neighbour who sold it to her then left town. Goldsboro police are investigating the incident as felony concealing or failing to notify the death of a person. In the wake of the dual citizenship row in Goa, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) today said that its stand on the issue would be in line with the Indian Constitution. "Does Constitution of India allow dual citizenship ? We will go by what the constitution says," MGP President Dipak Dhavalikar told reporters here. Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar had yesterday said that permitting dual citizenship was impossible. "I appeal people not to opt for dual citizenship as it will not be allowed," he said. The CM said that people whose birth is registered in Portugal as they were born before the state was liberated from Portuguese rule, need not worry as they won't be dubbed as a dual citizen. "My heart pains when I see people standing in front of Portuguese Consulate in Goa to apply for their passport," Parsekar said yesterday. Union minister of State for Home, Kiren Rijiju had recently stated that the central government will soon notify an authority in Goa to decide the contentious issue of dual citizenship concerning scores of Goans. A large number of Goans, especially those born before 1961, are facing legal hurdles given that their birth was registered under the Portuguese rule in the coastal state, according them the status of Portuguese nationals. However, a few months after the liberation of Goa, the then central government through a notification under the Citizenship Act 1955 automatically accorded Indian citizenship to every person who or either of whose parents or any of whose grandparents was born before December 20, 1961, in Goa, Daman and Diu, which were also Portuguese colonies. A woman today moved the Madras High Court bench here seeking a compensation of Rs 15 lakh from the Tamil Nadu Government for the death of her husband in the central prison here in 2009. Justice S Vimala posted the hearing in the case after two weeks on the petition by Muniammal. Muniammal submitted that her husband Kumaravel was convicted and sentenced to seven years of imprisonment in connection with an attempt to murder case in 2009 and was later lodged in Madurai central prison. When he was due for release in the next three months, the jail officials informed her brother-in-law Muniyandi on Nov 17, 2015 that Kumaravel took ill in and was rushed to the Government Rajaji hospital here. Later, they informed the local panchayat president that he had died at 10 pm on the same day, she submitted. The Assistant Jailer Murugesan had told Muniammal that her husband had collapsed at 6.40 pm and was rushed to the hospital at 6.50 pm. However, the hospital staff said that he had died on the way to the hospital. Hence, there was suspicion regarding the time of Kumravel's death, she said. She held the jail officials including the DGP prisons, SP and Inspector responsible for the death of her husband and prayed the court to direct the government to pay the compensation amount and order a judicial probe into the death. YOUNG (AP) State wildlife officials say a black bear that clawed a camper in north-central Arizona has been trapped and euthanized. Arizona Game and Fish Department officials say the young male bear was caught in a culvert trap Wednesday night. They say the bear was identified by a unique hind paw pad that matched tracks found at the campsite. Officials say there were unsecured food sources and garbage in the area and a field necropsy revealed garbage in the bear's stomach contents. They say the bear was investigating an undeveloped camp early Wednesday and pawed a man in a sleeping bag near Cherry Creek in Young. Bear spray was used and the animal retreated. The man in his 20s was treated at a hospital and released. His name hasn't been released. Thursday 10:30 a.m.: Bear claws man at campsite southeast of Payson State wildlife authorities say a man was injured by a bear Thursday morning while camping on Cherry Creek in the Tonto National Forest near Young southeast of Payson. According to information from the Arizona Game and Fish Department, the man reported he was pawed through his sleeping bag as the bear was investigating his campsite. Bear spray was used and the animal retreated. The man was treated at a local hospital and released. Based on the injuries and description, officers believe the bear was small and possibly young. The camp area is used by the Anasazi Foundation as part of its program. After the incident, other campers and Anasazi members advised Game and Fish officers that several bears had been seen in the campground area over the Memorial Day weekend. At least three different bears were identified by the campers as coming into camp and raiding food sources, and not fully retreating when bear spray was used. Campers did not notify officials of the bear activity, vacate the area or remove the food sources after the sightings. Game and Fish officers will set traps to attempt to capture the bears. The department also will work with the Tonto National Forest on possible area closures. If the offending bears are captured, they will be lethally removed because of their behavior near humans and the public safety threat it poses. The department asks that any nuisance bear activity be immediately reported to Game and Fish or local officials and recommends that all campers take precautions, including securing all potential food sources. Campsite food sources can include uncleaned BBQs, used plates, discarded wrappers, food stores and pet food. Bears have a very keen sense of smell approximately seven times better than a bloodhound and 100 times better than a human. If you encounter a bear, officers advise trying to scare the bear away by making yourself look as large as possible, making loud noises and throwing objects toward it. Do not run. In the rare event of a black bear attack, fight back aggressively and use bear spray. Arizona has had one fatal bear attack, which occurred in Pinetop in 2011. However, there are numerous reports each year of bears in close proximity to humans that could lead to serious injury or even death. For more information or questions on living with bears and keeping wildlife wild, visit the departments website at www.azgfd.gov/urbanwildlife. Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today said that women were the victim of sexual harassment as whenever they board a public transport, men of all age try to touch them inappropriately. "A woman is not safe, when she boards a matador or a bus, men from the age group of 15 to 70 tries to touch her indecently." "Men won't understand what mental trauma the woman has to go through, when she is touched inappropriately by these pervert," she said during a function here today. Mehbooba said that passing on of "vulgar comments" by the men was one torture which the female passenger has to go through. "These men touch the woman inappropriately with their elbows, it's a torture that a woman travelling in public transport has to go through everyday," she said. The Chief Minister said that her government would soon be introducing all women passenger vehicles in both the capital cities of the state. "Some have already been introduced in Srinagar, while more would be introduced and they will be introduced in Jammu as well," she said. Mehbooba said that her government was working for encouraging women entrepreneurship in the state and has decided to reserve 10 percent land in the industrial hubs for the woman entrepreneurs. She said that her government was also is in the process of offering 50 percent subsidy to the female students of two colleges of Jammu and Srinagar so that they can purchase a two-wheeler. "The aim of this is to put the female in a controlling situation where she is free to travel go wherever she wants," she added. By Caroline Copley BERLIN (Reuters) - As Beijing moves in to buy up firms from Germany's famed "Mittlestand" of mid-sized manufacturers, politicians are nervous that Chinese owners may take their vaunted technology and move jobs abroad. But one of the first prominent mid-sized German engineering firms to sell out to the Chinese says such fears are overblown. When Putzmeister, a 58-year-old maker of pumps for concrete, was bought by its Chinese competitor Sany for 360 million euros($402 million) in 2012, its workers protested outside the factory gates, fearing job losses. Four years on, however, the company's employment in Germany has held steady and it has promised to maintain it at least until 2020. Sales are up by nearly a third, the brand is still intact and established relationships with suppliers have been left in place. With the Chinese back for more acquisitions, the four-year-old merger is again drawing attention, this time as an example of how to sell out while safeguarding operations at home. In headlines from the latest Chinese shopping spree, home appliance maker Midea Group <000333.SZ> made a $5-billion bid for German robot maker Kuka last month, and Fujian Grand Chip Investment Fund agreed to pay 670 million euros for semiconductor manufacturing equipment maker Aixtron . German economy minister Sigmar Gabriel signalled politicians' unease this week, saying he would like to see a rival offer for Kuka from a German or European firm. Putzmeister executives remember similar worries. Before their company went up for sale, sales had only begun recovering from the 2009 global financial crisis. The suitor, Sany, from China's southwestern Hunan province, had itself overtaken Putzmeister as the global market leader for concrete pumps, mostly by selling cheaper pumps to Chinese customers. It was easy to imagine the Chinese firm following the merger by taking German designs and shedding German jobs. But Putzmeister's German Chief Executive Gerald Karch insists that was never the plan. "The strategy was and is the strict preservation of brand and corporate identities at both firms," he said in an e-mailed response to questions. Since the takeover, rather than shift production to China, Sany has divided up the market, selling its own pumps in China and the German firm's pumps in the rest of the world. Putzmeister pumps still come with German-engineered parts sourced from its previous suppliers. The German firm acts as the global distribution hub for the combined company. "There are positive impulses there," said Frank-Christian Raffel, Munich-based partner in boutique advisory firm MelchersRaffel, which specialises in M&A deals between German-speaking and Asian countries. "Evidently it is being well run by the Chinese." With employment at the company's factories in Germany holding steady, the workers who picketed against the merger four years ago now say they are more fortunate than they might have been had a buyer arrived from elsewhere. "I think if it were an American company, it would be a lot worse for the workforce," said Joerg Loeffler, head of the works council at Putzmeister. Nevertheless, although the merger appears to have been mostly a success in terms of sales and employment, the company acknowledges it may still take years to unite two very different corporate cultures and realise all the benefits of linking up. PLASTER MASTER Putzmeister, whose name means "plaster master", is an example of how Germany's small and medium-sized manufacturing sector produced "hidden champions" that excel as world leaders in niche markets, a path that turned Germany after World War Two into Europe's powerhouse of export-led manufacturing. The company's colossal truck-mounted cranes helped build the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, and were sent to pump millions of litres of seawater to cool Japan's tsunami-wrecked nuclear reactor in Fukushima in 2011. But it was hit hard by the financial crisis, when sales plummeted from 1 billion euros to 440 million, allowing Sany to snatch the crown of world leader in 2009. One aim of the merger was for Putzmeister to help Sany gain a technological edge over rivals by improving quality at its own production sites. To this end, joint projects were set up and engineers exchanged to facilitate the transfer of know-how. Following the takeover, the companies also expressed a desire for some co-operation in the procurement of parts, and raised the possibility that Sany could supply some of Putzmeister's components. But while Putzmeister has helped Sany purchase some parts, such as hydraulic components from German supplier Bosch Rexroth, it has kept its purchasing strategy and supply chain unchanged to maintain its reputation as a premium brand. PR CAMPAIGN Concerns about a deterioration in quality due to Putzmeister's new owners were allayed by intensive PR work with customers, according to Cora Jungbluth, from the Bertelsmann Stiftung charitable foundation, who carried out a case study on Chinese takeovers of German firms. Over in China, the firms initially operated a two-brand strategy. However, Putzmeister has since removed its pumps from the Chinese market, saying Sany's products enjoyed a "good reputation" there. Putzmeister said it continues to take advantage of Sany's distribution network to sell its concrete-spraying machines, which Sany doesn't have in its portfolio. By agreeing last year to guarantee jobs until 2020, Sany also managed to win over Putzmeister's workers. The German firm's global workforce has remained stable at 3,300 and there have been no noticeable changes for those working in its German factories. Thomas Heck, Head of PwC's China Business Group, said that so far German firms' experience with Chinese investors has shown that the overwhelming majority are less focussed on quick financial profits and more on long-term strategic goals. "They really want to go global and gain a foothold in developed markets and are aware that this might take even a decade," Bertelsmann's Jungbluth added. Despite Sany's willingness to keep Putzmeister on a long leash, there have still been challenges to overcome, notably in marrying corporate cultures. Few of Sany's Hunan-based employees speak English. Norbert Scheuch, Putzmeister's chief executive from 2009 who negotiated the merger, left the company a year after the deal. He told he had frequently become frustrated with his new bosses' hierarchy-driven management style, which he said slowed down decision-making and thwarted his efforts to make acquisitions. Joint projects were complicated by a Chinese culture that privileged rank over expertise, he told Reuters, contrasting it with an expectation from German managers that their knowledgeable subordinates will speak up. Unable to make small talk in Chinese, Scheuch said he often felt shut out of decisions. He described himself as the "party pooper" forced to temper Sany's initial over-optimistic expectations for growth in Europe's saturated markets. Putzmeister says current CEO Karch has built up a good basis of trust with Sany's billionaire founder Liang Wengen, a son of Hunanese peasants who rose to become at one point China's richest man. But the company acknowledges that more time is needed for the integration to succeed on all levels and in all countries. There are signs that future Chinese investors are becoming more savvy about foreign takeovers and the need to understand the local culture, says M&A adviser Raffel. "The Chinese are very willing to learn nowadays. I know investors that have bought German companies and are now holding workshops in China on how the German Mittelstand works." today hosted the India chapter of its Build Tour in Pune for over 600 developers as a follow-up to Build 2016. Build is the companys annual conference focused on software and web developers using Windows, Windows Phone, Azure and other technologies. Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and European Union Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmstrm today met in Paris and discussed various issues including possibility of resuming the long stalled FTA negotiations. Both the ministers met on the sidelines of an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Ministerial Council Meeting in Paris. According to a source, both the sides have deliberated upon ways to promote trade and investments besides the proposed Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA) and WTO related issues. Started in June 2007, the negotiations for the proposed BTIA have seen many hurdles with both sides having major differences on crucial issues like intellectual property rights, duty cut in automobile and spirits, and liberal visa regime. Before this meeting, senior officials from both the sides had met twice so far this year to resolve the contentious issues. Sitharaman had recently said: "We want to work with the EU. We want to sign that agreement. We shall move forward and talk." Malmstrm in her tweet said that she has met Sitharaman and "discussed EU-India trade and investment negotiations + WTO agenda". Further the Indian minister also held bilateral meetings with her counterparts including the Trade Minister of Canada and New Zealand. "Discussed strengthening bilateral ties and issues touching CECA (comprehensive economic cooperation agreement), RCEP (regional comprehensive economic partnership) and TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) with Mcclay-Trade Minister, New Zealand," Sitharaman said in her tweet. Sitharaman also attended an informal WTO meeting on key trade ministers there. Skill training in the country will be scaled up to cover 1.5 crore people during 2016-2017, the capacity of IITs will be enhanced by over six lakh and more than 5000 new ITIs will be created, according to decisions taken at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday. At the First Meeting of Governing Council of National Skill Development Mission, attended by three Chief Ministers and a number of union ministers, Modi stressed the need for proper skill mapping and identification of the future requirements for skills so that school-children and parents are well aware of the emerging trends in the job market. He said a similar exercise should also be done to map the skilled manpower requirements at the global level so that India can meet the global requirement of skilled workforce, a PMO statement said. The major decisions taken at the meeting included scaling up of skill training to cover at least 1.5 crore people during 2016-2017, the statement said. It also decided to set up the Central Board for Skills Certification by September 2016 to infuse quality into India's skill development ecosystem and leveraging unutilized infrastructure in existing engineering colleges for skill training courses. The meeting decided to enhance the capacity of IITs over the next one year to 25 lakhs from 18.5 lakhs and over 5000 new ITIs will be created for this, the statement said. Unutilized infrastructure in existing engineering colleges will be leveraged for skill training courses, decided the meeting which was attended by Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis and Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Kalikho Pul. "Profit making Public Sector Units (PSUs) will be mandated to scale up apprenticeships, upto 10 per cent of total manpower over the course of this year. Private corporations are also expected to follow suit," it said. 500 Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendras will be opened this year and provide skill training free of cost to India s aspiring youth. "Real, meaningful progress remains elusive, and recent signals indicate backsliding in key areas. For instance, India just released its long-awaited National Intellectual Property Rights Policy, which falls far short of industry expectations." Strong words. But it's a sampling of the kind of reservations some of the leading industry bodies, business groups and trade bodies in the US have about India. The text above is part of a letter that some 17 industry and business-related entities in the US have written to US President Barack Obama ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the United States, starting June 6th. They urged the US president "to use this visit to engage with the Prime Minister to advance both discussions and concrete action to produce a stronger and more-promising U.S.-India commercial relationship". Without mincing words, the letter says: "Prime Minister Modi finishes the second year of his leadership, however, we are concerned that the high hopes and positive rhetoric that accompanied the beginning of his tenure have yet to be translated into concrete measures to improve the business environment for U.S. workers and companies operating in and exporting to India." The letter has been written on behalf of leading bodies like Association of Equipment Manufacturers; American Foundry Society (AFS); Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO); Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA); National Association of Manufacturers (NAM); and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) among others. So, what are the big concerns and what is it that the US pharma industry in particular, would like India to do? One issue is unhappiness with India's new IPR policy, which they want Obama to take up with Modi so that India makes changes in the policy. Very broadly, to the US industry "concrete measures", as conversations on the subject of Indian IPR have revealed over the years, translates to measures like scrapping of the section 3(D) of the Indian Patent Act and clarifying that compulsory licensing will not be used for affordability argument, which, going by the Indian stand so far, are non-negotiable. In fact, the new IPR policy, which was out after nearly one year of deliberations, does not make changes on this. For many in the US industry, over the years, the key pain points have been the section 3(d) and Section 84 of the Indian Patents Act, and absence of a period of exclusive marketing rights when a new drug gets regulatory approval. Under Section 3(d), new forms of existing medicines cannot be patented unless they improve therapeutic efficacy. It was under this provision that India rejected a patent for Glivec. Section 84 allows issuing a compulsory licence to meet the reasonable requirements of the public at a reasonably affordable price. A compulsory licence can also be granted under Section 92 of the Act in case of a national emergency. Natco Pharma got a compulsory licence, the first ever in India, for generic Nexavar under Section 84. Many multinational companies feel Section 84 narrows the criteria for patentability and undermines incentives for innovation. India has maintained that Section 84 aims to ensure that a larger section of its 1.2 billion population gets affordable health care. In this letter to Obama, dated May 23rd, however the industry has listed out a range of concerns over India's policies, and says: "Among other things, it continues to allow sectoral regulations to trump the Copyright Act. Persistent issues, such as forced localisation policies in the information technology, energy, and other sectors; excessively high tariffs in a range of sectors; tariff increases that appear to violate the Information Technology Agreement; longstanding challenges on intellectual property; lack of predictability in enforcing the rule of law; barriers to investment, including proposed bans on further foreign direct investment in certain sectors and other related barriers to FDI, such as ex ante vertical integration restrictions in the broadcasting sector; and bureaucratic action that interferes with private sector contractual arrangements continue to hinder company operations and ensure that India remains a challenging place for U.S. companies to do business. Prime Minister Modi's visit presents an opportunity to discuss and resolve many of these important commercial matters that are limiting India's own trade engagement and growth." On IPR and pharma, where some of the key industry concerns are expressed, what are the options for Prime Minister Modi and what is it that the Indian industry is expecting. While this will need to be seen and much depends on whom the Prime Minister is meeting in the US, broadly the expectation is that the prime minister may reassure the US industry that compulsory licenses will not be given to all and sundry and given only in deserving cases (in a sense, the current policy would continue) . That apart, he may promise to speed up patent grant referring to the provisions in the new IPR policy on fast track for patent grant in certain cases as part of efforts to promote 'Make in India' . Asked to react on what was expected from the prime minister's visit in the light of the pressures in the US to make India yield some ground in its IPR policy, D G Shah, Secretary-General of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance says: "We need to see how the prime minister and the Indian government will respond to this, though I do not think there will be any change. The pharma industry, I do not think, is expecting any surprises." State-run firm BSNL on Thursday announced partnership with Hitachi Payment Services for facilitating round-the-clock phone bill payment through ATMs. "Some customers often miss to pay bill because of fix timing of BSNL counters. With these ATMs in place, customers will be able to pay their bill during any time of the day," BSNL CMD Anupam Shrivastava said while inaugurating the ATMs facility in Pune. Under the partnership, Hitachi's ATMs will be installed in all major customer service centers of BSNL. BSNL will provide free space in its premises to Hitachi to install and maintain ATMs. BSNL customers will be able to pay their bills through these ATMs. Telecom companies on Thursday questioned Trai's test results showing that the call drop situation has taken a turn for the worse on the ground that the issue is limited to an area where there are problems in installing towers. "While the area of Delhi NCR is 46,208 square kilometers, these results are limited to a route covering 600 km only," Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said in a statement. "Hence the quality of service (QoS) results from the Drive Test are not strictly comparable with the standard QoS for Dropped Calls regularly published by TRAI for the entire service area," the statement said. COAI represents GSM telecom majors, such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular and Aircel. The drive test and its results do not cover all the cell sites but only a limited amount of the telecom circle, it said. Trai had published its report on drive tests of mobile service quality on Thursday which stated that all 3G networks; 2G networks of Airtel and MTNL and CDMA network of RCom have shown degradation in performance compared to the previous drive test. However, COAI claimed that "when we look at the QoS for the entire local service area (LSA) of Delhi we notice that all the operators are in compliance with the benchmark set by TRAI of 2 per cent." It is also interesting to note that the big headlines regarding masking of call drops using the RLT (Radio Link Timeout) parameter proved misleading as TRAI's own published results in the Drive Tests show only one operator out of parameter, COAI said. The Trai report shows majority of the call drops happening in the four areas of Central Delhi, Dwarka & IGI Airport, Gurgaon & Manesar and Noida & Mayur Vihar. COAI has said that the Delhi IGI Airport has large areas of defence property and only recently Minister of Communication and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad opened up defence land for setting up of telecom infrastructure. Another area where call drops were seen as out of parameter is Central Delhi. Here again, this is a known problem area and the industry is involved in ongoing deliberations with NDMC for Central Delhi and with MCD for other parts of Delhi, for installation of towers, COAI said. The industry body also contested the measurement practices used by Trai's vendor Phistream Consulting. It said that parameters used by TRAI for conducting the drive test vary from those adopted by the operators. Members pointed out these anomalies to TRAI and these still remain unresolved, COAI said. It said that without explaining the difference between a selective drive result of called drops over known problem areas and compared to service quality benchmark set for call drops at circle level, misleads the public. It added that the telecom industry has invested over Rs 8.5 lakh crores till date. Moreover, the industry has put up over 2 lakh cell sites nationally in the past 15 months. It was announced today that Nexvet Biopharmas new development and manufacturing facility in Tullamore has been officially opened by Minister for Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation, Mary Mitchell OConnor. The facility has begun clinical and commercial-scale production of Nexvets advanced development candidates, a significant milestone towards preparations for commercialization. The veterinary biologics company secured the facility in September 2015. It was announced at that time that up to 30 new highly-specialised technical roles would be created there. The project is supported by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation through IDA Ireland. Nexvet is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on transforming the therapeutic market for companion animals, such as dogs and cats, by developing and commercializing novel, species-specific biologics. Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Mary Mitchell OConnor today commented, "The Biopharma sector is an important sector for Ireland and the work of Nexvet represents a very exciting development." She added, "This company is at the cutting edge of innovative biological products for veterinary use. High technology companies like Nexvet will help create and manufacture some of the next generation of biopharmaceutical products, thereby further enhancing Ireland's position in this sector." Source: www.businessworld.ie The Global interconnection and data centre company released the survey results at the official Equinix Lands in Ireland event at The Marker Hotel in Dublin yesterday. The survey was commissioned in May 2016 by Equinix Ireland and carried out by TechBeat among 137 senior IT decision makers in Irish-based businesses which were typically larger enterprises. The findings show that Irish-based business leaders are confused about data transfer regulations surrounding data privacy following Safe Harbours invalidation by the European Court of Justice in October 2015. When asked if they have a clear understanding of the current state of EU-US data regulations and what they mean for their business, some 60% of respondents answered no. For Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) companies, that figure increased to 80%. Data protection is now among the leading reasons why businesses choose to host in Ireland. Some 40% of respondents said data protection features in their top three drivers to host here. That is followed by proximity to their business (37%). Furthermore, strict legal rules around data localisation in certain countries (such as Russia and China) are not found in Irish data protection laws, which further consolidate the Irish hosting preference. In a similar survey last year, data protection did not feature in the top reasons to host in Ireland. Forty one per cent of respondents are planning on changing how they host their data in the next two years, with 28% of those saying they plan to move to a cloud solution. The average spend by respondents on hosting data in the past 12 months was 160,000 the same figure as last year and 74% of overall respondents said recent announcements regarding the location of data centres in Ireland from some of the worlds leading internet companies has made them more likely to consider an Irish data centre to host their digital assets. Managing Director of Ireland and Emerging Markets at Equinix, Maurice Mortell said, "Ireland is continuing to showcase itself as a prime location to host data and our data protection laws are adding to that story." He added, "Our survey shows that as the role of data becomes ever more valuable to businesses, IT decision-makers want assurance that their digital assets are in safe hands. In Ireland, we can guarantee that." Source: www.businessworld.ie About us Europe's telecoms operators will have to justify giving priority to certain services on their network, according to new EU regulatory guidelines in a move likely to disappoint an industry hoping for more leeway so they can boost revenues. The European Union last year adopted its first ever net neutrality rules which require telecoms operators such as Orange , Deutsche Telekom and Telecom Italia to treat all Internet traffic equally. BEREC, the body comprising the EU's 28 telecoms regulators, has produced a set of draft guidelines on implementing the net neutrality rules, which will be presented on Monday and adopted in August after feedback from interested parties. The telecoms industry is seeking to increase revenues from specialised services such as connectivity for driverless cars and Internet-connected devices to offset declining turnover from its traditional telephony business. But net neutrality advocates worry about creating a two-speed Internet, benefiting only companies with deep pockets that can pay for faster transmission of their services. The guidelines seen by Reuters say operators will only be able to offer such services over dedicated network capacity if it is "objectively required" and only if it does not negatively affect the Internet. National regulatory authorities (NRAs) will have to verify whether an application needs to be delivered separately from the rest of the Internet to guarantee a committed level of quality, or "whether they are instead set up in order to circumvent the provisions regarding traffic management", the guidelines say. Telecoms operators had lobbied strongly against strict rules forbidding them from prioritising some types of data over others, arguing that they need to be able to dedicate network capacity to services requiring a guaranteed level of quality, such as facilitating the exchange of medical data between patients and health professionals. Services such as high-quality voice calling on mobile networks, live television delivered over the Internet and remote surgery will likely be allowed as specialised services, the document says. "Given that we do not know what specialised services may emerge in the future, NRAs should assess whether a service qualifies as a specialised service on a case-by-case basis," it adds. One industry source said that while it was a positive sign that BEREC had not created a list of what can be considered specialised services, the fact that each new application will have to be assessed individually is a source of uncertainty for operators. "With restrictive guidelines, you can forget 5G and connected cars," said another industry source. The regulators say that zero-rating - namely where one application, say, Facebook, does not count towards someone's data usage - will be allowed until they hit their data cap. In other words, the operator will not be able to continue treating Facebook as completely free if the customer has used up the data in his subscription. (Reuters) Source: www.businessworld.ie About us Washington County 4-H member Shakell Peacock demonstrates how to sew a pair of light up shoes to a workshop attendee. Utah State University Extension 4-H youth recently travelled to San Mateo, Calif., to participate in the Bay Area Maker Faire, a festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness. Youth from Cache, Washington, Utah and Salt Lake counties joined makers from all over the world to learn about electronics, physics, engineering, crafting and more through interactive displays and innovative demonstrations. The Washington County 4-H members led a workshop that involved teaching other attendees how to sew and solder shoes that light up. The Blinky Shoe project was developed to help joggers who run early in the morning and late at night. This was an opportunity for them to really be creative, said Paul Hill, USU Extension 4-H agent from Washington County. They came up with the idea for the project themselves and put their skills to good use. I think seeing others learn from their project was really rewarding for them. The 4-H groups received funding from Cognizant, a global leader in business and technology services, as a part of their Making the Future initiative. This initiative was created to unleash the passion of young people in science, technology, engineering and math by creating fun, hands-on learning opportunities. The program was first introduced in Utah in 2012 as one of only 10 pilot programs in the country. The Making the Future program is part of a larger maker movement that is taking place in the country that emphasizes the making and doing aspects of life in an attempt to bring back the creative skills that often get lost with large-scale production and manufacturing. Innovation used to only happen in the labs of big companies, Hill said. Now, everyone has access to the tools of innovation. Its a global movement that shows youth the big picture and prepares them to attack problems on a local level. For more information about 4-H programs, visit utah4h.org. To get involved in the 4-H Maker Movement programs by joining a club or signing up for a camp, visit cachemakers.org or tinyurl.com/WashingtonCountyMakers. Support for universities and public schools, even public libraries, were firm planks in Republican platforms until recently. Yet over the last 15 years, we have seen a Republican legislature in Arizona (echoing Kansas and other states under Republican control) repudiate that tradition with remarkable ferocity, defying a popular proposition (in 2000) and a court order to implement it, keeping Arizona third from the bottom of the states in support for the schools and at the very top among the states in cutting state support of universities by 40 percent. The recent passage of Proposition 123, designed by the Republican leadership, repeals the proposition of 2000 and allows the legislature to avoid the court order to implement its requirement to support public education with taxpayer funds. It is now facing a court challenge. At first glance, it is surprising that education seems to have become an unwelcome expenditure to this legislature, rather than an investment--a conceptual shift with large implications. It seems a throwback to the times when an expendable and cheap labor market served agriculture, mining, and tourism, as well as other Arizona enterprises largely owned by out-of-state interests. Yet it is clear that for Arizona to thrive in this century a large supply of workers, from auto mechanics to computer scientists, require advanced public education of all sorts. But the legislature acts as if the kind of education that Connecticut, for instance, offers its citizens is some kind of existential threat to the dominant party, worth sacrificing a prosperous future to avoid. Sociologist professor Neil Gross, writing in The New York Times Sunday, May 15, provides what may be the underlying reason for this apparent contradiction: Last month, the Pew Research Center released a study showing that nearly a third of those who went to graduate or professional school have down the line liberal views on social, economic and environmental matters, whereas this is true for just one in 10 Americans generally. This, Gross points out, reflects a drastic change from 1994, when only 7 percent of postgrads held consistently liberal political opinions. Further, this new class, neither owner nor worker, is defined by the way it speaks and argues, forming a culture of critical discourse, based on science and other evidence-based studies -- rather than on obedience to authority, narrow views of sacred texts, and resistance to scientific knowledge. The new class welcomes international exchange of opinion and research while the presumptive Republican presidential candidate (supported by leading Arizona Republicans) voices opposition to outsiders, defies consistency and responsibility, and is proud of his ignorance of history and foreign affairs. His opponents remember Thomas Jefferson saying, If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The party that used to stand for Jeffersonian democracy, based on an informed consent of the governed, seems now to envision its future based on what pundits call low information voters. If this analysis is correct, the Republicans dominating the legislature are also correct in perceiving strong public education as a threat to their continued power. A close reading of Proposition 123 reveals a continued shift of funding from public to private education; indeed it is not clear if any funding at all will be available for public schools 10 years from now. The shift of funding from public to private and charter schools in Proposition 123 represents a move to deprive the poor and minorities of the education that has allowed them to move into middle-class lives and, not incidentally, to become more independent thinkers and voters. Graduates of expensive schools, on the other hand and I have taught at Harvard and Wellesley, so I have experienced such privileged students -- are much more likely to be content with a political system that has treated them well. A relatively thin educated class will provide the managerial skills needed by business and an autocratic government, while a submissive and powerless supply of low-paid workers will do as they are told. Fifty years ago, the critic Lionel Trilling predicted a public education system providing only the minimum reading and writing skills for a population to be effectively controlled. If we envision this as the long-range goal of the Republican majority, their recent actions make perfect sense. Whether they can continue to depress public education by defunding it is a question that the voters of Arizona will ultimately decide. When is hurricane season? Here's what you need to know in South Texas COURTNEY SACCO/CALLER-TIMES Premont 2016 valedictorian Graciela Tafolla addresses elementary school students Tuesday during the district's first senior walk. SHARE COURTNEY SACCO/CALLER-TIMES Premont valedictorian Graciela Tafolla walks down the hallway of the elementary school during the district's first senior walk Tuesday. COURTNEY SACCO/CALLER-TIMES Premont 2016 valedictorian Graciela Tafolla and salutatorian Rebeca Nevarez wait to addresses the elementary school students during the districts first senior walk, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. COURTNEY SACCO/CALLER-TIMES Premont 2016 salutatorian Rebeca Nevarez puts on her gown at the Oasis Restaurant before heading to the senior walk at the elementary school on Tuesday. COURTNEY SACCO/CALLER-TIMES Premont 2016 salutatorian Rebeca Nevarez puts on her medals during at the Oasis Restaurant before heading to the senior walk at the elementary school, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. By Beatriz Alvarado of the Caller-Times PREMONT Graciela Tafolla isn't shy. As valedictorian, she was the first of 28 graduating seniors tasked with galvanizing Premont's youth to follow in her footsteps during a school event Tuesday. Premont's students have been told by the state their schools don't warrant another day open, so some would be nervous about the undertaking. Not Tafolla. She confidently gripped the microphone and stepped out from behind the podium. Her Converse Chuck Taylor whites squeaked as she sprightly pleaded her case to the packed gym. "I've been at Premont since Head Start so I'm a cowgirl at heart," the 18-year-old said. "The advice I can give to you is keep moving forward. Anything is possible as long as you set your mind to it. So, study hard, work hard and believe me, it's possible." Tafolla said watching the school's 2013 valedictorian, Mariela Navarro, share a similar message of hope that year inspired Tafolla to strive to be the school's top student. Navarro was the high school's top ranking senior the year the district received a reprieve from closure a first time. The about 500-student district 30 miles south of Alice weathered its second closure threat by the Texas Education Agency last fall. Tafolla's class would have been the last to graduate. The threat of closure pushed her to excel. "We will get through our problems through hard work," she said. "We can keep the schools open." Tafolla's family moved to the U.S. from Guanajuato, Mexico, about 16 years ago. Of nine brothers and sisters, two of her siblings are Premont graduates 2008 and 2013 and also ranked in the Top 10 of their class. She is the youngest in the family. Her father is a farmer and her mother is a housewife. Tafolla plans to attend Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi to pursue a degree a medical degree. She wants to become a pediatrician. The high school's salutatorian Rebeca Nevarez echoed a similar sentiment about TEA's notice. "Challenge is opportunity," Nevarez, 17, said is the premise of her graduation speech. "It's what my dad always tells me." Nevarez's family moved to Premont from Ben Bolt the beginning of her freshman year and after watching over four young siblings the past several years, she decided to pursue a career as a neonatal nurse, she said. Nevarez plans to attend Coastal Bend College in Kingsville to stay close to home and continue helping maintain the single-parent home. "The best advice I can give you is to never stop dreaming," she said to the younger students Tuesday. "Everything is possible." Twenty-three of this year's graduating seniors signed letters of intent to pursue a higher education, Premont High School principal Michael Gonzalez said. The senior class size is twice as big as last year's despite losing close to 20 students after the closure notice was issued to Premont ISD in the Fall. Gonzalez, who also teaches government and economics at the school, said the senior class toughed it out four years and epitomize the district's long time fight to stay open. "These guys walked in as freshman (when the district was) in a tough situation," he said during Tuesday's event. "It's very eye opening to not know what your future holds. They couldn't have handled it better." Twitter: @CallerBetty FARES SABAWI/CALLER-TIMES Russian journalist Dmitry "Mitya" Evstifeev, who visited Corpus Christi for several days, tries his first Whataburger. The Caller-Times hosted him as part of the International Center for Journalists' program called "Journey of Shared Discovery for Russian and American Journalists." SHARE NATALIA CONTRERAS/CALLER-TIMES Russian journalist Dmitry "Mitya" Evstifeev, who visited Corpus Christi for several days, couldn't leave without a trip to the Mirador de la Flor, the memorial for Selena Quintanilla Perez at the Peoples Street entrance to the city marina. By Dmitry Evstifeev, Special to the Caller-Times A female customs officer looks at my passport and then at me sympathetically and then over again at my passport. "Sir, do you realize that this may be a problem?" she asks. I look at the ticket and understand that my surname is misspelled. It's a usual thing. It is difficult even for Russians. But despite that obstacle I happily sit on a plane bound for Corpus Christi. However, that beginning turned out to be symbolic. All my subsequent impressions of the United States remind me of translation difficulties when it seems that the differences are small, but in the end they dramatically change the whole experience. Perhaps I was lucky. Out of the 14 Russian journalists participating in the International Center for Journalists' program, I was the only one who came to Texas. I haven't been to other states except for a stop in Washington, D.C. but I nevertheless feel that Texas is unique. It's like the Lone Star on its state flag, standing alone and independent. The first breath after stepping off the plane was a challenge. I believe I looked like a fish out of water gulping air with bulging eyes. Russia is huge. It varies from the frozen plains of Siberia to the sun-scorched land of Krasnodar region, but I have not been to such a humid place. The first Texan (at least I identified this person as a Texan) looked exactly the same as Russians imagine them. A stocky man in a cowboy hat and heavy leather boots whose skin was tanned and weathered. He screwed up his eyes and spoke with a distinctive accent, like a cowboy from a ranch in movies. After this meeting I expected to find myself in the Wild West where every stranger with a straw in his mouth approaches you and says "howdy partner," but the reality turned out to be more interesting. Most noticeable is the way people communicate. I'm not the first to notice it but many Russians are always surprised that strangers can be friendly. Russians themselves are friendly too, really but Russian culture teaches you not to smile at strangers. It's also a bad idea to stare at anybody because it goes against the basic social protocol between people in Russia. However, if you make friends with a Russian then they quickly and easily can become your best friend and give you their last shirt. But first you need to get closer. I expected that here in Texas the Western friendliness formula wouldn't work because local people would be too conservative and tough. However, Texas turned out to be even more open and less snobbish than metropolitan Washington, D.C. "Mitya? Nice to meet ya!" people tell me and laugh. They are innumerable. Everyone wants to come and meet me. I'm not used to this and even my sincere smile starts to hurt the corners of my mouth. I worry that the smile can seem unnatural and someone insulted by it will pull out his Colt and shoot me down bang, bang. Weapons, by the way, are another stereotype associated with the United States. Russians are interested in Americans' right to bear arms because in Russia you can only have a hunting rifle. Many people are upset about it and think that our government does not trust them. As for Texas, many Russians believe there is a gun in every family (allegedly there is a law that forces to have at least one firearm in the house). It is also believed that people walk through the streets with a M-16 and drink coffee. But actually I have seen officials with guns only in the courts here and the police station which I visited with my colleagues on a tour. My feelings on the topic are mixed. Armed people usually cause anxiety in Russia. On the other hand some people feel secure as long as the weapon is in the hands of the person who owns it by right. I like the feeling that the world around me lives by the rules but at the same time it is alarming. In Russia we say the severity of laws is compensated by the fact that they are not necessary to perform. This means that in many situations you cannot act according to the rules and that's OK if you don't act too provocatively. This is called "legal nihilism" in Russia. There is no such a thing here in Texas or at least I do not see that as a foreigner. That's why trying to avoid the slightest offense all the time turns me into a neurotic person. For example, I am constantly worried when smoking in a public places because I am not sure that I can do it anywhere except for the backyard of the house I'm staying in. Actually, I'm not sure about the backyard either. "Sir, slowly put the cigarette on the ground and keep your arms above the head." That's how I imagine it. This "general order" confuses me any time I see it. Vegetables in stores must be weighed. Car rental rules are extremely detailed and do not allow exceptions. "No foreign debit cards, mister. We do not care how much money is on it." Once I found myself in Walmart where I went to buy a new iPhone because the old one refused to work. I heard that phones in the U.S. are sold with contracts (in Russia it is practically impossible to find such a practice) and so I asked several times whether the phone was unlocked. "No contract. It's unlocked," assured the guy at the store. As a result, I bought a phone which didn't work with a local SIM card because of the strange system. I honestly tried to understand why I couldn't start using the phone for other purposes. The money was returned to me after half an hour because the situation was precarious. It's rare when people return a phone 10 minutes after the purchase. The impressions of the American media also make me think sometimes about the great American order. When I was visiting editorial offices in Washington one of the chief editors said America is becoming increasingly divided into two camps: If earlier, for example, there were about 20 states that could not define their presidential pick, today there are only about 10. The rest, they say, have made their choice in advance. At the same time many media outlets quite clearly support one of the candidates. For example you can devote an entire issue to the explanation why one candidate is a really bad choice for America. Perhaps it is also a consequence of the tendency to order all the things around, no matter if they are good or bad. Americans often asked me what Russians think about them and about their country. It is easier to answer this question than the question about Putin. Well, really after 15 years of power, we have forgotten what we thought of it at the beginning and in the middle of his presidency. The thing is that Russians cannot hate America. For many years we have listened to American music, watched American movies, wore American clothes and used phones manufactured by Apple. It is impossible to cut off this cultural background because it surrounds us everywhere. Right now I feel like I am in an American movie! This is what I said many times during this trip because the background will not let you abandon it. Therefore, despite the real contradictions (politics and economics) and the imaginary ones (the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic do not miss the opportunity to show their opponent as the "evil empire"), I think we cannot be enemies. This is true especially with Texans because we are more similar than it appears. About Mitya The Caller-Times hosted Russian journalist Dmitry "Mitya" Evstifeev as part of the International Center for Journalists' program called "Journey of Shared Discovery for Russian and American Journalists." Evstifeev is from Moscow, where he works for the online news platform Gazeta.ru as a features editor. He left Corpus Christi on Friday bound for New York. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Dennis Gray Jr., president of the Coastal Bend Beekeepers Association, said a memorandum of understanding with Oso Bay Wetlands Preserve and Learning Center helps keep a native species of wasps in the Coastal Bend. SHARE By Fares Sabawi of the Caller-Times The Coastal Bend Beekeepers Association has reached an agreement with the city to keep Mexican honey wasps' nests nearby. According to a news release from the association, the beekeeping group signed a memorandum of understanding with the Oso Bay Wetlands Preserve and Learning Center that allows beekeepers to relocate Mexican honey wasp nuisance nests found around Corpus Christi and Nueces County into the preserve. The association outlined the agreement in a meeting Thursday evening with Michael Lopez, a San Antonio beekeeper who specializes in relocating the nests. Preserve Program Manager Manny Cantu said the partnership helps keep a native species in the Coastal Bend. "I was approached by the association and we discussed the idea," Cantu said. "(The wasps are) native pollinators, which is something we really want to emphasize here." Dennis Gray Jr., beekeeping association president, said the agreement is important because beekeepers needed a spot to put the nests. They often had to drop them off somewhere remote beyond city limits. "The wasps are pressured by development in urban areas," Gray said. "(Relocation) has always been a problem." Cantu said the nests will be in the most remote areas of the preserve so visitors won't be disturbed by them. The Oso Bay Wetlands Preserve and Learning Center is a 162-acre tract dedicated to preserving wildlife in Corpus Christi. Not only do the wasps pollinate, which helps other wildlife in the preserve thrive, they are also good at preventing pests. "They're huge hunters of a pest that affects the citrus (trees)," Cantu said. Twitter: @Caller_Fares Beekeeping memorandum of understanding SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Del Mar College President Mark Escamilla shakes hands with Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss last year, the day Escamilla flew with Kuss in his jet. Kuss, a member of the Blue Angels, died in a crash in Tennessee on Thursday. Contributed photo/Del Mar College Del Mar College President Mark Escamilla rides in a Blue Angel jet with Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss last year. Kuss, a member of the Blue Angels, died in a crash in Tennessee on Thursday. Related Coverage Florida military town mourns Blue Angel's death By Krista M. Torralva of the Caller-Times Pilot Jeff Kuss gave Mark Escamilla one of his most memorable experiences. Kuss coached the Del Mar College president through flips and turns above the clouds in his Blue Angels jet last year. The Marine captain asked Escamilla if he had any requests. Escamilla wished to dip below the clouds to see the city. Kuss asked Escamilla if he taught at the college. Escamilla replied that he's the president and works for the teachers. "I hear ya. Kinda like how I work for my wife and for the troops and the squadron," said Kuss in a video recording of the flight. "That's good stuff. That's a good mentality to have." This week, the elite pilot was practicing for a weekend show in Tennessee when his jet plummeted in a field and he died in a fiery crash. Footage of the Blue Angels flying near a residential area taken by a Smyrna resident shows the plane crashing into a field and exploding on impact. It doesn't appear he ejected, The Tennessean newspaper reported. Though an investigation into what went wrong is still ongoing, at least one local military official has a theory. "You can only surmise from that he must have made the choice to turn away from the civilian population and sacrifice himself to make sure that was safe from everybody else," said Capt. Steve Banta, commanding officer of Naval Air Station Corpus Christi. Banta made the comments aboard the Lexington Museum on the Bay, which held a ceremony Friday to mark the Battle of Midway's anniversary. Rear Adm. Dell Bull, chief of Naval Air Training, had been set to deliver the keynote speech at the event but is spending time with Kuss' family, Banta added. Kuss, 32, did his basic flight training at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi and advanced training at Naval Air Station Kingsville, where he graduated in 2009. He served in Afghanistan before being selected to fly with the world-class Blue Angels in 2014. In Kingsville, the Naval Air Station and Blue Angels are a celebrated fixture of the close-knit community. Kingsville Independent School District students admire the student pilots, many of whom volunteer as mentors with the kids, said Emilio Flores, the district's community relations and initiatives coordinator. Kuss, who was from Durango, Colorado, had dreamed of joining the elite group of pilots since he was a child. "His favorite toys were jets, and he wanted to be a Blue Angel since forever," his mother, Janet Kuss, told The Durango Herald in 2014. Last year, Kuss was the narrator for the Blue Angels show in Corpus Christi. It was his first season with the team. This year the married father of two began flying in shows. "This nation has lost an incredible husband, father, son, Marine and teammate truly one of the absolute finest Americans this country can produce," Navy Cmdr. Ryan Bernacchi said Friday at a news conference in Smyrna. Kuss' love for flying wasn't lost on those who met him. He was impassioned when he spoke about flying with Flour Bluff football coach Chris Steinbruck while they waited for mechanics to fix the jet's sensor last year before Steinbruck's turn to fly was canceled. Steinbruck was moved when he read a quote from Kuss' grandfather in The Tennessean newspaper. "It's hard to put into words right now, but it's beautiful that a person can live and die engaged in their life's pursuits," Dolph Kuss told the newspaper from his home in Durango. Rachel Denny Clow contributed to this report. Twitter: @CallerKMT Contributed photo Devon Cacy (left), Leslie Cacy and their dogs Moe Moe and Wrinkles. Cacy was killed Saturday after she fell off a train she was running and was struck in Colorado. SHARE Contributed photo Devon Cacy (left) and Leslie Cacy. By Natalia Contreras of the Caller-Times Leslie Cacy, 28, met the love of her life aboard the Royal Gorge Route Railroad in Colorado. The Corpus Christi native was on a family trip in 2008 when she met Devon Cacy. After that trip, she made the decision to move to Canon City, Colorado, the following year. In July 2015 she became an office manager at the Royal Gorge Route Railroad and later became a train conductor. She married Devon Cacy in October 2015. Cacy, known to her Ray High School alumni as Leslie Padilla, died Saturday after she fell off the Royal Gorge train she was running in Fremont County. "It was the perfect position for her to exude her extroverted personality, interact with people, and to spread pure joy and excitement amongst each and every co-worker and train passenger she encountered," Cacy's family stated in an email to the Caller-Times. About 5 p.m. Saturday, Fremont County deputies and medics in Colorado responded to the Royal Gorge Route Railroad, about 4 miles from the train station, when a witness called authorities after Cacy fell off the train and was struck. The Royal Gorge Route train is an attraction in Canon City and it takes passengers under the Royal Gorge Bridge. According to a Fremont County Sheriff's Office news release, the train was on its way back to the station. Cacy was at the rear of the train, as it was backing up to the station, and was standing in the door opening when she fell. There were about 200 passengers on the train at the time, the release states. No foul play was suspected, officials said. "She had the world's biggest heart. Always willing to lend a helping hand," Cacy's sister, Laurie Padilla said. "The most memorable memory of her is her unconditional love for every living soul she encountered." Padilla said Cacy valued spending time with family and friends. "She would choose spending time with family over any other option," Padilla said. "She cherished every moment she got to spend with you." Services will be at 10 a.m. June 6 at the Canon Community Baptist Church in Canon City, Colorado. In lieu of flowers contact Harwood Funeral Home, 516 North 10th Street, Canon City, CO 81212. A GoFundMe account has been created for Cacy's family at www.gofundme.com/lesliecacy SHARE Miriam Nisenbaum, National Association of Social Workers-Texas chapter executive director Lowering CPS qualifications hurts kids Texas is in a dire situation with its child protective services system. It's grossly underfunded and often locked into crisis mode, with little long-term planning and a lack of focus on true outcomes for children in care. And what's the department's most recent step toward solving the problem? Lowering the requirements for front-line staff in investigations, conservatorship, and family-based services from a four-year degree to an associate degree (community college). CPS is going backward, not forward, and this would give Texas the dubious distinction as the only state that doesn't require a four-year degree for its caseworkers. Texas needs to upgrade its degree requirements by hiring more social workers, not bringing on staff who lack the education, competencies, and skills necessary to work and remain at an extremely stressful job. Florida, like Texas, has a high child mortality rate in CPS. So what did their Legislature do? Mandate that by 2017, 50 percent of all CPS workers have social work degrees to begin to stem the tide of child deaths. We believe that Texas CPS is lowering qualifications to counteract the large turnover of experienced workers due to high caseloads and low salary. In effect, the thinking appears to be that CPS can keep paying less if they lower the bar to the applicant pool. When workers are less qualified and skilled it is the children who really pay the price. We need to raise our voices and tell CPS and our legislators that this is grossly inappropriate. Hire more social workers and you will increase retention rates and outcomes for kids. Hire fewer, and you put kid's lives at stake. As citizens, we must make this an issue for Child Protective Services, and show them that we don't want them further jeopardizing the safety of kids just because they want to pay workers less and relax necessary qualifications that are in place to ensure that only those with the strongest backgrounds work to eradicate abuse and neglect. This is serious, and we need everyone's support. The National Association of Social Workers-Texas chapter is working with many statewide partners to fight back against harmful policies that put already vulnerable children at further risk. We encourage all Texans to join us in putting kids first! Al Monitor Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for the Islamist Palestinian movement Hamas, addresses a news conference in Sanaa, Jan. 10, 2009. (photo by REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah) GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip Ever since the overthrow of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi on July 3, 2013, the Hamas movement has found itself in Egypt's crosshairs. The Cairo regime embarked on a campaign to destroy the border tunnels. It accused Hamas of supporting terrorist organizations in the Sinai Peninsula and called Hamas' military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, a terrorist organization. Egypt also tightened its blockade on the Gaza Strip and closed the Rafah crossing. Meanwhile, Egypt's leading role in the Palestinian cause has faded. However, the Hamas delegation's March 12 visit to Cairo may have brought back some hope that a new page of bilateral relations between the two parties will be opened. In a May 17 statement by its spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, Hamas welcomed the recent Egyptian statements about reconciliation with the movement and confirmed its readiness to deal with these efforts calling for ending the Palestinian division and opening a new page with Egypt. Al-Monitor spoke to Abu Zuhri, a native of Rafah and lecturer in the Department of History and Archaeology at Gaza's Islamic University since 2000. He is currently an assistant professor in the department and holds a doctorate in Islamic history. The text of the interview follows: Al-Monitor: How does Hamas perceive the relationship with Egypt? Abu Zuhri: The Hamas movement is keen to develop its relations with Egypt, as this will serve the interests of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Hamas has always been considering the depth of this strategic relationship, since Egypt and its leading role in the protection of the Palestinian cause are very essential, and we are aware of Egypts power and impact on all core issues, especially the issue of Palestinian reconciliation. Al-Monitor: Is it possible for Hamas to restore relations with Egypt and redevelop them? Abu Zuhri: The extent to which our relationship with Egypt has deteriorated is clear to everyone given the movements rejection of the military coup, but we shall not look back. We should improve our relations with Egypt because this is a priority for us, and the issue is not subject to speculation. Without the Egyptian role, the Palestinian cause would face a complete standstill. Therefore, we want to develop our relationship with Egypt and deal with the new reality there. Al-Monitor: Following the fall of Morsi, Hamas faced an unprecedented Egyptian media attack in which it was accused of prejudicing the security of Egypt. What is your response? Abu Zuhri: From the very beginning, we rushed to condemn the media defamation of Hamas, and we said that accusations of the movement being behind the developments in Sinai were untrue. We called on the Egyptian leadership and the Arab parties to shoulder their responsibilities in this regard because Hamas never targeted Egypt's security and dignity. Al-Monitor: What does Egypt want of Hamas today? What was the aim of the recent visit to Cairo? Abu Zuhri: Egypt wants its privacy and security to be respected. It does not want anyone to intervene in its affairs. During the meetings that were recently held, the Egyptian intelligence services offered a comprehensive vision through which public relations can be restored, most notably Hamas noninvolvement in Egyptian affairs and abstinence from supporting terrorist organizations in Sinai. According to this vision, the border between the two sides should be protected and media outlets monitored. For its part, the movement presented its vision, which stipulated the opening of the Rafah crossing and the achievement of reconciliation with Fatah. The parties agreed on the implementation mechanisms. More meetings will be held in this regard. Al-Monitor: What would the Egyptian rapprochement with Hamas achieve? What are the Egyptian conditions? Abu Zuhri: We are aware that the continued poor relationship with Egypt leads nowhere. Therefore, we are seeking rapprochement with [Egypt] by offering goodwill gestures, especially considering that we have nothing to do with what is happening there, and this is what we want to convey to Egypt. We want to provide reassurances that we are interested in the protection of its national security. Therefore, we are aware that rapprochement with Egypt grants stability and security to the Palestinian people. Al-Monitor: Egypt believes that Hamas is ideologically and organizationally linked to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. How true is that? How does Hamas perceive this relationship? Abu Zuhri: Our current perception of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is still the same. It has not changed. After all, the Hamas movement has roots related to the Muslim Brotherhood, but we are an independent Palestinian movement that has no organizational links with Egypts Muslim Brotherhood. We make our decisions independently and we deal realistically with all the issues. There may be decisions with a certain political dimension that the movement might have to pay the price for, but the key to success is not to go back. The key is to rectify the situation and stay in line with the public interest because we are part of this people. Therefore, we are ready to deal with the Egyptian authorities, regardless who they are directed by, in accordance with the comprehensive vision between the two parties. Al-Monitor: How valid are [Hamas official] Salah Bardawils statements about the foiling of an operation that targeted President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi? Abu Zuhri: Salah Bardawils statements are entirely accurate, and they affirm that the movement detected a cell supported by [Fatah Central Committee member] Tawfiq Tirawi and the former intelligence chief. The cell was planning to harm Egypt's security, specifically President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and Hamas will brief Egyptian officials with the full details of this case. Al-Monitor: What do Egypt's recent statements about reconciliation mean? With whom and where will this reconciliation take place? Abu Zuhri: The great Egyptian role in the reconciliation efforts is no secret to anyone, but after July 3, 2013, this role faded, and the recent Egyptian statements have been made in consideration of Egypt's desire to restore its role in the Palestinian cause and achieve reconciliation with Fatah, since Egypt and its territories have always been the sponsor of the Palestinian cause. This is a new twist that we warmly welcome, and we are ready to deal with this role. Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/06/abu-zuhri-interview-al-monitor-hamas-egypt-ties.html#ixzz4AWOMvCOl | BY Ricki Green | AKQA has announced the appointment of Aussie expat Ant Warne as executive planning director at its London office. Warne will co-lead strategic and business direction for many of AKQAs clients, reporting into general manager Ron Peterson. Warne brings with him over 20 years of experience leading teams on both agency and client side. Originally from Australia, Warne started his career as a creative director working in broadcast television and film. He has since worked across brand strategy, communications planning, social strategy, and data analytics. Warnes focus has been to build brands from the ground up, with strong expertise in consumer-centric design having worked with a broad array of clients in the retail, travel, and media industries. His work has been recognised by international industry awards bodies including Cannes Lions, The One Show, New York Festivals and the Effies. Says Peterson: We look forward to applying Ants rich experience and sharp insight to create a consistent stream of ideas and innovations for the clients we serve. | BY Ricki Green | Jaguar has debuted the F-PACE, its first ever SUV, at The Art of Performance, an exciting and immersive projection mapping and LED installation at Martin Place, Sydney to celebrate Jaguars contribution to Vivid Sydney 2016. TDC Technical Direction Company is showcasing the spectacular use of creative technology bringing the ideas by creative communications agency, Spark44 Sydney and multimedia design and animation by Spinifex Group to life. TDCs technical experts mapped the Jaguar F-PACE SUV in video projection that playfully highlights, deconstructs, rotates, recontextualises and generally manipulates the Jaguar SUVs geometry. The audience is involved in initiating the showcase by pressing a large start button, then the thrilling multimedia experience is brought to life. The vehicle is showcased on an angled podium against a diamond-shaped LED video wall. Both technologies work together to create a beautiful 11 by 8-metre canvas with the illusion of depth and immersive animation. Says Cyril De Baecque, managing director at Spinifex Group: The display has full automation, monitoring and interactivity, Spinifex used Cinema4D and 3D Studio Max to create the amazing visual content. The project is unique in its combination of technology within a public place as Anthony Pellizzari, technical project manager at TDC elaborates: This is a first for an audience to experience this type of technology in a outdoor public space. They can interact to fully become part of the experience. Gauging the public reaction so far, the use of technology and creative behind it seems to really appeal to all ages. This project gave us the opportunity to demonstrate our technical skills in mapping geometric objects. The added dimension of surrounding the car with LED really adds depth of field, and complete automation really lets us stretch our technical skills. We arereally happy with the results. | BY Ricki Green | The 18th Annual International Food and Beverage Creative Excellence Awards (The FAB Awards) were held last night at the quintessentially British The Hurlingham Club in London. Guests were treated to cocktails and a delectable three-course dinner followed by the ceremony itself, in which the award-winning design, creative and effective work was showcased to the audience, and the teams behind them presented with their trophies. This year also marked the first time all the finalists or Silver Award winners were handed out a plate at The FAB Awards Ceremony. Leo Burnett Melbourne scored a Silver Award for SPC Ardmona #MyFamilyCan in Effectiveness and Perth agency Meerkats won Silver for Brownes A Natural Silence in TV & Cinema Advertising. The recipients of the highest prize (FABulous Award) on the night, were as follows: FABulous Award across Packaging Design, Retail Environment, Logo Design Brand Redesign & Brand Identity TAPPED TAPPED Birch Water by Horse, UK Oh! Saft Squeeze Bottles by Leo Burnett, Germany FABulous Award across Press, Poster/OOH, TV & Cinema, Ambient & Radio McDonalds We Hear You + Celebration by Leo Burnett Chicago Viral Marketing Extra Gum Sarah & Juan by Energy BBDO Chicago Online Advertising KFC Rich Kids of Instagram by MRM McCann Romania For a remarkable third consecutive year, AMV BBDO were named the Google FAB Agency of the Year, having received 12 nominations and winning five FAB Awards. The awards were spread over four different clients: Sainsburys (x2), Pepsi Max, Guinness and Snickers. Says Ian Pearman, group chairman and group CEO AMV BBDO: To win Agency of the Year at The FAB Awards three years running is a source of great pride for our people and clients. Food and drink is a crowded category and to have standout work recognized by FAB is fantastic. The Google FAB Brand/Marketer of the Year was Mars Incorporated for a second year running, with a remarkable 18 nominations across all categories. Snickers was Mars Incorporateds most successful brand, constituting 14 out of their 18 nominations, and winning an impressive 10 FABs and one FABulous Award on the night. Says Bruce McColl, global chief marketing officer at Mars, Incorporated: We are deeply honoured to receive this prestigious award for the second year in a row. It demonstrates what is possible when you connect the creative excellence of our agency partners with the outstanding marketing talent that resides within our business at Mars. The chemistry that exists between these teams is palpable. The work they have created together is being recognized for its ability to engage our consumers and drive our business. Personally, I cannot be more proud of what they deliver time and time again. Design Agency Horse bagged the inaugural FAB Design Agency of the Year prize after winning two FAB Awards and a FABulous Award on the night. Says Sarah Pidgeon, founder/creative partner of Horse: What an incredible evening for Horse. It means a great deal to receive such an accolade from our peers, and to be recognised for the work were doing as a new agency. Its an unbelievably proud moment for us. We continually strive to create designs that express products in an original and challenging way. The multiple wins tonight for Horse solidify the hard work from our team to continually push the boundaries in market categories, and the bravery and uncompromising vision from our clients. | BY Ricki Green | Independent creative agency The Hallway has been appointed by UNSW as the universitys lead creative agency. The Hallway is handling strategic, creative and programmatic media assignments, geared towards cementing UNSWs reputation as a globally respected institution. The latest work introduces the new brand positioning of Australias Global University which is being rolled out across all university communications and strategic plans. The Hallways recent campaign UNSW World Changers celebrated the inspiring and internationally important work coming out of UNSW, including a bionic eye implant, water purification research and innovations in emergency housing. The campaign asked prospective students how they could contribute to UNSWs culture of innovation, in the process becoming a #unswworldchanger. The print, outdoor, digital and social campaign was supported by a programmatic recruitment campaign that helped UNSW surpass The University of Sydney as the number one preference within UAC for prospective university students. Says Jules Hall, CEO, The Hallway: At The Hallway, were passionate about investing in, and fostering creativity, particularly trans-disciplinary creativity. UNSW shares this commitment to new and creative approaches to education and research, balancing real world innovation with the purely academic. This is a motivating and noble outlook and we are excited about helping bring UNSWs ambitious goals to fruition. Says Sue-Anne Chew, UNSW: We are delighted to be working with The Hallway. Their work strongly reinforces our vision and resonates with both future and current students and we are already seeing unprecedented results. The Hallway was last year awarded the prestigious AC&E ADMA Grand Prix and Pinnacle Award for Innovation for their work with Google. Egyptian sumo wrestler Osunaarashi speaks during a news conference in Cairo on Thursday. | KYODO SUMO Egypts Osunaarashi, the first sumo wrestler from Africa to turn pro in Japan, became a tourism ambassador for his native country on Thursday, in a campaign to encourage Japanese to visit a destination avoided by many travelers following political upheaval. I want to contribute in various ways for the sake of Egypt, the 24-year-old wrestler, whose real name is Abdelrahman Ahmed Shaalan, said at a press conference in Cairo. He recalled a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi during the latters visit to Japan earlier this year, saying the president had at that time invited him to expand his contributions beyond the world of sports. The so-called Arab Spring democracy movement, which started in Tunisia and swept into Egypt in 2011, led to violent clashes in Cairo and the eventual ouster of 30-year ruler Hosni Mubarak. Fear of public disorder and terrorist attacks have drastically reduced the flow of travelers from Japan and elsewhere into the country, dealing a major blow to its vital tourist trade. Osunaarashis current trip marks his first return to Egypt in about three years. Next time I come back to Egypt, I would like to make the trip together with a group of Japanese travelers, he said. 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 Beauty New advances are making astonishing headway into the fight against cancer, but some cancer treatments can wreak havoc on your skin. Thankfully, these side effects are usually temporary. Read More "But we can't export it all. There has to be a sufficient amount kept for the domestic market.... It [the festival] brings together all of the key players not just in the city but in the region too. It works really well for the broader Canberra region." "The light in Australia tends to be really quite strong, and in Denmark, it's kind of softer light, you get to see more of the colours in the sky and especially with glass, light's actually quite important in how it changes the surface and the colours within the glass. It's quite interactive with its surroundings." Birthday wishes Call 281-422-8302 or email sunnews@baytownsun.com to wish someone a happy birthday. We will print your birthday wish on Page 2 of The Sun. Happy Birthday Wishes [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. The leading CeramicSteel manufacturer conducted a pan India survey along with partners Whitemark and Teach for India to measure the increase in learning depending on the quality of writing boards used Mumbai: In a bid to reduce the education inequity in India, one of world's leading CeramicSteel manufacturers, PolyVision, launched an initiative in India to provide a vital premium teaching tool to classrooms which needed it the most. In partnership with Teach for India, and Whitemark Limited, the company's national distributor in India, PolyVision donated hundreds of high quality e3TM CeramicSteel whiteboards and chalkboards to underdeveloped classrooms across seven cities; Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Ahmedabad and will continue their donation efforts with Teach for India throughout the year. To measure the positive effects on teaching and learning capabilities PolyVision launched a post installation survey for the teachers. This survey has helped in determining the ease with which a teacher can now conduct classes. Additionally it highlighted some of the core stress points that teachers and students have had to deal with until now. 5 effective tips for using technology in classroom KEY HIGHLIGHTS OF THE SURVEY RESULTS 97% teachers believe that writing on the board increases learning and nearly all believe that the writing board is an essential teaching tool While 90% teachers find their students communicating better due to the new aide More than 85% of the teachers believe that their class is retaining information better after installation of the new boards However, nearly 80% teachers report teaching classrooms of 40 - 60 students using sub-par writing equipment such as low quality blackboards or cracked painted concrete walls. About 2% of them are managing to utilize their classroom time efficiently with the resources available These new writing surfaces not only help teachers communicate to the students better but also helps the children learn better together. Teachers on the block might want to know how to get to know your new class, this academic year for a better communicative and interactive atmosphere throughout the year. Astha teaching in Mumbai points out that "In a lesson, having the students make a connection with words or images, it is crucial to understand a topic and improve one's vocabulary. Visual learning is particularly important in primary classrooms." While writing information and ideas on a whiteboard or chalkboard frees users from having to remember important information, displaying information helps create shared group knowledge. "When the teacher is writing the kids have time to absorb the content slowly also the kids understand how to start and end a para. How to present answers in exams," says Aditya from Pune Whiteboards make it easy for users to collaborate by jotting down thoughts, drawing correlations and building on each other's ideas. Many teachers reported struggling with basic issues such as being able to write clearly on and erase the writing surfaces they were previously using. Not only did this cause them unnecessary stress but it also ate into their class time. As Dhwani from Pune noticed, "It is through visual aids like drawing and labelling that my young students increase their vocabulary easily. Hence, being able to erase and write very fast to be able to keep up with their energy levels." Learning Ways To Retain Information A research undertaken by the University of Washington demonstrated a special relationship between the hand and the brain when a person composes thoughts. Finger movements activate regions of the brain involved in thinking, language and working memory. While teachers faced difficulties using their old writing boards themselves, they could rarely conduct learning sessions where the children could also use the tool to learn in a group. However, post the installation of their new e3 CeramicSteel board Divya reports her students in Mumbai "were very happy to see the new white and bright board in the classroom. I even ask them to solve the problems on the board and they come running to solve the sums. We are also very comfortable in showing videos. It is much clearer." Also read: The fact that India reports, a school drop-out rate of 40% at the elementary level while 4% never make it to school, is alarming. Reports also claim that the low quality of education is the prime deterrent, resulting in only 10% of Indian children being able to go on to college. The numbers unearthed by the survey indicate how important this initiative is as a step towards the goal to ensure that the future generation of India has a chance of writing a better future for themselves. About PolyVision PolyVision, a Steelcase company, is a leading manufacturer of CeramicSteel surfaces. For more than 60 years, the company has consistently produced durable and sustainable CeramicSteel surfaces for use in applications such chalkboards and whiteboards for education and commercial markets as well as architectural cladding and infrastructure for the most demanding environments. The global company offers its products to customers in North America, South America, Europe, Middle East and Asia-Pacific. For more information visit www.polyvision.com In partnership with the British Council, Newcastle University is offering GREAT Scholarship Scheme to two Indian students. Newcastle University invites undergraduate students from India for a scholarship award of 5,500 payable towards the first year of tuition fees. The students need to meet the conditions of the offer for a place on one of the courses in Newcastle University. In order to be eligible to apply for one of these scholarships the candidate must satisfy the following conditions: Must be an Indian national and have been assessed as international/overseas for fees purposes Must hold a Conditional or Unconditional offer for any Undergraduate programme at Newcastle city campus Intend to register to start your studies during the 2016- 17 academic year Should be a self-funded student and not in receipt of other University or external awards Must have achieved an overall of 80% in standard 12th or AAB in A levels or 36 IB points. The candidates have to submit their application online before June 30, 2016 to qualify for the scholarship. For further details, visit the University's official website. We never doubted our styling taste buds, so thats why it came as no surprise when a panel of judges honored the Bentley EXP 10 Speed 6 with the Design Award for Concept Cars & Prototypes, at the Villa Deste Concorso DEleganza. Every year, on the shores of Lake Como in Italy, BMW celebrates the art of motoring by organizing an elegance competition at Villa DEste a beautiful renaissance residence. BMW doesnt dominate the event with its vehicles, but instead invites other car makers and historic vehicle owners to take part in the celebrations. Naturally, a panel of experts and connoisseurs arbitrate which cars are best suited for an award; and believe us, choosing a winner is not that simple, since all the automobiles that parade on this occasion are rare, beautiful treasures. This year, Bentley had some stiff competition at the Concept Cars & Prototypes class. We already showcased you the stunning Zagato Maserati Mostro and the 3.0 CSL Hommage concept, but Aston Martin, Carrozzeria Touring, Lamborghini, Scuderia Glickenhaus and Magna Steyr were also there. The Design Award for Concept Cars & Prototypes celebrates the future of the automobile industry and it was awarded to Luc Donckerwolke, Bentleys Design Director. The jury decided the EXP represented the iconic Bentley design fused with progressive craftsmanship and thats just one of the many reasons it was considered the finest model on show and this didnt come from us, its what they actually invoked. Lately, the EXP 10 Speed 6 has gotten extremely positive feedback and maybe thats just what Bentley needs to put it into production. There are no technical specification available, but you can hear the thing growl in the video below. Mind you, it doesnt sound like a W12 nor a V8 PHOTO GALLERY VIDEO While millions of cars still have to pay a visit to the dealers and have their shrapnel-spreading Takata airbags replaced, free of charge of course, new reports indicate that four manufacturers are selling brand new cars, equipped with the defective inflators. The story, published by AutomotiveNews, points the finger towards Toyota, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Volkswagen and Mitsubishi, quoting a report by a top Democrat on the US Senate Commerce Committee that oversees the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Whats troubling here is that consumers are buying new cars not realizing theyre going to be recalled. These cars shouldnt be sold until theyre fixed, said US Senator Bill Nelson. New cars equipped with Takatas defective airbag inflators dont need public disclosure and automakers can continue to keep quiet until 2019: Until that time, its impossible for consumers to find out if their vehicle has a defective airbag, which will need to be replaced, added Rich Newsome, a lawyer representing consumers who have sued the Japanese parts supplier. Some of the vehicles currently being sold, which will have to be recalled sometime down the road, are the 2016-2017 Mitsubishi i-MiEV, 2016 Volkswagen CC, 2016 Audi TT and 2017 Audi R8. Moreover, the report states that Toyota is expected to build roughly 175,000 cars equipped with the defective inflators between March 2016 and July 2017. Thats not all, because a good part of vehicles that will have their airbags replaced will have to be called back in again, as dealers reportedly have stockpile of about 580,000 inflators that lack a drying agent. PHOTO GALLERY It seems that cars such as Googles self-driving RX or Fords fully-autonomous Fusion cant currently be used in the state of New York unless the state changes a 1971 law that requires drivers to always keep one hand on the wheel. According to the Nydailynews, legislators are currently arguing that this law, should it remain, will slow down the introduction of automated driving systems and could even hinder drivers that are using parking assist features. We are just trying to have the law match up to the technology that people are using today and I think is only going to grow down the road, said Senate transport committee chairman Joseph Robach. Mr Robach, who also said that hes not aware of anybody having been ticketed for using a parking system, has already introduced legislation that exempts drivers using driving technology from the requirement of keeping one hand on the wheel when the vehicle is in motion. Robachs bill was approved last week by the Senate, but has yet to gain any traction in the Democrat-controlled assembly mainly because there are still concerns about the technology. Show me how it is going to work at Second Ave. and 60th St. at rush hour and then I might support legislative change for driverless cars, argued Sen. Liz Krueger. On the other hand, those who are clearly for automated driving systems (like Audis Brad Stertz) argue that about 94% of the accidents in federal stats have some element of human error. The car with its 20 plus sensors all round it creates this sense of perception that humans dont have. Stertz also says that Audi is only two years away from introducing a system that can take over when the cars stuck in traffic, whereas one that can do the same on the highway is about four years away. One rather lighthearted comment came from Gov. Cuomos camp where spokesman Rich Azzopardi was quoted as saying: While Im personally stoked that Knight Rider is real, well have to review the legislation. Since 2011, at least six states (including the District of Columbia) have passed legislation authorizing the testing of automated driving systems on public roads with only basic safety requirements. PHOTO GALLERY Brett Sanders went on a crusade against the system after he got caught doing 39 mph (63 km/h) in a 30 mph (48 km/h) zone and fined, but his method of dealing with the situation was, well, lets just say out of the ordinary. The 32-year old tried to dispute the ticket in court, but lost. Aggravated by the situation, Sanders figured it was best to make the payment as inconvenient as possible, so he decided to pay the fine in pennies. He got ~20,000 coins from the bank, painted two buckets with the words extortion payment, headed to the Frisco Municipal Court and dumped the pennies on the counter. Sadly, while trying to stick it to the man, the outraged individual managed only to take his anger out on an innocent clerk who was just doing her job and seemed perfectly cordial. To make matters worse, according to the CNN, the original fine was $79.90, but with court costs the total amount got to $212. Thats without the time and money spent for planning his little act of self-justice, of course. I was on my residential street when I got a ticket for going nine miles over the speed limit. I thought it was unfair. I did not injure anyone, and I did not endanger anyone. Not only am I [ticked] off about this ticket and paying with pennies to clog up the system, but I also want to protest the whole racket, Sanders said. The pennies were counted using two coin-cashing machines and took staffers about three hours. At the end, there was an overpayment of $7.81 and Sanders was contacted by the Municipal Court to retrieve his money, but refused. VIDEO FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Soyia Ellison, soyia.ellison@cartercenter.org ATLANTA More than 60 activists, scholars and community leaders will come together June 18-21 to discuss ways to end violence in all its forms during the Carter Center's annual Human Rights Defenders Forum, "A Time for Peace: "Rejecting Violence to Secure Human Rights." Among the themes of this year's event are the economics of peace, unlearning violence, and nonviolent approaches to security and law enforcement. The second half of the forum which will include a keynote speech by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, June 20 is open to the media. The Monday afternoon and Tuesday sessions also will be webcast live for those who cannot attend. This year's participants include: Rana Allam , an outspoken Egyptian journalist and an adviser with the Women Alliance for Security Leadership. Murairi Bakihanaye Janvier , the president of the Association pour le Developpement des Initiatives Paysannes, who works to fight slavery and exploitation of mineral resources in Democratic Republic of Congo. Rodolfo Manuel Dominguez Marquez , director of Mexico's Justice, Human Rights, and Gender Civil Association, which monitors and sometimes litigates cases of femicide and works to protect women in situations of violence. Deeyah Khan , a music producer and the documentarian behind the films Banaz: A Love Story, about so-called honor killings, and Jihad, which investigates the motives of Western-born Islamic extremists, convicted terrorists, and former jihadis. Sylvie Kinigi , the only woman to serve as prime minister of Burundi (July 1993 to February 1994). Fatima Akilu, an expert in countering violent extremism who helped design Nigeria's countering violent extremism program, which takes a multipronged approach that includes PTSD training and education. Media interested in attending the forum or interviewing some of the participants should contact Soyia Ellison by June 15. For more information, see the draft agenda below. Monday, June 20 1:30 3 p.m. A Time for Peace, keynote speech by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, followed by a moderated Q&A. (The session includes a report on the earlier forum workshops and musical performances by renowned global musicians.) 3:30 4:45 p.m. The Economics of Peace: Investing in a Just and Equitable Global Economy Tuesday, June 21 9 10:30 a.m. Unlearning Violence: Re-educating Society for Peace and Human Rights 11 a.m. 12:30 p.m. Securing the Peace: Advancing Nonviolent Approaches to Security and Law Enforcement 2 3:15 p.m. Building a New Peace Movement: Rejecting Violence to Secure Human Rights 3:45 4:45 p.m. A Call for Peace, Dignity, and Justice Note: Schedule subject to change. ### "Waging Peace. Fighting Disease. Building Hope." A not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization, The Carter Center has helped to improve life for people in over 80 countries by resolving conflicts; advancing democracy, human rights, and economic opportunity; preventing diseases; and improving mental health care. The Carter Center was founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, in partnership with Emory University, to advance peace and health worldwide. Photo: Carmen Weld - Castanet File Photo The City of Kelowna is looking for your feedback, as it continues to explore several options for off-leash dog beaches and parks. Those options include four potential off-leash dog beaches and one off-leash dog park. These include: Cedar Avenue beach access Lake Avenue access Poplar Point Drive beach access Mini beach near the Sails Plaza Munson Pond Park. Residents are invited to attend a community discovery session on June 15 to learn more about these potential locations. The statistically valid survey conducted earlier this year indicated that there is a demand for more off-leash dog beaches in particular, said Robert Parlane, parks and buildings planning manager. The purpose of this session is to enable residents to provide feedback on the proposed locations. Its also an opportunity to identify potential concerns and look at possible solutions. The discovery session will be held Wednesday, June 15 from 4 p.m. until 6:30 p.m. in Kerry Park. Those unable to attend are encouraged to get involved by viewing the information boards and providing feedback online from June 7 until June 28. The potential neighbourhood locations were identified based on the survey results. All proposed off-leash areas are subject to community input, council approval and budget approval. For more information about dog parks and the public engagement process, including the results of the statistically valid survey, visit the city's website. Photo: Okanagan College From accountants to welders, thousands of Okanagan College graduates will be heading out into the world this month. As one Okanagan College business student will note when she addresses her graduating class Saturday, it was often the most challenging moments of her studies that best prepared her for the future. Jessica Lenz is completing a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) Honours Degree specializing in accounting. For the past year, she has been a student researcher with the Scotiabank Centre for Non-profit Excellence located at the Kelowna campus. She recently presented her findings at the The Canadian Council for Small Business & Entrepreneurship national conference in Guelph, Ont. It was so beneficial to have real-world opportunities to engage with and learn from business leaders in our community, said Lenz, who now plans to pursue her CPA certification. It was very challenging, but also very fulfilling as a student to be a part of research that has application to peoples businesses and livelihoods locally, and has the potential to bring about positive change. Lenz is among the more than 1,450 students who will be recognized at the colleges convocation ceremonies this weekend. She will also take the stage to give the student address and will be presented with the Silver Governor Generals Academic Medal and Bachelor of Business Administration Medal, as the graduate with the highest graduating grade average in an Okanagan College baccalaureate program and the BBA program this year. Receiving the Silver Governor Generals medal was one of the goals I have pushed myself toward for a long time, said Lenz. Its an incredible feeling to realize a goal like this. I cant wait to be at the ceremony with all my fellow graduates who share the same pride of accomplishment. The college will recognize the achievements of nearly 1,000 trades students at its commencement ceremony on the evening of Friday, June 3. The following day, 481 credentials will be conferred to students in academic and vocational programs and include 129 bachelors degrees, 55 associate degrees, 270 diplomas and 27 certificates. The ceremony on June 4 in Kelowna starts at 10:30 a.m. and will see students from arts, science, engineering technologies, computer science and health and social development programs receive their credentials. Local forest hydrologist, Dr. Rita Winkler, and Mission Hills Anthony von Mandl, will address the morning graduating class as Honorary Fellows of Okanagan College. At the afternoon ceremony starting at 1:30 p.m., Okanagan College will confer degrees, diplomas and certificates to graduates of the Okanagan College School of Business. It is in this ceremony that Lenz will share some wisdom gained during her time as a business student, followed by a local business veteran who shares her feelings on the subject of perseverance. After being recognized as Honorary Fellow on Saturday afternoon, Kelowna entrepreneur Bill Redmond will address the next wave of business leaders who will follow in his footsteps. One of his key messages will be learn how to overcome adversity, and even embrace it. Distilling a careers worth of lessons into a few short minutes isnt an easy task but Redmond says the lesson that has been most valuable was one that he learned early. The difficult things and the challenging things are what you remember, he said. Overcoming adversity, even embracing it and seeking it out, is really what sets people apart. It is actually quite easy to be a great leader when things are going well, but when things take a turn, thats when you grow the most. Redmond spent a year at Okanagan College as its first Entrepreneur-in-Residence in 2007. During that time he worked out of an office in the School of Business a few days a month, meeting with students, joining lectures and working with colleagues in the department. I was very impressed with the business students at Okanagan College, he said. Working with them made me remember the pure joy of learning about business. Its a wonderful institution and a great privilege to address the graduating class. This weekends ceremonies represent three of the Colleges six annual convocation ceremonies. The first convocation ceremony of the year was held in January, and 310 credentials were awarded to students. Two additional ceremonies will be held later in June. A ceremony in Vernon will be held on Monday, June 27. The final summer convocation in Kelowna will take place on Wednesday, June 29 and will confer approximately 380 diplomas and certificates. Former Okanagan College professor Rick Gee will be honored as the 2016 Distinguished Service Award recipient at that ceremony. More than 2,100 students will have graduated from Okanagan College in 2016 before the end of the month. The convocation can be watched live online. Photo: Wayne Moore Gas prices at a few Central Okanagan gas stations jumped 10 cents Wednesday night. Dan McTeague with gasbuddy.com suggests you fill up, before other stations follow suit. Several stations are still selling regular fuel at 114.9 per litre. He said if you can still find it at that price, get it before it reaches the new level of 124.9. We're not alone either. prices have shot up across much of the country. In Newfoundland today, prices were up as much as 20 cents per litre. Some of the blame for our rise in price can be placed on the situation in Northern Alberta, specifically Suncor's inability to produce both oil and gasoline. "Suncor announced last night it doesn't have the ability to produce as much gasoline," said McTeague. "It's scrambling to find supplies to meet its contracts. One of the three refineries (Edmonton), is having trouble producing gasoline." That's on top of it not being able to produce enough oil to pump through the Kinder Morgan pipeline. The bigger issue, according to McTeague, lies further east. "All wholesale prices of gasoline in Kamloops, Kelowna, throughout the Okanagan, are really based on what happens in the Chicago gasoline futures markets. Those have shot up 37 cents a gallon in the past two weeks." He said gas station operators are paying about $1.095 wholesale for a litre of gas in Kamloops and throughout the Okanagan. When you add their retail margins and GST, there's not much room left to make a profit. "The price is going up everywhere. It's likely going to stay that way until things settle down in Chicago, and we can get a better read on how soon Suncor can get back on its feet, and how quickly oil production can get back to where it should be." McTeague said two major refineries in the Midwest, one in Ohio and another in Michigan, are both down right now, causing the jump in gasoline futures. He said it's happening at a time when demand for gas in the United States is at an all-time high. It could be a few days, or even a few weeks, before the market stabilizes. Photo: Contributed RCMP are once again making a plea to the public to help find a missing woman. Sandra McLaughlan was last seen on May 19, leaving her residence on Nickel Road. Police now have a photo that shows the clothing McLaughlan was wearing on the day of her disappearance. While foul play is not suspected, police are very concerned for McLaughlans health and well-being and friends and family report that it is out of character for her to be out of contact for this long. She was last seen wearing: beige pants red shirt glasses Description of Sandra McLaughlan: Caucasian female 60 years 5 feet 9 inches tall 161 pounds blonde hair hazel eyes Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Sandra McLaughlan is urged to contact their local police. Watch as the piglet Kama shreds the gnar on his home island of Oahu. Photo: CTV A Penticton man's mission to out child predators has police urging caution. Tyler Fritsen went undercover on a popular dating website as a 14-year-old girl and caught two alleged creeps. Fritsen is president of the new Penticton chapter of a Canada-wide organization that attempts to catch child predators. Fritsen uploaded two videos to his Facebook page Tuesday of what he says are confrontations with men he chatted with online. The men, he claims, believed he was a teenage girl. Read more. Photo: Getty Images How many people can fit in to a one-bedroom apartment? I completely understand families and individuals are struggling finding homes to rent in Kelowna. The market is beyond a transition phase and into a frenetic hive of activity that we have not seen for a long time, If I cast my mind back to the early '80s to an old tenement building in Glasgow, I recall a picture of a family with an even greater struggle. At the end of the day, much has to do with what we become accustomed to. Dont get me wrong, I want dont to judge anyone, but our perspectives are different because of the circumstances we are used to. My wife was studying at the University of Strathclyde and I would visit my fiancee (at that time) on any possible occasion. She had a one-room bedsit (room!!!) and a room-mate. My wife and her roommate were on the fourth floor just off Cathedral Street near the hospital in Glasgow. As you opened the front door, a short corridor led you to the dingy apartment. You passed a small bathroom to the right and a kitchen, equally small, to the left. It was a squeeze for two students, but add a third person and it was decidedly cramped (or so we thought). If I showed up, Jackies room-mate would kindly accept the slightly more cramped living conditions for the weekend and in return we would cook her food, which was certainly not her forte. I guess you get used to cramped quarters when you are conditioned to them. Surprisingly what happened in the following weeks was a visit from the previous tenants a couple, with a young family. The man used to live in the bed-sit (bachelor) apartment. He didn't live there alone, but with Mum and Dad and six siblings. Apparently, the kitchen was a kitchen back then, but somehow, the father slept there while Mum and the kids slept on a bed Mum at the foot and the kids top and tailed across the bed. The total space in that apartment was no more than 350 square feet. Why would so many people choose to live in such cramped conditions? Frankly, it was normal and they could not afford anything else. Now, our view of normal has changed. What we used to put up with is now unconscionable to us. A house without stainless steel and granite? Yuck! Really? This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet. Photo: CFIA A nationally distributed energy bar is being recalled due to fears of food contamination. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced Thursday the CLIF Bar & Company is recalling its Sierra Trail Mix Energy Bar. The company initiated the recall due to possible Listeria monocytogenes contamination. Bars sold individually or by the box with codes, "Best By 2016JN06" up to and including "Best By 2017FE23" should not be consumed. The CFIA is conducting a food safety investigation, which may lead to the recall of other products. If other high-risk products are recalled, the CFIA will notify the public through updated food recall warnings. To date, there have been no reported illnesses associated with the consumption of the product. If you think you became sick from eating a recalled product, call your doctor. Check to see if you have recalled products in your home. Recalled products should be thrown out or returned to the store where they were purchased. Photo: Contributed A police raid at a home in Agassiz has ties to drugs and violence in Kamloops. According to information released by Kamloops RCMP, Friday, 17 weapons were seized during a raid at the Agassiz residence on Thursday. Members of the Kamloops Targeted Enforcement Unit, along with officers from Agassiz and Chilliwack, executed the raid. Among the weapons seized were two folding-stock rifles, two sawed-off shotguns, ammunition, scopes and magazines. "Kamloops RCMP believe these weapons are linked to individuals associated to the organized crime group known as the Wolfpack," said Cpl. Jodi Shelkie. "No arrests were made at the time of the seizure, but charges arising from this search are expected in the future." Shelkie said the weapons are another example of the violence that accompanies organized crime and the distribution of street drugs. "The disruption and dismantling of organized criminal activity continues to be a priority for the Kamloops detachment," she said. Photo: thecanadianencyclopedia.ca File photo. UPDATE: 3:48 p.m. The Okanagan Indian Band is in mourning following the death of former Kamloops MP Len Marchand, who served in Pierre Trudeau's cabinet and sat as a senator. It was the second blow for the community in less than a day, following the death of band councillor Homer Alexis. The magnitude of losing those two people. It's huge, said OKIB Chief Byron Louis, who was related to Marchand. Len was well respected based on his accomplishments, Louis said. Marchand was the first status Indian elected to Parliament. The Vernon-born man was also the first status Indian to graduate from a public high school in the community and was one of the first aboriginal students to enrol at the University of British Columbia. Marchand was recently admitted to a Kamloops hospital with kidney problems and died Friday at the age of 82. Len's greatest accomplishment was he was able to give a firsthand account of our issues to the highest levels of government, said Louis. He could tell the story instead of someone else telling our story. Len was us. Louis also paid tribute to Homer Alexis who has just died from leukemia. I was just talking to him on Sunday about when he would be able to come back to work. He maintained that outlook, trying to serve his community, said Louis. They were both leaders. with files from The Canadian Press Len Marchand, the former Liberal MP and senator who was the first status Indian elected to Parliament, has died at age 82. Marchand was recently admitted to a Kamloops, hospital with kidney problems and died today. He was born in Vernon, was the first status Indian to graduate from a public high school in the community and was one of the first aboriginal students to enrol at the University of British Columbia. He was elected to represent Kamloops-Cariboo in 1968, at the height of Trudeaumania, and held cabinet positions including minister of state for small business and environment minister, before the Liberal government's defeat in 1979. He was appointed to the senate in 1984, and retired in 1998. Marchand is survived by wife, Donna Parr, daughter Lori Marchand and son Len Marchand Jr. Mongolia explores export to Russia ICR Newsroom By 03 June 2016 With Mongolias cement production on the rise, the country may start exporting its surplus to countries such as Russia. National producers are currently studying the possibilities, according to local news reports. Demand in the country has risen with growing housing and infrastructure requirements. Mongolias cement production currently meets about 90 per cent of the domestic demand, which in 2013 reached 2Mt. With a capacity of 1.9Mta in 2013, the country has been importing cement to fulfil its needs. However, with domestic production on a steady rise capacity is expected to reach 4.5Mta by the end of 2016. To help meet this growing demand two new cement plants will be commissioned later this year, potentially making Mongolia completely self-sufficient with the possibility of surplus for exporting. Published under Colombia's market expands 5.9% in April ICR Newsroom By 03 June 2016 Cement dispatches in Colombia rose 5.9 per cent to 1.05Mt in April 2015, according to the countrys statistics office, Dane. Cement production in April reached 1.1Mt, up five per cent YoY and the highest output for April in the past eight years. By region, the department of Cordoba saw the highest increase in cement demand at 27.8 per cent, followed by Risaralda, with 20.8 per cent. Antioquia was reporting a variation of 9.5 per cent. Bolivar and Cesar recorded falls of 17.4 and 18.5 per cent, respectively, in the offices during the period analysed. Dispatches to Bogota decreased 3.2 per cent while Cundinamarca saw the market contract by 5.1 per cent. In the first four months of 2016, the domestic cement market saw deliveries rise by 1.4 per cent to 4.05Mt, a six-year high for the period. Production in Jan-Apr totalled 4.18Mt, advancing 2.2 per cent when compared with the first four months of 2015. Published under Sri Lanka: AFKO group may revive KKS plant ICR Newsroom By 03 June 2016 AFKO Group GMEX has expressed interest in reopening the Kankesanthurai (KKS) cement plant in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka, according to the countrys Industry and Commerce Ministry. We are keen to partner in the Kankesanthurai Cement Project and are ready to enter with US$450m as a start. We shall also bring in all the necessary machineries and technology and can start from scratch, AFKO Chairman, Keun Young Lee said. He added, We are not limited to KKS. We are keen about cement production industries elsewhere in Sri Lanka, including Mannar. It has been reported that limestone deposits in the area exceed 80Mt, which would be sufficient for manufacturing cement for another 100 years, even if they are extracted at a rate of 3500tpd. Operations at the KKS plant began in 1950 but ended production in 1991 due to the civil war. At the time of its closure the plants production capacity was 115,000tpa. Published under A Hickman man who stole 14 calves from a former employer will be sentenced this August in Gage County District Court. Cork E. Tyan, 53, was arrested by Beatrice Police in February after trying to sell some of the stolen calves at a Beatrice auction. This week he entered guilty pleas to charges of theft by receiving stolen property valued at $1,500-$5,000 and attempted theft of more than $5,000 as part of a plea agreement. He will be sentenced Aug. 3. On Feb. 8, the Beatrice Police Department received a request for assistance from the Hayes County Sheriffs Department regarding the theft of the black baby calves from a farm. The victim told authorities he suspected Tyan, a former employee, of the theft. An investigation revealed a woman Tyan was associated with contacted Beatrice 77 Livestock and arranged to bring five black baby calves to the auction. Court documents state employees at the auction barn told officers there was something fishy going on, as the woman didnt have specifics regarding the calves, as most owners do. She was unable to tell workers the number or sex of the calves. Workers informed officers that the woman and Tyan had arrived at the sale barn with five calves that matched the description of those stolen. Workers reported Tyan and the woman were acting nervous and left quickly in a vehicle and trailer north on Highway 77 before officers could arrive. Officers located the vehicle and conducted a traffic stop, when it was learned Tyan had an active warrant and was placed under arrest. The woman told officers she had no idea where the calves came from, and that Tyan had told her he purchased them on Craigslist. When interviewed, he maintained that he purchased the calves, but was unable to say where or who sold them to him. Lancaster County deputies went to Tyans home and located nine additional black calves, also matching the description of the stolen ones. The calves were taken to Hayes Center, and all paired up immediately with their mother cows. The days of a farmer walking the fields may soon be in the past as drones gain prominence in the agricultural industry. Drones are now able to collect data to determine if crops have enough water, or find leaks in irrigation systems. Southeast Community College is offering a workshop to help farmers better understand the ever-changing world of drones. Can I Fly My Drone on My Farm? will be held Thursday, June 9, from 1-4 p.m. at SCCs Beatrice Campus, 4771 W. Scott Road. The workshop will cover the rules and regulations of flying drones, what types are available, and how to make the most of drones on an agricultural operation. Corn, soybean and wheat farmers could save around $1.3 billion annually by using drones, according to a 2015 study by Informa Economics and Measure. The drone workshop is $20 and can be found on SCC's website at www.southeast.edu/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=20680. Press Release: Reporter: Do you intend to endorse Hillary Clinton? Roy Cooper: We are running our race right now, and we are going to let the Democratic primary run its course. I do believe strongly that North Carolina is ready for change, and they are ready for a new governor. One thing I do know is we don't need Donald Trump as president, that's for sure. Full article: Taking five with Dem gubernatorial candidate Roy Cooper By Sarah Mansur Daily Dispatch May 27, 2016 The Daily Dispatch recently had an opportunity to speak with state Attorney General and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Roy Cooper after he held a closed community meeting at St. James Missionary Baptist Church in Henderson.You have stated that you are against HB2 and believe it should be repealed. But the Republican state legislators have indicated they have no interest in doing that. If the political will doesn't exist to repeal HB2, what do you think should be done?We have to keep trying in order to make sure we protect our economy. It's becoming more clear every day that this is costing our state in money and jobs, and it's hurting everyday people. I think if we can continue with the pressure on (Gov. Pat McCrory) and the General Assembly, we can get it done. It's creating an unnecessary obstacle for economic improvement in all parts of our state. So we have to keep pushing for repeal of this legislation.Obviously, you are running against Gov. Pat McCrory. But do you also think you are running against Donald Trump?Gov. McCrory and Donald Trump have been saying some of the same things with their decisive rhetoric. I think we don't need Donald Trump and Gov. McCrory leading our country and our state. We are going to run our own campaign and make sure people understand that they have a real choice in November in leadership of this state, but I also don't think they are going to support Donald Trump either.Do you intend to endorse Hillary Clinton?We are running our race right now, and we are going to let the Democratic primary run its course. I do believe strongly that North Carolina is ready for change, and they are ready for a new governor. One thing I do know is we don't need Donald Trump as president, that's for sure.Earlier this week, 11 states filed a lawsuit to challenge the significant guidance from the Obama administration about how public schools in this country should accommodate transgender students. Do you think the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Justice overstepped their authority in this case?Our state superintendent of Public Instruction says that North Carolina is already dealing with that issue in an appropriate way within the guidelines. So I don't think it's an issue that we have to deal with in this state. ECU Air Force Cadet Josh Cole practices in the flight simulator in Wright Annex. (Photos by Cliff Hollis, ECU News Services) Realistic controls in the flight simulator provide good experience for cadets training to be pilots. ECU Army Cadets Clara Sarmiento, at left, Jacob Kriminger and Roberto Garcia work as a team on the obstacle course at ECU's West Research Campus. ECU Army Cadet Christopher Rudkowski hugs the ground on the belly crawl part of the obstacle course. This obstacle is designed to replicate soldiers moving under fire by crawling no more than 16 inches above the ground and beneath an obstacle to move into a better position to engage the enemy without exposing themselves. A new training course and flight simulator used by U.S. Army and Air Force cadets at East Carolina University is helping develop the nation's future military leaders.Unique among schools in the UNC system and across the country, ECU offers a dedicated outdoor training area at the West Research Campus that features maneuver and marksmanship space, a rappel tower and problem-solving obstacle course. A state-of-the-art flight simulator called the Combat Pilot Pro 4 located in Wright Annex can provide a computer model of public airports or military landing fields anywhere in the world.said Dr. Glen G. Gilbert, professor and dean of the College of Health and Human Performance, home to ECU's ROTC programs.Students began using the obstacle course last fall, while the flight simulator arrived in April.The simulator offers a realistic representation of the cockpit of an aircraft, complete with pilot's chair, throttle and control panel. It provides 180-degree views with three computer screens in front and on either side of the pilot. It can be configured to show any public airport or military air field in the world, as well as hundreds of types of aircraft and any weather conditions.Not all Air Force cadets have their private pilot's license, so the simulator offers valuable training for those who will eventually get certification, like 2nd Lt. Sarah Riggs. Riggs just graduated from ECU and is headed to pilot training at Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi. Her goal is to be a fighter pilot.Riggs said.Students who may be interested in flying can try it for free instead of paying up to $120 an hour for simulator use offered by private companies, said Capt. Korey Silknitter, assistant professor of aerospace studies at ECU.It also lets cadets gain much needed practice for the Air Force Test of Basic Aviation Skills, which is a required test for anyone interested in flying for the Air Force, Silknitter said.Silknitter said.Another first in the UNC system is the Army ROTC training course at ECU's West Research Campus, a former Voice of America site which covers almost 600 acres northwest of Greenville.said Capt. Kevin D. Prevost, assistant professor of military science and executive officer with the ECU Army ROTC.The leader reaction course consists of seven obstacles. Three of the stations test strength, coordination and agility while four require physical fitness along with critical thinking, decision-making and teamwork skills. For instance, soldiers work as a team to transport critical equipment from one side of a destroyed bridge to the other without falling in a simulated river, using only two boards and three leftover support beams.said Chris Rudkowski, an ECU Army ROTC and N.C. National Guard cadet and business management major from Apex.said Lt. Col. Joseph Pierce, professor of military science and the commander of ECU's Army ROTC program.ECU is the only Army ROTC program in the UNC system that has an engagement skills trainer for marksmanship training. The next closest one is at James Madison University, and most are located at military colleges or academies, Pierce said.said ECU's Army ROTC officer Prevost.This year marks the 100th anniversary of the national ROTC, which has a total of 275 programs at colleges and universities in the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam with an enrollment of more than 30,000.College ROTC programs produce more than 70 percent of the second lieutenants who join the active Army, the Army National Guard and the U.S. Army Reserve. More than 40 percent of current active duty Army General Officers were commissioned through the ROTC, according to the U.S. Army Cadet Command. RALEIGH The voter rage propelling the presidential candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders is not just an American phenomenon. Throughout Europe citizens are expressing deep discontent with self-serving political elites uninterested in addressing issues that threaten their futures, particularly uncontrolled immigration, radical Islamic terrorism, and economic insecurity.In the United Kingdom, this sentiment has transformed a June 23 referendum on whether the country should stay in the European Union. Prime Minister David Cameron, his top Cabinet officials, most members of the opposition Labor Party, and big business are working for what is called the "Remain" campaign.But with the public both angry and fearful, the coalition calling for Brexit, or British exit from the EU, expands. Comprising an eclectic band of small businesses, cultural conservatives, socialists, and an uncomfortably large number of Cameron's fellow Tories - including the always-entertaining mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who nakedly covets the premier's position - the "Leave" crowd is growing confident. It is no longer obvious that Britain will continue as a member of the organization it joined in 1973.Leaving now seems a distinct possibility for two reasons. First, the EU's inability to solve the problems that most vex its people patently is not an illusion. It cannot control its external borders from a flood of Middle Eastern and African migrants - more than a million came in 2015 with more than that expected this year.The problem is exacerbated by the Schengen Agreement that permits free travel within just about all the bloc and illuminated brightly by the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels. And it's not just peace the EU seems incapable of delivering. The Euro, the great symbol of European cooperation and success, continues to bind its users in a painful monetary union.Cameron himself is responsible for the second reason. The prime minister last year pledged he would hold the referendum and support continued membership on the condition that Britain's position in the organization was improved - for example, if it was allowed to reduce benefits to immigrants and services were placed on par with goods in the EU internal market.Because the agreement he ultimately reached with the 27 other leaders fell well short of this ambitious goal, Cameron appears to be championing an ineffectual organization over which he has little influence.The current debate about Britain's future obscures a more fundamental problem, however. When it was established in 1957 as the European Economic Community, the EU was essentially a free-trade zone intended to generate prosperity and economic cooperation on a continent that only recently had been brought to its knees by World War II. The plan worked.But flushed with this success, technocratic leaders like Germany's Helmut Kohl and France's Valery Giscard D'Estaing pushed for political union and regulation of the European open market in the 1970s and 1980s. By 1999 they had their crowning achievement: a common currency.The new EU quickly ran into trouble. Tremendous across-country variation in fiscal policy meant that the kind of coherent and authoritative monetary policy required for a healthy Euro never materialized. Members fudged their budget numbers so they could use the currency.Southern members like Greece and Italy, with their dirigiste economies and bloated public sectors, no longer had the ability to fund deficits by devaluation. Northern colleagues like the Germans and Dutch who bailed them out began, quite understandably, to demand significant structural reforms.Europeans don't want economic integration if it means EU bureaucrats will be regulating commerce, orchestrating national fiscal policy, and generally limiting their freedom. They also don't want political union.The continent should celebrate its different inherently European cultures, treasure sovereign national parliaments, and protect the free exercise of rights such as the freedom of speech, assembly, and religion that seem to evoke the ire of Brussels.Europe already has a common defense within NATO and, besides, the EU apparatus seems impotent to meet threats from nongovernmental actors like ISIS.Just because the EU is no longer the EEC does not mean the U.K. should leave, however. Some of those who want out envision Britain becoming part of an alternative organization consisting of countries like the United States, Canada, and Japan.That would be great, possibly preferred, but the idea betrays a severe misreading of the interests of these countries that tend to see Britain as a fading power and of no real utility outside the EU.The U.K. should stay to exploit the economic advantages of an open European market and push to bring down barriers to free trade in services. It should stay to protect the capitalistic principles that would lose Europe's most effective champion upon its departure.And without Britain, any hope the EU could avoid the efforts of socialist technocrats to erase all memories of its great cultures and liberal past would evaporate. H.B. 954 backers say state can get out of tolling contract with Cintra "for cause" because Spanish company failed to disclose litigation From left, Reps. Charles Jeter and John Bradford, both Mecklenburg County Republicans, explain their bill that would cancel the HOT lane project proposed for Interstate 77 north of Charlotte. (CJ photo by Barry Smith) RALEIGH Efforts to block the controversial high-occupancy or toll lanes on Interstate 77 in Mecklenburg and Iredell counties gained momentum on Wednesday as a bill to cancel the project cleared two committees.The House has scheduled a Thursday morning floor vote on House Bill 954 . If it passes the House and Senate, the bill faces certain opposition if not a veto from Gov. Pat McCrory, who consistently has defended the project against stout local opposition.Motorists using so-called HOT lanes would be required to pay a toll unless at least three people are in the vehicle. Plans call for two HOT lanes each way along a 26-mile stretch of I-77. They'd run alongside two standard untolled lanes, according to the plan.said Rep. Charles Jeter, R-Mecklenburg, one of the bill's sponsors, told the House Transportation Committee.The bill directs the N.C. Department of Transportation to cancel the I-77 HOT lane contract "for cause," which, if successful, would allow the state to escape monetary penalties to get out of the contract.Jeter said Cintra, the Spain-based company that contracted with the state to build and manage the HOT lane project, failed to disclose litigation in which it is involved. In case the "for cause" provision is not found valid in court, the bill also sets aside $250 million to cover the cost of breaking the contract. The measure also would suspend eight Mecklenburg County highway projects in case the "for cause" provision isn't found to be valid.Transportation Secretary Nick Tennyson urged lawmakers not to cancel the contract. He said he doubted that the "for cause" cancelation argument would hold up.Tennyson said.Tennyson said canceling the contract also would put the state transportation officials in a position of not knowing how to provide congestion relief in the I-77 corridor.Tennyson said.Rep. Rodney Moore, R-Mecklenburg, questioned the effect of canceling the contract.Moore asked.Jeter responded that by not canceling the project, Cintra would pocket $10 billion in toll charges over the next 50 years.Jeter said.The bill cleared the House Transportation and Appropriations committees without prejudice, meaning the committees neither killed the bill nor recommended its passage.The project would run from the Brookshire Freeway interchange in Charlotte (Exit 11) to the N.C. 150 (Exit 36) interchange in Iredell County.The DOT signed the contract with Cintra in 2014. The project's price tag is $655 million, $88 million of that is the responsibility of state taxpayers. Proposal also would fund 2,000 extra students per year if budget measure becomes law RALEIGH North Carolina's still-young Opportunity Scholarship Program would get a major boost if a provision in the proposed Senate budget becomes law.The Opportunity Scholarship Program, enacted in 2013, provides a child from a low-income family a tax-funded voucher of up to $4,200 per school year to use toward private-school tuition.The budget sets aside $34.8 million in a reserve account for the 2016-17 school year to help children from lower income families eligible to use the vouchers get off a waiting list and into a private school. It also allows the state to increase awards incrementally by 2,000 students per year - with a corresponding $10 million increase in spending each year - over the next 10 years.By the 2027-28 school year, up to $144.8 million could be going to pay for scholarship grants for about 36,000 students, said Darrell Allison, president of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina."There's no denying that there's a real demand for this program," Allison said. "Since the beginning of the program, we've had a total of 22,323 applications submitted to date."According to the N.C. State Education Assistance Authority's website, 3,908 grants were awarded this school year, with nearly $12.9 million in scholarships granted. The NCSEAA administers the Opportunity Scholarship Program.Allison noted that the program has been popular even though there was a "legal cloud" hanging over it. A number of groups and individuals, including the N.C. Association of Educators and the N.C. School Boards Association, filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the program, delaying its implementation.The plaintiffs won at the Superior Court level. However, in the summer of 2015, the N.C. Supreme Court reversed the lower court's decision and ruled the program passed constitutional muster.Leanne Winner, director of government relations for the N.C. School Boards Association, said she thought it was unwise for lawmakers to make such a significant change in the program's current structure and put in plans an automatic growth mechanism.Winner said.Winner said the provision could end up overfunding a program if the demand isn't there.Allison said he has no doubt that the demand will exist.Allison said.Rep. Skip Stam, R-Wake, the primary driver behind the Opportunity Scholarship Program, noted that almost 2,000 students are on the waiting list for the next school year.Allison expects that number to increase as the current school year winds down.Allison said.Stam also said the voucher program alleviates fiscal pressures on the public schools. Stam noted that the state will need to increase the public school budget by $46 million next year to fund enrollment growth.Stam said.The boost in voucher funding is part of the $22.2 billion General Fund budget that is scheduled for a floor vote in the Senate on Thursday. In light of continued developments, primarily since 2008, there exists in these United States a Legal System which operates on a proved Two Tiered approach to justice rendered, which primarily benefits Democratic Elites and Woke Ideological Virtue Signalers, representing their co-dependent wards, to the expressed exclusion of normal hardworking American citizens: What is your suggestion in remedying this widespread injustice and, if not corrected, its existential outcome for our Constitutional Republic? Complete overhaul the Department of Justice and their enforcers - the FBI - to reflect a far more honest justice system to keep patriots remaining calm. Disband the FBI, and request that congress investigate all unethical and non patriotic practices to partially right the wrongs of a distrusted and politically weaponized "Department of Justice." Press Release: The graduates of BCCCs fire academy: (front left to right) Greg Graham, Andrew Noell, Hunter Gurganus and Tanner Phelps; (back left to right) Nathan Lapp, Michael Mann, Jacob Powell and William Equils. Contact: Attila Nemecz Attila Nemecz (252)-940-6387 WASHINGTON, NC On Tuesday, May 31, the first cohort of students graduated from Beaufort County Community College's fire academy. The program, started by Fire Program Director Johnny Williams, finished its inaugural run as the eight students were honored. The cohort included William Equils of Swanquarter; Greg Graham and Michael Mann of Chocowinity; Hunter Gurganus, Andrew Noell and Tanner Phelps of Plymouth; Nathan Lapp of Old Ford; and Jacob Powell of Williamston.Students earned certifications in firefighting, HazMat responder, emergency vehicle driving, technical rescuer and vehicle rescue. Elected class leader Nathan Lapp has already been hired to the Washington Fire Department. All of the students currently serve as volunteer firefighters in the respective communities. As Lapp spoke, he reminded his cohort that the people they interact with are often having the worst day of their life. He emphasized that firefighters need to be empathetic to the victims.Chief Robbie Rose of Washington Fire, Rescue and EMS addressed the cohort.he said. He said the students owe it to their families to return home safely. He also encouraged professionalism and the need for further training. He warned the graduates not to become complacent or the world will pass them by.The program represents the first time that volunteer firefighters can achieve an academy-style training in this region. Many firefighters have had to travel to Wilson to attend a fire academy. The only full-time fire department in the BCCC service area is the Washington Fire, Rescue and EMS Department. The rest of the firefighters in the service area are volunteers.said academy graduate William Equils.Since the program began, BCCC has constructed a state-of-the-art fire training facility where students practice working in dark and confined spaces, rappelling and working with live fire. Currently, firetrucks must be onsite during live fire training as there is no running water to the building. The City of Washington has pledged to fund half of the cost of connecting the facility to municipal water if Beaufort County funds the other half, but so far the County Commissioners have been unable to do so, leaving the facility without water.Local fire departments are so enthusiastic about the training facilities at BCCC that they donate foam and bring their vehicles out during live burns. Their departments and the new graduates are the beneficiaries of the new facilities and the new academy.said Stacey Gerard, vice president of continuing education.The next fire academy starts August 15th. This academy will be on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights and every other Saturday.For more information about the fire academy, contact Johnny Williams at 252-940-6363 or johhny.williams@beaufortccc.edu. The United Daughters of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis Chapter 900 held their May meeting at the Kinser Church of God in Cleveland. President Marilyn Kinne called the meeting to order. The Ritual was read by Teresa Silvers. The pledges to the Flags were given, and the songs were sung. Jed Pritchett played the Tennessee Waltz on the mandolin. The minutes of the previous meeting was read by Debbie Riggs, Secretary and accepted. Peggy Morrison gave the Treasurers report. Vice President Lisa Pritchett stated the donations the Chapter has collected for the Veterans Home is scheduled to be delivered in November. She urged everyone to continue bringing their donations such as socks, sweat shirts and pants, and other personal hygiene items. The Civil War pamphlets that were printed by the Chapter have been given to Bradley and Polk County 5th grade students. City Schools will receive the pamphlet in the fall of this year. President Kinne urged everyone to turn in their activities sheets for this year, so she can begin compiling them for the Convention in October. Members have been busy working on the plans for the October Convention. The Convention is being hosted by the Jefferson Davis Chapter and will be held at the Read House in Chattanooga. Vice President Lisa Pritchett has designed a Chapter pin. It has been submitted for approval. The upcoming election of Officers for 2016-2018 was presented by the nominating committee: Helen Riden, Anita Green, and Linda Ballew. Nominations were accepted and approved by members. Officers for 2016-2018 are President Marilyn Kinne, Vice President Lisa Pritchett, Second Vice President Robin Ramsey, Third Vice-President MiniSu Willard, Secretary Amy Kibble, Treasurer Linda Ballew, Registrar Anita Green, Recorder of Military Service Awards Marilyn Kinne, Historian Christy Peden, and Librarian Teresa Silvers. The next meeting will be held in June, and is the UDC tea. Refreshments were provided by Lisa Pritchett, and Peggy Morrison. The meeting was turned over to the guest speaker Rick Elliott. He is a collector of Civil War coins, and currency. The Confederate dollar often called a greyback, was first issued into circulation in April 1861, when the Confederacy was only 2 months in existence. It was issued on the eve of the outbreak of the Civil War. The Confederacy, being limited in skilled engravers and printers and also printing facilities had to invent their own designs for beginning banknotes. Some were abstract depictions of mythological gods and goddesses, such as the Goddess of Liberty. Confederate themes and designs such as naval ships and historical figures were printed. Some of the people printed on banknotes include Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun, Alexander H. Stephens, Jefferson Davis, Judah P. Benjamin, and Lucy Holcombe Pickens, the wife of the governor of South Carolina. At first, Confederate currency was accepted throughout the South with high purchasing power. As the war progressed, confidence in winning the war decreased, and the amount of paper money increased. Near the end of the war, the currency became almost worthless because it was not secured by any assets. Mr. Elliott displayed his collection of Confederate currency used during the Civil War. He also has in his collection a $1 million dollar check written to the Confederate States of America by a southern supporter near the end of the war. There are only seven known to be in existence today. Sam Allen, a member of the Cleveland, Tn. Colonel Benjamin Sons of the American Revolution dressed as a Confederate soldier. He displayed a LeMat revolver. The revolver was invented by Jean Alexandre LeMat of New Orleans, and used by the Confederate States of America in the Civil War 1861-65. When the War broke out Mr. LeMat received Confederate contracts for the production of 5,000 revolvers. Plans were made to manufacture the gun abroad and then import them into the Confederacy. Confederate gun runners were able to slip shipments of the gun through the Union Naval blockade, and it is estimated that about 2,500 made it into Confederate service. Mr. Allen also sung, I am a Rebel Soldier. The meeting was adjourned. For more information on upcoming meetings and events or how to become a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, visit the chapters website at www.udcjeffersondavis900.com, or Facebook at www.facebook.com/udcjeffersondavischapter900. Melinda Kelsey has been named Chief of Staff for the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development (TDLWD). The White County native assumes the newly-created position after serving as the TDLWD Administrator of Communications, Constituent, and Government Relations. Melinda is recognized as an individual that gets things done, said TDLWD Commissioner Burns Phillips. She has the unique talent of sizing up a situation and identifying what is important and what is not. This enables her to quickly gather the talent and resources needed to solve a problem or reach a goal. This is a skill that brings incredible value to the Department of Labor & Workforce Development. As Chief of Staff, Kelsey will serve as a key member of the Departments leadership team and take on the responsibility of coordinating high priority commitments and projects, while identifying issues that will continue the departments success. Melindas tenacity, commitment to doing what is right and her no nonsense approach to all matters has earned the respect of all with whom she has interacted during her professional career, Commissioner Phillips said. This department has greatly benefited from her credibility with members of the Governors Office, the General Assembly and our many Labor & Workforce Partners across the state. Ms. Kelsey was promoted from her role of Administrator where she oversaw the TDLWD Communications department, as well as handled constituent and legislative inquires to the department. Ms. Kelsey started in state government as a part-time interviewer at the Tennessee Department of Employment Securitys Sparta, Tenn. office. She left the department after several years to become the human resources director at an automobile parts supplier. After eight years away from state government, Ms. Kelsey returned to the newly-renamed Department of Labor and Workforce Development. She started her second tour at the department as the director of employer services and was later promoted to assistant administrator of the employment security division. In 2013 Commissioner Phillips appointed Kelsey Administrator of Communications, Constituent and Government Relations. I am humbled and honored to serve in this new role, Ms. Kelsey said. I believe in state government, I believe in what this department is about, and I believe in the great things we do here every day. For the last five years Ms. Kelsey has spearheaded the Departments Paychecks for Patriots veterans hiring event. The Departments marketing campaign for the event has been awarded 16 Public Relations Society of America Parthenon Awards. Ms. Kelsey also serves on the Nashville Serving Veterans Board. Ms. Kelsey has graduated from the Tennessee Executive Institute; served on the Tennessee Government Leadership Council; and has graduated from the TBI Citizens Academy. Kelsey also hosts the monthly television programInside Workforce Development,which airs on NewsChannel 5+ in the Middle Tennessee area. Tennessee American Water announces that the companys 2015 Consumer Confidence Reports (Water Quality Reports) are available to customers online. In addition, Tennessee American Water has once again earned the Directors Award through the Partnership for Safe Water, marking the 16th consecutive year the utility has achieved this level of surpassing standards. The annual water quality report, also known as the consumer confidence report, is a performance measure of the quality of water. These measures are established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. The report describes local drinking water sources, testing conducted on the water, substances detected, and the levels of those substances. The Partnership for Safe Water is a voluntary utility program with the mission of improving drinking water quality by optimizing operations. In the state of Tennessee, nine utilities participate in the Partnerships treatment plant optimization program. Across the U.S., about 400 utilities participate in the Partnership. Since 1887 we have been the primary water provider for the Chattanooga area and have always been committed to the highest standards for water quality to our customers, said Tennessee American Water President Valoria Armstrong. In 2016, our goal is to be 18 times better than the U.S. average for water quality standards. Participating in the Partnership for Safe Water is one way we exceed standards. Messages on customer water bills provide an URL address to access a service areas specific water quality report. Customers may also search by zip code to find their report at www.tennesseeamwater.com. The URL addresses for specific Tennessee American Water service area water quality reports are as follows: Chattanooga: http://www.amwater.com/ccr/chattanooga.pdf Whitwell: http://www.amwater.com/ccr/sequatchievalley.pdf Suck Creek: http://www.amwater.com/ccr/suckcreek.pdf Printed copies of the report are available to customers who would rather receive their report in the mail or who do not have access online. To request a copy be mailed, customers may call the companys Customer Service Center at 1-866-736-6420 or by emailing presidentarmstrong@amwater.com. Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg answered a question Wednesday afternoon that's been a hot topic of debate in recent days: Will Facebook -- a company that wields extraordinary influence in the media world -- keep someone on its board of directors who has personally funded a legal fight seen by many as an effort to destroy a media company? The answer, Sandberg said in an onstage chat at a technology conference Wednesday, is yes. Speaking at Recode's Code Conference in Los Angeles, Sandberg responded to questions from tech journalist Kara Swisher and a member of the audience, saying that her fellow Facebook director, billionaire Peter Thiel, will remain on the board. The question followed the revelation last week that Thiel helped fund a lawsuit against Gawker Media involving a Hulk Hogan sex tape after negative coverage he'd received from the gossip site. Advertisement "I know this has been actively discussed here and it should be actively discussed, because issues of independence and the media are key to democracy and key to all of us," she said. "Peter did what he did on his own, not as a Facebook board member. We didn't know about it." Sandberg's response follows days of criticism and questions over what Facebook would say about the issue. In op-eds, some journalists and corporate governance advisers had said Thiel should step down from Facebook's board or that Zuckerberg should ask him to resign. Advertisement "If Zuckerberg does ultimately allow Thiel to stay on the board, you'll know how the CEO -- who holds absolute control over the world's most-powerful media company -- feels about the free press," wrote technology writer Dan Gillmor at Slate. Others raised questions over the apparent divide between Facebook's media role and Thiel's seat on the board. As Swisher put it in a post: "If you are putting yourself out there as a friend of media in order to get them to use your platform, having a director go undercover rogue in some cloak-and-dagger revenge plot to decimate a publisher is probably going to be an issue that needs some discussion." In an interview with the New York Times last week, Thiel said his actions were "less about revenge and more about specific deterrence," saying "I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest." Whatever his motivations, Sandberg was careful to distance Facebook. "We want to be clear Peter did what he did as an independent person. He didn't do it at Facebook -- we didn't know -- and he didn't use any Facebook resources," she said. "I understand there are complicated issues here, but this was something done independently with no Facebook resources." Sandberg's answer appears to be Facebook's first official response to the issue. A Facebook spokesperson reached just before Sandberg's comments said the company had no official comment. And though Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had yet to address the question, his views on it would likely have become known soon. That's because the company's annual shareholder meeting, when investors re-elect directors, is coming up on June 20. For one, it's possible that an investor could ask Zuckerberg about Thiel. "It's fair to ask, because this bears very directly on the actual business that Facebook is in, especially now," said Nell Minow, vice chairman of ValueEdge Advisers, a governance consulting firm. But Zuckerberg also controls more than half of Facebook's total voting power, according to a recent company filing. That means if Thiel was re-elected to the board, it would have been a clear sign the Facebook founder backed him. Advertisement "Facebook is a controlled company -- period," says Charles Elson, the director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, speaking about Facebook's share-class structure, which gives Zuckerberg and others greater voting rights. "You can make an argument that that's something that needs to be thought about, but it's ultimately Zuckerberg's decision." Beverly Behan, a corporate governance adviser, says that when a board make decisions about directors' actions, it first examines whether something might be a material conflict of interest, and then whether something might be a judgment error that could cause reputational damage. While the former may be clear-cut, the latter can be "a harder decision when the person is already a good and valuable director," she says. Thiel is not only one of Facebook's earliest investors, but its longest-serving member on the board besides Zuckerberg. The co-founder of PayPal, Thiel is a venture capitalist and Silicon Valley power player who gives out fellowships for high school and college students to drop out and start companies and has, in the past, been a supporter of the Committee to Protect Journalists. He has said he is a libertarian, and is expected to serve as a delegate from California for Donald Trump at the Republican convention. Sandberg acknowledged the importance of differing views in her remarks Wednesday. "W e have very independent board members with very independent thoughts that they share publicly," she said. "Those same strong people actually make really good board members because they have strong views and they're not afraid to think differently." Yet she also acknowledged "these are hard issues, and no one is going to pretend when independent board members do anything, it's easy for the company and the boards [on which] they sit." Patient Navigator Delaila Hernandez, center, helps Fred Cardenas with documents at a Affordable Care Act enrollment event Feb. 12, 2015, at the public library in Fort Worth, Texas. In Texas, Blue Cross and Blue Shield is seeking increases averaging 53.7 percent across its Affordable Care Act plans. (LM Otero / AP) Illinois residents who buy Blue Cross and Blue Shield health care coverage through the state insurance exchange may be in for Obamacare sticker shock, if proposed rate hikes by the largest insurers in Texas and Oklahoma are any indication. Texas and Oklahoma are possible harbingers of Blue Cross' prices on the Illinois exchange because all three health plans are owned by the same company, Chicago-based Health Care Service Corp. Blue Cross is the most popular insurer on the Illinois exchange. Advertisement In Texas, Blue Cross and Blue Shield is seeking increases averaging 53.7 percent across its Affordable Care Act plans, according to documents posted online by the federal government. In Oklahoma, Blue Cross and Blue Shield is seeking rate increases that average 49.2 percent. It is far from certain if the rate increases will hold up on review, or how much they might change. Illinois' proposed rates haven't been made public by the state so it would be premature to discuss, said HCSC spokesman Mark Spencer. But he cautioned against speculating on the company's prices in the 2017 Illinois individual market because there are differences between states and health insurance is priced locally. Advertisement Likewise, the Illinois Department of Insurance said it could not comment on rate plans filed by Blue Cross and other insurers because the proposals are under review. The federal government will make the ACA rates filed in Illinois public on Aug. 1, said Anjali Julka, department spokeswoman. Still, HCSC's recent history in ACA marketplaces shows a pattern across its markets. Last year, for example, the Blue Cross plans in Illinois, Texas and Oklahoma eliminated the PPO coverage sold on those exchanges because the policies no longer made financial sense for the company. A rate increase in Illinois similar to the proposed price spikes in Texas and Oklahoma would have consequences on the affordability of health care for some. Federal tax credits would soften the impact of higher premiums, but the sharp increases being proposed for next year will likely stir up more opposition to the health law, one of President Barack Obama's signature policy achievements. Federal officials say the proposed premium changes are not a reliable indicator of what typical consumers will actually pay next year because regulators will review rate requests to make sure they are justified and exchanges allow people to shop for the best deal. In addition, tax credits, which are pegged to incomes, could go up along with premiums. In Illinois, 75 percent of consumers who bought 2016 coverage on the exchange received tax credits. HCSC, which operates Blue's plans in five states, bet big on the online exchanges, one of the signature elements of Obamacare. The strategy was based on a long history of selling direct-to-consumer health coverage the kind that is offered on the exchanges. The company went all-in on Obamacare to protect its market share and to avoid signing up a disproportionate share of the sick, analysts said. Blue Cross is the most popular insurer in Illinois' individual market, and by a wide margin. At the end of last year, the company had more than 500,000 enrollees, about 83 percent of the market. The membership includes pre-Obamacare enrollees who were allowed to keep the health plans they had before the first ACA plans went into effect in 2014. HCSC's total individual membership nearly doubled to 1.63 million, from 868,863, between 2013 and 2015, according to its regulatory filings. At the end of last year, the company had the most individual members of any U.S. insurer, more than UnitedHealthcare, Anthem, Humana and Aetna, according to Mark Farrah Associates, a health industry data aggregator and web publisher. Advertisement But HCSC, like some insurers, has been stung by heavy losses in its ACA plans. Under the health law, insurers must provide a basic set of benefits and cannot turn away consumers, even if they are sick. It's not too surprising then that Obamacare enrollees, some of whom were denied coverage in the past because of their medical histories, are using the health care system a lot. Newer customers have higher rates of diabetes, depression and high blood pressure than pre-Obamacare individual members, according to the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, the national federation of Blue insurance companies. HCSC's medical costs have outpaced premium rate increases by a wider margin compared with other big health plans, according to Mark Farrah's analysis. Between 2013 and 2015, HCSC has seen a 107.4 percent jump in its average claim per member per month. But its premiums over that time went up 45 percent. HCSC and other insurers were counting on an Obamacare program to reimburse them for some of the business risk of selling ACA plans. But those federal payments fell far short of expectations. HCSC said it lost $1.5 billion last year on its individual business, up from $767 million in 2014. In Texas, where HCSC has nearly 603,000 members on ACA plans, the company lost $592 million last year and $416 million in 2014 on its individual business, Spencer said. In Illinois, Blue Cross lost about $375 million last year on its individual business, despite an average increase in premiums of 17.8 percent on ACA plans. Advertisement To stem the losses, some insurers are pulling out of the exchanges. In 2017, UnitedHealthcare, the nation's largest health insurer, plans to offer policies in only three of the 34 states in which it currently operates. Humana also is considering stopping the sale of Obamacare plans in some states. More than 12 million people have signed up for health insurance on the exchanges. Insurers say the market is smaller than predicted and there are not enough healthy people to cover the costs. But HCSC intends to stick with Obamacare. The company filed rate plans in all five of its markets: Illinois, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Montana, Spencer said. "We are working on a path toward a stable and competitive individual marketplace for our policyholders and for everyone else in the states where we provide coverage," he said. But that path will be painful for consumers, judging by the proposed rate increases filed by HCSC. "I think it's clear that we need to more accurately price those plans to cover those costs," Spencer said. He added that the rate requests are based on strong financial principles, science and data. Advertisement But consumer advocates question some of the big rate increases HCSC and other insurers are seeking. There was a lot of pent-up demand for medical services in the first two years of the ACA exchanges. Some expect the usage rates to stabilize. "They can't be raising rates to make up for losses in past years," said Dena Mendelsohn, a staff attorney at Consumers Union, the advocacy and policy division of Consumer Reports. "We want to see what they are proposing and what they're doing to avoid increases in health care costs." HCSC's proposed rate hikes in Texas and Oklahoma appear to exceed increases in other states. A recent analysis by the consulting firm Avalere Health of rate filings in nine states found that the average proposed increases across the most popular plans range from 5 percent in Washington to 44 percent in Vermont. Spencer declined to comment on what would happen if the company does not get the rate increases it seeks. Last year, HCSC pulled out of New Mexico's exchange after state regulators denied the company's proposed 51 percent rate increase. asachdev@tribpub.com Twitter @ameetsachdev Head brewer John Lavelle, left, and Paul Schroeder stack bags of grain onto a pallet June 2, 2016, at Like Minds Brewing in Chicago's West Town neighborhood. Like Minds is located in a planned manufacturing district, but its co-owner says he could see some benefit to allowing other zoning uses. (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune) The president of Koval Distillery likes to think that each bottle of whiskey she makes is a Chicago flag of sorts, proudly made in the city and planted in thirsty locales all over the world. "Distilled in Chicago" is printed on each label and is important to the brand. But Sonat Birnecker Hart fears the city's review of its industrial corridors could make it tougher for craft beverage companies like hers to find the necessary room to grow in Chicago. Advertisement For the past four years, Ravenswood-based Koval has searched for a larger facility, but has struggled to find affordable manufacturing space in areas that also will draw enough tourists to pack a tasting room. "We're romantics. We want to stay in the city. But ultimately, we're bursting at the seams and we're going to have to do something," Hart said. Advertisement Chicago is a manufacturing town. We make things. The City of Big Shoulders isn't necessarily the city of laptops. Sonat Birnecker Hart, president, Koval Distillery Koval's challenge is a familiar one among brewers and distillers, which have proliferated in Chicago in recent years even as traditional manufacturing has continued to decline. Those who run these companies say they bring needed jobs and tourism to the city. The trick is finding affordable manufacturing space that doesn't conflict with neighbors, but is still close to hot neighborhoods and public transportation. Planned manufacturing districts, encompassed by the very industrial corridors districts that are under review by the city, have been the answer for many. Since 1988 these zoning districts, which prohibit residential development, have provided breweries, distilleries and other companies room to expand without the challenges of fitting into a neighborhood full of homeowners. But depending on the outcome of the city's review, some manufacturing districts could be changed to include other uses and some might vanish altogether. "It's outlived its usefulness," said Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, of the Clybourn manufacturing district. "We need to be open to all possibilities." Hopkins, who represents the area that includes the Clybourn district, believes it's time for that particular zoning district to be "decommissioned." The Goose Island brewery, which has been in the Clybourn district since 1988, would be protected if the zoning regulations were to change, Hopkins said. Today, there are about 180 craft breweries in Illinois, about 80 of which are in Chicago, said Justin Maynard, executive director of the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild. Just four years ago, there were only about 20 craft breweries in the state with roughly half of them in the city. Goose Island, now owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev, was Chicago's first craft brewery. At the time, Goose Island founder John Hall said he didn't know much about the advantage of the planned manufacturing districts, or PMDs, but quickly came to realize their benefits. He was able to invest in the site without worrying about conflicts with residential developments popping up next door, he said. Goose Island even brewed a beer called PMD Mild, a nod to its industrial setting. Advertisement Still, Hall said it makes sense to evaluate whether the zoning districts could be better utilized. "With today's economic situation, it's obvious the city needs more tax revenue. It's time for a review, but you can understand the value of them," said Hall, who's no longer involved with the daily operation of Goose Island. The North Branch corridor, to be followed by the Pilsen and Little Village corridors, is first on deck for the city's review of its 26 industrial corridors, which encompass the 15 planned manufacturing districts. North Branch meetings begin next week; the meeting schedule is available on the city website. Zoning changes will be initiated by property owners and developers and subject to City Council approval, said Peter Strazzabosco, deputy commissioner for the city Department of Planning and Development, in an email. The planning department will develop "framework plans" with potential land use changes based on each corridor's "individual attributes, market trends and extensive community input," he said. "While an affordable location is a fundamental concern for virtually any business, there is no known shortage of available space for brewing and ancillary sales activities in any zoning district where they are permitted," Strazzabosco said. Breweries and distilleries conduct business in zoning districts other than the PMDs, Strazzabosco said. And one of the main objectives of the city's review is to support investment in industrial areas, including for breweries and distilleries, while also addressing the needs of traditional manufacturers, he said. Advertisement Some say the city should have acted sooner to support industry. Steve DeBretto, executive director of the Industrial Council of Nearwest Chicago, said "piecemeal" zoning changes and general lack of support from City Hall in recent years have threatened the availability of manufacturing space. "There's been no uniform plan or message regarding PMDs. They're starting to talk about it now, but the unfortunate reality on the ground is that it's fueled (real estate) speculation, absent a comprehensive plan," Debretto said. The Koval Distillery, in Chicago's Ravenswood neighborhood, is bursting at the seams May 31, 2016, with equipment and supplies. The company has searched for a larger facility for four years but has strugged to find affordable manufacturing space in areas that also will draw tourists to a tasting room. (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune) The former Finkl steel plant site is central to the debate of whether manufacturing districts protect industry or inhibit needed change. When A. Finkl & Sons moved to a larger facility on the Far South Side in 2014, it left more than 20 acres in the North Branch industrial corridor ripe for redevelopment. A brownfield redevelopment plan for a 34-acre swath of land in the North Branch corridor, which included the Finkl site, included several possible scenarios for an "urban innovation district." According to the plan completed in December 2015, such a district could include research and development offices, tech offices, and a brewery and distillery, all while creating as many as 5,500 jobs. But Mike Holzer, executive director of North Branch Works, the nonprofit community development corporation that commissioned the redevelopment plan, said city representatives told him in an April 1 meeting that they'd like to consider allowing other uses, including residential, in the North Branch corridor. "It's feeling like this is already a done deal. So we're looking at getting what we need, as opposed to what we want. And what we need is to hold the line on residential and big-box retail and create the innovation district," Holzer said. Advertisement Like Koval, many of the city's largest and fastest-growing craft breweries consider Chicago to be crucial to their identities. Revolution Brewing's portfolio includes beers like Fist City, marketed as a Chicago pale ale, and Rev Pils, a Chicago pilsner. Josh Deth, founder of Revolution Brewing, said he didn't seek out a planned manufacturing district for his recently expanded 90,000-square-foot brewery, but the building was affordable and available precisely because it was in the Kennedy district. And the brewery's truck traffic isn't bothering any neighbors, he said. "It's nice because you feel like it was intended for you and you belong there and you don't have to fight with the neighbors," Deth said. In April 2014, Lagunitas Brewing Co. began production in its 300,000-square-foot brewery in the Douglas Park neighborhood also in a planned manufacturing district. Each week, "thousands" of people visit the brewery every week for tastings and tours, via trains and tour buses, bringing economic activity to neighboring Pilsen, said Lagunitas spokeswoman Karen Hamilton. "I think anytime you have an area that's struggling, the more people you can bring in, the better," Hamilton said, speaking generally on the economic benefit of craft breweries. Advertisement Like Minds Brewing, a much smaller operation with a 10,000-square-foot brewery in the West Town neighborhood, is also within a planned manufacturing district, the increasingly bustling Kinzie corridor that extends west from the Loop. Zach Houlahan, co-owner of Like Minds, which also has a brewery in Milwaukee, said he could see some benefit to allowing other zoning uses. Additional residences in the area would mean more people drinking Like Minds beer, which would support a taproom the brewery is planning to build, he said. "We assumed with the proximity to public transit, the United Center and downtown, that this area would sooner or later pop off," Houlahan said. Of course, craft breweries and distilleries are but one small piece of a complicated puzzle. Larger market forces are work: High-end office, residential and retail developments are branching out from the Loop, compressing areas previously designated for manufacturing and other business uses. Brian Ripp, a commercial real estate broker at Strauss Realty specializing in industrial property, said there are still plenty of properties zoned for manufacturing in Chicago that could work for breweries and distilleries. Planned manufacturing districts and their restricted zoning are antiquated, Ripp said, and "their day has come and gone." "The city can't continue to support what's become these industrial ghettos," Ripp said. Advertisement For now, Koval's still looking for its new home. Having outgrown its current Ravenswood facilities, Koval hopes a new location will include a 40,000-square-foot distillery and tasting room. Though Chicago's distilleries are far fewer than its breweries, Hart believes the potential is there to capture tourism in the same spirit as the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, a Kentucky Distillers' Association program that promotes the bourbon industry in Kentucky. The planned manufacturing districts don't have to be preserved exactly as they are, Hart said, but she hopes the city will find a way to preserve its long tradition of supporting industry for this new wave of craft beverage makers. "Chicago is a manufacturing town. We make things. The City of Big Shoulders isn't necessarily the city of laptops. And while that may be the future, a lot of towns make that their future. Chicago's always been great because it has everything," Hart said. gtrotter@tribpub.com Twitter @GregTrotterTrib U.S. workers are more confident that they'll be able to retire someday. Just not until they're 70. Some 23 percent of Americans with jobs said they planned on being septuagenarian employees, up from 16 percent in 2009, according to Willis Towers Watson, a human resource consulting firm. While the average employee calculates he or she will retire at age 65, as a group they place the odds that they'll still be working at age 70 at 50 percent. If love of the job is what keeps someone working until or beyond 70, that's one thing. (Or beyond age 80: Hello, Mssrs. Buffett and Bogle.) But the survey of 5,100 U.S. employees, and 30,000 in total, in 19 countries, found that employees who expected to work longer were "less healthy, more stressed and more likely to feel stuck in their jobs than those who expect to retire earlier." The evocative and somewhat creepy term used for these people is "hidden pensioners." An even less happy survey result is that 40 percent of those planning to work into their 70s feel stuck in their jobs. Of those planning to retire at age 65 or earlier, about 28 percent feel that way."The decline of defined benefit plans and employer subsidies for early retirement removed one tool that encouraged that orderly rate of workers retiring," said Steve Nyce, a senior economist at Willis Towers Watson. There is some good news in the survey, however: In the United States, and around the world, the level of short-term financial worry has fallen. Here are other highlights (or lowlights, as the case may be) from the survey: --Employees in the U.S. are more pessimistic about whether their generation will be "much worse off in retirement" compared with their parents' generation. In America, 76 percent agreed or strongly agreed with that statement. Globally, 66 percent agreed. "The U.K., Japan, the U.S.-the more developed economies-tend to be less optimistic about the next generation," said Nyce. --A significantly smaller percentage of women than men feel confident about having enough savings to live comfortably for 25 years in retirement. The biggest gaps by gender here were among those between the ages of 20 to 29, and those age 50 or older. --The percentage of men 65 or older still on the job in the U.S. was 22 percent last year, up from 15 percent in 2003. Old age labor participation rates should rise a fair bit over the next decade or two, said Nyce. In the 1960s, the participation rate of older workers in the labor force was around 25 percent, he said. The countries seeing the biggest leaps in old age labor force participation over the past five years or so include the U.K., where it almost doubled to 13 percent, and Canada, where it stands at 17 percent, up from 9 percent in 2001. But everything pales next to the rate in South Korea, where it's 42 percent, up from 39 percent in 1989. Smartphones and tablets aside, tech giant Samsung has found success in a side business: pharmaceuticals. The company recently announced that its arthritis drug is one step closer to Food and Drug Administration approval, paving the way for the tech giant's first drug to enter the lucrative U.S. market. Samsung is looking to release a version of Remicade, a drug currently sold by Johnson & Johnson. The medication would be a biosimilar, which means a replica drug similar to a generic alternative that is offered at a lower price than the original drug. Advertisement Samsung is relatively new to the drug industry. Since 2011, it has invested billions in its pharmaceutical companies Samsung Bioepis, which focuses on biosimilar drugs, and Samsung Biologics, which manufactures original drugs developed by other companies. Samsung's choice to invest in a different industry represents a shift in the company's focus as its main business, hardware, begins to slow. And its investments seems to be paying off. It currently has a biosimilar replica of the Pfizer drug Enbrel, which treats rheumatoid arthritis, available in the European market. Advertisement Samsung isn't the only big tech company with fingers in a different pie. Other tech giants have taken on side businesses, such as search engine giant Google, which is heavily invested in the renewable energy business. After securing a deal with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to buy and sell energy, Google has been steadily purchasing wind and solar farms from around the globe. Its latest purchase, a wind farm in Kenya slated to operate 365 wind turbines, is the company's 22nd renewable energy investment since 2009. Canon, a Japanese hardware giant most known for its cameras, printers and photocopiers, just won exclusive rights to purchase medical equipment from struggling hardware manufacturer Toshiba. After a competitive auction process, Canon won the bid for Toshiba Medical Systems, a subsidiary of the larger Toshiba corporation that manufactures CT scan, X-Ray and MRI machines. Canon has been working hard to focus and expand its medical machine offerings as demand for its high-end cameras, which are being replaced by smartphone devices, declines. For these companies looking to branch out, the diversification strategy is one way to stay relevant in a quickly shifting market. Samsung is one such company moving full speed ahead in an entirely new market. Chance the Rapper's father Ken Bennett, an adviser to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, advised the 23-year-old rapper not to sign with Sony after dropping his "10 Day" mixtape in 2012. "They were talking about printing up contracts then ... my dad called me and he was just like, 'Son, I know you're in New York. I know you're doing something really important, but remember: don't sign anything,'" Chance said Wednesday during an hour-long talk hosted by the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics. "And I was like, 'Damn, is he in this (expletive)?' And moral of the story, I didn't sign that (expletive)." Advertisement The South Side native, who was born Chancelor Bennett, still isn't affiliated with a major label. His "Coloring Book" mixtape, released last month via Apple Music, became the first streaming-only project to debut in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart. At Wednesday's sold-out event, Chance also touched on his social activism, the media's coverage of gun violence and the influence of his parents, who sat in the front row. Housed on the former sales floor of a furniture store and located behind a grand new bar, Steppenwolf's new 1700 Theatre is designed to offer opportunities for more casual theatergoing, showcasing the work of this company's storied ensemble of artists. Great idea. And now let's hope that every play staged therein is better than the first. Advertisement "Voice Lessons," a facile and smug import from Los Angeles, is pretty wretched. I'm not sure I've ever seen quite the like at Steppenwolf. I'll happily stipulate that any evening that contains Laurie Metcalf, whom I regard as one of the best actors in America, is not a total bust. Just a few weeks ago I watched Metcalf in "Misery" on Broadway; she still managed to unleash a Tony Award-nominated performance despite an acting partner, Bruce Willis, who was not doing much of anything. It was a stunner. Advertisement For a while, I thought Justin Tanner's farce I suppose that is the term was headed into "Misery" territory. Here's the setup: A lower-middle-class community theater actress named Virginia (played by Metcalf) walks into the studio of a snooty but impoverished voice teacher named Nate (French Stewart, of "3rd Rock from the Sun" fame). She wants to show off all the tricks she's learned at the low end of the theatrical food chain and perform such classics as "My Heart Will Go On" from "Titanic." This allows for much amusement at the expense of such artistically unsophisticated folk which is, for me anyway, too smug a setup to be either tasteful or funny, given that the play is implicitly asking the audience, especially an audience like the one at Steppenwolf, to feel superior to this Virginia, with her fake-crying and bad fashion. I thought maybe she'd end up throttling her guy for one of Metcalf's gifts is the provision of an unsettling subtext to a chirpy personality. But no. Then I thought we might be headed into "Educating Rita," where the teacher might learn something from the raw honesty of his student. Nope. MOST READ ENTERTAINMENT NEWS THIS HOUR So where does "Voice Lessons" go? I can't really say, other than it rattles around a lot and, in time, we get into the realm of sexual jealousy once a third character, Sheryl (Maile Flanagan), shows up. And at one truly eye-popping point Stewart gets his kit off, as they say in the United Kingdom. All his kit. Quite the voice lesson. He should charge more. Some of the good folks around me were laughing, and Metcalf does hit some gags, as does Stewart, who is a lot better of a partner than Willis. But, oy, this script. It's more like something you used to see at the Royal George Theatre across the street, when it was under the previous management. But then, some of those farces were good farces. Which this is not at all. I think part of the clue to the problem here lies in the program, wherein you find the term "originally directed by Bart Delorenzo." Let's just say "originally directed by" needed to be replaced with "directed at Steppenwolf by," especially in a new space that is far more intimate than any performance venue in Steppenwolf's past, including that famous church basement. Especially when tickets are $75. The production, which has a perfunctory set, is scaled for a much larger setting some of the stuff in this play just does not need you to be so up close and personal. For much of the hour I fought off a strong impulse to flatten myself against the back wall. Advertisement Chris Jones is a Tribune critic. cjones5@tribpub.com Twitter @ChrisJonesTrib "Voice Lessons" - 1.5 STARS When: Through June 11 Where: Steppenwolf 1700 Theatre, 1700 N. Halsted St. Running time: 1 hour Advertisement Tickets: $75 at 312-335-1650 or steppenwolf.org RELATED STORIES: Why Steppenwolf's new Front Bar signals a big change in the business 'Constellations' takes a beautiful look at love out of time Steppenwolf plans new bar, cafe and theater on Halsted Big changes, notable names at Steppenwolf for 2016-17 season Advertisement Anna D. Shapiro at Steppenwolf Theatre: Work in progress Watch the latest movie trailers. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 126 Woody introduces the gang to a homemade spork toy with self-esteem issues in "Toy Story 4." Read the review. (Pixar / AP) His very name suggests "malevolence." But Malvolio, the nearest thing Shakespeare provided to an antagonist in "Twelfth Night," gets a chance to air his numerous grievances against the world in Tim Crouch's comic solo "I, Malvolio," running through Sunday at Chicago Shakespeare Theater as part of the yearlong Shakespeare 400 celebration. Crouch, a British artist who has done earlier solos embodying other Shakespearean characters such as Banquo and Caliban, will return to Navy Pier later this year with the premiere of his show "The Complete Deaths," a comic deconstruction of all the onstage deaths in Shakespeare as performed by the clown troupe Spymonkey. Consider "I, Malvolio" a curtain-raiser from the distance of several months for that coming extravaganza. Advertisement The title captures the split between the "I" of Crouch a performer kicking (lightly) against the conventions of theatrical storytelling and the "most notoriously abused" steward of Olivia's household in Shakespeare's original. When we enter the upstairs theater at Chicago Shakespeare, Crouch's Malvolio is already onstage in a torn and stained union suit, clutching a piece of paper, muttering to himself, his famous yellow stockings and cross-garters puddled at his feet. "I'm not mad," he tells us. Insane? Perhaps not. Angry? Oh my, yes. RELATED: MOST READ ENTERTAINMENT NEWS THIS HOUR Advertisement And why not? He's been the victim of a practical joke by drunken hooligans who played with his unrequited love for his mistress. That piece of paper turns out to be the fake love note, purportedly from Olivia, left for Malvolio in a plot cooked up by her maid and by Olivia's drunk-and-debauched uncle, Sir Toby Belch. Sure, Malvolio is a sanctimonious buzzkill. But where do we draw the line between mockery and persecution? Crouch confronts us with our own crude failings, using off-the-cuff riffs about our slovenly ways and admonishing us to sit up straight. "Quaffing and drinking will undo you," he advises a man with a beer in the front row. "By the looks of it, it already has." He gets in shots at the age of the audience and at the general state of affairs in America including "your frankly ridiculous political structure." (Hard to argue against that point, especially this year.) At times, the speed of Crouch's delivery and his occasional muted volume make it hard to catch every verbal flight. But Malvolio's tone of withering disdain comes through loud and clear. In the most discomfiting segments, Crouch also brings a series of audience members up to further abuse him from obeying the "kick me" sign on his back to actually aiding in his planned suicide-by-hanging. He instructs the kicker to aim for "that sweet spot between comedy and pain." And there are indeed moments where Crouch's Malvolio engages our sympathies with faint echoes of "King Lear," another "mad" character brought low by a combination of his own rigidity and the cruel plots of others. "Is this funny to you?" he asks us as he prepares to receive his kick. And of course it is. As Samuel Beckett once wrote, "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness." As long as it's not our own. But for the most part Crouch's metatheatrical adventures don't take us into dark and choppy waters. We get a Cliffs Notes summary of the tangled plot of "Twelfth Night," which in Crouch's telling makes a good case for stiff-necked Malvolio as the sane one. (Familiarity with the source text helps, but you won't be lost if you don't remember every detail.) We're confronted by our own complicity in enjoying the joke at another's expense that goes on a little too long. "We go to very difficult and dangerous places, but we do it safely," Crouch says. And though Malvolio promised "I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you," Crouch gives us a theoretical swat on our collective expectations as spectators and sends us on our way, more bemused than bruised. Kerry Reid is a freelance critic. "I, Malvolio" 3 STARS Advertisement When: Through Sunday Where: Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand Ave. Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes Tickets: $38 at 312-595-5600 or chicagoshakes.com RELATED STORIES: A bold anti-war take on Shakespeare: War is hell. And often pointless. Advertisement Why parody trumps original content. Even in restaurants. 20 hot shows to see this summer Watch the latest movie trailers. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 122 Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, anger management student, in "Dark Phoenix." The film, the latest in the "X-Men" franchise, costars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jessica Chastain. Read the review. (Twentieth Century Fox) In the watercolor world of Scottish design brand Bluebellgray, large-scale flowers at peak bloom crawl up shower curtains and cascade down cushions. Jewel-tone stripes spread across pillows and art prints, and small pastel shapes triangles, dashes, leaves adorn lampshades and sheets. It's the vibrant vision of Scottish artist Fiona Douglas who studied painting at the Glasgow School of Art before turning her attention to textile design. Now her business, Bluebellgray, is booming or perhaps we should say "blooming" with retailers selling her fabrics, throws, rugs, trays, bathmats (and so on) all over the globe. Advertisement The Taransay shower curtain by Bluebellgray is available from U.S. retailers. (Bluebellgray) Items that feel especially summery include the floral Taransay shower curtain, with its big brushstrokes and deep tones of red, purple and green, and the Lomond pillow, with its boldly colored stripes bleeding into one another, recalling a coastal landscape. Unlike more traditional floral designs, the painterly qualities and purposeful imprecision of Bluebellgray prints keep them from looking too perfect or prim. Plus, Douglas has a background in abstract painting, which she has incorporated into the brand. "I like the aesthetic of florals with abstract pieces," she told Design Sponge during a tour of her Glasgow home. "I find it difficult to do 'matchy matchy,' so I like things to sit together in a kind of haphazard manner." If you're still hesitant to bring floral prints into your home decor, take Douglas' advice (told to Canadian retailer Indigo): "Choose a few bold statements pieces and mix with bright block colors to contrast." For a vibe that's eclectic and casual, she says, "Don't be afraid of mixing a variety of designs in different and scales and patterns." Advertisement For more information and retailers, visit bluebellgray.com. Laura Pearson is a freelance writer. lpearson@chicagotribune.com Twitter @tislaurapearson RELATED STORIES: Millennial decor: High style, low budget Victorian-era cleaning methods still work in today's households How to buy a blender or juicer A year after opening, The 606 has been everything people expected, for better or worse. The sheer volume of runners, cyclists, strollers, families and others using the 2.7-mile Bloomingdale Trail, which is under the umbrella of The 606's trail and park system, suggests it's a hit, despite a couple of hiccups. Advertisement But go off the elevated trail a bit, and opinions differ on what the trail once a railway for freight trains means for the 80,000 residents who live within a 10-minute walk of The 606, which slices through the city's Northwest Side. It's definitely driven new residential developments in the neighborhoods around it: Wicker Park, Bucktown, Humboldt Park and Logan Square. But some longtime residents in the neighborhoods say diversity is on the wane while property values and property taxes are on the rise, stirring fears that homeowners as well as renters will be priced out those neighborhoods. The area has been gentrifying for years, but some residents are worried the trail will only accelerate that. Jennifer Velazquez and her family use the trail and consider it a nice space, but her main concern is that it, along with other projects, may nudge them out of Logan Square given the expected property tax increase on the Kimball Avenue home her father bought down the block from the trail 10 years ago. Advertisement "We're at a point where we've lost families, but we don't want to keep losing any more. So I think if we stabilize the amount of property taxes or rent prices to keep everyone where they are right now, I think that will be a good thing to see," said Velazquez, 21, a member of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association whose parents are Mexican immigrants. "If we keep going at this rate, I feel like there's going to be no more Hispanic families in Logan Square." Jennifer Velazquez and her family use The 606 trail and consider it a nice space, but her main concern is that it, along with other projects, may nudge them out of the Logan Square neighborhood as housing costs rise. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune) At the same time, neighbors have found it to be a much-needed and attractive commuting route. It's not uncommon to see people in their work clothes taking the trail home like Marybeth Moore, who walks a scenic route to work at Josephinum Academy near North and Western avenues. "It's a nice way to start and end my day," said Moore, 27, who lives along Humboldt Boulevard two blocks from the trail and near where new luxury homes under construction are priced close to $1 million. Since it opened last June 6, people have incorporated the trail into their daily lives, even when it is freezing cold and snowing sideways, said Jamie Simone, interim director of The Trust for Public Land's Chicago regional office, which managed the $95 million project. "Every time we're up there, it seems to be very well-used and well-loved," she said, adding: "We all thought it would be really successful based on the community's desire for an outdoor amenity, knowing how people embrace biking in the city of Chicago, knowing it crosses CTA transit lines, both buses and the Blue Line, and it crosses to the on-street bike network." There's even been some discussion about extending the trail east, even as fundraising with a goal of $14 million continues to complete the parks hugging The 606. "If we can connect the existing 606 trail to the other side of the river, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities for bike commuters," said Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd. During a speech last month at the City Club of Chicago luncheon, he laid out his vision to extend the trail east from its easternmost point at Ashland Avenue to below the Kennedy Expressway and over the river via an 1899 swing bridge once used for freight train service. The mix of trail users Advertisement Sure, the trail can be busy the officials have no official count for daily users but fans see it as an escape from headache-inducing traffic jams. Cyclists, runners, dog walkers and others mostly coexist peacefully, except for the occasional collision, not unlike the situation on the lakefront trail. There are no stop signs or traffic lights. "We get a good breeze when we're up here sometimes. It takes your mind off a lot. You don't have to watch out for a car," said Tommie Campbell, 41, who walks along the trail for exercise three times a week from Kedzie to Ashland avenues. While reviews have been largely glowing, some users have complained about the lack of public toilets on or along the trail. But that isn't exactly deterring visitors. As the weather continues to warm up, more people are ditching the gym and opting to sweat it out on the trail. On a recent day, Jessica Medina took the Blue Line train from the Logan Square stop to the Division station and then the Ashland bus north to Walsh Park, the trail's eastern terminus. Medina, 45, recruited two friends to walk the entire trail west to the Ridgeway Avenue trailhead, where they cheered and proudly snapped a photo before taking public transportation home. "We got to see the city more and get out of the house," said Joel Morell, 27, who ventured onto the trail for the first time in May. "It was long and tiring and the best feeling ever." Advertisement The trio plans to start making round trips on the trail by the end of the summer to lose weight and get in shape. "Everybody's nice. People are motivating, giving us high-fives," Medina said. "It's very cool to be above the city," said Dustin Majewski, 33, who for nearly five years has rented a place on Albany Avenue that's steps away from the trail. He goes on a 20-minute run with his 9-year-old rescue pit bull "Pig" about three times a week including during the winter. He also rides the trail at times to commute by bike to work downtown, cutting through neighborhoods to head east. "I love it. I think it's brilliant. It's great, it's recycled," he said. And it's not just people who are drawn to The 606: Lincoln Park Zoo's motion-activated critter cams installed at the east and west ends of the trail spotted squirrels, rabbits and raccoons on the trail and even bats were detected, by an audio monitoring system, zoo officials said. Neighborhood watch Velazquez, whose family has lived for a decade down the block from The 606, has seen Logan Square change over the past few years. Neighbors have moved out. Condos have replaced empty lots. Modest homes have been razed to make way for new, bigger houses. The store where she bought her prom dress and another shop where she picked flowers for her mom have closed. Bars and vegan restaurants have opened around her. She's considering working full time and attending Northeastern Illinois University part time to help contribute to the household as her family prepares for a property tax hike. Her father, a factory worker, is the sole income provider, so the family is looking at options including renting out the attic as an apartment for extra income, she said. Advertisement The city's most recent assessment used to calculate property taxes was completed prior to the opening of The 606 last year. Homeowners throughout the city will see a property tax hike on bills this summer because the city raised taxes to pay for pensions and Chicago Public Schools increased taxes to cover building projects and education costs. Just how proximity to The 606 is affecting property values and the housing market is being studied by the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University. Such results could be used in the consideration of strategies to preserve affordability and in the planning process for future trails, said Executive Director Geoff Smith. The housing stock is diverse along The 606 with condos and dense development along with higher-income households on the east end and single-family homes and small two- to four-flats and low- to moderate-income households farther west, he said. "The whole goal is to understand how this public investment that is an amenity ... how it affects the surrounding community," said Smith, who has lived near The 606 for the past nine years. The Logan Square and Avondale area, which is north of the trail, has been a hot housing market in recent years and is among the communities that have seen the strongest recovery in the Chicago housing market since the crash, he said. In April, the median sales price for a detached single-family home in Logan Square was $645,000 and $366,000 for an attached single-family home like a condo or townhouse, according to data provided by the Chicago Association of Realtors. Citywide, the median sales price was $225,000 for a detached single-family home and $321,000 for an attached single-family home. In recent weeks and months, community groups have protested against gentrification and proposed ideas to ease the burden for longtime residents who want to stay but fear getting priced out because of higher property tax bills or higher rents. Advertisement "If we're going to keep working-class families in the community, we need to quickly develop policies, ordinances and new laws that will help balance the development in the community," said Juliet de Jesus Alejandre, an organizer for the Logan Square Neighborhood Association. Skyrocketing property taxes have been the main complaint Ald. Roberto Maldonado said he has fielded from residents who live near the trail. Maldonado represents the 26th Ward, which includes Humboldt Park. John Knoerle, who lives on Bloomingdale Avenue, which runs parallel to The 606 elevated trail, was at first concerned about everything from crime to traffic to 606 users peering into his Bucktown home. We havent had any rubberneckers or gawkers, and thats been pleasant, said Knoerle, 67. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune) "That is a legitimate concern because that 606 has been marketed nationwide by the real estate industry, and everything that is around The 606 is like gold when it comes to real estate value," the alderman said. The 606 is certainly used as a selling point in many descriptions of home listings. Niko Apostal, principal broker of the Apostal Group, a residential brokerage firm at Coldwell Banker, adds: "One really nice thing about The 606, it opened up areas further west from Bucktown and Wicker Park." Maldonado never doubted The 606 would fast-track gentrification. That's why, he said, he didn't provide a letter of support to use tax increment financing funds for the project or attend last year's grand opening. Advertisement "A lot of people use it from the community, but a lot of people may not be using it some years down the road because they'll be living someplace else, removed from the neighborhood, from the place they called home for many years and maybe not be so close to it to be able to enjoy it," he said. More people, more problems? Initially, John Knoerle was concerned about everything from crime to traffic to trail users peering into his Bucktown home, which is 10 to 12 feet from the trail. "We haven't had any rubberneckers or gawkers, and that's been pleasant. I was afraid. They can see right into it (his home), especially at night with a light on they can see right into kitchen," said Knoerle, 67, who has lived on Bloomingdale Avenue since 1999. He draws the blinds in the living room so people are not able to stare at him. Although the trail is packed on weekends, Knoerle said there hasn't been any major traffic jams in his neighborhood. Though he does have a new transportation-related problem: cyclists speeding down his sidewalk. Other residents complained that visitors are taking up much of the street parking and requested parking permits, according to Maldonado's office. Advertisement Like anywhere in the city, the trail isn't immune to crime: Some thieves have targeted users. Marc Buslik, former Chicago police commander of the Shakespeare District who now serves in another role in the department, said the trail hasn't seen any crime wave to speak of. Security cameras are posted on The 606. In March, the Chicago Police Department, which patrols The 606 on foot, bike and all-terrain vehicles, issued a community alert notifying residents of three incidents in which cyclists late at night were knocked off their bikes and robbed. During one incident, the victim struggled with the attackers over a handgun, police said. Within days, a 17-year-old boy was arrested and charged as a minor with robbery in connection with one of the attacks, Chicago police said. Other crimes have been reported, from pot smoking and beer drinking to battery, according to nearly a dozen police reports obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Other than the rising property taxes and speeding bikes, Knoerle said his other concerns never became reality in The 606's first year. "It was not the complete nightmare I feared it would be," he said. Advertisement lvivanco@tribpub.com Twitter @lvivanco Save the date: Saturday is the big block party marking The 606's first birthday. The free event kicks off at 10 a.m. with a festival at Humboldt Boulevard between Wabansia and Cortland avenues. There'll be plenty of food as well as live music for a variety of tastes: salsa, alternative country, Latin ska/reggae and children's acts. Children can create crafts at the Julia de Burgos Park just north of the trail at Albany Avenue, and play games at Walsh Park at Ashland Avenue, the trail's eastern end. Performances and processions will move along the trail. An "illumination hour" will cap off the party with attendees making objects that light up and walking on the trail from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. Theaster Gates attends a "community exchange" event at the University of Chicago Arts Incubator in Chicago on Aug. 3, 2015. The monthly gatherings are typically intended for sharing information about arts events in the Washington Park community, but Gates spoke at the meeting to address concerns about the future of the DuSable Museum of African American History. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune) Just west of historical Washington Park, in an impoverished South Side neighborhood pocked by empty lots, rampant unemployment and crime, the University of Chicago is poised to rev up its emerging "Arts Block," a cluster of cultural enterprises nestled in early 20th century buildings across from the CTA Green Line stop at Garfield Boulevard. Plans to raise an estimated $10 million in private funding for a Green Line Arts Center and an adjacent outdoor gathering space are expected to be announced Saturday. The center would rise within a vacant terra cotta-and-brick building that until 1935 was home to Ciro's jazz club and more recently a food and liquor store. Its new venues would include a cinema to show rare films of interest to the African-American community, a live performance theater, a dance studio and creative space for resident artists. Advertisement The latest phase of the Arts Block initiative, led by renowned artist, entrepreneur and U. of C. professor Theaster Gates, adds to an array of arts-oriented projects put in place on the university-owned block since 2013. An Arts Incubator now occupies a former liquor store and a retro-chic cafe took over a former currency exchange. The strip also includes an art book store and offices for a think tank that explores using the arts as a tool for urban redevelopment. "I believe art-making artists and culture are really significant ways to begin a cycle of saying that a place matters, that the people in a place matter, that the spaces that are pre-existing are usable and worthy of being used," said Gates, who heads the university's Arts + Public Life initiative and has led several arts-related redevelopment projects throughout the South Side. Advertisement An infusion of art and culture can "jump-start other people's desire to invest in a place," he said. The expansion plans, to be unveiled by Gates, university President Robert Zimmer and Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, come ahead of a decision this summer, possibly this month, on whether the Barack Obama Foundation will build a presidential library in Washington Park or Jackson Park. The university and Dowell say the announcement is not connected to the pending library decision. But Dowell, whose ward includes the Washington Park neighborhood, said the development offers "a reason for the Obamas to see Washington Park as a viable option for the library." The project, on Garfield Boulevard between Prairie Avenue and Martin Luther King Drive, is a key stretch of real estate, serving as the western entry to Washington Park and the University of Chicago campus in Hyde Park. The university is still developing a formal price tag for the endeavor, but Gates estimates the arts center at $8 million and the public space at $2 million. "As an urban research institution, the University of Chicago is committed to understanding and developing solutions to urban challenges in our city and around the globe," Zimmer said in a statement. "We believe the arts can play an essential role in making that commitment a reality." The university already has invested $10 million in the Arts Block for buying property and renovating its Arts Incubator, a graceful collection of galleries, artist studios and a woodshop that fosters the work of local artists and students. The incubator has drawn 30,000 people to 650 free events and worked with 350 teens, almost all from the South Side, according to the university. From the corner of Garfield and Prairie, passers-by can gaze into the incubator's main gallery, where the current exhibit explores prom as a coming-of-age ritual on the South Side. The windows reveal feather- and sequin-trimmed gowns by Nigerian-American designer Suzette Opara, who works out of a South Side studio. Whoopi Goldberg's daughter Alex Martin wore one of her designs at this year's Academy Awards. Strolling east, the views shift to diners digging into shrimp and grits or catfish po' boys at the Currency Exchange Cafe, and to shelves of rare and arts-oriented books at BING Art Books, two enterprises owned by Gates. Advertisement Los Angeles-based architectural firm Johnston Marklee has designed the concept for the planned Green Line Arts Center, east of the bookstore, retaining the terra cotta facade of the former nightclub but adding a modern third floor with a dramatically peaked roof. If funds can be raised in time, the center would open in 2017, abutting a new public green space and pavilion. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > The White Box Gallery, a workspace for artists and students carved out of a former muffler shop, already anchors the eastern end of the green expanse. The university is working with Washington Park residents and Chicago-based arts organizations as it develops plans for the center and the public space. These efforts to involve the community have helped ease some wariness about the university's earlier push into nearby Woodlawn, Dowell said. In Woodlawn, she said, "there was a sense that they were coming in and taking over." Still, a number of South Side residents who support the Arts Block project take issue with certain aspects. Some say the loss of the grocery and liquor store hurts in a neighborhood where food stores are scarce. Others say more could be done to bring Washington Park residents into the programming. And still others say the original CTA station, built in the block in 1892 and now used for CTA storage, should be turned over to a community group to convert to a Washington Park historical museum. Overall, however, the project appears to be well-received by a number of South Side residents who remember the block being in a bad way. "There were a lot of undesirables, they would snatch purses," said retired CTA employee Ronald Wardlow, a former area resident who was paying a visit to the Hustleman shaved ice stand across the street from the university development. "Since the alcohol is gone, all that bad environment is gone." Advertisement Instead, the Arts Block exposes young people to life's possibilities, he said. "It helps them achieve their art dreams. ... They may have something they want to pursue." kbergen@chicagotribune.com A once-vacant apartment building in North Chicago will soon be home to six low-income families. Officials gathered Thursday to unveil the recently redeveloped Greenfield Apartments, part of the North Chicago Strategic Revitalization Plan that will attempt to add more affordable housing units in North Chicago to reduce the rate of foreclosed properties in the Uptown, Midtown and Argonne Heights neighborhoods. Advertisement The Greenfield Apartments went into foreclosure in January 2014, and the Lake County Residential Development Corporation bought the six-unit complex from First Midwest Bank in January. The corporation installed new mechanical systems, floors, plumbing, electric, windows and doors. Mary Ellen Tamasy, president of the corporation, said First Midwest Bank contacted them because it knew the corporation was searching for locations to rehab. The Illinois Housing Development Authority gave the bank about $70,000 in state tax credits for selling the property to the corporation, she said. Advertisement Developer John DeSanto had the corporation put a sign up at the Greenfield Apartments that included phone numbers to answer rental questions after neighbors kept approaching the building. Tamasy said they received 10 calls on the first day regarding the property, and two of the apartments have already been rented. In two weeks the residents can begin moving in. "I can remember when this space was actually a gas station here in the city, because I worked at it," North Chicago Mayor Leon Rockingham said at a Thursday ribbon-cutting ceremony. "But over time, things do change, and this is change for the better ... This is change to give residents of North Chicago an opportunity to have a nice place to stay." The nonprofit corporation, which has been building homes in Lake County for 38 years, plans to build 14 more affordable housing units in North Chicago. Tamasy hopes to have the 20 units completed within the next two years. "Whenever you bring families and young people into the community, it starts to move throughout the whole area," Rockingham said. "Also, as more families acquire homes, it also helps us with economic development because the residents need services, and businesses realize that and want to come into the community to develop business." The Greenfield Apartments will be open to residents making no more than 80 percent of the average income for their household size, Tamasy said. Rent will range from $675 to $1,125 per month depending on household income and apartment size. North Chicago Ald. Bonny Mayfield, 2nd Ward, said it helps the city to have apartments rented, which also decreases vandalism in neighborhoods. "This project is going to bring in new families, and I'm sure some will be young families with children, so it's going to help the city grow," she said. "We want to have new young families in North Chicago ... These projects for affordable housing and the housing being so beautiful we will attract more young families." Other developments will include housing for veterans with four rental units on 1235 Victoria Ave. Preference will be given to veterans who are homeless or at-risk for homelessness and make less than 50 percent of the average income for Lake County. Tamasy said they hope to begin construction by September. Advertisement Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Additionally, single family homes will be rented at 1910 Wallace Ave., and another location is still being decided, she said. An employer-assisted housing program will host eight single family homes at 1624-1626 Arrington Drive and 1708-1718 Kennedy Drive. "We've been working with Jelly Belly and AbbVie to promote those homes to their employees to help them become homeowners, so they don't have to drive so far to get to their job," Tamasy said. North Chicago donated some city-owned vacant land to the corporation to begin building new homes. Additionally, the Lake County HOME Program provided a grant of $187,000 to help with renovations, and plans to provide up to $600,000 for future revitalization projects, said Jodi Gingiss, community development administrator for Lake County. The Illinois Attorney General Foreclosure Settlement Funds also gave $50,0000 for the Greenfield Apartments. "Walking into an apartment like this, you know it's going to make a family really, really happy and provide a better quality of life for them," said Christine Moran, managing director for the Illinois Housing Development Authority. mejones@tripub.com Advertisement Twitter @MeganAsh_Jones Chicago Public Schools' discipline of a teacher who used a racial slur during a classroom discussion may have been short-sighted, an appellate court ruled this week, but did not violate the longtime instructor's constitutional rights. Lincoln Brown's decision to launch what the court described as an "impromptu lesson on racial epithets" to a group of sixth-graders several years ago ultimately led Judge Diane Wood, chief of the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and author of the opinion on Brown's case, to cite a quip former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made to a magazine writer. Advertisement "Justice Scalia once said that he wished all federal judges were given a stamp that read 'stupid but constitutional,' " Wood wrote. "As (Scalia) was implying, not everything that is undesirable, annoying, or even harmful amounts to a violation of the law, much less a constitutional problem." The dispute began when Brown confiscated a note passed between students in his Murray Elementary classroom. The message included a set of hip-hop lyrics that used profanity and a racial epithet, according to court records. Advertisement The court said Brown "used this episode as an opportunity to conduct what appears to have been a well-intentioned but poorly executed discussion of why such words are hurtful and must not be used." According to a legal filing from CPS, Brown asked students to explain "why blacks can call each other the 'N-word' and not get mad, but when whites like him do it, blacks get angry." Brown also asked students if they "ever thought about why blacks are killed in movies first," according to the district. Murray's principal, who was observing Brown's classroom at the time, decided the incident warranted disciplinary action and ultimately suspended the teacher for five days for violating a CPS policy that bars the use of "verbally abusive language to or in front of students." The Chicago Board of Education concurred with the suspension and formally censured Brown with a "warning resolution" in May 2012. Brown filed a lawsuit challenging his dismissal in U.S. District Court, which dismissed his claims, leading Brown to appeal. In its ruling, the appeals court found that Brown's free speech argument "fails right out of the gate," because prior cases have established public employees' speech rights fall under "a special set of rules for First Amendment purposes." Brown also failed to persuade the court that district policies were so vague that they violated his rights to due process. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > "Brown's real frustration seems to be that the policy does not distinguish between using the word in an educational manner from its use as a slur directed toward a student or colleague. While we understand his frustration, his only solace is in Justice Scalia's stamp," the court ruled. Advertisement CPS did not comment on the court decision, pointing instead to the legal brief it filed in the appellate case. Brown still teaches at Murray, a high-performing Hyde Park magnet school that serves a largely African-American student body. He did not respond to a request for comment Friday. "Brown is indignant that he was suspended for using a racial slur while attempting to teach his students why such language is inappropriate. His frustration is understandable, but it is not legally actionable," the appellate court ruled. "The Board may have acted in a short-sighted way when it suspended him for his effort to educate the students about a sensitive and socially important issue, but it did not trample on his First Amendment rights." jjperez@tribpub.com Twitter @PerezJr A group marches toward the Wear Orange Party for Peace to raise awareness against gun violence at Harold Washington Playlot Park on June 2, 2016, in Chicago. The nationwide event is held in conjunction with National Gun Violence Awareness Day. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune) A woman in a bright orange shirt embraced a woman wearing bright orange earrings. A man spun an orange hula hoop around his waist while a woman held up an orange sign that read "guns down peace up." The occasion was the second annual Wear Orange Party for Peace event at Harold Washington Playlot Park in Hyde Park on what would have Hadiya Pendleton's 19th birthday. Advertisement Hadiya was 15 when she was killed Jan. 29, 2013, as she and some schoolmates were hanging out at a park a few blocks away from King College Prep High School. Her slaying garnered national attention and she quickly became a symbol of innocent victims in Chicago. "A lot of people at the school were really devastated by it all and I was completely devastated by it all as well, but I think Hadiya's spirit really pushed us to try to create something larger, something that will stop this from happening to a lot of other people," said Nza-Ari Khepra, 19, a friend of Hadiya's. Advertisement Project Orange Tree, which helped stage the event Thursday, arose from a decision by Hadiya's friends to wear orange April 1-4, 2015. The color was chosen because it's "symbolic of the orange that hunters wear when they go hunting, and when they go hunting they wear orange to show they are not the target," Khepra said. "We flipped that on our head and we said, 'We're not the target, we don't want to be the next victim of Chicago's gun violence,'" Khepra said. People were encouraged to wear orange to the event to raise awareness about gun violence. Gwendolyn Baxter, 56, wore orange sandals and a bright orange shirt that read "Sisterhood" on the front. On the back was a picture of her shyly smiling son, Larry Harper, who was killed in December 2003 at age 24. "He had just left home after putting up a Christmas tree," Baxter said. After his death, Baxter threw herself into working to prevent gun-related deaths and establishing support networks with other mothers who had lost a child to gun violence. "I keep busy because I do know that there is a solution," she said. "We can't sit and do nothing. We need to help our young people." Thursday's event included live music, food, dancing and stories from people who had lost loved ones to gun violence. Last month was the deadliest May in Chicago since 1995, with 66 people killed, according to official Police Department records. Advertisement Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > "This is the point where you need to decide that it's time for me to make a change, it's time for me to step out and go out and do something," Khepra said. Despite the positive mood of the event, Khepra said she never forgets the death of her friend Hadiya. "The grief is always going to be there for me," Khepra said. "Hadiya was an amazing person and she shouldn't have never lost her life that early, and it makes me sad every time. Today is a celebration but it's also a day of mourning." She said she channels her emotions into working to end gun violence. "I really want to make this change and I really want to reach the goal so that other people don't have to feel the terrible emotions I have," Khepra said. "Every emotion I have is going and fighting and pushing towards attempting to make a change." gwong@tribpub.com Advertisement Twitter @GraceWong630 Two Metra engineers and a student assistant conductor were fired this year for violating the commuter rail agency's ban on using personal electronic devices while on duty, the first such dismissals in Metra's history, officials said Friday. "We have zero tolerance," said Metra CEO Don Orseno. "These are unforgiving positions." Advertisement "It takes a split second to change someone's life," Orseno said, referring to the possibility of an accident. "You have to have your attention focused." Details about how the employees were caught with the devices, including whether the engineers were operating trains at the time, were not available, said Pete Zwolfer, deputy executive director of operations for Metra. The incidents involving the engineers happened in October 2015 and the early part of 2016, though the dismissals both took effect this year. Advertisement The engineers' dismissals are on appeal through their union, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, Zwolfer said. The union had no comment, spokesman John Bentley said. Orseno and Zwolfer spoke to the Tribune about the firings during a Metra "safety train" excursion Friday, in which local officials were invited to ride a train to Grayslake to learn about Metra's safety procedures. The student assistant conductor was in training, and his dismissal cannot be appealed, Zwolfer said. The Federal Railroad Administration enacted a policy against the use of personal electronic devices after a series of railroad industry-related crashes, beginning with an emergency order in 2008 and followed by a permanent ban. One of those crashes happened in September 2008 when a Union Pacific freight train and a Metrolink commuter train collided head-on in the Chatsworth neighborhood of Los Angeles, resulting in 25 deaths. Federal officials found that the Metrolink engineer was exchanging text messages shortly before impact. A February crash in Germany that killed 11 people has been blamed on a dispatcher playing a game on his phone. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Metra requires railroad employees responsible for train operations to have electronic devices powered off and stowed away while on duty, without exception. In the event of a family emergency, family members can call Metra police to reach an employee. Fitness trackers and smart watches are also banned. By the end of 2017, FRA regulations will require that all controlling train cabs have inward-facing cameras. Metra already has begun installing them, and monitors engineer behavior with the cameras and other checks. Advertisement The CTA in August 2009 adopted a zero-tolerance policy against cellphone use by bus and rail operators. Ten bus drivers and one rail employee were fired in the next four months for violating the policy. Dr. Lanny Wilson, of the DuPage Railroad Safety Council, noted that rail workers aren't the only people who need to be responsible pedestrians distracted by electronic devices have been killed by trains. "A large part of trespassing deaths are related to distraction," Wilson said. mwisniewski@tribpub.com Twitter @marywizchicago Michael Shields, then-president of the Fraternal Order of Police, speaks at the City Club of Chicago lunch on Nov. 14, 2011. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune) The former president of the Chicago Police Department's largest union was awarded $21,600 Thursday in a whistleblower lawsuit claiming he was barred from union activities after being removed from office for publicly questioning the fairness of past contract negotiations with the city. The jury award for Michael Shields against Chicago's Lodge 7 of the Fraternal Order of Police comes six months after he reached a settlement for $100,000 against the Illinois FOP lodge in the same lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court. Advertisement Thursday's court victory for Shields comes more than two years after he was removed as the Chicago FOP's president following a 15-11 vote by the union's board of directors. At that point, he had been suspended from the union after he sent a letter to the city inspector general's office asserting that three previous police contracts two for officers and one for sergeants were rigged by City Hall, union bosses and an independent arbitrator to benefit the city. Advertisement Shields has said that he sent the letter because the city and union were nearing arbitration during negotiations over a new police contract. After Shields' successor Dean Angelo was elected in 2014, the union renegotiated its contract with the city on behalf of 10,000 rank-and-file Chicago police officers. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > On Thursday, a jury ruled that the union should not have barred Shields from the board meetings, even though he had been removed from office. As a former president of the Chicago FOP, Shields was entitled to retain a paid position on its board of directors, according to his lawyer, Michael Leonard. "It's nice that the jury found that completely wrong," said Leonard. Shields received the $100,000 settlement in December after Ted Street, who headed the Illinois FOP in 2014 when it oversaw Shields' removal as president of the Chicago lodge, was deposed in the lawsuit. Leonard said the suit vindicates Shields, but it remains to be seen whether he'd return to the board of the Chicago FOP. Shields currently works beat patrol duties in the Near North police district, which includes the Gold Coast, Magnificent Mile, River North and Old Town Triangle neighborhoods. Angelo could not immediately be reached for comment. jgorner@tribpub.com Twitter @JeremyGorner A small brown bat is held by animal control officer Karen Ross on April 30 at the Lake County Animal Control office in Mundelein. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune) The number of bats testing positive for rabies in Illinois has doubled compared with this time last year, and many of them are turning up in the Chicago area, authorities said Friday. The numbers are small increasing from eight positive tests to date last year to 16 this year but concerning, Illinois Department of Public Health officials said. Advertisement The rate of positive tests among animals tested for rabies more than doubled, from 2 to 5 percent. And from 2014 to 2015, the overall number of rabid bats discovered in Illinois jumped from 40 to 97, according to health department figures. "We are always worried about rabid bats, but certainly the high numbers this year are something to tell people about," said Connie Austin, a health department veterinarian and epidemiologist. Advertisement Officials don't know why there's been an uptick in cases and said it was too early to draw conclusions from this year's numbers. But they said with bats and other wild animals becoming more active in the summer, now is the time for people to look out for and try to avoid contact with them. Just in recent days, authorities announced that rabid bats were found inside homes in Arlington Heights, Aurora and LaGrange, and two more were discovered on Chicago's South Side. Because of concern that the family in Arlington Heights had been exposed, they are getting vaccinated against the fatal disease. The series of five shots is now given in the arm rather than the stomach, and so it's less painful, but still very expensive. The cost of the series of shots typically exceeds $3,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; other experts say it can go much higher, particularly if administered in an emergency room. Experts urge people in general to avoid touching or approaching a wild animal because rabies is spread through the saliva of infected mammals such as bats, raccoons, foxes and skunks. Bats are by far the most common transmitter, officials said, because they come in contact more often with humans. Throughout Illinois, small and big brown bats often nest in attics and, with a skull about the size of a dime, can get into a home through tiny openings. If someone encounters a bat near them or in their home, they should contact a doctor or local health officials to evaluate the situation. If it's possible any person or pet came into contact, residents should call the local animal control department and try to contain the animal in a room, box or bin, if that can be done safely without touching the animal. Extra precautions should be taken if a bat was exposed to a small child or discovered in a room where someone was sleeping because it might not be clear if the bat made contact with anyone. Most rabid bats found last year and so far this year were in Cook and the collar counties, probably because of greater contact with humans there. Last year, Chicago alone had 13 cases, and Will County led the state and set a record with 20 cases of bat rabies, more than half of them in Homer Glen, which officials attributed to bats being attracted to wooded areas with food and water. Advertisement To keep bats out of homes, officials recommend sealing off any potential entry points, such as caulking holes where utilities enter the house through the walls. However, if bats have already entered an attic, they must be expelled before any entry points are sealed off. Bat waste, also known as "guano," can contain a dangerous fungus called histoplasmosis, and must be removed and cleaned properly. To protect against rabies exposure, state health officials advise the following: Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Do not feed, approach or adopt wild animals or stray dogs or cats. Keep pet vaccinations up to date and don't let pets roam freely. Do not try to attract wild animals to your home with food. Make sure birdseed is inaccessible to other animals. Tightly seal garbage cans and cap chimneys with screens. Advertisement Teach children not to go near animals that are not their pets, and to report any contact they may have. If possible contact with a wild animal has occurred, notify health and animal control officials and try to contain the animal if it can be done safely and without risk of further exposure. rmccoppin@tribpub.com Twitter @RobertMcCoppin Emergency crews remove a body after more than 100 were pulled from the sea near Zwara, Libya, on June 3, 2016, after a smuggling boat carrying mainly African migrants sank in the Mediterranean. (AFP/Getty Images) ATHENS, Greece More than 110 bodies were pulled from the sea off Libya after a smuggling boat of mostly African migrants sank, while a separate search-and-rescue operation across the Mediterranean saved 340 people Friday and recovered nine bodies. The developments were the latest deadly disasters for refugees and migrants seeking a better life in Europe, and they followed the drownings of more than 1,000 people since May 25 while attempting the long and perilous journey from North Africa to southern Europe. Advertisement As traffickers take advantage of the improving weather, officials say it is impossible to know how many unseaworthy boats are being launched daily and how many never reach their target. A host of naval operations in the southern Mediterranean, coordinated by Italy, have been stretched just responding to the disasters they do hear about. At least 117 bodies 75 women, six children and 36 men were pulled from the waters near the western Libyan city of Zwara on Thursday and Friday, Mohammed al-Mosrati, a spokesman for Libya's Red Crescent, told The Associated Press. All but a few were from African countries. The death toll was expected to rise. Advertisement The children were between 7 and 10, said Bahaa al-Kwash, a top media official in the Red Crescent. "It is very painful, and the numbers are very high," he said, adding that the dead were not wearing life jackets something the organization had noticed about bodies recovered in recent weeks. "This is a cross-border network of smugglers and traffickers, and there is a need for an international effort to combat this phenomenon," he said. As is frequently the case, authorities were uncertain when or how the people died. The coast guard found an empty boat drifting Thursday, Libyan navy Col. Ayoub Gassim told the AP by telephone, adding it was possible the vessel had capsized a day earlier. Al-Mosrati of the Red Crescent said the bodies were not decomposed and had drowned in the past 48 hours. The boat that was found might have been the one carrying the victims, but strong winds and currents can push bodies from one place to the other, he added, making it difficult to determine where the tragedy occurred. The first signs of a disaster often are either a mayday call from one of the passengers to European authorities or the discovery of bodies washing ashore. Gassim blamed Europe for "doing nothing but counting bodies" in trying to stop the massive illegal migration from Libya. Libya has been in chaos since the ouster and killing of its longtime autocratic ruler Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. The country has been split into rival governments and parliaments, with each supported by a loose set of militias and tribes. Smuggling gangs have taken advantage of the turmoil to send waves of overcrowded boats toward Europe. Advertisement Hadi al-Zowaghi, a Red Crescent representative in the Libyan town of Sabratha, criticized local security forces for not trying to stop the human trafficking and failing to properly document those who die. "Burial is arbitrary, no data kept, no grave numbers, nothing, as if these people never existed," al-Zowaghi told the AP from Sabratha, a major transit area for migrants near Zwara, which is where the bodies were found. "These are real people with names and stories," he said. "They had families. They deserve to be buried properly and their relatives deserve to be notified." The number of people drowning is "huge," with dozens washing ashore each week, he said. Volunteers also were worried about the environmental impact of the dead along the beaches, he said. Al-Zowaghi said he has stopped helping because he can't be part of "this corrupt and inhuman trade." Migrants have said Libya's detention centers are guarded by militias who accept bribes to let them try to cross again with help of smugglers. Aid officials say the last two weeks have been especially deadly because smugglers are using riskier tactics such as bigger boats that are even less-seaworthy than before. Advertisement About 75 nautical miles south of Crete, another migrant boat sank Friday, with Greek authorities saying 340 people were rescued and nine bodies recovered in an operation involving Greek helicopters, planes, patrol boats and merchant ships. Greece's coast guard said the roughly 25-meter (82-foot) vessel, which resembled a large fishing boat, had been carrying an undetermined number of people when it was located half-sunk in international waters. It was not immediately clear where the boat was from, where it was headed or who had been aboard. Most survivors were picked up by the Norwegian-flagged tanker Clipper Hebe and were being taken to the Sicilian port of Augusta in Italy. Others were to be taken to Egypt and Malta. A search was continuing, the coast guard said. "The information we have on the number of people on board the vessel is still unclear we've heard that there were 400 or 500 people on board, but we cannot confirm that number," coast guard spokesman Nikos Lagadianos said. "There is a huge rescue effort underway." It would be "very difficult" for divers to reach the wreck anytime soon, he said. "A few hours ago, only the tip of the ship's mast was sticking out of the water. Now it's considered to have sunk," he added. Advertisement The shorter Aegean Sea crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands was the preferred sea route for those heading to Europe until Balkan countries closed their borders in March and the European Union reached an agreement with Turkey to send back any newcomers. The deal has led to a dramatic decrease in the number of people landing the islands from Turkey. Many have speculated that the EU migrant deal could prompt Syrians to try the more dangerous Libya-to-Italy route, but authorities have seen no signs yet of any big shift. Associated Press JANESVILLE, Wis. He's finally got Paul Ryan's endorsement, but many officials in Donald Trump's new wave of supporters remain reluctant backers at best. Leaders who have pledged their backing still aren't wholly satisfied with his temperament, policies or readiness for the White House. As Trump works to unify the fractured GOP behind him, these Republicans, Ryan among them, are struggling to show the same enthusiasm Trump has generated among rank-and-file conservatives across the nation. Advertisement "He's a work in progress," says Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, who promised to support the GOP nominee several weeks ago. Would Trump be a good president? "To me this is a question of alternatives," Cole told The Associated Press on Friday in a classic lukewarm embrace. "I'm comfortable that he will be a better president than Hillary Clinton." Advertisement In this photo taken June 2, 2016, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump pauses during a rally in San Jose, Calif. Slowly and grudgingly, the Republican establishment is falling in line behind Trump but the endorsements are coming with a bushel of hold-your-nose caveats, hedges, exceptions and qualifiers. (Jae C. Hong / AP) The day before, House Speaker Ryan ended an extraordinary public split by endorsing Trump in a column published in his hometown newspaper. Republican officials suggested that the endorsement marked an important step toward party unification, even while conceding that the speaker's endorsement was somewhat underwhelming. In a subsequent interview with The Associated Press, Ryan did not express support for any of Trump's policies, would not promise to campaign on his behalf this fall, and reminded voters that he doesn't support Trump's confrontational style. And, the day after the endorsement, Ryan lashed out at Trump's suggestion that a federal judge should recuse himself from a case involving one of Trump's companies because of his Mexican heritage. "Look, the comment about the judge the other day just was out of left field for my mind," Ryan said told Wisconsin radio station WISN. "It's reasoning I don't relate to, I completely disagree with the thinking behind that." Ryan continued: "So he clearly says and does things I don't agree with and I've had to speak up on time to time when that has occurred, and I'll continue to do that if that's necessary I hope it's not." He is not alone. Several other Trump backers on Friday had trouble detailing which of his policies they support and expressed continued concern about his temperament as president. And, keeping the candidate at arm's length, still others reassured nervous colleagues by citing constitutional protections that could help limit the risks. Advertisement "I still believe we have the institutions of government that would restrain someone who seeks to exceed their constitutional obligations," Arizona Sen. John McCain told The New York Times. "We have a Congress. We have the Supreme Court. We're not Romania." "Our institutions, including the press, are still strong enough to prevent" unconstitutional acts, he said. New York Rep. Peter King, another Trump backer, suggested his party's resistance to the New York businessman is fueled by his outsider status. While Trump has long been a political donor, he has no direct experience in governing and remains unfamiliar to many GOP leaders. "It's not like the boardroom when you can just fire somebody. He's not going to be able to fire Nancy Pelosi," King told the AP on Friday. "It's not a question of intelligence or ability but is he ready for all the uncertainties that go with politics and government?" George Sen. David Perdue offered a simple message for his reluctant colleagues: "Get over it. Do you want Hillary Clinton?" "I mean, that's the alternative," the Republican senator told the AP. "This is not about whether we're agreeing with every single thing Donald Trump says. We never agree 100 percent with any presidential candidate." Advertisement Yet many Republican leaders across the country continue to have deep reservations about Trump's devotion to GOP principles. Trump has repeatedly promised not to touch expensive entitlement programs such Medicare and Social Security, a position in direct conflict with Ryan. The two also break on immigration. Trump wants to deport more than 11 million immigrants in the country illegally in addition to imposing a temporary ban on Muslims. Ryan opposes both policies. The Republican speaker said he now has an increased comfort level with Trump's approach toward Ryan's priorities, including halting overreach by the president and executive branch. "I had friends wishing I wouldn't support him. I had friends wishing I would," Ryan said from his congressional office just down the hill from where he lives in the small Wisconsin city where he grew up. "I really didn't feel any pressure, other than my goal is to make sure that we're unified so that we're at full strength in the fall so we can win the election." Advertisement Some GOP leaders have declared they won't support Trump, including 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who had Ryan as his running mate. Earlier in the week, Romney signaled support for a possible third-party candidate instead. GOP operative Tim Miller, among a shrinking group of vocal anti-Trump Republicans, offered a warning to any party leaders who believe they can influence Trump by joining his campaign. "If you sign up with Trump, you get unadulterated Donald and all the bad that comes with it," he said. Associated Press Protests outside a Donald Trump rally in downtown San Jose spun out of control Thursday night when some demonstrators attacked the candidate's supporters. Protesters jumped on cars, pelted Trump supporters with eggs and water balloons, snatched signs, and stole "Make America Great" hats off supporters' heads before burning them and snapping selfies with the charred remains. Several people were caught on camera punching Trump supporters. At least one attacker was arrested, according to CNN, although police did not release much information. "The San Jose Police Department made a few arrests tonight after the Donald Trump Rally," police said in a statement. "As of this time, we do not have specific information on the arrests made. There has been no significant property damage reported. One officer was assaulted." In one video circulating widely on social media, two protesters tried to protect a Trump supporter as other protesters attacked him and called him names. Another video captured a female Trump supporter taunting protesters before being surrounded and struck in the face with an egg and water balloons. SAN JOSE, CALIF. Police eventually cleared the protest, which they called an "unlawful assembly." The incidents were the latest in a series of increasingly violent altercations between protesters, Trump supporters and police at the presumptive Republican nominee's campaign events. A week ago, it was Albuquerque descending into chaos as the city was shaken by raucous riots and arrests outside a Trump rally. A month earlier it was Costa Mesa, Calif. Advertisement Thursday was San Jose's turn to take center stage in what is quickly becoming a traveling fiasco. Before the event, San Jose Police issued a press release saying it "recognizes and respects everyone's right to express their First Amendment, and we will do everything possible to ensure the event is safe for all attendees and surrounding neighborhoods." Advertisement As the night unfolded, however, it became clear that the chaos seen at Trump campaign stops across the country had found its way to San Jose. Trump supporters were surrounded and, in several cases, attacked as they left the rally. In one incident captured on camera, a Trump supporter was struck hard over the side of the head as he was walking away from a group of protesters. The attack left him with blood streaming down his head and onto his shirt. "I was walking out with a Trump sign and he grabbed my Trump sign, saying I was like a racist and stuff," the man told bystanders and local media. "Then he followed me, like, spit on me." The Trump supporter said all he had done was chant the candidate's name before trying to walk away. Another Trump supporter was also bloodied after being attacked, his shirt torn almost completely off his body. Videos circulating on social media showed swirling, furious fights spilling from street corner to street corner, often with no police in sight. Marcus DiPaola, a freelance photographer following the Trump campaign, posted video of someone getting punched in the face. Reached by phone Thursday night, DiPaola said the sucker punch happened at 8:08 p.m. just outside the convention center where the Trump rally was held. Advertisement "It wasn't completely unprovoked," he said. "The guy with the flag was waving it in front of the victim's face. The victim kind of pushed the flag out of the way and then walked quickly away. You saw what happened next." (Josh Edelson / AFP/Getty Images) DiPaola said he called 911 but was put on hold and so hung up. He said he told one police officer about the beating but was told SJPD "didn't have the man power" to intervene. "Morons," he said. "How do you not staff 911 for an event of this size?" DiPaola wasn't the only journalist to condemn the cops' handling of the protest. Many of the protesters were peaceful. Some waved Mexican flags in an apparent response to Trump calling Mexican immigrants "rapists." According to the San Jose Mercury News, many of the protesters were Latinos from East San Jose opposed to what they saw as racism from the GOP candidate. Advertisement "We're here to support Latinos, black people; we're not rapists," Cindy Zurita, a 23-year-old student, told the Mercury News as she held a sign reading: "Mr Hate leave my state." ABC reporter Tom Llamas, however, reported that some of the protesters were "throwing up gang signs." "There were [people] who came to demonstrate & some who just wanted to brawl," he tweeted, adding that "This was by the most violent demonstrations we've seen." At times, protesters began to fight among themselves. In one instance, two female protesters pleaded for non violence while trying to protect a Trump supporter from an angry crowd. Despite their efforts, someone snatched the Trump supporter's hat. A handful of the bright red "Make America Great Again" hats were set on fire by protesters, who then snapped photos of the scene or hung the charred hats from street signs. Some protesters said they were disappointed to see violence undermine their message. Advertisement "It's sad to see San Jose representing like this," student Martha Garcia told the Guardian. "Trump is the one igniting the hate. You can't fight fire with fire." A Donald Trump supporter is pelted with eggs by anti-Trump protesters while pinned against a hotel door near where the soon-to-be Republican presidential nominee held a campaign rally in San Jose, Calif., on June 2, 2016. (Noah Berger / AP) I called 911 but no one answered. Donald trump protest in San Jose, CA pic.twitter.com/LwaWyeYZfq Marcus J. DiPaola (@marcusdipaola) June 3, 2016 Perhaps the most jarring scene was that of a young female Trump supporter being attacked by a crowd of protesters. In multiple videos of the incident, the woman initially appeared to be happily posing in her Trump football jersey in front of the mostly male protesters, some of whom can be heard whistling and shouting at her. Then an anonymous arm rises over the crowd and tosses an egg at the woman, striking her in the head and eliciting howls and laughter from the crowd. A second later, a red water balloon bursts against the woman's arm. At first, the woman tries to shrug off the attacks, smiling while appearing to reach out towards the Mexican flags that some protesters are waving. Advertisement Objects keep crashing into the convention center windows behind her, however, and protesters can be heard screaming expletives at her. Suddenly, another projectile strikes her hard in the face. Eventually, someone comes to help her and, after she indicates that she is having trouble seeing, she is ushered back inside the convention center. The ugly scenes of violence toward Trump supporters Thursday appeared to be the inverse of similar incidents earlier in the campaign in which Trump protesters, not supporters, were targeted. The sucker punch captured by DiPaola, for instance, echoed an incident in March when a 78-year-old Trump supporter sucker punched a protester at a rally in Fayetteville, N.C. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders's campaigns both condemned the violence in San Jose. John Podesta, chair of Hillary Clinton for America, tweeted that "violence against supporters of any candidate has no place in this election." Mike Casca, Sanders' rapid response director, tweeted that "we cannot stop Trump's violent rhetoric with violence - only peaceful protest in a voting booth can do that." Advertisement Blame for the attacks circulated almost as rapidly as images of the violence, with Trump supporters accusing Democrats and members of the media of having a double standard. Many liberals, meanwhile, including the Democratic mayor of San Jose, suggested that Trump angry and divisive rhetoric made him at least partly responsible for the violence at his events. "At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign," Mayor Sam Liccardo told the Associated Press, praising the city's police while adding that "we're all still holding our breath to see the outcome of this dangerous and explosive situation." A young man wearing a Donald Trump t-shirt runs away as he is chased by anti-Trump protesters near a rally in San Jose, Calif., on June 2, 2016. (Josh Edelson / AFP/Getty Images) Things inside the rally were more subdued -- if only slightly. Politico reported that one of its reporters had been removed from the rally for reporting at the event without the campaign's permission. Trump, meanwhile, was interrupted a handful of times by protesters. Advertisement Responding to Clinton's blistering attack on him earlier in the day, Trump attacked her over her email controversy, going so far as to say "Hillary Clinton has to go to jail." "She does not look presidential -- that I can tell you," he said, according to Bloomberg. "This is not a president. Four more years of this stuff and we're not going to have a country left." Washington Post Nancy Johnstone's vision as the longtime leader of Chicago social service organization Youth Guidance changed not only the course of the organization but the lives of thousands. "She was honestly the most effective advocate for Chicago's underserved youth," said Michelle Morrison, current CEO of Youth Guidance, which Johnstone led as executive director from 1973 to 2005. "And she was the brainchild behind Youth Guidance moving its programs into school-based services." Advertisement In a 1993 Tribune article, Johnstone spoke about that shift from counseling middle-class kids in a Loop office to reaching young people most in need of help. "My feeling increasingly became, this just wasn't the way to do it," Johnstone said. "The inner-city kids who needed help couldn't come to us. I felt we needed to go to them. We needed to move the program into the schools." Advertisement According to Morrison: "Because of that approach of removing every barrier to having youth access these supports, right now we work with 8,000 youths." Johnstone, 83, a Hyde Park resident for 55 years, died of a stroke May 25 in the University of Chicago Center for Care and Discovery, according to her son, Eric. Born Nancy Stavers in Detroit, she received a bachelor's degree from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. In 1954, she enrolled in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. After meeting her Canadian-born husband, John Johnstone, who survives her, she moved with him to Ottawa where she completed a master's degree in social work at Carleton University. The couple returned to Hyde Park in 1961. Within a few years she was working at Youth Guidance, first part time and later as assistant director before becoming director in 1973. Her management style was inclusive long before that became a common goal, according to Almarie Wagner, who met Johnstone at Youth Guidance in 1969 and worked with her there for 12 years. "She was very committed in years before it was popular to a leadership style that was very team-based, very flat and (she) believed in soliciting input from her staff," Wagner said. "That led to an organization where people were committed to the organization for many years." But Wagner said Johnstone never lost sight of the ultimate goal. "The mission was always the most important thing, and still is today at Youth Guidance," said Wagner. Of the group's efforts to defuse gang friction in schools, Wagner said, "Nancy was more focused on prevention to keep kids out of gangs." Wagner and Johnstone also worked together as co-founders of Women In Charge, an organization aimed at supporting women leading Chicago-area not-for-profits. Advertisement "It was to meet a need, because a lot of us had become executives without management training," said Wagner. The organization, which had a 10-year lifespan, held conferences to support and educate women leaders. Most of Johnstone's work in education took place in a more structured environment through her association with the U. of C. School of Social Service Administration. She was a life member of the school's visiting committee, an advisory board Johnstone joined in 1985, according to Stephen Gilmore, associate dean for external affairs. She also held several faculty positions, including lecturer from 1998 to 2009 and as a clinical associate from 1998 to 2000. From 1991 to 2008, she taught professional development workshops. "For many years, she was also a field instructor, a master practitioner who mentored and tutored graduate students," Gilmore said. "She wore many hats and she shared her great intellectual talents, but also her warmth and enthusiasm with a lot of our students and faculty." In 1994, Johnstone received a public services citation from the University of Chicago Alumni Association for exemplary leadership in voluntary service. Advertisement After leaving Youth Guidance, Johnstone moved to the Chicago Child Care Society as co-leader, her son said. She retired in 2012. "She was one of those institution builders, in the spirit of Jane Addams and the kind of women who cared about social welfare issues in Chicago," Gilmore said. In addition to her husband and son, Johnstone is survived by another son, Bruce. A celebration of her life will be held this summer. Graydon Megan is a freelance reporter Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign rally in Balboa Park on June 2, 2016, in San Diego, Calif. Clinton said rival Donald Trump's foreign policy is dangerously incoherent and labeling him unfit for office. (David McNew, AFP/Getty Images) Hillary Clinton has been wrong on one foreign policy issue after another, from the war in Iraq to the war in Libya to the war in Syria. She is secretive, averse to transparency, habitually deceptive and arguably corrupt. She is a risk to lead us into another messy conflict. Donald Trump has said some things that don't sound bad. He recognizes the invasion of Iraq and the bombing of Libya as mistakes. He vows to refrain from nation-building. He says he'd make our allies do more to defend themselves. Advertisement So let me be clear: If I had only these two choices of whom to be in charge of U.S. foreign policy for the next four years or five minutes I would pick Clinton in a heartbeat. Clinton is a bad option, in the way that Salisbury steak at a roadside diner is a bad option. Trump, however, resembles a tuna sandwich left out on the counter for days: definitely harmful and possibly fatal. Advertisement Her speech Thursday, which highlighted the many ignorant, reckless and noxious statements he has made on the subject, should not have been necessary. The president of the United States has more power to do harm than any person on the planet, and such power should be entrusted only to someone who meets a basic standard of knowledge, judgment and maturity. Trump plainly doesn't. In this realm, as in most areas of government obligations, he combines ignorance and arrogance. He didn't know what the nuclear triad is. He came up empty when asked about Brexit Britain's possible exit from the European Union. He insists "we are not a rich country." His chief idea for combating the Islamic State is to "bomb the s--- out of them." Trump made a big speech on foreign policy in April at an event sponsored by the Center for the National Interest which used to be called the Nixon Center, after a president who knew a great deal about the world and how to pursue America's interests in it. Richard Nixon was a terrible president. But had he known less, he would not have been better. On her worst days, Clinton evokes memories of him stiff, charmless, overly enamored of air power, even paranoid. But she also has a wealth of knowledge of the world and many of its leaders, and she needs no on-the-job training in international affairs. At the routine daily business of diplomacy, Clinton offers competence and predictability. Trump, however, has Nixon's darkest impulses and none of his understanding. The idea of someone so vindictive, petty and psychologically unbalanced having the power to start World War III ought to induce stark terror in every corner of the globe. Much of Clinton's Thursday speech consisted of airy banalities "We need to be strong at home," for example, and "we need to embrace all the tools of American power." Sometimes she sounded less like a former secretary of state than like Captain Obvious. But Trump's example makes her platitudes appealing. It's true that he avoids the obvious. No one but Trump would think to ask, "Who the hell cares if there's a trade war?" No one else would say John McCain, who was tortured during his five years in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp, was not a war hero. But unconventionality can be a symptom of insanity or stupidity rather than creativity. Clinton, for all her flaws as a public official and a person, is neither crazy nor clueless. Her establishment credentials and outlook mean her mistakes fall within a predictable range. Knowing something about crafting policy and dealing with foreign leaders might also steer her clear of hazards. Advertisement Robert Gates, one of the most informed and sensible people ever to serve as defense secretary, had his differences with her. But in his memoir, "Duty," he described Clinton as "smart, idealistic but pragmatic, tough-minded, indefatigable, funny, a very valuable colleague, and a superb representative of the United States all over the world." Trump is doomed to make mistakes not only because he doesn't know much, but because he thinks his lack of knowledge is actually an asset. The less you know, the simpler the world appears. But that's a dangerous illusion. Giving the presidency to Clinton is far from ideal. But if you needed a major operation, would you choose a surgeon with a haughty manner and a checkered past who loses more than the usual number of patients? Or would you trust the job to a taxidermist? Steve Chapman, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/chapman. schapman@tribpub.com Follow Steve Chapman on Twitter @SteveChapman13 and Facebook. The millennials have surpassed baby boomers to become the country's largest living generation, according to the Pew Research Center. How does that make you feel? Responses in the form of a selfie or an emoji are optional. If you've never taken a selfie or used an emoji indeed, if you stumble over the terms you're likely not a young-adult millennial. And you may wonder how things will pan out for society when they take charge. Especially since they never pry their phones away from their faces. Advertisement That's not the Tribune Editorial Board talking. We're, ahem, slightly past millennial age, but work closely with those in the 19-35 age bracket and they knock us out. However, plenty of people in older generations are puzzled by millennials, concerned that they will turn out to be less responsible than running the world requires. Nagging oldsters fuss over millennials' quirks. To generalize (always unfair), the rap is that they're technology-addicted, entitled and frankly rather soft. Psychology Today collected many of the perceived weaknesses in one paragraph: "They seek constant feedback and immediate gratification. They multitask and can't focus. They're sensitive to criticism and unable to work alone. They refuse to pay their dues. Don't even mention their (limited) verbal and writing skills." Advertisement The marketing world struggles mightily to understand millennials as consumers and citizens. Fabrizio Freda, a baby-boomer cosmetics CEO, told The Wall Street Journal: "Millennials are much more about immediate results than saving for the future. The 30-year-old today gets more photographs of themselves in a day than their mother did in a year, so they care about what their skin looks like now, not when they are 40." Talk about self-absorption. No, not by millennials. By boomers, who see the world through their own lens, crowding out the ability to look objectively or generously at the younger generation. We're not trying to shame Freda, who runs Estee Lauder. Millennials get grief all over. Writer Molly Worthen in The New York Times objected to millennial use of the phrase "I feel like" as an alternative to the declarative "I believe" or "I think." She tied the squishy sentiment to the safe zone/trigger warning/microaggression movement: the silencing of controversial or provocative discourse in the guise of being inclusive and sensitive to others. Meanwhile, a put-down story about millennials in The Atlantic magazine was titled, "The coddling of the American mind." Each generational shift profoundly ushers in roiling changes to the culture at large that feel natural to the ones coming of age but startle older folks not paying close attention. Boomers as a group are set in their ways, and so is next-up Generation X. Millennials are still evolving, but one day soon brace yourselves! they will take power and reshape society based on their own experiences. Already, their influence suffuses America. Offices look different because millennials have their own work style. Tattoos, beards, energy drinks, Chipotle all millennial trends. Their priorities are different, their tastes are different. Everything about millennials is different. Except for one crucial, ironic twist: the concern this young generation sows in parents and grandparents. Looking down on the kids is something that never changes. Remember, boomers? If you go back to the late 1960s, you'll find the establishment was whipping itself into a frenzy over what to do about hippies, real and imitational. They would ruin everything! Young people were drug-addled (as opposed to "technology-obsessed" today), promiscuous (free love vs. Tinder and other hook-up apps today) and had awful taste in music (the Grateful Dead, compared to Deadmau5 today). In August 1969, after the Woodstock musical festival, the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal lit into the concertgoers as self-centered, uncivilized regressives who wouldn't amount to anything. "It would be a curious America if the unwashed, more or less permanently stoned on pot or LSD, were running very many things," the Journal sniffed. The New York Times knew whom to blame: "Surely the parents, the teachers and indeed all the adults who helped create the society against which these young people are so feverishly rebelling must bear a share of the responsibility for this outrageous episode." Advertisement Of course the boomers (who also mistrusted previous generations) turned out OK. Their cohort ended the Vietnam War, pioneered equality movements, started a tech revolution. But they didn't do everything right. They created a hellacious pension debt crisis to fund their retirements. Oh and thanks for the college tuition hikes. That's the judgmental voice of millennials, saddled with paying for the messes left by older generations. American millennials will face rising challenges. But they are our most educated generation in history and our most diverse, too. They're open-minded. They're demanding (they want to work from home or Starbucks) and yes, coddled (everyone gets a medal for competing!). Yet they're also flexible, caring and savvy. The millennials are unique but, like preceding generations, will prove themselves extraordinarily capable. Our country will be in good hands. Maybe better. Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook. Overwhelmed by hundreds of hungry customers who quickly devoured everything on site on opening day, the owners of Big Ange's in Arlington Heights, Johnny Fridono, left, and Rocco Fridono were forced to close their doors on Friday so they could re-stock their kitchen and hire more employees. (Karen Ann Cullotta, Pioneer Press) Overwhelmed by hundreds of hungry customers at Thursday's grand opening, who quickly devoured everything in sight, the owners of Big Ange's Eatery in Arlington Heights were forced to close their doors Friday so they could re-stock their kitchen and hire more employees. "We were hoping to have between 30 to 50 customers, and we had about 400 ... there were so many orders for fries, that we went through 400 pounds of potatoes, and finally ran out," Big Ange's owner Johnny Fridono, 63, said Friday. "It was like everyone in Arlington Heights had not eaten in a week. By 7 p.m., we had run out of food, and it broke my heart, because we had to turn people away. There was a little boy who was crying, but all I had left to offer him was a beef sandwich." Advertisement At 11:30 a.m. Friday, Fridono and his son, Big Ange's co-owner Rocco Fridono, 27, huddled with their crew at the restaurant located on a pie-shaped corner of Euclid Avenue and Northwest Highway, discussing strategy for re-stocking the kitchen and hiring more employees. Meanwhile, a steady stream of customers began arriving, confused to find the venue was shuttered, a sign on the door explaining: Advertisement We never expected the overwhelming support by you, the community on our opening day and we thank you! We were forced to close our doors early. Please bear with us as we make some adjustments in order to serve you better. We will reopen in the next few days. Your patience is much appreciated. The Big Ange's Eatery Team. The family-owned restaurant, which is serving up everything from burgers and fries, to homemade Italian ice and gelato, opened Thursday afternoon after an extensive two-year-long, major renovation of the former Jimmy's Place. While signs proclaiming "opening soon" have been posted in the windows of the newly remodeled restaurant for more than a year, Johnny Fridono said a major renovation of the aging building, which included ensuring that the restaurant was ADA-accessible, took longer than expected. Now, the Fridono family plans to spend the next few days stocking up on everything and trying to recruit new employees to bolster the venue's small staff, which numbers about eight employees. The restaurant's temporary closure after just one day of business was disappointing to customer Max Stapleton, 18, a senior at the nearby Christian Liberty Academy. "I came in here yesterday and had two hot dogs, and two orders of fries, and it was awesome," Max said. "I've been waiting a long time for it to open, and I was really excited to see the open for business sign yesterday, and I was happy to see people sitting out on the deck." Fridono said while the unexpectedly massive crowds visiting the restaurant on opening day is in many ways, "a good problem to have," he hopes customers will be patient as he and the Big Ange's crew work out some of the kinks in the system, with hopes of re-opening next week. "One lady said, 'you're out of food? Well this is the last time I'll come here,'" Fridono said, shaking his head sadly. "It's not about the money, but it hurts my heart to disappoint anyone. But before we can re-open again, we need more employees, and more food." Advertisement kcullotta@tribpub.com Twitter @kcullotta This vacant home at 609 Elmwood Drive in Aurora is being rehabbed by Fox Valley Habitat for Humanity volunteers for occupancy this year. Habitat officials are seeking 50 area churches to participate in Faith Build 2017, a cooperative effort to build a new home in the Fox Valley. (Al Benson / Handout) Yorkville resident Ron Kelso wants to get 50 Kane and Kendall County churches together to build a Habitat for Humanity home. Kelso is Fox Valley Habitat for Humanity board of directors vice chairman. Advertisement Kelso is inviting local clergy and church missions committee chairmen to learn about the effort at an information breakfast from 9 to 10 a.m. June 11 at Genesis Community Church, 1300 S. Broadway in Montgomery. In addition to Kelso, speakers will include the Rev. Jeff Barrett, Fox Valley Habitat executive director and Genesis pastor; and Aurora resident Barb Zegiel, a Habitat homeowner. Advertisement Representatives of 25 churches in Aurora, Geneva, Naperville, Sugar Grove, Yorkville and Oswego have made reservations for the breakfast, according to a press release. Other interested churches are invited. "Fox Valley Habitat is a Christian nonprofit that builds affordable housing in partnership with working, low-income people in need of affordable housing. We invite local churches to join this new alliance," Kelso said in the release. According to Kelso, church partners will be asked to contribute volunteers, in-kind gifts and some financial support to the project estimated at $150,000. The location of the house and the schedule to build it will be determined later. Since its founding in 1989, Fox Valley Habitat volunteers have built or rehabbed 54 homes in Aurora, North Aurora and Montgomery. For breakfast reservations or more information, call 630-859-3333, email info@foxvalleyhabitat.org or go to foxvalleyhabitat.org. A second person has been charged in connection with the armed robbery of a convenience store on Aurora's Southeast Side. Darius Shaquille Totton, 22, of the 600 block of Serendipity Drive in Aurora, has been charged with armed robbery, aggravated robbery and aggravated battery after a 7-Eleven store in the 2200 block of South Eola Road was robbed in mid-February, Aurora police said in a news release. Advertisement D'Angelo Williams, 20, of the 700 block of Liberty Street in Aurora, is also accused of being involved in the same robbery. He had been arrested on an unrelated warrant in late February by members of the U.S. Marshals Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force, police said at the time, with charges filed related to the robbery in early March. At the time, police said detectives received phone calls from people who said they had seen surveillance photos circulating on Facebook and believed Williams was the man pictured. Advertisement According to police, two people with their faces concealed entered the 7-Eleven store around 11:30 p.m. Feb. 12., at least one holding a firearm. The clerk on duty was beaten, and cigarettes and money were stolen, police said. The clerk was treated for injuries and released from an Aurora hospital. As the two robbers fled the store, they came across a customer who had just come in, according to police. One of the robbers threatened the customer with a gun, and the other hit him, they said. "These arrests are a direct result of the Aurora Police Investigation Bureau's dedication and tireless efforts to provide justice for the victims of this offense," Aurora police Chief Kristen Ziman said in a statement. "It is hoped that such arrests send a loud and clear message to offenders that our investigations do not have dates. No matter how old, we will put forth every effort to bringing judicious solutions to these violent crimes." When Aurora Police Sgt. Liz Robinson-Chan found out that she had breast cancer, she kept it private as long as she could. But it wasn't long before she knew she would have to tell her colleagues, because she was going to start chemotherapy and would have to stop going to work for the department she will have served for 23 years this September. Advertisement She went first to her friend, Aurora Police Cmdr. Keith Cross. "I felt comfortable telling him," Robinson-Chan, 44, said. Advertisement However, the words were hard for Cross to hear. "It was difficult, very difficult, because she is a close friend of mine," he said. "I just tried to be as supportive as I could knowing how serious it was and just tried to let her know there are a lot of people that are going to help her through this ordeal." Robinson-Chan can't count the phone calls, texts, emails, cards, teddy bears, quilts and visitors who have helped her through the past couple of months as she fights cancer. "They're like that, my whole command staff," Robinson-Chan said. The whole police department, as well, she said, and other friends, family, and her community at Orchard Valley Baptist Church. "You name it, people are there and they let you know that you have support," she said. "They have had my back since day one." On Sunday, Aurora's chapter of the National Latino Peace Officers Association is hosting a fundraiser for Robinson-Chan at Mike and Denise's Pizza and Pub on North Farnsworth Avenue in Aurora. Aurora Police Sgt. Alfredo Dean, president of the chapter, said the organization works to help local peace officers whether or not they are members, but also that he personally wanted to help Robinson-Chan because of the kind of person she is. Advertisement "She is someone that will think of everybody else first," Dean said. "Everyone is rooting for her to stay strong and get through this." Supporters have also started a fundraising campaign for her on the platform YouCaring.com, where donations have reached more than $3,500 of the $10,000 goal. "Honestly, I totally appreciate it," Robinson-Chan said. "I don't know how to show my gratitude. I'm not used to sitting back and letting people take care of me... It's very humbling." She's hoping she can go to the event Sunday, even if she can't stay the whole time. "They've worked so hard to put things together for me and I'm going to make every effort to be there," she said. Her white blood cell count has been down, and she's not supposed to be around crowds. She hasn't been out of her Aurora house much lately except for doctor appointments a couple times a week. Advertisement Robinson-Chan has coped with a slew of health issues over the past 11 years. In 2005, she had major brain surgery for a tumor that had been causing her to have migraines for years. Shortly after that, she was diagnosed with Sjorgenn Lupus. She also has two different types of diabetes. The breast cancer symptoms started about a year ago. Doctors monitored a cyst for several months, she said. A second doctor's opinion confirmed the cancer diagnosis in March. When she got the news, she was in disbelief, she said. "I can't have something wrong with me, something else," she said. "I just felt like I'd paid my dues." But after a while, her line of thought changed from "why me" to "why not me?" she said. Robinson-Chan's daughter, Angelina, who is not quite 2 years old, has no idea what's going on. She's learning the alphabet and numbers, and starting to talk in complete sentences, but she doesn't know what cancer is. She did notice the day her mom's long hair wasn't there anymore. Advertisement Before Robinson-Chan started chemotherapy, she shaved her head and donated the hair to a nonprofit called Children with Hair Loss. When Angelina first saw her mom's bald head, she kept her distance and just looked before making her way across the room. "She approached me and said, 'Momma, your hair, what happened?'" Robinson-Chan said. "Sometimes when I'm sitting on the floor she will just walk up to me and rub my head. She doesn't understand that I have my illness." Angelina takes up much of her time, she said. "She means everything to me," Robinson-Chan said. "I have to be here for her." Her husband, George Chan, also stays home with Angelina these days. Advertisement Despite her illness, Robinson-Chan still tries to help others, including providing emotional support for another officer who is sick with a similar disease, Cross said. "Liz is the most unselfish person I've ever met in my entire life," Cross said. He said Robinson-Chan's colleagues are inspired by the way she deals with her challenges. "She always comes to work and you would never know that anything was wrong with her," Cross said. "The people that know her just marvel at her positive attitude." Aurora is the only police department she has ever worked for she describes it as one big family. That is a comfort while she battles cancer. "I never feel alone," she said. Advertisement hleone@tribpub.com Fundraiser for Liz Robinson-Chan What: The "Fight Strong Liz" fundraiser, which will include raffles, pizza and more. When: 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday Where: Mike and Denise's Pizza and Pub, 1760 N. Farnsworth How much: Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 at the door. Advertisement To donate: https://www.youcaring.com/sgt-liz-robinson-chan-563814 Aurora Fire Chief John Lehman retired earlier this year. He has been announced as the new fire chief in Grand Rapids, Michigan. (Steve Lord, The Beacon-News) Recently retired Aurora Fire Chief John Lehman did not stay retired for long. Lehman, 51, has taken the fire chief job in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a town very similar to Aurora. He retired in February after 29 years in Aurora, the past almost three years as the 16th chief in the city's history. Advertisement He said he had been planning for this possibility for years, because he "knew I was going to be young" when he retired in Aurora. "I knew I would be able to continue on and do a second career, if you will," he said. "I set myself up for that, mentally." Advertisement Lehman is going to a town in some ways eerily similar to Aurora. Both are about 200,000 people, and are the second-largest cities in their respective states. They both occupy about 45 square miles, and have a large river running through the middle of town. Aurora has nine fire stations with about 200 firefighters; Grand Rapids has 11 fire stations with about 110 firefighters, according to Lehman. After being announced in Grand Rapids, discussion on some social media there questioned whether Lehman was a "double-dipper" for retiring in one town and taking the same job in another city. But Lehman said that is not the situation. He said the way pension law works in Illinois, he "maxed-out" after 30 years as a firefighter, and would "make more money sitting on my hands than by going into work." "It didn't make much sense, when I could have the opportunity to continue working," he said. He added that's why people "rarely see" a firefighter stay past the 30-year mark. He does not get a second pension in Grand Rapids. He said no one would have questioned him taking a different kind of job after retiring from Aurora, "but being a fire chief is what I like." "Everybody's playing by the rules," he said. "We didn't make the rules. I'm not working the system or anything, I'm basically doing what it is." Lehman becomes chief in Grand Rapids after that city conducted a search almost five months long for a new chief. He beat out four other finalists, including one internal candidate, for the job. Advertisement Former Grand Rapids chief Laura Knapp, the first woman to hold the job there, retired in January. Deputy Fire Chief Margaret Felix has been serving as interim chief since then. slord@tribpub.com As East Aurora School District 131 planned for a roughly $46 million renovation and expansion of its high school, school board President Annette Johnson questioned in a February email whether the expansion would be necessary if the high school "continue(d)" to lose students. Later that month, when the East Aurora High School construction and other projects were presented at a school board meeting, Johnson said she was "still not convinced" the high school needed so many extra classrooms because student attendance had been down that school year. Advertisement Recently, she said in an interview with the Beacon-News she was "satisfied" with the decision to expand the high school because the district would keep more students in school. Regardless of enrollment, she said, certain areas of the high school are bursting at the seams and need to be updated. "I want to make sure that we tread lightly," she said. "But I am satisfied as far as expanding the high school." Advertisement The high school expansion is part of more than $70 million in construction and related costs planned across the district, including the work at the high school, upgrades at the district's middle schools and a new high school stadium, according to documents from the district's architects. Other documents from the architects indicate the construction is scheduled to begin during the summer and fall. A new academic wing at the high school is projected to be open for the 2017-18 school year, and most of the work on the middle schools is set to begin during the summer of 2017, the architects have said. The high school construction which is set to include additional classrooms, a new fine arts wing, renovations and changes to the cafeteria and kitchen, changes to the school's entryway and work on the library, locker rooms, hallways and science rooms would bring the school's capacity to more than 4,000 students, Johnson said. The school, along with nearby West Aurora High School and Naperville's Neuqua Valley High School, was already among the largest traditional schools in the state during the 2015-16 school year, according to data from the Illinois State Board of Education. According to the state, East Aurora High School had 3,712 students at the beginning of the just finished school year. Enrollment projections provided by the district show the high school topping 4,000 students in 2017, and reaching 4,500 by 2028. During the late February presentation to the school board, Superintendent Mike Popp said the district must plan for students enrolled in the district, even if they are absent. But Johnson, at the time, questioned the expansion in light of student attendance. "I do agree the numbers moving into the high school would support expansion but not if we continue to lose so many students," she wrote in the Feb. 15 email to Popp and board members, provided to the Beacon-News as part of an open records request. According to data from the state, the high school's dropout and mobility rates fell between 2011 and 2015, but the chronic truancy rate meaning the number of students who miss more than 5 percent of the school year without a valid excuse more than tripled. During that time, the attendance rate fell from just below 90 percent to just above 83 percent, according to the state. Recently, Johnson said the expansion would provide necessary space if the district kept more already-enrolled kids in school and for high school students who stay a fifth year to complete their work. Advertisement "In my heart of hearts, I do believe, in 10 years...the kids will certainly stay in school," Johnson said. "I think staying in high school is getting more and more important for teenagers." During previous high school construction, the district added additional classrooms and was able to lower class sizes, she said. But she said the district didn't address other spaces, such as the hallways, cafeteria, and band room, which she described as "just exploding." The stadium is in "disarray," she said, the science wing is aging and the building is "worn and dated." Part of the reason the district is tackling so many issues at once is because it was authorized to issue $50 million in bonds that will essentially be interest-free to the district to fund much of the work. The district likely would not have gotten approval to issue a large amount of bonds in a referendum, she said. The bonds cannot be used for work on the high school stadium, which is projected to cost about $5.6 million, before fees and equipment, according to the district's architects. Johnson estimated the district could cover $500,000 or $600,000 of that through grants, and documents from the architects show $125,000 of that coming from a bank account set aside specifically for improvements to the district's stadium. Money for other parts of the construction could come from other sources, such as certain types of federal funds, she said. "If we keep (kids) in school, we need to provide the facilities for them," she said. Advertisement The school board is scheduled to receive an update on construction at a meeting Monday. sfreishtat@tribpub.com Twitter @srfreish A 21-year-old Geneva man has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery in connection to a 2014 sex assault investigation, Kane County court records show. Quinn Moore was sentenced to two years of probation and 180 days of electronic home monitoring as part of an agreement with prosecutors. Moore was originally charged with criminal sex assault and sex abuse after a then-17-year-old female alleged Moore forced her to engage in certain sexual conduct. Moore's plea bars him from any contact with the female or one of her relatives, according to prosecutors. Advertisement Moore had sought to have his statements to police thrown out and his arrest quashed on grounds that police improperly questioned Moore without informing him of his rights and also recorded him with a squad car camera without his knowledge, court documents state. Kane County Judge D.J. Tegeler accepted the plea agreement. No trial date was pending in the case. Advertisement Dan Campana is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News Downtown Oswego, looking south on Main Street, toward Jackson Street. Oswego is looking at creating a tax increment financing district to spur development downtown. (Steve Lord / The Beacon-News) A new tax district to encourage development in downtown Oswego may soon move closer to becoming a reality. Oswego village trustees Tuesday night will vote whether to authorize the next step in a review process for a proposed Main Street and Washington Street tax increment financing district. Advertisement Staff has recommended a joint review board be set up comprised of members of various taxing bodies and a resident. The plan would be for the group to hold its first meeting July 8 at Village Hall. Staff has further recommended an ordinance be adopted that identifies a proposed redevelopment plan and that a subsequent public hearing on it be held at 7 p.m. Aug. 16 at Village Hall. Village trustees last year hired consulting firm Kane, McKenna and Associates of Chicago to prepare an eligibility study to determine if the downtown would qualify for requirements governing a tax increment financing designation. Advertisement Under a TIF district, the property tax amount that is collected annually and distributed to various taxing bodies is essentially frozen when the district is created. As property values increase over time with development, the additional tax dollars are placed into a village fund to help finance infrastructure and public improvements within the district. The maximum life of a TIF district is 23 years. The consultants presented the results of their study in early spring, which reviewed such aspects as the characteristics of the existing downtown area to determine eligibility, recommended boundaries for a tax district and a redevelopment plan with goals and objectives for the program. A draft of the proposed redevelopment plan says "the vision is to establish the area as a Riverfront Downtown that combines the best of the old and the new, drawing visitors from Oswego as well as neighboring communities." It further states that the "historic charm of Main Street will be strengthened with new development that brings more shops and residents to the heart of the downtown." The Village Board will consider adopting the TIF district after the public hearing. Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News A Yorkville man has been charged with possessing child pornography. Marco Hernandez, 47, of Yorkville, was charged in Kendall County Circuit Court with five counts of possession of child pornography, Class 2 felonies punishable by up to three to seven years in prison; and three Class 3 felony counts of possession of child pornography, which are punishable by up to two to five years in prison. Advertisement Bond for Hernandez was set at $50,000, and his next court date is scheduled for June 7. "Each time these horrific images are downloaded or traded, children and their families are victimized all over again," Attorney General Lisa Madigan said. "We will continue to be relentless in our pursuit of the offenders who perpetuate these appalling crimes." Advertisement Madigan's investigators, with the assistance of the Yorkville Police Department, the DuPage County Sheriff's Department and the Kendall County State's Attorney's Office, conducted a search of a residence in the 1400 block of Ruby Drive in Yorkville Thursday and arrested Hernandez after evidence of alleged child pornography was discovered, Madigan's office said in a press release. Kendall County State's Attorney Eric Weis' office will prosecute the case. This is the 80th arrest since Madigan launched "Operation Glass House" in August 2010 to investigate the most active child pornography traders in Illinois. No cuts to school funds As a mother and a former substitute teacher, ensuring my children receive the best education possible is one of the most important things in my life. The subject of school funding has been debated for many years, and I have also hosted a community discussion on this subject matter. I wanted to update you on this vital topic. Advertisement A national study in 2015 found that Illinois has the most unfair funding system in the country. Our property tax rates are some of the highest nationally, and I have consistently voted to freeze property taxes to give homeowners relief. For example, Oswego District 204's property taxpayers are taxed at almost 20 percent higher than the statewide average. Recent proposals in Springfield to change our state's education funding would result in even more dollars being taken away from our schools. I have said from day one that I cannot support a bill that would cause schools in my district to lose money. Advertisement If Senate Bill 231 is not changed to protect our schools, I will oppose it. I will continue to represent our area schools by opposing any cuts to school funding, supporting property tax relief, and ensuring our children get the best education for a successful future. Please feel free to call me at 630-306-2888 if you have any additional questions about this bill or any other issue. State Rep. Stephanie Kifowit, 84th District The recent expose on the dire conditions that define East Aurora School District 131 begs the question: What are our state elected officials doing to fix our broken education system? If you are unaware of the alarming statistics associated with the district, let me brief you. On average, 82 percent of students are low-income, 64 percent graduate from high school and 49 percent of graduates enter college (according to the Illinois Report Card). In order to alter this dismal reality, state representatives specifically Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia, D-Aurora, who represents D131 need to do their part. What has she done to help students from her alma mater have an equal playing field? What legislation has she sponsored to address the unfair funding formula that plagues our city? These are fair questions to ask Rep. Chapa LaVia, who is currently running for re-election. This broken school funding formula, which hasn't been modified since 1997, requires school districts to generate education funding through property taxation. D131, however, doesn't have the tax base to produce sufficient revenue. Further, it suffers when it doesn't receive state funds. While the state constitution requires that each school district receive $6,119 per enrolled student, it has consistently fallen short of meeting its funding obligation. To be sure, Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, introduced legislation to fix the formula. Though it passed the Senate, it is unlikely to pass the House because members such as Chapa LaVia need "a lot more discussion" on the issue. Evidently, 19 years isn't sufficient time to devise an alternative. Alderman-at-large Richard C. Irvin, candidate for Aurora mayor Advertisement The recent proposal by the Will County Health Department to eliminate services and medication management to adults diagnosed with a mental illness has quadrupled calls to the information line at NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness), the Will-Grundy affiliate. The U.S. Department and Health and Human Services indicates that 1 in 5 adults experiences a behavioral health disorder in a given year, yet 60 percent go untreated. In Will County, 20 percent of the population translates into 137,083 individuals, or perhaps a more important number is 34,812 families. Believe me when I say that families who are impacted by the diagnosis of mental illness are intimately aware of the pervasive lack of services available in Will County. Why would a county board who claims to care about its residents, and who clearly does care about its residents in the preponderance of their efforts, be willing to completely ignore the needs of a significant population of its residents and their families? The stigma of mental illness persists. . Individuals diagnosed with a mental illness are not lazy, are not violent and unpredictable, do not have a personality flaw, are not "psycho" and certainly are not beyond help. Understand that the following statement reflects my own personal opinion: Never have I witnessed the effect of the stigma related to mental illness as with the events of the last couple of weeks related to the decision to eliminate crucial services to individuals diagnosed with a mental illness in Will County and their families. Additionally, the saddest and more frustrating issue is that we are fighting to preserve services that are woefully inadequate to begin with. So, what do we do about it? Please, if you do nothing else, get educated. Take a Mental Health First Aid class, promote acceptance, resist stereotyping. Visit the NAMI website for information relating to mental health and take the pledge to be stigma-free. Tell your county representatives that you desire an improved quality of life for all residents of Will County. Advertisement Teena Mackey, president, NAMI Will-Grundy Share your views Submit letters to the editor via email to suburbanletters@tribpub.com. Please include your name and town of residence for publication. Please include phone number and email address for confirmation. Letters should be no more than 250 words. By Dezan Shira & Associates Editor: Jake Liddle The Chinese Central Bank has announced significant regulatory change to the operation of online payments, widely affecting service providers and their millions of users in China. From July 1, 2016, third party online payment service providers must ensure that all user accounts bear the real name of the account holder. In addition, accounts will be categorized into three types based on security requirements, capped with maximum annual payments. The policy was created with an aim to prevent large deposits of money into third party payment accounts unprotected from bank deposit insurance. The following table outlines the details of these account categories: In 2015, the size of Chinas third party mobile payments market reached RMB 9.31 trillion, up 57.3 percent from 2014. Analysts expect that the industry will continue to grow at a fast rate in the coming years, reaching RMB 52.11 trillion by 2018. Mobile payments have become an extremely useful tool for companies to optimize in their China market strategy. Here, we examine the two largest third party online payment platforms used in the country: Alipay and WeChat. RELATED: Information Technology-based Solutions from Dezan Shira & Associates Alipay With around 50 percent of the market share, Alipay is by far the largest payment option in China. A subsidiary of Alibaba Holding Group Ltd., Alipay serves Alibabas B2B e-commerce network much in the way that PayPal operates for eBay and Amazon. Alipay cooperates with VISA and around 65 other banks, including the Bank of China, China Construction Bank, the Agricultural Bank of China, and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. On top of being the primary payment method for Taobao and Alibaba.com, it also serves over 500,000 external merchants, covering online retail, gaming, communications, air tickets, commercial services and utility bill payments. Alipay Global is the international version of Alipay, which processes payments in RMB and automatically converts them to the merchants currency of choice. Alipay Global currently supports 12 currencies, with exchange rates decided by either the Bank of China or China Construction Bank. Alipay Globals transaction fee is two to three percent. To set up a service account with Alipay China, a company must first register an account and provide company information for verification. Once approved, an application can be made and a QR code will be issued. The following materials are required to make an application: Business license; ID card information of applicant; Public bank account; If the application is not the companys legal representative, they are required to provide power of attorney. WeChat Pay WeChat Payment, operated by Tencent Holdings, was launched in 2013. It operates differently to Alipay in that it serves as both a payment platform and an instant messaging service. It also differs from Tencents TenPay, which operates in the same way as Alipay. WeChat Pay can be used to pay in stores, on websites, WeChat shops and third-party apps, and its payment procedure is easier and simpler for both customer and company alike. Being able to pay through WeChat has revolutionized how retailers and customers interact, and has the potential to reach, and make its payment method essential for, a huge number of customers because of their dependency on its social media and instant messenger service. It is therefore a very useful and effective marketing tool. To set up a service account, a company will need to first register an official WeChat account. It is then necessary to specify reasons for the application and supply the category or type of company. The following documentation will be required in the application: Full name of the contact person, phone number and email address Website address of the company (not necessary for non-IT companies) Full company name Description of the product Customer service number Company bank account information In order for non-financial entities such as Alibaba and Tencent to provide third party online and mobile payment services in China, a payment business license must first be obtained. Regulations stipulate that the business scope, qualifications and contribution ratio of foreign invested institutions applying for the license will be decided by the Peoples Bank of China and State Council separately. Third Party Payment Business License Despite the opaqueness of Chinas regulatory framework and its exclusion of foreign companies, Apple Pay has recently entered the China market, launching on February 18 this year by partnering with China UnionPay and around 19 other Chinese banks. In its first two days of operation, more than three million bank cards were linked to its service, which utilizes Near Field Communication (NFC) contactless payments as opposed to QR codes, which are used by Alipay and WeChat Pay. Apple Pay, along with Edenred and Sodexo, is among the very few foreign invested companies in possession of a Chinese payment business license. Applicants of the license must be companies established in the Peoples Republic of China and must submit the following materials to a local branch of the Peoples Bank of China: Written application, specifying the name, domicile, registered capital and setup of organizational structure of the applicant, payment business to be applied for, etc; A copy of the companys business license (duplicate); Articles of association; Verification certification; Financial and accounting reports audited by an accounting firm; Feasibility study report on payment business; Acceptance materials on anti-laundering measures; Certification on technical safety testing and authentication; Resume materials of senior management personnel; Certification that the applicant and the senior management personnel thereof are free of any criminal records; Relevant materials of major capital contributors; and Authenticity statement of application materials. Entry into Chinas lucrative third party online payments can unlock huge market potential. However, applicants should consider carefully whether or not they fulfill the above strict requirements, as the application process and approval is by no means simple. In comparison, the process for obtaining an online payment QR code is relatively straightforward, but the recent restrictions imposed on payment account types and security checks might change both the way third party online payment platforms operate and consumer behavior. About Us Asia Briefing Ltd. is a subsidiary of Dezan Shira & Associates. Dezan Shira is a specialist foreign direct investment practice, providing corporate establishment, business advisory, tax advisory and compliance, accounting, payroll, due diligence and financial review services to multinationals investing in China, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam, Singapore and the rest of ASEAN. For further information, please email china@dezshira.com or visit www.dezshira.com. Stay up to date with the latest business and investment trends in Asia by subscribing to our complimentary update service featuring news, commentary and regulatory insight. How IT is Changing Payroll Processing and HR Admin in China In this edition of China Briefing magazine, we examine how foreign multinationals can take better advantage of IT in the gathering, storing, and analyzing of HR information in China. We look at how IT can help foreign companies navigate Chinas nuanced payroll processing regulations, explain how software platforms are becoming essential for HR, and finally answer questions on the efficacy of outsourcing payroll and HR in China. Internet Challenges & Solutions When Doing Business in China In this special edition of China Briefing magazine, we highlight how and why foreign companies will be negatively affected by Chinas internet, and provide methods to help solve these problems. We discuss ISP selection, internet connection types, CDNs and VPNs, and internal control systems. Finally, we examine the importance of network security in China and how it can help augment a companys internet connection. How to Restructure an Underperforming Business in China In this issue of China Briefing magazine, we explore the options that are available to foreign firms looking to restructure or close their operations in China. We begin with an overview of what restructuring an unprofitable business in China might entail, and then take an in-depth look at the way in which a foreign company can go about the restructuring process. Finally, we highlight some of the key HR concerns associated with restructuring a China business. You are here: Home Chinese e-hailing company Didi said on Thursday that it wants to raise more than US$3.5 billion after rival Uber announced fresh funding that values the company at over 60 billion dollars. Didi president Jean Liu told a conference in California that its fundraising is ongoing and that the company is looking for strategic investors similar to Tencent and Alibaba. Tencent and Alibaba were early backers of two companies that merged to become Didi in February last year, putting an end to a year of bitter competition. Uber announced this week that it had raised 3.5 billion dollars from the investment arm of the Saudi Arabian government, taking the company's valuation to over 60 billion dollars. As part of Didi's current funding round, Apple has invested 1 billion dollars into the firm. A man passes by the entrance of the Lenovo Exclusive Store in Zagreb, capital of Croatia, Feb. 2, 2012. [Photo/Xinhua] Lenovo Group Ltd's shares dropped 4 percent on Thursday, after it was revealed that Google Inc was looking to offload about 371 million shares in the Hong Kong-listed company. The shares are being offered at HK$4.58 (59 cents) per share, a discount of 3.6 percent on Wednesday's close, and Google is expected to raise about $219 million, Bloomberg reported. Both companies declined to comment on the announcement, but analysts said Google's move marked the latest blow to the Chinese tech conglomerate as it struggles to revive faltering smartphone and personal computer businesses. The sale also comes just a week after Lenovo reported dismal March quarter results and its first annual loss in six years, as it continued to wrestle with the integration of a US acquisition and a slowdown in demand for smartphones and computers. In March, Reuters reported International Business Machines Corp was seeking to sell its Lenovo shares, which can be worth up to $150 million. Shen Meng, director of Chanson & Co, a boutique investment bank in China, said it will be difficult for Lenovo to turn around its fortunes in the short term, given the company's traditional corporate structure and culture. "Lenovo is facing mounting challenges, and it is reasonable for Google, a non-majority shareholder in the company, to sell its shares," Shen said. Google bought 618 million Lenovo shares in 2014, as the Chinese company bought Google's Motorola Mobility for $2.91 billion. Since then, however, the value of its shares has dropped by almost 60 percent. But Shen added the sale does not mean Google is losing confidence in Lenovo in the long term, as even after selling the 371 million shares, the US tech firm still holds more than 200 million Lenovo shares, assuming no other small-scale selling has occurred. Still considered the world's largest PC maker, in the first quarter of this year, Lenovo was hit with an 8.5 percent plunge in personal computer shipments, data from research agency International Data Corp show. And the news is even worse on smartphone sales, with the firm now falling behind its Chinese rivals Oppo Electronics Corp and vivo Mobile Communication Technology Co Ltd, and dropping outside the global top five vendors for the first time in four years. James Yan, research director at Counterpoint Technology Market Research, said to compound matters, Lenovo is also in desperate need of cash, after digging into its profits to rejuvenate smartphone sales. "In the near future, Lenovo will have no option but to rely on PC and tablet business for profits and its smartphone unit for revenue. "But both are not easy given the fierce competition," Yan said. On Tuesday, the company launched its latest smartphone, the middle-range ZUK Z2, with great fanfare, which it insisted would propel it once again into the top tier of phone makers within two years. Officials were equally bullish about promoting its Moto brand in overseas markets. According to its latest fiscal report released last week, the company registered a net loss of $128 million for the fiscal year that ended in March. Only one year earlier, Lenovo reported a profit of $829 million. US tech company Uber, who provides on-demand transportation services through its mobile application, received $3.5b in fresh round from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, said the Middle East investor on Thursday in a statement. Liu Zhen, senior vice president of Uber China, told China Daily that currently the G-round fundraising of the company has reached $6 billion. "The $3.5 billion raised from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund announced on Thursday will support the global business expansion of Uber, including the Chinese market," said Liu. According to Uber, the company's valuation reached $62.5 billion before it started G-round fundraising. After the Middle East kingdom's investment fund, both the valuation and the single round fundraising of the company have become one of the largest-ever investments into a privately held start-up. According to the New York Times, the royal family of Saudi Arabia is barely seen participating in venture capital investing deals, though some of them, such as Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, has invested in Lyft, a competitor of Uber in the US market. For a taxi-hailing app that covers 460 cities in more than 69 countries, the competition between Uber and local enterprises have always been and will continue, as the company expands to achieve new territories. Last September, Uber confirmed to raise a further $1.2 billion in funding, led by Chinese technology company Baidu Inc. In China, Uber is spending millions in a subsidy war with Didi Chuxing, one of the major local competitors backed by Chinese Internet giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd. The latter just secured $1 billion in funding from Apple Inc last month. The asset volume of the newly-merged China Minmetals Corporation has surpassed 700 billion yuan (US$106.4 billion), announced the company during a reconstructing meeting held Thursday in Beijing. [Photo/China Minmetals Corporation] The asset volume of the newly-merged China Minmetals Corporation has surpassed 700 billion yuan (US$106.4 billion), announced the company during a reconstructing meeting held Thursday in Beijing. In December of 2015, the strategic merger between two Fortune World Top 500 Companies, China Minmetals Corporation and Metallurgical Corporation of China Ltd (MCC), was approved by the State Council. As a move to optimize China's mining and metallurgy industries, this decision also showed China's resolution to deepen reforms in state-own enterprises and encourage the "going global" strategy. Operation revenues of this global mining "aircraft carrier" exceeded 430 billion (US$65 billion) yuan last year, larger than the total volume of BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Vale. It has roughly 240,000 employees and over 18,000 valid patents, as well as overseas branches and projects in more than 60 countries and regions. Chairman of the Board Mr. He Wenbo said this new giant is aimed at being the "safeguard of national resource security, an innovator of industrial gradation and a motivator of transition." "China consumes more than half of the mineral products in the entire world, but we are still lingering at the middle and low end of its industrial chain. We are determined to create a unique business model and create a core competitiveness in order to become a leading metal and mining group," he said. General Manager Mr. Guo Wenqing, also the Board Chairman of MCC, pointed out that the new firm is the first of its kind in the world, one which goes through the whole industrial chain from the initial sourcing of resources, surveying, design, construction and operations all the way to logistics. Moreover, it has unique advantages in offering a systematic solution for metal and mining firms as well as the capability of full-life-cycle engineering construction and operation, which will significantly enhance its competitiveness in the global industry. A woman who was wrongfully jailed for about 13 years is seeking state compensation of nearly 10 million yuan (US$1.5 million). Qian Renfeng, 31, and her two lawyers have leveled a complaint against the High People's Court in Yunnan province demanding damages and an apology in major media. Qian was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 when she was 17 years old for allegedly poisoning children. The sentence was quashed in December because of insufficient evidence. In February 2002, at a nursery where Qian was working, a toddler died of food poisoning and two other children were hospitalized. Qian, who had prepared the children's meals that day, said she was forced into confessing that she had mixed rat poison in the food. "The interrogators made me kneel down on the floor for hours and cuffed my hands behind my back," she told media after being released from prison. "In a state of fury, extreme pain and exhaustion, I said I was guilty." She probably would have spent her entire life in prison if she hadn't been noticed in April 2010 by a group of lawyers who provide free aid to prisoners at No 2 Prison for Women in Yunnan province, where she was an inmate. Lawyer Yang Zhu, who has provided free legal assistance, found contradictions in her "confession", forged signatures on documents that Qian said she had never seen and an apparent lack of substantial evidence to support her conviction. In July 2013, the Yunnan provincial procuratorate agreed to reopen the case. Nearly two years later the procuratorate ruled that there was not enough evidence to support the conviction, and advised the provincial court to rehear the case. According to a white paper on judicial justice and transparency published in June, courts across the nation reheard 1,317 cases and corrected a number of wrongful convictions in 2014. It's still too risky to downgrade giant pandas from endangered to vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species, said an expert from a major breeding center for the species in Sichuan province. Giant panda Hao Hao holds her new cub in her mouth at Belgium's Pairi Daiza zoo.Provided to China Daily The IUCN completed an appraisal of the number of pandas and their habitats a year ago. A well-informed source recently told the South China Morning Post that the organization is considering downgrading the giant panda's status. The IUCN would only say that an appraisal is underway and the results have not been released yet. Zhang Hemin, chief of the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda in Wenchuan county, Sichuan, said such a downgrading would be detrimental to panda conservation. Pandas survive solely along the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in six mountain ranges, five of which are in Sichuan. Their habitat, which totals about 23,050 square kilometers, is very vulnerable, since Sichuan is prone to earthquakes. "In the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, 6 percent of the panda habitat in Sichuan was lost," said Zhang, a panda expert who has been devoted to panda research and conservation for 33 years. The number of giant pandas in the wild and in captivity has increased over the past decade. China's fourth panda census, the results of which were released last year by the State Forestry Administration, tallied 1,864 wild pandas and 375 captive pandas worldwide at the end of 2013. That compares with 1,596 wild pandas and 164 captive pandas worldwide in the third census, which was carried out in 2000 to 2002. Despite the population increase, 24 of the 33 groups of wild pandas found in the fourth census are believed to be endangered, with some groups having fewer than 30 pandas, Zhang said. Eighteen groups have fewer than 10 pandas each and are in severe danger of extinction, he added. Meanwhile, Belgium's Pairi Daiza zoo announced on Thursday the birth of a panda, just three months after Chinese experts tried to artificially inseminate the mother, Hao Hao. China's Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) on Thursday instructed procuratorates at all levels to take a zero-tolerance stance on crimes against minors. Addressing a seminar on procuratorate work for minors, Cao Jianming, Procurator-General of the SPP, said arrest warrants and indictments should be issued as quickly as possible in cases involving minors. Commutation and parole of convicts should be carefully monitored, he added. Procuratorates should work more closely with the police, courts and judicial administrative authorities, focusing on protecting children left behind by parents who leave their hometowns to earn a living, and those who stay with their parents in unfamiliar cities.P Support mechanisms for minors should be improved as well, he said. At a time of heightened tensions between China and the United States regarding the Asia-Pacific region, U.S. top diplomat Secretary John Kerry is heading to meet the Chinese side in Beijing. The United States and China has been facing off in what could be termed as a love-hate relationship over the South China Sea. Recently, there have been a lot of conflicting measures regarding freedom of navigation, and Kerry's visit to the Chinese capital for the eighth U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, is an excellent opportunity to clarify and talk out a few differences. Kerry will be joined by U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew. The dialogue will be co-chaired by Vice Premier Wang Yang and State Councilor Yang Jiechi. China recently took a strong sovereignty stance against comments made by Ash Carter. Ash Carter previously said that Chinese actions will result in China enclosing itself in a Great Wall of isolation, and a Chinese spokesperson said that China will not fall into the Hollywood portrayal of the Cold war mentality or the trap of confrontation. "I want to say that in today's globalized world, the Cold War mentality will lead nowhere and yield no result. China has no interest in any form of Cold War and has no interest in playing a part in a Hollywood blockbuster directed by people from the U.S. military," spokesperson Hua Chunying was quoted as saying. U.S. FONOP operations will likely be discussed. Previously, Beijing raised objections regarding U.S. spy flights near the South China Sea. China is also supposed to take up the topic of Taiwan and the Korean peninsula. A recent report in China Daily suggested that the Chinese side is interested in discussing the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula and continues to believe that there is major convergence in interests between both Washington and Beijing on that issue. However, this author believes there is much more to be discussed and that this opportunity should be taken advantange of for a frank discussion. As we know, the Indian navy is foraying in South China Sea waters, setting up bases and doing port calls in Philippines and Vietnam. While every country is free to act according to their perceived national interests, it is the duty of the great powers to be aware of what actions might or might not exacerbate the security dilemma of an already volatile region. Since India is a nominal ally to the U.S., and the U.S. has been actively encouraging India to take and do heavy power sharing and burden sharing, this platform provides a chance to discuss how much of India's actions are a result of U.S. encouragement. The second important thing, which has been a bit overlooked recently, is the situation in Afghanistan. Terrorism is on the rise again in Afghanistan, which has a ripple effect in the region, as seen in the recent and unfortunate death of a Chinese engineer due to a bomb blast. The meeting will be a good chance for both sides to figure out which organizations are responsible and how they are being funded and by whom. Recent polling suggests that Brexiters are ahead in the polls by four points. Hopefully, Britain will stay in Europe, but if that isn't the case, it will have an immediate impact on the Chinese and American economies. The euro will enter a free fall, and there will be a need for contingency measures to stop the fall. In the long run, British bilateral deals with both China and the U.S. will need to be figured out, as well as to stem the decline in productivity growth which will inevitably result from a Brexit and further jeopardize the global economy in the short run. As we can see, there is a massive opportunity in front of both countries to sort out a lot of issues. There have unfortunately been some blowbacks recently, however, as both the Chinese spokesperson and the American side hinted, the convergence between the two giants far outweighs their differences. Sumantra Maitra is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SumantraMaitra.htm Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. Flash The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continued to advance at the outskirts of a strategic town controlled by the Islamic State (IS) group in northern Syria, near the Turkish borders, on Thursday, a monitor group reported. The SDF, which comprises of Arab and Kurdish fighters and primarily led by the Kurdish People Protection Units (YPG), controlled several areas in the southern rim of Manbej, which constitutes a key supply route for the IS to smuggle in support of men and weapon from neighboring Turkey. The offensive, which was launched by the SDF backed by U.S.-led airstrikes last Tuesday, killed many of the IS fighters, including 12 recently killed when the SDF advanced and captured large parts of the town of Jdaideh in southern Manbej, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Observers believe that the advance of the Kurdish-led SDF along the Turkish borders have annoyed Ankara, but it was necessary to quell the momentum and support of the terror group as a step toward eradicating it from the region, particularly as the Iraqi forces are also making achievements in the battle against the terror group in Iraq's Fallujah city, in tandem with the SDF advance in Syria. The Kurds have become in control of 400 km of the 900 km borderline between Syria and Turkey, while the IS is in control of 80 km of that borderline. A day earlier, the Observatory said 15 civilians were killed by U.S.-led strikes on Manbej since the offensive started on Tuesday. The SDF forces have become 15 km from the central of Manbej, according to the Observatory. In parallel with the Manbej offensive, the SDF backed by the U.S. air cover advanced in the northern countryside of al-Raqqa, the de facto capital of the IS, as part of another offensive also recently unleashed against the terror group. The attacks reflect the U.S. desire to weaken the IS terrorists in both Syria and Iraq, analysts here say. On Thursday, pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV said the Syrian army and allied fighters unleashed a wide-scale offensive, aiming at capturing the town of Tabqa in countryside of al-Raqqa. Even though there is no declared cooperation between the attacks by the U.S.-led forces and the Syrian government ones supported by Russia, but analysts believe Russia and the U.S. have apparently reached an agreement to weaken the IS. Flash A terrorist attack on a UN camp in Gao, northern Mali on Tuesday killed a Chinese peacekeeper and injured four others. Chinese peacekeepers of UN Mali Mission take part in an exercise against emergency in Gao, Mali, Oct. 20, 2014.[Photo/Xinhua] China has strongly condemned the attack claimed by Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, and pledged to continue to support UN peacekeeping operations across the world. The UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) is the world body's deadliest active mission. More than 60 of its personnel have died on active service since it was set up in 2013 following a rebellion in the country by ethnic Tuareg fighters alongside armed groups. China started contributing its peacekeepers to MINUSMA in 2013. Currently, nearly 400 Chinese peacekeepers are based in Gao, carrying out security, engineering and medical work. MINUSMA has spoken highly of the role Chinese peacekeepers have played in helping maintain peace and stability in the region, where jihadists stage sporadic attacks on UN personnel. Koen Davidse, deputy special representative of the UN Secretary-General in MINUSMA, told Xinhua late last year that Chinese peacekeepers had done a "perfect job" and built good relations with locals. "I am impressed by the unique relations between Chinese troops and the population of Gao. They support many schools in Gao by providing medical support, something that is recognized and appreciated by the population," Davidse said. China has in the past decade been in the front line of supporting UN peacekeeping efforts in Africa, with a total of more than 2,400 Chinese blue helmets currently on duties in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), Liberia, Sudan, South Sudan and Mali. In DR Congo, where rebel groups have been active in its eastern part since late 1990s, Chinese peacekeepers have been on UN peacekeeping duties since 2003. The Chinese military engineers in DR Congo have been involved in road renovation, bridge construction, landmine detection, transportation and airport maintenance, while the medical personnel have been providing treatment for their UN comrades and local people. In South Sudan, which has just begun to heal from more than two years of civil war, China sent its first ever peacekeeping infantry battalion to the war-torn country in April 2015. The 700-strong battalion deployed to the capital Juba is tasked with protection for civilians and UN personnel and facilities, as well as humanitarian work. The head of the UN Mission in South Sudan, Ellen Loej, told Xinhua late last year: "When we have disturbances or unrest in protection of the civilians site, they (Chinese peacekeepers) have shown very quick reaction that I appreciate very much." Also in South Sudan, a Chinese engineering company and a medical team, numbering around 300, are serving with the UN mission in the northwestern city of Wau. In Liberia, where a 1980 coup led to some two decades of political instability, Chinese peacekeepers joined the UN peacekeeping mission there in 2003, and more than 500 Chinese blue helmets are now on duty. In Sudan's restive Darfur region, a Chinese peacekeeping team is currently part of the UN-African Union Mission in Darfur, with their role including construction of makeshift airports, bridges and roads, and civilian protection. China is the biggest contributor among the five UN Security Council permanent members in terms of the number of blue helmets. It will become the second-largest contributor to the UN peacekeeping budget 2016-2018, next to the United States. Globally, since 1990, more than 30,000 Chinese peacekeepers have served with over 20 UN peacekeeping missions. More than ten Chinese peacekeepers have lost their lives on active mission. In September last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced at a UN summit that China will contribute 8,000 troops to a UN peacekeeping standby force. Xi also pledged that China will provide military aid worth 100 million U.S. dollars to the African Union to support the establishment of the African Standby Force, Africa's peacekeeping troops. You are here: Home Flash The Chinese military sent a specialist medical team to Mali on Thursday to join Chinese peacekeepers there and help deal with casualties from a Tuesday terrorist attack. Led by a senior Defense Ministry official, the team will work with the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) and the Mali government to ensure the safety of peacekeepers. The MINUSMA camp in the Water Tower neighborhood of Gao was attacked on Tuesday evening. On Thursday, the Defense Ministry confirmed that First Sergeant Shen Liangliang, 29, was killed in the attack, and another five soldiers were injured, including Lieutenant Liu Liang, two first sergeants, a sergeant and a corporal. Flash Mitsubishi Materials' apology to forced Chinese laborers during World War II is insincere and the lawsuit against the company will continue, said a Chinese lawyer on Wednesday after the Japanese company reached a legal settlement with three forced Chinese laborers, the Shanghai-based Wenhui Daily reported. Chinese nationals on behalf of the wartime Chinese forced laborers in Japan sign a deal with Mitubishi Materials in Beijing on June 1, 2016. [Photo/Chinanews.com] The three forced Chinese laborers have the right to sign the deal, but the lawyer team representing the Chinese forced laborers will carry on with the lawsuit and continue to defend the truth and the rights of those who have been hurt, said lawyer Kang Jian. A public statement has been issued by the Chinese lawyer team, who said that Mitsubishi Materials was playing with words in the agreement, as the money it promised to give to the victims was labeled as a fund "for Sino-Japan friendliness" and not as compensation. According to the statement, Mitsubishi Materials deliberately avoided mentioning in the agreement that it had colluded with the Japanese government to kidnap and enslave Chinese laborers during wartime, thereby avoiding its liability to make corresponding compensation. The Chinese plaintiffs negotiated with Mitsubishi Materials on this matter, but their request to change the expression was refused and the negotiation was halted on Feb. 11, 2015. The company has never contacted the plaintiffs afterward, the statement said. Previous media reports quoted Mitsubishi Materials as saying that the company has found more than 1,000 forced Chinese laborers or surviving family members, and 95 percent of them agreed to the settlement. But the Chinese lawyers' statement said this is not true. Zhang Yang, whose father was a forced laborer, said on his father's behalf that the settlement is not agreed to by all and won't be accepted. "A monument in memory of the dead must be erected, and an apology must also be made. We would rather see these two requests met than receive any financial compensation," he said. Mitsubishi Materials has agreed to offer an apology and compensate 100,000 yuan (US$15,000) per person to the nearly 4,000 Chinese nationals who were forced to work in labor camps during World War II. At least 39,000 Chinese people were forcibly brought to Japan from China between 1943 and 1945. Almost 7,000 of them died there because of the rigors of their labor, the squalid conditions and a lack of basic essentials like food and water. Flash Tanzanian President John Magufuli on Thursday laid the foundation stone for the construction of a new library at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) to be built at a cost of about 40 million U.S. dollars funded by the Chinese government. Tanzanian President John Magufuli (3rd R, front), Tanzanian former President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete (2nd R, front) and Chinese ambassador to Tanzania Lv Youqing (3rd L, front) attend the foundation ceremony of China-aided Chinese Library at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), Tanzania, on June 2, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] President Magufuli said the Chinese government's 100 percent-aided project had come at the right time as the government was working hard to improve the country's education standard. He said once completed, the state-of-the-art facility will boast a space of 20,000 square meters and house over 800,000 books. The planned mega-library will also be able to accommodate 2,600 university students at any one time, officials said. The ground breaking ceremony for the construction of the library was also attended by former president Jakaya Kikwete, who is the chancellor of the UDSM. He appreciated the efforts by the Chinese government to fund various development projects in the country. The Chinese ambassador to Tanzania, Lyu Youqing commended Tanzania's efforts towards the promotion of its economy which grew at high rate in the last 10 years. Lyu commended President Magufuli's speedy transformation of the east African nation which aims to fulfill the Development Vision 2025 that would see the country developing into a middle class economy. President Magufuli said his government had been providing 9.4 million U.S. dollars every month to fund free education. "Increased enrollment in primary schools have left us with challenges of shortage of classrooms and desks. We request education stakeholders to keep on supporting the government," said the President. You are here: Home Flash At least 85 bodies of migrants washed ashore in Libya's western city of Zwarah on Thursday as they attempted to cross the Mediterranean, an official of the Libyan Red Crescent confirmed. Al-Khamis Al-Bosefi said that relief workers are recovering more bodies, including women and children, adding that the circumstances of their death are still unclear. No sea rescue patrol was done this week due to poor weather conditions, said Al-Bosefi. Zwarah's municipality council condemned "leniency and inaction of the state institutions and international organizations" towards the migrant crises in the city. "The municipality of Zwarah holds the officials of the Libya institutions and international organization responsible for the failure to provide assistance to fight this phenomenon." More than 40,000 immigrants have crossed the Mediterranean towards Europe this year. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, at least 880 immigrants drowned on the way to Europe this week. Libya is a preferred point of departure for immigrants wanting to cross the Mediterranean to Europe due to insecurity and chaos. Flash Iraqi security forces on Thursday fought fierce clashes with Islamic State (IS) militants and retook control of an area near the IS-held city of Fallujah in Iraq's western province of Anbar, while the U.S.-led air strikes continued against IS positions outside the city, a military statement and a security source said. The troops and allied paramilitary Shiite and Sunni units, known as Hashd Shaabi, had recaptured al-Tuffaha village and raised the Iraqi flag on nearby remains of a bridge in south of Fallujah, some 50 km west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, the statement from Hashd Shaabi media office said without giving further details. Meanwhile, the security forces and Hashd Shaabi units continued their battles around the IS-held town of Saqlawiyah in northwest of Fallujah, in an attempt to free the town from IS militants. The troops' advance toward Fallujah was slowed down but the battles with IS militants continued around the city as the troops have been facing fierce resistance from the extremist militants inside the city, in addition to hundreds of hidden bombs are believed to be planted by the militants to hamper the advance of the troops. The security forces also wanted avoid heavy casualties among tens of thousands of civilians who are reportedly trapped inside Fallujah. Earlier, Brigadier General Yahya Rasoul, spokesman for the Joint Military Command, said that intelligence reports indicate that about 400 to 600 militants are in Fallujah, many of them foreigners. He said about 50,000 to 70,000 civilians are expected to remain in Fallujah. On Wednesday, the UN children fund (UNICEF) warned that at least 20,000 Iraqi children remain trapped in the city of Fallujah where Iraqi security forces are fighting to drive out the extremist IS militants from the city. "The UNICEF estimates that at least 20,000 children remain trapped in the city. According to reports, food and medicine are running out and clean water is in short supply," the organization said in a statement. Also in the day, international aircraft bombarded an IS position at Jazirat al-Khaldiyah area in east of Fallujah, leaving at least 10 IS militants killed and destroying three of their vehicles, a local security source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Separately, another U.S.-led coalition aircraft carried out air strike on the IS headquarters in Albu Hawa area in south of Fallujah on the western bank of Euphrates River, killing eight militants and wounding 15 others, the source said. In addition, the international warplanes struck four IS positions in Albu Diyab area in north of Anbar's provincial capital city of Ramadi, some 110 km west of Baghdad, destroying the positions and killing at least nine militants, the source added. On May 23, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the launch of the offensive to claim Fallujah. Government troops and allied militias have currently been fighting for months to reclaim key cities and towns in Anbar from IS militants, who attempted to advance towards Baghdad after seizing most of Anbar province. Iraq is currently witnessing a wave of violence since the Islamic State controlled parts of Iraq's northern and western regions in June 2014. Flash The Kremlin Thursday denied reports that Russia has agreed to send a police mission to eastern Ukraine. "Allegations that there are records of the Normandy Quartet conversations somehow indicating that the Russian side agreed to the deployment of an OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) police mission are not true," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. There were no agreements on the subject, while any decisions to settle the Ukraine crisis should consider the position of representatives of the Donbass region, Peskov said, as quoted by RIA Novosti news agency. "There is a willingness to discuss this issue (of deploying an OSCE police mission)," Peskov said, adding that the option of sending a monitoring mission to the contact line was also being considered. On May 24, leaders of the Normandy Four, namely Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, held a telephone conversation. According to an online statement from the Ukrainian president, the four leaders supported the deployment of an OSCE police mission in the insurgent Ukrainian region of Donbass and the beginning of consultations on the issue. Nevertheless, an official Kremlin statement on the conversation did not mention the deployment of the police mission, but merely stressed the importance of an immediate ceasefire and start of a direct dialogue between the conflicting parties. Peskov said then that the talk was not about sending a special police mission, but only about the possibility of arming the OSCE monitoring mission in eastern Ukraine. Flash Canada's Governor General David Johnston met with visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi Thursday on enhancing relations between the two countries. Canadian Governor General David Johnston (R) meets with visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Ottawa, capital of Canada, on June 2, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] Johnston said Canada and China have enjoyed a long history of cooperation and exchanges in various fields. The bilateral relations have became increasingly active in recent years, which have had a broad impact on Canadian economic and social life, he said. Canada's new government has shown great enthusiasm to develop the relations with China, he said, calling on the two countries to meet each other halfway, develop mutually beneficial cooperation and promote people-to-people and cultural exchanges to constantly bring benefits to both peoples. The Chinese foreign minister, who arrived here Tuesday for a three-day visit, said that Johnston's proposal of the three themes of prosperity, innovation and communication for the China-Canada relations conforms to the future development of the bilateral ties. The China-Canada relationship has witnessed remarkable progress in all fields and is now faced with critical development opportunities, Wang said. Canada's new Liberal government expressed willingness to carry on its tradition of actively developing relations with China, he said, noting that China is willing to work together with Canada to create a golden age in the bilateral relations oriented towards the 21st century. Flash Los Angeles police announced on Thursday the shooter who killed a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) appears to have also killed a woman in Minnesota and more than one UCLA professors are on the gunman's "kill list". Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Chief Charlie Beck said the list found in the home of the shooter, Mainak Sarkar, in St. Paul, Minnesota, included three names: the woman in Minnesota; UCLA professor William Scott Klug, who was killed Wednesday; and another UCLA professor, who was not injured. Beck declined to give the names of the woman or the other professor. A neighbor in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, identified the dead woman to local newspaper as Ashley Hasti, who may have been Sarkar's ex-girlfriend. The newspaper published a photo on its website of Hasti and Sarkar together. Beck said Sarkar, 38, likely killed the woman in Minnesota several days ago, then drove to California in a 2003 gray Nissan Sentra with the Minnesota license plate. The car is still being sought in the UCLA area. He said although he believes the car does not present any danger, he urged anyone who recognizes it to report to the authority. Beck said Sarkar was heavily armed at UCLA, carrying two semiautomatic pistols -- one that was used in the murder-suicide, and another in his backpack. He was also carrying multiple ammunition magazines and loose rounds of ammunition, indicating he was prepared to carry out more violence. According to Beck, a note found by the bodies of Sarkar and Klug in a small office in UCLA's Boelter Hall "doesn't refer to suicide", but it included an instruction to check on Sarkar's cat -- leading authorities to his Minnesota residence and the "kill list", ultimately leading to the discovery of the woman's body. Beck said investigators have spoken to the other professor on the list, and that person was aware of the online postings but did not believe they were an indication of any impending violence. Sarkar was a Ph.D student and a current member of the Klug Research Group; Computational Biomechanics, at UCLA, according to a Klug Research Group publication. The victim was identified as 39-year-old William Scott Klug, a father of two and associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, students and his colleagues told Xinhua on site Wednesday. Sarkar had accused the victim of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else, according to an online blog post he wrote on March 10, 2016, as "William Klug, UCLA professor, is not the kind of person when you think of a professor. He is a very sick person. I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy", and "My name is Mainak Sarkar. I was this guy's PhD student. We had personal differences. He cleverly stole all my code and gave it to another student. He made me really sick." However, some inside source told Los Angeles local newspaper that the gunman's claims about killed professor Klug were untrue and Klug helped a lot to make gunman whose work was not stellar to graduate. The shooting happened shortly before 10 a.m. local time on Wednesday in Boelter Hall, which is part of the Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, according to the university. The entire UCLA campus was placed on lockdown, along with three Los Angeles Unified School District elementary and middle schools nearby. The UCLA authority canceled all the classes and activities Wednesday. Scott Waugh, UCLA vice chancellor and provost, said on Wednesday campus operations would return to normal Thursday -- except for engineering classes, which will be canceled for the rest of the week. This weekend's and next week's final exams would not be disrupted, he said. UCLA officials said the university was offering counseling services to students and staff affected by the shooting. The university has designated "healing spaces" on the campus where students can gather, and counselors will be available for students at the Counseling and Psychological Services office. You are here: Home Flash Israel on Friday released Palestinian member of parliament and top figure of the leftist Palestinian Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Khalida Jarrar after arresting her for 14 months. Jarrar was released at a military checkpoint near the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem, where crowds welcomed her and moved with her to her home in Ramallah. She said that it is essential to increase efforts to release female Palestinian prisoners, highlighting it as a national priority in order to end their suffering inside Israeli jails. Israeli forces arrested Jarrar in April 2015, after storming into her home in Ramallah. She was transferred to administrative detention for six months and later was sentenced to 15 months in jail. Jarrar only served 14 months of her sentence. [Photo/IC] China Minmetals Co, one of the country's largest mining groups by asset value and overseas projects, merged with China Metallurgical Group Co on Thursday, creating a new conglomerate bigger than the asset value of any of the three global giant mining companiesBHP Billiton Ltd, Rio Tinto Group and Vale SA. After the merger, China Metallurgical, the largest metallurgical engineering contractor and service provider in the country, will become a wholly owned subsidiary of China Minmetals. The company will no longer be directly administered by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council. Before the merger, China Minmetals had overseas operations in 34 countries and regions. The new company will have 240,000 employees, 29 national-level research and development centers and institutes, and different types of mines in Africa, Australia, Latin America and Asia. It will have mining and mine-related construction projects in more than 60 countries and regions. He Wenbo, chairman of China Minmetals, said the move would help the new company optimize its business structure and further ensure China's resource security in the current global business and political situation. "The new company will deploy more resources and manpower to accelerate the construction pace of developing copper, zinc and nickel mining projects in overseas markets to meet China's demand in these specific mining resources, as well as developing its modern logistics, financial services and equipment manufacturing businesses," He said. The combined sales revenue of the two Chinese companies reached 430 billion yuan ($65.36 billion) in 2015. The move is part of the ongoing restructuring of State-owned enterprises. The top two high-speed rail makers and two leading shipping companies have already merged since last year. Guo Wenqing, former chairman of China Metallurgical and now general manager of China Minmetals, said the merger would help the new company have a more diversified operational model that could take full advantage of the opportunities likely to come from the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as strengthen the company in its competition with established foreign rivals in overseas markets. A Chinese employee is seen at the stand of COFCO (China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corporation) during a food exhibition in Shanghai, Nov 16, 2014. [Photo/IC] China's largest food trader is on the hunt for international merger partners and acquisition targets, amid a massive surplus in domestic grain stocks. Yu Xubo, president of China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corp, commonly referred to as COFCO, said the company will concentrate on firms that can help solve food shortages at home, and allow the company to develop a global supply chain. Oilseed, such as soybean and rapeseed, and animal feeds will be its major focus, he said, as China's grain inventory is already at historic highs, including an estimated 250 million metric tons of corn after 12 consecutive years of increased production. Its prime target markets are the South and North Americas, and areas along the Black Sea in Europe. "With an adequate supply of staple foods domestically, we will shift our focus to sectors that are in demand in China," he said on the sidelines of G20 Agricultural Entrepreneurs Forum on Thursday in Xi'an, Shaanxi province. Despite the surpluses, however, Yu said the country still faces a long-term grain shortage due to shrinking quality farmland and over-stretched water resources. "That's why we will continue to focus on grain sectors, especially as the surplus reduces," he said. Yu said the company is eager to play a bigger role in China's agricultural sector supply-side reform, which is largely focused on solving the grain glut. "Our solid domestic grain processing and sales network will help absorb stocks," he said. "But we still need to make sure our supply chain is ready when the country's supply-side reform is complete," he said. COFCO announced in March it had taken full control of Noble Agri Ltd, after buying the remaining 49 percent of the company still owned by Noble Group, the Hong Kong-based global supply chain manager. Noble Agri has now been renamed COFCO Agri. Reuters reported in April the Chinese company is increasing its stake in Dutch grain trader Nidera BV to 65.5 percent in September from 51 percent. Ayumi Konishi, director-general of ADB's East Asia department. [Photo/Xinhua] Bank points to successful partnership with Hebei in reforming its energy policies How can an international organization with limited resources stay relevant in a vast country awash with money, such as China? Asian Development Bank's experience might offer an answer to that question. The Manila-based multilateral development bank, under President Takehiko Nakao's leadership, has crafted a strategy named "finance++": the first "plus" standing for "knowledge" and the second for "leverage". In China, its strategy has been further revised to "knowledge++", according to Ayumi Konishi, director-general of ADB's East Asia department. "For us working in China, we say knowledge++. Money really doesn't come first. Our main business in China is knowledge," he told China Daily in an exclusive interview. The bank's strategy was formed in the context of ADB's lending to China, which with around $1.7 billion approved in 2015, equates to less than 0.2% of the $1 trillion of total loans at China Development Bank, a domestic policy bank. To remain relevant, said Konishi, it has to offer more than just capital. To get a sense of what "knowledge" means, the ADB executive said take a look at the greater Beijing clean air program, for which the bank in late 2015 granted a $300 million policy-based loan. Together with another 150 million euros ($168 million) from an European agency, the funds only accounted for 10% of the total investment. But, Konishi said, ADB managed to play a key role in providing technical know-how. With ADB's support, Hebei province, which contributes most of the pollutants in the region, is making fundamental reforms of its energy policies, switching from coal to cleaner energy, promoting public transport in urban areas, and increasing the use of biomass for energy in rural areas. ADB also helped develop a monitoring and analysis system and helped strengthen environmental regulatory enforcement. In addition, employee retraining and social protection will be provided for workers affected by the industrial transformation. Konishi said some of the actions are follow-through efforts initiated by Hebei earlier, but the problem was that many targets were left unimplemented. For example, 11 cities in Heibei set themselves emission control targets, but some didn't even have the necessary monitoring stations. Besides designing new policies, much of ADB's work has been working with Hebei to oversee their actual implementation, review the policy, and discuss the next steps, Konishi said. "I don't know how many times our staff come to China to discuss with different government departments the policy details," he said. He added he had himself flown to China twice in a month, spending most of the time in discussions with heads of different departments. Konishi acknowledged that working through the myriads of Chinese departments was "not easy". However with ADB's presence, officials from different departments were able to "pool together" to meet his bank's team, facilitating a coordination that could otherwise be difficult to achieve. Konishi said ADB's expertise is reflected in various facets of one program. Although having a simple theme, the greater Beijing clear air program actually involved many different aspects, ranging from energy policies, public transport, urban development, institutional strength and even social policies, he said. From project design to implementation to review, ADB not only mobilized its China office staff but a major workforce in Manila. At least half of ADB's knowledge department staff have been involved in projects in China, Konishi said. Technicians check a pilotless helicopter at a startup company in the Binhai New Area of Tianjin. [Photo provided to China Daily] Innovative startup companies have become a new driving force for Binhai New Area's growth, according to an official of the new area in Tianjin as it celebrates its 10th anniversary. "We have attracted a lot of incubators invested by private companies that have brought along a large number of innovative startup companies, some of which have become highly successful," said Zhang Yong, director of the Binhai New Area. Instead of setting up a government-led incubator in the area, the Binhai government has given the floor to private companies to launch their own incubators, or mass innovation space as they are called in the area. So far, there are 15 such private incubators that have been or are about to be set up in the area. They are owned by large technology companies such as Tencent Holdings Ltd, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Baidu Inc. The latest incubator in Binhai is the Bauhinia Mass Innovation Space launched in May, with around 30 startup companies with 775.5 million yuan ($117 million) in registered capital. "We are absolutely confident in the future of the Binhai New Area," said Zheng Yuanxin, chief executive officer of Bauhinia (Tianjin) Technology Business Incubator. According to Zheng, more than 70 percent of the startup companies in the innovation space in Binhai are technology companies. Her company is cooperating with Tsinghua University and the China Investment and Finance Association to provide more professional services for startup companies. The governments in Tianjin and the Binhai New Area have set up a 1 billion yuan ($152 million) innovation fund to attract innovative companies. The fund offers subsidies of 3 to 5 million yuan for research institutes' purchases of equipment valued at more than 20 million yuan. It also includes a compensation fund that covers up to 70 percent of the bank loans that any startup companies fail to pay back. Moreover, innovative enterprises that get listed on the stock exchange will gain incentives from the fund as well. Tencent set up an incubator called Ckerhome in Binhai last year that has around 70 innovative projects going on with funding of more than 2 billion yuan. Zhang Shuai, chief executive officer of qingchujia.com, an auction platform selling novelties, limited edition shoes and technological gadgets in Ckerhome, has lauded the business environment in Binhai for entrepreneurial companies "The tax policies and well-constructed infrastructure are the two main reasons for us to do our business here," said Zhang. "Tax refunds are high at up to 80 percent. Employees are able to move their permanent residency registration to Tianjin, which has a great appeal for talent." The Binhai government has offered packaged services for entrepreneurial enterprises. "We help them go through paperwork with the government, contact the industry associations, and even help them hire people," said Yang Dehong, director of the central business management commission of the Binhai area. "Other public service platforms for accounting, legal affairs and training have been put in place too. We have saved them a lot of energy so that they can focus on their business." BEIJING - China opposes abuse of trade remedy measures, Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao said on Thursday in response to the latest trade spat between the United States and China on steel. A week ago, US regulators launched an investigation into complaints by United States Steel Corp that alleged Chinese competitors had stolen its secrets and fixed prices, and the company sought to halt nearly all imports from China's largest steel producers and trading houses. "China's stance is clear in this respect. That is, the country opposes abuse of trade remedy measures," Zhu stressed when answering a question on the issue at the 16th Lanting Forum, held in Beijing. China-US trade is rapidly expanding and annual bilateral trade has exceeded $558.4 billion, and it is inevitable that problems and contradictions will emerge during the development process, the vice minister said. However, to solve trade disputes, both parties should abide by WTO rules and hold dialogues to guard against abuse of trade remedy measures, according to Zhu. "We should oppose trade protectionism in the context of the principle of free trade, which is agreed upon by and serves the interests of both countries," said Zhu. On the same day, Hebei Iron & Steel Group, China's leading steelmaker by output, released a statement on its website, accusing the United States of breaching WTO rules. It said US protectionism is damaging the world steel trade. "The protectionist behavior taken by the United States, based on purely groundless accusations by US Steel, has seriously broken WTO rules, distorted the normal global steel trade and damaged the essential interests of Chinese steel mills and US steel consumers," the statement said. A staff member demonstrates the process of 3D printing of a car door at the expo in Shanghai, June 2, 2016. [Photo/VCG] A 3D printing expo in Shanghai attracted more than 100 companies from home and abroad to showcase their latest technologies, products and services from May 31 to June 2. Organized by the World 3D Printing Technology Industry Association and China 3D Printing Technology Industry Alliance, the event offers visitors a chance to have a close look at the new technology. More than 8,000 visited the expo on its opening on Tuesday. In a bid to engage wider audience, the organizers also announced they will create 3D printing maker spaces and digital medical centers in cooperation with 100 schools and hospitals. BEIJING - China's social security fund saw better-than-average investment performance last year despite downward economic pressure, according to the fund's operator on Friday. The national social security fund, which pays for social insurance schemes including endowment insurance, raked in about 229.5 billion yuan ($34.88 billion) in investment profits, with the rate of return on investment (ROI) standing at 15.19 percent, almost doubling the average ROI of 8.82 percent since it was established in 2000, according to a report from the National Council for Social Security Fund. China's social security fund totaled about 1.9 trillion yuan in assets by the end of 2015, with cumulative investment returns of about 790 billion yuan, the report showed. Visitors gather at a booth during the China (Xiamen) International Internet of Things Expo and Forum 2016 in Xiamen, Southeast China's Fujian Province, June 3, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] Fast-tracking the development of energy-saving smart cars is the purpose behind a new innovation contest which began in Beijing on Thursday. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] Fast-tracking the development of energy-saving smart cars is the purpose behind a new innovation contest which began in Beijing on Thursday. The event is designed to attract projects featuring new lightweight and energy-saving technology, improved performance and safety, innovative design, as well as smart cars. It's run by China EV100, an organization dedicated to advancing the research, development and deployment of new-energy vehicles, as they gain popularity in China. Chen Qingtai, head of the organization, said "the smart new-energy vehicle sector is in urgent need of innovation." "The contest will serve as a platform and pool resources for outstanding entrepreneurs," he said. The organizers said the contest was open to applicants from across the world. They can start enrolling by registering at www.carieda.com, with preliminary contests starting in October ahead of the final in January 2017. A nursery program was also started to help promising projects gain better development at incubators established by companies in the industry, including BAIC BJEV, NextEV, Lifan and ZD. Joseph Jimenez, CEO of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis International AG. [Photo provided to China Daily] Innovation will be Novartis' priority in 2016, its chief says Joseph Jimenez, CEO of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis International AG, is a titan in the industry. A few years ago, he was named one of the 25 most influential people in biopharma. Since taking over as CEO in 2010, he has consistently stressed the need for innovation and a new strategy as a "patent cliff" threatened major drugmakers. Patent cliff refers to the potential sharp decline in revenues upon the expiry of drug patents owned by a company. Novartis is set to lose patent protection for some of its drugs soon. Despite the looming threat, the company performed pretty well last year. Jimenez said he believes China will be one of its main three markets in five years. He praised the government's efforts to reduce what he called China's drug lag, or the delay in getting new drugs to patients. Jimenez spoke to China Daily recently. The following are excerpts from the interview: How did Novartis perform last year? What is your forecast for this year? Novartis had a good year in 2015. Aside from completing our portfolio transformation, which focused on three big divisionsinnovative medicines, eye care (Alcon) and generics (Sandoz)we also had a good financial performance. Our sales were up 5 percent in local currencies and there was a double-digit profit increase. The best part, however, was innovation. We had more new drug approvals in Europe and the United States last year than any other pharmaceutical companies. And we also launched two very important new drugs. One is for chronic heart failure. There have not been new therapies for 20 years in heart failure. The other is for psoriasis. Overall, 2015 was a very good year for the company. In 2016, we lose patent protection for our blockbuster (cancer) drug Gleevec in the US and we'll lose the patent in Europe next year. This will be a year that we lose patent protection, but we will also start to ramp up new drugs. The overall priority for 2016 is to keep the innovation strong because innovation is the core of our business. If we can continue to strengthen the pipeline with new drugs, gain new approvals, we'll be a very strong company. How about China? How much did the Chinese market contribute to your business? We don't provide country level breakup of revenues. But I can tell you that five years ago, China was in our top 20 countries. It's currently in our top 10 and within five more years, China will be in our top three countries. You can see the importance of China in our overall company. It's increasing very rapidly and that's why we are investing so much here. How do you see the opportunities and challenges for your company amid the Chinese healthcare reform? On the opportunity side, the government has recognized that new drugs don't come to Chinese patients as soon as they do to other countries. For example, of all the drugs introduced since 2008, only 20 percent have come to China. And I know that the Chinese authorities are working very hard to reduce what we call the drug lag that prevents Chinese patients from getting drugs sooner. For example, they have increased the number of reviewers so that all of the files can be adequately managed and approved or not approved depending on the data. They also have announced the priority review process for breakthrough therapies, which is something that other parts of the world also use, to speed up access of medicines for Chinese patients. So I think they are moving in the right direction in terms of increase speed of market access for Chinese patients. One of the questions is how we can expand insurance coverage so that we can ensure that not only all Chinese citizens have insurance for medicines but that they have them in a high enough level so that they can be treated. That is because we believe that the Chinese government could lower total healthcare cost by more efficient use of innovative pharmaceuticals. For example, our heart failure drug Entresto, which is under Chinese official review, has proven to reduce hospitalization by 20 percent. So there's a good trade-off there. How much do you invest in China every year and in what ways? Our strategic investment in China has reached more than $1.2 billion. We have invested more than $1 billion in our research center in Shanghai, which officially opened recently. It's a long-term commitment to helping the Novartis business to identify how we can better serve patients in China. But it is also going to help grow the pharmaceutical industry in China. Think about everyone employed in the research center coming out of the universities such as Fudan University and Peking University. That would be very beneficial for the local Chinese industry as people move in and out and build the whole ecosystem. You've spoken about biosimilar and generics. Could you explain? Biosimilar is very important to the future of the healthcare systems around the world because biologics are very expensive originator drugs. And it's not the same as a chemical. If you have a chemical, once a chemical goes generic, it's very easy for generics to launch. But in biologics, because we use living cells to create the medicine, it's much more difficult to make generics. So we have made a commitment to develop and launch generics. We'll have 10 filings over the next three years for biosimilars, which will help lower total cost of the healthcare system and free up funds so that more patients can be served and there will be more room for other innovative medicines that come. Could you explain your mergers and acquisitions strategy? We call our M&A approach precision M & A in terms of what we did two years ago with GSK (British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline Plc) and (the US pharmaceutical giant) Eli Lilly & Co. Precision M & A is when you look at your portfolio and what assets you want to keep and what assets you need to either sell or make stronger. And then you also look at other companies and go through the same exercise. And you try to find a match. We found a match in GSK. We wanted their oncology products and they wanted our vaccines products. So we did what's called a swap, where we swapped the assets and then we also formed a joint venture of our over-the-counter drug business. We call it "precision" because it goes in and identifies those specific assets in another company that help strengthen our company. What is your management style? Are you a tough man? My job as the leader of the company is to find the right people to run the businesses, to agree on the objectives and then to let them run the business. So my style is, let's get aligned upfront on what we are trying to accomplish, let's set targets and then give the managers the autonomy they need to deliver those targets. As long as everything goes well, then, there's a lot of autonomy. If things don't go well, then I will get very involved in the business and help them manage it in a way that can get us back on track. What are your hobbies? I like to do physical fitness, go to the gym and stay healthy, try to clear my mind. Working out is one of my big hobbies. I also love fly fishing. It's popular around the world, such as in Montana where there are very beautiful big rivers and a lot of beautiful landscape. Models display Lenovo's new smartphones at a product release in Shanghai. [Photo provided to China Daily] Sell-off comes just a week after troubled firm reveals its first annual loss in six years Lenovo Group Ltd's shares dropped 4 percent on Thursday, after it was revealed that Google Inc was looking to offload about 371 million shares in the Hong Kong-listed company. The shares are being offered at HK$4.58 (59 cents) per share, a discount of 3.6 percent on Wednesday's close, and Google is expected to raise about $219 million, Bloomberg reported. Both companies declined to comment on the announcement, but analysts said Google's move marked the latest blow to the Chinese tech conglomerate as it struggles to revive faltering smartphone and personal computer businesses. The sale also comes just a week after Lenovo reported dismal March quarter results and its first annual loss in six years, as it continued to wrestle with the integration of a US acquisition and a slowdown in demand for smartphones and computers. In March, Reuters reported International Business Machines Corp was seeking to sell its Lenovo shares, which can be worth up to $150 million. Shen Meng, director of Chanson & Co, a boutique investment bank in China, said it will be difficult for Lenovo to turn around its fortunes in the short term, given the company's traditional corporate structure and culture. "Lenovo is facing mounting challenges, and it is reasonable for Google, a non-majority shareholder in the company, to sell its shares," Shen said. Google bought 618 million Lenovo shares in 2014, as the Chinese company bought Google's Motorola Mobility for $2.91 billion. Since then, however, the value of its shares has dropped by almost 60 percent. But Shen added the sale does not mean Google is losing confidence in Lenovo in the long term, as even after selling the 371 million shares, the US tech firm still holds more than 200 million Lenovo shares, assuming no other small-scale selling has occurred. Still considered the world's largest PC maker, in the first quarter of this year, Lenovo was hit with an 8.5 percent plunge in personal computer shipments, data from research agency International Data Corp show. And the news is even worse on smartphone sales, with the firm now falling behind its Chinese rivals Oppo Electronics Corp and vivo Mobile Communication Technology Co Ltd, and dropping outside the global top five vendors for the first time in four years. James Yan, research director at Counterpoint Technology Market Research, said to compound matters, Lenovo is also in desperate need of cash, after digging into its profits to rejuvenate smartphone sales. "In the near future, Lenovo will have no option but to rely on PC and tablet business for profits and its smartphone unit for revenue. "But both are not easy given the fierce competition," Yan said. On Tuesday, the company launched its latest smartphone, the middle-range ZUK Z2, with great fanfare, which it insisted would propel it once again into the top tier of phone makers within two years. Officials were equally bullish about promoting its Moto brand in overseas markets. According to its latest fiscal report released last week, the company registered a net loss of $128 million for the fiscal year that ended in March. Only one year earlier, Lenovo reported a profit of $829 million. A woman on a subway in Busan, South Korea, sits near a "pink light" that is activated by a wireless sensor. [Photo/Agencies] Before they show a baby bump, some pregnant women in South Korea can expect accusing glares when they take subway seats meant for pregnant, disabled or elderly passengers. One South Korean city is testing a wireless technology it hopes can alleviate the problem and perhaps help address one of the biggest challenges facing the Asian country: a stubbornly low birthrate. In April, the southeastern port city of Busan, South Korea's second-largest city, began testing a small device called a beacon. Equipped with a wireless sensor, it activates a pink light attached to another sensor installed on a metal bar next to special priority seats, usually at the end of subway cars. The idea is to alert everyone nearby that the person is pregnant. The Pink Light Campaign is intended to make it easier for non-pregnant passengers who might be occupying a seat designated for pregnant passengers to give up the seat without having to wonder. "It is hard to tell if a woman is pregnant, and give up a seat, when she doesn't have a baby bump," said Lee Gyeong-eon, a 23-year-old college student who frequently travels by subway. Other South Korean cities also are trying to make travel by public transportation friendlier for pregnant women. Seoul, the capital, has installed bright pink seats designated for women who are expecting. With one of the lowest birthrates in the world, South Korea is eager to encourage larger families. South Korean women had 1.21 children on average in 2014. The average for the wealthy nations belonging to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development was 1.68. The Busan experiment is part of the trend toward the internet of things, which uses wireless technology in products not usually associated with internet connectivity. A worker adjusts the logo at the stand of Huawei at the CeBIT trade fair in Hanover, March 15, 2015.[Photo/Agencies] The US Commerce Department has issued a subpoena to Huawei Technologies Co Ltd as part of a probe into the Chinese technology company's transactions in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria, the New York Times reported on Thursday. Citing a copy of the subpoena sent to the Shenzhen-based Huawei, the Times said the department is demanding the company turn over all its information on the export or re-export of US technology to those countries. The request comes as part of the United States' investigation into whether Huawei broke export controls in its dealings with the five countries. Huawei had not been accused of wrongdoing, and the subpoena is administrative, not criminal, in nature, the Times said. Huawei declined comment on the subpoena but said that it abides by the laws and regulations of the countries it operates in. "In particular, Huawei has a strict code of conduct, rigorous training, and detailed policies relating to export control compliance and actively cooperates with the relevant government agencies, including the Department of Commerce, regarding Huawei's compliance with export control laws," a company spokesperson said in an email. A Commerce Department spokesman declined comment. Huawei is a world leader in producing telecommunications equipment and has six US research centers, though it is a bit player in America's telecoms infrastructure market. US national security concerns have helped scuttle several attempts by Huawei to expand its presence in the country. According to the Times, the subpoena was issued after US officials earlier blocked sales of American technology to another Chinese company ZTE Corp, Huawei's smaller rival. In March, the US government gave ZTE a three-month reprieve on its tough export restrictions. WUHAN/NANCHANG -- Three people were killed and another two are missing after torrential rain hit many parts of China on Wednesday and Thursday. Storms have disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and caused heavy economic losses. In Chongqing, two people died and another two are missing with more than 9,000 people relocated. The rain has also caused direct economic losses estimated at around 750 million yuan ($110 million). In Jiangxi Province, an elderly woman drowned. Flooding throughout the provincial capital Nanchang brought serious traffic jams to the city on Thursday. In central China's Hubei Province, 2,800 people were evacuated and more than 26,000 hectares of crops were damaged, resulting in direct economic losses of more than 400 million yuan ($60 million). A section of the Yichang-Wanzhou railway was damaged by flooding with 39 trains canceled. The line is expected to reopen on Saturday. Provincial weather forecasters warned residents to expect more storms this month. A flooded road in Chongqing municipality on June 1, 2016. Downtown Chongqing and 22 other districts and counties have seen rainfall of up to 210.5 mm since Wednesday. Chongqing weather authority has issued orange alerts for the rainstorms and floods as the continuous rainfall has caused landsides in many regions. Local hydrology authorities warned that the water level of 16 rivers in Chongqing will exceed the warning level. Relief work is under way. [Photo/Chinanews.com] A government white paper defended on Thursday China's efforts in fighting religious extremism, saying it is a just act to safeguard the fundamental interests of the country and the people. In the name of religion, extremists spread radical and extremist views and use such means to try to establish a theocracy, the paper said. Religious extremism is by nature "anti-human, anti-society, anti-civilization and anti-religion", according to the white paper, titled Freedom of Religious Belief in Xinjiang. It tackles the protection of religious belief in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in seven parts. Religious extremism betrays and distorts religious doctrines, deludes and deceives the public - particularly young people, according to the white paper. It transforms some people into extremists and terrorists, said the document, issued by the State Council Information Office. Under international influences, religious extremism has grown and spread in Xinjiang in recent years. The white paper states that it has become a real danger that undermines national unity and ethnic solidarity, sabotages religious and social harmony, impairs social stability and peace in Xinjiang, and endangers the lives and property of people from all ethnic groups. Religious extremists have planned and carried out a series of severe and violent terrorist attacks in China, killing or injuring religious personnel, believers and other innocent people, according to the white paper. Shewket Imin, an official with the Xinjiang regional committee of the Communist Party of China, said at a news conference that the key to combating extremism lies in local communities, where problems tend to form. Another official attending the news conference was asked about Ilham Tohti - a Uygur teacher imprisoned for life in 2014 for separatism - and said the sentence was based on the facts. Jerla Isamudinhe, vice-governor of the Xinjiang regional government, said, "The judgment did not target any particular ethnic group or religion." The white paper said that normal religious activities in Xinjiang are protected by law, religious organizations are responsible for coordinating internal religious affairs, and the government should not interfere. "No Xinjiang citizen has been punished because of his or her rightful religious beliefs," it said. Xi Yanchun, spokeswoman for the information office, said the religious circle in Xinjiang has played a great role in maintaining regional safety, promoting the local economy and providing better services. The domestically developed Y-20 heavy-lifting transport plane will soon be delivered to buyers, a project manager said on Thursday. The manager expects that China will need at least 1,000 of the huge aircraft. "I can't tell you the exact time planned for delivery, but ... it will be carried out very soon," Zhu Qian, head of Aviation Industry Corp of China's Large Aircraft Development Office, said at a technology exhibition in Beijing. "More than 1,000 Y-20s will be needed," he said, adding that the figure was calculated based on the experience of the United States and Russia. Both countries have used heavy-lifting transport aircraft for years. Zhu said the military and many civilian sectors will benefit greatly from delivery of the Y-20. The plane's engines will initially be imported, but it is only a matter of time before the Y-20 is equipped with domestically developed engines, he said. China will also develop transport jets that are even larger than the Y-20 and comparable to the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy from the United States and the Antonov An-225 Mriya, designed in the former Soviet Union. Wang Ya'nan, deputy editor-in-chief of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, said prototypes of the Y-20 have completed all planned tests, and AVIC will begin mass-production. "Once the Y-20 joins the military, it will enable the Air Force to move closer to its goal of building a strategic air power," he said. The Y-20, with a crew of three, made its maiden flight in January 2013, making China the third nation after the US and Russia capable of developing strategic transport aircraft. The plane has a maximum payload of 66 metric tons and a maximum takeoff weight of more than 200 tons, according to military sources. The high payload means it can carry the PLA's heaviest tank, the 58-ton Type-99A2. According to a technical evaluation in Aerospace Knowledge, the Y-20 when fully fueled and carrying a payload of 51 tons can fly for 5,200 kilometers. This means it can reach everywhere in Europe and Asia, the US state of Alaska, Australia and North Africa. With its maximum payload, it has a range of 3,700 km, enabling it to fly nonstop from Harbin in Heilongjiang province to Lhasa in the Tibet autonomous region, the report said. A woman who was wrongfully jailed for about 13 years is seeking state compensation of nearly 10 million yuan ($1.5 million). Qian Renfeng, 31, and her two lawyers have leveled a complaint against the High People's Court in Yunnan province demanding damages and an apology in major media. Qian was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 when she was 17 years old for allegedly poisoning children. The sentence was quashed in December because of insufficient evidence. In February 2002, at a nursery where Qian was working, a toddler died of food poisoning and two other children were hospitalized. Qian, who had prepared the children's meals that day, said she was forced into confessing that she had mixed rat poison in the food. "The interrogators made me kneel down on the floor for hours and cuffed my hands behind my back," she told media after being released from prison. "In a state of fury, extreme pain and exhaustion, I said I was guilty." She probably would have spent her entire life in prison if she hadn't been noticed in April 2010 by a group of lawyers who provide free aid to prisoners at No 2 Prison for Women in Yunnan province, where she was an inmate. Lawyer Yang Zhu, who has provided free legal assistance, found contradictions in her "confession", forged signatures on documents that Qian said she had never seen and an apparent lack of substantial evidence to support her conviction. In July 2013, the Yunnan provincial procuratorate agreed to reopen the case. Nearly two years later the procuratorate ruled that there was not enough evidence to support the conviction, and advised the provincial court to rehear the case. According to a white paper on judicial justice and transparency published in June, courts across the nation reheard 1,317 cases and corrected a number of wrongful convictions in 2014. Improvement seen in air and water, but many cities still failed to meet standards China made noticeable environmental improvements last year, with reductions in many airborne pollutants and in cleaning up severely polluted water, according to the annual bulletin about the national environmental situation released on Thursday. Still, the report found that 265 of the 338 monitored cities failed to meet national air quality standards, with pollution control initiatives complicated by thorny issues related to ozone at ground level, experts said. The Ministry of Environmental Protection usually releases the annual bulletin before World Environmental Day, which falls on June 5. It presents an overview of the nation's environmental status - from air, water and ocean quality to farmland and forest coverage, noise and even background radiation. It showed a general improvement in air quality last year - 74 major cities cut their levels of PM2.5 by 14.1 percent, PM 10 by 11.4 percent and sulfur dioxide by 21.9 percent year-on-year. PM2.5 and PM10 refer to the diameter, expressed in microns, of fine particulate matter harmful to human health. PM2.5 particles can get into the tiny blood vessels of the lungs. Of the 338 monitored cities, only 21.6 percent met national air quality standards last year, the bulletin said. In 2014, only 9.9 percent of the 161 cities with regular monitoring reached the standards. Xia Guang, director of the ministry's Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy, credited national campaigns for the improvements, saying in a Thursday report on China Central Television that "the action plan against air pollution works". Ground-level ozone pollution has popped into public view, the report said, especially in the Bejing-Tianjin-Hebei region, where seven of 11 cities saw average ozone concentrations higher than national standards last year. In Beijing, for example, ozone has replaced PM2.5 as the largest pollutant on a growing number of days since 2013. Many days in May have seen excessive ozone as temperatures warm, said Chen Chen, a researcher at the city's monitoring center. The ozone at ground level directly harms health. It is mainly generated through complex photochemical reactions in the atmosphere, which are harder to manage than other sources of pollution. Control of ozone requires comprehensive measures in curbing a variety of substances, Chen said. In 2015, the average ozone concentration in 74 major cities increased by 3.4 percent year-on-year, an increase of 7.9 percent over 2013, said Luo Yi, head of the environmental ministry's monitoring department, in February. Luo called for more focus on reducing ozone. In a step to reduce water pollution, China will expand the number of monitoring stations to 2,767 by the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period, the ministry said in March. BEIJING - China has set a benchmark for what the world can achieve in the fight against hunger, and its accomplishment must be replicated in other developing countries, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) Ertharin Cousin said. Ertharin Cousin made the remarks in an interview with Xinhuanet on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of WFP-China South-South Cooperation Policy Dialogue Tour on Wednesday. CHINA SETS A BENCHMARK "China has created significant lessons for the world and established a true benchmark for what the world can achieve," Cousin said. There are many people in the world having little faith in achieving zero hunger, but China proves them wrong with its remarkable achievements in ending hunger and achieving food security, Cousin said. "China has transformed from a nation that the world used to say will never feed itself to a country that is now donating financial resources and providing technical and intellectual support to help other governments address challenges of hunger and malnutrition,"she said. The accomplishment exceeds everyone's expectations, the WFP head acclaimed, noting "China has achieved the goals of increasing food security, and reducing stunting in children from 30 percent two decades ago to less than 10 percent today." Moreover, China has contributed over 100 millions dollars to the WFP to deal with emergencies and address food insecurity in developing countries over the past decade, she added. REPLICATE CHINA'S ACHIEVEMENT China's remarkable achievement must be replicated, said Cousin at the opening ceremony of the WFP-China South-South Cooperation Policy Dialogue Tour. And during the interview, she repeated, "China is my example to the world", highlighting the importance of learning from China in ending hunger and poverty through Trilateral South-South Cooperation. The policy dialogue tour brings together countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to learn from the Chinese people and government and to take these lessons back home to address the challenges that they are facing, Cousin said. This is a new type of cooperation between China and the WFP because it is China bringing the knowledge and WFP using its deep field experience and experience in implementing programs to bring in countries from the developing world to China, she said. It not only involves learning, but also putting into practice the lessons learned in the participants' countries. With the new cooperation, Cousin hoped to see the development of new strategies for food security and nutrition in these countries. The policy dialogue tour invited delegations from Kenya, Zimbabwe and Mozambique to visit China's capital Beijing, as well as Anhui and Jiangsu provinces from June 1 to 9. Fishing boats anchor at the Tanmen port in Qionghai city, South China's Hainan province, May 16, 2016. China banned fishing from May 16 to Aug 1 in the South China Sea, a measure taken for the 18th consecutive year. [Photo/Xinhua] BEIJING - It has been widely speculated that the South China Sea will dominate the Shangri-La Dialogue, an Asia-Pacific defense and security summit opened on Friday in Singapore. If so, the three-day meeting, which gathers military brass, intelligence officers and civilian leaders and promises to play a constructive role in regional security, will be another platform hijacked to make a fanfare of the maritime disputes. Around the South China Sea, another negative development is that a few, particularly non-claimants, have been busy expanding presence and flexing military muscles around the South China Sea, as an international arbitration tribunal in The Hague prepares to deliver a ruling in the next few months over a case about the issue unilaterally lodged by Manila in 2013. This adds to the worry that outside interference, which stems from various self-interests, has become an increasingly serious menace to stability in the South China Sea. For example, the United States has conducted several so-called "freedom of navigation" operations by closely flying or sailing past South China Sea islands, blatantly violating China's sovereign and security interests. In the meantime, the US military made a series of harsh rhetoric on the issue. During his speech at the U.S. Naval Academy at the end of last month, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the Pentagon's best weapons will be deployed to the Pacific region. The words and deeds, with an obvious intention to create a volatile situation to help Washington preserve hegemonic presence in the Asia-Pacific region, will embolden certain claimants to make hot-headed moves on the issue. These claimants should be reminded that if a confrontation between the United States and China whose sovereignty over the South China Sea islands is backed by both legal and historical facts should take place, regional countries will face a Cold War dilemma of picking sides between the world's two largest economies. To avoid such agony, they should be work together for common development and prosperity. In fact, before the recent disturbances struck, the South China Sea situation had been generally peaceful thanks to Beijing's exercise of restraint and concerted efforts of most countries in the region. Despite the territorial rows between China and other claimants, freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea has never been a problem. China also views the waters as being vital to global trade and its own development. The good old time has proven that Beijing and other claimants, whose security and development interests are intensely interwoven, are capable of settling the disputes by themselves. Successive leaders of claimant countries have agreed in their meetings and political documents that the South China Sea disputes should be resolved peacefully through direct negotiations. This stance is also stated in the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. What's heartening is that some positive signs have appeared. Among them, the incoming Philippine Foreign Minister Perfecto Yasay has said bilateral talks between the Philippines and China could help untangle the disputes in the South China Sea. "There is no other way but to go bilateral," he said. The remarks were welcomed by the Chinese sides. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said during a visit to Canada that "the door of dialogue between China and the Philippines is always open." It is very true that for the South China Sea disputes to be untangled as soon as possible and for the busy patch of water to remain permanently peaceful, outsiders should withdraw their meddling hands and allow the parties directly involved to give their wisdom and pragmatism a full play. SINGAPORE - China and Malaysia have witnessed smooth development of friendly and cooperative military ties in recent years, Admiral Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, said here Friday when meeting with Indonesian Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu. Sun said the Chinese and Indonesian sides kept good communications and coordination, effectively helped maintain peace and stability in the region. He also expressed the hope that the two militaries would further shore up cooperation in various fields. Ryamizard said that during the 6th China-ASEAN Defence Ministers Informal Meeting held last month, defense chiefs from Indonesia and China conducted good communications. On the South China Sea issue, Ryamizard said related countries should make joint efforts to maintain regional security. Ryamizard also noted that terrorism is a common threat faced by both countries, and Indonesia would like to cooperate with China in dealing with terror threats as well as safeguarding peace in the region. During the meeting, the Chinese admiral also expounded on China's consistent position on the South China Sea issue. CHANGSHA - Farmers in Central China are reaping success with a type of lotus grown from seeds carried into space by Chinese astronauts in experiments designed to increase their yield. Growing of "space lotus" has been pioneered by Li Baocheng, who has planted and helped others to plant 5,000 mu (333 hectares) of land in Shaoyang, Hunan province, with the aquatic perennial. Lotuses produce stunning flowers above the shallow water they grow in and delicious, edible roots below. Their seeds are particularly prized as a food and for their use in herbal medicine. Li's crop on 150 mu attracts tourists to stay in his guesthouse in Shaoyang's Dongfeng village. It all started in 2004, when Li heard about space lotus from a chef friend. The chef told him that the product could make him more money than Li's usual crop, potatoes. A state-backed project saw the seeds taken into space aboard satellites and spaceships in the mid-1990s. Vacuum and microgravity conditions transformed them, according to the scientists behind the project. In 2005, Li gave a wholesaler 5,000 yuan ($756) for 65 seedlings, which covered just one mu. While growing the lotus, he raised loaches, carp and mudsnails in the surrounding water. The lotus and aquatic products generated more than 15,000 yuan at the end of the year. By day, guests at Li's inn gorge on the visual feast of the flowers, and at night they dine on lotus and fish from the same fields. "Even my wife, who was unemployed, began to get very busy dealing with the tourists," Li said. As his farm-tourism business started to take root, Li developed two other types of lotus based on the original strain. The new, late-maturing varieties helped prolong the flowering period from June to October, and kept the visitors coming. "Each weekend, our village is so busy that there are often traffic jams on the country roads," said the 67-year-old. Last year, he formed a rural cooperative in Dongfeng, bringing in extra business partners. He has also been selling seedlings to other parts of Shaoyang, charging 1,000 yuan for enough to cover one mu plus a small surcharge for technical support ("Just enough to cover the price of fuel."). It is easy to see why lotus is a popular crop with farmers wanting to get the most profit out of the space at their disposal. Currently, a kilogram of potatoes sells for about three yuan, while a kilogram of lotus root sells for about twice as much. Lotus seeds are much more expensive, with each kilogram going for 60 yuan. Shaoyang is famous for its Lotus Pond, the inspiration for ancient philosopher Zhou Dunyi's renowned essay "Ode to the Lotus Flower." But there was barely any lotus production there in the years before Li had his bright spark. Now, space lotus has been planted in 11 regions of Shaoyang, and even in neighboring Hubei Province. Li expects the amount of farmland planted with space lotus in Hunan and Hubei to double in the near future. "I hope the growth of the lotus can help everyone in Shaoyang who loves the beautiful flowers and enable local villagers to live better lives," he said. BEIJING -- China is dissatisfied with the false accounts relating to China in a US State Department report on terrorism, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said Friday. In the "Country Reports on Terrorism 2015," the US blamed China for primarily focusing on the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) in its international counterterrorism. The report alleged that China has implemented stricter controls and curbs on religious practice in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and that there is a lack of transparency and information provided by China about violent incidents in China that the government characterized as terrorism. "China is dissatisfied with the false accounts relating to China, and regrets the unobjective remarks concerning China-US counterterrorism cooperation," Hua said at a regular news briefing. "China does not accept the US making irresponsible comments about the counterterrorism policies of other countries including China," Hua said. Calling terrorism the "arch-enemy of human civilization," Hua said joint counterterrorism efforts are a pressing task and the responsibility of the international community, and double standards will do little to help international cooperation. China has always attached importance to and participated in international counterterrorism cooperation, and will continue to have exchanges with other countries including the United States, Hua said. She called on relevant countries to respect China's efforts to combat East Turkistan forces, including the ETIM, which is listed by the United Nations as a terrorist group. Vietnam tells China warships welcome in one of its harbors Senior defense officials attending a high-profile security forum echoed China's call for nations to properly tackle disputes in the South China Sea while maintaining peace and stability. One of the officials, Nguyen Chi Vinh, Vietnam's deputy minister of national defense, said his country "warmly welcomes" Chinese warships to visit one of its harbors and is ready to boost cooperation between the two countries' coast guards. He made the remarks on the sidelines of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, which opened in Singapore on Friday. Experts said the move will improve interaction for regional security and help ease tensions. Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, elaborated on the country's position on the South China Sea while meeting with senior defense officials from other countries. The Vietnamese deputy defense minister told Sun that visiting Chinese vessels are welcome to conduct joint drills with the Vietnamese Navy in humanitarian relief and maritime search and rescue programs. Although he did not name the harbor, experts said it might be Cam Ranh Bay in southern Vietnam, a key stronghold that received two Japanese warships on May 29. Jia Duqiang, a researcher of Southeast Asian studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said Vietnam is "sending a positive signal" amid lingering tension in the South China Sea. It is meant as "a gesture to ease a confrontational situation and expel China's doubts", Jia said. The recent tension, fueled by an international arbitration case filed by the Philippines against China over the the South China Sea issue, "has prompted some countries, including Vietnam, to rethink", he said. "As arbitration serves no good purpose in resolving the issue and maintaining peace, it is necessary for countries to return to the negotiating table," Jia said. Indonesian Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu told Sun that the South China Sea is a "common home" for all countries in the region, and they should jointly safeguard regional security. Ryacudu said disputes over maritime sovereignty should be resolved gradually, taking into consideration many factors, such as the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, UN charters and historical backgrounds. New Zealand Defense Minister Gerry Brownlee said all parties involved should boost dialogue and communication, seek common ground and properly tackle disputes. Mark Binskin, chief of the Australian Defence Force, said both Australia and China are committed to ensuring regional prosperity and development, and Australia is ready to maintain dialogue and communication with China. Zhang Junshe, a senior researcher at the PLA Naval Military Studies Research Institute and a delegate attending the dialogue, said the talks on Friday show widespread support for direct dialogue and negotiation by countries directly involved to solve their disputes, which Zhang said is the "only correct and feasible way". Sonar Festival, Sonar village. [Photo provided to China Daily] As a veteran radio personality, Dai Yirong seems to have a little monster in her head guiding her to make wise decisions. She is the founder of popular radio programs when she worked at China Radio International during past decades, including the bilingual music programs Joy FM in 1993, and Easy FM in 1997. She also launched Hit FM as the director, which has been focusing on introducing Western music to Chinese fans since 2003. Recently, Dai has announced her latest plan, which will adapt the traditional radio shows into a new formula. Besides playing songs and having a conversation with radio listeners on air, she will make the interaction with listeners more real and direct. Her next concept, the 2016 World Music Tour, will be launched this summer. Joining one of Radio Beijing Corporation's channels, Metro Radio FM 94.5, Dai, as channel director, will take fans who like travel to some of the world's biggest outdoor music festivals. The first destination will be the Sonar Festival, which will be held from June 16 to 18 this year in Barcelona, Spain. Founded in 1994, the three-day music festival is known for offering the latest trends in dance and electronic music. Dai Yirong. [Photo provided to China Daily] Four more trips will be announced for 2016, including T in the Park, which will be held in Scotland in July. "The outdoor music festival is seen as a trendy lifestyle among young generations in China. For those who have been following the Western culture, going to those well-known music events will be an ideal experience," says Dai, adding that DJs of FM 94.5 will also go to those music festivals along with the fans, which will bring more fun to the trip. She also adds that the tour will be arranged among a small group of listeners, around 20 people. A graduate of Communication University of China, formerly known as Beijing Broadcasting Institute, with a major in international journalism, Dai has been interested in radio since she was young. The passion for radio drove her to stay in the business for decades. Like many industries, which are experiencing transformation nowadays, radio stations also need to adapt in a new era. For Dai, the change is to connect and interact with the listeners. "For Metro Radio, which has been on air for a year and targets at young Chinese people, it should function as a bridge. Besides playing music from the West, we also care about the latest lifestyle of the listeners," says Dai. Related: Chinese folk music shines in Sydney Specially preserved snail is a signature dish of Seafood House in Ningbo, Zhejiang province. [Photo by Xu Xiaomin/China Daily] Dongqian Lake is a magnet for fans of the region's best fare, Xu Xiaomin reports on a return visit to Ningbo. It is said that about one-third of Shanghai people have origins in Ningbo, a coastal city in Zhejiang province. I am one of themmy grandfather moved his family from Ningbo to Shanghai in the 1940s, when the two cities already enjoyed an easy connection by water. So it's no surprise that Ningbo cuisine, which features a salty taste and fresh fare from lake and sea, enjoys huge popularity. Even though Shanghai has lots of Ningbo restaurants, when I miss those flavors I like to go back to Ningbo for a fresh and authentic taste, as the journey now only takes two hours by high-speed train. A signature dish I miss most is fish-head soup, and Seafood House along Dongqian Lake, well-known for its fresh catch from the lake, serves up a superior example. Dongqian Lake is the largest freshwater lake in Zhejiang province. Surrounded by green hills and shadowy woods, it offers the region's freshest live fish and has become a destination for enjoying good food as well as a nice view. Because the lake is vast with a winding waterfront, it contains a high level of oxygen that makes the big-headed carp here taste fresh and tender without an earthy smell, according to chef Yu Kebin of the Seafood House. "If you have a good quality fish head, it is not necessary to make it complicated, just cook it in a simple way to keep its original taste and texture," says the chef, who was born in a fisherman's family on the bank of Dongqian Lake. Visitors consult about using of L'Oreal's La Roche-Posay My UV Patch during the China Beauty Expo in Shanghai. [Photo provided to China Daily] Wearable devices have just ventured into a new area: beauty. French cosmetics giant L'Oreal recently released the La Roche-Posay My UV Patch, a wearable device that combines sun protection with digital technology, at the 21st edition of the China Beauty Expo in Shanghai. Called an "internet on paper" invention, the device comprises a heart-shaped paper skin sensor with UV-sensitive dyes that change color depending on UV exposure. The sensor can be scanned using a compatible smartphone app that has been developed based on data collected from 400,000 users in real time and real-life conditions. The app then advises the wearer on sun-safe behavior according to his or her skin condition. The patch, which is thinner than human hair, is stretchable and water proof. It can last for three to five days. "We have to look to the future ... breaking through the digital age on a worldwide scale," says Sanford Marshall Browne, vice-president of research and innovation at L'Oreal China. "It's about personalization, so people will be able to get what is customized for them. This is the essence of a connected beauty device," he adds. For now, the product will be offered free for educational and informational purposes, complementing La Roche-Posay's sunscreen product. Speaking of its target audience, L'Oreal China's vice-president Chen Min says that the estimated average age of customers of La Roche-Posay is 27, and a majority of their consumption takes place on e-commerce sites, which means the brand has to pay more attention to social media to promote its beauty concepts. The product is part of the company's endeavor in beauty electronics and sensors. The company has a technology incubator that works with local and international startups to develop new technology. Last year, it released Makeup Genius, a virtual makeup app, venturing into augmented reality and personalization technology. The app has been downloaded millions of times. Research into 3-D bioprinting is also underway. Meanwhile, Sun Qiuning, chief physician and director of the Dermatologist and Cosmetology Center of Peking Union Medical College Hospital says that as overexposure to sunlight can cause skin aging and wrinkles, sunscreen is the most practical and convenient way to stay sun-safe compared with other devices. "From the medical point of view, the UV patch is a precise reminder of when and how much sunscreen you should apply," says Sun. Sun protection, along with moisturizing and cleansing, are the most important steps to maintain good skin, she says. A doctor removes glass from a victim's hand who is injured of a bus fire at the No.1 Hospital in Xiamen,Southeast China's Fujian Province, Jan 15, 2015.[Photo/Xinhua] Major hospitals in South China's Guangdong province are being encouraged to cancel their outpatient services step by step, according to a plan recently issued by the provincial government aimed at streamlining medical treatment in the province. Such a reform should only proceed when there are more community hospitals, Beijing News said on Thursday. In general, Guangdong's determination to streamline the functions of all hospitals in the province is in line with nationwide healthcare modernization, which aims to help more patients get properly treated. In fact, many Chinese citizens' limited access to the quality medical services offered by the leading hospitals has a lot to do with the inefficient use of community hospitals. In other words, the obsession with big hospitals would not have existed if they could receive basic community medical services in time. It is possible that some people prefer the doctors in the major hospitals to those in community hospitals, believing that the latter may misdiagnose their illnesses, which is hardly the case. Although equipped with inferior facilities and limited expertise, community doctors are not unprofessional. On the contrary, they are easier to approach for help and well qualified to make a preliminary diagnosis of a variety of diseases. The truth is, the underrated role of community hospitals means the doctors who work in them receive poorer pay and have limited career choices, which has discouraged many doctors from working as community doctors. Putting an end to all the outpatient services offered by big hospitals, therefore, may not be a good idea, given the notable shortage of community doctors. More importantly, as many leading comprehensive hospitals have finished their expansion in recent years, their newly built facilities are likely to be left unused if the number of outpatients dwindles. This might also deal a blow to their total revenues, especially those who receive tens of thousands of outpatients every day. Delegating outpatient services to community hospitals, of course, makes perfect sense and should be encouraged. But local authorities should not rush to press ahead with the reform, because patients are yet to be fully convinced by community medical services. Police officers in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu province, reportedly caught a woman who stole a chicken leg and a small bag of rice from a local supermarket on Tuesday. They found out that the woman wanted to meet her sick child's wish for a chicken leg, but could not afford to buy one. The police gave her some money and asked others to donate, but only better social welfare can really help poor people like her, comments China Youth Daily: Many people said they were astonished, because they could not imagine this happening today. Yet the social gap is so wide that many children are so well-fed they are overweight, while other children cannot even get enough food. In this case, the mother just wanted to fulfill her daughter's wish because the child was ill. It reveals the huge loopholes in the social welfare system, which fails to protect the most vulnerable in society. The story is so sad that even the policeman who caught the woman gave her money and called for donations to help her. We applaud that, but donations are not the answer to the problem. You cannot always expect donations to help the poorest members of society. It is the duty of local governments to ensure residents meet the minimum living standards. In this case, the mother is a single parent who is raising two children with kidney diseases; where is the government support and where is the social welfare? It is time for local governments to meet their responsibilities. Moreover, the central government needs to accelerate building a national child welfare system so that poor children won't be left behind by society. At an executive meeting held on International Children's Day, the State Council, China's Cabinet, called for better support for vulnerable children in need. Vulnerable children in need refers to kids who endure harsh living conditions because of family poverty, health problems, and the lack of parental care, as well as children who were abducted. These vulnerable children in extremely difficult circumstances face many problems including severe poverty and lack of medical care and education. The State Council pointed out that providing security to vulnerable children in need is an important part of the country's social security mechanism, as well as the joint responsibility of families, the government and society. According to the meeting, vulnerable children in need should receive support through the social security system through such things as orphan assistance, poverty relief aid, the basic living allowance and temporary aid. Children whose parents lack the ability to care for them and without other guardians should be raised by child welfare institutions. Basic medical insurance and critical illness insurance should give priority to seriously ill or seriously disabled children, and the ratio and the overall amount of insurance reimbursement should be increased. Moreover, the authorities should provide 12 years free education to disabled children in impoverished families to make sure they don't drop out. Officials in Anshun city in the southwestern Guizhou province have pledged to push for rural tourism growth in the coming years at the third session of the Anshun Tourism Industry Development Conference. The conference took place on May 28 at a leisure agricultural park in Puding county, Anshun. The park, named Baihua Huanle Dashijie ("happy world of flowers" in Chinese) is one of the rural tourism projects the city is promoting. Orchid cultivation and exhibition will be a feature of the park to entice horticulture lovers from far and wide. Foreign diplomats, local dignitaries, and representatives of travel agencies from across China attended the event. They were treated to folk art performances and learned about the diversity of local culture and recent tourism developments in the city. A Dixi opera performance is staged at the third session of the Anshun Tourism Industry Development Conference in Anshun, Guizhou province, on May 28. [Photo by Liu Sitong] Luis Jorge Roa Corredor, Minister Counselor at the Embassy of Colombia in China, attended the event to identify cooperation opportunities in the tourism industry. Ukrainian Ambassador Oleg Dyomin, Ecuadorian Ambassador Jose Maria Borja Lopez and Iraqi Ambassador Abdul-karim Hashim Mostafa also made appearances at the event. Hangzhou, the capital of East China's Zhejiang province, is one of Chinas finest and most popular tourist destinations. The city is ready to host the two-day 2016 G20 summit from September 4. The events 100-day countdown kicked off in Hangzhou on May 27, 2016. More than 5,000 staff and volunteers preparing for the summit attended. Beijing Municipal Commission of Tourism Development and MasterCard renewed a three-year Memorandum of Understanding on June 1 to boost special tourism resources in Beijing. [Photo provided to China Daily] Beijing Municipal Commission of Tourism Development and MasterCard renewed a three-year Memorandum of Understanding on June 1 to boost special tourism resources in Beijing. The global payment and tech company will offer custom-made experiences for tourists from all around the world. Card holders will have the opportunity of visiting the Summer Palace, ancient emperor's mausoleum that hasn't opened to the public, and having a private tour of the Galerie Urs Meile. "Beijing is an ancient city with more than 3,000 years of history. It is also one of the most important windows leading the world to China," says Cao Pengcheng, deputy director of the Beijing tourism commission. "We're hoping to share special Beijing culture tours with tourists worldwide through this strategic alliance, and display Beijing's magnificent sceneries and abundant culture heritage," Cao adds. Beijing has been a leader among tourism destinations in Asia-Pacific region, according to MasterCard's destination index report. The cooperation will boost inbound tourism in the mainland and showcase the choice of Beijing will be a priceless experience, says Chang Qing, president of MasterCard China. Sawyer Hartman from the US has been a beneficiary of the cooperation. MasterCard offered him a 10-day trip to Beijing. He took helicopter and enjoyed the bird's-eye view of the Great Wall. His other exciting experiences included Peking Opera, tai chi training and traditional Chinese medicine-based health preservation. Related: HK and Seoul top Chinese tourist destinations Chin P'ing Me (The Plum in the Golden Vase), David Roy's lifelong passion. Provided to China Daily Sad news came on Monday morning via WeChat that David Tod Roy, a professor emeritus in East Asian languages and civilizations at the University of Chicago, died early in the morning. The message, from The Paper, a Shanghai-based news portal, has been reposted by many people I know. They expressed their condolences with signs of tears and prayers. The headline, which described him as someone who had spent 30 years translating Chin P'ing Mei, or The Plum in the Golden Vase, is simply impressive enough for many Chinese. Most Chinese can hardly read the book written in ancient Chinese, so it would be a surprise that it was translated into English by a laowai (foreigner). Chin P'ing Mei, written anonymously in 1618, has been widely regarded by some as a milestone in the history of Chinese novels and dubbed the "ancestor of A Dream of Red Mansion" by Chairman Mao but also officially condemned in China as pornography and banned under Mao. One of my colleagues told me on Tuesday that when she checked out the book in her school library a few years back, she found it was abridged, with notes saying certain pornographic content was cut. As recently as April, the Beijing municipal authorities raided an illegal print shop in the city's Tongzhou District "based on tips that pornography book Chin P'ing Mei was being printed there. The authorities confiscated 120 copies of the book, based on a manuscript of the book from the Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799) era. I had long hoped to interview David Roy about his amazing work, but that's now become a regret. In a 2013 interview with J. Stapleton Roy, the former US ambassador to China and David Roy's younger brother, I was told that the fifth and final volume of the English translation would be published. But I still teased, saying it's still considered pornography by many in China. "The fact that it is printed by Princeton University Press suggests that it is not considered to be pornography in the United States," said Stapleton Roy, laughing. In fact, the two brothers are not really that much laowai. Both were born in Nanjing of East China's Jiangsu province in the first half of the 1930s to their Presbyterian missionary parents, who went to China in 1930. David was born in 1933. The family returned to the US on furlough in 1936. When the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression broke out in 1937, the University of Nanjing moved to Chengdu in West China's Sichuan province. So when the family returned in 1938, they stayed in Chengdu until 1945. In a feature posted on the University of Chicago website, David Roy said that the two brothers didn't have any formal schooling between 1939 and 1945. The family again returned to the US while the father, Andrew Roy, got his PhD at Princeton University from 1945 to 1948. When they again returned to China in 1948, the brothers went to the boarding school at the Shanghai American School. While most parents withdrew their children from the school and returned to the US or wherever they came from, the Roy family stayed. "By May 1949, when the Communists took the city, there were only 16 of us left out of the original 400. In fact, I took my final exam in 10th-grade geometry the day the Communists marched into Shanghai," wrote David Roy. The family's experience in China after 1949 was tortuous, but the brothers made huge progress in Chinese. Canada's Governor General David Johnston met with visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Ottawa, Canada, June 2, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] OTTAWA -- Canada's Governor General David Johnston met with visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi here Thursday on enhancing relations between the two countries. Johnston said Canada and China have enjoyed a long history of cooperation and exchanges in various fields. The bilateral relations have became increasingly active in recent years, which have had a broad impact on Canadian economic and social life, he said. Canada's new government has shown great enthusiasm to develop the relations with China, he said, calling on the two countries to meet each other halfway, develop mutually beneficial cooperation and promote people-to-people and cultural exchanges to constantly bring benefits to both peoples. The Chinese foreign minister, who arrived here Tuesday for a three-day visit, said that Johnston's proposal of the three themes of prosperity, innovation and communication for the China-Canada relations conforms to the future development of the bilateral ties. The China-Canada relationship has witnessed remarkable progress in all fields and is now faced with critical development opportunities, Wang said. Canada's new Liberal government expressed willingness to carry on its tradition of actively developing relations with China, he said, noting that China is willing to work together with Canada to create a golden age in the bilateral relations oriented towards the 21st century. DAR ES SALAAM -- Tanzanian President John Magufuli on Thursday laid the foundation stone for the construction of a new library at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) to be built at a cost of about 40 million US dollars funded by the Chinese government. President Magufuli said the Chinese government's 100 percent-aided project had come at the right time as the government was working hard to improve the country's education standard. He said once completed, the state-of-the-art facility will boast a space of 20,000 square meters and house over 800,000 books. The planned mega-library will also be able to accommodate 2,600 university students at any one time, officials said. The ground breaking ceremony for the construction of the library was also attended by former president Jakaya Kikwete, who is the chancellor of the UDSM. He appreciated the efforts by the Chinese government to fund various development projects in the country. The Chinese ambassador to Tanzania, Lyu Youqing commended Tanzania's efforts towards the promotion of its economy which grew at high rate in the last 10 years. Lyu commended President Magufuli's speedy transformation of the east African nation which aims to fulfill the Development Vision 2025 that would see the country developing into a middle class economy. President Magufuli said his government had been providing 9.4 million US dollars every month to fund free education. "Increased enrollment in primary schools have left us with challenges of shortage of classrooms and desks. We request education stakeholders to keep on supporting the government," said the President. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan speaks during a news conference in Washington, US, May 26, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] WASHINGTON -- Paul Ryan, the top elected US Republican, ended a long period of soul-searching and endorsed Donald Trump for president on Thursday, a step toward unifying party loyalists behind the insurgent candidate despite concerns about his candidacy. Ryan had been a high-profile holdout to supporting Trump for the Nov. 8 presidential election out of concern about the presumptive Republican nominee's bellicose rhetoric and break with party orthodoxy on issues including trade and immigration. The House of Representatives speaker announced his support in a column for the Janesville Gazette newspaper in his home state of Wisconsin. It surfaced in the middle of a speech by Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in which she launched a far-reaching attack on Trump's foreign policy credentials. Ryan did not specifically use the word "endorse" in his column, but his spokesman, Brendan Buck, made clear that Ryan's move should be seen as an endorsement. The speaker had criticized the Republican candidate several times, including Trump's proposal in December to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the United States because of national security concerns. The 46-year-old Ryan was the only member of the Republican congressional leadership who had not formally embraced Trump. In a tweet, Trump responded: "So great to have the endorsement and support of Paul Ryan. We will both be working very hard to Make America Great Again!" Ryan's backing of Trump could give cover to more reluctant Republicans to get behind the billionaire businessman as their best chance to win the White House. "I think the endorsement is significant because it shows the falling in line of the establishment Republicans from the top," said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. It should also help Trump make the case that he can bring the party together as he girds for a Republican nominating convention in July that many party leaders plan to skip. It also represents a blow to Republicans who have been trying to organize a third-party bid to give party loyalists who cannot abide Trump someone else to support. The "never Trump" crowd includes 2012 nominee Mitt Romney. Ryan was Romney's vice presidential running mate. While Ryan's decision could push some Republican leaders off the fence, many holdouts remained, such as two former rivals, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and US Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Aides to both said their positions had not changed. Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid described Ryan's move as "abject surrender," adding: "The GOP is Trump's party now." ATHENS - A major rescue operation was underway off the south coast of Crete island on Friday, as water has entered a wooden vessel carrying some 700 migrants and refugees at initial estimate, the Greek Coast Guard said. Approximately 250 people have already been evacuated from the sea, about 75 nautical miles off Kali Limenes in Crete, local officials told Greek national news agency AMNA. Greek Coast Guard vessels, a navy airplane and a Super Puma helicopter were dispatched for the mission. Four ships sailing around also offered help. The Italian Coast Guard was initially alerted about the incident, according to Athens officials, as the wooden vessel was sailing in international waters. It is believed that the ship was on its way from North Africa to Italy. Cultural communication is the final channel for China to build its national image abroad, especially in Latin American countries, according to a report from a senior researcher at the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS) under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. By establishing and developing an international communication network based on the integration of the government, the business community, the academic circles, and the media, China will open the channel for creating a new international image, says Guo Cunhai, a research scholar at ILAS, a government backed think tank in Beijing, in a special report called Constructing China's International Image from the Perspective of Cultural Promotion: Challenges and Suggestions. Guo's report is also the main piece published in the latest Yellow Book of Latin America and the Caribbean, which is a annual report on the region. Comparing with Western countries, China's national image in Africa and Latin American regions still need some improvements, Guo said in the report. Citing the result of the local survey in recent years, Guo said most Latin America countries hold a portative image in China, with 58 percent of the people in the countries holding a favorable impression of China. It is lower than the 74-percent of the United States and 63-percent of the Europe. Guo argued China's lack of cultural diplomacy coordinating, language promotion; international communication and overseas cultural aids are the major factors that influence the country's image building in Latin America regions. In contrast, China has a better national image in Africa, with more than 69 percent of African people showing friendly attitudes towards China last year, according to PewGlobal, Global Indicator Database. "Cultural exchanges and communication should be an important part in China's diplomacy," Guo says. "Setting up an international communication network that taking in charge of overseas cultural communication will help the country build its image. The Confucius institutes can also play an important role in building China's soft power." Another report in the yellow book argued that most Latin American countries' economic fluctuations remain to be large. In May, 2015, Premier Li Keqiang proposed a "3 x 3" model for boosting China-Latin America collaboration on production capacity. "This will help revive the global economy, be a win-win for multiple parties and benefit the public with the outcomes of development," Li said. China has been closely following the consequences of the Fukushima nuclear power station disaster and hopes that Japan will fully inform the global community of the latest and most accurate updates, the Foreign Ministry said on Friday. "We hope the Japanese act in a highly responsible manner, for the people of Japan and neighboring countries, as well as the international community," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a press briefing. The remarks came after Hua was asked about the Tokyo Electric Power Company's acknowledgment on Monday that its insistence on simply calling the disaster a "nuclear reactor damage" may have underplayed its severity. An explosion at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011, following a powerful earthquake, destroyed a building that was holding a reactor and sparked fears that it could go into meltdown. China has, on a number of occasions, asked the Japanese government to fully tackle the follow-up issues, the spokeswoman said. Faced with questions about the possible consequences, Japan has explicitly denied it was deliberately downplaying or concealing any facts. However, facts proved that the "reactor melting" in the aftermath was far more than the vaguely-worded "damage", Hua said Toshihide Tsuda, professor of environmental epidemiology at Japan's Okayama University, found that the incidence of thyroid cancer among children living near the plant, who have been exposed to leaked radioactive substances, was 20 to 50 times higher than the national average. Over 80 percent of the leaked radioactive substances entered the sea, according to Ken Buesseler, marine radiochemist with the US Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Other scientists in North America also found that radioactive cesium coming from Fukushima had found its way to the US West Coast, having a serious impact on the fish, the ecosystem, and food safety. Da Zhigang, director of the institute of northeast Asian studies at Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences, said the nuclear accident was by no means Japan's concern alone. "Facts should not be hidden," Da said, adding it is also necessary for the global community to work together to address the situation. Lyu Yaodong, an expert on Japanese policies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said Japan did not take into consideration the full environmental factors by playing a "hide-and-seek" game. "Instead, it tried covering up the facts of the nuclear pollution with other excuses, such as asking for other countries to cancel import restrictions on its agricultural products," Lyu said. Hua also alerted Chinese tourists to be cautious when travelling near Fukushima. The Chinese contributed 4.99 million trips to Japan last year, more than double from the previous year's figure. Xinhua contributed to this story. SINGAPORE -- Admiral Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, met with Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov here Friday and the two sides pledged to step up military cooperation. Sun, who met Antonov on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, said that the two countries have seen a sound development trend in military cooperation, as the overall relations between the two sides are running well. He said the two sides are both facing with a more complicated international security situation and closer mutual cooperation is in need. Antonov praised the effective cooperation between the two defense ministries and expressed the willingness to join hands with China in the fight against security threats including terrorism. Antonov also vowed to deepen the mutual military cooperation under the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. He said the Russian military is keen to launch more joint maritime drills and anti-terror exercises with the Chinese side. The 15th Shangri-La Dialogue, an Asia-Pacific defense and security summit, runs here from Friday to Sunday. Sun, on the sidelines of the dialogue, met on Friday with defense ministers, military chiefs and high-ranking defense officials from countries including Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and Brunei. Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, shakes hands with Nguyen Chi Vinh, Vietnams deputy minister of national defense, ahead of their meeting in Singapore on Friday. By Zhang Yunbi / China Daily Senior defense officials attending a high-profile security forum echoed China's call for nations to properly tackle disputes in the South China Sea while maintaining peace and stability. One of the officials, Nguyen Chi Vinh, Vietnam's deputy minister of national defense, said his country "warmly welcomes" Chinese warships to visit one of its harbors and is ready to boost cooperation between the two countries' coast guards. He made the remarks on the sidelines of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, which opened in Singapore on Friday. Experts said the move will improve interaction for regional security and help ease tensions. Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, elaborated on the country's position on the South China Sea while meeting with senior defense officials from other countries. The Vietnamese deputy defense minister told Sun that visiting Chinese vessels are welcome to conduct joint drills with the Vietnamese Navy in humanitarian relief and maritime search and rescue programs. Although he did not name the harbor, experts said it might be Cam Ranh Bay in southern Vietnam, a key stronghold that received two Japanese warships on May 29. Jia Duqiang, a researcher of Southeast Asian studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said Vietnam is "sending a positive signal" amid lingering tension in the South China Sea. It is meant as "a gesture to ease a confrontational situation and expel China's doubts", Jia said. The recent tension, fueled by an international arbitration case filed by the Philippines against China over the South China Sea issue, "has prompted some countries, including Vietnam, to rethink", he said. "As arbitration serves no good purpose in resolving the issue and maintaining peace, it is necessary for countries to return to the negotiating table," Jia said. Indonesian Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu told Sun that the South China Sea is a "common home" for all countries in the region, and they should jointly secure regional security. Ryacudu said disputes over maritime sovereignty should be resolved gradually, taking into consideration many factors, such as the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, UN charters and historical backgrounds. New Zealand Defense Minister Gerry Brownlee said all parties involved should boost dialogue and communication, seek common ground and properly tackle disputes. Mark Binskin, chief of the Australian Defence Force, said both Australia and China are committed to ensuring regional prosperity and development, and Australia is ready to maintain dialogue and communication with China. Zhang Junshe, a senior researcher at the PLA Naval Military Studies Research Institute and a delegate attending the dialogue, said the talks on Friday show widespread support for direct dialogue and negotiation by countries directly involved to solve their disputes, which Zhang said is the "only correct and feasible way". A new US government report praises the bilateral cooperation between China and the US in combating wildlife trafficking. The 2015 annual progress assessment of US national strategy was released on Thursday by the Task Force on Wildlife Trafficking, set up by US President Barack Obama and including 17 federal departments and agencies, to mark the 2016 World Wildlife Day on Thursday. It lists as a major achievement the agreement between Obama and President Xi Jinping in Washington last September to enact nearly complete bans on ivory imports and exports and to take significant and timely steps to halt the domestic commercial trade of ivory. The 32-page report features a big photo of Obama and Xi shaking hands in the White House to highlight global and bilateral cooperation on the issue. China, the US and the European Union are major markets for illicit wildlife trade. The report cites efforts by US government departments in China in the past year. For example, the State Department published in Chinese newspapers and websites an op-ed commending the bilateral commitments and calling for their quick implementation. Bilateral engagement has been conducted on multiple levels, such as a daylong session on wildlife trafficking as part of the China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) in Washington in June 2015. According to the report, the discussions at the meeting led to a bilateral agreement to stem the illegal trade in totoaba and sea turtles, to work jointly on enforcement, and to explore opportunities to use new and emerging technologies to inform and improve wildlife protection and law enforcement. Last September, the US Fish and Wildlife Service organized trilateral meetings of China, US and Mexico on the illegal trade in totoaba to address the trafficking problem of the endangered fish species. US Ambassador to China Max Baucus filmed an anti-ivory public announcement for the Chinese media and conducted an anti-wildlife trafficking print media campaign of billboards across China using his image. The report also praised the commitment reaffirmed by China and the US on trilateral cooperation in Arica. On Wednesday evening, the US State Department marked World Wildlife Day with a projection of images of endangered species on its C Street facade. In China, the State Forestry Administration said in a statement on Thursday that it will revise laws and regulations for the protection of wild animals. The revised draft of the Law on the Protection of Wildlife will build a mandatory protection system for their habitats, set a threshold for wildlife products to be traded, and put a stricter rein on trafficking and other illegal business involving wildlife, according to the statement. Protection projects on wildlife will be listed in work agendas for the next five years as the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) has stipulated protection targets, for example, conducting programs on precious species such as the panda and Siberian tiger. The revised draft was presented to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for discussion on Dec 21. The Vienna-based United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said on Thursday that billions of dollars in profit are made from the wildlife and forest crimes, destroying biodiversity and hindering sustainable growth. In 2015, 1,175 rhinos were poached in South Africa, while Central Africa has now lost 64 per cent of its elephants in less than a decade, it said. Contact the writers at chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com and zhengjinran@chinadaily.com.cn A ZTE stand at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Feb 24, 2016. [Photo/IC] CHINA HAS expressed its strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition to the US sanctions on ZTE Corp, one of its largest telecommunications equipment makers. The US Commerce Department on Monday banned US suppliers from selling components to ZTE, claiming the company "illicitly exported" controlled items to Iran in contravention of US law. Global Times on Wednesday said China needs to better protect the legal interests of its enterprises: To the Chinese government, the fresh sanctions on ZTE due to its "violations of US law" are unilateral and bad for the China-US relationship in the long run. It is foreseeable that more Chinese enterprises will become the subject of US trade restrictions. On their part, Chinese companies should try their best to avoid breaching local laws should they aim to expand in the US market. On the other hand, simply catering to all local regulations and legal enforcement (sometimes selective and prejudiced) may indirectly indulge the US hegemony, overstating the international effects of US domestic laws. To hit back at the unilateral sanctions, therefore, the Chinese government should restrict US companies in the same way, if they prove to have violated relevant Chinese laws while operating in China. In fact, such moves have often been witnessed in the past. Political communication is also needed to keep the China-US ties on the right track. That both sides managed to reach a consensus on cyberspace security before Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the US in September, not only dissuaded the US from imposing sanctions on certain Chinese enterprises regarding cybersecurity issues, but also contributed to Xi's fruitful trip. As for the Chinese enterprises aiming to enter the US market, they have to give voice to their concerns about the US' unfair trade restrictions and make their viewpoint heard, instead of remaining silent. Of course, both countries can resort to bilateral dialogue mechanisms, such as the China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue, to discuss the issues. An essay competition is being held to promote people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States. The theme of the competition is personal experiences of cultural exchanges, with participants encouraged to write about their understanding of the differences between China and US, their reflections on living and traveling in either country, or their feelings about how the Chinese dream and American dream have effected change. Jointly-held by China Youth Daily, China CYTS Group and China CYTS Tourism Holding Co, the contest is part of the China-US Tourism Year campaign, which aims to increase travel and tourism between the two countries by enhancing the travel experience, increasing travelers' cultural understanding and expanding appreciation of natural landscapes. Prizes up for grabs include a 10-day travel package to the west coast of the United States, four round-trip tickets from Beijing to Los Angeles, and ten coupons for one-night's free stay at a five-star-rated hotel in Los Angeles. Anyone who participates in the contest will also receive a coupon worth 199 yuan for any tourism product to the United States on aoyou.com. Only Chinese and English-written stories will be accepted and reviewed. The essay should be limited to 1,000 words with a 50-word introduction of the writer attached. All essays should be submitted before Dec 31 by email to chiniausa@aoyou.com. The subject of the email should be Essay Contest of China-US Tourism Year. Participants should also provide their name, contact information, passport number, address and post code in the email. Zhang Gaoli (R), Chinese vice premier and special envoy of President Xi Jinping, meets with French President Francois Hollande on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of the High-Level Event for the Signature of the Paris Agreement at the United Nations headquarters in New York April 22, 2016.[Photo/Xinhua] Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli held talks separately with French President Francois Hollande and US Secretary of State John Kerry here Friday, urging full implementation of the Paris Agreement on climate change. The talks were held on the sidelines of the High-Level Event for the Signature of the Paris Agreement at the United Nations headquarters. In the talks with Hollande, Zhang lauded efforts by the French side in hosting a successful UN climate change conference in Paris, during which the historic deal was finally adopted with no objection on Dec. 12, 2015. He highlighted the close coordination and highly effective cooperation between China and France throughout the preparatory process of and the negotiation during the conference, noting that the joint statement on climate change issued by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Hollande in November in Beijing contributed to the final adoption of the agreement. China is willing to work together with France to further promote the follow-up negotiations and effective implementation of the deal, Zhang said. Moreover, as the hosting country of the 2016 G20 Summit, which is scheduled to be held in east China's Hangzhou City in early September, China will lead the G20 to push forward the great cause of globally countering climate change, he said. The vice premier also expressed the hope that the two countries could maintain high-level exchanges to discuss possible coordination of development strategies such as China's 13th Five Year Plan for socioeconomic development in the 2016-2020 period and initiative on the construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, and France's "Industry of the Future" plan, as well as deepen cooperation in nuclear power, aviation and sustainable development. For his part, Hollande highly commented on China's role in promoting the adoption of the Paris Agreement, noting that France is ready to work together with China to take advantage of the G20 Hangzhou Summit to promote implementation of the agreement. France is full of confidence in China's economic development, and wishes to further strengthen cooperation in renewable resources, nuclear power, urban construction and third-party marketing, said Hollande. In the talks with Kerry, Zhang noted the successful meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the fourth Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on March 31, adding that the two sides should plan well for upcoming bilateral high-level meetings and dialogues of this year to achieve more positive results. Zhang said that China and the United States have issued three joint statements on climate change over the past few years, and both have played key roles in securing the adoption of the Paris Agreement. All of these developments indicate that the two countries could achieve win-win results in dealing with global challenges through cooperation. The two sides should continuously motivate the cooperating process in fighting climate change by making use of multilateral platforms, such as the G20 Hangzhou Summit, and promote practical bilateral cooperation in the area through mechanisms including the China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue and the China-U.S. Climate Change Working Group, said Zhang. China and the United States share common interests and responsibilities in global energy security and development. The two countries should strengthen dialogue and deepen cooperation to contribute to global energy sustainability, added Zhang. For his part, Kerry said that the US-China relations are among the world's most important bilateral ties, and that both countries have played vital roles in achieving the final adoption of the Paris Agreement. The United States would like to work together with China to strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation in various fields, he added. A total of 175 countries signed the Paris Agreement at the U.N. headquarters in New York on Friday -- the first day on which the deal was open for signature. Zhang, in the capacity of a special envoy of President Xi Jinping, signed the document on behalf of the Chinese government. Chinese Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli (right) shake hands with French President Francois Hollande at the United Nations Headquarters in Manhattan, New York, U.S., April 22, 2016. China will work with France and the United States to promote implementation the Paris Agreement as talks between high-level officials were held on the sidelines of the signing ceremony at the United Nations on April 22. In a meeting with French President Francois Hollande, Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli praised efforts by the French side in hosting the successful Paris Conference, during which the historic deal was finally adopted with no objection on Dec 12. "China hopes to work together with France to further promote the follow-up negotiations and effective implementation of the deal," said Zhang, also highlighting the close cooperation between the two countries throughout the process. "The joint statement on climate change issued by President Xi Jinping and Hollande in November in Beijing contributed to the final adoption of the agreement," he said. Hollande acknowledged China's role in promoting the adoption of the Paris Agreement and said that France is ready to work together with China to take advantage of the G20 Summit, which will be held in Septemberin Hangzhou, capital city of East China's Zhejiang province. "France is full of confidence in China's economic development and wishes to strengthen cooperation in renewable resources, nuclear power, urban construction and third-party marketing," Hollande said. Zhang also expressed the hope to deepen cooperation in nuclear power, aviation and sustainable development, and that the two countries could maintain high-level exchanges to discuss China's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), Belt and Road initiative, and France's Industry of the Future plan. Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday urged the United States to "properly tackle the Taiwan question" during a telephone conversation with US Secretary of State John Kerry. It is hoped that the US will uphold its one-China policy and firmly stay committed to key joint statements released by the two countries, Wang was quoted as saying in a release issued by the Foreign Ministry. Kerry said the US has not and will not change its position regarding Taiwan and it does not support "Taiwan independence". The two sides also agreed to "continue communication and properly tackle maritime issues", the release said. During the talk, Wang referred to a range of items between the two countries, including the upcoming annual China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue and the preparation for the G20 leaders' summit in Eastern China's Hangzhou in September. Both sides are expected to "stay focused on cooperation, properly manage divergences and maintain the momentum of the healthy and stable development of China-US ties", Wang said. The talk between Wang and Kerry came just four days before the inauguration of Tsai Ing-wen, chairwoman of Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party, as the island's new leader. While Tsai has talked about preserving the status quo in cross-Straits relations, she has not yet convinced people that DPP, which has long refused to endorse the 1992 Consensus that Taiwan and the mainland are both parts of one China, will give up pursuing the island's full independence from the mainland. Zhu Weidong, deputy head of the Institute of Taiwan Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was quoted by the Xinhua News Agency as saying that negating the consensus would disrupt the status quo of peace and stability promised by the incoming leader. "Adherence to the consensus is not only a matter of principle, but also a gesture of good will from the mainland, because the principle has been consistent. The mainland has asked no more from the DPP than it did from the Kuomintang (KMT) since 2008," Zhu said. Chen Shui-bian, the former Taiwan leader from the DPP, has pursued the island's formal "independence", which has complicated cross-Straits relations. Relations have improved dramatically after Ma Ying-jeou, the leader of Kuomintang, assumed leadership of the island in 2008. Bilateral trade has reached $170 billion each year. And the Chinese mainland has become Taiwan's largest destination of investment and exports. Taiwan also has long been a thorny issue between China and the US, with the US continuing to sell arms to the island and drawing strong protest from Beijing. Business leaders and former senior officials from China and the US gathered in Washington on Wednesday to explore ways to improve bilateral trade and investment relationships. The Eighth Annual US-China CEO and Former Senior Officials' Dialogue (May 18-19) precedes the annual China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Beijing early next month. Zeng Peiyan, former vice-premier in China and now chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said the Chinese economy has entered a critical period of structural reform and is striving to avoid the "middle-income trap". Zeng said he hoped that the meeting could be a time for the two sides to listen to and understand each other to eliminate suspicion, increase trust and reduce misjudgment. He said candid, frank and constructive dialogue about issues of common concern will help practical cooperation between business communities in the two countries and provide workable policy advice for the two governments. Zeng also said he hoped the meeting will inject new momentum into the bilateral relationship. China replaced Canada last year as the US' largest trading partner, with bilateral trade approaching $600 billion. US exports to China have grown an average of 12 percent annually in the past decade, making China one of the fastest-growing markets for the US. US International Trade Administration and Bureau of Economic Analysis statistics show that exports to China supported nearly 1 million jobs in the US in 2015. Meanwhile, US companies' total foreign direct investment in China has reached $77.5 billion, growing at an annual rate of 20 percent. China's foreign direct investment in the US also has increased dramatically, from $50 million in 2000 to $46.6 billion by the end of 2015. Thomas Donohue, president and CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce, applauded the achievements in bilateral trade and investment relations. He expressed concern over the anti-trade rhetoric by the 2016 US presidential candidates and said the winning candidate has to understand that trade is part of the solution and not the problem. "We must do what we must do to advance this positive and constructive and achievable agenda and get busy achieving it," he said of US-China trade relations. "That agenda includes completing the negotiation of a high-standard, comprehensive Bilateral Investment Treaty by the end of this year," Donohue said. chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com Nathan Sheets, US Treasury's undersecretary for international affairs, speaks at a Brookings event to preview the eighth China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington, May 24, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] WASHINGTON - China's deeper integration into the global economy benefits the United States and the world at large, a senior US Treasury official said Tuesday. This is because such integration will bring huge creative and innovative capacity that will support innovation years ahead, said Nathan Sheets, US Treasury's undersecretary for international affairs, at a Brookings event to preview the eighth China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) slated for early June in Beijing. "That's in the global (economy's) interests and in the US interests," he stressed. Sheets said that the deepening and further integration create a lot of opportunities for US firms to export to China, and creates jobs and opportunities in the United States, so that American consumers and firms can get access to a whole new range of goods that Chinese produce. The undersecretary reaffirmed the US government's commitment to reaching a bilateral investment treaty with China before President Barack Obama leaves office. According to the official, the upcoming S&ED will focus on a number of key issues, such as China's excessive industrial capacity, investment liberalization and macroeconomic rebalancing. China's economic rebalancing is of crucial importance not only to ensuring a balanced relationship with the United States, but also to ensuring that China's economy is able to grow in a sustainable way, said Sheets, adding that China has made progress in its rebalancing away from exports, manufacturing and investment to domestic demand, service sectors and consumption. In the question and answer session, Sheets said the G20 summit, to be held in Hangzhou, China in September, will focus on a robust set of issues which will be complementary to those raised in the S&ED. Issues such as boosting global demand, making global financial system more robust, facilitating cross-border investment, improving international financial architecture, and promoting climate financing, will top G20 summit's agenda, said Sheets. China and the United States will kick off their annual high-level bilateral meeting early next month in Beijing to address a set of serious bilateral economic and security issues. The Eighth Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) will be the last one to be held under the Obama administration. Nathan Sheets, the US undersecretary of treasury for international affairs, praised the last few years' S&EDs for making progress in such areas as promoting rule of law, strengthening regulatory transparency and encouraging economic reforms. Sheets said he was especially happy with last year's S&ED, which took place a few months before President Xi Jinping's state visit to the US in September. "We were able to have a robust exchange of ideas and make concrete progress on an ambitious set of economic outcomes," he told a group at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday. Sheets said the US will engage China on a number of key issues this year, including global excess industrial capacity, investment liberalization and macroeconomic rebalancing. He gave a long list of US concerns, from market access to a level playing field and exchange rates. Chinese officials have not publicly talked about their agenda for this year's S&ED. But China has long pressed the US to lift its outdated restrictions on high-tech exports to China, to make the CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) review process of Chinese foreign direct investment in the US fairer and more transparent. Sheets said the two authorities were discussing mechanisms to facilitate RMB trading and clearing in the US, something he described as a "priority highlighted in President Obama's meeting with President Xi last September." He said the US is waiting for a new negative list from China in negotiating a high-standard Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). Hope for a BIT to be concluded under the Obama administration has been dampened by the 2016 US election. The Obama administration is still trying to get a divided Congress to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Anti-trade rhetoric has been running strong on the presidential campaign trail. Sheets noted that China has begun embarking on a reform agenda towards more sustainable and balanced growth by addressing issues such as industrial overcapacity, opening up the service sector, strengthening the social safety net, implementing land reform and promoting a more market-based financial system. "Constructive engagement with China is important for the United States and for the millions of American jobs which depend on a strong, stable and growing global economy," he said. "This year's S&ED will be the last in the Obama administration. I must stress that the continued cooperation with China on the diverse set of issues covered in the S&ED is crucial not just for our respective countries, but globally as well," he said. While a slowing Chinese economy has drawn wide concern, IMF First Deputy Managing Director David Lipton said that China "certainly can continue to make an important contribution as the biggest single contributor to global growth for some time." "Don't forget, in 2015, China's growth was equivalent to adding an economy the size of Poland or Sweden to global GDP," he said in Washington on Tuesday. Robert Zoellick, the former president of the World Bank, said on Monday that the US and China could find common interest in China's One Belt One Road Initiative. Sheets, when asked to comment on the possible cooperation, did not say whether the US will participate in the Belt and Road or the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). He repeated the US rhetoric of ensuring high environmental and governance standards by the AIIB. The Obama administration drew wide criticism even within the US for its negative response earlier to China's AIIB initiative, something widely seen as a rising China playing a positive and constructive role on the global stage. China's State Councilor Yang Jiechi and Vice-Premier Wang Yang will head the Chinese delegation to this year's S&ED. The US team will be led by Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. Kerry will also join China's Vice-Premier Liu Yandong for the Seventh China-US Consultation on People-to-People Exchange (CPE). China and the United States will kick off their annual high-level meeting early next month in Beijing, to address a set of serious bilateral economic and security issues. The Eighth Strategic and Economic Dialogue will be the last to be held under the Obama administration. Nathan Sheets, the US undersecretary of treasury for international affairs, praised the past few years' S&ED for making progress such as in promoting the rule of law, strengthening regulatory transparency and encouraging economic reforms. He was especially happy with last year's S&ED, which took place a few months before President Xi Jinping's state visit to the US in September. "We were able to have a robust exchange of ideas and make concrete progress in an ambitious set of economic outcomes," he said at the Brookings Institution. Sheets said the US will engage China on a number of key issues this year, including excess global industrial capacity, investment liberalization and macroeconomic rebalancing. He gave a long list of US concerns from market access, to a more level playing field on exchange rates. Chinese officials have not publicly talked about their agenda for this year's S&ED. But China has long pressed the US to lift its outdated restrictions on high-tech exports to China, to make the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States review the process for Chinese foreign direct investment in the US fairer and more transparent. Sheets said the two authorities are discussing a mechanism to facilitate renminbi trading and clearing in the US, something he described as a "priority highlighted in President Obama's meeting with President Xi last September". He said the US is waiting for a new negative list from China in negotiation for a high-standard Bilateral Investment Treaty. Hopes of a BIT being concluded under the Obama administration have been dampened due to the 2016 US election. The Obama administration is still trying to get the divided Congress to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Anti-trade rhetoric has also remained strong on presidential campaign trails. Sheets noted that China has begun embarking on a reform agenda toward more sustainable and balanced growth by addressing issues such as industrial overcapacity, opening up the services sector, strengthening the social security net, implementing land reform and promoting a more market based financial system. "Constructive engagement with China is important for the United States and for the millions of American jobs, which depend on a strong, stable and growing global economy," he said. "This year's S&ED will be the last in the Obama administration. I must stress that the continued cooperation with China on the diverse set of issues covered in the S&ED is crucial not just for our respective country, but globally as well." IMF First Deputy Managing Director David Lipton said in Washington on Tuesday that while a slowing Chinese economy has generated much concern, China "certainly can continue to make an important contribution as the biggest single contributor to global growth for some time". "Don't forget, in 2015, China's growth was equivalent to adding an economy the size of Poland or Sweden to global GDP," said Lipton. Robert Zoellick, the former president of the World Bank, said on Monday that the US and China could find common interest in China's Belt and Road Initiative. Asked to comment on the possible cooperation, Sheets did not say whether the US will participate in the initiative, or in the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The Obama administration drew wide criticism even within the US for its negative response earlier to China's AIIB initiative, something widely seen as a rising China, playing a positive and constructive role on the global stage. China's State Councilor Yang Jiechi and Vice-Premier Wang Yang will head the Chinese delegation to this year's S&ED, while the US team will be led by Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lews. chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com (China Daily 05/27/2016 page14) Talks in Beijing also expected to consider Korean nuclear issue Beijing will pressure Washington over maritime issues during the upcoming annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue, as the United States' increasing military presence in the South China Sea is among China's major concerns, officials told China Daily. China will bring up topics related to its major concerns, including the Taiwan question, Tibet and maritime security, and it will respond to the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, which the US is expected to raise, two sources familiar with the matters said on condition of anonymity. The two countries have differing pursuits on major issues at the strategic level. However, the two still have many common interests, they said. Whether it is on the South China Sea issue or on the Korean Peninsula issue, the two countries have a shared security goal to maintain regional stability, they said. Beijing announced on Monday that the annual dialogue will take place in Beijing on June 6 and 7. China hopes to "properly tackle differences" alongside the US, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said. The dialogue, which started in 2009, has become the highest-level, regular bilateral communication channel for the world's two largest economies to compare notes on key issues concerning diplomacy, security and economy. Observers noted that the eighth dialogue will be the last to be co-chaired by President Barack Obama's administration. On the economic track, Na- than Sheets, US undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs, reaffirmed on May 24 the Obama administration's commitment to reaching a bilateral investment treaty agreement before Obama's presidency ends. Sources also said that China will urge the US to provide a level playing field for Chinese investment. China's investment in the US in the first quarter of this year is expected to be more than double that of the first quarter of last year, according to the National Committee on United States-China Relations, based in New York. Ruan Zongze, vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies, said the South China Sea issue will be brought to the table because it has affected the two-way ties, and the US has been "undermining regional stability" while "rebalancing to Asia" in the past two years. Washington should not take sides, but look at 'rights, wrongs' in S. China Sea issue, official says A senior Chinese diplomat urged Washington on Thursday to stick to its promise of not taking sides on the South China Sea issue, ahead of the annual highest-level Sino-US dialogue. At the Lanting Forum ahead of next week's Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Beijing, Vice-Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang also called for the United States not to make its South China Sea policy decisions based merely on "whether somebody is an ally or not". "In fact, the United States is not a claimant in the South China Sea dispute, and it has said it takes no position on territorial disputes," Zheng said. "So we hope the US can stick to its promise and not choose sides, and instead base its stance on the rights and wrongs of the case," he added. "I think if Washington can do this and stop provocative acts targeting China's sovereignty and security interests, then the US can play a constructive role in maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea" and help defuse the tension on the issue. State Councilor Yang Jiechi will discuss the South China Sea with US Secretary of State John Kerry at the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, Zheng added. Zheng also said that China and the US will hold the sixth Strategic Security Dialogue on Sunday, which will be co-chaired by Vice-Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui and US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He said representatives of the two militaries and relevant departments will "have in-depth discussions" on issues including sovereignty, maritime and outer space security and military relations. The Foreign Ministry announced that the eighth Strategic and Economic Dialogue and the seventh China-US High-Level Consultation on People-to-People Exchange will both be held on Monday and Tuesday. At the S&ED, State Councilor Yang and Kerry will co-chair the strategic part of the dialogue, while Vice-Premier Wang Yang and US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew will co-chair the economic part. Zheng said the strategic dialogue will cover topics including building up the new type of relations for major nations, managing differences and sensitive issues, and the two countries' interaction in the Asia-Pacific. A special conference on climate change will be held on the sidelines of the talks. Qin Yaqing, president of China Foreign Affairs University, said that in the dialogue, China and the US should consider how to convert their differences into areas of cooperation. "We can even consider whether we can turn the South China Sea into a point of cooperation," she said. Ruan Zongze, vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies, said, "China-US relations have come to a new crossroads," citing the debate on China policy in the US presidential campaign, the unknown fate of the S&ED under the next US administration, and US involvement in the South China Sea. "That has made this round of S&ED more eye-catching," he said. Contact the writer at lixiaokun@chinadaily.com.cn Negotiating with a Chinese company? Think Game of Thrones. If you have been reading the business news on China, two things ought to have jumped out at you. One, Chinese companies are looking to buy technology innovation. And, two, Chinese companies have a very annoying habit of backing out of their deals. For a news piece on the former, I give you this May 31 Wall Street Journal article: Chinas Xiaomi to Buy 1,500 Patents From Microsoft, subtitled, deal reflects smartphone makers efforts to acquire the intellectual property it needs to broaden its reach. For the later, I give you this June 1 Wall Street Journal article: Chinas Latest Export: Broken Deals. For the last year or so, our China lawyers have been seeing the same thing. On both counts. Lets talk about innovation first. Can China innovate? That question has been asked countless times in the last ten or so years and this blog and our China attorneys have asked that question many times as well. Some of us have even been on seminar panels discussing that issue. But I have stopped asking that question ever since a friend of mine pointed out to me that it is no longer the salient innovation question to be asking about China. The better question is a slightly broader one: Can China secure innovation either by generating its own or by buying it. Many in China, including at the highest levels of the government, have given up on China becoming a top-tier innovator and have therefore turned their attention to China becoming a top tier innovation acquirer. Add in the fears of a declining Yuan and you have all you need for a golden age of China innovation acquisitions. And that is exactly what is happening and exactly what our China lawyers have been seeing. Chinese companies are looking to acquire innovation/technology/IP any way they can, including by licensing, by purchasing (either the technology itself or the entire company) or by joint ventures. Now lets talk about why so many of these technology deals do not come to fruition and that naturally leads us to why negotiating these deals is so difficult.The Chinese government is telling Chinese companies to acquire technologies and Chinese companies badly want to acquire technologies, but this does not mean they have any real clue how to acquire technologies from overseas. Here is how our firm did a technology licensing deal for a Spanish company recently. This Spanish company wanted to buy a U.S. company with a cutting edge technology. The Spanish company spoke with the U.S. company and they negotiated a purchase price and generally discussed other key terms. The Spanish company then did its due diligence on the U.S. company and that due diligence uncovered a few warts and raised a few issues. So the Spanish and the American company sat down again and negotiated on some of the new issues and renegotiated on some of the old issues, and within a week or so the deal was again ready to move forward. The whole process from start to finish took 3-4 months. Here is what typically happens when we represent an American company seeking to do a technology deal with a Chinese company: 1. The American company and the Chinese company reach what sounds like a perfectly reasonable deal. 2. We draft up the perfectly reasonable deal and the Chinese company then completely changes it. 3. Our American company tells the Chinese company that it cannot do the new deal the Chinese company has just proposed. 4. The Chinese company comes up with some really bizarre explanation for why the new deal it is proposing is absolutely essential and explains why the deal our client thought it had can never work. 5. We then spend weeks explaining why the old deal is just fine, while the Chinese company alternately acts like it will do the old deal with just a few small changes or hints very strongly to our client that it should take the new deal or the Chinese company will just walk away. I could go on and on, but you get the point. Chinese companies like to draw in American and European companies with what looks like a really good deal and then go back on that deal. Chinese companies negotiate like this because they realize that once an American company commits to a deal, it wants to close the deal. Once five people in an American company have told their fellow employees we have a deal with XYZ Chinese company, those five employees do not want to keep negotiating that deal for another 5-6 months or just walk away from it. Chinese companies know all this and they seek to wear down the other side, plain and simple. Chinese companies will change the deal not just monetarily, but in even bigger ways as well. Have a deal where you dont turn over anything about your technology unless and until you get a large upfront payment? Prepare for an explanation from the Chinese company weeks into the deal why that is no longer possible. Have a deal where the Chinese company is supposed to get your three- year-old technology? Prepare for an explanation months into the deal as to why you now need to replace that with your newest technology, and all at the same price. Again, I could go on and on. So how should you handle this sort of negotiating? By remaining firm and resolute. Not kidding. In subsequent posts, we will go into greater depth on how to negotiate with Chinese companies. So stay tuned. . . . (Photo : NOEL CELIS/AFP/Getty Images) In this photo taken on March 2, 2016, Davao City Mayor and Presidential Candidate Rodrigo Duterte raises a clenched fist during his campaign sortie in Lingayen, Pangasinan, north of Manila. Advertisement China is upbeat that the new Philippines government will opt for dialogue to settle the South China Sea dispute after incoming Foreign Minister Perfecto Yasay said that bilateral talks between the Manila and Beijing will help resolve the impasse. Yasay added that there is no other way to solve the matter but through bilateral talks. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement In response to this, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying welcomed Yasay's remarks. She pointed out that in the past, leaders of China and Philippines have agreed that the South China Sea disputes should be resolved peacefully via negotiations. "We hope the Philippine's new government can honor their commitments and return to dialogue with China to properly handle the disputes so as to contribute to the healthy and stable development of bilateral relations," Hua said. Incoming Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said in a recent statement that he wants to promote friendly relations with China. He also said that he is open to direct talks regarding the South China Sea dispute. Duterte further praised Chinese President Xi Jinping, describing him as a great leader. China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi noted during his recent visit to Canada that the "door of dialogue" between China and the Philippines is always open. "If the Philippines sincerely wants to come back to the track of dialogue and negotiations, we welcome that," he added. Bilateral talks between China and the Philippines came to a standstill during the reign of outgoing Philippine President Beningo Aquino III. Advertisement TagsSouth China Sea Dispute, Philippines, china, Philippines incoming president Rodrigo Duterte, Chinese President Xi jinping, bilateral talks, outgoing Philippine president Benigno Aquino III, Philippines incoming foreign minister Perfecto Yasay (Photo : Abdurrahman Warsameh/GRN/Getty Images) Onlookers view the wreckage of a suicide car bomb that targetted Somali government minister Sheikh Yusuf Siyad Indha Adde, in a government controlled area, on February 15, 2010 in the south of the Somali capital Mogadishu. Advertisement A suicide car bomber crashed his vehicle into a hotel patronized by government officials and politicians in the capital of Somalia, Mogadishu, on Wednesday, killing 15 people. According to police officials, the blast was followed by gunfire. Al-Qaeda affiliated militants, al Shabaab, have claimed responsibility for the attack. The hotel was identified as Hotel Ambassador. They Islamic extremist group said in a statement that they targeted members of the apostate government and noted that they have some militants inside the area. The statement's validity has not been verified yet. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement It is possible that the bombing was carried out because Somali security forces recently killed 17 al Shabaab fighters including the head of their intelligence unit. Also, among the dead is a man suspected of organizing a deadly attack on Garissa University back in 2015 that killed 148 people. Colonel Ali Mohamad with the Mogadishu police said that the gate of the Hotel Ambassador was rammed by the vehicle. Initially, Somali authorities only confirmed three people dead, but another police officer, Major Ibrahim Hassan, said that the death toll is expected to rise. Hassan added that lawmakers Mohamud Mohamed and Abdullahi Jamac died in the hotel as they were living there. Other lawmakers were rescued from the blast. Aside from the 15 deaths, 20 injuries were also recorded. Hotel Ambassador is in Maka Al Mukaram street; a major passage that has hotels, restaurants, and banks. It is unclear if people from the other establishments on the street were injured in the attack. Somalian President Hassan sheikh Mohamud has sent his condolences to the families of the lawmakers and other people killed in the "barbaric attack." "These barbaric attacks are aimed to frighten citizens so that they do not support governance and peace and that will never happen," he added. Al Shabaab wants to implement strict Islamic rule throughout Somalia. Last February, al Shabaab fighters bombed the gate of a popular park also in Somalia's capital, killing nine. In January, another attack was carried out on a beach-front restaurant killing 17. Advertisement TagsAl Shabaab, Somali capital, suicide car bomber, lawmakers, Hotel Ambassador, 15 dead, militants, attack (Photo : Mario Tama/Getty Images) Dr. Vanessa Van Der Linden, the neuro-pediatrician who first recognized and alerted authorities over the microcephaly crisis in Brazil, measures the head of a 2-month-old baby with microcephaly on January 27, 2016 in Recife, Brazil. The baby's mother was diagnosed with having the Zika virus during her pregnancy. In the last four months, authorities have recorded close to 4,000 cases in Brazil in which the mosquito-borne Zika virus may have led to microcephaly in infants. The ailment results in an abnormally small head in newborns and is associated with various disorders including decreased brain development. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Zika virus outbreak is likely to spread throughout nearly all the Americas. At least twelve cases in the United States have now been confirmed by the CDC. Advertisement A baby with Zika-linked microcephaly in the United States was born on Tuesday, marking the first-ever case in the New York tri-state area but the third in the country. The baby girl was born on Tuesday in New Jersey. Children born with microcephaly is an indication that the baby has a partially-formed brain. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The mother of the baby was not identified but she reportedly contracted the virus during her trip to Honduras. She was admitted to the emergency room of Hackensack University Medical Center on Friday while vacationing in the United States. Doctors decided that they had to perform an emergency caesarean section to deliver the baby. It was not clear if the baby was born on her ninth month inside the mother's womb or if she was a premature baby. Doctors at the hospital pointed out that the baby was not developing well in the last month and was also born with intestinal and visual problems.It was unknown how much the child weighed but in cases such as this, babies born with the disease suffer from low birth weight. The mother reportedly had a rash when she was still in Honduras for two days. However, her symptoms did not show until she arrived in the United States a month ago. Doctors in Honduras said that the child insider her womb might have intracranial complications but it was only until the mother was admitted to the Hackensack University Medical Center that doctors confirmed the baby had Zika-linked microcephaly. The mother is not doing well emotionally after the birth of her child, a relative said. This is not the first case of a child born with Zika-linked complications in the United States. In February, a woman in Hawaii delivered a baby suffering from severe microcephaly as a result of the Zika infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC.) Babies who have contracted microcephaly can suffer from developmental delays, intellectual disability, vision problems, problems with movement and balance, seizures, hearing loss, and feeding problems. The Zika virus starts from the bite of an infected mosquito but it can also be spread through sexual contact and blood transfusion. There is no vaccine available at the moment to prevent the Zika virus so experts are advising people to wear long-sleeved shirts and pants when visiting affected countries. Symptoms of the virus include red eyes, joint pain, rashes, and fever. Advertisement TagsZika virus, Zika-linked microcephaly, United States, New York tri-state area, New Jersey, Honduran mother, Baby girl, mosquito (Photo : Getty Images.) The CEO of Swiss Pharmaceutical giant Novartis Joe Jimenez has said that China will continue to be a lucrative market for the pharmaceutical company despite the economic slowdown. Advertisement The head of Swiss Pharmaceutical giant Novartis Joe Jimenez said on Wednesday that demand for pharmaceutical products in China will continue to outshine Europe and the US despite the ongoing economic slowdown and other critical factors like falling drug prices and regulatory challenges. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement "China has the potential over the next 10 years to become a major force in global pharma," Jimenez told the Financial Times. He was speaking at the opening ceremony of Novartis' new state-of-the-art research facility in Shanghai. This is the company's third research and development center alongside its research centers in Basel and Cambridge. Jimenez said Novartis and other pharmaceutical companies would benefit from China's aging demographics. China is set to have one of highest 'old age' population in the world. "Within 35 years there are going to be 200m more Chinese over the age of 65 than there are now ... so there will be 340m people over the age of 65. That's similar to the total population of the US," Jimenez said. Jimenez also cited China's burgeoning middle class as one of the key factors that will continue to propel demand for pharmaceutical products. Analysts say that Novartis chief's encouraging statement clearly demonstrates the resilience of China's pharmaceutical market. However, new tough regulatory rules and rising regulatory costs continue to cast a shadow on pharmaceutical companies in China. In 2014, GlaxoSmithKline was fined Rmb3bn ($488m) for non-compliance with regulatory laws. Multinational pharmaceutical companies in China have reportedly altered their marketing practices to avoid facing regulatory penalties. Advertisement Tagschina, Novartis, Joe Jimenez, Gsk Glaxosmithkline (Photo : Gerty Images) China and Bangladesh are set to strengthen their bilateral relationship. Advertisement China has agreed to deepen its bilateral cooperation with Bangladesh. The decision was made during a meeting between visiting Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan and Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. "President Xi Jinping and her Excellency Hasina have reached several consensuses on bilateral relations. This charts the path for the development of more ties," Chang said. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The Bangladesh Premier voiced hopes of forming firm links with China in the fields of economy, agriculture, infrastructure, and military. She also expressed willingness to work with China to build the Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar Economic Corridor. Prime Minister Hasina said she is optimistic that the two countries will enhance cooperation and exchanges in all areas to promote greater development. She also weighed in on the South China Sea issue. Hasina reiterated that the matter should be resolved through bilateral negotiations between the parties directly concerned, with no third party involved. China has long insisted that she is the victim in the South China Sea issue, maintaining that the contested Islands have belonged to China since ancient times. The country has had to react to acts of provocation from the United States over the disputed islands. A few weeks ago, China scrambled fighter jets after an American Warship passed too close to her borders. During the visit, Chang met and held talks with Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid, Chief of Army Staff General Abu Melal Muhammad Shafiul Hug as well as the director of the Armed Forces Division of the Bangladesh Prime Minister's office. Advertisement Tagschina, business news, politics (Photo : Getty Images) Etihad Airways plans to fly to more destinations in China. Advertisement Etihad Airways plans to add more routes in China to boost traffic flows and expand in the country. James Hogan, the chief executive officer of the Abu Dhabi-based airline, said Etihad has already applied for more routes in China. The airline is now focusing on second tier Chinese cities. Etihad is currently operating flights to Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu under a codesharing agreement with two Chinese airlines - China Eastern Airlines and Hainan Airlines. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement "With the exception of China, there aren't too many gaps that we have in the network. Africa and China are two big markets with significant traffic flows," Hogan said in Dublin. The Irish capital is hosting the annual general meeting of the International Air Travel Association. "Etihad wants to partner with more Chinese airlines and increase traffic flows to the country. Over the horizon, we want more partnerships with Chinese airlines and we applied for [the rights to fly to] secondary Chinese cities to close gaps in our network," he said. "We already have strong codeshares in China. Ultimately we want more Chinese passengers flying into Abu Dhabi, but we are playing the long game." Hogan, however, refused to comment on Australian media reports that Chinese carrier HNA Aviation will buy 13 percent stake in Virgin Australia which would reduce Etihad's share in the Aussie airline. He also admitted that the recent terror attacks in Brussels, Paris and Egypt has adversely affected the aviation market as many travelers have decided to cancel their holiday plans. Advertisement Tagsetihad, china, Airlines, Hainan, China Eastern Airlines (Photo : Getty Images) A Chinese peacekeeper has been killed in terrorist attacks in Mali. Advertisement A Chinese peacekeeper was among four killed people in two separate attacks on the United Nations' peacekeeping mission's outposts in the northern parts of Mali on Tuesday. Al Qaeda's Noorth African branch - Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) - on Wednesday claimed responsibility for the attack on the United Nations' Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) base in Gao city. Four Chinese peacekeepers were reportedly injured in the attack. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement China has condemned the attack and called for an immediate probe into the incident. "We extend our deepest condolences to the victims and express our heartfelt sympathy to the wounded and the families of the victims," China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said. "The Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the State Council are taking the incident very seriously, Hua said, noting that emergency response and follow-up measures had been launched immediately," Hua added. "The attack targeted UN peacekeepers, making it a terrible, intolerable crime." The spokesperson also informed that more than 2,400 Chinese peacekeepers are currently deployed in seven African countries including Mali. U.N. Chief Ban Ki-moon, in a statement, expressed his outrage at the attacks on U.N. targets in Mali. "The Secretary-General is outraged by the terrorist attacks carried out yesterday in Gao, Mali, against the United Nations," the Secretary General's spokesperson said. "[Mr. Ban] is deeply concerned by the recent series of attacks directed against MINUSMA that have killed 12 peacekeepers and injured many more in May alone." Advertisement TagsChinese peacekeepers, UN, Mali, Al-qaeda (Photo : Getty Images.) Tesla will deliver its Model X tcar o Chinese customers by the end of this month. Advertisement US electric-car manufacturer Tesla Motors will deliver its Model X to Chinese customers by the end of this month, instead of the first quarter of next year, a senior Tesla official told state-owned newspaper China Daily. The senior official revealed that Model X customers will be able to purchase optional accessories from Wednesday. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Since its launch in 2014, Tesla Motors has been witnessing stupendous growth in the Chinese market. Today Mainland China is Telsa's second largest market after the US, registering a yearly growth rate of nearly 300 percent. Despite the overwhelming demand for the Telsa 3, Telsa's co-founder JB Straubel announced last month that the company is still hesitant to set up a manufacturing plant in China. Straubel said that it would not make sense to put a factory in China unless customer demand in the country reaches 'critical mass.' However, Tesla Motors is still committed to expanding its operation in the second largest market. On Wednesday, Tesla signed an agreement with the Beijing municipal government to start its operational headquarters in Beijing, where the company was previously running its sales headquarter. Zhu Xiaotong, the general manager of Tesla China, said the company will increase the number of its retail outlets in China from 17 to 30 by the end of this financial year. Zhu added that company will also increase the number of charging points across the country, with plans to install its 100th charging point in Beijing this year. Advertisement Tagstesla motors, china, Tesla Motors China, Tesla Model X, Telsa 3 (Photo : Imke de Pater, Michael H. Wong, Robert J. Sault) Radio image of Jupiter captured by the Very Large Array. Advertisement Astronomers now have a better idea of what lies underneath Jupiter's frenetic sea of clouds with a new map of this dominant feature. This map will be improved with new data from the NASA Juno spacecraft that will begin circling the planet on July 4. A research team led by the University of California, Berkeley has produced a map of Jupiter's atmosphere down to a depth of 100 kilometers from the cloud tops that uncovers Jupiter's toxic ammonia-rich clouds and atmospheric circulation patterns in fantastic detail. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Using the recently upgraded Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio astronomy observatory in New Mexico, the research team was able to construct a better global picture of the massive gas giant that's the largest planet in our solar system. "The Very Large Array is about ten times more sensitive than it was before, so now we have a much higher spatial resolution," said Imke de Pater, who led the study. "The overall dynamic picture is still correct, but now we see a lot of fine detail on that picture." The new map reveals an active weather system in Jupiter's ammonia-rich upper atmosphere. Enormous ammonia plumes form the distinctive bands tens of thousands of kilometers across that cloak the planet. More important, the new map might help scientists better understand what occurred in the early solar system some four billion years ago when rocky planets like Earth were first being formed into planets. Scientists said the processes that caused Jupiter to be enriched by heavier elements might also have played a key role in the formation of the Earth, Venus, and Mars. Other scientists argue that gas giants like Jupiter are necessary for the formation of rocky planets like Earth. "We don't know how Jupiter is enriched in heavy elements compared to the Sun, but it is," said Scott Bolton, director of NASA's Juno Mission. "And that's important, because the stuff Jupiter is enriched in is the same stuff our planet is made of." The arrival of NASA's Juno Mission on July 4 will add immeasurably to the knowledge about Jupiter. Juno (JUpiter Near-polar Orbiter) will begin its primary science mission in November. From its polar orbit, Juno will study Jupiter's composition, gravity field, magnetic field and polar magnetosphere. Juno will also search for clues about how Jupiter formed. It will also try to find out whether Jupiter has a rocky core and the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere. Advertisement TagsJupiter, NASA, Juno spacecraft, University of California, Berkeley, Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array Marine kicking down a door in Iraq Advertisement The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) expects to field in about two years an advanced 3D urban combat system that will allow U.S. soldiers to literally "see" through walls at what's inside a target structure before they rush into it. Kicking down doors is a perilous job for U.S Army or Marine infantrymen doing battle in an urban setting, as its experience in Iraq and Afghanistan has proven. What's on the other side might be a high-explosive booby trap or insurgents covering the door with assault rifles or a machine gun. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement DARPA is developing the VirtualEye program along with Nvidia Corporation, a company famous for designing advanced graphics processing units for gaming. VirtualEye will create an on-the-spot 3D image of a room using input gathered from remote cameras. The 3D image will allow U.S. warfighters to virtually explore a real time 3D recreation of a target room or building from a remote location and quickly pinpoint the exact locations of enemy combatants and booby traps. "I can do all this without having a soldier endanger himself. Especially when you have adversaries like ISIS who are trying to set booby traps to, in fact, harm the soldiers when they come in just to do the room clearing," said Trung Tran, DARPA program manager. To create the 3D image, VirtualEye evaluates images from multiple cameras mounted on portable battlefield robots or tiny aerial drones. As for hardware, VirtualEye only needs a tablet and cameras attached to robots such as the Foster-Miller TALON, which are small, tracked military robots designed for reconnaissance and combat. The need to see inside rooms or buildings is a matter of life and death for soldiers since U.S. ground troops are engaging in urban combat more than ever before. Fighting inside towns and cities is a favorite tactic of terrorists such as the Taliban and Isis since this form of warfare negates some of the advantages enjoyed by the U.S. such as superior technology and firepower. Advertisement TagsDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, VirtualEye, Nvidia Corporation (Photo : ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images) Workers produce replicas of Princess Diana's engagement ring at Yiwu Mingwang Jewellery Co., Ltd on March 16, 2011 in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province of China. Advertisement In an emphatic appeal to his countrymen, Premier Li Keqiang called on Chinese overseas workers to invest in the country, and to play an increased role in strengthening cross-Straits unification. "Overseas Chinese are welcome to invest and start their businesses in the motherland, as China is shifting from reliance on natural resources to human resources and promoting innovative industries," Li said. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The premiere delivered his remarks during the eighth Conference for Friendship of Overseas Chinese Associations, where he expressed his deep gratitude to the more than 60 million overseas Chinese citizens worldwide. Hosted by the State Council's Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, the meeting, was participated in by more than 700 delegates coming from 136 countries across the globe. "For a long time, overseas Chinese [workers] have made great achievements in their own fields and crucial contributions to China's economic and social development, and I hope you will continue to do so," Li said. The premiere however noted that that China was facing various challenges at the domestic and international front, wherein the nation needs to establish new markets by deepening reforms and promoting innovation to achieve medium- to high-speed growth. "China is still one of the most attractive destinations for investments, and overseas Chinese are welcome to invest in these new areas," he pointed out. Among the participants of the meeting was He Ruyi, director of the China-US Cultural Exchanges Center. He was responsible for organizing the welcoming ceremony in Washington for President Xi Jinping when the Chinese leader made a state visit to the United States in September. Born in Shenyang, He has lived in Maryland since 1988, and now works for the US Food and Drug Administration's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. "Today, we have so many compatriots coming together and received by the premier. It was encouraging to see him, showing the importance the Chinese government attaches to us," He said, as he underscored the significant role of Chinese overseas workers in the nation's economy. Advertisement Tagschina, China Overseas Workers, Webank Premier Li Keqiang (Photo : PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images) Chinese security guards patrol the area where an explosion killed 16 policemen in Xinjiang's famed Silk Road city of Kashgar in China's far northwestern, mainly Muslim Xinjiang region on August 4, 2008. Advertisement The Chinese government has justified its decision to crack down on Islamic militants in Xinjiang Province in a recently released white paper, which states that China will not allow any religious organization or person to interfere with the nation's religious affairs. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The government report described the crackdown on Islamic militants as a just and fair act, initiated with the intention to safeguard the interests of the country and its people. The white paper, titled Freedom of Religious Belief in Xinjiang, says that the militants spread radical and extremist ideologies using religion with the intent of establishing theocracy in the area. The document claims that the freedom of religious beliefs in the Xinjiang province cannot be matched by any other country or area. The paper also points out that the citizens of the People's Republic of China have always enjoyed the freedom to follow any religion of their choice. However, the Chinese government has made it clear that it will not support religious extremism as it is "anti-human, anti-society, anti-civilization, and anti-religion." The paper says that religious circles should have a positive role in the society such as promoting economic development and social stability. The white paper comes after Hafiz Saeed, leader of Pakistan-based terrorist organizations Jamat-ud-Dawa and Lakshar-e-Taiba, criticized China over its crackdown on Uyghur Islamic militants in Xinjiang. Xinjiang, which has more than 10 million Uyghur Muslims of Turkic origin, has experienced several terrorist attacks over the years, for which Beijing holds the separatist East Turkistan Islamic Movement responsible. The province is in a state of turmoil. Xinjiang shares its borders with the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Russia, and Tajikistan. Advertisement TagsXinjian, Islamic militants, uyghur, Uyghur Islamic militants, Chinese government, White Paper, china, China Islamic militants, Xinjiang Province (Photo : Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images) Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton raises her arms stands on stage during the New Hampshire Democratic Party Convention at the Verizon Wireless Center on September 19, 2015 in Manchester, New Hampshire. Advertisement Democratic Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is not backing down from attacks against GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump. Clinton said during her foreign policy speech on Thursday, June 2, that Trump is dangerously incoherent and temperamentally unfit to be president. Clinton's latest speech focused on Trump's controversial foreign policies. She described the real estate mogul as irrational, unprepared, and thin-skinned over this issue. Clinton pointed out that Trump's election as the next president of the United States would spark wars overseas that will ruin the country's economy. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The former Secretary of State pointed out that Trump can not take charge of the country's nuclear issues because his proposals are vague and nonsensical. Clinton also criticized Trump's anti-Muslim proposal as well as his plan to build a wall at the border to prevent immigrants from coming to the United States. She pointed out that Trump was too admiring of dictators and has no regard for the country's strategic alliances across the world. In her speech, Clinton noted that Moscow and Beijing are "deeply envious of our alliances around the world" because they have nothing to match that. She claimed that if Trump gets elected, these nations will celebrate as they know the businessman will jeopardize the country. "Donald Trump's ideas aren't just different - they are dangerously incoherent. They're not really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies," Clinton said. She also mockingly said that Trump's skills include bragging, mocking, and composing nasty tweets. Trump responded quickly to Clinton via Twitter. He said that it was pathetic and sad do watch her speech. He went on to describe Clinton as 'Crooked Hillary' in another tweet, noting that she does not even look presidential. These latest attacks come after Clinton accused Trump of being a fraud. Trump is accused of tricking students into paying thousands of dollars to be mentored by real estate experts. Clinton is competing with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination. Advertisement TagsHillary Clinton, attacks on Donald Trump, donald trump, GOP presumptive nominee, Democratic presidential candidate, incoherent, unfit for position, foreign policy speech (Photo : Photo by Feng Li/Getty Images) Google is planning to return to China to do business. Advertisement Google may stage a comeback to China, six years after it withdrew its search engine service from the world's largest internet market due to strict censorship laws. "I care about servicing users globally in every corner. Google is for everyone," Sundar Pichai, Google CEO said on Wednesday during a tech conference. "We want to be in China serving Chinese users." Like Us on Facebook Advertisement This is the most assertive statement that Google has made about its ambitions in China in recent times. The American search giant has repeatedly expressed its desire to return to China. However, Google has not disclosed any specific information about how it plans to comply with China's tough censorship laws. In recent years, the Chinese government has introduced a new set of restrictive censorship laws that may make it more difficult for Google to operate. However, analysts feel that the Chinese market is too big and lucrative for Google to ignore. Analysts say that Google will have to search for a middle path or simply comply with China's tough censorship laws. Meanwhile, Facebook, which has been banned in China since 2009, is also desperate to make a comeback in China. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made effort to appeal to the Chinese people and the country's top leaders. Zuckerberg surprised many this year by wishing Chinese people Happy New Year in Mandarin. Zuckerberg reportedly learned the Mandarin language from his wife Priscilla Chan, who is Chinese. Advertisement TagsGoogle, china, Facebook, China Internet Censorship (Photo : Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images) The US Department of Commerce is investigating Huawei for trade violations. Advertisement China's technology company Huawei Technologies has reportedly been issued a subpoena by the US Commerce Department. The subpoena is said to be part of an ongoing probe into the company's alleged violation of export restriction to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. According to the New York Times, the US Commerce Department has demanded that Huawei provides information about its export of US technologies to these five countries. The US imposed export restrictions on these countries due to security concerns. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement In response, Huawei has said that it follows a strict code of conduct to comply with the export control rules laid down by the US government. "In particular, Huawei has a strict code of conduct, rigorous training, and detailed policies relating to export control compliance and actively cooperates with the relevant government agencies, including the Department of Commerce, regarding Huawei's compliance with export control laws," a spokesperson for the company said in an email. The US Commerce Department has declined to comment on the issue. Earlier this year, another Chinese smartphone manufacturer, ZTE, was penalized by the US Commerce Department for alleged export violations to Iran. In March, after weeks of negotiation and sustained pressure from the Chinese government, the US State Department gave a three-month reprieve to ZTE. The Huawei case is the latest in the ongoing trade tension between US and China. The US has accused China of dumping of cheap steel in the American market while China has accused the US of failing to implement the World Trade Organization's (WTO) rulings. The US-China trade tension has also become a major issue in the ongoing US presidential campaign. Both the leading Democratic and Republican nominees have promised to impose tough anti-dumping and on China. Advertisement Tagschina, Huawei, US Commerce Department, ZTE (Photo : Getty Images) China on Friday said the Philippines attempt to characterize Taiping Dao as a rock is a violation of international law and is totally unacceptable. Advertisement China on Friday hit back at the Philippines for describing the Taiping Dao island in the South China Sea as a 'rock,' saying that Beijing has indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and its adjacent waters, including Taiping Dao. Responding to a media query during a regular press briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said the Philippines' attempt to characterize Taiping Dao as a rock is a violation of international law and is totally unacceptable. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement "The Philippines' attempt to characterize Taiping Dao as a rock exposed that its purpose of initiating the arbitration is to deny China's sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and relevant maritime rights and interests," Hua said. She added that the fact that Chinese people are working and living on Taiping Dao proves that Taiping Dao is an 'island' which is capable of sustaining human habitation or economic life of its own. "China has, based on the Nansha Islands as a whole, territorial sea, exclusive economic zone and continental shelf. Over the history, Chinese fishermen have resided on Taiping Dao for years, working and living there, carrying out fishing activities, digging wells for fresh water, cultivating land and farming, building huts and temples, and raising livestock," she noted. Hua's remarks come in response to the Filipino government's argument at the Haque-based Permanent Court of Arbitration that Taiping Dai is a rock. The Philippines is questioning China's claim to the South China Sea in its case at the international arbitration court. China, on the other hand, has refused to participate in the case or recognize the jurisdiction of the court, and maintains that it has 'indisputable sovereignty' over the South China Sea. Advertisement Tagschina, Philippines, South China Sea, Taiping Dao, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying Chinese officials outraged at Genesis account of creation in textbooks 03 June, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , | BEIJING (Christian Examiner) The Beijing Academy of Educational Sciences (BAES) has compiled a textbook for seventh grade Chinese students that includes parts of the Book of Genesis, but that doesn't mean the communist regime there is suddenly alright with God and the Bible. The Hindu reports that the education leaders in Beijing are still firmly atheist, but are using the textbook to enlighten students on the religious beliefs held dear by so many westerners. "(We) added some extracts from the Bible's Book of Genesis into the textbook to broaden students' horizons and introduce them to Western myths," a BAES employee and a selection consultant for the country's education authorities told the Beijing Youth Daily. Ironically, the textbook is not new, the paper reported. It has been used in Chinese language classes since 2006 and also includes several ancient "Chinese myths." The BAES said the textbook went unnoticed until the content was recently brought to the attention of some "outraged" officials who believe religion should not be included in education. One commentator, Wang Xiaoshi, said the text violates China's education laws because all textbooks should promote national unity. A professor at Jinan University, however, told the Global Times that people shouldn't see the inclusion of a religious text as part of a nefarious plan. "The basic purpose of education is to offer systematic knowledge of human culture, both domestic and foreign," Yao Xinyoung, who teaches in the Chinese Department at the university, said. Not all Chinese, especially those who grew up under the purge of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution, want textbooks to even entertain western ideals. They fear, the Times said, that any reflection on the West may blunt Chinese patriotism. Another professor, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Times that "some people have misunderstood the priority of Chinese teaching." "Some people still hold old-fashioned ideas that a Chinese textbook should mostly comprise patriotic ideological content, without noticing that the priority of Chinese teaching is to cultivate humanistic qualities in students," the unnamed professor said. Does new 'Finding Dory' promote a lesbian couple? Guest Reviewer | 03 June, 2016 by Michael Foust LOS ANGELES (Christian Examiner) Does a new trailer for the children's film "Finding Dory" depict the first gay or lesbian couple in a Disney/Pixar film? Perhaps, although moviegoers likely won't know for sure until the movie opens in theaters June 17. At issue is a short trailer snippet about a second showing two women at an aquarium who are shocked to see an octopus in a baby stroller. Although the two women certainly appear to be a lesbian couple, they also could be any other combination of women random strangers, two sisters, or even two (heterosexual) friends who met each other at the aquarium. It also appears that the stroller does not belong to them. The two women are not wearing wedding rings, but the LGBT community nevertheless is excited about the possibility. Wrote one woman (@m00rea) on Twitter, "finding out there's a lesbian couple in Finding Dory just makes my love for Finding Nemo so much more & makes my little gay heart happy." The left-leaning Twitter news feed @thisisamplify celebrated by saying, "Pixar is being progressive, featuring a lesbian couple in the latest #FindingDory trailer!" Sarah Kate Ellis, president of GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), didn't want to speculate about "Finding Dory" but told the Hollywood Reporter that it's just a matter of time until more animated films include gay characters. "We have been pushing them for years at GLAAD but now social media and the community is pushing them on it," Ellis said. "It's going to get harder and harder to ignore this drumbeat." 'Happy Chewbacca mom,' leverages 'simple joys' T-shirt to benefit missions Guest Reviewer | 03 June, 2016 by Michael Foust DALLAS (Christian Examiner) "Happy Chewbacca" mom Candace Payne has partnered with a business to release a T-shirt celebrating the "simple joys" of life, with 50 percent of the profits supporting a ministry at her church. Payne's viral video of her laughing at a Chewbacca mask received more than 150 million views on Facebook, allowing her to testify to the joy she lives with on a daily basis thanks to her Christian faith. The shirt, available at BecomingInk.com, features an artistic nature scene with the words "live for the simple joys." Becoming Ink is a unique business that sells specially designed T-shirts to benefit charities but prints only a limited number. Payne's T-shirt will be sold through June 27. Rebecca Tillman-Young, founder of Becoming Ink, said she reached out to Payne and asked her if she would be interested in the partnership. "What inspired me most about Candace's video and message was the laughter she was spreading through something so simple and fun," Tillman-Young told the Christian Examiner. "I had gotten some bad news and was having a terrible morning the day she posted the Chewbacca video, but in spite of my frustration, her video made me laugh, and immediately brightened my day," Tillman-Young said. "I thought, what can we do with this to keep it alive and remind people to embrace the simple joys every day?" Payne and Tillman-Young are longtime friends. "She's turned out to be this incredible, incredible artist," Payne said. Half of the proceeds from the shirt will benefit the "All In" initiative at The Oaks Fellowship in Red Oak, Texas. The initiative supports local needs and international missions. Sheriff orders child to stop sharing Bible verses at school Guest Columnist | 03 June, 2016 by Todd Starnes / Fox News PALMDALE (Calif.) A public school in California ordered a 7-year-old boy to stop handing out Bible verses during lunch and they dispatched a deputy sheriff to the child's home to enforce the directive. "This is a clear, gross violation of the rights of a child," said Horatio Mihet, a Liberty Counsel attorney representing the first-grader who attends Desert Rose Elementary School in Palmdale. They are also representing his parents, Christina and Jaime Zavala. Click here to join Todd's American Dispatch: a must-read for conservatives! Here's the back story: Mrs. Zavala made it a practice of including a Bible verse and encouraging note in her son's lunch bag. The boy would tell his friends about the note and read them aloud at the lunch table. READ THE FULL STORY AT FOXNEWS.COM! A Christian university in Canada appealed to the Supreme Court on Monday regarding a court ruling that banned accreditation of its proposed law school based on the school's stance against homosexuality. In 2014, the Law Society of British Columbia decided to accredit Trinity Western Universitys School of Law. However, it revoked the accreditation later that year because of a community covenant that all prospective students must sign. "The community covenant is a solemn pledge in which members place themselves under obligations on the part of the institution to its members, the members to the institution, and the members to one another, the covenant reads. The community covenant prohibits "sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman, which the Society believes discriminates against individuals with same-sex attractions. In July 2015, a three-judge Divisional Court of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled in favor of the Society to revoke accreditation. Upon losing its accreditation, TWU filed a lawsuit against the Society in August 2015. Later that year, Chief Justice Hinkson ruled that the original decision to accredit the law school should be reinstated, the ruling that the Society appealed on Wednesday. As the Chief Justice affirmed in December, the decision to approve TWU law school graduates must be based not on personal opinions and feelings, but on the law and evidence, said executive director of TWUs proposed School of Law Earl Phillips, according to Christian Week. The evidence shows that TWU teaches its students to work and live with the highest levels of skill and integrity. We hope the Court of Appeal will arrive at the same conclusion. Suspected Fulani Muslim herdsmen attacked a Christian community in northern Nigerian state of Kaduna, killing two people, and injuring several others, according to a report by World Watch Monitor. Fully armed herdsmen attacked the village of Ninte in the early hours of morning, and killed two people, and injured many others including women and children. People from Ninte community had to flee for their lives, and took refuge in other nearby communities. Church leaders in neighboring locality of Kafanchan have set up a temporary place for people harassed by militancy. Joseph Bagobiri, Catholic bishop of Kafanchan, raised a plea for "a global fund to help in the meaningful rehabilitation of victims, to ensure that both land and property of Christians and other vulnerable minorities are returned to them unfailingly." Bagobiri had attended a UN conference in New York, where he told the world leaders that an estimated 11,500 have been killed between 2006 and 2014 in Islamist attacks across the country, and some 13,000 churches were destroyed. Over 1.3 million people were displaced due to violence perpetrated by the militants. A local aid worker told World Watch Monitor that the oppression by Fulani tribes is similar to Boko Haram in the northeastern part of the country, but it has not yet been widely reported by international media. The episodes of Fulani cattle herders attacking mostly Christian farmers are mostly viewed as an economic struggle, but it has religious undertones, according to WWM. "Religiously-related violence has led to more deaths in northern Nigeria than have Boko Haram attacks," said commission Chairwoman Katrina Lantos Swett in April 2013. Fulani attacks are more brutal than Boko Haram. The terrorist group separates its victims, men from women and children who are generally spared. But Fulani herdsmen are notorious for killing everyone in their path,hacking and burning babies, and slashing bellies of pregnant women. They have public legitimacy and are not considered a terrorist organization, and move about freely with their arms, and often release press statements and file court cases justifying their massacres. After the infamous Agatu massacre, they claimed that 10,000 of their cows were killed by Christians, but an investigative team found no dead cows, and no one was implicated. The Fulani tribe is the largest nomadic tribe in the world, and most are nominal Muslims. They are also the wealthiest and most influential people in the region. There are some Christian converts among the tribe, who seek to evangelize their people because they have best access in the highly structured Fulani society. They are eager to take the gospel to the tribe even under the ever-looming threat of death and persecution, the Christian Aid reported. One tribesman Ardo's cows grazed over a farm he was crossing, and he expected a violent backlash from the farmer. But to his surprise, the farmer appeared to be a warm and forgiving man. The farmer was a missionary from Missionary Crusaders Ministries, and introduced Ardo and his family to Christ. Ardo's tribe later commanded him to abandon his Christian faith, but he did not. The tribe put him in prison for three years on false charges of stealing, and poisoned three of his children. Ardo stood firm in his faith despite the torture. "You have done this to break me," Ardo said. "But it has made me stronger because I am standing for the Truth: the Lord Jesus." The following exchange took place between Anderson Cooper of CNN and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in the March debate in Flint, Michigan: Cooper: Senator Sanders, are you intentionally keeping your Jewish faith in the background during your campaign? Sanders: I am very proud to be Jewish, and being Jewish is so much of what I am. Look, my fathers family was wiped out by Hitler in the Holocaust. I know about what crazy and radical and extremist politics mean. I learned that lesson as a tiny, tiny child when my mother would take me shopping and we would see people working in stores who had numbers on their arms because they were in Hitlers concentration camps. I am very proud of being Jewish, and that is an essential part of who I am as a human being. Once again we are in presidential election season. The candidates are, each in their own way, projecting what they want the electorate to know about their faith. We Americans are used to this quadrennial exercise. This election cycle, however, is exceptional. Senator Bernie Sanders has advanced further in the presidential campaign than any other Jewish citizen before him. (In 2000, Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut was the vice presidential candidate on Al Gores ticket.) Some have commented on how little has been madeand how little Sanders has madeof his Jewishness. Yet many others are trying to understand the relationship of Judaism and Jewishness to Sanders and the positions he advocates. Judaism, and membership in the Jewish people, fit no category of faith and religion familiar to most Christians. Ironically, Sanders own untraditional relationship to his faith and faith community actually presents ... 1 Today tens of thousands of Christians in Uganda will dip themselves and their children into a lake where executioners reportedly washed off the blood of dozens of martyrs. Its an annual ritual to remember 45 Catholics and Anglicans who were killed by sword or fire by Ugandan king Mwanga between 1885 and 1887. (A Ugandan film released May 30 retells the story.) Twenty-two of the martyrs were Catholic. Those men were beatified by Pope Benedict XV in 1920 and canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1964. Their shrine in Namugongo can seat 1,000 and has been visited by three popes, including Pope Francis. Last year, 500 Catholic pilgrims from Kenya spent more than a month walking 300 miles to reach it for the annual Martyrs Day. The June 3 observance draws millions of pilgrims across East Africa. The other 23 martyrs were Anglican. While there is also a shrine to the Protestant martyrs, its nothing like its Catholic counterpart. In fact, the Protestant presence is so small that originally Uganda president Yoweri Museveni said he thought there were only Catholic martyrs. He criticized Anglicans for not popularizing their martyrs more, and told them to follow the example of the Catholics. Mobilization and promotion is something that you need to work on. I am sorry, but you do not bring it out very well, he told Anglican clergy last June 3. I want you to be international. Where I have been (Catholic shrine), it is more exciting and I used three languages because they made theirs international. As CT reported last fall, the Anglicans are working on it, and one day the swampy site symbolizing religious freedom may prove better than gorillas for Ugandas economy. The Church of Uganda has expanded its small shrine, adding several buildings and a statue of the executioner, who later became a Christian. There are plans for a three-story museum that will hold artifacts of the history of the Anglican church in Uganda, a retired Anglican archbishop told allAfrica.com. This year, the shrine drew about 200,000 campers, reports the Anglican Communion News Service. But in general, Protestants dont do religious tourism the way Catholics do. For Catholics, shrines are sacred places which are by reason of special devotion frequented by the faithful as pilgrims. For Protestants, the term carries implications of worshipping something other than God. Indeed, when Rebecca Kadaga, Ugandas recently reelected Speaker of Parliament and a Christian, visited a shrine for her ancestors to tell them about her political victory, she was soundly rebuked by the Anglican church. We value our ancestors because we are connected to them, Church of Uganda archbishop Stanley Ntgali said in a statement. But, we must always trust only in God. We no longer need to go through the spirits of the dead because Jesus is our hope and protector. Kadagas visit was confusing and might cause others to stumble, Ntgali said. Kadaga defended her visit as cultural. I am a Christian. I was born and raised in a Christian family, she wrote. I am also very proud to be a Musoga. Her clan believes that the spirits of the dead continue to reside among the living, and she wanted to share my success with my ancestors and clansman, and I do not comprehend how that is deemed to have contradicted my standing as a Christian. However, she also defended her visit as promoting tourism. The site where Kadagas clan was founded was tapped by the president as a tourism site, she said. I also know that there are those to whom the Uganda Martyrs are simply family members, she wrote. I am sure they too visit the shrines in Namugongo not because they are martyrs, but because they are family/ancestors. Should we criticize them for paying tribute to their ancestors? The pressure to make much of religious sites stems from the success of others. The World Tourism Organization estimates that between 300 to 320 million tourists visit religious destinations each year. Religious tourism has been a boon for the Middle East, with destinations like Jerusalem, Mecca, and Medina. Mecca, the worlds most popular religious site, hosted 14 million pilgrims for Ramadan in 2015. Jerusalem was the most popular destination for Israels 3 million visitors in 2015, and more than half of those tourists were Christians. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee were also in the Top 5 Israeli tourist locations. Pope Francis visit to Uganda last year for the 50th anniversary of the canonization of the Namugongo martyrs drew 3.5 million people. Tourism is one of the major drivers of developing economies, and faith-based tourism is one of the products we have seen grow in numbers and impact on the Uganda economy, tourism minister Maria Mutagamba told East African Business Week. Plans for the upgraded Anglican shrine were announced in 2014, the same year Ugandas tourism board unveiled the Martyrs Trail. Visitors can follow a trail of locations where those 45 young men were tortured and killedfrom Ugandas first Anglican church to Mwangas palace to Namungongo, where the Catholic and Anglican shrines stand. Tourism is the real oil for East Africa, wrote one analyst for allAfrica.com. The potential is so huge, and with the proper conservation and management structures it is a resource we can exploit for so many years to come. Religious tourism is an area that has not been taken as serious as wildlife tourism and yet the potential is enormous. In November, CT reported on Pope Francis visit to Uganda and how Protestants were following Catholics on martyr tourism. Do your kids ever complain about going to church every week? my friend asks. She and her husband were raised in small countryside churches in the south of France, and while they were never zealous for the faith, they dutifully attended mass on Christmas and Easter until recent years. My friends accept the seeming inevitability of spiritual lapse. Sunday worship, hardly exhilarating in its own right, stands to compete with birthday parties, competitive sports, and the luxury of sleeping late. Remarkably, our five children dont complain. This isnt to say that our 13-year-old son doesnt occasionally look bored during the sermon. It isnt to deny that our twin eight-year-old boys wiggle distractedly during prayer, asking in loud whispers, When is this going to be over? On any given Sunday, our children may be more or less engaged in the 90-minute liturgy that moves us from a call to worship to a final benediction, but they do come willingly. Everyone is a worshiper, and every habit is a liturgy. This is the central premise of James K. A. Smiths research in the last several years, whose work David Brooks highlighted in his recent New York Times column, Putting Grit in Its Place. Brooks laments that our educational system, with its emphasis on grade-point average, forges gritthe mindless perseverance for extrinsic reward. But grit can only get us so far. Citing Smiths research, Brooks reminds readers that what really motivates human beings is desire. Our lives are oriented by our vision of the good life. Smiths research has been important not only for my work as a writer, but also as a parent. He argues against the Enlightenment ... 1 77 Boko Haram militants forced to surrender, 245 hostages rescued Seventy-seven members of Boko Haram were force to surrender by the Nigerian Army after a joint task force of 122 soldiers cleared an area, rescuing 245 hostages. "Nigerian troops deployed in Operation Lafiya Dole and their neighbouring counterparts under the Multinational Joint Task Force have been very busy clearing the remnants of Boko Haram terrorists into their respective areas of responsibilities," Colonel Sani Usman, acting director of Army Public relations, told allafrica.com. "In the process, they were able to rescue quite a number of abducted persons, arrested suspected Boko Haram terrorists, recovered weapons and equipment." Among the Boko Haram members that surrendered were 17 men, 16 women, 16 male children and 28 female children. Boko Haram has been present in Northern Nigeria for almost seven years, seeking to impose its harsh interpretation of Islam on Africa's most populous nation. Around 20,000 people have died and more than 2.5 million have been displaced as a result of the insurgency. Last month, more than two years after 276 Chibok schoolgirls were abducted by Boko Haram, two girls were recovered among a further 97 abductees, raising hopes for the remaining group. On May 14, French President Francois Hollande told a security summit in Nigeria that "[Boko Haram] has been weakened, it's been pushed back, it's been chased around and has given up the territories it was controlling, and as a result it's being even better targeted and fought. However, this terrorist group remains a threat." Angaelos praises forgiveness message from Christian grandmother forced to parade naked in street The head of the Coptic Orthodox Church has welcomed as "courageous and inspiring" the forgiveness offered by a 70-year-old Christian grandmother who was stripped and forced to parade naked in the street by a mob of angry Muslims. Soad Thabet was stripped and paraded through the streets of El Karm village in Egypt after claims circulated that her son had an affair with a Muslim woman. In testimony released afterwards, she said: "My name is Soad Thabet and I do not want anyone to interview me or give me help. I forgave them, God forgive them." Since the attack local armed forces have been ordered by the Egyptian president to rebuild Christian homes that were torched during the attack. Bishop Angaelos, General Bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, said: "Days after having been stripped and dragged through the streets of her village in the most undignified and inhumane of ways, the gracious and forgiving response of Soad Thabet, an elderly mother and grandmother, is both courageous and inspiring." He said the ethos of the Coptic Christian community in Egypt had always been one of forgiveness. This was was particularly evident in its peaceful and reconciliatory response to the burning of more than 100 churches and other Christian buildings in 2013, and following the brutal execution of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya last year. Bishop Angaelos continued: "Having said that, there is currently a rejection of conventional reconciliation meetings based on the fact that they have historically been used as a cosmetic short-term solution, without addressing root causes or preventing the recurrence of similar incidents. "Despite an ongoing commitment to genuine reconciliation efforts, there is an immediate and pressing need for tangible solutions, as superficial measures that aim to pacify will by no means have a lasting effect, and can never lead to true reconciliation and social cohesion." He said it was "shameful" that such mob crimes can be perpetrated against innocent communities or individuals, of whatever faith or ethnicity, and especially as a result of slanderous and unsubstantiated allegations. It was also shameful that an elderly woman could be so publicly and indecently humiliated. "What is also unacceptable is the utter disinterest, at best, and complicit and criminal negligence, at worst, with which the local security services conducted themselves, and the Menia Governor's initial denial that these crimes actually occurred." President Sisi of Egypt has called for a fair and transparent investigation. "The hope is that measures to safeguard every Egyptian citizen, irrespective of his or her chosen faith or belief, will indeed be effectively implemented," said Bishop Angaelos. "Egypt is at a formative stage of its contemporary history which requires a robust system of law and order that underpins an ethos of equal citizenship and accountability. Any such steps taken at the national level however are severely hampered and undermined by these recurring failures at the local level." China: Crackdown on Christians continues as church members threatened A church in China was stopped from holding services last Sunday, and members forced to register their identification cards with authorities. According to Texas-based Christian charity China Aid, local officials raided Huoshi Fellowship church in Gansu, north-western China, on May 29. The details of each church member were logged, and the church was warned not to continue holding meetings. The Communist party is believed to be becoming progressively more suspicious of the influence of Christianity, which is experiencing significant growth in China. Up to 1,700 churches have been demolished or had their crosses torn down over the past two years. According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, the Chinese government last year "stepped up its persecution of religious groups deemed a threat to the state's supremacy and maintenance of a 'socialist society'". On Tuesday, four civil rights activists were detained by authorities after holding a prayer meeting for those who died in the 1989 military crackdown in Tiananmen Square. June 4 marks the 27th anniversary of the massacre, during which hundreds of pro-democracy protesters were killed. The Chinese government considers the protests a 'counter-revolutionary riot', and commemorating the anniversary is forbidden. A report published by China Aid last month found that persecution against Christians in China has increased sevenfold since 2008. The Chinese government wants to replace "Christ as the head of the church with submission to the Communist Party", the report read, alleging that more Christians are harassed, beaten and tortured than ever before. China's Uyghur crisis: The hidden persecution of Muslims China is widely considered to be one of the worst countries in the world for religious freedom. But while the persecuted Church often dominates the headlines in Western media, much less is known about the persecuted Muslim community in China's far-western corner. Xinjiang is an autonomous region right at the tip of north-western China, bordering eight countries including Tibet, India, Russia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Traditionally, the majority of the population is Uyghur (or Uighur), a Turkic-language speaking group most of whom are Muslim, and Islam plays a significant role in the culture. However, though historically the territory has been fought over for hundreds of years, it came under the rule of the Qing dynasty in the 18th century and later under Mao's Communist Party of China (CPC), which maintains strict controls on religion. Designated a country of particular concern by the US since 1999, the Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) last month condemned the government's "severe religious freedom violations", in particular the "at times violent crackdown on Uighur Muslims" in Xinjiang. "China's leadership has long justified its harsh policies... by asserting the importance of confronting the so-called 'three evils' separatism, terrorism, and religious extremism," the USCIRF said. "In 2015, the Chinese Communist Party tightened its internal ideology, elevating the crusade against the three evils, particularly with respect to religious freedom." In January last year, the government's 2014 'strike-hard' anti-terror campaign was extended, and wide-scale restrictions were imposed against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. Thousands were detained in security sweeps, some with deadly force, and jail sentences were given out for wearing religious attire. Even men's beards or women's face veils were denounced as "extremist", and some local authorities threatened action against Muslim business owners if they chose not to sell alcohol and cigarettes due to their religious beliefs. The previous year, in 2014, some Muslims were imprisoned for taking part in religious gatherings or activities, and were forbidden from fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. Then in April this year, President Xi Jinping urged China to guard itself against foreign infiltration through religion. At a top-level meeting he warned against "ideological infringement by extremists", alluding to a growing concern among officials about Islam in Xinjiang. This week, however, China pledged that there would this year be no interference with Ramadan, which begins next week. A white paper on religious freedom in Xinjiang released on June 1 confirmed: "During the holy Islamic month of Ramadan, whether to close or open halal restaurants is completely determined by the owners themselves without interference. "No citizen suffers discrimination or unfair treatment for believing in, or not believing in, any religion," the document added, insisting that "religious feelings and needs are fully respected". In Xinjiang, "the positive role of religious circles in promoting economic development and social stability is well displayed, the government's capability of administrating religious affairs is constantly strengthened, international exchanges in the religious field are being expanded, and the proliferation and spread of religious extremism is being effectively contained," it said. However, reports surfaced at the end of May that legal and religious officials in the city of Khorgos had already inspected more than 30 ethnic restaurants and had them "guarantee normal business during Ramadan," according to Reuters. Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for international organisation of exiled Ugyhur groups, the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), urged the US to raise the suppression of Uyghurs during talks in Beijing due to start on Monday. He told Reuters that China's "lies could not cover up the truth" about its openly repressive religious policies. Speaking to Christian Today, Dolkun Isa, chairman of the executive committee of the WUC, said he agreed that the white paper was not to be trusted. "If China promises to [uphold freedom of religion] it is very welcome, but we cannot trust it. The Chinese government does not respect its own constitution. If it keeps its promise during Ramadan we will be very happy, but I don't believe this statement is reliable," he said. The issue isn't solely a religious one, however. The CPC's main concern is widely considered to be with maintaining absolute power and religion is just one among many perceived threats. It's why China announced in 2014 plans to nationalise Christian theology, and only allows state-recognised religious institutions to operate. Even they are closely monitored, and state-approved churches have begun to be targeted during crackdowns. "It is erroneous to conclude that the Uighur crisis is solely religious," journalist Usaid Siddiqui wrote for al-Jazeera last July. "The Uighur nationalists' desire for more autonomy has long been at odds with China's centralization policy. If anything, Chinese authorities are using the 'war on terrorism' as a cover to demolish the Uighur people's nationalist aspirations." Increased tensions and violence in Xinjiang has been attributed by the government to Uyghur separatists, who want to be free from Beijing's control. The separatist movement was forced underground in the 1990s, but there has been an increase in violence stemming from followers in recent years. In 2009, ethnic rioting resulted in more than 200 deaths and in 2014, 29 people were killed in a mass stabbing attack at Kunming train station in Yunnan province; an incident that was attributed to Muslim Uyghurs. Though the WUC condemns all forms of violence, including that perpetuated by Ugyhur groups, Isa said the CPC has actually had a role to play in the formation of these extremist factions. Open discrimination has led to widespread anger among Ugyhurs. They are not allowed to travel between cities without police permission, and have to register relatives when they come to visit. They must carry two ID cards at all time "daily life is threatened by the police," Isa said. "Ill feeling has grown". But Isa said that though the government is trying to combat extremism, there's no doubt it is targeting moderate Muslims, too. "The government uses terrorism as an excuse to attack Uyghurs," he said. And the situation shows no sign of getting better. It's actually worsened under President Xi, who Isa said has used the global fear of terrorism to his own advantage. And Isa accused the international community of being too "soft" on repressive Chinese policies. "China is now an economic power, and every country wants Chinese money. So China thinks 'I can do what I want, nobody can condemn me because all the world needs my money'. That sends a very wrong message to the Chinese government," he said. Ahead of the talks on Monday, Isa echoed the call for the US to stand up to China on the issue of religious freedom. "There is a lot of dialogue, but no progress," he said. "Religious freedom is getting worse. Dialogue is very important, but only if it's stronger." Christian parents 'prayed for dying son for two hours before calling ambulance', court hears A Christian couple prayed for two hours over their dying son before calling an ambulance, a court heard on Wednesday. An autopsy determined that Alexandru Radita, 15, from Canada, died from bacterial sepsis from complications due to starvation and untreated diabetes in May 2013. The court heard he weighed just 37 pounds at the time of his death. His parents, Emil and Rodica Radita, had returned from church to find Alexandru not breathing. They are currently on trial and have been charged with first degree murder. "They said they went to church at, I think it was after 1800 hours, and they came home at about 2000 hours and that's when the father said that he wasn't breathing, so they prayed and they didn't call EMS until sometime around 2200 hours," Shauna Mitchell, an investigator with the Medical Examiner's office, told National Post. "The boy was extremely thin," Larry Pugliese, the first police officer on the scene, told the Court of Queen's Bench murder trial. "I thought at the time maybe (he weighed) 20 pounds," he said. "When I looked at the boy my first instinct is he's dead." Mitchell reiterated to the court that Alexandru "basically looked like a skeleton with skin" when she viewed his corpse. "Emil said he had told Alexandru he needed to go to the hospital but he refused, he didn't like to go to the hospital because he had a bad experience when he was three years old," Pugliese said. Pugliese said Emil confirmed that the boy had diabetes and there was insulin in the refrigerator, but he said that Rodica told him Alexandru simply had the flu. Mitchell suggested to the court Alexandru could have stopped breathing before the couple even left the house to go to church. The trial continues next week. Eric Pickles: 'Proper understanding' of religious faith needed to combat bigotry A "proper understanding" of religious faith is the best way to stand up to bigotry in all its forms, according to Communities Secretary Eric Pickles. He praised faith groups as a "tremendous force for good" and said faith could no longer be treated as a minority hobby. Pickles, speaking at a reception to support Coexist House, a new London institution being developed by the Coexist Foundation and Cambridge University's interfaith programme, criticised "violent extremists" and "aggressive secularists". Speaking at the Temple church in London, he said: "We live in an age of confusion and fear about religion. Violence and conflicts are erupting around the world driven by man who claim to have a monopoly on faith and on piety. Many people are concluding religion is a problem, a relic of a past, [that] it would be much better if it didn't exist." He said that starting a peaceful dialogue did not guarantee a peaceful resolution. "Most people in Britain are proud of the freedoms that we enjoy," he said. But religion was seen as an "obstacle to progress" rather than something to be understood. This was a lazy and dangerous attitude because it left the fundamentalists unchallenged. "Faith should no longer be treated as a personal hobby which should be for the few. This will only ensure that fundamentalists control debate enjoy a position in the public spotlight. We need to recognise that faith groups are a tremendous force for good, serving and supporting the downtrodden, the marginalised in society, and bringing our different communities together." He said Coexist House will play a big role in promoting religious education and mutual respect. It will help deliver "religious literacy", increasingly seen as an essential tool to business, political, health and education leader leaders both nationally and internationally. "Recent months of religious violence across the world have made many feel pessimistic about the future, especially the role of faith in Britain," said Pickles. It was now "more important than ever" to demonstrate that faith was compatible with British values such as tolerance and freedom and the rule of law. British society would be the less without strong Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and other voices of faith. The Coexist Foundation last week organised London's first multifaith pilgrimage. Professor David Ford, of Cambridge University, said it would be the first of many and the new Coexist House, due to open in 2020, will provide a focal point for future pilgrimages. "For the first time this country will have a building that is fully shared between different religious traditions and open to all." Sir Bernard Rix, recently retired Lord Justice of Appeal, said no other city in the world besides London was better suited to a project such as Coexist House. "Diversity of faith is an opportunity for friendship and understanding, not conflict." Franklin Graham, Perry Noble weigh in on Harambe's death: Human life has more value Rev. Franklin Graham and Pastor Perry Noble from NewSpring Church, South Carolina have weighed in on the controversy surrounding the killing of Harambe, the silverback gorilla who was shot to death in Cincinnati Zoo to save the life of a three-year-old boy who fell into its enclosure last Saturday. The two expressed sadness at the loss of the animal but agreed that zoo authorities made the right call in killing Harambe and not risking the boy's life. At the same time, both Christian leaders could not understand why animal activists are causing such a ruckus concerning Harambe's death. "Someone commented on the page that 'Shooting an endangered animal is worse than murder.' People are grieving and leaving flowers at a gorilla statue. Excuse me? Human life should be more highly valued, and a decision had to be made to protect a child's life," Graham writes on his Facebook page. Instead of working themselves up over Harambe's death, people should be more upset over the 125,000 abortions performed around the world the day Harambe was killed, Graham says. "Where's the justice for these lives?" he asks. "God created men and women in His image, and He made humans to rule over the animals. I'm thankful that zoo officials made the right decisionto protect human life! I wish the Supreme Court and our politicians would understand the value of human life and realize that one day they will stand and be accountable before the Supreme Judge, Almighty God." Meanwhile, Noble criticised those people, now numbering over 470,000, who have signed an online petition called "Justice For Harambe," which seeks to hold the parents of the three-year-old boy responsible for the death of the gorilla. "We the undersigned want the parents to be held accountable for the lack of supervision and negligence that caused Harambe to lose his life. We the undersigned feel the child's safety is paramount in this situation," the petition states. Noble says people have "lost their freakin' minds" for signing that petition, and even thinks they are hypocrites because they profess to care for the life of Harambe but give little regard to the senseless deaths being carried out all over the world. "I wonder if [these] people have been equally bothered by Christians being beheaded/tortured in the Middle East?" Noble writes on his blog. "I wonder if [these] people were as upset when all of the dirt was exposed on Planned Parenthood? I wonder if [these] people were as upset when Dr. Kermitt Gosnell murdered a child after a botched abortion? I feel bad for the gorilla, but I would argue that human life simply has more value." Germany recognises massacre of Armenians as 'genocide' The massacre of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War One was genocide, the German Parliament said on Thursday. The German Bundestag voted to recognise the 1915 killings as genocide in a landmark move that has already seen Turkey recall its envoy to Germany in protest. Though nearly a dozen EU countries formally recognise the genocide, Turkey has consistently disputed it. It accepts that many Armenians died in partisan fighting, but denies that the figure is as high as 1.5 million, and says that it did not amount to genocide. Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the vote would seriously affect relations with Germany, the BBC reports. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim condemned the resolution as "irrational", and reportedly said a "racist Armenian lobby" was to blame for the decision. Armenians and other Christian groups, including Assyrian and Chaldean Christians, were almost totally wiped out in the Ottoman Empire as a result of the genocide. The Assyrian Confederation of Europe (ACE) applauded Germany's vote, labelling it an "important recognition of a historical fact". "Germany's recognition is special in light of the country's own history. It once again sends a signal that Germany considers it important for countries to acknowledge their troubled past and work to rectify it for the descendants of those who were subjected to violence," a statement from ACE said. "We reiterate that Turkey must recognize the Assyrian, Armenian, and Greek genocides and work towards reconciliation and restitution." ACE said Assyrians "suffered great losses due to the genocide", and now fewer than 25,000 Assyrians live in Turkey. Fewer than 3,000 remain in Tur Abdin, a mountainous region in south-eastern Turkey meaning 'The Mountain of the Servants of God', which is considered the heartland of Syriac Orthodox Christianity and is for many people as important as Jerusalem. "The path forward to a democratic and pluralistic Turkey cannot circumvent recognition of the genocides nor reconciliation between the Turkey of today and the descendants of Assyrians and other nations who suffered the same fate," ACE said. "As an important European country with a long history of relations with Turkey, the Bundestag's recognition will serve as a strong signal to other countries to stand for the historical truth and for Turkey to cease its policy of denial." Humanists at war with government over religious education British humanists have criticised the government's new guidelines for teaching religion in schools as "misleading" and in "error". The British Humanist Association (BHA) is demanding that Education Secretary Nicky Morgan explain why her department is running the risk "of spreading unlawful teaching practice". The latest confrontation comes after a group of humanist parents went to the High Court to challenge the government's decision to drop the teaching of non-religious world views from schools. Although the court ruled in their favour, the Education Department has not changed the syllabus because it says the court decision was made on a technicality. In his letter sent to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan this week, Andrew Copson of the BHA insists that failure to include non-religious world views such as humanism is unlawful, and could be pursued with legal action. Last month, the association circulated guidance produced by legal experts on the ruling, in response to teachers and parents who wanted to know more. The association is now querying the department's response to that guidance which they say "runs the risk of spreading unlawful teaching practice." The High Court ruling in favour of three humanist parents and their children who challenged the relegation of non-religious world views in the new subject content for GCSE Religious Studies states that religious and non-religious world views such as humanism must be afforded equal respect. However, the department has stated both that "the judgment should not be taken as having any broader impact on any religious education curriculum" and that "it is not for the BHA to issue legal guidance to schools." The department also published its own interpretation of the High Court ruling. According to a commentary by human rights professor Satvinder Juss, this guidance is "likely to mislead schools". Copson said, "Last year's High Court judgement was clear that in order for RE to meet the legal need for neutrality, impartiality, and pluralism, non-religious worldviews must be afforded equal respect to religions in the curriculum. "In declaring otherwise, the Government risks encouraging schools and others to act unlawfully, and schools and others responsible for RE who rely on the DfE perspective in this matter are relying on the same perspective that led to the DfE being defeated in court last year.' The Department for Education told Christian Today it stood firmly by its dismissal of the humanists' case. A spokesman said: "We have issued clear guidance for all schools. This guidance remains correct. We are clear that the British Humanist Association document has no official status and is inaccurate." The department added that the Judicial Review of the Religious Studies GCSE was based on "a narrow technical point" and added: "We strongly believe the judgment has no broader impact on any religious education curriculum or the RS GCSE subject content in either faith or non-faith schools." Is Buddhism really peaceful? 3 common misconceptions about Buddhism Last week's news that 40 dead tiger cubs were found frozen in the freezer of a Thai Buddhist Temple which was being investigated for sex trafficking is not exactly congruent with the peace-loving image of Buddhism we often encounter. Buddhism is often perceived to be the least offensive religious option for the curious atheist to explore - a philosophy of religion focused on peace and personal growth. This news story throws a spanner in the works. Is Buddhism the peaceful religion everyone thinks it is? This is not the first manifestation of Buddhist violence, in fact the frozen tigers are just the latest in a long list of violent Buddhists. In Thailand monastries have been used as military outposts and the government has commissioned special military monks. Similarly, in Myanmar there is a strong vein of Burmese Buddhist nationalism that has become increasingly intollerant of religious minorities. However, when you get back to the actual teachings in Buddhism, it is pretty clear that at its heart is not violent. Buddha condemned killing or harming living things often. That buddhism is a peaceful religion is true, but there are other areas where understanding is less founded on truth. Behind the veneer of yoga and meditation cherry-picked by Western culture is a Buddhism focused around concepts more challenging than you might expect. Here are three examples of such misconceptions: 1. Enlightenment is blissful Enlightenment is not about bliss, but about detachment. The entire religion is based around the letting go of the self - the anatman. It teaches that a person no more than the five aggregates - or parts - put into a human body: Just like a car is made up of physical parts, a human is too. One of the very first concepts that Buddhists learn is that "Life is Dukkha", which essentially means Life is Nothing. No bliss, no joy, just nothing. They believe that we are not a being with a soul, but just a compilation of aggregate parts that make a person - that human life has no inherent value. The aim of the Buddhist game is to realise that the self is not important and conclude that we are nothing. This is a pretty stark constrast to Jesus' message, who teaches that all humans are made in the image of His Father and are of infinite value - enough for him to die for us, in fact. Our eternity is not in nothing-ness, but in eternal relationship with God in heaven. 2. Buddhism is the best religion for women That Buddhism is a peace-loving religion might suggest there is a natural leap to say it is a woman-loving one. This is not the case. Buddha is recorded as questioning whether women could be ordained - fearing that it would make his message less successful - and now that it is allowed, strict hierarchies are at play. Even the most senior nuns are considered lesser than monks who have been ordained for one day. There are even schools of thought within Buddhism that question whether women are capable of being englightened. One school of thought says that for a woman to reach Nirvana they would have to be reborn as a man. Now, obviously historically Christianity doesn't have a clean slate when it comes to treatment of women either. However, when you look at Jesus himself, his treatment of women is pretty radical - he keeps female company, listens to their testimonies and responds to their prayers. Christianity is inherently pro-women. 3. It's a philosophy of life, not a religion A lot of atheists consider Buddhism to be more of a philosophy than a religion - it gets off lightly with religious critics compared to Christianity, for example. While Buddhism may not resemble Christianity as a religion, with a personable God who is both our creator and personal saviour, it remains a religion. The great majority of Buddhist practice has been focused on a good rebirth in the next lifetime and - although Buddhism doesn't speak of God in a Judeo-Christian sense - it does have an elaborate plethora of celestial beings who exist in various heavens and respond to the prayers of the devout. Where Buddhism ultimately seeks detachment, Christianity ultimately seeks relationship - relationship with God and then with others. Islam course taught in prisons could radicalise prisoners The Government is to investigate reports that a manual used in prisons to teach inmates about Islam risks turning people into jihadis. The Ministry of Justice told Christian Today it is to look into claims that The Tarbiyah Programme "Islam to Iman" could encourage violence. Sheikh Musa Admani of London's City University told the BBC the programme, in use since 2011, should be withdrawn. In a section on jihad the programme says taking up arms to fight evil is "one of the noblest acts". In this section, the imam is asked to discuss with prisoners the difference between "internal jihad", or the struggle for self improvement, and "external jihad", the struggle against enemies of Allah. The manual says: "There may necessitate a time to pick up arms and physical fight such evil. It is one of the noblest acts." This is followed by a vese the Koran. Sheikh Admani said: "This document sets out the steps and then addresses various forms of jihad and then goes on to emphasise a particular type ie the killing and the fighting. It incites people to take up arms. It prepares people for violence. It could turn people when they come out of prison, supposedly rehabilitated, back into violence." The Ministry of Justice last year appointed Ian Acheson to carry out an investigation into extremism and radicalisation in prisons. A spokesperson said: "Islamist extremism is one of the biggest threats facing this country. That is why the Justice Secretary commissioned the first ever review of Islamist extremism in prisons. As we have made clear, the report has been received and a summary document will be published in due course." The full report cannot be published for security reasons. The ministry pledged to investigate the issues raised by the BBC. Man charged over theft of vicar's late wife's rings A man has been charged with burglary after a dramatic incident in the home of a London vcar. Rev Simon Harvey of St Mary's, Islington, managed to take a photo of a man who was disturbed while in his house. He later realised that jewellery belonging to his late wife who died only three months ago had gone missing. James Casey, 39, of no fixed abode, appeared at Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court and has been remanded in custody. He will next appear at Blackfriars Crown Court on June 27. Harvey had been married to Jennifer for 29 years. Last week he described how the incident had left him deeply upset, but that even so, he was praying for the perpetrator and for justice to be done. The clergyman tweeted his thanks to police in Islington, saying, "Many thanks to @metpoliceuk @MPSIslington and an amazing public response, leading to a suspect being charged with last week's burglary." The response to the incident has been large with thousands of retweets and local and national media reporting on the story of the quick-thinking vicar who took a photo of the man. Harvey's message of forgiveness and justice has also struck a chord. 'Penny Dreadful' season 3 spoilers: Vanessa has a new ally to find Dracula After showing what Ethan Talbot (Josh Hartnett) can do when he embraces his dark side, the focus will turn to Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) in the next episode of "Penny Dreadful" season 3. In episode 5, titled "This World Is Our Hell," Ethan allowed Hecate (Sarah Greene) to bring out his dark side instead of helping him face his own demons. But while spending a lot of time together, the pair discovered that they have a lot of things in common, and they eventually ended up getting intimate. But not everyone was willing to embrace Ethan's dark side. Toward the end of the episode, Ethan's father, Jared Talbot (Brian Cox), asked Sir Malcolm (Timothy Dalton) to confront him by showing him the room where his family was killed by the Native Americans. The episode ended with a big clash between Ethan and his father, who forced him to repent of his sins as he pointed a gun at him. But could Jared really kill Ethan? Meanwhile, the trailer for the upcoming episode, titled "No Beast So Fierce," shows that Vanessa encountered a scholar named Catriona Hartdegen (Perdita Weeks), who educated her about the first vampire, now known as the Count Dracula (Christian Camargo). Catriona told her that the first vampire is also called a "seducer" who used a lot of disguises over the years. After earning her trust, Vanessa revealed to her new friend that she is looking for Dracula in London. This surprised Catriona, but she was eventually persuaded by Vanessa to join her in tracking down the first vampire. Will the ladies finally find out Dracula's hiding place? The official synopsis for the episode states that "Vanessa turns to an old friend for help, who introduces her to a new ally." Episode 6 of "Penny Dreadful" season 3 airs on Sunday, June 5, on Showtime. Pope gets 'annoyed' by people who preach 'Go and sin no more' on adultery The Pope has confessed that he gets "annoyed" when people quote what Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery: "Go and sin no more." Instead, he said, priests must show mercy. They must allow themselves to be "moved" by the weaknesses, sins and sufferings of their parishioners. In a meditation preached at St Paul's Outside the Walls in Rome for the Jubilee of Priests, Pope Francis spoke about Jesus' encounter with the woman caught in adultery recorded in John 8. Referring also to the plight of refugees attempting to cross oceans to safer lands, he urged priests to embrace mercy. "We can ask for the grace to taste with the crucified Jesus the bitter gall of all those who share in his cross, and smell the stench of misery in field hospitals, in trains and in boats crammed with people." He admitted the Church has always had its own sins and failings. "But when it comes to serving the poor by the works of mercy, as a Church we have always followed the promptings of the spirit." He also said he had always been struck by the passage of Jesus' encounter with the adulterous woman, and his refusal to condemn her. Pope Francis said: "In response to the question they asked to test him 'should she be stoned or not?' he did not rule, he did not apply the law. He played dumb, and then turned to something else. He thus initiated a process in the heart of the woman who needed to hear those words: 'Neither do I condemn you.' He stretched out his hand and helped her to her feet, letting her see a gentle gaze that changed her heart." The Pope then continued: "Sometimes I feel a little saddened and annoyed when people go straight to the last words Jesus speaks to her: 'Go and sin no more.' "They use these words to 'defend' Jesus from bypassing the law. I believe that Christ's words are of a piece with his actions. He bends down to write on the ground as a prelude to what he is about to say to those who want to stone the woman, and he does so again before talking to her." Jesus was in fact opening a space of "non-condemnation", the Pope said. His command, "Go and sin no more", had to do with the future, to help her to make a new start and to "walk in love", he added. "Such is the sensitivity of mercy: it looks with compassion on the past and offers encouragement for the future." He said the "no" has to be said to the deeply-rooted sin present in everyone. "In that woman, it was a social sin; people approached her either to sleep with her or to throw stones at her. That is why the Lord does not only clear the path before her, but sets her on her way, so that she can stop being the 'object' of other people's gaze and instead take control of her life. "Those words, 'sin no more' refer not only to morality, but, I believe, to a kind of sin that keeps her from living her life." Richard Huckle: How can the Church better protect against abuse? The disturbing account of Richard Huckle and his ability to apparently 'hide in plain sight' and extensively abuse children within the Christian community over a period of years has caused shockwaves both within and outside the Church since the news broke. This may appear to be an extreme case, but it highlights the need to consider a range of issues regarding how the Church might protect itself and those it serves from such abuse. Firstly, we must accept that the Church can be used as a 'soft target' by some people who deliberately intend to harm others. Any organisation considered to have weak safeguarding arrangements puts itself at greater risk from such offenders. That said, solving this problem is not always as easy as it sounds and we must also accept that we can never guarantee being able to prevent such people's actions. There are, however, measures that we can put in place in order to prevent as far as possible such people gaining contact with children and adults at risk of harm through work and volunteering. In his June 2 article on the Huckle case, Martin Saunders asks a very pertinent question: "How did no-one in his British church hold or raise suspicions about his behaviour?" One of the key things to recognise is that some potentially harmful behaviours can be spotted, but it requires a willingness first to accept that 'abuse could happen here'. In 2009, CCPAS conducted research that suggested 75 per cent of churches did not operate adequate safer recruitment arrangements. This was confirmed in further research undertaken in 2014, which found a real lack of understanding and a fundamental disconnect between that understanding and the implementation of best practice on the ground it is very complex territory. Furthermore, CCPAS has just completed its third regional 'Safeguarding and Safer Recruitment' conference. We have now educated more than 1,000 delegates from churches around the country and we continue to support churches in this aspect of safer practice. But this is not just about the DBS checking system which, although very important, forms only one part of a much bigger picture. We must be realistic about the limitations of the systems and processes that are available to us. The DBS system was never designed to be a panacea for ridding organisations of those who pose a risk of harm to others and above all it should never be used as a mechanism on its own. Recognising and understanding the motivation, attitudes and behavioural signs exhibited by those who may pose a risk of harm are crucial in maintaining safer recruitment and workforce management efforts. We certainly see an appetite to understand these issues. Saunders makes reference to Huckle as a "vile offender", and I am reminded here of the Fanny Crosby hymn that refers to the "vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus a pardon receives". This is one of the greatest challenges that the Church faces. Research evidence tells us that a supportive environment, such as a church, can act as a 'protective factor' against re-offending in such cases. However, this must be done properly and with well-trained and well-supported people. Moreover, we are called to support such people through a biblical mandate to love and care for our neighbour. We must not lose sight of the overarching need to do this safely, so we never create even greater risks to children, for example. In exercising grace, forgiveness and mercy we must never, therefore, ignore the ongoing risk that such people present to vulnerable groups. CCPAS often hears a range of arguments from those that would believe that, once repentance has taken place, an individual can somehow walk, uninhibited and unmonitored, off into the sunset. At the other end of the spectrum, we also encounter those that would shut the door on a sexual offender for ever and treat them like a pariah. But neither of these approaches is particularly helpful and in many ways can be dangerous. I wonder where the repentance is in this particular case and what evidence there is to show for it? Richard Huckle will need support and one day that may be from a church in a community when he is eventually released. So what of the opportunity that Huckle exploited to abuse children overseas? As churches become more and more connected with others around the world and become increasingly engaged in worldwide mission activities, the ability to reduce risk to children is missed. In 2013, CEOP (part of the National Crime Agency) published data on what is known about 'Trans National Child Sexual Offenders'. They discovered that there were hot spots of activity for such offenders, who were known to travel to countries where the risk to children was higher (including places where extreme poverty exists and where humanitarian disasters had struck). This might be disguised as 'religious work' or what we would probably describe as 'mission'. This represents a real challenge for the Church. Gone are the days when we should accept the goodwill offer of a social worker, teacher, paediatrician or other professional to join such mission trips, just because they hold a position that may be of use. We must never forget to ask appropriate questions and apply appropriate processes to their recruitment. There is much to learn from Huckle's case. It is very serious, but not the first of its kind and surely won't be the last. CCPAS exists to support and advise churches and other Christian organisations with such issues and we can be contacted by anyone with such concerns using our helpline on 0845 120 4550. Justin Humphreys is executive director (safeguarding) at CCPAS. Somoa Archbishop distances self from church call to ban Muslims The Catholic Archbishop of Samoa has made it clear he does not support a recent call by church leaders to ban Islam from the islands. Even though the Catholic Church is represented on the Samoa Council of Churches, whose leader made the call two weeks ago, Archbishop Alapati Lui Mataeliga said he had not been consulted on the ban and did not agree. He indicated he would prefer dialogue as a way forward and said it was wrong to identify Islam with terrorism. "The Catholic Church is at the forefront of dialogue especially with non-Christian religions and I take that view too. I think we should open our hearts and our minds to Islam and not really to rush into condemning Islam just because of terrorists," he told Radio NZ. Regarding calls to strengthen the Christian element of the constitution of Samoa, Archbishop Mataeliga said the constitution already recognises Samoa as Christian. He said there should be clear separation of church and state. He was speaking after Ma'auga Motu, secretary general of the Samoa Council of Churches, urged the government to ban Islam. He said he did not object in the least if people compared him to Donald Trump who last year suggested a ban on Muslims entering the United States. Of the Samoan islands' population of about 200,000, just 0.03 per cent are currently Muslim. The rest are nearly all Christian. The prime minister of Samoa, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, recently called for review of religious freedom. He wants Samoa's constitutional law changed to be more explicitly Christian. Motu said he thought this would not be enough. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Actress and activist Rose McGowan recently gave 2oth Century Fox a piece of her mind, and we say with good reason. A billboard promoting the new "X-Men" movie featured none other than America's sweetheart, Jennifer Lawrence, in a chokehold by male villain, Apocalypse. Let's take a moment to remember we live in the 21st century. A time when women are finally able to break barriers and stereotypes, and when violence against women (and men) is 100 percent not okay. MAKING A DIFFERENCE: These are the most admired people in the world So then comes McGowan's point. Who decided it was perfectly fine to use this image as the promotion? There are literally a whole movie's worth of images to pick from. The comments expressing McGowan's disbelief and disgust were originally posted to her Facebook page, but it appears they have since been taken down. However, she did post a tweet that quoted her saying; "There is a major problem when the men and women at 20th Century Fox think casual violence against women is the way to market a film. There is no context in the ad, just a woman getting strangled. The fact that no one flagged this is offensive and frankly, stupid. The geniuses behind this, and I use that term lightly, need to to take a long hard look at the mirror and see how they are contributing to society. Imagine if it were a black man being strangled by a white man, or a gay male being strangled by a hetero? The outcry would be enormous. So let's right this wrong. 20th Century Fox, since you can't manage to put any women directors on your slate for the next two years, how about you at least replace your ad?" We get it Rose, it's time for companies to get with the times. McGowan has been busy being an advocate for more than just preventing violence against women. She recently attended a gala for the East Los Angeles Women's Center. ELAWC is an organization that fights for women who have been abused, raped, or have HIV with a focus on the Latina community. As a victim herself, McGowan aims to join the fight to help victims everywhere. Way to stand up for women, Rose. Take a look through the gallery above to see other celebrities and the causes they stand for. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate One of two suspects is still on the run, months after the slaying late last year of a 71-year-old man who was working as a security guard in southwest Houston. Jonathan Vasquez, 21, is charged with capital murder in the shooting death of 71-year-old Saul Cruz about 4:10 a.m. Dec. 22 at 4735 Anderson, according to the Houston Police Department. The other person charged in the case, Daniel Moreno, 22, has been arrested. Cruz, police said, was sitting in his car outside a gas station convenience store while he was on duty when Vazquez and Moreno, carrying an AK-47 rifle and a pistol, ambushed him. They walked toward him from behind his car and opened fire on him. The pair had no prior confrontation with Cruz. Moreno and Vasquez, police said, snatched Cruz's handgun and ran. Cruz died at the scene. Police said a Crime Stoppers tip led investigators to identify Vasquez and Moreno as suspects in the case. Moreno was arrested Dec. 28, but Vasquez has so far eluded capture. Investigators said he may have gone to Mexico. Vazquez is described as being 6 feet, 2 inches tall and weighing 180 pounds. He has black hair and brown eyes. He has a possible gang tattoo of the number 3 on the left side of his face. Anyone with information about Vasquez's whereabouts is urged to contact the HPD Homicide Unit at 713-308-3600 or Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS. Crime Stoppers tips can also be submitted online at www.crime-stoppers.org. Tips can also be sent by text message. Text TIP610 and tips to CRIMES. Crime Stoppers will pay up to $5,000 for information that leads to the arrest of the suspect or charges being filed against him. All tipsters remain anonymous. The Miss USA and the Miss Universe pageants have become what could be the most anticipated beauty events of the year. The competition started after a Miss America winner refused to pose in swimwear by the sponsor Catalina. SAN ANTONIO The Natural Bridge Caverns are currently hosting a special tour of the caves filled with water due to the heavy rains and raised water levels, allowing visitors a peek at the aquifer that may be gone after two weeks. The Glen Rose Aquifer is the areas underground water reservoir that lies beneath the caverns. Normally, the water table is not high enough to be seen by visitors, but thats not the case right now. Heavy rains have sent large amounts of groundwater seeping into the aquifer, causing the water to rise slowly into the caverns lower chambers, said caverns vice president Travis Wuest. Toward the end of April, residents of Creekside Park were shocked to find out that the YMCA in their village would cease to operate as a fitness center by mid May. In the month since, hundreds of people expressed their disappointment that the facility would be closing, with more than 600 signing an online petition to keep it open. "The community has taken great ownership in that Y," said Cindy Morrow, a member of the YMCA who started the petition. She explained that many Creekside residents had loved that location for its convenience and for the amenities it offered. Some, she said, even used the YMCA location as one of the deciding factors in their decision to move to Creekside. But, as beloved as the location was for these residents, it didn't generate enough activity to make it financially sustainable, said Heather Saucier, a spokeswoman for the YMCA of Greater Houston. Few used fitness center Compared to the other two YMCA locations in The Woodlands, the Creekside location had 87 percent fewer members using the facility per month. The Branch Crossing and Shadowbend locations each were used an average of more than 22,200 times per month, while Creekside was only used an average of 2,871 times per month, according to information from the YMCA. The facility in Creekside opened in 2010 to operate as a day camp. The fitness equipment and classes were not added until 2012, Saucier said. In the four years since then, the fitness facility has not been used enough to justify the expense, she said. Furthermore, Saucier added that the other two YMCA locations in The Woodlands are not far from the Creekside location - each is about 5 miles away - and offer more fitness equipment and classes. Still, the residents of Creekside aren't ready to give up on the Creekside YMCA facility. Several residents, led by Nancy Becker, the village association's president, have asked The Woodlands Township board to acquire the facility and run it through the township's parks and recreation department. "The property sits prominently in the village of Creekside Park," Becker said. "For the future integrity of our village, we feel it is important to retain control of this piece of property." Residents 'blindsided' Becker said that the news of the facility's closure "blindsided" the community members who go there. As a member herself since 1994, she didn't even receive the notice that the YMCA sent out to members about the pending closure. She added that many residents of Creekside would benefit from the kind of programs that the parks and recreation department offers in other locations in the township and that the village association is concerned that, should Harris County gain control of the property, the community might lose access to the land. "We would like to implore you to take this within our control," Becker said to the board of directors at its May 25 meeting. Saucier with the YMCA said that there are no definitive plans for the Creekside facility currently. Meanwhile, the YMCA of Greater Houston is planning to build a new facility in southeast Montgomery County, near the newly opened segment of the Grand Parkway. The state-of-the-art facility is estimated to cost $13 million to build and construction could start as early as 2018. The Holcomb Family YMCA, named after Jim Holcomb, who donated the 10 acres the new center will be built on, as well as $500,000 toward the construction, will be located on a wooded site in the Falls at Imperial Oaks subdivision, overlooking a 100-acre lake. The Holcomb Family YMCA will offer after school care, day camps and personal wellness programs, and will be walking distance from one of the planned elementary schools. The plans for the new facility, however, had no bearing on the decision to close the one in Creekside, Saucier said. "Freeway expansion and population growth in the area near Riley Fuzzel and the Grand Parkway show southeast Montgomery County as an area for substantial growth and development and is outside of the service area of The Woodlands," she said. "The membership base at Creekside has not grown to sustain the costs affiliated with a fitness component. While it was a difficult decision, the prudent course of action was to discontinue fitness services at Creekside." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate In the 6 years that Lori Howard has lived in her home on Glen Loch Drive in the Timber Lakes-Timber Ridge subdivision just south of The Woodlands, it hadn't flooded once - until the Tax Day flood in April pooled about two inches of water into it. The flood waters crept into Howard's closets, spoiling the pillows and blankets that her grandmother had left her, and leaving behind a thick, sticky film that Howard and her husband, Eugene, spent three days on their hands and knees, breathing in bleach fumes, to clean up. Because their house is on slightly elevated ground, it wasn't hit nearly as badly as some of their neighbors' homes. When torrential downpours again slammed the flood-prone community Memorial Day weekend, the flooding stopped short of seeping into Howard's home, but just two streets down, one neighbor's house was flooded up to the roof, she said. Several houses along the streets in the subdivision, now lined with debris from the second flood, have "For Sale" signs in the front lawns. And as the threat of more rain and the start of hurricane season looms, Howard said the anxiety is getting worse. More Information Flood recovery information The Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster recovery center in The Woodlands, where victims of the April flood can go to apply for assistance, is located at The Woodlands United Methodist Church, 2200 Lake Woodlands Drive, and will be open through June 10. People still working to clean up flood damage can call the Free FLood Home Cleanup Hotline at 1-800-451-1954 through July 1. For assistance with other personal needs, such as food, clothing, shelter or insurance, call the United Way helpline at 211. See More Collapse "There's a panic attack that happens the closer (the water) gets to the house," Howard said. Back-to-back disasters The torrential downpours that brought up to 20 inches of rain in parts of the county last week caused more damage than the Tax Day flood, which flooded about 600 homes countywide in April, according to county Judge Craig Doyal. Gov. Greg Abbott issued disaster declarations June 1 for 31 Texas counties, including Montgomery, following the Memorial Day weekend flooding, which damaged 880 homes and businesses in the county. First responders performed more than 400 high water rescues and about 150 roads were impassable over that weekend. The area got only a short respite from the rain as a third storm rolled in last Wednesday, again soaking the ground and flooding roads. Periodic rains hovered over the county into the weekend, keeping officials and residents on guard for further flooding and road closures. The storms last week temporarily closed down a section of Sawdust Road between S. Millbend Drive and Grogan's Point Road due to damage to the bridge and guard rail. And in Creekside Park, the rain damaged a water supply facility in the Timarron subdivision, prompting a ban on outdoor water usage and the closure of the township's pools in that village last weekend. Road to recovery The latest wave of storms came just as victims of the flood in April were recovering and getting assistance. President Barack Obama joined Abbott and Doyal in declaring the April 18 flood event a disaster on May 9, making the flood victims eligible for Federal Emergency Management Agency aide. FEMA opened two Disaster Recovery Centers in Montgomery County last week - including one in The Woodlands - to help victims register flood damage and apply for aid with house repairs, temporary housing, medications and transportation. In order for victims of the latest floods to qualify for federal assistance, the federal government will have to declare another disaster. At Panther Creek Inspiration Ranch on Glen Loch Drive, a nonprofit dedicated to therapeutic horseback riding for people with special needs, the May floods hit just as they were planning to start up lessons again for the first time since the April floods. In April, up to 10 feet of water washed through the ranch causing more than $100,000 in damages, although the horses were safely evacuated. After weeks of volunteer hours cleaning up downed tree limbs and fences and getting the facilities back in order, the second floods came through, again forcing the evacuation of the horses. What was different this time, however, was that the staff and volunteers had the foresight to rebuild with future floods in mind. The tack and feed rooms were rebuilt to be sturdier and supplies were stored above the flash flood level. Now, whenever heavy rains are in the forecast, the staff is prepared for the worst, said MG Tindall, the ranch's president. "Anytime we're in for a lot of rain, we stage the trailers for an exit," Tindall said. "We're ready to go that's the prep we've learned." While the continuous rain has pushed back resuming lessons, Tindall said she hopes to get the ranch back up and running by Tuesday. "We will rise above this challenge," Tindall wrote on the ranch's website. But not all those who live in the hard-hit areas are as hopeful. Howard, whose Timber Lakes Timber Ridge house is down the road from Inspiration Ranch, said she believes many of her neighbors are planning to abandon the neighborhood entirely. But, as a homeowner, Howard said she has little choice but to hunker down and hope her house is spared. As a real estate agent, she understands that selling any home in danger of flooding is nearly impossible. "If you own here, you just can't (sell)," she said. "Who's going to buy here?" Howard said she has already had to contest her home's tax appraisal this year because it didn't take into account the drop in value this year's flooding has brought. The Montgomery County Commissioners Court voted in May to move forward with applying for a FEMA grant that would help the county buy out a number of the severely damaged homes in the areas that have been repeatedly hit by flooding. Before the flooding, the house on Glen Loch Drive was the Howards' dream home. The garage, which is big enough to fit three cars and a full bathroom, was perfect to serve as Eugene's "Man Cave" and a home for his prized Corvette. The price and proximity to Woodlands amenities, as well as the relative seclusion, fit well for her. Still, after the stress brought on from the flooding, Howard is already using her real estate savvy to start looking for a new place to live. One that is not in a flood zone. "We will eventually flood," Howard said. "(My husband) is going to have to give up the idea of the 'Man Cave.' We'll find another unique property." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Heavy rain fell in Houston early Saturday, and more is in the forecast this weekend. Meanwhile, officials kept a watchful eye on rain-swollen creeks and residents were evacuated from flood-prone areas. A flash flood watch is in effect for the Houston-Galveston region through Saturday evening. Gov. Greg Abbott took an aerial tour of flooded areas Friday and received a briefing on the state's response with officials from Brazoria and Fort Bend counties. He urged residents to heed evacuation orders and not try to drive though high water. Hang on Houston The culprit behind this week's rain is a slow-moving. upper-level low pressure system that's near Waco, flinging off bands of rain toward Southeast Texas. Some of the storms could produce heavy rain and exacerbate both street and river flooding. On Saturday, rain chances for the Houston area are at 90 percent. "... It might also be shipping off to the area southwest of Houston, like Edna east to Matagorda Bay," Lichter said. Chances of rain diminish on Sunday to 80 percent as drier air begins to move into the region. And while river flooding will remain a problem for days ahead, the weather finally shows signs of cooperating. Forecasters say Monday will mark the beginning of a typical Houston summer pattern warm temperatures with isolated thunderstorms riding coastal breezes. Sunny skies are forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday and rain chances look to be minimal through Friday. By the last two weeks of June, the worst of spring floods are typically over in Houston. And then hurricane season will be in full swing. Abbott tours flooded areas After an aerial tour of flooded areas Friday, Abbott pledged the state's full support for those in need. "Texas is here to help," he said at a news conference in Angleton. The governor had already issued a disaster declaration covering 31 counties, a step toward getting federal assistance. He cautioned residents of Brazoria and Fort Bend counties to heed the warnings of authorities. "The Brazos River is flooded all the way up to north Texas," Abbott said, clad in a windbreaker and surrounded by local and state officials. "It is going to take a while for the Brazos River to drain out. Our urgent request for the citizens of Brazoria County, Fort Bend County and surrounding areas is this: The most important thing you have is your life. Do everything you can to protect your life and the lives of others." Abbott said he was particularly concerned about recent incidents in which motorists have tried to drive through high water, in some cases by going around barricades, with tragic consequences. "If you see barricades, they are there for a reason," he said. Residents should heed evacuation orders, he said, because they mean "your life is in danger." Abbott expressed sympathy for the nine soldiers killed after a truck carrying them overturned in a fast-flowing flooded creek during a training exercise at Fort Hood, north of Austin. "It's so demonstrative of the need for everyone to understand the power of rising water and the danger it can pose to life," the governor said. Brazoria County Residents were evacuated, and animals were rescued, in Brazoria County on Friday as the coastal county prepared for floodwaters making their way down the Brazos River. The Brazos was expected to crest near Rosharon at 1 a.m. Saturday at 52.8 feet. The crest would be the highest since it rose to 52 feet in 1962. The record crest was 56.4 feet in 1913. Floodwater pushed a pickup off Texas 1462, leading to a dramatic rescue of the couple inside. The driver of the pickup drove it into floodwater washing across the highway about 10 a.m. near the Sun Creek subdivision, Trooper Jesse Matovina said. The force of the water rushing across the road pushed the pickup off it and swamped the vehicle, Matovina said. An airboat operating in the area rescued a man, woman and a dog, the trooper said. "Total terror, total terror," Alica Matura said after she was rescued Friday. "Water was rushing in and I was freaking out, I was shaking," Tony Conte, who was in the truck with her, told Houston television station KTRK. "It's scary and it happens fast." Near Rosharon, neighbors worried about the fate of at least 20 horses that were at risk of drowning when cowboys were unable to get permission to enter the property. But the horses were driven to high ground where there were about 20 rolls of hay that should keep them fed until the floodwaters subside, said Amanda Kaylor, a Brazoria County livestock deputy. "They should be all right," Kaylor said. The city of Holiday Lakes was put under a mandatory evacuation order Thursday. The city of about 1,200 is threatened by the rising waters of Oyster Creek. "It's going to continue rising, and I think we are going to have houses under water," said Matthew Reed, city utilities supervisor. Brazoria County had issued a mandatory evacuation order for an area west of Oyster Creek and east of the Brazos River on FM 1462 that affected between 300 and 400 families. The county on Friday expanded that evacuation zone. It now covers an area bounded roughly by the Brazos River on the west, County Road 610 on the south, a curving line that parallels Highway 288 on the east and County Road 42 on the north. Reed said earlier Friday that no houses in Holiday Lakes had been flooded but city officials wanted to evacuate before flooding cut County Road 30 and stranded the community. "We wanted to make sure we didn't have anybody trapped," Reed said. Reed said he would remain in the city to keep the water system functioning and to shut it down if floodwater rose high enough to threaten its operation. He has a small boat with an outboard motor to travel between his house and the water plant if necessary. "This flood is kind of unprecedented in the way it's happening," Reed said. "Nobody knows what's going to happen." Most of the other areas affected by flooding as of Thursday were in low lying unincorporated areas near the Brazos River. Houses in the Old Colony de Brazos community were surrounded by water Thursday and most of the residents had evacuated. The county emergency shelter in Angleton had 51 people registered as of early Thursday afternoon. A number of families near the river had stockpiled supplies and intended to wait out flooding that could cut roads and isolate them for as long as two weeks. State prison officials also evacuated about 1,700 prisoners from a correctional facility in Brazoria County. Some 2,600 inmates at two nearby prisons in Brazoria County were moved out Sunday. Harris County In the suburbs northeast of downtown Houston, road closures made it difficult for residents to get around as they also assessed the damage from days of rain and flooding. The west fork of the San Jacinto River near Humble crested at 55 feet late Thursday but was expected to remain at flood stage through Sunday. Cypress Creek, Little Cypress Creek, Spring Creek and Willow Creek were high but within their banks. Samuel Eby contemplated the floodwaters that rushed over the road to Rio Villa subdivision, watching a pickup drive through. "I'm just watching this dude to see," Eby, 36 said. On Friday, Eby was trying to get some of his four-wheelers and other belongings out of the subdivision, eyeing the waters to see if he could get through with his Dodge pickup. Last weekend, he said, the road was entirely washed out, a power line downed and sand and silt everywhere. Now, the damage has lessened. Justin Hutchinson, 37, said the impact in the subdivision was still apparent, with flooded cars everywhere, boats knocked off trailers. He had been living there for two years, and on Memorial Day weekend , the floodwaters were the worst he had seen. "We haven't had a chance to clean it up," Hutchinson said. Hutchinson drove across the road in a Ford Excursion, ready to begin some damage assessment. Everything in the first floor of his home, he said, was gone. Jon Manning hadn't had a change of clothes since last Friday, when heavy rains caused the San Jacinto to swell and flood his Forest Cove town home. On Friday, manning trudged through the flood waters, a walking stick in one hand to check for snakes and a black plastic bag slung over his shoulder: suits for his job as a real estate broker. "They say it's gonna rain tonight," he said warily. Manning bought the place last year and moved in in December. He bought the town home as an investment and as a place for his 23-year-old daughter, where he could fish and relax. He wasn't phased by the floods. To him its an act of nature. "It is what it is," he said. For Sharai Poteet, the prospect of more rain means it's time to move her chickens back up to the second floor of her Kingwood area home. The whole neighborhood had been flooded for a week and Poteet said the water was rising. On Friday afternoon, the 46-year-old pulled her Jeep up to a Red Cross distribution center in Kingwood at Foster Elementary School. "Can I tell my neighbors about this?" she asked. "They're all flooded." Volunteers loaded a rake, bottles of water, flashlights and other gear into the back of the Wrangler. For the most part, Poteet and her family were well-prepared. They moved their cars out, and an iron fence kept many belongings, aside from a chainsaw and some other garden equipment, from floating away. But after the rain stopped and the water began to go down, Poteet lost several chickens as water skiiers' waves crashed over the back of her yard. She wasn't going to let that happen again. The Red Cross was distributing cleanup supplies to families affected by the flooding on Friday until 6:30 p.m., and again from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. The agency said some 6,000 homes may have been affected by the latest round of floods. For information, call 800-REDCROSS or visit www.redcross.org/tx/houston. Fort Bend County The bleat of a goat was one unexpected sound in a flooded Fort Bend County neighborhood where not a whole lot else made sense right now and might not for weeks. Floodwaters had engulfed a corner of Richmond footsteps from a Brazos River bend called "the bottoms" where numerous trailer homes and low-income residents populate the lowest-lying areas. Surrounded playground equipment in the community park was more reminiscent of the Schlitterbahn waterpark than jungle gyms in sandboxes. Around noon Friday, Wyatt Sebesta and other volunteers were headed out in a pickup truck dragging a motorboat to rescue more horses and cows trapped in floodwaters. After all, the water in their community was going down, but they couldn't get started on their own recovery quite yet. The sense that receding floodwaters were just the beginning of a long recovery was echoed Friday by county officials. Commissioners extended County Judge Bob Hebert's emergency disaster order for another two weeks to provide time for the water go down and for residents to assess damages. Residents, business owners and government officials likely will need at least that long to determine their status and file for aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. About 20 percent of the county's geography is underwater, said Jeff Braun, Fort Bend County's emergency management coordinator. "We've had no more road closures. The water has crested in Richmond and is moving down toward Missouri City, Brazos Bend State Park and Rosharon," he said Friday. There had been more than 700 water rescues over the last week. A few families that left pets behind at home authorized emergency animal personnel to enter their residences to evacuate cats and dogs, Braun said. Historic flooding on the Brazos River is believed to have peaked on Thursday, but locations downstream particularly in southern areas of the county such as Missouri City and Sienna Plantation may see increased street flooding and a rise in water levels as the runoff flows downstream, Braun said. "So far, we're dodging some of the rain. If that keeps happening, that's the best we can hope for," he said. The road to Sebesta's home off a street aptly named Riveredge was its own waterway Friday. Neighbors trudged through a knee-high murky swill to reach their homes. Teenage boys sat on coolers and monitored fishing rods and other traps as they told tales of catching catfish, crawfish and water moccasins over the last week. Sebesta said the water in his neighborhood "fell about 6 inches overnight." That still left moats around homes. Larry Vargas, 45, said he had received commitments of food and money for his grilling effort to feed people folks. He's also been finding clothes and diapers for people and babysitting Sebesta's rescued goat who made himself at home in a backyard dog house. On Thursday, the impromptu pitmaster fed more than 100 people in the neighborhood. "We'll be cooking for the next two weeks," predicted Vargas, who has been off work from a TxDOT inspections subcontractor for the last few days. The Brazos River hit a historic high on Thursday of nearly 55 feet. A "major flood stage" occurs at 50 feet, according to the National Weather Service. By Friday morning, the Brazos had receded more than a half-foot at Richmond over the previous 24 hours and was projected to drop below 50 feet on Monday afternoon. This week's flood exceeded previous records including a 49.97-foot mark set in June 2015 and slightly over 50 feet in 1994. Montgomery County County officials said Friday evening that most of its rivers remained below flood stage. While Peach Creek was in minor flood stage, Peach Creek, Caney Creek and the west fork of the San Jacinto River were near flood stage. The San Jacinto was expected to crest a 2.1 feet on Saturday. A new Red Cross shelter opened for those who need help. The shelter is at the Light Community Fellowship, 1314 Interstate 45 in Willis. The shelter in Conroe was closed Friday morning. Many roads still closed Receding water has been allowing crews to open some Houston-area roads and providing hope others could follow. Midday Friday, as motorists managed without many thoroughfares in the Richmond and Rosenberg area, officials announced one lane of eastbound U.S. 90A was open. The news followed a 1-foot drop in San Jacinto River water levels, which with a lack of new rain was easing frontage road closures. By 2:30 p.m., frontage roads along Interstate 45 at Texas 242 and FM 1960 had reopened fully. Meanwhile, many routes in Richmond and Rosenberg remained closed, such as where the Brazos River topped Texas 36. One lane of the frontage road in each direction along U.S. 59 at the river was also affected. Away from the Brazos, the most significant closing was of Texas 6 from Interstate 10 to Clay Road. The segment has only been open a few days since the April 18 floods, and was expected to remain closed until June 8. This week's storms are the latest in a string of torrential rains since May 2015 that have put swaths of the state under water. Some areas now overwhelmed by water had run dry two years ago due to drought conditions. Staff writers St. John Barned-Smith, Dug Begley, Norman Gomlak, Margaret Kadifa, Dale Lezon, Harvey Rice, Matthew Tresaugue and The Associated Press contributed to this report. The Carrollton Police Department in North Texas tried out their new body cams on May 21. On the devices launch day, the cops captured a disturbing surprise on tape. Two bicycle officers approached 23-year-old Gerard Perry outside his car at a Starbucks that afternoon, after seeing him drinking with a group of people outside his car, the Dallas Morning News wrote. After handing the officers his ID, Perry jumped in his car and fled the scene. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Alexandria Vera, the middle school teacher accused of having a long-term sexual relationship with a 13-year-old boy, will have to wear a GPS ankle monitor, stay away from schools and have no contact with the teen, a judge ruled Friday. The 24-year-old former teacher faces a punishment range of 25 years in prison to life if convicted of continuous sexual assault of a child, a felony with a heightened punishment, even for first offenders. READ MORE: Teacher accused of sex with teen student turns herself in Free on $100,000 bail, Vera was arraigned in a Houston courtroom where state District Judge Michael McSpadden laid out conditions of her bond, including an 8 p.m. curfew and limited internet use. She appeared in black slacks, a black jacket and white blouse and said little except to indicate she understood the charges against her. After the brief hearing, she left the courtroom through a backdoor with two supporters and her lawyer without comment. Prosecutor Tiffany Dupree said the conditions were standard for suspects facing similar charges. "As parents, we entrust teachers with a very important role to educate our students," she said. "And we should not have to be concerned about teachers getting into a sexual relationship with our children while at school." READ MORE: Aldine ISD teacher wanted in connection with sexual abuse of teenage male student In court, the prosecutor said officials with Child Protective Services were notified about a possible sexual relationship and found out during their investigation that Vera had an abortion after being impregnated by the teen. Vera and the underage student apparently met when he was a student of hers in summer school last year at Stovall Middle School, according to court records. The pair's relationship apparently had the blessing of the boy's family, the documents show. Vera had been wanted by officials since May 27 on a charge of continuous sexual abuse of a child. She turned herself in Wednesday at the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office in Conroe and posted bail. Because the alleged crime happened in Harris County, she had to be arraigned at the criminal courthouse in downtown Houston. Read the police documents above. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Five Fort Hood soldiers were killed midday Thursday when a tactical vehicle overturned after getting stuck attempting to cross a creek during a training exercise, the Army said. By nightfall, an extensive search had failed to locate four others who were missing. Three soldiers were rescued. Personnel combed the rugged training area with aircraft, dogs, heavy equipment and swift-water rescue boats. The 1st Cavalry Division soldiers were conducting routine training maneuvers on the northeast side of Fort Hood, a sprawling 214,868-acre installation, when a call for a swift-water rescue was received at 11:20 a.m. Thursday. Few details were available, but a brief statement issued by Fort Hood said a Light-Medium Tactical Vehicle, or LMTV, had become stuck in an area near Cold Springs and Owl Creek off of East Range Road. Fort Hood search parties, which include soldiers, were still working through the heavily wooded and steep terrain after dark. RELATED: Fort Hood sergeant pleads guilty in pimping scheme that used female soldiers The post said no decision had been made on suspending the rescue operation for the night, but noted that the safety of our crews conducting the search is continually assessed. A Fort Hood spokesman, Tyler Broadway, said soldiers had been killed while training at the post since his arrival there in 2003 but nothing like this, involving such a large number of potential casualties in a swiftwater accident. I dont recall any other accident of this scope, he said. Broadway said it was too early to know what had happened at the creek. The soldiers who died were not identified pending notification of their relatives. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those soldiers who were lost, he said. The 1st Cavalrys commander, Maj. Gen. John C. Thompson III, issued a statement late in the evening on Facebook saying the incident occurred Thursday morning during flash flooding conditions. We are deeply saddened by the loss of several troopers and continue search operations, he said. Your thoughts and prayers are greatly appreciated during this difficult time as we care for the families, loved ones, and fellow soldiers of those impacted by this tragedy. God Bless the First Team. RELATED: Commander went out swinging in Lackland murder-suicide The three soldiers who were rescued were recovering at the posts hospital. They were in stable condition after being taken from Coryell Memorial Healthcare System in Gatesville to Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center. The bodies of the three killed were recovered from water downsteam from their LMTV, a four-wheeled, diesel-powered truck that has a 2-ton carrying capacity. Two more bodies were recovered later in the evening, according to a report from the Associated Press. The training accident marks the second major loss of life on the post since just before Thanksgiving. A UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter aircraft with four crew members crashed during a routine training mission on the evening of Nov. 23, also in the northeast portion on Fort Hoods range. Emergency crews found the bodies of four Black Hawk crew members, who served in the 1st Armys Division West, in roughly the same area where Thursdays mishap occurred. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the soldiers, their families and the Fort Hood community, and continue to be with those still unaccounted for, Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement, adding that the state was ready to help Fort Hood. The brave men and women stationed at Fort Hood and across our country put their lives on the line every day, and be it through rescue operations or on the battlefield, Texas will forever remain grateful for their sacrifices, he added. The Associated Press contributed to this report. sigc@express-news.net The heavy rain and winds that hit Texas this past week have brought some crazy and strange sights along with them. From high water rescues at Pedernales Falls State Park to stranded cattle in East Texas and excited rafters at a swollen Guadalupe River, dramatic images from across the state show how the Lone Star State is handling its latest battle with extreme weather. A 39-year-old woman from Morocco feels like she has a new lease on life, and it's all thanks to her new face, according to reports. Samira Benhar endured rejection and scorn at home because of a deformity caused by a genetic disease, the Latin American Herald Tribune reports. But after three operations, the mother of two can lead a much more normal life. "I feel like I was born again," she said the report. She and her surgeon, Pedro Cavadas, appeared at a news conference in Manises, Spain. Photos of her transformation circulated online Thursday. COMPLICATIONS: Woman attacked by a chimp suffered problems after face transplant The first of the three surgeries took place in June 2015 to begin the removal of a large portion of a tumor on the right side of Benhar's face, according to the report. Four months later, a second operation removed the rest of the tumor around her eye, and a prosthesis was implanted to improve her appearance in April. PROGRESS: Man who got 1st U.S. penis transplant released from hospital While Benhar is making news across the world, Houston is also home to medical breakthroughs. Click through the slideshow above to see some of them. AUSTIN -- A former head of the Texas Attorney General's civil litigation division said Friday that then-Attorney General Greg Abbott was not involved in the office's 2010 decision not to sue Trump University following a seven-month investigation. "To be clear, I did not discuss this matter with General Abbott or Daniel Hodge (a top Abbott aide) prior to making my decision. Any suggestion otherwise is false," said David Morales, who added that a lawsuit became unnecessary when Trump University decided to leave the state. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate AUSTIN Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton moved Friday to try to stop a former agency staffer from sharing any more documents about a seven-month investigation into Trump University that the ex-employee said was nixed for political reasons under Paxton's predecessor, current Gov. Greg Abbott. In a cease-and-desist letter, Paxton's top aide alleged that John Owensall names cq, a former deputy chief of the office's consumer protection division, likely broke the law by sharing records about the 2010 investigation with the Houston Chronicle and other media outlets. READ MORE: Former aide says Abbott not involved in decision to end Trump U probe "We ask that you immediately cease and desist from disclosing any privileged or confidential information obtained from your employment with this agency," the Paxton aide wrote. Owens, who retired in 2011 after 20 years of decorated service to the office, said he felt confident that he had done nothing illegal or unethical. READ MORE: Trump's personal attacks on judge spark GOP concerns "I think the information I provided to the press was important and needed to be shared with the public," he said, adding, "I stand by everything I have said, and everything I have said is true and correct." Paxton's letter was unusual because records about closed investigations conducted by government entities almost always are public, and it is rare for state officials to go after people who provide public records. Kelley Shannon, the executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, said she was not familiar with similar letters. "This should be public information," Shannon said. "If it's something of widespread public interest, like Trump University, then there is a reason to shed light on what's transpired in our state." READ MORE: Trump University's sales strategy foreshadowed campaign The letter came as Texas Republicans launched a campaign against Owens and his accusation that Abbott closed the Trump University probe for political reasons. Earlier in the day Friday, another former top Abbott aide, David Morales, said he not Abbott or Abbott confidante Daniel Hodge made the decision not to sue Trump University when the for-profit real estate training program voluntarily decided to leave Texas. READ MORE: BBB responds to 'inaccuracies' about Trump University "That agreement to permanently and immediately leave Texas was, in my opinion, the most important element of resolving this investigation," Morales wrote in a letter to the editor to the Chronicle and other outlets. A conservative website also published a story accusing Owens of being a Democrat. Abbott himself highlighted that story on Twitter, saying "a Wendy Davis & Obama supporter made false allegations." Owens said he was not a Democrat but a political independent who had run for office as a Republican and voted for candidates in both parties. The former investigator said he did even not seek out attention but simply made a Facebook post and then responded to questions from reporters. Ultimately, Owens shared 14 pages of records with the Chronicle and The Dallas Morning News late Thursday. The documents showed that a team of investigators in the Attorney General's Office spent seven months between late 2009 and May 2010 probing Trump University. They went undercover to attend seminars, interviewed dozens of students and requested hundreds of records. READ MORE: Why does Trump University have positive reviews? Ex-students blame coercion The team asked for permission to seek a $5.4 million settlement from the business for false advertising, but the plan was nixed. Three years later, The Associated Press reported earlier this week, Trump donated $35,000 to Abbott a revelation that Democrats pounced on, calling it evidence of a quid pro quo. Abbott's office laughed that off, noting the length of time between the investigation and the donation. "Story is bogus," Abbott tweeted Friday. Staff writer Gabrielle Banks contributed to this report. 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. Warriors end season with win over Rebels SIOUX RAPIDS - The Alta-Aurelia football team traveled to face Sioux Central for their final game of the season and... Cherokee takes down Generals to finish season CHEROKEE - The Cherokee football team hosted Sibley-Ocheyedan on Friday and won 35-28 to finish out their season. The... Warriors suffer heartbreaking end to season ALTA - The Alta-Aurelia volleyball team hosted Lawton-Bronson last Wednesday and suffered a nail-biting 3-2 loss to end their season.... Unity ends Cherokee volleyball season ORANGE CITY - Out of sync early, Cherokee's volleyball squad fell hard in the first set 25-8 to ranked Unity... Women in Online Work program pentru femeile care isi doresc sa munceasca in companii internationale, de la biroul de acasa The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear an appeal by State Farm contesting a jury finding that the insurance company defrauded the federal government when assessing damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 along the Gulf of Mexico coast. The court will review a 2015 ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the verdict in a suit brought under the federal False Claims Act, which lets people sue over allegations that the government has been defrauded. The court will consider a lawsuit brought by sisters Cori and Kerri Rigsby, former claims adjusters who worked with State Farm after the hurricane. People win a portion of the damages if such a False Claims Act suit is successful. The jury found that the U.S. government had been defrauded of $250,000 over a house that had sustained Katrina-related damage in Biloxi, Mississippi. The Rigsbys said the damage was caused by wind, which would be covered by the owners policy with State Farm. But State Farm concluded that the damage was flood-related, which was covered by the federal governments flood insurance program. The court said State Farm would have to pay $758,000 in damages. The Rigsbys were awarded $227,000 under the False Claims Act. State Farm argued in part that the lawsuit should have been thrown out because the Rigsbys former lawyer, Dickie Scruggs, had distributed information about the lawsuit to members of the media. False Claims Act lawsuits are required to be filed under seal and remain private for 60 days. In 2008, Scruggs was convicted of conspiring to bribe a judge in a different case. He was sentenced to five years in prison. The court will hear oral arguments and issue a ruling in the case during its next term, which begins in October and ends in June 2017. (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham) Egypt said Wednesday that a French ship has picked up signals from deep under the Mediterranean Sea, presumed to be from one of the black boxes of the EgyptAir plane that crashed last month, killing all 66 passengers and crew on board. The development raised hopes the planes flight data and cockpit voice recorders, known as the black boxes, could be retrieved and shed light on the aircrafts tragic crash. In Cairo, the Civil Aviation Ministry cited a statement from the committee investigating the crash as saying the vessel Laplace received the signals. The French Navy confirmed the Laplace arrived on Tuesday in the search area and picked up the signals overnight. The signals frequencies could match with the frequencies of data recorders, a French Navy spokesman told The Associated Press. The location and identification of the source of the signals have not been determined yet, he said, adding that he searches are still at an early stage. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasnt allowed to speak publicly on the issue. Laplaces equipment picked up the signals from the seabed of the wreckage search area, assumed to be from one of the data recorders, the Egyptian statement read. It added that a second ship, John Lethbridge affiliated with the Deep Ocean Search firm, will join the search team later this week. Locator pings emitted by flight data and cockpit voice recorders, known as the black boxes, can be picked up from deep underwater. The Laplace is equipped with three detectors made by the Alseamar company designed to detect and localize signals from the flight recorders, which are believed to be at a depth of about 3,000 meters (9,842 feet) underwater. By comparison, the wreck of the RMS Titanic is lying at a depth of about 3,800 meters (12,500 feet). Shaker Kelada, an EgyptAir official who has led other crash investigations for the carrier, told the AP that half the job has been done now and that the next step would be to determine the black boxers exact location and extract them from the sea. We have to find where the boxes are exactly and decide on how to pull them out, he said, adding that search teams might need to send in robots or submarines and be extremely careful to avoid any possible damage. Kelada said he was confident the boxes will be retrieved. He had investigated the Flash Airlines Flight 604 crash in 2004, when the aircraft hit the Red Sea shortly after takeoff from the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all 148 passengers, most of them French tourists, and crew on board. In the May 19 crash, EgyptAir Airbus A320 had been cruising normally in clear skies on a nighttime flight to from Paris to Cairo when it suddenly lurched left, then right, spinning all the way around and plummeting 38,000 feet (11,582.4 meters) into the sea, Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos has said shortly after the crash. However, the Egyptians refuted this, saying that the plane didnt swerve or lose altitude before it disappeared off radar. A distress signal was never issued, EgyptAir has said. Since the crash, small pieces of the wreckage and human remains have been recovered while the bulk of the plane and the bodies of the passengers are believed to be deep under the sea. A Cairo forensic team has received the human remains and is carrying DNA tests to identify the victims. The search has narrowed down to a 5-kilometer (3-mile) area in the Mediterranean. David Learmount, a consulting editor at the aviation news website Flightglobal, said the black boxes batteries can transmit signals up to 30 days after the crash. But even if the batteries expire, locating the boxes remains a possibility. Its terribly important to find the black boxes, because if they dont find them, they will know nothing about the aircraft, he said, citing the 2009 Air France Flight 447 crash in the Atlantic Ocean, when black boxes were found two years later. Nearly two weeks after the crash off Egypts northern coast, the cause of the tragedy still has not been determined. Egypts civil aviation minister, Sherif Fathi, has said he believes terrorism is a more likely explanation than equipment failure or some other catastrophic event. But no hard evidence has emerged on the cause, and no militant group has claimed to have downed the jet. Earlier, leaked flight data indicated a sensor had detected smoke in a lavatory and a fault in two of the planes cockpit windows in the final moments of the flight. In France, Sebastien Barthe, spokesman for the countrys air accident investigation agency or the BEA, told the AP that the signal picked up is specific enough combined with the localization in the search area to indicate that it comes from one of the data recorders of the EgyptAir flight. Some BEA investigators are on board of the Laplace. Safety onboard Egyptian aircraft and at the countrys airports have been under close international scrutiny since a Russian airliner crashed in the Sinai Peninsula last October, killing all 224 people on board, shortly after taking off from an Egyptian resort. That crash claimed by the Islamic States affiliate in Sinai and blamed by Moscow on an explosive device planted on board decimated Egypts lucrative tourism industry, which had already been battered by years of turmoil in the country. Also Wednesday, Egyptian authorities reported that they had evacuated all passengers from the EgyptAir Flight 960 from Cairo to Bangkok scheduled late the previous night after receiving security threats of a bomb on board. Tarek Zaki, head of security at Cairo airport, said the warning claimed an unidentified assailant had planted a bomb on the plane. A security official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said the plane and the bags were searched but no bomb was found. The threat caused a delay and eventually led to the flight being cancelled. (Corbet reported from Paris.) Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Four automakers are selling new vehicles with Takata airbag inflators even though the devices are potentially defective and likely to be recalled within a few years, according to a Senate report. Some Fiat Chrysler, Mitsubishi, Toyota and Volkswagen vehicles from the 2016 and 2017 model years are equipped with a type of inflator that is prone to rupture and presents a potential danger to drivers and passengers, Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee said in the report issued Wednesday. Takata has agreed to recall about 69 million airbag inflators in the U.S. by the end of 2019. The new model years arent yet covered by the recall, so the automakers can legally sell the cars. But at least one lawmaker thinks that decision is a risky one for car buyers. Consumers are buying new cars not realizing that theyre going to be recalled, said Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, the Commerce committees top Democrat. Nelson wants the automakers to replace the inflators before the cars are sold so they dont have to be recalled. The problematic inflators contain ammonium nitrate, which can deteriorate over time when exposed to moisture and high temperatures. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has said that its tests show it takes at least six years before the inflators pose a danger. Takata Corp. has agreed to recall all original equipment inflators that lack a chemical drying agent in phases by the end of 2018. So far, the recall affects 17 car and truck companies, with vehicles going back to the 2000 model year. At least 11 people have been killed worldwide by Takatas inflators. Two other deaths in Malaysia are under investigation. Mitsubishi and Volkswagen identified the new models that have Takata inflators without the drying agent. They include the 2016 Volkswagen CC, 2016 Audi TT, 2017 Audi R8, and the 2016 and 2017 Mitsubishi i-MiEV. Toyota and Fiat Chrysler did not specify models. According to the report, Toyota said it expects to make about 175,000 unspecified vehicles with Takata inflators that dont have the drying agent from March 2016 to July 2017. Toyota said its phasing out those inflators, but a spokesman didnt know by what date. Fiat Chrysler has only one new model with the inflators, which spokesman Eric Mayne declined to identify. These vehicles are not currently subject to recall. They meet or exceed all applicable safety requirements, Mayne said in an email. The Democrats report says completion rates for the Takata recall remain low. As of March, Honda led with almost 40 percent of inflators replaced, while Daimler Vans had completed only 0.4 percent. NHTSA said in a statement that it has called on automakers to do more to notify vehicle owners and speed up replacement of the Takata inflators. The report also says that a majority of replacement inflators that have been installed, about 4.6 million, are made by Takata and use ammonium nitrate. At least 2.1 million of those dont have the drying agent and will have to be recalled again. NHTSA has said there are 85 million unrecalled Takata inflators in U.S. vehicles, some with and some without the drying agent. Takata has until the end of 2019 to prove that inflators with the drying agent are safe, or they must be recalled as well. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. In 18 years, Southeast Texas resident Art Myrick says hes been ordered or asked to evacuate his home near the Brazos River about 20 times, but he didnt always do so and the house never flooded until now. Flooding comes with living in Simonton, a small town west of Houston. But this latest round has convinced the 66-year-old Myrick, who retired four years ago, that he should move. He has land to build a new home in San Antonio. Were gone. Getting too old to live with this, Myrick said of him and his wife Wednesday, while sitting on a cot inside a Red Cross shelter in Brookshire. For us, the Lord is in charge of everything and maybe this is his final message to us a sign its time to move on. I hate it because I love that house. Simonton, which has about 800 residents, and other Texas communities continued Wednesday to deal with flooding from rivers and waterways swollen by heavy rain last week, and from a new round of thunderstorms drenching the state. Hundreds of residents remained evacuated from their homes as the Brazos River reached 54.7 feet in Fort Bend County, which includes Simonton and has had more than 300 water rescues the last four days, before finally beginning to slowly fall. But additional rain this week could mean it might take days or even weeks before the Brazos and other waterways drop to normal levels. The Neches River in East Texas and the Colorado River extending southeast of Austin also were overflowing. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster Wednesday in 31 flood-affected counties including Lubbock County in West Texas, Hidalgo County in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, and Jasper County in East Texas. At least six people died in floods last week in Central and Southeast Texas. The storms have prompted flooding in parts of Texas that two years ago had run dry because of drought conditions. They are the latest in a string of torrential rains since May 2015 that have put swaths of the state underwater. Southeast Texas has been hit particularly hard and often, including storms in March that dumped up to a foot of rain in some areas and brought record flooding not seen since 1884 along the Sabine River. In April, more than a foot of rain fell in parts of Houston, submerging scores of subdivisions and several major highways, forcing the closure of schools and knocking out power to thousands of residents who were urged to shelter in place. State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said the average annual rainfall in Texas over the last century has increased about 5 to 10 percent. But the severe weather over the last year was exacerbated by El Nino, which is the natural warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean that changes weather worldwide. The El Nino period is dissipating but Nielsen-Gammon said the frequency of heavy rains likely will continue. Elevated water levels could continue through the weekend as forecasts call for more rain. The National Weather Service has issued a flash flood watch for the greater Houston region where 8 to 10 inches could fall through Friday in some isolated locations. The Austin area is expected to receive 3 to 6 inches through Friday, while Dallas and North Texas is forecast to receive 3 to 5 inches by the end of Thursday. Fort Bend Countys emergency management coordinator, Jeff Braun, said his biggest concern is the additional heavy rainfall in the forecast, which could delay evacuated residents from returning to their homes for up to a week because the water in flooded areas will not have anywhere to go with more rain. While Myrick said hes relocating, Barbara Leach, who lives in Rosenberg in Fort Bend County, said shes not going anywhere. The Brazos flooded the mobile home where she and her husband have lived for 41 years, but Leach, 78, said she enjoys their proximity to nature too much to leave. Leach, her husband Dan, and their family spent Wednesday ferrying furniture and other belongings from their mobile home to dry land on two boats. Leach said while government officials could have done some things to help mitigate flooding problems, nothing could have really stopped it. This is Mother Nature and I dont think they could have prepared for this. I dont care how many dams or dikes or whatever they have, she said. Im not blaming anybody for it. Thats life. Thats the way the world is. People have been hit harder than we have. So well come out OK. (Warren reported from Dallas.) Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Met Opera Names Yannick Nezet-Seguin as James Levine's Successor The Metropolitan Opera announced longtime music director James Levine's successor in Yannick Nezet-Seguin. The French-Canadian conductor, who has led the Philadelphia Orchestra since 2012, will not officially take up the post until the 2020-21 season. As we previously reported, Levine made the decision to step down after the current season due to ongoing medical issues. Previous health concerns had forced the conductor to take a two-year hiatus beginning in May of 2011, returning to the Met in September 2013 to conduct the revival of Cosi fan tutte. Levine held the Met's prestigious position of music director for 40 years, starting in 1976. In that time, his name has become near-synonymous with the various broadcasts and recordings by the Met's revered symphony orchestra. The New York Times reported today (June 2) on a telephone statement from Nezet-Seguin, currently on tour with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Japan: "I'm very, very lucky, of course -- maybe the luckiest music director -- to be able to have what I believe to be the two greatest, arguably, organizations in the United States, symphonically and operatically: the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Met." As for the delay in Nezet-Seguin's acceptance of the position, previously scheduled engagements (like the current Japanese excursion with his Philadelphia players) kept the conductor from taking the job any sooner. To secure him as director, the Met had to agree to the long waiting period. In order to make that gap less of a problem, Nezet-Seguin will direct two operas beginning in the 2017-18 season, taking on the interim title of "music director designate" prior to his untethered arrival in the 2020-21 season. He spoke of the gradual endeavor today: "It's true that in the pit I won't be more present, which doesn't mean that I will be out of touch -- rather the contrary," he said, adding that he planned to start discussions with the musicians right away. "I hope it won't feel like there's a wait, or there's a void." Watch an example of Nezet-Seguin's conducting prowess from the 2013 Proms: We want to hear from you: What do you think of Nezet-Seguin as Levines Met Opera replacement? Do you agree with the decision? Let us know in the comments section below. 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. TagsMet Opera, Metropolitan Opera, The Metropolitan Opera, James Levine, Yannick Nezet-Seguin BEACHWOOD, Ohio -- Beachwood Law Director Brian Reali is on paid administrative leave. City Council is expected to consider his employment status. A letter in Reali's personnel file, requested by cleveland.com, dated May 26 did not detail the reasons that Reali was placed on leave. City Council President Martin Horwitz said in a Wednesday email that since no public council meeting has been held changing his status, he is still serving as law director. Reali was hired in 2014 and has been law director throughout controversy over Mayor Merle Gorden's spending of taxpayer money. The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's office subpoenaed the city in July for records to be given to the FBI. Reali said in a previous cleveland.com article that the requests for information were prompted by "baseless" claims. Beachwood has also come under fire during Reali's employment for its public record request policies, including redactions on a portion of Gorden's day planner. Ohio Auditor Dave Yost determined that the redactions broke Ohio law, according to a report released in March. Reali's annual salary as law director is $127,140. City officials did not respond for comment Thursday. On June 6, there will be a special city council meeting to at 5:45 p.m. and a regular meeting from 5:45 to 7:30 p.m., according to the city's online calendar. An agenda was not available as of Thursday afternoon. Reali did not immediately respond for comment. Read the full letter below. This story has been updated to include Reali's salary. YORK.jpg Hennes Communications, based in Cleveland, looks to launch an Akron office and have Stephanie York at the helm of the satellite branch. (Courtesy photo) CLEVELAND, Ohio - Hennes Communications, which specializes in crisis management and communications, is expanding its team and looking to open an office in Akron, the downtown Cleveland-based company released Friday. Stephanie York, a communications professional with experience and deep ties in the Akron area, is joining Hennes Communications as vice president, and leading the new satellite office. Stephanie York "Stephanie is the ideal person to add to our team as Hennes continues to grow and expand," said Bruce Hennes, managing partner at Hennes Communications, in a press release. "For years, we have worked with clients in Akron and the surrounding communities, so we know the area. But Stephanie brings to us a different, deeper level of knowledge about the issues and an intimate level of familiarity and trust with people in Akron that can only come from years of working and volunteering there." York most recently was the director of communications and public relations for Cleveland Clinic Akron General. She also has been director of communications for the City of Akron, working with then-Mayor Don Plusquellic, and has legal expertise having worked as assistant director of law for the City of Akron. "And having an attorney on board, with the experience Stephanie has had with the Akron law department, gives us one more tool for clients who need help with crisis management," Hennes said. Hennes added that York also brings a skill set that includes governmental relations, social media management, strategic planning and implementation, community relations, disaster preparation and more. "Having served as an attorney, communications director, and spokesperson for the City of Akron and most recently as director of communications and public relations for Cleveland Clinic Akron General, I've handled scores of high-pressure, complicated issues and encounters," York said in a written statement. "I am looking forward to using the skills that I have developed over the past 25 years to help clients successfully navigate through reputation and image challenges. Throughout my career, I have been privileged to work with, and learn from, some of the brightest people in Northeast Ohio. Bruce Hennes has cultivated one of the most talented crisis management teams in the country, and I know that I will continue to grow personally and professionally as part of his team. "I am also very excited to be opening a Hennes Communications office in downtown Akron," York added, "where I can continue to work and support my community, in the heart of the city I love." Hennes Communications has not settled yet on an exact location for the Akron office. York's volunteer work includes serving as current president of the board of directors for the Downtown Akron Kiwanis, president pro-tem of the board of trustees for the Jewish Women's Endowment Fund, board of directors member for the Akron Roundtable, board of trustees member for the Leadership Akron Alumni Association and board of trustees member for the Jewish Community Board of Akron. York earned her bachelor of science degree in communications from Ohio University and her juris doctorate degree from The University of Akron. CLEVELAND, Ohio - Members of the team assembled to monitor Cleveland's progress in implementing a federal consent decree governing police use of force said Friday that they believe officers have begun to understand that the reforms underway are as much about improving their own working conditions as they are about ensuring Constitutional policing in Cleveland. The monitoring team met with members of the media Friday - a day after releasing the team's first biannual report on the city's progress - to shed more light on their first six months on the job. The city entered the consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice in May 2015 after an investigation showed that the city's police officers often used excessive force when dealing with citizens and that systems intended to hold officers accountable were broken. For months after the consent decree was forged, debates raged over whether the settlement agreement was anti-police in nature or would bring about reforms that diminished the powers of officers and endangered their lives. But monitoring team member and policing expert Sean Smoot said Friday that in the past six months, through one-on-one conversations, ride-alongs and other time spent with the team, rank-and-file officers have come to see that the reform effort is giving officers the tools they need to do their jobs more safely. "There is a recognition in the department and community that the philosophy of the monitoring team is that we're not here to do this consent decree to you, or to do it for you," Smoot said. "We're here to do it collaboratively with you." For example, lead monitor Matthew Barge said, officers have felt comfortable expressing to the monitors their frustration with the department's inadequate technology, equipment and record-management system. Barge said that as officers see that the monitoring team is advocating for their department to meet those needs, they are more likely to buy into the process. "This is not equipment and technology for the fun of it," Barge said. "The stuff we're describing in the report is core stuff that officers need to keep Cleveland and themselves safe. I would hope that as we have more of those conversations and hold people to task for making investments - which in some instances are not about outlays of money, but are about capacity and focus - that officers will see that it's about giving them the tools they need to fulfill those new requirements." Watch the video above to hear more from the monitoring team's meeting with reporters. And read the stories below for more details from the team's biannual report. L15speroAA Harry Nilsson in his famous bathrobe. (Plain Dealer file) CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Ruth Vinson is just wild about Harry. The late Harry Nilsson, that is. She loves the two-time Grammy-winning artist so much she has begun a campaign to have him inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. According to Rock Hall officials, he has never been on a ballot. To that end, she has organized a 1.7-mile race around the Rock Hall and FirstEnergy Stadium on Nilsson's birthday, Wednesday, June 15, at 10 a.m. She is asking all participants to wear bathrobes, as Nilsson did on the cover of his most successful album, "Nilsson Schmilsson," from 1971. The race is an informal gathering, she said, much like a flash mob. "Almost everyone knows some songs that Harry Nilsson sang or wrote. Songs like 'One,' 'Coconut' and 'Everybody's Talkin',' " said Vinson, 60, of North Ridgeville. "Far fewer people know the artist himself. I have always loved Nilsson," she said. "For me, the first song that turned me on to him was 'Coconut.' It was such a whimsical, funny and catchy tune. He went on to write so many popular songs in the early '70s, like 'Without You,' 'Remember' and 'Spaceman.' "Nilsson's songs displayed his extraordinary talent as a songwriter and a musician. That was accompanied by his perfect voice and amazing vocal range. His music was eclectic -- everything from rock to standards to experimental. His oh-so-clever and subtly subversive lyrics were fantastic. Nilsson is one of a kind. I can't help but smile or cry when I listen to his music." Artist manager David Spero was a good friend of Nilsson's. Nilsson even gave Spero a Pierre Cardin robe like the one he wore on the cover of that famous album. "He always wore bathrobes," Spero told former Plain Dealer music critic John Soeder. "I said, 'Where's the bathrobe from "Nilsson Schmilsson"?' He said, 'I'm not sure.' I said, 'Well, if you find it, I'd love to have it.' A few days later, I get a FedEx, this big box. In it was this bathrobe. It wasn't the one from 'Nilsson Schmilsson,' but it was definitely well worn. There were pictures of him wearing it, too." Spero is in favor of Nilsson's induction. "He's very worthy," said Spero. Vinson said she was surprised years ago to find out that Nilsson had passed away. "It was 1998, and I was listening to 'Nilsson Schmilsson' at home. So many great songs. I thought, 'I've got to email this guy to thank him for all his work.' I went online, only to discover that he had died of a heart attack in 1994 at the age of 53. What a shock," said Vinson. "Although he was popular, he never took the opportunity to perform a live concert," said Vinson. "His genius cannot be overlooked. Harry Nilsson belongs in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Just ask the Beatles. who in the late '60s said that Nilsson was their favorite recording artist. "This is why we're coming together wearing our bathrobes to honor him on his 75th birthday. We love Harry." Vinson isn't the only fan who wants to honor Nilsson. "More events are going on in Dallas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Portland [Oregon] and in London," said Vinson. "But our event in Cleveland is by far the most unique." 00000 little italy.jpg The 2016 Summer Art Walk in Little Italy. The three-day event - Friday-Sunday - dovetails the past and present by showcasing the neighborhood's art galleries, eateries and bars. (John Petkovic/The Plain Dealer) CLEVELAND, Ohio -- You're just as likely to hear the broken English of an exchange student as that of an Italian immigrant. And the neighborhood is home to more cappuccino-sippers than stonemasons. But no place in Cleveland has retained the historical look and Old World charm more than Little Italy. Check out the 2016 Summer Art Walk in Little Italy. The three-day event - Friday-Sunday - dovetails the past and present by showcasing the neighborhood's art galleries, eateries and bars. "The idea is to give people the full vibe of Little Italy," says Tara Seibel, owner of Tara Seibel Gallery. "You can experience the food and art of the neighborhood and there's nothing pretentious about it." Summer Art Walk in Little Italy rolls out a vendors village, an ice cream social, food and live music and 10 exhibits. "You have a number of artists doing very different things," says Seibel, who will host a show that features her works as well as photographer David Schwartz, a Little Italy operator that has documented his travels on Route 66. The exhibition includes Charles Bowman, George Kocar and Ralph Solonitz. "The neighborhood has a number of micro galleries doing unique things in an interesting neighborhood - like Moonstruck gallery or TOLI," says Seibel. Short for Tavern of Little Italy, the recently-opened bar-restaurant feels contemporary even as it pays homage to the neighborhood's past with an array of old photos and classic decor. Art Walk hours are 5-9 p.m. Friday, noon-9 p.m. Saturday and noon-6 p.m. Sunday. For more info, go to facebook.com/events/1672068079710578. For more info on Tara Seibel Gallery, go to taraseibel.blogspot.com. crime tape A 44-year-old Lakewood man died after he threw himself out a window in his 10th-floor apartment, police said. (File photo) LAKEWOOD, Ohio -- A 44-year-old Lakewood man died after he threw himself out a window in his 10th-floor apartment, police said. The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office ruled the death a suicide. The man died from blunt impacts to his head, neck, trunk and extremities, as well as brain and spinal cord injuries, a medical examiner's report says. The man was wheelchair-bound and was being treated for medical issues, including depression, Lakewood police Capt. Ed Hassing said Friday. A home health worker and maintenance staff at the Fedor Manor Apartments in the 12000 block of Madison Avenue found the body on an overhang outside the 10th-floor window around 10:45 a.m. May 27, according to police reports. It's unclear how long the body had been there, Hassing said. A home health worker last saw him alive during a visit at 2 p.m. the day before, reports say. The man lived in the apartment alone. The man's wheelchair was next to the window, and the screen was removed, Hassing said. If you wish to discuss or comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments section. Like Chanda Neely on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter: This Memorial Day, Americans took time to give thanks and respect to those men and women who have given their lives in the defense of our country and the freedoms that we enjoy. We also remember those that are suffering from the physical and emotional scars of their service. However, our Commander-in-Chief was giving a speech in Hiroshima, Japan about the U.S. dropping atom bombs on that city on August 6, 1945 and bombing Nagasaki a few days later. President Obama began his speech by saying, "Seventy-one years ago, on a bright, cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed." He seems to forget that the decision by President Harry S. Truman (D) to use the atom bombs would not have happened if December 7, 1941 was just an ordinary Sunday on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. However, at 7:55 a.m., Hawaii time, on a bright, cloudless morning Japanese war planes did a sneak attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. Much of our naval fleet was destroyed and over 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,200 were wounded. That should have been the beginning of the timeline for President Obama's speech. January 20, 2017 cannot come soon enough. Richard Paterson, Brunswick Hills south-euclid-police-carjpg-123a984fe8dc3298.jpg Two teens are charged in a Memorial Day incident in which one used a portable radio to broadcast a fake threat involving "kids and guns" in South Euclid, police said. (File photo) SOUTH EUCLID, Ohio -- Two teenagers are facing juvenile charges after one stole a park guard's portable radio and used it to broadcast a fake disturbance involving kids and guns, South Euclid police said. A 15-year-old South Euclid boy is charged with making false alarms and theft and a 15-year-old University Heights boy is charged with intimidating a witness in the Memorial Day incident at Bexley Park. The South Euclid boy used a park guard's portable radio to call for backup for a disturbance involving "kids and guns" just after 7 p.m., according to a police report. The broadcast could be heard at the South Euclid Police Department's dispatch center, in police cruisers and on other portable radios. Officers were en route when the park guard reported there was no disturbance. The park guard said the radio fell off his belt while he was sitting on a bench. The teen then took it and used it, he said. The teen dropped the radio when the park guard saw him using it. Officers arrested the boy when they arrived. Several teens walked by officers while they were speaking with witnesses. One began to shout profanities and act disorderly, police said. Officers then saw another teen, later identified as a University Heights boy, using his cellphone to record video of the park guard and the witnesses. The teen questioned why they were cooperating in the investigation. Officers warned him several times about intimidating a witness before he was taken into custody, according to the police report. The teens were taken to the South Euclid Police Department. Their parents were called to pick them up from the station. Eric Warfel in court 2.JPG Defense attorney Michael O'Shea (left) sits beside his client Eric Warfel (right) during Warfel's trial in Medina County Common Pleas Court. Warfel is accused of leaving his daughter's decomposing body in a crib for a month. (Evan MacDonald, cleveland.com) MEDINA, Ohio -- Prosecutors and defense attorneys for a Medina man accused of leaving his 1-year-old daughter's corpse in a crib for more than a month submitted their closing arguments to a judge. Eric Warfel, 35, was charged with gross abuse of a corpse and other criminal counts after a cable company worker discovered his daughter Ember's body in her crib on July 29, 2015. Three medical examiners could not determine how she died. Attorneys in the case handed in their written closing arguments to Medina County Common Pleas Judge Christopher Collier Friday after a trial that began two weeks ago. The two days of testimony saw prosecutors call 14 witnesses. Warfel's defense team called no witnesses. Collier has said that he expects to announce his verdict in the case within a week. The closing arguments center on different interpretations of the language contained in the criminal statute for the charges of gross abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence. "Warfel never lied to any investigator about Ember, and there is no evidence that he altered, removed, moved or actively concealed her body from any investigators," defense attorneys Michael O'Shea and Mark Ondrejech wrote. Several witnesses, including two investigators and the county coroner, testified during the trial that they found no evidence Ember's body was moved or altered in any way after she died. Yet Warfel's actions made it impossible for detectives to conduct a homicide investigation because decomposition made it impossible to determine the cause of death, Medina County Prosecutor Dean Holman and assistant prosecuting attorney Paul Lange said in their closing argument. "When combined with the evidence of the defendant's intent, these actions alone are sufficient to show that the defendant concealed the body and thereby committed the offense of tampering with evidence," the prosecutors said. The prosecutors argued that Warfel told detectives that he knew an autopsy would be performed if he reported his daughter's death. He also told the detectives that he was concerned that investigators might find cocaine in his apartment and that he was worried an investigation might result in him losing custody of his 7-year-old daughter. Warfel also deceived family members and friends after Ember died by telling them she was in daycare. Text messages showed Warfel told his parents that he would bring Ember to dinner on the day he was arrested, prosecutors said. "By concealing this child's death, the defendant prevented law enforcement from being able to immediately investigate the unusual and suspicious occurrences surrounding Ember's death," the prosecutors said. Warfel's attorneys also argued that prosecutors never proved that Warfel placed his 7-year-old daughter in danger by leaving her alone at his apartment, at a restaurant and at a motel room last year. Prosecutors disagreed. His attorneys also said that investigators never proved that cocaine found at Warfel's apartment belonged to him, or where and when it was obtained, the defense said. However, Medina Detective Sara Lynn testified that Warfel told investigators he used cocaine and regularly traveled to Cleveland to obtain it. Ember's death and Warfel's arrest Warfel told investigators that he found his daughter dead in her crib June 19, 2015 at the Forest Meadows Apartment Homes. Lynn testified during the trial that Warfel conducted online research on whether he was required to report her death. Warfel concluded that he did not have to because he had not committed a crime, she said. Ember remained there until the cable worker made the grisly discovery. Warfel was arrested later that day while he and his 7-year-old daughter were at Crocker Park in Westlake. Warfel and the 7-year-old girl were living at a Motel 6 in Middleburg Heights prior to his arrest. Investigators found cocaine in his motel room, police said. Investigators reopened the 2013 death of Warfel's daughter Erin, who was 5 months old when she died of what the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner deemed a "sudden unexplained infant death." Holman said the investigation was handled by Cuyahoga County and that Erin's death is not relevant to Warfel's trial. Warfel was granted full custody of Ember when he and his wife divorced in 2014. A judge said the girl's mother, Malinali Galdamez, had a history of substance abuse that made her unfit to care for Ember. If you'd like to comment on this post, please visit the cleveland.com crime and courts comments section. CHAGRIN FALLS, Ohio -- When Diane and Michael Swigonski of Chagrin Falls learned a few months ago that their Saint Bernard had bone cancer in his hind leg, the couple was devastated. "My husband noticed that his leg was swollen, and we thought it was an injury," Diane said of Pooh Bear, a rescue that's about 7 years old. "But an X-Ray showed that it was worse." The veterinarian who diagnosed Pooh Bear's osteosarcoma, or bone tumor, predicted the dog had only a few weeks to live and asked if the couple wanted him put down, given the bone cancer is extremely painful. The Swigonskis declined and the vet prescribed pain medication. "He prescribed the pain meds because I would not put him to sleep at the time," said Diane. "He told me to call him when I was ready to euthanize him because it was a matter of time before he would become incapacitated from the bone cancer, and that there was no cure for bone cancer. I couldn't take that for an answer. It would have been like losing a family member." The Swigonskis began researching treatment options on the Internet. In the meantime, a friend told them about a Chagrin Falls veterinarian who specialized in cancer cases. The veterinarian is Dr. Carol Osborne of Chagrin Falls Veterinary Center & Pet Clinic. Unbeknownst to the Swigonskis, Osborne is participating in a cancer research with Biotempus Limited in Melbourne, Australia. Other veterinarians, primarily in Australia, also are involved in the research. The company's website address is biotempus.com. The clinical trial is called Synchronisation of Immunotherapy. Through daily blood testing for up to two weeks, veterinarians determine the exact day and time the immune system of a dog with advanced cancer is at its optimal level. "When the dog's immune cycle is peaking at its optimal level, that's the day that the dog is given a single oral dose of chemotherapy," said Osborne. The goal is accurately timing the single dose of chemotherapy with the dog's immune cycle, rather than giving it randomly, she added. It's too soon to tell how the immunotherapy has impacted Pooh Bear, who has a Saint Bernard brother named Pumpkin. So far Pooh Bear is improving and despite weighing 200 pounds, he is now able to use his hind leg and has regained full mobility, said Osborne, who has other dogs participating in the trial, including one from Rhode Island. Ongoing blood tests will continue to monitor his T-cells. The trials will run through the end of the year. "The beauty of the trial is that the treatment doesn't have any adverse affect on the patients," said Osborne. "We'll see how he (Pooh Bear) progresses in the next few weeks." Said Diane, "He was in pretty bad shape when we brought him here. He was very sad and had no appetite. It was awful to watch. Now he is happy and walking and standing on that leg. If there is something out there that can cure him, and it's not invasive, I'm willing to try it." Vaccine clinic in Mentor: Lake Humane Society low-cost vaccine clinic, noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, June 4, 7564 Tyler Blvd. Call 440-951-6122. Animal shelter Classic Car Show in Parma: Parma Animal Shelter Classic Car Show, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, June 5, at Veterans Memorial Park, 6328 State Road. Pre-registration of cars, $12, ends June 1; day-of registration is $15. New this year: Best GM, Best Ford, Best Mopar. For more information, go to http://parmashelter.org/news-and-events/classic-car-show. Horse fundraiser in Olmsted Falls: Angels Haven Horse Rescue fundraising show, 9 a.m. Sunday, June 5, at Lewis Riding Ring near Barrett Road in the Metroparks. Bring your horse for the riding competition, or just come to watch. Call 440-781-5060. Cat fundraiser in Rocky River: Purr-fect Companions Sanctuary Wine and Whiskers, 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, June 18, West Shore Universalist Church, 20401 Hilliard Blvd. Tickets, $25, all you can eat pasta, two drink tickets for beer or wine, and more. Tickets available on Purr-fect Companions website at purrfectcompanions.org Sunny Days Adopt-a-Thon: Cleveland Animal Protective League adoption team will be at Sunnyside Toyota with adoptable animals, noon to 3:30 p.m. Sunday, June 12. Sunnyside is at 27000 Lorain Road, North Olmsted. Stop by and drop off items from the APL's wish list at or make a monetary donation, which will me matched by Toyota up to $2,500. Donations also can be made at Sunnyside's website at mysunnysidetoyota.com. Pet adoptions downtown Cleveland: "Justice Fur All" Cleveland APL dog and cat adoptions, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday, June 9, and Thursday, June 23, at the Justice Center, Lakeside Avenue and West 3rd Street. Also, APL's Nine Twelve Shop Stop, 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Tuesdays, on the Plaza at One Cleveland Center, 1375 East 9th St. Stop by to meet adoptable animals and have lunch at food trucks. Cuyahoga County Animal Shelter fundraiser: Third Annual Tails on the Town Celebrity Bartending Faceoff, 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, June 18, at the Velvet Dog, 1280 West 6th Street downtown Cleveland. Tickets, $25, include two drink tickets and food. Chef competitions, dueling emcees and more. Get tickets at cuyahogadogs.com or at the door. Send animal news to rwashington@plaind.com; 216-538-6010. State school board member AJ Wagner.JPG State school board member A.J. Wagner worries that too few students will be rated high enough on new state math tests to graduate on time. (Patrick O'Donnell/The Plain Dealer) COLUMBUS, Ohio - Scores on two of Ohio's new high school math tests from this spring have come in so much lower than expected that the state school board will likely adjust how they affect graduation requirements later this month. The adjustments won't be enough for board member A.J. Wagner, who is raising alarms that many students will still be at risk of not being able to graduate. Preliminary test scores on Ohio's new Geometry and Integrated Math II exams from the American Institutes of Research show that the tests were such a mismatch with student ability that fewer than one out of every four students that took them met state benchmarks. The state had predicted that 59 percent of high schoolers would score as "Proficient" or above on the Geometry exam, but only 24 percent did. Similarly, 56 percent were projected to score as "Proficient" or above on the Integrated Math II exam and only 21 percent did. Calling the lower results "outliers" that need attention, the Ohio Department of Education is asking the state school board to adjust the scores that students need to earn to fall into Ohio's five ratings categories - Limited, Basic, Proficient, Accelerated and Advanced. The proposal would increase the percentage of students placed in the higher rating categories on the two tests, so that 52 percent of students would be rated Proficient or above on the Geometry test and 35 percent Proficient or above on Integrated Math II. "We're changing the cut score on these two tests to bring them in line with the others," said school board President Tom Gunlock. "We had to make the adjustments based on results." The board will vote on the change at its next meeting June 13 and 14. See below for the scores the state projected in January for all new math and English tests, as well as more detail on how the proposed change will affect how many kids fall into each rating category. The preliminary scores and proposed changes drew immediate complaints from board member Wagner, a Dayton Democrat, who has worried for months that passage rates on these new tests could cripple chances for some students to graduate. Ohio has a few paths students can take to qualify for graduation, but the main pathway calls for them to earn "points" toward graduation based on their ratings on state tests - one point if Limited, two for Basic, three for Proficient, four for Accelerated and five for Advanced. High school students need 18 points to graduate. With seven math, English and social studies tests required, they have the opportunity to earn as many as 35. That means that students don't have to score as proficient on every test to graduate. These new rules took effect for freshmen starting high school in 2014-15. But Wagner says that system is unfair. If only 52 percent count as Proficient and earn three points, almost half of students will earn two or less, placing them behind schedule to graduate. Setting scores so that only 35 percent are proficient or above, as proposed for Integrated Math II, will have two thirds of students behind schedule, Wagner said. "We are headed for a train wreck!" Wagner wrote on his Facebook page. "These scores and the arbitrary standards being set for rigor put as many as two-thirds of our students in jeopardy for graduation! That'll show the world how tough we are! That'll motivate them to try harder as we keep moving the bar!" Wagner disagrees with Gunlock and ODE officials over whether the proposed adjustments make graduation easier for students or harder. Wagner says the proposed targets are still harder than what the board expected from projections in January, while Gunlock and ODE note that the adjustments make the targets easier than if they made no change now. Wagner said that setting tough requirements on the tests will especially hurt poor and urban areas. "This is class warfare," Wagner said. "These guys are setting us up so only the rich are gong to make it through high school now." scottshawdredge.jpeg Lt. Col. Karl Jansen commanded the Army Corps' Buffalo District over the past two years during its conflict with the Ohio EPA and the Port of Cleveland over dredging the Cuyahoga River shipping channel and its proposed open-lake disposal of PCB-laden sediment. (Scott Shaw/Plain Dealer file photo) BUFFALO, N.Y. - The commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Buffalo District - which oversees shipping on Lake Erie and at the Port of Cleveland - has been reassigned, and replaced by Lt. Col. Adam Czekanski of the Army Corps' San Francisco District. Lt. Col. Karl Jansen An Army Corps spokesman said the reassignment of Lt. Col. Karl Jansen was routine and unrelated to a federal lawsuit and ongoing dispute over the past two years between the Corps and the Ohio EPA and Port of Cleveland. "The change of command happens every two years at about this time," said Andrew Kornacki, public affairs chief at the Buffalo District. "It is a part of the normal Army process to change officer every two years," and a time-honored Army tradition that dates back to before the Civil War. Jansen will be transferred to the Army Corps' headquarters in Washington, D.C. The formal change of command ceremony will take place July 7 aboard the USS Little Rock located at the Buffalo and Erie County Naval and Military Park in Buffalo. Last year, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Nugent issued an injunction accusing the Army Corps of "unlawful, arbitrary and/or capricious" violations of common sense and federal law. He ordered the Corps to dredge the entire Cuyahoga River shipping channel, and to dispose of the dredged sediment in a confined disposal facility - not nine miles offshore into Lake Erie. Lt. Col. Adam Czekanski In his opinion, Nugent cited the "irreparable harm" the Army Corps could cause to the health of Lake Erie by dumping PCBs and other carcinogenic toxins into the open lake. Those same issues are expected to return to Nugent's federal courtroom this year if the Army Corps insists on open-lake disposal of dredged sediment, or if the Corps demands that Ohio or the Port of Cleveland pay for the disposal of the sediment in a lakefront containment dike. In his farewell address, Jansen said it has been a privilege to serve as the 72nd commander of the Buffalo District, and commended the people of the district for their extraordinary contributions to public service. "Since 1857, Buffalo District has proudly served the people and the watersheds of Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, and the St. Lawrence Seaway," Jansen said a prepared release. "Reliable for their character, competence, and positive 'can-do' attitude, our people make things better for our fellow citizens by enabling economic prosperity, assuring national security, and protecting our vital natural resources - a true noble purpose." PREVIEW "A Struggle for Home: The Crimean Tatars" What: A documentary by director Christina Paschyn, who will introduce the film and answer questions post-screening. When: 7 and 8:30 p.m. Friday, June 3, and 5, 7 and 8:30 p.m. Saturday, June 4. Where: Ukrainian Museum-Archives, 1202 Kenilworth Ave. in Tremont. Tickets: $10 for adults, $5 for students. Go to http://www.umacleveland.org/film/ or call 216-781-4329. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Christina Paschyn began her career as a journalist when she was a freshman at Parma High School in 1999. She contributed to The Plain Dealer's Next section, written by and for Cleveland-area teenagers, reporting on the cruel ordeal of midterm exams, reviewing movies and writing editorials urging passage of an upcoming school levy in Parma. Seventeen years later, Paschyn teaches journalism at Northwestern University in Qatar, after earning both a bachelor's and a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. Paschyn, who grew up in Cleveland's tight Ukrainian community and speaks fluent Ukrainian, went back to her roots to make her first documentary. "A Struggle for Home: The Crimean Tatars," tells the tragic history of the indigenous people of Crimea, a peninsula in the Black Sea south of Ukraine that has been under Russian domination for most of the years since 1783, when the Russian Empire conquered it. The film, showing Friday and Saturday at the Ukrainian Museum-Archives in Tremont, is a brisk 45-minute feature that covers the history of Crimea and the Tatars going back to the Crimean Khanate in the 15th century. In 1783, the Russian Empire conquered Crimea, and in 1944 Josef Stalin deported more than 200,000 Tatars from their Crimean homeland to Central Asia. Nearly half of those packed into boxcars for the long and brutal journey died; last year, Ukraine officially declared it an act of genocide. Paschyn, who began shooting the film in Crimea in 2012, thought she was making a film about the Tatars' triumph over their long history of tragedy. "Originally, I was going to focus on he Crimean Tatars' triumphant return to their homeland after decades of Soviet-enforced exile," she told a writer for the Borrego FilmFestival, where the film was shown. "When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many Tatars thought they had won their centuries-long battle for freedom from Russia," she said. "But in February 2014, those dreams were dashed when Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded and re-annexed the peninsula." The film combines dramatic re-enactments and archival film footage with interviews Paschyn conducted with survivors of the deportation and current Tatar activists and residents of Crimea, who continue to protest the Russian occupation of their homeland under dangerous conditions. Paschyn will be back in her own homeland this weekend to introduce her film and answer questions after the screening. Sherrod Brown Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio speaks to members of media on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 7, 2016. (Sait Serkan Gurbuz, AP Photo) CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown on Friday said he wants part-time workers, freelancers and contractors to receive benefits from employers. His "Benefits Bank" proposal would allow these workers to receive sick leave and retirement money from their employers, and have taxes withheld. Workers could keep their accrued benefits as they move from job to job. Employers would pay into a "Benefits Bank" account, using the number of hours an employee worked to calculate their benefits. "Lack of benefits is a major barrier to anyone who wants to do freelance work and take on more contract work. When we increase our safety net for all workers - regardless of the sort of work they do - we make our economy more dynamic," The Cleveland Democrat said in a speech at the City Club of Cleveland. Brown, a Democrat, acknowledged that it's unlikely that the proposal would pass tomorrow. Republicans dominate Congress, and it's a presidential election year. The proposal would help people who work for contract-based apps, including ride-sharing services like Uber. Or handymen and home cleaners who find work through the app Handy. "There are benefits to contracting, there are benefits to harnessing new technology to reinvigorate old industries," Brown said. "We just need to allow our labor standards to evolve with them." Brown also proposed taxing companies that pay meager wages and cause workers to rely too heavily on government aid. The government would determine the fee using the percentage of employees who fall below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. "It's pretty simple - if a firm choose to pay its workers so little that many are forced into government assistance, then that firm must reimburse American taxpayers," Brown said. rob portman.JPG In this April 1, 2016, file photo, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, will attend the Republican National Convention this summer inside the Quicken Loans Arena. Portman is considered one of the Senate's most vulnerable Republicans this cycle, as he faces the well-known former governor, Ted Strickland. ((John Minchillo, AP Photo)) Rob Portman will attend the RNC. Jim Renacci downplays RNC safety concerns. And Paul Ryan will support Donald Trump. Read more in the Ohio Politics Roundup, brought to you by Mary Kilpatrick, filling in for Henry J. Gomez. Portman and the RNC: U.S. Sen. Rob Portman will attend and participate in the Republican National Convention inside Quicken Loans Arena this summer, his campaign confirmed to me Thursday. "But it's unclear whether Portman will speak during the convention, and his campaign and Senate office did not provide details about his convention role or level of participation." Portman, who faces a tough challenge from Democratic former Gov. Ted Strickland, backs controversial GOP presidential pick Donald Trump, but doesn't seem eager to share the spotlight with him at the RNC. Democrats, however, love to tie Portman to the unpredictable billionaire. Renacci downplays RNC protest safety concerns: U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci reassured Clevelanders that the RNC will be safe, despite expected protests, cleveland.com reporter Andrew J. Tobias writes. "He noted that political protests have been a regular feature of past Republican conventions, but said they did not receive quite the same level of media attention," Tobias writes. Helping at-risk youth: Renacci and other Cleveland leaders have been working for over a year to identify programs that help at-risk youth prosper, cleveland.com reporter Leila Atassi writes. The group in July (right before the RNC) will endorse about a half dozen groups after evaluating nearly 400 organizations. "Renacci declined to provide further details of how those five or six programs will benefit from making the cut or exactly how they will work together under this initiative. But he foreshadowed a coordinated effort aimed at ending generational poverty, empowering youth and connecting them with mentors and job opportunities," Atassi writes. Waterguns, No. Guns, Yes. The city of Cleveland can ban water guns downtown in the "event zone" during the Republican National Convention. But not guns. Why? Ohio is an open carry state, which means that anyone who owns a gun legally can holster up in public because there's no law against it. Ohio does have a concealed carry law, so gun owners who want to carry their guns clandestinely must obtain a license from the state. But guns won't be allowed in a super-secure perimeter immediately around the convention hall, Quicken Loans Arena. The Secret Service controls that area and has said the weapons will be banned there. Read more in my explainer. House Speaker Paul Ryan climbs on the Trump train: Ryan said Thursday that he will vote for Trump in the November election. Ryan, who earlier said he wasn't ready to support Trump, explained his position in an editorial in his hometown newspaper, The Gazette. "It's no secret that he and I have our differences. I won't pretend otherwise. And when I feel the need to, I'll continue to speak my mind. But the reality is, on the issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground than disagreement," Ryan wrote. Celeste praises Clinton: Former Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste praised Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton's speech on national security, according to the Clinton campaign. "In November, Ohioans will go to the polls to select our next Commander in Chief. Hillary Clinton demonstrated again in her speech today just how prepared she is to take on this mantle and how intellectually and emotionally unfit Donald Trump is for the job," Celeste said in a news release Thursday. Donate to receive access? A hedge fund manager who supported Ohio Gov. John Kasich's presidential bid said that donating money to candidates comes with perks, MarketPlace reporter Nancy Marshall-Genzer writes. "The levels which I give at certainly are not going to have any influence," he said. "Do you buy some kind of access? You may. You certainly may - yeah." Buckeye State loses out: Ohio prioritized demolishing homes over helping homeowners struggling to keep their residences, cleveland.com Washington Bureau Chief Stephen Koff reports. The state made last-minute changes to a federal grant application and asked for more money to raze houses, and less to help Ohio homeowners in need. The decision caused the state to miss out on millions. Koff explains why and how this happened. "In a broad sense, this was a matter of Ohio picking priorities -- and winners and losers -- amid the usual tension between camps advocating for demolishing already-foreclosed homes and those pushing to help existing owners pay mortgages to stay out of foreclosure," Koff writes. Ohio Democrats look ahead: Ohio Democrats haven't won the governor's seat in six of the last seven elections, cleveland.com columnist Brent Larkin reports. But the party is looking ahead. Here's a look at possible contenders for governor on the Democratic ticket. Richard Cordray, the head of the watchdog Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, "has always been the smartest guy in the room, the one with the dazzling resume, supersized ability and uneven political skills," Larkin writes. Meanwhile, former Cincinnati state Rep. Connie Pillich "has been telling people for months that she will be a candidate," Larkin writes. Pillich would face steep competition from Cordray, if he chooses to run. "But if she's the nominee for governor, it will be because Cordray and Youngstown-area congressman Tim Ryan passed," Larkin writes. Barnes to withdraw bill to abolish Housing Court: Amid questions of a conflict of interest, State Rep. John Barnes Jr. of Cleveland decided to withdraw a bill that would shut down the city's Housing Court, cleveland.com reporter Jackie Borchardt writes. "Barnes said in an interview that his experiences with the court were part of the inspiration behind the bill, but his personal matters were separate from the legislation," Borchardt writes. Get Battleground Briefing, our FREE politics newsletter, delivered to your inbox: Sign up here. Tips or links? Send here. Follow along on Twitter: @HenryJGomez. puppymill.jpg According to the Humane Society of the U.S., more than 250 dogs were rescued in August 2012 from this puppy mill in Shelby, Ohio. The Ohio Senate last week passed a bill that would prohibit Ohio communities from imposing dog-purchase requirements on local pet stores aimed at curbing purchases from puppy mills. (Paul Vernon, Special for HSUS, PD file, 2012) Localities should be able to regulate pet stores more strictly than the state, especially when state law is so woefully behind the times. But Ohio lawmakers don't see it that way. Remaining on the Ohio House's menu when it returns in November is Senate Bill 331, which would forbid cities and villages from regulating pet store sales of dogs. Two cities that do that now are Toledo (since 2013) and Grove City, the Columbus suburb, whose ordinance takes effect Jan. 1. The cities' aims: to fight so-called puppy mills - intensive breeders of puppies, raised in sometimes sordid conditions. What's at issue with the bill? SB 331, sponsored by state Sen. Bob Peterson, a Republican from Fayette County, southwest of Columbus, would replace local regulation with proposed statewide regulations. That sounds good, but animal advocates say the rules are weak and that pre-empting localities from being able to pass their own pet-store ordinances forecloses a needed safeguard. Backers and opponents of SB 331: Key backer: Petland, the Chillicothe-based chain, founded in 1967, which employs more than 500 Ohioans and has nearly a score of Ohio stores. Petland doesn't have a Toledo store but built one in Grove City before that city passed its pet-store ordinance. About our editorials Editorials express the view of the of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer -- the senior leadership and editorial-writing staff. As is traditional, editorials are unsigned and intended to be seen as the voice of the news organization. * Talk about the topic of this editorial in the comments below. * Send a letter to the editor, which will be considered for print publication. * Email general questions or comments about the editorial board to Elizabeth Sullivan, opinion director for cleveland.com. Among those opposed to the bill are the Ohio Municipal League and the Humane Society of the United States. Where the bill stands: The Ohio Senate passed SB 331 by a largely party-line vote of 21-11 on May 25 and it is now pending in the Ohio House. What do the Toledo and Grove City ordinances do? Both ordinances limit where a pet store may obtain dogs and cats. Grove City's, for example, would let stores sell only dogs and cats obtained from an animal rescue shelter, or a humane society. Toledo's is similar, but grandfathered existing pet stores. Grove City's doesn't. How SB 331 would change that: Peterson's bill would let retailers sell dogs from a "qualified breeder" (an entity that isn't a "high-volume breeder") - but also from a high-volume breeder if it's licensed by the U.S. Agriculture Department or a state. Stores couldn't, however, obtain dogs from breeders who'd violated the Animal Welfare Act within certain time spans. (Ohio law defines a high-volume breeder as an entity that produces at least nine litters of puppies a year and sells 60 or more adult dogs or puppies a year.) What should happen: It's hard to argue that Petland doesn't have a beef with Grove City. But the city's ordinance doesn't take effect for almost seven months. That allows time to resolve the matter locally, and makes SB 331 - yet another assault on home rule in Ohio - unnecessary and untimely. The bill should not be taken up in the fall. ode.jpg Jim Wright, director of assessments at the Ohio Department of Education, tells the State Board of Education about new proposed standardized-testing rating levels last September. Ohio Auditor Dave Yost writes that ODE's excess of mandates and unclear mission make it possibly the worst agency in Ohio government. (Patrick O'Donnell, The Plain Dealer, File, 2015) Dave Yost is Ohio auditor. You can do too much in an attempt to succeed. It's the main problem with the Ohio Department of Education -- and why I think it may be the worst agency in all of state government (a competitive field, that). The department suffers from a muddled identity and a to-do list that is too long, too complicated and too contradictory. Is it an advocate for education? A funder? A regulator? An accountant? Is it a policy developer or a software company or a think tank or a performance analyst or a trainer? Under Ohio law, it's required to be all of these things, and many more. It's not the department's fault. Each year, the General Assembly adds new laws upon old laws, all with the best of intentions, all for the children. But it's like a bird cage that's maintained by just putting new layers of newspaper on top of the old layers. It's gotten to be quite a mess over the years. With the exit of Richard Ross, the former state superintendent of schools, a new leadership team will have the opportunity to narrow the focus of the department and spin off functions that are not related to its core mission. What are we fighting for? Of course, part of the problem is that ODE's core mission is not clear. I remember working many years ago with a government agency that was developing its first mission statement. I argued that what was excluded from the mission statement was just as important -- maybe more so -- than what was included. An all-inclusive mission statement makes it useless for staying focused on the mission, because everything is in it. I lost the argument, and the mission statement included the pet projects of every constituent group in that far-flung agency. No one ever referred to that mission statement again after it was printed. The ODE web page does not include a mission statement. A link to something called "Vision of the State Board" returns a message: "Page not found." Talk about a metaphor alert. The department needs to settle with the General Assembly what its mission is, and make sure the law reflects that. Skimming Title 33 of the Ohio Revised Code shows an amazing, incredible, astounding list of things that the department must do -- a list that has grown year by year, metastasizing in the dark until no leader could possibly grasp it all. The statute should not require ODE to do things not related to its core mission - such as developing software, setting accounting standards or doling out money. Whatever the department's core competency might be, there surely are many duties required in law that are not. The department needs to stop doing those things. The new superintendent should lead and tell the General Assembly what things should come off the list. Maybe some should go to other places -- funding and accounting seems like the core mission of the Office of Budget and Management -- and others maybe don't need to be done at all, like telling local schools how they must be organized. A 13-year production cycle. Ohio's education dollars should be purchasing a product on behalf of the public: a literate, numerate, job-ready citizen. The production cycle is 13 years, at least. In what other field could you change the design, tooling specifications and quality-control procedures 13 times during the production? Whether it's a custom-made product from an artisan's shop bench and hand tools or an assembly-line manufacturer, it simply couldn't be done. At some point, the designer needs to sit down and let the workers build. The next governor ought to say something in his or her first State of the State speech: "We're going to do an education bill. Bring me your best ideas, your necessary fixes, your innovations. I'll sign it. And that will be the last education bill I sign as governor. Bring me another bill during my term, and I will veto it. Let the teachers teach!" Leadership is a particular direction, not many directions. Focusing on too many things is bad for business. It's why, after decades of acquisition and growth, many very large companies are spinning off business units that are not part of the core mission or core competencies. The business pages are full of such restructurings. It works in the public sector, too. Gov. John Kasich broke up an agency that was too big, and failing: the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. By making the sprawling Medicaid program a stand-alone agency -- it includes not only medical care, but mental health and long-term care for the aging -- both ODJFS and Medicaid are doing their jobs better. ODE will do more for the kids by doing less. Dave Yost, a Republican, is the Ohio auditor. Parma police SWAT SUV.jpg A 23-year-old Medina mother is facing child endangering charges after she left three young children alone in a car parked outside a Parma Bureau of Motor Vehicles Office. (Carol Kovach, cleveland.com) PARMA, Ohio -- A 23-year-old Medina mother was cited after she left three young children alone in a car parked outside a Parma Bureau of Motor Vehicles Office, according to police records. Chelsey Huddleston is charged with three counts of child endangering. An arraignment is scheduled for June 22 at Parma Municipal Court, a court clerk said Thursday. The children were alone in the car for at least 30 minutes on May 25, when the temperature was about 85 degrees, Parma police Lt. Kevin Riley said. A witness saw the children in the backseat of a Buick at 12:10 p.m. After watching the children for 10 minutes, the witness went inside the BMV and told a Parma police officer who was working security. The officer called police dispatch at 12:39 p.m., according to police reports. Officers arrived and found a 2-year-old girl and 1-year-old boy in car seats. A 5-year-old girl was sitting in between the two younger children. The two front windows were rolled down, and the rear windows closest to the children where rolled up, according to reports. Huddleston came out of the BMV shortly after officers arrived. She told police that she didn't realize she had been gone that long. The 1- and 2-year-olds were Huddleston's biological children. The 5-year-old was her Godchild. If you wish to discuss or comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments section. Like Chanda Neely on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter: High pressure near Ohio High pressure expected in the Ohio area keeping rain chances extremely minimal just for today. (Kelly Reardon, cleveland.com) CLEVELAND, Ohio - High pressure is moving into the Northeast Ohio area, causing lovely warm weather and almost zero possibility of rain. Today: Thanks to a high pressure system, Northeast Ohio is going to have yet another beautiful dry, and sunny day. Temperatures are forecasted to be more towards normal seasonal averages, maxing out at 75 degrees by 2 p.m. High pressure causes air to sink in the atmosphere. Thunderstorms need rising and lifting air in order to occur, which is why the precipitation chances will be so low. Keep checking cleveland.com/weather for twice daily weather updates for Northeast Ohio, and don't forget to submit any weather questions you may have! Kelly Reardon is cleveland.com's meteorologist. Please follow me on Facebook and Twitter @kreardon0818. Japan Missing Child Takayuki Tanooka, right, father of the 7-year-old Japanese boy who went missing nearly a week ago, speaks to media after his son was found Friday in Hakodate, Hokkaido. (Daisuke Suzuki, Kyodo News via AP) TOKYO, Japan -- A man apologized for his actions after his 7-year-old son was found alive Friday, more than a week after he had been left in a heavily wooded area as a punishment by his parents. "I told my son that I am sorry that I made him go through a very hard situation. He nodded to me," Takayuki Tanooka said Friday during a news conference, CNN reports. "I have been raising him with lots of love. I would like to pour a lot more love over him from now on, and watch him growing up." Tanooka and his wife had left their son, Yamato Tanooka, alone beside a road Saturday because he had been throwing rocks at cars and people. When they returned minutes later, Yamato had disappeared. The parents initially said the boy had become separated while picking wild vegetables, but they later admitted to leaving him on the side of the road in a wooded area known for having bears. The New York Times reports the Yamato made his way to a military base about three miles from where he had been dropped off. He found an empty hut in a training area and huddled inside, drinking water from a faucet outside and sleeping on mattresses spread on the floor. He was found by a soldier Friday, who said the boy quickly ate two rice balls offered to him but did not cry, the Associated Press reports. The boy was dehydrated and had some scratches on his arms and legs, but otherwise was unharmed. The parents are not being investigated by police, reports say. watch now Now that the "sell in May and go away" theory didn't play out in May, Jim Cramer is hearing chatter of "lighten up in June before the swoon." Cramer hates these poetic tidbits. If they didn't rhyme, no one would even pay attention to them. The real problem is what Cramer refers to as complacent bearishness. It is always so much easier to be publicly bearish than it is to be bullish in this market. "The fact is, the most complacent people are the ones who presume that stocks that drop are finished and the market's swoons are all prologues to gigantic declines that must be sidestepped or else," the "Mad Money" host said. In fact, this year has been a series of roving bear markets, followed by thriving bull markets. One-by-one, each sector was taken down, regardless of the calendar. Oil, technology, retail, materials, biotech, consumer packaged goods. And with exception of retail, Cramer considered each sell-off to be a buying opportunity. "I don't want to scare you away from stocks when any kind of pullback can create some terrific buying opportunities. That strategy might not be alliterative, but I think it is right," Cramer said. Read More Cramer: Complacent bearishness plaguing stocksyou could be missing opportunity Typically, the technology sector is divided between companies branded as old tech and those deemed to be new. Cramer has found that investors often ignore the old tech, and only focus on the newer companies offering sexier growth. But old tech offers something that newer tech does not: value. Companies like Cisco , Intel and IBM have cheap stocks and yields in excess of 3 percent. "In other words, they are a totally different kind of investment," the "Mad Money" host said. Cramer turned to Tim Collins, a technician and colleague at RealMoney.com, who pointed out that there is no need to choose between old and new technology. Collins noted that owning one value tech stock and one growth tech stock could be what investors need for a diversified portfolio. "The truth is, you should be looking for opportunities wherever they can be found," Cramer said. Read More Cramer's battle of old vs new technology: Why the charts say you need both Suddenly everyone only cares about cars, too. Cramer finds it remarkable how quickly the automobile has moved into scope as the next big thing in technology, perhaps taking the place of cellphones. And Cramer totally gets it. Tesla seems like the most exciting thing that has happened to the world of automobiles since the Model T. "I have been saying that Tesla is a cult stock for ages, meaning that there is no logical way to explain how and where it trades," Cramer said. But that doesn't mean Cramer is recommending Ford or General Motors, either. For those investors who want to play the connected technology car with a stock, Cramer recommended NXP Semiconductors . Last year it shelled out $12 billion to acquire Freescale and became the top automobile related semiconductor company. Read More Cramer: Love Tesla? Here's your play on the connected car Jetta Productions | Getty Images It's that time again! Jim Cramer rang the lightning round bell, which means he gave his take on caller favorite stocks at rapid speed: Monsanto : "Just stay long. I'm typically not an arbitrager but everything I listen to and my partner David Faber makes me think that there's something coming. You probably want to be in MON." SecureWorks Corp : "I am so gun shy on cybersecurity, I'm just going to go back to Cyberark. We had Palo Alto on the show last night and I thought he told a great story. Does anybody really care? I do but I don't want to push the group hard." Read more from Mad Money with Jim Cramer Cramer: The money-making theme that Amazon & Salesforcehave figured out Cramer Remix: Why rich snobs on Wall Street don't understandthe dollar stores Cramer on Lowe's vs Home Depot: I'm changing my opinion Celator Pharmaceuticals : "Come on man, the gain has been made! Cha-ching, ka-ching, cha-ching. Let's move on." GoPro : "Ambarella reported a good number tonight, and they're a drone company, people are going to give a little halo to GoPro. I think if you can get to $12 it is time to skeedaddle." Dow Chemical Co : "A charitable trust name. I think the stock is actually 10 points undervalued. Right here, right now, I want to buy it." Fitbit : "I'm snake bit from Fitbit. I liked Fitbit but it's like, I can't take the Fitbit pressure. There we are ... I just feel you have to be very careful in this." Big Lots : "Big Lots had a good quarter, what can I say. It's time for those stores where you get the bargains. I think you have to wait for it to come in a little because it had a run. But Big Lots is back." Nokia Corp : "Nokia is not back. Now it's just a river in Finland." watch now United Airlines trails its close competitors in customer satisfaction. But CEO Oscar Munoz says the company is making sleep a priority to get business class travelers cozy with the airline again. "We set out to reinvent the whole business class experience," Munoz told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" Thursday. "We went back to re-engineer everything we had thought about and made sleep a priority." The company unveiled its new "United Polaris" business class Thursday and began non-stop flights between San Francisco and Singapore a day earlier. The flight on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner will take about 16 hours and 20 minutes westbound and 15 and a half hours going east. It is the longest trip operated by any U.S.-based carrier. United surveyed customers for the new business class to get a sense of what they needed on 16-plus-hour journeys. Sleep quality, Munoz said, was by far the most important. "We all understand the restorative powers of [sleep], and that's been supported by a lot of research," Munoz said. "Ms. Huffington just wrote a book on it; it's what our customers incredibly over-index in regards to what they wanted in this new product." The "sleep-enticing" amenities include bedding from Saks Fifth Avenue, with duvets, blankets, and two pillows, as well as slippers, pajamas, a gel-cooled pillow, eye shades, a lavender pillow mist and spa products. The sleep-upgrade could help boost United's customer satisfaction results, as it looks to move up in the rankings. Alaska Airlines scored the highest on customer satisfaction surveys, with 751 points out of 1,000, according to data from J.D. Power. Delta is second at 725, followed by American and United Airlines. "The level of improvement has been great across the industry, and we have improved along with everyone," Munoz said. "But we still have some lagging effect, and it is products like this that clearly differentiate and move us ahead." New business class seating for United Airlines Source: United Wal-Mart is testing a new way to bring products to your front door. At the company's annual shareholders meeting in Bentonville, Ark., Friday, CEO Doug McMillon will announce a grocery delivery pilot with Uber and Lyft. The test will debut in Denver, Colo., and Phoenix, Az., over the next two weeks, and follows what the company called a "very quiet" pilot between Sam's Club and Deliv in Miami, Fla., in March. The tie-up with that delivery company, which has scored investments with major mall operators including Simon Property Group, involves delivery of both grocery and general merchandise. "We've been working on convenient new ways to make shopping easier for our busy customers and members. You can see this in our rapid expansion of online grocery pickup across the country," Michael Bender, an executive vice president in Wal-Mart's global-commerce division, wrote in a blog post. That includes a grocery home delivery service that is currently offered in San Jose, Calif., and Denver, Colo. To place an order for home delivery, a customer in one of the test locations goes online and selects the preferred delivery window. Store associates will then select and prepare their orders, and request a driver from one of the companies to pick it up. Shoppers pay the retailer's standard $7 to $10 delivery charge online, and pay nothing to the driver when their order is delivered. A woman pours beer at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver. Getty Images The status quo sucks. It's only the status quo because we haven't yet figured out how to make it better. Jim Koch founder of Boston Beer Company We've zeroed in on three strategies that have led to success in the craft beer world that are relevant to all entrepreneurs. "Whether you're just starting a business, at the top of your industry or somewhere in between, you have to constantly be asking, 'How can I do this better?'" Koch said. 1. Don't drink alone craft brewers often succeed by working with what a technology company would consider an "enemy." While the competition for shelf space and tap handles is ferocious, most craft brewers don't view others in their field as enemies, as is common in many industries. They share secrets, work together with other brewers and encourage up-and-coming breweries. It's a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats philosophy that brewers say has the added benefit of making craft beer lovers more loyal to that segment of the industry. Sierra Nevada's "Beer Camp Across America" series, which just launched, includes 31 brewers working together to create six unique beers that are available only for a year. "The craft brewing renaissance is part of the hippie dream of the '70s, so I think there is some built-in idealism," said Sam Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head. "By and large, we all help each other and share ideas, do events or make actual beers that are collaborative. You don't see [Samsung] and Apple coming out with a collaborative phone. ... I think that resonates with beer lovers who see that it's about the love of beer, not money." It's working: Nearly half of the more than 4,100 breweries in the United States increased their capacity by 10 percent or more in 2015, but according to the Brewers Association, the vast majority of capacity in the country isn't expanding. The beer giants are stalled, and if MillerCoors is successful in closing its Eden, North Carolina, facility in September (the Teamsters are fighting it), total capacity for the U.S. beer industry will likely go down this year. Boston Beer goes a step further, having provided loans to craft brewers (along with other food, beverage and hospitality small businesses) since 2008. "We've provided start-up loans to over 30 craft brewers," Koch said. "This is counterintuitive to most people. Why would you help your competition? Craft brewers help craft brewers because we believe ... there is still so much room for craft beer to grow." 2. The brand on the label is essential to promote, but the most important brand campaign audience is internal your employees. Even if you're collaborating with other brewers, you still need to stand out on your own. In some cases, that's done by taking risks with new beers. Other times it's about establishing a big marketing presence. But many brewers start their branding efforts with their employees. Jen Kimmich, co-owner of The Alchemist, maker of Heady Topper, which is one of the top-ranked beers in the country, said it does not talk about mission statements or tell people "how great it is" to work for the company. "We do, however, show our customers (and community) what it is like to actually work here," she said. The Alchemist recently created a Facebook video series portraying its staff. Kimmich said employees are everywhere on the company's website, Facebook and YouTube page. The Alchemist has a videographer on salary who loves creating fun clips for social media, Kimmich said, adding, "Our employees love being filmed!" The company has named a beer after an employee, has printed their faces on T-shirts and has 4th of July floats with staff. "If you are genuine, honest and, most important, unique in employment branding efforts, you will attract like-minded people who will be passionate about the employment you provide," Kimmich said. In the 12 years since the company opened its 60-seat brewery, it has never spent money on paid advertising. It gives money to the Food Shelf or other local organizations; investments made in employees (livable salaries, paid time off, health insurance, 401(k) plans and meals) have helped create a reputation for being a good employer. "Our customers are loyal to us because of this. This is what I mean by attracting like-minded people; not just employees, but loyal customers," Kimmich said. 3. The customer is the king of beers, and R&D in any industry use them early and often to uncover potential blockbusters. Including customers in the product development decision-making process is an approach the craft brewers have honed. At Dogfish Head's Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, brewpub, for example, customers have the chance to sample one-off brewing experiments, and if the consensus is positive enough, the company considers rolling those beers out nationally. Palo Santo was initially a small batch but is now a year-round offering. And Dogfish Head's upcoming winter seasonal Beer for Breakfast is getting a push because the pub verdict was so favorable. Another rarity: Namaste started out as a pub batch for some brewing friends who were having a tough time. Customers loved it, so it found its way into 750ml bottles as an occasional release. "People REALLY loved it, so we put it in 12-oz. six-packs and made it available year-round," said a Dogfish Head spokeswoman. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, along with several financial industry groups, filed a court challenge to the fiduciary rule finalized in April by the Department of Labor. Joining the Chamber of Commerce in the court action were the Financial Services Institute, the Financial Services Roundtable, the Insured Retirement Institute and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. The lawsuit was filed on Thursday in Dallas. Despite intense opposition and heavy lobbying against the proposal by the brokerage and asset management industries, the new rule is the first major change to Employee Retirement Income Security Act law in four decades and will take full effect at the beginning of 2018. The suit, meanwhile, is focused on the provision that leaves financial advisors giving retirement advice vulnerable to class-action lawsuits if investors think their advisor has not acted in their best interests. The groups which filed suit also believe the Labor Department crafted a complex rule that will make financial advice very costly for smaller investors. Jacob Wackerhausen | Getty Images The Department of Labor issued a final rule imposing new fiduciary obligations on advisors to 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts. More than $14 trillion in assets are held in such retirement accounts, according to industry data. Initially proposed in 2010, the final rule requires that all advisors to such accounts act in the best interests of their clients. "Many firms say they put their clients' interests first," said Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez. "Now it's not just a marketing slogan, it's the law." He added: "This is a huge win for the middle class." Perez said the final rule incorporates changes that make the mechanics of drafting the new best-interests contracts easier, reduces the disclosure requirements on advisors and extends the timeline for full compliance with the new rule. "I believe the industry will be able to comply with these new streamlined rules," Perez said. "This involved one of the most well-funded efforts to defeat a proposed rule in the last decade but it made it," said Ed Gjertsen, vice president of Mack Investment Securities and chairman of the Financial Planning Association. "Most people don't understand the fiduciary debate, but they do understand the idea of someone acting in their best interests. "This rule is a huge benefit to the public," he added. The opposition exists, however. "Affordable, objective financial advice is a critical component to hardworking Americans' ability to save for a dignified retirement," said Dale Brown, CEO of the Financial Services Institute in a prepared statement. "The Department of Labor's two earlier proposals were complex and unworkable," he added. "As we have said since Day One, there is no compelling evidence this rule is necessary to achieve a uniform fiduciary standard, and DOL's own analysis fails to make the case. We will thoroughly analyze this rule to determine if it protects Main Street investors by preserving their access to affordable, objective financial advice delivered by their chosen financial advisor." The rule, however, remains a mystery to most individual investors. Surveys regularly indicate that few investors understand the concept of fiduciary obligation, and most believe their advisors are already required to act in their best interests. Investors need to keep in mind that this new rule covers only tax-advantaged retirement accounts and does not apply to most other investments. However, industry observers believe it could lead to more sweeping changes in the years ahead across the financial services industry. To that point, it could make it difficult for some smaller advisory firms to do business and perhaps encourage a further consolidation into larger companies better able to handle the detailed rules of compliance. This is a process, not a light-switch kind of event. Buyers still need to beware and demand cost and fee transparency from their advisors. Knut Rostad president of the Institute for the Fiduciary Standard "If I were outside this industry, I would assume that my financial advisor was required to act in my best interest," said Skip Schweiss, a managing director of advisor advocacy and industry affairs for TD Ameritrade Institutional. He added that "the DOL rule enhances the standard of care applying to financial advisors. There may be unintended consequences, but fundamentally, this will be a good thing for investors." The unintended consequences of the rule, say opponents, will hurt the small investors the rule is intended to protect. The brokerage industry argues that the increased compliance costs that will come with the new rule could price small investors out of the market for financial advice. Some might be forced into more expensive, fee-based accounts while others would lose access to advice entirely. Sheryl Garrett, founder of the Garrett Planning Network of fee-based financial planners, thinks such fears are overblown. "There will be a period of adjustment, but it won't be as dreadful as many fear," said Garrett, whose network includes 280 advisors. "The brokerage industry wasn't exactly embracing the middle class, anyway. "It could take until the next generation of financial advisors to really see the transition to a fiduciary culture," she added. The brokerage industry will be most affected by the DOL rule. Many brokers are currently regulated under a weaker "suitability" standard of conduct, in which investment recommendations have to be suitable for investors but not necessarily optimal or in their best interests. That lesser standard will still apply to brokers advising taxable investment accounts. The rule, however, will also affect registered investment advisors, insurance agents and anyone else providing advice on individual retirement accounts. "It casts a wide net," said Gjertsen of the FPA and Mack Investment Securities, whose "hybrid" firm offers both commission and fee-based investment advice to clients. "It's not just broker-dealers that will be affected." Fee-based advisors already operating as fiduciaries under the 1940 Investment Act will have to adjust to the ERISA rules governing retirement accounts. The issue of rollovers of 401(k) plans into IRAs or taxable accounts is a key element of the DOL's initiative, and it affects all advisors. Roughly $500 billion in assets every year are rolled over from 401(k) plans into other accounts when employees leave a job. Those numbers will increase as more baby boomers enter retirement. The DOL wants to ensure those rollovers are in the best interest of their owners. There are four basic options for investors: Leave the assets in the plan; move them to a new employer's plan; roll them tax-free into an IRA; or cash out the funds with a taxable distribution. What the best interests of an individual are depends on their circumstances, their need for income and their tolerance for risk. watch now The 401(k) plan may represent the lowest-cost investment account but may not necessarily be the best choice for investors. "Costs matter, but the appropriateness of advice and accomplishing financial objectives matters more," said Garrett of the Garrett Planning Network. "The key on rollovers is having an open, informed discussion about the client's objectives and alternatives." Perhaps the biggest benefit of the DOL rule will be clearer information for investors on the costs of their retirement accounts and of the financial advice they receive. "People understand price transparency, and this rule will provide more transparency on costs to consumers," said Knut Rostad, president of the Institute for the Fiduciary Standard. That includes product commissions and account management fees, as well as 12b-1 fees and other revenue-sharing payments that advisors receive from mutual fund firms and insurance companies. The DOL rule doesn't prohibit commissions or revenue sharing, but it requires that all advisors sign the best-interests contract, disclosing all payments and conflicts of interest they have. If investors feel their interests have not been protected, they can now sue their advisors for breach of contract. The substantial changes that the DOL rule entails won't happen overnight. Firms are adapting their platforms and putting resources in place to handle the new compliance. Independent broker-dealer LPL Holdings, for example, recently announced changes to reduce costs and simplify fee structures for its retirement plan offerings to investors. Other firms may decide not to serve smaller investors at all, because of the increased costs, while others will offer streamlined advice products similar to what's on offer from so-called robo-advisors or online automated wealth-management services. "This is a process, not a light-switch kind of event," said Rostad. "Buyers still need to beware and demand cost and fee transparency from their advisors." watch now watch now watch now Donald Trump supporters were in short supply at this week's Code Conference, an invitation-only gathering of tech and media elites held at a high-end resort just outside Los Angeles. Such events are lonely places for conservative voices, said one attendee, who compared being a Trump supporter at Code to "being in the closet." He said people who know him well friends and colleagues know his views, but he keeps them quiet among this crowd. The attendee, a venture capital investor based outside the San Francisco Bay Area, asked not to be named for fear that revealing his support for the presumptive GOP nominee would damage the very business relationships he came to cultivate. We chatted briefly among a small group at a cocktail party one of the many networking events to mix and mingle then followed up for a more candid one-on-one discussion the next day. "Folks in San Francisco California in general are pretty open about their views and their dislike for anything that is conservative, and there is really not a discussion to be had around it," he said. He described people in the tech community as having a "monolithic mindset" and of claiming to be "progressive," while automatically labeling conservatives as "regressive." "So folks like us would just rather not engage and if there is a comment made just let it slide," he said. It is no secret that this group leans left: Individuals in the internet, electronics and communications sectors have donated more money to support Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton than any other candidate. Monetary support for Trump is at or near the bottom among this group, according to money-in-politics tracking group OpenSecrets.org. Billionaire investor and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel is one of the few big names in tech backing Trump. The attendee we spoke with described himself as fiscally conservative and in favor of small government, lower taxes, a strong military and international presence, but socially liberal and in favor of free trade and immigration. He said Trump had been his least favorite candidate among the Republican hopefuls, but he is now resigned to casting his ballot for the real estate tycoon. "I am not lock-stepped politically or policy-aligned with Trump," he said. "There were a lot better candidates who were more respected, more presidential and more qualified, but I think a bad conservative candidate is better than any Democratic candidate." Over the course of the conference, Trump's opponents were vocal. From the on-stage interviews, to the late night parties the implications of a Trump presidency were a source of angst. "I truly believe that if he gets elected both this country and to some extent the world will enter a very dark period," said Yoav Leitersdorf, a partner at YL Ventures. "I am also appalled by how un-presidential The Donald is I think that statesmanship and proper conduct are prerequisites for the role." Common concerns included Trump's positions with regard to minorities and immigration, foreign policy, the economy, trade and the erosion of American values. For example, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post , criticized Trump for attacking free speech and freedom of the press. "One thing that I think is not appropriate that Donald Trump is doing is working to freeze or chill the media that are examining him," Bezos said in his on-stage interview, which set the tone for the entire event. "We live in this amazing democracy with amazing freedom of speech and a presidential candidate should embrace that." A Trump win would raise serious questions, said Sanu Desai, managing director Torch Partners. "What does it say about the electorate's collective decision-making, and what does it say about what type of job our elected officials have done? And, the subtext that the American Dream is over is getting louder and louder, whether you are a Bernie fan or a Trump fan," he said. On stage, the moderators pressed each speaker for their thoughts on Trump. "If I thought I could make a difference, I would probably do something," said rocket-builder Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla . "I am just glad being the U.S. president is like being captain of large ship with a small rudder, and so, there is just a limit to how much good or bad a president can actually do." A weak May jobs report raised concerns about the labor market. But a former McDonald's chief executive thinks the U.S. economy may be in worse shape than it seems. "I think we're in a small-business recession, and if we don't start opening up the opportunity for entrepreneurs to grow their business, we're going to continue see this drop in jobs. We need to energize small businesses," Ed Rensi told CNBC's "Closing Bell" on Friday. The U.S. economy added just 38,000 jobs in May, the Labor Department said Friday. The number came in well below economists' expectations for about 162,000, according to Thomson Reuters. Hillary Clinton has such a big lead over Bernie Sanders that he probably would have left the race already in a normal campaign cycle, the Democratic front-runner's press secretary told CNBC on Friday. "But we are totally fine with [Sanders] remaining in the race. It's not a matter where we'd be seeking to push him out. He's doing a good thing in terms of bringing more people into the process," Brian Fallon said on "Squawk Box." Ahead of Tuesday's big California primary, Clinton holds a 4.7-point lead in the state over the Vermont senator, a self-proclaimed Democratic socialist, according to the RealClear Politics polling average. Fallon said Clinton believes firmly in capitalism but "she thinks free market capitalism is prone to excesses just the same." If Clinton were to win the White House, her policies would not be just a continuation of Barack Obama's presidency, said Fallon. "The Obama administration has made significant gains, but we recognize there's still a lot of work to do." "I think the number one issue in this election is ... who get incomes rising again, who can make this prosperity a lot more shared across the board," Fallon added. "She has proposals, and plans to make the economy work for everyone." Including super delegates, who are free to support any candidate, Clinton is just shy of the 2,383 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination. Sanders has 1,545 delegates, despite winning 11 of the last 18 contests. In a head-to-head general election matchup, Clinton holds a 1.5-point lead over presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, the RealClear Politics polling average shows. Fallon called Trump's proposals on retaliating against China's trade policies, mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and "exploding the debt" with his tax cuts "recession-inducing." Both Trump and Clinton have big negative ratings among prospective voters. Fallon blames Clinton's negatives on the attacks she's sustained from the huge field of GOP candidates who went through the nominating process. Line is aiming to raise about $3bn in a dual Tokyo-New York listing, as the Japanese messaging app looks to arm itself with cash to challenge WhatsApp and WeChat. The initial public offering set for July will come after two abandoned attempts, said people involved in the plans. During that period, the market for technology IPOs in the US has waned while the Abenomics-driven share rise in Japan has fizzed out. Line was launched in 2011 after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, when telephone services in Japan were disrupted. Since then, the company owned by Naver, South Korea's biggest internet portal operator, has built on its dominance in its home market to pursue growth in other parts of Asia. Takeshi Idezawa, Chief Operating Officer of Line Corp. Junko Kimura-Matsumoto | Bloomberg | Getty Images In addition to instant messaging and free calls, Line's 215m monthly active users can also make payments, order pizzas, play games and search for jobs. But the company has long struggled to make headway against bigger rivals such as Facebook-owned WhatsApp in the US and Europe. In recent years it has quietly put aside its goal to become the world's number one internet company with Takeshi Idezawa, chief executive, saying Line will focus on Asia. Two-thirds of Line's active users come from Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia, where the popularity of cutesy emoticons or digital stickers, which also feature Line's own characters, and mobile games has driven growth. The IPO also comes amid market concerns that Line's rapid growth may be slowing. More stories from the FT watch now Federal prosecutors on Friday filed an additional charge in the fraud case against Martin Shkreli, the bad boy ex-pharmaceutical executive. Prosecutors and defense lawyers said last month that he could be hit with a new count. Asked for comment on Twitter, Shkreli directed CNBC to his lawyer. Tweet In a statement, Shkreli lawyer Ben Brafman said the superseding indictment "adds nothing of value to the government's case that still relies on a flawed theory." Martin Shkreli, former Chief Executive Officer of Turing Pharmaceuticals LLC, exits federal court on May 3, 2016 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Getty Images Shkreli was most recently in court May 3. He already was due to return to Brooklyn federal court in the case Monday. It is not clear if he will be arraigned on the new criminal charge then, or on another day. He is free on a $5 million bond. A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in the Eastern District of New York declined to comment. Shkreli has said he is innocent of the criminal case, in which prosecutors claim he looted his former pharma company Retrophin to pay off investors he was suspected of previously defrauding in a hedge fund he ran. His former lawyer Evan Greebel is a co-defendant in the case. The new charge is a conspiracy to commit securities fraud count related to unrestricted securities of Retrophin. Prosecutors allege Shkreli and Greebel defrauded potential investors "by concealing Shkreli's beneficial ownership and control of Retrophin's unrestricted or free shares." It exposes Shkreli to additional prison time. Greebel's lawyer Reed Brodsky declined to comment. The service fee for users is $10, but Zipdrug works with some pharmacies that cover the cost for the patient. For now, services are only available in New York City and parts of New Jersey. Once a prescription is filled, Zipdrug dispatches bike messengers who go to the pharmacy for you to pick up your medication. The start-up promises delivery from the pharmacist to your home or office within minutes. And users can track their delivery from their smartphones, similar to how Uber clients can track their drivers. The service works via Zipdrug's mobile app or the company's website. Users snap a photo of their insurance card and enter details about payment, pharmacy and delivery address. "Good health starts with a pharmacy visit. Believe it or not, one in three prescriptions written are never filled," Libby told CNBC. He said his remedy is Zipdrug, a start-up offering prescription drug delivery on demand. Angel investor Kelly Keenan Trumpbour was concerned about how the start-up would be able to manage safety concerns, such as drugs ending up in the wrong hands. "We track the latitude, the longitude, the altitude and require a photograph of the package at pickup and at drop-off, and a name and a signature from that patient or else we don't release that medication," she added. Concerned about competition, New York Angels board member Alicia Syrett wondered how Zipdrug could defend its bottom line from others taking on a similar business model. Libby argued that in addition to the size of the market in Manhattan and New Jersey, the company's partnership with CityMD, one of New York's urgent-care facilities, makes Zipdrug more viable than potential competitors. The start-up currently has kiosks installed at CityMD offices, where patients can set up a delivery of their prescription medications right from the doctor's office. While Zipdrug is not replacing the actual pharmacy, it does compete with pharmacies that offer their own delivery services. But Nat Burgess, an angel investor who's invested in tech companies in the health space, worried about competition on a bigger scale. He questioned if Zipdrug would be able to stand up to major nationwide delivery retailers like Amazon. Libby said he believes Zipdrug's Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 compliance gives the start-up a leg up. "It's difficult for major companies to start over and become HIPAA compliant. We started from a position where we can do exactly what we need to do, which is just delivering consumer health care to patients," he told CNBC. Although the company would not disclose any specific revenue numbers, it said more than 10,000 patients use its services, and it plans to reach patients nationwide in the near future. Since launching in 2015, Zipdrug has raised $2.6M in funding. Key investors include Collaborative Fund, Lux Capital and Montage Ventures. watch now watch now watch now Another Silicon Valley investor has ripped in to Gawker Media alleging the company behind "Deadspin" and "Jezebel" published a fake story. "That publication printed lies," angel investor and Inside.com founder Jason Calacanis told CNBC's "Squawk Alley" Friday. "We know this because at one of my companies we sent them a fake story and they printed it the same day. Gawker, during that period, was paying for stolen content." The story in question, according to Calacanis, was a 2007 leak he sent from a fake Yahoo email account, then published as, "Is Kokua the new site from Calacanis?." The story, which was picked up by other acclaimed technology blogs, is couched with skepticism: This may or may not be an early screenshot of Jason Calacanis' new search site. The prototype is called Kokua, and looks like a video version of About.com. It's search engine, wikipedia and podcasting directory rolled into one. Calacanis, the entrepreneur who sold Engadget and other weblogs to AOL for $25m, enjoys spreading confusion, and intrigue; but a spoof page with that in mind would be a lot of effort, even for him. Gawker Media founder Nick Denton, who then penned the post for technology blog ValleyWag, commented below the article, "Another reason to think this is fake... Jason Calacanis would have insisted on a hotter girl to illustrate the shopping channel." Calacanis said that the original story reported he going into business with Don Imus, who had just been fired. That was later debunked, Calacanis said. Calacanis does own Kokua.com, and wrote on his company's website that he bought the domain for $7,000. "Jason Calacanis recently backed the venture of A.J. Daulerio, the former editor of Gawker.com who was one of the targets of Peter Thiel's legal campaign," Gawker told CNBC. "Before that, he was Gawker Media's main competitor. He has changed his tune before, according to what gets him attention and money, and no doubt will again." (Calicanis responded: "I do think Gawker, Denton and AJ have all evolved considerably since the days in question. I am fond of much of Denton and AJ's other work, and I've learned to not judge people on only their worst moments.") It comes at a time when Gawker has been under legal fire, embroiled in an expensive lawsuit with wrestler and entertainer Hulk Hogan. Technology entrepreneur and wealthy investor Peter Thiel revealed he was bankrolling the fight, creating a divide in the technology world. Amazon CEO and Washington Post founder Jeff Bezos, suggested Thiel and those like him get a thicker skin, saying, "You don't want to create any kind of climate of fear or chill" when it comes to free speech, even if that speech is "ugly." But other prominent investors like Vinod Khosla and Ben Horowitz have tweeted support for Thiel. Calacanis himself recently told the Washington Post: "If you look at most tech publications, they have major conferences as their revenue. If you hit too hard, you lose keynotes, ticket buyers, and support in the tech space." Actor, composer Lin-Manuel Miranda performs on stage during "Hamilton" Theo Wargo | WireImage | Getty Images If you want to be in the room where it happens, it's going to cost you some serious money. Tickets for the July 9 showing of "Hamilton" are selling online for almost $10,000 following a report by The Hollywood Reporter that Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the hit Broadway musical, is poised to exit the show that evening. The cheapest seats on resale on Ticketmaster will set a fan back $1,485 for a view from the rear mezzanine. A seat in the lower orchestra costs more than $9,998 per ticket. "Hamilton" tickets have long been a hot commodity for online ticket resellers, especially because shows sell out months in advance. Tickets often appear on resale sites for more than $1,000. Since the show opened at the Richard Rogers Theater in August, it has grossed more than $75 million, not including what it made while in rehearsals at New York's Public Theater. Last week alone, the show grossed more than $1.9 million, according to BroadwayWorld.com. A spokesman for Miranda told CNBC that, "There is nothing to confirm at this time," in regard to Miranda's final show. datatables row click after that open details like this DataTables example - Row details[^] how can i in mvc i cannot make can you help me Hi All, I am working on computing Xor operation, but i could not exactly compute the proper result. Please help me to find a solution. If we "true" and "false", how to compute XOR operation to get the final result? I have tried like: result = s1 ^ s2; // here s1= "true", s2= "false" Regards, Amal Raj AmalRaj@Sync wrote: I could not exactly compute the proper result I assume you got 1 as the two operands of XOR are different, but What have you expect? XOR (^) is a bitwise operator, so assigning it on other types (like Boolean or String) can have interesting results. The reason of course is how type casting is done... For instance "hello" ^ "word" will return 0 (both operands are the same?), the reason is that both operands are converted to numeric and yielded NaN...and NaN is the same as NaN... As in your sample true converted to 1 and false to 0, so 1 ^ 0 yields 1... Skipper: We'll fix it. Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this? Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape. JavaScript Copy Code var s1 = " true" ; var s2 = " false" ; var result = s1 ^ s2; you will (correctly) get a result of 0 . This is because the strings are "truthy" - when converted to a boolean, all non-empty strings convert to true . Truthy and Falsy: When All is Not Equal in JavaScript[^] If you use proper boolean values, you will get the expected result: JavaScript Copy Code var s1 = true ; var s2 = false ; var result = s1 ^ s2; "These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer I'd like to find a tutorial or code to learn how to do this: on a web page user enters text to search, then checks checkbox to indicate which fields to search. * Testing should work in Firefox without installing anything else on my PC. Someone told me AJAX has some problems which disappear if run on a server, and I don't have access to a server with AJAX. * I don't know if jquery would help me here or not. I know nothing about it. * Find tutorials about filtering with XML, but not where they get user input from a form. Screenshot of idea is here[^] XML file is here: Copy Code Bill Smith University of Foo Microbiology Sandy Green University of Foo Microbiology Peter Billowsails United Nations FAO How nematodes affect corn crops These are usually several paragraphs long . corn nematodes IARC 2016-02-03 Interesting study. I enclosed all the XML in pre and /pre tags and it still doesn't show. What am I doing wrong here? modified 10-Jun-16 9:56am. Dear all, I want show a picture fullscreen with one web page, but most of the web browers have address bars, toolbars and tab bars, I want show the picture without them all. For example, I use Chorme browser. How to implement it with JavaScript or other methods ? Thanks all It's very kind of you, thanks a lot, I'll do some tests and feedback later. Thanks Thank you once again, I have tried the APIit works and very useful for me. But not reach my goal, as you say there's no way to lanuch fullscreen mode without asking for the user's permission. I have tried to set the state of the key clicked when load the page, so that it can trigger fullscreen mode when open the page, but it does not work in this way. My goal is to show a photo on the screen like desk background pictures, and some other info like Date, temperature and so on. For the device, may be I can ues Raspberry pi or my old computer. For my goal, it's not only like a project of digital photo frame, but also a smart home controller. First of first, show the photo with fullscreen, maybe I should try another solution, can please give me some suggests? Thanks B/R Jiang If there was a way around that restriction, I'm sure every scam, malware and porn site would be doing it. "These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer I need simple Javascript code to "Revert To Saved" a fillable PDF form. Thanks! Using Firefox v43. Trying example at Simple and Practical Introduction to Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX)[^] I'm a newbie here and with Javascript. If this isn't the right site for newbies just let me know. Some sites are somewhat hostile to newbies. I do have Ublock Origin in FF, I don't know if that or FF is blocking popups or not. If so, how do I get FF to not block popups from local HTM files? I made the XML file and html file (which I called ajax1.htm) and opened it in Firefox. I clicked the button "ReadXML" and it did nothing, nothing changed in my browser. I'm trying to figure out if FF does not support XMLHttpRequest or if something else is going on. Do you have any ideas? EDIT: The bottom of ajax1.htm has been changed to this to test the Error() function via clicking a new button. I got no result from clicking the "Test error" button either. (The code formatting does not seem to be working.) Copy Code modified 25-May-16 15:14pm. 2. Notice the date on that article, 2009. Quite old in tech years. I suggest using jQuery and calling .ajax() instead. There are tons of examples online and jQuery is a library that keeps up with the various browsers so the same code should work in all browsers. 3. See jQuery.ajax() | jQuery API Documentation[^] for documentation. 4. Also, if you choose to stick with your original question, edit it and post the relevant code. There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't. If I put the html file on a web server (I have an account on sdf.org) will Ajax work then? That sounds like a PITA if Ajax won't work in a local file. You don't need a live server to deploy it. You can use a local instance of IIS, or create a project in Visual Studio and use IIS Express. If you haven't got a copy of Visual Studio, you can get Community Edition for free: Free Dev Tools - Visual Studio Community 2015[^] "These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer Hi, I am beginner for AngularJS and learning, I am trying to execute the following AngularJS script, it is not firing. Can you please help me where did I do mistake? Here is my script Copy Code Using AngularJS Directives and Data Binding </ title > </ head > <body data-ng-init= " names=['Abdul Aleem', 'Farha Tabassum', 'Abdul Muqtadir', 'Abdul Malik']" > Name : <br /> <input type= " text" data-ng-model= " name" />{{name}} <br /> <ul> <li data-ng-repeat= " personName in Names" > {{personName}} </ li > </ ul > <pre> <div class = " container" data-ng-controller= " SimpleController" > <h3>Adding a Simple Controller </ h3 > <ul> <li data-ng-repeart= " cust in customers" > {{cust.Name}} - {{cust.City}} </ li > </ ul > </ div > <script> function SimpleController($scope) { $scope.customers = [ { Name: ' AA' , City: ' Sacramento' }, { Name: ' AB' , City: ' Plano' }, {Name: ' AC' , City: ' Freemont' }, { Name: ' AD' , City: ' Nalgonda' }, { Name: ' AE' , City: ' Nalgonda' } ]; } <script> <script src= " Scripts/WebForms/angular.min.js" > </script> </ body > Thanks, Abdul Aleem "There is already enough hatred in the world lets spread love, compassion and affection." the underline one are your mistakes HTML Copy Code < !DOCTYPE html > < html xmlns =" http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" data-ng-app =" myapp" > < head > < title > Using AngularJS Directives and Data Binding < /title > < /head > < body data-ng-init =" names=['Abdul Aleem', 'Farha Tabassum', 'Abdul Muqtadir', 'Abdul Malik']" > Name : < input type =" text" data-ng-model =" name" / > {{name}} < ul > < li data-ng-repeat =" personName in names " > {{personName}} < /li > < /ul > < div class =" container" data-ng-controller =" SimpleController" > < h3 > Adding a Simple Controller < /h3 > < ul > < li data-ng- repeat =" cust in customers" > {{cust.Name}} - {{cust.City}} < /li > < /ul > < /div > < script src =" https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.4.5/angular.min.js" > < / script > < script > var app = angular.module( ' myapp' , []); app.controller( ' SimpleController' , SimpleController) function SimpleController($scope) { $scope.customers = [ { Name: ' AA' , City: ' Sacramento' }, { Name: ' AB' , City: ' Plano' }, { Name: ' AC' , City: ' Freemont' }, { Name: ' AD' , City: ' Nalgonda' }, { Name: ' AE' , City: ' Nalgonda' } ]; } < / script > < /body > < /html > demo: JSFiddle[^] JavaScript Copy Code <script src= " https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.4.5/angular.min.js" ></script> angular js is missing.. Thanks, Abdul Aleem "There is already enough hatred in the world lets spread love, compassion and affection." Numismatic Bookie column from June 20, 2016, issue of Coin World: In 2016 the American Numismatic Association celebrates its 125th anniversary, chronicled by the ANAs official journal, The Numismatist. But, as the Grateful Dead would sing, what a long, strange trip its been for The Numismatist: it wasnt always the ANAs official journal; it was owned at various times by three different private individuals; and it didnt even begin with that name. The story starts downriver from Detroit, with Dr. George Heath, physician and mayor of Monroe, Mich. A coin collector and vest pocket dealer, Heath issued, in September 1888, a periodical dubbed The American Numismatist to sell his duplicates. By its second issue, in November, American disappeared from the masthead. A defunct numismatic magazine by that name had been published in Paterson, N.J.; perhaps Heath sought to avoid confusion, perhaps he just liked the shorter title better, but he never explained the alteration. Connect with Coin World: Heath enthusiastically filled The Numismatists pages with readable stories. In the February 1891 issue, he asked: Whats the matter of having an American Numismatic Association? ... Would it be practicable? Favorable responses abounded; in the June number, he nominated a slate of officers for the association. The doctors choice for secretary, Charles T. Tatman, was the coin columnist for a nationally distributed youth newspaper named Plain Talk, which Heath suggested as the official organ of the ANA. Heaths recommendation was never formally ratified, but Tatman reported ANA news in his column until the summer of 1892, when he left for a European vacation. He resigned, as of June 15, both as ANA secretary and as Plain Talks coin columnist, and The Numismatist became the ANAs official journal by default. Heath was a hands-on editor, personally printing every issue through 1893 on his own printing press, and always publishing The Numismatist in the best interests of the ANA. Death came for the doctor June 16, 1908, and Farran Zerbe swooped in a month later to buy The Numismatist from Heaths widow. Zerbe, of Tyrone, Pa., was also the sitting president of the ANA, and questions quickly arose about the appropriateness of his involvement in ANA politics while personally owning its official publication. A bitterly contested election in 1909 worsened the conflict. As 1910 wore on, The Numismatist had been the ANAs journal for nearly 20 years, but never had the ANA owned or controlled it. Stepped forth W.W.C. Wilson, a Montreal numismatist, who bought the magazine from Zerbe in November 1910, and generously donated it to the ANA. Ironically, it took a Canadian to resolve the conflict of interest bedeviling the American Numismatic Association. Even more ironically, the ANAs top award is named in Zerbes honor, while Wilson, the ANAs greatest benefactor, is honored not at all in Colorado Springs, Colo. Collectors benefit from the long, strange trip of The Numismatist, for extensive runs of the magazine can be purchased relatively inexpensively: 1911 to date for about $1,000, and 1894 to date for less than $3,000. The first six volumes, personally printed by Dr. Heath, are another story: a mere dozen complete sets can be definitively traced in individual and institutional libraries, and is likely to top $30,000 on those rare occasions when offered at public auction. Fortunately, a 1963 reprint of the first six volumes goes for about $250. Normally there are coins with a face value of 90 million in the Royal Mints Treasury Store waiting distribution to the U.K.s banks and for shipment overseas. The cache will grow to more than 1.5 billion toward the end of 2016 as the Royal Mint readies for the March 2017 release of new 1 coins. Visitors to The Royal Mint Experience soon become aware that they are heading towards a high security area. Is all the barbed wire really necessary? Yes. In the summer of 2013, 80 giant individually decorated fiberglass sculptures of Gromit, the dog from the British clay animation comedy series Wallace and Gromit, were displayed in Bristol. The 10-week public art exhibition was called Gromit Unleashed. The Royal Mint commissioned South Wales artist Stephanie Roberts, who gave him a coat of pennies. The obverses are displayed at the front of the sculpture and the reverse from halfway along its body. Editor's note: This is the first part of a story by Coin World London Correspondent John Andrew about his visit to the Royal Mint Experience, the new visitor's center. The original story appears in the June 20 issue of Coin World. It is quite appropriate in the year the Royal Mint Museum celebrates the 200th anniversary of its foundation that the United Kingdoms mint should open the Royal Mint Experience, a purpose-built visitors center on its 35-acre site at Llantrisant in Wales. Given the size of the visitors car park, the Royal Mint is expecting this to become a major tourist attraction, not just for numismatists, but for anyone interested in history or who simply wants an insight into one of the countrys oldest institutions. Connect with Coin World: After completing a sneak preview of the experience the day before it opened to the public on May 18, the number of parking spaces is not over-optimistic. The first things one sees are the high wire fences topped with a continuous loop of barbed wire surrounding the site. Visitors could be forgiven for thinking they had taken a wrong turn and were approaching a prison. Given the nature of the Royal Mint, it is not surprising that security is high. Up until recently the Treasury Store at the site held up to 90 million of coins waiting to go to banks. However, since production of the new 1 coins began, the store has been dramatically increased so that it can additionally hold up to 1.5 billion of these coins, which will go into circulation in March 2017. Add the mints bullion trading service and one can appreciate the high security. A pleasing single story newly-built edifice came into a view. A sheep, or at least a sculpture of a cartoon-like quadruped with a woolly coat, was there at the entrance to welcome everyone to the visitors center. It was a welcome antidote to the foreboding barbed wire. Just to the right of the main entrance was the Royal Mints penny Gromit sculpture. This certainly further set the tone that this was going to be a fun day out for all the family as opposed to a dusty museum experience. This is not the first time that the Royal Mint has been open to the public, but the Royal Mint Experience gives visitors unprecedented access. New space better than past access That stands in contrast to the private visits that have been allowed in the past. One such visit, on Feb. 18, 1661, was recorded by the famous diarist Samuel Pepys, who visited to see Charles IIs first coinage, which was hammered. Pepys remarked, [it] is strange to see, how good they are in the in the stamp [ie die], and bad in the money for lack of skill to make them. Pepys was advised that Pierre Blondeau the Frenchman, whose machinery had made Oliver Cromwells milled coinage, would soon be back. Pepys saw a demonstration of Blondeaus method of making this new money on May 19, 1663. Toward the end of the 19th century the Royal Mint Museum had an exhibition of part of its collection viewing by the general public. In 1904 the New Museum with 25 showcases opened to the public, but it was dismantled 20 years later. Students and bona fide numismatists have been able to arrange private visits to the collection and some private tours of the factory were allowed for interested parties. While these ad hoc arrangements worked well, there was no general public access. Although Dr. Kevin Clancy, director of the Royal Mint Museum, proposed a visitors center to the Royal Mint Board about five years ago, mint officials did not begin to look at the proposal in earnest until 2012. Slowly the project began to gain momentum and it became clear that a potential major tourist attraction was emerging in South Wales. The Welsh Government provided a grant of 2.3 million toward the projects overall 7.7 million cost. The mint anticipates up to 200,000 paying visitors per year, and will be open all but three days each year. I had no problem with deciding how to showcase over 1,000 years of coin-making history and the craftsmanship as well as the innovation for which the Royal Mint is known internationally, but how to deal with the factory was a different matter, Dr. Clancy said. Did you bus people around the complex, or was there another way? Striking coins is a noisy business and the furnace area is hot throw in health and safety and there has to be another way. The problem was solved by dividing the area into six zones, including views of the minting process. Viewing by zones Zone 1: The Royal Mint and the community this looks back over 1,000 years of history to explore the origins of the Royal Mint, its link with the Tower of London and its move to Wales. Zone 2: The Royal Mint and the world here visitors find out more about the coins and medals the Royal Mint has produced for more than 100 countries worldwide. Zone 3: Making money here is the place to learn about the detailed processes, design and the skills involved to produce a coin. Zone 4: The other side of the Royal Mint here visitors look at the fascinating military, sporting and commemorative medals the Mint has produced over 1,000-plus years. Zone 5: The meaning of coins this explores the many different roles coins play in our lives such as being symbols of luck and good fortune. Zone 6: Coins and collecting here visitors discover more about coin collecting, a hobby that captivates people of all ages. It should be noted, however, that visitors do not travel through the zones in sequence. Hello, I'm a reporter for summer 2016. I'm a dual major in journalism and English, a Californian and a lover of desserts. I look forward to covering a variety of topics, and would love to hear from you. Email me at kelseyhurwitz@mail.missouri.edu. Follow this search 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 Types of obituaries The Missourian publishes two types of obituaries family obituaries and life stories. A family obituary is the version submitted by a funeral home or family. Please see the submission form for details on cost and deadlines. Family obituaries A life story is a closer look at a person's life and involves a reporter contacting family and friends. Life stories are based on newsworthiness and consent of the family. Life stories. How a community saved the Wooldridge Baptist Church from wildfire The wildfire in Wooldridge burned about two dozen buildings. Remarkably, no one died, and the church remains. Go Eat If you want personality, you gotta #GoMemphis SHARE By Jennifer Biggs of The Commercial Appeal Tomorrow is an unofficial food truck day around town. The big deal is the GPAC Food Truck & Music Fest, 3-8 p.m. at the Germantown Performing Arts Center, 1801 Exeter. It's a fundraiser for the Germantown Education Foundation and the GPAC Education Arts Fund, and the folks that put on so many good shows are sure to put on a good festival, too. The food truck line up is: Corky's Gus's Fried Chicken Food Geek MEMPops Sweet Bella Treats Square Meal on Wheels Rawk'n Grub Riko's Kickin Chicken Fish From Heaven Parker's Concessions Memphis Soft Serve Ice Cream And the music schedule is: School of Rock; 3-4 p.m. Mason Jar Fireflies; 4:15-5:15 p.m. The Mighty Souls Brass Band; 5:30-6:30 p.m. Jason D Williams; 7-8 p.m. Admission is free, and it's rain or shine. Cloverleaf Reopening Everyone loves Summer Avenue, and on Saturday one of the longtime tenants of the street celebrates a facelift with a "grand reopening party." Cloverleaf Center, home to Cash Saver, Mary Carter and Pancho's and a host of other businesses, hosts a party 11 a.m.-2 p.m. featuring a farmers market at Cash Saver, samples from Pancho's, food trucks such as Rawk 'n Grub, Let's Be Frank, Fresh Gulf Shrimp and MEMPops, and live music. National Doughnut Day Today is the busiest day of the year in the doughnut world, says Don DeWeese, who as owner of Gibson's Donuts is probably the busiest guy in the Memphis doughnut world. "This is the only day of the year we cook 24 hours a day," he said. "We have 10 people behind the counter, a line out the door, and we even ran out for a little while this morning." To add busy to busy, he's also seeing a lot of traffic from Memphis Italian Festival, taking place just a couple of blocks away at Marquette Park; it runs through 11 p.m. tonight and is back tomorrow, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Admission is $10 today and tomorrow until 4 p.m.; after 4 p.m., it's $15. Here's a link to a story with more details. And speaking of Italian food, it's the last weekend to get a meal at Pasta Italia in Cordova. Michele d'Oto is closing his upscale place after Saturday dinner, but he has plenty more in the works and even plans to reopen Pasta Italia in a more central location around the end of the year. Check back Monday for more details. And if you're looking for a new place for brunch on Sunday, consider Jim's Place. The restaurant at 518 S. Perkins Ext. has recently opened for Sunday brunch from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.; call 901-766-2030 for more information. Happy eating! The Newburger Mansion, built in 1912 at 168 East Parkway S., has been the home of Memphis Theological Seminary since 1962. SHARE By Thomas Bailey Jr. of The Commercial Appeal Memphis Theological Seminary has received an anonymous donation that will be used to match up to $150,000 in any additional donations through July 31. We have an exciting opportunity to support the seminary this June and July, seminary president Dr. Jay Earheart-Brown states in a letter to supporters. In a time when churches are shrinking and seminaries are closing their doors, our work is more relevant and necessary than ever.'' The seminarys annual fund is used to maintain operations at the Midtown campus, provide scholarships for students and retain faculty. The ecumenical, interfaith graduate school of theology launched its "Ministry for the Real World" fundraising campaign in October. The goal is $25 million; the campaign has raised over $10 million in gifts and pledges so far. Donations can be made online at donatenow.networkforgood.org/mts. Artist rendering of One ServiceMaster Center SHARE June 3, 2016 - ServiceMaster announced Friday that the old Peabody Place mall Downtown will become the home to its new headquarters. The building will be renamed One ServiceMaster Center. (Brad Vest/The Commercial Appeal) June 3, 2016 - The stage is set at Peabody Place for Friday's noon press conference where ServiceMaster will announce that the old Peabody Place mall Downtown will become the home to its new headquarters. The building will be renamed One ServiceMaster Center. (Brad Vest/The Commercial Appeal) June 3, 2016 - A window at Peabody Place gives a peek of what is to come. ServiceMaster announced Friday that the old Peabody Place mall Downtown will become the home to its new headquarters. The building will be renamed One ServiceMaster Center. (Brad Vest/The Commercial Appeal) By Thomas Bailey Jr. of The Commercial Appeal ServiceMaster will remake Downtowns long-vacant Peabody Place retail mall into its corporate headquarters and enliven the space with 1,200 employees. Its going to be a real cool place for us, ServiceMaster chief executive Rob Gillette told The Commercial Appeal minutes before a festive announcement event in the Peabody Places atrium. The home and commercial services provider will move its home office 12 miles west from near I-240 and Poplar in East Memphis. The four-level Peabody Place mall, where sunlight pours through the lobbys big roof skylight, will be renamed One ServiceMaster Center. The move into the 328,000-square-foot building is scheduled to occur by the end of next year. Were thrilled to be joining the Downtown business community and being a part of the citys ongoing Downtown revitalization efforts, Gillette said in prepared remarks. Were excited to start the process of creating a new headquarters that reflects our winning culture and will help us attract and retain great talent in Memphis. ServiceMasters move would be a reversal of fortune for a Downtown that has seen the exodus of major employers for two decades. Make no mistake about it. ServiceMasters decision is clear proof of the momentum in Memphis, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said. This is the most significant corporate headquarters announcement in Downtown Memphis in a generation. The companys workers will be within a colorful, short stroll of Beale Street, FedExForum, the Peabody Hotel lobby, AutoZone Park, the River Walk, the Chisca, and bars and restaurants ranging from the Flying Saucer to the Flying Fish. Even Gov. Bill Haslam used the word cool in describing ServiceMasters new neighborhood. This is a really big deal, Haslam told the crowd that included dozens of ServiceMaster employees in sky-blue T-shirts. ServiceMaster could literally be anywhere, he said. ... So the fact they have doubled down on their investment in Memphis and Shelby County, if you will, is a really big deal. ... To the ServiceMaster employees, I cant imagine a cooler place to work, Haslam said. Youll be right in the heart of what I think is one of the best places to hang out in the whole world. The ServiceMaster move will be a boost to the Downtown office market. The 21 Downtown office buildings tracked by Cushman & Wakefield had a 23.6 percent vacancy rate in the first quarter of this year. That compares to a 11.7 percent vacancy rate in the East submarket. Office space is in stronger demand in East Memphis than anywhere else in the Memphis area. That means backfilling the space ServiceMaster vacates could be relatively easy. The situation is a win-win, said Greater Memphis Chamber president Phil Trenary. ServiceMasters call center with 800 workers will remain in northeast Memphis. But the move includes a new venture for ServiceMaster. The former Tower Records space 20,000 square feet on the ground floor and facing the corner of B.B. King and Peabody Place will house the ServiceMaster Innovation Center. For the company, the center will focus on creating technology moonshots, said Jamie Smith, chief information officer. About 40 percent of the center will house ServiceMasters technology research teams. Another 30 percent will house flexible innovation space and event space, Smith said. A great example is, we host hack-a-thons. If the community wanted to host hack-a-thons. (And) coding boot camps, the space could be used, he said. ServiceMaster will rent out the rest of the Innovation Center as co-working space. One of the big things we feel is important is to build momentum in Downtown for innovation and especially entrepreneurship and really encourage that, Smith said. So were going to provide a space to do that for entrepreneurs and other innovative (information technology) folks to come into Downtown and leverage the space, Smith said. Since taking the helm in June 2013, Gillettes mantra and guiding principle for employees has been digital first. The ServiceMaster Innovation Center is to open in early 2017, before the headquarters relocates. The company has signed a 15-year lease for the building with landlord Belz Enterprises. Upstairs from the Innovation Center, the cavity of old Peabody Place atrium will essentially remain intact. But most everything else will be changed. Asked how Belz Enterpises will reshape the malls interior to accommodate offices, Ron Belz smiled and said, Demolishing all the old stuff quickly. Weve got an enormous task ahead of us. If you can imagine, anything you see in here will be touched. Most of it will be demolished, he said. The building is fronted by B.B. King Boulevard to the east, Peabody Place to the south and Second to the west. Two street-level floor spaces facing Second will remain retail space for future tenants. The company intends to convert the old mall into Class A office space and work toward LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification. At 10 a.m. Friday, more than 1,000 employees gathered in a Peabody Hotel ballroom for a "ServiceMaster Town Hall.'' Gillette greeted his headquarters staff with some humor in referring to Thursday nights news stories that were based on unnamed sources. We have a very exciting day. It was supposed to be a surprise, he said to laughs. Gillette told The Commercial Appeal late Friday morning that ServiceMaster started its search by considering 10 to 13 cities before narrowing the list to Memphis and another city he declined to reveal. It came down to the deal we could cut and how we could get everybody in one place. And this is a very special place, Gillette said. His goal is to change the company culture, and to do that all 1,200 headquarters employees must work under one roof, Gillette said. The challenge was, that didnt exist, he said of a large space, adding that there are very few places to get 1,000 people under one roof. The availability of a parking garage with 1,000 spaces available for employees was a big deal, he said. ServiceMaster surveyed its headquarters workers and found that their commute to Downtown will average 30 minutes, a little longer than it takes them to drive to the East Memphis buildings. But 1,000 spaces in a parking garage connected to Peabody Place by a sky bridge will be reserved as free parking for employees. Gillette said his own commute from his Southwind home to Peabody Place Friday morning was 18 minutes, just eight minutes longer than it takes him to reach the current East Memphis office. The company will seek public incentives, but Gillette said he would not describe them until its time to make them public. State incentives may be revealed next week at a State Funding Board meeting. Locally, the Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE) staff will recommend giving ServiceMaster a break on its personal property taxes. And since there is an existing property tax incentive on Peabody Place, the Center City Revenue Finance Corp. may make changes to award property tax incentives to ServiceMaster. Belz Enterprises opened Peabody Place mall in 2001 next to its landmark Peabody Hotel. But the mall substantially closed by 2008. Its been shuttered longer than it was opened. Belz family patriarch Jack Belz said of having ServiceMaster move in: It is one of the happiest moments that weve been able to enjoy in many years. Because its been somewhat disappointing when Muvico headquarters went broke... We lost the whole essence of our retail center. So this is even more inspirational actually than what the Muvico was. Because of 1,200 employees coming down here every single day, and all the things they will generate, Jack Belz said. So its an exciting moment for us in making Peabody Place validated as we always dreamed it would be, he said. ServiceMaster operates the American Home Shield, AmeriSpec, Furniture Medic, Merry Maid, ServiceMaster Clean and Terminix brands. Those brands employ about 13,000 workers throughout North America, and independent franchises employ another 31,000 workers. ServiceMaster leases space at 860 Ridge Lake Blvd. and adjacent buildings off Poplar Avenue at Interstate 240. Brad Vest/The Commercial Appeal Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, center, along with a group of Memphians concerned about gun violence, gather to take a picture at Loflin Yard Thursday. Strickland and others urged people to come together to help put an end to the violence. SHARE By Jody Callahan of The Commercial Appeal On Feb. 8, 2015, two men shot and killed 22-year-old Chris Thomas as he sat in his car outside a Hickory Hill bar. On April 22, barely two months later, an 18-year-old playing with a gun shot and killed Curtis Johnson, also 18 and just days from graduating from Southwind High School. The two victims were related, and their mothers leaned on each other in their grief. On Thursday afternoon in Downtown Memphis, those mothers Tara Johnson and Tara Thomas spoke to a crowd of more than 200 people, most of whom were wearing orange in recognition of National Gun Violence Awareness Day. "We are standing here because we both lost our sons to gun violence," Thomas said. Thursday's event, held at the new outdoor spot called Loflin Yard, was one of numerous such celebrations elsewhere in Memphis and in communities across the nation. Those gathered Downtown heard several speakers, including State Sen. Lee Harris, District Attorney Amy Weirich and Mayor Jim Strickland. The point, organizers said, was to recognize those lost to gunfire while, hopefully, stirring others to action. "Showing up today and standing together, it's not just lip service. It's not just pretty. It means something," said Laura Gettys, a pastor at St. Mary's Episcopal Church Downtown. In Memphis, Strickland declared Thursday to be "Gun Violence Awareness Day," and the lights that normally shine blue outside the Liberty Bowl stadium were turned orange for the day. Strickland, calling this city's escalating murder tally an "absolutely unacceptable rate of violence," said he recently visited the mother of Myneishia Johnson, the 18-year-old shot to death Downtown on May 22. "It is hard to escape the sadness," he said. "That's the real cost of gun violence. Lives ended before they get a chance to reach their potential." It's that last bit that scares Terri Lee Freeman. Freeman, the president of the National Civil Rights Museum, also spoke, mentioning her 5-month-old grandson Xander. "I want his life to be full and fruitful. But I'm nervous," she said. "I'm nervous at what I see." By David Royer of The Commercial Appeal Shelby County Democrats elected a new party chairman Thursday night and voted to refer a matter involving a former chairman to authorities for criminal investigation. Members of the Shelby County Democratic Party's executive committee voted in favor of a resolution to pursue criminal charges with the Shelby County District Attorney or the sheriff's office against former party chairman Bryan Carson. The resolution accuses Carson of "unlawful embezzlement of funds in the amount of at least $25,000" during his term as chairman from March 2013 to January 2015. The county party had previously attempted to reach a settlement that would have had Carson repay $26,336, an amount that was reached after two reviews of the party's bank accounts found what party officials have called "unsubstantiated activity." Carson declined to comment on the matter last month, but his attorney, Robert Spence, said Carson rejected the allegations of fraud. Spence said Carson might not owe the party anything. Party leaders said they needed to take action to move beyond the Carson matter. "This matter needs to come to a resolution," said Del Gill, who proposed the motion at a meeting at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union hall on Madison. "We've got to restore credibility to this party." Thursday's vote came amid calls for the party to unify and focus on the 2016 elections following a turbulent period for local Democrats. Since Carson's resignation, two more top officers, chairwoman Randa Spears and vice chairwoman Deidre Malone, resigned this year, citing personal reasons as the party faced fines for late campaign finance filings. Also during the meeting, Shelby County Sheriff's Office Lt. Michael Pope, who had been acting chairman, was elected chairman. Virgie Banks was elected first vice chairwoman. Pope said after the meeting that the party would consult with counsel before formally taking action on the resolution to pursue criminal charges against Carson. U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels, flyover of the city of Nashville, Tennessee, June 2. (Shelley Mays/The Tennessean) SHARE By Nancy De Gennaro and Stacey Barchenger/The Tennessean SMYRNA One person has been reported dead after a U.S. Navy Blue Angels jet crashed following takeoff during a practice flight around 3 p.m. Thursday, officials said. Rutherford County Fire Chief Larry Farley said his dispatchers were told one person was killed. It is unclear if it was the pilot or a bystander. Steve Fiebing, deputy public affairs officer for the Naval Air Forces, said the jet crashed at 3:01 p.m. He would not release information on the condition of the pilot. He said the Naval Air Forces would investigate. The pilot has not been publicly identified. To read the complete story, go to Tennessean.com. A 2003 photo shows Peabody Place mall on the right, and Hampton Inn and Suites in the center. By Dave Darnell/The Commercial Appeal File By Jody Callahan of The Commercial Appeal ServiceMaster will remain in Memphis and locate its new headquarters Downtown, a source confirmed to The Commercial Appeal Thursday night. ServiceMaster executives plan a noon press conference Friday at Peabody Place to announce the decision. The company is also expected to announce plans to convert the shuttered Peabody Place mall into its new headquarters, the source said. ServiceMaster, which employs about 2,200 people here, had considered leaving Memphis, with cities such as Atlanta and Dallas mentioned as possible locations for a new headquarters. City officials were mum on the plans late Thursday, but one local real-estate person who has watched the relocation saga closely called it a huge win for the city. If thats accurate, its exciting for the company, for Memphis and for Downtown, said commercial real estate broker Larry Jensen of Cushman & Wakefield. To have that kind of company say this is a great place and we want to be down there, its very exciting news. ServiceMaster moved to East Memphis in 2006 from Chicago, giving the city another large corporate headquarters to go along with FedEx, AutoZone and International Paper. ServiceMaster operates the American Home Shield, AmeriSpec, Furniture Medic, Merry Maid, ServiceMaster Clean and Terminix brands. Those brands employ about 13,000 workers throughout North America, and independent franchises employ another 31,000 workers. Currently, ServiceMaster leases space at 860 Ridge Lake Blvd. and adjacent buildings off Poplar Avenue at Interstate 240. SHARE By Mark J. Heulitt and Miguel Rodriguez, Special to Viewpoint I read with great interest the May 27 response of Dr. Jon McCullers, chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, and Dr. James W. Eubanks III, medical director of trauma services, chief of pediatric surgery and surgeon-in-chief at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital, to the announcement of a new Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the Spence and Becky Wilson Baptist Children's Hospital. The writers expressed their concern over the safety of our children. I will be the new director for the Baptist pediatric ICU, and along with the input of Dr. Miguel Rodriguez, medical director of the Spence and Becky Wilson Baptist Children's Hospital emergency department, I would like to respond to quell those fears. I have been a pediatric intensivist for 26 years at a major academic children's hospital and am very familiar with the differences between an academic and nonacademic hospital. Those differences do not lead to a difference in the quality of care delivered to our children. In 2013, an article was published in the Journal of Pediatrics examining 89,000 admissions to the 29 PICUs in the United Kingdom. The author's conclusions were, "Despite the different characteristics of small units, the absence of any effect of unit size on mortality suggests the number of admissions per unit does not influence standards of care." (J Pediatr 2013;163:1039-44). We will be opening a technologically advanced PICU with 12 beds supported by not only pediatric intensivists, but also all the pediatric subspecialists necessary to care for these critically ill children. All pediatric services are covered 24/7 by attending physicians, most of whom have either trained or worked at Le Bonheur as physicians or subspecialists. Baptist is a well-established provider of pediatric care, having provided pediatric services since its beginning in 1912, and growing into a major referral center for pediatrics treating some 90,000 pediatric patients a year. Baptist Children's Hospital sits on the Baptist complex located in the geographic center of the city, easily accessible from Interstate 240 a very convenient option for families who live all over Shelby and surrounding counties. Seventy-five percent of patients treated at the Spence and Becky Wilson Baptist Children's Hospital emergency department are Medicaid patients. Baptist is well-qualified to treat patients who need services. Since the pediatric emergency department opened in 2015, less than 5 percent of patients have been transferred to a higher level of care solidifying Baptist's reputation as a strong pediatric care option. Boasting a slew of noteworthy services with plans to add more, Baptist has the area's only comprehensive pediatric eye center where patients can get the full continuum of care from treatment to surgery to follow-up care without having to travel outside the city. Soon, Baptist will have its own ambulance to transport patients needing a higher level of care to Baptist Children's Hospital. The ambulance will serve the tri-state area, as well as patients within the city who need to be transported. The desire to open the PICU is consistent with the mission of the Baptist system to offer quality health care to all children. Memphis is fortunate to have a hospital such as Le Bonheur; however, this does not preclude the need to have another cutting-edge children's hospital. Both children's hospitals are necessary to meet the needs of all children, not to compete, but to complement each other. Dr. Mark J. Heulitt is medical director of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the Spence and Becky Wilson Baptist Children's Hospital. Dr. Miguel Rodriguez is medical director of the emergency department at the hospital. SHARE By Jennifer Rubin When two separate groups, one headed by Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol and another a gaggle of prominent movement conservatives, began their quest for a third candidate, it was not out of the question that they could have persuaded Mitt Romney or another respected figure to take on Donald Trump. It was nearly a month ago that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, dropped out of the race. But as the process dragged on, prominent figures such as Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., and former senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) declined their entreaties. Names were bantered about, expectations raised and then dashed. Meanwhile, elected Republicans predictably fell into line behind Trump. The window for grabbing a viable contender who might forestall a full GOP embrace of Trump closed. Eager to still offer someone, Tennessean David French, a Bronze Star recipient and respected lawyer, became the default candidate. Despite his impressive record in journalism, the military and law, French's potential candidacy, leaked Tuesday, was underwhelming. Some conservatives dismissed it as "absurd." Erick Erickson, who was in the faction of conservatives who came close to corralling a big fish, dubbed French's candidacy an "insurmountable improbability." Journalist Matt Lewis sniffed (with justification) that, while admirable, French is not a "serious presidential contender." He argued, "Unlike past ubiquitous TV commentators like, say, Pat Buchanan -or even Bill Kristol (why didn't he just run?) French isn't all that well known outside the tight confines of conservative intellectual circles. This may well change, but as of today I'm more famous than he is." And those are conservatives hostile to Trump. The mainstream media were far more harsh. And at least some members of the movement conservative group seemed to reject French outright. Perhaps the effort was doomed from the start. Maybe the groups set unrealistic expectations. Possibly a more professional rollout would have not set French up for ridicule. Nevertheless, we are where we began: Trump has executed a hostile takeover of the GOP, which is too bereft of compelling ideas and leaders to put up much resistance. Those who tried but failed to come up with a big-name alternative to Trump spent time and effort (all volunteered) for the thankless task of trying to rescue the GOP from itself. Their enterprise was honorable, albeit unsuccessful. The real lesson is not that the #NeverTrump groups "failed," but that the GOP has. Perhaps the reason a large array of sophisticated senators, governors and ex-governors could not beat Trump in the primaries was a message failure, not lack of a suitable messenger. Even the most anti-establishment candidate, Ted Cruz, who represented the most doctrinaire form of conservatism, could only win a sliver of the GOP electorate (the "very conservative" Republicans). It seems the answer to Trump is not a stringent, a-historical version of 1980's conservatism. That does not mean conservatives or other Republicans in this year's election have "no choice." Libertarian Gary Johnson will likely be on the ballot in all 50 states. Despite his obscurity, French might appear on the ballot in some states. (Realistic assessment of his chances in no way should be interpreted as lack of respect for French as a person.) Some states allow write-ins. Any voter can leave the top of the ticket blank. And then there are the two major party nominees. Those are "choices," just not very satisfactory ones. That is the price paid, however, for failing to grasp the national mood, listen attentively to voters and present accessible leadership. It is a failure of conservatives' own making. Bill Galston, one of the most observant commentators around, explains: "[T]he Republican Party leadership . . . assumed that their rank-and-file voters were furious about their elected officials' failure to deliver smaller government, big cuts in annual spending and marginal tax rates, reductions in Social Security and Medicare outlays, and effective resistance to the Obama administration's social liberalism. Along came Mr. Trump, who proved that a plurality of the Republican electorate didn't much care about the classic Reagan-era agenda because it no longer addressed their fears and met their needs. "The larger error was empirical, not conceptual: we underestimated the extent of the mounting frustration in the large parts of the country left behind since the end of the 20th century, when incomes began to stagnate well before the Great Recession and a slow recovery made matters worse. "Flyover country" describes more than the travel patterns of bi-coastal elites; it depicts the mindset as well, along the lines of Saul Steinberg's famous New Yorker cover." The Republican solution to Trump won't come in 2016. It will need to come in the months and years after this election. That's when the search really begins for empathetic, effective voices in the center-right to prevail over Trumpkins and false Reagan idolaters. Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for the Washington Post. Farmers looking for ways to increase their crop output are using more technology and relying a little less on intuition. Farmers associated with Land O'Lakes, a dairy-focused, agricultural cooperative in Minnesota, are using online tools and apps to visualize their fields and to analyze the data in such areas as water management, seed placement and crop diseases. To do that, Land O'Lakes, known for producing the top butter brand in the U.S., has turned to Google's public cloud. The company is involved in a $3.5 million project with Google and expects to see a payback on it in two to three years. Why Google's cloud, when Land O'Lakes was already working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft's Azure clouds for other projects? The answer lies with Google Maps. Land O'Lakes Teddy Bekele is vice president of IT at Land OLakes. "With the ability to use Google Maps to be able to visualize our data, our land, that's really helpful," said Teddy Bekele, vice president of IT for the distribution division of Land O'Lakes. "They have tools that give them insights and help them make decisions instead of just relying on intuition. We've moving into an age where decisions are based on data and analysis. You can use data to improve your crops and the output of your field." Bekele said that data analysis can't be done without the cloud. "The goal is to figure out how to harness tech advances to the traditional farming and business model," he said. "The more science and data-driven decisions you can bring to a farmer, the more he'll trust you and commit his business to you." Improving crop output is important for Land O'Lakes, a $13.5 billion company with nearly 10,000 employees. The member-owned company, which is nearly 100 years old, has about 3,600 direct producer-members and 1,000 member-cooperatives. It also processes and distributes products for about 300,000 agricultural producers. The co-op also is one of the largest producers of butter and cheese in the U.S., processing 13 billion pounds of milk per year. With that direct link to farming, agricultural output is critical to Land O'Lakes. For example, Bekele said, corn is the biggest crop grown in the U.S., with average crop production in 2015 at 170 bushels per acre. However, in 2015 the maximum recorded output in the U.S. was 503 bushels per acre. There's a huge gap between what corn farmers are producing and what they could produce, Bekele said, and he would like to turn that around. "The genetic potential is there to produce more, but because of environmental conditions, soil types and certain practices, we just aren't able to achieve that," he said. "If the average went from just 170 to 180 an acre, that would be equal to 5 million more virtual acres." The answer to boosting that average yield per acre may lie with technology, Bekele said. There are 40 key decisions a farmer makes throughout the life cycle of a crop, he said. They have to decide, for instance, how much nitrogen to add to the soil and when; what type of seed to use and where to place it; and when to water the crops. Technology can help farmers make most of these decisions. The problem has been that farmers use little of this technology because the tools they need haven't been centralized, and it takes hours to input the same data about their fields and crops over and over again. Those tools are slowly being centralized, and farmers working with Land O'Lakes can access them in the cloud and input their farm data just once, saving time, money and aggravation. Land O'Lakes Land O'Lakes is using the Google cloud and its integrated Google Maps to help farmers visualize their fields and their data. Using a public cloud, the company created a data repository with information on farmers' field boundaries, seed prescriptions for the fields, plant nutrient history and tissue sample data. That data can be used by five tools that Bekele has added to the cloud. He's working on adding another five and hopes to have 20 to 25 tools available to farmers in the next 12 to 18 months. The project is just starting to roll out so only 25 to 30 farmers are using it. But in 12 to 18 months, Bekele said he expects to have 20,000 to 30,000 farmers using it. "As a farmer, my data is all in the cloud and all the tools are in the cloud," he said. "It will mean the ability to use multiple tools and make better decisions and better production with the same input If we had done this with our legacy systems, we couldn't have achieved it. The amount of data and the ability to scale it, it would have been too much." Bekele said Land O'Lakes will use Google's machine-learning tools to analyze data and find patterns, but he was mainly pulled to Google's cloud because Google Maps was integrated with it. "With the farms' field boundaries, Maps can give a geospatial location to them," he explained. "Anything that goes into this central cloud has a point -- a location. With the ability to use Google Maps, we are able to visualize our data, our land. That's really helpful. When you put seed on the ground, you can see the way it looks on a map." With Maps, farmers can visualize where they've already sprayed their crops and what areas need attention. When they log in the nutrient value of a tissue sample from an ear of corn, for instance, they can see what part of the field it came from. "Being able to visualize it in a mapping format is kind of critical," Bekele said. "When you say Field A, that could mean different things to different people. You need to see which field and which part of a field someone is talking about." Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, said this a smart move for Land O'Lakes. "I think Land O'Lakes is making the right decision because exact geographic locations are so important to what they're trying to do," he said. "This is where Google's multiproduct approach really pays off. If Google didn't have Maps, they would have much stronger competition for this type of business." Farming has become data and tech driven, Bekele added. "The biggest factor in crop production is weather. You can't control it," he said. "You have to work around it. Now, though, you can't control the weather, but you can control what you do and you can try to react in the right way. I think the cloud plays a big role in that. It helps us get to the next frontier. It's about big data and scaling up our ability to run big analytics and the ability to learn from a variety of factors." One of the biggest challenges Land O'Lakes has had to tackle is working with different cloud vendors. Bekele said the company hasn't gone all-in with one cloud vendor because it prefers to use the vendor that works best for a specific project, which also enables Land O'Lakes to learn about each cloud company. That also means that Land O'Lakes' IT workers need to be able to work with different vendors. According to Olds, using multiple cloud vendors can be worth the extra work and training. "Having multiple vendors means you 'keep 'em honest' by letting them know you have alternatives in case they screw up," he said. "Having multiple vendors also means that a problem that is confined to one vendor, like a service outage, won't take your entire business down." An even bigger challenge for Land O'Lakes, however, was managing security, especially around the mapping pieces in their cloud. "We needed more security so we can share [information] with growers and nobody else so we needed workarounds," Bekele added. "Some services, like the security piece and being able to share data and access to shared files and then rescinding that access wasn't as built-up as I'd like." The Texas Advanced Computer Center (TACC) has received $30 million in U.S. funding for a new supercomputer that will roughly double the performance of its existing 9-petaflop supercomputer. The new system, named Stampede 2 after its predecessor, is being funded by the National Science Foundation. It will be available for scientific research by June 1, 2017. The Texas supercomputing center occupies a unique niche. The U.S. government owns the nation's largest and most powerful supercomputers. The national leader is Titan, a Cray XK7 Opteron-based system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, running at a peak performance of about 27 petaflops. But TACC operates one of the nation's largest academic supercomputers, which went into production on Jan. 7, 2013. The original Stampede system ranked 10th on the latest Top 500 supercomputing list, released last November. Both U.S. and academic facilities conduct wide-ranging basic research in many of the same areas, such as climate and health. But U.S. national labs perform government-directed research, including those related to national security issues, nuclear research, energy, climate and biosecurity. NSF funds research efforts at universities covering every discipline imaginable and provides funding for HPC use. The largest academic system is the Cray Blue Waters system at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), University of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It is capable of 13.5 petaflops peak performance, but is not ranked on the Top 500 list. NCSA made a decision several years ago not to submit data to the Top 500, because of problems it has with the benchmarking system, Linpack, used to evaluate performance. Regarding Stampede II, "we anticipate it will be the biggest machine in a U.S. university by next year," said Dan Stanzione, executive director of TACC. Similar to its predecessor, Stampede 2 will use Dell servers and Intel chips. While work on Stampede 2 begins, the TACC is now upgrading Stampede -- adding 500 Knights Landing-based Xeon Phi systems, which can have up to 72 cores. With the Knights Landing chip addition, the aggregate performance of Stampede will theoretically be above 10 petaflops. However, the upgrade will be used to help start migrating applications to the new system. It won't be running jobs across the entire Stampede system. Stampede 2 will incorporate some of the latest memory advances, including the upcoming 3D XPoint non-volatile memory technology, about 1,000 times faster than NAND flash. There is considerable demand for HPC time from scientists. Although Stampede has run seven million jobs representing the work of some 10,000 researchers, the center still fields five times as many requests for time on the system as it can deliver, said Stanzione. The new machine will help meet this research backlog, said Stanzione. "We know the demand is out there," he said. Stampede 2 will mean higher resolutions and more accurate modeling for large runs. But smaller jobs, depending on how well they use memory and processing power, will completed more quickly. The node count between Stampede and Stampede 2 will be roughly the same, around 6,000 nodes. And while officials aren't sure of the final core count of the Intel processors, TACC is expecting each one-socket node to be capable of about 3 teraflops each. TACC held a dedication today for its newly expanded building, a $20 million, 38,000 square-foot complex. The new building is needed to meet the growing demand for HPC across a wide range of disciplines. "The more things in science that use advanced computing, the bigger our mission gets," said Stanzione. Oracle plans to sue whistleblower Svetlana Blackburn for malicious prosecution, the company said Thursday. On Wednesday, Blackburn -- a senior finance manager in Oracles cloud business -- said in a lawsuit she was terminated from her job for refusing to go along with cloud-computing accounting principles she considered unlawful. Blackburn alleges that upper management was trying to fit "square data into round holes" in a bid to boost the financial reports for Oracle's cloud services business that would be "paraded" before company leaders and investors. "We are confident that all our cloud accounting is proper and correct," Oracle spokesperson Deborah Hellinger said via email. "This former employee worked at Oracle for less than a year and did not work in the accounting group. She was terminated for poor performance, and we intend to sue her for malicious prosecution." Blackburn, a certified public accountant, received a positive performance review in August 2015. Soon afterward, however, her supervisors charted a course that veered from legal, ethical and company standards," according to her legal complaint against Oracle. Her employment was terminated on Oct. 15 after she continued to resist and warn of the accounting improprieties, the complaint said. Early this year, Gartner issued a report suggesting that accounting practices were not always reliable for cloud computing vendors. Oracle shares were down almost 5 percent percent in early trading on Thursday in the wake of news of Blackburn's lawsuit. "It hasnt been a good week for Oracle," said Frank Scavo, president of Computer Economics. "On Tuesday it was hit with a $3 billion lawsuit from HP for breach of contract, then on Wednesday a whistleblower lawsuit, and we still have two more days until the weekend." The HP lawsuit has been pending for years, but a jury trial started this week. Oracle is well-known for suing competitors, but this week it seems to be on the receiving end. "As they say, live by the sword, die by the sword," Scavo said. "I think Oracles response to this lawsuit is particularly harsh because it touches the core of Oracles strategic direction," he added. "Oracle has been under tremendous pressure from investors to show progress on its transition to the cloud," Scavo said. "If what this former employee is saying is true, it would cause investors to question how solid Oracles numbers are for its cloud business." That's no small thing: The hit to Oracle's share price "shows how seriously investors view this situation," Scavo added. Researchers have found a malware program that was designed to manipulate supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems in order to hide the real readings from industrial processes. The same technique was used by the Stuxnet sabotage malware allegedly created by the U.S. and Israel to disrupt Iran's nuclear program and credited with destroying a large number of the country's uranium enrichment centrifuges. The new malware was discovered in the second half of last year by researchers from security firm FireEye, not in an active attack, but in the VirusTotal database. VirusTotal is a Google-owned website where users can submit suspicious files to be scanned by antivirus engines. The mysterious program, which FireEye has dubbed IRONGATE, was uploaded to VirusTotal by several sources in 2014, at which time none of the antivirus products used by the site detected it as malicious. It's also surprising that no company has identified the malware until late 2015, because the VirusTotal samples are automatically shared with all antivirus vendors that participate in the project. FireEye itself discovered it because the company was searching for potentially suspicious samples compiled with PyInstaller, a technique used by various attackers. Two IRONGATE payloads stood out because they had references to SCADA and associated functionality. The good news is that the samples seem to be a proof of concept or part of some research effort. They're designed to find and replace a specific DLL that communicates with Siemens SIMATIC S7-PLCSIM, software that allows users to run programs on simulated S7-300 and S7-400 programmable logic controllers (PLCs). PLCs are the specialized hardware devices that monitor and control industrial processes -- spinning motors, opening and closing valves, etc. They transmit their readings and other data to monitoring software, the human-machine interface (HMI), that runs on workstations used by engineers. Like Stuxnet did at Iran's Natanz nuclear plant, IRONGATE goal is to inject itself into the SCADA monitoring process and manipulate the data coming from PLCs, potentially hiding ongoing sabotage. Stuxnet did this by suspending the PLC operation so the reported centrifuge rotor speed would remain static and within normal limits while it actually was not. IRONGATE instead records valid data from the PLC and then continuously plays that data back -- think of robbers feeding the same video recording to a surveillance camera in a loop. The fact that IRONGATE interacts with a PLC simulator and replaces a DLL that is not part of the Siemens standard product set have led the FireEye researchers to believe this malware was likely just a test. The Siemens Product Computer Emergency Readiness Team (ProductCERT) "has confirmed that the code would not work against a standard Siemens control system environment," the FireEye researchers said in a blog post Thursday. However, if IRONGATE was just a proof of concept developed in 2014, intended to test a Stuxnet-like man-in-the-middle attack against PLCs, it could mean its creators have built another malware program since then that works against real industrial control system (ICS) deployments. Either way, IRONGATE's discovery should serve as a warning to organizations that operate SCADA systems. "The attackers have learned and implemented Stuxnet techniques, but the defenders havent really improved the ability to detect malware targeting ICS," Dale Peterson, the CEO of ICS security consultancy Digital Bond, said in a blog post. "We need significant improvement in detection capabilities for ICS integrity attacks." The European Commission has signed a landmark agreement with the U.S. in its quest to legitimize the transatlantic flow of European Union citizens' personal information. No, it's not the embattled Privacy Shield, which the Commission hopes to conclude later this month, but the rather flimsier-sounding umbrella agreement or, more formally, the U.S.-EU agreement "on the protection of personal information relating to the prevention, investigation, detection, and prosecution of criminal offenses." It covers the exchange between EU and U.S. law enforcers, during the course of their investigations of personal data including names, addresses and criminal records. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, European Commissioner for Justice Vera Jourova and Dutch Minister for Security and Justice Ard van der Steur signed the agreement in Amsterdam on Thursday. One benefit of the agreement for EU citizens caught up in such investigations is that they will benefit from the same rights to judicial redress as U.S. citizens if a privacy breach occurs, thanks to the recently passed Judicial Redress Act. A stumbling block on the way to the agreement was U.S. senators' delay in approving the act after its approval by the House of Representatives. The agreement won't become part of international law until the European Parliament, noticeably critical of the Commission's data protection plans in recent weeks, has given its approval. IT monitoring software probes various parts of the infrastructure -- servers, networks and applications -- and alerts IT about problems before they can cause an outage that affects the business. According to IT managers in the IT Central Station community, the most important criteria to consider when choosing infrastructure monitoring software include compatibility with existing infrastructure and customizable views. Four of the leading IT infrastructure monitoring solutions are CA Unified Infrastructure Management, SevOne, Nagios and Opsview Enterprise, according to ratings by IT Central Station members. But what do enterprise users really think about these tools? Here, users give a shout out for some of their favorite features, but also give the vendors a little tough love. Editors note: These reviews of select infrastructure monitoring tools come from the IT Central Station community. They are the opinions of the users and are based on their own experiences. CA Unified Infrastructure Management (UIM) Valuable features It gives a good baseline as to how we go about monitoring our clients, as each one is different but can fall into a specific category of infrastructure monitoring. -- Daniel B., Enterprise Tools Architect at a tech services company We're able to predict how close we're approaching our thresholds so we can head off a disaster, and we can troubleshoot it before it becomes a big problem. -- Gary G., Senior Director of Technology Services Operations at a tech services company The ability to be able to pull data out of multiple data sources and surface it all into a single tool. Some of the other tools that we had were very limited, [but] with UIM you can scrape virtually any data source. -- Craig D., Manager, End-to-End Monitoring, at a manufacturing company Room for improvement UIM supports AS400, but it is somewhat limited. -- Dan H., Managed Services Operational Engineer at a tech services company Whenever there is an IP address change to the server it won't update automatically, [so] we have manually validated the probes. This should be improved. -- Franklin P., Senior System Engineer at a financial services firm You can read more CA UIM reviews on IT Central Station. SevOne Valuable features The reporting capabilities provide us with important metrics and data that help us with oversight of our system, network and overall IT infrastructure, both in terms of applications and hardware. -- Abdul K., Senior Software Engineer at a communications service provider The features we are seeing the greatest benefit from are the enhanced reporting, net-flow data collection, and the data retention. -- Jonas S., SaaS Engineer at a tech vendor "The graphing function can be tailored for all levels of management reporting. -- Ken O., Network Management Development and Support at a tech services company Room for improvement I think that the downstream suppression could be improved. Suppression must all be done manually [now], but this improvement is on SevOne's roadmap, I believe. -- Eric S., Chief Technology Officer at an aerospace/defense firm I'd like to see a configuration management feature that lets me customize analyses and data points important to me at any specific time. -- Harish K. , Network Engineer at a tech services company We would like heat mapping and more detailed data, but in a general sense the initial mission was to get a more informed viewpoint of traffic in our network, and they knocked that out of the park. -- Mark L., Network Engineer at a government agency You can read more SevOne reviews on IT Central Station. Nagios Valuable features The dashboard and heads-up display [are] practical and useful for enterprise/network operations center use cases. -- Sid R., Vice President of Operations & Client Support at a tech services company Our infrastructure is now [monitored] proactively and we don't have to wait for complaints from the customers or internal operation team regarding any issue with the service. -- Ammar S., Manager of Infrastructure at a financial services firm Room for improvement A better UI for graphing would make it better. -- Roshan N., Senior DevOps Engineer at a tech company Id like to have the option to configure Nagios using the Web interface. Although the command line interface gives a lot of customization options, I'd like to take a break from looking at lines of words. -- Kelvin L., Client Engineer at a tech services company [Nagios needs] to get a standard GUI and a better notification system. For my system, I've developed the notifications [in-house] because [Nagios] basically just sends you an email. -- Paulo D., Network Engineer at a tech services company Scaling Nagios to cover multiple regions or data centers is challenging. It requires another tool which I never incorporated. Due to this gap I used a dedicated Nagios server within each specific operation. -- Eric A.,Web Operations Engineer at a renewables/environment company You can read more Nagios reviews on IT Central Station. Opsview Enterprise Valuable features The most important feature is the distributed, highly available monitoring clusters in the enterprise editions. As we run multiple sites around the world and every second of service disruption costs us money, this feature is critical. -- Noah G., Systems & Monitoring Engineer at a communications service provider The most valuable features for us are the modification profiles and the initial dashboard. They're also the two main things we use the most. -- Oscar H., NOC Manager at a communications service provider The most valuable component of OpsView might be the very good Web GUI. It provides a great overview of all hosts and services; furthermore, adding new monitoring targets and modifying existing configuration is possible. -- Valentin H., Cloud Architect at a communications service provider Room for improvement Some aspects of the GUI functionality need improvement. We've discussed them with Opsview and they plan on making improvements per customer request. -- Dervia M., Internet Services Support & Maintenance Manager at a communications service provider I think it still has room for improvement to auto discovery. I also think it can be improved [when monitoring] VMware as well. -- Joe P., Systems Engineer at a maritime company You can read more OpsView reviews on IT Central Station. Application Switcher in OS X is one of those features many of us use every day without question, zipping between open apps with the press of the Command and Tab keys. But it does so much more You see, like so much about the Mac, Application Switcher can also be used to get other things done, helping you become more productive (maybe) and no doubt magnifying your capacity to impress and attract your opposite sex(es). So, what do we think we know? We know that when we press Command-Tab a window appears on screen within which we can cycle through all active applications. We may also know that if we press Command-Shift-Tab we can cycle backward through the open apps. (Or use the left and right arrows to move across the list). When the application that is required is selected one just releases the keys and it becomes the active, foreground app. This is a great way to zip between applications when trying to get things done, particularly (but not exclusively) when using a MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro, because it enables you to avoid digging through windows in search of the application you need. Many Mac users dont know: In Finder view you have a file of some kind you wish to open you can double click the item to open it in its default app; you can Control-Click it in order to launch the contextual menu to use the Open With command to choose an alternative app, you can drag and drop it on the relevant application icon in the Dock or your Applications folder, or you can do this: With your cursor, select the file you want to open and begin to drag it across the screen Without releasing the file, tap and hold Command-Tab on your keyboard to launch Application Switcher Now drag the file you wish to open and drop it onto the appropriate application icon in the Switcher The file will open in the application you chose, (if its compatible of course.) Most Mac users wont know: You can use the above tip to transfer content into different apps without saving selected content to your Clipboard. (Perhaps you have an item already saved to Clipboard you want to use subsequently). Select the content text from a Word document, Web page or email, for example and begin dragging it across your screen. Now without releasing hold of the text tap Command-Tab to get to the application in which you wish to use the material and drop it in there, or wait for the target application to launch and use it then. You may also want to use Command-~ to cycle through to the window within the destination app. You can then add whatever you had stashed in the Clipboard. Few Mac users know: If you are using a Magic Trackpad or MacBook you have a few more tricks. Use Command-Tab to launch Application Switcher and you can then scroll across the list using the Trackpad to select an item and click to launch it (or hit Return). You can use two fingers to scroll through the list faster, the advantage of doing so is that your on-screen cursor remains where it is perhaps at that key point you wanted to paste something using Photoshop, for example. AppleHolic Don't forget... If you have an active Handoff session you will see this appear as an added item to the left of the Application Switcher and you can select it. What else does Application Switcher do? Application Switcher has three other useful commands: Show open Windows: Press Command-Tab (or Command-Shift-Tab) to get to the application you want to take a look at. Keeping the app selected and with the Command button pressed down, press 1 and you will be rewarded with an Expose view in which all open windows belonging to that application will be visible. You can also select the app you want to take a look at and press the up or down arrows To Quit an app: Press Command-Tab (or Command-Shift-Tab) to get to the application you wish to close. With the application selected, keep the Command button depressed and then tap Q. To Hide an app: Press Command-Tab (or Command-Shift-Tab) to get to the application you want to Hide. With the application selected, keep the Command button depressed and then tap H. I hope this short report helps you get more from your Mac. Google+? If you use social media and happen to be a Google+ user, why not join AppleHolic's Kool Aid Corner community and join the conversation as we pursue the spirit of the New Model Apple? Want Apple TV tips? If you want to learn how to get the very best out of your Apple TV, please visit my Apple TV website. Got a story? Drop me a line via Twitter or in comments below and let me know. I'd like it if you chose to follow me on Twitter so I can let you know when fresh items are published here first on Computerworld. Over the past few days, attackers have been exploiting an unpatched vulnerability in WP Mobile Detector, a WordPress plug-in installed on over 10,000 websites. The plug-in's developer fixed the flaw Tuesday in version 3.6, but in addition to updating immediately, users should also check if their websites haven't already been hacked. The vulnerability is located in a script called resize.php script and allows remote attackers to upload arbitrary files to the Web server. These files can be backdoor scripts known as Web shells that provide attackers with backdoor access to the server and the ability to inject code into legitimate pages. The flaw was discovered by WordPress security outfit PluginVulnerabilities.com after it observed requests for the wp-content/plugins/wp-mobile-detector/resize.php even though it didn't exist on its server. This indicated that someone was running an automated scan for that specific file, likely because it had a flaw. Researchers from Web security firm Sucuri have analyzed the company's firewall logs and discovered exploitation attempts since May 27, four days before the patch was released. It's possible that attackers have known about the exploit even before that date. WP Mobile Detector, which shouldn't be confused with a different unaffected plug-in called WP Mobile Detect, used to have more than 10,000 active installations at the beginning of May. Now it has around 2,000, but after the exploit was discovered, the plug-in was briefly removed from the WordPress.org plug-ins directory. According to Plugin Vulnerabilities there is a limiting factor: in order for this flaw to be exploitable, the allow_url_fopen feature needs to be enabled on the server. Since it's not clear how many websites have been hacked, it's a good idea for WordPress website owners who use this plug-in to check their servers for signs of compromise. "At this moment the majority of the vulnerable sites are infected with porn spam doorways," Sucuri researcher Douglas Santos said in a blog post. "You can usually find the gopni3g directory in the site root, that contains story.php (doorway generator script), .htaccess and subdirectories with spammy files and templates." Iain Dale is Presenter of LBC Drive, Managing Director of Biteback Publishing, a columnist and broadcaster and a former Conservative Parliamentary candidate. Last week, I wrote that I thought Andrea Leadsom had been a star of the Leave campaign. Let me this week sing the praises of Liam Fox. In terms of putting the Leave case, he has been calm, assured and believable. He hasnt indulged in stoking up Project Fear and has been excellent in head to head debates. This wont have gone unnoticed in Downing Street which, when the referendum is over, will surely look to unite the party. One way of doing so may be to bring Fox back into the cabinet. But Id say this was a possibility rather than a probability. After all, the way he was treated last time may well mean that hed tell them to sling their collective hooks. For those who dont remember, Fox having been asked if he would like to return to government was called by Downing Street (not by the Prime Minister himself) and offered a Minister of State job at the Foreign Office. Indeed, it was the same job he had held as a young MP during the early 1990s. A total insult. On the Remain side, what on earth has happened to Ken Clarke? I expected him to be on the TV 24-7 during this campaign, but Ive barely seen him. Same for Michael Heseltine. Arent these the big beasts of the jungle who are most respected by the electorate? I suppose its possible that they are being saved up for the last two weeks, but its most odd that they havent appeared much so far. And while I think of it, what on earth has happened to Theresa May? Almost totally invisible during in this campaign. Very odd for one of the big three Cabinet Ministers and for someone who aspires to lead the Conservative Party. Perhaps she thinks that its least said, soonest mended. She may be right. Is the country actually being governed at the moment? I only ask because I cant actually remember reading a news story about anything else other than Brexit during the last two weeks. On Wednesday, I did an hour-long live interview with Mark Regev, Israels new Ambassador to Britain [see above]. I first interviewed him on the late lamented 18 Doughty Street in 2006. I wrote at the time: Anyone who heard him would have been impressed, regardless of where they stand on the current dispute. Calm, honest and assured he answered every question put to him with a dignity and honesty unusual in Government spin doctors. I wouldnt be surprised to see him have a great future in Israeli politics. I stand by every word. I may not agree with everything he says it would be strange if I did but if every Israeli spokesman had his capabilities, I suspect Israel might have a much better reputation in the world than it currently enjoys. He has a fascinating back story in that he arrived in Israel at the age of 22 to join the Socialist Zionist Movement. Latterly he was a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry and has spent the last eight years as Benjamin Netanyahus official spokesman. London is a plumb diplomatic posting, and I suspect will be a stepping stone either to the Ambassadorship in Washington or to going into Israeli politics. It wouldnt at all surprise me to see Regev reach the top of Israels greasy pole. Vice News have been given privileged access to Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and the result is a 30 minute fly on the wall documentary, which was released on Wednesday. Its presented by Ben Ferguson, a Labour Party member and self-confessed Corbyn supporter . Its all fairly harmless stuff and ultimately tells us little that we didnt know before apart from one thing: it tells us an awful lot about Seumus Milnes media priorities. If youre going to grant this kind of access, why would you give it to a little-watched website? This film may get several hundred thousand views (17,000 on Youtube at the time of writing), but I doubt whether many of them will be floating voters. Most of them will the kind of people who think Corbyn represents the second coming. Or they will be professional Corbyn-watchers, such as me. Surely it would have been better to let a proper journalist in someone like Michael Cockerell who would have done the job properly. Ferguson seems like a nice guy, and its a perfectly watchable film but he doesnt ask Corbyn a single searching question which would force Corbyn to provide an answer he hasnt given several times before. We learn little about Corby as a human being what motivates him; how he deals with the frustrations of the job. However, we do get to meet his wife, and we also get to know his hapless events officer, Gavin. I suspect poor Gavin will cringe a little when he watches this: The best way to get Jeremy out is to let him fail in his own time, was one of his more memorable comments. With friends like these We knew that the Corbyn camp operated under a siege mentality, and this was certainly confirmed through his little anti-BBC rant towards the end. Indeed, it seems that he and his entire team believe that the media is out to get them. Thats why they operate in a bunke only to peep out occasionally when a friendly journalist promises not to be too nasty. Milne has a lot to answer for. It is he who is intent on not allowing Corbyn out of the bunker any more than he has to. When he was a backbench MP, I would interview Corbyn at least once a month, sometimes more. He loved coming into the LBC studio and was a regular guest on my late, lamented Parliament Hour. He knew he would always get a fair hearing and fair treatment. Since Corbyn has been leader not only have I not interviewed him once, I dont think he has ever appeared on LBC a station which he always regarded as a friend. And its not for want of trying. John McDonnell only ever agreed to appear on Ken Livingstones show and now that thats gone, I dont suppose he will talk to any of the rest of us. Our experience is not unique. The thing is that a regular Phone Jeremy programme would do him the world of good but, in Milnes world, LBC is no doubt considered a proto-fascist organisation and all part of the capitalist conspiracy. Back in reality, all we want to do is quiz leading politicians on their views and allow our callers to put their questions direct. Youd have thought that Corbyn would find that a different way to do politics. There will come a time when his team realises that it needs to deal with the broadcast media in a very different way. But how long this will take is anyones guess The usual pattern of these special TV debates is that the interviewer targets missiles at the politician with drone-type accuracy or tries to before the studio audience sprays him with less well-directed grapeshot. So it proved yesterday during yesterday evenings Sky News event with David Cameron. Faisal Islam went for the Prime Ministers jugular over immigration, thus reminding viewers of a key Remain weakness. For while it is arguable that Britain would not be able to control immigration in the event of Brexit, it is certain that we will not do so by staying as an EU member. In effect, Cameron cannot deliver the immigration target originally set out in his 2010 manifesto to take net migration back to the levels of the 1990s tens of thousands a year, not hundreds of thousands. Before that election, honouring the pledge was part of a contract his word, not ours that the Prime Minister offered to voters: if we dont deliver our side of the bargain, kick us out in five years time, he said. Note how that solemn promise has now morphed into a mere ambition a word that Cameron kept repeating yesterday evening. Yesterdays event and immigration control thus highlighted a general problem for politicians which gets worse as time passes for each of them: trust. The longer a Prime Minister serves, the more exposed he is. There is somehow an umbilical relationship between hours in office passed, pledges once made broken and reputational damage done. Cameron has faced studio audiences before, and yesterday evenings was exceptionally gladiatorial: he was interrupted, heckled, and accused of waffling, hypocrisy, scaremongering and doing personal damage to his reputation. In itself, that perhaps wouldnt matter. In context, it may turn out to do so. What comes first? World War III or the global Brexit recession? the lively Islam mocked. Remains Project Fear exercise cant work if its messengers have no credibility. And the Prime Minister is the campaigns main messenger more authoritative than Alan Johnson, given the office he holds; more plausible than George Osborne or any other Conservative politician. Only a minority of voters will have seen yesterday evenings debate, of course. The ones that will take place closer to June 23rd will matter more. And Cameron, the old trouper, stuck to his game plan: keep going; dont be riled; change the subject if possible. Where Faisals cry was immigration, his was single market. But some of that grapeshot, much of it not connected to the referendum at all, hit home. The Prime Minister was pounded for sharing a platform this week with a man who hes only recently accused of appeasing extremists Sadiq Khan. I call the event a debate as a form of shorthand, but of course it wasnt one. Cameron does not want to risk his record in a head-to-head with Boris Johnson or anyone else. On the basis of yesterday evening, it isnt hard to see why. This evening, Michael Gove steps on down into the jackals den. This evenings event will take place on Sky News at 8pm. Freedom From Fear By Sheikh Javaid Ayub 03 June, 2016 Countercurrents.org Oxford English dictionary defines fear as a strong, uncontrollable, unpleasant emotion caused by actual or perceived danger, or threat. As a countable noun it means a phobia, a sense of fear induced by something or someone. Islamophobia is an undue fear of Islam, so is Westernophobia a growing sense of insecurity and fear of the West. Fear makes minorities feel vulnerable about their minority hood. Fear of communal violence and rightist ideology may make Indian Muslims vote for secular parties, especially for the Congress. Despite constituting 14 percent of the total population of India, Indian Muslims, it is stated, are deliberately being kept out of the Indian parliament. In the 2014Lok Sabha elections Muslim representation hit an all time low of just 22 MPs, with UP despite its substantial Muslim population, not returning a single Muslim candidate to the Lok Sabha. The parties are finding it difficult to field Muslim candidates for fear of consolidating the majority vote. Politics both international and domestic is shaped by fear. The anarchical world order can create fear among the nation state so do the US hegemony. Fear of losing statehood put the nation states on the path of armamentation. From conventional arms to nuclear bombs, fear has largely been a motive in this mad race of arms. The idea of the military utility has been a key driver for the pursuit of nuclear weapons. The fear of Fascism galvanized into the Second World War and the fear of Communism produced the Cold War. Cold War was a war of build up Vs build up. The two superpowers were so massively engaged in a nuclear race that they were in possession of more than 70000 weapons by the US and the Soviet Union during 1970s and 1980s. However, todays nuclear world is very different from the bipolar world of the Cold War dominated by nuclear rivalry between the two superpowers. The centre of gravity is relentlessly shifting from Europe to Asia Pacific. Fear is thus mother of all wars and all weaponry. Chinas presence as a nuclear power in the neighborhood provides a powerful reason for India to detonate its own, irrespective of being among the worlds poorest countries. According to the annual report of Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, India is home to 194.6 million undernourished people, the highest in the world. Despite being in such a killer poverty trap it manages its nukes. Indias bomb gave reason for Pakistan to have her own. Making of bomb kills so do its use. Living with nuclear bombs has made us believe that possessing such beasty bombs will secure us through nuclear deterrence. Believing in the logic of deterrence is to live in a fools paradise. Deterrence is the buzz word of the people who like to think of themselves as hawks claiming to have known human nature in its totality; perhaps not, because no one can claim a mastery over understanding the human nature. Ask Hobbes and he will claim human nature to be selfish, egoistic, quarrelsome, timid etc. Ask Locke and Rousseau they will opine that humans have a natural tendency of degeneration which is sufficient for men to wage wars and go for a rampant killing. The theory of nuclear deterrence, we are told, prevented the Cold War from turning into a Hot War. True, the Cold War remained cold till it ended but there are lots of hidden truths that need to be unearthed. Neither states nor the statesmen have saved the world at the most dangerous moment of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. It was Vasili Arkhipov, a Soviet Submarine Officer who blocked an order to fire nuclear-armed torpedoes, at the tensest moment of the crisis, when the submarines were under attack by US destroyers. A devastating response would have been a near certainty, leading to a Total War. In a nuclear world it is not dying that we must fear, but living. It is folly to believe that nuclear bombs are deadly only if they are used. But the fact is that their very presence is cancerous for our existence. Setting of a tradition of using nuclear bomb, the US has put the whole world on a nuclear volcano which can burriest any time anywhere. The day it burriest, will surely be a dooms day for the mankind. Ours is a risk society and nuclear risks cannot be overlooked. Barak Obama became the first serving US president to visit Hiroshima on May 27 of this year. The visit is mostly looked as reflecting obamas conviction about a nuclear free world. Although he did not make an apology for dropping of the atomic bombs in 1945, but he returned to the nuclear disarmament agenda, stating that new and destructive technologies need a moral revolution. He called for moral courage to escape the logic of fear in order to pursue a goal of a world without nuclear weapons. But he forgot to mention that the US has announced an ambitious plan to spend $1 trillion for modernization of its nuclear arsenal over the next three decades. Neither did he say that the US still maintains the right of first use of nuclear weapons though limited to extreme circumstances. Fear, if well articulated, can become a handy tool for keeping hegemony intact and can provide a kind of free license to intervene, attack and control nation states. Consolidation of power need creating and countering perceived threats to the society. Threats are created and solved in such a fashion that people relinquish their sovereign powers and surrender before propagandist state apparatus that virtually present herself as the guardian and protector of individual. People are made do think in the terms state wants them to think, there is no thinking beyond that, and no truth beyond the truth that is articulated by the state. Truth is what the hegemon calls truth! The fear of Al-Qaida can become enough reason for invading Afghanistan. In the same fashion the fear of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction become a valid reason for bombarding Iraq and eliminating Saddam Hussain. The fear is seen everywhere. It is politicized, manipulated, mutilated, manufactured and removed only to be replaced by a more intense one. The presence of seven lakh troops, backed by draconian laws is a glaring example of Indias fear of losing Kashmir. The presence of such a huge number of armed personnel has domesticated fear in every house hold with every Kashmiri. The fear hounds them as do ghosts in the dark dreadful nights. They are feeling dwarfed with their manhood lost. Their voices chocked and their individuality crushed. What they really need is freedom from fear. Let the fears are done with and the much needed peace and tranquility be restored for human happiness and human progress. The author teaches political Science and can be mailed at sunatjavaidps@gmail.com. It Is Expensive To Be Poor By Vidyadhar Date 03 June, 2016 Countercurrents.org Mumbai: A man murdered a woman in Mumbai recently because he was afraid she was going to deprive him of his job as a temporary watchman. This shows the crisis of employment in Mumbai. And this is a city which among all places in India is supposed to provide the maximum employment opportunity. And the watchman security industry is one of the few industries which has seen a big job growth in the last few years. If jobs are not easily available even here then it is a serious situation. So far one of the few jobs available for the poor is of security guards in housing societies . There is a big demand for the jobs even though these are very poorly paid. I talk with these people sometimes while taking a walk to Joggers Park and find that many of them work in two shifts, each of 12 hours, day and night. This is because the pay for one shift is not enough even for subsistence. Many of them sleep at night and it is easy to blame them if one does not take into account the working conditions. Doing two jobs is the only way they can tackle their problem of homelessness. Mumbais municipal commissioner recently talked of two items on top of his agenda - providing houses for the poor and to create jobs. But then Mumbai is mainly creating poorly paying jobs and there is not the faintest chance of these poor people ever being able to afford even the most miserable dwelling. And the government has not the slightest credibility in the scheme of providing houses to slum dwellers as this is aimed mainly at enriching the builders. Those not having access even to a slum have little future. Chief minister Antulay brought about a legislation in the early eighties to provide security of employment to security guards and to regulate the industry of security agencies often run by retired cops or armymen. It worked for some time and then was scuttled by subsequent administrations. The food needs of the watchmen have led to a new industry. Last night I saw two men on a motor cycle stopping in front of every building handing out plastic parcels to watchmen. This was their dinner of dal, chawal and sabji for Rs. 35. That comes to nearly Rs. 2000 per month for two subsistence meals a day. That may be one dinner expense in a restaurant for a better off person. But when a man makes Rs. 6000 doing a total of two jobs per day for a month, this is very unaffordable. There are other expenses and he has to send money home in U.P. or Bihar.. I also saw a couple of young men with their own motor cycles in front of a chemist shop handing out a home delivery of medicines. Such job creation is all right for survival but does not reflect a healthy economy. Clearly, the claims that India is the fastest growing economy in the world can hardly impress those who experience reality. The laziness of the rich is creating a demand for home delivery. People want home delivery even from a shop in front of their house. This is leading to the creation of agencies which offer home delivery for a range of products from groceries to electric appliances. But this job creation has little value. Besides, so many jobs are not only poorly paid but also hazardous. Three workers were suffocated to death while cleaning a drain pipe in the posh Palava city township coming up on the outskirts of Mumbai near Dombivali. Most such workers are denied basic protective measures in the hazardous job. Just as the railway network in the U.S. and Canada is said to be laid on the graves of workers killed during construction, our rich would be living on the graves of the poor who are killed while laboring for building the luxurious apartments for the rich. It is expensive to be poor as the famous American novelist James Baldwin and researcher Barbara Ehrenreich have pointed out. I know of a domestic help who pays Rs. 3000 per month for a shelter in a slum while an extremely rich man enjoying the protection of the old Rent Act may be living in a sprawling house in a posh area in Mumbai paying much less than that. For everything the poor have to pay more than the rich in proportion to their income. Since, the poor do not have a proper dwelling address, they do not get basic services. The rich who clog the streets with their cars do not realizing that the congestion is driving up the expense of an ordinary man who takes an auto rickshaw or a taxi in an emergency. The system does not care for the poor as the rich with their supreme ignorance and prejudice universally believe that the poor are to blame for their lot, not the system. Ordinary people it seems do not deserve basic amenities at public spaces even when they are paying for the services and even when they are engaged in boosting the economy. On the other hand the rich get preferential treatment. So, one notices that it is safer to get a heart attack at the Mumbai airport than anywhere else. A front page report in the Times of India said so earlier this month. One can be assured of treatment within three minutes with the use of electronic equipment installed at over 100 points. Fine. But how come it is difficult or almost impossible to get even first aid at our suburban or mainline railway stations or bus depots ? Many more people travel by trains than planes but it took a case in the high court to force the suburban railway system to agree to provide first aid boxes at railway stations in the last couple of years. And travelling by overcrowded trains is far more stressful and hazardous than planes. So the need here is much more. Besides chances of mishaps occurring at railway stations are much higher. Only two days ago, a slab on a drain collapsed at Vasai railway station and several people were injured and they fell into the slush. No one expects the posh ambience of airports at railway stations or bus depots. But how can the authorities discriminate between two sets of service users when it comes to basic amenities ? One has never noticed uncomfortable seats at airports. Toilet and drinking water facilities are all over and easily accessible. Can one imagine an airport where passengers wait in heat and rain without a roof over their head ? Medical tourism is cited as a reason for good medical facilities at the airport. But then so many ordinary people also travel by train and buses to get medical treatment. They may not be big consumers for five star hospitals. But they are travelers for a medical treatment though they are not tourists. The main reason for the discrimination is the extreme callousness of the political class and the upper class which think they can get away without providing even basic amenities to common people. Some top industrialists in Mumbai recently went out of their way to seek better surfacing of Marine Drive and wrote a letter to the municipal commissioner making a bitter complaint. If only they thought about the neglect of other areas, life would be better. There is a wider issue regarding railway stations and bus depots. These are prime public spaces used by lakhs of people. If only these are maintained well, if the authorities set a good example, it will help create a more social mindset, people will learn to use public spaces better, join in keeping them clean. (Vidyadhar Date is a senior journalist and author of the book Traffic in the Era of Climate Change). Mathura Violence: Jungle-Raj Raises Its Ugly Head Again In India By Samar 03 June, 2016 Countercurrents.org Mathura, a city in Uttar Pradesh, witnessed a sensational encounter between the police and a semi-religious cult that left at least 21 dead, 2 senior cops among them, yesterday. The police had reportedly gone there to evict members of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi who have been illegally occupying Jawahar Bagh for years on Thursday on the directions of the Allahabad high court. Still fuzzy reports coming out in the media hint that the group was armed to teeth to resist the move and it attacked the police party. The encounter, expectedly, made the parties in opposition blame the incumbent government for a total collapse of law and order in the state and the return of jungle-raj. A while back, the same jungle-raj was spotted in Bihar, an Indian province once notorious for its lawlessness and disorder. The son of a member of the Legislative Council (MLA) allegedly shot dead a student for having the temerity to overtake the MLAs sons car. Another MLA is cooling his heels in a jail after getting charge-sheeted for raping a minor. And, a senior journalist has been shot dead, allegedly on the orders of an ex-parliamentarian and political heavyweight. It seems that the state government has abdicated its constitutional obligation of maintaining law and order. For the opposition party, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), which has been trying every trick to get into power there, and for the media, this all signifies Bihar returning to the era of Jungle-raj, i.e. the law of the jungle or a collapse of the law enforcement. And, one could concur. Save, this does not seem to be happening in the once notorious state alone. Lets take for consideration, the security of journalists, a tribe that otherwise enjoys plenty of freedom in stable and mature democracies. A day before the fatal shooting of the journalist in Siwan District of Bihar, another scribe was shot dead in Chatra District of neighbouring Jharkhand, ruled by the BJP. The day after the murder of the Bihar journalist, yet another was shot at in Mathura District of Uttar Pradesh, ruled by the Samajwadi Party. This is no aberration. As per the Committee to Protect Journalists, an international watchdog, India has the dubious distinction of being the third most dangerous country for journalists judging by the the killing rates, right behind war-ravaged Iraq and Syria. Press freedom Index, 2016, released by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), another international watchdog, ranks India a lowly 133, out of 180 countries. Not a flattering compliment for a country that calls itself the largest democracy in the world. If this is what journalists are facing, one can easily imagine the fate of the ordinary population, not even armed with a camera and keyboard, condemned to live in the provinces. The reality of the brutality on display daily, however, doesnt leave much to the imagination. Take the recent case of the goons that tried to molest a girl. They killed her brother, an Indian Army soldier, in broad daylight in Dhule, Maharashtra, when he tried to save her. This happened just a day after the Bihar killing. And, then there is also the BJP ruled Madhya Pradesh, again, which is now infamous for the suspicious serial deaths of 43 people associated with a scandal in entrance tests conducted by the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board (MPPEB), popularly known by its Hindi acronym, Vyapam. The state is also notorious for routine killings of senior police officers including those from the Indian Police Services (IPS). Ironically, Bihar is actually doing better than many other states that are not being accused of Jungle-raj, if one goes by the latest findings of Indias National Crime Records Bureau; it doesnt figure in the top 7 crime prone states in 2014 (latest available figures). Delhi, a union territory with the highest crime rate of 767.4 under IPC crimes, sits at the top of the wall of shame followed by Kerala (585.3), Madhya Pradesh (358.5), Haryana (298.2), Assam (296.5), Rajasthan (295.1), and Telangana (294.5). The data, of course, may hide more than it reveals. There might be underreporting from states away from the media gaze, people might not be reporting crimes for the sake of honour, and so on. Yet, the data does show that the Jungle-raj exists and it is spread across the country, not only in Bihar. Let us look at the competitive and cacophonous blame game that political parties and their vested interests play closely, as this will reveal the set drama that follows such crimes. The opposition takes to streets and blames the party in power for these crimes and often demands a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation, an agency that works under the Union government. The ruling party promises toughest action and punishment to the guilty. A few heads are rolled in the constabulary. Some people get arrested and interrogated, sometimes on absurd charges. (For example, Bihar police has arrested the suspect in the journalist murder case for being in possession of alcohol and thus violating its recent prohibition laws. It is also looking for the lawmaker mother of the alleged road rage killer on the same charge as well!) The public interest starts subsiding after a while. A new crime takes place, captivates the public, and the earlier ones are forgotten. And so the drama repeats, in case after case. No one asks simple questions, such as: why should the political leadership promise action in cases of violent crimes? What else are the police, prosecution and judicial institutions established for? No one asks, why should it take outrage by the opposition or civil society or both for victims or their family to get justice / redress for the victims? This is the right of the people and the State is oath-bound to provide for it. No one talks of police and judicial reforms to build a system that places a heavy and deterrent cost on crime and restores the rights of the violated citizens without needing political patronage or civil society outrages. The chosen silences are not coincidence. They serve a purpose, the purpose of keeping the constabulary as uniformed henchmen of the regime and not as impartial law enforcers. The parties in opposition know that they would need the constabulary to cover up their corruption and hide the crimes of their goons once they return to power. The ruling parties know that the opposition knows that. They both invest in their own loyalists in uniform. And, so the system manifests. It is this massive politicization and favouritism that causes and perpetuates the Jungleraj in Indian states. Selective condemnation of a particular province, based on ones political ideology, will not change a thing. Samar is Programme Coordinator - Right to Food Programme Asian Legal Resource Centre / Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong Countering Pro-GMO Deceptions In The British Press By Colin Todhunter 03 June, 2016 Countercurrents.org In his recent piece for The Times newspaper in the UK, Viscount Matt Ridley argues that a new report from the American National Academies of Sciences (NAS) leaves no room for doubt that genetically engineered crops are as safe or safer, and are certainly better for the environment, than conventionally bred crops. Ridley adheres to the belief that GM technology reduces insecticide use and speculates that future GM crops will be even safer, better for the environment and better for human health. He says that it is a disgrace that Greenpeace still campaigns against Golden Rice, a vitamin-enhanced variety that its backers claim could save hundreds of thousands of lives a year. According to Ridley, opposition from rich westerners adds to the cost of bringing such crops to the market, which he argues restricts the spread of GM technology. In discussing the labelling of GM food in the US, Ridley argues this leaves consumers with the impression that there is something wrong. He argues that the recent NAS report makes the point that genetic engineering is a method, not a category of crop, and it makes no sense to single it out for special labelling because regulation should be based on traits, not techniques. Ridley implies, therefore, that GM is no different from food that is boiled or roasted as its actual content remains unaffected. Ridley finishes by saying the NAS report points out that emerging genetic technologies have blurred the distinction between genetic engineering and conventional plant breeding to the point where regulatory systems based on process are technically difficult to defend. With a good dose of industry-inspired PR flurry, he concludes that because gene editing in particular will soon allow scientists to improve crops in ways that have none of the even theoretical risks that critics highlight, if Europe does not embrace biotech plants now, its agriculture will wilt. Unfortunately, for readers of The Times, Ridleys piece is the usual concoction of misrepresentations, falsehoods and blunders we have come to expect of pro-GMO puff pieces that rely on flawed sources and reports. His major blunder is to have accepted at face value the NAS report. Ridley basing his piece on a flawed NAS report The NAS is compromised by the serious conflicts of interest within the NAS and its research arm, the National Research Council (NRC). Even studies relied upon by the NAS to show GMO safety are authored by people with conflicts of interest. Indeed, the new report by Food & Water Watch "Under the Influence: The National Research Council and GMOs" highlights the millions of dollars in donations received by the NAS and NRC from biotech companies. On its website, GMWatch discusses the Food & Water Watch report, which documents the one-sided panels of scientists the NRC enlists to carry out its GMO studies and describes the revolving door of its staff directors who shuffle in and out of industry groups. The report also shows how it routinely arrives at watered-down scientific conclusions based on industry science. Some 11 out of the 19 members of the NRC committee listed in the NAS report have ties to the GMO industry or to pro-GMO advocacy. The two reviews of animal data relied on by the NAS to claim GMO safety are authored by people who also have conflicts of interest (an analysis of these reviews and why they are misleading is here). Readers are advised to read the Food & Water Watch Report to see for themselves the massive conflicts of interests that Ridley either remains ignorant of or wishes to gloss over in order to push a pro-GMO agenda. GMWatch notes that the NAS committee member chosen to speak about the food safety aspect of the report to the online magazine The Conversation was Michael A. Gallo, emeritus professor of environmental and occupational medicine at Rutgers University. Gallo is a regular pro-corporate commentator who in 2004 defended farmed salmon in the wake of research showing it contained high levels of toxic PCB chemicals. In his piece for The Conversation, Gallo makes false and misleading statements, which are apparently designed to reassure the public about the safety of GM foods. For example, he says that any changes seen in GMO feeding experiments were within normal ranges. GMWatch states that this is an unscientific statement of a type often used to dismiss significant differences found in GM-fed animals compared with the non-GM-fed controls and goes on to highlight how pro-GM scientists make a nonsense of the scientific method and to come up with conclusions designed to mislead. GMWatch concludes: It is well established that conflicts of interest affect scientific outcomes and conclusions in every field that has been investigated, from tobacco to pharmaceuticals to GM crops and foods. The public deserves better than the NASs biased attempt to convince the public that GMOs are safe. It is not the first time advocates for GM like Matt Ridley have used flawed reports to push for this technology and to attempt to pass off tainted sources as independent and thus beyond reproach (see this and this). Readers may also wish to read these commentaries on the NAS report. Rosemary Masons 44-page open letter response to Ridley Matt Ridleys piece in The Times may be regarded as part of the government's on-going push to get GMOs into Britain and a timely intervention as the debate about glyphosate in the EU reaches a head. The final vote on renewing the licence for glyphosate use in the EU will take place on 6th June 2016. The British Government is supporting the European Food and Safety Authoritys assertion that it doesnt cause cancer, despite the WHO saying it is probably carcinogenic. In her 44-page open letter (1/6/2016) to Ridley and the editor-in-chief of The Times, Rosemary Mason responds to Ridleys piece by saying, I think I smell an industry rat. While Ridley takes about the safety of GM crops and reduced chemical use, Mason rubbishes such claims by referring to Charles Benbrooks paper on the massive increases in glyphosate use in trends in glyphosate herbicide use in the United States and globally (2016) which states that: Since 1974 in the U.S., over 1.6 billion kilograms of glyphosate active ingredient have been applied, or 19 % of estimated global use of glyphosate (8.6 billion kilograms). Globally, glyphosate use has risen almost 15-fold since so-called 'Roundup Ready'." If recent evidence demonstrates anything, it is that GM crops and glyphosate use are joined at the hip where industry profits are concerned. GMOs drive the sales of glyphosate. As if to underline this, referring to Monsanto, Jack Kasky on Bloomberg reports: Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant is focused on selling more genetically modified seeds in Latin America to drive earnings growth outside the core US market. Sales of soybean seeds and genetic licenses climbed 16 percent, and revenue in the unit that makes glyphosate weed killer, sold as Roundup, rose 24 percent. In the same piece, Chris Shaw, a New York-based analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Co states that Glyphosate really crushed it, implying it was a major boost to Monsanto's profits. The bottom line is sales and profit maximisation and the unflinching and defence of glyphosate despite the cover up of its harm and the effects on communities in Latin America, where cancers, birth defects, infertility and DNA changes since being exposed to GM Roundup Ready Crops are reported. Mason draws Ridley's attention to a recent piece in the New Eastern Outlook. William Engdahl discusses the relicensing of glyphosate in the EU by stating: What is amazing about the entire ongoing battle over glyphosate re-approval is that opposition and awareness that the EU Commission is willing by any means possible to bow to the chemical industry glyphosate weed-killer cartel and approve a probable carcinogen, is growing by leaps and bounds, and internationally. That awareness is in turn bringing light to the very dark corners of the world of GMO itself, something that Bill Gates, David Rockefeller, Monsanto, Syngenta and friends are none too able to withstand. To date the EU Commission has received a staggering 1.5 million citizen petitions demanding they not re-approve glyphosate. The opposition to EU Commission approval of glyphosate has taken on a self-expanding character and that has the agribusiness weed-killer cartel alarmed. The process is exposing to the general public, for the first time in such a clear manner, the degree of corruption in not only Brussels but also in the so-called scientific bodies that advise it on what is safe and what not. Signed by individuals and groups representing 60 million US citizens, Mason also brings the Letter from America to the attention of Ridley, which warned David Cameron (and the rest of the EU) not to authorise GM crops. It confirmed the devastating effects on human health and the environment. GM is not about public good or feeding the hungry as lobbyists claimed, but about corporate control of the food system. It stated: Studies of animals fed GM foods and/or glyphosate, however, show worrying trends including damage to vital organs like the liver and kidneys, damage to gut tissues and gut flora, immune system disruption, reproductive abnormalities, and even tumors These scientific studies point to potentially serious human health problems that could not have been anticipated when our country first embraced GMOs, and yet they continue to be ignored by those who should be protecting us. Instead our regulators rely on outdated studies and other information funded and supplied by biotech companies that, not surprisingly, dismiss all health concerns. Through our experience we have come to understand that the genetic engineering of food has never really been about public good, or feeding the hungry, or supporting our farmers. Nor is it about consumer choice. Instead it is about private, corporate control of the food system Americans are reaping the detrimental impacts of this risky and unproven agricultural technology. EU countries should take note: there are no benefits from GM crops great enough to offset these impacts. Officials who continue to ignore this fact are guilty of a gross dereliction of duty. Most of the countries in the EU apart from Britain took that advice and opted out of GM (including Scotland, Wales and Ireland). . Mason argues that glyphosate is a biocide: it kills life. She knows this from her direct experience on her nature reserve in the UK and cites various sources of evidence to highlight a correlation of the huge loss of biodiversity with GMOs and glyphosate use in the US, the massive adverse impacts on human health and links between herbicide use (including glyphosate) and antibiotic resistance. In citing a wide array of sources throughout her letter, Mason also highlights the ongoing collusion between academia and biotech companies, not least Monsanto, resulting in fraudulent practices intended to deceive the public and fool it into accepting harmful but highly profitable products. Readers are urged to read Masons open letter to Ridley in full here In it, she outlines how GMOs, glyphosate and the increasingly globalised system of chemical-intensive food and agriculture have led not only to academic fraud but also to an increase in congenital anomalies in the UK, decreased mental acuity and adverse impacts on fetal and child development and a wide range of diseases and illnesses. And she also takes apart Ridleys claim about GM crops and new techniques being no different from conventionally bred crops and safer (as have others), highlights various conflicts of interest within prominent bodies which shape policy and public opinion and addresses the issue of Golden Rice that Ridley also misrepresents in his piece. Ideology and self-interest driving the pro-GMO lobby Whereas Ridley offers a short but prominent newspaper article based on a flawed report, industry-inspired cliches and falsehoods, Mason is compelled to respond with a 44-page, comprehensive and fully-referenced text that pulls together relevant scientific research on GMOs and glyphosate. At the same time, she highlights the corruption and deceptions that have made it possible for powerful commercial interests to destroy the environment and human health for profit. A privileged viscount like Ridley, affluent biotech company CEOs, politicians and well-paid career scientists spout public relations rhetoric and deride critics for denying GM to the hungry poor. However, the pro-GMO lobby relies on fraud, regulatory delinquency, non-transparent practices, smear campaigns, dirty tricks, the debasement of science and PR messages such as a trillion meals containing GMOs have been eaten and no one has died or become ill as a result and that the debate is over. Aside from well-funded slick PR, it also relies on secretive studies and makes baseless claims wrapped up as scientific facts. And yet it is their critics who are dismissed for supposedly being emotive, unscientific, ideologues driven by self-interest. In making such accusations, pro-GMO figures attempt to deflect attention from their own self-interested motives, their hypocrisy concerning their policies towards the poor or their massive political influence. These people tend to be part of an enclosed world that promotes allegiance to a corporate-dominated paradigm that is intolerant of alternative views. And the result is a certain self-righteousness that leads them to impose their will and neoliberal ideology on the rest of humanity in collusion with the machinery and active backing of national states, while they set out to denigrate models of agriculture that could sustainably feed much of the world and ignore those factors (largely fuelled by the neoliberal system they support) that currently create poverty, hunger and food insecurity. When saying that Europe's agriculture will wilt if it rejects GM, Ridley mirrors the claim made by Owen Paterson that Europe will become a museum of world farming if it does not embrace GM crops (and, by implication, its chemical inputs). The evidence indicates that this is nothing more than fear-mongering. Ridley's tone reflects Paterson's baseless attacks on critics of GM. Finally, for those who may not be aware, Owen Paterson is a British MP and former the former environment minister. Due to his ongoing promotion of GM, fellow Conservative Party MP Zac Goldsmith described him as a puppet of the biotech industry. He is also Matt Ridley's brother-in-law. Colin Todhunter is an independent writer - website SHARE By Len Wells of the Courier and Press A Percy, Illinois man arrested in connection with the stabbing of two people in McLeansboro, Illinois in January has been sentenced to prison. Duane G. Carlson, 37, was given eight years in prison after pleading guilty Thursday to felony charges of aggravated battery and for being a convicted felon in possession of a weapon. Carlson was arrested Jan. 26 after stabbing 34-year-old Thomas C. Garrison in the back with a Bowie knife. He was also accused stabbing Mitzi M. Willis, 34, also of McLeansboro. Both were taken to Deaconess Hospital in Evansville for treatment. Carlson fled the scene and was arrested late the same night in the small Hamilton County community of Dale. He suffered injuries in the altercation and was treated and released at the hospital in McLeansboro. Charges of home invasion and aggravated domestic battery were dropped in return for the guilty plea, which was entered in Hamilton County Circuit Court. SHARE JASON CLARK / COURIER & PRESS USI students Stephanie Yurks (left) and Taylor McCoy screen dirt as they search for artifacts in New Harmony recently. The students are part of a six-week archaeological field school that is searching for artifacts left by Native American inhabitants in New Harmony. JASON CLARK / COURIER & PRESS Dr. Michael Strezewski, Associate Professor of Anthropology at USI shows an artifact with serrated edges used for cutting, found in New Harmony recently. USI students are part of a six-week archaeological field school that is searching for artifacts left by Native American inhabitants in New Harmony. JASON CLARK / COURIER & PRESS Dr. Michael Strezewski, Associate Professor of Anthropology at USI speaks to his students in New Harmony recently. The students are part of a six-week archaeological field school that is searching for artifacts left by Native American inhabitants in New Harmony.e process and student's findings. The daily tour of the historic sites, which leave the Atheneum at 1 p.m., will include the field school as part of their tour during this time period. For more information regarding the field school, contact Erin McCracken Merris at emccracken@usi.edu or 812-682-4488. Category: Local Receivers: EVME,EVJC Submitter: EVME Start: 5/18/2016 8:30 AM End: 5/18/2016 3:30 PM Priority: RECOMMENDED PLAY Publication date: 6/2/2016 3:00 AM Deadline: 5/18/2016 5:00 PM Play: Centerpiece Photo Location/Directions: Harmonist Cemetery in New Harmony, IN ** 6 week dig that is 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday through June 10. Weather permitting each day. Subject name: USI archaeological dig Additional Info: Meg will be there and plans to get a video. Her cell is 812-598-0782. Reporter present?: Reporter will meet there Photo Play: CHOOSE ONE Assignment address: Harmonist Cemetery in New Harmony, IN By Megan Erbacher of the Courier and Press NEW HARMONY When digging a hole for an archaeological excavation, you can't simply push the shovel straight down. That's a lesson Stephanie Yurks, Taylor McCoy and Michael Rusche learned from University of Southern Indiana Associate Professor of Anthropology Michael Strezewski. The three USI students, along with 9 other classmates, are part of a six-week Archaeological Field School in New Harmony. "It's a lot harder than you'd think," Yurks, 20, said. "It's so much more difficult to not dig a hole. You have to dig, literally, a centimeter at a time. Sideways." Rusche, 19, didn't realize digging was so organized. "I just kind of figured we dig and then we'll get stuff," the USI junior said. "But you have to dig to certain increments below the surface at a time, and then screen it to see what's there and document it on paper." From May 11 through June 10, students will study areas in the northwest part of New Harmony, including the Harmonist Cemetery, and excavate many areas outside the cemetery walls to look for signs of New Harmony's Native American inhabitants and their village areas before the Harmonists arrived in 1814. The goal is to provide hands-on experience in archaeological field methods through a site excavation. No digging will take place inside cemetery walls, which contain historic burials and Native American mounds. Instead, students conduct above-ground surveys using magnetometry and a resistivity meter, which creates maps based on soil-mapping data. During the class, students will learn basic mapping and excavation techniques, identify artifacts through above ground-surveys, and work on large- and small-scale excavation sites in the village area outside the cemetery. "When most people think of New Harmony, they think of the Harmonists or Owenites the early utopian communities in the town," Strezewski said. "But what we're interested in more is the Native American occupants. ... To see who these people were, when they lived here and what their lives were like." Some artifacts date back to the early Middle Woodland Crab Orchard phase, about 2,000 years ago. Yurks, 21, has known since third grade that she wanted to be an anthropologist. The Evansville native and USI senior majoring in anthropology took the summer class to determine if she prefers field work or being in a museum. "I just liked learning what the cultures did their ideas and thoughts," she said. "They did crazy things for science and math and they have all of these gods." "People are cool," said USI senior Jordan Conaway. After taking two anthropology electives cultural and physical Conaway, 22, "last minute" switched his major to anthropology in January of his junior year. The television series "Bones" first sparked McCoy's interest in anthropology. The 20-year-old USI junior from Attica, Indiana, is majoring in anthropology. An Evansville native, Rusche, 19, is a USI junior double majoring in anthropology and criminal justice studies. Rusche enjoys the variation of anthropological fields physical, cultural, archaeology and linguistics. "I took physical anthropology as an elective and I fell in love with it," he said. "And I continued taking more classes and added it as a major." In the 1970s, an adjunct professor led some archaeological digs in New Harmony, but none of those materials were processed or cataloged until Strezewski started his class in 2008. In years past, the field school has focused on the Harmonist period and students have worked at Fort Ouiatenon near West Lafayette. In 2013, USI started offering a bachelor's degree program in anthropology. Weather permitting, students will work at the sites about 8:30 a.m. 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday throughout the six weeks. The public is invited to visit to observe and ask questions. The daily Atheneum tours will include the field school while students are in town. SHARE By John Martin of the Courier and Press Florida resident Leslie Forston and her daughter, Evansville resident Amy Spindler, were ecstatic to learn about Evansville Regional Airport's newest direct connection. Forston lives in Melbourne, about 45 minutes from Orlando. She and her daughter both plan to be frequent users of the twice-a-week Allegiant flights connecting Evansville and Orlando Sanford International Airport. "We used to do the Owensboro flight, but it was so inconvenient because of the drive," Spindler said. "This is much more convenient for us." "This is really nice," added Forston, who arrived on the first Orlando-to-Evansville Allegiant trek on Thursday. "I didn't think it was true when I was told about it. I had my doubts. But this is great." Evansville Regional Airport has never offered a direct connection to Florida, and Thursday's inaugural ceremonies at the airport were celebratory. "We have this great flight. We want to keep and we want to grow that service with Allegiant. We think they're going to be a long-term partner.," Mayor Lloyd Winnecke said. "We want to encourage people to use the flight. We can't continue to grow air service here if we don't use Evansville Regional Airport and the flights that depart from here. This is how we will grow as a city, an airport and a region." Allegiant joins American, Delta and United among the carriers serving EVV. Orlando joins Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas and Detroit as the airport's nonstop destinations. Airport Director Doug Joest said Allegiant "is such a great addition to the portfolio of air service we already have. We have the three legacy carriers that can literally get you anywhere in the world in just one stop or two. This just adds to that. For leisure travel, Allegiant is such a nice package. ... We hope if this flight's successful, we can add some more destinations." The flights will be on Thursday and Sunday as the route begins, arriving in Evansville about 3 p.m. both days and then returning to Orlando. The service will be year-round, according to Allegiant. "Our arrival in Evansville means that a new population of travelers in Indiana will now get affordable and convenient access to one of the world's top summer vacation destinations," Allegiant Chief Operating Officer Jude Bricker said in a news release. New year-round service from Evansville Regional Airport to Orlando Sanford International Airport (SFB) will operate twice weekly. Flight days, times and the lowest fares can only be found at Allegiant.com. FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) Army teams and other emergency crews searched along a Fort Hood creek for four soldiers still missing from a truck that overturned in the swift water, killing at least five and injuring three. Fort Hood spokesman Chris Haug said the search continued after teams late Thursday night found the bodies of two soldiers who had been in the vehicle. Three others were found dead shortly after the 2 -ton truck overturned in Owl Creek during a morning training exercise on the sprawling Central Texas army post. Three soldiers were rescued and were hospitalized in stable condition. Aerial and ground crews searched the 20-mile creek that winds through heavily wooded terrain on the northern fringe of the base. Army aircraft, canine search teams, swift-water rescue watercraft and heavy trucks were being used. The Army did not release the names of the dead because it was still notifying relatives. Parts of Texas have been inundated with rain in the last week, and more than half of the state is under flood watches or warnings, including the counties near Fort Hood. At least six people died in floods last week in Central and Southeast Texas. Fort Hood spokesman John Miller said the crossing was flooded by two days of intermittent heavy rains when the swift water swept the truck, called a Light Medium Tactical Vehicle, from the road. The vehicle resembles a flatbed truck with a walled bed and is used to carry troops. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a statement saying the state "stands ready to provide any assistance to Fort Hood as they deal with this tragedy." The base has seen fatal training accidents before. In November 2015, four soldiers were killed when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed during a training exercise. And in June 2007, a soldier who went missing for four days after a solo navigation exercise died from hyperthermia and dehydration while training in 90-degree heat. Thursday's accident came the same day the Navy said a pilot was killed when his Blue Angels fighter jet crashed near Nashville. Speaking in Singapore, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter expressed condolences to the families of those killed in both accidents and said once investigations are complete, the military will take actions designed to prevent such incidents in the future. Also Thursday, the pilot of a U.S. Air Force Thunderbird ejected safely into a Colorado field, crashing the fighter jet moments after flying over a crowd watching President Barack Obama's commencement address for Air Force cadets. Across Texas, many were watching a new batch of storms that could dump up to 10 inches of rain from Thursday through Saturday and worsen flooding caused by waterways that already have risen to record levels. The heaviest rainfall Thursday night was reported in LaPorte, on the western shore of Galveston Bay, where 4.36 inches of rain was recorded between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. Thursday. Earlier, a storm system that moved through the Houston area Wednesday night and Thursday morning dumped nearly 8 inches of rain in some of the city's northern suburbs, causing flooding in some neighborhoods. In Fort Bend County, southwest of Houston, about 1,400 homes have been affected by the Brazos River, swollen by heavy rainfall from last week. Officials say levels in the Brazos have not dropped much and additional rainfall could make the flooding worse. "With the rain that's predicted, that's not going to help things as that water has no place to go," said Lt. Lowell Neinast, with the police department in Richmond, where more than 700 people have been evacuated. Fort Bend County emergency management coordinator Jeff Braun said officials have worked to warn and prepare residents ahead of the additional rainfall. More than 50 people are staying at shelters in Fort Bend County, one of the 31 counties included in a disaster declaration by Abbott. Braun said it could be at least a week before the flooding recedes and residents can go home. This week's storms are the latest in a string of torrential rains since May 2015 that have put swaths of the state underwater. Some areas now overwhelmed by water had run dry two years ago due to drought conditions. ___ Associated Press writers Terry Wallace in Dallas and Juan Lozano in Houston contributed to this report. SHARE By Staff Report One person was killed and another person was critically injured Friday afternoon in a traffic crash on Indiana 62 in Western Vanderburgh County, near the Posey County line. Pamela Miles, 71, of Evansville, was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the Indiana State Police. The crash occurred just before 3 p.m. Miles was a passenger in a 2006 Chevrolet Malibu driven by Charles Rainey, 69, of Springville, Tennessee. The Malibu was heading south on Posey County Line Road while a 2015 GMC pickup driven by Ethan Harms, 18, of Mount Vernon, was heading east on Indiana 62, according to a news release from the state police. Rainey reportedly pulled in front of Harms, causing the collision. The truck struck the Malibu on the passenger side, killing Miles. Both Harms and Rainey were taken to Deaconess Hospital. Harms suffered only minor injuries, according to the release, while Rainey was being treated for serious injuries. Indiana State Police is investigating the crash, with assistance from the Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office. House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis. meets with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, May 26, 2016. SHARE By Bill Glauber and Daniel Bice, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY Network After a month of meetings and phone conversations, House Speaker went to his hometown newspaper to declare what many saw was inevitable. Ryan endorsed presumptive Republican nominee on Thursday, saying he would vote for the New York mogul in the fall. "It's no secret that he and I have our differences," Ryan wrote in an opinion piece submitted to the Janesville Gazette. "I won't pretend otherwise. And when I feel the need to, I'll continue to speak my mind. But the reality is, on the issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground than disagreement." Those close to Ryan said the Janesville Republican and 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee reached the decision earlier this week. He spoke most recently to Trump sometime last week. Trump's courting of Ryan has gone on for weeks as he sought to unite the Republican Party. In style and substance, Ryan and Trump are polar opposites. Ryan has emerged as an intellectual force in conservative circles, while Trump brashly stormed through the Republican primaries, collecting enough delegates to secure the party's nomination. In doing so, Trump appeared at odds with party principles on entitlements and national security. He also made immigration a central focus of the race, while Ryan had spent years trying to secure a compromise on the complex issue. Ryan campaign spokesman Zack Roday said the column is an endorsement of Trump. Following Ryan's announcement, Trump tweeted that it was "great to have the endorsement and support of Paul Ryan. We will both be working very hard to Make America Great Again!" In his role as House speaker, Ryan has emerged as a key bridge between the party's establishment and more conservative wing. He also wields enormous power, helping shape his party's agenda. In early May, Ryan told CNN he wasn't "ready" to back Trump. Four days later, he told the Journal Sentinel said he was willing to step down as chairman of the GOP convention if Trump asked. In his opinion piece, Ryan wrote of the importance of House Republicans putting together an agenda to unite the party as well as the country. House Republicans will be rolling out that agenda beginning next week. "One person who we know won't support it is Hillary Clinton," Ryan said of the likely Democratic presidential nominee. Ryan wrote: "Donald Trump and I have talked at great length about things such as the proper role of the executive and fundamental principles such as the protection of life. The list of potential Supreme Court nominees he released after our first meeting was very encouraging." Ryan said the main focus of the talks revolved around the House policy agenda in such areas as health care, national security and the economy. "We've talked about the common ground this agenda can represent," Ryan said in his Janesville column. "We've discussed how the House can be a driver of policy ideas. We've talked about how important these reforms are to saving our country. And we've talked about how, by focusing on issues that unite Republicans, we can work together to heal the fissures developed through the primary. "Through these conversations, I feel confident he would help us turn the ideas in this agenda into laws to help improve people's lives. That's why I'll be voting for him this fall." In an interview with the Associated Press, Ryan said Trump didn't offer any deals in exchange for the endorsement. Ryan said the two still have their differences but he wanted to reach the right "comfort level" before endorsing Trump. "It is my hope the campaign improves its tone as we go forward and it's all a campaign that we can be proud of," Ryan said. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz blasted Ryan's move. "When he initially refused to endorse Trump four weeks ago, Paul Ryan said it was time to set aside bullying and belittlement," she said in a statement. "But with his tepid, halfhearted endorsement (Thursday), Ryan has backed away from his own criticisms of Trump's dangerous, divisive campaign, bowed down, kissed the ring, and conceded that Trump is the leader of the Republican Party." Lauren Spierer (Photo: Courtesy of Bloomington Herald T) SHARE By Vic Ryckaert/ USA Today Netowrk/ The Indianapolis Star Lauren Spierer had spent a late night with friends a college student doing what so many college students do but she never came home. Friday marks the fifth anniversary of Spierer's disappearance, one of the most talked about mysteries to ever hit the campus of Indiana University. The 20-year-old from Edgemont, N.Y., had just completed her sophomore year when she went missing in the early-morning hours of June 3, 2011, after she spent a night partying with friends in Bloomington. More than 600,000 people are reported missing every year in the U.S., but Spierer's disappearance remains the highest-profile unsolved case in the city of Bloomington. False leads and dead ends have frustrated law enforcement. Bloomington Police Capt. Steven Kellams said the department has investigated more than 3,500 tips and paid more than 2,500 hours of overtime in the department's ongoing effort to figure out what happened to Spierer. "The case continues to be a priority for the investigators assigned and there is work being done on the case literally every day," Bloomington police said in a statement emailed to the media on May 17. "The investigation into Laurens disappearance has never been considered or labeled a 'cold case' by the department." In the days after her disappearance, police and thousands of volunteers searched the IU campus and outlying areas. Divers combed through nearby Lake Monroe. Investigators dug through a landfill. Nothing. Spierer's parents appeared in daily news conferences and were interviewed on national television shows. No answers. The family filed a civil lawsuit against the three friends who were with Spierer on the night she disappeared, arguing that the friends failed in their duty to keep her safe. A federal judge dismissed the claims. Two other female students at the Bloomington campus have disappeared under suspicious circumstances, but only Spierer's case remains unsolved. Jill Berhman, 19, went missing in 2000 during a morning bicycle ride near campus. Her remains were found in a thicket in Morgan County nearly three years later. John R. Myers II was convicted of Behrman's slaying. Hannah Wilson, 22, went missing shortly after a cab dropped her off in Bloomington in April 2015, a month before she was scheduled to graduate. She was found slain hours later in a remote area of Brown County. Daniel Messel was charged with murder in Wilson's killing. The most recent development in the Spierer case seemed to happen in January, when Bloomington police and FBI agents searched a Martinsville property that belongs to the family of 35-year-old Justin Wagers. At the time, Wagers was in the Johnson County Jail linked to a several incidents of public indecency. But those search warrants have not led to an arrest in the Spierer case. Wagers' family was adamant that Wagers knew nothing about Spierer's disappearance. The details of the search warrant have remained sealed, and both the FBI and Bloomington police said authorities will not release information about the search. Most recently, records show Wagers was convicted of performing a sex act in front of a minor and public indecency in cases unrelated to Spierer's disappearance. In April, a judge sentenced Wagers to two years in prison. Meanwhile, Spierer's parents, Rob and Charlene, continue to ask the public for help. Every year, on June 1, they've issued a plea for witnesses to come forward. "Too many years, too few answers," Charlene Spierer posted Tuesday on Twitter. "Don't let them forget." In another Tweet posted May 22, Charlene Spierer said: "Just as determined as the day we learned Lauren was missing, June 3, 2011 will always be a day of heartbreak for our family." --- IndyStar reporter Madeline Buckley contributed to this story. SHARE "In too many cases antibiotics have stopped working. That means people are dying of simple infections or conditions like TB (tuberculosis), tetanus, sepsis, infections that should not mean a death sentence. If we do nothing about this, there will be a cumulative hit to the world economy of $100 trillion and it is potentially the end of modern medicine as we know it." British Prime Minister David Cameron, May 27, 2016 "The end of modern medicine as we know it" is a scary phrase coming from a respected world leader. We hope Cameron is exaggerating for effect, but we also hope his sense of urgency to develop powerful new antibiotics is, well, infectious. Developing more potent antibiotics is vital to vanquish a fast-encroaching army of superbugs, bacteria that have become resistant to current antibiotics. Recent bad news: The superbugs have invaded America. Researchers discovered a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman infected by a superbug, a "nightmare bacteria" resistant even to colistin, the antibiotic of last resort. That's the first time this super-resistant strain has appeared in the U.S., although it has occurred sporadically in livestock and people in Europe, China and elsewhere. How dangerous could this resistance be? Very. "It basically shows us that the end of the road isn't very far away for antibiotics that we may be in a situation where we have patients in our intensive-care units, or patients getting urinary tract infections for which we do not have antibiotics," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Thomas Frieden warns. Most Americans don't remember a time before antibiotics. You wouldn't want to live in that world again. Without effective antibiotics, women die in childbirth from sepsis. People who get a scrape or insect bite can develop fatal infections. Sore throats can bring rheumatic fever and heart failure. Surgeries pose greater threats of uncontrolled infection; chemotherapy and transplants grow riskier. The Obama administration says superbugs pose a national security threat. Left unchecked, superbugs could kill more people than cancer worldwide by 2050, a British task force has warned. Last March, the White House issued a "national action plan" to combat superbugs. But Washington can't do this alone. What's needed now is an aggressive worldwide response to develop new antibiotics and eradicate indiscriminate use of the current crop. That effort must include major antibiotic users and producers such as India and China. One key: Discouraging doctors and hospitals from dispensing antibiotics without strong cause. Doctors can't cave to patients who demand antibiotics even if they likely won't help. As many as one-third of U.S. prescriptions for antibiotics are inappropriate, a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimates. A potential battleground: U.S. farmers and ranchers often use antibiotics not to cure diseases but to promote faster growth of livestock. The European Union has banned such use, and the White House plan to combat superbugs sets a five-year goal to "eliminate medically important antibiotics for growth in food-producing animals." Food retailers such as McDonald's also are moving in this direction. "I don't care how fat your chicken is, if the result is you breed (superbugs) and people die as a result," Laurie Garrett of the Council on Foreign Relations tells us. Another idea: Create incentives for drug companies to develop potent next-generation antibiotics. That British task force recommends rewards of up to $1.5 billion. Such incentives could pay huge dividends. Encouraging companies makes sense not only because hurry-up research would be especially expensive and the likelihood of success highly uncertain. Any new drugs will be used sparingly so that patients don't develop resistance. That will cut potential sales but increase health worldwide. Sounds like a great project for a major charitable foundation looking to save lives worldwide and, in the bargain, build a legacy as superbug slayers. This editorial firsts appeared in the Chicago Tribune. Sussex News Story Saved You can find this story in My Bookmarks. Or by navigating to the user icon in the top right. Channel programs News Arrow To Buy UBM's Technical, Electronics Media Portfolio For $23.5M Michael Novinson Share this Arrow Electronics is aiming to help seed the market for the Internet of Things (IoT) by purchasing UBM's $19 million technical and electronics media business. The Centennial, Colo.-based distributor said its proposed $23.5 million acquisition of the U.S. and Asian versions of seven UBM publications -- including EE Times, EDN and Datasheets.com -- will give Arrow an outlet to help educate technical designers and engineers on IoT, as well as cloud, software and data center products. "Arrow's unbiased thought leadership position in what's really been more of a product design space will be a significant source of traction and leads," Matt Anderson, Arrow's chief digital officer, told CRN. "We're very interested in having leading brands that are driving thinking around how to use technology." [Related: Arrow Acquires United Technical Publishing, Boosting Content, Design Skills] The deal, announced Friday, is subject to closing conditions and regulatory clearance in China. The publications generated $16 million of online revenue and $3 million of print revenue in 2015, according to UBM. CRN's parent company -- now known as The Channel Company -- was owned by UBM before a September 2013 management team buyout. Anderson said very large enterprise and data center software vendors serving Arrow's Enterprise Computing Solutions (ECS) business have bought significant advertising space in the publications acquired from Hearst in an effort to drive education and adoption of their products among electronic and IoT-focused engineers. Anderson said these publications should help inform readers early in their buying journey, well before they're Googling specific product names or SKU numbers. Specifically, Anderson said, they should help nontraditional IT buyers -- such as chemists, botanists and industrial designers -- identify new technology trends and how to apply these trends to their industry. "Arrow and the industry will grow because Arrow is investing in fueling the pace of innovation," Anderson said. The UBM purchase comes more than 15 months after Arrow bought the United Technical Publishing arm of Hearst Media, which has focused on engineering-driven content, design and inventory tools. Similar to Hearst, Anderson said the UBM products will be run at arm's length from the rest of Arrow and will maintain complete editorial independence and control. Cloud News Ex-Employee Sues Oracle Over Alleged Cloud Accounting Shenanigans, Oracle Plans Countersuit Kevin McLaughlin Share this Oracle's cloud accounting practices are under scrutiny this week after a former employee filed a civil lawsuit against the vendor alleging that it inflated its cloud sales figures. Svetlana Blackburn, who spent 13 months as a senior finance manager in Oracle's North America Software-as-a-Service business, alleges her superiors pressured her to bolster cloud services sales figures in financial reports, and then fired her after she threatened to blow the whistle on the accounting improprieties. Blackburn's managers instructed her to add "millions of dollars in accruals to financial reports, with no concrete or foreseeable billing to support the numbers," Blackburn's lawyer Daniel Velton wrote in a civil complaint filed Wednesday. Velton didn't respond to a request for comment. When Blackburn warned one manager about the "dangers of a lack of billings, and the history of bad accruals that never resulted in billings," she was told her comments were "irritating," according to the complaint. After several weeks of trying to persuade her superiors to stop these practices, Blackburn was fired from Oracle in October 2015, according to the complaint. Blackburn's whistleblower actions are legally protected under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Velton said in the complaint. Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger said in an emailed statement that the vendor is confident that its cloud accounting is "proper and correct" despite Blackburn's allegations. "This former employee worked at Oracle for less than a year and did not work in the accounting group. She was terminated for poor performance and we intend to sue her for malicious prosecution," Hellinger said in the statement. After a late entry to the market for cloud software and services, Oracle is now intent on showing it can be a dominant player in the space. Yet according to some partners, the lofty figures Oracle cites as evidence of cloud sales growth don't reflect real customer adoption. CRN reported last June that Oracle had begun offering its salespeople up to five times their normal sales commissions for getting customers to buy Oracle cloud services. But some salespeople took advantage by selling customers "cloud credits" -- software licenses redeemable for cloud services -- they didn't want or need, partners told CRN. Oracle has also stepped up audits of customers to ensure they're paying for the software they're using. In cases where Oracle determines a customer owes it money, its salespeople have offered to waive back support and retroactive licensing costs if the customer agrees to buy cloud credits, partners told CRN. "We've had a couple of clients who've bought Oracle cloud credits because they wanted to buy Oracle cloud. But most are buying them to make audits go away," one source who works with Oracle told CRN. The Disney Wonder will head to Cadiz for a six-week drydocking this fall, the cruise line announced today. Among the additions to the ship: Marvel Super Hero Academy: Exclusively to the Disney Wonder, the Marvel Universe comes to life in Marvel Super Hero Academy. In one mission, Spider-Man will appear in person to help children hone their spider senses by perfecting their skills of reflex, speed and sharp minds. Children will work on their web-slinging and then get to see themselves in the headlines of the Daily Bugle. More Fun for Young Guests: In Disneys Oceaneer Club, children will have more live and in-person interactions than ever before including special visits from Anna, Elsa, Doc McStuffins, Jessie and Woody. Tianas Place Restaurant: Exclusive to the Disney Wonder, Tianas Place restaurant, inspired by the Disney animated feature, The Princess and the Frog, will transport guests to an era of southern charm, spirited jazz and street party celebrations. With a menu influenced by southern-style cuisine, Tianas Place will provide food for the body and soul, showing that dreams and dishes come true. English Pub: The adult district includes a brand-new pub that invites guests to take a jaunt to an authentic English tavern. Observant guests may discover this is no ordinary pub. Subtle nods to classic Disney films set in London can be found in artwork, props and other bits n bobs throughout the space. See the full news release from Disney Cruise Line here. Researchers have found a malware program that was designed to manipulate supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems in order to hide the real readings from industrial processes. The same technique was used by the Stuxnet sabotage malware allegedly created by the U.S. and Israel to disrupt Iran's nuclear program and credited with destroying a large number of the country's uranium enrichment centrifuges. The new malware was discovered in the second half of last year by researchers from security firm FireEye, not in an active attack, but in the VirusTotal database. VirusTotal is a Google-owned website where users can submit suspicious files to be scanned by antivirus engines. The mysterious program, which FireEye has dubbed IRONGATE, was uploaded to VirusTotal by several sources in 2014, at which time none of the antivirus products used by the site detected it as malicious. It's also surprising that no company has identified the malware until late 2015, because the VirusTotal samples are automatically shared with all antivirus vendors who participate in the project. FireEye itself discovered it because the company was searching for potentially suspicious samples compiled with PyInstaller, a technique used by various attackers. Two IRONGATE payloads stood out because they had references to SCADA and associated functionality. The good news is that the samples seem to be a proof of concept or part of some research effort. They're designed to find and replace a specific DLL that communicates with Siemens SIMATIC S7-PLCSIM, a software product that allows users to run programs on simulated S7-300 and S7-400 programmable logic controllers (PLCs). PLCs are the specialized hardware devices that monitor and control industrial processes -- spinning motors, opening and closing valves, etc. They transmit their readings and other data to monitoring software, the human-machine interface (HMI), that runs on workstations used by engineers. Like Stuxnet did at Iran's Natanz nuclear plant, IRONGATE goal is to inject itself into the SCADA monitoring process and manipulate the data coming from PLCs, potentially hiding ongoing sabotage. Stuxnet did this by suspending the PLC operation so the reported centrifuge rotor speed would remain static and within normal limits while it actually was not. IRONGATE instead records valid data from the PLC and then continuously plays that data back -- think of robbers feeding the same video recording to a surveillance camera in a loop. The fact that IRONGATE interacts with a PLC simulator and replaces a DLL that is not part of the Siemens standard product set have led the FireEye researchers to believe this malware was likely just a test. The Siemens Product Computer Emergency Readiness Team (ProductCERT) "has confirmed that the code would not work against a standard Siemens control system environment," the FireEye researchers said in a blog post Thursday. However, if IRONGATE was just a proof of concept developed in 2014, intended to test a Stuxnet-like man-in-the-middle attack against PLCs, it could mean its creators have built another malware program since then that works against real industrial control system (ICS) deployments. Either way, IRONGATE's discovery should serve as a warning to organizations that operate SCADA systems. "The attackers have learned and implemented Stuxnet techniques, but the defenders havent really improved the ability to detect malware targeting ICS," Dale Peterson, the CEO of ICS security consultancy Digital Bond, said in a blog post. "We need significant improvement in detection capabilities for ICS integrity attacks." Most consumers consider using credit cards as a way of getting themselves further into debt. Some credit card companies, though, are now offering consumers with student loans a way of getting ahead. These lenders have added the option to cash out the points earned from their rewards programs as payments towards the cardholder's student loans. While not all credit cards have this option, those offering it generally do not make direct payments to student loan companies. Instead, most will send the cardholder a third-party check for the student loan holder. Cards offering this option include the Sallie Mae Upromise MasterCard and the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, BankAmericard Cash Rewards Credit Card. Rewards points can be used to pay on both private and federal student loans. Before requesting a third-party check, cardholders are urged to contact their student loan servicer, to make certain that they accept third-party rebate checks. Not all do, which could lead to wasted points that could have been used for travel or as a credit made to the cardholders monthly credit card bill. Customers should also remember that there may be a processing period for their rebate check. They should request it early enough that they will not miss their student loan payment deadline. If you want more credit, check out MoneyTips' list of credit card offers. BRIDGEPORT - His ex-girlfriend sitting on the courtroom bench behind him, tears falling from her blackened left eye, Samuel Flicker on Friday begged a judge to let him go free. Im not contending my client did nothing wrong, Flickers lawyer, Eugene Riccio, argued as he client stood beside him dressed in a gray suit. But a bond of a quarter of a million dollars is exorbitant. There are two sides of this story. Flicker, 20, of Bronson Road in Fairfield, is accused of beating and choking his 20-year-old former girlfriend until she passed out and then leaving her on the side of the road. Senior Assistant States Attorney Kevin Dunn urged Superior Court Judge William Holden to keep Flicker in jail in lieu of $250,000 bond, contending the defendant is a danger to the community. This was a very chilling police report, the judge began. The language, the conduct, they are chilling. But based on Flickers work history and the fact he has no prior criminal record, he said he was setting the bond at $100,000. Dont contact this individual by any means, leave her alone, he added. He also ordered Flicker to wear a GPS monitoring device. The judge continued the case for a plea hearing June 16. Flicker is charged with second-degree strangulation, second-degree assault, first-degree reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct. On May 30, police said the woman told police she had been assaulted by Flicker, who she had been dating on and off for three years. While at a party on Hillbrook Lane in Fairfield, the victim said she received a text from Flicker and he came and picked her up. While they were driving around, she told police that she received a text from a male friend that she described as inappropriate. Flicker saw the message, she said, and got angry. The woman told police Flicker grabbed her by the hair and began slamming her head into the dashboard. She said at some point, she lost consciousness, and woke to hear him talking on the phone to another friend, asking for advice. The friend, the victim alleges, told Flicker to leave her on her front porch, ring the doorbell and drive away. Police said the woman told them she began to yell, and Flicker put his hands around her throat and began choking her until she again passed out. She awoke in a grassy area by the side of the road and began to walk until she saw the street sign for Burr Street. Police said the woman had numerous injuries, including a large bump on her head, a swollen eye, a bruised and swollen cheek and red finger marks on the side of her neck. Flicker later denied assaulting the woman, and in fact claimed she had attacked him, kicking and biting him, after she caught him looking at Snapchat while she slept in his car. NEW HAVEN Portraits of the four retired U.S. Magistrate Judges will be unveiled Friday at 2 p.m. in the federal courthouse in New Haven. The portraits are of retired U.S. Magistrate Judges Arthur H. Latimer, F. Owen Eagan, Thomas P. Smith and Holly B. Fitzsimmons. The four magistrate judges we are honoring have served our court for a combined period of over 100 years, said Chief U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall. This special ceremony is a fitting occasion to pay tribute to each one of these fine magistrate judges and the significant contributions each of them have made to our legal system. Latimer was appointed as the states first full-time U.S. Magistrate Judge on Jan. 25, 1971 and served in the New Haven U.S. District Courthouse until Oct. 31, 1993 when he retired. Egan served at the federal courthouse in Hartford from De.c 1, 1975 to June 6, 1996 when he retired. Smith became a federal magistrate judge on Nov. 2, 1979 and initially sat in the Bridgeport federal courthouse before being transferred to Hartford. At the time of his June 30, 2015 retirement he was the longest-sitting U.S. Magistrate Judge in the Second Circuit of the federal courts. Fitzsimmons, a former Waterbury Republican reporter and federal prosecutor, was appointed to the bench on June 4, 1993 and sat in the Bridgeport federal courthouse until her April 2, 2015 retirement. ANSONIA A 19-year-old Ansonia High School senior has been arrested for posting a threatening message on social media that closed and disrupted Ansonia schools for two days. GianCarlos Diaz, of Burke Street, was charged Friday with threatening in the first degree, threatening in the second degree, and breach of peace in the second degree. He was released after posting a $5,000 bond and will appear in Derby Superior Court on June 17. On May 23, Ansonia police were called to investigate the report of an anonymous threatening message posted on an App called After School that may have been directed at the Ansonia High School students. The threat prompted a lock in of the students at all Ansonia schools, an early dismissal and the cancellation of school the next day. Police were also deployed at all schools for the three days leading up to the Memorial Day weekend. Lt. Andrew Cota said based on the post that officers were able to see, the case does seem to revolve around a bullying incident. He said there was never a bomb threat indicated or mentioned. Although there was no identification of the actual school targeted, school officials said, they placed each of the four Ansonia schools on lockdown. Some Ansonia parents said they were dissatisfied with the way information was disseminated during the incident. Several expressed concern with the lack of notification on the first day of the threat, as well as with the school districts decision not to place police on school buses or along bus routes when schools reopened Wednesday. Superintendent of Schools Dr. Carol Merlone said she made the decision in conjunction with law enforcement. Det Sgt. Patrick Lynch, Detective Gerald Tenney and Officer Michael Barry continued to investigate this incident and interviewed numerous students and faculty members of the Ansonia High School, Cota said. This arrest was the culmination of many hours of investigative work. The officers involved on the day of the threat were able to secure all of the schools in Ansonia and make sure that all students were dismissed safely. VII Summit of Caribbean States opens in Havana The Seventh Summit of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) began today in Havana with a meeting of high level representatives of the member nations of this entity. The Summit will have the Havana's Conventions Center as its venue where delegations of the 25 nations of the ACS, and several guest countries will gather. During the meeting, participants will discuss important issues for the region as tourism, transportation, trade, sustainable development, climate change and peace in the Caribbean. source: www.cibercuba.com Pa. is about to vote. Here's what to know about voting and ballot access in 2022 Candidates come out swinging in only debate of Florida governor's race Gov. Ron DeSantis and his opponent, U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, met in their first and only debate October 24 at the Sunrise Theatre in Fort Pierce. The power suit has moved out of the office and onto the street in a variety of colours with the celebrity support of Julia Roberts and Cate Blanchett. by Damien Woolnough Even the European Unions most purblind defenders cannot conceivably justify the Home Offices profoundly disturbing failure to return foreign prisoners to their countries of origin. For according to a highly critical report published today by the Home Affairs Committee, Britain is abysmally incapable of deporting more than 13,000 foreign national offenders, as officialdom terms them enough to populate a small town. No fewer than 5,789 of them, including rapists, robbers, paedophiles and drug dealers, are free to roam our streets, having served their sentences. Even the European Unions most purblind defenders cannot conceivably justify the Home Offices profoundly disturbing failure to return foreign prisoners to their countries of origin (file photo) The rest are in prison, at a cost of 40,000 a head. And two of the main countries from which they arrived? It turns out that 983 are from Poland while 635 are Romanians who, remember, were only allowed into Britain in 2014. The failure to deport these people is an indictment of the EU, which has a prisoner transfer agreement under which Britain should be able to send home jailed Europeans. No wonder the committee warns that the persistent failure to send these inmates back is undermining confidence in the UKs EU membership. Meanwhile Michael Gove declares that, as Justice Secretary, he has been forced to allow in people with criminal records and even terror suspects under a ruling from the European Court of Justice. It is now ten years since the then Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, was sacked after his department was found to have released more than 1,000 foreign criminals into the community at the end of their sentences. After a welcome period of silence, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has seen fit to enter the referendum debate The situation is much worse now. Remain supporters should ask themselves how Britain has allowed itself to become a dumping ground for others criminals. Far from making us safer, the EU prevents us, as Mr Gove has confirmed, from securing our own borders. Keep schtum, Angela After a welcome period of silence, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has seen fit to enter the referendum debate. She probably thinks she is being tactful by telling us youll never get the results you want if youre not in the room. But British voters do not take kindly to being told what to do by Mrs Merkel, any more than they liked being lectured by the US President, Barack Obama, whose citizens would never in a million years accept being ruled by the leftish, undemocratic, supranational construct that is the EU. The German Chancellor should have noted how badly Mr Obamas intervention went down, and held her tongue. For this is the woman who last year gravely worsened the refugee crisis by her open-door policy. Nor has being in the room been any help to Greece and other impoverished southern European nations who find themselves caught in the vice-like grip of the euro, under which Germany is doing very nicely, thank you. How strange that all the economists and politicians who warn of Armageddon under Brexit havent seen fit to say that most of the countries in the EU are now financial basket cases. Mind your manners How depressingly typical of the increasingly pathetic Jeremy Corbyn to look on with a smirk as his loutish, bullying supporters jeered and booed the BBCs political editor, Laura Kuenssberg. Instead of defending the free Press, and in this case a hugely capable woman who upholds high standards of impartiality, Mr Corbyn responds to unfavourable coverage by feeling sorry for himself and trying to discredit the messenger. The people who run my suburban train line have devised a new and gruesome torture for commuters as we pace the platform waiting for our delayed trains. Interspersed with the usual announcements of cancellations and signal failures, weve been subjected this week to the recorded voice of a child, lisping over the public address system: Pleeeth make sure my mummy and daddy arrive home from work today safely, by keeping alert for anything suspicious. Well, I say its a child speaking and thats clearly what were meant to think. But to me, it sounds more like a middle-aged, gin-sodden actress, putting on a special baby voice (anything thuth-pishuth) in the hope of appealing to commuters soppy side (or do I mean thoppy thide?). Scroll down for video The people who run my suburban train line have devised a new and gruesome torture for commuters as we pace the platform waiting for our delayed trains, writes Tom Utley (file photo) Is it just me getting grumpy in my old age, or do others find this sentimental, patronising message fills them with impotent rage and saps their will to live? Speaking for myself, every time I hear it Im tempted to do an Anna Karenina (spoiler alert, for those who havent read it!) and throw myself under the next train if it ever arrives. Trend But then this sickly-sweet announcement seems part of a growing trend among advertising agencies, public authorities and politicians to address the public in baby-talk, as if kiddies are the font of all wisdom and theirs is the only language we understand. Perhaps those responsible picked up the idea from a London Underground poster that has been driving me mad for weeks. This, too, purports to be the work of a child, taking the form of a handwritten message with a crayon drawing of a Tube carriage underneath it. But again, I suspect the hand of an adult. To my world-weary eyes, the writing appears too neat and legible, the wording too slick and the drawing too stylish to have been produced by anyone but a team of professionals (though if Im wrong, Ill be happy to stand corrected by the precocious young artists proud parents). Arranged over five lines, like a poem by Private Eyes E.J. Thribb, the poster says: My mum works on the tube! Last night someone shouted at her again. I thought she was crying But she said it was just Something in her eye. I wouldnt be quite as blunt as one of my female colleagues, who tells me: This poster just makes me want to scrawl at the bottom: I told her to man up. But then, as I may have reported before, my wife worked as a London bus driver for two-and-a-half years, when the Utley coffers were bare. So I know better than most that abusing public transport staff is a widespread, serious problem and no laughing matter. But is it really necessary for the message to be delivered to us by a kid? Are we really more likely to refrain from shouting at bus and train staff, or look out for suspicious packages, if were instructed to do so by somebody posing as a six-year-old? (file photo) Mind you, Mrs U tells me she was reduced to tears only once in her 30 months on the buses, during which she suffered daily abuse from passengers who blamed her for the traffic that held them up. On this occasion, a foul-tempered brute had stood beside her for the 40-minute duration of his journey, yelling that she was a stupid cow and far worse for making him late for work (though her own shift had begun at 4am, hours before hed stirred from his bed). But shes a tough cookie, my wife, and it wasnt this vicious tirade that moved her to tears. No, it was the milk of human kindness, flowing from an elderly passenger who had witnessed her ordeal. When the vile fiend finally alighted, the sweet-natured old lady shuffled to the front of the bus and asked gently: Are you all right, dear? You poor thing. I dont know how you can bear it. And the tears welled up. But I digress. Are we really more likely to refrain from shouting at bus and train staff, or look out for suspicious packages, if were instructed to do so by somebody posing as a six-year-old? Behaviour Certainly, the advertising industry seems to think so. Commenting on the Tube poster campaign, a group describing themselves as brand consultants and behavioural economists points to the 44 per cent rise in attacks on Underground staff reported by the RMT union between 2009 and 2014, before the new approach was adopted. Clearly, those who are committing the acts are not fearful of the consequences of their own behaviour, says Mountainview Learning. So what about highlighting the consequence of their behaviour on others? The new campaign appears to be taking a more personal approach highlighting the impact that abuse can have from the perspective of a staff members child. We think this approach is more likely to get noticed, more likely to give pause for a moments thought and therefore more likely to get remembered. Well, I suppose Ive noticed and remembered it. But if anything, the schmaltzy campaign has made me more inclined to shout at Tube staff (not that I ever would), while that saccharine voice over the platform Tannoy has done nothing to sharpen my alertness for anything thuth-pishuth. What worries me is that this fashion for baby-talk appears to have infected the referendum campaign, with both sides treating voters like children with what they used to call special needs. For weeks now, inners and outers alike have been plucking random figures from the air in Remains case, with the disgraceful connivance of the once proudly independent Civil Service. If we pull out, well be 4,300 a year worse off per household, says the Treasury. Oh no we wont! say the Leavers. Well be 933 better off! (Make that 5,200 or 3,900, depending on who happens to be guessing aloud on any given day.) Im sick of seeing my country infantilised by an unsackable nanny state. In a word, I want out because I want Britain to be free Yet isnt it clear to every man, woman and, yes, child in the country that nobody with any degree of honesty can put even a rough figure on the financial consequences, for better or worse, of leaving the EU or remaining? All we can go upon is our experience of whats happening in the world and our gut instincts about whether the Brussels bureaucracy promotes economic activity or stifles it. And when theyre not insulting our intelligence by inventing figures, both sides have been playing the equally childish game of collecting signatures from prominent figures and appending them to letters drafted at Leave headquarters or Number 10. Destroying Our businessmen, generals and security experts are more impressive than yours! Oh no theyre not! Ours are much grander! Then theres all the infantile propaganda, pumped out mostly by Remainers posters depicting Leavers as skinhead thugs or taxpayer-funded booklets telling the blatant lie, in great big babyish letters: We control our own borders. At the risk of putting ideas into their heads, how much longer before they subject us to TV ads, showing cute toddlers lisping: My mummy says shell be very sad and sorry if Britain votes Leave, cos that will mean therell be nothing left for me to eat? As for myself, I havent much stomach for baby-talk. So let me end by giving my own reasons for voting Leave, in the voice of an adult. I want out because I fear that our national identity, our way of life and long tradition of liberal democracy are under threat from the EUs rules on the free movement of people and its insane human rights regime. I want out because I believe that Brusselss attempts to impose uniformity on hugely diverse peoples are holding economies back, destroying livelihoods and breeding dangerous ill-feeling between nations. I want out so that we can regain the right to elect those who make our laws and to dismiss them if they fail us. Weve all been there. Or at least, I have. Caught short in the middle of town and not a public convenience anywhere. I usually make a dash into the nearest pub, where I always feel obliged to buy a swift half to express my gratitude. Just the half, mind. Any more and Ill find myself in the same awkward situation 20 minutes later. These days, public toilets are fast becoming extinct. Over the past decade, 1,782 have closed, according to a report just published. In Newcastle, population 300,000, there are none. Manchester, where over half a million people live and hundreds of thousands more work and shop, boasts precisely one. Of course, you can always nip into McDonalds and try to sneak out without buying a quarter-pounder. But every time you need to use the loo you run the risk of being asked: Do you want fries with that? Disabled pensioner Brian Dean found himself in urgent need of a WC on a journey home from a day-trip to Blackpool. With no public facilities available, his wife Marta asked four businesses, including a Subway and a fried chicken shop, in Levenshulme, south Manchester, if her husband could use their toilet. All refused. Mr Dean, 75, who suffers from Parkinsons disease and struggles to get around without a wheelchair, could hold out no longer and wet himself. Mrs Dean told BBC News this week that he was humiliated and understandably felt he had been robbed of his dignity. And hes not the only one. Its easy to criticise the business owners. Their refusal to help a disabled gentleman in obvious distress will strike most people as harsh. But, frankly, I dont blame pub landlords and shopkeepers for putting up notices reading: Toilets provided for the sole use of customers and staff. Why should councils be allowed to dump their duty to provide adequate lavatories on boozers, fast-food joints and department stores? And, anyway, many of us feel embarrassed at having to plead with a shopkeeper to use their toilet. We shouldnt be forced into such a demeaning situation. Britain pioneered proper public toilets. The first opened outside Londons Royal Exchange in 1855, part of a growing awareness that decent sanitation was a hallmark of a civilised society, along with sewerage systems and regular rubbish collections. Soon there were public conveniences on every High Street, in every town and village. That was the case until fairly recently, too. I say fairly only because councils started closing toilets 30-odd years ago. I wrote about it back in 1988, in one of my first columns for Londons Evening Standard. When I lived in the Peoples Republic of Haringey in the bad old Barmy Bernie Grant days and before my number came up on the escape committee there was a nearby public loo next to a park and childrens playground. This particular toilet block was especially popular with members of the cottaging community. Attitudes to homosexuality were less enlightened then and gays often used toilets as singles bars, leading to complaints from local residents. Eventually, the council responded to pressure to get rid of the problem by closing the block altogether. Not wanting to appear homophobic, their excuse was that they couldnt afford to keep it open. Theres nothing new about Left-wing councils complaining about the savage Tory cuts. Someone was stupid enough to buy it and convert it into a single-storey family home. The joke was that it went from cottaging to cottage in a few short months. (The way the London property market has gone mental in recent years means its probably worth not far short of a million quid today. In Reading, a disused toilet converted into a one-bedroom flat now rents out at 1,300 a month. Beam me up, Scotty.) After that, youd see men peeing in the bushes on their way home from the pub something unheard of when the toilets were open. It also presented a problem for parents taking young children to play in the park. Suddenly there was nowhere for the kids to go potty. Soon the mass closure of toilets began to gather pace across the country. Some were sold off for housing, others turned into everything from nightclubs to noodle bars. In Clapham, South London, the letters WC outside a former public lavatory now stand for Wine and Charcuterie. I dont know whether to file that under Call Me Old Fashioned or You Couldnt Make It Up. Long car journeys can be a nightmare. Most main roads used to feature lay-bys equipped with loos at regular intervals. Theyre largely gone now. I can remember visiting France as a kid in the Sixties and being astonished at the number of men urinating in public places. That was something which you rarely, if ever, saw in Britain. Today, its commonplace. When youve gotta go, youve gotta go even if it is unedifying. But this is no laughing matter, its a national scandal. Councils should be under a statutory duty to provide adequate public toilet facilities. Its one of the few arguments for having councils in the first place. How can politicians boast about Britains world-class public services when theres nowhere for anyone, let alone a disabled pensioner with a weak bladder, to spend a penny? The major problem with local authorities is that they are run for the people who work for them, not those who pay for them. Councils used to exist to serve the community. There was never any dispute about what that entailed: safe parks, collecting the rubbish, working street lights, well maintained roads and pavements, clean public conveniences. Over the past three or four decades, our Town Halls have been taken over by professional politicians, all convinced of their own importance and more concerned with point-scoring than public services. They now have full-time Cabinet members for whom frontline services are merely cannon-fodder in their tedious battles with central government over resources and austerity. Whenever the savage cuts come around its always toilets, street lights and pavement repairs in the front line, never any of their pet projects. Lavatory attendants and park-keepers have long since been sacked, replaced by assorted diversity enforcers and climate change officers. Look at the way they have managed to politicise the simple business of refuse collection, complete with a byzantine selection of punishments, yet cant even empty the dustbins once a week. If they do ever get round to discussing public toilets its only to decide whether they should be transgender friendly. Eight years ago, a committee of MPs finally woke up to the inadequate provision of lavatories, warning of the dangers to public health and general wellbeing. Cut: Despite having existed on British high streets for 150 years, at least 1,782 facilities have closed across the UK in the last decade, Freedom of Information requests by the BBC found And what has been done to address the problem? Diddly squat. Heres how stupid it all is. Instead of actually laying on convenient public conveniences, the Government through the NHS is now sponsoring bladder training courses, giving advice to people with potential incontinence problems on cutting down on fluid and avoiding alcohol and coffee to spare their blushes. And some councils are launching community toilet schemes, trying to persuade shops and cafes that opening their toilets to passers-by is good for business. Well, it is in my case. Ive lost count of the number of swift halves Ive bought for the privilege of using a pub gents. Home Secretary Theresa May seems to have gone AWOL as the country debates the EU referendum Where on earth is Theresa May? The Home Secretary, who is widely seen as a plausible candidate to succeed David Cameron as Tory leader, normally laps up the limelight. Yet as the country debates the vital EU referendum, she seems to have gone AWOL. This is a shameful abrogation of duty, particularly at a time when one of her main responsibilities immigration has become the most bitterly contested political issue of the day. Ignore the huge inflow of foreigners coming into Greece and Italy, and just consider what has happened in Britain over the past few days. First, official statistics showed that migrants will help to add four million to Englands population in eight years, with net migration running at 300,000. Roughly half of this influx will be from within the EU. Next, we learned that the total number of EU nationals coming here under freedom-of-movement rules was 270,000 last year and that a record 77,000 arrived without the offer of a job. Compare this with the Tories election manifesto promise to keep our ambition of delivering annual net migration in the tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands. Then, on Monday, Britains lax border controls were branded a complete mess after coastguards intercepted a dinghy carrying 18 Albanians trying to reach the Kent coast, as it emerged that similar incidents had gone unpublicised. Finally, MPs reported that thousands of violent thugs and rapists from the EU, who should have been deported, are still walking Britains streets. In view of all this, Mrs Mays absence can only be interpreted as a cowardly refusal to accept that her partys policies have failed abysmally. The only other reason for her silence could be that she has deliberately ducked out of view so her Cabinet colleagues have to shoulder the blame for the immigration debacle. Whatever the truth, David Cameron has been obliged to publicly defend his partys tattered immigration policy. During Thursdays Sky TV interview, he struggled with this task and was rightly savaged over his failure to limit migrant numbers. If the PM loses the referendum which this week looked possible for the first time Mrs May should take her share of the blame. For until recently, opinion polls had suggested that the Remain camp was winning the argument. But that disturbing figure of net migration running at 300,000 a year has electrified the contest. E specially damaging to Mrs May, it has emerged that her Home Office staff repeatedly ignored warnings that vast stretches of Britains coastline were wide open to migrants. (Risibly, Mrs May has left her junior, Immigration Minister James Brokenshire, in charge of defending Government policy and he has been boasting that Britain has one of the most secure borders in the world.) Not surprisingly, Vote Leave campaigners have taken full advantage of the Home Secretarys absence. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have shown true leadership and produced a most credible solution to the problem, along the lines of the so-called points system used by Australia, which limits immigration to those with specific skills and who speak the English language. Mrs Mays response? Once again, a deafening silence. This coincided with the highlighting of the plight of a law-abiding Australian family who have lived for many years in the Scottish Highlands and who face deportation on a technicality, as they had breached visa requirements. A similar fate faced a Canadian family. So it is that these hard-working families from kith-and-kin countries face being booted out of the UK while, at the same time, a drug-dealing Albanian double-murderer has been granted legal aid to avoid extradition. What was Mrs Mays response to this? Again, silence. The injustice of the treatment of these two families was highlighted on Thursday when the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee commented on Mrs Mays failure to return thousands of foreign prisoners to the country of their birth. The report showed that the Home Secretary had not used the so-called EU prisoner transfer agreement which would have allowed her to send home jailed Europeans. Late on Thursday night, following much pressure (and a great deal of Home Office dithering), Mrs May responded with a cursory and largely meaningless three-sentence statement, saying that her department had removed a record number of foreign criminals from this country last year. Mrs May is not only failing in her duties as Home Secretary. She is also failing the British people, so many of whom are justifiably concerned about lax borders. To return to the question I originally posed: what on earth has happened to the Home Secretary? One of her Westminster admirers tells me that she is playing what he called a shrewd game. Mrs May is profoundly ambitious. She has set her sights on replacing Mr Cameron when he steps down. Boris Johnson (right) and Michael Gove (left) have shown true leadership and produced a most credible solution to the problem. But there is a deafening silence from Mrs May Even though she has come out publicly in favour of British membership of the EU, she is determined to do little or nothing to help Mr Cameron win his Remain campaign. That way, the thinking goes, she can come through the middle as a healing figure to reunite the Tory Party when the inevitable post-referendum leadership contest starts. If this is the reason for her current conduct, it means that she is prepared to put the interests of her career ahead of the national good. She cannot claim not to understand the scale of the crisis, with migration at a record level. We know this because she explained the danger of unco ntrolled immigration in a much-praised speech to the Tory conference last autumn. The numbers coming from Europe are unsustainable and the rules have to change, she declared, adding: There is a limit to the amount of immigration any country can and should take. R ightly, she warned that it is impossible to build a cohesive society when the pace of change is too fast. She went on to blame EU rules governing free movement, which mean it is impossible to protect our borders. These were strong and bold statements, and I cheered her for them at the time. It is frankly shameful that Mrs May has failed to live up to them during this referendum campaign. If Mrs May had been truly serious when she made those comments last autumn, she would have come out in support of Leave. She knows better than anyone that the only way to take back control of our borders is to quit the EU. Instead, bowing to political expediency and pursuing personal ambition, she, like the Eurosceptic Business Secretary Sajid Javid, has signalled her support for Remain. Ultimately, I believe Theresa Mays silence over the past few days shows she understands all too well that the Remain position on immigration is indefensible. But her utterly misguided behaviour since that Tory Party conference speech shows she is unfit to be Home Secretary and certainly should never be Tory leader. Lord King must speak up for Brexit Privately, former Bank of England governor Lord (Mervyn) King is known to believe that the British economy would function well outside the constraints of the EU. But he has refrained from saying so publicly because he is an old-fashioned figure who passionately believes that the Bank of England (like the monarchy) should never be drawn into political debate. I admire Lord Kings sense of propriety. Nevertheless, I am now convinced that he should break his self-imposed silence and tell the public what he thinks. This is because of the appalling conduct of the current governor Mark Carney, who is a politically ambitious Canadian who cares little about British constitutional propriety. In poodle-like obedience to the man who appointed him, Chancellor George Osborne, he has abandoned Bank of England independence and opportunistically turned it into a cheerleader for the Remain campaign. This being the case, Mervyn King, a genuinely distinguished bank governor, is entitled to make his views known. The Tory Party urgently needs a respected figure to take over as party chairman from Andrew Feldman, who is mired in the growing election expenses scandal. The obvious candidate is human man-mountain Eric Pickles. He ought to be recalled to the Cabinet with wide-ranging powers as party chairman. Currently, Mr Pickles is the Governments corruption tsar and therefore well-placed to deal with the mess created by Cameron crony Feldman during six calamitous years at Central Office. A pair of teens who met as babies suffering from heart disease are warming hearts across the nation after meeting again at prom. Logan Andrews was born almost 17 years ago in Concord, North Carolina, while Allison Wolfe came into the world in Boston. But while they didn't have geography in common, they were both born very similar: with heart disease. In June 1999, soon after Allison had to have surgery at just one month old for her complex heart abnormality called Tetralogy of Fallot, Logan was flown to the hospital for treatment of his hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Scroll down for video Reunited: Logan Andrews and Allison Wolfe, who first met as babies in a Boston hospital where they were both being treated for heart disease, recently attended prom together Looking back: Allison was born with a heart abnormality called Tetralogy of Fallot while Logan had hypoplastic left heart syndrome It was an incredibly tough time for both families, as Logan's mother recovered from a C-section and Allison fought terrifying infections. Both babies were in dire straights, with each only having a slim chance of surviving their conditions. Their mothers bonded over their tough times. But after months of fighting, both children went on to live, thrive and grow into happy teenagers. And now, almost 17 years later, the pair have crossed paths again, this time at prom, after Logan asked Allison to be his date. The pair hadn't seen each other in about ten years. Popping the question: Logan asked Allison to the prom by sending her a Build-A-Bear package with a recorded message inside it Dapper: In the recorded message implanted in the bear, Logan told Allison that 'it would do my heart good if you'd go to prom with me' Happy days: Allison was totally floored by the promposal, claiming that she 'didn't see it coming at all' The clever teen popped the question using a Build-A-Bear package Logan had sent from Burlington, North Carolina - a plan hatched by the teen and his mother. 'I was thinking it was something I had ordered from Amazon,' Allison told American Heart Association News . 'I didn't see it coming at all.' In a video Allison's mom filmed of her daughter opening the package, she is seen pulling the bear out of the box and pressing on the paw to hear Logan's voice saying: 'I know it's been awhile since we've seen each other, but it would do my heart good if you'd go to prom with me.' The young teen blushes and squeals: 'Yes! Yes, I'll go!' Putting it together: Allison's family drove down to stay with Logan and his parents so the teens could attend the event together Posing: Allison's sister Leah did her make-up, while Leah's boyfriend served as the couple's chauffeur All around success: The pair of teens said they had a wonderful time, with Allison saying that it was 'so amazing' that 'I can't begin to put it into words' Together forever: Allison said that she is grateful for their friendship and the pair have vowed to always keep in touch with each other When it came to the actual event, the Wolfe family took a drive together down to North Carolina and stayed with the Andrews'. Allison's sister Leah helped with her make-up while Leah's boyfriend served as a chauffeur for the couple. After dinner at Raleigh's Angus Barn restaurant, the pair headed to the prom and, by all accounts, had the time of their lives. A pregnant New Zealand woman has claimed a beauty therapist super-glued her eyes shut in a botched eyelash extension treatment. Sarah Tyson visited Hairport salon in New Lynn, New Zealand, where she said an employee was forced to 'cut my eye's open with scissors' after they became stuck together. But salon owner Winnie Teo denied the claims, telling Daily Mail Australia when Sarah left the salon 'she was happy'. New Zealand woman Sarah Tyson took to Facebook claiming her eyes had been super-glued together in a botched eyelash extension job She said her eyes were left swollen and puss had started to come out of her tear duct Sarah took to Facebook on May 30 to share her experience in a post that has received 5,279 shares. 'The lady that did my lashes super glued my eye's shut,' Sarah wrote. 'Then when I couldn't open my eyes the lady pulled my eye lids apart with her fingers and when she couldn't pull them apart with her fingers she cut my eye's open with scissors. 'The next day my eye lashes were so hardened I couldn't close my eye's they started swelling and glue and puss started to come out of my tearducked [sic].' Sarah sought the help of another eye lash technician, who took two hours to remove the lashes Sarah went on to say the store refused her request to have the lashes removed and a refund given. She took to Facebook to ask for advice, and was referred to 'a fully trained professional eye lash master' who visited her house to remove the lashes. 'It took her two hours to remove the lashes, the glue will take a week to fully remove,' she wrote. 'The professional artist then went on to tell me I either had a eye infection or there's glue all over my eye.' The salon owner denied the claims, saying Sarah left the salon 'happy' Sarah said she and the other lash artist went back to Haiport salon to explain what had happened. The other lash artist asked for a refund, and Sarah said it was refused. Ms Teo told Daily Mail Australia when Sarah left the salon 'she was happy', her eyes were not bleeding and there was no puss. 'After she left the shop she was happy and had her eyes open,' she said. She also denied the claims Sarah's eyes had been super glued together and cut open, and in the six years she had been operating she had received no complaints. Ms Teo said the other lash artist asked for a refund for the job, and she refused saying Sarah should have come back to her if she had a problem with her lashes, rather than go to someone else. The salon owner said Sarah should have come back to her salon if she had a complaint, rather than go to someone else The technician who removed the lashes said New Zealand needed to regulate the beauty industry Ms Teo also said the photos which Sarah shared were taken after the lashes were removed, a job she did not do. 'It's not fair to me to get somebody else to take it off [the lashes] and put the picture up after,' she said. The lash artist who helped Sarah remove the extensions spoke to the New Zealand Herald. The woman, who asked not to be named, said the beauty industry was unregulated in New Zealand, something she would like to see changed. On Facebook, Sarah said she hoped to raise awareness about the fact the industry is unregulated. Sarah shared photos of her eyes and cotton tips used to clean them after she had the lashes removed Under New Zealand law business are not required to hold a licence to apply lash extensions The New Zealand Herald reported by law, inspections on businesses that provide piercing, tattoo or hair removal services needed to be held annually to ensure they were clean and hygienic. They spoke with Auckland Council environmental health manager Mervyn Chetty who said the council had not received a complaint about the salon. A new app produced in China lets people be re-created as Chinese kids A bizarre new app has been launched which swaps the faces of well-known celebrities onto those of Chinese schoolchildren. In honour of Children's Day in China, which was celebrated on Wednesday, the mobile phone company, Pitu, released a new function in which people can change their appearance from adulthood to adolescence. Sydney-based student, Jang Zhang, jumped at the invention of the app, rushing to morph everyone from Taylor Swift to Donald Trump, the Queen and Hugh Jackman into the younger selves they never were. Adulthood to adolescence: A mobile phone app has released an app which allows people to transform themselves into Chinese schoolchildren - Jang Zhang, from NSW, has morphed various celebrities Terrifying change: Some of the best people he converts include Donald Trump (pictured), of whom Mr Zhang says: 'It seems like no matter where Donald Trump comes from he still doesn't look good' Reason for being: The app came into existence in honour of Children's Day in China and has been downloaded countless times since it was launched The results are unusual, hilarious and sometimes a bit scary. According to Mr Zhang, a student at the University of New South Wales: 'Owing to Western-looking faces, the transformation doesn't work well in some cases, but in others like Beyonce and Taylor Swift it works really well. 'I and my friends did find it quite hilarious however to change faces into that of a Chinese student [sic],' he said. What works: According to Mr Zhang, people like Beyonce (pictured) and Taylor Swift work particularly well as Chinese schoolgirls - they are somewhat easier to recognise Scary stuff: However, he says that lots of faces (perhaps like Barack Obama, pictured), don't work as well Mr Zhang added wittily: 'It seems like no matter where Donald Trump comes from he still doesn't look good.' How the app works is that users merely upload one photo with their face looking forwards, before the mobile phone app processes the image to show them as they would look if they were at school in China. Some of the best comparisons from Mr Zhang include a nearly-recognisable Queen Elizabeth, a totally baffling Victoria Beckham and an uncannily Benjamin Button-esque Chinese Brad Pitt. Australian heartthrob, Hugh Jackman, also gets a decent treatment. Recognise this one: The Queen works pretty well with the app, producing a funny result Mini Posh: You might be hard pressed, however, to recognise Victoria Beckham Creepy lookalike: Hollywood actor, Brad Pitt, looks uncannily Benjamin Button-esque as a Chinese schoolkid A star is born: Australian heartthrob, Hugh Jackman, also gets a decent treatment However, Mr Zhang didn't just limit it to Western household names. He also put several Chinese film stars, including Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee, through the unusually niche face generator. Mr Zhang says that the obsession with youth has taken as much hold in China as it has Europe, Australia and America. Swap it out: However, Mr Zhang didn't just limit it to Western household names - Bruce Lee goes through the converter, too No end: Chinese film star, Jackie Chan, was another person to go through the app 'In China the term for baby is bowbow and was usually used to describe little kids,' he said. 'But in todays China many people call themselves baobao to seem more youthful, lively and friendly towards others. 'Another application, Alipay, has won the nations attention using a youthful message for Childrens Day. 'When you open the app it says "We are all baobaos for today,"' he concluded. Whatever you make of the spooky Face Swaps, we can see hours of amusement being lost to this particular app. Baby face: Rihanna came out quite like fellow singer, Beyonce Younger and younger: Mr Zhang says that the obsession with youth has taken as much hold in China as it has Europe, Australia and America A gay couple from Melbourne have launched what they believe to be the world's first luxury magazine for gay weddings: Groom and Guy. The magazine, founded by Matty Bulger and his partner Tony Smith, is described as 'Australia and New Zealand's first and only luxury gay wedding resource' and is available across both digital and print platforms. The high-end publication covers more than wedding stories and will include sections focusing on style, travel, honeymoons and food. World first: A gay couple from Melbourne have launched what they believe to be the world's first luxury magazine for gay weddings: Groom and Guy 'Our journey has just begun': The magazine, founded by Matty Bulger (centre) and his partner Tony Smith (left), is described as 'Australia and New Zealand's first and only luxury gay wedding resource' Passionate: 'G+G is inspiration for not only your special day but also for your everyday life - from how to entertain, to what to wear and everything in between,' the pair explain on their website 'G+G is inspiration for not only your special day but also for your everyday life - from how to entertain, to what to wear and everything in between,' the pair explain on their website. 'In no way, shape or form is there anything presently available that is comparable to what G+G is or what it achieves. We are the benchmark, and we have set it pretty high (apologies in advance to our future competitors). 'G+G has been created so that you have the most definitive collection of ideas, suppliers and real life stories at your fingertips.' Chic: 'In no way, shape or form is there anything presently available that is comparable to what G+G is or what it achieves. We are the benchmark, and we have set it pretty high,' they said Luxe: The pair said that although same sex marriage rights are not yet acknowledged in Australia, couples are still creating 'something special' to celebrate their love True love: 'Couples continue to make the decision to create something truly special to mark their love and respect for one another, even if it isnt binding in the eyes of the law,' they said The pair said that although same sex marriage rights are not yet acknowledged in Australia, couples are still creating 'something special' to celebrate their love. 'Our journey has just begun and we are already shaking things up,' they wrote. 'Couples continue to make the decision to create something truly special to mark their love and respect for one another, even if it isnt binding in the eyes of the law, and we are here to showcase and support that decision. Excited for the future: 'We are thrilled you are a part of this and are so excited to show you what we have on offer! Rest assured, Groom and Guy is for you,' they wrote Exciting: Volume one of the magazine is available across 1,900 stockists throughout Australia and New Zealand and the next print edition will be published in November, 2016 'We are thrilled you are a part of this and are so excited to show you what we have on offer! Rest assured, Groom and Guy is for you.' Staff have been sharing snippets of the magazine on Instagram where they already boast close to 3,000 followers. Volume one of the magazine is available across 1,900 stockists throughout Australia and New Zealand and the next print edition will be published in November, 2016. A heartbroken woman dealt with the grief of her boyfriend of six years dumping her and getting engaged to her friend by bed hopping around the world. Laura Jane Williams, 30, from Derby has detailed how she threw herself into promiscuity in her new book Becoming, released yesterday, as a means of asserting control over her life again. The writer travelled to destinations such as Paris, Detroit, Italy, Bali enjoying meaningless sexual encounters with men - and even one with a woman - along the way. Scroll down for video Laura Jane Williams, 30, from Derby has detailed how she threw herself into promiscuity in her new book Becoming, released yesterday, after her partner of six years split up with her and got engaged to her friend She finally found herself at a convent on the Italian Riviera where she took a vow of celibacy and remained for three months, healing and forgiving herself for her actions. 'I could not go to the pub, a party or a work event without looking at a man and saying to myself: That one will be next,' The Sun reported. 'There always had to be somebody to take home, a conquest. 'I felt like an emotionally detached and liberated woman. I didnt want any of them to love me or treat me with respect because I didnt respect myself.' After the break up, Laura fled to Paris and had her first random sexual encounter with a man at a party. Laura, pictured soaking up the sun in Bali, enjoyed a series of meaningless sexual encounters while travelling the world The writer, pictured in Italy, where she spent time teaching English Although they ultimately did not have full sex, Laura said she was not worried by the rejection as from then on she saw men as interchangeable. 'One man was never enough. Peers, colleagues, strangers and friends were all potential lovers,' she said. Back in Derby it took her just an hour to plan her next encounter, via an online dating site. They had sex in a hotel 35 minutes after meeting in a bar. On her travels Laura felt like an emotionally detached and liberated woman for having sex with men she didn't care about Derby-born Laura said she didn't care if men respected her or not as she didn't respect herself From there it was on to Detroit where she got a job teaching writing workshops in high schools on behalf of Eastern Michigan University and embarked on a fling with an 18-year-old called Chad who she demanded sex from on a nightly basis. Her next stop was Italy where her encounter continued, including sex with a man she nicknamed Big D***. 'On the walk back to my house that first night, he'd pushed me up against the wall of a nameless street with my hands up against my head, and gyrated along the front of me,' she said. Laura practicing her yoga skills on a trip to Bali When her partner of six years split up with her, Laura was left heartbroken The writer, pictured in Rome, finally sought solace in an Italian monastery in Liguria where she took time to heal herself Describing his manhood as 'the largest, unruliest exhaust-pipe of a thing I'd ever encountered', she said they would have had sex in the street had she not told him 'breathlessly and just convincingly enough, "Get me inside. Get me inside the house".' 'It was like he was made I'd made him wait. By the time my door was open his hands were on my neck, in my hair, on my wiast, his mouth wet and heavy in my ear,' she said. 'He'd tossed me inside with a shove as soon as the door sounded its unlock. 'He didn't give a s*** what I wanted.Who I was. What this meant. This man, this stranger. He attacked me with his big, chunky paws, plotting a map of my curves. Laura's book reveals how she struggled to find herself after the end of her long-term relationship It took time for Laura to recover from the heartbreak of her relationship ending Laura surveying the rice plantations in Bali 'I felt sexy. It was powerful to be wanted. To be looked at like he'd swallow me whole. Devour me. 'He was issuing the commands but it was me who'd gotten us this far, me who'd been confident enough and in control enough to engineer his desire this way. 'But it wasn't so much that he had sex, as much as he did sex to me. I was his willing participant, but I could've been anybody. I was a vessel.' Laura sneaked into the school where she worked with a fellow teacher to have sex under the cover of darkness. Sex made Laura feel powerful and in control The writer made a 19-year-old Italian fall in love with her but she didn't care about those she slept with And she slept with a 19-year-old father-of-one every night for a month until he chased her down the street in his pyjamas declaring his love for her. There was also a six-week romance with one of her female friends. They had an agreement that the friend could do whatever she wanted, but Laura was not allowed to touch her. However, during her stint teaching English to Italian teenagers it dawned on Laura that her behaviour was not the answer to healing her heartbreak. So she moved into a monastery for elderly monks, the Chiostro di SantAgostino, near Loano in Liguria, where she took a vow of celibacy. 'I'd do my "studying": writing and reading and looking at the lavender beside the statue of the Virgin Mary holding her rosary beads, repenting for that which only she knew. I was forgiving myself too,' Laura recalled. 'I sought solace by proxy. In my time by the padre's office there owuld be knocks at the convent door, and anther old or disabled monk would let in one more soul seeking their right selves. 'I was in good company. It was mainly Romanians or southern Italians down on their luck, and I spoke with them all. A brave six-year-old cancer sufferer and her family are celebrating her remission after a potentially fatal tumour was discovered in her ribs after a plane journey. Claire Russell, from Maryland in Baltimore, has endured 17 rounds of chemotherapy after the disease was discovered when the air pressure mid-flight caused her severe pain. The young girl was rushed to hospital after the plane landed where she received the life-saving diagnosis. Claire Russell and her family are celebrating as she has now been cancer-free for a year after a tumour found in her ribs was removed The little girl pictured going on the plane journey that saved her life. Her tumour was discovered following the flight as doctors believe the high altitude put pressure on it causing pain And last month she was delighted to reach one year of being cancer-free with the blonde hair she lost during her gruelling treatment now back to shoulder-length. Claire's cancer was first discovered at 36,000ft when a minor pain she had felt in her back began to severely throb and hurt. The then four-year-old was in so much pain from the flight that after landing her mum Michelle, 32, rushed her to hospital. After antibiotics failed to relieve Claire, her mother pushed for more tests to be done and an X-ray revealed she had a box-shaped tumour on her ribs and spine. Doctors explained the cancerous mass had been disturbed by the difference in the air pressure while flying at a high altitude, causing Claire's intense pain. The cancerous mass called a Ewing Sarcoma is caused by a gene mutation that causes harmful cells to form into tumours around bone - accounting for one per cent of all childhood cancers. Claire's mother Michelle said throughout her year of grueling treatment she 'was absolutely amazing, considering she's so young, she was always in high spirits' The intense sessions of treatment lasted more than a year and saw Claire lose a quarter of her body weight, dropping to a fragile two stone (30lbs) Claire underwent chemotherapy to shrink the tumour enough for it to be removed and blast away the remaining cancerous cells. The intense treatment lasted more than a year and saw Claire lose a quarter of her body weight, dropping to a fragile 30lbs. Thankfully her treatment was successful and last month Claire, now six, celebrated her one-year anniversary for being cancer free. Michelle said: 'Going on that plane could have saved our daughter's life, without it we wouldn't have thought the pain in her back was anything more than muscle or growing pains. 'Doctors have said to us they believe flying at such a high altitude could have put pressure on the cancerous tumour. 'At the time we couldn't figure out why Claire was in so much pain, it was so intense that she was crying, it's shocking that flying alerted us to her cancer.' Claire first experienced pains in her lower back, which were dismissed as muscle or growing pains, during a gymnastics class in 2014. Michelle said: 'Going on that plane could have saved our daughter's life, without it we wouldn't have thought the pain in her back was anything more than muscle or growing pains' Claire's mother said one of the hardest times for the little girl was when she lost her blonde curls, left, due to chemo It wasn't until weeks later when flying to Seattle, Washington, for a wedding that Claire's symptoms became more severe. Michelle said: 'Claire was learning to do handstands and backflips when she first told us about a pain in her back, but we thought it was just her overdoing it. 'We were flying for a wedding when we knew something wasn't right. Claire was in absolute agony. 'Doctors thought she had a kidney infection and three days after being on antibiotics I found her crying in her sleep, it was then that I knew in my gut something really was wrong. 'Normally she's such a happy ray of sunshine who never complains about anything, even when she's hurting because she's used to playing rough with her brothers Cohen and Cooper. 'So when she was upset I knew there must be something more going on and pushed for an X-ray.' Claire's X-ray technician gasped after spotting the large Ewing Sarcoma and the family flew to John Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, for specialist cancer treatment. Michelle said: 'I remember seeing the technician suddenly look really frightened during her scans and knew it couldn't be a good sign, it was horrible. 'The tumour was shaped like a box and was situated between her 7th and 8th ribs and spread across to her spine, it was very large. Claire's treatment involved high-dosages of chemo. The tumour was then removed along with any remaining cancerous cells so she is now happy and healthy again 'I told Claire that there was a cell in her back that wouldn't stop growing which was why her back hurt. 'When we told her it would take about a year to fix, she was so nonchalant and relaxed, it was like she knew it was coming. 'Claire was absolutely amazing, considering she's so young, she was always in high spirits even while going through the year of chemo and surgery.' Doctors shrunk the tumour with seven high-dosages of chemo, surgeons removed the tumour, fused her spine, and shaved her spinal column in a 12 hour surgery September 2014 to ensure none of the cancer was left behind. Claire had ten more doses of chemo, which left her bones so weak she broke her femur while playing just weeks before being given the all-clear. Michelle said: 'Hearing that she needed 17 rounds of chemo was one of the hardest things, it seemed such a lot for a four-year-old to take. 'The chemo gave her pains sores in her throat and mouth, which made it difficult for her to eat and she lost a quarter of her body weight. Claire and her family are delighted she has been cancer-free for a year 'One of the most heartbreaking moments was cutting off the remaining tufts of her long, gorgeous blonde curls, late one night I had to sneak into her room to cut them off while she slept.' She added: 'Later when we received the news that she was cancer-free it was like being on cloud nine, I couldn't have been happier.' The Sarcoma Foundation of America raises funds to support research initiatives, educates people about the disease and advocates policies to help speed the development of new therapies for patients. Bert Thomas, CEO of the Sarcoma Foundation of America, said: 'There are over fifty different kinds of sarcomas - Ewing's sarcoma is one kind of sarcoma that grows in the bones or in the tissue around bones, often in the legs, pelvis, ribs, arms or spine. 'Sarcomas can arise anywhere because these tissues are found everywhere on the body. 'For children diagnosed after their disease has spread (metastasis), the survival rate is less than 30 per cent.' A mum left so traumatised after being set upon by two women as a schoolgirl that she picked holes in her skin has overcome her anxiety to become a beauty queen. Former dermatillomania sufferer Karlette Palmer, 24, from Surrey is now in the running to become Miss Great Britain after being crowned Miss Greater London in April. The young mum, who lives with her fiance Tiago Andrade, 25, and their 10-month-old son Alijah in Surrey, wants to celebrate her newfound confidence after years of suffering crippling anxiety. Scroll down for video Karlette Palmer, 24, years of suffering crippling anxiety after being attacked as a teenager but is now in the running to become Miss Great Britain after being crowned Miss Greater London in April Karlette says her newfound confidence has come from accepting what she's been through instead of trying to escape it Karlette had her cheekbone and ribs fractured in a brutal attack in April 2007, when she was just 14, and for years still saw her bruised and swollen face every time she looked in the mirror. Hair extension technician Karlette said: 'I was almost 15 at the time and walking home from school alone when a car pulled up and two girls got out. 'They jumped out the car and started hitting me in the face and then the body. They whacked my head off a brick wall fracturing my cheekbone. 'They broke my ribs and after I was covered in stamp marks from where they'd been kicking me. And they ripped out my hair. They really messed me up.' The injuries Karlette suffered after being attacked included broken ribs, a fractured cheekbone and bruising to her face. Her attackers also pulled her hair out The mother of one with her fiance Tiago Andrade, 25, and their son Alijah One of Karlette's attackers Stacey Dobbs, 30, of Thornton Close, Horley, Surrey, was found guilty of common assault at Guildford Crown Court on 10 March 2008. Dobbs was given a two-year conditional discharge and order to pay compensation of 200 to the victim while her accomplice was given a caution. Karlette said her life was turned upside down by the brutal assault, which left her so crippled by anxiety caused her to start compulsively picking her skin. Karlette said her life was turned upside down by the brutal assault, which left her so crippled by anxiety caused her to start compulsively picking her skin Karlette has holes all over her legs and face where she'd dug into the skin with her nail and then picked off the scab. She still bears the scars of her self harming While suffering from dermatillomania as a teenager, Karlette did not realise what she was doing was a form of self harm The young mum said in the aftermath she also suffered panic attacks, had extreme nightmares and it affected her relationships with friends and family. The obsessive skin picking - a condition called dermatillomania - may have acted as a temporary 'release' for Karlette but it also fuelled her anxiety and even further lowered her self-confidence. Karlette said: 'It affected me massively. I felt small and very alone. I felt like I had to constantly put on a front because I was scared but I didn't want anyone to see that I wasn't okay. 'I had to change my route home because I couldn't walk past where it happened without freezing or breaking down in tears. I was traumatised. Now Karlette feels more body confident, but she used to cover herself in heavy make-up, long sleeves and long socks to hide the marks of her self harming The brunette beauty admits that her anxiety put a strain on her relationship with her family, especially her mother The beauty queen has newfound confidence after years of fearing people were staring at her 'I used to have these panic attacks and the most extreme nightmares every other night. 'I developed this really anxious behaviour when I was out because I felt like everyone was looking at me and could see that something was wrong with me. 'But at home I was completely different - I was so angry. It really put a strain on my relationship with my family, especially my mum. 'I started digging holes in my face, legs and arms because it was like a release. It was soothing and relaxing. I didn't even realise I was doing it at first let alone that it was a form of self-harm. The beauty queen's new mantra is that you should always have something to live for and that you should always value yourself The Miss Great Britain hopeful now counsels other people with anxiety through her YouTube Channel 'It became a downward spiral. My anxiety had always meant I thought people were staring at me but when my dermatillomania got worse I knew they were. 'Of course they were - I had holes all over my legs and face where I'd dug a hole with my nail and then picked off the scab. I still have round brown scars everywhere. 'I started to cover myself in really heavy make-up, long sleeves and long socks to hide what I was doing. 'I went to dance school and passed everything with distinctions but never had the confidence to pursue it because I didn't think I was worthy. My whole life was put on hold.' Shortly after having therapy to deal with her issues, Karlette met her fiance Tiago Tiago's proposal to Karlette was captured on camera During a counselling session with TV therapists Nik and Eva Speakman in 2014, Karlette was faced with the shocking realisation that six years on from her attack she was still seeing her bruised and swollen face when she looked in the mirror. The revelation allowed Karlette to rediscover her self-confidence and launch her campaign to become Miss Great Britain. Karlette now has her own YouTube channel where she shares her story and tries to help others accept the traumas in their lives and cope with anxiety. Karlette said: 'The Speakmans got me to close my eyes and relive the attack and tell them how it made me feel. The happy couple celebrating their engagement with their baby son Alijah Life has never been better for Karlette as she's engaged and in the running to become Miss Great Britain 'Then they got me to describe myself. I spoke about marks on my face and one eye being lower than the other. 'When they asked me to open my eyes they held up what looked like a mirror and I thought I saw my reflection in it but it was actually a frame with a picture in it of what I looked like after the attack. 'I was seeing that every day when I looked in the mirror. It was like a form of body dysmorphia. Realising that was absolutely amazing. Karlette on a volunteering trip to Africa after regaining her confidence The young mother, pictured during her pregnancy, says life has never been better since having her son Alijah 'Getting back my confidence has completely changed my life. I never used to be able to have relationships because I was too scared to let people in but so soon after meeting the Speakmans I met Tiago. 'I'm engaged, I've got a beautiful baby boy and now I'm in the running to become Miss Great Britain. It's incredible. 'I learnt how to cope by taking each day at a time and setting myself realistic goals. People need to know not to push themselves. 'But the most important thing is accepting what you've been through instead of trying to escape it. I would not be who I am today if I hadn't been through what I have. 'It has made me so much better at dealing with other things and a better mum to Alijah. As the world reels from allegations that Johnny Depp beat his wife Amber Heard, Twitter users have turned their attention to the actor's recent Dior fragrance campaign. In it the 52-year-old Pirates Of The Caribbean star broodily rolls up his sleeves, with the name of the perfume, Sauvage, emblazoned over the top - which translates to 'wild' in French. However as the stars marital problems dominate headlines with 30-year-old Heard accusing her husband of domestic violence, people have commented on the campaign shots looking 'a bit dodgy' and being 'poorly timed'. Scroll down for video The advertisement for Dior's Savage, above, in which Depp gives a moody look to camera, has run on television and online Social media users are drawing comparisons between Johnny Depp's alleged beating of his wife Amber Heard, and his appearance in the fragrance campaign (pictured in LA this January) The campaign, which launched a year ago, included a video which saw the actor driving a vintage Dodge Charger at speed through the desert, surround by swooping eagles and prowling wolves. The advertisement, in which Depp gives a moody look to camera, has run on television and online, as well as gracing billboards. Twitter user Graham, who uses the handle @HallowGham, wrote: 'Johnny Depp rolling up his sleeves for a fragrance called Sauvage looks a bit dodgy, given current events.' Twitter users have commented on the images from the campaign, which was announced by the LMVH owned company last June, and called it 'a bit dodgy' and 'a bad idea' Johnny Depp's estranged wife Amber Heard appeared to have a bruised eye and cut lip in new pictures that first appeared in People magazine recently, above, which she claimed were the result of his abuse Another, who uses the name Werewolf Bat Mitzvah, wrote: 'Anyone good enough friends with Dior to quietly mention pictures of Johhny Depp with SAUVAGE printed across them might be a bad idea just now.' [sic] Caitlyn Davey tweeted: 'Is anyone else finding it awkward that #JohnnyDepp is the face of Dior's 'Sauvage'? It's all a bit poorly timed.' Pictures of his estranged wife, with what appeared to be a bruised eye and cut lip, were published in People magazine - with her claiming the injuries were a result of his abuse. The actress also said she 'truly feared for her life' during an incident in December 2015, according to her court filing. Heard, who has filed for divorce after 15 months of marriage, has been granted a temporary restraining order against the Hollywood star. James Crisp said: 'At an airport. Just saw a big advert for Dior's aftershave Sauvage...starring Johnny Depp. Seems v apt.' Heard, above, who has filed for divorce after 15 months of marriage, has been granted a temporary restraining order against the Hollywood star El Luis wrote: 'No surprises with Johnny Depp beating Amber Heard. Dior knew he was a Sauvage. At least he didn't use the shovel LOL.' Part of the television advert for the fragrance sees the actor carrying a spade over one shoulder. @Balloutboy305 wrote: 'Domestic violence isn't funny but Johnny Depp is a sauvage.......lmao (laughing my a** off)' while The Tailgate Times tweeted: 'Yeah Johnny Depp is a "sauvage" to say the least.' Gareth C said: 'Ha. Johnny Depp "Sauvage"...too right.' In Amber Heard's application for her restraining order she claims her husband was verbally and physically abusive to her for the 'entirety' of their four-year-relationship. However Depp's divorce lawyer Laura Wasser said in court documents that Heard was 'attempting to secure a premature financial resolution by alleging abuse'. In Amber Heard's application for her restraining order she said her husband, above, was verbally and physically abusive to her for the 'entirety' of their four-year-relationship Heard has already claimed that Depp argued with her on April 21 after showing up at the end of her 30th birthday party 'inebriated and high'. She then went on to say that he grabbed her by the hair and 'violently shoved me to the floor'. She also alleges that he threw a mobile phone at her, 'striking my cheek and eye with great force' during an altercation on May 21 - when he 'began obsessing about something that was untrue'. Los Angeles police have said they responded to that incident, but found no evidence of a crime. Heard's lawyers said she did not initially give a statement to police because she was trying to protect her privacy and Depp's reputation career. A fascinating new infographic reveals the most popular reality shows in every state and there are actually very few surprises. The statistics, compiled by CableTV.com from Google Trends data, show that when it comes to guilty pleasure TV, most people tend to stick with shows that reflect the local culture. So even though, nationally, competition shows like The Voice, American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, and The Bachelor may have pulled in the highest ratings, they're not actually the local favorites in most states. Scroll down for video Binge-watch: This map shows the most popular reality shows in each state, according to Google Trends Wow! Hoarders is the most popular show in five states: Montana, New Mexico, Kansas, Michigan, and Indiana You're fired: The Apprentice is most searched in Idaho, Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island One of the two most popular reality shows, on a state-by-state basis, is Hoarders. While the docu-series is certainly the most popular on A&E, it averages a couple of million viewers per episode, which can hardly compete with many network reality shows. Still, it's the most popular in Montana, New Mexico, Kansas, Michigan, and Indiana. The Apprentice is also the most-searched on Google in five states: Idaho, Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island. But while Donald Trump once touted that it's 'the number one show on television, the 2015 finale only had 6 million viewers. America's Next Top Model is also on top in four states Oregon, Vermont, Colorado, Maine while Shark Tank claimed favorite status in four states as well: New Jersey, Texas, Florida, and Illinois. The Bachelor may have pulled in the highest ratings, they're not actually the local favorites in most states Wanna be on top? America's Next Top Model is the most popular in Oregon, Vermont, Colorado, Maine Roses for these states! The Bachelor is most popular in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska. Twist and shout: In Wisconsin and Ohio, the most popular show is Dancing With the Stars A handful of shows managed to win the popularity contest in three states each including Project Runway, which came out ahead of the pack in Washington, Hawaii, Massachusetts. But The Bachelor, which earned a whopping 9.5 million viewers for its 2016 series finale, is only the most popular in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska. American Idol also seemed to go out without much of a bang, being the most-searched in only Missouri, Alabama, North Carolina. Other repeat favorites include Naked and Afraid (in Oklahoma and South Carolina) and Dancing With the Stars (in Wisconsin and Ohio). Local favorites: Californians can't seem to get enough Keeping Up With the Kardashians Mormons love 'em: Sister Wives, on TLC, is most popular in Utah Cultural tastes: The Duggars seem most popular in Kentucky, where 19 Kids and Counting is most popular There are plenty of shows that are only the most popular in one or two states, though their most-searched status in unsurprising given that they often reflect regional tastes. Keeping Up With the Kardashians, naturally, is the most popular reality show in California (though it's also top in Arizona), and obvious choice given both the lifestyle of its stars and the fact that they live in the Golden State. Though the family on the TLC polygamy series Sister Wives lives in Nevada, the show reigns supreme in Utah, where the Jesus Christ Church of Latter-Day Saints is prominent. The Sister Wives family are not members of the church, though they do practice an off-shoot of Mormonism. The Duggars' 19 Kids and Counting is most popular in Kentucky, which is quite similar to the religious family's home state of Arkansas, while Duck Dynasty is the most beloved in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Sticking to the familiar: Several southern states favor Duck Dynasty on A&E Surprise! The most popular reality show in New York State is RuPaul's Drag Race Georgia including Atlanta, an epicenter of the hip-hop community favors the VH1 show Love and Hip Hop, which is filmed there. In fact, there seem to be only a couple of surprises on the list, which also tallied up each state's second and third-favorite shows. New York's most-Googled show is RuPaul's Drag Race, and Long Island Medium which takes place in New York is actually the most-loved in Delaware. Advertisement She may have been on an official royal engagement, but Princess Leonore of Sweden gave her parents a right royal run around as they visited stables in Gotland today. The two-year-old put on an adorably cheeky display as her parents Princess Madeleine and her husband Christopher O Neil took her to meet her horse Haidi of Gotland for the first time. Leonore had far more important things to do like chasing around the meadow and even decided to chomp on the carrot meant for Haidi. Scroll down for video Princess Estelle of Sweden, two, hid out in a sun-kissed meadow, forcing her parents Princess Madeleine and her husband Christopher O Neil The young royal put on an adorably cheeky display as her parents took her to meet her horse Haidi of Gotland for the first time Eventually mum caught up with the little runaway - who was only too keen to show how pleased she was with her summer frock When Leonore finally met Gotland she was keen to help with his grooming The royals were visiting the Swedish island province for a day of engagements, which included introducing the young Princess to the horse gifted to Leonore for her christening in 2014. She arrived in her father's arms carrying a spotted riding helmet and a box wrapped in polka dot paper, which no doubt contained a gift for the steed. The toddler looked adorable in a baby blue dress with a white band at the hem and a Peter Pan collar. Her hair was clipped back on one side with a matching blue bow and she looked every inch the Princess in white shoes and ankle socks. Leonore even decided to chomp on the carrot meant for Haidi instead of giving it to him The young royal was more interested in chasing about the field than meeting her horse Leonore seemed to be in the mood for hide and seek, flopping down in the long grass which partially obscured her from her parents Princess Madelenie had to chase after her daughter after she took off across the field Leonore was clearly in a playful mood as she resisted her parent's attempts to introduce her to Haidi and dashed off across the field. Both Princess Madeleine and Christopher had to chase after her to bring her back. Luckily Princess Madeleine had sensibly donned a pair of flat embroidered plimsolls, which meant she was more than up for the chase. She cut a stylish but casual figure in cream coloured chinos and a matching shirt in a relaxed fit. The little Princess was clearly having a fantastic time as she enjoyed the summer afternoon At one point Leonore lost both of her shoes as well as her white socks Doting mother Princess Madeleine helped her daughter back in to her shoes and socks Christopher O'Neill carried his daughter across the field, clutching a riding helmet and a present for Haidi the horse Leonore looked like a perfect princess in a blue and white pleated dress and a matching bow in her hair Catch me if you can: The Princess was more interested in playing that she was in meeting her horse Estelle also seemed to be in the mood for hide and seek, flopping down in the long grass which partially obscured her from her parents. At one point she lost both shoes as well as her white socks, and her doting mother was seen patiently helping her to get dressed again. When the little Princess finally caught up with Gotland, she was keen to help with his grooming. She was seen wielding a brush, which she ran over his coat with the help of her mother. A royal engagement turned into playtime for the young Princess, who is also Duchess of Gotland After much running about, Leonore finally got to meet the horse she was gifted for her christening At first Princess Leonore was a little shy when introduced to Haidi Speaking to the media after the visit, Princess Madeleine said: 'Now you know what were dealing with. She is herself, thats how it is. Seeing her happy is fun. 'She and Haidi will probably become good friends soon. It takes some time to get to know a horse.' Chris added jokingly that their daughter is a 'wild monkey'. Leonore's father Christopher jokingly referred to his daughter as a 'wild monkey' while speaking to the media Earlier in the day the family visited the Gotland museum but it all got a bit too much for the youngster who sat on the ground to give her tired legs a rest Princess Madeleine carried her young daughter when her legs got tired The youngster clung to her mother's leg during a moment of shyness Following the stables Estelle changed into a white dress with blue ribbons after her first outfit had become a little muddy thanks to her dash through the fields. The family enjoyed lunch with the Governor of Gotland before a visit to the town's museum. But it all got a bit too much for the youngster who sat on the ground to give her tired legs a rest. Princess Leonore Lilian Maria was born on 20 February 2014 in New York. She was given the title Duchess of Gotland, in honour of the island province she visited with her parents today. For the past five years, thousands have bakers have proudly submitted their best pies to the Australia's Best Pie competition, held by peak industry body, the Baking Association of Australia. And while past years have seen iconic chunky beef pies take out the prestigious title, the 2016 winner was a vegan 'Thai Vegetable Curry' creation from Ka Pies in Sunshine, Melbourne. The pie is made like a traditional thai curry from fresh lemongrass and chillies, is topped with three triangle cuts and a sprinkle of parsley - the flavourful New Zealand inspired pastry beating over 1,700 others for the title. New winners: For the past five years, thousands have bakers have proudly submitted their best pies to the Australia's Best Pie competition, held by peak industry body, the Baking Association of Australia Plot twist: And while past years have seen iconic chunky beef pies take out the prestigious title, the 2016 winner was a vegan 'Thai Vegetable Curry' creation from Ka Pies in Sunshine, Melbourne While many have criticised the decision as being 'un-Australian' and 'insane', others are happy to see the bakers rewarded for their creativity. Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, Tony Smith, the Executive Officer of the Baking Association of Australia, said the pie, inspired by the pair's New Zealand heritage, 'ticked all of the boxes.' 'All the gold category winners are taken to the grand champion table where judges score the pies on their structure, the way they were baked and the flavour, ' Mr Smith said. Impressive: The pie is made like a traditional thai curry from fresh lemongrass and chillies - the flavourful New Zealand inspired pastry beating over 1,700 others for the title Happy with the result: Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, Tony Smith, the Executive Officer of the Baking Association of Australia, said the pie, inspired by the pair's New Zealand heritage, 'ticked all of the boxes' 'While many were shocked at the pie being a vegetable one, it's not a meat pie competition. People are doing all sorts of things with pies these days including ones made with crocodiles, buffalo and kangaroo. 'While meat pies may sound good many don't get it right with their flavour and texture and all of the criteria... this pie did.' Mr Smith said judges look for small details including the colour of the pastry, whether it is cooked properly on the inside and how well the top of the pie is lined up on the base. 'On top of this, the pie needs to be one that is actually sold in the shop,' he said. The star pie: 'All the gold category winners are taken to the grand champion table where judges score the pies on their structure, the way they were baked and the flavour, ' Mr Smith said Authentic: 'Bakers enter this competition with a lot of heart and soul and people who make show pies and don't show off their proper skills take the credibility out of it,' Mr Smith said 'All entrants need to sign a disclaimer before entering the competition that their pie is not a show pie and then for four to six months after the competition one of us will go in unannounced, buy the pie and make sure it's the right one.' If the pie is not the same or not being sold in the shop, winners will be stripped of their title. 'Bakers enter this competition with a lot of heart and soul and people who make show pies and don't show off their proper skills take the credibility out of it,' Mr Smith said. 'We are the national body and we can't be seen giving awards out left, right and centre to just anybody. Pie stars: 'The guys who won are so passionate about their flavours and while no, we have never seen a vegetable winner before, they won it fair and square and they absolutely deserved it,' he said All kinds: Besides their vegan option, Ka Pies are also known for their Hangi Pie crafted from traditional Maori style Hangi and smoked rolled pork, Smoked Fish Pie and Butter Chicken Pie 'The guys who won are so passionate about their flavours and while no, we have never seen a vegetable winner before, they won it fair and square and they absolutely deserved it.' Besides their vegan option, Ka Pies are also known for their Hangi Pie crafted from traditional Maori style Hangi and smoked rolled pork, Smoked Fish Pie and Butter Chicken Pie. They also offer bacon and egg pies, steak and cheese pies and of course, classic mince pies. Everything is on offer: They also offer bacon and egg pies, steak and cheese pies and of course, classic mince pies Proud: 'We're very happy to announce that Ka Pies are the winners of AUSTRALIAS BEST PIE competition for 2016,' the bakery wrote on Facebook Impressive: The bakery also won three silver medals and a bronze at the competition and have won a total of 18 medals over three competitions 'We're very happy to announce that Ka Pies are the winners of AUSTRALIAS BEST PIE competition for 2016. We went up against over 1,700 other pies from around the nation to take the honor [sic],' Ka Pies wrote on Facebook. 'We won with our Thai Vegetable Curry pie which is the first non meat pie to win in the history of the competition. Another fun fact about this pie is that its also Vegan. It contains no animal products but obviously tastes amazing. It's our 1 and only Vegan pie and we're very proud to call it a winner.' Is there a role for homeopathy in the National Health Service? The initial response from most people, and certainly the scientific community, is a resounding 'no' - homeopathy doesn't work and shouldn't be promoted as a bona fide treatment alongside conventional medicine. However, is there something that's been missed? Has the belief that homeopathy is no better than witchcraft interfered with pragmatic and logical reasoning? Homeopathy is classed as a 'complementary alternative medicine', setting it apart from conventional Western medicine. According to the British Homeopathy Association, the remedies are used by over 200 million people worldwide to treat both acute and chronic conditions. Homeopathic treatment for non-serious diseases stop people seeking unnecessary and powerful traditional treatments such as over-the-counter pills which may do more harm than good, argues Mark Davies THE LAWS OF HOMEOPATHY ARE NONSENSICAL Based on three central laws, the principles of homeopathy have remained unchanged since its 'discovery' by Samuel Hahnemann, a German doctor, in the 1790s. The 'Law of Similars' or 'like cures like', states that a substance which causes certain symptoms can help cure those symptoms. For example, caffeine (homeopathic name, Coffea Cruda) a stimulant, is used to treat insomnia. WHAT IS HOMEOPATHY? Homeopathy is a form of complementary, holistic medicine used by more than 200 million people across the world. Advocates advise it is used for both acute and chronic conditions. Homeopathic remedies are prepared by taking a substance, plant, animal or chemical material, diluting it in water or alcohol, then forcefully hitting the container against a hand or surface. The medicines come in the form of pellets to be placed under the tongue, tablets, liquids, ointments, sprays and creams. It is based on the principle of 'like cures like', the British Homeopathic Association states. The idea is that substances that cause illnesses can become remedies in small, highly diluted doses. The BHA advises it can be used to treat eczema, depression, coughs, the menopause, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome, hay fever, Crohn's disease, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and asthma. Advertisement It doesn't take a degree in biochemistry however, to realise how nonsensical this is. Homeopathy doesn't seem to be based on any science or evidence whatsoever, just the fertile imagination of Hahnemann. The 'Law of Infinitesimals' proposes the more diluted the remedy is, the stronger it becomes - so the greater its power to treat symptoms. Dilutions (usually with distilled water) are in the proportion 1 to 10 or 1 to 100, repeated up to thirty times. But dilution after dilution means the final preparation is devoid of any 'active' ingredient or if any, the equivalent of a molecule in the Pacific Ocean. In essence, a tincture of homeopathic remedy consists of nothing but water. In pill form, it's just a sugar tablet. It's not what it says on the label. The idea that less active ingredient makes a more powerful end product can be tested when you next put sugar in your coffee. Hahnemann realised there was unlikely to be any active ingredient left in the final homeopathic preparation. So he came up with the idea that vigorous shaking during each stage of the dilution process would 'imprint' the substance on the water. This he called succussion - and modern homeopaths believe water retains a 'memory' of the active ingredient. Needless to say, there is no credible scientific evidence for this or how this process could occur. And just imagine your tap water, recycled many times before it reaches your kitchen sink if the succussion theory were true, every substance encountered by the water would be imprinted on it, including some pretty nasty stuff In light of the three laws we can say with great confidence (but not absolute confidence) that homeopathy simply doesn't work, its core principles being completely at odds with modern scientific understanding. IT MAY NOT WORK BUT IT STILL CAN BE BENEFICIAL But before we consign it to the graveyard of hocus pocus and snake-oil, let's ask a different question - can homeopathy be beneficial? Surprisingly, in certain circumstances, yes. This is where Nassim Nicholas Taleb comes in, the author of the bestselling book 'The Black Swan' and known for his commentary on the nature and impact of unpredictable events. Many illnesses will get better on their own - and one theory is that taking harmless homeopathic remedies distracts patients while nature takes its course He argues many supposedly irrational beliefs and behaviours may have an 'ecological rationality', that is they are rational when viewed in terms of the environment they exist in. Rather than purely looking at things as true/not true, as the naive rationalist does, we should look at behaviours through the lens of pay-off, he claims. When we view things this way, the world becomes a different place - 'irrational' things can become rational when we consider their outcome. An action, superstition or attitude that reduces harm either to oneself or to a collective is arguably entirely rational, even if it seems illogical or ridiculous. Indeed, Taleb argues there must be benefits of irrational long-lasting beliefs otherwise they would have died out. Approaching homeopathy through the idea of pay-off rather than simply, 'it doesn't work' (therefore shouldn't be offered on the NHS), we can ask if there are certain situations where the use of homeopathic medicine has a positive pay-off - and we find there are. HOMEOPATHIC REMEDIES STOP PEOPLE TAKING DANGEROUS AND UNNECESSARY TREATMENTS Taleb argues homeopathy is beneficial in certain situations 'precisely because it is a proxy for doing nothing. Instead, its benefits lie in reducing medical over-intervention, acting as a placebo in cases which are marginal, in order to distract the patient while nature does the job'. The NHS Choices website states 'there is no good-quality evidence that homeopathy is effective as a treatment for any health condition'. For non-serious ailments, taking a homeopathic remedy stops people seeking unnecessary and powerful traditional treatments such as prescription pills - which could do more harm than good It states that NICE (the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence), which advises the NHS on proper use of treatments, doesn't recommend that homeopathy be used in the treatment of any condition. This is because patients who use homeopathy may miss out on other treatments that have been proven to be more effective. But does their opposition to homeopathy make them blind to the fact that their argument swings both ways? The NHS highlights the non-efficacy of homeopathy but ignores that whereas taking homeopathic pills for serious conditions is certainly bad, delaying possible life-saving medical treatment, there are non-serious situations where it is better 'to do nothing' than take unnecessary and potentially harmful over-the-counter or prescription drugs. In isolation, homeopathy seems like nonsense; in fact it almost certainly is. But in the context of over-medicalisation and harm caused by medical intervention, could it have a role? It's pretty certain that homeopathy doesn't work in the way that Hahnemann proposed - but in certain defined situations homeopathy may have a positive pay-off. THE DANGER OF OVER-MEDICALISATION It goes without saying the development of modern medicine has improved the lives of countless millions. There was a time when conventional medicine killed more than it cured, but this reversed with the introduction of vaccines and antibiotics, eradicating smallpox and virtually wiping out diseases such as polio and tuberculosis. Modern medical knowledge allows us to live free of conditions that killed or blighted the lives of even our recent ancestors. Only a fool would deny this. However, are we becoming over-medicalised? Experts agree that a wide range of conditions, such as prostate and thyroid cancers, asthma, and chronic kidney disease, are over-medicalised Research by the Health and Social Care Information Centre, a body set up by the government in 2013, found nearly half of all UK adults reported they had taken at least one prescribed drug in the week they studied. Surely, this is a cause for concern? In 2013, the British Medical Journal set up the 'Too Much Medicine' campaign to 'highlight the threat to human health posed by over-diagnosis and the waste of resources on unnecessary care'. The journal stated there is 'growing evidence that many people are over-diagnosed and over-treated for a wide range of conditions, such as prostate and thyroid cancers, asthma, and chronic kidney disease'. A report published in 2014 by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AoMRC), concluded that the NHS is wasting about 2bn a year, and risking patients' health by giving them too many X-rays, treatments and unnecessary drugs. The report stated that well over 1bn could be saved if doctors took care not to over-prescribe drugs and not to over-medicalise patients who may not have conditions they are diagnosed with. Sir Richard Thompson, former-president of the Royal College of Physicians, recently stated that many medicines are less effective than thought and that the NHS was over-treating its patients, leading to countless deaths. He claimed that full trial data on statins, cholesterol-lowering drugs taken by millions, has never been published. He also questioned the efficacy of Tamiflu, a flu drug that the NHS has spent 473million stockpiling. WE SHOULD SPEND MORE ON HOMEOPATHY Homeopathy has been available on the NHS since its formation in 1948. There are homeopathic hospitals in London, Bristol and Glasgow, plus a number of homeopathic clinics which take referrals from GPs and consultants. There are over 400 doctors who are registered homeopaths, regulated by the General Medical Council and members of the Faculty of Homeopathy, treating tens of thousands of NHS patients with homeopathy each year. The total NHS bill for homeopathy, including GP prescriptions, is thought to be around 4 million; a tiny fraction of the 113 billion annual NHS budget. Simon Singh, the author of 'Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine (2008)', and the founder of the 'Good Thinking Society' argues that, 'given the finite resources of the NHS, any spending on homeopathy is utterly unjustifiablethe money spent on these disproven remedies can be far better spent on treatments that offer real benefits to patients.' However, given the current cost of homeopathy pales into insignificance compared to the cost of over-medicalisation, perhaps more money should be spent on homeopathic treatments? As it is cheaper than conventional medicine, we should be spending more on homeopathy, he argued THE NHS SHOULD KEEP ITS HOMEOPATHIC ARM In light of potential savings it could be argued the NHS should keep its homeopathic arm for people who present with non-serious ailments, thereby reducing the unnecessary prescription of powerful drugs. There are valid concerns that some homeopaths abuse their status as alternative health practitioners, so surely it is better that a patient visits a registered GP who can accurately assess their condition, rather than a private homeopath who has a vested interest? There are valid concerns that some homeopaths abuse their status as alternative health practitioners, so surely it is better that a patient visits a registered GP who can accurately assess their condition, rather than a private homeopath who has a vested interest? The NHS is (or should be) more qualified and objectively positioned than private homeopaths whose livelihoods depend on administering homeopathic remedies. Done properly and overseen by the NHS, homeopathy could be used as a non-harmful option. While it's easy to criticise homeopaths for promoting non-effective treatments for serious conditions which require proper medical treatment, it's worth remembering pharmaceutical companies are also in the business of developing and selling drugs; do they have a real interest in preventing overuse and abuse of their products? People have been using homeopathic remedies for over 200 years; there is no reason to assume that modern medicine will make homeopathy redundant, in the same way that scientific knowledge and evolutionary theory hasn't made religion redundant. People hold on to their beliefs. Further, there is no reason to assume that we can educate everyone to not take pills for benign, self-healing conditions. It would be nice if people didn't want to pop pills but they do, that's the 'real world'. This being the case it's surely better to give people 'ineffective' sugar pills than potentially harmful, unnecessary drugs? An Indian mother has given birth to conjoined twins who have two sets of hands but share one pair of legs. The twins - a boy and girl - also share nearly every vital organ. Their mother, Shivrajo Devi, 24, gave birth at a private clinic in a village in Buxar, Bihar, eastern India, on Wednesday evening. However their condition soon began to deteriorate and they were moved to Sadar Hospital in the city where medics gave them preliminary treatment in neo-natal intensive care unit. Dr Raj Kumar Gupta, a paediatrician at Sadar Hospital, said: They are fused from the waist and only one genital is visible which is of a girl. 'Even though the second genital is missing, we suspect the face of the second baby is a boy, which makes this case even more rare as conjoined twins are usually of the same gender. The twins - a boy and girl - have two sets of hands but share one pair of legs and share nearly every vital organ Doctors say their condition is stable but they need special care - and their chance of survival is slim Once their condition stabilised, doctors sent the twins to a bigger hospital three hours away. But their devastated parents have now been told any further treatment will need to take place in Delhi. Unable to afford travel or the high cost of medical treatment, the couple say they have been forced to simply take the babies home. The babies parents said they had no idea she was carrying conjoined twins, despite thorough check-ups throughout her pregnancy including ultrasounds. Their devastated mother, Shivrajo Devi, said: 'I cannot believe my children are fused together. I'm heartbroken' Their father, Chhota Singh, said: 'I made sure to give my wife regular check-ups during pregnancy. We were excited to welcome twins but all our excitement has vanished' HOW CAN CONJOINED TWINS HAVE DIFFERENT GENDERS? Conjoined twins, whose skin and internal organs are fused together, are rare. They occur once every 200,000 live births, but approximately 40 to 60 per cent of conjoined twins arrive stillborn, and about 35 per cent survive only one day. The overall survival rate of conjoined twins is somewhere between 5 per cent and 25 per cent. Conjoined twins are formed from the same fertilised egg, which does not fully separate into two after fertilisation. The developing embryo starts to split into identical twins, but this process stops before it is complete. The partially separated egg develops into a conjoined foetus. As they come from the same egg, conjoined twins are genetically identical and always the same sex. Despite this, the surgeon at Sadar Hospital maintains in this case the twins could be of different genders. Paediatrician Dr Raj Kumar Gupta, said: They are fused from the waist and only one genital is visible which is of a girl. 'Even though the second genital is missing, we suspect the face of the second baby is a boy, which makes this case even more rare as conjoined twins are usually of the same gender. Source: University of Maryland Medical Centre Advertisement 'I cannot believe my children are fused together,' she said. 'I am heartbroken and had hopes that doctors can save their lives but with doctors turning them away, I do not know what will happen to them now. 'They told us the babies would be needed to be kept in a glass box and we should take them to big city like Delhi for their treatment,' said Shivrajo, who has two older children - a four-year-old son and two-year-old daughter. The twins father Chhota Singh, 30, a factory worker who makes 60 a month, said their joy had quickly turned to despair. He said he was in shock at the hospital's apathy. 'I made sure to give my wife regular check-ups during pregnancy,' he said. 'We were excited to welcome twins but all our excitement has vanished. I had only heard of such babies. 'After doctors at Sadar Hospital referred us to the other hospital, I borrowed money to take them there. 'But I was told there was no need for treatment.' Dr Ravi Kumar Gupta, child specialist at Sadar Hospital, said: 'The children are a rare case of conjoined twins. 'They are full grown and are joined from the abdomen region. 'While they have four hands they share two legs that are hanging from one side and share most of their vital organs.' 'Their condition is stable but they need special care and so we have referred them to an advanced hospital. Shocking new figures show the illegal market in fake or unlicensed erectile dysfunction pills has soared in the UK in recent years After breaking up with his long-term partner, John Browne worried that returning to the dating scene would not be easy. But as the 36-year-old chef sat down for dinner with a young woman, he knew what he was feeling could not be dismissed as nerves. His heart was beating too fast, his head was thumping and he was drenched in sweat. The father-of-two felt so ill that he feared he was having a cardiac arrest. Worse, John thought the fact that he was feeling so wretched could be his own fault. Anticipating how the night might unfold, before leaving his home in Herefordshire hed swallowed a small, blue, diamond-shaped pill. Hed purchased the drug online, paying 25 for what the website claimed were ten Viagra pills. But far from having the desired effect, the pill had left him horribly ill. Before I even got to the date, I started to feel really hot and sweaty, he said. I thought it might be nerves but then my heart started going really fast, I got a headache and felt a bit woozy. Unsurprisingly, the date did not go well, and by the time Mr Browne got home he was feeling so ill he considered heading to A&E. In the end, he just collapsed in bed. I felt horrible for two days, he said. I couldnt sleep, my nose was blocked, I was dehydrated and I had red blotches all over my face. A quick internet search of what a real Viagra pill should look like confirmed that the ones he had purchased were fake. I crushed them up and flushed them all down the toilet, because there was no way I was going to take them again, he said. I only took them as a back-up. Id never had any problems before, but I just wanted to be sure. I would never buy anything like that online again, and I wouldnt recommend anyone else to do so either. And there are plenty of people who should take heed of his warning. Shocking new figures show the illegal market in fake or unlicensed erectile dysfunction pills has soared in the UK in recent years. Officials have seized more than 11 million worth of these types of drugs in the past 12 months. Thats three times the value seized the year before, and a 15-fold increase on the 740,000 haul found in 2013. The increased availability of such drugs via the internet makes getting hold of them much easier. Men like buying them online, rather than through their GP, because it spares their blushes. There is also undoubtedly a growing demand. As well as those who have a medical condition for which Viagra or similar might be correctly prescribed, younger men are using them for sexual enhancement or are even taking them with other recreational drugs. While Viagra costs up to 6 a tablet, fakes can be bought for as little as 1. Other similar pills are illegal, unlicensed generic erectile drugs from India, where they have been made in labs that would not meet British safety standards. Analysis of these pills has found them to contain everything from gypsum (which is also used to make plaster of Paris) to printer ink, brick dust and even highly poisonous arsenic. They are often manufactured by criminal gangs who have moved into the market in response to increased demand. John Browne (left) thought he was having a cardiac arrest after taking a cheap Viagra pill before a date. Leo Darwin (right) has been using knock-off pills for years. Despite a few health scares, he continues to do so This demand is largely driven not by the elderly and infirm, but by many younger men who feel under pressure to perform whatever the risks. Unlicensed medicines can be dangerous, as they may contain incorrect ingredients and impurities, warns Alastair Jeffrey, head of enforcement at the Medicines And Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). There is no way of knowing if they are manufactured to acceptable standards of quality and safety. Those involved in the illegal supply of medical products arent interested in your health they are only interested in your money. Indeed, just how big the potential profits are was highlighted by the recent successful prosecution of a gang that was raking in up to 60,000 a week selling fake Viagra across Britain and beyond. Described in court as a highly organised, large-scale criminal enterprise, the group set up a series of websites to sell fake pharmaceuticals. They then created front companies claiming to sell jewellery, fishing tackle and cosmetics to cover the electronic payments they duly received. Offices were rented, stationery and packaging purchased, mail boxes rented to which customers posted cash, and merchant banking facilities were obtained to allow payments by debit cards, said prosecutor Gillian Jones. The increased availability of such drugs via the internet makes getting hold of them much easier. Men like buying them online, rather than through their GP, because it spares their blushes In total, around 10 million had been channelled through 100 bank accounts. This was big business, Ms Jones said. This case is not about wanting to distribute good medicines cheaply: the motivation was greed, with an utter disregard for patient safety. While those involved were ultimately jailed for up to six years each, what is concerning the authorities is that the trade in these illegal drugs is growing year after year. In 2015, more than 90 per cent of all illegal unlicensed medication seized was for erectile problems, according to officials at the MHRA, much of this advertised via foreign-based internet sites. Supplies were then shipped in bulk to individuals in the UK. Typically, these drop shippers, as they are known, are then responsible for their ultimate distribution. The online site will get lots of orders, pinging the delivery addresses through to the person here, who will put them in the packages and send off as instructed, explained a source involved in ongoing operations against the illicit trade. In that way, the person receiving it gets a parcel with a UK postmark on it and theyll think that because it has come from here, it is going to be OK, rather than if it came from, say, India. Danny Lee-Frost, Head of Operations of the Enforcement Group of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), with a seizure of fake viagra products It also means that when the authorities succeed in closing down a particular website, a new one can be set up without altering the distribution chain. Dating expert Hayley Quinn said that in her experience the use of Viagra-type substances among young professionals is not regarded as being out of the ordinary. Either people are seeking to have a heightened or longer sexual experience, or perhaps theyre taking them to offset the effects of other drugs and alcohol, she said. For men, particularly, I think there is a lot of pressure on performing, so when they have a new partner there will be a lot of anxiety. Even if the men do not actually need it, I think having something like that will often be seen as a crutch. That is very much the experience of 33-year-old Peter Jackson, who has been regularly using erectile dysfunction tablets for the past two years. He purchases pills online from a company based in India. The pills are sold as Viagra and each one costs 1. I started taking the pills after my marriage broke up, said the engineer, who lives in Gloucester. We were married for nine years and I thought we were happy, but my wife walked out on me, taking the two children. We had a normal, healthy sex life and I didnt have any performance anxiety. Once I was single I started dating online, and Ive discovered it is a whole new world out there. Im attracted to younger women in their 20s, but they have a much higher expectation of performance than my wife ever had. Maybe its because they have more access to online porn, but they expect you to be far more active and inventive, and to be able to make love two or three times a night. I work full-time and I just dont have the energy. I had one totally disastrous date when I couldnt perform, and the shame was intense. I had to pull my trousers on and slink home. He adds: I wouldnt be prescribed Viagra because I dont have serious erectile dysfunction or a medical need Im a normal healthy young man in every other way. But the first time I took one of these pills, the effect was instantaneous. I felt on top of the world as if I could go all night. There were, however, deeply unpleasant side-effects everything from severe headaches to fainting fits and dangerously high blood pressure. Just how big the potential profits are was highlighted by the recent successful prosecution of a gang that was raking in up to 60,000 a week selling fake Viagra. Described in court as a highly organised, large-scale criminal enterprise, the group set up a series of websites to sell fake pharmaceuticals (stock photograph) I once collapsed after taking two pills in two days, and I was in a state of severe dehydration, he says. I didnt see a doctor, though, because I was too embarrassed. I just put myself to bed and waited to get better. I know I shouldnt still be taking the pills but I feel under such pressure to perform in bed that I have developed a dependence on them. I dont think I could get an erection without them, and they mean I can perform for much longer. But goodness knows what they are doing to me. Indeed, the reason that Viagra is a prescription medicine is because it is not suitable for everyone and should only be taken with guidance from a medical professional. Not only can it affect how other drugs work, but before prescribing it a doctor would want to know about any pre-existing medical conditions, such as kidney problems, low blood pressure, a heart attack or stroke. But with fake pills, there is the added danger that it is impossible to know what the pill contains whether that be the amount of active ingredient or the other fillers it will have been bulked out with. When I take fake Viagra, I can last about an hour. Maybe its the proliferation of online porn, but a quickie these days just does not seem to count Leo Darwin, Viagra user It is also impossible to know in what type of conditions they were manufactured. It is for all these reasons that experts warn against buying the drugs online advice that 31- year-old Leo Darwin has studiously ignored, despite suffering deeply unpleasant side-effects. He buys the pills for as little as 1 a go from a friend, who in turn orders them from abroad on the internet. Ive been using fake Viagra pills for a couple of years and Ive had quite a few health scares with them, said the events manager from West Wickham in Kent. After being given one packet by a friend, I had a fainting fit. My blood pressure soared and I was drenched with sweat. My vision also went blurry, and I could see things in a strange colour. I also get raging headaches. I never should have started taking them, but the thing is that women these days seem to expect a star performance. When I take fake Viagra, I can last about an hour. Maybe its the proliferation of online porn, but a quickie these days just does not seem to count. Sure, the side effects can be very worrying, but Id still rather suffer that than the indignity of not being able to perform as well. The 'Achilles heel' of breast cancer has been identified, leading to hopes of a treatment which would cure it for good. Scientists have discovered why the disease can return years after women appear to be free of it. Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in women with nearly two million new cases diagnosed globally ever year. Now researchers have discovered why current treatments do not kill off the disease but render it dormant, meaning it can become active again at any time. Scientists from the University of Zurich have discovered a way to 'switch off' the signals which tell cancer cells to grow and divide. Scientists have identified how to 'switch off' the signals which tell cancer cells to grow and divide Many invasive forms of breast cancer have too much of the receptor HER2 on their surface, which leads to uncontrolled growth of the cancer cells. HER2 (human epidermal growth factor receptor 2) is a type of protein present in all human cells, but in certain types of cancer the levels are unusually high. Professor Dr Andreas Pluckthun said the discovery could lead to promising new treatments. 'Now that we have identified the Achilles heel of HER2-positive cancer cells, new opportunities are opening up for treating invasive tumour types like breast cancer more effectively in the future,' he said. High levels are found in about one in five breast and stomach cancer and known as HER2 positive cancers. Cancer drugs Herceptin, the brand name for trastuzumab and Perjeta, the brand pertuzumab, recognise the receptor but they do not kill off the cells. Instead they render them dormant, and the cancer cells can become active again at any time. This means many women can appear to be 'cured', only for their cancer to re-awaken years later. In a study in Nature Communications, the scientists aimed to find out why these antibodies merely slow tumour growth, rather than destroy them. A new technique targeting cancer cells has been developed offering hope of new treatments which would stop the disease from returning, scientists believe HER2 uses several signalling pathways at the same time to inform the cell that it should grow and divide. However, currently, the antibodies available only block one of those signalling pathways, while others remain active. Now, scientists believe they have developed a method to switch off all the signals, using a protein compound that binds to HER2 and changes its structure. This 'receptor bending' prevents prevents any growth signals from being transmitted to the cell's interior, causing the cancer cell to eventually die. This new technique is especially promising, as tests on mice found only the cancer cells were targeted, leaving healthy cells unharmed. The active ingredient, which comprises several DARPins (designed ankyrin repeat proteins), is also easy to produce. A woman may have caught Zika virus from her partner during oral sex - or perhaps even through kissing - doctors have warned. The 24-year-old, from France, was struck down with the illness after her partner returned from Brazil where there is an epidemic of the virus. In light of the extraordinary case, doctors have called for guidelines regarding the possibility of transmitting the virus orally through semen. A woman may have caught Zika virus from her partner during oral sex - or perhaps even through kissing - doctors have warned. Zika is known to cause a birth defect called microcephaly, where babies are born with very small heads. Pictured is a doctor treating a baby born with microcephaly in Recife The large and spreading outbreak of Zika that began in Brazilhas caused global alarm after thousands of cases of microcephaly in babies were linked to women who become infected with the virus while pregnant. Microcephaly causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads and birth defects. The virus has also been linked to Guillain-Barre syndrome, a serious condition of the peripheral nervous system which can cause muscle weakness and paralysis. Now, medics from the Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale - the French Institute of Health and Medical Research - in Paris, have written a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine describing the case. They say the 24-year-old woman developed a fever, muscle and joint pain and an itchy rash on February 20. The rash spread to her abdomen, arms and legs and she was unwell for around a week. The woman had never travelled to a region where Zika is rife nor had she had a blood transfusion other known ways the virus can be transmitted. In light of the extraordinary case, doctors have called for guidelines regarding the possibility of transmitting the virus orally through semen. Pictured are mothers in Recife whose babies were born with microcephaly But her 46-year-old partner had just returned from Rio de Janeiro where Zika is rife. During his last week in Brazil, he had suffered fever, headache and a rash - known symptoms of the virus - but his illness had ended when he arrived back in France on February 10. Between February 11 and February 20 the couple had sex seven times with each time involving vaginal sex but without ejaculation and oral sex with ejaculation. After the woman fell ill doctors suspected Zika and the pair were both tested for the infection. The man was found to have high levels of the virus in his semen and saliva. The woman had Zika in her urine and saliva, and antibodies - cells which fight disease in her blood. But a swab of her vagina was negative. The doctors added guidelines are needed to advise couples on how long they should use condoms for after the man has returned from an area where Zika is rife In the letter, the doctors said the data supports the theory that the virus was Zika was transmitted sexually either orally or during intercourse. They added it may have even have been passed from the man to the woman through kissing. They wrote: We cannot rule out the possibility that transmission occurred not through semen but through other biologic fluids, such as pre-ejaculate secretions or saliva exchanged through deep kissing. In light of this couples story, the doctors called for better advice on Zika transmission for people who are sexually active. Recommendations regarding the possibility of oral transmission of the virus through semen are needed. They added: Guidelines regarding how long men who are returning from an area where active Zika transmission is occurring should continue to use condoms during sexual contact with pregnant women and those of child-bearing age are lacking. A mother left disfigured by huge tumours that grew over her face says she feels 'born again' thanks to reconstructive surgery. Samira Benhar, 39, suffered from neurofibromatosis, a genetic condition which causes uncontrollable growths along the nerves. It left her with huge drooping tumours on the right side of her face - entirely covering her eye. In her home city of Casablanca, Morocco, her appearance made her an outcast and she was heartbroken after being rejected by her husband. But after drastic surgery in Spain to cut off the extra flesh and rebuild her face, she is now excited to be starting a new life. Samira Benhar, 39, suffered from neurofibromatosis, a genetic condition which caused huge tumours to grow over half her face (left). After reconstructive surgery to cut off the growths and give her a prosthetic eye she says she feels as though she has been 'born again' and is excited to begin a new life (right) Ms Benhar, who has two children aged 9 and 12, was ostracized in her home city of Casablanca due to her looks. She was left heartbroken when her husband also left her Ms Benhar, who cried with happiness at a press conference about her surgery, said she was 'badly damaged' both physically and psychological by neurofibramatosis A mother to two children, aged 9 and 12, she suffered social rejection and had been abandoned by her husband, the Spanish website 20 minutos reports. But her fate unexpectedly changed one day while sitting in a park, with her head in her hands. Ms Benhar said: 'A woman approached me and talked to me. 'When she saw my face she asked for a photo. I didn't have one so we went to a shop. 'Later she said to me, "I am not promising you anything, but I am going to do my best to help you".' The woman was working for the Adra Foundation, a religious organisation which was running a health project in Morocco at the time. The woman took Ms Benhar's case to Dr Pedro Cavadas, a world-renowned surgeon in reconstructive surgery and implants. He is based at Manises Hospital, Valencia. Dr Cavadas confirmed he could help - and promised surgery could vastly improve her appearance. He said: 'This is a genetic illness, rare but not so infrequent. 'Treatment consists in trying to make the face symmetrical. Fortunately the tumours are benign.' Ms Benhar was flown out to Valencia and had three operations to remove the tumour, rebuild her face, and have a prosthetic eye put in. During a press conference unveiling the results of surgery, Ms Benhar broke down in tears. She is pictured with surgeon Dr Pedro Cavadas, who works at the Manises Hospital, Valencia During a press conference where the results of the surgery were unveiled, Ms Benhar broke down in tears as she thanked the team at the hospital for giving her a 'new life'. She said: 'Today I am very happy, I will never forget everything they have done for me.' Now, she is on the way home to see her children for the first time in over a year - as the treatment has taken this long. The Adra Foundation, which funded her treatment, will also help to find her a house and a job so she can look after her family. Roger Lewis says Dahl's voice as a writer was recognisable at a young age Book of the week LOVE FROM BOY: ROALD DAHL'S LETTERS TO HIS MOTHER edited by Donald Sturrock (John Murray 20) Most authors serve an apprenticeship and spend a few years honing their skills, finding and perfecting a voice. Not so Roald Dahl. He was fully formed and recognisable at the age of nine, when he wrote home from boarding school to tell his mother that a large cow nearly mistook Smiths head for a thistle, so as a punishment we tried to milk it (the cow, presumably, not Smiths head. Dahl never did grasp the rudiments of grammar or spelling, admits his indefatigable editor and first-class biographer, Donald Sturrock). Tall tales: Roald Dahl was 6 ft 6 in from his early teens and taller than the masters at Repton, his boarding school in Derbyshire Dahl also informed his Dear Mama that ants had taken a fancy to his earwax and that yesterday we had a topping lecture on cave dwellers. When there was a storm and a flood, Dahl insisted, everyone set off to find provisions on floating sofas and wooden bedsteads. Youd think Im exaggerating, but Im not. As a child, the future inventor of Miss Trunchbull and the Twits had already found his subject matter: the comically grotesque, the ghoulishly hilarious. One fellow in the study, he reported from Repton, his boarding school in Derbyshire, who claims to have licked an Arabs foot, said he recognised the taste on the surface of his fig. Everyone was being force-fed figs to cure an epidemic of constipation. Readers are warned: there are many lavatorial references in this book. In letters home, Dahl was a Boswell to his bowels. The Dahls were a wealthy family descended from courtiers and officials in the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund. Harald, Dahls father, was the joint owner of a shipbroking business based in Cardiff - then an important port. Here Roald was born in 1916, and he and his parents lived in large houses in Radyr and Llandaff, a salubrious district next to the cathedral. LOVE FROM BOY: ROALD DAHL'S LETTERS TO HIS MOTHER edited by Donald Sturrock Harald died of grief in 1920, after the death of his seven-year-old daughter, Astri, of peritonitis. His widow, Sofie Magdalene, whom Sturrock says was as wise and imperturbable as the grandmother in The Witches, packed Dahl off to St Peters Preparatory School in Weston-super-Mare. This establishment, which Dahl remembered as being rather like a private lunatic asylum, was the inspiration for Crunchem Hall in Matilda, a place of sadistic teachers and disgusting food, and where the educational philosophy was: Never argue. Never answer back. Always do as I say. Apparently, 600 letters from Dahl to his mother survive, beginning in 1925 and ending 40 years later, shortly before Sofie Magdalenes death. Though the family spoke Norwegian at home, the correspondence is in English. From the moment he first put pen to paper, therefore, Dahl was consciously toying with language, striving after effects, wanting to divert and entertain - giving his mother a useful Chinese spell involving a potion made from rats tails, chickens legs and chopped grass, or innocently enquiring: How much are the monkeys at Harrods? It would be rather nice to have one. The letters are full of references to jelly and chocolate, giant conkers, cakes, stink bombs and exploding tins of pea soup. There was also a good deal of illness over the years. Boarding schools were unheated, damp, insanitary places, and Dahl often succumbed to flu or measles - one boy died during his time at St Peters. He wasnt the only fatality. When the Royal Family visited, their train ran over a man and killed him! And as they were driving through the streets of Weston, the iron monger, whos a bit mad, fired six shots of blank cartridge, and the Duke of York thought he was going to be assassinated!!! Dahl moved to Repton in January 1930. By the age of 13, he was the BFG - taller than the masters and with size 11 feet. He also smoked a Meerschaum pipe, sent by his mother from Norway. Dahl looked down on the staff in every sense. One teacher was a short man with a face like a field elderberry, a moustache that closely resembles the African jungle and a voice like a frog. Roger Lewis says Dahl's voice as a writer was already recognisable at a young age Dahl always thought it amusing when grown-ups lost their temper - a Mr Wall shouts and yells, rushes round the room, and on Wednesday he nearly threw himself out of the window. Ive never seen anything so funny in my life. How hysterical it really was, who can say? Dahl didnt fancy university. He proceeded instead to Tanganyika, or Tanzania as it later became, as an employee of Royal Dutch Shell, supplying fuel and lubricants for farm equipment to the colonial ranchers. It was a comfortable existence, with Dahl spending much of his time loafing in the elegant Dar es Salaam Club, where he mocked a fat man flowing over his chair like a hot jellyfish. But Dahl did not preserve any of his mothers side of the correspondence after she died When Dahl bathed in the sea, there were sharks biting the old balls. How pleased was his mother to be told that? The declaration of war ended Dahls indolent existence - but he still carried on behaving like an irrepressible schoolboy. He trained as a fighter pilot in Iraq and Egypt, where the Bedouin dont think twice about cutting your balls out for the sake of getting your brass fly buttons. But unfortunately, in October 1940, he crash-landed his plane in the Libyan desert, suffering a monumental bash on the head. From the moment he first put pen to paper, Dahl was consciously toying with language, striving after effects, wanting to divert and entertain Lucky to survive, he was temporarily blinded and trapped in the burning cockpit. The heat made the machine gun explode and fire its bullets. Years of surgery and convalescence ensued. The doctor pulled my nose out of the back of my head, Dahl told his mother. He was sent as an assistant Air Attache to the British Embassy in Washington, where he wrote a script about gremlins for Walt Disney, fictionalising his experiences as a pilot. By 1943, Dahl was in Hollywood, discussing these ideas. Here he met Charlie Chaplin and Ginger Rogers. Seemingly working covertly for intelligence - and obviously he says nothing about any of this in the mail to his mother - Dahl met President Roosevelt and travelled to Niagara Falls. Seeing Niagara Falls made me want to pee, Sofie Magdalene is at least vouchsafed. In hospital often with his spinal problems, Dahl found himself sharing the ward with Texans who had terminal piles from sitting all their lives on a horse. Dahl returned to England, and Great Missenden, in 1946. He wrote stories that were adapted for television by Alfred Hitchcock. He married the actress Patricia Neal but their infant son Theo was hit by a taxi. Their daughter, Olivia, died aged seven from measles - an eerie echo of Astris death. Patricia Neal nearly died of a stroke. If the purpose of a gruelling traditional English public school education was that it instilled the values of uncomplaining stoicism, Dahl needed every ounce of that stoicism, courage and a self-assurance that bordered on arrogance simply to get through each day of his later life. Sofie Magdalene died in 1967. Her ashes were scattered with Haralds and Astris in Radyr. Dahl didnt bother to preserve any of his mothers side of the correspondence, and only visited her grave once, decades later. The one thing he wasnt was a sentimentalist. In his books for children, he retained his own childlike egotism and oddly innocent cold-heartedness. Does it really matter, then, that some people found the adult Dahl extremely conceited, a person who expected very special treatment? LONDON COUTURE: BRITISH LUXURY 1923-1975 Edited by Amy de la Haye and Edwina Ehrman (V&A 50) LONDON COUTURE: BRITISH LUXURY 1923-1975 Edited by Amy de la Haye and Edwina Ehrman The phrase London, Paris, New York is in this particular order for a reason. London has always led the way in the couture stakes and this beautifully illustrated book shows us why. Self-help NEVER SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz (Random House Business Books 13.99) Back in March 2003, a tobacco farmer named Dwight Watson hooked up his jeep to a John Deere tractor festooned with anti-government banners and towed it all the way from his home in North Carolina to Washington DC. There he manoeuvred it into a pond between the Washington Monument and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and announced that it was packed full of explosives. Outraged by government policy towards tobacco farmers, Watson was prepared to blow the tractor, himself and a good part of the American capital to kingdom come. A hostage negotiator's skills can be applied in all sorts of less life-and-death transactions, from buying a car to getting a pay rise. Pictured is Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada It was Chris Voss, the main author of this book, who persuaded him that this wasn't a good idea. After nearly two days of tense negotiations, Watson surrendered to the police. At the time, Voss worked for the FBI and, as he admits, the Bureau's methods of negotiation hadn't always been very sophisticated. In the Seventies, the idea had been pretty much to talk to people like Watson only for as long as it took to figure out how to shoot them. The result, unsurprisingly, was a series of disasters that ended in unnecessary loss of life. In 1971, the hijacking of a plane in Jacksonville, Florida, had looked to be heading to a peaceful conclusion. Some hostages had themselves persuaded the hijacker to let them go. Then FBI agents had grown impatient and opened fire on the plane. When the guns finally fell silent, two hostages and the hijacker were dead. Even in the Nineties, negotiation techniques remained fairly primitive. The stand-off at Waco, Texas, with David Koresh and his Branch Davidian religious cult did not end well. Although, as Voss inarguably remarks, it's not easy 'to devise a mutually beneficial win-win solution with a guy who thinks he's the Messiah'. By the first decade of this century, things had moved on. Voss, originally a cop from Kansas City, Missouri, had joined the FBI and risen in the ranks to become the Bureau's lead international kidnapping negotiator. $135m The highest ransom ever paid - for the son of a Chinese billionaire He was sent all round the world to assist in difficult negotiations. A spate of kidnappings took him to Haiti. They were originally thought to be politically motivated, but Voss noticed that the kidnappers were especially busy on a Monday. It was as if they had a strong work ethic and couldn't wait to get cracking with the week's tasks. They also grew increasingly eager to get paid as the weekend approached. Eventually, Chris realised what was going on. The kidnappers were just ordinary thugs who wanted to get paid by Friday so they could use the money to party through the weekend. With a pattern in place, it became much easier to deal with them. On another occasion, an American citizen named Jose was kidnapped by rebel fighters in Ecuador and held in a jungle hide-out. Schooled by Chris, the hostage's wife engaged the kidnappers in long-distance negotiation by phone. It was remarkably successful. The ransom demand, which had started at an eyewatering $5 million, came down and down until they were very nearly begging for a pathetic $16,500. They didn't even get that because some of them grew bored with the prolonged negotiations and disappeared into the jungle. Jose was able to escape when the few that remained weren't looking. Negotiation, as someone once said, is 'the art of letting someone else have your own way' Over the years, the FBI have developed negotiation techniques that work with kidnappers, terrorists, and brutal killers. Do they work with normal human beings? Voss is firmly of the belief that they do. He's set up his own consultancy firm and written this book to let the rest of us into the secrets of his success as a negotiator. A hostage negotiator's skills can be applied in all sorts of less life-and-death transactions, from buying a car to sweet-talking a salary rise out of your hard-to-please boss - he calls it 'emotional intelligence on steroids'. Voss has something of a taste for coining phrases. One technique called 'mirroring', which seems to involve unsettling adversaries by repeating their own words back to them, he describes as 'a conversational Swiss Army knife' - valuable in just about every setting. My favourite is 'strategic umbrage' for which you pretend to be in a huff in order to coax your opponent into concessions. 'Tactical empathy' is what Voss calls the single most valuable technique in the negotiator's toolbox. As readers can probably guess, it means imagining yourself in your counterpart's situation. It's 'listening as a martial art' and it allows you to 'gain access to the mind of another'. Maybe he's right. Negotiation, as someone once said, is 'the art of letting someone else have your own way'. A QUIET LIFE by Natasha Walter A QUIET LIFE by Natasha Walter (Borough Press 14.99) The first novel by the acclaimed author of Living Dolls and The New Feminism takes as its inspiration the life of Melinda Marling, wife of Cambridge spy Donald Maclean. Walters heroine is Laura Leverett, an American who, as her name suggests, is something of an innocent when she sets out for London in 1939. Not for long: swiftly converted to the communist cause, she finds herself falling for Edward, a solemn, silent civil servant with a devastating secret. This isnt the Cold War thriller you might expect; serious in both tone and intent, its a slow-burn - although no less engrossing for that, as Laura assists her husband in his perilous missions first in wartime Britain and, subsequently, McCarthy-era Washington. But what keeps the pages turning is the sympathy Walter generates for her superbly realised central character, increasingly counting the cost of her idealism and forever pushed to the margins in what is, overwhelmingly, a mans world. Yet it is Lauras outsider status that allows Walter to turn such a keen eye on the various milieus through which her protagonist moves, proving herself a brilliant observer of period, place and upper-class mores. Impressive and rewarding. MAX GATE by Damien Wilkins MAX GATE by Damien Wilkins (Aardvark Bureau 8.99) Its well known that the body of Thomas Hardy was buried in Westminster Abbey and his heart in Dorset. But why? Thats the question explored in this surprising novel, which opens in 1928, a few days before the novelists passing. Our narrator is housekeeper Nellie, whose earthiness and tart ripostes might suggest a solid stock type but who is far more interesting, attempting to summon - as she looks back from a distance of 60 years - the perspectives of all those keeping vigil at Hardys home, Max Gate. The fading writer remains in the wings throughout; centre stage is his long-suffering second wife, Florence. Crushed by her husbands cruelty, she seeks solace in her friendship with another novelist, J. M. Barrie, but Barries plans for her spouses mortal remains are a growing source of tension. The making and shaping of an image is what interests New Zealander Wilkins in a novel that plays with the boundary between fact and fiction. However, its the tantalising, rather too brief glimpses of Nellie in her life outside and beyond Max Gate that ultimately prove most memorable. SUMMERLONG by Dean Bakopoulos SUMMERLONG by Dean Bakopoulos (Blackfriars 9.99) This has been billed in the States as the Great White Midlife Crisis novel - a description that, if true, might have many of us running for the hills. Fortunately, Dean Bakopouloss likeable, tender-hearted tale seems to have no such grandiose ambitions for itself, and in fact recalls Armistead Maupin more often than Jonathan Franzen. We kick off on a late-spring night in small-town Iowa. The sap is rising but 38 - year-old realtor Don Lowry is in free-fall, staring bankruptcy in the face. His wife, Claire, wants out, but the arrival of two attractive twentysomethings sends the hormones of all involved haywire. Mexican-born ABC is grieving for her lover, Philly, while failed actor Charlie has returned to his hometown to finish his senile fathers magnum opus. As the summer heats up, the sexual tension grows, and it seems only a matter of time before the Lowrys marriage vows go up in pot smoke. But Bakopoulos mostly keeps things light, opting for offbeat comedy over angst, and its refreshing to find our sympathies directed more towards stifled Claire than her depressed and frankly rather colourless husband. This is a searingly told portrait of celebrity in the modern world with a tantalising mystery at its heart BEFORE THE FALL by Noah Hawley BEFORE THE FALL by Noah Hawley (Hodder 14.99) This is a searingly told, multi-layered portrait of celebrity in the modern world with a tantalising mystery at its heart, written by the creator of the hit TV series, Fargo. Struggling artist Scott Burroughs is offered a lift into New York from Marthas Vineyard in Massachusetts on billionaire media tycoon David Batemans private jet. But the plane crashes into the sea, killing passengers and crew. Miraculously, Burroughs survives. As he starts to swim to shore, he finds and rescues the only other survivor, Batemans four-year-old son, J. J. Burroughs and boy are eventually found washed ashore, alive, and the media goes into overdrive. Was the plane sabotaged by someone determined to stop Batemans Right-wing news channel? Was one of the passengers, a Wall Street banker, being targeted by clients with a grudge? Meanwhile, Burroughs tries everything he can to remain anonymous, without success. Hawleys sublime prose glows on every page in this literary thriller of the highest quality, which never loses its grip. CRISIS by Frank Gardner CRISIS by Frank Gardner (Bantam Press 12.99) An engaging if overlong debut from the BBCs security correspondent, this thriller proposes that one of the Colombian drug cartels is set upon killing thousands of innocent people in the UK to take revenge on Britain for disrupting its lucrative cocaine trade. It opens with MI6s man in Bogota executed in the South American jungle, which prompts the Secret Intelligence Service to find someone with local knowledge to discover what is going on. Enter Luke Carlton, ex-Special Boat Service commando and brought up in Colombia, who follows the path pioneered by Frederick Forsyth to an action-packed finale in London, which is by far the strongest section of the book. Stuffed with detail about the business of espionage - the reader is all but swamped by acronyms for government agencies - authenticity seeps from every page, but that sometimes gets in the way of the story-telling. Gardners rather cool style also means the relationship between Carlton and his girlfriend lacks punch. We shall hear more from our hero, though, for this is a promising start. A DIVIDED SPY by Charles Cumming A DIVIDED SPY by Charles Cumming (HarperCollins 14.99) Very quietly, Thomas Kell has become one of the most interesting and well-drawn spies in contemporary literature - a man who now deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as George Smiley, and who is every bit as discreet. There is little derring-do about Kell, no Beretta, just a finely tuned sense of honour and duty - not to mention a desire to avenge the assassination of his girlfriend, Rachel. Now out of MI6 for three years, he is unexpectedly given an opportunity to take the law into his own hands and recruit to the British side a top Russian spy in London, which might also help him identify who ordered Rachels death. In the process, Kell discovers the Russian knows the identity of an Islamic terrorist who has been sent to England as a sleeper to commit an atrocity on British soil. So begins a race against time. Can Kell persuade his old masters at the Secret Intelligence Service that he should be allowed to act alone? Can he prevent the attack? THE POSTCARD by Fern Britton THE POSTCARD by Fern Britton (HarperCollins 12.99) In the idyllic Cornish village of Pendruggan, vicars wife Penny, a former TV producer, is battling postnatal depression and the decline of her career. Also troubled is hunky doctor Adam, an incomer from London, but things get even worse for him once Pennys scheming sister arrives. Can the books large cast of good eggs - including a nosy shopkeeper and a red-haired beauty - save the day? Its all warm-hearted, amiable and sunnily rural, even if the plot can be jerky and the characters sketchy. Pennys problems are well-handled, though, and I loved Mr Tibbs, her country detective TV series. Will Penny persuade the formidable Mavis Crewe, Mr Tibbss permanently cruising elderly creator, to pen any more episodes? THE MUSEUM OF YOU by Carys Bray THE MUSEUM OF YOU by Carys Bray (Hutchinson 12.99) Motherless tweenager Clover faces the long summer holidays in a dreary Liverpool suburb. Her father is a bus driver and serial hoarder; the house is full of junk. Inspired by a museum visit, Clover decides to curate the history of Becky, the mother she never knew but whose effects are shoved in various boxes. Via the discovery of T-shirts, bags and shoes, Beckys sad story slowly emerges, as do the unhappy histories of the other characters. While poetically and sensitively written, this tale of blighted hopes is not an especially cheerful read. But the main theme - the instinctive aspiration and optimism of children - is an uplifting one. Clover is clever with a kind heart; she befriends a lonely, bullied Polish girl and is nice to a malapropistic nosy neighbour. It is ultimately through Clover that the tangled threads of the other lives not only straighten, but start to lead somewhere. MY ITALIAN BULLDOZER by Alexander McCall Smith MY ITALIAN BULLDOZER by Alexander McCall Smith (Polygon 14.99) Writer Paul leaves the smoking ruins of a relationship and sets off to Tuscany to pen a food book. He runs into car hire problems and is issued a bulldozer instead. He drives it to the picturesque hill town where he is to work and where he meets some colourful locals, plus a glamorous U.S. academic with whom he falls in love. The plot thickens when Pauls female editor and ex-girlfriend arrive on the scene. Billed as a modern day commedia dellarte, this short novel is not especially comic. But its an engaging read written in McCall Smiths trademark wryly thoughtful style. Five protesters and two policemen, including an SP-rank officer, were killed and over 40 people injured in clashes during a drive to evict illegal occupants from land in Mathura district, a top official said. The clashes broke out when police were trying to evict illegal occupants from Jawahar Bagh, who are believed to be activists from the religious group "Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi", on the directions of the Allahabad High Court. An anti-encroachment drive by the police in Mathura led to the clash IG (Law and Order) H R Sharma said: Around 3,000 encroachers pelted stones and later opened fire at the police team as they reached the spot. In retaliation, the police had to fire after using batons and tear gas at them. Chief Medical Officer of the district, Vivek Mishra, said five protesters and two policemen were killed in the clashes. SP (City) Mukul Dwivedi and SHO, Farah police station, Santosh Kumar were killed in firing by the encroachers, Sharma and Mishra said. Mishra said search operations were on in Jawahar Bagh, though activists from Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi were evicted in the joint operation by the police, PAC and RAF. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav expressed grief over the incident and announced an ex-gratia of Rs 20 lakh to the families of the deceased policemen. It has been an endless wait for Mamta (21) and Sarita (19), who have been waiting for the past 12 days to see their father Mahavir Yadavs face one last time. However, their fathers body is still trapped amid legal formalities, and is being kept in a hospital in the Hofuf district of the eastern province of Saudi Arabia. Mahavir Yadav, 57, died of a heart attack in the Hofuf district of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia on May 22 this year. The daughters of Mahavir Yadav have written to the MEA for help Since then, the girls, who are now orphans, have been trying their level best to get his body back to India. Yadav, a native of Rautpar village of Uttar Pradeshs Gorakhpur district, went to Saudi Arabia in 2010 to work as a painter and never returned. He used to tell us that his employer (a rich sheikh) has confiscated his passport, Mamta claimed. She added: Our father was unable to come to India even when our mother died in July last year. Yadav has five daughters and three of his elder daughters are married, leaving only Mamta and Sarita at home. We used to run our house with the money our father sent. We were also breeding fishes in a small pond right in front of our house, but it was encroached upon by villagers soon after our mothers death, said Mamta. Talking about the unfortunate incident, Mamta says: Our uncle, Sardar Yadav, also worked with my father in Saudi Arabia and he has informed us that the Sheikh is not willing to hand over the passport. My uncle told us that the Sheikh is saying he will hand over the passport only after the legal formalities are completed. Some of our neighbours told us that we need to send a notary document to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to get back the body of our father. Accordingly, we sent it to the MEA but are yet to receive a response, said Mamta. Advertisement India Todays special investigation team has secretly filmed MLAs ready to sell their votes for the June 11 Rajya Sabha polls from Karnataka. Four seats in the Upper House are up for election from the southern state. Karnataka's ruling Congress party has fielded three candidates former ministers Oscar Fernandes, Jairam Ramesh, and former IPS officer KC Ramamurthy. Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman is the BJPs nominee, and real estate baron BM Farook will contest for the Janata Dal (Secular). The BJP at the Centre is looking to gain control of the Rajya Sabha, where it is in a minority, in a bid to push through crucial reforms such as the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill that have been blocked by a united Opposition led by the Congress. India Todays undercover reporters, posing as lobbyists for a candidate with uncertain chances of winning, met several MLAs who blatantly quoted prices for their votes. Each of the four nominees in the fray requires an allotted quota of 45 votes in the 224-seat assembly to make it to the Rajya Sabha. With its 124 members in its kitty, the Congress is tipped to get Fernandes and Ramesh elected. Theres no threat to Sitharaman either, because of the BJPs 46 MLAs backing her. A tough contest is expected, though, between the Congresss Ramamurthy and Farook - put up by the 40-member Janata Dal (Secular) of former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda. The reporters struck a deal with JD (S) MLA Mallikarjun Khuba. At his Delhi house, the legislator from Karnataka's Basavakalyan constituency demanded more than Rs 5 crore against his vote for a contentious Rajya Sabha seat. He offered to organise more votes, for a higher price. "If you want to talk about my vote, then we can talk about one vote. It its about ten votes, we'll talk about ten. If it's about two, we'll talk two," the young MLA told the India Today TV crew. "We need ten votes, sir. You please tell us how you can get that support for us, how it can be managed," asked one of the two journalists. After a few quick questions back and forth, the MLA came straight to the figure. "I said it, its above five (crore). I said it before... When we come as a team, its a fixed price for everyone. There are no two rates," Khuba said. He also offered 10 MLAs from his party, the JD (S), who he said would cross-vote in favour of the candidate the undercover reporters were lobbying for. The Rajya Sabha has some of Indias top industrialists, sportspersons and Bollywood celebrities as its members. At least 17 lawmakers in the Upper House have a net-worth of more than Rs 100 crore. India Todays investigative reporters filmed a conversation another Karnataka MLA, BR Patil, was having with his supporters in Room 409 of Bengaluru's The Lalit Ashok hotel. Patil described the Rajya Sabha voting as a match when his supporters came in to greet him. This Rajya Sabha election; aren't you seeing this match? he asked. As their discussion turned candid, one of the visitors said he expected the legislator to throw a party soon. After all, hes also an MLA and in demand, the man told Patil. "Something should be shared with friends. Everything can't be digested alone. Some percentage has to be taken out," the man is heard saying in India Today's video. Down in the lobby of the same hotel, the SIT also found a four-time JD(S) MLA, GT Devegowda, with his son-in-law, Ram. The team offered him hard cash for his Rajya Sabha vote, but Devegowda did not react. As he walked out, his son-in-law lobbed up a price for the vote. "What is from your side? What was fixed for the vote?" Ram asked. "What is up to? How much you go? You go ten crores?" he added. The reporters clinched that so-called deal as well. "Don't worry, you will get if Devegowda, your father-in-law, votes in favour of our candidate," said an India Today journalist. Another state MLA, Varthur Prakash, was also taped admitting he and other independent legislators have pledged their votes to the ruling Congress candidate. "... so money is coming. That's not an issue for independents," he acknowledged. After the explosive sting aired on India Today TV, senior politicians from the state admitted horse-trading for parliamentary elections was detrimental to democratic norms. "It's very shocking what I saw today on India Today. Total system is being ruined. I can't say anything," said Danish Ali, general secretary of the JD(S), whose MLA Khuba was one of the most outspoken in demanding cash for votes. Karnataka's ruling Congress termed it "reprehensible." "It is completely reprehensible and goes against the ethos of democracy," said state minister Dinesh Gundu Rao. The BJP chose to attack both the Congress and JD (S). BS Yeddyurappa has declared himself the BJP's chief ministerial candidate for Karnataka just a day after being announced as the head of the state unit. However, Yeddyurappa seems not to have worried about waiting for approval from his seniors. The former CM re-stated his intentions on the day he assumed charge in Karnataka, in front of thousands of cheering party workers in Bengaluru. Yeddyurappa has an exceptional following and is on a mission to bring the BJP back to power in Karnataka Not many leaders in the BJP can do this. But Yeddyurappa - a BJP leader with an exceptional mass following - proved that he is a man on a mission to bring the party back to power in the state. His return as the head of the state unit despite a number of corruption-related cases against him pending in the court indicates the state of affairs of the party in Karnataka. The BJP is the principal Opposition in the state legislature, but former prime minister HD Deve Gowdas Janata Dal (Secular) is doing a better job on all fronts. Be it the Hublot watch controversy, the drought-related crisis, or the second PUC question paper leak, the JD(S) has continued to score points over the BJP in the House by tackling the ruling Congress head-on. The BJP seems to have relegated itself to the background by allowing the JD(S) to function as the Opposition. One of the biggest setbacks for the BJP in Karnataka was losing the Mayor & Deputy Mayors posts in the prestigious Bengaluru City Corporation (Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike BBMP) after emerging as the single-largest party, within striking distance of grabbing power with the help of Independent councillors. But unwanted delays by the BJP enabled Deve Gowda to play a masterstroke and the BJP is now sitting in the Opposition. BJP leader R Ashoka, who was in-charge of the BBMP elections, is blamed for the fiasco and since then he has been maintaining a low-profile. A majority of the so-called young turks of the BJP have been missing in action in Karnataka for the last few years. According to BJP insiders, after waiting for three years, the collective failure of the senior leaders in the party prompted the re-entry of Yeddyurappa into Karnataka. The situation is ripe for the BJP, as the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government is committing one blunder after another. But Yeddyurappa is unlikely to make it easy for Siddaramaiah for the next two years and the Congress is also aware of the threat he poses. The BJP has given Yeddyurappa adequate time to consolidate his platform and take on the Congress in the polls in 2018. Yeddyurappas return to Karnataka is inevitable for the BJP from the caste perspective. He belongs to the dominant Lingayat community, which is the largest in the state but has been ignored by the Congress over the last three years. While the Backward Classes and other communities benefited under Siddaramaiahs rule, the Lingayats seem to have been abandoned. The Congress appointed one of its senior-most leaders, Shamanur Shivashankarappa, and other upcoming Lingayat leaders to important posts, but they pale in comparison to Yeddyurappa. A significant number of the Lingayat votes will swing in favour of Yeddyurappa in the assembly elections now that he has declared himself as the chief ministerial candidate. Yeddyurappa was dumped unceremoniously from the CMs post in 2011 by the BJP in the wake of the mining scam and the Lingayats have not taken it kindly. When Yeddyurappa had quit the BJP and formed the Karnataka Janata Party (KJP), the Lingayats backed him again. Though he could not win many seats, he made a dent on the performance of the BJP in the assembly polls in 2013. While the KJP managed to win from just six segments, it had emerged second in as many as 34 constituencies by pushing the BJP to either third or fourth place. The BJP had to be satisfied with victory from just 40 segments. Yeddyurappa can pick and choose from a wide range of topics to nail the Congress government. Such topics include the crumbling infrastructure of Bengaluru, the erratic power supply, the dangerous drought, farmers suicides, the flight of capital to neighbouring states, corruption, nepotism, and the never-ending scams. Unlike the other BJP leaders, Yeddyurappa is vocal and doesnt hesitate to take on the Congress leaders in a verbal spat - and he speaks with facts. Yeddyurappa has a long way to go, but he has already shown that he is here to do business. Gowda struggling to keep JD(S) together Former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda has criticised his growing number of enemies within the Janata Dal (Secular) party. His son HD Kumaraswamy, the former chief minister, is also singing the same tune. The JD(S), once a strong regional party, seems to be splitting in a number of directions. Former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda is struggling with enemies within the Janata Dal (Secular) party The JD(S) has been witnessing more drama than the ruling Congress, where demand for a Cabinet reshuffle has intensified. While Gowda is struggling to hold the party together, Kumaraswamy, who was on a self-declared sabbatical to help launch his son's acting career, returned to active politics last week to attack his fathers detractors. His once-upon-a-time confidants, former ministers N Cheluvarayaswamy and BZ Zameer Ahmed Khan, have declared an open war on the Gowda clan. Unhappy with the way the party is being run, the two leaders, along with three other legislators, declared that they would support the Congress candidates in the elections to the Legislative Council. Their decision is not shocking because discontent in the JD(S) has been brewing and the Cheluvarayaswamy faction is inclined towards the Congress. There is speculation that he will join the Grand Old Party. So, what does the JD(S) intend to do to fill the void? Gowda plans to introduce his grandsons into politics! Angry police officers to strike in Karnataka On June 4, more than 35,000 policemen across Karnataka state are expected to stay away from work to protest against poor wages, overburdened shifts, bad working conditions, and lack of holidays. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is invoking the ESMA (Essential Services Maintenance Act) against them. For policemen below officer rank to state their demands and go on strike is unheard of in Karnataka. More than 35,000 policemen across Karnataka state are expected to stay away from work, protesting against poor wages, overburdened shifts, bad working conditions, and lack of holidays. (File picture). However, now the policemen have formed a union, appointed a leader, and are communicating effectively. They have submitted a 30-point memorandum to the government listing their problems. For instance, there are 68,000 policemen across the state, while the vacancies unfilled are more than 25,000. The government has not recruited to fill the vacancies, while the existing policemen end up doing double shifts. Their wages are not on a par with the private sector and they face housing problems, especially in Bengaluru and Mysuru, where rents are high. Often, the policemen are forced to bribe their officers to retain their positions and in turn fleece money from the public. Hundreds of them are forced to work as orderlies, washing clothes or cleaning the homes of superior officers. The policemen are of the view that despite these issues being raising several times in the past, they were not addressed effectively by any of the governments. First, J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti accused National Conference founder Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah of changing his political stance after supporting Accession with India in 1947, and pushing Jammu & Kashmir into uncertainty. And now the PDP chief's party members have joined her in lashing out at Sheikh. We have our reasons to talk about Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. He continues to be the epicenter of history of Kashmir and played a pivotal role. But, he created a lot of confusion. We are suffering because of his shifting stances, Nizamuddin Bhat, PDP General Secretary, told Mail Today. He said Sheikh was a popular leader but he betrayed his people. Mehbooba Mufti says that unlike Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed remained committed to the idea of India On Saturday, in her speech in the Assembly, Mehbooba cited examples for rejecting Omar Abdullahs assertions that her father was snubbed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Last year in his address in Srinagar, the PM had told Mufti that he doesnt need advice on Pakistan after Mufti Mohammad Sayeed insisted that India and Pakistan should engage with each other. She said her father had great respect for Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, but he would often question why Sheikh led people in a different direction after supporting the Accession. On August 8, 1953, the then Sadr-i-Riyasat of the Sate, Karan Singh, dismissed Sheikh Abdullah as the Prime Minister on charges of having lost the confidence of his cabinet. He was arrested on charges of indulging in anti-national activities and of being a Pakistani agent. He was denied an opportunity to prove his majority on the floor of the House. After his arrest, Sheikh launched the plebiscite movement. Mehbooba said her father was a dignified man and his decisions would never be ego-based. She said that unlike Sheikh, her father remained committed to the idea of India. In the Upper House on Tuesday, she took on separatists, saying: Taunt me of being anti-Muslim, but blessed Fridays in Srinagar have become occasions for throwing stones. The chief minister has said nothing unusual. Sheikh Abdullah lied to people. He misled people. First, he supported the Accession, then he launched the plebiscite movement. PDP has remained Indian throughout history, Yasir Reshi, a member of the Upper House, said. He said that like Sheikh, both Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah were misleading people. When they are out of power, they talk of autonomy, he said. Asked if it was the end of the soft separatism approach usually taken by PDP, he said: PDP never had a soft-separatist approach. Separatists have accused the Mehbooba-led government of putting them in continuous detention and said she is implementing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh agenda to change the demography of the state by giving the nod to establishing separate colonies for Kashmiri pandits and the Sainik colony. Khadse's mobile number had been called from the landline of 1993 Mumbai Bomb mastermind Dawood Ibrahim Time is running out for Maharashtras revenue minister Eknath Khadse as calls for him to quit have reached the BJP leadership. The party will decide upon the action, remarked state chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. Fadnavis met BJP president Amit Shah to discuss the raft of allegations against his cabinet colleague, Khadse. I have given the factual report, Fadnavis told reporters at the party headquarters in New Delhi. Eknath Khadse - who holds more than half-a-dozen ministerial portfolios in Maharashtra - is alleged to have links with underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. Khadse denies all wrong-doing. Khadse - who holds more than half-a-dozen ministerial portfolios in Maharashtra - is alleged to have links with underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. He is also alleged to have fraudulently accessed a three-acre government plot in Pune, and then abused his position to get a whistle-blower implicated in a false case. In all three instances Khadse denies any wrong-doing. Top BJP sources told India Today TV that Fadnavis has already asked him to step down from the state government. As he battled attacks from the Opposition over Khadse, Fadnavis tried to reason with the revenue minister that the land deal he had brokered in Pune put him in a direct conflict of interest. But Khadse remained defiant and refused to quit, sources close to Fadnavis told India Today TV. Khadse's continued denial of any wrong-doing has prompted the Maharashtra chief minister to take up the matter with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, whom he met in New Delhi on Thursday. Sources say Fadnavis thinks Khadses land transaction was as politically damaging for his government as the Adarsh scam was for then chief minister Ashok Chavan in 2010. That scandal involved a deceitful sale of flats, originally meant for war widows, to politicians and military officers at below-market prices. Calls from the residence of Mumbai Bomb mastermind Dawood Ibrahim were allegedly made to Eknath Khadse's mobile Opposition parties too have stepped up their attack on the ruling BJP over Khadse. Why is the PM not investigating Eknath Khadse? asked Congress leader Sushmita Dev. If he is selling the MIDC land for peanuts to his relatives, then why is the PM and his government silent? What Khadse is doing is shameful, Dev said. Dev's comments referred to the Pune plot bought by the minister in April, but acquired by the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) 45 years ago. The Congress leader also cited India Today TVs expose on calls purportedly made from Dawood Ibrahims landline number in Karachi to Khadses mobile phone. Phone records of Eknath Khadse show that he was in touch with Dawood. We want to ask the PM what he has done with this information, Dev said. Khadse should resign or dismissed and there should be a thorough investigation, she added. [Sic]. Its not just the opposition. The BJP's ally the Shiv Sena has also hit out at the party for its public defence of the embattled minister. Sena MP Sanjay Raut suggested that Khadse should resign and face the investigation. His call triggered a sharp reaction from the BJP, with a party spokesman terming it an interference with internal issues. Dawood Ibrahim is said be living on the Pakistan border Another BJP leader, Girish Vyas, echoed similar views, saying his party was capable enough to take decisions. I think that the Shiv Sena has no right to speak like that, Vyas remarked. Ruby Ray, Bihar topper from Humanities, referred to political science as 'prodigal science' on camera A recent India Today TV expose on the questionable competence of the highest scorers in Bihars Higher Secondary Examination has jolted the states education establishment into action. Bihar School Examination Board has summoned the five toppers from the Humanities and Science streams for a re-test scheduled for Friday. The move comes after Ruby Ray, a Humanities topper, referred to Political Science as prodigal science on camera. India Today journalists visited her Hajipur home after suspicions were raised about her scores. In another reference to political science, she associated the subject with cooking. Her report card, however, shows a score of 90 per cent with 444 marks secured out of 500. Similarly, from the science stream, Saurav Sreshtha has scored 485 out of 500. But he was clueless when reporters asked him a basic science question about the most reactive element. This year, more than 5.5 lakh students from Bihar appeared for the examination. The board conducts secondary and senior secondary school tests twice a year. After India Todays stinging report, Bihars Education Minister Ashok Choudhary ordered a high-level probe into the matter. He said the probe will be conducted for students of the Humanities, Science, and Commerce streams. The merit of examiners will also be investigated, he added. The buzz at the fine-dining bar and kitchen in suburban Mumbai on Wednesday night was palpable. Its not every day that Shah Rukh Khan turns up for dinner at a restaurant, after all - and he had made reservations for two. And this while his wife Gauri is away shopping in London and celebrating her eldest son's high school graduation. Shah Rukh Khan took his daughter Suhana, 16, out for dinner in a restaurant in Mumbai SRK arrived soon enough, his casual mood highlighted by a grey patterned bandana. What made heads turn, though, was the lady accompanying him. Shah Rukh arrived at dinner with his pretty teenage daughter Suhana. News, of course, travels fast. By the time the father-daughter duo had finished the dinner, enough fans and press photographers had gathered outside the restaurant to cause a mini traffic jam in the area. Quite graciously, SRK stopped to have a few words with some of his little fans who were trying to reach out to him from among the crowd. He even posed for a couple of selfies before getting into his car and speeding off. Sources said SRK took Suhana out for dinner in order to spend some quality time with her. The dinner affair, it seems, was part of some time the superstar has taken off over the past week to ensure he sees his daughter amid his hectic schedule. General (Retd) VK Singh, minister of state for external affairs, has attacked those who have criticised his proposal to have Akbar Road renamed as Maharana Pratap Road. General Singh said: If you talk of the Hindus, vested interests in this country will brand you anti-other religions (sic). Singh took to Facebook to say India had never been defeated in war till insiders sold out national interests to foreign powers. Giving examples of Jaichand, Shakti Singh, Mir Jafar and others, the former Chief of Army Staff talked of todays self-styled intellectuals whose criticism of his initiative hurt him. General (Retd) Singh lashed out at todays 'self-styled intellectuals' for criticising his proposal to have Akbar Road renamed Maharana Pratap Road General Singh wrote that he was shocked by the way people reacted to his move seeking the renaming of Akbar Road, or any other suitable road in the Lutyens Zone as Maharana Pratap Road. Maharana Pratap united 36 different communities and fought a powerful foreign force for freedom of his land. Imagine a conflict where his own brother (Shakti Singh) was leading the enemy army. But the man being hailed as Great (Akbar) killed 25,000 people including women, children and the old in Mewar (sic), the General wrote in his Facebook post. Akbar was a Mughal Emperor who ruled from 1556 until his death in 1605 My point is if we give so much importance to the Mughals, then going by the same logic we should also build memorials after Robert Clive and Lord Dalhousie who ruled India in the same manner as the Mughals, he added. The General insisted that the nation now has to decide who it needs to be proud of - those who subjugated the people of India or those who fought for their independence. The BJP refused to comment on the Generals Facebook post saying it is his personal opinion, but the Congress hit out saying it reflected the BJPs mindset. BJP as a whole, General VK Singh included, has been practising the politics of so-called historical revenge especially targeted against a particular religion and community. He should learn from Maharana Pratap himself who would fight Akbar honourably but never belittle or trivialise the historic achievements of Akbar," says Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Congress MP and spokesperson. As President Pranab Mukherjee visited China last week, Indias entry into the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), whose members can trade in and export nuclear technology, has emerged as the latest battleground in the growing Sino-Indian relations. With Indias push for admission into the NSG gaining momentum ahead of the group's annual plenary session next month, Beijing is making it clear that it intends to make life difficult for India. China has relied on an obstructionist argument and has called for further discussion on whether India and other countries which have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty can join the NSG. President Pranab Mukherjee during his visit to the Forbidden City in Beijing Inclusion Where the US and other supporting members have called for Indias inclusion based on New Delhis non-proliferation track record and the US-India civil nuclear accord, China has made the NPT signature its central argument to scuttle Indias entry. Beijing is claiming that a compulsory requirement for NSG membership is that the NSG members must be signatories to the NPT. Apart from the rhetoric about the NPT, China has also encouraged Pakistan to apply for NSG membership so as to link New Delhis entry with that of Islamabad, knowing well that there will be few takers for Pakistans case. The US State Department, for its part, promptly came to Indias defence by reaffirming the view that India meets missile technology control regime requirements and is ready for NSG membership. The US has declared its support for Indias full membership since 2010. The Modi government is investing a lot of diplomatic capital in seeking NSG membership. It has reached out to the New Agenda Coalition, a group of states in the NSG, including Ireland, the Netherlands and Switzerland, and has been able to secure its support. The NSG chairperson too visited India last year to take this process forward. Membership of the NSG will be the final step in Indias inclusion into the global nuclear order. No wonder China is taking such a strong stand on this issue, despite the fact that its own non-proliferation track record remains abysmal. In fact, it was Chinas support for Pakistans nuclear programme that led the way for Indias overt nuclearisation. Weapons The Pakistani nuclear weapons programme is essentially an extension of the Chinese one. Despite being a member of the NPT, China has supplied Pakistan with nuclear materials and expertise and has provided critical assistance in the construction of Pakistans nuclear facilities. The Sino-Pak nuclear relationship is perhaps the only case where a nuclear weapon state has actually passed on weapons grade fissile material as well as a bomb design to a non-nuclear weapon state. After the 2008 US-India civil nuclear pact, China made it a point to further enhance nuclear cooperation with Pakistan, despite criticism from other nuclear powers. When the NSG was approached for the waiver for the passage of the US-India pact, China was the last state standing in opposing the India-specific waiver. When it failed to scuttle the deal, China quickly moved to sign an agreement with Pakistan. Guidelines This action of China was in clear violation of NSG guidelines that forbid nuclear transfers to countries not signatories to the NPT or adhere to comprehensive international safeguards on their nuclear programme. China suggested that there were political reasons concerning the stability of South Asia to justify the exports, echoing Pakistans oft-repeated complaint that the India-US nuclear pact had upset stability in the region by assisting Indias strategic programme. And now China and Pakistan are working together to block Indias bid to gain entry into the NSG. India was able to get a one-time clean waiver from the NSG in 2008 as it was able to convince the group of the effectiveness of its export control regime which was deemed to be in line with global standards. The Bush administration lobbied for India extensively, with President George W Bush himself talking to his Chinese counterpart after Beijing refused to budge. Today, India wants to be part of the decision-making at the highest levels of global nuclear architecture. As a rising and responsible nuclear power, it should be a part of this structure and it will also be good for the NSG if India is part of the decision-making process. China has taken a hard-line on this issue and it seems unlikely that it will change its opposition to Indias entry. During Pranab Mukherjees visit, China indicated that it might be willing to fine-tune its stance, though there was no commitment. If China continues to stick to rigid stance, to many in India this will further reinforce the perception that China is willing to sacrifice its long-term strategic partnership with a rising power for the short-term objective of trying to scuttle its rise. This wont be helpful for Sino-Indian ties, but Beijing wants to go down fighting. New Delhi should brace itself for a bumpy ride ahead. Punjab figurehead Amarinder Singh met with party VP Rahul Gandhi The Congresss Punjab stalwart Amarinder Singh met party VP Rahul Gandhi on Thursday for the first time since the two leaders were forced to discuss Singhs open spat with strategist Prashant Kishor. This was also Amarinder Singhs first meeting with the high command after returning from a foreign tour, where he had gone to drum-up support for NRIs in the forthcoming assembly elections. Amarinder is said to have given Rahul some tips for the Punjab campaign, for which a 200-day plan has been drawn up. Raju rushes to aide's defence The heat currently on Sanjay Bhandaris call records is also being felt by union civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapati Raju, after it came to light that his aide Appa Rao was involved in the alleged arms deal. The minister came out in defence of Appa Rao saying he had full confidence in him. It is my job to see that there is nothing clandestine going on, it is simply that. As long as I have confidence in him (Rao), he is there because he is my appointee, Raju told news channels. Trouble in BJP's old forts The BJP might be conquering new territories, but trouble is brewing in its old forts. Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis was in New Delhi to handle the crisis over his minister Eknath Khadse who is facing corruption allegations. Haryana CM Manohar Lal also met BJP president Amit Shah on Thursday to discuss the threat of another round of Jat reservation agitation in the state. Heat on government hospitals over absent workers The ongoing heat-wave is proving to be a major headache to patients in some of the government hospitals in Delhi, as more than 100 health officials including doctors and nurses have reported absent from duty. Most of the absents were marked in Aruna Asaf Ali Hospital and Maharashi Valmiki Hospital. The health department has now sought an explanation from 132 officials who skipped work. Modi government report card just a click away The Modi government has gone on a publicity blitzkrieg to project its achievements over the last two years. The campaign that ran across all the media platforms including the Internet. A click on the government websites leads to pop-ups dishing out a detailed report card. "Dhaka also wants us," Shipping minister Nitin Gadkari told journalists After having clinched the contract for the strategically important Chabahar Port in Iran, the government is looking eastwards and is in discussions with Bangladesh to develop a similar port in Paira. India Ports Global, the joint venture between Government-owned JNPT and Kandla Port for undertaking overseas ports ventures, ``is interested in the expressions of interest which have been invited for construction of Paira port in Bangladesh, the Shipping Ministry said on Friday. "Talks are on between our Foreign Ministry and Bangladesh. Dhaka also wants us. We have sent a team there for studies, Union Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari told journalists. China had earlier shown an interest in building the Paira port as part of its strategy to increase its influence in the region but Dhaka had then decided not to go ahead with the project. The Chinese have already strengthened their influence in Sri Lanka. The Narendra Modi government has been talking about an 'Act East' policy, as against the previous regime's 'Look East' policy and the port project in Bangladesh is being taken up as part o this new approach. The move can also be construed as a reply to the aggressive play by China, which is developing a port in Colombo and Gwadar in Pakistan. The Shipping Ministry is closely following the developments in regard to the Paira port so as to secure our national and strategic interests, the release added. It can be noted that China has embarked on what is referred to as 'string of pearls' strategy, under which it is creating such assets across the circumference of the Indian Peninsula in the Indian Ocean Rim region. Gadkari's comments come days after New Delhi secured a deal to build the strategic Chabahar port in Iran with an initial capex commitment of USD 500 million, which will help serve our interests in the Gulf country coming out of sanctions, and in the broader region as well. The minister said an immediate benefit of developing the Chabahar port will be cheaper gas availability, which can help reduce the urea subsidy bill by Rs 45,000 crore. There is also a possibility of investments of up to Rs 1 trillion in the Chabahar port region jointly by the ministries of petroleum and fertilisers, and the private sector, Gadkari said. He said Chabahar will benefit both the state-run Kandla Port Trust as well as Mundra Port in Gujarat through higher cargo volumes. The Mundra Port is owned by the Adani Group. The minister said his ministry is also planning to build a major port at Belekeri near Karwar in Karnataka, which will entail an investment of Rs 4,000 crore. Work on the ports at Wadhvan off the Dahanu coast in Maharashtra, Sagar in West Bengal and Colachel in Tamil Nadu will begin this year, he said. At present, the country has a dozen state-run major ports and is targeting to add eight more, including these four. Without giving the exact locations or investment details, Gadkari said of the remaining projects, two ports each will come up in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, and one in Karnataka, which will be a major port. He said the government is planning to channel investments of Rs 12 trillion into shipping, ports and allied sectors over the next five years, which will create 10 million direct and indirect jobs. To smoothen the finances for these ambitious projects, Gadkari today met top bankers in the financial capital but refused to elaborate. Authorities are pursuing the mastermind of a cash-for-kidney racket that allegedly nestled in one of the citys top private hospitals and its network spread beyond Indias shores. A senior Delhi Police officer will lead a team to catch T Rajkumar Rao, alias Raju, who has allegedly been running a sprawling organ trafficking trade for nearly a decade. Sources say after uncovering a nexus at the Indraprastha Apollo Hospital and arresting half a dozen people, investigators are looking at Rajkumars links with other medical institutes and path labs in the Capital, Jalandhar, Coimbatore and parts of West Bengal. A senior Delhi Police officer will lead a team to catch T Rajkumar Rao, alias Raju, who has allegedly been running a sprawling organ trafficking trade for nearly a decade The hospital says it is cooperating with the probe, while terming itself 'a victim of a well-orchestrated operation to cheat patients'. The absconder started off as a tout but with a web of connections he went on to become the trades kingpin, supplying kidneys to rich Indians and foreigners, said officials. Analysts say widespread poverty in Indias countryside makes the offer of cash for organs hard to resist. A police FIR shows Rajkumar charged around Rs 25-30 lakh from a kidney recipient, saying he had good contacts in Delhi hospitals. The donors would get only a tenth of this amount. According to sources, several touts and syndicates worked under him in different parts of India. Rajkumar is absconding and he is the main accused running this racket. His last location was traced to southern India, a senior Delhi police official said. From January till May, he successfully managed five deals and operations were conducted at Apollo Hospital. RP Upadhyaya, additional CP (Vigilance), at a press conference in Delhi Deputy commissioner of police (southeast district) MS Randhawa said among those arrested are Aditya Singh (24) and Shailesh Saxena (31), both personal secretaries to top doctors, while the others are touts. Aseem Sikdar (37) and Devashish Moulik (30) are natives of West Bengal while Satya Prakash (30) is a resident of Kanpur. According to Randhawa, the department received a tip about the racket on May 30 and after a little scrutiny found that the ring lured poor people from areas such as Kanpur, West Bengal, Chennai and Bihar to sell their kidneys. The gang also prepared forged documents, including ID proofs, to establish a relationship between the donors and recipients to meet legal requirements, the top cop revealed. The recipients were charged huge sums while a small amount out of it was paid to the donors, he said. Sources have confirmed that two other medical institutes in the city are also under the scanner. Delhi Police say two top doctors are also under suspicion. Involvement of doctors cannot be ruled out, joint commissioner (south-eastern range) RP Upadhyay said. Most of the donors were from Kolkata. After picking them up , the touts went on to strike deals with rich recipients. A member of the syndicate would bring the parties to Delhi and with the help of a local they prepared documents such as relationship certificates, government-approved identity papers, etc. Finally, the case was presented before the hospital committee and after approval the transplant was initiated. Cops also say that during interrogation the accused said the gang often targeted people from Sri Lanka and Thailand to earn more money. Kidney failure is common in affluent countries, often because of obesity. But a shortage of transplant organs feeds a black market that exploits disadvantaged donors. The police in their investigation have identified the secretarial staff of some doctors, who have been accused of being involved in the alleged racket, Apollo Hospital said in a press statement. We reiterate that these are not employees of the hospital. While all due precautions were conducted, the use of fake and forged documents was used for this racket with a criminal intent. Malaika Arora Khan has dealt with her separation with grace and a huge amount of style Divorced and single after years of marriage, the image of single moms has been that of stressed and over-controlling women, pulled in every direction just to keep things together. Oh yes, its been a mans world when it comes to being solo while the newly free dad rediscovers his bachelor days, the single mother gets home from work to pick up snacks from the floor, toys from the bed and the kids from their hobby classes. Yet as the tides turn in the new social fabric, a fresh breed of uncoupled mothers has emerged women who are separated and are losing no time to announce their sexy, fresh and fearless side. An impressive example is Malaika Arora Khan, who recently split from husband Arbaaz Khan after 18 years of marriage. The 42-year-old, mother-of-one walked out of the partnership not only with admirable grace, but with some seriously jaw-dropping style. Never been shy to flaunt her enviable curves, the actress has of late unleashed a force of fashionable choices as the judge on a talent show, and is confidently turning the idea of Indian single-motherhood on its head. Rather than sticking to the conservative image of a divorced mother, she is enjoying her new relationship status by dressing to the nines, be it in gorgeous figure-hugging gowns, a plunging beaded mesh top, or even feminine dresses and skirts that make her look many years younger with a flirtatious, girly vibe. Another diva that emerged stronger and more stunning after her split is supermodel Miranda Kerr, who got divorced from actor Orlando Bloom in 2013 three years after marriage. In the midst of a media frenzy tracking every move of the estranged couple, Kerr took to smartly reinventing herself through social media. Miranda Kerr reinvented herself via social media after her split Using the quickest and one of the most visible tools of recovery, she was out and about with her gorgeous smile in place, complimented by a bevy of stylish looks perfectly put together. It was almost like a new lease of life, as she focused on herself and on positivity to bounce back faster. And her fashion choices reflected this, be it the bright lipsticks she wore or the fun ensembles in vivid colours the young mother used fashion very well in her favour. Meanwhile, reality star Kourtney Kardashian walked out of a nine-year-long relationship with Scott Disick last year, and did a major overhaul of her fashion statement and life without saying a word. After she famously posted a picture of herself walking in a plunging lace dress, with the caption Tell everybody Im back in town on Instagram, Kardashian showed praiseworthy changes in her closet choices. From better fitted ganji T shirts, to stylish ripped jeans and of course, a much happier disposition Kardashian drew attention away from the separation to how much fun she was having instead. Other single and separated moms have also been quick to turn the corner, be it Sussanne Khan who became estranged from actor Hrithik Roshan in 2014, or model and author Padma Lakshmi who was once married to author Salman Rushdie. And then there has always been Kate Moss who epitomised rocker chic throughout her single parenthood until she married guitarist Jamie Hince in 2011. The list of single and proud mums is growing, and its catching up here in India too. And to be honest, who even has the time to mope around and be understated when theres already so much going down. A pretty dress and pair of heels have the power to make many women feel good again, irrespective of marital status. If fashion is what helps her to feel better, then so be it because like everything else in the world, this too shall pass. Austrian crystal jewellery brand Swarovski has announced supermodel Karlie Kloss as the new brand ambassador Supermodel Kloss shines on Austrian crystal jewellery brand Swarovski has announced supermodel Karlie Kloss as the new brand ambassador, replacing Miranda Kerr who was the face of the brand since 2013. The 23- year-old Kloss made her first red-carpet appearance for the brand at a party hosted in New York recently, sporting a black cut-out dress with a bright red pout and strappy heels. Commenting on the decision, Creative Director for Swarovski, Nathalie Colin said, Besides her amazing beauty, she stands for modernity, freshness, selfconfidence, elegance and spontaneity everything that we convey through our collections. Kloss will be spotted in the fall/winter 16 campaign for the brand in print, TV and digital versions, adding another prestigious label to her kitty. Who wore it better? While not everyone was a fan of actress Jacqueline Fernandezs recent fashion outing a custom Deme top featuring detachable glove-sleeves and a black collar around the neck her look sure left us with a feeling of deja vu. A nearly identical look was seen on reality star Kourtney Kardashian on May 23 as she partied it up with her friends in Las Vegas, with a similar black bustier, elbow gloves and a collar necklace. Donald Trump said Thursday night that Hillary Clinton 'has to go to jail' for her actions in a classified email scandal that has dogged her for the entire year she's been a presidential candidate. The Democratic Party's front-runner delivered a blistering speech earlier in the day that was billed ass a foreign policy address but ended up as a lengthy indictment of Trump as an uncontrollable risk to national security. Trump, the Republicans' presumptive nominee, called it 'a phony hit job,' and announced that 'she's guilty as hell.' He spoke for an hour in San Jose, California, alternating between clobbering Clinton as a morally compromised candidate and berating her for being too boring to watch. 'I watched Hillary's thing today, which was hard,' he said. 'It was like taking Sominex. To watch her is like Sominex.' SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO TO THE SLAMMER: Donald Trump insisted during a speech in San Jose, California that 'Hillary Clinton has to go to jail' for federal crimes related to her classified email scandal 'DANGEROUSLY INCOHERENT': Hillary Clinton blasted Trump earlier in the day during a San Diego speech that was billed as a foreign policy address but turned into what Trump branded a 'hit job' against him THRONGS: Trump's crowd of thousands crammed into the South Building of the San Jose Convention Center 'Did you ever hear of Sominex? Sleep all night. Bing!' he said, assuming a sleeping posture with his hands next to his head. 'It's hard to stay awake when you're you know, I'm not a great sleeper. I think she could make more money if she made speeches and sold them for people that can't sleep.' OVER-THE-COUNTER CLINTON: Trump said watching Hillary's speech was like taking the sleep aid Sominex Clinton had, by all accounts, been as merciless as she gets earlier on Thursday in San Diego. 'Donald Trump's ideas are not just different, they are dangerously incoherent,' she said 'They're not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies.' The billionaire real estate tycoon ultimately took his gloves off at the San Jose Convention Center, castigating her as a Democrat who belonged behind bars instead of behind the Oval Office's famed Resolute Desk. 'Hillary Clinton is missing 30,000 emails. They've been deleted!' he said, referring to the former secretary of state's admitted role in trashing all the emails from her tenure in the Obama administration that she determined were personal in nature. Describing himself as 'a counter-puncher,' he moved in for the kill. 'After what she said about me today in her phony speech that was a phony speech, that was a Donald Trump hit job I will say this: Hillary Clinton has to go to jail, okay?' 'She has to go to jail. Has to go to jail,' he said again as cheers erupted in sternum-shaking chaos. 'That was a phony hit job. She's guilty as hell.' FAMILY AFFAIR: 16-month-old Trinity Pike played with her toys before the start of Thursday night's rally Ten minutes earlier, he had raised more gently the issue of Clinton's culpability for allowing more than 2,000 classified documents to be transferred to a private email server she maintained in her home while she was America's top diplomat. 'I don't believe our country can let her get away with this crime,' he said. 'I don't believe it. So we'll see. And you know what? If they do let her get away with it, it will be a hot topic of conversation on the campaign trail, I can tell you that, folks.' 'And then if I win, he added, pausing for another wild run of exultant shouts, 'it's called a five-year statute of limitations if I win.' 'No, everything's gonna be fair,' he said, 'but I'm sure the attorney general will take a very good look at it, from a "fair" standpoint. I'm sure. I think it's disgraceful.' DISSENT: Protesters waving Hillary Clinton signs and a poster reading 'DONALD DUMP' were escorted from the Trump rally in San Jose Trump first raised the idea of reopening as president an investigation into Clinton's email drama during an April 20 rally in berlin, Maryland. 'You have to do it. You have to take a second look,' Trump told DailyMail.com in a phone call after that campaign stop, allowing that it 'would be very inappropriate' for the White House to dictate terms of an investigation to the Department of Justice or the FBI. But on Thursday he seemed more cocksure than usual about Clinton's chief strategic liability, the ongoing criminal probe that hangs over her head. 'The fact that they even allow her to participate in this race is a disgrace to the United States,' he declared. 'It's a disgrace to our nation.' A rare 1918 U.S. postage stamp featuring an upside-down plane that was stolen six decades ago and ended up in Northern Ireland was returned to its American owner on Thursday. But the mystery surrounding the Inverted Jenny remains: Who stole it and three other such stamps at a 1955 convention in Virginia? On Thursday at the World Stamp Show, the young man from Northern Ireland who inherited America's most famous stamp from his grandfather watched as it was handed to the Bellefonte, Pennsylvania-based American Philatelic Research Library, which holds the rights to the four. Two of the other stamps were recovered years ago, and the fourth is missing. American Philatelic Society executive director Scott D. English holds an 'Inverted Jenny,' a 1918 stamp stolen in 1955, that is finally being returned to its rightful owner, after it was officially handed over during the World Stamp Show on Thursday American Philatelic Society executive director Scott D. English, left, congratulates Keelin O'Neill, who was awarded for helping return an 'Inverted Jenny' U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who was an avid stamp collector as a boy, helped set up the legal restitution process. 'It's particularly great to have this accident of timing, the resurfacing of one of the world's most famous stamps just in time for one of the world's rarest events, the World Stamp Show,' Bharara said at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, the show venue. A hundred Inverted Jenny stamps were printed in 1918, until someone noticed the error. The misprint comes from a design that marked the launch of U.S. air mail, featuring a Curtiss JN-4H biplane, nicknamed the Jenny. The upside-down, century-old aircraft made those stamps much more valuable and intriguing, with counterfeits created as the collection was scattered. With a postage of 24 cents, one stamp from the batch of 100 was auctioned for $1.3 million this week in New York. Keelin O'Neill inherited his stamp several years ago from his grandfather, who stashed it away in a box alongside old records and an antique clock. 'I had no idea about the history and importance of the stamp until very recently,' he said. 'I have to say, it's quite fascinating, and I'm excited to learn more.' This past April, he approached auction house Spink USA for an appraisal. Spink turned to the Philatelic Foundation and outside experts to make sure this was one of the genuine missing Inverted Jennys. The foundation contacted the FBI, which investigated. Keelin O'Neill, a Northern Ireland man who inherited the stamp, smiles after receiving a $50,000 check for turning over the rare stamp This photograph shows an 'Inverted Jenny,' a 1918 stamp stolen in 1955. The FBI turned the stamp over to the APRL's president Thursday during a press conference in New York A wealthy collector, Ethel B. Stewart McCoy, had bought the four-stamp block in 1936 and allowed the American Philatelic Society to exhibit them at the 1955 collectors' convention in Norfolk, Virginia. The stamps disappeared from a display case there, and it's been a whodunit ever since. Two were recovered in 1977 and 1982 from Chicago connoisseurs who had bought them. On Thursday, O'Neill accepted a check for $50,000 as his reward, just after the head of the FBI's New York field office, Diego Rodriguez, handed over the Jenny to the American Philatelic Research Library's president, Roger Brody. Roaring applause followed for the tiny, unobtrusive stamp sitting under a clear, plastic cover, it's value unknown. But one thing is certain, said the American Philatelic Society's executive director, Scott English: 'I know this case is far from over, and I know our friends in the philatelic world will work very hard to see if they can solve the rest of the mystery.' It made its way into popular culture in movies such as 1985's Brewster's Millions, in which Richard Pryor's character uses one to mail a postcard Advertisement These days travellers roll their eyes at the thought of enduring a 23-hour flight from Australia to the UK. But spare a thought for the jet setters who took the first Qantas flight from Brisbane to London in 1935. The trip took 12 days, the flight made up to 31 stopovers and - at 20,525kilometres - was by far the longest air service in the world. The trip involved a long and complicated series of connections, transferring between a varying number of different-sized aircraft, all of which were cramped for space and would seem nightmarish to the modern traveller. Back then, the new route was regarded as a fantastic new option for speedy travel and was greeted enthusiastically by travellers whose previous options for getting to London included a six week sea voyage. Scroll down for video When Qantas began operating its first international service from Brisbane to Singapore, just ten passengers fit into the tiny De Havilland 86 plane (pictured). The flight took more than three days, made more than ten stops and had no cabin crew - although the co-pilot handed out sandwiches Passengers at Archerfield aerodrome in Brisbane 1935 on the steps of the tiny DH86 aircraft, which took more than three days to get to Singapore via more than ten stops in the Australian outback and Indonesia Lady Edwina Mountbatten, whose husband Lord Louis was the Queen's cousin, arrives (pictured) on the inaugural Qantas flight from Brisbane to Singapore after a gruelling three-and-a-half day journey on the tiny De Havilland plane In 1935, air travel from Australia to London was introduced by Qantas in partnership via a series of flights which took 12 days, had up to 31 stopovers (the ten major stops are pictured on the map above) and at 20,525km it was by far the longest air service in the world Lady Edwina Mountbatten (pictured in her Red Cross uniform around 1935) was a passenger on Qantas' first international flight which left Brisbane in April 1935. The wife of the Queen's cousin Lord Louis Mountbatten (the couple are pictured, right, in 1954), she used the service to get to Malta where her husband was stationed Passengers on the Empire route in 1935 had to endure more than three days cramped into a tiny aircraft just to get from Brisbane to Singapore, where they connected with the British-run Imperial airways and flew via India, Pakistan, the Middle east, Iraq, Egypt, Italy and France On the first flights from Australia to London in 1935 there were no cabin staff, but gradually Qantas introduced larger planes and passengers could enjoy the relative luxury of service by stewardesses like these pictured Qantas Empire Airways, as it was then known, began operating its first international passenger service to Singapore on April 17, 1935, flying via the Queensland outback and the Northern Territory. There was no cabin crew, although the co-pilot handed handed out sandwiches and drinks and the service to Singapore was 'ridiculously cramped' due to the large amount of mail aboard the tiny De Havilland 86 plane. The airfare was 195, which at today's exchange rate equals $281 Australian, but was equivalent in value to $18,000 Australian then. Qantas operated in partnership with Imperial Airways, a predecessor to British Airways, and passengers flew in the middle sector on planes operated by Indian Transcontinental Airways. The service departed from Brisbane once a week and took three and a half days just to reach the Asian city. The DH86, which had a range of just 1200kilometres and flew at a speed of 750mph (230kph), stopped at Charleville, Longreach and Cloncurry in Queensland. The aircraft carried just ten passengers and its mail delivery was hailed as a breakthrough in delivering fast and regular means of communication between Britain and Australia. The inaugural flight, which was boarded in Charleville by Lady Mountbatten, who was travelling to Malta to meet her husband Lord Louis Mountbatten, the second cousin of the Queen, then a nine-year-old Princess Elizabeth. There were no through bookings from Brisbane to London on the first service because of heavy sector bookings, but there were two passengers booked through to Brisbane on the next flight that left London on April 20, 1935. By 1947, when these catering supplies are pictured being loaded on to a Qantas Empire Airways flight at Archerfield aerodrome in Brisbane, passengers travelled for a mere four days to get to London From 1944 in the final years of World War II, travel conditions had been pared back to basic as sen on this Liberator aircraft which Qantas painted the exterior of its cockpit the kangaroo sign for the first time Qantas flight attendant uniforms (pictured, the summer uniform worn between 1959 and 1964) were mostly designed by overseas couturiers until the airline tapped into the talents of local designers, such as George Gross and Harry Who, and Peter Morrissey After an overnight in Cloncurry, the plane touched down in Camooweal near the Northern Territory border, then stopped at a series of towns and stations en route to Darwin, including Avon Downs, Newcastle Waters, Daly Waters and Katherine. Passengers spent the night in Darwin and then left for South-east Asia, stopping at Rambang in Indonesia - where they stayed overnight in a humble jungle rest house - then flew via several stops to Singapore. In Singapore, passengers connected with Imperial Airways, but boarded a planed operated by Indian Transcontinental Airways for Rangoon, Burma, now known as Yangon, the capital of Myanmar. Just nine passengers could fit into the Armstrong Whitworth Atalanta aircraft which flew from Rangoon to make a night stopover in Jodhpur, India, and then on to Karachi in Pakistan. In Karachi, passengers would change planes to the slightly larger Handley Page 42W Hannibal, which had greater range and carried 24 passengers. The flight went via Sharjah in the Persian Gulf, where the plane landed in the desert and taxied in alongside the Imperial Airways Resthouse through an opening in barbed wire entanglements which at night time were closed in. From there, they flew to Baghdad, Iraq and then on to Cairo. From Cairo to the neighbouring Egyptian city of Alexandria, the flight stopped on the island of Crete and over the Mediterranean to the Italian port city of Brindisi. From there, passengers had to board a train for Paris, where they took their final flight over the Channel to London abord the relative luxury of a Handley Page 42W Heracles which carried 38 passengers and had stewards serving meals. Qantas Empire Airways started flying to Europe from Brisbane but by 1944 had expanded its routes and used Guilford Airport in Perth (pictured) in its Western Operations Division For a brief golden age from 1938, Qantas flew 'flying boats' via Rose Bay in Sydney to London via South-east Asia with only one, luxury first class, but the aircraft were targeted by the Japanese air force in World War II Qantas staff model winter uniforms in 1948, a year after the airline introduced its history making 'Kangaroo Route' on which meals were served and the travelling time from Sydney to London reduced to four days In 1938, for a brief golden age, Qantas introduced its 'flying boats', a first class air service which left for London from Rose Bay in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs. Primarily designed to carry first-class air mail, the flying boats carried 15 passengers, a crew of five, and 1400kg of mail and cargo. But the cabins were no cramped, and so spacious they could be converted for sleeping accommodation at night and passengers could stroll around, chat and smoke Speeding along at 250km an hour, they reduced the trip to London to an unbelievable nine days, but their reign was curtailed when they became targets of the Japanese air force during World War II. By 1947, Qantas introduced its 'Kangaroo Route' and launched its first solely operated service from Sydney to London. Gateway to the world: Rose Bay flying boat base in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs in 1939 when the luxury aircraft had a brief reign offering first class travel which contrasted greatly to the cramped planes of four years earlier After introducing its first Brisbane to Singapore service in 1935 on tiny De Havilland plane, Qantas expanded its fleet (a Short Sunderland is pictured at Southampton in 1938) with 'flying boats' and other aircraft The flying Kangaroo emblem first appeared on Liberator aircraft in 1944 (pictured) which Qantas adapted from the adapted from an Australian one penny coin and painted beneath the cockpit The new service cut the nightmare journey of 1935 to a third of its duration, and provided cabin service and comfort. Qantas' first Kangaroo Route service departed Sydney and flew to Darwin and then Singapore where passengers stayed overnight, on to Calcutta in India, Karachi and Cairo overnight. The Constellation aircraft, which carried 29 passengers and 11 crew, flew on to Tripoli in Libya before arriving in London. The four night journey took more than 93 hours and included 55 hours in the air and was later described by Qantas as a history making 'momentous step in Australian aviation which literally brought Australia closer to the rest of world'. Qantas marine air base, pictured in the 1940s, when the airline operated 'flying boats' which sped along at 250km an hour and reduced the trip to London to an unbelievable nine days Britain's most prolific paedophile sent a series of chilling emails to gain the trust of a priest who runs a orphanages in India to get access to children living there. In the disturbing emails, depraved Richard Huckle posed as a volunteer who wanted to visit the children's home and bring his camera to take photos and videos of them. Huckle, 30, a grammar schoolboy, raised by middle class parents in Ashford in Kent, faces life in jail for a sickening catalogue of sex crimes against children as young as two. Posing as a freelance photographer and English teacher, he used his charisma to talk his way into communities of vulnerable children, primarily in Malaysia and Cambodia. Huckle gained access to care homes, orphanages and other impoverished communities that were unprepared to cope with the infiltration of a monster. Sick: Richard Huckle raped in orphanages and care homes in Malaysia and Cambodia. Here is pictured at India's New Hope for Children Orphanage, but is not believed to have abused orphans living there Abuse: In this never-before-seen picture, Huckle, 30, poses for a photograph at the New Hope for Children Orphanage in Bangalore. He is not believed to have abused children during his two day stay Depraved: Huckle took pictures and videos of himself raping and abusing young girls and boys and even a baby wearing a nappy - with victims aged between two and 13 Now, Indian pastor George Fernandes, 37, has revealed how the paedophile targeted his New Hope for Children Orphanage in Bangalore. Huckle sent emails to pastor Fernandes after finding the orphanage on Facebook. His first email on June 30, 2013, reads: 'Greetings Pastor George. My name is Richard Huckle. I'm originally from UK but am studying an IT Degree in Malaysia.' He went on to detail plans to travel through India, and expressed his enthusiasm for visiting the orphanage. He continued: 'I'm very much interested in visiting your orphanages in Bangalore and Ambur. 'It would be a great experience for me to visit your orphanages, meet and help the children, and would be more than happy to use my photography and video editing skills to help make some promotional material for your ministry.' He added: 'God bless your ministry and I look forward to hearing back from you.' Pastor Fernandes told how he accepted Huckle's offer, not suspecting the horrific crimes he was capable of. Infiltrated: Huckle targeted impoverished communities across Southeast Asia, primarily in Malaysia and Cambodia, because children were 'much, much easier to seduce' Target: He told Pastor Fernandes that he would be 'very interested' in visiting the orphanage where he wanted to take pictures of the children with his camera Trust: He was able to build up a rapport with the heads of the orphanages and care homes he visited, by posing as a student or a teacher to gain a position of trust within the facilities Huckle asked the pastor if he knew of anywhere he could stay, 'either with a local family or at a cheap hotel' and was offered a room at the priest's house. He was not left alone with the children during his two-day stay and he is not believed to have abused any children there. Pastor Fernandes told MailOnline: 'I am shocked to read about what he has done. In hindsight, I can see he just wanted to gain access our kids. 'He seemed nice on email and we were excited to host him as we thought he is keen to serve the orphan children,' said the priest. 'One thing I noticed that was unusual about his personality was his silence. He would not speak much or tell anything about his past. 'He was very quiet and very different than other western volunteers we had in the past and he would hardly opened up even during dinner at my home. 'He had very good knowledge of photography and taught us many new thing and we learnt a lot from him but he seemed disoriented and won't look straight into our eyes ever during his short stay.' During Huckle's visit, the orphanage posted a special 'thank you' photo on Facebook with the caption: 'Richard is a photographer who arrived in Bangalore today to work with Pastor George as a volunteer. He is taking new photos and video of the children at NHC Home.' Monster: Huckle boasted that the children he targeted in impoverished countries were 'much, much easier to seduce than middle-class Western kids' Predatory: The paedophile even asked Pastor Fernandes if he knew of any local families that he could stay with during his visit. He is pictured here teaching staff at the orphanage about photography Chilling: This series of emails, sent by Huckle to the Indian pastor at New Hope for Children Orphanage, demonstrates how he talked his way into a position of power over vulnerable children Deplorable: Huckle, pictured here at the New Hope for Children orphanage, now faces up to 22 life sentences at the Old Bailey after admitting to 71 charges of rape, sexual assault and sexual activity The pastor went on: 'He wrote me back saying that he is very keen to come back and spend more with us but he never came back and didn't maintain any kind of contact. 'He used to be regular and very active on Facebook messenger and I wrote him a message but there no reply from him.' Huckle now faces life in jail after admitting to 71 charges including rape, sexual assault and sexual activity with a child at the Old Bailey. HUCKLE'S NINE-YEAR CAMPAIGN OF ABUSE ACROSS SOUTHEAST ASIA 2005 Richard Huckle first visits Malaysia on a teaching placement in his gap year 2006 He spends two weeks in Cambodia and sexually abuses two sisters aged four and six 2007 He returns to Cambodia and stays with the same family. He takes a volunteer teacher role at a small centre in their village 2011 He moves to Malaysia permanently and enrols at Kuala Lumpur University to study IT. He also claims to be working as a freelance professional photographer 2013 Huckle arranges a visit to the New Hope for Children Orphanage in Bangalore and Ambur, after finding out about it on Facebook 2014 National Crime Agency gets a tip off from police in Queensland, Australia, alerting them to the abuse Dec 2014 Huckle is arrested at Gatwick Airport after arriving to visit his parents for Christmas Feb 2015 Huckle is charged with more than 90 offences June 2016 The case can finally be reported after restrictions are lifted at the beginning of a three-day sentencing hearing Advertisement His abuse began in 2006 when he abused two sisters aged four and six. The following year he returned to Cambodia where he stayed with the same family and volunteered as a teacher at a school in the village. In 2011 he moved to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he enrolled at the Metropolitan University and studied IT and began working as a freelance photographer. In Malaysia he preyed on up to 200 children by targeting vulnerable communities. He took pictures and videos of himself raping and abusing young girls and boys and even a baby wearing a nappy. A second pastor in Kuala Lumpur told MailOnline how he confronted Huckle at his church and demanded to know why he was constantly bringing young children to the Sunday morning services without the presence of their parents. 'I've got their permission,' Huckle told the pastor. 'Well, the next time you come, make sure there is at least one parent present,' he was told. The pastor did not see Huckle again for several months - when he returned with three more children and again with no parent present. 'There was something about him that made me uneasy, but I had no reason to take any direct action against him apart from insisting that he bring a parent along so I could speak to them. 'That opportunity never arose. I never did see a parent. But what I did find out from him was that he had brought the children across the city from many miles away in an area that he was living in. 'They were impoverished youngsters who had put their trust in him, but as we know now he abused that trust. Dark: As well as bragging about his crimes on online blogs on the dark web, Huckle also wrote a 60-page handbook of instructions for other paedophiles wanted to learn how to abuse children abroad Cruel: The scale of Huckle's crimes are unprecedented in the UK, and he has become only the third British man convicted under a recent law allowing the UK to prosecute 'sex tourists' 'The three or four children he would bring, sometimes the same, sometimes different ones, made me wonder where they had come from. He simply said they were from the area he was living in.' Huckle bragged of his activity in online blogs and even wrote a 60-page handbook for how other paedophiles could groom children in developing countries. The handbook, titled Pedophiles & Poverty: Child Lover Guide, described how to go about grooming victims, plying them with alcohol and avoiding detection. 'Impoverished kids are definitely much, much easier to seduce than middle-class Western kids,' he bragged. He also said of one of his victims: 'I'd hit the jackpot, a three-year-old girls as loyal to me as my dog and nobody seemed to care.' Methods Huckle is known to have used are: offering to take photographs for children's birthday parties; posing as a private tutor to gain one-on-one time with vulnerable children; taking his young victims for days out to parks, rides on the train and even to Sunday morning church services. He made money from selling child sex abuse images and videos for the online currency Bitcoins on the dark web. Huckle's activities were uncovered when the National Crime Agency who smashed a paedophile ring in Australia. The pastor in Kuala Lumpur's suspicions that something was 'very wrong' continued until Huckle left Malaysia to return to the UK at Christmas, 2014 - and he was arrested at Gatwick Airport. He was found to have possession of more than 20,000 images of horrific child sex abuse on his laptop, although some parts of his laptop are password protected and detectives are still unable to access it. DID UK POLICE BRITAIN'S WORST EVER PAEDOPHILES TO STRIKE AGAIN? Arrest: Huckle was arrested at Gatwick Airport in 2014 after a tip-off from Australian authorities For years, Richard Huckle moved stealthily from one community to another, targeting the young, innocent and impoverished. The National Crime Agency was tipped off months before his arrest that he was sexually molesting children hardly out of nappies, photographing his exploits for other perverts as he travelled through Malaysia and Cambodia, brazenly taking his young victims on outings to parks, rides on the train and even to Sunday morning church services. But the authorities in Malaysia where he eventually settled remained unaware of his activities. The English teacher was considered a philanthropist, a committed Christian, even a saviour. Yesterday Mariza Abdulkadir, interim executive director of the Malaysian charity Protect and Save the Children Association, told the Mail: 'Yes, of course we have asked why no-one stepped forward to stop him. We cannot understand why there was no collaboration between the NCA and our own police. 'I've learned that the NCA cannot operate in another country, move in and arrest someone, but I cannot understand why our police here were not tipped off to keep a watch on him. 'Perhaps there was a fear he would realise he was being investigated and would go underground that's the only logical explanation I can come up with, but I still don't think it's strong enough to let him continue to abuse children until he returned to the UK in December 2014.' She also criticised the NCA for failing to tell community leaders in Malaysia about the extent of his crimes until 16 months after his arrest. Advertisement Huckle's parents Edwin and Christina went to the airport where he told them he was a paedophile. His mother questioned him about the allegations and he admitted to her that he had sex with children aged three to 13. When he was bailed his mother was extremely upset and extremely angry. She and his father called the police and asked them to take their son away, making it clear they didn't want him under their roof, the court was told. The Huckles told police what their son has admitted and gave statements in court for the prosecution. A school was left embarrassed when its yearbook included a quote by Adolf Hitler. Bosses at Bangor High School have asked parents and students to send the books back so a sticker can be applied to cover up the offensive words. Principal of the Maine school, Paul Butler, said the printing of the Nazi leader's quote 'anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized' was 'regrettable'. Scroll down for video The Nazi leader's quote 'anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized' was published in the yearbook (pictured) Nick Danby (pictured), president of Bangor High's Class of 2016, thinks the quote was done by students as joke or dare School bosses said the quote made it into the final edition of the book because a problem with the editing and publishing process The school managed to fix stickers to most of the books before they reached students and parents but several still contained the error. Nick Danby, president of Bangor High's Class of 2016, thinks the quote was done by students as joke or dare. School bosses said the quote made it into the final edition of the book because a problem with the editing and publishing process. Mr Danby said students needed more time to work on the yearbook so errors are caught and corrected. Bosses at Bangor High School (pictured left) have asked parents and students to send the books back so a sticker can be applied to to cover up the quote by Adolf Hitler (right) 'I've never heard someone yell an Adolf Hitler quote or Stalin or Mussolini quote, any fascist quote in the hallways and I think really at the core of this it's just a joke, a bad joke that was poorly timed and poorly executed,' he told WLBZ2. A rare Tasmanian devil with an abnormally slow heartbeat has become just the second species of its kind to be implanted with a pacemaker. The devil, named Nick, is back in his exhibit area at the San Diego Zoo after vets performed surgery to speed up his heart. 'His heartbeats were too slow and now the pacemaker is going to actually take over (pacing) his heart and is going to determine when to pace fast or slow depending on his activity,' said Dr Joao Orvalho, a cardiologist at the University of California Veterinary Medical Center in San Diego. Scroll down for video A rare Tasmanian devil with an abnormally slow heartbeat was fitted with a pacemaker at the San Diego Zoo The devil, named Nick, is back in his exhibit area at the San Diego Zoo after vets decided he needed surgery to speed up its heart The surgery was performed on May 11 and Nick was released from the hospital later that day Pacemakers are routine in humans, but implanting one in a marsupial known for screeching, biting and a pungent odor proved challenging. 'Typically when a pacemaker is placed, it's placed within the neck area,' said Dr Fred Pike, the surgeon who performed the procedure. 'But because of the conformation area and the shape of the neck, that's not possible.' Instead, Dr Pike put the pacemaker in the animal's abdomen and attached the electrode to the heart. The pacemaker was implanted in the animal's abdomen and sutured the electrode to the heart Veterinarians at San Diego Zoo decided the devil needed a pacemaker to speed up his abnormally slow heartbeat The nocturnal hunters face extinction due to a rare, contagious cancer found only in devils. The San Diego Zoo's four devils are free of the disease, the zoo said Dr. Fred Pike (pictured), the surgeon who performed the procedure, said: 'Typically when a pacemaker is placed, it's placed within the neck area. But because of the conformation area and the shape of the neck, that's not possible' The surgery was performed on May 11 and Nick was released from the hospital later that day. It is now back to feeding and screeching in his enclosure at the zoo. 'So far everything looks really good,' Dr Pike said. Tasmanian devils, which are about the size of a small dog, are native to Tasmania. The nocturnal hunters face extinction due to a rare, contagious cancer found only in devils - devil facial tumor disease. The disease kills every animal infected and has no cure. The prosecutor for St. Louis said Thursday she won't be charging two officers in the fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old last year, concluding that no evidence disproves claims by police that it was self-defense. Calling Mansur Ball-Bey's August 2015 death 'a tragedy in every aspect of the word,' Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce said the officers and a witness reported that an armed Ball-Bey ran from a home during a drug and gun raid. Both officers, who are white, have said they fired at Ball-Bey at the same time after he pointed a gun at one of them, though one officer missed, according to Joyce. Joyce, whose office investigated the shooting separately from an internal police probe, said Ball-Bey's loaded gun was found at the scene, with his palm print on the ammunition clip. Scroll down for video Mansur Ball Bey's death came a little more than a year after a white police officer, Darren Wilson, shot and killed Michael Brown, a black, unarmed 18-year-old, in nearby Ferguson, Missouri. Ball-Bey is seen in these photographs St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce said Thursday she won't be charging two officers in the fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old last year, concluding that no evidence disproves claims by police that it was self-defense A local medical examiner concluded that Ball-Bey sustained a severed spinal cord, and a bullet pierced his heart. 'One of the biggest challenges we face in this case is that there is no independent, credible witness we can put in front of a grand jury or regular jury who contradicts police statements,' Joyce said in a statement. 'None of the other witnesses had a clear view at the moment when Ball-Bey was shot.' She noted that the officers declined to speak to prosecutors. An attorney for Ball-Bey's family, Jermaine Wooten, has questioned the police account, saying officers planted the gun on Ball-Bey at the scene if there was any weapon at all. Wooten said Thursday before Joyce's announcement that he anticipated the officers would not be prosecuted, adding that he has 'been down this road before' with area police being cleared in fatal shootings involving blacks. After Joyce's decision, he reiterated that 'we're going to maintain the fact he did not have a gun that day.' Ball-Bey's death came a little more than a year after a white police officer, Darren Wilson, shot and killed Michael Brown, a black, unarmed 18-year-old, in nearby Ferguson, Missouri. Brown's August 2014 shooting sparked waves of protests, including some that turned violent, and was a catalyst for the national Black Lives Matter movement and debate over police treatment of minorities. A St. Louis County grand jury and the U.S. Department of Justice ultimately cleared Wilson, who resigned in November 2014. Ball-Bey's death led to an outcry as well, with protests leading to arrests and damaged property. St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said Thursday he was confident Joyce made her decision after 'a comprehensive review.' He said his department plans to assess possible tactical lessons that could be learned. The family of Mansur Ball-Bey listens on the steps of the Mel Carnahan Courthouse as their lawyer, Jermaine Wooten speaks Thursday. Wooten has questioned the police account, saying officers planted the gun on Ball-Bey at the scene if there was any weapon at all 'I have pledged transparency to the citizens of St. Louis and will continue to uphold this promise,' Dotson said in a statement. The law gives police officers latitude to use deadly force when they feel physically endangered. The Supreme Court held in a 1989 case that the appropriateness of use of force by officers 'must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene,' rather than evaluated through 20/20 hindsight. That standard is designed to take into account that police officers frequently must make split-second decisions during fast-evolving confrontations, and should not be subject to overly harsh second-guessing. The Justice Department cited that legal threshold last year when clearing Wilson in Brown's shooting. Last November, Joyce cleared two St. Louis police officers in the fatal shooting of 25-year-old Kajieme Powell, who in August 2014 was armed with a steak knife as he approached the officers and urged them to shoot him. The white officers fired 12 times, killing Powell, who was black, while the region already was on edge over Brown's death 10 days earlier. But last month, Joyce charged former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley with first-degree murder in a 2011 shooting of a 24-year-old black man. Joyce said Stockley, who is white, was on duty when police say he witnessed a drug deal involving Anthony Lamar Smith. She said Smith and police became involved in a chase exceeding 80 mph and that Stockley approached Smith's car after the pursuit was over, firing five times into the driver's side and striking Smith with each round. Stockley's attorneys have said he fired in self-defense. Police in suburban Atlanta say they have arrested a woman accused of attacking another woman with an American flag. A Lawrenceville Police Department incident report released Thursday says 30-year-old Amina Ali Ahra walked up to Dami Arno's home and removed the flag, mounted on 4-foot long PVC pipe, from the mailbox. The report says Ahra, wearing a burka, approached Arno in a 'threatening manner swinging the post and flag at her, hitting her with it.' Arno told 11 Alive: 'How much plainer can a hate crime be when she rips your American flag off and charges you on your own property? Scroll down for video Police in suburban Atlanta say they have arrested a woman accused of attacking another woman with an American flag. Victim Dami Arno is seen here Arno's daughter Brittany Arno has said: 'When she came charging, you know, it was kinda like momma bear instincts kinda kicked in. And momma said, she's gotta protect her children' Aisha Ibrahim, pictured, was arrested for two counts of simple battery. She was later slapped with another charge due to giving police a fake name 'It's nothing less than a hate crime.' Arno recalled to Fox 5 Atlanta: 'A lady walks up out of our woods in a full burka, full attire, and stands there and stares at us for a minute. 'And then grabs my American flag off of my mailbox and charges towards us with it, just swinging it with all her might.' The report says Arno's two children tried to help their mother during the Tuesday attack. Arno's daughter Brittany Arno told Fox 5 Atlanta: 'When she came charging, you know, it was kinda like momma bear instincts kinda kicked in. 'And momma said, she's gotta protect her children.' The suspect is being held at the Gwinnett County jail. Authorities arrested her for two counts of simple battery. The suspect's real name is Aisha Ibrahim. She was later slapped with another charge due to giving police a fake name, The Smoking Gun reported. Ibrahim is facing a misdemeanor giving false name or information charge, online jail records show. Groups have protested against the bill and rules which restrict for up to two years if found guilty Women would be banned from requesting an abortion if their child were to be born with an abnormality, under new proposed laws in Louisiana. The state's Senate has agreed to a proposal which would prohibit an abortion if the fetus had a genetic abnormality. There are fears the southern state would face huge legal fees if taken to court over the ruling. The bill would penalize the doctor who violates the ban, not the woman. If convicted, a doctor could be sentenced to up to two years in prison and could face malpractice claims and a wrongful death lawsuit. North Dakota and Indiana have enacted similar laws and Louisiana's proposal has now gone to the state's House for consideration. The state's senate has agreed to a proposal which would prohibit an abortion if the fetus had a genetic abnormality Republican Senator Dan Claitor, who usually votes for bills adding new restrictions on abortion, said he couldn't vote for the proposal. The Baton Rouge lawyer said it clearly ran afoul of court decisions upholding a woman's right to an abortion. 'Why would you put me in a box to make a choice between supporting my oath to uphold the constitution ... and being pro-life?' Claitor said. 'The bill as written, in my view, is patently unconstitutional.' Claitor's attempt to amend the bill to better inform pregnant women about services for infants born with disabilities to discourage abortion based on genetic abnormalities was voted down. Republican Regina Barrow was one of the senators who objected to Claitor's amendment. According to ABC News, she said: 'Every bill we pass can be challenged. But this bill right here protects the life of unborn children,' she said. Republican Senator Dan Claitor (left), who usually votes for bills adding new restrictions on abortion, said he couldn't vote for the proposal but Republican Regina Barrow (right) said the bill protected children Senator Karen Carter Peterson said the bill 'ignored federal law' and the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Roe v Wade which made abortions legal. Her concerns focused on the legal cost of defending the decision in a state already struggling financially. The Senate approved the bill on a 29-6 vote but added an exception that abortions would be permitted if the mother's life was in danger. Athina Onassiss Olympic medal winning husband threw his decade-long marriage away on a one-night stand with the sister of an international equestrian, Daily Mail Online has exclusively learned. Doda Miranda was found in bed with the blonde at the $2 million home that the heiress bought in the horsey-heaven of Wellington, Florida just last year. Now Miranda is desperately trying to worm his way back into the life of the heiress who inherited half of the $5 billion fortune of her shipping magnate grandfather Jacqueline Kennedys second husband. I am really in the midst of a storm, Miranda, 43, admitted to Brazilian magazine Epoca, But I will not give up on my love. It wont be easy but I will fight until the end. Daily Mail Online has learned that Miranda real name Alvaro de Miranda Neto was discovered in bed with the woman by his wifes security team, causing a scandal that has rocked the show jumping world. Now ... and then: Athina Onassis, 31, at the Global Champions Tour show jumping tournament on May 22 in Madrid (left) without her wedding band or engagement ring after her security caught husband Alvaro de Miranda Neto, known as Doda, with found cheating with another woman. She was wearing her rings just months before In one of the most recent photos of the couple together, taken last July, the couple are holding hands. Now Doda is desperately trying to worm his way back into the life of the heiress who inherited half of the $5 billion fortune of her shipping magnate grandfather - Jackie Kennedys second husband Doda Miranda was found with a blonde at the $2 million home that the heiress bought in the horsey-heaven of Wellington, Florida just last year Inside the home where Doda was discovered with a well-connected member of the international show jumping circuit a source told Daily Mail Online exclusively. Doda begged his wife's security team not to say anything, but one of them went straight to Athina. She immediately packed her bags and went off to Europe Athinas security detail is paid by her not him. They busted him having sex with another woman in the couple's new house in Wellington, a well-connected member of the international show jumping circuit told Daily Mail Online exclusively. He begged them not to say anything, but one of them went straight to Athina. She immediately packed her bags and went off to Europe. This has been the buzz in Wellington for about a month, added the source. It was apparently a one-night stand, there was nothing serious going on between them. Doda was a member of Brazils Olympic showjumping team that won bronze medals in both 1996 and 2000. Athina, 31, is an international equestrian herself and hopes to represent Greece in this summers Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She competed in the latest leg of the Longines Global Champions Tour in Chantilly, France, last weekend without her wedding band. The website Greek Reporter said she looked sad and haggard. The next leg of the tour is in Cannes starting June 9. Sources say the woman that Miranda cheated with follows her sibling around to international competitions. Other high-profile members of the tour include Bruce Springsteens daughter Jessica, and Georgina Bloomberg, daughter of New York Citys billionaire former mayor, Michael Bloomberg. Athina is having a bad year on the Longines tour, so far winning a total of just 50 Euros about $56 in four outings, according to the tours website. Last year she won more than $11,000 and in 2014, her best year, her prize money totaled nearly $70,000. Athina competed in the Longines Global Champions Tour of Chantilly on May 26. She is an international equestrian and hopes to represent Greece in this summers Olympics in Rio Doda was a member of Brazils Olympic show jumping team that won bronze medals in both 1996 and 2000 Christina Onassis, daughter of Greek shipping magnet Aristotle Onassis, is seen with Athina, at Le Jardin d'Acclimation in Paris, France. Athina's early childhood had been the stuff of dreams. Her mother gave her her own flock of sheep, complete with a shepherd, when she learned the nursery rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep. She also gave her a private zoo Athina holds her father's arm as she poses with him and his wife Swedish model Gaby Landhage and their children. After Christinas death, Athina went to live with Roussel and Landhage Any money she wins competing pales into insignificance compared with her immense wealth. She inherited an estimated $2.7 billion on her 18th birthday, and at the time was reported as the richest teenage girl in the world. But her fortune has been badly managed over the years, experts say, and she sold the jewel in the Onassis crown Aristotles private Greek island, Skorpios to Russian billionairess Ekaterina Rybolovleva in 2013 for an estimated $100 million. Her early childhood had been the stuff of dreams. Her mother Christina Onassis gave her her own flock of sheep, complete with a shepherd, when she learned the nursery rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep. She also gave her a private zoo. But all the money in the world could not shield the Onassis family from tragedy. Athina was just 3-years-old when Christina was found dead in her bath tub in 1988 aged 37. She had died of a heart attack brought on by years of eating disorders. A decade and a half earlier, Christina had lost her entire family in little more than two years. Her 24-year-old brother Alexander was killed in a plane crash in January, 1973, their mother, Athina, died of a drug overdose the following year, and Aristotle, who never recovered from his son and heirs death, succumbed in March 1975, leaving former First Lady Jackie a widow for the second time. Christina had four marriages, none of them lasting more than three years. Athina, whose father was her final husband, French pharmaceutical heir Thierry Roussel, was her only child. Athina inherited an estimated $2.7 billion on her 18th birthday, and at the time was reported as the richest teenage girl in the world Christina had four marriages, none of them lasting more than three years. Athina, whose father was her final husband, French pharmaceutical heir Thierry Roussel (above) was her only child. Athina now has no contact with her father Five years after the assassination of John F Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy married Onassis in 1968 Onassis with his first wife Athina (Tina) and children, Alexander and Christina. Christina had lost her entire family in little more than two years. Her 24-year-old brother Alexander was killed in a plane crash in January, 1973, their mother, Athina, died of a drug overdose the following year, and Aristotle, who never recovered from his son and heirs death, succumbed in March 1975, leaving former First Lady Jackie a widow for the second time Roussel fathered a son with Swedish model Gaby Landhage while Christina was pregnant, and the couple split shortly after Athina was born. After Christinas death, Athina went to live with Roussel and Landhage. Athina now has no contact with her father and has even dropped his last name. He wasnt among the 1,300 guests invited to her December 2005 marriage to Miranda in a specially constructed Roman Catholic church at a posh resort in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Mirandas father Ricardo led her down the aisle. Athina finally seemed to have found happiness with her horses and her 12-years-older husband. She learned to speak fluent Portuguese and settled down to a comfortable new life in Brazil. They lived in a 17.000 sq. ft. apartment with 15 dedicated parking spaces. But before they married, in February 24, 2003, shortly after arriving in Sao Paulo, she checked herself into a clinic, reportedly to have liposuction done on her abdomen and derriere at Doda's urging. Doda told a Brazilian magazine they spent most of their time training, and only occasionally let their hair down. We do have fun, he said. But in a more low-profile way. We go out every now and then, but we prefer a dinner to a discotheque. Athina played down her Greek heritage to such an extent that the Aristotle Onassis Foundation refused to have her on its board, calling her someone who has no connection with our culture, our religion, our language or our shared experience, and who never went to college or worked a day in her life. She didnt even visit the country that she now wants to represent at the Olympics, for 12 years. Doda told a Brazilian magazine in 2011 that they intended to start a family within a few years. Athina reportedly became pregnant in 2013, but suffered a miscarriage Athina competed in the latest leg of the Longines Global Champions Tour in Chantilly, France, last weekend without her wedding band. The website Greek Reporter said she looked sad and haggard' Athina paid $12 million for a 20-stall barn, paddock and all-weather ring, complete with grooms accommodation, set on more than 5 acres of land in Wellington near her home She can do whatever she wants with what she inherited from her mother, but not with Onassiss legacy to the Greek people, said Onassis Foundation president Stelios Papadimitriou. Miranda told a Brazilian magazine in 2011 that they intended to start a family within a few years. Athina is still very young, he said, adding that having a baby would interrupt her budding showjumping career. I also have a very busy life, he said. When a baby comes I want to reduce the number of competitions to be more present. He said that Athina spent much of her time looking after Vivienne, his daughter with model Cibele Dorsa. Dorsa committed suicide in 2011 by jumping from a Sao Paulo apartment block. Athina reportedly became pregnant in 2013, but suffered a miscarriage. She and Miranda have lived primarily in Sao Paulo but they have another base in Europe. She bought the four-bedroom, five-bath property close to the Palm Beach Polo and Country Club in Wellington to be close to the center of the United States equestrian world. She also paid $12 million for a nearby 20-stall barn, paddock and all-weather ring, complete with grooms accommodation, set on more than 5 acres of land. There was no-one at Athinas Wellington home when Daily Mail Online knocked. Many residents in much of the tony equestrian area of Wellington, a suburb of West Palm Beach, leave town when the circuit moves to foreign countries for the summer. Three miles away, at Grand Prix Village, her $12 million barn was shuttered and the gates were padlocked. Neither Athina nor Doda responded to requests for comment from Daily Mail Online. Kanye's Yeezy brand, for which Connor has modeled three times, is releasing new range on 11 June, according to Adidas to speak about their relationship but source close to Kanye's team claims Connor was only a freelance consultant Kanye West today faces calls to cut ties with 'creative collaborator' Ian Connor as yet more women tell Daily Mail Online the stylist raped them. Jenni Stampley, 19, from Chicago, alleges she was attacked by the stylist during a visit to Toronto in April, while Taryn Williams, 23, from Redlands, California, alleges she was raped in October 2014. Both waived their right to anonymity to speak to Daily Mail Online - and Stampley said that as he raped her, Connor told her: 'Shut the f*** up.' He also texted her after Daily Mail Online interviewed her to threaten to sue, saying: 'I pray that you have a good lawyer because I will be getting everything.' Connor now faces five separate rape allegations as the fresh accusations follow those of Malika Anderson, 23, of Chicago, Khadiata Diallo, 19, of New York, and 'Alyssa', 18, of Denver, all made to Daily Mail Online earlier this week. Two of the alleged victims today called for West to sever all ties with Connor, with Stampley saying: 'He should set an example by showing he stands with the women who were assaulted and that he does not support rapists even if they are his friends.' SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO Attacked: Taryn Williams, 23, told Daily Mail Online that Connor urged her to come to where he was staying, then raped her New 'victim': Jenni Stampley, 19, of Chicago is among two young women who have come forward to tell Daily Mail Online that Ian Connor used social media to befriend them - before, they say, raping her At his side: Ian Connor with Kanye. The rapper has tweeted about 'having an idea to run past' the 23-year-old. Sources close to the rapper claim he is a former 'freelance consultant'. Connor posted a video from Kanye's studio on social media this week Latest statement: Ian Connor tweeted this message on Thursday night in an apparent response to the series of rape allegations leveled against him by women in Daily Mail Online Kanye West's spokesman was first asked for a statement on his links to Connor on Wednesday but his management company has declined to discuss their relationship, both business and personal. A source close to West's team said Connor had been a consultant 'on fashion brands' and paid to model at Yeezy shows, but was 'currently not an employee of Mr West, nor a consultant'. However, the source declined to rule out West collaborating with him in the future. Connor, meanwhile, has tweeted an apparent defense against the allegations, writing: 'I Should Never Be Punished In Lies.' The latest rape allegations have significant similarities to the three women who have already told their stories. Both Stampley and Williams say they were targeted on social media by Connor, conducted lengthy exchanges before meeting him, and that he then attacked them. Williams, who lives with her mother Lori, in Redlands, California, first encountered Connor on social media, after he commented on one of her photos on Instagram on May 18 2014. Connor, a friend of a friend, continued to comment on her Instagram posts but Williams says she never responded. 'I would never reply to the comments and I even saw him out one night and I ignored him,' she told Daily Mail Online. 'He messaged me saying, 'Why didn't you come up and say anything to me?' and I said, 'Because I don't know you. Why would I come up to you?' 'And he said, 'You seem to be anti me for some reason.' I said, 'I know how you are - it seems like every different city you go to you're with a different girl, that's not me.' 'So he said, 'You've got me all wrong you should just talk to me and see what kind of guy I am.' 'We spoke for a while just texting back and forth and he seemed like an OK guy - he never talked about anything sexual, he never asked me for photos and he didn't even comment on my appearance.' The two continued to exchange messages, both on and offline, and in October 2014, Connor asked the Fashion Institute of Design and Marketing in Los Angeles student to come and spend time with him. Thinking it would be fun because of their mutual interest in fashion, she agreed. He sent an Uber to her home in Whittier and Williams traveled to his [former] apartment in L.A's Northridge. But, she claims, things began to go wrong shortly after she arrived. 'He said, 'Hi' and he was acting really odd and not looking at me and walking ahead of me, not walking with me. It was weird. 'We got into his apartment and by that time it was probably 3 or 4 am in the morning and he said, 'Well are you going to spend the night because it seems kind of stupid to just hang out and then you leave at 7 in the morning?' 'So I said, 'That's fine if you have a couch I guess I could just sleep on the couch'. He said, 'Yeah no problem,' so we're probably hanging out for about 10 minutes or so and he said, 'Do you want some pajamas just to be comfortable and I said, 'No I'm fine,' and he said, 'No, no, no just take it,' and he gave me a big jersey. The two then sat together on the couch, where, says Williams, he began attempting to touch her 'making me really uncomfortable' in the process. She continued: 'Immediately after I put the pajamas on, he starts touching me and I said, 'Stop, you said this isn't what you wanted, why are you doing this?' and he just told me I was being weird. Victim number three: 'Alyssa', 18, is a newly-graduated high school student who has told Daily Mail Online Connor raped her when she met him in Los Angeles as she looked at college options Speaking out: Malika Anderson (left) and Khaditia Diallo (right) waived their right to anonymity to tell Daily Mail Online on Wednessday their accounts of being 'raped' by Ian Connor. They were joined by 'Alyssa'. Anderson called for Kanye to cut ties to Anderson and told Daily Mail Online: 'You cannot care about women, about protecting women, and associate with Ian Connor at the same time. It has to be one or the other. 'He never answered me. I said, 'Why are you doing this when you said you weren't going to?' I was getting really upset. 'He tried to put his face down near my vagina and I pushed him with my feet really hard and said, 'Don't, just stop it!' 'It was at that point he grabbed my lower back and pulled me to him and he put his penis inside me. I pushed him out again and I said, 'Please no, stop. This isn't what I wanted and you said this isn't what you wanted, why are you lying?' 'I just kept saying that 'Why did you lie to me?' and he told me, 'You're being weird stop being weird.' 'Then he just forced himself inside me and kept going. I kind of just was waiting until he was finished and I was crying and finally he was done and he fell asleep on the floor so I just made my way to the couch and tried to fall asleep.' The next morning, Williams says Connor barely spoke to her but seemed surprised when she said she didn't want to spend the day with him. 'I was thinking, 'You just raped me I really want to go home',' she says. Williams says she was initially reluctant to tell people what happened to her for fear that she would be ridiculed. 'I thought people wouldn't believe me,' says Williams. 'I knew his fan base and it's young boys who idolize people who they don't really know. Messages: These are some of the direct messages Ian Connor exchanged with Taryn Williams before the two met. Every other woman leveling rape allegations against him this week say he used social media to befriend them Reaction: The message Connor sent this week to Jenni Stampley when he became aware that she was going to go public to accuse him of rape How he reacted: This was part of Connor's social media response to Daily Mail Online's first disclosure of the allegations against him 'Especially after the whole Bill Cosby thing came out I was terrified because everybody said these women are liars, and there's no way this could have happened.' Williams says she messaged him a week later in a bid to make sense of what happened. 'I texted him the last time, the big message on December 12, 2014,' she says. KANYE AND CONNOR: FRIEND, CONSULTANT AND 'MUSE' - AND KANYE'S HANDLERS ARE SILENT ON CLAIMS Previously employed by rapper Wiz Khalifa and New York hip hop collective, the A$AP Mob, Ian Connor is now a close friend and business associate of Kanye West. West, who was described by Connor on Instagram as 'the person who taught me how to be a man', has returned the compliment tweeting about 'being in the lab with Ian Connor' and about 'having an idea to run past @soulajan [Connor]' on social media. Connor, who has been described as being West's 'creative consultant' as well as stylist to Kylie Jenner, appeared on the catwalk during the rapper's Yeezy 3 presentation at New York Fashion Week in February. In an interview given to Billboard magazine that month, Connor talked about how he and West are 'innovators' and said: 'At the end of the day, we're making s*** cooler, we're making it better and we're making it more open-minded instead of just the standard runway look if that makes sense.' Asked to describe his role in West's team, he said: 'I'm his creative consultant so I [advise] on the clothing and [give] my ideas as far as 'this is right, this is wrong, this is cool, we should bring in this person, we should not f**k with this person.'' In a profile on Vogue.com published in February, he was described as 'being something of a muse and certainly the Yeezy poster boy' who has made an 'indelible impression' on the rapper's style. More recently, Connor hinted at being handed the reins at West's Premium Pastelle fashion line instagramming a photo of the brand's logo along with a caption that read 'Coming Soon'. Video of the rapper in the studio were also posted on Connor's Instagram feed on Tuesday this time accompanied by a caption calling it 'the best 9-5 ever' - suggesting the 23-year-old filmed it. Daily Mail Online first approached Kanye West's management company for a statement on his links with Connor on Wednesday. His spokesman has declined to speak on the record. However a source close to Kanye's team said Connor 'has only worked in a freelance consultant capacity' but agreed that the stylist worked for Yeezy: 'He was hired as a model in the previous three fashion shows.' The source also said 'there are currently no plans' for future collaboration - but that is hardly ruling out more work with Connor in the future. Daily Mail Online has approached Adidas, West's partner in Yeezy, for comment. The next Yeezy release is on 11 June, Adidas Originals announced on Thursday. Advertisement The text message, seen by Daily Mail Online, said: 'I'm not texting you to talk or be your friend because I would never want that after seeing what kind of person you are. 'But before I can delete your number you need to apologize for what you did to me. I wanted to just be your friend because I respected you and you lied to me and used me. I can't just get over it because I'm not just a thing I'm a person.' Connor's response was brief. 'I'm sorry you're right, I'm just disconnected', he wrote. In Stampley's case, her first and only meeting with Connor came a month after the pair first began talking on Twitter and followed an argument over her refusal to visit him in New York. When she said no, he became angry. 'Eventually, he got mad and was like, whatever,' says Stampley. 'I expected him to be just mad and I thought he would talk to me later but he didn't. 'So a week later, I texted him and I was like, I'm sorry I didn't mean for it [the refusal] to come across like that.' Connor replied with an invitation to Canada and this time Stampley, at a loose end on a Friday night, agreed to fly to Toronto paid for by the stylist. When she arrived, on April 1, she was met by his friends 'they were all really nice to me' and driven to the bar where Connor was spending his evening. But when the group left to return to their hotel, Stampley says the Yeezy 'creative collaborator' became tactile en route, thrusting his fingers into her mouth and asking her to suck them. Once at the hotel, she says she swiftly discovered that no extra room had been booked for her and that she would be expected to share with him. He then insisted she change into one of his shirts before telling her to get into bed with him. A 'nervous' Stampley complied. 'I was like, OK, and got into bed with him,' she says. 'He was trying to do the same kind of stuff to me that he was doing in the car. I was like, no I don't want to have sex. 'Then he got behind me and held my waist from behind. I asked him to move but he said no and kept telling me to relax. 'I thought, if I say no, he's not going to do anything. I've never met anybody, said no and had them just keep going. I was sure he wasn't going to do anything else, so I just stopped moving. 'Then I saw him out of the corner of my eye taking off his pants, or maybe his boxers, and he noticed I'd seen him and turned me back around. 'So I said, no, I'm not going to have sex and he told me to relax again. I could hear he was getting a little mad. He was getting louder and he said, you need to stop. So I stopped moving. 'I could feel him pressed against me so I tried to move but he just grabbed the back of my neck and my hair and pushed my face into the pillow. 'I think I had a bun and he was holding the back of it. Then he just proceeded I guess. He was holding my hair and pushing my face into the pillow. 'I was trying to talk and he was like, 'shut the f*** up'. So then I stopped [trying to move]. He's not big but I tried to move at first and I couldn't so I just stopped.' Afterwards, Stampley says she lay on the bed aghast, before moving to a sofa in a different room and trying to get some sleep. Two hours later, she got up and had a shower. Connor slept through the night and then got up to attend a business meeting later on, leaving Stampley alone in the hotel suite. Asked why she stayed, she says: 'I didn't have any other way to get home. He was paying [for the flight] and he only bought me a one way ticket so I had to wait until he bought the other ticket.' On his return, she claims Connor insisted they had sex again. 'He came back and he was trying to have sex with me again,' she says. 'I told him I didn't really want to have sex, but he was like, "come on". I just did it because I just wanted to get home and I didn't think he was going to pay for me to go home if I didn't do anything so I did it. I just did it anyway. 'He was really aggressive, pulling my hair and he even recorded it.' She added: 'He even FaceTimed somebody while it was going on. One of his friends FaceTimed him and he picked up and was showing them. 'I said, you need to put that down but he was like, whatever. I just wanted to go home.' Later, says Stampley, he brought another two girls to the room and suggested that they engage in group sex which she declined to do. On the catwalk: Connor (front row, left) was one of the models in Kanye West's Yeezy collection in February of this year in New York. He modeled in two other Yeezy shows and been paid for it. Inner circle: Ian Connor (circled) is a stylist for Kylie Jenner (center) and has been a 'freelance consultant' to Kanye (second from left) and has met other members of the family as a result. He then disappeared off to a bar, leaving her alone and desperate to go home. Connor then insisted she come to meet him at a club, only for her to discover he had left and gone back to the hotel without her. The next morning, Stampley confronted Connor and asked for her ticket home which he finally agreed to give to her. 'I woke Ian and told him I needed a ride to the airport,' she says. 'Ian, he was mad, he had an attitude, so he was like, well, can't you get it? 'I was like, OK, I'll get it. If you want me to get it because I'm not having sex with you anymore, that's fine. I called Uber, got myself an Uber. Then I just went to the airport and went home.' 'He definitely doesn't have respect for women,' says Stampley. 'He'll be a nice person but when it comes to sex, he's mad. He has no respect at all. 'He will call you a b**** because he thinks he can call you a b**** and get away with it.' Stampley said her first thought on returning to Chicago was to go to the police. 'If you say no and someone keeps going, that's rape,' she says. 'It doesn't matter what you say or what you do after, it's still rape. So I was like, ok, that's what happened to me. I called Toronto but they said you need to file where you live. 'I went to the police and told them a bunch of stuff. I showed them pictures of when I was there, a picture of me and him together. 'They said I need to re-file with Cook County [Chicago] because I live in a small town it needs to be a bigger county. So I still need to do that.' However, she says she has been reluctant to confide in friends about the incident and claims she has already lost one or two who say her decision to come forward is merely attention seeking. She adds: 'I wasn't going to say anything but I know if I don't, he's going to keep doing it and keep doing it. Two homes were destroyed and a third sustained minor damage in the fire Two neighbouring houses have been destroyed by a fire as nine people are left homeless. The blaze began at a Depot Hill home in the central Queensland city of Rockhampton at around 1am on Friday morning. Fire services arrived to one completely home engulfed in flames and despite their efforts, it spread to a neighbouring property. Firefighters feared people may have been trapped, but everyone has since been accounted for. The fire began at a Depot Hill home in the central Queensland city of Rockhampton at around 1am on Friday morning Two homes have been completely destroyed and a third sustained minor damage. 'We turned up to one house well alight and with two houses under threat. One of the houses was just too close and it caught alight and has been lost as well,' Fire service officer Gavin Shuker told The Morning Bulletin. 'The house on the southern side actually started to smoke, got burn marks and melting and actually started to light up within the eaves, but we managed to save that.' According to the paper, a family of four lived in one of the destroyed homes and a family of five lived in the other. Mr Shuker said initial reports indicated two people were trapped in the blaze. 'We have a report of two people missing and rescue was our priority when we first turned up,' he said. 'After a few minutes we confirmed that all persons were out and the priority went to saving the other houses. A family of four lived in one of the destroyed homes and a family of five lived in the other. A third home sustained minor damage Fire services arrived to one completely home engulfed in flames and despite their efforts, it spread to a neighbouring property Initial reports indicated two people were trapped in the blaze when fire services arrived. It was later confirmed that all nine people had escaped Firefighters got the fire under control at around 2.30am, it has not been reported yet what caused the blaze. Fire service officer Gavin Shuker said that homes in the area are all built with wood and catch alight very quickly Mr Shuker said firefighters had done well to contain the fire to just two homes. 'In this area, Depot Hill, (homes) are all built with wood ... the houses catch alight very quickly once a fire starts.' Malcolm Turnbull's father-in-law described Tony Abbott as a 'lunatic' in a letter he penned to his brother. 'To elect Abbott in his place is the equivalent of putting the bull in charge of the china shop or the principal lunatic in charge of the asylum,' Tom Hughes, a former attorney-general, wrote in 2009, according to a new biography. In another letter - this time to Mr Turnbull - Mr Hughes urged him to stay in politics after losing the Liberal leadership, saying 'the party's present folly will pass'. Former Attorney General Tom Hughes QC (pictured centre with son-in-law and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and daughter Lucy Turnbull) was very critical of former Liberal leader Tony Abbott The revelations will appear later this month in the former attorney-general's forthcoming book 'Tom Hughes QC: A Cab on the Rank', written by Liberal Party historian Ian Hancock. The Australian also reports that the book republishes an angry letter from Mr Hughes to his brother, the late Robert Hughes - a well-respected art critic and historian - clearing criticising the decision to make Mr Abbott the Liberal leader. 'This is a potentially catastrophic decision,' he wrote. 'To elect Abbott in his place is the equivalent of putting the bull in charge of the china shop or the principal lunatic in charge of the asylum. 'Abbott's behaviour in relation to the risks of global warming may be compared to the oscillations of the weather vane.' Mr Hughes urged Mr Turnbull to stay in politics after losing the Liberal leadership and called Mr Abbott a 'lunatic' in a letter he penned to his brother Mr Turnbull was expected to launch the book but he has reportedly now pulled out of the role, with the former High Court chief justice Murray Gleeson doing the job instead. Mr Hughes, 92, was Liberal MP for the NSW seats of Parkes and Berowra from 1963 to 1972. He was attorney-general from 1969 to 1971. A famous figure in Sydney and Australian Bars for six decades, he first enlisted in the RAAF during World War II, and tried his hand at horse racing and farming in a colourful life. The former principal of an elite ultra-orthodox Jewish school has been allowed to walk free despite being wanted on 74 child sex charges. Malka Leifer is wanted by Victorian police for 74 charges of indecent assault and rape allegedly involving girls at the Adass Israel School in Melbourne, but a judge in Israel, where she fled in 2008 after being accused, has ruled she's not mentally fit to be extradited to Australia, the ABC reported. According to the report, Leifer has avoided 10 extradition proceedings in the past two years, claiming she suffers panic attacks and is too unwell to face court. Adass Israel School in Melbourne, where Malka Leifer was principal. She's accused of sexually abusing girls who were pupils at the school Malka Leifer, who fled Australia for Israel in 2008 After a psychiatrist's report released on Thursday said she was mentally unwell and after a judge said she couldn't face extradition, her house arrest in Israel will be lifted. She doesn't have to face an extradition hearing until after she's completed psychiatric treatment - which could last years, according to the ABC. The decision has stunned Australian authorities and those campaigning to seek justice for the alleged victims, including Australian-Israeli victim advocate Manny Waks. He said: 'Some of Leifer's alleged victims feel devastated and completely let down by Israel's legal system,' according to the ABC. The Israeli prosecutor's office has been given 72 hours to appeal, and is expected to do so. In April, a woman who alleged she'd been sexually abused by Leifer spoke out for the first time. She told ABC Lateline how she still struggled daily with consequences of the alleged abuse, which happened over a three-year period at school and on camps. Australian-Israeli victim advocate Manny Waks (pictured) said Leifer's alleged victims were 'devastated' by the decision The woman said when she first spoke about the abuse she wasn't believed and was told to keep quiet. Eventually a second victim came forward, but within hours of the allegations being made, Leifer fled Australia with her family in the middle of the night. She was arrested and put under house arrest six years later, in 2014, following an extradition request from Australia. Conrad Joseph Carter has been charged with murder He was allegedly punched by a 32-year-old during a fight in Morayfield KFC He died from head injuries in Royal Brisbane and Womens Hospital unconscious at a KFC in Brisbane on Wednesday A man charged with assault following a one-punch attack in the car park of a KFC in Queensland has had his charge upgraded to murder. Police allege Conrad Joseph Carter fatally punched Wayne Tolme, 50, in the car park of the fast food restaurant in Morayfield, north of Brisbane, about 7.30pm on Thursday. Mr Tolme died in Royal Brisbane and Womens Hospital yesterday afternoon. Scroll down for video A 50-year-old man died after he was allegedly punched and knocked unconscious at a KFC north of Brisbane on Wednesday night Carter, 32, was previously charged with grievous bodily harm, but his charge has been upgraded to murder. He was remanded in custody when he briefly appeared in the Caboolture Magistrates Court yesterday, but will appear again today. It is alleged that Carter knocked the victim to the ground with one punch and further attacked him while he was unconscious. Mr Tolme was rushed to Royal Brisbane and Womens Hospital with critical head injuries before dying on Thursday afternoon, the Courier Mail reported. He went into cardiac arrest and paramedics had to perform extensive CPR to revive him. It is alleged Mr Tolme had been abusing members of the public prior to the assault. Anyone with information is being urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 A smoking bandit pretended to be a member of a gym so he could steal the centre's computers and electrical equipment, police claim. The fake fitness fanatic entered the One & Health Fitness centre in South Morang in Melbourne's north-east last month after staff had finished for the day. He spent nearly four hours inside the centre, before leaving through an emergency exit shortly after 11pm. Scroll down for video The fake fitness fanatic entered a gym in South Morang in Melbourne's north-east last month after staff had finished for the day He spent nearly four hours inside the centre, before leaving through an emergency exit shortly after 11pm He allegedly made off with valuable electrical equipment and computers. Police have released CCTV images of the man and are hoping someone will recognise him. A police spokesperson said: 'Police are appealing for public assistance to help locate a man who committed a burglary at a fitness centre in South Morang last month. 'The offender gained entry to the Plenty Road Gym after hours by pretending to be a member at about 7.30pm on 21 May. A police spokesperson said: 'Police are appealing for public assistance to help locate a man who committed a burglary at a fitness centre in South Morang last month' 'Once inside he spent about four hours stealing items including electrical and computer equipment.' The Whittlesea Crime Unit is continuing the investigation. A fisherman in Florida made an unexpected catch when he discovered an ATM machine at the bottom of a retention pond. A 22-year-old Palm Coast man was fishing when he found the cash machine submerged about one-foot under water in a pond near Royal Palms Parkway on Friday, The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported. The empty gray ATM was covered in algae when it was recovered and appeared to have been open from the bottom, according to Flagler County Sheriff's deputies. A fisherman in Florida made an unexpected catch when he discovered an ATM (pictured) machine at the bottom of a retention pond Deputies removed the machine from the pond, hauling it to an impound yard, and informed the company that manufactured it about the discovery. It is not clear how long the cash machine had been under water and deputies said it had not been reported stolen. At the time, the fisherman told deputies he fishes frequently at the pound and that water levels are normally not that low, according to Click Orlando. He noted he had not seen the ATM in the pond prior to Friday's discovery. Deputies are still investigating but so far have not been able to determine where the cash machine was taken from. A TV breakfast show host in New Zealand has dissolved into fits of laughter during a weather report, after seeing a phallic image of a water trough over the north of Auckland. TVNZ breakfast weather presenter Sam Wallace is seen describing the water spout, which appeared over the north of the city on Wednesday. 'Quite an amazing thing to be fair, pushing in over the top of the country,' he says. Scroll down for video TVNZ's breakfast weather presenter Sam Wallace (pictured) is discussing the weather over the north of Auckland on Wednesday He then turns to the image displayed behind him and asks viewers and his fellow presenters if they can see anything else in the picture, if they take a step back He then gestures towards an image displayed on the screen behind him and says 'When you take a step back, is there anything else you see in this picture?' Presenter Rawdon Christie, who is watching on, exclaims: 'Oh Sam you didn't have to say that!' To which Sam innocently replies: 'What?' 'It's about as subtle as a sledgehammer mate!' says Rawdon Christie, as his fellow presenter Melissa Stokes dissolves into fits of laughter. Sam looks very pleased with himself, saying 'There's a lot of detail' To which Melissa Stokes replies, laughing out loud with her hand over her mouth: 'Oh my goodness!' Presenter Rawdon Christie (left) then replies with 'Oh Sam, you didn't have to say that!' while fellow presenter Melissa Stokes (centre) cracks up laughing Sam Wallace then looks pretty pleased with himself, replying 'What?' and then commenting that 'there was a lot of detail' The estranged wife of a New South Wales man has accused him of posting nude photos of her online, sending her abusive Facebook messages and stalking her at her workplace. The 39-year-old man, who has previously received suspended jail sentences, denied the allegations in the Gladstone Courthouse and made an application for bail. He allegedly went online in May and set up an account on blogging platform Tumblr using his wife's details, where he uploaded a series of naked and sexual images of her reported the Gladstone Observer. The former wife of a New South Wales man has accused him of uploading nude photos of her online His wife reportedly told police he was the only person who had possession of those images. The man is also accused of sending abusive messages to her via Facebook on May 22 and turning up at her workplace, where he was refused entry by the woman's boss. The woman told police when she was being escorted to her car by security, her husband was spotted sitting in a car parked nearby. Following his arrest, the man said he would live away from Gladstone and not have any contact with his former wife. Prosecutor Sgt Barry Stevens said police opposed bail as the man already had 10 convictions for breaches against court-imposed Domestic Violence Orders. When he appeared in custody, he was charged with three new counts of contravening the domestic violence orders. The 39-year-old man allegedly uploaded nude photos of his ex-wife onto blogging platform Tumblr (left) creating an account in her name. He is also accused of sending her abusive messages on Facebook (right) Sgt Stevens told magistrate Richard Lehmann the man had previously received suspended jail sentences and been put on probation but he was alleged to have re-offended. He said the man was convicted of four counts of breaching domestic violence orders and given an eight months' suspended jail sentence. 'It is also disturbing the way he is stalking her. Police have little confidence that he will not commit further offences,' Sgt Stevens said. Defence lawyer Jun Pepito said the man denied sending the abusive messages on Facebook, as his former wife had 'blocked him'. Mr Pepito also said the man was suffering from depression and if he was granted bail, he was planning to seek medial treatment on the Sunshine Coast. Mr Lehmann refused the man's bail application, saying the Crown case appeared strong and jail was within range for the offences if they were proven. The couple were previously together for more than a decade. The case has been adjourned. Scientists are preparing to trial the 'Holy Grail' of drugs which could prevent millions of heart attack, stroke and cancer deaths. The antibody which prevents blood clotting and bleeding at the same time is expected to soon undergo clinical trials and could be saving patients' lives within a decade. Cambridge University Professor Jim Huntington, speaking at the Hay Festival yesterday, said thrombosis was currently behind one in three deaths, but the new drug could change this. Cambridge University Professor Jim Huntington said 30,000 people die in the UK every year after suffering a clot during a hospital stay and this could be stopped with an injection of the drug (file photo) Scientists have long been investigating a way of reducing blood clotting while stopping bleeding at the same time. But Prof Huntington said early signs showed the new drug known for now as Ichorcumab did just that by targeting the enzyme responsible for blood clotting. He said: 'It won't make you immortal but you are going to have find something else to die of.' The professor said 30,000 people die in the UK every year after suffering a clot during a hospital stay and this could be stopped with an injection of the drug. He also said a generation of people over 60 could one day use the injections regularly to ward off the risk of strokes and heart attacks. He said: 'Perhaps everybody over a certain age will be wanting to take this I know I will.' The antibody prevents blood clotting and bleeding at the same time and is expected to undergo clinical trials (file photo) The drug could also be used help cancer sufferers fight off clots and give chemotherapy more time to work effectively, he claimed. He said: 'Imagine if one third of deaths in the industrialised world were preventable. That's 425 people who don't need to die every day.' The development of the drug was triggered after a chance medical observation of a woman who had fallen in her kitchen and had a headache for five weeks. She had, by chance, gone to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge in 2008 where doctors were baffled that despite a severe head injury, her blood was not clotting and the bleeding soon stopped. The university scientists found she had a natural antibody in her veins which prevented her blood from clotting and used it to produce a synthetic version for the new drug. Thousands of violent thugs and rapists from the EU are walking Britains streets and clogging up our jails because the Government has failed to send them home. The presence of the criminals who arrived here under EU freedom of movement rules is undermining David Camerons case to remain in the EU, a report warns today. The inquiry by MPs found the top three foreign nationalities inside our packed prisons are all now from inside the EU with almost 1,000 from Poland alone and 600 from Romania. Despite the Prime Minister repeatedly pledging to end the scandal, there were 4,171 criminals from the EU behind bars in England and Wales in December. Warning: Thousands of violent thugs and rapists from the EU are walking Britains streets and clogging up our jails because the Government has failed to send them home (file photo) They include rapists, robbers, paedophiles and drug dealers. The figure is all the more startling because there is a European agreement in place to send them home. Including those from the EU, the committee says there are more than 13,000 foreign criminals in Britain a number equivalent to a small town either in jail or walking our streets . More of those now living in the community after finishing their sentences have successfully resisted deportation by using human rights legislation. In its report today, Westminsters Home Affairs Select Committee says the Government has consistently failed to get a grip on the shambolic system for kicking out foreign convicts. And it says the failure to deport more EU criminals is so dire that it casts doubt on the point of the UK remaining a member of the EU. The committee report also warns it would take a modern miracle for Mr Cameron to meet his pledge to cut migration to under 100,000. The intervention is another blow to the Prime Minister, who has spent the past week under constant attack over his immigration record. A series of revelations about record levels of EU immigration and how people smugglers are exploiting Britains porous borders have made the referendum contest too close to call. The cross-party committee which includes leading figures in the In camp - said: There are too many foreign national offenders from European Union countries still in the United Kingdom. The public is entitled to expect a more efficient process for prisoner transfers. It is surprising that of the predominant foreign nationalities in UK prisons, the top three are from EU countries: 983 from Poland, 764 from Ireland, and 635 from Romania. The Home Office has failed to tackle this issue sufficiently, as EU prisoners should be the first to be removed and accepted by their countries of origin. The clear inefficiencies demonstrated by this process will lead the public to question the point of the UK remaining a member of the EU. Despite the Prime Minister repeatedly pledging to end the scandal of foreigners clogging up our packed prisons, a staggering 9,895 were behind bars in England and Wales in December. Of these, 4,171 were from the EU 42 per cent. The cost of housing them is an estimated 150million a year. Britain is entitled to deport criminals from the European Union if they are sentenced to jail while non-EU criminals must have served at least one year behind bars. Meanwhile, there are an unacceptable 5,789 foreign offenders are living in the community awaiting deportation the highest number for five years. It is up nearly 20 per cent on the previous year. VILE THUGS WHO ARE STILL HERE THE VIOLENT GANGLEADER Dawid Tychon led a Polish gang who attacked a father-of-four at his 2million home in London. Professor Paul Kohler was appallingly injured when he was beaten in front of his family. He was sentenced to 13 years after admitting aggravated burglary. THE SEX ATTACKER Gintas Burkinas, from Lithuania, walked into Britain after he was released from a ten-year jail term in his homeland. Within weeks, he raped a 31-year-old. He pleaded guilty to rape and grievous bodily harm and was sentenced to seven years. THE DOUBLE RAPIST Convicted Polish rapist Rafal Bargiel, 40, came to Britain under a false name before subjecting two young women to prolonged sexual attacks to teach them a lesson. He was convicted of rape and false imprisonment and jailed for life last December. KNUCKLE-DUSTER KILLER Viktor Lakatos, 42, moved here in 2012 from Slovakia where he had served a six years for GBH. He was jailed in January for 18 years after launching a barbaric knuckle-duster attack on a defenceless 89-year-old jeweller. THE MURDEROUS BURGLAR Ireneusz Bartowski, a convicted burglar, 22, stabbed an elderly couple to death in 2011 a week after arriving in the UK to stay with his sister. He was jailed for life with a minimum tariff of 34 years for double murder. THE KNIFE RAPIST Mustafa Abdullah was jailed for ten years for raping a pregnant woman at knifepoint. He was ordered to be deported but immigration judges refused saying it would breach his family rights. THE PAEDOPHILE AND RAPIST Victor Akulic, from Lithuania, raped a woman within a year of entering Britain. He even filmed the attack, and then forced the woman to watch the footage when she gave evidence. He was jailed for life with a minimum eight-and-a-half years. REVENGE KILLER AND RAPIST Ciprian Stanescu, 41, a Romanian, raped a woman within a year of arriving in the UK. He had been jailed for a revenge killing in his home country. He admitted rape and was jailed for eight years last September. CHILD TRAFFICKER AND SEX OFFENDER Eduard Peticky, a Slovakian was jailed for life for abusing and trafficking children in Rotherham. He travelled to England in 2008 and was allowed to stay despite convictions for rape in his home country. THE AXE MURDERER Intars Pless, a Latvian, was convicted of murdering a drinking companion with an axe in 1994. After his release, he moved to the UK. He was convicted of causing death while drink-driving and jailed for ten years. THE KILLER DRIVER Aso Mohammed Ibrahim ran over and killed Amy Houston, 12, in 2003 while banned from driving. The Iraqi was allowed to stay after serving a mere four months in jail because he had two children here. THE CHILD SEX ATTACKER Asylum seeker William Danga was jailed for ten years for raping a 16-year-old. After his release, the Congolese refugee, 40, raped two young girls while fighting deportation, and is now serving a 15-year sentence. Advertisement Instead of being locked up until thrown out, they are freed to protect their human rights, at risk of absconding and potentially putting the public in danger. Nearly a third 1,865 have been loose for more than five years. A string of murders and sex attacks have been committed by foreign nationals who should already have been booted out. Other horrendous crimes were committed by those let in after exploiting EU free movement rules. Justice Minister Dominic Raab, a leading Brexit campaigner, said it was clear the EU was making Britain less safe. He added: This damning report shows that the EU is making it more difficult to remove dangerous criminals which puts us at risk. It also costs UK taxpayers huge sums of money to keep these people in our prisons rather than sending them home. HOW THE AMERICANS SCREEN OUT EXTREMISTS The United States deploys a much tougher regime than Britain to screen out potential extremists and criminals who attempt to reach American soil. At the US border, fingerprints are harvested from all foreign arrivals to ensure anyone attempting to use a false ID can be identified. Prints are also retained for cross-checking if they later show up at a crime scene. It also utilises a formidable intelligence and security network to target undesirables, including passing a Bill in December which introduced restrictions on its visa-free travel scheme. America also maintains a no fly list of people who are to be denied the right to board US-bound flights, containing 47,000 names. Its database of suspected terrorists holds more than one million names. Britain has similar databases, principally the Warnings Index which checks if terrorists and criminals are trying to sneak in. But last year it emerged this broke down twice a week on average. Further, any EU citizen can enter the UK without a visa, just as Britons can travel freely around the continent. When EU nationals arrive at the border, their passport details are checked against a watchlist of suspects. But unless an offender is high-profile, the system is unlikely to be aware of their previous convictions. Advertisement The committees scathing 53-page report said it was surprising the top three nationalities of convicts were from EU countries: 983 from Poland, 764 from Ireland, and 635 from Romania. This is despite a prisoner transfer agreement under which Britain is supposed to be able to compulsorily deport European nationals who are jailed by the UK courts. Committee chairman Keith Vaz an ex-Europe Minister and pro-EU campaigner said: Despite repeated warnings, the Home Office is still unable to remove foreign offenders from the UK. These failures are undermining confidence in the UKs immigration system and in the UKs EU membership. Critics will point to the lack of progress since 2006 when Charles Clarke, then the Labour home secretary, was forced to resign over the failure to boot out 1,000 foreign criminals. Two years ago the National Audit Office found that the UK has more than 107 Prison Transfer Agreements with countries around the world. But on average, only 39 foreign prisoners a year were removed through the deals. Once a convict has served their sentence, they can only continue to be held if there is a good chance of them being deported imminently. But many challenge their deportation orders, often using controversial human rights or asylum laws. New figures show that 416 foreign offenders were freed between October and December last year after completing their sentences, but only six were deported. Another 14 were given permission to stay. The committee said too many EU convicts were still in prison because the Home Office had failed to tackle the problem. Figures last month revealed fewer than two EU prisoners a month were being deported from UK jails after a Brussels transfer deal descended into farce. The idea is that the prisoners will serve their sentences back home with the UK taxpayer no longer picking up the bill. But the system has been hit by problems. In total, only 402 EU prisoners have been sent home since 2007, mainly under bilateral agreements between Britain and individual countries. Vacuum cleaner salesmen in New Zealand may be the world's pushiest peddlers. A day after the tale of Dunedin mother-of-three Leonie Padgett - who endured a three-hour home invasion by a spruiker for a $4,500 cleaner - stormed the internet, another woman in the city has come forward with an even worse tale. Hair stylist Jane Hutton said a vacuum salesman from the same company came to her home and for hours pushed her to buy a $3,500 machine. He only left - at 1am - after her husband told him: 'We are not buying your f***ing vacuum cleaner,' Stuff.co.nz reported. In both cases the salesmen were from the South Island Clean Air company. Hair stylist Jane Hutton (right) with husband Andrew, who she says saved her from buying a $3500 vacuum cleaner after a salesman didn't leave their house until 1am - after a five hour sales pitch Dunedin, New Zealand hair stylist Jane Hutton, who described an ordeal with a salesman were the South Island Clean Air company Mrs Hutton said she came 'this close' to buying the appliance before her husband 'saved' her. Her ordeal started in the same way as Ms Padgett's - she took a phone survey with promises of a chance to win a prize. She was later told she'd won one, either a chopping block or coasters, and it was organised that the prize would be dropped at her home - but when the person arrived he launched into a lengthy sales pitch - and the prize turned out to be from a '$2 shop'. Not only did the salesman subject her to a five-hour push, but also made rude jokes, cleaned the demonstration vacuum in her laundry and left a pile of dust behind, Stuff reported. Her story comes after Leonie Padgett, also from Dunedin, described how she was cold-called to do a 'quick' survey, and was called three days later by SICA who said she was their daily prize winner. A salesman later delivered the glass platter with a NZ$6 price tag from a discount store still on it, and stayed at the Caversham for three hours until 10.45pm on Monday. Mother-of-three Leonie Padgett (pictured), from Dunedin in New Zealand, was cold-called to do a survey and then offered a prize. A salesman then showed up at her door with a NZ$6 platter which still had the pricetag on it, before staying a further three hours in the hopes of selling a NZ$4500 vacuum cleaner 'Taking a 30sec phone survey was the biggest mistake of my life,' Ms Padgett wrote on Facebook It appeared to Ms Padgett the cheap prize was merely a Trojan horse into their home in an attempt to sell a $4500 vacuum, The Monarch. She said he had brought in three big bags 'of god knows what' and asked them to turn their television off, 'where he can place this machine so we can see the work it does'. The demonstration of The Monarch involved stripping their sheets to vacuum the mattress before dumping the suctioned dust on their floor, Stuff reported. Eventually, the salesman named Jake said the vacuum would cost them NZ$4500 (AU$4227). When Ms Padgett said their family of five with one income lives paycheck to paycheck and could not afford it, the salesman offered them the sale with a NZ$500 deposit and weekly instalments to pay the remaining. Ms Padgett had been cold-called to complete a survey. Three days later she was told she'd won the company's 'daily prize', a glass platter 'I actually was near in tears when he wouldn't leave after me asking twice,' she wrote on Facebook. He eventually left about 10.45pm 'unhappy he didn't get a sale' but not before using their sink to wash the vacuum, drinking a glass of water and using their bathroom. In a Facebook rant on Tuesday, Ms Padgett said she was already in her pyjamas and dressing gown when the man showed up on Monday evening. 'I was and still am ropeable,' she wrote. She said she was concerned for others who could get 'sucked in' by the sales tactic. 'Taking a 30sec phone survey was the biggest mistake of my life.' SICA defended their sale tactic and products '100 per cent' to Stuff. Company director Keri Neame said they cold-called residents from the phone book and asked them to complete a survey. If they were receptive they would contact them again before showing them the product in person. Hours later, a salesman arrived at her door in Dunedin bearing the gift - which still had its NZ$6 pricetag on it from a discount store - and a $4500 vacuum to sell He said they have a 'no-pressure policy'. Customers have seven days to return the product. Consumer NZ warned against the company in March this year after Dunedin woman Petrina Virtue had a salesman stay at her home for six hours until she made a NZ$3,750 purchase on her credit card. She cancelled the purchase the following day. Consumer adviser Maggie Edwards told Daily Mail Australia said door-to-door vacuum sellers are a cause of regular complaints. 'People are too quick to say: "Why did they let them in?"' Ms Edwards said. She said it was great some people were assertive enough to ask the saleperson to leave immediately. 'Not everybody has that ability, and that's what they [the companies] count on,' Ms Edwards said. 'It is the most vulnerable who will be probably at most risk.' Ms Edwards said anyone who has trouble with an uninvited direct sales in New Zealand can report the company to the Commerce Commission, the equivalent of the ACCC, by email or by phoning 0800 943 600. There is more information about the right to cancel purchases here. A North Carolina resident said she discovered a body inside a freezer she had purchased for $30 at a yard sale. Goldsboro police said they responded to a home last week in reference to the discovery of possible human remains, and when officers arrived, they located a woman's body inside the chest freezer. The resident who found the remains, and wishes to not be identified, told WRAL the seller told her the items in the freezer were for a Sunday school project and the church would come collect them. Scroll down for video A North Carolina resident, who wishes to not be identified (pictured right as she speaks to a reporter), said she discovered a body inside a freezer she had purchased for $30 at a yard sale Police responded to this residence last Friday in reference to the discovery of possible human remains. The resident said at the time, the seller told her the items in the freezer were for a Sunday school project and the church would come collect them But three weeks later, she said no one came by to collect the items, so she grew suspicious and decided to look in the freezer. She was shocked when she saw a frozen foot inside. 'I was just in shock,' the resident told WRAL. 'I opened it up for a second time and my heart went into my throat. I ran out of the house and called 911.' The remains were sent to a medical examiner's office the following day and an autopsy was conducted on Wednesday, police said. The victim - whose body was intact and not dismembered in any way - was an elderly woman who was a Goldsboro resident, according to WRAL. She has not been identified until authorities notify her next of kin and the medical examiner said there are no signs of foul play, ruling her death as natural, police said. After three weeks passed and no one came to her home to collect the items, the resident said she grew suspicious and decided to look inside the freezer which was sitting in a spare room (shown above) The resident thinks the elderly woman's remains belong to the mother of the seller. She also noted she has not seen the elderly woman since the Fall, when she believes the victim had a stroke, according to WRAL. Neighbors told the station that the seller of the freezer moved to West Virginia. Police are still working to determine how the body ended up in the freezer and are investigating the crime as concealing or failing to notify the death of a person, which is a felony. Authorities are also looking to see if any other crimes have occurred since the victim's death. There was no evidence to suggest the couple started the fire A neighbour said she saw the family leave home moments before the blaze The couple's home was partly destroyed in a fire in October 2014 NRMA has been ordered to pay a family more than $500,000 after they wrongfully accused the parents of burning down their own home for compensation. Brett and Yvonne Wrigley lost part of the four-bedroom home they shared with their daughter and grandson in Triabunna, on Tasmania's east coast, in October 2014. The family claimed the fire started in the family room when they were not home, during a trial at the Federal Court in Hobart. A Tasmanian family sued the NRMA after they accused them for deliberately burning down their home But their Insurance company, NRMA, refuted the claim, instead siding with a neighbour who recalled seeing the family speeding out of the driveway before a loud explosion occurred inside the property. The back of the house was destroyed by the fire and the front was damaged from smoke. Belongings were left charred, and debris was left lying in the backyard of the property. Although the NRMA noted that the family struggled with their finances the court found their financial situation was not any different to other families. The neighbour's recount was noted to be 'inconsistent' and 'no ignitable liquid was found to be present in samples taken from the scene of the fire.' The insurance giant has to pay Brett and Yvonne Wrigley $407,900 as well as a further $31,735 in interest and costs NRMA had chosen to side with a neighbour who claimed to have seen the family speeding out of their driveway moments before an explosion was heard As a result Federal Court Justice Mark Moshinsky ruled in favor of the family who lost a number of sentimental possessions during the blaze including an urn with the ashes of Mrs Wrigley's father. 'In my view, the respondent has not established that the Wrigleys, or either of them, started the fire,' Justice Moshinsky said. 'The circumstantial evidence supports the view that they did not light the fire. The house had been renovated ... Arts and craft work was a labour of love for Mrs Wrigley; it seems unlikely, therefore, that she would set out to destroy all of her equipment and materials.' NRMA will pay the family $407,900 as well as a further $31,735 in interest. The insurance company can appeal the decision within three days. Federal Court Justice Mark Moshinsky ruled against the insurance company saying there was no justifiable cause for the Wrigley family to burn down their home A Utah high school biology final included a question about abortion that asks what a mother should do if genetic testing reveals her child has Downs syndrome. The question appeared on a test taken by Utah Electronic High School student Cody Okerlund, who snapped a photo on his phone. The school's principal Kathleen Webb says the question did not come from Electronic High School's biology teacher, but couldn't say where it originated. Webb said the question has been removed from the pool and is no longer available to students. The question reads a 40-year-old woman 'has just learned she's pregnant with a child. Genetic testing has indicated that the child has Downs syndrome. Utah Electronic High School student Cody Okerlund snapped this photo on his biology final that asked about abortion 'Their family doctor has recommended (the woman) have an abortion.' The question then lists four choices the woman can make, which include waiting until the 'baby is ready to be born to re-do the genetic test', consider 'religious beliefs, financial burden, the mothers health' and other factors, trust the doctor's scientific knowledge and have the abortion or let the mother make the decision on her own because she has the greatest responsibility. Utahns Against Common Core posted the image on Wednesday, which has caused debate on social media, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. Education activist Oak Norton told the Tribune he believes the school violated Utah law by testing students' moral, political and religious views. Principal Kathleen Webb says the question did not come from Electronic High School's biology teacher, but couldn't say where it originated 'It's getting at, really, a survey of their beliefs. It's an opinion question, and it doesn't even include a full range of opinions,' he said. Okerlund broke testing rules by taking out his phone and snapping a picture of the question but said it was more important he alerted the administration to the question. 'In order of importance, the most important part is the students' welfare,' Webb said. Lorri Higgins Okerlund, Okerlund's mother, said: 'This is a public school. We have every right to know what our kids are being asked and learning.' To the shame of George Osborne, who pledged to cut the tax bill, it is the first time in 15 years the date when workers get to keep all their wages instead of paying the taxman has been as late as June We might be halfway through the year, but today is the first in 2016 when workers get to keep all their wages instead of paying the taxman. It is Tax Freedom Day and in a clear sign the Government has ratcheted up its charges, it has come four days later than last year. Researchers at the Adam Smith Institute said Britons had to work 154 days this year to pay their taxes. And to the shame of George Osborne, who pledged to cut the tax bill, it is the first time in 15 years the date has been as late as June. The last time was at the height of Tony Blairs Labour government in 2001. Institute director Dr Eamonn Butler said: Its shocking that the Government takes over two fifths of the countrys earnings and then borrows more. 'We work longer for the Government than medieval serfs had to work for their lords. The free market think-tank is now calling on ministers to raise the threshold at which workers start paying national insurance from 8,060 to 11,000 the same level as income tax. Contributions for the tax come both out of employees wages and from employers coffers. Experts fear this can put companies off hiring staff and creating valuable new jobs. Dr Butler added: It is absurd that people on the minimum wage are liable for national insurance contributions, which raise their cost to employers and make it harder to move from benefits into work. The poor are also worst hit by regressive taxes like excise duties on what they buy. With Britains tax code now 12 times the length of the Bible, the real cost to the public can be hard to uncover. Tax Freedom Day is calculated including direct taxes like national insurance and income tax. It also covers VAT, corporation tax and other indirect charges such as tobacco duty. Today is the first in 2016 when employees stop paying tax and the money they earn goes in their pocket The Governments total tax take is projected to be 679.6billion this year, while the nation will earn around 1.6trillion. Although the economy will grow by 34.6 billion this year, the institute said the Treasury was raking in 35.4 billion more in tax. It leaves the public around 800million worse off despite the economic growth. Brexit campaigners said voting to leave the EU on June 23 would help cut the tax bill. Advertisement A Japanese boy who miraculously survived six days alone in a bear-infested forest trekked for three miles across dense bear-infested woodland to reach a disused military base where he took shelter. Yamato Tanooka, 7, was rushed to hospital suffering exhaustion and dehydration but otherwise apparently unharmed on Friday after he was found deep in woods on the northern island of Hokkaido. He was discovered inside an old Self-Defense Forces training facility in the town of Shikabe about three miles from where he disappeared after a massive search involving hundreds of police, military and volunteers. Scroll down for video The incredible route that Yamato Tanooka took across deep woodlands to a disused military base stretched three miles from where his parents abandoned him on the Japanese island of Hokkaido Yamato did not shed a tear when he was found and told his rescuer he was hungry before wolfing down rice balls and bread. The boy said he had walked to the SDF facility on his own through the mountains. Last Saturday his parents made him get out of their car as punishment for misbehaving, leaving him behind in a wooded area. When they returned minutes later, he had disappeared. Police said they are considering filing neglect charges against them, according to Kyodo News. Japanese boy Yamato Tanooka was taken to Hakodate hospital by helicopter after he miraculously survived for six days in a bear-infested forest where he had been left as punishment by his parents on Saturday Seven-year-old Yamato told rescuers who found him he was hungry before wolfing down rice balls and bread 'I'm so sorry': Takayuki Tanooka, the father of seven-year-old boy Yamato speaks to the media in Hakodate after his son was found A member of the Self-Defence Forces shows the mattress which the seven-year-old boy was using inside the military facility When he was found, the youngster devoured two rice balls the soldier gave him but did not shed a tear, the military said. He looked a bit worn out but was 'genki' a Japanese word describing healthy children. A member of Japan's Self-Defence Forces told NHK national television said: 'One of our soldiers was preparing for drills this morning and unlocked the door of a building on the base, and there he was. 'When he asked "are you Yamato?" the boy said yes. Then he said he was hungry, so the soldier gave him some water, bread and riceballs.' Local media reported the boy survived by sleeping between two mattresses inside the abandoned military dormitory which was an unheated wooden building. He told police had had been drinking water from a tap outside the building while he was staying inside the military base. Dr Yoshiyuki Sakai, the doctor who examined Yamato, told Asahi TV the child appeared to be in a good condition for a boy who had not had food for six days. Rescue workers moving missing boy Yamato Tanooka on a stretcher to a hospital in the town of Shikabe in Hokkaido on Friday According to local authorities he was given some water and a rice ball by his rescuers Yamato is flown in an air ambulance to hospital where he was reunited with his parents The seven-year-old was suffering mild dehydration and malnutrition, and had a mild rash and scratches on his arms and legs. According to The Guardian, a doctor said: 'He was incredibly calm considering he had been missing for seven days. He didnt panic at all'. Appearing outside the hospital where he was reunited with his son, his father Takayuki Tanooka said: 'We have raised him with love all along. 'I really didn't think it would come to that. We went too far. I thought we were doing it for my son's own good.' Asked what he had told his son, Mr Tanooka, fighting back tears, said: 'I told him I was so sorry for causing him such pain.' The nation welcomed the boy's safe return. Old photos of Yamato, of him wearing a cowboy hat, holding up two fingers in a peace sign, or with his fringe falling over a proud smile, were flashed across TV screens again and again. An aerial image of the dormitory buildings at the Ground Self-Defense Force Komagatake exercise area where Yamato was found on Friday This is the building in a military drill area where Yamato stayed for six days as searchers looked for him A soldier shows the mattresses that Yamato had been sleeping between while searchers looked for him Vast: The boy was found in a military shelter (centre bottom) in a huge expanse of bear-infested forest three miles from where he was left This image shows the places where Yamato Tanooka was left alone by his parents (front) and where he was found (back) in Nanae, Japan Daijiro Hashimoto, a former governor appearing on a talk show on TV Asahi, wondered how the boy had endured the loneliness, especially at night, and suggested that perhaps he had imagined he was on an adventure and was hiding in a secret camp. 'He had to keep a very positive attitude,' Mr Hashimoto said, reflecting widespread sentiment in the country. 'He is fantastic. He didn't know how long it might take, and when he would ever be saved.' Earlier in the week, Mr Tanooka expressed deep regret for his actions, saying: 'We have done an unforgivable thing to our child and we have caused a lot of trouble for everyone. I just hope he is safe.' More than 180 rescuers, including soldiers, were scouring the Higashionuma area where the parents said they dropped the boy off. There were no signs of the boy or any eyewitness reports of him, according to police. Bears are sometimes seen in the mountains of Hokkaido, but an attack by one of the animals is unlikely because none has been spotted in the area, the authorities said. The missing Japaanese boy Yamato Tanooka, seven, was found after six days in a bear-infested forest 'We went too far': Tamayuki Tanooka, Yamato's father, has apologised to his son and those involved in the search effort 'We've reflected on what we did and it was really excessive,' the boy's father said Takayuki Tanooka addressed the media on the day his son was found alive after six days in a forest Rescuers are seen here celebrating the news that Yamato had been found alive Tamayuki Tanooka said he made Yamato get out of the car to 'discipline' him and drove off. But when he returned a few minutes later he was nowhere to be seen Yamato trekked for three miles through mountainous woodland after being abandoned between Shikabe and Onuma on Hokkaido The boy's mysterious disappearance had captured international attention, with many praying for his safe return. Many people bitterly criticised the parents, triggering a debate over whether their treatment of the boy was discipline or child abuse. The parents initially said he disappeared while they were picking wild vegetables, but later admitted they made him get out of the car as 'discipline' after he threw stones at people during a visit to a park. Mr Tanooka said the boy was gone when he drove back to the spot a few minutes later. Police said they are considering whether the parents should be charged with child abandonment. 'Making children obey by giving them fear or pain is bad parenting, it's abuse,' Naoki Ogi, a professor of education at Hosei University, said in his blog. Pictured is the military site the boy was found at after six days on his own Media gather outside Hakodate Hospital where the boy was taken after being found Police said more than 180 rescuers, including soldiers, were searching the area where the boy was believed to have been dropped off Most people on social media rebuked the parents as neglectful and according to reports, the story sparked a nationwide discussion about what was acceptable parenting. 'If he was actually throwing stones at cars, that shows there wasn't a lot of discipline anyway and probably not enough love either,' said one person. 'Whatever the result, this is parental neglect. It's cold in the Hokkaido mountains, and I hear there are bears, too,' said another person. The Higashionuma area is so remote residents of the Nanae region, just north of the city of Hakodate, say they rarely travel through it. Yamato was last seen wearing a T-shirt and jeans in an area where the overnight temperatures can fall as low as 7C (45F). Yamato is not a common child's name in Japan. It is a name for ancient Japan and a famous battleship, the Yamato, sank in April 1945 with the loss of 3,000 sailors after going on a final 'suicide mission' at the end of World War II. Search team: There have been no signs of the boy or any eyewitness reports of him, according to police The BBCs Laura Kuenssberg was jeered by a hard-Left rabble yesterday as she tried to question Jeremy Corbyn. Activists hissed and booed, while the Labour leader appeared to smirk before making a half-hearted attempt to quieten them. Mr Corbyn has accused the BBC of trying to damage his leadership and some of his supporters have campaigned for the BBC to sack Miss Kuenssberg as its political editor. Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn delivers a speech on the UK's membership of the European Union. He said the EU could deliver 'positive change' everything from mobile phone charges to clean beaches and protecting bees But after she and other journalists were heckled, rising Labour star Wes Streeting warned his party was turning into a cult. The Ilford North MP said that party events were in danger of becoming Donald Trump-style rallies, where journalists are routinely attacked for questioning the leader. The Labour Party needs to hold a mirror up to itself and ask if we really want our events to resemble Trump rallies, he said. Laura Kuenssberg (pictured) was later heckled as she tried to ask Mr Corbyn a question about his speech. She has been vilified by the Left for alleged bias against Mr Corbyn Were meant to be a political party providing effective opposition and an alternative government, not a cult. Fellow Labour MP Pat McFadden also criticised the behaviour of activists, saying: The booing of a journalist for doing her job is wrong. It is not the culture we should have in the Labour Party. The heckling occurred when journalists were invited to ask Mr Corbyn questions after he made a speech on Europe at an event in London. ITVs Chris Ship asked the long-time Eurosceptic whether he had campaigned as hard as you can to keep Britain in the EU, following criticism of his lacklustre approach. Ironically Mr Corbyn (pictured) mentioned the importance of the freedom of the press in his speech Mr Corbyn responded with a swipe at the Press, saying: Its partly down to the media and how they report what we do. The hand-picked audience of Labour activists cheered and applauded his answer, with some shouting angrily Its all your fault at journalists. Miss Kuenssberg, who had posted a message on Twitter saying: Corbyn cant resist a pop at the media in answer to Chris Ship, was then called to ask a question, prompting dozens of activists to hiss and boo. Miss Kuenssberg's tweets about freedom of the press were retweeted and liked A petition calling for the removal of Laura Kuenssberg (pictured) as the BBC's political editor was signed by more than 35,000 people last month Ironically, Mr Corbyn had used part of his address to vow to protect free speech. Afterwards Miss Kuenssberg tweeted: Corbyn also mentioned importance of free Press in his speech just sayin. Former BBC Countryfile presenter Miriam OReilly wrote on Twitter: Disgraceful how Jeremy Corbyn barely stifles a smirk when his supporters hiss Laura Kuenssberg. Last night a Labour source insisted Mr Corbyn did not support the hostile reception given to Miss Kuenssberg and other journalists, saying: We do not condone any journalists being booed. Yesterdays episode follows a campaign by some Corbyn supporters to have Miss Kuenssberg sacked for alleged anti-Labour bias. A petition calling for her removal was signed by more than 35,000 last month, before it was taken down by campaign group 38 Degrees for attracting sexist and hateful abuse towards the BBC journalist. Another petition calling for her removal for gross bias has now been launched. Team Corbyns anger at Miss Kuenssberg erupted in January over her reporting of the Labour leaders botched reshuffle. It came to a head after she reported on the partys dismal performance in Mays local elections. This week a documentary on Mr Corbyn showed him launching into a paranoid rant about the BBCs coverage of his leadership. Samer Nashef, a cardiac surgeon at Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire, said 30 per cent of his colleagues admitted avoiding operations on high-risk patients to protect their reputations Patients who are most in need of heart surgery are being turned down because doctors fear they will drag down success rates, a leading consultant warned yesterday. Samer Nashef, a cardiac surgeon at Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire, said 30 per cent of his colleagues admitted avoiding operations on high-risk patients to protect their reputations. The figures emerged in a survey he carried out of all heart surgeons in the UK, with 80 per cent claiming they had heard of other doctors playing the system in this way. He said surgeons are being incentivised to advise against tricky operations even when they are needed because mortality rates are collated by the NHS and published. Mr Nashef also said that patients are twice as likely to die if they are operated on before a heart surgeon goes on holiday than after the surgeon has come back. His comments came in a wide-ranging interview yesterday at the Hay-on-Wye literature festival in South Wales in which he spoke about life as a surgeon. He said the death rate can vary by 200 fold depending on the patient. The variation in the outcome between surgeons is smaller than that of the patient. Patients should not conclude that one surgeon is better than another simply by looking at the statistics, because the difference might be because one is playing the system, Mr Nashef said. These days, because results are available online, you add a different dimension to the way surgeons think, he said. So beforehand, the surgeon would look at a patient and say, I know whats best for you, its this operation. Now a surgeon will say, I know whats best for you, this operation but is it going to be good for my figures? And that unfortunately comes into it. I did a survey to find out how much impact that has on a surgeons decision making and tragically it is quite compelling. This was an anonymous survey of all the heart surgeons in the UK, and about 30 per cent of them said, yes, they have turned patients down for surgery even when they knew full well the surgery is in the patients best interests, because of concern about what it might do to their figures. He said surgeons are being incentivised to advise against tricky operations even when they are needed because mortality rates are collated by the NHS and published The patients who might perhaps have the most to benefit from an operation there is a little bit of evidence now to show that they are not being offered surgery because of concern about figures on outcomes. Mr Nashef said the NHS does not police such decisions although those wrongly denied surgery could take their case to the General Medical Council. He said a surgeon could say a patient is too high risk to avoid performing an operation, adding: We can sway anybodys opinions. Publishing doctors results does have its pitfalls. He added that some hospitals also try to reduce their mortality rates by sending patients to other hospitals after operations. Asked how doctors tiredness affected operations, Mr Nashef said holidays were a big factor. He said: The day before a surgeon goes on holiday is not a good day to have an operation. The day we come back from holiday, we are at our best. The results when we come back have less than half the mortality rate of the day we leave. A council has become the first in England to shorten its school summer to less than five weeks. Barnsley, in south Yorkshire, has ruled that all local authority schools will stay open until the end of July and have a two week autumn half term. Council bosses said the traditional six week break led to a 'learning loss' and many children forgot what they had been learning about the previous years. But the move has left some head teachers furious that they were not consulted about the change. Barnsley, in south Yorkshire, has ruled that all its local schools will stay open until the end of July Parents are unlikely to be pleased with the short summer as the two week break in the autumn half term will be in late October and early November long after the holiday season in Europe has ended. It might also cause havoc for parents who have children at different schools as it means they will have to make separate childcare arrangements. The Barnsley plan for the 2017-18 academic year would cut the summer break to four weeks and four days. According to the Times Tim Cheetham, the council's cabinet spokesman for education, suggested that school summer holidays should be no longer than five weeks to maximise pupils' educational achievement. Council bosses said the traditional six week break led to a 'learning loss' and many children forgot what they had been learning about the previous years He said: 'The main differences to this year's dates from previous years the shorter summer break and a two-week break at October half-term will support educational outcomes for pupils by reducing the long summer break which can lead to learning loss. 'It also means that holiday weeks are distributed more evenly throughout the school year.' Brighton and Hove council is also considering shortening the summer holidays to allow parents to the opportunity to take cheaper breaks in the autumn term. This will be a disaster But head teacher Nick Bowen has criticised the move. Mr Bowen, the principal of Horizon Community College in Barnsley, told The Guardian: 'We have been left perplexed that a change of this magnitude is being brought in without any real consultation with head teachers. 'This will affect our ability to recruit high-quality staff because they will not want a shorter break. 'There is also the fact that most of the academies in the area probably won't come on board with it so everyone will have different holidays. It will be a disaster in terms of attendance because parents who have multiple children will have to take other siblings out of school if the holidays don't match.' Councils have reported a surge in fines for parents taking their children out of school. Those who take their children on holiday in term time without permission can be fined 60 and prosecuted if they refuse to pay. A cleaner who has been the subject of dozens of complaints and public warnings in two states has been fined $5000 for ripping off customers. Cassandra Nicole Cooney appeared in Southport Magistrates Court in Queensland yesterday, where she pleaded guilty to six charges of wrongly accepting payment and failing to supply services within a specified time. Between March and July 2013, Cooney was paid by customers in Brisbane and Gold Coast to carry out end-of-tenancy bond cleans, but failed to do the work, The Northern Star reported. Cleaner Cassandra Nicole Cooney has been fined $5000 for ripping off customers in Queensland Complaints from customers led to six charges being brought against her by the Queensland Office of Fair Trading. The court heard that Cooney, who is based in Alstonville in northern New South Wales, had ample time to repay customers, but chose to do so only before her court appearance. No charge was recorded against her. NSW Fair Trading said in February it had received more than 80 complaints from consumers about businesses controlled by Cooney since 2012. The complaints related to her accepting payment for cleaning services, but failing to provide them. Customers paid Cooney more than $300 on average and were typically renters that required house cleaning for the return of their rental bond, NSW Fair Trading said. She had or has multiple businesses with names like Bond Cleaners Australia, Bond Cleaners Trust and Express Bond Cleaning. Cooney has been the subject of dozens of complaints for taking customers money for cleaning services that were never provided NSW Fair Trading said Cooney would typically ignore calls from customers asking for a refund, and then shut down businesses when bad reviews accumulated online. If she did respond to customer complaints, she would often dispute customers' claims and only pay partial refunds - often stinging them with a cancellation fee of $250 if a service was not rescheduled within 72 hours. Cooney's dealings have prompted public warnings from consumer affairs authorities in NSW and Northern Territory. The suspect in the murder of a 16-year-old babysitter has turned himself in after the teenager told officers his name with her dying breaths. Shemel Mercurius was caring for three-year-old Josiah in her Brooklyn, New York, apartment when she was gunned down on Wednesday. Police then used surveillance video and, with the help of the victim, they said the shooter was 24-year-old Taariq Stephens. Cops said he was seen getting into an elevator, apparently armed with a 40 caliber Kel-Tec submachine gun, before running away from the sixth-floor apartment. According to the New York Daily News, he was being questioned at the 67th Precinct after surrendering to police Thursday evening Scroll down for video Police were able to identify Taariq Stephens (left) as the suspect in the murder of 16-year-old babysitter Shemel Mercurius after the teenager told officers his name with her dying breaths Mercurius (left and right) was caring for three-year-old Josiah in her Brooklyn, New York, apartment when she was brutally gunned down A suspect, believed to be Stephens, was seen running from the apartment with a sub-machine gun NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce told the New York Post: 'He is the shooter. You see him with the backpack. He gets on to the elevator and takes it directly to the floor shes on.' He added that the video had been edited as the whole footage was too graphic. 'We are seeking him now,' he went on. 'Theres the gun that we believe, you see he pulls down the stop of the gun before he shoots the young lady. 'He shoots her one time, it goes through her arm and into her body and causes her demise later on in the hospital. Shemel's 70-year-old grandmother Joan told the newspaper: 'She died before she got to the hospital. Moments before he was seen on his cell phone in the elevator of the building 'But before she died she gave the cops her boyfriend's name. She told them he shot her.' Joan told The Post: 'They're looking for him. Her boyfriend. Nobody knew that she had this boyfriend. 'I always told her, "Shemel, you're a beautiful girl, don't worry about boys. Focus on your education."' Shemel was originally from Guyana and was declared dead at a Brooklyn hospital. The girl's father Dexter Mercurius, 38, told the newspaper: 'Before she passed she called out a boy's name. 'I don't know if it was the boyfriend or not. I just have questions right now and no answers.' Speaking to WABC, the father said Shemel had an order of protection against an ex-boyfriend -- who isn't the person whose name that Shemel gave. He was seen running to the door with a backpack and red trousers on before the shooting A man and a woman went into Shemel's apartment ahead of the incident Tuesday night and later took off A man and a woman went into Shemel's apartment ahead of the incident Tuesday night and later took off, the TV station reported. Shemel's cousin Josiah was not hurt. His mother, who is Shemel's aunt Latoya Price, told WABC: 'I feel it, like I literally gave birth to her. 'We were really that close. I'm the mother figure in her life, and I don't know what to think because I don't know how it happened.' Price told CBS New York: 'I said, "What happened?" He said "Shemel died." He's got some doggone good tricks! Sailor the poodle set two Guinness World Records in Vernon Hills, Illinois, on Thursday. The black dog walked a 10-meter on a globe in 33.22 seconds in order to snatch the title. Guinness said Sailor set another record but has yet to reveal what that record is. Scroll down for video Guinness World Records, the global authority on record-breaking achievement, has confirmed a new record for Sailor the poodle (pictured) Sailor the poodle set the record for fastest 10-meter walked on a globe by a dog. He did it in 33.22 seconds Sailor's owner, Alex Rothacker (pictured), brought the pooch to Hawthorn Middle School South to attempt the record Rothacker rescued Sailor when he was a six-month old puppy but a veterinarian told the man the dog was aggressive Sailor's owner, Alex Rothacker, brought the pooch to Hawthorn Middle School South to attempt the record. Rothacker rescued Sailor when the dog was six months old. A veterinarian told Rothacker the puppy was aggressive and was set to be put down. But Rothacker had other plans and adopted the dog and trained him. Rothaker was already an experienced dog trainer and Sailor now has multiple Guinness records. Sailor was going to be put down by the veterinarian but Rothacker had other plans and decided to adopt the dog Rothaker was already an experienced dog trainer and began teaching the pooch a wide array of tricks and stunts Rothacker and Sailor now hold multiple Guinness records. He said when Sailor hears people laugh he gets excited Rothacker said when Sailor hears people laugh he gets excited because 'he knows he's making people happy'. 'The greatest thing in life is making people happy and performing and making people laugh... And that's what Sailor does,' Rothacker said. In September, Sailor held the record for fastest time to climb 20 stairs by a dog on hind legs, which he achieved in 18.19 seconds. The record was broken by a dog named Arsenal in January. Apart from training dogs, Rothaker has a big passion for Guinness World Records and he has been collecting the annuals since he was a kid, the record recording website said. Rothacker said Sailor gets excited when 'he knows he's making people happy'. He was given the accolade on Tuesday In September, Sailor held the record for fastest time to climb 20 stairs by a dog on hind legs, which he achieved in 18.19 seconds Sailor no longer holds this title however. The record was broken by a dog named Arsenal in January He has trained multiple record-holding dogs. His dog Sweet Pea holds the record for the Fastest 100-meter with a can balanced on head by a dog. The record stands at 2 minutes and 55 seconds and was achieved in Illinois, USA in September 2008. Rothacker has now trained numerous record-breaking and record-holding dogs including Sailor Apart from training dogs, Rothaker has a big passion for Guinness World Records and he has been collecting the annuals since he was a kid be in 'deep s***' if caught Hartman told the court the pair believed they' Lawyers for Oliver Curtis, the investment banker husband of PR queen Roxy Jacenko, fought to the bitter end to stop his insider trading trial in its tracks, it can now be revealed. A jury found Curtis, 30, guilty of one charge of conspiracy to commit insider trading on Thursday after a tense three week trial where his former 'best mate' John Hartman turned on him. In his opening address, Curtis's barrister said the case would hinge on whether prosecution star witness Hartman could be trusted. And about midway through the NSW Supreme Court trial, Murugan Thangaraj SC made an attempt to have Hartman's testimony thrown out - which could have sunk the prosecution's case. Scroll down for video GUILTY: Oliver Curtis, the husband of Sydney PR queen Roxy Jacenko, was found guilty of one charge of conspiracy to commit insider trading on Thursday His wife, public relations queen Roxy Jacenko (left), has watched the trial's proceedings from the public gallery each day. The pair left the NSW Supreme Court separately on Thursday Ms Jacenko appeared tearful as she and her mother Doreen left the historic St James Road court on Thursday afternoon Following Hartman's evidence, the defence argued he may have given evidence because he thought he could be sent back to jail if he didnt cooperate with authorities. But the prosecution said Hartman had at all times expressed his willingness (to attend the hearing)' and Mr Thangaraj aborted the attempt after argument from Crown Prosecutor David Staelhi SC. It has also been revealed Justice McCallum rejected a separate application from Curtis' lawyers to have the case thrown out. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that later in the trial, Mr Thangaraj told the judge Curtis had no case to answer because prosecutors could not prove he 'ever possessed inside information' when making trades at the centre of the case. The application was rejected by Justice McCallum, the newspaper reported. Curtis, who pleaded not guilty, did not testify during the trial and wasn't required to. He sat just metres away from Hartman, who he attended the prestigious Saint Ignatius Riverview School with on Sydney's north shore. Hartman, who now lives in Perth working for mining magnate Andrew Forrest, avoided eye contact throughout the trial. Curtis watched him intently. Star witness:John Hartman, the former best friend of Mr Curtis, avoided eye contact with his former friend when he testified against him over three days of the trial. He travelled from Perth to testify against him Ms Jacenko left the court in tears after the twelve member jury of eight men and four women found her husband guilty of an insider trading charge Ms Jacenko waited for a Range Rover to pick her up on the side of Elizabeth St, Sydney, following the hearing Dressed in black Ms Jacenko is pictured leaving the courtroom dressed in black, ducking into a waiting vehicle Defence lawyers targeted Hartman's credibility, accusing him of using his mate as a 'bargaining chip' with ASIC. Hartman served a discounted prison sentence for his own insider trading offences after agreeing to testify against Curtis. The Crown's case was Curtis conducted 45 trades from insider information supplied by Hartman. Prosecutors argued the pair agreed to split the $1.433 million profits 50/50. Mr Thangaraj claimed the '50-50' split was made up by Hartman 'because you've got to somehow explain this agreement', which Hartman denied. In his closing remarks, he urged the jury to reject the case against Curtis because it 'doesn't make sense' and he was acting like an innocent man. MEDIA SWARM: Ms Jacenko, an assistant and her mother, Doreen, braved a media scrum as they trudged towards a waiting car She appeared tearful as she left the court as cameras captured the moment The jury heard the pair made about $1.4 million from the trades and used the money on a lavish holiday to Whistler and Las Vegas, a $20,000 Ducati motorcycle and a $60,000 Mini Cooper. 'It's crazy... We were swept up in this fake world,' Hartman said while under examination. In emails shown to the court, Mr Curtis even suggested the pair would charter a helicopter to fly them around Canada because they would be 'too hungover to drive'. 'We will all be very hung over and not enjoy a 2 hour drive': Emails were shown to the jury about a holiday Mr Curtis and Mr Hartman organised. The court heard it was funded by an insider trading scheme We have to settle for commercial flights': Another excerpt from emails tendered in court during the trial and obtained by Daily Mail Australia They rented a $3000-a-week pad together in Bondi allegedly using the profits of the insider trading scheme, the court heard. The trial - originally set down for November 2014 - was repeatedly delayed until a jury was finally empanelled in May this year. Curtis received bail on the condition he surrender his passport and agrees not to leave Australia or approach an international airport. He will face a sentencing hearing in front of Justice Lucy McCallum on June 17. The couple arrived at court on Thursday walking hands but left separately following the proceedings Mr Curtis appeared tense arriving at the court on Thursday afternoon Ms Jacenko arrived at court with Mr Curtis in designer outfits throughout the three-week trial (left, right, centre) Britain has been ranked fourth in a global league which measures how much countries contribute to the 'common good of humanity'. The Good Country Index placed the UK above France and Germany because Britain does more 'good' and less harm than more than 150 countries around the world. Using 35 separate indicators - sourced from the United Nations, World Bank and other international organisations - the survey examined the good each country does for humanity as well as what it takes away. Giving to charity was just one of the measures of goodness and humanity STOCK IMAGE Britain came top of the index for its global contribution to science and technology, thanks to the high number of journal exports, Nobel prizes and international publications that the country has produced. But it slipped behind Sweden - which came first overall - as well as Denmark and the Netherlands. The UK scored poorly on international security and peace, coming 64th out of 163 countries, yet was ranked second on its global contribution to health and wellbeing. Libya came last in the table. Simon Anholt, the creator of the Good Country Index, said that while countries must serve the interests of its own people, that should not be at the expense of other populations. 'This is the new law of human survival, and it's a balance which is far more easily maintained than many people imagine. Working together makes for better policy than working alone. 'Most of our problems are rapidly and dangerously multiplying because of globalisation.' He said: 'We need our governments to understand that they're not just responsible for their own voters and taxpayers, but for every living thing on the planet. 'They must collaborate and cooperate more, not less; the UK, for example, isn't just an island unconnected to the rest of Europe or to the rest of the world. Just like every other country on Earth, it is part of one system. If it fails, we all fail.' Mr Anholt added that the performance of smaller countries in the index was more 'volatile' because events in those countries have a bigger impact. Actress Susan Sarandon said today it's 'inevitable' that Hillary Clinton will be indicted, making Bernie Sanders the better choice for the Democratic nomination. 'Nobody's even talking about this indictment. What happens with that? Sarandon told MSNBC's Chris Jansing on Thursday. 'Besides the trust issue of catching her in so many lies.' Jansing pointed out that Clinton has not been indicted, but Sarandon said that wasn't the point. 'No, but there's going to be. There's going to be. I mean, it's inevitable,' she replied. Actress Susan Sarandon said today it's 'inevitable' that Hillary Clinton will be indicted, making Bernie Sanders the better choice for the Democratic nomination She's been vocal about her distaste for Clinton. The actress and political activist told DailyMail.com in January that she hasn't been able to get past Clinton's 2002 vote for the War in Iraq Noting that it's not a certainty - the FBI has not finished its investigation into Clinton's email practices - Jansing said, 'We don't know that.' 'We don't know that he's not going to get the numbers either,' Sarandon came back with. Clinton had not been interviewed by the FBI as of a week ago, per campaign spokesman Nick Merrill. Several news outlets have reported that the FBI is nearing the point in its investigation where it will call on Clinton for an interview, having talked to all of her associates at the State Department already. It could drop the hammer on her or one of her current or former aides late in the summer. Republicans are counting on her being indicted before the general election, even though the former secretary of state has said repeatedly she broke no laws and no evidence has emerged to contradict her statements. Clinton said in April that Republicans are living in a 'fantasy' world if they actually think she's going to jail. Sanders has avoided talking about Clinton's emails, saying last week that they're top of mind for everyone in America, and it's not something he needs to spend time on. Sarandon had no problem talking about it on Thursday, though, as she campaigned for him in Modesto, California. Sanders has avoided talking about Clinton's emails, saying last week that they're top of mind for everyone in America, and it's not something he needs to talk about on the trail She's been vocal about her distaste for Clinton. The actress and political activist told DailyMail.com in January that she hasn't been able to get past Clinton's 2002 vote for the War in Iraq. 'She failed that test,' Sarandon said after a Sanders rally in Mason City, Iowa, her first appearance on behalf of the senator. She said, 'I'm sorry, but for me, you can't get a bigger decision than that and we've been paying the price ever since. And I think she has to be held accountable for that.' As for Clinton's foreign policy experience since then as secretary of state, Sarandon said, 'She's had a job but what has she done that we're bragging about. How has she led?' Sarandon signaled today that she wouldn't vote for Clinton in the fall if she beats Sanders out for the Democratic nomination. Thousands of New Zealanders are scared to return home because of student loan debt and may come under scrutiny next month when a Trans Tasman information-sharing agreement is set to begin. Those who are in default living in Australia currently will receive warning notices as of next month when contact details of student loan borrowers in the country become accessible to authorities. Two people have already been arrested trying to leave New Zealand and 20 people who have defaulted on their student loans are being monitored. Thousands of New Zealanders are scared to return home because of student loans (stock) and may come under scrutiny next month when a transtasman information-sharing agreement is set to begin If you haven't made a payment on your student loan for nine months and have not made arrangements with your servicer - that do not obligate you to make those payments - you are in default. The New Zealand Inland Revenue Department (IRD) has confirmed an arrest warrant is the 'very last resort' and told the New Zealand Herald there is a 'blanket approach' to deal with those in default. They said: 'If borrowers are having difficulty meeting their obligations, they should contact Inland Revenue immediately so we can help them work out a repayment plan that fits their circumstances. Interest on the student loan will also be applied when a borrower is overseas for longer than six months and late payment interest is charged on overdue amounts. The IRD explains: 'If a borrower ignores their obligations that will inevitably mean the total amount owed will increase over time. 'If borrowers have intentionally refused to repay their loan, they have done a disservice to the vast majority of those who do the right thing and pay back their loans.' Those who are in default living in Australia currently will receive warning notices as of next month when contact details of student loan borrowers (stock) in the country become accessible to authorities Student unions have criticised the border arrest policy as severe and likely to make New Zealanders 'student loan refugees', reported New Zealand Herald. A woman arrested at Auckland Airport on Tuesday will appear in the Manukau District Court on Wednesday and In January, Cook Island man Ngatokotoru Puna, 40, was arrested as he tried to leave. Mr Puna's arrest was the first time the policy, which passed in March 2014, had been used and there was a surge of overseas-based borrowers contacting the IRD after it. The 40-year-old man had a $40,000 loan which ballooned to about $130,000, reported the New Zealand Herald. Two people have already been arrested trying to leave New Zealand (stock) and 20 people who have defaulted on their student loans are being monitored Mr Puna said that the IRD had sent reminder letters but they were to the wrong address. After the crackdown the a solo mother who left New Zealand after becoming pregnant phoned the IRD who told her after 21 years her student loans had almost quadrupled. The woman had taken a $6,500 loan and now owes $30,000 - despite not being able to complete her course after becoming pregnant. She told the New Zealand Herald: 'I never blinked an eye or even thought about my loan.' Student unions have criticised the border arrest policy as severe and likely to make New Zealanders 'student loan refugees'. But the New Zealand Inland Revenue Department has said payment options are flexible She said: 'I went into complete shock, I was petrified. What is the point of me paying off 30-something thousand dollars when I'm never going to pay it off? 'If I was given the opportunity to pay the $6,500 off I would in a heartbeat.' A majority of overseas-based student loan borrowers live in Australia. There are about 112,000 borrowers with 70 per cent in default. Emails to the IRD rose by 62 per cent and phone calls increased by 55 per cent which have been attributed to the recent arrests. Legislation allowing the information-sharing passed last month. Disgraced Glee star Mark Stalling has been seen taking out a $100,000 check that could be keeping him out of jail. The actor, who is facing child porn charges, was spotted outside a Chase bank branch in Los Angeles with the check made out to the Clerk of the US District Court. The 33-year-old was pictured a week after he found out he faces up to 40 years in prison, if he's convicted. Glee star Mark Stalling was seen in Los Angeles taking out a $100,000 check that could be keeping him out of jail. It comes a week after he was indicted on two federal child porn charges He was spotted outside a Chase bank branch in souther California with the check made out to the Clerk of the US District Court According to TMZ, the check could be for a fine linked to details of a plea bargain. However it's more probable that he will used it to post bail when he appears in court for his first hearing on Friday. Salling has been accused of both possessing and receiving child porn. He was indicted on federal charges on May 24. For the fist count, Salling has been accused of using the internet to receive a still image and a video depicting child pornography featuring young girls. The second count alleges Salling possessed two videos depicting child pornography, also depicting young girls. The check could be for a fine linked to details of a plea bargain. However it's more probable that he will used it to post bail when he appears in court for his first hearing on Friday Salling - seen wearing a vest, shorts and flip flops - has been accused of both possessing and receiving child porn. He was indicted on federal charges on May 24 U.S. Attorney Eileen Decker said: 'Young victims are harmed every time an image is generated, every time it is distributed and every time it is viewed.' Through his attorney Sailling agreed to surrender to federal authorities on June 3 to face the charges in the indictment, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Salling is best known for playing Noah 'Puck' Puckerman on Glee. Late last year Salling's residence was searched by LAPD's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. They allegedly found hundreds of indecent images of young children - although he was indicted for just three videos and one still image. Salling is best known for playing Noah 'Puck' Puckerman on Glee. He hit the headlines when his home was searched by the LAPD last year Cops allegedly found hundreds of indecent images of young children - although he was indicted for just three videos and one still image The police were reportedly tipped off by one of Salling's ex-girlfriends. He was brought to Los Angeles' Downtown jail, processed and then posted jail. This was not the first time last year that the actor was in trouble with the law. He was previously sued by ex-girlfriend Roxanne Gorzela for sexual battery. She claimed he forced her to have unprotected sex with him and then later, when she confronted him over his actions, he allegedly pushed her to the ground and caused injury to her knees. AirAsia will suspend flights from Melbourne and Sydney to Bali from September 1, a little over a year after the airline launched the cheap service to the holiday island. Indonesia AirAsia X, an affiliate of the Malaysian low-cost carrier AirAsia, confirmed it would end the service on Friday. 'The suspension of these services is part of a network restructuring aimed at improving operational efficiencies at Indonesia AirAsia X,' the airline said in a statement. From September 1, Indonesia AirAsia X will no longer fly from Melbourne and Sydney to Bali The suspension has outraged customers, who have had to cancel family holidays and honeymoons after they were informed their flights had been shelved via text messages. No explanation was offered. 'This is an outrage!! My honeymoon flights to Bali have been cancelled!' said Serder Adar on the airline's Facebook page. 'I have booked my non refundable accommodation and now I'm stuck! Flight prices have now tripled. Never ever again.' Other people posted messages saying they were furious and would never fly with AirAsia again. 'Your sincere email advising us that from 1 September, 2016 you are no longer flying the route will not help the heartbreak tomorrow when I tell the kids their holiday has been cancelled,' wrote Justin Morgan. People who have had flights cancelled blasted the airline on social media Customers put out by the changes have been offered the chance to bring their bookings forward, take a rerouted flight via Kuala Lumpur within 14 days of the original booking, based on seat availability, or receive credit or a full refund. AirAsia X flights to Bali from Perth and Darwin are unaffected. Indonesia AirAsia X launched its Melbourne to Bali service in March 2015, starting initially with two flights a week and then jumping to five. A five weekly service between Sydney and Bali was added in October last year. He is likely to be deported back to An HIV-positive circus performer who infected his girlfriend has been given a suspended five-year jail sentence. Godfrey Zaburoni, 37, was re-sentenced in Brisbane's District Court on Friday, two months after the High Court quashed his original nine-and-a-half-year jail sentence when it found he didn't intentionally infect his former partner. Instead, the Gold Coast acrobat was sentenced to five years imprisonment for the lesser charge of unlawfully doing grievous bodily harm, but it was suspended immediately due to his having already served more than three years. Godfrey Zaburoni is set to walk free after a five year prison sentence was suspended on Friday The Zimbabwean is set to be deported when he is released after already serving three years behind bars Godfrey Zaboruni leaving court on Friday after receiving a suspended five-year jail sentence. In sentencing Zaboruni, Judge Julie Dick said the grievous bodily harm charge was less serious than the original offence and that she had to consider his early guilty plea and attempts at rehabilitation. But Zaburoni is now likely to be immediately deported back to his native Zimbabwe. Judge Dick said it was difficult situation given the offence was not a one-off act and the recklessness related to 'repeat transactions'. She also referred to his former partner's victim impact statement, which highlighted her difficulties having children and breastfeeding. 'It was a very moving statement,' she said. The Zimbabwe-born performer was originally sentenced in 2013 after becoming only the second person in Queensland to be convicted of intentionally infecting someone with HIV. He appealed the decision in the Queensland Court of Appeal, but the matter was dismissed and he then received special leave to take his case to the High Court of Australia. The High Court upheld his appeal against the conviction in an April finding that, even though he had frequent unprotected sex with his girlfriend, there was 'no evidence to support the inference' he intended to infect her. The High Court judges determined it was a reasonable possibility Zaburoni had sex with his girlfriend 'selfishly for his own gratification' rather than with the sole intent to cause her harm. During the trial the jury heard evidence there was about a 14 per cent chance Zaburoni's girlfriend would contract HIV. He has already served three years and two months behind bars. Zaburoni argued to he hadn't intentionally infected his former partner, despite having unprotected sex with her Donald Trump has continued his attacks on the judge presiding over a lawsuit filed against his failed university, saying his Mexican heritage is in 'absolute conflict' with plans to build a wall on the border. Trump said it was inappropriate for judge Gonzalo Curiel to oversee the Trump University lawsuit because his parents were Mexican immigrants. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has vowed to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in an attempt to clamp down on illegal immigration. 'I'm building a wall. It's an inherent conflict of interest,' Trump told the Wall Street Journal. Scroll down for video Donald Trump (left) has continued his attacks on judge Gonzalo Curiel (right), who is presiding over a lawsuit filed against his failed university He said Curiel had 'an absolute conflict' because of his 'Mexican heritage', although the judge was born in Indiana. Trump also suggested Curiel's membership of a Latino lawyers group and his supposed friendship with one of the Trump University plaintiffs' lawyers made him biased. However, the lawyer in question, Jason Forge, said he was not friends with Curiel and that they had only worked together once as prosecutors. 'Neither Judge Curiel's ethnicity nor the fact that we crossed paths as prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office well over a decade ago is to blame,' Mr Forge said. Trump has previously branded Curiel a 'hater', accusing him of having a vendetta against him because of his immigration policy. Trump University is being sued for $40million in New York by students who claim they were defrauded, as well as the separate class-action lawsuit in San Diego that is being overseen by Curiel. Attendees who were promised a personal photo with Trump received only the chance to take a photo with a cardboard cutout The San Diego lawsuit claims lectures were more like infomercials and students were pressured to buy more seminars - paying up to $35,000 for courses. The lawsuit states that students were made to fill out the satisfaction surveys before the courses ended and that they were not anonymous, leaving people afraid to criticize their lecturers. According to the class-action complaint, a one-year apprenticeship that Trump University students were promised ended after students paid for a three-day seminar. Attendees who were promised a personal photo with Trump received only the chance to take a photo with a cardboard cutout, and many instructors were bankrupt real estate investors, the lawsuit says. Trump has been named as a witness for the defense, but has questioned the integrity of the trial and said students gave the courses a 98 per cent satisfaction rate. The Republican presumptive nominee spent 12 minutes during a campaign rally in San Diego last week laying into the judge, boring thousands of supporters with intricate details of the case. 'The trial is going to take place sometime in November. There should be no trial. This should have been dismissed on summary judgment easily,' Trump said. 'Everybody says it, but I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He's a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel.' 'Curiel is not doing the right thing. And I figure, what the hell? Why not talk about it for two minutes? 'We're in front of a very hostile judge,' Trump continued. 'The judge was appointed by Barack Obama, federal judge. Frankly, he should recuse himself because he's given us ruling after ruling after ruling, negative, negative, negative.' Trump also told the audience, that Judge Curiel is 'Mexican', despite the fact that he is an American. 'What happens is the judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great. I think that's fine,' Trump said. He said the case should have been thrown out 'but because it was me and because there's a hostility toward me by the judge - tremendous hostility - beyond belief.' He added: 'I believe he happens to be Spanish, which is fine. He's Hispanic - which is fine. 'I think Judge Curiel should be ashamed of himself,' Trump droned on. 'I'm telling you, this court system, judges in this court system, federal court, they ought to look into Judge Curiel. Because what Judge Curiel is doing is a total disgrace, OK? 'But we'll come back in November. Wouldn't that be wild if I'm president and I come back to do a civil case? Where everybody likes it. OK. This is called life, folks.' Trump's Republican and Democratic rivals have both used political ads highlighting the university as an example of the real estate mogul failing to stand by his pledges. An Australian Defence Force Academy cadet has been charged with allegedly raping an 18-year-old fellow academy member while she was sleeping. An 18-year-old man from Campbell, in Canberra's south-east, will face court on Friday. Police will allege the man sexually assaulted an 18-year-old woman on Saturday while she was sleeping. An 18-year-old man from Campbell, a suburb in Canberra's south-east, will face court on Friday, charged with sexual assault (stock) Police will allege the man sexually assaulted an 18-year-old woman on Saturday, as she was sleeping. Above, cadets exercise at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra (stock) The male officer was arrested by Criminal Investigations detectives on Friday morning and was taken to the ACT Watch House, where he was charged with sexual intercourse without consent. He will face the ACT Magistrates Court this on Friday. His defence lawyer asked for the matter to be stood down until Friday afternoon while he awaited instructions over the bail application, The Canberra Times reported. The Defence Force would not comment further as the matter is now before the ACT Magistrates Court. More to come. The man's defence lawyer asked for the matter to be stood down until Friday afternoon while he awaited instructions over the bail application (stock) Almost three-quarters of Australians want the government to take action on climate change and two-thirds of them are in favor of carbon pricing, new research has revealed. Australians living in rural areas as well as inner-city areas support action, signaling a shift in views since then-prime minister Tony Abbott campaigned on a 'scrap the carbon tax' platform at the last election in 2013. The research shows 74 per cent of 250,000 respondents to a survey want the government to do more to tackle climate change, compared to 50 per cent in 2013, according to ABC'S Vote Compass. Over 60 per cent of Australians want carbon pricing back and 74 per cent want the government to take action on climate change With global warming effects seen to be more prominent, more than one third of the Great Barrier Reef has been destroyed in a mass bleaching event brought on by global warming, Australians are wanting to see a change. But Coalition voters have continued to remain divided on carbon pricing even though support rose by 13 per cent to 41 since the last election. The government wants to cut emissions by 26 to 28 per cent by 2030 but Labor wants to see a more dramatic drop, a 45 per cent cut. The opposition has proposed an emission trading schemes which will see a cap on greenhouse gases forcing businesses to purchase permits if they surpass the cap. Over 250,000 Australians responded to the carbon pricing question put forward by the ABC's Vote Compass Addressing of climate change appears to be a more approachable topic since Tony Abbott's election campaign in 2013 which saw 'scrap the Carbon Tax' at the forefront of his campaign Former Liberal leader John Hewson who was a supporter of an emissions trading scheme was prompted to suggest Tony Abbott did not win the last election because of his campaign against the carbon tax. 'I know the party feels they won the last election on the carbon tax but the bottom line to me is they won the election as a vote against the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government,' Mr Hewson told the ABC following the release of the data. 'Abbott just ran a massive scare campaign on the carbon tax and he was helped in that ... '[Labor] never tried to counteract that at all, they never tried to market why they were doing it and linking it with the science and trying to educate the electorate.' An echidna has been treated to a 'healing' bubble bath at the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital in Brisbane after it was found injured in a suburban backyard. A video shows the adorable echidna, nicknamed 'Biddy', stay calm as wildlife workers gently wiped over the open sores on her legs with a sponge. Biddy, who was found north of Brisbane in Maryborough, had a fractured rib and deep cuts to the back and legs when she arrived at the hospital, Scroll down for video Biddy the echidna keeps calm in an antiseptic 'healing' bath at Australia Zoo Hospital in Brisbane The echidna was found in a backyard close to an area where line-trimmers were being used to clear the roadside, zoo experts said this explained the creature's injuries. Biddy's treating vet Dr Sharon Griffiths said the echidna should be able to be returned to the wild once the wounds heal. 'Biddy came to us in distress with severe cuts and abrasions on the back and leg, as well as broken, missing and bent spines,' Dr Griffiths said. Biddy, whose sex is yet to be identified but is believed to be a girl, is a healthy adult echidna 'apart from the obvious injuries' according to Dr Griffiths. The echidna was admitted to the animal hospital after it was found with deep cuts in Maryborough Once Biddy was taken from the antiseptic bath a team of three hospital staff removed the dirt from its spines and de-ticked her entire body. 'Echidnas certainly aren't the easiest animals to treat as they pose a few very obvious, very spiky challenges. But no matter how difficult it may be, it's very rewarding in the end to see such a unique native Australian animal back out in the wild,' Dr Griffiths said. Biddy is on a course of antibiotics and pain relief medication to help heal the wounds before eventually being released back into the Maryborough area. Until then Biddy's recovery will be monitored by the zoo. William Durden, 61, of Reno, Nevada, spent 20 hours in the Gulf of Mexico without a life vest before being rescued by the coast guard The U.S. Coast Guard rescued a man from the Gulf of Mexico after 20 hours without a life vest. William Durden, 61, of Reno, Nevada, set out from Homosassa, Florida, north of Tampa, on his boat by himself on Wednesday morning. His wife, Lisa, called the Coast Guard when he didn't return that night. While out in the Gulf, Durden became lost and was thrown into the water. 'I left the boat in gear and I shouldn't have, walking to the back of the boat I was by myself,' Durden told WFTS-TV. 'I went back to grab a rod, something yanked it and pulled me right over.' The Coast Guard found Durden about at 1.10am on Thursday about 18 miles west of the shoreline. A Coast Guard helicopter pulled him from the water. He was then checked out by paramedics. First responders said he was in good shape despite being lost at sea for nearly a full day without a life jacket. The USCG released video of the dramatic helicopter rescue on their Twitter page. Durden said his Navy training prepared him for a situation like the one he found himself in on Wednesday. Scroll down for video Durden's wife, Lisa, called the Coast Guard when he didn't return on Wednesday following an afternoon fishing Durden said he left his boat in gear and was thrown over while trying to get a fishing rod for the back of the vessel The U.S. Coast Guard found him at 1.10am on Wednesday and used a helicopter (pictured) to pull him out of the water 'I used to be a pilot in the Navy and we trained for this every year,' said Durden. The 61-year-old says he'll brave the Florida waters again and go fishing but with one change. 'I'm going back on a boat, but not by myself,' Durden said. Same location where Sam Morgan and Mat Lee were mauled last year Three beaches on the New South Wales north coast were evacuated on Friday morning following sightings of four sharks. Surfers at Lighthouse Beach were evacuated after three great white sharks were spotted off North Wall about 10.15am, reported The Australian. According to a report from Shark Smart on Twitter, the sharks were approximately 2.2-3 metres long. Scroll down for video Three great white sharks (pictured) were spotted off North Wall in Ballina on Friday morning by a NSW Department of Primary Industries helicopter doing some training An aerial view of the coastline along Lennox Head (pictured), close to where the shark sightings were reported this morning at Lighthouse Beach, Flat Rock and Sharpes Beach They were spotted during an aerial surveillance by the NSW Department of Primary Industries. Lighthouse Beach, which is minutes from the centre of Ballina, a coastal town about eight-and-a-half hours north of Sydney, was where surfer Sam Morgan and bodyboarder Mat Lee were mauled last year. Another white shark was spotted earlier at Flat Rock, further north towards Skennars Head, just after 9.20am, with a body boarder called from the water, reported The Northern Star. A further shark was reportedly spotted even further north, off Lennox Head Main Beach by a local surfer this morning, but it went unreported. Just after 11.30am a 2.5 metre white shark was spotted off Sharpes Beach, between Lennox Head and Ballina, prompting that beach to be closed as well. Sirens were reportedly used to evacuate the water in both reported sightings. The evacuations took place after surfers reported recent encounters with white pointers between Evans Head and Byron Bay in the past week. It includes one incident where paddleboarder Mark Haine was reportedly circled by a three-metre shark off Ballina's north wall. Last week Ben Gerring, 29, lost a leg in a shark attack at Falcon, south of Perth, on Tuesday afternoon. Western Australia's Department of Fisheries set baited drum lines at 7am on Wednesday (WST) at the site of the attack to trap the shark as part of its controversial serious threat policy. The department revealed on Thursday that the shark was caught on Wednesday afternoon and died on the drum line. It was then towed out to sea and dumped after samples and measurements were taken. This week, the NSW NSW Department of Primary Industries used 'smart' drum lines off Evans Head to tag white sharks, with GPS technology sending an alert when a shark is hooked, before scientists usher the sharks out to sea and then release them. Ballina mayor David Wright has said he is 'very concerned' about this week's spike in white shark sightings in northern NSW and told The Northern Star that it 'looked like they were back'. A local surfer reported seeing a fifth shark at Lennox Head Main Beach this morning, but it went unreported 'The only reason we found out there were three whites there with surfers (at Lighthouse Beach this morning) was the DPI were there in a helicopter doing their training,' Mr Wright said. 'I hate to say it, but it's getting nearly 11 months since Mat (Lee) was (attacked), hopefully it is just an anomaly I'll be pushing the DPI in an hour to see what we can do.' 'We just don't want another attack.' A seven-year-old boy abandoned in the northern Japanese wilderness in cold, rainy weather managed to survive for a week until being rescued - despite being left with no food or water and wearing only jeans and a t-shirt. Yamato Tanooka's parents abandoned him in the forests of Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, as a punishment for misbehaviour after throwing rocks at cars last Saturday. Six days later he was found, suffering from exhaustion, inside an unused military building kilometres away from where was last seen, according to reports. Yamato Tanooka, seven, who survived a week in the northern Japanese wilderness alone, wearing only jeans and a t-shirt The parents of seven-year-old boy Yamato Tanooka, missing in the Higashionuma mountain range (file picture) where bears live, admitted they lied about his disappearance and left him there as punishment during a family hike These are the mattresses the seven-year-old boy slept on inside the military facility after being abandoned by his parents The boy had found his way into an unused military base and slept between two mattresses (pictured) This is the building in a military drill area where Yamato stayed for six days after he walked from the forest where his parents left him Yamato survived six days on his own inside this facility without any food, but drank water from a tap outside Yamato was forced to get out of the car between Shikabe and Onuma on the northern island of Hokkaido, before walking several kilometres to an abandoned military facility for shelter After being discovered by a soldier, he told police he had been drinking water from a tap outside the building while he was staying inside the military base. He'd walked about 5.5km to the site, where he took shelter inside a hut where a door had been left unlocked and slept between mattresses, which likely kept him warm. In the forest where Yamato was left on his own, overnight temperatures dropped to 7 degrees and there had been heavy rainfall in recent days. Dr. Yoshiyuki Sakai, the doctor who examined Yamato, told Asahi TV the child appeared to be in a good condition for a boy who had not had food for six days. Part of forest in Hokkaido, northern Japan, where Yamato was left by his parents for misbehaving An aerial image of a dormitory building at the Ground Self-Defense Force Komagatake exercise area where Yamato was found Yamato was taken to hospital by helicopter after he was found, suffering from exhaustion after his ordeal Scenes of Yamato's safe discovery on Friday, after he spent six days alone in the Japanese wilderness He was suffering mild dehydration and malnutrition, and had a mild rash and scratches on his arms and legs, the doctor said. He was taken to Hakodate Hospital by helicopter and reunited with his parents. According to reports, when he was found, the boy asked for water, bread and rice balls. More than 180 rescuers, including soldiers, had been scouring the area where the parents said they dropped the boy off. In an interview with TV Asahi after the child was found, his father Takayuki Tanooka revealed that he had 'apologised to Yamato'. He also admitted he'd 'gone too far'. 'First of all, it's really great he is safe. I can't find words. It's good.' Takayuki Tanooka, father of 7-year-old boy Yamato Tanooka who went missing on May 28 Advertisement A group of protesters attacked Donald Trump supporters who were leaving the candidate's rally in San Jose on Thursday night. A dozen or more people were punched and knocked to the ground by protesters during the melee, as anti-Trump demonstrators grabbed the candidate's signature hats from off of the heads of his supporters in order to set them on fire. And at one point, a mostly male mob that was five to six people deep even surrounded a female Trump supporter and began to pelt the defenseless woman in the face with eggs and watermelon. That woman, who was wearing a 'Trump' jersey, responded by smiling and pointing right back at the group as they screamed and waved Mexican flags, before eventually making her escape thanks to a nearby door. Many of the protesters carried the Mexican flag during the demonstration, which was eventually diffused once local police made the decision to move in and make some arrests. A few of the demonstrators also burned an American flag outside the convention center. Scroll down for videos A man is seen punching who he believes is a Donald Trump fan outside his rally in San Jose, California. He later discovered he was actually a fellow protester A woman wearing a Trump shirt is pelted with eggs and pinned in against a door after leaving a rally in San Jose The supporter is left rubbing raw egg from her eyes and hair after being attacked by Trump protesters A Trump supporter collides with another man after leaving the rally in San Jose, California, as ugly scenes erupted in the surrounding area The man reacted after a woman sneaked up behind him and stole his Trump hat from his head A woman is knocked over as she walks towards a police line outside the Trump rally in California She lies on the ground after falling during the demonstration against the presumptive Republican U.S. presidential nominee Watch: The moment a Trump supporter, surrounded by protesters, is egged in the face, hit by other food. pic.twitter.com/qYFdwJWvrS Jacob Rascon (@Jacobnbc) June 3, 2016 This latest protest came just hours after Trump slammed a judge presiding over a case involving Trump University, saying he should be recused from making a decision in the legal matter because of his Mexican heritage. Trump said that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel has 'an inherent conflict of interest' because of his plans to build a border wall between Mexico and the United States should he be elected president. Curiel was born in Indiana, and appointed to the bench by President Obama in 2011 after a lengthy career working as both a federal prosecutor and judge in the California state judicial system. San Jose Police Seargent Enrique Garcia told NBC News that several protesters were arrested during the fracas and one officer was assaulted. Police waited until about 90 minutes after the rally had ended to begin moving into the remaining crowd and try and disperse those who were showing no signs of going home. This immediately sparked clashes between demonstrators and police, and it is not clear if any of those anti-Trump supporters were injured during the scuffle. The rowdy and angry crowd of around 300 protesters had thinned significantly by that time, but those who remained on the scene managed to fill an entire city block right by the San Jose Convention Center. Some banged on the cars of Trump supporters as they left the rally and others chased after those on foot to frighten them and try and grab their hats. Police kept their distance from the crowd as things initially began to play out, but did step in to stop protesters from advancing any further once they neared the convention center. Anti-Trump protesters set about a supporter of the Republican candidate in a street outside the rally An altercation between the two rivals begins and the man in the white shirt ends up being punched in the face The man is sparked out by the punch and ends up lying face down on the floor as two officers come to help The police officers on motorbikes go to the aid of the punched man and help him on to his feet 'Our police officers have done an extremely courageous and professional job so far,' San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said after the eventful evening. 'We're all still holding our breath to see the outcome of this dangerous and explosive situation.' The mayor, a Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter, criticized Trump for coming to cities and igniting problems that local police departments had to deal with. Lan Hoang, one of the Trump supporters who had his hat stolen during the demonstration and set on fire, spoke about how upset he was on Thursday night. 'It was unbelievable. I've never seen anything like that in America before,' Hoang told NBC Bay Area, adding that he saw 'a lot' of Trump supporters getting attacked outside the venue. Clinton campaign chair John Podesta also condoned the events of the evening, saying that 'violence against supporters of any candidate has no place in this election.' One of Trump's trademark hats was set alight on the ground by a group of angry protesters One of the angry mob stomps on a burning Trump hat surrounded by people carrying Mexican flags Inside the convention center, the presumptive GOP nominee spoke for about 50 minutes at the rally, sniping at Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and calling her speech on foreign policy earlier in the day 'pathetic' and 'sad to watch.' Protesters before the speech included Adam Rivas, a 22-year-old community college student who was born and raised in San Jose, who held a spray-painted sign that read 'Dump Trump.' Rivas said he was particularly disturbed by Trump's remarks about Mexicans. 'For any one Mexican here he bashes, there are about 20 Mexicans out there who are hard-working and just doing their job,' he said. Protesters climb on to the roof of a car outside the Trump campaign rally in San Jose. It's not known whether anyone was inside at the time Another anti-Trump demonstrator kicks a car as it leaves a parking garage near the venue Heavily-armed police were forced to push back some angry members of the crowd as they waved placards Police officers were forced to form a line to contain the protesters outside the rally in San Jose, California A Trump protester holds his hands up in the air as he tells a police officer how he has been harassed by demonstrators Trump supporter Debbie Tracey, a U.S. Navy veteran from San Jose, said she came to hear the presidential hopeful speak and left the rally with two hats, a T-shirt and a handful of signs that said 'Veterans for Trump.' Passing in front of a wall of protesters, many chanting in Spanish, she said she supported Trump's call for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. 'I'll go help build the wall because if you are going to come to this country, land of opportunity, you should be here legally,' she added. Trump seemingly ignored what was going on an applauded as he addressed the crowd Donald Trump waves to the crowd as he is surrounded by Secret Service agents after a rally, just before the violence outside the venue began Two nurses have been charged for allegedly ignoring a patient as he lay on the floor bleeding from the head. Funmilola Taiwo and Esohe Agbonkpolor are accused of leaving the 51-year-old man for 12 minutes during their shift at the Peninsula Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Far Rockaway, New York. The patient, who has not been identified for privacy, suffered the wound to his head after he fell during the incident in October 2014. Funmilola Taiwo and Esohe Agbonkpolor are accused of leaving the 51-year-old man for 12 minutes during their shift at the Peninsula Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Far Rockaway, New York Agbonkpolor, 39, allegedly walked away, leaving the mentally ill man alone crawling on the floor before another nurse aide dragged him back to his room. Prosecutors say about 25 minutes later, the man crawled out of his room with blood still running down his head. The incident was caught on surveillance camera inside the ward. The nurses allegedly continued to ignore the man's plight until an ambulance arrived 20 minutes after his fall. According to the New York Daily News, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said: 'The complete and utter lack of care allegedly displayed by these two nurses is shocking. The nurses are both no longer employed with the facility. They each face up to four years in prison for endangering the welfare of an incompetent or physically disabled person charges. Taiwo was also charged with falsifying business records. The Certified Nurse Aide who dragged the patient already pled guilty to neglect The llamas were show quality and worth up to $20,000 a piece Each was charged with a count of animal cruelty, two counts trespassing to the crime but their motive is still unknown Two high school students have been arrested after authorities in Texas say they beheaded a llama and shot another one. Harris County Precinct 1 Constable Alan Rosen says the two 16-year-old students were arrested Thursday. A pregnant llama named La Tida was beheaded and a second animal, Lorenzo Llama, was shot, ranch co-owner Robin Turrell told the Houston Chronicle. 'They left Lorenzo for dead. They took La Tida's head,' Turrell said, according to the Dallas Morning News. The llamas were used for wool, which was crafted into rugs and sold. La Tida was used for breeding while Lorenzo was used to ward other animals off, sometimes called a 'guard llama'. Lorenzo the llama (pictured) was shot by two teens in Texas who broke into the Figment Ranch in Cypress in March. Lorenzo survived his wounds Since being shot in the head Lorenzo is no longer aggressive, Turrell said. Each juvenile, who haven't been identified due to their age, have each been charged with one count of animal cruelty and two counts of criminal trespass. Rosen says the teenagers, who are students at Tomball High School, went onto the Figment Ranch in Cypress. First, they decapitated one of the animals, then they shot the other in the neck on March 6. 'Just when you think you've heard it all, along comes a bizarre case that makes you wonder what goes through people's minds, especially young people,' said Rosen. The llama that was shot survived. A pregnant llama named La Tida (pictured) was beheaded by the teens, who are in custody and have each been charged with one count of animal cruelty and two counts of criminal trespass The case was cold for two months but Rosen said the teens confessed to their crimes, according to ABC 13. 'They did not tell us why they committed this act. We will eventually find out why they did this. It's a very sad case. 'The people at the Figment Ranch really love these animals,' Rosen said during a Thursday press conference. Authorities say the motive for the incident is unclear at this time. Private investigator Mark Stephens is responsible for tracking down the teens, according to Turrell. 'What we worry about is someone who's willing to do that will transition to doing this to humans. This is a segue to doing other things,' Rosen said. A black New York teen died from a fatal asthma attack as he ran from a group of white youths who allegedly had a gun and were yelling racist jibes as they chased him and his friends. Dayshen McKenzie, 16, of Staten Island collapsed and died during the deadly pursuit last Friday that started when he and his friends ran into the other group behind a Checkers in Mariners Harbor. Witness Diane Fatigati, a former NYPD officer and 9/11 responder, told The New York Daily News that during the ordeal, she heard pursuers yell 'I got a gun!' and 'I'm gonna shoot you, n*****.' Dayshen McKenzie, 16, of Staten Island (pictured) died from a fatal asthma attack as he ran from a group of mostly white males who allegedly had a gun and were yelling racist jibes as they chased him and his friends On Friday, McKenzie reportedly forgot to take his asthma inhaler with him when he headed out with six of his pals, who were all black, and his final minutes were spent hiding inside a shed. Fatigati, who tried to resuscitate the teen, told the Daily News her first time seeing the Curtis High School sophomore that day was as his friends dragged him out of the shed. 'The kids were throwing water on him,' the 53-year-old who called McKenzie's death a murder, told the Daily News. 'I came out and said, 'What's going on?' They said, 'My brother's dead, my brother's dead! He's dying, he's dying!'' Fatigati - who saw the seven black youths dashing behind houses and jumping fences as they tried to escape the other group - was able to revive McKenzie twice after he collapsed. McKenzie reportedly forgot to take his asthma inhaler with him when he headed out with six of his pals and his final minutes were spent hiding inside a shed in the backyard of 32 Spartan Avenue (pictured) during the chase But, ultimately, her efforts to save his life proved to be unsuccessful. Police said the aspiring rapper, known to his friends as Poppa Jawn, was in the wrong place at the wrong time, noting no one in the other group was targeting the teen, the Daily News reported. The ordeal reportedly escalated from a dispute between one of McKenzie's friends and a member from the other group over a girl, dating back two years. Fatigati noted the other group consisted of white males and one Hispanic male, and that two of the cars giving chase during the wild pursuit had Pennsylvania license plates. Diane Fatigati, a former NYPD officer and 9/11 responder, said during the ordeal, she heard pursuers yell 'I got a gun!' and 'I'm gonna shoot you, n*****' The groups encountered each other behind the fast-food joint, Checkers - a meeting a police source told the Daily News was pre-arranged. However, that account has not yet been verified by officials. Harry Smith, 19, recalled during the encounter that his friend and someone from the other group exchanged words. Then he said the other group, 'left, and they came back three cars deep,' and said a guy in the first car had a gun, according to the Daily News. The black teens fled the parking lot as the carloads of teens from the other group chased them. Police confirmed that one of the teens from the other group pulled out 'what was believed to be a handgun.' 'They were calling us n******,' Smith told the Daily News. 'I just heard a lot of racial slurs.' As the chase poured into a large field between the houses, McKenzie took cover in a shed in the backyard of 32 Spartan Avenue. The pursuers then allegedly cornered the group but fled when police could be heard arriving at the scene, Smith told the Daily News. Moments later, he said they could hear someone yelling McKenzie's name as he collapsed. 'Poppa said, 'It's mad hot' and he just fell. My friend thought he was joking, then he realized he was really down,' Smith told the Daily News. Once officers arrived at the scene, they reportedly ordered the teens to put their hands up. Emergency responders then arrived and transported McKenzie, who also suffers a heart condition in addition to his asthma, to Richmond University Medical Center where he was pronounced dead. A city medical examiner said his cause of death is still pending, according to the Daily News. McKenzie's mother, 43-year-old Tisha Richardson (right) who described her son (left) as ambitious and a 'kid with many talents' said she was shocked to learn the details of his final moments alive The deadly pursuit began last Friday after McKenzie and his friends ran into the other group behind a Checkers in Mariners Harbor (pictured) His mother, 43-year-old Tisha Richardson who described her son as ambitious and a 'kid with many talents' said she was shocked to learn of his final moments alive. 'He was scared,' she told the Daily News. 'He's 16 years old. If someone has a gun, anyone would run.' Richardson said McKenzie, the youngest of seven children, was a good kid who went after his dreams. He was set to celebrate his 17th birthday in two months. She noted she was an overprotective mother, recalling she never let him spend the night outside the house due to her fears of him having an asthma attack and others not knowing what to do. 'So I wouldn't allow him to spend the night out, and it still ended up taking his life,' she told the Daily News. McKenzie was transported to Richmond University Medical Center (pictured) where he was pronounced dead. Following the incident, no arrests have been made and no charges have been filed Following the incident, no arrests have been made and no charges have been filed, according to the Daily News. Fatigati has called the teen's death a murder noting chasing him is a crime, 'you're hunting them because they're black... you're calling them a n*****,' she told the Daily News. While a police source said McKenzie's friends did not mention the racial slurs when they were interviewed by police after he died, hate crimes investigators are set to interview the witnesses again following the Daily News' inquiry into the case. When filing their reports, responding officers reportedly observed 'no indication of a bias element.' Meanwhile, Richardson just wants justice for her McKenzie. The graffitied words were clear to anybody walking past the house A mayor has been the victim of a racist attack after her home was graffitied with offensive racial slurs. The exterior fence of Lord Mayor Katrina Fong Lim's home in the northern Darwin suburb of Nightcliff was vandalised with death threats and a well-known slur about her Chinese heritage. A neighbour who spotted the graffiti on Thursday morning told 105.7 ABC Darwin that the words were about 50 centimetres tall and were clear to anybody walking past the house. Scroll down for video The exterior fence of Lord Mayor Katrina Fong Lim's home in the northern Darwin suburb of Nightcliff was vandalised with death threats and racial slurs Neighbour Jane believes the attack occurred overnight. 'My husband actually saw it walking the kids to school this morning,' she told ABC Darwin. 'He mentioned it to me and I had to go have a look for myself. I didn't actually believe that someone would write what was written on that fence. 'It was pretty disgusting and pretty cowardly.' In a short statement on her Facebook page, Ms Fong Lim wrote that she was 'saddened and disappointed by the personal attack.' 'I know this is not a reflection of the harmonious multicultural community that I am so proud of,'she added before thanking supporters for their well wishes. Police have been informed of the matter and Ms Fong Lim urged anyone with information to contact them. The Mayor has also painted over the graffiti and says the act will not deter her from fulfilling her civic responsibilities. A neighbour spotted the graffiti on Thursday morning. They said the words were about 50 centimetres tall and were clear to anybody walking past the house Police have been informed of the matter and Ms Fong Lim urged anyone with information to contact them In a short statement on her Facebook page, Ms Fong Lim wrote that she was 'saddened and disappointed by the personal attack' With a public debate about a city roundabout being removed and a smoking ban being brought into Smith St Mall, the vandalism comes at a tense time for Darwin City Council. 'I know [Ms Fong Lim] holds a public position and there's controversial things happening, whether it's related to the roundabout or the smoking ban,' Jane told the ABC . 'People can have an opinion but to do it in such a cowardly manner and not the right avenue to have their say.' Supporters have taken to social media to voice their reactions to the vandalism. 'You cannot make everybody happy or like you. But Darwin very lucky to have you. You just one of the best,' wrote one under the Mayor's Facebook post. 'I'm so sad and disgusted that someone thought this was an appropriate way to act towards another human being. 'Good on you for taking the high road on something that must be personally upsetting,' added another supporter. The vandalism comes at a tense time for Darwin City Council, with a public debate about a city roundabout being removed and a smoking ban being brought into Smith St Mall 'You cannot make everybody happy or like you. But Darwin very lucky to have you,' one user posted in support of the Mayor Newer photos show how the former deputy mayor is heavily tattooed The yearbook photos were taken when he was in years 8 and 9 He appears fresh-faced with a tuft of brown hair and a familiar smile Pictures emerge of Mr Mehajer during his time at Trinity Catholic College Hes a fresh-faced little boy with a tuft of brown hair, big cheeks and a very familiar bright, white smile. School pictures obtained by Daily Mail Australia show former deputy mayor Salim Mehajer as a young pupil at Trinity Catholic College in Auburn. The junior school pictures speak to Mr Mehajers transformation into the hulking, heavily tattooed person he is today. Scroll down for video Salim Mehajer is pictured left, as a fresh-faced Year 9 student at Trinity Catholic College in Auburn, and right, in a more recent picture with on a boat with friends Images of Mr Mehajer's leg tattoo - which he denied existed - emerged earlier this year. His tattoo includes the word MILLIONAIRE, a rose, the family crown and an image of his wife, Aysha Another picture of Mr Mehajer as a youngster at Trinity Catholic College (circa Year 8, left). A more recent photo shows him partying on the water with friends (right) Mr Mehajer poses for the camera at a party with various friends - in this rare instance, showing his large tattoo In contrast, newer pictures of Mr Mehajer frolicking with friends show his large frame and considerable collection of tattoos. Mr Mehajer long denied having a 'leg sleeve' tattoo featuring the word MILLIONAIRE, a rose, the family crown and an image of his wife Aysha. However, pictures earlier this year confirmed the tattoos belonged to him. The before and after pictures of Mr Mehajer follow the release of old photographs of his siblings, Aiisha and Khadijeh, earlier this year. Both sisters have developed public profiles of their own since Mr Mehajer's controversial wedding to wife Aysha in August 2015. Glamourous sisters, posing up recently: Preparations are underway for the upcoming wedding of Khadijeh 'Kat' Mehajer (left) with sister Aiisha Old pictures: Khadijeh Mehajer is pictured left and Aiisha Mehajer right in these images which surfaced earlier this year Mr Mehajer was fined $220 by the council for shutting down a Lidcombe street last August for his lavish wedding, which involved a fleet of luxury cars and four helicopters landing on the local oval. The council's response to the nuptials are set to be examined by a public inquiry into the council this year. The council, long the subject of controversy, was dissolved by the New South Wales government under its amalgamation plan. Chunks have been divvied up into an expanded Parramatta Council as well as a new Cumberland Council. As for Mr Mehajer, the former deputy mayor reportedly expressed an interest in returning this week. He has previously expressed aspirations to become prime minister. At least a dozen illegal immigrants have been smuggled to the U.S. border, including an Afghan with terrorist ties who made it into Arizona before he was caught. A trafficking network took the Middle Eastern immigrants on a convoluted route across South and Central America to avoid detection before crawling under the U.S. fence with Mexico. Palestinians, Pakistanis and the Afghan with links to the Taliban were helped into the Western Hemisphere by a Brazilian gang who hooked them up with Mexicans near the border, according to official documents seen by the Washington Times. The Afghan man was 'involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. and/or Canada', according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). At least a dozen illegal immigrants have been smuggled to the U.S. border, including an Afghan with terrorist ties who made it into Arizona before he was caught. They were smuggled through 10 countries on their way to the United States. Their route is pictured above Some of the Middle Eastern men were arrested before they crossed the border, but the Afghan and five Pakistanis made it to a ranch 15 miles north of the border in Arizona after scrambling under the fence. According to the documents, the man's terror links were not immediately flagged up to border officers because he was not listed on their watch list. His family ties to the Taliban were eventually uncovered after his name was run through an FBI database. The five Pakistanis are understood to have since been granted asylum are are now living in the United States legally. The smuggling network charged would-be immigrants for their services, which saw them travel from the region to Brazil. From there, the migrants astonishing journey saw them travel through 10 countries on their way to the U.S.. Some of the Middle Eastern men were arrested before they crossed the border, but the Afghan and five Pakistanis made it to a ranch 15 miles north of the border in Arizona. File picture shows border agents on the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona After leaving Brazil, the men traveled through Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico before crossing into America. The documents were obtained by Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter, whose chief of staff Joe Kasper said the information was 'disturbing, in so many ways'. 'The interdiction of this group validates once again that the southern border is wide open to more than people looking to enter the U.S. illegally strictly for purposes of looking for work, as the administration wants us to believe,' he told the Times. 'What's worse, federal databases weren't even synced and Border Patrol had no idea who they were arresting and the group was not considered a problem because none of them were considered a priority under the president's enforcement protocol. That's a major problem on its own, and it calls for DHS to figure out the problem - and fast.' The DHS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not comment. Police say surveillance video from a neighborhood market shows a man abducting 13-year-old Detroit boy, Deontae Mitchell A cause of death could be determined Friday for a 13-year-old Detroit boy who was abducted while riding a bike along a city street. The Wayne County medical examiner's office is scheduled to perform an autopsy on the body of Deontae Mitchell, which was found Thursday in a vacant lot. Deontae disappeared Tuesday night while riding bikes with a cousin, who told police that the teen had picked up money dropped by a man who was urinating outside a market. Video shows Deontae being pursued by a man who grabbed the boy by his arm and forced him into a car. 'The suspect grabbed his arm and forced him into rear passenger side' of a black Chevrolet Impala, Police Chief James Craig told reporters. 'It may be over money. It may not be over money,' Craig said. 'Certainly... no reason to abduct a 13-year-old.' It appears the man had a revolver. A second person may have been inside the Impala, police said. This image from a surveillance video provided by the City of Detroit Police Department is believed to show Gregory Walker, moments before he allegedly kidnapped the teenager Police say Gregory Walker is a suspect in the abduction of the boy who was taken from outside a Detroit neighborhood market Craig offered his 'heart and prayers' to the boy's family and called it a 'horrific crime'. 'We're talking about a defenseless child. An adult male with a gun,' Craig said at a news conference earlier Thursday. 'Once again, another coward preying on children, and that needs to stop.' Police believe that man was 45-year-old Gregory Walker, who was arrested Thursday with a woman in Toledo, Ohio. Walker hasn't been charged. A second man was also arrested Thursday in Detroit. Craig noted that another man is also wanted by police in what he called 'very much an active investigation'. A 30-year-old from Detroit, was arrested Thursday in his home who was not immediately charged, and a 51-year-old man is also being sought. Detroit police were preparing information to present to prosecutors for murder charges, said Sgt. Michael Woody, who added that Walker may have to be extradited to Michigan from Ohio. Late Thursday morning, police combed through knee- to waist-high weeds and grass in an empty lot behind a vacant one-story building that once housed a men's clothing shop and a tax service. Crystal Mitchell, the mother of Deontae Mitchell is comforted by family and friends when she arrives where a body has been found Detroit Police Chief James Craig said the medical examiner will determine how Deontae Mitchell died. His body was found in a field on Thursday About three dozen people gathered nearby, some praying for the boy's family, the neighborhood and the city. Madgrine Jones, 35, cried, saying 'the spirit led me here'. A security guard at a cemetery, Jones didn't know the victim and is not acquainted with his family, but has children of her own. 'It hurts. It hurts,' she told The Associated Press, tears streaming down her face. 'Why can't we go back to when people spoke up? We got babies being killed. It's just too much. I pray for the family. I pray for the city. I pray for our kids.' Video Courtesy of WJBK Former prime minister John Howard has appeared in a bizarre advertisement promoting Australian-made mattresses to middle-class Chinese consumers. After Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull toured the Sydney factor for family-owned company A.H Beard on Thursday, it was revealed Mr Howard and his wife Janette travelled to China in 2013 to promote the company's sales. The five-minute clip shows the former Prime Minister describing how the products, which retail for up to $76,000 will 'prove their worth in China', Australian Financial Review reports. Scroll down for video Former Prime Minister John Howard and his wife Jeanette appeared in a promotional video for A.H Beard mattresses The clip is to promote sales of the expensive mattresses to a Chinese market The handmade Australian mattresses can retail for up to $76,000 in China 'A.H beard has been a very successful Australian company for more than 100 years, it produces a very high quality mattress,' Mr Howard says in the video. 'It will make available to middle class Chinese consumers a wonderful high quality product which has proved its worth in Australia and I know will prove its worth here in China'. The video then goes on to show Mr Howard signing autographs from a group of fans and addressing a crowd about the A.H Beard mattresses. Mr Howard addresses the camera in the video to speak about the businesses success in Australia His wife Janette is also seen signing a loyalty wall for A.H Beard. The process to make one of the 'high quality' mattresses is also included in the video, right before an awkward pillow fight between two women wearing formal gowns. A.H Beard chairman Garry Beard also appeared in the bizarre clip to explain the origins of the company. In a 2015 interview, Mr Beard revealed Mr Howard and his wife travelled to China with himself and the rest of the family shareholders a few years earlier. He says the matresses are a high quality product which have proved their worth in Australia The bizarre promotional video featuring the former Prime Minister and his wife runs for five minutes John Howard's face is also featured on advertising material sich as this billboard in China ISIS jihadists based in a city in Syria with so many British fighters it has been nicknamed 'Little London', 'aspire' to bomb the West, the US Secretary of Defense said today. Many foreign ISIS fighters are based in the northern Syria town of Manbij, where their goal is to 'inspire or direct' a terror attack in their home nation, according to Defence Secretary Ashton Carter. Anti-ISIS fighters, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed alliance of Kurds and Arabs, this week launched an offensive to capture Manbij after taking control of a nearby village. Scroll down for video Special forces from the Syria Democratic Forces gather in Haj Hussein village, after taking control of it from Islamic State fighters, in the southern rural area of Manbij, in Aleppo Governorate The town is on the north-south axis between Jarablus, on the border with Turkey and controlled by ISIS fighters, and Raqqa, ISIS's self-proclaimed capital in Syria. Its capture has long been seen as key in stemming the flow of foreign fighters into and out of Syria. 'There are people there, and I can't go into any details, who aspire to inspiring or even directing plots outside of Syria,' Carter said at a news conference in Singapore, where he is attending a regional security summit. 'That, along with that fact that it is a transit hub for foreign fighter flows in both directions, is a reason why it is an important objective and we are pleased to work with local forces ... who basically want to take back their own territory from ISIS ... and they are making progress,' he added. Carter is in Singapore until Sunday for the Shangri-La Dialogue, a meeting of Asian security chiefs to discuss regional security. Alleged ISIS fighters captured by the Democratic Forces of Syria near Manbij is taken away in a car Anti-IS fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed alliance of Kurds and Arabs, have launched an offensive to capture Manbij Meanwhile, regime bombing raids in and around the northern Syrian city of Aleppo killed 31 civilians Friday, including ten when their bus was hit, the civil defence said. 'As well as the ten civilians killed in strikes on the bus... 21 others died in intense strikes on several neighbourhoods in the east of the city since dawn,' the organisation known as the White Helmets said. An AFP correspondent in Aleppo said Friday's bombing raids were the most intense in more than a week, with dozens of barrel bombs - crude, unguided explosive devices - hitting several eastern quarters of the city UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported intense strikes on the Castello road - a key rebel supply route out of divided Aleppo - giving a toll of eight dead civilians. A bus on the road was also hit on Wednesday, resulting in seven civilian deaths. Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said the Castello road, which for civilians in rebel-held areas is the route out of Aleppo, was now 'effectively cut'. A heroic war veteran abandoned his Everest climb just 500 metres from the summit to save the life of another mountaineer. Leslie Binns, who was blinded in one eye in an explosion in Afghanistan, could see the top when when he heard the screams of Sunita Hazra and saw her struggling ahead. He decided to end his lifelong dream of conquering Everest, and helped the Indian mother, who is now in hospital and expected to make a full recovery. Hero: Leslie Binns, who was blinded in one eye in an explosion in Afghanistan, could see the summit when when he heard the screams of Sunita Hazra and saw her struggling ahead and help her down Safe: Sunita said she owes her life to Mr Binns, 42, and she is expected to make a full recovery after suffering from frostbite and return to her children in India On the way down, they met another stricken climber who joined them but due to exhaustion, they were unable to get him to the camp after an exhausting descent. Sunita said she owes her life to Mr Binns, 42, and the brave soldier said he is 'extremely proud' to have helped her down the mountain. However, the he said he is regretful he could not help the other climber, whose haunting cries he heard in the distance outside his tent moments before passing out from exhaustion. He told the BBC: 'I truly regret not being able to do anything more for him. But I had nothing left in me that night and I tried my level best to rescue him but he could not be moved,' he said. 'I am immensely proud that I helped Sunita. I just wish I could have done more.' Mr Binns was in the army for 13 years, serving in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. He was blown up four times and awarded two medals, including the Queen's Commendation for Bravery. Climbing Everest was his life-long dream, but when he heard a 'commotion' ahead on the south west ridge called The Balcony, where oxygen is scarce, his natural instinct was to help. Mr Binns, from Rotherham, told the BBC: 'All I could hear were the screams of terror as the person gained momentum. I braced myself to try and stop whoever it was, and managed to do so. Tragic: On the way down, they met another stricken climber who joined them but after struggling through deep snow and terrible weather, they were unable to go back for him when they reached camp due to exhaustion Haunting: the brave soldier said he is regretful he could not help the other climber, whose voice he heard in the distance outside his tent moments before passing out from exhaustion 'I helped her upright and looked at her oxygen regulator. It was registering empty.' At that moment, he decided to abandon his dream and help. 'No summit is worth a life,' he added. The area is infamous for its lack of oxygen and they headed to the nearest camp, where teams keep spare cannisters, and met the other climber on the way down. On the descent, they encountered spots of deep snow and had to wade through it when it was waste height, leaving the team exhausted. When they finally reached the camp, they were so exhausted and the weather conditions were so difficult that they couldn't go back for the other man. Sunita suffered frostbite on her hands, however, she and Mr Binns - who now works in the private security sector in Iraq - were rescued and are now safe. A sentence for the rape of a woman while on bail will be placed Serial rapist Ashraf Makary will spend 18 years in prison after he lured unsuspecting victims under the guise of teaching them English to his home and car where he would drug and then rape them. Makary, 42, was sentenced in the District Court in Brisbane to serve at least 15 of those years for the rape of two Korean women and the attempted rape of a third. Judge Leanne Clare condemned Makary in court saying his attacks were particularly bad because he embarked on a course of hunting women to rape, reported The Courier Mail. Scroll down for video Serial rapist Ashraf Makary (pictured) will spend 18 years and six months in prison after luring unsuspecting victims - under the guise of teaching them English - to his home and car to drug and then rape them In regards to the drugging the women he raped, Judge Clare said: In this case there is another aggregating factor and that is the fear of the unknown. You are a true serial predator, she added. The 42-year-old who moved to Australia in 2003 would drive the women he was teaching to Mt Coot-tha and around Brisbane city and spike their drinks with sedatives before assaulting them. One of his victims drifted in and out of consciousness and recalled being dragged across a bed by Makary - who was naked below the waist, while another was left on the side of the road. Forced to crawl until passers-by came to her aid, medical tests showed Makary had used a central nervous system depressant on her and the court heard he used the same on his other victims. Judge Clare told the court that Makary had devised his own rape kit, reported ABC. Judge Leanne Clare condemned Makary (pictured) in court saying his attacks were particularly bad because he embarked on a course of hunting women to rape You pressure each victim to drink and when she did you waited till the drugs took effect and turned them into a rag doll, she added. Judge Clare also added that it isnt just the psychological trauma suffered by the victims of Makary but the risk from the drugs themselves which could have resulted in death. The three women were aged 19, 20 and 24 and had only been in Brisbane for a short time to study and travel when they were attacked on three separate nights in April 2011. Judge Clare slammed the Murarrie resident for smiling through the most difficult parts of his victims prerecorded evidence. Makary, 42, was sentenced in the District Court in Brisbane to serve at least 15 of those years for the rape of two Korean women and the attempted rape of a third (pictured) She said: You appeared to enjoy those things. Your demeanour in the absence of the jury ... was very different to the way you presented yourself when they were here. A degree of planning and premeditation had gone into the attacks against Makarys victims, Prosecutor David Finch said. He said: It is detailed. It has required significant thought by Mr Makary. He has then put that into action on three separate occasions. One of the women, who had a boyfriend at the time, realised soon after that she was pregnant. The three women were aged 19, 20 and 24 and had only been in Brisbane for a short time to study and travel when they were attacked by Makary (pictured) on three separate nights in April 2011 Uncertain of who the father was she had to make the difficult decision to terminate the pregnancy. The womans statement said that she suffered profound and ongoing effect from the incident. Another victim felt self-blame and asked herself what if she had acted differently. Mr Finch said: Clearly there is no blame to be placed on any of these young ladies. Makary pleaded not guilty last month to three counts of rape and three counts of administering a stupefying drug with intent to commit an indictable offence. A degree of planning and premeditation had gone into the attacks against Makarys (pictured) victims, Prosecutor David Finch said But a jury on Wednesday morning convicted him of all charges except one count of rape and instead found him guilty of attempted rape. At least five other women have said they were drugged or raped but decided not to press charges, reported The Courier Mail. Judge Clare will prepare a separate sentence on Makary who raped another Korean woman while on bail in 2012 where he was found in the back of a car at New Farm, near Brisbane River. She appeared to have been drugged in the same way as his previous victims, appearing semi-conscious when police arrived. He drove (car pictured) two of the women to Mount Coot-tha and another to New Farm where he offered them drinks and snacks, after which they would become dizzy and suffer from memory loss Medical tests showed Makary had used a central nervous system depressant on her and the court heard he used the same on his other victims (one victim providing evidence) During his time away from jail, phone records showed that Makary contacted more potential victims and frequently ignored a court-ordered curfew, The Courier Mail reported. Police who had said that Makary was an extremely dangerous individual at the time found 85 phone numbers on his phone that he had either contacted or obtained since his release. He had attempted to meet 27 of these contacts and police found evidence to suggest he had actually met four. At the time Justice Peter Applegarth based his decision on Makary's previously clean record, but imposed a number of restrictions on his activities and movement, including an 8pm curfew. Makary posted advertisements on a website called SunBrisbane, which is used to organise cultural and language exchanges, using a host of fake names including 'Chuck' and 'Andrew'. At least 24 people have died in clashes between police and followers of a revolutionary sect in northern India after members of the group attacked officers armed with swords and home-made grenades. Police in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, had begun evicting 3,000 sect members who had been camping in a public park when the group began throwing explosive devices. Officials say they were pelted with rocks, causing the death of the local police superintendent, and crude bombs by sect members who had barricaded themselves in their park camp 'military style'. Deadly: Two police officers and the city Superintendent were among those killed in the overnight clashes during a move to expel around 3,000 sect followers who had illegally occupied public land in Mathura Several police officers were among those killed in the overnight clashes during a move to expel around sect followers who had illegally occupied public land in Mathura for the last two years. Police came under fire from armed members of the sect who positioned themselves on tree-tops and also hurled crude explosive devices at them. Protesters also ignited gas cylinders which has been used for cooking food in the camp, causing a fire that killed 11 of their own sect members. 'Twenty-three people, including two police officers, died in the clashes,' divisional commissioner Pradeep Bhatnagar, who is the top civilian official in Mathura, 90 miles east of New Delhi. 'Eighty are injured, including 30 policemen. Most of them have bullet wounds and are in critical condition. Members of the sect barricaded themselves in the camp 'military style' and hurled crude bombs and rocks at police before attacking with swords and rifles Kicked out: Police were evicting 3,000 followers of Swadhin Bharat Vidhik Satyagrah (pictured) from the park where they had been illegally squatting since 2014 Police officials say they only responded with live fire once they themselves were attacked by the sect 'Twenty-one of the dead were extremists who attacked police and civil authorities with arms and bombs from inside the park. 'They were carrying automatic rifles and crude bombs and had fortified the area in a military style.' A senior officer said police were forced to respond with live fire after two of their men were shot dead by followers of the sect, which is known as Swadhin Bharat and Vidhik Satyagrah. Police Superintendent Mukul Dwivedi, who was heading the eviction operation, was hit on the head with a rock and died in hospital after suffering three subsequent heart attacks . 'We had gone to clear the area but were fired upon by the miscreants. Two of our men died,' Hari Ram Sharma, inspector general of police for Uttar Pradesh, told AFP. More than 1,000 followers of Swadhin Bharat Vidhik Satyagrah were arrested, Sharma added. The area has now been sealed off and the situation was tense but under control. The sect also ignited gas cylinders which has been used for cooking food in the camp, causing a fire that killed 11 of their own sect members Some 80 people were injured, including dozens of police officers, with a majority suffering bullet wounds The clearance operation was launched after authorities won a court order to remove hundreds of tents and makeshift wooden structures from a 270-acre patch of land that the sect had been occupying since late 2014. Over time, the protest camp grew with tents and cooking gear, with thousands of men, women and children using it as a makeshift home. Television images and pictures from the scene showed that many of the huts where members of the sect had been living had been set alight, with smoke billowing across the area. In postings on social media, Swadhin Bharat Vidhik Satyagrah's followers describe themselves as political and social revolutionaries. Their demands include the abolition of elections and cheaper fuel for everyone. 'Their ideology is similar to the Naxalites,' said Bhatnagar in reference to Maoist revolutionaries in parts of eastern and central India. 'They want to free India from the present governance system including the abolition of the post of prime minister and president.' Swadhin Bharat Vidhik Satyagrah is led by a man called Ram Vraksha Yadav, whom police say was at the scene of the violence in Mathura but has so far eluded arrest. Two millionaire brothers nicknamed Britain's 'Bollygarchs' have today been accused of being part of a group of businesses hiking up the prices of common drugs needed by the NHS. Vijay and Bhikhu Patel, who started out with a single Essex pharmacy and are now worth 675million, have allegedly exploited a NHS' pricing loophole. Today four businesses, including two with past and present links to the siblings, have allegedly hiked up the price of common drugs by up to 12,500 per cent, helping them rake in 262million a year. The companies have been allowed to charge 'extortionate' prices by simply dropping the brand name and using a generic name instead, allowing them to legally bypass the NHS' pricing cap rules. In one case highlighted by The Times a packet of steroid tablets sold for 75p in 2008 is now priced at 85. In the firing line: Millionaire brothers Bhikhu, left with wife Shashi, and Vijay Patel, right with wife Smita, have been accused of using a loophole in the NHS pricing structure to hike up the cost of drugs Success: Bikhu's Patel's grand Essex mansion close to Southend, funded by his highly successful pharmaceutical businesses No answer: MailOnline asked to speak to Mr Patel at home today (pictured) but received no response - a member of staff at his Atnahs business said they would not comment on today's allegations The Patel brothers' rag to riches tale has been widely celebrated, but today's allegations has opened them up to major criticism. Vijay and Bhikhu Patel have been among Britain's richest Asians for years having amassed hundreds of millions from their pharmaceutical businesses. They live in two of Essex's finest mansions, but the brothers came to the UK from Kenya as teenagers in 1967, arriving with little more than the clothes they came in. Their timber merchant father died when they were young children, and their mother earned money by setting up a nursery. Aged 16 they came to Britain thanks to their late father's British passport. After studying at night-school, Vijay, 66, opened a chemist's shop in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex in 1975. Bikhu, 68, worked in a fish and chip shop to support himself while doing his A-levels and gained a place at Bristol University to read architecture. Five years later he invested the 15,000 he had been able to save in his first business two newsagent shops in Woolwich, south-east London. The brothers then worked together to set up their first major company based around six pharmacies - they went on to own 25 shops before going on to make pharmaceuticals themselves. Bhiku's early training in architecture also led to him becoming a developer setting up Sovereign Property Group, which was also extremely successful. Two years ago they sold part of one of their companies, Waymade, which along with subsidiaries sent drugs to 110 countries, and was bought up to a private equity company in a 370million deal. Claims: The businessmen, including the Patel brothers, have allegedly been allowed to charge 'extortionate' prices by simply dropping the brand name and using a generic name instead Grand: Vijay Patel's modern mansion in stockbroker belt Essex, with grounds so large it appears to hold a larger aeroplane Good life: Vijay Patel and his brother came from next to nothing before setting up businesses making them worth an estimated 675million Then they set up Atnahs Pharma, which is already selling drugs across the world. But The Times has revealed that their rebranding of common drugs means they may be raking millions more from the NHS every year. The Times has found that since 2011 32 medicines have risen in price by at least 1,000 per cent - a bill of 262million and enough to pay for an extra 7,000 junior doctors a year. Their investigation found that four companies have been buying out of patent drugs no longer considered profitable by the bigger pharmaceutical companies. They then buy the marketing rights, drop the famous brand name and use the drug name to bypass NHS pricing controls, it is alleged. Among the 32 drugs having their prices hiked by were: 10mg tablets of steroid Hydrocortisone - up by 12,500 per cent from 70p in 2008 to 85 in 2016. 50mg of anti-anxiety drug doxepin up from 5.72 to 154 a packet since 2011. Cyclizine 30mg tablets, used to treat nausea, up from 9.57 to 353.06 a packet. The Times said a company the Patels set up in 2013, Atnahs, and previous company Amdipharm used the tactics, as are Mercury Pharma and Auden Mckenzie, run by others. Amdipharm and Mercury were bought out by a private equity firm four years ago. Bhikhu, left, and Vijay, right, sold up part of their Waymade business to a private equity company in a 370million deal Vijay Patel used a rare interview in 2014 to back staying in the EU, despite 'nuisances over bureaucracy', saying: 'Open immigration is difficult', but added: 'The vast majority of immigrants want to work hard and better themselves'. He added: 'We are immigrants and this country has made it possible for us to prosper. Of course we worked hard, but we are also grateful for the opportunity'. Describing their humble beginnings he said: 'We were seriously poor. And if you've known that deprivation, you never want to go back there again'. He said it gave them the motivation 'to get on and do something with yourself'. Today both men enjoy the trappings of their wealth living in vast mansions, with expansive grounds and exclusive cars parked on their sweeping driveways. Vijay Patel lives in a modern grey brick mansion in a commuter town in the heart of stockbroker belt Essex. Large black wrought iron gates lead up to the property and on the right-hand side is a small lodge cottage at the entrance to the grounds. The imposing mansion itself is at the bottom of a sloping driveway and is neo-Georgian in style. There are a series of impressive red brick outhouses in the area around the main house, and the grounds are even big enough to contain a large aeroplane. A Range Rover with personalised plate is parked outside the house. Mr Patel's wife answered the door today and told MailOnline: You should try contacting him at his work.' His company gave a firm 'no comment' and hung up today. Bhikhu Patel lives in a gated mansion in Essex, close to Southend. Parked on the driveway is a Porsche Cayenne turbo, and a Mercedes saloon, both with personalised plates. Starting out: This undated image is believed to show Vijay, far left, and Bhikhu, far right, pictured with their sister Manjula and parents Chhotabhai and Shahtaben MailOnline tried the house's intercom today - a woman answered and then ended the call. The reporter then left a message. Neither men have responded. The tactics of the companies involved are entirely legal - but are only increasing financial pressure on the already stretched NHS. Not all the money from the price increase will go to the manufacturer, with some also going to the distributor. MPs have reacted with fury at the news, and demanded that Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt closes the loophole. Former Labour health minister Ben Bradshaw said: 'These revelations are extremely alarming at a time of severe financial constraint on the NHS.' Chelsea and Westminster global health consultant Dr Andrew Hill told The Times the price hikes were 'extortionate' and that the NHS should have 'spotted this themselves'. The prices of these drugs and the practice are now being investigated - although the The Times said that none of the companies involved are themselves known to be under investigation. A Department of Health spokesman said: 'No pharmaceutical company should be exploiting the NHS. The Competition and Markets Authority is already investigating a potential abuse of generics pricing, and as part of a public consultation we have asked for views on government powers to limit the prices of generic medicines where there is no competitive market.' Advertisement The bodies of more than 100 refugees have washed up on a Libyan beach as a new migrant boat tragedy unfolded in the Mediterranean south of Greece today. They were among hundreds of refugees who died in a boat disaster earlier this week as departures from the North African coast towards Italy surged. Colonel Ayoub Gassim said the Libyan coast guards found the empty boat on Thursday and that it is possible it capsized the day before. He blamed Europe for 'doing nothing but counting bodies' to stop the illegal migration from Libya. It came as Greek authorities said three bodies were recovered and 302 refugees rescued from another capsized boat carrying 700 people off the island of Crete today. Hundreds are still missing. Victims of the migrant crisis: Some of the 85 bodies which have washed up in Libya are seen on a beach in Zuwarah, west of Tripoli A Libyan man looks at the body of a migrant that washed up on a Libyan beach on the coast of the northwestern port city of Zuwarah It was the second migrant vessel found in that area of the southern Aegean Sea since last week, indicating that people smugglers may be forging a new route to avoid NATO ships. A coastguard spokeswoman said: 'People are in the water, boats crossing the area have thrown lifebuoys and are moving to save the migrants.' She said a passing ship spotted the sinking vessel about 75 nautical miles south of Crete, Greece's largest island, in the southern Aegean Sea. The coastguard rushed two patrol boats, a plane and a helicopter to the scene while at least four ships crossing the area joined the rescue operation. About half of the 25-metre-long boat is underwater, the spokeswoman said. It was not immediately clear where the boat had left from or where it was headed. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said: 'Over 250 people have been rescued from a shipwreck off Crete which is believed to have left Africa with at least 700 migrants on board.' Waste of life: A body bag lies on the beach as rescue personnel work where bodies of migrants washed up in Zuwarah, west of Tripoli Libyan Red Crescent personnel retrieve the body of a migrant that washed up on a Libyan beach on the coast of the port city of Zuwarah Libyan officials remove a body from a beach in Zuwarah. At least 85 bodies have washed up onto Libyan beaches this week Any confirmed deaths would be the first fatalities in Greek waters since April, the IOM said, after a controversial deal in March between the EU and Turkey led to a sharp drop in the flow of migrants to Greece. Warm weather and calmer seas in the Mediterranean have also led to a surge in journeys from Libya, where traffickers operate with relative impunity. Meanwhile, migrants also appear to be forging a new route from Turkey to Italy. Greek tourist islands in the Aegean witnessed the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people crossing in flimsy boats from Turkey last year, many of them refugees fleeing the war in Syria. But the number using that route has reduced to a trickle after the EU-Turkey deal, under which migrants landing on the islands can be sent back to Turkey, and the deployment of NATO ships. Horror: A boy reacts while walking on a beach where bodies of migrants washed up in Zuwarah, west of Tripoli, on Thursday Couldn't save them: A buoyancy aid lies on a beach where bodies of migrants washed up in Zuwarah, west of Tripoli, on Thursday EU ACCUSED OF ENTICING MIGRANTS TO THEIR DEATHS A Libyan coastguard chief has accused the EU of directly contributing to the deaths of migrants by enticing them to make dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean. Mirwan Issam Abudib, the deputy commander of the coastguard in Zuwarah, said increased rescue patrols had encouraged more refugees to get into boats. He told The Times: 'I blame Nato and the EU for many of these deaths. 'Their rescue ships from Operation Sophia and suchlike now push to the 12 nautical mile limit of our territorial waters. 'The migrants respond to this by trying to cross in greater numbers and smugglers respond by sending them to sea into s*****r and s*****r craft designed to stay afloat for a few hours only.' Advertisement The IOM said its observations supported the theory of a possible new migrant route, reporting a 'surge of new arrivals to Greece further south, on sea lanes connecting North Africa to the island of Crete.' In Libya, many of the boats which sank are believed to have left from the shore around Zuwara and Sabratha in the country's northwest. Al-Khamis al-Bosaifi said most of the migrants appeared to be from sub-Saharan Africa, though their bodies were decomposed and it was not clear when they had drowned. The bodies of two children were among those recovered, he said. A coastguard spokesman in Tripoli said no migrant boats had been intercepted over the past two days, with rougher seas preventing patrols. So far this year more than 40,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa to Italy by paying people smugglers for the journey, broadly in line with a steep increase in numbers since 2014. Smugglers in Libya have exploited political chaos and lawlessness to expand their activities along routes from sub-Saharan Africa, often working with local militias. The head of the European Union's Mediterranean naval mission recently said that people smuggling was estimated to account for between 30 and 50 percent of the gross domestic product in northwestern Libya. Migrants pay smugglers hundreds of dollars for a place on boats, often flimsy inflatable craft that either sink or are picked up by international rescue missions. Some 204,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe since January, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday. At least five migrants drowned and hundreds were rescued off the Libyan coast last week after this heavily overcrowded boat capsized Frantic passengers could be seen swimming for their lives as the boat started to overturn and sink beneath the surface. Some held on to the hull as it started to sink It said more than 2,500 people have died trying to make the perilous journey this year. The vast majority were killed crossing between Libya and Italy, as migrant arrivals to Greece have fallen sharply since the EU entered a controversial deal on March 20 with key transit country Turkey to stem the flow of migrants. The Greek coastguard on May 27 intercepted a boat off Crete carrying 65 Syrian, Afghan and Pakistani migrants, and under the control of two suspected people traffickers a Ukrainian and an Egyptian. The coastguard did not indicate if the boat, which the migrants said had left from Turkey, was headed for Italy or the smugglers had chosen the route through the southern Aegean to reach Greece by avoiding NATO ships deployed further north. An English teacher whose 'boring' lessons left her pupils 'unmotivated' and 'disinterested' has been banned from the classroom. Gillian Scott, a secondary school teacher at Breadalbane Academy in Aberfeldy, Perthshire, failed to interact with the children during lessons that involved them copying out notes or listening to her read in silence. Pupils complained about the repetitive lessons always being the same and one was told they would 'get a warning' if they did not put their hand down. Miss Scott's lessons at Breadalbane Academy (pictured) led to complaints from parents that their children were not being 'pushed, stretched or motivated' A fitness-to-hearing of the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) removed her from the teaching register. Between 2010 and 2013, her lessons were observed by David Macluskey, the school's principal teacher of English. In his evidence he said he was 'horrified' at 'how bad' one lesson had been. He found expectations were set too low for the pupils and the point of lessons was never made clear. In one lesson he reported that 'after copying work from the board, several pupils were left waiting for others to finish which meant their individual needs were not met'. In June 2011 Scott set the same work for pupils in classes across three different year groups with an essay titled 'what I did in activities week'. She then did the same again in September when she instructed them to detail 'what I did in my summer holidays'. Despite other teachers sitting in on her lessons, little changed and on one occasion she 'told pupils about the characterisation during a clip of Jurassic Park and instructed them to write down the points [she] had made.' She also spent three consecutive lessons reading a novel to a class of 11-year-old pupils but at no point asked them any questions about the book. In March 2013, a teacher reported that Scott told a pupil asking for help: 'Put your hand down. If you ask again you'll get a warning.' Other classes Scott taught descended in chaos with the disengaged pupils turning disruptive and rowdy. In lessons watched by Mr Macluskey in 2011, he said pupils had 'inappropriate sexual graffiti on their folders' and during one lesson, children were 'out of controlpupils were shouting out, throwing objects and throwing chairs'. In another lesson in May 2011, it is alleged Miss Scott issued a 'disproportionate number' of punishment exercises to one child and failed to stop four pupils [who had already been thrown out] 'racing a chair up and down the corridor'. The hearing was told her S2 class was 'out of control on various occasions and pupils were shouting out, throwing objects and throwing chairs'. Children were even issued with warnings for raising their hands to ask a question (stock picture) Miss Scott - who is now teaching abroad - did not attend the hearing and was represented by her father, James. His claimed his daughter was the victim of a 'sustained campaign of bullying and harassment' by her colleagues and Perth and Kinross Council following a complaint made by her and other colleagues. He also said her current employers 'recognise her gift for teaching'. In an email, written on May 1, Miss Scott told the council: 'With hindsight, I can identify situations that I could have handled differently, either in the classroom or with colleagues'. In its ruling the GTCS said: 'The panel found extensive failings in her ability to plan and prepare lessons, indeed, the panel considered that the evidence suggested that the respondent did not understand how to produce a lesson plan. 'Despite significant support over a lengthy period of time, the respondent's lesson planning did not improve and she did not seem to accept that she needed to improve. 'The Panel concluded that the respondent's professional competence is currently falling significantly below the standard expected of a registered teacher.' More than 400 dogs and cats have been saved from being slaughtered, cooked and served at restaurants in a Chinese city. The animals were squeezed into tiny rusty cages at the back of a heavy truck as they were being transported in the city of Guangzhou, Guangdong Province. The rescue operation in the evening of May 26 took place a month before China's annual dog meat festival, which is due to take place in the neighbouring Guangxi Province on summer solstice. No more slaughter: More than 400 dogs and cats have been rescued on their way to restaurants in Guangzhou Anger: Animal lovers rushed to the scene to save the caged dogs and cats after they saw a social media post Residents of Guangzhou spotted a heavy truck carrying caged dogs and cats on Huangsha Avenue in Liwan District around 11pm last Thursday, according to on.cc. Eyewitnesses claimed that three men, aged in their 20s and 30s, were trying to surround the cages with paper boxes labelled 'seafood'. The back of the truck was covered by black canvas, the report said. There were said to be around 300 cats and 100 dogs on the vehicle. Passersby suspected that the animals had been stolen and were being sent to restaurants, where they would be butchered. They took pictures of the scene and upload them onto WeChat, a Chinese social media app. The post were quickly shared leading hundreds of animal lovers to rush to the scene. A Heng, a volunteer who took part in the rescue, told On.cc that they had surrounded the truck and demanded the driver free the animals. Police were also called to the scene. After around four hours of negotiation, the driver eventually unloaded the animals, which were being kept in a warehouse temporarily. Determined to rescue poor animals: They surrounded the truck and demanded the driver unload the cages Temporary shelter: More than 300 cats and 100 dogs were sent to a warehouse where they are being kept The animals were rescued in Guangzhou, a city six hours drive from Yulin where the dog meat festival is Animal protection organisation Humane Society International (HSI) confirmed the rescue to MailOnline and called it 'an amazing operation dealing a heavy blow to the city's dog and cat meat traders'. The organisation said China has the largest and most extensive dog meat business in the world. In the last few weeks alone, HSI has seen hundreds of dogs saved throughout the country by the organisation's local partners. Wendy Higgins, the Director of International Media from HSI, told MailOnline: 'Typically, our activists find terrified and exhausted dogs on board these trucks, including many pure breeds still wearing their pet collars, clearly someone's stolen companion.' She added: 'Dogs are snatched from the streets, crammed violently into tiny wire cages, packed on trucks and driven days or weeks across China without water or food, before reaching the slaughterhouse where they are beaten to death in front of each other. 'It's animal abuse on a massive scale and it has to stop.' Daily deaths: This image, showing a woman butchering dogs at a market in Yulin, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, shows that the slaughter of dogs is not confined to the annual meat festiva Common food: Some 300 dogs and cats are butchered for meat in Yulin alone every day during the festival Streed food: Traders at Yulin's meat market skins cats by putting their carcasses in a chemical solution The animal rights organisation found that many of the dogs and cats kept at the slaughter houses and meat markets wore pet collars - evidence that they could be stolen pets Cut short: A cat is seen sitting in a cage at Yulin meat market, photographer by animal rights organisation Humane Society International on their recent visit Peter J. Li, the China Policy Specialist at HSI, called for the Chinese government to step up in the protection of animals. Mr Li told MailOnline: 'While we applaud the action by the Chinese activists, we believe this was really not the job of the activists or anyone in the society. 'Law enforcement is the job of the local authorities.' He went on saying: 'China is no medieval country. Yet, local authorities and officials are stuck with a medieval management mindset.' Dog meat consumption can be found in different parts of Asia, including Korea, Vietnam and China. Guangzhou, where last week's rescue operation took place, is a six-hour drive to Yulin, the host city of China's sickening dog meat festival. The controversial event, held every year to celebrate summer solstice, sees as many as 10,000 dogs, many of them stolen pets, slaughtered for the market deep in the largely rural and poor Guangxi Province. Humane Society International are leading the global #StopYulin campaign with an online petition at www.hsi.org/helpstopyulin which will be submitted to Chinese officials in early June. Not just for the feast: Animal rights organisation HSI travelled to Yulin ahead of the dog meat festival, and found shocking evidence of daily slaughter - all year around Lies: To appease animal rights groups and pet-lovers across the globe, local authorities had said the slaughter had been confined to the festival, celebrated in June each year Burnt kangaroos who were painstakingly nursed back to health after a state-sanctioned fire raged out of control will now be culled. The culling orders have been issued by the same government department that lit the Lancefield burnoff in Victoria, who also allegedly wanted to use rescued kangaroos for feel good photos. Hundreds of animals were injured, maimed and killed in the October 2015 fires and Victorian wildlife organisations have spent thousands of dollars caring for them, reported The Age. Hundreds of kangaroos were injured when a state-sanctioned burnoff in Lancefield, Victoria, escaped control The same department that ordered the burnoff has ordered a cull which could target rescued kangaroos that were nursed back to health A post on the Macedon Ranges Wildlife Network Facebook page issued an urgent plea for help to save the kangaroos. The post said: 'Some of the kangaroos at risk of being shot under the issued permit were victims of the state governments Lancefield prescribed burns gone wrong. 'Our community has generously donated for their care, rehabilitation and release back to the wild.' Wildlife organisations in Victoria have started a campaign to save the rescued kangaroos The culling permit has been issued by Victoria's Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, who has allegedly refused to tell conservationists how many animals will be killed. The same department gave the green light for the 2015 burnoff in Lancefield, north Victoria, which escaped control and threatened dozens of houses. After the fire, which also fatally maimed hundreds of wombats, possums and gliders, the department allegedly asked if they could take 'feel good' pictures of rescued animals with wildlife officials. After the fire one wildlife organisation alleged that the government department wanted to use the rescued kangaroos for 'feel good photos' The department has allegedly refused to confirm how many kangaroos will be targeted in the cull The culling permit will run for six months and has been issued for a property bordering the Pastoria East Wildlife Shelter, where many of the injured kangaroos live. It has been issued to protect bordering properties which are used for sheep and horse farming from damage caused by kangaroos. The owners of the wildlife shelter told The Age that they had tried to discuss non-lethal ways of limiting damage while protecting the animals. Owner Christine Litchfield said: 'We got a fencing quote to pay for his fence to be heightened and all sorts of other measures that we had packaged to put to him and then on Thursday morning, the department called and said it had already issued the permit. 'We know that something has to be done but they (the department) were unwilling to give us a stay of execution.' The cull has been sanctioned by the government to protect neighbouring farmlands from kangaroo-damage A spokesman for the department told Daily Mail Australia that kangaroos living in the Pastoria wildlife shelter had caused 'significant damage' to neighbouring fences and pastures. He said: 'Wildlife officers inspected the applicants property and found significant damage to pastures and fences due to kangaroos. The officers confirmed and identified the damage as key determinants to issue an Authority to Control Wildlife (ATCW). 'Officers have spoken to both the applicant and the owner of the adjacent wildlife shelter and have listened to their concerns. '[We] have worked with the applicant to exhaust all practicable non-lethal methods of kangaroo control on the landholders property. '[We] have previously offered advice on alternative release locations for the rehabilitated kangaroos. 'It is a critical time of year for the applicant to germinate his pasture and therefore the issuing of an ATCW is time critical to ensure a successful growing season. A manual of Islam used in British prisons teaches inmates about jihad and 'incites' them to wage holy war, it has been claimed A manual of Islam used in British prisons teaches inmates about jihad and 'incites' them to wage holy war, it has been claimed. The Tarbiyah (Islamic study) programme has a section on holy war and advises that taking up arms against the enemies of Allah is 'one of the noblest acts'. Shaeikh Musa Admani has called for it to be removed because it 'incites' violence and helps convicted terrorists manipulate younger inmates towards extremism. And the Ministry of Justice has refused to release the document to MailOnline due to 'security concerns', despite the fact it has been available in prisons since 2011. They said they are investigating the issue and will publish a 'summary document' when it has been revised. It comes amid claims that inmates in high-security jails have formed Islamic councils who administer sharia law and dole out physical punishment to other prisoners for actions they consider anti-Islam. A former prison officer told the BBC that there were multiple occasions where prisoners feet were 'severely battered' during punishments, and Muslims have 'taken over' the law of some jails. The recent scandal comes after another teaching course was removed last year after it emerged that it was written by extremists. The Tarbiyah teaches inmates the difference between internal jihad, the struggle for improvement, and external, the fight against evil - but Admani says there is too much focus on fighting. The document, seen by the BBC, reads: 'There may necessitate a time to pick up arms and physical [sic] fight such evil... It is one of the noblest acts.' The statement in the manual, which was written by imams and Ahtsham Ali, an adviser to the Ministry of Justice, is followed by a section from the Koran. There are currently 12,328 Muslim prisoners in England and Wales, which is 15 per cent of the prison population - and 131 were convicted of terrorist offences. Mr Admani, an expert in interpreting Islamic texts, worries that it focuses on violence and could make prisoners more violent: The Tarbiyah (Islamic study) programme, used in prisons since 2011, has a section on holy war and advises that taking up arms against the enemies of Allah is 'one of the noblest acts'. Stock image He told the BBC: 'This document sets out the steps and then addresses various forms of jihad and then goes on to emphasise a particular type ie. the killing and the fighting. 'It incites people to take up arms... It prepares people for violence. It could turn people when they come out of prison, supposedly rehabilitated, back into violence. Shaeikh Musa Admani has called for it to be removed because it 'incites' violence and helps convicted terrorists manipulate younger inmates 'It hinders all the aims that the Ministry of Justice might have to achieve peace and harmony. This document works against it, it doesn't add an iota to that good intention and they need to remove it as quickly as possible and then rehabilitate those who have learnt it.' A spokesman added: 'Islamist extremism is one of the biggest threats facing this country. That is why the Justice Secretary commissioned the first ever review of Islamist extremism in prisons. 'As we have made clear, the report has been received and a summary document will be published in due course. 'The MoJ and NOMS are already taking forward urgent work in this area.' A comes after a damning report is expected to claim that officers were being exploited by Islamic inmates who are aware staff are worried about losing their job due to racism complaints. The independent review, commissioned by Justice Secretary Michael Gove, also recommended that prisoners convicted of terror offences be kept away from other Muslims in a specially designed blocks at high-security jails. Experts believe this will stop the cons from meeting up with other non-militant inmates and using occasions such as Friday prayers as a chance to recruit them for their jihadi cause. Publication of the review, conducted by former Home Office official Ian Acheson and to be released this month, was delayed by Government bosses over fears that it might have been toned down in order to detract criticism from National Offender Management Scheme (NOMS) staff. Over 12,000 Muslims are behind bars in England and Wales with 130 of those serving terror related sentences, while Government officials believe that 1,000 could be vulnerable to radicalisation. Parents notified that an 'Asian man' was seen multiple times by A Melbourne primary school has ramped up security following repeated sightings of a man who exposed himself to a young girl six weeks ago. Police have been hunting for an offender seen lurking near Laburnum Primary School in Blackburn after a man exposed himself to a nine-year-old girl while she was walking to the toilet with another student in April, The Age reported. Since that assault, parents have been notified that a man fitting a similar description has been seen at least four times by students, the publication reported. Police have been hunting for an offender seen lurking near Laburnum Primary School (pictured) in Blackburn after a man exposed himself to a nine-year-old girl in April Since that assault, parents have been notified (pictured) that a man fitting a similar description has been seen at least four times by students The man is described as being in his 20s, of Asian appearance, with shaved hair on the side of his head and longer hair on top. The Department of Education said it is working with the primary school to install a new fence and CCTV cameras in response to the sightings. Installation of the cameras started last week and the new fence will be up by term three. Sex crimes detectives are yet to make a breakthrough on the man's identity. A text message sent to parents by the school said an Asian man wearing a biker jacket was seen taking photos on school grounds at around 9am, the publication reported. Another message notified parents that students said they saw an Asian man in his 20s taking photos on a different day on the north side of the school. A Melbourne primary school has ramped up security following repeated sightings of a man who exposed himself to a young girl six weeks ago Sex crimes detectives are yet to make a breakthrough on the man's identity A mother of two students at the school, who wished to remain nameless, said she was worried about the current fence at the school which is just over a metre high. 'It's really scary to think you can't drop the kids off at the school gates, you feel like you've got to wait until the bell goes and they walk into class,' she told The Age. A police spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia that investigators have not yet been able to link the reported sightings to the incident on April 18. Neither are they able to confirm any evidence to suggest a person of a similar description has been spotted taking photos at the school on two separate occasions. 'Investigators continue to work through any information that is received and appeal for anyone with information to come forward,' the spokesperson said. A mother of two students at the school, who wished to remain nameless said she was worried about the fence at the school which is just over a metre high (pictured) A technical glitch at Starbucks has charged some customers up to 150 months after they purchased their beverages. Customers around the UK found large sums of money withdrawn from their bank accounts after card payments were delayed. Now many have been left furious after they were left overdrawn in the bank following the technical issue. Technical glitch: Starbucks charged some customers up to 150 months after they purchased their beverages Customers of a Starbucks in Saffron Walden, Essex (pictured) were shocked to learn as much as 150 was taken from their accounts for purchases dating back as far as February Some regular customers at a Starbucks in Saffron Walden, Essex, were shocked to learn as much as 150 was taken from their accounts in one go for purchases dating back as far as February. The delayed payments have caused havoc with customers' banking, and some have even been charged for falling into their overdrafts and missing direct debit payments. Starbucks has apologised and blamed a technical fault, which delayed customers' debit and credit card charges. Expensive coffee: Customers around the UK found large sums of money withdrawn from their banks Lucy Trimnell, 32, who has seen 130 taken from her account for drink purchases at Starbucks dating back to March, said: 'I'm very, very upset about the situation. 'I'm a full-time carer for my disabled son and I go to Starbucks twice a week, and it's a chance for me to relax for a short period of time with friends. 'I have to manage my money quite carefully and this large amount coming out has seen me fall into my overdraft, for which I have been charged. 'A direct debit payment, which comes out of the same account, also bounced and I got charged for that as well. 'I do check my balance quite regularly, but I can't say I look through my statements that closely, so I had no idea that they hadn't been charging me for coffee since March. 'I contacted my bank but they said companies have six months to claim payment so there's nothing they can do. I contacted Starbucks and they offered me some free drink vouchers, which I politely declined. 'It's such a shame because I like going there, but I won't be anymore. There are loads of people this has affected and I think they will lose a lot of customers in the town over this.' Another customer, Keeley Kenzie, saw payment for 19 Starbucks transactions come out of her account on May 20, and a further 20 were removed on May 26, dating back to February. To date 150 has been withdrawn from her account. She said: 'I probably go to Starbucks five times a week and I always have the same thing, so as soon as I saw all the charges, I knew what it was. I hope there isn't too much more to come. 'I completely understand people's frustrations about it, I have been in there a few times when the card machine has been down so I can't say I'm that surprised. I'll be sure to pay cash in future.' Starbucks has apologised and blamed a technical fault, which delayed customers' debit and credit card charges A spokesperson for Starbucks said: 'We are working hard to rectify this delayed transaction issue caused by a technical fault, which meant a delay to some customers' authorised debit and credit card charges, in some of our UK stores. 'We are very sorry to those customers affected and ask anyone seeking assistance to contact our customer services team as we resolve this problem.' Carl Langdell has been jailed for life for murdering young teacher Katie Locke and sexually assaulting her corpse A killer who strangled a young teacher to death in a hotel room on a first date has been jailed for life. Carl Langdell was given a minimum sentence of 26 years after confessing to murdering young teacher Katie Locke and sexually assaulting her corpse. Langdell throttled Miss Locke in a hotel room, hours after a first date organised through the Plenty of Fish website. The 26-year-old, who lied to Miss Locke about being a lawyer, wrapped his victim's body in a duvet before dumping her near a skip in the grounds of the four-star hotel. It emerged today that the fantasist had been released from a psychiatric hospital just two months before the Christmas Eve killing last year. And months before the murder, he avoided going to prison after making threats to kill a community nurse. Instead he got a suspended sentence, having threatened the woman in what he claimed was an attempt to shock mental health officials to get their attention. After the murder, Langdell told his mother he was a 'monster' and claimed he had killed Miss Locke in a sex game gone wrong. He had told a mental health worker that he had fantasies of cutting a girl's throat, seeing her naked and having sex with her dead body, just nine months before the murder. Jailing Langdell at St Albans Crown Court today, Judge Andrew Bright told him: 'I am firmly of the view that you pose a very great danger to women and young girls with whom you come into contact with in the future. 'I note that you have described yourself to others as a monster and a psychopath because of what you did to Katie Locke.' The judge continued: 'Once you have served the minimum term I have set, it will be for others to decide when, if ever, it will be safe for you to be released. They will be guided by psychiatric opinion on your condition. 'Dr Philip Joseph, who is arguably the country's most experienced consultant forensic psychiatrist in cases of this kind, expresses the opinion that you suffer from an emotionally unstable and dissocial psychopathic personality disorder with the result that the risk you pose to women is likely to remain significant for the foreseeable future.' Miss Locke's parents described their daughter, who taught at a school in east London, as a 'ray of sunshine' Miss Locke taught history and politics at Cardinal Pole School in Hackney after graduating from Southampton University. The judge added: 'Katie was a thoroughly decent and innocent young woman who had done you no harm at all.' I'm grieving for my beautiful daughter, for the happy child she was, for the lively, beautiful noisy teenager, for the lovely young adult and mostly for the woman I'll never know Miss Locke's mother Jennifer 'You lied to her about being a lawyer with you own firm when the reality was that you had recently been made the subject of a suspended sentence of imprisonment of Bristol crown court for making death threats to women which you communicated to a community nurse involved in caring for your mental health.' Judge Bright told the court that former boyfriends of Katie confirmed she had previously shown no interest in anything other than 'conventional' sex. Langdell, of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, who admitted Katie's murder at an earlier hearing, showed no emotion as he was led away to the cells. The court had heard that, on the night of her murder, Miss Locke had texted her friend to say her night was going well. Langdell and Miss Locke left Trafik bar in Shoreditch, east London, at around 2am on Christmas Eve and took a taxi back to the hotel, arriving at 3.30am. Miss Locke's father Bill told Langsdell: 'On the internet you said you were an ordinary decent person. You are ordinary, but you are not a decent person' Her mother Jennifer said: 'In hindsight I did not tell her enough how pretty she was or how much I loved her' A receptionist said Langdell looked 'very intoxicated' and that Miss Locke also appeared drunk. She said that as they walked down the corridor, Miss Locke held up Langdell as he was staggering. Half an hour later, Miss Locke phoned reception to ask for two toothbrushes. Just over two hours later, another hotel guest noticed a hotel coat hanger was jammed in the floor's fire escape door. Langdell phoned reception to ask for late check-out and left a 'do not disturb' sign on the door. When staff later went to the room they found all the bedding and towels were missing and the lock on the window was broken. The court heard that Miss Locke's friends grew concerned when she did not turn up to house sit for a friend. They contacted Miss Locke's parents, who did not know their daughter had been on a date. The friends used a photo Langdell had sent Miss Locke to find his address and her father, Bill Locke, drove out to the family home. Langdell, pictured, confessed to the killing on the phone to his mother after Miss Locke's started investigating her disappearance Langdell killed Miss Locke at Theobolds Park Hotel in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, pictured Langdell's mother told him her son had gone out for a dog walk. She phoned her son and he confessed the murder. Mrs Evans said: 'He said to his mother he had killed her. As he put it, "I'm a monster".' Langdell was arrested near the canal in the Lea Valley Park. He told an officer Katie's body was 10 metres from a skip in the grounds of the hotel. He would not answer police questions but forensic analysis indicated the use of cocaine, diazepam and drugs used in the treatment of depression and anxiety. Teacher Miss Locke was 23 when she was killed by Langdell on Christmas Eve last year In victim impact statements, Miss Locke's parents told the court that their daughter, who lived with them in Essex, was a 'ray of sunshine'. Mother Jennifer Locke said: 'Nothing could prepare her for meeting a monster. I shall miss her every minute of every day.' Mr Locke looked at Langdell in the dock and told him: 'On the internet you said you were an ordinary decent person. You are ordinary, but you are not a decent person.' He added: 'Katie's loss is huge for me. In hindsight I did not tell her enough how pretty she was or how much I loved her. Maybe she knew it but now I feel l probably at fault for not telling her.' Prosecutor Ann Evans told the court: 'The tragedy of this case is that Katie Locke, like thousands of other young people, having agreed to a date with Carl Langdell, accepted what he told her about himself.' Mrs Evans told the court that Langdell had previously been diagnosed with emotionally unstable personality disorder and had been discharged from a psychiatric unit just two months before he killed Katie. She added the murder victim's mobile phone and bank card had never been found since her death. Advertisement These dramatic pictures show hundreds of Iraqis making treacherous journeys across the Euphrates river to escape the clutches of ISIS in Fallujah. Men, women and children some carrying the elderly and disabled in blankets swam, waded and crossed in makeshift boats as Iraqi forces launched an operation to retake the city. Stuck under the rule of the increasingly desperate and violent jihadists and with no safe exits, the civilian population are struggling to survive and are now resorting to extreme measures to flee. Civilians from Fallujah flee their homes by crossing Euphrates river on a boat to escape fighting between Iraqi security forces and ISIS Bid for freedom: Hundreds of Iraqis are making treacherous journeys across the Euphrates river to escape the clutches of ISIS in Fallujah Desperate: Men, women and children swam, waded and crossed in makeshift boats as Iraqi forces launched an operation to retake the city Stuck under the rule of the increasingly desperate and violent jihadists, the civilian population are resorting to extreme measures to flee Hundreds of Iraqis gather on the edge of the Euphrates preparing to cross to escape fighting between ISIS and Iraqi forces Around 50,000 civilians are believed to be trapped in Fallujah amid fears the terror group are using them as human shields to stall the Iraqi offensive. Iraqi Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said ISIS was putting up a tough fight and its recapture by the Iraqi army could take time. Fallujah, located 32 miles west of Baghdad, has been a bastion of the Sunni insurgency that fought both the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the Shi'ite-led Baghdad government. Islamic State fighters raised their flag there in January 2014 before sweeping through much of Iraq's north and west, declaring a caliphate several months later, from Mosul. 'Fallujah is a tough nut to crack,' said Zebari. 'Daesh (ISIS) are holding the population as hostages, not allowing them to escape and they are putting up a tough fight there,' he added, referring to the militant group by one of its Arabic acronyms. 'Nobody can give you a definitive time when Falluja will be cleared of Daesh. Mainly because of the resistance, because of the IEDs (improvised explosive devices), because of the tunnels' the militants have dug to move without being detected, he added. Civilians from Fallujah carry an old woman on a blanket after crossing Euphrates River as they flee their homes Men, women and children some carrying the elderly and disabled in blankets flee fighting between ISIS and Iraqi forces in Fallujah Around 50,000 civilians are believed to be trapped in Fallujah amid fears the terror group are using them as human shields The army started the offensive on May 23, with the backing of Shi'ite militias known as Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and air support from the U.S.-led coalition. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Wednesday the army had slowed the pace of its offensive because of fears for the safety of tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the city with limited access to water, food and healthcare. 'The security forces, the PMF have made significant progress but really to storm the center of Fallujah I think will take time,' Zebari said. 'We should not declare victory prematurely.' A spokesman for one of the main Shi'ite paramilitary groups taking part in the offensive on Fallujah said the operations have come to a near standstill in the past three days and asked Abadi to order the attacks to continue. 'We demand that Prime Minister Abadi continues the operation to free Falluja and not to submit to American and Western pressure to halt the operation,' said Jawad al-Talabawi, a spokesman of the Iran-backed Asaib Ahl al-Haq. 'We say... freeing Fallujah is needed to protect Baghdad.' Iraqi Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said ISIS was putting up a tough fight and its recapture by the Iraqi army could take time Civilians from Fallujah flee their homes after crossing the Euphrates River during fighting between Iraqi security forces and ISIS Abadi ordered the offensive on Fallujah after a series of bombings claimed by Islamic State hit Shi'ite districts of Baghdad, causing the worst death toll this year. Falluja would be the third major city in Iraq recaptured by the government after former dictator Saddam Hussein's home town Tikrit and Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's vast western Anbar province. Abadi has expressed hope that 2016 will be the year of 'final victory' over Islamic State, with the capture of Mosul, their de facto capital in northern Iraq. Baghdad-based political analysts said the battle for Fallujah would be harder than Tikrit and Ramadi because of the symbolism of the city for the militants and because they cannot retreat to other places, as the whole area is under siege by the army and Shi'ite militias. 'In Fallujah, Daesh has die-hard fighters defending a city they consider as a symbol for Jihad,' said analyst and former army general Jasim al-Bahadili. This is the moment a madcap British holidaymaker smothered himself in suncream before sliding head-first across concrete into a Spanish swimming pool - leaving him bleeding and bruised. Tourist Kelly Crouch filmed the pool-side prank at a hotel in Benidorm from her balcony during a stay last week. The man, believed to be from Nottingham, takes a running jump and dives on his stomach across a hosed-down section for an agonising slide across the surface before landing in the water. Toe-curling footage shows the Brit in Benidorm belly-slide across the concrete before he lands in the pool The unnamed tourist was left with bloody and bruised after he performed the stunt in Benidorm Ms Crouch looked on as the man - egged on by his pals - hobbled out of the pool with his belly, arms and knees bleeding. Ms Crouch, 32, said: 'They had been messing around all day but this was definitely the craziest thing I saw. 'It's the sort of thing that probably only seems like a good idea after an afternoon of drinking. The tourist slid into the pool while being cheered on by his mates The man raises his arms in triumph as one of his friends prepares to jump in and join him 'I had been chatting to them by the pool during the day but I took the video from my balcony up on the 14th floor. 'You could see them all whooping and cheering. I couldn't believe he did it. I saw him around the hotel afterwards and he was covered in cuts and bruises to his legs and arms. 'He tried a couple of short ones but then they rubbed him up with suncream thinking it would help with the friction. 'The ground was solid concrete. Even though they covered it in water, it still must have hurt like hell.' Kelly Crouch captured the video while she was on holiday at the Spanish resort Kelly, from Maidstone, Kent, was staying at the four-star Gran Hotel Bali for a four-day break with a friend when she spotted the shenanigans and recorded it on her phone. She had been socialising with the lads by the pool for most of the day. Kelly, a photographer, said: 'They were just a crazy crowd who were up for having a good time. I thought it was quite entertaining 'I got chatting to them by the pool it was probably a mixture of the drink and the heat that gave this guy the confidence to do it. 'He really bust his hip and was in quite a bit of pain. His mates just seemed to be laughing at him and there weren't many other people around to take notice. Iran has ruled out helping America to bring down ISIS after describing the US as its 'main enemy', branding Britain 'evil' and calling Israel 'damned and cancerous'. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said trusting the US would be a 'big mistake' and that cooperating with Washington 'goes against independence' of Iran. Despite the nuclear deal, which went into effect this year, Iran has 'many small and big enemies, but foremost among them are America, Britain and Israel, he said. After accusing the US of procrastinating over Tehran's landmark nuclear deal, he ranted: 'It's the US, the evil Britain, and the damned and cancerous Zionist regime. These are the main enemies.' Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei slammed the United States, Britain and Israel as the Islamic republic's 'main enemies' There has been no formal talk of a joint fight or even cooperation between Iran and the United States against ISIS. In Iraq, Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards are on the front lines, backing Shiite militias and Iraqi government forces in their offensive to reclaim land from IS militants. U.S.-led airstrikes are also backing the offensive against the Islamic State. In Syria, Iran is a top backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad, along with Russia. Tehran has deployed what it says are military advisers to support the government and has had casualties in the conflict, though it denies the presence of Iranian combat troops. Meanwhile, the U.S. and its Western allies, along with most Gulf Arab nations, back the Syrian rebels fighting to topple Assad. The Ayatollah was making a televised speech marking the 27th anniversary of the death of his revolutionary predecessor Ruhollah Khomeini. The supreme leader mentioned the nuclear deal with world powers that came into force in January, and accused Washington of breaking its promises. 'We sat down and negotiated with the P5+1 group and even separately with the Americans over the nuclear issue,' he said during a televised speech to thousands gathered at Khomeini's extravagant mausoleum in southern Tehran. 'The other side, the Americans, made some commitments. The Islamic republic completed its commitments but the other unfaithful side is procrastinating.' Iran has ruled out helping America to bring down ISIS after describing the US as its 'main enemy', branding Britain 'evil' and calling Israel 'damned and cancerous' (file picture of ISIS fighters) 'Whoever trusts in the United States is committing a big mistake and will be hit with a slap' by them, he added. After the nuclear deal entered into force in mid-January, some international sanctions on Iran were lifted by the United Nations, the US and the European Union. But the US and EU have kept sanctions related to Iran's missile programme, its human rights situation and support for groups like the Lebanese Hezbollah, which Washington categorises as a 'terrorist' organisation. Khamenei said it was 'impossible' that Iran would enter into negotiations with the US over such issues. 'First they enter with a smile and (soft) language but later in practice they will not do what they should do and will not keep their commitment,' he said. Iran particularly accuses President Barack Obama's administration of not taking the required steps to reassure big international banks who are reluctant to do business with Iran for fear of punitive measures. More than a decade of nuclear-related sanctions hampered Tehran's economy. President Hassan Rouhani told Tehran's newly elected parliament last week that Iran needed up to $50 billion (34billion) each year in foreign investment in order for it to hit its 8 percent growth target. Khamenei went on to emphasise the importance of a domestic 'resistance economy', rather than reliance on foreign investment. 'To think that the economic boom of the country can be merely reached through foreign investment is a mistake,' he said. 'More important than foreign investment is activating domestic potential. We have great deal of potential still not activated.' An 18-year-old man is recovering in hospital after plunging 30ft from from the fourth-tier balcony of a theatre and landing on a spectator below. The teenager had been watching a performance of Grease The Musical when he fell, clipping the shoulder of a woman in the stalls below and landing in the isle in front of shocked families. He was then rushed to hospital but police said today that his injuries are not life-threatening, and the woman below was uninjured. An 18-year-old man is recovering in hospital after plunging 30ft from from the third-tier balcony of a theatre and landing on a spectator below. Pictured is a file image of the inside of the theatre The teenager had been watching a performance of Grease The Musical (pictured, being performed by a separate company in London) when he fell, clipping the shoulder of a woman in the stalls below The performance was abandoned but will resume again this evening to complete the run of shows planned at the Grand Theatre, Blackpool. Twitter user Robert Simmill, who witnessed the incident, said: 'Terrible scenes at Blackpool Grand theatre tonight! Seeing a body fall from the top tier is probably the worst thing I've ever seen!' Joanne Brookes wrote: 'Shocking scenes. I was there with my 12 yr old. Something I can't believe she had to witness.' Phil Chapman, chairman of the Blackpool and Fylde Light Opera Company (BFLOC), which put on the performance, said: This has obviously been a shocking and upsetting incident. 'Thankfully, we understand his injuries are not life-threatening and our thoughts are with the young man and his family. 'After consulting both members of the production company and the theatre staff, together we have decided that the show will go on. After falling from the gallery, the top tier (pictured), he was rushed to hospital but police said today that his injuries are not life-threatening, and the woman below was uninjured The performance was abandoned but will resume again this evening to complete the run of shows planned at the Grand Theatre, Blackpool (pictured) A number of witnesses at the theatre last night tweeted about the 'shocking scenes' at The Grand Ruth Eastwood, chief executive of the Grand Theatre, said: This has been a very difficult situation for all concerned. 'The theatre is working with all the relevant authorities to investigate the matter with due diligence. 'Lots of hard work has gone into creating the show and the company and the young mans family have received numerous messages of support via social media and the theatre will offer any support we can.' Lancashire Police were called to the theatre at around 9.30pm last night and the ambulance service took the man to the Royal Preston Hospital for treatment. A spokesman said that despite the height he fell from, his injuries are not though to be life-threatening, and the woman below did not even need medical assistance. The theatre later made a statement on Twitter, saying: 'We can confirm an incident @Grand-Theatre this evening. Police/Ambulance service attended, performance was abandoned.' The incident happened at around 9.30pm on Thursday and the performance was subsequently cancelled. The theatre later made a statement on Twitter (pictured). A spokeswoman for Lancashire Police said: 'As he landed, he caught the shoulder of a woman on the end of one of the rows; however, she was uninjured and did not require medical attention. 'The ambulance service attended and the man was taken to Royal Preston Hospital. His injuries are not thought to be life-threatening.' The incident happened at around 9.30pm on Thursday and the performance was subsequently cancelled. The theatre later made a statement on Twitter, saying: 'We can confirm an incident @Grand-Theatre this evening. Police/Ambulance service attended, performance was abandoned.' Theatre bosses said a decision on future performances would be made on Friday. A Porsche 911 turbo with distinct body paint was stolen from a North Sydney home overnight along with mobile phones, wallets and credit cards. Between 10pm on Thursday night and 2am on Friday morning, a number of people broke in to a home on Blaxland Street in Hunters Hill while a family-of-four slept inside. The home belonged to Zoe McKeough, the managing director of the Better Breathing Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation which funds and supports PHD students to conduct high level research in to chronic lung diseases. The Porsche 911 turbo was stolen on Thursday night from a Hunters Hill home along with mobile devices, credit cards and wallets Mrs McKeough said the burglars smashed through her kitchen window to enter the house and she suspected they could be known to her as they found the keys to the Porsche in the pantry. The Porsche Coupe, which is painted in fluorescent colours, was designed to be raced in the 25th anniversary of the Targa Tasmania - the world's largest, longest and hardest tarmac rally event -to promote the not-for-profit. It was covered in a vinyl wrap designed by Merry Sparks, an Australian artist based in Brisbane. The wrap features the organisation's logo on the hood. Mrs McKeough fears she will not be able to get the car back as anything could have happened to it. 'I'm not sure if it's going to be stripped back to its original colour, which is white, or if it's already on a shipping container to who knows where,' she told Daily Mail Australia. Police are continuing to investigate. The car had been covered in a vinyl wrap in preparations for a race in the 25th anniversary of the Targa Tasmania Do you know one of the soldiers pictured? Email news@mailonline.co.uk Unknown WWI soldiers pictured have now been colourised by an expert In the war cemetery in the French village of Vignaport near the Somme, the monument to the dead is engraved with the words: 'Brothers in arms of the British Army, fallen on the field of honour, sleep in peace; we are watching over you.' The small village acted as a staging post where soldiers could rest and prepare for battle before advancing to the front and the carnage that awaited them in the fields of the Somme during the First World War. And it was here a French couple decided to record haunting portraits of the soldiers - who have been brought back to life by a dedicated colourisation artist in a bid to help identify some of the 'Lost Tommies'. Great War stories: Discovered in an attic in northern France after nearly 100 years, these pictures show hundreds of British and Commonwealth soldiers, captured by Louis and Antoinette Thuillier during WWI The 4,000 images of anonymous Western Front troops were uncovered almost a century after they were taken, having lain hidden in an attic in a farm house in northern France. The incredible collection of photographs have meticulously been restored by a team of researchers led by Australian journalist Ross Coulthart for his book 'The Lost Tommies'. For much of the First World War, the small French village of Vignacourt was always behind the front lines - as a staging point, casualty clearing station and recreation area for troops of all nationalities moving up to and then back from the battlefields on the Somme. Mystery men: Some of the 4,000 black-and-white images or yet-to-be identified British and Commonwealth soldiers have been brought back to life by a colouration specialist Pride of Britain: The identities of the hundreds of Great War troops, including this soldier of the British West Indies Regiment, are yet to be uncovered It was here that local couple Louis and Antoinette Thuillier hit on the idea of taking portrait photos of soldiers passing through the town to send home to their worried families. The photos were captured on glass and printed into postcards to be sent back to Britain, allowing soldiers to maintain a fragile link with loved ones at home. The images capture what military life was like for the troops as well as some of the friendships and bonds formed between the soldiers and civilians. Now for the first time a sample of the best quality images have been painstakingly brought to life by colourisation expert Tom Marshall, in a haunting testament to the brave but mostly unidentified soldiers from the brutal war. An unknown British Tommy from the 'A' Squadron, the North Irish Horse Regiment, with children watching The King's men: An unknown British Colonel, wearing the Military Cross medal ribbon, and a soldier, possibly of the Leeds Rifles, sporting an injured hand Doing his duty: A soldier of the Durham Light Infantry sporting the ribbon of the Military Cross Two unknown soldiers pose for Mr and Mrs Thuillier's camera at some point during the Great War 'Of the hundreds of pictures, I chose these particular ones because of their clarity and crispness of the faces,' said Mr Marshall, 28, from Much Wenlock, Shropshire. DO YOU KNOW ANY OF THE BRITISH SOLDIERS IN THE PHOTOS? Email news@mailonline.co.uk Advertisement 'I believe that colour can add another dimension to a person's face and aid in recognising family resemblances in old photographs. 'Hopefully this will help the campaign to identify the lost Tommies. 'None of the men in these photographs have been identified, and this is just a tiny selection of the thousands of images in the collection.' As a professional, Tom was approached to colourise a portion of the collection in the hope this could make identifying some of the soldiers easier for the public. This man has Two Years Overseas Service chevrons on right sleeve and a Good Conduct (Three Years) chevron on his left sleeve The Thuilliers photographed the soldiers and printed the snaps into postcards to be sent home, allowing soldiers to maintain a fragile link with loved ones The photographs all feature in a moving new book Lost Tommies - written by journalist Ross Coulthart 'I would encourage anyone who sees these photos to look through the entire photo collection and help to identify these men, many of whom were photographed just weeks before being killed on the front lines. 'I feel it's important that they aren't forgotten, and if we can find out more about even one more soldier's life then they will always be remembered, with a physical record for their family to treasure. 'The reaction to this project has been overwhelmingly positive, 'Many people have commented on the sadness in the eyes of the men, or the distant expressions on their faces, as it's clear that these soldiers saw something very few could imagine today. 'My favourite reaction has been the thank yous I've had from people researching their own ancestors, as they can perhaps imagine how the families of any identified soldiers might feel when they see their ancestors appear in colour.' A Forth Worth mother is facing a death penalty trial after she was indicted on two counts of capital murder over the deaths of her two daughters. Ukrainian-born Sofya Tsygankova is accused of smothering her two daughters Nika, five, and Michaela Koholodenko, one, with a pillow at her home in Benbrook, Forth Worth in March 2016. Tsygankova pleaded not guilty to both charges and is currently in Tarrant County jail with a bond set of $2 million. Scroll down for video Sofya Tsygankova, left, estranged wife of pianist Vadym Kholodenko, right, is accused of smothering their daughters Michaela, one, and Nika, five, at her home in Benbrook, Forth Worth, Texas on March 17, 2016 Kholodenko, left, arrived at the house to find his wife Tsygankova, right, 'going crazy' and covered in blood Detectives believe Tsygankova, right smothered both girls with a pillow before trying to take her own life The 32-year-old suspect is the estrange wife of internationally renowned pianist Vadym Kholodenko, who discovered his wife covered in blood and the bodies of his daughters when he arrived a their house on March 17 to take the girls to school. According to the arrest warrant affidavit, Tsygankova 'was going crazy and she had blood on her'. Responding officers who arrived at the scene said: 'Tsygankova was rocking back and forth, and making noises'. 'Officer Wallace was unable to understand what she was saying. Tsyganokova was wearing a mid-length night gown that was covered in blood. 'Officer Wallace observed blood on both of her arms as well. Officer Wallace noticed a cut on the inside of her left wrist. Officer Wallace noticed a puncture wound on Tsygoankova's chest, near the inside of her left breast.' Officer Wallace reported he discovered the body of one-year-old Michela Kholodenco lying on her back with 'a light colored fluid running out of her mouth'. He described her as 'ashen colored' and cold to the touch. The body of five-year-old Nika showed signs of rigor mortis. Tsygankova, pictured, who is facing the death penalty, has denied both charges after appearing in court Tsygankova, pictured, tried to stab herself after allegedly killing her children. She is being held in Tarrant County Jail with a bond set of $2 million while awaiting the capital murder trial in Fort Worth, Texas Officers found a pillow 'partially resting' on Michela's head in the master bedroom. According to court documents, 'the pillow had a slight indentation on top consistent with the size of a small head'. The documents claimed there was 'a small spot of biological fluid' on the pillow. A search team recovered large butcher knife with blood on the blade and the handle hidden outside on the patio. A second, cleaver style knife was inside the bath tub, beside three bottles of prescription medicine. Officers also found an empty bottle of prescription medicine in the kitchen. In an affidavit, Detective R James met with Tsygankova in the intensive care unit of John Peter Smith Hospital. He claims Tsygankova told him: 'I think I committed suicide.' She admitted injuring herself with a knife and taking a lot of pills. He said: 'She didn't want to live.' James said Tsygankova waived her Miranda Rights and allegedly told the officers she 'didn't see any future for me and kids'. She later asked: 'Did I do anything bad to my kids?' Thai police have charged 22 people, including three Buddhist monks, with wildlife trafficking as they continue to make gruesome discoveries at the infamous Tiger Temple. Wildlife officials found around 20 jars containing the preserved dead bodies of tiger cubs at the Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua temple in Kanchanaburi province, north-west of Bangkok on Friday. They made the horrifying find just two days after uncovering the bodies of 40 dead tiger cubs in freezers on the temple's grounds. Thai wildlife official display jars of dead tiger cubs after they were found during a raid at the Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand Wildlife officials found a number of jars containing the preserved dead bodies of tiger cubs at the Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua temple n Friday. The monks have previously claimed that the cub bodies in jars and freezers were kept before cremation The temple has long been a major tourist attraction, with visitors paying 600 baht (12) admission to pose for photographs with the tigers. Wildlife activists have accused the temple of illegally breeding the tigers while some visitors on online forums complained that the tigers appeared sedated. The temple denies the accusations. Dozens of police and park officials have been stationed at the popular tourist destination since Monday after removing 137 tigers from the complex. Adisorn Nuchdamrong, from Thailand's Department of National Parks, said 22 people had been charged with wildlife possession and trafficking, including 17 members of the temple's foundation and three monks trying to flee with a truckload of tiger skins. 'We found found tigers skins and amulets in a car which was trying to leave a temple,' Noochdumrong said on Thursday. Thai officials of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation found 20 dead tiger cubs preserved in jars as they were raiding the controversial Tiger Temple The find of the dead cubs in jars came just two days after the discovery of about 40 dead bodies of tiger cubs which had been stored in a freezer Despite the gruesome finds, alongside discoveries of bodyparts and skins, the temple denies allegations that they are involved in black market animal trade On Friday, 22 people were charged with wildlife possession and trafficking, including 17 members of the temple's foundation and three monks trying to flee with a truckload of tiger skins He said a search of several monks' quarters turned up more body parts, bringing Thursday's haul to two full-body tiger skins, around ten fangs and dozens of smaller pieces of tiger fur. The discovery comes after authorities found thee carcasses of forty tiger cubs have been found crudely stuffed into freezers following a raid on a Buddhist temple which is believed to be involved in illegal trafficking and animal cruelty. For decades the infamous Tiger Temple has been a popular stop for tourists who pay a steep fee to pet and be photographed with the predators - which animal rights groups say are heavily sedated. The latest finds back up long-running accusations that the Tiger Temple is involved in the illegal wildlife trade, breeding tigers and selling dead and live animals on the black market.. Animal rights activists have long accused the temple of mistreating the tigers. The government suspects the monks have been involved in illegal breeding and trafficking of the animals. National Parks and Wildlife officers examine the skin of a tiger at the Tiger Temple in Saiyok district in Kanchanaburi province, west of Bangkok The carcasses of 40 tiger cubs found undeclared at the Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua Tiger Temple on Wednesday The carcasses of 40 tiger cubs were lined up after officials made the grim discovery on Wednesday Deputy DNP director-general Adisorn Nuchdamrong stands by the carcasses of 40 tiger cubs and a bear Wildlife officials carry a sedated tiger on a stretcher at the 'Tiger Temple' in Kanchanaburi province Veterinarian officers stand by tigers loaded on a truck at the Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua Tiger Temple The monks had turned back previous attempts to take the tigers away and continued to resist Monday morning. But they relented that afternoon after police obtained a court order to carry out the action. 'There was some resistance from the community, they didn't understand why we were taking them (the tigers) from the temple when they look so peaceful and fine at the temple,' Thailand's Wildlife Conservation Office Teunjai Noochdumrong said. 'We tried talking to them, explaining to them that the tigers belong to the country.' The monks still don't understand, but at least did not put up physical resistance, she said. Wildlife officials in Thailand on Monday began removing some of the 137 tigers held at a Buddhist temple following accusations that the monks were involved in illegal breeding and trafficking of the animals About 40 tigers are set to be relocated to government animal shelters elsewhere in the country Thai DNP officers carry a sedated tiger outside its cage as its set to be relocated to animal shelters He and his dad he is suddenly flattened by the This is the hilarious moment a boisterous - but friendly - dog knocked over a boy posing for the camera. The child can be seen standing in long grass that nearly hides him in a field in Dundalk, Ireland. 'Look how small I am,' he jokes to the camera - and his dad who is believed to be filming. The child can be seen standing in long grass that nearly hides him in a field in Dundalk, Ireland. 'Look how small I am,' he jokes to the camera - and his dad who is believed to be filming Then rustling can be heard and the dad spots a tail whisking through the field and the grass parting. Suddenly the boy is thrown to the ground with a loud, 'Oh!' Then rustling can be heard and the dad spots a tail whisking through the field and the grass parting. Suddenly the boy is thrown to the ground with a loud, 'Oh!' The two burst out laughing as the family dog appears next the kid as he scrambles to his feet. The canine shows no shame for his actions and simply sits looking innocent, panting heavily. Dundalk is close to the border with Northern Ireland, equidistant from Dublin and Belfast. The two burst out laughing as the family dog appears next the kid as he scrambles to his feet A judge has accused a nightclub of allowing a teenager to fall into the hands of two sex attackers after they kicked her out before she was abducted and raped. Mrs Justice Mary Stacey accused Snobs in Birmingham of 'abandoning' the 19-year-old victim to be picked off 'like prey' by two sex attackers, who took the girl's virginity. She even suggested the nightclub was partly to blame for the rape by saying they had 'created the circumstances for the crime to occur.' Shocking: The victim was thrown out of the nightclub and lured into a transit van by Zaheer Abbas, 30, left, and Sajad Hussain, 35, right, who spent an hour abusing her The university student, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was thrown out by bouncers after she collapsed at the popular nightspot on February 20 last year. A court heard after being ejected she became separated from her friends and was lured into a transit van by Zaheer Abbas, 30, and Sajad Hussain, 35. She was then driven to an industrial estate where she was brutally raped and sexually assaulted in the back of the vehicle by the pair during an hour long ordeal. Rebuke: Judge Stacey criticised the management at Snobs - which is one of Britain's oldest nightclubs - saying the victim was abandoned Yesterday Abbas was jailed for 11 years after being convicted or rape while Hussain was sentenced to six years after being found guilty of sexual assault. Sentencing at Birmingham Crown Court, Judge Stacey criticised the management at Snobs - which is one of Britain's oldest nightclubs. In a scathing attack on binge drinking Britain she also blasted the venue's cheap drinks promotions and accused them of acting 'irresponsibly towards their customers.' She said: 'Something needs to be said about Snobs nightclub. 'We have heard how the establishment carries on serving drinks to students who have had far more than enough to drink. 'Then they fail to take responsibility for the students, they removed (her) after she collapsed inside. 'Snobs abandoned her on the street where she was prey to the likes of Abbas and Hussain. 'The security officer is not personally to blame, it was a failure of Snobs itself to fail to put procedures in place, for example by arranging taxis to take them (students) home. 'The disregard for customers allowed for the circumstances for this crime to occur.' The judge said the case called into question the club's fitness to hold a licence and referred the venue to licensing chiefs at Birmingham City Council. She also vowed to contact colleges and universities warning them of Snobs' cheap drinks promotions targeting 'young and vulnerable' students She added: 'This was a deeply distressing case. The distress on the face of the jurors was all too evident and understandable.' Abbas was convicted by a jury last December while Hussain was convicted last month. Both trials were shown chilling CCTV of the pair outside the club before the attack. Jurors heard the victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was ejected by Snobs' security staff at around 3.30am. Abbas and Hussain, along with others, were then seen leading her to Abbas' transit van. She was then driven to an industrial estate in the Nechells area of the city where she was raped by Abbas and sexually assaulted by Hussain. Ordeal: Snobs was accused of throwing out the teenage student after she collapsed, leaving her as easy prey for her attackers The horrific ordeal lasted over an hour before the twisted pair dropped the victim back at her student accommodation. The court heard the student, who had been a virgin, had since dropped out of her course at the University of Birmingham. Judge Stacey told the wicked pair: 'What you both did to her had devastating consequences. 'After achieving her goal of getting into a top university because of your actions she dropped out. 'She no longer goes out on her own and feels wary and fearful. She was clearly abducted, she had to be held up and was unable to walk unaided. 'She was totally incapable. Abbas, you took her virginity from her which can never be reclaimed, you took her innocence and ruined her time in Birmingham. 'Both of you have shown no remorse and have cynically attempted to portray her as a sexual predator when the exact opposite was true.' Abbas, of Birmingham, and Hussain, of Birmingham, denied doing anything wrong but were both convicted by separate juries. The judge praised their victim who endured two trials, saying: 'I pay tribute to her strength and courage coming forward. 'Her bravery and dignity impressed everyone at court. Her actions resulted in you both being brought to justice.' Hussain, who was working as a taxi Marshall on the night, still denied doing anything wrong despite damning DNA evidence being found on the victim's clothing. Jabeen Akhtar, defending, said; 'He doesn't accept anything that happened. 'He is remorseful because he feels he should have distanced himself more and should have got out of the van. 'He realises this incident would have an impact on (the victim) and he is sorry for that. He hopes she can get on with her life and put this behind her.' car was thanks for supporting Noor after her mum died A Kuwaiti nursery school pupil has taken end-of-year gifts to the next level after presenting her favourite teacher with a brand new luxury Mercedes. Noor Al Faris, aged around five, wanted to thank her teacher for helping her 'graduate' from kindergarten in Kuwait this week. Little Miss Al Faris is pictured sitting on the bonnet of the car, which has; 'This car is for my favourite teacher Nadia' written in Arabic on the windscreen. Noor said she gave Nadia the car because she wanted to express her gratitude towards her teacher after she graduated from her local nursery. But according to local media, it was in fact Noor's appreciative father, not named, who bought the present for Nadia after the teacher helped his child recover from losing her mother. The widower told local reporters that she had a key role in helping his child develop and had had a positive impact on Noor following her mother's death. The exact price and specifications of the car were not revealed although local media suggested it was an expensive model. Deputy Chief John Sprague has had his badge and gun taken away and placed on modified duty after he refused to testify before a federal grand jury Another NYPD police chief is to be questioned as part of a major corruption investigation into the force. Deputy Chief John Sprague has had his badge and gun taken away and placed on modified duty after he refused to testify before a federal grand jury. The senior officer, part of the NYPD's force investigation division, had been called as part of the gifts-for-favors scandal. Sprague was ordered to attend court on Friday but then told officials he would plead the Fifth Amendment if called to testify. But the 45-year-old has said he will answer questions by the police force's Internal Affairs Bureau. His lawyer, Michael Farkas told the Daily News: 'Deputy Chief Sprague exercised the right that all of us have as citizens under the U.S. Constitution. 'However, as a dedicated public servant with decades of service to the people of our city, he intends to answer all questions put to him by the Police Department in its investigation.' Sprague once held a senior post covering the Patrol Borough Brooklyn South and the 66th Precinct - an area several officers involved in the investigation are from. The probe is investigating businessmen Jeremy Reichberg and Jona Rechnitz, gun broker Shaya Lichtenstein and Hamlet Peralta, previously the owner of the Hudson River Cafe. He was charged in April with running a $12 million Ponzi scheme. Sprague was only appointed to the deputy chief position at the end of March - just days before the investigation was made public. He was linked last year with the department's new Force Investigation Division, which was formed to investigate all police-involved shootings. Four senior police officers, named in the gifts-for-favors investigation, have all filed for retirement. Deputy Chief Eric Rodriguez, the former executive officer at Patrol Borough Brooklyn South, and Deputy Chief Andrew Capul, the former second in command at Patrol Borough Manhattan North and Deputy Chief David Colon and Deputy Inspector James Grant, have all been named in the probe. The government has abandoned plans to charge families of British troops killed in Iraq 767 for copies of the long-awaited Chilcot report after a furious backlash. Despite Sir John Chilcot being paid 790 a day for chairing the seven-year inquiry into the Iraq War, it had emerged that relatives would not be given free copies of the two million word report. They were only due to receive an executive summary - which will be charged at 30 for others - and had been told to access the full report for free online. The approach was branded 'scandalous' and an 'insult' by relatives of those who gave their lives in the conflict. David Godfrey, the grandfather of Rifleman Daniel Coffey who was shot on patrol in Iraq in 2007, told MailOnline Tony Blair should be forced to pay for their copies. Before Downing Street stepped in the families of British troops killed in Iraq were being asked to pay 767 each if they want a hard copy of the long-awaited copy of the full Chilcot report But as Tory MPs joined calls for a rethink Number 10 stepped in, with a spokesman saying: "There is no question of families of service personnel who died in Iraq having to pay for copies of the Chilcot report. Families who lost loved ones after Mr Blair took Britain into Iraq in 2003 have already waited seven years for the report, which has suffered dozens of set-backs and cost the taxpayer millions of pounds. The report will finally be published on July 6 and will be four times the length of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Roger Bacon, who lost his son in the Iraq War, said it was 'offensive' to charge him and fellow grieving relatives to pay for the report. David Godfrey (pictured right outside his home in Cullompton, Devon), the grandfather of Rifleman Daniel Coffey who was shot on patrol in Iraq in 2007, told MailOnline that Tony Blair should be forced to cover the costs for each family to receive a copy of the Chilcot report Tory MPs have added their voices to calls for the Government to cover the costs so the families can obtain a hard copy for free. Mark Pritchard, MP for the Wrekin demanded the Government 'rethink' the decision to charge families. Fellow Tory MP and former commando in Afghanistan Johnny Mercer said it was an 'insult' to the families and said it was proof they have been 'almost entirely forgotten'. The report is expected to be more than 6,000 pages long and include 12 volumes, including an executive summary. There are fears that the length of the report will make it 'unfocused' as the blame will be at so many doors. Mr Godfrey criticised the length of the report, telling MailOnline: 'How can they expect the families let alone the public to digest such a vast volume and give our opinions and look at why this has happened and goodness knows what else?' Mark Pritchard, Tory MP for the Wrekin demanded the Government 'rethink' the decision to charge families Reg Keys (right) lost his 20-year-old son Lance Corporal Thomas Keys in the Iraq War. He was killed in an ambush in Iraq in 2003. Above, Mr Keys is pictured with his other son Richard on the steps of the Ministry of Defence in 2007 as they sought answers The decision to charge for a hard copy of the Chilcot report caused more fury among family members who lost loved ones in the Iraq War, including Elsie Manning (left), mother of Staff Sergeant Sharron Elliott (34, right) who was killed in 2006 when a bomb hit her patrol boat Responding to news that relatives would have to pay 767 to get his hands on a hard copy of the final Chilcot report, he said the Government must be made to cover the costs so families can receive a copy for free. 'I think they should, absolutely. They should be made to pay for it. Blair should be made to pay for it himself. 'Theres not the words to explain what I personally feel about Blair and Bush and the downright illegal war that they created.' Explaining that he could not afford to pay to travel to London to attend the publication of the report next month, he said: 'Unfortunately I wont be able to because being a pensioner I cannot afford that kind of pay-out. 'I think it would cause more heartbreak than ever to go up there and sit in that room, you wouldnt be able to concentrate, your head would be screwed.' He added: 'Im going to have to read it online, unless we can get the Government to move on getting these copies to the families, which they should do.' Last month a former minister who had discussed the report with its authors said the report will seriously damage Tony Blair's reputation and will also come down hard on former foreign secretary John Chilcot and a host of intelligence chiefs. Responding to news he would have to pay 767 to obtain a hard copy of the Chilcot report, Mr Bacon told the Telegraph: 'It's ridiculous, I think it's very unfair. To have to spend that amount of money, where do they think the families are going to get the funds from to do that. 'This is big money for most people. We are not corporations or Government organisations, we are ordinary people.' Other relatives who have long-campaigned for answers over the Iraq War include Reg Keys, who lost his 20-year-old son Lance Corporal Thomas Keys in a mob ambush in June 2003. This is the shocking moment a pensioner drives the wrong way down the M60 before colliding with two vehicles. Dozens of terrified drivers were forced to swerve out of the way as they saw the elderly man's red Ford Fiesta speeding towards them on the anti-clockwise carriageway of the motorway on Monday evening. Video footage shows motorists heading towards Cheadle. As the clip continues a silver vehicle suddenly veers left into the middle lane, before the camera captures the Fiesta heading towards oncoming traffic in the right-hand lane. The man, aged in his 80s, drives the wrong way down the M60 before colliding with two vehicles He was taken to hospital with minor injuries, the three other occupants in the two cars were not seriously injured Seconds later, the Fiesta disappears out of shot but continues in the wrong direction of one of Greater Manchester's busiest highways. Steve Gait, who filmed it on his dashcam, said: 'I flashed my headlights and blew my horn. It made no difference to him. He was driving at about 45 to 50mph.' A few minutes later, the Ford was involved in a smash with two other vehicles. The three occupants were not seriously injured. The driver, a man in his 80s, was taken to Salford Royal hospital but his injuries were not thought to have been serious. Greater Manchester Police received multiple 999 calls alerting them to the emergency, after the car was spotted entering the motorway at junction three for Cheadle. The footage shows a silver vehicle suddenly veer left into the middle lane of the road, before the camera captures the man's red Ford Fiesta heading towards oncoming traffic in the right-hand lane of the carriageway Drivers who witnessed the drama said they were stunned by what they had seen. Gemma Eccleston said she had to move to avoid hitting the driver. She posted on Twitter 'Just had to narrowly avoid an old man driving up the wrong way of the M60. Hope he's going to be okay'. Rick Taylor added: 'Feeling lucky to be alive. Car going flat out in the fast lane of the M60 - going the WRONG way. I do hope @gmpolice get them quick!' It was a miracle that no-one was killed, or seriously injured, during the bizarre incident Traffic was stopped completely between the two junctions while police and paramedics were called to the scene. A spokesman for the North West Ambulance Service confirmed that two ambulances attended and treated four people. The carriageway was fully reopened at around 8pm. A drink-driver has been banned from the wheel after police tried to flag him down as he drove erratically down the M6 and refused to stop. The German saloon driven by Mark Stamper, 24, was spotted swerving between lanes on the M6 northbound before exiting at junction 40 near Penrith, Cumbria at about 12.45pm on May 9. Footage filmed by another driver shows Stamper - who was almost twice the legal alcohol limit - blasting past an officer in a lay-by who was frantically trying to flag his 3-Series down. Erratic: A German saloon driven by Mark Stamper, 24, was spotted swerving between lanes on the M6 northbound Stamper, a farmer from Cockermouth, Cumbria, pleaded guilty to driving above the alcohol limit at West Cumbria Magistrates Court last Friday (May 27) and was banned from driving for 17 months. He was also fined 230 and ordered to pay 85 in costs and a 30 court surcharge. The court heard that when Stamper - who had been on a night out in Blackpool the previous night - finally stopped, the police officer could smell alcohol on him. Dangerous: Stamper veered from lane to lane while driving the car back from a night out in Blackpool He was found to have 62 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35. Stamper told officers he had stopped drinking at 2am. Geoff Taylor, defending, said: 'This is the situation of a man who got drunk, went to bed and then drove. 'He even went for a walk on the promenade at Blackpool for an hour and a half before driving. 'He works for his family farm, he's a hardworking, decent chap. 'He apologises for his actions. If he is disqualified, this would cause problems with the running of the farm.' Stop: Police desperately signalled for Stamper to stop, bu he refused - and when he finally did, he was over the limit But in sentencing, Judge Gerald Chalk told Stamper: 'I must disqualify you for 17 months. 'Although I appreciate that this would cause great inconvenience to yourself and your family, you drove a long way from Blackpool. 'I do offer you the opportunity of attending a drink driving rehabilitation course which could reduce your disqualification by 17 weeks.' Brian Douglas, 30, from Whitehaven, Cumbria, called Cumbria Police after spotting Stamper's erratic driving on the M6 northbound and it was this call which initiated an operation to bring him to a halt. Speaking after the sentencing, Brian said: 'I called the police because I felt it was almost a matter of time until there was a major accident. 'When I saw the policeman in the lay-by, I thought 'this is it, the police will finally stop him' so I couldn't believe it when he went flying past. 'It was a relief when they finally pulled the car over.' A Cumbria Police spokesperson said: 'Police were called at around 12:45pm on Monday 9th May following reports of a silver BMW swerving through lanes on the M6 Northbound, Penrith. A veteran Mexican matador has died in hospital more than a month after he was gored and left paralysed during a bullfight. Rodolfo Rodriguez Gonzalez, known as El Pana, died in the Civil Hospital in the city of Guadalajara in central Mexico after being rushed their after a performance. The famous 64-year-old was gored after a bull ignored his cape and smashed straight into him, sending him flying through the air leaving him to land on his head. Mexican matador Rodolfo Rodriguez Gonzalez, who has died a month after being gored by a bull at a bullfight During the incident, the bull ignored Rodriguez's pink cape and smashed into him sending him flying upwards After being thrown into the air, Rodriguez landed back down on the ground on his head, causing paralysis Rodriguez, known for his cigar smoking, had been receiving treatment in the hospital and had even been moved out of intensive care last week. But doctor Francisco Preciado said he began to suffer from pneumonia, which eventually led to his death. The matador was taking part in his second bullfight of the day in the city of Ciudad Lerdo, in the northern Mexican state of Durango. Footage of the accident shows the veteran Mexican bullfighter standing waiting with his colourful cape held out to one side. After the incident people gathered around Rodriguez to try to assist him and get him to hospital quickly Rodriguez, known for his cigar smoking, had been receiving treatment in the hospital and had even been moved out of intensive care last week but then suffered pneumonia The massive brown bull runs out of its enclosure and ignores his cape as it charges straight at Rodriguez, who is tossed into the air as the crowd gasps in horror. People quickly rush towards him and he is put on a stretcher and taken to a nearby hospital. Speaking at the time, doctor Galvan Zermeno, who treated Rodriguez, said: 'We have found symptoms that indicate a very serious injury to the spinal tissue. 'The diagnosis leads us to the conclusion of possible quadriplegia, which means immobility in his whole body.' However, the accident was not the first time that the veteran was injured in the ring. At his debut in La Plaza Mexico he was gored and suffered a ruptured artery. Doctors feared he would lose his leg but he battled back and was in the ring 30 days later. Rodriguez was also famed for his outrageous and controversial comments including one in 2007 when he dedicated a victory to the 'w****s who had given me protection' He is also famed for his outrageous and controversial comments including one in 2007 when he dedicated a victory to the 'w****s who had given me protection.' He said: 'I give thanks for the dames, the ladies, the mistresses, the princesses, the waifs and strays, the w****s. 'Because you all have quenched my thirst and satiated my hunger and given me protection and cover in your breast and loins and accompanied me in my loneliness. Advertisement Animal welfare officers had to shoot a bear cub with a tranquilizer dart after it clambered up a tree overlooking a school in Massachusetts. Officers shot the cub twice as it sat in a tree beside Pittsfield High School, which is about 110 miles west of Boston. The bear took almost an hour to fall out of the tree as rescuers waited patiently below with a large net to prevent the animal from injuring itself on the ground. This is the moment the bear cub fell from a tree after being shot by a tranquilizer dart outside a school in Pittsfield, Massachusetts The bear, pictured, spent much of yesterday wandering around Pittsfield, Massachusetts before his capture after several hours roaming The bear landed safely in the net, pictured, after it fell from the tree in Pittsfield, Massachusetts after been shot with a special dart According to the Berkshire Eagle, animal welfare officers chased the bear around Pittsfield, which is only six miles from the border with New York State for much of the afternoon. Witness Kevin Unterberger said a lack of food was forcing the bears into town. He said: 'The berries aren't out yet and they're looking for food," he said. "We had such an off winter that a lot of them really didn't stay in hibernation. 'One walked right through the front door of my neighbor's house and ate muffins right off the kitchen table. By the time everybody got home he had walked out and left. I told her next time you should put a pot of coffee on and maybe he'll stay longer.' He added: 'I was so afraid the little guy was going to get hurt. There's a story with a nice ending.' Rescuers hoped to release the bear, pictured following its capture yesterday, back into the nearby woods so it could find its mother Police have released an image of a man with no nose in the hope it will help them identify a sexual attacker. Victoria Police released the computer-generated image as they investigated a sexual assault on a Melbourne tram in May. The image shows a man with dark eyes, brown hair and a black bar obscuring where his nose would be. Victoria Police released a computer-generated image of the man believed to be responsible for a sexual assault on May 26 Police said the man groped a 30-year-old woman on the bum several times as she travelled on a tram on Melbourne's St Kilda Road. They said he may have also assaulted another passenger before getting off the tram near the Shrine of Rememberance. The incident occurred around 8pm on May 26. A Victoria Police spokeswoman said the nose had been obscured because the victim could not remember what it looked like. She said: 'If the victim can't be satisfied with how the image looks, the artist might leave that feature out. 'They have to be happy with how it looks.' Anyone with information about the incident is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or make a confidential report at www.crimestoppersvic.com.au. Victoria Police said the assault occurred around 8pm on St Kilda Road near the Shrine of Rememberance Human remains have been found inside a 4.3 metre crocodile which was shot by wildlife officers in Queensland on Friday. The remains were discovered inside the crocodile when the large reptile was autopsied in Cairns on Friday evening. They are believed to be those of Cindy Waldron, who was dragged in to the water by a crocodile last week. Scroll down for video Police will examine a crocodile trapped as part of an investigation into Impulsive New South Wales photographer, Cindy Waldron (pictured), 46, who was dragged under the water by a crocodile on May 29 Crocodile victim Cindy Waldron's sister Anna-Lee Annett (pictured) said that the incident gave her 'nightmares' but does not support a recent appeal to cull the reptiles since her sister's death A spokesperson for Queensland Police told Daily Mail Australia the remains would be sent to the coroner along with a report from police detailing the events of the last week. The Department of Environment and Heritage Protection removed the animal from Cooper Creek, near Thornton Beach, where the 46-year-old was taken on Sunday night, and shot it dead. Queensland Police said wildlife officers believe they caught the correct crocodile based on its size and location. 'The 4.3m estuarine crocodile was humanely euthanised. It is being transported to a secure EHP facility in Cairns,' they said. The remains of the reptile will be examined to determine if it was responsible for the fatal attack at the request of police. This is the second crocodile to be caught as part of the investigation in to the woman's death. On Thursday, another reptile was trapped and set to be examined - as it was revealed her family don't want to see the animal that may have killed her harmed. The Department of Environment and Heritage Protection trapped an estuarine crocodile estimated between 2.5 and 2.7 metres, although it is believed the reptile was not the one involved in the incident. Ms Waldron's sister and father arrived in Cairns on Wednesday to say goodbye to their beloved family member, who was dragged under the water by a crocodile at Thornton Beach, in Queensland's Daintree National Park. Authorities continue a search for Ms Waldron remains after she ventured into the water with friend Leeann Mitchell on May 29. The missing crocodile attack victim's sister, Anna-Lee Annett said picturing the incident was giving her nightmares but that she found comfort in the response seen in Queensland. She said: 'It's pretty overwhelming to know that so many people care and have given up their time to help with the search. She's worth it.' Since the death of her sister, three crocodile traps have been set up in the area to make sure the incident does not happen again. Ms Waldron (left), 46, had been swimming with her friend, Leeann Mitchell (right) when Ms Mitchell had felt something brush past her leg in the water. The pair had been celebrating the end of Ms Mitchells chemotherapy and travelled to the tropics for a holiday Ms Annett has said that although she and her family are 'heartbroken' they do not support the recent appeal to cull the reptiles. The state government is set to allocate an extra $5.8million over three years in next week's budget for crocodile management. Environment Minister Dr Steven Miles said: 'We don't know with enough scientific accuracy if crocodile numbers are increasing or decreasing in some river systems and in light of a suspected crocodile attack in the Daintree we need to know. Survey work will be carried out in rivers and estuaries at night, when tidal conditions increase the chance of spotting crocs. Emergency services pictured at the scene on Thornton Beach following the attack on May 29 are still in search of the remains of Ms Waldron as family joined the search part on June 1 Queensland's governmentis set to allocate an extra $5.8million over three years in next week's budget for crocodile management. A crocodile suspected of carrying out the attack is pictured near the Beach six months ago Dr Miles said: 'This will be the most comprehensive crocodile population survey ever in Queensland and data will be compared to figures going back as far as 1979. 'There are serious public safety concerns associated with croc country, and we need to explore ways to live side-by-side with these animals and protect crocodile populations in the wild,' he added. Federal MP Bob Katter has called for croc-shooting safaris to cull the growing population, but other experts have warned there is no solid evidence of a problem. Family members made an emotional visit to the beach after their flight to Cairns to say goodbye and expressed gratitude for the massive search effort. Ms Waldron (right) pictured with Leann Mitchell (left) whose cousin, Alan Frost, said she was unhurt in the incident but was treated for shock. Ms Mitchell spoke to Ms Waldron's sister after she left hospital and Ms Annett said the two had been best friends but what they did was 'silly' Thornton Beach in far North Queensland's Daintree region is known for having a high concentration of crocodiles but Ms Waldron's father Pat said his daughter often 'did crazy things' Mr Waldron said: 'We need to be here and cry on the beach.' RECENT CROCODILE ATTACKS IN QUEENSLAND * May 29, 2016 A 46-year-old woman is snatched and dragged under water during a late-night swim with a friend at Thornton Beach in the Daintree National Park. Her friend tried in vain to save her. * March, 2016 Cooktown sailor Graham Clark fended off a crocodile with a piece of wood after it latched onto the side of his boat at the town's harbour. The 70-year-old was woken by barking fox-terrier Laddie. * December 2, 2015 Snorkelling off the coast of Lizard Island at night, Noosa man Mick Curwen was bitten on the arm by a 2.5m crocodile. He managed to shock the reptile by shining his torch in its eyes before frantically swimming to shore. * April 13, 2015 An elderly golfer was attacked at a Port Douglas course owned by Clive Palmer. The 70-year-old man disturbed a crocodile in a waterway at the 11th hole of the Palmer Sea Reef Golf Course and suffered puncture wounds. * March 9, 2011 A fisherman suffered a broken leg after being struck by a four-metre croc at Weipa in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The 28-year-old clung to mangroves before another fisherman was able to fight it off. * February 5, 2011 A north Queensland man was swimming at a popular watering hole near Weipa with his two daughters when a crocodile latched onto his arm. He punched it several times in the head before it let go. * February 8, 2009 Five-year-old Jeremy Doble was taken on the banks of the Daintree River in Cairns. He was playing with his older brother when he followed the family's dog into the water. * September 30, 2008 Vietnam veteran Arthur Booker, 62, was killed while checking a crab pot on the Endeavour River near Cooktown. Two weeks later remains were found in the stomach of a 4.3m crocodile. Advertisement He said that his daughter would often do 'crazy' things and that it was a 'horrible way to end'. 'She didn't deserve that,' he added. Described as impulsive and fun-loving, it is believed that Ms Waldron would have known the risks of her later-night beach adventure. In the hours leading up to her disappearance the 46-year-old New South Wales photographer posted to Facebook: 'I'm on the beach, it's a lovely place, I'm having a ball.' Ms Waldron had been with her childhood friend from New Zealand Ms Mitchell, and the pair were walking arm-in-arm in knee-deep water along the beach shortly after dinner. Ms Mitchell claimed that she had felt something brush past her leg at the time of the attack. 'They'd only been in the water for no more than a minute (before the attack),' Senior Constable Russell Parker said, according to The Australian. Ms Mitchell's cousin, Alan Frost, told the New Zealand Herald she was unhurt in the incident after the pair waded into the water that was known to have a high population of crocodiles. Despite Ms Mitchell's desperate efforts to free her friend from the predator's clutches, Ms Waldron was dragged away as she screamed, 'a croc's got me, a croc's got me', 9News reported. Ms Mitchell was taken to Mossman Hospital following the attack, suffering from shock and minor grazes. Ms Mitchell, who had reportedly travelled to the tropics to celebrate the end of her cancer treatment with Ms Waldron, has since left hospital and spoken to Ms Annett. Ms Annett said: '(It was the) most difficult conversation of my entire life, but I needed to have that conversation. 'They were best friends and they hadn't seen each other for a while. 'They did something silly.' Ms Waldron's suspected death makes the second fatality involving a crocodile in a fortnight. On May 17, Noel Ramage, 72, drowned after a crocodile reportedly overturned the boat he and his mate were in while crabbing near Gunn Point, about 40km northeast of Darwin. The Victorian man was trapped under the capsized tinnie and drowned while his 72-year-old friend hurled spanners and spark plugs at the croc in a desperate bid to keep it at bay. The friend was trapped in muddy mangroves for three hours before he was rescued. There are crocodile warning signs on the side of the Daintree River near where the attack took place Environment Minister Dr Steven Miles said that there are no accurate numbers for crocodiles in the region and survey work will be carried out in rivers and estuaries at night, when tidal conditions increase the chance of spotting crocs A 52-year-old Russian man has been detained after using an axe to sever his friend's penis, say police. The two villagers had been arguing about the size of their manhoods during a drinking session in the Urals region on Bashkortostan. After embarking on a penis-measuring competition, the 'loser' was so enraged that he attacked his 47-year-old friend with the axe. Sore loser: The two men embarked on a penis-measuring competition after a drinking session in the village where they live in the Urals region The elder man grabbed the axe and his his friend over the head with it, before chopping off the man's penis, it was alleged. A police spokesman said: 'Over two days the men were binge drinking, which led to a violent argument. 'When words were exhausted, the attacker pulled out an axe and first struck the opponent on the head, then cut off his manhood.' Neighbour called the emergency services after hearing the man's pained screams. Short straw: The 'loser' was so enraged that he attacked the 'winner' with an axe, cutting off his penis Reports said it was the man judged to have the smaller genitals who wielded the axe. The men have known each other since childhood and live in the village of Nikolsk. They were not named. The older man has been charged with inflicting a 'grave injury' on his friend. Advertisement These are the gruesome scenes of a whale post-mortem after the 22ft mammal washed up on a beach in Scotland. It was spotted in St Andrew's on Wednesday evening and it is believed that it became tangled up in something and was unable to swim away. Marine experts from Inverness have now arrived to conduct a post-mortem on the mammal in a remote location near the River Eden. Once beached, whales can explode because of a chemical reaction in their stomach, so it is crucial that they are cut open. Disposal: This Minke Whale was washed up on the Beach at St Andrews, Scotland, and marine experts were called in to dispose of it Mammoth task: Once the tests are complete, they will have to find somewhere appropriate to bury as it because it is too big to move Explosive: Once beached, whales can explode because of a chemical reaction in their stomach, so it is crucial that they are cut open Scientists:0 Marine experts from Inverness have now arrived to conduct a post-mortem on the animal in a remote spot near the River Eden Primitive: The scientists have to use rudimentary tolls such as saws and huge clippers to do the tests amd cut parts of the mammal as it is too heavy to deal with whole Science: It also provides a vital opportunity for the staff with the Scottish Marine Stranding Scheme to learn more about the animals Lerning: The scientists took various information and measurements from the whale, and hope to find out exactly what it was that led it to its death on the beach The scientists have to use rudimentary tolls such as saws and huge clippers to cut parts of the mammal as it is too heavy to deal with whole. Once the tests are complete, they will most likely have to find somewhere appropriate to bury as it. Dr Andrew Brownlow, a member of the team from Inverness, told The Courier: 'There has been some anecdotal evidence from some local fishermen that they had seen something that looked like a minke whale floating at sea with some material attached to it. 'Im pretty confident that it was tangled up but we need to look at it.Officials have been in discussions with environmental health colleagues to get permission to carry out an autopsy at the scene.' The whale post-mortem is also provides a vital opportunity for the staff with the Scottish Marine Stranding Scheme to learn more about the animals. The scientists took various information and measurements from the whale, and hope to find out exactly what it was that led it to its death on the beach. Whales have a complex internal navigation system, yet unusually high numbers have washed up on British beaches over the last year. Lost: Whales have a complex internal navigation system, yet unusually high numbers have washed up on British beaches over the last year Dr Andrew Brownlow, a member of the team from Inverness, told The Courier: ' There has been some anecdotal evidence from some local fishermen that they had seen something that looked like a minke whale floating at sea with some material attached to it. Dr Andrew Brownlow added: 'Im pretty confident that it was tangled up but we need to look at it.Officials have been in discussions with environmental health colleagues to get permission to carry out an autopsy at the scene' The mammal was spotted in St Andrew's on Wednesday evening and it is believed that it became tangled up in something and was unable to swim away Marine experts from Inverness have now arrived to conduct a post-mortem on the animal in a remote location near the River Eden The Honduran mother who delivered what is believed to be the first baby to be born with a Zika virus-related condition in the New York tri-state area flew to America to specifically seek treatment. In an interview with Fox News Latino, the young mother whose name has not been released publicly, explained that her initial symptoms were 'underestimated' by medical doctors in her native land. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in February that it will cost at least $1million to treat a baby with Zika throughout their lifetime. Mail Online contacted the US Customs and Border Patrol Agency who declined to comment about the woman's immigration status along with the baby in question due to Privacy Act restrictions. The 31-year-old woman told Fox News Latino that a rash appeared on her in December and that she was also feverish around the same time - both of which are symptoms of Zika. She decided to see another doctor in the Central American nation, but then decided to seek treatment in the US and possibly entered the country on a tourist visa 33 days ago. 'I told my gynecologist that I had an allergic episode,' she said from her hospital bed at Hackensack University Medical Center. Scroll down for video The first baby (pictured) with Zika-linked microcephaly was born in the tri-state New York area to a 31-year-old woman who was visiting from Honduras on Tuesday The mother had a normal ultrasound early in her pregnancy and that one conducted last week showed birth defects, including microcephaly. Above the baby girl is pictured The 31-ear-old mother (pictured) told Fox News Latino that she may have contracted Zika from a mosquito bite. She said she had a rash in December and told her gynecologist in Honduras Watch the latest video at <a href="http://video.foxnews.com">video.foxnews.com</a> 'He asked if I had a fever. I said I had had a little fever but it was very brief, only for about an hour.' In addition, the doctor in Honduras asked her if she had other symptoms, like redness or pain in her eyes. Those symptoms are often spoken about to health workers from people who have the virus. 'I said no,' the woman told Fox News. 'He said, 'Don't worry, everything will be fine. I don't think you will be affected.' Then I had an ultrasound, and everything looked fine.' She was eventually diagnosed with Zika in Honduras before she traveled to New Jersey, where she has relatives. It's unclear exactly how far along she was in the pregnancy before she traveled to the US. In addition, most US airlines do not restrict pregnant women from flying, but it is highly suggested that women who are closer to their due date do not board planes. The woman, who is unsure of how she contracted the virus, said that it may have happened because of a mosquito bite. She gave birth to the baby girl that has intestinal and visual issues along with microcephaly by cesarean section on Tuesday at Hackensack UMC. HOW HOMELAND SECURITY DEALS WITH ZIKA VIRUS SUFFERERS In a statement provided to Mail Online, the Department of Homeland Security provided the list below of steps they are taking combined with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for efforts to respond to the Zika virus: U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel observe all travelers entering the United States for general overt signs of illness at all U.S. ports of entry. CBP officers also observe migrants for overt signs of illness when they are apprehended at U.S. borders while attempting to enter the United States unlawfully. Homeland Security does not believe enhanced mass screenings for Zika would be effective because most sufferers do not display symptoms of the virus Accordingly, CDC is not conducting enhanced entry screening for Zika, such as active symptom monitoring and temperature checks at ports of entry for arriving travelers. Sick migrants are referred, transported, and escorted for appropriate medical attention as needed. There is no mention of Zika sufferers being deported to their country of origin. Pregnant women in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody who come from areas where Zika is rife are automatically screened for symptoms and blood tested. They are provided with parental care while in custody. Advertisement The Zika virus has been linked to microcephaly, which is when a baby's head is smaller than expected due to the brain not developing properly. Since the baby girl was born in New Jersey, she will automatically become a US citizen. It's unclear if the mother has insurance or who is paying for the hospital costs. According to the CDC, the estimated lifetime cost to treat a baby born with this condition that will require long-term care ranges from $1million to $10million. Some babies with the condition can live normal lives, but most suffer from severe disabilities. The surgical team at the hospital was led by Dr. Abdulla Al-Khan and Dr. Manny Alvarez, the hospital's chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology and reproductive science, according to Fox News Latino. The Associated Press reported that the Al-Khan said the mother had a normal ultrasound early in her pregnancy and that one conducted last week showed birth defects, including microcephaly. She gave birth to a baby girl (pictured) by cesarean section on Tuesday at Hackensack UMC. The baby has intestinal and visual issues She said that one of the doctors in Honduras told her 'don't worry, everything will be fine,' but was eventually diagnosed with Zika. She traveled to New Jersey to seek treatment Doctors at Hackensack University Medical Center (pictured) in New Jersey confirmed the baby is suffering from the Zika virus, a condition wherein the child's brain and head are partially developed Al-Khan said the prognosis for babies who are born with microcephaly is 'generally very poor.' He added that the mother is 'hanging in there.' 'But, of course, what human being isn't going to be devastated by this news?' he said. The mother said: 'It's a reality we're living. Sometimes we can underestimate things, but when it's your turn to be in that situation, that's the hard part.' Mail Online has requested comment from Hackensack UMC, US Customs and Border Patrol and the CDC. Experts recently discovered that sexual transmission of the Zika virus is more common than health officials first feared. The discovery has prompted the World Health Organization to revise its advice to women who have visited areas hit by the virus. Health experts now suggest women abstain from sex, or use protection and delay conceiving for at least eight weeks after they or their partner returns from areas where Zika is rife. The WHO said Tuesday that couples or women planning pregnancy 'are strongly recommend to wait at least eight weeks before trying to conceive', to ensure the virus has cleared their bodies. Sexual transmission of the Zika virus is more common than health experts first feared, it has emerged. The discovery has prompted the World Health Organization to revise its advise regarding conception, urging couples to abstain from sex or use protection and delay conceiving for at least eight weeks (file photo) The recommendation, which doubles the abstinence period the WHO had previously advised, comes after scientists found the virus lingers longer than previously thought in blood or other body fluids (file photo) The recommendation, which doubles the abstinence period the WHO had previously advised, comes after scientists found the virus lingers longer than previously thought in blood or other body fluids, spokesman Christian Lindmeier told a news briefing. If the male partner in a couple planning pregnancy has symptoms of the Zika virus, the period of safe abstinence should be six months, he added. 'People should practice safer sex or abstain for at least eight weeks if they are returning from Zika-affected areas,' he said. 'The previous recommendation suggested a period of at least four weeks, so we're upping (it).' The new guidelines 'reflect what we have learned about Zika disease and its complications,' he added. Health officials recommend wearing long-sleeved shirts and pants, as well as practicing mosquito control to prevent infection where Zika is being transmitted. The CDC reported there have been 591 cases of Zika diagnosed in the US, and all have been travel related. The CDC also wants travelers to take extra steps to avoid being bitten by mosquitoes when they come home so local insects won't pick up the virus and spread it. While the CDC does expect some clusters of homegrown Zika to occur, it is working with state and local governments to boost mosquito control. An endangered snow leopard and her two cubs have been found dead in an illegal snare after disappearing in Siberia, it has emerged. The family had been lost to researchers and wildlife experts since a set of astonishing pictures of the cubs playing were taken two years ago in Russia's emote Altai Nature Reserve. The cubs - then just six-months-old - were seen play fighting and honing their hunting skills in the snow. Now experts say all three are dead after their remains were found in an illegal snare set by poachers to trap deer. An endangered snow leopard (pictured) and her two cubs have been found dead in an illegal snare after disappearing in Siberia, it has emerged The family had been lost to researchers and wildlife experts since a set of astonishing pictures (above) of the cubs playing were taken two years ago in Russia's emote Altai Nature Reserve Experts say all three are dead after their remains were found in an illegal snare (pictured) set by poachers to trap deer Their remains show the cubs died first while their mother Vita apparently tried to free them. Then, experts have told local news outlet the Siberian Times, she ate their bodies and became trapped in the same snare, where she also died. Altai Nature Reserve researcher Sergey Spitsyn said: 'The mother tried to free them, but she was apparently in a state of distress - and finally ate the cubs. 'Then she got caught in the same loop and died.' Vita was the first snow leopard seen in a new network of automatic cameras spread throughout the reserve. Officials realised something had happened to her family when she wasn't seen again following these photographs from 2014. Their remains show the cubs died first while their mother Vita apparently tried to free them Vita was the first female with kittens which was photographed by the camera traps in the Argut River valley. Spitsyn said: 'The kittens were around six months old at the time. For a long time their traces were not seen. 'They were not spotted by other cameras. Later we learned that her cubs were caught in a loop-trap which was put out for musk deer.' He added: 'It's hard to fight with this, but there are changes. 'The number of leopards is growing. There are a lot of new broods and this season we found seven families in different areas. So there is hope.' Experts from the Snow Leopard trust say poachers are still the single biggest cause of death among the species. Officials realised something had happened to Vita's family when she wasn't seen again following these photographs from 2014 They explained: 'Their bones and other body parts are in demand for use in traditional Asian medicine and wild snow leopards are sometimes captured for private animal collections in Central Asia. 'Many poachers are locals who live in snow leopard habitat areas. 'These regions face high levels of poverty, and poaching offers a source of extra income that can be used to meet the most basic necessities of life, including food and shelter.' But the family's grim fate has provoked fury among animal lovers. One social media user identified as Vincent Law said: 'Poachers should get 10 years in jail for this.' Madonna has won a copyright case involving her 1990 hit Vogue despite a court ruling she had sampled a horn riff from a 1980s funk track. The superstar was sued by the copyright owners to the Salsoul Orchestra funk ensemble, who claimed Madonna took part of the horn section from their track 'Ooh I Love It (Love Break)". The original track was produced by Shep Pettibone, who later went on to make Vogue with Madonna. Scroll down for video Madonna, pictured performing Vogue at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1990 has won a copyright case over a sample taken from a 1980s track by Salsoul Orchestra funk ensemble which was produced by Shep Pettibone Pettibone worked with Madonna on her 1990 hit Vogue and used the sample from the earlier track The court upheld an earlier decision that the sample was too small to warrant any form of compensation VGM Salsoul sued Madonna and demanded compensation for using part of their band's track. However, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a 2013 decision of a lower court which found the section taken by Madonna was too trivial to warrant attention. They said the snippet was 'de minimis' and not worthy of compensation. Judge Susan Graber of Portland Oregon ruled: 'We conclude that a reasonable juror could not conclude that an average audience would recognize the appropriation of the horn.' While changing little for Madonna, the ruling could help future artists using samples as it puts the Ninth Circuit, which covers California, directly at odds with another federal appeals court. In a 2005 ruling known as the Bridgeport case, the Sixth Circuit which includes the music hub of Nashville ruled against gangsta rappers N.W.A. whose '100 Miles and Runnin'' sampled a brief guitar riff from funk greats Funkadelic. That decision, which said that even small samples warranted copyright protection, led to a surge in lawsuits of artists seeking compensation. It is no defense to theft that the thief made off with only a "de minimis" part of the victim's property Dissenting judge Barry Silverman In Thursday's decision, Graber acknowledged the Bridgeport case but said that the court found the Sixth Circuit's reasoning 'unpersuasive'. In a dissent, Judge Barry Silverman said that use of the sample on 'Vogue' rather than hiring new musicians or paying for a license amounted to theft. He wrote: 'It is no defense to theft that the thief made off with only a "de minimis" part of the victim's property.' Silverman said the latest decision would cause confusion at a national level more than a decade after the Bridgeport ruling, adding that Congress was the more appropriate venue to change rules. The latest ruling did offer one consolation to the plaintiffs, striking down the lower court's decision to force them to pay the legal fees of Madonna and Pettibone. Dilruk Dias-Banbaranayake, 18, was found with hundreds of indecent images A teenager caught with hundreds of indecent images was spared jail after claiming they were for a 'school project'. Dilruk Dias-Banbaranayake, 18, was found guilty of hoarding the distressing photographs and videos involving children and animals. Dias-Banbaranayake first downloaded the material in February 2014 when he was 15 and claimed that 'complete strangers' had sent him the footage through a mobile chat app. He was found guilty last month and during sentencing at Croydon Youth Court on Thursday, he told District Judge Andrew Sweet he had looked at the images for a school project about 'human reproduction' and 'not to gain sexual pleasure'. Dias-Banbaranayake, from Croydon, south London, said: 'It started off as research and I just got addicted with that site. It wasn't just those images, it did have other stuff.' Judge Sweet replied: 'I'm not sure I believe you. 'I do not imagine the sites producing this material about human reproduction.' The judge spared the student from Kingston College a custodial sentence for the 'unsettling offences' and instead handed down an 18-month rehabilitation order and 150 hours of unpaid work. According to his lawyer Voratida Sangchant, the teenager 'felt he deserved the public shame' for what he had done and was 'sorry his family had to be impacted'. His lawyer said Dias-Banbaranayake had made an 'active effort to turn away from' viewing such material. Dias-Banbaranayake was found guilty of 12 counts of possessing extreme or indecent material and placed on the Sex Offenders Register. He was also ordered to attend a youth sex offences program, and pay 250 in costs, as well as a 15 victim surcharge. Greg Wallace has been banned from teaching after he awarded school contracts to his gay lover A 'superhead' advisor to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has been banned from teaching after awarding computer contracts worth over 1million to his gay lover's company. Greg Wallace bought IT services from C2 Technology Ltd while running the Best Start Federation of primary schools in Hackney. Wallace did not disclose he was in a sexual relationship with Tony Zangoura, the principle director and shareholder of the company, a standards hearing was told. The National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) heard the money was paid over a five-year period, breaching rules regarding appropriate use of public money. Wallace, who was a company secretary for C2 Technology, even sent emails to Zangoura encouraging him to invoice for more work. 'You shd charge for last week and this because some of it is research time,' said Wallace. 'I have got loads of things for you to look into and you can list them all on the invoice.' The director had been in a sexual relationship with Wallace in 2008 and from the summer of 2012 onwards. Wallace, who was once a member of a government advisory board, also disclosed confidential information to Zangoura about bids being tendered by competitors to C2 Technology Ltd. He copied him into emails sent by the rival firm and advised him on amendments to the C2 proposals. Wallace, 46, had also recommended to the governing body in April of 2011 that C2 Technology Ltd should fit out the ICT suite at Whitmore school in Hackney. He received 4,000 from Zangoura just two months later for an 'Effective Marking joint Venture' he operated with them. Wallace's actions were an embarrassment to Nicky Morgan due to his role on an advisory board Wallace also failed to disclose he had been Company Secretary of C2 Technology for five years prior to working at the Federation. He admitted breaching finance governance standards, not declaring an interest, disclosing confidential information and receiving assistance from Zangoura. The NCTL found that there was conflict of interest, but that he had not been dishonest. Panel chairman Martin Greenslade said: 'Mr Wallace had a clear and significant conflict of interest in dealing with C2 Technology Limited based on his previous role as a company secretary. 'The close nature of Mr Wallace's relationship with TZ, and the nature of communications between them, both created a conflict of interest. 'The panel has seen written evidence from a number of witnesses testifying to the excellent work of Mr Wallace and his inspirational abilities in improving the teaching of children. 'The panel has determined that a recommendation for a prohibition order will not be appropriate in this case.' Wallac recommended his lover's firm should fit out the ICT suite at Whitmore school in Hackney, pictured However, the Secretary of State rejected the NCTL recommendation, and instead banned Wallace from teaching. They said: 'I believe that the panel has not taken sufficient account of the public concern that would arise, and that public confidence in the profession could be seriously weakened, if the conduct found proved in this case was not treated with the utmost seriousness.' Wallace, who was present at the hearing, was banned from teaching indefinitely. He started out as headteacher of Woodberry Down in 2001 and was deemed so successful he was drafted in to turn around four more underperforming schools - London Fields in Westgate Street, Whitmore in Bridport Place, Hoxton, Mandeville in Oswald Street, Lower Clapton and Burbage in Ivy Street, Hoxton. Lestari Williams and her husband Brad were honeymooning in paradise when tragedy struck and tore them apart forever. The newlyweds were walking along the beach in Bali when a rogue wave swamped them from behind and washed them out to sea, reported Nine News. Mr Williams made it back to shore but Mrs Williams and her eight-year-old sister vanished in the surf. Scroll down for video Lestari Williams and her husband Brad, pictured on their wedding day, were in Indonesia for a traditional ceremony when tragedy struck Mr Williams and wife Lestari were honeymooning on the Indonesian island of Nusa Penida after their traditional wedding in front of Lestari's Balinese family The couple, from Two Rocks, Perth, married in Australia in 2015 but travelled to the Indonesian island of Nusa Penida, Bali, to celebrate a traditional Balinese wedding. Days after the ceremony they were walking along the rocks near Angels Billabong beach alongside Mrs Williams' younger sister when the freak incident occurred. The family was separated as the wave swept them out to sea and Mr Williams had no choice but to swim to safety without his new bride or her sister. The pair were walking the beach on the island of Nusa Penida, Bali, when a rogue wave hit them from behind. Mrs Williams' eight-year-old sister was also swept out to sea. Mr Williams managed to swim to safety After less than 24 hours of frantic searching for the sisters, the body of a 24-year-old woman believed to be Lestari Williams - was recovered by police. The body washed up in the beachside region of Manggis on the main island of Indonesia - about 20km from where Mrs Williams was swept away. It is reported that Mr Williams has been asked to identify the body at a local morgue, but he is currently too grief-stricken to do so. The fate of her sister is unknown. Indonesian Police believe that the body of Lestari Williams washed up in the region of Manggis, about 20km of where she was swept into the sea Indonesian Police believe they found the body of Lestari Williams less than 24 hours after she vanished. The fate of her sister is not known The couple, along with Mrs Williams' younger sister, were walking along the rocks on Angel's Billabong beach when a freak wave swept them into the sea Lestari Williams, 24, moved to Australia from the small Balinese region of Klungkung where her family still live. She is believed to come from a relatively large family with five other sisters. Mr Williams, 40, works for Australian mining company BHP Billiton. Neighbours said the couple were planning to renovate their home upon their return from Bali and even had plans to start a family of their own. The couple were married in Australia last year but visited Indonesia to celebrate a traditional Balinese wedding Lestari Williams comes from the Balinese region of Klungkung and returned to the island to celebrate her marriage with her family Mrs Williams' - or Tari to her friends - death was met with heartfelt tributes on social media. Friend Angelia Novita wrote: 'RIP for my best friend in Perth. Hope you have good place there. 'We love you babe...' Laura Inglis said: 'RIP Tari. Your beautiful smile will be missed and massive hugs to Brad Williams. 'Life is just not fair, my thoughts are with you mate.' Tributes from Mrs Williams' friends poured into social media following news of her death. One friend said her beautiful smile would always be missed Friends of the couple said they were devastated by the news. Angelia Novita described herself as Mrs Williams' best friend The couples neighbour Rosemary Ellis told Channel Nine she was devastated by the news. She said: Its so sad. Brads going to be devastated, everybody in the street will be devastated. A 12-week-old baby girl is fighting for her life after being found seriously injured at a homeless accommodation shelter for families. The child was found unconscious at Strathbrock Family Unit in Broxburn, West Lothian, before she was taken to St John's Hospital in Livingston by ambulance on Monday night. She was then transferred to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh and is said to be in a serious condition today as Police Scotland continue to speak to her family and medical staff. 'Tragic incident': The child was found unconscious at Strathbrock Family Unit (pictured) in Broxburn, West Lothian, before she was taken to St John's Hospital in Livingston by ambulance on Monday night Chief Inspector Stevie Dolan, area commander for West Lothian, said: This is a tragic incident that has affected everyone involved. Unfortunately, the baby remains in a serious condition. I can reassure the public that we are working closely with hospital staff as well as with the young childs family to establish the full set of circumstances. A source said: There are some questions that need answered about how she was injured. Social work staff at the unit are there to provide care and supervision for the families living in the unit. Speaking to Sun reporter Thomas Brown, the source continued: The unit is supposed to be a place of safety for families with a variety of issues so they can be monitored by staff. A West Lothian Council spokesman added: Emergency services attended a homeless facility for families in Broxburn on Monday after concern was raised over the health of a child. Homeless accommodation: The centre is run by NHS Lothian and West Lothian Council, and a source told how it is 'supposed to be a place of safety for families with a variety of issues so they can be monitored by staff' Four years ago an at-risk baby was left in agony for weeks after social workers at the same unit failed to notice 21 rib fractures and broken knees. This is a tragic incident that has affected everyone involved Chief Inspector Stevie Dolan, area commander for West Lothian Social workers there are meant to provide 24-hour support and regular monitoring of residents. But when a doctor examined the injured youngster, he found that some of his ribs had been broken for so long that they had already started to heal. Weeks earlier, staff at the centre, which is run by NHS Lothian and West Lothian Council, had found a Stanley knife hidden beneath the mattress in the boys cot, but took no action. The idea that Donald Trump could win California come November looks to be a pipe dream, a new poll shows. A survey out this week from USC and the Los Angeles Times has likely Democratic nominee beating The Donald this fall by 26 points. Clinton receives the support of 56 percent of California's likely voters, while Trump stands at 30 percent. Scroll down for video California Dreamin'? Donald Trump has boasted that he could turn traditionally blue states red, but polling out of California shows that Hillary Clinton currently has a 26 point advantage in the Golden State Hillary Clinton has a huge lead in California and if it holds, she could set a new record for biggest win in the state, which President Obama currently holds winning Cali by 24 points in 2008 Donald Trump's comments about Hispanics have hurt his chances in California and have dragged down his likability numbers That's a larger gap than President Obama's record-setting 24 point win in the Golden State in 2008. The Democratic hopeful is helped by the state's Hispanic population of which 73 percent plan to go to the polls for the former secretary of state. Just 11 percent say they plan to vote for Trump, the GOP's presumptive nominee. Many polls have shown both party's likely nominees to have net negatives when voters are polled about the candidates' likability. but here, Hispanics help Hillary again. In California, while both Clinton and Trump have net negatives, the perception that people have of Trump is worse, while Clinton's numbers are boosted because she holds a net positive with the Hispanic community. Among the entire population of likely voters, Clinton stands in California at a negative three. But among Hispanic voters, Clinton is viewed favorably by 62 percent, while she's viewed negatively by 33 percent, giving her a net positive of 29 percent. Looking at white voters, however, Clinton is viewed positively by 39 percent and viewed negatively by 59 percent, with a net negative of 20 points. Trump, who has called for a border wall to be built between the U.S. and Mexico and kicked off his campaign last June by referring to illegal Mexican immigrants as 'rapists' is viewed unfavorably by 86 percent of Latinos in California, while 11 percent view him favorably. Three times that amount, 33 percent, of white voters view Trump favorably, while another 62 percent view the former reality television star unfavorably, giving him a net negative with whites of 29 percent. California Democrats are still feeling the Bern with the poll showing Bernie Sanders one point ahead of likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton less than a week before the state's primary Among all likely voters in the state, Trump's net negative stands at 46 percent, which is 43 points worse than Clinton. Out of the registered Republicans who were surveyed, 40 percent said they would enthusiastically vote for Trump, while another 32 percent said they would reluctantly vote for their party's presumptive nominee if he's indeed on the November ballot. While the Republican primary once looked like it would go to a contested convention in Cleveland, lats week Trump officially got the 1,237 delegates he would need to lock up the GOP nomination. Another 21 percent of Republican likely voters in California said they would not vote for the nominee and of those voters 39 percent said they would vote for the Democratic nominee instead. A quarter of those voters said they would seek out a third-party choice, while 10 percent wouldn't vote for president at all, but would vote for down ticket offices. The top reason voters didn't want to see Trump in the White House was that he 'doesn't have the temperament to lead America in the world,' respondents said. That reason was followed by 'his demeaning comments about women' and 'his statements about Muslims and immigrants.' The poll, which dropped yesterday, also shows what a number of other polls have suggested in recent days that the primary contest in California, slated for Tuesday, could go either way. Bernie Sanders, making a last-ditch effort to derail Clinton's march to the Democratic nomination received the support of 44 percent of likely Democratic voters, while Clinton received 43 percent. Two other polls in the last week have shown Sanders two points behind Clinton, while another poll had the former secretary of state leading in California by double digits. If Clinton is the nominee, which his highly likely, 57 percent of Democratic voters would enthusiastically vote for her, while another 24 percent would reluctantly cast a vote for the longtime politician. Fifteen percent of registered Democrats say they won't vote for Clinton. The top reason why those voters won't cast a ballot for the former secretary of state is 'she isn't genuine,' respondents said. Democratic and independent voters also questions her involvement in 'scandals and controversies' along with her 'associations with Wall Street and big money.' The latter point her rival Sanders drilled home again and again throughout the Democratic primary season as Wall Street was one of his top talking points. The enthusiasm for Sanders is eight points higher among registered Democrats the poll found, with 65 percent saying they'd enthusiastically vote for the Vermont senator, 20 percent saying they'd reluctantly vote for the democratic socialist and nine percent saying they'd refuse to cast a vote. Dr Paula Nicole 'Nikki' Shoemake, died of natural causes at OCH Regional Medical Center while in labor with her second daughter A beloved surgeon and mother-of-two died from 'natural causes' while in labor with her third child at a Mississippi hospital on Wednesday. General surgeon, Dr Paula Nicole 'Nikki' Shoemake, died of natural causes at OCH Regional Medical Center in Starkville, according to Michael Hunt, the Oktibbeha County coroner. Hunt told the Clarion-Ledger that he considered Shoemake, 40, a personal friend and described her death as a 'tragic loss to the community'. Shoemake gave birth to a baby girl, but the status of her health is unclear. A specific cause of death has not and will not be released until an autopsy has been completed. The hospital confirmed Shoemake's death on their Facebook page Wednesday. 'Our hospital family is mourning the loss of this beautiful woman who devoted her life to taking care of others. 'Please remember Dr Shoemake's family in your thoughts and prayers. She will be missed greatly but will never be forgotten,' the statement read. The hospital's CEO, Richard Hilton, told the Ledger in a statement that the 'OCH family is very saddened with the loss of Dr Nikki Shoemake'. He said she was 'an excellent surgeon who cared about her patients and was passionate about the practice of medicine'. 'She had an impact on countless lives and will be greatly missed.' Hilton added that her untimely death is a 'loss for the people she would have treated'. A specific cause of death has not and will not be released until an autopsy has been completed. According to Shoemake's Facebook page, she has a son and a daughter (right), with her husband (left and right) Coroner, Michael Hunt, who considered Shoemake a personal friend said her untimely death is a 'tragic loss to the community'. She's pictured with her son Shoemake gave birth to her second daughter (pictured), but the health of the baby is unclear According to Shoemake's Facebook page, she has a son and a daughter, with her husband. Though a specific cause of death can't be determined until the autopsy is completed, Beth Crisler Cook, a woman who identified herself as Shoemake's friend in a Facebook post, said Shoemake died of a pulmonary embolism while in 'natural labor', according to the Clarion-Ledger. But Cook also wrote on Facebook that she was repeating what she 'had heard about the cause of her death'. Several patients who were treated by Shoemake expressed their condolences to the family as well as hailed her as an 'awesome' surgeon who 'loved all of her family and her job'. Shoemake joined the medical staff at OCH in 2008 as a general surgeon, hospital spokesperson Mary Knight told the Ledger. She received her undergraduate degree in microbiology from Mississippi State University in 1998. Originally from Tupelo, Shoemake was a 2003 graduate of the University of Mississippi medical school. She also completed the first two years of her general surgery residency at the University of Mississippi Medical Center before completing her residency at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, and at the Hospital of Saint Raphael in New Haven, Connecticut. Mississippi has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the nation, with nearly 40 maternal deaths per every 100,000 births, according to the Mississippi State Department of Health. Shoemake joined the medical staff at OCH Regional Medical Center (pictured) in 2008 as a general surgeon School was left to 'self regulate' Parking rangers were told not to issue fines to vehicles outside a Muslim School under Salim Mehajer's disgraced Auburn council, a public inquiry has heard. Former council ranger Dianne Laing told the inquiry on Wednesday staff were ordered not to issue notices at Al-Faisal College, in Sydney's west, and were threatened with suspension if they did. 'We were told not to issue notices there,' Ms Laing said, according to The Australian. Scroll down for video Former council ranger Dianne Laing told the inquiry on Wednesday that council staff were ordered not to issue notices at Al-Faisal College (pictured), in Sydney's west She told the court that the school was left to 'self regulate' parking offences. Despite there being at least 20 other schools in the area, Ms Laing said staff were only told to waiver tickets at Al-Faisal College. Stefanie Griffiths, a former Auburn Council team leader, said the ruling had come 'from the top'. She told the court she was worried councillors cancelled tickets on behalf of friends, family and associates. Ms Griffiths said she had kept a record of all instances she believed to be amiss, the publication reported. The hearing continues. Parking rangers were told not to issue fines to vehicles outside a Muslim School under Salim Mehajer's (pictured) disgraced council, a public inquiry has heard English taxpayers pay more than twice as much for EU membership than Scots, a new study revealed today. Economics professor David Bell said the average UK taxpayer pays a bill equivalent to 117 per person but differing levels of EU handout in different places creates a huge disparity between the home nations. English taxpayers pay the most by a significant margin, contributing a net 140 a year to the EU via their taxes. In Scotland, the figure is 64 and in Northern Ireland it is just 31. The UK makes an overall payment of 17billion a year to the UK and gets back 8.9billion in rebate, grants and other subsidies. Scottish taxpayers make a net contribution worth less than half that of the English to the European according to a new study out today (file picture) Welsh taxpayers get the best deal from the EU as each one gets back the equivalent of 164 - partly as a result of two Welsh areas being the only in Britain to qualify for regional aid. West Wales and the Valleys are the only areas of Britain where GDP falls below 75 per cent of the EU average, qualifying them for injections of extra cash. Professor Bell told the Daily Telegraph, which revealed his research today, that average incomes in Scotland and the UK as a whole are close to the EU average. In addition, Scotland's most prosperous cities are also home to large numbers of people from other EU countries. Non-EU Norway pays 106 per person for access to the single market while Switzerland contributes 53 per person to trade in the single market from outside the EU. A Scotland Stronger In Europe spokesman: 'The report concludes that Scotland's account with the EU is 'broadly in balance', while making the important point that Norway pays 106 per person and Switzerland 53 per person to access the single European market but have no say whatever over its rules. 'These figures make the case that we should stay in and help set the rules.' The UK makes an overall payment of 17billion a year to the UK and gets back 8.9billion in rebate, grants and other subsidies. Ross Thomson, a Scottish Conservative MSP and spokesman for the Scottish Vote Leave campaign, said: 'This paper confirms the fact that the EU doesn't work for Scotland. 'The UK is the second highest contributor to the EU budget, annually Scotland sends 1.5billion to Brussels. 'Inside the EU Scottish taxpayers cannot hold unelected bureaucrats to account on how they spend our money, we cannot secure our own trade deals with growing economies in the US, China and India and we cannot kick out commissioners when they introduce bad laws. Agency head says networks are becoming more 'flexible and resilient' Europol report warns that the issue is becoming more Rob Wainwright, head of Europol, has warned about the activity of people smuggling networks Europol has warned that people smugglers are targeting 'border weakspots' like the small ports and harbours around the UK. Chichester in West Sussex and Portsmouth in Hampshire have been named among 13 'migrant smuggling hotspots' attracting criminal gangs. The warning comes amid growing fears that migrants are being smuggled across the channel undetected before being dropped at ports on the South Coast. A report by Europol published last month states that 90 per cent of migrants coming to the EU have been helped by a criminal network. Rob Wainwright, head of Europol, said: 'Europe is confronted with an unprecedented migration crisis in terms of the number of migrants arriving in Europe as well as the level of involvement of complex and ruthless migrant smuggling networks. 'Intelligence held at Europol indicates that more than 90 per cent of all migrants reaching the European Union use the facilitation services of a migrant smuggling network at some point throughout their journey. 'This is a clear indication that organised crime networks are profiting from mass migration. 'Migrant smuggling networks have proven flexible and resilient, adapting to law enforcement action by quickly changing the routes used to smuggle migrants to the EU. 'These routes are constantly diversifying and changing. More than ever before, law enforcement authorities have to rely on situational awareness and an intelligence picture updated in real-time that can only be provided through effective intelligence sharing.' People smugglers are said to be increasingly targeting smaller harbours like Chichester, Portsmouth, Hull and Tilbury because they are less protected by border officials. Footage from Dymchurch Kent showing an inflatable power boat on beach after 18 Albanian migrants were rescued from the Channel. Five of them have now claimed asylum Just two days later, 17 migrants were found trying to enter Britain illegally in the back of a lorry in Ashford, Kent - just 13 miles from Dymchurch, where the Albanians were landed after being rescued Gangs are reportedly charging desperate migrants upwards of 10,000 to cross the Channel and enter Britain. It comes after the arrest of 17 Albanian migrants aboard a catamaran at Chichester Marina last week, along with a British man who has been charged with facilitating illegal entry into the UK. And last Saturday 18 Albanians had to be rescued from a sinking speed boat off the coast of Kent in Dymchurch. It emerged yesterday that Kent Police sold their patrol boat for just 80,000 amid restructuring in 2014. The Home Office does not comment on the measures taken to protect individual ports or airports. However, if intelligence suggests that there will be an increase in the numbers of migrants attempting to enter via certain ports it will consider deploying additional officers to carry out more searches in those locations. On trial: Jeffrey Davies, 45, of Aberdare, South Wales, is accused of forcing two women into having sex with him while working as a family liaison officer A married police constable who raped a woman on a mountainside later asked her to join in a threesome with another fellow officer, a court heard today. Jeffrey Davies, 45, of Aberdare, South Wales, is accused of forcing two women into having sex with him while working as a family liaison officer. He raped one victim after her two sons were arrested - and weeks later asked her to join in a threesome, Newport Crown Court was told. Davies, a former officer with South Wales Police, allegedly first targeted the vulnerable woman in her 40s while she was in an abusive relationship with her partner. The court heard he raped her on his car bonnet on the side of a Welsh mountain, and weeks later saw her in her home town when he asked her for the threesome with another policeman. On one occasion, he is alleged to have told her he had discussed having a threesome with her and a colleague from his police force. The woman, who cannot be named, said: He was saying about another police officer from another station. He said the officer liked me and wanted to have a threesome with me. But he said hed told him to keep away because I was all his. I was just shocked. Those words have just stuck with me. Matthew Stanbury, defending Davies, suggested the comment had been made playfully and not threateningly towards her. The woman previously told the jury when she asked Davies to stop midway through the sex attack on the Bwlch Mountain near Rhondda, he said: Ill make you feel better. Hearing: Davies (pictured in 2014), a former officer with South Wales Police, allegedly first targeted the vulnerable woman in her 40s while she was in an abusive relationship with her partner She said on another occasion she passed Davies while he sat in his car, while his police colleagues conducted inquiries yards further down the road. He is said to have asked her there to perform a sex act on him as he tried to undo his trousers, which she declined. He said the officer liked me and wanted to have a threesome with me Alleged victim The woman said she did not tell anyone about the alleged attack because she felt dirty and disgusted. But she eventually reported Davies to police in 2013, when he appeared in the news after being accused and eventually convicted of sexually assaulting other women. Davies is also accused of raping another woman after smoking cannabis with her brother. Brock Allen Turner, 20, was found guilty of raping an unconscious woman near fraternity housing A former Stanford University swimmer who was facing a 10-year jail sentence for raping a drunk woman he met at a campus party, has been given just six months in prison for his crime. Brock Allen Turner, 20, was found guilty of sexually assaulting a drunken and unconscious woman. Turner who was part of Stanford's high-powered swimming program was convicted in Santa Clara County Superior Court of three counts of sexual assault. Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky was lenient, after hearing emotional pleas from Turner and the victim. The 23-year-old victim delivered an emotional speech at the hearing, decrying rape culture and asking that the judge send a strong message about the severity of Brock's attack on her. 'We cannot forgive everyone's first sexual assault The seriousness of rape has to be communicated clearly. We should not create a culture that suggests we learn that rape is wrong through trial and error.' 'The punishment does not fit the crime,' District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement after the hearing Thursday. 'The predatory offender has failed to take responsibility, failed to show remorse and failed to tell the truth. The sentence does not factor in the true seriousness of this sexual assault, or the victim's ongoing trauma.' Scroll down for video Brock Turner, 20, right, makes his way into the Santa Clara Superior Courthouse in Palo Alto, California, on June 2 A jury found Turner guilty of assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated/unconscious person, penetration of an intoxicated person, and penetration of an unconscious person. 'You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice,' the victim told Turner at the sentencing hearing. 'The damage is done. No one can undo it.' The sentence will do nothing to quell the feeling among many that Stanford is among a number of universities criticized for having relaxed policies on sexual assault. A law professor at the university, Michele Landis Dauber, has urged the school to make serious changes in their policies towards sexual assault. Only four of the 175 reported sexual assaults at Stanford between 1997 and 2009 were properly investigated. Dauber has called the statistics 'appalling'. Dauber said that despite some improvement by the school in investigating sexual assault cases and acting for welcoming to victims, there is still room for improvement. Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen reacts to what happened in the courtroom outside of the Santa Clara Superior Courthouse in Palo Alto, California Turner's crime happened in January of 2015 when he had met a woman at a party at the Kappa Alpha House. The pair were kissing outside. He said he took off the woman's underwear, penetrated her with his hands and touched her breasts, but never took off his pants. According to Turner, the woman appeared to be enjoying herself as she rubbed his back. He added that his 'intentions were not to try and rape the girl without her consent' but to 'hook up' with a girl', the report said. He said "we" started "dry humping" - rubbing against each other with their clothes on - but said he then felt sick from the seven beers and two sips of whiskey he'd drunk. He said he stumbled away thinking he would vomit when he noticed another man near him asking what he was doing. The victim gave a statement saying she drank four whiskey shots two hours before arriving at the party. She then 'blacked out' 30 minutes later after two more shots of vodka and stepping outside with her sister. Turner was detained after being spotted by two cyclists, before trying to flee. The pair managed to tackle him while a third man called the police, Santa Clara County prosecutors say. The school commended the cyclists who stepped in to save the rape victim. The attack took place on Stanford University's campus in Santa Clara County. Turner was apprehended by two cyclists who witnessed part of the attack 'Several students, both graduates and undergraduates, were upstanders in this situation,' Catherine Criswell, the University's Title IX Coordinator said. 'They made the courageous decision to intervene and provide assistance. That is exactly the type of leadership and caring we attempt to cultivate in our community, and we commend those students on their courage and quick response.' After his arrest he was released on $150,000 bail. The victim was not enrolled at Stanford and was visiting the campus for a party. 'She was lying on the ground unconscious, not moving,' said Deputy District Attorney Alaleh Kianerci. The woman was taken to the hospital and treated for her injuries. He voluntarily withdrew from the university shortly after being charged. Originally from Ohio, Turner swam for the Dayton Raiders before being recruited for Stanford and was a three-time All-American high school swimmer at Oakwood High School. Some accomplishments include breaking the Ohio record for fastest time by a male 18 and under in the 800-meter freestyle, winning high school state titles in the 200 and 500 freestyle, and making the U.S. Junior National team. Officers have named Donald Proudfoot, pictured, as the man they believed gunned down 46-year-old Sam Cosmore Police are hunting for a sneaker-obsessed suspect they believe shot and killed another man in a row over a retro pair of Nike Air Jordans. Officers have named Donald Proudfoot as the man they believed gunned down 46-year-old Sam Cosmore at a barbecue in Brooklyn, New York on Tuesday. It is believed the pair had been in a disagreement over a pair of Nike Air Jordan sneakers before Cosmore was killed. However, it is unclear which one of the pair was actually wearing the shoes and what they were specifically arguing about. Authorities allege that Proudfoot, 28, fired multiple shots into the victim's chest and police later found his lifeless body lying in the street a block away from the barbecue. He was rushed to Kings County Hospital, but he could not be saved by doctors. Police sources told the New York Post that it is thought Mr Cosmore staggered from the scene in an attempt to get help before collapsing to the ground. They added that after investigators spoke to witnesses, they were able to identify Proudfoot as a suspect after reviewing blood spats and bullet fragments. Meanwhile NYPD chief of detectives Robert Boyce told the New York Daily News: 'We believe its over something about a pair of Air Jordan sneakers. 'We dont know what happened with it.' It is believed the pair had been in a disagreement over a pair of Nike Air Jordan sneakers, pictured, before Cosmore was killed However, it is not the first time authorities have sought Proudfoot in a incident regarding shoes. Police say that he was also arrested in November for beating up his girlfriend and stealing her retro black and red Jordans as well as her Ugg boots. George Osborne has joined forces with major firms including HSBC, LP Morgan, PwC, Ocado and BT to warn that Brexit could destroy 400,000 jobs in the services sector. The Chancellor accused the Leave campaign of trying to 'deceive' voters that people's livelihoods are not at risk if we cut ties with Brussels. The jibe came as Tory infighting over the looming EU referendum raged on. Former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith has lashed out at David Cameron for being 'insincere' over what powers the UK has to control immigration within the bloc. Chancellor George Osborne warned that 400,000 jobs could go in the services sector after Brexit The Prime Minister used an appearance on ITV's Good Morning Britain today to argue that his renegotiation of membership terms meant EU nationals could be kicked out if they did not find a job within six months. Mr Osborne attempted to turn the focus back on to the Remain campaign's favoured turf of the economy during a speech to staff at JP Morgan in Bournemouth. 'Today, 10 of the largest companies in our services sector, from BT to our universities to Universal Music are all telling us that there will be damage to our economy and jobs will be at risk if we leave the EU,' he said. 'So let's end this deception that somehow if we quit the EU that jobs won't be at risk. It's deceiving people to pretend that we can leave the EU and jobs won't be at risk. 'In our analysis of the services sector alone, 400,000 jobs will be at risk. 'These aren't numbers on a trading screen or an accountant's graph, they are people's livelihood, their ability to support their families, their ability to live out their dreams and aspirations and that is what is on the ballot paper when we vote in this referendum.' A letter backing EU membership has been signed by the bosses of HSBC, PwC, Ocado and BT and other leaders of the service sector - which employs more than 25 million people in areas including retail, hospitality, transport, professional and financial services. 'Britain's service sector includes everything from retail to the arts, from finance to education, and from hotels to architects,' they said. 'It accounts for around 80 per cent of value added and 80 per cent of employment, making it the jewel in the crown of British industries. 'As the leaders of some of Britain's biggest service businesses we believe that a vote to leave the EU would damage the UK's thriving service sector and put jobs at risk. We want to ensure that Britain remains a leader in this vital field, and that is why we support the UK remaining in the EU on June 23.' Mr Osborne, appearing with JP Morgan chief executive Jamie Dimon, said the idea we could leave the EU without damaging the economy was a 'deception' Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, said the consequences of a British withdrawal from the EU could have an impact on its 16,000 staff in locations in Basingstoke, Bournemouth, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Swindon. He said: 'My observation of the facts is that a vote to leave would be a terrible deal for the British economy. 'At a minimum, a Brexit will result in years of uncertainty and I believe that this uncertainty will hurt the economies of both Britain and the European Union.' Saying that the company would have to react quickly to a decision to leave the EU, he added: 'One realistic outcome is that we lose the ability to passport our banking and trading services into Europe. 'But our clients will still need us to trade within what will then be the EU. If that's what the rules say, we will need to do what works. 'So if the UK leaves the EU, we may have no choice but to re-organise our business model here. 'Brexit could mean fewer JP Morgan jobs in the UK and more jobs in Europe.' But Tory MP Steve Baker said: 'Campaigners for Brussels can't have it both ways. 'They say the EU is about peaceful cooperation, yet then they threaten us if we dare to consider taking back control in favour of a relationship based on trade rather than EU diktats. 'The British people will not be bullied into voting to hand more money and more power to Brussels by someone whose bonus would make even some Eurocrat's eyes water and whose bank helped crash the economy. 'It's time for the In campaign to engage in an honest debate, not make unsubstantiated and illogical threats which are the real danger to our economy.' The Chancellor was addressing staff at JP Morgan offices in Bournemouth today Brexiteers dismiss warning from bank that supported joining euro JP Morgan chief executive Jamie Dimon today The boss of JP Morgan has warned that jobs could be moved to the EU if Britain votes to leave on June 23. Jamie Dimon said the consequences of a British withdrawal from the EU could have an impact on its 16,000 staff in locations in Basingstoke, Bournemouth, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Swindon. Speaking alongside George Osborne at the bank's offices in Bournemouth, Mr Dimon said: 'My observation of the facts is that a vote to leave would be a terrible deal for the British economy. 'At a minimum, a Brexit will result in years of uncertainty and I believe that this uncertainty will hurt the economies of both Britain and the European Union.' Saying the company would have to react quickly to a decision to quit the EU, he added: 'One realistic outcome is that we lose the ability to passport our banking and trading services into Europe. 'But our clients will still need us to trade within what will then be the EU. If that's what the rules say, we will need to do what works. 'So if the UK leaves the EU, we may have no choice but to re-organise our business model here. 'Brexit could mean fewer JP Morgan jobs in the UK and more jobs in Europe.' But Vote Leave pointed out that the bank had supported the UK joining the single currency, and was also implicated in the 2008 credit crunch. JP Morgan has donated to the official Stronger In campaign. Tory MP Steve Baker said: 'Campaigners for Brussels can't have it both ways. 'They say the EU is about peaceful cooperation, yet then they threaten us if we dare to consider taking back control in favour of a relationship based on trade rather than EU diktats. 'The British people will not be bullied into voting to hand more money and more power to Brussels by someone whose bonus would make even some Eurocrat's eyes water and whose bank helped crash the economy. Authorities in Germany are monitoring almost 500 Islamic extremists they believe pose a potential security threat, officials said today. The announcement came a day after the arrest of three men suspected of planning to carry out an attack in the country for ISIS. The men identified only as Syrians named as Hamza C, 27; Mahood B, 25; and Abd Arahman AK, 31 were arrested in three separate locations across Germany following a tip from a fourth suspect who had approached French authorities earlier this year. Scroll down for video Plot foiled: A Syrian man accused of plotting an ISIS terror attack in the city of Duesseldorf is led away by police at the Federal court in Karlsruhe, Germany on Thursday While Germany hasn't suffered mass-casualty attacks by Islamic extremists of the type seen in France and Belgium over recent months, authorities say the country is a target and the risk of attacks is high. 'It's definitely too soon for a fundamental reassessment in light of what happened yesterday,' Interior Ministry spokesman Johannes Dimroth said, adding that authorities will have to await the outcome of prosecutors' investigation. All three of those arrested in Germany were living in refugee shelters, adding to concerns that ISIS might be sending fighters to Germany disguised as asylum-seekers. Almost 1.1million people were registered as asylum-seekers in Germany last year, many of them fleeing war and persecution in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Dimroth said authorities had received regular tips about possible Islamic extremists coming to Germany as asylum-seekers and were systematically checking those reports. He didn't say how many of the 499 Islamic extremists under observation by state and federal police were asylum-seekers. The three Syrians suspected of planning an ISIS terrorist attack were arrested in separate German states Federal prosecutors say the men who were arrested intended to carry out an attack in the western city of Duesseldorf though they had no concrete plans. German weekly Der Spiegel reported Friday that the plot was to involve a total of 10 attackers, of whom two were to detonate suicide vests. The magazine didn't provide a source for that information, which it said French authorities received from Saleh A., a 25-year-old Syrian in custody in France. None of the suspects' surnames were given due to German privacy rules. Authorities spent months quietly tracking the three men before swooping Thursday because one of the suspects planned to travel to southern Europe, Der Spiegel reported. Overall in Germany, Justice Ministry spokesman Philip Scholz said federal prosecutors are currently conducting nearly 120 investigations involving over 180 suspects in connection with terrorism offences. Wolfgang Bosbach, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's party, warned Friday against placing all refugees under suspicion. Marc Roselli had just parked his car when he was attacked by two men in Castleton Ave in in Port Richmond A 61-year-old priest was punched in the face and robbed at gun point in front of his church on Staten Island. Marc Roselli had just parked his car when he was attacked by two men in Castleton Avenue, Port Richmond, New York. One of the men punched him whilst the other robbed him of his cellphone and wallet at gun point at about 5am on Thursday. The men then sped off in his Ford Fusion which police found dumped four blocks away The priest, who serves at St. Mary of the Assumption Church, suffered a black eye but said he was 'completely OK'. Despite the ordeal he continued his day and celebrated Mass at noon. 'I wasn't shot, he told the Daily News. 'I wasn't stabbed. The guy punched me. That was about it. I'm not in the hospital.' Reverend Mark Hallinan, pastor of the church, said: 'He's fine, physically.' Talking about continuing his day, he added: 'I think that makes him feel more comfortable and more at ease.' Concerned parishioners reported seeing the priest's black eye when he appeared at Mass. He made no mention of the crime during the service but said he would pray to God that it would not happen again. Police said his wallet and phone would be returned, along with the car, after a local man discovered the valuables in his yard. Officers were questioning two men on Friday morning after police CCTV images of the alleged assailants was published. The two suspects were identified as Kerry Pack, 39, and Antwine Lucas, 44. They are due to be charged with robbery and criminal possession of stolen property. Officers were questioning two men on Friday morning after CCTV of the alleged assailants was published A 21-year-old hit with a string of fines after flouting parking regulations in his 250,000 Lamborghini turns out to be the boss of a firm whose ripped jeans are sported by several Geordie Shore stars. Ash White has been repeatedly caught illegally parking his bright orange supercar around the streets of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and was most recently seen using the Mayor's official space. Mr White, who runs the Hera fashion company in London, has been slapped with a number of tickets on his Lamborghini Huracan but says he does not care about the cost because he can afford it. Ash White was seen parking in the Mayor's official parking space outside Cheltenham Council offices Mr White has criticised the lack of available parking in his home town, and said he parked in the Mayor's space because he had 'no option' The 21-year-old has been hit with a string of fines after flouting parking regulations in his 250,000 Lamborghini Mr White is the CEO and founder of Hera London, a menswear brand launched last year. He describes it as 'an exclusive, up and coming online menswear retailer,' which 'focuses on bringing top quality pieces to their worldly clientele'. He adds on the Hera London website: 'Their premier mens contemporary ready-to-wear denim line Super Spray On Skinny Ripped Jeans has paved the way in reviving the ripped denim movement. 'We are focused on reviving the highly coveted skinny ripped denim movement, which is hard for stylish men to find in the UK.' Last month Ash White shared this picture of Geordie Shore's Marty McKenna wearing a pair of Hera's ripped jeans as he gets a peck on the cheek from Chloe Ferry Ash White told a local paper he was considering buying an office on the town's promenade which would allow him to get access to a business permit but he wrote on Facebook about the press believing 'anything you tell them' The brand is often modelled by reality stars Gaz Beadle and Scotty T, from the MTV series Geordie Shore. Mr White's Facebook page shows Geordie Shore's Marty McKenna wearing a pair of Hera's ripped jeans as he's kissed by Chloe Ferry. And in November last year he posted another image, captioned: 'So sick seeing all the lads on G Shore and Mario Falcone wearing my brand Hera London Jeans big things to come for 2016 hard work pays off.' Ash White (right) posted this picture of himself with Arsenal and England footballer Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain on his Facebook page back in April The entrepreneur is the CEO and founder of Hera London, a menswear brand launched last year - which counts reality TV stars among its fans There is also a photo of him with Arsenal and England footballer Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, captioned: 'Sick night in London with Patrick Sword same table as arsenal lads and ox chamberlain loose night' He told a local paper he was considering buying an office on the town's promenade which would allow him to get access to a business permit but after it appeared in print he posted on his Facebook page: 'They'll believe anything you tell them.' Mr White, of Clarence Parade, Cheltenham, said he was 'dismayed' at the parking problems in the spa town. Ash White posted these pictures on his Facebook page last year with the cast of Geordie Shore wearing his firm's ripped jeans The ripped jeans business is obviously doing good business for Ash White. Back in December he was driving a Renault Megane but he's now traded up to a 250,000 Lamborghini Huracan 'I've called the council a number of times, I've spoken to my landlord and looked into getting business permits and nothing has come of it,' he said. 'There isn't anywhere to park in Cheltenham and I'm not going to walk or take a taxi from a car park to get into town so I'm forced to park in different places.' He added: 'I don't mind paying up, the tickets don't bother me.' He also claimed he received a 10 percent discount for paying so many tickets - something Gloucestershire County Council denied. Mr White, of Clarence Parade, Cheltenham, said he was 'dismayed' at the parking problems in the spa town Jim Daniels, parking manager at Gloucestershire County Council, said: 'If any vehicle is parked illegally the owner will be given a parking ticket and payment will be required within the standard 60 day time frame. 'There are a variety of car parks in and around Cheltenham, including Rodney Road, St Georges Place and Royal Well Place which are all within walking distance to the promenade and town centre.' The 21-year-old raised eyebrows when parked in the Mayor's parking space, claiming he had 'no option', adding parking in the town was 'impossible' and painted markings on the space were faded. These are the shocking scenes as a group of small Palestinian children perform military-style terrorist drills in a grotesque drama performance. The video claims to be from the graduation ceremony of at a Gaza Kindergarten filmed on May 30, 2016. The group of children are dressed in military-style fatigues and are seen with a mocked-up tank, mortar and even a drone. During the shocking video, small children are dressed up as terrorists and raid a house with an Israeli flag The young boys spend five minutes moving around the stage in a tactical fashion as if they were terrorists Before the performance, a narrator stands on the stage and introduces the show: 'And now the number you have all been waiting for the military training show, directed by brother Bilal Majed Ashour. We salute his enormous effort. During the six-minute long video, a group of small children ran onto the stage wearing black pyjamas, bandanas and keffiyehs, where they were handed toy assault rifles from a boy, not much older than a toddler. The youngsters then form up in a military fashion before advancing across the stage in a tactical fashion. Moments later, the leading child dives to the ground and lies prone, holding his toy gun in a sniping fashion. Other children are dressed in desert camouflage military fatigues and can be seen loading 'shells' into a toy mortar. The disturbing play continues for approximately five minutes. At the end of the shocking performance, the narrator urges the audience to attack Israelis The narrator then invited the leader of Islamic Jihad Khodhr Habib to the stage to address the parents When the narrator returns to the stage, he said: Stab! Kill the occupier with stones and knives. Use any available weapon. From the edge of fire, when the blood calls to arms, the morning rises. The narrator then invites the leader of Islamic Jihad, Khodhr Habib to the stage. He tells the parents sitting in the crowd: The message of the children of Palestine today is a message of love to the whole world. Indeed the spokesman of these children is saying today: The love that we bear in our hearts is enough to be distributed among all the people of Earth. However, it is this Zionist enemy that kills the children, the women and the elderly, and is occupying the land. It is the enemy that forces us to bear arms, and protect our mothers and fathers, our elderly and the honour of our womenfolk. Police investigating the stabbing of TOWIE's Jake Hall have questioned three men after being called to a beach club by someone who claimed they were involved. The British trio were identified but not arrested by officers who went to the popular Puerto Banus venue. The police probe was continuing last night after detectives managed to speak to the reality TV star but got little out of him. One insider described the 24-year-old Brit, who has now been moved out of intensive care, as 'fairly uncooperative.' Three British men have been questioned over Jake Hall's nightclub stabbing in Marbella. The TOWIE was left in intensive care where he posted this photograph earlier this week, stating: 'You can't get rid of me that easily' He was rushed to the Costa del Sol Hospital near Marbella by friends in the early hours of Monday morning after being stabbed with a broken bottle at celeb nightspot Aqwa Mist. He almost lost a kidney after being wounded in his right side when a group of Liverpudlian friends he was with were involved in a fight with a gang of violent Londoners. Police were called to the nightclub but were only informed later in the day Jake was in hospital. The star has admitted he just wants to 'get better' and tweeted from his hospital bed shortly after being spoken to by police: 'Starting to get to me now please can I get better f### sake.' Earlier, he had posted a picture of himself in hospital, boasting: 'You can't get rid of me that easily.' TOWIE star Jake Hall (pictured with Chloe Lewis in Marbella last year) was treated in hospital after an apparent stabbing at a nightclub in the Spanish resort He added: 'Thank you so much for everyone's amazing support and getting me through this. I'm getting better thank [sic] to everyone.' A source close to the case said: 'Officers have identified three men as being possibly involved in the stabbing at Aqwa Mist but no arrests have taken place yet. 'Officers have been to see the injured British man in hospital but he was fairly uncooperative.' A spokesman for Spain's National Police, which is probing the incident under the coordination of an investigating magistrate, said: 'This matter is still under investigation. 'We cannot say any more at this stage.' A source said Mr Hall was treated amid 'fears over his kidney' after the incident at Aqwa Mist on Sunday A court in Marbella has received a report on Jake's injuries stating he was stabbed in the right side and his kidney was affected. The report was sent the same day a spokesman for the reality TV star admitted he was in hospital in Marbella but could not confirm he had been attacked with a broken bottle during a fight. Officers from a unit specialising in probing violent crimes are leading the police investigation into the stabbing. They are understood to have questioned Jake on Wednesday afternoon, shortly after he was moved out of intensive care where he had spent more than two days. An English Defence League supporter who collected a terrifying arsenal of weapons was found by police camping next to a busy cycle track armed with axes, knives and a bow. Daniel Joyner, 30, was arrested on the Isle of Wight after a frightened witness spotted him walking along a road with the axe and arrows while wearing a Nazi Swastika armband and a mask. Police searched a nearby area of woodland, close to the cycle track between Cowes and Newport, and heard the sound of chopping wood, before finding Joyner sitting next to a small tent. Scary: Daniel Joyner, 30, was arrested on the Isle of Wight after a frightened witness spotted him walking along a road with the axe and arrows while wearing a Nazi Swastika armband and a mask Arsenal of weapons: Police searched an area of woodland and heard the sound of chopping wood, before finding Joyner sitting next to a small tent with a bow, arrows, axes, cut throat razors and a machete Collection: Joyner admitted 13 charges of possessing a knife or bladed article in public and three of possessing an offensive weapon - but avoided jail after being given a suspended sentence and a 25 fine Joyner, of Cowes - who is a fan of survival expert Bear Grylls - had a bow, arrows, axes, cut throat razors and a machete in the tent, Isle of Wight Magistrates Court was told. He admitted 13 charges of possessing a knife or bladed article in public and three of possessing an offensive weapon - but avoided jail after being given a suspended sentence and a 25 fine. Anne Smout, prosecuting, told the court that after police found his collection of weapons at the tent, they visited his house 400 yards away and uncovered yet more items. In a shed, which Joyner called his 'man cave', officers found a Nazi flag pinned to the ceiling and an EDL poster in the window, along with a British Army uniform and a Samurai sword. No immediate prison term: Joyner was sentenced to 12 weeks in jail, suspended for 12 months, fined 25 and ordered to pay 85 costs and a 115 surcharge Evidence: After police found his collection of weapons at the tent, they visited his house 400 yards away and uncovered yet more items - including a Nazi flag pinned to the ceiling (right) Supporter: Officers also found an English Defence League poster in the window of Joyner's shed in Cowes Pictures of Joyner with his weapons were found on his mobile phone. He told officers he collected military items because his hobby was 'survival'. Joyner told Isle of Wight Magistrates Court he planned to sell the items he was allowed to keep He added that he had been going to the woods near the cycle track to camp for a few days. He said there was a possibility that society would 'fail' and he wanted to be prepared, like doomsday 'preppers' in the US, said Mrs Smout. He said he had the axes and machetes for cutting wood and the razors for cutting rope - and claimed a gas mask he was found with was due to a report of a gas leak. Liz Miller, defending, said her client was a fan of war films and collected the items because his great-grandfather served in the armed forces. He had since referred himself to a drug and alcohol misuse team. She said: He spent a lot of money on weapons as he was a collector. His shed was his man cave. Everything was kept under lock and key. He does like Bear Grylls and he does like to be extra safe. This was a mistake from his point of view rather than him trying to cause trouble. Joyner was today sentenced to 12 weeks in jail, suspended for 12 months, fined 25 and ordered to pay 85 costs and a 115 surcharge. Advertisement The dramatic moment a tiger kills a deer has been captured by a photographer who waited 660 hours during 220 safaris in India to get the perfect shot. Stunning photos show the big cat sprinting after its prey before leaping on its back and dragging it away in Ranthambore National park, Rajasthan, India. The sequence of images was captured by British photographer Andy Rouse who has spent years waiting to see a tiger hunt unfolding in front of him. The dramatic moment a tiger kills a deer has been captured by a photographer who waited 660 hours during 220 safaris in India to get the perfect shot Stunning photos show the big cat sprinting after its prey before leaping on its back and dragging it away in Ranthambore National park, Rajasthan, India The sequence of images was captured by British photographer Andy Rouse who has spent years waiting to see a tiger hunt unfolding in front of him Until this point, the photographer had failed to capture what he referred to as 'the holy grail' of photographing tigers. He said: 'I have tried repeatedly to capture a tiger making a kill in the open, which is the holy grail of tiger shots because it's so rare. 'It is like winning the animal lottery of wildlife photography to get shots of a kill in the open, in the sun where the light is right. It was a superb day.' 'It was definitely one of the highlights of my year seeing a wild tiger kill in the open and actually managing to photograph it too!' After making an initial three-month trip to take photos for his first book on the majestic creatures, the tiger enthusiast has gone back to Ranthambore on countless trips to observe the tigers. Stalking: Until this point, the photographer had failed to capture what he referred to as 'the holy grail' of photographing tigers Attack: The tiger stalked its prey before sprinting after it and leaping on to its back in a dramatic ten minutes on the safari The photographer and his six-man team came close to observing a kill on several occasions but luck was never on their side On the day of the kill, Mr Rouse was following female tiger Noor T39 (all tigers in the reserve are numbered), along a stone valley when she suddenly stopped and sat down, putting her legs underneath her After playing with her prey for a few minutes, Noor dragged it to a cave, out of the scorching 45 celsius heat in Rajasthan, India Flying out for two-week stints, the safari drives lasted three hours at a time and were completed in the early morning and evening hours to avoid the hostile daytime temperatures, which could reach over 100 degrees Celsius. The photographer and his six-man team came close to observing a kill on several occasions but luck was never on their side. He said: 'You've just got to come round the corner at the right time when the tiger is waiting to make a kill. An awful lot of things have got to come together for it to go perfectly.' 'I've had many times watching a tiger in what I would call the perfect kill situation and then for whatever reason they didn't go for it. We were all sat there waiting, thinking "why aren't you doing it?" And then when they do go for it the chance of seeing a kill in the open is very low.' From static to full-speed in a moment, the tigress quickly overtook the deer, before using her strength and size to take down her prey On the day of the kill, Mr Rouse was following a female tiger, along a stone valley when she suddenly stopped and sat down, putting her legs underneath her The giant tiger used all of its power to spring an attack on the deer, before dragging it down and clamping its jaws around its neck Surrounded by boulders and on an uneven, rocky riverbed, the Sambar Deer stood no chance against the power and speed of the tigress On the day of the kill, Mr Rouse was following female tiger Noor T39 (all tigers in the reserve are numbered), along a stone valley when she suddenly stopped and sat down, putting her legs underneath her. He said: 'I knew from working with cats that this was a sign she was getting ready to run.' 'She gazed intently at us and just as I turned to see what she was looking at I heard some stones falling and saw a Sambar deer appear from the bushes.' From static to full-speed in a moment, the tigress quickly overtook the deer, before using her strength and size to destroy her prey. Surrounded by boulders and on an uneven, rocky riverbed, the Sambar Deer stood no chance against the power and speed of the tigress. As an experienced wildlife photographer Mr Rouse had seen plenty of hunts in the past but the brutality of the tiger's kill surprised even him Flying out for two-week stints, the safari drives lasted three hours at a time and were completed in the early morning and evening hours to avoid the hostile daytime temperatures, which could reach over 100 degrees Celsius As well as the hunt, Mr Rouse managed to capture the big cat feasting on its prey after it dragged the animal away behind rocks Dinner time: The stunning tiger tucked into its dinner after dragging it away behind rocks at Ranthambore National park, Rajasthan, India Mr Rouse said: 'I've seen lots of kills but when you see a tiger kill it's the awesome power and focus of the tiger that gets you 'The tiger was bouncing from boulder to boulder and just grabbed the deer and pulled it down. From start to finish it was over in 10 minutes.' As an experienced wildlife photographer Mr Rouse had seen plenty of hunts in the past but the brutality of the tiger's kill surprised even him. A high school student has been suspended after unfurling a Confederate flag in class and telling students 'happy white privilege day', according to school officials. Teachers at Nicolet High School in Glendale, Wisconsin, say the male senior was walking into English class on Wednesday morning when he pulled the flag from his pocket. The teacher took the flag from the student and he was sent to the principal's office, then suspended after an investigation, WISN reports. A male pupil at Nicolet High School in Wisconsin has been suspended after he walked into an English class on Wednesday, pulled out a Confederate flag, and told students 'happy white privilege day' A school spokesman said the boy was a senior on his last day of school and believe the stunt was a tasteless prank because he had not been involved in this kind of activity before (file image) Police were also called, but no legal action has been taken, according to the news site. A school spokesman told Dailymail.com the boy carried out the stunt during his last day at school and teachers believe it was a tasteless prank. The spokesman added that the boy's actions came out of the blue and he had not been disciplined for this kind of thing before. The spokesman added: 'I don't think the student thought through the repercussions of his actions.' Senior Hannah McBride told WISN that the boy's actions were not 'an accurate representation of the student body at Nicolet' and that he 'should have known better'. Principal Gregory Kabara sent an email to parents saying: 'This action disrupted the class and upset many students. 'While district policy allows for students to initiate conversation about a controversial issue, it must be presented in the ordinary course of classroom instruction and cannot be disruptive to the educational setting. The student's actions were a clear violation of this policy.' Fellow senior Hannah McBride said the boy's actions were not 'an accurate representation of the student body at Nicolet' and that he 'should have known better' Dr. Robert Kobylski, Superintendent for the Nicolet School District, said: 'On Wednesday, a student made a derogatory and offensive demonstration during an English class. 'This action disrupted the class and is in violation of district policy. We conducted an investigation that resulted in disciplinary action. 'Fostering an educational community based on tolerance and respect is of the utmost importance to the administration, faculty and staff at Nicolet. in the Atlantic are most visible sign of renewed interest in submarine warfare by President Vladimir V Putin The commander of the Navy's US 6th Fleet has warned that Russian submarines are waging a Cold War-style 'fourth battle of the Atlantic'. Vice Admiral James Foggo III outlined Russia's submarine operations, which he said is probing US anti-submarine networks, in an article for the US Naval Institute's June issue of Proceedings. In his article he explained the submarine battles between the Allies and the Germans in World War I, World War II and the Cold War, between the US and the Soviets, and how they compare to Russia's actions today. Vice Admiral James Foggo III (left) said that Russia's current actions 'prowling' the Atlantic have 'increased in alarming and confrontational ways'. The patrols are the most visible sign of a renewed interest in submarine warfare by President Vladimir V Putin (right) Russian submarine Severodvinsk Russia has stepped up its submarine operations and is regularly probing US anti-submarine networks in possible 'fourth battle of the Atlantic' He compared those first, second and third battles to Russia's current actions 'prowling the Atlantic'. Foggo wrote: 'Once again, an effective, skilled, and technologically advanced Russian submarine force is challenging us. Russian submarines are prowling the Atlantic, testing our defenses, confronting our command of the seas, and preparing the complex underwater battlespace to give them an edge in any future conflict.' He said that Russia's current actions and capabilities have 'increased in alarming and confrontational ways' as its national-security policy is 'aimed at challenging the United States and its NATO allies and partners'. The increased submarine presence are the most visible sign of a renewed interest in submarine warfare by President Vladimir Putin, whose government has spent billions of dollars for new classes of diesel and nuclear-powered attack submarines that are quieter and better armed and operated, according to The New York Times. The tensions are part of an expanding rivalry and military buildup between the US and Russia. Since the presence of Russian submarines have increased in the Atlantic, the Pentagon is attempting to maintain its supremacy. Last month, US Navy Commodore Ollie Lewis told CNN: 'We were operating in places where we didn't have to rely on an adversary being there to challenge us. That's changing.' 'So we're back to the point now where we have to consider there is an adversary ready to challenge us in the undersea domain and that undersea superiority is not guaranteed,' Lewis said. The US Navy also told CNN in April that Russian submarine activity was reaching levels unseen for decades. Foggo wrote that Russia is 'rapidly closing the technological gap with the US'. 'It has created an advanced military designed to overcome our advantages and exploit our weaknessesthis is the epitome of asymmetric warfare. The tensions are part of an expanding rivalry and military buildup between the US and Russia. But since the presence of Russian submarines have increased in the Atlantic, the Pentagon is attempting to maintain its supremacy. Pictured is a Russian submarine 'Russia rapidly is building and deploying more advanced and significantly quieter attack submarines and frigates armed with the long-range Kalibr cruise missile', which he wrote, includes six new 'Kilo-class nuclear-powered attack submarines destined for the Black Sea'. Russian officials admitted the increased submarine operations over the last two years. Russian Navy head Adm Viktor Chirkov said in March 2015 that submarine operations have increased by 50 per cent, according to Sputnik News. 'This is logical and necessary to guarantee the security of the state,' he said at the time. Russia now employs an 'arc of steel' from the Arctic through the Baltic and as well as the Black Sea, Foggo wrote. And because of that reason, 'combined with extensive and frequent submarine patrols throughout the North Atlantic and the Norwegian Sea, and forward-deployed forces in Syria, Russia has the capability to hold nearly all NATO maritime forces at risk', Foggo wrote. But in regards to winning the fourth battle today, Foggo wrote: 'With our allies and partners in NATO and across the globe, we present a broad and united front against any potential Russian threats.' FROM THE BEGINNING: A SUMMARY OF THE BATTLES OF THE ATLANTIC First Battle of the Atlantic 1914-1918: The Atlantic U-boat campaign of World War I was the prolonged naval conflict between German submarines and the Allied navies in Atlantic watersthe seas around the British Isles, the North Sea and the coast of France. It was directed against the British Grand Fleet, but later extended to include action against the trade routes of the Allied powers. This campaign was highly destructive, and resulted in the loss of nearly half of Britain's merchant marine fleet during the course of the war. Second Battle of the Atlantic 1939-1945: German U-boats threatened the Allies with new tactics and technologies based on experiences in the previous war. The Germans had learned how to overcome the antisubmarine warfare (ASW) advantages of the Allies, and only by again bringing new technologies, tactics, and resources to bear did the Allies prevail. Third Battle of the Atlantic 1945- early 90s: During the Cold War, US ASW forces engaged in a constant cat-and-mouse game with the Soviet Union's submarines. Nuclear power, ballistic and cruise missiles, and quieter systems empowered Soviet submarines in troubling ways. To respond, the US and its allies were forced to build greater and more effective ASW forces and continually refine their own ASW technologies to counter the Soviets. Source: BBC History Russian Navy head Adm Viktor Chirkov said in March 2015 that submarine operations have increased by 50 per cent. Pictured is a borei-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine Advertisement A mother clung to her car door and screamed as a man hijacked her sedan with her sleeping three-year-old son still inside early on Monday morning. Tina Ye, from Melbourne, was leaving for work around 6.40am when she got out of her seat to close her garage door and heard the sudden sound of her door slamming behind her, according to Seven News. As she frantically turned around, Ms Ye said she saw a man sitting in the driver's seat and she quickly lunched for the door. Scroll down for video Tina Ye (pictured), from Melbourne, was leaving for work around 6.40am on Monday when a man tried to hijack her car as her three-year-old son, Marcus, was sleeping in the back seat Ms Ye said she was closing her garage door and heard the sudden sound of her door slamming behind her (pictured) Ms Ye said she lunged for the door and began to scream for the man to let her son, Marcus, (pictured) go She yelled at the man to let her son out of the car but he spun the car into reverse and began to speed down the street. 'I was still holding onto the car door and screaming help, help!,' she told Seven News. Ms Ye said soon after she watched the car come to a sudden halt and saw Marcus unbuckle himself and run toward her. The man then dumped the car at the end of her street and noticed that it smelled like alcohol, she said. Despite her screams, the man spun the car into reverse and began to speed down the street The incident has terrified Marcus, Ms Ye said. 'He'll tell me, "Mummy, there's a bad guy in the car".' Ms Ye described the man as of African appearance with a solid built and between 20 to 40 years old, according to Seven News. Police said they are investigating the incident. A man who led police on a high-speed chase through a city in Wisconsin while allegedly under the influence of cocaine ran naked from his car and dived into a lake before finally being arrested on Wednesday night. Police said a resident reported a 'suspicious person' near Carroll University in Waukesha just before midnight. An officer approached the 29-year-old and realized he was naked, however the man jumped into a silver Volvo station wagon and took off, starting a pursuit that went through the downtown area. Police say the suspect struck curbs, drove in opposite lanes of travel and was not obeying any traffic control signals, Fox 6 Now reported. Scroll down for video Under the influence: Footage taken at the scene shows the moment the naked male suspect emerges from the Fox River in Waukesha late on Wednesday night Zap: This is the moment police taser the man after he allegedly lunged at a police officer In grainy CCTV footage, a group of police can be seen restraining the man, who is lying on the ground naked The man eventually crashed the car after losing both front tires. However the chase didn't end there. The man - still naked - then started running from the car, and jumped into the nearby Fox River. After firefighters arrived on the scene with a rescue boat, they were eventually able to convince him to get out of the river, but the man was uncooperative. 'He lunged at officers, forcing them to utilize less lethal munitions, including a Taser in order to impede his assault and safely stabilize him,' police said in a news release. 'This stabilization was necessary in order to get him under control and provide immediate medical treatment.' Police also said the man was on probation at the time of the incident. Scene: Police were first called to the area amid reports of a man wandering around naked around midnight The man eventually crashed his car after some of the tires fell off during the chase. He then fled the scene The suspect was taken to Waukesha Memorial Hospital and treated for cocaine use. He is facing charges of operating under the influence, eluding, resisting, prowling, lewd and lascivious behavior, and other traffic citations. Adam Kindred, outreach coordinator with the Addiction Resource Council, said the man could have been undergoing some kind of episode because of the cocaine. 'When somebody becomes intoxicated or impaired from a substance, there may be these one-time incidents ...whether they black out or they kind of exhibit some behaviors that they normally wouldn`t when they`re not under the influence of substances,' he told Fox. Freya, a six-year-old Staffordshire bull terrier cross, has been overlooked by 18,000 people but is now to appear in a movie Britain's loneliest dog is to star in the fifth Transformers movie. Freya, a six-year-old Staffordshire bull terrier cross, has been overlooked by more than 18,000 potential families who have visited her rescue centre. It led to a Facebook page being set up which gained a rapid following and was noticed by the movie's director Michael Bay. The animal loving film-maker has now cast her in the fifth instalment of the franchise, which is due to start shooting this summer. And if he can't find a home for Freya, who suffers from epilepsy, he has promised to take her in to his home in Miami. The shelter has welcomed the intervention from Bay, who has two two bullmastiffs, Bonecrusher and Grace - named after characters in his own movies Transformers and Armageddon. A spokesman for Freshfields Animal Rescue Centre told The Mirror: 'We have had a fantastic response to our appeal for a new home for Freya, with lots of interest shown from around the world as well as closer to home in the UK.' 'We are thrilled at the opportunity of a movie deal for Freya and at such interest and support from a major film director who is also a dedicated animal advocate.' Freya was brought in as a young stray but was recently been diagnosed with epilepsy, leaving her carers more anxious than ever that she will never find a loving home. Deputy kennel manager Kate Jones, 35, said: 'She has been here many years now and is constantly overlooked, which breaks our hearts as we adore her. 'We do not understand why she has been overlooked for so long. 'Every year we update her age on the website and it absolutely breaks our hearts to see her getting older and has never had a home. A Facebook campaign to find her a home was noticed by animal lover and Transformers (pictured) director Michael Bay, who has cast her in the fifth instalment of the franchise which will be filmed this summer The shelter has welcomed the intervention from Bay, who has two two bullmastiffs, Bonecrusher and Grace - named after characters in his own movies Transformers and Armageddon Staff at Freshfields Animal Rescue in Liverpool are baffled as to why Freya is constantly passed by. The lonely pet has recently been diagnosed with epilepsy, leaving her carers more anxious than ever that she will never find a loving home 'She is a beautiful girl, so loving and friendly. She is our big baby.' Kate worried that Freya's epilepsy, which requires medication to manage and blood tests every three months, would put off potential owners. Freya was previously seeking an adult-only home with no other furry friends, so it is unclear if Mr Bay's home - which his other dogs - will suit. The shelter said she will require an owner with patience while she adapts to being in a home for the very first time. Deputy kennel manager Kate Jones, 35, said: 'Freya was brought into the rescue as a young stray but nobody came forward to claim her. 'She has been here many years now and is constantly overlooked, which breaks our hearts as we adore her. We do not understand why she has been overlooked for so long' Kate added: 'She loves a fuss and getting her belly tickled. 'Her bursts of love when she sees someone is just pure excitement as she loves people so much. Once she has calmed down she will happily lie next to you getting fussed for as long as you will stroke her for. 'Freya has so much potential, she just needs someone to give her that chance. She may take a few weeks to settle and calm down, but that is understandable after her poor start to life. The number of people being arrested over laws to stop 'offensive' social media posts is soaring, new figures show. Statistics released by the Metropolitan Police show more than 850 people in London were detained under the controversial Communications Act last year. The number of arrests has jumped by more than a third in the past five years, during which time police in the capital have questioned people over more than 3,500 allegations. Paul Chambers (left) had his conviction overturned after he was prosecuted for tweeting he would blow up Robin Hood Airport. Markus Meechan (right) was arrested after posting a video of his dog doing a Nazi salute The figures, published by The Register, mean that during 2015, more than two people were arrested in London every day for allegedly posting messages which fall foul of the rules. The law allows people to be prosecuted for sending 'offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing' messages on 'public communication networks' such as Facebook or Twitter. The laws have been used to tackle online harassment, stalking and repeated 'trolling', but critics fear overzealous use of the rules could clamp down on free speech. The act came under scrutiny in 2012 when Paul Chambers successfully challenged a conviction he got for tweeting that he would blow up Robin Hood Airport when it closed after heavy snow. After his prosecution - for what he insisted was no more than a 'silly joke' - guidance was given by the Director of Public Prosecutions raising the threshold for prosecutions. But figures released last year showed that, around the country, more than 1,200 were prosecuted in 2014 for offences under the act. Laws ban the sending of 'offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing' messages on 'public communication networks' such as Facebook or Twitter Experts say that greater use of the internet and increased awareness of trolling being a crime has contributed to the rise in prosecutions. Last month, Markus Meechan from North Lanarkshire was arrested under the Communications Act for uploaded footage of his girlfriend's dog doing a Nazi salute and jumping when it heard words 'gas the Jews'. Council tax bills could be increased to fund care for refugee children due to arrive in Britain from July if the Government does not offer more money, it was claimed today. Under a new scheme, the first unaccompanied children are due to be brought to Britain from refugee camps in the Middle East. The pledge was made in addition to 20,000 other vulnerable refugees fleeing the war in Syria due to be resettled in Britain by 2020. But council leaders today warned town halls would not be able to afford the extra burden without more money. Council leaders have demanded the Government offer more funding to help them look after unaccompanied refugee children that are due to start arriving in Britain from July (file picture) Hillingdon Council deputy leader David Simmonds said told the BBC the Government was offering 41,600 a year per child but that the real cost was 50,000. Mr Simmonds, who is deputy chairman of the Local Government Association, said: 'Unless there's additional funding in the system we'll need to see either increases in council tax to pay for supporting refugee children or we'll see local councils cutting other services.' Correspondence revealed by the Radio 4 Today programme shows the 'first phase' of the relocation scheme would begin in July. Some councils have refused outright to take in more children under the scheme, which is based on local authorities volunteering their assistance. Councils near Heathrow and the Channel Tunnel in Kent face a greater burden as they are obliged to look after children who arrive on their patch and ask for help. The Home Office was reported to have been in extended negotiations with councils about the scheme for weeks since it was first announced. Ministers decided to go ahead with the scheme while under intense pressure to take in unaccompanied children who are already in Europe. David Cameron has repeatedly said Britain should do nothing to incentivise more people to make the hazardous journey to Europe from the Middle East. Instead, the Government has pressed ahead with schemes to relocate vulnerable people identified by the UNHCR directly from refugee camps around Syria. Alexandru Radita, 15, who was found dead at his home in Calgary after suffering from complications due to starvation The parents of a teenager who died after they found he had stopped breathing waited two hours before before calling for an ambulance as they were praying, a court in Canada heard. Alexandru Radita, 15, was found dead by emergency workers at his family home in Calgary in May 2013. An autopsy determined that the diabetic teenager died from complications due to starvation and weighed just 37 pounds at the time of his death. His parents Emil, 59, and Rodica, 53, are each charged with first-degree murder and are currently on trial at the Court of the Queen's Bench in Alberta. Testifying at the trial was Shauna Mitchell, an investigator with the Medical Examiner's Office who investigated Alexandru's sudden death. According to the Canada National Post, Ms Mitchell said she had asked the couple when they had last seen their son alive. She added: 'They said they went to church at, I think it was after 1800 hours, and they came home at about 2000 hours and thats when the father said that he wasnt breathing, so they prayed and they didnt call EMS until sometime around 2200 hours.' The investigator also told the prosecutor that several members of the couple's church were at the home when she attended and they were all praying. She also added it was possible that the boy hadn't been breathing since 6pm on the day he died, before his parents went to church. Meanwhile Alberta's chief medical officer Jeffrey Gofton also gave evidence at the trial and according to the Calgary Sun, said that Alexandru appeared to be so badly neglected, his fat and muscle reserves were depleted and his teeth had rotted away. He also revealed that the boy died after contracting bacterial sepsis. Alexandru's parents Emil, 59, left, and Rodica, 53, right, are each charged with first-degree murder and are currently on trial at the Court of the Queen's Bench in Alberta Mr Gofton explained: 'Theres no muscle mass, theres no fat, theres no resources 'Alexnadru has no resources, he has no ability to mount, by himself, a ... response to anything.' He also said that sore on the boy's neck was the likely source of where the infection moved into his blood stream. The struggling actor and son of a prominent Chicago couple sent a six-hundred page 'manifesto' to relatives, police and news outlets before killing his parents and then committing suicide, say police. Aaron Wulf, 36, shot and stabbed his parents to death at approximately 10.49am on Wednesday in their Talon Pointe vacation home in Las Vegas, according to Las Vegas Metropolitan Police. Cops received a phone call from a worried Illinois relative of the couple who was a recipient of the son's sprawling and emotionally-charged manifesto, reports Las Vegas Review-Journal. After receiving the document, in which Wulf threatened to kill himself, the relative called the home of Art Wulf, 69, and Jan Morgan-Wulf, 66, and heard screams and sounds of a struggle when the phone was answered. The relative then called police, who arrived at 11.23am, but found the three adults already dead. Art and Jan Wulf, above, were just beginning to enjoy traveling in their retirement when they were killed by their mentally ill son, Aaron, say police Aaron Wulf, above, was a child actor who appeared in several commercials but didn't have success with his adult film career, with only two small listings on IMDB. He reportedly had a long history of mental illness The couple had three other children besides Aaron, and brother Seth says that the couple never abused Aaron and that he was 'clearly a troubled person' The couple were in their upstairs bedroom dead from gunshot and stab wounds, and their son was on the landing, dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to police. Despite the worried relative and police receiving copies of the manifesto, cops say they did not realize a crime was in progress, and arrived at the home too late to intervene. Video Courtesy FOX32 Wulf, above, was a cute, curly-haired tyke who appeared in a number of commercials as a child, though it is unclear how many. He accused his parents of stealing the funds made from his acting The manifesto, in which Aaron Wulf details a litany of complaints against his parents and others, was mailed to Las Vegas cops a few days before the incident. However, police say they only received it after the three were dead, although they would not specify when, according to Northbrook Patch. The manifesto contained six hundred pages of written complaint and explanation for his impending suicide, plus photo, videos, and two hours of audio. Reportedly, it took Wulf five months to compile the allegation-filled document. 'If you are receiving this now, it means that I am dead,' the manifesto begins, according to the Journal. 'This is not a joke. I promise. And you dont need to call anyone; I can assure you Ive already been found.' Las Vegas Metro Police Lt. Dan McGrath, left, and Captain Jason Letkiewicz of the LVMPD homicide section, responded to the scene of the tragedy on Wednesday On the audio portion, played by Fox 5 Las Vegas, Wulf is heard saying, 'I will die in the worst physical pain. I can guarantee you, serial killers die better than I did. 'I reached out directly to four family members and they all wished me death. And now I'm dead because no one will listen to me.' He then went on to detail years of alleged abuse inflicted by his parents, saying teachers and police would never listen to him. 'My whole life was a worst case scenario, why, why, I was not a weak man, I was the strongest man in history,' he said. 'Even when [my parents] beat me in public, the number of people who witnessed me being beaten by this savage, the most violent sadistic man Ive ever met, no one has ever reported it.' It's unclear if Wulf also threatened to kill his parents in the manifesto. The document named a man that Wulf says was his psychiatrist, but the doctor said he would not discuss former or current patients, reports the outlet. At least one family member is denying the claims. Wulf's brother, Seth, wrote to Fox 5 Las Vegas that 'Aaron was clearly a troubled person who was mentally unstable.' He added that the accusations were 'false and devastating'. Mark Damask, a friend of the family, also told the outlet that the manifesto was the mental illness speaking and that the couple were not violent or abusive. Reportedly, Wulf had a history of mental illness but it's unclear what kind and whether he was treated for it. He had no criminal record. He was also a struggling actor who had small roles on Monk and Girlfriends. According to IMDB, his last acting job was in 2002. But as a child, the curly-haired boy appeared in various commercials, and he accused his parents of stealing his money. The couple were in their upstairs bedroom dead from gunshot and stab wounds, and their son was on the landing, dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to police Art Wulf was a semi-retired attorney who served on the District 225 School Board in Glenview from 1995 to 1999. Jan Morgan-Wulf was a former Chicago Public Schools speech pathologist who also had worked for Coldwell Banker Real Estate as an agent in the Northbrook office. The pair had a home in Northbrook, Illinois as well as their vacation home in Las Vegas. The couple had recently begun traveling more in their semi-retirement, and a Facebook photo shows them visiting Peru. 'I'm just in shock,' Vicky Maurici, a Coldwell agent and friend of the family said Thursday, according to the Chicago Tribune. 'I just cannot believe this has happened. She was just a beautiful person, and they were living a full life.' The couple had three other adult children. Almost 3,500 EU citizens have been sent polling cards for the referendum despite it being illegal for them to vote in the poll, the Electoral Commission admitted tonight. The elections watchdog yesterday insisted there was only a handful of cases and a memo sent to counting officers, seen by MailOnline, mentioned just seven examples. But with a number of councils still to confirm the extent of the error, the Electoral Commission tonight issued a statement confirming 3,462 polling cards or postal votes had been issued in error. EU citizens are not allowed to take part in the referendum because the franchise is based on the system used for the general election franchise. Reports have emerged of referendum polling cards being sent to EU citizens who are not eligible to vote in the poll on June 23 The Electoral Commission said none of the affected voters would be allowed to take part on polling day. Yesterday officials reveal a 'glitch' in election software called Xpress used by several councils failed to properly record the nationality of some voters. The fault was due to have been fixed by a software patch on Wednesday night and any EU voters wrongly issued polling cards or postal votes will be written to with an explanation of what went wrong. Iain Duncan Smith, the leading Vote Leave campaigner, yesterday wrote to David Cameron to demand a swift investigation into the 'deeply disturbing' claims. A spokesman for the Electoral Commission said: 'The Commission can today confirm that according to information it has received so far, 3,462 electors were affected by this issue. 'We are still waiting for confirmation from six local authorities about whether they were affected and, if so, the figures will be updated once we receive this information. 'The software provider has resolved the issue which means that, if any postal votes have been issued to these electors, they will be cancelled and none of these electors will be shown as eligible on the electoral registers to be used at polling stations on 23 June. 'All of the affected electors will also be written to by their local Electoral Registration Officer with an explanation of what happened and will be told that they will not be able to vote at the referendum.' Iain Duncan Smith, who explosively quit the Cabinet in March, has written a strongly worded letter to David Cameron demanding measures to stop EU nationals illegally voting in the referendum EU citizens living in Britain are not entitled to vote in the poll, but migrants from Poland and Germany are among those who have reported getting voting cards. The memo sent to counting officers revealed that if the system recording nationality is updated by someone typing in a country manually and then moving away from the screen before confirming the entry, a foreign voter was recorded as being eligible to vote. WHO IS ALLOWED TO VOTE IN THIS MONTH'S REFERENDUM? The people on Gibraltar have been given a vote in this month's referendum despite not usually taking part in general elections Laws implementing this month's referendum based the franchise for the historic vote on who can vote in general elections. This includes all British and Irish citizens but excludes EU nationals who are living in the UK via free movement rules. EU nationals are allowed to take part in local and European Parliament elections. The rules create surprising anomalies - such as Nick Clegg's wife, the Spanish lawyer Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, who cannot vote. In addition, the European Union Referendum Act allows peers to vote and also extends the franchise to the population of Gibraltar who, given their close proximity to Spain, will be enormously affected by the result. Advertisement EU nationals living in the UK are allowed to vote in council and European elections but they are barred from voting for MPs or in the referendum. When registering, voters are required to declare their nationality. They must also provide their National Insurance number which can be checked against the official database. However, this only reveals whether their name and address is accurate, and does not check their nationality. The Electoral Commission said it is aware of a 'small number of non-eligible EU citizens' had mistakenly been sent polling cards and is working to confirm exactly how many ineligible voters had been given a slip. It also appealed for others to provide evidence of any ineligible voters being sent a polling card. In his strongly-worded letter to the PM, Mr Duncan Smith and fellow Tory MP Bernard Jenkin wrote: 'We have been contacted by a number of concerned electors who have alerted us to the fact that ineligible EU citizens have been sent polling cards telling them that they have a vote in the referendum on 23 June. 'We believe the British public will be as shocked as we are to discover that the integrity of the franchise for this long-awaited referendum with profound consequences for the future of our nation is being protected in such a lax manner.' They accused the Electoral Commission of 'shrugging off' concerns about the vote. A Leave campaign supporter in Nottingham they said has received an email from a local election official admitting: 'If an elector lies during their registration, we are not able to check to see if the nationality is correct or not. 'We have to assume that the elector is submitting their correct nationality.' Vote Leave chief executive Matthew Elliot said: 'Now we find out that EU migrants who should not be allowed to vote in this referendum are actually being given a vote. This is totally illegal. 'There should be an urgent inquiry by the Cabinet Secretary, involving people outside the Cabinet Office who are clearly impartial, to discover who is responsible for illegally giving EU migrants the vote and undermining the foundation of our democratic process. EVEN MATT DAMON'S LECTURING US! Hollywood star Matt Damon has described Brexit as an 'insane idea'. The American said the prospect of Britain leaving the EU was among a 'buffet' of problems facing the world. He also questioned what Europe would look like in 25 years' time. Addressing graduates at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Bourne Identity star said: 'This world has some problems that we need you to drop everything and solve. 'Go ahead and take your pick from the world's worst buffet.' He listed problems including economic inequality, the migrant crisis, climate change and institutional racism before adding: 'Or the Brexit, for God's sake, that insane idea that the best path for Britain is to cut loose from Europe and drift out to sea. What is Europe even going to look like in 25 years?' The actor also used the speech to take a jokey swipe at Donald Trump. Referring to theories that humanity exists in a 'computer simulation' run by advanced lifeforms, he said: 'If there are multiple simulations, how come we had to be in the one where Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee for president?' Advertisement 'Immediate action must be taken to avoid the integrity of our referendum being undermined.' Reports of EU citizens being given voting cards first surfaced on the Guido Fawkes website, which reported that Jakub Pawlowski, a Polish citizen living in Kingston, Surrey, had never applied for British citizenship but was sent a polling card after buying a house in December. He said: 'I recently bought a house and in December 2015, right after completion, filled the form to get registered on electoral roll. I have selected there that I'm a Polish citizen. 'I could therefore vote in London mayoral elections this month, however recently I got a polling card for the upcoming referendum on EU membership.' Kingston council said Mr Pawlowski was given a polling card for the referendum because he had indicated his nationality was British when applying to be put on the electoral register. A postal voting guide sent out by Bristol City Council was criticised after the graphic hovering over the Remain box was said to subliminally suggest which way to vote The council said it was working closely with the Electoral Commission. Journalist George Eaton tweeted that he also knew of German and Polish citizens who had been sent polling cards. Another Twitter user said: 'This happened to a Swedish friend of mine who had a German passport. 'They were on the electoral roll and voted.' The new row comes days after Bristol City Council was criticised for sending out instructions with postal votes that appeared to suggest voters should back remain. The step-by-step guide includes routine advice such as to 'read the instructions carefully, then complete the ballot paper'. But it also features an image of a hand hovering above the box stating 'remain a member of the European Union', and apparently about to tick it. Advertisement Beleaguered NRL star Kieran Foran is selling his million-dollar house in Sydneys swanky Northern Beaches. The Parramatta Eels troubled captain bought the four-bedroom home in Belrose, Warringah, for $1.06million in 2012. The property will be sold at auction by Ray White Real Estate on June 25 where it could fetch upwards of $1.5million, reported the Daily Telegraph. Troubled NRL star Kieran Foran is selling his million-dollar house in Sydney's Northern Beaches - and it could fetch up to $1.5million Foran bought the property, in the suburb of Belrose, Warringah, for $1.06m in 2012 but the property will be sold at auction this month The Parramatta Eels captain is selling the property in Belrose (pictured) after splashing $2.51m on another house in Freshwater, Manly, earlier in February The two-storey house has four bedrooms, three bathrooms and a large outdoor pool. It also features timber floors and spacious living and dining areas. Foran is selling-up after splashing $2.51m on another house in Freshwater, Manly, earlier in February. Foran has been battling a series of personal issues in recent months, following his split with long-term partner Rebecca Pope, who he shares two children with. He reportedly overdosed on prescription pills in April after his relationship with Ms Pope broke down. Following the episode, the gifted five-eighth spent three weeks at a Brisbane rehabilitation clinic and was granted indefinite leave by the Parramatta club. Foran reportedly went on a $75,000 gambling binge at the TAB on the day he left rehab, reported The Daily Telegraph. He has subsequently sued the betting agency for a breach of privacy and is seeking $150,000 in damages. When Foran finally returned to play for his under-fire club against the Newcastle Knights on May 30, he left the field with a season-ending shoulder injury. The house is expected to sell for more than $1.5m when Ray White Real Estate auction it on June 25 The 696 square metre two-storey property has four bedrooms and three bathrooms. Pictured: One of the bathrooms The property, on the market with Ray White Real Estate, also features timber floors and large living and dining areas (pictured) Foran has battled a series of personal issues after splitting from his long-term partner Rebecca Pope (right) in April The seventh victim of a brutal Dublin gangland feud was buried today, four weeks after he carried his uncle's coffin who was also murdered in the bloody dispute. Gareth Hutch was gunned down as he approached his car in Dublin's north inner city on May 24. Hutch, 35, was a nephew of gangland kingpin Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch', whose gang is involved in a vicious feud involving Christy 'The Dapper Don' Kinahan, who is regarded as one of Europe's biggest drug dealers. The latest victim's coffin was carried shoulder high through Dublin's north inner city behind a solitary piper following a funeral mass. Gareth Hutch was murdered in front of his young son Preston outside his home in Dublin on May 24 Hutch, 35, is the seventh person to in the feud between Christy Kinahan and his uncle Gerry Hutch Gareth Hutch, pictured carrying his uncle Eddie's coffin after the 59-year old was killed in the feud Hutch's uncle Eddie, 59, was killed on March 8, at his home three days after Kinahan henchman David Byrne was shot dead at the Regency Hotel in Dublin by killers dressed in SWAT-style paramilitary uniforms. Byrne was not the intended target of the hit on March 5 at the weigh-in for a fight. The gunmen had hoped to murder Kinahan's son Daniel, who is now head of the 1billion drugs empire. The father-of-one was the third member of the Hutch family to die in this feud. His cousin, 34-year-old Gary, was shot dead in Spain in September 2015 by the Kinahan mob, who accused him of being a police informant. His brother Patrick Hutch junior, 24, has been charged in connection with the Byrne murder. The Kinahan mob is also believed to be behind the murder of The Monk's long-time associate Noel 'Kingsize' Duggan who was shot dead on March 25 outside his home in Ratoath, County Meath. The 55-year-old criminal was once Ireland's largest illegal smuggler of illicit cigarettes. According to RTE News, Fr Paddy Madden told the congregation at the funeral mass: 'Every tragedy has a human face. Beyond analysis, comment and speculation we have pain and tears. 'Life is precious, sacred, God-given. Gareth's primary concern was for the safety, well-being, care and protection of his son, Preston.' He urged the congregation not to retaliate and such action 'needs courage, restraint, goodwill and right reason and a desire for peace.' Hutch was buried at Glasnevin Cemetery where white doves were released. Hutch's coffin was carried shoulder high through Dublin's north inner city following last month's murder Mourners at the funeral were told by Fr Paddy Madden than they must break the cycle of violence Irish police have announced they expect to make a number arrests internationally in connection with the feud GERRY HUTCH'S ASSOCIATES Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch Famously nicknamed 'The Monk', this former criminal is from Dublin's north inner city. He is believed to have been deeply involved in two of the biggest armed robberies in the history of the State, which he denies. A brother of Eddie Hutch, who was murdered earlier this month, The Monk is an uncle to Gary Hutch, whose murder in Spain last September kick-started the recent spate of bloodletting. The killing of his 'snitch' nephew is said to have brought The Monk out of retirement. Eddie Hutch senior A brother of The Monk and also an uncle to the late Gary Hutch, Eddie Hutch Snr was murdered in February. He is believed to have had very little involvement in crime. His death indicates how desperate the rival faction were to gain revenge against anyone connected to the Hutch family. Eddie Hutch junior Edward has a series of convictions, including for theft and motoring offences. He came to national prominence last year when he won a place on RTE's Winning Streak. His brother Ross took his place, easing the potential for embarrassment for the national broadcaster. He won 8,000 in cash and a car worth 25,000. Derek 'Del Boy' Hutch Another nephew of the Monk, he is currently serving a 16-year sentence for his role in cash van robbery. He was attacked in October of last year by two inmates who are believed to have slashed him on the arm with a shiv. In 2011, he also got a six-year term with four suspended for the manslaughter of Alan Donoghue, who was stabbed by Del Boy and an accomplice on St Stephen's Day 2007 in Co. Meath. Advertisement THE KINAHAN CRIME CARTEL Christy Kinahan Originally from St Teresa's Gardens in Dublin's south inner city, the 'Dapper Don' is said to have moved to Dubai, having previously lived in a 4.5million villa in Spain's Costa del Sol. He is understood to have handed the reins to his son for one of the biggest wholesale drug businesses supplying narcotics into both Ireland and the UK. Kinahan, speaks several foreign languages, including Dutch and Spanish, and has managed to avoid arrest despite massive police surveillance. Daniel Kinahan The eldest son of Christy, Daniel is believed to have inherited much of the day-to-day running of the Kinahan empire from his father. He lives along with his father in the Costa del Sol, where he is also a boxing promoter, and it was in that role that he returned to Dublin for February's ill-fated weigh-in at the Regency Hotel. He escaped through a window with a minder when the shooting started. Christy Kinahan jnr Christopher is also suspected of working in his father's drugs empire. He and his brother were arrested with their father in a police crackdown on the Kinahan mob in 2010, but they were never charged. Fat Freddie Thompson A well-known member of the Kinahan cartel, he is a cousin of David Byrne who was shot in February. Thompson has many convictions and was sentenced to 20 months last year for his part in a pub brawl. Despite reports that he had fallen out with the Kinahans, he is believed to have returned to work for them since his release. Paul Rice Enforcer Paul Rice has reportedly been ewarned by police that he is a target of Hutch gang because of his close links to the Christy Kinahan cartel Advertisement Irish police expect arrests to be made overseas as part of probe into an international crime cartel behind a murderous feud that has spilled onto the streets of Dublin. In its latest security briefing, the Garda said an unprecedented spate of underworld-ordered murders in the Irish capital was being directed from Spain, the Netherlands and the UK. The tentacles of the criminal 'conglomerate' involved also reach into Russia and the so-called Marseille Mafia, assistant commissioner John O'Mahony said. 'There is no doubt about what's happening in this country and impacting on these communities - particularly in the inner city communities of Dublin - is being orchestrated from the south of Spain and from Holland and indeed from the UK,' he told the briefing. Asked if he expected imminent arrests overseas, the Garda chief said: 'Of course I do anticipate [arrests], I hope.' A special crime task force has been set up as the blood-letting between the Kinahan and Hutch families spirals out of control. Tit-for-tat turf war: Family trees showing the network of gangsters in the Hutch and Kinahan crime cartels It is believed that seven people have been murdered so far as part of the increasingly bitter feud Grief-stricken friends and relatives followed the coffin led by the lone piper to Hutch's final resting place Friends and relatives took turns to carry Hutch's coffin along the road past his parents house Mr O'Mahony said the international dimension is a challenge for the investigations. The establishment of the Criminal Assets Bureau after the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin in 1996 to strip crime lords of their wealth has probably driven gangsters overseas and out of its reach, he added. Nonetheless, the senior police officer pointed to past arrests of notorious figures John Gilligan and Brian Meehan, who were brought back to Ireland to face court over Guerin's killing. 'That is something we will do again,' he said. 'We will follow those people who are guilty of these crimes or indeed guilty of organised crime activity in this country to wherever it takes us and bring them back to justice here.' Gilligan was acquitted of Guerin's murder but convicted of multimillion cannabis smuggling. Garda chiefs are considering basing some officers overseas to assist other national forces as part of the crackdown. 'We are dealing with a huge crime conglomerate; we are not just dealing with Ireland,' said Mr O'Mahony. 'It reaches out into Russia, into the Marseille Mafia, all based in Spain.' Fr Madden told the mourners: 'Every tragedy has a human face. Beyond analysis, comment and speculation we have pain and tears.' Fr Madden said Hutch's primary concern was the well-being of his son Preston As well as targeting crime bosses, the newly-established Garda special task force is going after low-level associates in Dublin. Garda deputy commissioner John Twomey warned that even those who go out to buy a mobile phone for a killer are equally responsible. 'Those people who are involved in the fringes of these crimes, those that are involved in any of the logistics, the purchasing of the phones or purchasing of cars are equally as culpable as those who pull the trigger,' he said. 'They figure centrally in our investigations.' Last week, Irish premier Enda Kenny demanded an international response to the spate of cold-blooded murders in Dublin. The Taoiseach suggested the security response was being hampered because offshore crime bosses were behind the hits. Listing off a macabre roll call of some of the country's most murderous crime gangs in the past, he said they were all based within Ireland and could be targeted at a national level. Iranian police have arrested 132 men and women, some of them allegedly bisexual, as part of crackdown on partygoers accused of breaking Islamic rules, according to a judiciary website. In the capital Tehran 'more than 70 drunk men and women at a restaurant in Farahzad' were arrested on the northwestern outskirts of the city, local news site Mizan Online stated. The report continued: 'A number of bisexuals were identified among those arrested.' Iranian police are cracking down on partygoers and arrested 132 men and women, a judiciary website reported (file photo) In addition 62 men and women were arrested at a party in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, although the exact date was not reported. Drinking alcohol and dancing with the opposite sex is forbidden in the country and just last week a further eight people were arrested for making 'obscene' music videos. The arrests come just days after more than 30 students were given 99 lashes each for violating the country's morality code. The students were partying at a graduation ceremony in northern Iran when they were arrested. In the capital Tehran 'more than 70 drunk men and women at a restaurant in Farahzad' were arrested, according to a local news site On May 16, Iran also announced the arrest of eight people for working in 'un-Islamic' online modelling networks, particularly on the photosharing app Instagram. The crackdown comes despite moderate President Hassan Rouhani's effort to allow greater social and cultural freedom. Tehran police chief announced in April the recruitment of 7,000 plainclothes police in the capital to fight against 'immorality'. The officers are responsible for monitoring and reporting 'noise, harassment of women and women's lack of Islamic veils inside cars,' he said. The bodies of four missing soldiers have been found after an Army truck overturned in a rain-swollen creek at Fort Hood, killing five other servicemen. Five soldiers were found dead on Thursday after the two-and-a-half ton truck flipped over in Owl Creek at the Texas Army base. Four more soldiers were unaccounted for after the tragic accident, but their bodies were found further downstream on Friday - taking the death toll to nine. Their remains were discovered after a lengthy search by military helicopters and boats. Three other servicemen were injured in the incident. Scroll down for video The bodies of four missing soldiers have been found after an Army truck overturned in a rain-swollen creek at Fort Hood, killing five other servicemen. Search boats are seen scouring the water for the missing troops A Texas DPS helicopter flies over Lake Belton near the scene of the accident as part of the search operation A Fort Hood spokesman said officials were in the process of closing roads on the sprawling Army post when a truck carrying 12 soldiers was swept away by high water on Thursday. Post spokesman Chris Haug said the soldiers were being trained how to operate the two-and-a-half ton truck when it overturned Thursday morning along Owl Creek. Haug says the portion of road where the Light Medium Tactical Vehicle overturned was not known to be overrun by water during past floods. The vehicle resembles a flatbed truck with a walled bed and is used to carry troops. Emergency crews searched through the night for the four missing soldiers before their bodies were found on Friday afternoon. Three others pulled from the water are in a stable condition in hospital.. Emergency responders talk near a regional command center in Fort Hood. Floods have ravaged Texas for the last few days Officials told KWTX that the deceased soldiers were found downstream. The four soldiers who were found on Friday are from the 3rd Battalion, 16th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division. Army aircraft, canine search teams, swift-water rescue watercraft and heavy trucks were used in the search for the missing soldiers. The names of the dead are being withheld until their relatives can be notified. Fort Hood spokesman John Miller said the low-water crossing of the creek was flooded by two days of intermittent heavy rains when the swift water swept the truck, called a Light Medium Tactical Vehicle, from the road. 'Our thoughts and prayers go out to the soldiers, their families and the Fort Hood community,' Texas Governor Greg Abbott said. A park ranger looks in the flood waters where the soldiers are said to be missing Texas has been ravaged by floods in the past week. A driver is seen trying to get across a low-water crossing near New Braunfels Meanwhile, a third Texas prison is being evacuated because of flooding. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice on Friday began moving about 1,700 inmates from the Ramsey Unit in Rosharon, about 30 miles south of Houston. They are being placed on buses for transfer to other prisons in East Texas that have room. Some 2,600 inmates at two nearby prisons in Brazoria County, the Terrell and Stringfellow Units, were moved out Sunday. Agency spokesman Jason Clark says additional food and water has been delivered to the prisons receiving the displaced inmates. Nearly the entire eastern half of Texas is under a flash flood watch or warning as the effects of days of heavy rains linger in creeks and rivers. Chance Morgan canoes past flooded townhouses in the Forest Cove neighborhood as he tries to get home Storms off the southeast Texas coast in the Gulf of Mexico are threatening to worsen flooding in places like Brazoria and Fort Bend counties, southwest of Houston, where residents near the Brazos River have been forced from their homes. Gov Abbott is scheduled to tour the area Friday afternoon. Fort Bend officials said 20 per cent of the county's land area has been affected by flooding. Parts of Texas have been inundated with rain in the last week. More storms were on the way that could dump up to 10 inches of rain through Saturday and worsen flooding caused by rivers and other waterways that already have risen to record levels. A North Texas woman is accused of punishing her young stepsons by making them lick a dirty toilet bowl and burning their tongues with a charcoal grill lighter, police say. Sara Anne Woody, 24, of Burkburnett, faces thirty criminal charges that also include allegations of forcing her two stepsons, aged 12 and seven, to drink a concoction that made them vomit, and striking their genitals with a belt, according to Times Record News. She is also charged with three counts of child endangerment and one count of tampering with a witness. She remains in the Witchita County Jail on $3million bond. Sara Anne Woody and Jonathan Darrell Woody face multiple criminal charges relating to the alleged horrific abuse of their two sons The children (above) have all been placed with relatives while the couple remain in Witchita County Jail in Texas on unspeakable child abuse charges Sara Woody, above, is alleged to have forced her stepsons, ages 12 and seven to lick the rim of a filthy toilet bowl among other abuses Her husband, Jonathan Darrell Woody is charged with three counts of child endangerment and one charge of tampering with a witness. He is in jail on $500,000 bond. The investigation started when one of the boys was brought to the Wichita Falls hospital with a lip injury. Both children were subsequently interviewed at a children's advocacy center, and the boys alleged that Sara Woody made them lick the rims of a toilet bowl that was filthy with waste, forced them to remove their clothes so she could beat their genitals with a belt, and beat them on the head, back, shoulders and legs with a paddle or tent pole. They said she also forced them to do pushups. Sara Woody, of Burkburnett, Texas, is currently in jail on $3million bond and is also pregnant, according to Times and Record News Jonathan Woody was also charged because police say he admitted knowing about the alleged abuse and did nothing to stop it. The tampering with a witness charges are because police say the boys were told to tell authorities a false story about the lip injury. Able to work on female clients again after He tried to seduce woman with 'RnB music' and said she had a 'nice a**' masseur who sexually harassed female client able to work again A masseur who touched a woman's breast while he tried to seduce her with 'RnB songs with sexual lyrics' can continue work on female clients after he completes an ethics course. Claude Fakhouri, owner of mobile massage business Massage2u told a client she had a 'nice a**' and 'touched her right breast' during a massage in Camden in July last year, the Health Complaints Commission found. Mr Fakhouri, who is a married man, then suggested that 'he and she should go for coffee sometime.' Claude Fakhouri (pictured), owner of mobile massage business Massage2u told a client she had a 'nice a**' and 'touched her right breast' during a massage in Camden in July last year Mr Fakhouri (pictured), who is a married man, then suggested that 'he and she should go for coffee sometime.' When the woman refused and lodged a complaint against him, Mr Fakhouri hired a private investigator to discredit her. The masseur also came to the commission's attention after a similar incident involving a woman 'half his age' at a gym in Campbelltown in 2013. He received a formal warning and the commission found that this incident, among others, resulted in the termination of his employment at the gym. In the most recent complaint the woman stated that Mr Fakhouri told her to take off everything, including her bra, and leave only her 'g string' on, before he reached underneath her and ran his hand over her nipple. Before completing the massage Mr Fakhouri told the client to 'roll over baby.' The woman said she was 'very shaken' by the ordeal and that she trusted the therapist who took advantage of her. A masseur who touched a woman's breast while he tried to seduce her with 'RnB songs with sexual lyrics' can continue work on female clients after he completes an ethics course She lodged a complaint with the commission which ruled in her favour on Thursday. It was found that Mr Fakhouri 'breached the code of conduct' and was a 'risk to public health and safety'. He is prohibited from providing massage services to female clients until he has completed a Tafe ethics course. Mr Fakhouri hired a private investigator, claiming he had been targeted by the woman, who he said was business a competitor, however the commission found this evidence to be 'unsatisfactory'. He also admitted to calling female clients 'hot', 'babe' and 'cute'. Mr Fakhouri had been protected by an identity suppression order until Thursday. Police said she is now This was the inspiring moment a group of pedestrians rescued a woman trapped under a car. Traffic cameras in the Chinese city of Zhenjiang captured the shocking moment a motorcyclist and his passenger were knocked into the middle of the road by a reversing truck. A white car travelling behind them then ran over the woman. Watch out! A truck driver who fails to look behind him before reversing knocks two people off a motorbike into the path of a white sedan She was pinned under the sedan until a large group of pedestrians rushed to the rescue. Working as a team they lifted up the cars back wheels to save her. Police said the woman was rushed to an intensive care unit where she is now in a critical condition. After the car runs over the female passenger a group of pedestrians rush in to save her But she was given a fighting chance thanks to the quick-thinking men. A video of the incident was uploaded on YouTube by Chinese news site CCTV News. The World Health Organisation estimates around 260,000 people die in fatal road accidents each year in China alone. Three Minnesota men have been found guilty of plotting to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State. A federal jury in Minneapolis convicted 21-year-old Guled Ali Omar, 22-year-old Abdirahman Yasin Daud and 22-year-old Mohamed Abdihamid Farah of conspiracy to commit murder overseas on Friday, the most serious charge they faced. They now face possible life sentence in prison. Mohamed Abdihamid Farah (left) and Guled Ali Omar (right) were among the three to be convicted of conspiracy to commit murder overseas Abdirahman Yasin Daud was born in a refugee camp in Kenya and arrived in Minnesota aged 9 The three are among 10 young men accused in the conspiracy. Six have pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to support a foreign terrorist organization. A seventh, 22-year-old Abdi Nur, is at large, and believed to be in Syria. Prosecutors built their case largely on recordings made by a friend of the men who became a paid informant. Testimony at trial showed he was paid roughly $119,000. But defense attorneys argued that comments on the records were youthful bluster. Prosecutors also argued that the trio had made 'exceptionally persistent efforts over a 14-month period' to join ISIS, reported Sky. They said that the trio knew they would be killing people once they arrived in Syria. The young men were detained last April in San Diego, after they went with an FBI informant to buy fake passports. Family and friends have protested what they call entrapment, and said most of the defendants were in their teens when they were caught up in the Islamic State's social media recruitment campaign. Defense attorneys said that Farah's desire to leave the country was motivated by humanitarian aims. Farah was one of four co-defendants stopped by FBI agents in New York as they were tried to board planes en route to Turkey, according to the Star Tribune. Omar's older brother left Minnesota in 2007 to fight for Somali extremist group al-Shabab. Pictured, the remains of a car after a bomb attack led by Somalia's Islamic extremist rebels, al-Shabab. Audio recordings also caught him defending an ISIS video that captured a Jordanian pilot being burned alive, as well as saying he would kill an FBI agent, Daud was born in a refugee camp in Kenya and arrived in Minnesota aged 9. Last April, he was arrested with Farah driving to California, allegedly in an effort to obtain fake passports to travel to Mexico. Omar is one of 13 siblings who, as a teen, led religious studies groups that included discussions about the Syrian civil war, according to the Tribune. In 2007 his older brother left Minnesota to fight for Somali extremist group al-Shabab. While Omar himself had made two unsuccessful attempts to leave the U.S. More than a dozen people have left Minnesota to join jihadist groups in Syria in recent years, said the FBI. The Minnesota case was the third ISIS-related case to trial nationwide, according to CBS. The eighth grade teacher who has admitted she got pregnant after sex with her 13-year-old student appeared in court on Friday for the first time and was told to stay away from minors by a judge. Alexandria Vera, 24, was formally read the charges against her at an arraignment hearing in Houston, Texas, but did not enter a plea. Judge Michael T McSpadden told Vera she was to have no contact with the victim or anyone under the age of 17. He also ordered Vera - who is out on $100,000 bail - to wear a GPS monitor and to stay away from the school. Alexandria Vera, a former Aldine School District middle school teacher accused of having a long-term sexual relationship with an underage student, appeared in the Harris County's 209th State District Court on Friday Vera, 'admitted to having a sexual relationship since September 2015 with a known student', according to police Vera, pictured arriving in court, told officials that she was impregnated by the boy, but she later had an abortion Vera appeared in court dressed in long pants, a blazer and white button up - a far cry from her cleavage-filled selfies on social media The former middle school teacher was also banned from accessing the internet and put on a curfew to remain in her home between 8pm and 7am each day. The court heard Vera - who was fired from her job at Stovall Middle School after the allegations emerged - now has a new job where she uses a computer. Judge McSpadden said: 'You have a job, you use a computer in your job that's fine. No internet usage at home. 'You're not allowed contact with anyone under the age of 17. The main thing is we do not want anything else to happen during this time - you're awaiting possible trial.' He added: 'We take these conditions very, very seriously.' Vera, dressed in a smart black suit and white shirt, sat in court beside her two people thought to be her mother, Nidia Rivera, and her mother's partner, and listened as the charges were read out against her and nodded to say she understood. After the hearing she avoiding the media scrum waiting outside the courtroom and took a back staircase to her car, refusing to make any comment to Daily Mail Online as she left. Her lawyer Ricardo Rodriguez told Daily Mail Online that she will not be commenting to the press. 'Not at all, we are going to try the case in the court not in the press,' he said. Vera talks with her lawyer Ricardo Rodriguez during her arraignment hearing in a Houston court on Friday Vera, pictured above with her lawyer, allegedly admitted to engaging in a sexual relationship with the boy since September, after they began flirting during a summer school session Vera was formally read the charges against her at an arraignment hearing on Friday but did not enter a plea A judge ordered Vera - who is out on $100,000 bail - to wear a GPS monitor and to stay away from the school Vera (pictured left in her mugshot) was banned from accessing the internet and put on a curfew to remain in her home between 8pm and 7am each day Outside the courtroom, Tiffany Dupree, assistant district attorney assigned to child abuse, said: 'The message is she is to comply with the court's bond conditions, she's to have no contact with the complainant, she's to have no contact with children under the age of 17, she has an electronic GPS monitor placed on her, and the judge is very serious about the bond conditions.' Dupree said she did not know if Vera - who was an English teacher at the school - has had any contact with the victim since his arrest and said she was yet to speak to his family. She added: 'It's extremely serious, as parents we entrust teachers with a very important role to educate our students and we should not be concerned about teachers getting in a sexual relationship with our children while they're at school.' A probable cause document which outlines the police's case against Vera told how the boy's parents didn't object to the relationship and that she said 'they love each other'. Dupree confirmed the boy's parents could also face charges for not reporting the abuse, she said: 'Failure to report child abuse is a possibility. We're continuing our investigation.' Describing how Vera was caught, Dupree added: 'CPS (Child Protective Services) became aware of a possibility the defendant was impregnated by one of her students and so they went to interview her, they then learned she had an abortion. Vera was joined in court by her mother, Nidia Rivera, and her mother's partner, who sat next to hear in the audience Vera's mother puts a hand on her daughter's back as they listen in court on Friday. Vera was told to stay away from minors and children under 17 years old while at the hearing Vera's mother and her mother's partner (pictured) lean in to speak with Vera's lawyer during Friday's hearing 'The defendant was interviewed and she did admit to having a sexual relationship with the complainant and getting pregnant by him.' Asked if Vera is allowed to continue to look after her four-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, Dupree said: 'She has a brother who she's allowed to have contact with. I don't know what the CPS conditions are for her child, I'm not aware of that... we're early in our investigation.' Vera turned herself in to police on Wednesday after a warrant was issued for her arrest on charges of continuous sexual abuse of a child. She was released hours later after she posted a $100,000 bond. The probable cause document outlining the case against her states how school principal Elsa Wright got a tip that Vera was having an inappropriate relationship with a student. She then questioned the defendant who 'admitted to having a sexual relationship since September 2015 with a known student', according to the document. The student, who can't be named, was in her eighth grade English class and was 13 years old. A police officer met with Vera to discuss the case and she told them she fell pregnant with the eighth grader's child in January after they had continuous sex. The court document says Vera first met the boy's parents at a school open house. It says: 'Defendant said that in October the school had an open house and this was where she met the complainant's parents. Vera (left and right) of Houston, Texas, told prosecutors that she gave the boy her number on Instagram after he failed to show up to class and that the relationship developed from there 'The defendant stated that after the open house, she went over to the complainant's home, and was introduced as his girlfriend to the complainant's parents. 'The defendant stated that the parents were accepting of their relationship and she was even invited to family gatherings after that point.' Vera is then said to have told the investigator the boy would sleep with her at her house and she'd drive him back home in the morning so he could catch the bus to school, it says: 'She stated that she and the complainant had sex on almost a daily basis at her home and that they love each other'. The court document says Vera stated the boy's family were 'supportive and excited' when they were told she was pregnant but the teacher ended up having an abortion after she got nervous when the CPS showed up at school to question her about the relationship in February this year. Vera said she denied the pregnancy and relationship at the time, the document said. Her phone was forensically analyzed by police who found 'many messages between defendant and complainant that were consistent with what she disclosed'. The complainant was also interviewed and admitted the relationship, the court document said: 'The complainant was able to identify the parts of his body and defined sex as putting his penis inside the defendant's vagina.' Vera faces 25 years to life in prison with no possibility of parole if found guilty of the charges against her. She is next scheduled to appear at court on July 12. Vera was an eighth grade English teacher at Stovall Middle School in Houston, Texas (pictured), when the alleged sex was ongoing A Philippine politician has said he has given more than 2,000 to police officers for killing drug traffickers, the first such rewards since their new president introduced bounties for slain criminals. President-elect Rodrigo Duterte, 71, won last month's elections in a landslide after pledging to wipe out crime by killing tens of thousands of criminals. He said this week that he would pay bounties to law enforcement officers if drug traffickers were killed. And now, Tomas Osmena, 67, mayor-elect of Cebu - the nation's second-biggest city - has made the first payment to officers. President-elect Rodrigo Duterte (pictured), 71, won last month's elections in a landslide after pledging to wipe out crime by killing tens of thousands of criminals He announced on his official Facebook page - which has more than 250,000 'likes' - that he had given 155,000 pesos (2,300) to the police after they killed three men he said were drug traffickers. Osmena posted a series of comments celebrating the deaths of the three men, as he lashed out at the Commission on Human Rights, a constitutionally mandated body, for investigating the circumstances of the May 28 killings. He wrote: 'CHR = Criminals. Have. Rights. (Even more than the real victims). 'Just gave the promised P155K (3 dead plus 1 wounded) to the team responsible for the death of Yawa. Kudos to officers Henrix Bancoleta, Leo Longronio, Joey Bicoy, and everyone involved. 'Let's make Cebu safe again.' Osmena described one of the slain suspects, Rowen Secretaria, as one of Cebu's biggest drug dealers. He did not return calls requesting comment, and in a previous interview refused to disclose where the money for the bounties would come from. Osmena and Duterte, like all winners in the national elections, will not take office until June 30. He announced on his official Facebook page - which has more than 250,000 'likes' - that he had given 155,000 pesos (2,300) to the police after they killed three men he said were drug traffickers But Duterte this week urged security forces to begin the war on crime immediately, calling on them to kill criminals. Duterte announced on Tuesday he would pay three million pesos ($21,000) to law enforcers for killing drug lords, with lesser amounts for lower-ranking people in drug syndicates. However, Osmena's rewards are the first confirmation of a payment being made for killing a suspect. Duterte's law-and-order campaign pledges hypnotised millions of Filipinos hoping for quick solutions to the nation's deep-rooted problems of crime and corruption. However, human rights groups and other critics voiced alarm that a Duterte presidency would lead to extrajudicial killings and a general breakdown in the rule of law. A recent spate of drug suspects being killed has deepened those fears. Police have confirmed killing at least 15 drug suspects, including Secretaria and his group, since May 24. Georgia Assistant Attorney General Camila Wright struggled to hold back her tears Friday as she told of how her husband, who was shot in his Lyft car, had started driving at night so he could spend the days with their one-year-old daughter, Zoya. Shahriar Zolfaghari, 36, was found slumped in the front seat of his car in Atlanta early on Wednesday morning. He had been shot twice in the chest. 'People have lost the value of human life,' said Wright, visibly moved, at a news conference Friday, WSB-TV 2 reported. Scroll down for video Tragic: Georgia Assistant Attorney General Camila Wright (pictured Friday, with one-year-old daughter Zoya) spoke Friday about the death of husband Shahriar Zolfaghari, who was shot in the Lyft car he had been driving 'Broken': Wright said she was bereft at the loss of Zolfaghari, who was found Wednesday morning - and that their daughter would grow up not knowing her father. 'We know he's with Christ,' she said, 'but we are broken' She also told reporters that Zolfaghari had only taken up a job as a Lyft driver at night so that he could spend more time at home with their baby daughter. 'Every day that she napped, she napped on his chest,' Wright said in a video recorded by 11Alive. 'We know he's now with Christ, but we are broken, said Wright. 'This is not right, it is so wrong. 'Zoya will not remember him, except for the pictures we keep and share and the stories...' she said as her voice trailed off. She also revealed that one of the last text messages sent to her by her husband was 'I miss you and Zoya,' and that the day before he died, her 'generous' and 'loved' husband had spent the day making phone calls for a family in need. She said she was thankful that she had 'more happiness' in the three years since she met her husband than 'most people have in their whole lives.' Wright also said that she believes the motive behind the shooting - originally described by police as 'mysterious' - was robbery, although police said at the time that Zolfaghari still had his ID and credit cards when found. Shortly before the conference, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal made an executive order promising $5,000 to anyone with information leading to the arrest and conviction of Zolfaghari's killer. Mrs Wright was made Georgia's prosecutor for human trafficking in 2014 and was believed to be the first person to take up such a role in the U.S. Before that, she was in charge of Fulton County's human trafficking unit, where she helped jail 19 people, including two for life. Father: Shahriar Zolfaghari (left) was driving a Lyft car so that he could provide money for their family while spending time with their daughter, Mrs Wright said Crime scene: Zolfaghari, 36, had been shot twice in the chest when he was found slumped in the front seat of his car in Atlanta early on Wednesday morning According to 11 Alive, a witness told police that he pulled up behind Mr Zolfaghari's vehicle at a red light next to a church at around 1am on Wednesday, but got out to see what was the matter when he did not pull away after the light changed to green. They told investigators that the motorist had been shot and that there was blood inside the car. Two shell casings were found at the scene, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. 'It looks like someone must have either been in the vehicle with him or shot him at close range,' police Major Adam Lee III said. 'It's a mystery as to why someone would harm him,' he added. Police have subpoenaed Lyft for Mr Zolfaghari's records to see if he was on a ride - and if so, who ordered it - when he was shot. The father-of-one had been married to Mrs Wright since 2014 and they have a young daughter together. Love: The father-of-one had been married to Mrs Wright since 2014 A heartbreaking Facebook post by Mrs Wright's sister, Everett Wright, said: 'My perfect brother, in love my sister found you. In love you leave us. 'You were the gentlest, kindest, most innocent person I knew honestly. You adored your wife and daughter in a way that cannot even be described by these words. 'I cannot fathom the thoughts that run through the minds of people that choose to take people like you away from the incredible life you had here. Our hearts our broken. Please all you who read this shower the heavens with prayers for my sister, her daughter, and my family. 'I love you, we all love you and always will cherish you. You are gone too soon. Rest in heaven's peace and may the thought of you bring peace to us all.' A spokesman for Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens said: 'We at the Attorney Generals office are heartbroken by the tragic loss of Camilas husband. Our thoughts and prayers are with her and her family.' Her speech at the diverse public City College of NY was her last as first lady Michelle Obama usually sticks to (mostly) non-controversial topics like wounded warriors and healthy eating President Obama used a similar tactic to slam Trump without using his name at his own commencement address at the Air Force Academy 'We don't build up walls,' FLOTUS says, in obvious reference to Trump Alludes to Trump by saying 'some folks' have 'different perspective' First Lady Michelle Obama took a veiled swipe at Donald Trump while delivering a passionate defense of immigration and diversity, in the final commencement address of her husband's presidency on Friday. 'Infusions of new cultures and new ideas, generation after generation, created the matchless alchemy of our melting pot and helped us build the strongest, most vibrant, most prosperous nation on the planet,' Obama told the 2016 graduating class of City College of New York. 'Some folks out there today seem to have a very different perspective,' she said, appearing to allude to the presumptive Republican nominee for president, without using his name. Scroll down for video First lady Michelle Obama, in her final college commencement speech, blasted those who view 'diversity as a threat' 'They seem to view our diversity as a threat to be contained rather than as a resource to be tapped, they tell us to be afraid of those who are different,' said the first lady, wife of Democratic president Barack Obama in remarks that appeared more pointedly political than usual. 'They act as if name calling is an acceptable substitute for thoughtful debate, as if anger and intolerance should be our default state.' Donald Trump has vowed to build a wall along America's southern border to keep out illegal immigrants, and has run a controversial campaign insulting women, Mexicans, Muslims, the disabled and journalists whom he dislikes, among others. 'In America we don't give in to our fears, we don't build up walls to keep people out, because we know that our greatness has always depended on contributions from people born elsewhere but sought this country,' Obama said. Who me? Obama usually stays away from politics in public, but clearly aimed at Donald Trump She chose the highly diverse City College of New York as the location for her remarks She deliberately chose CCNY, a public college and immigrant-rich New York for her final address to a university graduating class. The school welcomes students who speak more than 150 different languages and come from every possible background in a city that for centuries was the gateway for immigrants striving for a better life in America, Obama said. While she did not mention Trump, Michelle Obama did reference ex-secretary of state Colin Powell, a CCNY graduate and son of Jamaican immigrants who served Republican president George W. Bush, calling him a role model for young people. The Princeton grad picked up an honorary doctorate of humane letters from CCNY Two police constables and a sub-inspector have now been suspended Police in India shaved the head of a suspect after he attacked an officer and then tied him to the bonnet of one of their vehicles before they drove it around the town. The police constables allegedly exacted vengeance on Abdul Qadir after he attacked Shyam Chandra Sharma, who was in charge at the station in Mahidpur, which is in India's Ujjain district. Two police constables and a sub-inspector have been suspended following the incident, which took place after violence erupted in the town when a fight broke out between bike-racing youngsters on May 30. Police claimed that Qadir, a resident of Jamalpura Todi, was wanted by officers and had taken advantage of chaos that took place during the violence, before he attacked Sharma. Two police constables and a sub-inspector have been suspended following the incident, which took place after violence erupted in Mahidpur (pictured) when a fight broke out between bike-racing youngsters on May 30 The inspector and his team had intervened when Qadir and his family members, including women, were damaging vehicles after police used strength to gain control over the stone pelting that followed the fighting in the town. Sharma had sustained a fracture on his collar bone and a constable also suffered injuries on his leg during the attack, reports The Times of India. The website reports that police had arrested Qadir, his wife Aabida Bi and relatives Huma, Sahiba and others for attacking the policemen. It was reported that on Thursday officers arrested Qadir and beat him up. His head was shaved and he was forced to wear a garland made of slippers before policemen tied him to the bonnet of a police jeep and paraded him through the markets of Mahidpur. Madhu Kumar, Ujjain inspector general of police, told The Times of India: 'The action was unwarranted. 'A case was already registered against the accused and legal action was on. 'We have suspended a sub-inspector and two constables.' More than 1,000 refugees have entered Paris just days after the French capital's first official camp was announced. It comes after mayor Anne Hidalgo revealed a plan for the internationally-recognised aid site as part of a plan to end a wave of shanty camps that have been set up. Paris police have been battling the makeshift camps for months, with new illegal sites being built at the same rate they as existing ones are being evacuated and torn down, costing the authorities both time and money. The mayor was forced to admit defeat in the fight against the shanty towns, saying Tuesday that the current situation is no longer 'tenable'. Police pictured removing migrants from an illegal makeshift camp in Paris, with an official refugee site announced as part of a plan to end the 'untenable' situation Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, pictured, is behind the scheme but has been criticised after the announcement was blamed for the arrival of 1,000 more refugees in the city It is understood the number of migrants living in a makeshift site at a park in northern Paris is around 2,300, with hundreds arriving this week. Officials have described the numbers as crazy, but Ms Hidalgos plan has caused friction with the French housing minister, Emanuelle Cosse. Speaking to Europe 1 radio, Ms Cosse said the announcement prompted 1,000 refugees to enter the city. She said: Camps are not the solution. The solution is to receive people in different locations in existing structures so they can be integrated in our country. A group of Afghan migrants told the Daily Telegraph they had come to Paris from Calais because they had no money to pay people-smugglers to take them to England. But city officials said many migrants living in the park were already in the Paris area but had previously been spread out across the city. The mayor's office added it was a 'denial of reality' to blame any influx of refugees on the camp announcement. The Socialist mayor has said several times she hopes the state will be a 'partner' in the project, which she said must conform to international norms for refugees. She said Parisians have a humane duty to help refugees and migrants, adding she was confident 'the Paris population will be at our side.' City authorities are 'assessing different sites' for their suitability to host a camp 'as soon as possible', Ms Hidalgo told a press conference. Hundreds of migrants have been evicted from Paris 'shanty' camps, pictured, over the past few months She said the Paris camp would be inspired by the one created at Grande-Synthe in northern France, which was built to take in refugees from the notorious Jungle camp in the northern port city of Calais. Ms Hidalgo criticised the French government over its response to the crisis and said Paris could not sit idly by while the Mediterranean becomes a graveyard for refugees. Last month, French police tore down and evicted 500 migrants from an illegal camp under the Stalingrad metro in east Paris for the third time in two months. In March, nearly a thousand people were removed from the camp, which had mushroomed in the wake of the destruction of the Jungle camp in Calais. The migrants, mostly from Sudan, Eritrea and Afghanistan, were housed in emergency shelters. About 400 people were evacuated on March 7 and taken to shelters, but the camp quickly reformed. House Speaker Paul Ryan sharply criticized Donald Trump for his comments about a federal judge just hours after Ryan endorsed the controversial real estate mogul in a column. Ryan was asked to comment about Trump's attacks on federal judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is overseeing a case against Trump's defunct Trump University. Trump told the Wall Street Journal Curiel has 'an inherent conflict of interest' because Trump is 'building a wall' at the U.S.-Mexico border. Ryan said the comment was 'totally out of left field,' appearing on WISN's 'Up Front with Vicki McKenna Friday. Speaker Paul Ryan criticized a Trump comment as 'out of left field' just a day after endorsing the real estate mogul 'The comment about the judge the other day was totally out of left field,' Ryan said. 'I completely disagree with the thinking behind that,' the Wisconsin lawmaker continued. 'It's reasoning I don't relate to,' Ryan said. Last week Trump slammed the judge as a 'hater' and a 'total disgrace.' Ryan found himself on cleanup duty just hours after he endorsed Trump in a Wisconsin newspaper column, although he offered more than one caveat in an interview with the Associated Press. 'It is my hope the campaign improves its tone as we go forward and it's all a campaign we can be proud of,' Ryan told the AP. No conflict: Trump met with Ryan in May to begin the process of working through differences Trump hailed Ryan Thursday after the speaker became the last Republican leader to endorse the presumptive party nominee 'It's very clear to me that Hillary is in no certain way going to be advancing our principles and policies. She's promising another Obama term,' Ryan said Thursday. 'It's also become clear to me through my conversations that Donald Trump is somebody I know is comfortable with these principles and general policies.' Ryan wrote in the Janesville Gazette, his hometown newspaper, Thursday that Trump 'would help us turn the ideas in this agenda into laws to help improve people's lives.' 'That's why I'll be voting for him this fall,' Ryan said. 'It's no secret that he and I have our differences. I won't pretend otherwise,' wrote Ryan. 'And when I feel the need to, I'll continue to speak my mind. But the reality is, on the issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground than disagreement.' Ryan's counterpart, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has warned that Trump could have a Barry Goldwater-type effect on Hispanic voters by driving them away from the GOP. 'I do. I do,' McConnell told CNN Thursday. 'And I think the attacks that he's routinely engaged in -- for example, the Republican governor of New Mexico, the chairman of the Republican Governors' Association -- I think, was a big mistake.' Trump slammed Martinez as not doing her job after she failed to appear at his campaign event in New Mexico. More than 20,000 people will participate in a massive 'doomsday' drill to practice readiness in case of a Pacific Northwest 9.0 magnitude mega-quake that could unleash a killer tsunami. The readiness drill is planned to test how well the US military and state and local emergency responders will work together to minimize loss of life and damages when a mega-quake rips along the Pacific Northwest and unleashes a killer tsunami. During the second week of June the drill that has been developed by the US government, the military, and state and local emergency managers over the past few years, will be rehearsed. Earthquake and tsunami drill is planned to test how well the US military and state and local emergency responders will work together to minimize loss of life when a mega-quake rips along Pacific Northwest and unleashes a tsunami. Pictured is Washington Air National Guard Lt Col Curt Puckett During the second week of June emergency responders in the Pacific Northwest will conduct drills to test how ready they are to respond to a massive earthquake and tsunami. Pictured are Washington Air National Guard soldiers working to assemble temporary living structures at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington Lt Col Clayton Braun (pictured) of the Washington State National Guard. Braun has been a key planner of the doomsday drill, which is being overseen by the Federal Emergency Management Agency The June 7-10 exercise called Cascadia Rising is named after the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a 600-mile-long fault just off the coast that runs from Northern California to British Columbia. 'This is the largest exercise ever for a Cascadia break,' said Lt Col Clayton Braun of the Washington State National Guard. Braun has been a key planner of the doomsday drill, which is being overseen by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The 20,000 people that will be involved in the disaster drill will represent various federal agencies, the US military, state and local emergency response managers across the Pacific Northwest, Native American tribes and emergency management officials in British Columbia. Awareness of the seismic threat looming just off the Pacific Northwest dates back to the 1980s, when researchers concluded that coastal lands long ago had been inundated by a tsunami. Research also indicated that a tsunami that was documented in Japan in January 1700 originated from the Cascadia Subduction Zone, also known as the CSZ. On average the CSZ produces magnitude 9.0 quakes every 500 years, but big quakes have been separated by as few as 200 years and as many as 1,000. So it is impossible to predict when the next monster quake occurs. However, tectonic stresses have been accumulating in the CSZ for more than 300 years and seismologists say it could rupture at any time. The Cascadia Subduction Zone (red line and circled), a 600-mile-long fault just off the coast that runs from Northern California to British Columbia More than 20,000 people will be involved in the disaster drill, representing various federal agencies, the US military, state and local emergency response managers across the Pacific Northwest, Native American tribes and emergency management officials in British Columbia Studies have forecast that while 1,100 people could die from a 9.0 magnitude quake, 13,500 could perish from the tsunami that would slam into the coast within 15 to 30 minutes after the shaking begins More than 8 million people live in the area that is vulnerable to the Cascadia Subduction Zone. It contains the most heavily populated areas of the Pacific Northwest, including Seattle and Portland, as well as Interstate 5, one of the nation's busiest roads. Coastal towns are especially at risk. Studies have forecast that while 1,100 people could die from a 9.0 magnitude quake, 13,500 could perish from the tsunami that would slam into the coast within 15 to 30 minutes after the shaking begins. A scenario document written in preparation for Cascadia Rising exercise states: 'The scale of fatalities across the coast may overwhelm the resources of local governments.' Whole towns along the coast may disappear. Hospitals could either collapse or be too severely damaged to handle casualties. All across the region between the Pacific and the Cascade Range, bridges and roads could be destroyed, fuel supplies and communications disrupted, and buildings and crucial infrastructure may sink into soil that's been liquefied by the intense shaking. The region has taken steps over the last few years to better prepare for the looming calamity. Schools are being moved out of tsunami inundation zones. Money is being allocated for seismic retrofits of crucial structures. Tsunami evacuation routes to high ground have been identified. Some of the exercise will put boots on the ground. For example, Washington State National Guardsmen will conduct a landing on Vashon Island to rehearse delivery of supplies with landing craft. About 2,300 National Guard soldiers are among the 6,000 or so exercise participants in Washington state. Another major drill rehearses how to get the Port of Tacoma back into operation after it has been devastated by a quake, using a US Army Reserve pier that consists of a logistics support vessel, a barge derrick crane and a large tug. In Oregon, about 580 National Guard soldiers are among some 1,400 Cascadia Rising participants from across the state. All across the region between the Pacific and the Cascade Range, bridges and roads could be destroyed, fuel supplies and communications disrupted, and buildings and crucial infrastructure may sink into soil that's been liquefied by the intense shaking The region has taken steps over the last few years to better prepare for the looming calamity. Schools are being moved out of tsunami inundation zones. Money is being allocated for seismic retrofits of crucial structures. Tsunami evacuation routes to high ground have been identified Specialty teams will practice their roles for the disaster that will come. This includes pulling people out of a pile of rubble that simulates a collapsed building and triaging them for medical care. Much of Cascadia Rising will entail civilian agencies and the military coordinating in what will be extremely difficult conditions. Participants in the exercise will contact emergency management offices with reports of specific needs during the simulated disaster. It will be up to agencies to work together to come up with solutions. Amateur radio operators are also participating in Cascadia Rising. If internet and phone service are severed, ham operators have the ability to act as the eyes, ears and messengers for emergency officials scrambling to figure out what they need to do to save lives and prevent more damage. The region's ham radio operators are even able to establish email service for emergency management officials, using amateur radio frequencies to bridge the gaps. 'We can leapfrog over the outage, to where there is still internet activity,' said Bruce Bjerke, Oregon section coordinator for Amateur Radio Emergency Services, a national non-governmental organization. Regional and local emergency managers are welcoming the opportunity to rehearse a Cascadia calamity. 'The Cascadia is relatively new to us,' said Tiffany Brown, emergency manager for Clatsop County, the northernmost county on the Oregon coast. 'We're behind in terms of getting ready for it.' She has now been charged with making a Police in Texas have released terrifying footage of the moment a woman walked in to a station holding up two knives and threatening the front desk officer, showing how they took her down. Officials say the 28-year-old entered the Arlington Police Department headquarters about 9:15pm Tuesday night. The woman, Patricia Sayan, was asked by the commander to drop her weapons, but she refused. She then started walking closer to the desk, waving the knives over her head. Scary moment: Surveillance from inside the station shows the 28-year-old threatening the front desk officer with two knives Police say that Patricia Sayan, 28, refused orders to drop her weapons and just continued to wave them Some officers were able to creep up behind Sayan and hit her a taser while the front desk officer retreated The video shows the moment Sayan succumbed to the taser and fell to the floor, dropping the knives The weapons can be seen hitting the ground as Sayan goes down. She was then arrested and charged The officer managed to call for help while slowly retreating to an office behind the desk. 'The woman began making thrusting motions towards the officer with the knives,' Lt. Chris Cook, a police spokesman, said in a statement. to The Star-Telegram. 'The officer remained calm and waited for additional officers to arrive. 'As several officers arrived, they formulated a plan and began yelling commands to her as well to drop the weapons but she would not drop the knives.' An officer then quickly stunned Sayan in the back and took her into custody. Sayan is now facing one charge of terroristic threat. Her bail has been set at $750. Charged: Patricia Sayan, 28, entered Arlington Police HQ at 9.15 p.m. Tuesday armed with two knives It is alleged that the two suspects took the 10 beach towels for a bet Police on patrol interrupted the ruckus and the tourists were arrested He confronted men in street and a fight broke out near s'Arenal beach Two German tourists stole beach towels from shop but owner noticed Two German tourists have been arrested in Mallorca for allegedly stealing beach towels from a shop and then fighting with the owner. Police spotted two men brawling in the street while they were on a patrol of the s'Arenal beach on the island of Mallorca, Spain on Monday night. The officers interrupted the ruckus and learned that two German tourists had stolen beach towels from the small store at around 9.30pm. This is the second theft in recent weeks in Palma de Mallorca, which attracts thousands of tourists from across Europe The owner had noticed the towels were missing and chased after the men in order to confront them, according to local news site Ultima Hora. It is alleged that one of the men then attacked the store owner. The pair began fighting in the street of the popular Balearic Island destination before officers spotted them and approached. Police stopped the fight and the two suspects were arrested. It was reported that the tourists took the beach towels for a bet and had made off with 10 in total. This is the second theft in recent weeks in the area, which attracts thousands of tourists from across Europe. Last Thursday a pair of thieves were arrested in Palma de Mallorca for taking valuables from people on a beach. Just a few months ago it was one of the most impressive houses in its particular corner of Surrey. Now, after a bitter nine-year planning battle, this is all that remains of Robert Fidler's dream home. The mock Tudor 'castle' thought to have been worth in the region of 1million is just a pile of rubble after Mr Fidler obeyed a court order to demolish it rather than face jail. Rubble: After a bitter nine-year planning battle, this is all that remains of Robert Fidler's dream home A High Court judge warned Robert Fidler that he could face a three-month prison sentence if his mock Tudor 'castle' was not demolished Honeycrock Farmhouse had remained hidden behind a 40ft stack of hay bales, which was covered by sheets of tarpaulin He had managed to conceal the construction of his striking home in 2000 by hiding it behind a wall of hay bales on his farm in Salfords. However, once Reigate and Banstead Borough Council discovered the building which was put up without planning permission on green belt land the farmer was ordered to knock it down. That was nine years ago and the once-grand home has now finally been razed after Mr Fidler, a 67-year-old grandfather of 11, was threatened with a prison sentence. Until the family uncovered their home in 2006, Honeycrock Farmhouse remained hidden behind a 40ft stack of hay bales, which was covered by sheets of tarpaulin. Mr Fidler, who lived at the house with his wife, Linda, 46, and youngest son, Harry, 15, had hoped that concealing the house would see him exploit a loophole that if a construction lasts four years uncontested, authorities cannot touch it. But the council began action and in 2007 he was ordered to tear it down Mr Fidler originally began building the four-bedroom castle farmhouse around two grain silos, used as a frame for the circular towers Mr Fidler lived at the house, thought to have been worth in the region of 1million, with his wife, Linda, 46, and youngest son, Harry, 15 After a lengthy legal battle and numerous court appearances, in November 2015 a High Court judge warned that he could face a three-month prison sentence if the structure was not demolished by June 6 Monday. Cattle farmer Mr Fidler began work to raze the family home last month. He said then: 'Tearing down the house is completely pointless, it's completely ridiculous, and totally wrong. There's supposed to be a housing shortage, but all they intend on doing is spending thousands of pounds getting one house demolished.' He originally began building the four-bedroom castle farmhouse around two grain silos, used as a frame for the circular towers. In March this year, he said: 'We have to say we have had 15 wonderful years living in a beautiful house and we will have to see what we do next.' Mr Fidler had hoped that concealing the house would see him exploit a loophole that if a construction lasts four years uncontested, authorities cannot touch it The manual for the staff at Trump University events was precise: The room temperature should be 68 degrees. Seats should be arranged in a theater-style curve. And government prosecutors had no right to see any documents without a warrant. Instructing employees how to stall law enforcement investigations might seem like an unusual part of running a real estate seminar company. But at Trump University which drew investigations by Democratic and Republican attorneys general alike it was par for the course. Trump University guides unsealed this week by a federal judge in southern California undercut Trump's portrayal of his one-time real estate seminar course as an uncontroversial operation. Instead, the manuals reflect boiler-room sales tactics the proceeds of which went largely to Trump. A Trump University seminar presentation advised students to try to boost their credit card limit by inflating their annual income by $75,000 Exhibit A: The script advises attendees to inflate their earnings in order to secure higher credit card limits One guide encouraged staff to learn prospective enrollees' motivations in order to better sell them on products: 'Are they a single parent of three children that may need money for food?' the guide asked. When people balked at paying for expensive courses, the suggested response for Trump University staff was harsh. 'I find it very difficult to believe you'll invest in anything else if you don't believe enough to invest in yourself and your education,' the guide offered as a recommended response. The Trump University seminar presentations advised students to try to boost their credit card limit by inflating their annual income by $75,000, according to the documents. The instruction, legal experts said, could amount to a lesson in bank fraud. 'If someone is encouraging people to make a false representation about their current income, that might be an appropriate target for prosecution,' said John W. Moscow, a former head of the fraud bureau of the New York County District Attorney's Office to ABC News. 'If the caller actually does what they were told to do, that could easily be fraud,' agreed Randall M. Fox, who served as the founding bureau chief of the New York attorney general's taxpayer protection bureau. An undated presentation called 'Fast Track to Foreclosure Investing,' offers an inside look at how the costly real estate seminars worked and includes instructions for increasing credit card limits, presumably to enable someone to invest more money in foreclosed property. 'When asked for your income,' the instructor's script reads, 'take your current income and add $75,000 from your real estate enterprise.' Speaking out: 'It's fraud. ... straight-up fraud,' said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman who is suing Trump over Trump University Broad allegations of fraud swirling in three civil cases against Trump University have dogged the Republican presidential front-runner this week Trump Organization general counsel Alan Garten told ABC that simply because the instructions were included in internal Trump University materials does not mean that guidance was ever given to students. Those who bought into Trump University ended up paying as much as $34,995 for what was purported to be private mentoring with supposed real estate experts some of whom Trump himself later acknowledged were unqualified. 'It's fraud. ... straight-up fraud,' said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman during an MSNBC interview on Thursday morning. Schneiderman is suing Trump over Trump University in separate but similar case. 'He was clearly in charge of pitching this scam university to people.' With past Trump-affiliated business failures and controversies, Trump has often distanced himself by noting that his only financial involvement was a branding agreement. In the case of Trump University, however, Trump's ownership is not in dispute Trump wanted the business for himself. When future Trump University President Michael Sexton pitched Trump on the deal, he wanted to pay Trump a flat fee in a licensing deal. Trump rejected that, Sexton said in a deposition. Trump 'felt this was a very good business, and he wanted to put his own money into it,' said Sexton, who ended up receiving $250,000 a year from Trump to run a business in which Trump held more than a 90 percent stake. The design of the Trump University operating agreement 'was entirely in the hands of the Trump legal team,' Sexton said. Other court records and depositions showed that Trump and senior members of the Trump Organization were responsible for reviewing and signing all checks and that Trump withdrew at least $2 million from the business. Trump University is the target of three lawsuits: two in California and one in New York Trump reviewed the advertising for Trump University's courses, Sexton said. And he did not believe Trump ever looked at what the three-day seminars included. 'Mr. Trump is not going to go through a 300-page, you know, binder of content,' Sexton said. The impression of Trump's involvement given to potential customers was quite different, according to a script for Trump University telemarketers. 'You know who my boss is, right?' the script reads. 'Mr. Trump is on a mission to create the next wave of independently wealthy entrepreneurs in America. Is that YOU?' Also among the documents released Tuesday are a number of statements from former employees of the university, including one who said that the program, in which customers could purchase to increasingly expensive real estate courses and seminars, was a 'fraudulent scheme and that it preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money.' Trump has defended Trump University by citing surveys in which 98 percent of students reported being pleased with the program. But those surveys took place before students had experienced the full program and were not anonymous, plaintiffs lawyers have said. A higher percentage demanded refunds later. Trump University is the target of three lawsuits: two in California and one in New York. The documents released this week are part of one of the California suits, but New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who brought the N.Y. suit against Trump in 2013, recently said that in calling itself a university, 'it was really a fraud from beginning to end.' On Thursday, Trump stood by Trump University in public comments on social media, writing that he planned to reopen Trump University. Such a move would be surprising, however, because Trump University has ceased to exist, has no assets, and according to a deposition by Sexton, was not meeting the Trump Organization's financial expectations. 450lb gorilla's death has led to outcry and zoo is being This is the child whose fall into Cincinnati Zoo gorilla enclosure resulted in the death of 17-year-old silverback, Harambe. Three-year-old Isiah Gregg has been seen for the first time back as a normal three-year-old: clutching a toy truck and wearing an orange Nintendo Super Mario T-shirt that read 'I Make Awesome Happen.' The scars of his experience were clearly visible in the form of scrapes on his forehead and elbow. Isiah's mother Michelle Gregg, 32 and father Deonne Dickerson, 36, have been staying with friends since they found themselves mired in controversy following the accident which took place last Saturday. Scroll down for video Showing the scars: Isiah Gregg, three, was seen for the first time at the house where he and his parents have been staying temporarily since the gorilla was shot Death threats: Michelle Gregg and Deonne Dickerson were at the center of an international outcry after their three-year-old son crawled into the gorilla enclosure Official probe: Police in Cincinnati interviewed the parents but have recommended that no charges be brought against them Back playing: Isiah has been spending time with his parents and three siblings in the aftermath of the gorilla incident. His grandmother Valerie Dickerson told Daily Mail Online he would need counselling Earlier this week police announced that they would be investigating Ms Gregg to determine whether or not parental negligence played any part in the incident that saw Isiah tumble 15 feet into the moat of Harambe's enclosure. The 450lb gorilla dragged the child through the water before standing over him as the horrified crowd of zoo visitors looked on. Yesterday police visited Gregg at the Cincinnati townhouse in which she, Dickerson and their four children are staying. The officers questioned her for 90 minutes in their bid to establish just how Isiah slipped from her care to breach the enclosure's three-foot metal and wire perimeter fence and the four feet tall bushes beyond. Police have not recommended criminal charges in the case, a decision made after the interview. The zoo has announced plans to increase the fence height by half a foot. Isiah's parents have not yet spoken publicly about the ordeal with their only communication coming in the form of a Facebook statement posted by Gregg the day after the accident and statements issued by the PR retained by the family shortly after. They had received death threats from around the world over the shooting of the gorilla. But this week Isiah's grandmother Valerie Dickerson, 55, gave an exclusive interview to Daily Mail Online. Speaking in front of her Cleveland home Dickerson gave the first true insight into the family at the center of a story that has seen them criticized and supported in almost equal measure. And according to Dickerson, who has been in daily contact with her son Deonne and his family, she believed the zoo should not have shot Harambe. Day out: Michelle Gregg gets Isiah into the car as they leave the house where they have been living in Cincinnati since the gorilla's death Parents: Deonne Dickerson and Michelle Gregg were both investigated by police but the department has not recommended they be charged. Ordinary boy: Despite being at the center of worldwide attention, life is continuing as normal for Isiah, including playing with his siblings Death: The zoo shot the beloved animal after he dragged the boy through the water and up out of the moat, but many say he was simply trying to protect the child She described herself as 'saddened' by the creature's death and said: 'For me, I still think they could have gone another route though they said they couldn't. 'But mainly I just thank God my grandson is okay.' She said that everybody was 'doing fine,' but admitted to having found video of the incident 'devastating.' She said: 'It was upsetting. I had to have some family members come round and kind of compose me. 'It was devastating to watch.' She went onto disclose that her grandson is to receive counseling to help him come to terms with his very public ordeal. She said: 'We'll move forward. He'll receive counseling and life goes on. You just have to think positive thoughts.' Despite her belief that the zoo's decision to shoot Harambe was too drastic a step Mrs Dickerson said that she did not blame them for the incident. She said: 'I have never been to that zoo so I really don't want to place any blame. It was just a freak accident and thank God it turned out okay.' The family has no plans to sue the zoo. Endangered: The zoo authorities concluded that the gorilla was putting Isiah's life at risk - prompting them to call in their marksmen to shoot Harambe dead Standing guard? Some said the way Harambe reacted to the boy showed he was trying to protect the three-year-old but the zoo has stood by its decision to shot the gorilla dead Mourned: The death of Harambe at 17 was decided on by the zoo authorities. They said he could not have been tranquilized in time to guarantee the life of Isiah Closed for repairs: The zoo authorities have shut the gorilla exhibit (left)for a higher and better constructed fence (right) to be installed. It will reopen to visitors next week Audio of Gregg's panic stricken 911 was released earlier this week. In it she can be heard telling the operator: 'My son fell in the zoo exhibit at the gorilla Cincinnati Zoo. There is a male gorilla standing over him.' As the operator tries to establish how old the child is, Gregg can be heard shouting 'be calm, be calm, be calm,' before exclaiming, 'He's dragging my son. I can't watch this.' In another frantic 911 call placed by an unidentified member of the public a woman is heard pleading for help. 'There's a baby in the zoo that fell in the gorilla moat! There's a baby at the zoo in the gorilla moat,' she shouts. 'Hurry! Hurry! The gorillas are out. The gorillas don't have him yet. They need help.' The woman added that she had left the area surrounding the enclosure because she has young children. In a statement released by the family on Wednesday they said: 'Our child has had a check-up by his doctor and is still doing well. 'We continue to praise God for His grace and mercy, and be thankful to the Cincinnati Zoo for their actions taken to protect our child. 'We are also very appreciative for the expressions of concern and support that have been sent to us. 'Some have offered money to the family, which we do not want and will not accept. If anyone wishes to make a gift, we recommend a donation to the Cincinnati Zoo in Harambe's name.' Meanwhile prosecutor Joseph T Deters said in a statement: 'The incident at the Cincinnati Zoo involving the young child who fell into the gorilla enclosure is under investigation by the Cincinnati Police Department. A father has been left devastated after his 15-year-old daughter took her own life at their Pennsylvania home earlier this week. 'I tried telling you something bad would happen,' her suicide note read. 'But no one listened.' Shania Sechrist told her father she loved him, but she was just tired of being bullied. Billy Sechrist said his daughter came home every day and told him she was scared. 'I'm scared I'm going to get jumped', he recalled Shania saying. 'I'm scared I'm going to get stabbed.' Shania Sechrist, 15, committed suicide in her York City, Pennsylvania home after school this week. She left her family a note that read: 'I was just tired of the bullying' Shania first told her father about the bullying four months ago, revealing it was often coming through Facebook and text messages (pictured is a candlelight vigil held at her home) Shania first told her father about the bullying four months ago, revealing it was often coming through Facebook and text messages. It turned physical a couple of months ago, and Shania and another girl were both suspended for 60 days from William Penn Senior High School in York City. 'A person can only take so much,' Billy told York Dispatch. Shania, who Billy said suffered from both anxiety and depression, had to return to school a couple of weeks ago. The bullying hadn't stopped when she'd been away. Billy said Shania's mother took her phone away, hoping to isolate her from the texts. But her peers only continued to post about her on Facebook. On Wednesday it became too much. Shania committed suicide after coming home from school. York City School District would not comment on the bullying because York City Police are investigating the death, which has been ruled a suicide by the York County Coroner's Office. The district released a statement saying the community was 'devastated' by the loss of Shania. Billy Sechrist (pictured) said his daughter came home every day and told him she was scared of getting jumped or stabbed. He revealed Shania suffered from anxiety and depression 'We offer our deepest condolences to Shania's family and friends,' the statement read. 'Counselors have been available to grieving students and staff at the high school since Thursday.' 'The district will continue to provide these services to anyone who needs help coping with this tragedy.' A candlelight vigil was held at Shania's home on Friday and tributes have begun to pour in on Facebook. 'This here is my best friend in the entire world she lost her life due to bullying and I just wish I would've been there when you needed somebody the most,' one friend wrote. 'And I wish I could go back and at least tell you that your so special to me and that you are a bright beautiful, gorgeous, amazing, young girl with a lot of joy and always kept a smile on your face no matter what happened. 'I'd do anything to get one last hug from you.' The new series of Top Gear has been caught up in more controversy amid claims producers inserted canned laughter to cover up awkward silences. Sound effects of hysterical laughter were allegedly used to make jokes sound like they landed despite deadpan looks on the faces of the audience. The new series, fronted by Chris Evans and Friends actor Matt LeBlanc, has been slated by critics while it only drew 4.3million viewers the lowest figures for a series debut in more than a decade. It comes as leaked BBC audience data supposedly ranked the show as the 'worst' on terrestrial television last weekend. Scroll down for video The new series of Top Gear, pictured, was panned by critics and watched by just 4.3million people last Sunday Laugh tracks were allegedly inserted when Evans made a joke about catering a reference to the sacking of former host Jeremy Clarkson and when LeBlanc made a quip about Top Gear remaking Lawrence of Arabia. On both occasions, audience members visible in shot remained nonplussed, but hysterical laughter could be heard in the background. At one point during filming, Evans also had to ask the crowd to laugh if they found things vaguely funny. One guest who attended the shoot told The Sun: There were so many long, awkward silences. But when I watched the show back I just couldnt believe how much laughter they had added in. The episode made it sound as though we were in fits of hysterics throughout the recording but that is far from the truth. The guest added much of the audience was bored out of their minds rather than being in stitches as the televised programme suggested. The laughter was also noticed by viewers who took to social media to point out the lack of correlation between the reaction of those in the audience and the levels of laughter heard. Jason Linsel wrote: 'The best part of #TopGear is the canned laughter when you can clearly see that nobody's laughing.' But a Top Gear spokesman defended the show, and said there had not been any awkward silences. He said: 'It's well known that Top Gear isn't a live programme and that the show is edited after filming, but last week's episode was edited in exactly the same way as previous series.' The BBC said all laughter is taken from the studio audience and no artificial laughter is used. Meanwhile, according to the Daily Telegraph, the BBC's Appreciation Index (AI) gave the show a score of 60, 22 points lower than its average rating. Host Chris Evans, pictured, has come under criticism for being 'shouty' on the show The index works by polling 5,000 people, who give a programme a score out of 100, with the higher the result reflecting 'higher quality'. No other show had as low a rating as Top Gear, which is said to have matched the short-lived ITV morning show Daybreak, widely panned by critics before it was scrapped in 2014. The final Top Gear series under Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond is understood to have ranked in the 80s. A BBC source told the Telegraph it was not concerned and said: 'Programmes traditionally start low and improve as the viewers who don't like it leave and viewers who enjoy it stay. 'The show has to be allowed to bed in.' LeBlanc has distanced himself from criticism over the shows filming of stunts near the Cenotaph memorial in Westminster, telling a New Zealand reporter We didnt do anything that wasnt agreed, allowed or accepted. The show has been beset by claims of infighting between the hosts, as well as reported clashes between Evans and the producers, with executive producer Lisa Clark leaving after just five months amid reports of creative differences with the former Big Breakfast presenter. Since then, several former colleagues of Evans have made allegations of bullying against him. More recently, the Cenotaph incident has led to claims of a rift between LeBlanc and Evans, with the 48-year-old American feeling stabbed in the back by Evans reaction, according to reports. According to The Sun, the BBC has drawn up a contingency plan to replace Evans despite giving him a three-year contract to host the show. A source close to the programme told The Sun the magic it had under Clarkson had gone and that the BBC is working out a Plan B if they decide to get rid. Evans was criticised for being shouty during the first episode while LeBlanc drew praise for his cool approach. The BBC are also said to have abandoned a 250,000 supercar film shoot in Norway involving a Ferrari and Lamborghini after police told them not to break a 50mph speed limit. Corporation bosses are now said to be desperate to extend LeBlancs Top Gear deal despite his commitment to filming CBS comedy Man With a Plan about a house husband who finds taking care of his three children is much harder than it seemed. But the actor is understood to be unsure about returning because he doesnt want the hassle. Evans has continuously denied claims of the rift with LeBlanc and, as previously reported, also hit back at the bullying claims. The first episode, pictured, has been hit by claims that it used a laugh track to cover up 'awkward silences' Speaking to Event magazine, he said he was revved up and roaring to take on his critics. Evans said: You cant lose if it looks like youre on to a total loser from the outside. A lot of people have written the show off before its hit the air. 'Nothing I can do about that other than prove them wrong or confirm that theyre right. But I know whats in the can. He also hit back at claims he was a 'control freak' that circulated when executive producer Lisa Clark resigned from the show after just five months. He said: 'I honestly dont think I am. Control freak, tyrant, call it what you want. 'All I can say is that the vast majority of the team who started the programme are still working very happily on it.' LeBlanc, who made his name as Joey in Friends, was also said to have been spotted with his head in his hands looking drained and fed up by the production. The BBC show was watched by an average of 4.3million people last Sunday- peaking at 4.7million - compared to the 5.3million who watched the final episode starring Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May last June. Fighting back today Mr Evans did not mention the 4.3million figure, but tweeted: 'The new Top Gear is a hit. OFFICIALLY'. He added: '23% audience share. 12% MORE than the opening episode of the last series. These are the FACTS. Top Gear audience grew throughout the hour. FACT. Won its slot. FACT. Still number one on iPlayer. FACT. These are THE FACTS folks.' But last week he said his new show would not be considered a success if it is not watched by more than 5million viewers. During the first episode, Evans, 50, visited a US Naval Base - better known as the home of Top Gun - where he raced a Dodge Viper ACR against a Corvette Z06 driven by German driver Sabine Schmitz. Co-hosts Evans and Friends actor Matt LeBlanc, pictured, are also said to be embroiled in a rift over a stunt at the Cenotaph in Westminster which caused controversy LeBlanc, pictured, was said to have been seen 'with his head in his hands' during filming of the show Evans has faced weeks of allegations of 'bullying' during his lengthy broadcasting career while the show's former executive producer Lisa Clark is said to have left after five months due to 'creative differences' LeBlanc, who is the first non-British host in the programme's 39-year history, went for a spin through the Moroccan desert in an Ariel Nomad. The pair also braved the cold British weather as they raced from London to Blackpool in roofless Reliant Rialtos, and welcomed celebrity guests Gordon Ramsay and Jesse Eisenberg who took part in the new Star In A Rallycross Car part of the show. But it appears many viewers were not impressed - saying Chris Evans was trying too hard to be like Clarkson and was too 'shouty', others said Matt LeBlanc appeared 'wooden'. The show itself was called 'disastrous' and 'boring'. One tweeter, named Ali, wrote: 'The new #TopGear is so cringe. Why does Chris Evans put on a weird cinematic voice.' While a poster named James wrote: 'Five minutes in and it's clear that Chris Evans is just trying to be @JeremyClarkson. A poor man's Clarkson at best. #TopGear.' Kellie Yardley wrote: 'New #TopGear is pretty much old Top Gear- same scripts, different faces- would have thought they'd have wanted to change it up a bit...' Tweeter Ben Pearson said the new version was 'exactly the same without the banter or charisma'. Danny Cohen, the BBC's former director of television and the man who sacked Clarkson, was trolled by disgruntled viewers during the broadcast. One said: '@JeremyClarkson it is safe to say that @DannyCohen has now made top gear into flop gear! What an absolute pile of s**t!!' Another added: '@DannyCohen should have cancelled the show rather than this.' Members of the public were not alone with their calls to bring back Clarkson, Hammond and May to Top Gear. The popular trio will be back with a new Amazon Prime motoring show called The Grand Tour, which will make its debut on the streaming service in the autumn. A Polish rapist with an appalling criminal record dating back 20 years slipped into Britain undetected and 48 hours later battered a man with learning difficulties and flung him in front of a bus. Damian Pankiewicz, 37, was high on drugs when he pounced on the innocent man at a bus stop in South London, punching him to the ground before grabbing his unconscious victim by the neck and dragging him across the road. CCTV images showed that as a double decker bus approached at speed, Pankiewicz dumped his victim in its path, forcing the driver to screech to a halt, only narrowly missing the man. Damian Pankiewicz (pictured) was jailed for 12 years after he launched an unprovoked attack on a man with learning difficulties, only weeks after being released from prison in Poland A CCTV camera shows Pankiewicz dragging his hapless victim across the road and into the path of a bus The 52-year-old victim survived but was in hospital for three weeks with bleeding on the brain, a broken leg and broken ribs. The case reignited the row over the ease with which dangerous foreign criminals are able to slip into Britain undetected. And the Daily Mail can now reveal that Scotland Yard did not know about Pankiewiczs previous convictions in Poland until they arrested him after the attack on July 22 last year. Last month he was jailed at Inner London Crown Court for 12 years for grievous bodily harm with intent for the attack in Brixton. Pankiewicz is a career criminal with a terrifying record of violence in his homeland where he revels in his notoriety, even boasting on dating websites that he is a good thief. The drug addict, who has convictions dating back to the age of 17 for offences including rape, burglary, violent assaults, drink driving and theft, came to Britain on July 20 last year, a few weeks after being released from prison in Poland. Pankiewicz was caught on camera walking off, leaving his victim in the road where he was narrowly missed being crushed by a bus He considers himself to be a celebrity villain at home after he recorded a song with Polish rock band Lombard while serving a jail sentence for burglary in 2012. He performed a rap about his life of crime and so impressed the band that they invited him to record a song in his cell for their album. Pankiewicz told the group: In prison, helped by family, music and above all participating in the meetings of the fraternity of prayer and sobriety, I found the meaning of life. But instead he quickly returned to a life of crime. A source said: Damian has been prosecuted many times since 1996. He also committed a particularly cruel rape, it was sadistic. Pankiewicz will be deported after serving his prison sentence in Britain. reaches record high levels the Loire has also burst its banks As the French flooding crisis intensifies this stunning drone footage shows some of the devastation already inflicted. The Seine has reached near 60-year high levels, and the banks of the Loire have also burst saturating the surrounding lands with water depths exceeding 1m. In this astonishing video floodwater is shown submerging a stretch of the A10 near Orleans in Loiret, with a reported 300 vehicles abandoned in the depths. Wa-ter catastrophe! A French motorway is transformed into an enormous murky lake near Orleans Burst banks of the Loire: In an astonishing video floodwater is shown covering a stretch of the A10 in Loiret When the camera pulls out from the water just a few tiny cars can be seen rising above the enormous murky lake the floodwater has fashioned. Yesterday afternoon the authorities began the operation to pump out the water. Scroll down for video By late this morning the attempts had failed, but they now hope the first vehicles will be rescued tomorrow. The road is still closed and cut off from the Paris- Orleans direction, reports France Bleu Orleans. The French capital lies around 70 miles to the north of the city. Try getting through that! When the camera pulls out from the water just a few tiny cars can be seen Completely cut off: Yesterday afternoon the authorities began the operation to pump out the water By late this morning the attempts had failed, but authorities hope the first vehicles will be rescued tomorrow The floodwater in the video reaches depths of up to 1.30m, and an estimated 100 trucks and 200 cars are trapped. The exceptional measures being used during the 'unprecedented operation' have had a delayed progress. Yet a section of the A71 motorway, which has been closed since Tuesday due to flooding in Loiret, was reopened to local traffic. French flooding crisis: A resident brings French baguettes to his mother's flooded house Orleans In the unprecedented floods the French capital has been submerged after The Seine in Paris burst The entire region has been placed on red alert due to the dangers caused by the flooding. As well as closed motorways in the centre-north of France prisons and schools have had to be evacuated. Paris has faced its worst flooding in more than a century, as French president Francois Hollande said on Friday that 'more decisions' may be required due to the 'exceptional' flooding situation in Paris and other French regions. 20,000 people have been evacuated from their homes across France, these are in the town of Nemours Here two people use a canoe on a flooded street in the town of Moret sur Loing south of Paris, on June 3 Scientists have come out to say the extreme rainfall is due to man-made climate change. Worldwide record-breaking rainfall has increased 12 percent from 1980 to 2010, when compared to the previous 80 years, reports The Associated Press. U.S. Army Special Forces troops were airlifted from a mountain peak inside Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park on Friday after some had trouble climbing one of the state's highest peaks. The rescue, which is still underway, took place after two members of the team suffered altitude sickness during a training exercise, a military spokesman said. The 10-member team was climbing Longs Peak on Thursday when the soldiers became ill and the group was forced to camp overnight while on its way to the summit, Army Special Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Sean Ryan said in a telephone interview. Scroll down for video Park rangers were helping evacuate military personnel in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park on Friday (pictured) after some had trouble climbing one of the state's highest peaks Two members of the team suffered altitude sickness during a training exercise, a military spokesman said It had originally been planned as a one-day climb, he said. Longs Peak has an altitude of 14,259 feet, according to a National Park Service website. The climbing exercise approximates conditions members of the military experience in Afghanistan, Ryan said. The route the personnel are taking is not as technical as some, but still requires climbers to cross a steep ice field and a ledge that is very narrow at points. On Friday morning, the soldiers aided one another as they reached the summit, along with an 11th soldier who arrived to provide help, according to KRDO. The team was climbing Longs Peak on Thursday when the soldiers became ill and the group was forced to camp overnight while on its way to the summit, Army Special Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Sean Ryan said The mission was still underway, as separate flights were needed to take the members in turn, Ryan said The 11 Green Berets belong to the 10th Special Forces based at Fort Carson near Colorado Springs The soldiers decided it would be easier to continue to the mountain's summit than climb down to a lower elevation, Ryan told ABC News. By Friday afternoon, National Park Service rangers had airlifted by helicopter some members of the group. The mission was still underway late Friday afternoon, as separate flights were needed to take the members in turn, Ryan said. 'They were never in any danger,' Ryan said, adding that the two team members who became ill were being evaluated. By Friday afternoon, National Park Service rangers had airlifted by helicopter some members of the group. All are based at Fort Carson near Colorado Springs, Ryan said The training had originally been planned as a one-day climb. Longs Peak has an altitude of 14,259 feet, according to a National Park Service website 'No one is lost, missing or injured,' he said, according to ABC7. 'It's typical for what happens in Colorado mountain training.' The 11 Green Berets belong to the 10th Special Forces based at Fort Carson near Colorado Springs, according to ABC News. Police in North Carolina are looking for a woman, after authorities say her mother's body was found in a freezer that she sold in a yard sale. Marcella Jean Lee, 56, of Goldsboro is being sought on a charge of failure to report the death. An autopsy revealed no signs of foul play in the death of 75-year-old Arma Ann Roush, who lived with her daughter. Roush was last seen in August. Police said a neighbor bought the freezer from Lee for $30. It was taped shut and Lee apparently told the neighbor that church members would come by to pick up items in the freezer. Scroll down for video A North Carolina resident, who wishes to not be identified (pictured right as she speaks to a reporter), said she discovered a body inside a freezer she had purchased for $30 at a yard sale Police responded to this residence last Friday in reference to the discovery of possible human remains. The resident said at the time, the seller told her the items in the freezer were for a Sunday school project and the church would come collect them Video Courtesy WNCN The neighbor said the seller told her the items inside the freezer were for a Sunday school project and that the church would come pick them up. Weeks after the purchase, no one had come for the items, so the neighbor opened the freezer and discovered Roush's remains. The neighbor told WNCN: 'She sold me her frozen mother for $30. How do you do something like that?' In a 911 call obtained by the TV station said, she said: 'I have a serious problem. My neighbor sold me a deep freezer. 'I just opened it and there's a body in there I think. I am freaking out.' According to the neighbor, the daughter was moving out of state and told her not to open the freezer, which she referred to as a time capsule, until church members could come by and collect the contents inside. 'I was just in shock,' the neighbor recalled to WRAL. 'I opened it up for a second time and my heart went into my throat. I ran out of the house and called 911.' She also noted she has not seen the elderly woman since the fall, when she believes the victim had a stroke, according to WRAL. Neighbors told the station that the seller of the freezer moved to West Virginia. Roush's body was intact and not dismembered in any way, according to WRAL. Police are still working to determine how the body ended up in the freezer. Authorities are also looking to see if any other crimes have occurred since the victim's death. A police chase in the movies inevitably means turbo-charged squad cars, wailing sirens and maybe a helicopter. In all my years as a sergeant on Scilly, Ive been involved in exactly one high-speed pursuit and I was riding a childs pedal cycle. I was heading from St Marys, the biggest of the islands, for the remoter outpost of Bryher. Thered been a tip-off that a man was driving around on a quad bike, probably drunk, with a child aged about six on his lap. Scroll down for video Colin Taylor, pictured, patrols the virtually crime-free Scilly Islands, a tiny archipelago off the tip of Cornwall Scilly has been described as The Land That Crime Forgot, and its generally an idyllic place to live and work, but every now and then someone tries to spoil it. My job is to prevent that. I was headed as fast as I could for Bryher, but that meant first taking the ferry to the neighbouring isle of Tresco. And I didnt have any easy way getting across Tresco . . . until a boy of 11 or so, sitting across from me on the boat, piped up: You can borrow my bike if you want. He pointed to the quay as we approached harbour. Its over there. It wasnt till we stepped on land that I realised this was a childs bike and I was in full uniform, wearing a stab jacket, with a bulky breathalyser kit slung over my shoulder. PASSPORTS PLEASE For light entertainment, I like to board the tripper boats just before they sail, when everyone has already taken their seats. I revel in the little gasp of surprise and the darted nervous glances among the tourists, as a uniformed bobby clambers aboard. They are all wondering whether my presence will have implications, and I play on this by shouting out to the boatman: Just spot-checking for passports and vaccinations! If I pitch it right, with a straight face, the more gullible tourists start to panic, turning on their partners to remonstrate that it was their job to find out these details - and now theyre going to be arrested. Of course, Scilly is part of England, just as the Isle of Wight is, but it does have the feeling of being abroad . . . so I get away with this joke more often than youd credit. Advertisement I was overly massive for this toy transport: once I lowered myself on to the saddle, I could put both feet flat on the ground with my knees bent at right angles. All it needed was a flashing blue light on my helmet and I would have been every bit the ridiculous Keystone Cop. My knees were round my ears as I pedalled. But as I found my balance and built up speed, I realised it felt marvellous. My trousers flapped in the wind as I freewheeled downhill. When I spied walkers ahead, I rang the bell on the handlebars and enjoyed their wide-eyed stares of disbelief as I rushed past. It felt as though I was a child in an Enid Blyton book who had grown up and become a policeman. All I needed was a bottle of ginger beer in my knapsack and a brown paper parcel of jam sandwiches. At that moment, I knew I had the best job in the world. Thanks to a friend with a small wooden boat, I was able to race across to Bryher and arrest my drink-driver. It took two boats, an undersized pushbike, a bright and helpful 11-year-old, and a timely tip-off from a member of the general public but that combination, improbable as it would be on the mainland, is not so out of place on Scilly. Devon & Cornwall Police employs just three policemen, a community support officer and a special constable to maintain order on the islands, and as sergeant Im the most senior. But the 2,195 residents look out for each other, and that keeps Scilly honest. It helps that, traditionally, the community has taken a stern line on law-breakers. Folklore has it that, under the old Scillonian system of criminal justice, suspected criminals would be taken by a lynch mob out to Bishop Rock a wave-pounded lump of granite that pokes up a few feet above high tide. No seabird can nest there, because their eggs would be swept away by the waves. The Isles of Scilly are in the North Atlantic but formally come under Devon and Cornwall Police On this desolate outcrop, the accused was dumped. If he were still clinging to the rock after several tides, he would be considered guilty as charged only the innocent were claimed by the mermaids. I dont know what punishment awaited survivors, but I doubt it involved community service. Bishop Rock is the most westerly point of the most far-flung place in the United Kingdom. About 28 miles beyond Lands End at the tip of Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly are where God comes on holiday to get away from it all. Ive been here seven years, which makes me the longest-serving police officer Scilly has had in peacetime. Thats an easy claim to make, because the islands were at war for 335 years, with the Netherlands, thanks to some piffling maritime dispute that got out of hand. A truce was not declared until 1986 and, since then, no one has been a Scilly policeman longer than me. Its a myth that no one locks their doors here. But burglary is rare not because its difficult to carry out, but because its difficult to get away with. Thieves can hardly sell what they steal in the local pubs, because the drinkers will be the very people they stole from. And they cant easily escape, either well spot them as they queue for the ferry, sweating nervously. Being a drug-dealer is not a promising occupation either, as a young man named Gary discovered within a few days of arriving on St Marys. Hed come from Bristol, taking a kitchen porters job in one of the hotels in Hugh Town, and I first noticed him on the night of the annual boat races: he was at the bar in a crammed pub as I waited with a group of friends for one of us to get the drinks in. I wasnt on duty that night I was wearing my human suit. During a lull in conversation, Gary sidled over and introduced himself. I didnt take much notice, until he asked: Fancy a smoke? Ive got some weed back at my room. When it involves people with cannabis in the privacy of their own homes, Im not a particular zealot and the last thing on my mind was putting myself on-duty for the sake of a bag of weed. But my mates had overheard the conversation and I could see from the corner of my eye that they were agog to know how I was going to handle this one. Colin Taylor hands out advice to a young lad on a lane in the Scilly Isles. The islands were famously the summer holiday destination for then Prime Minister Harold Wilson in the 1960s and 1970s I decided that this was one fish that could wait till tomorrow before I reeled him in. I dont like mixing weed and alcohol, I said. And my mate Ted has just bought his first round ever, so I have to celebrate that. What about if I pop round tomorrow evening? Can I bring a mate? This was duly arranged, and the next day my colleague Des and I called round, in uniform, and introduced ourselves formally. The look of recognition on Garys face, as he replayed in his mind the events of the night before, was comical to watch. I thought Id made a bigger catch when a lone mariner was towed into harbour, his yacht half-wrecked by a storm in the Atlantic as he crossed from the Caribbean. Since there were no Customs and Excise officers available that day, the UK Border Agency dragged up a piece of legislation Id never heard of, and appointed me their Man in Scilly for 24 hours. I was empowered to seize the battered boat and make a cursory search, before the revenue squad arrived the next day to do a more thorough job. The craft was easy to spot, moored alongside the quay, with its broken mainmast and tangled rigging lashed to its side. The sailor was laying out his sodden clothing to dry on the deck, and I shouted down to him: Ahoy! Can I come aboard? The terminology sounded satisfyingly appropriate: I didnt want to give the impression I was a novice to this lark. He offered me a mug of tea, which I accepted, and then I seized his boat. Below decks, everything that wasnt bolted down was strewn all over. It was a right mess. The dishevelled sailor seemed nervous was he just a beaten man after his ordeal, I wondered, or was he hiding something? A search of the kitchen drawers and cupboards revealed only that he was pretty short of food, but when I moved to the fridge I found another thing entirely. Beside an open jar of mouldy pate and a pool of ooze at the bottom of the salad shelf, there was a large, crudely wrapped package the size of a baby marrow. The milky-white contents were obviously cocaine. It weighed at least 4lb and on the streets in Britain would easily fetch 100,000. I looked over at the sailor, half expecting him to make a break for it or worse, train a Uzi machine-pistol on me. Its not what you think, he said. Its a mozzarella. I didnt believe him. It didnt compute that a half-starved, shipwrecked mariner with a wild-man beard could have an unfeasibly large, untouched package of cheese in his fridge. But he insisted: in mid-Atlantic, hed passed a container ship whose crew threw down supplies to him, including water and a catering pack of cheese. He hated cheese and, even when he was famished, he hadnt attempted to eat it. Tentatively, I unwrapped a corner and prodded it. It did have that rubbery bounce of mozzarella. And the smell of decomposing curd gave it away. Sergeant Colin Taylor takes a selfie with a tourist. He has gained some notoriety due to his focus on using social media as part of his policing That was disappointing, but my new friend was a man with a sense of humour. He agreed to play a trick on the Customs agents with me, and together we hid the package out of sight in the hold so that when Her Majestys revenue men arrived the next day, to make a closer inspection, they, too, would think theyd uncovered a cocaine haul. Crimes in Scilly are rare, at least the serious ones. In seven years, Ive never used a siren, and only had occasion once to use the blue flashing lights when I was late for a wedding. Mind you, it was a bomb that made me late . . . and if I had used the siren, the whole island might have assumed it was an air-raid warning. What happened was that the quay at St Marys was being lengthened, which meant the harbour had to be dredged, and every now and then the workmen found a live round of .303 ammunition in the mud. My theory is that a Bren gunner on duty during World War II had stumbled over a box of ammo and kicked it into the water, where it lay for decades. One Saturday, my friend Alistair was getting married, and Id promised to deliver him to the church in the police Land Rover. So at the station that morning my mind was on the wedding, not the unexploded ordnance, until our community support officer, Shirley, produced an A4 manila envelope containing the latest find from the harbour a live 40mm anti-aircraft shell with the brass casing bent and split, exposing the highly unstable cordite rods inside. Shirley told me that shed carried it through town in a Co-Op bag. The bomb squad, I found out quite swiftly, was based with the Royal Navy at Plymouth, 100 miles away as the crow flies. With an urgency that only made the situation more worrying, they scrambled a disposal team on a Navy Sea King helicopter, and when they arrived a short while later they demanded to know where they could carry out a controlled detonation. I was relieved to realise they werent planning to do it in the station. The building had only just been decorated, and I wasnt sure how Id explain it to my inspector in Penzance. NO NEED FOR MOTs There is no car wash on the islands and, in the mild climate, a fair proportion of vehicles proudly feature shrubs, grasses and even brambles from doors and wheel arches. This is possible because there is no MoT test on Scilly: we have only one garage, at Porthmellon, and without a minimum of two MoT-approved repair shops, the legal necessity of an annual check does not apply. I have a hunch theres a local conspiracy to keep it that way no one else dare start up a competing garage for fear of invoking provisions under the Road Traffic Act 1956 that would make them and their business very unpopular indeed. Twice a year we fly in a traffic officer to run spot-checks along the islands roads, during which time the dodgier motors go into hiding and their owners walk more: in this way, our policing efforts have secondary health benefits, which is a win-win for everybody. Advertisement We SETTLED on a scrappy beach on the other side of the island, called Deep Point, where the public could easily be kept at a safe distance even though there were only Shirley and me to put a 200-yard safety cordon in place. By the time the bomb squad had finished digging trenches and filling sandbags, it was 11.59am . . . and I was due to pick up bridegroom Alistair in town in 16 minutes. It was all getting mighty tight. I waved at the disposal crew to get a move on, but it was another five minutes before an almighty BOOOM shook the island and a hessian sandbag shot a clear 300ft in the air and rained safely down in scraps. Pausing only to shout to the bomb squad that Id be back to fetch them later, I sprinted to the Land Rover and set off bouncing along the coastal track. Up ahead I could see a local farmer in his truck. I could tell he wanted to stop for a chat, to discover what that bang had been, but I didnt have time for him there and then. So, for the only time on Scilly, I switched on the strobing blue lights. Not the sirens, though after an explosion like that, the noise would have caused panic. By the time I delivered Alistair to the church, we were behind schedule but ahead of the bride, and that was all that mattered. Afterwards, when the photos were being taken, I slapped a pair of handcuffs on the grooms wrists and pretended to arrest him for wasting police time. The picture went viral on the internet, and the happy couple ended up being interviewed on TV in America. Scilly has a tradition of wedding shenanigans, since its a popular destination for stag parties. Most arrive by ferry, already half-cut, and proceed to stagger round the pubs until midnight . . . which is when they discover there are no fast-food outlets on St Marys open after 9pm. No kebab shops, no curry houses, no burger vans. And, believe me, no sleep for a police sergeant who knows a gang of hungry inebriates are raising havoc up and down Hugh Street. Its not unknown to discover the groom, minus his trousers and alone in the small hours, clingfilmed to a lamp-post. But I can recall only one occasion where a stag had stripped completely naked in the middle of the day. His mates were in Hawaiian shirts and grass skirts, but he had dispensed with these and was propped up against the plate-glass window of a clothes shop, posing while the rest of the party took photos of him on their phones. He did still have his flip-flops on, and a garland of plastic flowers in his hair, but otherwise not a stitch. Hed gone to considerable effort to get noticed, Ill credit him with that. Still, most shoppers on the street were doing their best to ignore him. Perhaps they just didnt want to think about the hangover hed have next day. Gripping him by his arm to stop him from stumbling, I marched him towards the quay, with my police helmet held at waist height to protect his modesty. One fixed penalty notice later, he was wearing his shirt and skirt again, and on the 4.15pm ferry back to the mainland. I later heard the ferry captain used his skill to set the boat gently rocking all the way back to Penzance, which ensured the stags passed the whole journey in a beery slumber. Perth shark attack victim Ben Gerring put up the 'biggest fight for life doctors and nurses had seen for 20 years' but had finally surfed his last wave. Touching tributes including a picture of Mr Gerring and his fiancee Jasmine Boyer kissing have been posted on Facebook following the death of the board rider, whose leg was torn off by a shark. The 29-year-old was attacked at the popular Gearies break at Falcon Beach, 80km south of Perth, on Tuesday. Scroll down for video Touching tributes including a picture of Ben Gerring and his fiancee Jasmine Boyer kissing have been posted on Facebook following the death of the board rider, whose leg was torn off by a shark He died on Friday night in Royal Perth Hospital with his family by his side. President of the Mandurah Boardriders Club Brian Williams on Saturday said his friend had lost a mammoth battle for life. 'Our mate Ben Gerring finally caught his last wave here on earth,' Mr Williams posted on Facebook. 'I know he is getting pitted off his head up there somewhere. I would like to give our heartfelt thoughts to Ben's family. RIP, forever surfing Benny.' Ms Boyer who is expecting the couples first child posted a picture on Facebook on Saturday morning of them embracing in a kiss. Mr Gerring's family said this week he had been afraid of sharks and would never have gone surfing if he had known of a Surf Lifesaving WA tweet warning that a large shark had been spotted in the area earlier that day. His death is the first shark fatality in WA since December 2014, when spear fisherman Jay Muscat was killed by a four to five-metre great white near Albany. Mr Gerring, 29, died in hospital on Saturday after a shark tore part of his leg off while he was surfing at a beach south of Perth only hours after reports of a great white shark lurking nearby Mr Gerring's family thanked everyone involved in his rescue and treatment at Royal Perth Hospital in what was a difficult time. 'The bravery and efforts of his rescuers and the care provided by the doctors and nurses has been amazing,' the family said. 'We would also like to thank family and friends for their messages of love and support. They are greatly appreciated.' Fellow surfers rushed into the surf to rescue Mr Gerring straight after the attack. Mr Gerring (pictured) who had been expecting a child with fiancee Jasmine Boyer (right) was attacked at about 4pm on tuesday and a local shopkeeper said two men came frantically running from the sand asking for ice, claiming a surfer had his leg 'fully' bitten off On Thursday a 4.2 metre great white shark was trapped and killed after it was caught on baited drum lines near where Mr Gerring was attacked. Western Australia's Department of Fisheries set baited drum lines at 7am on Wednesday (WST) at the site of the attack to trap the shark as part of its controversial serious threat policy. The department revealed that the shark was caught on Wednesday afternoon and died on the drum line. It was then towed out to sea and dumped after samples and measurements were taken. He was pulled from the water at a popular surf break of Gearies near Falcon after a shark attacked him from behind just before 4pm. Mr Gerring was pale and had lost a lot of blood by the time he was pulled on to shore by local surfers Mr Gerring's family have thanked everyone involved in his rescue and treatment at Royal Perth Hospital in what was a difficult time. Mr Gerring's fiancee Ms Boyer flew down from a WA mine. 'The bravery and efforts of his rescuers and the care provided by the doctors and nurses has been amazing,' the family said in a statement. 'We would also like to thank family and friends for their messages of love and support, they are greatly appreciated.' A gofundme page set up for the Mandurah man has raised over $24,000 for the family which was set up to 'help Ben and Jas in any way possible'. A 4.2 metre great white shark has reportedly been caught on drum lines near to where West Australian surfer Ben Gerring was attacked on Tuesday Western Australia's Department of Fisheries set baited drum lines at 7am on Wednesday at the attack site Shocked and distressed fellow surfers and friends, including those who pulled him out of the water, gathered on Wednesday morning at the closed beach. Mr Gerring was described as a keen big wave surfer who had paddled out further and screamed for help before being dragged under the water. His friend, Mandurah Boardriders Club president Brian Williams, was preparing to go for a surf when he noticed a commotion with about 15 surfers rushing back to shore and 'all hell broke loose' as a couple of men came out with Mr Gerring propped up on a board. 'They jumped to work straight away, it was pretty horrific to see someone you know in that predicament,' he told ABC radio. 'There are images there that are going to be pretty hard to get out of your mind for a while ... I've spoken to a lot of the guys that are struggling at the moment with the scenes they saw.' Mr Gerring was given CPR for around 20 minutes on the sand and his severed leg was wrapped in a towel before two ambulances arrived and he was transported to hospital with life threatening injuries Mr Williams described the efforts of those who had bravely rescued Mr Gerring as heroic. Friends and surfers have rallied online, including Tarsh Wright Webster who posted: 'Praying very hard for you Ben. You are in the very best care at RPH (Royal Perth Hospital). Also to the people who rescued him, you are heroes. Well done.' Fisheries Department regional manager Tony Cappelluti said the drum lines were set on Wednesday morning as per the WA government's serious threat policy. The use of traps is controversial and was widely criticised on Wednesday, including by WA Greens MP Lynn MacLaren, University of Sydney lecturer Christopher Neff and Mr Williams, who said killing individual sharks did not make the ocean safer. Mr Cappelluti defended Fisheries' warning systems. Paul Ford, pictured, 47, avoided jail after admitting dangerous driving over a crash that left John Cleary, 59, with devastating injuries A diabetic police officer has walked free from court after leaving a father-of-two brain damaged in a horror smash which occurred after he failed to check his blood sugar levels. John Cleary, 59, suffered devastating injuries when Merseyside Police officer Paul Ford's car smashed into his vehicle in a horrific pile-up on the M57 in February 2014, and can now only communicate by giving a thumbs up or down. Diabetic Ford, 47, of Bebington, Merseyside, had not checked his blood sugar levels before getting into his vehicle that day and suffered a hypoglycaemic attack at the wheel. After pleading guilty to one count of dangerous driving at an earlier hearing, Ford was sentenced to 11 months in prison suspended for two years at Liverpool Crown Court today. Ford, who was required by the DVLA to check his blood sugar levels before driving, was also ordered to do 200 hours unpaid work, given an eight month curfew and banned from driving for four years. Sentencing, Judge Clement Goldstone QC, the Recorder of Liverpool, said: 'On this occasion you failed to check your blood levels. 'You took a massive chance that you would not suffer a hypoglaecemic attack. 'You knew full well a hypoglaecemic attack would deprive you of your mind and control of the vehicle. 'Just being aware of the potential for disaster, you should not have taken that risk - that was a criminal decision. 'All your victims were seriously affected, as were there families, and all of them are amazed that of all people a policeman should have behaved in such a cavalier way. 'You should remember how fortunate you are not to be looking at prison walls and not to be suffering like your victims. You will live with that for the rest of your life.' Liverpool Crown Court heard the smash caused Ford's Vauxhall Mervia to bounce off the barriers of the M57 before running traffic lights and crashing into stationary cars at between 65 and 70mph at the Switch Island motorway junction near Aintree, Merseyside on February 28, 2014. In the crash Mr Cleary's skull was fractured, causing bleeding to the brain, and now the father cannot breathe, eat or communicate on his own. The cabbie and former police officer for the same force as Ford is now under 24-hour care at a Southport care home. In total three people were seriously injured, two of them life-threateningly, with Ford's two other victims Christopher Whittaker and Victoria Lavery also requiring hospital treatment. Prosecutors said Ford made no effort to brake as he ploughed into the other vehicles, sending Mr Whittaker's car flying into the air - ending up on its roof at the bottom of a grass verge. Ford, left and right, failed to check his blood sugar levels on the day of the crash and suffered a hypoglycaemic attack at the wheel Robert Wyn-Jones for the prosecution read a victim statement from John's wife Barbara Cleary, of Liverpool, Merseyside, ahead of the sentencing as the 'lonely and helpless' mum was 'too upset' to read it herself. Barbara's statement said: 'Both my sons have been changed by what has happened and not for the better. 'My son James is angry and upset that this incident happened and that he has missed out on sharing happy times with his father ever since. 'He is getting married but his dad won't make it to the wedding. He has been robbed of sharing his special day with his dad and of making him an even prouder father than he already was. 'He feels he has a replacement father as the one he knows and loves has been taken away. 'My son Daniel was away with the navy at the time of the incident and couldn't do anything until three days later when the ship came into dock. 'He feels he has become a recluse and on bad days his mind starts to wander so he fills his life with work. 'They both looked up to John. And we never made a decision in the family without running it by him. But now their dad can't see their journey through life. 'I have to try to be a strong figure for my sons but I still have times where I break down and am reduced to tears. 'The marital home is so empty with John's presence. I go to the home all the time because I feel better just to be beside him but he is not the man I married. 'We had a happy marriage and two wonderful sons but there is nothing that pays for this trauma but we get by and we are forced to survive. 'As a family we will never give up on him. We will hope he will return to us and be the man he was before the crash.' Ford, who was diagnosed with Type One diabetes in 2013, eight months before the accident, suffered a spinal fracture, an injury to his left eye requiring surgery, and bruising to his ribs. He was initially charged with causing serious injury by dangerous driving but entered a not guilty plea, with what Judge Goldstone described in his sentencing as a 'fabricated' defence. But the suspended police officer eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of dangerous driving. This was accepted by the court after experts found Ford had been over-prescribed insulin which meant the usual warning signs of a hypoglycaemic attack - including sweating, anxiety or acute hunger - would not have been present. But the routine daily checks of his blood sugar levels had still not been followed, meaning Ford had driven dangerously. His sudden change of plea prompted Judge Goldstone to describe the officer as having 'low moral fibre'. However, in sentencing Ford Judge Goldstone told him the over-prescription of insulin was what had persuaded him to give the copper a suspended sentence rather than a jail term. The judge at Liverpool Crown Court, pictured, ordered Ford to do 200 hours unpaid work, gave him an eight month curfew and banned him from driving for four years The court heard Ford had failed to admit 'tragic and catastrophic accident' right away because he couldn't come to terms with the 'horrific' crash happened. Trevor Parry-Jones, defending, said: 'The incident can only be described as tragic and horrific and nothing that the defendant does or I submit on his behalf can of course remedy the injuries sustained. 'But Ford was a man of impeccable character. He was a hard-working family man conscientious of both his family and his community throughout his life. 'He has always accepted his responsibility and he has always been remorseful but he struggled to come to terms with the result. He could not reconcile how it occurred and became totally absorbed and immersed - a changed man.' Speaking after the sentencing, John Cleary's son James, 29, a rail technician from Liverpool, said he was disappointed Ford had not been given a jail term. He said: 'I think today's sentence is far too lenient, we all think he should have got a custodial sentence. 'I would like to see more communication between the DVLA and diabetes clinics when patients change their regime, otherwise there is nothing stopping this happening to another family. 'He has effectively been given a slap on the wrist for causing life-changing injuries to more than one person.' Following the sentencing, Merseyside Police confirmed Ford has been suspended pending a full investigation by the force's professional standards department. Karen Cummings, head of Merseyside Police's professional standards department, said: 'As a force we expect the highest of standards from all of our officers and as a result, Constable Paul Ford has now been suspended from the force, pending a full investigation by Merseyside Police's professional standards department. 'The public's confidence in the ability of the force to do its job, relies on officers as individuals to maintain their integrity at all times. 'When their conduct falls below this level we will always take appropriate steps to investigate and address this.' Investigating officer constable Michael Rawson, of the roads policing investigation department, added: 'While today's result cannot undo the hurt caused to the victims in this case, we hope it brings them some sense of justice. This is the horrific moment a group of urban patrol officers in China violently beat up a street vendor using huge wooden sticks. The incident, which took place yesterday in the city of Yibin, Sichuan Province, saw the officers repeatedly hitting the man before brutally stamping on his head and abdomen. Local government admitted the officers had acted too violently and has suspended them from work. Extreme measures: A group of urban patrol officers in Yibin, China, were seen brutally beating a street vendor The footage, shared by People's Daily Online on Facebook, first emerged on Chinese social media site Weibo and is believed to have been taken by an onlooker. Weibo users claimed that a street vendor had refused to obey the patrol officers and was holding a knife trying to fight them off. The post went on saying that the officers sized the knife before stamping on the face, neck and abdomen of the vendor for multiple times. At the beginning of 70-second-long clip, the vendor, who wore a pale blue top and an apron, was seen holding a knife and surrounded by a group of around six officers, all armed with long sticks. Suddenly, one officer beat the vendor on the back with the rod, causing him to collapse. Another officer then hit the vendor around the arm as he was lying on the ground. Shortly afterwards, three officers pinned down the lone vendor with the stocks while two of them stamped hard on his neck and face. Onlookers could be heard shouting: 'Officers are beating people.' Later in the video, the vendor tried to get up, but the officers kicked him on the back and buttocks before capturing him. A female officer could be seen stopping onlookers from filming. Nothing is happening here: They hit the vendor with huge wooden rods and tried to stop onlookers from filming We dare you run away: The vendor tried to get up from the ground but was quickly pinned down by an officer An eyewitness told a reporter from The Paper: 'The vendor occupied the pavement. He saw the officers coming and were ready to fold his stall and leave. 'Unexpectedly, he was caught by the officers who were to take away his belongings. 'The vendor was irritated. He took a knife trying to scare off the officers and get his stuff back.' The People's Government of Cuiping District in Yibin confirmed the incident. On a statement through the government's official Weibo account, the authority said the officers from Zhaoyang community were patrolling around the Yibin Vocational School to shut down illegal stalls. The statement read: 'A mobile street vendor, with the surname Yu, was running his business on the pavement and did not obey [the officers]. '[He] held a controlled knife trying to interrupt the law enforcement.' The statement then admitted that the officer had been too violent in the collision. The officers in question had been suspended from their positions, the statement went on saying. A police officer has been hailed online after giving his waterproof coat to a young child in the rain while he became soaked. Pictures of the touching moment shows the traffic policeman, from Jinhua, China, wrapping his high-visibility uniform around the child. The images have been widely shared by Chinese media and readers are deeply moved by the scene. Heart-warming: A traffic police officer from Jinhua, China, gave his waterproof coat to a child who got lost The incident took place in the afternoon of June 1 as the city of Jinhua saw a downpour, reported the People's Daily Online. The pictures, taken by a passerby, were shared by Zhejiang Traffic Radio through its social media page on Weibo on June 2. The child was crying in the rain when the police officer, surnamed Zhang, saw him on the street during heavy rain, according to the post. Zhang found out that the child had been separated from grandmother and had been drenched. The officer immediately took off his own waterproof coat to cover the child. The pictures show that the child was so small that the jacket almost covered him completely from the head to the ankles. Only the feet, wearing a pair of sandals, could be seen . The post called this an 'extremely heart-warming and touching moment'. It also said that the difference in the height of the officer and the child has made the scene 'unbearably cute'. Zhang later helped the child find the family, the post said. Don't be afraid, I'm here: He made sure the child was dry and safe before tracking down the family in question Chinese media have widely shared the two pictures. As the incident occurred on the Children's Day, which is celebrated in the country, it's been said that the man had given the child the best gift he would receive this year. Social media users have expressed an outpouring of admiration towards the kind officer. One user named 'autumnyun': 'On a slight chilly day in early summer, a scene like this is so warm and touching.' While 'tangge518' wrote: 'One tall and one short, these two are the cutest.' 'Quzhou CAPF' said: 'This is positive energy.' Seeing Not enough space flash on your phone can cause anyone irritation. Users have to swipe through their many apps and delete each item separately in order to make room for new ones. To put an end to this frustration, Google is testing an uninstall manger in the Play Store that suggests which apps consumers should get rid of based on how much each is used. Google is testing an uninstall manger in the Play Store that suggests which apps consumers should get rid of based on how much each is used. The technology also lets users know how much storage is needed in order to install new items HOW DOES IT WORK? When a user attempts to install a new app to their phone, but the device is out of storage the uninstall manger will pop up to suggest apps to remove displaying them by frequency of use and largest file size. The technology also lets users know how much storage is needed in order to install new items. Once the uninstall manger is displayed, users simply mark which apps they want to delete and push continue to free up space. To monitor storage use, the Play Store links to Settings and Storage in the phone. Advertisement When a user attempts to install a new app to their phone, but the device is out of storage the uninstall manger will pop up to suggest apps to remove displaying them by frequency of use and largest file size, reports Android Police. The technology also lets users know how much storage is needed in order to install new items. Once the uninstall manger is displayed, users simply mark which apps they want to delete and push continue to free up space. To monitor storage use, the Play Store links to Settings and Storage in the phone, but unfortunately it does not give any information regarding how much files or pictures are using. And it doesnt suggests uploading files to Googles cloud storage options like Google Drive, Photos or Play Music. The uninstall manager has been open to just Google Play testers since mid-May, reports TechCrunch, but it is not clear if it will be released as a full-on feature. Google has announced for sure that it will soon allow its Chromebook laptops to run Android apps. The laptops run a version of Google's Chrome browser instead of an operating system like Windows - but until now have been unable to download apps. According to the market research firm IDC, in Q1 of this year Chromebook shipments overtook Macs in the U.S. That means, thanks to your support, in the U.S. Chrome OS is now the second most popular PC operating system,' said Google. Once the uninstall manger is displayed, users simply mark which apps they want to delete and push continue to free up space. To monitor storage use, the Play Store links to Settings and Storage in the phone, but unfortunately it does not give any information regarding how much files or pictures are using 'As we continue to increase our focus on mobility, we want to make sure your apps are easily available on this new form factor, reaching the many Chrome devices while maintaining a great experience. 'Today we announced that we're adding Android apps to Chromebooks, which means users will be able to install the apps they know and love. 'Later this year you can expand your app's reach to a new hardware platform and wider audience while maximizing the Google Play ecosystem. Most of us log into our social media sites, whether it is Twitter, Facebook or Instagram at least a few times a day. But soon, it could require more than entering your username and password to check your friends' latest updates. The European Commission is now proposing the idea of using national ID cards to log in to online services, including Facebook, Twitter and even Uber. Soon, it could require more than entering your username and password to check your friends' latest updates on social media sites like Twitter. The idea has been presented by Andrus Ansip (right), Vice President for the Digital Single Market on the European Commission Government ID cards are used in European member states, except for Denmark and the UK. But the move may open the floodgates to similar actions elsewhere. The idea has been presented by Andrus Ansip, Vice President for the Digital Single Market on the European Commission. Documents were leaked from within the European Commission, which revealed a call for the roll out of more extensive use of national ID cards across the EU. Since the leak, the European Commission has uploaded the paper to the Commission's own website. The paper outlines that: 'Online platforms need to accept credentials issued or recognised by national public authorities, such as electronic ID cards, citizens cards, bank cards or mobile IDs. 'For every consumer to have a multitude of username and password combinations is not only inconvenient but becomes a security risk.' Mr Ansip is from Estonia, where they currently have a highly-developed national ID card system. The paper is called 'Online Platforms and the Digital Single Market' and is dated from 25 May. The main reason that the paper states for implementing ID cards is to combat the current prevalence of fake user reviews that are misleading European consumers. The paper states: 'Online ratings and reviews of goods and services are helpful and empowering to consumers, but they need to be trustworthy and free from any bias or manipulation.' The EC is proposing the idea of using national ID cards to log in to online services, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (stock image used) However, many people are unhappy about the proposal, saying it will eradicate both online privacy and freedom of speech. Speaking to Breitbart London, Diane James, a Member of the European Parliament and the UK Independence Party's spokesman for Home Affair said: 'Calling on us to log onto YouTube with national IDs etc shows a direction of travel which should worry anybody who believes in personal liberty.' It appears that this interference in social media by the EU is not a new occurrence. Ms James added: 'In 2013, the European Parliament spent almost 2 million on press monitoring and trawling Eurosceptic debates on the internet for "trolls" during euro-elections amid fears that hostility to the EU was growing.' The European Parliament claimed 'institutional communicators must have the ability to monitor public conversation and sentiment on the ground and in real time, to understand 'trending topics' and have the capacity to react quickly.' She will be put on display in a special A 2,500-year-old mummy of a tattooed Siberian princess is to go on public display for the first time, despite objections from local ethnic groups. Preserved in permafrost in the Altai Mountains, her remains will be draped in a mock-fur cover to shield her modesty. The 25-year-old woman, who is thought to be one of the earliest known victims of breast cancer, was excavated from her icy tomb almost 20 years ago. The mummified remains of a Siberian princess (pictured) found buried in an icy tomb on the Ukok Plateau in the Altai Mountains are to go on public display for the first time despite objections from local ethnic groups who fear it will unleash evil spirits and want her to be re-interred in her tomb THE SIBERIAN ICE MAIDEN The Siberian Ice Maiden, also known as the Princess of Ukok, is a mummy of a woman from the 5th century BC. She was discovered in 1993 in a kurgan of the Pazyryk culture in Republic of Altai, Russia. Analysis of her remains earlier highlighted sophisticated tattoos of 'great artistry' of fantastical creatures. Researchers discovered, among other things, clothing and headdresses, a make-up bag, and a stash of cannabis, buried with her. She had suffered from breast cancer, making her thin and weak at the time of her death. However, her actual cause of death may have been injury from falling from a great height. The ice maiden often sniffed cannabis, it is thought, and her altered state of mind gave her a special status in her society. This would explain the care her people took to care for her and not leave her to die, or hasten death. It also helps to understand the way her burial was conducted in a style similar - but different - to royalty. Advertisement She had been buried on the 8,200 feet high Ukok Plateau with six horses and many treasures. But the decision to put her on public display at a museum in Gorno-Altaisk, close to where her grave was found, has caused outrage among native ethnic groups in the Altai Republic, a Russian region bordering Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan. They believe showing the mummy with her 'modern-looking' tattoos will unleash evil spirits. Instead, they want her remains to be reburied at the site of her original tomb. Local campaigner Akai Khan complained: 'The dead cannot be disturbed, and especially they cannot be held on public display and carried around the world. 'After she was dug out, we immediately saw earthquakes, floods, and hail which were not known previously.' Yet, despite earlier promises her remains would not go on display, she is to be shown off to the public at the next new moon, in keeping with local superstitions. Experts from a Moscow institute that maintain the embalmed corpse of Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin have advised on preserving the mummy of the woman. They have developed a specially designed wood and glass sarcophagus for the exhibition, in which the Altai princess will be partially covered by a 'fur coat-style blanket'. The ice princess's body art has won acclaim around the world, and will be visible on her shoulders and fingers. Detailed scientific analysis has shown that the 'princess' - who lived five centuries before Christ - almost certainly died from breast cancer. Researchers have also concluded that her illness may have caused her to suffer a fall, probably from a horse, which compounded her health problems. The woman, who is thought to have been a princess in the ancient Pazyryk culture, is believed to have taken cannabis to ease her suffering. Dug from her permafrost burial chamber on the high Ukok Plateau in 1993, analysis of the princess' remains highlighted sophisticated tattoos of 'great artistry' of fantastical creatures (shown) The 2,500-year-old remains were unearthed almost 20 years ago in the Ukok Plateau in Russia (pictured) The princesses shoulders, arms, wrist and fingers were found to be covered in intricate tattoos (pictured). She will be partially covered with a fur cover to help hide her modesty when her remains go on display Buried around her were six horses, saddled and bridled as her spiritual escorts to the next world, along with a meal of sheep and horse meat. Archaeologists also found ornaments made from felt, wood, bronze and gold as well as a small container of cannabis and a stone plate on which coriander seeds were burned. From her clothes and possessions including a 'cosmetics bag', scientists were able to recreate her fashion and beauty secrets. Her head was completely shaved, and she wore a horse hair wig on top of which was a carving of a wooden deer. Researchers found the woman's tattoos were designs based on fantastical-looking animals (illustrated) Scans of the remains conducted by Russian scientists Andrey Letyagin and Andrey Savelov revealed a primary tumour in the right breast (shown in red above) and in the right axial lymph nodes (green arrows) When a star explodes, it can be bright enough to outshine entire galaxies. These stunning supernovas are created when a star, after several million years, collapses in on itself in its final death throes. Now, researchers in Michigan have used one of the government's most powerful supercomputers to recreate exactly what happens in 3D. Scroll down for video The final seconds in the life of a very massive star are captured in 3D by an MSU-led team of scientists. This is the first time a 3D model of such a star has been developed and could lead to a better understanding of why these stars blow up as supernovae. This visualization is a volume rendering of a massive star's radial velocity. In comparison to previous 1-D simulations, none of the structure seen here would be present. WHEN A STAR DIES In the landmark television series 'Cosmos,' astronomer Carl Sagan famously proclaimed, 'We are made of star stuff.' At the end of their life cycles, these massive stars explode in spectacular fashion, scattering their guts which consist of carbon, iron and basically all other natural elements across the cosmos. These elements go on to form new stars, solar systems and everything else in the universe including the building blocks for life on Earth. Advertisement 'If we want to understand the chemical evolution of the entire universe and how the stuff that we're made of was processed and distributed throughout the universe, we have to understand the supernova mechanism,' said Sean Couch, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Michigan State University. He is leading an effort to use Mira, the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility's (ALCF's) 10-petaflops supercomputer, to carry out some of the largest and most detailed three-dimensional (3-D) simulations ever performed of core-collapse supernovas. After millions of years of burning ever-heavier elements, these super-giant stars (at least eight solar masses, or eight times the mass of the sun) eventually run out of nuclear fuel and develop an iron core. No longer able to support themselves against their own immense gravitational pull, they start to collapse. But a process, not yet fully understood, intervenes that reverses the collapse and causes the star to explode. 'What theorists like me are trying to understand is that in-between step,' Couch said. 'How do we go from this collapsing iron core to an explosion?' Through his work at the ALCF, Couch and his team are developing and demonstrating a high-fidelity 3-D simulation approach that is providing a more realistic look at this 'in-between step' than previous supernova simulations. While this 3-D method is still in its infancy, Couch's early results have been promising. In 2015, his team published a paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, detailing their 3-D simulations of the final three minutes of iron core growth in a 15 solar-mass star. This simulation shows that the presence of rotation and weak magnetic fields dramatically impacts the development of the supernova mechanism as compared to nonrotating, nonmagnetic stars. The nascent neutron star is just barely visible in the center below the turbulent convection. They found that more accurate representations of the star's structure and the motion generated by turbulent convection (measured at several hundred kilometers per second) play a substantial role at the point of collapse. 'Not surprisingly, we're showing that more realistic initial conditions have a significant impact on the results,' Couch said. Despite the fact that stars rotate, have magnetic fields and are not perfect spheres, most one- and two-dimensional supernova simulations to date have modeled nonrotating, nonmagnetic, spherically symmetrical stars. Scientists were forced to take this simplified approach because modeling supernovas is an extremely computationally demanding task. Such simulations involve highly complex multiphysics calculations and extreme timescales: the stars evolve over millions of years, yet the supernova mechanism occurs in a second. According to Couch, working with unrealistic initial conditions has led to difficulties in triggering robust and consistent explosions in simulations a long-standing challenge in computational astrophysics. However, thanks to recent advances in computing hardware and software, Couch and his peers are making significant strides toward more accurate supernova simulations by employing the 3-D approach. The emergence of petascale supercomputers like Mira has made it possible to include high-fidelity treatments of rotation, magnetic fields and other complex physics processes that were not feasible in the past. 'Generally when we've done these kinds of simulations in the past, we've ignored the fact that magnetic fields exist in the universe because when you add them into a calculation, it increases the complexity by about a factor of two,' Couch said. 'But with our simulations on Mira, we're finding that magnetic fields can add a little extra kick at just the right time to help push the supernova toward explosion.' But even with today's high-performance computing hardware and software, it is not yet feasible to include high-fidelity treatments of all the relevant physics in a single simulation; that would require a future exascale system, Couch said. 'Our simulations are only a first step toward truly realistic 3-D simulations of supernova,' he said. 'But they are already providing a proof-of-principle that the final minutes of a massive star evolution can and should be simulated in 3-D.' The other problem the 3D model addresses is the actual shape of the star. Older computer models yielded stars that were perfectly spherical. Pictured is the core of a supernova at the onset of explosion. Neutrinos emitted from the protoneutron at the center (bluish sphere) are absorbed by the gas behind the shock front, heat up this gas, and drive turbulence However, that is not what real stars look like, and this new work shows that the messy details matter for understanding supernova explosions. Millions of years of nuclear burning in massive stars results in central cores made of inert iron. This iron cannot be used by the star as fuel. Eventually, without any fuel source, the star collapses from its own tremendous gravitational pull. 'This is what we see in our simulation process,' Couch said. 'The iron core building up to where it can no longer support itself and down it comes.' He said the development of the 3D model is an early stop in pinning down the reasons why stars explode, but could completely change the way scientists approach to supernova. Legend has it a giant, hairy creature that is half man and half ape roams the world in secrecy. The story of Bigfoot has been circling the globe for centuries and now one man claims to have proof that the massive beast did exist. While hiking near his home in Ogden, Utah, Todd May stumbled upon a 75-pound object that he says is the fossilized skull of Sasquatch. Scroll down for video Todd May (pictured) spotted a hand print on top of a rounded surface, dug the object out and it was the skull, he said. This discovery occurred in 2013 and since then he has had many people challenge his finding. an expert who has seen the 'skull' in real life and he said, without a doubt, just a highly weathered rock BIGFOOT SIGHTINGS FROM TODD MAY May says he has been interested in this mythological creature all his life and has had two run-ins with critters he believed were Bigfoot. 'The first time I saw one I was startled, it looked like an ape from the zoo,' May said. He said the creature jumped out of nowhere and scampered away after the two made eye contact. However, it was the red-furred one May spotted last year that was much bigger and gave him a scare. While hiking through the woods at night with a flashlight, May heard someone across the river say 'Oh, my God! It's a monster'. Advertisement There have been more than 4,000 sightings of the ape-like creature over the past 95 years and Ogden, Utah is known as a hot spot for these experiences. 'I would go out there often and find things, fossils, rocks,' May told USA Today regarding the moment he spotted the 'fossilized skull'. 'I looked around for about half an hour, then I saw it.' May says he has been interested in this mythological creature all his life and has had two run-ins with critters he believed were Bigfoot. 'The first time I saw one I was startled, it looked like an ape from the zoo,' May said. He said the creature jumped out of nowhere and scampered away after the two made eye contact. This sighting brought May back to a hot springs in the area, where he 'often felt someone, or something, pegging him with rocks'. 'I just thought it was kids, but then my friend was playing her flute outside and had a couple of witnesses who saw the Bigfoot,' May said. The story of Bigfoot has been circling the globe for centuries and now one man claims to have proof that the massive beast did exist. While hiking near his home in Ogden, Utah, Todd May stumbled upon a 75-pound object that he says is the fossilized skull of Sasquatch However, it was the red-furred one May spotted last year that was much bigger and gave him a scare. While hiking through the woods at night with a flashlight, May heard someone across the river say 'Oh, my God! It's a monster'. When he flashed the light in the direction of the scream, the beam light up the 'face of an 8- to 10-foot tall red-furred apelike creature' that was 20 feet away, he explained. A couple of months later, he found what he believes is the creature's skull. May spotted a hand print on top of a rounded surface, dug the object out and there it was. This discovery occurred in 2013 and since then he has had many people challenge his finding. 'There's haters out there, other Bigfoot enthusiasts that don't like that I found something first,' May said. Many of the doubters site the opinion of a Utah professor who said, after reviewing the photos, it is simply a large, heavy rock. However, May is not settling for this answer, as the 'professor just saw the picture' in the paper not in person, he said. But Midwestern State University Assistant Professor Jesse Carlucci, Kimball School of Geoscience was an expert who has seen the 'skull' in real life and he said, without a doubt, just a highly weathered rock. There have been more than 4,000 sightings of the ape-like creature over the past 95 years and Ogden, Utah is known as a hot spot for these experiences and where May found his fossilized Bigfoot skull 'Often, the natural fractures or joints in the rock are sites of increased weathering (chemical breakdown of the rock, as they interact with rainwater), where you have these types of depressions form. It's not Bigfoot!' he said. Carlucci continued to explain that if it were a fossilized rock, it would be fragile and of course made of bone different textures than the object May found in the woods. Machines could deliberately wipe out the human race or do so by Google's secretive AI division is working on a 'big red button' that can halt its artificial intelligence software. Researchers have previously warned that AI could threaten humanity, with doomsday scenarios of AIs taking over, with one expert involved in the new paper admitting Google's historic win over Go world champion proves AI can be 'unpredictable and immoral'. Now the DeepMind team say they have the answer - an off switch. Scroll down for video Google's DeepMind team say AI agents are 'unlikely to behave optimally all the time' and have called for 'safe interruptibility' to be built into systems. GOOGLE SETS UP AI ETHICS BOARD TO CURB THE RISE OF THE ROBOTS Google has set up an ethics board to oversee its work in artificial intelligence. The search giant has recently bought several robotics companies, along with Deep Mind, a British firm creating software that tries to help computers think like humans. One of its founders warned artificial intelligence is 'number one risk for this century,' and believes it could play a part in human extinction. 'Eventually, I think human extinction will probably occur, and technology will likely play a part in this,' DeepMind's Shane Legg said in a recent interview. Among all forms of technology that could wipe out the human species, he singled out artificial intelligence, or AI, as the 'number 1 risk for this century.' The ethics board, revealed by web site The Information, is to ensure the projects are not abused. Neuroscientist Demis Hassabis, 37, founded DeepMind two years ago with the aim of trying to help computers think like humans. Advertisement The researchers, Laurent Orseau of Deep Mind and Dr Stuart Armstrong at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, explain in the paper that AI agents are 'unlikely to behave optimally all the time.' 'Now and then it may be necessary for a human operator to press the big red button to prevent the agent from continuing a harmful sequence of actions - harmful either for the agent or for the environment - and lead the agent into a safer situation.' They say that 'safe interruptibility' is key. 'Safe interruptibility can be useful to take control of a robot that is misbehaving and may lead to irreversible consequences, or to take it out of a delicate situation, or even to temporarily use it to achieve a task it did not learn to perform or would not normally receive rewards for this.' However, they admit that some systems could be unable to be halted. 'It is unclear if all algorithms can be easily made safely interruptible,' the authors admit. Dr Armstrong has previously warned it's a race against time to develop safeguards around artificial intelligence research, before robots outwit us - or even accidentally cause our demise. Speaking at a debate on artificial intelligence in London earlier this year, he warned that humans could be wiped out even if robots are instructed to protect people. Dr Armstrong, based at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, predicted that robots will be increasingly integral to our everyday lives, doing menial tasks, but will eventually make humans redundant and take over,The Telegraph reported. He believes machines will work at speeds inconceivable to the human brain and will skip communicating with humans to take control of the economy and financial markets, transport, healthcare and more. The robots will have what's known as artificial general intelligence (AGI), enabling them to do much more than carry out specific and limited tasks. Dr Stuart Armstrong believes it's a race against time to develop safeguards around artificial intelligence research, before robots outwit us (such as in the film Transcendence (screenshot pictured), or even accidently cause our demise 'Anything you can imagine the human race doing over the next 100 years there's the possibility AGI will do very, very fast,' he said. Dr Armstrong is concerned that a simple instruction to an AGI to 'prevent human suffering' could be interpreted by a super computer as 'kill all humans' or that 'keep humans safe' could lead to machines locking people up. 'There is a risk of this kind of pernicious behaviour by an AI,' he said, adding that human language is subtle and can be easily misinterpreted. 'You can give AI controls, and it will be under the controls it was given. But these may not be the controls that were meant.' He predicts that it will be difficult to tell whether a machine has deadly 'intentions' or not and could act as if it is a benefit to humanity right until the point it takes control of all functions. Professor Stephen Hawking has previously told the BBC: 'The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.' Dr Armstrong, of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, predicted that robots will be increasingly integral to our everyday lives (illustrated with a stock image), doing menial tasks, but will eventually make humans redundant and take over This echoes claims he made earlier in the year when he said success in creating AI 'would be the biggest event in human history, [but] unfortunately, it might also be the last.' In November, Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind Space-X and Tesla, warned that the risk of 'something seriously dangerous happening' as a result of machines with artificial intelligence, could be in as few as five years. He has previously linked the development of autonomous, thinking machines, to 'summoning the demon'. Speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) AeroAstro Centennial Symposium in October last year, Musk described artificial intelligence as our 'biggest existential threat'. He said: 'I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it's probably that. So we need to be very careful with artificial intelligence. 'With artificial intelligence we're summoning the demon. You know those stories where there's the guy with the pentagram, and the holy water, and he's sure he can control the demon? Doesn't work out.' While Dr Armstrong acknowledges that super intelligent computers could find cures for cancer and other illnesses, for example, but said that mankind is now in a race to create safe artificially intelligent machines, before it's too late. Professor Stephen Hawking (pictured) has previously told the BBC : 'The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race' One suggestion is to teach robots a moral code, but Dr Armstrong is pessimistic this will work because humans find it hard to separate right and wrong and are often not good role models when it comes to exemplary behaviour. A group of scientists and entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk and Professor Hawking signed an open letter in January promising to ensure AI research benefits humanity. The letter warns that without safeguards on intelligent machines, mankind could be heading for a dark future. The document, drafted by the Future of Life Institute, said scientists should seek to head off risks that could wipe out mankind. Dr Armstrong is concerned that a simple instruction to an artificially intelligent machine to 'prevent human suffering' could be interpreted by a super computer as 'kill all humans' The authors say there is a 'broad consensus' that AI research is making good progress and would have a growing impact on society. It highlights speech recognition, image analysis, driverless cars, translation and robot motion as having benefited from the research. 'The potential benefits are huge, since everything that civilisation has to offer is a product of human intelligence; we cannot predict what we might achieve when this intelligence is magnified by the tools AI may provide, but the eradication of disease and poverty are not unfathomable,' the authors write. HOW ALPHAGO WORKS: THE CHALLENGES OF BEATING A HUMAN Traditional AI methods, which construct a search tree over all possible positions, don't have a chance when it comes to winning at Go. So DeepMind took a different approach by building a system, AlphaGo, that combines an advanced tree search with deep neural networks. These neural networks take a description of the Go board as an input and process it through 12 different network layers containing millions of neuron-like connections. One neural network called the 'policy network,' selects the next move to play, while the other neural network - the 'value network' - predicts the winner of the game. 'We trained the neural networks on 30 million moves from games played by human experts, until it could predict the human move 57 per cent of the time,' Google said. The previous record before AlphaGo was 44 per cent. However, Google DeepMind's goal is to beat the best human players, not just mimic them. The world's top Go player Lee Sedol reviews the match after the fourth match of the Google DeepMind Challenge Match against Google's artificial intelligence program AlphaGo in Seoul, South Korea. To do this, AlphaGo learned to discover new strategies for itself, by playing thousands of games between its neural networks and adjusting the connections using a trial-and-error process known as reinforcement learning. Of course, all of this requires a huge amount of computing power and Google used its Cloud Platform. To put AlphaGo to the test, the firm held a tournament between AlphaGo and the strongest other Go programs, including Crazy Stone and Zen. AlphaGo won every game against these programs. The program then took on reigning three-time European Go champion Fan Hui at Google's London office. In a closed-doors match last October, AlphaGo won by five games to zero. It was the first time a computer program has ever beaten a professional Go player. Advertisement But they issued a stark warning that research into the rewards of AI had to be matched with an equal effort to avoid the potential damage it could wreak. For instance, in the short term, it claims AI may put millions of people out of work. In the long term, it could have the potential to play out like a fictional dystopias in which intelligence greater than humans could begin acting against their programming. 'Our AI systems must do what we want them to do,' the letter says. Jung, 40, said that during his explorations, he feels a sense of anticipation, excitement and the Advertisement These stunning snaps of underwater caves will take your breath away. Scuba diving instructor Charlie Jung, from Korea, captured what lies beneath the waterline in a series of dives in Turkey, South Korea, Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands and Japan to showcase the beauty of the caves. The aquatic explorer has more than 6,000 logged dives and says it is his passion to share his love of the underwater world with those curious about the underwater realm. Jung is a Padi course director and trainer and his spellbinding images showcase mystical caverns, along with pools that are home to shoals of fish. Jung, 40, said: 'I feel anticipation, excitement and God's presence when cave diving. 'There are many high-risk factors involved in cave diving but the photos are thrilling and can't be compared to anything else - I want to convey that fantastic feeling to the public.' Scroll down as video These stunning snaps of underwater caves will take your breath away. Pictured is a diver swimming near a boat inside a cave in Kas, Turkey Scuba diving instructor Charlie Jung captured what lies beneath the waterline in a series of dives in Turkey, South Korea and Japan. Here he photographs a diver illuminated by light streaming into a cave Into the blue: Here a scuba diver explores a cave near Japan. Jung explained that cave diving has numerous risks Following his passion: Two individuals are dwarfed by a giant canyon in Turkey. Jung has more than 6,000 logged dives under his belt Jung has seen some incredible sights, including these - caves in Japan (left) and on Jeju Island, South Korea (right) Jung hopes that his pictures will convey the sheer thrill of cave diving to the public From Turkey (left) to Miyakojima, Japan (right), Jung's selection highlights how the divers are completely dwarfed by the caves Breathtaking surroundings: Jung, 40, said he always feels anticipation, excitement and God's presence when cave diving Jung's hobby has seen him collect snaps from all over the globe from this cave near Miyakojima, Japan (left) to a Saipan cave near the North Mariana Islands in the Western Pacific (right) This is another shot taken in the Saipan cave and it shows divers exploring the entrance to the vast wonderland Nine people had to be rescued from the open sea after the 46ft yacht they were travelling on caught fire following what was described as an explosion. The group from Poland were found drifting in a life raft 50 miles off the south-west coast of the Shetland Islands by a Norwegian vessel and rescued. A video shows the dramatic moment flames engulf the yacht after the group had already escaped the stricken ship. Nine people had to be rescued from the open sea after the 46ft yacht (pictured) they were on caught fire In the video, which was filmed by the rescue helicopter that was dispatched and released by the Maritime & Coastguard Agency, the 46ft vessel can be seen partially obscured by heavy smoke. Almost the entire front section of the boat was engulfed in the flames. The group issued a distress call to the coastguard at about 9.20am on Thursday. They abandoned their yacht, which was named Miracle, and boarded the life raft with a radio. Their pleas for help were heard by the crew on board the REM Gambler, a Norwegian supply vessel. Jens Goderstad, the captain of REM Gambler, told STV: 'We got a distress call and found out the Miracle was only seven nautical miles from us. 'We set full speed for it and could see the flames and the smoke. We got hold of the guys in the life raft, who had a radio with them, and after an hour or so we had the life raft. 'We lifted the life raft onto the vessel and got all the people on board. They were happy to be rescued.' According to the Press and Journal, the group didn't reach Shetland until 6pm, where they were handed over to a second vessel, Lyrie, which took them to the island itself. They were met with coastguard, police officers, the British Red Cross and Fishermens Mission. None of the crew were injured. In an video released by the Maritime & Coastguard Agency taken from the rescue helicopter that was dispatched, the 46ft vessel was partially obscured by heavy smoke Almost the entire front section of the boat was engulfed in the flames. The vessel was outside of UK waters at the time of the incident Nicola Stove, BRC Northern Isles Service Manager, said in a statement early on Thursday: 'We have a team of staff and volunteers ready to meet and assist the nine people affected by this morning's explosion. 'We will be on hand to make sure that the survivors have the food, clothing and toiletries that they need as well as providing transport and phones so they can let loved ones know they are safe. 'In addition to practical support we will also be providing any emotional support that people need after such a traumatic experience.' A spokesman from the UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch told MailOnline Travel: 'This accident happened outside UK waters on board a Polish registered vessel, with Polish crew and is therefore outside our regulations. Chinese tourists have been involved in a number of high-profile incidents relating to bad behaviour both abroad and domestically. Now the country has released the definitive list of acts that will get you blacklisted and banned from travel as part of the new 'uncivilised behaviour law'. But while the state tourism department hopes the new list will curb embarrassing incidents sparked by Chinese citizens abroad, its effectiveness is yet to be seen as the ban only lasts for five years. Scroll down for video One photo posted on social media shows a Disney Shanghai visitor allowing a young girl to urinate in public Seeing the trail of destruction caused, like the branch being stamped on above, one Japanese talk-show presenter called for there to be a 'Chinese-only' zone in tourist areas The list of bad behaviour that will get a tourist blacklisted was released by China National Tourism Administration on May 30 and replaces previous versions of the law. After a number of incidents involving Chinese tourists opening plane doors, it's no surprise that number one on the list is any 'interference' with public transport facilities including planes, buses and boats. Damages to public facilities and historical attractions has also been included in light of the recent reports of Shanghai Disneyland being trashed before its even opened and graffiti at Everest base camp. Following the cherry blossom season, where Chinese tourists were so poorly behaved in Japan that there's been calls for a separate area to be created for visitors from China, damaging natural environments has also been included in the list of bannable offences. Unforgivable: A man was caught giving the trunk of a cherry blossom tree a firm kick (left) in Nanjing, east China, and then standing under it for a photograph (right) Rude: One woman climbed a cherry blossom tree in China wearing stilettos before seemingly getting herself stuck there Gambling and pornography, while legal in other parts of the world, are illegal in China and has also been included in the list. As if a caveat of anything else that might crop up, the list stipulates that other acts deemed unsavoury by the State Tourism Department could get a holidaymaker banned as well. Details of the offender and the offence will only be kept on record for one to five years depending on the severity of the incident but the current rules do not stipulate what will happen to re-offenders. It's not just the tourists who are facing increasing restrictions. The new law also applies to those offering tourism facilities in China. Now, anyone working for tourist attractions, travel agencies or tour guides involved in forcing holidaymakers to spend money, threatening them with violence, showing disrespect for local customs or promoting distasteful or superstitious ideas will also be banned. NINE THINGS THAT WILL GET YOU BLACKLISTED BY CHINA Interference with public transport facilities including planes, buses and boats Damaging public facilities and public environments Offending local customs or way of life Damaging areas of historical relevance Participation in gambling, pornography or drugs Not following police instructions and participation in activities that will endanger yourself, others or other people's property Damaging the natural environment and not following wildlife and nature protection rules Breaking the regulations at a tourism attraction and severely disturbing tourism ideals Any other unsavoury acts as determined by the State Tourism Department Advertisement Someone carved graffiti into a freshly-painted lamp post to notify others that he 'was here' Qatar Airways inaugural flight to the worlds busiest airport hit a snag when it couldnt pull up to the only gate large enough to accommodate the worlds biggest aircraft because it was blocked by a rival airline. The Gulf carriers welcome celebration was put on hold as more than 500 passengers and crew were forced to wait more than an hour to disembark the Airbus A380 superjumbo jet via stairs and take shuttle buses to the terminal at Atlantas Hartsfield-Jackson airport. Passengers were unable to walk straight into the terminal because the gate was in use by a much smaller Airbus A320 belonging to Delta Air Lines, which is based at the airport and has been involved in a bitter spat with Qatar Airways. Scroll down for video Qatar Airways' A380-800 aircraft was parked away from the terminal at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport Both the airport and Delta blamed state-owned Qatar Airways, claiming the gate had already been reserved as it didnt give enough notice that it would be operating a double-decker A380 on Wednesdays inaugural 14-hour flight. Hartsfield-Jackson spokesman Reese McCranie told MailOnline that the airport has been working with Qatar Airways for the last several months to ensure a smooth and successful inaugural flight. He said: 'Initially, Qatar planned on flying a Boeing 777 and the airport was able to accommodate this aircraft. In late April, Qatar switched to an Airbus A380 and did not provide adequate notice for the airport and other airlines to make the operational changes needed for this much larger aircraft.' He said the A380's wingspan takes up two gates and it requires a longer period for disembarking, cleaning and refuelling than a small Boeing 777. McCranie added: 'Due to the sheer size of the aircraft, time needed to service and short advance notice the airport was given, aircraft operations would have been significantly disrupted and would have displaced four or five other aircraft. This was communicated multiple times to Qatar.' A Delta spokeswoman told MailOnline: 'Despite limited time to solve for the request, Delta offered solutions to allow Qatar to use the gates while ensuring our own schedule remained accommodated during a heavy traffic period at the international terminal.' Gunter Saurwein, Qatar Airways' vice president for the Americas, told CNN that it gave Delta and the airport lead time. He declined to speculate whether the A380 was deliberately blocked, adding: We as an airline don't finger point. Shuttle buses were brought in to transport passengers from the plane to the terminal after the 14-hour flight All future flights on the Doha-Atlanta route will use the smaller Boeing 777-200LR and have a dedicated gate. McCranie said: 'We are happy to welcome Qatar Airways to Hartsfield-Jackson and we are confident we can move past these initial operational challenges so that we may work together more collaboratively in the future.' Qatar Airways Airbus A380 aircraft have a capacity for 517 passengers (461 in economy, 48 in business and eight in first). When the inaugural flight arrived, it was parked at a stand away from the terminal, and passengers were kept on board until stairs and shuttle buses arrived. The outbound flight to Doha was delayed by approximately two hours. Qatar Airways chief executive, Akbar Al Baker, has been in a feud with heads of US airlines, including Delta, which have called for a limit on US-bound flights by Gulf carriers, claiming they have an unfair advantage because they are subsidised by their governments. MailOnline has contacted Delta Air Lines for comment. Its the second time in almost six months that Qatar Airways has had problems with an inaugural flight to or from the US. Last December, it operated the first Airbus A350 flight from a US airport, but the plane, which was packed with journalists, was forced to abort its take-off at New Yorks JFK Airport. The planes computer system decided the 11,000ft runway was not long enough for take-off and applied the brakes at full force on its own. He's something of a jet-setter. And Jude Law was pictured with Dutch actress Halina Reijn as they attended a party in Amsterdam together alongside a bevvy of actors on Wednesday. The 43-year-old British hunk looked dapper in a suit as he signed autographs for fans while the actress, 40, sported an A-line white gown. Scroll down for video Heading out: Jude Law and Dutch actress Halina Reijn were seen in Amsterdam together alongside a bevvy of actors on Wednesday Jude looked extremely dashing in his pinstripe navy blazer worn with a thin scarf layered beneath a scoop neck top which gave a glimpse of his chest. He then sported matching navy trousers and smart shoes making for a slick ensemble for the event which was attended by a host of other actors. The star was clutching a copy of Bob Moore's 2009 book Don't Call Me A Crook: A Scotsman's Tale of World Travel, Whisky and Crime alongside what seems to be a script. Meeting the fans: The 43-year-old British hunk looked dapper in a suit as he signed autographs for fans while the 40-year-old sported a billowing white gown Slick: Jude looked extremely dashing in his pinstripe navy blazer worn with a thin scarf layered beneath a scoop neck top which gave a glimpse of his chest Meeting the fans: . He then sported matching navy trousers and smart shoes making for a slick ensemble for the event which was attended by a host of other actors She slipped into a stunning white dress which she paired with stylish brown ankle boots, which made the most of her still slender pins. The pair were pictured walking past the Grand Theatre of Amsterdam, Stadsschouwburg. Halina is actress of the grand theatre group Toneelgroep Amsterdam of director Ivo van Hove. Halina and Jude and the other actors of Toneelgroep Amsterdam were meeting the star for there play together, which is called Obsession. According to the play's website, Gino, an attractive vagabond, stops at a small roadside restaurant and gas station. It is operated by Giovanna and Giuseppe. Giovanna is stuck in an unhappy and loveless marriage to an older man in order to escape a life of poverty. A passionate affair occurs between her and the vagabond. Together, they devise the plan to kill her husband. Pals: She slipped into a stunning white dress which she paired with stylish brown ankle boots, which made the most of her still slender pins A bumpy trip: The white dress had a flirty hemline which hung loosely off her figure Jude's trip to Amsterdam comes after his ex-fiance Sienna Miller spoke to PORTER's Features Director Vassi Chamberlain about her relationship with her famous ex-fiance. She confessed that, while she doesn't see him much anymore, they still have a strong bond. 'We don't see each other that much. I care about him enormously,' she said. Chatting away: Jude's trip to Amsterdam comes after his ex-fiance Sienna Miller spoke to PORTER's Features Director Vassi Chamberlain about her relationship with her famous ex-fiance Jude, she confessed that, while she doesn't see him much anymore, they still have a strong bond Sienna and Jude were the showbiz world's golden couple back in the mid-noughties, after becoming engaged in December 2004. They parted ways in 2005 after he cheated on her with his children's nanny, and attempted to reconcile and try again as they reunited in 2009. However, while their romance didn't last the second time around, she was able to heal their friendship and they are clearly still on great terms over a decade after their initial break-up. She may have just landed a coveted magazine cover for the latest Harper's Bazaar Mexico. But Olivia Palermo and former star of MTV's The City was clearly a New York City girl at heart as she stepped out on Thursday. The fashionista cut a stylish figure in a gold and creme striped jumpsuit with a matching bold bow tied around her svelte waist. Magazine maven: Palermo is Harper Bazaar Mexico's cover girl for their June/July issue Over here: Olivia Palermo was clearly a New York City girl at heart as she hailed a cab on Thursday The 30-year-old completed the look with a navy blue bomber jacket, and pointy blue loafers with chic tassels across the top. As for accessories, the socialite dressed up her look with multiple gold bangles and rings, an oversized pair of dark sunglasses and a sleek top knot kept her light brunette locks out of her face. She appeared to be headed somewhere important, keeping her iPhone and large white clutch tucked close under her arms. On a mission: The 30-year-old completed the look with a navy blue bomber jacket and pointy blue loafers with chic tassels across the top Olivia has come a long way since her reality television debut, cementing her status as a successful trendsetter and woman about town. Just last month, news broke that the wife to Johannes Huebl would be the face for Piaget's upcoming Possession Collection campaign. Previously, the stunner returned to New York City after attending the premiere of La Traviata opera, an opera directed by Sofia Coppola, in Rome. She rose to fame on Ex On The Beach, where she routinely flaunted her enviable six-pack and shapely legs in a bikini. And on Thursday evening reality star Jess Impiazzi flashed her beach-ready body yet again as she dazzled at the one-year birthday celebration of shoe brand Ego at Bonbonniere nightclub in London. Simon Webbe's ex-girlfriend dressed to impress in an open-front bandage dress, which showcased large portions of her chest, stomach and endlessly lithe legs. Daring: On Thursday evening reality star Jess Impiazzi showed off her gym-honed legs as she dazzled at the one-year birthday celebration of shoe brand Ego at Bonbonniere nightclub in London Highly geometric and undoubtedly daring, the dress was so open at the front that it showed off the extremities of her very muscular inner thigh. The 5ft 6in model elongated her perfect pins in a pair of wedges, which mimicked the geometric cross-strap pattern of her dress. The lashings of fabric snaked across her tiny feet and wrapped around her ankles, delivering a sexy take on the traditional wedge. Leggy lady: Simon Webbe's ex-girlfriend dressed to impress in an open-front bandage dress, which showcased large portions of her chest, stomach and endlessly lithe legs It was recently revealed that Jess is single again after a split from Castleford rugby hunk Denny Solomona at the start of this year, not long after they purchased a home together. She told The Daily Star: 'To be honest I dont seem to be having the best luck with men. Denny and I broke up at the beginning of the year, which has been quite hard because we bought a place together. 'Luckily we are still friends because we did rush in to it. We were only dating for about six months. Ive not really met anyone since and thats really had an affect on my heart.' Shoe parade: TOWIE stars Danielle Armstrong and James Locke also attended the Ego celebration All dressed up: Danielle was colourful in a green leather jacket teamed with a tight denim skirt for the bash Jess added: 'Im actually looking for a nice guy and a decent boyfriend and although Ill always be a huge fan of Ex on the Beach the show just didnt feel right for me this time around.' In July 2015, Jess confirmed that she had ended her relationship Simon Webbe of the boy band Blue - just one month after they were snapped looking absolutely besotted as they frolicked on the beach in Cape Verde. She was linked with Denny, who is five years her junior, shortly after that. Single and ready to mingle, the brunette was joined at Thursday night's event by Danielle Armstrong and boyfriend James Lock, as well as Holly Rickwood and Lilah Parson. Back to black: Ex On The Beach star Holly Rickwood looked divine in this thigh-skimming black dress. Capital Breakfast presenter Lilah Parson looked as delicious, even if she covered up her perfect pins Also in attendance: Courtney Green and Chloe Meadows were also partying Glam: Courtney looked pretty in her black jumpsuit layered under a leather jacket and coordinating heels Summer style: Chloe put on a leggy display in her tiny shorts It's time to spruce up the living room. Actress Courteney Cox donned a casual look on the streets of West Hollywood after purchasing some new rugs Thursday afternoon. The beaming brunette opted for a comfortable style wearing a black button-up shirt with minimal pattern, loose blue jeans that ripped at the cuff, and black sandals. Casual day: Courteney Cox opted for a comfortable look in a black buttoned top, loose blue jeans that she held up with a black belt, and matching black flat sandals while shopping for rugs in LA on Thursday Smile! The actress appeared satisfied with her purchases The former Friends actress had her hands full while carrying a couple different rugs on her right arm along with her white cellphone and car keys, and her black leather purse hanging off her left arm. She tied her pretty dark brown hair back in a low ponytail and covered her make-up free face with black sunglasses. Her jewelry game was on point as she wore a simple gold pendant on her neck, one ring per hand, and layered bracelets with a black and gold watch on her left hand. Natural beauty: The brunette wore her hair back in a ponytail while black sunglasses covered her make-up free face The 51-year-old actress appeared to be calm and collected while walking up and down the streets of West Hollywood. She certainly had a reason to walk with a spring in her step as her and her beau Johnny McDaid are reportedly planning for a fall 2016 wedding. The Irish star proposed to the mother-of-one in June 2015 after two years of dating, but split in December before working things out earlier this year. New purchases! The mother-of-one walked towards her car while having her hands full of new rugs She's connected: The former Friends actress clutched a cell phone so stay connected to her own pals After making amends, the couple are in talks of getting married in McDaid's native Ireland. 'They just took a trip to London to meet with their wedding planner,' a friend of the couple told Life & Style. 'They are considering Castle Leslie where Paul McCartney married Heather Mills, as well as Ballintubber Abbey where Pierce Brosnan got married.' 'She really wants a low-key wedding with about 100 guests,' said the friend.'Their good friend Ed Sheeran will be playing and Johnny will be singing a song he wrote especially for Courteney.' He recently welcomed his second daughter into the world. And Ryan Gosling, 35, has claimed having girls has proven to him that females are 'more evolved' than their male counterparts. In an interview with ES Magazine, The Nice Guys star explained: 'I think women are better than men. They are stronger. More evolved. You can tell especially when you have daughters and you see their early stages, they are just leaps and bounds beyond boys immediately. Scroll down for video Feminist: Ryan Gosling, 35, has claimed having girls has proven to him that females are 'more evolved' than their male counterparts His respect and appreciation for women stems back to his childhood and has followed him into his current home life. Ive always liked women more,' he revealed. 'I was brought up by my mother and older sister. I found my way into dance class. My home life now is mostly women. They are better than us. They make me better. A nice guy: His respect and appreciation for women stems back to his childhood and has followed him into his current home life And when it comes to a female in the White House's Oval Office, he simply said: I think it needs a womans touch. On April 14, it was claimed that Ryan and Eva Mendes were expecting their second child, and Eva gave birth to Amada in Santa Monica two weeks later. Much like with 18-month-old Esmeralda, the star kept both the pregnancy and birth of her second child under wraps. Amada is the name of Eva's grandmother, and means 'beloved' in Spanish. It's also the name of the character the actress played in the 2007 movie We Own The Night. Ryan has been hot on the promo trail for his latest film The Nice Guys which he stars in alongside Russell Crowe. The film sees Crowe play a contract killer to Gosling's private investigator, with the pair working together to solve the mysterious disappearance of a porn star in 1970s Los Angeles. It has won rave reviews from film critics across the world and is expected to do well commercially too, with projected takings of around $10 million on its opening weekend in the US. Filming for the movie began back in late 2014 in Atlanta and Decatur, Georgia, and additional filming took place in Los Angeles. Time for a change: When it comes to a female in the White House's Oval Office, he simply said: I think it needs a womans touch Ryan recently revealed he quit smoking after he unexpectedly gassed himself on lung-damaging fumes while shooting the film, in which he portrays chain-smoking private investigator Holland March. He explained: 'I use to [smoke], but in this movie I smoked myself out. I never want another cigarette again! 'It really is the greatest way to quit - it's hard to come by - you really have to get a film where you have to smoke all the time, but I highly recommend it if you are trying to quit.' Happy family: Ryan and his girlfriend Eva Mendes are parents to 18-month-old Esmeralda (pictured) and their newborn Amada Andrew Lloyd Webber is planning a musical based on a Botswana love match Andrew Lloyd Webber is planning a musical based on the love match between Seretse Khama, the man who became Botswanas first president, and Ruth Williams, a white English woman. The couple met in London in 1948. They both loved jazz, and thats what was playing the night they met, the composer told me. When they realised they were in love, and wanted to get married, there was incredible opposition to the idea. For starters, Khama was African royalty: heir in waiting of the ruling Bangwato people in what was then known as Bechuanaland in southern Africa. It was a British protectorate, and Khamas uncle (and regent) Tshekedi did not want the marriage to go ahead. Nor did the British and South African governments. Williamss parents in South-East London were opposed, too. The couple defied them all, and married in London. But there was a diplomatic outcry, and headlines around the world deplored the union. In particular, South Africas apartheid government wanted the marriage annulled, because a mixed-race union made a mockery of their own repellent race laws. Added to all that, diamonds had been found in Bechuanaland and certain elements were desperate to keep the information from Khama. The Foreign Office used devious means to force him into exile, and the British government was involved in all manner of shenanigans designed to prevent the pair from returning to Bechuanaland . Lloyd Webber told me he first became interested in the story when he read an obituary for Ruth Williams, who died in 2002. That interest was rekindled when he saw a piece in this space on a film about Ruth and Seretse called A United Kingdom. Due to be released in the autumn, it stars David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike and has been directed by Amma Asante. The movie follows the Khama story and tells how supporters in London including Tony Benn helped the couple return to Bechuanaland, where Khama later gave up the throne before running in the countrys first democratic elections. Its such a fascinating story, and they went through the most awful times, Lloyd Webber said. But love ruled. And they loved music! They liked the Ink Spots. 'Theres a lot to explore, musically. I want to do more research. I believe its a good topic for a musical. Devotion: Andrew Lloyd Webber is planning a musical based on the love match between Seretse Khama, the man who became Botswanas first president, and Ruth Williams, a white English woman He said its early days and he hasnt yet assembled a writer or a director for the project. Meanwhile, his Broadway hit School Of Rock will open at the New London Theatre in October. The St James Theatre is to be renamed The Other Palace by Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose Really Useful Theatre Group acquired it a few months ago. Buckingham Palace is up the road, and the Victoria Palace is around the corner, so The Other Palace made some sort of sense, he told me. A line-up of new musicals are to be tried out at the venue. Good cop turns bad guy Martin Compston is taking a break from being one of the good guys in hit BBC drama Line Of Duty to tackle a new role: as a serial killer. The Scottish actor, best known as dogged anti-corruption officer DS Steve Arnott in the award-winning police procedural (I must also salute his fellow cast members Vicky McClure, Keeley Hawes, Adrian Dunbar and Craig Parkinson), will portray American-born Scot Peter Manuel, a sexual psychopath who murdered seven people in Scotland between 1956 and 1958. The three-part mini-series will also star Scottish actors Martin Compston (left) and Douglas Henshall (right), as serial killer Manuel and the police officer who helps track him down The three-part mini-series will also star another Scot, Douglas Henshall (above right), as the police officer who helps track Manuel down. John Strickland, who directed a lot of Line Of Duty, will direct the Manuel programmes on ITV. Hector MacLeod and Malcolm McLeods book Serial Killer said Manuel was known as The Beast. An expert cat burglar before he turned killer, he often surprised his victims as they slept. Sometimes he would lay down with them first; other times he would abduct young women before beating and strangling them. She's reportedly lost two stone since leaving the Celebrity Big Brother house earlier this year. And reality star Gemma Collins has definitely learned to work with her slimmer figure, as she demonstrated while modeling clothes from her recently relaunched plus-sized clothing line. The 35-year-old beauty oozes health and happiness in the promotional images for The Gemma Collins Collection, which see her slip into her delightful creations, including a thigh-skimming floral print aqua shift dress. Scroll down for video Stunning: Reality star Gemma Collins oozes health and happiness in the promotional images for her recently relaunched, plus size clothing line. Her designs include this thigh-skimming floral print aqua shift dress Sleeveless, slightly flared and with a V-neck that plunges to just the right depth, the dress casts Gemma as a designer - and model - who is very much in bloom. The Romford-born stunner paired that look with pink wedges, helping to elongate her lithe, sun-kissed legs. Throughout the series of images she wears her hair in simple part, allowing her platinum locks to frame her wrinkle-free complexion as they fall gently to her shoulders. Variety: The range, which includes everything from natural jersey tops to lace-detailed kaftans, starts at 35 and caters to women sizes 16 to 24 Swing, swing: The collection includes a chiffon and lace criss-cross swing dress, at left, and the equally enticing paisley swing dress with lace-up front detail Hard-worker: I have been so hands on with both designing and choosing every single piece of the range,' she says. 'I am offering curvy ladies of the UK and beyond a new vision and choice for the summer.' The range, which includes everything from natural jersey tops to lace-detailed kaftans, starts at 35 and caters to women sizes 16 to 24. Owing to popular demand, the garments can be shipped worldwide. Gemma tells MailOnline that she is thrilled to be giving curvy ladies a new, on-trend and fresh fashion choice. I have been so hands on with both designing and choosing every single piece of the range, she says. 'I am offering curvy ladies of the UK and beyond a new vision and choice for the summer. 'I get contacted daily by my plus size customers all over the world wanting a trend-led, affordable fashion option and I really believe Ive given it to them with this re-launch. 'I have listened to my customers over the years and now I really believe I know what they want from their clothing choices. My collection is designed to make ladies look and feel amazing and I really hope my passion for plus size fashion shows with my brand new range.' Power to the people: 'I get contacted daily by my plus size customers all over the world wanting a trend-led, affordable fashion option and I really believe Ive given it to them with this re-launch,' she says. Going global: Owing to popular demand, the garments can be shipped worldwide She turned up the style thermostat at the Gucci Cruise fashion show just hours earlier. And Georgia May Jagger didn't disappoint as she attended the brand's after-party in London on Thursday. Arriving at the historic 106 Piccadilly in Mayfair, the 24-year-old model looked stylish in a pink and black tailored suit. Scroll down for video Stylish: Georgia May Jagger looked stylish in a pink and black tailored suit as she attended the Gucci afterparty in London on Thursday Vamping up the outfit, the English model wore gold beaded sandals and a matching statement box clutch. Wearing her blonde hair loose, Sir Mick Jagger's daughter went light on the make-up, accessorising with bold statement rings. Adapting her earlier look slightly, Georgia added a touch of pink eyeshadow to match her suit ensemble. Golden girl: Vamping up the outfit, the English model wore gold beaded sandals and a matching statement box clutch Coordinating: Adapting her earlier look slightly, Georgia added a touch of pink eyeshadow to match her suit ensemble Pretty in pink: Georgia matched her eye-shadow to her bubble gum pink suit Also in attendance was Hollywood star Elle Fanning, who sported an interesting choice of attire from Gucci's sporty chic range. The 18-year-old Maleficent actress looked casual in an unzipped Gucci shellsuit, showing a hint of red bra. Adding a dash of glamour to her low-key look, the American actress glammed up the outfit with red shoes and a Gucci shoulder bag. Further dressing up her outfit, Elle opted for glittery eye make-up to complete her look. Sports-chic: 18-year-old Maleficent actress Elle Fanning looked casual in an unzipped Gucci shellsuit, showing a hint of red bra Family affair: Thomas Cohen and Pixie Geldof also attended the glitzy bash, posing together for pictures Bows and bra: Pixie wasn't afraid to flaunt her underwear in her pretty pink bow detailed dress Thomas Cohen and his sister-in-law Pixie Geldof also attended the glitzy bash, posing together for pictures. The late Peaches Geldof's husband and sister looked retro-chic in their unique outfits. English model Pixie, 25, wore a nude wrap dress with gold sandals, while Thomas sported a Christmas inspired mistletoe-print suit with a red shirt and a tan Gucci belt. Also getting in on the suit action was model Erin O'Connor. The 38-year-old English fashionista wore a grey silk suit featuring a paisley-inspired print, going bold with a vibrant jumper, gold boots and a baby blue clutch. Clashing patterns: Erin O'Connor wore a grey silk suit featuring a paisley-inspired print, going bold with a vibrant jumper, gold boots and a baby blue clutch Bee stylish: Even A$AP Rocky was game for a costume change, ditching his earlier floral inspired jeans get-up in favour of black jeans, a black hoodie and a red bomber jacket with a large bee applique Even A$AP Rocky was game for a costume change, ditching his earlier floral inspired jeans get-up in favour of black jeans, a black hoodie and a red bomber jacket with a large bee applique. Also in attendance was Salma Hayek, remaining in her Gothic black ensemble she wore earlier in the evening as she sat front of house with husband Francois-Henri Pinault. Businessman Francois was no doubt excited to see what was in store for the pre-season collection as he is the chief executive officer of KERING, a Paris-based conglomerate that owns Gucci, as well as YSL and Bottega Veneta. His wife sat beside Gucci CEO Marco Bizzarri, who also shared the front row seats with guests Soko, ASAP Rocky, Jay Jopling, Tatiana Casiraghi and Hikari Yokoyama. The guests bore witness to the first ever catwalk show held inside the Gothic church, which is the burial site of Lewis Carroll, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Aphra Behn. Gothic: Salma Hayek remained in her Gothic black ensemble she wore earlier in the evening as she sat front of house with husband Francois-Henri Pinault (L-R) Marie Ange Casta, Valeria Golino. Francois-Henri Pinault, Salma Hayek, Marco Bizzarri, Gucci CEO, Charlotte Casiraghi, Tatiana Casiraghi, Ella Purnell, Bel Powley, Elle Fanning and Nicolas Winding Refn Belle of the Bal: Actress Bel Powley, who starred in film Diary of a Teenage Girl, was elegant in a Chinese inspired silk dress with ostentatious bow detailing Beautifully bright: Fashion blogger Susie Bubble was a treat for the eye in her bubble gum pink coat and sheer red culottes Fashionista: Alexa Chung picked the perfect party dress in the form of her glitzy bronze number Lovely in Lace: Selma's black velvet jacket hid her exquisite calf-length gown with lace detailing and frilled flamenco inspired long sleeves They've been married more than a decade and are still inseparable. Julia Roberts and her husband Danny Moder were spotted in Brentwood, California, on Thursday as they picked up some furniture samples. The 48-year-old actress looked youthful as ever in a chic graphic top with skintight trousers that showcased her slender legs. Scroll down for video Retail romance: Julia Roberts, 48, and her husband Danny Moder, 47, were spotted in Brentwood on Thursday as they picked up some furniture samples The Pretty Woman star donned a multi-coloured blouse that included shades of navy, white and pine green. She went make-up free for the afternoon outing, accentuating her ageless appearance and natural beauty. Her brown eyes were shaded from the blazing California sun in a pair of dark sunglasses. The Oscar-winning actress completed her look with a large midnight blue clutch and matching pointed flats. Pretty Woman! The star looked youthful as ever in a chic graphic top with skintight trousers that showcased her slender legs Natural beauty! The Oscar winner went make-up free for the afternoon outing, accentuating her ageless appearance Moder, 47, did all the heavy lifting and carried a box full of sample textures, fabrics and paperwork. He held what appeared to be a business card from the store in his mouth as the loved up couple made their back to their car. The cinematographer opted for a laid back look in a black tee with khaki pants and brown leather shoes. Julia and Danny - who tied the knot in 2002 - are parents to twins Finn and Hazel, 11, and eight-year-old Henry. Laid back look: The cinematographer opted for comfort in a black tee with khaki pants and brown leather shoes And it's refreshing to see a Hollywood power couple so in love for as long as they have been. The couple hit the red carpet together at the star-studded Hammer Museum Gala last October. People magazine asked Roberts if there's anything that she's obsessed with and she simply pointed to her husband and said: 'He's right there.' Moder's mouthful! Danny did all the heavy lifting and carried a box full of sample textures, fabrics and held what appeared to be a business card from the store in his mouth Julia and Danny teamed up late last year on the thriller Secret in Their Eyes and Roberts gushed about the experience working on set with her hubby. 'I don't know if I would have succeeded in some of the efforts that I made, if he hadn't been in such close physical proximity to me,' she admitted. Adding: 'There's something about having the safest place in the world for you in the same room.' Andy Cohen received happy birthday messages on Thursday from famous friends ranging from Bethenny Frankel to Julianne Moore. The Bravo host turned age 48 and Bethenny was among the network's reality stars who took to social media to mark the milestone. 'Happy bday @bravoandy xoxo,' Bethenny, 45, wrote on Instagram along with a photo of herself and Andy during a recent appearance on Watch What Happens Live. Birthday messages: Bethenny Frankel took to Instagram on Thursday to wish Andy Cohen a happy birthday Oscar-winning actress Julianne, 55, took to Twitter and tweeted 'Happy birthday @Andy' followed by symbols for a cake, balloon and hearts. The Real Housewives Of New Jersey star Teresa Giudice, 44, posted a collage on Instagram of Andy with herself and daughters. 'Happy Birthday @bravoandy from the Giudice family! Xoxo,' Teresa wrote in the caption. Her fellow RHONJ cast member Melissa Gorga also posted a photo of herself with Andy. Oscar winner: Julianne Moore also took to Twitter to acknowledge Andy's birthday Bravo host: Andy is shown last month in New York City 'Happy Birthday to this handsome guy! @bravoandy Always fun to be with!,' Melissa wrote in the caption. Kim Zolciak, 38, also posted a photo of herself with Andy on Watch What Happens Live. 'Happy Birthday to the master mind behind the madness @bravoandy We you and hope you have the most incredible day EVER!! #Happy21stBirthday #SexyBoss #TheManThatAlteredTheRealityTvPlatform,' Kim wrote in the caption. Reality star: Teresa Giudice posted a photo collage on Instagram as she wished Andy a happy birthday Sexy boss: Kim Zolciak used a 'sexy boss' hashtag in her Instagram posting for Andy's birthday Good times: Melissa Gorga in her birthday posting said she always has fun with Andy Happy birthday @bravoandy wishing you the best of health, happiness , love & success #zoolandering A photo posted by Kyle Richards Umansky (@kylerichards18) on Jun 2, 2016 at 9:36am PDT Andy was the head of development at Bravo for more than a decade but resigned from the role in November 2013. He remains an executive producer of The Real Housewives franchise and also hosts the network's chat show Watch What Happens Live. Andy is the first openly gay host of a Us late-night chat show. Walking the dog: Andy is shown last month walking his beloved dog Wacha in New York City Bravo star: The TV executive is shown in October 2009 in New York City She's known for pushing the fashion envelope. And Stella Maxwell proved she can put a new spin on a classic look as she showcased her svelte physique at the Daily's Summer premiere party where her magazine cover photo was revealed at the Smyth Hotel. The 26-year-old model flashed a hint of cleavage and toned torso in a plunging tuxedo-like ensemble at the New York City event on Thursday. Cover girl! Stella Maxwell, 26, showcased her svelte physique at the Daily's Summer premiere party where her magazine cover photo was revealed The Victoria's Secret Angel wore the satin black number which included a corset style top with long tails. It showed off her impeccable figure, buttoned up to a sweetheart neckline and revealed her bronzed rock hard abs. Created by designer Jeremy Scott, the Irish beauty teamed the unique item with slim-fitting trousers, finished with a cummerbund-like waistline. Man, she feels like a woman! The Victoria's Secret Angel flashed a hint of cleavage and toned torso in a plunging tuxedo-like ensemble at the New York City event on Thursday Tuxedo top: The blonde beauty wore the satin black corset-style top which included long tails Adding sparkle to the stunner's monochrome look was a pave diamond choker, one long vintage earring and several rings. The blonde beauty - who has been linked with Kristen Stewart and Miley Cyrus - braided the front half of her hair back. She opted for a shimmering gold eye shadow with thin black liner that made her blue eyes pop, rosy blush and pale pink lip. Bevy of beauties! Stella paused for a snapshot with fellow Victoria's Secret Angels (L-R) Jasmine Tookes and Lais Ribiero Talented: Created by designer Jeremy Scott, the Irish beauty teamed the unique top with slim-fitting trousers, finished with a cummerbund-like waistline Toned tummy! Hotel heiress Paris Hilton, 35, appeared to have gotten the memo that bare midriff was the theme of the night Comic strip cutie! The socialite wore a two-piece ensemble with fictional character Betty Cooper from the iconic Archie Comics emblazoned on the front Also in attendance at the reveal was hotel heiress Paris Hilton, 35, who appeared to have gotten the memo that bare midriff was the theme of the night. The socialite wore a two-piece ensemble with fictional character Betty Cooper from the iconic Archie Comics emblazoned on the front. She donned a halter style cropped top and skintight mini skirt with musical notes, as Betty played tambourine in Archie's garage band in the comic strips. I whip my hair back! Model Sasha Kichigina showed off a quirky furry wrap Black is back: Models Annika Krijt, Julia Jamin, Greta Varlese and Susanne Knipper wore nearly matching ensembles Models Isis Bataglia,Roosmarijn de Kok and Keke Lindgard posed up with designer Jeremy Scott Flawless! Paris donned a halter style cropped top and skintight mini skirt which showcased her impeccable figure Her golden tresses cascaded in medium barrel waves and parted down the middle. Paris went with a dramatic dark eye but balanced the look with soft pale lips and rosy cheeks. Reminding attendees of her DJ skills, she rounded out her look with black leather fingerless gloves and she wore sexy black ankle boots. Lovely in lace: Lais Ribeiro put on quite the show in a see-through black lace top He is known for his flawless selfies. And Gold Coast social media star Kurt Coleman has provided his top ten tips for taking the perfect selfie in any situation during a short video to celebrate the release of Zoolander 2. The video begins with the 19-year-old - who takes up to 500 selfies a day - providing advice on how to take the 'best activewear' snap. Decked out in tight gym clothes, the Instagram star is seen kicking back and enjoying a hot beverage. Scroll down for video Snapping away: Social media star Kurt Coleman provided his top ten tips on taking the perfect selfie in celebration of Zoolander 2 on DVD 'This is after my workout because everyone will think that,' Kurt, who boasts an Instagram following of 184,000 people, mischievously says in the three-minute flick. Hashtag post workout treat,' he adds while pursing his lips and clicking his iPhone at different angles. The camera then switches scenes to the social media star taking a up-close picture with a French bulldog dressed in a striped jumper. New scene: The camera then switches scenes to the social media star taking a up-close picture with a french bulldog dressed in a striped jumper Both need to be dapper: Kurt tells viewers your pet needs to be dressed in good clothes to take the perfect pet selfie Kurt tells viewers to dress their pets in good clothes if they want the likes. If your dog has bad clothes on, its not going to be as good as what you look like. You need to match with your dog, he says in his piece-to-camera. Again the avid social media user is seen snapping his camera at different angles. The short video then switches to Kurt on a picturesque beach. Just look away: The fresh face star says to look away to have a more natural appearance in a beach selfie Clicking away: Kurt is known for taking 500 selfies at a time Easy peasy: The Gold Coast native told viewers to just eat while you snapped away This time he tells fans to take a more 'natural' selfie while enjoying the surf and the sand. Pretend you are looking out at the surf or checking the view because that is natural really, he says as he turns his head away from his iPhone. He also advises fans to get their own signature selfie. What you do is - really pull it in. So if you are ridiculously good looking like me you can do this.' Raising one eyebrow, the selfie king extends his arm at shoulder length and clicks the button on his phone. Selfie stick: The Gold Coast native suggests using a selfie stick to capture your surroundings 'Just sippin': Kurt suggests to take 'hundreds' of pictures of yourself sipping on champagne because you'll eventually find one good one Double checking: The internet sensation flicked through the pictures he'd just taken on his iPhone When it comes to taking the perfect champagne snap, the teen instructs viewers 'to be sippin'. Obviously just take so many. You can take hundreds. If you can take that many youll find a good one anyway,' Kurt says as he positions the champagne flute near his mouth during the bar scene. He also provides advice on how to take a selfie after youve woken up, using a mirror, and how to take the perfect picture while eating. The video concludes with the fresh-faced Gold Coast personality suggesting to gain 'selfie' inspiration from fictional character Derek Zoolander and his iconic 'Blue Steel' pose. Inspirational: The video concludes with the fresh-faced Gold Coast personality suggesting to gain 'selfie' inspiration from fictional character Derek Zoolander and his iconic 'Blue Steel' pose Blue steel: Kurt told his fans to take inspiration for their very own pose from the Zoolander movie made famous for the 'Blue Steel' pose The video comes two days after the teen took to Instagram to post a video of himself post-tan, claiming that he doesn't think he even looks dark enough. He captioned the footage: 'When I'm like "I'm not even tanned",' and told his 184,000 followers: 'This isn't even enough' spray tan.' The fake tan regular continued inspecting his very dark face in the reflection and added: 'Like, if you think I'm tan, this is not even tan, like, this is white.' Zoolander 2 is available on DVD at your local retailer. He recently enjoyed a week long luxury holiday with his family. And Chris Hemsworth, 32, splashed out on a luxury $12,000-a-night suite during a trip to the One&Only Hayman Island resort in the heart of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Chris was joined by his wife Elsa Pataky and their three children India Rose, Tristan, and Sasha for the tropical getaway on the Whitsunday Islands, Queensland. Scroll down for video Luxury: Chris Hemsworth (R) was joined by wife Elsa Pataky (L) and their children for a lavish week-long getaway on the Whitsunday Islands recently Sources tell Daily Mail Australia that Chris was doing promotional work for Tourism Australia, after he narrated a popular advert this year which highlighted the beauty of the islands. Chris and his family are said to have stayed in the three-bedroom Owner's Penthouse, which starts at $12,000 a night. The Ghostbusters actor likely kept up his training regimen during the holiday, reportedly having a personal trainer with him and also spending his mornings in the resort's gym. See Chris Hemsworth updates as he and Elsa Pataky's stay on Hayman Island resort The height of luxury: The One&Only Hayman Island resort is located the heart of the Great Barrier Reef Sunset: With infinity pools and breathtaking views, it ranks among the most lavish destinations in Queensland Stunning beaches: It is believed Chris was doing promotional work for Tourism Australia, after he narrated a popular advert this year which highlighted the beauty of the islands Room with a view: Even the standard rooms (pictured) look decadent and give a glimpse of the lap of luxury the couple would have stayed in during their holiday According to the resort's website, the penthouse 'is the ultimate indulgence', featuring 'a large sitting room and dining area, three bedrooms (and) three bathrooms', as well as 'wrap around balcony.' It also 'includes (a) complimentary in-room bar, Internet access and personalised Butler service.' Even the standard rooms, featured on Trip Advisor, look decadent and give a glimpse of the lap of luxury the couple would have stayed in during their holiday. Chris recently moved his family from Los Angeles to coastal New South Wales after expressing a desire to raise his children Down Under. Luxury: Chris and his family are said to have stayed in the three-bedroom Owner's Penthouse at One&Only, which is believed to cost around $12,000 a night He reportedly spent $7.2 million on a Byron Bay property in September 2014 and the Hemsworth family have been frequently spotted there in recent months. Chris previously told Daily Mail Australia: Were spending more and more time back in Australia and I definitely want the kids to grow up here and spend time here. We were in California a lot. I missed it here and my wife missed it too so that was our goal to get back here, he added. Homecoming: Chris previously said, We were in California a lot. I missed it here and my wife missed it too so that was our goal to get back here' From Hollywood to Down Under: Chris reportedly spent $7.2 million on a Byron Bay property in September 2014, and the Hemsworth family have been frequently spotted there in recent months Earlier this year, he told Modern Luxury: 'I love what I do as an actor, but when you are surrounded by it constantly, it becomes a bit suffocating. 'Its nice to have conversations with people and be a part of a community that doesnt live and breathe that world. 'We were living shoulder to shoulder in the suburbs and thought thats not how we want our kids to grow up. Moving to a kind of farm setup back here on the coast in Australia has been the best thing.' Meanwhile, the extravagant One&Only resort notably featured on an episode of US sitcom Modern Family in 2014. She just returned from a tropical getaway in Maui, Hawaii. And Lea Michele showed off her sun-kissed skin when she hit the red carpet at the Television Academy's 70th Anniversary Celebration Gala. The 29-year-old star looked radiant in an asymmetrical strapless dress that showcases her bronzed legs at the Los Angeles event on Thursday. Shining star! Lea Michele, 29, looked radiant at the Television Academy's 70th Anniversary Celebration Gala in Los Angeles on Thursday The Scream Queens star made sure to turn heads at the star-studded affair in a nude-coloured frock which hit above the knee. Her couture gown included a plunging neckline which flashed a hint of cleavage and revealed her gym-honed arms. She slicked her silky tresses back into a low chic ponytail, as to not draw any attention away from her stunning ensemble. Sun-kissed stems! The Scream Queens star showed off her bronzed stems in the chic asymmetrical gown Standout star! The former Glee actress made sure to turn heads at the star-studded affair in a nude-coloured couture frock The sexy co-stars from Mr. Robot posed for a snapshot on the red carpet including Rami Malek, Portia Doubleday, Carly Chaikin and Christian Slater. Dancing With the Stars pro Derek Hough, 31, was hunky as always in a blue buttoned-up dress shirt and grey trousers. Scandal star Bellamy Young, 46, cut a ladylike figure in a flowing satin floral gown which included shades of tangerine and white. Sexy co-stars! Fellow Mr. Robot cast members (L-R) Rami Malek, Carly Chaikin, Portia Doubleday and Christian Slater stunned on the red carpet Handsome Hough! Dancing With the Stars pro Derek Hough, 31, was hunky as always in a blue buttoned-up dress shirt and grey trousers Pretty as a petal! Scandal star Bellamy Young, 46, cut a ladylike figure in a flowing satin floral gown, which she paired with Schutz pumps Pretty in pink! Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman, 53, showed off her toned torso in a satin black cropped top and high-waisted fucshia trousers Icons: Brady Bunch stars (L-R) Christoper Knight, Florence Henderson united with The Love Boat's Bernie Kopell and Jill Whelan for a 1970s ABC network reunion snapshot Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman, 53, showed off her toned torso in a satin black cropped top and high-waisted fucshia trousers. Oscar nominee Lily Tomlin looked sensational at 76 in a fitted black blazer with zippered neckline. Hollywood hunks David Hasselhoff, 63, with Ted Danson, 68, looked handsome as ever in fitted black suits. Forever young! Oscar nominee Lily Tomlin looked sensational at 76 in a fitted black blazer with zippered neckline Hollywood hunks! David Hasselhoff, 63, with Ted Danson, 68, looked handsome as ever in fitted black suits Coordinating couple! Hollywood power couple Harry Hamlin, 64, and Lisa Rinna, 52, matched their chic ensembles in all black attire Hollywood power couple Harry Hamlin, 64, and Lisa Rinna, 52, coordinated their chic ensembles in all black attire. Television personality and host Chelsea Handler, 41, revealed her ample cleavage and flawless physique in a plunging navy jumpsuit. The Brady Bunch stars Florence Henderson, 82, and Maureen McCormick, 59, appeared to have never aged from their 1970s hit family sitcom. Allison Janney, 56, looked youthful in a form-fitting LBD which cinched at the waist, highlighting her slender physique. Too hot to Handle-r! Television personality and host Chelsea Handler, 41, revealed her ample cleavage and flawless physique in a plunging navy jumpsuit Frozen in time! The Brady Bunch stars Florence Henderson, 82, and Maureen McCormick, 59, appeared to have never aged from their 1970s hit family sitcom Ageless beauty! Allison Janney, 56, looked youthful in a form-fitting LBD which cinched at the waist, highlighting her slender physique Seinfeld star! Michael Richards, 66, who played the famous Cosmo Kramer was all smiles at the star-studded gala All grown up: The Wonder Years star Fred Savage, 39, looked handsome in a dark suit with pine green necktie Revealing: Emmy nominee Niecy Nash, 46, put on a busty display in a beautiful floral colourful frock Icon: Legendary actor Bob Newhart, 86, from the Bob Newhart Show made an appearance at the gala Perfect pair! Rocky film star Carl Weathers, 68, and actress Christine Kludjian were a stunning couple on the red carpet Red carpet romance! Two and a Half Men star Jon Cryer, 51, looked polished in a grey suit with brown leather brogues as he attended with his wife Lisa Joyner Leggy blonde! Former Three's Company star Suzanne Somers, 69, dazzled in a gold and black sequinned mini-dress which showed off her ample bosom Floral frock: Yeardley Smith, 51, who is best known as the voice of Lisa Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons, wore a lovely flowing floral skirt Flawless! Law & Order actress Elisabeth Rohm, 43, showcased her enviable figure in a geometric coral and black form-fitting dress Stepping out! Actresses Carly Chaikin, 26, and Lisa Edelstein, 50, opted for sexy black ensembles but added a pop of colour their pointed toe heels Rose Byrne looked glamorous as she stepped out in New York City on Thursday. The actress, who welcomed baby son Rocco four months ago, wore a sheer black Chanel cocktail dress as she attended a Chanel Fine Jewelry event at The New York Public Library. The dinner was also attended by Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld, Girls actresses Allison Williams and Jemima Kirke, stylist Rachel Zoe, Dakota Fanning, Natasha Lyonne and Leelee Sobieski. Scroll down for video Lovely: Actress Rose Byrne looked chic in a sheer black cocktail dress as she arrived at Chanel's Fine Jewelry Dinner at The New York Public Library on Thursday Rose looked upbeat and flashed a smile as she strolled up the library steps. The Australian star, 36, shares son Rocco with actor partner Bobby Cannavale, 46. The brunette beauty's cocktail dress featured sheer sleeves and skirt overlay, and a pretty black ribbon waist and floral detail. Chic: The Australian actress' dress featured see-through sleeves and a ribbon waist Classy look: The 36-year-old welcomed son Rocco with partner Bobby Cannavale four months ago The X-Men: Apocalypse star accessorized with a white clutch in the shape of a perfume bottle. She added black pumps and a classic red manicure with matching crimson lipstick. Rose pulled her ombre brown hair back in a half-updo. Show-stopper: Rose pulled her brunette hair back in a half-updo and added bright red lipstick Fashion event: The X-Men star appeared to be in high spirits as she arrived at the Chanel bash Also at the star-studded event were Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld. Bestselling cookbook author Jessica, 44, looked chic in a white dress with frayed fabric neck and hemline, and a slim gold belt. Comedy legend Jerry, 62, looked sharp in a charcoal suit and navy tie. All smiles: Comedian Jerry Seinfeld and author wife Jessica Seinfeld also attended the dinner Unique look: Jessica wore a Chanel dress with layers of ripped white fabric on the neckline and hem Also attending the Chanel bash were Girls stars Allison Williams and Jemima Kirke. Allison, 28, went for a classic black and white combo, donning a sheer, black lace top over a long white skirt. Jemima, 31, looked chic in a black strapless gown and lace coat, paired with white and black flats. Girls stars: Allison Williams, left, wore a black lace top over a long white skirt, while her costar Jemima Kirke opted for a black mini with lace coat Lovely: Dakota Fanning looked fashionable in a Chanel dress with a leather skirt and floral bodice All that glitters: Wendi Deng looked incredible in an intricate sequin gown Actress Dakota Fanning also opted for a monochrome look. The 22-year-old's chic look featured a white bodice with embellished floral accents and mid-length leather skirt. She accessorized with glittering heels and a diamond flower bracelet. Orange Is The New Black star Natasha Lyonne also attended the event at the library, along with actress Leelee Sobieski. Strike a pose: Actresses Natasha Lyonne, left, and Leelee Sobieski also looked stylish in Chanel Natasha, 37, wore a shimmering black dress and carried a Chanel handbag. Leelee, 32, looked stylish in a metallic silver-and-white patterned ensemble, which featured two large black buttons on the chest. Also at the event was British model and DJ Atlanta de Cadenet Taylor, 24. Shimmering: DJ and model Atlanta de Cadenet Taylor stood out in a sparkly, purple frock Chanel fans: Model Hannah Bronfman, left, and actress Phoebe Tonkin also looked stylish at the dinner The daughter of Duran Duran musician John Taylor and chat show host Amanda de Cadenet wore a sparkling purple dress with pleated skirt. Also attending was model Hannah Bronfman, who wore a white and black checked coat over matching skirt, paired with silver sandals. Australian actress Phoebe Tonkin, 36, also attended, wearing a leather dress with embellished floral details. Musician and model Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis, 21, who is the son of actor Daniel Day-Lewis and French actress Isabelle Adjani, looked dapper in a light grey suit. DJ Leigh Lezark, 31, also attended, wearing a Chanel mini with white collar and cuffs. Looking good: Model and musician Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis and DJ Leigh Lezark also put in an appearance She has remained tight-lipped on why she and former husband Steve Pollock ended their one-year marriage earlier this year. But on Friday, Mel Greig threw out several hints during an interview on Channel Seven's The Daily Edition. Speaking to Tom Williams and Sally Obermeder, the 34-year-old radio personality hinted that the pair split on bad terms, rather nebulously saying: 'There's some things that have come to light that are going to be very hard to move forward from.' Scroll down for video Moving on: Mel Greig hinted her one-year marriage to Steven Pollock ended on bad terms during an interview with The Daily Edition on Friday Despite the difficult circumstances the radio host remained relatively upbeat saying: 'I'm fine, I honestly am. I have been through the worst battle I could possible be through, it happens to so many people.' 'A lot of marriages just don't last and there was a lot of stress on our marriage and it's just the way it is,' she continued. When asked by Sally if there was any chance of a reconciliation, Mel was honest in her answer saying: 'No, no reconciliation.' Mel continued to elaborate on the stress her marriage faced and mentioned that there were 'a few mistakes that were made by someone' which constituted the catalyst for their split. 'I'm fine, I honestly am': Despite the difficult circumstances the radio host remained relatively upbeat 'A lot of marriages just don't last': The blonde beauty acknowledged she's not alone in dealing with divorce 'In terms of reconciliation, there are some things that have come to light that are going to be very hard to move forward so it's no for the reconciliation and just focusing on moving forward.' She also went on to say that the couple will be going on a Hawaiian holiday together in the coming weeks. 'It's a group holiday that we booked and there are four other couples going and it's my best friend's husband's 40th.' 'No, no reconciliation': When asked by Sally Obermeder if there was any chance of a reconciliation, Mel was honest in her answer 'Just focusing on moving forward': Mel revealed there was some things that came to light, causing their split, which is keeping her focused on moving forward, rather than hoping for reconciliation 'I still want to go and support her, he still want to go so we're all going but I'm staying at a different hotel,' the blonde beauty added. 'We'll sit on opposite ends of the table but we'll still be amicable, I don't hate him. Like I said there are mistake which he has made that are stopping us from moving forward again but I don't hate him.' Following the interview, Mel took to Instagram to share a picture of herself on set, which she captioned with: 'Well that was funny and awkward ...thanks for having me'. 'Well that was funny and awkward': Following the interview, Mel (centre) took to Instagram to share a picture of herself on set with Tom Williams (left) and Sally (right) She also added the hashtags: 'single life', 'endometriosis', 'just keep smiling' and 'one life'. Mel announced her and Steve's break-up in April this year during an appearance on Channel Ten's morning program, Studio 10. 'I am separated from my husband now,' she said, explaining that Steve needed time 'to rediscover himself as an individual'. Case of the ex: Australian radio star Mel Grieg last month announced that she and her husband of just over one year, Steve Pollock, had separated 'It's been a couple of months that I've been dealing with that in private and because I have been so open about my endometriosis and my battle, it's hard when people ask you how's the baby-making going, when's he moving to Wollongong?' 'So now I just need to put it out there and say "this is what's happening." 'He's not moving to Wollongong. There are no babies on the way and we're going to deal with it in private, the best we can.' The pair tied the knot in November 2014 and recently had been doing long distance when Mel moved interstate to Sydney for her new job at Wave FM. She was left in a flood of tears on Thursday after her husband Oliver Curtis was found guilty of conspiracy to commit insider trading. And on Friday, Roxy Jacenko's day got a little bit brighter when a delivery man delivered a formidable bouquet of flowers as well as a large box of blooms to the PR maven. But the deliveries didn't stop there, with a mariachi band also arriving on her door-step in Sydney, with someone clearly committed to cheering up the blonde beauty. Scroll down for video Bizarre range of deliveries: A mariachi band were seen arriving on the doorstep of Roxy Jacenko's home in Sydney on Friday among a range of deliveries, after husband Oliver Curtis was convicted of insider trading Three men dressed in traditional outfits, including black studded trousers and matching sombreros were seen buzzing at the bottom of the building with instruments at the ready. Two of the trio had guitars across their bodies, while a third man delicately carried a violin in hand. While it's not known if the musical trio were for the PR maven, they appeared to patiently wait in line along with other deliveries for the family home. Attached to one large bunch of flowers was a handwritten note from a friend, addressed to the 34-year-old along with words of support. Traditional garb: Three men dressed in traditional outfits, including black studded trousers and matching sombreros walked to the building where the 34-year-old and her family live Waiting in line: While it's not known if the band was there for Roxy, they were seen waiting in line outside the apartment block with instruments at the ready Written on the inside of the card was the message: 'Dear Roxy, thinking of you and the family during this time. Pleas let me know if you need absolutely anything.' The former florist gushed on Instagram about her beautiful blooms, as she thanked those who sent the arrangements. 'Makes me want to revisit my former career as a florist!' Roxy wrote alongside an image of the red and pink bouquet. Sending love: A delivery man was spotted carrying a formidable bouquet of flowers toward the PR maven's door-step Sending words of support: Attached to one large bunch of flowers was a handwritten note, which appeared to be addressed to the 34-year-old Difficult time: Written on the inside of the card was the message: 'Dear Roxy, thinking of you and the family during this time. Pleas le me know if you need absolutely anything.' From a good friend? The flowers would no doubt have been an expensive gift, thanks to the addition of orchids and roses While, alongside a photo of the white bunch of flowers, the publicist added: 'Fav thing about Friday's - seeing @seedflora incredible creations'. Meanwhile, Roxy's Instagram page has been flooded with messages from friends since Thursday, with one commenting on her most recent photo: 'Hang in there roxy - you're a huge inspiration'. 'My heart just broke for you,' commented another. 'Makes me want to revisit my former career as a florist!' Roxy later took to Instagram to thank those who sent her the beautiful blooms Influx of support: More flowers were delivered to her doorstep and were carried by foot in a large cardboard box Other fans left words of encouragement, with one writing: 'stay strong lovely girl' while another commented: 'Thinking of you Roxy, you will put on a brave face and get done what needs to get done while being a supportive wife and mother.' Roxy has not posted on her personal social media pages since the Supreme Court of New South Wales handed down its ruling of her husband's case. On Thursday, her investment banker husband was found guilty of conspiracy to commit insider trading. Staying silent: Roxy has not posted on her personal social media pages since the Supreme Court of New South Wales handed down its findings Emotional: On Thursday afternoon Roxy was spotted shedding some tears while leaving the Supreme Court of New South Wales in Sydney, separately from her husband Oliver Curtis after he was found guilty of conspiracy to commit insider trading The PR guru was spotted shedding tears while leaving the Supreme Court of New South Wales in Sydney, separately from her spouse. In an all-black ensemble, the mother-of-two emerged outside of the court, keeping her head down and not speaking to the press. She had arrived earlier that morning in rather conservative attire, wearing a black Christian Dior dress teamed with a military style Balmain jacket. Solemn: In an all-black ensemble, the mother-of-two emerged outside of the court, while her husband Oliver walked the other way In all black: She was seen wearing a black dress teamed with a matching blazer Serious: The mother-of-two shielded her eyes with a pair of dark sunglasses While the pair arrived at court that day hand-in-hand, they left separately in the afternoon with Oliver walking in one direction and Roxy in the other with her mother Doreen. The jury delivered its verdict on Thursday following a tense three week trial where Oliver's former best friend and schoolmate John Hartman was pitted against him. Oliver, 30, could face up to five years imprisonment and/or a $220,000 fine over the charge. Hard times: The PR guru understandably struggled to keep her emotions in check Support: Roxy's mother Doreen Jacenko was by her side Oliver had vigorously denied the charge, pleading not guilty. But following two days of deliberations, the eight men and four women of the jury disavowed his plea. Over the course of the trial, the New South Wales Supreme Court heard Oliver traded using inside information from Hartman on 45 occasions between May 2007 and June 2008. Devastated: The PR maven was visibly emotional as she made her way back to her car Keeping her head down: As she made her way towards a dark vehicle, the media personality did not speak to press Tense times? Earlier that morning Roxy and husband Oliver had arrived holding hands Kate Beckinsale pushed a cart full of luggage in style on Thursday upon arriving at Los Angeles International Airport. The 42-year-old English actress was effortlessly fabulous in an all-black ensemble that featured long sheer sleeves. Beckinsale had her shiny chestnut brown hair down in soft curls below her shoulders and accessorised with round mirrored sunglasses and a plain choker necklace. Lady in black: Kate Beckinsale was effortlessly stylish on Thursday upon arrival at Los Angeles International Airport The Underworld star had several suitcases stacked up as she returned to Los Angeles after a trip to Europe. Beckinsale attended the after party for the Christian Dior Cruise 2016/2017 presentation on Tuesday night at the private members club LouLou's in London. She also attended the Lady Dior party on Monday at the Audley pub in Mayfair, London. Beckinsale was praised by her Pearl Harbor director Michael Bay, 51, on Wednesday after she told a story on The Graham Norton Show about being cast in his 2001 epic war movie. English actress: The Underworld star returned to Los Angeles after spending some time in Europe The actress while on the chat show on May 29 said that Bay told her that she would have to 'work out' for her role as a 1940s nurse. Bay took to his website to shoot down the body-shaming story. 'Really? This poster has hung proudly over my desk for 15 years. Yesterday I read in the press that I dont think Kate Beckinsale is ''a stunning beauty,'' huh?,' Bay wrote along with a photo of a Pearl Harbor poster featuring Beckinsale as Lieutenant Evelyn Johnson. New movie: The actress has been promoting her new movie Love & Friendship 'And they went on to suggest that Kate and I dont like each other? Well, totally untrue. Kate and I are friendly. She is a fantastic actress, very funny, witty lady, sassy, speaks her mind, and I truly respect her,' Bay added. The Bad Boys director pointed out that Beckinsale has 'come to so many of my Christmas parties and Birthday parties'. 'The reporter made her story into some scandalous confrontation, when it was nothing of the sort. Spoke to Kate today and she felt she told a funny story,' Bay wrote. Truly respect: Michael Bay took to his website on Wednesday to praise Kate after she relayed a story about her casting for Pearl Harbor 'So I guess I was the "bad guy" 16 years ago for suggesting a trainer because she just had her new beautiful baby girl - and she was about to enter into an intensive action movie. Note to reporters: 95 per cent of leads in movies have trainers and drink green juice!,' he concluded. Beckinsale was on the chat show promoting her latest movie Love & Friendship based on the Jane Austen novel Lady Susan. The critically acclaimed romantic comedy was set for wider release on Friday in the US and was released last week in the UK. Laverne Cox was pretty in pink while out in LA on Thursday. The actress wore a Romeo Hunte mini dress as she attended the premiere of her new documentary Free Cece! at The LA Film Festival at the Arclight Cinemas in Culver City. The 32-year-old added a stack of vintage gold Chanel necklaces as she attended the screening of the film, in which she also stars. Think pink: Actress Laverne Cox wore a pink mini dress to the premiere of her documentary Free CeCe! at the Los Angeles Film Festival on Thursday Laverne interviews transgender woman and former prisoner CeCe McDonald in the documentary. CeCe was arrested for stabbing a man to death in what she said was self-defense, after he assaulted her in an attack that was seen as racist and trans-phobic. Her case became famous, and she spent time in a men's prison before being released in 2014, and Laverne's new documentary tells her story. Stylish: The Orange Is The New Black star added vintage Chanel necklaces and a gold clutch Premiere: Laverne appears in the documentary, which follows the story of transgender activist CeCe McDonald The actress told GLAAD CeCe's case hit home, because she could easily have been in CeCe's shoes and found herself in a dangerous situation that quickly escalated into violence. 'But for the grace of God I could be CeCe McDonald,' she said. 'CeCes case represents a long list of instances of violence against transgender women who are disproportionately trans women of color.' On Thursday, the transgender star added pink heels, and accessorized with a geometric, gold clutch as she celebrated her film's premiere. Support: Laverne was joined by her Rocky Horror costars Victoria Justice and Reeve Carney. They're starring in a remake of the camp classic that will air on Fox this fall Activist: Transgender woman CeCe McDonald, who was imprisoned in a men's prison after stabbing a man to death in self-defense, discusses her past with Laverne in the documentary CeCe, who served just under two years after a plea deal, also attended, wearing a black body-con jumpsuit. Also showing their support at the premiere were actress Victoria Justice, who wore a blue satin bomber jacket and black skinny jeans, and Penny Dreadful star Reeve Carney. Victoria, 23, and Reeve, 33, both co-star with Laverne in Fox's new remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which will air in the fall. Cute look: Twenty-three-year-old Victoria wore a bright blue bomber coat and skinny jeans Film festival: Actress Gabrielle Union wore a black and white dress with a sheer bodice as she attended Also out at The Los Angeles Film Festival was actress Gabrielle Union, who attended a master class session with actor-turned-director Nate Parker. The 43-year-old looked stylish in a black and white dress with a sheer lace top and monochrome striped skirt. The Being Mary Jane star slicked her dark hair back in a chic ponytail and added bright red lipstick. She became the ultimate bikini queen thanks to a skimpy white swimsuit and a well-timed stint on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! 10 years ago. And Myleene Klass, 38, proved she is still worthy of her title as she showcased her incredible figure in an attention grabbing gold bikini in a new Instagram snap on Friday morning. The skimpy metallic number made the most of the mother-of-two's toned curves, enviable abs and taut tummy as she got her groove on in the sunshine. Scroll down for video Golden girl: Myleene Klass, 38, showcased her toned curves in a skimpy gold bikini as she got her groove on with her gal pals while enjoying her latest holiday in the sunshine The 38-year-old presenter, musician and model looked like she was having a whale of a time as she posed with friends and punched the air in celebration. With the triangle string bikini, a trio of golden lucky charm chains and a pair of large sunglasses, Myleene needed nothing else to complete her poolside look. While one pal wore a matching gold bikini, her other girlfriend went for a more demure golden one-piece swimsuit, with a plunging neckline and high leg cut. ABS-olutely fabulous: The skimpy metallic number made the most of the mother-of-two's toned curves, enviable abs and taut tummy as she got her groove on in the sunshine Bikini queen: The TV personality became the ultimate bikini queen thanks to a skimpy white swimsuit and a well-timed stint on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! 10 years ago Cute twosome: Myleene was joined on her holiday by her two adorable daughters, Ava, eight, and Hero, five, from her marriage to ex-husband Graham Quinn, who she divorced in 2013 As well as enjoying a spot of sunshine with her gal pals, Myleene was joined on her holiday by her two adorable daughters, Ava, eight, and Hero, five, from her marriage to ex-husband Graham Quinn, who she divorced in 2013. The TV personality posted a sweet snap of the two girls wearing matching outfits as they posed by a stunning infinity pool. And it was a real family affair, with Myleene's father also joining them on the trip. Daddy cool: It was a real family affair, with Myleene's father also joining them on the trip Fun in the sun: The classically-trained musician posted another cute picture of the former Royal Navy diver treating little Ava how to scuba dive The classically-trained musician posted another cute picture of the former Royal Navy diver treating little Ava how to scuba dive. Despite previously vowing never to marry again following her acrimonious split from her ex-husband, the star has recently been reported to have found love once more. Myleene met fashion PR Simon Motson last Autumn shortly after he split from his wife, and have slowly got to know each other better since. New project: The TV star made an appearance on ITV's Lorraine on Tuesday morning to promote her new documentary 'Myleene Klass: Single Mums On Benefits' According to the Sunday Mirror. Myleene has told friends: 'I have never, hand on my heart, been happier.' 'Its new. Im not gonna put any conditions on it Im literally gonna roll with the punches because Ive learned you cant plan anything. 'Its just nice to be fearless and thats going to be my mode from now on.' The mother-of-two has recently divided viewers for her ITV programme 'Myleene Klass: Single Mums On Benefits', with some praising her honesty while others have slammed the millionaire presenter for not understanding the struggle of everyday working mums. Dressed to impress: Myleene looked stunning in a cream lace-detail dress for her busy morning of promo for the show, before jetting out of London for her sun-soaked break Moving on: Despite previously vowing never to marry again following her acrimonious split from her ex-husband (pictured together in 2005), the star has recently been reported to have found love once more They were spotted getting cosy during a holiday in Bali in March and now, two months on, Michael Klim has confirmed his relationship with fashion designer Desiree Deravi. Taking to Instagram on Thursday to gush about his new flame, the six-time Olympic champion reminisced over the he time spent with the tanned beauty in an idyllic location. 'Take me back please,' he captioned the throwback snap, which showed only half of his face submerged from the surf. Scroll down for video 'My love': Olympic swimmer Michael Klim confirmed his relationship with fashion designer Desiree Deravi in a throwback post to Instagram on Thursday A bikini-clad Desiree could just be seen in the background standing on a board and holding up a paddle in one hand. Michael made sure to add the hash-tag 'mylove' and tagged her in the post. A smitten Desiree also shared her own photo from the envy-inducing vacation with the father-of-three. Holding on tight: The fashionista leads the competitive swimmer out into the crystal clear waters Holding tightly onto Michael's hand, the fashionista appears to lead the competitive swimmer out into the crystal clear water. 'More, more, more,' she wrote alongside the picture. Daily Mail has contacted a representative for the star to comment. The pair were first spotted enjoying a casual lunch with friends in Bali in March. First seen together: The pair were first spotted enjoying a casual lunch with friends in Bali in March The two appeared to be relaxed and at ease as they cuddled up for a group shot. Michael's estranged wife Lindy Klim has also moved on with Englishman Adam Ellis. The pair were pictured attending a number of shows at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia. Speaking with Daily Mail Australia, the mother-of-three said she didn't predict falling back in love so soon after her split from Michael. '[It's] completely not what I expected, to fall back into another relationship, but he's so lovely,' she said cheerfully. 'It's about time I got on with my life.' Moving forward: Michael's estranged wife Lindy Klim (left) has also moved on with Englishman Adam Ellis (right) She also said it was 'difficult' juggling single parenthood, and she wished Michael and his new flame Desiree Deravi 'all the best'. Michael and Lindy, who tied the knot in 2006, announced their separation in a joint statement after months of speculation in February. The pair's management told News.com.au: 'It is with much respect for each other that Michael and Lindy Klim have agreed to formally separate, believing that this decision is best for their family.' 'Michael and Lindy's children will always remain their highest priority, and their happiness will be Michael and Lindy's primary focus. We ask that you respect their privacy at this time.' The pair have three children together - two daughters, Stella, 10, and Frankie, three, and son, Rocco, seven. Dominic Purcell has broken his nose in two places after an iron bar fell on his head while filming the latest series of Prison Break in Morocco. The Prison Break star shared the news through social media and posted two pictures showing his bandaged nose and gashes to his head on Instagram after sustaining the injuries on Monday. The 46-year-old actor was flown by emergency helicopter from Marrakesh to Casablanca for urgent hospital treatment, while his girlfriend AnnaLynne McCord, who was on set at the time, was by his side. Scroll down for video Accident: Dominic Purcell shared the news he had broken his nose twice through social media after sustaining the injuries on Monday in Morocco Lucky escape: The 46-year-old actor was flown by emergency helicopter from Marrakesh to Casablanca for urgent hospital treatment Captioning a photograph of his deep wounds and nose, he wrote: 'Had a little accident on set. Haha! Back at work asap. Pays to have a thick skull when an iron bar falls on your #head!! 'Busting it open severely also broke my nose in two places. Haha.I got a free nose job out of it...... Stoked to be alive. All good.' He jokingly downplayed his serious injuries and revealed that it was only his tough fibre that saved him from being killed. 'Doc said I have an unusually tough tissue fiber that's what saved me apparently. Thank god for my #Viking heritage hahaha !!!!' he wrote. The Prison Break star (pictured on the set of the show) jokingly downplayed his serious injuries But the star praised his 90210 star girlfriend for helping him overcome his injuries, and admitted he was 'lucky to be alive'. Alongside a snap of the couple, he wrote: 'Thank god my love @theannalynnemccord was there when my unfortunate accident occurred on set. 'She went into raging #momma mode along with #christinanorthup and got me the right care. Show goes on. No worries !!! 'Oh being airlifted out on a helicopter was another adventure I didn't expect. Thought the bloody thing was going to fall from the sky!!! What a day it was. Grateful to be alive.' Cute couple: Dominic's long-term love, 90210 star AnnaLynne McCord, was on set with him at the time of his dramatic injury Dominic shared the photos with his 363,000 Instagram followers and quickly attracted support from his legion of fans. His first upload garnered 37,700 likes and thousands of messages of encouragement and the second picture quickly attracted 22,100 likes and hundreds of comments in a matter of hours. The later snap showed the actor's svelte torso, as he disclosed he had lost 12 pounds while filming in the desert for series five of Prison Break. But the near death experience didn't bring about any epiphany for the Australian heartthrob, who plays Lincoln Burrows in the hit drama. Tough guy: The actor shared a snap from the set of his latest movie prior to his accident 'I wish I could say I discovered something profound out of my near miss. Ummmmm nothing yet just a broken nose and a hundred stitches in my head,' he said. Dominic and AnnaLynne reunited in March after splitting in 2014 following a three-year relationship. 'I'm very happy, I have my best friend back, so it's cool,' the blonde beauty gushed on a podcast. The award-winning actress revealed that the pair became friends again after Dominic, 46, was diagnosed with skin cancer last year. But their relationship soon turned romantic again as she explained: 'I came back into his life as his friend, and I took him to his doctor's appointments.' 'I was there with him because whether or not he knew it, I love him.' . She's as well known for her sense of style as she is for her stellar acting career. And Dakota Fanning opted for grown-up glamour in another chic ensemble on Thursday night as she joined the star-studded fashion pack at the Chanel Fine Jewelry event at The New York Public Library. The actress, 22, showcased her vampy side as she slipped into a skintight PVC pencil skirt, which she teamed with a cute floral embellished white bodice. Scroll down for video Fashion's finest: Dakota Fanning opted for grown-up glamour in another chic ensemble on Thursday night as she joined the star-studded fashion pack at the Chanel Fine Jewelry event at The New York Public Library The Twilight star's striking look didn't finish there as she strutted up the iconic library's stairs in a pair of silver-encrusted strappy black Louboutin heels. Her joy at attending the event was evident as she she sported a huge smile, which accentuated her natural make-up. Like a true movie-star, Dakota's sleek blonde locks caught the wind perfectly and flicked to the side as she looked around to take in her surroundings. The beauty - who started her career at the tender age of five- relied on accessories to pull her look together. The lady is a vamp: The actress, 22, showcased her vampy side as she slipped into a skintight PVC pencil skirt, which she teamed with a cute floral embellished white bodice Dressed to impress: The Twilight star's striking look didn't finish there as she strutted up the iconic library's stairs in a pair of silver-encrusted strappy black Louboutin heels A stunning black clutch which exhibited a silver detailing was firmly placed in her hands, which sported an array of dazzling silver jewellery. An incredibly hard-worker when it comes to the acting business, the talented thespian has been keeping herself busy in a variety of projects. Dakota recently wrapped up filming for Please Stand By, in which she stars opposite Alice Eve and Helen Hunt. Fanning her look: Dakota's sleek blonde locks caught the wind perfectly and flicked to the side as she looked around to take in her surroundings Style rules: The natural beauty relied on accessories to pull her look together- which included a chic clutch and a silver bangle and rings The film follows a young autistic woman who runs away from her caregiver as she tries to submit her manuscript to a writing competition. She will also play the role of Merry Levov who commits an act of political terrorism in the crime drama American Pastoral. But despite her successful acting career, the actress is itching to get on the other side of the camera. Lovely: Actress Rose Byrne looked chic upon arrival in a sheer black cocktail dress 'I value the relationship that I have with a director so much, and I would be really excited to be on the other end of that relationship.' she recently told Indiewire. Both films are scheduled for release in 2016. Other stars at the Chanel event included Neighbors star Rose Byrne, Girls' Allison Williams and actress Amanda Peet. Her plentiful cleavage and perfectly honed curves have helped her grace the front cover of countless lads' mags. And Casey Batchelor, 31, once again ensured all eyes were on her as she squeezed her ample assets in to a skin-tight bodysuit at the Nudestix cosmetics launch at The Light Lounge in London on Thursday night. The extreme plunging one piece bared her toned arms and was tucked in to a matching flower-print skirt, giving the look a demure vibe. Scroll down for video Voluptuous: Casey Batchelor, 31, attended the Nudestix cosmetics launch in London on Thursday night A delicate gold chain rested upon her collarbones- further accentuating her glistening decolletage region. The floral number cinched her in at the waist and fanned out before falling at a midi-length level, displaying a peek of her tanned legs. Accentuating her 5 ft 4 in frame, the Celebrity Big Brother star opted for a pair of simple black stiletto heels. Her highlighted brunette locks cascaded down in voluminous curls to frame her face, while she placed the make-up drama on her smokey eyes. Sticking to a nude lip and blush-infused cheeks, the beauty looked in high spirits as she posed up a storm and mingled with her pals. Head-turner: The extreme plunging one piece put her busty cleavage on display and toned was tucked in to a matching demure flower-print skirt, giving the look a demure vibe Stunning garment: The floral number cinched her in at the waist and fanned out before falling at a midi-length level Stylish: Accentuating her 5 ft 4 in frame, the Celebrity Big Brother star opted for a pair of simple black stilettos In terms of her personal life, Casey has had a hectic time in recent months, including a short-lived romance with Union J's JJ Hamblett, 27, while he was on a break from girlfriend Caterina Lopez. However, Casey was reportedly left 'shocked' when JJ reunited with his model girlfriend Caterina Lopez - the mother of his son, Princeton, two - without telling her. A source told The Sun at the time: 'They decided to take it slow and really enjoyed each other's company. Casey was raving about him and thought he was a great guy. Blow-dried perfection: Casey's highlighted brunette locks cascaded down down in voluminous curls to frame her face Vamping it up: She placed the make-up drama on her smokey eyes and blushed cheeks Reality star babes: Casey mingled with her TOWIE pal, Danielle Armstrong Bottoms up! Just back from their Only Way Is Essex group vacation, Danielle returned to the London nightlife scene with boyfriend boyfriend James Locke 'She has been treated badly in the past and is a sucker for love, so it was shocking for her to all of a sudden see that he and Caterina had reunited. He didn't tell her they were getting back together.' A spokesperson for Casey told MailOnline: 'I can confirm that Casey was dating JJ Hamblett when he was single. Casey has now moved on.' And she most certainly seemed to be enjoying the single life as she sunned herself on a recent trip in the South of France with her gal pals. Stunning couple: Love Island's Cally Jane Beech and Luis Morrison also attended the event. They met on the steamy dating show last year In love: The pair were obviously smitten and complemented each other with varying shades of green Couple's affair: Danielle had a nip slip as she arrived on the arms of James Lock Meanwhile, other attendees at the make-up launch included Love Island's Cally Jane Beech and Luis Morrison, who met on the steamy dating show a year ago. Cally Jane stood out in a statement mint oversized blazer, while Luis Morrison complimented her in an all black ensemble, finished with a khaki jacket. Hollyoaks' Gemma Oaten, TOWIE's Pascal Craymer and Danielle Armstrong were also among the plethora of guests. Bold and beautiful: TOWIE's Pascal Craymer stood out in a bright pink body-hugging dress Alluring: X-Factor's Chloe Paige looked demure in a snakeskin print dress which hugged her figure Jeremy McConnell has insisted his ex Stephanie Davis is not pregnant with his child and has even called for a DNA test if she gives birth to prove she is lying. The former Celebrity Big Brother contestant called Stephanie's claims 'ridiculous,' and added she would look like a 'mug' when it is revealed any child is not his after a paternity test, Ireland's TV Now Magazine reports. Following a bitter war of words between the former couple last week, the 26-year-old again said: 'I'm not going to be a dad. If she is pregnant, it's not mine. Scroll down for video No love lost: Jeremy McConnell has insisted his ex Stephanie Davis is not pregnant with his child and has even called for a DNA test if she gives birth to prove she is lying 'If I was a dad, I'd be 100% no, 110%, the best dad in the world. But you'll see in the future that it's not my kid, and she'll look like a mug,' he added. A representative for Stephanie said in a statement to MailOnline: 'Our client is categorically pregnant. We do not need to continue repeating this.' Despite their strained relationship, Jeremy showed he still cared for the former Hollyoaks actress and dismissed her behaviour as a tactic to secure media coverage. 'I still love Steph and Id never bad mouth her, but I just think the whole thing is a media approach and its ridiculous,' he said. Just over a week ago Stephanie, 23, alleged her ex had a serious drug problem and begged him to go to rehab. In response, Jeremy vehemently denied he was abusing narcotics and accused Stephanie of having an affair with her ex-boyfriend Sam Reece during their rocky four-month romance. War of words: The former Celebrity Big Brother contestant called Stephanie's claims 'ridiculous' The former Beauty School Cop-Out star also denied Stephanie's claims again that he is the father of her unborn child. Posting a lengthy statement on Twitter, he wrote: 'Was gonna stay quiet about the whole thing and just let it come out normally, first of all I'd like to let people know I'm perfectly healthy mind and body and have took the break up privately, but when me and my family are effected by what I'd call a person with no shame, she is slandering me and trying to portray me in a certain light for a reason, to make me look like a terrible lad. 'People can choose to believe or not. I do not care. For months she was seeing Sam behind my back and now in Ibiza together. It will all unfold in time. 'Healthy mind and body': The Irish male model posted a lengthy statement on Twitter last week, denying he had a drug problem and accusing her of having an affair with her ex Sam Reece 'People don't know what I put with in that relationship. I was never perfect but please, don't believe 90 per cent of what she says. I've messed up but I'd never be as evil. This will be my last message about her #bookclosed.' The night before his lengthy post, he tweeted: 'I'm as shocked as all you are at this whole saga, I'm sure you can join the dots yourself #letmelive. 'She's not pregnant with my child come on. It's all lies I've been told by her friends.' The following morning, an angry Steph hit back: 'Tell me I'm not pregnant and keep denying your child, and I#ll throw u right under that bus as the s**t I have in u, u would never survive!' Responding to Jeremy's claims she's in Spain with her ex - who she dumped on TV after falling for Jeremy on Celebrity Big Brother - Stephanie posted a photo of her legs on a balcony in Liverpool. She wrote: 'Sorry does his tweet not show how f**ked he is... I'm in Ibiza with Sam.......... Sure I'm in Liverpool. Turbulent: Stephanie and Jeremy dated for four months and split numerous times 'Let's look positively he needs this to sort his life out , for all u to understand what I've been through with his crazy mind. It's all good.' Jeremy's statement came an hour after Stephanie posted her own lengthy essay, accusing her ex of failing to turn up for baby scans. She wrote: 'I think it's disgusting that Jeremy hasn't turned up for scans and is constantly drunk and partying, the stress he has had me under. I've already been in hospital once with pains and stress. 'I don't hate the lad I feel very VERY sorry for him the fact no one is getting him the help he needs. His management should have him in rehab and sorting his life out so he can then be there for his child before he dies. 'I wouldn't mind but don't WANT to get someone pregnant and have a family. To not be there. I'm happy doing it alone. Off for a chilled week away with bump. 'Been doing this since his act from Big Brother was over after sleeping with what 9 girls now? Boy need help. Sort it out and be a dad. Bye for now, Steph.' The night before the post, Stephanie shared a brief video clip - believed to taken in April during their holiday in Cape Verde - of a bloodied Jeremy. Concerns: The former Hollyoaks actress accused Jeremy of being a drug addict and urged him to go to rehab Former flame: Jeremy accused Stephanie of having an affair with her ex-boyfriend Sam Reece, who she dumped to date the Irish male model in January In the nine second clip, Jeremy is heard to say: 'This is going straight on Twitter and you're going to watch it go on Twitter. You're going to watch this go on Twitter. You don't think I will? You don't think I will?' A voice that sounds like Stephanie is heard off camera, saying: 'Get off me. Get the f**k off.' Tweeting afterwards, she declared: 'U all give me s**t... U have no idea what I've put up with, with that man, now, I'm going to look after me & my baby. Now u know! #dontjudge.' Responding to the video posting, Jeremy tweeted: 'We were in Africa , I videoed it, I never once outed her for the abuse, she done it herself #truth. After someone tweeted him 'there was video evidence of the behaviour', he replied: 'I took the video.' At the time of their visit to Cape Verde, Jeremy was reported to have been hospitalised and needed six stitches in his hand during a row with his girlfriend. A source told The Sun in April: 'Jeremy and Stephanie had a huge fight last night which ended with him having to get six stitches. They were both screaming foul language and a number of guests complained as they had small children with them. 'When the hotel's security came to the room the place was trashed. Stephanie verbally attacked them too and they eventually had to call the police to calm things down. Reception staff have described them as the worst guests they've ever had.' MailOnline reached out to Jeremy's reps for comment, while Stephanie's spokesperson declined to comment. Moving on: Stephanie, pictured last weekend, claims she is pregnant with Jeremy's baby, which he has vehemently denied Following a week of speculation and deleted tweets, the actress confirmed her pregnancy in an interview with OK! magazine on Monday. She said: 'My pregnancy was a shock but I can't wait to be a mum. I hope that Jeremy will want to be a part of this baby's life, but if he decides not to then I am prepared to raise our baby on my own. 'I'm so excited to be a parent, I couldn't be happier.' Meanwhile, The Only Way Is Essex star Danielle Armstrong has denied having a private message conversation with Stephanie back in February, which was shared on Twitter on Thursday. Steph shared a conversation appearing to be between the two women discussing Jeremy and Megan McKenna following a night out at Sheesh in Chigwell, Essex, which also included what seemed to be Danielle's mobile phone number. However, Danielle's rep told MailOnline that the conversation was fabricated and it isn't even the TOWIE's star phone number. He said: 'Danielle is completely shocked that Steph would take to social media to fabricate an entire conversation that never occurred and in turn, a Twitter profile to corroborate it alongside a fake phone number. 'It is clear that Stephanie is a distraught and unstable woman at present and Danielle hopes that she seeks the necessary help to recover.' On-screen romance: Stephanie and Jeremy fell for each other on Celebrity Big Brother in January - while she was still dating Sam Reece Innocent: Stephanie tried to drag Danielle Armstrong (pictured with Jeremy and Megan McKenna in February 2016) into the row by sharing a fabricated conversation with TOWIE star on Twitter She's walked the runway for the best designers in the world and fronted major campaigns. But Cara Delevingne has lent her modelling skills to a different cause, fronting a new campaign to raise awareness of trophy hunting and poaching in the animal kingdom. The British model has stripped off for the I'm Not A Trophy campaign, proudly sharing the stunning shots on her Instagram page on Friday. Scroll down for images Cara poses up a storm in the black and white shots, taken and created by French artist Arno Elias. Her naked figure has been covered in colourful projections of endangered species, for a series of stunning images. Cara told her fans about her team-up with the new campaign, writing on Instagram: 'I am so proud to be the an ambassador of @imnotatrophy organization to create greater awareness in the malicious acts of trophy hunting and poaching of endangered species! imnotatrophy.org' The model is the first Ambassador of the first ever I'm not a Trophy campaign, which is aimed at encouraging greater education, understanding, and appreciation of the acts of trophy hunting. Speaking to Marie Clare, Cara explains that she got involved after meeting Arno through a model pal. 'I was introduced to Arno's work after falling in love with the images he did for my friend and fellow model, Suki Waterhouse', she says. 'Suki put us in touch and before we knew it we were in Paris shooting together.' She added of her work with the anti poaching movement: 'I am extremely passionate about animals and am so honored to be representing an organisation and cause that is fighting for the rights of these innocent lives.'. In addition to supporting endangered species, the campaign also aims to empower women, another message close to the model and actress' heart. 'I wanted to highlight women as powerful figures within our society,' she says. Melanie Griffith was seen strutting out of West Hollywood hotspot Craig's solo on Thursday evening. The 58-year-old Oscar nominee - whose mother is Tippi Hedren - covered her sleeveless LBD with a white wrap and she wore black T-strap heels. The Hawaii Five-O actress sported full make-up and rocked diamond earrings with a large diamond ring for her night out. Scroll down for video Fierce after 50! Melanie Griffith was seen strutting out of West Hollywood hotspot Craig's solo on Thursday evening Eighties It girl: The 58-year-old Oscar nominee - whose mother is Tippi Hedren - covered her sleeveless LBD with a white wrap and she wore black T-strap heels Hillary Clinton supporter: The Hawaii Five-O actress sported full make-up and rocked diamond earrings with a large diamond ring for her night out Meanwhile, Melanie's ex-husband #3 Antonio Banderas - who's dating Dutch investment consultant Nicole Kempel - just opened up about his life after their 2014 divorce. 'My life changed very much during the last two years, personal reasons,'the 55-year-old Golden Globe winner told E! News this week of their 18-year marriage. 'The possibility of reinventing myself was there, and so I said, "Probably this is the moment that I can do this."' The Automata actress and the Spanish heartthrob share a 19-year-old daughter Stella, who was especially rebellious. Miami fashion week: Meanwhile, Melanie's ex-husband #3 Antonio Banderas - who's dating Dutch investment consultant Nicole Kempel - just opened up about his life after their 2014 divorce (pictured Thursday) The 55-year-old Golden Globe winner told E! News: 'My life changed very much during the last two years, personal reasons. The possibility of reinventing myself was there, and so I said, "Probably this is the moment that I can do this"' 'She was not very obedient, but I learn from her': The Automata actress and the Spanish heartthrob share a 19-year-old daughter Stella, who was especially rebellious 'I told my kids sometimes, but in fact, the reality is I learned from them more. They were not very obedient, but I learn from them,' admitted Antonio. 'Especially from my little one, Stella. And at the beginning I thought it's not the thing that's actually making her look better, but then I realized it was part of a tendency. 'Because I saw her coming home with a bunch of her friends and they were all in the same style, so it's a tendency. Everybody's going there for some reason. It's very interesting how people, we all, react to tendencies.' Griffith also has a daughter Dakota, 26, with ex-husband #1 Don Johnson; and a son Alexander, 30, with ex-husband #2 Steven Bauer. Working girl: Griffith will next play Laura Lee in J.L. Family Ranch with Jon Voight (R) and James Caan, which airs August 21 on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Me and the ever so handsome Jon Voight on the set of JL Ranch A photo posted by MELANIE (@melanie_griffith57) on Jan 24, 2016 at 3:03am PST The Hillary Clinton supporter will next play Laura Lee in J.L. Family Ranch with Jon Voight and James Caan, which airs August 21 on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. Melanie will also play Jean Shelton in James Franco's comedy The Masterpiece, which hits US theaters this fall. The behind-the-scenes spoof of Tommy Wiseau's terrible 2003 flick The Room also stars Sharon Stone, Bryan Cranston, and Zac Efron. 'You're tearing me apart Lisa!' Melanie will also play Jean Shelton in James Franco's comedy The Masterpiece, which hits US theaters this fall She's currently chronicling her sun-drenched Greek vacation to her 52,000 Instagram followers. And Ashley James, 29, proved it was difficult for her to be seen in anything other than a skimpy bikini as she shared yet another eye-popping snap of her derriere to her social media platform. The former Made In Chelsea star donned a quirky pineapple print bikini - but instead of her usual busty displays, she allowed her pert posterior to take prominence. Scroll down for video Bold: Ashley James, 29, shared yet another eye-popping snap of her derriere from her Greek holiday in a fun-print bikini to her social media platform on Friday While she captioned the image: 'Just discovered a beautiful #vegan bag company called Matt & Nat (I've been trying to find nice / affordable leather alternatives)', the main attention was diverted to her physique. Putting on quite the sexy display with her wet blonde hair scooped in front of one of her shoulders, the rest of her derriere was covered in sand, hinting she had been lying down on the beach beforehand. The vegan bag was indeed stunning and seemingly matched the blue-green sea she stood in front of her. Cheeky: The day prior, the former Made In Chelsea star shared another snap taken from behind where she flaunts her pert derriere in a bright print piece Here come the girls: Ashley James (far right) showed off her sun-kissed figure as she touched down in Mykonos on Thursday The iconic Mykonos coastline lay to the left of her, while a slew of luxury yachts drifted in the waters. Just the previous day, she shared another booty shot where she stunned in a bright orange two-piece.'Brazilian bikini. Not a Brazilian booty,' the cheeky star captioned the super hot snap. Ashley hasn't just been topping up her tan during her first 24 hours in Greece though, as she shared another shot of herself post-workout. The blonde beauty shows off her impressive abs in a red crop top and matching shorts as she flexes her muscles outside her villa. Fitness fanatic: Ashley took a break from her tanning duties and embarked on a scenic run on the Mykonos coastline 'Forced myself to get up and go for a quick run along the coast. Didn't want to but now I feel great, saw some beautiful sights, and can eat whatever I want for the rest of the day! #balance #travel #mykonos #mykonos2016 #fitfam,' the fitness conscious star captioned the sporty pic. However, Ashley ensured she wasn't going anywhere without topping up her tan before jetting off on her hols. On Wednesday the former reality star uploaded her photo in a black two-piece ahead of her sunny trip to the stunning Greek isle and said: 'See you soon sunshine.' Too hot to handle: Ashley started off her Friday in a striped play-suit before changing in to a skimpy bikini 'Fri-yay': The TV presenter is clearly enjoying her sunny getaway with her gal pals Ashley wore a sultry black two piece which drew attention to her ample assets as she posed on a bed for the shot. She kept her blonde locks loose and parted at the centre to frame her face, as she pushed her hair back with her sunglasses. She captioned the picture: 'Off to Mykonos - see you soon sunshine! Always been a factor 50 girl so managed to squeeze in a spray tan before leaving, thank you for my healthy glow @fakebakeunited @secretspauk ' She's currently enjoying a romantic getaway to Bali with her husband of two years, Dane Rumble. And model Nikki Phillips certainly isn't holding back on the bikini-clad, envy-inducing posts, having already shared numerous snaps of herself to her social media accounts. The 31-year-old stunner posted two more photos on Friday to add to her growing collection, showing herself relaxing poolside in a black and white bikini. Flaunt it! Nikki Phillips is currently enjoying a romantic getaway to Bali with her husband of two years, Dane Rumble and wasn't afraid to post a number of envy-inducing shots on Friday In one snap, the blonde beauty is posing in the shade of a palm tree, putting her incredible body on display in a skimpy two-piece. She has a full face of make-up for the poolside photo shoot, sporting a bold red lip and her flawless complexion is on show. Completing her stylish look, the blonde beauty flashes a bright red manicure as her sun-kissed skin is simply glowing. Romantic: The couple have returned to Bali to celebrate their second anniversary, after getting married in Indonesia in 2014 Her short blonde locks have been swept to the side in a casual, beachy vibe and she has added the caption: 'You smile, I smile, we all smile'. The surrounding villa and pool appears to be extremely luxurious, presumably being enjoyed by the loved-up couple. In a second snap shared by the model, she can be seen perched on the edge of a sun lounger, looking out over the picturesque emerald water in the surrounding plunge pool. 'Happiness is being with you': The 31-year-old has been a ball of love since heading to Bali for the romantic getaway So much love! The loved-up couple have enjoyed being spoiled by their hotel during their getaway together And the model seems to be liking her look, sporting the same black and white bikini for the post. Nikki captioned the photo: 'Villa life continues.. Today's motto: pool, eat, swim and repeat.' The couple have returned to Bali, where they were married two years ago, to celebrate their wedding anniversary in style. Think pink: Nikki has been flaunting her gym-honed figure in an array of bikinis, including this pink and light blue two-piece 'Every hour is cocktail hour when you're on holiday': The model is clearly enjoying kicking back, donning yet another bikini Floral: Nikki showed off her svelte frame in this red and blue floral bikini, as she posed beneath some cliffs The beauty has kept a busy schedule so far this year, with the blogger and television personality a regular on the social scene as well as keeping up with her runway commitments for Myer. She also unveiled the official schedule for the upcoming Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia, where she was joined by fellow models Bambi Northwood-Blyth and Megan Irwin, and TV host Carissa Walford, among others. Most people spend their birthday being pampered by a partner and spoiled by friends. But hardworking actress Michelle Keegan wasn't going to let a special day get in the way of her work on Friday. The birthday girl was hard at work filming emotional new scenes for the BBC drama Our Girl in Cheshire. Scroll down for video All work no play: Birthday girl Michelle Keegan spent her special day on Friday filming scenes for the BBC drama Our Girl in Cheshire Dressed down in a bright white T-shirt, white trainers and indigo skinny jeans, the former Coronation Street star wore a baby blue sweater slung around her waist. Her handsome co-star, who she was seen kissing in scenes late last month, was clad in a charcoal grey wedding suit with a dapper patterned waistcoat underneath. However the mood captured in the shots looked far from joyful, with both characters looking pensive and relations strained. See Michelle Keegan updates as she spends her 29th birthday filming scenes for Our Girl Parklife: Dressed down in a bright white T-shirt, white trainers and indigo skinny jeans, the former Coronation Street star wore a baby blue sweater slung around her waist Intense scenes: Her handsome co-star, who she was seen kissing in scenes late last month, was clad in a charcoal grey wedding suit with a dapper patterned waistcoat underneath A shoulder to lean on: The mood captured in the shots looked far from joyful, with both characters looking pensive and relations strained Out of character, Michelle was caught grabbing a snack on the go as the crew re-set for filming. Michelle began filming Our Girl earlier this year, taking over the lead role from Lacey Turner, who will reprise her character of Molly Dawes but in a minor capacity due to her hectic filming schedule with EastEnders. For her scenes, the star was forced to move to South Africa for six months, separating herself from her new husband Mark. However, the couple have sunnier climes in sight for their next home, as they are reportedly set to ditch the UK in favour of Los Angeles. Razzle? Out of character, Michelle was caught grabbing a snack on the go as the crew re-set for filming Golden opportunity: Michelle began filming Our Girl earlier this year, taking over the lead role from Lacey Turner, who will reprise her character of Molly Dawes Mark and Michelle, who have been plagued by rumours that their marriage is on the rocks in recent months, are thought to be heading to California. According to Heat magazine, the former TOWIE star and the actress are hoping that the big move will give their careers a boost as well as a new start away from the UK. A source told the magazine: 'They think it could be really good for their marriage and they feel like it's a really good time for a fresh start. 'They've both made no secret of their wish to crack America, and they're making plans to move over there.' Working away: For her scenes, the star was forced to move to South Africa for six months, separating herself from her new husband Mark The Bachelor's Ben Higgins is 'seriously considering' a run for the Colorado House of Representatives' House District 4. The 28-year-old Republican even launched a campaign website seeking out potential voters in the Sloan's Lake area of Denver. '[I'm] definitely not a politician,' the software salesman from Indiana admitted in a statement to the Colorado Independent. Scroll down for video '[I'm] definitely not a politician': The Bachelor's Ben Higgins is 'seriously considering' a run for the Colorado House of Representatives' House District 4 (pictured April 30) 'Thank you for your support!' The 28-year-old Republican even launched a campaign website seeking out potential voters in the Sloan's Lake area of Denver 'Whatever lies ahead, love, grace, and hope are ideals that guide my life. I will take them with me into my next adventure.' It would certainly be a dream come true for Ben's fiancee of three months Lauren Bushnell, who aspires to become The First Lady. 'I would love to see the life of the president, but not actually be the president. Way too stressful!' the Alaska Airlines flight attendant wrote in her ABC bio. The primary is June 28 for the seat occupied by Democratic Speaker Pro Tempore Dan Pabon, who apologized March 21 on the House floor for his DUI arrest on St. Patrick's Day. 'Lauren and I arent sure yet': It would certainly be a dream come true for Ben's fiancee of three months Lauren Bushnell, who aspires to become The First Lady (pictured April 30) The Alaska Airlines flight attendant wrote in her ABC bio: 'I would love to see the life of the president, but not actually be the president. Way too stressful!' 'Lapse in judgement': The primary is June 28 for the seat occupied by Democratic Speaker Pro Tempore Dan Pabon, who apologized March 21 on the House floor for his DUI arrest on St. Patrick's Day 'I'd be happy to': Republican nominee Willie Pinkston even told the paper he'd 'happily step aside' if Higgins joins the 4th District race Has Proverbs 16:3 tattoo: The software salesman from Indiana - who's been meeting with GOP power brokers - has worked with the charities Humanity and Hope United in Honduras as well as Indiana's Baker Youth Club Republican nominee Willie Pinkston even told the paper he'd 'happily step aside' if Higgins joins the 4th District race. The 6ft4in reality star - who's been meeting with GOP power brokers - has worked with the charities Humanity and Hope United in Honduras as well as Indiana's Baker Youth Club. ABC's cameras will be rolling (and paying for) whenever Ben and his 25-year-old bride-to-be decide to marry, likely this summer in her Portland hometown. But the odds are against the co-habitating Christian couple since out of of the 30 betrothed duos from The Bachelor/The Bachelorette franchise, only six have remained together. Postponed for public office? ABC's cameras will be rolling (and paying for) whenever Ben and his 25-year-old bride-to-be decide to marry, likely this summer in her Portland hometown Tom Cruise, 53, has not 'seen or spoken to' his daughter Suri in 1,000 days, according to an In Touch Weekly article that came out on Wednesday. But that doesn't seem to be bothering the 10-year-old child - whose mother is actress Katie Holmes - as she was seen the next day looking carefree. The tween was spotted smiling and laughing - as well as sticking her tongue out - as she left a gymnastics class in Los Angeles with Katie's mother Kathleen. Happy and you know it: Suri Cruise looked to be in good spirits on Thursday as she left a gymnastics class in Los Angeles with her grandmother Kathleen (right); the day before InTouch Weekly reported the child has not seen her father Tom Cruise in 1,000 days Action figure: Tom looked happy between scenes of The Mummy reboot in London in April Suri wore a blue gymnastics top and white skirt with flip flips as she pulled faces while sipping on a beverage in a purple bottle. Holmes and Cruise divorced in 2012 after five years of marriage with the actress retaining custody of their daughter Suri. Sources point to Tom's adherence to Scientology as the reason for the severance of ties with his only biological child. Funny kid: The 10-year-old stuck her tongue out at one point as she held a water bottle Hee hee: Suri wore a blue gymnastics top and white skirt with flip flips as she pulled faces while sipping on a beverage in a purple bottle The publication claims that Tom last saw Suri more than two and a half years ago, and that he hasn't spoken to his daughter on the phone since then either. DailyMail.com has reached out to Cruise's representative for comment. 'They used to Skype and text, but that trailed off drastically,' a source told In Touch Weekly of Tom and Suri. Her mom seems like a hands-on parent: Suri pictured with Katie in NYC on her 10th birthday, April 18 According to the magazine, Cruise 'uses his film commitments as an excuse.' Indeed, Tom has maintained a rigorous shooting schedule and put out at least one film every year since his divorce from Katie. Those films include Rock Of Ages and Jack Reacher in 2012, Oblivion in 2013, Edge Of Tomorrow in 2014 and Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation in 2015. Career commitments: Tom - pictured with Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Leonardo DiCaprio in London on February 14 - 'uses his film commitments as an excuse' not to see or call Suri, the publication is claiming Sighting: The A-list actor and devoted Scientologist was reunited with Suri on July 17, 2012, one of the last times he was pictured with his daughter The A-list actor is currently filming The Mummy in London, England, and he has two films in post-production, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back and the crime-thriller Mena, and three more films announced including Top Gun 2, M:I 6 - Mission Impossible and Luna Park. He is busy, to be sure, but the source says 'that doesnt hold much weight with Suri anymore.' In Touch Weekly's insider claims Scientologys 'disconnection' policy is at work here. Working: Tom was all smiles alongside a youngster on the set of The Mummy in London on April 18 - Suri's birthday Members are told to shun any friend, family member or colleague who is thought to be critical of Scientology, as the magazine reported. 'Tom eats, breathes and sleeps Scientology,' the source told In Touch Weekly. 'Hes disconnected from Katie, and then de facto from Suri, because of her connection to Katie. He hasnt seen her since she was seven.' Tom is also parent to daughter Isabella, 23, and son Conner, 21, both adopted with his former wife Nicole Kidman but raised primarily by Cruise after their divorce in 2001. Working mom: Katie (pictured on May 25) is reprising her role as Jackie Kennedy Onassis for the TV miniseries The Kennedys: After Camelot filming in Toronto, Canada In May, Tom sold the sprawling Beverly Hills mansion he once shared with Katie Holmes and their daughter Suri. The star bid adieu to the seven-bedroom, 10,000 square foot home for $40 million,TMZ reported. Katie, on the other hand, has been described as an 'amazing' mom by In Touch Weekly's sources. Katie has often shared touching photos of her and daughter on Instagram. On April 18, Suri's 10th birthday, mother and daughter enjoyed a relaxed hand-in-hand stroll in New York City with the birthday girl dressed up in a pink dress, pink bow and pink ballet slippers. She began her career in Hollywood much younger than most do, at the age of three. And Jodie Foster, who is still at the top of her game 50 years on in one of the toughest industries in the world, has revealed one of the more sobering experiences of her career. The 53-year old actress and director told SBS' The Feed earlier this week how a sleazy producer almost tried to take advantage of her when she was only 14 years old. Scroll down for video 'My mum was out of town': Jodie Foster recalled how a Hollywood producer tried to arrange a secret meeting with her when she was only 14, so he could 'see her body' She said: 'He called me at a friend's house on the weekend where I was having a sleepover and he pretended that we had an appointment that I'd forgotten about. 'My mum was out of town. He had me come to the appointment and he was talking to me and then asked me to take my jacket off and turn around so he could see my body. The actress added swiftly, and with a laugh: 'My agent went to his office and punched him in the face.' Moved on: The actress and director seemed to be fine speaking about the incident, saying her agent 'went to his office and punched him in the face' The two-time Oscar winner was recently in Australia promoting her newly-directed film Money Monster, starring big names George Clooney and Julia Roberts. The film is Jodie's fourth turn directing. Speaking to Daily Mail Australia on the red carpet at the premier in Sydney on Monday, Jodie discussed the casting process, saying Jack OConnell was not her first choice. Down Under: The two-time Oscar winner was recently in Australia promoting the film Money Monster, which she directed The 25-year-old, who plays a disgruntled investor who takes George Clooneys character hostage, has to do his audition over Skype to get the role. Hes very British and hes very young and my idea for the role was someone from Queens [New York City] who was 35 or 40, Foster said. But the second I saw him I was blown away and couldnt imagine anybody else. She made a big impression starring as Neil's stunning sister in The Inbetweeners. And Kacey Clarke, 28, has quit her teaching job to pursue her acting dream after landing a role opposite Iggy Pop in dark thriller Blood Orange. The brunette beauty only appeared in two episodes of the hit Channel 4 comedy, but her students had no trouble recognising her from her role in the show. Scroll down for video Living the dream: Kacey Clarke, 28, has quit her teaching job to pursue her acting dream after landing a role opposite Iggy Pop in dark thriller Blood Orange Kacey told the Daily Mirror: 'Even though I was only in a couple of episodes my character became iconic because the show is iconic so people always remember it. 'The funniest experience was about four years ago when I was a substitute teacher covering for my mum's partner. 'Everything was normal until one of the boys put his arm up and said 'are you Neil's sister', which was pretty funny.' Aspiring actress: The brunette beauty only appeared in two episodes of the hit Channel 4 comedy, but her students had no trouble recognising her from her role in the show Fan favourite: The actress shot to fame as Katie Sutherland in episodes Will's Dilemma and Night Out in London back in 2009 and 2010 Rock god: In Blood Orange Kacey stars as promiscuous Isabelle, the young wife of Bill (Iggy Pop) a half-blind aging rocker The actress shot to fame as Katie Sutherland in episodes Will's Dilemma and Night Out in London back in 2009 and 2010. During the episodes, Katie was the subject of a number of sexual jokes made by Neil's pals -- Jay, Will and Simon -- but she's hoping her latest role will showcase her acting range. In Blood Orange Kacey stars as promiscuous Isabelle, the young wife of Bill (Iggy Pop) a half-blind aging rocker. Desirable: During the episodes, Katie was the subject of a number of sexual jokes made by Neil's pals -- Jay, Will and Simon -- but she's hoping her latest role will showcase her acting range Strong woman: Kacey described Isabelle as more in control of her sexuality than Katie and called her a 'ruthless sexual person' The pair are enjoying an idyllic life in Ibiza when Isabelle's ex-boyfriend Lucas (Ben Lamb) tracks her down and accuses her of stealing his inheritance. According to IMDB: 'Bill asks Lucas to stay and to make peace with Isabelle, but really he has another agenda - he has a plan... 'Meanwhile, Lucas is already torn up inside with the desire for revenge, and when he sees how Isabelle is having one of her flings with David their Spanish 'pool boy' he sees an opportunity to turn the tables and things spiral dangerously out of control.' Kacey described Isabelle as more in control of her sexuality than Katie and called her a 'ruthless sexual person'. Rihanna went topless beneath a white cover-up in a series of new seaside photographs snapped by her childhood BFF Melissa Forde. The 28-year-old pop diva is currently enjoying a lavish Turks and Caicos holiday before resuming her seven-month Anti World Tour. The Bajan beauty paired her maxi-mesh top with black bikini bottoms and gladiator heels selected by her head stylist Mel Ottenberg. Scroll down for video Straddling the balcony: Rihanna went topless beneath a white cover-up in a series of new seaside photographs snapped by her childhood BFF Melissa Forde 'I don't work out as much as I'd like to,' Riri - born Robyn Fenty - admitted to Vogue in March. 'But my trainer Jamie [Granger] is a beast and she makes me pay for it.' Aside from Melissa, Rihanna was joined in paradise by the rest of her inseparable entourage - assistant Jennifer Rosales and creative director Ciarra Pardo. Forde also took pictures of the eight-time Grammy winner rocking an off-the-shoulder floral frock from Parisian label Faith Connexion. Caribbean native: The 28-year-old pop diva is currently enjoying a lavish Turks and Caicos holiday before resuming her seven-month Anti World Tour Stretch it out: The Bajan beauty paired her maxi-mesh top with black bikini bottoms and gladiator heels selected by her head stylist Mel Ottenberg Riri - born Robyn Fenty - admitted to Vogue in March: 'I don't work out as much as I'd like to, but my trainer Jamie [Granger] is a beast and she makes me pay for it' Friends on the payroll: Aside from Melissa, Rihanna was joined in paradise by the rest of her inseparable entourage - assistant Jennifer Rosales and creative director Ciarra Pardo A photo posted by ciarra (@ciarrap) on Jun 2, 2016 at 4:29pm PDT #morningcoffee A photo posted by Jennifer Rosales (@jennnrosales) on Jun 3, 2016 at 9:12am PDT 'She makes it too easy #MTFphotography,' the Barbadian lenswoman gushed to her 720K followers. The Consideration crooner paired her seventies-style blue silk dress with metallic pink Gucci stilettos. Rihanna sported full contoured make-up, including bright pink lipstick, and slicked-back natural locks for the camera. On Thursday, Mike Will Made-It dropped the first single off his album Ransom 2 - Nothing Is Promised - which features the Higher hitmaker on vocals. Xanadu style: Forde also took pictures of the eight-time Grammy winner rocking an off-the-shoulder floral frock from Parisian label Faith Connexion The Barbadian lenswoman gushed to her 720K followers: 'She makes it too easy #MTFphotography' Leggy lady: The Consideration crooner paired her seventies-style blue silk dress with metallic pink Gucci stilettos Needed me? Rihanna sported full contoured make-up, including bright pink lipstick, and slicked-back natural locks for the camera The Work songstress has also recently co-designed collections with Stance, Manolo Blahnik, Puma and, most recently, Christian Dior. 'I was already proud to be a Dior woman, but to be a black Dior woman and the first: It did something else for me,' Rihanna - who boasts 182.3M followers - told the mag. The Home starlet will kick off the European leg of her 74-date Anti World Tour on June 17 at Holland's Amsterdam Arena. New summer jam: On Thursday, Mike Will Made-It dropped the first single off his album Ransom 2 - Nothing Is Promised - which features the Higher hitmaker on vocals We got 1!! @badgalriri @future @plussproducer #NothingIsPromised on iTunes now #RANSOM2 otw #EardrummerSummer A video posted by Mike Will (@mikewillmadeit) on Jun 3, 2016 at 8:41am PDT First black Dior spokesmodel: The Work songstress has also recently co-designed collections with Stance, Manolo Blahnik, Puma and, most recently, Christian Dior Globetrotter: Rihanna will kick off the European leg of her 74- date Anti World Tour on June 17 at Holland's Amsterdam Arena (pictured May 22) He's known for causing controversy wherever he goes, but Kanye West insists that he's just a family man at heart. The 38-year-old admitted that he wakes up and reads fan comments after sharing epic Twitter rants, and revealed that they only upset him if they are about his wife Kim Kardashian or their two children. 'I'm crazy about my kids. I'm crazy about Kim,' he said on Friday in Los Angeles during an interview on the Big Boy's Neighborhood radio show on Real 92.3, according to E! News. Scroll down for video 'I'm so happy to be a father': Kanye West gushed about his wife and children during an interview on the Big Boy's Neighborhood radio show on Friday. He is pictured with daughter North last week Kanye added: 'I'm so happy to be a father. I want to learn what my daughter has to say. What she learns. I just want to learn how she learns in this world. I'm extremely protective.' But while the rapper does confess to being hurt when he reads cruel comments about his family, he said he has no regrets about anything he has posted on social media. 'We're going to be gone in 100 years,' he explained. 'I can't say enough.' Kim and Kanye, who celebrated their second wedding anniversary last month, are parents to two-year-old daughter North and five-month-old son Saint. Family man: The rapper confessed he is 'crazy about Kim and the kids'. He is seen here with Kim last month And the star said that the reason he decided to partner up with Adidas to create his hugely popular Yeezy trainers was all to provide for his little girl. 'When I left Nike for Adidas I did it for my daughter,' Kanye said during the interview. 'There was an opportunity to grow.' He added: 'There was love and admiration at Adidas, this was to make a better life for my daughter.' Kanye wasn't just appearing on the show to discuss his more infamous Twitter tirades - which have included slamming Wiz Khalifa and Amber Rose, claiming he is $53million in debt and ranting about in-app purchases. 'I can't say enough': Kanye, pictured with Kim and North in Cuba last month, said he has no regrets about any of his Twitter rants He also debuted the first song from his Cruel Winter compilation: Champions (Round & Round), which features the likes of Travis Scott, Big Sean, 2 Chainz, Gucci Mane, Desiigner, Yo Gotti and Quavo. Speaking about the track, Kanye said: 'I'm a champion. I'm a winner. I came to innovate. I came to change.' The father-of-two also claimed he is working on new music almost 'constantly' and compared himself to Michael Jackson. More music: The 38-year-old (pictured last week) also debuted the first song from his Cruel Winter compilation: Champions (Round & Round), which features stars including Travis Scott, Big Sean and 2 Chainz Meanwhile, Kanye's creative studio was robbed recently while he was in London with Kim. Police sources told TMZ that the thieves made off with laptops and desktop computers worth $20,000. And while the computers all potentially had different projects that Kanye was working on them including new music and designs for his clothing line, they fortunately had 'heavy-duty tech security'. Cara Santana is carved a niche as an actress-turned-fashion blogger. The 32-year-old brunette beauty certainly made an impression as she modeled a sexy one-one piece on her website Caradisclothed.com. Cara was sexy sophistication rolled into one in a blue and black bathing suit with sheer details on top and a revealing cut-out waistline, courtesy of Kore Swim. Blue belle: Cara Santana was the essence of sexy sophistication as she modeled a Kore Swim one-piece on her fashion website Caradisclothed.com 'Who said a one piece doesnt look sexy? Not me,' Cara teased. 'Leaving more to the imagination can be provide more appeal then barely there baring all. 'Sophistication and sexy are not mutually exclusive. Ever heard of the ole librarian fetish? Thats right. This summer, Ill be adding full bathing suits to my fashion template, and there isnt anything snoozy about it.' Cara must have made her longtime beau Jesse Metcalfe proud as she showcased her tan and toned lean figure in a series of poses. 'Who said a one piece doesnt look sexy?' The 32-year-old actress teased, 'Leaving more to the imagination can be provide more appeal then barely there baring all' Summer trend: Cara alerted, 'This summer, Ill be adding full bathing suits to my fashion template, and there isnt anything snoozy about it' The Salem star was on the fashion beat on Thursday as she stepped out in Los Angeles to run some errands. Cara looked hip in a dusty rose-hued jumpsuit with zipper front and wide-legged trousers that stopped right above her ankles. She added a white camisole underneath and ankle-strapped white sandals. Fashion forward: The Salem star looked on trend in a dusty rose jumpsuit with flaring trousers as she stepped out in LA on Thursday It didn't matter that she went light on the make-up and hair styling gel - Cara looked like a winner. Besides her trendy fashion sense, Cara is best known for dating former Desperate Housewives star Jesse. The two have been together since 2009 and are a focal point at major celebrity red carpet events. Now that Taylor Swift's 'magical' 15-month relationship with Calvin Harris has fizzled, differing reports have flooded in over who dumped whom and why. Us Weekly and TMZ claimed it was the Scottish 32-year-old DJ who ended things, while Page Six reported it was the 26-year-old Pennsylvanian pop diva who pulled the plug. '[She] thought he was The One,' an insider told Us. Scroll down for video It's over: Now that Taylor Swift's 'magical' 15-month relationship with Calvin Harris has fizzled, differing reports have flooded in over who dumped whom and why (pictured in 2015) 'She used to talk about their future a lot - marriage, babies. And although he wants all of that, it just felt a bit like she was all full-steam ahead, whereas he is more of a slow and steady, let things progress organically, kind of guy.' TMZ was told that low-key Calvin - born Adam Wiles - 'grew more and more uncomfortable' under the ever-increasing spotlight at red carpet events. Meanwhile, the New York Post alleged the This is what You Came For hitmaker had been 'ring shopping' before Taylor abruptly gave him a 'bulls*** excuse about her career.' Harris confirmed their amicable split Thursday on Twitter: 'The only truth here is that a relationship came to an end & what remains is a huge amount of love and respect.' '[She] thought he was The One': Us Weekly and TMZ claimed it was the Scottish 32-year-old DJ who ended things, while Page Six reported it was the 26-year-old Pennsylvanian pop diva who pulled the plug Her choice? New York Post alleged Calvin - born Adam Wiles - had been 'ring shopping' before Taylor abruptly gave him a 'bulls*** excuse about her career' (pictured in 2015) Harris confirmed their amicable split Thursday on Twitter: 'The only truth here is that a relationship came to an end & what remains is a huge amount of love and respect' No cheating, no intimidation: The Grammy-winning power couple - last photographed together on May 20 - were ranked by Forbes as the music industry's highest-paid celebrity pair grossing $146M in 2015 The Grammy-winning power couple - last photographed together on May 20 - were ranked by Forbes as the music industry's highest-paid celebrity pair grossing $146M in 2015. And as Swift's longest relationship comes to an end, her fans are eager to hear a song inspired by the heartbreak. 'The only love worth being in is the love worth singing about,' the boy-crazy crooner explained to Rolling Stone in 2013. 'And kind of mad love. I think that, for me, when you experience something that's worth writing a song about, chances are it's the same kind of intense feeling that someone else has felt.' 'The only love worth being in is the love worth singing about': And as Swift's longest relationship comes to an end, her fans are eager to hear a song inspired by the heartbreak Famous ex: Oscar nominee Jake Gyllenhaal was said to have inspired Swift's songs We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, State of Grace, All Too Well, Girl at Home, and The Moment I Knew (pictured in 2010) Womanizer: Dear John and I Knew You Were Trouble were supposedly thinly veiled salutes to the Apple Music spokesmodel's romance with seven-time Grammy winner John Mayer (pictured in 2009) Boy crazy: Taylor reportedly wrote Forever & Always and Last Kiss about DNCE frontman Joe Jonas, and she allegedly penned Back to December about The Ridiculous Six's Taylor Lautner (pictured in 2016) Oscar nominee Jake Gyllenhaal was said to have inspired Swift's songs We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, State of Grace, All Too Well, Girl at Home, and The Moment I Knew. Dear John and I Knew You Were Trouble were supposedly thinly veiled salutes to the Apple Music spokesmodel's romance with seven-time Grammy winner John Mayer. Taylor reportedly wrote Forever & Always and Last Kiss about DNCE frontman Joe Jonas, and she allegedly penned Back to December about The Ridiculous Six's Taylor Lautner. This is what you came for: Calvin - who's reportedly romanced Anne Vyalitsyna, Ellie Goulding, Rita Ora, and Aarika Wolf - will next spin Friday at Omnia Nightclub in Las Vegas On hiatus: The Out of the Woods belter will compete for two Teen Choice Awards - female artist and song - when the ceremony airs July 31 on Fox (pictured February 15) Calvin - who's reportedly romanced Anne Vyalitsyna, Ellie Goulding, Rita Ora, and Aarika Wolf - will next spin Friday at Omnia Nightclub in Las Vegas. The Out of the Woods belter will compete for two Teen Choice Awards - female artist and song - when the ceremony airs July 31 on Fox. But Swift isn't scheduled to perform again until October 22 when she headlines the Formula 1 US Grand Prix in Austin. He's been struggling with alcoholism for some years. Now Nicholas Brendon has admitted in an interview with Us Weekly that he fell off the wagon again last month. The 45-year-old actor, best known for playing Xander on Buffy The Vampire Slayer and now writing the Buffy comcs, was reportedly spotted at a hotel bar at the Comic-Con convention in Des Moines, Iowa, Struggling with his sobriety: Buffy The Vampire Slayer alum Nicholas Brendon, pictured on the Dr Phil show last August, has admitted that he had he had a drink at the Comic-Con convention in Des Moines, Iowa 'This is completely true,' Nicholas said in a statement. 'I was feeling down, went to the hotel bar and ordered a few beers. Im in the public eye, but Im just like any person working the program. 'Its minute by minute, day by day, and Ive unfortunately stumbled,' he continued. 'Im very happy to say that nothing like the events of last year have occurred, and I am committed to making sure that they never do again.' The actor, who lives in the boho Venice area of Los Angeles, was referring to his tumultuous 2015 when he had alcohol-fuelled run ins with the police several times. Before the fall: The 45-year-old actor, pictured at a fan event in Dublin, Ireland, that he posted on Twitter in April, fell off the wagon at a Comic-Con convention in Des Moines, Iowa, just a month later Looking glum: Nicholas turned up for ComicCon in Dublin last August, during his year of living badly In December, Nicholas pleaded guilty to criminal mischief after he was accused of choking his girlfriend during a fight in their Saratoga hotel room in upstate New York in September. Police said he also took her keys and tossed her cellphone during a September 30 fight. The Criminal Minds star was also arrested once for public intoxication and twice for trashing hotel rooms while under the influence. In August, Brendon appeared on Dr. Phil but walked off the set because he felt the psychologist 'went for the jugular.' Getting his act together: The star has a regular gig on Criminal Minds. He said of his lapse with sobriety, 'Im just like any person working the program. Its minute by minute, day by day, and Ive unfortunately stumbled' Before he left the show, the tearful star said: 'I think I have a lot of shame, ya know. And I look at my life and I just thing how things could have been different, ya know.' Meanwhile, Nicholas is getting his life back on track. Aside from Criminal Minds, he has signed on for The Inspector Chronicles, a spoof on the BBC's iconic Dr Who, and heist movie Snatched. And he has a long list of fan conventions set up. Australian model Nicole Trunfio has paid tribute to her father Joe following his tragic death on Wednesday after a long battle with appendix cancer. Taking to Instagram on Friday, the 30-year-old shared a black and white photo of her father as a child, along with a heartfelt message dedicated to him. She wrote: '#thegreatest soul I have ever known, so blessed and humbled you are my father. I love you more than words can describe, you taught me everything I know, with your grace, honestly and loyalty'. Scroll down for video Tragic loss: Australian model Nicole Trunfio has paid tribute to her father Joe following his tragic death on Wednesday after a long battle with appendix cancer The model went on to explain the great impact her father had on her life over the years. She continued: 'You touched every one in your path, so deeply, so vividly. A character so wild, so true'. And candid with her grief and heartbreak, Nicole wrote: 'I am more heartbroken than I could have ever imagined possible, to know I cannot feel your warmth and call you for wisdom and love, or even just a laugh anymore. 'No words can describe the fact you're not here with me, but your legacy and strength will live on, always. I know you live in my heart and will guide me always through this life, I will see you in another. Tribute: Taking to Instagram on Friday, the 30-year-old shared a black and white photo of her father as a child, along with a heartfelt message dedicated to him Heartfelt: The model explained the great impact her father had on her life over the years 'I love you dad. #mysoulmate #mybestfriend #thisangelismyfather Giuseppe Antonio Trunfio #RIP 01.06.2016 #letuspray.' Last month Nicole jetted to Australia to visit her ill father, who was too sick to make it to her nuptials in Palm Springs in April. Nicole's father Joe was diagnosed with appendix cancer five years ago when he was told he only had 11 months to live. In 2014, the beauty opened up to The Sunday Times about the important role her father has played in her life. 'My dad is my idol. He is a hardworking family man who built such a solid foundation for all his children,' she said. Nicole and Gary announced their engagement in November 2014, and they welcomed their son in January last year. Happy family: Nicole wed Gary Clarke Jnr. in April in a star-studded ceremony in Palm Springs, but unfortunately her father Joe couldn't make it to the ceremony due to his illness Breaking The Bank (12A) Verdict: Silly but fun Rating: Kelsey Grammer looks and very nearly sounds the part as Charles Bunbury, the upper-crust British chairman of a bank actually owned by his haughty wife Penelope (Tamsin Greig). Just occasionally, Grammers cut-glass vowels betray his American roots, but on the whole he is excellent value for money, and of course money is what this amiably silly comedy is all about. Directed by Vadim Jean, and written (and funded) by a former merchant banker, Roger Devlin, it attempts to do what The Big Short and Money Monster have recently done in more sophisticated fashion, offering a tongue-in-cheek explanation of how great financial institutions can come crashing down. Kelsey Grammer looks and very nearly sounds the part as Charles Bunbury, the upper-crust British chairman of a bank in Breaking The Bank, writes Brian Vinver In the case of the venerable Tuftons bank, the catalyst for ruin is the bumbling Charles himself, who is as dim as he is grand, and makes a catastrophic investment on the basis of a tip offered by an arrogant trader, Nick Freeman (Matthew Horne). Devlin denies that he had either Barings or Nick Leeson even remotely in mind when he wrote the screenplay (on a beach holiday five years ago in the Maldives, for want of anything better to do), but I think we can take that with a pinch of coral sand. Whatever, after Charles makes friends with a homeless man he meets as hes about to throw himself into the Thames, the story becomes one of redemption and revenge on the US corporate raider (John Michael Higgins) who wants to pinch both his bank and his wife. All this plays a bit like Carry On Banking, but thats no bad thing, and there are some memorably snappy one-liners Charles works 24/7, meaning 24 hours a week, seven months a year. Moreover, Devlin knows the arcane world of high finance well enough to share some of its secrets, such as the contemptuous acronym ninja, which Freeman uses to describe losers with no income, no job, no assets. US cracks down on payday lending The US government moved Thursday to protect consumers from payday debt traps with regulations that include requiring lenders to make sure borrowers have the ability to repay their loans. Proposed rules by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau mark the first time the federal government has moved to regulate payday lending, which is outside the banking sector and generally overseen by states. In addition to payday loans -- small-money advances typically due to be repaid from the next paycheck -- the CFPB rules cover other small-sized credit products such as auto-title loans in which the car or truck is put up as collateral. Offered outside the regulated banking sector, payday advance loans are usually provided by one of 20,000 storefronts across the US Mark Ralston (AFP/File) "Too many borrowers seeking a short-term cash fix are saddled with loans they cannot afford and sink into long-term debt," said CFPB Director Richard Cordray in a statement. "It's much like getting into a taxi just to ride across town and finding yourself stuck in a ruinously expensive cross-country journey." According to the CFPB, about 16,000 payday loan businesses operate in the 36 states, and the number of online outlets is expanding. The proposed standards would prevent payday lenders from using predatory tactics to succeed in setting up financially vulnerable borrowers to fail, the agency said. The finance charge on payday loans is much higher than regular bank loans or credit cards. According to the CFPB, a typical payday loan charges an annual loan rate of nearly 400 percent, while credit cards typically charge from 12 percent to 30 percent. To keep up with high interest payments, borrowers often resort to new loans and more finance charges, turning it into a long-term debt trap. Under the proposed rule, lenders would be required to evaluate whether the borrower can afford the full amount of each payment when it is due and still be able to cover basic living expenses and major financial obligations. Other provisions include making it difficult for lenders to push strapped borrowers into reborrowing or refinancing the same debt, and capping the number of short-term loans that can be made in quick succession. The CFPB said public comments on the proposed rule were due on September 14 and would be weighed before final regulations are issued. - Too much, or too little? - The Community Financial Services Association of America, which represents nonbank lenders, accused the bureau of bowing to "self-proclaimed 'consumer advocacy' groups" trying to eliminate payday lending. The CFSA said the regulations "will cut off access to credit for millions of Americans who use small-dollar loans to manage a budget shortfall or unexpected expense." It cited the Federal Reserve's report last week that 46 percent of Americans cannot pay for an unexpected $400 expense. "Thousands of lenders, especially small businesses, will be forced to shutter their doors, lay off employees, and leave communities that already have too few options for financial services," it added. But the Pew Charitable Trusts, a research and polling group that has campaigned for a crackdown on harmful lending, said the rules did not go far enough. "Payday loan reform is urgently needed, but without changes, the CFPB's draft regulation misses the mark," said Nick Bourke, director of Pew's small-dollar loans project, in a statement. Pew wants a limit on installment loan payments to five percent of a borrower's paycheck, and giving borrowers up to six months to repay. "These are the two essential safeguards that research shows are needed in the small-dollar loan market," Bourke said. The lack of a clear product safety standard will derail banks' plans to offer loans at prices six times lower than payday lenders, he said. "As a result, the CFPB is missing an historic opportunity to save millions of borrowers billions of dollars." UN blacklists Saudi-led coalition over child deaths in Yemen UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday placed the Saudi-led military coalition supporting Yemen's government on an annual blacklist over the deaths of hundreds of children in airstrikes. Yemen's Shiite Huthi rebels who seized the capital Sanaa in September 2014 were also added to the list of children's rights violators released Thursday, detailing offenses in 14 countries. "Emerging and escalating crises had a horrific impact on boys and girls," said a statement from the office of the UN envoy for children and armed conflict. Yemeni children look at buildings that were damaged by air strikes carried out by the Saudi-led coalition over the past year in the old city of the Yemeni capital Sanaa, on March 23, 2016 Mohammed Huwais (AFP/File) "The situation in Yemen was particularly worrisome with a five-fold increase in the number of children recruited (by armed groups) and six times more children killed and maimed compared to 2014," it said. The Saudi-led coalition is responsible for 60 percent of the total 785 children who were killed and 1,168 wounded last year in Yemen, said the report. The coalition launched its air campaign to push back the Huthis in March 2015, but the rebels still control the capital and many parts of the country. "In Yemen, owing to the very large number of violations attributed to the two parties, the Huthis/Ansar Allah and the Saudi Arabia-led coalition are listed for killing and maiming and attacks on schools and hospitals," the report said. Of the 762 verified cases of recruitment of child soldiers, 72 percent were attributed to the Huthis, 15 percent to pro-government forces and nine percent to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, according to the report. "In several situations of conflict, aerial operations contributed to creating complex environments in which large numbers of children were killed and maimed," said Leila Zerrougui, the UN envoy for children and armed conflict. "State-allied armed groups and militia have also increasingly been used to fight in support of government forces, in some cases recruiting and using children," she said. Two US military aerobatic planes crash separately, one dead Two US military aerobatic planes crashed in separate incidents, one occurring shortly after flying over a speech by President Barack Obama and the other resulting in a death. A plane from the US Air Force's elite Thunderbird team crashed in the state of Colorado shortly after performing at a graduation ceremony for the US Air Force Academy, where Obama addressed the audience, an official said. The pilot ejected safely from the aircraft and was unharmed, according to the Air Force official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. A plane from the US Air Force's elite Thunderbird team crashed after performing at a graduation ceremony for the US Air Force Academy attended by President Barack Obama (C) Brendan Smialowski (AFP) Following the incident, Obama met with the pilot at nearby Peterson Air Force Base and expressed relief that the pilot was not injured, before heading back to Washington aboard Air Force One. Later in the day a F/A-18 aircraft from the US Navy's Blue Angels aerobatics team crashed as it "was taking off to start the afternoon practice" at the airport in Smyrna, Tennessee, according to a statement from the Naval Air Forces. "The pilot died from injuries sustained during the crash," it said, adding that the other five jets at the scene were not involved and landed safely. Both the Air Force and Navy said investigations are underway. The Blue Angels will not perform in an airshow that had been scheduled for this weekend, the Navy said. Missing Japanese boy found safe after forest ordeal A seven-year-old Japanese boy was found alive on Friday nearly a week after his parents left him in a bear-inhabited forest as punishment for misbehaving, hungry but unharmed in a hut on a military base. A soldier discovered Yamato Tanooka who had apparently walked some 5.5 kilometres (3.4 miles) from the spot where he was abandoned last Saturday, finding shelter in the hut where he huddled in a pair of mattresses. During his ordeal, in rugged terrain on the northern island of Hokkaido, he drank from a tap near the corrugated-iron hut, and was immediately given food when he was found. Yamato Tanooka, a seven-year-old who spent nearly a week sheltering in a hut after being abandoned by his parents in a bear-inhabited forest, in an undated picture provided by an elementary school in Hokuto city, Japan Yamato's parents have been severely criticised by the Japanese public for forcing him out of their car on a mountain road to teach him a lesson for throwing stones at cars and people. After the emotional discovery, the contrite father appeared before the media outside the hospital where the boy was taken for a check-up, bowing as he apologised for his "excessive" actions. "The first thing I said to my son was, 'I'm very sorry to have caused you to face this suffering because of me,'" said Takayuki Tanooka, adding that the child nodded in reply. "I deeply apologise to people at his school, people in the rescue operation, and everybody for causing them trouble," he added, thanking those including military and police who spent days searching in cold and difficult conditions. Self-Defense Force spokesman Manabu Takehara said the boy "looked in good health" but had been taken to hospital by helicopter as a precaution. - 'He didn't look scared' - The parents originally told police that their son got lost while they were out hiking to gather wild vegetables along with their daughter, but later admitted they had become angry with him for throwing the stones. They ordered him onto the road, bounded on both sides by thick mountain forests, and quickly returned only to find him missing. Days of frantic searching found no trace of the child. The boy told police that he walked to the military base that Saturday night, finding shelter in the hut located in the complex, according to the local Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper. Temperatures in the area dipped as low as 4.6 degrees Celsius in the past week. The soldier who found the boy told reporters that he found him when he happened to open the door of the hut. "I asked, 'Are you Yamato?'" said the soldier, who was not identified, adding that the boy nodded as if saying yes. "He stood still," the soldier added. "He didn't look scared. He seemed relieved." A still image of the rescue on TV showed the boy wearing a baseball cap and T-shirt, holding some food and drink. - A 'miracle' - Japanese media interrupted regular programmes to broadcast news of Yamato's discovery in the case which has drawn huge attention. The stunning development was the top trending item on Twitter in Japan, with many expressing amazement at the boy's survival skills. Ken Noguchi, a renowned alpinist who has climbed Mount Everest, tweeted: "If he survived by himself, it's an unbelievable miracle." Others were concerned about the impact of the ordeal on the young boy and even whether his parents should regain custody. "I wonder if his heart was broken as he was discarded in the mountain," read one tweet. Police have reportedly said they are considering filing neglect charges against the parents, and many in Japan have called for punishment. "Missing boy was found and that's all wonderful, but the parents must be disciplined such as being abandoned on an uninhabited island," one person tweeted. Naoki Ogi, a noted education expert who has been strongly critical of the parents, said the entire family now needs psychological care as they start the healing process. "How much distrust is Yamato feeling toward his parents?," Ogi asked in a post on his influential blog. "I hope experts will offer adequate care and careful counselling to all members of the family." Japan boy found John Saeki (AFP) Takayuki Tanooka, father of Yamato Tanooka, speaks to reporters in Hakodate, Japan, on June 3, 2016 The inside of a hut in Shikabe, Hokkaido, where missing seven-year-old boy Yamato Tanooka was found by military personnel A building in a military exercise area in Shikabe, Hokkaido, where missing Yamato Tanooka was found by Japanese military personnel Johnson sets early pace at Memorial with 10 birdies Dustin Johnson upstaged Jordan Spieth and Jason Day Thursday in the first round of the Memorial Tournament where the 2015 US Open runner-up shot a first round eight-under 64. The hard-hitting American rolled in 10 birdies for a one-stroke lead over Brendan Steele who is alone in second with a 65. World number one Day shot a six-under 66 with an eagle, six birdies and two bogeys while two-time major winner Spieth shot a two-under 70 with five birdies. Dustin Johnson watches his tee shot on the 15th hole during the first round of The Memorial Tournament in Dublin, Ohio Andy Lyons (Getty/AFP) Spieth was in a group with world number three Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas. Johnson tallied a pair of twos on his scorecard. He had one stretch of four straight birdies beginning at number 12 and two with three consecutive birdies. His two bogeys came after he failed to get up and down from beside the green. "I felt like I played well right out of the gates," he said. "I hit it close on the first three holes and made all of them, so that's always a good way to start your day." Day, Hudson Swafford, Danny Lee, Matt Kuchar and David Hearn each shot 66 as 79 players are under par following a day with perfect scoring conditions. Day, of Brisbane, had his best finish here in 2009 when he tied for 27th. "You just have to pick and choose when you feel comfortable and when you don't feel comfortable and try to attack the course from there," said Day, who plays the Muirfield Village course often. "To be a Muirfield member and to play as poorly as I have in the past is frustrating and disappointing. This is one of the events you want to put on your resume." McIlroy shot a mixed bag 71 that included three bogeys and a double bogey on the tricky par-three 16th hole. He and Spieth teed off on the back nine. Spieth made bogey on his final hole, the par-four ninth, after sailing his second shot over the green and into a bunker. Thomas finished at five-over 77. Spieth and McIlroy combined for 11 birdies but were undone by mistakes. The worst part of McIlroy's game was his putting, including a three-putt from 13 feet. "Six birdies is great, but the five dropped shots was the rest of the story," McIlroy said. Serial UK paedophile says 'regrets' Malaysia abuses A British serial paedophile who preyed on impoverished Kuala Lumpur slum children voiced deep remorse before a London court on Friday for his "disgusting behaviour". Richard Huckle, 30, who has pleaded guilty to 71 of 91 counts of child sex offences, including rape, targeted children while posing as a volunteer working with Christian communities in the Malaysian capital. More than 20,000 images of child sex abuses were found on his heavily-encrypted laptop. Richard Huckle, 30, faces life in prison on 91 charges including the rape and sexual assault of children as young as six months NATIONAL CRIME AGENCY (NATIONAL CRIME AGENCY/AFP) Huckle appeared in the dock at London's Old Bailey criminal court where judge Peter Rook heard mitigation from his lawyer Philip Sapsford. Rook said he would have to weigh up whether a life sentence was appropriate for 22 of the most serious counts before passing sentence at 10:00am (0900 GMT) on Monday. Sapsford asked for leniency, arguing that in pleading guilty, his client had spared a jury from being exposed to images of his abuse. He accepted it would be "a very long time" before Huckle was released from prison but asked that the sentence give his client "hope" of rehabilitation into society. Huckle had bragged about his abuse online and was snared by an Australian investigation on the dark web -- a hard-to-access part of the Internet often used for illegal activity. - 'All my own doing' - In the letter of remorse written on May 23 and read to the court by his lawyer, Huckle acknowledged "the scale of the damage I have caused". "I completely misjudged the affections I received from these children. "My low self-esteem and lack of confidence with women was no excuse to be using these children as an outlet." He said he was "gullible to be easily influenced" by the "pathetic, perverted lust of those who drew me into the dark net". And he said he hoped there would be help for the victims of the "disgusting behaviour I performed on them". "I am open and eager to rehabilitate from this offending behaviour," he wrote. "In no way do I want to be treated as a martyr to child sex tourism in Malaysia. "This was all my own doing as a consequence of my own immaturities. "I am deeply remorseful and regretful of what has happened and will do all I can in being proactive towards rehabilitating myself." The Old Bailey heard earlier that Huckle targeted poor victims and was writing a guide to child abuse that he intended to publish for profit. He posted pictures of the abuse of boys and girls online. Huckle admitted offences against children aged between six months and 12 years, committed between 2006 and 2014. Investigators have identified 23 victims -- 22 Malaysians and one Cambodian. - Outrage in Malaysia - Huckle, who comes from Kent in southeastern England, was arrested at London's Gatwick Airport in December 2014 as he returned from Malaysia to spend Christmas with his parents. Files on his laptop showed him committing offences including rape. Huckle has not handed over the passwords for some files which remain encrypted. Police also found a ledger in which he detailed the abuse of 191 victims, but officers were unable to press charges on all cases as there was no photographic evidence. Videos recovered showed children being forced to sexually abuse each other, abuse being committed as other children watched and children being urinated on. The case has sparked revulsion in Malaysia, with newspapers on Friday plastering photos of Huckle on their front pages along with angry headlines. "This monster defiled our kids," read the headline in The Star leading daily. Huckle took children with him to church and regularly roamed an impoverished Kuala Lumpur neighbourhood to snap pictures of children, those who had met him said on Friday. But several people interviewed by AFP said they had seen no reason to suspect Huckle of child sex abuse. Paul Packianathan, senior pastor of a Protestant church located in a Kuala Lumpur suburb, said Huckle's church visits were infrequent and had aroused "no suspicions". France steps gingerly into Israel-Palestinian peace void The international community committed Friday to try and push Israel and the Palestinians to resume peace talks under a French-led initiative, despite a decidedly lukewarm reaction from Washington and hostility from Israel. Indirect peace talks between the two sides collapsed more than two years ago, and French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault warned that the diplomatic void meant the prospect of a two-state solution to the decades-long conflict was in "serious danger." He repeated France's wish to organise an international conference, with both the Israelis and the Palestinians, before the end of the year. French Foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault (R) shakes hands with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Paris on June 3, 2016 for talks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Stephane De Sakutin (POOL/AFP) Neither Israeli nor Palestinian representatives attended the talks in the French capital aimed at laying the ground for a fully-fledged peace conference to be held by the end of the year. The Palestinians hailed the Paris meeting as a "very significant step" toward peace that sent a clear message to Israel about its ongoing occupation of lands they want for a future state. But Israel lashed out, saying the initiative would only strengthen the Palestinians' hand and would go down in history as having "pushed peace further away." At the meeting, representatives from 28 countries, the Arab League, European Union and United Nations discussed ways in which the international community could "help advance the prospects for peace, including by providing meaningful incentives to the parties to make peace," according to a joint statement. But few believe genuine progress will be made. Despite a widespread sense of scepticism that the French initiative will succeed where so many others have failed, Ayrault said the world could not "fold its arms and do nothing." - A sense of urgency - In their final statement, the participants agreed that "the status quo is unsustainable" and voiced "alarm" at the situation on the ground, citing continuing acts of violence and Jewish settlement building. Washington, which has traditionally taken on a mediating role between the two sides, has not tried to initiate any fresh peace moves since the previous US-led round of indirect talks collapsed in April 2014 and has remained decidedly cool on the French initiative. US Secretary of State John Kerry told journalists after the talks that while "we need to find some immediate kinds of steps on the ground that would make a difference... we can't impose a solution from outside, we need to have direct negotiations and I will continue to encourage that." Earlier, in opening the conference, French President Francois Hollande had urged Israel and the Palestinians to make a "courageous choice" for peace. - 'A clear message' - Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erakat said the Paris talks sent a "clear" message to Israel. "The Paris meeting is a very significant step and its message is clear: If Israel is allowed to continue its colonisation and apartheid policies in occupied Palestine, the future will be for more extremism and bloodshed rather than for coexistence and peace," he said in a statement. But Israel said the French effort would only cause the Palestinians to harden their positions. "The Paris meeting will go down in history as having only hardened Palestinian positions and pushed peace further away," foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said in a statement after the meeting. Ayrault said the talks were focused on the 2002 Saudi-led Arab peace initiative. Under that proposal, Arab leaders offered to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied since 1967, and the creation of a Palestinian state. At the time, the plan was largely ignored by Israel, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week he would be open to re-negotiating aspects of it with the Palestinians. Speaking after the meeting, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir rejected this idea, saying the Arab peace initiative already "has all the elements for a final settlement." "To argue that the Arab peace initiative should be watered down to accommodate the Israelis is not a wise approach," he said. "It provides Israel with a lot of incentives and it's incumbent on the Israelis to accept that." Analysts say Palestinian frustration of the deadlock in negotiations has driven a wave of violence that has left 206 Palestinians and 28 Israelis dead since October. Israel blames the bloodshed on incitement by Palestinian leaders and media. Palestinians clash with Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank on May 27, 2016 Jaafar Ashtiyeh (AFP/File) US stamp found six decades after its theft A rare US stamp known as the "Inverted Jenny" has been recovered 61 years after its theft. The stamp was officially donated Thursday to the American Philatelic Research Library (APRL), according to a release from the US Attorney's office in New York. The Inverted Jenny stamp came from a sheet of 100 stamps printed in 1918, and gained fame for being misprinted upside down. The Inverted Jenny stamp came from a sheet of 100 stamps printed in 1918, and gained fame for being misprinted upside down Jewel Samad (AFP) The sheet was later broken up and individual stamps sold to collectors. The stamp has an image of the Curtiss Jenny JN-4HM biplane modified for shuttling mail. It commemorated the US Postal Service's first airmail flight on May 15, 1918, with a value of 24 cents per stamp. On Thursday, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara announced the return of one of the stolen stamps. Investigators recovered the stamp after the Spink auction house in New York alerted authorities that an individual had tried to sell the stamp. The owner Keelin O'Neill assured the FBI during questioning that he had inherited the "Inverted Jenny" from his grandfather, now deceased. O'Neill agreed to relinquish the stamp to authorities once he learned it was stolen. The returned stamp is one of four from a block stolen from collector Ethel B. Stewart McCoy in 1955. Three of the four stamps stolen from McCoy -- who died in 1980 -- are entrusted to the APRL. The fourth is still missing. From pariahs to pets: dogs find a home in Oman Long seen as unwanted fleabags wandering the streets in search of food, dogs in Oman have become pampered pets thanks to changing attitudes among Muslims towards canine companions. They may be man's best friend to millions around the globe, but in the Islamic world dogs have traditionally been shunned because tradition holds that they are unclean. In a suburb of Muscat, a 35-room "hotel" with a difference stands as a testament to the turnaround in pooch fortunes in the Gulf sultanate. At the PetCare Veterinary Centre, four-legged guests undergo daily 15-minute exercise sessions Mohammed Mahjoub (AFP) The two-storey building boasts two small swimming pools, a veterinary clinic, grooming salons, a dressing room and two dog trainers. Three of the bedrooms at the PetCare Veterinary Centre are reserved for canine couples only. While it is by no means the first of its kind in the world, in Oman it is still something of a rarity. Its creator is Adel al-Jamri, who has travelled the globe participating in dog-breeding contests as far afield as Asia and Europe since the 1990s. Omanis and foreign residents alike bring their dogs to stay for between one night and three months, particularly when they go on holiday. Jamri said he was encouraged by "a change of mentality" in Oman that has seen a growing interest in dogs for companionship, hunting or to enter into competitions and animal shows. "The dog is no longer an unclean animal," he said. And their owners "entrust them to us, especially when they go on vacations". Muslim tradition holds that dogs' saliva is unclean and could spread disease. Islam "prohibits the ownership of dogs, apart from those used for guarding or hunting," said Sheikh Ahmed Khashba, the imam of a mosque in the Omani capital. While breeding camels and horses is an ancient tradition in Oman and neighbouring Gulf countries, "raising dogs and cats is new for us in the sultanate," said Salem al-Ghanimi, a customer at a pet store in Muscat. He puts it down to "the tendency of some people to imitate foreigners". However, many families still avoid keeping dogs because they believe it goes against the teachings of Islam, said Ghanimi. Store manager Mohammed Wassim says younger generations are at the forefront of the new trend of keeping pets. - 'More faithful than humans' - At the PetCare Veterinary Centre, four-legged guests undergo daily 15-minute exercise sessions. They range from small chihuahuas to German shepherds and golden retrievers. Hotel rules are strict: a dog cannot check in without a veterinary certificate showing it has had the necessary vaccinations. But with an occupancy rate that often exceeds 95 percent, there is no shortage of guests, said its chief administrator Azzan al-Zadlaji. The cost is eight rials ($21) a day for full board, or less if the owner provides the food. Smaller puppies qualify for a discount. The parents of 15-year-old student Sultan al-Rawahi brought their son's Dutch shepherd for one month to help him to concentrate on his exams. Sultan Yahia, another Omani, brought his pitbull for training in preparation for competitions. He also has a German shepherd at home. With purebred dogs growing in popularity, the centre has become a meeting point for dog breeders and owners who hope to start Muscat's first canine club. In the meantime they hold a dog show every Friday in an Oman park. And it is not just dogs that are pampered by Oman's growing ranks of animal aficionados. Lamia al-Bakri spends almost a fifth of her monthly salary on her cat. But she says her furry friend is worth it, "especially these days with animals proving to be more faithful than some humans." Four-legged guests at the PetCare Veterinary Centre range from small chihuahuas to German shepherds and golden retrievers Mohammed Mahjoub (AFP) Hotel rules are strict: a dog cannot check in without a veterinary certificate showing it has had the necessary vaccinations Mohammed Mahjoub (AFP) Gay Syrian fails to block Greece deportation A gay Syrian man fighting against deportation from Greece to Turkey was told by the European Court of Human Rights that his request to immediately block the process has been denied, court staff said Friday. "Yesterday the court rejected the request for interim measures in question," a court source in Strasbourg told AFP. The court confirmed that it was the first such appeal under an EU-Turkey migration deal that went into effect in March. Under the EU deal struck with Ankara, all Syrian migrants arriving in Greece from March 20 can be sent back to Turkey if they do not apply for asylum or their claim is rejected Yannis Kolesodis (POOL/AFP/File) Karl Kopp, European affairs director for German-based rights group Pro Asyl, said the request to the Strasbourg-based court was tabled late on Thursday. The court said this decision in no way "prejudged" any subsequent decisions on the case, adding that the Syrian man could still pursue his application even after deportation. Greek state news agency ANA said the 46-year-old man had previously worked in the oil industry and lived between Turkey and Nigeria. In March, he fled to Greece after a visit by the Islamic State "emissaries" who told him to return to Syria, Kopp said. "He fled head over heels by jumping from his kitchen window," Kopp said. The Syrian arrived on the Greek island of Lesbos on March 29, days after the EU struck a deal to send failed asylum seekers back to Turkey in a bid to stem the bloc's worst ever migrant crisis. His application was rejected by Greek asylum services and a board of appeal ruled that it was safe to return him to Turkey on the grounds that he had lived several years in Istanbul. Before now, the board had granted asylum to every applicant it deal with -- all Syrians -- on the basis Turkey was not a safe country for them, according to Pro Asyl. The refugee advocacy group listed 10 such decisions. A Greek government source dismissed any suggestion the decision was politically motivated, saying each ruling was made on a case-by-case basis. Pro Asyl, the Greek Council for Refugees and other rights groups are providing legal assistance to many asylum applicants who fear discrimination or physical danger if returned to Turkey. By the end of May, there were around 880 official requests -- including 770 by Syrians -- and thousands of expressions of interest, according to a government source. Greece has been on the front line of an influx of migrants crossing by boat from Turkey as part of Europe's biggest migrant crisis since World War II. Under the deal struck with Ankara, all Syrian migrants arriving in Greece from March 20 can be sent back to Turkey if they do not apply for asylum or their claim is rejected. Greece's asylum services have been overwhelmed as many new arrivals have filed applications to try to prevent -- or at least delay -- their return to Turkey. Thousands of people have been left stranded in cramped detention camps on Greece's islands, known as popular tourist destinations, where violence has boiled over into brawls and arson attacks. A Pakistani father-of-35 has begun his quest for wife number four in order to achieve his life goal of having 100 children. Sardar Jan Mohammad Khilji, 46, from Quetta, Balochistan, says he believes it is his religious duty to have as many children as possible. The medical technician claims his three wives all support his decision to bring a fourth woman into their marriage - but you have to take his word for it as he would not let them comment on the matter. Pakistani father-of-35, Sardar Jan Mohammad Khilji, pictured with four of his daughters, says he believes it is his religious duty to have as many children as possible Proudly showing off his two latest additions to the brood - two baby girls born withing a week of each other - he insists it is 'very rare' that he mixes up his children's names. Khilji said he juggles the affections of his 35 children - who are all under the age of 15 - by taking turns to attend family events with them and their mothers, such as weddings. His three current wives support his procreational and matrimonial goals, he said, adding that they all live in harmony together. However, none of his wives could confirm this, as he would not allow a visiting reporter to speak to any of them . Rights activists warn it is women and children who suffer most in polygamous marriages. Jan, his three wives and his 35 children - all under the age of 15 - live together in a five-bedroom mud hut in the outskirts of Quetta in restive Balochistan province Pakistani men are permitted to take up to four wives under Islam, though to do so they must seek permission from their first wife and an arbitration council. It remains rare for men to take multiple wives in the country, but when polygamy does take place, studies have shown it can result in 'depression and despair' among wives, while children often struggle to know their father, said Rafia Zakaria, a women's rights activist. Ms Zakaria said that the Koran dictates that multiple wives may be taken only when a husband can do 'perfect justice' among them. 'Well, perfect justice is impossible, and for this reason polygamy is never a good situation,' said Zakaria, who campaigns against the practice. 'Someone always suffers and almost always it is the women and children,' she added. Family lawyer Mohammed Bilal Kasi, who deals with polygamy cases in Quetta agreed. 'We lawyers are well aware of social problems surrounding polygamy,' he said. 'Women and children undergo mental agony due to these affairs.' The tension can lead to serious legal disputes over property and rights after the father's death, he said. Denied his permission to speak, Jan's wives could not describe what life is like for his sprawling dynasty, who all live together in a five-bedroom mud hut in the outskirts of Quetta in restive Balochistan province. At least two of his children appear to support his goals, however, including his eldest child Shagufta Nasreen. 'A large family is like Allah bestowing a case of mangoes,' the 15-year-old explained, adding that she hopes to go into medicine like her father. The father-of-35 claims he 'very rarely' mixes up his children's names and the wives and children take turns in accompanying him to events and family celebrations Jan's eldest son, 13-year-old Mohammed Esa, also wanted to emulate the patriarch -- but he has set his sights even higher, resolving that he will have more than 100 children. Jan, who claims he is a qualified medical technician, runs an unregulated clinic where he treats people for minor ailments such as headaches, adding that as he is 'serving humanity' he charges just 250 rupees ($2.30) per patient while providing his services to the poor for free. He also runs a seminary funded by donations where nearly 400 students -- including four of his sons -- are studying the Koran, and says he pays for 20 of his 35 children to attend private school. The household expenditures of his growing empire, however, can reach up to 120,000 rupees per month -- more than ten times Pakistan's average -- in a neighbourhood that lacks basic amenities such as tap water and sewage, he said. He insisted he has never faced any financial problems trying to care for his brood, but did not explain how he could cover all the expenses with just pay for his medical work. Jan conceded that his needs may increase as his children grow and so is calling on the government to allocate funds for the food, education, and healthcare of his family -- a request that is unlikely to be fulfilled. But Jan has faith. If the government does not listen, he said, he trusts in God to provide. Mr Khilji put his fertility down to daily doses of fresh and dry fruits, milk and meat; as well as reciting the Holy Koran and praying five times a day Pakistan has the highest birth rate in South Asia - around three children per woman according to World Bank and government figures - though an accurate census has not been conducted in more than 30 years. Jan put his fertility down to daily doses of fresh and dry fruits, milk and meat; as well as reciting the Holy Koran and praying five times a day. While his eldest child is 15, his youngest is just a few weeks old. At the beginning of March he was still a father of merely 33, but that month two more daughters were born within six days of one another, he says. His marriages were all arranged by his parents. 'I married the first one...when I was 26 years old, and the next year wedded the other two within a gap of five months,' he told AFP. His next wedding, however, could be arranged via Facebook: since his story aired in Pakistani media, he says, he has had a slew of marriage offers via the social network. A large poster on the wall at Jan's house carries the symbol he used when he ran for provincial office in 2013: a double bed, which, he told AFP, 'denotes special pleasure and meaning in my life'. Two Koreas squabble over defections, talks offer The two Koreas stepped up an angry war of words Friday as tensions mounted over a series of North Korean defections and the South's rejection of Pyongyang's repeated offers of military talks. Tensions have been running high on the divided Korean peninsula ever since the North conducted its fourth nuclear test in January followed by a long-range rocket launch. In the past month, a new source of friction has emerged with two cases of group defections by North Korean staff working in Pyongyang-run restaurants in China. North, right, and South Korean army soldiers face off at the border village of Panmunjom. The North has again accused Seoul of "premeditated" abduction following the latest defection of North Korean staff working at a Pyongyang-run restaurant in China Ahn Young-Joon (POOL/AFP) A dozen women and their restaurant manager arrived in Seoul in April, and three others from a separate restaurant followed them this week. North Korea insists the staff were duped and effectively kidnapped by South Korean intelligence agents and are being held in the South against their will -- an accusation Seoul categorically denies. "The allurement and abduction clearly proves that the puppet forces of south Korea are the most hideous human rights abusers," a spokesman for the North Korean Red Cross said in a statement. -- 'Premeditated abductions' -- Referring to the latest case of the three women who had been working in a restaurant in the northern Chinese province of Shanxi, the spokesman said they were the victims of a sophisticated, "premeditated abduction". He said South Korean agents "lured" the women away from their work and spirited them across the border with Laos and then into Thailand. Seoul's unification ministry dismissed the "groundless" accusations on Friday, and said North Korea could better spend time examining why its citizens wanted to flee. "We hope North Korea will look back on the continued defections and use it as an opportunity to improve the human rights and livelihoods of its people," ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-Hee said. The South Korean government estimates that Pyongyang rakes in around $10 million every year from about 130 restaurants it operates -- with mostly North Korean staff -- in 12 countries, including neighbouring China. Tough UN sanctions imposed on North Korea after its January nuclear test significantly curtailed the isolated state's ability to earn hard currency, making the restaurants an even more important source of income than before. There have been reports of staff not being paid, with restaurants pressured into increasing their regular remittances to Pyongyang. -- Dialogue dispute -- Another recent source of cross-border tension has been South Korea's negative response to a proposal from North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un to hold military talks to defuse the situation. Seoul argued that the offer amounted to little more than diplomatic posturing given Kim's renewed commitment to expanding the North's nuclear arsenal. In a statement issued late Thursday, the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said the South's rejection of talks was confrontational. "If they turn their back on us, the result will be miserable," the statement said. "Our response will be the toughest offensive aimed to push them deeper into the abyss and lead them faster to self-destruction," it added. In Seoul, the Unification Ministry said such bellicose rhetoric only served to underline the duplicity inherent in the North's talks proposal. "We can see that North Korea is proving that its previous demands for dialogue was just an insincere posturing," spokesman Jeong said. Japan officials raid Suzuki HQ over fuel-testing scandal Japan's transport ministry raided small-car maker Suzuki's headquarters Friday in the wake of its shock admission that it used improper fuel-testing methods for years, affecting millions of cars. Officials descended on the company's base in Hamamatsu city, around 250 kilometres (155 miles) southwest of Tokyo, saying they were hunting for documents linked to the under-fire emissions and fuel-economy testing. "We are raiding Suzuki's headquarters to confirm the information that the company supplied" to the ministry, an official in charge of automotive safety told AFP. Officials descended on the company's base in Hamamatsu city, around 250 kilometres (155 miles) southwest of Tokyo, saying they were hunting for documents linked to the under-fire emissions and fuel-economy testing JIJI PRESS (JIJI PRESS/AFP) The agency also raided the office of rival Mitsubishi Motors after its shock revelation in April that it had cheated on fuel-efficiency tests for decades. Suzuki, which was for years led by its 86-year-old chairman Osamu Suzuki -- a direct descendant of the company's founding family -- has admitted to using a testing method not approved by Japanese regulators. But it has repeatedly insisted it had not meant to deceive drivers. The company said in a statement it will "fully cooperate" with the transport ministry, but declined to speculate on what sort of financial penalties it could face. "We'll just have to wait and see," a company spokesman told AFP. Instead, the company claimed this week the problem was linked to scaling back resources earmarked for testing in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which set off the world financial crisis. After the Lehman shock "the increased workload of developing new models and engines led Suzuki to be unable to allocate sufficient manpower for the (approved) test," it said Tuesday. "In addition, (we) failed to invest in necessary infrastructure... as well as to make efforts to improve testing technology." Suzuki's Tokyo-listed shares dropped 0.92 percent to 2,829.5 yen by the lunch break on Friday on reports of the raid. The company has confirmed that 26 vehicle models were involved, about half produced for other automakers, since it started using the unapproved testing in 2010. More than two million cars, all sold in Japan, were affected, it said. The Suzuki revelations come during a tough time for the global industry. Japan's transport ministry ordered all domestic automakers to probe their own compliance with government testing methods following Mitsubishi's revelations that it manipulated fuel-economy data. Polish grandpa gives up Atlantic kayak crossing bid A Polish grandfather attempting his third solo trans-Atlantic kayak crossing has been forced to give up because of strong waves off the US coast. Adventurer Aleksander Doba paddled off from the tip of Manhattan Sunday. His goal was to reach Portugal in time to celebrate his 70th birthday on land in September. But waves off Sandy Hook in the state of New Jersey pushed Doba ashore, he said on his Facebook page Friday. Polish kayaker Aleksander Doba left from the tip of Manhattan on his trans-Atlantic trip but was forced ashore by waves off New Jersey and his boat was too damaged to continue Eduardo Munoz Alvarez (AFP/File) Doba reached shore safely with his kayak but it was too severely damaged to go out again, his land-based team said. He will try again next year, it said. A star at home, gray-bearded Doba gained global attention when he was named a National Geographic adventurer of the year in 2015. At that point, the retired engineer -- also an avid rock-climber, parachutist, glider pilot, sailor and yacht skipper -- had already had two solo Atlantic kayak crossings under his belt. The first, between October 2010 and February 2011, took him from the Senegalese capital Dakar to the Brazilian city of Acarau. Taiwan holds first Tiananmen commemoration in parliament Taiwan held the island's first ever commemoration in parliament Friday of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown as lawmakers urged the new government to address human rights issues in its dealing with China. It comes weeks after China-sceptic Tsai Ing-wen was sworn in as president, succeeding Ma Ying-jeou who oversaw an unprecedented eight-year rapprochement with Beijing. Ties have rapidly cooled since Tsai won the presidency in January, with Beijing highly distrustful of her traditionally independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). A Chinese paramilitary guard stands in Tiananmen Square under portrait of Mao Zedong in Beijing on June 3, 2016, on the eve of the 27th anniversary of the June 4, 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests Fred Dufour (AFP) In the past, Taiwan's government has repeatedly urged China to learn lessons from the Tiananmen crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, in which more than 1,000 were killed according to some estimates. But parliamentarians have never before gathered to voice their views. A day ahead of the June 4 anniversary, senior lawmakers from the DPP and the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) were joined by human rights activists and exiled Chinese dissident Wu'er Kaixi as they observed a minute's silence. They also signed a motion proposed by DPP lawmaker Yu Mei-nu to demand the government "express Taiwan's serious concerns over redressing the June 4 incident at the appropriate time" in future interactions between the two sides. "Taiwan and China have very close ties, so the suppression of human rights that happened to Chinese citizens could also threaten human rights in Taiwan," Yu said. KMT lawmaker Chen Shei-saint broke partisan ranks to voice his support, saying democratisation in China was "the biggest assurance for Taiwan's security." Taiwan is self-ruling after splitting with China in 1949 following a civil war, but Beijing still sees it as part of its territory to be reunified. Since Tsai took power Beijing has been pushing her to adhere to its "one China" concept. Taiwan was left furious after its citizens were deported from Kenya and Malaysia to the mainland as part of fraud investigations, a move seen as a pressure tactic on Tsai. For its part, the DPP this week dropped what were criticised as "China-centric" changes to the high school curriculum that triggered major protests last year while the KMT were still in power. The repealing of the curriculum changes was criticised by Beijing, which warned Taiwan it would "shoulder the consequences for repeating the history of provoking tension and instability". Activists urged parliament to hold the Tiananmen commemoration every year. "Please send a message to China's authoritarian government that... you are standing beside pro-democracy campaigners and that you are different from the Chinese government," said Wu'er, a prominent student leader in 1989 now living in exile in Taiwan. Also speaking in parliament, Yang Sen-hong, chairman of Taiwan Association for China Human Rights, said Taiwan should "bravely tell (China) to stop the terror and end the disaster, otherwise Taiwan will suffer too". Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen greets supporters during her inauguration ceremony in Taipei, on May 20, 2016 Sam Yeh (AFP) China Alibaba founder says assisting US probe: Xinhua Alibaba's founder Jack Ma has said the New York-listed Chinese e-commerce giant is "actively assisting" an investigation into its accounting by the US stock market regulator, China's state news agency reported Friday. In an interview with Xinhua Thursday, Ma said that Alibaba has provided requested information to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and welcomed the enquiry. Alibaba said in a regulatory filing earlier this month that the SEC had opened the probe "into whether there have been any violations of the federal securities laws." Alibaba founder Jack Ma says the e-commerce company has provided requested information to the Securities and Exchange Commission and welcomes the enquiry by the US stock market regulator Eric Feferberg (AFP/File) Among other things, the US regulator sought information into Alibaba's accounting for its Cainiao logistics network and its reporting practices for "Singles Day", China's biggest online shopping event. "The best way to settle questioning is transparency and communication," Ma told Xinhua, adding that some US investors struggle to understand Alibaba's business model. The company -- often described as China's equivalent to eBay -- dominates online commerce in the country. Its Taobao platform is estimated to hold more than 90 percent of the domestic consumer-to-consumer market, while its Tmall platform is believed to have over half of the country's business-to-consumer transactions. Separately Alibaba's biggest shareholder SoftBank said this week that it will sell at least $7.9 billion worth of its stake in Alibaba, as the Japanese firm looks to pay down a massive debt load. Alibaba itself is buying back at least $2.0 billion worth of the shares while the "Alibaba Partnership", which consists of 34 management partners, is buying $400 million, according to SoftBank. "Alibaba has ample cash and is optimistic about its earnings in the future," Ma said, according to Xinhua. Trying to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict A Paris meeting Friday on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the latest attempt to tackle one of the world's most stubborn diplomatic issues. Here is a rundown of past efforts. Oslo to Camp David Graffiti in Gaza commemorates the "Nakba" or "catastrophe", referring to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 Mohammed Abed (AFP/File) - OSLO ACCORDS: September 13, 1993: After six months of secret talks in Oslo, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation sign in Washington a mutual recognition agreement that allows for five years of Palestinian autonomy aimed at striking a final deal no later than May 1999. Under the deal, Israel is to withdraw from 70 percent of territory it occupies in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and in July 1994, PLO leader Yasser Arafat returns from 27 years in exile. - OSLO II: September 28, 1995: A new interim accord is negotiated in Taba, Egypt and signed in Washington. It foresees a gradual Israeli West Bank withdrawal. But before that happens, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated on November 4 by a Jewish extremist. - WYE PLANTATION: October 23, 1998: A deal signed at Wye Plantation in the US calls for a gradual Israeli withdrawal from 13 percent of the land it still occupies in the West Bank, which would leave the Palestinians controlling 40 percent. Two months later, Israel freezes the deal after pulling back from two percent of occupied territory. An accord signed on September 5, 1999 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, gives the initiative fresh momentum, and targets September 13, 2000 for a final agreement. - CAMP DAVID: July 11-25, 2000: At a summit at Camp David in the US, Palestinians and Israelis remain deadlocked over the questions of a final status for Jerusalem and compensation for Palestinian refugees from 1948. Two months later, the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, breaks out, lasting until 2005. The Israeli army temporarily reoccupies almost the entire West Bank. String of failures - ARAB INITIATIVE of March 28, 2002: After the failure in January 2001 of a summit in Taba, an Arab summit in Beirut adopts a Saudi initiative offering diplomatic relations between Israel and Arab countries in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories and a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue. - ROAD MAP of April 30, 2003: A diplomatic quartet comprised of the European Union, Russia, United Nations and United States publishes a document dubbed a "road map" towards a Palestinian state in 2005 once Palestinian attacks and Jewish settler activity cease. Israel and the Palestinians commit to its application on June 4, 2003 in Aqaba, Jordan in the presence of US president George W. Bush. - ANNAPOLIS SUMMIT of November 27, 2007: Israelis and Palestinians commit to negotiating an agreement by the end of 2008 during a conference that includes Israel and 15 Arab countries for the first time. The Palestinian group Hamas, which now controls the Gaza Strip following Israel's withdrawal in 2005, rejects the agreement. Palestinian Authority envoys pull out of talks after Israel launches an offensive in Gaza in late 2008. Fresh efforts - ABORTED DIALOGUE: September 2, 2010: After a 20-month hiatus, direct talks briefly resume in Washington with a meeting between Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who accepted the principle of a Palestinian state in June 2009. The talks break down when Israeli resumes construction of West Bank settlements on September 26. - NINE MONTHS from July 29, 2013: US Secretary of State John Kerry announces the launch of nine months of direct talks, the first in three years. They are suspended by Israel on April 23, 2014, a week before term, after the announcement of a reconciliation deal between the PLO's Fatah and Hamas. Translator for Bangkok bomb suspects held on drug charges A translator for two Uighur men accused of a deadly Bangkok bombing was remanded in custody Friday for drug possession, further complicating a murky trial that has failed to answer key questions about the unprecedented attack on Thailand. Sirojiddin Bakhodirov was arrested this week with small amounts of marijuana and crystal meth. On Friday a Bangkok court extended the Uzbek national's remand, according to police. Suspects in the Bangkok Erawan shrine bombing Bilal Mohammed (C), also known as Adem Karadag, and Yusufu Mieraili (front L) are escorted by police at a military court in Bangkok on April 20, 2016 Lilian Suwanrumpha (AFP/File) But Bakhodirov, who is the only Uighur translator at the Bangkok bomb trial, told AFP by phone the drugs were planted on him as punishment for helping Thailand's Uighur community. The mostly Muslim ethnic minority faces persecution and discrimination in their homeland in northwestern China, forcing many to flee and often use Thailand as a transit country. Two Uighur men were arrested over the August 2015 bombing that killed 20 people -- mostly ethnic Chinese tourists -- at Bangkok's Erawan shrine. "I am innocent, they set me up," Bakhodirov told AFP of his drug charges. "They don't want me to translate because I help the Uighur community". Police have denied the framing allegations. "It happens to be that (the suspect) is related to a high-profile case. That is why it is getting attention from the public," said deputy police spokesman Krissana Pattanacharoen. Bakhodirov told AFP army officers interrogated him about Uighurs in other parts of Thailand after his arrest. The two Uighurs accused of bombing Bangkok deny the charges and one of the suspects, Bilal Mohammed, says police tortured him into making a confession he later retracted. The most recent court hearing saw Bakhodirov translate testimony from a sobbing Mohammed as he accused Thai captors of beating him and denying him halal food in prison. A month before the bombing, Thailand's military government forcibly deported more than 100 Uighurs to China. The move inflamed rights groups and has fed speculation that the bombing was plotted as revenge on a kingdom which had been a key transit route for the minority. Thai authorities have rejected the theory and insist the attack was in retaliation for a crackdown on a people-smuggling gang. But they have yet to catch a number of other suspects -- many of whom, including the alleged mastermind, are believed to be overseas. People offer prayers at the Erawan shrine in Bangkok on February 5, 2016 Christophe Archambault (AFP/File) Yellowstone County is on pace to set a record for primary voters, said election officials on Thursday. Slightly more than 32,000 voters had returned ballots by Thursday afternoon, with more than 1,000 arriving in the mail daily. That pace, plus the walk-in voters who cast ballots at MetraPark on June 7, should put the county above the current record of 37,000, said Bret Rutherford, elections administrator. The record is 37,200. Thats the turnout total for a primary election, Rutherford said. Well get it, I think. There have already been more ballots submitted than the total from the 2012 presidential election. The number of ballots turned in is also significant because absentee ballots were mailed out a week later than usual. Election officials asked for a later start so ballot returns werent being mailed at the same time voters were still applying for absentee status. Historically, primary voting is normally low, Rutherford said. Spring school bond elections have had better turnout than primaries for several years. As the election wraps up, there are a few things voters should be aware of. Montanans can register to vote and cast a ballot on the same day, even on June 7. However, the Monday before the election, registration and voting is cut off at noon. The cutoff was requested by elections officials so they can prepare for the final day of voting. Registration and voting begins at 7 a.m. June 7. Any voter who hasnt yet received an absentee ballot in the mail isnt going to get one, Rutherford said. Those voters will need to vote in person. There is always confusion from voters who expect a ballot in the mail because they received one in April for a school election. However, school elections are mail ballot only, Rutherford said. Other elections are absentee ballot by request. Legislators a few years ago passed a law requiring voters to reapply for a mailed absentee ballot every two years. Severn thousand voters miss the application period every two years, Rutherford said. Statewide, more than a fifth of registered voters have already cast ballots. The Secretary of State's Office says more than 141,000 Montanans have already cast ballots as of Thursday. Over the years, the number of early voters has been on the rise. In the 2014 primary, 67.9 percent of all votes cast were absentee ballots amid the lowest turnout in recent years. As of Thursday, more than 646,000 of the state's residents had registered to cast ballots. Voters will be deciding primary contests for president, the U.S. House, governor and four other statewide offices and three seats on the state Supreme Court. The most contentious battles are occurring in down-ticket legislative matchups between Republican moderates and conservatives. US guarantees major new Ukraine loan The United States said on Friday it had signed a major new loan guarantee with Ukraine aimed at helping the war-scarred former Soviet republic stabilise its floundering economy. The $1-billion (900-million-euro) commitment is the third of its kind issued by Washington since a pro-EU revolution brought down Ukraine's Russia-backed president in February 2014. The pledge is meant to provide Ukraine with more affordable access to international capital markets and fill its gaping budget hole. The confict in Ukraine has reduced many buildings to ruble, including Donetsk International Airport Aleksey Filippov (AFP/File) "The guarantee sends a strong signal of the United States' continued support for Ukraine as it pursues reforms that fulfill the Ukrainian people's aspirations for a prosperous and democratic future," US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt said in a statement. The new US assistance is part of a $40-billion global rescue package agreed by Ukraine and the International Monetary Fund in March 2015. About $17.5 billion of that money is a loan from the Fund. The rest includes a restructuring programme approved by Ukraine's private Western creditors and assistance from individual governments and international institutions. The IMF had been frustrated by the slow adoption of painful belt-tightening measures that were resisted by populist parties and helped weaken leaders who rose to power after Ukraine's 2014 turn toward the West. Allegations of government corruption led to the resignation of prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and his replacement by pro-Western parliament speaker Volodymyr Groysman in April. Ukraine has so far only received $6.7 billion in IMF disbursements and none since August 2015. But the sides last month reached a staff-level agreement to resume the programme after parliament adopted a raft of austerity measures prescribed by the IMF. That progress allowed Kiev's other partners to resume their own lending and help Ukraine shed the dysfunctional economic legacy of its Soviet past. Kiev hopes to receive $1.6 billion in fresh funds from the IMF by July. Yet some economists warned that the new pro-Western coalition created in parliament during Groysman appointment was fragile and its economic measures under threat of being undermined by nationalist and populist factions. "Substantial risks to a fruitful IMF cooperation remain as the government has a rather thin parliamentary majority," Austria's Raiffeisen Bank said in a research note. - 'Strategic partners' - The east European nation's economy contracted by 9.9 percent last year but appears to be on course to achieve modest growth in 2016. Ukraine reported a 0.1 percent expansion of gross domestic product (GDP) between January and March compared to the same period in 2015. This marked the first quarter of annualised growth since the end of 2013. The news may help President Petro Poroshenko mute growing criticism of his seemingly ineffective bid to stamp out wasteful government graft and achieve the prosperity he promised when elected in May 2014. Poroshenko on Friday took personal credit for securing the new assistance during an April 1 meeting with US President Obama on the sidelines of an economic summit in Washington. "This bears testament to the fact that the United States and Ukraine are reliable strategic partners," Poroshenko said in a statement. Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, pictured in Kiev on April 19, 2016, is under growing criticism of his seemingly ineffective bid to stamp out wasteful government graft and achieve the prosperity he promised when elected in May 2014 Genya Savilov (AFP/File) 17 abducted minority Hazaras freed in Afghanistan Seventeen Shiite Hazaras kidnapped in northern Afghanistan have been released, officials said Friday, after gunmen hauled them out of their vehicles in the latest assault on the ethnic minority group. The incident on Wednesday in Sar-e-Pul province comes amid a spate of attacks against civilian vehicles, underscoring a worsening security situation after the Taliban named a new leader last week. "We secured the release of 17 passengers abducted by Taliban gunmen" late Thursday, provincial governor Zaher Wahdat told AFP. Taliban insurgents stepped up their annual spring offensive in Afghanistan after naming a new leader last week Noorullah Shirzada (AFP/File) "Local elders and residents mediated for their safe release," he said, adding that all 17 were civilians with no government connections. The Taliban have so far not commented on the incident. There has been a surge in violence against Hazaras, a community that has suffered a long history of oppression, with a series of kidnappings and killings in recent months. The latest incident came after after the Taliban killed 10 bus passengers, many of them summarily executed, and kidnapped dozens of others in northern Kunduz province earlier this week. The insurgents said they were targeting Afghan security officials aboard the buses passing through the insurgency-prone district of Aliabad. Regional police commander Shir Aziz Kamawal said a handful of passengers from the Kunduz attack were still in Taliban captivity. "The hostages have been spread out into several villages in Chardara district of Kunduz," Kamawal said. "Village elders are trying to secure their release." The violence underscores Afghanistan's fragile security situation as the militants intensify assaults against government forces after launching their spring offensive in April. The Taliban also last week announced Haibatullah Akhundzada as their new leader, elevating a low-profile religious figure in a swift power transition after officially confirming the death of Mullah Mansour in a US drone strike. 117 migrant bodies washed up on Libyan beach: Red Crescent The bodies of at least 117 migrants trying to reach Europe, many of them women, have washed up on a beach in the Libyan town of Zwara, the Red Crescent said Friday. "So far, 117 bodies have been found, 70 percent of them women and six children," Khames el-Boussefi, spokesman for the Libyan Red Crescent in the western town, told AFP. "We are going out again to search around Zwara and nearby beaches," he said. Libyan Red Crescent personnel retrieve the body of a migrant that washed up on a beach in the city of Zwara, on June 2, 2016 Earlier, Libyan navy spokesman Colonel Ayoub Qassem gave a similar count of bodies retrieved since Thursday evening, cautioning it was likely to rise since an average boat carries 115-125 passengers. People smugglers have exploited the chaos gripping Libya since the 2011 uprising that overthrew dictator Moamer Kadhafi to traffic migrants across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. It is a lucrative business for the smugglers who cram migrants into boats that are small and unsafe for the perilous journey to Italy just 300 kilometres (190 miles) from Libya's shores. Thousands of migrants try each year to make the crossing, but many drown when their boats founder. Qassem said that migrant boats leaving from western Libya usually set off from the port cities of Sabratha and Zwara, with passengers who are mostly African or Arabs, many of them from Morocco. The identities of the bodies found on Thursday were not yet known. Qassem said it was not clear if the victims had been on three boats that capsized last week off the Libyan shores. Survivors and the United Nations had said at the time that almost 700 migrants, including 40 children, who were on those boats had drowned. Some 204,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe since January, the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday. More than 2,500 people have died trying to make the crossing this year -- the vast majority of them between Libya and Italy -- as Europe battles its worst migration crisis since World War II. Qassem criticised the failure of the international community to deal with the problem. The global community limits itself to "counting bodies and issuing statements", he said. The Zwara municipality also regretted what it called "the strange silence of all those in charge", including Libyan government officials and NGOs. A statement on its Facebook page said Zwara "lacks all the means necessary to deal with such a problem". Angola president appoints daughter boss of oil firm Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has named his billionaire daughter Isabel to head the state oil firm Sonangol, according to a government statement published late Thursday. He appointed the 43-year-old Isabel dos Santos chairwoman of a new board of directors of Sonangol, after sacking the previous board last month. Isabel dos Santos has been ranked by Forbes magazine as the richest woman on the continent. Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos presides over sub-Saharan Africa's second largest oil producer after Nigeria Stephane De Sakutin (AFP/File) Critics say she amassed her vast fortunes thanks to the backing of her father who has ruled Angola for 35 years. In a statement Friday Isabel dos Santos vowed that the new Sonangol board "will work to decrease production costs and optimise resources in order to increase the international competitiveness of the Angolan oil sector". The eldest daughter of the Angolan leader, she is nicknamed the "Princess" and is ranked Africa's eighth wealthiest by Forbes magazine after building a vast business empire. She grew up in London, where she studied mechanical and electrical engineering at King's College. Her first business venture was a restaurant, Miami Beach, which she opened as a 24-year-old in Luanda. Her wealth is estimated at $3.3 billion. The mother of three holds a quarter of the shares in Angola's mobile phone company Unitel and a significant stake of Angola's Banco BIC. She also controls 19 percent of Portugal's fourth-biggest bank BPI and has bought shares in several Portuguese companies in recent years, including a cable television firm. Isabel dos Santos has recently spread her banking empire into neighbouring Namibia, after a banking licence was approved by the country's central bank. Angola is sub-Saharan Africa's second largest oil producer after Nigeria. Shell probing new claim of Nigeria pipeline attack Shell's Nigerian subsidiary said on Friday it was investigating a claim by the Niger Delta Avengers that it had struck another pipeline in the restive oil-producing south. "We are investigating reports of an attack on our pipeline in the western Niger delta," Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) spokesman Precious Okolobo told AFP, without elaborating. The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), blamed for a wave of bombings on Nigeria's oil infrastructure since the beginning of the year, earlier claimed responsibility for the attack. The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) have been blamed for a wave of bombings on Nigeria's oil infrastructure since the beginning of the year Dave Clark (AFP/File) "At 3:00 am today (0200 GMT Friday), @NDAvengers blow up the SPDC Forcados 48" export line," it said on its Twitter account. The attack was carried out because Shell had refused to heed earlier warnings not to repair the pipeline, which was damaged in February, it added. The NDA, which says it is seeking a fairer share of Nigeria's oil wealth for the Niger delta people and has asked oil majors to leave the region, also said it had struck Agip facilities. "At about 3:30 am today (0230 GMT Friday), strike team blow up the Brass to Tebidaba crude oil line in Bayelsa (state)," it said on Twitter. Desmond Agu, commandant of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) in the state, confirmed the second attack and said the pipeline had been shut down. "We have dispatched our men and we have intensified patrols in the area. We are working round the clock to protect critical infrastructure in Bayelsa," he added. There was no immediate word from Agip's parent company, Eni of Italy, when contacted by email. - Output cut - The NDA has been attacking facilities operated by subsidiaries of Shell, Eni, US firm Chevron, and the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). The army said on Thursday that six people, including two soldiers, were killed when militants attacked a boat belonging to the NNPC in the region, but the NDA denied involvement. The deadly attack happened at about 5:50 pm (1650 GMT) on Wednesday in the Warri area of Delta state, which has seen a spate of attacks recently. That followed two claimed NDA attacks on two supply pipelines in Bayelsa state on Wednesday and a warning it would bring oil production to a standstill in Nigeria unless its demands were met. The upsurge in violence has seen Nigeria's oil production fall to 1.4 million barrels per day -- well below the budgeted for 2.2 million bpd. The Avengers are believed to have sympathy for a former oil rebel leader who commanded militants in the region in the 2000s and who is now wanted on money laundering and corruption charges. The Nigerian military, which has slammed the NDA as "economic terrorists", has deployed gunboats and fighter jets to the creeks and swamps of the delta in search of the militants. Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari last week ordered enhanced security in the delta, adding: "We have to be very serious with the situation... because if threatens the national economy." S. African mining companies appeal silicosis ruling South African mining companies said Friday they had appealed against a court ruling allowing hundreds of thousands of miners to sue for damages over lung disease contracted at work. A High Court last month allowed former and current mine workers employed by the country's main gold mining firms since 1965 to proceed with a class action against the companies. The court decision cleared the way for up to half-a-million miners to sue for damages resulting from silicosis -- a deadly respiratory condition developed from breathing in fine silica dust that can be found in places such as mines. A miners' supporter films a protest outside the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg on May 13, 2016 after the judge allowed a class action against mining companies over silicosis Mujahid Safodien (AFP/File) The miners accuse 30 subsidiaries of seven companies -- including African Rainbow Minerals, AngloAmerican, AngloGold Ashanti, Harmony Gold, Gold Fields and Sibanye Gold -- of knowingly and systematically failing to protect workers against the disease that inflames and scars the lungs. In a joint statement, those six companies said they have filed individual applications to appeal against the "class certification judgement handed down by the South Gauteng High Court on 13 May 2016". They are appealing because they believe that the court's ruling on some "highly complex and important" issues of fact and law was "incorrect and that another court may come to a different decision". It could not be immediately established if the seventh firm, DRDGold had also lodged an application to appeal. A group of about 60 former miners brought the case, which is set to expand to involve thousands of elderly men from the poorest rural areas of South Africa as well as Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi and Mozambique. If the companies fail in their appeal, the class action will be the biggest ever in South Africa, although many miners have already died from respiratory diseases allegedly caused by their jobs. Some studies have found silicosis prevalence in South African gold mines at between 22 and 36 percent of all workers -- among the highest rates in the world. The mining companies hinted in their statement that they may seek an out-of-court settlement. While denying liability for the claims, the companies said they are of the "view that a fair and sustainable settlement is preferable to long and protracted litigation". Missing boy case sparks discipline debate in Japan The abandonment of a seven-year-old Japanese boy on a mountain road for misbehaving has sparked a national debate, with some expressing anger and others sympathy for the pressures parents face in disciplining their children. Yamato Tanooka was discovered alive and well early Friday after spending nearly a week sheltered alone on a military base just a few kilometres (miles) from where he was forced out of the family car for misbehaving. While views outside Japan persist of a hard-working people raised under a tough samurai-style discipline, the reality is far more nuanced. Yamato Tanooka, a seven-year-old who spent nearly a week sheltering in a hut after being abandoned by his parents in a bear-inhabited forest, in an undated picture provided by an elementary school in Hokuto city, Japan As in much of the developed world, Japanese parents too have become more indulgent towards their children in recent decades, to the point that older generations complain the country has gone soft. Japanese reacted with outrage on social media after news emerged of what happened last Saturday, with the actions of the parents roundly condemned as "abuse" and them being described as "stupid" for what they had done. And though there was a national sigh of relief after the boy's rescue, opinions remained harsh. "Missing boy was found and that's all wonderful, but the parents must be disciplined such as being abandoned on an uninhabited island," read a Japanese-language tweet. The father, Takayuki Tanooka, admitted that what he did was wrong, apologising in front of reporters after being reunited with his son, and decrying his own action as "excessive". He and his wife had originally fabricated a story that the child got lost on a family outing in the mountains, not wanting to own up to having meted out such a harsh punishment. Among the most notable opinion leaders critical of the parents was prominent education expert Naoki Ogi. "The parents who put him in this situation must be harshly condemned," Ogi wrote earlier this week on his widely followed blog. - 'Chance to think' - "Surely, they will be arrested soon," he added. But he also said that many adults had told him they too as children were abandoned by their parents as a form of punishment. "This is apparently not unusual!!" he wrote. While many social critics, television personalities and others have condemned the parents, some were quick to sympathise over frustration related to child-rearing and discussed their own experiences of tough parental love. "Should we call all forms of strict disciplining abuse?" said one tweet. "If you were his parents, would you never keep a distance from your child or even abandon them? "This case could be a chance to think about how we engage with children." Another Twitter user expressed sympathy with the father, whose impulsive decision to momentarily punish his son turned into a nightmare. "Many say the father in the Hokkaido abandonment case is scum, but he was not going to go home without the child." Ogi on Friday softened his tone somewhat, recognising that the entire family needs psychological care as they start the healing process after their ordeal. "How much distrust is Yamato feeling toward his parents?" Ogi asked in a fresh blog post. "I hope experts will offer adequate care and careful counselling to all members of the family." Takayuki Tanooka, father of Yamato Tanooka, speaks to reporters in Hakodate, Japan, on June 3, 2016 More than 1,000 Iraqi forces wounded in Fallujah op More than 1,000 members of the Iraqi forces have been wounded since the start of the operation to retake Fallujah from the Islamic State group, a health official said Friday. "We have received 1,119 wounded since the start of the operation," a senior Baghdad health official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "The wounded fighters were treated at Kadhimiya, Abu Ghraib, Al Karama, Al Karkh and Yarmuk hospitals," he said. A member of the Iraqi pro-governement forces fires his weapon from the front line in the Albu Huwa area, south of Fallujah near the Euphrates river, on May 31, 2016, during an operation aimed at retaking areas from the Islamic State group Moadh Al-Dulaimi (AFP/File) The official said the casualty toll included members of the army, police, counter-terrorism service and Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary organisation. Iraqi forces on May 22-23 launched a vast offensive aimed at retaking the IS bastion of Fallujah, a city only 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad that was the first to fall out of government control in 2014. Iraqi military commanders are not divulging casualty figures. The health official could not provide a figure for the number of fighters killed. The bodies of the dead are usually taken to a morgue near Baghdad airport or other locations and then collected directly by the families. The number of funerals held across the country however suggests the Fallujah battle is taking a high toll. The coffins of at least 70 fighters killed in the Fallujah fighting had by Wednesday been brought to Najaf's Valley of Peace cemetery, where many from Iraq's Shiite majority bury their dead, according to a security source there. Officials in Basra said the southern province had lost 26 fighters from the Hashed al-Shaabi force alone. UN to request Syria approval on Sunday for aid drops: diplomats The United Nations will on Sunday present a formal request to the Syrian government to approve airdrops of humanitarian aid to besieged areas where civilians are at risk of starvation, diplomats said. UN aid chief Stephen O'Brien told a closed meeting of the Security Council on Friday that consent from the Damascus regime was needed to carry out the airdrops of food and medicine, diplomats at the meeting told AFP. The 15-member council was discussing UN plans for airdrops to reach areas under siege where trapped civilians face dire shortages in the five-year war. A child walks past boxes of aid provided by the World Food Programme (WFP) in Kafr Batna, in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area on the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus on March 1, 2016 Amer Almohibany (AFP/File) World powers decided last month that if aid continued to be blocked, the United Nations would begin airdrops on June 1, although such an operation would require Syrian approval and pose high risks. "What is at stake here is the necessity to put an end to a humanitarian disaster," French Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters ahead of the meeting. "The Syrian regime is continuing to systematically starve hundreds of thousands of civilians and use them as weapons of war. These are war crimes," said Delattre, who holds the council presidency this month. Diplomats said they expected the Syrian regime to take some time to respond to the request and UN officials have said the airdrops are not imminent. Delattre called on Russia, Syria's ally, to ratchet up pressure on Damascus to allow aid to reach civilians by land, which the United Nations has said is the most effective way to deliver aid. "The top priority is to get those who have influence over Damascus, starting with Russia, to strongly increase their pressure on the regime," he said. France, Britain and the United States are calling on the United Nations to forge ahead with plans for the airdrops, even if the operation presents major security challenges. "There should be airdrops where access is being denied by land," said British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft. The United Nations said Thursday that helicopters would have to be used for air bridges to 15 of the 19 besieged areas because they are densely-populated. According to the United Nations, a total of 592,000 people live under siege in Syria -- the majority surrounded by regime forces -- and another four million live in hard-to-reach areas. 'Death Cab' to donate proceeds from N. Carolina shows Alternative rockers Death Cab for Cutie said Friday they would donate proceeds from their upcoming shows in North Carolina to two groups opposing a new state law restricting the rights of transgender people. The band, a favorite with university crowds in the 2000s, said it respected artists led by Bruce Springsteen who have shunned North Carolina, but wanted to honor commitments to play the June 11 and June 16 shows. Death Cab for Cutie, as well as the Scottish synthpop group Chvrches who will open the June 16 show, said in a statement that they will "not take a single dime" from the concerts. Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard Mike Lawrie (Getty/AFP/File) They said they would donate all proceeds to two North Carolina-based activist groups -- the Freedom Center for Social Justice and Southerners On New Ground -- that are fighting the new law. "This nefarious brand of bigotry is embarrassing for the state of North Carolina and has no place in this great nation," the bands said in a statement. North Carolina in March passed a law that requires transgender people to use the bathroom corresponding to the sex on their birth certificates. The move led other states to seek similar laws but also triggered a backlash, with President Barack Obama's administration issuing a directive to all US schools to make transgender students feel comfortable. Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard has long been outspoken in his advocacy of gay rights, but said in the statement that the band has met "wonderful people" in North Carolina. Since Springsteen, artists who have canceled North Carolina shows include alternative rockers Pearl Jam, Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, pop band Maroon 5, violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman and the Cirque du Soleil. School District 2 will require students to be up-to-date on their vaccinations next school year in order to attend school. A 2015 law that went into effect last fall required students to get a series of new shots that werent previously required. In September, more than 2,000 students in SD2 werent up to date, but were allowed to attend school anyway. State officials elected not to step in, citing a fall vaccine shortage and a steep adjustment curve. SD2 Superintendent Terry Bouck said letters were sent to about 500 students who were still behind on their shots. The district has partnered with RiverStone Health to offer vaccinations and conducted several in-school clinics during the school year. The Montana Department of Health and Human Services expects to release a report detailing immunization levels around the state in about a month. Schools were required to report data in December, but about 15 percent of schools were late. The state initially hoped to have the report ready in March. Chief of the Communicable Diseases Bureau Jim Murphy said the report may not reflect current figures because data was collected shortly after the law began. If we were to retake this snapshot right now, wed hope to see that (rates) were higher, he said. Last years decision to allow SD2 students to attend school was rooted in the high number of unvaccinated students and the effect missing school could have on their academic success. SD2 allows students to miss only 10 days per semester in order to receive credit, with exceptions. Attendance matters to us, Bouck said. The letter of the law and being compliant with the Montana law matters to us, too. The new district policy would have accommodations for homeless students, and state law allows parents to opt-out of vaccination requirements for their children for medical or religious reasons. Murphy said that the state is still analyzing data, but anecdotally, it appears that smaller districts found the law easier to comply with. I think they had a simpler time catching kids up just because of the sheer numbers in the urban areas, he said. Schools put a tremendous amount of effort into helping us with this and catching kids up. Some schools, such as Laurel, have held students out who werent up to date with the new rules out of school since the law took effect. All students are required to be immunized against varicella disease, more commonly known as chicken pox. Students in preschool or prekindergarten need one dose, while K-12 students need two. Students in grades seven-12 are also required to have one dose of a vaccine for pertussis, or whooping cough. In previous years, only a Td, or tetanus/diphtheria, shot was required. Before the new law was passed, Montana was the only state that did not require chickenpox vaccinations to attend public school. A Gazette analysis found that more than 10 percent of Montana schools didnt have enough students immunized to ensure herd immunity, a term for near-universal inoculation that helps protect entire populations against a disease, even if the vaccine isnt 100 percent effective or certain people cant get immunized for health reasons. Rebranding move backfires on troubled media group Troubled newspaper group Tribune Publishing was trying for a new image as it seeks to fend off a takeover bid and adapt to the digital era. Instead, its new name "tronc" -- all in lowercase letters -- drew ridicule, mockery and disbelief. The "rebranding" provoked a flood of derision on Twitter and from media analysts and critics. Tribune Publishing, which includes the Los Angeles Times and other large dailies, is searching for a new direction in an industry that is increasingly digital Frederic J. Brown (AFP/File) "At first I though it looked like hoax," said Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University who also blogs about the media industry, calling the name change "ridiculous." Kennedy said it appears to be a move by a group seeking to evolve from the struggling print newspaper business "but they don't sound like they have a clue on how to." The name tronc -- derived from "tribune online content," according to a statement -- was chosen because it "captures the essence of the company's mission" to "deliver personalized and interactive experiences to its 60 million monthly users." But "tronc" is also a British term for the pooling of tips or other resources. And in French, it translates to tree trunk. On Twitter, the comments were merciless. "If you wanted to signify the pathetic nasal honks of the last dying dinosaur, 'tronc' would be a pretty good word," tweeted New York Times deputy tech editor Quentin Hardy. "The robot overlords appear to have won," said NPR media writer David Folkenflik. Emily Bell, director of the Columbia University Tow Center for Digital Journalism, said in a tweet: "I thought Tronc was a Lars von Trier trilogy about the moral descent of a suburban architect and his customs officer wife." The company, which includes the Los Angeles Times and other large dailies spun off the larger Tribune Co. media conglomerate in 2014, has been searching for a new direction in an industry that is increasingly digital. Over the past month, it has been fending off a takeover effort from USA Today publisher Gannett. But the name change did little to inspire confidence. - 'Cartoon caveman' - Mashable's Patrick Kulp called it "a head-scratching name that might sound better suited for a cartoon caveman." At the Nieman Lab media blog, an editor's note said the lower-case spelling would not be accepted. "Because we do not hate our readers, Nieman Lab style from here on out will be a capitalized Tronc, no matter what the company insists," the note said. A Los Angeles Times article also used the Tronc spelling. Washington Post media writer Erik Wemple pulled no punches, writing that "the Tribune lost its mind" with the name change. "Far worse than the name and punctuational idiosyncrasies is the direction in which (chairman Michael) Ferro is pushing the company," Wemple said. Wemple said the release simply offered "buzzwords" and phrases with little real meaning such as turning the group into "a content curation and monetization company." "If all that baloney sounds like the work of a team with no background in journalism, then it accurately represents itself," he wrote. As abortion barriers grow, US Supreme Court ruling looms Abortion may be legal in America, but US states are throwing up more and more barriers to the practice. So an upcoming decision from the Supreme Court is keenly awaited. By the end of this month, the nation's highest court is expected to hand down a ruling on an issue that is highly divisive for Americans. It will concern the state of Texas, specifically, but could reshape how abortion is carried out in the rest of the United States. A minority of 41 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be banned in most or all instances, according to recent study by the Pew Research Center Brendan Hoffman (Getty/AFP/File) As states put up more and more restrictions, the eight members of the court -- one of nine seats on the bench is vacant -- will either halt this trend or issue a decision that encourages it. A narrow majority of 56 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be allowed in most or all instances, according to recent study by the Pew Research Center. Around 41 percent feel the opposite way, with higher numbers among conservative Republicans (68 percent) and white evangelical Christians (69 percent). The historic 1973 Supreme Court decision known as "Roe v. Wade" that legalized abortion has been the target of repeated attacks by these groups. But according to the Guttmacher Institute, which is pro-choice, the past five years have accounted for 27 percent of the more than 1,000 restrictions placed on abortion in America in the past four decades. The pro-choice camp -- which advocates letting women choose contraception or elect to end an unwanted pregnancy -- is squared off against the so-called pro-life camp which opposes abortion. - 'Pro-life' camp strengthened - Since 2010, the latter has been boosted as Republicans scored electoral victories in many US states. Conservatives who want to overturn "Roe v. Wade" go so far as to say the United States has become pro-life. The restrictions take many forms: bans on the most commonly used medical techniques, long waiting times imposed on women who want abortions, administrative red tape for doctors who perform them, and the granting of legal status to fetuses from the moment of conception. In many places anti-abortion activists have set up fake clinics -- billed as crisis pregnancy centers -- that lure in women seeking an abortion, and put them under psychological pressure to forego the procedure. The bottom line is that at least 57 percent of women of child-bearing age now live in a state considered to be hostile to abortion, says the Guttmacher Institute. "Since 2011, anti-abortion advocates have pushed for the passage of state-level restrictions on abortion. More recently, they have also begun to propose anti-abortion bills at the state-level that purport to promote women's rights," said Sital Kalantry, a professor at Cornell Law School. Such is the case in Texas. There, a law passed in 2013 obliges clinics offering abortions to have surgical facilities on par with those of hospitals. The law, which is said to aim to protect women's health, also obliges doctors who perform abortions to have admitting rights at a local hospital. - 'Abortion desert' - These restrictions -- which are being weighed by the Supreme Court -- have prompted more than half of the abortion clinics in Texas to shut down, advocacy groups say. "It appears that the current principal political strategy of the anti-abortion activists is to impose such significant burdens on abortion providers that most, if not all of them, have to close their doors," said Michael Dell, a specialist lawyer. US media have begun to speak of an "abortion desert" in the South, from Florida to New Mexico, and in the Midwest, based on the accounts of hundreds of women forced to travel hundreds of miles to get an abortion. Besides the distance, these women confront the challenge of having the time and money to make such trips. Many fear the restrictions will lead women to turn to backstreet abortionists -- or perform dangerous self-abortions. "We do not have research findings that tell us whether the tide of new restrictions is leading more women to turn towards unsafe abortion," said Sarah Roberts, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. But the cost to women of being forced to go ahead with an unwanted pregnancy is well-documented. "Women unable to have abortions experience more violence, are more likely to be in poverty, and have more physical health consequences than women who have abortions," said Roberts. President Trump? 'Anything can happen,' election expert says Although Donald Trump defeated numerous rivals for the Republican presidential nod fairly easily, polls suggest he'll lose the November general election to Democrat Hillary Clinton, now just days away from clinching her party's nomination. But Norman Ornstein -- a highly regarded expert with four decades' expertise in US electoral politics -- says it would be a mistake to rule out a surprise Trump victory in November, in what has been an utterly unpredictable campaign season. Ornstein sat down with AFP to answer questions about the tumultuous 2016 presidential race. An election expert has said it would be a mistake to rule out a surprise victory in November for Donald Trump Josh Edelson (AFP/File) Q: Why has it been so hard for Hillary Clinton to lock up the Democratic nomination? A: Hillary Clinton simply can't emerge very easily as a figure of change. That was true in 2008, when there was strong desire for change, and Barack Obama became that candidate of change. Now, eight years later at the age of 68, having served in the Obama administration, change isn't the word you're going to use about her. Her issues involving email and other questions going back to some of the scandals, some of which were not real but were blown out of proportion from the Clinton administration years, are weighing her down a little bit. The fact that her focus is on incremental policies to help improve the country, and not on sweeping revolution like Bernie Sanders, doesn't help her very much either. The populism that we see out there, which is anti-establishment, is not going to work for a figure who is a core figure of the establishment. Q: Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has mounted an astonishingly vigorous challenge to Clinton from the left during the Democratic primaries. What does the future hold for him within the party? A: The symbolism if Sanders wins California becomes important because that will embolden him to dig in and stay in the contest longer and to demand more from Hillary Clinton in terms of policy, platform and the like, which will pull her to the left before he concedes. For Bernie Sanders at some point, this becomes a question of how he goes back to the US Senate. He could go back as a major figure, he is now a national figure, where he wasn't before. He could be the leader of the left, but if he persists in a quixotic campaign that he can't win and damages Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the White House, he could also go back as a pariah. Q: Can Trump beat Clinton in November? A: Because our politics are tribal, most Republicans are going to end up voting for Trump. Why would they vote for Trump even if they don't much like him or don't care for some of his policies? Because he's not Hillary Clinton. Negative partisanship will play a role. Because of the tribal politics and the negative partisanship, Donald Trump probably starts with a floor of around 45 percent of the votes. If he gets over 50 percent, he's got a chance of winning the electoral college numbers to win an election. Let's face it. Things can happen in the final weeks and months before the election. What if there's a Brexit? What will that do to the global economy and maybe the American economy? What if we have an attack like Paris in October? Maybe people will say we can't trust a person who's never had any experience, but maybe there is the allure of a strongman. We just don't know. And while Trump is not likely to expand his base beyond angry white voters, anything can happen in this day and age. 'Bisexuals' among 132 arrested partying in Iran: report Iranian police have arrested 132 men and women, some of them alleged bisexuals, a judiciary website said Friday, in the latest crackdown on partygoers accused of breaking Islamic rules. On Thursday night police in Tehran arrested "more than 70 drunk men and women at a restaurant in Farahzad," on the capital's northwestern outskirts, Mizan Online reported. The news agency later quoted police as saying there were 40 men and 30 women, including 26 men and six women who tested positive for alcohol. Tehran's police chief announced in April the recruitment of 7,000 plainclothes police in the capital to fight against "immorality" Atta Kenare (AFP/File) "Six bisexuals were identified among those arrested," it said. Drinking alcohol and dancing with the opposite sex are forbidden in the Islamic republic. In addition, "62 men and women were arrested at another party in Bandar Abbas," a southern port city, Mizan said without giving a date. Last week, Iran arrested eight people accused of involvement in making "obscene" music videos. It came days after more than 30 students partying at a graduation ceremony in northern Iran were arrested and given 99 lashes each for violating the country's morality code. On May 16, Iran also announced the arrest of eight people for working in "un-Islamic" online modelling networks, particularly on the photosharing app Instagram. The crackdown comes despite moderate President Hassan Rouhani's effort to allow greater social and cultural freedom. Tehran's police chief announced in April the recruitment of 7,000 plainclothes police in the capital to fight against "immorality". Canada complains about China FM's outburst at reporter Canada has lodged a formal complaint over Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's berating of a Canadian reporter during his visit to Ottawa this week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday. "I can confirm that both (Foreign) Minister (Stephane) Dion and department officials from Global Affairs Canada have expressed our dissatisfaction to both the Chinese foreign minister and to the ambassador of China to Canada, our dissatisfaction at the way our journalists were treated," he told a news conference. "Freedom of the press is extremely important to me," he said. "We know that the job of the media is to ask tough questions and we encourage you to do that." China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi talks during a meeting at Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on April 30, 2016 Jason Lee (Pool/AFP/File) A visibly irritated Wang Yi told a reporter during a news conference Wednesday that she had "no right" to question Beijing's human rights record. The reporter had asked Dion about what Canada was doing to pressure China over human rights and its holding of a Canadian man on espionage charges. "Your question is full of prejudice and arrogance," Wang said, standing beside Dion at the joint briefing. "This is totally unacceptable". "The people that know the most about human rights in China is not you, it's only the Chinese people. You don't have the right to speak," he added. "Don't ask these kinds of irresponsible questions again." Although China often condemns other countries for criticizing its human rights record, it usually refrains from doing so in such direct terms at news conferences abroad. In contrast, Chinese President Xi Jinping admitted his country had "room for improvement" on human rights after a British journalist asked him a similar question during Xi's visit to London last year. Canadian media had portrayed Wang's Ottawa visit -- when he also met with Trudeau -- as an attempt to improve relations as Canada presses for a free-trade deal with the world's second-largest economy. Ties have been strained by the detention of Canadian citizen Kevin Garratt in 2014 on espionage charges. He had run a Christian-themed coffee shop near the North Korean border. US urges China to account for Tiananmen crackdown The United States marked the 27th anniversary of China's crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square on Friday with a call for Beijing to end human rights abuses. Just days before the start of the annual US-China strategic dialogue, the State Department urged China to allow peaceful commemorations of the incident. "The United States government continues to call for a full public accounting of those killed, detained or missing," spokesman Mark Toner said. A Chinese paramilitary guard stands in Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 3, 2016, on the eve of the 27th anniversary of the June 4, 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests Fred Dufour (AFP) US Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will be in China next week for high-level talks on relations between the world's two biggest economic powers. But US officials say relations between the countries are now on a strong enough footing to allow Washington to speak out about its concerns without triggering a crisis. Toner said China has seen many changes in the quarter-century since June 4, 1989, when the government "violently suppressed peaceful protests" in the heart of Beijing. But, the US spokesman added, Washington continues "to have serious concerns with ongoing violations of human rights in China." He cited the detention of human rights activists, lawyers, journalists and civil society leaders. And he condemned "increased restrictions on media content, expression, association, and religious practice." Gabon presidential candidate in police standoff Former top African Union official Jean Ping, who is running in Gabon's upcoming presidential elections, on Friday shunned a police summons, denouncing it as a bid to oust him from the race. Ping, a former AU commission chief, said the summons was unfounded and a manoeuvre to keep him out of the public eye. He had been called to the judicial police -- an investigative unit under the orders of the judiciary -- at 10am, but chose not to attend. Gabonese presidential candidate Jean Ping, pictured on October 8, 2016, shunned a police summons, saying it was unfounded and a manoeuvre to keep him out of the public eye Kenzo Tribouillard (AFP/File) Police had deployed in large numbers outside the judicial building, where several dozen Ping supporters had turned out to show their backing. "I was summoned without due cause," Ping told AFP. "Who exactly is behind the summons and why? I don't know... but when you summon someone to the judicial police on a Friday, it's to put him in jail straight away." The presidential election, expected in August or October, will pit incumbent Ali Bongo, who is seeking a second term, against Ping and several other well-known figures including parliamentary leader Guy Nzouba Ndama and former prime minister Raymond Ndong Sima. In May, the government accused Ping of seeking to foment civil war after he made statements allegedly calling on supporters to fight "to the death" and talked about a war "to get rid of the cockroaches". On Friday, government spokesman Alain-Claude Bilie By Nze confirmed that the state would file a complaint against Ping over those remarks. UN to ask Syria to allow airdrops of aid The United Nations will formally ask the Syrian government Sunday to allow airdrops of humanitarian aid to besieged areas where access by land has been denied by the regime, diplomats said. UN aid chief Stephen O'Brien told a closed meeting of the Security Council on Friday that consent from the Damascus regime was needed to carry out the airdrops of food and medicine to civilians trapped in those areas. At least 592,000 people live under siege in Syria -- the majority surrounded by regime forces -- and another four million live in hard-to-reach areas, according to the United Nations. Humanitarian access in Syria has been a key sticking point in stalled UN-backed peace talks aimed at ending the five-year war Amer Almohibany (AFP/File) During the month of May, aid convoys were able to reach only two locations, and O'Brien told council members that this was "simply not enough." World powers decided last month that if aid continued to be blocked, the United Nations would begin airdrops on June 1, although such an operation would require Syrian approval and present high risks. Russia, Syria's ally, said it was prepared to support the request, but stressed that delivery by land was the most effective and safest way to reach those in need. "We are open to everything if it's effective and can be done properly and safely," Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters after the meeting. British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said the council should be prepared to consider "further measures" if food, medicine and other relief supplies continue to be denied. Syria told the United Nations that it had approved aid deliveries to 12 besieged areas for the month of June, but UN officials said this fell short of full access. "We need to see full approval of the June plan for humanitarian access," O'Brien said in a statement after addressing the council. Syrian Ambassador Bashar Jaafari denied that his government was blocking aid and refused to answer questions on whether Damascus would allow the airdrops. "It's not about yes or no," Jaafari told reporters. "The Syrian government has been engaged with the UN for years in delivering humanitarian aid." - Ending the sieges - French Ambassador Francois Delattre, who holds the council presidency this month, said that on Sunday the United Nations "will ask Damascus to authorize humanitarian airdrops to reach localities for which land access was denied by the Syrian regime." Diplomats said they expected Damascus to take some time to respond to the request -- if it responds at all -- and UN officials have said the airdrops are not imminent. "What is at stake here is the necessity to put an end to a humanitarian disaster," Delattre told reporters. "The Syrian regime is continuing to systematically starve hundreds of thousands of civilians and use them as weapons of war. These are war crimes." France and Britain called on Russia to ratchet up pressure on Syria to allow access for aid. "We talk to them all of the time," responded Churkin. "They are listening. Sometimes they are accepting things but they do not happen during implementation." US Ambassador Samantha Power said the sieges must end and accused the Syrian regime of "picking and choosing who eats and who starves to death." Britain, France and the United States are calling on the United Nations to forge ahead with plans for the airdrops, even if the operation presents major security challenges. The United Nations said Thursday that helicopters would have to be used for air bridges to 15 of the 19 besieged areas because they are densely populated. Peace talks to end Syria's five-year war stalled in April after the opposition walked out over escalating fighting on the ground and lack of humanitarian aid. A truck from the Syrian Red Crescent enters the rebel-held Syrian town of Daraya on June 1, 2016 Fadi Dirani (AFP/File) Trump lashes out again against 'hater' judge Donald Trump on Friday again lambasted the judge handling a pair of lawsuits over his defunct online university, insisting that the jurist's Mexican heritage makes him biased. The Republican presidential frontrunner slammed Judge Gonzalo Curiel in a speech last week as a "hater" and a "total disgrace" whose Mexican parentage poses an "absolute conflict" in the cases. He doubled down on those comments in an interview published in The Wall Street Journal, saying Curiel -- a US-born native of Indiana -- might be "biased" by Trump's controversial campaign vow to build an anti-immigrant wall on America's southern border with Mexico. Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, pictured on June 2, 2016, said that the Mexican heritage of a judge handling a pair of lawsuits over his defunct online university prevents him from being impartial Josh Edelson (AFP/File) "I'm building a wall. It's an inherent conflict of interest," Trump told the daily, noting that Curiel also had belonged to an organization of Hispanic judges -- another disqualifier in his eyes. Reminded on CNN that Curiel is American, Trump doubled down: "he's of Mexican heritage, and he's very proud of it." The developer and reality television host has enthused supporters and enraged many others with his calls for building a wall on the US-Mexican border and alleging that Mexico sends its criminals to the United States. "I've had terrible rulings (by Curiel), I've been treated very unfairly. I've been treated very unfairly by this judge," Trump said on CNN. In addition to questioning Curiel's impartiality, Trump said that if elected president, he would consider changing free speech laws to make it easier to sue journalists. Many see that as a plan to restrict basic US rights. Newly unsealed court documents in the case against Trump's "university" reveal allegations that it preyed on the uneducated and misled consumers with aggressive marketing that amounted to fraud. - 'Outrageous' - The revelations come as the 2016 presidential race shapes up as a contest between Trump and the likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, who sharply criticized his remarks. "I think it's terrible. I think it's outrageous," Clinton said on MSNBC after a rally in California. "Judge Curiel and his family epitomize the American dream," Clinton Hispanic outreach staffer Lorella Praeli said. "His parents worked hard to give their US-born children a better life." Curiel and one of his brothers became successful lawyers, while another brother served in Vietnam. "The fact that Donald Trump doesn't see Judge Curiel and his family as Americans makes him unfit to be president of this great nation, a nation of immigrants," said Praeli. Trump's statements are also highlighting the Republican Party's difficulty uniting around the brash billionaire. A day after having endorsed Trump for president, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan criticized him again on Friday. Speaking on WISN radio in his home state of Wisconsin, Ryan called Trump's attacks against Curiel "out of left field." Burundi school students charged for defacing president's photo Eleven high school students in a city in central Burundi were detained and charged Friday with defacing a photo of President Pierre Nkurunziza, a police official said, as three people were shot and injured in a protest at the arrests. "The prosecutor in Muramvya has just decided to detain 11... for insulting the head of state," the police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The children, six girls and five boys aged over 14, were placed in custody in Muramvya central prison in mid-afternoon." Insulting Burundi's president, currently Pierre Nkurunziza, carries a potential jail term of five to 10 years, according to the country's penal code Joel Saget (AFP/File) The information was confirmed by several witnesses, including a parent who saw his daughter being taken off to the prison, and a lawyer who helped the students. Insulting the president carries a potential jail term of five to 10 years, according to the country's penal code. An impoverished country in central Africa struggling with a legacy of ethnic conflict, Burundi plunged into crisis in April 2015 when Nkurunziza announced he was running for a third term, a vote he won last July amid opposition boycotts. Violence has left more than 500 people dead and forced more than 270,000 Burundians to flee the country, according to the UN. The 11 students were rounded up on Friday morning by members of the national security service, the police said. About a dozen others, aged under 14 -- the age of criminal responsibility in Burundi -- were released. Hundreds of students at Muramvya municipal high school immediately rallied to demand the release of the 11, witnesses said. "Policemen in the Burundi secret service opened fire to disperse the protest," said one source. Two demonstrators were injured, along with a passing motorcyclist, the witnesses said. In a separate incident last month, more than 300 students aged 14 to 16 were sent home from their school in the town of Ruziba after staff found a picture of the president had also been defaced in textbooks. In some pictures the eyes had been gouged out, while insults against the president were scrawled over others. When Grace Johnson was writing a 25-page paper this year, Google wasnt going to cut it as a research resource for the recent West High graduate. A lot of teachers wont allow you to use sources that arent from EBSCO and JSTOR, she said, referencing databases of scholarly articles. But as revenue directed to Montana libraries from the states coal severance tax loses steam, public and school libraries will lose access to EBSCO, a collection of databases. Billings high school librarians strongly oppose the move. In January, the Montana State Library found out it would be losing $46,000 in expected tax revenue for the current 2015-17 budget. In mid-May, another $166,000 was cut. The state library had about $943,000 in coal severance tax revenue budgeted for 2016-17 financial years. The agencys full two-year budget is almost $12 million. But the database funding is specifically assigned to the tax revenue, State Librarian Jennie Stapp said. A recent state library task force identified a database package paid for by the state and used by libraries across Montana as most opportune for decreasing investment. Thirteen task force members said the state could decrease investment in state databases in a ranking exercise of library resources; only one person said that investment should remain the same, and no one voted for an increase. The Montana State Library Commission also previously voted to reduce database funding in April. Combined with the fact that database funds rely on the funding stream being slashed, it made the most sense to cut databases, Stapp said. A letter sent out to libraries May 25 says "given the extreme circumstances we face, we believe we are making the best choices available to us that will allow us to continue to serve libraries and Montanans in every corner of our state." Students at West High who use the databases disagree. Senior Brenna Hoffman said that students would be more likely to use unreliable information, falling into traps like well, this one says .org. I think its OK. EBSCO includes thousands of scholarly, peer-reviewed articles published in academic journals, which are spread out over several databases, with information on topics from literary analysis to automotive updates. Its very much like working with a cable company to get the one database you want you have to buy all of them, said Stapp. The state re-negotiated its roughly $350,000 contract with EBSCO down to about $250,000 in 2013, but EBSCO made it clear they werent willing to go lower, Stapp said. Billings school libraries are exploring the possibility of purchasing more narrow access to the databases, which is cheaper overall but offers less bang for their buck. That would require the use of existing funding. It means were going to be able to get fewer books, and do less programs, get less technology, West librarian Brittany Alberson said. West High already subscribes to JSTOR, LexisNexis and CQ Press using about $4,500 in funds brought in by SD2's technology levy. Hoffman uses the database for college courses shes taking a full course load this year through a state program. They expect you to know how to use it there, she said. Johnson used several sources from international journals for one project that you cant get here at any of the libraries in Billings. Sophomores Kyler Hodik and Reagan Linde both used the database to craft arguments for speech and debate events. When youre in speech and debate, you have to have a reliable source, Linde said. Cash sources Revenue from the coal tax peaked in the early 1980s. But cuts to the tax rate and production have hacked away at revenue over the years. In fiscal year 2015, the tax brought in about $61.8 million. The coal severance tax trust fund receives half of all coal severance taxes in Montana. The other half is directed into the general fund and other programs; a small slice is set aside for the library commission. While the tax generated robust revenue in 2015, commodity markets are often volatile. Montana coal production has tumbled in 2016, and economic experts have issued bleak projections for the industry, at least for the short-term. A letter sent by SD2 high school librarians to the state commission notes the significance of the cuts and that the commission is responsible for serving a wide array of libraries, but it blasts the decision. It is imperative that our students have equitable access to databases in order for them to be competitive with other 21st century learners and researchers, it reads. The loss of access to these databases will severely impact their research education and could hinder their college and career readiness. Alberson said returns from a survey sent to other school libraries about the database cut show an "overwhelming" response. Access to EBSCO is slated to end Aug. 31. Nigeria President Buhari urged to act against oil attacks Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday faced urgent calls to stop security spiralling out of control in the oil-rich south, after militants claimed two new attacks against key pipelines. The Niger Delta Avengers, blamed for a wave of bombings in the region since the start of this year, claimed the attacks on infrastructure operated by Shell and Eni's Nigerian subsidiaries. "At 3:00am today (0200 GMT Friday), @NDAvengers blow up the SPDC Forcados 48" export line," it said on Twitter, referring to the Shell Petroleum Development Company. An aerial view of Shell Cawtharine channels at Awoba in the Niger Delta, taken on March 22, 2013 Pius Utomi Ekpei (AFP/File) The group said the attack was carried out because Shell had refused to heed earlier warnings not to repair the pipeline, which was damaged in February and is still not back on stream. Half an hour later, a "strike team" blew up the Brass to Tebidaba crude oil line in Bayelsa state operated by Agip, the subsidiary of Italy's Eni, the NDA said. The militants' purported spokesman, Mudoch Agbinibo, warned the company "not to commence repair works on any of the blown pipelines in Bayelsa. We will make you regret it". Shell later confirmed "signs of a leak" on the Forcados pipeline after the reported attack but said it had "yet to fully evaluate the potential impact and damage". The company operates the line as part of a joint-venture with the state-run oil firm the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), French group Total's local subsidiary and Agip. Desmond Agu, commandant of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps in Bayelsa, confirmed the second attack and said the pipeline had been shut down. "We have dispatched our men and we have intensified patrols in the area. We are working round the clock to protect critical infrastructure in Bayelsa," he added. - Increasing attacks - Friday's attacks follow two claimed bombings of Agip pipelines elsewhere in Bayelsa state on Thursday and the sabotage on Tuesday of two oil wells operated by the US group Chevron. Six people -- four soldiers and two personnel -- were also killed on Wednesday in neighbouring Delta state when suspected militants disguised as commuters opened fire on an NNPC boat. The NDA denied any involvement but it has vowed to bring oil production to a standstill in Nigeria, which normally depends on crude exports for 70 percent of government revenue. The attacks have already had an impact, with output slashed to 1.4 million barrels per day, well down on the budgeted 2.2 million bpd this year. That has exacerbated a sharp decline in oil revenue due to the global fall in crude prices since mid-2014, which has left Nigeria's government cash-strapped and has stalled growth. Shortage of natural gas deliveries has hit electricity production and left pumping stations unable to supply water to much of megacity Lagos, which is home to some 20 million people. The NDA are believed to have sympathy for a former oil rebel leader who commanded militants in the region in the 2000s and is now wanted on money laundering and corruption charges. - 'Rapidly deteriorating' - The Nigerian military, which has slammed the NDA as "economic terrorists", has deployed gunboats and fighter jets to the creeks and swamps of the delta in search of the militants. Buhari last week ordered enhanced security in the delta, adding: "We have to be very serious with the situation... because it threatens the national economy." But Eric Omare, from the Ijaw Youth Council rights group, said more needed to be done as the situation was "rapidly deteriorating and getting out of control". Buhari should "urgently and personally take charge of the management of the process to return peace and normalcy to the region". Talks were required between both sides to restore peace, he said, calling on the NDA and other militant groups to stop their campaign of violence. "The events that are happening in the region pose serious economic, environmental and security challenges to the entire nation," he said. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari is facing urgent calls to stop security spiralling out of control in the oil-rich south Dan Kitwood (Pool/AFP/File) Latest US strike on Al-Qaeda in Yemen kills four A US air strike last month killed four suspected Al-Qaeda militants in Yemen, the ninth such attack this year, the US military disclosed on Friday. The strike on May 19 took place in the southern province of Shabwa, US Central Command (Centcom) said in a statement. It brought to nine the number of US air strikes against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) since the beginning of the year, the statement said. Fighters loyal to Yemen's President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi ride in the back of a truck in Shabwa province, east of Aden, on December 21, 2015 Saleh al-Obeidi (AFP/File) Four of the strikes had not previously been disclosed. US attacks have killed a total of 81 suspected AQAP fighters, the statement said. An air strike against a training camp on March 22 killed 56 militants, according to Centcom's latest tally. The United States, which has considered AQAP the most dangerous Al-Qaeda branch since 2009, regularly conducts airstrikes against the jihadist group in Yemen, mostly using drones. AQAP has taken advantage of the country's civil conflict between Houthi rebels and Yemeni government forces to expand its influence in the country's south and southeast. US soldiers had been deployed in Yemen until March 2015, when the last troops left the country in the face of a Houthi rebel advance. However, a "very small number" of US soldiers recently returned to the southern port of Mukalla, retaken from AQAP in April, the Pentagon confirmed last month. The soldiers were deployed to support Yemeni forces and the Arab coalition taking part in the fight against Al-Qaeda in the region. AQAP is "using the unrest in Yemen to provide a haven from which to plan future attacks against our allies as well as the US and its interests," Centcom's statement said. Namibia offers endangered rhino for trophy hunt The Namibian government on Friday called for bids from trophy hunters to kill three endangered black rhinos, despite fierce global criticism over previous auctions. An American hunter last year paid $350,000 to shoot one of the prehistoric beasts with a high-powered rifle, with government officials on hand to ensure he killed the correct animal. Since 2012, Namibia has sold licences each year to kill individual rhinos, saying the money is essential to fund conservation projects and anti-poaching protection. Since 2012, Namibia has sold licences each year to kill individual rhinos, saying the money is essential to fund conservation projects and anti-poaching protection Martin Bureau (AFP/File) It says the only rhinos selected for the hunts are old individuals that no longer breed and that pose a threat to younger rhinos. On Friday, the environment ministry advertised three black rhinos available for the hunting season which ends in November. The advertisement offered discounts to Namibian-owned companies or those employing a Namibianregistered professional hunter. Environment ministry spokesman Romeo Muyunda defended the auction, telling AFP: "We feel we are doing the right thing. "As a country we have our own legislation and we are not doing anything contrary to any law. As a matter of fact, our constitution allows us to empower our own people, he said. "We are hoping to get enough money from this auction but we also do not want it to be controversial like in the past, he said. Syria regime kills dozens in raids, agrees aid convoys Syria's regime killed dozens of civilians with air strikes in and around Aleppo city on Friday, even as it agreed to allow access for ground convoys to deliver aid to 12 besieged areas. The raids on Aleppo were the most intense in more than a month, with dozens of barrel bombs -- crude, unguided explosive devices -- dropped on rebel-held eastern districts of the city, an AFP correspondent said. Fourteen people were killed when a bus they were travelling in was hit on the Castello road, a key rebel supply route out of Aleppo, the civil defence said. Syrians carry a body following a reported air strike by Syrian government forces in Aleppo on June 3, 2016 Thaer Mohammed (AFP) At least 43 other civilians were killed in regime strikes on neighbourhoods in the city's rebel-held east, said the civil defence, known as the White Helmets. "There are people under the rubble and we're still looking for the missing," said a volunteer who gave his name as Khaled. AFP footage showed a building in the city's east whose front had been blown off and bulldozers clearing debris from the roads. A man wearing medical gloves stood in a room surrounded by white body bags, one with blood seeping through. Official news agency SANA said rebel rocket fire killed two children in the regime-controlled west of the city. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Castello road was now "effectively cut". "All movement is targeted, be that buses or bystanders," its head Rami Abdel Rahman said. The observatory later said that regime air strikes killed at least 15 civilians in the Boleel area controlled by Islamic State outside Deir Ezzor city in eastern Syria. It added that rebel shelling on Friday killed 10 civilians, including a woman and two children in Aleppos regime-controlled western districts. - 'Security challenges' - Nearly 600,000 people are estimated to live under siege in Syria, most of them encircled by forces of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, whose approval the UN says is needed to deliver aid by air. Last month the UN said that if it did not see an improvement on aid access to besieged areas by June 1, it would task its food agency to carry out drops. Syria on Friday agreed to partial aid deliveries to Moadamiyeh, Daraya and Douma, which are besieged by regime forces, the UN office of humanitarian affairs said. Some diplomats however dismissed the move, saying such approvals had been granted in the past and failed to materialise on the ground. The UN will on Sunday present a formal request to the Syrian government to approve airdrops where land access has been denied, diplomats at a closed UN Security Council meeting said. Officials have stressed the challenges and risks of aid operations in the skies above a country at war. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said helicopters would have to be used to transport aid to 15 of 19 besieged areas that include densely populated towns. - Advance on IS - Allowing aid into areas under siege is key to the resumption of peace talks on ending the five-year war that has killed 280,000 Syrians and displaced millions. A truce brokered by Russia and the United States between the government and non-jihadist rebels has been violated nearly continuously around Aleppo. More than 300 civilians were killed in Aleppo in two weeks from April 22 as rebels pounded regime-controlled neighbourhoods with rocket and artillery fire and the regime hit rebel areas with air raids. In north Syria, meanwhile, regime forces backed by Russia on Friday advanced towards a bastion of the Islamic State group east of its Syria de facto capital of Raqa city, the Observatory said. The advance came after a US-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance pressed an offensive last week towards the same town of Tabqa from the opposite direction. The alliance is also advancing towards the strategic IS-held town of Manbij north of the town. The US military said the Syrian rebels advancing on Islamic State fighters in Manbij have seized more than 40 square miles (100 square kilometres) this week. A rebel victory there would inflict one of the largest strategic defeats on the IS group since it proclaimed its rule over territory in Iraq and Syria two years ago. The US-led coalition since Thursday has dropped ammunition, light weapons and anti-tank weapons to Syrian rebels, as they try to prevent IS jihadists from entering the town of Marea north of Aleppo city, the Observatory said. A US official confirmed the ammunition drops, but denied that they also contained weapons. A Syrian civil defence volunteer speaks with the driver of a bulldozer who is removing rubble following a reported air strike by Syrian government forces, in Aleppo on June 3, 2016 Thaer Mohammed (AFP) Syria's regime killed dozens of civilians with air strikes in and around Aleppo A truck from the Syrian Red Crescent enters the rebel-held Syrian town of Daraya on June 1, 2016 Fadi Dirani (AFP/File) Humanitarian access in Syria has been a key sticking point in stalled UN-backed peace talks aimed at ending the five-year war Amer Almohibany (AFP/File) Clinton raps Trump as peddler of 'lies' and division Hillary Clinton doubled down Friday in attacking Donald Trump, branding her likely Republican presidential opponent a peddler of "lies" and proclaiming she will be the Democratic flagbearer once California votes next week. "We need everybody to show up on June 7," Clinton told a few hundred supporters at a college in Culver City, California. "If all goes well, I will have the great honor as of Tuesday to be the Democratic nominee for president," she said to loud cheers. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton waves during a Women for Hillary organizing event at West Los Angeles College on June 3, 2016 in Culver City, California Robyn Beck (AFP) Clinton was spending a full day campaigning in the Los Angeles area, wooing primary voters as she aims to thwart rival Bernie Sanders once and for all and fully turn toward a likely bruising battle against Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee. Democrats in six states vote Tuesday, including California and New Jersey. Clinton is already on the cusp of securing enough delegates to win the nomination and she is certain to surpass the threshold on June 7. Sanders has been barnstorming California, hoping for a miracle in which he wins the remaining contests and many so-called super-delegates, senior party figures who can vote at the party convention for whomever they choose, switch alliances and support him. Clinton supporters were having none of it. "Spoiler alert: Hillary wins," read several T-shirts at the Culver City event. - 'Ready to lead ' - For a second straight day Clinton leveled withering criticism at Trump over his character, stream of insults and lack of coherent foreign policies. She labeled Trump "temperamentally unfit" and otherwise unprepared to lead the United States. "He just engages in rants and personal feuds and outright lies, something our nation cannot afford in our commander in chief," the former secretary of state said. More than a dozen women -- actresses, members of Congress, and civil servants -- joined her on stage in Culver City to offer their support. "She is bad-ass, and she is ready to lead," US House Democrat Linda Sanchez boomed. While Clinton has upped her attacks on Trump as a "fraud," Trump has drilled into Clinton as dishonest and "crooked." - Clashes at Trump rally - Trump on Friday also hit out at the protesters -- "thugs" -- who clashed with his supporters in California the previous evening, the latest in a string of his rallies to be marred by violence. "Rally last night in San Jose was great. Tremendous love and enthusiasm in the hall. Big crowd. Outside, small group of thugs burned Am flag!" the candidate tweeted. Hundreds of demonstrators insulted Trump supporters as they tried to leave the event in San Jose. One supporter was hit with an egg, and according to the Los Angeles Times a dozen or more people were punched. Crowds had earlier chanted "No hate in our state" and carried signs that read "Dump Trump" as they marched near the convention center. Hispanics outnumber whites in California, the most populous state in the country, and many have been deeply shocked by Trump's characterization of Mexican immigrants as "rapists" and his pledge to build a wall along the southern US border. Trump stepped up attacks Friday against the judge handling a class action lawsuit by former students of Trump University who paint the entrepreneur program as a scam -- insisting the jurist's Mexican heritage prevents him from being impartial. The tycoon told the Wall Street Journal there was "an inherent conflict of interest" for Gonzalo Curiel to rule on the case. The judge was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants. Trump's attack on the judge earned swift condemnation from House Speaker Paul Ryan, the nation's top elected Republican, who only a day earlier said he would vote for the billionaire in November after weeks of hesitation. "It's reasoning I don't relate to. I completely disagree with the thinking behind that," Ryan said in a radio interview. Police move in to disperse anti-Trump protesters as they demonstrate outside the convention center where Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump held an election rally in San Jose, California on June 2, 2016 Mark Ralston (AFP/File) Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, California on June 2, 2016 Josh Edelson (AFP/File) UN ending Burundi police role in Central Africa mission The United Nations is effectively ending police units from Burundi in its Central African Republic mission because of their involvement in human rights abuses in their country, officials said Friday. The 280 Burundian police will not be replaced when they end their tour of duty in Bangui around September, but some 840 military troops from Burundi will remain in MINUSCA for the time being. "In light of the current situation in Burundi, a decision has been taken at UN headquarters not to replace the units serving in the country when their tour of duty ends," said UN spokesman Farhan Haq. Soldiers from MINUSCA (UN Mission in the Central African Republic) patrol in Bangui on December 10, 2015 Marco Longari (AFP/File) Stefan Feller, the top police adviser for UN peacekeeping, said the decision was made "given the current allegations of serious and ongoing human rights violations in Burundi." The United Nations formally notified the Burundian mission in New York of the decision. A Burundian non-governmental organisation, FOCODE, in February asked the United Nations to investigate allegations of human rights abuses by the Burundian police now serving in Bangui. According to FOCODE, Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza has rewarded soldiers and police who have been the most active in the repression of his political opponents with assignments to UN missions. FOCODE said police officers now serving as peacekeepers had fired live rounds on demonstrators in Bujumbura and were involved in torture, extrajudicial killings, rapes and attacks on hospitals. UN officials said they were examining the record of Burundian soldiers who could also face the same fate. "We will continue to monitor the situation in the country and decide accordingly on the future of the military deployment," said an official, speaking on background. Burundi began contributing peacekeepers to the 12,000-strong MINUSCA in 2014. Israeli police to beef up security during Jerusalem march JERUSALEM (AP) Israeli police plan to deploy hundreds of officers to Jerusalem's Old City next week, a spokesman said Thursday, in a bid to secure an annual march commemorating Israel's capture of east Jerusalem that may coincide with the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Tensions were high ahead of Sunday's event, with follows an eight-month-long outburst of Israeli-Palestinian violence that has lessened recently but occasionally flares up. On Thursday, the military said a knife-wielding Palestinian woman was shot and killed as she tried to stab a soldier at a West Bank checkpoint. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said some 2,000 officers would be sent to secure Sunday's march, which is expected to draw some 30,000 people celebrating the "unification" of Jerusalem following the 1967 Mideast war. Ramadan, which draws tens of thousands of worshippers to a sensitive holy site in the Old City, could begin Sunday evening. Rosenfeld said police intend to make sure the marchers and Muslim faithful do not cross paths, hoping to ensure that "there will be no incidents whatsoever." Over the last eight months, Palestinian attacks have killed 28 Israelis and two Americans. About 200 Palestinians have been killed during that time. Israel says most were attackers and the rest were killed in clashes with Israeli forces. The Latest: Sunken boat was in prohibited area of bay WINGATE, Md. (AP) The Latest on the rescue of more than 20 people aboard a sunken boat in the Chesapeake Bay (all times local): 11:30 a.m. The U.S. Coast Guard says a boat that sank in the Chesapeake Bay sparking the emergency rescue of two dozen passengers including schoolchildren was in a prohibited area. Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class David Marin said by telephone that the boat was in an off-limits area when a distress call went out Wednesday evening. Authorities say boat and helicopter crews were launched but a commercial boat arrived, rescued everyone and took them to shore. Marin said the area was off-limits because of obstructions in the water. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation owns the boat. The foundation said in a statement that 14 students were among the 23 people who were rescued. Foundation President William Baker declined to comment about the location, saying that would be part of the Coast Guard's investigation. The Coast Guard said 22 people were rescued. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy. ___ 2:15 a.m. Authorities say a good Samaritan rescued 22 people, including schoolchildren, after their boat sank in the Chesapeake Bay. The U.S. Coast Guard said in a statement it received a distress alert Wednesday saying a boat had sunk off Bloodsworth Island. The statement says boat and helicopter crews were launched but a good Samaritan arrived, took the boaters aboard and brought them to shore in Wingate, where they were transferred to EMS personnel. A spokeswoman for the Maryland Natural Resources Police tells the Baltimore Sun the vessel was a charter boat filled with schoolchildren. The Coast Guard says one person was airlifted to a hospital and an unknown number of others were taken by ambulance. Lt j.g. Issac Yates says everyone was wearing a life preserver. ___ Police search Lyft records after Atlanta driver gunned down ATLANTA (AP) Detectives are searching for clues in the ride-booking records of a slain Lyft driver who was married to a state prosecutor, Atlanta police said. Shahriar Zolfaghari, 34, was shot in the upper torso and found dead inside his car at a stoplight in northeast Atlanta around 1 a.m. Wednesday, police said. He was married to Camila Wright, a Georgia assistant attorney general who focuses on human trafficking cases. Investigators are trying to determine whether he'd picked up a passenger just before the killing, and whether he had any other rides scheduled in the area, Atlanta police Maj. Adam Lee III said at a news conference. A witness approached the car when it didn't move ahead on a green light at the intersection, police said. That person then noticed blood in the vehicle, and police were called around 1 a.m. Wednesday. "It's a mystery as to why someone would harm him," Lee said, adding that there was no indication that robbery led to the death. The driver still had his ID and credit cards with him, and his car was not stolen. Police subpoenaed records from Lyft, which the company promptly turned over, Lee said. Investigators were searching those records for customer names and other details that might lead to a killer. Based on the location of two shell casings found at the scene, investigators believe the shooter "may have been inside the car with him at some point," Lee said. "Our heartfelt sympathies are with the family and loved ones of Shahriar Zolfaghari," Lyft spokeswoman Alexandra LaManna said in a statement to The Associated Press on Thursday. "Lyft has been working closely with law enforcement and will continue to assist their investigation," she said. Though there are no obvious signs pointing to robbery, that could still have been the motive, Lee said. "Robbery may have been an initial motive and the person panicked, ran away before he could try to get his money," he said. In October 2014, Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens appointed Wright to prosecute human trafficking cases across the state, he said in a news release when he hired her. Before that, Wright had established the Fulton County Human Trafficking Unit in that county's district attorney's office, and had worked closely with the FBI, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and other agencies to investigate human trafficking. HELENA A partial owner of Talen Energy Corp., the Pennsylvania company that is the operator and a co-owner of Montana's Colstrip power plant, is seeking to buy the entire company in a $1.8 billion deal, company officials said Friday. The planned acquisition by the investment firm Riverstone Holdings LLC will not mean any immediate changes for Colstrip, a 2,100-megawatt coal fired power plant that is co-owned by five companies besides Talen. "The owners are the same owners, the operators are ourselves," Martin said. "Our mission is the same, to operate these plants safely." Riverstone and its affiliates already own more than a third of Talen, which Martin said is valued at $5.2 billion and has 23 power generating facilities in eight states. Riverstone plans to buy Talen's outstanding shares for $1.8 billion in cash, or $14 a share. Colstrip's future was already uncertain in a declining coal market and amid increasing regulations for coal-fired plants. The largest of Colstrip's owners, Puget Sound Energy in Washington state, will be allowed to set aside money for the closure of Colstrip's two oldest units under a law passed by that state's legislature this year. No date has been set for the closure of those units. In Oregon, Portland General Electric and PacificCorp. -two more Colstrip owners - helped write legislation to wean that state off coal-produced electricity by 2035. Talen last month said it had given two-years' notice to the other Colstrip owners that it plans to cease being the plant's operator. Martin said Friday the acquisition will not change those plans. Riverstone and Talen companies hope to win the approval of regulators and shareholders and close the deal by the end of the year. The agreement also includes a provision that gives Talen 40 days to seek an alternative deal to the Riverstone purchase. Martin declined to comment on whether any such negotiations are underway. US spy agency opts for new site in St. Louis ST. LOUIS (AP) A federal spy agency will move its regional headquarters to a new location in St. Louis rather than to a site across the Mississippi River in southern Illinois, the agency said Thursday on its website. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which has been in St. Louis for more than 70 years, announced its new western headquarters would remain in the city. The decision follows efforts to lure the agency to Illinois, though the NGA had announced in April that a blighted area in north St. Louis that was previously the site of a razed high-rise public housing complex, Pruitt-Igoe, was its preferred location. "This is a proud day for St. Louis and for the entire State of Missouri," Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon said in a prepared statement. "This was a tough, high-stakes competition, and St. Louis won decisively." The NGA's online statement said Robert Cardillo, director of the agency, signed the record of decision Thursday. "Ultimately this location, near a quickly-growing technological and professional environment, will allow for NGA to integrate capabilities and technologies in support of our mission to provide accurate and relevant geospatial intelligence to our customers," Cardillo said in the online statement. "I am very confident our new facility in north city will secure the future of this agency for generations to come." The announcement followed public comment and a fight by Illinois Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, the state's two U.S. senators and several members of Congress to bring the NGA West project to an Illinois location across the Mississippi River near Scott Air Force Base in St. Clair County, 25 miles east of downtown St. Louis. The two-state battle drew public notice to the government agency, which is a branch of the Department of Defense with close ties to the U.S. Air Force and the CIA. The agency helped map lunar surfaces for moon landings nearly half a century ago and aided in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. The Illinois site's early offer of hundreds of acres of free land was matched by St. Louis, which stood to lose the more than $2 million per year in income taxes paid by NGA employees who currently work at an aging complex south of downtown near the longtime Anheuser-Busch brewery. Rauner's office didn't immediately return a call seeking comment. Illinois Rep. Mike Bost said the decision is "as disappointing as the methods they used to achieve it." "It appears that this result was baked in long ago, despite nearly every objective metric being in St. Clair County's favor," he said in a prepared statement. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, called Cardillo's decision "short-sighted" and endorsed calls for the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office to scrutinize the process leading to Thursday's outcome. "Ultimately, this is just a bad decision and the people of Illinois and Missouri who work at NGA deserve a full, unbiased analysis," Durbin said in a statement. Missouri's Sens. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, and Roy Blunt, a Republican, applauded the decision. The Latest: Blue Angels pilot killed; no civilians hurt SMYRNA, Tenn. (AP) The Latest on the crash of a Navy Blue Angels fighter jet outside Nashville, Tennessee (all times local): 5:35 p.m. An official in Tennessee says a pilot was killed when his Blue Angels fighter jet crashed, but no civilians were hurt on the ground. This May 19, 2016, photo shows Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss at an air show in Lynchburg, Va. A Blue Angels F/A-18 fighter jet crashed Thursday, June 2, near Nashville, Tenn., killing the pilot just days before a weekend air show performance, officials said. A U.S. official said the pilot was Kuss. (Matt Bell/The Register & Bee via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Harry Gill, the town manager in Smyrna just outside Nashville, said Thursday that the pilot was the only casualty. Some power outages were caused by the crash, but no civilians were hurt. A U.S. official says the pilot was identified as Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The Navy says the pilot was beginning to take off during an afternoon practice session when the crash happened. Five other F/A-18 jets landed safely moments later. The elite acrobatics team was scheduled to perform at an air show this weekend. ___ 5:15 p.m. A U.S. official says the pilot of a Blue Angels jet did not eject when the aircraft crashed in Tennessee and likely was killed. The official spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The Navy says the pilot was beginning to take off during an afternoon practice session when the crash happened. The pilot is not being identified until next of kin are notified. Five other F/A-18 jets landed safely moments later. The Navy says it is investigating. ___ Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report. ___ 4:05 p.m. A Blue Angels F/A-18 fighter jet crashed Thursday near Nashville, Tennessee, where the team is scheduled to perform at an air show this weekend, the Navy said. There are no details yet on whether the pilot was injured in the crash. The Blue Angels were practicing for the show. This is the second fighter jet crash of the day for the military's elite fighter jet performance teams. A member of the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds crashed in Colorado following a flyover for the Air Force Academy graduation where President Barack Obama spoke. That pilot ejected safely into a field. People near the crash site told The Tennessean newspaper (http://tnne.ws/25DlrLt ) that they heard a huge explosion and saw a massive plume of smoke when the plane went down. Jennifer Elliott, who had been watching the jets practice before going inside her house, said everything shook. "It sounded like car crashed into my house," she said. Rebecca Durand told the newspaper she thought the jet was performing a stunt when she saw its nose come straight down. "Instead, I just saw this big orange explosion," she said. This May 19, 2016, photo shows Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss at an air show in Lynchburg, Va. A Blue Angels F/A-18 fighter jet crashed Thursday, June 2, near Nashville, Tenn., killing the pilot just days before a weekend air show performance, officials said. A U.S. official said the pilot was Kuss. (Matt Bell/The Register & Bee via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Ryan to AP: Trump is comfortable with my principles House Speaker Paul Ryan endorsed Donald Trump for president on Thursday, and explained his decision to back the billionaire businessman in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press. Quotes from the interview: ___ "What matters to me more than anything else are our core principles, the policies that come from them, the agenda we're driving in the House that we're about to release. And I just wanted to have a good comfort level that these principles and policies were something we would be able to work with him on and it took some time just to have those conversations." House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., speaks during an interview with The Associated Press Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Janesville, Wis. Ryan endorsed Donald Trump on Thursday, ending an extraordinary public split between the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee and the nation's highest-ranking Republican office holder. (AP Photo/Andy Manis) ___ "It's very clear to me that Hillary is in no certain way going to be advancing our principles and policies. She's promising another Obama term. It's also become clear to me through my conversations that Donald Trump is somebody I know is comfortable with these principles and general policies." ___ "We obviously have a different kind of style and tone. That's very clear. Anyone who knows anything about us knows that. But what really, ultimately matters is how best can we make sure these principles and policies get enacted in 2017. And it is clear that is far more likely to happen under a Trump presidency than a Clinton presidency." ___ "This isn't a deal. This isn't one of those. It was basically getting a comfort level of our idea about where the country is headed and where it ought to go. It's more of an understanding of each other and these principles and policies. That's to me what matters. There is no kind of an agreement of sorts. It was just needing to spend time with our presumptive nominee to get comfortable with the notion that he would be supportive of the direction we want to go as a party, as a country." ___ "I wasn't just going to sign up sight unseen without even having a conversation or knowing what direction, because he had only mentioned a few policies in the primary. I wanted to basically make sure that (we agreed) on the big issues of the day, on really important principles." ___ "I had people on both sides of it. I had friends wishing I wouldn't support him. I had friends wishing I would. I really didn't feel any pressure, other than my goal is to make sure that were unified so that we're at full strength in the fall so we can win the election." ___ "There are times where I've felt very motivated to speak out about some of the things he had said, like the Muslim ban. And I spoke to him about those things. Criticizing other Republicans, I've spoken to him about that as well. ... My hope is that I won't have to speak out in the future on a case-by-case basis. I'm not going to litigate what's said at a given rally on a day-to-day basis." House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., pauses during an interview with The Associated Press Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Janesville, Wis. Ryan endorsed Donald Trump on Thursday, ending an extraordinary public split between the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee and the nation's highest-ranking Republican office holder. (AP Photo/Andy Manis) Ray Berrian has been smoking marijuana for years. But on Thursday he walked into a store on a busy street in the Portland suburbs and legally bought an 'edible' three small squares of rich chocolate infused with cannabis oil for the first time. Berrian, a 66-year-old retired elementary school teacher, was one of hundreds of recreational users who lined up at retail stores around Oregon to buy such pot-infused sweets as the state made their sale legal to the general public for the first time. 'It's new for me, it's new for a lot of my friends that there can be such a thing. I'm not really familiar with edibles so this will be actually new for me,' he said. 'I'm kind of excited about getting home and trying these with some coffee.' Cannabis-infused lemon truffles await packaging at the Chalice Farms industrial kitchen in Portland Chalice Farms production manager John Schuch wraps cannabis-infused hazelnut milk chocolates infused with marijuana in foil papers to prepare for sale at the company headquarters in Portland Recreational marijuana sales became legal in Oregon last fall. Now, medical marijuana dispensaries participating in an early sales program may add edibles and extracts to the things they can legally sell to recreational users. Under the current early sales program, one dose of cannabis-infused edible can have no more than 15 milligrams of THC; consumers can buy up to 1 gram of oil, or cannabis extract, with no more than 1,000 milligrams of THC per cartridge. Customers are limited to one purchase per day. The Oregon Liquor Control Commission is in the process of licensing producers and expects to authorize recreational shops later this year. Oregon also wants to cap the dose for individual edible products at 5 milligrams each half of what's allowed in Colorado and Washington state. Thursday was the first day recreational marijuana users could legally purchase marijuana edibles and oils in Oregon An employee displays a limeade-flavored cannabis-infused gummy candy at the Chalice Farms industrial kitchen William Simpson, president of Chalice Farms, holds a display of his company's cannabis-infused truffles, chocolates and gummy candies at the company headquarters Dispensaries participating in the early recreational sales program can do so until Dec. 31, by which point Oregon authorities hope to have a licensing program in place for stand-alone recreational marijuana stores. Marijuana entrepreneurs have been gearing up for Thursday's business for weeks, anticipating a rush by the general public on the newly available products. Edibles had already been available for legal sale to medical marijuana card holders. At Chalice Farms, every employee was recruited to wrap and box up hundreds of pot-infused goodies before their four Portland-area stores opened their doors at 9 a.m. The kitchen at the company's headquarters can produce 500 packages of candies a day. Customers poured into the company's retail location in Tigard, southwest of Portland as soon as its doors opened. By 11 a.m., the lime-flavored, cannabis-infused gummies were sold out. Business was brisk at the glass case displaying brightly colored boxes of truffles in salted caramel, coconut, lemon meringue and peanut butter flavors. Other offerings included gummies in a variety of fruit flavors and chocolate toffees, white chocolate chai squares and milk chocolate infused with hazelnut alongside the marijuana. The edibles sold for $12 to $16 per package. 'Right now, the whole team, it's all hands on deck, and they're working hard to get it done,' said William Simpson, the company's president. 'This is a huge day for Oregon.' A package of peanut butter-flavored cannabis-infused truffles is on display Cannabis-infused hazelnut milk chocolates are wrapped in foil awaiting packaging Victim's dad jumps over table to attack her killer in court CLEVELAND (AP) The father of a woman killed by a convicted sex offender dived across a courtroom table to attack him Thursday shortly after a judge sentenced the defendant to death for killing three people and wrapping their bodies in garbage bags. Van Terry, the father of Shirellda Terry, had walked to the front of the courtroom to give a victim-impact statement and turned toward Michael Madison, who gave him a malicious smile. Terry lunged at Madison and was immediately swarmed by sheriff's deputies as Madison and his attorneys scrambled to get out of the way. Law enforcement officers dragged Terry out of the courtroom and ushered him out of the courthouse. A spokesman for the Cuyahoga County prosecutor said the situation was being reviewed. A court officer tackles the father of one of three victims of Ohio serial killer Michael Madison, left, who leaped over a table to attack the defendant in court just minutes after the judge pronounced a death sentence in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Cleveland. Van Terry, the father of victim Shirellda Terry, was giving testimony about the loss of his daughter when he turned, paused and lunged toward Madison. (AP Photo/David Richard) Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Nancy McDonnell declined to clear the courtroom, and after about a 15-minute delay the hearing continued. The judge accepted a jury's recommendation that Madison, 38, receive the death penalty. She could have chosen to sentence Madison to life in prison without parole. She said the horrific nature of Madison's crimes far outweighed evidence presented to spare him, including an abusive and chaotic childhood. The jury convicted Madison last month of multiple counts of aggravated murder and kidnapping. Madison didn't make any statements during Thursday's hearing except to answer questions posed by the judge. Defense attorney David Grant declined to comment afterward. Prosecutor Tim McGinty said the death penalty was meant for criminals like Madison, whom he called the "worst of the worst." Any execution is likely years away because of lengthy appeals. In addition, Ohio currently lacks supplies of lethal drugs, meaning it's unclear whether it can even begin a new round of executions, currently scheduled to start in January and stretching into 2019. The bodies of 38-year-old Angela Deskins, 28-year-old Shetisha Sheeley and 18-year-old Shirellda Terry were found in July 2013 near the East Cleveland apartment building where Madison lived. Madison told police he strangled two of the women but couldn't remember killing the third. Prosecutors say the women were killed over a nine-month period: Sheeley in October 2012, Deskins in May 2013 and Terry in July 2013. Other relatives of the victims spoke of their heartbreak and loss during the hearing. Linda Deskins, the stepmother of Angela Deskins, spoke about the grief Angela Deskins' father has endured. "Nothing anyone can say or do can make it better for him," she said. The discovery of the bodies in July 2013 drew national attention to the possibility that another serial killer like Anthony Sowell had been killing women in and around Cleveland. Sowell was convicted in 2011 and sentenced to death for killing 11 women whose bodies were found at his Cleveland home. The Ohio Supreme Court is considering whether to uphold his conviction and sentence. Madison's attorneys never contested his guilt at trial. They instead focused on saving his life by presenting evidence that he suffered lasting psychological damage from physical abuse as a youngster. There was testimony that Madison was abused by his drug-addicted mother, a stepfather, some of his mother's boyfriends and other family members. "This history of abuse and his dysfunctional upbringing certainly doesn't excuse what happened here but certainly provides a basis for understanding the type of person Michael Madison evolved into," Grant told the judge. The case began when a cable television worker reported a putrid smell coming from a garage shared by Madison at the apartment building. Inside, police found the decaying body of a woman wrapped in garbage bags that were sealed closed with tape. The next day, searchers found bodies in the basement of a vacant house and in the backyard of a home nearby. Prosecutors argued at trial and during the mitigation hearing that Madison deserved to die because of the circumstances surrounding the killings. A death sentence "will send a message to the community that the strongest possible sentence will be imposed upon crimes of this nature," assistant prosecutor Christopher Schroeder said. Madison was classified as a sex offender in 2002, when he was sentenced to four years in prison for attempted rape. A court officer tackles the father of one of three victims of Ohio serial killer Michael Madison, left, who leaped over a table to attack the defendant in court just minutes after the judge pronounced a death sentence in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Cleveland. Van Terry, the father of victim Shirellda Terry, had walked to the front of the courtroom to give a victim-impact statement when he turned, paused and lunged toward Madison, who gave him a malicious smile. (AP Photo/David Richard) A court officer tackles the father of one of three victims of Ohio serial killer Michael Madison, left, who leaped over a table to attack the defendant in court just minutes after the judge pronounced a death sentence in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/David Richard) Ohio serial killer Michael Madison, right, smiles at Van Terry, the father of one of Madison's victims, as Terry approaches to to give a victim-impact statement just minutes after the judge pronounced a death sentence in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Cleveland. Terry lunged at Madison and was immediately swarmed by sheriff's deputies. (AP Photo/David Richard) Court officers escort Van Terry, center, from the courtroom after he dove across a courtroom table to attack convicted serial killer Michael Madison shortly after a judge announced the defendant would be sentenced to death in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Cleveland. Terry is the father of victim Shirellda Terry. (AP Photo/David Richard) CORRECTS THAT MADISON WAS CONVICTED LAST MONTH INSTEAD OF EARLIER THIS MONTH - Ohio serial killer Michael Madison, right, reacts after a judge pronounced a death sentence in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Cleveland. The same jury convicted Madison last month of multiple counts of aggravated murder and kidnapping. (AP Photo/David Richard) CORRECTS THAT MADISON WAS CONVICTED LAST MONTH INSTEAD OF EARLIER THIS MONTH - Ohio serial killer Michael Madison, left, reacts after a judge pronounced a death sentence in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Cleveland. The same jury convicted Madison last month of multiple counts of aggravated murder and kidnapping. (AP Photo/David Richard) The shoes of the father of one of three victims of Ohio serial killer Michael Madison, left, sit on the courtroom floor after he leaped over a table to attack the defendant in court just minutes after the judge pronounced a death sentence in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/David Richard) Ohio serial killer Michael Madison sits in the courtroom after a judge pronounced a death sentence in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Cleveland. The same jury convicted Madison last month of multiple counts of aggravated murder and kidnapping. (AP Photo/David Richard) Former priest found guilty of lewd acts in Puerto Rico SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) A jury in Puerto Rico has found a former Roman Catholic priest guilty of lewd acts in a case involving a 14-year-old boy. Floyd McCoy Jordan was accused in part of harassing the boy through calls and text messages from 2013 to 2014. He is scheduled to be sentenced in July and could face up to eight years in prison. His attorney could not be immediately reached for comment. UN: Violations against children in conflict rose in 2015 UNITED NATIONS (AP) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed shock at the escalating recruitment and killing of children in conflicts last year especially in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia and South Sudan. The U.N. chief's annual report on children and armed conflict released Thursday said the scale and increasing severity of grave violations included continuing large-scale abduction of children and aerial attacks by some governments and international coalitions which killed and maimed many youngsters. Ban called on all parties to conflicts to immediately end violations against children and take measures to prevent the recruitment, killing, abduction and sexual abuse of children caught in conflicts. He warned that combatants who violate children's rights "will find themselves under scrutiny by the United Nations" and stressed that accountability remains a key priority. The U.N. Security Council took the first major step to prevent the victimization of young people in war zones in 2005 by approving a resolution to identify governments and armed groups that recruit child soldiers. In 2009, the council voted to name and shame countries and insurgent groups engaged in conflicts that lead to children being killed, maimed and raped. Last June, the council voted unanimously to name and shame governments and armed groups that abduct children. Thursday's report names nine government security forces and 51 armed groups that committed grave violations against children last year. New additions to the list include the Saudi Arabia-led coalition and Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen for killing and maiming children and attacking schools and hospitals, and South Sudan's government forces known as the SPLA for carrying out more than 100 incidents of sexual violence against children. The Civilian Joint Task Force in Nigeria, who are local residents fighting Boko Haram extremists, was listed for recruiting and using children, with more than 50 verified cases in 2015, and Raia Mutomboki 5, a large rebel group in eastern Congo, was listed for recruiting, using and engaging in sexual violence against children. In response to last year's council resolution, the report for the first time lists six armed groups for abducting children al-Shabab militants in Somalia, Nigeria's Boko Haram, the Lord's Resistance Army in Central African Republic and Congo, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and South Sudan's SPLA. The report said children were disproportionately affected by the intensifying conflict in Afghanistan, which recorded the highest number of child casualties in 2015 since the U.N. began documenting civilian deaths and injuries in 2009. The U.N. said it verified 1,306 incidents resulting in 2,829 child casualties 733 killed and 2,096 injured. The casualties included 42 percent attributed to armed groups including the Taliban, 23 percent to Afghan forces and pro-government militias, and 55 to international forces, mainly from airstrikes, the report said. In Syria, the report said Islamic State extremists continued the massive recruitment and use of children and the anti-government Free Syrian Army recruited and used children as young as 9. Airstrikes and indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas were the primary cause for the killing of 591 children and injuries to 555 others, the report said. Judges say NYPD justified in Muslim spying records request NEW YORK (AP) An appellate court ruled Thursday that the New York Police Department was justified in using a Cold War-era federal legal doctrine to neither confirm nor deny the existence of records related to investigators' surveillance of two Muslim men that were requested under state open records law. An attorney for the men, a Rutgers University student and a well-known Harlem imam, had argued that when the police department invoked the Glomar doctrine in responding to Freedom of Information Law, it had extensively claimed an expansive privilege under a blanket exemption that should not apply to the state open records law. But in a decision handed down Thursday, a panel of judges presiding over the state Supreme Court Appellate Division in Manhattan said the Glomar responses were appropriate in this case because of "heightened law enforcement and public safety concerns." "We are all safer because of this ruling, which confirms that the NYPD is not required to reveal the targets of counterterrorism surveillance," said Nick Paolucci, a spokesman for the city's Law Department. Omar Mohammedi, the attorney who represented the two men, Samir Hashmi and Talib Abdur-Rashid, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Two lower court judges had issued conflicting rulings in lawsuits brought by Hashmi and Abdur-Rashid related to their surveillance after the NYPD responded to 2012 records requests by invoking Glomar. Their lawsuits were prompted after a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning stories by The Associated Press detailed the ways in which the nation's largest police department searched for possible terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks, in part by infiltrating Muslim student groups and putting informants in mosques. Earlier this year, the city settled lawsuits over the surveillance practices, allowing a civilian lawyer appointed by the mayor to attend meetings about secret investigations. The NYPD's intelligence chief, Thomas Galati, wrote in affidavits that requiring the police department to reveal who was under surveillance could harm ongoing investigations and allow would-be extremists to gain sensitive information. The panel of judges found the police department met its burden to prove there was a specific and compelling reason to decline to confirm or deny the existence of the records. The judges said although the state's public records law wouldn't specifically prohibit an agency from invoking the Glomar doctrine, it should submit detailed affidavits to show the information falls within certain exemptions. Glomar gets its name from a 1976 federal court decision that allowed the CIA to "neither confirm nor deny" whether records existed related to the Hughes Glomar Explorer ship that was used in the recovery of a Soviet nuclear submarine. __ Bisping gets 1st title shot after decade in the UFC octagon INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) Michael Bisping fought for 10 years and 25 UFC bouts to get the opportunity that finally arrived in a rush last month. The 37-year-old middleweight has beaten stars, lost to drug cheats and made millions in mixed martial arts, but he had never fought for a UFC title. A flamboyant English bad boy who promotes as well as he fights, Bisping thrived for years as a villain before emerging as a grudging fan favorite for his verbal dexterity and sheer tenacity in a notoriously fleeting profession. When an injured Chris Weidman suddenly dropped out of his rematch with middleweight champion Luke Rockhold two weeks ago, the promotion needed a replacement contender for the main event of UFC 199 at the Forum on Saturday night. FILE - In this April 15, 2014, file photo, middleweight Michael Bisping, of England, gestures during the weigh-in for a fight against Tim Kennedy, of the United States, in Quebec City, Canada. Bisping has fashioned a profitable UFC career as a flamboyant English bad boy, yet he had never been given a title fight after 25 trips to the octagon. Thanks to Chris Weidman's late injury, the 37-year-old Bisping finally gets his long-awaited shot at middleweight champion Luke Rockhold's belt at UFC 199 on Saturday, June 4, 2016. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jacques Boissinot, File) MANDATORY CREDIT Bisping (29-7) suddenly had the opportunity he had craved for a decade, albeit with no training camp against an opponent who already beat him 19 months ago. The circumstances aren't ideal, and not many people outside his camp expect him to claim Rockhold's belt. Bisping only sees the opportunity that eluded him for so long. "I get to walk in on two weeks' notice, I get to punch him in the face, and I finally get to become UFC champion," Bisping said. "It's my destiny." Bisping never gave up on his dream to wear a UFC title belt, but realized that he had faltered just often enough to make it unlikely. He was on the brink of a title shot when Dan Henderson knocked him out at UFC 100 seven years ago. He lost another title eliminator in 2012 to Chael Sonnen, and that defeat began a string of four losses in seven fights culminating in that second-round submission loss to Rockhold (15-2) in Sydney. But Bisping rebounded with a strong recent run capped by a cathartic victory over former middleweight champion Anderson Silva in February. Bisping also has plenty to occupy him outside the cage, including a comfortable family life in Orange County and an acting career. In fact, Bisping was on set in Toronto, playing a bad guy opposite Vin Diesel in the latest chapter of the "xXx" extreme-sports action hero franchise, when Rockhold agreed to make his first title defense against him. Bisping went straight from his movie into an even more familiar performance mode. "All the pressure is on Luke," Bisping said. "It's very, very free mentally. I'm just going to go out there and do my thing. I have no pressure. I know I'm expected to lose. The world is expecting me to lose this fight, and that's so nice. That feels good. I haven't had 10 weeks of evaluating footage and going through the emotional roller coasters feeling confident, feeling negative, feeling confident again and then negative again. I haven't got time for that." Rockhold, a verbally gifted promoter himself, has promised a first-round finish amid countless unflattering descriptions of Bisping's abilities and attitudes. Yet Rockhold raised eyebrows Thursday when he acknowledged he has been training with a torn ligament in his knee that prevented him from working on kicks until the past week. The champion still is a huge favorite among bettors, and even Bisping can't argue with the odds against him. But don't mistake Bisping's realism for self-doubt: All that trash talk is underpinned by a real confidence in his abilities and toughness. The former postman, furniture upholsterer and weekend DJ from Lancashire built an MMA career when the sport was largely unknown, and his win over Silva only underscored his self-certainty heading into an improbable opportunity to live his only remaining UFC dream. "I'm expected to lose," Bisping said. "That's awesome, because I'm going to go out there and I'm going to show off to the world. I'm going to swing for the fences, and I'm going to push that guy up against the fence, and I'm going to unload with everything I've got right in his face. And, you know, I think it gets the job done." Aerial demonstration team crashes throughout history AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (AP) Two fighter jets from the military's elite performance teams crashed within hours of each other Thursday. A U.S. Air Force Thunderbird jet crashed in Colorado Springs, Colorado, following the group's traditional performance the Air Force Academy commencement. A Navy's Blue Angels pilot was killed when his F/A-18 fighter jet crashed near Nashville, Tennessee, where the team was practicing for a scheduled performance this weekend. The aerial demonstration teams have crashed dozens of times in their long histories. Here is a look at some of the recent cases: April 2007: Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Davis, 32, of the Blue Angels, died when his jet went down during the final minutes of a performance at the Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in Beaufort, South Carolina The Pittsfield, Massachusetts., native was in his first year flying in formation with the team. A U.S. Air Force Thunderbird rests in a field where it crashed following a flyover performance at a commencement for Air Force Academy cadets, south of Colorado Springs, Colo., Thursday, June 2, 2016. The pilot ejected safely from the jet. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley) August 2005: No one was hurt when two Thunderbird jets made contact while flying in formation, and a missile rail was dislodged. No one was injured in that accident at Chicago Air and Water Show, but the carbon fiber object fell into Lake Michigan, roughly 2,500 feet from where spectators had gathered to watch the show. September 2003: Captain Chris Stricklin safely ejected with only minor injuries when his Thunderbird jet crashed at an air show at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho as about 85,000 spectators looked on. October 1999: Lt. Commander Kieron O'Connor, 35, and crewmate Lt. Kevin Colling, 32, were killed while practicing for air shows with five other Blue Angels jets at Moody Air Force Base in southern Georgia. There was no evidence of a mechanical problem on the F/A-18 Hornet. Investigators said O'Connor had a rib injury that might have given him trouble tensing his abdominal muscles to avoid blacking out during maneuvers that exert extreme gravitational forces on pilots. April 1999: Two Thunderbird F-16 jets bumped shortly after takeoff during a performance at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida. They were able to safely land without injury. July 1985: Navy Lt. Cmdr. Mike Gershon, 32, of Pensacola, Florida, died when two A-4 Skyhawk jets collided and plummeted to earth in a fiery crash witnessed by 22,000 spectators. Lt. Andy Caputi, 30, ejected from his plane and landed safely on the grounds of the Niagara Falls Air Force Base. North Dakota researchers and industry are aiming to apply agriculture practices to coal mine reclamation. Soil compaction, often resulting from heavy equipment, is one of the biggest challenges mining companies seek to remedy during any reclamation project. Following the mining process, heavy machinery is used to move soil, which applies compressive pressure during the reclamation process, said Jay Volk, environmental manager for BNI Coals Center Mine, in a statement. We knew this compaction was occurring, but we thought, with time, the soils would loosen as crops were planted, rains fell and the ground froze in the winter and thawed in the spring," he said. "But, instead, we found that the compaction problems continue to linger as long as four decades after mining. While coal mines in the state have received multiple national awards for reclamation programs, many are investing in further improvements. North Dakota State University researchers are aiming to reduce soil compaction by scaling up agricultural practices for the mining industry in order to create better water movement, vegetation and increase root penetration. Volk says companies try to decrease the compaction by changing traffic patterns but it still exists to a certain level. So the industry is turning to Ryan Limb, project director and principal investigator, and three other researchers from North Dakota State Universitys Department of Natural Resources. Agriculture has long had the same problems but on a much smaller scale, Limb said. As part of a five-year, $1.1 million state- and industry-funded study, researchers will test the practices of deep ripping, polymer and mulch soil additions and seeding changes to determine whether they can make a difference. The last time research was done on reclamation in the state was the early 1990s. Limb said companies have started to use some of these practices but no one has quantified the benefits, if any. Seeding Researchers also will experiment with a change to how companies are seeding. Kentucky bluegrass is prevalent on reclaimed lands. It meets production benchmarks but its shallow root system puts it at risk in drought and wet conditions. More than 27,000 acres of rangeland has been mined and gone through formal bond release. To be released from bond, the land must be as productive or more productive for 10 years than it was prior to mining. Limb said the research being conducted will be proactive, finding ways to maintain and extend production on reclaimed lands should a drought occur. For property going back to rangeland rather than cropland, researchers will seed native flowers to improve root structure, bringing back more native prairie plants, Limb said. These arent being planted with pollinators in mind but it could also help North Dakotas beekeepers by providing an additional source of forage. The biggest limit will be commercial seed availability. The team will also change soil respread depths. At current depths, Limb said companies have basically created a perfect storm for Kentucky bluegrass to grow. New depths may change that. Limb said the study is not specifically looking at the economics of these methods but theyre designed to not add additional expense for companies. Farmers operate under the same small margins (as coal companies) already, Limb said, so what farmers can afford, mines can, too. Extending the benefits And the benefits of the study will not be limited to coal mines. Soil compaction is soil compaction, Limb said, and if researchers can find a fix on a mine site, other industries, such as oil and gas and wind producers, could use it as well. North Dakota has more than 10,000 active oil wells and 12 wind farms. Associated with these energy sources are pad sites, access roads, pipelines and transfer stations, which will all need to be reclaimed, according to the Lignite Energy Council. All of these trials will be run on actual mine reclamation sites, for which companies are currently seeking research variances. The plots will be at least an acre so equipment can be run at production rates. Government approvals Ultimately, if solutions are found, North Dakota Public Service Commission approval will be needed to make changes to reclamation practices. North Dakota Public Service Commissioner Randy Christmann holds the coal industry portfolio for the PSC and also sits on the states coal tax-funded Lignite Research Council, which provided half of the $1.1 million in funding for the research. BNI Coals Center Mine and North American Coals Coyote Creek, Falkirk and Freedom Mines have all invested in the rest of the necessary funding and will provide the test plots acreage and labor. After speaking with the PSCs division of reclamation manager, I decided to support the study, Christmann said in a statement. He told me that more research is needed to prevent the occasional compaction problems and non-native grasses growing on land that has bond released. When I learned that, I changed my mind. While we reclaim mined land well, we can always learn to do it better. The result of the study will be a best management practices document. The Latest: Heavy rain continues in parts of Texas FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) The Latest on flooding in Texas (all times local): 11:10 p.m. Heavy rains are drenching much of Texas, bringing almost 5 inches to parts of the Houston area within a three-hour period. Streets along the Brazos River are closed, Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Rosenber, Texas. Parts of Texas have been inundated with rain in the last week, and more than half of the state is under flood watches or warnings, including the counties near Fort Hood. At least six people died in floods last week in Central and Southeast Texas. (Mark Mulligan/Houston Chronicle via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT The heaviest rainfall Thursday night was reported in LaPorte on the western shore of Galveston Bay, where 4.36 inches of rain was recorded between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. Thursday. The rain came in bands that circled around a disturbance that covered much of the state Thursday night. A flash flood watch continues in effect for most of Texas, from the Red River to the Rio Grande. ___ 10:15 p.m. A Fort Hood spokesman says crews have found the bodies of two more soldiers who were in a truck that was washed from a low-water crossing by a flooded creek on the Central Texas Army post. That brings to five the confirmed death toll from the Thursday morning incident at the Owl Creek Tactical Crossing. In a statement late Thursday night, spokesman Chris Haug said teams were continuing the search for the four soldiers still missing. The three other soldiers from the 12 in the 2-ton truck were hospitalized. ___ 9:30 p.m. Fort Hood's 1st Cavalry Division commander has issued a statement of condolence to the survivors of soldiers killed when their troop carrier was washed from a low-water crossing. At least three soldiers are dead and six are missing after the Thursday morning accident at the Texas base. Three others were hospitalized in stable condition. The soldiers were members of the 1st Cavalry. Maj. Gen. John C. Thomson III said the Fort Hood-based division "is grieving after a training accident ... during flash flooding this morning." He said in the statement Thursday night that search operations continue and "thoughts and prayers are greatly appreciated." ___ 8 p.m. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have issued statements of condolences to the families of those killed when an Army truck was washed from a low-water crossing by swiftly moving floodwaters at Fort Hood. At least three soldiers are dead and six are missing after the Thursday morning accident. Three others were hospitalized in stable condition. In his statement, Abbott said the state "stands ready to provide any assistance to Fort Hood as they deal with this tragedy." In his statement, Patrick asked people to "pray the six soldiers still missing will be found safe and unharmed." ___ 5:25 p.m. Fort Hood says three soldiers are dead and six are missing after an Army troop truck was washed from a low-water crossing and overturned in a rain-swollen creek at Fort Hood in Central Texas. A statement from the Texas Army post says the accident happened about 11:30 a.m. Thursday in an area near Cold Springs and Owl Creek. Three soldiers were rescued from the swift water. They're in stable condition at Coryell Memorial Healthcare System in Gatesville. Army aircraft, canine search teams, swift-water rescue watercraft and heavy trucks are being used in the search for the six missing soldiers. The names of the dead are being withheld until their relatives can be notified. ___ 1:45 p.m. Parts of Texas still recovering from heavy rainfall are watching new storms that could dump up to 10 inches of rain and worsen flooding in rivers and other waterways that already have risen to record levels. More rain is forecast in Southeast Texas from Thursday through Saturday. One storm system moved through the Houston-area Wednesday night and Thursday morning, dumping nearly eight inches of rain in some of the city's northern suburbs and leading to some flooding. About half of Texas is under flood watches or warnings, including Fort Bend County, southwest of Houston, where about 1,400 homes have been affected by the swollen Brazos River. New super PAC to help Trump, this time organized by a friend WASHINGTON (AP) A close friend of Donald Trump has helped start a super PAC to support him, potentially giving the presumptive Republican presidential nominee his first big-donor help for the general election. Tom Barrack, a Los Angeles real estate investor, said in an interview with CNN on Thursday that the group has already received $32 million in financial commitments. The group is called Rebuilding America Now, according to documents filed Thursday with federal regulators. Like other super PACs, the new group will be able to accept unlimited amounts of money from wealthy donors, but won't be permitted to take directions from the candidate or his campaign. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, center, holds up a sign after autographing it during a rally at the Sacramento International Jet Center, Wednesday, June 1, 2016, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) There already are several super PACs backing Trump, but none is seen as having the blessing of his campaign. That potentially could cause confusion for donors who want to be convinced that they're giving to a group that Trump himself sees as helpful to his cause. Another complication: Trump has repeatedly condemned all super PACs as "corrupt." There is no such confusion on the Democratic side. There's no dispute that Priorities USA, which is stocked with friends and allies of likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, is the major money vehicle aiding her. It has plans to spend at least $136 million in advertising before the November election. One existing pro-Trump group, Great America PAC, had raised $1 million, but was in debt at the end of April. So far, it has raised most of its money from people giving $200 or less. Another entity, Committee for American Sovereignty, formed only recently and is run by a former aide to one of Trump's former rivals, Ben Carson. Barrack's group may prove to be the natural choice for wealthy Trump donors, thanks to his long friendship and business relationship with the candidate. The executive chairman of Colony Capital, Barrack met Trump in 1988 when he negotiated the sale of The Plaza hotel in New York to Trump. Barrack's publicist described the men as having since "solidified a lifelong friendship between themselves and their families." Barrack, whose company owns Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch, among many other real estate assets, also has been "close personal friends" with Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign chairman and chief strategist, for almost four decades, according to a bio provided by the publicist, Kristin Celauro. Barrack held a large fundraiser for Trump last month, a dinner that cost at least $25,000 to attend. The money raised there will be divided among the Trump campaign, Republican National Committee and 11 state GOP parties, per a fundraising agreement struck in May. That event followed an increasingly public role for Barrack as a Trump promoter. Barrack spoke glowingly of Trump Feb. 1 in an interview on CNBC. "He's one of the kindest, and actually most humble, friends that I've had," Barrack said. "I have so much respect for him because at this point in his career, wandering into the milieu was not easy, and he's changed the dialogue of the debate." A full endorsement of Trump followed a few weeks after Barrack's CNBC appearance. The Trump campaign celebrated it in a Feb. 29 press release. "Mr. Barrack and Mr. Trump have worked together and opposite each other on past deals," it said. "They have had a great relationship and share a mutual admiration for their respective accomplishments." ___ Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report. ___ Clashes erupt during eviction drive in north India; 24 dead MATHURA, India (AP) Police efforts to evict thousands of people squatting in a makeshift protest camp in the heart of a north Indian city ended in bloodshed as people opened fire from treetops and police retaliated, leaving at least 24 people dead, police said Friday. More than 370 people have been arrested for alleged involvement in the violence, during which gas cylinders being used by the protesters for cooking exploded and ignited a fire that killed 11 people, according to a top state police officer, Daljit Chaudhary. He said the victims included two officers who were gunned down when the violence began late Thursday in Mathura, an ancient Hindu temple city on the Yamuna River, about 300 kilometers (200 miles) southwest of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh state. More than 100 people were injured in the melee, including 23 police officers who were hospitalized with injuries including bullet wounds. Indian police guard an entrance to a park where clashes between police and squatters claimed several lives in Mathura, India, Friday, June 3, 2016. The clashes took place on Thursday, June 2, 2016 after police tried to evict hundreds of squatters following a court order. The protesters had gathered to resist the eviction, and about 100 of them violently attacked the officers, including some who opened fire from treetops while others hurled stones and thrashed the officers with wooden sticks, according to Javed Ahmed, director general of state police. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das) "We knew they had firearms, but we didn't expect them to fire at us the way they did," state police Chief Javed Ahmed said. "They appeared to be well trained in handling arms." The standoff had been building for about two years, during which thousands of people occupied a 268-acre (108-hectare) patch of government land while demanding a raft of drastic reforms including abolishing the nation's presidential and prime ministerial posts, changing the Indian currency, building public facilities and providing steep discounts on petrol prices, now at about $1 per liter (about $4 per gallon). The protesters said they were part of an independence force that followed the example of Subhash Chandra Bose, one of India's independence leaders who went missing during a military operation in 1945. Over time, the protest camp grew with makeshift tents, thatched huts, cooking gear and thousands of men, women and children camping out. In April, the High Court in Allahabad ordered the occupiers to leave. When they refused, police obtained a court order for eviction and on Thursday sent about 30 officers to survey the situation. They were met with fierce resistance as a few hundred protesters "surrounded them and attacked them with sticks and stones. Protesters hiding on treetops started firing simultaneously," said city resident Ravi Thakur, 24, a cable television technician who witnessed the clashes. The protesters had strung up barbed wire at the park entrances and refused to be evicted. Police sent in about 500 reinforcements, who fired rubber bullets and tear gas canisters to clear the area and evict the squatters by Thursday night, he said. "As the police swung into action, some of the protesters set their thatched huts in the area on fire to block their way," Thakur said. "The clashes continued for about two and a half hours." As the protesters left the grounds, they were reportedly pelted with stones by some Mathura residents. Police said one of those killed had been lynched, but the details of that attack were unclear. Police said they seized more than 170 rifles and 40 homemade revolvers. On Friday, smoke hovered in the air from a few fires still smoldering. Police stood guard at the entrances to the park to keep people from entering while officers continued to search for more weapons, suspects and evidence. "The culprits will not be spared at any cost. The police had gone there to vacate land following court orders," said Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, the highest elected official in Uttar Pradesh. ___ Biswajeet Banerjee reported from Lucknow, India. In this Thursday, June 2, 2016 image made from video, paramilitary soldiers detain an unidentified man from the site of violent clashes in Mathura, India. Police efforts to evict thousands of people squatting in a makeshift protest camp in the heart of a north Indian city ended in bloodshed as people opened fire from treetops and police retaliated, police said Friday, June 3, 2016. (AP Video via AP) This Thursday, June 2, 2016 image made from video shows Indian policemen and paramilitary soldiers near the site of violent clashes in Mathura, India. Police efforts to evict thousands of people squatting in a makeshift protest camp in the heart of a north Indian city ended in bloodshed as people opened fire from treetops and police retaliated, police said Friday, June 3, 2016. (AP Video via AP) This Thursday, June 2, 2016 image made from video, paramilitary soldiers charge at protesters near the site of violent clashes in Mathura, India. Police efforts to evict thousands of people squatting in a makeshift protest camp in the heart of a north Indian city ended in bloodshed as people opened fire from treetops and police retaliated, police said Friday, June 3, 2016. (AP Video via AP) Indian police guard an entrance to a park where clashes between police and squatters claimed several lives in Mathura, India, Friday, June 3, 2016. The clashes took place on Thursday, June 2, 2016 after police tried to evict hundreds of squatters following a court order. The protesters had gathered to resist the eviction, and about 100 of them violently attacked the officers, including some who opened fire from treetops while others hurled stones and thrashed the officers with wooden sticks, according to Javed Ahmed, director general of state police. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das) Thousands of Peruvian pilgrims attend Snow Star Festival SINAKARA VALLEY, Peru (AP) Tens of thousands of pilgrims crowd an Andean valley, with dancers in multi-layered skirts and musicians with drums and flutes performing non-stop over three days. The native melodies resound throughout a snow-capped mountain range long adored by the Quechua people. Known as the Snow Star festival, the gathering is held every year shortly before the Christian feast of Corpus Christi and draws as many as 100,000 people to the Quispicanchis province in Peru's Cuzco region. It also coincides with the reappearance of the star cluster Pleiades in the Southern Hemisphere, signaling the abundance of the harvest season. Inscribed on UNESCO'S Intangible Cultural Heritage list, the festival features a pilgrimage by local people to the sanctuary where a boulder features an image of Jesus Christ known as the Lord of Qoyllur Rit'i (pronounced KOL-yer REE-chee), or Snow Star in the Quechua language. In this May 24, 2016 photo, a pilgrim carrying his son on his back, plays a traditional Andean flute known as a quena, as he walks the five miles to the Sanctuary of the Lord of the Qoyllur Riti, to take part in the syncretic festival of the same name, translated from the Quechua language as Snow Star, in the Sinakara Valley, in Peru's Cusco region. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) The sanctuary is in the Sinakara Valley at the base of the Qullqip'unqu mountain in the Andes. Parish churches in the area provide food for the pilgrims, who camp out in the valley. The celebration mixing Roman Catholic and indigenous beliefs honors Jesus as well as the area's glacier, which is considered sacred among some indigenous people. While the native celebration is far older, the Christian part of the ritual stretches back to the 1700s, when Jesus is said to have appeared to a young shepherd in the form of another boy. On the last night of the festival, men known as "ukukus" climb more than 4,500 meters (about 14,765 feet) in freezing temperatures up to the Qullqip'unqu mountain's glacier. They dress as half-bear, half-man creatures and carry crosses up the slope to spend the night at the top. They descend with their crosses as first rays of the morning sun spread across the mountain range and are met by groups of women and children. The ukukus are organized into militaristic groups with strict rules overseen by a "corporal." When new recruits reach the glacier, each kneels before a cross and places their hands on the ice. In recent years, the pilgrims have noted a decline in the size of the glacier because of warming trends. In hopes of preventing additional melting, the ukukus no longer use the large candles that were once common in the ritual. The ukukus also used to cut away ice cubes to bring down, but no longer do so. Jose Luis Mamani, president of the Paucartambo, one of numerous "nations" making the pilgrimage, said members of his group "are very worried about the state of this sacred place." Still, after praying to the Lord of Qoyllur Rit'i for health, peace and prosperity, the pilgrims head home with their hope intact and the expectation they will perform the ritual again next year. In this May 23, 2016 photo, pilgrims dressed as "Ukukus", mythical half-man, half-bear creatures, eat soup gifted by parishioners at a parish in the city of Occongate, in Peru's Cusco region. The group of Ukukus, who are part of a "nation" that include musicians and dancers, met up in the town of Paucartambo, and traveled in the bed of a farm truck to the Sinakara Valley to take part in the syncretic festival Qoyllur Riti, translated from the Quechua language as Snow Star. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) In this May 23, 2016 photo, pilgrims wait for the start of a procession to the Sanctuary of the Lord of the Qoyllur Riti, as part of the the syncretic festival of the same name, translated from the Quechua language as Snow Star, in the Sinakara Valley, in Peru's Cusco region. Tens of thousands of pilgrims crowd into the Andean valley, with dancers in multi-layered skirts and musicians with drums and flutes performing non-stop for the three-day festival. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) In this May 23, 2016 photo, "Ukukus", representing mythical creatures of half-man, half-bear, watch a group of dancers perform outside the Sanctuary of the Lord of the Qoyllur Riti, as part of the syncretic festival of the same name, translated from the Quechua language as Snow Star, at the base of the Qullqip'unqu mountain, in the Sinakara Valley, in Peru's Cusco region. The ukukus are organized into militaristic groups with strict rules overseen by a corporal. They help to maintain order and act as intermediaries between the pilgrims and the Gods. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) In this May 23, 2016 photo, pilgrims wait for the start of a procession to the Sanctuary of the Lord of the Qoyllur Riti, as part of the syncretic festival of the same name, translated from the Quechua language as Snow Star, in the Sinakara Valley, in Peru's Cusco region. Religious processions, dance and music are central to the three-day celebration. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) In this May 24, 2016 photo, "Ukukus", men dressed as mythical half-man, half-bear creatures, light candles on the glacier of the Qullqip'unqu mountain, as part of the syncretic three-day festival Qoyllur Riti, translated from the Quechua language as Snow Star, in the Sinakara Valley, in Peru's Cusco region. In recent years, the pilgrims have noted a decline in the size of the glaciers because of warming trends. In hopes of preventing additional ice melting, the ukukus no longer use the large candles that were once common in the ritual. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) In this May 23, 2016 photo, a Quechua woman waits for a religious procession to file past so she can cross the road, during the second day of the syncretic festival Qoyllur Riti, translated from the Quechua language as Snow Star, in the Sinakara Valley, in Peru's Cusco region. The festival coincides with the reappearance of the star cluster Pleiades in the Southern Hemisphere, signaling the harvest season. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) In this May 24, 2016 photo, an "Ukuku", man dressed as a mythical half-man, half-bear creature, kneels in prayer before a cross on the glacier of the Qullqip'unqu mountain, as part of the the syncretic festival Qoyllur Riti, translated from the Quechua language as Snow Star, in the Sinakara Valley, in Peru's Cusco region. On the last night of the festival, the ukukus climb more than 4,500 meters in freezing temperatures up to the glacier where they spend the night worshipping and commiserating with Apus or the mountain gods. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) In this May 24, 2016 photo, an "ukuku" pledge places his hands on the ice of the Qullqip'unqu mountain glacier, kneeling before a cross as he is whipped three times by an ukukus leader, in an induction ceremony, as part of the syncretic festival Qoyllur Riti, translated from the Quechua language as Snow Star, in the Sinakara Valley, in Peru's Cusco region. New recruits promise to make the pilgrimage three years in a row. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) In this May 24, 2016 photo, men dressed as mythical half-man, half-bear creatures called "Ukukus", watch as their leader whips a pledge during an induction ceremony on the Qullqip'unqu mountain glacier as part of the syncretic festival Qoyllur Riti, translated from the Quechua language as Snow Star, in the Sinakara Valley, in Peru's Cusco region. Ukukus are comprised only of men. Ukuku is derived from the Quechua word to describe bear. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) In this May 24, 2016 photo, men dressed as mythical half-man, half-bear creatures called "Ukukus", descend the Qullqip'unqu mountain glacier carrying a cross on the last day of the syncretic festival Qoyllur Riti, translated from the Quechua language as Snow Star, in the Sinakara Valley, in Peru's Cusco region. The ukukus also used to cut away blocks of ice from the glacier to bring down to share with the community in the belief that the melted held magical healing powers, but no longer noting a decline in the size of the glaciers because of warming trends. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) In this May 24, 2016 photo, men dressed as "Ukukus", mythical half-man, half-bear creatures, huddle together to keep warm, as they take a break from their spiritual trek to the top of the Qullqip'unqu mountain, as part of the syncretic three-day festival Qoyllur Riti, translated from the Quechua language as Snow Star, in the Sinakara Valley, in Peru's Cusco region. On the last night of the festival, the ukukus climb more than 4,500 meters in freezing temperatures to the mountains glacier, carry crosses up the slope to spend the night at the top. They later descend with their crosses as the first rays of the morning sun spread across the mountain range and are met by reception groups of women and children. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) In this May 24, 2016 photo, children mount a horse after breaking camp at the base of the Qullqip'unqu mountain, in the Sinakara Valley, in Peru's Cusco region, where they spent the last 3 days at the Sanctuary of the Lord of the Qoyllur Riti, taking part in the festival of the same name, translated from the Quechua language as Snow Star. The gathering is held every year shortly before the Christian feast of Corpus Christi and draws as many as 100,000 people to the Quispicanchis province. It also coincides with the reappearance of the star cluster Pleiades in the Southern Hemisphere, signaling the harvest season. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) In this May 24, 2016 photo, a young boy descends the Qullqip'unqu mountain looking out at the tens of thousands of pilgrims gathered to celebrate the three-day festival Qoyllur Riti, translated from the Quechua language as Snow Star, in the Andean Sinakara Valley, in Peru's Cusco region. The celebration that mixes Catholic and indigenous beliefs honors Jesus as well as the areas glacier, which is considered sacred among some indigenous people. While the native celebration is far older, the Christian part of the ritual stretches back to the 1700s, when Jesus is said to have appeared to a young shepherd in the form of another boy. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) In this May 24, 2016 photo, men dressed as mythical half-man, half-bear creatures, known as an "Ukukus", descend the Qullqip'unqu mountain accompanied by a receiving party of women and children, on the last day of the three-day festival Qoyllur Riti, translated from the Quechua language as Snow Star, in the Sinakara Valley, in Peru's Cusco region. The celebration that mixes Catholic and indigenous beliefs honors Jesus as well as the areas glacier, which is considered sacred. Many of the pilgrims are very worried about the state of this sacred place as they see the mountain glacier slowing disappearing because of warming trends. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) Mexico's dominant PRI a contender even in struggling states COSOLEACAQUE, Mexico (AP) It looks like party time in Veracruz. Women in feathered bikinis gyrate to bouncy dance music praising the ruling party. A bused-in crowd of voters mills beneath a tent covering a full city block, waiting to celebrate the man who if 87 years of history holds true has a strong shot at becoming the next governor. The upbeat spectacle is part of efforts to burnish the battered image of the Institutional Revolutionary Party in Veracruz, a state it has never lost despite years of drug cartel violence, looted government coffers and multiple unsolved killings of journalists. It is depending on loyal voters like Rubiselia Alor Perez, a single mother from an outlying neighborhood of this city of 23,000. In this May 18, 2016 photo, Hector Yunes Landa, candidate for Governor for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI, and the coalition "Para Mejorar Veracruz," or "For Improving Veracruz," greets supporters during a campaign rally in Cosoleacaque, in the gulf coast state of Veracruz, Mexico. Mexican states elect new governors and the PRI, which runs the country in the middle of growing criticism and disenchantment for corruption cases, the violence and a bad economy, is trying to show that it has enough power to win the majority of the governorships. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) Asked how things had gone in the state, Alor said, "Worse, worse unemployment, crime, everything." Nevertheless, she's sticking with the party known as the PRI: "I was born with my party," Alor said. "There you stay." Polls indicate the PRI has a fighting chance to win yet again in Veracruz and most of the other 11 states holding elections on Sunday victories that could smooth its path to keeping the presidency two years from now. "The more state governments the parties have, the more resources they have to mobilize and buy the vote," said Jose Antonio Crespo, a political analyst at Mexico's Center for Economic Research and Teaching. "So if the PRI loses some important places its probability (of winning in 2018) diminishes." Veracruz is the biggest of the states choosing governors and one of five along with Durango, Hidalgo, Quintana Roo and Tamaulipas in which the PRI has never lost even as its once iron grip on power has eroded across the nation as a whole. While President Enrique Pena Nieto is suffering historically low approval ratings, PRI leader Manlio Fabio Beltrones says he expects to win eight of those statehouses. The party now controls nine of them. The PRI finally lost the presidency in 2000 for the first time in 71 years. But even in a more competitive era it remains the country's most powerful political force, controlling with its allies about half the seats in both houses of congress and 19 of 32 governorships. It won back the presidency itself in 2012. At first glance, conditions would appear ideal for change in Veracruz. Last week, five dismembered bodies were dumped on a highway near the Veracruz city of Cordoba. A sign left with the dead suggested one drug cartel was "cleaning up" its rivals. Days earlier, six people were killed in two nightclub shootings. Sixteen journalists have been slain in Veracruz during the six-year term of the widely reviled outgoing governor, Javier Duarte. Businesses regularly complain of extortion by drug cartels. But the PRI still enjoys an extensive party machinery as well as loyalty that has been cultivated some say bought over decades. Three polls published this week by national newspapers showed the PRI's Hector Yunes Landa in a tight three-way race. His chief rivals are his cousin, Miguel Angel Yunes Linares, who is backed by an alliance of convenience between the conservative National Action Party and the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, and Cuitlahuac Garcia of the upstart Morena party a little-known candidate who has surprised some by turning the race into a three-man fight. Yunes Linares comes with his own political baggage. He has been dogged by and denies alleged connections with a more than decade-old pedophilia scandal that implicated several political and business leaders, although many voters like Lourdes Rosales Calvo don't believe the accusations. Rosales' son was taken by gunmen in Veracruz city in 2013 and has not been heard from since. She blamed the PRI for allowing organized crime to flourish in the state and said she would vote for Yunes Linares, who met with her and other women whose children vanished in recent years. "He really wants to hand Duarte over to the people (for punishment). ... Everybody wants Duarte to pay for all of his garbage," she said. The federal attorney general's special prosecutor for electoral crimes recently told the newspaper El Universal that his office had received over 250 reports of alleged electoral crimes in Veracruz, tops for all Mexico. Among the most common is "electoral tourism," in which people are brought to Veracruz from other states and registered to vote. In the coastal city of Coatzacoalcos, the prosecutor said his office was investigating one case involving 854 suspicious voters. "There has never been a crisis so generalized, so absurd, a governor so unpopular, a collapse of the state," said Alberto Olvera, a researcher at Veracruz University, where teachers and administrators accuse the governor of siphoning away federal money earmarked for the school. "The only reason why the PRI could have a remote chance of winning the elections is the effectiveness of its system for buying votes and rural electoral nepotism." Yet other parties stand accused, too. In Mexico City, for example, Morena leaders are feuding with the party they broke away from, Democratic Revolution, accusing it of buying votes with home water tanks and other goods. On the day of the PRI's rally in Cosoleacaque, sitting in the back of the small shop where he sells thumb drives and printer cartridges, Eduardo Soto said he was unimpressed by either of the Yuneses. "They're cousins," he said. "Whichever one you vote for, it's the same." Soto said he was considering Morena's Garcia, but didn't know much about him. "People don't trust any of the candidates. They don't even vote for that reason," Soto said. "They feel like their vote doesn't matter." In this May 18, 2016 photo, women in feathered bikinis dance in front of an electoral banner with an image of Hector Yunes Landa, candidate for Governor for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI, and the coalition "Para Mejorar Veracruz," or "For Improving Veracruz," during a campaign rally in Cosoleacaque, in the gulf coast state of Veracruz, Mexico. The upbeat spectacle is part of efforts to burnish the battered image of the PRI in Veracruz, a state it's never lost despite years of drug cartel violence, looted government coffers and multiple unsolved murders of journalists. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) In this May 18, 2016 photo, a supporter protects himself from the sun with a party themed umbrella as he waits for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI, candidate for Governor Hector Yunes Landa, during a campaign rally in Cosoleacaque, in the gulf coast state of Veracruz, Mexico. Polls indicate the PRI has a fighting chance to win yet again in Veracruz and most of the other 11 states holding elections on Sunday, June 5, victories that could smooth its path to keeping the presidency two years from now. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) In this May 18, 2016 photo, Hector Yunes Landa, candidate for Governor for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI, greets supporters during a campaign rally in Cosoleacaque, in the gulf coast state of Veracruz, Mexico. Veracruz is the biggest of the states choosing governors and one of five, along with Durango, Hidalgo, Quintana Roo and Tamaulipas, in which the PRI has never lost even as its once iron grip on power has eroded across the nation as a whole. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) In this May 18, 2016 photo, supporters wait for the arrival of Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI, candidate for Governor Hector Yunes Landa, during a campaign rally in Cosoleacaque, in the gulf coast state of Veracruz, Mexico. The PRI finally lost the presidency in 2000 for the first time in 71 years. But even in a more competitive era it remains the country's most powerful political force. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) In this May 17, 2016 photo, Miguel Angel Yunes Linares, candidate for Governor for the National Action Party, PAN, and the coalition "Unidos para rescatar Veracruz," or "United to rescue Veracruz", greets supporters during a campaign rally in Ixhuacan, in the gulf coast state of Veracruz, Mexico. Three recently published polls showed three-way statistical tie with his cousin, Institutional Revolutionary Party's Hector Yunes Landa and Cuitlahuac Garcia of the upstart Morena party, a little-known candidate who has surprised some by turning it into a three-way race. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) In this May 19, 2016 photo, Miguel Angel Yunes Linares, candidate for Governor for the National Action Party, PAN, and the coalition "Unidos para rescatar Veracruz," or "United to rescue Veracruz," poses for a picture during a campaign rally in Jalacingo, in the gulf coast state of Veracruz, Mexico. Yunes Linares comes with his own political baggage. He has been dogged by, and denies, alleged connections with a more than decade-old pedophilia scandal that implicated several political and business leaders. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) In this May 17, 2016 photo, a supporter of Miguel Angel Yunes Linares, candidate for Governor of the National Action Party, PAN, and the coalition "Unidos para rescatar Veracruz," or "United to rescue Veracruz," holds a party flag, at a campaign rally in Jalacingo, in the gulf coast state of Veracruz, Mexico. Home to Mexico's third largest voting population after Mexico state and Mexico City, Veracruz is the biggest prize among the 12 states holding elections Sunday, June 5. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) 'Safety villages' let kids navigate fire, traffic hazards ASHVILLE, N.Y. (AP) With the fire alarm sounding, 8-year-old Chryssa Wahl crouched beneath the smoke spreading from the kitchen stove and crawled into a bedroom and to the window, where she threw a leg over the sill and stepped her way down a wobbling rope ladder to the ground below. During this school field trip, the danger wasn't real. But the crawling and climbing were. That kind of hands-on experience is what instructors at the Chautauqua Children's Safety Education Village say make their lessons so effective. In this May 20, 2016 photo, Dewittville Volunteer Fire Department Chief Burl Swanson tells second-graders about kitchen fire hazards during a field trip to Chautauqua Children's Safety Education Village in Ashville, N.Y. The not-for-profit is one of dozens of safety villages in the United States and Canada and more are in the works, including one near Albany, N.Y., the idea being that learning by doing in a safe environment is the best defense against real danger. (AP Photo/Carolyn Thompson) "If they're ever in a fire in their own home then they're going to remember what they did here," Executive Director Terri Kindberg said. Later, Chryssa's group from Jamestown's Bush Elementary School moved from the model house to an outdoor village, not unlike a movie set, with scaled-down streets and mock storefronts to practice the rules of the road behind the wheel of miniature cars. The nonprofit in upstate New York is one of dozens of safety villages in the United States and Canada, and more are in the works, the idea being that learning by doing in a safe environment is the best defense against real danger. Students from preschool age on up practice twisting their arms out of the grip of a stranger and making 911 calls. They demonstrate that "stop, drop and roll" and other lessons are sinking in. "Some kids are really scared and they don't want to go out the window, they don't want to go down the ladder," Kindberg said, "but we really try to encourage them and work with them to get them to do that one time." Patrick Carroll is trying to raise $250,000 to buy a closed school building and surrounding property to site a safety village near Albany. The Chautauqua County village is funded by donations, fundraising and a $5 per child fee after getting off the ground with a $1.7 million federal grant. Sheriff Joseph Gerace led efforts to build the western New York village after being introduced to the concept in 1996. Since opening in 2010, the site also has given law enforcement a place to practice with remote-controlled robots and K-9 units. The New York leaders want to see government get involved in building villages in the state and beyond. Georgia's Cobb County Safety Village is a private-public venture that sits on county land, director Allison Carter said. Every second- and fourth-grader practices escaping from a "burning" living room at the site, which sees 24,000 students during the school year and 2,000 during the summer. "It's like when I turned 16 and my dad taught me how to change a tire," Carter said. "If I hadn't gone through it, when I was 21 and stranded on the side of the road I wouldn't have known how to change a tire." The western New York village points as a success story to a 4-year-old student who after her visit insisted that her family make an escape plan. A month later, the family used the plan to safely escape a house fire, Kindberg said. "What the program brings home to the parents," said Chryssa's mother, Danni Wahl, "is that reminder to have these conversations." In this May 20, 2016 photo, Dewittville Volunteer Fire Department Chief Burl Swanson helps second-graders from Bush Elementary School practice climbing down a fire escape ladder during a field trip to Chautauqua Children's Safety Education Village in Ashville, N.Y. The not-for-profit is one of dozens of safety villages in the United States and Canada and more are in the works, including one near Albany, the idea being that learning by doing in a safe environment is the best defense against real danger. (AP Photo/Carolyn Thompson) In this May 20, 2016 photo, second-graders from Bush Elementary School crawl under smoke from a simulated kitchen fire during a field trip to Chautauqua Children's Safety Education Village in Ashville, N.Y. The not-for-profit is one of dozens of safety villages in the United States and Canada and more are in the works, including one near Albany, N.Y., the idea being that learning by doing in a safe environment is the best defense against real danger. (AP Photo/Carolyn Thompson) In this May 20, 2016 photo, second-graders from Bush Elementary School crawl under smoke from a simulated kitchen fire during a field trip to Chautauqua Children's Safety Education Village in Ashville, N.Y. The not-for-profit is one of dozens of safety villages in the United States and Canada and more are in the works, including one near Albany, N.Y., the idea being that learning by doing in a safe environment is the best defense against real danger. (AP Photo/Carolyn Thompson) In this May 20, 2016 photo, a student practices "stop, drop and roll" while learning about fire safety during a field trip to Chautauqua Children's Safety Education Village in Ashville, N.Y. The not-for-profit is one of dozens of safety villages in the United States and Canada and more are in the works, including one near Albany, N.Y., the idea being that learning by doing in a safe environment is the best defense against real danger. (AP Photo/Carolyn Thompson) In this May 20, 2016 photo, instructor Brenda Gernatt teaches students how to escape the grip of a stranger during a field trip to Chautauqua Children's Safety Education Village in Ashville, N.Y. The not-for-profit is one of dozens of safety villages in the United States and Canada and more are in the works, including one near Albany, N.Y., the idea being that learning by doing in a safe environment is the best defense against real danger. (AP Photo/Carolyn Thompson) In this May 20, 2016 photo, second-grade students from Bush Elementary School practice traffic safety during a field trip to Chautauqua Children's Safety Education Village in Ashville, N.Y. The not-for-profit is one of dozens of safety villages in the United States and Canada and more are in the works, including one near Albany, N.Y., the idea being that learning by doing in a safe environment is the best defense against real danger. (AP Photo/Carolyn Thompson) With new tactics, Taliban gain ground in south Afghanistan KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) In the rugged terrain of the Taliban heartland in southern Afghanistan, the fight against the Kabul government has become a war for control of key stretches of main roads and highways as the insurgents use a new tactic to gain ground. First they storm a checkpoint, kill all the police, seize their weapons and equipment and effectively cut off the main road to a remote village. They raise the white Taliban flag and plant roadside bombs to prevent cars from coming through the checkpoint. Any vehicle that tries to pass through is either blown up or attacked, residents and local leaders say. Then they wait. In this Friday, May 27, 2016 photo, Senior leader of a breakaway faction of the Taliban Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi, third left, arrives to give a speech to his fighters, in Shindand district of Herat province, Afghanistan. In the rugged terrain of the Taliban heartland in southern Afghanistan, the fight against Kabul has become a war for control of key stretches of main roads and highways as the insurgents use a new tactic to gain ground. (AP Photos/Allauddin Khan) Food supplies soon dwindle and prices rise, forcing villagers to abandon their homes and move to where they can afford to eat and live. Most sneak out on foot or on donkeys via backroads and mountain paths, leaving many of their belongings behind. The new tactic has helped the Taliban gain ground, albeit at a slower pace than a deadly, surprise raid on an entire village. For the insurgents, starving a population out is less costly than forcing them out at gunpoint and risking armed resistance. The Taliban are seeking to expand their footprint at any cost even if that means raising their flag over an empty village. The tactic demonstrates a significant shift in emphasis. In the past, fighters would first try to attack high-profile government targets, such as district administration buildings and police headquarters. Now, by focusing their firepower on checkpoints at the edges of towns and villages, they can gain ground more cheaply. Checkpoints are easier to overpower and police often surrender, handing over weaponry and vehicles. The Taliban have been waging war against Kabul since 2001, when their regime was overthrown in the U.S.-led invasion. Since the international combat troops pulled out of Afghanistan at the end of 2014, leaving behind only a largely training and advising contingent, the insurgency has intensified as government forces struggle to take the lead in the battle. The Taliban are refocusing their attention mostly on the southern provinces of Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan, according to U.S. and Afghan military officials, although the insurgents also have struck elsewhere, such as in Kunduz province in the north, where they overran and held the provincial capital for a few days last fall. The results have been daunting: The U.N. says 3,545 Afghan civilians were killed and 7,457 wounded in 2015, most of them by the Taliban. In the south, one of the worst-hit areas is Uruzgan province, where the Taliban have been putting pressure in recent weeks on Afghan forces around the provincial capital of Tirin Kot, said Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, the U.S. military spokesman in Kabul. "The Taliban's main focus in the south is now Uruzgan," and U.S. forces have been providing assistance and air support as needed, he said. The director of Uruzgan's provincial council, Abdul Hakeem Khadimzai, described the situation there as the "worst in 15 years." In May alone, he said, about 200 security forces were killed and more than 300 were wounded in Uruzgan. The figures are an estimate. Khadimzai insisted that if he were to include civilians, "then they would be doubled." The numbers could not be independently verified, since the Afghan government does not release military and police casualty figures. "Every day our forces are stepping back, and every day the Taliban are controlling more and more area," he said. "Our security forces are trying their best to control the area, but they can't because logistics supplies are not delivered on time." Uruzgan residents and community leaders say the highway connecting Tirin Kot to the city of Kandahar, 163 kilometers (101 miles) away, has been closed since March. And the road linking the Khas Uruzgan district with the rest of the province has been blocked for about a year. With the Taliban gaining ground, areas under government control have shrunk. Khadimzai describes Tirin Kot now as an "island of government control disconnected from the rest of the province." The closures have more than doubled the prices for basic goods in some areas, he said. In Khas Uruzgan, Dihrawud and Charchino districts, wheat now costs 3,200 afghanis ($47) for a sack of 45 kilograms (99 pounds), compared with 1,900 afghanis elsewhere in the country. Cooking oil is 540 afghanis for a container of 3 kilograms (6 pounds, 9 ounces), compared with the national average of 260 afghanis. Most fresh produce is grown locally but farmers in cutoff areas cannot get to markets to sell their goods, said Aminullah Hotaqi, a tribal elder and former Uruzgan council chief. Earlier this year, Noor Muhammad Noori had to close shop in his hometown in Khas Uruzgan and moved with his family to Tirin Kot, where he runs a general store. He said he just couldn't afford the dwindling supplies that were making it through the blocked highway nor could his customers. "After the road was cut off for a year ... I couldn't get food through for my family, and couldn't afford to pay the prices in Khas Uruzgan," he said. Between Jan. 1 and April 30, "117,976 people fled their homes due to conflict" in 24 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, the U.N. mission in Kabul said. Amnesty International said this week the number of internally displaced people has doubled in three years, to 1.2 million. A Tirin Kot taxi driver says the road closures have hit him hard: He no longer has any business taking people outside the city, but nor do any other taxi drivers, so competition in the city is fierce and his earnings have plummeted. "Now I can't afford to buy fuel. How am I going to feed my children?" he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared for his safety. Like other residents in the area, he spoke to The Associated Press over the telephone. After a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan killed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour last month, questions emerged on which direction the insurgency would take under his successor, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, a conservative cleric with no battlefield experience. Akhundzada's deputies Mullah Yaqoub, son of Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, and Sirajuddin Haqqani, who heads a brutal faction designated by the U.S. as a terrorist group are expected to escalate the violence as Akhundzada moves to consolidate his leadership position. The fight in the southern, opium poppy-producing regions will probably intensify once the harvest is done. For Uruzgan residents, Kabul seems both far away and unwilling to help. "It's time the government realized the day is not far off when its security forces will try to control the area, and they'll find that the civilians are fighting on the side of the Taliban," Khadimzai said. In this Friday, May 27, 2016 photo, Taliban fighters stand guard as senior leader of a breakaway faction of the Taliban Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi, not pictured, delivers a speech to his fighters, in Shindand district of Herat province, Afghanistan. In the rugged terrain of the Taliban heartland in southern Afghanistan, the fight against Kabul has become a war for control of key stretches of main roads and highways as the insurgents use a new tactic to gain ground. (AP Photos/Allauddin Khan) In this Friday, May 27, 2016 photo, a member of a breakaway faction of the Taliban fighters guards a gathering in Shindand district of Herat province, Afghanistan. In the rugged terrain of the Taliban heartland in southern Afghanistan, the fight against Kabul has become a war for control of key stretches of main roads and highways as the insurgents use a new tactic to gain ground. (AP Photos/Allauddin Khan) In this Friday, May 27, 2016 photo, Taliban fighters guard as senior leader of a breakaway faction of the Taliban Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi, not pictured, delivers a speech to his fighters, in Shindand district of Herat province, Afghanistan. In the rugged terrain of the Taliban heartland in southern Afghanistan, the fight against Kabul has become a war for control of key stretches of main roads and highways as the insurgents use a new tactic to gain ground. (AP Photos/Allauddin Khan) Nations struggle to craft new Mideast peace strategy PARIS (AP) Nations struggled Friday to craft a viable new strategy for Mideast peace, failing to agree on a French proposal for an international conference that would bring together Israel and the Palestinians. Diplomats nevertheless vowed to reinvigorate a peace process that has been all but dead for two years. The gathering in Paris of top diplomats from the United States and more than two dozen Western and Arab countries ended with a call for "fully ending the Israeli occupation," a rhetorical shift from what Washington has previously endorsed. But it wasn't immediately clear if the shift meant a new focus and participants couldn't outline how they might achieve that goal. As for the proposed peace mediation conference, they only welcomed the "prospect" of such an event later this year. Israel has fiercely opposed it; the U.S. hasn't been supportive, either. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian officials were present for Friday's talks. "A negotiated two-state solution is the only way to achieve an enduring peace, with two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security," a joint communique said. It called the status quo unsustainable and said "actions on the ground, in particular continued acts of violence and ongoing settlement activity, are dangerously imperiling the prospects for a two-state solution." France said it felt compelled to bring world and regional powers together at a time when Mideast peace appears further away than ever. While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledges to pursue peace, his increasingly hardline government and its strained relationship with much of the international community makes that seem less likely. At the same time, Palestinian leaders won't engage in direct talks while Jewish settlement construction continues in territories they hope to include in their state. And with the Middle East occupied by crises such as Syria's civil war and fighting the Islamic State, global attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has withered despite months of deadly unrest. Palestinian attacks have killed 28 Israelis and two Americans since September. About 200 Palestinians have been killed in that time. Israel says most were attackers and Israeli forces killed the rest in clashes. The vague reference to a future international peace conference suggests the idea was rebuffed in private discussions among lower-level aides before French President Francois Hollande, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met Friday. For years, statements by the international Quartet of mediators the U.S., Russia, the European Union and United Nations ended with similar language about a future gathering in Russia "at an appropriate time." That time never arrived. Asked about a conference, Kerry told reporters: "I have no idea yet." But he emphasized that right now, "we need to find some immediate kinds of steps on the ground that will make a difference." In his opening remarks, Holland allowed that "we cannot substitute for the parties." Still, he said his country's initiative could provide guarantees "that the peace will be solid, sustainable and under international supervision." As a first step, working groups will meet in the coming weeks to develop economic and security incentives for both sides, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told reporters afterward. The final communique's other wrinkle was its reference to "fully" ending Israel's occupation. That is subtly different than past papers supported by the U.S., even if President Barack Obama and other officials have used the term "occupation" and urged Israel to relinquish control over most of the territories it conquered in the 1967 Mideast War in a peace deal. This land includes the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Kerry himself led the last meaningful peace push, nine months of mainly indirect talks that collapsed in April 2014. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has welcomed France's efforts, having long grown frustrated with Washington's two-decade domination over peace efforts. Palestinians see the U.S. heavily favoring Israel and want an effort with more world powers involved, like last year's Iran nuclear diplomacy. Still, Foreign Minister Riad Malki expressed disappointment. "We were expecting timelines for the negotiations," he said, also lamenting the lack of demand to halt settlements. Netanyahu is defiantly opposed to the French initiative. He says a deal can only be reached in direct negotiations. However, he has expressed openness to elements of a 2002 Arab peace proposal that offered Israel recognition throughout the Muslim world after a deal with the Palestinians. Peace isn't possible through "imposition," David Keyes, Netanyahu's spokesman, said Friday. "If you have a dispute about your home," he said, "you don't fly to another continent and invite 30 people around the world to solve that conflict." ___ Protesters punch, throw eggs at Trump supporters in San Jose SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) A group of protesters attacked Donald Trump supporters who were leaving the presidential candidate's rally in San Jose on Thursday night. A dozen or more people were punched, at least one person was pelted with an egg and Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. Police stood their ground at first but after about 90 minutes moved into the remaining crowd to break it up and make arrests. At least four people were taken into custody, though police didn't release total arrest figures Thursday night. One officer was assaulted, police Sgt. Enrique Garcia said. There were no immediate reports of injuries and no major property damage, police said. Protesters against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump chase a man leaving a Trump campaign rally on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. A group of protesters attacked Trump supporters who were leaving the presidential candidate's rally in San Jose on Thursday night. A dozen or more people were punched, at least one person was pelted with an egg and Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) The crowd, which had numbered over 300 just after the rally, thinned significantly as the night went on, but those that remained near the San Jose Convention Center were rowdy and angry. Some banged on the cars of Trump supporters as they left the rally and chased after those on foot to frighten them. Police were keeping their distance from the crowd as the scuffles played out, but keeping them from getting any closer to the convention center. "Our police officers have done an extremely courageous and professional job so far," San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo told The Associated Press by phone. "We're all still holding our breath to see the outcome of this dangerous and explosive situation." The mayor, a Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter, criticized Trump for coming to cities and igniting problems that local police departments had to deal with. "At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign," Liccardo said. The presumptive GOP nominee spoke for about 50 minutes at the rally, sniping at Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and calling her speech on foreign policy earlier in the day "pathetic" and "sad to watch." Protesters before the speech included Adam Rivas, a 22-year-old community college student who was born and raised in San Jose, was holding a spray-painted sign that read "Dump Trump." Rivas said he was particularly disturbed by Trump's remarks about Mexicans. "For any one Mexican here he bashes, there are about 20 Mexicans out there who are hard-working and just doing their job," he said. Trump supporter Debbie Tracey, a U.S. Navy veteran from San Jose, she came to hear Trump speak, she left his rally with two hats a T-shirt and a handful of signs that said "Veterans for Trump." Passing in front of a wall of protesters, many chanting in Spanish, she said she supported Trump's call for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. "I'll go help build the wall because if you are going to come to this country, land of opportunity, you should be here legally," she said. Protesters against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump kick and jump on a car leaving a Trump campaign rally on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. A group of protesters attacked Trump supporters who were leaving the candidate's rally in San Jose on Thursday night. A dozen or more people were punched, at least one person was pelted with an egg and Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) Police form a line to contain protesters outside a campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) A police officer leads a man to safety after he was chased by protesters against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. A group of protesters attacked Trump supporters who were leaving the presidential candidate's rally in San Jose on Thursday night. A dozen or more people were punched, at least one person was pelted with an egg and Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally, Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) A man takes a selfie while getting his sign autographed by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a rally, Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) Japan praises boy who survived alone, wonders about parents TOKYO (AP) The remarkable survival of a 7-year-old Japanese boy, abandoned in a forest by his parents who wanted to teach him a lesson, prompted nationwide joy and relief Friday. But Japanese also wondered whether the father and mother themselves might need a stern lesson in parenting. Yamato Tanooka (Tah-noh-oh-kah) survived alone for nearly a week by finding shelter in a military hut and drinking water from a nearby faucet until he was discovered by chance by a soldier on Friday. He looked a bit worn out but was "genki," the military said, using a Japanese word describing healthy children. A doctor who examined him said he was dehydrated but basically fine. But some have reacted with outrage, slamming what the parents did as inexcusable punishing a child for misbehaving by leaving him in a forest reputedly occupied by bears on the northernmost main island of Hokkaido. The parents said they had returned after a few minutes, but couldn't find him. This undated photo released Friday, June 3, 2016, by Hamawake Elementary School shows 7-year-old Yamato Tanooka, who was found safe nearly a week after he was abandoned in the forest by his parents in Nanae, Hokkaido, northern Japan. The boy's safe return was welcomed in a nation riveted by his disappearance and undergoing intense soul-searching about how it raises and disciplines its children. This photo was taken by his school before he went missing. (Hamawake Elementary School/Kyodo News via AP) JAPAN OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT The incident was seen as underlining how isolated the nuclear family has become in modern Japanese society, with parents not getting enough advice on parenting, and the traditionally present grandma and grandpa no longer part of everyday life. Mitsuko Tateishi, an educator who has written a book urging mothers to take it easy, said some parents are succumbing to what she calls tremendous "good-mom pressures," such as having their children excel and measuring up to other children. "A child is not a dog or a cat. You have to treat the child like a human individual," she said, stressing that calm explanations of what is good versus bad is at the root of parenting, not punishing a child with abandonment. Tateishi also believes Japan remains behind the West in protecting children, and doubts any concrete action will be taken against the parents. "The father is probably really sorry for what he did, but he is so misguided," she said. Appearing outside the hospital where the boy was flown by helicopter, the father, Takayuki Tanooka, apologized, bowing deeply, thanked everyone for the rescue, and vowed to do a better job as a dad. "We have raised him with love all along," Tanooka said, fighting tears. "I really didn't think it would come to that. We went too far." Abandonment and child abuse are far more common in Japan than the stereotype of the doting parent and stay-at-home mom would suggest. Corporal punishment in the name of discipline is common, including beatings and getting thrown out of homes in the cold. There have been reports recently of children who were starved. Even more alarming, local school and community officials have not adequately responded to warning signs, such as a child's bruises or extreme hunger. In one case, parents in their 20s kept their 3-year-old chained to a collar around his neck. The father was arrested. A report by Japanese police found that child abuse is on the rise, with annually reported cases doubling to nearly 74,000 over the last decade, resulting in nearly 700 prosecutions, triple the number a decade ago, and more than 2,000 children getting placed in protective custody a year. Yamato's parents are not officially under any police investigation for their actions. Yamato's ordeal, pieced together from information from military and police teams reported by local media, was admirable for his resourcefulness and resilience. After apparently walking for several kilometers (miles), the boy found an empty hut in an unoccupied military drill area and entered a door that had been left open. The Quonset hut-style building had no heat or electricity and no food, but Yamato huddled between mattresses on the floor and drank water from the solitary faucet outside the hut for several days. Temperatures drop in the forested area in northern Japan to below 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) at night, and there was rain during the week, fueling fears the boy, wearing only a T-shirt when he went missing, might die from exposure. The soldier who found him had not been part of the search effort, but when he asked if the boy was Yamato Tanooka, the boy nodded and said, "Yup." The soldier gave him rice balls, which he ate ravenously. When the solider suggested they should go home together, the boy nodded again and said, "Yup." Although going without water is dangerous even for a few days, people can survive considerably longer without food. But experts stress a water-only diet for so long must have been painful. Daijiro Hashimoto, a former governor appearing on a talk show on TV Asahi, wondered how the boy had endured the loneliness, especially at night, and suggested that perhaps he had imagined he was on some adventure and was hiding in a secret camp. "He had to keep a very positive attitude," Hashimoto said, reflecting widespread sentiment here. "He is fantastic. He didn't know how long it might take, and when he would ever be saved." Japanese media reports focused more on how lucky and smart the boy had been, and less on criticizing the parents. Yamato's father said he was sorry. "I told him I was so sorry for causing him such pain," he told reporters. ___ Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at twitter.com/yurikageyama Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/yuri-kageyama Takayuki Tanooka, father of the 7-year-old Japanese boy who went missing nearly a week ago, bows in front of media after his son was found, in Hakodate, Hokkaido Friday, June 3, 2016. The boy, missing since Saturday, was found unharmed Friday, police said, in a case that had set off a nationwide debate about parental disciplining. (Daisuke Suzuki/Kyodo News via AP) JAPAN OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT Takayuki Tanooka, father of the 7-year-old Japanese boy who went missing nearly a week ago, speaks to media after his son was found, in Hakodate, Hokkaido Friday, June 3, 2016. The boy, missing since Saturday, was found unharmed Friday, police said, in a case that had set off a nationwide debate about parental disciplining. (Daisuke Suzuki/Kyodo News via AP) JAPAN OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT A member of the Self-Defense Force shows the mattress which Yamato Tanooka, a 7-year-old Japanese boy who went missing nearly a week ago, was using inside a building in a military drill area in Shikabe town, on Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido Friday, June 3, 2016. Nearly a week after he was abandoned in the forest by his parents, the boy did not shed a tear when he was found safe Friday. The boy's safe return was welcomed in a nation riveted by his disappearance and undergoing intense soul-searching about how it raises and disciplines its children. (Daisuke Suzuki/Kyodo News via AP) JAPAN OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT A faucet is seen outside the longhouse-style hut building, where 7-year-old Japanese boy Yamato Tanooka was found safe nearly a week after he was abandoned in a forest by his parents, in a military drill area in Shikabe town on the northernmost main island of Hokkaido Friday, June 3, 2016. The boy's safe return was welcomed in a nation riveted by his disappearance and undergoing intense soul-searching about how it raises and disciplines its children. Apparently walking for several kilometers, the boy found the empty hut, huddled between mattresses on the floor and drank water from the solitary faucet for several days, local media reported. (Daisuke Suzuki/Kyodo News via AP) JAPAN OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT The media and members of the Self-Defence Forces stand near the building where the 7-year-old Japanese boy who went missing nearly a week ago, was found, in a military drill area in Shikabe, on the northernmost main island of Hokkaido Friday, June 3, 2016. The boy, missing since Saturday, was found unharmed Friday, police said, in a case that had set off a nationwide debate about parental disciplining. (Takaki Yajima/Kyodo News via AP) JAPAN OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT An image of Yamato Tanooka, the missing 7-year-old Japanese boy, is displayed by Japanese newspaper Yukan Fuji being sold at a railway station kiosk in Tokyo, Friday, June 3, 2016. Tanooka, who went missing nearly a week ago after his parents left him in a forest as punishment, was found Friday in a case that set off a nationwide debate about parental disciplining. Headline, red in center, reads: "Miracle return" . (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama) Rescuers celebrate after a news that a missing boy was found, in Nanae town, on Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's four main islands Friday, June 3, 2016. Police say they have found the boy who went missing after his parents reportedly left him in a forest as punishment six days ago. (Daisuke Suzuki/Kyodo News via AP) JAPAN OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT The media and members of the Self-Defence Forces stand near the building, right, where the 7-year-old Japanese boy who went missing nearly a week ago, was found, in a military drill area in Shikabe, on the northernmost main island of Hokkaido Friday, June 3, 2016. The boy, missing since Saturday, was found unharmed Friday, police said, in a case that had set off a nationwide debate about parental disciplining. (Takaki Yajima/Kyodo News via AP) JAPAN OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT UCLA killer turned violent despite foundation for success LOS ANGELES (AP) With a wall's worth of academic degrees from top universities and a new wife in his chosen country, Mainak Sarkar entered mid-life with a foundation of success. Then his life began to unravel. This week he snapped and, for reasons that investigators are still trying to understand, gunned down those he once held close. Authorities say Sarkar killed his estranged wife in a Minneapolis suburb then drove across half the country to Los Angeles and fatally shot the UCLA professor who had helped him earn an engineering Ph.D. This undated photo shows Ashley Hasti, left, and Mainak Sarkar, who police say carried out a murder-suicide at the University of California, Los Angeles on Wednesday, June 1, 2016. Sarkar had a "kill list" with multiple names that included professor Bill Klug, Hasti who was found dead in a Minneapolis suburb and another UCLA professor who was not harmed, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation told The Associated Press. (Facebook via AP) As panic began to spread on the bustling University of California, Los Angeles campus, he turned the gun on himself. He left behind devastated families, a shaken university community, a "kill list" that included the name of a second UCLA professor he felt had wronged him and many unanswered questions. Chief among them is what led him to violence. Police have not detailed when they believe Sarkar shot Ashley Hasti after apparently breaking into the Minnesota home she shared with her father; whether he committed other crimes en route to California; or why he felt wronged by another professor on the "kill list" who was not on campus when Sarkar arrived with two semi-automatic pistols. What soon became clear was that Sarkar believed the professor he killed, William Klug, had stolen code from him. In March, Sarkar posted online that Klug the man he had praised in his 2013 dissertation as a mentor had made him "really sick." Colleagues said only a deranged person could conclude someone of Klug's character would defraud a student. "Apparently he's harbored those feelings over the past three years since his graduation" but investigators hadn't found any "trigger event" that would explain why he decided to kill now, Los Angeles police Capt. William Hayes said. He did say prescription medication, possibly Valium or a similar sedative, was found in the St. Paul, Minnesota apartment where Sarkar had lived. Even before his death, Klug had been hailed as a caring father and gifted educator who inspired his students. Hundreds gathered to honor him at on-campus vigils. Klug's outgoing personality contrasted with Sarkar's introversion. Where Klug smiles in pictures, Sarkar rarely does. "He was a little bit of a loner," said Ajit Mal, an engineering professor who taught Sarkar in one of his earliest classes at UCLA, where he enrolled in 2006. As Klug's career and family blossomed in his native Southern California, Sarkar struggled to finish his studies. While at UCLA, Sarkar was "a nice guy going through the same anxieties and struggles as anyone else," recalled Jeff Eldredge, a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor who was a close friend of Klug's and helped review and later approved Sarkar's dissertation. Eldredge called Klug an exceptional person and teacher who had a gentle way giving feedback to students. Even so, Sarkar "didn't take criticism well" when he submitted a dissertation that advisers returned, requesting significant revisions. "He was rather combative in his responses," Eldredge said. "He'd say, 'I don't know how to answer that' or 'I don't know what that means.' He was just very stubborn." Sarkar submitted a new document that Eldredge said was barely sufficient for Klug to urge colleagues to grant him a Ph.D. in 2013. By then, Sarkar and Hasti had been married two years. Hasti's grandmother, Jean Johnson, said Sarkar was reserved and polite but couldn't handle Hasti teasing him. Sarkar came to the U.S. from India on a student visa in 2001 after earning a degree in aerospace engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur. In India, former classmates and teachers described a solid student who gave no indication of aggression. He attended Stanford University from 2003 until 2005, when he received a master's degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, according to the university. A year later, he had moved to UCLA. It appears that 2014 was pivotal for Sarkar a fulcrum year when his life tipped toward failure, despite being granted a green card to stay in the U.S. Johnson said 2014 was when the couple split, though they did not divorce. It also was the year that Sarkar left his last known job, as an engineering analyst at an Ohio-based rubber company called Endurica Company President Will Mars said Sarkar left that August, but declined to elaborate. The next two years are a mystery. On Friday, a bicyclist found a 2003 Nissan Sentra that police believe Sarkar used to drive from Minnesota to Los Angeles. Police searched it for bombs and found no explosives but a handgun and cans of gasoline were in the trunk. The gas apparently was used to avoid using credit cards and making fuel stops as Sarkar drove cross-country, and his car was spotted in Denver the day before the UCLA killing, Hayes said. Sarkar parked in a neighborhood where he once lived and took a bus to campus on a route he would have used while attending UCLA, Hayes said. Investigators planned to examine the bus surveillance video. UCLA's engineering faculty met Friday to discuss the shooting. No one could recall a sign that Sarkar would become violent. "He went through something all I can think is personal struggles the last few days, weeks or years that we weren't privy to," professor Eldredge said. "We assume, frankly, that he went through a psychological break that was pretty profound." ___ Associated Press writers Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin; Ashok Sharma in New Delhi; and Manik Banerjee in Kolkata, India, contributed to this report. ___ Contact Amanda Lee Myers at https://twitter.com/AmandaLeeAP and Justin Pritchard at https://twitter.com/lalanewsman This undated photo provided by the University of California, Los Angeles shows Bill Klug, a professor of mechanical engineering. Mainak Sarkar fatally shot Klug before taking his own life in a UCLA engineering building Wednesday, June 1, 2016, leading to a lockdown on the campus. (University of California, Los Angeles via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT This undated photo shows Mainak Sarkar, who police say carried out a murder-suicide at the University of California, Los Angeles on Wednesday, June 1, 2016. Sarkar had a "kill list" with multiple names that included professor Bill Klug, a woman found dead in a Minneapolis suburb and another UCLA professor who was not harmed, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said. (Facebook via AP) Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck comments on the investigation into a murder-suicide on the UCLA campus during a news conference in Los Angeles Thursday, June 2, 2016. Detectives believe that Mainak Sarkar, a former engineering graduate student, intended to kill a second professor Wednesday morning, but could not find him on the UCLA campus. Chief Beck, said Sarkar left a "kill list" at his Minnesota home that led authorities to find a woman's dead body. At left is a Minnesota license plate illustration of the missing car driven by Sarkar. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) Students arriving to class walk past the engineering department at the University of California, Los Angeles on Thursday, June 2, 2016. Classes at UCLA resumed Thursday for most of the school, except for the engineering department, whose students and faculty will return Monday, following Wednesday's fatal shooting. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) Employees at the University of California, Los Angeles walk down a hallway past the Mechanical Aerospace Engineering Department office where Wednesday's fatal shooting occurred in Los Angeles, Thursday, June 2, 2016. Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck, said the man who carried out a murder-suicide at UCLA left a "kill list" at his Minnesota home that led authorities to find a woman's dead body. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) Brooklyn Park deputy chief Mark Bruley, left, reads a brief statement during a press conference Thursday June 2, 2016, at Brooklyn Park City Hall about a woman whos body was found, in Brooklyn Park, Minn. The investigation into a murder-suicide on the UCLA campus took a more sinister turn Thursday when police announced they suspected the shooter earlier killed a woman in Minnesota then drove to Los Angeles to confront a professor he believed had stolen his work. (Jerry Holt /Star Tribune via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT; ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS OUT; MAGS OUT; TWIN CITIES LOCAL TELEVISION OUT Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner officials remove a body at the scene of a fatal shooting at the University of California, Los Angeles, Wednesday, June 1, 2016, in Los Angeles. About two hours after the first 911 call came in around 10 a.m., with the center of campus still saturated with officers, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said it was a murder-suicide and declared the threat over. Two men were dead in an engineering building office, and authorities found a gun and what might be a suicide note, he said. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) A person from the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner's office removes a body at the scene of a fatal shooting at the University of California, Los Angeles, Wednesday, June 1, 2016, in Los Angeles. About two hours after the first 911 call came in around 10 a.m., with the center of campus still saturated with officers, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said it was a murder-suicide and declared the threat over. Two men were dead in an engineering building office, and authorities found a gun and what might be a suicide note, he said. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) People are evacuated by Los Angeles Police officers from the UCLA campus near the scene of a fatal shooting at the University of California, Los Angeles, Wednesday, June 1, 2016, in Los Angeles. Los Angeles police chief says shooting at UCLA was murder-suicide. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) A University of California Police Officer is seen behind a glass door, as he secures the entrance to the Engineering IV annex at UCLA campus near the scene of a fatal shooting at the University of California, Los Angeles, Wednesday, June 1, 2016, in Los Angeles. Los Angeles police chief says shooting at UCLA was murder-suicide. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) Turkey says ties with Germany won't 'deteriorate entirely' ANKARA, Turkey (AP) Turkey's prime minister says his government intends to take further measures in response to the German Parliament's decision to label as genocide the killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks a century ago. But he says no one should expect ties to "deteriorate entirely." Binali Yildirim said Friday that Germany had made a "historic" error, which it should rectify. In Berlin, German's foreign ministry spokeswoman expressed hope that the "deep" and "close" relations between the two nations won't be further compromised. Turkish protesters connected with Turkey's opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), hold a big Turkish flag, during a rally outside the German consulate in Istanbul, Thursday, June 2, 2016. The protesters rallied against the decision made by the German parliament earlier Thursday that overwhelmingly voted to label the killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks a century ago as genocide, prompting Turkey to recall its ambassador to Germany. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel) "We trust that what we've built up in recent decades is so strong that it won't be shaken," Sawsan Chebli told reporters. Turkey recalled its ambassador in Berlin for consultations after Thursday's vote. Yildirim didn't specify what else it might do. Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event viewed by many scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey disputes the description. It says the toll has been inflated and considers those killed victims of a civil war. Speaking ahead of a trip to Azerbaijan, Yildirim also lashed out at Armenia, saying the country has a history of being "involved in wrong things through agitations." "In the past they were involved in terror attacks against our country that took the lives of many of our diplomats," he said, referring to a 1980s assassinations campaign against Turkish diplomats in several countries. "Today, it is no secret that they have tacitly, through other ways, opened arms to terror organizations," Yildirim added in an allusion to the Kurdistan Worker's Party, or PKK, which has been in conflict with Turkey for decades. The Armenian foreign ministry dismissed the claims that Armenia has supported terrorism. "The new prime minister is playing outdated songs, which is ruining his pledge for change," Foreign Ministry spokesman Tigran Balayan told The Associated Press on Friday. "Not surprised at all." ___ Avet Demourian in Yerevan, Armenia, and Dominique Soguel in Istanbul, Turkey, and Frank Jordans in Berlin, Germany, contributed to this report. Fort Hood officials were closing roads as truck washed away FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) Fort Hood commanders were in the process of closing roads on the sprawling Army post in Central Texas when a truck carrying 12 soldiers overturned in a fast-flowing flooded creek during a training exercise, killing nine and injuring three, officials said Friday. The portion of road on the northern fringe of the post where the 2-ton Light Medium Tactical Vehicle overturned Thursday hadn't been overrun by water during past floods, Fort Hood spokesman Chris Haug said. The vehicle resembles a flatbed truck with a walled bed and is used to carry troops. He said the soldiers were being trained on how to operate the truck when it overturned along Owl Creek, about 70 miles north of Austin. Maj. Gen. John Uberti, Fort Hood deputy commander, center, Col. Todd Fox, left, and Fort Hood fire chief Coleman Smith, right, speak to the media during a news conference in Fort Hood, Texas, on Friday, June 3, 2016. Officials say Fort Hood commanders were in the process of closing roads on the sprawling Army post in Texas when a truck carrying 12 soldiers overturned in a fast-flowing flooded creek during a training exercise on Thursday. (Rodolfo Gonzalez/Austin American-Statesman via AP) AUSTIN CHRONICLE OUT, COMMUNITY IMPACT OUT, INTERNET AND TV MUST CREDIT PHOTOGRAPHER AND STATESMAN.COM, MAGS OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT "It was a situation where the rain had come, the water was rising quickly and we were in the process, at the moment of the event, of closing the roads," Haug said. Soldiers on training exercises regularly contend with high-water situations following heavy rains, he said. "This was a tactical vehicle and at the time they were in a proper place for what they were training," Haug said. "It's just an unfortunate accident that occurred quickly." Three soldiers were found dead shortly after the vehicle overturned. The bodies of two others were found late Thursday night. Four others were discovered dead Friday. The three injured were released from Fort Hood's hospital on Friday, said Maj. Gen. John Uberti, Fort Hood deputy commander. He said the identities of the dead weren't being released pending notification of their families. "This tragedy extends well beyond Fort Hood and the outpouring of support from the country is sincerely appreciated," Uberti said. With four soldiers still missing after the accident, crews used helicopters, boats and heavy trucks to search the 20-mile creek. At Owl Creek Park, where the creek feeds into Lake Belton at the northeast edge of Fort Hood, the creek is normally 30 to 40 feet wide but was swollen Friday to some 500 feet wide. The 340-square-mile post, one of the nation's largest, has seen fatal training accidents before. In November 2015, four soldiers were killed when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed during a training exercise. And in June 2007, a soldier who went missing for four days after a solo navigation exercise died from hyperthermia and dehydration while training in 90-degree heat. After taking an aerial tour of flooded Southeast Texas counties Friday, Gov. Greg Abbott said the Fort Hood deaths show why drivers should stay out of high water and not go around barricades on flooded roads. "I've heard stories of far too many people who think they are able to drive through water only to be washed away," Abbott said. "If that can happen to trained soldiers, it can also happen to untrained civilians. It demonstrates the need of everyone to understand the power of rising water and the danger it can pose to life." He also urged residents to comply if they're ordered to leave their homes. This week's storms are the latest in a string of torrential rains since May 2015 that have put swaths of the state under water. Nearly the entire eastern half of Texas, including Fort Hood, was under flash flood warnings or watches Friday. Storms moving in from the Gulf of Mexico threatened to worsen flooding in places like Brazoria and Fort Bend counties, southwest of Houston, where residents near the Brazos River were forced from their homes. The river at Richmond in Fort Bend County, where flood stage is 48 feet, was at 54.19 feet at mid-afternoon Friday, down more than a half-foot from the same time Thursday. Farther south in Rosharon in Brazoria County, the last flood gauge before the river empties into the Gulf of Mexico crept to 52.5 feet at mid-afternoon, a half-foot higher than 24 hours earlier. Flood stage there is 43 feet. "Total terror, total terror," Alica Matura said after she and another person were rescued Friday morning from a pickup truck swept off a Brazoria County road by swift water. "Water was rushing in and I was freaking out, I was shaking," Tony Conte, who was in the truck with her, told Houston television station KTRK. "It's scary and it happens fast." Also Friday, a third Texas prison near the Brazos River was being evacuated because of flooding. About 1,700 inmates were being moved from the Ramsey Unit in Rosharon. Some 2,600 inmates at two nearby prisons in Brazoria County were moved out Sunday. ___ Graczyk reported from Houston. Associated Press writers David Warren and Terry Wallace contributed from Dallas. An Army and Texas Department of Public Safety helicopter search Lake Belton Friday, June 3, 2016, for four missing soldiers from U.S Army's Fort Hood that were swept away in a low water crossing during training when the Army vehicle they were in was swept away on Thursday. Five soldiers were killed, four are still missing and three were rescued on Thursday. (Rodolfo Gonzalez/Austin American-Statesman via AP) The pilot and co-pilot speak with a Texas Parks & Wildlife department game warden Friday morning, June 3, 2016, before joining in the search efforts of 6 missing soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas. (Rusty Schramm/The Temple Daily Telegram via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT A military helicopter joins in the search efforts Friday, June 3, 2016, for 6 missing soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas. (Rusty Schramm/The Temple Daily Telegram via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Army helicopters hover above Lake Belton Friday, June 3, 2016, searching for four missing soldiers from U.S Army's Fort Hood that were swept away in a low water crossing during training when the Army vehicle they were in was swept away on Thursday. Five soldiers were killed, four are still missing and three were rescued on Thursday. (Rodolfo Gonzalez/Austin American-Statesman via AP) A military Helicopter joins in the search efforts Friday, June 3, 2016, for 6 missing soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas. (Rusty Schramm/The Temple Daily Telegram via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Morgan's Point Resort Fire and Rescue works on Lake Belton near the scene of an accident at Fort Hood at Owl Creek Park near Gatesville, Texas, on Thursday, June 2, 2016. Fort Hood says several soldiers are dead and six are missing after an Army troop truck was washed from a low-water crossing and overturned in a rain-swollen creek at Fort Hood in Central Texas. A statement from the Texas Army post says the accident happened about 11:30 a.m. Thursday in an area near Cold Springs and Owl Creek. (Michael Miller/The Temple Daily Telegram via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT A Texas DPS helicopter flies over Lake Belton near the scene of an accident at Fort Hood at Owl Creek Park near Gatesville, Texas, on Thursday, June 2, 2016. Fort Hood says several soldiers are dead and six are missing after an Army troop truck was washed from a low-water crossing and overturned in a rain-swollen creek at Fort Hood in Central Texas. A statement from the Texas Army post says the accident happened about 11:30 a.m. Thursday in an area near Cold Springs and Owl Creek. (Michael Miller/The Temple Daily Telegram via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Texas Parks and Wildlife Game Wardens prepare to launch a boat Friday morning at Owl Creek Park to join in the search efforts Friday, June 3, 2016, for 6 missing soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas. (Rusty Schramm/The Temple Daily Telegram via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Emergency responders talk near the scene of an accident at Fort Hood at Owl Creek Park near Gatesville, Texas, on Thursday, June 2, 2016. Fort Hood says several soldiers are dead and six are missing after an Army troop truck was washed from a low-water crossing and overturned in a rain-swollen creek at Fort Hood in Central Texas. A statement from the Texas Army post says the accident happened about 11:30 a.m. Thursday in an area near Cold Springs and Owl Creek. (Michael Miller/The Temple Daily Telegram via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Chance Morgan canoes past flooded townhouses in the Forest Cove neighborhood as he tries to get to his home Thursday, June 2, 2016 near Kingwood, Texas. Parts of Texas have been inundated with rain in the last week, and more than half of the state is under flood watches or warnings, including the counties near Fort Hood. At least six people died in floods last week in Central and Southeast Texas. (Michael Ciaglo/Houston Chronicle via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Pakistan: All suspects in killing of schoolteacher arrested ISLAMABAD (AP) Pakistani police announced Friday that all five suspects in the brutal killing of a 19-year-old schoolteacher who was tortured, doused with gasoline and set on fire earlier this week for refusing to marry a man twice her age are now in custody. Before she died, Maria Bibi had given a statement to police, saying five attackers had stormed her house in the town of Upper Dewal on Monday, dragged her to an open area and kicked her as though she were a "football." She was brought to Islamabad hospital in critical condition and later died. The attackers fled after the assault. Bibi's family has maintained that she was killed for rejecting a marriage proposal from a man who owned a school and wanted her to marry his son. Pakistani family members of a female teacher who was beaten and set on fire, comfort each other in Upper Dewal, Pakistan, Thursday, June 2, 2016. Pakistani police say they have arrested two suspects and are continuing their search for five men who tortured a 19-year-old school teacher and burned her to death for refusing to marry a man twice her age. (AP Photo/Muhammad Yousaf) The case has shocked the nation though violence against women is not uncommon in Pakistan, where nearly 1,000 women are killed each year in so-called "honor killings" for allegedly violating conservative norms on love and marriage Police official Waheed Ahmed said Friday that three more suspects in the case were arrested early in the morning, following the two arrests made the day before. He identified the prime suspect in the case as Shaukat, the owner of the school who is nearly 60 years old and whose son, a man about 40 years old and already married, was the intended groom. "The unfortunate woman Maria Bibi in her statement insisted that Shaukat and four other men dragged her from the door of her home and tortured and burned her. We have arrested all the five men," Ahmed said. Bibi's father Sadaqat Hussain Abbas praised the police for the arrests and asked the government in an emotional plea on Friday to execute the men in his family's presence in the same way they had killed Bibi. Demands like this are common but Pakistani law doesn't allow for such punishment. Zohra Yusuf, who heads the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, condemned the incident and warned of an increase in assaults on women. "As women are increasingly fighting for their rights, the reaction from the male-dominated society has been extreme, and we have witnessed an increase in violence against women," she told The Associated Press. Last month, police arrested 13 members of a local tribal council who allegedly strangled a local girl and set her body on fire for helping one of her friends elope. The charred body of 17-year-old Ambreen Riasat was found in a burned van in the tourist resort of Donga Gali on April 29. And in 2012, Pakistani teenage activist and later Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by the Pakistani Taliban on her way home from school. The militants targeted her because she advocated education for women. In this picture taken on Wednesday, June 1, 2016, grandmother of a female teacher who was beaten and set on fire, prepares to sit near the body in an ambulance on her way to village, outside a local hospital in Islamabad, Pakistan. Pakistani police say they have arrested two suspects and are continuing their search for five men who tortured a 19-year-old school teacher and burned her to death for refusing to marry a man twice her age. (AP Photo/M. Farid) Family: Blue Angels pilot killed in crash dreamed of flying SMYRNA, Tenn. (AP) A Blue Angels pilot who died when his F/A-18 fighter jet crashed near Nashville, Tennessee, had wanted to fly since he was a child, relatives said. A U.S. official identified the pilot killed Thursday as Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. "It's hard to put into words right now, but it's beautiful that a person can live and die engaged in their life's pursuits," said his grandfather, Dolph Kuss, reached at his home in Durango, Colorado. "This was his dream since he was a child, to be an aviator, a flier." This May 19, 2016, photo shows Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss at an air show in Lynchburg, Va. A Blue Angels F/A-18 fighter jet crashed Thursday, June 2, near Nashville, Tenn., killing the pilot just days before a weekend air show performance, officials said. A U.S. official said the pilot was Kuss. (Matt Bell/The Register & Bee via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT He choked back tears and said he was struggling to gather his thoughts. "It's hard to celebrate someone's life in this way," he said. "It is certainly a shock. Everything in life has its dangers, I guess." Kuss was married with two young children, his grandfather said. It was the second fighter jet crash of the day for the military's elite fighter jet performance teams. A member of the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds crashed in Colorado after a flyover for the Air Force Academy graduation where President Barack Obama spoke. That pilot ejected safely into a field. Harry Gill, the town manager in Smyrna just outside Nashville, said Thursday that the Blue Angels pilot was the only casualty and no civilians on the ground were hurt. The Navy said in a news release that the pilot was beginning to take off during an afternoon practice session for a weekend air show performance when the crash happened. Five other F/A-18 jets landed safely moments after the crash. "My thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of the Blue Angels after this tragic loss. I know that the Navy and Marine Corps Team is with me. We will investigate this accident fully and do all we can to prevent similar incidents in the future," Adm. John Richardson, the Navy's top officer, said in a Facebook post. The team is based at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida. According to his official Blue Angels biography, Kuss joined the elite aerobatics team in 2014 and accumulated more than 1,400 flight hours. He was a native of Durango and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marines in 2006. He had previously served in Afghanistan before joining the Blue Angels. Kuss' hometown newspaper, The Durango Herald, reported when Kuss was named to the Blue Angels team that he was a 2002 Durango High School graduate and 2006 graduate of Fort Lewis College, where he studied economics. The newspaper said he had been "enamored of jets since he was a toddler," learned to fly in Durango and soloed in a Cessna 152 when he was 15. "He still hadn't gotten a driver's license," his mother, Janet Kuss, told the newspaper then. "His favorite toys were jets, and he wanted to be a Blue Angel since forever." In a video the U.S. Navy posted to its YouTube channel, Kuss stood in his flight suit in front of a line of Blue Angels planes and answered a question from a fan about how to become a pilot. "I started flying when I was a young kid," he said. "I always had a love for it, worked really hard through school, went to college and eventually got into the military. I wanted to fly the fastest, meanest thing I could. And that's why I'm here today, because I was fortunate enough to get to fly the F-18 Hornet. It's been a great experience every time I strap into it." The Blue Angels will not participate, but the Great Tennessee Air Show will go on as scheduled, Smyrna airport Executive Director John Black said in a news release. "After close consultation with the Blue Angels, regulatory officials and the performers, we have made the decision to carry on with this weekend's show," Black said. Thomas Bucher, 32, of Smyrna, lives about 2,000 feet from the crash site and was outside doing yard work Thursday afternoon. He had noticed the jets practicing near the airport. "That particular Blue Angel, I saw him doing some barrel rolls looked like in the air," he said "He was flying awful low, I thought, and he kind of got below the tree line over there. And it looked like he was on his belly going down, and that's the end of it." After the plane went below the tree line, Bucher said he saw a cloud of smoke come up over the tree line. "I was hoping that he had ejected from his seat, but with him being that low ... My dad is in aviation; I knew there was no way he could have ejected from that height and survived." ___ Baldor reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Claire Galofaro contributed to this report from Louisville, Kentucky. This May 19, 2016, photo shows Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss at an air show in Lynchburg, Va. A Blue Angels F/A-18 fighter jet crashed Thursday, June 2, near Nashville, Tenn., killing the pilot just days before a weekend air show performance, officials said. A U.S. official said the pilot was Kuss. (Matt Bell/The Register & Bee via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Smoke billows from the crash of a Blue Angels F/A-18 fighter jet in Smyrna, Tenn., Thursday, June 2, 2016. Officials said the pilot, Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss, was killed. The Navy said in a news release that Kuss was taking off during an afternoon practice session for an air show when the crash happened. (AP Photo/Becca Cullison-Burgess) In this May 19, 2016, photo Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss lands his plane at an air show in Lynchburg, Va. A Blue Angels F/A-18 fighter jet crashed Thursday, June 2, near Nashville, Tenn., killing the pilot just days before a weekend air show performance, officials said. A U.S. official said the pilot was Kuss. (Matt Bell/The Register & Bee via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT AP Analysis: In Trump takedown, Clinton finds her message NEW YORK (AP) Hillary Clinton may have found her message. Wrapped in the guise of a foreign policy speech, Clinton delivered a political thrashing of Donald Trump on Thursday that was unquestionably a standout moment for a candidate who has often struggled to focus her White House campaign. Clinton's sharply targeted remarks served notice on the presumptive Republican nominee that she's prepared for a bruising general election fight, one that's centered squarely on his competency to serve as commander in chief. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gives an address on national security, Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Diego, Calif. (AP Photo/John Locher) "He is not just unprepared he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility," Clinton said. She cast Trump as dangerously thin-skinned, someone who might plunge the nation into war over a perceived slight. She repeatedly referred to her White House rival by his first name only a knowing dig at a billionaire businessman whose closest advisers reverentially call him "Mr. Trump." For Clinton, who has acknowledged her weakness as a campaigner, it was a confident and well-timed performance. Though she has struggled for months to shake Democratic primary rival Bernie Sanders, Clinton is poised to clinch the nomination in the coming days and secure her place in history as the first woman ever put forward by a major U.S. political party. But the long primary season has come at a cost. Sanders has been unrelenting in his criticism of Clinton's judgment and transparency, evaporating much of the goodwill she accrued with Americans during the four years she spent outside the political arena as secretary of state. Some of Clinton's own supporters also worry that she's failed to articulate a clear rationale for her own candidacy and will struggle to counteract Trump's ability to command the spotlight. Clinton's takedown of Trump on Thursday should quiet those critics, at least for now. Gone was the wonky, meandering policy speech Clinton has delivered to lukewarm reviews in primary campaign appearances. Instead, she was focused and direct, lacing her remarks on the Islamic State group and Iranian nuclear accord with bumper sticker-worthy slogans about Trump. "This isn't reality television. This is actual reality," Clinton said as she chided the real estate mogul and political novice for his lack of experience on the world stage. And in a line likely to be repeated by Clinton and Democrats between now and November, she warned that electing Trump would be a "historic mistake" for the nation. To be sure, Clinton will face tough questions in the months ahead about her own foreign policy record. She was a leading proponent of U.S. military engagement in Libya, which succeeded in ousting a brutal dictator but left the country vulnerable to extremist groups. And she'll continue to have to answer for her vote in support of the Iraq war, which Sanders has repeatedly held up as a sign of poor judgment. He did so again on Thursday. But the speech suggested Clinton will be far more at ease responding to a Republican challenger than she has been at confronting Sanders in the Democratic primary, where she's had to avoid turning off his young, liberal supporters. On Thursday, she made no attempt to appeal to Trump's backers or even show the slightest sign of respect for the Republican nominee. The result? Clinton succeeded in generating the same kind of attention Trump receives for his frequent rallies and news conferences: Her remarks were widely carried on the television news networks. Despite Clinton's standing as the Democratic front-runner, that is a basic benchmark she has struggled to reach. Trump has no such problem. Trump himself appeared to be watching Clinton, too. He took to Twitter midway through the speech to remark that his likely Democratic opponent "doesn't even look presidential." There was notable silence from many other Republicans, some of whom made similar arguments about Trump's temperament and inexperience during the GOP primary. A handful of Republicans even praised the likely Democratic nominee. "I have to say, Hillary is giving a hell of a good speech on national security taking down the Donald while making a convincing case," Eliot Cohen, a foreign policy official for Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, wrote on Twitter. For Clinton's strong showing to have lasting impact, it will need to be more than just a one-off moment. Some of Trump's primary rivals had fleeting success in rattling the supremely confident businessman and in raising issues that appeared to give voters momentary pause. But those arguments were rarely made in a sustained fashion and in some cases came too late to change the trajectory of the Republican race. If Clinton plans to avoid those same mistakes, she now has the message she needs in hand. ___ EDITOR'S NOTE Julie Pace has covered the White House and politics for The Associated Press since 2007. Follow her on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jpaceDC Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a roundtable event at a restaurant Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Perris, Calif. (AP Photo/John Locher) Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, left, listens to Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., at a roundtable event at a restaurant, Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Perris, Calif. (AP Photo/John Locher) A woman holds up a sign for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton embraces a woman while arriving at a roundtable event at a restaurant, Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Perris, Calif. (AP Photo/John Locher) At least 117 bodies found off Libya as smuggling boat sinks ATHENS, Greece (AP) More than 110 bodies were found along a Libyan beach after a smuggling boat of mostly African migrants sank, while a separate search-and-rescue operation across the Mediterranean saved 340 people Friday and recovered nine bodies. The developments were the latest deadly disasters for refugees and migrants seeking a better life in Europe, and they followed the drownings of more than 1,000 people since May 25 while attempting the long and perilous journey from North Africa to southern Europe. As traffickers take advantage of improving weather, officials say it is impossible to know how many unseaworthy boats are being launched and how many never reach their destination. Naval operations in the southern Mediterranean, coordinated by Italy, have been stretched just responding to the disasters they do hear about. The lifeless body of a migrant lays on the beach near the western city of Zwara, Libya, Thursday June 2, 2016, as rescue workers begin to retrieve some of the more than 100 bodies pulled from the sea, after a smuggling boat carrying mainly African migrants sank into the Mediterranean. Libya's navy spokesman Col. Ayoub Gassim says, Friday June 3, that the bodies of more than 100 migrants have been retrieved, but the death toll is likely to be higher. (APTV via AP) TV OUT At least 117 bodies 75 women, six children and 36 men washed up on a beach or were pulled from the water near the western Libyan city of Zwara Thursday and Friday, Mohammed al-Mosrati, a spokesman for Libya's Red Crescent, told The Associated Press. All but a few were from African countries. The death toll was expected to rise. The children were aged between 7 and 10, said Bahaa al-Kwash, a top media official in the Red Crescent. "It is very painful, and the numbers are very high," he said, adding that the dead were not wearing life jackets something the organization had noticed about bodies recovered in recent weeks. "This is a cross-border network of smugglers and traffickers, and there is a need for an international effort to combat this phenomenon," he said. As is frequently the case, authorities were uncertain when or how the people died. The coast guard found an empty boat drifting Thursday, Libyan navy Col. Ayoub Gassim told the AP, adding it was possible the vessel had capsized a day earlier. Al-Mosrati of the Red Crescent said the bodies were not decomposed and had drowned in the past 48 hours. The empty boat might have been the one carrying the victims, but strong winds and currents can push bodies from one place to the other, he added, making it difficult to determine where the tragedy occurred. The first signs of a disaster often are either a mayday call from a passenger or the discovery of bodies. Gassim blamed Europe for "doing nothing but counting bodies" in trying to stop the flow of migrants from Libya. Libya has been in chaos since the ouster and killing of its longtime autocratic ruler Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. The country has been split into rival governments, with each supported by a loose set of militias and tribes. Smuggling gangs have taken advantage of the turmoil to send waves of overcrowded boats toward Europe. Hadi al-Zowaghi, a Red Crescent representative in the Libyan town of Sabratha, criticized local security forces for not trying to stop the human trafficking and failing to properly document those who die. "Burial is arbitrary, no data kept, no grave numbers, nothing, as if these people never existed," al-Zowaghi told the AP from Sabratha, a major transit area for migrants near Zwara, which is where the bodies were found. "These are real people with names and stories," he said. "They had families. They deserve to be buried properly and their relatives deserve to be notified." The number of people drowning is "huge," with dozens washing ashore each week, he said. Volunteers also were worried about the environmental impact of the dead along the beaches, he said. The Zwara Municipal Council criticized the silence of Libyan authorities and the lack of an international response to the continuing loss of life. Aid officials say the last two weeks have been especially deadly because smugglers are using riskier tactics such as bigger boats that are even less-seaworthy than before. About 75 nautical miles south of Crete, another migrant boat sank Friday, with Greek authorities saying 340 people were rescued and nine bodies recovered in an operation involving Greek helicopters, planes, patrol boats and merchant ships. Greece's coast guard said the roughly 25-meter (82-foot) vessel had been carrying an undetermined number of people when it was located half-sunk in international waters. It was not immediately clear where the boat was from, where it was headed or who had been aboard. Most survivors were picked up by the Norwegian-flagged tanker Clipper Hebe and were being taken to the Sicilian port of Augusta in Italy. Others were to be taken to Egypt, Turkey and Malta. "The information we have on the number of people on board the vessel is still unclear we've heard that there were 400 or 500 people on board, but we cannot confirm that number," coast guard spokesman Nikos Lagadianos said. "There is a huge rescue effort underway.". Elinor Raikes of the International Rescue Committee said such incidents show "that desperate people will continue to attempt these treacherous journeys until adequate legal alternatives to safety are established." Border closures, she said, "will only result in new and alternative smuggling routes, and we can expect many more of these tragedies to occur as dangerous journeys present the only option." The shorter Aegean Sea crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands was the preferred sea route for those heading to Europe until Balkan countries closed their borders in March and the European Union reached an agreement with Turkey to send back any newcomers. The deal has led to a dramatic decrease in the number of people landing the islands from Turkey. Many have speculated that the EU migrant deal could prompt Syrians to try the more dangerous Libya-to-Italy route, but authorities have seen no signs yet of any big shift. ___ Michael reported from Cairo. Rami Musa in Benghazi, Libya, Derek Gatopoulos and Nicholas Paphitis in Athens, Jamey Keaten in Geneva and Colleen Barry in Milan contributed. ___ Follow Becatoros on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ElenaBec and Michael at https://twitter.com/mokhbersahafi Emergency services remove the body of a victim as more than 100 bodies are pulled from the sea near the western city of Zwara, Libya, Friday June 3, 2016, after a smuggling boat carrying mainly African migrants sank into the Mediterranean. Libya's navy spokesman Col. Ayoub Gassim says that the bodies of more than 100 migrants have been retrieved, but the death toll is likely to be higher. (APTV via AP) TV OUT The lifeless bodies of migrants are scattered along the beach near the western city of Zwara, Libya, Thursday June 2, 2016, as rescue workers begin to retrieve some of the more than 100 bodies pulled from the sea, after a smuggling boat carrying mainly African migrants sank into the Mediterranean. Libya's navy spokesman Col. Ayoub Gassim says, Friday June 3, that the bodies of more than 100 migrants have been retrieved, but the death toll is likely to be higher. (APTV via AP) TV OUT A local Zwara resident views the body of a victim, laying in the surf at centre, as more than 100 bodies are pulled from the sea near the western city of Zwara, Libya, Friday June 3, 2016, after a smuggling boat carrying mainly African migrants sank into the Mediterranean. Libya's navy spokesman Col. Ayoub Gassim says that the bodies of more than 100 migrants have been retrieved, but the death toll is likely to be higher. (APTV via AP) TV OUT EDS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT - The lifeless bodies of migrants lay on the beach near the western city of Zwara, Libya, Thursday June 2, 2016, as rescue workers begin to retrieve some of the more than 100 bodies pulled from the sea, after a smuggling boat carrying mainly African migrants sank into the Mediterranean. Libya's navy spokesman Col. Ayoub Gassim says, Friday June 3, that the bodies of more than 100 migrants have been retrieved, but the death toll is likely to be higher. (APTV via AP) TV OUT 'Glee' star Salling pleads not guilty in child porn case LOS ANGELES (AP) An actor who starred on the musical dramedy "Glee" pleaded not guilty to federal pornography charges Friday and had his internet usage and travel severely restricted. U.S. Magistrate Judge Rozella A. Oliver ruled Mark Salling can be released after he posts $150,000 bail, including $100,000 of his own money to guarantee future court appearances. Salling, 33, answered several questions from the judge and entered the not guilty during his court appearance, which also resulted in a July trial date being set. Salling, who played bad-boy Noah "Puck" Puckerman on the Fox musical dramedy, was charged last week with two counts receiving and possessing child pornography after a grand jury indicted him last week. U.S. Attorney's spokesman Thom Mrozek said investigators found an extensive, carefully organized collection of child pornography during searches of Salling's electronic devices. Actor Mark Salling, who starred on the musical dramedy "Glee," leaves federal court in Los Angeles after pleading not guilty to federal pornography charges Friday, June 3, 2016, and had his internet usage and travel severely restricted. U.S. Magistrate Judge Rozella A. Oliver ruled Salling can be released after he posts $150,000 bail, including $100,000 of his own money to guarantee future court appearances. (AP Photo/Nicole Evatt) Prosecutors initially sought to have Salling held without bail, but reached an agreement with the actor's attorneys to allow bail to be posted. Salling's attorney Alan Eisner surrendered Salling's passport during Friday's hearing. Salling's internet-connected devices must now be approved by federal authorities, he will have to wear a location monitoring bracelet and submit to drug testing as conditions of his release, Oliver said. Eisner declined comment after the hearing and Salling did not speak as he left the courthouse. Salling was arrested at his home last December after Los Angeles police officers and federal agents seized a laptop, hard drive and flash drive they say contained images and videos depicting child pornography. He was charged with one count of using the Internet to obtain a pornographic still image and video of young girls and a second count of possessing two other child porn videos that also featured young girls. If convicted, he could face as much as 20 years in prison on each of the charges. The actor is best known for his long-running role on "Glee," which aired from 2009 to 2015. He also released an album, "Pipe Dreams," in 2010. He shared a Screen Actors Guild award with the "Glee" cast in 2010 when the show was honored for outstanding TV comedy ensemble. ___ Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP Actor Mark Salling, left, who starred on the musical dramedy "Glee," leaves federal court in Los Angeles after pleading not guilty to federal pornography charges Friday, June 3, 2016, and had his internet usage and travel severely restricted. U.S. Magistrate Judge Rozella A. Oliver ruled Salling can be released after he posts $150,000 bail, including $100,000 of his own money to guarantee future court appearances. (AP Photo/Nicole Evatt) FILE - In this March 13, 2015 file photo, Mark Salling arrives at the 32nd Annual Paleyfest "Glee" held at The Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Salling, an actor who starred on the musical dramedy Glee is scheduled to turn himself in to federal authorities Friday, June 3, 2016, in a child pornography case. Salling, who played bad-boy Noah "Puck" Puckerman on the series, is scheduled to be arraigned on two charges of receiving and possessing child pornography. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File) CORRECTS SIGN OFF TO ANTHONY MCCARTNEY- Actor Mark Salling, left, who starred on the musical dramedy "Glee," leaves federal court in Los Angeles after pleading not guilty to federal pornography charges Friday, June 3, 2016, and had his internet usage and travel severely restricted. U.S. Magistrate Judge Rozella A. Oliver ruled Salling can be released after he posts $150,000 bail, including $100,000 of his own money to guarantee future court appearances. (AP Photo/Anthony McCartney) CORRECTS SIGN OFF TO ANTHONY MCCARTNEY-Actor Mark Salling, who starred on the musical dramedy "Glee," leaves federal court in Los Angeles after pleading not guilty to federal pornography charges Friday, June 3, 2016, and had his internet usage and travel severely restricted. U.S. Magistrate Judge Rozella A. Oliver ruled Salling can be released after he posts $150,000 bail, including $100,000 of his own money to guarantee future court appearances. (AP Photo/Anthony McCartney) Kashmir villagers rise up, foil rebel-hunting Indian troops LELHAR, India (AP) On a crisp morning in February, Indian troops surrounded a sleepy, riverside village in the disputed mountain region of Kashmir. Intelligence had suggested three anti-India rebels were hiding out in homes set among the willows and poplar trees. As the soldiers prepared to lay siege on a cluster of houses, they were surprised by a barrage of rocks, bricks and abuse hurled by hundreds of villagers demanding they go away. The rebels also began firing, drawing the soldiers into a battle on two fronts. Two students and one rebel were killed before the troops eventually retreated and the other militants got away. The incident marks a recent shift in how local Kashmiris are responding to the hundreds of thousands of Indian soldiers deployed in the Himalayan territory. For decades, local villagers had remained behind locked doors when troops arrived to root out rebels bent on ending Indian control over the region. FILE - In this Friday, May 27, 2016, file photo, Kashmiri Muslim villagers throw stones at Indian security personnel in support of rebels during a gunbattle in Khonshipora, 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir. Frustrated after decades of political stasis and military operations to root out rebels in their midst, Kashmiri villagers are rising up at the first sight of troops entering their village. The trend puts the disputed region's poor villagers in the center of India's fight against anti-India insurgents. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File) Not anymore. Frustrated after decades of political stasis and worn out by military operations to root out rebels from their midst, many Kashmiris are rising up at the first sight of troops entering their villages, and protecting the very militants Indian forces are trying to locate. "We're all militants now. Our men, women and children are all warriors against Indian rule," said Adbul Rashid, a farmer of Lelhar in his mid-40s. "Stones are now the people's weapons." When the soldiers returned to Lelhar in April, the villagers were ready. Public announcements asking women and men to beat back the troops had already gone out from the minarets of various mosques, and the troops were met by a hail of rocks. Intense clashes erupted, but this time the soldiers did not fire. And the three hiding militants fled to safety. Both India and Pakistan have claimed Kashmir in its entirety since 1947, fighting two wars over the picturesque mountain region. Each country controls a portion of Kashmir, which is divided by a U.N.-drawn militarized line of control. On the Indian side, about 68,000 people have died in an armed insurrection and Indian military crackdown since 1989. Indian military officials estimate there are some 200 militants in the region, staging attacks on Indian law enforcement and crossing back and forth over the de facto border with Pakistan. It's a steep drop from the 20,000 estimated to have waged the insurgency in the early 1990s, but military officials say their job is getting harder as the villages increasingly get involved. "It's a big problem, a challenge for us to conduct anti-militant operations now," said Lt. Gen. D.S. Hooda, India's senior military commander in the region. He noted that armed soldiers had little hope of competing with the militants for public sympathy. Most citizens in the mostly Muslim region have long resented the Indian presence, and support rebel demands that Kashmir be independent or part of Pakistan. "Frankly speaking, I'm not comfortable anymore conducting operations if large crowds are around," Hooda said. "Militarily, there's not much more to do than we already have done. ... We're losing the battle for a narrative." Human rights activist Khurram Parvez said that, while the rebels are fewer in number, their influence has grown. Beyond their usual guns and grenades, rebels now carry smartphones to coordinate their movements with village supporters, and load photos and videos onto social media sites. "It's a more like a symbolic militancy now which tries to rally the support for freedom, and glamorizes militants, resistance and defiance," Parvez said. "But people listen to them and support them more openly and fiercely." Kashmiris in the countryside regularly defy the curfews imposed when the military plans an operation in their area. Some militants have even become household names. "India's military might have crushed militancy to a large extent, but they've failed to change people's minds," Parvez said. "Their support for militants and freedom (from India) is now increasingly manifesting in fierce ways." Indian forces admit the village defiance is forcing them to change their strategy. "During an average counterinsurgency operation, general law and order has become more important to tackle than the actual operation itself. It's a matter of serious concern," top paramilitary officer Nalin Prabhat said. They're trying to reach out to Kashmir's youth, organizing school debates, sightseeing trips throughout India and visits to sporting events in hopes of persuading them to stay away from the insurgency and anti-India protests. But the so-called "Operation Goodwill" campaign has so far had little impact among Kashmiris aged 18 to 35 two-thirds of the region's 7 million people who have grown up politically radicalized over decades of brutal armed conflict. Kashmir continues to be one of the most militarized regions in the world. The countryside is crisscrossed by coils of barbed wire. Police and army checkpoints are a common sight, and emergency laws grant government forces sweeping powers to search homes, to make arrests without warrants and to shoot suspected rebels on sight without fear of prosecution. "Earlier the sight of an army soldier would send us into hiding," said Zahoor Ahmed Reshi, sitting amid the rubble of what was once his home in the southern village of Gudroo, near Lelhar. The modest wood house was destroyed by an army mortar fired at a rebel who took shelter there during a firefight. When the village came under siege again in May, hundreds of men and women clashed with the soldiers to help three trapped militants escape. "People have overcome their fear," the 48-year-old villager said. "Everybody is now saying, it's do or die." ___ Follow Aijaz Hussain on Twitter at www.twitter.com/hussain_aijaz FILE - In this Oct. 23, 2015, file photo, Kashmiri Muslim villagers watch the funeral procession of Irshad Ahmed, a local militant of the Hizbul Mujahideen, in Maldaer village, south of Srinagar, Indian-controlled Kashmir. Frustrated after decades of political stasis and military operations to root out rebels in their midst, Kashmiri villagers are rising up at the first sight of troops entering their village. The trend puts the disputed region's poor villagers in the center of India's fight against anti-India insurgents. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File) Officials representing charities say granting North Dakotas five American Indian tribes exclusive rights to host online gambling could effectively end charitable gambling in the state. The tribes want Gov. Doug Burgum to approve the idea under tribal-state agreements known as compacts. The current compacts expire at the end of this year and only Burgum can approve them. The tribes argue that their casinos have been hurt by the explosion of the charities Las Vegas-style pull tab machines. Burgum heard arguments from the charities and tribes on Friday. He says the terms of the compacts are still being negotiated and should be completed next month. Toronto tycoon's creative son accused of evil act in LA LOS ANGELES (AP) A Canadian real estate tycoon's son who explored the darkest side of evil in one of his graphic novels is now accused of carrying out such an act. Blake Leibel was charged this week with murder in the torture and mutilation of a girlfriend who had just given birth to their child. Deputies discovered the bloodless body of Iana Kasian after breaking through a barricade to get into the couple's West Hollywood apartment last week, prosecutors said. The case has grabbed attention in Canada, where his father, Lorne Leibel, a sailor on the country's 1976 Olympics team, built a fortune constructing homes in the Toronto area and is known for his love of Ferraris and racing powerboats. The father and his estranged wife, Eleanor Leibel, provided for their two sons when they moved to California years ago, according to papers filed in an Ontario court. Each was given a big house and Blake Leibel lived off an allowance of about $18,000 a month over a seven year period until inheriting the majority of his mother's estate. Blake Leibel and his older brother, Cody, were drawn to California because of the weather, said attorney Ronald Richards, who said he was hired to look after them and keep them out of trouble. Each pursued different creative paths. Cody Leibel founded C-Note Records, a now defunct label, and rubbed elbows with some of Hollywood's biggest stars. As part of an unlicensed high-stakes poker game that included actor Tobey Maguire and other hotshots, Cody Leibel got snared in a lawsuit to reclaim money for investors duped in a Ponzi scheme by another gambler. Blake Leibel, 35, worked in a variety of creative roles, including as a director and creative consultant in 2008 on the animated series based on Mel Brooks 1987 film "Spaceballs," according to his profile on IMDb. He wrote a comic book series and penned and directed his own film, "Bald," a comedy about a balding college student whose friends create an erotic website to raise money for a hair transplant. He's credited as the creator and executive editor of the graphic novel "Syndrome," published in 2010. The book's plot follows a mad doctor's quest to test his theory that he can isolate the root of evil in the brain and fix it, trying his experiment on a serial killer. The illustrated novel opens outside a prison where the killer is about to be executed for 38 murders. It then flashes back to scenes of him hanging a couple by their ankles and slitting the man's throat. The charges against Blake Leibel allege he used a knife to torture, maim and murder Kasian sometime between May 23 and May 26. The elements of torture include the intent to cause cruel and extreme pain and suffering for revenge, extortion or a sadistic purpose. By the time she was found, all the blood had drained from her body, prosecutors said. Leibel, who pleaded not guilty Tuesday to all counts, faces a mental competency hearing June 14. If convicted of first-degree murder, he could face the death penalty, though prosecutors haven't decided if they'll seek it. Defense lawyers have been mum about the case, asking in a statement that he be given a chance for fair hearing. Richards said the allegations are hard to grasp. Blake Leibel was in the process of settling an amicable divorce with his wife while starting a new relationship with Kasian. There were no abuse allegations in the divorce, lawyers for both parties said. The divorce was filed in July and his wife, Amanda Braun, gave birth to their son the following month. Blake Leibel moved out of a Beverly Hills house his mother had bought him so Braun could raise the boy there, Richards said. He moved into an apartment with Kasian, who gave birth to his daughter in early May. Deputies went to the couple's apartment after Kasian's mother reported her missing. It appeared she had been badly beaten, authorities said at the time. Blake Leibel was arrested at the scene. "I thought he was very happy with this change in his life, which can be complicated with two women and two children," Richards said. "It seemed like he was going in the right direction." A lawyer for Braun said she's upset and in shock. "There was nothing to indicate he had a violent past or violent tendencies. Nothing," attorney Pedram Mansouri said. Richards said the Leibel family was "temporarily fractured" after Blake Leibel contested his mother's will in 2013, which left him two of her properties after she died in 2011, including his home in California. He had to split other property with his brother. Blake Leibel claimed unsuccessfully that he was to be the sole heir because his mother raised him while his father raised his brother. A message left at Lorne Leibel's office was not immediately returned. ___ Tiananmen crackdown anniversary commemorated outside China BEIJING (AP) Commemorations were held in Taiwan and elsewhere ahead of the 27th anniversary of China's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests centered on Beijing's Tiananmen Square, while the government in China, where the incident remains a taboo topic, said it had long ago turned the page on the "political turmoil." Former student leader Wu'er Kaixi was joined by lawmakers outside Taiwan's parliament on Friday to mark the June 4, 1989, military assault that left hundreds, possibly thousands, dead. Taiwan's democratic politics and open society have long been a counterpoint to China's authoritarian one-party system, which permits no discussion of the crackdown or memorials for the victims. Wu'er said the Chinese government continues to prevent him from returning to China and bars his elderly parents from traveling to meet him and their grandson outside the country. Visitors walk across Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Saturday, June 4, 2016. Saturday marks the 27th anniversary of Chinas bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests centered on Beijings Tiananmen Square. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) "This is what a so-called great nation has done to me," Wu'er said. "We are facing a nasty and brutal China." Wu'er fled China after the crackdown, in which he was named the second most wanted among the student leaders. Unable to return home, he married a Taiwanese woman and settled on the island in 1996. Earlier this year he ran an unsuccessful campaign for a seat in the legislature. With the anniversary looming, security in China has been tightened and victims' family members have been placed under additional restrictions. At least half a dozen people have reportedly been detained for attempting to commemorate the events, although a small group wearing T-shirts condemning the crackdown converged on the square on Sunday, among them former house painter Qi Zhiyong, who had both of his legs amputated after being shot by martial law troops. In Washington, D.C., the State Department called for a "full public accounting of those killed, detained, or missing and for an end to censorship of discussions about the events of June 4, 1989, as well as an end to harassment and detention of those who wish to peacefully commemorate the anniversary." In a statement, it also urged the Chinese government to respect the rights and freedoms of all its citizens. Asked about the anniversary, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China had "long ago reached a clear conclusion about the political turmoil at the end of 1980s and other related issues." China's explosive economic growth in the years that followed "proves that the path of socialism with Chinese characters we chose to follow ... is in line with the fundamental interests of the Chinese people, and it represents a wish shared by them all," Hua told reporters at a daily news briefing. Another former student leader, Wang Dan, told a news conference in Tokyo that China's post-crackdown development proves it isn't necessarily true that economic growth will eventually lead to democracy. Wang, now a professor in Taiwan, said holding such memorials was about more than just remembering the 1989 events. "It's a gesture to show your political position," he said. "It's a gesture to fight against the view of the Communist Party." ___ Associated Press journalists Johnson Lai in Taipei, Taiwan, Emily Wang in Tokyo, and Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report. A pair of visitors walk near the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Saturday, June 4, 2016. Saturday marks the 27th anniversary of Chinas bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests centered on Beijings Tiananmen Square. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) A police officer stands guard on the sidewalk of a street adjacent to Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Saturday, June 4, 2016. Saturday marks the 27th anniversary of Chinas bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests centered on Beijings Tiananmen Square. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) Members of a Chinese tour group walk along a street next to Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Saturday, June 4, 2016. Saturday marks the 27th anniversary of Chinas bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests centered on Beijings Tiananmen Square. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) Iran's top leader rules out cooperation with US against IS TEHRAN, Iran (AP) Iran's top leader on Friday ruled out any formal cooperation with America against the Islamic State group, their common adversary in Iraq and Syria, insisting that the United States remains a prime enemy of Tehran, despite a landmark nuclear deal with word powers. Trusting the U.S. would be "a big mistake," said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, insisting that cooperation with America goes "against the independence" of Iran. There has been no formal talk of a joint fight or even cooperation between Iran and the United States against the Islamic State group. Nevertheless, Khamenei's remarks were somewhat ironic since the war against the Islamic State has put Americans and Iranians in close proximity. In this picture released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivers his speech in a ceremony marking 27th death anniversary of founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini at his shrine just outside Tehran, Iran, Friday, June 3, 2016. Iran's top leader has ruled out cooperation with America against the Islamic State group, their common enemy in Syria and Iraq. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP) In Iraq, Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards are on the ground, helping Shiite militiamen and Iraqi forces in their offensive on Fallujah, an IS stronghold west of Baghdad. A U.S.-led airstrikes campaign is also backing that battle. But Khamenei said that despite the nuclear deal which went into effect this year, Iran has "many small and big enemies, but foremost among them are America," Britain and Israel. He spoke at a ceremony marking the 27th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought hard-line clerics to power and ousted the U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Tens of thousands of Iranians attended the ceremony in Tehran while state TV broadcast Khamenei's 90-minute speech live. The deal with world powers eased Tehran's isolation from the international community and removed many economic sanctions in exchange for Iran curtailing its nuclear program. But the agreement, struck in 2015 with moderate President Hassan Rouhani's administration, has been assailed by Iranian hard-liners, and in the months since its implementation, Iran has conducted missile tests criticized by the U.S., as well as aired footage on state television of an underground missile base. In Syria, Shiite power Iran is a top backer of President Bashar Assad, along with Russia. Tehran has deployed what it says are military advisers to support the Syrian government and has had casualties in the conflict, though it denies the presence of Iranian combat troops. Meanwhile, the U.S. and its Western allies, along with most Gulf Arab nations, back the Syrian rebels fighting to topple Assad. Morricone marks 60 years as Hollywood's go-to music man ROME (AP) Oscar-winning composer Ennio Morricone is back on his feet after canceling a string of concerts because of two collapsed vertebrae that raised questions about the continued prodigious output of the 87-year-old music legend. Morricone, whose memorable scores to "The Mission," ''Cinema Paradiso" and other films have made him one of Hollywood's most sought-after composers, says he's doing fine now and is ready to get back on tour to mark his 60 years in the industry. In an interview at his home in an elegant Rome palazzo, Morricone says even after all his years, he still gets the jitters before going on stage to conduct. Three-time best sound-track Oscar winner Ennio Morricone answers questions during an interview with The Associated Press, in Rome, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Oscar-winning composer is back on his feet after canceling a string of concerts because of a collapsed vertebrae that raised questions about the continued prodigious output of the 87-year-old legend. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) "I get very nervous, because sometimes despite the good will, accidents can happen," he said from his art-filled living room. "Even small accidents can bother me, things that the audience doesn't even notice." "I rather prefer to write music, but obviously it is natural that I direct the music I wrote," he adds. Morricone is still basking in his second Oscar win earlier this year, for scoring Quentin Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight." He previously won a lifetime achievement Academy Award in 2007. "It is a nice satisfaction," he said, a copy of his Hollywood Star on the coffee table. "But what is important is not to think about it." Morricone does put a lot of thought into what eventually goes down on paper, however. "I used to bring some paper and leave it on the bedside table, both sheets with pentagram or blank, to write down an idea that could arise during the night," he said. "Ideas can come by chance too, sometimes while you're in the car. An idea arrives and that's it." What's critical, he said, is having a relationship with the director. Morricone's most famous collaboration was with Italian director Sergio Leone, whose "Dollars" trilogy starring Clint Eastwood and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" enabled Morricone to reinvent the music for Westerns. Of his art, he says his role is to essentially fill in the gaps. "I don't describe images with my music," he said. "When there is an important movie, it's key that the music tell what isn't said and what you cannot see." A new album commemorating Morricone's six-decade career and sampling some of his 600 works, "Morricone 60," is being released by Decca Records in October. It contains new recordings of some Morricone's greatest hits, performed by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. Three-time best sound-track Oscar winner Ennio Morricone answers questions during an interview with The Associated Press, in Rome, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Oscar-winning composer is back on his feet after canceling a string of concerts because of a collapsed vertebrae that raised questions about the continued prodigious output of the 87-year-old legend. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) Three-time best sound-track Oscar winner Ennio Morricone answers questions during an interview with The Associated Press, in Rome, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Oscar-winning composer is back on his feet after canceling a string of concerts because of a collapsed vertebrae that raised questions about the continued prodigious output of the 87-year-old legend. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) Three-time best sound-track Oscar winner Ennio Morricone answers questions during an interview with The Associated Press, in Rome, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Oscar-winning composer is back on his feet after canceling a string of concerts because of a collapsed vertebrae that raised questions about the continued prodigious output of the 87-year-old legend. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) Three-time best sound-track Oscar winner Ennio Morricone answers questions during an interview with The Associated Press, in Rome, Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Oscar-winning composer is back on his feet after canceling a string of concerts because of a collapsed vertebrae that raised questions about the continued prodigious output of the 87-year-old legend. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) French prime minister promises Greece more help with reforms ATHENS, Greece (AP) France's prime minister promised Greece on Friday more help in overcoming its financial crisis, with investment and assistance with administrative reforms. Manuel Valls met Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras before the two countries signed agreements to continue France's assistance in reforming central and regional government. Greece is hoping to restart its long-delayed privatization program after eurozone countries assured the country that they will continue to pay bailout money and will improve the repayment terms of past loans. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls reviews the Honor guard during a wreath laying ceremony at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in central Athens on Thursday, June 2, 2016. Valls has arrived in Greece for a two-day visit expected to focus on economic cooperation, among tight security measures. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) Valls' visit came a week after a trip to Greece by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said Russian companies were also interested in Greek privatization projects. France played a lead role last year in easing a dispute between rescue lenders and Tsipras' left-wing government that had threatened Greece's place in the eurozone. "France used all its influence and all its weight ... to make sure that the Greeks remained in the large family of the eurozone," Valls said. "To have the eurozone or (passport-free) Schengen area without Greece that would be a different kind of Europe that we don't want" Bailout lenders are expected Monday to approve the next bailout installments to Greece, worth 10. 3 billion euros ($11.5 billion). French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, center and Greek State Minister Nikos Papas, left review the Honor guard during a wreath laying ceremony at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in central Athens on Thursday, June 2, 2016. Valls has arrived in Greece for a two-day visit expected to focus on economic cooperation, among tight security measures. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, front, and Greek State Minister Nikos Papas, right, pay tribute during a wreath laying ceremony at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in central Athens on Thursday, June 2, 2016. Valls has arrived in Greece for a two-day visit expected to focus on economic cooperation, among tight security measures. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) Roadside bomb in southeast Turkey wounds 7 soldiers ISTANBUL (AP) Turkey's state news agency says seven soldiers have been wounded by a roadside bomb planted by Kurdish rebels in the southeast. The explosive device went off as a military vehicle went by in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bomb. The outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, however, stages frequent attacks against Turkish policemen and troops. A truce between the state and the insurgent movement, which has fought in southeast Turkey for decades, collapsed last July. Majority of Germans want UK to remain in EU, poll finds BERLIN (AP) A new poll indicates that a large majority of Germans would prefer Britain to remain a member of the European Union. The survey released Friday by public broadcaster ZDF found that 67 percent of respondents want the United Kingdom to stay in the 28-nation bloc. Eight percent of respondents favored a so-called Brexit in the survey conducted by polling group Forschungsgruppe Wahlen. Some 23 percent of those polled say they don't feel strongly either way, while two percent said they don't know. German Chancellor Angela Merkel addresses the media during a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg as part of a meeting at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, June 2, 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn) The poll of 1,292 voters was conducted by phone from May 31 to June 2. The margin of error was between two and three percentage points. German town turns to Syrian refugees to save its school GOLZOW, Germany (AP) At the talent show in Golzow's elementary school, the highlight is a Syrian girl proudly singing a German pop hit to applause from her classmates. The scene last week in the tiny town near the Polish border population 870 came a year after Golzow launched what principal Gaby Thomas calls an act of "mutual rescue." The school couldn't get together the 15 students needed to set up a first-grade class, and that had Mayor Frank Schuetz fearing for his town's future. "If we had allowed this school to crumble away, we also would have had to accept families saying, 'you can't move to Golzow, your children will have to go to school somewhere else,'" he says. In this photo taken Friday, May 27, 2016, Syrian refugee family Halima Taha, right, her husband Fadi Sayed Ahmad, center, and their children Bourhan, left, Kamala, second from left, and Hamza, front, pose for a photo in the village Golzow, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of Berlin, Germany. When the elementary school in Golzow couldn't find the 15 students needed to set up a first-grade class, town officials persuaded two Syrian families to move to the small town on the Polish border. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber) In this thinly populated area of what was once communist East Germany, which has seen its population shrink since the reunification of Germany in 1990, "any infrastructure has very significant value." So the town's leaders went to a migrant reception center in nearby Eisenhuettenstadt and persuaded two Syrian families to move to Golzow. They brought with them three children of school age salvaging the school's first grade and taking on the challenge of settling into a peaceful but hardly cosmopolitan rural backwater. Nour and Kamala, both 10, and Kamala's 9-year-old brother Bourhan, started school from scratch with younger Germans. "Of course they didn't know Golzow at all, they had no idea what they were getting themselves into," Schuetz said. "But they saw a chance to get out of the strange situation of living in tents and were willing to move." As Germany begins to integrate hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Arab world and beyond who arrived last year, Golzow offers a small-scale taste of success. A man from a nearby village who speaks Arabic helped in the early months but now the two Syrian families, who were joined in January by a third, are keen to speak German even insist on doing so. "If we had had a lot of time to think about what problems we could face, and lost ourselves in that, it maybe wouldn't have worked out so well," principal Thomas says. "We did a lot of things spontaneously, and the families were incredibly cooperative." Halima Taha, 29, who moved to Golzow with husband Fadi Sayed Ahmed and their three children, has just started a part-time job as a translator at a home for refugees in a nearby town. Her work includes translating rental contracts for newcomers seeking a long-term place to live. Taha's presence is invaluable because "she has arrived, she got support and now she lives in an apartment with her family," home director Jens Planeta says. "That takes a lot of people's fear away, and that is irreplaceable." "I think this is a good opportunity," Taha says. At home, she adds, "my husband is always helping, people in Golzow are always helping too ... everyone helps here." It's certainly a change of scene for the family, who come from Syria's coastal city of Latakia and spent a year in Turkey before moving on to Germany. "Everything here is quiet, no war good," Taha said. There's a down side to that quietness, however, and it has a lot to do with why Golzow's leaders wanted to bring the families there. "I was a real estate agent in Syria very, very good work and I don't know what I can do here. I must (find) different work, but that's OK," says Fadi, Taha's husband. Golzow has lost nearly a third of its population since German reunification, a phenomenon seen in many parts of the east after communist-era industry and collective farms went out of business or downsized. Real estate is not a booming business in fact, taking in the families has helped the town tackle another concern by using some of its empty housing. The dwindling population has taken a toll over the years on the school, which the town named "The Children of Golzow" in a nod to its main claim to fame, a documentary film project of the same name that followed a class of schoolchildren from 1961 to 2007. "This small place is defined by this school," the mayor says. At its peak, the school had up to 700 students. In 2008, however, it lost its top four grades and was reduced to an elementary school. It now has some 130 pupils. This year, town leaders say they have enough children for a first grade, though they're still waiting for the official green light. When the newcomers started school last fall, teachers held workshops on the issue of flight and expulsion with the children, principal Thomas says "because everyone's first question was, 'why are they here?' And then they knew why they're here." The two Syrian mothers told her not to give their children special treatment, and at one point even complained that their children were speaking too much Arabic with each other, she adds. Two of the Syrian children volunteered last week to perform at the school talent show. Nour, who's near-fluent in German after just a few months and says she wants to become a doctor, impressed her schoolmates by singing German pop duo Rosenstolz's "Ich bin ich" ("I am me"). Her parents, Mahmoud Alahmad Alhammash and Mervat Seikh Mohamed, proudly filmed their daughter. "I'm happy Nour is singing in German and Nour's a star," says her mother. Several months in Germany have allowed her to forget the war at home and their journey from Damascus via Libya. "My family is staying here in Golzow not going to Munich or Hamburg," says Alhammash. "Much better in Golzow." In this photo taken Friday, May 27, 2016, Syrian refugees Halima Taha, second from left, and her husband Fadi Sayed Ahmad, third from left, talk with another Syrian migrant family during the school festival of their children of the elementary school in the village Golzow, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of Berlin, Germany. When the elementary school in Golzow couldn't find the 15 students needed to set up a first-grade class, town officials persuaded two Syrian families to move to the small town on the Polish border. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber) In this photo taken Friday, May 27, 2016, school director Gaby Thomas poses at the entrance of the elementary school in the village of Golzow, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of Berlin, Germany. When the elementary school in Golzow couldn't find the 15 students needed to set up a first-grade class, town officials persuaded two Syrian families to move to the small town on the Polish border. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber) In this photo taken Friday, May 27, 2016, people attend a summer party at an accommodation for migrants where Halima Taha works as a translator in Vossberg near Golzow, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of Berlin, Germany. As Germany begins to integrate hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Arab world and beyond who arrived last year, Golzow offers a small-scale taste of success. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber) In this photo taken Friday, May 27, 2016, refugee families with their children leave the school building of the elementary school in the village of Golzow, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of Berlin, Germany. When the elementary school in Golzow couldn't find the 15 students needed to set up a first-grade class, town officials persuaded two Syrian families to move to the small town on the Polish border. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber) In this photo taken Friday, May 27, 2016 Halima Taha a refugee from Syria poses for a photo at an accommodation for migrants where she works as a translator in Vossberg near Golzow, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of Berlin, Germany. As Germany begins to integrate hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Arab world and beyond who arrived last year, Golzow offers a small-scale taste of success. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber) Turkish president opens new embassy in war-torn Somalia MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) Turkey's president opened a new Turkish embassy in Somalia's capital on Friday amid heavy security less than two days after Islamic extremists attacked a hotel in the city, killing 15 people. The al-Shabab group, which is waging an insurgency against Somalia's weak government, has claimed responsibility for the assault on the Ambassador Hotel in Mogadishu. This is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's third visit to Somalia. He is the only non-African president to visit war-ravaged Somalia in decades. Erdogan visited Somalia last year, a day after al-Shabab attacked a hotel hosting Turkish delegates and killed at least six people. From left to right; Turkey's First Lady Emine Erdogan, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu attend a ceremony to open a new Turkish embassy in Mogadishu, Somalia Friday, June 3, 2016. Erdogan opened the new Turkish embassy in Somalia's capital on Friday amid heavy security less than two days after militants attacked a hotel in the city, killing 15 people. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh) On Friday, Erdogan cut a ribbon to the new beachfront Turkish embassy in Mogadishu, calling it the largest and most advanced Turkish embassy in Africa. "Somalia is an important ally for us," said Erdogan. "I can see a remarkable change here since my first visit in 2011. I hope Somalia will hold a free and fair election," he said of Somalia's planned polls, scheduled for August. He added he will return to Somalia again to open a polytechnic school and a $400 million military training camp that are now under construction. He added that Turkey will send humanitarian aid to Somalia and Ethiopia, especially drought-affected areas in Puntland, Somaliland and Ethiopia. During Erdogan's visit to Mogadishu, officials signed several new development agreements. Somali president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud praised Turkey's support, saying that it attests to how the Turkish government is committed to helping Somalia recover from decades of war. The Turkish president visited Kenya and Uganda before coming to Mogadishu. Erdogan has been trying to raise Turkey's influence in Africa, especially in the continent's Muslim countries. Turkey has significantly stepped up trade with sub-Saharan nations in the past decade. ___ Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed. Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks to Somali girls wearing clothes in the colors of the Turkish flag, outside the new Turkish embassy in Mogadishu, Somalia Friday, June 3, 2016. Erdogan opened the new Turkish embassy in Somalia's capital on Friday amid heavy security less than two days after militants attacked a hotel in the city, killing 15 people. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh) From left to right; Turkey's First Lady Emine Erdogan, Turkey's President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, and Somalia's President, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, cut the ribbon at a ceremony to open a new Turkish embassy in Mogadishu, Somalia Friday, June 3, 2016. Erdogan opened the new Turkish embassy in Somalia's capital on Friday amid heavy security less than two days after militants attacked a hotel in the city, killing 15 people. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh) Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks to Somali girls wearing clothes in the colors of the Turkish flag, outside the new Turkish embassy in Mogadishu, Somalia Friday, June 3, 2016. Erdogan opened the new Turkish embassy in Somalia's capital on Friday amid heavy security less than two days after militants attacked a hotel in the city, killing 15 people. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh) Trump claims Trump University judge has 'absolute conflict' NEW YORK (AP) Donald Trump said that the federal judge presiding over a lawsuit brought by former Trump University students has an "absolute conflict" in handling the case because he is "of Mexican heritage." The presumptive Republican presidential nominee told The Wall Street Journal, in an interview in Friday's edition, that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel has "an inherent conflict of interest" because Trump is "building a wall," a reference to Trump's proposal to build a wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico. Trump University is the target of two lawsuits in San Diego and one in New York that accuse the business of fleecing students with unfulfilled promises to teach secrets of success in real estate. Trump has maintained that customers were overwhelmingly satisfied with the offerings. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump smiles while speaking during a rally Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) Trump has brought up Curiel's ethnicity several times this year, including last week at a rally in San Diego. Curiel was born in Indiana and served as a federal prosecutor and a judge in the California state judicial system before being nominated to the federal bench by President Barack Obama in 2011. In an interview with CNN, aired Friday, Trump noted once again that Curiel is of "Mexican heritage. He's proud of his heritage," Trump said, reiterating his intention to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. "I respect him for that." "I've spoken to so many lawyers who have said this is not a case, this is a case that should have ended," Trump said. On Wednesday, Curiel ordered some records that were released in the class action lawsuit against Trump University be yanked from public view. Late Tuesday, Curiel ordered some released documents to be resealed and resubmitted with sections blacked-out. He said some records had "mistakenly" been released last week, when he ordered some documents made public. Lorella Praeli, director of Latino outreach for Democrat Hillary Clinton's campaign, said Friday that Curiel and his family "epitomize the American dream." As Democratic-NPL Party officials gear up for a caucus on Tuesday, the state is garnering some attention from the national stage. Jane Sanders, the wife of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, said campaign staff have been busy working phone banks, undergoing training and getting supporters educated on the caucus process. Every state is playing a very big role. I just hope the people of North Dakota who support Bernies vision for the future come out and vote in this election," said Sanders, who added that the campaign has won several rural states and is confident North Dakota can join that group. Democratic-NPL Party officials and representatives with the campaigns of both candidates vying for the presidential nomination say theyre ready for the partys caucus, which begins at 7 p.m. Weve been working with folks at the district level to make sure they have everything they need. Theres a lot of excitement in the air, said North Dakota Dem-NPL Party Executive Director Robert Haider, adding that photo identification isnt required but attendees must be able to identify as a Democrat and indicate theyre voting for the party in this years election. Hillary for North Dakota State Director Marcella Jewell said in a statement that the campaign has been successful in engaging with Dem-NPL officials and supporters. There is so much at stake for women, Indian Country and working class families in this election, and it all starts with our supporters getting out to caucus, Jewell said. This week, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton secured the endorsements of more than a dozen North Dakota Dem-NPL lawmakers as well as multiple tribal chairman in the state. We are proud of the efforts of our volunteers and supporters to get out the word about Hillary Clinton's plans to break down the barriers that North Dakotan families face, Jewell said. The purpose of the caucus is to elect delegates in each legislative district to attend the partys State Delegate Selection Committee meeting June 18 in Bismarck. The number of delegates from each district that will be able to attend the June 18 selection meeting are divided proportionately based on the 2012 presidential election. At the June 18 meeting, 23 delegates and two alternates will be selected to represent the state at the partys national convention July 25-28 in Philadelphia. Theres a lot of excitement around the race; thats why were expecting a solid turnout, Haider said. Clintons lead over Sanders in delegates was at 1,769 to 1,501 as of Friday. When adding in unpledged super delegates from each state, Clintons lead jumps to 2,313 to 1,546; a total of 2,383 delegates are needed to clinch the nomination. Both have made their play for North Dakota delegates in recent weeks. Sanders made multiple stops in the state last month while Clinton had her husband, former president Bill Clinton, and other supporters stump for her in the state as well. Both have opened campaign offices in the state in recent weeks. California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota also are holding their primaries on Tuesday. Depending on what the numbers look like nationally on June 7, that could have an impact on who shows up June 18, Haider said. Twelve district delegates are to be pledged to presidential candidates proportionately based on candidate preference at the district caucuses. The two alternates also are chosen from the district level. In addition, four at-large delegates are chosen, as are two pledged Party Leader or Elected Officials delegates and five unpledged Party Leader or Elected Officials delegates. The five unpledged Party Leader or Elected Officials delegates consist of Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., the state party chair and vice-chair as well as the partys national committeeman and committeewoman. Whoever earns the support of North Dakota Democrats faces long odds in November for the states three electoral votes: The last Democrat who won the state in November was Lyndon Johnson in 1964. North Dakota Dem-NPL caucus locations and information can be found at www.demnpl.com. Israel releases female Palestinian lawmaker after 14 months RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) Israel has released a female Palestinian lawmaker imprisoned for 14 months. Khalida Jarrar flashed a victory sign to well-wishers as she was freed on Friday in the West Bank. Jarrar is a popular figure in the Palestinian territory, known for fiery speeches against Israel. Israel imprisoned her last year after convicting her of belonging to an illegal organization and incitement. Her husband Ghassam says "she was arrested for political not security reasons." Jarrar is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular, left-leaning faction. The group was involved in attacks in the 1970s but scaled back militant activities in recent years. Officials say 499 Islamic extremists pose threat in Germany BERLIN (AP) Authorities in Germany are monitoring almost 500 Islamic extremists they believe pose a potential security threat, officials said Friday, a day after the arrest of three men suspected of planning to carry out an attack in the country for the Islamic State group. The men identified only as Syrian citizens Hamza C., 27; Mahood B., 25; and Abd Arahman A. K., 31 were arrested in three separate locations across Germany following a tip from a fourth suspect who had approached French authorities earlier this year. While Germany hasn't suffered mass-casualty attacks by Islamic extremists of the type seen in France and Belgium over recent months, authorities say the country is a target and the risk of attacks is high. An alleged terror suspect is led by police at the Federal court in Karlsruhe, Germany, Thursday, June 2, 2016. Prosecutors said three Syrian men suspected of planning an attack in Duesseldorf for the Islamic State group have been arrested in Germany. They say a fourth suspect, who informed officials in Paris about the plot, was already in custody in France. (Uli Deck/dpa via AP) "It's definitely too soon for a fundamental reassessment in light of what happened yesterday," Interior Ministry spokesman Johannes Dimroth said, adding that authorities will have to await the outcome of prosecutors' investigation. All three of those arrested in Germany were living in refugee shelters, adding to concerns that IS might be sending fighters to Germany disguised as asylum-seekers. Almost 1.1 million people were registered as asylum-seekers in Germany last year, many of them fleeing war and persecution in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Dimroth said authorities had received regular tips about possible Islamic extremists coming to Germany as asylum-seekers and were systematically checking those reports. He didn't say how many of the 499 Islamic extremists under observation by state and federal police were asylum-seekers. Federal prosecutors say the men who were arrested intended to carry out an attack in the western city of Duesseldorf though they had no concrete plans. German weekly Der Spiegel reported Friday that the plot was to involve a total of 10 attackers, of whom two were to detonate suicide vests. The magazine didn't provide a source for that information, which it said French authorities received from Saleh A., a 25-year-old Syrian in custody in France. None of the suspects' surnames were given due to German privacy rules. Authorities spent months quietly tracking the three men before swooping Thursday because one of the suspects planned to travel to southern Europe, Der Spiegel reported. Overall in Germany, Justice Ministry spokesman Philip Scholz said federal prosecutors are currently conducting nearly 120 investigations involving over 180 suspects in connection with terrorism offences. Wolfgang Bosbach, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's party, warned Friday against placing all refugees under suspicion. Police in northern Spain search for possible escaped bear MADRID (AP) Police in the northern Spanish region of Cantabria are searching a mountain safari-type park to determine if a bear has escaped after local youths reported having seen one outside the park's perimeter. A regional government spokesman said Friday that Cabarceno park authorities have no indication that a bear has escaped and police have so far found no paw prints, excrement or signs of a bear loose in the area. PICTURED: Violinmaking thrives in the land of Stradivarius MILAN (AP) Acoustics aren't all that count when making a violin. Aesthetics are also a key element. And that's why the craft of making stringed instruments is thriving in Italy, a country known for its love of beauty and long history of violinmaking. Stradivarius made his prized violins in Cremona, but the craft is growing in other cities in the Lombardy region, including Milan and nearby Pavia. Marco Brunello says the sculpting of the violin scroll is distinctive to the artist who makes it, his or her signature. Violinmaker Marco Brunelli, 43, was born in Rochester, Minnesota, United States, checks the shape of a violin inside his lab in Pavia, Italy, Friday, April 15, 2016. Here, in the quiet pedestrian streets of Pavia, is Marco Brunello's instrument boutique. A few examples of his work are on display in the window, but the magic happens in the shop's back room, the instrument-making lab. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni) The 44-year-old violinmaker in Pavia took up the trade after a decade as an engineer. His shop on a quiet pedestrian street displays a few examples of his work in the window. But the magic happens in the instrument-making workshop at the back. Brunello creates about 10 violins a year, each involving about 200-300 hours of work. The starting price for a Brunello violin is 5,000 euros ($5,600) and the sky is the limit on the final tab. Brunello's customers are mostly from Asia. At the Civica Scuola di Liuteria di Milano, a school for making stringed instruments, students dedicate the first two years to the technical foundations, learning how to properly use the tools. Only after that can turn their creative energies to violin design. Established in 1978, the school accepts just 15 students a year. "For me, the greatest joy when making a violin is when I assemble the strings, when in fact I can play the violin," said Franco Ferloni, a fourth-year student in his final year. A violin made by Marco Brunelli, 43, was born in Rochester, Minnesota, United States, is shown inside his lab in Pavia, Italy, Friday, April 15, 2016. Here, in the quiet pedestrian streets of Pavia, is Marco Brunello's instrument boutique. A few examples of his work are on display in the window, but the magic happens in the shop's back room, the instrument-making lab. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni) Violinmaker Marco Brunelli, 43, was born in Rochester, Minnesota, United States, checks the shape of a violin inside his lab in Pavia, Italy, Friday, April 15, 2016. Here, in the quiet pedestrian streets of Pavia, is Marco Brunello's instrument boutique. A few examples of his work are on display in the window, but the magic happens in the shop's back room, the instrument-making lab. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni) Violinmaker Marco Brunelli, 43, was born in Rochester, Minnesota, United States, makes a violin in Pavia, Italy, Friday, April 15, 2016.Here, in the quiet pedestrian streets of Pavia, is Marco Brunello's instrument boutique. A few examples of his work are on display in the window, but the magic happens in the shop's back room, the instrument-making lab. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni) Violinmaker Marco Brunelli, 43, was born in Rochester, Minnesota, United States, tests a violin in Pavia, Italy, Friday, April 15, 2016. Here, in the quiet pedestrian streets of Pavia, is Marco Brunello's instrument boutique. A few examples of his work are on display in the window, but the magic happens in the shop's back room, the instrument-making lab. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni) Violinmaker Marco Brunelli, 43, was born in Rochester, Minnesota, United States, works in side his lab in Pavia, Italy, Friday, April 15, 2016. Here, in the quiet pedestrian streets of Pavia, is Marco Brunello's instrument boutique. A few examples of his work are on display in the window, but the magic happens in the shop's back room, the instrument-making lab. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni) Violins made by Marco Brunelli, 43, was born in Rochester Minnesota, United States, are shown inside his lab in Pavia, Italy, Friday, April 15, 2016. Here, in the quiet pedestrian streets of Pavia, is Marco Brunello's instrument boutique. A few examples of his work are on display in the window, but the magic happens in the shop's back room, the instrument-making lab. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni) Violinmaker Marco Brunelli, 43, was born in Rochester, Minnesota, United States, works in his lab in Pavia, Italy, Friday, April 15, 2016. Here, in the quiet pedestrian streets of Pavia, is Marco Brunello's instrument boutique. A few examples of his work are on display in the window, but the magic happens in the shop's back room, the instrument-making lab. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni) Violinmaker Marco Brunelli, 43, was born in Rochester, Minnesota, United States, tests a violin in Pavia, Italy, Friday, April 15, 2016. Here, in the quiet pedestrian streets of Pavia, is Marco Brunello's instrument boutique. A few examples of his work are on display in the window, but the magic happens in the shop's back room, the instrument-making lab. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni) A violin made by Marco Brunelli, 43, was born in Rochester Minnesota, United States, is shown in Pavia, Italy, Friday, April 15, 2016. Here, in the quiet pedestrian streets of Pavia, is Marco Brunelli's instrument boutique. A few examples of his work are on display in the window, but the magic happens in the shop's back room, the instrument-making lab. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni) A violin made by Marco Brunello, 43, was born in Rochester Minnesota, United States, is shown inside his lab in Pavia, Italy, Friday, April 15, 2016. Here, in the quiet pedestrian streets of Pavia, is Marco Brunello's instrument boutique. A few examples of his work are on display in the window, but the magic happens in the shop's back room, the instrument-making lab. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni) Lorenzo Rossi, 41, checks the strings of a violin in Milan, Italy, Monday, May 2, 2016. Acoustics arent all that count when making a violin. Aesthetics are also a key element. And thats why the craft of making stringed instruments is thriving in Italy, a country known for its love of beauty and long history of violinmaking. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni) Violinmaker Lorenzo Rossi, 41, shapes a violin in Milan, Italy, Monday, May 2, 2016. Acoustics arent all that count when making a violin. Aesthetics are also a key element. And thats why the craft of making stringed instruments is thriving in Italy, a country known for its love of beauty and long history of violinmaking. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni) Violins are shown at violin making school in Milan, Italy, Wednesday, May 4, 2016. Acoustics arent all that count when making a violin. Aesthetics are also a key element. And thats why the craft of making stringed instruments is thriving in Italy, a country known for its love of beauty and long history of violinmaking. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni) Charlotte police shoot, kill man suspected in bus shooting CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) Police shot and killed a suspect in an earlier shooting on a city bus, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said early Friday. Officers were called to a shooting on a bus shortly after 10 p.m. Thursday, spokesman Keith Trietley said in a news release. Some of the responding officers saw a man walking down a street that matched the description of the suspect, Trietley said. "They exited their vehicles and engaged the suspect, giving him verbal commands," Police Chief Kerr Putney said Thursday night. "Two of our officers perceived an imminent threat, an imminent lethal threat, and they shot the suspect," Putney said. Emergency medical workers pronounced the man dead at the scene. The officers were not hurt. Investigators recovered a gun from the dead suspect. The man shot on the bus was taken to a hospital with injuries not thought to be serious. His name has not been released. The names and race of the officers and suspect were not immediately available. The officers have been placed on administrative leave while the shooting is investigated by the department's internal affairs bureau. Bosnia: public broadcaster risks shutting over funding woes SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) Bosnia's debt-ridden public broadcaster, BHRT, said Friday it will go off air at the end of June unless the government and parliament can solve its funding problems. The European Broadcasting Union, which counts BHRT as a member, voiced "deep concern" over the situation. It has called on Bosnian authorities to urgently take measures to prevent their country from becoming the only European nation without an active national public service broadcaster. It said it would be the first time a public service broadcaster in Europe would be forced to stop broadcasting because of financial woes. The BHRT is funded by license fees collected as part of telephone bills. However, the collection has been in decline for years as Bosnians increasingly cancel fixed phone lines and switch to mobile phones. The parliament is set to debate a new law on the collection of license fees for the public broadcaster on June 15. However, repeated efforts in previous years to adopt a sustainable and enforceable collection mechanism ended in failure due to different political expectations of the public broadcaster. Indonesian Muslim hard-liners hold anti-communist protest JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) About a thousand members of hard-line Islamic groups marched Friday in Indonesia's capital to denounce a government plan for an investigation into anti-communist massacres in 1965, saying it would help revive communism in the world's most populous Muslim nation. Researchers estimate the military and religious groups killed a half million people in attacks on suspected communists and sympathizers that ushered in the 32-year rule of dictator Suharto. The protesters, organized by several groups including the Islamic Defenders Front, known by its acronym FPI, rallied peacefully outside the tightly guarded presidential palace, in a sign of the deep divisions within Indonesia over what rights groups say was one of the worst atrocities of the last century. Muslim men shout slogans during a rally against communism outside the presidential palace in Jakarta, Indonesia, Friday, June 3, 2016. About a thousand members of hard-line Islamic groups marched Friday in the capital to denounce a government plan for an investigation into anti-communist massacres in 1965, saying it will help revive communism in the world's largest Muslim nation. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana) FPI has a long record of vandalizing nightspots, hurling stones at Western embassies and attacking rival religious groups. The vast majority of Muslims in the nation of 250 million practice moderate Islam. The demonstrators shouted "Crush communists, down with PKI," referring to the outlawed Indonesian Communist Party, and called on President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo to stop his support for the investigation. Banners and signs carried by the marchers read "Save Indonesia from communists" and "Don't say sorry to PKI." Some retired army generals were among the participants. "We have conveyed our demands to the government: Don't apologize to PKI, it will help revive communism in this nation," said Kivlan Zein, one of the retired generals. In Indonesia, widely accepted accounts of the era gloss over the deaths, and descendants of Communist Party members are stigmatized and face legal discrimination that prevents them from holding government jobs. In April, the government convened an unprecedented discussion of the massacres that brought together survivors and representatives of the military. It led Jokowi to order officials to start documenting the locations of mass graves of the victims. The government announced last month it would investigate a list of 122 alleged mass grave compiled by victims' advocacy groups. New Serbian Parliament convenes, with far-right groups back BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) Serbian lawmakers including far-right groups who returned to Parliament met on Friday for the first time since elections in April, paving the way for the formation of the new government. The assembly is dominated by the pro-European Union Serbian Progressive Party of Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, who won 131 of 250 seats in the Apr. 24 snap vote. Vucic had called the early election, saying he wants a new four-year mandate to push forward the economic and political changes needed to move closer to achieving European Union membership. Vucic, who despite his pro-EU outlook has faced accusations of adopting hardline policies, said Friday that the new government could be formed in mid-June. "We will know by the end of next week who will be in the government," he added. Vucic's previous Cabinet also included the Socialists, but it was not clear whether the party will be part of the future government. The Socialists now hold 29 parliamentary seats, while the extremist Serbian Radical Party led by firebrand nationalist Vojislav Seselj, who was recently acquitted of war crimes by a U.N. court, returned to Parliament as the third-strongest group with 22 seats. Seselj said Friday that "we could support Vucic's government only if it abolishes the EU bid and turns to integration with Russia instead." Several lawmakers from another pro-Russian group, the Dveri party, wore Serbian national costumes to Friday's session. AP Explains: China's bloody 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown China's bloody 1989 military crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests was a pivotal moment in the country's political development. Despite the Communist Party's efforts to erase memories of the event, every year its anniversary triggers heightened security and surveillance on the mainland, along with furtive commemorations by a handful of activists. With this weekend marking the 27th anniversary of the military assault on the night of June 3-4, The Associated Press looks at some of the key questions surrounding the event and its aftermath. ___ FILE - In this file photo taken May 24, 1989, student-led pro democracy protesters camp out on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Chinas bloody 1989 military crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests was a pivotal moment in the countrys political development. And despite the Communist Partys efforts to erase memories of the event, every year its anniversary triggers heightened security and surveillance on the mainland, along with furtive commemorations by a handful of activists. (AP Photo/Mark Avery, File) Q: What happened on Beijing's Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3, 1989, and the early hours of the following day? A: After weeks of student-led pro-democracy protests, only a hardcore group remained camped in Tiananmen Square, although they enjoyed broad support from many ordinary citizens. Fed up with the show of defiance, the Communist Party leadership headed by Deng Xiaoping decided to use force to end the situation. Tanks, armored vehicles and assault troops converged on the city center from multiple directions. Estimates of those killed range from the government's official figure of 241 to more than 2,000. ___ Q: How are the events marked in China by the government, the public, and by activists of that generation? A: The government forbids discussion of the crackdown, which it initially labeled a "counterrevolutionary riot," and memorials for those killed both public and private are forbidden. That approach has made the crackdown a fading memory for many of those alive at the time, while young Chinese may have only a hazy knowledge of it gleaned largely from foreign sources. An annual candlelight vigil in Hong Kong continues to draw large numbers of participants of all ages, however, while exiled former student-leaders also hold public commemorations. Activists within China are generally placed under house arrest or forced to leave Beijing around the time of the anniversary. ___ Q: Who are the Tiananmen Mothers, what are their demands, and what is the likelihood that they will be met? In the face of government surveillance and harassment, relatives of some of those killed have coalesced into a loose grouping known as the Tiananmen Mothers that calls for a formal investigation into the crackdown and justice for the victims. Chinese legal bodies have refused to accept their petitions and their public appeals mostly fall on deaf ears within the country. With most members now elderly and frail, the government seems content to let the movement die out on its own, although others have vowed to continue the struggle. ___ Q: How have the protests and subsequent crackdown shaped the party's strategy in leading today's China? A: The crackdown largely destroyed faith in communism and ended most attempts at political reform. In response, the leadership promoted raw nationalism and economic growth while improving conditions for students, lifting restrictions on private businesses and allowing some personal freedoms such as foreign travel. The party, however, continues to severely curtail civil liberties, allowing no political opposition, and lawyers, labor activists and nongovernmental groups face onerous restrictions, harassment and the ever-present possibility of arrest. FILE - In this file photo taken June 9, 1989, a young man swings on the barrel of a disabled tank on the streets of Beijing after soldiers crack down on a student-led pro-democracy protest. China's bloody 1989 military crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests was a pivotal moment in the country's political development. And despite the Communist Party's efforts to erase memories of the event, every year its anniversary triggers heightened security and surveillance on the mainland, along with furtive commemorations by a handful of activists. (AP Photo/Jeff Widener, File) File - In this file photo taken Wednesday June 4, 2008, Ding Zilin, co-founder of the Tiananmen Mothers, a group representing families of those who died in the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations, stands in front of a shrine to her son, Jiang Jielian, at her apartment in Beijing. Despite government surveillance and harassment, relatives of some of those killed have coalesced into a loose grouping known as the Tiananmen Mothers that calls for a formal investigation into the crackdown and justice for the victims. (AP Photo/Greg Baker, File) FILE - In this file photo taken June 4, 2015, tens of thousands of people attend a candlelight vigil at Victoria Park in Hong Kong to commemorate victims of the 1989 military crackdown in Beijing. China's bloody 1989 military crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests was a pivotal moment in the country's political development. And despite the Communist Party's efforts to erase memories of the event, every year its anniversary triggers heightened security and surveillance on the mainland, along with furtive commemorations by a handful of activists. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu, File) Hospital: No more info on mother with Zika or her newborn HACKENSACK, N.J. (AP) A Honduran woman with the Zika (ZEE-kuh) virus who gave birth in New Jersey to a baby who appears to be affected by the disease wants privacy. Hackensack University Medical Center tells The Record newspaper (http://bit.ly/1X1u4Kz ) it won't release any more information about the 31-year-old mother or her baby. The infant was delivered premature by cesarean section on Tuesday. An ultrasound last week revealed birth defects, including microcephaly (my-kroh-SEF'-uh-lee), in which the baby's head is smaller than expected because the brain hasn't developed properly. A doctor on Wednesday said the baby looks "completely Zika-affected," but confirmation of the virus in the infant is pending testing. A baby in Hawaii was born with microcephaly related to Zika earlier this year. ___ There are few fond memories about the spring and summer of 2011 because of the flooding and other weather-related problems. It was a spring that began with two deaths and slipped into a wet, cool summer. It was a time that tested the resiliency of North Dakotans. As a package of stories in Thursdays Tribune pointed out, the damage was heavy and the recovery continues after five years. On the surface things have returned to normal, but there are still those coping with the consequences of the flooding. A timeline graphic on Page A1 Thursday traced the sequence of events in 2011, an especially trying period from May into August. One of the first signs of trouble was the drowning deaths of two men in Apple Creek. High water contributed to a canoe accident and it took authorities 12 days to recover the bodies. It was a frustrating time for searchers who did everything they could to retrieve the bodies. It was the first of many frustrating times to come. The flooding impacted a large portion of the state, with Minot, Bismarck and Williston getting much of the attention. Smaller communities like Linton, Hebron, Hazen and Medora battled rising waters. Heavy rains caused landslides throughout the Badlands, reshaping the landscape. Looking back, it seems like a dreary time. However, it also was a time of incredible spirit and kindness. Organized efforts to fill sandbags became party-like, with families taking part and food being delivered to the workers. Those driven from their homes found shelter with family and friends; those needing to store belongings found space from people they didnt know; bus trips were organized to take Bismarck volunteers to Minot; and there was endless help for those sandbagging to protect their homes. The National Guard seemed to be everywhere. In Bismarck and Minot, especially, there was the constant hum of trucks as the Guard moved sand and dirt. The Guard directed traffic, filled sandbags and provided security. At a time when government draws a lot of criticism, local, state and federal officials stepped up. There were regular televised briefings where officials from different branches of government provided updates. It wasnt perfect because situations changed quickly and the extent of the problems was vast. It was a government functioning well in a crisis. As noted, the recovery from 2011 continues. While millions of dollars have been poured into North Dakota communities, infrastructure repairs arent complete. The flooding changed the Missouri River and impacted the fish. Nature has a way of recovering, but it takes time. North Dakotans didnt give up in 2011, even when faced with flooded homes and a landscape of downed trees. Those who could rebuilt and others moved on to a new phase in their lives. What has happened in five years is remarkable. Not only have we rebuilt, but we have taken steps to better protect ourselves in the future. Its a credit to the spirit of North Dakotans. Orthodox Christian's spiritual seat issues calls for unity CAIRO (AP) The spiritual seat of the world's Orthodox Christians on Friday issued a call for unity ahead of the first ever meeting of the faith's 14 independent churches that is expected to discuss the churches' common future and efforts to heal the nearly 1,000-year rift with the Roman Catholics. The meeting later this month in Crete will be convened by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the Istanbul-based spiritual leader of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians. All the Orthodox churches, old and new that emerged over the centuries, have never met like this before not since the "great schism" of 1054, when the Orthodox and Roman Catholics split after disputes over the Vatican's power. FILE - In this file photo dated Saturday, April 16, 2016, released by Greek Prime Minister's office, Pope Francis, left, is escorted by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, during a visit to the Greek island of Lesbos. On Friday June 3, 2016, the Orthodox Church led by Patriarch Bartholomew I, issued a call for the faith's 14 independent churches to discuss their common future and efforts to heal the nearly 1,000-year rift with the Roman Catholic church. All the Orthodox churches are scheduled to meet later June, in Crete, Greece. (Andrea Bonetti/Greek Prime Minister's Office via AP, FILE) The Ecumenical Patriarchate, which is also based in Istanbul, said the "Holy and Great Council is a unique and historical occasion." Preparations for the meeting have been underway since 1961, when the planning first began. Bartholomew's spokesman, the Rev. John Chryssavgis, told The Associated Press that the June 19-26 gathering's "sole purpose is the affirmation of unity." "Unity is a slow and painful process. We don't have to be united on every point to convene the council; but we do have to convene the council if we aspire to unity," Chryssavgis said. The call followed reports that the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which is due to come to Crete, had threatened to pull out, reportedly asking for some mostly procedural changes to the agenda. It did not say what changes it was requesting or if it would carry out the threat. Chryssavgis said that "after centuries of isolation, occupation, and persecution," it won't be easy for the churches to come together. "It is very natural, then, for some Churches to feel unsure or uncomfortable about coming together after such a long time, much like members of a family might be skeptical and even mistrustful after a long period of separation," he said. Unlike the Roman Catholics, the Orthodox churches are independent and have their own leadership. For example, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow is head of the world's largest Orthodox Church, but is considered equal to other patriarchs. Bartholomew is called the "first among equals," but leads a smaller flock than Kirill. Since the "great schism" there have been about a dozen smaller Orthodox councils over the centuries to discuss theological or doctrinal issues, but there has never been a meeting on the scale of the Holy and Great Council. The Crete council will discuss the mission and role of the Orthodox Church and its global flock, issues relating to the function of the churches and its relations with other Christian faiths. Unity of the Orthodox churches is considered a key prerequisite to any reconciliation with the Vatican. Fears of 'Brexit' stark along Ireland's EU-blurred border BLACKLION, Ireland (AP) Only a gentle stream separates the border villages of Blacklion and Belcoo, where Irish cows graze along one bank, British sheep on the other. Long gone are the armored police checkpoints, the concrete-block barricades on illegal side roads, the customs officers on the prowl for smugglers. But Ireland's soft border could become a hard fact of life again if the United Kingdom leaves the European Union, the sovereignty-sharing bloc that has done much to blur the 95-year-old boundary. Should a majority of British voters reject continued EU membership in a June 23 referendum, Northern Ireland's nearly 500-kilometer (310-mile) frontier with the Irish Republic would become the only British land border with the 27 remaining EU nations. The intertwined residents of Belcoo in Northern Ireland and Blacklion barely 200 meters (yards) away in the Republic of Ireland would find themselves again in two diverging lands. Hugh Maguire inspects a week-old calf on his Northern Ireland border farm on Tuesday, May 24, 2016. Maguire, who lives nearby in the Republic of Ireland village of Blacklion, says his farm couldn't survive without hefty European Union subsidies worth more than 80,000 euros (US dlrs 90,000) annually and doubts that Britain would pay him nearly as much if the United Kingdom leaves the EU. (AP Photo/Shawn Pogatchnik) While some view that prospect as an opportunity, many more express dread at the thought. "I live right down on the border and I wouldn't want to see my family experience all those problems that arose. It was terrible at times," said farmer Hugh Maguire, 60, who lives in Blacklion but raises sheep, cattle and hens on nearby Northern Ireland soil. "Borders create problems." Both communities depend on EU funding. Agriculture is the top employer, and farms receive 329 euros per hectare (133 euros, or $149, per acre) from the EU's subsidy scheme around 80,000 euros ($90,000) annually to Maguire's 241-hectare farm. Few Northern Ireland farmers are confident that the British government, long a critic of EU farm subsidies, would maintain anything close to that support. "We cannot survive without the subsidies. There's no way in the wide, wide world," said Maguire, who gets two-thirds of his income from subsidies, much of the rest from open market access to livestock marts south of the border, where lamb prices are stronger. The EU symbol liberally adorns projects big and small in both villages. That reflects double-barreled European funding available for Ireland's borderland, which qualifies both for infrastructure investment on economic deprivation grounds and as a recovering conflict zone following Irish Republican Army cease-fires of the 1990s. As councilman John Paul Feeley stands near the bridge connecting his native Blacklion with Belcoo, he points in every direction to projects funded by the EU. These include two enterprise centers, still largely empty, to house business startups; footpaths, a riverside walk and park with historical plaques; and a once-crumbling 18th-century market building transformed into a gift shop, social hall, coffee bar and tourist information hub complete with iPad and mini-cinema. All around the region, road signs highlight a border-straddling tourist attraction branded the Geopark that links natural and archaeological treasures, including caves, castle ruins, dolmen-marked graves and the humble headwaters of Ireland's mighty River Shannon. It's a marketing work in progress. On a blustery midweek visit, there's not a tourist in sight, only a lone worker using a weed-whacker to keep the EU-funded paths open to hilltop Neolithic monuments offering panoramas of the two villages and mountains, forests, lakes and farms. "It's a stunning view, and it's a view opened up by the EU," Feeley said. "We just need to get the people here." As a resident of the Irish Republic, Feeley can't vote on Brexit. His brother, a mechanic living in Belcoo, can. "I know he'll be voting to stay in the EU. I really haven't found anybody locally making a strong case to get out," Feeley said. But chatting to locals in Jack's Bar, the main Belcoo pub, harvests a wide swathe of opinion, including disenchantment even disgust with the EU. Some argue that the UK shouldn't be so open to immigration from the bloc's eastern members. "The EU does throw a lot of money at the farmers. But they also make it way too easy for foreigners to come here, claim benefits and overcrowd the place," said Jay McGourty, a 25-year-old bricklayer. "I don't want to come across as a racist, but people from other countries see the UK as a gold mine." When asked how many foreigners lived among Belcoo's approximately 500 residents, he paused: "Two, maybe three Poles." McGourty, who's never voted in a Northern Ireland election but plans to cast a referendum ballot, still isn't sure which way he'll vote, because he works mostly on Irish Republic building sites and wouldn't like to see "the hassle and waste of time" of border checks. Behind the bar, proprietor Paul Leonard and his son Stephen look likely to cancel each other's votes. The son favors staying in the EU, while the father is eyeing an exit. "I'd love to stay in the EU," said Stephen Leonard. "Wee country villages like this can be dead set against everything, but we need to keep moving forward." Paul Leonard says he's annoyed by what he considers overblown scare tactics from the pro-EU camp particularly assertions that the return of an actively policed border with customs checks would stir an IRA revival. The last of eight people slain by the IRA in Belcoo, a policeman at a vehicle checkpoint, was shot outside the pub in 1992. The IRA sniper fired from Blacklion. Paul Leonard appreciates today's transformed security landscape. His own father, Tom, served 32 years in the Northern Ireland police and survived an IRA assassination bid in Londonderry in 1985. After his father retired from the force, he sought reassurances from local IRA figures that his family could safely return to live in their native Belcoo. A durable truce has allowed Belcoo's bomb-proof police fortress to be razed and replaced with apartments. There's no longer any officers based in the village. Paul Leonard expresses confidence that an EU-free Northern Ireland wouldn't alter this. "There's no way this generation will let the country go back to the bad old ways. We've moved on," he said. "And a UK free of all that EU bureaucracy would be a good thing for business. The UK's already shown it can be independent by keeping its own currency instead of joining the euro." Everyone seems to agree on one point: EU withdrawal would drive a renaissance in cross-border smuggling amid a weaker British pound and revived import barriers. "The border was always a smuggler's paradise," said Harold Johnston, whose family has run a clothes store in Blacklion since 1901. "Smugglers would want the border back more than anyone. They'll all be voting to send the EU packing." ____ Online: Blacklion, http://www.blacklion.ie/ Geopark, http://www.marblearchcavesgeopark.com/ Jack's Bar, https://www.facebook.com/jacksbarbelcoo/ Blacklion-based county councilman John Paul Feeley stands amid the remains of a 4,500-year-old wedge tomb as he tells visitors about the region's major European-sponsored tourism initiative, the Global Geopark, atop Tullygobban Hill, Republic of Ireland, overlooking the border with Northern Ireland on Wednesday, May 25, 2016. Trails built with EU funds allow visitors to visit Neolithic tombs and other monuments dating back to 2500 B.C. (AP Photo/Shawn Pogatchnik) Paul Leonard, left, and his son Stephen pose behind the bar of their pub in Belcoo, Northern Ireland, on Wednesday, May 25, 2016. Paul Leonard says he'll probably vote to leave the EU in the June 23 referendum because he thinks the UK, including Northern Ireland, can do better economically outside the bloc, while Stephen plans to vote to stay. (AP Photo/Shawn Pogatchnik) Harold Johnston, whose family has owned a clothes shop in the Irish border village of Blacklion, Republic of Ireland, since 1901, chats to a customer about shoes and local history inside his crowded premises on Wednesday, May 25, 2016. Johnston says a British vote to leave the EU would rekindle a once-thriving underground economy in which smugglers would seek to profit from major price differences on either side of the border. (AP Photo / Shawn Pogatchnik) Suspect in UCLA shooting remembered as good student in India KOLKATA, India (AP) Residents of an east Indian industrial town were shocked Friday to recognize the face of a man they remember as a diligent student as the person who allegedly shot a UCLA engineering professor before killing himself in the U.S. state of California. But they said it's been years since they've heard from Mainak Sarkar, who left Durgapur in the state of West Bengal for a life in the United States. Police say that before he killed UCLA professor William Klug on Wednesday, Sarkar had already killed a woman in Minnesota his estranged wife, according to relatives, neighbors and public records. The 38-year-old Indian-American engineer had reportedly put both victims on a "kill list" police later found in his Minnesota apartment. This undated photo shows Mainak Sarkar, who police say carried out a murder-suicide at the University of California, Los Angeles on Wednesday, June 1, 2016. Sarkar had a "kill list" with multiple names that included professor Bill Klug, a woman found dead in a Minneapolis suburb and another UCLA professor who was not harmed, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said. (Facebook via AP) A former classmate at Durgapur's Bidhan Institute where Sarkar studied for two years after high school before attending the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur said he was "totally stupefied" by the news of the shooting. "Mainak was a very good student. In school, he looked so innocent and was well-behaved," said Mridul, who like many people in India uses only one name. "We were not in touch after he left for the United States." A former teacher at the school also remembered Sarkar as a solid student. "His behavior was good and normal," Gautam Biswas said. "This shooting is a shock to us. I can't imagine that Mainak is involved in such a shocking incident." Sarkar grew up in Durgapur, where his father worked as a clerk in a cement manufacturing company named the Associated Cement Companies Babcok. As a boy, he attended St. Michael's School until his early teens. "Sarkar's face looked familiar when I saw his picture in the media today," said Sumita Mukherjee, who was secretary to the principal at St. Michael's when Sarkar attended. "This morning I spoke to some teachers of that time. They said he was good in studies and cracked the top-ranking Indian Institute of Technology test. They also say he was well behaved, but a little introverted." Sarkar did not show up at the school's last reunion in 2014, Mukherjee said. "As far as I know, he didn't maintain contact with his schoolmates on social media," she said. Sarkar earned a degree in aerospace engineering in 2000 from the IIT at Kharagpur and moved to the United States. A neighbor who lived three houses from his family's home in Durgapur, 180 kilometers (110 miles) north of Kolkata, said his parents didn't hear from him after that. According to his LinkedIn page, he later obtained a master's degree at Stanford University. "He did not keep in touch with his parents after moving to the United States, and they used to be very upset about it," said Purnima Maity. She said Sarkar's father and mother both died several years ago, and his sister married and moved to Kolkata. Maity did not know if the two siblings had been in touch. At the IIT in Kharagpur on Friday, the dean of the aerospace engineering department said the news of an alumnus being linked to such a crime was "very shocking." But neither he nor other professors remembered much about Sarkar. "As teachers, we remember outstanding students or those who come back to us seeking recommendations for post-graduate studies. It appears he was neither," one of his former teachers, M.K. Laha, told the Times of India. ___ Sharma reported from New Delhi. This undated photo provided by the University of California, Los Angeles shows Bill Klug, a professor of mechanical engineering. Mainak Sarkar fatally shot Klug before taking his own life in a UCLA engineering building Wednesday, June 1, 2016, leading to a lockdown on the campus. (University of California, Los Angeles via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT PICTURED: Editor selections of the week in the Mideast In Iraq, elite counterterrorism forces have pushed into the southern edges of Fallujah, an Islamic State stronghold in the volatile western Anbar province. Their advance stalled by Wednesday amid fierce resistance from Islamic State militants and concerns over protecting tens of thousands of civilians still trapped inside the strategic city. With the operation to retake Fallujah now in its second week, convoys of special forces could only inch forward on the dusty southern outskirts of the city as a handful of airstrikes sent up plumes of white smoke above clusters of low buildings on the fringes of the city's dense urban terrain. FILE - Iraqi counterterrorism forces face off with Islamic State militants in the Nuaimiya neighborhood of Fallujah, Iraq, Wednesday, June 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) More than 50,000 people are believed to be still inside Fallujah, and the U.N. estimated that 20,000 of them are children, warning that they face a dire humanitarian situation in addition to the risk of forced recruitment by the extremists. The few families who have managed to escape had to cross the Euphrates River, a scene eerily similar to the refugees risking their lives at sea. ___ This gallery was curated by Associated Press Middle East Regional Photo Editor Maya Alleruzzo in Baghdad. Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mayaalleruzzo ___ Follow AP photographers and photo editors on Twitter: http://apne.ws/15Oo6jo FILE - Smoke rises from Islamic State group positions at the front line during fight against Islamic State outside Fallujah, Iraq, Saturday, May 28, 2016. Days into an Iraqi military operation to push Islamic State fighters out of Fallujah, residents still inside the city are preparing for a long battle, with some saying they fear being trapped between two forces they don't fully trust. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) FILE - FILE - In this image posted on an information sharing website by an Islamic State militant media arm on Monday, May 30, 2016, IS fighters prepare to battle Iraqi forces and their allies west of Fallujah, Iraq. Iraqi forces battling their way into Fallujah repelled a four-hour attack by the Islamic State group in the city's south on Tuesday, a day after first moving into the southern edges of the militant-held city with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.(militant photo via AP, File) FILE - Iraqis gather water in a neighborhood in central Fallujah, Iraq as Iraqi counterterrorism forces battle Islamic State militants on the southern edge of the city on Tuesday, May 31, 2016. A leading aid group raised alarm over the unfolding "human catastrophe" here, where an estimated 50,000 people remain trapped as the fight intensifies and renewed calls on warring parties to open up safe corridors for civilians to flee.(AP Photo, File) FILE - Iraqi counterterrorism forces face off with Islamic State militants on the southern edge of Fallujah, Iraq on Tuesday, May 31, 2016 a day after launching an operation of the militant-held city with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. (AP Photo/Osama Sami) FILE - Internally displaced civilians from Fallujah flee their homes, gathering on the edge to cross the Euphrates River, during fighting between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State group during a military operation to regain control the city, of outside Fallujah, 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, June 2, 2016. (AP Photo, File) FILE - Blindfolded men are led to a bus after being detained during fighting between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State militants during a military operation to regain control of Fallujah, 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, June 1, 2016. Since the operation began, the United Nations says they have received reports that some 500 men and boys have been detained for questioning as thousands of civilians have fled the city???s mostly rural outskirts.(AP Photo/Anmar Khalil, File) FILE - Smoke billows on the horizon as Iraqi military forces prepare for an offensive into Fallujah to retake the city from Islamic State militants in Iraq, Monday, May 30, 2016. A wave of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group targeted commercial areas in and around Baghdad on Monday, killing more than 20 people in attacks that came as Iraqi troops poised to recapture Fallujah. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) FILE - Internally displaced civilians from Fallujah flee their homes by crossing the Euphrates River on a boat heading to safe haven during fighting between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State group during a military operation to regain control the city, outside Fallujah, 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, June 2, 2016. (AP Photo, file ) FILE - Families from Fallujah flee their homes during fighting between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State group during a military operation to regain control the city, , 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, June 1, 2016. The U.N. children's fund has issued a stark warning to Iraqi troops and Islamic State militants in the battle for Fallujah to spare the children, the most vulnerable among tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the city west of Baghdad (AP Photo/Anmar Khalil) FILE - Internally displaced civilians from Fallujah flee their homes after crossing Euphrates River, during fighting between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State group during a military operation to regain control the City, outside Fallujah, 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, June 2, 2016. (AP Photo) Lawyer: Egypt can't be trusted to respect hijacker's rights NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) A lawyer for an Egyptian airline hijacker fighting extradition from Cyprus argued Friday that his client would not receive a fair trial in Egypt because its government was undemocratic and could not be trusted. Seif Eddin Mustafa fears he will face torture and execution if returned to his homeland, his lawyer told a Nicosia judge who must rule whether to accept Egypt's extradition warrant. Mustafa, 59, was arrested March 29 after using a fake suicide belt to force an Alexandria-to-Cairo flight to be diverted to Cyprus. All 72 passengers and crew members aboard the EgyptAir Airbus A320 were released unharmed after a six-hour standoff. "He will be tried by an undemocratic government and will be treated without due respect to human rights," said lawyer Robertos Brahimis. "If it's a dictatorship, then human rights are not respected. ... If not democratically elected, the government is not legitimate and its word can't be taken at face value," Brahimis said. But a Cyprus government official argued in court that the Justice Ministry accepted Egyptian legal assurances that Mustafa would be treated fairly and not face the death penalty. Mustafa laughed quietly and shook his head as he listened to the translated testimony of the Cypriot official, Yioulika Hadjiprodromou. Previously, Cypriot authorities had described Mustafa as mentally unstable. Mustafa has a right of appeal should the current court rule in favor of his extradition. An immigrant rights group in Cyprus called KISA also has filed a lawsuit challenging the Cyprus government's rejection of Mustafa's political asylum request. During the hijacking, Mustafa presented six pages of hand-written demands to the aircraft crew. In those notes, Mustafa denounced the Egyptian government and the "January 25th coup," a likely reference to the Egyptian military's 2013 overthrow of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. ___ Vatican summit of judges pledges aid to fight trafficking VATICAN CITY (AP) Judges and prosecutors from around the world pledged Friday to crack down on human trafficking and help victims of modern-day slavery in the latest Vatican initiative to draw attention to the problem and rally resources to fight it. At a Vatican summit of judges, prosecutors and other public officials, Pope Francis signed a declaration declaring human trafficking, forced labor, prostitution and the trafficking of organs as a "crime against humanity" that should be prosecuted and punished as such. The 10-point declaration, which was also signed by the conference participants, pledged increased funding for international cooperation to boost prosecutions of traffickers and consumers of the sex trade. It also pledged better support for victims, including issuing temporary residence permits, and said repatriation should never be the default judgment against victims. Pope Francis, flanked, by Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo signs a declaration during a two-day summit of judges and magistrates against human trafficking and organized crime at the Vatican, Friday, June 3, 2016. Judges and prosecutors from around the world are pledging to crack down on human trafficking and help victims of modern-day slavery in the latest Vatican initiative to draw attention to the problem and rally resources to fight it. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) History's first Latin American pontiff has made the fight against human trafficking a priority of his pontificate as part of his emphasis on looking out for society's most marginalized, including refugees and the poor. In 2014, he and 25 religious leaders signed a declaration pledging to eradicate modern-day slavery by 2020. A year later, he invited mayors from around the world to a summit where they pledged to work to end trafficking and the involuntary repatriation of victims. The 2016 edition focused on judges and prosecutors, with guests including the supreme court judges of Mexico and Argentina, Britain's commissioner against modern slavery, and the U.S. ambassador responsible for trafficking. In his address to the summit, Francis urged the judges and prosecutors to pay particular attention to the crime of trafficking but to make sure the punishments are not an end in and of themselves. "A punishment that doesn't give rise to hope is torture, it is not punishment," he said, repeating his opposition to the death penalty. Alison Saunders, the British director of public prosecutions, told Friday's conference that there has been a shift in the profile of victims of trafficking in the past two years, with more adult men, rather than women, being victims of forced labor in Britain. Previously, women forced into prostitution tended to account for most victims, she said. For his part, Richard S. Moultrie Jr., an assistant U.S. attorney, told the summit that the increasing crime of domestic servitude is often hard to detect because it occurs in the home, with victims often isolated by linguistic barriers, psychological abuse and fears of their own illegal residency status. "We must view the crime through a more expansive prism of criminal conduct, where trafficking is achieved through non-violent means," he said. ___ Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield Pope Francis, center, poses for a family picture during a two-day summit of judges and magistrates against human trafficking and organized crime at the Vatican, Friday, June 3, 2016. Judges and prosecutors from around the world are pledging to crack down on human trafficking and help victims of modern-day slavery in the latest Vatican initiative to draw attention to the problem and rally resources to fight it. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) Pope Francis, flanked, by Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo signs a declaration during a two-day summit of judges and magistrates against human trafficking and organized crime at the Vatican, Friday, June 3, 2016. Judges and prosecutors from around the world are pledging to crack down on human trafficking and help victims of modern-day slavery in the latest Vatican initiative to draw attention to the problem and rally resources to fight it. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) Pope Francis, flanked, by Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo signs a declaration during a two-day summit of judges and magistrates against human trafficking and organized crime at the Vatican, Friday, June 3, 2016. Judges and prosecutors from around the world are pledging to crack down on human trafficking and help victims of modern-day slavery in the latest Vatican initiative to draw attention to the problem and rally resources to fight it. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) Pope Francis, top right, speaks at a two-day summit of judges and magistrates against human trafficking and organized crime, at the Vatican, Friday, June 3, 2016. Judges and prosecutors from around the world are pledging to crack down on human trafficking and help victims of modern-day slavery in the latest Vatican initiative to draw attention to the problem and rally resources to fight it. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) Pope Francis smiles as he arrives to attend a two-day summit of judges and magistrates against human trafficking and organized crime, at the Vatican, Friday, June 3, 2016. Judges and prosecutors from around the world are pledging to crack down on human trafficking and help victims of modern-day slavery in the latest Vatican initiative to draw attention to the problem and rally resources to fight it. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) Pope Francis delivers his message during a two-day summit of judges and magistrates against human trafficking and organized crime.at the Vatican, Friday, June 3, 2016. Judges and prosecutors from around the world are pledging to crack down on human trafficking and help victims of modern-day slavery in the latest Vatican initiative to draw attention to the problem and rally resources to fight it. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) Kashmir rebels ambush Indian paramilitary soldiers; 3 killed SRINAGAR, India (AP) Rebels in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir ambushed a convoy of Indian paramilitary soldiers in a busy market Friday, killing at least three and injuring three others, police said. Police officer Syed Javaid Mujtaba Gillani said the militants sprayed bullets at the Border Security Force convoy in southern Bijbehara town. The rebels, who are fighting for Kashmir's independence from India or its merger with Pakistan, often attack Indian targets in the region. Paramilitary officer Nalin Prabhat said the insurgents fired at the convoy from an alley in the town's marketplace and later fled into a residential area. He said police and soldiers cordoned off the area and reinforcements rushed to track down the militants. In a telephone call to a local news agency, Current New Service, a man who identified himself as the operations spokesman for Kashmir's largest militant group, Hizbul Mujahideen, said it attacked the convoy. Kashmir is divided between Pakistan and India but is claimed by both. The countries have fought two wars over the disputed territory since they gained independence from Britain in 1947. Worker accused of burying boss in dirt with front-end loader DEBARY, Fla. (AP) A construction worker in Florida has been arrested after authorities say he buried his boss in dirt using a front-end loader. Citing an arrest report, the Orlando Sentinel (http://bit.ly/1Uz5TzN ) reports 32-year-old Erick Cox of Sanford was charged Wednesday with aggravated battery. Witnesses say Cox was arguing with 57-year-old Perry Byrd of Orlando at a construction site in DeBary when Cox dumped two loads of dirt onto Byrd, pinning him to the ground. The report says Cox then began hitting Byrd in the head with a 6-foot aluminum level. Byrd was knocked unconscious. Cox told investigators Byrd had threatened him and he accidentally buried Byrd's leg in dirt while reaching for his keys. It's unclear whether Cox has an attorney. ___ Kosovo, Albania in joint cabinets' meeting on EU integration PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) Kosovo and Albania have pledged to increase their commercial exchanges as part of moves aimed at one day becoming members of the European Union. Kosovo and Albania on Friday discussed how to advance the integration process into the bloc by increasing the number of joint projects in economy, energy, finance, environment, education, data and more. during a cabinets' meeting in the Kosovo capital, Pristina. Albania expects to launch membership talks with Brussels this year, while Kosovo signed a Stabilization and Association Agreement with the bloc last year. Maryland governor to honor waterman for rescue ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) Maryland's governor plans to honor a waterman for rescuing 23 people, including a group of schoolchildren on a field trip, from a boat that sank in the Chesapeake Bay. The Baltimore Sun reports (http://bsun.md/1t65qwv ) that Matthew A. Clark, a spokesman for Gov. Larry Hogan, said Thursday the governor plans to honor the "life-saving" actions of Jeremy Shockley of Toddville with a citation. Clark says Shockley's "quick response helped to avert what could have been a terrible tragedy." In this June 1, 2016 aerial photo released by the Maryland State Police, a charter boat belonging to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation lies in the Chesapeake Bay after sinking near Wingate, Md. A good Samaritan rescued more than 20 people, including schoolchildren, after the vessel sank Wednesday evening, authorities said. (Maryland State Police via AP) Everyone on board was rescued after the 40-foot Chesapeake Bay Foundation vessel hit a submerged object and sank in water about 10 feet deep near the mouth of the bay Wednesday. The Coast Guard says the boat was in a prohibited area. A Coast Guard investigation may determine just what the vessel hit. Lawyers: Appalachian Trail was client's 'road to redemption' CINCINNATI (AP) Attorneys for a Kentucky accountant who embezzled $8.7 million before going on the run said Friday that hiking the Appalachian Trail for six years as a fugitive put him on "the road to redemption." A sentencing memorandum filed by lawyers for James T. Hammes seeks a three-year prison sentence. That's less than half of what the federal government wants. U.S. District Judge Susan J. Dlott will sentence Hammes on June 22 in Cincinnati. He pleaded guilty last year to wire fraud and agreed to pay back millions diverted from his employer, a Pepsi-Cola bottler. FILE - This undated file photo made available by the Butler County Jail in Virginia shows James T. Hammes of Lexington, Ky. Hammes is scheduled to be sentenced June 22, 2016, after pleading guilty in 2015 to wire fraud and agreeing to pay back millions embezzled from his employer, a Cincinnati-based Pepsi-Cola bottler. Federal prosecutors said Wednesday, June 1, 2016, that they want a prison term of more than seven years for Hammes, who spent six years as a fugitive, much of it hiking the Appalachian Trail. (Butler County Jail via AP, File) The U.S. attorney's office seeks more than seven years in prison, citing the large amount Hammes embezzled and the fact that he fled. His attorneys say he has no criminal past, is remorseful and has spent years contemplating his wrongdoing on the popular trail that winds more than 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine. "He sought refuge in the foothills and mountains of the Trail, in an attempt to sort through a sordid past," stated the memo submitted by Zenaida Lockard, an assistant public defender in Cincinnati representing Hammes, and Federal Public Defender Deborah L. Williams. At times lyrical as it discusses the spiritual journey and "rediscovery" the picturesque trail offers hardy hikers, the memo says: "Each day spent out in Mother Nature shed light on Jim's dark past; and as he began to understand the flaws of his character, he moved one step closer to personal redemption." The memo said he has simplified his life and become "a changed man." It also said Hammes suspects he long suffered from depression and hopes to get mental health treatment. Prosecutors say Hammes, now 53, lied and stole on a monthly basis in a scheme he carried on for more than a decade, misleading everyone from his managers to his family with crimes motivated by "sheer greed." They say he prepared a complex escape plan that allowed him to stay on the lam for years. FBI agents arrested Hammes a year ago at an inn in Damascus, Virginia, during an annual Appalachian Trail festival. The inn's operator and fellow hikers said he was known by the trail name Bismarck and described him as affable and popular on the trail. Hammes, a Milwaukee native, was the Lexington-based controller for the southern division of G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers Inc. The FBI said Hammes created a sham vendor account, wrote checks to it, then moved the deposits into his own accounts. ___ Follow Dan Sewell at http://www.twitter.com/dansewell For some of his other recent stories: http://bigstory.ap.org/content/dan-sewell Latest: 4 Fort Hood soldiers' bodies found; total of 9 dead FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) The Latest on flooding in Texas (all times local): 7:20 p.m. The Army says the bodies of four missing Fort Hood soldiers whose truck was swept away in a rain-swollen creek during training have been found, bringing the total dead to nine. An Army and Texas Department of Public Safety helicopter search Lake Belton Friday, June 3, 2016, for four missing soldiers from U.S Army's Fort Hood that were swept away in a low water crossing during training when the Army vehicle they were in was swept away on Thursday. Five soldiers were killed, four are still missing and three were rescued on Thursday. (Rodolfo Gonzalez/Austin American-Statesman via AP) Maj. Gen. John Uberti says the last bodies were found Friday, a day after the 2-ton truck overturned in Owl Creek at Fort Hood. Three more soldiers were injured in the training exercise at the sprawling Army base in Central Texas. Fort Hood spokesman John Miller has said a crossing was flooded after two days of heavy rains and that the swift floodwaters swept the Light Medium Tactical Vehicle from the road. Central and Southeast Texas have been inundated with rain in recent days, and more than half of the state is under flood watches or warnings At least six other people have died in recent floods in the state. ___ 4 p.m. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is urging people in flooded areas of the state to heed warnings when they're told to evacuate and to not drive through high water or around barricades. Abbott gave a briefing Friday after taking an aerial tour of flooded Fort Bend and Brazoria counties, south of Houston. He says he's seen and heard too many stories of people being trapped in rising waters. The governor says the accident at Fort Hood demonstrates that even trained soldiers can be swept away. Five soldiers were killed Thursday when their truck overturned in a flooded creek. Four remain missing. Abbott says the Fort Hood deaths show that everyone needs to understand the power of rising water and the danger it can pose. ___ 1:50 p.m. Crews in helicopters and boats are searching the 20-mile Owl Creek for four soldiers missing after a truck overturned in high water at Fort Hood. The creek winds through heavily wooded terrain at the Army post. Owl Creek Park, where the creek feeds into Lake Belton at the northeast edge of Fort Hood, is serving as a launching point for Texas Parks and Wildlife game wardens who deployed two sonar boats in the search effort while a state Department of Public Safety helicopter flies overhead. The normally 30- to 40-foot-wide creek at the park is swollen Friday to some 500 feet wide. ___ 12:30 p.m. An apartment complex has been evacuated after ground saturated by days of rain collapsed and undermined retaining walls along a lake southwest of Fort Worth. Images provided by KDFW-TV in Dallas show the ground slid away from a corner of the complex Friday morning, leaving the foundation exposed and a steep drop extending toward Lake Granbury. Fire officials say no injuries have been reported but authorities are determining whether other nearby structures may be threatened, too. The lake is part of the Brazos River, which extends through much of Texas and has been the source of extensive flooding in the state. The river near Granbury on Friday was more than 4 feet above flood stage, close to a record crest of nearly 36 feet. ___ 10:50 a.m. A third Texas prison near the Brazos River in southeast Texas is being evacuated because of flooding. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice on Friday began moving about 1,700 inmates from the Ramsey Unit in Rosharon, about 30 miles south of Houston. They're being placed on buses for transfer to other prisons in East Texas that have room. Some 2,600 inmates at two nearby prisons in Brazoria County, the Terrell and Stringfellow Units, were moved out Sunday. Agency spokesman Jason Clark says additional food and water has been delivered to the prisons receiving the displaced inmates. ___ 10:30 a.m. Nearly the entire eastern half of Texas is under a flash flood watch or warning as the effects of days of heavy rains linger in creeks and rivers. Storms off the southeast Texas coast in the Gulf of Mexico are threatening to worsen flooding in places like Brazoria and Fort Bend counties, southwest of Houston, where residents near the Brazos River have been forced from their homes. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is scheduled to tour the area Friday afternoon. The river at Richmond in Fort Bend County, where flood stage is 48 feet, was 54.35 feet Friday morning, down slightly from Thursday. Fort Bend officials say 20 percent of the county's land area has been affected by flooding. Farther south in Brazoria County at Rosharon, the last flood gauge before the river empties into the Gulf of Mexico was at 52.42 feet Friday morning, a half-foot higher than 24 hours earlier. Flood stage is 43 feet. ___ 9 a.m. A Fort Hood spokesman says officials were in the process of closing roads on the sprawling Army post in Texas when a truck carrying 12 soldiers was swept away by high water, killing five and leaving four missing. Post spokesman Chris Haug said during a news conference Friday that the soldiers were being trained on how to operate the 2-ton truck when it overturned Thursday morning along Owl Creek. Haug says the portion of road where the Light Medium Tactical Vehicle overturned was not known to be overrun by water during past floods. The vehicle resembles a flatbed truck with a walled bed and is used to carry troops. Emergency crews searched through the night for the four missing soldiers. Three others pulled from the water are hospitalized in stable condition. ___ 1:55 a.m. Army teams and other emergency crews continue to search along a Fort Hood creek for four soldiers still missing from a truck that overturned in the swift water, killing at least five soldiers and injuring three. Fort Hood spokesman Chris Haug said the search continued after teams found the bodies late Thursday night of two soldiers who had been in the vehicle. Three others were found dead shortly after the 2 -ton truck overturned in Owl Creek during a morning training exercise on the sprawling Central Texas army post. Three soldiers were rescued and were hospitalized in stable condition. A Fort Hood spokesman said the truck was going over a crossing flooded by two days of intermittent heavy rains when it was swept away. Maj. Gen. John Uberti, Fort Hood deputy commander, center, Col. Todd Fox, left, and Fort Hood fire chief Coleman Smith, right, speak to the media during a news conference in Fort Hood, Texas, on Friday, June 3, 2016. Officials say Fort Hood commanders were in the process of closing roads on the sprawling Army post in Texas when a truck carrying 12 soldiers overturned in a fast-flowing flooded creek during a training exercise on Thursday. (Rodolfo Gonzalez/Austin American-Statesman via AP) AUSTIN CHRONICLE OUT, COMMUNITY IMPACT OUT, INTERNET AND TV MUST CREDIT PHOTOGRAPHER AND STATESMAN.COM, MAGS OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT Ukrainian president condemns leak of journalist data KIEV, Ukraine (AP) Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Friday condemned the leak of the names and contact information for thousands of journalists who have reported from rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine. The May publication by hackers from a group called Myrotvorets has raised concerns about the safety of the journalists, many of them from international media organizations. Some Ukrainian officials however, including the interior minister, have welcomed the publication of the data, accusing the journalists of being accessories to terrorism. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko drinks a water as he listens to a journalist's question during his news conference in Kiev, Ukraine, Friday, June 3, 2016. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky) Several journalists have reported threats from unknown people who called on their phones or sent messages to the email addresses listed in the publication. Ambassadors to Ukraine from the Group of Seven countries on Thursday expressed concern about the publication. Poroshenko on Friday told reporters that the publication was a "big mistake" and called for a probe into the leak. Poroshenko, however, called on journalists not to write "negative articles" about Ukraine and said some Russian reporters on the lists made "criminal things." He did not elaborate. "I would like to offer guarantees to journalists that there are no threats to you," he said. The hackers said they had gained access to computers used by the Russia-backed separatists to register journalists working in the conflict zone and felt it was necessary to publish the list "because these journalists collaborate with fighters from terrorist organizations." Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko gestures while speaking to the media during his news conference in Kiev, Ukraine, Friday, June 3, 2016. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky) Egypt's ex-head auditor freed, faces trial over 'false news' CAIRO (AP) The lawyer of Egypt's former chief auditor says his family has paid his bail, securing his release ahead of his trial next week on charges of "spreading false news." Ali Taha said Friday that his client, Hesham Genena, had spent the night in a police station after refusing to pay bail. He says that Genena's daughter collapsed with grief, prompting the family to pay on his behalf. Hesham Genena was charged with spreading false news after a newspaper in December quoted him as saying government corruption cost the country 600 billion Egyptian pounds ($67.6 billion) in 2015. Genena says he was misquoted, and the figure covered four years. Genena will stand trial on 7 June, three months after he was dismissed as head of the country's corruption watchdog. ___ US factory orders up 1.9 percent in April, best in 6 months WASHINGTON (AP) Orders to U.S. factories increased by the largest amount in six months but much of the strength came from a rise in demand for commercial aircraft. A key category that tracks business investment plans fell. Factory orders increased 1.9 percent in April, the biggest gain since a 2.4 percent rise in October, the Commerce Department reported Friday. Orders had been up 1.7 percent in March after having fallen in February. In this Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2014, photo, Boeing 737-800 airplanes are on the assembly line at Boeing's 737 assembly facility in Renton, Wash. On Friday, June 3, 2016, the Commerce Department reports on U.S. factory orders for April. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren) Demand in a category that serves as a proxy for business investment spending declined 0.6 percent after a small 0.3 percent increase in March and a 2.1 percent February decline. Manufacturing has been hurt in the past year by a big plunge in investment spending in the oil industry and weakness in exports, which reflect a global slowdown and the strong dollar. Orders for durable goods such as autos and appliances increased 3.4 percent, unchanged from a preliminary report, while demand for nondurable goods such as chemicals and paper, increased 0.4 percent after a 1.4 percent rise in March. The increase was led by a 65.3 percent surge in orders for commercial aircraft, a volatile category from month to month, which was rebounding after two months of declines. Orders for machinery fell 1.9 percent, led by an 86.1 percent plunge in demand for mining and oil field equipment. This sector has been hurt by the cutbacks in exploration and drilling that have come after the big plunge in energy prices. The Latest: Dispute between camps preceded fatal beating BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) The Latest on a homeless encampment beating (all times local): 11:30 a.m. Police in Vermont say a dispute between separate homeless encampments that involved smearing and pouring human waste on occupants' tents preceded the fatal beating of a transgender man. Burlington police say someone from one encampment smeared feces on the tent of someone from the other camp about 100 feet away. Amos Beede was then assaulted after he poured urine on the tent of one of his assailants. Beede was assaulted May 23. He died May 28. Police Chief Brandon del Pozo said Friday the crime showed "a lot of anger, rage, (and) commitment on the part of the perpetrators," but one of the suspects had a history of assaulting other homeless people. Police don't believe the fatal beating was related to Beede being transgender. Burlington police identified the suspects as Erik Averill, Myia Barber, Allison Gee and Jordan Paul. They are being held in California. ___ 10:10 a.m. Police say they do not believe the fatal beating of a man at a Vermont homeless encampment was related to his being transgender. Four people wanted in the May 23 attack on Amos Beede were arrested Thursday in San Diego. Burlington police identified the suspects as Erik Averill, Myia Barber, Allison Gee and Jordan Paul on Thursday afternoon. San Diego police Sgt. Michael Tansey tells The Burlington Free Press (http://bfpne.ws/20W60Hy) that the group will be held until authorities in Burlington bring charges against them and seek their extradition from California. They have yet to be assigned attorneys who can comment. Tips provided by Burlington police led San Diego detectives to the suspects, who were found at a park in the city. Police believe a dispute preceded the beating. ___ 7:50 a.m. Four people wanted in the fatal beating of a transgender man at a Vermont homeless encampment were arrested in San Diego following a nationwide manhunt. San Diego police Sgt. Michael Tansey tells The Burlington Free Press (http://bfpne.ws/20W60Hy ) that the four suspects wanted on suspicion of second-degree murder in the May 23 attack on Amos Beede were apprehended late Thursday. Burlington police publicly identified the suspects as Erik Averill, Myia Barber, Allison Gee and Jordan Paul on Thursday afternoon. Tansey says the group will be held until authorities in Burlington bring charges against them and seek their extradition from California. They have yet to be assigned attorneys who could comment. Tips provided by Burlington police led San Diego detectives to the suspects, who were found at a park in the city. ___ Prince estate administrator proposes timeline for claims MINNEAPOLIS (AP) The special administrator handling Prince's estate is proposing an aggressive timeline for testing claims of heirship to the music superstar's fortune. The order filed Thursday in Carver County District Court would require existing claimants to file a sworn affidavit by June 10. A three-page questionnaire asks for details on parentage, birth certificate, parents' marriage certificate, and more. The special administrator would let claimants know within three days whether their claim is confirmed or ruled out or genetic testing is necessary. FILE - In this Nov. 22, 2015 file photo, Prince presents the award for favorite album - soul/R&B at the American Music Awards in Los Angeles. A law-enforcement official says that tests show the music superstar died of an opioid overdose. Prince was found dead at his home on April 21, 2016, in suburban Minneapolis. He was 57. (Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision/AP, File) A Colorado prison inmate has filed papers claiming Prince is his father. Claims have also been filed by a woman and girl claiming to be prince's niece and grandniece. Saudis team with US university on security degree program A university in Connecticut will help shape the instruction of some security officers in Saudi Arabia under an agreement announced Friday that the school describes as bringing American-style police training to the kingdom. Under the agreement, signed this week at a Riyadh ceremony, faculty from the University of New Haven's Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences will advise the King Fahd Security College on the creation of a new security studies program. Other American universities have worked with Saudi institutions, but officials at UNH say they believe they are the first to collaborate in the area of criminal justice. The agreement was signed with the Saudi Interior Ministry under a Technical Cooperation Agreement between the two governments that promotes the transfer of security-related knowledge and skills from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia. "We're very pleased to be developing with the ministry an American-style program," said Daniel May, the UNH provost. May said the idea for the collaboration grew out of work the college has done in the Middle East and around the world to advance modern policing, led by the famed forensic scientist Henry Lee. The school's relationship with the Saudis dates back decades and about 400 Saudi students are currently enrolled at the University of New Haven, more than from any other foreign country. It took eight years for the agreement to be reached as the two sides worked through cultural differences, the time difference and concern about human rights issues, May said. The latest U.S. State Department report on human rights practices for Saudi Arabia noted concerns including citizens' lack of ability to choose their government, pervasive gender discrimination and reports that some members of the security forces and other officials committed abuses with impunity. Experts from the Lee College will help the college in Riyadh to develop curriculum for a four-year bachelor's degree program with specializations available in criminal justice, homeland security and intelligence studies. Instruction will be in English and under U.S. guidelines for academic freedom, May said. A UNH team will be on site in Riyadh to launch the program, which is expected to enroll about 150 new students each fall. May said he could not share details of the financial terms. UNH President Steven Kaplan, who signed the agreement in Riyadh, said it will put the school's expertise at the service of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's security professionals. "This agreement deepens longstanding bilateral educational cooperation between the U.S. and KSA, and we are honored to support the further development of security expertise upon which so many in the region and beyond depend," he said. Germany to probe intel agency's failures in far-right case BERLIN (AP) Germany's Interior Ministry has ordered an independent investigation into the failings of the country's domestic intelligence agency in a high-profile neo-Nazi case. The BfV agency recently acknowledged finding in its archives a cellphone and five SIM cards belonging to an informant codenamed 'Corelli.' German lawmakers are investigating whether Corelli had links to a far-right group called the National Socialist Underground. Prosecutors accuse the group's three members of killing eight Turks, a Greek and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007. The only surviving alleged member, Beate Zschaepe, has been on trial since May 2013. The Interior Ministry said Friday that a retired senior civil servant will investigate the BfV's handling of evidence and submit a report at the end of the month. The move increases the pressure on BfV chief Hans-Georg Maassen to explain what his agency knew about the NSU and why the cellphone and SIM cards containing potentially important information remained undiscovered for more than four years. The previous head of the BfV resigned in 2012 following questions about authorities' failure to apprehend the group, whose existence only came to light in November 2011 when its two other members Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt died following a botched heist. Police investigate why mom, 3 kids went off cliff into water BOISE, Idaho (AP) Authorities dug deeper Friday into what might have caused a dramatic SUV crash that killed an Idaho woman and her three children, while the kids' schools arranged to make counselors available for grieving classmates. Investigators so far have released few details about the crash, other than to say a witness reported seeing the vehicle accelerate from the side of the road before it went off a cliff and plummeted about 70 feet into a reservoir. Deputies found no skid or brake marks near the cliff, the Ada County Sheriff's Office said. In this photo provided by the Ada County Sheriff's Office, the Boise Fire Department dive team searches for an SUV driven by a 40-year-old Boise woman that plunged off a cliff into the Lucky Peak Reservoir Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Boise, Idaho. Divers with the Boise Fire Department recovered the bodies of two girls, ages 12 and 6, and the body of a 10-year-old boy from the vehicle, which was about 40 feet below the surface Thursday morning, according to the Ada County Sheriff's Office. A witness saw the SUV accelerate from the side of the road to go over the cliff, the sheriff's office said. (Patrick Orr/Ada County Sheriff's Office via AP) Also Friday, the county coroner's office identified the victims as 40-year-old Noel J. Voermans, 13-year-old Anika Noel Voermans, 11-year-old Logan R. Voermans and 8-year-old Gwyneth G. Voermans, all of Boise. The children all died of drowning associated with blunt-force trauma from the crash, the coroner's office said. The mother's cause of death was drowning. Toxicology results won't be available for several weeks, a spokesman said, and then they'll be turned over to the sheriff's office. The SUV drove off a cliff Thursday morning near a bridge on State Highway 21. It then plunged into Lucky Peak Reservoir. The top of the vehicle collapsed from the impact, deputies said. The SUV then sank about 40 feet before hitting the bottom. Divers pulled the children's bodies from the water about an hour and a half after the crash. Noel Voermans' body was trapped in the wreckage and removed once the vehicle was brought to the surface Thursday afternoon. Investigators will study the wreckage to determine if the vehicle had any mechanical problems, authorities said. However, a sheriff's spokesman said Friday no additional updates were immediately planned. The children attended East Junior High School and Riverside Elementary in the Boise School District. Classes for the year ended Thursday, but school officials were making counselors available at both schools Friday and Monday. Students don't need to make an appointment, school officials said. "This is a sensitive issue for children, and we suggest that you talk with your children about their feelings," the district said in an email to parents. "Your children may have been friends or classmates who knew the victims and, as a result, may need counseling services." In this photo provided by the Ada County Sheriff's Office, Ada County Sheriff's Deputies and the Boise Fire Department dive team stand by the wreckage of an SUV driven by a 40-year-old Boise woman that plunged off a cliff into the Lucky Peak Reservoir Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Boise, Idaho. Divers with the Boise Fire Department recovered the bodies of two girls, ages 12 and 6, and the body of a 10-year-old boy from the vehicle, which was about 40 feet below the surface Thursday morning, according to the Ada County Sheriff's Office. A witness saw the SUV accelerate from the side of the road to go over the cliff, the sheriff's office said. (Patrick Orr/Ada County Sheriff's Office via AP) In this photo provided by the Ada County Sheriff's Office, Ada County Sheriff's Deputies and divers with the Boise Fire Department stand by the wreckage of an SUV driven by a 40-year-old Boise woman that plunged off a cliff into the Lucky Peak Reservoir Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Boise, Idaho. Divers with the Boise Fire Department recovered the bodies of two girls, ages 12 and 6, and the body of a 10-year-old boy from the vehicle, which was about 40 feet below the surface Thursday morning, according to the Ada County Sheriff's Office. A witness saw the SUV accelerate from the side of the road to go over the cliff, the sheriff's office said. (Patrick Orr/Ada County Sheriff's Office via AP) Belgian judge to weigh extradition of Paris attacks suspect BRUSSELS (AP) Belgian officials say a judge may decide next week whether to extradite Mohamed Abrini to France, where he has been linked to the attacks that killed 130 people in Paris on Nov. 13. Friday's statement from federal prosecutors says a Brussels judge will consider France's extradition request June 9. Abrini has admitted being the so-called "man in the hat" pictured in surveillance video footage walking alongside two suicide bombers minutes before their March 22 attack on Brussels Airport. Abrini was arrested in Belgium in April. Belgian prosecutors say France has issued European arrest warrants for four other suspects identified as Hamza A., Mohammed A., Mohammed B. and Ali O. SC museum hopes race exhibit will foster conversations COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) A year ago, a nation stood horrified after nine African-Americans were deliberately gunned down during a quiet, evening Bible study at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. The massacre sparked anguish and soul-searching that led to steps unimaginable even a decade ago, including the lowering of Confederate flags in parts of the South. Now, the ever-passionate conversation about race has a new venue: the South Carolina State Museum. An exhibit opens Saturday that aims to tackle and explain the elements that comprise race and racism in the United States, in an effort to help explain differences and perhaps find ways to bridge them. "Race: Are We So Different?" opens June 4 and runs through September 11. Museum officials say the 5,000 square-foot exhibition is the first nationally traveling exhibit to tell the stories of race from the biological, cultural and historical points of view. This June 1, 2016, photo depicts images from the Civil Rights era that are part of a new exhibit on race at the South Carolina State Museum, in Columbia, S.C. A year after the tragic shootings of nine members of a historic black church in Charleston, officials hope "Race: Are We So Different?" will inspire constructive conversation and opportunities for healing. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard) Museum officials estimate anywhere from 15,000 to 20,000 visitors will tour the exhibit during its run, spending as much as three hours taking in the videos, text panels and interactive materials. The exhibit tackles its topic from a variety of angles, exploring the scientific reasons for different skin tones and using high-tech stations to give users an up-close look at how genes work and make us look different from one another. Other areas use historical photographs of "whites only" water fountains to depict the Civil Rights Era. One exhibit lays out the disparities experiences by white and black soldiers returning home from World War II. In another section, visitors can try to match up voices with the speakers' faces, in an attempt to see if you can "hear" someone's race. Officials have tried to bring the exhibit to South Carolina in years past but deemed it too expensive. But a new impetus for the project came on June 17, 2015. On that day, authorities say, an armed white man entered the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston and gunned down nine blacks during an evening Bible study. The suspect, Dylann Storm Roof, has since been charged in the killings. Authorities have said Roof wanted to start a race war. Pictures of him brandishing photos of the Confederate flag led the state of South Carolina to remove it from its Statehouse grounds. A school district in Virginia banned apparel displaying Confederate and other symbols in public schools. The Florida Senate voted to remove the Confederate battle flag from the chamber's official seal. William Calloway, executive director of the South Carolina State Museum, said that after the Science Museum of Minnesota approached him in February with a chance to launch the exhibit, the museum stepped into high gear to do in just a few months what typically takes nearly a year. The museum partnered with the Central Carolina Community Foundation and worked with a consultant to train facilitators who will help visitors ingest the powerful information while they tour the exhibit, as well as talk about it afterward. "A big part of this exhibit is not to leave the visitors hanging," says Calloway. "We do think it will stir emotion." On Tuesday evenings throughout the summer, the public is invited to come and talk about the exhibit, as well as race issues in general. On June 17, the one-year anniversary of the Charleston shootings, the museum is opening its doors to anyone wishing to pause and reflect on the events of that night and the year since. For Steve Benjamin, the first black mayor of South Carolina's capital city and first elected in 2010, the exhibit, and the conversations he feels certain it will inspire, will be beneficial for anyone interested in learning more both about what unites and divides us. As he walked through the exhibit a few days before its opening, the mayor said he also sees the historic flooding that last fall devastated parts of South Carolina including Columbia as an important illustration of how tragedies can affect people of all races in massive ways. "We showed America, we showed the world even more importantly, we showed ourselves that we're in this together," Benjamin said. "It's not the crisis. It's how you respond to it." ___ Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP. Read more of her work at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/meg-kinnard/. In this June 1, 2016, photo, Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin takes a first look at a new exhibit on race at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, S.C. A year after the tragic shootings of nine members of a historic black church in Charleston, officials hope "Race: Are We So Different?" will inspire constructive conversation and opportunities for healing. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard) Criminal probe into downing of plane over Ukraine nears end THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) The international team carrying out a criminal investigation into the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine nearly two years ago says it will reveal details of the weapon used and the exact launch site "after the summer." A Dutch civil investigation reported last year that a Soviet-designed Buk surface-to-air missile downed the Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur flight on July 17, 2014, but it didn't say who fired it. All 298 passengers and crew were killed as the jet disintegrated in midair and plummeted to the ground in conflict-torn eastern Ukraine. 17 civilians killed by rocket fire on market in Yemen's Taiz SANAA, Yemen (AP) At least 17 civilians including 10 women and one girl were killed and dozens were wounded when rockets hit a busy market in the western city of Taiz on Friday, Yemeni medical officials said. The rockets were fired by Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, who are besieging the city. They struck at around 3:30 p.m. local time, when Taiz residents were shopping in preparation for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is due to start next week. At least 30 people were wounded and the death toll was expected to rise, the officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the press. The market in the old city of Taiz is under the control of local resistance forces loyal to the internationally-recognized government, who are backed by a Saudi-led coalition. The city has been hard hit by fighting since coming under siege by the Houthis. Abdel-Rahim al-Sameei, a member of Taiz's medical committee, told The Associated Press that the rockets also hit a bus station, and destroyed several houses. He described the scene at the market as "mayhem." Friday's civilian death toll was one of the highest since the United Nations declared a truce on April 10 to pave the way for peace talks that started a week later in Kuwait. The fragile truce has been marred with violations and breaches by both sides as clashes and airstrikes led by the coalition continued in different parts across the country. Yemen's Human Rights Minister Ezz Eddin al-Asbahi said in a press conference in Kuwait that 212 civilians have been killed in Houthi shelling since the beginning of the truce, which he said had been used by Houthis to reinforce their fighters. He described the Taiz killings as "crimes against humanity." It wasn't immediately possible to reach the Houthis for comment. The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the growing number of children killed in conflict or recruited to fight in wars raging in six countries, including Yemen. In a report released Thursday, the U.N. listed nine government security forces and 51 armed groups that committed grave violations against children last year. Village hosts festival to celebrate the nuisance blackflies CALAIS, Vt. (AP) A Vermont village is hosting a festival to celebrate a nuisance of spring in New England: the blackfly. The 13th annual Adamant Blackfly Festival on Saturday includes a fashion show, a blackfly poetry slam and a blackfly pie contest in which entries are judged on their taste and blackfly homage. Blackflies aren't actually an ingredient in the pies, though. Some cooks try to make designs that resemble blackflies. "It's just about being festive and happy, and damn the flies!" said Janet MacLeod, an artist with a studio in Adamant. A collection of bug-related hats, some with insect netting, in advance of the annual Blackfly festival, giving tribute to the spring outdoor nuisance, are displayed in Adamant, Vt., Thursday June 2, 2016. The festival includes a combination parade and fashion show, with music and a blackfly pie contest where entries are judged on their taste and blackfly homage. (AP Photo/Lisa Rathke) MacLeod said one year a participant actually made the pies fly by shooting them off into the woods. Festival organizers say about 40 species of blackfly exist in Vermont, with only four or five that bite humans. In late April or May, they emerge from streams in droves in search of blood. In other parts of the world, they spread diseases like river blindness but not in New England. "Up here they are just basically protectors of our wild areas," said Alan Graham, Vermont state entomologist. Adamant, a village in the 1,600-resident town of Calais in central Vermont, has conditions that blackflies like: clean moving water in the form of streams. The festival schedule also includes live music, an auction and the annual Blackfly Parade, with a marching band, tractors and floats. Somebody might even bring their goats this year, MacLeod said. "We never kind of know what's going to be there until 2:00 when people start lining up," MacLeod said. The event, which is expected to draw 100 to 200 people, raises money for the Adamant Co-op, a community-run general store and post office. The festival ends between 4:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. at which time the schedule notes: "Blackflies all die." "That's optimistic," MacLeod said. A sign is displayed, in advance of the annual Blackfly festival, in Adamant, Vt., Thursday June 2, 2016. The festival includes a combination parade and fashion show, with music and a blackfly pie contest where entries are judged on their taste and blackfly homage. (AP Photo/Lisa Rathke) Man says he lunged at daughter's killer in court over smile CLEVELAND (AP) An Ohio man says he lunged at his daughter's killer in court because the defendant smiled disrespectfully at him. Courtroom deputies in Cleveland grabbed Van Terry after he leaped across a courtroom table Thursday minutes after a judge sentenced Michael Madison to death in the killings of his daughter and two other women. Terry told WJW-TV (http://bit.ly/1XUOAfj ) that he was thinking about his daughter when he went after Madison. Madison didn't appear to be injured. A court officer tackles the father of one of three victims of Ohio serial killer Michael Madison, left, who leaped over a table to attack the defendant in court just minutes after the judge pronounced a death sentence in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Cleveland. Van Terry, the father of victim Shirellda Terry, had walked to the front of the courtroom to give a victim-impact statement when he turned, paused and lunged toward Madison, who gave him a malicious smile. (AP Photo/David Richard) Prosecutors say Madison mutilated Terry's 18-year-old daughter. The victims' bodies were found near Madison's East Cleveland apartment in 2013. Terry says it's fine if he's charged with going after Madison because he did the right thing. A spokesman for the Cuyahoga (ky-uh-HOH'-guh) County prosecutor's office says the attack is being reviewed. A court officer tackles the father of one of three victims of Ohio serial killer Michael Madison, left, who leaped over a table to attack the defendant in court just minutes after the judge pronounced a death sentence in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/David Richard) Men defend loading Yellowstone bison calf into vehicle A Canadian man and his son loaded a Yellowstone National Park bison calf into their vehicle last month because they thought it was an abandoned newborn that would die without their help, the men said in their first interview since park officials had to euthanize the animal. The calf was killed because it couldn't be reunited with its herd after being handled by Shamash Kassam of Quebec, Canada, and his son, Shakeel Kassam, on May 9, park officials said. The encounter led to public outcry and renewed warnings by Yellowstone officials for visitors not to touch wildlife. Shamash Kassam was fined $235 and ordered to pay $500 to the Yellowstone Park Foundation Wildlife Protection Fund on Thursday after he pleaded guilty to a charge of intentionally disturbing wildlife. Kassam and his son told ABC News (http://abcn.ws/1Zj0UVw) on Friday the calf approached them with its umbilical cord still attached. They put it in the back of their SUV in the belief that they were rescuing it. "We didn't have the heart to kind of just leave it there and let it suffer, you know, as the darkness descended," he said. "I thought it was going to be a happy ending, and the calf was going to be integrated with another herd, and everything was going to be fine. We had no idea it was going to turn out so bad like that," he added. Messages left at phone numbers listed for Shamash Kassam in Quebec and Shakeel Kassam in Alexandria, Virginia, were not immediately returned. Park rangers took the animal back to where it was picked up, but they could not reunite it with its herd. The calf was euthanized because it was continually approaching people and cars on the roadway, Yellowstone officials said. They warned that humans approaching wildlife can affect the animals' well-being and possibly cause mothers to reject their offspring. Shamash Kassam said he was shocked by the media coverage and the public response, particularly accusations that he and his son kidnapped the bison or picked it up because they thought it was cold. The animal was abandoned, and he believed Yellowstone had a place where abandoned animals could be cared for, as a game reserve in his native Tanzania does, he said. He would just leave the animal alone if he could do it over again. The Latest: Suspect's sister: Her life revolved around sons PHOENIX (AP) The Latest on the killings of three young Phoenix boys (all times local): 1:30 p.m. The sister of an Arizona woman suspected of fatally stabbing her three young sons says she saw no signs that her sibling was troubled. A Phoenix police detective exits a home, Thursday, June 2, 2016 in Phoenix where three boys were killed during a several hour period Wednesday night. The boy's mother was hospitalized in critical condition with self-inflicted stab wounds according to Phoenix police. (AP Photo/Matt York) Vonitica (Von-Teesh-AH) Nickerson says the three boys were the center of the life of her younger sister, 29-year-old Octavia Renee Rogers. The bodies of the three boys ages 2 months old and 5 and 8 years old were discovered in a closet at their Phoenix home. Child welfare officials had prior contacts with the family but found no legal grounds to take the children into emergency care. Nickerson says Rogers was happy to have recently moved back to Phoenix after spending about a year and a half in Virginia. ___ 12:40 p.m. An Arizona woman suspected of fatally stabbing her three young sons and badly wounding herself has led a tumultuous life over the past decade. She faced domestic disputes with family members, inquiries from child-welfare investigators, and she tried to collect child support from the fathers of two of the three boys. Police haven't yet revealed her identity as she recovers from her injuries at a hospital. But court records in child support cases identify 29-year-old Octavia Renee Rogers as the mother of two of the slain children. The bodies of the three boys ages 2 months old and 5 and 8 years old were discovered in a closet at their Phoenix home. The youngest boy's body was found in a suitcase. Police have said the mother will face charges. ___ 9:20 a.m. Arizona child welfare officials had prior contacts with the family of three young boys found stabbed to death in their home. The boys' 29-year-old mother is hospitalized with self-inflicted stab wounds. Police say the Phoenix woman is the primary suspect and will face charges. The state Department of Child Safety says investigators couldn't locate the family in 2010 to check reports of a boy with a small abrasion on his forehead. The department says it also investigated cases in 2011 and 2016 involving marijuana allegations in which it found no legal grounds to take the children into emergency care. One allegation was substantiated, and the other was not. Director Greg McKay says the department takes seriously its responsibility to protect children but cannot predict the future, including "awful things" that people can do. ___ 1:15 a.m. The Phoenix mother had been transported to the hospital covered in blood with stab wounds to her neck and abdomen when police officers searching her house opened a closet to a grim discovery. Inside, officers found the bodies of her three young sons. Police discovered the dead boys ages 2 months old and 5 and 8 years old in a closet full of miscellaneous items. Phoenix police Sgt. Trent Crump said the youngest boy's body was in a suitcase. Crump said the children appeared to have been stabbed to death and "parts of their bodies were dismembered." The 29-year-old mother is in the hospital in critical condition with self-inflicted stab wounds. Police say she is the primary suspect and will face charges. Phoenix police detectives stand outside a home, Thursday, June 2, 2016 in Phoenix where three boys were killed during a several hour period Wednesday night. The boy's mother was hospitalized in critical condition with self-inflicted stab wounds according to Phoenix police. (AP Photo/Matt York) Autopsy finds no indication abducted Detroit boy was shot DETROIT (AP) An autopsy of a 13-year-old Detroit boy who was found dead in a vacant lot after being abducted from a city street found no indication that he was shot, the medical examiner's office said Friday. However, the manner and cause of Deontae Mitchell's death is still being investigated, Wayne County medical examiner's office spokesman Lloyd Jackson said in an email. Deontae's body was found Thursday on Detroit's east side. He disappeared Tuesday night while riding bikes with a cousin, who told police that Deontae had picked up money dropped by a man who was urinating outside a market. Surveillance video shows Deontae being pursued by a man, who grabbed the boy by his arm and forced him into a car. This image provided by the City of Detroit Police Department shows Deontae Mitchell. Police say surveillance video from a neighborhood market shows a man abducting the 13-year-old Detroit boy. An Amber Alert was issued earlier Wednesday, June 1, 2016, for Deontae. (City of Detroit Police Department via AP) Police have not said whether the man in the video is the same man Deontae's cousin said dropped some money, but Police Chief James Craig said during a news conference Friday that investigators know the abduction was committed "over a certain amount of money." Craig did not provide details. Police believe the man in the video was 45-year-old Gregory Walker, who was arrested Thursday with a woman in Toledo, Ohio. They have said he was armed with a revolver when Deontae was forced into the car and that at some point after the abduction, he returned to the market. Walker was being held Friday on a probation violation warrant. He was sentenced in 2013 in Michigan to two years in prison for receiving and concealing a stolen vehicle, according to state Corrections records. He also has past weapon, stolen property and drug convictions. A 30-year-old man sought by police in Deontae's abduction and subsequent death was arrested Thursday in Detroit. A 51-year-old man also has been arrested. No one has been charged in the case. Police are working with the Wayne County prosecutor's office, which will make a determination about charges, Craig told reporters. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan joined Craig at the news conference and said violent crimes especially those involving children are happening too often in Detroit. "The tragedy of Deontae Mitchell has touched the hearts of all Detroiters," Duggan said. More than a half-dozen people contacted police with tips after news spread of Deontae's abduction, Duggan said, which he believes shows a change in what some have called the city's "no-snitch" mentality. People are saying "enough is enough," Craig said. "When we see something that just doesn't fit we should say something." This image made from a surveillance video provided by the City of Detroit Police Department shows a man police are looking to question about the kidnapping of 13-year-old Deontae Mitchell. Police say the surveillance video from a neighborhood market shows a man abducting Deontae. An Amber Alert was issued earlier Wednesday, June 1, 2016. (City of Detroit Police Department via AP) Crystal Mitchell, the mother of Deontae Mitchell is comforted by family and friends when she arrives where a body has been found, Thursday, June 2, 2016 in Detroit. Detroit Police Chief James Craig said the medical examiner will determine whether the body found in a field is Deontae Mitchell, who disappeared Tuesday night. (Regina H. Boone/Detroit Free Press via AP) DETROIT NEWS OUT; TV OUT; MAGS OUT; NO SALES; MANDATORY CREDIT DETROIT FREE PRESS Crystal Mitchell, center the mother of Deontae Mitchell,is surrounded by comforting family and friends pray, Thursday, June 2, at the scene where a body was found in Detroit. Detroit Police Chief James Craig said the medical examiner will determine whether the body found in a field is Deontae Mitchell, who disappeared Tuesday night. (Regina H. Boone/Detroit Free Press via AP) DETROIT NEWS OUT; TV OUT; MAGS OUT; NO SALES; MANDATORY CREDIT DETROIT FREE PRESS UN says humanitarian access to needy in Syria is worsening UNITED NATIONS (AP) Access to millions of Syrians in need of help is worsening as violence increases across the war-torn country, the U.N. humanitarian chief warned Friday, and the Security Council announced it will formally ask Damascus to allow air drops to besieged areas. Stephen O'Brien said he told a closed emergency council meeting that recent attacks "are creating new humanitarian emergencies and compounding the challenges" as access continues to be denied to some besieged locations where needs are most acute. The 5-year-old civil war in Syria has killed some 250,000 people, displaced millions and left vast swaths of the country in ruins, enabling the Islamic State extremist group to take control of large areas of the country. A Russia- and U.S.-brokered truce began on Feb. 27, but fighting has continued to rage in many areas. While the United Nations continues to provide aid to millions of Syrians every month, O'Brien said it needs access and "the consent of the Syrian government and all necessary security guarantees, in order to conduct air drops." The International Syria Support Group, a coalition of world powers known as the ISSG, had called for the U.N. World Food Program to unilaterally deliver food to besieged Syrians starting June 1 if access wasn't granted by the government. France's U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre, the current Security Council president, said the U.N. "will ask Damascus to authorize humanitarian air drops to reach localities for which land access was denied by the Syrian regime." He said Syria's authorization of some aid convoys to besieged towns is "at best a drop in the ocean." "We have not been fooled by the Syrian regime's ploy to authorize certain convoys which turn out to be empty of food or medicine or both," Delattre said. "There is a strong momentum here in the Security Council, a strong pressure on the Syrian regime, to say 'enough is enough'." Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari insisted that "humanitarian aid has never been denied by the Syrian government to any part of the country." He dismissed "baseless allegations" by some council members that the government is hindering deliveries to certain areas and insisted the council meeting was an attempt "to demonize the government" and exert "political pressure" ahead of the next round of talks aimed at ending the war. Ja'afari, Syria's chief negotiator at the peace talks, refused to say whether Syria would authorize air drops. The Syrian government announced late Thursday that it approved the delivery of aid to 36 "restive areas" and partial deliveries to eight other areas in June. The United Nations had requested access to 34 locations to help 1.1 million people and Syria approved 23 requests in full and six partially, and rejected five, U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman Amanda Pitt said. O'Brien, the undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said the U.N. needs "full approval" of its June request. That request included all 19 locations officially designated as besieged areas except Yarmouk, which is covered by the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, and Deir el-Zour, which is under siege by Islamic State extremists and is already receiving airdrops, Pitt said. Of the 17 besieged locations that the U.N. sought to send aid, Pitt said Syria approved 12 requests in full and three partially Moadamiyeh, Daraya and Douna, where it approved medical assistance, school supplies and milk for children. Syria rejected U.N. requests to send aid to Zabadani, a mountain resort which has been besieged by government forces and Lebanon's Hezbollah fighters since last year, and Waer, the last rebel-held neighborhood in the central city of Homs, Pitt said. O'Brien said the U.N. has been able to reach 40 percent of the 592,700 people in besieged areas. But he said only two besieged locations were reached by land in May, a sign of the potential importance of air drops, which are more difficult and costly. WFP said it is "activating" its air delivery plan following a request from the ISSG, which is led by the U.S. and Russia. But it stressed the need for authorizations and funding first. The U.N. food agency said late Thursday that 15 besieged areas would require helicopter operations for air drops if land access is not granted. High-altitude air drops are taking place in Deir el-Zour and would be possible in two other villages, it said. Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, Syria's close ally, said Moscow is looking at "all possibilities" including air drops if they are effective. But he strongly criticized unnamed council members for trying to make humanitarian access a precondition for peace negotiations, calling this "an immoral position." ___ Puerto Rico inmates cast early ballots in Democratic primary SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) More than 7,000 prisoners across Puerto Rico are expected to cast early ballots for this weekend's Democratic primary in the U.S. territory. Prisoners lined up Friday to vote for presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and local candidates running for mayor and the island's Senate and House of Representatives. Puerto Rico's Democratic Party is holding its primary Sunday but allows early voting. Under the island's election rules, inmates who want to participate must vote early. Thousands of inmates cast ballots in the Republican primary held in March. Politico reporter booted from Trump rally NEW YORK (AP) A reporter from the news outlet Politico was ejected from a Donald Trump rally late Thursday the latest sign of growing antagonism between the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and the press. Politico reported that Ben Schreckinger had been typing on his laptop at the event at the San Jose Convention Center when he was approached by a Trump campaign staffer. After consulting with higher-ups, the aide and a private security staffer reportedly escorted Schreckinger out of the venue. Schreckinger had entered on a general admission ticket after repeatedly being denied press credentials for Trump events. "I was removed from Donald Trump's rally tonight for practicing journalism without the campaign's permission," he wrote on Twitter. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump applauds during a rally, Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) The Trump campaign routinely denies credentials to outlets it deems unfriendly, including Politico, BuzzFeed and the Daily Beast. Reporters from those outlets often enter Trump events as members of the general public so that they can report. Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in an emailed statement that the campaign was "looking into" the incident. "As I told Politico, the campaign was not aware of this incident or the circumstances surrounding his removal. We are looking into it," she wrote. Politico also reported that a second journalist, Carla Marinucci, was approached by a Trump staffer at the San Jose event. She was told she could stay, according to the outlet, as long as she did not "talk to people or interview them in general area where we sit." Trump escalated his attacks on the media this week during a charged press conference where he dismissed the political press as dishonest and insulted specific reporters, calling out one as "sleazy." Politico editor Susan Glasser said in a statement that the campaign's actions interfered with basic press rights. "If this is an effort to squelch independent coverage of their campaign, it will not work," she said. "Such actions constitute a violation of the basic right of a free press to report and as such the Trump campaign has a responsibility to let journalists do their job. US-led summit to seek to double number of resettled refugees WASHINGTON (AP) The White House says an international summit hosted by President Barack Obama will seek to double the number of refugees resettled around the world. Obama plans to host the summit on refugees in September on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. White House national security adviser Susan Rice says the summit's goals include a 30 percent increase in funding for humanitarian support. She says the leaders will also seek to increase by 1 million the number of refugees attending school globally. The summit comes as the Obama administration struggles to meet its commitment to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees this year. Europe has borne the brunt of the Syrian refugee crisis. The Latest: Driver, kids killed in Idaho crash identified BOISE, Idaho (AP) The Latest on an Idaho SUV crash that killed a woman and her three children (all times local): 11:15 a.m. Authorities have identified the mother and three children killed when their SUV plummeted 70 feet off a cliff into a southwest Idaho reservoir. In this photo provided by the Ada County Sheriff's Office, Ada County Sheriff's Deputies and divers with the Boise Fire Department stand by the wreckage of an SUV driven by a 40-year-old Boise woman that plunged off a cliff into the Lucky Peak Reservoir Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Boise, Idaho. Divers with the Boise Fire Department recovered the bodies of two girls, ages 12 and 6, and the body of a 10-year-old boy from the vehicle, which was about 40 feet below the surface Thursday morning, according to the Ada County Sheriff's Office. A witness saw the SUV accelerate from the side of the road to go over the cliff, the sheriff's office said. (Patrick Orr/Ada County Sheriff's Office via AP) The Ada County Coroner's Office in a news release Friday says the cause of death for 40-year-old Noel J. Voermans is drowning. The coroner's office listed the cause of death for 13-year-old Anika Noel Voermans, 11-year-old Logan R. Voermans and 8-year-old Gwyneth G. Voermans as drowning associated with blunt-force trauma due to a motor vehicle accident. The coroner's office says the manner of death for all four individuals is under investigation from the Thursday crash. Police say the SUV drove off a cliff near a bridge that crosses Lucky Peak Reservoir on State Highway 21. It sank about 40 feet before hitting the bottom. ___ 8 a.m. Authorities in Idaho are trying to determine what caused an SUV to go off a steep cliff and into a reservoir, killing a woman and her three children. Investigators say they'll study the wreckage to determine if the vehicle had any mechanical problems. The Ada County Sheriff's Office says an autopsy also will be done Friday on the body of the mother, a 40-year-old from Boise. The crash also killed her 6-year-old and 12-year-old daughters and her 10-year-old son. The Ada County Coroner's Office is expected to release their names in the next few days. The SUV plunged about 70 feet off a cliff and into Lucky Peak Reservoir on Thursday. Sheriff's officials say a witness saw the vehicle first accelerate from the side of the road. Deputies say they found no skid or brake marks where the vehicle went over the edge. In this photo provided by the Ada County Sheriff's Office, Ada County Sheriff's Deputies and the Boise Fire Department dive team stand by the wreckage of an SUV driven by a 40-year-old Boise woman that plunged off a cliff into the Lucky Peak Reservoir Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Boise, Idaho. Divers with the Boise Fire Department recovered the bodies of two girls, ages 12 and 6, and the body of a 10-year-old boy from the vehicle, which was about 40 feet below the surface Thursday morning, according to the Ada County Sheriff's Office. A witness saw the SUV accelerate from the side of the road to go over the cliff, the sheriff's office said. (Patrick Orr/Ada County Sheriff's Office via AP) In this photo provided by the Ada County Sheriff's Office, the Boise Fire Department dive team searches for an SUV driven by a 40-year-old Boise woman that plunged off a cliff into the Lucky Peak Reservoir Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Boise, Idaho. Divers with the Boise Fire Department recovered the bodies of two girls, ages 12 and 6, and the body of a 10-year-old boy from the vehicle, which was about 40 feet below the surface Thursday morning, according to the Ada County Sheriff's Office. A witness saw the SUV accelerate from the side of the road to go over the cliff, the sheriff's office said. (Patrick Orr/Ada County Sheriff's Office via AP) Bail set for man in downtown Vegas shooting that wounded 4 LAS VEGAS (AP) Bail was set at $250,000 on Friday for a North Las Vegas man accused of shooting and wounding two tourists from Australia and two other people last weekend on a downtown Las Vegas sidewalk. Pierre Terrell Devlin's attorney, Alissa Engler, said following his brief initial court appearance that she didn't know if Devlin could post bail ahead of a preliminary hearing June 20. Engler identified Devlin in court as a bus driver in Las Vegas who owns his home. She said he surrendered with his lawyer to police after learning that he was sought. This undated Clark County Detention Center booking photo provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department shows Pierre Terrell Devlin. Devlin was arrested Tuesday, May 31, 2016, on attempted murder, battery, conspiracy and weapon charges in a sidewalk shooting that police say left four people wounded early Sunday, May 29, 2016, in downtown Las Vegas. (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department via AP) Devlin, 32, is charged with attempted murder, battery, conspiracy and a weapon crime that could get him decades in prison if he's convicted. The judge entered a not guilty plea on his behalf. Police Officer Laura Meltzer said police are still looking for a second suspect in the shooting early Sunday. Prosecutor Liz Mercer told Justice of the Peace Diana Sullivan that two of the shooting victims were from Queensland, Australia. She said later the other two were from Las Vegas. One victim had been reported to have been in critical condition. Mercer said she had no updates on their medical conditions. The prosecutor said police found a gun at Devlin's home believed to have been used in the shooting. Witnesses told police that Devlin and another man argued with the four people before one of the suspects retrieved a handgun from a white Lexus sedan and opened fire. Police said shots also were fired from the Lexus as it drove away. Attack on Iraqi civilians fleeing IS in Fallujah kills 2 CAMP TARIQ, Iraq (AP) A bomb attack on a group of civilians fleeing the Islamic State group-held city of Fallujah on Friday killed two people and wounded three, Iraqi federal police and eye witnesses said. The explosion struck a group of dozens of civilians who were attempting to flee the city through an agricultural neighborhood on its northern edge. An Iraqi federal police official said the Islamic State group was responsible for carrying out the attack, but that it was unclear if it was a suicide bombing or a booby-trapped explosive. Smoke rises from Islamic State group positions after an airstrike by U.S.-led coalition warplanes as Iraqi counterterrorism forces face off with Islamic State militants in the Nuaimiya neighborhood of Fallujah, Iraq, Friday, June 3, 2016. (AP Photo/ Khalid Mohammed) The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the press. This is the first reported bomb attack on civilians fleeing Fallujah, but civilians in other parts of Anbar province have been attacked while trying to escape fighting between IS and Iraqi government forces. Residents trapped inside Fallujah said the Islamic State group has threatened those who try to escape with death. Aid groups estimate some 50,000 civilians are trapped inside the city, which lies just west of the capital, Baghdad. An international aid organization said Friday that 12,000 people have fled the outskirts of Fallujah since the operation to unseat IS was announced nearly two weeks ago. The Norwegian Refugee Council said that almost all the fleeing families lived on the city's outskirts. Iraq's prime minister says safe corridors were established to allow some civilians to flee, but residents inside the city and aid groups say almost all of the 50,000 civilians inside Fallujah are trapped. Philadelphia lawyer charged over beating outside Starbucks PHILADELPHIA (AP) Police in Philadelphia say a lawyer is charged with throwing coffee on another woman outside a Starbucks, then pulling her hair, punching her and pushing her to the ground before a pedestrian intervened. Police announced Friday that 47-year-old Yvonne Montgomery turned herself in May 24, about a month after the attack outside the downtown coffee shop. The Wyncote woman faces misdemeanor charges including terroristic threats and simple assault. Police released surveillance video of the April 25 beating to track down the woman. The cause of the altercation wasn't provided. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports (http://bit.ly/288Y6Qw ) Montgomery is a lawyer specializing in litigation for businesses and individuals. She also provides advice on topics such as workplace violence. A message seeking comment from Montgomery wasn't immediately returned Friday. ___ Alaska police seek help in airport tire-slashing probe ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) Authorities are seeking the public's help in investigating the widespread slashing of airplane tires at a small airport in the Alaska's largest city. Police in Anchorage are asking area businesses and others to check surveillance footage recorded between midnight and 5 a.m. Thursday. Police believe that's when the tires on 87 small planes were cut at nearby Merrill Field, on the edge of downtown. Aircraft tires can run as high as $2,000 each. Police spokeswoman Jennifer Castro said Friday investigators also have reviewed Merrill Field security footage, but she declined to discuss what was found. Police say it's possible the vandal or vandals entered the premises on foot from the south side of the airport. The Latest: Police say UCLA killer took bus to campus LOS ANGELES (AP) The Latest on the murder-suicide at UCLA (all times local): 6:45 p.m. Los Angeles police say a man who drove from Minnesota to kill his college professor at UCLA finished his deadly journey by bus. This undated photo shows Ashley Hasti, left, and Mainak Sarkar, who police say carried out a murder-suicide at the University of California, Los Angeles on Wednesday, June 1, 2016. Sarkar had a "kill list" with multiple names that included professor Bill Klug, Hasti who was found dead in a Minneapolis suburb and another UCLA professor who was not harmed, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation told The Associated Press. (Facebook via AP) Authorities say Mainak Sarkar (MY'-nahk SUR'-kahr) had lived nearby several years ago and knew the bus route to the University of California, Los Angeles where he killed engineering professor William Klug on Wednesday and then shot himself. His car was found parked in his old neighborhood Friday by a bicyclist. A bomb squad found no explosives but police say a handgun and cans of gasoline were in the trunk. The gas apparently was there so Sarkar didn't have to stop for fuel on his trip from Minnesota, where he killed his estranged wife some days ago. His car was spotted in Denver a day before the UCLA killing. Police Capt. William Hayes says Sarkar apparently held a grudge against Klug for several years but it's unclear what triggered his deadly attacks this week. ___ 3:40 p.m. Police believe officers have found the car of the gunman who fatally shot his estranged wife in Minnesota then drove to Los Angeles to kill a UCLA professor and himself. Police Capt. Andrew Neiman said Friday a gray 2003 Nissan Sentra with Minnesota license plates is parked on a residential street on the city's west side. They believe it belongs to gunman Mainak Sarkar (MY'-nahk SUR'-kahr). Neiman says the bomb squad plans to sweep the car as a precaution to make sure there are no explosives inside before other officers examine the vehicle further. ___ 2:25 p.m. Minnesota authorities have officially identified a woman found dead during the investigation of this week's UCLA murder-suicide as the wife of campus gunman Mainak Sarkar (MY'-nahk SUR'-kahr). The Hennepin County medical examiner says the body found Thursday in a Brooklyn Park residence was 31-year-old Ashley Erin Hasti and she died of multiple gunshot wounds. Police say Hasti was legally married to Sarkar but had been separated for some time and lived separately. Officers found a broken window where they believe Sarkar entered Hasti's home to commit the crime. Police say they had no previous calls concerning Hasti or Sarkar. Sarkar fatally shot his former UCLA professor, Bill Klug, to death on Wednesday and then killed himself. ___ 10:45 a.m. A relative says a Minnesota woman who was killed by her estranged husband before he fatally shot a UCLA professor was a world traveler and close to becoming a doctor. Jean Johnson, the grandmother of victim Ashley Hasti, said Friday that Hasti was smart and spent her late teens and early 20s visiting China, India and Tibet. She spoke fluent Chinese and knew French. She also dabbled in stand-up comedy. Johnson said the 31-year-old Hasti was a year away from finishing medical school at the University of Minnesota and hoped to work with children. Johnson said Hasti met Mainak Sarkar while she was studying at Scripps College in Claremont, California, in 2009 and 2010, when he was a student at UCLA. Hasti was found dead in her Twin Cities-area home on Thursday, a day after her estranged husband, Mainak Sarkar, gunned down a UCLA professor on the school's campus before killing himself. This undated photo provided by the University of California, Los Angeles shows Bill Klug, a professor of mechanical engineering. Mainak Sarkar fatally shot Klug before taking his own life in a UCLA engineering building Wednesday, June 1, 2016, leading to a lockdown on the campus. (University of California, Los Angeles via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT This undated photo shows Mainak Sarkar, who police say carried out a murder-suicide at the University of California, Los Angeles on Wednesday, June 1, 2016. Sarkar had a "kill list" with multiple names that included professor Bill Klug, a woman found dead in a Minneapolis suburb and another UCLA professor who was not harmed, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said. (Facebook via AP) Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck comments on the investigation into a murder-suicide on the UCLA campus during a news conference in Los Angeles Thursday, June 2, 2016. Detectives believe that Mainak Sarkar, a former engineering graduate student, intended to kill a second professor Wednesday morning, but could not find him on the UCLA campus. Chief Beck, said Sarkar left a "kill list" at his Minnesota home that led authorities to find a woman's dead body. At left is a Minnesota license plate illustration of the missing car driven by Sarkar. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) Students arriving to class walk past the engineering department at the University of California, Los Angeles on Thursday, June 2, 2016. Classes at UCLA resumed Thursday for most of the school, except for the engineering department, whose students and faculty will return Monday, following Wednesday's fatal shooting. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) Employees at the University of California, Los Angeles walk down a hallway past the Mechanical Aerospace Engineering Department office where Wednesday's fatal shooting occurred in Los Angeles, Thursday, June 2, 2016. Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck, said the man who carried out a murder-suicide at UCLA left a "kill list" at his Minnesota home that led authorities to find a woman's dead body. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) Brooklyn Park deputy chief Mark Bruley, left, reads a brief statement during a press conference Thursday June 2, 2016, at Brooklyn Park City Hall about a woman whos body was found, in Brooklyn Park, Minn. The investigation into a murder-suicide on the UCLA campus took a more sinister turn Thursday when police announced they suspected the shooter earlier killed a woman in Minnesota then drove to Los Angeles to confront a professor he believed had stolen his work. (Jerry Holt /Star Tribune via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT; ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS OUT; MAGS OUT; TWIN CITIES LOCAL TELEVISION OUT Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner officials remove a body at the scene of a fatal shooting at the University of California, Los Angeles, Wednesday, June 1, 2016, in Los Angeles. About two hours after the first 911 call came in around 10 a.m., with the center of campus still saturated with officers, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said it was a murder-suicide and declared the threat over. Two men were dead in an engineering building office, and authorities found a gun and what might be a suicide note, he said. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) A person from the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner's office removes a body at the scene of a fatal shooting at the University of California, Los Angeles, Wednesday, June 1, 2016, in Los Angeles. About two hours after the first 911 call came in around 10 a.m., with the center of campus still saturated with officers, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said it was a murder-suicide and declared the threat over. Two men were dead in an engineering building office, and authorities found a gun and what might be a suicide note, he said. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) People are evacuated by Los Angeles Police officers from the UCLA campus near the scene of a fatal shooting at the University of California, Los Angeles, Wednesday, June 1, 2016, in Los Angeles. Los Angeles police chief says shooting at UCLA was murder-suicide. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) A University of California Police Officer is seen behind a glass door, as he secures the entrance to the Engineering IV annex at UCLA campus near the scene of a fatal shooting at the University of California, Los Angeles, Wednesday, June 1, 2016, in Los Angeles. Los Angeles police chief says shooting at UCLA was murder-suicide. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) Venezuela's Maduro takes legal action against congress CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro is taking legal action against congress, accusing the body of meddling in the country's international relations. Maduro on Friday asked the Supreme Court to take action against congressional leaders he accuses of trying to interfere with the executive branch's duties by getting involved in foreign affairs. The move follows a call by the head of the Organization of American States for an emergency meeting of regional governments to evaluate Venezuela's respect for democracy. Congress had asked the OAS to take action against the Maduro administration. Congress President Henry Ramos has defended that request to the OAS, and says politicians are allowed to speak their minds. This resource is no longer available This resource is no longer available. Return to previous page. Police: Pharmacist fatally shoots shotgun-toting robber LEVITTOWN, Pa. (AP) Police say a suburban Philadelphia pharmacy owner shot and killed a would-be robber wearing a Halloween mask and carrying a shotgun. Falls Township police Lt. Henry Ward says the gunfire broke out just before 10 a.m. Friday at the Pennsbury Pharmacy. He says the gunman got out of the passenger seat of a minivan in the parking lot, walked in and went behind the store counter before the pharmacist fired nearly a dozen rounds at him. Ward says the owner watched on his security camera as the man came into the store with a shotgun and he was prepared for him. Slain Lyft driver worked at night, cared for baby during day MABELTON, Ga. (AP) Camila Wright took a chance three years ago when she got on a plane to meet the man who would become the love of her life. This week he was cruelly taken from her, shot dead while working to provide for his wife and young daughter. Shahriar Zolfaghari, 34, was shot in the upper torso and found dead inside his car at a stoplight in Atlanta around 1 a.m. Wednesday, police said. He had been working at night as a driver for ride-hiring service Lyft so he could care for his daughter during the day. Wright is a prosecutor who focuses on human trafficking cases for the Georgia attorney general's office. Zolfaghari's credit cards and ID were still on him and his car wasn't taken, and police have said they don't know the motive behind the killing. They've subpoenaed ride-booking records from Lyft, which the company promptly turned over. Based on the location of two shell casings found at the scene, investigators believe the shooter may have been in the car at some point, police have said. Georgia Assistant Attorney General Camila Wright hugs her daughter Zoya after speaking about the death of her husband at a press conference, Friday, June 3, 2016, in Mableton, Ga. Detectives are searching for clues in the ride-booking records of Shahriar Zolfaghari, a slain Lyft driver who was married to Wright, Atlanta police said. (Brant Sanderlin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP) MARIETTA DAILY OUT; GWINNETT DAILY POST OUT; LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; WXIA-TV OUT; WGCL-TV OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT Wright and her husband began talking after a mutual friend put them in touch. A frequent traveler who had previously lived abroad, Wright had wanted to visit Istanbul, where Zolfaghari lived. After they'd been talking for five or six months, she booked a ticket, excited to have a travel buddy but not expecting anything more until he met her at the airport. "The moment I saw him walking towards me holding a bunch of flowers, I said, 'Oh damn.' I knew it was something special," she told reporters outside her home in Mabelton on Friday as her brother and parents hovered nearby. "We married nine months later and we've had three perfect years." After their daughter, Zoya, was born a year ago, Zolfaghari put his career in real estate development on hold to stay home and care for her. "The day she was born, he looked at her and said to me that she would always be with one of us," Wright said. Each day when Zoya napped, she slept on her father's chest, Wright said. Ultimately, Zolfaghari hoped to start his business up again, so his wife could stay home with their daughter. The couple had also talked about having another child and about adopting children. "So he had that constant motivation to skip a little more sleep and see how he could move our dreams forward," Wright said. Zolfaghari generally spent evenings with his family, heading into Atlanta around 8 p.m. or 9 p.m. and usually returning home around 2 a.m. He would text his wife between rides and she would send him photos of their daughter. The night he died, he sent Wright a text saying he missed her and Zoya and called her around midnight to see if they could lend money to a family in need to buy a water heater. It was something he'd been working on arranging all day. The two texted a few more times, laughing at how he'd had one fare that was only $3, and then she sent him a smile by text and went to sleep. Wright awoke at 4 a.m. surprised to find that her husband wasn't there. "I could've sworn he came home," she said. "I was so confused because I really remember him coming home and giving me a kiss." She began calling, texting and looking for him. Then she called police sergeants and detectives she knows through work. They told her what had happened and hurried to her home to be by her side. Crime Stoppers offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction. Gov. Nathan Deal on Friday issued an executive order, at the request of Attorney General Sam Olens, offering $5,000 more. The family has also set up a GoFundMe account for people to contribute money to help pay for care for Wright and Zolfaghari's daughter. Georgia Assistant Attorney General Camila Wright holds her daughter, Zoya, while speaking to the media in Mableton, Ga., on Friday, June 3, 2016, about the death of her husband. Detectives are searching for clues in the ride-booking records of Shahriar Zolfaghari, a slain Lyft driver who was married to Wright, Atlanta police said. (Branden Camp/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP) MARIETTA DAILY OUT; GWINNETT DAILY POST OUT; LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; WXIA-TV OUT; WGCL-TV OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT Georgia Assistant Attorney General Camila Wright speaks to the media in Mableton, Ga., on Friday, June 3, 2016, about the death of her husband. Detectives are searching for clues in the ride-booking records of Shahriar Zolfaghari, a slain Lyft driver who was married to Wright, Atlanta police said. (Branden Camp/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP) MARIETTA DAILY OUT; GWINNETT DAILY POST OUT; LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; WXIA-TV OUT; WGCL-TV OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT Georgia Assistant Attorney General Camila Wright speaks to the media in Mableton, Ga., on Friday, June 3, 2016, about the death of her husband. Detectives are searching for clues in the ride-booking records of Shahriar Zolfaghari, a slain Lyft driver who was married to Wright, Atlanta police said. (Branden Camp/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP) MARIETTA DAILY OUT; GWINNETT DAILY POST OUT; LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; WXIA-TV OUT; WGCL-TV OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT Georgia Assistant Attorney General Camila Wright holds her daughter, Zoya, while speaking to the media in Mableton, Ga., on Friday, June 3, 2016, about the death of her husband. Detectives are searching for clues in the ride-booking records of Shahriar Zolfaghari, a slain Lyft driver who was married to Wright, Atlanta police said. (Branden Camp/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP) MARIETTA DAILY OUT; GWINNETT DAILY POST OUT; LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; WXIA-TV OUT; WGCL-TV OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT Georgia Assistant Attorney General Camila Wright speaks about the death of her husband at a press conference, Friday, June 3, 2016, in Mableton, Ga. Detectives are searching for clues in the ride-booking records of Shahriar Zolfaghari, a slain Lyft driver who was married to Wright, Atlanta police said. (Brant Sanderlin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP) MARIETTA DAILY OUT; GWINNETT DAILY POST OUT; LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; WXIA-TV OUT; WGCL-TV OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT The Latest: Trump calls violent protesters 'bunch of thugs' REDDING, Calif. (AP) The Latest on Donald Trump campaign rallies in California (all times local): 2:20 Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called those who attacked his supporters in San Jose, California, on Thursday a "bunch of thugs." Protesters against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump chase a man leaving a Trump campaign rally on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. A group of protesters attacked Trump supporters who were leaving the presidential candidate's rally in San Jose on Thursday night. A dozen or more people were punched, at least one person was pelted with an egg and Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) Trump was speaking at a campaign rally Friday afternoon in Redding, about 350 miles north of San Jose. More than a dozen Trump supporters were punched, hit with eggs and spat on Thursday night after a rally in San Jose. San Jose police arrested four people and defended their response as appropriately restrained. Some criticized San Jose police for intervening too slowly. --- 1:30 p.m. San Jose, California, and its police department are facing mounting complaints of a tepid and tardy response to attacks on Donald Trump supporters after a political rally. Videos circulating online show physical clashes happening in front of San Jose police officers dressed in riot gear. The officers stand stoically in a line outside the convention center where Trump spoke Thursday night. Critics also complained that assaults occurred on side streets near the venue that lacked police presence. The San Jose Police Department said in a statement Friday that officers initially didn't want to ratchet up the violence by responding aggressively and with physical force. Police arrested four people. --- 11 a.m. Hundreds are lining up for a Donald Trump rally in far Northern California but the atmosphere in the city of Redding is much different than it was in San Jose Thursday night when protesters pounced on Trump supporters. There are no protesters in sight ahead of the scheduled Friday afternoon rally at the local airport, where a giant American flag flutters from a crane. It's much more fertile ground for Trump's insurgent candidacy where rural conservative residents often feel slighted by government officials in Sacramento, 150 miles to the south, and Washington, D.C., a continent away. Redding is the seat of Shasta County, the center of a secessionist movement to create a 51st state called Jefferson. In San Jose Thursday night, protesters threw eggs and punches at Trump supporters, grabbed their hats, chased them and banged on their cars. Protesters against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump kick and jump on a car leaving a Trump campaign rally on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. A group of protesters attacked Trump supporters who were leaving the candidate's rally in San Jose on Thursday night. A dozen or more people were punched, at least one person was pelted with an egg and Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) Police form a line to contain protesters outside a campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) A police officer leads a man to safety after he was chased by protesters against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. A group of protesters attacked Trump supporters who were leaving the presidential candidate's rally in San Jose on Thursday night. A dozen or more people were punched, at least one person was pelted with an egg and Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally, Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) A man takes a selfie while getting his sign autographed by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a rally, Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) Iraqi military takes a slow approach in battle for Fallujah CAMP TARIQ, Iraq (AP) The battle for Fallujah is shaping up to be unlike any of the other assaults in the Iraqi military's town-by-town war with the Islamic State group. In the nearly two weeks since the operation began, airstrikes have been used sparingly, Shiite militias have so far been kept to the perimeter, and the initial advance on the symbolically important town has been slow. U.S.-trained Iraqi counterterrorism forces, wary of coming street battles in the city, are already facing fierce resistance on the outskirts from well-entrenched militants. Those fighters are believed to include many foreign jihadis who are considered better-trained that the ones in towns that have been retaken in recent months. Smoke rises after an airstrike by U.S.-led coalition warplanes as Iraqi security forces advance towards Shuhada neighborhood of Fallujah to retake the city from Islamic State militants, Iraq, Friday, June 3, 2016. (AP Photo/ Khalid Mohammed) In Ramadi the last major victory for Iraqi forces against IS many of the militants were able to flee to other strongholds along the Euphrates River valley. Now, all of that territory has been cleared, and the extremists have no escape route from Fallujah. That suggests a long fight for the city less than an hour's drive west of Baghdad. While Fallujah is smaller in area than Ramadi, an estimated 50,000 people are trapped in the city, twice as many as were in Ramadi when it was recaptured. Aid groups say about 1,000 families have managed to flee the outskirts of Fallujah since the operation began May 22. But the Norwegian Refugee Council, an international humanitarian group that does extensive work in Iraq's Anbar province, says none of the civilians trapped in the center of the city have made it out. Residents have told The Associated Press that IS fighters tightly control all roads in and out of the city and have threatened to kill anyone who tries to escape. "There is a clear difference between the Fallujah and Ramadi operations," said Iraqi military Brig. Haider al-Obeidi. The terrain is a challenge, he said, because the outskirts are dotted with orchards and irrigation canals that give IS fighters working in small mobile units an advantage over the slow-moving convoys of armored vehicles The fighters his men are encountering are better trained than those in pervious battles, al-Obeidi said. Military commanders are reporting larger numbers of foreign fighters in Fallujah. "Their snipers are smart, they hit essential parts of the bulldozers' engines and Humvees' wheels," he said. Repairing them takes time and slows advances, and the forces have not received any new weaponry or additional training that would help, al-Obeidi said. The troops have few options beyond trying to protect their units from IS counterattacks, he said. As streets are cleared, they plan to erect roadblocks to guard against suicide car bombs, one of the deadliest IS tactics. Iraqi forces are continuing to move forward, snaking through the desert on Fallujah's southern edge. Smoke rose Friday from a cluster of factories and industrial buildings in the area. On the city's northeastern edge, Shiite militia forces fired mortar rounds into the city from suburbs cleared by Iraqi federal police. Another big concern in the assault is the tension between Sunnis and Shiites. Fallujah, part of the Sunni heartland of western Iraq, has long been a bastion of bitterness toward the Shiite-led central government in Baghdad that emerged after the 2003 U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. The city was the heart of the Sunni insurgency against U.S. forces in the mid-2000s that eventually gave birth to al-Qaida in Iraq. As revolution swept across the Middle East in 2011, Iraq's own anti-government protest movement began in Fallujah and quickly mobilized millions across the Sunni-majority provinces. The Islamic State group took it over in 2014. Military commanders say the mostly Shiite militias, formally incorporated into the government's Popular Mobilization Forces umbrella group, will not be part of any push into the center of the city. The militias have been accused of abusing Sunni civilians in past operations. In Ramadi, Shiite militias stayed out of the fight entirely. In Fallujah, even their participation on the sidelines could be a problem, according to Patrick Martin of the institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank. "It's going to be more of an issue now because of their proximity to Fallujah and the fact that they view Fallujah and its residents with great suspicion," Martin said. While there was swift progress securing Fallujah's outskirts, pushing into the city has been much slower. It is expected to slow even further the closer that the forces get to the city center. "When you get into the dense urban terrain, it's going to be hot and it's going to be tough work," said Col. Christopher Garver, the Baghdad-based spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State group. So far, Garver said, the speed of the operation has been determined by how much coalition air support Iraqi troops are getting. As they move into urban areas, calling in airstrikes will become more difficult due to the presence of trapped civilians and the threat of inadvertently hitting friendly forces. Martin said a drawn out battle will not only have humanitarian consequences, it could also allow IS to regroup and launch even more debilitating counterattacks. "The longer the operation goes on for, the more likely ISIS will be able to regenerate attack capabilities," he said. ___ Associated Press writer Susannah George in Baghdad contributed to this report. Iraqi military forces prepare for an offensive into Fallujah to retake the city from Islamic State militants in Iraq, Friday, June 3, 2016. The battle for Fallujah, now two weeks old, is shaping up unlike others in the Iraqi military's town-by-town war with the Islamic State group: Airstrikes have been sparingly employed, potentially violent Shiite militias have so far been kept to the perimeter, and the initial advance on the symbolically important town has been slow.(AP Photo/ Khalid Mohammed) Smoke rises from Islamic State group positions after an airstrike by U.S.-led coalition warplanes as Iraqi counterterrorism forces face off with Islamic State militants in Nuaimiya neighborhood of Fallujah, Iraq, Friday, June 3, 2016. (AP Photo/ Khalid Mohammed) Iraqi military forces prepare for an offensive into Fallujah to retake the city from Islamic State militants in Iraq, Friday, June 3, 2016. The battle for Fallujah, now two weeks old, is shaping up unlike others in the Iraqi military's town-by-town war with the Islamic State group: Airstrikes have been sparingly employed, potentially violent Shiite militias have so far been kept to the perimeter, and the initial advance on the symbolically important town has been slow. (AP Photo/ Khalid Mohammed) Iraqi security forces advance towards the Nuaimiya neighborhood of Fallujah, Iraq, Friday, June 3, 2016. The battle for Fallujah, now two weeks old, is shaping up unlike others in the Iraqi military's town-by-town war with the Islamic State group: Airstrikes have been sparingly employed, potentially violent Shiite militias have so far been kept to the perimeter, and the initial advance on the symbolically important town has been slow. (AP Photo/ Khalid Mohammed) Iraqi military forces prepare for an offensive into Fallujah to retake the city from Islamic State militants in Iraq, Friday, June 3, 2016. The battle for Fallujah, now two weeks old, is shaping up unlike others in the Iraqi military's town-by-town war with the Islamic State group: Airstrikes have been sparingly employed, potentially violent Shiite militias have so far been kept to the perimeter, and the initial advance on the symbolically important town has been slow. (AP Photo/ Khalid Mohammed) Lt. General Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, center, commander for the Iraqi counterterrorism forces' operation to re-take Fallujah from Islamic State militants, directs his forces outside the city Friday, June 3, 2016. The battle for Fallujah, now two weeks old, is shaping up unlike others in the Iraqi militarys town-by-town war with the Islamic State group: Airstrikes have been sparingly employed, Shiite militias have so far been kept to the perimeter, and the initial advance on the symbolically important town has been slow. (AP Photo/ Khalid Mohammed) The Latest: Manner, cause of abducted boy's death pending DETROIT (AP) The Latest on the discovery of a young boy's body in Detroit and the arrest of a suspect found in Ohio (all times local): 2:40 p.m. An autopsy has determined that a 13-year-old Detroit boy who was abducted and killed this week was not shot to death. This image provided by the City of Detroit Police Department shows Deontae Mitchell. Police say surveillance video from a neighborhood market shows a man abducting the 13-year-old Detroit boy. An Amber Alert was issued earlier Wednesday, June 1, 2016, for Deontae. (City of Detroit Police Department via AP) The Wayne County medical examiner's office conducted an autopsy Friday. County spokesman Lloyd Jackson said in a statement that the manner and cause of Deontae Mitchell's death has yet to be determined, pending further investigation, but that the teenager was not shot. Deontae had been riding his bike with a cousin Tuesday night when he was abducted outside a market on the city's east side. Surveillance video shows a man forcing the boy into a car. Police believe that man was 45-year-old Gregory Walker, who was arrested Thursday with a woman in Toledo, Ohio. Deontae's body was found Thursday in a vacant lot on Detroit's east side. Two other men have since been arrested in Detroit. ____ 12:25 p.m. Police say a fourth person sought following the abduction and death of a 13-year-old Detroit boy who was riding a bike along a city street has been taken into custody. Detroit police Chief James Craig says the 51-year-old man was arrested Friday, but no charges have been filed against him or three others. Craig also said that police are awaiting the results of an autopsy on the body of Deontae Mitchell, which was found Thursday in a vacant lot. Deontae disappeared Tuesday night while riding bikes with a cousin. Surveillance video shows Deontae being pursued by a man who grabbed the boy by his arm and forced him into a car. Police believe that man was 45-year-old Gregory Walker, who was arrested with a woman in Toledo, Ohio. Another man was arrested Thursday in Detroit. This image made from a surveillance video provided by the City of Detroit Police Department shows a man police are looking to question about the kidnapping of 13-year-old Deontae Mitchell. Police say the surveillance video from a neighborhood market shows a man abducting Deontae. An Amber Alert was issued earlier Wednesday, June 1, 2016. (City of Detroit Police Department via AP) Crystal Mitchell, the mother of Deontae Mitchell is comforted by family and friends when she arrives where a body has been found, Thursday, June 2, 2016 in Detroit. Detroit Police Chief James Craig said the medical examiner will determine whether the body found in a field is Deontae Mitchell, who disappeared Tuesday night. (Regina H. Boone/Detroit Free Press via AP) DETROIT NEWS OUT; TV OUT; MAGS OUT; NO SALES; MANDATORY CREDIT DETROIT FREE PRESS Crystal Mitchell, center the mother of Deontae Mitchell,is surrounded by comforting family and friends pray, Thursday, June 2, at the scene where a body was found in Detroit. Detroit Police Chief James Craig said the medical examiner will determine whether the body found in a field is Deontae Mitchell, who disappeared Tuesday night. (Regina H. Boone/Detroit Free Press via AP) DETROIT NEWS OUT; TV OUT; MAGS OUT; NO SALES; MANDATORY CREDIT DETROIT FREE PRESS Ex-'Survivor' contestant to face trial on child porn charges CLARKSTON, Mich. (AP) Former "Survivor" contestant Michael Skupin has been ordered to trial in Michigan on child pornography charges and other crimes. A suburban Detroit judge on Friday said there's enough evidence to send Skupin to Oakland County court. He was charged in February. Investigators say child porn was discovered on Skupin's laptop while they were looking into an alleged Ponzi scheme in which money from new investors is used to pay earlier investors. Defense attorney Steven Lynch says police can't prove that Skupin owned or even used the computers. Ryan rips Trump comments on Mexican judge after endorsement WASHINGTON (AP) House speaker Paul Ryan is condemning Donald Trump's charge that a federal judge's Mexican heritage creates a conflict of interest in a court case involving one of the Republican billionaire's companies. Ryan on Friday told Wisconsin radio station WISN that Trump's comment on the judge "was out of left field for my mind." He said it's "reasoning I don't relate to, I completely disagree with the thinking behind that." The speaker's remarks come one day after he endorsed Trump's presidential bid. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., talks during an interview with The Associated Press Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Janesville, Wis. Ryan endorsed Donald Trump on Thursday, ending an extraordinary public split between the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee and the nation's highest-ranking Republican office holder. (AP Photo/Andy Manis) Trump told The Wall Street Journal that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel has "an inherent conflict of interest" because of Trump's plan to build a wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico. San Jose, California police under fire after Trump rally SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) This Silicon Valley city and its police department are facing mounting complaints of a tepid and tardy law enforcement response to attacks of Donald Trump supporters after a political rally. Videos circulating online show physical clashes occurring in front of San Jose police officers dressed in riot gear and standing stoically in a line outside the convention center where Trump spoke. Critics also complained that assaults occurred on side streets near the venue that lacked police presence. "Potentially more could have been done," said San Jose Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio, chairman of the council's public safety committee. Protesters against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump chase a man leaving a Trump campaign rally on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. A group of protesters attacked Trump supporters who were leaving the presidential candidate's rally in San Jose on Thursday night. A dozen or more people were punched, at least one person was pelted with an egg and Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) The questions about the San Jose police response came while Trump launched a rally Friday afternoon in Redding, California, a politically conservative city 350 miles north of San Jose. Trump called those who attacked his supporters Thursday night a "bunch of thugs." San Jose police chief Eddie Garcia commended his officers' response to the violence after the Thursday night rally, saying the 250 officers on hand showed "discipline and restraint." Garcia said uniformed officers refused to break from their "skirmish line" to break up nearby scuffles because they weren't deemed life threatening and that "additional force can incite more violence in the crowd." San Jose police arrested four people Thursday. One officer suffered minor injuries after a dozen or more people were punched and car windows were broken Thursday night. Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. At least one woman was pelted with an egg. Police stood their ground at first but after about 90 minutes moved into the remaining crowd to break it up and make arrests. "Many of the attendees were attacked out in the open," said Pete Constant, a former San Jose councilman and former police officer. "It appears that law enforcement was more focused on protecting private property." Thursday night's crowd, which had numbered over 300 just after the rally, thinned significantly as the night went on, but those who remained near the San Jose Convention Center were rowdy and angry. Some banged on the cars of Trump supporters as they left the rally and chased after those on foot. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, a Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter, criticized Trump for coming to cities and igniting problems that local police departments had to deal with. "At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign," Liccardo told The Associated Press by phone. Liccardo defended the police Friday. "San Jose police officers performed admirably and professionally to contain acts of violence and protect individuals' rights to assemble, protest and express their political views," the mayor said. Meanwhile, the atmosphere Friday in Redding was far calmer than in San Jose. The region is fertile ground for Trump's insurgent candidacy, where rural conservative residents often feel slighted by government officials in Sacramento, the state capital, and Washington, D.C. "It's about representation and it's about making America great again," said Jan Hanks of Shasta, a small town west of Redding. Clinton and Democratic opponent Bernie Sanders also have scheduled campaign stops in California on Friday as they look to Tuesday's state primary. ___ Associated Press writer Donald Thompson contributed to this report from Redding, California. Protesters against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump kick and jump on a car leaving a Trump campaign rally on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. A group of protesters attacked Trump supporters who were leaving the candidate's rally in San Jose on Thursday night. A dozen or more people were punched, at least one person was pelted with an egg and Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) Police form a line to contain protesters outside a campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) A police officer leads a man to safety after he was chased by protesters against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. A group of protesters attacked Trump supporters who were leaving the presidential candidate's rally in San Jose on Thursday night. A dozen or more people were punched, at least one person was pelted with an egg and Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally, Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) A man takes a selfie while getting his sign autographed by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a rally, Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) Turkey ends security operations near Iraq, Syria border ISTANBUL (AP) Turkey's state-run news agency says security operations have ended in two flashpoint districts of the southeast. Anadolu Agency said Friday counter-terrorism operations have ended in the mainly Kurdish towns of Sirnak and Nusaybin. Turkey's southeast has witnessed some of the worst violence in years since the collapse of a truce between Kurdish rebels and the state last summer. The agency said 496 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK were killed in Nusaybin, near the Syrian border. The office of the governor of Nusaybin said 50 soldiers died there. Anadolu said another 498 rebels were killed near the border with Iraq, in Sirnak. Argentines protest violence against women BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) Thousands of people marched in Buenos Aires on Friday to condemn violence against women, the latest public outcry following the recent killings of three 12-year-old girls in Argentina and the gang rape of a teenage girl in Brazil. The rally was organized on social media by women's groups under the slogan #NiUnaMenos, meaning "Not one less." Demonstrators wearing the purple wigs that represent the movement flooded the streets in front of the congress building. Many waved flags or wore shirts emblazoned with photos of victims of domestic violence. "We're here because we want justice. Not just for us but everyone who has suffered," said Angelica Itati Nunez. She held a T-shirt displaying photos of her 15-year-old daughter, 6-year-old granddaughter and her mother-in-law, who were killed by the same man in 2012. Demonstrators holding photos of victims of gender violence march outside the National Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, June 3, 2016. Thousands marched under the Spanish slogan #niunamenos, which in English means "not even one less." Women's rights group Casa del Encuentro reports 275 femicides or gender-based killing of women in the past year. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano) There were 275 gender-based killings of Argentine women in the past year, according to Casa del Encuentro, a women's rights group and shelter. In 40 of those cases, women had reported attacks by men, and some even had a restraining order. In the case of Karina Abregu, half her body was badly burned after her husband doused her with alcohol and set her on fire in 2014. She had already reported beatings and other abuses during their 13 years of marriage, but she said authorities failed to intervene. Her husband was only jailed after her case was reported in the press. "If we don't get the protection we need from the government, we'll keep fighting in the streets to get it," said Abregu, whose husband was sentenced last April to 11 years in prison. The #NiUnaMenos movement was launched in Argentina last year and garnered global attention. Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi joined last year's campaign with a message against femicides published on his Twitter account. During a recent visit, Michelle Obama also praised the efforts by Argentine women to fight against violence. This year's march comes after the recent killings of three 12-year-olds in Argentina. Micaela Ortega was found strangled on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Police say a 26-year-old man tricked her into meeting him by pretending to be a girl of her same age using a fake profile on Facebook. Authorities say Milagros Torres was strangled by her mother's former boyfriend in northern Argentina. Guadalupe Medina was abused and murdered by a drug gang in Santa Fe province. Similar marches against gender-based violence were held Friday in Uruguay and Brazil, where the recent gang rape of a 16-year-old girl shocked the nation and highlighted its endemic problem of violence against women. __ Associated Press video journalist Paul Byrne in Buenos Aires and Leonardo Haberkorn in Montevideo, Uruguay contributed this report. Demonstrators hold placards with a phrase that reads in English "not even one less" during a march against domestic violence outside the National Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, June 3, 2016. The women's rights group Casa del Encuentro reported 275 femicides or gender-based killing of women in the past year. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano) Demonstrators, holding the photos of their relatives who were victims of gender violence, march outside the National Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, June 3, 2016. Thousands marched under the Spanish slogan #niunamenos, which in English means "not even one less." Women's rights group Casa del Encuentro reports 275 femicides or gender-based killing of women in the past year. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano) A demonstrator picks up a flyer against domestic violence, right, that mocks the flyer promoting prostitution that are normally found across the city during a march against domestic violence outside the National Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, June 3, 2016. Women's rights group Casa del Encuentro reports 275 femicides or gender-based killing of women in the past year. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano) Thousands of demonstrators march against domestic violence outside the National Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, June 3, 2016. Women's rights group Casa del Encuentro reports 275 femicides or gender-based killing of women in the past year. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano) Artist Cecilia Coppo makes a mural that resembles Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man but using a woman as a model during a march against domestic violence outside the National Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, June 3, 2016. Thousands marched under the Spanish slogan #niunamenos, which in English means "not even one less." Women's rights group Casa del Encuentro reports 275 femicides or gender-based killing of women in the past year. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano) A woman holds signs that read in English "not even one less" during a march against domestic violence outside the National Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, June 3, 2016. The women's rights group Casa del Encuentro reported 275 femicides or gender-based killing of women in the past year. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano) Florida man given death in murder of girlfriend, son CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) A Florida man convicted of murdering his girlfriend and their infant son in 2010 was sentenced to death on both counts of first-degree murder. The Tampa Bay Times (http://bit.ly/1X34O6M) reports that 41-year-old Craig Wall said, "Woohoo," when Pinellas County Circuit Judge Philip Federico sentenced him Friday. Wall and Laura Taft had a baby, and while under Wall's care, the boy went into cardiac arrest and died. Wall was arrested for violating a domestic violence injunction. Three days after getting out of jail, Wall crashed through a sliding-glass door of Taft's apartment and stabbed her to death. Last February, Wall pleaded guilty to killing Taft and no contest to killing their child. He has said several times in court in the past several months that he wants the death penalty. ___ A timeline of recent oil train crashes in the US and Canada The derailment of an oil train in Oregon's Columbia River Gorge follows a string of fiery accidents in the U.S. and Canada as shipments of crude by rail have increased with more domestic oil production: July 5, 2013: A runaway Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway train that had been left unattended derailed, spilling oil and catching fire inside the town of Lac-Megantic in Quebec. Forty-seven people were killed and 30 buildings burned in the town's center. About 1.6 million gallons of oil was spilled. The oil was being transported from the Bakken region of North Dakota, the heart of an oil fracking boom, to a refinery in Canada. Nov. 8, 2013: An oil train from North Dakota derailed and exploded near Aliceville, Alabama. There were no deaths, but an estimated 749,000 gallons of oil spilled from 26 tanker cars. FILE - In this Dec. 30, 2013 file photo, a fireball goes up at the site of an oil train derailment near Casselton, N.D. A fire engulfed tank cars loaded with oil on a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train after a collision about a mile from Casselton. No one was injured, but more than 2,000 residents were evacuated as emergency responders struggled with the intense fire. (AP Photo/Bruce Crummy, File) Dec. 30, 2013: A fire engulfed tank cars loaded with oil on a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train after a collision about a mile from Casselton, North Dakota. No one was injured, but more than 2,000 residents were evacuated as emergency responders struggled with the intense fire. Jan. 7, 2014: A 122-car Canadian National Railway train derailed in New Brunswick, Canada. Three cars containing propane and one car transporting crude oil from western Canada exploded after the derailment, creating intense fires that burned for days. About 150 residents were evacuated. Jan. 20, 2014: Seven CSX train cars, six of them containing oil from the Bakken region, derailed on a bridge over the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. The bridge is near the University of Pennsylvania, a highway and three hospitals. No oil was spilled and no one was injured. The train from Chicago was more than 100 cars long. April 30, 2014: Fifteen cars of a crude oil train derailed in Lynchburg, Virginia, near a railside eatery and a pedestrian waterfront, sending flames and black smoke into the air. Nearly 30,000 gallons of oil were spilled into the James River. Feb. 14, 2015: A 100-car Canadian National Railway train hauling crude oil and petroleum distillates derailed in a remote part of Ontario, Canada. The blaze it ignited burned for days. Feb. 16, 2015: A 109-car CSX oil train derailed and caught fire near Mount Carbon, West Virginia, leaking oil into a Kanawha River tributary and burning a house to its foundation. The blaze burned for most of week. March 10, 2015: Twenty-one cars of a 105-car Burlington Northern Santa Fe train hauling oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota derailed about 3 miles outside Galena, Illinois, a town of about 3,000 in the state's northwest corner. March 7, 2015: A 94-car Canadian National Railway crude oil train derailed about 3 miles outside the northern Ontario town of Gogama. The resulting fire destroyed a bridge. The accident was 23 miles from the Feb. 14 derailment. May 6, 2015: A 109-car Burlington Northern Santa Fe crude oil train derails near Heimdal, North Dakota. Six cars exploded into flames and an estimated 60,000 gallons of oil spilled. July 16, 2015: More than 20 cars from a 108-car Burlington Northern Santa Fe oil train derailed east of Culbertson, Montana, spilling an estimated 35,000 gallons of oil. __ Nov. 7, 2015: More than a dozen cars loaded with crude oil derail from a Canadian Pacific Railway train prompting the evacuation of dozens of homes near Watertown, Wisconsin. June 3, 2016: A Union Pacific train hauling crude oil derails in Oregon's Columbia River Gorge, sparking a large fire. FILE - In this July 6, 2013, file photo, smoke rises from railway cars from now defunct Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railways company that were carrying crude oil after derailing in downtown Lac Megantic, Quebec, Canada. Forty-seven people were killed and 30 buildings burned in the town's center. About 1.6 million gallons of oil was spilled. The oil was being transported from the Bakken region of North Dakota, the heart of an oil fracking boom, to a refinery in Canada. (Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press via AP, File) MANDATORY CREDIT FILE - This Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2015, file photo, train cars remain on the scene following a derailment near Mount Carbon, W.Va. The 109-car CSX oil train derailed and caught fire near Mount Carbon, West Virginia, leaking oil into a Kanawha River tributary and burning a house to its foundation. The blaze burned for most of week. (Chris Jackson/The Register-Herald via AP, File) MANDATORY CREDIT File- This Nov. 8, 2013, file photo shows a tanker train carrying crude oil burning after derailing in western Alabama outside Aliceville, Ala. An oil train from North Dakota derailed and exploded near Aliceville, Alabama. There were no deaths, but an estimated 749,000 gallons of oil spilled from 26 tanker cars. (AP Photo/ABC 33/40, Bill Castle, File) MANDATORY CREDIT In this photo provided by Silas Bleakley, a train towing cars full of oil sends up a plume of smoke after derailing Friday, June 3, 2016, near Mosier, Ore. The accident happened just after noon about 70 miles east of Portland. It involved eight cars filled with oil, and one was burning. Highway 84 was closed for a 23-mile stretch between The Dalles and Mosier and the radius for evacuations was a half-mile. (Silas Bleakley via AP) IndyCar still working toward solution to stop debris strikes DETROIT (AP) Tony Kanaan was not injured when struck in the hand by a piece of debris during the Indianapolis 500 and the incident was barely noticed during the historic 100th running of the race. Yet it was a reminder of an issue that has had tragic consequences in the past. Justin Wilson was killed last August when he was struck in the head by a piece of debris during a race at Pocono. The deaths of Wilson and Formula One's Jules Bianchi from head injuries have created discussions on how to protect open-wheel drivers. F1 is planning further tests this month on a protective halo device, which could be implemented in time for the 2017 season. Helio Castroneves, of Brazil, drives through the first turn during the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 auto race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Sunday, May 29, 2016. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson) Kanaan said Friday finding the right solution for IndyCar is complicated, but series leadership is on the right track. "What we've been doing lately is a lot of studies to see how we're going to fix that," he said. "We're all aware of it, I think not just in America but in Europe as well, and we're trying to figure out what's the best solution for it." Kanaan said the series has been researching several scenarios, but added that canopies aren't a catch-all solution for every series. "The biggest challenge we have F1 doesn't race in the ovals and they don't have banking so the peripheral vision of our cars, you can put a canopy or whatever you want to do, it's different than the Formula One cars," Kanaan said. Bianchi died in July following a long battle to recover from head injuries from a collision with a crane after he went off the track in rainy conditions at the Japanese Grand Prix in October 2014. Wilson died on Aug. 23, a day after being hit in the helmet by debris from another car. Two years ago, James Hinchcliffe sustained a concussion when struck in the head by debris from another car in the inaugural Grand Prix of Indianapolis. The halo device forms a protective structure around and above a driver's head. F1's Red Bull has proposed an alternative, a protective screen. IndyCar driver Will Power said he thinks the windscreen is more protective. "I think IndyCar are definitely looking at a windscreen," Power said. "I'm all for it, 100 percent. All for it. It's the last big step in safety that open-wheel cars need." Helio Castroneves has a similar stance on these potential safety measures. "I've seen some pictures regarding one is a halo, the second one is the windshield, and I'm in favor of it. I think this should be all part of it. All open-wheel (series) should communicate and work together because this is going to benefit everybody," Castroneves said. "We've got to work fast." Aside from protecting other drivers, Kanaan said he's not sure much can be done about the amount of debris on the track when cars crash. "You'd have to go back in the old days and then have less wings and body parts on the cars, so you don't have many things flying when you crash," he said. "That's not going to happen." It's a challenge to come up with ideas that protect the heads of drivers without creating additional, unintended safety issues. "We're all on the same page," Kanaan said. "It's not easy to develop something like that overnight. ... To say, 'OK, we're going to fix one problem.' But what about if you roll over? What about if you talk about ventilation in the car? ... It might be safer for preventing debris to come in the car, but what about the other five other issues that we've created? If you roll upside down, you catch fire, and you need to get out, how do you do it?" Kanaan expects a solution before too long and he says it may not need to be a drastic change. "It won't be as big as people think it needs to be. They have some studies that they know exactly how and where it needs to go," Kanaan said. "We're not going to look like the popemobile." ___ Follow Noah Trister at www.Twitter.com/noahtrister FILE - In this March 3, 2016, file photo, Ferrari's mechanics show a prototype of the new head protection device during Formula One preseason testing at the the Catalunya racetrack in Montmelo just outside of Barcelona, Spain. Auto racing is looking at ways of improving cockpit security to leave drivers less exposed to the risk of head injuries after French driver Jules Bianchi and British IndyCar driver Justin Wilson died last year.(AP Photo/Manu Fernandez, File Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton of Britain steers his car during the Formula One Grand Prix at the Monaco racetrack in Monaco, Sunday, May 29, 2016. (AP Photo/Claude Paris) Sumner Redstone asks court to reject lawsuit by Viacom CEO BOSTON (AP) Media mogul Sumner Redstone, fighting back against charges that he's mentally incapacitated, said Friday that not only is he competent but he was backed by a majority of trustees when he stripped Viacom's CEO of key positions last month. The 93-year-old Redstone, through his lawyers, responded in a written filing to a lawsuit filed last month by Viacom chief executive Philippe Dauman and board member George Abrams. Dauman and Abrams sued in Norfolk Probate Court in Canton after Redstone stripped them of their positions. They argue Redstone is not mentally competent and is being manipulated by his daughter, Shari Redstone. FILE - In this Oct. 1, 2012 file photo, Sumner Redstone attends the premiere of "Seven Psychopaths" in Los Angeles. Redstone has asked a Massachusetts court to reject a challenge by Viacom's chief executive Philippe Dauman, who's suing Redstone seeking reinstatement as a director and trustee to entities that control Viacom and CBS Corp. Dauman and Abrams sued in Norfolk Probate Court in Canton after Redstone stripped them of their positions. (Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision/AP) Lawyers for Redstone say in their court filing he has the mental capacity and authority to make business decisions. His filing also says he has the support of a majority of the trustees, who ratified his removal of Dauman and Abrams on Sunday. The lawsuit filed by Dauman and Abrams seeks to block Redstone from removing them as trustees of the Sumner M. Redstone National Amusements Trust and as board members of National Amusements Inc. Redstone controls about 80 percent of the voting shares of Viacom through those entities. Viacom Inc., a media conglomerate based in New York, owns the Paramount Pictures movie studio and pay TV channels such as MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and BET. In the court filing Friday, Redstone's lawyers said he has been examined twice in the past two weeks by a well-known geriatric psychiatrist, Dr. James Spar, including on the day he removed Dauman and Abrams from their positions. Spar said Redstone is "clearly communicating" his business decisions, which "reflect his own authentic wishes and preferences." Redstone's lawyers also said he is not being manipulated by his once-estranged daughter to take control of his businesses. An attorney for Dauman and Abrams, Les Fagen, said Redstone is being heard only through carefully crafted remarks distributed by his advisers. "This evaluation was conducted by a paid medical consultant and does not answer the question of whether Sumner Redstone had sufficient capacity to make complex decisions impacting the governance of billion dollar publicly-held corporations, nor does it acknowledge that undue influence was exercised to manipulate his views," Fagen said in a statement. Washington urges Albania's opposition to approve reforms TIRANA, Albania (AP) The United States on Friday increased its pressure on Albania's main opposition party to approve a package of judicial reforms needed to convince the European Union to start membership talks. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland told Democratic Party leader Lulzim Basha that the package was "a top priority in U.S.-Albanian relations and for Albania's progress toward the EU," according to a statement from the U.S. embassy in Tirana. A day earlier, EU's top official for enlargement Johannes Hahn also urged Albania to complete the reforms if it wants to launch full membership talks with the bloc. Despite regular visits and direct involvement from the U.S. and EU ambassadors, Democrats do not agree with a final draft despite earlier approval. Their votes are needed in the 140-seat Parliament for some constitutional amendments in the package that should be passed by the end of the month to convince Brussels to authorize membership negotiations. After getting candidate status from Brussels two years ago, Albania, a NATO member since 2009, expects to launch full membership talks this year on the condition that the legal package is approved and implemented. The EU and the U.S. have helped Tirana draft the reform package. It also has been reviewed and approved by the Venice Commission, as both main political groupings had asked for. The reform package is considered key to fighting corruption at all levels, especially the judiciary. Basha and his governing Socialist counterpart, Prime Minister Edi Rama are expected to meet Monday. Ex-Air Force colonel held hostage in Iran dies in Arizona SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) Thomas E. Schaefer, a retired Air Force colonel who was the ranking military officer among the 52 Americans held hostage in Iran for 444 days before being released in 1981, has died in Arizona. He was 85. David Schaefer said Friday that his father died of congestive heart failure Tuesday at a hospice in Scottsdale. Schaefer was a military attache at the U.S. embassy in Tehran when militants seized the compound on Nov. 4, 1979, and 66 people were taken hostage. FILE - In this Dec. 25, 1980, file photo, four American hostages, from left, William Belk of Columbia, S. C.; Thomas Schaefer of Tacoma, Wash.; Donald Hohman of West Sacramento, Calif.; and John Craves of Reston, Va., listen to the latest demands for their release in Iran. Schaefer, a retired Air Force colonel who was the ranking military officer among the 52 Americans held hostage in Tehran, Iran for 444 days before being released in 1981, has died Tuesday, May 31, 2016, of congestive heart failure Tuesday at a hospice in Scottsdale. Ariz., his sone David Schaefer said Friday, June 3, 2016. He was 85. (AP Photo/File0 From the first day of the takeover, Schaefer was singled out for special attention. As the ranking U.S. military officer in the embassy, he was accused of running a "nest of spies." His captors paraded him blindfolded in front of television cameras and threatened repeatedly to put him on trial and execute him. He spent 150 days in solitary confinement and began his captivity enduring 14 days of relentless interrogation in a freezing prison cell with damp floors and only a thin blanket for warmth. "I could see my breath the entire time," Schaefer said in a 2004 interview. "They were breaking me down both physically and mentally. I could feel myself losing it." He said he used a pin to punch a code into his Bible daily to get through the hostage ordeal. Schaefer was among the last hostages who were released on Jan. 20, 1981. Just before the aircraft bringing the hostages home entered U.S. airspace, the co-pilot invited Schaefer to take his seat in the cockpit. Schaefer retired from the Air Force less than two years later and was a professional speaker for decades. His family said he spoke to more than a quarter-million students and adults about facing adversity. "Really, he was a positive guy," David Schaefer said Friday. "He tried to educate and help people deal with really bad situations in their lives." In 1998, Schaefer said the United States should re-establish relations with Iran for strategic reasons. But in 2013 he denounced the Iran nuclear deal as "foolishness," saying he didn't know of any Iranian leaders who could be trusted. Born in Rochester, N.Y., Schaefer was a bomber pilot for the Air Force first flying B-47s and then B-52s before he switched to administrative positions. In retirement, Schaefer and his wife lived in Arizona for the last 30 years, first in the Phoenix suburb of Peoria and then in Scottsdale since 2013. Schaefer is survived by his wife of 63 years, Anita; two sons, six grandchildren and three great grandchildren. There will be a service at Arlington National Cemetery this fall. FILE - In this Nov. 26, 2013, file photo, retired Air Force Col. Thomas E. Schaefer discusses his 444 days in captivity in Iran, at his home in Scottsdale, Ariz. Schaefer, a retired Air Force colonel who was the ranking military officer among the 52 Americans held hostage in Iran for 444 days before being released in 1981, has died Tuesday, May 31, 2016, of congestive heart failure Tuesday at a hospice in Scottsdale. Ariz., his sone David Schaefer said Friday, June 3, 2016. He was 85. (AP Photo/Brian Skoloff, File) FILE - In this Xxx, Sept. 29, 2004 photo, retired Air Force Col. Thomas E. Schaefer, shows the tattered Bible att his home in Peoria, Ariz., that he used for his secret notations while held hostage in Iran. Schaefer, a retired Air Force colonel who was the ranking military officer among the 52 Americans held hostage in Iran for 444 days before being released in 1981, has died Tuesday, May 31, 2016, of congestive heart failure Tuesday at a hospice in Scottsdale. Ariz., his sone David Schaefer said Friday, June 3, 2016. He was 85. (Michael Ging(/The Arizona Republic via AP) MARICOPA COUNTY OUT; MAGS OUT; NO SALES; MANDATORY CREDIT BP to pay $175 million to investors in oil spill suit HOUSTON (AP) BP announced Friday that it has agreed to pay $175 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by investors who accused the oil giant of misleading them about the rate of oil flowing after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. In a brief statement, BP said it will pay the investors over this year and next year. U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison in Houston still needs to approve the deal. BP said the agreement doesn't resolve other securities-related litigation relating to the disaster, which killed 11 workers and poured millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf for 87 days. The lawsuit said BP's low estimates of the rate of oil spewing into the Gulf inflated securities prices. It also accused BP of misrepresenting its safety procedures before the spill. UN grapples with violent extremism's pull on youth UNITED NATIONS (AP) The rise of social media has rendered traditional government and religious institutions inadequate to address the growing number of youth attracted to the message of violent extremism, a top United Nations official said Friday. Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson said leaders must recognize the communications revolution taking place in today's world in order to address the problem. "Today's young people are inherently better communicators. Just look at your children and grandchildren. They have unprecedented skills of networking. They have an almost unlimited access to information. We need a comprehensive approach to address their needs and aspirations," Eliasson said. "These extremist groups are systematically recruiting children and young people through social media and peer-to-peer networking. They use financial incentives, fear-mongering and coercion," he added. Eliasson made his remarks at a high-level conversation on children and youth affected by violent extremism, where politicians and academics from around the world grappled with how best to counter the extremists' message. Belgium's Deputy Prime Minister Jan Jambon conceded his country had more foreign fighters per capita than any other country in Europe but seemed stumped on how best to address the issue. "How is it possible that young people raised in our countries, get their heads spun around by terrorist organizations, causing death and destruction to countless innocent victims? Well ladies and gentlemen, as a minister, I ponder this question every day," Jambon said. His main suggestion involved having intelligence services work together with teachers and social workers to identify extremism in its early stages and follow up on youngsters who have gone off track. Qatari Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani maintained that extremism was "not inherent in a given religion or ideology," but was rather caused by social, economic and political distortions that lead "some forces to interpret religion in this manner." He said Qatar employed "a strategy of inculcating our people with the spirit of tolerance, underscoring the importance of constructive dialogue and opening up to one another at the national and international levels," in order to combat extremist views. U.N. General Assembly President Mogens Lykketoft said it was important to remember that young people are often the targets and victims of violent extremists' acts. "Regrettably, however, millions of other children and young people are also vulnerable to radicalization and to becoming violent extremists themselves, whether in Copenhagen or Cairo, in South Carolina or Syria," he said. Lykketoft, however, offered little in the way solutions instead praising the event as an important opportunity to better understand the subject. Colombia seeks end to farmers' strike after 2 deaths BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) Members of Colombia's government met with indigenous leaders on Friday to try to negotiate an end to a nationwide strike by farmers now in its fifth day. The meeting in the southwestern province of Cauca came a day after two protesters were killed and dozens more injured in clashes with police. The strike began Monday and now includes farmers in 20 of Colombia's 32 provinces. Protesters are demanding the government honor rural spending commitments dating from a much longer and deadlier strike in 2013. "The agrarian strike is continuing," said Christian Mantilla, a spokesman for the strike's organizers, amid local media reports of more protests on Friday. Interior Minister Juan Fernando Cristo, who heads the official delegation, said negotiations were advancing. "There is a good environment to move forward in the talks, to accelerate the fulfillment of the agreements." Government officials accuse the National Liberation Army, the country's second-largest rebel group, of infiltrating the protests and sparking violence. Military: Precision flying teams are worth the risk, cost DENVER (AP) Both of the U.S. military's high-drama, high-dollar flying teams suffered crashes on the same day this week, but supporters say the Air Force Thunderbirds and the Navy Blue Angels are worth the money and the risk because they're vital to recruitment and help citizens feel good about their military. "It's our No. 1 recruiting tool," said retired Air Force Col. Pete McCaffrey, a pilot with the Thunderbirds from 1992 to 1995. Most people don't get to see the military up close, but when they see the elite air squadrons perform, "it gives them a sense of pride in their military and their country, and I think now we need that more than ever," McCaffrey said Friday. The Air Force Thunderbirds fly overhead as graduating cadets celebrate with the "hat toss" after graduation ceremonies at the 2016 class of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Thursday, June 2, 2016, in Colorado Springs, Colo. A Thunderbirds jet crashed after a flyover of the academy commencement attended by President Barack Obama. The pilot was able to safely eject from the jet. (Ryan Jones/The Gazette via AP) MAGS OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT A Blue Angels F/A-18 crashed Thursday near Nashville, Tennessee, while taking off for a practice session ahead of a weekend air show. The pilot, Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss, was killed. Also Thursday, a Thunderbirds F-16 crashed outside Colorado Springs, Colorado, but that pilot, Maj. Alex Turner, ejected safely. The Thunderbirds had just performed over the open-air graduation ceremony at the nearby Air Force Academy, where President Barack Obama spoke. The military hasn't publicly discussed the cause of either crash. Both are under investigation. The Blue Angels and Thunderbirds have had dozens of crashes in their long histories, and a total of at least nine pilots been killed during performances or practices since 1985. The teams are pricey, too. The Thunderbirds have an annual operating budget of $35 million, said Air Force Staff Sgt. Katie Maricle, a spokeswoman for the Air Combat Command. A Navy spokesman couldn't immediately provide the Blue Angels' budget. But the military insists the teams are important to the services and the nation. "The Thunderbirds are a huge part of U.S. Air Force history and they are such a vital element of connecting our nation to our Air Force," Maricle said. Michael Kennedy, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, said the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels help servicemen and women share their pride with the public. Kennedy, who now flies in air shows, said the demonstration teams let the military say, "We're here to defend you and we just want to show you. We want to demonstrate to you so you can appreciate what we're doing for you." Kuss himself once said the Blue Angels were his inspiration to become a pilot. Two months ago, when the squadron arrived at the Smoky Mountain Air Show in Alcoa, Tennessee, Kuss told a reporter from WATE-TV that he remembered looking up at the Blue Angels as a little boy. He said his goal was to inspire all the kids now looking up at him. "We're just pumped to be able to interact with the community and tell them a little bit about what we do," he said. "But we really just try to invoke that fire in their belly to go out and do what they want to do that makes them happy and successful in life." Tom Meyvis, a professor of marketing at New York University's Stern School of Business, said the recruitment argument has merit, especially when potential servicemen and women see the teams at air shows. "People who are interested in the Air Force are more likely to attend these events and witness these teams and be excited by them," he said. "The idea of investing in the future brand of the Air Force or the military, that is a positive investment." But Meyvis cautioned he's not a military expert and said he couldn't evaluate whether the military's investment pays off. "Is it worth the money? I don't know," he said. He also questioned the value of the flying teams in building goodwill with the public. "I don't know that the U.S. military necessarily needs to sell itself to the general population," he said. ___ Associated Press writer Kristin M. Hall in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report. A U.S. Air Force Thunderbird rests in a field where it crashed following a flyover performance at a commencement for Air Force Academy cadets, south of Colorado Springs, Colo., Thursday, June 2, 2016. The pilot ejected safely from the jet. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley) Crew inside a military helicopter examine the site where a U.S. Air Force Thunderbird crashed following a flyover performance at a commencement for Air Force Academy cadets, south of Colorado Springs, Colo., Thursday, June 2, 2016. The pilot ejected safely from the jet. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley) Smoke billows from the crash of a Blue Angels F/A-18 fighter jet in Smyrna, Tenn., Thursday, June 2, 2016. Officials said the pilot, Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss, was killed. The Navy said in a news release that Kuss was taking off during an afternoon practice session for an air show when the crash happened. (Becca Cullison-Burgess via AP) In this March 31, 2016 photo, Blue Angels Pilot Captain Jeff Kuss is interviewed at Naval Air Station Key West, Fla., prior to an Blue Angels show. A Blue Angels F/A-18 fighter jet crashed Thursday, June 2, 2016 near Nashville, killing the pilot just days before a weekend air show performance, officials said. A U.S. official said the pilot was Kuss.(Rob O'Neal/The Key West Citizen via AP) MIAMI OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT The Latest: 'Grim Sleeper' jury adjourns without verdict LOS ANGELES (AP) The Latest on the death penalty trial of the man convicted of 10 murders in the "Grim Sleeper" serial killings (all times local): 4:05 p.m. A Los Angeles jury weighing the fate of the serial killer known as the "Grim Sleeper" has adjourned for the weekend. Jurors are scheduled to resume deliberations Monday to decide if Lonnie Franklin Jr. is sentenced to death or life in prison without parole. Franklin was convicted a month ago of murdering nine women and one teenage girl over more than two decades in South Los Angeles. A prosecutor says Franklin should pay the ultimate penalty, while a defense lawyer asked jurors to spare his client's life. Police didn't connect the crimes to a serial killer for years. Victims' family members and community residents complained the killings weren't thoroughly investigated because the victims were poor and black and some were prostitutes who had been using cocaine. ___ 11:28 a.m. A Los Angeles jury has begun deliberating whether a serial killer known as the "Grim Sleeper" should spend his life in prison or be executed. Attorneys presented final arguments Friday in the penalty phase of the trial nearly a month after Lonnie Franklin Jr. was convicted of murdering nine women and one teenage girl over several decades in South Los Angeles. A prosecutor says Franklin should die for his crimes, while a defense lawyer pleaded for his client's life. Prosecutors say Franklin killed at least four other women but he was not charged in those attacks. Police didn't connect the crimes to a serial killer for years. 3 guilty of conspiracy to commit murder abroad in IS case MINNEAPOLIS (AP) Three Minnesota men accused of plotting to go to Syria to join the Islamic State group were convicted Friday of conspiracy to commit murder overseas a charge that carries a possible sentence of life in prison. The defendants Guled Ali Omar, 21; Abdirahman Yasin Daud, 22; and Mohamed Abdihamid Farah, 22 showed little emotion as the three-week trial came to a close. Several people sitting in seats reserved for family broke down in tears; others left the courtroom in disbelief. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis didn't immediately set a sentencing date, saying he wanted to review the case and hear directly from the Somali-American men before making a decision. FILE - This undated file photo provided the Sherburne County, Minn., Sheriff's Office shows Abdirahman Yasin Daud. On Friday, June 3, 2016, in Minneapolis, Daud and two other men, who were accused of plotting to go to Syria to join the Islamic State group, were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder overseas. (Sherburne County Sheriff's Office via AP, File) In addition to the most serious murder-conspiracy charge, the three faced multiple other counts, including plotting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. "Can I write to you?" Omar quietly asked the judge. "Yes sir, you can write to me anytime," Davis responded. Looking at Farah, he said: "And this time, I don't want you to hold anything back." Young men from Minnesota's Somali community, the nation's largest, have been a target for terror recruiters in recent years. Prosecutors have said Omar, Daud and Farah were part of a group of friends who inspired and recruited each other to join the Islamic State organization. Six others earlier pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiring to support a foreign terrorist organization. A seventh, 22-year-old Abdi Nur, is at large, believed to be in Syria. Others who were part of the group but have not been charged were successful in going overseas. "These were not wayward kids who just got caught up in a fantasy," said U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger, adding that he was satisfied with the federal jury's ruling. "They made a deeply personal and deliberate decision back in 2014. They wanted to fight for a brutal terrorist organization, kill innocent people and destroy their own families in the process." He called the trial "one of the most important" seen in Minnesota in years, because it put a spotlight on ongoing terror recruitment. The three defendants, all from Minneapolis and arrested a year ago, pleaded not guilty during the trial. "I really thought there was a tenuous connection between what my client allegedly did and the conspiracy to commit murder charge," said Farah's attorney, Murah Mohammed. Prosecutors built their case largely on recordings made by Abdirahman Bashir, a friend of the men who went on to become a paid informant. It was revealed during the trial that he made $119,000, prompting family and friends to protest what they called entrapment. A small gathering was held on the plaza outside the courthouse after the verdicts. The Star Tribune reported some the defendants' supporters carried signs that said "Stop FBI Entrapment" and "Stop Targeting Somalis." Bashir testified that members of the group eagerly watched propaganda videos that included beheadings and mass executions. He also secretly recorded conversations with the defendants discussing the best way to get to Syria and scheming to get false passports. Omar, the only defendant to take the stand, testified that he and friends held study groups to discuss the Quran, and discussed the political situation Syria, but he knew of no legitimate plans for anyone to travel there. He also said he thought a proposal to get fake passports was not good. The case was the third Islamic State-related case to go to trial nationwide, and is unique because of the sheer number of people who were connected to each other on a personal level. In other cases, most recruitment has been done online. The FBI has said roughly a dozen young men and women left Minnesota to join militants in Syria in recent years. And since 2007, more than 22 men have joined al-Shabab in Somalia. FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office shows Guled Ali Omar. On Friday, June 3, 2016, in Minneapolis, Omar and two other men, who were accused of plotting to go to Syria to join the Islamic State group, were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder overseas. (Hennepin County Sheriff's Office via AP, File) Brexit campaigner Michael Gove: It is time to tell Brussels elite 'you're fired' Prominent Brexit campaigner Michael Gove has issued a call to British voters to send a message to the "arrogant" Brussels elite: "You're fired. We're taking back control." In an hour-long TV grilling ahead of the June 23 EU referendum, Mr Gove claimed that " the majority of people in this country are suffering as a result of our membership of the European Union". Repeatedly blaming the EU for the collapse of his own father's fish merchant company, he branded Brussels a "job-destroying machine" and said employment would rise and salaries increase if the UK left. Justice Secretary Michael Gove before taking part in a live Sky News interview with Faisal Islam, left, and a Q and A session moderated by Kay Burley Speaking on Sky News's EU: In or Out?, Mr Gove denied that Vote Leave was running a "Project Lies" campaign, and said he was happy to allow independent auditors to test its widely-criticised claim that the UK sends Brussels 350 million a week. The Justice Secretary accused David Cameron's Remain camp of relying on "pessimism" about Britain's future, and insisted that Brexit was a "Project Hope" which would allow the next generation to "make this country once more truly great". He insisted he was "absolutely not" using the referendum campaign as a means to seize the prime minister's job, saying voters should "count me out" from any bid for the Conservative leadership. Under intense questioning from Sky News political editor Faisal Islam, Mr Gove was unable to name any independent economic authorities which backed Brexit, but insisted he was "glad" that organisations like the Bank of England, IMF and OECD were not backing EU withdrawal. Organisations that supported EU membership had in "many cases" received money from Brussels, had "consistently made errors" on issues like the euro and the 2008 crash and had an "agenda", he claimed. "I am glad that all these organisations are not on my side," said Mr Gove. "The organisations that many people are citing in this debate are organisations that have been wrong in the past and I think they are wrong now." In an increasingly tetchy exchange, Mr Islam branded the Justice Secretary an "Oxbridge Trump" and suggested that the Leave camp shared with the US presidential candidate a disdain for expert opinion. Asked why voters should trust him over all of the experts and leaders who had spoken out in support of the UK staying in, Mr Gove replied: "I'm not asking the public to trust me, I'm asking the public to trust themselves." He added: "The people who are backing the Remain campaign are people who have done very well thank you out of the European Union." The Sky political editor challenged him to name a single international ally who backed Brexit, adding: "You can't name one, can you? I'll give you half a point for Donald Trump." Mr Gove won applause as he accused the Remain camp of "sneering condescension" for suggesting that those who want to withdraw from the EU were "following in the footsteps of Trump". And when Mr Islam said that his father's experience of losing his company gave him "no special moral authority", the Justice Secretary hit back: "I'm absolutely not unique. I'm one of many who have seen their parents and their friends lose their jobs, lose their income, lose their livelihood because of the European Union. "Do not skate over their misery. Don't dismiss the pain that they've had. Don't belittle the hurt that has been caused by the job-destroying machine that is the European Union." He accused the broadcaster of being on the side of the "elites", while he was on the "side of the people". But he came under fire from some audience members, including Andrew Carnegie, who compared him to a First World War general ordering his troops "over the top" while having "no idea what's on the frontline or what the casualty rate will be in the conflicts to come". Asked whether he could guarantee no-one would lose their job as a result of Brexit, Mr Gove said: "I can't guarantee every person currently in work in their current job will keep their job." To loud applause from the studio audience, he added: "Seventy-three members of the European Parliament will be losing their job. Our European Commissioner will be losing his job and as far as I'm concerned I wish them well in the private sector." And he added: "It's the invincible arrogance of Europe's elites that gets me. "These are people who have seen the euro collapse. These are people who are presiding over a migration crisis on their borders, and yet do they ever acknowledge that they need to change? No. "They say they need more integration, more of our money, more control over this country. "I think it's time that we said to people who are incapable of acknowledging that they've ever got anything wrong: 'I'm sorry, you've had your day.' MPs' concern over 'small town' of foreign criminals Failure to deport the equivalent of a "small town" of foreign criminals will lead the public to "question the point" of Britain remaining in the European Union, according to a powerful cross-party committee. MPs said it was "deeply concerning" that 5,789 offenders from overseas were walking the UK's streets - the highest number since 2012. But Home Secretary Theresa May hit back, saying the Government removed a "record number" of foreign national offenders last year. There are 13,000 foreign convicts in the country, the Home Affairs Committee has said The Home Affairs Committee said the Government must take urgent action to "significantly" reduce the 13,000 total number of foreign convicts in the country. In a damning report, it found the top three countries the criminals hailed from were all within the EU, with Poles accounting for nearly one in 10 foreign offenders - some 983 - while 764 were from Ireland and 635 from Romania. MPs criticised the Home Office for consistently failing to remove convicts despite their home nations being part of the 28-member bloc and warned the problems undermine public faith in Britain's EU membership. "The clear inefficiencies demonstrated by this process will lead the public to question the point of the UK remaining a member of the EU," the report said. The committee criticised Mrs May for being "unconvincing in suggesting that remaining a member of the EU will make it easier to remove these individuals from the UK". It also warned it would take a "modern miracle" for David Cameron to meet his "no ifs, no buts" pledge to cut migration to under 100,000. Latest official figures showed net immigration was 323,000 to September 2015, an increase of 31,000 on the previous year. And MPs said it was "deeply concerning" that there had been so little improvement in the immigration backlog, which stood at around 345,400 at the end of last year. In 2015-16, 5,692 foreign criminals were removed from the UK - the highest since the series began in 2009. Of these, 3,451 were from the European Economic Area, compared to 1,019 in 2010/11. Mrs May said: "Foreign nationals who commit crimes here should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them. "Last year we removed a record number of foreign national offenders from this country, including a record number of EU criminals. "Being in the EU gives us access to criminal records sharing and prisoner transfer agreements which help us better identify people with criminal records and, allow us to send foreign criminals back to their home countries to serve their sentences." The UK is also signed up to the EU's Prisoner Transfer Agreement which means the Government can transfer foreign offenders criminals in prison to their home nations to continue serving their sentence there at their own country's expense. In the wide-ranging assessment on the work of the immigration services, the committee said there were serious questions over the Home Office's judgment following the "extraordinary" decision it took to deport thousands of people on "questionable or insufficient evidence" of English language testing fraud. Allegations of widespread fraud in the system lead to heavy-handed treatment of students despite the lack of an independent investigation into the claims, MPs said. Committee chairman Keith Vaz said: "Despite repeated warnings, the Home Office is still unable to remove foreign offenders from the UK. "We agree with the Prime Minister that the Home Office should have done better. There are still over 13,000 foreign national offenders in the country, who could fill towns the size of Louth in Lincolnshire, Beccles in Suffolk or Berwick-upon-Tweed in Northumberland, and almost 6,000 of these are living within communities. "The public would expect our membership of the European Union to make it easier to deport European offenders, but this is clearly not the case, and we continue to keep thousands of these criminals at great and unnecessary expense. These failures are undermining confidence in the UK's immigration system and in the UK's EU membership. "In stark contrast to these failures are the arrests, dawn raids and aggressive deportations of students from outside the EU. The Home Office appears not to have investigated English language testing fraud allegations themselves before undertaking heavy-handed action. Recent legal cases, with their damming criticisms from senior judges, have opened the door to a mass of expensive and damaging litigation. "Net migration now stands at 333,000, the second highest figure on record. It will take a modern miracle for the Government to meet its target." Vote Leave said the foreign offenders were costing 36,000 a year each to jail and that the EU made it "more difficult" to deport overseas criminals. Backer Dominic Raab, the justice minister, said: "The EU is making us less safe. If we take back control we will be able to deport foreign criminals from our prisons. Odd stories in the news KARAOKE COP A policeman entertained a pub crowd with a karaoke classic after being called in to deal with a brawl. Sergeant Jon Harris belted out Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive while in full uniform to cheers from drinkers at Glasgow's Waterloo Bar. Mr Harris was called to the Argyle Street pub on Wednesday evening following reports of an alleged assault, and a 23-year-old man was arrested. The policeman later agreed to take to the stage and a senior officer has credited him for "helping defuse any simmering tensions". CLEAN MONEY A wipe-clean fiver will "stand the test of time", just like Sir Winston Churchill, whose face adorns the banknote, the Governor of the Bank of England said. Unveiling the full new design for the 5 at Sir Winston's birthplace on Thursday, Mark Carney paid tribute to the wartime prime minister's "bulldog spirit" and his part in British history. He said: "This spirit is just one, only one, of his many contributions that the Bank commemorates with the new fiver." NEW EMOJIS Seventy-two new emojis have been approved to be added to the rapidly expanding icon-based language. On the list of new designs is 'rolling on the floor laughing' or ROFL as the kids used to call it, a runny-nose face, two fist bumps, a black heart and everyone's favourite superfood - avocado. At the centre of the playful-looking icons is actually an approval system run by the Unicode Consortium. This group reviews and approves the designs for new emojis, adding them to the standard list and then making them available to app developers to add to their own libraries. SEX BOMB A Pittsburgh man who robbed a bank with a fake bomb made out of phone wires, duct tape and a sex toy has been sentenced to up to three years in prison. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports an Allegheny County judge sentenced 36-year-old Aaron Stein on Tuesday after rejecting requests for leniency, including house arrest. The judge said he could not tell the community Stein's case warranted only house arrest. Stein pleaded guilty in March. He said he robbed the PNC Bank in Crafton last June because he was desperate after losing 9,000 US dollars he had invested to pay for his approaching honeymoon. KAYAK COMPLETES JOURNEY Stuart Cleary set out in late 2014 to paddle solo from Australia to New Zealand. But in the end, it was his homemade kayak that completed the journey on its own. Just hours into the trip, Cleary's kayak started taking on water, and he was forced to abandon the vessel before being rescued at sea. Eighteen months later, the kayak has washed up on a New Zealand beach close to where Cleary had intended to arrive. Nathan Marshall said he was taking his dogs for a run on Muriwai Beach on Wednesday when he found the barnacle-encrusted kayak. He was hesitant to look inside, worried he would find a body. Cleary said he'd travel to New Zealand to have a look but, this time, he'll take a plane. ALLIGATOR ATTACK A Florida man who threw an alligator through a drive-thru window was sentenced to a year of probation after throwing himself at the mercy of the court. Twenty-four-year-old Joshua James told the judge he is sorry he threw the alligator through the window at a Wendy's last October. He said he found the nearly four-foot gator by the side of the road and meant to play a prank on a friend at the restaurant. Wales flanker Dan Lydiate faces three months on sidelines after shoulder surgery Wales forward Dan Lydiate will have surgery this weekend on the shoulder injury that ruled him out of Wales' tour of New Zealand. The Ospreys flanker suffered the injury while captaining his country in defeat against England at Twickenham last weekend. As a result, the 28-year-old had to skip Wales' summer commitments and is now looking at three months on the sidelines. Wales' Dan Lydiate requires surgery Ospreys physio Anthony Carter said: "Dan sustained a significant injury to the AC joint in his right shoulder, caused by an impact during the England game on Sunday. "He's been seen by Richard Evans, shoulder specialist at Spire Cardiff, who confirmed that the shoulder requires stabilisation via surgery, after which there is an expected rehab period of 12-14 weeks." Ellis Jenkins was called up to replace Lydiate earlier in the week. Wales were already without wing Alex Cuthbert and flanker Justin Tipuric through injuries for the New Zealand tour, while Sam Warburton is recovering from a shoulder injury that sidelined him last weekend. Moves towards 'Single European Sky' sought to foil air traffic control strikes Europe's largest airlines are lobbying the continent's governments to allow neighbouring countries to carry out a ir traffic control (ATC) in airspace affected by industrial disputes. Airlines for Europe (A4E), which represents carriers such as easyJet, Ryanair and British Airways' parent company IAG, wants an end to the cancellations and delays caused by ATC strikes. Flights to, from and over France have been severely disrupted by dozens of strikes in recent years. Air traffic controllers at work in Swanwick, Hampshire Aviation industry body Iata described the strikes as one of the "biggest challenges we see in Europe". Aage Duenhaupt of A 4E said talks are ongoing with the European Commission about forming an action plan to reduce disruption from strikes. "We could be in a position in the future to control parts of the European airspace from other countries or from central bases and not from an affected country," he explained. Mr Duenhaupt said technology is already in place to enable immediate improvements in ATC, although a fully integrated airspace would require more advanced work. Aircraft flying over the UK are controlled by ATC centres in Swanwick, Hampshire and Prestwick, Ayrshire. Flights between London and Spain were delayed by as much as eight hours during a recent French ATC strike with one service between Heathrow and Barcelona being forced to fly far off France's west coast to avoid the country's airspace, Mr Duenhaupt added. IAG chief executive Willie Walsh told reporters at Iata's annual general meeting in Dublin that the situation in France is "having a significant impact on all European aviation". He said: " It's putting stress on the whole European ATC network. We believe there are technological solutions that exist, that could be put into place and we've been calling on the (European) Commission to look at these initiatives. "This is something that is not driven specifically by the situation in France - where we have seen a number of ATC strikes - but it's an initiative that could be put in place at any time to provide resilience for the ATC system in Europe, which is clearly in the interests of everybody." ATC strikes have taken place in Greece, Italy and Belgium in recent months. Mr Walsh will join other chief executives of A4E members in Brussels later this month to call on governments to make progress on the issue. Rafael Schvartzman, Iata's regional vice president for Europe, blamed "political reasons" for the lack of action, saying that countries are " trying to keep these spaces in a traditional manner with borders". Iata is calling for the long-delayed introduction of Single European Sky (SES), which would create one European airspace. It has previously commissioned a study which calculated that the inefficiency of the current system will cost 245 billion euro (189 billion) by 2035 if nothing is done. "W e can reduce and simplify the number of control centres to be able to manage efficiently the aircraft in Europe," Mr Schvartzman said. "It is something that can be done today by governments." Mr Walsh described the implementation of SES as "too long in the discussion phase". Ryanair cancelled 75 flights on Thursday amid the latest French ATC strike . The Dublin-based airline said it was the 50th such strike since 2009 and the ninth in the past 10 weeks. Surrey Police accept Deepcut probe 'mistakes' over Cheryl James' death Surrey Police said they accepted "mistakes were made" in the original investigation into Cheryl James' death at Deepcut. But they insisted her death has now been the subject of a thorough investigation. And as Detective superintendent Adam Hibbert, from Surrey Police, delivered the prepared statement on the steps outside Woking Coroner's Court he was met with a shout of "liar". The Royal Way Gate where Private Cheryl James was on guard duty on the morning of her death (Ministry of Defence Police/PA) DSI Hibbert said: "The death of Ms James has been a tragic loss of a young woman's life, and we recognise that this has been compounded for her family and friends as a result of the way her death was subsequently investigated. "Surrey Police has long accepted that mistakes were made in this investigation. The force should have maintained primacy for it, and has previously apologised to the family for those errors. "Today we would like to reiterate those apologies." Backing the coroner's investigation, he added: "We know that Ms James' family have long since been seeking answers to the circumstances surrounding her death. "The evidence has now been thoroughly examined throughout the new inquest today, and our thoughts are with Ms James' family and her friends. We hope they can take time to reflect upon the coroner's verdict. "We are also acutely aware that today's findings will be relevant to the families of the other three young soldiers who died in Deepcut barracks between 1995 and 2002. "I would like to take this opportunity reassure them that we will fully support any need for disclosure for any future potential coronial processes." But as he walked away from the court steps there was a shout of "liars". Pte James' family were scathing of the police approach to the inquest, saying it appeared they had tried to "unashamedly pursue a suicide verdict". Mr James said: "My wife and I were made to feel as though we were on trial and we felt as though our family was undermined at every opportunity." He added: "Despite Surrey Police's best efforts, the very serious shortcomings in their investigation into Cheryl's death were revealed. "Without conducting any investigation at all, in 1995 Surrey Police abandoned the scene of Cheryl's death within 40 minutes of their arrival and agreed that the Military Police should be permitted to investigate it for themselves. "As a result, the military were allowed to investigate the matter for themselves and they failed to take even the most basic steps to preserve the scene, retain forensic evidence or conduct any form of independent inquiry into a sudden death. Genetic testing of tumours could personalise cancer treatment, experts say Cancer patients should undergo genetic testing of their tumours in order to boost survival and avoid unnecessary, gruelling treatments, experts say . Researchers attending the world's biggest cancer conference in Chicago hailed personalised medicine as the "future of cancer treatment" and the "biggest breakthrough since chemotherapy". While some treatments already hone in on specific biological pathways to stop cancer growing, such as in breast cancer, there is still no widespread use of personalised medicine. Biopsies of cancer tumours should be genetically tested in order to personalise treatment, experts have said Yet the approach - which is being developed at a rapid pace by the cancer community - means patients could be spared chemotherapy if the genetic profile of their tumour biopsy shows it will be of no benefit to them. Highly-targeted drugs aimed at bringing the cancer under control can also be selected rather than relying on "guesswork" or a "one size fits all" approach. Several studies are due to be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) conference showing the benefits of personalised medicine. One trial of more than 13,000 patients found targeting therapies dramatically boosted the numbers who saw their tumours shrink compared to standard treatment. In another, experts from the University of Cambridge Hospitals and University College London (UCL) believe thousands of women every year could be spared chemotherapy if their genetic test shows their tumour will not respond to it. Rowena Sharpe, head of precision medicine at Cancer Research UK, said personalised medicine "is a very, very different way of treating patients". She added: " It's the most exciting thing since chemotherapy. "It's about giving the patient the most appropriate choice. We don't want to treat them with a drug that isn't going to do anything." Professor Roy Herbst, chief of medical oncology at Yale Cancer Centre in the US, said precision medicine was " about finding the right key for the lock, finding out what it is that is driving the tumour, what makes it tick". He added: "At the moment, it is informed guesswork, so that treatment often doesn't work for large numbers of patients. "I believe the potential (of personalised medicine) is huge." Professor Johann de Bono, head of drug development at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, agreed it was an "exciting time in the field" with "major benefits for patients". He added: "What patients need to be aware of, is that we can now look at their tumour by genomic testing and if we identify what we call, actionable genomic aberrations, that we can use that to decide what drug to give the patient. "It's no longer just thinking about whether the cancer has come from the breast or the bowel or the lung. There's more to it than that." Prof de Bono said the practice was still not used widely on the NHS as there is still a large amount of research to do. He said the tumour testing involved extracting DNA from biopsies and putting it through a sequencing machine. The cost of tests can vary from 200 for targeted sequencing of a couple of genes, up to around 3,000 for a more comprehensive analysis. Prof de Bono stressed things were "changing very quickly" and personalised medicine was already having an impact for some cancers including prostate, ovarian, breast, lung and bowel. The University of California, San Diego School of Medicine study presented at ASCO, which pooled the results of 346 early-stage clinical trials involving more than 13,000 patients, has shown the benefits of personalised medicine. Researchers found that tumours in patients who received targeted treatments had shrinkage rates of 30.6%, compared with 4.9% in those who did not. Those on targeted treatment also lived longer without their disease progressing. Dr Robert Stein, a consultant in breast cancer at UCL, is also launching a trial on genetic testing for 4,500 women newly-diagnosed with breast cancer. It could see thousands of women a year avoiding chemotherapy, saving the NHS millions of pounds. He said: " In every area of cancer treatment, we have largely functioned on a one size fits all basis, because we didn't have tools to do any better. "What personalised medicine does is identifies groups of patients who are not likely to benefit from a particular treatment. "We would expect to reduce chemotherapy within the trial population by about two thirds. "We are looking at between 5,500 and 7,000 fewer a year being treated with chemotherapy than are currently treated." Chris Coleman relishing Wales' clash with "monster" Zlatan Ibrahimovic Chris Coleman refers to Zlatan Ibrahimovic as "a monster of a man", but he still wants the Swedish striker around to test his Wales side in their final Euro 2016 warm-up game. Veteran forward Ibrahimovic, who has been heavily linked with a summer move to Manchester United after ending his four-year spell at Paris St Germain, sat out Sweden's goalless stalemate against Slovenia in Malmo on Monday with a calf injury. But Wales boss Coleman hopes the 34-year-old will recover in time to take his place at Solna's Friends Arena on Sunday and line up against his own superstar, Gareth Bale. Chris Coleman is hoping to face Zlatan Ibrahimovic when Wales play Sweden "I don't think any of my players have played against Zlatan," said Coleman. "Ben Davies, Ashley Williams, James Chester and Neil Taylor are Premier League players and are playing against top strikers every week. "But there is only one Zlatan and he is one of a kind on the planet in terms of how he plays. "He is a monster of a man. He is mobile, scores goals anywhere and any way. It will be a new test for them, but it is not something they will be fearful of. "They will look forward to the test and it will be a challenge. We need to make sure we are ready for it." Bale is set for his first Wales appearance since Euro 2016 qualification was celebrated last October with a routine victory over Andorra. The 26-year-old was exhausted after Real Madrid's Champions League final victory last weekend and was barely able to move in the extra-time period because of severe cramp. But Bale has missed the last three friendlies against Holland, Northern Ireland and Ukraine, and Coleman is keen for him to play some part in Sweden with Wales' Euro 2016 opener against Slovakia only a week away. "It was 120 minutes for Gareth last week and it is also what happened 48 hours later," said Coleman. "Gareth doesn't drink alcohol, but it's the travel and celebrating. So we will look at that. "But if there is a chance that we can give him some minutes. then yes we will. "It is important for him to be not only on the training pitch, but the real thing before we kick off." Coleman had wanted to play the same side in Sweden which will line up against Slovakia in their Euro 2016 opener. But Joe Allen, Joe Ledley and Hal Robson-Kanu are all set to be given extra time to shrug off injuries ahead of the big kick-off in Bordeaux. "I know the 11 I want to play against Slovakia, but between now and then I need to see how the guys are physically," said Coleman. "I want to see what they are capable of and how that will impact the week in the build-up to Slovakia. "But if they are all good and fine we will go in there heavy and strong. Joy Global posts surprise profit on cost reductions By Arunima Banerjee June 2 (Reuters) - Mining equipment maker Joy Global Inc reported a surprise quarterly adjusted profit and a sequential rise in bookings for the first time in four quarters, sending its shares up as much as 14 percent on Thursday. Joy Global, like larger rival Caterpillar Inc, has been cutting costs as plunging commodity prices and slowing growth in markets such as China, the world's top copper consumer, reduced demand for its giant shovels and draglines. However, the company acknowledged that mixed economic signals, primarily from China, suggest that there could be a possible near-term improvement in economic output. Caterpillar in April had indicated that demand for construction equipment from China was improving. Joy Global has noted some signs of life in China, which is a positive for the copper market, J.P. Morgan Securities analysts wrote in a note. Citigroup analysts said bookings for the quarter exceeded their expectations. Bookings for the Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based company rose 24 percent sequentially in the latest quarter. Bookings last rose in the second quarter of 2015, when it increased 6.4 percent on a sequential basis. The company reported a loss from continuing operations of $15.3 million, or 16 cents per share, for the latest quarter, compared with a profit of $56 million, or 57 cents per share, a year earlier. However, it earned 9 cents per share on an adjusted basis. Analysts on average were expecting the company to break even on a per-share basis for the quarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Revenue fell to $602 million from $810.5 million. Joy Global has cut jobs and lowered production among other measures to try to adapt to slowing demand. The company said it now expected 2016 sales at the lower end of its previous outlook of $2.4 billion-$2.6 billion. Adjusted earnings were also pegged at the bottom end of its previously expected range of 10-50 cents per share. Ireland bids to recover long-lost transatlantic air traffic By Conor Humphries DUBLIN, June 2(Reuters) - Decades after long-range airliners ended Ireland's role as the stepping stone to Europe for Americans, who sipped Irish coffees as their propeller-driven planes refuelled, the country is slowly re-establishing itself as a major transatlantic aviation hub. Last year Dublin for the first time entered the top-five rankings for transatlantic hubs in Europe, data showed, after British Airways owner IAG started to implement plans to use Dublin as an alternative to the continent's top hub at London Heathrow. With Irish low-cost giant Ryanair considering using its fleet to feed long-haul services, senior airline executives at the first annual meeting of the International Air Transport Association to be held in Dublin since 1962 talked up prospects for further growth. "It's an absolutely enormous opportunity for Dublin," said Pat Byrne, chief executive of Irish regional airline CityJet, which announced plans to double its fleet to 50 planes. "The last time Ireland has had this significance (for transatlantic travel) was when airplanes had to stop to fuel." In the 1940s and 50s U.S. presidents and movie stars would stop off near Shannon on the west coast of Ireland before flying on to Europe's great cities, bringing a touch of glamour to one of the most under-developed regions in Western Europe. Locals claim the Irish Coffee, finished with a dash of whiskey, was invented by a local barman catering for the visiting stars. But the airport went into decades of decline when long-range jets could fly further. Ireland's resurgence has been fuelled in recent years by strong sterling, a large under-utilised terminal completed just after Ireland's 2008 banking crisis and the only pre-clearance facility for travelling to the United States in an EU capital. Transfer traffic has been growing at Dublin by between 25 and 30 percent a year as former flag carrier Aer Lingus has built up its long-haul fleet from seven in 2010 to a target of 20 by 2020, a spokesman said. Meanwhile all transfer traffic through Dublin airport rose 50 percent to 250,000 passengers in the first four months of the year, the Dublin Airport Authority said. Heathrow had 230,000 transatlantic seats available weekly at the peak of last summer compared with fifth-placed Dublin with 41,000, according to aviation data and analytics company OAG. Dublin has focused on the 25 regional UK airports it has direct flights to, but the focus is shifting towards other parts of western Europe, said Dublin Airport Authority chief executive Kevin Toland. The next stage could be to harness Ryanair, whose second largest base in Europe is Dublin, with 86 destinations. Long averse to connecting flights due to logistical difficulties, Ryanair has said it will experiment with connections this summer with a view to feeding long haul airlines in the future. But Ryanair Chief Commercial Officer David O'Brien told Reuters it would need a "stronger compelling economic reason" before it starts regular feeds for rival carriers. Executives also cited Ireland's pro-business regulator as a plus. The Irish Aviation Authority has been pushing to allow Norwegian Air Shuttle's Irish subsidiary to start flying transatlantic routes, despite heavy resistance from U.S. carriers against it. Aer Lingus Chief Executive Stephen Kavanagh, who has been spearheading his airline's hub plan since its takeover by IAG last year, said the key to further growth is being opportunistic, poaching passengers from overcrowded hubs in Europe and the United States. U.S. imposes sanctions on three Burundian nationals WASHINGTON, June 2 (Reuters) - The United States Treasury said on Thursday it had imposed sanctions on two pro-government Burundian officials and a member of an armed opposition group for "engaging in actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, or stability" of the African country. A Treasury statement said sanctions were imposed on: - Marius Ngendabanka, a military commander under President Pierre Nkurunziza who is "one of several Nkurunziza regime officers alleged to be involved in 'purification' operations in Bujumbura against those opposed to the president's third-term bid." - Ignace Sibomana, who has been involved in operations to target those opposed to Nkurunziza. Brazil judge suspends Odebrecht lawsuit, in sign of plea deal BRASILIA/RIO DE JANEIRO, June 2 (Reuters) - Brazilian judge Sergio Moro suspended one of several lawsuits against executives of engineering conglomerate Grupo Odebrecht SA for 30 days, signaling potential plea bargain deals with prosecutors investigating a massive graft scheme. The suspension was confirmed by Moro's office in an emailed statement. He wrote in a Wednesday ruling that he suspended the lawsuit "given the information there may be ongoing negotiation for some type of collaboration agreement" with prosecutors. Testimony in plea bargains is confidential until they are fully collected by prosecutors and approved by a judge. Analysts and political commentators have said that testimony by executives at Odebrecht, believed to be at the center of a corruption probe at state firms, could widen the investigation even further and possibly bring down top political figures. The company said in March that some executives would seek plea bargains with prosecutors, a radical shift for the company, which had done little to cooperate in the probe that has targeted major political parties and contractors of state-controlled oil firm Petroleo Brasileiro SA. Odebrecht is the largest of Brazil's major engineering firms accused of colluding to overcharge Petrobras for work and using the excess as bribes that were funneled to ruling coalition politicians and, in some cases, Rousseff's opponents. In New Zealand, kiwifruit comeback offsets dairy downturn By Rebecca Howard and Charlotte Greenfield WELLINGTON, June 3 (Reuters) - Five years ago, the future of New Zealand's celebrated kiwifruit industry looked dire as a previously unseen disease decimated orchards, forcing growers to rip up vines and sending production plunging. But helped by a new disease-resistant variety and the soaring popularity of the nutritionally-packed berry, kiwifruit exports are now helping prop New Zealand's economy amid struggling sales of its major agricultural product, dairy. New Zealand's grower-owned co-operative Zespri International Ltd last week reported record sales volumes - and returns for growers - on the back of booming demand for the fruit and its health properties, particularly from China. "Asian markets see food as part of their approach to health," Zespri International Ltd chief executive Lain Jager said. "Food is medicine and we are perhaps growing faster in Asia than in the U.S. and Europe, primarily off that health platform." The egg shaped fruit is marketed for its high nutritional levels - one serving has around twice as much vitamin C as an orange and provides nearly as much potassium as a banana. Zespri sold 131.6 million trays in the year to March 31, up 21 percent on the previous season. Sales revenue also jumped 21 percent to a record NZ$1.9 billion ($1.3 billion). Much of the rise was due to a recovery in exports of gold kiwifruit, a sweet, smooth-skinned variety particularly hard hit by the PSA pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae (Psa) bacteria that was discovered in New Zealand for the first time in 2010. For New Zealand's agriculturally dependent economy, the recovery couldn't have come at a better time. The country's dairy sector, which accounts for a fifth of all exports has been struggling with weak demand and plunging prices. "Rises in exports of our smaller commodities, such as fruit, are offsetting the falls in the dairy sector," said Statistics NZ senior manager Nicola Growden. As dairy exports fell almost 12 percent to NZ$11.2 billion in the year to April, fruit exports rose by a third to NZ$2.4 billion, data showed. GOLD STANDARD Doug Brown, who owns a 50 hectare (124 acre) kiwifruit farm in the small coastal town of Opotiki in New Zealand's eastern North Island, said growers were breathing a sigh of relief as the industry recovers from Psa. Authorities still haven't determined exactly how the bacterium was introduced, but it spread quickly. Zespri responded to the Psa virus by developing a new variety that is more resistant to the disease, which has been found in other growing regions including Asia, Europe and Chile. It now expects to increase volumes of higher value gold kiwi fruit from 32 million trays to about 45 million trays this year. "The new gold variety's going particularly well," said Brown, who sells 600,000 trays of kiwifruit annually. "It's almost a challenge to grow enough." Much of the rising demand is coming from China. Already the world's largest producer and consumer of kiwifruit, China is poised to become Zespri's number one market by volume in the current season and to account for around one-fifth of its sales. Zespri plans to expand in China, growing the number of offices and increasing staff to 90 from 25 over the next three years. Last November, it signed a memorandum of understanding with the local government in the central Chinese province of Shaanxi to assess growing local kiwifruit varieties. Kiwifruit used to be known as Chinese gooseberries, but were renamed by New Zealand growers after the country's iconic flightless bird as a marketing ploy. New Zealand fruit is particularly popular in Asia for its perceived clean, green growing environment. "It's all about the quality of the fruit, and New Zealand's brand behind it," said Huub Kerckhoffs, a kiwifruit researcher at New Zealand's Massey University. The new variety is also selling well in the United States, prompting Zespri to boost its presence and take on top U.S. supplier Chile. More strains are in the pipeline, with a new green variety expected to launch next year. Longer term Zespri is working on commercialising tiny kiwi berries and a variety of red kiwifruit. "I think most growers are quite optimistic for the future, there's lots of good things happening," said Brown. ($1 = 1.4654 New Zealand dollars) OPEC changes nothing of substance, but at least they're being civil: Russell By Clyde Russell LAUNCESTON, Australia, June 3 (Reuters) - There are two ways of looking at the OPEC meeting in Vienna, and neither is wrong. Firstly it was a success as the Saudis and Iranians managed to be relatively nice to each other, and secondly it was a failure because everybody can still pump as much oil as they feel like. The market expectations had been set so low for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meeting yesterday in the Austrian capital that the positive view appears to be more common in the post-conference assessments. The April gathering in Doha, which included non-OPEC major Russia, was widely viewed as a debacle because the market had expected a production freeze to be agreed and instead they got an acrimonious breakdown between Gulf rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. While Thursday's OPEC meeting also failed to agree any production limits, or indeed a clear-cut strategy for the group, there were some encouraging signs. The first was that new Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih struck a conciliatory note and tried to reassure the market that his country, the world's largest crude exporter, would act responsibly. "We will be very gentle in our approach and make sure we don't shock the market in any way," Falih told reporters. In other words, the Saudis are going to carry on with their current policy of producing as much as they can sell and allowing the market to set the price of oil. For its part, Iran was also more conciliatory but equally insistent that it will continue to ramp up output until it gets back to what it considers its rightful market share. Bijan Zanganeh, Iran's oil minister, said his country doesn't support an output ceiling and that its output quota should be based on historic levels of about 14.5 percent of OPEC's total production. This would give Tehran a quota of about 4.7 million barrels per day (bpd), which is well above the market's estimate of current Iranian output of about 3.5 million bpd. PRODUCER RIVALRY TO CONTINUE IN ASIA The main takeaway from Thursday's event is that nothing has really changed since the December OPEC meeting, which effectively imposed no restrictions on members at all. It was hardly surprising that Brent crude dropped to the lowest in 13 years in the wake of that meeting, slumping to $27.10 a barrel on Jan. 20. Since then a combination of lower output from high-cost wells, such as some U.S. shale producers, and outages caused by wildfires in Canada and unrest in countries including Libya and Nigeria has led Brent to rebound to close at $50.04 a barrel on Thursday. The Saudi tactic of letting low prices force supply from the market has started to work, but oil's recent gains probably owe more to the output disruptions. There are some positive signs on demand as well, with both of Asia's top importers, China and India, posting strong demand growth. China's crude oil imports are up 11.8 percent in the first four months of the year to about 7.46 million bpd, while India's April imports jumped 15.6 percent from the same month a year earlier, bringing the total for the first four months of the year to about 4.31 million bpd. China's imports are still being driven by purchases for strategic storage, a process that has some way to run, while India's story is more one of strong economic growth increasing vehicle sales and fuel consumption. China and India are the battleground for Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia and the OPEC meeting did nothing to suggest that the fight for market share is abating. Russia has overtaken Saudi Arabia to be China's top supplier so far this year, while Iran has been gaining market share in Asia, with shipments to the region likely to have jumped 60 percent in May from the same month a year earlier. Overall, the OPEC meeting in Vienna did very little to alter the dynamics of the crude oil market. If it did achieve anything, it was that everybody seemed to make an effort to get along, which could be important if it lays the groundwork for deeper cooperation at the next meeting in December. El Salvador wants to investigate ambassador for arms sales SAN SALVADOR, June 2 (Reuters) - El Salvador prosecutors on Thursday asked Congress to allow the government to investigate the country's ambassador to Germany for illegal arms sales during his time in the Defense Ministry. Congress must approve criminal proceedings against any public official. The government said Ambassador Jose Atilio Benitez, 57, a retired general, committed fraud with more than 30 weapons that belonged to the armed forces, selling everything from military rifles to handguns on the black market. Prosecutors want to bring charges "for corruption, specifically for the crimes of illegal commerce and storing of weapons, for arbitrary acts, and for the deception committed by this person," Douglas Melendez, the attorney general, told reporters. El Savador's embassy in Germany was not immediately available for comment. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment. Benitez, who led Salvadoran troops on missions in Iraq, was named deputy defense minister of El Salvador in 2009, and two years later became defense minister for ex-President Mauricio Funes, a leftist whose party continues to be in power. Benitez was named ambassador to Spain in 2013, and has been head of El Salvador's mission in Germany since April of last year. GRAINS-Soybeans edge lower, set for biggest weekly gain in 19 months SYDNEY, June 3 (Reuters) - U.S. soybeans hit a fresh two-year high on Friday and was poised for its biggest weekly gain in over 19 months, as fears of big production losses in Argentina fuelled expectations of increased demand for U.S. supplies. FUNDAMENTALS * The most active soybean futures on the Chicago Board Of Trade rose to $11.46 a bushel and the contract was up more than 5 percent for the week, the biggest weekly gain since October, 2014. * Soybeans have risen for eight weeks in a row, the longest run of gains since October, 2003. * The most active corn futures were up nearly 0.5 percent for the week, the fourth consecutive weekly gain. * The most active wheat futures were up 0.5 percent for the week, the second consecutive weekly gain. * Rains this week in Argentina's top agricultural province, which was previously unaffected by recent wet weather, may further damage the 2015/16 soybean harvest, the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange said on Thursday. * Government data released on Wednesday showed Chinese pork prices hit record levels this week, with farmers holding back pigs from slaughter to rebuild herds following widespread culling in 2014 when prices were low. * Brazil's cereals exporters association Anec cut its estimate for 2016 corn exports to 23 million tonnes, down 7 million tonnes from its April outlook. MARKET NEWS * The euro wallowed near a three-year low against the yen early on Friday, having been underwhelmed by the European Central Bank holding back from making material changes to its policy mix after a review. * Brent oil prices held around $50 a barrel on Friday following an OPEC meeting that failed to agree on output targets, but which was seen as supportive as Saudi Arabia pledged not to flood the market with more fuel. * Wall Street closed slightly higher on Thursday as fresh data gave a rosier view of the economy and further gains for healthcare shares countered declines in energy names. DATA AHEAD (GMT) 0750 France Markit services PMI May 0755 Germany Markit services PMI May 0800 Euro zone Markit service PMI final May 0900 Euro zone Retail sales Apr 1230 U.S. Nonfarm payrolls May 1230 U.S. Unemployment rate May 1230 U.S. International trade Apr 1400 U.S. Factory orders Apr 1400 U.S. ISM non-manufacturing PMI May Grains prices at 0118 GMT Contract Last Change Pct chg Two-day chg MA 30 RSI CBOT wheat 484.00 -1.50 -0.31% +2.16% 473.63 60 CBOT corn 414.50 -0.75 -0.18% +0.18% 392.11 67 CBOT soy 1143.25 -1.00 -0.09% +3.96% 1059.87 79 CBOT rice $11.45 $0.08 +0.70% +4.14% $11.39 56 WTI crude $49.15 -$0.02 -0.04% +0.29% $46.59 69 Currencies Euro/dlr $1.115 $0.000 -0.01% -0.33% USD/AUD 0.723 0.000 -0.01% -0.41% Most active contracts Wheat, corn and soy US cents/bushel. Rice: USD per hundredweight RSI 14, exponential (Reporting by Colin Packham) Diesel margins nearly double as El Nino spurs Asia oil demand By Florence Tan and Seng Li Peng SINGAPORE, June 3 (Reuters) - Diesel, one of the worst performing fuels in the refining complex for years, has seen its fortunes turn around as extreme hot weather has boosted demand, especially at power generators in South Asia. Asia has been struggling to absorb excess diesel as an economic slowdown across the region curbed consumption of the industrial fuel. The International Energy Agency warned last month that global gasoil demand was crumbling. But the fuel's crack spread, or the profit a refiner gets for producing a barrel of diesel from Dubai crude, nearly doubled to $11.74 a barrel on Thursday from its low point this year of $6.22 on April 6 after India, Pakistan and other Asian countries boosted imports. "The strength in imports into these affected countries will continue in coming weeks," analysts at energy consultancy FGE said. "The El Nino phenomenon is expected to last till June, after which conditions should normalize." India imported 510,000 tonnes (126,650 barrels per day (bpd)) of diesel in April , the biggest volume in five years, as state-owned refiners ramped up imports after supplies from private companies became too expensive in the absence of discounts on taxes and shipping. Pakistan bought 215,000 tonnes for May in a rare move due to summer demand and supply disruptions caused by a recent strike at Kuwait Petroleum Corp, its long-term supplier. Vietnamese trading company Petrolimex doubled gasoil purchases in April to 140,000 tonnes from March, and maintained the same volume in May. Those purchases cut Asia's diesel surplus, which is forecast by FGE to drop by about 50,000 bpd in the second quarter from the same period a year ago. The proportion of middle distillates against overall oil stocks held in Singapore , the region's oil hub, has fallen to multi-year lows after refiners across the region optimised output of gasoline, which has seen strong demand growth. But the frenzy may be short-lived as India and Vietnam are showing signs of slowing down their diesel purchases, traders said. "Indian Oil Corp (the main diesel importer) is reducing its imports now because of the monsoon," said a middle distillates trader based in Singapore. Petrolimex's June purchases have also slowed. "The raining season is coming across Vietnam and demand (for gasoil) is easing off," said a trader who tracks trade flows into the country. Without the weather-induced incremental demand in the second half of the year, Asia's gasoil surplus is expected widen again to an average of 935,000 bpd in the second half of this year, up 77,000 bpd from a year ago, FGE said. Guatemala accuses ex-president of corruption, orders 50 arrested GUATEMALA CITY, June 2 (Reuters) - Guatemala's attorney general accused ex-president Otto Perez on Thursday of negotiating hundreds of bribes for public contracts, and ordered at least 50 people arrested for participating in the massive corruption scheme. The latest accusation comes after a bribery scandal toppled Perez's government, forcing his resignation and landing him in jail last fall. The latest accusations also sweep in other politicians and prominent business leaders. Authorities arrested 23 people during the day and sent seven international orders for capture, including for Alba Lorenzana, the wife of Mexican media magnate Angel Gonzalez and a partner in his companies. "We are facing a criminal structure that had co-opted power ... with the ultimate goal of illegal enrichment," Attorney General Thelma Aldana said at a news conference, adding that the organization was led by Perez and his former vice president Roxana Baldetti. According to the investigation, officials and businessmen started using a "mechanism" during the 2011 elections to hide bribes, pulling in at least $130 million. The scheme continued until the resignation of Perez and Baldetti, who are both in jail pending trial for customs fraud. Lawyers for Perez and Baldetti were not immediately available for comment on the newest accusations, which include charges for illicit campaign finance, illegal association, passive bribery and money laundering. Perez has denied any involvement in the customs fraud. The attorney general's office and the Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a U.N.-backed body that was key in Perez's fall, said Perez and Baldetti took at least 60 percent of the funds for themselves, to live a life of luxury. The investigation is looking at 450 cases of illicit contracts, involving bankers, officials, and businessmen such as the legal representative of Sigma, Guatemala's most important construction firm, as well as people who acted as front men to hide the source of funds. "The conditions under which one works (as an official) have their risks and today I have to confront this situation and confront my joint responsibility," said Rudy Gallardo, director of the National Register, which processes personal identification cards, and one of those detained in the case. Major powers meet to revive moribund Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking By John Irish PARIS, June 3 (Reuters) - France convenes foreign ministers from major powers on Friday to put Israel-Palestinian peacemaking back on the international agenda and find enough common ground to bring the two sides back to the table by the end of the year. With U.S. efforts to broker a deal on a Palestinian state on Israel-occupied land in deep freeze for two years and Washington focused on its November presidential election, France has lobbied key players to hold a conference that would aim to break the apathy over the impasse and stir new diplomatic momentum. France has grown frustrated over the absence of movement toward a "two-state solution" since the collapse of the last round of talks in April 2014, arguing that letting the status quo prevail is like "waiting for a powder keg to explode". "We know that we aren't going to get the Israelis and Palestinians to make peace immediately, but we want to create the right conditions to get the two around the negotiating table," said a senior French diplomat. The gathering of ministers in Paris includes the Middle East Quartet - which comprises the United States, Russia, the European Union and United Nations - as well as the Arab League, the U.N. Security Council and about 20 countries. Neither Israel nor the Palestinians have been invited. The meeting, the first international conference on the issue since Annapolis in the United States in 2007, will not touch on any of the chronic core differences between the two sides. Its initial focus is to reaffirm existing international texts and resolutions that are based on achieving a Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza Strip co-existing with Israel, an outcome some say is becoming unrealistic. PROTRACTED IMPASSE Previous attempts to coax the foes to strike a deal have come to nought. The Palestinians say Israeli settlement expansion in occupied territory is dimming any prospect for the viable state they seek, with a capital in Arab East Jerusalem. Israel has demanded tighter security measures from the Palestinians and a crackdown on militants who have attacked Israeli civilians or threaten their safety. It also says Jerusalem is Israel's indivisible capital and cannot be divided. The Paris meeting will try to establish working groups comprising various countries that would meet in the coming months and tackle all aspects of the peace process. Some groups would strive to creating economic incentives and security guarantees to convince both sides to return to talks. Others would focus on trying to find ways to break deadlocks that scuttled previous negotiations or look at whether other peace efforts such as a 2002 Arab initiative remain viable. "France isn't trying to reinvent things that already are out there. The idea is to rebuild confidence and convince everybody to work together to find a way to get to the next conference," the diplomat said. He said the objective was to get Israelis and Palestinians back together after the U.S. elections. A senior U.S. State Department official said Secretary of State John Kerry would bring no specific proposals to the conference. U.S. delegates will be in Paris "to listen to the ideas that the French and others may have, and talk through with them what might make sense going forward," the official said, dampening expectations. While objecting to the French initiative, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stopped short of saying Israel would boycott the conference, although Dore Gold, director-general of Israel's Foreign Ministry, told reporters in Jerusalem that the initiative was doomed. "One hundred years ago, two officials by the name of Mark Sykes and Francois-George Picot tried to dictate a new order in the Middle East. It was at the apex of the era of colonialism in our era. This effort utterly failed then, and will completely fail today," he said. Sykes and Picot were British and French diplomats who secretly mapped out a Middle East their nations would control on defeating the Ottoman Turks in World War One, but the borders they drew have been blurred by nationalist and sectarian bloodshed in recent years. The Palestinians have meanwhile shelved plans to push for a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning settlements to see how the French initiative pans out. In a column in the French daily Le Monde on Thursday, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said the old method of bilateral talks had failed and that it was time to move to a "multilateral framework" that would allow the international community to impose international law in the region. Romania - Factors to watch on June 3 Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Romanian financial markets on Friday. BOND TENDER Romania sold a more than planned 313 million lei ($77.60 million) worth of July 2027 treasury bonds on Thursday, with the average accepted yield at 3.98 percent, central bank data showed. Debt managers, who had planned to sell 200 million lei, last tendered the issue in April at an average yield of 3.96 percent. PPI Romanian industrial producer prices fell 3.0 percent on the year and was flat on the month in April, data from the National Statistics Board showed. NATO The NATO military alliance is not seeking confrontation with Russia by reinforcing its battalions in eastern Europe, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in Berlin on Thursday. CEE MARKETS Central European currencies and equities firmed on Thursday ahead of a European Central Bank meeting where it said it would continue its policy to stimulate the economy. For the long-term Romanian diary, click on For emerging markets economic events, click on For an index of all diaries, click on China slams Philippines' definition of South China Sea "reef" BEIJING, June 3 (Reuters) - As Asia's biggest security summit is set to convene, China on Friday accused the Philippines of seeking to negate its sovereignty in the South China Sea by describing Taiping Island as a reef and not an island in Manila's territorial court case. Tensions in the South China Sea are set to dominate the Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD) starting Friday, exposing a deepening rivalry between the United States and China ahead of a landmark legal ruling over the disputed area in the Hague. Beijing refuses to recognise the case lodged by the Philippines with the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague over territorial claims in the South China Sea and says such disputes should be resolved through bilateral talks. Manila is challenging the legality of China's claim there, in part by arguing that no land mass in the Spratly archipelago, including Itu Aba, known as Taiping Island in Chinese, can legally be considered a life-sustaining island. That would mean it cannot hold rights to a 200 nautical mile (370 km) exclusive economic zone. "The Philippines' attempt to define Taiping Island as a 'reef' exposes that the goal of its arbitration case is to try to negate China's sovereignty and related rights over the Spratly Islands," China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said. "This is a violation of international law and completely unacceptable," Hua said in a statement posted to the ministry's website. Chinese fishermen had historically lived on Itu Aba year-round, and fished, dug wells, cultivated plants and constructed buildings, all evidence that it was an island capable of sustaining human life and economic activity, Hua said. China claims almost the entire South China Sea, through which about $5 trillion worth of ship-borne goods passes every year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims to the waters. Self-ruled Taiwan controls Itu Aba, which some analysts believe has the strongest claim to island status and an economic zone. Late last year it finished a $100 million port upgrade on Itu Aba, which has an airstrip, a hospital and fresh water. China, which claims sovereignty over Taiwan, has appeared unruffled by Taiwan's upgrading work on Itu Aba. Military strategists say that is because it could fall into China's hands should it ever take over Taiwan. Taiwan in May called on the international court not to make a ruling on the legal status of Itu Aba in the South China Sea case if the judges don't visit first to see for themselves it can sustain life. Iran's Khamenei says US, 'evil' Britain remain main enemies - state TV ANKARA, June 3 (Reuters) - Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Friday Tehran had no intention of cooperating on regional issues with its main enemies the United states and "evil" Britain, state TV reported. "America has continued its enmity towards Iran since (the 1979 Islamic) revolution... It is a huge mistake to trust the evil Britain and the great Satan (U.S.)," Khamenei said in a speech broadcast live on state TV. "We will not cooperate with America over the regional crisis," he said, adding that: "Their aims in the region are 180 degrees opposed to Iran's." China stocks post best week since March on hopes of MSCI inclusion SHANGHAI, June 3 (Reuters) - China stocks posted their best weekly gain since March, buoyed by growing hopes that MSCI will add Chinese shares to its index later this month and revive foreign interest in the struggling mainland market. China's blue-chip CSI300 index rose 0.7 percent to 3189.33, bringing its weekly gain to 4.1 percent. The SSEC gained 0.5 percent to 2938.68 points, rising 4.2 percent for the week, breaking a 6-week losing streak. But further gains were capped on Friday by worries about the slowing economy and downward pressure on the yuan currency. Investors are awaiting a raft of China May data next week for clues on whether the economy is stabilising. March data was encouraging, but April indicators and May business activity surveys have painted a weaker picture. Growing expectations of a looming U.S. rate hike and the resulting boost to the U.S. dollar have also revived fears of more depreciation pressure on China's currency. Analysts polled by Reuters expect the yuan to weaken around 2.5 percent over the coming year against the greenback. Iran's Khamenei says US, 'evil' Britain can't be trusted - state TV By Parisa Hafezi ANKARA, June 3 (Reuters) - Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Friday Tehran had no intention of cooperating on regional issues with its main enemies, the United States and "evil" Britain. Khamenei also accused Washington of not being committed to a nuclear deal reached between Tehran and six major powers, including the United States, in 2015 that aims to curb the country's disputed nuclear programme. Under the agreement, economic sanctions were lifted in January after Iran suspended sensitive nuclear work that the West suspects was aimed at creating a nuclear bomb. Iran denies seeking a nuclear bomb. Inflation, unemployment and other economic hardships persuaded Khamenei to support President Hassan Rouhani on the nuclear question aimed at improving the parlous state of Iran's economy. "America has continued its enmity towards Iran since (the 1979 Islamic) revolution ... It is a huge mistake to trust evil Britain and the Great Satan (the United States)," Khamenei said in a speech broadcast live on state TV. "We will not cooperate with America over the regional crisis," he said, adding that: "Their aims in the region are 180 degrees opposed to Iran's." Asked about Khamenei's remarks, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said he did not really have a response. "His rhetoric is always somewhat hyperbolic and so we take it with a grain of salt and don't necessarily rise to the bait," Toner told reporters. Relations with Washington were severed after Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution and enmity to the United States has always been a rallying point for hardliner supporters of Khamenei in Iran. Tehran and Washington have common interests and threats across the Middle East. They have cooperated tactically in the past, including when Tehran helped Washington counter al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Islamic State militants (IS) in Iraq. The United States and its allies in the Middle East accuse Iran of supporting terrorism and interfering in the affairs of regional states, including Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Tehran is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's main regional ally and has provided military and economic support to his fight against rebel groups and IS. Following the end of the sanctions on Iran, the country has started to increase trade with the West. But some U.S. sanctions remain and U.S. banks remain prohibited from doing business with Iran directly or indirectly because Washington still accuses Tehran of supporting terrorism and human rights abuses. "They use human rights, terrorism ... as pretexts to avoid fulfilling their commitments," Khamenei said. "If we remain strong and united and revolutionary, those who are trying to bully Iran and are against us will not succeed," he told a gathering to commemorate the anniversary of the death of the revolution's founder, Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, in 1989. Iran has repeatedly urged Washington to do more to remove obstacles to the banking sector. France says Mideast peace effort must take regional upheaval into account PARIS, June 3 (Reuters) - Changes that have swept the Middle East mean that past efforts for peace between Israelis and Palestinians are no longer as relevant, and major powers must play a key role in resolving the crisis, French President Francois Hollande said on Friday. "The discussion on the conditions for peace between Israelis and Palestinians must take into account the entire region," Hollande said at the start of a conference on the issue. Nigerian militant group says it blew up Brass-Tebidada oil pipeline SINGAPORE, June 3 (Reuters) - The Niger Delta Avengers militant group said on Thursday through social media that it had blown up a third crude pipeline in Nigeria's Bayelsa state in the Delta area. "At about 3:30am our (@NDAvengers) strike team blew up the Brass to Tebidaba Crude oil line in Bayelsa," the group said on a Twitter feed it uses to claim attacks. The pipeline is used to transport Brass River crude to an export terminal. The attack came hours after the group said they blew up the Ogboinbiri-Tebidaba and Clough Creek-Tebidaba pipelines in Bayelsa. Hong Kong shares rise to 1-mth high but investors wary of event risks June 3 - Hong Kong shares rose to one-month highs on Friday to cap a third straight week of gains, but trading remained thin, reflecting investor caution of a possible U.S. rate hike later this month. Worries about the health of the Chinese economy and Britain's referendum on June 23 on whether it should remain in the European Union are also tempering risk appetite. The Hang Seng index rose 0.4 percent, to 20,947.24, while the China Enterprises Index gained 0.6 percent, to 8,809.81 points. For the week, Hang Seng was up 1.8 percent. Most shares rose on Friday, with the utility sector leading the gains. Shares of Dah Sing Financial Holdings Ltd rose 3 percent, on news that the bank has agreed to sell its insurance business to China's Thaihot Group Co Ltd for $1.4 billion in the city's most expensive insurance deal ever. Malaysians seek child abuse case details from British police KUALA LUMPUR, June 3 (Reuters) - Malaysian authorities sought details on Friday of the abuse by a British paedophile who is awaiting sentencing in his homeland on charges of raping and abusing scores of Malaysian children. Malaysians were shocked when news broke on Thursday that Richard Huckle, 30, had raped and sexually abused numerous Malaysian children from impoverished families while he worked in the country as a freelance photographer for nearly a decade. Malaysian police said they were seeking details on the man's victims from their British counterparts while the government had set up a hot line for members of the public to phone if they had information. "The victims have not been identified and the NCA only informed about the incident about one month ago, but no information had been given because the case is still on trial," Ong Chin Lan, a senior officer in the police's Sexual, Women and Child Investigation Division, told the Bernama news agency. The NCA is the London-based National Crime Agency. "We have asked for the information repeatedly and will continue to press them for more information for follow-up action," she said. Huckle, who was arrested in London when he was returning home for Christmas in 2014, began exploiting children and documenting his activities in 2005 when he first visited Malaysia. His victims were aged between six months and 12 years, according to a British court document. He was charged with 91 offences, including 14 counts of rape of a child under 13 years old. His victims included five children aged between 3 and 12 at the time of the abuse, and a baby believed to be six months old, the document said. He is believed to have abused up to 200 children, the BBC reported. 'PREVALENT' PROBLEM Huckle pleaded guilty to 71 offences and his sentence hearing will be concluded on Friday. "Hopefully, after the court judgement on Friday, the authorities in the United Kingdom can provide us with more information," Ong said. While the police sought more details the government had set up a special phone line for information, Women, Family and Community Development Minister Rohani Abdul Karim said in a statement. The government was also setting up a sex offenders' registry, she said. A child rights group said the Huckle case was the tip of the iceberg. "Sadly, child sex abuse is very prevalent in Malaysia," said Sharmila Sekaran if the advocacy group Voice of the Children. Sekaran said child sex tourism was also a problem. The U.N. Children's Fund said the case highlighted a global problem and it wanted to help drafting laws to protect children in Malaysia. PRESS DIGEST - RUSSIA - June 3 MOSCOW, June 3 (Reuters) - The following are some of the leading stories in Russia's newspapers on Friday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. VEDOMOSTI www.vedomosti.ru - Russia's lower house of parliament may soon vote for a law that will introduce payment for drivers entering cities. Lawmakers hope to ease traffic and Moscow may become the first city to test the initiative, the paper writes. - Russia plans to deliver four Mi-35M helicopters worth some $80 million to Kazakhstan before the end of 2016, the paper writes. - Russian car maker Avtovaz will stimulate workers to quit by offering volunteers five salaries if they resign in the period from June 1 to June 15, the paper writes. KOMMERSANT www.kommersant.ru - The paper runs an interview with the CEO of Russian state defence conglomerate Rostec, Sergei Chemezov, who says China will be able to buy S-400 air defence missile systems after 2018. - The mayor of the city of Vladivostok in Russia's Far East, Igor Pushkaryov, was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of abuse of authority and bribery, the paper reports. - Russia's Education Ministry is working on introducing a single exam for all Russian regions that will test work migrants' knowledge of the Russian language, history and basic laws, the paper writes. - The number of foreign tourists visiting Russia dropped by some 14.5 percent in the first quarter of 2016 year-on-year, the paper writes citing Moscow airport statistics. NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA www.ng.ru Nigerian militants say aim is zero oil output after three new attacks By Libby George and Ulf Laessing LONDON/ABUJA, June 3 (Reuters) - The Niger Delta Avengers militant group has claimed responsibility for three new attacks on Nigeria's oil infrastructure, promising to cut production to zero. The attacks are the latest in a Delta region conflict that a major local youth group said is "rapidly deteriorating and getting out of control", putting intense pressure on Nigeria's stretched finances. The Nigerian Air Force, in a statement issued late on Friday, said it had deployed additional "fighter aircraft, helicopter gunship and surveillance aircraft" in troubled oil-producing areas to conduct "offensive air operations and intelligence gathering". The army has moved reinforcements to the swamps in the last few weeks. Early on Friday, the Niger Delta Avengers group said via its Twitter account it had blown up a pipeline in Nigeria's Bayelsa state owned by Italy's ENI, hours after attacks on another ENI pipeline as well as one belonging to Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd (SPDC). "At about 3:30am our (@NDAvengers) strike team blew up the Brass to Tebidaba Crude oil line in Bayelsa," the group said on a Twitter feed it uses to claim attacks. Shell confirmed its 250,000 barrels a day Forcados pipeline had been hit again and was leaking. "We have ... mobilised appropriate oil spill response measures," SPDC said in a statement. The pipe had been shut in February after a seawater attack but a new strike might complicate three-month long repairs, for which the firm has brought in experts from abroad. Force majeur has been in place for Forcados crude since then. The Niger Delta Avengers say oil firms are responsible for pollution and say the poor swampland region fails to reap any benefit from its reserves. It said its attacks had brought Nigeria's oil production to just 800,000 barrels per day (bpd), from 2 million bpd, without killing anyone, though they hit infrastructure feeding crude grades already under force majeure. The ENI pipeline is used to transport Brass River crude. The group also hit ENI's Ogboinbiri-Tebidaba and Clough Creek-Tebidaba pipelines in Bayelsa and warned ENI not to start repairs or "we will make you regrets it". ENI did not respond to a request for comment. LOUD SOUND Ayiri Appah, a resident of Ogboinbiri, where the ENI pipelines are located, said he "heard a loud sound" from the area between 2 and 4 am local time. Three grades of Nigeria's oil - Forcados, Brass River and Bonny Light - are under force majeure, while Exxon Mobil lifted force majeure on Qua Iboe, the country's largest export stream, on Friday. Nigeria's oil minister said on Thursday that output was 1.6 million bpd. Even if the most recent attacks, which also included facilities belonging to Chevron under its Escravos grade, took out all exports of the oil linked to them, June production would remain near 1.2 million bpd. Experts said the violence showed little sign of abating, and would keep pressure on the Nigeria's oil production and finances. President Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim from the north, on Thursday cancelled what would have been his first visit to the Delta region since taking office. The Avengers have accused Buhari of ignoring local problems by having never visited the Christian region in the south. Dutch grid operator can import 20 pct more electricity from Germany - regulator AMSTERDAM, June 3 (Reuters) - The Netherlands will be allowed to import up to 20 percent more electricity from neighbouring Germany starting on June 4, the country's market regulator said on Friday. The Authority for Consumers and Markets said that the increase would likely lead to a fall in the cost of Dutch electricity as German prices are cheaper. The change comes after a study found Dutch grid operator Tennet could import up to 5,000 megawatts per day from Germany without difficulty, from the current limit of 4,250 MW. Israel won't extradite ex-school principal wanted in Australia on sex crime charges SYDNEY/JERUSALEM, June 3 (Reuters) - An Israeli court has ruled that a former Australian school principal accused of more than 70 counts of sexual assault was mentally unfit to face extradition and could be freed from house arrest, officials said on Friday. For nearly three years Australia has been pushing Israel to extradite Malka Leifer, who fled Australia in 2008, with what Australian authorities believe was the assistance of the insular Adass Jewish community, after accusations against her surfaced. Leifer, who has Israeli citizenship, is the former principal of the Adass Israel School, an ultra-orthodox Jewish girls' school in Melbourne. She is wanted by police in the surrounding Australian state of Victoria on charges of indecent assault and rape involving girls at the school. Thursday's court decision angered former students who say they were abused by her and could raise diplomatic tensions between Australia and Israel. Copies of the court ruling were not immediately available and spokespeople from Israel's Ministry of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Australia's ambassador to Israel said he would pursue efforts to have Leifer extradited to face justice. "We retain a strong interest in seeing Ms. Leifer extradited. She is wanted to face prosecution in Australia for criminal conduct relating to 74 separate sexual assault offences," Dave Sharma told Reuters. "We are working closely with Israeli authorities regarding the next steps in the extradition proceedings. And we will remain patient and determined in pursuing justice in this case." Leifer's lawyer in Israel, Yehuda Fried, said the court in Jerusalem had 72 hours to decide whether she would be released from house arrest. "My client is a very sick woman," he told Reuters, adding that she had been examined under court order at a public hospital and that a commission headed by the chief district psychiatrist determined she was unfit to stand trial. "According to Israeli law, in this situation she cannot be prosecuted, and therefore her extradition proceedings were halted," he said. World powers have duty to revive Middle East peace talks - EU PARIS, June 3 (Reuters) - The European Union's foreign policy chief said on Friday that major powers had a duty to revive talks between Israel and Palestine and that the perspectives created by the Oslo accords in 1993 were at risk. Pakistan ex-minister gets 16 years for haj pilgrimage kickbacks ISLAMABAD, June 3 (Reuters) - A Pakistani court jailed a former religious affairs minister for 16 years on Friday for taking kickbacks in arranging the annual Muslim haj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, media reported. Hamid Saeed Kazmi was an influential minister in the government of the Pakistan People's Party that was in power from 2008-2013. He was charged with hiring a substandard building to house Pakistani pilgrims to Mecca in 2009, charging exorbitant rents from the travellers and receiving kickbacks. A special court also convicted two other former officials of the religious affairs ministry and jailed them for 16 and 40 years, respectively, Dawn newspaper reported on its website. All three were taken into custody after the court announced the verdict. They have the right to appeal the order at Islamabad High Court. Each year, more than 100,000 Pakistanis perform the haj pilgrimage, considered a religious obligation for practising Muslims. GRAINS-U.S. soybeans climb to two-year high on Argentina rains By Nigel Hunt LONDON, June 3 (Reuters) - U.S. soybean futures climbed to a two-year high on Friday as renewed rain in Argentina heightened concerns about crop losses in the world's number three producer. Wheat prices also rose as heavy rains dented crop prospects in western Europe while corn futures were supported by a diminished outlook in Brazil following a drought. July soybeans on the Chicago Board of Trade were up 1.6 percent at $11.62 a bushel at 1031 GMT after earlier rising to a peak of $11.63-1/4, the highest level for the most active contract since June 2014. Rains this week in Argentina's top agricultural province, which was previously unaffected by recent wet weather, may further damage the 2015/16 soybean harvest, the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange said on Thursday. "There is possibility of further upside potential in soybeans as there is big dent in South American production and if the United States has below average crop conditions," said Phin Ziebell, agribusiness economist at National Australia Bank. "Having said that millers would be looking to replace soymeal with other sources of protein." Chicago soybean futures are on track for an eighth consecutive week of gains and concerns are emerging that the run-up may have been overdone. "We now regard the extent of the latest price rise to be excessive," Commerzbank said in a market note on Friday. Wheat edged up in Chicago and Paris as heavy rain threatened to reduce crop quality in the United States and Europe. The condition of cereal crops in France worsened again last week, farm office FranceAgriMer said on Friday, in a sign that heavy rain is affecting crops in the European Union's largest grain producer. "Current weather in parts of Europe is not favourable, with wet conditions across much of France and Germany moving east into the Balkans and southern Russia," David Sheppard, managing director of UK merchant Gleadell said in a market note. "This, together with forecasted warmer temperatures, could increase disease potential in crops." September wheat in Paris rose 0.6 percent to 168.75 euros a tonne while July wheat in Chicago was up 0.4 percent at $4.87-1/4 a bushel. Corn prices also rose, supported by crop losses in Brazil. Syrian army opens new front against Islamic State, edges towards Raqqa province BEIRUT, June 3 (Reuters) - The Syrian army backed by Russian air strikes has advanced towards Islamic State-held Raqqa province in a new offensive, a group monitoring the war said, nearing a region where U.S.-backed militias have also attacked the jihadist group. Heavy Russian air strikes hit IS-held territory in eastern areas of Hama province near the provincial boundary with Raqqa on Friday, where the army had advanced some 12 km (7 miles), according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The army was around 12 km from the Raqqa provincial boundary. U.S.-backed militias including the Kurdish YPG are pressing a separate, multi-pronged attack against IS in Raqqa province and neighbouring Aleppo province, which escalated this week with a push towards the city of Manbij near the Turkish border. A pro-Damascus Lebanese newspaper said the Syrian army was entering "the race for Raqqa" with its new offensive. A Syrian military source, however, said that reports of an attack targeting Raqqa were "expectations", and that both Raqqa and Deir al-Zor, also in the hands of IS insurgents, were possible targets of army operations. The army announced on Thursday a new operation backed by Russian air strikes in the Athriya area of eastern Hama province close to the provincial border with Raqqa. State media said the army had made territorial gains and inflicted heavy casualties. "There is progress from Athriya on two fronts but the coming direction is not set," the military source said. Raqqa city is Islamic State's de facto capital, and the province has been a major base of operations for the group. The Syrian military source said the army was focused on eastern and northern areas of both Homs and Hama provinces "in the direction of Daesh (IS) gatherings". Homs province borders the Islamic State-dominated Deir al-Zor region which links the territory it controls in Syria with the territory it holds in Iraq. "The field leadership does not give information about the main direction or the secondary direction, but the direction is open to two possibilities - Deir al-Zor and Raqqa," the source said. The Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar said the first aim was to capture the town of Tabqa in Raqqa, the location of an air base and major IS arsenal, and to put "a foot in the area without leaving it completely to the Americans' allies". The U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces alliance (SDF) launched an attack in that direction last week. The SDF has also begun an offensive against IS-held areas in Aleppo province, beginning with the Manbij area. That thrust, supported by U.S. special forces, aims to deny Islamic State any access to the Turkish frontier. Al-Akhbar said the new Syrian army operation did not aim to reach Raqqa city "in the coming weeks", but the goal was at least to reach Tabqa city and Lake Assad, which it overlooks. Tabqa is some 50 km (30 miles) west of Raqqa city. Islamic State captured Tabqa in 2014 at the height of its rapid expansion in Syria and Iraq. The Syrian army advanced to the border between Raqqa and Hama provinces in February. A military source said at the time Tabqa would be the first target of a Syrian government attack in Raqqa province. Venezuela crisis set to dominate Caribbean summit in Cuba HAVANA, June 3 (Reuters) - Leaders of Caribbean countries are set to arrive in Cuba on Friday to attend a regional summit where Venezuela's embattled, socialist government will seek support as opposition at home and abroad intensifies. The summit comes days after the head of the Organization of American States called an urgent meeting to discuss whether Venezuela was violating democratic norms, paving the way for a vote that could suspend it from the body. A majority of the 25 states that are members of the Association of Caribbean States, or ACS, receive subsidized fuel from Venezuela under its Petrocaribe oil program that Caracas uses to wield influence in the region. "Venezuela will denounce to the ACS the most recent aggression carried out by the general secretary of the OAS, Luis Almagro," Venezuela's ambassador to Cuba, Ali Rodriguez, was quoted as saying in local media. Venezuela's government is facing an opposition push at home for a referendum to recall President Nicolas Maduro as well as a shift throughout Latin America away from leftist populism to more conservative policies. Venezuela, Communist-ruled Cuba and other leftist allies like Bolivia have railed against "imperialist" efforts to regain control over the region. Last year, U.S. President Barack Obama attended a Caribbean summit seeking to reassert U.S. leadership in the region, after launching an energy initiative seeking to wean it off cut-rate Venezuelan oil. The official agenda of the seventh ACS summit includes discussions about trade, transport and sustainable tourism as well as strategies to combat climate change. Seventeen countries have confirmed their heads of state will be attending, the ACS said. Colombia on Thursday confirmed President Juan Manuel Santos would not be attending, dashing hopes he might announce a bilateral ceasefire with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, this weekend. His government has been in peace talks with the guerrilla group in Havana for the past three years. Investigators find car believed to belong to UCLA gunman By Alex Dobuzinskis and Piya Sinha-Roy LOS ANGELES, June 3 (Reuters) - A car found near Los Angeles on Friday belonged to a former graduate student who shot dead his estranged wife at her Minnesota home before driving halfway across the country and killing a professor and himself at the University of California, Los Angeles, a police spokeswoman said. Mainak Sarkar's 2003 gray Nissan Sentra was found in Culver City, a suburb just outside Los Angeles, and a bomb squad has been sent to examine the vehicle, said Los Angeles police spokeswoman Liliana Preciado. The car was found blocks from an apartment where Sarkar once lived. Police do not know uet how Sarkar traveled to UCLA after he left his car in Culver City, about 6 miles (10 km) away from UCLA, said Los Angeles police spokesman Drake Madison. Investigators have been looking for the car since Wednesday, when Sarkar shot to death 39-year-old engineering professor William Klug at UCLA. The shooting drew a massive response of heavily armed police and sparked a two-hour lockdown of UCLA's sprawling urban campus. Students said they hid in classrooms behind doors, some of which did not lock. Sarkar had intended to also kill a second professor at UCLA, police said. The native of India was convinced that Klug had stolen software he had developed, according to police, who called Sarkar's claim unfounded. Earlier, Sarkar had killed his estranged wife Ashley Hasti, at her home in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, police said. Hasti's sister, Alex Hasti, described her in a statement on Facebook as a 31-year-old medical school student with a love of acting and stand-up comedy. So far no motive has emerged to explain why he killed Hasti in the home they had shared in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, some 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from Los Angeles. Hasti was found dead early on Thursday morning of multiple gunshot wounds, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Office said in a statement on Friday. "Because this was an unwitnessed death, a more accurate date and time of death cannot be determined," the statement said. Sarkar is believed to have forced his way into Hasti's home through a window, which was found broken, Brooklyn Park police said in a statement. Police only decided to check on Hasti after finding a note at the Los Angeles crime scene written by Sarkar, 38, asking authorities to check on his cat at his home in St. Paul. The bizarre hint led to the discovery of a "kill list" that included Klug, Hasti and the second professor, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck told reporters on Thursday. Alex Hasti on her Facebook post offered no indication of what might have provoked Sarkar. "My sister, Ashley Hasti, was the smartest, coolest, and funniest person I knew. She could do anything she dreamed of," the sister said. "Unfortunately, she won't get to see that last dream come true as her life was cut short much too soon by her estranged husband ... I'm still in a state of shock right now." Sarkar was armed with twin 9mm semiautomatic handguns and multiple extra clips of ammunition, authorities said. The two guns were legally bought in Minnesota, according to Meredith Davis, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. She declined to say who bought the weapons. Wednesday's attack was the latest in a long string of deadly shootings at U.S. schools, including an October attack at an Oregon community college that killed nine and a 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech, in which a gunman killed 32 people, was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. PAIR WED IN 2011 Ashley Hasti married Sarkar in 2011, according to a copy of a marriage license obtained by Reuters. An active Facebook page belonging to Hasti shows pictures of Sarkar, none more recent than May 2011. A page apparently belonging to Sarkar, with no public posts since 2011, prominently displayed several photos of them together. Sarkar came from India's eastern state of West Bengal, where he graduated from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur in 2000 after studying aerospace engineering, according to an ex-classmate and the university's alumni list. Staff at his secondary school in the industrial town of Durgapur remembered him as an able student who passed his exams with good results. Philippines may widen debt borrowings, cut income tax to fuel growth By Manolo Serapio Jr and Enrico Dela Cruz MANILA, June 3 (Reuters) - The Philippines' incoming finance minister Carlos Dominguez says he is open to diversifying the country's borrowings to fund infrastructure projects and will push for a cut in income taxes to keep the Southeast Asian country on track for growth. Boosting infrastructure spending is among the priorities for the new government of Rodrigo Duterte, the firebrand mayor from Davao city in the south, who won the May 9 election by promising he will go hard against crime and corruption and improving basic government services. That includes addressing the Philippines' horrific traffic jams that have weighed on economic growth, and Dominguez told Reuters he will ensure there are enough funds for new infrastructure projects. Sukuk bonds "are certainly in the menu", as well as yuan borrowings, in terms of fund-raising. "It's not diversification for diversification's sake, it's (getting) the best deal. It depends on who gives us a better deal, will it be the local market or the international market?" The Philippines, which used to be one of Asia's most active sovereign bond issuers, last went to the debt market in February selling $2 billion of 25-year bonds that drew huge demand. TAX PLANS Dominguez is also planning to impose new taxes on other "unhealthy products" in addition to alcohol and cigarettes to compensate for a planned cut in income taxes as he vows to widen the tax base and make the revenue raising regime more equitable. The income tax rate for individuals and companies should be slashed to "mid-20s" percent from as high as 32 percent, but he said he isn't keen to raise the current 12 percent sales tax. "Almost half of your (income goes to) the government. You think that's smart? I don't think so," the 71-year-old businessman and former classmate of Duterte said. Dominguez, who is returning to the Cabinet after 27 years, plans to review the Philippines' Real Estate Investment Trust regulations and to rid the internal revenue and customs agencies of massive corruption. Dominguez served as minister of agriculture and head of the environment and natural resources from 1986 to 1989, during the presidency of the late Corazon Aquino. The Duterte leadership is not shy about planning to copy and expand some of the reform measures instituted by the outgoing government of President Benigno Aquino, Corazon's son, including a public-private partnership on infrastructure investment. "We will change the focus on making the economy more inclusive," Dominguez said. He plans to open up more sectors to foreign ownership, except land, to increase competition and boost services in areas such as telecommunications and power. At the same time, Dominguez said the unnecessary contractualisation of jobs by big Philippine companies will end. "Our administration is not in favour of a system where people cannot plan their lives, cannot say whether or not they can send their kids to school after six months." Dominguez would also push for the lifting of the country's bank secrecy law and put casinos under an anti-money laundering legislation to avoid a repeat of the Bangladesh Bank heist where stolen funds found their way to Manila. Jaguar Land Rover sues Chinese automaker over Evoque copycat - source By Jake Spring BEIJING, June 3 (Reuters) - Jaguar Land Rover is suing Chinese automaker Jiangling Motor for allegedly copying the British firm's Range Rover Evoque, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said - a rare move by a foreign automaker to fight copycats in the world's biggest autos market. A spokesman for JLR, owned by India's Tata Motors, said in brief emailed comments to Reuters that a court in Beijing's eastern Chaoyang district "served Jiangling with newly filed actions surrounding copyright and unfair competition." He declined to elaborate. The suit relates to Jiangling's Landwind X7 sport utility vehicle copying the design of the Evoque, JLR's first China-made model that went on sale last year, said the person with knowledge of the legal proceedings, who is not authorised to talk to the media and didn't want to be named. A spokesman for Landwind declined to comment. Despite widespread and often blatant copying, global automakers generally don't take legal action in China as they feel the odds of winning against local firms are low. Also, a lawsuit can be bad for branding if the Chinese public think a foreign company is bullying domestic competitors. If JLR wins its case, it could prompt other automakers to also take legal action, said Chen Jihong, a Beijing-based lawyer at Zhong Lun Law Firm, speeding up a shift to stronger enforcement of intellectual property rights. CLOSE RESEMBLANCE Landwind unveiled a new version of its X7 SUV in November 2014, drawing criticism for its striking likeness to the Evoque, an imported version of which was already on sale in China. The two SUVs have a similar shape, with the roof and windows tapering from front to back, and near identical tail lights and character lines on the side panelling. The X7's front grille is slightly more rounded than the hard edges of the Evoque. The slight differences between the two cars can be virtually eliminated using widely available kits that allow a Range Rover grille, logo and Land Rover badges to be put on an X7. Kits on Alibaba's Taobao shopping website cost around 128 yuan ($19.43). The X7 costs around a third of the price of an Evoque, and is some way behind in technology and performance, said Yale Zhang, managing director of Automotive Foresight. The JLR spokesman said Jiangling has been barred by injunction from selling the X7 in Brazil, where it recently appointed an importer. Separately, the source said with knowledge of the newly filed suit said the two automakers are also discussing what Landwind can and can't do in any X7 design update. JLR sales fell by a fifth in China in January-March of last year - when it launched its China-made Evoque - after rising 36 percent in the same 2014 period. In the same period this year, JLR's China sales rose 19 percent. A lawsuit could be a long and gruelling process. It took Honda Motor, for example, 12 years to win a case in China against a little-known local automaker - for copying its best-selling CR-V SUV - according to a report by the official Xinhua news agency, confirmed by a Honda spokesman. Even then, the Japanese firm was awarded only 16 million yuan ($2.43 million) in compensation. It had sought 300 million yuan. Spanish court investigates 40 cases in HSBC tax probe MADRID, June 3 (Reuters) - The Spanish High Court said on Friday said it was investigating 40 cases of possible tax evasion following leaks of sensitive information from HSBC's Swiss private bank. Earlier police acting on the orders of the court visited local bank Santander's Madrid headquarters to seek documents related to a number of accounts as part of the probe, the court and police said. The Spanish investigation is one of many undertaken by national tax authorities as a result of the leak in 2008 of extensive client data belonging to HSBC's private bank by Herve Falciani, a former IT employee at the bank. The Spanish court on Friday said all 40 of the people and families under investigation had been on Falciani's list. Falciani, a French citizen, has said he is a whistleblower trying to help governments track down citizens who used Swiss accounts to evade tax. France, Austria, Belgium and Argentina have also launched their own investigations. Santander said the authorities had asked it for information related to the movement of funds between banks and was collaborating with the investigation. An HSBC spokeswoman in London declined to comment. Last year Falciani was sentenced by a Swiss court in his absence to five years in prison for aggravated industrial espionage. Turkey's reaction to Germany genocide vote tempered by politics, trade By Ercan Gurses and Noah Barkin ANKARA/BERLIN, June 3 (Reuters) - Turkish outrage over Germany's decision to label the 1915 massacre of Armenians as an act of genocide was swift, but like the symbolic Bundestag vote itself, Ankara's reaction is likely to be more for show than anything else. German lawmakers on Thursday overwhelmingly endorsed the resolution, prompting Turkey to recall its ambassador and summon a senior German diplomat to the foreign ministry. Newspapers across the political spectrum were united in their anger, with both the pro-government Star and the opposition Sozcu depicting German Chancellor Angela Merkel as Adolf Hitler. The Armenian massacre is a touchy subject for Ankara, which is sensitive to outside criticism. Turkey rejects the view that the killings of Christian Armenians during World War One amounted to a genocide. Ruling party officials said Ankara's response would be kept in check by economic reality. Germany is Turkey's top export market, accounting for $13.4 billion in exports last year. It is also home to more than 3 million Turks. Those ties - as well as talks with the EU to end the migrant crisis and give Turks visa-free travel to Europe - are unlikely to be permanently damaged. "Our reaction to Germany will be limited to a political reaction," a senior AK Party official told Reuters. "We do not think it will reach the level of economic sanctions... We don't want to say 'We will punish Germany' and then go and punish our citizens who live there." Prime Minister Binali Yildirim took a similar stance. "Nobody should expect German-Turkish relations to be completely spoiled, but no one should expect us to be unresponsive," he told reporters before departing for an official visit to Azerbaijan. The nature and scale of the killings remain highly contentious. Turkey accepts that many Armenians died in partisan fighting beginning in 1915, but denies that up to 1.5 million were killed and that this constituted an act of genocide, a term used by many Western historians and foreign parliaments. President Tayyip Erdogan has previously described the killings as "inhumane" and has expressed condolences. 'TOTAL RUPTURE' "Turkey and Germany have close relations in everything, including the economy and politics," said commentator Cengiz Aktar. "The most sensitive issue is the visa and migrants deal, but I don't see this resolution having an impact on it." Never one to shirk from voicing outrage, Erdogan said on Thursday the vote would "seriously impact" relations. Yet, tellingly, he has not yet given any details. This time, Turkey's language is markedly more reserved than in 2012, when it threatened a "total rupture" with France over a law outlawing denial of the genocide. France's highest legal authority ruled that was an unconstitutional violation of freedom of speech, prompting a thaw in relations. Even the withdrawal of Turkey's ambassador was tempered by the fact he was due to leave Germany this summer. "We are looking past what Erdogan says and focusing on what he actually does. He may not be especially determined to join the EU but he clearly wants to use the EU-Turkey deal to get certain things like visa liberalisation. We believe he has a strong interest in this deal," said one senior German official. Merkel is relying on the success of an EU-Turkey deal she has championed to stem the flow of migrants to Europe in return for cash, visa-free travel for Turks to Europe and accelerated talks on EU membership. At home, critics accuse her of going soft on Ankara over human rights because her desire to stop the flow of migrants. In April, she drew fire for allowing German prosecutors to look into charges against a comedian who mocked Erdogan in a crude poem. Merkel herself did not take part in the vote, citing public engagements. Turkish officials said they recognised that domestic German politics a played a role in the resolution. Initiated by the opposition Greens, the motion was almost unanimously endorsed - although the chamber itself was not full and the top three people in government, Merkel, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier were all absent. "This resolution was taken in response to Germany's domestic political dynamics. They did not embrace it that closely. The turnout was low," the senior AKP official said. UCLA shooter remembered in India as level-headed; struggled as postgrad By Sujoy Dhar KOLKATA, India, June 3 (Reuters) - The former student who killed his estranged wife and then drove 2,000 miles (3,200 km) to shoot dead a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, was known at home in India as calm, smart and unassuming by former teachers and classmates. Mainak Sarkar, 38, shot himself dead after this week's killings. He studied at one of India's elite engineering institutes where admission is fiercely competitive and there is huge pressure to excel, and may have been demoralized by the long struggle to earn his doctorate in the United States. "My initial reaction was one of shock and disbelief," said Gautam Biswas, who taught Sarkar in the 9th and 10th grades of St. Michael's School in Durgapur, West Bengal. The industrial township lies just over two hours' drive northeast of the state capital Kolkata. Biswas, shaken, said he was also a private tutor to Mainak and remembered him well. "How could he do this? That was the question that raked my mind for long hours," Biswas said. "In school days, Mainak was a very level-headed, intelligent student and never did give any indication of abnormal behaviour." FRIENDLY, NICE The woman shot dead in her Minnesota home by Sarkar was identified by her sister on social media on Friday as Ashley Hasti. The sister, Alex Hasti, said Ashley Hasti's "life was cut short much too soon by her estranged husband." Sarkar shot her dead before driving to Los Angeles to kill Professor William Klug, 39, police said on Thursday. Police found a "kill list" at his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, that included the name of another professor, who was unharmed. Sarkar graduated in aerospace engineering in 2000 from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur - also in West Bengal. Like Sarkar, many of his IIT "batchmates" went on to study and work in the United States. "When I knew him in IIT he was a very friendly, nice, smart and ambitious guy with dreams to go for higher studies to the USA," said Manish Kumar, who studied with Mainak in Kharagpur and now works in the United States. "Nothing in his behavior indicated that he would ever contemplate or carry out anything like this. Something has to have drastically impacted his mental balance in later years during his PhD for him to become so unhinged." Intense competition among students to succeed in India has drawn social criticism and even featured in Bollywood movies like "3 Idiots", starring Aamir Khan, in which a sadistic professor drives an engineering student to attempt suicide. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said that UCLA faculty members were aware that Sarkar, who graduated in 2013, harboured a grudge against them. "There was some harsh language - but certainly nothing that would be considered homicidal," Beck told reporters on Thursday. Local police said they have not been able to trace Sarkar's immediate family in Durgapur. At St Michael's School in Durgapur the double murder-suicide cast a shadow over plans to celebrate its forthcoming 50th anniversary with an alumni reunion. Qatar Airways hails holding in BA-owner as strategic cost saver DUBLIN, June 3 (Reuters) - Qatar Airways said on Friday its 15 percent stake in British Airways-owner IAG was a strategic rather than financial investment which helped purchasing and network planning, but it was not seeking a board seat. The Gulf carrier said in May it had increased its stake in International Consolidated Airlines Group to 15 percent from 12 percent amid a rapid global expansion. "IAG is a strategic investment, not a financial investment," Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker told reporters at the International Air Transport Association annual meeting in Dublin, adding Qatar was "satisfied with 15.01 pct.". "The benefit is really unlimited, joint purchases, joint insurance, joint component repairs, handling, joint catering," he said, adding that Qatar's Hamad International airport in Doha was a perfect hub to feed India, where IAG was not very strong. He said he had "absolute confidence" in the management of IAG and that Qatar was not seeking a seat on the board. Speaking to Reuters at the same conference, IAG chief executive Willie Walsh insisted that the Qatar Airways holding had no bearing on any operational tie-ups and any deepening of the partnership was "completely separate" to the equity holding. Libyans will defeat local Islamic State themselves - unity gov't PM By Aidan Lewis TRIPOLI, June 3 (Reuters) - Libya is uniting its various armed factions and will be able to eradicate Islamic State militants on its territory with its own forces, the head of the U.N.-backed unity government in Tripoli said on Friday. Prime Minister Fayez Seraj said his Government of National Accord (GNA) was working with brigades from the western city of Misrata and eastern Ajdabiya that were advancing on the radical Islamist movement in their coastal stronghold of Sirte. No one - not even the controversial eastern commander Khalifa Haftar - would be excluded from a national army as long as they submitted to central political authority, he told Reuters in his first interview with international media since arriving in Tripoli in late March. "We are sure that the battle and the eradication of Islamic State will be carried out by Libyans," he said. "I think that what was achieved from Ajdabiya to Sirte and from Misrata to Sirte was a good achievement, given the capabilities that the fighters have." Seraj's government is the result of a U.N.-mediated deal to stop the anarchy and conflict plaguing Libya since the 2011 uprising that ended Muammar Gaddafi's four decades in power. Western states see it as the best hope for uniting Libya's many political factions and armed groups to tackle Islamic State and crack down on people smuggling across the Mediterranean. Both crises have been highlighted in the past two weeks, with armed forces loyal to the GNA pushing Islamic State back around Sirte and hundreds of migrants dying in a new wave of boat departures from western Libya. 'GREAT HOPE' A week ago brigades based in Misrata reached the outskirts of Sirte, while the Petroleum Facilities Guard, which controls oil terminals in eastern Libya, have recaptured two towns about 130 km (80 miles) east of Sirte. Haftar's forces have also announced plans to move on Sirte, though they are still engaged in a battle with Islamists and other opponents for control of the eastern city of Benghazi. Seraj played down fears that competing campaigns for Sirte would revive conflict between factions in the east and west. "I have great hope that the two sides will be united," he said. It was too early to talk about a timeframe for the battle for Sirte, Seraj said. The GNA is still working to build a unified command structure. He confirmed that Libyan brigades had been benefiting from international intelligence, though he would not comment on the activities of Western special forces. "Security and intelligence information, lifting the arms embargo, that's the international assistance we are talking about." Seraj said he had tried to persuade Haftar, a popular figure in the east but despised by many in western Libya, to cooperate with the GNA - and that there could still be a place for him in a future military structure. "We're not going to exclude anyone like Haftar, or any other person, as long as he obeys the political leadership," he said. BLOCKED VOTE Libya's conflict escalated in 2014, when loose alliances of armed groups fought for control of Tripoli. The internationally recognised parliament and government moved to the east, and a rival set of institutions was set up in the capital. Since the GNA arrived with the backing of Misrata's powerful brigades, the self-decalared government in Tripoli has faded - though the GNA's leadership still operates from the secure naval base on the seafront where Seraj was speaking. Nationally, the GNA's progress has been hampered by its failure to win formal approval from the House of Representatives (HOR), the eastern parliament. Hardliners in Tobruk, the city were the parliament is based, have repeatedly blocked a vote. Seraj said he was still pushing for the HOR to convene, possibly in another city. "I'm trying to stress to them and convince them that they should hold a session in the near future - in any place - just to take their responsibility to make the right decision about many issues," Seraj said. The HOR is meant to decide on the leadership of the central bank, which like the National Oil Corporation and the sovereign wealth fund, currently has two rival heads. Seraj said he expected decisision on the leadership of those institutions in the "near future". SMUGGLERS' BOATS As with the fight against Islamic State, Seraj said Libya should retain sovereign control over tackling the crisis of migrantion between Libya and Italy. He signalled his opposition to the expansion of the EU's naval mission into Libyan waters, saying that destroying smugglers' boats on Libya's shores was "not a solution", and the problem must be dealt with in migrants' countries of origin. Seraj said he was working with the EU and neighbouring states including Niger and Chad to find a formula for repatriating Europe-bound migrants to their countries and not to Libya, and that in the meantime, Libya needed humanitarian assistance to feed and house migrants passing through. "It upsets us that many people have lost their lives on the shores of Libya, shores that should be a place of prosperity, that should be full of life and not death," he said. Western Sahara independence movement at crossroads after Polisario chief's death By Patrick Markey and Aziz El Yaakoubi ALGIERS/RABAT June 3 (Reuters) - Western Sahara independence chief Mohammed Abdelaziz took his movement through a war and diplomatic struggle, but his death leaves a new leadership facing a tough diplomatic test with a younger generation likely to be demanding change. Abdelaziz, who died on Tuesday aged 68, will be buried on Saturday after more than three decades as leader of the Sahrawi people's Polisario Front movement and president of its self-declared Sahrawi Republic. His name is synonymous with the Polisario, from its early days in the 1970s as a guerrilla front fighting against Spanish, and then Moroccan, troops through to the U.N.-backed ceasefire and years of stalemate over a referendum on the disputed territory's self-determination. Polisario will hold an extraordinary session to choose a new leader after a 40-day period of mourning. The desert territory, which is rich in phosphate, has been at a diplomatic impasse for more than 20 years since a U.N.-sponsored ceasefire came into force between the Polisario and Morocco on the understanding a referendum would be held on independence. The two sides never agreed on the terms of the referendum or who would be eligible to vote in it, however, and, with Morocco having no interest in keeping it alive, the idea has been shelved. Analysts say it will be the task of any new Polisario leader to keep the referendum idea in the international spotlight even though Morocco is lobbying its allies to keep any such vote off the agenda. Some say the younger generation of Sahrawis, who have spent all their lives in camps, may look to Abdelaziz's successor to push more aggressively for reclaiming territory. Abdelaziz's death came as the obscure dispute took a delicate turn after Morocco, angered by a comment by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, expelled part of the U.N. peace-keeping mission in the territory earlier this year. That triggered a new round of diplomatic scrambling over the future of the arid territory. Polisario leaders, based in the Sahrawi refugee camps in southern Algeria, warned that move puts the ceasefire at risk. Morocco says its decision is irreversible. "Don't expect a new leader to offer dramatic change immediately ... The Polisario movement has been adamant about wanting to see a referendum as previously agreed and has always rejected other options than independence", North Africa project director at International Crisis Group Issandr El Amrani said. Morocco took over most of the territory in 1975 after the end of Spanish colonial rule. It has offered an autonomy plan that Rabat says meets U.N. resolution for a "mutually acceptable solution" to the conflict. Morocco's king has also invested billions in the development of the region, in part to help ward off independence ambitions from Sahrawis there. The Moroccans may be hoping the thrust for independence will peter out. One independent Moroccan daily Akhbar Al Yaoum posed the question: "Abdelaziz is dead : How long will the separatist dream live after him?" DIPLOMATIC WAR The African Union and a European Parliament were among those who expressed support for the Sahrawi people's self-determination and independence after Abdelaziz's death. Rabat has however dismissed the relevance of Abdelaziz, dubbing him a puppet of Algeria, and saying his death will not change the nature of the conflict. "He spent his last years threatening to resume war against Morocco, if he did not, it is because his masters did not want to," a Moroccan official source said, referring to the Algerian government, which has backed Polisario. Abdelaziz will be buried in the buffer zone called "liberated territory" by the Polisario, which is located between the Moroccan protective berm and Algerian and Mauritanian borders. The latest crisis started with Ban Ki-moon's visit to southern Algerian refugee camps where he referred to Morocco's 1975 annexation of Western Sahara as an "occupation." Rabat responded by expelling part of the U.N. civilian mission, in part charged with organising a referendum. In a vote in April, the U.N. Security Council extended the peacekeeping mission for a year and demanded its full team be allowed back in following the move by Morocco. The situation has not yet been resolved. But in the Sahrawi camps, many of the younger generation of refugees were already frustrated by the lack of progress even before the expulsions and Abdelaziz's death. Many Sahrawis have lived all, or most of, their lives in the desert camps in southern Algeria near the border with Morocco, often in mud-brick homes and using car batteries to power lights at night. Geoff Porter, an analyst with North Africa Risk Consulting, said leadership change may intensify the conflict with Morocco as younger Sahrawis are frustrated with the lack of material change in their circumstances after three decades. Lithuanian, Polish regulators probe Polish power import limits By Agnieszka Barteczko, David Mardiste and Andrius Sytas WARSAW/VILNIUS/TALLINN, June 3 (Reuters) - Energy market regulators in Poland and Lithuania are investigating whether Polish electricity grid operator PSE is breaking European Union rules by limiting Lithuanian imports. The restrictions, which are adding to tensions between the Warsaw's eurosceptic government and the European Commission, could be in breach of EU market rules, legal experts said. "The Commission and the Polish regulator have received a request from a market participant regarding the situation when transmission capacity from the Polish side is limited to zero during night hours," Lithuania's National Commission for Energy Control and Prices, said in an email. Lithuania and Poland started power transactions on their first 500-megawatt link last December. The investigation was initiated after Estonia's state-owned power group Eesti Energia filed a request in April asking if the restrictions comply with EU regulations. "The situation is definitely problematic as the Polish TSO (transmission system operator) clearly is not acting in accordance with its previously made statements and officially submitted information," Hando Sutter, the company's chief executive, told Reuters in an email. Import restrictions raise a question about achieving the EU's goal of creating an energy union, Sutter said. The EU wants to see electricity flowing freely across the bloc without technical or regulatory barriers, helping to reduce prices for consumers and ensure security of supply. Meanwhile, Poland has called for greater energy union to help it reduce EU reliance on Russian gas. PSE said unregulated power imports "can destabilise the system" at night, when demand is low and government officials said it was a necessary step to protect its coal power plants, a source of 80 percent of electricity, from imports of "cheap, subsidised electricity". "The day and night fluctuations, which could be caused by the excess of electricity coming from the Baltic states to Poland, are a threat to our power stations...," Piotr Naimski, a senior government official in charge of energy infrastructure, told Reuters. Christian Schnell, a partner at the Warsaw-based law firm Solivan said import restrictions could violate article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which prohibits unfair trading conditions. Asked whether Warsaw was discussing the issue of power import restrictions with the European Commission, Naimski said: "We are trying to explain this situation and we are looking for some understanding for (the) Polish energy system." The European Commission declined to comment. Spectators in short supply as Serena and Muguruza set up final showdown By Pritha Sarkar PARIS, June 3 (Reuters) - It was not just Serena Williams who looked like she did not want to be at Roland Garros on Friday. The American seemed listless, bored and completely out of sorts as she finally clipped the wings of flying Dutchwoman Kiki Bertens 7-6(7) 6-4 to reach her 27th grand slam final. There the world number one will meet Spanish fourth seed Garbine Muguruza, who ended the run of 2010 runner-up Samantha Stosur with a no-nonsense 6-2 6-4 win in the other semi-final that had to be staged on the secondary Court Suzanne Lenglen after a week of rain derailed the tournament's usual schedule. "I feel like you have to be still mentally alive, and obviously you need to be physically alive and ready for everything," said Williams, who on Saturday will meet the rival who holds the distinction of being the last woman to have beaten the American on Paris clay. While Williams could be forgiven for feeling rather fed up at having to play a match for the third day running on Friday, since day 13 of the claycourt major is traditionally a rest day for the women finalists, global TV viewers were left wondering "Where the hell are all the fans?" Twitter went into overdrive with comments such as: "It's an absolute disgrace to see a women's semi-final at a grand slam tournament take place in front of so few people" or "women's semi-final played out in half empty stadium. Should move it to Spain!" Organisers pointed out that the severe weather conditions in the region, with some parts experiencing flooding after one of the wettest weeks on record, have played a part in keeping fans away. However, according to the official Roland Garros website, tickets for Friday, usually reserved for the two men's semi-finals, were sold out weeks ago. Those who did bother to turn up on Friday were left wondering if the "real Serena Williams" would turn up as she appeared to move in super-slow motion between the points, surrendered her opening service games in both sets and sprayed 31 unforced errors long and wide. "Sometimes Serena doesn't look like she wants to be out there. I think today is one of those days.... You're tired and sore and you have a grand slam semi-final," former French Open champion Mary Pierce said while commentating on the match. It was not vintage Williams but then again she did not need to produce her best to beat a woman who was ranked 58th in the world and was making her debut appearance in a grand slam semi-final. Bertens, covered from neck to toe in a long-sleeved white shirt, a blue skirt and skin-tight black leggings on yet another chilly day, had two set points in the first set but missed both with forehand errors. While Williams grimaced, groaned and growled louder and louder with each passing minute of the contest, Bertens looked like she was having plenty of fun despite failing to win the points that mattered. U.N. pleads with Syria to airlift aid to starving civilians By Michelle Nichols and Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS, June 3 (Reuters) - The United Nations, backed by the United States, Britain and other powers, urged the Syrian government on Friday to end all sieges and allow U.N. airdrops of aid to hundreds of thousands of people trapped across conflict-torn Syria. Nearly 600,000 people are besieged in 19 different areas in Syria, according to the U.N., with two-thirds trapped by government forces and the rest by armed opposition groups and Islamic State militants. U.N. aid chief Stephen O'Brien told the Security Council the world body would on Sunday ask Syria to approve airdrops or airlifts of aid into besieged areas where only partial or no land access had previously been granted, said French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre, president of the council for June. "I told the council that the operating space for humanitarian actors is shrinking as violence and attacks across Syria increase," O'Brien said in an statement. "We need the consent of the Syrian government and all necessary security guarantees, in order to conduct airdrops." Last month members of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), which includes Russia and the United States, agreed that the U.N. World Food Program should airdrop aid to Syria's besieged communities from June 1 if land access was denied. O'Brien said the U.N. only reached two of the besieged areas by land last month, representing some 20,000 people, or 3.4 percent of Syria's total besieged population. "The Security Council and the rest of the U.N., the ISSG, and international community must be prepared for air drops if the regime continues its obstruction," U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said in a statement. Secretary of State John Kerry discussed humanitarian aid deliveries to Syria with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov over the telephone on Friday. "The preference is to get it in by ground, and we're still working on getting it in by ground," he told reporters in Paris. Syrian U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari declined to respond when asked if his government would permit airdrops. He said it was "terrorists," not Damascus, preventing aid deliveries. "If the Syrian government did not cooperate with the U.N. with regard to humanitarian aid, millions of Syrians would have died," Ja'afari told reporters. If Syrian President Bashar Assad's government blocks the airdrops, British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said his and other governments "will consider further action to ensure that humanitarian aid is delivered." He declined to provide details. It was not clear why Assad's government would consider agreeing to airlifts for areas where it has blocked land access. Syria gave the U.N. and the Red Cross approval on Thursday to send humanitarian aid convoys into at least 11 of the 19 besieged areas during June after the United States and Britain called for airdrops. Several Western diplomats said the Syrian announcement may be a ploy to deflect discussions on airdrops, noting that Assad's government has a track record of reneging on promises to permit full access to needy people. Syria's opposition has warned the government may open the door just enough to defuse international pressure before restricting access again. At least 250,000 people have died in Syria's five-year civil war in Syria, while more than 6.6 million have been internally displaced and another 4.8 million people have fled the country. Vitaly Churkin, the U.N. ambassador of Assad's close military ally Russia, suggested Russia was not necessarily opposed to airdrops. "We're open to everything, if it's effective, if it can be done properly and safely," he said. Russia, like Assad's other ally Iran, is widely seen as having significant influence over the Damascus government. Burundi police shoot at students protesting against colleagues' arrest NAIROBI, June 3 (Reuters) - Police in Burundi shot and wounded a student and a taxi-driver on Friday during a protest by schoolchildren against the arrest of their colleagues for defacing President Pierre Nkurunziza's portrait, students and residents. The incident took place in Muramvya province, about 50 km (30 miles) east of the capital Bujumbura. The schoolchildren, aged between 12 and 17-years-old, were marching on the highway between Bujumbura and Gitega. "We were in the streets to ask for the release of our colleagues who were unjustly arrested, then some police officers who were in a pick-up vehicle of the intelligence office opened fire on us, a colleague was hurt by one bullet and was taken to hospital for treatment," one student told Reuters. A police officer, who did not wish to be named, confirmed the student and the taxi driver had been shot. The five students had spoiled Nkurunziza's photo in a book, a school administrator said. Burundi has been mired in a year-long crisis in which more than 450 people have been killed since Nkurunziza pursued and won a third term. Opponents said his move violated the constitution and a deal that ended a civil war in 2005. Nkurunziza's camp says a court ruling had declared the former rebel-turned-president eligible to seek another term. Two weeks ago, more than 300 students of a school in the capital's Ruziba neighbourhood were sent home for the same reason. Airlines support carbon emissions deal despite costs -trade group By Victoria Bryan and Allison Lampert DUBLIN/MONTREAL, June 3 (Reuters) - Airlines want one global deal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from air travel despite higher costs, in order to avoid a patchwork of regulation that would be harder to manage, an executive of the International Air Transport Association trade group said on Friday. The market-based plan must win the support of the United Nations aviation agency's 191 member countries at a fall assembly, or risk the European Union's imposing its own emissions trading scheme on international airlines. At its annual meeting this week in Dublin, the trade group said the deal led by the International Civil Aviation Organization, or ICAO, should be the only agreement to reduce emissions from international aviation. "It's really a top priority," said IATA Corporate Secretary Paul Steele. "It's dominated discussions here in our board meetings." Steele expressed optimism that a deal would be reached at Montreal-based ICAO. The plan would allow airlines to offset their emissions by buying carbon credits from designated environmental projects. Airlines recognize the deal would add costs. For example, the cost of fuel on an A380 flight from London to Beijing would be $45,000, and a carbon offset at the highest price would be 10 percent of that, Steele said. "The industry hates costs," Steele said. "But this is a cost we believe needs to be built into system, and with that level and with a carbon offset scheme, we think it's the right way to go." Countries remain divided over the proposed agreement on issues like the large number of exempted states. According to early drafts, at least a third of emissions from air travel would not have to be offset. To help bridge the divide, Singapore recently proposed a pilot phase before the start of the global agreement, two sources familiar with the talks said. IATA has said any pilot period should not delay the planned agreement's 2021 start date. Steele said airlines wanted as much of the industry as possible to be involved in the program from the start. Ahead of the fall assembly, ICAO's president and some countries will hold late August meetings before presenting a new draft to the governing council, the sources said. REUTERS SUMMIT-Montenegro says Russia should not interfere in its NATO bid BELGRADE, June 3 (Reuters) - Montenegro's defence minister said on Friday that its long-time ally Russia should not interfere in its plans to join NATO. The former Yugoslav republic of 600,000 people was invited to join NATO last December, a move the Kremlin said risked fuelling geopolitical tensions in Europe. Each country should decide its own business, Milica Pejanovic Djurisic told Reuters in a telephone interview from Podgorica for the Reuters Eastern Europe Investment Summit. "As far as Montenegro is concerned, we have our own objectives and goals, I believe, and NATO has its own on its policy of enlargement, and it is not for any other country to intervene in the process," she said when asked about the Russian comments. She said her government maintained there was no need to hold a referendum on NATO membership, as Moscow has demanded, as joining the alliance would not harm Montenegro's sovereignty. Montenegro's membership of NATO would represent the alliance's first expansion since 2009, when Albania and Croatia joined. Pejanovic Djurisic said she expected Montenegro to become a full member of NATO in the coming months. The country's stunning Adriatic coastline has seen an influx of Russian money, homebuyers and tourists since the country split from its union with Serbia in 2006. But relations with Moscow have been uneasy, given the Montenegrin government's pursuit of closer integration with the West since 1995, after the wars over the break-up of Yugoslavia. Ties deteriorated further when Montenegro joined EU sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. "There is a wrong perception that the economy of Montenegro is dependent on Russia. Maybe it looked like that some 10 years ago. In the meantime there are no big investors from Russia, not even in tourism," Pejanovic Djurisic said. She said she did not fear Russian moves against Montenegro as had been seen in the Baltic states. "We are not a neighbouring country, and I cannot compare these two cases," Pejanovic Djurisic said. Montenegrins themselves remain divided over NATO membership, many still angry over the alliance's 1999 bombing of Serbia to halt the killing and expulsion of ethnic Albanians in Serbia's then southern province of Kosovo. NATO also bombed Montenegro, then part of a rump Yugoslavia with Serbia, arguing its targets were part of the Serbian war machine. Follow Reuters Summits on Twitter @Reuters_Summits GRAINS-U.S. soy drops from 2-year highs on profit taking; wheat firms By Mark Weinraub CHICAGO, June 3 (Reuters) - U.S. soybean futures backed off two-year highs on Friday, with investment funds locking in profits from the oilseed's sharp rally this week. Wheat firmed as heavy rains dented crop prospects in western Europe, traders said. The gains in wheat spilled over to corn, which firmed slightly but faced resistance at the multi-month high hit on Thursday. Renewed rain in Argentina heightened concerns about crop losses in the world's number three producer, and kept soybean declines in check. Losses also were limited in corn due to worries about crop shortfalls in Brazil following a drought. At 10:25 a.m. CDT (1525 GMT), Chicago Board of Trade July soybean futures were down 4-1/4 cents at $11.40 a bushel. The most actively traded contract peaked at $11.69 a bushel, its highest since June 2014, early in the session. Rains this week in Argentina's top agricultural province, which was previously unaffected by recent wet weather, may further damage the 2015/16 soybean harvest, the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange said on Thursday. Soybean futures were on track for a 4.8 percent gain this week, which would be its eighth straight week of gains and its 13th in the last 14 weeks. It would be the longest streak since one of equal length in 2003. Concerns are emerging that the run-up may have been overdone. "We now regard the extent of the latest price rise to be excessive," Commerzbank said in a market note on Friday. CBOT July corn was 3/4 cent higher at $4.16 a bushel and up just 0.7 percent for the week. CBOT July wheat futures were up 7 cents at $4.92-1/2 a bushel. The contract has gained 2.4 percent so far this week. The condition of cereal crops in France worsened again last week, farm office FranceAgriMer said on Friday, in a sign that heavy rain is affecting crops in the European Union's largest grain producer. "Current weather in parts of Europe is not favourable, with wet conditions across much of France and Germany moving east into the Balkans and southern Russia," David Sheppard, managing director of UK merchant Gleadell, said in a market note. Peru presidential election tightens to tie two days before vote By Marco Aquino LIMA, June 3 (Reuters) - Peru's presidential race tightened in the final days of campaigning with polls showing support for longtime front-runner Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the jailed former president, slipping ahead of Sunday's vote. Fujimori, 41, who enjoyed a 5 percentage point lead less than a week ago, is now in a statistical tie with former World Bank economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, according to three surveys taken since Tuesday. "We are reaching a very Peruvian finale to this election, with uncertainty over who is going to win," said Fernando Tuesta, a political analyst at Lima's Catholic University, referring to the unpredictable nature of Peruvian politics. "Anything can happen," he said in an interview on Friday. Fujimori won 50.3 percent of valid votes in a mock voting exercise conducted by pollster Gfk on Wednesday and Thursday, compared with Kuczynski's 49.7 percent. The survey seen by Reuters but not made public in Peru had a 2.3 point margin of error, up or down. The conservative Fujimori ended her campaign by dancing in front of thousands of orange-clad fans on the outskirts of Lima Thursday night, and told voters her opponent did not know their country as well as she did and would not be tough enough on crime. Kuczynski, 77, held a more subdued closing event in the southern city of Arequipa, as supporters chanted "democracy yes! dictatorship no!" in reference to Fujimori's father Alberto, who governed Peru from 1990 until 2000 and is now in jail for corruption and human rights abuses. Fujimori, whose brand of right-wing populism appeals more to poor voters, has pledged to respect democracy and distanced herself from her father since losing the 2011 election. Some voters still support the elder Fujimori, however, and say measures like shutting Congress were necessary to end the Maoist Shining Path insurgency. Both candidates favor maintaining Peru's free-market economic model. They defeated a leftist candidate in a first-round vote in April, as left-wing politics has fallen out of favor in much of Latin America. Fujimori won 51.6 percent of valid votes in a mock voting exercise conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday by CPI, compared with Kuczynski's 48.4 percent. CPI's survey had a 2.3 point margin of error, up or down. A CPI poll conducted May 26 and 27 gave Fujimori 54.8 percent of valid votes. South Africa dodges bullet: S&P maintains investment-grade rating By James Macharia JOHANNESBURG, June 3 (Reuters) - South Africa held on to its investment-grade credit rating from S&P Global Ratings on Friday, but the rating agency also maintained its negative outlook, citing low GDP growth. S&P left its rating BBB- but warned in a statement that its negative outlook reflects "the potential adverse consequences of low GDP growth" and signals "that we could lower our ratings on South Africa this year or next if policy measures do not turn the economy around. South Africa risked losing investment-grade status because of weak growth, large deficits and scandals surrounding President Jacob Zuma. "Rising political tensions are accentuating vulnerabilities in the country's sovereign credit profile," S&P warned, but it said Pretoria had shown resolve to reduce fiscal deficits. The rand extended earlier gains to trade at 15.0600 at its strongest levels, up more than 3 percent on the day. South Africa's Treasury said S&P's decision gave it more time to implement economic reforms before another review in December and to expand growth, which it has forecast at 0.9 percent in 2016, compared with 1.3 percent last year. A cut to "junk" status would have pushed up Pretoria's borrowing costs, making it harder to plug a budget deficit estimated at 3.2 percent of GDP in the 2016/17 financial year. A review by Fitch, which also rates South Africa one step above non-investment grade, is expected next week, according to the Treasury. Last month Moody's held its rating at Baa2. "NEGATIVE NOISES" S&P's decision was also seen by analysts as a sign of confidence in Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, who was re-appointed in December after Zuma removed two other finance ministers within five days. Following his appointment, the minister set out to reassure ratings agencies and investors that he was committed to stabilising public debt at below 50 percent of national output. "We are indeed a resilient nation and we have many things going for us," Gordhan told Talk Radio 702 after S&P's decision. On eNCA television, he called for an end to "negative noises which harm us in the eyes of global investors." South Africa has been gripped by political upheaval ranging from a failed impeachment attempt against Zuma to widespread media reports that the president is at "war" with Gordhan. Zuma has denied the claims. Analysts say Zuma's ruling party faces a strong challenge at local government elections in August from opponents seeking to capitalize on his troubles. South Africa "had turned the corner," said ANC's spokesman Zizi Kodwa. BNP Paribas Cadiz Securities economist Jeffrey Schultz said apart from growth, S&P wanted to see less political instability. Germany grounds Merkel's helicopter after fatal Norway crash BERLIN, June 3 (Reuters) - The German Defence Ministry decided on Friday to ground the three Airbus Cougar AS532 helicopters used to transport Chancellor Angela Merkel, after a Europe-wide grounding of the civilian version of the aircraft, a ministry spokesman said. An Airbus H225 Super Puma helicopter ferrying passengers from a Norwegian oil platform operated by Statoil crashed on April 29, killing all 13 people on board as the main rotor blades separated from the aircraft. In response to the accident, the European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA) grounded Airbus H225 LP and AS332 L2 Super Puma helicopters on Thursday following the discovery of metal fatigue in the gearbox of the crashed helicopter. Germany operates three modified versions of the Cougar AS 532 for government and state purposes. The grounding will remain in place while the underlying issue is examined, the spokesman said. MOSS POINT, Mississippi-- Twenty-one-year-old Moss Point resident Robert Arthur Nix, II, pled guilty last month to one count of Armed Robbery for his role in a September 2015 robbery of Gas 'N' Save in Pascagoula, according to District Attorney Tony Lawrence. Nix approached the convenience station with his face covered with a "Scream" mask and showed the cashier his gun. Nix then demanded cash from the register and safe, stealing $795 from the register. The Pascagoula Police Department investigated the case. On Thursday, Judge Robert Krebs sentenced Nix to a 20 year split-sentence. Nix will serve nine years in state prison, and 11 on post release supervision. Nix was assessed with a $1,000 fine which will consist of court costs as well as $100 given to the Crime Victim Compensation Fund, along with restitution. Nix was ordered to take part in alcohol and drug treatment programs while incarcerated. After his release, he will be required to attend weekly meetings at NA/AA and obtain a sponsor. Deutsche Bank's Abbey Life sale faces delay over regulatory inquiry - sources By Pamela Barbaglia, Carolyn Cohn and Arno Schuetze LONDON/FRANKFURT, June 03 (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank's sale of its British insurer Abbey Life Assurance Co is facing delays as bidders struggle to decide on a valuation due to an investigation by Britain's financial watchdog into the firm, sources familiar with the matter said. They said Swiss Re unit Admin Re, Phoenix and Legal & General have made it to the final stages of an auction which kicked off at the beginning of the year. The German lender started weighing the sale of its British insurance unit in October, attracting interest from a series of rival insurers including China's Anbang Insurance Group. But in March the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) launched an investigation into Abbey Life's treatment of long-time life insurance customers which could result in compensation payments to policyholders or fines to the British insurer. "This is a large risk," one of the sources said. "It's too big to solve it just by offering a discount. Unless this probe is out of the way the sale won't go ahead." Deutsche Bank, Swiss Re, Phoenix and L&G declined comment. Abbey Life is valued at around 1 billion pounds ($1.5 billion), the sources said. It has made no comment on the FCA inquiry. Swiss Re, Phoenix and L&G recently got access to the company's books but are looking to hedge themselves against the risk the British watchdog could impose a fine or compensation, causing a delay to the process, the sources said. The inquiry, which targets five other British insurers, is trying to establish whether insurers have treated customers locked into pension and other savings plans fairly compared with new customers. Abbey Life, along with Old Mutual, is also subject to a further investigation on whether it contravened other regulatory requirements related to the treatment of long-standing customers, the FCA said in March. Old Mutual has said it is cooperating with the review. VALUATION RISK Stricter European capital rules for insurers which came into force this year have encouraged financial services firms to offload insurance businesses. Deutsche Bank, which bought Abbey Life from Lloyds TSB for 977 million pounds in 2007, is now keen to find a new owner for the business as part of its restructuring efforts. Swiss Re, Phoenix and L&G have consistently showed interest in buying closed books of life assurance business in Britain with the Swiss firm securing control of Guardian Financial Services in a 1.6 billion pound deal in September. The three insurers are now expected to ask Deutsche Bank to take on the risk of any compensation payments that the FCA would impose on Abbey Life while negotiating on price, the sources said. One of the sources said the process was still far from the finishing line as the bidders have several weeks of due diligence ahead and need to factor in the possible consequences of the regulatory inquiry. Phoenix and L&G have been busy with other deals in recent weeks, potentially adding to any delay, two of the sources said. Luxembourg sets aside 200 million euros to fund space mining ventures BRUSSELS, June 3 (Reuters) - Luxembourg on Friday upped its bid to be a leader in the nascent space mining industry by setting aside 200 million euros ($223 million) to fund initiatives aimed at bringing back rare minerals from space. Luxembourg in February announced plans for a law that would make it the first state in Europe to give legal clarity to the commercial exploitation of asteroids. A similar law was passed by the United States in November. "We have a first budget to get started but if we need more money, we will be able to provide it," Etienne Schneider, Luxembourg's economy minister told a news conference. Luxembourg's ambitions drew interest from pioneers in the field such as U.S. operators Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries which aim to set up offices in the grand duchy. A first reconnaissance mission to scout nearby asteroids for resources could take place as soon as three years from now. Primarily known for its fund management and private banking industry, Luxembourg has high ambitions for the exploration of space. "Luxembourg's aims is to be in the top 10 space faring nations in the world," Schneider said. One of the successes the country can point to is Luxembourg's SES one of the world's largest operators of communication satellites. "In 1985 the government decided to launch the first satellite. We had huge discussions then that nobody would need that kind of satellite or that it could fall from the sky," Schneider added. Under international law, mining in space is a contentious subject as international treaties call for exploration to be carried out for the benefit of all countries. South Africa finmin Gordhan says aims to improve growth to avoid December downgrade JOHANNESBURG, June 3 (Reuters) - South Africa's finance minister said on Friday the decision by S&P Global Ratings to keep its investment-grade credit rating was positive and showed that the country was resilient. Speaking on Talk Radio 702, Pravin Gordhan said that growth needed to be expanded to avoid a downgrade by S&P in December. Kenyan opposition to resume protests on Monday over election body NAIROBI, June 3 (Reuters) - Kenya's main opposition coalition said on Friday it will resume protests next week against alleged bias in the country's election commission, ending a one-week break for a dialogue that did not happen. The Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) wants the commission to be scrapped. Its electronic vote results transmission system collapsed during the 2013 election that brought President Uhuru Kenyatta to power. The next elections are not due until August 2017 but politicians are already trying to rally supporters in a country prone to political strife during elections. Violence erupted after the 2007 vote and the opposition disputed the outcome in 2013. "The #CORDdemos will be on this Monday, following breached dialogue agreements," CORD said on its Twitter feed. The opposition had hoped to speak with lawmakers allied to the government and election commission officials. "#IEBCMustGo & we shall take nothing less for an answer," it said, referring to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto urged the opposition on Wednesday to end demonstrations over the IEBC. IEBC officials have dismissed the allegations of bias and say they will stay. On Friday, Kenyatta reiterated his call for CORD to follow the law, saying parliament's legal committee was ready to start sittings to hear public views on how to reform the IEBC. "We want dialogue like yesterday but it must be held within the confines of the law. Dialogue is not about going to the streets or meeting in tea rooms," his office quoted him saying in a statement after a meeting with religious leaders. Three people were killed in clashes on May 23 between demonstrators and police in Nairobi and other cities during marches against the IEBC led by opposition leader Raila Odinga's CORD coalition. Clashes also flared during three other protests. ICC prosecutor vows to investigate both sides in Ivory Coast By Tom Miles GENEVA, June 3 (Reuters) - The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor said on Friday she would investigate crimes committed on both sides of Ivory Coast's civil war and defended the court against its critics. Fatou Bensouda said the court had to prioritise because it lacked the resources to pursue all potential cases at once, and cited Ivory Coast, or Cote d'Ivoire, as an example of things not going as quickly as they might. "Cote d'Ivoire is a case where my office has said from the very beginning that we will investigate on both sides of the conflict, that no one will be spared," she said. "The accusation is that we are only investigating on one side, and therefore this is victor's justice and we don't intend to investigate on the other side." A lack of funding was largely to blame for slow progress, she said. The trial of ex-Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo began in January, with prosecutors accusing him of orchestrating "unspeakable violence" to cling to power after losing an election, pitching his country into civil war. But the court has come in for criticism, having handed down just two convictions, both of little-known African warlords, in its almost 14 year history. Bensouda, who was speaking at the Graduate Institute in Geneva alongside U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein, said other challenges included accusations of "African bias" -- that the ICC was only targeting African leaders. Africa is the region with the most countries that belong to the ICC, and five African countries had requested the ICC to intervene in their situations, she said. "I always say that in fact if you really look at the facts of how it happened and how these cases came to the ICC, I say Africa is going after the ICC. They requested ICC to come and not the other way round." Cases often got politicised and countries did not want to cooperate with the court, despite signing up to it. "What we were seeing...is deliberate attempts not to support the work of the court, either by not providing the information we are requesting, or by delaying that information or pretending to give us the information when it is not there, and various other ways," she said. Zeid said the world was in "deep jeopardy" because of countries being too cowardly, timid and hypocritical to uphold the standards they had agreed to. "If you do not stand up for the International Criminal Court, you might as well be standing next to the soldier raping the young girl in a conflict and do nothing, or standing next to someone who is being shot and being dismembered," he said. U.S. air strikes in Yemen kill 15 al Qaeda militants -Pentagon WASHINGTON, June 3 (Reuters) - The U.S. military on Friday disclosed that it carried out an air strike in Yemen in May, killing four al Qaeda militants, and also revealed three other strikes that had not been previously reported. The announcement concerned strikes in Yemen that ranged from February to March and killed 11 al Qaeda militants, the Pentagon said in a statement. The total number of strikes carried out by the U.S. military in Yemen this year against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is now at nine, the statement said. "AQAP remains a significant threat to the region, the United States and beyond," it added. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, widely considered the most dangerous branch of the global militant group, took advantage of more than a year of war in Yemen to seize towns along a 600-km (370-mile) stretch of Arabian Sea coastline. Nigeria's Buhari says fraudsters asked government for money to negotiate Chibok girls release ABUJA, June 3 (Reuters) - Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday said fraudsters have asked the government for money to negotiate the release of more 200 girls abducted by Boko Haram militants over two years ago from their school in the northeastern town of Chibok town. China's HNA Group eyes South American airline groups Avianca -sources By Mike Stone and Greg Roumeliotis June 3 (Reuters) - China's HNA Group has expressed interest in acquiring Avianca Holdings SA and Avianca Brasil, the South American airlines controlled by Bolivian-born entrepreneur German Efromovich's Synergy Group, people familiar with the matter said. Both Avianca Holdings and Avianca Brasil are working with investment banks to explore options. They have also attracted interest from U.S. peers United Continental Holdings Inc and Delta Air Lines Inc, the sources said on Friday. If HNA makes the deal, it would be the second major Latin American investment for the aviation, tourism and logistics conglomerate, which has also snapped up air cargo handlers Swissport and Irish aircraft leasing company Avolon. The Chinese group agreed in November to pay $450 million for a 23.7 percent stake in Azul SA, Brazil's third-largest airline, which is controlled by JetBlue founder David Neeleman. Avianca's Chief Financial Officer Gerardo Grajales has flown to China, according to a source at the airline. The structure of an eventual deal remained unclear, said the sources familiar with negotiations. Shares of Panama-based Avianca Holdings, which operates flights in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Central America and the Caribbean, were up 16 percent in Friday trading on news of a potential deal, which was first reported on Thursday. Efromovich's Synergy Group separately controls Avianca Brasil, the fourth-largest airline in Brazil, where the government is reconsidering laws requiring domestic control of its airlines. Efromovich has Colombian and Brazilian citizenship. Delta and United shares fell nearly 2 percent in New York. "We continually evaluate opportunities to strengthen our relationships with partners that will enable us to provide better and more convenient services to our customers. However, we won't discuss rumors or speculation," United said in a statement. Delta declined to comment. Avianca Holdings and Avianca Brasil did not immediately respond to questions. HNA and Synergy could not be reached for comment. Kenyan police say opposition protest planned for Monday is banned NAIROBI, June 3 (Reuters) - Kenya's police said on Friday that a protest the opposition plans to hold next week is illegal and participants could be arrested, setting the scene for potential confrontation. Three protesters were killed a similar march on May 23 in clashes with police and three other demonstrations have also turned violent. The protests, organised by opposition leader Raila Odinga's Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD), are against alleged bias in Kenya's election commission. CORD called for a fresh protest on Monday, ending a one-week break for a dialogue that did not happen. CORD wants the electoral commission scrapped. Its electronic vote results transmission system collapsed during the 2013 election that brought President Uhuru Kenyatta to power, beating Odinga, a result disputed by the opposition. The next elections are not due until August 2017 but politicians are already trying to rally supporters in a country prone to strife during elections. Deadly violence erupted after a 2007 vote. "The #CORDdemos will be on this Monday, following breached dialogue agreements," CORD said on Twitter. The opposition had hoped to speak with lawmakers allied to the government and election commission officials. "#IEBCMustGo & we shall take nothing less for an answer," it said, referring to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). Police said in a statement on Friday it had declined to honour CORD's notification to march, saying it would be in contravention of a court order issued on May 26 barring any demonstrations against IEBC. "Similarly, we wish to caution any other person or persons wishing to stage unauthorised counter-demonstrations that they will be in breach of the law and therefore risk arrest and prosecution," the statement said. IEBC officials have dismissed the allegations of bias and say they will stay. On Friday, Kenyatta reiterated his call for CORD to end the protests, saying parliament's legal committee was ready to start hearing public views on how to reform the IEBC. Nigeria's Buhari says fraudsters asked government for money to negotiate Chibok girls release ABUJA, June 3 (Reuters) - Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday said fraudsters have asked the government for money to negotiate the release of more 200 girls abducted by Boko Haram militants over two years ago from their school in the northeastern town of Chibok town. The first of the 219 girls held captive since the mass kidnapping in April 2014 to be found alive was discovered last month. A second girl was rescued days later, although campaigners said she was taken in a separate abduction. "While the rescue and safe return of the remaining Chibok girls remains a top priority of his administration, he will not fall for the antics of fraudsters," Buhari's spokesman, Femi Adesina, said. Adesina said the president stated this during a meeting with archbishops of the Church of Nigeria. "President Buhari said that his administration will continue to insist on a thorough authentication of the identities and bona fides of any persons or groups claiming to have custody of the girls before entering into negotiations with them," he said. Northrop Grumman photo.jpg Governor Phil Bryant, Moss Point Mayor Billy Broomfield, Board of Supervisors President Melton Harris and other distinguished guests were on hand Thursday in celebration of Northrop Grumman's ten year anniversary in Moss Point. (Northrop Grumman) MOSS POINT, Mississippi--Thursday morning in Moss Point featured the celebration of one of the state of Mississippi's best kept secrets in Northrop Grumman celebrating 10 years of manufacturing aerial ships for their allies in their state of the art 101,000 square-foot facility. On hand for Thursday's festivities was Mississippi Governor, Phil Bryant along with civic leaders and special guests. Since 2004, Northrop Grumman landed in Moss Point tentatively while waiting for construction on their work site to begin, which began in 2005. After Hurricane Katrina devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast, construction came to a brief halt, but construction continued immediately despite impact levied upon the coast. In 2006, the aerospace industry in south Mississippi grew after the ribbon was cut on the facility and since that time, Moss Point has been an important manufacturing center for Northrop Grumman. According to George Freeland of the Jackson County Economic Development Foundation, Thursday's celebration marked the longevity of what Northrop Grumman has been able to accomplish in their ten years and to let the rest of the world know that not only is the Mississippi Gulf Coast known for its shipbuilding industry, but also for its aerial vehicles. "The facility is a purpose built facility built by Jackson County, Mississippi," Freeland said. "Northrop Grumman has entered into a lease for a specific period of time and in doing so, they manufacture highly advanced aerial vehicles and employ a great number of people here in this community." "It is important for us to get this out into the world," Freeland said. "We want people to understand that we not only build ships, and not only do we refine gasoline and petrochemical products, Jackson County builds some of the most advanced unmanned systems in the world." Northrop Grumman facility director Mike Jones was presented with a plaque for Thursday's celebration and discussed what has made them successful since their inception. "We have had a great deal of success over the last ten years, particularly sophisticated autonomous systems which there is a big demand in the marketplace for those systems," Jones said. "We have a great partnership with the state of Mississippi and we would not have had the success we have been able to achieve without their support and dedication. The governor being here today is truly a symbol of that support and partnership and collectively, we have done an outstanding job moving as one team in one direction. The vehicles that we provide our fighters and allies are making a difference day in and day out and that is the big part of the success we have had here. Our people are dedicated and committed to what they do day in and day out and they deliver high quality work on time to our customers." According to Gov. Bryant, an eight year contract has been signed to continue the manufacturing of unmanned vehicles at the Moss Point facility and says he hopes the partner will extend long after the new eight year contract is up. Peru presidential election tightens to tie two days before vote By Mitra Taj and Marco Aquino LIMA, June 3 (Reuters) - Peru's presidential race tightened ahead of Sunday's vote, with polls showing waning support for longtime front-runner Keiko Fujimori, daughter of a jailed former president. Fujimori, 41, who enjoyed a 5 percentage point lead less than a week ago, is now in a statistical tie with former World Bank economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, according to three surveys taken since Tuesday. Analysts from pollsters GfK and Datum said voters who had been undecided were now favoring Kuczynski. Both candidates studied in the United States and would maintain Peru's free-market economic model. They defeated a leftist candidate in a first-round vote in April as left-wing politics fall out of favor in much of Latin America. Fujimori won 50.3 percent of valid votes in a mock voting exercise conducted by GfK on Wednesday and Thursday, compared with Kuczynski's 49.7 percent. The survey, seen by Reuters on Thursday but not made public in Peru, had a 2.3 point margin of error. The conservative Fujimori ended her campaign by dancing in front of thousands of orange-clad fans on the outskirts of Lima on Thursday night. She told voters that Kuczynski did not know their country as well as she did and would not be tough enough on crime. "My opponent developed his plan from his comfortable office," she said at her final rally. "We traveled to every single region, every province." Kuczynski, 77, held a more subdued closing event in the southern city of Arequipa as supporters chanted "Democracy yes! Dictatorship no!" in reference to Fujimori's father Alberto, who governed Peru from 1990 until 2000 and is now in jail for corruption and human rights abuses. Fujimori, whose brand of right-wing populism appeals to poor voters, has pledged to respect democracy and distanced herself from her father since losing the 2011 election. Some voters still support the elder Fujimori, however, and say measures like shutting Congress were necessary to end the Maoist Shining Path insurgency. Kuczynski, a former prime minister, even endorsed Fujimori five years ago over outgoing President Ollanta Humala, a one-time leftist who governed moderately. Earlier this week, Kuczynski canceled plans to take part in an anti-Fujimori rally that was attended by tens of thousands in downtown Lima. Alfredo Torres of pollster Ipsos said that was politically the right call as the majority of residents of Lima, who will probably decide the election, disapproved of the protests. Fujimori won 51.6 percent of valid votes in a mock voting exercise conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday by CPI, compared with Kuczynski's 48.4 percent. CPI's survey had a 2.3 point margin of error. A CPI poll conducted May 26 and 27 gave Fujimori 54.8 percent of valid votes. A poll by Datum had similar results. Venezuela's Maduro takes opposition congress leaders to court CARACAS, June 3 (Reuters) - President Nicolas Maduro's legal team lodged a formal complaint in Venezuela's Supreme Court on Friday against the National Assembly's opposition leaders for allegedly "usurping" his role in international affairs. Maduro's legal adviser Elvis Amoroso said documents were delivered to the court accusing the assembly's heads of violating the constitution by requesting support from international bodies including the Organization of American States. The government views the 35-member OAS as a puppet of hostile U.S. policy. "It's unacceptable that bodies like the OAS ... receive these men when they know they are usurping a constitutional provision that international relations are exclusively managed by the president," Amoroso told state TV from the court. While the measure was an attempt to stop leaders of the congress from addressing foreign bodies such as the OAS, there are wider fears in opposition circles that the president may seek to close down the legislature altogether. Thanks to public ire over a brutal economic crisis in the OPEC nation of 30 million, the opposition won control of the assembly in a December election and is pushing for a recall referendum this year to oust Maduro. Maduro, 53, is already winning a power conflict with the National Assembly, whose measures have been repeatedly struck down by the Supreme Court, but he said recently that the legislature could soon "disappear". Simon Calzadilla, the congress' third in command, said Friday afternoon that the Supreme Court cannot prosecute a lawmaker without the authorization of the National Assembly, according to the country's constitution. "The only ones usurping here are the Supreme Court judges in not following the constitution," he told reporters. OAS head Luis Almagro, a former Uruguayan foreign minister and now a bitter enemy of Maduro, sought this week to begin proceedings at the hemispheric body that could lead to Venezuela's suspension on grounds of violating democracy. I am my own man, says Ukraine's new prime minister By Pavel Polityuk, Matthias Williams and Alexei Kalmykov KIEV, June 3 (Reuters) - Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said on Friday he would not let his decision-making be shackled by powerful vested interests, allowing him to push through reforms and usher in a period of economic stability. In his first interview with foreign media since taking office in April, Groysman told Reuters he was confident of receiving a further installment of aid worth $1.7 billion from the International Monetary Fund, which is contingent on implementing reforms. He will travel to Washington in mid-June, with Ukraine having recently taken two major steps - freeing up gas prices and passing legislation to tackle corruption in the judiciary - under its commitments in a $40 billion international bailout deal. The appointment of Groysman, 38, ended months of political turmoil that had stymied policymaking. He had cut his teeth as Ukraine's youngest ever mayor, at 28, before becoming speaker of the rough-and-tumble parliament. Since the fall of communism, Ukraine's business oligarchs have frustrated efforts by a succession of governments to reform the economy, most recently in the form of changes promised by pro-Western leaders after street protests toppled the previous president in 2014. Asked if he could free himself from the oligarchs' influence, Groysman said: "I consider myself to be completely free in terms of my views and my decision-making." "I can be dependent only on Ukrainian society," he added. "We will fight for every reform, for every change, fight transparently." FIGHTING FOR EVERY REFORM Groysman took power with Ukraine just emerging from recession, still fighting a war against Russian-backed separatists in the eastern Donbass region and amid growing disillusion with the pace of change since the 2014 uprising. A ceasefire agreement negotiated by Ukraine, Russia and Western powers is barely holding, with each side accusing the other of failing to honour their promises. The IMF and Ukraine's other main backers - the European Union and United States - have also urged Kiev to speed up the reforms and tackling of endemic corruption. An agreement for more IMF aid had been derailed by the political turmoil in Kiev. An IMF mission visited in May for talks on a new memorandum, which is still being drafted, and the Fund is expected to decide on disbursing new aid in July. "During the last IMF mission, we had a constructive and frank discussion about the problems, and we found a common ground that allows us to move on," Groysman said. "I do not see anything that would prevent us to get (the next installment)," he added. "I am optimistic about our continued co-operation with the IMF." "We need to ensure macroeconomic stability," he said. "This requires fighting corruption with deregulation, privatisation, and an effective judicial system," he said. Once Ukraine returns to economic growth, which Groysman saw happening "very quickly", Ukraine and the IMF could even move to a "very different system of cooperation", he said, without specifying what the change would be. He also said Ukraine could soon expect to receive a $500 million loan from the World Bank to buy gas in exchange for certain conditions, including improving governance at state energy giant Naftogaz. Ukraine is expected to bypass Russia to purchase the gas, but Groysman did not completely rule out buying supplies from Russia's Gazprom, saying his government would take a "political decision" if Gazprom made the right offer. Ukraine's Western backers have praised the steps taken since Groysman came to power, and on Friday Washington signed a new loan guarantee agreement worth $1 billion. However, it has not all been plain sailing. Kiev has pledged to privatise hundreds of state-owned companies, but last week the IMF and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) criticised the process. They complained to Groysman that the sale of the Odessa Portside Plant - seen as the first major test of Kiev's ability to attract foreign investment - fell short of international standards and could deter respectable investors. Groysman ruled out making any change to the reserve price of $521 million for the fertiliser plant, which the IMF and EBRD say is too high. "No. We have started this process and are interested in making it happen," he said. NO ELECTIONS AT GUNPOINT The Minsk ceasefire agreement to stop the violence in Donbass, which has already killed more than 9,000 people, requires Ukraine to hold local elections in the region and pass a law giving it greater autonomy. Meanwhile, the EU is due to decide within weeks whether to renew sanctions on Russia, imposed after Moscow's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Some countries in the bloc want them lifted. Asked whether Ukraine could hold elections in the Donbass region this year, Groysman said: "Here is the question to Russia: when they will meet their obligations? When will they withdraw their troops and withdraw fighters and mercenaries, and when do we regain control over the territory?" U.S. falters in campaign to revive Iraqi army, officials say By Ned Parker and Jonathan Landay June 3 (Reuters) - A 17-month U.S. effort to retrain and reunify Iraq's regular army has failed to create a large number of effective Iraqi combat units or limit the power of sectarian militias, according to current and former U.S. military and civilian officials. Concern about the shortcomings of the American attempt to strengthen the Iraqi military comes as Iraqi government forces and Shi'ite militias have launched an offensive to retake the city of Falluja from Islamic State. Aid groups fear the campaign could spark a humanitarian catastrophe, as an estimated 50,000 Sunni civilians remain trapped in the besieged town. The continued weakness of regular Iraqi army units and reliance on Shi'ite militias, current and former U.S. military officials said, could impede Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's broader effort to defeat Islamic State and win the long-term support of Iraqi Sunnis. The sectarian divide between the majority Shi'ite and minority Sunni communities threatens to split the country for good. Critics agree that there have been some military successes, citing the continued victories of American-trained Iraqi Special Forces, who have been fighting Islamic State for two years. But the presence of 4,000 American troops has failed to change the underlying Iraqi political dynamics that fuel the rise and growing power of sectarian militias. Retired U.S. Lieutenant General Mick Bednarek, who commanded the U.S. military training effort in Iraq from 2013 to 2015, said the Iraqi army has not improved dramatically in the past eight months. He blamed a variety of problems, from a lack of Iraqis wanting to join the military to the resistance of some lower-level Iraqi officers to sending units to American training. "The Iraqi military's capacity hasn't improved that much - part of that is the continuing challenge of recruitment and retention," said Bednarek. "Our (officers) train who shows up, and the issue is we are not sure who is going to show up." Two senior U.S. military officers and Bednarek said that with few exceptions, the most effective and only truly non-sectarian Iraqi government fighting force is the Iraqi Special Forces, sometimes called the Counter-Terrorism Service. American officials expressed worry that the Special Forces units may burn out after nearly two years of continuous combat. MILITIA INFLUENCE Across Iraq, regular Iraqi army units have largely watched from the sidelines as Iraqi Special Forces and Shi'ite militias have reclaimed land from Islamic State, current and former U.S. military officials said. Militias have repeatedly taken advantage of the power vacuums that have emerged after Islamic State defeats. The Iraqi military operations command of Salahuddin province, north of Baghdad, is dominated by a Shi'ite militia leader, Abu Mehdi Mohandis, according to a current U.S. military officer, an Iraqi security official and three Iraqi officials who monitor the province. Mohandis serves as the chief state administrator for Shi'ite paramilitary forces. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned him in 2009 for allegedly attacking U.S. forces in Iraq. He was also convicted in absentia by Kuwaiti courts for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait. The Fifth Iraqi Army Division in eastern Diyala province is considered to be under the command of the Badr group, a powerful Shi'ite militia and political party with strong ties to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, according to four current and former U.S. military officers. In Baghdad, U.S. military officers estimate that 10 percent to 20 percent of the 300 officers who run the Iraqi military's Operations Command have an affinity or association with either the Badr militia or the Shi'ite religious leader Muqtada al Sadr. And after Iraqi Special Forces, aided by U.S. air strikes, captured a strategic oil refinery in the town of Baiji in October, Shi'ite militias looted all of its salvageable equipment, according to a senior U.S. military official and three Iraqi government officials. Over the past year, U.S. military officers have struggled to ensure that militias do not seize American weaponry delivered to the main Iraqi army supply depot in Taji and to a brigade in the Saqlawiya region. "We would transfer arms to units in those areas - and either because of corrupt commanders or outright robbery - they would end up in the hands of the militia groups," said one U.S. officer. The officer noted, however, that controls have been tightened and the number of cases was small. "You can't eliminate it entirely. It's just not realistic." "AN OFFICIAL BODY" Iraqi government and senior paramilitary leaders said the reports of poor training and Shi'ite militia dominance in the military are false. They said the militias follow the orders of the prime minister and his military commanders. Iraqi defense ministry spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool called the militias "an official body connected with the office of the commander-in-chief of the armed forces." He said they take their orders only from government officials and "have a great role in supporting the army forces and the federal police." Mohammed Bayati, a former human rights minister and senior Badr group leader, now commands forces in northern Salahuddin Province. He said the Shi'ite paramilitaries fall under the army, police and regular military chain-of-command. Bayati told Reuters that any reports of militias operating on their own were false. "Yesterday, I was in the Salahuddin Operations Command," he said. "All orders are coming from the police and army leadership." The Shi'ite militias "are supporting the army and police." The spokesman for the government umbrella body that oversees the militias, Ahmed Al-Asadi, said the Shi'ite forces did not loot the Baiji refinery. "I deny totally such allegations," he said. Islamic State, he said, stole and destroyed equipment. The office of Prime Minister Abadi and the Iraqi Embassy in Washington didn't respond to requests for comment. AMERICAN CONCERNS But current and former U.S. military officials and local Sunni leaders say the militias continue to take advantage of the vacuums that emerge in predominantly Sunni areas after Islamic State forces are defeated. A lack of strong regular army units allows the militias to remain the dominant players. Norman Ricklefs, a former U.S. government adviser to the Iraqi interior and defense ministries, said the state has still not filled the void in most areas retaken from ISIS. He said militias are the most powerful they have been since Iraqi government forces defeated them in a series of battles across Iraq in 2008. Ricklefs regularly visits Iraq and maintains ties with the Iraqi security apparatus and Shi'ite and Sunni politicians. "In the cities the militias occupy - Samarra and Tikrit and significant parts of eastern Baghdad - they are the most powerful force," Ricklefs said. "For the first time since 2008, the government has lost control of large parts of cities" to Shi'ite militias. One senior U.S military official said the setbacks call into question the Obama administration's overall strategy in Iraq. He said any military training effort would fail until the U.S. put more pressure on Iraq's Shi'ite and Sunni political leaders to strike a genuine power-sharing agreement. "We need to accelerate the reconciliation piece to make Sunnis feel they are part of the government," said the official, who asked not to be named. "Are we really in any way focused on that?" Obama administration officials said the U.S. strategy is succeeding and Iraqi forces have steadily grown stronger with American support. U.S. advisers have helped train existing units and set up two new Iraqi divisions, according to American and Iraqi officials. They achieved this despite struggling with shortfalls in Iraqi funding to hire new soldiers and a shortage of Iraqi Shi'ite volunteers. But there has been little improvement in overall Iraqi army combat readiness, according to a U.S. civilian official, one ex-official, a former general and three current senior U.S. military officers. Last October, American military officials estimated that only five Iraqi army divisions were ready for battle and put their combat readiness at only 60 to 65 percent. Today, those figures have increased only marginally, the officials said. 'LION'S SHARE' OF PROGRESS The U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Colonel Chris Garver, said that despite the difficulties, U.S. forces have seen Iraqi army units improve after training. He also cited advances by army brigades in areas around Falluja as signs of success. But Garver acknowledged that the lion's share of military offensives has been spearheaded by the Special Forces, and that two years of battle are taking a toll on Iraq's elite soldiers. "The Government of Iraq has relied heavily on the Iraqi special operations forces and the potential for these forces being depleted into combat ineffectiveness is a real concern," he said. Garver said the regular Iraqi army continues to struggle with increasing its ranks. "Recruiting and funding have both been well-documented challenges for the GOI," or Government of Iraq. "These are areas the GOI must address." Brigadier Rasool, the Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman, rejected any suggestion that the regular Iraqi army was not an equal partner to the Iraqi Special Forces. "We have troops who were able to retake land from Daesh," Rasool said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. "After the fall of Mosul, the Ministry of Defense's joint command has resupplied and retrained the Iraqi security forces." The current and former U.S. officials contended that the Falluja offensive is again exposing the weakness of regular army units. GRAINS-Profit-taking pulls soy from 2-year highs; corn, wheat firm By Mark Weinraub CHICAGO, June 3 (Reuters) - U.S. soybean futures backed off two-year highs on Friday, with investment funds locking in profits from the oilseed's sharp rally this week. Wheat firmed as heavy rains dented crop prospects in western Europe and caused some investors to cover bearish bets they had made on the market. "Wheat caught another wave of chart buying on short covering as we plowed into new high ground, with traders talking about flooding in Europe again," Charlie Sernatinger, global head of grain futures at ED&F Man Capital said in a note to clients. The gains in wheat spilled over to corn, which firmed slightly but faced resistance at the multi-month high hit on Thursday. Renewed rain in Argentina heightened concerns about crop losses in the world's number three producer, and kept soybean declines in check. New-crop soybean futures firmed slightly, buoyed by a U.S. Agriculture Department report that showed strong demand for supplies that will be delivered in the fall. Chicago Board of Trade July soybean futures settled down 12-1/4 cents at $11.32 a bushel. The most actively traded contract peaked at $11.69 a bushel, its highest since June 2014, early in the session. Soybean futures gained 4.4 percent this week, its eighth straight week of gains, the longest streak since one of equal length in 2003. Soybeans have risen in 13 of the last 14 weeks. Concerns are emerging that the run-up may have been overdone. "We now regard the extent of the latest price rise to be excessive," Commerzbank said in a market note on Friday. CBOT July corn was 3 cents higher at $4.18-1/4 a bushel and up 1.5 percent for the week. CBOT July wheat futures rose 11-3/4 cents at $4.97-1/4 a bushel. The contract gained 3.0 percent this week. The condition of cereal crops in France worsened again last week, farm office FranceAgriMer said on Friday, in a sign that heavy rain is affecting crops in the European Union's largest grain producer. "Current weather in parts of Europe is not favorable, with wet conditions across much of France and Germany moving east into the Balkans and southern Russia," David Sheppard, managing director of UK merchant Gleadell, said in a market note. German government agrees to reform BND spy agency -sources BERLIN, June 3 (Reuters) - Germany's coalition government on Friday agreed to tighten controls over the country's BND spy agency and impose new legal restrictions on its surveillance activities, according to sources familiar with the agreement. The long-delayed reform package for Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND, was agreed during a meeting at the German chancellor's office on Friday, according to several participants in the meeting. The legal reforms, which must still be finalized by the German parliament, would ban the BND from spying on countries in the European Union and its citizens, as well as EU institutions, except in the case of suspected terrorist activity. The agreement also requires the head of the BND, the chancellor's office and an independent panel of judges to approve strategic foreign espionage activities based on keyword lists, according to the sources. The changes would also spell out more clearly when the agency would be permitted to carry out such spying activities. The BND intelligence service has been in the limelight after a series of scandals that embarrassed German Chancellor Angela Merkel, including revelations that the agency had helped the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) spy on European allies, using such lists of keywords. That news sparked public outrage in a country suspicious of surveillance because of the excesses of Nazi and Communist secret police in its past, and triggered the reform drive. In April, Gerhard Schindler, who has run the BND since 2012, abruptly left his post two years earlier than planned, amid reports that he was forced out over disagreements about the reform effort. News of the agreement came a day after three Syrians were arrested on suspicion of planning attacks in Dusseldorf. German authorities are on heightened alert about possible large-scale attacks by Islamist militants after the bombings in Brussels in March and Paris in November. Those events also raised questions about how European intelligence agencies cooperate with each other. At least six Yemenis killed by rocket fired from Houthi-held area-medics CAIRO, June 3 (Reuters) - A rocket fired by Yemeni Houthi forces or allied troops killed at least six civilians when it landed in a crowded market in the southwestern city of Taiz on Friday, medics said. The medics said children were among the victims of the Katuysha rocket, which was fired from an area controlled by the Houthis and troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Forces loyal to Saudi-backed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi broke a siege imposed by the Houthis on Taiz - Yemen's third-largest city and a cultural centre - in heavy fighting in March. But neither side has been able to extend control over the entire city. The medics said 18 people were wounded as well as the six killed in the attack, which took place days before the start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. Ezzeldin al-Asbahi, human rights minister for the internationally recognised government based in Aden, put the death toll at nine civilians and said 26 other people were wounded. "The rocketing of Taiz by the Houthis and Saleh is a proof that the killers are destroying any hope of peace," Asbahi said in a statement. A Saudi-led alliance intervened in the Yemen conflict in March last year to try to restore Hadi to power after the Houthis, a Shi'ite movement, had taken over the capital Sanaa advanced on his temporary headquarters in Aden, forcing him to flee to Saudi Arabia. A shaky truce between the Iran-allied Houthis and Hadi loyalists has repeatedly been violated by both sides since it took hold in April before U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Kuwait. The talks have made little progress towards ending the war that has killed more than 6,200 people and displaced more than 2.5 million. Romania stroll to 5-1 win over Georgia in Euro warm-up BUCHAREST, June 3 (Reuters) - Romania scored two early goals on their way to a leisurely 5-1 victory against a listless Georgia side at the National Arena in their final Euro 2016 warm-up on Friday. Anghel Iordanescu's team, who play in the tournament's opening game against hosts France next Friday, took the lead after 68 seconds when Adrian Popa punished a defensive blunder by dribbling past Georgia keeper Roin Kvashvadze to score. The home side doubled their advantage two minutes later when Georgia captain Aleksandr Amisulashvili slid the ball into his own net from Romania captain Razvan Rat's left-wing cross. The last time the Romanians scored twice in the first three minutes was in a 4-2 win over China in a friendly in 1984. Romania, who have been struggling with injuries and players not featuring for their clubs, had conceded six goals in three friendlies in the last 10 days against two in Euro qualifying, and Iordanescu was determined to tighten the defence. On the back of a 4-3 loss to Ukraine he fielded Cosmin Moti in the centre of defence instead of Vlad Chiriches after the Napoli defender's disappointing performance on Sunday and they were never under any serious or sustained pressure. Georgia, ranked 137th in the world, barely registered a shot on goal and allowed the home side to dictate the play, with the hosts hitting the post twice midway through the first half. Florin Andone got a chance up front, having missed Romania's training camp in Italy and their last two friendlies against DR Congo and Ukraine due to club commitments with Spanish second-tier side Cordoba for whom he scored 21 goals last season. But it was Nicolae Stanciu who made it 3-0 after the break with his fourth goal in five internationals although Iordanescu would not have been pleased when Georgia substitute Levan Mcedlidze scored after 68 minutes following an error by Moti. However, Romania's Gabriel Torje restored the home side's three-goal lead with an easy close-range finish in the 80th and fellow substitute Claudiu Keseru completed the rout with a deflected 25-metre shot four minutes from time. PT 305 crew 2.jpg Joseph Cirlot of Moss Point is fourth from left in back row of this photo of the first crew to serve aboard PT boat 305, now under full restoration at the WWII Museum in New Orleans. The father of Mitchell Cirlot of Pascagoula, Joseph served from 1942 to 1945 in the U.S. Navy. (Courtesy Photo- Mitchell Cirlot) A World War II boat is gaining a new lease on life on the Gulf Coast, and for one Pascagoula man, it will serve as a direct link to his father's role in the conflict. PT Boat 305, now under restoration at the World War II museum in New Orleans, was built by Higgins Industries in that same city. The vessel, a torpedo-armed, fast-attack craft used by the U.S. Navy, served in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations. PT Boats in action during World War II like these (pictured) were sisters to PT-305 soon to be activated on Lake Pontchartrain by the New Orleans WWII museum. When it becomes operational and goes for a cruise in Lake Pontchartrain, an event scheduled for later this year, Pascagoulan Mitchell Cirlot will be one of the first aboard. The trip will have special meaning for Cirlot because his late father, Joseph Cirlot, was among the first crew on 305. Mitchell also played a role in seeing the boat turned over to the WWII Museum. Mitchell Cirlot connected through the Internet with Tim Kelly in Kemah, Texas, an officer with the Defenders of America Naval Museum, the organization that had tracked down and rebuilt the PT 309, which is now on display in Fredericksburg, Texas, at the Admiral Nimitz Museum. Cirlot helped work on PT 309. This work inspired him and the members of the Naval Museum to locate and acquire PT 305. It was found in Maryland being used as an oyster dredge boat. "We worked very hard to see it given to the New Orleans museum," Mitchell said. "I will be there when it hits the water at launching," he said. "I have already walked the decks, sat in the 40mm gun turret where my daddy served during combat conditions and I have been in the engine room where he stayed and worked while in port." Mitchell Cirlot of Pascagoula has returned the original PT-305 flags to the original vessel under restoration at the World War II museum in New Orleans. Mitchell's father, Joseph, was the longest serving sailor on the 305. Other gifts besides the battle flag included the commissioning pennant (pictured here with the battle flag), and a captured Nazi flag signed by the PT boat squadron sailors. Once operational, the boat will be berthed in a boathouse adjacent to a pavilion on Lake Pontchartrain and available for public tours and cruises. At present it is housed in the museum's John E. Kushner Restoration Pavilion, where visitors can see first hand the techniques used to repair and restore this and other war-era boats, vehicles, weapons and artifacts that tell the stories of WWII. Mitchell has also donated valuable memorabilia of his father's to the boat including its last battle flag, its commissioning flag and a photo of his mother that was affixed to his father's bunk nearly 70 years ago. According to a description on Wikipedia.com, PT (Patrol Torpedo) boats were small (about 80 feet long), fast and inexpensive to build. They were valued for their maneuverability and speed. During World War II, PT boats engaged enemy warships, transports, tankers, barges, and sampans. As gunboats they could be effective against enemy small craft, especially armored barges used by the Japanese for inter-island transport. Primary anti-ship armament was four 2,600-pound Mark 8 torpedoes, according to Wikipedia. Launched by 21-inch Mark 18 torpedo tubes, each bore a 466-pound TNT warhead and had a range of 16,000 yards at 36 knots. Mitchell Cirlot of Pascagoula holds a photo of his mother Marion that was affixed to his father's bunk on PT 305 during World War II. It will now be returned to its original place on his father Joseph's bunk. Mitchell also donated photos, mementos, a coffee cup and sugar dispenser from PT-305 to the boat nearing complete restoration at the WWII Museum in New Orleans. More than 500 PT boats served during WWII. Only a few survived. Nicknamed "the mosquito fleet" and "devil boats" by the Japanese, the PT boat squadrons were heralded for their daring and their stories have endured into the 21st century. PT 305 operated under the British Coastal Forces, saw action against the Germans and along the northwest coast of Italy and southern coast of France. Many became famous, none more so than PT 109, commanded by future President John F. Kennedy. Joseph Cirlot served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1945 and was a Motor Machinist Mate 1st Class. Now his memory and that of his crew mates will be immortalized by the WWII Museum. A day after the BJP announced former chief minister BS Yeddyurappa as the head of the Karnataka unit of the party, he declared himself the chief ministerial candidate without waiting for approval from his seniors. He reiterated the same on the day he assumed charge in Karnataka in front of thousands of cheering party workers in Bangalore. Not many leaders in the BJP can do this. But Yeddyurappa, the undisputed BJP leader with an exceptional mass following in the state, proved that he is not only a satrap but a man on a mission to bring the party back to power. His return as the head of the state unit despite many corruption-related cases against him pending in the court indicates the state of affairs of the party in Karnataka. The BJP is the principal opposition in the state legislature, but former prime minister HD Deve Gowda's Janata Dal (Secular) is performing a better job on all fronts. Be it the Hublot watch controversy or drought-related crisis or the second PUC question paper leak, the JD(S) has scored brownie points over the BJP in the House as well as outside by taking the ruling Congress head-on. The BJP seems to have relegated itself to the background by allowing the JD(S) to function as the opposition. One of the biggest setbacks for the BJP in Karnataka was losing the mayor and deputy mayor's posts in the prestigious Bengaluru City Corporation or Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) after emerging as the single-largest party with a striking distance of grabbing power with the help of Independent councillors. Current Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah. But unwanted delay by the BJP enabled Deve Gowda to play a masterstroke and the BJP is now sitting in the opposition. BJP leader R Ashoka, who was in charge of the BBMP elections, is blamed for the fiasco and since then he has been maintaining a low profile. A majority of the so-called young turks of the BJP have been missing in action in Karnataka for the last few years. According to the BJP insiders, after waiting for three years, the collective failure of the senior leaders in the party prompted the re-entry of Yeddyurappa into Karnataka. The situation is ripe for the BJP, as the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government is committing one blunder after another. But Yeddyurappa is unlikely to make it easy for Siddaramaiah for the next two years and the Congress is also aware of the threat he poses. The BJP has given Yeddyurappa adequate time to consolidate his platform and take on the Congress in the polls in 2018. Yeddyurappa's return to Karnataka is inevitable for the BJP from the caste perspective. He belongs to the dominant Lingayat community, the largest in the state, but ignored by the Congress in the last three years. While the Backward Classes and other communities benefited under Siddaramaiah's rule, the Lingayats feel abandoned. The Congress appointed one of its senior-most leaders Shamanur Shivashankarappa and other upcoming Lingayat leaders to important posts, but they pale in comparison to Yeddyurappa. A significant number of the Lingayat votes will swing in favour of Yeddyurappa in the Assembly elections now that he has declared himself as the chief ministerial candidate. Yeddyurappa was dumped unceremoniously from the CM's post in 2011 by the BJP in the wake of the mining scam and the Lingayats have not taken it kindly. When Yeddyurappa had quit the BJP and formed the Karnataka Janata Party (KJP), the Lingayats backed him again. Though he could not win many seats, he made a dent on the performance of the BJP in the Assembly polls in 2013. While the KJP managed to win from just six segments, it had emerged second in as many as 34 constituencies by pushing the BJP to either third or fourth place. The BJP had to be satisfied with victory from just 40 segments. Yeddyurappa can pick and choose from a wide range of topics to nail the Congress government. Be it the crumbling infrastructure of Bengaluru, the erratic power supply, the dangerous drought, farmers' suicide, flight of capital to neighbouring states, corruption, nepotism, scams. Unlike the other BJP leaders, Yeddyurappa is vocal and doesn't hesitate to take on the Congress leaders in a verbal spat and he speaks with facts. Yeddyurappa has a long way to go, but he has already shown that he is here to do business. As President Pranab Mukherjee visited China last week, India's entry into the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), whose members can trade in and export nuclear technology, has emerged as the latest battleground in the growing Sino-Indian contestation. With India's push for admission into the NSG gaining momentum ahead of the annual plenary session of the NSG next month, Beijing is making it clear that it intends to make life difficult for India. China has relied on an obstructionist argument and has called for further discussion on whether "India and other countries" which have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) join the NSG. Inclusion Where the US and other supporting members have called for India's inclusion based on New Delhi's non-proliferation track record and the US-India civil nuclear accord, China has made the NPT signature as its central argument to scuttle India's entry. Beijing is claiming that a "compulsory" requirement for NSG membership is that "the NSG members must be signatories to the NPT". Apart from the rhetoric about the NPT, China has also encouraged Pakistan to apply for NSG membership so as to link New Delhi's entry with that of Islamabad's knowing well that there will be few takers for Pakistan's case. Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif (L) with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The US state department, for its part, promptly came to India's defence reaffirming the view that "India meets missile technology control regime requirements and is ready for NSG membership". The US has declared its support for India's full membership since 2010. The Modi government is investing a lot of diplomatic capital in seeking NSG membership. It has reached out to the New Agenda Coalition, group of states in the NSG, including Ireland, the Netherlands and Switzerland, and has been able to secure its support. The NSG chairperson too visited India last year to take this process forward. Membership in the NSG will be the final step in India's inclusion into the global nuclear order. No wonder, China is taking such a strong stand on this issue despite the fact that its own non-proliferation track record remains abysmal. In fact, it was China's support for Pakistan's nuclear programme that led the way for India's overt nuclearisation. Weapons The Pakistani nuclear weapons programme is essentially an extension of the Chinese one. Despite being a member of the NPT, China has supplied Pakistan with nuclear materials and expertise and has provided critical assistance in the construction of Pakistan's nuclear facilities. The Sino-Pak nuclear relationship is perhaps the only case where a nuclear weapon state has actually passed on weapons grade fissile material as well as a bomb design to a non-nuclear weapon state. After the 2008 US-India civil nuclear pact, China made it a point to further enhance nuclear cooperation with Pakistan, despite criticism from other nuclear powers. When the NSG was approached for the waiver for the passage of the US-India pact, China was the last state standing in opposing the India-specific waiver. When it failed to scuttle the deal, China quickly moved to sign an agreement with Pakistan. Guidelines This action of China was in clear violation of NSG guidelines that forbid nuclear transfers to countries not signatories to the NPT or adhere to comprehensive international safeguards on their nuclear programme. China suggested that there were "political reasons concerning the stability of South Asia to justify the exports," echoing Pakistan's oft-repeated complaint that the India-US nuclear pact had upset stability in the region by assisting India's strategic programme. And now China and Pakistan are working together to block India's bid to gain entry into the NSG. India was able to get a one-time clean waiver from the NSG in 2008 as it was able to convince the group of the effectiveness of its export control regime which was deemed to be in line with global standards. The Bush administration lobbied for India extensively; with President George W Bush himself talking to his Chinese counterpart after Beijing refused to budge. Today, India wants to be part of the decision-making at the highest levels of global nuclear architecture. As a rising and responsible nuclear power, it should be a part of this structure and it will also be good for the NSG if India is part of the decision-making process. China has taken a hard line on this issue and it seems unlikely that it will change its opposition to India's entry. During Pranab Mukherjee's visit, China indicated that it might be willing to fine-tune its stance, though there was no commitment. If China continues to stick to rigid stance to many in India, this will further reinforce the perception that Beijing is willing to sacrifice its long-term strategic partnership with a rising power for the short-term objective of trying to scuttle its rise. This won't be helpful for Sino-Indian ties but Beijing wants to go down fighting. New Delhi should brace itself for a bumpy ride ahead. GULFPORT, Mississippi -- Yeon Sook "Jackie" Hwang, as expected, entered a guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering during a plea hearing in U.S. District Court Friday, according to U.S. Attorney Gregory K. Davis. Hwang, a 41-year-old Korean national, is the former manager of JJ Spa Massage in St. Martin, which task force agents raided in November 2015 after a year-long investigation revealed the spa was a front for human trafficking and prostitution. Two days after the raid, a six-count federal indictment was unsealed, charging Hwang with transporting individuals from at least six other states to Mississippi for the purposes of engaging in prostitution, as well as money laundering to support those activities. After the raid, investigators said at least some of the women -- all Koreans -- appeared to have been forced to live at the spa on North Washington Avenue. Hwang entered the guilty plea in exchange for prosecutors dismissing the the other charges against her. She will be sentenced Sept. 1 and faces up to 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. She has been in the custody of U.S. Marshals since her arrest, having been deemed a flight risk and denied bond. At an arraignment hearing in December, FBI Agent James Grunwald testified that nearly $1 million went through the spa over a two-year period, but added that was likely not all of the money which was funneled through the business. Grunwald said the FBI used an informant who had served as a courier for the spa, shuttling women to and from the airport and making bank deposits for Hwang and the women who worked there. Hwang personally garnered about $150,000 from the spa, but only $1,600 a month came in the form of a paycheck, according to records from the State of Mississippi. Investigators also interviewed five spa customers who each confirmed they had received sexual services at the spa in exchange for cash. The case was investigated by the Jackson County Sheriff's Office, Jackson County District Attorney's Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The HSUS has been working very actively since 2013 to close asphyxiant gas chambers around the country. So far, weve had a hand in shuttering more than 70 of them, and the number of states with gas chambers has dropped from 16 at the beginning of 2013 to just four. Photo by iStockphoto 2.6K shares Today, we saw the closure of the last known asphyxiant gas chamber operating at a California animal shelter. If there is euthanasia of healthy animals in that state and we hope to see that end soon enough, too dogs and cats will not endure the sometimes protracted and painful death that comes from carbon dioxide poisoning. A 1998 law in the state banned all chambers that use carbon monoxide to euthanize animals, but failed to include chambers that use carbon dioxide. The closure of the City of Coalingas gas chamber comes as a result of a grant from The HSUS, working in partnership with San Francisco SPCA. The HSUS has been working very actively since 2013 to close asphyxiant gas chambers around the country. So far, weve had a hand in shuttering more than 70 of them, and the number of states with gas chambers has dropped from 16 at the beginning of 2013 to just four, in Ohio, Nevada, Wyoming, and Missouri. Twenty-six states now have full or partial bans in place. The HSUS is working with the San Francisco SPCA and Assemblyman Bill Quirk to pass a bill that would close Californias loophole. But California is not the only state with a loophole in its gas chamber ban; Maryland, North Carolina, and Louisiana also ban carbon monoxide but not carbon dioxide chambers from their shelters, and Kansas just this year passed regulations outlawing carbon monoxide, but failed to include carbon dioxide. The HSUS will work to close these loopholes. Our work to end the use of gas chambers has made several advances in the first half of 2016. This year, the South Carolina legislature passed a full ban on gas chamber use in shelters, ending both carbon monoxide and dioxide chambers. The last known shelter using a gas chamber in Oklahoma has voluntarily stopped using it for dog and cat euthanasia, and the last operational chamber in Nevada was donated to the National Museum of Animals & Society in Los Angeles, to serve as a marker of the steps being taken to make our society more humane for animals each and every day. In Michigan, advocates fought to ensure that no gas chambers are or will be in existence, and Grants Bill, which would end gas chamber use, continues to make its way through the legislature. Gas chambers are an unacceptable way to euthanize homeless companion animals. Carbon dioxide exposure causes pain and distress even at low concentrations (humans describe the pain associated with carbon dioxide exposure as excruciating). Typically the animal is placed in a small, dark box, sometimes full of the smells of the animals who came before them, where they may remain conscious for several minutes, terrified, clawing, and calling for a way out. They may spend their last minutes fighting each other; when animals are placed together in chambers, they often clash out of fear and desperation. They may struggle for air or begin convulsing before finally losing consciousness. If the chamber is old, or if the animal is very young, very old, injured, or stressed, it could take much longer. In the worst cases, the animal is still conscious when the vital organs begin to shut down. The HSUS is working to end pet euthanasia by preventing pet homelessness and through programs to increase the adoption of shelter pets. But until the day we can bring down the number of pets euthanized to zero, we can at least try and ensure that animals receive something akin to a painless death. As we celebrate the closure of the City of Coalingas gas chamber, we pledge to continue our fight until all 50 states have banned all gas chamber use. One day well hope to make any form of euthanasia of healthy and treatable companion animals a thing of the past. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- During this graduation and awards time of year, Fashion Institute of Technology grad Rosemary Paone got to add yet another award to her lengthy roster. The West Brighton resident's original sportswear design walked the runway in the Future of Fashion Show, an annual fashion show for only a select number of grads from each specialization. But to backtrack: Rosemary -- who's relocating to Manhattan to be more "fashion hands on" -- graduated magna cum laude last month with a bachelor of fine arts degree in Fashion Design from FIT and was the recipient of the Dennis Basso Critic's Choice award. And if Basso's name sounds familiar it should. In addition to holding the distinctive of eing an American fashion designer of couture fur designs, it was recently announced that Basso will be opening a store in the new and innovative Empire Outlets. in St. George. And Rosemary's design was chosen out of hundreds for the award. FYI: Rosemary had the extraordinary opportunity of living and studying in Florence and then Milan over the last two years, and now back and representing Staten Island in an amazing way. Says Rosemary: "The concept behind my thesis collection is inspired by the intricate Italian mosaic tile-work of basilicas throughout Italy. When exploring the duomos of Florence, Milan, and Venice, instead of gazing up at the spectacular frescos, altarpieces and ornate domes of the churches, I was looking down; drawn to the intricate geometric patterns in the church floors." Rosemary goes on to explain in the Venetian Basilica of San Marco, when the light hits the seamless mosaic titles, the glow produced is mesmerizing. "The details in my collection capture the spirit of these artworks as well as the essence of 'la bella figura' with small squares of leather hand pieced together, beaded embellishments and reflective details," she adds. Rosemary's garments consist of black matte rubber and pony hair coat with reflective piping, lambskin leather skirt with hand sewn beaded leather embellishment and bodysuit with mesh inserts. Way to go, Rosemary! CELEBRATIONS: JUNE 3 AND 4 Happy birthday Friday to Kathleen Kellerhals, owner of the former Corner House, Grant City, John Townsley, August Alvarez, Adriene Mark, Ellen Conklin, John Lemmen, Dolores Bowers and Amee Palisay. Happy 82nd birthday Friday to Veronica Parascondola of Oakwood Heights, an avid reader of the Advance since the early 1970's. Happy birthday Friday to Mark Russo and to his son Christian Russo, who turns 13. P Happy wedding anniversary Friday to Rosalie and Sal Cassati, who celebrate their 65th. Saturday is birthday time for Staten Island's former First Lady, Joan Cusack and her twin Rosemary Licciardello, Rob Bailey, Bill Frickenstein, D. Lansing Parker, Kevin J. Collins, Mehghan Limato, Steve DiGennaro, Gina Hoffman who turns 52, Jack Rosenthal and Nicole Tagliamonti. Happy wedding anniversary wishes Saturday for Lucy and Ellis Krone, Dr. Stephen and Dr. Karen Costa and Nelly and Vincent James Dugan. BRUSSELS - Belgium - Every citizen of the EU who uses the internet will be forced to have a trackable government ID number under new DSM plans from the European Union. The Digital Single Market (DSM) initiative spearheaded by unelected official Andrus Ansip for the European Commission will identify each user of the internet in the EU and assign them an electronic identification tag enabling authorities to better track individuals on the internet. More generally, this issue includes the ways in which users identify themselves in order to access online platforms and services. It is recognised that a multitude of username and password combinations is both inconvenient and a security risk. However, the frequent practice of using ones platform profile to access a range of websites and services often involves non-transparent exchanges and crosslinkages of personal data between various online platforms and websites. As a remedy, in order to keep identification simple and secure, consumers should be able to choose the credentials by which they want to identify or authenticate themselves. In particular, online platforms should accept credentials issued or recognised by national public authorities, such as electronic or mobile IDs, national identity cards, or bank cards Digital Single Market (Pg 10) By introducing a mandatory ID system for all internet users, the reasoning behind the EU initiative is to do away with multiple passwords for all internet portals and to track users more accurately. The drawback for the user is that their loss of internet anonymity will result in their every move on the internet being tracked by the EU government as well as commercial corporations and marketers. Anonymity, which is one of the hallmarks and original concepts of the internet will thus be removed. This Orwellian move by the EU is only a totalitarian tiptoe step, as in the future, any form of questioning the EU could be deemed as Thoughtcrime, or in todays terminology (hate speech/fake news). In other words, any form of dissent, questioning of political ideology, alternative view to the state or satire would be punishable with physical imprisonment and arrest. The future of the EU is a dystopian nightmare becoming reality every day, as little embers and revelations come to light, bit by bit. Britain must preserve its democracy, its freedom of expression, it must separate itself from this totalitarian EU march towards certain digital imprisonment and Stasi hell. We must Vote Leave on June 23, not only for your sake, but for the sake of future generations, for the mantle of freedom, democratic accountability, and the right to free expression. Legal notices 1) The material on this blog has been created by W. Blake Gray, is protected under US copyright law and cannot be used without his permission. 2) To the FTC: In the course of my work, I accept free samples, meals and other considerations. I do not trade positive reviews or coverage for money or any financial considerations, unlike certain famous print publications which have for-profit wine clubs but, because they are not classified as "bloggers," are not required by the FTC to post a notice like this. Question: There are no shortage of concerns about Chinas treatment of human rights advocates, such as the Hong Kong booksellers and its detention of the Garratts, not to mention the destabilizing effects of its territorial ambitions in the South China Sea. Given these concerns, why is Canada pursuing closer ties with China, how do you plan to use that relationship to improve human rights and security in the region, and did you specifically raise the case of the Garratts during your discussions with the foreign minister today? Answer: I want to make a response to the questions that the journalist has just raised concerning China. Your question was full of prejudice against China and an arrogance that comes from I dont know where. This is totally unacceptable to me. Do you understand China? Have you been to China? Do you know that China has come from a poor and backward state and lifted more than 600 million people from poverty? Do you know that China is now the worlds second biggest economy with $8,000 per capita? If we werent able to properly protect human rights, would China have achieved such great development? Do you know that China has incorporated protecting human rights into its Constitution? I want to tell you that its the Chinese people who most understand Chinas human rights record not you, but the Chinese people themselves. You have no right to speak on this. The Chinese people have the right to speak. So please dont raise such irresponsible questions again. China welcomes all well-meaning suggestions, but we reject all groundless accusations. The Canadian Press news agency reported that the offending question, which was asked by a reporter for iPolitics, a news website, was devised through an agreement by several different news outlets, including itself. But Chinas foreign minister, Wang Yi, clearly decided that being in Canada was no reason to hold his temper. Especially when it comes to questions on his countrys human rights record. A Canadian journalist learned that on Wednesday when she asked about the Chinese governments detention of human rights advocates and a Canadian couple accused of espionage. The question was directed at the Canadian foreign minister, Stephane Dion, during a joint news conference in Ottawa. But Mr. Wang then stepped in with a withering lecture, delivered with operatic dudgeon, in which he called the journalist arrogant and prejudiced. Chinese officials often bristle at questions about human rights and other contentious subjects. But their reactions vary. Sometimes they stick, coolly but adamantly, to the governments stock response that China respects the rule of law and that the countrys stability and economic growth have been a boon to citizens rights. But sometimes, like Mr. Wang this time, they strike back with their own accusations. In 2000, Jiang Zemin, who was Chinas president at the time,chastised a journalist from Hong Kong for what he considered an impertinent question. You go everywhere to follow the big news, but the questions you ask are too simple, sometimes naive, Mr. Jiang said. I feel the need to impart to you some real-life experience. New Delhi: The Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) Bill, which aims to pave the way for "unlocking" of Rs 41,000 crore earmarked for forest land, would be passed in the upcoming session of the Parliament, Power Minister Piyush Goyal said on June 3. "CAF Bill got passed in the Lok Sabha. We expect the Bill to be passed in the Rajya Sabha in the next session. "In this session it (Bill) could have been passed if there was some cooperation. Four months could have been saved. In four months, more tress could have been planted. But then it's ok, it's better to be late than never," Goyal said during the release of an NTPC coffee table book on bio diversity here on June 3. If passed, the CAF Bill, 2015 will pave the way for expeditious utilisation of funds realised for forest land diverted to non-forest purposes in a transparent manner. It will also "unlock" nearly Rs 41,000 crore earmarked for forest land which is lying unspent for about four years. Stressing on the rejuvenation of the depleted forest cover, the minister said there is a need to take the country's valuable forest cover to the level where "our ancestors left it". The mission of the present government is to increase use of clean technologies and renewable energy for power generation, making India the Clean Energy Capital of the world. He also emphasised on the need to restore the forest cover through massive tree plantation. The minister urged NTPC to increase its tree plantation target and keep a proper record reflecting ownership of the activity. He said the power sector in India is focusing on environment sustainability and NTPC has taken a lead by preserving flora and fauna in and around its power stations. Goyal congratulated NTPC on its 4,670 MW largest power station at Vindhyachal achieving 100.05 per cent PLF generating 114 MUs in a day on June 2. Tiger Shroff, who is basking in the success of his recent release 'Baaghi: A Rebel For Love', is gearing up for the release of his next, 'A Flying Jatt'. Mumbai: Tiger Shroff and rumoured girlfriend Disha Patani are soon to come together for a romantic single. According to reports, recee for an upcoming music video, produced by Bhushan Kumar, is presently underway in Paris. The duo, who are steadily dating since a year, have often been spotted dining together at popular suburban joints. Recently, Tiger was quizzed whether the two are finally willing to make it official, he said, Kaash! She is too good for me. I'm the most un-cool person. I wish someday someone will like me. Disha, is all set to make her Bollywood debut in Neeraj Pandey's 'M S Dhoni: The Untold Story' opposite Sushant Singh Rajput. Tiger Shroff, who is basking in the success of his recent release 'Baaghi: A Rebel For Love', is gearing up for the release of his next, 'A Flying Jatt' opposite Jacqueline Fernandez. He has also been roped in for Remo D'Souza's 'ABCD 3'. The stork has been extremely busy! And first on its agenda is apparently Kareena Kapoor Khan and Saif. With rumours of the ravishing Udta Punjab actress being three-and-a-half months pregnant doing the rounds, news feeds are flooded with the Is she or is-she-not? Grapevine is also rife with speculations that Saif and his begum, who were spotted holidaying in London, were there for another purpose Kareenas relaxation during her pregnancy. Whats more, in a candid interview, she reportedly stated, Arrey women have children at 40. Ive a long way to go. I will definitely have my own children. Ive always done what I wanted to. I wanted to be a star-actor, then I wanted to get married, have a home. Ill be a mother. And Ill continue to act. So, is Bebo ready for the baby? It certainly looks like it. Newbie parents Riteish Deshmukh and Genelia DSouza Deshmukh are also on this list after they welcomed a baby boy recently. Following close behind is Bhajji dear and his wife Geeta Basra who are welcoming their first child in July this year. And the Basras apparently have a big fat baby shower planned for Geeta. Mira Rajput and Shahid Kapoor are also getting ready to be first time parents and Mira, we must say, looks totally adorable and glowing. Baby luck seems to the way to go! So sweet. Fentanyl, prescribed by doctors for cancer treatment, can be made illicitly and is blamed for a spike in overdose deaths in the United States. Los Angeles: Toxicology tests for Prince concluded that the entertainer died from an accidental overdose of the opioid fentanyl, according to a report on his death by the Midwest Medical Examiner's Office. Fentanyl, prescribed by doctors for cancer treatment, can be made illicitly and is blamed for a spike in overdose deaths in the United States. It's 25 to 50 times more potent than heroin and 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration, reported CNN. Prince, whose full name was Prince Rogers Nelson, died April 21 at age 57, after being found unresponsive in an elevator at Paisley Park, his home and recording studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota. The report from the medical examiner's office, which was released on Twitter, didn't provide many details. "How injury occurred: The decedent self-administered fentanyl," the report said. For manner of death, a box was marked for "accident." The report didn't specify how the drug was taken and if the fentanyl was prescribed or illegally made. Rating: Cast: Megan Fox, Noel Fisher, Jeremy Howard, Pete Ploszek, Alan Ritchson Director: David Green It may be declared: if the leads of a blockbuster (read: a sequel, a franchise entry) are on a plane, they arent on it to merely travel, like all the others instead, they must scourge its layout for camouflaged terrorists, use it to conduct a daring mid-air abduction or in the case of those lacking imagination, employ it as a platform to make a thrilling chute-aided jump from. In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, the turtles are on a rudimentary plane ride from one place to another. Soon they realise the enemy they hope to interrupt at their destination is already on the plane back home. One of them pulls out a homing device and calculates that coincidences of all coincidences the planes will cross at a distance of 3,000 feet. They decide, for the film is not very rich in imagination, to use their own vehicle as a platform to make a thrilling chute-aided jump from. Soon they land onto another plane, there is a mid-air brawl, which causes the enemy plane to crash into a river below. Almost inevitably, they are soon at the cusp of a steep waterfall. They descend without injury, only to find themselves engaged in yet another brawl when this sequence of amusements (all devoid of any real danger) finally comes to a close. Only for a bit though, before another chase ensues. In Out of the Shadows, the plot is merely a clever ruse, the pretext for a thousand thrills. Still there is a semblance of it: Shredder, the series main antagonist and the evil leftover of the first film, is being escorted to a prison for permanent incarceration. The advance of the police convoy is however disrupted by rogue rescuers who seem to have no real plan, merely a lot of intent. The turtles land on the spot to save the day, but cannot (they fail at most of their chosen missions in the film, no doubt heroic) because Shredder seems to jump straight into a time-warp that opens into another dimension. The engineer of this radical technology is Baxter Stockman, an incredible physicist, compulsive nerd, attracted naturally to evil (a most interesting character completely wasted). However, Stockman can no longer trace Shredder, who has disappeared in his inter-dimensional travel. We discover soon that he has been abducted to a new dimension by alien Krang (this is a useful strategy in a film with no real regards for narrative progression, coherence or chronology), who seeks his assistance in the conduct of an extraterrestrial invasion of New York City, which will enable them later to rule the world. The turtles soon get invested in the situation; there is notional nonsensical science, more brawls, exciting chases, some bargaining with the authorities, a couple of scenes of simulated, tiresome emotion and finally, a big showdown, triumph, the announcement of a sequel. Throughout the film, the turtles exist merely as instruments of action (they climb, jump, run, kick and punch) but not as true, emotional beings. There is a brief crisis: the turtles struggle with their anonymity, with the lack of recognition for their contributions to the city (this is a running theme: another character recognised as a hero must first earn it, another must earn recognition as a hero he believes he is). This is triggered by their desire to evolve from their subterranean existence, live as normal, functional human beings in a society that does not think of them as monsters. It leads to a moment of rupture within the group a genuinely interesting possibility but soon, they are made to sweep this aside and embrace their essential nature as heroes with a larger, more significant purpose (which, I suppose, is the continuation of the movie franchise). As a result, the turtles come across eventually like oddly tragic figures who live out a dire existence for they are not supposed to choose to live in any manner other than what is demanded of them by their borderline-parasitic human benefactors. Therefore, even as Ralph declares at the end, Who wants to live a normal life? one feels he is doing it under coercion, with two of his three fingers crossed beneath the frame. The writer is programmer, Lightcube Film Society African-American women who reported regular use of body powder were at greater risk for ovarian cancer compared to their peers who didnt use talc, a new study shows. Regular use of powder was associated with ovarian cancer regardless of where the women used it, the researchers report. Users of genital powder had more than a 40 percent increased risk of cancer, while those who used only non-genital powder had an increased risk of more than 30 percent. African-American women have been targeted for use of body powder, and they use it more commonly, principal investigator Joellen Schildkraut told Reuters Health in a telephone interview. Ive concluded why use it? Schildkraut, an epidemiologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, had been skeptical of a long-debated connection between genital talc and the deadly gynecologic cancer. But her new study, in concert with other recent research, convinced her to advise women to avoid using talcum powder. I was a cynic until these recent studies came out. As you look across all these studies, I would say, why use it? Its an avoidable risk for ovarian cancer, she said. Schildkrauts team interviewed 584 black women with ovarian cancer and 745 black women without the disease from the southern, eastern and midwestern U.S. Nearly 63 percent of the women with ovarian cancer and nearly 53 percent of the healthy controls dusted themselves with powder, the researchers report in Cancer Epidemiology. Dr. Nicolas Wentzensen, head of clinical epidemiology for the National Cancer Institute, noted that African-American women are underrepresented in many epidemiological studies. He told Reuters Health by email that Schildkrauts research was well-conducted and confirms previous studies describing an increased risk of ovarian cancer from talc use. Wentzensen noted that the current study found stronger associations between talc use and ovarian cancer than previous research. A December paper in the journal Epidemiology, for example, reported a 33 percent higher risk of ovarian cancer in women who said they routinely applied talc to their crotches, sanitary napkins, tampon and underwear. In the past, African-American women have reported significantly higher use of so-called feminine hygiene products, including genital powder. A 2015 case-control study in Los Angeles found that 44 percent of African-American women reported using talcum powder, compared to 30 percent of white women and 29 percent of Hispanic women. In the 1990s, Johnson and Johnson outlined a plan to hike flagging sales of its powder by targeting black and Hispanic women, according to a company memorandum made public in recent lawsuits leading to multimillion-dollar verdicts against the powder manufacturer. Prospective studies, which follow participants over time to see if they develop a disease, are generally considered more reliable than studies that look backward. Two prospective studies have failed to link talc and ovarian cancer. But Schildkraut believes the prospective studies included too few talc users and too few ovarian cancer cases to uncover a relationship. Because African-American women tend to use talc more, Schildkraut believes that studying a sizable group of black women, like she did, makes the study more powerful and might explain the stronger association. Wentzensen said recall bias, particularly following publicity about outsized jury verdicts in talc-ovarian cancer cases, might explain the stronger association in the new study. Schildkraut considered recall bias but said she tends to believe women were more likely to correctly remember their talc usage. An estimated 20,000 American women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer and about 14,500 die from it annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr. Daniel W. Cramer, who heads the Obstetrics and Gynecology Epidemiology Center at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston, first reported a link between genital talc and ovarian cancer in 1982. Since then, hes been calling for warning labels. In a recent editorial in Gynecologic Oncology, cancer genetics expert Dr. Steven Narod of Womens College Research Institute in Toronto wrote, In the interests of public health, I believe we should caution women against using genital talcum powder. Narod, who was not involved in Schildkrauts study, wrote that its disingenuous to state that there is no evidence that talc is associated with ovarian cancer. Radhika and Shivali Miglani, Bengaluru-based siblings believe in doing more with less A2 Naturals, their maiden venture is a mash of all things natural and sustainable. In a bid to promote organic farming and Ayurveda, the entrepreneurial duo will be holding insightful programmes to encourage the growth of Agripreneurs to aid farmers in combining their love for agriculture with business. We chat up with them to find out more We were leading a cushioned life backed by stable corporate careers. But on delving deeper about the declining health despite high-end advancements in science; Shivani and I decided to roll out an idea that would make a wee bit of a difference, shares Radhika, who quit a lucrative 9-5 as an actuarial consultant in the year 2014 to materialise the plan. Armed with a degree in finance from the London School of Economics, Shivali decided to use her academic knowledge to test and kick-started the plan on social media. We began posting and tweeting on various forums about merging the traditional goodness of ancient India, backed with technology and complete scientific evidence and validation. And the responses were indeed encouraging. Roughly about a year and a half later, the sisters are climbing up the ladder, trying to make an impact and carve a niche for themselves a la au naturale line of products. Were quite the health freaks! In fact, I always make it a point to read everything and anything that goes into making a product that I use. So everything we are currently doing is what we personally believe in. Its important to steer clear of toxic and artificial products and become a smart buyer, adds Shivali. On days when the duo isnt continually researching or conducting seminars, theyre exploring exotic locales. We love travelling. Unwinding usually translates to jet setting off to a never-explore destination. But other than that, were quite the movie buffs. So on a lazy day, youd see us glued to the television screens! says Radhika with a streak of excitement in her tone. While their works have been recognised by the National Program on Organic Farming, the enterprising sisters believe theres still a long way to go. We want to make a mark as eco-entrepreneurs. We will be holding awareness-generation campaigns and free training programmes on sustainable agriculture for farmers in and around the city. We wish our state-of-art natural products builds a connect with the modern buyer, while bolstering the rural economy. Also in the pipeline are tie-ups with corporates to launch in-house wellness facilities for the wellbeing of their employees, and manufacturing simple health supplements that help reduce stress that comes with modern day working. Most dogs today are a mixture of both Eastern and Western dogs - one reason why previous genetic studies have been difficult to interpret. (Photo: Pixabay) London: Dogs may have been domesticated not once, as widely believed, but twice, say scientists who found that man's best friend may have emerged independently from two separate wolf populations that lived on opposite sides of the Eurasian continent. Some scholars argue that humans first domesticated wolves in Europe, while others claim this happened in Central Asia or China. Researchers led by the University of Oxford in the UK reconstructed the evolutionary history of dogs by first sequencing the genome of a 4,800-year old medium-sized dog from bone excavated at the Neolithic Passage Tomb of Newgrange in Ireland. The team also obtained mitochondrial DNA from 59 ancient dogs living between 14,000 to 3,000 years ago and then compared them with the genetic signatures of more than 2,500 previously studied modern dogs. The results of their analyses demonstrate a genetic separation between modern dog populations currently living in East Asia and Europe. Curiously, this population split seems to have taken place after the earliest archaeological evidence for dogs in Europe. The new genetic evidence also shows a population turnover in Europe that appears to have mostly replaced the earliest domestic dog population there, which supports the evidence that there was a later arrival of dogs from elsewhere. A review of the archaeological record shows that early dogs appear in both the East and West more than 12,000 years ago, but in Central Asia no earlier than 8,000 years ago. Combined, these new findings suggest that dogs were first domesticated from geographically separated wolf populations on opposite sides of the Eurasian continent. At some point after their domestication, the eastern dogs dispersed with migrating humans into Europe where they mixed with and mostly replaced the earliest European dogs. Most dogs today are a mixture of both Eastern and Western dogs - one reason why previous genetic studies have been difficult to interpret. "Animal domestication is a rare thing and a lot of evidence is required to overturn the assumption that it happened just once in any species," said Greger Larson, from the Oxford University. "Our ancient DNA evidence, combined with the archaeological record of early dogs, suggests that we need to reconsider the number of times dogs were domesticated independently," Larson said. "Maybe the reason there hasn't yet been a consensus about where dogs were domesticated is because everyone has been a little bit right," he said. "The Newgrange dog bone had the best preserved ancient DNA we have ever encountered, giving us prehistoric genome of rare high quality," said Professor Dan Bradley, from Trinity College Dublin. The study was published in the journal Science. The victim, identified as Hetal Parmar was a mother to four daughters and her husband Jitendra along with the in-laws used to allegedly harass her for not giving birth to a son. (Representational photo: PTI) Vadodara: A 30-year-old woman was killed after she was pushed into a well allegedly by her husband for being unable to bear a male child, police said on Friday. The incident took place in Bagidol village of Godhra taluka on the night of May 31, 90 km from here, they said. The victim, identified as Hetal Parmar was a mother to four daughters and her husband Jitendra along with the in-laws used to allegedly harass her for not giving birth to a son. According to a complaint filed by the victim's family member Saidaben Chauhan, the accused fought frequently with the deceased over this issue. On the day of incident, the couple again had an altercation after which Jitendra forcibly took his wife to the well and threatened to kill her saying that she does not have the right to live after giving birth to four daughters. Subsequently, he pushed Hetal into the well and she died after drowning, the complaint said. Hetal belonged to Kantharai village of Thasra taluka in Kheda district. After marriage, she was staying with her husband at Bagidol village. Jitendra, who is absconding since the incident has been booked for murder and searches are on to nab him, police added. Srinagar: Three Border Security Force (BSF) jawans were killed and five others wounded in a sneak rifle fire attack by Kashmiri militants in Jammu and Kashmirs highway town of Bijbehara, about 48 km south of Srinagar, on Friday afternoon. The slain jawans have been identified as Havaldar Rajnesh, head-constable Girish Kumar Shukla and Constable Mahendra Ram. Police sources and witnesses said that the BSF convoy came under militants attack while it was passing through the main town. The terrorists emerged from behind a row of shops at Goriwan near a government-run hospital in the heart of the town and opened indiscriminate fire towards the BSF convoy at about 4. 20 pm, a police officer said. He added that two BSF jawans were killed on the spot and a third among the seven injured personnel succumbed to his injuries in the hospital. The condition of one of these injured jawans is also stated to be "very critical". Reports from Bijbehara said that three militants were involved in the attack but only two of them were actually seen by the BSF and road opening parties of the security forces deployed in the area. They emptied 25 to 30 bullets of their AK 47 rifles each at one of the BSF vehicles in the convoy, police sources said. Reports said that the BSF convoy was on its way to Srinagar from Jammu when the militants targeted the last of the 11 vehicles in the fleet. However, a police officer said that it was 7th or 8th vehicles in convoy when came under militant attack. Most of the jawans and officers on board these vehicles were returning to the Valley to resume their duties after spending vacations at their respective homes places, sources in the paramilitary force said. Two critically injured jawans were airlifted to Srinagars 92 Base Hospital of the Army where one of them has succumbed, sources said. Witnesses said that the firing continued for about 12 minutes, leading to chaos in and around Bijbehara town with people running to safety and shopkeepers bringing their shutters down in panic. Also, public and private transport vehicles were quickly withdrawn from the roads and the stretch of Srinagar-Jammu highway has been closed for vehicular traffic. Reinforcements from J&K police, BSF, CRPF and columns of the Army have arrived at the scene and laid siege to a vast area to start searches. A massive manhunt has been launched for the terrorists involved in the ambush, the police said. When the attack took places two more convoys of the CRPF and Army were on the move along the highway between Srinagar and Khanabal in Anantnag district, officials said. Kashmiri militant outfit Hizb-ul-Mujahideen has owned responsibility for carrying out the attack. Its Operational spokesperson Burhanuddin told Srinagar- based news agency CNS that several Indian troopers were killed in the attack carried out by a special squad of the outfit. Besides killing these troopers, many more were critically injured by mujahedin, he claimed. He also said that the Operation Field Commander of the Hizb has directed the squad to intensify the attacks against the Indian troops in Kashmir Valley and hence Bijbehara like incidents will continue to occur till the Indian troops are present on the Kashmiri soil. The last major militant attack on the BSF along the Srinagar-Jammu highway took place on August 5, 2015 when two jawans of the paramilitary force were killed in an ambush outside the garrison town of Udhampur. Following the attack, Muhammad Naved Yakub, a Pakistan militant of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, was captured alive by a group of villagers. His accomplice Muhammad Noam was, however, killed in the security forces retaliatory fire. In yet another major such attack along the vital highway connecting Kashmir Valley with rest of the country took place at Pampore on the outskirts of Srinagar in February this year. In this attack and during subsequent 48-hour-long armed standoff between a group of militants holed up in J&K Entrepreneurship Development Institute (JK EDI) campus and security forces three CRPF jawans, two Army officers and an employee of the JKEDI were killed. All the three militants holed up in the multi-storey building were also killed in security forces counter attack. Soon after Fridays attack, Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke to DG BSF, KK Sharma, and asked him to rush to Kashmir for an on-the-spot reiview of the situation. Senior Home Minister officials also reviewed the security situation in the Valley as attack on BSF personnel comes close on the heels of two J&K police personnel being shot dead a few days ago. Home Ministry sources said there was a deliberate attempt by the militant outfits to target security personnel in the Valley now to demoralise them and send out a message that militants could virtually strike at will. Meanwhile, Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti, has strongly condemned the militant attack on the BSF convoy in Bijbehara area. Immediately after the attack, the Chief Minister spoke to DG BSF Mr. Sharma and expressed anguish and sorrow over the death of BSF personnel in the attack. "Such senseless attack is a desperate attempt by the elements inimical to peace to derail the peace efforts of the Government and subvert the rejuvenating economic activity in the State," the Chief Minister said in a statement. She added the elements inimical to interests of Jammu and Kashmir have always tried to derail the peace efforts and the latest militant strike in Bijbehara was again aimed at subverting the peace and development initiatives launched by the government. These elements have always been inimical to the interests of Jammu and Kashmir and have tried to derail any peace effort initiated in the larger interest of the people of the State and the region, she said and added that such dastardly attacks and senseless killings have only brought miseries to the people and tragedies for the victim families, both security forces personnel and the civilians. She further said, The only purpose of such gory acts seems to be to keep the turmoil in the state on and the latest attack is again aimed at vitiating the atmosphere. She while expressing solidarity with the bereaved families of the security forces personnel prayed for early recovery of the injured including civilians. I would like to express my sincere condolences to the families who have lost their loved ones in todays attack, she said. Clashes broke out between the police and encroachers who were being evicted from Jawaharbagh in Mathura on Thursday. (Photo: PTI) Mathura, Uttar Pradesh: Two policemen, including a superintendent of police were among the 21 killed while 40 others injured after clashes broke out in in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh following an eviction drive late on Thursday. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has ordered a probe into the incident. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who spoke to Yadav, expressed anguish over the loss of lives and assured all necessary help to the state government. 19 people have been killed apart from SP City Mukul Dwivedi and SHO, Farah, Santosh Yadav, Pradeep Bhatnagar, Commissioner, Agra Division, said on Friday. A magisterial probe has also been ordered, he said. Read: Hema Malini embarrasses BJP, tweets about her shoot after 21 die in her constituency The violence had erupted when police were trying to evict illegal occupants, believed to be of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi, from Jawahar Bagh on Thursday after orders from the Allahabad High Court. In Lucknow, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav ordered a probe by the divisional commissioner of Mathura, an official spokesperson said. DGP Javed Ahmed and Principal Secretary (Home) Debashish Panda have rushed here. The Union Home Minister said he has reviewed the situation in Mathura. "I have spoken to the Chief Minister of Uttar Pardesh and reviewed the situation in Mathura. I have assured him of all possible help from the Centre. "I am anguished over the loss of lives in the incident in Mathura. May God give strength to the bereaved families," Rajnath Singh said. A scene during clashes between the police and the encroachers who were being evicted from Jawaharbagh in Mathura. (Photo: PTI) The activists used not only hand grenades but also opened fire from automatic weapons after taking position on tree tops, DM Rajesh Kumar had said. The area was filled with smoke following explosions from hand grenades and LPG cylinders and several huts caught fire, he said. Police said some vehicles bearing Madhya Pradesh registration number have been found. "The wrath of people against encroachers was such that when they were retreating, they were severely beaten by the public," an official said. Over two years ago, activists of splinter group of Baba Jai Gurudeo, who described themselves as 'Satyagrahis' had occupied hundreds of acres of land of Jawahar Bagh on the pretext of 'dharna'. Their demands included "cancellation" of election of President and Prime Minister of India, replacement of existing currency with 'Azad Hind Fauj' currency, sale of diesel at the rate of 60 litres for one rupee and petrol at the rate of 40 litres for one rupee. Read: Mathura clashes: Teary-eyed mother of killed SP, says 'bring back my son' The station house officer (SHO) of the Farah police station Santosh Yadav and the Superintendent of Police (City) Mathura Mukul Dwivedi were killed when activists of Swadheen Bharat Subhash Sena (SBSS) opened fire at the police party that attempted to evict it from Jawahar Park late on Thursday evening. According to Mathura police, two bullets hit Yadav, who was declared dead on arrival by doctors at Niyati Hospital. Dwivedi, who was placed on ventilator support, succumbed to bullet injuries later, said doctors at the private hospital. Over 100 people, including the city magistrate Ram Araj Yadav, were also injured in the clash that lasted for almost four hours. Reports said that the police had failed to evict them earlier despite a court issuing orders to do so. The 260-acre park is valued in crores of rupees. The clashes started as a police team went to the park. Uttar Pradesh's Director General of Police Javed Ahmed said that there was unprovoked firing from the members of an offshoot of the Jai Gurudev sect. He claimed that heavily armed men from the other side fired at the police and the latter had to resort to a baton charge and tear gas shelling and finally opened fire. Calling the situation 'tense', Ahmed said reinforcements, including senior police officers, are being sent to the area. Read: Mathura clashes: UP CM announces 20 lakh Rs ex-gratia for slain SHO According to police, members of this outfit and another smaller organisation, Swadheen Bharat Subhash Sena, had been staging demonstrations at Jawahar Bagh over the last two-and-a-half years. Among the other demands posted on their Facebook page are: "We demand all records relating to the 'Ruler of the Nation', law and order, and also the document of citizenship (which shows how we are citizens of the nation) to be made public." The high court had, acting on a PIL, directed the authorities to vacate the land. In April, Mathura district administration has issued a notice to the protesters asking them to vacate the land. The land falls under the Horticultural Department of the UP government, and attempts by its officials to evict the people had failed. Hyderabad: Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's US visit, starting on June 7, India today said "protectionism" was creating hurdles and called for a shift from the conservative mindset to boost the Indo-American trade relations. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said this while addressing a programme organised by the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce in Hyderabad. "There should not be protectionism. Protectionism is one the biggest hurdles between India and US trade relations. There is a need to keep away from it, because the whole world has now become a global village. In order to keep the free flow of trade globally, we should give up our conservative mindset and have an open mindset," Mr Singh said. "On outsourcing policy, I expect USA's approach to be more rational," he said after releasing a report titled 'India-US trade- a formidable economic force' by KPMG. Mr Singh also said that as a part of ease of doing business, the Home Ministry is thinking of replacing the existing 10-year security clearance for foreign investors with one-time clearance. The minister hoped bilateral trade between India and the US to touch $500 billion in future as both nations have huge potential. Of late, the industry has been accusing the US and other developed nations of implementing some rules that have become an impediment for Indian traders. The industry has alleged that some of the recent rules by the US including hike in VISA fee and restriction on job visas are part of the "protectionism" being observed by the North American country. Mr Singh said the US can take the advantage of Indian pharma industry's success in reducing its health-care bills. "USA is one the biggest markets for Indian generic medicines. If US allows Indian generic drugs without much restrictions in their market, then definitely the cost of health-care will go down in that country," he felt. He said there has been a lot of upsurge in Indo-US relations during the past 14 years. The bilateral trade was $90 billion in 2009, which has now crossed $100 billion. "It is a fact the China-US bilateral trade crossed USD 500 billion in 2013 itself. We also hope that the Indo-US trade would reach USD 500 billion. Now India is considered as one of the fastest growing economies due to its strong leadership with a vision," he said. New Delhi: At a time when an environment of unrest has engulfed the holy city of Mathura, actor-politician Hema Malini, who represents this constituency in the Lok Sabha, who seemed unaware of the dreadful event, tweeted about the shooting for her upcoming film. Embarrassing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has trained guns at Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party Government after the unfortunate incident in Mathura, Malini in a series of tweets today shared the location of the shoot of her upcoming flick and her pleasant boat ride. Read: Mathura violence: Police killed in unprovoked firing; over 320 arrested "I was pleasantly surprised to see a vast change this time thks to Shri Gopal Shetty. The pathways leading to the boat in Versova are smooth," Malini tweeted. "The journey to Madh Island used to be tedious those days.It used to be a 2 hr journey by road or by ferry the approach to which was horrible," she said. Hema Malini tweets pictures of a shooting for her upcoming film even as death toll from Mathura incident rises. (Photo: Twitter) "Shooting at Madh island for Ek Thi Rani-a film based on the life of HH Vijaya Raje Scindia revived after many years.I play the title role," she tweeted. "Hoping for an early release of this film," she said. Realising that she had committed a blunder, Malini, however, soon withdrew her tweet and expressed grief over the loss of lives. "I just came bk frm Mathura & got the news of the violence tht has taken place there in which policemen have lost their lives," Malini tweeted. "So so upset by ths news frm a place which is so dear to me. Will go there again if my presence is required. My heart goes out to the bereaved," she said. Meanwhile, the death toll in yesterday's Mathura clash has risen to 22. Those killed include Mathura Superintendent of Police (City) Mukul Dwivedi, Farah Police Station SHO Santosh Yadav and 20 protesters. More than 40 people have been injured in the incident. The clashes between police and protesters broke out when the men in uniform launched a drive to clear encroachment in Jawahar Bagh area of the city. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has ordered an inquiry into the incident and also announced an ex-gratia of Rs. 20 lakh to the family of deceased policemen. The authorities have cleared the area and a manhunt has been launched to nab the culprits. Washington DC: Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit here, the United States has expressed its desire to build stronger with its 'vital partner' India, based on security and economic stability. "The breadth of the U.S.-Indian relationship is wide. As we mentioned earlier, it addresses security; it's got a strong economic component. We're looking to build closer relationships across the board with India, because we see it as a vital partner in the region," State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner said in a press briefing. Talking about the Prime Minister's visit specifically, he added that US Secretary of State John Kerry will be involved with the visit and that there will be meetings at the State Department. Asserting that the US is looking forward to the visit, Toner said that the US-Indian relationship is of incredible significance, not only to the region but to the world. We have a broad bilateral and multilateral relationship with India and look forward to engaging on all those issues," he added. Prime Minister Modi will embark on a five nation tour that kicks off next week, where he will first head to Afghanistan on June 4 and from there to Qatar on June 5 for a bilateral visit. Then the Prime Minister will fly to Switzerland on June 6 and then to the United States for a bilateral visit on June 7 and June 8. He will be addressing a joint session of the US Congress on June 8. According to reports, he is then expected to visit Mexico before returning home on June 10. He will be the fifth Indian Prime Minister to address a joint meeting of Congress, and the first since 2005. The first-ever Indian premier to make such a speech was Rajiv Gandhi in 1985, followed by P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1994 and Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2000. Prime Minister Modi will be the fifth, speaking 11 years after his predecessor, Congress leader Manmohan Singh. Every full-term prime minister since 1984 has addressed a joint meeting of the House and Senate. Pune: Even as speculations are rife on the fate of Maharashtra Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse amid a host of allegations against him, BJP state unit president Raosaheb Danve on Friday ruled out any "party action" against him till the charges against him are proved. Terming allegations against Khadse as "political" in nature, Danve said the party has adopted a "cautious approach towards them", adding "we believe that there is no substance in them." While maintaining that Khadse would face action if the allegations against him are proved in a court of law, he said there was "no pressure from the party high command" to remove him from the state cabinet. Asked about Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis's meeting with party president Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday over the Khadse issue, Danve said, "the chief minister submitted his report to Shah. But that does not necessarily mean that the report was against Khadse. It could be in his favour also." Danve, who was in Jalna to pay respect to the memory of late BJP leader Gopinath Munde on his second death anniversary, said that since there was no "substance" in the allegations against the revenue minister, "there is no need for any action". Khadse, a senior BJP leader, has come under cloud of a host of allegations including irregularities in a land deal in Pune and calls allegedly received from fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim's residence in Karachi on his mobile phone. He is in a spot over the purchase of a three-acre Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation land in Bhosari allegedly at a low price of around Rs 3.75 crore from its original owner in the name of his wife and son-in-law. The market value of the land is reportedly Rs 40 crore. Khadse, who is in his home town Jalgaon in North Maharashtra amid political heat, has denied all these allegations and said he would abide by the party decision in his case. "I will follow my party's instructions and will abide by its decisions," he had said. Fadnavis met Modi and Shah in Delhi yesterday and said the party will decide "appropriate action". Several huts caught fire after clashes between police and encroachers who were being evicted from Jawahar Bagh in Mathura. (Photo: PTI) Barabanki: With the Samajwadi Party coming under fire in wake of the violent clashes in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Friday said that the police should have been 'more prepared' before trying to evict the agitators, who had encroached on the land. "It is quite unfortunate that such an incident happened in Mathura. The police had gone there to warn the people and the incident happened while they were doing the recce. They did not know how much arms and ammunition the locals had with them at the time. 19 people have died so far, including two police officers," Akhilesh told the media. Police guard an entrance to a park where clashes between police and squatters broke out. (Photo: PTI) Read: Mathura violence: Police killed in unprovoked firing; over 320 arrested Stating that the Allahabad High Court had given them orders to remove the people, who had encroached on the land, he added that the state government had tried to speak to them and had also warned them of dire consequences but the locals still chose violence. The Chief Minister also ruled out a CBI probe into the matter, saying that it would be conducted only at the Commissioner-level and action will be taken against the guilty following the investigation. Read: Rajnath condemns Mathura violence after 21 killed, Akhilesh orders probe "The people there were squatting on the government's property. The police should have gone ahead with full preparation, as they clearly did not know about the cache of ammunition that the locals had with them at the time," Akhilesh said. The Chief Minister had earlier ordered an inquiry into the incident and also announced an ex-gratia of Rs. 20 lakh to the family of deceased policemen. A policeman being treated in the District Hospital after he got injury during clashes in Mathura. (Photo: PTI) Read: Mathura clashes: Teary-eyed mother of killed SP, says 'bring back my son' Meanwhile, the death toll in yesterday's Mathura clash has risen to 24. Those killed include Mathura Superintendent of Police (City) Mukul Dwivedi, Farah Police Station SHO Santosh Yadav and 20 protesters. More than 40 people have been injured in the incident. Read: Mathura violence 'stark reminder' of deteriorating law and order in UP: Rahul Gandhi The clashes between police and protesters broke out when the men in uniform launched a drive to clear encroachment in Jawahar Bagh area of the city. The BJP has demanded a judicial probe into the clashes. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh earlier had a telephonic conversation with the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and assured him of complete help from the Centre in wake of the unfortunate incident. Read: Hema Malini embarrasses BJP, tweets about her shoot after 21 die in her constituency Superintendent of Police (City) Mukul Dwivedi and Farah Police Station SHO Santosh Yadav were among those killed when the Swadheen Bharat Subhash Sena (SBSS) activists opened fire at the police party that attempted to evict the Jawahar Park late last evening. Over 100 people, including City Magistrate Ram Araj Yadav, were also injured in the clash that lasted for almost four hours. The encroachers, who described themselves as 'Satyagrahis', were reportedly from a semi-religious sect. The authorities have cleared the area and a manhunt has been launched to nab the culprits. New Delhi: Two years ago there were questions over whether Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi could get a visa to enter the United States. Next week he visits Washington as one of President Barack Obama's closest international partners. Obama invited Modi for one of the last big visits by a world leader before his term ends in January. Although the trip won't feature a lavish state dinner, the Indian leader will address both houses of Congress, considered a rare honour. This will be their seventh meeting since Modi became prime minister in May 2014, an impressive tally for a U.S. president and a leader who is not a formal ally, said Ashley Tellis at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. Read: India-US sign key pact on sharing information on terrorists "The personal relationship between the president and the prime minister ... is really one of the unanticipated surprises of the past two years," said Tellis, an expert on India. The developing relationship is seen as an Obama foreign policy success. Washington views India as an important part of its rebalance to Asia and as a counterweight to China. The two countries are finalising agreements that would make it possible for their militaries to cooperate more closely, and for U.S. defence manufacturers to both sell and make high-tech weaponry in India. Read: Looking forward to build closer ties with 'vital partner' India, says US A deal on logistics would govern issues such as how the two countries account for costs of military exercises. Another involves encrypted communications and geospatial data transfer. A history of colonial rule followed by decades of non-alignment has, however, made New Delhi wary of an embrace by the more powerful United States, which has overtaken Russia as India's top arms supplier. "It is neither a strategic partnership nor an alliance," said Nitin Gokhale, founder of defence portal Bharat Shakti. "It can be a long-term arrangement, but to call it a strategic partnership would be premature." There are frustrations, too, on the U.S. side. The two countries reached a civil nuclear agreement in 2005, but it has yet to yield any contracts for U.S.-based companies. Only now is Westinghouse, a unit of Japan's Toshiba (6502.T), approaching the finish line on a deal to build six reactors in India. GETTING TO KNOW YOU The visit gives Modi a chance to network with U.S. lawmakers who may feature in a Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton administration but, as it coincides with the California primary, he is not expected to meet either. Modi is generally popular with U.S. lawmakers, who extended his invitation to address Congress. But they criticise what they see as lingering unfriendliness to U.S. firms and a stifling bureaucracy, and question New Delhi's record on human rights. "The economic engagement between our two countries should increase and it should be more accessible for U.S. companies," Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a telephone interview. Read: India, US sign pact to boost energy security, combat climate change Obama and Modi are expected to discuss India's desire to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 48-member club of nuclear trading nations. India was shut out for decades because of its weapons programme, and the civil nuclear agreement with the United States gave it access to foreign suppliers without giving up its arms. Obama administration officials have said they backed India's desire to join the group, but the idea faces resistance among some on Capitol Hill, as well as from China, an ally of India's arch-rival Pakistan. "Existing NSG guidelines were established to guard against nuclear proliferation, and we should not create exceptions for particular countries," Corker said. There is lingering concern in Washington over Modi's handling of communal riots in 2002 that killed at least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, in Gujarat. Modi was chief minister of the state at the time and, though a court-ordered inquiry found insufficient evidence to prosecute him, the issue prevented him from getting a U.S. visa for years. Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, raised human rights on a visit to New Delhi this week, saying the two largest democracies had "special obligations" to set the highest standards. Congress' Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission has scheduled a hearing on India for June 7, the day Modi arrives in Washington and the day before his address to the combined House of Representatives and Senate. He leaves the United States on June 8. Corker promised to asked Modi about India's record on human trafficking, which he brought up recently in an emotional Senate hearing with Obama administration officials. "The country we believe has 12-14 million slaves, which is close to half the number we believe exists worldwide," Corker said. "It's obviously a very significant issue and when he's here, it's one I certainly plan to raise. New Delhi: NIA on Thursday night said it was awaiting a response from Pakistan on letters rogatory seeking information and interrogation of Jaish-e-Mohammed terror group chief Maulana Masood Azhar and his brother Abdul Rauf in connection with the Pathankot air base strike even as it probed the role of other "state actors" in the attack. NIA Director General Sharad Kumar said that the role of the Jaish chief and his brother, besides two other handlers, has been established and all the evidences have been shared with Pakistan. "We are still awaiting a response from them," Kumar said, adding two letters rogatories and several reminders to Islamabad remain unanswered. Asked whether NIA has given a clean chit to Pakistani agencies, including ISI, in the matter, Kumar said "the case is still under investigations. We have not given any clean chit to anyone. We are examining the role of other players which include state actors" who might have been involved in the conspiracy behind the attack. He, however, did not elaborate on the "state actors". He denied media reports that quoted him as saying that a clean chit has been given to Pakistani agencies in the Pathankot attack case. Four terrorists were killed when they carried out a suicide attack on the strategic Indian Air Force base in Pathankot during the intervening night of January 1 and 2. Seven security personnel were also killed during the 80-hour-long gunbattle. DGP Javed Ahmed looks at the arms recovered from the Jawarhar Bagh encroachers, in Mathura Mathura/New Delhi: The Centre on Friday blamed the Uttar Pradesh government for the violence in Mathura in which at least 24 people, including an SP and SHO, lost their lives. "Definitely there was lapse," Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju told reporters here. Read: Mathura violence kills 24, CM Akhilesh Yadav admits 'some lapses' Several huts caught fire after clashes between police and encroachers who were being evicted from Jawahar Bagh in Mathura. (Photo: PTI) He was replying to a question on whether there was lapse on the part of the Akhilesh Yadav government in handling the situation on Thursday. Meanwhile, the Uttar Pradesh Police has made 368 arrests in connection with the violence in Mathura even as the four main accused in the clashes between police and members of a sect are absconding. "Police has registered a case under sections 147, 148, 149, 307, 302, 353, 186, 188 of IPC and section 7 of Criminal Law Amendment Act against 11 named and 2500-3000 unnamed persons," Uttar Pradesh IG (Law and Order) Hari Ram Sharma said. Police guard an entrance to a park where clashes between police and squatters broke out. (Photo: PTI) He said among those arrested, 58 are accused in the case registered on a complaint by Sadar police station officer Pradip Kumar while 310 people were held for breach of peace. Police has also recovered 58 weapons and 184 used and live cartridges from the area hit by violence in which 24 people including Superintendent of Police (City) Mukul Dwivedi and Farah Station House Officer Santosh Yadav were killed. Read: Mathura clashes: Teary-eyed mother of killed SP, says 'bring back my son' Sharma said enquiry into the violence is on and action will be taken if any official is found guilty regarding the clashes between police and the members of the sect, who had illegally set up a camp on an over 260-acre plot in Jawahar Bagh for last two years. The entire area has been cleared, he said. "We have identified four main boys who are behind this entire incident and absconding right now," said Daljeet Singh, Additional Director General (law and order) of Uttar Pradesh Police. Read: Mathura violence 'stark reminder' of deteriorating law and order in UP: Rahul Gandhi "Ram Vriksh Yadav, Chandan Bose, Girish Yadav and Rakesh Gupta are identified as the main culprits of the violence and we are definitely going to hunt them," he said. "We have asked the Special Task Force (STF) and local police in Mathura and neighbouring districts to hunt them and arrest them at the earliest," he added. According to Singh, the sect members numbering around 3000 were from different parts of the state as well as outside and theirs was an "unlawful assembly". There were people from different parts of Uttar Pradesh including Ghazipur and Badayun as well as from Bihar and Madhya Pradesh and a few from Nepal, he said. "It was just an unlawful assembly, they gathered here for a quite long time," he added. The Home Ministry was awaiting for a detailed report from the Uttar Pradesh government about the circumstances leading to the incident and reasons. Read: Encroachers to be booked under NSA: UP DGP on Mathura violence The Home Ministry has already sought a report from the state government about the incident. Home Minister Rajnath Singh has also spoken to Akhilesh and reviewed the prevailing situation. DGP Javed Ahmed looks at the arms recovered from the Jawarhar Bagh encroachers, in Mathura. New Delhi/Lucknow/ Mathura: The temple town of Mathura, close to Agra, was on edge on Friday with the death toll in Thursdays clashes rising to 26, as the Centre stepped in and sought a report from the Uttar Pradesh government. Over 368 people have been detained over the violence that claimed the lives of an SP and an SHO, among others. Union home minister Rajnath Singh on Friday spoke to UP chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, who has ordered an inquiry by the Agra divisional commissioner. Speaking in Barabanki on Friday, the CM admitted some lapses by the police in Mathura. There were some lapses. The police should have gone with full preparation and after holding talks, there was no information they had so much arms and ammunition, he told reporters. Earlier, Union minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju had said in New Delhi there were lapses on the part of the state government. The CM also announced compensation of Rs 20 lakh for the families of each slain. The violence once again brought into focus the fragile law and order situation in UP, with the BJP, Congress, BSP and others accusing the ruling Samajwadi Party government of unleashing goonda raj in the state. The violence erupted as the police tried to evict illegal occupants, believed to be members of a cult calling itself Swadheen Bharat Andolan, from Jawahar Bagh in Mathura on Thursday on the directions of the Allahabad high court. The encroaches lobbed hand grenades and opened fire with automatic weapons at the police. Squatters had 1,000 cylinders Mathura SP Mukul Dwiwedi, who led the police team, got a bullet in his head, while SHO Santosh Kumar was shot in the face. While the SHO was declared brought dead at the hospital, the SP succumbed to his injuries later. Sources said the squatters had illegally accumulated nearly 1,000 LPG cylinders and used these to set off the explosions and fire. Eleven of the deaths were caused by these blasts. Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu is firm that he will not take part in any bilateral talks with the Telangana government on irrigation issues. He instead stresses on tripartite discussions. Mr Naidu has categorically said that he does not want one-on-one or state level talks with TS CM K. Chandrasekhar Rao or his government on new irrigation projects and old issues. Talks should be in CWC presence: Chandrababu Naidu Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu wants the issues to be sorted out with the intervention of the Apex Council and CWC. Reacting to the olive branch extended by Mr Rao, who on TS formation day had said that he was ready for talks with Mr Naidu, the AP CM said: Any talks should be done in the presence of competent authorities like the CWC and the Apex Council. Read: Stick to rules: Naidu to Telangana on sharing rivers The Apex Council and river water boards have been formed for dealing with the water issue. Recently in the Nagarjunasagar issue, APs share of drinking water was not released initially despite the CWCs directions. It was delayed. It is not going to be that we both sit and talk. We have to be part of the established structure. At Nagarjunasagar, the police of the two states were about to fight with each other. I felt bad about it and I phoned (KCR) and said it would bring shame to us. We sat with the Governor and decided. Why should this happen? We will sit with the apex council to so-lve any water issues. Read: AP CM Chandrababu Naidu warns staff who refuse to shift When asked whether he spoke to Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding their differences during the Godhra riots, Mr Naidu said that he had spoken to Mr Modi about his differences with him. Mr Naidu had demanded Mr Modis resignation during the riots when the latter was CM. I told him that we had to work together and that India needed him, said Mr Naidu. Vijayawada: Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Friday issued a stern warning to the employees and their leaders who cite excuses about coming to Amravati as per the June 27 deadline set by the government. He was reacting to AP secretariat employees leaders raising new issues over employees shifting to Amaravati from Hyderabad. Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, the Chief Minister reacted strongly to the excuses, and asked employees to stop mad thoughts (picchi alochanalu manukovali). No more negotiations. Let them stop telling stories. No one can dictate terms to my government. They have to come to Amaravati. Only in very special cases will exceptions be given, he said. Mr Naidu said that the employees will have to listen to government order and start working from the temporary secretariat as per the schedule fixed by the government. Read: Want to see Andhra Pradesh top on happiness index: Chandrababu Naidu There is no further discussion on it. I will not even allow any body to raise the matter. I am clear. For nine years, all the employees worked without making any noise. I am giving them utmost respect. Employees should also understand this. They are here to work for the people. More than the employees, people have problems. People have no income. They are suffering. Our government has to work for them. I dont want to hear this again from any quarters. Even if Chief Secretary brings up this issue, I will not listen to him. They should stop these mad thinking. On humanitarian grounds, one or two cases will be considered, he said. The chief minister also said only people will be allowed to dictate terms to his government. Regarding the share of assets of Andhra Pradesh in Hyderabad after the staff moved out, Mr Naidu said the Supreme Court judgement in higher education department has to be followed regarding these assets. Assets and debts have to be divided between both AP and TS based on the population. If TS wants to have those buildings, the Centre will have to ensure that we get a compensation for the same so that we use them for development of Andhra Pradesh, said Mr Naidu. Hyderabad: Hyderabads environment and in turn its citizens have faced the brunt of industrial pollution since decades. And repeated protests against polluters seem to fall on deaf ears. However, one law which can come to the rescue of citizens while reining in polluters with an amendment is the lesser known Public Liability Insurance Act enacted in 1991, six years after the Bhopal gas tragedy, to ensure compensation for victims of industrial disasters or accidents who are not workers of the industries through a special insurance policy. Most officials unaware of the funds collected under the scheme. The Act covers industries which handle around 179 types of chemicals, compounds and other flammable substance and provides compensation up to five crore rupees to claimants. As per the Telangana State Pollution Control Board, there are about 280 companies in the state falling under the ambit of PLI Act. Around 35 of these industries are yet to get insured as per the Act. The Act is of no help to people who suffer due to industrial pollution since the PLI does not include industrial pollution. It covers accidents which it defines as "fortuitous, sudden or unintentional occurrence" during handling of the listed hazardous substances. According to pollution control board officials, most of the pollution is because industries try to save money by excluding machinery or process mandatory for mitigation of pollution. All major general insurance companies offer insurance policies to companies under the PLI Act but pollution is not covered under them. Pollution is made an optional liability that the companies can choose to include in their policy but many companies conveniently ignore it. BV Subba Rao, environmentalist and founder member of Save Our Urban Lakes, says, There is a need for inclusion of pollution in the PLI Act and a clear procedure defining pollution and health effects associated with it as defined by a statutory medical body. It will make it easy for victims to go to Court, prove that their health is affected due to pollution and claim compensation. The present laws make it tough to prosecute the polluters efficiently and swiftly and compensate the victims, he added. New Delhi: As the fate of Maharashtra minister Eknath Khadse who is facing graft allegations hangs in balance, the Congress on Friday piled pressure on the BJP for his dismissal to prove Prime Minister Narendra Modi's claim of "zero tolerance" to corruption. But the BJP's Maharashtra unit president Raosaheb Danve ruled out any "party action" against the minister till the charges against him are proved. The hunger strike of activist and former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Anjali Damania demanding probe into corruption charges against Khadse, meanwhile, entered its second day. "Take action against Khadse, dismiss him forthwith from his Ministry, register a case against him for misuse of office and take decisive action", party's chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala said. Surjewala attacked the Prime Minister for maintaining a "deafening silence" in the last 24 months on the issue of action against corruption where BJP Leaders or their own Governments are involved. "People of Maharashtra and India demand that Prime Minister breaks his studied silence and takes decisive action on all these issues including Khadse", he added. Maintaining that Khadse, a Revenue minister, would face action if the allegations against him are proved in a court of law, Danve claimed there was "no pressure from the party high command" to remove him from the state cabinet. Terming allegations against Khadse as "political" in nature, Danve said in Pune that the party has adopted a "cautious approach towards them", adding "we believe that there is no substance in them." Asked about Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis's meeting with party president Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday over the Khadse issue, Danve said, "the chief minister submitted his report to Shah. But that does not necessarily mean that the report was against Khadse. It could be in his favour also." Khadse, who is in his home town Jalgaon in North Maharashtra amid political heat, has denied all allegations against him and said he would abide by the party decision in his case. Khadse, a senior BJP leader, has come under cloud over allegations including irregularities in a land deal in Pune and calls allegedly received from fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim's residence in Karachi on his mobile phone. He is in a spot over the purchase of 3-acre Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation land in Bhosari allegedly at a low price of around Rs 3.75 crore from its original owner in the name of his wife and son-in-law. The market value of the land is reportedly Rs 40 crores. Bengaluru: Certain disgruntled Congress MLAs, whom JD (S) state unit president H.D. Kumaraswamy had reportedly tried to win over, said their commitment to the party was non-negotiable ahead of Rajya Sabha polls. On Wednesday, sources in JD (S) told the media that their party leaders were in touch with at least 10 Congress MLAs including Malikayya Guttedar, Dr A.B. Maalak Reddy and K.B. Koliwad in a bid to drum up support for the partys candidate in RS polls, B.M. Farookh. When Deccan Chronicle contacted some of these legislators, they denied being contacted by any JD (S) leaders. Both Mr Koliwad and Mr Guttedar said: None from JD (S) contacted us, and even if they do, it will not make any difference. They, however, expressed their displeasure over being for sidelined. We are upset with the Chief Minister, no doubt. But, our commitment to the party is non-negotiable. In fact, I am more committed to the party than Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, remarked Mr Koliwad. Mr Guttedar rued the fact that the party did not even consult MLAs about RS elections. "I am very upset. But, I will not go against the party diktat. Why should I get into a controversy because I have two more years," he said. One more MLA, who declined to speak on record, told Deccan Chronicle that he was being monitored by partymen constantly. I do not mind because I do not want to go against the Congress party. These people (Chief Minister and other leaders) are wasting their time monitoring me, he added. Meanwhile, energy minister, D.K. Shivakumar, one of the strategists of Congress for Rajya Sabha elections dubbed claims by JD (S) leaders of contacting 10 Congress MLAs as false. Taking a swipe at his rival, H.D. Kumaraswamy, Mr Shivakumar said: It is a typical of Mr Kumaraswamy to make such claims. You mark my words. No one will go to JD (S) and support their candidate. Even if Mr Kumaraswamy speaks to our party MLAs, do you think they will go with him? They are not so stupid to risk the remaining two years of their tenure as legislator, he added. Mr Shivakumar declined to divulge details about the partys strategy to ensure the victory of the partys third candidate and former IPS officer K C Ramamurthy. Praising Mr Siddaramaiah, Mr Shivakumar said he was an ordinary worker and would do whatever the party had asked him to. He maintained that Mr Siddaramaiah, KPCC president Dr Parameshwar and himself would work on strategies to ensure the victory of the three candidates the party has put up, said the minister. Bengaluru: Two separate sting operations done by two national TV channels seems to have cast a shadow on the Rajya Sabha elections. The Times Now and India Today TV channels telecast sting operations about money changing hands during Rajya Sabha elections. In the India Today sting operation, four JD (S) and independent MLAs speak about role of money played in RS polls. One legislator reportedly says one would get Rs 5 crore for casting the vote with a relative of the JD(S) leader reportedly discussed how much money one had to pay and another saying he would spend Rs 100 crore to get votes of 20 MLAs. When reached for comment, all the legislators denied discussing a monetary transaction and threatened to file a defamation suit against the TV channels. In a significant development, chief election commissioner, Dr Nasim Zaidi reportedly told one of the TV channels that following the expose, he would take a call on the fate of elections. However, when contacted, chief electoral officer, Anil Kumar Jha said he had received no direction from the Election Commission of India. Congress leader, D.K. Shivakumar said it was the JD (S) which was trying to buy votes, while one of the Congress national spokespersons and Karnataka minister for food and civil supplies , Dinesh Gundurao said the Congress would not subscribe to the culture of money politics. Lucknow: Stage is set for contest in 11 Rajya Sabha seats from Uttar Pradesh and 13 seats for Legislative Council with two extra candidates remaining in the fray as deadline for withdrawal of nominations ended on Friday, prompting major parties to work overtime to keep their flock together. Returning Officer and Principal Secretary (Assembly) Pradeep Kumar Dubey said none of the 12 candidates for Rajya Sabha and 14 candidates for the Legislative Council withdrew their papers. The contest for Rajya Sabha became interesting after Independent candidate Preeti Mahapatra, a social worker, filed her papers at the last moment as the 12th candidate for the 11 seats going to polls next week, thereby forcing voting. Several BJP MLAs and members of smaller parties besides some Independents have signed Preeti's two sets of nominations making chances of cross-voting a possibility. Congress has accused her of being a BJP candidate who could encourage horse-trading as her entry might queer the pitch of former Union minister and noted lawyer Kapil Sibal, who needs five extra votes for victory. Congress has 29 MLAs and each candidate needs 34 votes for Rajya Sabha win. Sibal is expecting help from BSP that had recently backed Congress in the Uttarakhand Assembly floor test to defeat "communal forces". Mayawati is yet to clarify which way her 12 surplus BSP lawmakers will go as after getting both its nominees elected. Ruling Samajwadi Party has fielded seven candidates for the RS, but the seventh candidate of the party is short of nine first-preference votes for victory. In the 403-member Assembly, ruling SP has 229 MLAs, BSP 80, BJP 41 and Congress 29. The rest belong to small parties or are Independents who hold the key. In this scenario, Rashtriya Lok Dal with eight MLAs has gained sudden importance. Despite being an open election, anti-defection law does not apply here. Therefore, even if an MLA violates party whip, he or she would not lose membership of the House. Jagan said that Mr Naidu had purchased the MLAs who had contested on the B-form of another party, through ill gotten money and dared him to allow them to seek fresh mandate once more. Anantapur: YSR Congress president Y.S Jagan Mohan Reddy lashed out at Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu that he has no guts to make turncoat MLAs resign and seek a fresh mandate from the people. Mr Jagan's second day of Rythu Bharosa Yatra continued in Tadipatri Assembly constituency on Thursday. During his yatra, Jagan consoled family members of P. Nagaraju, a handloom weaver who committed suicide due to debts in Kristipadu mandal in the district. He also interacted with family members of Kodandaramudu, Ramasubba Reddy who had also committed suicide. He said that Mr Naidu had purchased the MLAs who had contested on the B-form of another party, through ill gotten money and dared him to allow them to seek fresh mandate once more. By not doing so, Mr Naidu has once again proved that he is unsure of the result. Earlier this week, two surveys by international organisations punctured the balloons of wellness released into the skies over New Delhis India Gate, where Prime Minister Narendra Modis big bash to celebrate two years in office took place recently. The 2016 Cities in Motion Index by a Barcelona business school and its allied Centre for Globalisation and Strategy told us scathingly that four Indian cities are far from smart and anything but liveable, compared to other world metropolises. Out of the 181 surveyed, Mumbai gasped to 167, Delhi slouched at 174, Bengaluru collapsed to 176 and Kolkata slumped at 179. Small comfort that we beat only Lagos and Karachi. The other study gave India world leader status, but in human trafficking. The Global Slavery Index 2016, compiled by the Australian Walk Free Foundation, told us 18 million Indians are still ensnared in bonded labour: as beggars, prostitutes but also, curiously, as child soldiers. All journalists know that statistics should be taken with a large sack of salt. First, the CGS name that combines globalisation (a euphemism for neo-imperialism emanating primarily from powerful Western investor-nations) and strategy itself speaks volumes. There are several trade agreements: between India and the European Union, the CGS home, as well as other superpowers. Some, like the EU, are hanging in limbo, largely because foreign investment must additionally and rightfully boost Indias own mammoth if sluggish industrial capacity, be it through JVs or by stimulating competitiveness. The India-China rivalry for world supremacy both as import and export leaders is not restricted to the two neighbours alone: there are a slew of lobbyists for and against each of them, across the West. The other, worrying statistic on bonded labour by GSI 2016 deserves introspection and action, as human indices must be of paramount importance to any eme-rging superpower reaching out to Western nations who use (or ignore) human rights as it suits them, to gain advantage and influence in any and every sphere of bilateral relations. However, a closer look at the report reveals some misleading implications. Indias population is 1.2 billion, while Chinas is 1.38 billion. At 3,287 sq km, Indias size is about a third of Chinas 9,597 sq km. It doesnt take a doctorate in mathematics to assume that India is, therefore, more densely populated per sq km than China. Nor is it a secret that Indias democracy and free media disseminate much more information than secretive, totalitarian China. Still, the GSI reports that 1.4 per cent of Indias population, i.e. 18 million people, live in bonded servitude but in Chinas case based on little or no reliable evidence from behind the Great Wall it is merely 0.2 per cent, or 3.3 million people. The most startling aspect of the GSI survey is its claim of child soldiers being deployed in over 197 Indian districts. A footnote reveals a solitary source: a three-year-old report by another NGO, the London-based Child Soldiers International (CSI). But what was the methodology used by the Londoners? Desk-based research, gathering information (from)... national and international NGOs, Unicef, journalists and other national stakeholders, reads the explanation on CSIs website. Overlook the dubiousness of the national stakeholders and think hard when, other than in Naxal-hit states, did you last hear of child soldiers in 20 districts of J&K, 106 districts of Andhra, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal ? Or in 71 districts of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura? CSI, in turn, tries to play safe by attributing that claim to Indias home ministry. But the MHA report on Naxalism merely said these areas were either conflict-affected, disturbed or as hit by left-wing extremism. Does that confirm the presence of child soldiers? CSI predicts that question too. Because of the risk of childrens involvement in hostilities, this report focuses on the armed actors active in these regions. But before it skims over underground rebel groups, the CSI report outlines the minimum recruitment age for the other armed actor, the Indian armed forces and various other paramilitary and border security units, in great detail. The ludicrous implication? That the Indian state itself is primarily guilty of recruiting child soldiers. The minimum age... varies between 16 years and six months for the Navy, 17 years and six months for the Army and 17 years for the Air Force. CSI has been unable to confirm whether the minimum age for recruitment in the armed forces is established in law. The government maintains it sends recruits to operational areas only after they attain 18 years... An inadequate safeguard against child soldier use, the report says. There is a likelihood of under-18s being militarily deployed in the event of a crisis. For this, prohibition in law of direct and indirect participation in hostilities is needed, and must be backed up by pre-deployment screening systems, which are lacking in India, it notes, and ominously adds that the CSI remains concerned. Of course, our cities are far from wonderful and it is exhausting to live in any of them. They are urban messes, whose planning was left not to professionals but to hobby architect-babus and junket-hungry officials with zero training in engineering or urban layouts. Smart cities are still light years away. It is even more heartbreaking to see our children and the poor still in the clutches of ruthless criminals, despite grand promises by all governments in the past 70 years to eradicate slave labour. India has a long history of exploitative colonial rule, so some caution over headlines screaming-damnation to the emerging Asian power is always a good idea. We must look hard at and consider emergency surgery for our ugliest features in the mirror. But do consider who is shining it in our faces, and why. Scientists can make relatively short stretches of DNA now, but creating entire genomes the size of the human one with current technology would be hugely expensive. New York: Scientists proposed a long-term project Thursday that involves creating DNA blueprints for making human beings, a prospect some observers find troubling. The researchers said they have no intention of using these genomes huge collections of genetic material to make people. Instead, they said in interviews, human genomes would be used in lab experiments, inserted for example into cells or simplified versions of organs called organoids. That might help scientists identify the effects of genetic mutations, or create safer stem cells for transplantation, said the researchers, George Church of Harvard University and Jef Boeke of New York University. They are among 25 authors of a paper proposing the effort, which they call the Human Genome Project-Write. The paper was released by the journal Science. The project would also include creating genomes of animals and plants and new methods to edit DNA. Scientists can make relatively short stretches of DNA now, but creating entire genomes the size of the human one with current technology would be hugely expensive. The main goal of the new project is to cut the cost of engineering and testing big genomes more than a thousand-fold in 10 years. The hope is to make it inexpensive enough that scientists could study "millions of genomes in dozens of cell types" to look for the effects of mutation, Church said. Other potential payoffs from the project include engineering virus resistance into mammal cells that are used to make medicines, so that infections don't shut down production, he said. It could also help efforts to genetically modify pigs so that organs from them can be transplanted into people without fear of rejection, Boeke said. The researchers aim to launch the effort this year after raising $100 million in support from public, private, philanthropic, industry and academic sources from around the world. They said it's hard to estimate the total cost of the project, but that it's likely less than the $3 billion Human Genome Project, which revealed the makeup of the human DNA. The project would seek public involvement and study the ethical, social and legal implications of the work from the start, the researchers said in Science. "It's important to engage legal and ethical scholars and society at large to really help shape the goals as well as communicate the reasons that we're launching this project," Farren Isaacs of Yale University, another author of the paper, said in an interview. Researchers also must study the potential for misuse of the new technology and how to prevent that, Church said. Word of a closed meeting about the project leaked out last month. Two observers who criticized that gathering told the AP in a joint statement this week that they were pleased by the Science paper's commitment to public involvement, but they still had reservations about the project. Basic ethical questions still need to be asked, like whether developing the ability to make human genomes is a good idea, wrote Laurie Zoloth, a professor of religious studies and bioethics at Northwestern University, and Drew Endy, an associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford. To construct a genome, even just in a cell, "implies a level of power and control that must be carefully and fully debated," Zoloth wrote in an email. Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. Los Angeles: "Check on my cat," was the last message left by Mainak Sarkar, the Indian-American gunman who shot dead his wife and his former college professor before turning the gun on himself, Los Angles police said. When detectives arrived at professor William Klug's office in the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) on Wednesday morning, they found two bodies besides a note from Sarkar listing his home address in Minnesota and asking someone to "check on my cat." "Immediately we were highly suspicious," LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said on 38-year-old Sarkar's note. "That made me uneasy about what we would find when we got to Minnesota," he said. The LAPD worked with the FBI and Minnesota authorities and served a search warrant at Sarkar's home, Beck said. Inside the home, they found extra ammunition and a box for one of two pistols found at UCLA, as well as the three-name "kill list," that included the names of Klug, another UCLA professor and Ashley Hasti, he said. Authorities then went to the woman's (Hasti's) home in Brooklyn Park, a Minneapolis suburb, and found her body, Brooklyn Park Police Deputy Chief Mark Bruley said. "We have multiple detectives working on this case," Bruley said. Beck said it appeared the woman had been dead of a gunshot wound for "maybe a couple of days." The woman killed by Sarkar is thought to be Ashley Hasti. Local records confirmed that Hasti was married to Sarkar on June 14, 2011. It was unclear if they remained married at the time of the shooting, the Times said. Sarkar drove some 3,200 km from Minnesota to Los Angeles, according to Beck, but it was unclear how long he was in the city before Wednesday's shooting. Police are now searching for the grey 2003 Nissan Sentra Sarkar, an alumni of the IIT-Kharagpur, drove from Minnesota to California, Beck said. On Wednesday, a "heavily armed" Sarkar carried a backpack, two semiautomatic pistols and extra magazines to Klug's fourth-floor office, where he fatally shot the professor before turning the gun on himself, Beck said. Sarkar, he said, "was certainly prepared to engage multiple victims." A note from Sarkar included language about the second professor, Beck said. "We believe that he went to kill two faculty from UCLA," Beck said. "He was only able to locate one." The second professor, whom Beck did not name, was not on campus at the time of the shooting. Police have been in contact with that person, who "is fine," he said. That professor "knew Sarkar had issues with him," Beck said. Klug, 39, was a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Sarkar had accused him of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else, police said. Los Angeles: The gunman who shot a professor at UCLA has been identified as Mainak Sarkar, a 39-year-old Indian-American. His academic stint started off at IIT Kharagpur where he did his B-Tech in Aerospace engineering, after which he flew to Bengaluru and worked there as a software developer for a year at Infosys. Sarkar was a diligent student and was extremely focused. Mainak was a brilliant student. He remained busy with studies and did not talk or socialise much. As far as I remember, he was from Kolkata, lamented an IIT professor, as quoted in a news report. According to his Linkedin profile, the scholar also worked as a research assistant in University of Texas at Arlington. Read: UCLA murder-suicide: Mainak Sarkar's 'kill list' included wife Sarkar immigrated to US in the year 2001 on a foreign student visa from India. Before joining UCLA, he garnered a Masters degree from Stanford University. He joined UCLA as a research scholar and was mentored by Professor William Klug. His hostility to Klug came to the fore when he posted a hate article on his personal blog. He is sick, he stole my code and students should be aware of his vicious deeds, this is how he penned down his predicament in the post. However, in his doctoral dissertation submitted in the year 2013, he had expressed his gratitude to Klug for the help and assistance he rendered to him for his paper. Read: UCLA murder-suicide: Gunman Mainak Sarkar had planned third killing Before killing Klug, Sarkar killed his estranged wife in Minnesota after which he directly drove to UCLA where the shooting happened. The shooting resulted in a complete lockdown of the university and police forces rushed to the spot to bring the situation under control. Sarkar was armed with two 9mm pistols and multiple ammunition clips, Beck said. (Photo: Social Media) Los Angeles: A former University of California, Los Angeles, student shot dead a woman at her home in Minnesota before he drove almost 2,000 miles to the school and killed a professor but failed to find a third intended victim, police said on Thursday. Mainak Sarkar, 38, had intended to kill a second professor besides shooting engineering professor William Klug, 39, at a small office on the campus, police said. He shot himself dead after the killing, police said. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck told reporters on Thursday that a search of Sarkar's St. Paul, Minnesota, home turned up a "kill list" that included the name of the woman found dead nearby, Klug - who was Sarkar's professor at UCLA - and the name of another professor at the school, who was not harmed. Read: Check on my cat: last message of Indian-American gunman Officials would not release the name of the woman, whose body police said they found at a house in the 2400 block of Pearson Parkway in Brooklyn Park near Minneapolis. A marriage license application obtained by Reuters lists a residence on that block as the home of Ashley Erin Hasti and Sarkar, who married in Minnesota in 2011. Neighbors also said Hasti lived at the home. Records do not show whether the couple, who appeared to have been living separately, were divorced. An active Facebook page belonging to a Minneapolis-area woman named Ashley Hasti shows pictures of Sarkar, but not more recently than May 2011, about two weeks before their marriage. A page apparently belonging to him, with no public posts since 2011, still prominently displayed several photos of them together. "We believe that Sarkar came to the Los Angeles area very recently, within the last couple of days," Beck told reporters at Los Angeles police headquarters. "He went there to kill two faculty from UCLA. He was only able to find one." Read: UCLA shooter Mainak Sarkar was estranged from wife who he shot The other professor was off campus at the time, Beck said. Sarkar was armed with two 9mm pistols and multiple ammunition clips, Beck said. He killed himself immediately after fatally shooting Klug, he said. Police searched Sarkar's Minnesota home after finding a note at the Los Angeles crime scene asking for someone to check on his cat, Beck said. "In the search of Sarkar's residence in Minneapolis, a list was located," Beck said. "The list has been described as a 'kill list.' That was the wording that was put on it." The attack on Klug appeared to be provoked by Sarkar's belief that his former professor had stolen computer code from him, according to a March blog post that appeared to be written by Sarkar, Beck said. "Your enemy is my enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm," the post said. "Be careful about whom you trust." Reuters was not able to confirm the authenticity of the blog. "UCLA says there is no truth to this," Beck said of the alleged theft of code. "This was a making of his own imagination." The anger reflected in the March blog contrasted with earlier online records indicating Sarkar had gotten along with Klug. In a copy of his 2013 dissertation posted online, Sarkar thanked Klug. "I would like to thank my adviser, Dr. William Klug, for all his help and support," Sarkar wrote. Sarkar hails from West Bengal, where he graduated in aerospace engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur in 2000. Staff at his secondary school in the industrial town of Durgapur remember him as an able student who passed his exams with good results. "He was from Durgapur town," Sumita Mukherjee, who was the secretary to the school principal, told Reuters. "This is many years ago, but I do not recall any strangeness in his behaviour." Sarkar left for the United States in the early 2000s, after a short stint as a software developer in southern India. Los Angeles police chief Beck said UCLA faculty members were aware that Sarkar, who graduated in 2013, harbored anger toward them. Prior to his time at UCLA, from 2003 to 2005 Sarkar attended Stanford University, where he received a master's degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, university spokeswoman Lisa Lapin said. UCLA, part of the University of California system, has more than 43,000 students. Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce said there was not enough evidence to show that the plainclothes officers did not shoot Mansur Ball-Bey, 18, in self-defence, as they contend they did. (Photo: Facebook) St Louis: Two St Louis police officers will not face charges for the shooting death of a black teenager in August 2015, a Missouri prosecutor said on Thursday. Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce said there was not enough evidence to show that the plainclothes officers did not shoot Mansur Ball-Bey, 18, in self-defence, as they contend they did. "This is a tragedy in every aspect of the word. I'm sorry for the pain that the Ball-Bey family is experiencing right now," Joyce said in a statement. St Louis and its suburb of Ferguson have drawn protests over police treatment of minorities after a white Ferguson officer fatally shot an unarmed black teenager in 2014. That and other fatal incidents ignited protests around the United States. Ball-Bey was killed as police were trying to execute a search warrant at a home in a crime-ridden neighbourhood. Joyce said the two officers and a witness reported that they saw Ball-Bey with a gun as he ran out of the building. Ball-Bey pointed the loaded weapon at one officer and both shot at him, she said. Prosecutors found photos from social media and Ball-Bey's cell phone of what appear to be the same gun in his possession, she said. Jermaine Wooten, the Ball-Bey family's attorney, said: "We're terribly disappointed. It appears her investigation centred more around just rubber-stamping the police." The family has not decided whether to file a civil suit, he said. They maintain that Ball-Bey, a recent high school graduate, was not in the home being searched. The autopsy shows that his spinal cord was severed, but the police explanation would mean he ran another 80 feet (24 meters), Wooten said. Joyce had ordered an independent probe into the shooting at the same time police were investigating it. The officers have not been identified. Pakistani police commando walks at the cordoned-off site of the Lahore suicide bombing. Pakistan has launched a manhunt to fight the terrorists behind the March 27 suicide bombing, which killed at least 72 people. (Photo: AFP) Washington: The US State Department said on Thursday that the number of terrorist attacks around the world declined last year for the first time since 2012, and that such attacks were becoming more decentralised and diffuse. Terrorist attacks fell by 13 per cent compared with 2014, while fatalities caused by terrorist activity declined by 14 per cent, the agency said in its report on global terrorism, which tracks trends in political violence. The State Department's acting coordinator for counterterrorism, Justin Siberell, said the drop was due to fewer attacks in Iraq, Pakistan and Nigeria. Terrorist attacks and deaths increased in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, the Philippines, Syria and Turkey, according to Siberell. "The global terrorist threat continued to evolve rapidly in 2015, becoming increasingly decentralized and diffuse," the report said. "Although terrorist attacks took place in 92 countries in 2015, they were heavily concentrated geographically, as they have been for the past several years." Data compiled by the University of Maryland for the State Department showed there were 11,774 terrorist attacks worldwide during the year, in which more than 28,300 people died and roughly 35,300 others were wounded. ISIS terrorists posed the greatest terrorism threat globally despite significant losses in territory in Iraq and Syria last year, the report said. The group made gains in Libya, however, where it has about 5,000 fighters, the report said. It said that ISIS-aligned groups had emerged in other parts of the Middle East, south and Southeast Asia and West Africa, although the relationship between the groups and ISIS leadership was "symbolic in most cases." As in previous years, the report cited Iran as the world's biggest state sponsor of terrorism, saying Tehran supported conflicts in Syria and Iraq, and was implicated in violent Shia opposition raids in Bahrain. Bahrain has accused Iran of fomenting unrest in the its country and of supplying weapons to Shi'ite terrorists behind several bomb attacks on security forces. Iran has denied the claims. A protester with a "no Donald Trump" sign is removed from a campaign rally for Donald Trump. (Photo: AFP) Los Angeles: Protesters gathered late on Thursday outside a rally for Donald Trump in California, as police braced for violence that has erupted at similar events for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The protesters chanted "No hate in our state" and carried signs that read "Dump Trump" as they marched near the San Jose Convention Center in northern California. Police were out in force, at one point forming a line to allow Trump supporters access to the rally and prevent clashes that have erupted at a number of the real estate magnate's events in recent weeks. One Trump supporter was egged while others were spit on. A protester was seen burning an American flag. Several fistfights erupted but were quickly broken up. Trump was last in the San Jose area in April, when he spoke at the California Republican Party convention where protesters blocked access to the venue, forcing him to use the back door. San Jose police chief Eddie Garcia said in a statement earlier that he expected 12,000 to 15,000 people at the rally Thursday and that his officers would do their utmost to respect people's right to protest. Union members, community activists and religious leaders had pledged to protest Trump's event. Last week, dozens of protesters were arrested in San Diego after a campaign appearance by Trump, who has angered many with his rhetoric against Hispanics, women, Muslims and others. Protests at a Trump rally in New Mexico last month also turned violent as demonstrators overran barricades and clashed with police in riot gear. Washington: Paul Ryan, the top elected Republican, ended a long period of soul-searching and endorsed Donald Trump for president on Thursday, a step toward unifying party loyalists behind the insurgent candidate despite concerns about his candidacy. Ryan had been a high-profile holdout to supporting Trump for the Nov. 8 presidential election out of concern about the presumptive Republican nominee's bellicose rhetoric and break with party orthodoxy on issues including trade and immigration. The House of Representatives speaker announced his support in a column for the Janesville Gazette newspaper in his home state of Wisconsin. It surfaced in the middle of a speech by Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in which she launched a far-reaching attack on Trump's foreign policy credentials. Ryan did not specifically use the word "endorse" in his column, but his spokesman, Brendan Buck, made clear that Ryan's move should be seen as an endorsement. The speaker had criticized the Republican candidate several times, including Trump's proposal in December to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the United States because of national security concerns. The 46-year-old Ryan was the only member of the Republican congressional leadership who had not formally embraced Trump. In a tweet, Trump responded: "So great to have the endorsement and support of Paul Ryan. We will both be working very hard to Make America Great Again!" Ryan's backing of Trump could give cover to more reluctant Republicans to get behind the billionaire businessman as their best chance to win the White House. "I think the endorsement is significant because it shows the falling in line of the establishment Republicans from the top," said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. It should also help Trump make the case that he can bring the party together as he girds for a Republican nominating convention in July that many party leaders plan to skip. It also represents a blow to Republicans who have been trying to organize a third-party bid to give party loyalists who cannot abide Trump someone else to support. The "never Trump" crowd includes 2012 nominee Mitt Romney. Ryan was Romney's vice presidential running mate. While Ryan's decision could push some Republican leaders off the fence, many holdouts remained, such as two former rivals, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Aides to both said their positions had not changed. Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid described Ryan's move as "abject surrender," adding: "The GOP is Trump's party now." 'Heal the fissures' Ryan met Trump in a high-profile meeting last month and they have since had a number of telephone calls. "Its no secret that he and I have our differences. I wont pretend otherwise," Ryan wrote. "And when I feel the need to, Ill continue to speak my mind. But the reality is, on the issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground than disagreement." Ryan said he and Trump had spoken many times in recent weeks about how, "by focusing on issues that unite Republicans, we can work together to heal the fissures developed through the primary." "Through these conversations, I feel confident he would help us turn the ideas in this agenda into laws to help improve people's lives. Thats why Ill be voting for him this fall," Ryan said. Announcing he will vote for Trump should make it a bit more comfortable for Ryan to chair the party's nominating convention in Cleveland. While Ryan's endorsement was significant for Trump, there remain many concerns about him within the party. Longtime Republican financier Fred Malek drew attention to worries about Trump in a column in the Washington Post on Thursday. He cited Trump's criticism last week of New Mexico's Republican governor, Susana Martinez, considered a rising star in the party with the ability to appeal to Hispanics. "These attacks on fellow Republicans must stop as we move closer to the general election," Malek wrote. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, who has said he will support Trump, told CNN that Trump's proposed Muslim ban was a bad idea and that his criticism of Martinez was ill-advised. Ryan said he too still had concerns about Trump's tone. "It is my hope the campaign improves its tone as we go forward and it's all a campaign we can be proud of," Ryan said. Washington: Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton launched a searing attack on Donald Trump, saying his foreign policy ideas were "reckless and irresponsible" and terming him "unfit" to become President. "Like many across our country and around the world, I believe the person the Republicans have nominated for President cannot do the job. Donald Trump's ideas aren't just different they are dangerously incoherent. "They're not even really ideas just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies," Clinton said yesterday in San Diego, California. During the speech, which was being billed as a major foreign policy and national security address, Clinton minced no words in going after the presumptive Republican nominee on various issues -- from his past statements on international affairs to his temperament for the job. "He is not just unprepared - he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility. "This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes because it's not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin," she said. "We cannot put the security of our children and grandchildren in Donald Trump's hands," she said. "We cannot let him roll the dice with America. This is a man who said that more countries should have nuclear weapons, including Saudi Arabia." "This is someone who has threatened to abandon our allies in NATO the countries that work with us to root out terrorists abroad before they strike us at home," Clinton said. She took a dig at Trump's past business dealings as well. "He believes we can treat the US economy like one of his casinos and default on our debts to the rest of the world, which would cause an economic catastrophe far worse than anything we experienced in 2008," she said. Referring to some of Trump's recent foreign policy remarks, Clinton said the billionaire does not deserve to be the President of the United States. "Unlike him, I have some experience with the tough calls and the hard work of statecraft. I wrestled with the Chinese over a climate deal in Copenhagen, brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, negotiated the reduction of nuclear weapons with Russia, twisted arms to bring the world together in global sanctions against Iran, and stood up for the rights of women, religious minorities and LGBT people around the world," Clinton claimed. "And I have sat in the Situation Room and advised the President on some of the toughest choices he faced. So I'm not new to this work. And I'm proud to run on my record, because I think the choice before the American people in this election is clear," she said. Los Angeles Police officers walk by the Mathematical Sciences Building on the UCLA campus after a fatal shooting. (Photo: AP) Washington: A former University of California, Los Angeles, student shot dead a woman at her home in Minnesota before he drove almost 2,000 miles (3,200 km) to the school and killed a professor but failed to find a third intended victim, police said on Thursday. Mainak Sarkar, 38, had intended to kill a second professor in addition to shooting engineering professor William Klug, 39, at a small office on the campus, police said. He shot himself dead after the killing, police said. The shootings prompted a two-hour long lockdown on Wednesday. Read: Student kills professor, commits suicide in shooting at UCLA campus Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck told reporters on Thursday that a search of Sarkar's St. Paul, Minnesota, home turned up a "kill list" that included the name of the woman found dead nearby, Klug - who was Sarkar's professor at UCLA - and the name of another professor at the school, who was not harmed. Officials would not release the name of the woman, whose body police said they found at a house in the 2400 block of Pearson Parkway in Brooklyn Park near Minneapolis. A marriage license application obtained by Reuters lists a residence on that block as the home of Ashley Erin Hasti and Sarkar, who married in Minnesota in 2011. Read: US police identify Indian student as man who killed professor at ULCA Neighbours also said Hasti lived at the home. Records do not show whether the couple, who appeared to have been living separately, were divorced. An active Facebook page belonging to a Minneapolis-area woman named Ashley Hasti shows pictures of Sarkar, but not more recently than May of 2011, about two weeks before their marriage. A page apparently belonging to him, with no public posts since 2011, still prominently displayed several photos of them together. According to the birth date listed on the marriage license application, Hasti turned 31 in March. Read: UCLA students struggled with unlocked doors during shooting "We believe that Sarkar came to the Los Angeles area very recently, within the last couple of days," Beck told reporters at Los Angeles police headquarters. "He went there to kill two faculty from UCLA. He was only able to find one." The other professor was off campus at the time, Beck said. Sarkar was armed with two 9 mm pistols and multiple ammunition clips, Beck said. He killed himself immediately after fatally shooting Klug, he said. Police searched Sarkar's Minnesota home after finding a note at the Los Angeles crime scene asking for someone to check on his cat, Beck said. "In the search of Sarkar's residence in Minneapolis, a list was located," Beck said. "The list has been described as a 'kill list.' That was the wording that was put on it." The attack on Klug appeared to be provoked by Sarkar's belief that his former professor had stolen computer code from him, according to a March blog post that appeared to be written by Sarkar, Beck said. "Your enemy is my enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm," the post said. "Be careful about whom you trust." Reuters was not able to confirm the authenticity of the blog. "UCLA says there is no truth to this," Beck said of the alleged theft of code. "This was a making of his own imagination." The anger reflected in the March blog contrasted with earlier online records indicating Sarkar had gotten along with Klug. In a copy of his 2013 dissertation posted online, Sarkar thanked Klug. "I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. William Klug, for all his help and support," Sarkar wrote. Undated photo shows Ashley Hasti, left, and Mainak Sarkar, who police say carried out a murder-suicide at the University of California (Photo: AP) Los Angeles: An Indian-American gunman who shot dead his former college professor at the University of California Los Angeles or UCLA had also killed his wife before taking his own life, authorities said on Thursday, adding that both of the victims were on a "kill list." Local news reports in Minnesota said Mainak Sarkar, a 38-year-old IIT Kharagpur graduate, killed his wife Ashley Hasti before embarking on a 2,000-mile (3,220-kilometer) journey to Los Angeles in his car to shoot his former professor William Klug. Read: Student kills professor, commits suicide in shooting at UCLA campus Officials in Hennepin County, in the midwestern state of Minnesota, said Hasti and Sarkar were married on June 14, 2011. It was unclear if the couple were still married. Klug, 39, a father of two who taught mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California Los Angles (UCLA), was shot in a small office on campus on Wednesday before Sarkar turned the gun on himself, police said. Read: UCLA murder-suicide: Gunman Mainak Sarkar had planned third killing Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck said a note in Sarkar's backpack -- in which he asked that his cat be looked after -- led police to his home in Minnesota where a "kill list" was found. He said Klug was named on the list along with another UCLA professor and the deceased woman, apparently Hasti. Read: US police identify Indian student as man who killed professor at ULCA She was found dead of a gunshot wound at her home in the small Minnesota town of Brooklyn Park. Beck said investigators believe Sarkar killed her before driving to Los Angeles to continue his rampage, armed with two semi-automatic pistols and multiple rounds of ammunition."We believe he went there to kill two faculty of UCLA," Beck said. "He was only able to locate one. The second member was off campus." Read: UCLA students struggled with unlocked doors during shooting "He arrived at the UCLA campus heavily armed. He was certainly prepared to engage multiple victims with the ordnance he had at his disposal," Beck added. He said Sarkar was convinced Klug had stolen his computer code and given it to someone else, and seemed bent on revenge. "That appears to be his motive," Beck said. "We have discussed this with UCLA (which) says there is no truth to it. "This was a making of his own imagination." Vigil planned The murder-suicide prompted a lockdown and a massive security deployment at the university, amid fears of a mass shooting. The university was shut down for the day but reopened on Thursday and a vigil was planned later in the evening to honor Klug. Students and staff affected by the shooting were offered counseling. The Los Angeles Times quotes a source who was close to Klug as saying the professor had gone out of his way to help Sarkar finish his dissertation and to graduate, even though his work was subpar. In his doctoral dissertation, submitted in 2013, Sarkar thanked Klug for his help and support. But he apparently developed a grudge against his former mentor, and offered scathing criticism of Klug in a now-deleted blog post on March 10. "William Klug, UCLA professor is not the kind of person when you think of a professor," he wrote in the post quoted by several US media. "He is a very sick person. I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy..." Beck said the other professor targeted by Sarkar told investigators he was aware Sarkar held a grudge but did not think "it would rise to the level of homicide." 'We've Become Immune' According to his LinkedIn page, Sarkar got his master's degree from Stanford University and also studied aerospace engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, where he graduated in 2000. He apparently worked as a research assistant at the University of Texas in 2003 and then took on a job as a software developer. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said on Thursday that the deadly shooting at UCLA was a reminder of how endemic gun violence had become in the United States, where readily-available firearms claim around 30,000 lives each year. "When guns are so easy to get, when that violence continues to play out on our streets, we have to speak up and speak out -- have smart legislation to try to prevent that where we can," he told reporters. "You can have a PhD or you can be a little kid, you could be black or white, brown or Asian ... and gun violence has just become too acceptable. We've become immune to it." Media members gather in front of the hospital where the 7-year-old Japanese boy who went missing nearly a week ago after his parents left him in a forest as punishment, was taken to for checkups, in Hakodate, Hokkaido. (Photo: AP) Tokyo: Nearly a week after he was abandoned in the forest by his parents, the boy did not shed a tear when he was found safe Friday. The soldier who discovered him by chance in a military hut gave him two rice balls, which 7-year-old Yamato Tanooka ate ravenously. He looked a bit worn out but was "genki," the military said, using a Japanese word describing healthy children. The boy's safe return was welcomed in a nation riveted by his disappearance and undergoing intense soul-searching about how it raises and disciplines its children. Yamato's story, as pieced together from comments from the military and police, was admirable in resourcefulness and resilience. His parents, trying to teach him a lesson for misbehaving and throwing rocks, made him get out of the car last Saturday on the northernmost main island of Hokkaido in a forest reputedly ridden with bears. They couldn't find him when they returned several minutes later. Apparently walking for several kilometers, the boy found the empty hut in a military drill area and entered a door that had been left open. It had no heat or power and no food, but Yamato huddled between mattresses on the floor and drank water from the solitary faucet outside the hut for several days, local media reported. A massive manhunt, including 180 people and search dogs, had found no trace of him. The soldier who found him had not been part of the frenzied search effort, but soon the boy identified himself as Yamato Tanooka (Tah-noh-oh-kah). Appearing outside the hospital where the boy was flown in by helicopter, his father apologized, bowing deeply, thanked everyone for the rescue and vowed to do a better job as his dad. "We have raised him with love all along," said the father, Takayuki Tanooka, fighting tears. "I really didn't think it would come to that. We went too far." Military officials expressed admiration for the boy's perseverance, as the building where he was found was far from where he had disappeared and involved a rigorous uphill climb. The boy was dehydrated and had minor scratches on his arms and feet, but no serious health risks were found, a doctor who examined him said on nationally televised news. Asked what he had told his son after he was found, the father said, "I told him I was so sorry for causing him such pain." The nation welcomed the boy's safe return. Old photos of Yamato, wearing a cowboy hat here, holding up two fingers in a peace sign there, his bangs falling over a proud smile, were flashed across again and again on TV. Daijiro Hashimoto, a former governor appearing on a talk show on TV Asahi, wondered how the boy had endured the loneliness, especially at night, and suggested that perhaps he had imagined he was on some adventure and was hiding in a secret camp. "He had to keep a very positive attitude," Hashimoto said, reflecting widespread sentiment here. "He is fantastic. He didn't know how long it might take, and when he would ever be saved." The boy's disappearance and the debate set off by the parents' decision resonated in an aging nation with a dearth of children, where child-raising is expensive and often requires financial sacrifice. Japanese culture also is not seen as promoting individual rights of children, but rather to view children almost as family property. Abandonment and child abuse are far more common in Japan than the stereotype of the doting parent and stay-at-home mom would suggest. Yamato's parents are not officially under any police investigation for their actions. A child welfare expert said abandonment of a child should be treated seriously. Tamae Arai, who heads a Tokyo ward's family support operations, said though she does not know the specifics of this case an investigation would be likely in a similar case to ensure a child is protected. "Beating and kicking are not the only forms of child abuse. There is also neglect. Of course, we are all thrilled he was found, but it is important to note that there could be a serious problem here," she said. Members of the Ground Self-Defense Force conduct a search operation for Yamato Tanooka, a seven-year-old boy who has been missing (Photo: AP) Tokyo: A seven-year-old boy missing since his parents abandoned him in a bear-inhabited forest in northern Japan as a punishment nearly a week ago was found alive on Friday, officials said. The boy, apparently unharmed and in good health, was discovered inside a military base at about 7:50 am (2250 GMT Thursday), a police spokesman said. "A Self-Defence Force official who was on a drill found a boy whose age appeared to be seven," he said. "There was no conspicuous external injury, and the boy introduced himself as Yamato Tanooka," the spokesman said. Manabu Takehara, a spokesman for the Self-Defense Forces, also confirmed that the boy was found. "He looked in good health, but he was sent to hospital by medical helicopter" for a check-up, he said. The child had been missing since Saturday after his parents said they made him get out of their car on a mountain road as punishment for misbehaving. He was reportedly without food or water. The parents originally told police their son had got lost while they were out hiking to gather wild vegetables, but later admitted they became angry because he had thrown stones at cars and people. A US Naval officer uses binoculars to scan the area in the Mediterranean Sea where the Egyptair flight 804 en route from Paris to Cairo went missing (Photo: AP) Paris: Search teams zeroed in on the wreckage of EgyptAir flight MS804 on Thursday after a French vessel picked up a signal from one of the crashed jet's black boxes. An Egyptian source on the investigation committee told Reuters the search zone for the crashed Airbus A320 had been reduced to a 2 km (1.24 miles) radius from 5 km. France's transport minister said it would be about eight days before the flight recorder was recovered from the Mediterranean seabed. Locating the black boxes is crucial to understanding why the jet plummeted into the Mediterranean en route from Paris to Cairo on May 19, killing all 66 people on board. EgyptAir's chairman, Safwat Musallam, denied French media reports the aircraft had sent a series of technical warnings during flights to Asmara in Eritrea and Tunis in the 24 hours before it disappeared off radar screens and crashed. "For me it's not true," Musallam said on the sidelines of the IATA annual meeting in Dublin when asked about the reports. Musallam said the aircraft had not experienced any maintenance issues before departure and that the plane was "normal". "We fully trust the aircraft and the pilot," he said.Without the black boxes, which lie in waters up to 9,840-feet (3,000 meters) deep, investigators do not have enough information to determine whether the airplane suffered a technical problem or was brought down deliberately. The jet transmitted a series of messages in the minutes before it crashed showing a rise in temperature at the co-pilot's window and smoke on board, but investigators say these shed little light on the cause of the plane's disappearance. French Transport Minister Alain Vidalies said he could not confirm reports by the Le Parisien newspaper and France 3 TV that the jet had also sent warnings indicating smoke through the automatic Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) on earlier flights. "We have ... a sudden event which could point towards an attack. On the other hand we have other information which points more towards an accident," Vidalies told France Info radio. There are conflicting reports of the plane's last moments as it crossed from Greek to Egyptian airspace. The head of Egypt's air navigation has told Reuters the plane disappeared suddenly from radar while cruising at about 37,000 feet. On the day of the crash the Greek defence minister said the plane swerved and dropped to 15,000 feet before disappearing from screens. Iran's most powerful authority, Khamenei also said the United States had not remained committed to a nuclear deal reached between Tehran and six major powers in 2015 aimed at curbing the country's disputed nuclear programme. (Photo: AP) Ankara: Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Friday Tehran had no intention of cooperating on regional issues with its main enemies the United states and "evil" Britain, state TV reported. "America has continued its enmity towards Iran since (the 1979 Islamic) revolution... It is a huge mistake to trust the evil Britain and the great Satan (US)," Khamenei said in a speech broadcast live on state TV. "We will not cooperate with America over the regional crisis," he said, adding that: "Their aims in the region are 180 degrees opposed to Iran's." Iran's most powerful authority, Khamenei also said the United States had not remained committed to a nuclear deal reached between Tehran and six major powers in 2015 aimed at curbing the country's disputed nuclear programme. Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria said that the phenomenon of terrorism has affected Pakistan more than any other country in the world. (Representational image) Islamabad: Pakistan alleged that India was involved in creating instability through "subversive and terrorist activities" in Karachi and Balochistan province. Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria said at a briefing that the international community had already been informed about the alleged Indian involvement. "The apprehension of a serving officer of Indian intelligence agency RAW has vindicated Pakistan's longstanding position that Indian intelligence agencies are involved in subversive and terrorist activities in Pakistan especially Balochistan and Karachi," he said. "Our security agencies are fully aware of all threats and are actively working to counter them, wherever required. You are aware that we have briefed the international community. As the investigations are in progress, we would apprise the world community accordingly," he added. Zakaria also said that the all necessary actions have been taken based on "Kulbushan Yadav's confession and I am aware that many arrests have been taken place". He said that the phenomenon of terrorism has affected Pakistan more than any other country in the world. "We have deeper concern over foreign hands behind perpetration of terrorist attacks and terrorist financing in Pakistan," he said. He said Pakistan was ready for dialogue with India to resolve all outstanding issues including Jammu and Kashmir. He said in addition to other issues, the dialogue would include the discussion on terrorism. To a question about what was discussed when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi before his operation, he said it was an exchange of telephone calls, which related to Sharif's health. "This was hardly the occasion to discuss other issues though I am not privy to the exact details of the conversation," he said. The spokesperson said Pakistan's NSG application stands on solid grounds of technical experience, capability and well-established commitment to nuclear safety. "Pakistan has operated secure and safeguarded nuclear power plants for over 42 years. Safe and sustainable civil nuclear energy is essential for Pakistan's future energy security and its economic development," he said. Zakaria said Pakistan's NSG membership is in the interest of nuclear trading countries as it will further promote NSG non-proliferation objectives by the inclusion of a state with nuclear supply capabilities and its adherence to guidelines. "We are, therefore, hopeful that NSG decision for expansion in membership for non-NPT countries will be for an even-handed approach since any country-specific exception will not be beneficial for the non proliferation regime, the objective of strategic stability in South Asia or the credibility of NSG itself," he said. To a question about India and Japan agreement to build six nuclear reactors in Andhra Pradesh, he said India was given a waiver. "Our position on the issue has been very clear. We don't want any discriminatory treatment for any country which is not party to NPT. Pakistan calls for a non-discriminatory and criteria-based approach lest that would actually further add to the reasons disturbing the strategic stability in the region," he said. Dhaka: Each time he hears of the latest deadly machete attack, Ashraful Islam can't help but think of his father's gruesome murder and fear his fellow Sufi Muslims will never be safe again in Bangladesh. "The killings are not declining, they're getting worse. And every one reminds me what happened to my father," said the 30-year-old medical student. "I've no idea why they are doing this but if they aren't stopped then our future is doomed, we'll become another Pakistan." Islamists have claimed responsibility for around 40 killings in the last three years of foreigners, secular bloggers, gay activists, Hindus and Christians. Many have been slaughtered with machetes. But no group has suffered as much as Sufis, an offshoot of mainstream Islam whose followers are often denounced as "infidels" for their mystical traditions, including worshipping at shrines. Fourteen have died since December 2014 in religiously motivated attacks, including Islam's father Khizir Khan. More than 100,000 Sufis are expected in Dhaka tomorrow to attend an annual congregation, which this year is both a celebration and an act of defiance. It comes less than a month after local Sufi leader Mohammad Shahidullah was found hacked to death under a mango tree in the northwestern Rajshahi district. The deep wounds in his neck echoed Khan's murder last October when he was killed by suspected members of banned Islamist militant group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). Khan had around 2,000 followers, many of whom would turn up at weekly prayers at the family home in Dhaka. On the night of his killing, he had arranged to meet prospective tenants for a vacant apartment underneath the family's own flat. But he went downstairs to an ambush by a gang who cornered him in a bathroom and then hacked at his neck until he bled to death. The killers then burst into the upstairs living-room, tying up Khan's family, who later managed to escape. "It was my mother who discovered the body in the bathroom. The head was partially severed. "It was such a shocking thing. Every now and then my mother still breaks down." Police soon arrested five suspects who allegedly told investigators it was their "religious duty" to kill Khan. No-one has yet to be convicted for the killing and there have been few arrests in the other murders. Most have been claimed by the likes of JMB or international jihadists such as the Islamic State organisation or Al-Qaeda's South Asia wing. While more than 90 per cent of Bangladesh's 160 million population are Muslims, it is an avowedly secular state. For most of the first four decades after winning the 1971 independence war with Pakistan, Bangladesh had a reputation for religious tolerance and Sufi Muslim services drew tens of millions of worshippers. Bahaddur Naidu has adopted a rare gesture to create awareness against AIDS. Naidu, who is from Bengaluru, is on a bike ride for the awareness work, and reached Kalasa last week. He has also entered into Guinness Book of World Records for covering 1,18,679 km in six years. He started his journey in 2000, on a bicycle. From 2006, till date, he has covered 1.55 lakh km on bike. He has also visited Bhutan, China, Singapore, Tibet, Australia, Indonesia and Wagah border, along with the 33 states of the country. Bahaddur delivers a 10-minute speech on Aids, wherever he goes. With the monitory assistance provided by the organisers, he moves to the next village. Although from Barma origin, Bahaddur was brought up in Bengaluru, after his parents abandoned him. As a person called Subrahmanya Naidu was responsible for his upbringing, Bahaddur has added the surname Naidu, to his name. Worked at circusThe 47-year-old Bahaddur, started working in circus companies as a bike rider, after completing a diploma in Bengaluru. He took a decision to create awareness against Aids in 2000, and started his tour on a bicycle. He covers 250 km daily. During his expedition of 16 years, he has learnt many languages. He said that he got to know about the lifestyle of people in various states. He recalls the experiences of his encounters with Maoists in Andhra Pradesh and militants of Kashmir and Nagaland. He also met Veerappan, who handed over Rs 1,000 to Bahaddur. In North India, a large number of people suffer from Aids, Bahaddur said. He has also visited the red light areas and made efforts to convince the sex workers to quit their jobs, after explaining to them about Aids. Bahaddur said that after reaching his residence in Bengaluru, he cannot sit quit for more than three to four days and heads on for a new journey. He was planning to visit the Malnad area and hence came to Kalasa last week. His bike is painted with different colours and is decorated differently. Bahaddur gathers the attention of onlookers with his unique attire too. Putting to rest anxiety of those who do not have access to internet and computers and claim that cyber cafes charge them a big amount for the purpose, a few Delhi University colleges have decided to open their computer labs for admission seekers. The university for the first time has made the entire process online for admission to over 60,000 undergraduate seats. The process began yesterday and over 39,000 applications were received on Day 1 itself. However, while the queries about the technicalities of the online process seem to be burdening the varsity officials, students wings of various political parties have been accusing DU of taking the decision without considering those who come from poor background and have limited access to computers and internet. Various colleges such as Deen Dayal Upadhyay, Janki college, IP college for women, etc are providing access to their computer labs for admission seekers. Also, the students need to be worried about the process being technical. Open day sessions are being conducted for the same purpose, a senior university official said. The university has also uploaded an animated video on YouTube detailing the filling up of application forms and further process. The online registration will continue till June 19 and the first cut-off list will be announced on June 27. Students from a Delhi school take to the streets on weekends to fix spots which are dirtied with garbage dumps, betel stains or vandalised with posters. A batch of four to six students from classes 8-12 on rotation basis of Indian School in South Delhi identify a dirty spot in the schools vicinity and get together to clean it. The initiative, started with the help of an organisation New Delhi rising, is known as spot fixing and was started around an year ago and till now the students have covered six locations. We have the Swachh Bharat campaign but no one covers these small areas. There are so many walls and pillars, especially under flyovers, which have been defaced by posters which is illegal. Our only motive is that we do not want to wait for the government to do something, said Shubham Airi, a class 12 student involved in the drive. Till now, the students have fixed spots like Defence Colony, pillars under Moolchand flyover, Lajpat flyover and the subway next to it, and the most recent was the underpass wall of Ansal Plaza last Sunday. After cleaning the area, the students repaint the walls. We believe if it is clean and beautiful, people will think twice before dumping waste there and sticking posters on the walls. Most places where the drive was conducted have remained cleaned since then, said Sangeeta Aswani, a tea-cher and project coordinator. Each spot requires at least three visits to properly clean it and then repaint it. The children also talk to shopkeepers and the local public in the area to spread awareness and convince them to keep it clean. The students also want to visit other schools to spread the message and urge them to initiate such an activity in their institutions also. In fact, in February, when five students were busy removing posters from pillars under the Lajpat flyover, they were approached by Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who was passing by from the area. He walked up towards us and enquired about what we are doing and appreciated us. Later we asked him if this could be implemented in government schools also and he said he will look into it, said Shubham. In a bid to prevent employees from keeping away from work during office hours, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has directed all departments to adopt biometric attendance for contractual and daily wage employees, like regular staff. The move is aimed to ensure that the staff especially those posted as sanitation workers and security guards - put in the minimum number of work hours and there is no loss to the exchequer through payment to staff for man-hours which they do not put in. Kejriwals decision to check absenteeism from seat of staff, especially contractual, comes in the backdrop of his feedback that some contractual workers remained away from their desk after marking their attendance in morning. It is incumbent upon the Heads of Departments to ensure that the authorised person in marking his or her attendance and getting the salary for his or her work, said an official note. The system of bio-metric attendance was introduced in the 49-day tenure of the AAP government. At that time, the new provision had left a few employees complaining. Sources said the bio-metric attendance system is yet to be applied uniformally in all Delhi government system. Despite the General Administration Departments assurances, Kejriwal has got the feedback that there still are a huge number of contractual and regular employees who are not clocking-in and clocking-out regularly. It has been observed that the number of employees, including contractual and daily wage workers, are not attending office in time and sometimes they are absent from their respective offices, said an official note. In order to ensure punctuality, the Competent Authority has directed that all the officials (regular/non-regular/contractual/daily wages sanitation and security workers) shall mark their attendance on bio-metric system, said the note sent to all department heads. Stop exploitation The initiative to discipline contractual staff comes close to Kejriwals efforts to stop exploitation of contract workers by their supplying agencies. After complaints of delay in payment of wages to contract workers by their agencies, the Chief Minister mandated that monthly salary of daily wagers should be paid by the 15th of the next month. To safeguard the interests of contract workers, the Cabinet directed that HoDs/Secretaries should use all powers at their disposal to ensure that all employees get their salaries in time. If contractor fails to comply despite repeated attempts, HoD/Secretary shall be at liberty to cancel the contract, said the Cabinet decision of March 22. To centralise the hiring of contractual staff, the Cabinet decided that the Finance Department will take steps to empanel agencies which can supply workers to meet the requirements of different departments. The departments shall be at liberty to engage requisite workforce from such empanelled agencies. ISIS made a whopping USD 2.4 billion in 2015 despite losing territory by simply adjusting its business from oil to taxes and is still the richest terror group on the planet, according to a report. The new report, by the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism on the finances of the Islamic State, said that despite the constant airstrikes on its oil infrastructure, ISIS still has an over USD 2 billion empire and it is making up lost revenue by squeezing about 8 million people under its control through raising of taxes. The authors of the report, terrorism experts Jean-Charles Brisard and Damien Martinez, conclude that "ISIS's military defeat is not imminent...as things stand, ISIS economic collapse remains some way off in the mid-term." The report says ISIS made USD 2.4 billion in 2015. That is a USD 500 million drop from the center's revenue estimate the previous year, but ISIS remains the richest terrorist organisation on the planet. The Islamic State's extortion of the people living inside its territory in Iraq and Syria has skyrocketed from USD 360 million in 2014 to USD 800 million in 2015, according to researchers. The theoretical value of assets under ISIS control (oil reserves, gas reserves, minerals, cash assets) was estimated at USD 2,260 billion by the end of 2015, up by 11 per cent compared to late 2014, the report released yesterday said. "It's really an adaptive organisation. What strikes me is the fact that they're clearly behaving as managers, not simple looters. They really have budget requirements, and they're compensating," Brisard told CNN Money. The report is a sobering take on what has been an image of ISIS as a terrorist organisation in disarray. In recent months, ISIS has cut fighter salaries in half and a nonstop bombing campaign has cut its oil production. It has also lost 40 per cent of its territory, according to the US military, but ISIS still has about 8 million people under its control. Brisard and Martinez were quoted as saying that ISIS has simply adjusted its business from oil to taxes. As oil fell from 38 per cent to 25 per cent of its revenue stream last year, ISIS cranked up its extortion racket. In 2015, taxes went from supplying 12 per cent of yearly ISIS revenue to 33 per cent. Those taxes include a 10 per cent income tax, up to 15 per cent business tax, road tolls, 5 per cent fees for bank cash withdrawals and up to 35 per cent taxes on pharmaceutical drugs. There are also fees for leaving the territory, even temporarily. And there's a special tax on non Muslims called jizyah. However, the US Treasury Department said the coalition's effort to disrupt the Islamic State's economy is working. "We are seeing progress... since late-2015, ISIL's production of oil has declined by about 30 per cent. Their ability to generate revenue has been reduced by at least that much," the Treasury was quoted as saying. Minneapolis Saturday marks the 25th anniversary of the passing of the first charter school law in the country. Ember Reichgott Junge is the former Democratic state senator who authored the charter school legislation, which was signed into law in Minnesota on June 4th. The charter movement has since expanded to include 43 states plus the District of Columbia, and over 2.5 million studentsor about 5 percent of the total K-12 public student population. I went to Minnesota to speak with Reichgott Junge for a special series on the charter anniversary for Education Week, which is coming out on Wednesday. I asked Reichgott Junge for her thoughts on how charter schools have evolved over the last 25 years. Much of our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, focused on innovation. Q. When you sponsored the first charter school law, I know innovation was a very big part of why you did that. Have charter schools lived up to their promise to help innovate in public education. In what ways have they succeeded and what ways have they maybe fallen short? A. The two core values, the fundamental values of chartering were innovation and autonomy. For the most part, the laws have allowed that to occur. Over the country, some states have limited that, unfortunately. With regard to innovation, I think we can do more, and we should be doing more in the sector. It doesnt necessarily have to be something like a year-round school, Im looking more towards the innovation of personalized learning, of project-based learning, of what I call the 21st century learning. Chartering provides the autonomy for that to occur. That doesnt mean that it cant occur in district schools; it does. I see that theres a way for both the district and charter sectors to learn from each other on innovation. We havent done that very much. I believe there is much more to be done in innovation. I believe there is much more that both sectors can do, and we need to be focused on that for the future. Q. Why do you think there hasnt been more done in terms of innovation in the chartering sector up until this point? A. Let me give you an example from a charter school I worked with personally. We applied for the federal funding startup grant for a very innovative school. The response to us was that we didnt have data to support the innovation we were trying to create. You see, you cant have data for something that hasnt [been] established yet. We knew that in other contexts it worked. When you have the old rules coming down on those trying to innovate, it creates a real conflict. Weve got to be able to allow teachers and educators the freedom to experiment, the freedom to innovate, the freedom to try new things. If we do that, sometimes they might fail, but thats OK, we learn from it and we figure out something new, a new strategy for learning. We dont allow that in the education space. Q. It is a common criticism in the charter sector that a lot of charter schools dont look that different from traditional district schools. Kids are still divided in the classes, they go to school for a certain amount of time, a teacher lectures a class with 20 students. Can that model be changed much more than it already has been or do you foresee innovation that looks drastically different from that? A. Theres two levels of innovation. Theres one, theres meeting the needs of the child that doesnt exist in another school in that area. Thats critically important, a critical fundamental and theres the opportunity for the chartering law to allow spinoffs, to allow new and different schools to emerge, new schools to try new ideas. As long as we have the law of chartering, we have the basis for innovation. Now its up to the leaders. Now its up to those entrepreneurial leaders who are trained, who want to do this to make the innovation happen. The chartering law doesnt create the innovation itself, it creates the opportunity for innovation for the right leaders. Q. How is charter schooling different today than your original vision? Is it playing out mostly how you thought it would play out? A. I think we missed a couple of things in our original vision. We missed, first of all, that we needed to pay more attention to the authorizers or sponsors and to make sure they were well trained and to understand their role better. Not only are they compliance oriented, which they should be to hold the charter schools accountable, but they also need to be supportive in the sense of helping the school to be creative. To find those innovative solutions to meet their benchmarks in new and different ways. We dont always see that. We see some authorizers just checking off the boxes without a lot of support. We also need to train the charter school boards. The charter schools boards of directors sometimes are not well trained. They are not holding the school accountable; thats important to improve that. Youll see more and more of that being done around the country. I think that as far as the sector today, we didnt imagine the need for startup funding or facilities funding. A number of schools are not provided those funds in their states. That is a problem. We just thought that they could do more with less. Unfortunately charters are receiving about on average 70 percent of what the district schools are receiving. Thats just too big of a gap. On the bigger picture of it, I dont think I expected as many networks and our management companies in chartering. I think many of them have been very helpful and very productive. Some have not been so helpful. I dont want anyone to think that there is only one sector in chartering. Theres room for everyone. I just want them to succeed. If they are succeeding, they are getting results, then thats fine. Related stories: Photo: Former Minnesota Democratic State Senator, Ember Reichgott Junge. Photo by Ackerman + Gruber for Education Week The same brain circuits that are activated by eating chocolate and winning money are triggered when teenagers see a large number of 'likes' on their photos or those of peers on social networking sites, a new study has found. Researchers from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) told 32 teenagers, aged 13-18 years that they were participating in a small social network similar to the popular photo-sharing app, Instagram. In an experiment, researchers showed them 148 photographs on a computer screen for 12 minutes, including 40 photos that each teenager submitted, and analysed their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Each photo also displayed the number of likes it had supposedly received from other teenage participants. In reality, the number of likes was assigned by the researchers. "When the teens saw their own photos with a large number of likes, we saw activity across a wide variety of regions in the brain," said Lauren Sherman from UCLA. A region that was especially active is a part of the striatum called the nucleus accumbens, which is part of the brain's reward circuitry, she said. This reward circuitry is thought to be particularly sensitive during adolescence. When the teenagers saw their photos with a large number of likes, researchers also observed activation in regions that are known as the social brain and regions linked to visual attention. In deciding whether to click that they liked a photo, the teenagers were highly influenced by the number of likes the photo had, researchers said. "We showed the exact same photo with a lot of likes to half of the teens and to the other half with just a few likes. When they saw a photo with more likes, they were significantly more likely to like it themselves," said Sherman. Teens react differently to information when they believe it has been endorsed by many or few of their peers, even if these peers are strangers, researchers said. "In the study, this was a group of virtual strangers to them, and yet they were still responding to peer influence; their willingness to conform manifested itself both at the brain level and in what they chose to like," said Mirella Dapretto from UCLA. "We should expect the effect would be magnified in real life, when teens are looking at likes by people who are important to them," said Dapretto. The teenagers in the study viewed "neutral" photos - which included pictures of food and of friends - and "risky" photos - including of cigarettes, alcohol and teenagers wearing provocative clothing. "For all three types of photographs - neutral, risky and even their own - the teens were more likely to click like if more people had liked them than if fewer people liked them," said Patricia Greenfield from UCLA. The findings were published in the journal Psychological Science. Mainak Sarkar, the Indian- American gunman who shot dead his former college professor in California before turning the gun on himself, drove over 3,200 km to kill his mentor after murdering his wife and had another faculty member on his hit list, police said. Sarkar, 38, killed his wife Ashley Hasti at her Minnesota home, before driving to the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) to shoot his former professor William Klug. The former doctoral student left a list at his home in Minnesota that included the names of the woman, UCLA professor Klug and a second professor who is safe, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said. Sarkar shot Klug multiple times in a small office in the Engineering Building of the UCLA on Wednesday before taking his own life, authorities said. Hasti was found dead of a gunshot wound at her home in the small Minnesota town of Brooklyn Park. Hennepin County Vital Records confirmed that Hasti was married to Sarkar on June 14, 2011. It was unclear if they remained married at the time of the shooting, the Los Angeles Times reported. Beck said Sarkar had plans to kill another UCLA faculty member, but could not do so as he was not able to find him. The faculty member, whose name was not revealed by police, is safe. "We believe that he went to kill two faculty from UCLA. He was only able to locate one," Beck said yesterday. He said police found an extra box of ammunition in his Minnesota home. According to the LAPD chief, Sarkar arrived at the UCLA campus "heavily armed". "He had a backpack, two semiautomatic pistols and extra magazines. It looks like he was certainly prepared to engage multiple victims," Beck told reporters. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is assisting the Los Angeles Police Department in its investigation. In a blog post, Sarkar, an IIT Kharagpur graduate, had accused Klug of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else. "William Klug, UCLA professor is not the kind of person when you think of a professor. He is a very sick person," Sarkar wrote. "I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy. He made me really sick. Your enemy is your enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust," he wrote. Local media quoted several university officials and students as saying that Sarkar's allegation was not true. "UCLA says there is no truth to this," Beck told reporters in response to a question. Klug graduated from Westmont in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science in engineering physics, completed a master's degree at UCLA and a doctorate at CalTech. He was an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA. Pakistan has not taken "sufficient action" against terror groups like LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammad JeM, blamed for attacks in India, the US has said while noting that these outfits continue to operate, train, organise and fundraise in that country. The State Department in its annual 'Country Reports on Terrorism 2015' report said that the Pakistani military and security forces undertook operations against groups that conducted attacks within Pakistan such as Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), but did not take action against externally-focused terror groups. It said some UN-designated terrorist groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) affiliates Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FiF) were able to raise funds and hold rallies in Pakistan. "Pakistan did not take substantial action against the Afghan Taliban or Haqqani, or substantially limit their ability to threaten US interests in Afghanistan, although Pakistan supported efforts to bring both groups into an Afghan-led peace process. "Pakistan has also not taken sufficient action against other externally-focused groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), which continued to operate, train, organize, and fundraise in Pakistan," it said. LeT and JuD leader Hafiz Saeed, who is also a UN- designated terrorist, was able to make frequent public appearances in support of the organization's objectives, which were covered by the Pakistani media. "In September, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Agency prohibited media coverage of LeT and affiliated groups, although the groups continued to recruit and operate around the country. Despite JuD and FiF's proscription under UN sanctions regimes, the Pakistani government affirmed in December that neither organisation was banned in Pakistan," the State Department said. India, the State Department said continued to experience terrorist attacks, including operations launched by Maoist insurgents and transnational groups based in Pakistan. Indian authorities continued to blame Pakistan for cross-border attacks in Jammu and Kashmir, it said. In July, India experienced a terrorist attack in Gurdaspur, Punjab; the first in the state since the 1990s, the report said. Over the course of 2015, the Indian government sought to deepen counter-terrorism cooperation with the US. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi continued to prioritise counter-terrorism cooperation during Obama's visit to India in January and Modi's visit to Washington in September. The Indian government closely monitored the domestic threat from the IS and other terrorist organisations, it said. The State Department said Pakistan was also slow in taking action against 2008 Mumbai attack perpetrators. "Anti-Terrorism Courts had limited procedures for obtaining or admitting foreign evidence. The trial of seven suspects accused in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack was ongoing at years end, with many witnesses for the prosecution remaining to be called by the court. "Security concerns and procedural issues resulted in a slow pace of trial proceedings. In December 2014, the court granted bail to the lead defendant, alleged Mumbai attack planner and LeT operational commander Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi. Lakhvi was released from prison on bail in April 2015 and the Government of Pakistan reports he remained under house arrest at the end of 2015," the report said. According to the State Department, money transfer systems persisted throughout much of Pakistan, especially along the country's long border with Afghanistan and may be abused by drug traffickers and terrorist financiers operating in the cross-border area. While Pakistani authorities did report having frozen assets of UN-designated entities during 2015, the amount was unclear. The US government was not informed of any successful terrorism financing prosecutions in 2015. The NIA today filed a charge sheet in a case pertaining to banned terror outfit ISIS outlining the modus oprandi of a 23-year-old alleged operative in identifying, radicalising, recruiting and sending Indians to join the terrorists in Syria and Iraq. The probe report, filed before District Judge Amar Nath, refers in detail to the role of accused Naser Packeer who was working as a web and graphics designer in Dubai. The National Investigation Agency, which has arrayed over 22 persons as witnesses, has also made his father Packeer Mohammad a prosecution witness. "In furtherance to its larger conspiracy under its leadership, members of terror groups Islamic State (IS) or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL)..., in connivance with a few resident, and non-resident Indians have been indulging in identification, redicalization, recruitment, training and finally transfer of Indian youths to countries like Syria, Lybia, Iraq for terror acts. "For that purpose, members of the above terror groups have been using different channels/services available on internet, telephone and one to one meeting," the charge sheet said. The sources said that the charge sheet, which was filed in court during an in-chamber proceeding, alleged that Naser, who hails from Tamil Nadu and was arrested in December last year, was involved in a conspiracy to recruit Muslim youths in India to join ISIS and shift them to Iraq and Syria to carry out terror attacks and wage war in India. The charge sheet further said that the accused, who did B Tech from a Chennai college before leaving for Dubai in 2014, used several internet based websites including Twitter, WhatsApp and Youtube to spread the base of terror organisation in India and the world. It also said that the assistance of USA through Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty and internet giants like Google and Twitter was sought in the investigation against the accused. The agency said, "The services of internet have been used by recruiters, trainers and members of above terror organisations for indoctrinating and motivating Indian Muslim youths for travelling to countries like Syria, Libya, Iraq for taking part in terror activities." "As a result, a few known and unknown Indian youths have expressed their solidarity, allegiance and support to ISIS in different forms and left India and joined ISIS," it claimed. NIA has claimed that several incriminating documents and articles like laptop, mobile phones, pen drives and DVDs have been recovered from the possession from the accused. "The main inspiration to motivate youths to join 'Jihad' were the lectures from some Islamic scholars on YouTube. The twitter account being used by the accused with the i.d. of 'Abu Khalid Al Hind' was being used to deliver provocative and inciting contents and calling upon like-minded people to wage Jihad and join ISIS," the agency said in the charge sheet. The charge sheet has been filed for the alleged offences punishable under sections of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The court has now fixed June 9 for considering the charge sheet filed by the NIA and extended the judicial custody of the accused till that date. The agency had filed an FIR in the matter on December 9 last year against unknown persons on inputs received from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). On October 5, 2015, Naser was apprehended by Sudani authorities for concealing his identity and trying to join ISIS in Syria. Later, he was deported to India on December 10, 2015. The BJP and JD(S) charged that the Chief Minister was behind the attempts to woo MLAs. The footage of "sting operation" by one channel showed a JD(S) MLA purportedly talking about money in crores of rupees for supporting a candidate while the one by another channel showed Congress candidate K C Ramamurthy and independent MLAs purportedly speaking about getting enhanced development funds for the constituency by the government in return for votes. Reacting to the sting operations, BJP state President and former Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa called Siddaramaiah an "architect" behind these activities. He said "Chief Minister himself is behind it. They are saying Rs 100 crore package will be given to those supporting supporting Congress along with other benefits..; Chief Minister is trying to lure, no one else." Yeddyurappa demanded that the Election Commission take appropriate action on this issue. Hitting back, Siddaramaiah reminded that Yeddyurappa was the brain behind "operation Kamala" that was used to weaken opposition parties when BJP was in power in the state. "Operation Kamala" saw BJP winning over several Opposition MLAs who resigned from their party, joined BJP and won elections on its ticket that helped it secure comfortable majority in the Assembly. "Such things were started by Yeddyurappa, who did operation Kamala? It is he who started such things. Congress has never done such things, they will never do it also," Siddaramaiah told reporters. He said "no such thing has happened from our side ...all of them whose names have appeared in the sting operation have denied it. Whether such thing has happened or not I don't know. How can I react." Former Prime Minister and JD(S) supremo H D Deve Gowda said, "Chief Minister who has grown from my party (JDS) is doing this to finish the party." A political slugfest broke out in Karnataka today over TV "sting operations" that purportedly showed MLAs negotiating a money deal in exchange for their votes in elections to four Rajya Sabha seats from the state even as the Election Commission sought a report.As a demand was made that the Election Commission take appropriate action over the alleged money deal, the EC sought a factual report from Chief Electoral Officer of Karnataka.The Commission said it has "asked CEO Karnataka to provide a report on the facts of the matter."The Commission said it has received queries from newspersons regarding the sting following which it was issuing the brief statement. With elections due to be held on June 11, five candidates are in the fray for four seats after the deadline for withdrawals expired today.As the videos of the "sting operations" aired by two private TV news channels yesterday brought discomfiture to him over allegations about the ruling Congress' moves to win over MLAs including from the JD(S) to add up to its numbers, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah put up a brave face, saying, "...Congress has never done such things, they will never do it also." Taking on the critics of his proposal to rechristen Akbar Road as Maharana Pratap Road, Union Minister V K Singh has said the country has to decide if it has to be proud of those who "enslaved" it or those who fought the enslavers. Though the government has virtually rejected his recommendation, he has written a long Facebook post saying the country has to discard "divide and rule" and "appeasement" policies if it has to move forward. Drawing a parallel between Mughal kings and the British, he said the latter ruled India like the Muslim kingdom and took a dig at his detractors, saying memorials should be built for Robert Clive and Lord Dalhousie as well going by their logic. "After I batted for Maharana Pratap, I received a big shock... Our self-proclaimed intellectuals said Akbar is a big name in our history and we should not speak against him. "...We will have to decide that who we should be proud of; those who enslaved us or those who fought them. We do not want to give importance to Begum Hazrat Mahal, ignore the pathan general of Maharana Pratap and do not name our prominent roads after the great martyr Bhagat Singh," the former Army chief said. Calling Maharana Pratap a great soul, Singh said he united 36 communities "but the history hailed (Akbar) as a great man. He killed 25,000 people, including women, children and the elderly in Mewar." He also said people feel hesitant in paying homage to those who laid down their lives for the nation and its people as it may hurt the feelings of some fake patriots. "I want to say this if we are giving so much importance to Mughals, then by this logic we should build memorials for Robert Clive and Lord Dalhousie too as they were very talented administrators who ruled us in the same way as the Mughals," Singh said. Singh also rejected the assertion of many historians that Akbar along with Ashok were two "great" kings, saying Akbar was called so because his name literally meant great. If people continue to give importance to those who enslaved them, then our "slave mentality" will never disappear, he said. If the country has to move forward, then it will have to adopt policies that take it ahead instead of letting it stuck in the rut where it has been for the last 60 years, he said. Singh had last month written a letter to Urban Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu, asking him to name Akbar Road after Maharana Pratap. With his proposal inviting sharp reactions from opposition, Naidu said it was not on the government's agenda. After British liquor giant Diageo Plc, Diageo Holdings Netherlands today filed an interlocutory application before the Debt Recovery Tribunal seeking vacating of DRT's order barring liquor baron Vijay Mallya from withdrawing USD 75 million exit buyout by it under a deal till disposal of SBI's case against him over loan default. All the parties, including Kingfisher, Diageo Plc and UBHL, pleaded today before the Tribunal to take up their applications on a priority basis. "The Tribunal will decide which applications should be heard on priority basis and also set a timeline for disposing all the pending applications," DRT Presiding Officer Benakanahalli said and then posted the matter for hearing on June 7. Yesterday, Diageo Plc had filed the interlocutory application seeking vacating of DRT's March 7 order. DRT had barred Mallya from withdrawing USD 75 million exit payment from Diageo till the disposal of the case over the loan default by Kingfisher Airlines. It had restrained Diageo and United Spirits Limited, owned by the UK-based firm, from temporarily disbursing the amount to Mallya who worked out the deal under a severance package. However, USD 40 million of the USD 75 million severance package deal had already been disbursed, following which the bankers' consortium had sought directions from the Tribunal to attach the amount before it. Following a directive of the Tribunal, Diageo Plc and its two subsidiaries submitted the details of severance package deal, in which the bankers figured out that USD 40 million of the USD 75 million was parked in the account held by Vijay Mallya in New York-based J P Morgan Bank. On May 17, DRT directed J P Morgan Bank not to disburse to Mallya USD 40 million and asked it to "attach" (submit) before it statements of accounts held by Mallya in the bank. On the other hand, Vijay Mallya-controlled United Breweries (Holdings) Limited (UBHL) sought time to submit evidence and substantiate their claim of Rs 594 crore from bankers for compensating the losses incurred by it due to the sale of USL equity shares by lenders at cheaper rate. Following a directive of the Tribunal, Diageo submitted the details of severance package deal, in which the bankers figured out that USD 40 million of the USD 75 million was parked in the account held by Mallya in the New York-based J P Morgan Bank. Thereafter, on May 17, the Tribunal directed J P Morgan Bank not to disburse to Mallya USD 40 million sweetheart deal struck between him and Diageo PLC. The Tribunal also had directed the bank to "attach" (submit) before it the statements of accounts held by Mallya in the bank. Benakanahalli also had directed companies including Watson Limited, a Mallya-affiliated firm, to attach shares before the Tribunal. Diageo, the worlds largest spirits maker which acquired control of United Spirits (USL) in 2012, had issued a guarantee to Standard Chartered Bank for a USD 135 million (around Rs 900 crore) loan to Watson to release certain UBL shares that were to be acquired as part of the deal. The company, in their statement, had said that the risk had arisen due to default by Watson in May and DRT preventing sale or any other transfer of such UBL shares in June as part of the enforcement process pending further orders following the petition by bankers. Benakanahalli had also pulled up the banks for not taking due deligence of taking appropriate action to know the details of transaction between Diageo and Mallya. Mallya, whose now-defunct group company Kingfisher Airlines owes over Rs 9,000 crore (Rs 90 billion) to 17 banks, had left the country on March 2 and is in the UK. With Britain recently declining India's request to deport him, government has approached Interpol for issuance of an arrest warrant against Mallya in connection with a money laundering case being probed by ED. Michigan is the latest state to consider allowing students to replace required foreign language classes with computer coding courses. The states House of Representatives voted earlier this week to approve a bill that would allow students to take three credits of computer science, arts, or career tech training instead of a foreign language in order to graduate. Proponents argued the bill , which has not yet passed the states Senate, would give students more flexibility in choosing their courses. This isnt the first time a state has argued that computer code is an appropriate stand-in for foreign language in high school. Texas passed a law in 2013 that allowed some students to use computer coding to meet their foreign language requirement, and Kentucky and New Mexico considered similar bills around that time. In Montana, a bill currently on the table would put informatics, or coding, courses in every high school and allow them to count for a foreign language requirement. In Florida, the legislature considered a bill earlier this year that would have required state colleges to accept coding credits in place of foreign language credits for incoming freshmen. That bill had the support of tech companies and was supported by Florida Sen. Jeremy Ring, a Democrat and former Yahoo employee, who said coding would be a great equalizer for the states students. But civil rights groups, including the Spanish American League Against Defamation, decried the bill , saying it would deprive students of critical language skills. The bill made it through the states senate but died before becoming law . The White House has been supportive of schools and states that want to expand the role of computer science in schools, proposing $4 billion to states for computer science programming as part of a Computer Science For All Initiative launched early this year. But advocates for both computer science and foreign language education have raised red flags about conflating computer language and human language. A world language course helps you connect with people around the world that youre able to understand because you speak the language and understand the culture, said Marty Abbott, the executive director of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language, in an interview. Thats a completely different end result than you find with computer coding. We dont see the connection at all, she said. Were concerned about this trend of equating computer coding with learning a world language. Abbot said that just about 17 states require students take a foreign language to graduate (other states require it for certain types of diplomas, or have state universities that require two years of language for admission), so the ACTFL is wary of any efforts to water down those requirements. Some 20 states dont even collect data about how many students take world language courses. Proponents of computer science have also argued against the argument that coding is equivalent to a world language: In 2014, Amy Hirotaka, the state policy and advocacy manager for Code.org, wrote a blog post arguing that computer science is more than just learning to code , and that coding is more related to math and science than to world languages. A number of states allow computer science courses to count for math or science credit. Computer science courses are becoming more prevalent, but the debate over just what they should be teaching has also grown. Should the focus be on theory or practice? Mimicking computer scientists job or introducing students to the basics? A recent report argues that computer science should be taught as a core science , not just as a set of codes and activities. As more states and legislators get interested in coding, its likely weve not seen the last of the arguments that computer code is a language. Related stories: The Superintendent of Police and Station House Officer who lost their lives in the Jawaharbagh operation here were hit by bullets in the first 10 minutes of "unprovoked" firing by the encroachers, officials said. The anti-encroachment operation started around 5 pm and the strategy was to enter Jawaharbagh by scaling the wall on its eastern side, Uttar Pradesh Police officials said. Jawaharbagh, spread over nearly 260 acres, is less than a km away from the district magistrate's office here. It is bound by cantonment area, police lines, a prison and government quarters. By the time the police force could move any closer to the 5-feet-high wall fencing the land, the encroachers had started firing. Within seconds it was raining bullets and the encroachers had positioned themselves at the trees in the enclosed area. "In the first ten minutes, five police officials had sustained bullet injuries including the SP and the SHO," a police officer said. Meanwhile, the protesters resorted to grenade shelling and the police team had to move back, the officer said. After the injured policemen were rushed to the hospital, the police force took over the terraces of the government quarters on eastern side of Jawaharbagh and started stone pelting, said eyewitnesses. Once the firing stopped for a while, the police teams scaled the wall and entered Jawaharbagh premises. As the police and PAC personnel managed to enter the premises, the encroachers again started firing. This time, the police fired in retaliation as they went on making their way towards the hub where the encroachers had based themselves, police officials said. Once the chase started, the encroachers allegedly began to set their tents on fire which was followed by a series of cooking gas cylinder blasts causing further damage. Meanwhile, the grenade attacks continued for some time till the police managed to take control of the entire situation and the entire operation ended by 7.30 pm, officials said. But by then a new problem emerged - the fire at the camps started spreading and the flakes of fire reached the colonies adjacent to the park area, eye witnesses said. Soon the fire tenders were rushed to the spot to contain the fire. One house had reportedly caught fire but the flames were doused by the fire fighters. By the time the operation came to an end, 24 lives, including SP Mukul Dwivedi, and SHO Santosh Yadav had lost their lives. Among the 24 killed, the two policemen were shot dead and 11 were burnt to death due to cylinder blasts. The protesters had set on fire the huts where bombs, explosives and gas cylinders were stored, before retreating from the site. In all, 22 rioters including a woman were killed Legislator J R Lobo said the development of Old Port and modernisation of fishing sector will find a place in the proposal for the Smart City Project from Mangaluru City Corporation for the second phase plan. Briefing mediapersons here on Friday, the MLA said the history associated with the Mandakki Bhatti (puffed rice mill) Colony in Davangere and Cantonment Area in Belagavi helped the cities to find a place in the first phase of the Smart City Project. We have decided to include development of Old Port and fishing sector in the proposal and promote it as our USP, he added. Lobo said the Smart City Project will catapult cities into the technology-based future. The citys tryst with Old Port and fishing sector dates back to several centuries. But in more modern times, it established itself as a famous trade and employment. Given its vast employment opportunities and trade activities, Lakshadweep was wholly depending on Mangaluru for its all requirements. However, now the trade between Lakshadweep and Old Port in Mangaluru has declined drastically. In the past, Mangaluru traders were exporting spices and coffee to Middle Eastern Countries, Africa and Mauritius through Old Port. The Old Port has a long history of being a commercial centre. There is a need to revive the past glory of the Old Port and fishing activities through Smart City Project, he stated. He said Mangaluru did not figure the first list of the Smart City Project as it failed to propose development based on a sector in the proposal. The revival of the Old Port and modernisation of fishing sector will also promote tourism in the region, he added. Lobo said the long-pending demand for a dedicated jetty for tourism and trade between Mangalore and Lakshadweep will soon be fulfilled with the state government and Lakshwadeep administration signing a memorandum of understanding. This will revive the trade relations with Mangaluru city. The jetty, to be constructed on the northern side of the Old Port in Bunder, will facilitate both tourists and traders who will export commodities to the island Union territory. The blue print of the project is ready. Lakshadweep administration will invest Rs 70 crore for the project. Apart from this, the Lakshadweep administration will take up dredging by six metre depth from estuary to the northern side of the Old Port, which in turn will help the fishermen in anchoring their boats in the Wharf, he noted. As a first step of the new government in Assam to stop rhino poaching in the world famous Kaziranga National Park, a Unesco world heritage site, Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Friday directed the Environment and Forest Department to set up a permanent office of the Principal Chief Conservator of Forest at Kaziranga. According to official sources, the chief minister gave the go ahead in course of a review meeting with Minister for Environment and Forest Pramila Rani Brahma, Chief Secretary V K Pipersenia and senior forest officials at his office at Assam Secretariat on Thursday yesterday. Sonowal has asked the Environment and Forest Department to prepare an action plan for generation of revenue to the tune of Rs 1,000 crore out of its own resources during the current financial year without causing any harm to the ecology. Sonowal asked the department to sell off the timber at the different beat offices online. The toppers of the Class XII examination, conducted by the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) appeared for a re-examination at the board office here on Friday. They were in the eye of storm after a video footage questioned their merit. Except Ruby Rai, the topper of the arts stream, all the other 13 toppers were present during the re-test. The written test was followed by an interview conducted by a panel of experts. The BSEB had asked the 14 intermediate toppers of science and arts stream to appear before it for a small test on June 3 to clear the doubt whether the toppers were genuinely meritorious students. The board had to face criticism and huge embarrassment when one of the toppers Ruby Rai (of Vishnu Roy College in Vaishali) could not pronounce her subject political science properly. She created more doubts when she said cooking was taught in political science. When asked out of how much aggregate marks she had scored 444, she replied (after much prodding from a family member), 600.Actually, she has obtained 444 out of 500 in arts section. Similarly, the science topper Suarabh Shrestha too could not answer properly when media quizzed him about basic science. On Friday, though Saurabh appeared for the re-examination, Ruby failed to turn up at the examination venue. Her parents informed the BSEB chairman LP Singh that she was quite depressed for the last couple of days following media trial, but will appear for a re-test once she recovers from depression. The BSEB chairman, who has withheld the result of Ruby and Saurabh till the experts panel clear their name, had earlier said, After a re-look, I found her answers were perfectly alright. But since the video footage has cast a doubt, we have asked all the toppers to appear again for a small test on Friday, followed by an interview by a group of experts. This will clear all the doubts and put a lid on the controversy. The experts panel will also match the handwriting of toppers, appearing for re-test, with their previous answer sheets. Meanwhile, Bihars Education Minister Ashok Choudhary has asked the BSEB to release the list of toppers from next year onwards only after they (toppers) face an interview. India will step up its security assistance to Afghanistan to help fight Taliban, but will not take up any new major development project in the war-torn country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghan President M Ashraf Ghani will inaugurate the Salma Dam at Herat province of Afghanistan on Saturday. Though India has been deeply involved with reconstruction of Afghanistan, it is unlikely to embark on any new big development project in that country immediately. New Delhi, however, will continue to fund small development projects in Afghanistan. Modi will convey to Ghani New Delhis willingness to step up support to Kabul to augment the capability of the Afghan National Security and Defence Force, which is now at the forefront of the war against Taliban, Islamic State and other terrorist outfits after the withdrawal of the US-led International Security Assistance Force. Though New Delhi prefers to keep its security assistance to Kabul under wraps, sources said that India remained fully committed to supporting Afghanistan for strengthening its defensive capabilities in order to preserve its unity and territorial integrity and ensuring security of its people. New Delhi and Kabul are already discussing possibility of increasing and expanding training opportunities for Afghan National Security and Defence Forces personnel in relevant institutions in India, of course based on the requirements of Afghanistan, sources told DH. The dam, which Modi will inaugurate on Saturday, was built by the WAPCOS Limited, a Government of India undertaking, on the Chist-e-Sharif river at Herat province of Afghanistan. The Afghan-India Friendship Dam has the capacity of generating 42 mw of power and irrigating 75,000 hectares of land apart from providing water supply and other benefits to the people of Afghanistan. India spent over Rs 1,775 crore to build the dam in Afghanistan The WAPCOS Limited took over 10 years to build the dam, with the remoteness of the site and security situation being the primary reasons for the delay in implementing the project. India on Friday declined to give a clean chit to state agencies of Pakistan in the case of January 2-5 terror attack on an airbase at Pathankot in Punjab. A day after National Investigation Agency chief Sharad Kumar created a flutter by ruling out role of Pakistan governments agencies in the terror attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot, New Delhi went into a damage-control mode. There is no question of a clean chit or any clarification. Investigation is on, the Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju told journalists. The Ministry of External Affairs issued a statement pointing out that the investigations into the attacks were going on both in India and in Pakistan. At this stage, we await further response and information from Pakistan. It would be injudicious to speculate in this situation, MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup said. Swarup noted that the involvement of Pakistans nationals in the attack on the airbase was an accepted fact. The row started after the NIA chief gave an interview to a TV channel. No. So far, no evidence to show that the Pakistan government or Pakistani government agency was helping Jaish-e- Mohammed (JeM) or Masood Azhar or his aides to carry out Pathankot attack, Kumar told the TV channel, when he was asked about the role of state actors of Pakistan. The NIA on Friday issued a statement strongly refuting the observation attributed to its chief regarding investigations into the attack in Pathankot. The probe agency said that Kumars statement had been misquoted. I would remind you that investigations are ongoing. Foreign Secretary (S Jaishankar) had conveyed to his Pakistani counterpart when they met in New Delhi in April that it was time for review of progress in investigation in the attack after return of Pakistans JIT (Joint Investigation Team), which had gathered all evidence that it had wanted when it visited India, said the MEA official spokesperson.He said that enough information had also been provided to Pakistani authorities through two Letters Rogatory to conduct investigation in Pakistan. Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani on Friday announced approval of three new model degree colleges and higher education infrastructure development projects worth Rs 48 crore in 10 states under the Rashtriya Uchchattar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA), launched by the previous government in 2013. Of the three model colleges approved under the scheme, one will be set up in Andhra Pradesh while other two in Chhattisgarh and Odisha each at an estimated cost of Rs 12 crore. Proposals for infrastructure development grants were approved for state higher educational institutions in Punjab, Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir and Sikkim. The ministry also approved grants for Telangana governments project on creation of a digital gender atlas for advancing womens education This is manifestation of cooperative federalism that our prime minister (Narendra Modi speaks of, Smriti said, while presenting a report card of her ministry on completion of two-years of the Modi government. The event to announce the approval of the project was webcast live. Senior officials of the 10 states, leaders of ruling parties in the respective states, teachers and students participated in the digital launch of the RUSA projects through video conferencing. About three lakh students from across the country as well as some academicians from the UK and US are watched us live, a senior official of the ministry said. The erstwhile government of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) had rolled out RUSA in October 2013 to overhaul the higher education system in the states through strategic funding with an estimated outlay of Rs 98,134 crore for 12th and 13th 5 year plan period. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, however, has allocated Rs 1,300 crore to RUSA for 2016-17. The annual budget for the scheme was Rs 1,155 crore in last fiscal. Smriti said more projects will be approved to support states bring quality in their higher educational event higher education. Under RUSA, the curriculum in social sciences, sciences, mathematics and engineering will be upgraded and internationalised, she said. Experts from the University of Edinburgh, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, University of Pennsylvania, UC Berkeley, University of Washington and University of Georgia Tech have agreed to extend their support in upgrading of higher education curriculum in India at the initiative of HRD Ministry, she added. Later holding a press conference, Smriti listed various other initiatives taken by her ministry in last two years, announcing that ministry will extend the Padhe Bharat, Badhe Bharat scheme to Class III from this year as the programme which aimed at improving learning out comes of class I and Class II students of schools had yielded encouraging results since it was rolled out. Triumph Motorcycles India, which commenced sales in India almost 30 months ago, is aiming to be among the top two players in the superbike category above 500 cc. We now have 15 products across brands and have sold 3,000 bikes so far. Our aim is to be among the top two players in the superbike category above 500 cc, Triumph Motorcycles India managing director Vimal Sumbly said. The company also plans to have 20 dealerships across the country by 2020, Sumbly added. Triumph Motorcycles India is a subsidiary of the iconic British motorcycle manufacturer and caters to Indian customers through its 12 dealerships in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Indore, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kochi. The company has a CKD facility in India. Triumph Motorcycles India has one of the largest portfolio across superbike categories of classics, cruisers, roadsters, adventure and super-sports in the country. Meanwhile, the company launched the new Triumph Thruxton R in the country at a price of Rs 10.9 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi). The all-new Thruxton R is powered by a 1,200 cc Thruxton spec engine. The Portland public schools failed to disclose that the drinking water at dozens of school buildings had elevated lead levels, the Williamette Week reports . District tests conducted from 2010 to 2012 found that 47 district buildings had lead levels that exceeded national guidelines, according to a database obtained by the newspaper. After the paper emailed those test results to district leaders, the district shut down drinking fountains at all of its schools for the remainder of the school year. The revelation has sparked outrage in the 46,000-student district and raised questions about accountability. Superintendent Carole Smith, the districts chief operating officer, and five school board members told Williamette Week that they were not aware of the test results. The districts environmental director did not respond to questions from the newspaper. Portland school board chairman Tom Koehler told Williamette Week that he wants an outside entity to review how the district handles lead testing. Superintendent Smith said she also wants an outside review to identify lapses in judgment, protocol, and communication, the newspaper reported. But some district parents were already calling for Smiths ouster before the latest development. For two months, Smith failed to inform students, staff, and parents that tests conducted in March confirmed high levels of lead in water from sinks and fountains. The Oregonian first reported the test results in late May. District leaders are now working to coordinate on-site blood lead level screening next month for students at the affected schools, The Oregonian reported. The elevated lead levels like those found in Portland have brought new concerns about testing requirements for such contaminants and about whether similar discoveries may emerge elsewhere, particularly in urban districts where buildings tend to be older, my colleague Denisa Superville wrote in March. Lead poisoning could have lifelong consequences, especially for young children. Research has tied high levels of lead in blood to learning disabilities, poor classroom performance, impaired growth, and even hearing loss. The number of districts facing the lead threat continue to emerge. In Chicago, water will be tested at all the citys public schools after initial tests at an elementary school uncovered elevated levels of the toxic metal in three water fountains. Related Stories After Flint, New Scrutiny of Schools Drinking Water Lead Levels Force Shutdown of Newark Water Fountains Water Contamination Raises Health Concern for Flint Students In a tragic incident, at least 17 people were killed in a multiple collision involving a lorry, a bus and a car at Melumalai in Krishnagiri district on Friday evening. Police headquarters here said the deceased included the drivers of the lorry and the bus and about 30 others were injured. Most of the deceased were travelling in the bus, which was carrying more than 40 passengers. The death toll might go up as the condition of some of the injured was said to be critical. Some of the badly injured were shifted to hospitals in Bengaluru for advanced treatment. Police said the bus was proceeding to Hosur from Krishnagiri and in the opposite direction, the lorry was proceeding to Krishnagiri from Hosur, when the accident occurred. The lorry driver, while negotiating a curve on the Krishnagiri-Melumalai Highway, lost control after one of the tyres got burst. The lorry jumped the road divider and rammed into the bus coming from the opposite direction. Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa announced a financial assistance of Rs 1,00,000 to the families of the dead and Rs 50,000 to those who were seriously injured. Four injured in the accident have been rushed to Sparsh Hospitals in Electronic City.All of them are in stable condition and have only sustained minor injuries. "They have scratches on the face and simple fractures. None are in the ICU," said Dr Shanu Patil, medical director of the hospital. All four are from Tamil Nadu. At a time when violence has engulfed the city of Mathura, BJP MP Hema Malinis move to post pictures of the shooting of her upcoming movie has put her in a tight spot. The actor-politician represents Mathura in the Lok Sabha. Though Hema deleted the pictures and said she was upset by the news, she was trolled on social media for being indifferent to her constituency in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh. In a series of tweets, the actor had shared photos of her enjoying a boat ride. Shooting at Madh island for Ek Thi Rani - a film based on the life of H H Vijaya Raje Scindia revived after many years. I play the title role, the caption read. The MP also hoped for an early release of the film on Scindia, a prominent Jana Sangh leader and founding member of the BJP. On realising her photographs were politically incorrect, she tweeted: "I just came back from Mathura and got the news of the violence that has taken place there in which policemen have lost their lives. So so upset by the news from a place which is so dear to me. Will go there again if my presence is required. My heart goes out to the bereaved, and added that she would go to her constituency soon. An embarrassed BJP came to her defence, with spokesperson Sambit Patra saying Hema would visit the temple town. "As far as the issue of Hema Malini reaching Mathura is concerned, I am sure she will reach soon... Lets not divert the issue as to when she will be reaching Mathura. The major issue is law and order, which is a state subject. The chief minister (Akhilesh Yadav) has to take stock of the law and order situation," Patra said. The BJP, meanwhile, deputed national secretary Shrikant Sharma to visit Mathura and submit a report to party chief Amit Shah. Senior officers of Bengaluru city police on Friday conducted separate parades and later heard grievances of the constables in order to prevent them from participating in the proposed mass casual leave protest on Saturday. Parades are organised every Friday and the officers used the opportunity and held separate grievances meeting after the parade. They promised constables that measures would be initiated to fulfil their long standing demands. Additional Commissioners KSR Charan Reddy, P Harishekharan, K V Sharath Chandra and R Hithendra conducted meetings after the parades at CAR grounds at Sampigehalli, Thanisandra, Adugodi, Madivala and Chamarajpet. They also visited police quarters at various places and took stock of the living conditions there. The officers requested the constabulary not to participate in the protest and uphold the reputation of the uniformed service. They told them that the government has assured immediate measures to redress their grievances. The civil society is sympathetic towards the constabulary which is the backbone of the police department. Always work for the safety of public and property, the officers said. Hundreds of constables attended the meetings and submitted memoranda seeking hike in salaries, better working atmosphere, regular weekly offs and proper implementation of welfare schemes like Arogya Bhagya and canteen facility. Sharathchandra and Harishekharan visited quarters at Magadi Road and Pulakeshinagar and heard the problems aired by families of constables. There are some problems regarding water supply, drainage and sanitation. I have listed the problems and will forward the same to police commissioner for action. The women were bit agitated. We convinced them about the commitment of the department for the welfare of constables, Sharathchandra told Deccan Herald. Harishekharan said: There are problems in some quarters in Pulakeshinagar constructed about 40 years ago. I have decided to conduct Swach Quarters Abhiyan and many women in the quarters welcomed the decision. They have promised that they would not be protesting on Saturday. Charan Reddy and Hithendra said that a parade was conducted at CAR ground in Sampigehalli and constables expressed solidarity with senior officers and the department. The Sri Ranganathaswami temple in Srirangapatna has become richer by thousands of crores, as recent findings have concluded that it owns 880 acres of land in five villages of Bengaluru South taluk. Situated on the banks of River Cauvery in Mandya district, the temple gave Srirangapatna town its name and is a popular pilgrimage centre. The temples fortunes soared after a Bengalurean named Mahendra Javaraiah suggested in 2015 that it owns land worth Rs 1,500 crore in Bengaluru. Surprisingly, even the Muzrai Department was unaware of the land owned by the temple until then. Major portions of the land, however, have been encroached upon. The department found the temple indeed owns 880 acres and 37 guntas of land in five villages in Tavarakere hobli, Bengaluru South taluk. The land was donated to it through a Trust Deed by Dwarakabai, a resident of Malleswaram, Bengaluru, in 1937. It is said that 285 acres and 29 guntas at Cholanayakanahalli, 89 acres 36 guntas at Doddamaranahalli, 265 acres six guntas at Peddanapalya, 95 acres at Byalalu, and 145 acres six guntas at Kurubarahalli (Kadukarenahalli), belong to the temple. It was also found that vast tracts of land were transferred to others around 40 years ago and buildings have come up on them. The RTCs of a few survey numbers have been procured online. While some are in the name of others, some remain in the temples name. Ranganathaswami Temple Executive Officer Dhanalakshmi has written to the Special Deputy Commissioner in Bengaluru, requesting that khatha should not be issued to the land in survey numbers 47, 51, 53, 54 at Byalalu village; 56 to 63 in Cholanayakanahalli; 28 to 32 in Doddamaranahalli; 7 to 11 in Peddanapalya, and 117, 154 to 157, and 161 to 164 in Kurubarahalli. Mandya Deputy Commissioner Dr Ajay Nagabushan M N wrote to his Bengaluru Urban counterpart, citing irregularities in the transfer of land donated to the temple. He told Deccan Herald the temple land was being identified and would be fenced thereafter. A day after two news channels showed four Karnataka MLAs reportedly discussing sale of votes for the Rajya Sabha polls, there were varied reactions from parties and politicians. The JD(S) on Friday demanded that the entire sting incident be probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). While JD(S) leader H D Revanna demanded a CBI probe, his father and former prime minister H D Deve Gowda alleged that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was behind the incident. Gowda said it was a conspiracy hatched to finish off his party. Gowda said he could not rule out the involvement of two MLAs from his own party, Zameer Ahmed Khan and N Chaluvarayaswamy (both whom have fallen out with the JD-S), in the conspiracy. JD(S) spokesperson Ramesh Babu said the Election Commission of India should immediately postpone the polls and order an inquiry. Two of the legislators shown in the sting operation are from the JD(S) G T Deve Gowda and Mallikarjun Khuba. Speaking to reporters in Kalaburagi, BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa alleged that it was the Congress which was trying to buy votes from MLAs. More skeletons in the Congresss cupboard will tumble out in the coming days, he said. Former Deputy Chief Minister R Ashoka said Legislative Assembly Speaker Kagodu Thimmappa should take cognisance of the incident and initiate action against the legislators. Sting op preplanned:HDK Former chief minister and JD(S) state president H D Kumaraswamy has termed the sting operation on RS polls pre-planned. Speaking to reporters at Managuli in Vijayapura taluk on Friday, Kumaraswamy said that the episode had come to light only after the meeting between legislator Zameer Ahmed and Digvijaya Singh, who is in charge of Congress affairs in Karnataka. We had written to the Election Commission of India last week itself about possibilities of malpractice in the elections. But, the incident has come to light now. There are chances of the ECI deferring the elections, considering the issue seriously, he said, adding that all the MLAs of the party were taken into confidence while writing to the ECI. Fuel supply in the city will be affected from June 6 as the tank truck crew attached to the Devangonthi terminal on the city outskirts, from where all the oil companies dispense fuel, have decided to go on an indefinite strike from Monday demanding better wages and facilities at the terminal. Karnataka Petroleum Transports Drivers and Cleaners Association president Sri Ramu said the strike would hit fuel supply to Bengaluru, Mysuru, Chamarajanagar, Mandya and surrounding districts. Bangalore Petroleum Dealers Association president B R Ravindranath said the association will support the strike. Ramu said: Last month when lorry owners and truck driver associations held a flash strike, the companies gave us an undertaking that a panel comprising distributors, drivers and lorry owners would be formed. But till date nothing has happened. The continuing debate over vouchers is bound to become even hotter after investigators reported contradictory results about test scores. Its little wonder that confusion reigns. Public school students who used vouchers to attend private schools in Louisiana and Indiana scored significantly worse on reading and math tests compared with similar students who remained in public schools (On negative effects of vouchers , Brookings, May 26). But researchers at the University of Arkansas who looked at 19 studies of 11 voucher programs from Milwaukee, Wisc. to Delhi, India found that voucher students posted statistically significant improvement in math and reading test scores - the equivalent of several months of additional learning (Vouching for Achievement , The Wall Street Journal, May 27). Which side is right? Until now, most people have assumed that private schools provided a better education than public schools. But a public school student in Louisiana who was at the 50th percentile in math slipped to the 34th percentile after one year in a private school. A student at the 50th percentile in reading declined to the 46th percentile. The results were impressive because private schools with more applicants than seats used lotteries to choose applicants randomly. The performance of those who won (the treatment group) was then compared with the performance of those who lost (the control group). Moreover, students applying for a voucher were below average for the state, thereby negating the assertion that self-selection was at work. In contrast, researchers delving into 19 studies of 11 voucher programs found that voucher students increased their reading scores by about 0.27 standard deviations and their math scores by about 0.15 standard deviations. In more understandable terms, that meant the voucher students benefited from the equivalent of several months of additional learning than non-voucher students. The 19 studies all compared a treatment group (voucher students) with a control group (non-voucher students). Neither sides evidence will end the debate over vouchers, nor should it. Test scores are not the only factor that parents take into account in making a choice. If they believe that traditional public schools are shortchanging their children for any reason, they have the right to send them elsewhere, even when test scores tell a different story. Of course, they have always had this right by paying for private and religious schools. What is different today, however, is that public funds can be used for that purpose as a result of the U.S. Supreme Courts ruling in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris. The high court held that as long as public money was given directly to families, they were free to choose the kind of schooling they alone believed was best suited for their children, be it private, religious, online, or at home. NY Nurses Indicted for Endangering Disabled Patient You don't usually think of nurses as criminals but sometimes their actions can be so cruel as to rise to a crime. That is what grand jurors in New York decided when they indicted two nurses this week for ignoring a bleeding disabled patient who fell, leaving him crawling around in distress for more than ten minutes. The nurses are accused of having ignored the patient and failing to treat him, reports the New York Daily News. Each could face four years in prison if convicted on the charges. The Charge The nurses were charged with a class E felony for endangering the welfare of an incompetent or physically disabled person. The statute in question, New York Penal Law Section 260.25, provides as follows: A person is guilty of endangering the welfare of an incompetent or physically disabled person in the first degree when he knowingly acts in a manner likely to be injurious to the physical, mental or moral welfare of a person who is unable to care for himself or herself because of physical disability, mental disease or defect. Based on the indictment, it seems that New York jurors agree that leaving a disabled man to bleed on the ground after a fall "is likely to be injurious to the physical, mental or moral welfare" of the patient, who was unable to care for himself. The alleged victim's name has not been released and we know only that he is 51-years-old. Endangering Patients The nurses have both been fired from their jobs at Peninsula Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Far Rockaway after their actions, or inaction more precisely, was caught on camera. Reportedly, the resident fell in front of nurse Esohe Agbonkpolor and hit his head. She is said to have seen this and left him bleeding on the floor. The other defendant, Funmilola Taiwo, was also on duty at the time and allegedly ignored the man writhing in pain. Taiwo was also charged with falsifying business documents to hide unspecified crimes, according to the New York Post. State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman had this to say about the case: "The complete and utter lack of care allegedly displayed by these two nurses is shocking." It is interesting to note that the person who came and saved the disabled patient, dragging him back to his room, is also a worker accused of neglect. Emmanuael Ufot previously pleaded guilty to neglect charges and is awaiting sentencing -- his willingness to testify in this case against his colleagues is likely a factor that the judge will consider favorable when imposing his sentence. Accused? If you have been accused of a crime, don't delay. Get help with your defense today. Many criminal defense attorneys consult for free or a minimal fee and will be happy to discuss your case. Related Resources: Nearly a decade after helming the Oscar-winning indie 'Boys Don't Cry,' Kimberly Peirce finally got a chance to direct her first studio film, Paramount's coming-home drama, 'Stop-Loss.' Peirce and co-scenarist Mark Richard's script chronicles the travails of three closely knit friends from the time they fight together as US Army soldiers in Iraq during the Second Gulf War to their return home to a lower-middle class community in Texas. Peirce directs a very powerful drama with Ryan Phillippe, Channing Tatum, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt delivering some of their best work. Although generally well received by critics, 'Stop-Loss' was not a box-office success, probably due to US involvement in two wars at the time. The film deserves a much wider audience on Blu-ray. After surviving a heavy firefight in Tikrit, Staff Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), Sgt. Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum), and PFC Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) return home to an unspecified town in Texas where they have trouble reintegrating themselves into society. Brandon believes that his tour of duty is over so he becomes flummoxed when he learns that he has been reenlisted into the First Brigade for another combat tour. (He is a victim of the government's stop-loss policy, also known as a 'Back Door Draft.') Brandon disagrees with the decision and facing time in the stockade, he flees by stealing the jeep of his best friend, Steve. Brandon is declared AWOL and branded a fugitive. Accompanied by Steve's fiancee, Michelle Overton (Abbie Cornish), Brandon hits the road for Washington D.C. where he hopes to set the record straight with Texas Senator Orton Worrell (Josef Sommer). The film shows the psychological wounds the soldiers have wrought on their families. For example, Brandon's parents have mixed feelings about their son's options. Should he travel to D.C. and protest this policy in front of the senator? On the other hand, should he stay home and stand trial at a court-martial? In addition, Michelle is distraught because Steve has been emotionally and physically abusive to her. Late one evening, Steve digs a 'ranger's grave' in the front yard where he camps out with his gun. He acts as if he is awaiting arrival of the enemy inside a foxhole or behind a bunker. Moreover, Tommy comes home a drunk and Jeanie (Mamie Gummer), his newly wed, kicks him out, triggering a downward spiral for the young private. Ultimately, Peirce's work is about the perils that test and may tear apart the bonds of friendship between Brandon, Steve, and Tommy. The three soldiers grapple with significant PTSD issues. They have brought the war home with them. Brandon and Steve's conflicting views about military service clash in a climatic cemetery scene. Everyday settings become indistinguishable from the locales they inhabited in Iraq. While sitting on a diving board at a motel, for instance, Brandon thinks that Pvt. Rico Rodriguez (Victor Rasuk) is lying face down at the bottom of the pool so he jumps in to save him (or does he?). Peirce and her sound editors also utilize displaced diegetic sound in dramatic ways to accent Brandon's PTSD. They juxtapose sounds from Brandon's war experiences with various scenes of him on the home front. While 'Stop-Loss' includes jarring images of carnage and maimed soldiers in a veteran's hospital, it is that unique antiwar film that may also be considered a pro-soldier film. Brandon and Steve have different opinions about soldiering but they are joined together in honor for their country. The concluding scene befits the film's tagline: 'The bravest place to stand is by each other's side.' On May 26 the Cuba and Its Current Challenges event was held in New York, organized by the Cuba Posible Laboratorio de Ideas and sponsored by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) at a facility belonging to the Open Society Foundation and with funding provided by it. In four panels, made up mainly of Cubans, both living on the island and forming part of the diaspora, aspirations for development through 2030 were discussed, along with the quality of social change, welfare, equity and justice, how global political figures view Cuba, and, finally, if the alleged changes in Cuba hinge on power, knowledge or the agents involved. The most interesting aspect of the event was its diversity, with divergent and even conflicting points of view expressed by those who participated. Before it had even begun, however, the regime's official blogosphere (the only one officially permitted) had already condemned the forum. Diversity and divergent ideas have always been anathema to dictatorial systems of thought. The WOLA, a self-financed organization with a long record of struggle in favor of lifting the embargo and cooperating to improve relations between Cuba and the US, was dismissed for being as "dangerous" as the Open Society Foundation, the ultra-powerful liberal foundation created and headed up by George Soros. With the arrogant language that characterizes all totalitarian thinking, Cuba's digital firing squads - avengers in the shadows - saw in the participants, sponsors and financiers "CIA agents," "specialists in subversion" and "old friends of the CANF (Cuban American National Foundation.)" Thus, they were able to tar with the same brush the likes of Carmelo Mesa-Lago, the most important living Cuban economist, who lives in exile; Rafael Hernandez, director of the magazine Temas and a defender of the regime, who lives on the island; and Carlos Saladrigas, a Cuban-American millionaire businessman, who, after having fought the regime head-on, now promotes cooperation with the Government to promote investments in the island and improve the lives of his compatriots. Also suffering digital assassination - never in open, clean debates featuring fair, equal conditions were groups and people living on the island, who defended the lifting of the embargo, and dialogue. The execution of prestige knows no ethical or political limits, even including the three ambassadors participating, among them the American Jeffrey DeLaurentis. All were accused of meddling in the internal affairs of the island when, one by one, before sharing any ideas, they recognized that they were constrained precisely by their roles as diplomats. Everything seems to indicate, based on the exaggerations, lies and paranoia of those present in New York, that more than medals and awards are necessary. We can agree or disagree with the positions of Cuba Posible, derided by all sides with all kinds of epithets. But what one can hardly accuse the group headed by Roberto Veiga and Lenier Gonzalez of is leaning to one side. Perhaps in its insular idiosyncrasy lies the dilemma. Cuba Posible has opted to take a line that seeks the center, and many believe, on the island and off it, that this is impossible. The center for them is suspect, betrayal and apostasy. Cuba Posible proposes a Cuba beyond exclusionary ideologies, and that is unthinkable to some because there is no room in their minds for ideas that are not their own, for the social and private spheres to coexist at the same time, for State control and the entrepreneur. Cuba Posible proposes a Cuba like the group assembled in New York: as diverse in its ideas as in its races, genders and countries. And that, for others, is impossible because to think about Cuba one must live "inside," or as if he lived there. Cuba Posible was in New York, the same city where the Cuban flag was designed, and where Jose Marti lived half of his life, and wrote almost all his work, and where Father Felix Varela was on the verge of becoming an auxiliary bishop. The city that served to raise funds for the wars of independence and the struggle against the Batista dictatorship. But for certain people New York is nothing more than the nest of the imperial eagle and its hegemonic ambitions. And, as the media holds power, thus far deploying an army of digital guerrillas, it is hard for everyday Cubans to see New York as anything else. We do not know the "past that awaits" Cuba Posible. Most likely, it will implode, as there is enough dynamite placed at its bases to destroy it from within. The order just needs to be given. An order that suspended, some believe, because Cuba Posible has ties to important businessmen, figures on the left, and men and foundations with a long humanitarian tradition that might be useful given the looming chaos. The challenges facing Cuba Posible are the same ones always facing Cubans: overcoming personal interests, those craving recognition and dollars, and a Cuba embodied by men whose plans forsake the common good. The challenge facing Cuba Posible today, to avoid chaos and bloodshed in Cuba, may be the same as that facing Father Felix Varela and Jose Marti in the 19th century: the irreconcilable differences between Cubans themselves. Thus, the struggle of any reconciliation project is not only against a ruthless power, but also a known and all-too-close enemy. The real, very tough battle will always be against Cubans themselves: hidden in the shadows, collaborators with those in power, the same people who let the one who taught us to think die of sorrow in St. Augustine, and used the apostle as a target in Dos Rios. Camera is one of the primary requirements for people who want to invest in a flagship class smartphone. It is almost the middle of 2016 and most smartphone makers have already launched their flagship phones in India. After Samsung, HTC and Xiaomi, LG has joined the ranks, launched the LG G5 today. While the phone itself performs quite well and offers all the features you may require from a flagship device, we were intrigued by the new dual camera setup. This comparison aims to find out how it fares against its other flagship counterparts. Before we begin, you should know that we are comparing only the primary cameras on the three phones. The secondary wide angle 8MP fish-eye camera in the LG G5 will be left out for now. We will be adding a few images from this camera, for your consideration. You can learn all about this camera in the LG G5 review. Macro shot in natural light The images you see below has been taken in normal lighting conditions. Here, the Samsung Galaxy S7 and the LG G5 keep the ISO less than 75, the Xiaomi Mi 5, on the other hand, takes the ISO count up to 166, and overexposes the image a little. Cropping the image to 100 percent, we noticed that the noise levels in the Xiaomi Mi 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S7 are higher compared to the LG G5. Further, we find that LG G5 has a better colour saturation than the other two phone. Its worth noting that we have taken better shots with the Galaxy S7 Edge, than the Galaxy S7 unit we have. This is a result of multiple camera sensor vendors that Samsung employs. (Click on a cropped image to see the full size image) 100 percent crop of the image taken by LG G5 100 percent crop of the image taken by Samsung Galaxy S7 100 percent crop of the image taken by Xiaomi Mi 5 Normal Outdoor shot Images taken by the LG G5 in normal outdoor setting under sunlight look warmer, compared to the images taken by the Xiaomi Mi 5 and the Galaxy S7. Although, at 100 percent crop, the level of detail seems to be better on the Samsung Galaxy S7. The images taken by the LG G5 look a bit overexposed, compared to the S7. While the detailing is also good on the Xiaomi Mi 5, the image look oversaturated compared to the other two. (Click on a image to see the full size image) (L to R) - LG G5, Samsung Galaxy S7, Xiaomi Mi 5 Indoors shot in white light As we moved indoors, and light deteriorates, the LG G5 and Xiaomi Mi 5 tend to lag behind the Samsung Galaxy S7. Under fluorescent light, the Samsung Galaxy S7s camera begins to shine. The camera algorithm used by the this camera is offers better colour saturation as well as a more detailed image. Check out the 100 percent cropped image given below. The details on Pagan Mins hair on the Far Cry 4 poster. (Click on a cropped image to see the full size image) 100 percent crop of the image taken by LG G5 100 percent crop of the image taken by Samsung Galaxy S7 100 percent crop of the image taken by Xiaomi Mi 5 Images taken with a single light source To find out, how the three phones would perform under dim lighting, we clicked the images below with a single white light source. The Samsung S7 aces this test as well, with controlled colour reproduction, and lower noise levels. In comparison, the LG G5 toned down the colours, making the image look slightly cooler. While the focusing seems fine, there is much background noise compared to the Samsung phone. The Xiaomi Mi 5 does a decent job as well, and shows saturation than the LG G5. While Xiaomis camera software keeps the noise levels in check, the depth of field isn't the best. (Click on the image to see the full size image) (L to R) - LG G5, Samsung Galaxy S7, Xiaomi Mi 5 Image taken in low light As we turned the lights down further, images taken by the Samsung Galaxy S7 remain more visible and brighter, compared to the LG G5 and Xiaomi Mi 5. That said, we find that even with recorded ISO 3199, the Xiaomi Mi 5 is unable to do well. Whereas, the ISO counts jumps to 1250 on S7. At 100 percent crop, we found that images clicked by the Mi 5 are far too noisy to be used. (Click on the cropped image to see the full size image) 100 percent crop of the image taken by LG G5 100 percent crop of the image taken by Samsung Galaxy S7 100 percent crop of the image taken by Xiaomi Mi 5 On the other hand, images from the Galaxy S7 are much better. Lastly, the image taken by the LG G5 is only partially visible, but the noise levels are kept at a minimum. It is worth noting that the Samsung Galaxy S7s camera is the fastest of the lot in low light conditions, thanks to the dual-pixel mechanism. Out of the three, the LG G5 provides the most control over the camera. This gives you more granular control on how images look, if youre willing to invest the effort. The Samsung Galaxy S7 is the best of the lot, thanks to its low light prowess, while the Mi 5 is too weak here. To sum it up, the Samsung Galaxy S7 is the best camera for those shooting on auto mode, while the LG G5 is a good choice for those who have better knowledge of manual controls (it allows RAW shots as well). The Xiaomi Mi 5 is fine for its price range, but it definitely isnt amongst the best camera phones in the market today. Microsoft opens Windows Hello to use wearables as authenticators for logging in to Windows At Computex 2016, Microsoft demonstrated that users will soon be able to unlock their Windows 10 PCs by using wearables. The company demonstrated on stage how a Microsoft Band can be used to unlock a Windows 10 device. Support for wearables are being added to Windows Hello, in the upcoming Windows 10 Anniversary upgrade later this summer. Windows Hello is a framework that allows logging into devices with the use of biometric data like fingerprint, facial scan, etc. Windows Hello works on the principle of a passport, which are generated by the biometric data and helps users authenticate themselves securely, without the use of actual passwords. Microsoft also announced that wearable devices made by other companies would also be compatible with Windows Hello authentication, and not just its own. These will fall under updates made to the Windows Hello Companion Device Framework. Microsoft states that the devices, which can be used to login via Windows Hello, can also be used to log in to the Windows Store and make payments, or browse websites using these wearables. This marks a significant move away from passwords. With companies like Google also looking to phase out passwords and Yahoo! launching on-demand passwords, this comes as no surprise as many users will cherish being able to unlock their machines with smart wearables. We can expect to see more devices being launched in the future, that will be compatible with Windows 10 authentication. Police enter bank headquarters on order of Spanish judge de la Mata Spanish civil guard agents are carrying out a search in Santander Spain's central headquarters in Madrid, according to Spanish newspaper El Mundo. The bank are being investigated with regards to the HSBC money laundering involvement surrounding the Falciani list. The bank are being investigated with regards to the HSBC money laundering involvement surrounding the Falciani list The investigation is being managed by judge Jose de la Mata and the Fiscalia anti-corruption unit. The unit has issued a summons to the bank in order to gather documents relating to "certain current accounts". Because the bank did not deal with the summons, a signed document from the magistrate facilitated the search. Santander Spain have refused to comment on the issue when contacted by Bolsamania. In November 2015 the unit started to investigate the operations of HSBC in Spain after the publication of the list which contained the names of 600 Spanish account holders with an estimated value of 6 billion euros in the Swiss bank. The judge wants to determine if the bank presided over by Ana Patricia Botin collaborated in the management of the illicit funds in connection with their clients, or if they had knowledge of any wrongdoing. Last month, a controversial political machination at the top levels of Brazil's government saw the removal of its elected left-wing president, Dilma Rousseff, and her replacement with an appointed, neoliberal "interim president" President Michel Temer, who has now been convicted of committing election fraud and barred from holding elected office in Brazil for 8 years. Temer's conviction is just the latest scandal to hit his appointed government: two of his cabinet was also forced to resign immediately after they were appointed, when recordings surfaced in which they illegally plotted to obstruct the investigation into Temer's corruption. Temer's administration has pledged to impose radical austerity and sweeping sell-offs of state assets in Brazil, the world's fifth-most-populous country also one of the world's most unequal nations (the situation there may remind Americans of Michigan Republican governor Rick Snyder's unilateral removal of elected mayors from the state's overwhelming poor and black cities, and their replacement with corporate-sector "interim leaders" a situation that led shortly to the Flint lead crisis). Temer's government enjoyed cautious approval from the international community at its outset, but this is collapsing, with parliamentarians from around the world condemning the political process that put it in office as a "coup" and denying the administration legitimacy. In the scope of the scheming, corruption and illegality from this "interim" government, Temer's law-breaking is not the most severe offense. But it potently symbolizes the anti-democratic scam that Brazilian elites have attempted to perpetrate. In the name of corruption, they have removed the country's democratically elected leader and replaced her with someone who though not legally barred from being installed is now barred for 8 years from running for the office he wants to occupy. Just weeks ago, Dilma's impeachment appeared inevitable. Brazil's oligarchical media had effectively focused attention solely on her. But then, everyone started looking at who was engineering her impeachment, who would be empowered, what their motives were and everything changed. Now her impeachment, though still likely, does not look nearly as inevitable: last week, O Globo reported that 2 Senators previously in favor were now re-considering in light of "new facts" (the revealed tapes of Temer's ministers), and yesterday Folha similarly reported that numerous Senators are considering changing their minds. Notably, Brazilian media outlets stopped publishing polling data about the public's views of Temer and Dilma's impeachment. Credibility of Brazil's Interim President Collapses: Receives 8-Year Ban on Running [Glenn Greenwald/The Intercept] (Image: Michel Temer president, Mauricioomlb, CC-BY-SA) Republic of Ireland's sovereign credit rating has been affirmed at 'A+/A-1' by S&P Global Ratings , which expected the new minority government to keep pursuing open and proactive economic policies and continue fiscal consolidation. Moreover, thanks to the republic's rapid nominal gross domestic product (GDP) growth, S&P Global foresaw net general government debt falling below 80% of GDP in 2017. It noted that Ireland's recent economic performance had surpassed most euro-zone countries. "The stable outlook balances our view of upside potential for the ratings if Irelands fiscal position continues to improve against risks associated with external factors such as a potential Brexit, or weaker global demand," S&P Global said. The economic analysis did not factor a potential Brexit into the equation, but S&P Global did warn the impact of such an event on the Irish economy could likely be negative. "In terms of direct trade relationships, the UK accounts for only around 12.4% of Irish goods and 20% of Irish service exports, well below 50% levels observed when both countries joined the European Community in 1973," it said in a statement. "However, the sectors that serve the UK market are, on average, more labor intensive and any negative shocks could damage the mending Irish labor market." The ratings agency said other negative economic risks associated with a potential Brexit could include the weakening of the UK's financial service sector, with which Ireland's financial service sector was closely linked, and the potential ripple effect stemming from lower demand from the rest of the EU. "Furthermore, many aspects of Britains relationship with the EU, and therefore the UK-Irish relationship, would be unclear, increasing uncertainties related to trade and investment between the two countries. "We do not believe the potential relocation of some UK businesses to Ireland would fully offset the overall negative impact of Brexit in the short to medium term." European stocks ran into a wall of selling at the end of the week, in the form of a much weaker-than-expected reading on the state of the US Jobs market in May. US non-farm payrolls rose by a meagre 38,000 in that month, undershooting economists forecasts for a rise of 160,000 by a very wide margin. History suggests that payroll growth slowing persistently below its expansion-average points to higher risk of a recession. Since 1960, when payroll growth has dipped persistently below its recovery-period average, the US economy has more often than not found itself in an NBER-defined recession 9 to 18 months in the future, Barclayss Michael Gapen said in a research note sent to clients. A near two percentage point jump in the value of the euro against the US dollar contributed to the DJ Stoxx 600s late 0.89% slide to end the day 3.06 points lower at 341.29, Germanys DAX fell 1.03% to 10,103.26, while Frances CAC was 0.99% lower to 4,421.78. Somewhat ironically, Fridays losses in European stockmakets came close on the heels of weekly fund flow data, from EPFR and Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, which revealed the first inflow into global equities in eight weeks. Cyclicals bore the brunt of selling, with the Stoxx 600 Auto&Parts gauge finishing down by 2.38% for the day and a similar gauge for banksshares retreating 2.20%. Euro area economy stuck in low gear, Markit says On the European data front, Markits final Eurozone composite output index came in at 53.1 in May, up from the flash estimate of 52.9 and Aprils reading of 53.0. The upturn was again led by the service sector, which saw a modest growth acceleration. Manufacturing production also rose, albeit at a slightly lesser pace than the previous month. Meanwhile, the final Eurozone service business activity index printed at 53.3, up from the flash estimate and Aprils reading, both of which were 53.1. Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, said: The final PMI numbers for May have come in slightly ahead of the earlier flash readings, but still point to a Eurozone economy which seems unable to move out of low gear. The survey data are signalling a GDP rise of 0.3% in the second quarter, suggesting the growth spurt seen at the start of the year will prove frustratingly short-lived. June looks likely to prove equally disappointing, as inflows of new business slowed in May to the weakest for almost one-and-a-half years. Retail sales in the 19 countries that share the euro were stable in April from March compared with expectations of a 0.3% increase, according to Eurostat. Food, drinks and tobacco sales rose 0.5%, while non-food products remained stable and automotive fuel decreased by 0.1%. On the year, Eurozone retail sales were up 1.4%, missing forecasts of a 1.9% rise. Corporate news was thin on the ground. Oil giant BP was on the front foot after it agreed to pay $175m to settle claims by US investors that its managers lied about the size of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Stock in German power producer RWE AG tacked on 5% after analysts at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch recommended clients buy its shares. AstraZeneca was in the black after announcing the completion of its licensing agreement with Ironwood Pharmaceuticals for the exclusive US rights to the drug. French hotels group Accor was a high riser after Le Monde reported that Chinas Jin Jiang was considering upping its stake to 29%. Drugmaker AstraZeneca continued its charge of licensing its Zurampic (lesinurad) drug on Friday, with the company announcing it has completed its licensing agreement with Ironwood Pharmaceuticals for the exclusive United States rights to the drug. The FTSE 100 firm said the agreement also covered a fixed-dose combination of lesinurad and allopurinol. Zurampic is already approved in the US, in combination with a xanthine oxidase inhibitor, for the treatment of hyperuricemia associated with uncontrolled gout. The fixed-dose combination will be submitted for regulatory review in the second half of 2016, AstraZenecas board confirmed in a statement. It came a day after AstraZeneca revealed it has entered into a licensing agreement with German drug firm Grunenthal GmbH for the exclusive rights to Zurampic in Europe and Latin America. The former owners of BHS came under fire on Friday from the leader of one of Britain's biggest business lobby groups, who accused them of lamentable failures. Simon Walker, director general of the Institute of Directors (IoD) said the collapse of the department store chain could be deeply damaging to the reputation of British business. Administrators Duff & Phelps put BHS into liquidation with the immediate loss of 8,000 jobs on Thursday after failing to find a buyer for its 163 stores. A further 3,000 jobs are at risk. The chain was sold by retail tycoon Philip Green for 1 last year to Dominic Chappell, a three-time bankrupt and former racing car driver. It went into administration in April with a pension fund deficit of 571m. "We spend a lot of time agonising about the loss of trust in the business community, and I think we can see why this is. I think there is a lamentable failure of behaviour and there are a lot of questions that need to be asked," Walker told BBC radio. Philip Green is a very high-profile business leader. He is the person who is on the front page with Kate Moss on his arm and who has a 100m superyacht and so on. When someone like this ends up behaving like this, people think thats how business is, and its not. The majority of business leaders are people who are more likely to have mortgaged their homes to keep their company going than to own this kind of lavish thing. Walker added that Green had "moral responsibilities" towards members of the BHS pension fund. His attack is unusual as the IoD is normally a champion of business. It is not the first time Walker has criticised Green over his stewardship of BHS. Asked if he could defend Green's handling of the company, Walker told the BBC: "No, I can't." "You can't just get yourself off the hook by selling a business to someone who's been bankrupt three times and is a former racing driver with no retail experience," he said. "It's the manner of its failure and the fact that it ends up dumping huge liabilities on to the taxpayer that is a problem, and it is the lack of due diligence in selling it (to Chappell)... something's wrong." The collapse of the 98 year-old store has led to a joint parliamentary inquiry by the Work & Pensions and Business select committees. Green and Chappell have been summoned to give evidence in the next two weeks. Former City Minister and ex chairman of Marks & Spencer Lord Paul Myners also went on the attack, saying Green should remove himself from the head of the creditors' queue. There is no love lost between the two. Myners fought off a 9bn takeover bid for M&S in 2004. "He could give up that security and make sure the money is used for the benefit of the employees and pensioners and not claim to be in the front of the queue," Myners told the BBC. He also questioned the decision to sell the business to Chappell. "Sir Philip Green must take some of the responsibility, not least of all selling the business to Mr Dominic Chappell, which is rather like giving the keys of your car to a five-year-old, and then allowing the five-year-old to go off and crash the car." Green, who is no stranger to publicity, complained after Frank Field, head of the Work & Pensions committee, called for him to be stripped of his knighthood if he did not help make up the pension fund deficit. The flamboyant businessman said Field should step down as he was clearly prejudiced. But Walker, writing on the IoD's Director website last month, said Greens "remonstration" that two parliamentary committees investigating him were conducting a 'trial by media' was particularly ironic given his constant seeking of the limelight, often flanked by celebrity friends. Japanese carmaker Suzuki had its offices raided by the countrys transport ministry on Friday, after the company became the latest manufacturer to admit to improper fuel testing of its vehicles. The companys officers in Hamamatsu, 160 miles southwest of Tokyo, were visited by suited officials who said they were looking for any documents relating to the testing. We are raiding Suzukis headquarters to confirm the information that the company supplied, a ministry official told Agence France-Presse. It came weeks after officials also raided the offices of rival Mitsubishi Motors, after it too admitted to using improper fuel testing methods. Since revealing the claims, Suzuki has maintained that it never meant to deceive motorists, but instead linked the issue to the culling of testing resources after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The increased workload of developing new models and engines [after Lehmans collapse triggered the global financial crisis] led Suzuki to be unable to allocate sufficient manpower for the test, the company said on Tuesday. Suzuki has confirmed that 26 of its models are involved, with more than two million cars - all sold domestically in Japan - affected. 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. How are Black residents here doing compared to rest of U.S.? news If you're a Californian registered Independent/No Party Preference, you are entitled to cast a ballot in the Democratic primary on June 7, but some Orange County poll workers report that they've been instructed to give independent voters "provisional ballots," which, in practice, are rarely if ever counted. Here's Greg Palast: Palast: If you don't know what a provisional ballot is, you are probably white. I call them placebo ballots. They were created by George Bush and Karl Rove after they swiped Florida in 2000. The Congressional Black Caucus was very upset that people were not able to vote because they were falsely removed from the voter rolls for all kinds of cockamamie reasons. So they said, "If your name is not on the voter rolls, you should still be able to vote provisionally. They can check your records and count your vote later so you don't lose your vote." They passed the provisional ballots through the Help America Vote Act. You can imagine, Dennis, what happens when George Bush says he's going to help us vote. People won the right to a provisional ballot, but we didn't win the right to have them counted. They rarely are. That's why I call them placebo ballots. They say you can't vote here, but you can fill out a provisional ballot. You think if you filled out a provisional ballot, sign it and stick it in the envelope, it's counted. It isn't. The chances they'll count it are minimal. It's like voting, but it's not voting. What does that have to do with California? I am currently reporting from Southern California, and there's an Ashley Beck, who is a poll worker in conservative Orange County. She was being trained with other poll workers, and they were given some very strange information. In the California primary, the independent voters registered as NPP, or no party preference, can vote in the Democratic primary. They can ask for a ballot and they are allowed to vote. The Orange County poll workers were told if NPP voters ask for a Democratic Party ballot to vote for Bernie or Hillary, they are not to be given regular ballots, but provisional ballots. This shook up Ashley: "I was told that all NPP voters are to be given provisional ballots. I was bothered by that, because I was always told that NPP voters in California can vote for Democrats and their vote would be counted. I was a little worried that he was telling all 18 of us poll workers to give all NPP voters provisional ballots. We all know what happens most of the time with provisional ballots. They are not being counted." They are not being counted. Here's the trick: Overwhelmingly, all polls show that NPP, or independent voters, are Bernie Sanders voters. Regular registered Democrats tend to slightly favor Hillary Clinton in the polls. So if you knock out the NPP voters by giving them placebo ballots provisional ballots that's one way to steal the primary in California on June 7. Former Stanford University athlete Brock Allen Turner, 20, raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. Prosecutors wanted him put away for 6 years, but the judge, Aaron Persky, gave him 6 months to avoid being unnecessarily harsh on the boy. He'll be out in a few weeks. After a jury convicted Turner of sexually penetrating an intoxicated and unconscious person with a foreign object, prosecutors asked a judge to sentence him to six years in California prison. Probation officials had recommended the significantly lighter penalty of six months in county jail, according to the San Jose Mercury News. The judge, Aaron Perksy, cited Turner's age and lack of criminal history as factors in his decision, saying, "A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him I think he will not be a danger to others." This was described as a "brazen" attack: he was physically forced off of his victim, then chased down and detained by passers-by until police arrived. Yet this column, by Scott Herhold, was the sort of coverage he enjoyed in the press: Turner was rightfully convicted. I wrote a column earlier this year praising the two Stanford students, both from Sweden, who interrupted the assault and chased the drunken athlete down. But probation officials, who see hundreds of less remorseful defendants, had it right. Turner should be given six months in county jail. He is not, as the prosecution has it, "a continued threat to the community." Why do I say that? The probation people cite his lack of a criminal record and what they see as genuine remorse. His attorneys have argued that the ex-swimmer has a record of real accomplishment. A real record of accomplishment indeed. Her suffering is as invisible to men like this as the costs of his crimeand it always will be. The district attorney issued a press release to express disgust at the sentence. "The punishment does not fit the crime," the District Attorney said. "The predatory offender has failed to take responsibility, failed to show remorse and failed to tell the truth. The sentence does not factor in the true seriousness of this sexual assault, or the victim's ongoing trauma. Campus rape is no different than off-campus rape. Rape is rape. And I will prosecute it as such." The sentence follows a trial and a jury's verdict in late March that found Turner guilty of three felony charges: assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated/unconscious person, penetration of an intoxicated person, and penetration of an unconscious person. After midnight, on January 18, 2015, Turner was seen by two witnesses sexually assaulting the unconscious victim, who was laying on the ground behind a dumpster on Stanford campus. When they called out, Turner ran away. The two tackled him and held him until police officers arrived. Evidence showed that the victim was so heavily intoxicated that she did not regain consciousness until hours later. Here's the impact statement that Emily Doe, a pseudonym, offered the courtand which Judge Persky ignored. I thought there's no way this is going to trial; there were witnesses, there was dirt in my body, he ran but was caught. He's going to settle, formally apologize, and we will both move on. Instead, I was told he hired a powerful attorney, expert witnesses, private investigators who were going to try and find details about my personal life to use against me, find loopholes in my story to invalidate me and my sister, in order to show that this sexual assault was in fact a misunderstanding. That he was going to go to any length to convince the world he had simply been confused. You ran because you said you felt scared. I argue that you were scared because you'd be caught, not because you were scared of two terrifying Swedish grad students. The idea that you thought you were being attacked out of the blue was ludicrous. That it had nothing to do with you being on top my unconscious body. You were caught red handed, with no explanation. When they tackled you why didn't say, "Stop! Everything's okay, go ask her, she's right over there, she'll tell you." I mean you had just asked for my consent, right? I was awake, right? When the policeman arrived and interviewed the evil Swede who tackled you, he was crying so hard he couldn't speak because of w hat he'd seen. "I don't want my body anymore," she said. "I wanted to take off my body like a jacket and leave it at the hospital with everything else." Subscriber content preview Greg DiLoreto of the American Society of Civil Engineers said another $105 billion must be spent to modernize water and wastewater treatment facilities. By DAVID WARREN Associated Press DALLAS A glass of drinking water hasn't been easy to come by lately for the 320,000 people in Corpus Christi. The Texas Gulf Coast city has issued three orders in less than a year telling residents to boil their water to ensure it's safe to consume, including a two-week order this month that sparked outrage, contributed to the city manager's resignation and renewed questions about how to fix the problem. . . . Subscriber content preview SEOUL, South Korea (AP) Four people died and 10 others were injured after an explosion at a subway construction site on Wednesday near Seoul. The workers were welding iron bars 49 feet underground when the explosion occurred in the morning, said officials from the Gyeonggi Province Fire and Disaster Headquarters, who didn't want to be named, citing office rules. . . . Billions still needed to restore tiny Hawaiian island used as a bomb range for 50 years One goal is to turn Kahoolawe Island into a Native Hawaiian educational center. By MARINA STARLEAF RIKER Associated Press HONOLULU Six miles from the scenic beaches of south Maui sits a small, deserted island with a rich history and a big problem. Researchers say Hawaiians traveled to Kahoolawe Island as early as 400 A.D., and it's home to nearly 3,000 archaeological sites. It's also littered with unexploded ordnance. The U.S. Navy used the barren island as a bombing range for decades starting in World War II. It later joined with the state and spent millions on cleanup, but they didn't finish the job. Today, live grenades and bombs remain scattered across about a quarter of the 45-square-mile island. But the agency tasked with restoring Kahoolawe is likely on its own next year after lawmakers passed a bill pushing it to become financially self-sufficient. Now, the Kahoolawe Island Reserve Commission and community advocates are looking for ways to fund the rest of the cleanup so they can bring back native wildlife and use the island as a Native Hawaiian educational center. It's no small effort. Restoring and then replanting the entire island could take decades and cost billions of dollars, despite about $400 million spent between the commission and the Navy since 1994, the agency said. The commission also has depleted a $44 million federal trust fund since the state gained control of the island in 2004. It speaks volumes to the amount of bombing Kahoolawe sustained that so much work still needs to be done to complete this effort, U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono said. She added she will work to help find solutions to finish the cleanup at the culturally significant site, which is banned from commercial use. On a clear day, the islands of Maui, Lanai and Molokai are visible from the shores of Kahoolawe, which archaeological evidence suggests Hawaiians used as a navigational center for voyaging, a workshop for making stone tools and for cultural ceremonies. Fortunately, many of the cultural sites such as fishing shrines were on the coast and were spared from the military bombing, which went on for 50 years, said Michael Nahoopii, the Kahoolawe Island Reserve Commission's executive director. Still, gold-colored grenades that explode if touched, bombs weighing up to 2,000 pounds and hundreds of projectiles remain. You walk across this line, and it is night and day. One side of the line is very clean. There's no scrap metal. There's nothing on the ground, Nahoopii said. You walk across this line, and there's bombs sticking out of the ground. There are pieces of razor-sharp metal. A 2013 financial audit criticized the Kahoolawe commission for lacking a comprehensive cleanup plan and measures to gauge if objectives are being met. Lawmakers recently passed a measure giving the agency $450,000 for restoration during the upcoming year, but no money after 2017. One of the requirements is that the commission come up with a plan for being self-sufficient. The proposal has been sent to Gov. David Ige, who hasn't said whether he will sign it into law. Ideas for future funding include running the island off renewable energy and charging tuition for educational programs. Josh Kaakua, a commissioner and member of the Protect Kahoolawe Ohana, said the state should help fund Kahoolawe's restoration since it took responsibility for the island after the Navy ended the federal cleanup. The island was also ravaged by years of cattle and goat ranching before its military use the Army first trained there in 1925 and faces problems with severe erosion and a lack of fresh water sources. I think people only care about what's in their backyard, so often I think Kahoolawe gets put to the side, Kaakua said. Kahoolawe is a treasure. It's a resource. But we're losing it. We're slipping. Nobody is paying attention. Nahoopii, meanwhile, said the Navy has a responsibility to finish restoring the island. When the federal government took over Kahoolawe in the 1950s, it agreed to return the land in a condition of suitable habitation, he said. Yet Agnes Tauyan, director of public affairs for Navy Region Hawaii, said the Navy completed what was required by the federal government and isn't aware of any requests to return to Kahoolawe. Kahoolawe is one of about 100 formerly used defense sites throughout the Pacific, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Honolulu District. Right now, the corps is working on about 10 cleanup projects, including the Waikoloa Maneuver Area on the Big Island, which alone is expected to cost about $723 million to clean up. It's really a microcosm of what's happening in the whole world, right on Kahoolawe, Nahoopii said. ST speeds up light rail delivery SEATTLE Sound Transit's Board of Directors unanimously approved plans to speed up delivery of several light rail lines in the Sound Transit 3 package. These changes will bring light rail to Everett, Redmond, Federal Way, Ballard, West Seattle and Tacoma two to five years faster than originally planned and add projects in North Seattle, Renton and Kirkland. The changes will add about $4 billion to the cost of ST3, bringing the price tag to $54 billion. Sound Transit will make up for the increased cost by issuing more bonds. Part of the funding package that will be on the ballot in November includes sales, MVET and property taxes. A final Sound Transit Board vote on which projects will be in the ST3 package is set for June 23. Subscriber content preview A battle between St. Louis and Illinois for the headquarters drew public notice to the agency, which has more than 3,000 employees. ST. LOUIS (AP) A federal spy agency will move its regional headquarters to a new location in St. Louis rather than to a site across the Mississippi River in southern Illinois, the agency said Thursday on its website. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which has been in St. Louis for more than 70 years, announced its new western headquarters would remain in the city. The decision follows efforts to lure the agency to Illinois, though the NGA had announced in April that a blighted area in north St. Louis that was previously the site of a razed high-rise public housing complex, Pruitt-Igoe, was its preferred location. . . . From Hotlanta to the sunny, arid deserts of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 94th Airlift Wing Airmen always stand ready to execute the U.S. Air Force mission. Miles and cultural differences separate Jordan from here; however, the country is a strong U.S. ally in the Middle East. For this reason, the wings Airmen traveled there to strengthen the partnership between the two nations military forces. As a player in Exercise Eager Lion 2016, held May 15-24, the 94th AW worked with Royal Jordanian Armed Forces members to execute a wide variety of airlift missions. Through collaboration, the two groups overcame challenges and capitalized on similarities to integrate their capabilities. In the process, the 94th AWs operations and maintenance crews not only maintained sharp technical skills, but also found ways to work together more efficiently. Eager Lion is designed to continue strengthening our relationship with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Jordanian Armed Forces, said Brig. Gen. Pete Byrne, Air Component Coordinating Element director. It is a conduit to our shared objective of security for the region. This year marks the sixth iteration of Eager Lion, but only the second year the 94th Airlift Wing has participated, said Maj. Jonathan Lester, the 94th AWs lead planner for the exercise. Last years exercise included many other nations from around the world. The 2016 exercise only included Jordan and the U.S., which allowed for a tighter working relationship between the 94th AW and the RJAF, added Lester. While Eager Lion is a U.S. Central Command exercise also including U.S. Army, Navy, and Marines, the 94th AW provided a significant portion of the air support as the only participating C-130 unit, Lester said. The primary exercise partner agency for the 94th AW was the Royal Jordanian Air Force No. 3 Transport Squadron, a C-130 Hercules unit based at King Abdullah Air Base in Amman. Eager Lion provided us with the opportunity to learn more about integrating our capabilities with allied nation forces - we flew low-level tactical missions, performed airdrops, flew using night-vision goggles, performed engine-running on-loads and off-loads, and deployed threat avoidance tactics, Lester added. In pairing with the Jordanians, 94th crews executed every C-130 assigned mission set, excluding formation flying. Though significant, the air support mission of the 94th AW and RJAF No. 3 Sq. represented only a portion of the Eager Lions overall scope. It is a ground centered exercise simulating a war, Lester said. We are here to support the air component of the Eager Lion; whether its moving cargo, dropping Army paratroopers or setting up an airfield. In executing these tasks, 94th AW crews especially the wings traditional reservists had many opportunities to sharpen their skillsets, he said. Its a lot of work, Lester added. Just through the operation and maintenance of the aircraft itself, everyone is getting training, and maintaining currency and proficiency. Early in the exercise, 94th AW crews flew a familiarization flight over Jordan in an RJAF C-130 and observed the host nations crews at work, Lester said. A big benefit of the collaboration here is the aspect of show-and-tell. Capt. Dave Lessani, 700th Airlift Squadron pilot, participated in the flight and said he noticed minor differences in the way the RJAF aircrews operated and employed procedures; however, the cohesive dynamic between the crew members and the roles they play while flying is nearly identical to U.S. military C-130 crews. During the flight, I spoke with a Jordanian loadmaster; although there are cultural differences, the human element of who we are and what we do is the same, said Lessani. We are both dedicated to our military duties and service to our country. As 94th AW and RJAF crews continued working together, the workflow and rhythm continually increased as the units learned to collaborate more efficiently, Lester said. To keep the 94th AW C-130 running smoothly, more than 15 aircraft maintenance personnel supported the exercise from the ground, said 1st. Lt. Elizabeth Van Patten, 94th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron officer. The working partnership between 94th AW and Jordanian maintainers is very strong, she said, stating she had been working closely with an RJAF technician who had been performing maintenance on C130s for more than 35 years. The Jordanian crews are extremely knowledgeable of the C-130 and take a lot of pride in their aircraft, Van Patten added. They have very good maintenance practices. Although the 94th and RJAF crews quickly developed a good rapport, Van Patten explained that overcoming the language barrier was a challenge. She said she learned some Arabic words during the exercise to improve communication between the groups. Ive realized our crews use slang and shortened words to describe aircraft pieces and equipment, she said. I told the Jordanians we needed a TD amp and they didnt understand. When they communicate in English, they dont know any slang. After requesting the part by its formal name - temperature data amplifier - communication was effective and the RJAF maintenance crew was able to provide the needed part, she explained. While working with RJAF crews, 94th AW Airmen experienced another benefit that occurred naturally. The exercise was designed to strengthen the partnership between U.S. and Jordanian forces, but it also provided an opportunity for the 94th aviation operations and maintenance crews to tighten unit cohesion. In spending time together throughout the exercise, and traveling from Dobbins ARB to Amman, Jordan, personnel from the different squadrons got a chance to know each other better, said Lester. The aircrew members had a chance to better understand which maintenance technicians specialize in what aspects of the job, which can translate into a stronger working relationship. Considering the constant close interaction and the demands of working this far from home, the exercise simulates a deployed environment, said Chief Master Sgt. Marvin Jones, 94th Maintenance Group superintendent. A situation like this helps operations and maintenance Airmen understand each other better. While the exercises technical operations sought to meet definitive objectives, the greater benefit of the exercise can sometimes be more closely related to building relationships, not meeting specific metrics. Some of the exercise objectives are more easily measurable than others, said Byrne. In my view, the intangibles are sometimes more important to attaining the goal of overall security in the region, Byrne added. The intangibles relate to the synergy and team atmosphere created by this collaboration. Its amazing what can be accomplished with mutual trust, added Byrne. The Earagail Arts Festival returns to Donegal next month for a fortnight of music, theatre, visual arts, the spoken word and other festivities by Irish and international artists. The festival programme was launched yesterday by Letterkenny Municipal District Mayor, Cllr. Gerry McMonagle, who said Earagail Arts not only promotes Donegal and the arts, but provides outlets for the growing talent that exists in Donegal. This years EAF also features the centrepiece theatre production, Unified by Guy LeJeune, a musical celebrating the people and stories of Unifi, the textile plant that was Letterkennys major employer over a 30-year period of rapid social change. Earagail Arts runs from July 8th to 24th in venues across a broad section of the county, featuring emerging and established artists. Donegal County Council has commissioned a major video project by Donegal/Derry artist Willie Doherty, Turner Prize nominee, that explores the legacy of the 1916 Rising. The work is a project of the Arts Council of Irelands ART: 2016 centenary programme. At the launch, Dessie Larkin, chairperson of the Earagail Arts Festival, said the festival showcases Donegal and offers communities across the county the opportunity to have unique Irish and international arts on their doorstep. Earagail Arts Festival is all about Made in Donegal, Dessie said. Thats the concept were trying to project all around the world. Saying the festival has gone from strength to strength, he said the EAF is also highly regarded nationally and internationally. Paul Brown, director of the Earagail Arts Festival, said for the first time this year, there will be an Earagail Arts Festival stage at the Swell Festival, which runs on Arranmore Island from July 8th to 12th. The multidisciplinary, tri-lingual performance area, curated and produced by EAF, will feature two days of electronica, traditional and folk artists in music and the spoken word. Earagail Arts has featured festivals within the festival, and this year Shaun Hannigan, manager of the Regional Cultural Centre, said there will be a festival within a festival within a festival focusing on English and Irish folk music within the Donegal International Folk and Roots Weekend, July 14th to 17th. In Home to Ballybeg, renowned traditional musicians will celebrate the late playwright Brian Friel, in a specially commissioned concert presented by composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Manus Lunny on July 17th at An Grianan Theatre in Letterkenny. The full EAF programme and ticket information at www.eaf.ie Pictured: Festival director Paul Brown, chairperson Dessie Larkin and Cllr. Gerry McMonagle were among those at yesterdays launch of the EAF programme. Canada Post claimed a "crown copyright" over the postal codes assigned to Canadian homes, meaning that Canadian organisations and businesses could only use this vital information if they paid that is, they'd have to pay to access something their taxes already paid for, and the richer you were, the more access you could afford. An Ottawa startup called Geocoder crowdsourced the creation of a new database, asking Canadians to send in their addresses and postal codes, and giving free access to all comers. Canada Post sued them. Now, four years and a change in government later, the post office has dropped its suit. The Canada Post lawsuit has been simmering for several years, but late last month the parties reached a settlement. Canada Post has agreed to discontinue the lawsuit and Geocoder will continue to make its database available to the public. The settlement statement acknowledges: The postal codes returned by various geocoder interface APIs and downloadable on geocoder.ca, are estimated via a crowdsourcing process. They are not licensed by geocoder.ca from Canada Post, the entity responsible for assigning postal codes to street addresses. The settlement represents a big win for open data in Canada, as the lawsuit raised serious concerns about over-broad copyright claims given suggestions that Canada Post owned the copyright in all postal codes. As Geocoder notes, CIPPIC and Ridout & Maybee provided support in contesting the lawsuit. Canada Post Drops Lawsuit Over Crowdsourced Postal Codes [Michael Geist] The family of William Craig Phatzo Hawkins hopes to see justice served with the announcement Friday of four arrests in connection with the murder of their loved one. Angela Rogers spoke out on what happened to her brother, 38-year-old Hawkins, who suffered a single fatal gunshot wound last month at his Dothan home. Rogers and three other relatives joined Dothan Police Chief Steve Parrish as he announced the arrest of four teenagers for capital murder in connection with the Hawkins killing. We hope to see justice served, Rogers said. He was a loving person. He never met a stranger, and he never met a person that was not friendly with him. He didnt fight with people, and he didnt cause trouble. Parrish said police have arrested Ricky Deontae Smith , 16, of Dothan, and charged him with felony capital murder robbery. Smith was taken to the Houston County Jail and held without bond. Court records show police charged Smith with using a handgun to fatally shoot Hawkins during the commission of the theft of drugs and cash. Records show the court appointed attorneys Derek Yarbrough and John Steensland III to represent Smith on his capital murder charge in court. He also said police have charged three 15-year-old males with the same crime, capital murder robbery, but they are all being charged as juveniles. Dothan Police Capt. Will Benny said all three 15-year-old capital murder suspects were taken to the Southeast Alabama Juvenile Diversion Center. Parrish said the charges stemmed from Dothan police officers responding to a firearm assault at 609 Collier St. o n the night of May 16. Police found the victim, Hawkins, dead from a fatal gunshot wound around 8:30 p.m. Parrish said witnesses described several suspects entering the home armed with weapons. He said Hawkins physically struggled with one of the suspects who came toward him with a weapon, and during the struggle he was shot in the chest. Parrish said robbery was the motive to the killing, and said an undisclosed amount of cash was taken during the crime. All the suspects left the victims home, and escaped until police recently made the four arrests over the past couple of days. Parrish said all four of the suspects have had criminal records in juvenile court. Three of the four of them had ankle monitors on at the time of the crime, and that did help us locate them, Parrish said. Parrish said police have not ruled out the possibility of making more arrests in the homicide. What were dealing with here is children, Parrish said. Its a sad day when children in our society are missing something that turns them to this. The case became the third murder of 2016 investigated by the Dothan Police Department. TTIP is the farcically secretive, insanely corrupt trade agreement that the US and EU negotiated behind closed doors in parallel with the faltering Trans-Pacific Partnership. Like TPP, TTIP allows corporations to sue governments to repeal environmental, safety and labor laws that may impact their future profits, in a system of secret courts whose deliberations are not visible to the public. Opposition to TTIP has been mounting, with the German and French governments suggesting that they will block the deal in the EU. Given that ACTA, the predecessor to TTIP, faltered after public protests caused EU governments to back out, this bodes ill for TTIP's future. Another nail was just driven into TTIP's coffin by UK opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who said that he would also kill the deal if elected; among other reasons, Corbyn cited the deal's potential to compromise the UK's National Health Service. TTIP has the support of the European Commission, the unelected bureaucracy that administers the political union, as well as UK Tory leader David Cameron, and US Democratic establishment figures like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. "Many thousands of people have written to me, with their concerns about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (or TTIP) the deal being negotiated, largely in secret, between the U.S. and the EU," he said in his speech in London. Jeremy Corbyn speaking in London on Thursday. (Screengrab)"Many people are concerned rightly that it could open up public services to further privatizationand make privatization effectively irreversible," he added. "Others are concerned about any potential watering down of consumer rights, food safety standards, rights at work or environmental protections, and the facility for corporations to sue national governments if regulations impinged on their profits," he said, referring to ISDS tribunals. Jeremy Corbyn: I Would Kill TTIP [Andrea Germanos/Common Dreams] (via Naked Capitalism) 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. At the outset of the campaign for the Democratic nomination, many of the party's "superdelegates" (party grandees, including current and former officeholders, party officials, etc, who have the ability to swing the nomination at the convention if they think the popular vote has selected an "unelectable" candidate) publicly pledged for Hillary Clinton, but Sanders supporters have held out hope that they would switch sides when it became apparent that Bernie Sanders had a better chance of winning the general election than Hillary Clinton did. Now, a trickle of superdelegates are publicly declaring for Sanders. The latest is New Hampshire Democratic Party vice chairwoman and state senator Martha Fuller Clark, who cites Sanders' popular support among the party's rank-and-file as her reason for changing. She is one of three superdelegates who switched this week, and she calls on other unpledged superdelegates to do the same. "In the primaries and caucuses held so far, Senator Sanders has won about 45% of the pledged delegates, yet has pledges from only about 6% of the "super delegates." No wonder Sanders voters are so frustrated with the party," Monahan said in a statement. "Party leaders need to acknowledge and embrace Senator Sanders and his supporters. That is why today I am pledging my super delegate vote to Senator Sanders. I am encouraging all still unpledged super delegates to support Senator Sanders as well. We need new energetic people in the Democratic Party to spread our effective message." Sanders picks up more superdelegates [Daniel Strauss/Politico] (Image: NH Senator Martha Fuller Clark (D-Portsmouth), Keith McCrea, CC-BY-SA) (via Naked Capitalism) Diageo and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) have formed a partnership to try and reduce traffic death and injuries globally. The worlds largest premium alcoholic drinks company and UNITAR have signed a two-year agreement to collaborate to build institutional and individual capacity to improve road safety, worldwide. Road traffic injuries from all causes claim more than 1.2 million lives each year and have a disproportionately large impact on health and development, according to UNITAR and Diageo. Scheduled to start in July, training will be run in 15 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin and Central America, with a focus on countries with the highest death rates related to road traffic accidents. More than 60 countries will be invited to participate. The training activities will reach approximately 6,000 participants who will be a mix of government officials, young people, and other relevant people, through training workshops for government officials at the national and local levels, awareness-raising road shows for young people and high-level conferences on the issue. According to the joint statement, Diageo was selected as a partner for a two-year partnership entitled Road Safety Initiative for Cities due to the companys track record in supporting programmes and policies to address drink driving. Diageo has a long history of working to reduce alcohol-related fatalities and crashes and supports numerous drink drive prevention programmes around the world. These range from supporting high visibility enforcement through random breath tests in countries such as Ghana, Mexico and China, to funding safe rides and free public transportation, and supporting laws to establish maximum blood alcohol concentration levels in countries where none exist. United Nations assistant secretary-general and executive director of UNITAR, Nikhil Seth said: Achieving the 2030 Development Agenda and its different goals will only be possible through innovative partnerships with the private sector such as this one, where different stakeholders join forces to reach specific beneficiaries and targets by sharing their respective expertise and resources, thereby achieving common objectives. Diageo chief executive, Ivan Menezes said: We believe that a single death caused by drinking and driving is one too many and can be prevented. We are encouraged that over the last few years, the number of alcohol-related fatalities has fallen significantly in many countries. However, there is more to do and we are committed to playing our role in eradicating harm caused by drink driving. This new partnership with UNITAR is important as it will allow us to work together to deliver the global goal of halving road traffic deaths. UNITAR reports that road accidents are the 9th leading cause of death across all age groups globally and the leading cause among young people aged 15 to 29, costing governments approximately 3% of GDP on average and 5% of GDP in low- and middle-income countries specifically (WHO, 2015). Most importantly, 95% of road traffic deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. In 2011, the WHO launched the Decade of Action for Road Safety. The United Nations secretary general Ban Ki Moon, then highlighted the need to move this campaign into high gear and steer our world to safer roads ahead. Road safety is also a priority in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which gives the target of reducing road traffic deaths and injuries by 50% by 2020. More recently, in April, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 70/260 entitled, Improving Global Road Safety, which renewed the call for governments to take a leading role in the implementation of the road safety-related SDG targets and the activities of the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020. Picture caption: Breathalysers are used in Ghana as part of campaign to tackle drink driving. Mercedes-Benz promised the world's most advanced car when the new E-Class arrived and it hasn't disappointed. The German brand has revealed pricing and specifications details for the new large sedan ahead of its Australian arrival in July, and it hasn't gone light on equipment. Three engine variants will be available initially and all will come equipped with Driver Assistance package Plus, keyless entry and ignition, surround view parking camera, electric front seats, LED headlights and 'Stardust effect' LED taillights. The three variants are the E200, E200d and E350d with plans to expand the range with the E300 and E400 4Matic set to join at a later date, as well as the high-performance E43 and E63 variants from AMG. The E200 is powered by a 135kW/300Nm 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine paired with a nine-speed automatic transmission; which is standard transmission on all three models. The E200 will be priced from $89,900 plus on-road costs. Next up is the E200d with its four-cylinder turbo diesel producing 143kW/400Nm and using just 4.1-litres per 100km. It is priced from $92,900 plus on-roads. Both the E200 and E220d will come standard with Mercedes' new Widescreen cockpit, Comand online infotainment system, 18-inch alloys, DAB+ digital radio and Mercedes' new smartphone-style touch control buttons on a leather steering wheel. The top of the initial range will be the E350d, which will be priced from $134,900 (plus on-roads) and gets a 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo diesel engine good for 190kW and 620Nm. In addition to the lower grades, the E350d gets 20-inch AMG alloys, Air Body Control suspension, 13-speaker Burmester surround sound system, head up display, heated front seats, genuine leather upholstery and a panoramic glass sunroof. Click here for all the latest Mercedes-Benz news and reviews. Foleys Tearooms in Castlebellingham is currently being rethatched by master thatcher Peter Childs and qualified thatchers Eoin Murphy and Alan Grimes. The current thatching project at Foley's is part funded by Louth County Council and the Department of Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht Built Heritage Investment Scheme 2016. School children and teachers from Dromiskin National School and Kilsaran National School were invited to attend the thatching demonstration on Thursday 12th May 2016. It was a gloroiusly sunny day and perfect conditions for the thatchers to demonstrate this wonderful craft and historic skill. Participants from Dunleer Men's Sheds and Castlebellingham/Kilsaran Tidy Towns Committee also attended the afternoon demonstration. Joe Donovan proprietor of Foley's Tea Rooms is looking forward to the completion of the entire thatched roof and it is anticipated the works will be completed within 6 weeks. Foley's Tea Rooms is the last building in Castlebellingham to retain a thatched roof and Mr Donovan has worked dilligently over the past number of years to retain this building which is an important part of our vernacular heritage. There is serious concern about the decline of historic thatch in Ireland; historic thatch is being lost at an accelerated rate. There are many reasons for this including the fragmented nature of the trade, a widespread lack of detailed knowledge of historic thatch materials and techniques. There are different types of thatch, wheat, rye and oat straw, water reed, wheat reed, sedge, heather, flax, which were used in the areas where they were normally found in the wild, or were grown for other agricultural uses. The most common types of thatching material traditionally used in this area (Louth / Meath) were long straw of either oats or wheat, using thrust thatch style. Reed has only been introduced in north Leinster in recent times and is usually imported from England, Poland or Turkey. Rye is occasionally used. Thatching is an important traditional skill which must be preserved. There is a shortage of skilled thatchers in Ireland. There is an urgent need to pass on the skills to a new generation, particularly working with historic thatch. Peter Childs is a Master Thatcher with an award-winning apprenticeship from the Countryside Agencys (England) Thatch Training Centre in Salisbury, Wiltshire, UK. He has 32 years experience (mainly regional style straw thatching) including self-employment and membership of the Suffolk Master Thatchers Association in England, including 5 years reed and straw work in Ireland. He specialises in conservation, heritage and tourism work using historic materials and methods identified and copied where possible, e.g. oats, rye, barley, reed, rushes, marram grass, flax, etc. Using scolb thatching, slice, thrust or fletch thatching, stitching or sewing on. Examples of his craftsmanship can be seen in Skerries, Rush, Balbriggan, Ballyboughal, Oldtown, Meath, Westmeath Louth Monaghan, Armagh, Clare, Wexford and Mayo. Eoin Murphy and Alan Grimes have worked with Peter Childs for 12 and 13 years respectively and are qualified thatchers working on this project with Peter. The nurses at Our Lady of Lourdes instigated a work to rule at the troubled hospital in a bid to force the hand of the HSE to start filling vacant nursing positions. Management at the hospital accept that they currently have a deficit of 104 whole time equivalent posts, that remain unfilled. However, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives organisation (INMO) - the hospital continues to work at full capacity and this ensures that there are insufficient nurses on duty to provide safe and appropriate care to patients. The strike action is in the form of a work-to-rule with nurses setting aside non-core working duties in order to increase their ability to provide direct care to patients. The INMO say it likely that the dispute will enhance patient care as they will be focusing on their clinical duties rather than non-essential administrative tasks. Some progress has been made. On Monday of last week the INMO secured confirmation, from the HSE, that all vacant nursing posts, in the countrys Emergency Departments (ED), will be filled, as provided for in the recent Agreement, despite the recent announcement, to pause recruitment, from the HSE. The confirmation, that all posts will be filled, was given at the third Review of the ED Agreement, reached in January, between the HSE/Department of Health and the INMO, which was chaired by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) earlier today. This part of the ED Agreement provides for the filling of over 144 staff nurse posts, in emergency departments across the country, as part of a comprehensive ED Agreement. This agreement also provides for a system wide escalation policy, weekly meetings between senior management and the INMO and ongoing health and safety and hygiene audits of all emergency departments. However management at the hospital say they are disappointed at the decision to strike. The RCSI Hospitals Group - who oversee OLOL - say it ' regrets' the decision taken by the INMO on the 20th May 2016 to undertake industrial action, 'particularly as any change' in existing terms and conditions for nurses can only be advanced at a national level. The RCSI Hospital Groups focus is on patient safety, quality outcomes, and effectiveness of care across all our hospitals, they said in a statement. Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda will implement a contingency plan to minimise, in so far as is possible, the impact of this industrial action on patient care. The Emergency Departments will remain open over the course of the industrial action in an effort to continue to meet patients emergency medical needs. Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital continues to be an extremely busy hospital with 52,000 attendances per year, 13,000 emergency admissions and over 22,000 inpatient discharges. During 2016, the hospital has experienced a 9 per cent increase in ED attendances in comparison to 2015, however the hospital has secured 89 per cent compliance with the national 9 hour target (registration home) and a 20 per cent reduction in the number of patients waiting for ward bed accommodation as per the Weekly INMO Trolley Report dated week ending the 13th May 2016. Gerry Adams says the positions must be filled. I want to pay tribute and extend my solidarity to the staff of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda who do an incredible job treating patients in the most difficult of circumstances. The fact that the hospital is operating with 104 less staff than it should is nothing short of a scandal. Our Lady of Lourdes has consistently been amongst the three hospitals in the State with the highest emergency department trolley figures, and yesterday had the highest with 26 patients waiting on trolleys for a bed. The chaos in our hospital emergency departments will not be resolved by the Governments ill-considered and underfunded two-tier approach, agreed with Fianna Fail during Government negotiations. The introduction last week of a recruitment moratorium at hospital groups is only going to worsen the situation. What we need is real investment in public healthcare and the required staffing levels in hospitals to be met. The Minister for Health must take urgent action to resolve issues at Our Lady of Lourdes. Dick Van Dyke, who recently celebrated his 90th birthday, has written an op-ed in the Hollywood Reporter endorsing Bernie Sanders as the best candidate for senior citizens. Van Dyke, who recently appeared on Jesse Thorn's excellent Bullseye podcast to discuss Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths About Aging his bestselling guide to aging gracefully, describes Sanders as the politician most capable of resolving the "delicate balance" between "capitalism and democracy" which has become so distorted that "we're practically an oligarchy now." He says that older voters may be scared off by the Sanders' "socialist label," but they needn't be, but explains that Sanders' brand of socialism is the same New Dealism that saved America from the Great Depression. Bernie, whom I went to Reno to campaign for ahead of the Nevada caucuses and introduced at a rally in Santa Monica on May 23, gets called all sorts of names. "Socialist" is supposedly a bad one, but he isn't any more socialist than the New Deal that enabled America to emerge from the Great Depression and become the world's greatest superpower. The good news is that millennials aren't particularly worried about labels they're focused on ideas, such as everyone paying their fair share in taxes, and that's why Bernie is doing so well with them. But older people often get frightened by labels, and I'm here to tell them they shouldn't. (I'm 90 years old, and I like to give young politicians like Bernie a hand up!) They're just words. Why Bernie Sanders Is the Best Candidate for Senior Citizens (Guest Column) [Dick Van Dyke/Hollywood Reporter] (via Naked Capitalism) Three beaches in County Louth - Port, Templetown and Clogherhead, retained their Blue Flags today at the 2016 Blue Flag and Green Coast Awards last week. Cllr. Mark Dearey Dundalk-Carlingford, applauded the success, but called for further work on water quality in the county. This is very good news indeed, great news even.It is important that we continue to maintain the standard and try ensure that whatever land bases run off are treated. Our seas our a precious resource as well as an attraction. They offer economic value and add to our own general health and well being. I would love to see villages like Omeath get a treatment sewage plant. There is actually one scheduled for 2017.I would like to see no unregulated sewage for Louth. We need to continue to press on for better water quality and treatment of our sewage", he said. Mr Simon Coveney T.D., Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government presented the awards at a ceremony at Velvet Strand, Portmarnock, Co. Dublin. A total of 141 awards were presented for beaches and marinas in 14 local authorities around the country. The Blue Flag is an international award for beach excellence, which is operated in Ireland by An Taisce with support from the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. The Blue Flag Programme has been operating in Ireland since 1988, and this year 85 Blue Flags are being awarded, 79 to beaches and 6 to marinas. US Vice President Joe Biden will visit Ireland this June for the G8 summit in Fermanagh giving him the perfect opportunity to visit his ancestral home of Cooley. US Vice President Joe Biden will visit Ireland this June for the G8 summit in Fermanagh giving him the perfect opportunity to visit his ancestral home of Cooley. Mr Biden confirmed to Taoiseach Enda Kenny at a St.Patricks week breakfast last week that he would be attending the G8 summit in Enniskillen. The vice president has Louth and Mayo roots and his most prominent links are with the Cooley Peninsula, where his mothers grandfather Owen Finnegan came from. Finnegan was a blind musician who arrived in New York on his own in May 1849 and began making a new life for himself as a shoemaker. He brought his family over a year later. Mr Biden has already expressed a keen interest in coming to Ireland to trace his family heritage, just like President Barack Obama did in 2011. Mr Bidens Irish roots have been traced by respected genealogist Megan Smolenyak, who first highlighted President Obamas Offaly connections and the vice president is believed to be related to Finnegans and Boyles in the area. Strangely enough, Obamas and Bidens Irish ancestors were both shoemakers and arrived in New York in 1849, with their families making the voyage the following year. A spokesperson for Carlingford and Mourne Tourism told the Democrat that although they were hopeful that the Vice President would find time to visit, they had not been contacted by him or any of his representatives yet. Friday afternoon drinks its the great Australian ritual that brings workers together so they can celebrate the weeks successes and recover from its trials. But theres always been one catch: some poor fool has had to go on a bottle shop run. Not anymore enter Friday Beers. The brainchild of ex-corporates Keegan Sard and Lee Mathers, Friday Beers is a subscription alcohol delivery service that, each and every Friday, delivers a range of icy-cold craft beers (and ciders) straight to the desks of weary workers. There are no lock-in contracts, no hidden fees, subscribers can stop and start whenever they want and the environmentally-conscious will be pleased to know each six-pack is housed in recyclable holder. A surprise and delight offering The biggest selling point, according to co-founder and chief spruiker Keegan, is Friday Beers dedication to surprising and delighting subscribers. Humans are creatures of habit, he told Dynamic Business. Every time we go to a bottle shop, we tend to pick the same beer. Lee was guilty of this but at least he demonstrated good taste with Stone and Wood Pacific Ale. Another problem is that some people (no names mentioned) think all beer is the same and frankly, thats not true. Thats why we deliver a different six pack of craft beer to our subscribers each week, from Amber Ales and Pale Ales through to IPAs and Summer Ales. Included with each delivery are tasting notes on our Beer of the Week. Some people might call us educators. Does that make us GST exempt? Just kidding! The best part of the business for me is what I like to call Research and Development (or in other words a reason to test regularly) and can I say that Australian craft brewers are not only holding their own, they are killing it. This is crazy when you consider some of these guys are super small side-businesses but the quality of the product is five stars. Swimming with the sharks So, when did Keegan and Lee first realise they had something special they could bottle? Well, the idea for Friday Beers began to ferment in their minds last year when they were working together in a Brisbane office. Lee used to make me fetch beers with him on Friday afternoons, Keegan explained. For a while, we went back and forth between our office and the bottle shop and we kept asking ourselves, why isnt someone doing this for us? Then one day we said, why dont we do this?! After a lot of initial planning, Keegan and Lee partnered with a duo of seasoned bar and restaurant operators: Nick Pinn and Matt Browning of Malt Traders, a locally owned and operated purveyor of fine consumables that specialises in craft beverages. The team works really well together, Keegan said. Lee manages tech and day-to-day operations, while I manage marketing and social. Nick handles regulatory compliance including liquor licensing and Matt has arguably the most important job: selecting our beers. He meets with craft brewers and bottle shops and partners with those that are a good fit for our brand. As a result, we have a great range of craft beers to showcase in each Friday Beers six pack, from both local to international brewers. Weve been operating for two months now and the response to date has been fantastic. In fact, just this week Keegan, Lee, Nick and Matt appeared on Channel Tens Shark Tank, where they successfully pitched Friday Beers to one of the sharks entrepreneur and investor Steve Baxter. East coast expansion was always the plan Currently, Friday Beers delivery network is based on postcodes starting with the Brisbane CBD. We deliver from New Farm through the CBD, all the way to Paddington and across to Kangaroo Point and the Gabba, Keegan said. We are constantly working on expanding our delivery radius as demand increases in neighbouring suburbs. Were a pretty chilled bunch so if you are just outside the radius, just send us an email and we can see what we can do. Sydneysiders and Melbournites need not get too jealous Friday Beers is coming their way very, very soon. In fact, it kicks off in Sydney in little over a week. East coast expansion was always going to happen and the Sydney (and later the Melbourne) market is exactly our target demographic, Keegan said. Lets get the party started Cant every day be Friday? A lot of people ask us this question, Keegan said. Friday Beers has always been an experience business based around that Australian culture of Friday afternoon drinks. Currently there are no plans to change the model to be a full service alcohol delivery service and with some amazing players in that space we are pretty happy with our niche. We want to get the party started. Youve had a long week and now its time to wind down and what better way to wind down then a cold beer delivered to your desk in the afternoon. Friday Beers appeared in episode 5, season 2 of Shark Tank. You can watch it here: http://tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/shark-tank When John Yoo thinks you're an unacceptably authoritarian threat to the rule of law, does that make you one of the baddies? The New York Times reports on conservative legal eagles unsettled by Trump's naked threats to wield presidential power against his enemies. There are other precedents, said John C. Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who took an expansive view of executive power as a lawyer in the Bush administration. "The only two other presidents I can think of who were so hostile to judges on an individual level and to the judiciary as a whole would be Thomas Jefferson and Franklin Roosevelt," he said. Both of those presidents chafed at what they saw as excessive judicial power. "But they weren't doing it because they had cases before those judges as individuals," Professor Yoo said. "They had legitimate separation-of-powers fights between the presidency and the judiciary. Trump is lashing out because he has a lawsuit in a private capacity, which is much more disturbing." 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. Interview with Risk Magazine Interview with Benoit Cure, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB and Chairman of the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI), conducted by Cecile Sourbes on 10 May and published on 19 May 2016 What was the outcome of the questionnaires that the CPMI and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (Iosco) sent to central counterparties (CCPs) in 2015? The work done by CPMI-Iosco is a response to the request made by the G20 ministers and governors to ensure that CCPs are safe and resilient. The work done on risk in CCPs has been set as a priority this year by the Chinese presidency of the G20. Risk in CCPs is an important piece, and maybe even the main missing piece, of the post-Pittsburgh regulatory agenda. A great deal of work has been done to make the derivatives market safer, make central clearing mandatory and improve the resilience of infrastructures in particular through the implementation of the CPMI-Iosco Principles for financial market infrastructures (PFMI). Now, its time to wrap it up, take stock of what has actually been done and consider whether this is enough or whether we need to do more. So its an important milestone. To answer your question, yes, CPMI-Iosco sent a series of questionnaires to several CCPs last year which covered both recovery planning and risk management practices more generally. It was a way to assess their compliance with the PFMI and the recovery guidance released in 2014 by CPMI-Iosco. We have looked at the responses in depth and this has given us a good insight into how CCPs have implemented the PFMI. We are now taking stock of this material and we are also working with the Financial Stability Board (FSB). The outcome of this work will appear in two twin reports that will be published in early summer, presumably in July. Those reports will come right in time for the G20 summit in Hangzhou on 4 and 5 September. Are there any areas that require further guidance? The first report will review the implementation of the PFMI across 10 derivatives CCPs. We are very positive about the work that has been conducted by CCPs, but weve identified shortcomings when it comes to addressing certain topics, including financial resources and liquidity resources. We have also found a number of shortcomings in terms of recovery planning. This is not about rewriting the PFMI there is unanimity that the PFMI are the right approach as they stand. Its about making sure that the PFMI are implemented fully and consistently across all jurisdictions. And the outcome of this work will show there is still more to be done. This is why we will publish a second report, which will provide additional guidance to support the implementation of both the PFMI and the recovery guidelines released in 2014. There will be a public consultation process on this second report in order to gather input from the industry, and the final guidance will be published at a later stage, either late this year or in early 2017. In terms of the PFMIs, what are the areas where further guidance is needed? Governance, financial resources and stress testing are all included. We will also have further guidance on margining and, to some extent, on collateral management. The report will be quite broad. It will send a positive message that the PFMI are being taken seriously by the clearing community, but it will also highlight a number of gaps that must be carefully examined. The CPMI-Iosco guidance on the recovery of financial market infrastructures is relatively recent and only dates back to 2014. Why is there a need for additional guidance at this point? Recovery planning is a work in progress and its a completely new area. It has been implemented differently by CCPs in different jurisdictions, for obvious reasons. CCPs have different business models, they face different risks, their membership and ownership are different and, even more importantly, they operate under different regulatory and legal frameworks. So CCPs move at different paces depending on the difficulties they face. Our report is more about making sure that the existing guidance is properly and consistently implemented across markets and jurisdictions, based on what is actually being done by CCPs, than about issuing additional guidance, since it only dates from 2014. I must clarify that this report will cover recovery only. Its not about resolution. Resolution is being discussed by the FSB and they work under a different timeline. We do work in close partnership with them. Resolution comes after recovery, so it makes sense for CPMI-Iosco to address recovery and then, later this year, the FSB will come up with its own guidance on resolution. Some questions remain when it comes to CCP resolution. Will the FSB be prescribing any specific rules on that? Its not my role to comment on the work the FSB is conducting, but let me stress the strong interaction between the recovery and resolution discussions. One of the first issues they will address is the question of who is in charge and what the resolution point is. When is the right time to go into resolution? Good risk management starts in the CCP, even before the recovery point, of course, and thats why the implementation of the CPMI-Iosco guidance is so important. And the PFMI are stringent enough, in particular through the Cover 1 and Cover 2 requirements, to make sure that even recovery is considered a tail event and that resolution is even less likely to materialise lets call it a tail-of-tail event. But this is obviously not an excuse for not having the right arrangements because resolution can still happen and because the allocation of costs in resolution shapes the incentives in recovery. As far as the resolution point is concerned, an authority should in my view be able to decide that a CCP needs to go into resolution even before the recovery waterfall has been exhausted, for two reasons. First, there might be a public interest in a CCP going into resolution rather than waiting for the recovery instruments to be exhausted. The resolution authority speaks for the public, starting with the indirect members and investors, and society more broadly if there are possible systemic consequences. Second, authorities dont want to step in when financial resources are already exhausted. Another key interaction between the daily management of the CCP, recovery and resolution has to do with cooperation. As you know, the PFMI include a responsibility for cooperative oversight. There are discussions within the FSB about setting up cross-border crisis management groups for CCPs, where relevant authorities will cooperate if resolution becomes necessary. Of course, the two discussions between CCP supervisors and overseers as well as between relevant authorities if resolution becomes necessary need to be consistent because we cannot afford to have two different groups of people taking different decisions. This starts with having a common approach to deciding on which CCPs are systemic in more than one jurisdiction. We are doing some work within the CPMI-Iosco, at the request of the FSB, to agree on a common methodology to define what makes a CCP systemically important. What kind of criteria are you looking at? Its an ongoing discussion within CPMI-Iosco and well then report the outcome of our work to the FSB, prospectively also around July. The objective is to look at the potential cross-border systemic risk implications of CCPs throughout their potential lifecycle, although the measures to address these implications may be different under business as usual, emergency and resolution conditions. One recovery tool that is highly controversial is the use of initial margin. Market participants and some regulators believe that haircutting initial margin could create the wrong incentives, since member firms might run for the exit to protect their initial margin, making the task of rescuing a CCP even more difficult. Do you understand those concerns? I fully appreciate the concerns. The whole point of the recovery and resolution toolkit is to identify a set of instruments that are effective in meeting the potential financial shortfall, but that also set the right incentives for proper risk management of the CCPs and for the clearing members. Setting the right incentives for central clearing is extremely important. The G20 decided in 2009 to make central clearing mandatory. This has been extensively discussed by the regulatory community and our conclusion is not that the G20s decision was wrong. It is correct because mandatory clearing reduces the overall level of risk in the system, with ancillary benefits such as more efficient use of high-quality collateral. But, of course, it also pools risks in CCPs, and that is why the work on risk in CCPs is so important, and has to be conducted in a way that sets the right incentives. This is true for the CCP rulebooks but also for the banking regulation. Thats why we are in close contact with the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision about the parameters of the leverage ratio, because we want to be sure that there are no disincentives for mandatory central clearing. We are now at a point where we should look across different elements of regulation and make sure we are consistent. On your question, there is a broad consensus at the global level, as well as at the European level, on the toolbox that can be used cash calls, variation margin gain haircutting, partial tear-ups and, most controversial of all, initial margin haircutting. Its true that initial margin haircutting is problematic in several respects. It can make the task of rescuing CCPs even more difficult and it also raises legal issues in some jurisdictions which require the initial margin to be insolvency remote. Thats probably what makes initial margin haircutting the least desirable instrument, but since we are still at an early stage in the discussions, I dont want to exclude it completely. Im just saying that this tool would have to be used as a last resort, in a capped way, and for events that are beyond the extreme but plausible market conditions that we consider for stress testing. Some regulators say that, regardless of the problems with initial margin haircutting, this tool should still be made available to CCPs in case they need to gain quick access to liquidity to replenish their default waterfall. Do you have sympathy for this argument? I dont want to prejudge the outcome of the discussion. There are a number of shortcomings that we still need to investigate more deeply, especially around the legal issue of bankruptcy remoteness and the kind of uneven playing field that we will create if we have an instrument that has a different legal treatment in different jurisdictions. One major concern for us is to be internationally consistent. So if an instrument happens to create an uneven playing field across jurisdictions, its probably not the right instrument. Stress testing for CCPs is also high on the regulatory agenda. The CPMI is conducting some work on this. How is it progressing? The CPMI has already expressed public support for exploring a framework for regulatory stress testing, and this is part of the CCP work plan that was released in September 2015. This work plan is a joint endeavour by different standard-setting committees, including Iosco, the FSB, and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. A framework for consistent and comparable stress testing could serve two key objectives: it could help authorities better understand the macro-prudential risks that could materialise, and it could help them assess the financial resources of individual CCPs. On the first aspect, I believe that supervisory stress tests will bring maximal value to the stakeholder community both the supervisors and the CCPs themselves, as well as their clients if they are designed in a way that accounts for the inter-connectedness and the potential spill-over of risk. Its obvious that risk can spread from one CCP to another, from CCPs to the clearing members and then bounce back to the CCPs. Making sense of these interconnections is a big task. Some would say that the cliff is just too high and would tend to give up. I would say its a big and ambitious project, so the earlier we start, the better. What is the timeframe for this project? CPMI-Iosco are discussing it. We will probably come up with some initial thoughts that we will present to G20 ministers and governors this summer. And I would very much like them to take the project on board and make it a priority of the financial regulatory work stream. We need to be realistic about it, though. Its only starting and it will extend beyond the Chinese presidency of the G20. This means the German presidency which will run through 2017 will need to take up this project. But I think there is a lot of value in trying to build a macro approach to supervisory stress testing. One reason its so important is because its one major component of what is increasingly being called a macro-prudential approach to CCPs. CCPs are, essentially, systemic actors. We made them systemic for good reasons, because they help reduce the level of risk in the system. But still, it creates new forms of inter-dependency and a potential spill-over of risk in the system. What is the macro-prudential approach to CCPs? The macro-prudential approach to CCPs potentially includes different dimensions. It starts with good risk management in CCPs under the PFMI. It then includes a better understanding of the inter-dependencies on which the FSB is currently working and a better understanding of the CCP practices that can create pro-cyclicality in the system, e.g. margining practices. Margining is actually a good example of that last point since in some situations there can be a contradiction between the stability of the CCPs and financial stability at large. Imagine a situation where a CCP facing a particular type of risk needs to substantially increase its margin. This is clearly in the interest of a CCP's good risk management, but it may also increase risk in the wider system. The key is to avoid pro-cyclicality. It then extends to this notion of supervisory stress testing with a macro dimension. Developing a framework for supervisory stress testing should therefore be a priority. It will take time, but it will go a long way to support a better understanding of the macro-prudential risks of CCPs. Are other supervisors keen to embrace this idea? I think they all agree that the project makes sense and is useful. They also agree on the fact that supervisory stress testing should be consistent internationally, so its methodology needs to be discussed at the global level. Im not saying that we should have a big coordinated supervisory stress test at the global level. That would be an incredibly complex project. The implementation needs to be decided by supervisors themselves but there is a clear understanding and agreement that we should have a common concept. On that note, I would like to welcome the first EU-wide stress test conducted by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). The outcome of the EU stress test showed that the daily stress testing CCPs were conducting on themselves was not as tough as the minimum shocks set out by ESMA. Is this surprising or even worrying? When it comes to compliance with the regulatory requirements, this is the kind of thing we have been looking into within CPMI-Iosco and its what the first of the twin reports I mentioned earlier will be about. The experience shows that there are some shortcomings with regards to regulatory expectations. There has been room for interpretation of the PFMI, which in some cases may create an uneven playing field. Thats why we need additional guidance. This additional guidance is not about raising the bar. Its about making it clear where the bar is. Was this EU stress test urgently needed, in your view? Its not a question of urgency. It is about starting to develop an instrument that, in my view, will become a normal supervisory instrument, as is already the case in banking supervision. Stress tests on banks used to be big, extraordinary events, but are increasingly becoming the bread and butter of banking supervision. It started in the United States with the Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR), and Europe is following a similar route. We are not yet at this stage when it comes to CCPs, and the whole concept is still in its infancy. But what ESMA has done is very important in terms of progressing along the learning curve. I also see a connection between supervisory stress testing and the discussions on financial buffers in recovery and resolution. The big focus for the supervisory community right now is to know whether CCPs need more financial resources in recovery and resolution. Thats one big question mark. But I think this question is asked in too-general terms because it very much depends on each CCP. They have different business models, face different risks and evolve in different environments. So I personally wish we could move gradually to an approach that is closer to the one we have in banking supervision, if we use stress testing to inform supervisory requirements. I would be very much in favour of the concept of a pillar II for CCPs. We would have pillar I requirements that would be standardised across CCPs, and we would have a pillar II, which would be decided by the competent supervisor and informed by the outcome of the stress test. To me, thats the way forward. It will take some time to take shape and, in the meantime, we should restrain ourselves from approaches to financial resources of CCPs that are too simplistic and standardised. Digital rights and free speech advocates are up in arms over Tuesdays announcement of an agreement between the European Commission and four leading U.S. social media firms Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft on a Code of Conduct designed to crack down on hate speech. The companies have agreed to adopt a system that allows users to flag illegal hate speech and incitement to violence. They also agreed to review flagged posts within 24 hours and to take appropriate action, such as removing them or blocking access. The announcement comes six months after terrorist suicide attacks in Paris killed 130 people and injured hundreds of others, and just two months after terrorist bombings in Brussels took 32 lives and injured hundreds more. Governments in Europe and the U.S., which are engaged in an air and low-intensity ground war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, have urged technology companies to help crack down on the use of social media for recruitment, propaganda, fundraising and other uses by terrorist groups. The recent terror attacks have reminded us of the urgent need to address illegal online hate speech, said Vera Jourova, EU commissioner for justice, consumers and gender equality. Social media is unfortunately one of the tools that terrorist groups use to radicalize young people, and racists use to spread violence and hatred. Facebook, Twitter and Google, which owns YouTube, last year agreed to a plan to remove hate speech from their social media sites in Germany within 24 hours of its being reported. That agreement came in the wake of a rise in xenophobic postings as refugees from Africa and the Middle East began streaming into Europe by the thousands. Censorship Fears Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter already had announced a crackdown on speech that encourages terrorism following last years San Bernardino shooting, which reportedly was inspired by ISIS but not directly organized by the group. Hateful conduct has no place on Twitter and we will continue to tackle this issue head-on, alongside our partners in industry and civil society, said Karen White, head of public policy for Europe. Facebook, Microsoft and Google officials offered similar expressions of support, promising that offending content would be reviewed swiftly, and deleted or blocked pending substantiation of complaints. Open technology and privacy groups have widely condemned the agreement, however, raising concerns over a lack of transparency in its development, and contending that it leaves the door open for censorship within Europe. No Transparency European Digital Rights and Access Now said they would withdraw from any further discussions with officials on the plan and expressed no confidence in the Code of Conduct based on its development process thus far. No outside civil society organizations were invited to participate in discussions on terrorism, the groups maintained, although several were allowed to participate in talks on online hate speech. The groups were excluded completely from participation in the ECs talks with technology companies, which led to the Code of Conduct released earlier this week. Although Access Now was not part of the discussions, it was asked to endorse the process, said policy analyst Estelle Masse. Access Now would consider sitting down at the table if the process were changed to include more transparent discussions with outside groups, she told the E-Commerce Times. EFF is deeply disappointed in the crafting of this code of practice, said Danny OBrien, international director of the Electronic Freedom Foundation. With it, the EU companies have rubber-stamped the widespread removal of allegedly illegal content, based only on the flagging by third parties, he told the E-Commerce Times. The policy does not take into account that whether speech is considered illegal depends on the jurisdiction where it is seen, OBrien pointed out. Further, voluntary agreements such as this one might be misused by parties outside of Europe, he added. This is a dangerous precedent, as any wider discussion between the EU and international human rights groups would have revealed. Civil society was systematically excluded from negotiations over this code of conduct, and it shows. Concern about online security and privacy are leading Americans to curtail online activity, the United States National Telecommunications and Information Administration reported last week. More than 41,000 households with at least one Internet user in July responded to several privacy and security questions the U.S. Census Bureau posed for the NTIA. Eighty-four percent of those households named at least one online privacy and security concern, and 40 percent mentioned at least two. Sixty-three percent were concerned about identity theft. Other concerns included credit card or banking fraud, data collection or tracking by online services, loss of control over personal data, data collection or tracking by government, and threats to personal safety. Privacy or security concerns deterred 45 percent of online households from conducting financial transactions or buying goods or services online, from posting on social networks, or from expressing opinions on controversial or political issues online during the year prior to the survey. Thirty percent refrained from at least two of those activities. Hemmed In, Cabined, Cribbed and Confined Online households were more likely to refrain from activities related to their privacy or security concerns, the NTIA found. For example, 35 percent of households concerned about identity theft refrained from conducting financial transactions online during the year prior to the survey, compared to 18 percent of other online households. Thirty-three percent of online households concerned about credit card or banking fraud didnt make purchases over the Internet compared to 21 percent of other online households. Fear about government data collection dissuaded 29 percent of online households from expressing controversial or political opinions online, compared to 16 percent of other households. Policymakers need to develop a better understanding of mistrust in the privacy and security of the Internet and the resulting chilling effects, said Rafi Goldberg, policy analyst in the NTIAs Office of Policy Analysis and Development. In addition to being a problem of great concern to many Americans, privacy and security issues may reduce economic activity and hamper the free exchange of ideas online. Older people are more likely to refrain from going online, as they tend to be far more concerned with this kind of thing than younger users, observed Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. That said, one large breach might scare a massive number of people off the Web if its damaging enough, he told the E-Commerce Times. How Big Is Big Enough? Its unclear how big a breach needs to be to have a measurable impact on the economy. In all, nearly 4 billion records have been lost or stolen since 2013, according to the Breach Level Index. The Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, SWIFT, which serves more than 11,000 banking and securities organizations worldwide, recently warned members that its software might have been breached. That incident is yet another example of the ever-increasing challenge of preventing unauthorized access to repositories of sensitive data, HPE Securitys George Rice, senior director, payments, told the E-Commerce Times. A young Russian hacker earlier this month offered to sell data from more than 272 million stolen email accounts, including some from users of Yahoos Googles and Microsofts systems, for just US$1. Yet e-commerce appears to be going strong. For example, Amazons net revenues in Q1 2016 exceeded $29 billion, compared with about $23 billion in the first quarter of 2015. However, Amazons figures dont tell you what the revenues would have been had these concerns not be evident, nor what will happen to these revenues in the face of a major breach, noted Enderle. By now, the everyday users who are going to let [news about breaches] scare them into good security practices have already done so, remarked Jonathan Sander, vice president at Lieberman Software. To see 272 million records going for $1 means the prices for our data are falling, which may be seen as good news, he told the E-Commerce Times. As prices get lower and the skill needed to grab the data gets higher, maybe well see market forces fighting the bad guys for us. 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Relations between the Vatican and communist leaders of Vietnam are seen as improving after Pope Francis included in the latest batch of cardinals the appointment of Hanoi Archbishop Pierre Nguyen Van Nhon. Nhon, 76, said his red hat represents the challenging task ahead of him, as the Holy See and Hanoi have sought to re-establish diplomatic ties, a report by Radio Free Asia reported. The archbishop admitted, however, that the Church leadership has a lot on its plate for the roughly six million followers in Vietnam. There religious activity continues to be under State control despite government claims of religious freedom. Christians make up the second largest religious group in the country, after Buddhists who comprise the majority of Vietnam's 92.5 million population. The Vatican and Hanoi have not had formal diplomatic relations since the communist government took power in 1975. Dialogue between the parties resumed in 2007 with the establishment of a Joint Working Group. "Based on visits exchanged between the two sides and especially the presence of ... the Vatican's representative in Hanoi, we can see there have been efforts to hold productive dialogue," said Nhon. "Such dialogue requires patience and sincerity. I've seen obvious efforts from the Vatican, as well as from the government [of Vietnam]. The direction looks positive, but the path is still long and we need time," he continued. Nhon observed that Catholics in Vietnam are generally optimistic about the efforts to improve religious freedom in the country. He said that some problems church followers encounter are usually isolated. Nhon takes over from Cardinal John Baptist Pham Minh Man, who retired last year at the age of 80. "The work has been there always and now I will have to do it better," said Nhon, who was ordained as a priest in 1967 and named Hanoi archbishop in 2010. (Photo: REUTERS / Kham)Catholics hold candles and posters with the image of lawyer Le Quoc Quan during a mass prayer for Quan at Thai Ha church in Hanoi February 16, 2014. Participants in the mass prayer also called for justice for Quan, a political dissident and democracy activist, ahead of his appeal trial which will be happened on February 18, his brother Le Quoc Quyet said. The Hanoi's People Court sentenced Quan, a political dissident and pro-democracy activist, to 30 months in jail for tax evasion after a half-day trial on October 2, 2013. GENEVA - U.N human rights experts have called on Viet Nam to stop persecuting and torturing Tran Thi Hong, who has been repeatedly arrested for informing the international community of human rights violations against her husband, who is in prison for peaceful religious activities. The Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Heiner Bielefeldt, and the Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan E. Mendez, also urged the Vietnamese authorities to put an end to all persecution and harassment. This includes criminalization, against religious leaders and human rights defenders, women human rights defenders and members of their families, the statement released June 3. Tran, spouse of imprisoned Pastor Nguyen Cong Chinh, was initially arrested on April 14, 2016. She was tortured and warned to stop her activities promoting freedom of religion. Since then, Tran Thi Hong has been repeatedly arrested and harassed by the authorities, who are trying to force her to 'cooperate' with the government. "We are concerned that the repeated arrests and the continuing detention of Ms. Tran resulted from her peaceful human rights work and exercise of her fundamental rights, which constitutes arbitrary detention," the experts said calling for her unconditional release. During his May visit to Vietnam, U.S. President Barack Obama defended the concept of universal human rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly in a speech made in Hanoi. "The United States does not seek to impose our form of government on Vietnam," he said. "The rights I speak of I believe are not American values; I think they're universal values written into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." "When there is freedom of religion, it not only allows people to fully express the love and compassion that are at the heart of all great religions, but it allows faith groups to serve their communities through schools and hospitals, and care for the poor and the vulnerable," he noted, Catholic Culture reported. Tran's husband has been in prison since 2011 for his religious activities as director of the Vietnam-U.S. Lutheran Alliance Church, which is considered as 'anti-Government' and 'anti-communist' by the authorities. In prison, he has been subjected to torture and deprived of contact with his family. "The Vietnamese Government has the obligation to respect the right of religious communities to organize themselves as independent communities and to appoint their own leaders," said Special Rapporteur Bielefeldt. "The severe beating, by authorities who did not identify themselves, amounts to torture and must be investigated and those responsible held accountable, in accordance with Viet Nam's international human rights obligations," Mr. Mendez, added. The UN Special Rapporteurs concluded that "Viet Nam should immediately and unconditionally release Pastor Nguyen Cong Chinh and Ms. Tran Thi Hong, as well as all persons detained for their legitimate activities in the defence of human rights." The human rights experts' appeal has also been endorsed by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Michel Forst; the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Maina Kiai; the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye; the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Dubravka Simonovic; and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. On April 26, the International Commission of Jurists and 32 other human rights groups called on the Vietnamese authorities to carry out a prompt, impartial, independent and effective investigation into allegations that Tran Thi Hong, who is a member of the Vietnamese Women for Human Rights, tortured Mark Scott, who spent 10 years as the ABCs managing director, is about to take up his new role as head of the NSW Department of Education Scott who stepped down from the ABCs top job in April will replace former secretary, Dr Michele Bruniges, who is now the head of the Federal Department of the Education.A statement from the NSW Premiers office recognised Scotts background in education during the 1980s.Mr Scott was a teacher at St Andrew's Cathedral School before working in senior roles for two education ministers in the Greiner Government, Virginia Chadwick and Terry Metherell, the statement said.He then completed a Master of Public Administration at Harvard before joining Fairfax as a journalist, rising to senior editorial and executive roles, then moving to the ABC.NSW Premier, Mike Baird, said Scotts appointment would further reinvigorate the senior executive of the NSW public service.Along with promoting outstanding young talent from within the service, we have sought out the best and brightest from the corporate world, he said.Like Rob Whitfield, who took the reins at Treasury last year, Mark is ready, willing and able to bring the fruits of his immense experience to the benefit of the entire NSW community.In a statement, Scott said he saw no more important opportunity than working alongside the teachers of NSW and the staff of the Department to improve teaching and learning in our schools.Education Minister Adrian Piccoli said he looked forward to working with the former ABC chief.I look forward to working with Mark to continue delivering the most comprehensive set of reforms of school education in a century, he said.Our focus remains on improving student results and delivering the skills base needed to grow the NSW economy. To build the largest and most complete Amateur Radio community site on the Internet - a "portal" that hams think of as the first place to go for information, to exchange ideas, and be part of whats happening with ham radio on the Internet. eHam.net provides recognition and enjoyment to the people who use, contribute, and build the site. This project involves a management team of volunteers who each take a topic of interest and manage it with passion. The site will stand above all other ham radio sites by employing the latest technology and professional design/programming standards, developed by a team of community programmers who contribute their skills to the effort. The site will be something of which everyone involved can be proud to say they were a part. We welcome your comments. The eHam.net Team, Revision 07/2020. Ely, Cambridgeshire is best known for its majestic cathedral dubbed the 'Ship of the Fens' because it dominates the flat landscape. The city, which is the second smallest in England, is about 14 miles north-northeast of Cambridge and about 80 miles by road from London. 13:33, 25 OCT 2022 As the gaming world heads towards E3 2016, Microsoft announced a pretty sweet deal for its current flagship console, the Xbox One. The console, which has sold fairly well unless compared to its rival, the PlayStation 4, is now being offered by the tech giant for a discounted price. What's even better is the fact that the discount is very significant. According to the tech giant, the Xbox One console would only retail for $299 for the 512GB model. The higher-end models with 1TB of storage are also discounted at just $319. However, despite the fact that Microsoft announced that the promotions are available only for a limited time and that the deal is actually pretty notable, it would not be in your best interests to get an Xbox One now. Here are three reasons why. E3 2016 is Just Around the Corner Microsoft is expected to announce a series of devices during its upcoming presentation at E3. During this event, the tech giant is expected to reveal a number of Xbox-related consoles, including the rumored Xbox One Slim. Of course, if the Xbox One Slim does indeed turn out to be true, it would mean that the Xbox One would be an outdated console soon. Unless you have to get an Xbox One now, it would be wise to wait a few more weeks. The Xbox One Lost to the PS4 for a Reason While Xbox One sales are pretty satisfactory on its own, its sales suddenly become very low when compared to its rival, the Sony PlayStation 4. One of the reasons for this, of course, is the fact that Microsoft's device was rather underwhelming when compared to its Sony counterpart. This was noticed by players, and the Xbox One's sales definitely took a blow. It would be important to note that the Xbox One is a console that seems to be scheduled for an update. If a device is getting an update, it would be best to check out that those updates are before committing to the original system. The Xbox Two Scorpio Might Come Next Year Rumors are emerging that the highly-anticipated Xbox Two device, the rumored Xbox Scorpio, would feature 4x the power of today's consoles. What's more, the Scorpio is alleged to be scheduled for a 2017 release. Thus, if you get the original Xbox One now, your console might very well become obsolete next year. Generally, the weeks leading up to a major announcement from a console manufacturer is widely regarded as the worst time to purchase a current-generation console. In this case, fortune might very well favor the patient. GIVING chemotherapy after radiotherapy delays further growth of a rare type of brain tumour, increasing the number of patients alive at five years from 44 per cent to 56 per cent. These results - from a clinical trial for patients with anaplastic glioma run by the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) and funded in UK by Cancer Research UK - were presented at the 2016 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chicago today (Friday)*. The phase III clinical trial compared survival for patients whose tumours were thought to be less likely to respond to chemotherapy because they did not have mutations in two genes called 1p and 19q. 750 patients from institutes around the world were split into four groups and either given: 1. Radiotherapy alone 2. Radiotherapy at the same time as chemotherapy 3. Radiotherapy then chemotherapy 4. Radiotherapy at the same time as and followed by chemotherapy. Giving chemotherapy after radiotherapy (groups three and four) halted tumour growth for 43 months after treatment, compared with 19 months for those who only had radiotherapy (groups one and two). This improvement resulted in 56 per cent of patients given radiotherapy then chemotherapy surviving for five years, compared with only 44 per cent of those who did not. While giving chemotherapy after radiotherapy has improved survival and is now standard care for these patients, the benefits of chemotherapy at the same time as radiotherapy are still unclear and need further follow-up. Around 280 people are diagnosed with anaplastic gliomas each year in England. UK trial lead Dr Sara Erridge, consultant oncologist at the Edinburgh Cancer Centre, said: "Our important study showed that giving temozolomide chemotherapy after radiotherapy delays progression and significantly improves survival for this group of patients. This trial has changed the way we manage patients with this type of tumour with radiotherapy followed by temozolomide chemotherapy now being the standard of care." Martin van den Bent, member of the EORTC Board and study coordinator, said: "This study demonstrates the value of collaborative academic research in improving the standard of care for rare cancers. Through this partnership between EORTC, Cancer Research UK, North American and Australian study groups we were able to involve a large enough group of patients with this rare tumor type, allowing us to draw definitive conclusions that guide future treatment decisions in this disease." Cancer Research UK scientists led the development of temozolomide chemotherapy, including its discovery in the lab and the development and first clinical trials of the drug in cancer patients**. The treatment is used worldwide to treat glioblastoma - the most common type of adult primary brain tumour. Dr Ian Walker, Cancer Research UK's director of clinical research, said: "The data from this trial is an important step forward for patients with anaplastic glioma. Many types of brain cancer are difficult to treat which is why we have committed to investing in more research in these hard-to-treat cancers. It wouldn't have been possible for our researchers to discover and develop temozolomide without the generous donations of our supporters. And thanks to research like this we hope to be able to increase survival for more patients in the future." ### For media enquiries contact Emily Head in the Cancer Research UK press office on 020 3469 6189 or, out of hours, on 07050 264 059. Notes to editor: * More information about the BR14/CATNON trial available here: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/find-a-clinical-trial/a-trial-radiotherapy-with-and-without-temozolomide-for-anaplastic-glioma-BR14 ** More information available here: http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2013/07/18/the-story-of-temozolomide/ About EORTC The European Organisation for the Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) brings together European cancer clinical research experts from all disciplines for trans-national collaboration. Both multinational and multidisciplinary, the EORTC Network comprises more than 4,500 collaborators from all disciplines involved in cancer treatment and research in more than 600 hospitals in over 30 countries. Through translational and clinical research, the EORTC offers an integrated approach to drug development, drug evaluation programs and medical practices. About the MRC The Medical Research Council is at the forefront of scientific discovery to improve human health. Founded in 1913 to tackle tuberculosis, the MRC now invests taxpayers' money in some of the best medical research in the world across every area of health. Thirty-one MRC-funded researchers have won Nobel prizes in a wide range of disciplines, and MRC scientists have been behind such diverse discoveries as vitamins, the structure of DNA and the link between smoking and cancer, as well as achievements such as pioneering the use of randomised controlled trials, the invention of MRI scanning, and the development of a group of antibodies used in the making of some of the most successful drugs ever developed. Today, MRC-funded scientists tackle some of the greatest health problems facing humanity in the 21st century, from the rising tide of chronic diseases associated with ageing to the threats posed by rapidly mutating micro-organisms. http://www.mrc.ac.uk About Cancer Research UK Cancer Research UK is the world's leading cancer charity dedicated to saving lives through research. Cancer Research UK's pioneering work into the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer has helped save millions of lives. Cancer Research UK receives no government funding for its life-saving research. Every step it makes towards beating cancer relies on every pound donated. Cancer Research UK has been at the heart of the progress that has already seen survival in the UK double in the last forty years. Today, 2 in 4 people will survive their disease for 10 years or more after a cancer diagnosis. Cancer Research UK's ambition is to accelerate progress so that by 2034, 3 in 4 people will survive their disease for 10 years or more after a cancer diagnosis. Cancer Research UK supports research into all aspects of cancer through the work of over 4,000 scientists, doctors and nurses. Together with its partners and supporters, Cancer Research UK's vision is to bring forward the day when all cancers are cured. For further information about Cancer Research UK's work or to find out how to support the charity, please call 0300 123 1022 or visit http://www.cancerresearchuk.org. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook. (GOODYEAR, Arizona -- June 3, 2016) -- Advances in lung cancer, ovarian cancer and new immunotherapy treatments are among the scientific studies presented this year at ASCO by Dr. Glen Weiss, Director of Clinical Research at Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) at Western Regional Medical Center (Western). Dr. Weiss has overseen a substantial number of innovative clinical trials since he began supervising clinical research at CTCA Western in 2013. The results of several of these projects will be presented at the annual meeting of ASCO -- the American Society of Clinical Oncology -- June 3-7 at McCormick Place in Chicago. With nearly 30,000 members from across the globe, ASCO is the world's largest organization of cancer physicians. "At CTCA at Western, through our clinical trials program, we have been privileged in recent years to bring some of the latest in technological and pharmaceutical advances to our patients in an effort to provide high-quality care," said Dr. Weiss. "In the process, we have documented clinical advances that should benefit our patients now, and in the years to come." In one of the five ASCO studies, Dr. Weiss and a team of CTCA researchers in Arizona and Illinois, as well as collaborators at Chronix Biomedical in Germany, showed in a preliminary study how "liquid biopsies" might be able to help predict improvements in patient treatment as many as 3-12 weeks prior to conventional image-scanning technology. Liquid biopsies are simple blood tests that potentially may help detect cancer at an earlier point in time compared to conventional imaging technology. They seek to identify "at risk" genetic biomarkers in a patient's blood circulatory system. Although more research is needed, they may also be able to help monitor a patient's progress during treatment. "Tumor cell-free DNA provides minimally invasive, patient-specific biomarkers with which to monitor tumors," explained Dr. Weiss, who was the lead author of this study. This ongoing study began with 24 patients with various types of cancer who were treated with a combination of new immunotherapies and conventional chemotherapies or immunotherapy alone. Dr. Weiss will present the findings of this study June 5, 2016, at ASCO. (Abstract #3027; Tumor cell-free DNA copy number instability (CNI) to predict therapeutic response to immunotherapy prior to cycle 2.) Liquid biopsies are designed to be less invasive, less risky, and perhaps even less costly than conventional tissue biopsies, which essentially are minor surgeries. Not only do they have the potential to help detect cancer before symptoms occur, but they may also better detect who is at risk for the reoccurrence of cancer. "Because liquid biopsies can be obtained frequently, they may provide physicians with up-to-date information about how a patient's cancer might be changing. This, in turn, might help in the selection of the best possible treatments to combat the cancer," Dr. Weiss said. "Having the ability to know weeks in advance how a cancer is responding to treatment would potentially give us an advantage in helping the patient." In another study involving 124 patients, Dr. Weiss and colleagues documented promising preliminary findings that an anti-PD-L1 antibody agent, avelumab, was safe and effective against recurrent-refractory ovarian cancer. This is the largest study to date of anti-PD-L1 agents in patients with this type of ovarian cancer. (Abstract #5533; Avelumab (MSB0010718C; anti-PD-L1) in patients with recurrent/refractory ovarian cancer from the JAVELIN Solid Tumor phase Ib trial: Safety and clinical activity.) Immune checkpoint blockade inhibitors such as anti-PD-1 and anti-PD-L1 agents have the potential to revolutionize care for cancer patients by providing clinical benefits with minimal side effects. They essentially uncloak the cancer so the patient's own immune system can help attack the tumor. Dr. Weiss also was a co-author of a first-in-human study of the safety and effectiveness of anti-PD-1 antibody agent called REGN2810, in which 27 of 43 patients (62.8 percent) with solid tumors saw their cancer either stabilize or shrink. Although not conclusive, the results suggest a promising correlation between REGN2810 and tumor growth. (Abstract #3024; A first-in-human study of REGN2810, a monoclonal, fully human antibody to programmed death-1 (PD-1), in combination with immunomodulators including hypofractionated radiotherapy (hfRT).) And, Dr. Weiss was co-author of two international studies -- one at 10 sites and another at 15 sites -- of patients with a rare type of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which showed promising preliminary results from an agent called brigatinib. In one study, of ALK NSCLC patients, brigatinib "yielded substantial antitumor activity ... both systemically and in brain metastases." (Abstract #9057; Activity and safety of brigatinib (BRG) in patients (pts) with ALK+ non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC): Phase (ph) 1/2 trial results.) In another study, ALK NSCLC patients resistant to conventional treatment with the drug crizotinib were found to have benefited from brigatinib. (Abstract #9060; Activity of brigatinib (BRG) in crizotinib (CRZ) resistant patients (pts) according to ALK mutation status.) "Taken as a whole, these studies show that CTCA is contributing to the field of cancer research in a profound way," Dr. Weiss said. "We are proud of our efforts to find new ways to provide patients with ever expanding opportunities to receive the very latest in experimental therapeutic innovations." Details of Dr. Weiss' studies may be found at abstract.asco.org. ### About Cancer Treatment Centers of America Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), headquartered in Boca Raton, Fla., is a national network of five hospitals that serves adult patients who are fighting cancer. CTCA offers an integrative approach to care that combines advancements in genomic testing and precision cancer treatment, surgery, radiation, immunotherapy and chemotherapy, with evidence-based supportive therapies designed to help patients physically and emotionally by enhancing their quality of life while reducing side effects both during and after treatment. CTCA serves patients from around the world at its hospitals in Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Tulsa. Consistently rated among U.S. hospitals that deliver the highest quality of care and patient experience, CTCA provides patients and their families with comprehensive information about their treatment options and encourages their active participation in treatment decisions. For more information, visit cancercenter.com, Facebook.com/cancercenter and Twitter.com/cancercenter. Sweden, the country hosting this year's European Obesity Summit in Gothenburg (1-4 June) has always been associated with good health indicators. However new research presented at the summit shows that obesity has continued to increase across mid-Sweden since the start of the new millennium. The study is by Dr Anu Molarius, Competence Centre for Health, Vastmanland County Council, Vasteras, Sweden, and colleagues. The area studied includes four counties with about one million inhabitants. It does not include any big cities such as Stockholm or Gothenburg but several smaller cities such as Uppsala (with about 200 000 inhabitants), and Vasteras and Orebro (with about 140 000 inhabitants each). The simple aim of this new research was to investigate trends in the prevalence of obesity by age and level of education in the general population in mid-Sweden from year 2000 to 2012. A postal questionnaire was sent to a random population sample aged 25-74 years in years 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012. The overall response rates were 67%, 65%, 60% and 53%, respectively, and the study included 29017, 27385, 25910 and 24152 respondents, respectively. Obesity (BMI of over 30 kg/m2) was based on self-reported weight and height. The researchers found that age-standardised prevalence of obesity increased from 13% to 17% in women and from 12% to 17% in men between 2000 and 2012. Obesity increased in all age groups from 2000 to 2008 and continued to increase among the middle aged (45-64 years) between 2008 and 2012. (see table below) The socioeconomic gradient in obesity changed during the study period since the absolute increase in obesity was steepest at the middle educational level. In 2012, the prevalence of obesity was almost twice as high at both middle and low educational levels compared with high educational level. After making corrections to the data to adjust for potential errors in self-reported weight and height, the researchers estimated the "true" prevalence of adult obesity to be approximately 20% in 2012 for both men and women. Dr Molarius says: "Obesity has continued to increase in the general population, but the increase among people of mid-educational level appears to have been the most rapid." She adds: "The prevalence is about 2 percentage points higher in this area we studied than in national studies, where the population is more concentrated in big cities which have a lower prevalence of obesity in general. But we think that similar trends over time are probable. To verify this, however, national studies are needed." "While obesity may be slowing down in some groups, it is not in the majority. The continuing increase among the middle-aged and among those with a middle level education, who represent half of the adult population, is a major public health challenge." ### Testing for metabolic changes in the blood could indicate whether a cancer drug is working as designed, a new study reports. Scientists have found that measuring how cancer treatment affects the levels of metabolites - the building blocks of fats and proteins - can be used to assess whether the drug is hitting its intended target. This new way of monitoring cancer therapy could speed up the development of new targeted drugs - which exploit specific genetic weaknesses in cancer cells - and help in tailoring treatment for patients. Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, measured the levels of 180 blood markers in 41 patients with advanced cancers in a phase I clinical trial conducted with The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. They found that investigating the mix of metabolic markers could accurately assess how cancers were responding to the targeted drug pictilisib. Their study was funded by the Wellcome Trust, Cancer Research UK and the pharmaceutical company Roche, and is published in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics. Pictilisib is designed to specifically target a molecular pathway in cancer cells, called PI3 kinase, which has key a role in cell metabolism and is defective in a range of cancer types. As cancers with PI3K defects grow, they can cause a decrease in the levels of metabolites in the bloodstream. The new study is the first to show that blood metabolites are testable indicators of whether or not a new cancer treatment is hitting the correct target, both in preclinical mouse models and also in a trial of patients. Using a sensitive technique called mass spectrometry, scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) initially analysed the metabolite levels in the blood of mice with cancers that had defects in the PI3K pathway. They found that the blood levels of 26 different metabolites, which were low prior to therapy, had risen considerably following treatment with pictilisib. Their findings indicated that the drug was hitting its target, and reversing the effects of the cancer on mouse metabolites. Similarly, in humans the ICR researchers found that almost all of the metabolites - 22 out of the initial 26 - once again rose in response to pictilisib treatment, as seen in the mice. Blood levels of the metabolites began to increase after a single dose of pictilisib, and were seen to drop again when treatment was stopped, suggesting that the effect was directly related to the drug treatment. Metabolites vary naturally depending on the time of day or how much food a patient has eaten. But the researchers were able to provide the first strong evidence that despite this variation metabolites can be used to test if a drug is working, and could help guide decisions about treatment. Dr Florence Raynaud, Senior Researcher in the Clinical Pharmacology and Trials Team at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: "We have shown that assessing a patient's metabolites can be a quick and simple way of assessing whether a cancer drug is specifically hitting its intended target in the body. Our study is an important step in the development of new precision cancer therapies, and is the first to show that blood metabolites have real potential to monitor the effects of novel agents. "Our method was developed specifically for pictilisib but could now be adapted to discover metabolite markers for other cancer treatments." Co-author Professor Paul Workman, Chief Executive of The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: "In the modern world of precision cancer medicine it is really vital to understand a drug's mechanism of action, and to know how it is working not just overall but in individual cancer patients. "By monitoring metabolic signals in the blood, we could make informed decisions about drug development without having to wait years to see the final results of large clinical trials. And our method could eventually be used to monitor patients routinely during the course of treatment, as a quick and easy way of assessing whether a drug is still working, or whether treatment needs to be adapted." ### Notes to editors For more information contact Sophia McCully on 020 7153 5136 or sophia.mccully@icr.ac.uk. For enquiries out of hours, please call 07595 963 613. The Institute of Cancer Research, London, is one of the world's most influential cancer research organisations. Scientists and clinicians at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) are working every day to make a real impact on cancer patients' lives. Through its unique partnership with The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and 'bench-to-bedside' approach, the ICR is able to create and deliver results in a way that other institutions cannot. Together the two organisations are rated in the top four centres for cancer research and treatment globally. The ICR has an outstanding record of achievement dating back more than 100 years. It provided the first convincing evidence that DNA damage is the basic cause of cancer, laying the foundation for the now universally accepted idea that cancer is a genetic disease. Today it is a world leader at identifying cancer-related genes and discovering new targeted drugs for personalised cancer treatment. A college of the University of London, the ICR is the UK's top-ranked academic institution for research quality, and provides postgraduate higher education of international distinction. It has charitable status and relies on support from partner organisations, charities and the general public. The ICR's mission is to make the discoveries that defeat cancer. For more information visit http://www.icr.ac.uk Antibodies to native double-stranded DNA are present in the blood of healthy people, but their level is increased manifold in patients with autoimmune diseases, when the human immune system becomes hyperactive and attacks normal, healthy tissues. Symptoms of these diseases can affect many different body systems, including joints, skin, kidneys, blood cells, heart, and lungs. The vast majority of antibodies to DNA circulating in the blood of patients and healthy subjects are not associated with any pathologic manifestations and are non-pathogenic. Only a subset of antibodies to DNA circulating in the blood of patients are pathogenic because they are associated with one of the most common complications of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) known as the "lupus" glomerulonephritis, a kidney damage followed by renal dysfunction The researchers of Kazan Federal University, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania used Molecular Dynamic simulations of bimolecular complexes of a segment of dsDNA with a monoclonal anti-DNA antibody's Fab-fragment to obtain detailed structural and physical characteristics of the dynamic intermolecular interactions of DNA with anti-DNA antibodies. The computer-based Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulation plays an increasingly important role, as it "revives" crystallographic protein structures and provides information not available by other means about their moving parts and intra- and intermolecular interactions. Using a computationally modified crystal structure of a Fab-DNA complex, the authors studied in silico equilibrium Molecular Dynamics of the Fab-fragment associated with two homologous dsDNA fragments, containing or not containing dimerized thymine, a product of DNA photodamage. An important role that anti-DNA antibodies play in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases, including SLE, is related to the properties of modified or abnormal DNA formed in these pathological conditions. The aggregate of data obtained shows that the highly specific recognition and stability of DNA-containing immune complexes are governed primarily by the amino acid composition of both light and heavy polypeptide chains, by the number and location of the aromatic amino acid residues, and the geometry of the antigen. The findings provide a mechanistic insight into formation and properties of the pathogenic anti-DNA antibodies in autoimmune diseases, such as SLE, associated with skin photosensibilization (increased sensitivity of the skin and mucosa to the light and UV radiation), which may lead to UV-induced DNA damage, causing the exposure of polynucleotide autoantigens. Elucidation of structural mechanisms of an antigen recognition and interaction of anti-DNA antibodies provides a basis for understanding the role of DNA-containing immune complexes in human pathologies and for new treatments. ### This work was supported by the Program for Competitive Growth of Kazan Federal University. Joint research between scientists from Kumamoto University, Japan and Imperial College London, UK has revealed the mechanisms of persistent latent infection of the human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1). This is an important achievement that may contribute to the prevention of refractory leukemia, a form of leukemia in which leukemic cells do not respond well to treatment. HTLV-1 is a type of retrovirus that has co-existed with humans for several thousand years, and is thought to be transmitted either through sexual contact or from mother to child through breastfeeding. It is currently estimated that there are at least 30 million infected people in the world. Most are asymptomatic HTLV-1 carriers who won't be affected by further disease, but a few (3-5%) will develop leukemia or chronic inflammatory disease. The main trait of a retrovirus infection, simply put, is that the virus DNA integrates with the original DNA of a host cell, thereby making it extremely difficult to recognize and treat. Virus DNA that is incorporated into a host cell's DNA is able to avoid the immune mechanism and the actions of antiretrovirus drugs since the host cell considers the virus DNA as its own. This is a major obstacle in attempting to completely eliminate the virus from the body of an infected person. A recent collaboration between researchers from Kumamoto University and Imperial College London has revealed that the key factor in HTLV-1 infection is CTCF. CTCF is a type of cell-derived protein with the important function of determining how genes are sterically folded into DNA. The research collaboration revealed that CTCF binds directly to the already integrated viral DNA of HTLV-1 and controls the mechanisms that promote persistent infection. "When the virus enters the human body the immune system begins working," said lead researcher Associate Professor Yorifumi Satou of Kumamoto University. "However, to escape the immune system, HTLV-1 integrates with human DNA and uses the original folding system of the human cells. Thus, the virus is able to stealthily survive in the body of infected person." "Adult T-cell leukemia developed from HTLV-1 is an intractable blood cancer with a low incidence rate but poor prognosis," Dr. Satou continued. "The results of our study illustrate an important mechanism used in the persistent latent infection of HTLV-1 and should contribute to the development of new forms of prevention and treatment." Although HTLV-1 is one of the oldest retroviruses, it was not discovered until 1980. Since then, researchers from Kumamoto University have been contributing to HTLV-1 research, working toward prevention and eventual cure of the disease. ### This finding was posted in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, online edition, on Feb. 29th, 2016. How does the cross-talk between brain networks change when working memory - the mental assembly of information needed to carry out a particular task -- is engaged? Investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have found that dopamine signaling within the cerebral cortex can predict changes in the extent of communication between key brain networks during working memory. Their findings receiving online publication in Science Advances may lay the groundwork for studies of how disruptions in dopamine signaling contribute to working memory deficits that are characteristic of schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. "Our principal finding is that dopamine signaling within the cortex predicts the extent to which the frontoparietal control network -- which directly mediates working memory performance -- becomes disconnected from the default network - which is active when the brain is awake but directed towards internal tasks, such as thinking about past or future events," says Joshua Roffman, MD, of the MGH Department of Psychiatry, lead and corresponding author of the paper. "The disengagement of these two networks is what allows us to shift our focus away from internal events and towards the performance of many types of cognitive tasks." For their investigation the MGH team utilized the first device capable of simultaneous MRI and PET imaging, which is located at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at MGH. The ability to conduct both scans at the same time allows real-time measurement of both dopamine signaling -- using a PET imaging agent that binds to D1 dopamine receptors - and the interaction of particular brain networks, as measured by functional MRI. After first confirming that connection between the frontoparietal control network and the default network abruptly drops when healthy volunteers begin engaging in a working memory task, the researchers then showed that the disengagement between the two networks was strongest in individuals with the lowest cortical density of D1 receptors, which reflects higher dopamine levels. D1 receptor density did not affect how accurately study participants completed the memory task. An associate professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Roffman notes that this result is in line with previous studies in primate models showing that dopamine signaling on a cellular level is essential to a key aspect of working memory - determining which neural signals to pay attention to and which to ignore. This study is the first to examine how this cellular-level activity is expanded to a network-wide level in the brains of healthy humans. He states, "We hope that improved understanding of the role of dopamine in organizing cortical networks will lead us to better ways of improving working memory in patients with schizophrenia and other illnesses through optimized dopamine signaling." ### Co-authors of the Science Advances report are Alexandra Tanner, Hamdi Eryilmaz, PhD, Anais Rodriguez-Thompson, Noah J. Silverstein, New Fei Ho, PhD, Adam Z. Nitenson, Randy Buckner, PhD, and Dara Manoach, PhD, MGH Psychiatry; Daniel Chonde, Douglas Greve, PhD, Bruce Rosen, MD, PhD, Jacob Hooker, PhD, and Ciprian Catana, MD, Martinos Center; and Anissa Abi-Dargham, MD, Columbia University Medical Center. Support for the study includes a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Early Career Physician-Scientist Award and National Institutes of Health grant R01 MH101425. Massachusetts General Hospital, founded in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The MGH Research Institute conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the nation, with an annual research budget of more than $800 million and major research centers in HIV/AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer, computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, regenerative medicine, reproductive biology, systems biology, photomedicine and transplantation biology. The MGH topped the 2015 Nature Index list of health care organizations publishing in leading scientific journals, earned the prestigious 2015 Foster G. McGaw Prize for Excellence in Community Service and returned to the number one spot on the 2015-16 U.S. News & World Report list of "America's Best Hospitals." Astronauts aren't the only ones who get to use NASA technology. Computer scientists and engineers at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, work to make flight software and satellite technology more accessible in an effort to engage the public and educate students. Students at Capitol Technology University in Laurel, Maryland, for example, use NASA technologies to develop their own computers and build their own small satellites known as Cube-Sats. There has been an increasing interest in small satellite and CubeSat architecture. However, CubeSat software can often be too complex to implement into the classroom. But thanks to a novel technology known as Pi-Sat, developing flight software for satellites and other systems is more accessible than ever before. The Pi-Sat is a low-cost, easy-to-use test bed that facilitates the research and development of software for small satellite and CubeSat architectures. "Even though the CubeSat is a compact spacecraft, it has all the complexities of a large spacecraft," said David McComas, head of the Flight Software System branch at Goddard. "Now, with Pi-Sat, we have something everyone can use. You can literally just hook up a keyboard to it to send commands and receive data." The Pi-Sat is based on the Raspberry Pi, which gives the satellite its name. The Raspberry Pi is a low cost, credit card-sized computer that plugs into a computer monitor and uses a standard keyboard and mouse. It enables users to explore computing and learn how to code. Raspberry Pi is not best hardware available in terms of processing power, but it's low cost and ease of development makes it ideal for classroom-built satellites. Pi-Sat can also easily run the core Flight System, or cFS, software architecture that was developed at Goddard. The cFS became open source in December 2014. The cFS consists of a reusable software framework and a set of reusable software applications. It comes with a built system of sample apps and lab applications, as well as a tool that creates the skeleton of an app that allows users to customize their own applications. "Making the cFS open source was a big plus because now we had this entire working product free for anyone to use," said Susanne Strege, cFS project lead and associate head of the Flight Software Systems branch at Goddard. "It gives us a greater capability for educational outreach and is much more accessible to students." Alex "Sandy" Antunes, professor of astronautical engineering, and Patrick Stakem, professor of electrical engineering, have led the educational efforts around Pi-Sat and cFS at Capitol Tech by incorporating them into their curricula. They also host a summer workshop for college students from Brazil as part of a Science Without Borders program in which the students build and operate their own Pi-Sats and software. Nineteen students participated in the first workshop in 2015. This year, Antunes and Stakem will work with 30 students. "Most university-class satellites still have issues, which are often software related," Antunes said. "Having an open source control software such as cFS is essential to the success of student-built satellites." Students at this year's workshop will advance the work of last year's cadre, further developing the cFS and building their own satellites. "Last year's workshop asked the students, 'Can you build a satellite?'" Stakem said. "This year, we're asking, 'Assuming you can build a satellite, what would you do with it?' We want the students to define their own projects while we give them guidance. There are a couple right ways and a whole lot of wrong ways to build a satellite." The Pi-Sat and cFS have made their way into the hands of students at other universities as well. Jose Martinez Pedraza, a student at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, has worked with the Pi-Sat and cFS during multiple internships at Goddard. Sharing his knowledge of these technologies with fellow students, Martinez and his team successfully ran cFS on a human rover they built for NASA's 2016 Human exploration Rover Challenge held at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, April 6, 2016. The event challenged participants to design and construct rovers that could successfully perform in various environments in our solar system, including Mars, the moon, asteroids and comets. Though they did not win the rover challenge, it was a victory for the educational efforts around the NASA technology. "It's awesome to see my fellow students working with this technology and getting excited about it when they get it to work," Martinez said. "I think it's great that Goddard is making all of this more accessible for everyone." These successes of students working with the Pi-Sat and cFS are just the beginning. McComas and Strege are working to develop an online open forum where Pi-Sat and cFS users can share their experiences and ask questions. They hope this online community will help advance the technology and engage even more people. "I see this as a way of democratizing space; we're trying to make it accessible to as many people as we can," McComas said. "We want to give back and spread our knowledge to these students. You can talk theory all you want, but when you have something like this that is tangible, it captivates the students' attention and they want to learn more." The cFS software architecture is available to the public under a NASA Open Source Agreement. To learn more about the cFS suite please visit: https://cfs.gsfc.nasa.gov/ To learn more about NASA's CubeSat initiative please visit: http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/home/CubeSats_initiative ### In a new study published in Nature Communications, Chen-Yu Zhang's group from Nanjing University reports that 24 hours of fasting induces a miRNA-149-3p-mediated subcutaneous to visceral fat switch via suppression of PRDM16 in mice. As an integrator of energy homeostasis, many basic physiological functions provided by adipose tissue have been overlooked because of their association with obesity. Cold and hunger were probably the baseline states in humans over a substantial portion of evolutionary time. Therefore, the lipid-burning brown/beige adipocytes are specialized to maintain body temperature by producing heat in a cold environment, whereas the lipid-storing white adipocytes are adapted to cope with food shortage. Recently, it has become clear that subcutaneous fat possesses substantial thermogenic capacity in response to cold stimulation compared with visceral depots. This cold-induced emergence of brown-like adipocytes in subcutaneous fat suggests that certain adipose processes are extraordinarily plastic in response to changes in environmental cues. Although several studies have reported that mobilization of the subcutaneous depot appears to be less than that of visceral fat during starvation, an important challenge is to understand the molecular mechanisms by which physiological changes regulate these different white adipose depots. In the present study, Chen-Yu's group showed that in addition to the capacity of 'browning' to defend against hypothermia during cold exposure, the subcutaneous depot is also capable of 'whitening' to preserve energy during fasting to maintain energy balance, via miR-149-3p-mediated regulation of PRDM16. This work is important for the following reasons: 1) In this study, they showed that 24-h fasting triggered a depot-specific pattern of changes in both lipogenic and lipolytic genes in mice, indicating preferential mobilization of lipids in visceral depots compared with subcutaneous fat pads. Food deprivation also stimulated a visceral-like switch in subcutaneous depots. These observation may be evolutionarily important. Fasting has been practiced for millennia. During fasting, preferentially oxidized visceral fat can drain directly into the portal circulation and appears to be more efficient at meeting energy needs compared with the relatively externally located subcutaneous fat. Simultaneously, because large amounts of visceral fat are being used, subcutaneous fat must undergo a morphological and functional visceral-like switch to prepare to become a backup energy reservoir. 2) Visceral adiposity is strongly associated with metabolic disease risk, whereas subcutaneous adiposity is comparatively benign. However, their relative physiological importance in energy homeostasis remains unclear. Recent studies demonstrate that the 'browning' of subcutaneous adipose tissue is capable of defending against hypothermia. In this study, using a 24-h fasting stimulus, they found that fasting stimulated a set of visceral gene transcripts but decreased the expression of genes related to the thermogenic programme, presumably to preserve energy. Therefore, cold exposure and fasting, two different physiological stimuli, lead to nearly opposite phenotypic and functional changes in subcutaneous adipocytes to maintain the energy balance. This extraordinary plasticity of subcutaneous depot suggests that this adipose tissue might play even broader roles in the physiology and homeostasis of mammals. 3) Emerging evidence suggests fascinating effects of intermittent fasting. By alternating 24-h cycles of fasting and ad libitum feeding, they found that the visceral fats decreased. However, unlike visceral fat, the decreased weight was restored in subcutaneous depots by 24-h refeeding, suggesting the "visceralization" of subcutaneous fat is an adaptive response to 24-h fasting-induced physiological stress to maintain whole-body energy homeostasis. These results confirmed that alternating day-fasting preferentially consumes the "metabolically harmful" visceral fat, which might benefit health. 4) Recently, the appreciated 'browning' ability of subcutaneous fat, which are capable of defending against hypothermia and obesity, has caused an explosion of interest in the function of this adipose tissue. They showed that during this fast-induced 'visceralization', the upregulated miR-149-3p directly targets PRDM16, a key coregulatory protein required for the 'browning' of white fat. More importantly, they demonstrated that subcutaneous inhibition by anti-miR-149-3p activated beige cell development in inguinal fat and subsequently increased whole-body energy expenditure without causing dysfunction in other tissues, which might be a potential strategy to counteract obesity. ### The researchers of this project include Hanying Ding, Shasha Zheng, Daniel Garcia, Dongxia Hou, Zhe Wei, Zhicong Liao, Limin Li, Yujing Zhang, Xiao Han Ke Zen, Chen-Yu Zhang, Jing Li, Xiaohong Jiang, State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Life Sciences, Jiangsu Engineering Research Center for MicroRNA Biology and Biotechnology, NJU Advanced Institute for Life Sciences (NAILS), School of life sciences, Nanjing University, 163 Xianlin Road, Nanjing, Jiangsu, 210046, China. This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.81200201, 81550001, 81250044 and 31301060), the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (No. 2014CB542300), and the Research Special Fund for Public Welfare Industry of Health (No. 201302018). Once upon a time, settlers in the Fertile Crescent of West Asia domesticated few wild plant and animal species. To be precise, it was about 11-12 thousand years ago (kya), and nowadays we name this behavior as, agriculture. The emergence of agriculture is suggested to have driven extensive human population growths, because food production by agriculture can support far higher population densities compared to hunting and foraging. Nevertheless, like the famous question "chicken or the egg", dispute between agriculture and initial population expansion in Neolithic Time exists for long. Despite historical and archaeological efforts, previous genetic work such as mitochondrial DNA analysis in worldwide populations found that most major maternal lineage expansions began after Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, about 15 kya) but before the first appearance of agriculture, and the increase of population size was likely the driving force that led to the advent of agriculture. There are also numerous studies on population expansion using paternal Y chromosome single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) in the genealogical tree and rapidly mutating short tandem repeats (STRs) yet without an convincing result, owning to the fact that nonrandom sampling of SNPs can result in an ascertainment bias, and to choose whether the evolutionary rate or the genealogical rate of STRs in Y chromosome dating is controversial, since the result can be almost three-fold difference. As science and technology update rapidly, entirely sequenced Y chromosomes in numerous human individuals have only recently become available. With the next-generation sequencing technology, the 1000 Genomes Project has sequenced whole Y chromosomes from more than 500 males, which provides a wonderful chance to estimate population sizes through time from a set of globally distributed populations without ascertainment bias. To resolve the long dispute, researchers in Fudan University analyzed about 8.9 mega-base pairs on the unique regions of Y chromosome and whole mitochondrial genomes of 526 male individuals from three African, five European, three Asian and three American populations sequenced in the 1000 Genome Project. A maximum likelihood tree was constructed using Y chromosomal SNPs. Containing samples from haplogroup A, B, C, D, E, G, I, J, N, O, Q, R, and T, the tree is a good representation of geographical paternal lineages. To infer the expansion time, researchers calculated the date of each divergence event throughout the tree using Bayesian method with a constant mutation rate. The outcome demonstrates that most major paternal lineage expansions coalesced in Neolithic Time. In other words, these Neolithic expanding clades comprise a large proportion of current population. Researchers then estimated effective population size through time via coalescent Bayesian Skyline plots to infer population size changes during the LGM and the advent of agriculture. Rapid, roughly exponential population growth in most European and Asian maternal lineages occurred right after the LGM (12-8 kya), followed by a long period of very slow growth (since 8-7 kya). However, at the paternal side, all the populations show the most pronounced expansion from 6.5 kya to 2 kya, with a 10- to 100-fold increase in population size. The fastest growth intervals for global male populations range from 1.5-3.3 kya, which are 1-3 ky later than the advent of agriculture. The correspondence between the coalescence age of most paternal lineages and the population growing periods observed in skyline plots suggested that the initial male population expansion began within the Neolithic Time, probably due to the advent and spread of agriculture. "Agriculture has provided a much more stable food supply than hunting and foraging, leading to higher population fertility and infant survival rate, more importantly, as agriculture has kept male away from dangerous hunting, the reduction in hunting-related mortality of males might contribute most to this sex-biased Neolithic expansion," they supposed. ### This research was funded by the National Excellent Youth Science Foundation of China (31222030), National Natural Science Foundation of China (91131002), MOE Scientific Research Project (113022A), and Shanghai Shuguang Project (14SG05). See the article: Wang C C, Huang Y Z, Yu X E, et al. Agriculture driving male expansion in neolithic time. Sci Sin Vitae, 2016, 46: 468-474, doi:10.1360/N052016-00126 http://engine.scichina.com/publisher/scp/journal/SSV/46/4/10.1360/N052016-00126?slug=abstract Trailblazing institute in Saudi Arabia opens doors for innovators and entrepreneurs; Converging revolutions in digital technologies, agriculture, genetics, and materials will drive prosperity, productivity in future A competitive economy fuelled by innovation is the ambition of many nations today -- developed and developing alike. But is there a formula for creating an environment in which innovation and entrepreneurialism is fostered and rewarded, generating sustainable jobs and propelling national prosperity? Looking to demonstrate the answer is Dr. Hayat Sindi, a medical scientist of growing global renown who founded and leads the Institute for Imagination and Ingenuity (i2institute.org) in her homeland, Saudi Arabia. She is also one of 26 members of the UN Secretary-General's Scientific Advisory Board and was appointed this year by the SG to a 10-member group supporting technological facilitation of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Her insights and advice now contribute also to Malaysia's unique "kitchen cabinet" of 51 national and international sustainable development advisers, the Global Science and Innovation Advisory Council. According to Dr. Sindi, shortages of entrepreneurialism in the developing world generally comes down to a handful of reasons: A lack of formal business skills among scientists and engineers Culturally intrinsic fear of failure Too few potential investors to provide the necessary capital and fewer still willing to finance science-based ventures. Through fellowships, trainings and mentorships, her i2 Institute seeks to empower and inspire the next generation of innovators and support innovative ideas in four critical areas -- energy, water, health, and the environment -- and cites five factors for success: The quality of the business idea Unique approaches tailored to regional needs Role models and mentorship to build business skills and confidence, and to form bridges to investors A strong support network Excellence in delivery Another essential ingredient for entrepreneurial success, says Dr. Sindi: A passion to improve people's lives. While financial rewards often result, personal gain cannot be the driver behind innovation. Needed are agents social change in both the science and business realms. "That is what drives me to conduct science: Seeing the needs of people and wanting to make life better for them," Dr. Sindi says. "Science was born to solve problems and with talent and vision we can solve any problem that faces us." "Every innovation started with a need," she says. "Listen to the voices of the developing world. Give people the tools and confidence to meet their own needs. Poor doesn't mean stupid." Practicality and simplicity are essential, she adds. Though she was personally inspired by Marie Curie, Ibn Al-Haitham and other great scientists who changed the world, "the i2 Institute is not looking to create another Einstein." "Children in the developing world need clean water, for example. People need electricity in order to work and study. How can we provide these where they are needed in more creative, adaptive and affordable ways?" Of critical importance, says Dr. Sindi: Impressing on children an understanding and appreciation of how science and technology can improve lives, and to impress on national leaders the imperative to invest in S&T at appropriate levels. Educated at King's College London, Cambridge, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Harvard Business School, Dr. Sindi overcame long odds to become the first female from the Gulf to earn a PhD in biotechnology. In addition to her institute, she is co-founder of Diagnostics For All, creating novel, affordable point-of-care diagnostic tools for impoverished people. Dr. Sindi notes that after her scientific training, "the experience that changed my life forever" came in business school, learning "how to talk to investors, how to tell my story, how to assess how many people and which collaborators I need to succeed, and who my competitors will be." "My dream is that i2 will make stories like mine less exceptional and more possible for every young innovator." Among those joining Dr. Sindi as a new international member of Malaysia's Global Science and Innovation Advisory Council: The Honourable Deborah L. Wince-Smith, an expert on economic, science and technology policy and President of the Washington DC-based Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils (GFCC). Chaired by Prime Minister Najib Razak, GSIAC's mandate is to help Malaysia identify and pursue sustainable means for achieving high income status by 2020. Secretary of the Council is Prof. Zakri Abdul Hamid, the PM's Science Advisor and, like Dr. Sindi, one of 26 members of the UN Secretary-General's Science Advisory Board. The converging revolutions expected to drive future productivity and prosperity According to Ms. Wince-Smith: "The fields of digital technology, precision agriculture, genetics and new materials are all experiencing revolutions, and their convergence is going to create new services and industries we can't yet imagine. These extremely disruptive new industries will impact national wealth, jobs and global security on a massive scale." Her organization, the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils, is a global network of leaders from competitiveness councils around the world. The GFCC shares best practices among councils and creates a network of global leaders committed to their national prosperity and the prosperity of the world. She says the physical and digital worlds are merging as evidence by, for example, ubiquitous sensors, self-driving vehicles, and futuristic robots, such as the machine teaching itself to be a firefighter on US navy ships. In agriculture, a smarter approach to management of the entire supply chain will help eliminate waste "from farm to fork," offering the opportunity for many to transition from food scarcity to food abundance and high nutrition, she says. Nanotechnology and synthetic biology -- already a $1 trillion global industry -- is producing materials and products with profoundly important new characteristics. Ms. Wince-Smith urges nations to direct their innovation capacity to next generation manufacturing, saying that the USA learned a hard lesson when it failed to invest sufficiently to compete successfully in flat panel display manufacturing. "The old view of manufacturing was based on the four "Ds": dirty, dumb, dangerous and disappearing," she says. "But technology advances are replacing that view with four "Ss": smart, safe, sustainable and surging." Malaysia, she adds, has strong competitive advantages in the form of an open economy in a dynamic world region, in its agricultural and palm industries, and in the presence of large scale global manufacturers, including such giant tech companies as INTEL and Dell. She urges Malaysia to quickly promote next-generation manufacturing. In its 2016 Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index (GMCI), the U.S. Council on Competitiveness - of which Wince-Smith is president and CEO-- predicted that by 2020, Malaysia, India, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam (MITI-V or "Mighty Five") would rank among the top 15 nations in the index. The MITI-V represent a "New China" in terms of low-cost labor, agile manufacturing capabilities, favorable demographic profiles, market and economic growth. The Index, published in partnership with Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (DTTL) and created from a survey of over 500 leading corporate executives worldwide, ranks Malaysia 17th among the world's top 40 nations and forecasts a rise to 13th place by 2020, by which time the USA will replace China as the most competitive manufacturing nation, with Germany a solid third. ### More about Hayat Sindi Appointed a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for the Sciences (2012) One of the first women appointed to the Saudi Arabia's highest consultative body, the Shura Council With a team at Harvard, co-founded the non-profit Diagnostics For All organization to create innovative, inexpensive, point-of-care diagnostic devices for people in impoverished regions. These devices require no power, water or trained doctors Invented a machine combining the effects of light and ultra-sound for use in biotechnology Named by Newsweek one of "150 Women Who Shake the World" (2012) and by Forbes as number 2 the most powerful Arab woman Saudi Arabia More about The Hon. Deborah L. Wince-Smith President & CEO of the Council on Competitiveness, a unique coalition of leading CEOs, university presidents, national lab directors and labor union leaders that puts forth actionable public policy solutions to make America more competitive in the global marketplace An internationally renowned, leading voice on competitiveness, innovation strategy, science and technology, and international economic policy. Initiated a widely acknowledged bilateral competitiveness partnership between the United States and Brazil, co-creating a model for collaboration, "The Innovation Learning Laboratory," and convening the 2007, 2010, and 2013 U.S.-Brazil CEO Innovation Summits. Spearheaded the groundbreaking 2004 National Innovation Initiative (NII) that played a pivotal role in creating a reinvigorated U.S. competitiveness movement and shaped the bipartisan America Competes Act. The GSIAC Secretariat is hosted by the Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology (http://www.might.org.my), a not-for-profit dedicated to providing a platform for industry-government consensus-building in the drive to advance high technology competency in Malaysia. BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - In a study recently published in the American Heart Association journal Stroke, investigators in the REasons for Geographical And Racial Differences in Stroke Study, or REGARDS, found that blacks are four times more likely to die of stroke at age 45 than their white counterparts because blacks have more strokes, not because blacks who have a stroke are more likely to die than whites who have a stroke. Important insights from the study and risk factors that lead to stroke indicate changes that are needed in Americans' health habits and in primary health care to reduce the excess number of deaths from stroke in the black population. "Since the driving force of the racial difference in stroke deaths is the larger number of strokes in blacks, to reduce this disparity we have to focus on factors prior to the stroke's ever happening," said George Howard, Dr.P.H., lead author and professor of biostatistics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health. "We need to do more to focus on prevention and control of risk factors before they result in a stroke. While it is important to ensure that blacks and whites receive the same care once a stroke happens, any differences in care once the stroke happens do not appear to be the reason that blacks die more from stroke." Most research focuses on treating stroke patients and preventing recurrent stroke. Few studies look at whether an elevated stroke rate in blacks is the predictor for more stroke deaths. "We need more aggressive prevention efforts for stroke risk factors, particularly focusing on why blacks have more strokes," said Virginia Howard, Ph.D., professor in the UAB School of Public Health Department of Epidemiology. "Racial differences in the development and control of risk factors are to blame." Traditional and nontraditional risk factors that lead to stroke are more common for blacks, particularly high blood pressure and diabetes. According to study authors, more must be done to address the racial differences and prevention methods for risk factors and reduce the disparity in stroke. At age 45, the risk of a black person dying from a stroke is four times greater than the risk in a white person; but by age 85 the black-white differences go away. The risk of having a stroke followed a remarkably similar pattern, but there were no black-white differences in the risk of dying once a stroke occurred. Earlier research from the REGARDS study shows that blacks are at a higher risk for a first stroke. "The magnitude of the public health burden of the racial disparity in stroke is staggering," George Howard said. "We estimate that there were 22,384 additional stroke events in blacks occurring in 2014 above what would be expected relative to rates in whites." In addition to the human impact of health challenges associated with stroke, there are also economic implications. With a lifelong estimated cost of stroke of $104,000, the black-white difference in stroke costs America more than $2.3 billion annually. "Efforts that would even marginally reduce this burden would pay remarkable dividends for the United States," he said. ### Co-authors are Claudia S. Moy, Ph.D.; Virginia J. Howard, Ph.D.; Leslie A. McClure, Ph.D.; Dawn O. Kleindorfer, M.D.; Brett M. Kissela, M.D.; Suzanne E. Judd, Ph.D.; Fredrick W. Unverzagt, Ph.D.; Elsayed Z. Soliman, M.D.; Monika M. Safford, M.D.; Mary Cushman, M.D.; Matthew L. Flaherty, M.D.; and Virginia G. Wadley, Ph.D. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke funded the study. About UAB Known for its innovative and interdisciplinary approach to education at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, the University of Alabama at Birmingham is the state of Alabama's largest employer and an internationally renowned research university and academic medical center; its professional schools and specialty patient-care programs are consistently ranked among the nation's top 50. UAB's Center for Clinical and Translational Science is advancing innovative discoveries for better health as a two-time recipient of the prestigious Center for Translational Science Award. Find more information at http://www.uab.edu and http://www.uabmedicine.org. EDITOR'S NOTE: The University of Alabama at Birmingham is a separate, independent institution from the University of Alabama, which is located in Tuscaloosa. Please use University of Alabama at Birmingham on first reference and UAB on all subsequent references. VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/uabnews TEXT: http://www.uab.edu/news TWEETS: http://www.twitter.com/uabnews The team, led by the University of Cambridge, have invented a way to make such sheets on industrial scales, opening up applications ranging from smart clothing for people or buildings, to banknote security. Using a new method called Bend-Induced-Oscillatory-Shearing (BIOS), the researchers are now able to produce hundreds of metres of these materials, known as 'polymer opals', on a roll-to-roll process. The results are reported in the journal Nature Communications. Some of the brightest colours in nature can be found in opal gemstones, butterfly wings and beetles. These materials get their colour not from dyes or pigments, but from the systematically-ordered microstructures they contain. The team behind the current research, based at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, have been working on methods of artificially recreating this 'structural colour' for several years, but to date, it has been difficult to make these materials using techniques that are cheap enough to allow their widespread use. In order to make the polymer opals, the team starts by growing vats of transparent plastic nano-spheres. Each tiny sphere is solid in the middle but sticky on the outside. The spheres are then dried out into a congealed mass. By bending sheets containing a sandwich of these spheres around successive rollers the balls are magically forced into perfectly arranged stacks, by which stage they have intense colour. By changing the sizes of the starting nano-spheres, different colours (or wavelengths) of light are reflected. And since the material has a rubber-like consistency, when it is twisted and stretched, the spacing between the spheres changes, causing the material to change colour. When stretched, the material shifts into the blue range of the spectrum, and when compressed, the colour shifts towards red. When released, the material returns to its original colour. Such chameleon materials could find their way into colour-changing wallpapers, or building coatings that reflect away infrared thermal radiation. "Finding a way to coax objects a billionth of a metre across into perfect formation over kilometre scales is a miracle," said Professor Jeremy Baumberg, the paper's senior author. "But spheres are only the first step, as it should be applicable to more complex architectures on tiny scales." In order to make polymer opals in large quantities, the team first needed to understand their internal structure so that it could be replicated. Using a variety of techniques, including electron microscopy, x-ray scattering, rheology and optical spectroscopy, the researchers were able to see the three-dimensional position of the spheres within the material, measure how the spheres slide past each other, and how the colours change. "It's wonderful to finally understand the secrets of these attractive films," said PhD student Qibin Zhao, the paper's lead author. Cambridge Enterprise, the University's commercialisation arm which is helping to commercialise the material, has been contacted by more than 100 companies interested in using polymer opals, and a new spin-out Phomera Technologies has been founded. Phomera will look at ways of scaling up production of polymer opals, as well as selling the material to potential buyers. Possible applications the company is considering include coatings for buildings to reflect heat, smart clothing and footwear, or for banknote security and packaging applications. ### The research is funded as part of a UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) investment in the Cambridge NanoPhotonics Centre, as well as the European Research Council (ERC). Chronic wounds cause nearly 80,000 lower leg amputations annually in the U.S. alone and are associated with an increased likelihood of death. While the body generally repairs acute wounds in a predictable series of steps, this process can be disrupted by trauma, medications, foreign objects, and systemic problems such as diabetes, malnutrition, and immune deficiencies. When an acute wound fails to heal, it becomes a chronic problem. "Effective strategies to improve chronic wound repair would impact both quality of life and mortality rates, but standard therapies continue to produce very limited healing incidences," says the University of Delaware's Millicent Sullivan. Sullivan and her colleague Kristi Kiick recently received a $1.4-million grant from the National Institutes of Health for research that could provide a new approach to the treatment of chronic wounds. Combining their expertise in gene delivery and materials design, the two are collaborating with Dr. David Margolis in the Department of Dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine on the four-year project, "Collagen Turnover-Stimulated Gene Delivery to Enhance Chronic Wound Repair." Sullivan explains that promising therapeutic alternatives include the application of topical growth factors, combination wound dressings, or cellular scaffolds, which provide structural support for cell attachment and the tissue development that follows. "However, even with these methods, the incidence of full wound closure remains strikingly low, and growth factor delivery methods fail to provide enough growth factor to stimulate the cells appropriately," she says. "New strategies to promote efficient and localized production of growth factor by the cells involved in active tissue repair could overcome these issues." One of the most important aspects of healing is remodeling of the extracellular matrix (ECM), which provides the scaffolding for the cellular constituents in all tissues and organs. The strategy Sullivan and Kiick have proposed is to harness ECM remodeling to stimulate growth factor gene release and expression. In particular, they are using peptide-based methods employed by Kiick to decorate nanostructures studied by Sullivan, with a target of localizing delivery vehicles directly in a wound. This can be accomplished by modifying the body's collagen, a protein that provides strength and structure to the bones, muscles, skin, and tendons. These collagen-integrated nanostructures can then prompt growth factor expression in coordination with tissue repair kinetics. "Our goal is to be able to 'tune' the duration of growth factor expression for periods ranging from a few days to several weeks and to coordinate this expression with the body's needs," Kiick says. "This tunability, or on-demand release and expression, should be ideally suited to the uncoordinated repair processes that are a hallmark of the chronic wound environment." The researchers hope their approach will ultimately be useful as a versatile biomaterials platform that is applicable to not only healing of chronic wounds but also a variety of other regenerative medicine applications. ### About the researchers Millie Sullivan is an associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Kristi Kiick is a professor with joint appointments in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Department of Biomedical Engineering. The two began to collaborate in 2011, when they were awarded funding through the University of Delaware Research Foundation (UDRF)'s strategic initiative grants program to explore the concept of designing DNA-modified collagen scaffolds for improving acute wound repair. The strategic initiative grants program -- established in 2008 to support research in the life and health sciences, energy and the environment -- pairs early-career faculty with senior faculty mentors and provides seed money for promising research that will lead to larger proposals to such agencies as NIH and the National Science Foundation. Our vocal cords, two multilayered folds of tissue located above the trachea, produce voice when air passes between them and sets them into vibration. Various environmental, mechanical and pathological factors can damage this delicate tissue, resulting in a wide spectrum of voice disorders that affect millions of Americans. Current treatment options for vocal fold disorders are limited, and the development of new procedures has been slow due to the inaccessibility of the tissue and its susceptibility to damage. Further, the unique structure and properties of human vocal folds are not accurately reflected in animal models, so discoveries made from animal tissues cannot be translated to those of humans. Now, a team of researchers at the University of Delaware has received a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to engineer a tissue model that can be used to investigate vocal fold development, health, and disease, and more importantly, to facilitate the development and testing of new treatment options. Xinqiao Jia, principal investigator on the project, explains that existing vocal fold models are made of several types of rubber to reflect the textures of the various layers making up the vocal cords. However, these models do not allow for cellular-level investigation, nor do they accurately reflect the graded nature of the transitions from one layer to the next. Jia, whose background lies in materials science and tissue engineering, will work with UD's Joseph Fox, with expertise in organic chemistry, and Randall Duncan, who brings knowledge in cell and molecular biology. The team also includes Susan Thibeault from the University of Wisconsin and Luc Mongeau from McGill University. The researchers will first create a hydrogel-based platform with well-defined spatial gradients to promote tissue growth. They will then use that scaffold to produce and characterize the epithelial cover. Finally, they will cultivate the cell-populated hydrogels in a bioreactor that simulates human phonation. "Overall, the combination of a tissue-mimetic hydrogel, primary human cells and a vibratory culture device offers an exciting opportunity for the engineering of reliable and viable vocal fold tissue models," says Jia. "This platform will enable us to study vocal cord development, phonation, and trauma and provide a foundation for treating vocal cord disorders." ### About the research team Xinqiao Jia is an associate professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, with a joint appointment in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Joseph Fox is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, with a joint appointment in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Randall Duncan is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, with a joint appointment in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Susan Thibeault is the Diane M. Bless Endowed Chair in Otolaryngology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Luc Mongeau is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. For interviews, please contact Professor Richard H. Ebright at 848-445-5179 or ebright@waksman.rutgers.edu. The ancient underwater remains of a long lost Greek city were in fact created by a naturally occurring phenomenon - according to joint research from the University of East Anglia (UK) and the University of Athens (Greece). When underwater divers discovered what looked like paved floors, courtyards and colonnades, they thought they had found the ruins of a long-forgotten civilization that perished when tidal waves hit the shores of the Greek holiday island Zakynthos. But new research published today reveals that the site was created by a natural geological phenomenon that took place in the Pliocene era - up to five million years ago. Lead author Prof Julian Andrews, from UEA's School of Environmental Sciences, said: "The site was discovered by snorkelers and first thought to be an ancient city port, lost to the sea. There were what superficially looked like circular column bases, and paved floors. But mysteriously no other signs of life - such as pottery." The bizarre discovery, found close to Alikanas Bay, was carefully examined in situ by the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of Greece. Archaeologist Magda Athanasoula and diver Petros Tsampourakis studied the site, together with Prof Michael Stamatakis from the Department of Geology and Geoenvironment at the University of Athens (UoA). After the preliminary mineralogical and chemical analyses, a scientific research team was formed, composed of UoA and UEA staff. The research team went on to investigate in detail the mineral content and texture of the underwater formation in minute detail, using microscopy, X-ray and stable isotope techniques. Prof Andrews said: "We investigated the site, which is between two and five meters under water, and found that it is actually a natural geologically occurring phenomenon. "The disk and doughnut morphology, which looked a bit like circular column bases, is typical of mineralization at hydrocarbon seeps - seen both in modern seafloor and palaeo settings. "We found that the linear distribution of these doughnut shaped concretions is likely the result of a sub-surface fault which has not fully ruptured the surface of the sea bed. The fault allowed gases, particularly methane, to escape from depth. "Microbes in the sediment use the carbon in methane as fuel. Microbe-driven oxidation of the methane then changes the chemistry of the sediment forming a kind of natural cement, known to geologists as concretion. "In this case the cement was an unusual mineral called dolomite which rarely forms in seawater, but can be quite common in microbe-rich sediments. "These concretions were then exhumed by erosion to be exposed on the seabed today. "This kind of phenomenon is quite rare in shallow waters. Most similar discoveries tend to be many hundreds and often thousands of meters deep underwater. "These features are proof of natural methane seeping out of rock from hydrocarbon reservoirs. The same thing happens in the North Sea, and it is also similar to the effects of fracking, when humans essentially speed up or enhance the phenomena." ### 'Exhumed hydrocarbon-seep authigenic carbonates from Zakynthos island (Greece): Concretions not archaeological remains' is published in the journal Marine and Petroleum Geology on June 3, 2016. WORCESTER, MA - Eight weeks after receiving their first samples of Zika virus, scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) have shown that a very small protein we all have in our bodies, interferon-induced protein 3 (IFITM3), can dramatically reduce the ability of Zika virus to infect human and mouse cells. In some cases, IFITM3 can also prevent Zika virus from killing our cells. The findings, by senior author Abraham Brass, MD, PhD, assistant professor of microbiology & physiological systems, suggest that boosting the actions of IFITM3 may be useful for inhibiting Zika virus and other emerging viral infections. The study appears in the journal Cell Reports. "This work represents the first look at how our cells defend themselves against Zika virus' attack," said Dr. Brass. "Our results show that Zika virus has a weakness that we could potentially exploit to prevent or stop infection." Previous studies by Brass and Paul Kellam, PhD, professor from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK, have shown that people who have a genetic variant, or allele, of the IFITM3 gene are more susceptible to the development of severe influenza. While relatively rare in people of European decent, this IFITM3 variant is more common in Asia and Micronesia. The current study suggests that it will be important to test whether this allele might contribute to the risk of more severe Zika virus infections and birth defects, according to Brass. An expert in flaviviruses, a family of viruses transmitted by mosquitos that includes Zika, yellow fever, dengue and West Nile, Brass has developed a suite of genomic tools to probe how human cells respond to pathogens and how these invaders exploit host cell factors and proteins to replicate. "Having these tools allowed us to respond quickly when the Zika virus threat emerged," said Brass. "We simply adapted the technology we'd developed over the last four years working with dengue, influenza and other viruses to begin work on Zika virus." The mosquito-transmitted Zika virus typically causes relatively mild symptoms in infected adults. Prior to outbreaks of the virus in Micronesia and Southeast Asia in 2007 relatively few human cases had been reported. An ongoing epidemic of Zika virus began in early 2015 in Brazil and with it new evidence emerged that Zika virus infection of mothers during early pregnancy can result in microcephaly, a severe brain defect in infants. There is no treatment for Zika virus infection. The best way to prevent the infection is to limit potential exposure to the infected mosquitos that carry the disease. As summer heats up and mosquito season gets under way, the World Health Organization expects the virus to spread throughout much of the Americas including parts of the United States. From their earlier research on dengue virus and other flaviviruses related to Zika virus, Brass and his group had a hunch that IFITM3 might reduce or block viral infection. Using the IFITM3 tools and assays they'd developed for studying dengue and influenza viruses, the Brass lab was able to rapidly test IFITM3's effect on Zika virus. "We just plugged Zika virus into our system and immediately began testing it," said Brass. "What might have taken many months or longer to build, we were able to turn around in just several weeks." Found in nearly all human cells, IFITM3 works to alter the cell membrane, making it more difficult for viruses to penetrate this outer defense. The Brass lab found that when IFITM3 levels are low, Zika virus can more readily infiltrate into the cell interior and cause infection. Conversely, they discovered that when IFITM3 is abundant and on guard, it strongly prevents Zika virus from reaching the interior of the cell and so blocks its infection. "In effect, we see that IFITM3 allows our cells to swallow up and quarantine the virus thereby stopping their own infection, and also the infection of neighboring cells" said George Savidis, a research associate in the Brass lab and the first author of the study. "We think this also reduces the levels of cell death caused by Zika virus. "This work shows that IFITM3 acts as an early front line defender to prevent Zika virus from getting its hands on all of the resources in our cells that it needs to grow," said Savidis. "IFITM3 pretty much keeps Zika virus stuck in no man's land where it can't do anything to harm us." The next step for Brass and his collaborators, including Sharone Green, MD, associate professor of medicine and a flavivirus expert at UMMS, is to test these findings in mice that are IFITM3-deficient to see whether these animals are more susceptible to the effects of Zika virus infection. The Brass lab is also searching for small molecules that can boost the levels, and hopefully the anti-viral actions, of IFITM3. Brass believes that such molecules could be developed into therapies to treat or protect us from Zika virus, as well as a growing list of other dangerous viruses. "A lot of data by us and others in the field has shown that IFITM3 has a big impact on blocking many emerging viruses such as dengue, Zika, and Ebola" said Brass. "Given our recent results with Zika virus, it's now even more important that we work to find out how IFITM3 is blocking these viruses, and use that knowledge to prevent and treat infections." ### About the University of Massachusetts Medical School The University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS), one of five campuses of the University system, is comprised of the School of Medicine, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, the Graduate School of Nursing, a thriving research enterprise and an innovative public service initiative, Commonwealth Medicine. Its mission is to advance the health of the people of the Commonwealth through pioneering education, research, public service and health care delivery with its clinical partner, UMass Memorial Health Care. In doing so, it has built a reputation as a world-class research institution and as a leader in primary care education. The Medical School attracts more than $266 million annually in research funding, placing it among the top 50 medical schools in the nation. In 2006, UMMS's Craig C. Mello, PhD, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the Blais University Chair in Molecular Medicine, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with colleague Andrew Z. Fire, PhD, of Stanford University, for their discoveries related to RNA interference (RNAi). The 2013 opening of the Albert Sherman Center ushered in a new era of biomedical research and education on campus. Designed to maximize collaboration across fields, the Sherman Center is home to scientists pursuing novel research in emerging scientific fields with the goal of translating new discoveries into innovative therapies for human diseases. PHILADELPHIA, PA - The University of Pennsylvania has co-founded and structured BluePen Biomarkers in collaboration with BluePrint Bio, Inc. and Emerald Logic, Inc. to conduct biomarker research and identification. BluePen is creating a comprehensive biomarker measurement and discovery pipeline for the acceleration of personalized medicine. BluePen will collaborate with Ian Blair, PhD, the A.N. Richards Professor of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics and Director of Center for Cancer Pharmacology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "This is innovation at its core -- a results-focused collaboration of academics, private industry, and research partners around the world dedicated to improving upon existing knowledge of biomarkers through a 'big science' approach," said Michael Poisel, the Penn Center for Innovation's Director of PCI Ventures. BluePen will measure and integrate genomic, proteomic, metabolomic, and lipidomic biomarkers, alongside clinical data, demographics, and other phenotypic data, providing its customers and collaborators with access to a comprehensive 'multi-omics' discoveryplatform. With this collaborative venture, Penn's goal is to radically improve and accelerate the discovery of relevant biomarkers, without bias toward single genes, single modalities, or inappropriate mathematical assumptions. "Our fundamental conviction is that any intervention that has a predictable biologic outcome will have a detectable biomarker signature," said Blair. "The challenge is to detect the signature. BluePen's comprehensive multi-omics platform married to Emerald Logic's bio-inspired signal processing analytic approach provides a powerful solution." Matthew Nunez, CEO of BluePen has focused on the creation of a network of collaborative clinical and research institutions that can contribute biofluid samples and patient data, further augmenting the value of the platform. "Our goal at BluePen is to help bridge biologic discoveries to clinical purpose," he stated. "We have been working with researchers in oncology, inflammatory diseases, neurological disorders, and a variety of other areas of interest, to identify and validate discoveries that can mitigate human suffering while decreasing treatment costs." "The BluePen Biomarkers partnerships illustrate how creative collaboration enables discoveries in academic research to translate into medical advances," said Dawn Bonnell, PhD, vice provost for research at the University of Pennsylvania. ### About The Penn Center for Innovation The Penn Center for Innovation (PCI) translates Penn discoveries and ideas into new products and businesses for the benefit of society by facilitating connections with the private sector. Whether the end result is a technology license, an R&D alliance, the formation of a new venture, or an integrated combination of these activities, PCI serves as a dedicated one-stop shop for commercial partnering with Penn. About PCI Ventures PCI Ventures is a division of the Penn Center for Innovation (PCI) and provides entrepreneurial support products and services for faculty, staff, and students at the University of Pennsylvania who have an interest in starting a new venture. Over the last six years, PCI Ventures has built numerous operating companies through its support programs, including UPstart, UPadvisors, AppitUP, and DevelUPmed. About Blueprint Bio Blueprint was founded to generate and transform intellectual property into commercial and social value, fulfilling the personalized medicine model. By identifying, protecting and offering new biological discoveries to existing clinical, pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies, Blueprint Bio is creating a validated marketplace for biomarkers signatures in personalized medicine. In order to de-risk and accelerate biomarker discovery, Blueprint is actively collaborating with the researchers and companies who are generating biologic patient data from 'omics devices such as mass spectrometers and sequencing machines, among other assay methods, at an unprecedented rate. Blueprint is based in California, with additional offices at the University of Pennsylvania and the Mayo Clinic. About Emerald Logic Emerald Logic has created the world's only integrated 'omics precision analytics platform. The company's mission is to make personalized medicine a reality, in order to reduce patient suffering, treatment costs, and drug development risk. Emerald's bio-inspired signal processing technology is proven to solve problems impossible for other methods, by modeling the underlying biology of disease regardless of the number or complexity of available biomarkers, lab assessments, clinical history, and demographics. The company's body of work includes diagnostics and prognostics for a wide variety of cancers, inflammatory diseases, neurological disorders, cardiac health, and addiction. The company's customers include major pharma, renowned clinics, and world-class research institutions. CHICAGO - More precise dosing methods and cellular engineering techniques show promise in the effort to improve treatment of aggressive cancers with personalized cellular therapies, according to new studies from researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine and the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania and The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Those findings are among results of six studies of investigational chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells for both adult and pediatric leukemias, adult lymphomas, and ovarian cancer which will be presented during the 2016 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting. Results from two clinical trials detail efforts to determine the most effective, safest dosing regimen of modified CAR T cells - which are engineered in a laboratory from patients' own T cells to hunt and potentially kill cancer cells - for adults with leukemia. Noelle Frey, MD, an assistant professor of Hematology-Oncology, will present results in 27 adult patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), identifying an optimal dose and infusion regimen that should improve treatment response while reducing potential for side effects. The study's first six patients received 5 x 108 cells - more than 500 million of the modified cells - as a fractionated dose given over the course of three days, and five patients achieved a complete remission and one patient had a partial response to the therapy. All six had cytokine release syndrome (CRS), from which they recovered after treatment with tocilizumab, an immunosuppressant drug that blocks the effects of the inflammatory cytokine IL-6. CRS can include varying degrees of flu-like symptoms, with high fevers, nausea, and muscle pain, and temporary neurologic symptoms, including delirium, and in more severe cases, low blood pressure and breathing difficulties which may require treatment in an intensive care unit. The next six patients received the same cell dose as a one-time infusion. Three patients in that group died of refractory CRS and sepsis, and three patients experienced complete remissions. The research team then treated 9 patients with a lower cell dose (5 x 107 cells), as either a one-time or a split-dose infusion. This dose was found to be safe with no treatment-related deaths, and three patients achieved a complete remission. Next, the team treated an additional 6 patients at the original higher dose split into multiple parts to closely monitor for early signs of CRS. The overall complete remission rate for patients who received this dose and schedule was 86 percent, with no treatment-related deaths. Nine of the 12 patients in those two groups experienced CRS and recovered after treatment with tocilizumab and/or steroids. The researchers say the results suggest that both the dose of T cells administered and the infusion regimen (one large dose vs several smaller doses) are important to maximize both response and safety. In a dose-optimization study of 35 patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), researchers examined two different doses of CTL019 - a lower dose (5 x 107 cells) and a higher dose (5 x 108 cells). Among 30 patients who were evaluable for response, 4 of 13 responded at the lower dose (one complete remission and three partial responses, ORR = 31 percent) and nine of 17 responded at the higher dose (six complete remissions and three partial responses, ORR = 53 percent). Five patients remain in complete remission after a median follow-up of 26 months. One patient's cancer returned with CD19-negative cells, which are not amenable to targeting with CTL019. All 35 patients were evaluable for toxicity, with 19 experiencing varying degrees of CRS, four of who were treated with tocilizumab. There was no association found between cell dose and CRS development or severity. Results of this study will be presented by David Porter, MD, a professor of Hematology-Oncology and director of Blood and Marrow Transplantation in Penn's Abramson Cancer Center. Two studies detailing the latest results of pediatric trials of CTL019 for ALL will be presented by Shannon Maude, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of Pediatrics and a pediatric oncologist at CHOP. In a first-of-its-kind study, children who relapsed after receiving CAR T cells were re-treated with a new type of CAR engineered with a "humanized" CAR protein more closely related to human proteins than the mouse protein used in other investigational Penn and CHOP CAR T cells, in hopes of improving the modified cells' persistence in the body. The new CAR T cells, called CTL119 cells, produced complete responses in four of eight children, including one ongoing remission at seven months. Four of the eight children experienced cytokine release syndrome. Maude will also detail updated data on pediatric ALL patients who received CTL019, expanding on results in 59 patients presented at the 57th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology in December 2015. Those data showed a sustained overall response rate of 79 percent at 12 months after treatment. In a study of 30 patients who received CTL019 for three different types of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the researchers found that 59 percent of patients responded to the therapy (17 of 29, 15 of who experienced complete remissions of their disease). After a median follow-up of 14 months, no patients in complete remission had relapsed. These findings update results presented at December's Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology, with additional analysis examining the speed of patients' humoral immunity recovery following therapy. They found that over 18 months after their CTL019 treatment, counts of most patients' immunoglobulin levels (IG) -a measure of antibodies that help fight off viruses and bacteria - recovered to levels which did not require treatment with IG replacement therapy to maintain healthy immune function. The findings will be presented by Stephen Schuster, MD, the Robert and Margarita Louis-Dreyfus Associate Professor in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and Lymphoma Clinical Care and Research in the Abramson Cancer Center. In a phase I study examining the role of CAR T cells in the treatment of solid tumors, six patients with recurrent ovarian cancer received a CAR therapy directed against mesothelin (CART-meso). All six patients showed stable disease on imaging (per RECIST criteria) at one month after treatment. Tests over time showed expansion of the modified cells in the body that peaked between days seven and 10. By day 26, tests showed that cancer cells in one patient's pleural fluid had been eradicated. The CART-meso cells trafficked to tumor sites in three of four patients with available tumor samples. There were no acute adverse events related to the infusion, and no patients experienced CRS. Other symptoms observed, which may not have been related to the CART-meso infusions, included pleural effusion, breathing difficulties, abdominal pain, ascites, and constipation. These results will be presented by Janos Tanyi, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Updated data may be presented during the meeting for some of the abstracts detailed in this press release: Randomized, phase II dose optimization study of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) modified T cells directed against CD19 in patients (pts) with relapsed, refractory (R/R) CLL (Abstract #3009) Optimizing chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy for adult patients with relapsed or refractory (r/r) acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) (Abstract #7002) Recovery of humoral immunity in patients with durable complete responses following chimeric antigen receptor modified t cells directed against CD19 (CTL019) (Abstract #7564) Sustained Remissions with CD19-specific Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR)-modified T cells in Children with Relapsed/Refractory ALL (Abstract #3011) Efficacy of Humanized CD19-targeted Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR)-modified T cells in Children with Relapsed ALL (Abstract #3007) Anti-mesothelin chimeric antigen receptor T cells in patients with epithelial ovarian cancer (Abstract #5511) ### This study was supported in part by a grant from Novartis and by multi-year research funding under The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Specialized Centers of Research grant program, and the National Institutes of Health (R01CA165206, K24 CA117879, R01CA102646 and R01CA116660). Editor's note: The University of Pennsylvania has licensed technologies involved in these trials to Novartis. Some of the scientists involved in these trials are inventors of these technologies. As a result of the licensing relationship with Novartis, the University of Pennsylvania receives significant financial benefit, and these inventers have benefitted financially and/or may benefit financially in the future. Additional disclosure information is available in the meeting abstracts. Penn Medicine is one of the world's leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. Penn Medicine consists of the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which together form a $5.3 billion enterprise. The Perelman School of Medicine has been ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States for the past 18 years, according to U.S. News & World Report's survey of research-oriented medical schools. The School is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $373 million awarded in the 2015 fiscal year. The University of Pennsylvania Health System's patient care facilities include: The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center -- which are recognized as one of the nation's top "Honor Roll" hospitals by U.S. News & World Report -- Chester County Hospital; Lancaster General Health; Penn Wissahickon Hospice; and Pennsylvania Hospital -- the nation's first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional affiliated inpatient care facilities and services throughout the Philadelphia region include Chestnut Hill Hospital and Good Shepherd Penn Partners, a partnership between Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Network and Penn Medicine. Penn Medicine is committed to improving lives and health through a variety of community-based programs and activities. In fiscal year 2015, Penn Medicine provided $253.3 million to benefit our community. Scientists at the University of Sussex have discovered how just two neurons in the brain hold the key to explaining how complex behavioural decisions are made. In the first-of-its-kind study, published today in Nature Communications, scientists from the University studied the brain activity of freshwater snails and discovered how a circuit comprising of just two neurons can drive a sophisticated form of decision making. Scientists, from Sussex Neuroscience, monitored the snails' behaviour whilst they made decisions in their search for food (in this case lettuce). The researchers then measured the activity in the snail's brain by using electrodes to record small electrical changes, called action potentials, in individual neurons. They discovered a controller type neuron which lets the snail's brain know potential food is present and a second neuron which transmits signals telling the snail's brain what it's motivational state is, i.e., whether it's hungry or not. The scientists also reveal how the system, created by the neurons, enables the snails to save energy by reducing brain activity when food is not found. Professor George Kemenes, of the University of Sussex, who led the study, said: "What goes on in our brains when we make complex behavioural decisions and carry them out is poorly understood. "Our study reveals for the first-time how just two neurons can create a mechanism in an animal's brain which drives and optimizes complex decision making tasks. It also shows how this system helps to manage how much energy they use once they have made a decision. "Our findings can help scientists to identify other core neuronal systems which underlie similar decision making processes. This will eventually help us design the 'brains' of robots based on the principle of using the fewest possible components necessary to perform complex tasks." Food-searching is an example of a goal-directed behaviour which is essential for survival. During goal-directed decision making, such as searching for food, animals must integrate information about both their external environment and their internal state in order to find food whilst using minimal energy. ### The study entitled "A two-neuron system for adaptive goal-directed decision making in Lymnaea" has been published in Nature Communications and can be found here http://www.nature.com/ncomms/index.html MEDIA RELATIONS Communications and External Affairs | University of Sussex | Sussex House | Brighton BN1 9RH | United Kingdom T +44 (0)1273 678888 | press@sussex.ac.uk http://www.sussex.ac.uk/newsandevents NOTES TO EDITORS: The University of Sussex is among the leading research universities in the UK, with 98 per cent of its research rated as world leading, internationally excellent or internationally recognised (REF 2014) http://www.sussex.ac.uk. The University has counted among its faculty three Nobel Prize winners, 13 Fellows of the Royal Society, six Fellows of the British Academy and a winner of the prestigious Crafoord Prize. DALLAS - June 3, 2016 -The mosquito-borne Zika virus linked to microcephaly and other neurological problems in newborns of affected mothers directly infects the brain progenitor cells destined to become neurons, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report in a study published online today in Cell Reports. The team of researchers used a strain of Zika currently impacting the Americas, and found that the virus infects about 20 percent of cells on average, evades immune system detection, and continues to replicate for weeks. "The cellular system we studied mirrors what pathologists are finding in the brain tissue of affected infants and will be valuable for further understanding how Zika causes severe brain-related problems. The system may also serve as a platform for testing new therapies targeting the virus," said Dr. John Schoggins, Assistant Professor of Microbiology at UT Southwestern and senior author of the study. Zika can be spread by infected mosquitos or through sexual intercourse. In adults, the symptoms are generally mild and include fever, rash, joint pain, and red eyes. However, Zika virus can cause a serious birth defect called microcephaly, and other severe neurological effects such as eye problems, hearing loss, and impaired growth in infants born to women who contracted the virus when pregnant, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC's website lists a series of unanswered questions about the virus that the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a public health emergency of international concern. The unanswered questions include when during pregnancy the infection may harm the fetus and how the virus affects individual pregnancies. "There was a suggestion that the detrimental effects of the virus might be linked to its ability to infect brain cells, specifically the progenitor cells that give rise to neurons," said Dr. Schoggins, a Nancy Cain and Jeffrey A. Marcus Scholar in Medical Research, in Honor of Dr. Bill S. Vowell. "We showed that neural progenitors can be infected by a strain of Zika virus that is currently infecting people in the Americas," Dr. Schoggins said. "We found that the virus kills some neural progenitor cells, but not all. Other cells survive the infection, and surprisingly, continue to replicate the virus for many weeks. In addition, it appears that Zika virus does not stimulate much of an immune response." ### Dr. Schoggins collaborated on the study with Dr. Genevieve Konopka, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and a Jon Heighten Scholar in Autism Research, whose expertise includes working with neural progenitor cells, cells similar to stem cells that tend to differentiate into neurons. Other UT Southwestern co-authors included: lead author Dr. Natasha Hanners, a pediatric infectious diseases fellow training in Dr. Schoggins' lab; Jennifer Eitson, a research assistant in Microbiology; Dr. Noriyoshi Usui, a postdoctoral researcher in Neuroscience; and Microbiology graduate student R. Blake Richardson. A researcher from UCLA also participated. This project received support from the National Institutes of Health and the Rita Allen Foundation. About UT Southwestern Medical Center UT Southwestern, one of the premier academic medical centers in the nation, integrates pioneering biomedical research with exceptional clinical care and education. The institution's faculty includes many distinguished members, including six who have been awarded Nobel Prizes since 1985. The faculty of almost 2,800 is responsible for groundbreaking medical advances and is committed to translating science-driven research quickly to new clinical treatments. UT Southwestern physicians provide medical care in about 80 specialties to more than 100,000 hospitalized patients and oversee approximately 2.2 million outpatient visits a year. ### This news release is available on our home page at http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/home/news/index.html To automatically receive news releases from UT Southwestern via email, subscribe at http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/receivenews A few years ago, our historian colleague Michael Flannery had the opportunity to participate in the Second International Conference on Alfred Russel Wallace held in Kuching (Sarawak), Malaysia. The paper he delivered, Alfred Russel Wallace, Natures Prophet: From Natural Selection to Natural Theology, is now published in a collection of presentations by scholars from the conference, Naturalists, Explorers and Field Scientists in South-East Asia and Australasia (Springer). Flannery casts Wallace as a prophet, in the Greek sense, one who reads and interprets the text of nature. His article is deeply informed and perceptive, which comes as no surprise if you know Flannerys work. Above all, I was struck (not for the first time) by the degree to which Wallace co-discoverer with Darwin of the theory of evolution by natural selection foreshadowed many of the main themes of the theory of intelligent design as we know it today. Wallaces thinking runs parallel with that of Discovery Institute biologist Michael Denton, along with, Flannery makes clear, William Dembski, physicist Bruce Gordon, Jay Richards (Privileged Planet), Michael Behe, and other figures in the ID movement. Wallaces writings on the birds wing and insect metamorphosis are updated in a couple of recent ID-themed Illustra Media documentaries (Flight and Metamorphosis). Professor Flannery masterfully tells the story of Wallaces dramatic evolution as a scientist. He points out that his break with Darwin was not sudden, but rather the product of tremors in Wallaces articulation of evolutionary theory and Darwins own going back to the start. However, the issue that broke the back of their intellectual partnership was what Discovery Institutes Wesley Smith calls human exceptionalism. Simply put, natural selection as Wallace and Darwin understood it is a strictly utilitarian doctrine. That unguided natural process can select only traits that are useful to propagating a species. Anything else, including pretty much everything that makes humans exceptional, must come fromsomewhere else. Flannery explains: When, much to the chagrin of Darwin, Wallace rejected the idea that mans special attributes abstract reasoning, love of music, appreciation of the numinous, empathy, etc. could be produced solely by the processes of natural selection, and instead called upon an Overruling Intelligence, it was actually based upon Darwins own principle of utility in nature (Darwin 1859: 121), which Darwin described as variation useful to each beings own welfare . . . preserved in the struggle for life by the strong principle of inheritance. Wallaces position was really rather simple. Wallace pointed to the human intellect as being too great to be produced simply by natural selection because, by definition, the principle of utility as described by Darwin himself would be an effective barrier to its development. In what sense, Wallace asked, does the ability to reason abstractly, perform mathematics, play music, create art, or any of a number of uniquely human abilities and propensities afford a survival advantage in nature? Lacking a convincing answer, some other cause or action must be invoked. That cause of action Wallace called an Overruling Intelligence. The 1869 break with Darwin was not sudden. It could be seen in a line of reasoning that began with a paper Wallace read on The origin of human races and the antiquity of man before the Anthropological Society 5 years earlier. In this paper Wallace asked, Can this theory [of natural selection] be applied in any way to the question of the origin of the races of man? or is there anything in human nature that takes him out of the category of those organic existences, over whose successive mutations it has had such powerful sway? There is, as a general rule [among animals], Wallace noted, no mutual assistance between adults, which enables them to tide over a period of sickness. Neither is there any division of labour; each must fulfill all the conditions of its existence, and, therefore, natural selection keeps all up to a pretty uniform standard. But in man, as we now behold him, he added, this is different. He is social and sympathetic (Wallace 1864: clxii). For Wallace, at some point in the distant past the hominid form, devoid of sociability, sympathy, or anything approaching human reason, acquired a brain with the capacity for all of those things, at which point natural selection ceased to operate upon human physical structures. Man was no longer slave to the capricious tyranny of natural selection but conquered it through his extraordinary mental capacities. Wallace saw in man not continuity with nature but indeed something special (Wallace 1864: clxviii). Learning about Wallace is like making the acquaintance of a lost ancestor, whose photo bears an uncanny resemblance to your own image. Writes Flannery, the ghost of Wallace still haunts the certainties of the most ardent Darwinian materialists because life, and especially personhood and qualia, remains their unsolved problem.' Lost ancestor, the ghost that haunts Darwinism, honorary founder of the intelligent design movement this is Alfred Russel Wallace, of whose ideas Michael Flannery is our leading interpreter. Hi there! Welcome!I'll apologise as well as this is probably going to be an equally long post as your original questions are quite a lot to cover. I'll try to answer your questions by numbers as they are.1) There are different types of settlement visas for the UK. Spouse, Fiance, Unmarried, or Marriage Visit Visas for your situation. Since you haven't been living together for at least 2 years, unmarried visa is not available to you. That being said, there are a few ways people go about getting married or even waiting:a) Spouse Visa - This is initial entry-clearance visa for married couples where the applicant moves to the UK to be with the sponsor (or if both overseas, then come together) which is valid for 33 months with right to work then you'll have to renew. (cant access public funds)b) Fiance Visa - This is like the Spouse visa, except it's for engaged couples where the applicant wants to move to the UK to settle. It's required the couple be married within the 6 months that the visa is granted for. Afterwards, one can apply for further leave to remain as married which lasts for 30 months. This route pays the costs of the fiance visa + further leave of remain whereas the spouse visa is just roughly the same length, but one visa cost. It's cheaper to marry outside the UK, but for some people this is just as great (like me!). You can't work on this visa (until you switch to FLR (M) further leave to remain) or access public funds.c) Marriage Visit Visa - This is for engaged couples where the applicant comes to the UK to marry, but is required to leave afterwards. It is also granted for 6 months. It is much cheaper than the Fiance Visa. I've seen some people do this and apply for a Spouse Visa later down the road. Not allowed to work or access public funds either.For many couples it is easier and less stress to be married before coming to the UK, but everyone is on different roads with their relationship. Like me for example, I'm here in the UK on a Fiancee Visa as I'm getting married next month so I didn't necessarily take the easier path of the Spouse Visa, because we weren't ready yet and we would rather be married here. Im not sure on your girlfriends view, but for you it sounds like you definitely want to wait. So maybe looking at a Fiance Visa around March 2018? Its entirely up to you two how you go about it.2) Work visas (Tier 2) are very hard to come by. They require a company to sponsor you and the only way they can do that is if the job cant be fulfilled by a UK or EU person (specialized, skilled, etc). You can also qualify for a work visa via the shortage job list I think. Youll have to do more searching for that as I dont really know much about them. Maybe other members here do. Settlement visas (spouse, fiance, etc) is where the UK citizen sponsors their partner and/or family. To be eligible for those depends entirely on both of you and if you fit the requirements whereas the work visas have to fulfil very specific guidelines through a company.Study visas (Tier 4) are just what they say they are. Again, I dont know much about them, but if thats something shes interested in (studying at a UK university) that could be an option as well. I know its easier than trying for a work visa.3) The financial requirement is 18,600. There quite a few ways of meeting this. Salaried/Non-salaried income, non-employment income, savings, self-employment, etc. All of that is listed in the link below and shows you how to calculate and provide what is required to prove it. To help with some uneasiness about being able to earn 18,600 a year, look at the example below.Example: You earn 15,000 per year working. You are 3,600 short of meeting the requirement, but you have some savings put away. To be able to use the savings, youll need to have:3,600 x 2.5 (length of visa) + 16,000 = 25,000 in savings untouched in an account for at least 6 months. Some of the methods can be combined with others to meet the requirement like salaried/non-salaried income and savings.As I said before, there are various ways of meeting the requirement, but the most common I think is Category A (check the link!) which requires you to be with your employer for at least 6 months and to also provide a letter, 6 months of payslips and bank statements. As for savings, it can be yours, partners, or both. It can also be a gift from family (not a loan), but you can find out how thats proved later on if you go that route.4) Proof of Genuine Relationship includes communication methods (Skype, email, phone apps, facebook, etc) that shows you two have kept in touch while away/dont live together. Photos are an absolutely amazing to have as well. Youll be trying to prove the length of your relationship when you apply (for me that was 5 and half years worth). It doesnt have to exact, just as much as you can within limits (10-15 pages of communication + 15-20 photos for example) just spread over the length of time. If you apply for the Fiance Visa, youll also have to prove your intent to be married during the 6 months (venue, florist, clothes, rings correspondence/booked, etc). Another great thing is flight itineraries, but seeing as you two live close/in the same country thats okay. Has she met your family or you have met hers?5) Oh that question If I had an extra 10 months to prepareI would have probably wished Id have found this forum/researched earlier like you are doing now. This forum has been great getting help and/or helping people find their way to the UK. I probably would still try to get married in the UK as I always wanted to, so that wouldnt change.6) This is a tough question to ask, because it really is up to you two and how you want to go about it. Once you start applying for a settlement visa (work and student is a different), it can take a few weeks to a few months just for applying/processing. Each application is unique, but for me it took a good month to get the paperwork together as I tend to be really thorough before doing anything and a few more months before that of preparing, engagement, and making sure this is what we wanted to do. You sound like you have a good plan going, but just remember that things can change quickly and unexpectedly. Ive seen people plan who have more than a one year gap to people who do everything in just a few months.7) Actually, I really believe there are, but I do not know any off the top of my head. I know there are quite a few Japanese people living in the UK, especially around London. I would say try searching in English or Japanese on Facebook as well. That might be a bit easier than trying to find a forum? Not sure. There are some members here who are from Japan as well!I hope all of this helps and it isnt too overwhelming! I tend to get carried away when giving responses sometimes. If you have any other questions, definitely come back and post! Good Luck ^-^ Hello, I am new to the forum and hope that you can give me some advice. I am looking to buy a property for us firstly to use as a holds you home and then to have on a more permanent basis a few years down the line. We have had a look around the east and west and stayed in both areas. For us to make this work we will need to rent out our holiday home at first. I have seen a lovely town house in chlorakas, a townhouse in Peyia and an apartment in Kapparis. Could anyone advise which would be the most popular for rental income as according to my agent all would be great! Ha Thank you I have been living in new building in Mankhool since Sep 2015. It had good maintenance earlier except that in Nov/Dec we found various kinds of foul smell in the rooms as well as the corridors. After numerous complaints they fixed it and apartment was free of smell and corridors were free 80% of the smell. It was ok till April 2016 when suddenly things got worse, and anytime from 5 AM to 11 PM the air from AC was nothing but smell of onions. After numerous complaints maintenance said that they have closed fresh air unit on the roof that injects fresh air as the compressor has failed and they are waiting for the contractor who delivered the building to fix it. Even after a month they say they will take a week to fix it. All workarounds they tried have failed, such as blocking the fresh air vent in the apartment thinking it might be bringing in stale smell in the absence of fresh air unit functioning. There only hope is it will get over once the fresh air unit starts working. My questions : (a) Is such a thing expected in a new building hardly a year old ? Is this the attitude of maintenance in most buildings here given that an issue such as AC must be dealt with utmost priority ? (b) My lease is now only 3 months away from renewal, so should I look for another house which has better maintenance, or is it similar everywhere ? (c) FYI the maintenance has not cleaned window glasses outside which are full of dirt for the whole year. Is that normal in other buildings ? We are paying the highest rent for 1 bed room I have heard of in this area. If possible can we legally get out of this apartment and find another before the lease is over if they fail to fix AC in another week ? Please let me know buildings which do not have such maintenance issues not very far from Bur Dubai. I have ordered a delivery from ikea and on the site it only allowed me to choose what appeared to be weekly sections.. and went for the 20th June, even though 21st/22nd will be better.. I seem to remember someone saying it was flexible to change within that week once order and delivery week is confirmed? If someone can please advise? Thanks all Coming from the US, the first big requirement is going to be a visa. Check the website of the Italian consulate in the US (there is probably one in Chicago for your area). They most likely have a section devoted to visas and the requirements for obtaining one for a "long stay." Your reason for moving to Italy will determine the specific type of visa you'll need. For example, if one of you has Italian citizenship, you'll need to find the requirements for a spouse visa. If you're going to retire there, it's a different visa than if you plan on working while there. Cheers, Bev jeff4051 said: I will be moving to spain next year, I will be renting my house out in uk, I dont make money on it, the rent will pay the mortgage and insurance etc. Do I have to declare it in Spain, if so will they tax me even though I dont make a profit. Click to expand... Two points;You will have to make a declaration on Modelo 720 of any assets above 50000 held outside of Spain.You will also have to declare any rental income. However, once allowances have been taken into account, you may end up not having to pay any additional tax.It has been mentioned on this forum before so a quick search may give you the answers you're looking for. Exxon Mobil Corp. may invest more than $10 billion as it transplants the U.S. shale-drilling model to Argentinas Vaca Muerta region in the next few decades, Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson said Thursday. The oil giant has so far invested $200 million in the worlds second-largest shale gas deposit and plans to invest another $250 million in coming months on a pilot project, Tillerson said after meeting with Argentine President Mauricio Macri in Buenos Aires. Unlike the mega-projects that have been Exxons hallmark for more than half a century, the shale developments the company began pursuing in 2010 have involved drilling hundreds of individual wells and installing thousands of miles of pipes to squeeze crude and natural gas from deep, dense, onshore fields. If the pilot project is successful, the company will start full development during a period of 20 to 30 years that could involve additional investment that would be well in excess of $10 billion, he said. For Tillerson, Argentinas vast Vaca Muerta shale region represents an opportunity to reverse production losses and add reserves after a $35 billion wrong-way bet on U.S. natural gas and a Russian exploration venture that was derailed by international sanctions. Exxon, the worlds largest oil explorer by market value, has designated Vaca Muerta as one of nine key activity areas in the Western Hemisphere and one of just four in South America, according to company data. Macri has been courting international corporations from Total SA to Dow Chemical Co. to Coca-Cola Co. to invest in Argentina since taking office in December. Exxon, whose annual sales dwarf the economic output of all but about 45 of the worlds nations, is building a plant to strip impurities out of natural gas as well as a pipeline network to handle the output from its Vaca Muerta wells. I am very encouraged by the changes that have occurred here in Argentina, with the change in government, Tillerson said, according to a statement from the Argentine government. 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. Even with the Argentine shale investment, Exxon hasnt completely abandoned the pursuit of mega-projects. The Irving-based company is a junior partner in the proposed $37 billion expansion of the Tengiz field in Kazakhstan, a development led by Chevron Corp. Exxons worldwide oil and gas output is lower than it was when Tillerson began his tenure as CEO a decade ago. Last year, the company that traces its roots to the 1880s and John D. Rockefellers Standard Oil Trust failed to replace all the crude and gas it pumped with new discoveries for the first time in 22 years. In April, S&P Global Ratings stripped Exxon of the gold-plated credit rating it had held since the Great Depression. Tillerson will reach Exxons mandatory retirement age of 65 in March. In a May 25 meeting with reporters after the companys annual meeting in Dallas, he declined to say whether he would seek an extension of his tenure from the board. Vaca Muerta, Spanish for dead cow, is one of the worlds top shale plays, covering an area the size of Belgium and considered key to restoring energy self-sufficiency in Argentina. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Oil rose to a seven-month high in London after a U.S. crude supply decline tempered the impact of OPECs failure to reach an agreement for a new production ceiling. Brent closed above $50 a barrel for the first time since Nov. 3. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, had previously discussed restoring an output target scrapped in December, delegates familiar with the matter said. There was no action, no surprise, said Michael Wittner, the New York-based head of oil market research at Societe Generale SA, said of the OPEC meeting. It was interesting to see that the Saudis were willing to talk about an overall ceiling, but Iran stuck to its party line and nothing came of it. The overall result is that things will be unchanged. Oil has surged more than 85 percent in New York from a 12-year low earlier this year amid signs global supply, especially U.S. shale production, is under pressure from OPECs strategy of sustaining production amid a glut. Prices also advanced because of disruptions to output in Canada, Nigeria and Libya. U.S. crude stockpiles dropped the third time in four weeks, according to a government report released Thursday. Brent for August settlement rose 32 cents to close at $50.04 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. West Texas Intermediate for July delivery rose 16 cents to settle at $49.17 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices earlier dropped as much as $1.04 to $47.97. The August WTI contract closed at a 38-cent discount to Brent. U.S. crude stockpiles dropped 1.37 million barrels to 535.7 million last week, an Energy Information Administration report showed Thursday. The industry-funded American Petroleum Institute reported that supplies climbed 2.35 million barrels. Inventories climbed to 543.4 million barrels in the week ended April 29, the highest since 1929. The reaction to the inventory data just shows the markets ability to react to the latest headline rather than giving them timely, even-handed thought, said Tim Evans, an energy analyst at Citi Futures Perspective in New York. This marked the first OPEC meeting since Khalid Al-Falih became Saudi Arabias oil minister. Al-Falih is close to the kingdoms powerful Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose plan to partly privatize the state oil company has sparked speculation it may further expand production capacity and market share, severing its ties to OPEC. It was important because it was Khalids first meeting, said Michael D. Cohen, an analyst at Barclays Plc in New York. Its more of the same from OPEC. They are setting it up where its shale output that will have to moderate prices in the short term. 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. While Saudi Arabia had shown willingness to mend divisions Thursday with cash-strapped members demanding a new group ceiling, Iran said it would only support individual country quotas that would be difficult to agree to in a single meeting. Iran has rejected any cap on production as it restores output following the removal of sanctions in January. The countrys refusal to participate in a production freeze proposed earlier this year prompted Saudi Arabia to block a deal between OPEC and Russia at a meeting in Doha in April. Gulf producers continue to indicate desire for collaboration, but Irans position prevents agreement, said Sarah Emerson, managing director of ESAI Energy Inc., a consulting company in Wakefield, Massachusetts. The time is just not right yet. It will be at some point. While OPEC regularly ignores its own output targets and there had been no suggestion anyone would cut production, even token gestures would have shown a renewed unity and lifted prices. United Arab Emirates Oil Minister Suhail Mohammed Al Mazrouei had said OPEC and producers outside the group would have to agree to any supply freeze. OPEC also appointed Nigerias Mohammed Barkindo as secretary-general during the meeting. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate VIENNA OPEC countries failed Thursday to agree on measures to influence crude supplies and prices a missed opportunity to show the resolve that for decades let them set how much consumers and industries worldwide would pay for gas, heating and related necessities. At the same time, OPEC officials argued that the cartel was alive and well, scoffing at suggestions that its authority was eroding to the point where it will soon be negligible. Dont take that (to mean) that OPEC is dead, said Secretary General Abdulla al-Badri. OPEC will be powerful, will be strong. OPEC is alive. But the decision to make no decision appeared more an illustration of lack of unity, particularly between OPEC rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, whose deepening struggle for Mideast supremacy has for years been mirrored at oil meetings. Iran was second only to the Saudis inside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in terms of production before international sanctions over its nuclear program crippled sales. Now with a deal in place limiting its atomic prowess, sanctions have been lifted and Tehran served notice even before the Vienna meeting that it intends to reach or surpass previous levels. Mehdi Hosseini, the head of the oil contracts revision committee at Irans Petroleum Ministry, puts pre-sanctions levels at around 4.2 million barrels per day. Accepting anything less than that, Hosseini said in April, would amount to another sanction against ourselves. It is something we cannot accept. The latest figures from the International Energy Agency show Iran making good on its pledge, with output jumping by 300,000 barrels a day to nearly 3.6 million barrels daily in April the highest since November 2011. One idea at the Vienna meeting that could have allowed for more Iranian production was to abandon a firm production target. OPEC countries had been considering a sliding ceiling that could shift between two benchmarks, both well above 30 million barrels a day. But Iran already put its foot down against quotas of any kind in April. It did not even show up at a meeting between OPEC members and outside producers attempting to agree on a joint output freeze to push prices higher. The Saudis subsequently said they would not cap output if Iran didnt do the same, dooming the gathering to failure. In part, the OPEC divide reflects growing political tensions between Shiite powerhouse and the Sunni-ruled desert kingdom, regional rivals that back opposite sides in the Syrias war and the conflict in Yemen. They broke off diplomatic relations earlier this year after Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Saudi Shiite cleric, a move that sparked protests in Iran and the storming of Saudi diplomatic posts. The relationship soured further as the OPEC meeting was underway, with Tehran announcing it would not facilitate sending pilgrims to the Hajj this year because of what it sees as insufficient Saudi security guarantees. Still, with the Saudis used to setting OPECs agenda, the main issue between the two in Vienna on Thursday appeared to be oil-related. Since deciding in 2014 to squeeze out outside competition by flooding the market to drive down prices, the Saudis have pumped close to or above 10 million barrels a day close to a third of OPECs total. That, plus resurgent output from Iraq and Iran, helped push down prices, with the desired effect of making shale production increasingly uneconomical. But Saudi Arabia came to Vienna this time more focused on easing OPEC concerns of a further production increase that could reverse the upward price trend. The countrys oil minister, Khalid A. al-Falih declared ahead of the meeting that his country will be very gentle in our approach and make sure we dont shock the market. That clashed with Irans determination to produce all out and contributed to foiling agreement on any kind on an OPEC output ceiling. It doesnt make sense for Iran to commit to a production freeze, said Robin Mills of Qamar Energy in Dubai. On the Saudi side, it would be very difficult to come to an agreement that allows another OPEC member to increase its production. It was clear, though, that the market was looking for at least an attempt by OPEC to show unified muscle. U.S. benchmark oil dropped as much as $1.04 to $47.97 a barrel before recovering. News of a U.S. crude supply decline also tempered the impact of OPECs failure. U.S. crude stockpiles dropped 1.37 million barrels to 535.7 million last week, an Energy Information Administration report showed Thursday. The afternoon report helped spur global benchmark Brent to close above $50 a barrel for the first time since Nov. 3. It also boosted West Texas Intermediate, which settled at at $49.17 a barrel, up 16 cents, on the New York Mercantile Exchange. OPECs final statement Thursday mirrored the communique at the last OPEC meeting in December in not even mentioning an output target. That December decision effectively left it up to individual members how much crude to pump and was a strong signal of the cartels eroding ability to act as a group to influence supply, demand and prices. 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. OPEC President Mohammed Bin Saleh al-Sada denied that his organization was fading. Instead, he described the cartel as a dynamic, living organ responding to changes. The world has changed, is changing and will change, he told reporters Thursday. So OPEC is responsive to change interacting with facts on the ground. For todays market conditions, OPEC is responding appropriately. But Bob Minter, an analyst at Aberdeen Asset Management Investment, said the meeting failed to at least signal that members can agree on something. This should have been an easy meeting to re-establish OPEC relevance but they missed the opportunity, he said. Bloomberg News contributed to this article. Exhibits of Spanish colonial art typically are organized by media, that is, what the works are made from. For Highest Heaven: Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Art from the Collection of Roberta and Richard Huber, co-curators William Keyse Rudolph and Marion Oettinger Jr. opted to take a different tack one thats particularly appropriate for a city that grew out of Catholic missions. (Oettinger) came up with a very simple, yet wonderful idea, which was to bring the religion back into the story, Rudolph said. The exhibit, which explores the art of the high plains, or Altiplano, of Peru and Bolivia in the 18th century, opens June 11 at the San Antonio Museum of Art. It showcases more than 100 works, among them paintings, silverworks, ivories and furniture, collected by the Hubers during four decades of living and traveling in South America. The majority of the pieces are religious artworks depicting Christian subjects. This art often had work to do, and the work that it had to do was about spreading Catholicism because art, as we know, has always been a powerful tool for religious instruction and conversion and devotion, Rudolph said. At the same time, a lot of the objects youre going to see here tell us a lot about international trade in a global world, he added. More Information Curator's picks We asked William Keyse Rudolph, co-curator of "Highest Heaven," to name five of his favorite works in "Highest Heaven." Here are his picks: "Rosa de Salazar y Gabino, Countess of Monteblanco and Miramar" Attributed to Cristobal Lozano (Peruvian, 1705-1776) 1764-1771, oil on canvas This is probably one of the most spectacular of all Spanish colonial portraits, showing one of the wealthiest women in the New World. The sheer abundance of her jewelry testifies to her status, and the eye-catching pink satin dress - adorned with a significant amount of money in the form of lace - is up-to-the-minute French fashion. "Rest on the Flight into Egypt" Bolivian, 18th century, oil on canvas An extraordinarily charming scene showing the Holy Family pausing on their perilous escape from the Massacre of the Innocents to attend to the necessities of life. The landscape, flora and fauna are all recognizably South American, rather than of the Holy Land. "Our Lady of the Candlemas with Donors" Bolivian, Potosi, 1799, oil on canvas This is a splendid example of one of the so-called "Dressed Virgin" paintings, showing an image of a famous statue of the Virgin Mary that was carried in processions in feast days. All around the main image are little scenes showing miracles attributed to her, including rescuing drowning people and a man falling from a building. "Christ Descending into Hell" Peruvian, 18th century, oil on canvas This dramatic scene shows Jesus after the Crucifixion but before the Resurrection, trampling the devil and freeing the souls of those in purgatory. Jesus' power and what Christianity promises the faithful comes through boldly, loudly and clearly. "Christ Child as Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World)" Indo-Portuguese, 17th century, ivory with paint, gilding This is an exquisitely beautiful example of the devotional ivory sculptures probably carved in the Portuguese colony of Goa, off the coast of India. Christ stands on top of the world and blesses all humanity. The religious message is one of absolute love. The piece is exceptional in its craftsmanship and testifies to the truly global nature of the Spanish and Portuguese colonial worlds. See More Collapse The exhibit features areas devoted to secular objects, angels and archangels, the life of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints made by both well-regarded masters and anonymous artists and artisans. After works from the Hubers collection were featured in an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2013, the couple approached Katie Luber, who worked there before becoming director of the San Antonio Museum of Art, about doing an expanded version. Oettinger, curator of Latin American art at the San Antonio museum, created the checklist for the show, then handed the reins to Rudolph, the museums chief curator. After its San Antonio run, the show will travel to the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California, and the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. The Hubers, who live in an art-filled home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, said they are pleased to have works from their collection on view in a city with Spanish colonial roots. Were actually tickled by that because weve long been fascinated by the missions, particularly in South America, the Jesuit missions in what is today Paraguay and Bolivia, Richard said. We visited them numerous times. And so the missions in San Antonio very much tie into that because theyre very much of the same time period, very much of the same style, so theres a definite resonance there. The couple first became intrigued with Spanish colonial art when they moved to Buenos Aires in 1962 for Richards career in banking. In an essay for the catalog, the Hubers describe how their fascination grew with the way artists melded European design and colonial subject matter. They purchased their first piece a reverse glass painting of Saint Augustine for $100 in 1973. The works in the exhibit represent about 60 percent of their collection. When we have visitors to our home in New York, particularly people we dont know very well, we almost feel obliged to explain to them: No, were not religious fanatics, because the thematic material was largely religious, Richard said. The Hubers are still active collectors. They purchased one of the works in the show a painting of the newly crucified Christ stomping on the devil in hell a year ago. But the competition for pieces has become stiffer in recent years. Weve been longtime advocates and propagandistas for Spanish and Portuguese colonial art, and for a long time it fell pretty much on deaf ears, Richard said. Now suddenly, everybody seems to have awakened. Thats great, except when we sit in the second row of an auction. We see someone from the (Metropolitan Museum of Art), we see someone from (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art), we see someone from Dallas sitting there as well. Aside from gently advocating for a couple of favorite pieces, including the painting of Christ descending into hell and a silver lantern with a rustic inscription, the Hubers left the selection of artworks in the show up to the curators, as it should be, Roberta said. Works in the secular section of the show include a portrait of Rosa de Salazar y Gabino, a member of the aristocracy. Bedecked in jewelry, she is dressed in a pale pink French gown festooned with lace and poses with a sprig of flowers at her breast. So here we are in what would be present-day Lima, Rudolph said. She is just as fashionable as anyone back in Europe, and she is richer, because look at the jewels, look at the pearls, look at the lace. This is no country cousin. Other works in the section include a small box that would have been used to store precious items, such as letters, spices or other household goods, and a decorated writing desk. Though the form of the pieces is European, they are decorated with pre-Columbian designs and motifs, so these are all hybrid works in a really interesting way, Rudolph said. Among the religious artworks is a Bolivian painting of the holy family resting on the flight into Egypt by an unknown artist. Joseph is holding the Christ child on his knee while Mary does wash in a basin by a stream in a lush, tropical setting. This is not the Holy Land, this is South America, Rudolph said. I mean, look at the flora and the fauna. In a Peruvian painting by an unknown artist, Christ is depicted healing a blind man who kneels among a host of spectators wearing contemporary courtly dress. In the background, another group is trailed by an indigenous woman minding two small children. Artists are making works that speak to places where they are, Rudolph said. Some of the paintings of Mary were based on statues, which accounts for the static nature of the images. That is not the case with a painting of Our Lady of Mount Carmel by Gaspar Miguel de Berrio. The artist, who worked in Bolivia, depicts a sweetly smiling Mary attended by a host of angels. She is holding the Christ child in one arm and handing a scapular to a pair of bishops below. Her long, brown robes are decorated with a delicate pattern of flowers in gold, intended to evoke brocaded fabric. The painting bears an inscription in Latin that reads Gaspar Miguel de Berrio painted me. Rudolph hopes the exhibition provokes some of the religious fervor many of the objects were created to inspire. I want this exhibition to make people want to go immediately to Mass, he said. This is like a revival meeting. We want to bring them back. Highest Heaven runs June 11 through Sept. 14 at the San Antonio Museum of Art, 200 W. Jones Ave., 210-978-8100, www.samuseum.org. Cost is $10 in addition to museum admission for visitors 18 and older. lsilva@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate When Terry Guerrero started teaching at Gilbert Elementary School in 1976, the Harlandale Independent School District had just finished building the campus. There was one hallway and 250 students. Most of her class did not speak English. Today, the school has a second story and more than 600 students. Guerrero spent all 40 years of her career at Gilbert, an unheard-of streak among teachers. As hundreds of thousands of Bexar County students went home for the summer Thursday, Guerrero checked names off a clipboard, handling bus duty for the last time before retirement. She always gives us gifts, said Diego Gausing, 7, one of her first-graders. I dont want her to leave. I want her to stay here for two thousand weeks. He didnt know that adds up to another 38 1/2 years. Guerrero grew up on the West Side, graduating from Memorial High School in Edgewood ISD. Guerrero said her seventh-grade Spanish teacher Maria Elena Watkins, who followed the class to Memorial, was so generous and understanding that Guerrero was inspired to follow in her footsteps. She went on to study at Our Lady of the Lake University and the University of Texas-San Antonio, earning a masters degree in education. The concept of bilingual education had just taken hold when Guerrero started looking for jobs as a bilingual teacher. Edgewood wasnt hiring, but Guerrero figured Harlandale was a similar district. Once she started at Gilbert, she realized the students there needed her. Most of these children, unfortunately, come from broken homes, and I just didnt want to leave here and go anywhere else, Guerrero said. According to Texas Education Agency data, 99 percent of the student body is Hispanic and 94 percent is considered economically disadvantaged. Guerrero said those demographics have been about the same for 40 years, and the kind of development taking place near Brooks City-Base has not reached the Gilbert area. Nevertheless, Gilbert grew while Guerrero taught, enrolling more students from apartments and mobile homes. In her four decades at the school, Guerrero has taught bilingual classes in every grade from first through fifth. She has taught classes for dyslexic students, remedial math and reading. She has taught all the siblings in many families. She has taught a mother and her three daughters, and in two cases, she has taught the grandchildren of her former students. She taught at Gilbert through six presidents and countless changes in education policy. She was the San Antonio Area Bilingual Teacher of the Year in 2000. She watched bilingual education evolve into dual-language instruction, meaning for the past five years, half of her students have come from English-speaking homes and are learning Spanish. Guerrero has watched many colleagues leave Harlandale for better pay and shorter commutes in Northside or North East ISDs. She herself lives close to a Northside ISD school, and said her husband always asked why she didnt apply there. She wishes her students had access to the same programs and resources as those on the North Side, but tries to make up the difference herself, buying many supplies out of her own pocket. I do what I need to for them, Guerrero said. That was not going to keep them from learning what I wanted them to learn. Children who came to her not speaking English are now nurses, police officers or teachers themselves, Guerrero said. Guerrero could have retired after 25 years, but said she always felt there were more students to help. Now, she said, a new face with new ideas needs to take her place. She said she is looking forward to traveling and taking care of her mother. Thursday, Guerrero gave out candy, cupcakes and report cards and read Clifford, El Gran Perro Colorado to her first-grade class. She didnt hesitate to put students in time out, and she reminded them she had given them lots of books, so they had no excuse to play video games all summer. I know you all, she said in Spanish. You sit in front of the TV and you start to play. Youre going to break your fingers. But she started to cry when two fellow teachers, and then the principal, came in for hugs. Shes a legend, said Christine Valero, a teacher who has known Guerrero for 32 years. Shes very energetic, said Eduardo Cavazos, a special education teacher whom Guerrero helped hire. Its just like it was her first year. amalik@express-news.net Twitter: @AliaAtSAEN This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate HOUSTON A teenager accused of sexually assaulting and strangling his girlfriend will remain behind bars in the Harris County juvenile detention center, a judge ruled Thursday. The 15-year-old high school student could be certified to stand trial as an adult if prosecutors decide to move the case to state district court from the juvenile court system. The teen, who is charged with murder, is accused of killing 15-year-old Karen Perez on Friday in an abandoned South Houston apartment complex and hiding her body in a cabinet under a kitchen sink. The sounds of the assault were captured on his cellphone video, prosecutors said. The girls body was found Monday by investigators and Texas EquuSearch. On Thursday the teen, handcuffed and wearing a green jail jumpsuit, made his first court appearance for questioning before Magistrate Judge Aneeta Jamal. Because there is no bail in the juvenile justice system, teens accused of serious crimes are either held or freed without regard to posting a bond. The teens parents attended the brief hearing. They did not comment as they left the juvenile courthouse. Jerry Michael Acosta, the teens attorney, said the case remains under investigation but he declined to answer questions about the case. We ask that the public reserve judgment until all the evidence is collected and evaluated, he said. Under Texas law, suspects ages 14 to 16 can be certified to stand trial as an adult by a juvenile court judge based on criteria including whether the crime was against a person or property, the suspects maturity level and previous criminal record. The decision to certify is made by a judge after a request is made by prosecutors; the potential punishment is higher in adult courts. Whether to seek certification typically takes weeks or months. In Harris County, juveniles charged with serious crimes, especially slayings, are often certified to stand trial as adults. In a similar case from 2014, two teens in Clear Lake were certified to stand trial as adults in the fatal bludgeoning and stabbing of a 15-year-old in an empty apartment. Jose E. Reyes, who was 17 at the time of the crime and Victor Alias, who was 16, were both sentenced to life in prison without parole after being convicted of capital murder in the death of Corriann Cervantes. The so-called satanic murder made headlines because the youths told investigators they were trying to sell their souls to the devil. One later said Lucifer was in the room watching the fatal assault with approval. If the 15-year-old accused of killing Perez is not certified, his punishment would be capped at 40 years in prison. Experts in juvenile law said the Harris County district attorneys office will likely pursue certification, based on the allegations that have been made public. Something that serious, I would certainly expect (prosecutors) to seek certification, said Joanne Musick, a past president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association who practices juvenile law. Typically the only time we dont see them certified is if they are extremely young and unsophisticated. She noted that the accusations, although early in the investigation, seem to point toward premeditation. Because of strict laws governing the identification of juveniles, prosecutors have not spoken about the case outside of court. Depending on the autopsy results as well as other evidence, the teen could face capital murder charges if he is certified. If convicted of a capital crime, he could face life in prison without parole. His age bars prosecutors from seeking the death penalty. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate BANDERA A combination of sunny skies and heavy-duty pumping from the lower reservoir at the Twin Lakes subdivision eased concerns Thursday about one or both of the earthen dams there failing. But relief expressed by Bandera County officials that the immediate hazard had passed for residents downstream from the two side-by-side ponds off Texas 173 was tempered by the threat of additional downpours. It hasnt breached, but its not a good situation, County Commissioner Andy Wilkerson said while inspecting the lower dam overtopped by water this week eroding some areas on its downstream side. Nearby residents were warned Wednesday they should be prepared to evacuate. I was kind of shocked by the alert, said Mellisa Andrade, 31, who couldnt recall any such warnings in her lifetime in the development about 3 miles north of town. Nobodys in a panic anymore because the sun is out. Two rented pumps put into use by the county helped draw down the water level on the lower lake known officially as Twin Lake below its spillway by 5 a.m. Thursday. But pre-dawn showers pushed the water back over the road within four hours, despite the pumps carrying an estimated combined 6,000 gallons a minute over the dam into Jack Hollow, which runs into Bandera Creek. The road atop the dam remains closed, but residents can still reach their homes via a dirt road detour. Failure of the lower dam could flood dozens of homes along nearby Oak Drive, Bandera County Emergency Management Coordinator Carey Reed said. She said more extensive damage would occur if the upper dam, on the reservoir called Mosher Big Lake, were to give way first, which would wipe out the lower dam, as well. Were very happy with the progress we made with the pumps and we feel the threat is over, Reed said early Thursday. The Mosher Big Lake dam holds back 342 acre-feet of water, and Twin Lake contains 121 acre-feet, records indicate. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality advised the county to draw down the levels of the side-by-side reservoirs, built in the 1950s, and helped identify downstream residents who would be at risk in case an evacuation is necessary, agency spokesman Andrew Keese said. Both dams were overtopped in the flooding and suffered significant damage to the downstream faces, he said. David Tamblin recalled that the lakes were nearly empty when he rented a home there two years ago. Last night I was worried. Today Im not, Tamblin, 53, said after checking the pumps and road. The waters going down. The dams last were overtopped by flooding in 2002, said Commissioner Wilkerson, who began fielding phone calls at 5 a.m. Thursday from residents concerned for their safety. I said, Right now I dont see a problem, if we dont get more rain. he said. zeke@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate BROWNSVILLE Jerry Stones, 74, gets choked up talking about Harambe, a Western lowland gorilla that was born in this Texas border city and was killed by Cinncinnati Zoo worker last week after a child fell into the gorillas enclosure. I was sick to my stomach, Stones said Thursday as he recalled getting the news of Harambes death. It was like losing a family member. Stones is the facilities director at Gladys Porter Zoo, where Harambe was born and lived for 15 years. When Harambe was born 17 years ago, Stones was in charge of the zoos mammals. He was the one who cut Harambes umbilical cord, and took the infant gorilla home with him at night. He fed him, and put him in a diaper to avoid a mess around the house. I have two sons, and I dont ever remember changing their diapers, Stones said. But he has little trouble conjuring up those early days with Harambe. He had a beautiful personality. Last weekend Cincinnati Zoo staff shot and killed Harambe after the 3-year-old boy apparently crawled through a railing and fell into the moat that surrounded the gorillas island. Harambes death has garnered national headlines, and ignited heated discussion over whether the animal, an endangered species, should have been killed. Lost in the debate is the gorilla himself, Harambe. Few man or beast knew him quite like Stones. Stones got word that Harambe had been killed about an hour after it happened. Harambe had recently celebrated his birthday. The longtime zoo official has listened to the roiling debate, hes read the headlines, and hes convinced that most people weighing in on the mother of the chid who tumbled into the enclosure, or the actions that the zoo staff took to protect the child, have little idea what actually transpired. He imagines the mother, horrified as she watches while her child is dragged around the enclosure like a doll by the 450-pound gorilla, even as people surrounding the exhibit scream in fear. Her baby is down there with this beast, and she didnt know him, Stones said. And, my God, what had to go through the mind of the zookeeper? Then Stones imagines Harambes world. Suddenly a small boy is in his house. Should he be scared? This was a no-win situation for everybody involved, Stones said. Unforeseen circumstances took over and Harambe had to pay the price. Stones and other zoo officials say the best way to remember Harambe, whose name in Swahili means pull together, is to help raise awareness of the plight of lowland gorillas. To that end, the Gladys Porter Zoo has launched the Harambe Fund. To find out more information about Harambe and to donate, go to gpz.org. AUSTIN Tea party forces have launched a new front in a seemingly perpetual battle with the Texas Ethics Commission: jockeying state leaders to replace half of the eight-member panel that regulates state campaign finance laws. Several prominent tea party groups have asked Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Joe Straus to make it a "priority action item" to appoint new regulators to the commission. Four commissioners remain on the panel as holdovers after their terms expired because they have yet to be replaced by state leaders. The call for action on the appointees represents a further escalation in an on-going tug of war playing out for several years between the commission and some tea party groups with 501c(4) nonprofit status. The state regulator has taken an aggressive stance on so-called "dark money" disclosure, drawing fire from politically active nonprofits in a barrage of lawsuits. Two of the groups making the request Empower Texans and the Texas Homeschool Coalition have pending lawsuits against the commission. A third, Texas Right to Life, not so long ago won the dismissal of an ethics inquiry prompted by the campaign of a former state senator. The appointee issue grew publicly tense earlier this week. Lawyers representing several of the tea party groups kept turning the screws at a commission meeting, even questioning the panel's legal authority since half its members are currently serving under expired terms. At least one ethics commissioner was noticeably vexed. Tom Ramsay, an ethics commissioner whose term expires next year, questioned the lawyers about their role in the letter sent to the state's Big Three. It quickly escalated into a terse back and forth. "If you ... didn't give these people the idea it is unconstitutional for us to do these things, who did they get that legal advice from?" Ramsay asked. "They're paying you big bucks when they're calling you up." Joe Nixon, a lawyer for Empower Texans, shot back. "It's very ironic that if someone were to file a form 10 minutes late or five minutes later than midnight they get a $500 fine," Nixon said. "But you guys can continue on and in one case five or six years passed the time your term has expired and continue to think that you still have the authority to act." An incredulous Ramsay kept prodding: How could Nixon have any legal knowledge of the situation if he didn't help the groups write the letter? To which, Nixon responded he got into the office early that day and brushed up on the Texas Constitution before attending the commission's meeting. "If I were making your hourly rate I'd be there early too," Ramsay quipped before saying he'd heard enough. "You continue to make confrontational situations for us." The state constitution spells out clearly the policy for appointees with expired terms. It says "all officers within the state shall continue to perform the duties of their offices until their successors shall be duly qualified." Commission Chairman Chase Untermeyer said that allows state government to continue doing its job even while there are vacancies on state agency boards or commissions. "Nobody is hanging on to their job on this commission by their finger nails," Untermeyer told Nixon. The position of ethics commissioner is unpaid all of the commissioners are reimbursed for expenses and maintain full-time outside jobs but it is viewed as a public service. The governor appoints half of the eight-member ethics panel, while the lieutenant governor and House speaker each appoint two members. Appointees are split evenly along party lines, and commissioners are traditionally selected from a list of nominees drawn up by Senate and House caucuses from each party. Trey Trainor, a lawyer who represents several of the groups, said no caucus lists have been submitted to date for the open positions. "There are term limits for the ethics commission for a reason," he said. "This process has got to stop." A bit of context: holdovers at the commission are not uncommon at all. The last time a holdover on the ethics commission voluntarily stepped down was in 2013, when Democrat Paula Mendoza, whose term expired in 2007, resigned only after former Gov. Rick Perry appointed her a regent for the University of Houston System. Currently, commission vice chair Tom Harrison has been serving as a holdover since 2011 and could possibly be the first person Abbott replaces in the process of remaking the ethics panel. Commissioner Bob Long, whose term expired last year, is also due to eventually be replaced by Abbott. Commissioner Wilhelmina Delco, a former state lawmaker appointed by former Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and whose term expired last year, will eventually be replaced by someone chosen by Patrick. And the term for Straus appointee Paul Hobby, who recently wrapped up a stint as chairman, expired in 2015. In an interview last week, before the appointee brouhaha, Untermeyer addressed the issue of holdovers with the San Antonio Express-News/Houston Chronicle. He noted that several commissioners were "serving overtime," but predicted the makeup of the commission will likely stay the same for awhile longer. "There is potential for change but until then people hang on," Untermeyer said. "We all may be around longer than expected or anticipated by the law." Donald Trumps real estate school was just a scam, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said after the presumptive Republican presidential nominee defended his former for-profit real estate school. Trump bilked people out of millions of dollars, Schneiderman said on ABCs Good Morning America one of several TV appearances Thursday to discuss Trumps school. Were going to make sure he pays it back. The states top legal official said on MSNBCs Morning Joe that Trump had been in settlement talks before Schneiderman sued in 2013. A Trump representative disputed Schneidermans characterization of the talks, which failed. What actually happened is they made a settlement demand which we rejected, said Alan Garten, general counsel for the Trump Organization. Thats why we are litigating. Trump is facing one suit brought by Schneiderman, a Democrat, and two in California over allegations that he swindled students with unkept promises of investment secrets and had little involvement in the school. Despite claims that Trump handpicked instructors, some had little training and were former fast-food or retail workers, according to Schneiderman. Students paid thousands of dollars for the lessons. Schneiderman claims Trump swindled students out of $40 million and that he may have personally made as much as $5 million from them. The New York official has been on an eight-stop media blitz for two days over his lawsuit against Trump, a flurry of activity prompted by the release of documents in one of the California cases and Trumps criticism of the judge overseeing it. Referring to the documents, a Schneiderman spokesman said Thursday in a statement that newly released Trump University playbooks reaffirm what the Attorney Generals investigation uncovered and what he alleged in his lawsuit: Trump University was a fraud that harmed thousands of individuals. The playbooks contain rules and procedures for Trump University events and scripts for engaging with customers. Schneiderman also criticized a TV ad featuring students praising the now-defunct school. Trump said at a May 31 news conference in New York that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel in San Diego, who is overseeing both of the cases in California, has been very unfair and has not done a good job. I could settle that case, I could have settled it, Trump said, referring to a California case in which Curiel released documents. I just chose not to. In fact when I ran they said, Why dont you settle that case? I dont want to settle the case. Because you know what? Because Im a man of principle, and most of the people who took those courses have letters saying they thought it was great, essentially. JANESVILLE, Wis. House Speaker Paul Ryan endorsed Donald Trump on Thursday, ending an extraordinary public split between the GOPs presumptive presidential nominee and the nations highest-ranking Republican office holder. I had friends wishing I wouldnt support him. I had friends wishing I would, Ryan said in an exclusive interview. I really didnt feel any pressure, other than my goal is to make sure that were unified so that were at full strength in the fall so we can win the election. Ryan said he continues to have concerns about Trumps combative style. It is my hope the campaign improves its tone as we go forward and its all a campaign we can be proud of, Ryan said. Ryan said the endorsement is not the product of any deal with the billionaire developer. Trump won his endorsement, Ryan said, based on an understanding of our mutually agreed upon principles. Ryan said he specifically wanted to go over Trumps approach to executive power and judicial appointments and his position on abortion. Those conversations took some time, he said. I feel much more comfortable that hes in the same page with us. Most importantly, it is obvious that Hillary Clinton is not, Ryan said. Ryan, R-Wis., ended a weekslong standoff with Trump minutes before the interview by outlining his support for the New York billionaire in a column published in his hometown newspaper. Ryans announcement marks a significant shift for a GOP desperately trying to come together ahead of a general election matchup against likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Some of the Republican Partys best known leaders have vowed not to support Trump, including 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who tapped Ryan as his running mate. The day before Ryans announcement, Romney signaled support for a possible third-party candidate. Ryan shocked the political world last month by refusing to endorse Trump once the real estate mogul became the presumptive GOP nominee. The pair spoke privately in a series of Washington meetings last month and their campaigns have maintained contact. Yet as the GOPs so-called Never Trump movement struggled to identify a viable alternative, many believed it was only a matter of time before Ryan fell in line. Ryan has embraced reforms to Medicare and Social Security as his signature policy fight on Capitol Hill. Most Republicans in Congress have followed Ryans lead to reduce the cost of the programs. Trump has repeatedly promised not to cut the popular programs, echoing a position more commonly adopted by Democrats. Its no secret that he and I have our differences. I wont pretend otherwise, Ryan wrote in a column in the Janesville Gazette. And when I feel the need to, Ill continue to speak my mind. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate LOS ANGELES The man who killed a UCLA professor before turning the gun on himself Wednesday had a brief stint at the University of Texas at Arlington as a research assistant, according to media reports. And Los Angeles police said Thursday morning they suspect Mainak Sarkar, 38, killed a woman in Minnesota before carrying two semiautomatic pistols and a grudge back to the University of California campus there, where he fatally shot a young professor he once called a mentor then killed himself. Sarkar was enrolled at UTA as a graduate aerospace engineering student from fall 2001 through spring 2003, according to Kristin Sullivan, associate vice president of communications at the University of Texas at Arlington. Sarkar did not complete a degree or certificate during his time at the university, she said in an email Thursday. Sarkar had received a degree in aerospace engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in 2000 before coming to Texas. When Sarkar left Texas in 2003, he went to Stanford to get his masters in aeronautics. Two years later, Sarka came back to Texas to work as a a software developer, the Huffington Post reported. This weeks attack came after Sarkar composed a kill list with the names of the woman and two UCLA professors, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said. Detectives believe Sarkar also intended to kill the second professor but couldnt find him Wednesday on the bustling campus, Beck said. Authorities pieced together the case as most classes resumed a day after thousands of students and staff members were locked down on the sprawling campus. Its normally tranquil paths and hallways were swarmed by a small army of officers clad in body armor and wielding high-powered rifles. Students who could flee did, and those who couldnt leave locked or barricaded classroom doors and huddled in nervous silence. The investigation unfolded rapidly after Sarkar left a note in the office where he killed professor Bill Klug. It mentioned the second professor on the kill list and asked anyone who read it to check on Sarkars cat in St. Paul, Minnesota. When authorities went to Sarkars apartment, they found the list of planned targets. Authorities checked the residence of the woman in a nearby town and found her body. Authorities have not publicly identified the woman or the unharmed professor, who also belonged to UCLAs engineering faculty. Sarkar had disparaged Klug online and the professor knew of his contempt, but police have not uncovered any death threats, Beck said. The writings contained some harsh language, but certainly nothing that would be considered homicidal, he said. A blog post written in March by someone identifying himself as Sarkar asserted that Klug cleverly stole all my code and gave it (to) another student and made me really sick. Authorities believe Sarkar drove to Los Angeles from Minnesota in the past few days with two handguns he legally bought in Minnesota and with ammunition. Police working to find that car sought the publics help, saying it was a 2003 Nissan Sentra with the license plate of 720KTW. With the guns and ammunition Sarkar carried, he could have caused many more fatalities than the one, Beck said. Kelsey Bradshaw of mySA.com contributed to this report. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Roy Barrera Sr., Texas first Hispanic secretary of state in 1968, won City Council approval Thursday to rezone his 5.9-acre ranch in North San Antonio, allowing developers to convert the property into a more densely populated gated community with 37 homes. The half-dozen North Side residents who spoke out about the project on Vance Jackson Road all agreed: More density is bad. But they were split on support for the project. Some urged council to vote down the change, saying it would worsen the already heavy traffic on Vance Jackson and endanger students at nearby Shirley J. Howsman Elementary School. While others reluctantly asked council to approve it, concerned that something worse could replace it. I cant believe Im on this side, said Bill Hurley, who lives in the area and supported the development despite his concerns. The property, named Villa del Carmen after Barreras late wife, is well-known among local residents for displaying abstract sculptures. More Information Past coverage: Neighbors on Vance Jackson worry about increased congestion See More Collapse Barrera asked the city to rezone the property as a planned unit development, or PUD, as he prepares to sell it to Austin-based developer Scott Felder Homes. Daniel Ortiz, a lawyer for Scott Felder, pointed out that up to 63 units could be built on the property under the current zoning. Im not here to suggest that our development will improve traffic, said Ortiz of Brown & Ortiz P.C. The plan weve set out here is a vast improvement to what could be developed today. The city Zoning Commission unanimously approved Barreras rezoning request in April. Opponents of the project said they only learned about it recently because signs about the zoning change werent well-placed on Barreras property. A city official acknowledged at the council meeting that no signs were up on Thursday because they were blown away by recent storms. The opponents asked the city to consider buying the property to turn it into a park, saying that green space is scant in the area. If people had known about this early enough, they would have tried harder, said Karen Vaught, who has lived in the area since the 1950s. There were so many opportunities that we missed because it was not properly done. The project received support from Vance Jackson Neighborhood Inc., the local neighborhood association, after Scott Felder Homes agreed to certain restrictions that prohibit the developer or future owners from changing the site plan. District 8 City Councilman Ron Nirenberg also gave it his support, pointing out that the developer plans to preserve some trees and historic buildings on the property. Nirenberg acknowledged that infrastructure is inadequate in the area but said that collaboration with developers was the citys only choice for controlling density on a property it doesnt own. Theyre right, Nirenberg said of his constituents who complained of traffic congestion on Vance Jackson. But he added, I have to support this case. In April, concerns about high density in Nirenbergs district led him to propose downzoning a 36-acre vacant property on Babcock Road to prevent the construction of an apartment complex. The Babcock property was owned by the federal government when Nirenberg proposed a zoning change, but it was later bought by a group of investors based in California. Local real estate leaders opposed the change, saying it violated property rights, and council voted it down. While making a motion to approve the gated community, Nirenberg added a requirement for Scott Felder Homes to build an 8-foot-fence on the south side of the property. The developers representative said it was willing to build the fence. Barrera, who co-founded the high-profile Nicholas & Barrera law firm in 1957, bought the property in 1959, when it was next to a 200-acre dairy farm. He decided to sell his property after his wife, Maria del Carmen Zendejas Barrera, died last year. He plans to move to another ranch on the far Northwest Side where his children live. Food miles measure the distance between farm and table. Food miles are often used to quantify the environmental impact of food production and transportation. How food miles are calculated Volume, distance, mode of transportation, energy and emissions are factored into a foods miles. Carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide emitted as a result. Food that travels great distances generally uses more energy and emits more carbon than food that travels short distances. The average pound of tomatoes sold in the U.S. supermarket travel 1,569 food miles and emits .21 kg CO2. The average tomato at the farmers market travels less than 60 miles from farm to table and emits .13 kg of CO2. Interested in learning more about food carbon emissions? Check out this calculator. Why food miles matter to farmers Environmental impact, food quality and nutritional value, security and strength of local supply, economics, and marketing are reasons food miles matter to farmers. Environmental impact. Dependency on fossil fuels, greenhouse gas emissions and climate change hurt the environment and challenge the future of farming. Reducing energy inputs and fuel used for food production is good for the environment and farmers wallets. Food quality and nutritional value. Food quality and nutritional value diminish with every food mile. Meat producers struggle to maintain freshness of refrigerated products during transit. Wilt, bruises and blemishes that occur during transit lessen produce growers profits. Local sales reduce food miles and maintain food quality. Security and strength of local supply. Dependency on outside sources for food to feed Americans is not safe. Increasing concerns over foreign food safety and production practices offer American farmers an opportunity to grow a healthy home market. Utilizing local suppliers and processors invests in regional economic development and builds a resilient local food supply. Economics. International agricultural trade has risen since 1960. Consumers demand a constant supply of their favorite fresh foods year-round. Globalization has made it cheap and easy to provide them with such, but at great cost to American farmers. When large multinational companies dominate the food system, American farmers cannot compete. Small family farms have been hit the hardest. Small farms can create economies of scale and reduce food miles by partnering with other local producers. Pooling trips to the processor, transporting food together and sharing refrigerated storage space reduces the carbon footprint of food production. Coordinating bulk feed and supply purchases saves money and fuel. Marketing. Consumer awareness of food miles and demand for sustainably produced food is on the rise. Modern shoppers understand the consequences of eating high-mile foods frequently and actively seek local low-mile alternatives. Direct marketing allows farmers to reduce food miles and increase profits. Educating customers how you shorten the distance between farm and table differentiates your farm products and increases their value. Ways farmers can reduce the carbon footprint of food production Sell direct Target local restaurants, institutions, retailers Use natural season extenders Grow varieties well-suited to regional climate Reduce energy inputs Use less fuel Use energy efficient cooling and heating systems Partner with other producers Use local processors and suppliers Process minimally Choose eco-friendly packaging Condense trips to town and markets Market to multiple outlets in a concentrated area European farmers warn in a meeting with EU Commissioner Andriukaitis that without the use of glyphosate, sustainable, quality and safe EU food supplies will be under threat. The farmers warn of the huge costs to farmers and consumers if authorization of the herbicide is not renewed for 15 years. Guy Smith, UK farmer and member of NFU, said: "Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the EU. "I have been using it on my arable farm for 40 years to produce quality grain used for bread-making. "Pre-harvest use in particular ensures the highest quality for bread and saves money and CO2 emissions compared to drying the crop after harvest. "Losing glyphosate would cost the UK economy alone 630 million euros annually, making us less competitive to farmers in non-EU countries who have good access to these tools." Supporting his statement, French farmer Christian Durlin from the FNSEA said: "Glyphosate enables me to harvest at the right time and have an optimal production to respond to high quality demand for exports and to remain competitive. "This is particularly important in view of the increasing market volatility and extreme weather events we are experiencing these days." Looking at the environmental costs, Finnish arable farmer Max Schulman from MTK underlined: "I have been using no till a sustainable agricultural practice since 1992 when producing malting barley and its with the use of glyphosate that I am able to do this in a cost effective manner to ensure my soils are in good condition. "It is an important tool together with catch crops toprevent soil erosion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions." Importance of glyphosate in crop rotation German farmer Bernhard Conzen from DBV went on to emphasise the importance of glyphosate in crop rotation to keep soils in good condition. "It enables me to plant sugar beet in Spring directly after a catch crop and prevents soil erosion," Conzen said. "Without it, I would need to use an extra 20-30 litres of fuel per hectare to mechanically till the land and around 15 to 18 more hours per hectare to do the same work," he added. Wrapping up, Copa and Cogeca Secretary-General Pekka Pesonen stressed: "Based on the unanimous mandate from all Copa & Cogeca members, we call for an extension of the approval of glyphosate for the next 15 years. "Farmers need to have cost-effective and sustainable tools available to ensure safe, reliable and affordable food. "We support EFSAs work. EFSA gave a positive assessment on glyphosate and this should be followed. "Therefore, we call Member States to vote in favour of this authorisation. Without glyphosate, farmers livelihoods would be threatened and food production jeopardised as no alternatives exist." Sheep farmers are being encouraged to get advice from their SQP (Suitably Qualified Person) on new SCOPS (Sustainable Control of Parasites in Sheep) quarantine guidelines. "The reasons for quarantine treating sheep has not changed," says sheep vet, Kate Hovers, who has been training SQPs in implementing the new guidelines. "Farmers now have a wider range of options, making it easier to develop a strategy adapted to individual farms. "The guidelines offer three levels of treatment gold, silver and bronze, all of which will protect existing flocks," explains Kate Hovers. "If a farm specialises in high-value tups, then the gold standard will be worthwhile. For a farm that buys and sells large numbers of sheep or finishes lambs, the silver or bronze might be more cost-effective," she says. "I would encourage farmers to take advantage of free advice from their SQP, and to ask plenty of questions to establish the right approach on their farm," Kate Hovers continues. "Several hundred SQPs have received training in the new SCOPS guidelines since they were published earlier this year and many more have signed up to forthcoming AMTRA (Animal Medicines Training Regulatory Authority)/AHDA (Animal Health Distributors Association) CPD (Continuing Professional Development) Roadshow events through the year," she concludes. "The aim of quarantine treatments is to stop resistant worms coming on to a farm with new or returning sheep," explains Lesley Stubbings of SCOPS "This new approach offers a range of treatment options which will help SQPs create the best strategy for customers, including protection against the risk of sheep scab," she concludes. A wide-ranging report on how cutting-edge technology can boost farming has received a timely boost ahead of a key vote next week in the European Parliament. The report by Conservative MEP Anthea McIntyre, which has already been backed by the European Parliaments Agriculture Committee received a strong endorsement from the Agri-Food Chain Coalition at a debate in Brussels. The coalition welcomed the initiative and called for consistent EU policies to unlock the potential of innovation in Europes agri-food sector to maintain its position as a world leader. Miss McIntyre, Conservative MEP for the West Midlands, told the debate that competitiveness, economic growth and jobs were the potential benefits of an innovation-friendly and supportive political and regulatory environment in Europe. Her report - titled Technical solutions for sustainable agriculture, - covers a range of areas where effective harnessing of innovation will boost productivity while protecting the environment and biodiversity. It considers applied research, precision farming, genetic diversity, precision breeding, plant protection, skills and better-regulation. She said: "Farmers are the major stewards of our environment. "They need continued access to innovation, to new technology and to research in order to produce food in a sustainable way so that we can both feed the world and protect the environment for future generations. "The EU and the Member States, academia and industry, breeders, the agro-chemicals sector, farmers and food manufacturers must all work together to improve the translation of research into practice. From lab to farm to fork. "This will unlock a new phase in agricultural innovation in Europe." Miss McIntyre will make a presentation on her report to the parliament in Strasbourg on Monday, followed by a vote later in the week. Scottish Rural Economy Secretary Fergus Ewing has pledged to make resolving the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) payment problems his first and foremost priority. In a statement to Parliament, Mr Ewing confirmed that most farmers and crofters should have received most of their due payments and that the Government is doing everything possible to get remaining payments out before the end of June. Looking ahead, Mr Ewing also said one of his main objectives was to see 2016 payments on a proper footing with no repeat of the problems faced in 2015-16. Mr Ewing said: "From day one in the job and for the foreseeable future the resolution of the CAP payments issues are my top priority. "I want to assure all those in rural communities that I will devote all necessary time and attention to that task. It is my number one priority. 'Will not be achieved overnight' "Progress is being made. By the end of April, all eligible farmers should have received a substantial payment from the Government unless they chose to opt-out of the nationally funded loan scheme. "That payment will have been worth around 80 per cent of their estimated entitlement. "However, the resolution of the CAP payments problems will not be achieved overnight, nor by any single or simple set of actions. "We have already started to fix these problems and I have three objectives; to complete 2015 payments so farmers get their money as soon as possible, to deliver compliance and minimise any financial penalties and to see 2016 payments on a proper footing. "I am determined that the Government learn lessons from the Futures programme. "However, I do not wish to distract from the clear and present task of getting the last payments out to farmers and crofters. "Now is the time to focus on that. But I can confirm that there will be a process to learn lessons. "I am also determined to oversee and drive forward the work necessary to bring this payment regime back onto an even keel." AHDB agrees to transfer surplus levy funds to new horticultural body More than half of employees who work for CCS make $43K or more a year Dominic Purcell was airlifted to hospital after suffering horrendous injuries on the Moroccan set of 'Prison Break'. Dominic Purcell [Instagram] The 46-year-old actor broke his nose in two places and had to get 100 stitches in his head after an iron bar fell on him and he admitted he is lucky to be alive. He shared a picture of his injuries on Instagram and wrote: "I'm good. #thanksforsupport ... Had a little accident on set. Haha ! Back at work asap. Pays to have a thick skull when an iron bar falls on your #head!! busting it open severely also broke my nose in two places. Haha. I got a free nose job out of it...... Stoked to be alive. All good. #chill. Oh. I didn't get knocked out took a knee. Ha!! Doc said I have an unusually tough tissue fiber that's what saved me apparently. Thank god for my #Viking heritage hahaha !!!! "So what do u do when you escape the #grimreaper and lose 12 pounds in the desert? Well life goes on with or without. I wish I could say I discovered something profound out of my near miss. Ummmmm nothing yet just a broken nose and a hundred stitches in my head. So just Get going and see what happens I guess (sic)." Dominic also praised his girlfriend, '90210' actress AnnaLynn McCord for rushing to his rescue and getting help for him. He wrote: "Thank god my love @theannalynnemccord was there when my unfortunate accident occurred on set. She went into raging #momma mode along with #christinanorthup and got me the right care. Show goes on. No worries !!! Oh being airlifted out on a helicopter was another adventure I didn't expect. Thought the bloody thing was going to fall from the sky!!! What a day it was. Grateful to be alive (sic)." Dominic and AnnaLynn, 28, recently rekindled their romance, one year after they called time on their relationship of three years, when they reconnected following his skin cancer diagnosis. She previously explained: "I came back into his life as his friend, and I took him to his doctor's appointments and I was there with him because whether or not he knew it, I love him. One of the things he said was, 'You really love me, don't you?' I was like ... 'Oh my God. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? After all this time, you still don't know that? I gave up all my 20s for you!'" Britain's Prince Harry has met with hospital staff who saved the life of an Invictus Games athlete. Prince Harry Sgt Elizabeth Marks was gearing up to compete in the 2014 Paralympic-style games for wounded soldiers when she was struck down with a serious lung condition and rushed to Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire. Now, Prince Harry has fulfilled Elizabeth's wish for one of her gold medals from this year's games to be given to the team that saved her life. Professor John Wallwork, chairman of Papworth Hospital, said: "It means an awful lot for the staff and the people that looked after her. We do a lot of very good work at Papworth, a lot we know about and a lot the public doesn't know about, and I think it just emphasises how good the hospital is and we're very proud of it." The hospital are now trying to launch a fund named after Elizabeth to raise money to improve equipment and services for the hospital's critical care unit. The 31-year-old royal met with lead ECMO clinician Dr Alain Vuylsteke, lead ECMO nurse Jo-anne Fowles, senior staff nurse Laura Bowden and senior clinical perfusion scientist Giordano Paiella at Kensington Palace to hand over the medal. Meanwhile, Elizabeth previously recalled the harrowing events leading up to her collapse. She said: "I landed in London and became very ill, very rapidly, I was in hospital in London and went into respiratory distress syndrome. They shipped a team down from Papworth who put me on to ECMO [Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation] life support and that ultimately saved my life. I was on it for 10 days and ended up waking in an army hospital in Germany having no idea what had happened. "But they absolutely saved my life and I can't thank the UK enough for having that kind of medical support and taking such good care of me. "So I gave Prince Harry one of my medals and hope it will find its way back to Papworth. Thank you, I'll never be able to repay you, but what you're doing is wonderful." Britain's Prince William was "really pleasant" with locals as he helped to treat a man with breathing difficulties. Britain's Prince William The 33-year-old royal was flying the East Anglian Air Ambulance helicopter to Ely, Cambridgeshire to help paramedics treat an elderly man who had a suspected heart attack. Resident Darren Woodstock said: "I saw the Air Ambulance coming and wondered whether Prince William could have been on board. I went outside to have a look and he landed not long after. He was really pleasant, we said hello and asked him how he was and he waved back and replied to say, 'Good morning', and that he was well. "He went off to do what he had to do and everyone just let him get on with his work. It was nice to see him out and about. My wife Tasha was over the moon because she loves the royals. It really made her day." Another resident added to the Mail Online: "Prince William was here for just over an hour. He obviously went off to help treat the patient as he left the aircraft wearing blue rubber gloves, returned for some equipment and then disappeared again. "I didn't approach him. He seemed preoccupied with his job, which is only right, but he did smile at all those standing around. The other pilot who remained with the aircraft was very friendly to all those who gathered around and invited them to go up to the aircraft and have a look." The man was transported to Addenbrooke's Hospital by land ambulance and is undergoing further treatment. Britain's Prince Philip looked the picture of health as he visited the Veterans Aid hostel. Britain's Prince Philip The 94-year-old royal was forced to pull out of an appearance in Orkney at commemorations to mark the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Jutland earlier this week but looked well as he chatted to Army Air Corps veteran Nathan Rooke at the hostel on Thursday (02.06.16). Nathan told the Prince: "My relationship broke down and I lost my job and it just spiraled downwards after that. I found myself on the streets. All I had was my guitar and a bag of clothes and my 'screaming eagle' belt buckle from my days in the Army Air Corps. I busked my way to London and Veterans Aid were amazing. I was put up in a hotel at first and given money to get something to eat. I just burst into tears." The Prince - who is married to Queen Elizabeth - was visiting New Belvedere House, a hostel for war veterans in East London, to see how they are making progress with its refurbishment. Veterans Aid CEO Dr Hugh Milroy added: "The New Belvedere House makeover project is the largest single investment of money, human resource and community engagement in the charity's history and it is on track to deliver a facility that will change the way people think about hostels. "The Duke of Edinburgh has attended all of our carol concerts but this is the first time he has seen how money raised by donors and supporters translates into delivery of practical help. We were delighted and honoured when he accepted our invitation to visit." It's day five in our week of Game of Thrones theories, and today we're going back to the Northern Houses and something that people have been pondering for some time. Are they still loyal to the Starks and is there a Grand Northern Conspiracy? Credit: HBO What is the Grand Northern Conspiracy? This is something that if true would have been born from the anger the Northern houses felt following Lord Walder Frey's and House Bolton's betrayal of the Starks at the Red Wedding. Due to the Stark family and army breaking bread with the Freys and Boltons, they went against tradition and murdered them in their hall. The Grand Northern Conspiracy is said to be led by Lord Wyman Manderly, a man who has brought those loyal to the Starks together and who is hoping a Stark would go forth to rule Winterfell again. With Brandon and Rickon thought dead, Ned, Robb and Catelyn all very dead and the whereabouts of Sansa and Arya unknown however, it leaves just who would lead as a Stark up in the air. That brings us to Jon Snow. Credit: HBO Before their deaths, Robb and Catelyn had a discussion about just who should be Robb's heir should he die. Robb wanted to name bastard brother Jon, and so the theory continues that Robb had papers drawn up and witnessed by his bannermen that would legitimise Jon Snow in the event of his own death. They were made so that if Robb did die - which he did - the North would pass to a Stark family member rather than a House who hadn't led the North before - such as the Boltons who are for now sitting pretty. But why Lord Manderly? Here's a great YouTube video which includes a dramatic reading of a passage from the Dance With Dragons novel from the Song of Ice and Fire novel series by George R R Martin. The reading is of Lord Wyman Manderly's speech of how the men in the North have not forgotten their Stark loyalty nor forgiven those who took part in the Red Wedding. 'The North Remembers' - remember? It's something Sansa was told not too long ago during the fifth season of the television adaptation. Ned Stark was the head of the North during his time alive and he was a man incredibly loyal and honourable. Could his traits have paved the way for most if not all of the rest of the Northmen? What comes into question is the Umbers. On the show we saw the House hand over Rickon Stark, Osha and Shaggydog's head to House Bolton whilst agreeing to serve for them. Despite saying they were loyal to the Boltons, the representative of House Umber refused to bend the knee. Odd, for sure. So what if House Umber is double crossing the Boltons? Was the head handed over really Shaggydog's, or simply a random wolf found in the North? Anything is possible, and some fans believe the head was too small to be that of the direwolf. Has Rickon been handed over as part of a more elaborate plan to take down the Boltons from the inside? Credit: HBO How plausible is this theory? Quite. It all hinges on whether or not you believe that one of the Northern houses would put Rickon Stark's life at risk by handing him and Osha over to the Boltons. They probably wouldn't have minded Osha's death as a casualty for the greater good and, it's very possible she thought she could kill Ramsey Bolton before he got to her. That, or she may even have sacrificed herself to further the life of the boy she had been looking after for some time now. Osha grew to be quite the selfless wildling - did she make the ultimate sacrifice for Rickon and House Stark? Game of Thrones continues Sundays in the US and Mondays in the UK on HBO and Sky Atlantic respectively. Theory #1 - 'R+L=J' Theory #2 - Tyrion Targaryen Theory #3 - Bran Stark the Three Eyed Raven Builder Theory #4 - Bran Stark is the Night's King by Daniel Falconer for www.femalefirst.co.uk find me on and follow me on Hollyoaks' Warren Fox is set for a feisty new romance. Jamie Lomas Jamie Lomas - who has just reprised his role as the bad boy following five years away - has teased his conniving alter-ego has an explosive storyline coming up involving a new lady love. Speaking exclusively to BANG Showbiz, Jamie said: "He's in prison at the moment and I'm sure he'll have a lot of catching up to do with the women. He's been away five years. I know he'll have a love interest. I'm not sure who yet. We'll see." The handsome star shocked fans late last week when his criminal character waltz back into the village of Chester but he has admitted his return was a no-brainer. He explained: "There was just an opportunity, they contacted me and asked me if I was interested in coming back. I had just done a film in LA and I was setting up an acting school in Manchester, so it just seemed the right thing to do. And I love playing the character, I always did, and to get the opportunity - I just couldn't say no. Everything just fell into place." Jamie first appeared in the soap in 2006 as the old pal of Sean Kennedy (Matthew Jay Lewis) and quickly became known as the show's main villain. He then left screens in 2009 after seemingly being killed off by Claire Devine (Gemma Bissix) in a fire at his nightclub, The Loft and but then made a surprise return a year later having survived. He then made another departure in August 2011 when his character was thrown behind bars for murdering his wife Louise Summers (Roxanne Makee). by Louisa Grasso, Founder and MD of Healthy & Delicious Vegan on Female First The word organic, as we know it today, was to me while growing up simply a way of life; one that both my maternal and paternal grandparents and the generations before them had lived by. I grew up in England but would return to Italy each year to spend the long hot summer holidays of my childhood on the family farm. One of the same farms we use today at Healthy and Delicious for our own grown products, which we produce using the same old traditions. It was during these long summers that I learnt to understand and appreciate the way of life my parents had grown up with. Fruit and vegetables were always seasonal and planted, grown and harvested. I watched each crop from the moment of plantation to the second it reached my plate. The fruits and vegetables were preserved in jars and at Healthy & Delicious we use this same method to preserve our tomato sauce. As a child I would watch the entire production process on the farm. The land was ploughed and fertilised with the manure from the cows and the pigs reared later became prosciutto. Flour was made from the grain harvested all year, which was also eaten by the chickens that ran wild and laid eggs. I was forced to drink one of these eggs every morning; salmonella was not a word that passed my grandmother or grandfather's lips! It was a far cry from the scares and worries of food consumption today. This organic way of life wasn't exclusive to Italy. I remember the arrival of May and the days spent raspberry picking in England. It's hard to imagine such a day with ever increasing pesticide concerns. There was this interconnectedness between the food and the person eating it, which one rarely gets today. There are however, organizations such as the soil association who are working towards this end. My memories may seem romantic, but they are accurate representations of farming life forty years ago. Today Healthy & Delicious, like other companies, use traditional farming methods and we work with local Italian farms to support communities and businesses that fall outside the mainstream. Like many like-minded organizations and individuals who want organic to be a way of life, we choose quality and value over profit. Aside from this, there are a few other reasons why you should go organic. Firstly, it prevents health risks from industrial chemicals. There are over 3,800 brands of insecticide, herbicide and fungicide approved for use in the UK. Some fruit and vegetables are sprayed as many as ten times before reaching supermarket shelves. At Healthy & Delicious, we grow all our crops on a farm in a protected national park in Basilicata, Southern Italy. We go to extreme lengths to ensure our vegetables never meet a chemical. Organic vegetables boost your mineral and vitamins intake. Our tomatoes are grown in the perfect conditions, facing towards the East and are planted in extremely rich and fertile land. We, therefore, lock in all their natural goodness so when they reach the customer they're still packed with vitamins and minerals. With an increased reliance on pesticides, farms have been able to grow in size but have cut back on labour. This is slowly destroying rural economies, so by going organic you can help save them. Organic food tastes better. Your taste buds can tell if something is organically farmed. As a result of our organic farming methods, our vegetables have more flavour-enhancing nutrients and a lower concentration of sugars and water. Conventional farming methods mean that anything that threatens the maximum yield of crop being produced is killed. Organic farming promotes diversity in the environment. We use traditional farming methods to grow Healthy & Delicious crops, as a result we contribute to biodiversity. Organic is the only alternative. It's hard to ignore everything you hear in the press whether it be genetic mutation, water pollution, unacceptable suffering of farm animals and so organic is the answer. Entrepreneurs Driven By Idea To Create Impact, Not Fear: Bhavish. Blames Cash Burn On Irrational Competition Taxi-hailing app Ola's co-founder & CEO Bhavish Aggarwal's rough and tumble fight with Travis Kalanick's Uber to win the urban transportation battle is seeing no signs of abating.This clash is as intense, if not more, as the hotly contested e-commerce war raging between Amazon and Flipkart because of the billions of dollars at stake, the colossal size of the market opportunity , and the two founders who are equally go-for-broke and competitive. Aggarwal's personality type mirrors in many ways his arch rival's, but unlike Kalanick he's rarely sighted in the media. Uber's unrelenting fundraising prowess helped it mop up an eye-popping $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia's public in vestment fund on Wednesday .To counter its rival's firepower, Ola, valued at $5 billion, became part of the global antiUber alliance, and has China's transportation powerhouse Didi Chuxing as one of its investors. Recently , Didi scooped up $1billion from the iPhone maker Apple, bringing about a new twist to the ever-growing rivalry between the two warring fronts. From here on, Uber is not only fighting Ola, Didi and Lyft but also the Cupertino-based tech giant. As the dynamics change rapidly for him and the techbacked transportation industry, the 30-year-old Aggarwal, whose signature, and at times mocking laugh, is unmissable, sat down with TOI for an exhaustive interview. The IIT Bombay alumnus spoke about building Ola while facing global competition very early on, the experiments and innovations introduced in the past six months to up consumer experience, and how quality at massive scale will help it pip Uber in India... Despite being a market leader, your competitor Uber has a loyal set of users you have not been able to wean away? This is a big enough industry but the point is they've not innovated. Such businesses are built by focusing on the customer and drivers in our case, and suppliers and merchants for e-commerce players. We have done a lot of improvements for customers and drivers in the past few months. I remember you told me in 2013, firing an app to hail a cab was not going to work in India, people would want to call and book their cabs? But we had an app at the time and have since changed. The point is we've built our business alongside Uber in India, unlike other internet companies in India who had a significant headstart over their foreign counterparts. There are many people who think we had the firstmover advantage.But actually , when Uber came to India, Ola was doing only 2,000 rides per day . We had less than half-a-million dollars of funding. That has meant we've had to resort to aggressive scale-up. And at this stage, to offer a better experience for customers and drivers is something that will end up winning the battle for us. Weren't you coming from a place where you scaled too rapidly and your service quality suffered? There was a time when the customer experience wasn't at the scale we wanted to offer, but things have changed significantly for both drivers and customers, especially over the past six-eight months. What have you done to improve the experience? Six months ago there was no Prime, Micro and Share. All these innovations were done in the past six months, which shows the forward momentum we have for our business. This is in addition to things like our corporate programme we launched, the leasing company which we started and is now scaling up. We also started Ola Shuttle. All of this has helped us to improve experience, grow faster, and consolidate market leadership. Uber, too, has all of these products and services in India, so what's the differentiation? All things can be done by every company in the world.Apple builds a phone and so does Samsung. It's not about being different but about being better at what you do. And all our key metrics are better than the competi tion consistently . We have shorter expected time of arrival (ETAs), our experience is better now, we have a wider breadth of choices at lower price points, along with having more repeats on our platform. Why didn't you launch Prime and Micro earlier? Was there a glaring need for these products? Markets evolve at a certain rate and there is a right time to do things. If we launch a new product we have to time it right. It's not about how soon you can do it but how well we can do it. Prime has been a huge success. How much of all these launches were to do with Uber's aggressiveness in India? There is no Uber sign which I wake up to every morning.Entrepreneurs are not driven by fear, they are driven by the idea to create impact. We saw a huge opportunity in Prime and I, as a consumer, felt the experience could be better.We've built something that didn't exist in the market. We started Prime six months ago and it contributes significantly to our overall rides. Prime is bigger than what Ola was in July last year in terms of number of rides. What about Micro and Mini, the ones at lower price points? Micro is a unique proposition while Mini is our heavy lifter.Ola Auto continues to grow in addition to bikes, shuttles and e-rickshaws. These are our core categories. India is not homogeneous like the West and we believe in segmenting the market and building products for the right demography and use cases. If you look at the competition, those are plainvanilla products. So have you been able to cover all segments? No, we have a long way to go, we've just scratched the surface so the innovation you'll see over the next six months will be far more. There are 300 million trips happening across urban cities, we want to be part of those trips and add value to each one of them. That's been our strategy which has been executed over the past six months. Our belief is that the opportunity in India for transportation is one of creation and not disruption. Some companies think disruptive while we think creative. Why do you think disruption and creation cannot go hand-in-hand? This is a mindset issue.When you think of disruption you always have an enemy; when you think of creation, you are thinking about the customer and how to build a better experience. You're also the enemy for taxi unions while some state governments have banned peak pricing? Our business is so impactful on society from every perspective, whether you think of drivers, consumers, governments. And we are a very responsible player in moving society forward as far as transportation goes. That's why stakeholders are engaging with each other. We want to work with the government.The industry is in an evolution phase so it will go through its own hits and trials to find the right structure on peak pricing and other issues. Are you focusing on your mainstay , having shuttered grocery, food delivery verticals? We were always an experimental and entrepreneurial company , that's always been our DNA, and we will continue to be that way . You'd know we started off as Olatrip.com, pivoted to outstation car rental, from there we moved to intra-city. When we were launching autorickshaws, it was big experiment for us. Last year, we toyed with food and grocery delivery , and Ola Money as our payments platform. We've taken learnings from the experiments we made with Ola Cafe and Ola Store. On market share tussle with Uber? Look at all the third-party reports (Truecaller, Quettra).You've to triangulate them and come to a conclusion. There is no city in which competition is neck and neck. Even in the top six cities, we have over 75% market share against our nearest competitor. These citi es account for over 90% of our business. How long will the subsidy madness sustain? When you have a good competitor, that (capital) cannot be your lone strategy to win the market. That's what they've done, it's not worked and it won't work out. Uber racked up $3.5 billion while Didi got $1 billion from Apple recently , are you looking to raise fresh capital? We raised a lot last year, and have a very solid balance sheet. We don't need to raise now. Any time frame for turning profitable? More than half of our cities are profitable. But focus is only on growth for the foreseeable future, that's how it's going to be. Is that because of Uber's presence? No, it's because of the market being so huge. Tell me how do you view the sentiments turning cautious around the startup ecosystem? This is an opportune time for good businesses to break out. We've been through one of these cycles very early on in 2012-13. How important is capital to build ventures in India? Capital is to some extent like table stakes. Nobody wants to burn money , it's because of irrational competition. You've to defend your market share against competition who's spending more than you. Investment is also required when you've to build infrastructure and there's a gestation period attached to it. Sometimes, you have to do that. Next Story : Five famous transgender celebrities you should know Site Blocked In order to access website you need to accept our cookie policy. View cookie policy. Accept Social media-crazy youngsters are taking emojis off the screens and bringing them to life in what can be best described as their latest obsession -emoji nail art. "We type them so much, so they might as well be on our nails. Thanks to emojis, displaying emotions has never looked so cute," says nail expert Shikha Sridhar, adding, "It is popular among college students. I also got enquiries for this form of nail art for a kiddie birthday party. It's a funky trend. You can either do it on one nail or even all 10, because the design is not too overwhelming." If you are creative enough, you can draw them with the help of nail paint, or even simple marker pens.Start with simple smileys. You can create your own style of smileys. All you need is the following: yellow, black, white, red and blue nail polish. Some nail art tools like nail art brushes and dotting pen will do the needful. Start the design with tiny dots instead of lines as connecting the dots is much easier, and helps eliminate mistakes. If drawing is not one of your strengths, you can get decals and nail tattoos online, which will help you get intricate Yemojis, like the dancing girl, correct. "Emoji nails are fun and can be used to portray any emotion.Drawing an emoji may seem challenging, but it is not, as it mainly consists of one-stroke lines and dots, which makes the design easy to follow," says nail expert Neela Bopaiah. Next Story : Not Your Average Gift: Our Handpicked Thoughtful Diwali Gifts After floral, glitter, marble, snake and wood prints, the new nail art trend is watercolour manicure. If you are game for it, then follow these simple steps... - Get nail paints in different colours. Choose thinner paints that will not take long to dry. - File your nails. Give them the shape you desire and apply a layer of base coat. - Make your own paint colour palette. Choose the colours you desire and take a few drops of each polish on a palette. Don't mix them. - Use a paint brush and dab different paints on your nails. Take your time and choose one colour at a time. Before moving on to a new colour, dip the brush into nail polish remover, so that the brush is clean. - Once all the colours are on your nails, gently smear them into diffusion using a brush. You may press a plastic sheet over the colours, too, slowly peeling it off immediately to get that textured look. - Let the nails dry and give them that final touch with a clear top coat. Next Story : Not Your Average Gift: Our Handpicked Thoughtful Diwali Gifts Deepika Padukone, who arrived in Mumbai yesterday afternoon after filming xXx: The Return of Xander Cage in the U.S. and Canada (for nearly five months), had homecoming celebrations over a late lunch for her team in her Prabhadevi home yesterday. Even though the actor was filming a dance number for close friend Dinesh Vijans film Raabta in Budapest, she meticulously planned the menu with her cook. Her personal assistant oversaw the plating and took charge of the bar. Deepika told a leading daily, My teammy brand managers, personal assistant, hair, make-up, stylist and spot boysis my extended family in Mumbai. I have been away for a while and I couldnt wait to spend time with all of them. Homecoming is a lovely feeling. The actor is set to spend time with her parents and sister before moving on to shoot television commercials and hearing narrations of a few films that are in the pipeline including Sanjay Leela Bhansalis Padmavati. Photograph: Tarun Vishwa The whole world is trying to find ways to get rid of ISIS militants, but clearly no solution has been found yet. However, according to recent reports, the British have chanced upon a weapon that could be what the world has been looking for to effectively defeat the ISIS. And guess what this all important weapon of destruction is? Bollywood music! Yes, thats right. According to a report in the Daily Mirror, British Special Forces troops are upsetting Islamic State fighters in Libya by blasting Bollywood music at them. The idea came about after a Pakistani-born British Army intelligence officer said that Bollywood tunes would annoy ISIS because of their sheer dislike of Hindi music. Apparently, conservative Islamic extremists banned Hindi music for being frivolous and un-religious, and consider it as an apostasy. According to a similar report in The Sun, the psychological operations unit managed to infiltrate the fighters communications network and flooded their lines with Bollywood numbers. The militants imposed Sharia law inside Sirte and banned anything western or frivolous and these Bollywood songs were seen as a huge insult. I hope they are using at least some of our songs, and I hope those ISIS bastards' eardrums explode! https://t.co/6xMNWkct0b VISHAL DADLANI (@VishalDadlani) June 2, 2016 When ace music director Vishal Dadlani came across this new, he even tweeted saying how he hopes some of his songs are put to good use! Well, we are unsure if the strategy worked. You could say it depends on the music they choose. Only time will tell! Is your libido waning? You aren't alone. Sexologists estimate a huge number of people (from both the sexes) are battling a loss of interest in sex, irrespective of age. There are a number of reasons for this, they say. While unhealthy lifestyles and underlying medical causes are some of the reasons, stress or resentment in your relationship can also cause your sex drive to go for a toss. Here are common reasons why your libido seems to have taken a nosedive and what you can do about it... Gone are the days when women reported a low sex drive only as they approached menopause. Today, sexologists say that even women in the 30s and 40s are reporting a complete disinterest in sex. Your hormones could have a big role in this. Fluctuating levels of estrogen and other hormones could play havoc with your sex drive. Don't hesitate to speak to your doctor if you feel a complete lack of interest at the thought of getting intimate with your partner you may require medical help to sort out your hormones. When you're emotionally fragile, don't expect to be scintillating in bed. Women tend to be more emotional than men and when you're feeling down in the dumps (for whatever reason), your sex life is bound to be in the doldrums. While cheering yourself up is easier said than done you can't snap out of it just like that make an attempt to figure what is bothering you and deal with it. Very often, men shy away from intimacy. This, in turn, leads to friction in the relationship and lesser time spent in the bedroom. Intimacy issues have dogged couples of decades and the best way to deal with them is to discuss boundaries with your partner or seek professional help to assist you with your issues. In a study that asked women how the behaviour of their partner affected them, a large number of participants responded that they were often taken for granted, ignored or undervalued, and this affected their sex drive. Mental health experts reckon that talking about your issues with your better half will help iron out differences to some extent. The rest, they say, is up to you on how you want to deal with it. Always keep that fancy lingerie and expensive bed linen for special occasions? Avoid that, say relationship experts. Don't wait for a birthday or anniversary to get intimate. Instead, make an ordinary day special by going out of the way to rekindle the spark in your relationship. Plan date nights, surprise your partner with a gift or spend more time together. Sometimes certain medications can also cause your libido to crash. While some birth control pills could be the culprit, medicines for depression, high blood pressure or anxiety could also be the culprit. Speak to your doctor and see if he/ she can change the medication. n Regular things like your hectic work schedule, household chores, work commute, kids' studies, financial issues, etc can have quite a powerful impact on your sex drive. Stress causes the release of the hormone cortisol in excess, which suppresses the libido to a great extent. Hence, indulge in some de-stressing activities like a relaxing massage, meditation or simply listen to some soothing music to declutter your mind and get your sex drive back on track. Next Story : Not Your Average Gift: Our Handpicked Thoughtful Diwali Gifts Outdoor lifestyle brand Timberland has entered into a partnership with sustainable fabric manufacturer, Thread International as part of its commitment to responsible operations; the first collection resulting from the partnership being launched in Spring 2017. Thread's fabrics are tracked and traced at every step to ensure presence of up to 50 per cent recycled PET from plastic bottles. This transparency will help Timberland's consumers to learn sustainability metrics behind the making of each product. From the moment we met them, we knew this had the potential to be far more than a supplier relationship, Colleen Vien, director of sustainability at Timberland said commenting on the partnership. We are beyond excited about partnering with Thread. Timberland has entered into a partnership with sustainable fabric manufacturer, Thread International as part of its commitment to responsible operations; the 1st collection resulting from partnership being launched in Spring 2017. Thread's fabrics are tracked and traced at every step to ensure presence of up to 50 per cent recycled PET from plastic bottles.# Additionally, Ian Rosenberger, CEO of Thread said, This partnership is truly special. We're proud to work with a brand with such a longstanding commitment to the environment and social responsibility. Working together transparently, we're able to look beyond recycled materials toward the rich social impact consumers care about and the stories that bring beautiful products to life, Rosenberger added. Timberland and Thread will discuss their partnership further at the Sustainable Brands conference in San Diego. (MCJ) Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India SPGPrints' Pike digital textile printer won the European Digital Press (EDP) award for 'Best Industrial Textile Solution' at Drupa 2016, in Dusseldorf, Germany. Pike, which was launched in ITMA Milan 2015, provides textile printers the opportunity to switch to various images within one roll, and offers very short turnaround times compared to traditional textile printing. The Pike printer features the break-through Archer technology with Fujifilm Dimatix Samba print heads for high-quality single-pass printing. Pike delivers fine lines, subtle halftones, smooth gradients and sharp geometric patterns at speeds up to 40m/minute and provides the combined advantages of shortened time to market and reduced logistics costs. SPGPrints' Pike digital textile printer won the European Digital Press (EDP) award for 'Best Industrial Textile Solution' at Drupa 2016, in Dusseldorf, Germany. Pike, which was launched in ITMA Milan 2015, provides textile printers the opportunity to switch to various images within one roll, and offers very short turnaround times compared to traditional tex# Jorgen Lundahl, area sales manager for SPGPrints, on accepting the award said, We are very excited to have won this award for the PIKE printer. It not only recognises Pike's significance in the textile market, but also SPGPrints' leadership in digital printing technologies. The advantages Pike can bring to textile printers will be reinforced in the marketplace by the award, and the overall credibility of digital textile printing enhanced. (HO) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India Turkmenistan's ministry of textile industry and the chamber of commerce and industry are jointly organising an international exhibition showcasing the country's textile products in Ashgabat from June 4, 2016. The theme of the two-day fair is that Turkmen textile industry is on the way to a new stage of development. Various Turkmen companies will display samples of cotton fibre, cotton yarn and fabrics, denim wear, knitwear, silk fibre and yarn, unique handmade silk carpets, and the national fabric keteni at the expo. Turkmenistan is a traditional cotton growing country, and its textile industry plays a major role in the country's economy. This year, the country's cotton production is estimated at 1.05 million tons. Turkmen textile products are mainly exported to the US, the UK, China, Canada, Italy, Germany, Ukraine and Russia. (RKS) In Fiji, we unfortunately have a long and unsettling history confronting issues of ethnicity. That history includes the coups of 1987 and 2000 that were justified on ethnic grounds and that drove away many skilled and talented people, retarding our national development and scarring our nation for many years. We have done our best to move away from that tarnished legacy and begin a new chapter in Fiji by giving every Fijian the benefits of common and equal citizenship and promoting a culture that rewards on the basis of merit and achievement. We have walked into the future together, as one people, to fulfil our true potential, unhindered by the ethnic prejudices of the past. Yet still, there are some who cannot help but see our progress and development through the lens of ethnicity. Those individuals who cannot let go of the politics of division and who, at every turn, use divisive politics for their own cheap political gain. We again saw that dangerous and divisive rhetoric in Parliament on 1 June 2016 when NFP Parliamentarian Honourable Tupou Draunidalo made inaccurate and deeply irresponsible accusations against a fellow member. As a result, I strongly support Parliaments decision to suspend her. Hon. Draunidalo incorrectly attributed the quote "dumb natives" to Minister for Education Honourable Dr. Mahendra Reddy during an exchange in Parliament on 1 June 2016. Upon review of the audio recording, it was revealed Hon. Reddy never made any such statement and that Hon. Draunidalo alone mentioned the quote dumb natives. Instead of engaging in rational debate, she sought to add an element of ethnic prejudice into the exchange and mischaracterise the Ministers statement. To levy such a heavy charge against Hon. Reddy without any factual proof is inexcusable. It discredits the Minister unfairly and brings ethnic tension and discord into a conversation where none existed. This was a blatant attempt by Hon. Draunidalo to set back the clock and destroy the vision of ethnic harmony that the FijiFirst Government has worked tirelessly to make a reality. We cannot tolerate this regressive mind-set that threatens our democracy and our Constitution by seeking to divide us along ethnic lines. It is unacceptable for any member of Parliament to misuse their right to engage in parliamentary debate by falsely accusing another of ethnic discrimination. Not only did Hon. Draunidalo misrepresent Hon. Reddys statements, she also went on to call him a fool and an idiot, blatantly disregarding the Standing Orders and degrading the work, dignity and standing of the Parliament, which represents the Fijian people. Such careless insults and accusations have no place in modern Fiji or in Parliamentary debates, as clearly seen under Standing Order 62(4) (a) and (d) which states that it is out of order for a member, when speaking, to use offensive words against Parliament or another member or words that are likely to promote or provoke feelings of ill-will or hostility between communities or ethnic groups within Fiji. Our Parliamentarians must discuss the real issues of national development, climate finance and adaptation, the status of women in our society, economic and youth empowerment and our childrens education objectively without reference to ethnicity, religion or the other forms of commonality. By pointing to our divisions, you stop us from reaching our true potential as a nation. Therefore, it is not in the nations best interest for elected leaders to pull out the ethnicity card at every drop of the hat as the Opposition has a tendency to do. Hon. Draunidalos comments have also inflamed ethnic tensions and debates on social media. Her comments have been treated as accurate by some and used to divide Fijians on the basis of ethnicity. For her part, Hon. Draunidalo had taken no steps to correct her error prior to todays parliamentary debate or quell the divisive, ethnically charged comments that have been posted online. Those who have followed Hon. Draunidalos example by spreading lies and insults on social media should be ashamed. It is in no ones interest to use untruthful statements to gain public support, and it is not befitting any elected leader or Fijian citizen to do so. I urge every Fijian to be wary of those who fan the flames of ethnic tension on social media, and to distance themselves from any who seek to use ethnic division as a tool to destroy. Given our history, Parliament must never allow such reckless behaviour to go unchecked. Given our history, we must put in place deterrents so that such events never occur again. We have rules in place designed to ensure our democracy operates fairly and accountably and those rules need to be enforced. Only then can we truly strive to be a nation with a Constitution that protects equal citizenry, civil and political rights and equal access to economic opportunity for all Fijians. Deepika Padukone, is in India after four months, as the actress was in Canada shooting for her Hollywood debut xXx: The Return of The Xander Cage, alongside Vin Diesel. The actress, then flew to Paris to meet Ranveer Singh and went on to Budapest, to shoot a song for the movie Raabta. Constant travelling can surely drain a person, but it can never drain Deepika Padukone. As soon as the actress landed in India, she ended up throwing a lavish lunch to her entire team at her residence in Worli, Mumbai. A source present at the party was quoted as saying, "Deepika had organised the entire lunch from Budapest itself along with her cook and had planned the menu. It was a pleasure-cum-business lunch for her as she discussed what she had done during her xXx shoot while in turn, they briefed her on the work front. Today onwards, she will start having script-reading sessions." Remember Komal From Chak De India? This Is How She Looks Now! The source further continued, "In the last 10 days, after wrapping up xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, Deepika has had no time to rest. After xXx, she flew to Paris to spend some time with beau Ranveer Singh and then went to Budapest to shoot for her dance number in Raabta. After she returned to Mumbai yesterday, she hosted a lunch for her core team members at her residence where she caught up with everyone." Beautiful & Classy! Lisa Haydon's Photoshoot For Harper's Bazaar Magazine Deepika Padukone, also received a lot of gifts from the people present at the party and the actress was quoted as saying, "My team - my brand managers, personal assistant, hair, make-up, stylist and spot boys - is my extended family in Mumbai. I have been away for a while and I can't wait to spend time with all of them. Homecoming is a lovely feeling." Pictures! Shahrukh Khan Attends A Kids Event In Delhi Sunny Leone and her husband Daniel Weber just landed in Rome, Italy, and the couple straight away headed off to the Vatican. The actress, posted a picture on her Instagram account standing inside the Vatican museum along with her husband Daniel Weber and captioned the image as, "The Vatican museum! Amazing every time I come!! With @dirrty99" Before posting a picture from inside the Vatican museum, Sunny Leone posted pictures of the lovely streets in Rome, and also posed at the Trevi fountain for a picture. Sunny Leone, also posted a picture from the skies while reaching the airspace of Italy and the image showed Italy from the bird's-eye view. After a long time, Sunny Leone and Daniel Weber are having a "proper holiday" as per her Instagram post and we're sure that the couple will have a wonderful time in Italy together. Stay tuned for more updates on Sunny Leone & Daniel Weber's Italy trip! We're sure you're gonna love every bit of it. Remember Komal From Chak De India? This Is How She Looks Now! Popular Telugu actor Allu Arjun, has a huge fan base in Kerala. Probably, he is the most popular Telugu star in Kerala, a tag which he earned through the successes of the dubbed versions of his own Telugu movies in Kerala. His most recent release is Yodhavu, which is the dubbed version of the actor's Telugu movie Sarrainodu directed by Koyapati Sreenu. According to the reports, the actor is planning for a movie in Malayalam. Allu Arjun opened about his plans of Mollywood debut when he came down to Kerala for the promotion of his recent release Yodhavu. The film, which released on May 27, did have a decent opening at the box-office. The actor has been in the discussions for making a Malayalam movie for the past 3 years, but it didn't materialize due to various reasons. The actor also stated that Kerala audience can expect him in a Malayalam movie, within a span of 2 years. Well, it is a great move by Allu Arjun, as the actor has a huge fan base in Kerala. The grand opening that his films receive, reassures the popularity of the star in the state. Allu Arjun became a popular face in Kerala with films like Arya, Happy, Bunny etc. which were big successes in Kerala box-office too. Actor and director Balu Anand, aged 62, passed away last night (June 2nd) at his residence in Coimbatore, following a massive heart attack, said a source close to Balu. The film-maker, who has featured in more than 100 Tamil films, died on the way to a nearby hospital, after complaining of chest pain, the source added. He is survived by his wife, son and a daughter. His mortal remains have been kept for public and others to pay their last homage at his home in kalampalayam, Coimbatore. The funeral will take place around 3 PM today, according to a report. A former assistant of actor-director R Sundarrajan, Balu Anand is responsible for fabricating some of the hit movies including Sathyaraj-starrer Annanagar Mudhal Theru and Vijayakanth's Naane Raja Naane Mandhiri. Also Read: The Promise That Kept Kamal Haasan From Taking Up The All Important Role In Rajinikanth's '2.0'! BEIJING (dpa-AFX) - Singapore-listed Commodity trading house Noble Group Ltd. (NOBGF.PK) said that its founder and chairman Richard Elman wishes to step down as executive chairman within the next 12 months. Its Board approved a fully underwritten rights issue with net proceeds of approximately US$500 million. Furthermore, it also announced an expanded cost reduction programme. The rights issue, together with the sale of Noble Americas Energy Solutions or 'NAES' announced last Monday and the previously announced sale of low return assets and working capital reduction measures will, in aggregate, generate US$2 billion in additional liquidity over the next 12 months. This liquidity will be available to further reduce net debt, and will also significantly improve the Group's financial flexibility. It also follows through on Noble's earlier commitment to raise US$1 billion in liquidity bythe end of 2016. The rights issue announced today has strong support from both Mr. Richard Elman and China Investment Corp. or ('CIC', and will comprise: 1 Rights Share for every 1 share in Noble Group held, issued at SG$0.11 per share, representing a discount of approximately 63% to the closing price of SG$0.300 per share on the Singapore Stock Exchange on 2nd June 2016, being the last trading day of the Noble Group shares prior to the announcement of the Rights Issue, and a discount of approximately 46% to the theoretical ex-rights price of S$0.205 per share. Richard Elman has given an irrevocable undertaking to procure subscriptions for 625.50 million Rights Shares to which he, through Noble Holdings Limited or 'NHL' is entitled to under the Rights Issue, representing 9.6% of the maximum number of shares to be issued. China Investment Corporation has given a similar undertaking in respect of the 630.56 million Rights Shares to which they are entitled, representing 9.6% of the maximum number of Rights Shares. The remainder of the rights issue has been underwritten by The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, Morgan Stanley Asia, DBS Bank Ltd, Societe Generale and ING. Noble Group reconfirmed its earlier commitment to a comprehensive asset disposal and portfolio optimisation programme, which will generate at least US$1.5 billion, including the proceeds from the sale of NAES. This programme will comprise: Sale of ownership stakes in selected low returning assets; Continued reduction of working capital in low return businesses globally. Noble Group today confirmed the continuation of a rigorous operating cost reduction programme witha focus on reduction in headcount following exit from low returning businesses and assets; planned headcount and SAO expense reduction in excess of 20% from current levels over the course of 2016. The company noted that, at the request of Richard Elman, the Board will set up a sub-committee to examine options for his succession. The subcommittee will be chaired by David Eldon, who is a non-executive director and will identify a successor to assume the role of non-executive chairman. Mr Elman wishes to step down as executive chairman within the next 12 months. This matter will be discussed extensively by the Board over the coming months with the objective of ensuring a smooth and orderly transition. In addition, Noble Group also announced the following changes to the Board. In recognition of CIC's support for the company, CIC will henceforth be entitled to a second non-executive director, in addition to the current appointee they have on the board. Noble will also seek to appoint an additional independent non-executive director with a background in international commodities and futures trading. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 06/03/16 -- Product photos are available at http://bit.ly/24lNUPW CLIF Bar & Company is recalling CLIF Bar brand Sierra Trail Mix Energy Bar from the marketplace due to possible Listeria monocytogenes contamination. Consumers should not consume the recalled products described below. The following products have been sold nationally. Recalled products ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brand Product Size UPC Codes ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CLIF Sierra Trail 68 g 7 22252 12115 8 All codes from Bar Mix Energy Bar Best By 2016JN06 up to and including Best By 2017FE23 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CLIF Sierra Trail 1 box 00 7 22252 14115 6 All codes from Bar Mix Energy Bar (12 x 68 g) Best By 2016JN06 up to and including Best By 2017FE23 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- What you should do If you think you became sick from eating a recalled product, call your doctor. Check to see if you have recalled products in your home. Recalled products should be thrown out or returned to the store where they were purchased. Food contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes may not look or smell spoiled but can still make you sick. Symptoms can include vomiting, nausea, persistent fever, muscle aches, severe headache and neck stiffness. Pregnant women, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems are particularly at risk. Although infected pregnant women may experience only mild, flu-like symptoms, the infection can lead to premature delivery, infection of the newborn or even stillbirth. In severe cases of illness, people may die. - Learn more about the health risks - Sign up for recall notifications by email, follow us on Twitter, or join the CFIA community on Facebook - View our detailed explanation of the food safety investigation and recall process Background This recall was triggered by the company. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is conducting a food safety investigation, which may lead to the recall of other products. If other high-risk products are recalled, the CFIA will notify the public through updated Food Recall Warnings. The CFIA is verifying that industry is removing recalled product from the marketplace. Illnesses There have been no reported illnesses associated with the consumption of this product. More information -- CLIF Bar & Company: 1-888-851-8456 -- CFIA: www.inspection.gc.ca/contactus Contacts: Media enquiries CFIA Media Relations 613-773-6600 Regulatory News: BONE THERAPEUTICS (Brussels:BOTHE) (Paris:BOTHE) (Euronext Brussels and Paris: BOTHE), the bone cell therapy company addressing high unmet medical needs in the fields of bone fracture repair, fracture prevention and spinal fusion, today celebrates its ten-year anniversary with an evening event which will bring together guests from industry, government and the media as well as representatives of the international scientific community. The event will be attended by Mr Paul Magnette, Minister-President of Wallonia and Mr Jean-Claude Marcourt, Vice-President and Minister of Economy, Industry, Innovation and New Technologies of the Walloon Government. Enrico Bastianelli, Chief Executive Officer of Bone Therapeutics, commented: "We are proud of what we have achieved in the ten years since Bone Therapeutics was founded in 2006. We have come a long way, with two products in the clinic, six clinical trials and preparations underway to initiate trials in the US. We are grateful for the support of our investors, as well as the Walloon Government, without whom this would not have been possible. We want to mark this ten-year milestone in the company's history, and look forward to the next ten years of progress." Paul Magnette, Minister-President of Wallonia and Mayor of Charleroi said: "Bone Therapeutics is a great example of how dynamic, high technology companies enhance the economy and social fabric of Wallonia, creating employment and bringing innovation to the region. Wallonia has established a leadership position in the field of cell therapy in part through the achievements of companies like Bone Therapeutics and their contributions to this endeavour. Jean-Claude Marcourt, Vice-President and Minister of Economy, Industry, Innovation and New Technologies of the Walloon Government, adds: "Over the past decade, Wallonia has seen its biotechnology industry grow significantly and it is now at the forefront in the field of cell therapy. An important contributory factor was the creation of Biowin, the health cluster of Wallonia. This initiative, which has a broad international reach, creates the perfect ecosystem for emerging biotech companies to thrive. The Walloon region has supported and keeps on supporting innovative ventures, like Bone Therapeutics, that strengthen its position." Since its foundation in 2006 as a spin-off from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles (ULB: Brussels, Belgium), Bone Therapeutics has focused on developing a technology initiated at the Erasme Hospital of the ULB. The Company has built on these initial foundations and is now running clinical trials in six indications. With the support of its shareholders and the Walloon Region, the Company has grown significantly over the past ten years, employing over 100 people, and has established its position as a leader in the field of cell therapy. About Bone Therapeutics Bone Therapeutics is a leading biotechnology company specializing in the development of cell therapy products intended for bone fracture repair and fracture prevention. The current standard-of-care in this field involves major surgeries and long recovery periods. To overcome these problems, Bone Therapeutics is developing a range of innovative regenerative products containing osteoblastic/bone-forming cells, administrable via a minimally invasive percutaneous technique; a unique proposition in the market. PREOB, Bone Therapeutics' autologous bone cell product, is currently in pivotal Phase IIB/III clinical studies for two indications: osteonecrosis and non-union fractures, and in Phase II for severe osteoporosis. ALLOB, its allogeneic "off-the-shelf" bone cell product, is in Phase II for the treatment of delayed-union fractures and lumbar fusion for degenerative disease of the spine, including a minimally invasive therapy for failed spinal fusions. The Company also runs preclinical research programs and develops novel product candidates. Founded in 2006, Bone Therapeutics is headquartered in Gosselies (South of Brussels, Belgium). Bone Therapeutics' regenerative products are manufactured to the highest GMP standards and are protected by a rich IP estate covering 11 patent families. Further information is available at: www.bonetherapeutics.com Certain statements, beliefs and opinions in this press release are forward-looking, which reflect the Company or, as appropriate, the Company directors' current expectations and projections about future events. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties and assumptions could adversely affect the outcome and financial effects of the plans and events described herein. A multitude of factors including, but not limited to, changes in demand, competition and technology, can cause actual events, performance or results to differ significantly from any anticipated development. Forward looking statements contained in this press release regarding past trends or activities should not be taken as a representation that such trends or activities will continue in the future. As a result, the Company expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release any update or revisions to any forward-looking statements in this press release as a result of any change in expectations or any change in events, conditions, assumptions or circumstances on which these forward-looking statements are based. Neither the Company nor its advisers or representatives nor any of its subsidiary undertakings or any such person's officers or employees guarantees that the assumptions underlying such forward-looking statements are free from errors nor does either accept any responsibility for the future accuracy of the forward-looking statements contained in this press release or the actual occurrence of the forecasted developments. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. Bone Therapeutics S.A. Rue Auguste Piccard, 37 6041 Gosselies Belgium (Europe) Phone: +32 (0) 2 529 59 90 Fax: +32 (0) 2 529 59 93 www.bonetherapeutics.com View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160602006565/en/ Contacts: Bone Therapeutics SA Enrico Bastianelli, Chief Executive Officer Wim Goemaere, Chief Financial Officer Tel: +32 (0)2 529 59 90 investorrelations@bonetherapeutics.com or For Belgium and International Media Enquiries: Consilium Strategic Communications Amber Fennell, Jessica Hodgson and Hendrik Thys Tel: +44 (0) 20 3709 5701 bonetherapeutics@consilium-comms.com or For French Media and Investor Enquiries: NewCap Investor Relations & Financial Communications Pierre Laurent, Louis-Victor Delouvrier and Nicolas Merigeau Tel: 33 (0)1 44 71 94 94 bone@newcap.eu 2 June 2016 DKG Capital plc ("DKG" or the "Company") Director Appointment DKG Capital Plc is pleased to announce that Mr Tesheb Casimir has been appointed to the board of the Company as Non-Executive Director with immediate effect. Po Sen Lim, Chief Executive Officer of DKG Capital commented: "We are pleased to welcome Mr Casimir to the board of DKG. He brings a wealth of contacts in both Asia and Europe which will be very helpful to the further development of the business" Further information on Mr Casimir: Mr Tesheb Casimir is currently Chief Executive Officer of Elgin Associates (M) Inc. a licensed insurance broker through the Labuan Financial Services Authority. He has worked in the offshore finance industry and successfully set up Elgin Associates Malaysia Inc. in 2011. Mr Casimir graduated with a combined double degree in Law & Commerce at Bond University, Australia. Current directorships and partnerships: Elgin Associates (M) Inc. Rorine International Holding Corporation Past directorships over the last 5 years: European Group Limited Unwall International U-International Holdings Group Plc There is no further information that is required to be disclosed pursuant to Paragraph 21, Appendix 1 of the ISDX Growth Market Rules for Issuers. For further information, please contact: Mr. Nick Lyth DKG Capital PLC Tel: + 44 (0) 7769 906686 Email: info@dkgcapital.co.uk Corporate Advisor David Coffman / Daphne Zhang Daniel Stewart & Company Tel: +44 (0) 207 776 6596 About DKG Capital PLC (DKGP) DKGP was established for the purpose of making investments in businesses which provide luxury services aimed at high net worth clients within established and developed countries within the Asia Pacific region. Through investing in a number of different businesses which are targeted at people with high levels of disposable income, DKGP will be able to exploit cross-selling opportunities between the businesses and create a database of like-minded customers. For more information about DKGP please see www.dkgcapital.co.uk 3 June 2016 UBM divests electronics media portfolio UBM plc (LSE: UBM-LN) today announces that it has reached agreement to divest its electronics media portfolio to an affiliate of Arrow Electronics Inc. for a cash consideration of $23.5m. The portfolio comprises the US and Asian versions of EE Times, EDN, ESM, Embedded, EBN, TechOnline and Datasheets.com. In 2015 these assets generated revenues of $19m - $16m online and $3m print. The sale is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory clearance in China. Tim Cobbold, CEO of UBM plc, said: "In line with our 'Events First' strategy this transaction further improves the alignment between our portfolio of Events and Other Marketing Services." - Ends - Contacts Kate Postans Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications, UBM plc Kate.Postans@ubm.com +44 207 921 5023 Meredith Corley Head of PR and Communications, UBM Americas Meredith.Corley@ubm.com +1 (703) 853-8977 Jon Coles, Andy Rivett-Carnac, Craig Breheny ubm@brunswickgroup.com +44 207 404 5959 Notes to Editors About UBM plc UBM plc is a leading global marketing services and communications company, whose primary focus is events. We help businesses do business, bringing the world's buyers and sellers together at events, online and in print. Our 5,100 staff in more than 20 countries are organised into specialist teams which serve commercial and professional communities, helping them to do business and their markets to work effectively and efficiently. Running over 400 events per year, UBM is the second largest exhibitions organiser globally and the largest independent organiser in the US and China. For more information, go to www.ubm.com; for UBM corporate news, follow us on Twitter at @UBM_plc and go to http://media.ubm.com/social for more UBM social media options. LONDON (dpa-AFX) - UBM plc (UBM.L) said that it has reached agreement to divest its electronics media portfolio to an affiliate of Arrow Electronics Inc. for a cash consideration of $23.5 million. The portfolio comprises the US and Asian versions of EE Times, EDN, ESM, Embedded, EBN, TechOnline and Datasheets.com. In 2015 these assets generated revenues of $19 million - $16 million online and $3 million print. The sale is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory clearance in China. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - At 3:45 am ET Friday, Markit Economics is due to release its service PMI figures for Italy. PMI reports for France and Germany are due at 3:50 am ET and 3:55 am ET, respectively. The manufacturing PMI for the Eurozone is due 4:00 am ET. Ahead of the reports, the euro showed mixed trading against the other major currencies. While the euro fell against the pound, it held steady against the U.S. dollar, the yen and the Swiss franc. As of 3:40 am ET, the euro was trading at 0.7723 against the pound, 1.1048 against the Swiss franc, 1.1152 against the U.S. dollar and 121.29 against the yen. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. LONDON, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Global Committee of EdTech experts select candidates from Coursera, edX, IBM, Khan Academy, littleBits, Raspberry Pi to join inaugural ranking of 50 international innovators In association with WISE, the World Innovation Summit for Education, EdTechXGlobal, the organisers of leading education technology-focused conferences EdTechXEurope and EdTechXAsia, have launched the Makers and Shakers of Education Technology Index - the first comprehensive global listing of ground-breaking innovators in the EdTech field. The international index celebrates 50 of the most innovative EdTech thought leaders, organised by four geographical regions (Europe, Americas, MENA and Asia). The 2016 Index honours these luminaries who through digital and physical technologies, have introduced innovative new ways of learning to the market through play, construction or interactive design. The list was curated by EdTechXGlobal and WISE and then selected by 15 members of the global advisory committee; comprised of industry leaders from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google for Education, IDEO, IBIS Capital, Kaizen Private Equity, Learn Capital, LinkedIN, Times Higher Education and TES Global. The 2016 international media partners, including Business Week MENA, l'Etudiant, JMDedu, LinkedIN and TES also aided the selection process and will help showcase these innovators to their worldwide communities. The advisory committee scored each proposed candidate against criteria including; individual vision, disruptive innovation and impact and contribution. The "Makers" were defined as rising stars of education technology, innovating and pushing boundaries for future success, and "Shakers", as established leaders in their region, inspiring worldwide EdTech change. "This Index seeks to recognise thinkers and doers who have pioneered innovative approaches to addressing challenges in education", said Stavros N. Yiannouka, the CEO of WISE. "The Makers & Shakers of Education Technology is a global index that elevates Education innovators and thought leaders as 21st Century social rock stars. The index rewards talent, creativity, impact and influence in education," added Benjamin Vedrenne-Cloquet, Co-Founder of EdTechXGlobal. The selected global candidates will be invited to an exclusive networking and celebratory dinner due to take place in London on the evening of 15th of June, as well as having the opportunity to participate in the EdTechXEurope conference programme, when the fourth annual summit kicks off 15th-16th June, at Kings Place. The full ranking of global candidates is available here: http://makersxshakers.com Notes to editors: About EdTechXGlobal: EdTechXGlobal connects the global EdTech community though an insight, investment and annual thought leadership event series, EdTechXEurope in London and EdTechXAsia in Singapore. The EdTechXGlobal summits bring together executive level investors, innovators, and industry influencers from worldwide education technology companies. Through extensive networking opportunities, the conferences in London and Singapore also aim to connect leading foundations, higher-education institutions, policy makers, and thought leaders from the industry as well. Now in its fourth year, EdTechXEurope 2016 is scheduled to take place at Kings Place in London, UK on 15-16 June, hosting 800+ global attendees and over 130 global speakers, in partnership with leading education events SXSWedu and WISE. The inaugural EdTechXAsia conference will invite 1200+ global thought leaders from the Asia region and the international EdTech industry for a two-day summit and expo event. About the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE): Qatar Foundation, under the leadership of its Chairperson, Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser launched the World Innovation Summit for Education in 2009. WISE is an international, multi-sectoral platform for creative thinking, debate and purposeful action. Through the Summit and a range of ongoing programs, WISE has established itselfas a global reference in new approaches to education, promoting innovation and partnership. About the Makers and Shakers Education Technology Index: The WISE and EdTechXGlobal teams preselected 25 names per region for the "Makers of Education and Technology" and the "Shakers of Education and Technology" categories. The role of the Advisory Committee was to score each proposed name based on the below criteria. A ranking was then generated to list final 50 the "Makers" and "Shakers" per region and you were selected as one of the 2016 Makers & Shakers. Each criterion was scored from 1 to 4, with 4 being the highest score - these were: Individual vision The individual demonstrates a powerful and unique vision for the role of technology in education. The individual demonstrates a powerful and unique vision for the role of technology in education. Disruptive innovation The initiative(s) launched by the individual is a creative and disruptive solution to an education challenge, showing innovation in its use of technology, design, methodology and/or practice. The actor is offering new ways of learning and distinguishes himself/herself from other actors in similar fields. The initiative(s) launched by the individual is a creative and disruptive solution to an education challenge, showing innovation in its use of technology, design, methodology and/or practice. The actor is offering new ways of learning and distinguishes himself/herself from other actors in similar fields. Impact and contribution to education The impact of the individual in the field of EdTech has been recognized and documented as having a positive impact on its beneficiaries and society at large. The advisory panel, selecting the Makers and Shakers for the Index were as follows: Americas Ms Sandy Speicher, Managing Director of the Education Practice, IDEO (USA) Mr. Henry Hipps, Senior Programe Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (USA) Mr. Luis Pinto, Global Operations Partner, Learn Capital (USA) Europe Mrs. Liz Sproat, Head of Education, EMEA, Google for Education (UK) Ms. Brigitte Ricou-Bellan, Managing Director, Digital, TES Global (UK) Mr. Benjamin Vedrenne Cloquet, Co-Founder, EdTechXGlobal (France) Mr. Charles McIntyre, CEO, IBIS Capital (UK) Mr. Ross Hall, Director of Education Strategy, Ashoka (UK) Mr. Charles Hardy, Education Engagement Lead, EMEA, LinkedIN (UK) Mr. John Gill, Editor, Times Higher Education (UK) MENA Mr. Stavros N. Yiannouka, CEO, World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), Qatar Foundation (Cyprus) Mr. Ravi Raman, Vice President and Associate Publisher, Business Week MENA (UAE) Asia Dr. Xuening Liu, CEO, JMDedu (China) Mr. Sandeep Aneja, Managing Director, Kaizen Private Equity (India) Mr. Takashi Onogawa, Deputy Manager, Mitsui & Co. (Japan) OAK BROOK (dpa-AFX) - Fast food chain McDonald's is in advanced talks to shift its headquarters to Oprah Winfrey's former Harpo Studios site, reports said. The Big Mac-maker, which has been looking for a new home for sometimes now, is in talks with developer Sterling Bay to create a 300,000 square foot campus in Chicago as its new headquarters, reports said. It is likely that the move will take place in 2018. McDonald's is now based in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook, Illinois, and employs more than 2,000 people in the village. Sterling Bay had bought the property from Winfrey's Harpo Studios in Chicago's Near West Side in 2014 for $30.5 million. The studio shut down the production last December. The company reportedly was close to moving into One Prudential Plaza in downtown Chicago, but backed off the deal last September. Last month, at the company's annual shareholder meeting, McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook had commented, 'We will leave no stone unturned and we will also consider where the best location for the office is and the best facilities. If you want a world class team you've got to provide a world class environment.' To bring back customers, who are moving away from processed food stuff, McDonald's has been trying to modernize itself. In recent times, the company has been trying different menu offerings in different locations. 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. SAINT HELIER (dpa-AFX) - Shire plc (SHP.L, SHPG) announced it has completed combination with Baxalta Inc. (BXLT). Baxalta became an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Shire. Shire said the company is now the global leader in rare diseases, with the number one rare diseases platform based on both revenue and pipeline programs. It now has more than 50 programs in clinical development, with a balanced mix of early, mid and late-stage projects. The combination is expected to be accretive to non-GAAP EPS in 2017, the first calendar year of ownership, and beyond, with an attractive ROIC that will exceed Shire's cost of capital in 2020. Through the combination, Shire expects to deliver double-digit compound annual top-line growth, with over $20 billion in annual projected revenue by 2020 and approximately 65% of total annual revenues being immediately generated by its rare disease products. The combined company is expected to yield annual operating cost synergies of at least $500 million within the first three years post-closing. Shire expects to generate additional revenue synergies and a combined non-GAAP effective tax rate of 16-17% by 2017. 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. NINGBO, China, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --The 2nd China-CEEC Investment and Trade Expo will showcase a variety of unique products from China and Central & Eastern European (CEE) countries at Ningbo International Conference Center from June 8-12, 2016. Adding appeal to the expo's strong lineup, there will also be a trade fair of high-tech projects during the same period. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160602/374680 According to the organization committee office, some 260 companies will join the expo, displaying their products at 282 booths in the conference center's No. 1 Pavilion. Exhibited products include spirits and wines, dairy products (milk and cheese), cosmetics and food (ingredients and leisure foods). Among the list, plenty are specialties of each country, such as dairy products from Lithuania, amber beeswax from Poland, crystal products and beers from Czech, red wines from Hungary, Romania and Macedonia, and rose-based cosmetic products from Bulgaria. "Exhibitors have showed great passion for presenting their products at China-CEEC expo this year," said Danhua Yu, director of CCEEC organization committee office. "We finished the business seeking procedure 20 days earlier than last year and there are 50 more companies coming to the expo this year compared with last." The high-tech show will be held at the No.6 Pavilion in the conference center. Leading high-tech companies in China will present their latest breakthroughs together with the Slovenia Pavilion -- the only foreign country pavilion. The 18 Chinese companies at the event include State Power Investment Corporation, China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC) and local companies in Zhejiang Province. High-tech projects on show cover a wide range of sectors, including nuclear power technology, medical equipment, clean energy, electric vehicles, glasses-free 3D technology and intelligent city management systems. In addition to products and technology exhibitions, China-CEEC expo also features business matching activities where exhibitors, retail dealers and importers can seek business opportunities after attending the exhibition. The municipal government of Ningbo has introduced policies to encourage more deals to be made during the expo, with Chinese business groups being offered financial incentives if they sign deals worth more than $20,000 with exhibitors from China and CEE countries during the expo. About China-CEEC Investment and Trade Expo China-CEEC (Central & Eastern European countries) Investment and Trade Expo is a major project declared in the Belgrade Guidelines and Suzhou Guidelines for Cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries. It is also the first expo on trade and investment between China and CEE countries. The first edition of the expo was held in Ningbo from June 8-12, 2015. It is hosted jointly by the Ministry of Commerce and the provincial government of Zhejiang, and organized by related sectors of the Ministry of Commerce, Ningbo municipal government and Department of Commerce of Zhejiang Province. LONDON, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Just in time for summer, Vision Direct is now stocking a wide range of sunglasses from leading manufacturers and brands. Vision Direct has recently updated its online store front to include a huge range of sunglasses from popular manufacturers. This new range will benefit from the same discounted prices and superfast next day delivery as every other product on the Vision Direct website. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375129 ) Leading brands such as Levi's, Karen Millen and Ben Sherman will be available for purchase in a variety of shapes, styles and colours. and will be available for purchase in a variety of shapes, styles and colours. Customers will have the option of filtering sunglasses by their face shape, allowing for a fast recommendation on the shades that will suit them best. Sunglasses will be delivered separately to other eye care products, so as not to interrupt the superfast letterbox delivery Vision Direct customers have come to expect for their contact lenses. Michael Kraftman, CEO of Vision Direct, commented on the launch of the website's sunglasses section: "I am delighted to announce the availability of an extensive range of sunglasses from VisionDirect.co.uk. This is the first stage of an exciting transformation for Vision Direct, allowing us to offer a full range of vision products across all our websites after becoming part of the Essilor family earlier this year." As well as introducing sunglasses, Vision Direct is constantly striving to provide the best possible customer experience across all of its products. A recent website update has made it even easier for users to find and order their contact lenses across all their connected devices, including tablets and smartphones. For more information, follow Vision Direct on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Website: http://www.visiondirect.co.uk Notes to editors 1. About Vision Direct Vision Direct is Europe's largest online contact lens supplier, stocking over 1 million lenses from world leading brands, including Focus Dailies, Air Optix and Acuvue Moist. Vision Direct is dedicated to making the purchase of contact lenses easy, quick and affordable. It offers free, fast delivery and seven days a week customer support, as well savings of up to 45% against high street opticians. Customers can order their lenses through the UK Vision Direct website, http://www.VisionDirect.co.uk, any of its European web properties, or by calling the telephone number, 0207 768 5000. Customers can also benefit from a free repeat prescription and reminder service, and receive free eye care advice from Vision Direct's resident optician. For further information, please contact: Amy Pritchett, Outreach Manager, Vision Direct Tel: +44(0)20-8099-5366 (office) - Mon - Friday 9am to 5:30pm Email: amy.pritchett@visiondirect.co.uk Address: 6 Camden High Street, London, NW1 0JH 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. MILL VALLEY, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 06/03/16 -- Glassdoor, Inc., the world's most transparent jobs and recruiting marketplace, today announced the closing of a $40 million investment round led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. Existing investors Battery Ventures, Google Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures and Tiger Global also participated in the round. The company has raised approximately $200 million since it was founded in 2007. While best known for its proprietary user-generated content, Glassdoor is now one of the largest job aggregation engines in the world. No other job site offers as many job listings combined with such a vast array of workplace insights, including company ratings and reviews, CEO approval ratings, detailed pay data by job title, interview reviews, benefits reviews and office photos. Glassdoor currently welcomes approximately 30 million monthly unique users and now has data on more than 540,000 companies in 190 countries. This new financing will support Glassdoor's continued growth and investments in product, marketing, and people around the globe. "We believe that Glassdoor is fundamentally changing the way job seekers search for jobs and companies recruit talent. Their unique user-generated data includes millions of reviews, which increases transparency in recruiting. Our view is that Glassdoor is executing well, and it can be a much larger company over time," said Henry Ellenbogen, portfolio manager of T. Rowe Price New Horizons Fund, Inc. "We're delighted to add T. Rowe Price to our incredible investor roster, as they bring significant experience with late-stage, high-growth companies such as ours and a long-term focus," said Robert Hohman, co-founder and CEO of Glassdoor, Inc. "Regardless of where you live, where you work matters and the level of transparency Glassdoor has brought to the market is helping people everywhere find a job and company they love and, in turn, helping employers attract high-quality candidates." Tens of thousands of employers worldwide have claimed their profile on Glassdoor and are leveraging free and/or paid services to engage with candidates and employees, market open jobs and manage their employer brands. Approximately 40 percent of the Fortune 500 are currently Glassdoor clients. Glassdoor generates revenue through job advertising, Enhanced Company Profiles, and display advertising. Companies leveraging Glassdoor to manage their employer brands and influence candidates include Chevron, Cigna, Dell, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Groupon, HP, Intuit, Procter & Gamble and Twitter. Any official company representative(s) may claim their Glassdoor profile by registering for a Free Employer Account, which allows authorized personnel to respond to reviews, update company and benefits information, and access basic analytics. The company continues to expand its global footprint and now has localized websites and mobile apps in 11 markets beyond Glassdoor.com's worldwide reach: the UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, and India. Glassdoor currently has approximately 600 employees and recently opened offices in Chicago and Dublin, Ireland. Headquartered in the Bay Area's Marin County, the company also has offices in London, Ohio and soon-to-be San Francisco. Glassdoor is hiring in all locations. About Glassdoor Glassdoor is the most transparent jobs and recruiting marketplace that is changing how people search for jobs and how companies recruit top talent. Glassdoor combines free and anonymous reviews, ratings and salary content with job listings to help job seekers find the best jobs and address critical questions that come up during the job search, application, interview and negotiation phases of employment. For employers, Glassdoor offers job posting, recruiting and employer branding solutions to help attract high-quality candidates at a fraction of the cost of other channels. In addition, Glassdoor operates one of the most popular job apps on iOS and Android platforms. Launched in 2008, Glassdoor has raised approximately $200 million from Google Capital, Tiger Global, Benchmark, Battery Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, DAG Ventures, Dragoneer Investment Group, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. and others. Glassdoor is a registered trademark of Glassdoor, Inc. Regulatory News: Getinge Group (STO:GETIB) has appointed Jens Viebke as the new President of the Acute Care Therapies Business Category Unit. Jens will be a member of the Getinge Group Executive Team and succeeds Heinz Jacqui who will step down from his current position after four years with the Group. Acute Care Therapies is one of Getinge's three Business Category Units and is responsible for developing technologies and solutions for cardiac, pulmonary and vascular therapies and products and therapies for intensive care. The Group has made significant investments in quality management systems in recent years, particularly in areas related to the Acute Care Therapies Business Category Unit. Intense focus continues to be directed to completing the necessary improvement measures for building up a global quality management system with the desired standard. The product segments in Acute Care Therapies, where Getinge has a strong pipeline of new products, have significant growth potential and investments continue to be made in developing pioneering technologies and solutions. "I am very pleased to present Jens Viebke as the new President of our Acute Care Therapies Business Category Unit. We have faced a number of challenges related to this product area in recent years and I have every confidence in Jens using his extensive experience and expertise to lead the operations in the right direction. With his comprehensive knowledge in the field of research and development, coupled with his commercial experience, Jens will be a major asset for the Group in his new role," says Alex Myers, CEO and President of Getinge, who concludes: "I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Heinz Jacqui for his valuable contribution and dedicated work during his time with the Group." Jens Viebke most recently served as Chief Technology Officer at Acute Care Therapies and was previously the President of the Critical Care division in the Group's former Medical Systems business area. Jens has long and broad experience from the healthcare industry and has previously held positions in research and development, as well as strategy and marketing, at other large companies in the industry, including GE Healthcare and Pharmacia Upjohn. Jens has a PhD in Polymer Technology from the Royal Institute of Technology of Stockholm and holds an Executive MBA from the Stockholm School of Economics. Jens Viebke will take up his new position as of June 6, 2016, and will report to Alex Myers, President CEO Getinge Group. Getinge Group is a leading global provider of innovative solutions for operating rooms, intensive-care units, hospital wards, sterilization departments, elderly care and for life science companies and institutions. Getinge's unique customer offering mirrors the hospital's organization and value chain, and the solutions are used before, during and after the patients' hospital stay. Based on first-hand experience and close partnerships, Getinge provides innovative healthcare solutions that improve every-day life for people, today and tomorrow. This information is such that Getinge AB must disclose in accordance with the Swedish Securities Market Act and/or the Financial Instruments Trading Act. This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160603005326/en/ Contacts: Getinge Group Alex Myers CEO and President Tel: +46 10 335 00 00 E-mail: alex.myers@getinge.com or Kornelia Rasmussen Executive Vice President, Corporate Communications Brand Management Tel: +46 10 335 5810 E-mail: kornelia.rasmussen@getinge.com JAKARTA, Indonesia, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- GE Healthcare and Frost & Sullivan, on May 19 hosted the first Indonesia Thought Leadership - Next Generation Imaging IT forum at the Grand Senyiur Hotel, Balikpapan to discuss innovative IT solutions in imaging workflow in Indonesian hospitals. More than 80 representatives from Indonesian hospitals attended the forum. Marc Foo, General Manager of GE Healthcare IT, ASEAN, Australia & New Zealand said that diagnostic imaging radiologists are beginning to play a critical role in surgery and emergency care. "Therefore, diagnostic imaging radiologists need comprehensive, real-time patient data, as well as collaboration and consultation with peers to ensure reliable and timely diagnosis," he added. "Radiologists need flexible imaging IT solutions that help address their day-to-day issues, such as the delay in image loading, need to move between workstations, image quality and frequent IT downtime," Foo added. While imaging IT has advanced significantly in the last three decades, there is still room for further technological innovation that empowers radiologists with the right information at the right time, he said. "Frost & Sullivan is delighted to jointly host the Indonesia Thought Leadership - Next Generation Imaging IT forum with GE Healthcare to discuss about medical imaging transformation and innovative IT solutions in imaging workflow in Indonesian hospitals," said Rathanesh Ramasundram, Senior Consultant, Transformational Health, Asia Pacific at Frost & Sullivan. In her 'Medical Imaging Transformation in Indonesia' presentation, Ramasundram notedthat demand for diagnostic testing in Indonesia's public hospitals increased after the launch of Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional (JKN), a national health insurance system introduced by the Government. She added that in line with the demand for healthcare services, medical imaging procedure volumes have also increased multi-fold. "Rising incidence of chronic conditions has increased disease complexity and co-morbidity, requiring radiologists to have access to and make sense out of far more complex patient information than before. With only 2,240 radiologists, the acute workforce shortage in Indonesia has led to a huge increase in clinicians' daily workload," she said. Ramasundram also said that in response to the increasing demand on care pathway workflow, Indonesian hospitals are moving towards digital imaging solutions including Radiology Information Systems (RIS) and Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS). She added that Indonesia needs to leverage on IT for radiology diagnostics to improve the quality and efficiency of health services. Ramasundram also said that IT solutions can help to address isolated and rural health facilities for diagnostic radiology services and facilitate clinical real-time collaboration for faster diagnostic turnaround times for referring physicians and their patients. At the panel discussion 'An In-Depth Look Into the Digital Imaging IT Footprint for Indonesia', Dr. Aziza Ghanie Ickson, Chairman of Indonesian College of Radiology said that without digital solutions, she would have to wait a few hours before getting the imaging files due to the manual system. At the same time, she needs to look for old images, medical records and research for other clinical findings in order to prepare a more detailed reading. Dr. Raditya Utomo, General Diagnostic Radiologist, Premier Bintaro Hospital said that it will be very helpful if private hospitals and government hospitals can share data easily with the use of technology. "Hopefully, in future, imaging reports can be shared electronically between hospitals easily," he added. Dr. Jacub Pandelaki, Secretary General Perhimpunan Dokter Spesialis Radiologi Indonesia (The Indonesian Society of Radiology) said that the total number of radiologists in Indonesia cannot support the growth of hospitals in Indonesia. He noted that geographically, Indonesia also has many islands and traffic congestion is a common problem in big cities such as Jakarta. Therefore, he added that there is an increasing need for technology to allow for remote access of images anywhere in case of emergency. He added that with today's more complex medical cases, radiologists need to have historical data of all the patients' records for better diagnostic. About GE Healthcare GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems. Our 'healthymagination' vision for the future invites the world to join us on our journey as we continuously develop innovations focused on reducing costs, increasing access and improving quality and efficiency around the world. Headquartered in the United States, GE Healthcare is a $16 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. Our "Growth Partnership" supports clients by addressing these opportunities and incorporating two key elements driving visionary innovation: The Integrated Value Proposition and The Partnership Infrastructure. The Integrated Value Proposition provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation. provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation. The Partnership Infrastructureis entirely unique as it constructs the foundation upon which visionary innovation becomes possible. This includes our 360 degree research, comprehensive industry coverage, career best practices as well as our global footprint of more than 40 offices. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organization prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies? Contact Us: Start the discussion Join Us: Join our community Subscribe: Newsletter on "the next big thing" Register: Gain access to visionary innovation TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 06/03/16 -- Editors Note: There is a photo associated with this press release. The results are in! Topper's Pizza Canada was involved in a record breaking campaign, raising a total of $44,623.00, surpassing last year's customer donations by over $10,000. The Toppazzini family matched $1 to every $5 raised, bringing the total donation to $53,547.60. In an effort to increase funding and awareness among local communities across Ontario, Topper's Pizza joined with SickKids for this ten week fundraising campaign. Donations were collected online, phone orders, in store donation or by ordering the Topper's Feel Good Meal, a meal created specifically for this campaign. "At SickKids, we believe that where you live shouldn't determine if you live," said Wendy Dempsey, manager, sponsorship and cause marketing, SickKids Foundation. "We were thrilled that so many people chose to contribute to Topper's campaign through their pizzerias across the province. These donations will be put towards the hospital's highest priority needs allowing us to help more sick children in need of specialized care from four corners of our province." The majority of the donations came from franchises outside of the GTA, reaffirming that SickKids hospital impacts lives every where. "Our franchise partners really jumped on board with the program this year, and our call centre was a huge driver of the campaign's success," said Karen Trottola, Director of Marketing and Communication for Topper's Pizza Canada. To thank them for their passion and commitment, Toronto Sick Kids Hospital paid a visit to the Sudbury call centre to celebrate their success and say Thank You, as they were approaching the end of the campaign. "Over the past four years, Topper's Pizza Canada's Feel Good campaign has raised over $200,000 in donations," says Trottola. "We'd like to thank all of our customers for their continued support." About Topper's Pizza Canada Founded in 1982, the Topper's Pizza franchise has over 37 pizzeria locations across Ontario serving up authentic Italian specialty pizzas as well as wings, salads, desserts and their new Crustano Sandwiches. The company began franchising in 1992 and has plans for rapid expansion across Ontario and Canada. Topper's success is built on a four generation Toppazzini family legacy which has been carried on with the tradition of using fresh, high quality ingredients, local vegetables and their trademark Authentic ItalianBread Crust. Topper's Pizza strives to give back to their local communities while in addition, partnering with SickKids Foundation. For more information, visit www.toppers.ca About SickKids Foundation Established in 1972, SickKids Foundation raises funds on behalf of The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and is the largest charitable funder of child health research, learning and care in Canada. Philanthropy is a critical source of funding for SickKids - one of the world's foremost paediatric healthcare institutions. Thanks to the generosity of the community, and as a result of a record-breaking year in fundraising and investment returns, SickKids Foundation generated an unprecedented $136 million for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2015. For more information, please visit sickkidsfoundation.com. To view the photo associated with this press release, please visit the following link: http://www.marketwire.com/library/20160602-1057672_SickKidsCampaign_800.jpg Contacts: For media information contact: Amanda Sutton 705-791-7209 Amanda@catalystcc.ca VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 06/03/16 -- Atlantic Gold Corporation (TSX VENTURE: AGB) ("Atlantic" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that pursuant to the approved schedule of phased reclamation security (the "Security") in the amount of $10.4 million for its Touquoy Gold Mine ("Touquoy"), as approved by the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources ("NSDNR") and Nova Scotia Environment ("NSE") (together, the "Province"), the Company has posted its initial reclamation bond for $3.43 million with the Province. Touquoy is the first deposit to be mined in the Company's Moose River Consolidated Project ("MRC Project"). The Company also announces that it has bound coverage in respect of environmental impairment liability insurance ("EIL Policy") at Touquoy. The Security is a requirement under the Company's Mineral Lease (2011), while the Security and EIL Policy are both required under the Company's Industrial Approval dated March 24, 2014 (the "IA"). A phased approach to providing the Security was agreed in order to allow the Company to provide satisfactory financial security on a progressive basis commensurate with the area disturbed by the activity on the site at any given time. Concurrent with the finalization of the Security and EIL Policy, the Company engaged in clearing and mulching activities in April and May 2016 at Touquoy in order to facilitate earthmoving activities, which commenced June 1, 2016. This earthmoving is required to prepare the site for commencement of construction of the Touquoy plant and related infrastructure. Steven Dean, Chairman and CEO commented, "Atlantic is pleased to have agreed the first instalment of reclamation security with the Province. Atlantic looks forward to completing bulk earthmoving activities in the coming weeks as a preparatory step to the start of physical construction of the Touquoy plant". Further updates will be provided in due course. On behalf of the Board of Directors, Steven Dean, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Advisors to the Surety Bond Aon Risk Solutions, acting as insurance broker for the Company, was the responsible broker for negotiating the terms of the EIL Policy and the Security. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-Looking Statements: This release contains certain "forward looking statements" and certain "forward-looking information" as defined under applicable Canadian and U.S. securities laws. Forward-looking statements and information can generally be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may", "will", "expect", "intend", "estimate", "anticipate", "believe", "continue", "plans" or similar terminology. Forward-looking statements and information are not historical facts, are made as of the date of this press release, and include, but are not limited to, statements regarding discussions of future plans, guidance, projections, objectives, estimates and forecasts and statements as to management's expectations with respect to, among other things, the activities contemplated in this news release and the timing and receipt of requisite regulatory, and shareholder approvals in respect thereof. Forward-looking statements in this news release include, without limitation, statements related to proposed exploration and development programs, grade and tonnage of material and resource estimates. These forward looking statements involve numerous risks and uncertainties and actual results may vary. Important factors that may cause actual results to vary include without limitation, the timing and receipt of certain approvals, changes in commodity and power prices, changes in interest and currency exchange rates, risks inherent in exploration estimates and results, timing and success, inaccurate geological and metallurgical assumptions (including with respect to the size, grade and recoverability of mineral reserves and resources), changes in development or mining plans due to changes in logistical, technical or other factors, unanticipated operational difficulties (including failure of plant, equipment or processes to operate in accordance with specifications, cost escalation, unavailability of materials, equipment and third party contractors, delays in the receipt of government approvals, industrial disturbances or other job action, and unanticipated events related to health, safety and environmental matters), political risk, social unrest, and changes in general economic conditions or conditions in the financial markets. In making the forward-looking statements in this press release, the Company has applied several material assumptions, including without limitation, the assumptions that: (1) market fundamentals will result in sustained gold demand and prices; (2) the receipt of any necessary approvals and consents in connection with the development of any properties; (3) the availability of financing on suitable terms for the development, construction and continued operation of any mineral properties; and (4) sustained commodity prices such that any properties put into operation remain economically viable. Information concerning mineral reserve and mineral resource estimates also may be considered forward-looking statements, as such information constitutes a prediction of what mineralization might be found to be present if and when a project is actually developed. Certain of the risks and assumptions are described in more detail in the Company's audited financial statements and MD&A for the year ended December 31, 2014 and the quarter ended September 30, 2015 on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com. The actual results or performance by the Company could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, any forward-looking statements relating to those matters. Accordingly, no assurances can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur, or if any of them do so, what impact they will have on the results of operations or financial condition of the Company. Except as required by law, the Company is under no obligation, and expressly disclaim any obligation, to update, alter or otherwise revise any forward-looking statement, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. Contacts: John Morgan (President and COO) +1 604 689-5564 Espoo, Finland, 2016-06-03 13:52 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --SRV GROUP PLC STOCK EXCHANGE RELEASE 3 June 2016 at 2:55 PMSRV wins about EUR 290 million contractor agreement for the implementation of Central Finland Central HospitalSRV will further boost its position as implementers of large, high-profile projects. The Council of Central Finland Health Care District approved the new hospital's more detailed overall budget and the project management contractor agreement worth about EUR 290 million agreed with SRV on 3 June 2016. The final project management contract agreement will be signed in June.A new central hospital will be built near the existing Central Finland Central Hospital in Kukkumaki in 2020. The total investment in the new central hospital will be worth about EUR 490 million."This is a historic agreement for SRV, because it's the company's largest contract in which our company's own capital will not be tied. Our order backlog totalled EUR 1,6 billion at the end of March. Central Finland Central Hospital will significantly increase our already record-high order backlog. The final target price of the project management contractor agreement was confirmed at a meeting of the Administrative Council of the Central Finland Health Care District. This is a great example on how SRV could found reduction on costs in co-operation with the client in order to meet the target price set," says Juha Toimela, who is in charge of operations in Finland. The project will be included in SRV's backlog following the agreement's signature on 15 June 2016. The prerequisite for signing the agreement is that the decision made by the Council of Central Finland Health Care District has entered into force.The new hospital will be built near the existing central hospital. Most of the hospital premises will be taken up by specialised care, while some will be reserved for the City of Jyvaskyla's basic health care. Earth-moving for the new hospital will begin in early August and actual construction in the beginning of September 2016. The new hospital will comprise 100,000 gross square metres. The hospital will improve health care efficiency, change structures, processes and logistic solutions and integrate basic health care, specialised care and social work services. The hospital's expenses will be divided among the 21 municipalities that make up the Council of Central Finland Health Care District.SRV has solid experience in the construction of health care and specialised premises. In recent years, for example, SRV has built the A&E annex to Jorvi Hospital in Espoo, and the HUSLAB laboratory building in Meilahti, Helsinki."The hospital projects we have carried out in recent years have been extremely successful. The HUSLAB laboratory building, for example, was completed ahead of schedule, with zero faults. We are currently also working on three new buildings for Tampere University Hospital; the New Children's Hospital in Helsinki; the basic renovation and extension of the Women's Hospital; and the health and wellbeing centre in Kalasatama, Helsinki," says Mr Toimela.For more information, contact: Juha Toimela, Vice President, Operations in Finland, +358 40 594 5473, juha.toimela@srv.fi Kimmo Kurki, Production Manager, +358 40 705 7266, kimmo.kurki@srv.fi Timo Kauppi, Regional Director, +358 40 592 3008, timo.kauppi@srv.fi Paivi Kauhanen, SVR, Communications, +358 50 598 9560, paivi.kauhanen@srv.fi www.srv.fiYou can also find us on social media:Facebook LinkedIn Twitter InstagramSRV - Building for life HONG KONG, June 3, 2016 - (ACN Newswire) - June 3, 2016, Chaos International Financial Limited ("Chaos International Financial") was officially opened in Hong Kong. As a wholly owned subsidiary of Chaos Ternary Futures, Co. Ltd. ("Chaos Ternary"), Chaos International Financial is an important part of Chaos Ternary in the implementation of its internationalized and integrated strategy.Chaos International Financial is a significant part of globalized strategy layout of Chaos Ternary Futures, Co. Ltd. Differing from traditional brokerage, the development vision of Chaos International Financial is based on an international asset management oriented-platform, managing "multi-asset strategy fund" and providing fund management to professional investors and institutional clients. The controlling shareholder of Chaos Ternary Futures, Co. Ltd. is Chaos Investment Group, which is owned by Mr. Ge Weidong, also known as "China Soros". With a deep understanding of chaos theory, Mr. Ge applied this to his investment practices which resulted in a huge success. The average annual return of the investment portfolio managed by Mr. Ge Weidong nearly reached 120%, allowing a rapid growth of Chaos Investment Group. He also laid position as the cutting edge in the realm of hedge funds in China. Relying on the Chaos Investment Group's advantage as a leading hedge fund in China, Chaos International Financial is able to provide customers with a full range of personalized services with a better understanding of the needs of institutional and individual investors. Chaos International Financial currently holds Type 2 license by SFC and is expected to build a financial holding within the next three years. It is in the expected future that Chaos International Financial will bring more imagination to capital market in Hong Kong.Positioned high-end customers and assemble top financial professionalsChaos International Financial aims to "staying highly tuned to market needs and being customer-centric" and is positioned to provide service for high-end institutional clients and professional individual investors. The Company is committed to developing itself as an innovative full license financial service platform with investment consulting, asset management and risk management.Chaos International Financial has gathered an experienced team of professionals to provide professional and quality services to our clients. Our dealing team has many years of experience in trading futures and options and has thorough understanding of product details and unique insights in trading strategies. The Company will provide personalized services for different customer requirements, and plan to offer discretionary account services to selected clients in the future. Regarding to IT solutions, Chaos International Financial provide customers with access to API interface and achieve multi login on domestic and overseas futures accounts. The Company also has a direct line from Hong Kong to China to ensure a stabilized transaction. Meanwhile, the Company also provide hosting server for selected customers. The Company continues to provide customers with more professional and convenient services with a 24-hour trading floor.Likewise in Chaos Ternary, Chaos International Financial will also be holding investment seminars inviting domestic and global hedge fund managers and traders. The Company aims to build a platform for professionals to communicate trading strategies and allocate seed fund to the top traders.Complete the entire layout of the license within the next three years and present diversified investors with investment choicesThe Company currently holds the type 2 license with Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) for admission to regulated activity "Dealing in Future Contracts" (REF: ABE516). We provide global futures trading for exchanges including Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), London Metal Exchange (LME), Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Hong Kong Futures Exchange (HKFE), Singapore Exchange (SGX), Tokyo Commodity Exchange (TOCOM), Bursa Malaysia Derivatives (BMD), etc. The team is particularly familiar with metals market in London and the rubber market in Southeast Asia.Chaos International Financial is expected to build a financial holding covering equities market, futures and options, foreign exchange trading and asset management in the next 2-3 years, so as to provide customers with a one-stop financial services.Mr. Hu Renxi, Chairman of Chaos Ternary Futures, Co. Ltd. said, "In the future, Chaos Ternary will develop superior, comprehensive, internationalized one-stop financial services platform with our core focus on international asset management. We strive to achieve excellence in order to protect the interest of our clients and provide professional trading services to capture every investment opportunity. Chaos International Financial will gather intelligence, utilize the opportunity and create value for investors through systematic investment services."Copyright 2016 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved. Hauck Aufhauser is expanding Equity-Sales and Sales-Trading activities through alli-ance with J.P.P. Euro-Securities Inc. *J.P.P. Euro-Securities Inc. customers are benefitting from the know-how and experience of Hauck Aufhauser with equity and capital market products. *Hauck Aufhauser is strengthening its future position in Equity Sales- and Sales-Trading in the US based on J.P.P. Euro-Securities Inc. strong experience. Hauck Aufhauser will expand its relationships to institutional US investors through an alliance with J.P.P. Euro-Securities Inc. to satisfy the rising demand for investment products in Germany as institutional US investors show a growing interest in German equities. Part of the alliance is the establishment of a dedicated Equity-Sales and Sales-Trading team for Hauck Aufhauser which will be operated by J.P.P. Euro-Securities Inc. in New York. The partnership with J.P.P. Euro-Securities Inc. enables Hauck Aufhauser to work more closely with its clients and better serve US institutional investors' interests to invest in German companies. Moreover, US institutional investors will be offered deep insights into German speaking companies as well as valuable contacts to German corporates and senior industry experts. Access to Hauck Aufhauser's expertise and broad network will help US investors to significantly expand their investment opportunities in Germany and Europe. As a fully owned subsidiary of Intermonte SIM, an independent Italian broker and investment bank, J.P.P. Euro-Securities Inc. will operate as the exclusive distributor of Hauck Aufhauser's products, know-how and research in the US. For this reason, J.P.P. Euro-Securities Inc. has already established an experienced Equity Sales and Sales-Trading-Team in New York which is dedicated to solely distribute Hauck Aufhauser's equity and capital markets products. Quinn Raftery, former Senior Equity Sales Manager North America at International KBR Finance LLC and Bankhaus Lampe in New York, will be appointed as the new Head of the J.P.P. Euro-Securities Inc. German Equity-Team for the management of the new division. In order to ensure the best possible trade execution service to clients, all sales traders will be working during live hours of the European markets. Background Information J.P.P. Euro Securities Inc: J.P.P. Euro-Securities Inc. is a fully owned subsidiary of Intermonte SIM, an Italian internationally operating independent broker and investment bank, and is located in 595 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10022, USA. Their focus lies in identifying specific investment opportunities and European market trends as well as offering tailor-made assistance for institutional investors. Hauck Aufhauser Privatbankiers KgaA: With its 220 years of tradition, Hauck Aufhauser Privatbankiers is one of few independent private banks in Germany. From its locations in Frankfurt am Main, Munich, Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Cologne and Luxembourg, the bank focuses on providing comprehensive advisory services and administering the assets of its private, corporate and institutional clients. This includes asset management for institutional investors, close cooperation with independent asset managers and both the concept and management of private label funds. The partners of the bank consist of the personally liable partner, Jochen Lucht, and the partners, Michael Bentlage and Stephan Rupprecht. Hauck Aufhauser considers itself a private bank that combines modernity with a strong sense of tradition. The focus lies in providing comprehensive and personalised advisory services, which form the basis for developing customised solutions. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160603005405/en/ Contacts: Sandra Freimuth Hauck Aufhauser Privatbankiers KGaA Phone +49 89 2393 2111 sandra.freimuth@hauck-aufhaeuser.de www.hauck-aufhaeuser.de BRUSSELS, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- On Monday 6 June, European citizens will show the EU standing committee exactly how they feel about the toxic chemical glyphosate. Supporters of WeMove.EU, the movement for a better Europe, will join others in protesting the renewal of glyphosate's licence. If the standing committee approves the licence, it would mean the continued spread of the probably carcinogenic chemical into our everyday environment. The group will show the European Commission what their decision will mean for Europe: burnt grass, brown leaves, dead animals, sick people. Each and every decision maker who walks into the meeting will have to vote having seen for themselves the death and destruction they could cause. We will also be delivering a petition with more than 262,000 signatures calling for an outright ban on the chemical. It is sure to be a disruptive and compelling sight! The creative protest will demonstrate the widespread support in European countries for an all-out ban on the chemical, and the anger they feel about companies manipulating 'scientific' studies (and even EU officials). Notes: WeMove.EU is a citizens' movement, campaigning for a better Europe; for a European Union committed to social and economic justice, environmental sustainability and citizen-led democracy. As of June 2016 we have 309,000 members across Europe. Our campaigns are run in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and Polish. Event details: Date: 06 May 2016 Time:9am Place:Albert Borschette Congress Center Rue Froissart 36 1040 Brussels More information: Jorg Rohwedder, Campaigner, joerg@wemove.eu, +49-451-30086913 Contact on Monday in Brussels: Julia Krzyszkowska, Campaigner, julia@wemove.eu , +48-501-23-53-93 SAN JOSE, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 06/03/16 -- In 2010, MediLeaf, a Medical Marijuana Club with locations in both Gilroy and San Jose, was raided by a group known as SCCSET (the Santa Clara County Specialized Enforcement Team). The widely publicized raids have now proven to be one of the biggest wastes of resources by the D.A.'s office in Santa Clara County's history. The Silicon Valley Cannabis Coalition will be holding a press conference today to release more details regarding the case. Press Conference Details What: Silicon Valley Cannabis Coalition Press Conference Regarding the MediLeaf Case. When: Today, June 3, at 11 a.m. Where: Santa Clara County Hall of Justice, 190 West Hedding Street, San Jose, Calif. 95110 About the Case: More than 50 narcotics agents were used to raid MediLeaf's Santa Clara County locations on Thursday, December 9, 2010. Almost 3 years later, charges in the case where filed, and the trial finally began March of 2016. "This was an unreasonable waste of public resources; it makes you question if the mishandling of other cases in Santa Clara County are related," said Attorney J David Nick, who represented defendants in this case. "I certainly hope the D.A.'s office changes the way they manage their priorities." It took Santa Clara D.A. Jeff Rosen's office over five years to build a case and hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayers money, for a case they had no reason to proceed with. According to testimony by the Gilroy Police Records Clerk beginning in 2014, the evidence for this case had more visits by the D.A.'s office than any other evidence, for any other case, in her 25 year career. Tuesday, May 31st, 2016, the MediLeaf operators were found unanimously not guilty on all 22 counts by a jury of 12 in Santa Clara County Superior Court. "The waste of resources, and disrespect for California's medical marijuana laws in this case, are horrendous," said Dave Hodges, director of the Silicon Valley Cannabis Coalition, and expert witness in this case. "Based on the prosecutor's statements in court, combined with policies recommended by the D.A.'s office to our elected officials, it's clear that Jeff Rosen's office has a hatred for all medical marijuana operations." The group claims over the past four years, enforcement against legal medical marijuana operations has increased in Santa Clara County. Also that a representative from the D.A.'s office, Attorney Patrick Vanier, has actively been encouraging both city and county officials to create policies that ban access to medical marijuana or make it very difficult for any medical marijuana business to operate. "This case and the horrible regulations in San Jose show the prejudice towards lawful medical marijuana businesses by dishonest elected officials throughout Santa Clara County," said Hodges. "Rosen ran on a platform of respecting medical marijuana, but as always, actions speak louder than words." Although, the case is now over, and MediLeaf proven victorious, the group has no chance of reopening in Santa Clara County unless San Jose ballot Measure C passes in the June 7th election next week. San Jose Measure C would modify San Jose's current regulations to allow for more access to Medical Marijuana, and allow Medical Marijuana patients under the age of 21 to safely access their medication without buying it off the streets. "The only opportunity to for clubs like MediLeaf to reopen would be if San Jose ballot Measure C were to pass," said Attorney Russell Goodrow, who also represented defendants in this case. "Unfortunately with bans in every city in Santa Clara County except San Jose, and a bad law that prevents new collectives from opening in San Jose, Measure C is the only hope for reasonable regulations in Silicon Valley." Media Contacts: Erika Montgomery 408-218-2391 ErikaMontgomery@ThreeGirlsMedia.com Dave Hodges Silicon Valley Cannabis Coalition 408-614-4718 Dave@A2C2.us MIAMI, FL -- (Marketwired) -- 06/03/16 -- Ami James Brands, Inc. (OTCQB: AJBI) ("Ami James Brands" or "Company"), a licensing and brand management company with its core business rooted in the tattoo industry, is pleased to announce its President, Ami James, will be traveling across Europe to explore potential opportunities for the Company within new markets. While on tour, Mr. James will also be hosting the grand opening of tattoo studio "Next Level Tattoos Costi" (www.costi-tattoo.com) in Bucharest, Romania, on Saturday, June 18th. "Romania, much like a lot of Europe, has had an underground tattoo scene for decades, but only recently, with global tattoo acceptance on the rise, have legitimate studios and artists had the opportunity to flourish," commented Ami James, President of Ami James Brands, Inc. "These guys are truly next level with their use of organic pigments and other techniques they incorporate into their work. As an artist, it's always great to see what other artists are doing in terms of design, technique, and innovation. As the President of AJBI, it's important for me to explore global grass roots opportunities that are available to us as we grow the Ami James brand on an international scale." After attending the grand opening in Romania, Mr. James will travel to Copenhagen, Denmark, to visit the offices of the largest online tattoo portal in the world -- Tattoodo at www.tattoodo.com. Over the course of the next several weeks, the Company will be consulting with industry experts to outline shortcomings in the tattoo industry and develop possible solutions that will lead to potential revenue streams and expansion into different domestic and international markets. About Ami James Brands, Inc. (AJBI) Ami James Brands, Inc. is a licensing and brand management company with its core business rooted in the tattoo industry. From apparel and fashion, to consolidating the fragmented tattoo industry, artist and entrepreneur Ami James is arguably the most recognizable face in the tattoo world. The Company is based in Miami, Florida, the home of the legendary "Miami Ink" tattoo studio, the Love Hate Social Club. For additional information regarding Ami James Brands, Inc. visit www.amijamesbrands.com. Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: Certain statements in this news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of Rule 175 under the Securities Act of 1933 and Rule 3b-6 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and are subject to the safe harbor created by those rules. All statements, other than statements of fact, included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding potential future plans and objectives of the Company, are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The Company undertakes no duty to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this release. Contact: Investor Relations (888) 481-5999 (Toll-free) E-mail: ir@amijamesbrands.com Website: www.amijamesbrands.com DUBLIN, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global Military Floating Bridge Market 2016-2020" report to their offering. The global military floating bridge market to grow at a CAGR of 4.61% during the period 2016-2020. Global Military Floating Bridge Market 2016-2020, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market. The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global military floating bridge market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the sales of military floating bridges, including modular floating bridges (standard ribbon bridges and IRBs) and self-propelled floating bridges. Furthermore, the revenue generated from the modernization of existing floating bridge systems, and services (training) are covered. However, the revenue generated from amphibious bridge systems, bridge erection equipment, and ferry systems, and after-sales services are not considered. One trend that is expected to boost market growth is the rapid deployment capability of military bridges. The ongoing global military trend is focused on the development of rapid deployment forces to engage in asymmetrical conflicts. Thus, the combatant forces can attain the operational efficiency by employing a good synergy between their components, and ensure high mobility of the support equipment. Thus, the military organizations across the globe are deploying rapidly emplaced bridge systems, including assault bridges, wheel vehicle mounted bridges, floating ribbon bridges, as well as amphibious bridges. According to the report, a key growth driver is the collaborative effort to counter tension in MENA. The rising instability in MENA, including political volatility, violence, and growing dominance of rebel forces, has considerably dominated the military agenda of the international community in recent times. Due to the geographical impotence, MENA (situated at the intersection of Asia, Africa, and Europe) has been a prime focus for the US foreign and defense policies over last four decades. Further, the report states that one challenge that would hinder market growth is defense budget cuts. Key vendors - AM General - China Harzone Industry - CNIM - Jiangsu Bailey Steel Bridge - General Dynamics - RPC Technologies Other prominent vendors - FBM Babcock Marine - Mabey - Oshkosh Defense - WFEL For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/wcgwdh/global_military 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 CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The U.S. dollar extended its early slide against the other major currencies in European deals on Friday, as the U.S. jobs growth slowed much more than expected in May, partly reflected by the impact of a recent strike by Verizon workers. The Labor Department said non-farm payroll employment edged up by just 38,000 jobs in May compared to economist estimates for an increase of about 158,000 jobs. The report said the unemployment rate still fell to 4.7 percent in May from 5.0 percent in April, as people left the labor force. The unemployment rate had been expected to dip to 4.9 percent. The greenback slipped to more than a 3-week low of 107.58 against the yen, 3-day low of 1.4523 versus pound, more than 2-week lows of 0.9810 versus the franc and 1.1289 versus the euro, off its early high of 109.14, 2-day highs of 1.4399, 0.9920 and 1.1114, respectively. The greenback dropped to a weekly low of 1.2978 versus the loonie, more than 2-week low of 0.7307 versus the aussie and more than a 4-week low of 0.6932 versus the kiwi, from its previous highs of 1.3106, 0.7218 and 0.6801, respectively. The next possible support for the greenback is seen around 106.00 against the yen, 1.44 against the pound, 0.97 against the franc, 1.14 against the euro, 1.28 against the loonie, 0.74 against the aussie and 0.705 against the kiwi. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - June 3, 2016) - DNI Metals Inc. (CSE: DNI) (OTC: DMNKF) (FSE: DG7N) ("DNI" or the "Company") DNI adds New Director, Keith Minty, a mining engineer to help with the development of the Vohitsara Graphite Deposit. Mr. Minty, P. Eng. MBA has more than 30 years professional experience in mineral resource exploration and development in precious and base metals, industrial minerals and coal in Canada and internationally. Mr. Minty has directly involved in the realizing mineral resource projects value by constructing, operating and managing gold and platinum group metal projects. Mr. Minty has been associated with premier mineral resource exploration and developing companies such as Hunter Dickinson Inc., Viceroy Resources, North American Palladium and Thani Investments in many senior operating and management positions. Until 2013, Mr. Minty was the Chief Operating officer for Thani Investment Ltd.,(a private Dubai based Venture Capital Group) and a subsidiary of Thani Emirates Resources Ltd., and was primary responsible for unlocking value from their worldwide mineral resource projects. Mr. Minty obtained extensive graphite technical and operating experience at both North Coast Industries (now Northern Graphite Corporation) Bissett Creek Graphite and Cal Graphite Corporation (now Ontario Graphite Inc.) Kearney graphite mine and has experience of in the development of several past and new Sri Lanka graphite projects. Mr. Minty has had the opportunity of conducting Madagascar precious metals project valuations and is knowledgeable of the political and social requirements associated with Madagascar project development and operations. Mr. Minty is an active member of the board of directors of Auryn Resources Inc. and Callinex Mines Inc. mineral resource companies. Mr. Minty obtained a B.Sc. in Mining Engineering from Queen' University in 1978 and a MBA from Athabasca University in 2014. Paul Gorman has resigned from the board of DNI. The board expresses their appreciation in Mr. Gorman valuable contributions in advancing the company to it's new operating entity. DNI's board of directors approved a debt for equity transaction and is issuing 300,000 shares to a consultant. In the next 90 days DNI has 437,500 options expiring. With the addition of a new CFO and three new directors, the board has approved the granting of incentive stock options. Pursuant to its Stock Option Plan, DNI has granted incentive stock options to certain directors, officers, and consultants of the Company to purchase up to an aggregate of 2,250,000 common shares in the capital stock of the Company. The options are exercisable at a price of $0.06 per common share, on or before June 3, 2021. The company's approved option plan allows for up to 10% or 3,972,420 options to be issued. Neither the CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. DNI - Canadian Securities Exchange DG7N - Frankfurt DMNKF - OTC Issued: 39,724,204 For further information, contact: DNI Metals Inc. - Dan Weir, President & CEO 416-595-1195 DanWeir@dnimetals.com Also visit www.dnimetals.com We seek Safe Harbour. This announcement may include forward looking statements. While these statements represent DNI's best current judgment, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary, including risk factors listed in DNI's Annual Information Form and its MD&As, all of which are available from SEDAR and on its website. JERUSALEM (dpa-AFX) - The US State Department said in its Country Reports on Terrorism that the total number of terrorist attacks in 2015 decreased by 13 percent when compared to 2014. Total fatalities due to terrorist attacks decreased by 14 percent, principally as a result of fewer attacks and deaths in Iraq, Pakistan, and Nigeria. This represents the first decline in total terrorist attacks and resulting fatalities worldwide since 2012. At the same time, there were several countries, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey, where terrorist attacks and total deaths increased in 2015. Acting Coordinator for Counterterrorism Justin Siberell, who provided an overview of key aspects of the 2015 Country Reports on Terrorism, said that in 2015, the United States faced a dynamic and evolving terrorist threat environment. The international community made important progress in degrading terrorist safe havens - in particular, a sizeable reduction in the amount of territory held by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, as well as the finances and foreign terrorist fighters available to it. According to the statistical annex prepared by the University of Maryland and appended to the report, more than 55 percent of all attacks last year took place in five countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nigeria. And 74 percent of all deaths due to terrorist attacks took place in five countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Syria, and Pakistan. 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. WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - In a fresh, scathing attack on Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton said his presumptive rival in the race for White House is temperamentally unfit to become US President. In what was termed as a major foreign policy and national security address, the Democratic presidential front-runner told her supporters in San Diego, California, that Trump's foreign policy ideas were dangerously incoherent. 'They're not even really ideas, but just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies.' The former Secretary of State rejected Trump's foreign policy stance and called him thin-skinned, irrational, and unprepared. She warned that a Trump administration could start overseas wars and ruin the US economy. 'We cannot put the security of our children and grandchildren in Donald Trump's hands,' she said. Clinton, whose fight with Bernie Sanders for a Democratic ticket is still not over, said electing Trump would be a historic mistake. The 68 year-old business magnate hit back, saying Clinton 'no longer has credibility - too much failure in office'. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. LONDON, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Cindy Crawford joined Orbis, the international eye care charity that fights blindness around the world, to unveil its new Flying Eye Hospital at a press conference at Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday. The third-generation Flying Eye Hospital is the world's only mobile ophthalmic teaching hospital aboard an aircraft. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160603/375168 ) Hundreds of experts have combined their avionics, hospital engineering, technology and clinical expertise to make the new Flying Eye Hospital a reality. It features a modular design, 3D technology and live broadcast capabilities, enabling Orbis and its team of 400+ medical volunteers, to train more doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals across Africa, Asia and Latin America. There are 39 million blind people globally; with 90% living in developing countries with limited access to sight-saving treatments, yet 80% of blindness is preventable and treatable. For over 30 years, Orbis has helped countries build the skills and resources required to deliver quality eye care to those in need. In September 2014, Cindy Crawford, Omega Brand Ambassador, witnessed a sight-saving programme first hand with the previous Flying Eye Hospital, in Peru. Omega has supported Orbis since 2011. "Our mission at Orbis is to bring the world together to fight blindness, as we believe that no one should go blind from conditions that are treatable or preventable," said Bob Ranck, President & CEO, Orbis International. "The Flying Eye Hospital helps us do that. It is in equal parts teacher, envoy and advocate. We harness this powerful tool for change to support long-term programmes around the world." The new plane is equipped with everything needed to provide hands-on training to local ophthalmic professionals. The 3D filming and broadcast capabilities will enable programme participants to experience and learn from live surgeries with a view similar to the surgeon's microscope lens. "We are not here to show off, we are here to show how," explains Dr. Daniel Neely, Orbis volunteer pediatric ophthalmic surgeon and Medical Advisor. "The new technologies on the Flying Eye Hospital allow us as teachers to share, train and interact with more of our colleagues in the developing world, giving a deeper and richer learning environment to transfer the skills to their practice. Most exciting, we are able to continue the mentorship relationships long after the plane has moved on, via Cybersight-our telemedicine portal." The Flying Eye Hospital includes: a 46-seat classroom, state-of-the-art AV/IT room patient care/laser treatment room operating room sterilization room pre and post-operative care room. The MD-10 aircraft housing the new Flying Eye Hospital, has been donated by Orbis's longtime partner FedEx,and has been custom designed to bring the best medical technology and training direct to areas of need. It is the only non-land-based hospital globally that is accredited by theAAAASFI (American Association for Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgery Facilities International.) TheFlying Eye Hospital will conduct its inaugural program in Shenyang, China this September, before heading to Indonesia in November. Vilnius, Lithuania, 2016-06-03 15:41 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On the initiative of a shareholder of AB INVL Technology (legal entity code 300893533, address of the registered office: Gyneju str. 16, Vilnius, Republic of Lithuania, hereinafter, the Company), shares held by which grant at least 1/10 votes, and by the decision of Kazimieras Tonkunas, authorised person of the Company, the Company's extraordinary general meeting of shareholders is to be held on 27 June 2016 at 8:30 a.m.The extraordinary general meeting of shareholders will be held in the premises at Gyneju str. 14, Vilnius.Registration of the shareholders will start at 8:00 a.m.Only the persons who are the shareholders of the Company at the end of the accounting day of the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders are entitled to participate and to vote at the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders.The accounting day of the meeting is 17 June 2016.The total number of the shares issued by the Company, with the nominal value of EUR 0.29 each, and the number of votes carried by such shares in the general meeting of shareholders are the same - 12,175,321 shares. ISIN code of the Company's shares is LT0000128860.Agenda of the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders:1. Amendment of the Articles of Association of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology and approval of a new wording of the Articles of Association.2. Amendment of the Management Agreement of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology with the management company UAB INVL Asset Management and approval of a new wording of the Management Agreement.3. Approval of the rules for formation and activities of the audit committee of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology, election of members of the audit committee and setting remuneration for the independent member of the audit committee.Draft resolutions of the Company's extraordinary general meeting of shareholders:1. Amendment of the Articles of Association of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology and approval of a new wording of the Articles of Association.To amend the Articles of Association of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology approved by a resolution of the general meeting of shareholders of AB INVL Technology held on 29 April 2016 and to approve a new wording of the Articles of Association of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology, by replacing the text of the Articles of Association in full (enclosed).To authorise Kazimieras Tonkunas (with the right to re-delegate the authority) to sign the Articles of Association of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology.2. Amendment of the Management Agreement of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology with the management company UAB INVL Asset Management and approval of a new wording of the Management Agreement.To amend the Management Agreement approved by a resolution of the general meeting of shareholders of AB INVL Technology held on 29 April 2016 with the management company UAB INVL Asset Management (legal entity code 126263073, address of the registered office: Gyneju str. 14, Vilnius, Republic of Lithuania) and to approve a new wording of the Management Agreement of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology with the management company UAB INVL Asset Management, by replacing the text of the Management Agreement in full (enclosed).3. Approval of the rules for formation and activities of the audit committee of a special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology, election of members of the audit committee and setting remuneration for the independent member of the audit committee.To approve the rules for formation and activities of the audit committee of a special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology (enclosed).To elect Danute Kadanaite and Tomas Bubinas (independent member of the audit committee) as members of the audit committee of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology.To set remuneration for the independent member of the audit committee for his work in the audit committee at the hourly rate not higher than EUR 145. To instruct the management company UAB INVL Asset Management (legal entity code 126263073, address of the registered office: Gyneju str. 14, Vilnius, Republic of Lithuania) to determine the procedure of payment of the remuneration to the independent member of the audit committee after the issuance of the license for the closed-end type investment company.The shareholders may review the documents related to the agenda of the meeting, draft resolutions on every item of the agenda, documents which have to be submitted to the general meeting of shareholders and other information related to exercise of the shareholder's rights in the premises of AB INVL Technology at Gyneju str. 16, Vilnius, during working hours.The shareholders are entitled: (i) to propose to supplement the agenda of the general meeting of shareholders, submitting a draft resolution on every additional item of the agenda or, where there is no need to take a decision, of the shareholder's explanation (this right is granted to shareholders who hold shares carrying at least 1/20 of all the votes). A proposal to supplement the agenda is to be submitted in writing by registered mail or delivered in person against signature. The agenda is supplemented if the proposal is received no later than 14 days before the general meeting of shareholders; (ii) to propose draft resolutions on the issues already included or to be included in the agenda of the general meeting of shareholders at any time prior to the date of the general meeting of shareholders (in writing, by registered mail or delivered in person against signature) or in writing during the general meeting of shareholders (this right is granted to shareholders who hold shares carrying at least 1/20 of all the votes); (iii) to submit questions to the Company related to the issues on the agenda of the general meeting of shareholders in advance but no later than 3 business days prior to the general meeting of shareholders in writing by registered mail or delivered in person against signature.A shareholder participating at the general meeting of shareholders and having the right to vote, must present a personal identity document. Each shareholder may authorize either a natural or a legal person to participate and to vote on behalf of the shareholder at the general meeting of shareholders. The proxy has the same rights as the represented shareholder would have at the general meeting of shareholders. The authorized persons must have personal identity documents and a power of attorney approved in the manner specified by law, which must be submitted to the Company no later than before the commencement of registration for the general meeting of shareholders. A power of attorney issued abroad must be translated into the Lithuanian language and legalised in accordance with the procedure prescribed by law. The Company does not establish a special form of a power of attorney.A shareholder is entitled to issue a power of attorney by means of electronic communications to legal or natural persons for participation and voting on his behalf at the general meeting of shareholders. The shareholder must inform the Company about the power of attorney issued by means of electronic communications no later than before the commencement of registration for the general meeting of shareholders. The power of attorney issued by means of electronic communications and the notice about it must be written and may be submitted to the Company by means of electronic communications, if the security of transmitted information is ensured and the identity of the shareholder can be verified.A shareholder or his proxy may vote in writing by filling in a general ballot paper, in this case the requirement to present a personal identity document does not apply. The form of a general ballot paper is presented on the Company's website. Upon a shareholder's request, the Company shall send the general ballot paper to the requesting shareholder by registered mail or shall deliver it in person against signature no later than 10 days prior to the general meeting of shareholders free of charge. The shareholder or his authorized representative must sign a completed general ballot paper. The completed general ballot paper signed by the shareholder or other person having the right to vote and the document confirming the right to vote must be presented to the Company in writing no later than on the last working day preceding the meeting, sending them by registered mail to AB INVL Technology at Gyneju str. 16, LT-01109 Vilnius.The Company does not provide possibilities of participating and voting at the meeting by means of electronic communications. Information in connection with the convened general meeting of shareholders (notice on convocation of the general meeting of shareholders, information about the Company's shares, draft resolutions, etc.) is available on AB INVL Technology's website at www.invltechnology.lt.Enclosed:1. Ballot paper of the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders;2. Draft Articles of Association of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology;3. Draft Management Agreement of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology with the management company UAB INVL Asset Management;4. Draft rules for formation and activities of the audit committee of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology;5. Curriculum vitae of Danute Kadanaite;6. Curriculum vitae of Tomas Bubinas.The person authorized to provide additional information: Kazimieras Tonkunas Authorised person acting pursuant to the power of attorney, dated 13 May 2016 E-mail: k.tonkunas@invltechnology.ltAttachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=574574 The Certified Automotive Parts Association (CAPA) and Intertek, a leading Total Quality Assurance provider to industries worldwide, have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the China Automotive Technology and Research Center (CATARC), formalizing their cooperation to encourage the development of high quality, certified aftermarket automotive parts in China. Under the agreement, the organizations will work together to develop Chinese standards and promote cooperation among automotive companies, testing agencies, certification entities and other institutions in the U.S. and China. "We are pleased to support the efforts to make high quality, certified aftermarket automotive parts available to Chinese consumers, collision shops and insurers," stated Jack Gillis, Executive Director of CAPA. "We look forward to working with CATARC and Intertek to exchange information and ideas that will help develop a certification program in China." Prior to January 1, 2015, only original equipment manufacturer (OEM) replacement parts could be used for insurance-based repairs in China. Since then, the market has opened up to aftermarket parts-parts made by independent manufacturers-provided they are certified to be comparable to those made by the OEM. Currently, several Chinese agencies are working to define those certification standards, including CATARC. "CAPA's vision, openness and expertise, along with that of Intertek, is greatly appreciated by the Chinese aftermarket industry," said Ms. Jie Ma, Vice Director of Automotive Engineering Research Institute at CATARC. "We look forward to working with both groups to promote the development of part certification standards in China and providing more options for our domestic automobile industry." CAPA's standards have been used in the United States to certify that high quality aftermarket auto parts are comparable to their OEM counterparts, based on their design, materials and construction. Intertek Transportation Technologies has served as a partner to CAPA in certifying these parts based on years of expertise in performance, quality, and reliability standards and expectations for the automotive industry. "Intertek is committed to providing comprehensive solutions to our customers in China and across the globe," said Tim Hubbard, Sr. Vice President at Intertek. "As CAPA's long time validator in the U.S., we look forward to working with them to potentially bring their ideas and insights to the Chinese aftermarket industry with CATARC." The memorandum was signed by all three groups on June 2 in Washington, D.C. About CAPA The Certified Automotive Parts Association, founded in 1987, is the nation's only independent, non-profit certification organization for automotive crash parts whose sole purpose is to ensure that both consumers and the industry have the means to identify high quality parts via the CAPA Quality Seal. CAPA is an ANSI accredited standards developer for competitive crash repair parts. For more information see CAPAcertified.org. About Intertek Intertek is a leading Total Quality Assurance provider to industries worldwide. Our network of more than 1,000 laboratories and offices and over 40,000 people in more than 100 countries, delivers innovative and bespoke Assurance, Testing, Inspection and Certification solutions for our customers' operations and supply chains. www.intertek.com Bringing quality and safety to life. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160603005059/en/ Contacts: For CAPA: Deborah G. Klouser Director of Operations 202-737-2212 debbie@CAPAcertified.org or For Intertek: John Clark Global Marketing Manager 734-582-2950 john.clark@intertek.com or Cheryl Prejsnar Public Relations Manager 630-481-3185 cheryl.prejsnar@intertek.com VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA and DOWNERS GROVE, ILLINOIS -- (Marketwired) -- 06/03/16 -- Kelso Technologies Inc. (TSX: KLS)(NYSE MKT: KIQ) ("Kelso" or the "Company") announces the following voting results following the Company's 2016 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders (the "Meeting") which was held June 2, 2016 in Vancouver. A total of 22,210,491 common shares of the 46,071,752 common shares outstanding at the record date were voted at the Meeting, representing approximately 48.21% of the issued and outstanding common shares of the Company at the record date. Election of Directors On a vote by ballot, each of the following nominees proposed by management was elected as a director of the Company to hold office until the next annual meeting of shareholders or until their successors are elected or appointed: ---------------------------------------------------------------- Nominee % Votes For % Votes Withheld ---------------------------------------------------------------- James R. Bond 71.63 28.37 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Neil Gambow 68.25 31.75 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Hughes 70.47 29.53 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Anthony Andrukaitis 80.79 19.21 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Phil Dyer 71.67 28.33 ---------------------------------------------------------------- John R. O'Neill 79.87 20.13 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Cass 61.19 38.81 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Other Matters Voted Upon In addition, by resolution passed by an 82.36% affirmative ballot vote, Smythe CPA was appointed auditor of the Company for the coming year. At a meeting of the Board of Directors held after the Meeting the following officers were appointed: James R. Bond - President and Chief Executive Officer Richard Lee - Chief Financial Officer Anthony Andrukaitis - Chief Operating Officer Neil Gambow - Chief Technology Officer Kathy Love - Corporate Secretary About Kelso Technologies Kelso is a railway equipment supplier that designs, produces and sells proprietary tank car service equipment used in the safe handling and containment of hazardous materials during transport. Products are specifically designed to provide economic and operational advantages while reducing the potential effects of human error and environmental harm during the transport of hazardous materials. The Company is recognized as a reliable supplier of AAR approved railway equipment that addresses the regulatory concerns about railroad safety in North America. For a more complete business and financial profile of the Company, please view the Company's website at www.kelsotech.com and public documents posted under the Company's profile on www.sedar.com and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov in the United States. On behalf of the Board of Directors, James R. Bond, CEO and President Contacts: Kelso Technologies Inc. James R. Bond CEO and President bond@kelsotech.com Kelso Technologies Inc. Richard Lee Chief Financial Officer lee@kelsotech.com www.kelsotech.com BENTONVILLE (dpa-AFX) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) said Friday that it will test its grocery delivery service with ride-sharing services Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. within the next two weeks in Denver and Phoenix. The move is part of the retailer's efforts to better compete with online retail giant Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN). This is in addition to a quiet pilot program that the company started in March for its warehouse chain Sam's Club with Deliv Inc., involving delivery of general merchandise and grocery for business members in Miami. At the company's annual shareholders meeting, Wal-Mart CEO Doug McMillon will announce its newest pilot program - a last-mile delivery test through services like Uber, Lyft and Deliv. Wal-Mart provided further details of the grocery delivery pilot program with Uber and Lyft. A customer in one of the test locations can place their grocery order online and select a delivery window. Wal-Mart's personal shoppers will select and prepare the customer's order and the team may request a driver from one of these services to come to the store, pick up the customer's order, and take it directly to the customer's location. Customers can pay Wal-Mart the normal $7 to $10 delivery charge online, and need not make any payment to the driver. The company will inform customers that their order is being delivered by a driver from Uber or Lyft. Michael Bender, EVP and chief operating officer of Walmart Global eCommerce said, 'We'll start small and let our customers guide us, but testing new things like last-mile delivery allows us to better evaluate the various ways we can best serve our customers how, when and where they need us.' 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. WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Supporters of Donald Trump have clashed with protesters at a rally in San Jose, California, Thursday night. It is reported to be one of the worst such confrontations so far. Violence broke out shortly after Trump finished speaking at the San Jose Convention Center in northern California. What began as peaceful protests outside the Convention Center quickly descended into running-battles around it. Protesters who gathered outside the rally pelted Trump's supporters with eggs, punched, and spat at them. A protester burnt an American flag. Addressing the rally, Trump hit back at Hillary Clinton's scathing attack on him, saying: 'Hillary Clinton has to go to jail.' Hours ago, Clinton had said his presumptive rival in the race for White House is temperamentally unfit to become US President. Earlier, police who formed a line to allow Trump supporters access to the rally quickly broke up fistfights that erupted between the two sides. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. DUBLIN, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global Wind Tower Market Size, Share, Development, Growth and Demand Forecast to 2022 - Industry Insights by Tower Type (Tubular Steel Towers, Concrete Towers, Hybrid Towers, Lattice Towers, Guyed Pole Towers) by Application (Onshore, Offshore)" report to their offering. The global wind tower market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.4% during the forecast period. Different types of wind towers are used for the efficient generation of wind energy. Tubular steel towers, concrete towers, lattice towers and hybrid towers are used for large wind turbines. Whereas, guyed pole towers are used for small wind turbines. Wind tower being one of the most important parts of a wind turbine would cost 25% to 30% of the total cost of wind turbine. Wind towers are specially designed for different applications. Wind towers are manufactured for onshore wind turbine, as well as offshore wind turbine. Distinct governments across the globe are are looking for alternative source of energy to reduce their dependency on conventional energy sources. Wind energy is one of the most efficient alternatives for conventional fossil fuel based energy. Therefore, a high growth in the wind energy industry is expected during the forecast period, thus driving the growth of the global wind tower market. One of the key trends witnessed in the global wind tower market is the increasing job opportunities for skilled labor worldwide. The manufacturing of wind towers require skilled labor, thus providing work opportunity for workers with specialization in electrical engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, and various other field of manufacturing. The high rate of depletion of fossil fuels and increasing demand for sustainable and ecofriendly energy source are indirectly creating ample opportunities for the growth of the global wind tower market. Companies Mentioned: CS Wind Corporation Enercon Gmbh General Electric (Ge) Kgw Schweriner Maschinen-Und Anlagenbau Gmbh Shanghai Taisheng Wind Power Equipment Co. Ltd. Siemens Ag Suzlon Energy Limited Trinity Structural Towers, Inc. Vestas Wind Systems A/S Windar Renovables Report Structure: 1. Research Scope & Methodology 2. Executive Summary 3. Market Outlook 4. Global Wind Tower Market Size and Forecast (2012 - 2022) 5. Global Wind Tower Market, by Geography 6. Competitive Positioning Analysis 7. Company Profiles and Strategic Developments 8. Appendix For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/fskwvv/global_wind_tower 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 VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 06/03/16 -- A British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) panel has permanently banned John "Johny" "JFA" Ferdinand Alexander Spangenberg and two companies he incorporated from B.C.'s capital markets for perpetrating a fraud on investors and illegally distributing securities. In March 2016, the panel found that Spangenberg and the corporate respondents fraudulently raised over $170,000 from at least six B.C. residents between June 2011 and December 2013 in exchange for shares in Odyssey Renewable Growth Inc. and geoTreasuries Clean Energy Limited. Spangenberg and the corporate respondents also illegally distributed securities to certain of the investors. Spangenberg was a director and the sole controlling mind of both companies. In its sanctions decision, the panel wrote that "Significant harm has been done to the investors in this case. All of them have lost all of their investments in the corporate respondents." For their misconduct, the panel permanently prohibited Spangenberg, Odyssey, and geoTreasuries from trading or purchasing securities or exchange contracts. The panel has also permanently banned them from becoming or acting as a promoter or registrant, from engaging in investor relations activities, and from acting in a management or consultative capacity in connection with the securities market. The panel also banned Spangenberg from acting as a director or officer of any issuer. The panel ordered that Spangenberg pay an administrative penalty of $225,000 to the Commission. The panel also ordered that Odyssey pay to the Commission $69,996 and geoTreasuries pay to the Commission $101,450, which were amounts the panel found they had obtained as a result of their misconduct. The panel ordered that Spangenberg is jointly and severally liable for these amounts. You may view the sanctions decision on our website www.bcsc.bc.ca by typing John Ferdinand Alexander Spangenberg, Odyssey Renewable Growth Inc., geoTreasuries Clean Energy Limited, Clean Carbon Finance, Clean Energy Finance USA, One geoFinance, GT2 Climate Risk Bonds Inc., GeoSteward Inc., or 2016 BCSECCOM 180 in the search box. Information regarding disciplinary proceedings can be found in the Enforcement section of the BCSC website. Please visit the Canadian Securities Administrators' Disciplined List for information relating to persons disciplined by provincial securities regulators, the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) and the Mutual Fund Dealers Association (MFDA). About the British Columbia Securities Commission (www.bcsc.bc.ca) The British Columbia Securities Commission is the independent provincial government agency responsible for regulating capital markets in British Columbia through the administration of the Securities Act. Our mission is to protect and promote the public interest by fostering: -- A securities market that is fair and warrants public confidence -- A dynamic and competitive securities industry that provides investment opportunities and access to capital Learn how to protect yourself and become a more informed investor at www.investright.org. Contacts: Media Contact: British Columbia Securities Commission Alison Walker Media Relations 604-899-6713 www.bcsc.bc.ca Public inquiries: 604-899-6854 or 1-800-373-6393 (toll free) XI'AN, CHINA -- (Marketwired) -- 06/03/16 -- Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, Lawrence MacAulay, participated in the G20 Agricultural Ministers' Meeting in Xi'an, China today, where Ministers supported the adoption of the G20 Agriculture Ministers' Meeting Declaration. The Declaration focuses on ways the G20 can promote food security, nutrition, sustainable agricultural growth, and rural development. During the G20 meeting Minister MacAulay stressed the importance of trade and agricultural innovation to respond to climate change. Minister MacAulay met for the first time with Mr. Han Changfu, China's Minister of Agriculture. He used this meeting to reinforce Canada's commitment to cooperate with China in agricultural opportunities and to continue to seek support for science-based trade decisions. Earlier in the week in Beijing, Minister MacAulay had the opportunity to meet with senior officials from China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) to discuss progress on market access issues, including canola, beef and pork. Canada continues, in consultation with Canadian industry, to work towards securing increased access for our commodities and a permanent and commercially viable solution for canola exports to China. Agriculture is of significant economic importance to both countries, and a key aspect of our bilateral relationship with China. Also in Beijing, Minister MacAulay participated in various events with Canadian industry, including the signing of a partnership agreement between the Canadian canola industry and the Chinese Nutrition Society to promote canola oil as a healthy vegetable oil; and the opening of a Cows Ice Cream Store, an ice cream manufacturer and chain of ice cream stores based in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Quick facts -- China is Canada's second-largest trading partner, after the United States. In 2015, the value of Canada's total agri-food and seafood exports to China was $6.3 billion. -- With a population of more than 1.4 billion, China is one of the fastest- growing economies in the world. -- This is the third G20 Agricultural Ministers' Meeting, previous meetings were held in France and Turkey. Quotes "Canada continues to participate fully in international discussions and promote solutions that facilitate trade so we can grow our economy and create jobs. This is the best path to helping farmers around the world be more productive, earn better incomes, and reduce environmental impacts." -- Honourable Lawrence MacAulay, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Additional links - G20 and Canada - History and Members of the G20 Follow us on Twitter: @AAFC_Canada Like us on Facebook: CanadianAgriculture Contacts: Guy Gallant Director of Communications Office of the Honourable Lawrence MacAulay 613-773-1059 Media Relations Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Ottawa, Ontario 613-773-7972 1-866-345-7972 PHUKET, THAILAND -- (Marketwired) -- 06/03/16 -- Travelers are invited to explore the flavor and spirit of Phuket this summer season as Renaissance Phuket Resort & Spa invites guests to celebrate a Global Day of Discovery. This June 16th marks the kick off of this vibrant, culturally inspired event at the iconic Phuket beach resort, set along beautiful Mai Khao Beach. Embark on a Tease, Tour & Taste at 2:00 PM, which invites guests to discover the art of spirit making at the CHALONG BAY rum factory. Indulge in the subtle flavors of Phuket's own indigenous, handcrafted rum. Guests will leave the hotel and set out via bus to the factory, where they'll hear stories about Phuket, enjoy snacks and drinks, and stop at a local pottery crafter to see how bowls are made and buy souvenirs. Guests arrive at the factory, where they'll enjoy a press conference and presentation, and set out for a factory tour by a factory specialist. Discoverers will learn how the rum is made, from sugar canes to the distilling process. Afterwards, travelers are invited to discover and create CHALONG BAY inspired cocktails. Following the tour and drinks, guests can savor inspired fresh, local seafood, house-made BBQ recipes, and local Thai and International pop and acoustic music. This journey through the art of spirit making celebrates some of Phuket's most unique flavors. Afterwards guests will head back to the Renaissance resort and villas in Phuket, where a scenic Thailand beach vacation waits. Just beyond the resort guests can visit Similan, Phi Phi Islands and many of the best dive sites in Thailand with ease, or spend the day on Surin Beach, or Mai Khao Beach, right outside the hotel. Guests can explore other local sights, or relax right at the hotel and unwind with a treatment at Quan Spa. This year's Global Day of Discovery at the iconic hotel near Phuket airport, is a celebration of the city's vibrant culture and rich flavors. For more information, call +66-76-363999 and make your reservations. About the Renaissance Phuket Resort & Spa Set amidst the unspoiled splendor of Mai Khao Beach, Renaissance Phuket Resort & Spa, a Marriott Luxury and Lifestyle Hotel, is the ultimate retreat for guests looking for relaxed luxury. Whether here for a vacation, a dream wedding, or a business retreat, the award-winning resort welcomes guests to experience the beauty of Thailand. Its deluxe guest rooms and private villas boast sophisticated decor, plush bedding, and modern technology, as well as accommodations featuring breathtaking beach views, with some including plunge pools. Guests can enjoy a visit to the resort spa, fit in a workout at the fully-equipped gym, or satisfy their appetite with cuisine from one of several restaurants. Weddings are truly special occasions with settings that include beautiful beach destinations, and inspired event venues in the heart of Phuket. Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3017306 CONTACT: Renaissance Phuket Resort & Spa 555, Moo 3, Mai Khao, Talang Phuket Island 83110 Thailand +66-76-363999 http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/hktbr-renaissance-phuket-resort-and-spa/ The Luxembourg Government forges ahead with the SpaceResources.lu initiative by presenting an overall strategy to be implemented progressively for the exploration and commercial utilization of resources from Near Earth Objects (NEOs), such as asteroids. Amongst the key actions undertaken is the establishment of an appropriate legal and regulatory framework for space resource utilization activities to provide private companies and investors with a secure legal environment. The new law will be based on the findings of a study on legal and regulatory aspects for the utilization of space resources conducted by the University of Luxembourg in cooperation with renowned space law experts in the fields of international space law and policy. The comprehensive legislation is expected to be effective 2017 and will guarantee operators the right to resources harvested in outer space in accordance with international law. Space resource-dedicated licenses will be issued under the new law, and government supervision of the activities of operators and regulating their rights and obligations will be ensured by Luxembourg in accordance with the Outer Space Treaty. Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel stated: "Simultaneously to steps taken on the national level, Luxembourg will strive to promote a legal regulatory framework on the international level supporting investments and growth opportunities for private ventures targeting the utilization of space resources. The Grand-Duchy aims to participate with other nations in all relevant fora in order to agree on a mutually beneficial international framework." Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy, Etienne Schneider, commented: "Luxembourg will offer an attractive overall framework for space resource utilization related activities, including but not limited to the legal regime. The government will dedicate funding to R&D in technologies related to space resource utilization, in line with our ambition to become a European hub for the exploration and use of space resources. Drawing on its success and proven expertise in the commercial satellite services industry, Luxembourg once again opts for space as a key high-tech sector for the country." Minister Schneider furthermore welcomed Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources to Luxembourg, two U.S. companies with visionary ambitions for exploration and use of space resources. Both have established legal entities in the Grand Duchy to build up economic and technological substance, with Deep Space Industries having signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Government and the public-law banking institution "Societe Nationale de Credit et d'Investissement", while an MoU with Planetary Resources is expected to be announced shortly. Etienne Schneider: "We look forward to working with these exciting ventures, as with any other companies both from Europe and from outside of Europe who establish a presence in Luxembourg, to make the vision of sustainable economic development in the space industry a reality." Mr. Georges Schmit, Consul General and Executive Director at the Luxembourg Trade Investment Office in San Francisco, Mr. Jean-Jacques Dordain, Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA) from 2003 to 2015, and Dr. Simon "Pete" Worden, longstanding Director of NASA-Ames Research Center in California, serve as high-level advisors to guide the Luxembourg Government. Jean Jacques Dordain is convinced that: "The spaceresources.lu initiative is timely, and will epitomize innovation, cooperation as well as competition, while being attractive to entrepreneurs and investors far beyond Europe and the traditional space industry. The arrival of American entrepreneurs illustrates the relevance of the initiative and Luxembourg's triple legacy of mining, finance and space is a guarantee for success." Dr. Simon "Pete" Worden said: "Perhaps the most important aspect of Luxembourg's spaceresources.lu initiative is the excitement it is generating across the world particularly young scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs. Everywhere I go I hear young people ask about these ideas. Recently, entrepreneurs from Poland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Colombia and Mexico contacted me to ask how they can get involved. I come from Silicon Valley but I'm convinced that the Silicon Valley for space resources and gateway to an unlimited future of resources for humanity, will be here in Luxembourg." Released by the Luxembourg Ministry of the Economy View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160603005786/en/ Contacts: Ministry of the Economy, Luxembourg Paul ZENNERS, (+352) 247-74126 mobile: (+352) 621 409 141 E-mail: paul.zenners@eco.etat.lu ANN ARBOR, MI--(Marketwired - June 03, 2016) - University Bank, a wholly-owned subsidiary of bank holding company University Bancorp, Inc. (OTCQB: UNIB), announced that it is hosting a fundraiser for the children in Flint on June 20th, 5pm to 8pm with speeches beginning at 6pm. Due to the generous charity of University Bank and local business owners 100% of donations will benefit the two main charities that feed children in Flint when they are not in school, "St. Luke N.E.W. Life Center Food Pantry" and "Catholic Charities of Shiawassee & Genesee Counties". These charities are in real need as their budgets are stretched due to the crisis in Flint and summer is coming. Honored guests who are speaking include Flint's Mayor Karen Weaver, His Excellency the Bishop of Lansing Earl Boyea, Father Tom Firestone who is the pastor of the combined Catholic Parishes in Flint and the former Pastor of Ann Arbor's St. Mary's Student Parish at the University of Michigan, and Catholic Social Services of Washtenaw County who will outline charity opportunities to meet the needs of local Washtenaw County children. The Feeding Children in Flint Fundraiser will be at University Bank's headquarters, 2015 Washtenaw Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. More information about the charities, a link to donate to them, and additional information about the event is available at http://www.university-bank.com/feedflintkids/. University Bank's President Stephen Lange Ranzini noted, "We are honored that the Mayor of Flint and the Bishop of Lansing are both coming to University Bank to help raise money for these key Flint charities. Through generous donations Flint citizens are receiving much assistance, including donated clean water. Here is an opportunity for those who are more fortunate to help provide needed food to the children in Flint." Ann Arbor-based University Bancorp owns 100% of University Bank which, together with its Michigan-based subsidiaries, holds and manages a total of over $18.4 billion in financial assets for over 115,000 customers, and our 347 employees make us the 9 th largest bank based in Michigan. University Bank is an FDIC-insured, locally owned and managed community bank, and meets the financial needs of its community through its creative and innovative services. Founded in 1890, University Bank is proud to have been selected as the "Community Bankers of the Year" by American Banker magazine and as the recipient of the American Bankers Association's Community Bank Award. University Bank's parent company, University Bancorp, was ranked as the #1 top performing publicly traded banking firm in the entire United States in 2015 based on average return on shareholders' equity according to American Banker magazine after being ranked as #2 in the entire United States from 2012-2014. University Bank is a Member FDIC. Contact: Stephen Lange Ranzini President and CEO Phone: 734-741-5858, Ext. 9226 Email: Email contact VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 06/03/16 -- Reservoir Minerals Inc. (TSX VENTURE: RMC)(OTC PINK: RVRLF)(BERLIN: 9RE) ("Reservoir" or the "Company"), advises that a public dissemination has been made under National Instrument 51-102 that communicates opposition to the proposed combination with Nevsun Resources Ltd. ("Nevsun"). The Board of Directors of Reservoir continues to recommend that the Company's shareholders vote FOR the proposed combination transaction. Reservoir's board remains unanimously supportive of the transaction with Nevsun, which was the result of a comprehensive process conducted with oversight and participation of the Reservoir Special Committee. The decision was further supported by a fairness opinion from its financial advisor on the consideration to be received by Reservoir shareholders. Reservoir is also pleased to announce that ISS Proxy Advisory Services ("ISS") and Glass, Lewis & Co. ("Glass Lewis"), two leading independent proxy advisory firms, have recommended that the Company's shareholders vote FOR the Plan of Arrangement through which Nevsun will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of the Company (the "Transaction). In their assessment of the Transaction, both ISS and Glass Lewis identified the reasonable strategic rationale for the business combination, implied premium and expected strong balance sheet of the combined company as factors supporting a FOR recommendation. Under the terms of the Transaction, Reservoir shareholders will receive two Nevsun shares and $0.001 cash per Reservoir common share held. Upon completion of the Transaction, existing shareholders of Nevsun and Reservoir will own approximately 67% and 33% of the pro forma company, respectively, on a fully-diluted in-the-money basis. Details of the Transaction are in the news release dated April 24, 2016. Dr. Simon Ingram, Reservoir's President and CEO commented: "The Board of Reservoir voted unanimously to support this transaction, obtained an independent fairness opinion from Canaccord Genuity and these recent positive recommendations from both ISS and Glass Lewis is a strong endorsement of the proposed combination with Nevsun. Shareholders of the combined company will be owners of a leading mid-tier base metals company with a strong balance sheet and operating cashflow to fund development of Timok." About the Company: 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. For further information on Reservoir Minerals Inc., please consult our website www.reservoirminerals.com. This news release includes certain "forward-looking statements" under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Such forward-looking statements or information, including but not limited to those with respect to receipt of the Information Circular and proxy materials, the expected closing date of the Arrangement, the consideration to be received in respect of the Arrangement, beliefs with respect to future value creation at the Timok Project and the outcome of the Arrangement and benefits to shareholders, and the future ownership by Reservoir shareholders of Nevsun Shares, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Reservoir Minerals Inc. to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or information. Such factors include, among others, (i) the conditions to completion of the arrangement will not be satisfied, including approval by Reservoir's and Nevsun's shareholders, and court approval; (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 (x) 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 disclosed in documents filed from time to time with the securities regulators in the applicable Provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Contacts: Reservoir Minerals Inc. Chris MacIntyre VP Corporate Development +1.416.703.0010 chris@reservoirminerals.com www.reservoirminerals.com DemandJump, a Indianapolis, IN-based Artificial Intelligence Marketing (AIM) platform, raised $1.8m in seed funding. Investors include 4G Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, and Bob Davoli (Managing Director at Sigma Prime). The company intends to use the funds to expand its sales and development teams and to increase client success teams. Established in 2015 by Christopher Day, CEO, and Shawn Schwegman, CSO, DemandJump has just launched its new platform for marketers and brands to calibrate disparate online and offline data, using proprietary artificial intelligence techniques coupled with graph theory and algebraic topology, to identify the best allocation for any budget and resource. FinSMEs 03/06/2016 Glassdoor, a Mill Valley, California-based provider of a jobs and workplace review marketplace, raised $40m in funding. The round was led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., with participation from existing investors Battery Ventures, GV (Google Capital), SutterHill Ventures and Tiger Global. The company, which has raised approximately $200m to date, to continue to expand investments in product, marketing, and people around the globe. Founded in 2007 by CEO Robert Hohman and Tim Besse, Glassdoor is a jobs and recruiting marketplace that allows people to search for jobs and companies to recruit talent. The platform combines free and anonymous reviews, ratings and salary content with job listings to allow job seekers to find a job and address critical questions coming up during the job search, application, interview and negotiation phases of employment. Glassdoor is currently used by more than 30 million monthly unique users, while offering data on approximately 540,000 companies across 190 countries, also serving close to 4,000 partnering employers with recruiting and employer branding solutions. The company has 600 employees in Mill Valley, Chicago, and Dublin, Ireland. FinSMEs 03/06/2016 Social Nature, a Vancouver, Canada-based social product sampling community, raised $1m in seed funding. Investors include: Scott Lake, Co-Founder of Shopify The Pereira / Wharton Family, Founders of RevenueWire and ParetoLogic Founders of Pomme Natural Markets Olympic Gold Medalist Simon Whitfield and Brenda Irwin of Relentless Pursuit Partners Conconi Growth Partners The company intends to use the funds to continue to grow the company across North America. Led by Annalea Krebs, CEO, Social Nature is a community that allows people to test natural products in order to help natural brands get in front of people that are interested in their offering. The company only seeks products that care for the planet, respect animal rights, benefit the community and promote wellness. FinSMEs 03/06/2016 New Delhi/Washington: Two years ago there were questions over whether Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi could get a visa to enter the United States. Next week he visits Washington as one of President Barack Obama's closest international partners. Obama invited Modi for one of the last big visits by a world leader before his term ends in January. Although the trip won't feature a lavish state dinner, the Indian leader will address both houses of Congress, considered a rare honour. This will be their seventh meeting since Modi became prime minister in May 2014, an impressive tally for a US president and a leader who is not a formal ally, said Ashley Tellis at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "The personal relationship between the president and the prime minister... is really one of the unanticipated surprises of the past two years," said Tellis, an expert on India. The developing relationship is seen as an Obama foreign policy success. Washington views India as an important part of its rebalance to Asia and as a counterweight to China. The two countries are finalising agreements that would make it possible for their militaries to cooperate more closely, and for US defence manufacturers to both sell and make high-tech weaponry in India. A deal on logistics would govern issues such as how the two countries account for costs of military exercises. Another involves encrypted communications and geospatial data transfer. A history of colonial rule followed by decades of non-alignment has, however, made New Delhi wary of an embrace by the more powerful United States, which has overtaken Russia as India's top arms supplier. "It is neither a strategic partnership nor an alliance," said Nitin Gokhale, founder of defence portal Bharat Shakti. "It can be a long-term arrangement, but to call it a strategic partnership would be premature." There are frustrations, too, on the US side. The two countries reached a civil nuclear agreement in 2005, but it has yet to yield any contracts for US-based companies. Only now is Westinghouse, a unit of Japan's Toshiba (6502.T), approaching the finish line on a deal to build six reactors in India. Getting to know you The visit gives Modi a chance to network with US lawmakers who may feature in a Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton administration but, as it coincides with the California primary, he is not expected to meet either. Modi is generally popular with US lawmakers, who extended his invitation to address Congress. But they criticise what they see as lingering unfriendliness to US firms and a stifling bureaucracy, and question New Delhi's record on human rights. "The economic engagement between our two countries should increase and it should be more accessible for US companies," Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a telephone interview. Obama and Modi are expected to discuss India's desire to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 48-member club of nuclear trading nations. India was shut out for decades because of its weapons programme, and the civil nuclear agreement with the United States gave it access to foreign suppliers without giving up its arms. Obama administration officials have said they backed India's desire to join the group, but the idea faces resistance among some on Capitol Hill, as well as from China, an ally of India's arch-rival Pakistan. "Existing NSG guidelines were established to guard against nuclear proliferation, and we should not create exceptions for particular countries," Corker said. There is lingering concern in Washington over Modi's handling of communal riots in 2002 that killed at least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, in Gujarat. Modi was chief minister of the state at the time and, though a court-ordered inquiry found insufficient evidence to prosecute him, the issue prevented him from getting a US visa for years. Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, raised human rights on a visit to New Delhi this week, saying the two largest democracies had "special obligations" to set the highest standards. Congress' Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission has scheduled a hearing on India for 7 June, the day Modi arrives in Washington and the day before his address to the combined House of Representatives and Senate. He leaves the United States on 8 June. Corker promised to asked Modi about India's record on human trafficking, which he brought up recently in an emotional Senate hearing with Obama administration officials. "The country we believe has 12-14 million slaves, which is close to half the number we believe exists worldwide," Corker said. "It's obviously a very significant issue and when he's here, it's one I certainly plan to raise. New Delhi: The HRD ministry has roped in experts from leading global universities such as Cambridge, MIT, Pennsylvania to help design and "internationalise" syllabi of higher education institutions in the country, Union Minister Smriti Irani said. Speaking at the launch of 10 projects in different states under Rashtriya Ucchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA), Irani said that experts from institutions including University of Edinburgh, MIT, Cambridge, University of Pennsylvania, UC Berkeley, University of Washington and University of Georgia Tech have been roped in to upgrade the curriculum in social sciences, sciences, mathematics and engineering. "The government of India has been in touch with some international faculty and academicians and institutions who shall through RUSA, a national higher education mission, help states internationalise their curriculum in order to benefit their students," Irani said. Irani who launched various projects including the inauguration of a Model Degree Colleges in Kurnool of Andhra Pradesh, Rajnandgaon in Chattisgarh, Boys' Hostel in Amritsar, also held interactions with students via teleconferencing. She announced a competition under which students were invited to design a logo with acronym related to aspiration of students and promised that winning entries would get a free study tour abroad. The logo would be announced on 15 August, she said. During the interaction, she also told students that the ministry has asked institutions to provide counsellors to deal with stress. She also said the HRD ministry has made the process of dealing with grievances related to fellowships faster from earlier 175 days to 28 days now. Irani also said that students should be allowed to pursue the courses of their choice. New Delhi: All banks have been asked to give priority to pensioners visiting their branches for seeding of Aadhaar numbers with their bank accounts, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said on Friday. He said special camps are being held to facilitate recording of Aadhaar numbers in pensioners' accounts till 10 June in pension disbursing banks and their branches all across the country. He said pensioners can approach their paying branches with the Pension Payment Order (PPO), Aadhaar card and bank pass book for trouble-free seeding. Singh, Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, said it is hoped that a large number of pensioners will benefit from the camps. "So as to reach the pensioners and family pensioners located in the remotest corners of the country, this event will be publicised through radio jingles, hand bills, local cable TV network etc.," he said. Various steps are being taken by the government and pension disbursing banks to sensitise pensioners and bank branches to link up Aadhaar number, PPO number and bank account number so that all pensioners can avail the 'Jeevan Pramaan' facility. Jeevan Pramaan is an initiative launched by the Department of Pension and Pensioners' Welfare, for the benefit of aged and infirm pensioners or family pensioners. "Under the scheme, digital life certificates can be submitted by pensioners from personal computers and laptops at home or by visiting a conveniently located common service centre or the nearest branch of any pension disbursing bank," a press release issued by Personnel Ministry said. "Submission of digital life certificate also ensures authenticity of pension payments. So far, more than 15 lakh certificates have been attempted," the release said. There are 58 lakh central government pensioners. Meanwhile, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which issues Aadhaar--a 12-digit unique identification number--which acts as a proof of identity and address, anywhere in the country, has launched a special enrolment drive for pensioners. The drive, being conducted till June 10, will enable pensioners avail the convenience of Jeevan Pramaan. Ahmedabad: For the past 14 years of my life, every second, every minute the scenes of those thousands coming to us, holding us one by one, slitting us into pieces and burning us down like vehicle tyres. I saw it with my own eyes, in front of me. They say there was no conspiracy to kill us, the court agrees there was no conspiracy, Imtiyaz Khan Pathan, now 40, is unstoppable. One of the many survivors of the 28 February, 2002 Gulbarg Society massacre, Imtiyaz is shocked that only 24 people have been adjudged guilty by a special sessions court, which pronounced its verdict as many as 14 years after the brutal attack that left 69 of his neighbours dead. I have myself given names of many more people than the 24 that have been convicted. Twenty three of these 24 were identified by me. Only 11 of them have been charged for murder, he tells Firstpost. Imtiyaz is an electrician, who along with his family and relatives, left the burnt-down Gulbarg Society and moved to the labour-dominated Gomtipur area in eastern Ahmedabad. Murder? Simple murder, any other murder just like you see day in and day out on TV? wonders Imtiyaz, asserting that the attack was ghastly and planned. Thousands of people coming together, pulling people out of their homes like furniture, cutting them into pieces and then burning them. Is this plain simple murder? Wah! Wah! I am frustrated, I am angry, I am helpless, what else could I be? You asking these questions, you asking for my reaction to that verdict that unfortunate verdict, what do you want from me, he screams exasperatedly at this reporter. There was no conspiracy, the court has decided. Okay, I will tell you, now listen to me, dont ask questions, dont interrupt, just listen, Imtiyaz starts. Crowds had started gathering right from the morning. Stone-pelting had started, shops and vehicles were being set on fire. At 10.30 am, Joint Police Commissioner MK Tandon came to Gulbarg, met Ehsan Jafri, assured police security, and went away. Nobody came, no security, nothing. After that nobody came till 4.30 pm, during which time the killings had already taken place. In my presence and in the presence of all of us, Ehsan Jafri sahab made desperate calls to everybody. Police control room, police officers, politicians, leaders. Nothing helped. He called the Chief Ministers Office. Nothing happened. Is this not conspiracy? If not, then what is it? Imtiyaz asked. And the court will not take note that so many calls were made for help. There is more. Why is it that police officials started coming only after 4.30 pm, when everything was over. They dispersed some mobs and took us to safety at a relief camp. If Tandon or his deputy PB Gondia could come at 4.30 pm, why couldn't they come earlier in the day when they exactly knew what was happenng in our society? asks Imtiyaz. He asks again, You will not call this a conspiracy? They let the crowds kill our people throughout the day and in broad daylight, they ignored all calls for help during the massacre, and they made a show of help in the evening, when 69 people had been burnt alive. I want to ask the court, what more do you want in a conspiracy? But dont worry, we are not going to take this lying down, we will go to higher courts and still higher. You wait. Imtiyaz is completely distraught, sometimes angry, sometimes frustrated, but mostly determined. The writer is editor, Development News Network, Gujarat Zakia Jafri and her family may not be entirely satisfied with Thursday's court verdict on the Gulbarg society killings, but they cannot be entirely unhappy either. The conviction by a Special Sessions Court in Ahmedabad of the 24 accused, and the acquittal of the 36 involved in the riots evoked mixed reactions from being partly vindicated to substantially let down by the system for letting off serious offenders. After all, the massacre of 69 people including Zakias husband Ehsan Zafri cannot be the handiwork of just 24 convicts. Yet, the conviction of the accused in the Gulbarg society riots would appear to be a positive development, when one contrasts it with the fate of more serious riots in Meerut just 50 km away from Delhi exactly 29 years ago. Maliana and Hashimpura killings in Meerut are still the festering wounds of Western Uttar Pradesh an area where the communal tinderbox often explodes at the slightest pretext. Let us recall what had happened in Hashimpura, where able-bodied Muslim youths were dragged out of their houses on 22 May 1987 and brought to Ghaziabad, where they were asked to kneel down. Officials and Jawans of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC), who had conducted this operation, fired from their rifles and killed 42 people. Some of the youth escaped death by jumping into the Hindon canal flowing nearby. They were later rescued by a conscientious superintendent of police VN Rai and his team. The Centre and the state were ruled by Congress back then Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister while Bir Bahadur Singh was UP Chief Minister. A day after conducting this operation in Hashimpura, a strong team of PAC personnel descended to Maliana, a Muslim locality in Meerut. Once again, Muslim men were asked to come out of their houses with their hands raised. Before anybody could realize the intent of the exercise, the PAC men started indiscriminate firing and killed 73 persons in cold blood. Some managed to escape with just bullet wounds, as they ran towards the by-lanes after hearing gunshots All indications pointed to the fact that the PAC personnel were motivated to conduct this operation by a senior IPS officer who was manning the control room in the district. This particular officer wanted to administer a shock therapy to the Muslims, so they can mend their ways, said a senior police officers involved with the investigation of the case. Even a cursory visit to Maliana proves beyond doubt that the wounds of the riots have not healed. But what is particularly galling is the fact that justice is still eluding in both these cases. Only last year, a Delhi court exonerated all the 16 accused in the Hashimpura case after finding fault with the police investigation. The court gave them the benefit of doubt and said that 'lack of evidence has failed to establish their identification in the case.' There were 19 accused in the case. However, three of them died during the trial. Initially the state government ignored hue and cry by the media over this apparent travesty of justice. Later chief minister Akhilesh Yadav decided to appeal against the verdict. In the Maliana case, which is nothing short of an extra-judicial execution of 73 Muslims by state agencies, the proceedings often progress at speeds that defy logic. It got stuck last year as the FIR registered by the state police was untraceable at the trial court in Lucknow. It is almost certain at this point that the prosecution would be delayed to the point of denying justice to the victims in their lifetime. Ironically, Hashimpura and Maliana are not the only two cases that paint the conduct of the Indian polity as pulling wool over the eyes of obnoxious facets of society. In the eighties and the nineties, there were a series of riots in Bulandshahar, Ghaziabad, Gonda, Varanasi and Azamgarh in which the guilty were never punished. The state often colluded with criminals and allowed the justice to atrophy. In such context, the conviction of the 24 accused in Gulbarg has partly, if not substantially, restored trust in the criminal justice system. Yet, cases like Hashimpura and Maliana are festering wounds that expose the morbidity of the Indian polity. Washington: Indo-US ties are of "incredible significance" not only to the region but also to the world, an Obama Administration official has said, days ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit here. "We're very much looking forward to Prime Minister Modi's visit. The US-India relationship is of incredible significance, not only to the region but to the world," State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner told reporters here ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit next week. "The breadth of the US-Indian relationship is wide. It addresses security. It's got a strong economic component. We're looking to build closer relationships across the board with India, because we see it as a vital partner in the region," Toner said. Modi is scheduled to arrive in Washington on 6 June on a three-day visit. The Prime Minister is scheduled to meet US President Barack Obama at the White House on June 7 and address a jointmeeting of the US Congress on 8 June. "We have a broad bilateral and multilateral relationship with India and look forward to engaging on all those issues," Toner said. Agartala: The peace talks between the Centre and several militant outfits in the northeastern region are moving positively and peace would be restored in the whole region soon, a top official of the Ministry of Home Affairs said on Friday. "The Central government has been holding peace talks with several militant outfits in the northeastern region. The talks are progressing positively," Satyendra Garg, Joint Secretary in-charge of Northeast of the Union Home Ministry, told reporters. After meeting Tripura Chief Secretary Yashpal Singh and state police chief K Nagaraj, he said: "Peace talks are going on with the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah faction), United Liberation Front of Asom and many other militant outfits of several northeastern states." The official said the government is hopeful that with the positive outcome of the on-going peace talks with the extremists' groups, absolute peace would be restored in the entire northeastern region soon. "Government's policy is to hold talks with the militant groups that shun violent activities. The Centre is closely observing the situation in the northeast and bordering areas," Garg said. "Tripura and Mizoram are the most peaceful states in the northeast India," he said, adding that northeastern states are in a strategic location adjoining five countries China, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. "India's strategies for China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and other neighbours are different. For India, Myanmar is located in a significant position," said Garg, who came here on Friday afternoon. On Saturday Garg would hold tripartite meeting at north Tripura's Kanchanpur with tribal refugee leader and officials of Mizoram government. About 31,300 Reang tribals, who call themselves "Bru", have been living in seven makeshift camps in northern Tripura's Kanchanpur areas adjoining Mizoram for the past 18 years. They had fled after an ethnic violence in Mizoram following the killing of a Mizo forest officer at the Dampa Tiger Reserve. The Home Ministry official said that the government has given utmost importance to erection of fence along the international borders with northeastern states at the earliest. "After the completion of fencing, infiltration, cross-border movement of militants and inimical elements, and smuggling of contraband would be checked to a large extent," Garg added. Jaipur: Three persons accused of cattle smuggling were assaulted by activists of some Hindu outfits after they intercepted a truck ferrying the animals in Pratapgarh district of Rajasthan, police said on Friday. The three men were rescued by police and arrested on charges of cattle smuggling, while a separate case of assault has been registered against 250 people from Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal and other outfits, they said. The incident occurred on 31 May when activists of Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal and other outfits followed a truck coming from Nimbaheda, Kailash Chandra, SHO, Chhoti Sadadi police station said. The activists assaulted the three men after they found that the truck carried 52 heads of cattle, he said. Four animals died while they were being shifted to a cowshelter irking the activists who set the truck on fire, Chandra said, adding, the rest 48 animals are now in the cowshelter. The three men identified as Rajendra Chaturvedi, the driver, Manohar Kumawat and Dinesh, tried to flee the spot but the activists nabbed and assaulted them. Police, however, managed to free the three from the activists, and arrested them after taking them to a local police station. A separate case was registered against 250 people from the outfits though no one was named in the FIR, the SHO said, adding, all the three accused have been sent to judicial custody. Twenty-two protesters died and 23 policemen were injured after the Jawahar Bagh protest against government's anti-encroachment drive in Mathura turned violent, Uttar Pradesh DGP Javed Ahmed told reporters at a press conference on Friday. Eleven of the 22 died in the fire which they started, he said. One hundred and twenty-four people have been arrested so far and 196 other people have been arrested under Section 153 offence, Javed said. Javed added that 47 locally made katta pistols, six rifles and 178 live cartridges were seized from the spot. 22 prostesters died in the incident, 11 died in the fire which they caused themselves: UP DGP on Mathura incident pic.twitter.com/gflrLI7zdv ANI (@ANI_news) June 3, 2016 23 policemen are in the hospital being treated for their injuries. They were harmed brutally: UP DGP on Mathura incident ANI (@ANI_news) June 3, 2016 Meanwhile, Times Now reported that the death toll has gone up to 24. According to Firstpost, Superintendent of Police of Mathura along with five other policemen were injured on Thursday as violence erupted during an operation to clear hundreds of acres of government land from the activists of a religious group 'Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi'. Police used teargas to deal with the violent agitators in the Jawahar Bagh area where the clashes continued even on Friday. The injured policemen included SP (City) of Mathura and SHO of the local police station, police sources said. Unconfirmed reports said the SHO had died in the clash, but there was no official announcement. Over two years back, the activists of splinter group of Baba Jai Gurudeo, claiming themselves to be member of 'Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi', had occupied hundreds of acres of land of Jawahar Bagh on the pretext of 'Dharna.' Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav announced compensation of Rs 20 lakh each for the families of the two officers. Many senior state-level officials reached Mathura to take stock of the situation on Friday. Divisional Commissioner Pradip Bhatnagar, after a visit to Mathura, said firm action will follow and nobody found involved in the violence would be spared. The encroachers who call themselves "satyagrahis" have dispersed and the disputed Jawahar Bagh area, spread over 280 acres, is now under police control. While 12 companies of the PAC were already stationed in the city, three more were rushed to the district on Thursday night. Members of the Braj Bachao Samiti have demanded a CBI inquiry monitored by a Supreme Court judge to expose the conspiracy behind the events climaxing in the confrontation between the police and the protesters. "The babas have been building empires in Mathura-Vrindavan and are engaged in all kinds of shady land deals. Their connections with politicians are well known. Some have been patronised by the politicians of the ruling party in the state," Samiti President Manoj Choudhary told IANS. Civil society members in Mathura said it was clearly an intelligence failure. "How these people manage to smuggle in arms in such huge quantities needs to be investigated. Some of them were trained in guerrilla tactics and had built shelters in the tress from where they began an all out assault on the police," activist Girdhari Lal said. Dhaka: Each time he hears of the latest deadly machete attack, Ashraful Islam can't help but think of his father's gruesome murder and fear his fellow Sufi Muslims will never be safe again in Bangladesh. "The killings are not declining, they're getting worse. And every one reminds me what happened to my father," said the 30-year-old medical student. "I've no idea why they are doing this but if they aren't stopped then our future is doomed, we'll become another Pakistan." Islamists have claimed responsibility for around 40 killings in the last three years of foreigners, secular bloggers, gay activists, Hindus and Christians. Many have been slaughtered with machetes. But no group has suffered as much as Sufis, an offshoot of mainstream Islam whose followers are often denounced as "infidels" for their mystical traditions, including worshipping at shrines. Fourteen have died since December 2014 in religiously motivated attacks, including Islam's father Khizir Khan. More than 100,000 Sufis are expected in Dhaka on Friday to attend an annual congregation, which this year is both a celebration and an act of defiance. It comes less than a month after local Sufi leader Mohammad Shahidullah was found hacked to death under a mango tree in the northwestern Rajshahi district. The deep wounds in his neck echoed Khan's murder last October when he was killed by suspected members of banned Islamist militant group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). Khan had around 2,000 followers, many of whom would turn up at weekly prayers at the family home in Dhaka. On the night of his killing, he had arranged to meet prospective tenants for a vacant apartment underneath the family's own flat. But he went downstairs to an ambush by a gang who cornered him in a bathroom and then hacked at his neck until he bled to death. The killers then burst into the upstairs living-room, tying up Khan's family, who later managed to escape. "It was my mother who discovered the body in the bathroom. The head was partially severed. "It was such a shocking thing. Every now and then my mother still breaks down." Police soon arrested five suspects who allegedly told investigators it was their "religious duty" to kill Khan. No-one has yet to be convicted for the killing and there have been few arrests in the other murders. Most have been claimed by the likes of JMB or international jihadists such as the Islamic State organisation or Al-Qaeda's South Asia wing. While more than 90 percent of Bangladesh's 160 million population are Muslims, it is an avowedly secular state. For most of the first four decades after winning the 1971 independence war with Pakistan, Bangladesh had a reputation for religious tolerance and Sufi Muslim services drew tens of millions of worshippers. Pune: Even as speculations are rife on the fate of Maharashtra Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse amid a host of allegations against him, BJP state unit president Raosaheb Danve on Friday ruled out any "party action" against him till the charges against him are proved. Terming allegations against Khadse as "political" in nature, Danve said the party has adopted a "cautious approach towards them," adding "we believe that there is no substance in them." While maintaining that Khadse would face action if the allegations against him are proved in a court of law, he said there was "no pressure from the party high command" to remove him from the state cabinet. Asked about chief minister Devendra Fadnavis's meeting with party president Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday over the Khadse issue, Danve said, "the chief minister submitted his report to Shah. But that does not necessarily mean that the report was against Khadse. It could be in his favour also." Danve, who was in Jalna to pay respect to the memory of late BJP leader Gopinath Munde on his second death anniversary, told reporters that since there was no "substance" in the allegations against the revenue minister,"there is no need for any action." Khadse, a senior BJP leader, has come under cloud of a host of allegations including irregularities in a land deal in Pune and calls allegedly received from fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim's residence in Karachi on his mobile phone. He is in a spot over the purchase of a three-acre Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation land in Bhosari allegedly at a low price of around Rs 3.75 crore from its original owner in the name of his wife and son-in-law. The market value of the land is reportedly Rs 40 crore. Khadse, who is in his home town Jalgaon in North Maharashtra amid political heat, has denied all these allegations and said he would abide by the party decision in his case. "I will follow my party's instructions and will abide by its decisions," he had said. Fadnavis met Modi and Shah in Delhi yesterday and said the party will decide "appropriate action." Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir Assembly was adjourned on Friday following pandemonium as Opposition MLAs stormed the Speaker's podium to protest against a government order allowing mining rights to non-local bidders. Opposition National Conference (NC) and Congress MLAs jumped protested against the statutory rules order (SRO) No. 105 that allows a breather of three months for non-local bidders to carry on mining operations in the state. Some members of ruling coalition partner BJP MLAs were also seen near the podium as repeated requests from Speaker Kavinder Gupta failed to restore order. The Speaker then adjourned the House for 15 minutes. In the week since Pinarayi Vijayan of the Left Democratic Front (LDF) took over as the Chief Minister of Kerala, he has made all the right noises. The CPM leader virtually unrolled a red carpet for IT companies and other multinationals, the symbols of capitalism and neoliberalism for communist ideologues of the past. To make Kerala industry-friendly, Vijayan is even talking of raising private capital for mega projects. The words private and capital are not music to conventional communist ears. The new chief minister also has a mammoth plan to widen Keralas notoriously narrow highways: this means displacement of a large number of people in this densely populated state. Displacement of people for whatever reason goes against the Kerala brand of communism. And he is talking of raising money if the Railway Board is ready to lay a new track across the state. This means both displacement of people and private capital. This change in tack is not as sudden as it looks. Foreseeing victory in Kerala, Vijayan had given more than a hint of it in January by talking about large-scale public-private partnership (PPP) projects at a discussion on 'Kerala development agenda' in Thiruvananthapuram under the umbrella of CPMs AKG Study Centre. Just a day before this, the partys former general secretary Prakash Karat had said in an article: They (the middle classes) see benefits in neoliberal capitalism and can no longer relate to the Left programme. Karat and his protege Vijayan have been pushing for a shift to the right call it social democracy, if you will without actually admitting they are watering down their Marxist principles. The CPMs performance crashed from 5.6 percent votes and 43 seats in 2004 to 5.3 percent and 16 seats in 2009 and to 3.2 percent votes and nine seats in 2014. Karat can only blame himself for this collapse since he was the partys General Secretary during that time. Aided by Vijayan, Karat is bent upon revitalising the party now with a right turn. They see it as the only way the CPM can grow and occupy at least some of the vacuum left by the waning fortunes of the Congress instead of letting the BJP usurp all of that space. It may, in the end, turn out to be a pipe dream if Karat and Vijayan want the CPM to take advantage of a Congress-mukt Bharat. But, for now, they are pushing ahead their economic agenda with a political motive in Kerala. After the alliance with the Congress, promoted by current General Secretary Sitaram Yechury, flopped in the West Bengal election, its now Karat who calls the shots. Now that Vijayan has actually reiterated his private investment projects, many eyebrows are being raised in Kerala. Most of these eyebrows belong to leaders of the CPM and other parties in the LDF, notably the CPI. Thats not surprising because the Left front is filled with parties which continue to be populated by leaders who stick to a moth-eaten ideology, and there are already whimpers of protest against Vijayans ideas. Its fairly certain these whimpers will grow louder soon. But Vijayan must stick to his guns. Unless infrastructure is developed and industries open up in Kerala, there is no way he can come anywhere close to fulfilling his fronts election promise of creating 25 lakh jobs in the next five years. Vijayan is not Indias first Left honcho to look at the IT sector as a potential job-creator. It was LDFs Chief Minister EK Nayanar who was instrumental in the launch of the Technopark at Thiruvananthapuram in 1990, but it made little progress during his time. West Bengals Jyoti Basu and Buddhadeb Bhattacharya too beckoned the software sector. But theirs were only half-hearted attempts, which only left the companies frustrated. In contrast, the new Kerala chief ministers blanket invitation to not only software giants, but even other MNCs is most unequivocal and devoid of any ideological baggage. His vocabulary and body language leave one in no doubt that he means business. In fact, he lost no time in meeting Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, a man from Kerala, to find out firsthand why his company had walked out on a project during the term of the previous Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) Chief Minister Oommen Chandy. Infosys had abandoned a project that promised 10,000 jobs, saying the company was not getting support in setting up basic infrastructure. Opposition to Vijayans various new moves may also come from his arch enemy within CPM, VS Achuthanandan, and trade unions of all hues. Vijayan is probably on safe ground as far as the IT sector is concerned, but not over his other moves. Achuthanandan had, in fact, taken Chandy to task for having shooed away IT companies. The CPI has raised its voice against another proposal of the new government to revive the 163-megawatt Athirappilly hydroelectric project, which it had all along opposed for environment reasons. On his part, Vijayan seems unfazed by all this and is busy proving that he is a man in a hurry to put Kerala on the path of development. The urgency Vijayan showed in going to Delhi and meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Home Minister Rajnath Singh to seek their support for the states development was part of this hurrying-up. In 2000, when Atal Behari Vajpayee, then Prime Minister, came to Kerala for a year-end holiday, the Left Chief Minister EK Nayanar didnt even receive him. Nayanar had said Vajpayee and Jinnah were two sides of the same coin. Its clear that even politically Vijayan is prepared to abandon the Lefts rigid ways of doing things. It was more than courtesy that he had in mind when he met Modi and his ministers. He wanted to check for himself how much help he could get from the Centre. A beaming Vijayan told the media that his meetings, especially the one with Modi, were cordial and useful. In fact, Vijayan got Modi to agree in principle that the centre will pay a minimum support price to Keralas rubber farmers. Modi, who had kicked up a furor during the election campaign by saying that Keralas tribal infant mortality rate was worse than Somalias, told Vijayan that Kerala could become a model by providing toilets and digital connectivity to all households. Its only a week since Vijayan took over, and its too early to even say well begun is half done. But he has done quite a bit of work in the first week. After five years of the Chandy government that just bumbled along without direction, there are at last some clear signs now that there is an administration in place. As long as Vijayan stays on track and is seen to be doing things for the good of Kerala, he has nothing to worry about critics. Even Achuthanandan may lay off, if he finds that Vijayan is gaining public acceptance. And if the CPI continues to stir up ideological trouble, the chief minister can afford to snub that party. Though the CPI is the second largest party in the LDF after the CPM, it accounts for only 19 of the fronts total of 91 seats in the 140-member assembly. The CPM has 58 members of its own. Author tweets @sprasadindia. Even as Karnataka is all set for the Legislative Council elections, BJP state president BS Yeddyurappa said that the Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has been handling issues that concerned government employees, without "humanitarian consideration", reported The Hindu. Police Welfare Association President V Shashidhar was planning to head a strike on 4 June, protesting exploitation, low pay and poor working conditions. Following this, the state government warned against the planned agitation and threatened to invoke the Essential Services Maintenance Act (Esma) for maintaining public order and safety across the state. Despite the warning, the Karnataka state police association, which includes a 60,000 constabulary force has decided to push forward with their en masse leave on Saturday. Shashisdhar alleged that constables were being forced to work for irregular and long hours, without proper leave mechanism and harassment by senior officers. Bengaluru Police Commissioner NS Megharikh said that a case had been registered at Yelahanka New Town police station and that "Shahidhar has been arrested and presented before local court, which remanded him to judicial custody till 16 June." The Hindu report also quoted Yeddyurappa as saying that Siddaramaiah had no time to listen to government employees and that it wasn't necessary to arrest Shashidhar at midnight. An India Today piece said that the Health and Family Welfare Department had issued directions to government hospitals for not issuing medical certificates for policemen based on health grounds for 4 June, the day of the planned strike. The police personnel have also received support from the Opposition, which asked the government to revise salaries, instead of taking a strict stance to quieten the protests, it added. Karnataka passed the Esma Bill in 2013, making striking at work a non-bailable offence and giving the police the authority to arrest a striking employee without warrant. The bill is supposed to put an end to employees working in water, power, health, transport and service sectors going on strikes, inconveniencing people. As per the bill, the definition under Esma for essential services include any service connected with the production, generation, storage, transmission, supply or distribution of water or electricity and any transportation service for the carriage of passengers or goods by motor vehicles. It gives government the power to declare even those services that the state has powers to make laws for under List II of the 7th Schedule of the Constitution, as essential services. Upon conviction, those who commence a strike or continue to go on strike or takes part in any strike will be punished with a sentence up to one year or with fine up to Rs 5,000 or both. Those instigating or financing strikes also face the same punishment. On 23 May, at the Madras University Convocation Hall, Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa was sworn in after winning a historic second consecutive term. What created a flutter though was that 14 MLAs of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), led by its treasurer and heir apparent MK Stalin, were seated somewhere in the tenth row for only the second time in a decade-and-a-half when the Opposition attended the swearing-in of its rivals in government. A DMK leader in the know later described how the partys nonagenarian leader, M Karunanidhi, created what he referred to as a scene at his Gopalapuram residence in Chennai. Nee thalaivara, illa naan thalaivara? a furious Karuna is said to have asked of his son MK Stalin, seemingly peeved at the media attention he received on that day. In English, his question translates to Are you the leader or am I? And this, perhaps, is what is bothering the grand old man of Tamil politics the most, as he celebrates his 93rd birthday on Friday. Power, or maybe the draining away of it. DMK workers say that Kalaignar (artist, Karunas moniker) is suddenly active in party affairs especially after the recent debacle in the May 2016 Assembly polls. With the party that he leads now filled with loyalists of his son Stalin, and his chief ministerial dreams dashed, Karuna is not likely to be in the best of spirits. Karunanidhi has been in active politics for almost eight decades now, joining the Dravidian movement when he was only 14 years old. A large chunk of the states post-Independence history has this man inextricably intertwined with it. You cannot talk about Tamil Nadu politics by detaching Karunanidhis name from it from the 1950s to now, and the same will continue as long as Tamil Nadu exists as a state, said RK Radhakrishnan, senior journalist and political commentator. Following reforms that have happened in the state, which has led the state to be one of the best in the country in terms of the key indicators social or economic it is Karunas policies that have led to these developments. He has also continued the legacies of his predecessors without trying to discontinue them merely because a political opponent has started it, he added. But the Chanakya of Tamil politics finds himself at a crossroads now in his 94th year. Longevity and ruthless politicking have, perhaps inevitably, led to widespread criticism of the leader. Once adored and showered with adulation, Karuna now faces merciless brickbats from all quarters. Dravidian slight He may be fond of calling himself as Periyars (founder of the Dravidian movement) protege but many Periyarists (ardent followers of Periyar) disagree. The movement that launched Karunanidhis political career, they say, now stands in tatters and a large part of the blame for the decline, dilution and decay of the movement, they say, goes to Karunanidhi. He was the one who took the decision to align with the BJP and the Congress when in power this, despite decades of fighting against the Congress, said Kolathur Mani, Periyarist and founder of the Dravidar Viduthalai Kazhagam, a group that propagates Periyars ideology. That itself was an opportunistic move. When the DMK was formed, what did they say about why they wanted to get power? They said they want to bring Periyars ideologies to the whole state and implement them. Did they do that? Not at all, he said. Mani agrees that a lot of the blame possibly rides on Karunas shoulders simply because he has been at the helm of affairs the longest. CN Annadurai, the first chief minister from the DMK, died early, with Karuna replacing him. It is not just Karunanidhis fault, but the entire DMK itself, as a concept, is at fault, explained Mani, adding, Once the DMK was formed, Periyars ideology was diluted. Even when Periyar was alive, his take on womens rights, his anti-caste stand, none of that was followed. The decay began during Annas time itself, he said. Experts do not necessarily concur. They say that Karunas role must be looked at from the view of what was necessary for Tamil Nadu at the time. Karunas contribution should be seen in the light of the gradual ideological decay that has set in in society, its polity and the country in general since Independence, argued RK Radhakrishnan, senior journalist, further stating, Measured against this, Karunas contribution has been remarkable in every sphere of empowerment of marginalised classes, benefits to organised sector, embracement of market reforms, allying with ideologically incompatible partners and guiding Tamil Nadu as a key player in national polity. Anger of the Dalits Another section of Tamil society that feels cheated by the DMK in general and Karunanidhi in particular, are the Dalits. This 25 percent of the states population has been disdainful of the DMK of late, preferring instead to vote for its rival, the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). Dalit thought leaders argue that Karunanidhi has taken an openly anti-Dalit political stand throughout his career. They point to the various incidents of crimes against Dalits in the states recent history and argue that Karunanidhi, whether in power or in Opposition, did nothing except mouth vague platitudes. Karunanidhi, in terms of Dalit welfare, has contributed more negative inputs than positive, said C Lakshmanan, associate professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies and an expert in Dalit issues. When he became chief minister for the first time, he expelled a strong Dalit leader Sathyavani Muthu, who was a founding member of the DMK. She was unceremoniously thrown out of the government and the party because the SC-ST (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) development allocation from the Centre was diverted to the Backward Classes Department as a minister for Adi Dravida Welfare, she asked how without her prior knowledge other ministries and officials were overriding her powers. After this, he went on to create a rift between the Dalit communities between Parayars and Pallars, he explained. Karunanidhi loyalists in the DMK, like KS Radhakrishnan, a DMK spokesperson, defend their leader staunchly. Pazhuttha maram than kalladipadum, said Radhakrishnan. In English, this means that only a tree that bears ripe fruit will suffer an attack of stones by those who want to pluck it. Similarly Kalaignar is 93 years of age. He has given more than 70 of his years to public life. What he has done for the people of Tamil Nadu is incalculable, he said. Introduction of freebie culture and institutionalised corruption The DMK leader has also been criticised severely for launching the state-sponsored freebie culture, not just in the state of Tamil Nadu, but all over the country. It was in 2006, ahead of the Assembly election, that Karuna announced free colour televisions for poor families in the state. The DMK combine was installed in the seat of power. Subsequent elections have seen a rash of announcements of freebies, each party competing with the other to give away mixer-grinders, fans and gold. The introduction of free colour TVs in the manifesto in 2006 was possibly the first time a major freebie was introduced to the Tamil people, said RK Radhakrishnan, senior journalist. He (Karunanidhi) laid the foundation stone for a lot of such things to be added to manifestos which did not in any way help the development of the people or society. The DMK demurs. At every point of time in history, there is a need in society economic and social needs and demands, argued KS Radhakrishnan, DMK spokesperson. Colour TV was the need of that time. This time it is different. That is why we have not announced any freebies in this election. As a party, we change with the times, he said. Corruption and the DMK have become synonymous, following the 2G scam and the Rs 200-crore Kalaignar TV scam, two of the biggest corruption allegations the Indian courts have tried. Experts say nothing can take away the contribution made by the nonagenarian to Tamil and national politics. Some of his initiatives on the front of federalism, his stand on inter-state relations, administrative measures, the Constitution are all sound, said Lakshmanan of MIDS, But Karunanidhi is also the person who changed the government processes into a wholly sycophantic machinery. He has always hankered after populism and publicity." RK Radhakrishnan said Karunas pragmatism in politics is admirable. His pragmatism can be seen in the way the DMK gave up the demand for a separate Tamil state, aligning later with the Congress which had dismissed his government - and much later his decision to be part of the NDA govt at the Centre and then switching sides to be again with the Congress, he pointed out. All because of his firm conviction that the demands of the Tamils can be aligned with Delhi, regardless of whoever is in power. The DMK believes that many of the best schemes now in vogue in the country were implemented during the DMK regime, under Karunas leadership. Each time the DMK formed government, a pilot scheme was initiated which was followed by other states the slum rehabilitation scheme, lepers rehabilitation scheme, spectacles for the downtrodden, the abolition of hand-pulled rickshaws all of this was done in the 1970s, said KS Radhakrishnan, and argued, In 1989, he announced free power for farmers it was only after that that the Punjab government announced it in its state." But the writing is on the wall for the aged lion. Eight decades of missed opportunities to become a statesman, rather than remain relegated to the position of a mere politician. A statesman requires certain qualities, a certain charisma, said Lakshmanan. A statesman is one who has a vision. Statesmen will tide over party line and political mileage to speak up for the downtrodden. I dont think Karunanidhi has done any of that, he concluded. On Friday, his birthday, as he holds his first public meeting since the election results were announced nostalgia is likely to be writ large in his speech, as it has been of late. The lion will roar for the gallery. The writer tweets @sandhyaravishan Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa will visit her Dr RK Nagar constituency here on 6 June and thank voters for electing her again in the 16 May Assembly election. She will be visiting a host of areas in her constituency including Kasimedu, Tiruvottriyur High Road, Veeraraghavan Road, Suriyanarayana Chetty Street-Jeevarathinam Salai junction and thank voters, an AIADMK headquarters release said on Thursday. Jayalalithaa was re-elected from the constituency by a margin of about 40,000 votes, defeating her nearest DMK rival Shimla Muthuchozhan, in the recently held Assembly election. Already, AIADMK MLAs have visited their respective constituencies to thank voters. Kolkata: The Congress-Left combine on Friday rejected the BJP's proposal for floor coordination between opposition parties in the West Bengal Assembly, alleging the saffron party had a "tacit understanding" with ruling TMC. "The Left-Congress alliance has been formed after both the parties together fought for long on various issues for the last four years. But we have never seen BJP hitting the streets on issues concerning the masses," Leader of Opposition and Congress leader Abdul Mannan said. BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya had on Thursday said that his party could offer issue-based support to other opposition parties in the Assembly, days after similar view by the party's state unit chief Dilip Ghosh was rejected by Congress and CPM Ghosh had on Monday said the BJP was ready to work with other opposition parties in the House in the interest of people. "Tacit understanding and opposition cannot go hand in hand. We all know about the tacit understanding between BJP and TMC. So these talks of opposing TMC in Assembly is nothing but a farce to fool the masses," CPM MLA Sujan Chakraborty said. WINNIPEG Canada has complained to China about the behavior of Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who publicly berated a Canadian journalist in Ottawa this week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday. Wang lost his temper on Wednesday when pressed by a female reporter about human rights in China, saying the question was unacceptable and calling her arrogant and irresponsible. The incident occurred after a meeting with Canadian Foreign Minister Stephane Dion, who raised the case of Kevin Garratt, a Canadian citizen charged with spying in China. Dion and Canadian Foreign Ministry officials had "expressed our dissatisfaction to both the Chinese foreign minister and the ambassador of China to Canada... (about) the way our journalists were treated," Trudeau told a news conference in Winnipeg. No one was immediately available for comment at the Chinese embassy in Ottawa. The affair comes at a delicate time for Trudeau, who wants to boost trade with China to help revive a struggling Canadian economy. He is set to visit China in late August in the run-up to a G20 summit in Hangzhou. China wants a free trade agreement with Canada. Opinion polls have consistently shown Canadians are divided about the idea, citing concerns about human rights, freedom of religion and fears of increasing Chinese influence in Canada. Trudeau, saying there was no evidence to back the charges of spying against Garratt, raised the case with Wang at a private meeting on Wednesday. The Canadian was detained in August 2014 near China's sensitive border with North Korea. "We will continue to bring up human rights concerns every chance we get ... the way Canada has always engaged best in the world is to be active and vocal about the things we are concerned about and disagree on, while at the same time looking for common ground," Trudeau said. Dion, criticized by commentators for not intervening on behalf of the Canadian reporter, on Friday told journalists that she was "a professional with a thick skin" and did not need him to go her rescue. (Additional reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Alan Crosby) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. WASHINGTON U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton lambasted Donald Trump's foreign policy platform as "dangerously incoherent" in a speech on Thursday that cast her Republican rival as both a frightening and laughable figure. In remarks that at times resembled a comedy roast, Clinton unleashed a torrent of polished zingers and one-liners to attack Trump's policies and character, suggesting Trump might start a nuclear war if elected to the White House simply because "somebody got under his very thin skin." "Donald Trump's ideas are not just different, they are dangerously incoherent," she said to a room of supporters in San Diego, California. "They're not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies." Clinton, the front-runner in the race to become the Democratic presidential nominee, delivered her speech as she seeks to shift her attention to the Nov. 8 election against likely rival Trump and away from Bernie Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, who is continuing his long-shot bid for the nomination. Clinton was speaking in San Diego ahead of California's June 7 primary election. Democratic Party leaders have fretted about how to best oppose Trump, who managed to knock out all 16 rivals for the Republican nomination in part with his uninhibited style of assailing them with personal insults. Trump revels in referring to Clinton as "Crooked Hillary" and dredging up the infidelities of her husband, Bill Clinton, the former president. Clinton's remarks were intended in part to show she would not be cowed and that she could go toe-to-toe with him in scornful put-downs. "He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia," she said as the crowd guffawed, and she suggested Trump would run the U.S. economy "like one of his casinos." During her speech, Clinton predicted Trump, who has been deeply critical of Clinton's foreign policy record, would take to his Twitter account to insult her, and he did. "Bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton!" ran one posting during the speech, which included a typo. "Reading poorly from the teleprompter! She doesn't even look presidential!" Trump has said previously that Clinton is distorting his actual policies. TWO VISIONS Amid the laugh lines, Clinton cited her own experience as secretary of state, in particular her role advising President Barack Obama during the mission to kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, to suggest her approach to foreign policy was the more serious. "He praises dictators like Vladimir Putin and picks fights with our friends, including the British prime minister, the mayor of London, the German chancellor, the president of Mexico and the pope," Clinton said, listing some of the allies with whom Trump has verbally sparred in the last year. Obama, who has also been repeatedly mocked by Trump, has criticized Trump as being ignorant or cavalier about world affairs and has said that Trump's rise has "rattled" foreign leaders. Trump has talked tough on foreign policy. He has said he would bring back waterboarding and other brutal interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects that are widely regarded as torture and were discontinued by Obama. Trump has also vowed to renegotiate trade deals, called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, and said he would ask members of the 28-nation NATO alliance to "pay up" or "get out." He has said he would sit down with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to try to stop Pyongyang's nuclear programme. Clinton derided these and other positions, promising she would do a better job keeping the United States safe. Standing in front of a backdrop of 19 large U.S. flags, an unusual abundance even by the standards of presidential campaign events, Clinton painted the election as a choice between "two very different visions." "One that's angry, afraid and based on the idea that America is fundamentally weak and in decline," she said, summing up Trumpism. "The other is hopeful, generous and confident in the knowledge that America is great, just like we always have been." Trump has criticized Clinton for her handling of foreign policy during her 2009-2013 stint as secretary of state, including the Sept. 11, 2012, attack by Islamist militants on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. He cites Clinton's support for the war in Iraq, launched by former Republican President George W. Bush, as another example of her shortcomings. Democratic challenger Sanders echoed Clinton's concerns about Trump after her speech, though he also criticized Clinton's foreign policy. "I agree ... that Donald Trump's foreign policy ideas are incredibly reckless and irresponsible," Sanders said in a statement. In criticizing Clinton, Sanders cited her vote for the war in Iraq, calling it "the worst foreign policy blunder in modern American history," and said "she has been a proponent of regime change, as in Libya, without thinking through the consequences." In assailing each other's suitability for the White House, Clinton and Trump are reflecting a negative voter mood ahead of next month's party conventions that will choose the presidential nominees. Both Clinton and Trump are facing record-low favourability ratings. A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken Friday through Tuesday shows half of Trump supporters say the primary reason they are going to vote for him is "I don't want Hillary Clinton to win," while 41 percent of Clinton supporters cite their primary reason as not wanting Trump to win. (Additional reporting by Chris Khan in New York and Ginger Gibson in Washington; Writing by Doina Chiacu and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Frances Kerry and Leslie Adler) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. WASHINGTON U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton lambasted Donald Trump's foreign policy platform as "dangerously incoherent" in a speech on Thursday that cast her Republican rival as both a frightening and laughable figure. In remarks that at times resembled a comedy roast, Clinton unleashed a torrent of polished zingers and one-liners to attack Trump's policies and character, suggesting Trump might start a nuclear war if elected to the White House simply because "somebody got under his very thin skin." "Donald Trump's ideas are not just different, they are dangerously incoherent," she said to a room of supporters in San Diego, California. "They're not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies." Clinton, the front-runner in the race to become the Democratic presidential nominee, delivered her speech as she seeks to shift her attention to the Nov. 8 election against likely rival Trump and away from Bernie Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, who is continuing his long-shot bid for the nomination. Clinton was speaking in San Diego ahead of California's June 7 primary election. Democratic Party leaders have fretted about how to best oppose Trump, who managed to knock out all 16 rivals for the Republican nomination in part with his uninhibited style of assailing them with personal insults. Trump revels in referring to Clinton as "Crooked Hillary" and dredging up the infidelities of her husband, Bill Clinton, the former president. Clinton's remarks were intended in part to show she would not be cowed and that she could go toe-to-toe with him in scornful put-downs. "He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia," she said as the crowd guffawed, and she suggested Trump would run the U.S. economy "like one of his casinos." During her speech, Clinton predicted Trump, who has been deeply critical of Clinton's foreign policy record, would take to his Twitter account to insult her, and he did. "Bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton!" ran one posting during the speech, which included a typo. "Reading poorly from the teleprompter! She doesn't even look presidential!" Trump has said previously that Clinton is distorting his actual policies. TWO VISIONS Amid the laugh lines, Clinton cited her own experience as secretary of state, in particular her role advising President Barack Obama during the mission to kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, to suggest her approach to foreign policy was the more serious. "He praises dictators like Vladimir Putin and picks fights with our friends, including the British prime minister, the mayor of London, the German chancellor, the president of Mexico and the pope," Clinton said, listing some of the allies with whom Trump has verbally sparred in the last year. Obama, who has also been repeatedly mocked by Trump, has criticized Trump as being ignorant or cavalier about world affairs and has said that Trump's rise has "rattled" foreign leaders. Trump has talked tough on foreign policy. He has said he would bring back waterboarding and other brutal interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects that are widely regarded as torture and were discontinued by Obama. Trump has also vowed to renegotiate trade deals, called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, and said he would ask members of the 28-nation NATO alliance to "pay up" or "get out." He has said he would sit down with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to try to stop Pyongyang's nuclear programme. Clinton derided these and other positions, promising she would do a better job keeping the United States safe. Standing in front of a backdrop of 19 large U.S. flags, an unusual abundance even by the standards of presidential campaign events, Clinton painted the election as a choice between "two very different visions." "One that's angry, afraid and based on the idea that America is fundamentally weak and in decline," she said, summing up Trumpism. "The other is hopeful, generous and confident in the knowledge that America is great, just like we always have been." Trump has criticized Clinton for her handling of foreign policy during her 2009-2013 stint as secretary of state, including the Sept. 11, 2012, attack by Islamist militants on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. He cites Clinton's support for the war in Iraq, launched by former Republican President George W. Bush, as another example of her shortcomings. In assailing each other's suitability for the White House, Clinton and Trump are reflecting a negative voter mood ahead of next month's party conventions that will choose the presidential nominees. Both Clinton and Trump are facing record-low favourability ratings. A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken Friday through Tuesday shows half of Trump supporters say the primary reason they are going to vote for him is "I don't want Hillary Clinton to win," while 41 percent of Clinton supporters cite their primary reason as not wanting Trump to win. (Additional reporting by Chris Khan in New York and Ginger Gibson in Washington; Writing by Doina Chiacu and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Frances Kerry and Leslie Adler) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Washington: In a major boost to Republican party unity ahead of the November polls, House Speaker Paul Ryan has endorsed presumptive nominee Donald Trump, saying that they have "more common ground than disagreement". "I feel confident he would help us turn the ideas in this agenda into laws to help improve peoples' lives. That's why I'll be voting for him this fall," Ryan said in an op-ed published in Gazette Xtra. Ryan, citing "major policy differences", had refused to endorse Trump after he emerged as the presumptive presidential nominee following his win in the Indiana primary elections in May. Thereafter, the two had a series of meetings and phone calls. The Speaker has now insisted that despite differences between the two men, they have more common ground than divergence. "It's no secret that he and I have our differences. I won't pretend otherwise. And when I feel the need to, I'll continue to speak my mind. But the reality is, on the issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground than disagreement," he said. "I'll be voting for @realDonaldTrump this fall. I'm confident he will help turn the House GOP's agenda into laws," he tweeted. His goal from the start, Ryan said, was to unite the Republican party so they could win in the fall. "And if we're going to unite, it has to be over ideas. Donald Trump and I have talked at great length about things such as the proper role of the executive and fundamental principles such as the protection of life," he said. "The list of potential Supreme Court nominees he released after our first meeting was very encouraging," he said. He also said he would start introducing a series of policy proposals that address the American peoples' top priorities, starting next week. "To enact these ideas, we need a Republican president willing to sign them into law. That's why, when he sealed the nomination, I could not offer my support for Donald Trump before discussing policies and basic principles," he wrote. Trump welcomed the endorsement that he had been awaiting for weeks now. "So great to have the endorsement and support of Paul Ryan. We will both be working very hard to Make America Great Again!" he tweeted. The two had met face-to-face for the first time in May, where they vowed to unite the party to ensure victory in the November polls. "The United States cannot afford another four years of the Obama White House, which is what Hillary Clinton represents," Trump and Ryan said in their joint statement after the meeting at the Republican National Committee headquarters. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to strongly push for India's membership at the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) during his visit to Switzerland, Mexico and the US countries that are part of the elite group that looks after critical issues relating to the atomic sector. India has been pushing for membership of the 48-nation bloc for last few years and had formally moved its application on 12 May. "This has been the objective we pursued for many many years. I think we have made lot of progress and that has led us to formally apply for the NSG membership some days ago. We are engaged with all NSG members," Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said. He said India was looking at a very major domestic expansion in nuclear power sector besides at a "very large" international collaboration with different countries and its entry into the NSG would help its objective of having clean energy. Insisting India not signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty should not be linked to its bid for NSG membership, he said India fulfilled all its commitments relating to atomic sector. "We have a very solid record with which much of the world is comfortable. The NSG has already made one exception for us. In a sense, our credentials have been examined, a judgement was arrived at in 2008. "In 2008, we gave some commitments, we gave commitments on separation of our nuclear programme, between civil and the strategic side. We agreed to accept and implement additional protocol. We faithfully followed up," he said. The foreign secretary said granting NSG membership to India is a "logical next step". During his talks with the leadership of Mexico, Switzerland and the US, Modi is likely to seek support for India's membership bid at the NSG. About NPT and NSG, Jaishankar said the "objectives are different and I would not confuse apples for oranges." "The merits of our joining NSG derive from the fact that we have a substantial expansion of our nuclear energy segment. As the industry grows, we will ourselves become a serious nuclear exporter.. Our records are very good," he said. The US has been supporting India's bid and is learnt to have been reaching out to other countries as well to support it. "Obviously, countries which feel that what we are doing is the right thing, if they take it up on themselves to articulate their positions, and talk to others, this is what friends do for each other," Jaishankar said. For more than a decade, he said, India has been telling the world that a country like India needs nuclear energy in a big way and that can be achieved If there is no uncertainty about trading rules. "That will only be possible if there is a sense that there is a predictable environment. If there is uncertainty about trading rules, if there is uncertainty about technology then you will really not get that kind of investments and players," he said. He said, if everything goes well, then India will have a very large number of reactors in the next 15 years in the country. "We are also becoming a nuke exporter. We want our own industry also to be compliant with international norms and practices," he said adding proliferation is not an irrelevant concern but India has a very good non-proliferation record. Former UCLA graduate Mainak Sarkar, who went on a murder-suicide mission to UCLA and shot professor William Klug, also killed a woman in Minnesota. Officials confirmed that the woman found dead in Brooklyn Park, a suburb of Minneapolis, was Ashley Hasti. According to CNN, Hasti and Sarkar got married 14 June, 2011, but it is not clear whether they were still married at the time of their deaths. The Daily Beast reported the local cops said that Hasti could have been dead for a couple of days, while Daily Mail reported that Hasti, who was a medical student, was found with a gunshot to the head. The report added that Hasti had enrolled in the University of Minnesota Medical School in 2012. She also holds a bachelor's degree in Asian languages and literature. Hasti's name was on a "kill list" that Mainak Sarkar had written. The list also included the name of another professor whom the authorities believe the gunman had intended to kill, but could not find on the UCLA campus, police chief Charlie Beck said. The cops found the list in Sarkar's Minnesota home. The authorities, however, did not publicly identify the unharmed professor or the woman. Sarkar drove to Los Angeles from Minnesota with two guns and killed Klug before taking his own life. Beck said it appeared mental issues were involved and that Sarkar's dispute with Klug was tied to Sarkar thinking the professor released intellectual property that harmed Sarkar. Hasti lived with her father in Brooklyn Park. Gordy Aune Jr, the neighborhood watch commander, said that the father daughter kept to themselves. Records in Hennepin County, Minnesota, show Hasti married Sarkar in 2011, though more recently they had different residences. Hasti's grandmother, Jean Johnson, said the two only remained together for about a year, but didn't get a divorce, because Hasti couldn't afford one. "They just didn't get along," Johnson told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. "The only enemy she had was him, I guess. I never thought he would do something like that." She said she hadn't mentioned any recent animosity with Sarkar. Sarkar met Hasti in California around 2009-10. Johnson told Minneapolis Star-Tribune that "Sarkar seemed like a quiet, smart man, but he was real hyper. He had trouble sleeping. He just needed to see a doctor. Sarkar had disparaged Klug online and the professor knew of his contempt, but police have not uncovered any death threats, Beck said. The writings contained "some harsh language, but certainly nothing that would be considered homicidal," he said. A blog post written in March by someone identifying himself as Sarkar asserted that Klug "cleverly stole all my code and gave it (to) another student" and "made me really sick." Beck said Sarkar was mentally unstable, saying the investigation had shown his claims of stolen code are "a making of his own imagination." According to AP, Sarkar and Klug were once close. In his 2013 dissertation about using engineering to understand the human heart, the student thanked the professor "for all his help and support. Thank you for being my mentor." Authorities believe Sarkar drove to Los Angeles in the past few days with two handguns he legally bought in Minnesota. Sarkar's LinkedIn page shows he obtained a master's degree at Stanford University after graduating in 2000 from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur with a degree in aerospace engineering. He most recently was listed as an engineering analyst at a Findlay, Ohio, company called Endurica. Company president Will Mars said Sarkar left in August 2014. It's unclear what he had been doing since. Colleagues, family and friends described Klug as a kind, devoted father and teacher. He is survived by his wife and two children, a 9-year-old boy and 7-year-old girl. "Bill was so much more than my soul mate. I will miss him every day for the rest of my life," Klug's wife, Mary Elise Klug, said in a statement. "Knowing that so many others share our family's sorrow has provided a measure of comfort." With inputs from AP BODO/ABUJA, Nigeria Militants launched new attacks in the Niger Delta on Thursday, vowing to bring Nigeria's struggling oil industry to a total halt, and the president cancelled a long-awaited visit to the region. The army said militants killed six people on Wednesday when they ambushed a boat belonging to state oil firm NNPC in the Warri area. Separately, the Niger Delta Avengers group said it had attacked two crude pipelines operated by Italy's ENI (ENI.MI). "At about 2:00 am today @NDAvengers blew up the Ogboinbiri to Tebidaba and Clough Creek to Tebidaba Crude Oil pipelines in Bayelsa State," the group said on Twitter. "This is in line with our promise to all international oil companies and indigenous oil companies that Nigeria oil production will be zero." But the NDA said in a statement late on Thursday that it was not responsible for the boat attack. "Killing of sleeping soldiers is not our style," the NDA said in an emailed statement. The Avengers group has claimed responsibility for other recent attacks on Chevron (CVX.N) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) facilities. A wave of such attacks have helped drive the country's oil output to a 20-year low. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari cancelled at the last minute a visit planned for Thursday to the Delta, source of most of Nigeria's crude. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo made the trip in Buhari's place to launch a cleanup programme in an area badly hit by oil spills, vowing to work with community leaders to end militant attacks. POVERTY AND POLLUTION No reason has been given for the cancellation of what would have been Buhari's first visit to the region since taking office a year ago. Western allies and local officials have told the former military chief that he needs to address poverty and oil pollution in the Delta to stop unrest. "We are determined to put right the wrongs of the past, where the people of this land were treated unfairly and the environment unduly polluted and degraded," Osinbajo said in a speech in the town of Bodo in the polluted Ogoniland area. "The cleanup of this land will require change on the part of all those who deal with the Niger Delta environment - particularly the oil companies and our communities," he said. The Avengers have accused Buhari, a Muslim from northern Nigeria, of ignoring the problems of the predominantly Christian Delta. Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme, joined Osinbajo at the ceremony. He said the cleanup "cannot happen overnight" but he hoped the government, oil firms and locals could work together to reduce pollution. (Additional reporting by Felix Onuah in Abuja, Seun Sanni in Lagos, Anamesere Igboeroteonwu in Onitsha and Ernest Scheyder in Houston; Writing by Ulf Laessing and Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Andrew Roche and Peter Cooney) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. ST. LOUIS Two St. Louis police officers will not face charges for the shooting death of a black teenager in August 2015, a Missouri prosecutor said on Thursday. Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce said there was not enough evidence to show that the plainclothes officers did not shoot Mansur Ball-Bey, 18, in self-defence, as they contend they did. This is a tragedy in every aspect of the word. Im sorry for the pain that the Ball-Bey family is experiencing right now, Joyce said in a statement. St. Louis and its suburb of Ferguson have drawn protests over police treatment of minorities after a white Ferguson officer fatally shot an unarmed black teenager in 2014. That and other fatal incidents ignited protests around the United States. Ball-Bey was killed as police were trying to execute a search warrant at a home in a crime-ridden neighbourhood. Joyce said the two officers and a witness reported that they saw Ball-Bey with a gun as he ran out of the building. Ball-Bey pointed the loaded weapon at one officer and both shot at him, she said. Prosecutors found photos from social media and Ball-Bey's cell phone of what appear to be the same gun in his possession, she said. Jermaine Wooten, the Ball-Bey family's attorney, said: "We're terribly disappointed. It appears her investigation centred more around just rubber-stamping the police." The family has not decided whether to file a civil suit, he said. They maintain that Ball-Bey, a recent high school graduate, was not in the home being searched. The autopsy shows that his spinal cord was severed, but the police explanation would mean he ran another 80 feet (24 meters), Wooten said. Joyce had ordered an independent probe into the shooting at the same time police were investigating it. The officers have not been identified. (Writing by Ian Simpson; Editing by Chris Reese) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Los Angeles: Protesters gathered outside a rally for Donald Trump in California, as police braced for violence that has erupted at similar events for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The protesters chanted "No hate in our state" and carried signs that read "Dump Trump" as they marched near the San Jose Convention Center in northern California. Police were out in force, at one point forming a line to allow Trump supporters access to the rally and prevent clashes that have erupted at a number of the real estate magnate's events in recent weeks. One Trump supporter was egged while others were spit on. A protester was seen burning an American flag. Several fistfights erupted but were quickly broken up. Trump was last in the San Jose area in April, when he spoke at the California Republican Party convention where protesters blocked access to the venue, forcing him to use the back door. San Jose police chief Eddie Garcia said in a statement earlier that he expected 12,000 to 15,000 people at the rally on Thursday and that his officers would do their utmost to respect people's right to protest. Union members, community activists and religious leaders had pledged to protest Trump's event. Last week, dozens of protesters were arrested in San Diego after a campaign appearance by Trump, who has angered many with his rhetoric against Hispanics, women, Muslims and others. Protests at a Trump rally in New Mexico last month also turned violent as demonstrators overran barricades and clashed with police in riot gear. WASHINGTON Paul Ryan, the top elected Republican, ended a long period of soul-searching and endorsed Donald Trump for president on Thursday, a step toward unifying party loyalists behind the insurgent candidate despite concerns about his candidacy. Ryan had been a high-profile holdout to supporting Trump for the Nov. 8 presidential election out of concern about the presumptive Republican nominee's bellicose rhetoric and break with party orthodoxy on issues including trade and immigration. The House of Representatives speaker announced his support in a column for the Janesville Gazette newspaper in his home state of Wisconsin. It surfaced in the middle of a speech by Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in which she launched a far-reaching attack on Trump's foreign policy credentials. Ryan did not specifically use the word "endorse" in his column, but his spokesman, Brendan Buck, made clear that Ryan's move should be seen as an endorsement. The speaker had criticized the Republican candidate several times, including Trump's proposal in December to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the United States because of national security concerns. The 46-year-old Ryan was the only member of the Republican congressional leadership who had not formally embraced Trump. In a tweet, Trump responded: "So great to have the endorsement and support of Paul Ryan. We will both be working very hard to Make America Great Again!" Ryan's backing of Trump could give cover to more reluctant Republicans to get behind the billionaire businessman as their best chance to win the White House. "I think the endorsement is significant because it shows the falling in line of the establishment Republicans from the top," said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. It should also help Trump make the case that he can bring the party together as he girds for a Republican nominating convention in July that many party leaders plan to skip. It also represents a blow to Republicans who have been trying to organize a third-party bid to give party loyalists who cannot abide Trump someone else to support. The "never Trump" crowd includes 2012 nominee Mitt Romney. Ryan was Romney's vice presidential running mate. While Ryan's decision could push some Republican leaders off the fence, many holdouts remained, such as two former rivals, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Aides to both said their positions had not changed. Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid described Ryan's move as "abject surrender," adding: "The GOP is Trump's party now." 'HEAL THE FISSURES' Ryan met Trump in a high-profile meeting last month and they have since had a number of telephone calls. "Its no secret that he and I have our differences. I wont pretend otherwise," Ryan wrote. "And when I feel the need to, Ill continue to speak my mind. But the reality is, on the issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground than disagreement." Ryan said he and Trump had spoken many times in recent weeks about how, "by focusing on issues that unite Republicans, we can work together to heal the fissures developed through the primary." "Through these conversations, I feel confident he would help us turn the ideas in this agenda into laws to help improve people's lives. Thats why Ill be voting for him this fall," Ryan said. Announcing he will vote for Trump should make it a bit more comfortable for Ryan to chair the party's nominating convention in Cleveland. While Ryan's endorsement was significant for Trump, there remain many concerns about him within the party. Longtime Republican financier Fred Malek drew attention to worries about Trump in a column in the Washington Post on Thursday. He cited Trump's criticism last week of New Mexico's Republican governor, Susana Martinez, considered a rising star in the party with the ability to appeal to Hispanics. "These attacks on fellow Republicans must stop as we move closer to the general election," Malek wrote. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, who has said he will support Trump, told CNN that Trump's proposed Muslim ban was a bad idea and that his criticism of Martinez was ill-advised. Ryan said he too still had concerns about Trump's tone. "It is my hope the campaign improves its tone as we go forward and it's all a campaign we can be proud of," Ryan told the Associated Press. (Additional reporting by Alana Wise, Emily Stephenson and Richard Cowan; Editing by Peter Cooney) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Seoul: The two Koreas stepped up an angry war of words on Friday as tensions mounted over a series of North Korean defections and the South's rejection of Pyongyang's repeated offers of military talks. Tensions have been running high on the divided Korean peninsula ever since the North conducted its fourth nuclear test in January followed by a long-range rocket launch. In the past month, a new source of friction has emerged with two cases of group defections by North Korean staff working in Pyongyang-run restaurants in China. A dozen women and their restaurant manager arrived in Seoul in April, and three others from a separate restaurant followed them this week. North Korea insists the staff were duped and effectively kidnapped by South Korean intelligence agents and are being held in the South against their will an accusation Seoul categorically denies. "The allurement and abduction clearly proves that the puppet forces of south Korea are the most hideous human rights abusers," a spokesman for the North Korean Red Cross said in a statement. Referring to the latest case of the three women who had been working in a restaurant in the northern Chinese province of Shanxi, the spokesman said they were the victims of a sophisticated, "premeditated abduction". He said South Korean agents "lured" the women away from their work and spirited them across the border with Laos and then into Thailand. Seoul's unification ministry dismissed the "groundless" accusations on Friday, and said North Korea could better spend time examining why its citizens wanted to flee. "We hope North Korea will look back on the continued defections and use it as an opportunity to improve the human rights and livelihoods of its people," ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-Hee said. The South Korean government estimates that Pyongyang rakes in around USD 10 million every year from about 130 restaurants it operates with mostly North Korean staff in 12 countries, including neighbouring China. Tough UN sanctions imposed on North Korea after its January nuclear test significantly curtailed the isolated state's ability to earn hard currency, making the restaurants an even more important source of income than before. There have been reports of staff not being paid, with restaurants pressured into increasing their regular remittances to Pyongyang. BEIRUT A suicide bomber detonated explosives near a mosque in the Syrian coastal city of Latakia on Thursday, killing and wounding several people, a monitoring group and state media reported. The explosion took place near the city centre as people were leaving prayers, state TV reported, describing it as a terrorist attack. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the conflict using sources on the ground, confirmed the blast took place in a northern area of Latakia. The Obseratory said the blast killed at least three people. State media reported at least one dead and several wounded. State-run Ikhbariya news channel showed patches of blood on the ground and rescue workers and security personnel carrying wounded people towards ambulances. Bomb attacks have previously hit Latakia city, which is in President Bashar al-Assad's heartland along the Mediterranean coast. Shells fired by insurgents later on Thursday hit Assad's ancestral town of Qardaha, further inland in Latakia province, killing at least one person, the Observatory said. Last week a series of bombings killed nearly 150 people in Jableh, just south of Latakia, and Tartous, the first such attacks of their kind in those cities. Islamic State claimed last week's attacks, saying they targeted Assad's Alawite minority, and other attacks in the Syrian capital Damascus and western city Homs earlier this year. (Reporting by John Davison; Editing by Angus MacSwan) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Damascus: The Syrian army aims to target Islamic State in Raqqa province, a pro-Damascus newspaper reported on Friday, in a new offensive focusing on areas that a US-backed alliance is also aiming to capture from the jihadists. The initial target is the town of Tabqa, the location of an Islamic State arsenal, the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar reported, adding that the army would was putting "a foot in the area without leaving it completely to the Americans' allies". Tabqa is also a target of the US-backed Syria Democratic Forces alliance (SDF) which has launched a multi-pronged attack against IS in the provinces of Raqqa and neighbouring Aleppo, aiming to deny it access to the Turkish frontier. The Syrian army announced on Thursday a new operation backed by Russian air strikes in the Athriya area of eastern Hama province, some 100 km (60 miles) southwest of Tabqa and some 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the provincial frontier with Raqqa. Asked about the al-Akhbar report, a Syrian military source told Reuters the army was focused on eastern and northern areas of both Homs and Hama provinces "in the direction of Daesh (IS) gatherings". Homs province borders the Islamic State-dominated province of Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria. "The field leadership does not give information about the main direction or the secondary direction, but the direction is open to the two possibilities - Deir al-Zor and Raqqa", the source said. Al-Akhbar said the new Syrian army operation did not aim to reach Raqqa city "in the coming weeks", but the aim was at least to reach Tabqa city and Lake Assad, which it overlooks. Tabqa, the location of an air base, is some 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Raqqa city, Islamic State's de facto capital. Islamic State captured Tabqa in 2014 at the height of its rapid expansion in Syria and Iraq. The Syrian army advanced to the border between Raqqa and Hama provinces in February. A military source said at the time Tabqa would be the first target of a Syrian government attack in Raqqa province. Athens, Greece: Three bodies were recovered and 302 people rescued on Friday from a sinking boat carrying a "significant number" of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea south of Crete, Greek authorities said. The coast guard said the roughly 25 metre (82 foot) vessel, which resembled a large fishing boat, had been carrying an undetermined number of people when it was located, on Friday, half-sunk about 75 nautical miles south of Crete in international waters, and within Egypt's search and rescue area of operation. Greece was sending two patrol vessels, a military airplane and three helicopters, while five passing ships were participating in the rescue operation and one more was on its way. The coast guard said the operation was continuing to locate any potentially missing passengers from the migrant boat. It was not immediately clear where the boat's passengers were from, or where the vessel had set off from or was heading to. The short crossing from the Turkish coast to Greek islands was the preferred route for migrants heading to Europe until Balkan countries closed their borders and the European Union reached an agreement with Turkey to stem the flow of people. Under that deal, those arriving on Greek islands from 20 March onwards face deportation back to Turkey unless they successfully apply for asylum in Greece, a financially troubled country few migrants or refugees want to stay in. The deal has led to a dramatic decrease in the number of people arriving on Greek islands from Turkey. The coast guard said it and European border patrol agency Frontex had rescued 164 people in four separate incidents Thursday off the islands of Lesbos and Chios. Before the EU-Turkey deal, thousands would arrive each day. However, the deal has led refugees and migrants to seek alternative routes, with many attempting the much longer and more dangerous crossing from north Africa towards Italy. Hundreds have died in the past few weeks when overcrowded boats attempting the crossing sank. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has also promised Greece more help in overcoming its financial crisis, with investment and assistance with administrative reforms. Valls met with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Friday before the two countries were due to sign agreements to continue French assistance for reforms in central and regional government. Greece is hoping to restart its long-delayed privatization program after Eurozone countries assured the country that they will continue to pay bailout money and will improve the repayment terms of past loans. France played a lead role last year in easing a dispute between rescue lenders and Tsipras' left-wing government that had threatened Greece's place in the Eurozone. Washington: Republican Party's presidential candidate Donald Trump said that his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, should be imprisoned for her misuse of email when she was the Secretary of State. "I will say this: Hillary Clinton has got to go to jail. Honestly, she's guilty as hell," Trump told his supporters at a rally in San Jose, California, on Thursday where violence erupted as his supporters clashed with protesters. The business mogul had earlier accused Clinton of violating federal law by using her personal email account for official business when she was the head of US diplomacy, the position she held from 2009 to early 2013. Clinton, on the other hand, accused Trump at a rally in San Diego, California, that he lacks the temperament and preparation required to be President. "Donald Trump's ideas aren't just different - they are dangerously incoherent" said former Secretary of State, adding "it's not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin." Clinton is criticised by many Republicans saying that her email misuse could have jeopardised US national security. The FBI is investigating her use of an private and unsecured email server during that time. LOS ANGELES A former University of California, Los Angeles, student shot dead a woman at her home in Minnesota before he drove almost 2,000 miles (3,200 km) to the school and killed one professor but failed to find a third intended victim, police said on Thursday. Mainak Sarkar, 38, had intended to kill a second professor in addition to engineering professor William Klug, 39, at a small office on the campus, police said. He shot himself dead after the killing, police said. The shootings prompted a two-hour long lockdown on Wednesday. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck told reporters on Thursday that a search of Sarkar's St. Paul, Minnesota, home turned up a "kill list" that included the name of the woman found dead nearby, as well as the name of the other UCLA professor, who was not harmed. "We believe that Sarkar came to the Los Angeles area very recently, within the last couple of days," Beck told reporters at Los Angeles police headquarters. "He went there to kill two faculty from UCLA. He was only able to find one." The other professor was off campus at the time, Beck said. Sarkar was armed with two 9 mm pistols and multiple ammunition clips, Beck said. He killed himself immediately after fatally shooting Klug, he said. Police searched Sarkar's Minnesota home after finding a note at the Los Angeles crime scene asking for someone to check on his cat, Beck said. "In the search of Sarkar's residence in Minneapolis, a list was located," Beck said. "The list has been described as a 'kill list.' That was the wording that was put on it." The attack appeared to be provoked by Sarkar's belief that Klug had stolen computer code from him, according to a March blog post that appeared to be written by Sarkar. "Your enemy is my enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm," the post said. "Be careful about whom you trust." Reuters was not able to confirm the authenticity of the blog. "UCLA says there is no truth to this," Beck said of the alleged theft of code. "This was a making of his own imagination." The anger reflected in the March blog contrasted with earlier online records indicating Sarkar had gotten along with Klug. In a copy of his 2013 dissertation posted online, Sarkar thanked Klug. "I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. William Klug, for all his help and support, Sarkar wrote. 'HARSH LANGUAGE' Beck said UCLA faculty members were aware that Sarkar, who graduated in 2013, harbored anger toward them. "There was some harsh language but certainly nothing that would be considered homicidal," Beck said, referring to social media postings by Sarkar. His motive for killing the woman was unclear, Beck said. University officials did not respond on Thursday to requests for comment on Sarkar's claims. Prior to his time at UCLA, from 2003 to 2005 Sarkar attended Stanford University, where he received a master's degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, university spokeswoman Lisa Lapin said. Police in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, north of Minneapolis, said they discovered the woman's body when they went to check on her. They did not immediately disclose her identity. Klug was a married father of two children, UCLA said in a statement. "It was really a pleasure to work with him, from a scientific point of view for his original ideas, but also from the personal point of view," Wouter Roos, a professor at the University of Gronigen in The Netherlands who co-authored several research papers with Klug, said in an email. "He had such a positive attitude." Reports of shots fired, or even sightings of possible gunmen, have sparked heavy police responses and lockdowns at U.S. schools and other places because of the nation's history of mass shootings. Last October nine people were shot and killed at Umpqua Community College in southwest Oregon. The 2007 attack at Virginia Tech, in which a gunman killed 32 people, was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Classes resumed at UCLA on Thursday, with the university offering counselors for students, faculty and staff. UCLA, part of the University of California system, has more than 43,000 students. (Additional reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago and Amy Tennery in New York; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Dan Grebler) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. digital and print publisher. digital and print publisher. We are Americas largest We are Americas largest The brands you love. The experiences you want. 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A report from last year said that Samsung is working on a device with Dual cameras for 2016 and a recent patent hinted at the same for the next Galaxy Note edge flagship. Now a new report from Taiwanese media says that the Galaxy Note 7 edge will pack dual rear cameras. Samsung is said to skip the Galaxy Note 6 and name the next Note flagship as Galaxy Note 7, to eliminate inconsistencies and bring it in line with the current Galaxy S7 and S7 edge in terms of branding. According to the the report, Samsung Electro-Mechanics (Semco) has already started production of dual camera modules to be used in the Note 7 edge. According to earlier rumors, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 and Note 7 edge will pack a 5.8-inch Quad HD screen, will be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 823 processor, come with 6GB of RAM, up to 256GB of storage, pack a huge 4000mAh battery, come with IP68 ratings for water resistance and also have iris scanner. Huawei is the latest company to release a high-end smartphone, P9 with dual camera setup with Leica lenses. Apple is also expected to go with dual iSight camera setup for the iPhone 7 Plus. Source | Via Sothebys New York (NYSE: BID) is rolling out a collection of high end, mind boggling collectable watches and other mechanical marvels for a highly anticipated June 8 auction. Over 200 watches and other hand crafted automata are up for bid ranging from the early 19th to 21st centuries. Brands like Patek Philippe, Richard Mille, as well as a few prominent pieces once owned by the late King Farouk of Egypt. The showstopping "Magician Box" may get top billing for as much at $1.5 million. FoxBusiness.com got a sneak peek of the collection when we caught up with Katharine Thomas, Vice President and Head of Department of Watches at Sothebys. We are collecting pieces from all over the world, all types of clients, new collectors and people who have inherited things. Its really exciting because we are out there treasure hunting in unusual places on the planet finding these great pieces and excited to finally bring them to the public says Thomas. So what do watch enthusiasts have their eye on this time around? We spoke with Ben Clymer, founder of the go-to watch website, HODINKEE.com for answers. The biggest watch on sale is the [Patek Philippe] World Time. Its vintage early part of 20th century, something novel. World travel not many people did in 30s and the watch was truly designed for the upper tiers of society who could afford the international travel. In my opinion, it easily can go for one million dollars" says Clymer. But are people buying? Its a very robust market. When one part of the world is softer in terms of the economy, other markets are stepping up. We have participants in North and South America, Europe, Asia, all over. Its very, very diverse Thomas says. The very important things will continue to sell no matter what the market is doing, People are seeking trophies, true master pieces no matter what, she added. Its a good bell weather for whats going on with luxury from the United States to Hong Kong and across the globe says Clymer. I am seeing things that would have sold for thirty thousand dollars ten years ago are now going for three hundred thousand dollars. As more and more enthusiasts look into upgrading their watch game, is it really the smart way to invest financially for the future? I would never encourage people to assume there is growth. Buy the best quality and the most timeless, you will be OK Clymer recommends. There is an element of buying for an investment but more because people are just passionate. You are buying something that you love says Thomas. If you are on the hunt for something timeless, be sure to check out Sothebys Important Watch Collection on view now. Don't have time to stop by Walmart for groceries? No sweat. Soon, Uber and Lyft will be able to handle it for you. Walmart will soon begin piloting a new grocery delivery service through Uber, Lyft, and Deliv. The service is slated to launch within the next two weeks in Denver and another undisclosed city. Here's how it will work: place your grocery order online and select a delivery window. Walmart's personal shoppers will prepare your order, and request a driver from one of the services to pick it up and bring it to you. Walmart will notify you when the driver is on their way, and you can check "get groceries" off your to-do list. "It's all seamless to the customer," Walmart said. You will, of course, have to pay for this convenience. Walmart is charging a $7 to $10 delivery fee; you won't have to pay the driver any extra, though. Walmart has been quietly testing this idea at Sam's Club in Miami since March. The process there is similar: the store's personal shoppers prepare orders, and they're delivered via Deliv. "We're thrilled about the possibility of delivering new convenient options to our customers, and about working with some transformative companies in this test," Walmart wrote in a blog post. "We'll start small and let our customers guide us." Meanwhile, Walmart may in the future add another convenient option: drone deliveries. Following the lead of Amazon and Google, the retailer last year asked the Federal Aviation Administration for permission to test drones for things like package delivery and inventory monitoring. This article originally appeared on PCMag.com. Outsourcing manufacturing and exporting jobs are a sore spot for many Americans, however some companies find good reason to stay put or break new ground. This summer FOXBusiness.com's series 'Still Made in America' introduces us to a variety of companies keeping their production--and jobs--at home. In 1972 aeronautical inventor Gordon Holcombe found himself working on designing the DC-10 jetliner's emergency slide, and he realized that it was similar to a raft and indeed could function as one. Taking parts of the words MARine and AVIAtion, he founded the Maravia raft company with a group of investors in California. Today it has become one of America's premier manufacturers of whitewater-rafting boats and accessories and features 100 percent U.S. production. Like a typical river trip, that journey took a number of twists and turns. River guides Doug Tims and Mike McLeod bought the company in 1985 with a group of other investors and moved the company to Boise, Idaho. With a product line of about 40 items, ranging from rafts and catarafts to sleeping pads and cushions, Maravia has 12 employees and although the company does not release sales figures, in 2009 Tims was quoted in Boise Weekly And that range is considerable. For a Maravia raft that costs $7,200, a comparable U.S.-made boat by another manufacturer might run $5,200, and an import about $3,000. So how does Frazee compete with rafts from companies including Aire, Sotar and NRS? "Dealing with the huge influx of imports and lower price points, the value is in the construction of the product," he says. "Nobody in the industry builds a boat like we do, using more high-end materials and a unique process." That method includes an additional step after each raft has been constructed: encapsulating the boat in polyurethane. Which means Maravia boats last. "We're building better boats," says Frazee, "so we're not seeing turnaround." Outfitters (commercial whitewater rafting companies) typically replace rafts after five years of hard use--running over sharp rocks and being dragged on and off of trailers-- but can get 15 years out of a Maravia boat, Frazee claims. More From FOXBusiness.com... FireEye, Inc. and Check Point Software each supply advanced appliances and software solutions in the field of cybersecurity. Check Point offers network and endpoint security and aims to "secure the Internet." FireEye focuses on advanced threat detection and prevention, as well as incidence resolution technology. Both are highly visible and well-regarded organizations in the security sector. But which makes for the better investment? Key Comparisons Let's begin by observing how these two companies fare on a handful of key metrics: Metric Check Point FireEye 2015 Revenue $1.6 Billion $623.0 million 2015 Operating Income (Loss) $839.7 million ($507.7 million) 2015 Operating Income Margin 51.50% -81.50% 3-Year Revenue Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) 8% 96% 3-Year Operating Income/Loss CAGR 4% 147% Trailing-12-Month (TTM) Price to Earnings 21.8 N/A* Forward 1-Year Price to Earnings 18.3 N/A* TTM Price to Sales 9.1 3.2 Forward 1-Year Price to Sales 8.0 2.0 Data source: Check Point and FireEye SEC annual report filings, 2012-2015. *Not applicable as FireEye does not yet have positive earnings on which to base price-to-earnings comparisons. Check Point was incorporated in Israel in 1993, and its maturity shows. As one of the very first -- and oldest -- network security companies, Check Point has tallied a decent, if not pulse-raising, revenue compounded annual growth rate, or CAGR, of 8% over the last three years. Similarly, profits have increased at a modest CAGR of 4%. But what catches my eye, and perhaps yours as well, is Check Point's extremely high profitability. An operating income margin of over 50% is quite rare, even for a software company. In trade for moderate growth and profit expansion, a shareholder in Check Point can bank on extremely robust profits each quarter. That's quite appealing to investors with long holding periods. Scanning over the same information in FireEye's column, revenue growth is a standout metric. FireEye has continued to add customers and sales at a heady pace since its debut on the public markets in 2013. But to create this order of top-line expansion, FireEye has invested heavily in research and development while incurring a high cost of sales, and has yet to generate positive net income on an annual basis. In fact, FireEye's three-year revenue CAGR is exceeded only by its three-year loss CAGR. That is to say, the 96% annual average improvement in sales is topped only by the 147% annual growth rate of the company's losses. In the software industry, and indeed within the subsector of cybersecurity, investors value revenue increases but also demand some visibility into future profits. That FireEye continues to rack up losses while producing either negative or marginally positive operating cash flow each quarter has rattled its investors as of late. The chart above is indicative of some idiosyncrasies surrounding FireEye's business, in particular, its unique approach to security software. Rather than provide firewall protection or traditional intrusion prevention systems, FireEye's products guard against advanced threats in a virtual software environment, leaving an organization's native systems uncompromised. Thus, the company's software isn't top of mind as a foundational security solution, and some customers buy FireEye's offerings only when a significant corporate hack is widely publicized. Similarly,investors' interest in the company tends to rise in direct proportion to the buzz around global security threats. Management is well aware of this cyclical, news-driven phenomenon. In its annual reports,FireEye even acknowledges the risk that if the level of advance threats from rogue outfits, state-sponsored security hacking, and corporate espionage agents decreases, the company's business could be materially impacted. Check Point's software is closer to what a typical corporation reaches for when building a security solution to protect vulnerabilities enterprisewide. Check Point successfully bundles appliances and software "blades" to provide a comprehensive security option. While it's still very much a network security leader, the company has also branched out in the threat detection market, albeit using different technologies than FireEye. This year, Check Point's latest suites of security appliances are especially optimized for threat prevention. After introducing the data center and high-end 15000 and 23000 appliances last year, the company followed up with the small and midrange 1400, 3000, and 5000 series, which come out of the box with a full threat prevention suite enabled. The better buy Ultimately, which stock is the better buy? While Check Point may be the much more mature company, it's no slouch as an investment. Since the FireEye IPO nearly three years ago, Check Point stock has returned 48%. Compare that to FireEye itself, which has lost 56% cumulatively since going public. Despite its operational losses, FireEye shows a great deal of promise due to its ability to capitalize on a rapidly expanding niche market. But a return to an ascending stock chart will hinge on management's ability to control costs and squeeze higher revenue from current levels of selling expenses. The company is countering the cyclical sales weakness discussed above by developing long-term relationships with clients via multiyear contracts. It's also refining its skill in selling advanced solutions to multinational corporations and government entities. In the company's most recently earnings call, outgoing CEO Dave DeWalt noted that FireEye's largest transaction of Q1 2016 was an eight-figure contract with a U.S. federal entity to protect more than 100,000 email addresses. Conversely, Check Point can already point to a plethora of large, long-term clients; its continued success rests on its ability to innovate, while maintaining a reputation as an industry leader. Recently, CEO Gil Shwed promised that the company will soon extend its cybersecurity platforms into markets such as the Internet of things (IoT), national security, and critical infrastructure. Check Point has a long track record of successfully evolving along with market trends, so investors have a reasonable assurance that it will indeed capture crucial market share in cybersecurity in the coming years. An extremely healthy corporate balance sheet is well capable of supporting further market expansion. Considering all factors, FireEye will remain a somewhat speculative investment until the company can string together several profitable quarters. Check Point, despite a sleepier reputation, has proved a winning holding over the last few years. While both offer compelling reasons to invest, for the near future, Check Point will remain the better buy. The article Better Buy: FireEye, Inc. vs. Check Point Software originally appeared on Fool.com. Asit Sharma has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Check Point Software Technologies and FireEye. 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: Instagram. Ever since Facebook purchased Instagram, the social media giant has been slowly morphing the photo and video sharing app's business model to look more like its own. And the latest change came this week when Instagram announced that it will soon have sponsored posts and business profiles. The sponsored posts will work how nearly every other sponsored posts on social media work: companies or brands can pay to have one of their photos or videos placed more prominently in front of users. One of the major changes this brings for companies is that they'll now be able to change regular posts into ads. Before, an advertisement was just that, an ad, but now a popular post can become an ad if it's proving to be popular among a brand's followers. The new business profiles will work similarly to Facebook Pages, with the ability for Instagram users to click a button to call, text, or email a company. And both of the changes could boost ad spending on the platform. Why the changes are good for Instagram Business profiles are a logical move for a platform, which is already widely used by many brands, and the feature will also include more analytics for the companies. Here's what Instagram said in blog post: The more data companies have about their posts (like what time of the day posts are most popular) should translate into brands being more willing to spend money promoting posts, or just adding more ads in general. Instagram says the promoted posts can be targeted to a specific audience of the brand's choosing, or Instagram can suggest the targeting it thinks is best. What Facebook stands to gain Instagram has become a core part of Facebook's overall revenue over the past few years. Facebook doesn't break out Instagram revenue specifically, but ads from the platform are estimated to bring in $1.53 billion for Facebook this year, which would equate to 15% of Facebook's total ad sales, according to eMarketer. And those ad numbers are expected to climb to $2.8 billion by next year. Instagram is rolling out the new business profiles and promoted posts slowly, starting with a U.S. launch this month, followed by New Zealand and Australia later, and finally worldwide by the end of the year. The new features should be a welcomed move by advertisers, and could help Facebook continue to build out one of its strongest assets. Investors will have to wait at least a few quarters to find out if the changes bring any significant bump in revenue to Facebook's bottom line, but they should be pleased that the social media juggernaut is using its experience on the Facebook platform to fuel new areas of growth in its other businesses. The article Instagram Is Borrowing Yet Another Facebook Strategy originally appeared on Fool.com. Chris Neiger has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Facebook. 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. Clean Energy and Big Blue Bus will be together for at least five more years. Image source: Clean Energy Fuels. The City of Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus has been a Clean Energy Fuels customer for a number of years, and the company has clearly done a solid job for the city. Santa Monica, located in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area, faces some of the most-aggressive emissions standards in the U.S. Furthermore, the city's residents also tend to be environmentally conscious, so there's a lot of momentum for its public transit to operate as environmentally friendly as it can. What does the deal mean for Clean Energy Fuels, both in the short and long term? Let's take a closer look at the details, and what it can tell us. On June 2, Clean Energy Fuels Corp announced that it had been awarded a five-year contract with the City of Santa Monica, California to provide Redeem, the company's brand of renewable natural gas, for the city's "Big Blue Bus" public transit system. According to the press release, this five-year deal will be worth approximately $3 million per year, and will provide liquefied natural gas, or LNG, for the Big Blue Bus fleet of 200 natural-gas-powered city buses. The city also disclosed in the release that it would replace the engines in 100 of its buses with the CWI 8.9L ISL G Near Zero natural-gas engine during the next three years. The engine is manufactured by a joint venture between engine-makerCumminsandWestport Innovations, and is called Cummins Westport. Environmental impact of Redeem offsetting cheaper diesel prices In short, this is more evidence that the environmental benefits of natural gas -- particularly renewable natural gas -- continue to play a big role in the decision that fleet operators make when it comes time to replace or add vehicles, even as diesel prices stay low: U.S. Retail Diesel PriceYCharts Natural gas prices have also fallen; on a per-gallon basis, it remains cheaper than both diesel and gasoline. The cost of a natural-gas-powered vehicle, however, can cost tens of thousands of dollars more than a comparable diesel-powered vehicle. With diesel still down about half from its peak, it's much easier for fleet managers to choose newer diesel engines, which are both cheaper than natural gas versions, and also more fuel-efficient than their predecessors. However, cheaper diesel, and improved diesel engines, don't change the reality that air quality is a real concern, especially in high-population urban centers like Southern California. According to Clean Energy CEO Andrew Littlefair, when combined with the new Cummins Westport Near Zero engine, a vehicle would produce fewer emissions than an electric vehicle powered by the grid. It seems that message is resonating in both the public and private sector, with organizations looking to reduce their environmental impacts as much as improve their bottom lines.The Big Blue Bus deal is only the most-recent agreement that indicates as much. In early May, Clean Energy Fuels announced that it had signed deals withKroger's Fred Meyer chain and refuse companyRepublic Servicesto provide Redeem.Prior to that, in March, the company announced that it had signed agreements with San Diego Airport Authority and Dillon Transportation to provide Redeem for their fleets. Combined, those four deals were worth more than 2.4 million gallons of natural gas per year -- and they're the ones the company made public. Redeem volumes increased 70% last quarterafter more than doubling in 2015. Redeem is only part of what's driving Clean Energy Clean Energy has come a long way in the past few years, outlasting the oil downturn so far, and continues to grow fuel sales and margins, even as diesel has stayed relatively cheap. At the same time, the company has improved its cost structure, and started chipping away at the mountain of debt it took on to fund station expansion that's only just beginning to pay returns. The company still has about $80 million in debt to deal with before September, and has recently come to a point where it should be consistently profitable -- so there remains some risk. But it looks like the worst is behind Clean Energy, and the benefits of Redeem -- as well as the company's reputation and its geographic scale -- have it well positioned for years of growth. The article What Investors Need to Know About Clean Energy Fuels Corp's Latest Deal For a big pharma with about $23 billion in annual revenue and the widest margins in its industry,AbbVie stock has been awfully volatile over the past couple of years. Competitors are lining up to take on its top product, Humira, so these jitters are clearly a symptom of the biosimilar blues. Humira, a popular anti-inflammatory, is still responsible for about 60% of the company's total revenue,but a flurry of acquisitions and collaborations are making progress toward reducing its Humira dependence. However, a collaboration withBiogen to commercialize multiple sclerosis drug Zinbryta probably won't be one of them. The blue-chip biotech and AbbVie are basically splitting profits and losses down the middle.After running the largest and longest head-to-head clinical trial in multiple sclerosis history, the partners may not break even on Zinbryta in the years ahead.Here are a few reasons why. 1. FDA warnings Black-box warnings will do to a drug launch what a cup of sugar will do to your gas mileage. These are the FDA's most severe warnings, and the Zinbryta salesforce has some pretty serious ones to deal with. At the top of the list is risk of severe liver injury, with cases reported up to four months after the last dose.Before a patient can begin Zinbryta, physicians need to be certain their liver is in tip-top condition, and they must conduct monthly blood tests for six months following the patient's last dose. Because of its safety profile, the FDA recommends reserving Zinbryta for patients who continue relapsing after treatment with two or more multiple sclerosis drugs. 2. A small niche Zinbryta's black box also includes a number of immune-related disorders, but one important warning missing from the label is the risk of an opportunistic brain infection, progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, or PML.This black-box warning is on Biogen's Tysabri,and its more recent inclusion on Tecfidera's (non-black-box) list of warnings and precautions has slowed that drug's growth trajectory significantly. There are a small group of patients who continue relapsing after trying safer, less effective drugs who are also at risk of developing PML. For those patients, Sanofi's Lemtrada is an option. However, this drug won FDA approval back in 2001 but is selling at an annualized run rate of about $394 million. Lemtrada's black-box warningsmake Zinbryta's seem like a walk in the park. That isn't its only disadvantage. When it comes to reducing lesions detected by MRI scans, Sanofi's drug failed to significantly outperform the standard of care, while Zinbryta showed a 54% reduction. However, when it comes to relapses, 78% of patients on Lemtrada remained relapse-free versus 67% in the Zinbryta trial. While these were both tested against a standard of care, they weren't head-to-head studies, so these comparisons need to be taken with a grain of salt. However, I wouldn't be surprised if Zinbryta pressures sales of Lemtrada for about a year. 3. A new standard AbbVie's and Sanofi's sales of Zinbryta and Lemtrada could find themselves up against a drug from Roche that threatens to redefine treatment of relapsing multiple sclerosis. Image source: Roche. The Swiss drugmaker's still-experimental Ocrevusis the first drug ever to significantly slow progression in the 10% to 15% of multiple sclerosis patients with the steadily progressing form of the disease. Roche plans to file an application soon for this and the larger relapsing indication all these previously mentioned drugs compete in. While the FDA will grant an expedited review to the application for treatment of primary progressive multiple sclerosis, Ocrevus could earn approval for the relapsing indication just less than a year from now. Zinbryta reduced the annualized rate of relapse by 45% over the standard of care. That's slightly less impressive than Ocrevus' performance against a similar drug. When it comes to watery or fatty brain lesions, patients receiving Ocrevus showed some impressive reductions versus the standard of care in two separate trials, detailed here. Again, these weren't head-to-head trials between Ocrevus and Zinbryta, but Roche's drug looks as if it has Zinbryta beat in terms of efficacy. If it earns approval without black-box warnings, as is widely expected, there will be little reason for patients to risk treatment with the drug from AbbVie and Biogen. Abbvie's top-line growth following its split from Abbotthas been impressive. First-quarter sales rose a whopping 31.9% over the same period last year through expansion of its cancer program, and the recent approval of Venclexta is another giant step forward. With plenty of growth drivers to look forward to, AbbVie is on sale, but I'm afraid Zinbryta isn't one of the bargains. The article 3 Reasons AbbVie's and Biogen's Latest MS Drug Might Flop originally appeared on Fool.com. Cory Renauer owns shares of Abbott Laboratories. You can follow Cory on Twitter @TMFang4apples or connect with him on LinkedIn for more healthcare industry insight. The Motley Fool recommends Biogen. 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: Fitbit. The market for fitness trackers is heating up at both ends of the pricing spectrum, and it's only natural to wonder ifFitbitwill still rule the roost. Fitbit's been able to stand up well against the threat of tech and smartphone giants rolling out high-end smartwatches and activity-measuring bracelets, but there's now some rumbling on the low end. Xiaomi -- the company that's giving Apple fits in China with its cheap but stylish smartphones -- is also gunning for Fitbit. Xiaomi claims to have sold 20 million of its Mi Band and Mi Band Pulse activity counters, and now it's raising the bar with Mi Band 2. The new wristband monitors steps taken, distance traveled, heart rate, and sleep activity. It also offers a small display -- a first for Xiaomi -- yet still manages to have a battery life of 20 days. It hits the market next week at a dirt cheap $23, but let's not assume that this will slow Fitbit down. Let's go over three reasons why Fitbit can do just fine in this climate. 1. Mi Band 2 is still leaning on China Xiaomi is focusing on China, where the new tracker will be released on June 7. Fitbit is still relying on the U.S. market for 70% of its sales. This is important. China has grown to become Apple's second largest market, so Xiaomi's booming popularity is a problem for the world's largest consumer electronics company. Apple's revenue in Greater China plunged 26% in its latest quarter, and Xiaomi played a big role there. That's not what's happening at Fitbit. 2. Xiaomi isn't a household name here -- at least not yet A neat feature of Mi Band 2 is that if it's connected via Bluetooth to a Xiaomi smartphone then wearers don't need to punch in their phone passcodes to unlock their devices. However, for that feature to matter you have to own a Xiaomi phone -- and most people don't. Having a recognized brand matters. Why do you think forward-thinking companies wanting to keep their health insurance costs in check by promoting active lifestyles through subsidized fitness trackers are turning to Fitbit? Xiaomi is going to be a force to reckon with in several product categories, but that's just not a problem for Fitbit in the near term. 3. There's plenty of growth to share Xiaomi may have already sold 20 million devices, but you wouldn't notice if you were looking at Fitbit which sold more than that in 2015 alone. Revenue growth has slowed at Fitbit, but it still saw its top line soar 50% in its latest quarter. This is what happens when a niche is growing so fast that at least two players can post healthy growth. There's a big market to carve out, and Fitbit remains the brand of choice in its home market. Margins will be challenged if there's a glut of cheap wrist huggers on the market, but Fitbit's stock already reflects that new dynamic. Xiaomi's Mi Band 2 is an impressive device at an even more impressive price point, but Fitbit still has plenty of room to run. The article 3 Reasons Why Fitbit Shouldn't Worry About a Rival's $23 Tracker originally appeared on Fool.com. Rick Munarriz owns shares of Apple. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool has the following options: long January 2018 $90 calls on Apple and short January 2018 $95 calls on Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Fitbit. 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 aren't any independent benchmarks yet, so we'll have to wait until closer to launch before getting a clear idea of how the RX 480 performs. According to AMD, the card has compute performance of more than 5 teraflops, which would put it somewhere between the last-gen R9 390 and R9 390X. Following NVIDIA 's reveal of two high-end Pascal graphics cards in early May, Advanced Micro Devices finally unveiled the first graphics card based on its Polaris architecture during Computex. The Radeon RX 480 is a mainstream product that will be priced at just $199 when it becomes available on June 29th --a bit more than half the price of NVIDIA's GTX 1070. Polaris brings with it plenty of architectural improvements, though, as well as a higher memory bandwidth, and substantially lower power usage. In terms of real-world performance, somewhere in the ballpark of the 390X would probably be a safe assumption. This means that the RX 480 will be substantially slower than NVIDIA's GTX 1070. But with the 1070 priced at $379 when it launches later this month, the gap in price between the two cards may be larger than the gap in performance. Had AMD launched a $300 card instead, I would have been concerned that the 1070 would pull PC gamers up to a higher price point, like NVIDIA managed to do with its last-gen GTX 970. But the RX 480 is going after a different demographic entirely. Mainstream VR AMD is pushing this new graphics card as ideal for bringing the total cost down for buying a VR-capable system. Oculus VR had previously listed NVIDIA's GTX 970 and AMD's Radeon 290 as the minimum required to run the Oculus Rift, both of which launched at well over $300. The RX 480 lowers the cost of a VR-capable PC, but that's only half the problem. The Oculus Rift headset retails for $599, and the HTC Vive costs a whopping $799. Even if a powerful PC wasn't required, the cost of the headsets alone would prevent VR from truly going mainstream until prices come down. AMD is making a big deal of the RX 480's ability to power VR, and I don't doubt that lowering the cost of the required PC will accelerate VR's ascendance to the mainstream. But if someone's willing to shell out $599 or $799 for a VR headset, I doubt they would then turn around and skimp on the graphics card. Winning market share Until NVIDIA launches lower-end Pascal graphics cards, which will happen within the next few months if history is any indication, the RX 480 should be a no-brainer for PC gamers looking to spend no more than $200. By pricing this card so low, it will be difficult for NVIDIA to undercut AMD on price. Having said that, there's every reason to believe that the GTX 1060, or whatever NVIDIA calls its lower-end Pascal card, will be competitive with the RX 480. Another problem for AMD: NVIDIA currently enjoys a unit share of around 80% Despite these issues, I expect the RX 480 to drive at least some market-share gains for AMD, assuming it performs as well as its specs suggest. What the graphics card does for the company's profitability is another question entirely, though, and the focus on enabling VR seems early, with headsets being so expensive. With NVIDIA being the undisputed leader in the high-end of the market, I doubt the RX 480 will have much of an impact on that company's financial performance. Pricing the RX 480 at $199 is an aggressive, and likely necessary, move by AMD. The onus is now on NVIDIA to respond with a mainstream variant of Pascal. The article AMD Gets Aggressive With Polaris Image source: Pfizer. Many investors gravitate toward companies that pay dividends, and the best dividend stocks are those that have businesses that continually generate large amounts of free cash flow to return to investors. The pharmaceutical industry has been a stronghold for dividend investors for years, because companies generally can divide the profits from successful drugs between reinvesting into new drug development and making payouts to shareholders. Some of the strongest and best-established companies in the business also have lucrative dividend payouts. Below, we'll take a closer look at Pfizer , Merck , and Johnson & Johnson to see how each one has treated dividend investors well lately. Pfizer Pfizer has a long history that dates back to the mid-19th century, but the drugmaker has grown into a giant of innovation. The company has several billion-dollar products in its arsenal, including the Prevnar family of vaccines, fibromyalgia treatment Lyrica, and Viagra for erectile dysfunction. Pfizer also has an impressive pipeline of drugs at various stages of the development process, including dozens of treatments going through clinical trials. From a dividend perspective, Pfizer's current dividend yield of 3.5% is attractive, and the drugmaker has a history of regular increases in its quarterly payout over time. In recent years, a series of $0.02 annual increases has nearly doubled its current payout to $0.30 per share. Pfizer did give shareholders a 50% haircut on their dividend payments in 2009, diverting cash to help fund its acquisition of Wyeth and breaking what had been a much longer streak of annual dividend boosts. Pfizer's current dividend payout ratio of more than 90% is troubling to some investors. But that figure is based on earnings that have been depressed by restructuring charges, losses on sales of investments, legal settlements, asset writedowns, and other unusual items. Historically, Pfizer has aimed at a 60% to 70% payout ratio, and that seems consistent with what most investors expect from the drugmaker going forward based on future earnings estimates. Merck Merck's existence as a company goes back even further than Pfizer, with its history dating back to the mid-17th century. It's arguably best known right now for its Januvia treatment for type 2 diabetes, which brings in almost $6 billion in sales annually. Newer up-and-coming treatments are also doing well, such as cancer immunotherapy Keytruda and its march toward the $1 billion annual sales mark. With a pipeline that includes more than two dozen late-stage developmental drugs and many more prospective treatments for cancer, HIV, diabetes, and other maladies, Merck is setting itself up well for the future. Image source: Merck. Merck currently has a dividend yield of 3.3%, trailing Pfizer by just a small amount. Merck hasn't had the same commitment to regular dividend increases, however, boosting quarterly payouts by just a penny per share in each of the past five years. Merck was able to avoid a dividend cut during the financial crisis, and that should give investors some comfort that the company is interested in being friendly to shareholders. Like Pfizer, Merck's dividend payout ratio is currently inflated above the 100% mark by restructuring charges, legal settlements, and other unusual items. Concerns about Januvia's long-term staying power are also weighing on sentiment. Looking at forward earnings expectations, however, investors believe that Merck will have plenty of earnings to pay current dividends and still have money left over for further research and development. Johnson & Johnson Image source: Johnson & Johnson. Johnson & Johnson isn't the first company most people think of when they look at the pharmaceutical sector, because most people know J&J more for consumer products like its Band-Aid bandages and over-the-counter products like Tylenol. But recently, Johnson & Johnson has gotten the most growth from its pharma segment, and products there include important treatments such as leukemia treatment Imbruvica and blood-clot prevention drug Xarelto. The drugmaker also has more than 30 treatments undergoing phase 3 trials, giving it plenty of potential for the future. J&J's dividend yield of 2.8% isn't as high as Pfizer's and Merck's, but the company has something its peers can't claim: a 54-year streak of annual dividend increases. The most recent increase came in just the past month, with the company boosting its quarterly payout by a nickel to $0.80 per share. Past increases haven't been stingy either, with payments having quadrupled since 2002. Johnson & Johnson's more diversified exposure has also insulated it somewhat from the factors hitting earnings at its main rivals. As a result, J&J's payout ratio rests at just 55%, and that's consistent with the level of available capital that the company has traditionally kept in order to sustain dividend payments and reinvest in its business. Most investors expect that J&J's earnings growth will keep powering further dividend increases along the way. Invest and get paid These three Big Pharma stocks are powerhouses in their own right, and their dividend payments are just one component of their long-term success. Each faces its challenges, but together, these companies have a lot of promise for investors that should stretch well into the future. The article Get Paid While You Wait: 3 Top Big Pharma Dividend Stocks originally appeared on Fool.com. Dan Caplinger has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Johnson & Johnson. 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. Its CEO has signaled he plans on an eventual Snapchat IPO, so with the company's focus shifted toward monetization and revenue growth in coming years, let's review how Snapchat plans to make ever-greater sums of money in the years to come. That's nearly double the value Twitter , arguably the most high-profile social media giant to IPO in recent years. How does Snapchat make money? Though very much in flux, co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel has previously described Snapchat's business model as having three distinct points of monetization: camera, content, and communication. In terms of monetizing its camera interface, Snapchat has developed a branded geofilters business, which gives individuals and businesses the opportunity to purchase filters inside Snapchat's popular stickers section. For example, the recent X-Men: Apocalypse film paid to have branded X-Men filters take over Snapchat in the run-up to its launch. This campaign reportedly also included the functionality for users to swipe the filters to purchase tickets, which adds an e-commerce opportunity from which Snapchat could derive revenue. Here's another example of a sponsored filter from the most recent Hunger Games movie: Image source: Snapchat. In addition to these mass-market promotional campaigns, Snapchat also allows users to purchase sponsored filters covering smaller geographic areas. A friend of mine recently purchased one to cover the one-block area around the bar where he held his going-away party in New York City, where I live. This in some ways mimics how other social media giants like Facebook appeal to advertisers (or partiers, as it was in this case) both large and small. Turning to media content, Snapchat launched its Discover functionality in January 2015,which allows major media outlets to push short-form content onto Snapchat for its video-hungry masses. It isn't clear how much revenue Snapchat generates from this business, but content distribution has already emerged as an obvious monetization point as Snapchat continues to grow its revenue. The last -- and least defined -- area of Snapchat's business is communication. At present, Snapchat has no direct way for companies to connect with consumers via Snapchat's popular chat function, though a broader industry trend suggests an opportunity exists. As just one example, Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have both rolled out products Snapchat's road to $1 billion in revenue Snapchat's shift to prioritize revenue growth could produce surprising results sooner than many observers might realize. According to a recent investor presentation viewed by TechCrunch, Snapchat has told investors it expects 2016 revenue to fall between $250 million and $350 million, up from a reported $50 million in 2015. However, with the full effect of its nascent monetization efforts continuing to scale, Snapchat has told investors it expects 2017 revenues to increase to between $500 million and $1 billion, an impressive figure for a company that launched in mid-2011. As a point of comparison for Snapchat's sales growth, it took Facebooksix years to top $1 billionin sales. Twitterneeded eight years. Many have questioned Snapchat's place as one of the most valuable start-ups in the world. But implausible as it might seem to those unfamiliar with it, Snapchat has a clear plan in place to make good on its valuation -- sooner, perhaps, than many realize. The article How Does Snapchat Make Money? Image source: Philip Morris. Global tobacco giant Philip Morris International has a short history as a separate company, but it has operated around the world for decades. Over that time, Philip Morris has learned the ropes and figured out how to deal with changing conditions in its most important markets. Yet even after all its success, many investors have questions about where Philip Morris plans to go from here. Below, we address five of those questions along with answers that Philip Morris CFO Jacek Olczak just provided at a presentation in May. How is Europe doing for Philip Morris? Olczak was optimistic about the company's prospects in Europe. Not only have industry trends finally started to turn more favorable, but Philip Morris has done a good job of fighting against illicit trade of cigarettes and other tobacco products. The company has maintained its pricing power, and population movements both within Europe as well as from other regions into European countries are an opportunity for Philip Morris to build its business there. In particular, the Marlboro brand is doing well in countries like Italy, Spain, and Poland, and that's helping to drive growth in earnings for Philip Morris in the region. Is Marlboro going to be the focus for the company going forward? Philip Morris' most important brand is Marlboro, and Olczak sees that continuing to be the focal point for the company's overall strategy. Other brands such as L&M and Chesterfield have also done reasonably well, making up the top three brands in Europe when you add in Marlboro. Yet the Marlboro 2.0 architecture project has taken several years to implement fully, and market share has responded favorably to the efforts to update the message surrounding the key brand for Philip Morris. Between marketing design, sales-force marketing strategies, and a solid ground game at the local level, Philip Morris is making Marlboro work more effectively than ever. Why is Japan a tough area for Philip Morris? Olczak explained how pressure on market share in Japan continues for Philip Morris, noting that new flavors in the menthol part of the market have created a lot of new competition among industry leaders serving the island nation. Philip Morris has worked to come up with innovations to respond to that competitive demand in the combustible cigarette area, but Olczak also encouraged investors to take a more holistic approach in analyzing the company's Japanese business. In particular, the iQOS heat-not-burn reduced-risk product has moved the needle in Philip Morris' numbers for Japan, and the CFO believes that those trends will continue well into the future. How is iQOS doing in global markets? More broadly, iQOS has done well in the limited number of markets in which the product has been introduced. In Japan, iQOS has roughly 0.8% market share based on penetration of 60% to 65% of the national market based on its most recent available numbers, and since then, Philip Morris believes it has a fully national presence for the product. Penetration numbers in Switzerland, Italy, Ukraine, Russia, and Romania aren't nearly as high as they are in Japan, but initial figures are encouraging for the company. By scaling up in the markets where it already has a presence and by adding new markets to the mix, Philip Morris is optimistic about iQOS' long-term prospects. Is a U.S. launch for iQOS coming? Philip Morris has planned an application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to have iQOS approved. Olczak pointed out in his presentation that part of the FDA application will also cover the manufacturing of the product. With Philip Morris building a factory in Italy to ramp up global supply, the company will need to manufacture iQOS products in exactly the same way that consumers received the product for testing purposes. FDA inspectors will have the opportunity to look at laboratory, manufacturing, and other practices to make sure that the product is consistently made and is uniform. Even then, Philip Morris can't be sure that it will get an FDA approval, but many are hopeful that the company has a better chance with iQOS to diversify its business beyond traditional cigarettes. Philip Morris has a lot of growth potential, both through its existing product lines and with the promise of iQOS. Investors should watch closely to see how well Philip Morris is able to capitalize on its opportunities and build up its business in the future. The article Philip Morris Just Answered These 5 Key Questions originally appeared on Fool.com. Dan Caplinger 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. Qualcomm recently unveiled its new Snapdragon Wear 1100 chips at Computex 2016 in Taipei. The low-power chips are designed for "purpose-built wearables" that are designed for specific low-end uses, as opposed to more-powerful chips that power full-feature smartwatches. Qualcomm has stated that the chip will be installed in fitness trackers, kids' watches, smart headsets, and other wearable accessories. Snapdragon Wear. Image source: Qualcomm. Expanding its lineup of wearable processors Qualcomm already controls about 80% of the Android Wear smartwatch market with its ARM -licensed SoC designs. Most high-end devices in that market arepowered by its Snapdragon 400 SoCs -- which are also used in entry-level smartphones. Qualcomm claims that more than 100 different wearable devices are already powered by Qualcomm chips. The new Snapdragon Wear processors were built from the ground up to be installed in wearable devices, with a heavy emphasis on power efficiency, connectivity, and motion-tracking capabilities. The first chip in that lineup was the Snapdragon Wear 2100, which was introduced in February fornext-gen smartwatches. The new Snapdragon Wear 1100 complements the 2100 by extending Qualcomm's reach to more-basic devices within the Internet of Things (IoT) market. Taking another step away from mobile devices Snapdragon Wear represents yet another way for Qualcomm to diversify away from the saturated mobile-chip market, where it has ceded market share to cheaper challengers like MediaTek, and first-party chipmakers like Apple , Samsung, and Huawei. Qualcomm's other chip-diversification projects include a reference design for drones called Snapdragon Flight, connected camera solutions for action- and security-camera makers, Snapdragon A-series chips for connected cars, and 64-bit data-center chips. These moves might rejuvenate its QCT (chipmaking) businesses, where revenues fell19% annually last quarter as operating profit plunmeted 77%. Qualcomm claims that more than 1 billion IoT devices now use its chips, but it hasn't disclosed exactly how much revenue those chips generate. Wearable and IoT chips are much cheaper than beefier mobile ones, so sales of wearables must soar dramatically to really move the needle for Qualcomm. However, market forecasts are on Qualcomm's side -- research firm IDC expects worldwide shipments of wearables to soar from 110 million this year to 200 millionby 2019, thanks to growing demand for smartwatches. LG's Watch Urbane 2 is powered by a Snapdragon 400. Image source: LG. Can Qualcomm dominate wearables? Qualcomm's 80% share of the Android Wear market sounds impressive, but we should remember that Apple -- which uses its own chipset for the Apple Watch -- controlled 52% of the smartwatch market during the first quarter, according to Strategy Analytics. This means that Qualcomm's share of the overall smartwatch market is probably slightly less than 40%. Qualcomm's rivals don't plan to let the chipmaker conquer the wearables market unopposed. MediaTek is aggressively expanding into the wearables market with chips for smartwatches, fitness trackers, and other devices. Intel , which lost the mobile market to Qualcomm, is selling wearable-focused chip modules like the SD card-sized Edison and button-sized Curie -- which is also designed for low-power, "purpose-built" wearables instead of full-featured smartwatches. Samsung recently unveiled an all-in-one health chip forwearable devices called the Samsung Bio-Processor, which does all the health tracking and monitoring on a single chip without the need for external processing. That competition indicates that the two main challenges that Qualcomm faces in mobile chips -- cheaper rivals and first-party silicon -- could follow it into the wearables market. However, Qualcomm's first mover's advantage, the scale of its operations, and its dedicated Snapdragon Wear chipsets, should give it enough breathing room against its potential rivals. The key takeaways Investors should see Qualcomm's new low-end Snapdragon Wear chip as a part of the chipmaker's broader plans to diversify its QCT business. If these new investments succeed, Qualcomm could dominate the IoT market just as it did with smartphones. But to do so, it needs to first outmaneuver the same companies that challenged it in the mobile market. The article Qualcomm Inc. Unveils New Low-Power Wearable Chips originally appeared on Fool.com. Leo Sun owns shares of Qualcomm. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple and Qualcomm. The Motley Fool has the following options: long January 2018 $90 calls on Apple and short January 2018 $95 calls on Apple. 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. "AXON" -- it's Canadian for "body camera." Image source:TASER INTERNATIONAL. Since introducing its Axon on-body camcorder in 2009, TASER International has dominated the market for body cameras for police. At last report, TASER has succeeded in getting more than 3,500 law enforcement agencies to purchase the device for their officers. Precisely how many AXONs have been sold isn't exactly clear. But TASER has reported issuing "approximately 75,000" licenses for the Evidence.com service that stores and catalogs Axon videos for later retrieval -- so it stands to reason there are at least 75,000 Axon cameras on the market already today. Most of these users are in the U.S., granted. But TASER is growing its international business as well, and most recently, in Canada. Canada, eh? Last week, TASER announced that its Canadian subsidiary has just landed its first pilot project deploying Axon body cameras linked to Evidence.com accounts. The Service de Police de la Ville de Montreal(SPVM)will be the company's inaugural customer north of the border, deploying Axon cameras to 50 officers of the Montreal Subway Patrol and Traffic Patrol for a trial period of nine months. Financial specifics of the pilot project were not revealed, but the numbers here will not be large. TASER sells its Axons for as little as $399 a unit, and Evidence.com revenue can be as little as $300 a year, depending on the data plan chosen. At the low end, therefore, the total revenue for this project could be as little as $31,200 -- or less, if one assumes TASER cut Montreal a deal to gain entree into the Canadian market. Now that TASER is in Canada, though, how big could the opportunity become? How much are Canadian dollars really worth? Well, let's see here. Seven years into the Axon program, TASER appears to have penetrated something under 9% of the potential law enforcement market here in the U.S. According to Statistics Canada, there are just under 69,000 police officers in all of Canada today. If Canadian adoption of Axon tracks that seen in the U.S., therefore, we might see as many as 6,300 (9% of 69,000) Axon cameras sold in Canada and 6,300 Evidence.com subscriptions signed seven years from now. That suggests a market opportunity of perhaps $2.5 million for the hardware (probably more, as TASER introduces more advanced versions of the device and users pay to upgrade), spread over seven years -- so go ahead and round it up to $400,000 a year. On top of that, annual subscription revenue will start slow, but might ramp up to something in the neighborhood of $1.9 million (again, "probably more," given that TASER charges more for more robust data plans) seven years from now. In short, for a company that did $209 million in annual revenue last year, primarily in the U.S., Canada offers an attractive bolt-on market. But even so, it will probably be several years before we see Canada add even 1% to TASER's annual revenue stream. So what can we surmise from all this, about the 6% rise in the value of TASER stock that we've seen since the Canadian story broke -- a stock price rise that's taken place in the face of no other news but the Canadian story? Simply put, it's probably an overreaction. Once again, TASER shareholders are getting carried away. The article TASER Comes to Canada 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. 299 out of more than 75,000 rated members.The Motley Fool recommends Taser International. 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. With Valeant Pharmaceuticals losing nearly 90% of its market cap over the last 10 months, it's perhaps easy to forget that the company still has some positive things going for it. Valeant's management will likely want to talk a lot about those positives when the drugmaker announces its first-quarter earnings results on June 7. However, investors will also want to know about the problems facing the company. Here's what to expect with Valeant's first-quarter results. Financials In March, Valeant said that revenue for the first quarter should be between $2.3 billion and $2.4 billion. The company also projected that first-quarter earnings would come in somewhere between $1.30 and $1.55 per share. Considering that Valeant confirmed that guidance on May 9, it would be very surprising to see anything significantly different from those ranges. Valeant fully expected the first quarter to be weak for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the lower pricing for products distributed through Walgreens Boots Alliance . The two companies struck a deal in December where Walgreens would distribute Valeant'sbranded prescription-baseddermatologicalandophthalmologicalproducts, with Valeant cutting prices for the products by 10%. A separate agreement between Valeant and Walgreens shouldn't have any impact on the first quarter. Valeant committed to reducing the prices for over 30 branded products for which generic versions are available byaweightedaveragepricedecreaseofmorethan50%. However, those price cuts don't take effect until the second half of 2016. Perhaps the scariest number of all with Valeant's first-quarter results will be its debt. It had over $31 billion of long-term debt at the end of 2015. One of the biggest challenges for Valeant will be to service that debt load and still invest in development to grow itself. Controversies To say that Valeant is surrounded by controversies is an understatement. However, expect at least one issue to be laid to rest. I would be surprised if Valeant didn't commit to getting back on schedule with its regulatory filings. The company already received notice of default by one bondholder because of a late filing. Valeant should cure that default by filing its 10Q report in June. The deal with Walgreens helps to some extent with another major controversy: Valeant's drug pricing. Those discounts are at least a move in the right direction to present a better image to politicians and the public, and you can count on the company to bring them up during the earnings call. Expect Valeant's management to also highlight the recent move to cuttheprices ofNitropressandIsuprel based on volume. Valeant will probably emphasize its new management and new direction in its discussion of the first-quarter results. Joseph Papa, who became CEO in May, has a good reputation and will put his stamp on the company's operations. What likely won't be discussed is the lucrative compensation package that outgoing CEO Michael Pearson received. Future Certainly, Valeant's difficulties have raised many questions about its future. The company will have a good chance to answer some of those questions in its discussion about its first-quarter performance. While the market became excited recently over reports that the company could be bought, I suspect Papa will pour cold water on any such hopes -- at least for now. Papa was brought in to right the ship. The board will likely want him to have ample time to give it a shot before seriously entertaining any buyout offers. I'll be surprised if Papa isn't asked during the earnings call about the possibility of being acquired, though. As I stated earlier, Valeant still has positives going for it. The distribution deal with Walgreens is a good thing. Ditto for bringing Papa in as CEO and getting a fresh face on the board of directors. There's still solid revenue coming in the doors. What Valeant has to do now is avoid new controversies, continue taking the right steps to quell the old ones, and execute well. The company's first-quarter results and discussion should provide clues as to whether Valeant will be able to do those things. The article What to Expect in Valeant Pharmaceuticals' Q1 Results originally appeared on Fool.com. Keith Speights has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Valeant Pharmaceuticals. 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. What: Shares of Lion Biotechnologies, a clinical-stage biotech focused on cancer immunotherapy, leapt by more than 25% as of 12:00 p.m. EDT after the company announced that it has appointed a new CEO and raised money through a private offering. So what:Lion's board has appointed Maria Fardis, Ph.D., as the company's new president and CEO, effective June 1, 2016. Dr. Fardis succeeds Elma Hawkins, Ph.D., who has been in the top chair since January of last year. Dr. Fardis has held a number of executive positions over the years with a variety of successful drug developers, racking up an impressive track record. Most recently she was COO at Acerta Pharma, a company that was ultimately acquired by AstraZeneca for up to $7.0 billion. She also spent time at Pharmacyclics -- which was acquired by AbbVie for $21 billion -- where she helped to develop the blockbuster cancer drug Imbruvica. In a separate announcement, Lion stated that it is raising $100 million through a private placement equity offering. The company is selling a combination of 9,684,000 shares of common stock and 11,368,500 shares of newly authorized Series B Preferred Stock. The purchase price is $4.75 per share, and the deal is expected to close by June 7, 2016. The new Series B Preferred Stock is non-voting and will become convertible into one share of common stock, though details of the timing of the conversion were not released. Now what: Afterthis capital raise is completed, Lion will hold almost $200 million in cash on its books, which at current spending levels should be enough to fund its operations for years to come.That's great to see, as chances are good that spending will beincreasing quickly over the years as it continues to advance its product compounds down the regulatory pathway. Image source: Lion Biotechnologies. It also bodes well that the company was able to attract an experienced leader who already has a relationship with AstraZeneca's top management team. AstraZeneca has partnered with Lion through its MedImmune division, so it's possible that the board hired Dr. Fardis to assist in the company's eventual sale. Of course, that is all speculation at this point, and the only thing that matters from here is how well the company's therapies perform in clinical trials. However, given the good news about its leadership team and capital position, it's hard to blame the markets for bidding up shares today. The article Why Lion Biotechnologies Inc. Stock Is Roaring Higher Today originally appeared on Fool.com. Brian Feroldihas no position in any stocks mentioned.Like this article? Follow him onTwitter where he goes by the handle@Longtermmind-setto see more articles like this.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. MEET ATLAS, DESIGNED BY BOSTON DYNAMICS, FUNDED BY DARPA -- and soon to be owned by Toyota? Image source:BOSTON DYNAMICS. Three months ago, I pooh-poohed the idea that Toyota Motor Corporation might buy Alphabet's Boston Dynamics -- the humanoid robotics arm of the company formerly known as "Google." Three months later, it looks like I couldn't have been more wrong. Yesterday, TheFly.com reported that rumors are beginning to fly about an imminent sale of Boston Dynamics to Toyota. The main source for this view -- although it's been mooted by several -- is the website TechInsider.io, which assures us that the "ink is nearly dry" on a deal to sell the division. So there it is: I was wrong in predicting General Dynamics would step up and buy Boston Dynamics -- but I was also half right.... Toyota -- more than just cars Turns out that Toyota, while a big user of robots on its automotive assembly lines (something Boston Dynamics does not do), has set up a special division that may be a more natural fit for Boston Dynamics. Dubbed the "Toyota Research Institute," or TRI, this special group is technically set up under the Toyota corporate umbrella, but is physically located in Silicon Valley. Toyota tasked TRI with doing R&D work in artificial intelligence and robotics, and to that end, has given TRI a reported $1 billion budget to build out its capabilities. In March, TRI acquired the entire engineering team of Jaybridge Robotics. Jaybridge is a Massachusetts-based start-up working on driverless cars, and so Toyota's interest in that tech is only natural. But it seems TRI -- and Toyota -- may also be interested in doing some military work. The Wall Street Journal reports that TRI's head is former DARPA program manager Gill Pratt, who worked with the government's team of mad scientists from 2010 through 2015. As such, he would be very aware of Boston Dynamics' past work with DARPA in the field of military humanoid robots. In particular, he'd be familiar with Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot, which participated in the DARPA Robotics Challenge in 2013. In any case, Pratt seems to like Boston Dynamics quite a lot today, and apparently enough that he wants to buy it for Toyota. What it means for investors Alphabet never disclosed how much it paid to acquire Boston Dynamics back in 2013. It's unlikely Toyota will be more forthcoming if it acquires the division in 2016. Suffice it to say that this makes it difficult to value the deal, or opine on whether Toyota is getting a good price. That said, you can still see why the deal might appeal to Toyota. Acquiring a military robotics maker opens up a potential new market for Toyota, which at 7% projected earnings growth over the next five years (according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence) is currently only expected to grow at about half the rate of the auto industry at large. In short, if the Jaybridge acquisition in March was a deal aimed at bolstering Toyota's competitive position in cars, buying Boston Dynamics appears to be a way to juice Toyota's growth in areas its rivals may not be exploiting at all. It's a deal that, with Toyota stock currently selling for less than 8 times earnings, just might be good enough to make investors give Toyota a second look. The article Will Toyota Buy Google's Boston Dynamics? 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. 310 out of more than 75,000 rated members.Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors.The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A shares) and Alphabet (C shares). 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. Eva Longoria was all smiles on Wednesday at the premiere of her new film, "Lowriders," in Los Angeles, less than two weeks after tying the knot with husband Jose Antonio Baston in Valle de Bravo, Mexico. Longoria spoke with ET's Nischelle Turner before the premiere at the Arclight Hollywood theater, where the newly-married star gushed about her post-wedding bliss, explaining that her radiant glow was the result of both a happy marriage and a honeymoon tan. WATCH: Eva Longoria Chases Waterfalls on Her Honeymoon The cute couple tied the knot on May 21 and then took off for an exotic honeymoon that included a stop in Cambodia, where the 41-year-old "Telenovela" star shared a selfie in front of an ancient temple. She also shared shared a few bikini-clad Instagram posts from various idyllic locales. RELATED: Eva Longoria and New Husband Jose Antonio Baston Wear His-and-Her Pajamas on Their Honeymoon Longoria didn't share many details with her social media followers about where she went on her stunning honeymoon, and she was equally secretive about where she was going to get married in the weeks leading up to her and Bastons big day. "How did you keep it such a secret?" Turner asked. "You were killing us, posting pictures from everywhere, throwing everyone off." "We were trying!" Longoria explained. "It was a very small wedding, so it was very close family and friends. It was easy not to have a leak when it's your closest friends." PHOTOS: Celebs Who Had Secret Weddings Now the Golden Globe-nominated actress is back in the City of Angles for the premiere of her new film, which opened this year's L.A. Film Fest. The movie takes a look at the lowrider culture in East L.A. and Southern California's Latino communities, and Longoria says there is "no better film to open this festival." "It is total L.A. It's filmed in L.A., the story is an L.A. story, and it's a beautiful subculture that hasn't really been depicted in film that's such a huge part of L.A.," Longoria shared. "Lowriders" is set to hit theaters later this year. Guy Ritchie and Madonna A $27 million divorce settlement may seem generous to some, but not Guy Ritchie. When he and Madonna parted ways after eight years of marriage, he reportedly scoffed at that figure, knowing he had more to gain because even though Madonna was worth an estimated $500 million, she had never asked Ritchie, worth an estimated $45 million, to sign a pre-nup. And good thing, because he more than tripled the first offer and reportedly walked away with a cool $92 million. Hows that for patience paying off? Mel and Robyn Gibson Its hard to put a price tag on being married to Mel Gibson and his famous temper for nearly 30 years, but for his ex-wife, Robyn, that price was reportedly $425 million and then some. Without a prenuptial agreement on record, Gibson lost half of his earnings during their marriage and was also ordered to pay Robyn half of his residual film earnings for the rest of his life when the two divorced in 2011. Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Philippe Legally Blonde star Reese Witherspoon was legally blind when it came to love and paid the price. At the beginning of her seven-year marriage to Ryan Phillipe, the two young actors were just starting to make their mark on Hollywood. By the time they divorced, Witherspoon had won an Academy Award for her role in Walk the Line and was raking in $20 million per movie, while Ryan hovered around $2.5 million per film. Without a prenup in place, Philippe was entitled to half of her earnings under California law. Rosanne Barr and Tom Arnold Rosanne Barr should have listened to her lawyer. Instead, she fired her attorney for the mere suggestion that she and Tom Arnold sign a prenup when they got married in 1990. Fast forward four years when the couple divorced and Tom walked away with $50 million in his pocket. That must have helped get him a date. Paul McCartney and Heather Mills Former Beatle Paul McCartney should have taken the bands famous song Tomorrow Never Knows a bit more seriously when he decided against asking environmentalist Heather Mills to sign a prenup before the couple married in 2002, despite the fact that he was worth an estimated $660 million. As a result, Mills, McCartneys second wife, walked away with $35 million. He couldnt have been too fazed by the payout because he opted out of a prenup again! before his third marriage to New York businesswoman Nancy Shevell in 2011. Katy Perry and Russell Brand Without a pre-nup in place, Russell Brand could have been set for life after the funnyman and Katy Perry divorced. However, according to reports, he refused $20 million in their settlement, which was half of the pop stars earnings during their 14-month marriage. Reports also indicate Perry signed the divorce papers with the signature smiley face in her last name. No wonder she was smiling. Health officials reportedly determined this week that a California hospital broke state law by not quickly reporting a deadly outbreak last year caused by dirty scopes. The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday the letter comes after an investigation into Pasadenas Huntington Hospital into the outbreak which killed 11 and sickened 16 other patients. Heath officials didnt investigate the cause of the patients deaths and only noted one patients death certificate listed the dangerous drug-resistant superbug from the dirty scopes as the cause of death. Pete Kaufman, a lawyer from the families of three patients, including two who died, insisted that patients medical records show they got infections after procedures that used a duodenscope. Its very disturbing, Roy Apponno, 52, who survived an infection and is one of Kaufmans clients, told the LA Times. I think I was one of the lucky ones. Huntington Hospital spokeswoman Eileen Neuwirth said the scopes are an issue that many hospitals have come to grips with. "We take responsibility for the deficiencies outlined in the report and have taken steps to ensure rigorous compliance going forward, she said. Pasadena health officials said in their investigation that doctors at the hospital were monitoring suspected drug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections in at least 35 patients before the city was alerted to a possible outbreak by county health officials on Aug. 19, the LA Times reported. California law requires hospitals to report an occurrence of any unusual disease or any outbreaks of disease within 24 hours to local health officials. The investigation blamed the devices hard to clean design as well as hospital errors for the deadly outbreak. Pasadena officials said when they arrived at the hospital for inspection back on Aug. 20, they found residue in the machines where the devices were supposed to be disinfected. They also blame the hospital for not properly cleaning the scopes. The report revealed that the hospital was using compressed air from Office Depot to dry the scopes. An independent city investigation confirmed that 16 patients were sickened by the tainted scopes between January 2013 and August 2015, according to the paper. The city said that Pasadena officials had to ask the hospital twice to notify patients who had procedures with the three contaminated scopes over the time period. Olympus, the scopes manufacturer, recalled one of the duodenscopes models in January to replace one of its parts that an investigator said in 2012 could trap bacteria inside. The Pasadena hospital was using that model and an older model. In April 2015, it was revealed that between 2010 and 2015 more than 41 hospitals worldwide reported bacterial infections linked to the scopes, likely affecting 300 to 350 patients. Click for more from The Los Angeles Times. Airline passengers have one more thing to worry about when they fly unsanitary practices by flight attendants. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning to Horizon Air, citing lack of facilities for hand-washing as insufficient for employees who handle food and ice, The Seattle Times reported. The airlines 76-seat airplanes do not have sinks. The May 13 letter comes after several FDA inspections last winter and correspondence about the issue. While the airline did fix other issues, the employees continued to serve drinks with ice. Directing your employees to wash their hands in the airport between flights or to use hand sanitizer does not meet the requirements for suitable lavatory facilities for food-handling employees, the FDA wrote. We recommend that you discontinue the use of ice and serve only food and beverages that are in closed containers. Its unusual to not have sinks on commercial airplanes, one expert said. People are in close contact. All it takes is one person with an infection and it can easily spread on an airplane, Roy Costa, a public-health consultant and trainer who writes about airline food safety told The Seattle Times. Hand-washing is one of those things you cant do without. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), hand washing dramatically reduces the number of people who get sick and studies show hand sanitizers are not as effective. Sanitizers can be effective against bacteria, but basically dont work for viruses, Costa told The Seattle Times. If the person handling the ice is infected, and they havent washed their hands, thats going to spread to the ice and eventually to the beverage. Youre talking microorganisms here, viruses that are extremely small and can be huge in number, Costa told the newspaper. Without hand-washing, you dont have any barrier at all. Horizon has 15 business days to reply to the FDAs warning letter, a method reserved for what the agency considers to be significant violations of the law, The Seattle Times reported. If the airline doesnt resolve the issue, the FDA could pursue legal action. Horizon Air is owned and operated by Alaska Air Group. The safety and health of our customers and employees is our No. 1 priority. We are working with the FDA to revise our in-flight procedures to resolve its concerns. We plan to roll out more robust procedures on all Horizon flights next week, a spokeswoman said in an emailed statement, The Seattle Times reported. On Thursday, the airline said flight attendants will now be required to sanitize their hands with what the airline described as hospital-grade disinfectant, then immediately don food-service gloves before serving beverages. A tailored six-week mindfulness program may lead to small improvements in some physical and psychological symptoms that breast cancer survivors often experience, according to a new study. "Although not all patients suffer to a high degree from these distressing symptoms, research shows that due to treatment and long-term effects often patients experience depression, anxiety, sleep disturbances, fears of recurrence (FORs) and physical symptoms of pain and fatigue," said lead author Cecile A. Lengacher of the University of South Florida College of Nursing in Tampa. When breast cancer survivors transition off of treatment and experience physical symptoms, they may worry that it's a sign of cancer recurrence and be at a higher risk for anxiety and depression, Lengacher told Reuters Health by email. The researchers tested the effects of a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program and examined whether any particular types of patient seemed to benefit most from the therapy. MBSR is a program developed decades ago at the University of Massachusetts to help seriously ill patients cope with pain, such as from advanced cancer or AIDS. But in recent years that program has been adapted and offered more widely to people seeking relief from pain and stress of many kinds. For the new study, researchers compared 155 breast cancer survivors who completed a six-week MBSR program with 167 survivors who received usual care. Symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress, fear of cancer recurrence, fatigue, pain and quality of life were all measured before the study began, after the six-week program ended and another six weeks later. Women in the mindfulness program attended two-hour sessions conducted by a clinical psychologist once weekly and received training manuals and CDs. They practiced four meditation techniques, including sitting, walking, body scan and Hatha yoga and learned how to apply them in daily life. The researchers kept track of how many sessions each participant attended and how much of the assigned 15 to 45 minutes of at-home practice per day each completed, based on their diaries. For the MBSR group, the largest mindfulness-related improvements happened during the first six weeks and most were maintained at 12 weeks. They experienced a greater reduction in anxiety, fear of recurrence and fatigue compared to those in the control group, although the improvements were small to moderate. There was no meaningful difference for depression scores or pain levels, according to the results in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Mindfulness practice helps patients learn how to self-regulate their emotions by acceptance and non-reacting to internal and external cues and experiences, reducing reactions to emotional and physical triggers, and learning to be in the present, which diminishes the distress of worrying about the past or future, Lengacher said. "Also, this trial showed that those patients with the most stress had the highest benefit from this trial, indicating the importance of screening patients for distress," Lengacher said. Survivors of other types of cancer also suffer from varying symptoms depending on type and stage of cancer, she said. MBSR classes, which tend to cost around $200, are widely available at hospitals and privately, as well as through online programs such as the one offered by the University of Massachusetts medical school (here: http://bit.ly/1vjU4kG). A trained teacher delivers the mindfulness program so it would be hard for women to try it on their own, Lengacher noted. A pregnant woman in remote Greenland faced a scary medical emergency after doctors diagnosed her with appendicitis in the middle of a blizzard, hundreds of miles away from the nearest surgical center, according to a new case report. The 32-year-old Greenlandic Inuit woman came to the local health center when she was 12 weeks pregnant, after experiencing abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting in September 2015. At first, doctors thought she had a stomach bug, because she had just eaten raw meat, according to the case report, published online May 18 in the journal BMJ Case Reports. But soon, the woman's pain moved to her lower right abdomen, suggesting she had appendicitis, the doctors said. Moreover, she had a fever, an elevated white blood cell count and high levels of a protein called C-reactive protein, which increases during times of inflammation. All of these signs indicated that the woman's body was mounting an immune response, said report co-author Dr. Trine Jensen, an internist in the obstetrics and gynecology department at Herning Hospital in Denmark. [16 Oddest Medical Cases] To make matters worse, the weather was horrible and the woman was in the wilds of northwest Greenland, in Qaanaaq, about 730 miles (1,173 kilometers) from Ilulissat, the city with the closest regional hospital, said Jensen, who was working at Ilulissat Hospital at the time, and treated the woman. Appendicitis can lead to a perforated, or burst, appendix, Jensen said. Moreover, appendicitis during pregnancy can lead to preterm birth and even fetal loss, she said. The doctors wanted to remove the woman's appendix, but there was no way to get her to Ilulissat Hospital for the operation, Jensen said. "It was pretty far," Jensen told Live Science. "There are no roads, you can't just take a car or an ambulance and drive. You need to take airplanes." Blizzard treatment Because surgery wasn't an immediate option, the doctors in Qaanaaq started the woman on antibiotics. According to a study published in the June issue of the journal JAMA, antibiotics can be an effective treatment for appendicitis. Of the more than 250 people in the study who received antibiotics for their appendicitis, 70 patients (about 27 percent) went on to need surgery to remove their appendicitis within the next year, the researchers found. However, the Greenlandic woman's health did not improve after she took the antibiotics. So, once the weather got better, she was flown to Ilulissat Hospital. There, the doctors did an abdominal ultrasound to confirm that she had appendicitis, and 64 hours after the episode started, they removed her appendix. "She actually woke up and she was singing, 'I can keep my baby,'" Jensen said. "She was so happy." The woman later had the baby without any compilations, and both are doing well now, the report's other co-author, Dr. Luit Penninga, the head of Ilulissat Hospital, told Jensen. Even if the antibiotics had helped the woman, it's likely that the doctors would have still removed her appendix, Jensen said. That's because, as the JAMA study found, some people who receive antibiotics for appendicitis still need surgery within a year. With pregnant women, the longer doctors wait to do the surgery, the riskier it is, she said. [5 Key Nutrients Women Need As They Age] "It's easier to do the surgery while they're early in pregnancy, because when they get bigger and further along, it might be even harder to diagnose the appendicitis," Jensen said. "Because the womb is filling up the entire abdomen, and the appendix can move around." The report is a good example of how doctors can treat pregnant women with appendicitis who don't have immediate access to surgery, said Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, who was not involved in the case report. "Antibiotics present a reasonable option for treatment," Glatter told Live Science. "If you're in a remote situation, that's a reasonable first choice. But at this time, it's generally recommended to have the appendix out because of the risk to the fetus, as well as the mom." Original article on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Amid growing concern over an increasing number of Zika cases in the Americas, scientists are now cautioning that the usually mosquito-borne virus may be transmitted not only by vaginal sex, but also by oral sex and kissing. In a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, a peer-reviewed medical journal, scientists detailed one such case in France. A 46-year-old French man reportedly stayed in Brazil, a Zika hotspot, from Dec. 11, 2015 to Feb. 9, 2016, and unknowingly contracted the virus during his visit. Thereafter, he returned to Paris and had seven sexual encounters with his healthy 24-year-old female partner, who developed Zika symptoms on Feb. 20, 2016. According to scientists letter, she had not been taking medication or receiving blood transfusions. She also had not traveled to a Zika-afflicted region in recent months. The Aedes aegypti and A. albopictus mosquitoes, the main vectors of Zika, do not reside in Paris. The couple was not using condoms during sex, but the male partner ejaculated only during oral sex as a form of birth control, according to the letter. Scientists wrote in the letter that they could not rule out the possibility that transmission occurred not through semen but through other biologic fluids, such as pre-ejaculate secretions or saliva exchanged through deep kissing. They noted that the male partners saliva tested negative for Zika after he began exhibiting symptoms, but it was not tested earlier. In an interview with The New York Times, Dr. William Schaffner, head of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical School, and an author of the letter, said its possible the couple in France had imperfect recollections, despite being interviewed separately with matching accounts. Dr. John T. Brooks, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Times its not out of the question that Zika could be transmitted by oral sex. But Brooks, who is studying sexual transmission of Zika, said he thought it was unlikely that the virus could be transmitted through kissing. Casual kissing has got to be safe because, if it werent, dont you think wed see a lot more Zika? Every mom who kissed her baby would pass it on, Brooks told The Times. To be sure, wed have to look for deep kissing in the absence of sexual contact, and thats hard to find. Scientists in the letter said, to their knowledge, no definite cases of Zika transmission by saliva have been reported. Experts say a Pennsylvania woman's recent case of an antibiotic-resistant infection shows the urgency for new antibiotics. In the case, the E. coli bacteria causing the 49-year-old woman's urinary tract infection were found in lab testing to be resistant to an antibiotic called colistin. Doctors consider colistin a "last resort" drug it can have serious side effects, such as kidney damage, so it is used only when other antibiotics do not work. Currently, colistin is mainly used to treat people infected with a type of bacteria called CRE, or carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae. E. coli is one type of enterobacteria, though not all E. coli strains have acquired resistance to carbapenem. Bacteria that are resistant to multiple antibiotics are the sort of thing that "[keeps] us awake at night," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious-disease specialist and professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine who was not involved in the woman's case. Although doctors were able to treat the woman's infection with other antibiotics, the discovery of a colistin-resistant bug in the United States has experts on high alert. [6 Superbugs to Watch Out For] Indeed, ever since colistin-resistant E. coli were discovered in China in November 2015, labs in the U.S. have been on the lookout for similar strains, Schaffner told Live Science. Because of this extra attention, they were able to recognize it immediately in the woman's case, he said. In addition to the United States, the superbug has been found in Europe, Schaffner said. That means there will be more cases of these bacteria, he said. It's unclear how widespread or how quickly the bug will spread, but Schaffner said he's "very sure that we'll see more instances of this." This particular superbug will not only spread farther but could also give rise to completely new strains of superbugs, experts say. That's because the genetic element that makes the bacteria resistant to colistin is found on a small, circular piece of DNA called a plasmid, Schaffner said. Plasmids are unique because they can be transferred easily from one species of bacteria to another, he said. Because of this, it's clear that this genetic element has the potential to spread to other strains of bacteria, although that hasn't happened yet, he said. But if the plasmid that makes bacteria resistant to colistin were to spread to a CRE strain of bacteria (that was already resistant to carbapenem), doctors would not be able to use either powerful antibiotic to treat the infection. The end of the line? Doctors in Europe and the United States have encountered patients who have infections with bacteria that are resistant to a number of antibiotics and thus have almost no options for treatment, Schaffner said. [7 Devastating Infectious Diseases] In these cases, doctors may see if any experimental drugs are available or may try using combinations of antibiotics, Schaffner said. By combining drugs, it is sometimes possible to kill the bacteria, he said. Another option is to give a patient a higher-than-recommended dose of the antibiotic, he said. There will always be mechanisms that allow bacteria to evade or become resistant to an antibiotic, Schaffner said. In other words, as researchers develop new drugs, bacteria will mutate to become resistant to them, and so on. Therefore, there is a need to keep looking for and creating new antibiotics, Schaffner said. The search is more difficult than it once was. The antibiotics that were the easiest to discover were found back in the 1940s and 1950s, Schaffner said. "These days, it will take more work" to find new drugs, he said. But although more research on antibiotics is imperative, the detection of the superbug in the United States is not a cause for panic, experts say. "I think, for the moment, those in [the fields of] public health and infectious disease will do the worrying for everyone," Schaffner said. The most important thing that people can do is to not argue with a doctor if he or she tells you that you don't need antibiotics, Schaffner said. Don't insist on them, he said. Originally published on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Hillary Clinton has begun the policy wars with Donald Trump. She gave it her best shot Thursday with what was billed as a major foreign policy speech. Ill save you the effort to read the transcript. She said in essence, nothing. Most of her time was spent trash-talking Trump saying hes neither smart enough nor stable enough to be president. The rest of the time was telling us about all her many self-proclaimed successes and ending with how she and President Obama were responsible for killing Usama bin Laden. I give her full credit for that, as well as Obama. But thats not the only issue in American foreign policy over the last two terms. But lets put aside her own very questionable judgment on a number of issues: - Compromising national security with her cavalier treatment of our most classified information. - Failing to protect or rescue Americans in Benghazi and then lying about it afterwards. - Clamoring for the Libya war and supporting the premature Iraq withdrawal which enabled the spread of radical Islam far and wide. - Failing to reset relations with Russia The real problem is that Hillary Clinton represents the Democrat and Republican establishment position on national security issues. She claims it as a badge of honor. But frankly, the foreign policy establishment hasnt gotten much right in the last fifteen years, whether it was the Bush or Obama administrations. They lost three wars: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. And, if you count Syria, four. They failed to stop the spread of radical Islam all around the world, and in some ways enabled it. They encouraged the rise of Iran by signing a one-sided nuclear deal in a misguided attempt to get them to change. Sadly, its only emboldened Irans anti-American, pro-terrorist stance, as a determination to build nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. The establishment decimated the U.S. military and abandoned our veterans. Theyve allowed America to be pushed around all over the world -- by China, by Iran, by Russia, and even the pipsqueak in North Korea. Theyve also failed to get a handle on cyber-threats. Secretary Clinton slams Trump for not appreciating, or even comprehending, the accepted conventional wisdom of both political parties. In so doing, she misses the point. Trump hasnt accepted the conventional wisdom because it hasnt succeeded, at least not for the last decade or so. Trump is forcing us to rethink our failed policies of the past, by relying on good, old-fashioned common sense. You know who else did that? Reagan. In 1980 he challenged and beat the GOP establishment candidate George H.W. Bush in the primaries and went on to beat the incumbent Democrat President Jimmy Carter in the general election. Reagan revisited the decades old policy of coexistence with the USSR and decided we should win the Cold War instead. We did within a decade, without firing a shot, by using our economic superiority. Reagan rejected the mutually assured destruction (MAD) strategy of mutual suicide in favor of a Star Wars missile defense system that could protect us from nuclear attack. So Hillary does have a point. Trump isnt a conventional candidate. He doesnt fall into line with conventional wisdom. Hes rethinking the issues. What will he come up with to replace the tired old theories of the past? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Well have to wait and see. Thats why we can throw out the rule book for this election. And thats why its so interesting. Bloomberg reports that U.S. Internet giants Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc., Google and Microsoft Corp. pledged to tackle online hate in less than 24 hours as part of a joint commitment with the European Union to combat the use of social media by terrorists. Further, the companies said it remains a challenge to strike the right balance between freedom of expression and hate speech. It makes perfect sense if you believe in the existence of evil, and therefore of hatred. Its not just a right, but a moral imperative to forbid it on social media platforms. The most obvious example is, of course, ISIS and whatever other terrorist groups exist. Its pretty much a unanimous consensus given that even ISIS et. al. would readily admit they hate the West. So why are conservatives alarmed? Why are they pointing I-told-you-so fingers at those this writer being one -- who recently visited with Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, and then vouched for the sincerity of the FB brass (but not other sites) that forcefully stated its desire to work with conservatives? At the meeting at Facebooks Menlo Park headquarters the discussion focused on the roles of the curators, those individuals hired by the company to ensure that community standards are met. Its a necessary endeavor but also one that introduces the human factor and, as a result, subjective opinion. Its not difficult to find the slippery slope where matters of hatred are concerned. What is hate, as defined by leftists, the very community from which these curators hail? The Southern Poverty Law Center is a prominent radical leftist group hell-bent on poisoning society against conservatives, especially the social kind. It features a Hate Map with the locations of conservative organizations of all stripes. The Family Research Center, The Center for Security Policy, the Center for Family and Human Rights, ACT for America and the Traditional Values Coalition these are but a few. And what views do these haters hold? Some support traditional marriage, some stopping illegal immigration, some fighting radical Islam. A writer for the leftist website Salon has his example of hatred the Confederate flag, which he calls the American swastika. [D]isplaying the Confederate flag anywhere is, at bottom, an act of hate. It should be recognized as such, and punished as a hate crime. (He later reversed himself, heroically likening his inconsistency to that of Frederick Douglas.) According to The College Fix, an employee from Loyola Marymount University was discussing her views on sexual orientation with three students. Both the police and the universitys Bias Incident Response Team [!] are investigating the stated belief that only two genders exist, male and female, as a hate crime. The College Republican Chapter at DePaul University stands accused of a hate crime for writing Trumps name in chalk on sidewalks. Speaking of which, when a pro-life student group at John Hopkins University used a sidewalk to counsel women near an abortion facility, it was denied official campus club recognition by the college student government for promoting hate speech. Google tea party and hate speech and you get 1,280,000 listings. Far left agitators branded Brendan Eich a hater and forced him to step down as head of the company he founded, Mozilla, because he contributed $1,000 to a traditional marriage referendum in California (which passed). Dan Cathy of Chick-fil-A was also targeted as a hater for defending traditional marriage. GLAADs website features a list of over 100 opponents who serve as media commentators but who should be expelled from civilized society for being extremists or haters. The list includes six U.S. Catholic bishops. The Washington Redskins is hate speech, too. The list seems endless. Virtually any belief opposed by the radical left is branded hatred and that belief spoken becomes hate speech. The goal is to silence the conservative world view through censorship, period. The fringe will use every means available to pressure these online giants to follow suit. Will Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft comply? Time will tell. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have now delivered major speeches on foreign policy. If you are looking for a presidential candidate who favors conservative foreign policy prescriptions and such traditional Republican positions as promoting free trade, strong alliances, and the selective but robust projection of American force abroad, look no further than the presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Thats right. In most key foreign policy issues, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee is to the right of her rival, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. Consider the following. On Russia, while Mrs. Clinton has called Putin a bully and has described the relationship between Washington and Moscow as complicated, Mr. Trump has floated the idea of establishing a new alliance with Russia, whose cooperation he says is needed to help end the six-year war in Syria, fight terrorism, and diffuse tensions. While he says that more should be done to support Ukraine, which has been battling Russia-backed separatists since Russia annexed Crimea, he has not detailed what specifically he would do to help end Russias occupation of Crimea and combat Russian meddling in Kievs internal affairs. Mrs. Clinton, by contrast, has become steadily more critical of Russia since 2009 when she and Mr. Putin famously pushed a red reset button on their relationship. By the end of her tenure as secretary of state, The Wall Street Journal reported, she had written a private memo to President Obama declaring the Russia reset dead and asserting that relations with Moscow had hit a new low. To combat Russian aggression, Mrs. Clinton, like most Republicans and Democrats, has staunchly supported working closely with the 28-member NATO alliance which helped contain the Soviet Union until it collapsed in 1991. Mr. Trump, by contrast, has criticized the alliance as obsolete and too costly for America, saying he would insist that either its members pay up or get out. Or consider Americas war in Iraq. While then New Yorks Senator Clinton voted in favor of authorizing the use of force in Iraq in 2002, Mr. Trump now claims to have opposed that intervention. Putting aside the pesky issue of whether that claim is true (and several contemporaneous and recent reports indicate that Mr. Trump once supported the invasion) he now asserts that From the beginning I said its gonna destabilize the Middle East and Iran will take over IraqWe decimated that countrys military and now the countrys a mess. Mrs. Clinton has said that if she had known then what she knows now, she would have voted differently on the Senate resolution authorizing intervention. But she has not apologized for her action. And she has proposed more intrusive intervention in Syria to stop the civil war than either Mr. Trump or President Obama. A proponent of arming moderate or pro-western rebels in Syria and expanding American airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria, she has also pushed for establishing a no-fly zone over Syria to protect refugees. President Obama rejected that option partly because it would put the U.S. in potential direct military conflict with Russia, which has sent military advisers to Syria to protect Syrian president Bashar Assad and bomb not only ISIS but other rebel forces there. For his part, Mr. Trump has talked tough about defeating ISIS in Syria and Iraq, saying he would bomb the expletive out of them and kill families of terrorists, which Mrs. Clinton and others have noted would be a war crime). But he has consistently refused to disclose his plan for defeating the jihadis on grounds that it would deny Washington the element of surprise. Unlike Mrs. Clinton, he has opposed arming Syrian rebels. In his isolationism and reluctance to use force to secure American goals, Mr. Trump resembles Democratic presidential aspirant Senator Bernie Sanders more than he does Hillary Clinton. Or consider North Korea. While Mrs. Clinton has adopted a tough stance towards North Koreas brutal young dictator Kim Jung Un, whose abuse of his people and quest for nuclear weapons she denounced yet again in her foreign policy speech in San Diego Wednesday, Mr. Trump has offered to sit down with Mr. Kim and try to negotiate a deal. While Mrs. Clinton would shudder at being praised by the mercurial leader in Pyongyang, Time magazine reported this week that official state media called Mr. Trump a wise politician and farsighted candidate who can reunify the Korean Peninsula. Mr. Trump has also threatened to withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea if Seoul does not pay more to support them and also to let South Korea and Japan and even Saudi Arabia develop their own nuclear weapons (another position he now denies having embraced) rather than depend on American military deterrence. Mrs. Clinton has proposed stiffening sanctions against Pyongyang to force Mr. Kim it to abandon his nuclear program. Plus, she has strongly opposed nuclear proliferation in any region, preferring to rely on American leadership thru traditional alliances to deter Russian and Chinese aggression and to fight ISIS. On trade policy, too, Mr. Trump sometimes seems to the left of his Democratic rival. While Mrs. Clinton has opposed the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership, she strongly embraced the trade talks that led to the free trade agreement when she was secretary of state. Mr. Trump, by contrast, argues that the trade deals so beloved of fellow Republicans have invariably cost Americans jobs and revenue at home. He vows to tear them up, negotiate better deals, or start a trade war with China if necessary. Weve been taken advantage of by globalization because we have leaders that are incompetent, he says, often sounding more protectionist than his Democratic rival. On Israel, Mrs. Clinton has been a fierce champion, praising the Jewish state and vowing to defend it yet again in her speech today. Not so, Mr. Trump, who having retracted an earlier desire to be neutral in negotiations between Israel and Palestinians, has questioned Israels commitment to peace. I have a real question as to whether or not both sides want to make it, Mr. Trump said, adding: A lot will have to do with Israel and whether or not Israel wants to make the deal whether or not Israel's willing to sacrifice certain things. They may not be, and I understand that, and I'm OK with that. But then you're just not going to have a deal. Staunch support for Israel is among the issues that have led many prominent neo-conservatives, most prominently Bill Kristol, once supportive of Republicans, to embrace Mrs. Clinton and oppose or be skeptical of Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump has staunchly criticized Mrs. Clinton for her interventionism what he calls her mishandling of foreign policy as secretary of state during her 2009-2013. He has been especially harsh on her preference for military interventions in Libya and her handling of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack by Islamist militants on an U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, where jihadists killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. While he has talked tougher than his Democratic rival about the need to make Americas foes respect America again and has condemned her embrace of the Iran nuclear deal and recognition of Cuba two areas where Mr. Trump appears more hawkish than Mrs. Clinton -- there is less practical difference between them than it may seem. Mr. Trump has vowed to renegotiate the nuclear deal, though how he would do that is unclear, and has endorsed toughening sanctions on Iran to secure concessions. But he has not echoed Republican Senator Ted Cruzs vow to tear up the agreement on day one. Nor is he likely to walk back recognition of Cuba. While Mr. Trump will have to cope with his myriad foreign policy faux pas and flip flops, Hillary Clinton will have her own challenges. Whatever her current views, she has little to show for her years as secretary of state. Perhaps harder, she will have to separate herself from the legacy of President Obama's foreign policy -- two still failing wars, over 500,000 dead in Syria, tens of millions of refugees displaced from their homes and flooding Europe, and the disdain of so many Middle Eastern and other allies for America's indifference and lack of leadership. Small wonder that neither candidate may want to dwell on foreign policy as they head to November. A public school in California ordered a 7-year-old boy to stop handing out Bible verses during lunch and they dispatched a deputy sheriff to the childs home to enforce the directive. This is a clear, gross violation of the rights of a child, said Horatio Mihet, a Liberty Counsel attorney representing the first-grader who attends Desert Rose Elementary School in Palmdale. They are also representing his parents, Christina and Jaime Zavala. Click here to join Todds American Dispatch: a must-read for conservatives! Heres the back story: Mrs. Zavala made it a practice of including a Bible verse and encouraging note in her sons lunch bag. The boy would tell his friends about the note and read them aloud at the lunch table. It wasnt long before children asked for copies of the notes and Mrs. Zavala obliged including a brief note to explain the daily Bible verse. On April 18 a teacher called Mrs. Zavala and said her son would no longer be able to share the Bible verses because he was not allowed to share such things while at school. Liberty Counsel said the school would only allow the child to distribute the Bible verses outside the school gate after the bell rang. They say the teacher told Mrs. Zavala that her son could no longer read or share Bible verses or stories at lunch citing separation of church and state. So, Mr. and Mrs. Zavala complied with the schools clearly unconstitutional edict. Click here to get Todds latest book - your primer on how to restore traditional American values! But on May 9, the schools principal decided to implement a complete ban on the Bible verse sharing. Liberty Counsel alleges the boy was ordered to stop handing out notes because it was against school policy. The principal told the boy and his father to move to a public sidewalk. They complied with the principals demand. It would be just a few hours later when the Zavala family heard a knock at their front door. The deputy sheriff said he had been sent by the school, Liberty Counsel attorney Richard Mast told me. The deputy went on to tell the parents that the school was worried that someone might be offended by the Bible verses. Liberty Counsel said the deputy sheriff was not belligerent or threatening. The family was not served with any sort of legal documents. It appeared to be a friendly warning. It was outrageous and should shock the conscious of every freedom-loving American, Mihet told me. Apparently all the real criminals have been dealt with in Palmdale and now theyre going after kids who share Bible verses during lunch time. I reached out to the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department but they did not return my telephone calls. Raul Maldonado, the superintendent of Palmdale School District, told me they are reviewing the matter and consulting with legal counsel. I can confirm the Districts understanding that a member of the Sheriffs department visited the home, he said. However, the District is not yet clear as to the specific nature of that engagement. He did not respond to questions about who ordered the deputy sheriff to visit the childs home or why the visit was necessary especially since the family complied with the schools directives. The District remains committed to ensuring an environment where all students, regardless of religious affiliation or belief, are free to learn and reach their full potential, Maldonado said. With all due respect, Mr. Maldonado that is a load of hooey. It appears to me that the deputy sheriff was dispatched to the home as part of a strategy to intimidate the Zavala family. I would expect something like this to happen in Communist Romania where I went to elementary school but cops dont bully 7-year-olds who want to talk about Jesus in the Land of the Free, Mihet said. Students do not check their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door, he said. If students are permitted to pass out Valentine or birthday cards at school or to talk about Superman and Captain America at lunch, they cannot be prohibited from sharing Bible verses and discussing their faith during their free, non-instructional time, Mihet told me. Liberty Counsel is demanding the school stop its policy of suppressing and censoring student religious speech. If they fail to comply, the school could face a federal lawsuit. And for good measure we can only hope that Liberty Counsel will use a deputy sheriff to hand deliver the lawsuit to the schools principal. Anyone still perplexed by the rise of Donald Trump need only take a 50 minute drive from here to the town of Gramercy, where the 444 men and women who work at Norandas alumina refinery are at risk of losing their jobs because China is cheating the rules of global trade. Since opening in 2004, this refinery has helped feed the exponential growth in demand for the aluminum used to build pickup trucks, fighter jets, and body armor for our troops. Today, American industrys appetite for aluminum is higher than it has ever been. And yet, these workers are facing devastating layoffs because the Chinese government is illegally subsidizing aluminum production. Whats happening in Gramercy is playing out in states and communities across the country where over 10,000 family sustaining, high paying manufacturing jobs are at risk of disappearing. The Obama administration must take decisive action now to combat Chinas illegal market manipulation and bring relief to these families immediately. Whats happening in Gramercy is playing out in states and communities across the country where over 10,000 family sustaining, high paying manufacturing jobs are at risk of disappearing. The Obama administration must take decisive action now to combat Chinas illegal market manipulation and bring relief to these families immediately. When you look at how China has been cheating American aluminum workers, you can understand why millions of people are angry about the consequences of unfair global trade. Over the past 15 years, China has extended a variety of illegal subsidies to its domestic aluminum producers including below market electricity, debt forgiveness, free use of government-owned land, and interest free loans. These subsidies have not only allowed a previously unprofitable industry to stay afloat, but also have flooded the international market with product and collapsed the global price of aluminum. The impact of this price collapse has been devastating for American workers. In the past year alone, these illegal subsidies have forced 60 percent of the primary aluminum smelters in the United States to shutter. Thousands of jobs have already disappeared. This, in turn, has catastrophic consequences for workers across the entire aluminum supply chain from boxite mines, to alumina refineries like the one in Gramercy, to extrusion companies. Soon, small communities, counties, and parishes across the country will feel the impact in the form of lost tax revenue. This means that communities that are already struggling with tighter budgets may have to fire thousands of teachers, police officers, and firefighters. This is simply wrong. Chinas behavior in this situation directly contradicts the commitments it made when it reached an agreement to join the World Trade Organization in 2001. This agreement expressly forbid the kind of subsidies China is now providing to its domestic aluminum industry. When the Senate debated granting China Permanent Normal Trade Relations Status in 2000, I argued that admitting China into the World Trade Organization would give us the tools to fight back if they broke the rules. In my view, China is breaking the rules right now. And we should use the tools we have to take action by filing a subsidies case against China at the WTO immediately. The successful resolution of this case, which should be a foregone conclusion given Chinas egregious behavior, would solve the root cause of the aluminum overcapacity crisis in the United States and provide job certainty to the thousands of people who depend on this industry. I have always been a strong supporter of international trade, but cases like this demonstrate that it must be not only free, but also fair. Everyone needs to be held to the same standard and we must hold countries accountable when they cheat. By taking decisive action both at home and abroad, the United States can save the thousands of high paying jobs that depend on the aluminum industry and draw a bright red line against Chinas continuing circumvention of the rules of global trade. Doing so will demonstrate to voters across the country that our leadership in Washington can be counted on to hold China accountable to the rules that allow U.S. workers to compete fairly. An Afghan national with ties to the Taliban and a plot to carry out a terror attack somewhere in North America was caught last fall after being smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico, an incident sure to further inflame the debate over national security risks at the border. The Afghan nationals alleged terror ties were not initially flagged in a terror database and as a result, not initially reported when the incident first came to light last November, according to Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who obtained Homeland Security documents on the incident. It was only later that U.S. officials discovered his associations. Hunter told Fox News on Friday that the database disconnect represents a monumental failure. We dont know whos coming into the U.S. and what theyre bringing with them, he told Fox News Americas Newsroom. It is as bad as it seems. The new details were first reported by The Washington Times. According to information shared with FoxNews.com by Hunters office, the Afghan in question was picked up and detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents about 15 miles inside Arizona from the border. He was arrested along with five Pakistani citizens and two Mexicans identified as smugglers. The Afghan claimed he crossed into the U.S. on Nov. 13, 2015 by crawling under a border fence near Nogales, Ariz. But an initial check in one of the terror databases apparently did not flag him. As a result, all six illegal immigrants from what are known as special interest countries were cleared by the National Targeting Center. According to a letter sent Wednesday from Hunter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, all six were initially served with an Expedited Removal. The Afghan national sought U.S. immigration benefits, and was processed as having credible fear after he stated his life was in danger, Hunter wrote. However, according to the letter, the individual was in fact identified in a separate database, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), as having terror ties. Hunter wrote that the individual was said to be involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. and/or Canada and has family ties to members of the Taliban. For an unknown reason, the individual was not initially watch-listed in the separate Terrorist Screening Database, according to the letter and so these associations were not initially noticed. Officials apparently noticed the error in time, as the individual remains in U.S. custody in Arizona. But Hunter said in his letter to Johnson that his understanding is the whereabouts of the other men arrested that day is unknown. Hunter asked DHS for additional details. Hunter also pushed back Friday on the notion that the incident could represent a success since the Afghan national was ultimately apprehended and later flagged. You can assume that others have gotten through, Hunter told Fox News. The information shared with FoxNews.com showed at least a dozen illegal immigrants from Afghanistan and Pakistan have either made it across the U.S. border or gotten close, dating back to 2014. The Washington Times reported that the incident last fall involved a Brazilian-based smuggling network. The Afghan national in question apparently took a complicated route, essentially around the world and then through Latin America, to arrive in Arizona. He told officials he left Afghanistan in 2015 and then traveled from Dubai to Brazil. From there, he moved up through Peru and other South American countries before traveling through Central America. In August 2015, he was apprehended in Panama but was released when no derogatory information on him was found. He continued his journey, crossing into the U.S. in November before being detected, along with his group, by Border Patrol. The apprehensions were reported at the time. However, the local reports, based on comments from border officials, also said no derogatory information turned up when their names were run through security databases. The American people would have had no clue on this if we didnt get these documents from Homeland Security, Hunter said Friday. Reached for comment, a DHS spokesperson said: "Department of Homeland Security agencies and our partners are consistently targeting, through a sustained and unified effort, human smuggling networks. However, as a matter of policy, we do not confirm details in ongoing criminal investigations or law enforcement operations." FoxNews.com's Jennifer Hickey contributed to this report. [We warned you that Fox News First was coming to an end. Sad! But today well tell you whats next. Terrific! See the end of todays note for the details.] Buzz Cut: Dems must denounce rioters Ryan knuckles under Power Play: Hillarys tarnished Golden State? Time for a change DEMS MUST DENOUNCE RIOTERS Politicians arent necessarily responsible for the actions of their supporters. But they are certainly responsible for denouncing misconduct undertaken on their behalves. When two Donald Trump fans beat and urinated on a Hispanic vagrant in Boston last year, Trump was criticized for not denouncing their behavior swiftly and thoroughly enough. So where are Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders on the riots that took place Thursday outside of a Trump rally in San Jose, Calif.? Trump has been regularly flayed for failing to disavow the ugly minority of his supporters the white nationalists, Klansmen and woman haters for their online misconduct or endorsements. Journalists spent weeks exploring the violence of Trump supporters after a man responded to Trumps calls for violence against protesters by sucker-punching a woman in the face. Perhaps Trump deserves opprobrium for the tacit acceptance of hate. But what about a woman pelted with eggs and garbage for supporting Trump? What about rioters attacking police, hurling rocks, burning American flags and even allegedly slapping a horse? Depending on your point of view, the boiling cauldron of racially-charged hate that is spilling into the streets this election cycle may be more the fault of one politician or party than another. But neither side is blameless. After decades of politicians relentlessly racializing American politics, usually with code words and subliminal messages, we find ourselves transported back 50 years to real riots, real violence. Democrats should swiftly, loudly and unequivocally condemn this behavior, if not from a spirit of civic virtue, then at least out of self-interest. Its hard to imagine anything these protesters could do to help Trumps cause more than these oppressive, thuggish tactics. By living down to the worst claims made by Trump and his supporters, the rioters give credence not only to the idea that immigrants are lawless but also that Trumps idea of rough justice is warranted. What Democrats want is for the focus to be on what Clinton was talking about on Thursday: that Trump is an abnormal human being unfit for the normal duties of the presidency. Her speech was all the more brutal for its calm, well-reasoned power. This was not her screaming at a rally, this was her being the adult in the room. And Trump had better come up with something better than what hes dishing out if he wants to correct his deficiencies with college-educated voters. But if those same voters decide that these are abnormal times that call for abnormal men and measures, Clintons potent putdowns might not matter so much. WITH YOUR SECOND CUP OF COFFEE NYT: Scientists have done well in scouring the DNA of humans to track our origins to the African continent. But the ancient origins of an animal that is an honorary member of many human families has remained in doubt: We still dont know where dogs came from. A group of scientists who are in the middle of a grand examination of canine fossils and modern DNA proposed Thursday to turn the whole conversation on its head. Suppose dogs didnt evolve in one place, they suggested, but two. What if domestication of ancient wolves happened in both Asia and Europe different wolves, different people? Laurent Frantz and Greger Larson of Oxford University and an international team of scientists who are all part of a dog domestication project run out of Oxford, made the new argument in a paper published in the journal Science. Got a TIP from the RIGHT or the LEFT? Email FoxNewsFirst@FOXNEWS.COM POLL CHECK Real Clear Politics Averages General Election: Clinton vs. Trump: Clinton +1.5 point Generic congressional vote: Democrats +2.2 RYAN KNUCKLES UNDER Paul Ryan tried to marginalize his endorsement of Donald Trump by announcing it in his small, hometown newspaper and issuing it at the precise moment that Hillary Clinton began her highly publicized bombing raid on Trumps character and fitness for office. Ryan succeeded in marginalizing much more than that. As Trump could have taught him, walking away from a deal empty-handed means diminished status at the next negotiation. After a month of high-minded-sounding objections about Trumps policies and particularly his tone, Ryan simply signed on the dotted line. Ryan deposited his Trump endorsement like an XXX video rental dropped in the store return slot and will get a similar portion of glory for so doing. Conservatives like Philip Klein are savaging Ryan. And the nominee is bound to hold Ryan in even lower esteem than he does those who emigrated to Trumpghanistan early on. All Ryans 28-day run of Hamlet got him was scorn. Ryans real choice all along was either to step down as speaker or obey his partys nominee. So Ryan is obeying. For Ryan to do so even as Trump says a federal judges Latino ethnicity makes him unfit to hear a fraud suit against him shows that Ryan wasnt that serious about his objections in the first place. Ryan said he hopes the campaign improves its tone as we go forward and its all a campaign we can be proud of. But didnt Ryan just teach Trump exactly the opposite lesson? POWER PLAY: HILLARYS TARNISHED GOLDEN STATE? A new USC/LAT poll shows its going to be a close contest in next Tuesdays California primary and may be the last stand for Bernie Sanders. He is assuredly going to fall short of the required delegates even if he takes the Golden State, but will he keep his promise and go all the way to the convention in July? Will the Democratic split continue? Sanders could make Clinton vulnerable to Republican opponent Donald Trump by staying in the race, but quitting could further aggravate his supporters who are already feeling burned from the tough primary season. MoveOn.orgs Washington Director and Bernie supporter, Ben Wikler, and Democratic strategist and Hillary supporter, David Morey, weigh in to Chris Stirewalt. [Watch Fox: Senior Political Correspondent Mike Emanuel gets the latest from California.] Trump backtracks on Martinez attacks - Santa Fe New Mexican: In a stunning reversal of rhetoric and tone, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Thursday said he respects New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez and wants her endorsement. Trumps comments in a phone interview with The New Mexican came just days after he castigated Martinez in front of 8,000 people in AlbuquerqueId like to have it, Trump said in a phone interview when asked if he wanted Martinezs support. I respect her. I have always liked her. Fox News Sunday - Guests include Trump enthusiast and veep shortlister Newt Gingrich. Watch Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. Check local listings for broadcast times in your area. #mediabuzz - Host Howard Kurtz breaks down the weeks media news with guests including Laura Ingraham and Molly Ball. Watch Sunday at 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. RACE NOTES Bloomberg-backed gun control group endorses Hillary - NYT Charlie Cook talks about the potency of partisan identification for Democrats - National Journal Matthew Continetti warns the GOP to pay attention to good economic and Obama polling numbers - Free Beacon Buuuuutnew jobs data may be an ill omen for Dems - AP Billionaire backers lining up for Trump super PACs - USA Today Mitch McConnell says Trumps continued attacks on GOP a mistake - Time Obama adviser lashes out over questions on deleted State Dept. briefing footage - Fox News WITHIN EARSHOT Donald Trump will peel [Hillary Clintons] skin off in a debate setting. And actually hell peel it off this evening. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry in an appearance on Your World with Neil Cavuto TIME FOR A CHANGE This being the end of graduation season, you may have had heard or are bracing yourself for a speech of rolling profundities or excruciatingly pithy pragmatism. The commencement address is one of the last forms of oratory still celebrated in America, and while most are banal, there are still some wonderful moments. This years address to Penn graduates from Lin-Manuel Miranda, for one. But just in case you didnt attend a commencement this year, or if you did and the address you heard sounded like a speech-length motivational poster (but made more excruciating by the prickles of sweat collecting at your collar), here is perhaps the finest example of the form in recent memory, author David Foster Wallaces 2005 speech at Kenyon College: This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesnt. You get to decide what to worship. Because heres something else thats weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. You can listen to the whole thing which has come to be called This is Water here. And you ought to think about doing so, since we are always, always in transition in this transitory life. AND NOW, A WORD FROM CHARLES I thought the content of it was rather devastating. It was an entire 6 months accumulation of opposition research. Had one of the Republican challengers took to Trump in a nomination, delivered it, it would have had tremendous effect. The problem is she delivers it and youre looking at her you think, this is the worst person the Democrats could have chosen to deliver the message. Charles Krauthammer on Special Report with Bret Baier. [Ed. Note: After many happy years bringing you Fox News First, its time for a change. Next week, we will publish our last installment and simultaneously launch a new product. The successor note will maintain the same commitment to the latest and best political news and analysis, but with a new look and slightly different approach. We hope that youve come to trust us and enjoy our offerings enough that you will come along for this next adventure. It will require you to re-subscribe, but still at no cost. We will provide the signup information along with the name and more information about the new note on Monday. We will give you a few days to make the switch and then poof Fox News First will disappear from your inbox for good.] 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. Top Obama press adviser Jen Psaki lashed out at Fox News on Thursday after being pressed for clarification over her statements on press briefing footage that the State Department admitted had been deliberately deleted from a public archive. The department acknowledged Wednesday that several minutes of video from the 2013 briefing at which then-State Department spokeswoman Psaki appeared to acknowledge misleading the press over the Iran nuclear deal had been intentionally cut. The order apparently came from an official in the public affairs office, but that individual has not been identified. Psaki, who is now White House communications director, issued a statement late Wednesday saying it wasnt her: I had no knowledge of nor would I have approved of any form of editing or cutting my briefing transcript on any subject while at the State Department. I believe deeply in providing the press as much information on important issues as possible. Fox News James Rosen, though, sent Psaki an email seeking clarification, noting that the issue was not edits to the transcript but the actual video of the briefing. Psaki responded that her statement also applies to the video but then went on to accuse Rosen of vilifying her without evidence. The full email exchange is as follows: ROSEN EMAIL Jen, Some have pointed to a certain aspect of your statement, highlighted below, as not removing yourself from consideration for having issued the order to edit the briefing video: I had no knowledge of nor would I have approved of any form of editing or cutting my briefing transcript on any subject while at the State Department. I believe deeply in providing the press as much information on important issues as possible. Of course, as Liz Trudeau and others have stressed, the briefing transcript remained unaltered the entire time. Do you want to issue a revised statement, asserting the same for the video, which was altered? Forgive me if you have already put out something along these lines and I missed it. Yours cordially, James PSAKI RESPONSE James, My statement applies to the video which is considered a form of the transcript and every aspect of this. I understand it is inconvenient for you that I have nothing to do with this given you have spent the last three weeks vilifying me on television without any evidence of my knowledge or involvement and without once reaching out and asking me, but I would encourage you to also ask the State Department if there is any evidence. A shred or any information at all that suggests I had any knowledge of this or any connection to this on any level. Hopefully you will find the time to spend on the range of global events happening in the world in between attacking my character. Consider that on the record from me as well Thanks Rosen said Thursday he has never assailed Psakis character, nor has he ever asserted or implied she was responsible for editing the footage. Psaki isn't the only ex-spokeswoman denying involvement in the edits. Former deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf also told Fox News in a statement Thursday that she had no knowledge of nor would I have approved of this editing. I have no idea who asked for the editing of the tape, said Harf, now a senior adviser to Secretary of State John Kerry. The denials leave a mystery over which official indeed had the footage cut from the 2013 briefing. At that briefing, Psaki was asked by Rosen about an earlier claim from another official that no direct, secret talks were underway between the U.S. and Iran when, in fact, they were. Psaki at the time seemed to admit the discrepancy, saying: There are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that. However, Fox News later discovered the Psaki exchange was missing from the departments official website and its YouTube channel (though not from the transcript). Eight minutes from the briefing, including the comments on the Iran deal, were edited out and replaced with a white-flash effect. While the department initially claimed this was the result of a glitch, officials looked into it and State Department spokesman John Kirby revealed Wednesday there was a deliberate request to cut the footage. He said somebody in his public affairs office had a video editor excise part of that footage from the briefing in question. Kirby told Fox News' Fox & Friends on Thursday he does not know who made the request, though he did not rule out pursuing the matter further if more information comes to light. There's no cover-up, Kirby said. Kirby also said Psaki, in the 2013 briefing, was not trying to say anybody at the department lied about the Iran deal. We dont lie, he said. Kirby also thanked Rosen for "bringing this to my attention, because if he didnt a couple of weeks ago, I would never have known that this occurred. So first of all, kudos to him, hes a journalist who I have a great respect for." Fox News Lucas Tomlinson and FoxNews.com's Judson Berger contributed to this report. After years of kicking the can down the road on whether to move the American embassy in Israel out of Tel Aviv, the diplomatic corps could be saying next year in Jerusalem no matter who wins the race for the White House. Despite President Obama once again signing an order on Wednesday delaying implementation of a plan approved by Congress more than 20 years ago to move the embassy both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the likely presidential nominees of their respective parties, have expressed support for moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. This raises the possibility that the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Acts directive to relocate the embassy could actually go forward in 2017. To date, successive presidents of both parties have ignored it citing security interests. Obama did so again on Wednesday, using a presidential waiver to suspend the implementation for another six months. Jason Stverak, legislative director of the Christians United for Israel Action Fund, called the move yet another example of the disconnect between President Obamas and the American peoples attitude towards Israel. His group, along with other pro-Israel organizations and lawmakers, contend that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of the Jewish state and want U.S. policy to reflect that, in part by relocating the embassy. There are no signs the Obama White House would change course before January. But post-inauguration is another matter. Trump in March assured the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that he wants to move the embassy to Jerusalem, calling it the eternal capital of the Jewish people. Clinton has not weighed in specifically on the issue this year, but has been bolstering her pro-Israel credentials in recent months and said she wants to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House. And back in 1999, when running for U.S. Senate in New York, Clinton did say she supported the embassy move. "[Y]ou can be sure that I will be an active, committed advocate for a strong and secure Israel, able to live in peace with its neighbors, with the United States Embassy located in its capital, Jerusalem," she wrote in a letter to the Orthodox Union, according to a CNN report. Neither campaign responded to a FoxNews.com request for comment on the embassy issue. Clinton, though, in 1999 included a caveat that would seem to leave wiggle room. She said: "Of course, the timing of such a move must be sensitive to Israel's interest in achieving a secure peace with its neighbors. The 1995 law called for the U.S. embassy to be established in Jerusalem no later than May 1999. However, it allowed the president to suspend the terms for six months if necessary to protect national security interests; every president since Bill Clinton has done so, amid complaints that the law infringes on executive power. Multiple attempts have been made to bring the act out of legislative limbo, most recently a 2015 bill to withhold State Department funds until the move was complete. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., who sponsored the bill, said he is still fighting for it. I will continue urging every U.S. President to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as the U.S. has already committed to doing. I will be pushing for my bill, the Jerusalem Embassy and Recognition Act, until this becomes a reality, Heller said in a statement to FoxNews.com. Fox News Lesa Jansen contributed to this report. Americas troops who havent seen a raise over 2 percent in years could soon see their monthly pay actually go down in some cases if a Senate plan to overhaul the military housing allowance goes through. Right now, the Defense Department pays service members a set housing stipend based on several factors including rank and zip code. These rules allow bargain-hunting soldiers who find less expensive housing to pocket the difference -- and use it for groceries, utilities or other expenses. Under the new Senate proposal, members of the Army, Navy and Air Force would get only the exact amount they spend on rent and utilities. Its part of a plan to make sure rent and utilities are covered for everyone while curbing abuses in the system while likely saving the government millions in the process, according to one estimate. But the rule tweak is facing strong resistance from military advocates, including some in Congress who are now fighting the proposal. This is a benefit every service member earns, retired Col. Michael Barron, of the Military Officers Association of America advocacy group, told FoxNews.com. We dont agree [with the proposed change]. The proposal to change the so-called Basic Allowance for Housing is included in the Senate Armed Services Committee's 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. If approved by Congress and signed into law, the proposed change would go into effect in 2018 and make the tax-free benefit more like the militarys overseas housing allowance, as first reported by The Military Times. The proposal, part of the 1,666-page Senate bill, has received relatively little attention, in part because Americans may be more concerned about spending recommendations for defense projects and servicemembers health care. This is a reform bill. And all of this was achieved while upholding the committees commitments to servicemembers, retirees and their families, Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said in May of the $602 billion, bipartisan proposal. A Capitol Hill source said the proposed change is supposed to help service members by precisely covering their rent and utilities -- instead of the existing program which may give some troops extra money but can leave others paying as much as 5 percent out-of-pocket on those costs. The changes also reportedly are meant to cut down on abuse of the system. However, Barron suggested the military is trying to cut costs on the backs of military members. He also said a second proposed change in the legislation, which would reduce the housing allowance for military couples and military roommates, would penalize service members. His group, service members and others have gotten help from Republican Sens. Susan Collins, of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, who each have an amendment to strike those changes from the Senate proposal. The related House bill does not appear to include such changes, and the Defense Department did not return a call Wednesday seeking comment. In a supplemental report to the bill, committee members raised concerns about service members seeing the allowance as an entitlement, when it was in fact created 20 years ago to deal with the transient nature of military service, including frequently unemployed civilian spouses. This disconnect is exacerbated by the significant increases in the benefit over the past 16 years, concludes the report, which cites Army audits that found the housing benefit now far exceeds the cost of housing for some service members and such costs for married service members in fiscal 2014 exceeded local housing costs by more than $200 million. Barron praised Congress for its work over the past two decades in reducing service members out-of-pocket housing expenses, which had been about 15 percent of their paycheck. However, he said the proposed changes come at a bad time, considering looming hikes in health-care costs and the amount service members have to contribute to their retirement funds. The USS Harry Truman, a Navy aircraft carrier, is launching airstrikes against the Islamic State from its position in the Eastern Mediterranean, a Navy official confirmed to Fox News on Friday. This is showing the U.S. Navy can conduct flight operations [against ISIS] from other locations, not just the [Persian] Gulf, the official said. The aircraft carrier has been launching fighter jets to conduct strikes against ISIS from the Persian Gulf since December. The latest airstrikes took place against targets in Syria, according to a senior defense official familiar with the operation. In April, the U.S. Navy announced Trumans deployment would be extended an extra 30 days. When asked if there was any objection from Russian or Syrian military, the Navy official was not aware. He did not know if the U.S. asked for permission from the Syrians or Russians before conducting the flights. The Russians set up the S-400 fourth-generation surface-to-air missile system in Syria late last year. When asked how long the USS Harry Truman would be in the Mediterranean, the official said, more than a few days. Truman is currently scheduled to return to her homeport in Norfolk, Va., in mid-July. Reuters first reported on the new airstrikes. The nations largest veterans group hit back at President Obama on Thursday and urged him not to denigrate their intelligence after the president suggested their members were easily swayed by cable news and right-wing radio. The Veterans of Foreign Wars called out the president after Obama referenced the political opinions at VFW halls in an Indiana speech Wednesday that toggled between campaign politics and the economy. I dont know how many VFW Posts the president has ever visited, but our near 1.7 million members are a direct reflection of America, VFW National Commander John A. Biedrzycki Jr. said in a statement. We dont have confused politics, we dont need left or rightwing media filters telling us how to think or vote, and we dont need any President of the United States lecturing us about how we are individually [affected] by the economy. Obama, speaking in Elkhart, Ind., had lamented the primary story he claimed Republicans are telling about the economy one that focuses on how moochers at the bottom of the income ladder are squeezing middle-class families. We have been hearing this story for decades, Obama said. Tales about welfare queens, talking about takers, talking about the 47percent. It's the story that is broadcast every day on some cable news stations, on right-wing radio, it's pumped into cars, and bars, and VFW halls all across America, and right here in Elkhart. Obama continued: And if you're hearing that story all the time, you start believing it. It's no wonder people think big government is the problem. Biedrzycki suggested veterans are not so easily swayed. Our nation was created and continues to exist solely because of the men and women who wear the uniform, he said. Lets not denigrate their service, their sacrifice or their intelligence. Obama is no stranger to the VFW, having addressed the groups national convention several times dating back to his first presidential campaign. He last spoke to the VFW convention last July in Pittsburgh, calling the occasion a great honor. He used the speech to address ongoing efforts to help Americas veterans, especially in the area of health care, in the wake of the Veterans Affairs wait-times scandal. As president, I consider it my obligation to help make sure that, even though less than 1 percent of Americans wear the uniform, that 100 percent of Americans honor your sacrifices and your service, he said. An editor with the website Vox was suspended Friday for a series of tweets encouraging protesters to "start a riot" at Donald Trump rallies shortly after the Republican candidate's supporters were attacked outside a San Jose rally the night before. "We welcome a variety of viewpoints, but we do not condone writing that could put others in danger, the site's founder, Ezra Klein, said in a statement announcing the suspension of Emmett Rensin. Rensin, deputy editor for the site's first-person section, had taken to Twitter as reports first emerged of the chaotic scenes Thursday night outside the California rally, where protesters confronted supporters of the presumptive GOP nominee as they departed. Supporters were punched, and one woman was seen on film being hit with an egg and other trash. Rensin tweeted that it's "never a shame to storm the barricades set up around a fascist." He then posted: His suggestion was followed by a series of similar statements. "Listen, if Trump is Hitler then you've got no business condemning rioters. If he isn't, you've got no business pretending normal is better," he argued. Several bloggers, including Ed Morrissey of the conservative Hot Air, criticized Rensins comments, but it was not until Friday afternoon that Klein chimed in. A frequent commentator on MSNBC, Klein left his position as a Washington Post columnist to start Vox in 2014. In announcing Rensin's suspension, Klein asserted he welcomes debate, but that direct encouragement of riots crosses a line between expressing a contrary opinion and directly encouraging dangerous, illegal activity. Meanwhile, Trump commented on the San Jose chaos during a rally Friday afternoon in Redding, Calif., calling some of the protesters "thugs." Rensin continued his tweet-storm well into Friday morning, while clarifying and defending his position. He wrote: I wonder how many of the people beside themselves about anti-Trump riots have called for armed revolt against Obama in the past 8 years? Blue Origin has been chosen as NASA's latest space-age guinea pig. Jeff Bezos's private aerospace company was awarded a contract to perform suborbital research flights as part of NASA's Flight Opportunities Program, which tests how emerging technologies perform to see if they might be useful on current and future missions. As SpaceNews reports, the deal means Blue Origin can team up with researchers and submit flight proposals to NASA, which decides whether or not to fund them. They'll go up against other space firms that have NASA contracts: Virgin Galactic, World View Enterprises, Masten Space Systems, Near Space Corporation, and UP Aerospace. "We are pleased to have Blue Origin join our cadre of Flight Opportunities services providers," Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator for NASA's STMD, said in a statement. "Adding additional flight providers enables NASA and the broader aerospace community to demonstrate and transition space technologies, developing new capabilities faster and, potentially, at lower cost." To date, the Flight Opportunities Program has supported 46 flights of 172 different payloads, SpaceNews said, citing Jurczyk. Bezos and Blue Origin made history in November, becoming the first to launch a rocket and successfully land it vertically back on Earth. Rockets are not typically salvageable, and crash into the ocean after a mission. So companies like Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX have been working on rockets that can be reused, saving man hours and money for future flights. As Popular Mechanics explains, though, the milestones accomplished by Blue Origin and SpaceX are a bit different. Blue Origin did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment. This article originally appeared on PCMag.com. There are eight planets in our solar system, and have been officially ever since Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. But what if there was a ninth planet, billions of miles past Neptune? Earlier this year, researchers from CalTech announced that they had found signs of the planet, which is referred to a Planet 9, through modeling and computer simulations. If a ninth planet were out there, it would be a big one ten times the mass of Earth and very, very far away, completing just one orbit around the sun as slowly as perhaps every 10,000 to 20,000 years. Related: Scientists may have just found a ninth planet and it's massive Now, scientists from Lund University in Sweden have used computer simulations to propose a new theory about how Planet 9 if it exists came to be a member of the solar system. They propose that it was stolen by our sun from another star about 4.5 billion years ago. What we were arguing was that you could create this [Planet 9] around another star, and then the sun could capture it, in a close encounter, Alexander Mustill, a researcher in the department of astronomy and theoretical physics at Lund University, explained in a video about the theory. Related: NASA identifies 1,284 new exoplanets, most ever announced at once We argue that this is how you could put this planet on a wide orbit around the sun, he added. You first create it around another star, and then the sun captures it. The researchers argue that this would make this planet an exoplanet, which is the term scientists use to describe planets in other star systems beyond our own. Just last month, NASA announced that they had added over 1,200 new exoplanets to the official roster, all of them discoveries from the Kepler spacecraft that had been validated through a new statistical method. Related: Planet discovery fuels interest in mythical world of deep space Its very exciting to this that there might be an extrasolar planet in our own solar system, Mustill said. The study proposing the new theory about Planet 9 was published online in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in April. Scientists have already sequenced the human genome, the DNA that includes all of our thousands of genes. But now a group of researchers are calling for an ambitious new initiative constructing very long stretches of DNA, perhaps as much as an entire human genome. Writing in the journal Science on Thursday, the scientists refer to the original sequencing of the genome, the Human Genome Project, as HGP-read. This new initiative, they propose, will be known as HGP-write. Instead of sequencing, it will be focused on building. Related: Who among us has Neanderthal, Denisovan DNA? The 25 scientists who hail from institutions like New York University Langone Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, and the University of California argue that synthesizing the genome is the next step in the field of genetics, and call for public conversation on the topic to discuss, among other issues, the ethics of the controversial idea. As human genome-scale synthesis appears increasingly feasible, a coordinated scientific effort to understand, discuss, and apply large-genome engineering technologies is timely, the scientists write. The biggest goal, the scientists argue, is to dramatically bring down the costs of creating, or writing, very long sections of DNA in the next decade. Related: DNA from ancient Phoenician stuns scientists They say that the ambitious proposal could help improve human health, such as by growing transplantable human organs, and hope to launch this year, estimating that it could cost less than the original project to sequence the human genome. Follow Rob Verger on Twitter: @robverger Streaking at a speed of about 40,200 mph, an asteroid zipped across the Arizona sky on Thursday morning, lighting up the night with a fireball, triggering sonic booms, and spurring calls to the police. NASA says that the object was probably about five feet across, weighed a few tons, and was so bright that the cameras trained to the sky were whited out by the event. The meteors last known location was about 22 miles over the Tonto National Forest, and likely left behind meteorites on the ground. When the sky lightened in the morning, a twisted smoke trail was visible. Related: Fireball shoots across California night sky There are no reports of any damage or injuriesjust a lot of light and few sonic booms, Bill Cooke, of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, said in a statement. If Doppler radar is any indication, there are almost certainly meteorites scattered on the ground north of Tucson. The American Meteor Society said that it had received more than 340 reports of the fireball an event defined as a very bright meteor-- which occurred just before 4 a.m. mountain time, including reports from Texas, California, and New Mexico. CNN reported that a spokesman for the Phoenix Police Department told them they had received over 60 calls after the event. Related: How the Air Force's 'space fence' will keep American satellites safe NASA said that while this meteor was just about five feet across, the 2013 object that dramatically streaked across the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia was probably about 65 feet across and produced more than 800 times the amount of energy as this one. If you need further proof that elephants are highly-intelligent animals, this is it. Ben, an injured bull elephant - thought to be 30-years-old - gave staffers at the Bumi Hills Safari Lodge in Kariba, Zimbabwe the surprise of their lives when he appeared to ask for help. From the start it was clear to manager Nick Milne that something wasnt right, as the animal had a significant limp and appeared to be wounded. Unfortunately though, the in-house vet had left for the weekend so they were unable to tell the full extent of his injuries. The lodge got the word out, and another vet kindly volunteered to fly 200 miles from the capital to help the elephant. While medical assistance jetted out to him, Ben calmly passed the six-hour wait; he stayed no more than a few metres from the house, drunk his fill and grazed. When the vet arrived Ben was tranquillised and it was then a large wound in his shoulder was discovered, along with two bullet holes in his ear injuries thought to be from a poachers bullet sustained in a separate incident. The vet and workers were able to clean and disinfect Bens wound and administer a tracking collar to monitor his recovery. Click for more from News.com.au. Facebook has finally addressed the Peter Thiel controversy that was threatening to once again drag it in to a media quagmire. The platform's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, tackled the issue head-on when it was raised at Recode's annual Code Conference on Wednesday. Despite the recent revelation that Thiel covertly financed wrestler Hulk Hogan's successful lawsuit against news outlet Gawker Media, Sandberg insisted that the Silicon Valley investor would remain a Facebook board member. "Peter did what he did on his own, not as a Facebook board member. We didn't know about it," claimed Sandberg. "We have very independent board members with very independent thoughts that they share publicly." She went on to add: "Those strong people make really good board members because they have strong views, and they're not afraid to think differently than other people, which has served Facebook well." More from DigitalTrends: The calls for Thiel's dismissal have mainly come from media organizations, which are accusing the billionaire entrepreneur of using his wealth to effectively silence the press. In the lawsuit's aftermath, and following Thiel's defense of his actions, questions began to arise regarding Facebook's stance on the matter. Fresh off the back of a similar free-speech debacle regarding its trending topics feed, Facebook's silence reflected its apprehension over an issue that had some members of the press riled up. Sandberg spoke of Facebook's existing relationship with the media when quizzed as to how the company would respond if Thiel was methodically suppressing publishers. "It's really hard to answer all of these hypotheticals, but what really matters, is Gawker is getting distribution from us as is the New York Times, as is Fox News, as is Recode," she stated. She also made reference to the comparisons that were being made to the way Facebook treated board member Marc Andreessen over his disparaging comments about India. Sandberg claimed that unlike Andreessen -- who was publicly called out over his statements by CEO Mark Zuckerberg -- Thiel acted alone, and "not as a Facebook board member." Asked about her own future, and the rumours surrounding an alleged offer for the role of CEO at Disney, Sandberg stated that she wasn't going anywhere: "I don't want another job. I love Facebook." Twenty-first-century fatwas have become way more technologically advanced than edicts of old against the likes of Salman Rushdie and other supposed infidels. To wit: A Saudi scholar has issued a ruling warning against the pilfering of WiFi, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. "Taking advantage of the WiFi service illegally or without the knowledge of other beneficiaries or providers is not allowed," was the stern mandate of Ali Al Hakami, a member of the Islamic religious council that advises the Saudi king. He clarified that public WiFi, such as that found in parks, hotels, and shopping malls, is A-OK to access. Gulf News points out that this most recent ruling aligns with one issued in April by Dubai's Department of Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities after a reader on its website asked if it was OK to tap into a neighbor's WiFi. "There is nothing wrong in using the line if your neighbors allow you to do so, but if [they] don't allow you, you may not use it," the department advised. Not that this is the first odd fatwa to be proclaimed: RT.com notes rulings have also come down from on high prohibiting emoji, women sitting in chairs, and travel to Mars. But some think it's pretty obvious no one should take something from others without askingand that instead of a fatwa, Saudis should employ a more common-sense tactic: passwords. "We do not need a religious edict to pinpoint such basic things," one online commenter wrote, per the Gulf News. "Private property should remain private, especially [since] the owner paid money for the services. Nobody should just take advantage." (The academy that issues the Nobels finally blasted the fatwa against Rushdie27 years after it was issued.) This article originally appeared on Newser: Latest Saudi Fatwa: Don't Rip Off WiFi The Army said Friday they have found the bodies of four Fort Hood soldiers who were swept away in a rain-swollen creek during a training exercise at the sprawling Army base in Central Texas. Maj. Gen. John Uberti says the bodies were found a day after their 2 1/2-ton truck overturned in Owl Creek at Fort Hood. Five other soldiers were killed and three more injured. Fort Hood spokesman Chris Haug said late Thursday that teams found the bodies of two more soldiers who had been in the vehicle. Three other soldiers were found dead shortly after the 2 1/2-ton truck overturned in Owl Creek during a morning training exercise on the Central Texas army post. "It was a situation where the rain had come, the water was rising quickly and we were in the process, at the moment of the event, of closing the roads," Haug said Thursday. Soldiers on training exercises regularly contend with high-water situations following heavy rains, he said. "This was a tactical vehicle and at the time they were in a proper place for what they were training," Haug said. "It's just an unfortunate accident that occurred quickly." Three soldiers were rescued and were hospitalized in stable condition. This tragedy extends well beyond Fort Hood Maj. Gen. John Uberti said Friday, adding that the Army is providing support and counseling to soldiers, families and friends affected in the incident. It was the third tragic incident of the day for the U.S. military, after a Blue Angels fighter pilot was killed in a crash in Tennessee and the pilot of an Air Force jet participating in a Colorado graduation ceremony's flyover was slightly injured after he ejected before the craft crashed in a field. The Texas soldiers involved are from the Armys famed 1st Cavalry Division, which is based at Fort Hood. The Army has yet to release any of the names of the deceased soldiers because it was still notifying relatives. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to the soldiers their families and the Fort Hood community," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement late Thursday. "The brave men and women stationed at Fort Hood put their life on the line every day, be it through rescue operations or on the battlefield. Texas will forever remain grateful for their sacrifices," Abbott said. Fort Hood spokesman John Miller said the low-water crossing of the creek was flooded by two days of intermittent heavy rains when the swift water swept the truck from the road. Maj. Gen. John C. Thomson II, the commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division, released a statement on Facebook late Thursday. Parts of Texas have been inundated with rain in the last week, and more than half of the state is under flood watches or warnings, including the counties near Fort Hood. At least six people died in floods last week in Central and Southeast Texas. Across parts of Texas, many were keeping an eye on a new batch of storms that could dump up to 10 inches of rain from Thursday through Saturday and worsen flooding caused by waterways that have already risen to record levels. The heaviest rainfall Thursday night was reported in LaPorte, on the western shore of Galveston Bay, where 4.36 inches of rain was recorded between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. Thursday. Earlier, a storm system that moved through the Houston area Wednesday night and Thursday morning dumped nearly 8 inches of rain in some of the city's northern suburbs, causing flooding in some neighborhoods. In Fort Bend County, southwest of Houston, about 1,400 homes have been affected by the Brazos River, swollen by heavy rainfall from last week. Officials say levels in the Brazos have not dropped much and additional rainfall could make the flooding worse. "With the rain that's predicted, that's not going to help things as that water has no place to go," said Lt. Lowell Neinast, with the police department in Richmond, where more than 700 people have been evacuated. Fort Bend County emergency management coordinator Jeff Braun said officials have worked to warn and prepare residents ahead of the additional rainfall. More than 50 people are staying at shelters in Fort Bend County, one of the 31 counties included in a disaster declaration by Abbott. Braun said it could be at least a week before the flooding recedes and residents can go home. This week's storms are the latest in a string of torrential rains since May 2015 that have put swaths of the state underwater. Some areas now overwhelmed by water had run dry two years ago due to drought conditions. Fox News Lucas Tomlinson and the Associated Press contributed to this report. An abortion question on a final exam for an online high school has prompted complaints from parents and an investigation by the Utah State Board of Education. The question asks what a woman and her family should do after a doctor recommends that she have an abortion because genetic testing shows the child could be born with Down syndrome, Fox 13 Now reports. Students are given four chocies: waiting and re-testing; considering all factors like religion and finances before deciding; following the doctors advice to abort; and leaving the decision up to the mother. The question showed up on a final biology exam administered by the Utah Electronic High School, the station reported. "The first thing through my mind was, this question violates Utah law," said Oak Norton of the group Utahns Against Common Core told the station. "It's totally inappropriate for a classroom. No student should have this kind of question asked of them. Norton posted a cellphone photo of the question on the Utahns Against Common Core website this week after getting it from a 10th grader taking the exam, according to Fox 13 Now. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the question was removed from the online schools computer-based tests Thursday after parent complaints. Principal Kathleen Webb told the paper the question did appear to have been written by the schools biology teacher. The instant that I found it with her, we removed it from the test bank, Webb told the paper. It is not available to students. Utah Interim Deputy Superintendent Richard Nye said hes trying to determine how many students were given the question. That item has no place in a public education test, he told Fox 13 News. Its something that we find deplorable. He said the question was randomly selected by a computer from a bank of hundreds of questions. He said not even the teacher knew it was on the test. Click for more from Fox 13 Now. Authorities in Alaska said Thursday they are investigating an overnight vandalism spree at a small airport where dozens of airplanes had their tires slashed. About 87 small planes at Merrill Field, on the edge of downtown Anchorage, had their tires slashed. Jennifer Castro, a police spokeswoman, said officials are investigating the vandalism but provided few details. Airfield manager Paul Bowers said surveillance footage was being reviewed as part of the investigation. Merrill Field is home to about 830 aircraft. The field has more security cameras than any other aviation airport in Alaska, he said. "But it's not a panacea," he said. "It's not a perfect system, and we don't know if we've captured everything that can be captured at this point." Bowers called it ironic that the airport is in the midst of upgrades to its security system, including its camera network, fencing, and vehicle entrance and exit gates. But the existing system was operating at the time of the vandalism, he said. The best guess so far is that the vandalism occurred between 1:30 a.m. and 6 a.m. Thursday, Bowers said. Citing a request by police, he declined to say what areas of Merrill Field were targeted in the spree. Chris Seaman, an Anchorage native, got to the airport at about 6:45 a.m. and was shocked at what he found. "Driving into the parking area, we were like, 'Wow, there's a lot of flat tires out here,'" he told the Alaska Dispatch News, "and realized, 'Holy (sic), all the tires were slashed.'" The affected aircraft owners have been notified directly or through messages, Bowers said. Aircraft tires can run as high as $2,000 each. He said the total could end up costing $200,000. Bowers he has been in airport management for more than 30 years, and the slashings are the first such incident he has encountered. "Never heard of it, anywhere in the world," he said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. The body of a missing 13-year-old Detroit boy was found in an empty lot on the citys east side Thursday, while police arrested the main suspect in Ohio. Deontae Mitchells mother, Crystal Mitchell, identified her sons body and an autopsy is planned for Friday morning, the Wayne County medical examiners office said. Detroit Police Chief James Craig offered his "heart and prayers" to the boy's family and called it a "horrific crime." "We're talking about a defenseless child. An adult male with a gun," Craig said at a news conference earlier Thursday. "Once again, another coward preying on children, and that needs to stop." The boys cousin, Raheem Matthews, told police they were riding bikes Tuesday night when they saw an apparently drunken man drop money while urinating outside the market. The cousin said Deontae picked up the money and rode away. Surveillance video shows the boy being pursued by the suspect, grabbed his arm and forced into a black Chevrolet Impala. Matthews told Fox 2 Detroit that he tried to help Mitchell but Walker allegedly pointed the gun at him and took the teen. Matthews said Mitchells last words were help me. "This all I'm going to be looking at every day," he said clutching a picture of Mitchell. "It hurts." Police believe that the suspect was Gregory Walker, 45, of Detroit, who was arrested Thursday with a woman in Toledo, Ohio. Walker hasnt been charged. Craig noted that police are searching for two more men in the murder of the boy and called the case very much an active investigation. One of them, a 30-year-old from Detroit, was arrested Thursday in his home; he was not immediately charged. A 51-year-old man still is being sought. Detroit police were preparing information to present to prosecutors for murder charges, said Sgt. Michael Woody, who added that Walker may have to be extradited to Michigan from Ohio. Late Thursday morning, police combed through knee- to waist-high weeds and grass in an empty lot behind a vacant one-story building that once housed a men's clothing shop and a tax service. About three dozen people gathered nearby, some praying for the boy's family, the neighborhood and the city. Madgrine Jones, 35, cried, saying "the spirit led me here." A security guard at a cemetery, Jones didn't know the victim and is not acquainted with his family, but has children of her own. "It hurts. It hurts," she told The Associated Press, tears streaming down her face. "Why can't we go back to when people spoke up? We got babies being killed. It's just too much. I pray for the family. I pray for the city. I pray for our kids." The Associated Press contributed to this report. The Christian version of The Onion is facing fire and brimstone for a satirical article on an famous evangelist published the day she died. The Babylon Bee, a religious satire news site known for its biting parody, took the joke too far when it mocked Trinity Broadcasting Network co-founder Jan Crouch, say critics. The article poked fun at Crouchs role in the so-called "prosperity gospel movement," which embraces wealth, as long as one tithes. As the nation mourns the sudden and unexpected loss of TBN co-founder Jan Crouch, various baffled prosperity gospel preachers have begun offering theories Tuesday on how Crouch could possibly have passed away, given her overabundance of faith, her supernatural ability to name and claim health and wealth at will, and her decades of collecting donations while promising that Gods will is for everybody to be wealthy and healthy, reads the lead paragraph from farce news article. Crouch, who was 78, and husband Paul Crouch, who died in 2013, were well-known for being leaders within the prosperity gospel movement, according to ChristianExaminer.com. The article also included mock quotes from well-known evangelists like Joel Osteen. "Maybe she read a really mean tweet or some criticism of her theology, and she spoke the words out loud and gave them life, Osteen was quoted as saying. How else can you explain someone who possessed supernatural health from God dying four years before the average female life expectancy in the U.S.?" The articles snark enraged some from the religious community. "I have been a fan of the Babylon Bee. I have appreciated their sometimes irreverent and stinging satire, Barry McCarty, professor of preaching and rhetoric at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, told the Christian Examiner. I would also say that ordinarily I appreciate wit and satire and I am no fan at all of prosperity gospel and televangelists but this struck me as being beyond the pale today." Others took to the websites Facebook page to express dismay over the article. "Being in the funeral industry, the Bee has lost me on this one," wrote one reader. "She does have a family who is grieving her loss. Pray for her family that they may see the truth and be brought closer to God. Don't make fun of her after she passed. What would Jesus do? I love ya Bee, but you crossed the line this time." "I normally think everything BB posts is gold.... but this was completely insensitive. Satire and jokes are fun, but this crossed the line," wrote another. Some took to the social media page to defend the Bee, which has not removed the article. "Satire works because it offends and in offending shocks our senses to the reality behind the joke," wrote one defender of the article. "It is in the very moments of life and death and pain and suffering that the hellacious Prosperity Gospel does its most damage. So this is the perfect time, there can be no other. Go BB." Four former prison guards who were barred from carrying concealed guns despite a 2004 federal law that gave off-duty and retired law enforcement officers the right to pack heat won a landmark court victory on Thursday. In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington D.C. Circuit held that the citys Department of Corrections improperly barred the men from carrying concealed firearms, saying the 2004 Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act guaranteed their right. The court rejected the citys argument that the law does not apply to corrections officers because they lack arresting authority. [Congress] left no discretion for a state to revise the historical record of an individual qualified law enforcement officer, read the majority opinion. The law was intended to improve response to threats in public as well as to allow current and former law enforcement officers with at least 10 years experience the ability to protect themselves from criminals they may have had past dealings with. Although plaintiffs Robert Smith, Ronald DuBerry, Harold Bennette and Maurice Curtis all said they regularly received threats from inmates they once guarded, their applications for concealed-carry licenses were denied. I will not certify an application request for carrying a concealed weapon under LEOSA for retired employees, as corrections officers do not meet all of the required elements necessary. Corrections Department Director Tom Faust said at the time. It is not clear whether the decision will be appealed, but it makes clear for now that the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act must extend to retired and off-duty corrections officers as well as state and local police and federal agents. Smith, who retired as a Corrections department firearms instructor, told the The Washington Times in 2014 that he was fired upon by men he suspects were former inmates as he took out the trash outside his home. They remember you, he said. The District of Columbias fight to leave former corrections officers unarmed shows how entrenched its opposition to guns is, according to John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. This case illustrates how extreme the District of Columbias opposition to concealed carry has been, Lott said. Here you have law enforcement who are offering to protect others for free, and the District has borne large legal costs to stop them from doing it. In a dissenting opinion, Judge Karen Henderson wrote that the federal law did not preclude state or local officials from determining who met the qualifications under the act. It makes perfect sense to likewise conclude that the Congress intended a state court to determine whether one of its retired law enforcement officers is qualified, that is, whether he possessed certain state law authority. Several military personnel were rescued by helicopter Friday in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park after some had trouble climbing one of the state's highest peaks. Defense officials told Fox News that 11 Green Berets from Fort Carson in Colorado Springs were involved in a climbing training exercise Thursday on 14,259-foot Longs Peak, but a few of them had trouble continuing. MMA328 has been sent to Rocky Mtn. National Park for a search and rescue (SAR) for 10 overdue military personnel on Long's Peak. #COFire COFirePrev&Control (@COStateFire) June 3, 2016 The group ended up spending the night. Rocky Mountain National Park spokesman Kyle Patterson said they're helping one another climb to the summit of Longs Peak and that rangers are helping as needed. Two soldiers got altitude sickness, and the other soldiers decided to spent the night on the mountain, 10th Special Forces group spokesman Lt. Col. Sean Ryan told ABC News. No one is lost, missing or injured, Ryan told the network. The route the personnel are taking is not as technical as some but still requires climbers to cross a steep ice field and a ledge that is very narrow at points. Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 The Latest on the murder-suicide at UCLA (all times local): 2:25 p.m. Minnesota authorities have officially identified a woman found dead during the investigation of this week's UCLA murder-suicide as the wife of campus gunman Mainak Sarkar (MY'-nahk SUR'-kahr). The Hennepin County medical examiner says the body found Thursday in a Brooklyn Park residence was 31-year-old Ashley Erin Hasti and she died of multiple gunshot wounds. Police say Hasti was legally married to Sarkar but had been separated for some time and lived separately. Officers found a broken window where they believe Sarkar entered Hasti's home to commit the crime. Police say they had no previous calls concerning Hasti or Sarkar. Sarkar fatally shot his former UCLA professor, Bill Klug, to death on Wednesday and then killed himself. ___ 10:45 a.m. A relative says a Minnesota woman who was killed by her estranged husband before he fatally shot a UCLA professor was a world traveler and close to becoming a doctor. Jean Johnson, the grandmother of victim Ashley Hasti, said Friday that Hasti was smart and spent her late teens and early 20s visiting China, India and Tibet. She spoke fluent Chinese and knew French. She also dabbled in stand-up comedy. Johnson said the 31-year-old Hasti was a year away from finishing medical school at the University of Minnesota and hoped to work with children. Johnson said Hasti met Mainak Sarkar while she was studying at Scripps College in Claremont, California, in 2009 and 2010, when he was a student at UCLA. Hasti was found dead in her Twin Cities-area home on Thursday, a day after her estranged husband, Mainak Sarkar, gunned down a UCLA professor on the school's campus before killing himself. A former UCLA graduate student killed his estranged wife in Minnesota before driving to Los Angeles and murdering one of his former professors before turning the gun on himself, authorities said Thursday. The body of Ashley Hasti, 31, was found early Thursday in her home in Brooklyn Park, northwest of Minneapolis. Hennepin County records confirmed the gunman, Mainak Sarkar, married Hasti in June of 2011. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said Thursday that Hasti's name was on a "kill list" composed by Sarkar. The list also named William Klug, a mechanical engineering professor who died in the Wednesday morning shooting on the Westwood campus, and another engineering professor who was unharmed. Authorities did not identify the second professor. Hasti's grandmother, Jean Johnson, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune the two only remained together for about a year, but didn't get a divorce because Hasti couldn't afford one. "They just didn't get along," Johnson told the paper. "The only enemy she had was him, I guess. I never thought he would do something like that." Authorities pieced together the case as most classes resumed a day after thousands of students and staff members were locked down on the sprawling grounds of UCLA. Its normally tranquil paths and hallways were swarmed by a small army of officers clad in body armor and wielding high-powered rifles. The investigation unfolded rapidly based on a note Sarkar left in the office where he killed Klug. It mentioned the second professor and asked anyone who read it to check on Sarkar's cat in St. Paul, Minn. At Sarkar's apartment, authorities found his list of three planned targets, which led them to Brooklyn Park and Hasti's body. Gordy Aune Jr., who lives three doors away and is the neighborhood watch commander, told the AP Hasti lived with her father. He said his neighbors were quiet and kept to themselves. Sarkar had disparaged Klug online and the professor knew of his contempt, but police have not uncovered any death threats, Beck said. The writings contained "some harsh language, but certainly nothing that would be considered homicidal," he said. A blog post written in March by someone identifying himself as Sarkar asserted that Klug "cleverly stole all my code and gave it (to) another student" and "made me really sick." The blog continues: "Your enemy is your enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust. Stay away from this sick guy." Beck said it was Sarkar who was mentally unstable. The chief cited conversations in which UCLA officials told investigators the former Ph.D. student's claims of stolen code are "a making of his own imagination." Sarkar, 38, and Klug, 39, were once close. In his 2013 dissertation about using engineering to understand the human heart, the student thanked the professor "for all his help and support. Thank you for being my mentor." Authorities believe Sarkar drove to Los Angeles in the past few days with two handguns he legally bought in Minnesota. With the weapons and ammunition Sarkar carried, "he could have caused many more fatalities than the one," Beck said. At Sarkar's apartment building in St. Paul, the only people who would open their doors Thursday said they didn't know their neighbor and that police had been there Wednesday night. Sarkar's LinkedIn page shows he obtained a master's degree at Stanford University after graduating in 2000 from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur with a degree in aerospace engineering. He most recently was listed as an engineering analyst at a Findlay, Ohio, company called Endurica. Company president Will Mars said Sarkar left in August 2014. It's unclear what he had been doing since. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Click for more from Fox9.com. In the predawn hours of May 1, thieves towed away a World War I-era cannon from outside the Veterans Memorial Hall in Richmond, Calif. -- where the artillery piece had stood for 70 years -- and later sold it to an unsuspecting buyer. It was an audacious caper, but not an uncommon one. American war memorabilia is so hot that thieves are robbing VFW halls, museums, and even graves to supply a black market that operates online, in flea markets and through a murky network of rabid collectors, according to law enforcement and dealers tasked with identifying stolen items -- some worth thousands. "There's definitely a market for it," said Pat Chaisson, of Scotia, N.Y., a retired Army National Guard officer, history buff and longtime collector of military and war memorabilia. "The buyer has to be very careful," Chaisson warned. "All of the collectors I know are very sensitive that theres a black market out there that what youre buying could very well have been stolen." "And it's difficult to identify sometimes," he said. "How do you prove that a musket ball or cannon wasnt stolen from an armory or a collection?" The 5-foot-tall iron and brass cannon taken from the Veterans Memorial Hall in Richmond was returned after the buyer, who purchased it for $1,200, saw a news story about it and contacted police. "This act is about stealing a piece of our country's history, and stealing from our war veterans who fought bravely for our country and our freedom, the Richmond Police Department said in a statement. "This gentleman was more than helpful and felt absolutely horrible he had inadvertently bought a stolen piece of American history," police said. The cannon theft is one of many around the country involving priceless military and war memorabilia -- from tanks in front of small-town VFW halls to medals displayed in unguarded government buildings. Shady middlemen and collectors need not worry about provenance, say experts. "Theres no way to track it," said Rick Brumby, the historian at the of the Museum of Military History in Kissimmee, Fla. "There are no serial numbers on this stuff." Brumby noted that while a market exists, it's very difficult to sell such items on reputable auction sites, like eBay. "The real stuff has a tendency to go into private collections," Brumby said. "People get greedy and, if the price is right, theyll buy it and keep it in their home. "When they die, it comes out," he said. Vermont State Police are actively hunting for Civil War memorabilia stolen in October from a Shrewsbury man's home, items that were passed down through generations. The valuables taken from George Lincoln's home include a 6" flintlock pistol with a small leather powder horn, a post-Civil War-era bayonet and a distinctive Civil War Union soldier's leather ammo case. The theft followed another Vermont case from 2015, in which thieves stole World War II memorabilia from the family of a nurse who served in the U.S. Army. Det. Sgt. Benjamin Katz of the Vermont State Police told FoxNews.com it's challenging to recover such items and described dealers of second-hand goods as "the driver of these type of crimes." "Not all dealers are shady, of course, but all it takes is a couple," he said. "In Vermont, if they know its stolen, they have to call police. But it's impossible for us to prove they knew it was stolen. "Its basically an honor code," he said. "There's very little regulation when it comes to the purchase of antiquities." In February 2015, investigators with the Sacramento County, Calif., Sheriffs Department said they discovered a "trove" of military medals and memorabilia during a probation search. The items, which were reported missing in 2014, belonged to the family of an Air Force pilot who served during World War II. The belongings included a Purple Heart medal, photographs and the mans personal diary, written while he was a Prisoner of War. Authorities said they were able to return the collection of priceless goods to members of the pilots family who live in another state. The most egregious example of war collectible theft, say law enforcement, is the desecrating and looting of soldiers' graves. Such was the case in Burke County, Ga., in 2013, when two men allegedly raided the graves of five Confederate soldiers inside the Old Church Cemetery in search of heirlooms. Antique brokers say these historic war relics can sell for a hefty price: An officers sword from the Civil War is valued between $20,000 and $30,000, while uniforms and medals can go for $500 to several thousand dollars. In 2011, copper thieves struck Abraham Lincoln's burial site in Springfield, Ill., stealing a 3-foot-long sword from a statue atop the tomb. A guard used to be stationed at the tomb overnight, but the position was cut over budget problems. Cristina Corbin is a New York-based reporter for FoxNews.com. Follow her on Twitter @CristinaCorbin. Its one cool shirt. A high school junior convinced nearly 60 students and faculty at Sleepy Hollow High School in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., to wear the same yellow Hawaiian shirt in their yearbook photos. Teen convinces nearly 60 students, teachers to wear the same Hawaiian shirt in yearbook pics https://t.co/IDh6utFyvg pic.twitter.com/QNz3q5GVTI ABC News (@ABC) June 3, 2016 We bought five shirts and about 10 kids knew about it before picture day, Dave Husselbee told ABC News. Husselbee said students would pass the shirts to anyone willing to wear it after their photos were taken. Some of the staff was unsure but once the chair of the science department decided to do it, all the others were enthusiastic, he told ABC News. Warrants were issued for four North Carolina high school students after a school administrator suffered a concussion in a violent fight at the institution, Fox-46 reported Friday. Police in Charlotte, N.C., issued four warrants after students were caught on tape attacking Harding High School administrator Annette Albright. The station confirmed that one alleged participant in the melee was 15 and another was 16. Authorities have not yet released their identities. #BREAKING: Warrants issued for 4 Harding students accused of attacking female administrator. It was caught on camera pic.twitter.com/UNiz0K1Ctl WSOCTV (@wsoctv) June 3, 2016 Albright told the station the 15-year-old female student slapped her face after threatening her. She said the student was among a group that was skipping class and she was called to make sure the they went to their session. She said the student, who had recently returned from an alternative school after being involved in another violent attack, became enraged when Albright radioed the schools resource officer for backup. The girl said I was calling the cops on her brother, Albright told the station. Footage of the fight was posted to Facebook, but was later removed. No students have yet been charged. A federal report released Thursday details a shocking turf battle that broke out when immigration officials blocked law enforcement agents from interviewing a person of interest in the San Bernardino terror attack last December. Just one day after a radical Muslim couple opened fire on office workers at a Christmas party, the FBI asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain the man later determined to have supplied guns used in the attack. When Homeland Security Investigations agents went to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office where Enrique Marquez and his wife were being interviewed, they were turned away, according to the report. Here, the agents were justifiably concerned that Marquez and Chernykh may pose a threat to the occupants and visitors of the USCIS facility, the report by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general states. Less than 24 hours before, individuals associated with the couple had committed an atrocity on an unthinkable scale against unarmed innocents; at the time of HSI's visit to USCIS, Marquez and Chernykhs intentions were unknown. Homeland Security Investigations is part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which, like U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is part of DHS. The audit confirmed a March report by FoxNews.com and provided new details of the turf battle a day after Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik murdered 14 people in the Southern California community. The Inspector General's Office conducted 23 interviews and a review of email, text, and phone records from the agencies, confirmed the stunning breakdown in cooperation that first caught the attention of Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., in March. "Today's report confirms whistleblower complaints I received about a dangerous lack of coordination between ICE and the USCIS, Johnson said Thursday. The refusal to allow armed ICE agents into a USCIS facility to detain a suspected terrorist could have had tragic consequences. When five agents went to the USCIS building dressed in tactical gear to detain the couple, the report said they were confined to the lobby for up to 20 minutes, and then waited another 10 minutes to meet with the USCIS field office director. The agents told the field director they were looking for Marquez, because he was connected to the shootings and there was concern that he could be in the building, but the field office director told agents they could not arrest, detain, or interview anyone in the building based on USCIS policy. The agents also were denied a file on Marquezs wife as well as known addresses or any other information that could lead to their apprehension, according to the report. The HSI agents waited outside for an hour before being given clearance from Washington DC to return to the USCIS offices where they were allowed to hand copy the file. The contract security personnel at the USCIS facility should have immediately permitted entry to the HSI agents once they identified themselves the report said - adding USCIS had no authority to restrict their access. The USCIS Field Directors behavior was not only outrageous and reprehensible, but in violation of federal law and policy that ensure any law enforcement agency the ability to make arrests or conduct interviews in government facilities, said Jessica Vaughan serves as Director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, DC-based research institute. These ICE agents are from the very same agency she works for they are her homeland security colleagues. A delay such as the one that occurred here could have disastrous consequences under different circumstances, the report added. Department of Homeland Security spokesman Neema Hakim said since this clash in December, changes have been made. ICE and USCIS have since improved their protocols for facility access and information sharing in circumstances with potential national security or public safety implications, in order to avoid any such delays in the future, Department of Homeland Security spokesman Neema Hakim said in a statement to FoxNews.com. USCIS agents were investigating Marquez for marriage fraud, stemming from his 2014 union with Chernykh, a Russian national married to Farooks brother. Marquez, who is now in jail and awaiting trial this summer, is accused of supplying the guns as well as marriage fraud. Both Farook and Malik were killed by law enforcement after their morning attack. Marquez is already in jail and awaiting trial for conspiring with one of the San Bernardino attackers, Syed Rizwan Farook, in terror plots that never materialized. Federal court documents obtained by FoxNews.com tied to Marquezs case show both he and Farook abruptly halted plans for a dual terror attack in 2012. In that assault, Marquez and Farook allegedly planned to use pipe bombs and two AR-15 rifles to maximize the number of casualties at Riverside City College, a nearby institution they attended, and on state Route 91, a busy freeway with few exits where motorists are frequently stuck in heavy gridlock. Marquez is also accused of supplying weapons to Farook and Malik before the Dec. 2 attack that also left 22 injured and is accused of making false statements in connection with his weapons purchases used in the San Bernardino shooting. Marquez has pleaded not guilty to the charges filed against him. If convicted of all counts, Marquez faces up to 50 years in prison. An Iraqi Christian who escaped the ISIS stronghold of Mosul says she was "married and divorced" as many as nine times a night, all to give her tormentors a twisted justification for rape, according to an interview conducted by an advocacy group and reviewed by Fox News. "They had me whenever they would desire it," the woman, whose name was withheld for her own protection, says in the interview with the nonprofit group In Defense of Christians (IDC). "Especially this one, Farouk, who was obsessed with me and he would say, 'I like the people of Jesus.'" The rapes were preceded by phony marriage ceremonies that the Islamic radicals believed gave them permission to attack her, she said. "What wedding?" said the woman, who appears to be in her thirties and is seen sobbing and shaking in parts of the interview. "For them it was a wedding, but what kind of wedding is this?" The woman said her story is not uncommon, and that she wants it told so the world will act to protect Christians, said In Defense of Christians President Toufic Baaklini. Click here for genocide report by Knights of Columbus and In Defense of Christians "She asked for her story to be heard in the United States - that it is happening not only to her," said Baaklini. "It's happened to many, many Christians, Yazidis and Yazidi woman, and others." In the interview, a tape and partial transcript of which were provided to Fox News, the woman recounts how her husband vanished after ISIS took control of Mosul in 2014. Baaklini said she left two older children in the care of neighbors, and along with her new baby, began searching for him. "People were leaving, everyone was leaving, I mean, even the Muslims were leaving," she says. "But I didn't have anybody and I had hope in my husband and I said to myself, 'If I left, where would I go?' "I had no idea where I would go to, so I stayed," she says. ISIS fighters confronted her, and discovered a crucifix tattoo on her arm, she says. They took her and the baby to a school that had been converted into a slavery camp where she was repeatedly assaulted. The U.S. decision earlier this year to officially designate the plight of Christians in Iraq as genocide is one step, the next should be the creation of a safe haven for them similar to the way the U.S. and NATO sought to protect Muslims in the 1990s during the Bosnian war, said Baaklini. "They just want to live in peace and pray and be free, so the safe haven, a secured area would be the next step for us to help them go back to their homes," Baaklini said. The advocacy group also provided what appeared to be an ISIS price list for slaves, where the highest prices were demanded for children between the ages of 1 and 9. The woman's claims about rape camps, and the slave price could not be independently confirmed but were reviewed by outside experts and judged to be consistent with the terror group's brutal tactics. Referring to women and children as "Merchandise" and "Spoils of War," the document said the prices are mandatory and those who violate the "price controls will be executed ... It is not allowed for any customer to purchase more than 3 spoils, except for foreigners like Turks, Syrians and Gulf Arabs." In additional to sexual exploitation, outside experts said ISIS also sells woman and children as house servants and for manual labor. IDC said the Iraqi Christian was able to escape because an ISIS fighter in the school of death was from her Mosul neighborhood, recognized her, and allowed her to slip away. The USS Harry Truman, a Navy aircraft carrier, is now in the eastern Mediterranean conducting air strikes against the Islamic State, a Navy official confirmed to Fox News. This is showing the U.S. Navy can conduct flight operations (against ISIS) from other locations, not just the (Persian) Gulf, the official said Friday. USS Harry Truman conducting strikes against ISIS from Mediterranean Sea, a @USNavy official confirms to Fox News. pic.twitter.com/20sd2qySnf Fox News (@FoxNews) June 3, 2016 F/A-18 Hornets launched from Truman conducted strikes against ISIS targets in Syria, according to a senior defense official familiar with the operation. The Navy strike fighters flew over Turkey for a majority of the flight, the official added to minimize exposure to Russian air defenses now operational in western Syria along the Mediterranean coast, the official added. The U.S. Navy did not alert Russian or Syrian officials before conducting the strike operations against the Islamic State, Fox News is told. The Russians have set up an S-400 fourth-generation surface-to-air missile system in Syria late last year. Truman and her escort ships transited the Suez Canal, Thursday according to the Navy. It was the first time the Navy conducting strike missions in the Middle East from the Mediterranean Sea since flying operations against the Iraqi military in 2003. Truman will be relieved by another aircraft carrier, USS Dwight D. Eisenhower next month. "While the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group is in the 6th Fleet area of operations, they continue to project power ashore against terrorists and violent extremists," said Vice Adm. James Foggo III, Commander, in a statement from U.S. 6th Fleet. "This exemplifies our Navy's mobility, flexibility and adaptability, as well as our commitment to execute a full range of military operations in concert with our indispensable European Allies and partners," he added. The strike group consists of USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75), the embarked Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 7, Commander, Carrier Strike Group 8, USS Anzio (CG 68), Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 28, USS Bulkeley (DDG 84), USS Gonzalez (DDG 66) and USS Gravely (DDG 107). Truman has been launching fighter jets to conduct strikes against ISIS from the Persian Gulf since December. iHandyMan to Expand Across Northern Ontario iHandyMan Grows Amid a Host of New Locations May 12, 2016 // Franchising.com // SUDBURY, Ontario iHandyMan, the newest franchise concept from Global Franchise Opportunities, will soon be available to residents seeking its services throughout northern Ontario. The Halifax, Nova Scotia-based franchisor announced today that it has signed a master franchise agreement to significantly expand in Ontario. Under the agreement, Ontario entrepreneur Mike Smith will develop iHandyMan, leading the openings of several offices in Sudbury, Barrie, Thunder Bay, North Bay, Muskoka and the surrounding region. Mike has several years of experience in corporate positions, including six years as a regional owner in Ontario for sister company A Buyers Choice Home Inspections. He currently serves as director of franchise recruiting at Global Franchise Opportunities and will continue in his role while he builds his iHandyman region. After intense market research and ongoing discussions with professionals in each local market, weve identified a need for a reliable home maintenance system capable of tackling a range of home projects, said Bill Redfern, founder, president and CEO of Global Franchise Opportunities, iHandyMans parent company. Our new regional master franchise owner and my close colleague, Mike Smith, is an experienced professional who will make the woes of maintaining a local home or business a thing of the past. iHandyMan frees homeowners from relying on specialized carpenters, electricians or plumbers, who are busy and sometimes require an hourly fee just for arriving at the job. iHandyMan franchise owners are bonded and insured, and are prepared for any job of any size. The home repair service covers a wide variety of projects to meet a host of needs from plumbing, electrical work and tile repair to working on concrete driveways, roofing and siding. iHandyMan is the third franchise concept by Redfern and Global Franchise Opportunities, the parent company for his brands. His first concept, A Buyers Choice Home Inspections (ABCHI), became the largest Canadian home inspection franchise after only two years of operation, and subsequently grew into one of the worlds largest home inspection companies. Today, ABCHI has nearly 200 franchises operating in 15 countries around the world. Following ABCHIs worldwide success, Redfern launched iCare Intelligent Home Care Solutions in 2014 to meet the home health care needs of seniors everywhere. A proven expert in international franchising, Redfern and Global Franchise Opportunities together are responsible for the development, growth and success of these standout home-focused concepts. Global Franchise Opportunities aims to bring iHandyMan to every home in need of attention and repair across the globe. For self-starters looking for an opportunity to own their own business, iHandyMan offers a low-cost, proven path to success as part of a profitable home-based concept. Unit franchise owners can work on their own or with a staff, hiring and managing outside contractors for larger jobs. Additionally, Global Franchise Opportunities is one of the few franchisors offering master franchise opportunities for all three of its franchise concepts. Master franchise opportunities are for entrepreneurs looking to develop a larger territory consisting of multiple franchise locations. A work-from-home franchise opportunity with iHandyMan offers those with the drive and perseverance the chance to change careers, own a business and become their own boss, said Redfern. Our affordable franchise opportunity holds the key to self-employment, job security and financial gain that come with a proven method, without the high risk and uncertainty that plagues the traditional business marketplace. For more information about iHandyMan and available franchising opportunities, visit www.ihandymanservices.com or contact Mike Smith at (416) 986-4321 or mike.smith@gfoonline.biz. About iHandyMan iHandyMan is a home repair franchise that takes professionalism to the next level with expert service from reliable franchise owners. Launched by serial entrepreneur Bill Redfern and his franchising parent company Global Franchise Opportunities, iHandyMan is bringing homeowners everywhere the solution to any home maintenance issue. Whether the job is an emergency or just one on a growing list, iHandyMan is the answer. With a team of punctual and well-trained franchise owners, iHandyMan offers the peace of mind and preparedness for any home project. For more information, please visit www.ihandymanservices.com. For more information about iHandyMan franchise opportunities, call (954) 933-7129. SOURCE iHandyMan Media Contact: Katharine Nichols All Points Public Relations (847) 897-7495 knichols@allpointspr.com ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Blaze Fast-Fire'd Pizza Announces Job Fair for Des Moines, IA Location New Fast Casual Pizza Concept Hiring Team Members DES MOINES, IA - (Marketwired - Jun 2, 2016) - Blaze Fast Fire'd Pizza, the fast-casual artisanal pizza concept known for its chef-driven menu and casually hip restaurants, announced today that it will begin hiring for its upcoming Des Moines location at a job fair this month. The job fair will be held at 300 West Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway, on Tuesday, June 7th 2016 from 9a.m. until 5p.m. In preparation for its opening this month, the Des Moines location plans to hire between 40 and 50 full and part-time positions, including Shift Managers. Hourly positions range in pay between $8.00 - $10.50 per hour, with Managers and Shift Managers earning more. Blaze Pizza will be located at 300 West Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway in Downtown Des Moines and is part of a plan to build 5 Blaze Pizzas in the Des Moines Area. "We're looking for energetic individuals with a drive to deliver the highest standards in quality and service," said Paul McCrae, Director of Operations for On The Rise, LLC., a Blaze Pizza franchise partner. "We're excited to introduce Blaze Pizza to the community and are looking for great employees to grow with us." Scheduled to open in late June, 2016 the MLK Parkway location will have 66 interior seats and additional patio seating. The 2,900 square foot restaurant will feature an interactive assembly line format that allows guests to customize one of the menu's signature pizzas or create their own, choosing from a wide selection of carefully sourced, high-quality ingredients -- all for around $8. The generously-sized 11" pizzas are then sent to a blazing hot open-flame oven -- the centerpiece of the restaurant -- where dedicated pizzasmiths ensure that the thin-crust pies are fast-fire'd and ready to eat in just 180 seconds. Candidates interested in working at the Des Moines location are encouraged to attend the job fair or apply online at blazepizzajobs.com. Prior to attending the job fair, applicants are asked to complete the application process online. At the job fair, applicants will receive on-the-spot interviews and learn more about Blaze Pizza. About Blaze Pizza The first Blaze Pizza restaurant opened on Aug. 6, 2012, in Irvine, Calif., and quickly gained attention for its chef-driven recipes, thoughtful interior design, and a service culture that celebrates individuality. Now ranked as the overall #2 fast-casual brand in FastCasual.com's annual Top 100 list, Blaze Pizza is building momentum and developing a cult-like following as it expands across the country. The company currently operates 138 restaurants in 29 states and Canada, including the major metropolitan areas of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, Dallas, Las Vegas and Washington D.C. Founded by Elise and Rick Wetzel (co-founder of Wetzel's Pretzels), the concept is backed by investors including LeBron James, Maria Shriver, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Boston Red Sox co-owner Tom Werner and movie producer John Davis. For more information, please visit blazepizza.com andfacebook.com/blazepizza or click here to view a company video. Blaze Pizza, Fast-Fire'd, the horizontal logo design, and the proprietary names "Pizzasmith", "Intelligent Choices For Our Pizzas, People & Planet" and related trademarks are the property of Blaze Pizza LLC. SOURCE Blaze Pizza Media Contact: Paul McCrae Director of Operations On The Rise, LLC 815-904-4712 Joanne Dry Marketing Director On The Rise, LLC 843-849-1877 ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Quiznos CEO Doug Pendergast Stepping Down Current CFO Katie Scherping to Serve as Interim President and CEO DENVER - June 2, 2016 // PRNewswire // - Quiznos, one of the nation's premier quick?service restaurant chains and the pioneer of the toasted sandwich, today announced the resignation of Doug Pendergast as the company's President and Chief Executive Officer. Pendergast decided to depart the company to spend more time with his family in Atlanta. Katie Scherping, current Chief Financial Officer, will serve as Interim President and CEO. "We believe Quiznos is a stronger company as a result of Doug's work," said Quiznos Chairman, Doug Benham. "Under his leadership, we've accomplished several major brand initiatives to help advance our business. We thank Doug for his dedication to the Quiznos brand and have full confidence in Katie and the management team to continue the brand on a successful path forward." With more than 30 years of finance, accounting and managerial experience, Scherping joined the Quiznos team in December 2013 as Chief Financial Officer. She spearheaded the brand's financial restructuring in 2014 and helped overhaul Quiznos food cost and supply chain model in order to improve restaurant-level economics. Most recently, Scherping led the rollout of Quiznos new national point-of-sale system, which is expected to help bolster sales and lessen restaurant costs through new reporting and management tools. Scherping and Pendergast have worked closely together since Pendergast joined Quiznos inJanuary 2015. Throughout his time at Quiznos, Pendergast led the organization to several accomplishments including significant gains in customer satisfaction, enhanced support for franchise operations and occupancy costs, and a renewed focus on value pricing. These efforts have helped cut store closures and set the stage for a return to growth. "This was a difficult decision, as I was torn by the desire to see the results of the changes we've made during my tenure with Quiznos," said Pendergast. "Ultimately, I need to put my family first. I sincerely thank the entire Quiznos system for all that we have accomplished as a team." During this transition, Quiznos goals remain the same serving guests, supporting franchisees, strengthening the current brand and cultivating growth. As Quiznos celebrates its 35th anniversary this summer, the sub company is optimistic about the future and looks forward to continuing to serve up innovative, hot, flavorful menu items to guests. About Quiznos Denver-based Quiznos is a chain designed for today's busy consumers who are looking for a high quality, tasty, freshly prepared alternative to traditional fast-food restaurants. With locations across the United States and 34 countries, Quiznos is one of the world's premier quick-service restaurant chains and pioneer of the toasted sandwich. Quiznos restaurants offer creative, chef-created sandwiches and salads using premium ingredients. Quiznos was founded in 1981 by chefs who discovered that toasting brought out the best in every sandwich ingredient. For more information, please visithttp://www.quiznos.com or http://www.facebook.com/quiznos. SOURCE Quiznos Media Contact: Maggie Miller 816-423-6329 mmiller@crossroads.us ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus The teacher crisis is real, and were not going to work our way out of it simply by making it easier to hire teachers. We are here for you and your loved ones beyond your cancer diagnosis. Find information related to your care at Fred Hutch. Our team members will help you with your medical records, financial assistance, housing questions and other services. EDsmart Releases 2016-2017 Best Online Communication Degree Programs EDsmart.org, a nationally recognized publisher of college resources and rankings, has released the 2016-2017 edition of best online communication degree program. -- Online communication degree programs were evaluated and ranked based on eight publicly available data points dealing with accreditation, affordability, and student satisfaction, the highest possible ranking score being 100. Along with rankings, EDsmart includes pertinent information about each degree program. The College of Arts and Sciences at University of Louisville leads this year's EDsmart ranking with a score of 100. The University of Florida's College of Journalism and Communications and Valley City State University's Communications Arts Department came in second and third, respectively. *See the full rankings here Other universities making the list include (alphabetically ordered): Appalachian State University Arizona State University-Online DePaul University Drexel University King University Mississippi College Northeastern University Oral Roberts University Regis University Siena Heights University University of Central Florida University of Denver University of Florida University of Louisville University of Massachusetts Amherst University of Memphis University of Missouri-St Louis University of Nebraska at Kearney Valley City State University Washington University in St Louis According to Tyson Stevens, managing editor for EDsmart, an online degree in communications "provides students with ample opportunity for employment post-graduation", noting that "communications graduates face a lower unemployment rate than most other majors." The EDsmart ranking aims to help students and working professionals choose an online degree program best suited to their needs. About EDsmart: EDsmart reviews publicly available data to produce independent ranking assessments of various educational programs, in addition to student guides and resources. The site is regularly updated by a committed team of writers and researchers, who produce college rankings and resources that will help prospective and current college students make informed decisions. Media Contact: Company Name: EDsmart Contact Person: Tyson Stevens Email: tstevens@edsmart.org Phone: (707) 595-0736 City: Draper State: UT Country: United States For more information about us, please visit http://www.edsmart.org/ Contact Info: Name: Managing Editor Email: tstevens@edsmart.org Organization: EDsmart Phone: (707) 595-0736 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/edsmart-releases-2016-2017-best-online-communication-degree-programs/117892 Release ID: 117892 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) C&E Security Launches New Nonlethal Self-Defense Public Awareness Campaign Those who wish to equip themselves for self-defense through nonlethal means have effective options for doing so, C&E Security will show through new campaign -- C&E Security, one of the country's leading suppliers of nonlethal self-defense products, announced a new public awareness campaign. With more people than ever taking self-defense seriously, interest in non-lethal options has been rising steadily. The new C&E Security campaign will help spread awareness as to how key chain pepper spray, flashlight stun guns, and other nonlethal products can contribute to peace of mind and improved personal safety. By providing a carefully selected range of top-quality, highly effective self-defense products at low prices with responsive, personal customer service, C&E Security has enabled many Americans to take charge of their lives in these ways. The company's new initiative will help more people become familiar with the options of this kind. "Whether to protect against threatening animals in the wilderness or to make sure that criminals will not harm a city dweller, self-defense is something that everyone should think about," C&E Security representative Edward Vanaken said, "That does not necessarily have to mean carrying a deadly weapon, however. We take great pride in our selection of nonlethal self-defense products and how they allow more people to protect themselves as they go about their lives." Although much of the talk about self-defense in the United States centers around weapons like firearms, the fact is that many people rely on products that are designed to deflect attackers without causing death. This is true of both those who go places where wild animals might pose a threat and others who wish to guard against the possibility of human aggression, with items like electric stun guns, bear repellent, and others appealing to many for these purposes. The new C&E Security initiative will help more people understand the options of these kinds. With an e-commerce site stocked with nonlethal self-defense products of proven effectiveness and quality, C&E Security provides access to tools that can enable greater personal security and improved peace of mind. Products like the company's popular stun flashlight, for example, integrate naturally with everyday life while adding a new dimension of protection and capability, but without introducing the possibility of potentially deadly force. Those interested in nonlethal self-defense weapons and approaches can learn more at the C&E Security website and are invited to submit any questions they might have using the contact information found there. About C&E Security: Offering a full range of proven, top-quality stun guns, pepper sprays, and other nonlethal self-defense products, C&E Security provides the best in customer service and real peace of mind. For more information about us, please visit http://candesecurity.com/ Contact Info: Name: Edward Vanaken Organization: C and E Security Phone: 1- 859-927-9249 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/ce-security-launches-new-nonlethal-self-defense-public-awareness-campaign/117899 Release ID: 117899 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) Executive Relocation Experts Wins 2015 Telstra Micro Business Award Elite Executive Service Pty Limited won the 2015 Telstra VIC Micro Business Award sponsored by Telstra Australia, coming out on top over 100 other competitors. -- Elite Executive Service Pty Limited was named winner of the Telstra VIC Micro Business Award beating out 100 other competitors to take home top honors. Telstra Australia presented the award to Kathy Hunn, Director of Elite Executive Service Pty Limited at an award ceremony in Sydney. Potential award recipients were required to enter using an Online Application in order to be in contention for the Telstra VIC Micro Business Award. Suitable candidates were then judged based on Independent assessments of the business leading to a Regional shortlisting after being visited by Judges. Regional winners were then forwarded to a National Listing and Interviewed by a panel of Judges before a gala award ceremony. Kathy Hunn, Director of Elite Executive Service Pty Limited was pleased about the company's performance, saying: "The philosophy at the heart of the organisation is to provide the best support possible to newcomers, whether company-assisted or individuals." A video of the award ceremony can be at the companies website, which was attended by dignitaries and senior management of Telstra Australia. Kathy praised her team of on the ground dedicated consultants, who are the heart and soul of the connection with their clients. The admin and back office team is mainly made of family members who have helped sustain the business since 2001, through all the difficult times and downturns in the economy. Elite Executive Service have also been shortlisted for other awards in 2016 including the Relocate Magazine awards in London, which is a clear testament to the caliber of the management and team towards their client's. For many people, an interstate or overseas move is fraught with difficulties. Fortunately, Cheltenham's Elite Executive Services is on hand to take the stress out of relocation. Recognizing that individuals and companies needed support managing the relocation process, Kathy Nunn established Elite Executive Services in 2001. It helps people make their new destination a home. From locating schools to unpacking boxes, Kathy understands the practical and personal aspects needed to help families settle in. Although the judging committee saw the organisation experience a slow-down, the business quickly diversified and is now making significant in-roads into new markets. With an increasing number of Chinese families looking to move to Australia, Elite Executive employed local consultants who speak Mandarin and Cantonese. This customer commitment means Australia's newcomers can be confident that Elite Executive will make their transition an easy one. Persons interested in learning more about Elite Executive Service Pty Limited and the award can visit the website. Elite Executive Services offers relocation services in many countries including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and United Kingdom, to find out more about the exciting range of services, please visit their website. For more information about us, please visit http://www.eliteexecutiveservices.com.au/ Contact Info: Name: Kathy Hunn Email: relocations@eliteexecutiveservices.com.au Organization: Elite Executive Service Pty Limited Release ID: 117816 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) OTO Motors Publish A Detailed Guide To Importing A Used Car From Japan OTO Motor Imports releases a how-to guide for those looking to import a car from Japan -- Japanese Car Import business, OTO Motor Imports, has published a new how-to guide dedicated to helping families who wish to import a car from Japan. This guide also offers information useful to anybody facing the challenge and wishes to avoid the red tape of doing it yourself!. This most recent how-to guide from OTO Motors Imports contains precise and detailed steps and instructions, designed to be used by those who enjoy travelling together with their family in comfort and style. It will also assist others who need it, helping those who wish to import a car from Japan, as quickly, easily and with as little stress as possible. OTO Motor Imports states that this accessible, easy to follow guide provides all of the information necessary to fully understand the topic, to get the results they want. It clearly details the procedure involved and provides accurate information on how to avoid the pitfalls of buying from a distance. The Full How-To Guide Covers: Import A Japanese Car Yourself - The processes involved in choosing the right car, the complexities of shipping and final importation. Buying An Already Registered Import From Japan - Taking the stress away by purchasing an already imported car from Japan and Choosing a dealer who specializes in importing cars from Japan to personalized specification - Giving buyers the freedom to select their own car from a large selection guaranteed and sourced by experts. When asked for more information about the guide, and the reasons behind creating the guide on Importing A Second Hand Car From Japan and what they hope to accomplish with it, David, Sales Manager at OTO Motors Imports said: "This guide explains the process involved in importing a used car from Japan to the UK, the pitfalls, the fees and the time it takes to complete. This guide offers an insight and solutions to help buyer decide the best option for them to follow, and presents an opportunity to source their ideal vehicle using trustworthy services." Families and anybody interested in Importing A Second Hand Car From Japan are invited to review the how-to guide at the website. More information about OTO Motors Imports itself can be found at www.otomotorimports.com For more information about us, please visit http://otomotorimports.com Contact Info: Name: David Organization: OTO Motor Imports Release ID: 117908 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) Applocation Releases New Mobile App To Help Users Plan A Relocation To Australia Applocation releases information on how its new mobile app helps users plan their move to Australia. Our service will change things in the Migrating to Australia space for the better. Further information can be found at http://applocation.com.au. -- Earlier today, Applocation announced the launch of its new mobile app that helps users to plan a move to Australia service, set to go live 5th June 2016. For anyone with even a passing interest in the world of Migrating to Australia, this new development will be worth paying attention to, as it's set to shake things up. Currently, with even a passing glance, a person will notice that this app is loaded with useful tips and tools to help users plan their move to Australia. Loaded with useful contacts and solutions to take away the pain of planning such a move. The Principal at Applocation, Kathy Hunn, makes a point of saying "things are going to change when our mobile app that helps users plan their move to Australia service launches". Kathy Hunn continues... "Where one will always see many competitors doing the same old thing, the app coordinates all your plans into a simple to use format. Allowing users to schedule things in advance and produce local information at the touch of the screen.. We do this because we have many years of experience helping many thousands of people relocating to Australia. We have pooled many resources into one app that will help guide users on the biggest move of their life. Ultimately this is going to be a huge benefit to many customers because it offers a simple solution, by sourcing valuable local resources tailored to their plans.." Applocation was established in Summer 2012. It has been doing business for many years, providing invaluable support to those migrating to Australia. and it has always aimed to provide a one stop solution that is available at the touch of a screen. Currently, the closest thing to Applocation's mobile app that helps plan a move to Australia service is searching for hours over the internet and relying on third party information., but Applocation improved on this by combining all of the users personal information and wish lists into a user friendly app that is safely stored on their mobile device. This alone is predicted to make Applocation's mobile app that helps users plan their move to Australia service more popular with customers in the Migrating to Australia space, quickly. To download the app please visit the itunes portal https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/applocation-austra... Once again, the mobile app that helps plan a move to Australia service is set to launch 5th June 2016. To find out more, the place to visit is http://applocation.com.au For more information about us, please visit http://applocation.com.au Contact Info: Name: Kathy Hunn Organization: AppLocation Pty Limited Release ID: 117824 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) RCS London Expand Business Services To West London RCS London has expanded its range of services to include providing IT Support in West London to new customers and old. Further information can be found at http://rcs-london.com/. -- Small to Medium Businesses looking for IT Support in West London can now take advantage of the new offering from RCS London. RCS London has implemented a new element to its IT Support services by expanding it's reach into west London with immediate effect. This will be of benefit to both new and existing customer looking to expand or update their IT systems. In order to extend the dedicated services RCS have increased their dedicated team of IT professionals and technicians to offer on-call IT support services in west London and beyond. Specifically, this update will deliver a professional team of experts committed to providing ongoing IT support services for small and expanding businesses. The increased capacity allows RCS to dedicate a team for west London IT Support, who will offer IT managed solutions, hardware and software provisioning, as well as complete IT infrastructure packages, to customers. RCS London has been able to do this by bringing together a team of experts, who are committed to customer service, and offering state of the art IT technology solutions.. To take full advantage of this new update and Providing IT Support in West London, customers can visit the website at http://rcs-london.com/ for full details. RCS London is excited to unveil the latest benefit for current and new customers as it's specifically designed to meet the needs of business owners and managers who can access professional services without the overheads of a salaried employee. On this subject, Ravi Rayarel, Founding Director at RCS London said: "The personal relationship with each client and organisation means that RCS London has an understanding of the businesses they work with. This means that the responsibility of each company's IT systems is of personal interest to the whole team. As a result, all solutions are designed with the individual needs of each organisation in mind." RCS London has made a point of listening to its customers and taking feedback wherever possible. They do this because It is invaluable information when assessing a customers goals and objectives. It allows a detailed plan to be prepared that takes into consideration the needs of today, and future proof them with modular technology. The strategies are implemented in conjunction with the client and to a fixed time table.. Having been in business now since November 2000, RCS London strives to offer unique solutions that are modular, and can cater for an expanding business. in the IT Support and Consultancy market. This dedication has made them known among customers as a company dedicated to providing onsite solutions that are reliable and trustworthy. Being on call in times of need is important to maintaining clients online services.. Interested parties who would like to be among the first to experience the launch of IT Support in West London with RCS London are encouraged to visit the website at http://rcs-london.com/ for full details and to get started. For more information about us, please visit http://rcs-london.com/ Contact Info: Name: Ravi Rayarel Email: sales@rcs-london.com Organization: RCS London Release ID: 117905 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) Free Freightnet Membership List your company in the Freightnet directory. It's Free, it's Easy and your company can be displayed in front of potential freight buyers within 24 hours. At a meeting yesterday (June 2) Opec failed to agree a new output ceiling for the amount of oil produced by member countries. But the members confirmed their commitment to a stable and balanced oil market. The oil price has continued to climb and Brent crude is now trading at above $50 a barrel, at $50.12 or 0.2 per cent higher. At the meeting, members discussed that since Opecs last meeting in December 2015, crude oil prices have risen by more than 80 per cent, supply and demand is converging and oil and product stock levels in the OECD have recently shown relative moderation. This is testament to the fact that the market is moving through the balancing process. The organisation noted it would continue to closely monitor developments and will meet again to suggest further measures depending on the prevailing market conditions. Joshua Mahony, market analyst at IG Group, said there were no surprises from the meeting after Opec members agreed to stick to their existing policy. He added: It is simply a case of market share for the Saudis, and thus without the agreement from Iran and non-OPEC members, it was always a long shot that the committee would emerge with anything but the status quo. Amid bonds sales, austerity and the Aramco share sell-off, it is clear that the Saudi Kingdom is in a more uncomfortable position than it is used to. However, while US production continues to fall and prices rise, the Saudis have temporarily found a sweet spot. The question is how long it will last. Opec, which comprises 13 oil-exporting countries, will meet next on November 30 in Vienna, Austria. Equilibrium Asset Managements Mike Deverell has joined the investors withdrawing from property funds as he shifts back to fixed income. Mr Deverell, the firms investment manager with responsibility for four core model portfolios, has halved his property exposure from a 2015 high of nearly 30 per cent in the firms Balanced offering. The move executed between February and April by selling Standard Life UK Property and reducing holdings in offerings from Aviva Investors, Aberdeen, Henderson, Standard Life Investments, M&G and Kames Capital comes at a difficult time for the asset class. Several property funds have shifted pricing in recent weeks, after the IA Property sector was hit by 166m of net outflows in the first quarter of 2016, as investors appear to reassess the outlook. I dont see any major issue in the asset class, but we felt it was starting to run its course, Mr Deverell explained. The yields were coming down and we are not getting a lot of income growth. We felt we could get better returns in fixed income. We got the property [exposure] down before the major repricings. The Balanced portfolios weighting to fixed income has nearly doubled, from around 8 per cent earlier this year to 15 per cent, as Mr Deverell looks to take advantage of the early-year sell-off in corporate debt. In February, we bought the BlackRock Corporate Bond Tracker, he said. We did that because the yield on the corporate bond index went to about 4.1 per cent. A year before, it was about 3 per cent. We felt it was pretty low risk to make a reasonable return. The manager also topped up investments in the Jupiter Strategic Bond, Royal London Sterling Extra Yield Bond and TwentyFour Dynamic Bond funds. Another tactic employed by Mr Deverell this year has been the use of passive funds for short-term tactical trades. As part of this, the manager bought the Fidelity UK Index vehicle and the iShares FTSE 100 exchange-traded fund in the opening weeks of the year, as market stress took hold, before selling them off as they rallied. This saw the equity weighting in the Balanced portfolio reach around 41 per cent in mid-February, before dropping back to its current level of 35 per cent. On the equity side we have been trading volatility. When markets have dipped we have bought, and we have sold when they recovered, he said. Mr Deverell is also among those to have taken a shine to alternative equity offerings. Theres a lot of [divergence] between asset classes, regions and monetary policy, so a fund that can go long and short has a big opportunity set, he said. This year, the Balanced portfolios weighting to alternative equity rose from around 12 per cent to 17 per cent, with Mr Deverell buying the Natixis H2O MultiReturns fund. He noted the vehicle could be pretty volatile but said it was balanced out by other holdings in the space, which include Invesco Perpetual Global Targeted Returns. Lifetime Isas represent what a new pensions taxation system could look like, the head of retirement savings for Aberdeen Asset Management has warned. In a video interview with Ellie Duncan, deputy features editor for Investment Adviser, Gregg McClymont, a former shadow pensions minister, said the government had given an indication of its intentions when it comes to pensions policy. He explained: When I talked about the pensions death spiral in an Investment Adviser article recently , I was talking specifically about the UKs occupational pension system, which is a bedrock part of the broader UK pension system. I was also concerned about government proposals, which seem to have been shelved at the moment, to move to a system of pension Isas. From the employers point of view, it seemed to me the incentives provided by the current tax relief system are crucial, incentivising employers to do more than the statutory minimum in terms of workplace contributions, he stated. My worry is a shift to a different taxation system - to pension Isas - would not provide employers with the incentives they need to provide good quality pensions. And in that context, we could see a further retreat from such employer-based provision, which is my concern. 4915445125001 MyExperience4915445125001 Mr McClymont said he was glad the government had not gone ahead with that proposal but warned this is still on the agenda. Indeed the introduction of the Lifetime Isa (Lisa) suggests the government is edging to that view of the world, where Isas play a much bigger role in terms of pension savings, he said, adding: With the Lisa we are beginning to see somewhat of what this new world would look like. Also, he said there was a wide variety of opinions over what a good pension system looked like, although quality and cost has improved among providers. Therefore, having a greater amount of choice could cause further complexity. H cited demographics, individualisation and fiscal policy as barriers to pension saving. For example, there are massive macro headwinds facing global governments over providing state pensions. These headwinds include ageing populations and the fiscal policy problems associated with growing numbers of pensioners, as well as a trend to people having more control over their savings, but without the commensurate knowledge over how to invest. Mr McClymont added: Evidence suggests individuals tend not to be investing as wisely over the long-term as institutions would, so this also presents a challenge to the pensions industry, not just in the UK but also across the world. simoney.kyriakou@ft.com Pensions were back on the agenda during the last five days, with defined benefit deficits, major inquiries and a lack of innovation all making the news. These, and a couple of other things besides, will now make up your Friday look back at the week that was: This morning (3 June) saw last ditch attempts to save department store BHS fail, taking up to 11,000 jobs with it, following its administration in April with a 571m pension deficit. While there was better news for the British steel industry as Tata sold its European piping business to Greybull Capital for an undisclosed fee, the two high-profile failures brought legacy defined benefit schemes back into sharp focus. On Tuesday, work and pensions select committee chair Frank Field launched an inquiry into the matter, aiming to unearth radical solutions for the increasing pressures on retirement savings posed by rising life expectancy and stubbornly low investment returns. We should be under no illusions that British Steel is a special case, Mr Field said. More than 5,000 of the associated schemes are in deficit to the tune of 805bn, while the combined surpluses of other schemes is 4bn. He added the committees in-depth case study of the BHS debacle showed DB schemes are already creaking from rising life expectancy and record low returns on capital. 2. Altmann opines The pensions minister Baroness Ros Altmann made some interesting comments exclusively to FTAdviser this week, suggesting pension guidance should be extended to younger people as they are auto-enroled into pensions from the age of 22. Should we have financial guidance, planning education for young people? Yes, we definitely should, she stated. I would like to see more guidance and financial planning and information help embedded into auto-enrolment right from the start. Meanwhile, Ms Altmann was also banging the drum for innovation, siding with some providers and consultants in her opinion that more must be done to help those accessing their pension freedoms. We have not seen many new products yet, she argued. I understand the industry is coping with a lot of extra volume as a result of auto-enrolment, and the pensions dashboard is going to require co-operation, management time and so on; but that doesnt stop companies maybe offering new products. 3. Industry contracts Following the news this time last week that Axa was selling its investment, pensions and protection businesses - Axa Wealth and SunLife - to Phoenix Group, this week saw Phoenix Lifes chief executive Andy Moss confirming a large chunk will no longer accept new customers once the deal completes. Meanwhile, Standard Life - which recently snapped up Axas Elevate platform and has been on the hunt for advisory firms to boost its 1825 arm - stated it would not be buying any more platforms in the near future. Head of adviser and wealth manager propositions David Tiller said the focus will be on completing the Elevate deal and ensuring continuity for advisers before looking at other potential acquisitions. Irish co-operative Glanbia has launched a 55m (42.6m) advance payment scheme offering interest-free cashflow support to help dairy and arable farmers cope with price volatility. The voluntary scheme enables farmers to draw down cash when market prices for milk and grain fall below specific trigger levels, which will be set annually. Interest-free repayments will be triggered when markets recover above specific levels. See also: Irish farms to benefit from loans linked to milk price Henry Corbally, chairman of Glanbia Co-operative Society, said the scheme, which will be in place between May 2016 and December 2020, is the latest in a series developed by the organisation to help members cope with income volatility. The scheme has been developed because it became clear to the co-op board that the depth and duration of the current downturn in global market prices required additional measures to support our active members at this time, he said. The 55m pot of money is being funded by Glanbia Co-operative Society through the launch of an equity-linked bond. The co-op expects to raise 100m (77m) by issuing a five-year exchangeable bond linked to a pledge of approximately 4.3m Glanbia shares. Glanbia Co-operative Society is the largest individual shareholder in the global nutrition company Glanbia. The co-op, which has more than 16,000 members, also owns a 60% shareholding in Glanbia Ingredients Ireland, the biggest dairy processor in Ireland. Michael Oakes, NFU dairy board chairman, said Glanbia was being very innovative in supporting its farmers through extreme price volatility, offering a fixed milk price scheme and loans where repayments are linked to milk price. We havent anyone with the will or as deep pockets as Glanbia to do something similar here. But there are definitely things that some of the processors could do to assist farmers. Mr Oakes said there was a growing opportunity for dairy farmers to start selling forward, but producers needed helping through the process as it was a foreign language at the moment. Some of the big PLCs have that knowledge and could facilitate getting that knowledge to farmers to allow them to sell a proportion of their milk at a certain margin. Animal health companies MSD and Zoetis have announced they will be making a bluetongue vaccine available to cattle and sheep farmers by July. The announcements follow intense pressure for the production of a vaccine from both the National Sheep Association (NSA) and NFU, after an Animal & Plant Health Agency report released in March confirmed there was an 80% chance the disease would hit UK shores this summer. MSD Animal Health has signed an agreement with Spanish-based veterinary biopharmaceutical specialist CZ Veterinaria to distribute its Bluevac BTV8 bluetongue vaccine throughout Britain. Bluevac BTV8 is an established vaccine that has been used in Europe for a number of years and MSD says it will be available by mid-July. See also: Vaccine manufacturers under pressure to restart production MSD says the agreement has enabled them to fast track the supply of the vaccine to UK farmers, as it would have taken them longer to bring the vaccine to market if they had to manufacture and supply their own. Meanwhile Zoetis said a batch of bluetongue vaccines, including Zulvac 8 Bovis and Zulvac 8 Ovis, will also be available to veterinary practices in mid-July. Phil Stocker, NSA Chief Executive, welcomed the news. NSA very warmly welcomes the announcements from MSD Animal Health and Zoetis, and congratulates them on moving so quickly. Two jabs per animal is not ideal for sheep but is certainly far preferable to the situation earlier in the year when it looked like we wouldnt have any vaccine available to us. I urge all sheep producers to assess the risk on their farm and seriously consider vaccination. All farmers are being urged to speak with their vets if they are considering vaccinating stock. Livestock farmers will face fewer restrictions, yet will still enjoy the same level of support, should the UK quit the EU, according to Leave campaigner Boris Johnson. Talking to farmers at Clitheroe market in Lancashire on Thursday (2 June), Mr Johnson suggested that EU rules for spinal cord removal were obsolete. Ive just been talking to people about this rule that says, if your sheep has two teeth, youve got to slaughter it in a certain way to remove the spinal tissue, he told journalists. What is the point of that? See also: EU referendum: Farmers Weeklys view Brought in under EU disease controls, to help prevent the spread of scrapie, carcasses from sheep over 12-months-old or which have cut their adult incisors, must be split to have the spinal cord removed. Mr Johnson said this practice was out of date and could only be removed if the UK was in charge of its own rules. But the NFU, which is in favour of remaining within the EU in the upcoming referendum, has cited this rule as an example of UK government gold-plating. In the UK, the implementing legislation requires the removal of 100% of the specified risk material, said a recent briefing document. This is in contrast to other EU countries that instead require the removal of as much as possible. As a result of this, spinal cord removal by any other method than splitting is illegal in the UK. Other member states permit alternative, less destructive methods, such as vacuum removal. According to the NFU, sheep carcasses can be devalued by as much as 40% as a result of carcass splitting. Question of support Industry representatives have also challenged Mr Johnsons assurances that UK farmers would get the same level of support in a post-Brexit world. Writing in Farmers Weekly this week, former NFU president and active Remain campaigner Sir Peter Kendall said he was always nervous of politicians bearing gifts. There is a need for a reality check on the 350m/week to spend if we leave claim, representing the apparent cost of our EU membership, he wrote. After Margaret Thatchers rebate, the regional funds and the money for farmers, this figure is actually 153m at best. Promises abound about what this will be spent on the NHS, a rebate on council tax, the list goes on. It sounds to me like farming would be at the bottom of a big pile of other priorities. Is Britain better off in or out of the European Union? With less than three weeks to go until polling day in the referendum, Farmers Weekly has invited two of the most vocal participants in the debate to set out their views. Peter Kendall, a former NFU president, argues the case for the UK staying a member of the union. On the other side of the fence, Michael Seals of the Farmers For Britain campaign counters with an argument in favour of a British exit, or Brexit, from the EU. Both sides outline arguments considering subsidies, trade and red tape. Peter Kendall, ex-NFU president and Britain Stronger in Europe campaigner I am convinced that, for farmers and those building a career in agriculture, staying in the EU means more opportunities and fewer risks. For UK farmers in the single market, this means 500 million of the worlds richest consumers on our doorstep who can buy our great British produce free of tariffs. This market is important in setting the price we receive, but equally importantly, we also have common standards. See also: Your letters on the EU referendum debate That means our militant French colleagues cannot keep our lamb or any other product out. Brexiteers argue that they need us more than we need them. Its not that simple. Nearly 50% of what we export goes into the EU market, yet less than 8% of what the rest of the EU exports arrives in the UK. For agriculture, 73% of UK exports go to the EU. I remember only too well how the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak stopped exports and how the price of lamb fell dramatically overnight. No one can guarantee tariff-free access for our products into this vital market, so lets be crystal clear: any tariff or an increase in the cost of trading will come straight off the farmers bottom line. Cheaper imports Lets also take a look at the trade aims of those advocating Brexit. Michael Gove, secretary of state for justice, recently noted that a big selling point of leaving the EU would be cheaper food; yes, cheaper food. We all know who really pays for cheap food farmers, rural communities and our unique environment. Thankfully, EU agriculture commissioner Phil Hogan knows, for example, that the EU beef industry would be devastated if South American beef was allowed unlimited into the EU free of tariffs. I know Mr Hogan will defend the EU beef industry to the hilt, I dont have the same confidence in the free traders of the Conservative right who cant wait for unfettered free markets. I am also not convinced its an easy job instantly striking new trade deals around the world. The recent EU deal with Canada took seven years to negotiate. We benefit from more than 50 such trade agreements; all of these would need renegotiating with very little time to do it. The important topics in this debate are money and access, so lets move on to cash. I have long argued that the future lies in growing markets and less reliance on support payments. I believe that, if support is to be reduced, it should be unravelled across the EU so that as farmers we dont face unfair competition from our near neighbours. Future support So what have the Brexiteers in mind? The campaign group Farmers for Britain says it will protect subsidies, probably increase them and at the same time abolish cross-compliance. I have always been nervous of politicians bearing gifts, and even more nervous when Im told the cheque is in the post. We would all be wise to see through this. Theres a need for a reality check on the 350m/week to spend if we leave claim, representing the apparent cost of our EU membership. After Margaret Thatchers rebate, the regional funds and the money for farmers, this figure is actually 153m at best. Promises abound on what this mythical 350m a week will be spent on the NHS, a rebate on council tax, the list goes on. It sounds to me like farming would be at the bottom of a big pile of other priorities. Red tape Finally, lets look at the promised bonfire of regulation. We must face facts. We live in an urban country and politicians are dependent on votes. Add in strong pressure groups in the UK and its clear we actually get a tougher time than most of our EU colleagues. The UK government has a tendency to gold plate legislation. The UK is the only country in the EU to protect badgers. The UK banned stalls and tethers early, halving our pig industry. The UK has lower stocking densities for chickens than what is permitted by the EU. This government is supportive of farming yet has to listen to an urban majority, and that doesnt always give us the right results. Being a member of the EU with countries that are more rural, who place a higher value on their farmers and go into bat for them in global trade talks, is emphatically good for UK farming. I remain optimistic for British agriculture. Demand for food is growing. We produce some of the highest quality food in the world. By remaining in the EU and working with our neighbours we can strike new trade deals that will open up tariff-free exports to exciting new markets, as well as cushioning us from the extremes of volatile global markets. Michael Seals Farmers For Britain campaigner The Brexit referendum is a momentous event, a once in a lifetime choice that will affect our industry more than any other. Weve had debate with few facts, but a lot of emotion. There are good points about being in a market of 500 million, however the EU belongs to a bygone era as the world opens up. Future growth will come from countries such as China, a country of 1.36 billion people, and a world market of 7.1 billion. World trade has grown, there is an interdependency between nations. Look at your cars or tractors, they owe nothing to one country or even the EU, they are world products produced by global companies. The CAP itself was generous in the past to UK agriculture, but that generosity is quickly diminishing with increasing interference, bureaucracy and inflexibility in a system that limits the power of the UK government and ministers to do anything but try to influence outcomes. The Remain camp cites the benefits of common standards. But ask the pig and poultry industries if they feel standards are applied equally across the EU? While the system remains there is one rule for all, which is perfect for none. This really is your decision. A vote to leave will mean changes for UK agriculture, but the alternative is to remain mired in an ever-decreasing support system riven with bureaucracy. Trade matters What will a UK agricultural policy look like when we leave? David Cameron has clearly stated, the UK government will continue to give farmers and the environment support. But, Mr Cameron will not be PM beyond this parliament. My vision for our industry outside of the EU is a thriving world leader, unfettered by bureaucracy, yet supported in ways that encourage innovation, competitiveness, youth and investment. When we leave, the big issues to deliver that vision will be trade and support. We will inevitably maintain trade. Many outside countries trade with the EU. Last year, we exported more than 11.5bn worth of food to the EU, but we imported food products worth about 31bn. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food. This is part of more than half-a-trillion pounds worth of trade back and forward between the EU and UK, leaving Britain with an overall deficit. There is no benefit to any country for this to stop, but trade changes all the time, and that will happen whether we are in or out of the EU. Success will be having a product that is demanded at a price that is competitive. In terms of support, this is a greater unknown. We all know government is short of money and has priorities beyond our industry. The Treasury and others could see this as an opportunity to save more by cutting agricultural support. But farming unions and the devolved administrations will all have an input; there will be a UK agricultural policy. The challenge will be to find new ways of supporting this industry as it develops and grows away from the stifling bureaucracy and declining area payment which will continue should we stay in the EU. A new farm policy What could a future support system consist of? First, government must continue to invest in science and innovation, to give us the technology for success. Second, farming has always been a risky business because of the weather and price volatility. I see opportunities for government generated insurance schemes, such as those in Canada. Third, an area payment based on environmental measures, possibly broadened to include animal welfare, but one which is simpler and more rounded. Fourth, marketing, our biggest issue in sectors such as the dairy industry. Developing a government-sponsored marketing body alongside USA-style marketing orders will pave the way to a better future. Finally, to become that world leader we will expect government to support industry initiatives, such as government-funded endemic disease eradication, supporting young entrants, older farmers exits and, more particularly, capital investment in new plant and fixtures. All this is possible, only if we leave. Change will come gradually and will transform UK agriculture. If we look at ourselves as an industry today, the CAP provides billions in direct payments and bureaucratic grant aid through Rural Development Programme for England, yet none of it is working. We are struggling drastically across almost all sectors. To take control of our future we need a vision and ministers with their civil servants to start thinking policy ideas through from first principles. Then we can deliver the change British farming needs. Voting to leave will mean change, and yes, our industry will be affected. But in five years time the only question people will ask themselves is why we didnt do it sooner? Dont listen to the fear mongers, the only fear in voting to leave is fear itself. Story Highlights 67% agree with concept of increasing worker overtime eligibility Majorities also favor requirements for paid sick leave, vacation and family leave On balance, Americans are negative about increased power for unions PRINCETON, N.J. -- Americans agree with the idea of expanding the number of workers eligible for overtime pay, a change recently announced by the U.S. Department of Labor and one favored by presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Expand Number of Workers Eligible for Overtime Agree Disagree Don't know enough to have an opinion % % % Expand the number of workers eligible for overtime pay 67 14 18 Gallup, May 24-27, 2016 The change in overtime rules to be put in place by the Department of Labor raises the maximum annual salary at which employers are required to pay workers for overtime from $23,660 to $47,476. The expansion of overtime eligibility has been championed by both remaining Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. At this point, the American public's initial reaction to the idea is quite positive. Americans also agree with the idea of raising the minimum wage, as they generally have in the more than 70 years Gallup has tested it using different formats and different dollar amounts. The specific proposal tested in the current research is to raise the minimum wage to $20 per hour by the year 2020, agreed to by 56% of Americans. Both Sanders and Clinton have supported the idea of raising the minimum wage, with Sanders endorsing the specific proposal tested here. Donald Trump's position on the minimum wage has been characterized as shifting, although he has recently implied that the minimum wage does need to be increased. Increase Minimum Wage Agree Disagree Don't know enough to have an opinion % % % Increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour by 2020 56 36 7 Gallup, April 21-24, 2016 These measures of the American public's reaction to proposed changes affecting workers were tested in Gallup research conducted April 21-24 and May 24-27 of this year, and are part of Gallup's ongoing assessment of the ways in which Americans react to proposals made by presidential candidates. The research measures initial reactions to shorthand versions of proposals made by presidential candidates in speeches or in debates. Most policy changes are, in reality, complex, and the public's reactions could change if proposals became a matter of continuing public debate. Americans Supportive of Mandatory Paid Vacation, Family Leave A majority of Americans also favor workplace proposals that would require employers to provide seven days of paid sick leave, two weeks of paid vacation and at least 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave. Both Clinton and Sanders support these types of proposals, aimed at improving life for the nation's workers. Trump has not addressed the proposals. Sick Leave, Vacation, and Family and Medical Leave Agree Disagree Don't know enough to have an opinion % % % Require employers to provide all workers at least seven days of paid sick leave 75 16 9 Require employers to provide all workers at least two weeks of paid vacation 75 19 5 Require employers to provide at least 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave 62 27 10 Gallup, April 21-24, 2016 Both Clinton and Sanders have also argued for a strengthened role for labor unions as a mechanism designed to improve the situation for workers in this country. Unlike the reactions to the other aforementioned proposals, more of the public disagrees with this idea than agrees. Increase Power of Labor Unions Agree Disagree Don't know enough to say % % % Enact laws increasing the power of labor unions 32 41 27 Gallup, May 24-27, 2016 The net negative response to the idea of increasing the power of labor unions matches Gallup's ongoing union trends. Americans are positive about unions in general -- 58% approve of them -- though that level of support is much lower than what Gallup measured in the 1930s through the 1990s. But fewer than four in 10 Americans in Gallup's latest measure say the influence of labor unions in this country should increase. The majority of Americans say that unions' influence should either decrease or stay the same. Bottom Line Americans' reactions to presidential candidates' proposals concerning new laws or regulations aimed at improving the situation of the country's workers are generally positive. A majority of the public agrees with the idea of increasing eligibility for overtime, raising the minimum wage and requiring companies to offer specified amounts of paid sick leave, vacation, and family and medical leave. Americans do not, however, support the idea of increasing the power of labor unions. Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics. Survey Methods Results reported in this article are based on telephone interviews with random samples of 2,024 national adults, aged 18+, living in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, conducted April 21-24, 2016, and 2,044 national adults conducted May 24-27, 2016. Each respondent interviewed April 21-24 rated a randomly selected subset of five of 18 policy proposals included in the survey. Each proposal was rated by between 533 and 590 national adults. Results for each proposal have a margin of error of 5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Each respondent interviewed May 24-27 rated a randomly selected subset of six of 20 policy proposals included in the survey. Each proposal was rated by between 588 and 634 national adults. Results for each proposal have a margin of error of 5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting. Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 60% cellphone respondents and 40% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. Learn more about how the Gallup U.S. Daily works. Social Media Sites Including Facebook, Twitter & YouTube To Combat Online Hate Speech In Europe A social media breakthrough took place as three of the biggest social companies pledge to eradicate hate. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft vowed to combat the widespread of "illegal hate speech." The social media websites collaborated with the European Commission in creating a new code of conduct to possibly avoid and eradicate the dreaded "hate speech." According to The Hollywood Reporter, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube are among the few who pledged to help the Eurpean Comission combat the widespread of terrorism through social media. Part of their commitment is to filter and make sure that they take the necessary precautions in removing all "illegal hate speech" that is detected on their sites. The social media giants also vowed to remove and disable the access of the person or group who would spread the hate speech. Aside from making a prompt gesture to abolish the "illegal hate speech," the social media websites also noted that they will participate in raising awareness. They will educate their subscribers as to what are the basic do's and don'ts when it comes to information sharing using their respective website guidelines. The European Commission's press release included the statements of the websites that participated in putting an end to the dreaded "illegal hate speech." Statements coming from the social media and IT companies CEO are also included on their press release. This gesture is a step closer in educating the consumers about terrorism and their recruitment methods. It is thrown towards the previous terrorist attacks that took place in several countries wherein terrorists used the social media to recruit new members. Vera Jourova, the EU commissioner for justice, consumers, and gender equality mentioned that their gesture to collaborate with the IT companies is a step forward in putting an end to terrorism. Jourova pointed out that social media plays a vital role in spreading hate infiltrate young people with violence. Working together in putting an end to the online hate speech, terrorism can be greatly reduced if not eradicated. Xiaomi Mi Band 2 Release Date. Extended Battery, New Straps, OLED Display & Other Nifty Features The Xiaomi Mi Band 2 is set to release soon. The wearable tech is a follow-up to the original, which was first introduced in 2014. Xiaomi is the No. 2 largest maker of wearable tech after Fitbit. The Xiaomi Mi Band 2 is expected to maintain the trend and continue to grow the popularity of the tracker. The bracelet has proven to be a reliable gadget for fitness enthusiasts and people on the go, among others. Engadget reported that the Xiaomi Mi Band 2 has several similar functions as the original version. It can track the users basic movements, monitor sleep, check the users heart rate, count steps, time workouts, show the time and more. The second version features a thin anodized 0.42-inch OLED screen that displays the necessary information. Due to the more powerful display, however, the battery life of the Xiaomi Mi Band 2 has decreased from about 30 days to 20 days. The pedometer algorithm of the new product has reportedly been improved. The Xiaomi Mi Band 2 has a module with an oval form and thin silicone construction. There is a single button at the base of the display that lets users scroll through the various displays. The wearable device is available in green, blue, orange and black color. According to ArsTechnica, the China-based company has worked on three fitness trackers. The predecessor of the Xiaomi Mi Band 2, the Mi Band 1, was priced at only $13. The Xiaomi Mi Pulse followed, which mainly monitored the users pulse. The upcoming device can do more, such as vibrating to alert the user for remaining sedentary for a period of time. It is ideal for individuals who aim to maintain a certain heartbeat range and stay physically active. It can also be a useful device for physical therapy patients and those who are recovering from an injury or heart problem. Overall, the Xiaomi Mi Band 2 appears to be a promising and useful device. Its price and convenience are its strongest factors, considering how other brands offer similar devices at very high prices. The Xiaomi Mi Band 2is priced at $23 and will become available on June 7, 2016 in China. The international release dates have yet to be announced. Although it is still uncertain whether the gadget will release abroad, the company is said to be eyeing on expanding to more countries in the West. More updates and details on the Xiaomi Mi Band 2 are expected soon. Battlefield 1 And Titanfall 2 Release Date, News And Update: Games To Launch Just Three Weeks Apart According To EA Exec "Battlefield 1" and "Titanfall 2" are confirmed to launch in the same year but with no exact dates. However, the company recently confirmed that "Battlefield 1" and "Titanfall 2" will be released just three weeks apart of each other. Three Weeks Apart Electronic Arts (EA) Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen revealed at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2016 Global Technology Conference that the release date for "Battlefield 1" and "Titanfall 2" are just weeks apart from each other, Gamespot said. "Battlefield 1" is set to come out on Oct. 21 so the release date of "Titanfall 2" may fall between Sept. 30 and Nov. 11. However, Jorgensen has failed to mention if the release date is before or after the debut of "Battlefield 1." More so, Jorgensen said he's not concerned over the release of two FPS (First Person Shooter) games just within a few weeks of each other. Jorgensen believes that either sale of "Battle 1" or "Titanfall 2" will be affected. DualShockers noted that EA is confident enough since it has a wide range of FPS market, catering to varying types of shooter players. EA wasn't sure if Battlefield 1 would work because it's not sure kids have heard of WW1 https://t.co/Ob7JBfx4w9 pic.twitter.com/CjdBEFHGw5 IGN (@IGN) June 2, 2016 Head On Competition With 'Call of Duty' However, Jorgensen is more concerned with "Battlefield 1" and "Titanfall 2" going head to head against Activision's "Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare." Jorgensen mentioned that EA is not at all comfortable with the scenario. "Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare" is set to be released on Nov. 4. Since Jorgensen mentioned that "Titanfall 2" will be directly competing with "Call of Duty," it is highly possible that the release date is around November 22 as opposed to September. Meanwhile, Digital Spy reported that "Titanfall 2" may feature a grappling hook that allows players to explore the terrain. "Battlefield" on the other hand, will include the Italian Alps, Arabian deserts and France in its locations. Do you think it is wise to release the two FPS games just weeks of each other? Hit us with your comments below. Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia was among the right people enshrined on the memorial wall on Saturday, Oct. 21. The Corvallis Planning Commission rejected two applications from Timberhill developers at a Wednesday night meeting that concluded after the Gazette-Times presstime. GPA1 Inc., which owns approximately 200 acres of property on Timberhill north of Northwest Kings Boulevard, sought to split the acreage into lots of 5 and 197 acres and also establish the road layout for 5-acre lot. City staff recommended against the applications because they said detailed development plans were needed for the acreage. The Planning Commission agreed, voting 6-2 to deny both applications. Voting to reject the plans were Dan Brown, Susan Morre, Paul Woods, Ron Sessions, Tom Jensen and Jim Ridlington. Carl Price and Rob Welsh cast the dissenting votes. Chuck Kingsley, a broker with Commercial Associates, which is working with GPA1 on the project, declined to comment on the decision. But Kingsley added that there certainly will be an appeal to the City Council. Another Timberhill project, a plan to establish the alignment for Kings Boulevard through Timberhill to the city limits near Northwest Lester Avenue, was rejected by the Planning Commission in December and by the City Council in January. The case is before the state Land Use Board of Appeals. The three-member board heard 70 minutes of oral arguments May 26 and have advised that a decision will be announced by June 24. A 2015 plan to apply for approval to build a student housing complex that would house more than 800 residents on 30 acres of the Timberhill property was pulled on the eve of a Planning Commission public hearing because of a negative staff report and strong community opposition. The Timberhill property is the last large undeveloped parcel of residential land in the city limits. June 3, 1924 May 25, 2016 Mary Louise Young, 91, of Corvallis passed away on May 25, 2016. She was born in Easton, Pennsylvania, on June 3, 1924, to John H and Gladys Gunning. Mary Louise attended the Easton Hospital School of Nursing and became a registered nurse in 1946. During the Korean War, she entered the US Navy after her brother joined the Marines. After two years, she left the navy as a Lieutenant JG to return to school to finish her four-year nursing degree at the University of Maryland School of Nursing. While there, she worked part time at a local hospital. It was there that she met her future husband, Robert H. Young Jr., who was in medical school at the time. They were married in 1957. After Robert finished school, they moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and then to Wenatchee, Washington, before finally settling near Spokane, Washington, where they remained until 1984. When Mary Louise wasnt working, she kept herself busy volunteering, from being the neighborhood coordinator for the March of Dimes to being her daughter Helens Campfire leader. When her children were grown, she and Robert relocated to Oakland, Oregon. She was very active in the community and volunteered wherever her energy and talents were needed. She especially enjoyed helping children learn to read through the SMART program. Several years after her husbands death, she moved to Corvallis to live closer to her daughter. Mary Louise loved to travel, visiting Russia, China, and Turkey, among other places. She had a zest for life and was always willing to try new things. She was preceded in death by her two brothers, John H. and Benjamin N. Gunning; husband Robert H. Young Jr.; and son David Young. She is survived by her son and daughter-in-law, Michael and Teresa Young of Palmdale, California; daughter and son-in-law Helen and Mehmet Kupeli of Corvallis; daughter-in-law Teresa Young of Salem; and several grandchildren. A celebration of life will be planned later this summer. Donations may be made in her honor to the Sutherlin Oakland Emergency Food Pantry, 183 W. First Ave., Sutherlin, OR 97479; or to the Douglas County SMART reading program, PO Box 2358, Roseburg, OR 97470. Please share your thoughts and memories for the family at www.demossdurdan.com. April 3, 1954 June 1, 2016 Born on April 3, 1954, in Montebello, California, to Bettye Jeane Tobin and Will Seward Keim Jr. and also raised by his stepdad, Jack Wilhelm, Will passed away peacefully on June 1, 2016, after battling melanoma cancer for the last two years. Will was a big man, both in stature and personality and would always do anything for anyone. He was an educator who has spoken at over 3,000 corporate and collegiate campuses to over 3 million people. He spoke in all 50 of the United States and Canada, on values and ethics in every spectrum of life. He was also an intercollegiate campus minister. People all over the country had him officiate their weddings, baptisms and memorial services. Will is survived by his wife, Donna; mother-in-law Mary Basham; four children, Christa, Samantha, JJ and Hannah; two sons-in-law, Brandon and Steve; two grandchildren, Adeline and Harvey; and one grandchild soon to be born. He has friends all over the world that loved Wills wit, wisdom, and great cooking! His family would like you to tell a favorite story to someone who did not know Will. If you feel a need to give money in memory of Will, Donna has one more year of education for JJ, Hannahs Make A Wish Foundation for Chi Omega, Wills Deltas Upsilons Education Foundation, JJs Sigma Alpha Epsilon Mario Pastega House in Corvallis, Christas Corvallis High School leadership program, and Samis Corvallis High School Softball team. The family felt you needed to hear Wills message that he greatly believed in: My goal in speaking is to be precise in detail, persuasive in appeal, and passionate in delivery. I know that I am not the message but rather the messenger, in many way, I feel like the Wizard of Oz. That is, I cannot give you something you do not already have. You have a good brain, a caring heart, and ability to do great thing things. What I tried to do today was inspire you. Life is hard and it is ultimately worth living. Dont give up on yourself or others. If you get knocked down, get up. Let people help you. We are in this together. You have 25,000 days to live out your masterpiece. It is time to get busy. Please leave your thoughts and memories at www.mchenryfuneralhome.com. The message was in my email when I got into the office Thursday morning; a Corvallis parent had sent it to me before 6 a.m. The topic of the email was why the Gazette-Times hadnt yet reported anything about this weeks suicide of an 18-year-old Corvallis student. This is part of what the email said: We as parents believe you avoiding putting any of this in the paper is stunting awareness to other parents Corvallis can no longer sweep this under the rug. We have a problem with teen suicide and it needs to be addressed by the grown-ups in this town because the kids are already dealing with it. I was going to respond along the lines of how newspapers need to be cautious about reporting details about youth suicide lest it increase the risk of what experts call suicide contagion in the ages that are particularly susceptible, mostly 15 to 24. Thats all true, and we have tried to keep those expert guidelines in mind. But then I was seized by a realization: I really couldnt argue against anything that my email correspondent was saying. And, in fact, some of the coverage decisions the Gazette-Times has made in the past have played a role in sweeping the issue of youth suicide under the rug. In a number of cases over recent years, the newspaper has not reported about individual incidents. I dont think we can afford the price of that silence any more. I dont think we ever could. This is why we've decided to write the story that appears in today's edition. This weeks death is, as far as we can tell, the second mid-valley suicide this year involving a high school student. Ann Kirkwood, the states new suicide intervention coordinator (a position created by a bill sponsored by then-state Rep. Sara Gelser) says shes aware of 13 suicides statewide involving people who are 24 years old or younger. But Kirkwood cautions that the number almost certainly is low, in part because the average for Oregon in any given year is 90. Ninety. If nearly 100 young Oregonians were dying every year of an infectious disease, youd know all about it. It would be frequent statewide news. The news gets worse: With the exception of one year, Oregons rate of youth suicide has been rising since 2000. In Benton County in 2014, the last year for which statistics are available, three youths died from suicide and eight youths were hospitalized following suicide attempts and those are just the cases we know about. (A copy of the states recent report on youth suicide is attached to the online version of this column.) We know that one way to help prevent suicides is to emphasize the idea that help is available for people who are struggling and vulnerable to depression and thoughts of suicide, and to get that message across through every possible channel. But we cant communicate that by staying silent. We cant do any of the vitally important work that we have to do to curb this public health emergency by staying silent. I am ashamed that the Gazette-Times, to some extent, has helped to enable that silence. The time has come to break it. David vs. Goliath To the Editor: The St. Pauls debate has been heavily dominated -- in the media and public meetings -- by sermons from save the building advocates. The latter group is... POAs start primary process open to all residents As previously announced, the four Property Owners Associations (Western, Estates, Central and Eastern) have made changes to their processes to nominate residents to serve as trustees for the Village Board of Trustees (BOT) and the Board... Now the time has come To the Editor: The Governance Committee should be appreciated for their work which generated several meritorious recommendations relating to the Village government. I was present when two members of Governance... School tax bill fiasco To the Editor: The county assessments are now in a 5-year phase-in program thanks to our past county executive's changes to the assessment process. Also, the Star program which once... Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN! Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2021. 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. Shah Rukh Khan Ditches Nokia for Apple [REPORT] Features oi -Sachin King Khan fans have some rumors to talk about. It is about sweet Apple too. After being a long-time brand ambassador for Nokia might soon be sporting Apple's products (which he already does own for sure). Indian Apple Tim Cook visited India with many motives. Setting up a Maps team dedicated to improving the service in India, a Swift app development team that will provide support to various organizations and start-ups who want to be a part of the App Store. Selling of refurbished iPhones too was on the agenda, but things did not swing in favor of Apple. King Khan picture Sources have come to know that Apple CEO Time Cook was attending a party hosted by Shah Rukh Khan when he visited Mumbai. Whether his visit was to intentionally get the actor on board, or if things happened after some consideration is yet unclear. But Apple is definitely eying the Indian smartphone industry. Also read: iPhone 6S Users Should Try These 8 Secret Tricks to Become Power Users! Goodbye Nokia Nokia may be making a comeback with their Android smartphones soon, but Shah Rukh Khan may not be for their billboards and ads. The actor was a brand ambassador for Nokia's Lumia range of devices, with the company even joining in to market the phone along with promotions of 'Chennai Express'. Apple in India With 4G reaching many major cities in India, telecom companies are now pushing to make the technology a standard soon. And Apple feels more interested in bringing their devices to a market that is ready to accept 3G and 4G services. iPhones are already 4G ready handsets, and many new users can benefit from the arrival of Apple. Also read: Check Out What Your iPhone Case Says About Your Personality Fanfare sales! Once Shah Rukh Khan brings his charm to help sell iPhones, there is no telling if Apple's plans will succeed. iPhones are Still Expensive (and that's the iPhone SE we talk about). There may be a Shah Rukh Khan edition smartphone which could sell like the Virat FanBox, with his autograph sprawled at the back and users greeted with his wallpapers. We can already see Shah Rukh fans camping outside Apple Stores! 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. Total force integration significant in KC-46 support By Christopher Ball, 412th Test Wing Public Affairs / Published June 02, 2016 EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AFNS) -- When the Air Force and Boeing launched the KC-46 Pegasus program, the 412th Test Wing was tagged as one of the prime players in testing and validation of the aircraft. Named the Air Force's Responsible Test Organization, the 412th TW had to supply aircraft and a support crew for testing at Boeing Field International Airport in Seattle. According to Lt. Col. Jennifer Barnard, the deputy commander of the 412th Maintenance Group, supporting the KC-46 with three dedicated F-16 Fighting Falcons creates a support deficit at Edwards Air Force Base where the remaining F-16 aircraft and support personnel do not have the capacity to meet the current workload. Barnard was part of a team that started briefing Maj. Gen. Michael Brewer, the 412th TW commander, last spring about potential solutions in Washington state. "There was a lot of doubt as to whether or not this would be successful," she said. One solution was to ask for support from the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve. Barnard said they asked the Air Force for 7,300 military personnel appropriation (MPA) days. The Air Force agreed, basically authorizing Edwards AFB with 20 Guard or Reserve maintainers per day for fiscal year 2016. According to Maj. Lena Freienmuth, the KC-46 test and F-16 support air reserve component coordinator, an MPA day is basically a Guard or Reserve workday. "We use it to put people on orders." "It's basically how we get days in addition to our normal two weeks a year and one weekend a month," explained her enlisted counterpart, Senior Master Sgt. Kevin Hunter. Barnard said the major had to apply a little creative recruiting to find the right people to come here. "Because we know there's a shortage of F-16 maintainers -- active duty, Reserve and Guard -- Maj. Freienmuth came up with the idea of asking Guard and Reserve units -- that within the last five years had a mission conversion -- for support," Barnard said. The units used to have F-16s but were converted to other missions, such as a remotely piloted aircraft or intelligence wing, she explained. "Those maintainers' training records are still good for five years, so she was able to find that resource," Barnard said. The Guard and Reserve volunteers blend in with active-duty and civilian personnel and rotate to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, based on KC-46 support requirements. There are three volunteers who stay at the joint base integrated locally in aerospace ground equipment, fuel systems and supply. Barnard said the key to success has been "creative, effective recruiting with detailed and persistent management." She also said that the level of detail in management, both at the program level and in the aircraft maintenance units, has been tremendous. "It's about relationships, community, and taking care of each other," Barnard said. Freienmuth agreed, citing an example of a senior master sergeant out on the line turning wrenches. "He's doing a lot of the training for the young 3-level (trainees) we just got in," she said. "He's loving it. We take care of people up here from the program perspective, but he's down in the AMU making sure those guys are taken care of." Barnard added that some of the Guard and Reserve Airmen who have been turning F-16 wrenches for a few years are easing the training burden on new F-16 crew chiefs who are retraining from the C-130 Hercules. Caring for people is another key to success. The Guard and Reserve Airmen are treated the same as active duty. One example is a senior airman who recently won a quarterly award from the active-duty side. "No one can remember this level of TFI (total force integration) at Edwards prior to this," Barnard said. "In eight months of flight testing (where F-16s were required), the KC-46 has not lost a test mission due to F-16 support. That's incredible." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Counter-ISIL Strikes Target Terrorists in Syria, Iraq From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release SOUTHWEST ASIA, June 02, 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 the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports. Strikes in Syria Bomber, attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 15 strikes in Syria: -- Near Raqqah, three strikes destroyed six ISIL oil pumpjacks and an ISIL crane. -- Near Manbij, 12 strikes struck 11 separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed three ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL mortar system, an ISIL-used cave, an ISIL vehicle bomb, ISIL-used tunnel systems, and four ISIL vehicles and damaged a separate ISIL vehicle. Strikes in Iraq Rocket artillery and fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 17 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government: -- Near Qaim, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit. -- Near Albu Hayat, a strike struck an ISIL vehicle bomb. -- Near Fallujah, four strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed 10 ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL vehicle, an ISIL weapons cache, an ISIL recoilless rifle, an ISIL heavy machine gun, and an ISIL-used tunnel system and damaged a separate ISIL fighting position and denied ISIL access to terrain. -- Near Habbaniyah, a strike struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position and an ISIL vehicle. -- Near Haditha, a strike struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL fighting positions. -- Near Hit, a strike destroyed an ISIL mortar position. -- Near Mosul, four strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed four ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL vehicle, and an ISIL assembly area and suppressed an ISIL heavy machine gun position. -- Near Qayyarah, two strikes destroyed three ISIL rocket rails and an ISIL rocket system. -- Near Sinjar, a strike destroyed an ISIL fighting position and suppressed an ISIL heavy machine gun position. -- Near Sultan Abdallah, a strike struck an ISIL vehicle bomb factory. 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 Commission adopts Rule of Law Opinion on the situation in Poland European Commission Brussels, 1 June 2016 The European Commission has today adopted an Opinion concerning the rule of law in Poland. Following the intensive dialogue that has been ongoing with the Polish authorities since 13 January, the Commission has deemed it necessary to formalise its assessment of the current situation in this Opinion. As foreseen in the Rule of Law Framework, this is the first step taken by the Commission in this process. The Opinion sets out the concerns of the Commission and serves to focus the ongoing dialogue with the Polish authorities towards finding a solution. First Vice-President Frans Timmermans said today: "The rule of law is one of the foundations of the European Union. There have been constructive talks which should now be translated into concrete steps to resolve the systemic risk to the rule of law in Poland. The Opinion adopted today presents our assessment of the issues at stake, building on the dialogue which started in January. On this basis we stand ready to continue the dialogue with the Polish authorities. " The rule of law is one of the common values upon which the European Union is founded. It is enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union. The European Commission, together with the European Parliament and the Council, is responsible under the Treaties for guaranteeing the respect of the rule of law as a fundamental value of our Union and making sure that EU law, values and principles are respected. Recent events in Poland concerning in particular the Constitutional Court have led the European Commission to open a dialogue with the Polish Government in order to ensure the full respect of the rule of law. The Commission considers it necessary that Poland's Constitutional Tribunal is able to fully ensure an effective constitutional review of legislative acts. The current concerns of the European Commission relate to the following issues: the appointment of judges to the Constitutional Tribunal and the implementation of the judgments of the Constitutional Tribunal of 3 and 9 December 2015 relating to these matters; and the implementation of the judgments of the Constitutional Tribunal of 3 and 9 December 2015 relating to these matters; the Law of 22 December 2015 amending the Law on the Constitutional Tribunal , the judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal of 9 March 2016 relating to this law, and the respect of the judgments rendered by the Constitutional Tribunal since 9 March 2016; , the judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal of 9 March 2016 relating to this law, and the respect of the judgments rendered by the Constitutional Tribunal since 9 March 2016; the effectiveness of the Constitutional review of new legislation which has been adopted and enacted in 2016. Next Steps The Polish authorities are now invited to submit their observations on the Opinion. On the basis of these observations, the Commission would continue to pursue the constructive dialogue with the Polish government with a view to finding solutions to the concerns set out. If the concerns have not been satisfactorily resolved within a reasonable time, the Commission may decide to issue a Rule of Law Recommendation. This would mean entering the second phase of the Rule of Law Framework (see Annex). Background In November 2015, the Commission became aware of an ongoing dispute in Poland concerning the composition of the Constitutional Tribunal, as well as the shortening of the mandates of its current President and Vice-President. The Constitutional Tribunal rendered two judgments on these matters, on 3 and 9 December 2015. In addition, the Commission noted that the Sejm (Polish parliament) approved on 22 December 2015 a law amending the law on the Constitutional Tribunal, which concerns the functioning of the Tribunal as well as the independence of its judges. In light of the situation regarding the Constitutional Tribunal, the First Vice-President wrote to the Polish Government on 23 December 2015 to request further information about the state of play. The letter requests that the Polish Government explain the measures they envisage to take with respect to the different Constitutional Tribunal judgements. The First Vice-President's letter also recommended that the Polish Government consult the Venice Commission before adopting the proposed changes to the Law on the Constitutional Tribunal. The Polish Government requested a legal assessment from the Venice Commission on 23 December, but in the meantime the law was formally adopted on 28 December On 9 March 2016 the Constitutional Tribunal ruled that the Law of 22 December 2015 is unconstitutional. On 11 March, the Venice Commission adopted an opinion in which it found the amendments of 22 December to be incompatible with the requirements of the rule of law. The judgment of 9 March, as well as all judgments rendered by the Constitutional Tribunal since then, have not been published in the Official Journal. On 13 January 2016, the College of Commissioners held a first orientation debate on the situation as regards the rule of law in Poland. This was followed by extensive exchanges in writing between the Commission and the Polish authorities. First Vice-President Timmermans visited Warsaw on 5 April and held constructive talks with a number of his Polish counterparts. Since then, extensive exchanges have taken place between the Commission and the Polish Government in meetings at various levels to seek a resolution of the current duality of legal systems in Poland. However, despite these exchanges, it has not yet been possible to find a solution to the issues identified by the Commission. On 18 May, the College of Commissioners discussed the situation concerning the rule of law in Poland based on an oral presentation by First Vice-President Timmermans regarding the state of play of the intensive dialogue that has been ongoing with the Polish authorities since 13 January on the situation of the Constitutional Tribunal, and examined a draft Rule of Law Opinion. The First Vice-President travelled to Poland on 24 May for discussions with the Polish Prime Minister and other relevant parties. Despite these meetings and further contacts, the Polish Government has still not taken the concrete steps needed to address the Commission's concerns in a satisfactory way and thereby resolve the issue. The Rule of Law Framework introduced on 11 March 2014 - has three stages (see also graphic in Annex 1). The entire process is based on a continuous dialogue between the Commission and the Member State concerned. The Commission will keep the European Parliament and Council regularly and closely informed. Commission assessment : The Commission will collect and examine all the relevant information and assess whether there are clear indications of a systemic threat to the rule of law. If, on this evidence, the Commission believes that there is a systemic threat to the rule of law, it will initiate a dialogue with the Member State concerned, by sending its "Rule of Law Opinion", substantiating its concerns. This Opinion serves as a warning to the Member State, and gives the Member State concerned the possibility to respond. : The Commission will collect and examine all the relevant information and assess whether there are clear indications of a systemic threat to the rule of law. If, on this evidence, the Commission believes that there is a systemic threat to the rule of law, it will initiate a dialogue with the Member State concerned, by sending its "Rule of Law Opinion", substantiating its concerns. This Opinion serves as a warning to the Member State, and gives the Member State concerned the possibility to respond. Commission Recommendation : In a second stage, if the matter has not been satisfactorily resolved, the Commission can issue a "Rule of Law Recommendation" addressed to the Member State. In this case, the Commission would recommend that the Member State solves the problems identified within a fixed time limit, and inform the Commission of the steps taken to that effect. The Commission will make public its recommendation. : In a second stage, if the matter has not been satisfactorily resolved, the Commission can issue a "Rule of Law Recommendation" addressed to the Member State. In this case, the Commission would recommend that the Member State solves the problems identified within a fixed time limit, and inform the Commission of the steps taken to that effect. The Commission will make public its recommendation. Follow-up to the Commission Recommendation: In a third stage, the Commission will monitor the follow-up given by the Member State to the recommendation. If there is no satisfactory follow-up within the time limit set, the Commission, the European Parliament or a group of 10 Member States could resort to the 'Article 7 Procedure'. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Commission Opinion on the Rule of Law in Poland and the Rule of Law Framework: Questions & Answers European Commission Brussels, 1 June 2016 The European Commission has today adopted an Opinion concerning the rule of law in Poland. Why did the Commission launch a dialogue on 13 January on the situation in Poland and the Rule of Law Framework? The rule of law is one of the fundamental values upon which the European Union is founded. The Commission, beyond its task to ensure the respect of EU law, is also responsible, together with the European Parliament, the Member States and the Council, for guaranteeing the fundamental values of the Union. Recent events in Poland, in particular the political and legal dispute concerning the composition of the Constitutional Tribunal, and the non-publication of judgments rendered by the Constitutional Tribunal, have given rise to concerns regarding the respect of the rule of law. Following a debate in the College of Commissioners on 13 January about recent developments in Poland, the Commission launched a dialogue and requested information on the situation concerning the Constitutional Tribunal and on the changes in the law on the Public Service Broadcasters. The first debate on these developments in Poland, followed a presentation of the matter by First Vice-President Frans Timmermans (responsible for the Rule of Law Framework), as well as Commissioner Oettinger (responsible for media policy) and Commissioner Jourova (responsible for justice). Why is the Commission adopting an Opinion on the Rule of Law in Poland? Despite the constructive dialogue with the Polish authorities since 13 January, the crisis concerning the Constitutional Tribunal has not been resolved. The Commission has therefore deemed it necessary to formalise its assessment of the current situation with regards to the rule of law in Poland in the Opinion adopted today. On 18 May, the College of Commissioners discussed the situation based on an oral presentation by First Vice-President Timmermans regarding the state of play of the intensive dialogue with the Polish authorities, and examined a draft Rule of Law Opinion. The First Vice-President travelled to Poland on 24 May for discussions with the Polish Prime Minister and other relevant parties. However, despite this dialogue, the Polish Government has not yet taken the concrete steps needed to address the Commission's concerns. The Commission is adopting today's Opinion in order to help focus these ongoing positive discussions towards the concrete steps needed to resolve the systemic risk to the rule of law. What are the developments in Poland that the College is concerned about? 1. The appointment of judges to the Constitutional Tribunal Ahead of the general elections for the Sejm (lower chamber of the Polish Parliament) of 25 October 2015, on 8 October the outgoing legislature nominated five persons to be 'appointed' as judges by the President of the Republic. Three judges would take seats vacated during the mandate of the outgoing legislature while two would take seats vacated during that of the incoming legislature which commenced on 12 November. On 19 November, the new legislature, through an accelerated procedure, amended the Law on the Constitutional Tribunal, introducing the possibility to annul the judicial nominations made by the previous legislature and to nominate five new judges. The amendment also shortened the terms of office of the President and Vice-President of the Tribunal from nine to three years, with the current terms coming to an automatic end within three months of the amendment's adoption. On 25 November the new legislature annulled the five nominations by the previous legislature and on 2 December nominated five new judges. The Constitutional Tribunal was asked to rule on the decisions of both the previous legislature and the incoming legislature. The Tribunal delivered two judgements, on 3 and 9 December 2015. On 3 December, the Court ruled that the previous legislature was entitled to nominate three judges for seats vacated during its mandate, but was not entitled to make the two nominations for seats vacated during the term of the new legislature. The Constitutional Tribunal also clarified that the President was obliged to take the oath of the three validly elected judges without delay. On 9 December, the Court ruled that the new legislature was not entitled to annul the nominations for the three appointments under the previous legislature, but that it was entitled to appoint the two judges whose mandate began under the incoming legislature. The Constitutional Tribunal also declared invalid the shortening of the terms of office of the current President and Vice-President of the Tribunal. The consequence of the judgements is that the President of the Republic is obliged to "appoint" (i.e. take the oath of) the three judges nominated by the previous legislature. However, the President of the Republic has in the meantime taken the oath of all five judges nominated by the new legislature. The judgments of the Constitutional Tribunal have thus not been implemented, raising concerns in regard of the rule of law, and the correct composition of the Tribunal remains disputed between the institutions of the State. 2. The functioning of the Constitutional Tribunal On 22 December 2015, following an accelerated procedure, a law amending the law on the Constitutional Tribunal, which concerns the functioning of the Tribunal as well as the independence of its judges, was passed by the Polish Parliament. In a letter of 23 December 2015 to the Polish Government, the Commission asked to be informed about the constitutional situation in Poland. On 23 December 2015 the Polish Government asked for an opinion of the Venice Commission on the Law of 22 December 2015. However, the Polish Parliament did not await this opinion before taking further steps, and the Law was published in the Official Journal and entered into force on 28 December 2015. On 9 March 2016, the Constitutional Tribunal ruled that the Law of 22 December 2015 is unconstitutional. That judgment has so far not been published in the Official Journal. On 11 March, the Venice Commission issued an opinion in which it found the amendments of 22 December to be incompatible with the rule of law. Following the judgment of 9 March 2016, the Constitutional Tribunal started again adjudicating cases. The Polish Government did not participate in these proceedings and the judgments rendered by the Constitutional Tribunal since 9 March 2016 have so far not been published by the Government in the Official Journal. The refusal to publish the judgment of 9 March creates a level of uncertainty which will adversely affect not only the present judgment, but all future judgments of the Tribunal. Since these judgments will, following the judgment of 9 March, be rendered in accordance with the rules applicable before 22 December 2015, the risk of a continuous controversy about every future judgment will undermine the proper functioning of constitutional justice in Poland. This risk has already materialised as the Tribunal has to date rendered nine rulings since its ruling of 9 March 2016, and none of these rulings have been published in the Official Journal. 3. Effectiveness of constitutional review of new legislation (media law and other laws) A number of sensitive new legislative acts have been adopted by the Polish Parliament, such as a new media law, and others are in preparation. In letters of 1 February 2016 and 3 March 2016, the Commission asked the Polish government about the state of play and content of a number of legislative reforms, but so far this information has not been provided. The Commission considers it necessary that the Constitutional Tribunal is able to fully ensure an effective constitutional review of legislative acts. What has the Commission done so far to address this issue? Under the current Commission, First Vice-President Timmermans has been entrusted by President Juncker with the responsibility for the EU's Rule of Law Mechanism (see below) and with upholding the respect for the rule of law. The Commission's intention is to clarify the facts, in consultation with the Polish Government. In light of the current situation regarding the Constitutional Tribunal, First Vice-President Timmermans wrote to the Polish Government on 23 December 2015 to request further information about the state of play. The letter requests that the Polish Government explain the measures they envisage to take with respect to the different Constitutional Tribunal judgements. In his letter, the First Vice-President also recommended that the Polish Government consult the Venice Commission before enacting the proposed changes to the Law on the Constitutional Tribunal. The Polish Government requested a legal assessment from the Venice Commission on 23 December, but has proceeded with the conclusion of the legislative process before receiving the Venice Commission's opinion. The Commission wrote to the Polish Government on 30 December 2015 to seek additional information about the proposed reforms to the governance of Poland's Public State Broadcasters. First Vice-President Timmermans asked the Polish Government how relevant EU law and the need to promote media pluralism were taken into account in the preparation of the new "small media law". On 7 January 2016, the Commission received a response from Poland on the letter on the media law denying any adverse impact on media pluralism. On 11 January, the Commission received a response from Poland on the Constitutional Tribunal reform. On 13 January 2016, the College of Commissioners held a first orientation debate in order to assess the situation in Poland under the Rule of Law Framework adopted in March 2014. On 19 January, the Commission took part in a European Parliament Plenary debate on the situation in Poland with Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydo. The Commission explained its concerns and stressed that its analysis in the dialogue with Poland under the rule of law framework would be objective, non-partisan and evidence-based. First Vice-President Timmermans was in Warsaw on 5 April and on 24 May for exchanges with his Polish counterparts on how to resolve the situation. Extensive exchanges have taken place between the Commission and the Polish Government in meetings at various levels. However, despite these exchanges, it has not yet been possible to find a solution to the issues identified by the Commission. Further meetings have taken place between the College meetings of 18 May and 1 June, but have not resulted in significant and concrete progress on the matter. What is the Rule of Law Framework? On 11 March 2014, the European Commission adopted a new Framework for addressing systemic threats to the Rule of Law in any of the EU's 28 Member States. The Framework establishes a tool allowing the Commission to enter into a dialogue with the Member State concerned to prevent the escalation of systemic threats to the rule of law. The purpose of the Framework is to enable the Commission to find a solution with the Member State concerned in order to prevent the emergence of a systemic threat to the rule of law that could develop into a "clear risk of a serious breach" which would potentially trigger the use of the 'Article 7 Procedure'. Where there are clear indications of a systemic threat to the rule of law in a Member State, the Commission can launch a 'pre-Article 7 Procedure' by initiating a dialogue with that Member State through the Rule of Law Framework. The Rule of Law Framework makes transparent how the Commission exercises its role under the Treaties, and aims at reducing the need for recourse to the Article 7 Procedure. The Rule of Law Framework has three stages (see also graphic in Annex 1): Commission assessment : The Commission will collect and examine all the relevant information and assess whether there are clear indications of a systemic threat to the rule of law. If, on this evidence, the Commission believes that there is a systemic threat to the rule of law, it will initiate a dialogue with the Member State concerned, by sending a "Rule of Law Opinion", substantiating its concerns. : The Commission will collect and examine all the relevant information and assess whether there are clear indications of a systemic threat to the rule of law. If, on this evidence, the Commission believes that there is a systemic threat to the rule of law, it will initiate a dialogue with the Member State concerned, by sending a "Rule of Law Opinion", substantiating its concerns. Commission Recommendation : In a second stage, if the matter has not been satisfactorily resolved, the Commission can issue a "Rule of Law Recommendation" addressed to the Member State. In this case, the Commission would recommend that the Member State solves the problems identified within a fixed time limit, and inform the Commission of the steps taken to that effect. The Commission will make public its recommendation. : In a second stage, if the matter has not been satisfactorily resolved, the Commission can issue a "Rule of Law Recommendation" addressed to the Member State. In this case, the Commission would recommend that the Member State solves the problems identified within a fixed time limit, and inform the Commission of the steps taken to that effect. The Commission will make public its recommendation. Follow-up to the Commission Recommendation: In a third stage, the Commission will monitor the follow-up given by the Member State to the recommendation. If there is no satisfactory follow-up within the time limit set, the Commission, the European Parliament or a group of 10 Member States could resort to the 'Article 7 Procedure'. The entire process is based on a continuous dialogue between the Commission and the Member State concerned. The Commission will keep the European Parliament and Council regularly and closely informed. At which stage are we under the Rule of Law Framework? The adoption of the Rule of Law Opinion is part of the first stage of the procedure. The Polish authorities have now been invited to submit their observations. After examining this reply, or if no observations are submitted, the Commission may issue a Rule of Law Recommendation. This would mean that we would enter the second stage under the Rule of Law Framework. There is no specific deadline for the Commission to issue a Rule of Law Recommendation. What is the Article 7 Procedure? The Procedure foreseen under Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) aims at ensuring that all EU Member States respect the common values of the EU, including the Rule of Law. It foresees two legal possibilities in such a situation: a preventive mechanism in case of a "clear risk of a serious breach of the [Union's] values" (Article 7(1) TEU) and a sanctioning mechanism in the case of "the existence of a serious and persistent breach" of the Union's value, including the Rule of Law (Article 7(2) and Article 7(3) TEU). Article 7 TEU has so far not been used. The preventive mechanism allows the Council to give the EU Member State concerned a warning before a serious breach has actually materialised. The sanctioning mechanism allows the Council to act if a serious and persistent breach is deemed to exist. This may include the suspension of certain rights deriving from the application of the treaties to the EU country in question, including the voting rights of that country in the Council. In such a case the 'serious breach' must have persisted for some time. The Article 7 Procedure can be triggered by one third of the Member States, by the European Parliament (in case of the preventive mechanism of Article 7(1) TEU) or by the European Commission. To determine that there is a clear risk of a serious breach of the rule of law, the Council, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament, must act with a decision of 4/5 of its members, and must reach the same threshold if it wishes to address recommendations to the Member State concerned. The Council must hear the Member States concerned before adopting such a decision. To determine the existence of a serious and persistent breach of the rule of law, the European Council must act by unanimity, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament. The Member State concerned must first be invited to offer its observations. To sanction a Member State for a serious and persistent breach of the rule of law, the Council must act by qualified majority. To revoke or amend these sanctions the Council must also act by qualified majority. In accordance with Article 354 TFEU, the Member of the European Council or the Council representing the Member State in question shall not take part in the vote, and the Member State concerned shall not be counted in the calculation of the majorities for these determinations. Has the Article 7 Procedure ever been used? Since 2009, the European Union has been confronted on several occasions with events in some EU countries, which revealed specific rule of law problems. The Commission has addressed these events by exerting political pressure, as well as by launching infringement proceedings in case of violations of EU law. The preventive and sanctioning mechanisms of Article 7 have so far not been resorted to. Annex I NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address "Kings of Fury" unleash Spartan Fury US Marine Corps News By Lance Cpl. Jesus Sepulveda Torres | June 2, 2016 Marines with 1st Battalion, 12th Marine Regiment's, "Kings of Battles," conducted live-fire sustainment training during Spartan Fury, an annual pre-deployment exercise, aboard the Schofield Range Facility on May 4th, 2016. Spartan Fury is one of three annual battalion level exercises to help improve sustainment training for future deployments. The objective of this five-day exercise is to support 3rd Marine Regiment by providing direct and indirect artillery strikes. Master Sgt. Timothy Harvey, the operations chief for 1st Bn., 12th Marines, said Spartan Fury began with a beach raid at Marine Corps Training Area Bellows where Marines simulated an amphibious landing. "Our mission was to hit certain training objectives as a battalion," said Harvey, a China Spring, Texas, native. "This training helps us become a better fighting force." He said despite challenges such as adjusting to updated communication equipment, the field operation showed exceptional results. "We mostly used high-frequency radios, but we started to switch over to satellite communications, meaning, we basically talk from across the island, which isn't very common," Harvey said. "The reaction and following of orders was quick and our rounds landed right on target." He said the annual training has become second nature, but has made his Marines more lethal than before the training began. "Being more responsive, more accurate and more lethal really shows our Marines' combat capabilities," Harvey said. "This is what we love to do and we've gotten much better in the four days we've been out here." Cpl. Kyle Kuschner, an artillery sensor support man with 1st Bn., 12th Marines, said he helped his Marines with the communication equipment during the live-fire exercise. "My section went over how to conduct a counter-fire mission order using an advanced field artillery tactical data system, which helped to provide automated support for planning, coordinating, controlling and executing fires and effects," said Kuschner, a Manitowoc, Wisc., native. "This exercise was a good training experience for both the Marines on the gun line and the Marines supporting them." He said Spartan Fury provides a great opportunity for the Marines to become more proficient in their roles. "Since the beginning of this exercise, we have been executing all orders accurately and getting things done in a timely manner," Kuschner said. "Even with all the little things we covered today, it made a huge impact and will certainly show on future exercises and deployments." 1st Lt. Ian Collins, the battalion fire direction officer for 1st Bn., 12th Marines, said Spartan Fury and similar exercises help prepare Marines for future combat deployments and keep them at a constant state of readiness. "This training is applicable because when we execute any type of movement, the battalion as a whole seeks to coordinate command and control efforts, specifically amass the battalion for complex fire missions," said Collins, a Portland, Ore., native. "During this exercise, all forward deployed forces are expected to meet and exceed the standards. They exceeded all expectations and it will show in future movements." He said the experience gained from Spartan Fury is always beneficial, especially to his junior Marines. "I wanted my Marines to (become) familiar with the radios, establishing the communication chain for other units at headquarters and the firing batteries," Collins said. "They also had to perform much more efficiently, and as a team, they had to process the information provided, adjust for fire missions and get ready to send shells down range within a minute and a half." He said the Marines performed their duties with lethal precision and accuracy, which shows the possible outcome of applying this training in a real combat scenario. "Today's training definitely helped in improving my Marines' combat capabilities," Collins said. "While challenging at times, this training will pay dividends to the future when some of the younger Marines go to combat. My Marines are always ready to take the fight to the enemy. If we were to deploy tomorrow, we would be ready." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Mount Whitney in Estonia for BALTOPS Kickoff Navy News Service Story Number: NNS160602-07 Release Date: 6/2/2016 9:53:00 AM By Chief Mass Communication Specialist Karen E. Rybarczyk, USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20) Public Affairs TALLINN, Estonia (NNS) -- Amphibious command ship USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20) arrived in Tallinn, Estonia June 2. The flagship is in Estonia, along with seven more ships participating in BALTOPS 2016, to conduct a pre-sail conference in preparation for the exercise kickoff June 5. Mount Whitney is designed to be a command and control ship and, as the U.S. 6th Fleet flagship, will serve as the operating platform for Striking and Support Forces NATO (STRIKFORNATO) during BALTOPS 2016. Quote: "The crew of the USS Mount Whitney is very pleased to visit Tallinn, Estonia and to sail, train, and operate in the Baltic Sea with U.S., NATO allies, and partner nations to improve our interoperability and cooperation, ensuring peace and stability in the Baltic Region. The Sailors and civil service mariners have trained and performed very well in 2015 and 2016; we are very proud of what they stand for and what they do." - Capt. Carlos A. Sardiello, commanding officer, USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20) Quick Facts: BALTOPS is an annually recurring multinational exercise designed to enhance flexibility and interoperability, as well as demonstrate resolve of allied and partner forces to defend the Baltic region. This is the 44th year of the exercise. Striking and Support Forces NATO's (STRIKFORNATO) mission is to integrate U.S. Navy and Marine Corps forces into combined NATO operations. This is the second year in a row they have led the exercise. Mount Whitney, forward deployed to Gaeta, Italy, operates with a combined crew of U.S. Navy Sailors and Military Sealift Command civil service mariners. The civil service mariners perform navigation, deck, engineering and supply service operations, while military personnel support communications, weapons systems and security. It is one of only two seaborne Joint Command Platforms in the U.S. Navy, both of which are forward deployed. U.S. 6th Fleet, headquartered in Naples, Italy, conducts the full spectrum of joint and naval operations, often in concert with allied, joint, and interagency partners, in order to advance U.S. national interests and security and stability in Europe and Africa. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Karzai Says Taliban Leader's Killing Has 'Hurt' Chances For Afghan Peace June 02, 2016 by Rabia Akram and Frud Bezhan KABUL -- Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai says the killing of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansur in a U.S. drone strike has damaged the prospects of a negotiated peace settlement with the militant group. Karzai, in an interview with RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal in Kabul on June 2, also called the war in Afghanistan a "foreign problem" and called on countries such as Russia, Iran, and India to be involved in the peace process. He said the May 21 drone strike that killed Mansur in the Balochistan Province of southwestern Pakistan "has hurt the peace process." "If the intention was peace, then this shouldn't have been done," Karzai said. During the last years of his 2002-14 presidency, Karzai had a rocky relationship with the United States and was critical of U.S. air strikes, which he said were killing too many civilians rather than the militants they targeted. Washington and Kabul hailed Mansur's death as a possible breakthrough in restarting stalled peace talks with the Taliban. Mansur had refused to engage in a series of talks held in Islamabad and attended by the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG), made up of officials from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States, and China. The group has been trying to facilitate direct talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban since 2015. Under Mansur's leadership, the Taliban made substantial military gains against Afghan security forces and carried out deadly bombings in Kabul. Since Mansur's death, the Afghan Taliban has announced that Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, a religious hard-liner, is the new Taliban leader. In a recent audio recording, a voice purported to be Akhundzada's vowed in a recent audio recording that there will be no return to peace talks. The drone strike that killed Mansur was the first known U.S. attack on a top Afghan Taliban leader on Pakistani soil. The attack angered Islamabad, which has accused Washington of violating its territorial integrity. "As it looks now and from all that I have heard in the statements from the Taliban, the government of Pakistan, others, it has hurt the peace process," Karzai said. The ex-president also called for a regional solution to the conflict in Afghanistan. He specifically called for Russia and neighboring Iran and India to be involved in any political settlement with the militants. "If peace in Afghanistan was our own issue, a matter among Afghans, then why did the United States get involved or why did Pakistan and China engage in talks?" Karzai said. "Their involvement [in the peace efforts] proves that our problem exists outside and is foreign." He added: "Since it is a foreign problem, there are foreigners that are powerful and strong and can have influence [on the talks]. Such actors are Russian, India and Iran -- these countries should also be included in the process so that we can have results." Karzai has close ties with India, where he once studied and which he has visited often, including after stepping down as president in 2014. India has been a key supporter of Kabul since the U.S. invasion in 2001, a stance that has led observers to point to the threat of a "proxy war" in Afghanistan between India and archrival Pakistan. Karzai has also forged warm ties with one-time Afghan nemesis Moscow. During his time in power, Karzai was keen to bolster ties with regional players like Russia to shore up security after the pullout of most NATO troops from Afghanistan in 2014. Moscow has a vested interest in containing the Islamic State (IS) militant group and other extremists. IS and Taliban fighters have made advances in northern Afghanistan, near the border with the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Moscow is also worried about the Afghan drug trade, which could worsen Russia's destructive heroin epidemic. Russia has signaled its willingness to boost its involvement in Afghan security and provide weapons and training to Afghan forces. In October, Russian President Vladimir Putin described the situation in Afghanistan as "genuinely close to critical" in an address to fellow Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) leaders at a summit in Kazakhstan. Putin warned of "terrorists of different stripes...gaining more influence and not hiding their plans for further expansion" and urged neighbors to "be ready to react in concert." In the past year, a number of Afghan lawmakers and high-profile officials, including Afghan Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum, a former warlord and Afghan Army general, have visited Russia to request helicopter gunships and heavy weapons. But Moscow has so far been wary of increasing its role in Afghan affairs. The Soviet Union's calamitous 1979-89 military venture in Afghanistan killed or displaced millions of Afghans and sapped Moscow's precious political, military, and economic resources in the Soviet Union's dying decade. Written by Frud Bezhan, based on reporting by Rabia Akramkhan Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/afghanistan-karzai-mansur-killing-hurt-chances-for-peace/27775213.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 German Lawmakers Recognize Ottoman Killings Of Armenians As A Genocide June 02, 2016 by RFE/RL Germany's lower house of parliament has approved a resolution recognizing the mass killings of Armenians during World War I by Ottoman forces as a "genocide," unleashing a furious reaction from Ottoman successor state Turkey. The five-page, symbolic resolution passed in the Bundestag on June 2 calls for a "commemoration of the genocide of Armenian and other Christian minorities in the years 1915 and 1916," when up to 1.5 million ethnic Armenians are thought to have been massacred. Turkey adamantly opposes the characterization of the killings as a genocide. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that the resolution "will seriously affect relations between Germany and Turkey," and Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus called it a "historic mistake." Erdogan said Ankara recalled its ambassador to Germany, Huseyin Avni Karslioglu, for consultations. Turkey's Foreign Ministry also summoned the German charge d'affaires to discuss how the resolution could impact ties. In a reference to the Nazi Holocaust of World War II, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavosoglu angrily suggested via Twitter that Germans were seeking to bury guilt over "dark pages" in their own history. "The way to close the dark pages in your own history is not to besmirch the history of other countries with irresponsible and groundless parliamentary decisions," he tweeted. Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus called it a "historic mistake." Turkey's Foreign Ministry later issued a statement accusing the Bundestag of trying to alienate millions of Turkish citizens who live in Germany from their national history. Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian praised the vote, saying Germany was making a "valuable contribution not only to the international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide, but also to the universal fight for the prevention of genocides, crimes against humanity." Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Kurtulmus called the resolution "null and void." "The German parliament's recognition of 'distorted and groundless' allegations as 'genocide' is a historic mistake," he said on Twitter. German Chancellor Angela Merkel brushed aside the storm of criticism from Ankara and questioned Erdogan's assertion that it would hurt German-Turkish ties. She said Germany's relations with Turkey remain "broad and strong." Merkel said that "there is a lot that binds Germany to Turkey. And even if we have a difference of opinion on an individual matter, the breadth of our links, our friendship, our strategic ties, is vast -- starting with defense issues and many other issues, and last but not least the 3 million Turkish citizens living in our country." German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said later on June 2 during a visit to Buenos Aires that "as expected, Turkey has reacted" and that he hopes the two countries "will succeed in the next days and weeks to avoid any overreaction." Franz Josef Jung, a politician who is in charge of the foreign policy portfolio of Merkel's Christian Democrats, acknowledged Turkey's fury but said that recognition of historical facts and "taking responsibility for the past is indispensable for reconciliation" between Turkey and Armenia. A dispute between Turkey and Germany over the resolution could further strain implementation of an agreement on the return and hosting of migrants between the European Union and Turkey amid the continent's most serious refugee flow since World War II. Merkel has staked her political fortunes on the deal as part of a solution to the humanitarian crisis as millions of Syrians and other non-Europeans have risked their lives to flee conflict and other sources of hardship. Under the terms of the March agreement, Ankara agreed to stem the flow of refugees to Europe in exchange for cash, visa-free travel rights, and accelerated talks on European Union membership. German officials have expressed hope the genocide vote doesn't doom the EU-Turkey migrant deal, but they are bracing for that possibility. German lawmakers noted the resolution acknowledges that the German Empire during World War I, then a military ally of the Ottoman Empire, did nothing to stop the killings. It says Germany is aware of the "uniqueness" of the Nazi Holocaust and it "regrets the inglorious role" of Germany for failing to stop the "crime against humanity." The resolution also urges the German government to "encourage" Turkey to "deal openly with the expulsions and massacres" in order to "lay the necessary foundation stone for a reconciliation with the Armenian people." Volker Kauder, Merkel's conservative ally and the parliamentary faction leader of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union alliance, stressed that the resolution did not condemn the Turkish people or the current Turkish government. Speaking on Germany's ARD television, Kauder said Germany wants to work with Turkey and recognizes that "Turkey is making an incredible contribution to the migrant issue as it has taken in 2 million people and looked after them." Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the resolution shows that Merkel's government is attempting "to divert attention from" a situation where "they are experiencing trouble in domestic policy." Tensions between Berlin and Ankara also flared in April over Erdogan's demand that a German satirist be prosecuted under a rarely applied section of the German penal code that threatens offenders with up to five years in prison for insulting foreign leaders. The United Nations defines a genocide as an action that intend "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group." But since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, each successive government in Turkey has historically rejected the notion that the killings constituted genocide. Ankara continues to argue that Armenians died because of civil strife related to the war rather than an organized campaign by Ottoman rulers to annihilate the Christian minority. Turkey's government also points out that many Turkish civilians died in the disorder that accompanied the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. On June 1, Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian urged German lawmakers to ignore the warnings from Erdogan and Yildirim. "It's not fair that you cannot call the genocide of the Armenians genocide just because the head of state of another country is angry about it," Sarkisian told the German daily Bild. Advocates in Germany's parliament for the resolution have included the opposition Greens party as well as lawmakers from Merkel's conservative bloc and the center-left Social Democrats. More than 20 countries -- including France, Russia, Italy, Brazil, and Canada -- recognize the killings and deportations of the Armenians by Ottoman Turks as a form of genocide. The European Parliament and 44 states of the United States also have recognized the killings as genocide, along with an overwhelming majority of historians around the world who are not Turkish. Tensions between Berlin and Ankara also flared in April over Erdogan's demand that a German satirist be prosecuted under a rarely applied section of the German Penal Code that threatens offenders with up to five years in prison for insulting foreign leaders. With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, Bild, ARD-TV, BBC, Hurriyet, 24 TV, and Anadolu Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/germany- recognizes-armenia-turkey-genocide/27774021.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 Germany Recognizes Armenian Genocide, Drawing Turkey's Ire by Dorian Jones June 02, 2016 German lawmakers voted overwhelmingly Thursday to recognize the World War I-era killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide, triggering an angry reaction from Ankara. "The resolution adopted by the German parliament will seriously impact relations between Germany and Turkey," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said shortly after the vote during a news conference, adding that, after the recall of the country's ambassador to Germany for consultations, the government would discuss what steps Ankara would take in response. Erdogan spoke in Nairobi while on a visit to Kenya. Turkey summoned Germany's charge d'affaires to the Foreign Ministry in Ankara after the German parliament's vote. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the two countries have broad, friendly and strategic ties despite a "difference of opinion on an individual matter." Speaking at a joint news conference with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in Berlin, Merkel said that Germany supported dialogue between Turkey and Armenia and sought good relations with Ankara. Ankara's options seen as limited Turkish government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus called the German vote a "historical mistake" and said Turkey's response to Berlin would be made in various forums. But with Germany being Turkey's biggest trading partner and home to 3 million ethnic Turks, political scientist Cengiz Aktar of Istanbul's Suleyman Sah University said Ankara's room to maneuver is limited. "Turkish-German relations are much too big to be impacted by this. Of course there will be all sorts of nationalist propaganda for internal purposes. But I am sure the Turkish authorities will stop short of going further than that," Aktar said. Ankara strongly denies the genocide charge, claiming the deaths of ethnic Armenians occurred in a civil war. It also says Armenians' claims that over 1.5 million people died is exaggerated. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Ankara accused Berlin of seeking to cover up its own dark past. The controversy comes as Ankara is playing a key role in helping the European Union to reduce the number of arriving migrants. A main beneficiary of that deal is Berlin. But observers say it is unlikely Ankara would use the migrant agreement against Berlin as Ankara is pressing Brussels for visa-free travel for its citizens. Sensitive issue for Turks But the genocide controversy remains a sensitive issue for Turkish nationalists, a powerful voting constituency in Turkey. Political columnist Semih Idiz of Turkey's Cumhuriyet newspaper warns with over 20 countries now recognizing the Armenian genocide claims, Ankara is finding itself increasingly isolated, but says Turkey's political leadership is trapped by its past. "We are where we are today, because of this wrong attitude. This hardcore denialist attitude. Which in fact is only on the government side. As you see in Turkish society, the taboos relating to this subject are being broken down. I mean even the genocide is being commemorated even in Turkey now, without anyone attacking the demonstrators," Idiz said. Until a few years ago, anyone in Turkey claiming that there had been an Armenian genocide would be subject to prosecution. In 2007, Hrant Dink, a prominent Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor, was murdered by a Turkish nationalist gunman for calling on Turkish society to face up to its past. Observers say today in Turkey people are openly delving into the country's difficult past, but with the president whipping up Turkish nationalist sentiments, questions remain on how long this new process will continue. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Venezuelan Political Strategist Granted Asylum in US by VOA News June 02, 2016 A Venezuelan political strategist has been granted asylum in the U.S., Colombian media reported Tuesday. J.J. Rendon, who has been living in Miami, confirmed on twitter that the U.S. had accepted his request for asylum, retweeting his lawyer's photo of the official letter. Rendon says he faces death threats in Venezuela where he openly opposes what he calls the pseudo revolution. "There is no argument, or enough money on the face of the earth, that would convince me to work with anyone involved in Chavismo," he is quoted as saying in a biography on his website. "Chavismo", named for the late socialist president Hugo Chavez, is a left-wing populist movement in Venezuela. The opposition won a majority of parliament seats in December - the first time non-supporters of Chavez has been in power since the 1990s. Rendon has worked on political campaigns at all levels across Latin America. In 2013 Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro declared Rendon the number one public enemy of Venezuela and has accused him of conspiring against the government. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Pakistan Imposes New Curbs At Afghan Border, Stranding Hundreds June 03, 2016 by RFE/RL Pakistan has imposed stringent new controls at a key border crossing with Afghanistan, stranding hundreds of people attempting to cross on June 2. Afghans now need valid passports and visas to enter Pakistan at the Torkham crossing near the Khyber Pass, but many people were unaware of the changes that came into force on June 1. Between 10,000 and 15,000 people typically use the crossing each day. Pakistan says the new rules are aimed at stopping militants from crossing into Pakistan and staging attacks, and it will soon apply the same rules at other crossing points with Afghanistan. Islamabad has been planning to increase border controls since the Army Public School attack that killed more than 150 people in 2014. Its resolve was bolstered by an assault on Bacha Khan University in January. Pakistan intelligence found that two of the university attackers traveled into Pakistan through Torkham. But while Islamabad claims that Kabul has not done enough to stop Pakistani Taliban militants living in Afghanistan from crossing the border and mounting attacks on Pakistan, Kabul has frequently had the opposite complaint: that Islamabad does little to deter Afghan Taliban members from staging attacks on their homeland from Pakistan. Pakistan has set up walk-through gates and scanning machines to check travelers and their luggage. Their passports and visas are checked by border guards. Pakistan says the system will soon be extended to seven main crossings between Afghanistan and Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, as well as an eighth crossing into Balochistan Province, when funds are available. The restrictions are expected to affect an estimated 1 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Most have large families on both sides and travel back and forth. They are also mostly poor and uneducated. Afghan refugees living in Pakistan have shuttled back and forth across Torkham for nearly 40 years without being asked questions. A woman and her daughter on the Afghan side of the border could be seen on June 2 weeping as they could not reach a sick relative in a hospital in Peshawar. They did not know the crossing had been closed. The border station is usually packed with cargo-filled trucks and minibuses crammed with passengers. Drivers on both sides said they are nervous they will lose business. Some travelers who regularly cross the border on foot were outraged. "I have to cross the border every morning to go to work and return home. How can I get a visa every time?" Mohammed Yusuf, an Afghan national, told Al-Jazeera. "How can each visiting family member pay $300 for a passport?" The long and porous border has long been a source of tension between the two countries, and the new border curbs could revive a historical dispute centered on how the border was drawn. In the late 1800s, Mortimer Durand, a British colonial diplomat, drew the border, which Afghans say cut off a third of their territory and placed it in Pakistan, which was then part of British India. The severed, formerly Afghan regions included the current-day Pakistani provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Some Afghans never came to terms with the arrangement, which was signed off by an Afghan king at the time. "I blame the Afghan authorities at that time," Faridon Momand, an Afghan legislator, told Al-Jazeera. "For short-term gains, they cut one body in two, causing harm that still hurts today." Some of Faridon's family members are prominent politicians in Pakistan and their native village is divided in two by the Durand Line. With reporting by BBC and Al-Jazeera Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/pakistan- imposes-curbs-visas-passports-afghan-border-crossing- stranding-hundreds-refugees/27775951.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 US Sees Islamic State Group Spreading its Tentacles by Pamela Dockins June 02, 2016 The global terrorism threat is becoming increasingly decentralized with groups such as Islamic State spreading tentacles into regions including Southeast Asia, Russia's North Caucasus and Africa, the State Department said in its annual report on terrorism. While al-Qaida, Boko Haram and al-Shabab continue to launch destabilizing attacks, the State Department said IS remained the greatest threat globally last year, with a "formidable force" in Syria and Iraq. It says while some of the Islamic State's forces in these two countries eroded during the latter half of 2015, fighters with the militant group managed to wage a series of attacks elsewhere, in countries including France and Turkey. Islamic State also made gains in Libya and established affiliates in countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. The State Department lists nearly 60 U.S. designated foreign terrorist groups in its annual report, and it also singles out several countries as bad actors in the global fight against extremism. In a VOA interview, Acting Coordinator for Counterterrorism Justin Siberell said the report tries to provide a "better understanding of what is going on at the localized level" so that the U.S. and its allies can tailor efforts to fight extremists. "Although our efforts have been quite successful in keeping these groups off balance, they continue to recruit new members," Siberell said. "Our response really needs to be expanded into a better understanding of the drivers of radicalization," he said. Other Key Findings: Boko Haram: Declared Islamic State affiliation; Killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands in Lake Chad Basin region. Al Qaida: Central leadership weakened, but group remained threat; Inspired network of affiliate groups in Arabian Peninsula, Maghreb and Indian subcontinent. Al Shabab: Waged deadly attacks in Somalia; Sought to reverse progress made by Somali government and weaken "political will" of AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia). Bad State Actors: Iran: Considered "foremost" state sponsor of terrorism; Cited for support of Hezbollah, Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza, extremists in Iraq and throughout Middle East. Sudan: Retained State Sponsor of Terrorism designation due to U.S. concerns about support of groups including Fatah, Palestine Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Hezbollah. Syria: Assad regime provided political support to terror groups affecting regional stability; Provided weapons, political support to Hezbollah. Progress: -The State Department said 45 countries passed or updated laws dealing with foreign fighters. -Thirty-five countries arrested foreign fighters. -Twelve countries "successfully prosecuted" at least one foreign fighter, last year. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Alan Burkitt-Gray speaks to Michael Wheeler, executive vice president at NTT Ltd, about a name change for the company, NTT's contribution in the midst of the pandemic and all things network security. English Lithuanian Vilnius, Lithuania, 2016-06-03 15:41 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On the initiative of a shareholder of AB INVL Technology (legal entity code 300893533, address of the registered office: Gyneju str. 16, Vilnius, Republic of Lithuania, hereinafter, the Company), shares held by which grant at least 1/10 votes, and by the decision of Kazimieras Tonkunas, authorised person of the Company, the Companys extraordinary general meeting of shareholders is to be held on 27 June 2016 at 8:30 a.m. The extraordinary general meeting of shareholders will be held in the premises at Gyneju str. 14, Vilnius. Registration of the shareholders will start at 8:00 a.m. Only the persons who are the shareholders of the Company at the end of the accounting day of the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders are entitled to participate and to vote at the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders. The accounting day of the meeting is 17 June 2016. The total number of the shares issued by the Company, with the nominal value of EUR 0.29 each, and the number of votes carried by such shares in the general meeting of shareholders are the same 12,175,321 shares. ISIN code of the Companys shares is LT0000128860. Agenda of the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders: 1. Amendment of the Articles of Association of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology and approval of a new wording of the Articles of Association. 2. Amendment of the Management Agreement of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology with the management company UAB INVL Asset Management and approval of a new wording of the Management Agreement. 3. Approval of the rules for formation and activities of the audit committee of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology, election of members of the audit committee and setting remuneration for the independent member of the audit committee. Draft resolutions of the Companys extraordinary general meeting of shareholders: 1. Amendment of the Articles of Association of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology and approval of a new wording of the Articles of Association. To amend the Articles of Association of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology approved by a resolution of the general meeting of shareholders of AB INVL Technology held on 29 April 2016 and to approve a new wording of the Articles of Association of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology, by replacing the text of the Articles of Association in full (enclosed). To authorise Kazimieras Tonkunas (with the right to re-delegate the authority) to sign the Articles of Association of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology. 2. Amendment of the Management Agreement of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology with the management company UAB INVL Asset Management and approval of a new wording of the Management Agreement. To amend the Management Agreement approved by a resolution of the general meeting of shareholders of AB INVL Technology held on 29 April 2016 with the management company UAB INVL Asset Management (legal entity code 126263073, address of the registered office: Gyneju str. 14, Vilnius, Republic of Lithuania) and to approve a new wording of the Management Agreement of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology with the management company UAB INVL Asset Management, by replacing the text of the Management Agreement in full (enclosed). 3. Approval of the rules for formation and activities of the audit committee of a special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology, election of members of the audit committee and setting remuneration for the independent member of the audit committee. To approve the rules for formation and activities of the audit committee of a special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology (enclosed). To elect Danute Kadanaite and Tomas Bubinas (independent member of the audit committee) as members of the audit committee of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology. To set remuneration for the independent member of the audit committee for his work in the audit committee at the hourly rate not higher than EUR 145. To instruct the management company UAB INVL Asset Management (legal entity code 126263073, address of the registered office: Gyneju str. 14, Vilnius, Republic of Lithuania) to determine the procedure of payment of the remuneration to the independent member of the audit committee after the issuance of the license for the closed-end type investment company. The shareholders may review the documents related to the agenda of the meeting, draft resolutions on every item of the agenda, documents which have to be submitted to the general meeting of shareholders and other information related to exercise of the shareholders rights in the premises of AB INVL Technology at Gyneju str. 16, Vilnius, during working hours. The shareholders are entitled: (i) to propose to supplement the agenda of the general meeting of shareholders, submitting a draft resolution on every additional item of the agenda or, where there is no need to take a decision, of the shareholders explanation (this right is granted to shareholders who hold shares carrying at least 1/20 of all the votes). A proposal to supplement the agenda is to be submitted in writing by registered mail or delivered in person against signature. The agenda is supplemented if the proposal is received no later than 14 days before the general meeting of shareholders; (ii) to propose draft resolutions on the issues already included or to be included in the agenda of the general meeting of shareholders at any time prior to the date of the general meeting of shareholders (in writing, by registered mail or delivered in person against signature) or in writing during the general meeting of shareholders (this right is granted to shareholders who hold shares carrying at least 1/20 of all the votes); (iii) to submit questions to the Company related to the issues on the agenda of the general meeting of shareholders in advance but no later than 3 business days prior to the general meeting of shareholders in writing by registered mail or delivered in person against signature. A shareholder participating at the general meeting of shareholders and having the right to vote, must present a personal identity document. Each shareholder may authorize either a natural or a legal person to participate and to vote on behalf of the shareholder at the general meeting of shareholders. The proxy has the same rights as the represented shareholder would have at the general meeting of shareholders. The authorized persons must have personal identity documents and a power of attorney approved in the manner specified by law, which must be submitted to the Company no later than before the commencement of registration for the general meeting of shareholders. A power of attorney issued abroad must be translated into the Lithuanian language and legalised in accordance with the procedure prescribed by law. The Company does not establish a special form of a power of attorney. A shareholder is entitled to issue a power of attorney by means of electronic communications to legal or natural persons for participation and voting on his behalf at the general meeting of shareholders. The shareholder must inform the Company about the power of attorney issued by means of electronic communications no later than before the commencement of registration for the general meeting of shareholders. The power of attorney issued by means of electronic communications and the notice about it must be written and may be submitted to the Company by means of electronic communications, if the security of transmitted information is ensured and the identity of the shareholder can be verified. A shareholder or his proxy may vote in writing by filling in a general ballot paper, in this case the requirement to present a personal identity document does not apply. The form of a general ballot paper is presented on the Companys website. Upon a shareholders request, the Company shall send the general ballot paper to the requesting shareholder by registered mail or shall deliver it in person against signature no later than 10 days prior to the general meeting of shareholders free of charge. The shareholder or his authorized representative must sign a completed general ballot paper. The completed general ballot paper signed by the shareholder or other person having the right to vote and the document confirming the right to vote must be presented to the Company in writing no later than on the last working day preceding the meeting, sending them by registered mail to AB INVL Technology at Gyneju str. 16, LT-01109 Vilnius. The Company does not provide possibilities of participating and voting at the meeting by means of electronic communications. Information in connection with the convened general meeting of shareholders (notice on convocation of the general meeting of shareholders, information about the Companys shares, draft resolutions, etc.) is available on AB INVL Technologys website at www.invltechnology.lt. Enclosed: 1. Ballot paper of the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders; 2. Draft Articles of Association of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology; 3. Draft Management Agreement of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology with the management company UAB INVL Asset Management; 4. Draft rules for formation and activities of the audit committee of special closed-end type private capital investment company INVL Technology; 5. Curriculum vitae of Danute Kadanaite; 6. Curriculum vitae of Tomas Bubinas. Portillo's in The Corridor on Bluemound Road in Brookfield will be opening July 19. Charles Auer/Freeman Staff As part of Virginias First Offender Program, a person facing a first drug conviction can receive a restricted drivers license to travel to work, school and other activities, Del. Danny Marshall said Wednesday in a news release. It is very important to correct the misconception about the driving, Marshall said. While the persons full driving privileges are taken away for six months, the court can direct DMV to issue a restricted license so that the person can go independently to work and attend the required probationary meetings and community service. Marshall was responding to a letter to the editor, A flaw in First Offender program, (on page A8 of Wednesdays newspaper), by Danville resident Carolyn Tanner. In the letter, Tanner expressed frustration over the six-month suspension of a full drivers license as required by Virginia law. Tanner said when she wrote the letter, she was not aware of the restricted license aspect of the program. Under the program, the restricted license may be used for 13 activities outlined by Virginia law, including driving to work, school, drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs and other uses. Additionally, Marshall said a judge also could determine other uses for the licenses, such as looking for employment or going to job interviews. Marshall praised the program for its power to forgive people before they entered the cycle of multiple convictions and prison sentences. The tremendous benefit of this program is that upon successful completion of the probation requirements, the person is basically forgiven without having an offense on the record, he said in the release. Tanner agreed with Marshall, and said felonies place too many burdens on citizens attempting to re-enter society. The major prediction of a second felony is a first felony, she said. Tanner said she hoped lawmaker would continue to take steps to help ex-offenders rebuild their lives. A Schoolfield Elementary School teacher asked the Danville School Board not to move current principal Everette Johnson to another position in the school district during the boards monthly meeting Thursday. How can you show stability to the faculty, to the students and to the parents if after two years you want to move someone who has made progress, said teacher Tonya MaCrae. MaCrae, a second-grade teacher at Schoolfield, said staff members were informed in a meeting one day before school ended that Johnson might be leaving the position after two years. MaCrae said she was frustrated at the bad timing of the announcement and said it was unprofessional. We were very upset and very disappointed, MaCrae said. MaCrae said Schoolfield was making progress under Johnsons leadership, but two years was not enough time for more restructuring. There has been a lot of progress academically and with behavior, MaCrae said. MaCrae asked the board and administrators to consider the lack of stability in moving Johnson after such a short time period, and the effect it would have on every other member of the school. Agenda items The board heard an end-of-the-year discipline report from Coordinator of Support Services Robin Owens. Owens reported that this year all infractions and suspensions had decreased from the 2014-15 school year. Infractions were down 12 percent, long-term suspensions were down 11 percent and expulsions were down 40 percent. There was a significant decrease in the number of students who had a recommended expulsion, Owens said. Owens said the new discipline process had greatly benefited the amount of behavior problems and suspensions. She said administrators would continue to tweak the process before the upcoming school year. Board members also approved bids for both the rehabilitation of school bus parking lots and grounds service for elementary schools in the district. Two and a half weeks after receiving a three-year suspended sentence in connection with the shooting of his neighbor, a former Henry County Sheriffs Office deputy has filed a $1 million civil suit against an area resident, according to a filing in the Henry County Circuit Court Clerks Office. Joshua Dean Nash, 28, of 239 Blue Spruce Drive in the Snow Creek area, has filed the suit against Chelsea Hopkins of Figsboro Road. According to the legal document prepared by his attorney Glen Koontz, he is seeking a trial by jury. On May 16, Nash was given a three-year suspended sentence in the unlawful wounding of his neighbor, Eric Eysenbach, 60. That sentence was handed down in Franklin County Circuit Court by Judge Clyde Perdue. Perdue also accepted a defense request for a deferred disposition on a count of discharging a firearm in an occupied dwelling, which will come up for review in one year and could be dismissed. According to a Roanoke Times article, in the early morning of May 17, 2015, Eysenbach found Nash in his Snow Creek home. Nash was armed with a laser-sight equipped .380 Smith & Wesson and shot Eysenbach in the shoulder. Eysenbach escaped, and police found Nash partially undressed and unconscious in a recliner in Eysenbachs living room. The article adds that at the sentencing hearing for Nash, veterinarian and toxicologist Gerry Henningsen testified that he understood Nash had been drinking at a party a few hours before the shooting and had been given intravenous fluid injections by an off-duty paramedic, possibly as a means to induce sobriety. Instead, Henningsen theorized, it had caused "fluid overload," which he said could have led to water intoxication. According to the civil suit filed Wednesday in Henry County, Chelsea Hopkins was named as the off-duty paramedic who allegedly administered the intravenous fluid to Nash. The suit states that on May 16, 2015, at approximately 10 p.m., Nash and his wife, Donna Nash, arrived at Hopkins residence for a birthday party. The party continued into the early morning hours of May 17, 2015, and around 4 a.m. on that date, Nash "sat down in a chair and drifted off to sleep." "For reasons unknown," the suit continues, at approximately 4:30 a.m., Hopkins allegedly inserted a needle into Nashs arm while he slept and intravenously administered two one-liter bags of saline fluid to Nash over the course of 15-20 minutes. The suit alleges that Nash was unaware of the actions, and that the insertion of the needle and intravenous feeding of the saline solution did not wake him. It adds that Nash did not request or consent to the administering of the saline solution. At approximately 5 a.m., the suit alleges, Donna Nash helped her husband into their truck, and noticed that he was now slurring his speech and having difficulty walking, conditions he did not exhibit prior to falling asleep at the party. After driving her husband home, a distance of 1-2 miles, the suit alleges that Donna Nash exited the vehicle and went to unlock the home and turn off the security system prior to helping her husband from the vehicle; upon returning to the truck, however, she discovered that her husband had disappeared from the vehicle. It was at that time, the suit alleges, that Nash entered Eysenbachs home, encountered Eysenbach, and shot him in the shoulder for reasons unknown. Eysenbach fled to a neighbors house, according to the suit, and the neighbor summoned the Franklin County Sheriffs Office to respond to the incident. Upon arriving at the Eysenbach residence, the suit alleges that Franklin County Sheriffs Deputy Lt. Gower found Nash "slumped in a chair in the living room." It did not appear that Nash was breathing and he appeared to be in a "catatonic or comatose state." "According to Lt. Gower, Mr. Nash appeared to be dead," the suit states. "Lt. Gower slapped Mr. Nash hard and sharp across his head; Mr. Nash did not awaken or respond." Nash was removed from the residence, transported to the jail in Rocky Mount and placed under arrest, the suit continues. The suit alleges that Hopkins was negligent in her actions toward Nash, and that by intravenously feeding him the two bags of saline solution fluids, she "violated her duty to exercise ordinary care to protect him from injury" and "violated medical norms, standards and protocols." The suit further alleges that by injecting Nash with saline solution, Hopkins acted "wantonly and with criminal indifference to the effect and result of her actions." Because of the saline solution, the suit alleges, Nash "likely suffer(ed) a brain edema" which caused him to "enter into a state of delirium" and "become detached from reality, and be unable to act reasonably and rationally." It may also have caused him to "suffer from lesions on his brain and related symptoms, including, but not limited to, headaches and other physical pain." The damages Nash suffered as a result, the suit continues, include arrest and incarceration; loss of custody and visitation with his child; loss of his job as a Henry County Sheriffs deputy; loss of income; the incurrence of financial expenses; and "physical pain, mental anguish and humiliation." The suit requests compensatory damages of $1 million; punitive damages in an amount to be determined at trial; costs incurred in the prosecution of the case; and "such other and further relief as may be deemed just." Republican leaders called Friday for Gov. Terry McAuliffe to address a series of errors that they said resulted in voting and civil rights being restored for a murderer serving a life sentence and two sex offenders still in prison. The Washington Post reported Friday that two Northern Virginia prosecutors had found multiple cases of criminals wrongly included in a state database of offenders covered by the governor's executive order restoring rights for more than 200,000 felons. On a call with reporters Friday morning, GOP leaders in the General Assembly, who are suing to stop the order, said the errors show the McAuliffe administration failed to do the due diligence required to accurately carry out the order. The data problems, Republicans said, validate their argument that rights should be restored an individual, case-by-case basis rather than sweeping decrees for an entire group. "Overall, this is just a stunning level of incompetence and recklessness," said House of Delegates Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford. "It just is another validation that this governor and his administration did not think this process through at all," said Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr., R-James City. Republicans called for the firing of employees responsible and again urged McAuliffe to release the base list of 206,000 felons believed to meet the criteria for the order. The governor's office has declined multiple Freedom of Information requests seeking the list. Republicans said its release would allow prosecutors, the media and citizens to check the administration's work. Prosecutors from Loudoun and Fauquier counties said they discovered the errors by checking past cases of serious crimes in their localities against the state's online database that allows ex-offenders to check if their rights have been restored. "When you magnify this across the commonwealth of Virginia, I think you're going to have profound consequences," said Fauquier Commonwealth's Attorney Jim Fisher. Vancouver, BC (FSCwire) - CKR Carbon Corp.. (CKR or the Company) (TSX-V: CKR) (CB8FRANKFURT) (CBULF USA) is pleased to announce the results of assays on approximately 160 kilograms of samples sent to TEA-Lab (previously Lilof Enterprises) of Swakopmund, Namibia. The average grade of 59.40% Cg (Carbon as graphite) for the graphite samples resulted from only screening of material from the Aukam dumps. Average grades of flake graphite deposits typically range from 1.5% to 25% Cg. Assay Results Total results of all assays from 7 samples ranging in weight from 20 kg to 30kg show a range of 55.64% Cg (carbon as graphite) to 63.87% Cg with an average of 59.40% Cg (See results below). While these samples were selected from a larger 1.6 tonne sample of the dumps, they are not considered representative of the mineralization on the property as a whole. Sample Number Carbon as Graphite (%) 1975 57.50 1980 63.87 2015 55.64 2075 58.66 2080 58.75 2225 60.86 2345 60.49 Average 59.40 These samples were taken from a 1.6 tonne sample shipped as part of our commitments under a Letter of Intent with a vertically integrated graphite producer (See news release dated March 16, 2016) and are believed to be representative of that larger sample. The grade of these samples exceeds our expectations based on previous assays of screened bulk samples from the Aukam dumps that averaged 42% Cg said Dr. Roger Moss, Chief Executive Officer of CKR Carbon. We expect the 1.6 tonne sample to respond well to processing and look forward to the results of the test. Assays were performed at TEA-Lab of Swakopmund. Samples were crushed by hammer and jaw crusher to <5mm and split before milling sub-samples to < 200 microns followed by thermo-gravimetric analysis. The technical content of this news release was approved by Roger Moss, Ph.D., P.Geo a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. About the Aukam Project CKR has an option to acquire up to 73% in the Aukam graphite project by meeting certain milestones and making cash payments. The project is located on 34,082.15 hectares in southern Namibia close to the port city of Luderitz. The property hosts three underground adits which were mined periodically between 1940 and 1974. Five dumps from the historical mining occur on the property and 73 samples from the lower three dumps were assayed and averaged 42% Cg. CKR is planning a bulk sampling program at Aukam, and has a letter of intent to sell the graphitic material produced during the program. CKR also intends to put the historical mine back into production and is working on an application for a mining license. The company maintains high safety and environmental standards and has a comprehensive strategy of social engagement. About CKR Carbon Corporation CKR Carbon Corp. is focused on high quality, natural graphite suitable for use in lithium-ion batteries, graphite foil and other value-added high growth technology applications. We only select projects requiring low capital and a short time to market. The company is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol CKR and has 33.2 million shares outstanding. For more information: visit the website at www.ckrcarbon.com or contact: Roger Moss, CEO, +1 416-704-8291 E-mail inquiries: rmoss@ckrcarbon.com For graphite product enquiries: Arno Brand, Boswell Projects, +1 416-561-4095 abrand@boswellprojects.com Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: This news release contains forward-looking statements, which relate to future events or future performance and reflect managements current expectations and assumptions. Such forward-looking statements reflect managements current beliefs and are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company. Investors are cautioned that these forward looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ materially from those expected. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and, except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements and by those made in our filings with SEDAR in Canada (available atwww.sedar.com). To view this press release as a PDF file, click onto the following link:public://news_release_pdf/CKR0632016.pdfSource: CKR Carbon Corp. (TSX Venture:CKR) http://www.ckr-carbon.com/ Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2016 Filing Services Canada Inc. TRADING SYMBOL: TSXV:EPO VANCOUVER, June 3, 2016 /CNW/ - Encanto Potash Corp. ("Encanto" or the "Company") (TSXV: EPO) is pleased to announce that, further to its news release of May 16, 2016, it has closed its private placement of non-flow-through units ("Units") and flow-through shares. A total of 24,503,000 Units were issued at a price of $0.105 per Unit for gross proceeds of $2,572,815. Each Unit consists of one common share and one warrant, each warrant entitling the holder to purchase one common share at a price of $0.16 per share on or before December 3, 2018. Additionally, a total of 3,125,000 flow-through common shares were issued at a price of $0.16 per share for gross proceeds of $500,000. Finders' fees of $25,210 were paid in connection with the private placement. The proceeds from the private placement will allow Encanto to discharge its accounts payable, will provide working capital, and will provide funds for work on the Muskowekwan Project and to establish the potash trading company. Insiders purchased an aggregate of 11,715,500 Units. The shares and warrants comprising the Units issued in connection with the private placement are subject to a hold period expiring October 4, 2016, and the flow-through shares are subject to a hold period expiring September 25, 2016. The Company also announces that, subject to receipt of final acceptance for filing of the TSX Venture Exchange, it is issuing 20,000,000 bonus shares in consideration for consulting services, of which 8,000,000 shares will be subject to a four month hold period from the date of issuance and the balance of 12,000,000 shares will be held in escrow and subject to release as follows: (a) 6,000,000 escrow shares upon receipt by the escrow agent of written confirmation from Encanto, that Encanto or a trading company in which Encanto has a commercial interest, has successfully delivered its first shipment of potash to Metals and Minerals Trading Company of India ("MMTC") pursuant to a Memorandum of Understanding with MMTC dated October 9, 2015, as amended March 10, 2016, or has successfully delivered its first shipment of potash to any public sector undertaking of the Government of India; and (b) 6,000,000 escrow shares or, if 6,000,000 escrow shares have not been released pursuant to (a) above, then 12,000,000 escrow shares, upon receipt by the escrow agent of written confirmation from Encanto that Encanto or an affiliate has entered into a definitive off-take agreement with MMTC or a party arranged by MMTC or by the holders of the escrow shares for the long term supply of potash. About Encanto: Encanto Potash Corp. is a TSX Venture Exchange listed and traded Canadian resource company engaged in the development of potash properties in the Province of Saskatchewan, Canada, the largest producing potash region in the world. Through a joint venture agreement with Muskowekwan Resources Ltd. on our flagship property, Encanto has a project land package which totals approximately 61,000 largely contiguous acres. A Pre-Feasibility Study dated February 28 2013 titled "Encanto Potash Corp. Technical Report Summarizing the Preliminary Feasibility Study for the Muskowekwan First Nations Home Reserve Project in South Eastern Saskatchewan, Canada" confirms the Proven & Probable KCI Reserves totaling 162 MMt grading 28% which supports primary and secondary mining for over 50 years at an assumed annual rate extraction rate of 2.8 million tonnes. The Company has a 5% interest in the 55,000 acre Ochapowace/Chacachas property also located in Saskatchewan. The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by James Walchuck, a qualified person as defined by NI 43-101. For additional information about Encanto Potash Corp., please visit the Company's website at www.encantopotash.com or review the Company's documents filed on www.sedar.com. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS "James Walchuck" Per: James Walchuck CEO 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. THE FOREGOING INFORMATION MAY CONTAIN FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION RELATING TO THE FUTURE PERFORMANCE OF THE COMPANY. FORWARD LOOKING INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO A NUMBER OF KNOWN AND UNKNOWN RISKS, UNCERTAINTIES AND OTHER FACTORS THAT MAY CAUSE ACTUAL RESULTS TO DIFFER MATERIALLY FROM THOSE ANTICIPATED IN OUR FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS. SUCH RISKS AND OTHER FACTORS INCLUDE, AMONG OTHERS, THE ACTUAL RESULTS OF EXPLORATION ACTIVITIES, CHANGES IN WORLD COMMODITY MARKETS OR EQUITY MARKETS, THE RISKS OF THE MINING INDUSTRY INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THOSE ASSOCIATED WITH THE ENVIRONMENT, DELAYS IN OBTAINING GOVERNMENTAL APPROVALS, PERMITS OR FINANCING OR IN THE COMPLETION OF DEVELOPMENT OR CONSTRUCTION ACTIVITIES, TITLE DISPUTES, CHANGE IN GOVERNMENT AND CHANGES TO REGULATIONS AFFECTING THE MINING INDUSTRY, AND OTHER RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES DETAILED FROM TIME TO TIME IN THE COMPANY'S FILINGS WITH THE CANADIAN SECURITIES ADMINISTRATORS (AVAILABLE AT WWW.SEDAR.COM). FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS ARE MADE BASED ON VARIOUS ASSUMPTIONS AND ON MANAGEMENT'S BELIEFS, ESTIMATES AND OPINIONS ON THE DATE THE STATEMENTS ARE MADE. SHOULD ONE OR MORE OF THESE RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES MATERIALIZE, OR SHOULD UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS PROVE INCORRECT, ACTUAL RESULTS MAY VARY MATERIALLY FROM THOSE DESCRIBED IN THE FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN. THE COMPANY UNDERTAKES NO OBLIGATION TO UPDATE FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS IF THESE ASSUMPTIONS, BELIEFS, ESTIMATES AND OPINIONS OR OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD CHANGE, EXCEPT AS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW. SOURCE Encanto Potash Corp. In the face of a burgeoning dating app culture, are punters swiping left on traditional bar hookups? The commentators on New York Magazine's popular Sex Lifes podcast think so, likening an rendezvous with a fellow barfly to "hiring someone without seeing their resume". Apps like Tinder have destroyed nightlife in New York, they recently said, labelling the good old bar embrace as "weird and rare". Time to face up: Does Tinder really work for women? Photo: Simon Schluter "If you flirt with someone, it's like complete insanity, you're not supposed to do that," writer and comedian Phoebe Robinson said. "If they don't have someone to talk to, they call someone in [via an app]." In July last year, it was estimated that 15 per cent of Aussies use Tinder, verifying that the once-sleazy platform has turned mainstream. Now we have Happn (based on proximity), Bumble (the girl has to talk first) and Hinge (based on your social networks), among others. Before the digital dating revolution, hitting a bar was the pathway to passion for most singles, fuelled by the social lubricants of alcohol and supportive mates. Ramblin' Rascal Tavern bartender Charlie Lehmann believes old-fashioned two-drinks-in romance is alive and well. Photo: Daniel Munoz Can we still fall in lust, without knowing if the potential philanderer is inclined to the odd gym selfie, or prefers cats to dogs? And, more importantly, are bars still the same good-time venues without the promise of swipe-free affection? Orlan Erin Raleigh, co-owner of Jangling Jacks in Sydney's Potts Point, thinks that it all comes down to the actual venue, but overall, dating apps have been a positive thing for small bars in particular. "Tinder forces people to go out and try new things, try new bars, and maybe suggest to the other person that they just give somewhere new a go," Raleigh said. Advertisement "You can 100 per cent tell when people are on a first date; there is usually one person waiting and other walks in, looks around nervously and goes 'hi, are you so-and-so?'. There's a booth at the front we call the 'kissing booth' because there's often a good make-out session there." In the pick-up stakes, there's one kind of bar that has a major advantage: those with limited reception. "We get no reception. It means that no phones ring in the bar, and people are usually looking around, interacting and listening to the music." That means at Jangling Jacks, and Sydney's slew of underground bars, such as the city's The Baxter Inn and Darlinghurst's Shady Pines, patrons who haven't scored a match before going out are forced to pick up at the old-fashioned way. Back above ground, not all hope is lost. At Ramblin' Rascal, in Sydney's CBD, old-fashioned two-drinks-in romance is alive and well, according to bartender Charlie Lehmann. "It's a small space so you have to interact with the people around you. There's nowhere to run and hide. I was talking to two girls in here the other night, and group of guys came over and approached them," Lehmann said. "Australians tend to be more outgoing and welcoming that people in the states; what we do in hospitality is very different to London, New York or Tokyo. It's a very Australian thing to sit and talk to someone that you've never met before." Myffy Rigby, national Good Food Guides editor and creative director of Good Food Month, reckons that digital dating platforms can also create a fresh spate of IRL awkwardness far worse than the usual by-the-bar rejection. "I was at the bar with some pals and a guy came up to me and said, 'I swiped right on you on Tinder', to which I said, 'Oh, that's nice, I'm flattered. I'm going over here with my friends now'." The wannabe Tinderella then quietly followed her to another bar, surprising her with a tap on the shoulder and a propensity to hover. "I wasn't sure what he expected to get out of it it's a little bit creepy, like a double attack. But then I recognised a guy from a dating app in real life, but I got too shy to approach him, which I never normally would. "There's a double whammy of creepiness, and then a double whammy of real rejection as well." As far as bar atmosphere goes, Rigby said that our reliance on phones is more damaging than the actual apps. "It's the addiction to being distracted that's ruining bars. I think dating apps like Tinder, Bumble or Happn are just distractions how often do you actually people up with the people? It's just a game; it even says, 'Do you want to keep playing?'," she said. "Rather than talking to the person next to you, you're trying to order the McDonalds of people, looking for that elusive Big Mac, when it could be sitting right next to you. People aren't talking as much and that ruins the atmosphere of the bar." Favourites from Northern Light, such as chicken-skin yakitori, make an appearance at Honcho Noodle. Photo: Supplied It's a case of try before you buy for Adam Liston's forthcoming Punch Lane Korea-Japanese-Chinese restaurant, Honcho. He's just opened a pop-up version, Honcho Noodle, for a three-month run. In collaboration with Hotel Windsor owners the Halim Group, chef Liston has set up shop in the old Wallis & Ed site off Bourke Street, glamming it up a bit without spending too much cash (they'll save that for the real thing come September) a splash of neon, manga projections and additional outside seating for 20 more noodle lovers. It's a short, sharp menu of "noodles" and "not noodles", the latter a swansong for some favourites from Liston's Northern Light days; think chicken-skin yakitori and those delightful prawn crackers. Honcho's soba noodles with spring onions and black vinegar. Photo: Supplied The rest is a stepping stone for Liston, "a taste of what Honcho will be": steaming bowls of souped-up noodles like a spicy kind of red ramen with an organic Korean mountain water noodle that Liston's imported direct (in fact, he's got his hands on the entire Australian allotment), barbecue pork and gochujang. Don't overlook the on-table condiments: katsubishi-infused soy, house-made togarashi and Chinese-style chilli paste will heat things up. Open Tue-Sat 5pm-10.30pm. 1 Bourke Street, Melbourne honchomelbourne.com MoVida restaurant in Surry Hills will close at the end of the month. Photo: Fiona Morris It's a case of one door closing and another one opening for Surry Hills residents, on the back of Frank Camorra's announcement that MoVida Sydney will permanently close at the end of June. The rock and rollers from nearby Porteno have snapped up the space, with plans to completely relocate the restaurant to MoVida's nearby Holt Street site, and convert the current Porteno site on Cleveland Street into an events space. Co-owner Sarah Doyle said that massive renovation works will kick off in July, with a planned opening date of October. Porteno will continue operating in Cleveland Street until the new site is ready. Related Content Frank Camorra to close MoVida Sydney "We're going to do an complete overhaul; it's an amazing site, with a really interesting layout, which we're going to optimise a bit more," Doyle said. "It will still have the same feel [as the original Porteno], with the same people and the same music." It's a win-win for Sydneysiders, as Doyle, along with restaurateurs Elvis Abrahanowicz and Ben Milgate, plans to host some epic parties in the old space. Fire 'em up: The grill at Porteno on Cleveland Street, Surry Hills. Photo: Christopher Pearce "We've been doing live music, weddings and even an Alice McCall [fashion] launch the other day, but at the moment we're just so restricted due to our trading hours. We like we want do there - we just want to do more of it. Live music is a big thing for us, and it has a late night licence that we can use for events." Doyle and Abrahanowiz jet off to Argentina next week, on a part-personal, part-inspiration seeking trip. The fresh-faced Porteno will still have a signature fire pit, with bar and dining sections, but will gain a private dining room, and possibly a lunch service. The menu will stay true to the classics. "All of the old favourites will be there, but there are a few new things that the team is working on as well," Doyle said. The original Porteno restaurant will become an events space. Photo: Jennifer Soo "I'll resign if they take the Brussels sprouts off the menu." Associated Press Kayla Mitchell serves a customer March 23 at Good Day Cafe in North Andover, Mass. Payroll processor ADP reported 173,000 net new jobs in private companies in May. SHARE Hiring up from April but off 15 pace By Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times (TNS) WASHINGTON Private companies increased their job creation last month, adding 173,000 net new positions, but hiring lagged last years stronger pace, payroll firm Automatic Data Processing said Thursday. The May growth was an increase from the upwardly revised 166,000 net new jobs created the previous month. The April figure initially was estimated at 156,000, which would have been the slowest pace in three years. Still, job creation in April and May was well off the strong monthly pace of about 207,000 last year. So far this year, monthly private-sector job growth has averaged about 188,000, ADP said. There does appear to be some slowing in job growth, at least in the last two or three months, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys Analytics, which assists ADP in preparing the monthly report. I think its premature to conclude this is going to be a persistent slowdown, he said. The U.S. economy has been averaging about 200,000 net new jobs a month for about five years and a slowdown probably is on the horizon as the nation approaches whats considered full employment, Zandi said. Manufacturers, who have been hit by the global economic slowdown and the strong dollar, shed 3,000 positions in May, ADP said. It was the fourth straight month of job losses in that sector, though Mays figure was an improvement over the 10,000 net job cuts in April. Economists watch the ADP data as a harbinger of the governments job report, due out on Friday. The Labor Department report, which covers private- and public-sector hiring, is expected to show the economy added about 160,000 net new jobs in May. That would be similar to Aprils disappointing 158,000 job growth. But economists said the May figure will be temporarily skewed downward because of a strike by nearly 40,000 Verizon workers, which as settled last week. The Labor Department would count those workers as unemployed last month. ADP does not consider striking workers to be unemployed, Zandi said. Despite the slowing job growth recently, the labor market still appears to be healthy, he said. On Thursday, the Labor Department said first-time claims for unemployment benefits fell slightly last week to 267,000. The figure is historically low. Also on Thursday, another private report showed that the number of job cuts announced by U.S. companies fell to a five-month low in May. There were 30,157 layoffs and other workforce reductions announced last month, less than half of the 64,141 in April, said career counseling firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. May could be the start of a summer slowdown in the pace of job cutting as companies take a pause following the period of heavy downsizing that started the year, said John A. Challenger, the companys chief executive. Still, largely because of major cutbacks by energy companies caused by low oil prices, announced job cuts are up 13 percent this year compared with the same period in 2015, Challenger said. Warner Bros. Entertainment Emilia Clarke stars as a woman hired to be a companion to a wealthy quadriplegic (Sam Claflin) in "Me Before You." SHARE Romance guaranteed to draw tears By Connie Ogle, Miami Herald (TNS) Some people just like to cry at the movies. If you are one of those people if you have for example actually committed to watching "The Fault in Our Stars" or "The Notebook" more than once, either endeavor an act of incomprehensible madness then chances are you will enjoy "Me Before You." And you will undoubtedly get a bit teary. "Me Before You" has been adapted for the screen by Jojo Moyes ("One Plus One," "The Girl You Left Behind" and "Me Before You's" sequel, "After You") from her bestselling novel, and so the screenplay is faithful to the source material, with necessary omissions. Love stories are Moyes' milieu, but this one comes with a bite. Despite the amusing bits (and there are many), despite the budding ardor (predictable and crowd-pleasing), despite the rarely seen and irresistible smile of Emilia Clarke (who is not allowed moments of levity as the formidable Daenerys Targaryen, the Mother of Dragons, on "Game of Thrones"), "Me Before You" is a juicy, ripe red apple of a romance with a razor blade embedded under its skin. Clarke plays the good-hearted but unambitious Louisa Clark, who lives at home in an English village with her family and helps her working-class parents with the rent. When Lou loses her job at a bakery that's closing, she applies for a well-paying post as a companion to wealthy, handsome and bitter quadriplegic Will Traynor (Sam Claflin, the charismatic Finnick Odair of "The Hunger Games"). Lou does not know how to take care of a quadriplegic but learns quickly she's not expected to: There's a nurse for that. Will's tense mother (Janet McTeer) stresses two things: That Lou is there to keep the once-active Will company and to never, ever leave him alone for more than a few minutes. First, naturally, there's distrust on his part and frustration on hers. Gradually, though, they do what people tend to do when they're thrown together for long periods of time: they soften toward each other. Then Lou discovers Will's real plan he is determined to commit legal suicide in Sweden. What else can she do but vow to show him a life with her is worth living no matter the constraints? Clarke, who's almost unrecognizable here, is a large part of what makes the film as engaging as it is. Claflin is an appealing leading man, and the rest of the cast is a Who's Who of Popular British Actors, including Brendon Coyle (Mr. Bates of "Downton Abbey") as Lou's out-of-work but genial dad; Charles Dance ("Game of Thrones") as Will's father, whose caddish instincts have been excised; and Matthew Lewis ("Harry Potter's" heroic Neville Longbottom) as Lou's boyfriend Patrick, who prefers prepping for a triathlon to date night. "Me Before You" has already incited a few complaints about its portrayal of quadriplegics and its glossing over of the acrimonious subject of state-assisted suicide. The film never examines that debate fully and in the interest of time has cut Moyes' side plot in which Lou investigates and gets to know the active, supportive disabled community. But "Me Before You" is a sugar-coated romantic bauble, not a gritty documentary. Giving into its pleasures is not for everyone, but its message live boldly, as the movie's hashtag encourages is an admonition that's awfully hard to argue. photos by Patrick Dove/Standard-Times Community members meet for a Jewish service at Congregation Beth Israel last week in San Angelo. The synagogue just celebrated 100 years of worship in the community. SHARE Synagogue celebrates 100 years of worship, many without a rabbi By Ami Mizell-Flint After Sabbath services last week at San Angelo's Jewish synagogue, Saundra Israel stayed behind to take pictures of names on a yahrzeit wall, which memorializes members of the congregation who have died. Israel was particularly interested in the names Leon Fine and Alva Doris Fine ? her grandfather and his daughter, who died at age 4. "I never met them," she said, "but I feel very close to those family members, whose names I have heard all my life. "To see their names next to a little light (on the yahrzeit wall) brings us just a little closer to them. They really live on in our hearts." Israel remembers visiting the synagogue as a little girl with her grandmother. "I remember coming up the blue stairs," she said. "They seemed so big at the time." Israel was one of about 100 people who attended the service. Nearly every seat in the sanctuary was filled as members of the Texas Jewish Historical Society, descendants of early members of the synagogue and non-Jewish members of the community joined the regular attendees for the Friday night service. For 85 years, members of the Jewish community have gathered every Friday night at the synagogue to welcome the Sabbath. Typically, the weekly service is attended by 10 to 15 local members. One of the three longest, continuously running congregations in their original buildings in Texas, Congregation Beth Israel has had services lay-led by its members for the majority of its history. There was a lay rabbi in its early years, and an ordained rabbi served the congregation in the 1950s and '60s. Since Rabbi Shnayerson's death in 1971, however, there have been only occasional visits from rabbis for special occasions. Last week was one such occasion. Rabbi Marcy Greene, director of Houston's L'Chaim Center, returned to San Angelo to lead services celebrating a historical marker placed at the building, honoring the congregation's founding 100 years ago. It was Greene's second time in San Angelo ? she led services for a quadruple Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah service for four teenagers in July 2011. "I just love San Angelo and how hard you work to keep Judaism alive here," Greene said. "I declare myself Congregation Beth Israel's unofficial rabbi." At the beginning of the service, Greene invited women who were descendants of the early families to join in lighting the Sabbath candles. Carole Ann Hoppenstein, daughter of San Angelo businessesman Leon Fine, and Barbara Rosenberg, daughter of San Angelo businessman George Cohen, took her up on her offer. Both women grew up in San Angelo. Rosenberg comes back to San Angelo occasionally, but it was Hoppenstein's first time back to San Angelo in almost 40 years. Throughout the service, Greene made several mentions of David Goldberg, lay rabbi for the congregation when the synagogue was built, and talked about how much the congregation has changed over the past 100 years. Greene read a heartfelt letter written by Goldberg's sons during the service, sharing their memories of the synagogue and their father. "I hope you can feel his presence here, and his teachings," Greene said. Greene taught lessons of her own in mini sermons throughout the service. "This weekend is Tu B'Shvat, the (Jewish) holiday celebrating trees," she said. "How appropriate is it that we celebrate this holiday on the same weekend that the congregation here celebrates the seeds planted by the founding families of the Jewish congregation?" "This idea, that we plant roots, then the seeds go forth and branches shoot off and bear fruit, is significant," Greene said in an interview. "Our children are the fruit of the tree," she said. "The past inspires us, guides our future and forms the way we live in the present." Trish and Jerry Grashaw attended the services for the first time. Although they are not Jewish, they had been waiting for an opportunity to attend a service at the synagogue. "We sure enjoyed ourselves," Trish Grashaw said. "I've been wanting to get inside there since we moved here seven years ago. We didn't know it was still being used every week." The Grashaws travel throughout Texas to visit courthouses and churches and were excited to add the synagogue in San Angelo to the list of those they have visited. "It was awesome to be able to share in the celebration," she said, "and see that the prayers are similar to ours. I also loved that the prayers were sung." SHARE By Ngan Ho of the San Angelo Standard-Times Pretrial hearings are scheduled Friday for four people indicted on charges of capital murder in the shooting death of a 69-year-old San Angelo man. Prosecutors with the Tom Green County 51st District Attorney's Office are seeking the death penalty for three of the four accused. Eric John Martinez, 26; Jonathan Jesse Marin, 27; Eliza Victoria Losoya, 29; and Fernando Lavaris Jr., 30, are in the Tom Green County Jail in lieu of more than $500,000 bail each. Lavaris has been in jail since Aug. 31, and the other three were taken into custody in September. A special sitting of a grand jury was held in November because of the magnitude of the charge. Capital murder is punishable by death or life in prison without parole. Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty for Marin, Losoyo and Lavaris in the event of a conviction, according to court documents. All four were indicted in paragraph one of the indictment with burglary of a habitation and robbery in paragraph two. Four different attorneys were listed to represent each of the four suspects. The pretrial hearings are scheduled in 51st District Judge Barbara Walther's courtroom at 10:30 a.m. What began as an attempted robbery Aug. 31 at a residence in the 500 block of Sellers Street led to a shooting and the subsequent death of William Valdez, 69, according to court documents. Valdez was shot under his left arm, about 4 to 6 inches from his armpit, according to the complaint, and was taken to Shannon Medical Center for emergency surgery. Valdez had his kidney removed and suffered a spinal cord injury and a perforated colon from the gunshot, according to the complaint. The bullet also could not be removed from his body at the time, according to court documents. He died Sept. 15 after about two weeks on life support. About 4:05 a.m. Aug. 31 William Valdez's son, Guillermo Valdez, said he heard his dog barking and someone banging on the sliding glass door at his home, according to court documents.. Guillermo Valdez went outside and was confronted by Losoya in the driveway, who said that the two needed to talk, stated court documents. Guillermo Valdez told police he became fearful and went back in the house, locked the front door and called police. He then said he heard the sliding glass door being broken into as he entered his bedroom and the front door being kicked open after, according to court documents. He said he heard a man say "Where's the money and do not call the police" before hearing gunshots inside his father's bedroom, according to the complaint. Guillermo Valdez said he was afraid he was going to be shot, so he stayed inside his bedroom, according to the complaint. When he eventually left the room, he said he saw his father lying by his bed as he waited for police. Losoya told police that she, Lavaris, Martinez and Marin went to the residence with the intent to steal after breaking into the house, according to court documents. She said Marin "had been casing the victim's house for a future robbery" and that the men all had guns and Martinez had a BB gun. Losoya also told police she was hiding with Lavaris near a vehicle that was parked in the driveway at the front of the house when the incident began, according to court documents. She then began knocking on the sliding glass window that was near the parked car, and she said she spoke with Guillermo Valdez before he walked back into the house. Losoya said she returned to her hiding spot, heard the front door being knocked down and ran away when she heard gunshots. Marin told police he arrived at the residence in a car with the three other suspects. According to court documents, he told police the others had asked him if he was willing to commit a burglary with them, and he agreed to. Marin told police that Martinez, Losoya and Lavaris went to the front of the house while he stayed at the back of the house by himself, according to court documents. In another account, Marin told police he waited with Martinez at the back door during the incident, according to court documents. Marin also told police he was inside the house when the burglary occurred and that he saw Lavaris shoot William Valdez, the documents stated. Lavaris told police he was present during the robbery and that he was at the front of the home with Losoya, but said he was under the influence of methamphetamine laced with heroin and couldn't remember anything, according to court documents. Lavaris refused to provide details of the incident and only stated that he ran from Sellers Street and never went inside the home, according to court documents. Investigators matched Lavaris' palm print to one on the sliding glass door and recovered a bullet and two 9 mm bullet casings at the scene. SHARE By Nacha Cattan, Bloomberg News (TNS) MEXICO CITY Disgust with corruption in Mexico is so overwhelming that voters on Sunday are entertaining the thought of sacrificing landmark education and economic reforms in exchange for a chance to bring down the politicians they blame for it. Through the heart of the June 5 elections for governors flow the stirrings of populism, personified by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, 62, a two-time presidential contender known as AMLO. He has railed against graft in government, but has also raised concerns in the past that hed pit the poor against the rest of the country and recently criticized evaluations of teachers, whose protests have grown in some states. The elections for governors of 12 states will help answer whether his anti-corruption message attracts voters he turned away by his more divisive policies. How his new Morena Party candidates do in the race for states overrun by graft like Veracruz could be a bellwether for the 2018 national elections and, along the way, the potential for Lopez Obradors third try at the presidency. I have no doubt Lopez Obrador will end up in first or second place in the presidential race, said Jose Antonio Crespo, a political analyst at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching in Mexico City. I dont think it would be good to have Lopez Obrador as president, but many do think so, because all other alternatives have been used up. First will come the test in Veracruz, which is seen as a microcosm of the disaffection for politicians that has spread through Mexico, starting with President Enrique Pena Nieto. His approval rating plunged to 30 percent after the disappearance of 43 teaching students, presumably with the help of police, and amid reports that builders of his and his wifes homes were government contractors. Most recently hes been criticized for delays in passage of anti-corruption laws. Graft and impunity arent new problems in Mexico, but theyre triggering greater public ire, in part due to discontent with parties in power that in Latin America has contributed to the ouster of Brazils president and, in the U.S., the rise of outsiders like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, said Andrew Selee of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. Corruption is the biggest concern of Mexicans after violence, a new government agency study reported. The discredit of the three parties that have dominated politics in Mexico really opens opportunities for Lopez Obrador, said Selee, executive vice president of the center. If he can show Morena is a serious party even in local elections, it makes it much more likely that other parts of the left will follow him. In a sign of his potency, Lopez Obradors party which is but two years old and whose leadership consists of pretty much just him is tied for second place out of seven candidates in some polls for governor in Veracruz. The state has the largest population and fiscal budget, at $5.25 billion of any other up for election, and has never left the hands of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as PRI. His chosen candidate for governor in Zacatecas also is polling second. Once referred to as Latin Americas Houston in the expectations it would attract billions in energy investment, Veracruz has become the nations murder capital of journalists, and kidnappings have doubled as drug cartels battle for territory. Its governor, Javier Duarte, grew so maligned by corruption scandals and accusations that he was generating some of the violence that his own party demanded he give a full account of his actions. He has yet to resolve criminal complaints brought by federal auditors alleging Veracruz misdirected funds and then faked the return of $260 million of that money. The clamor led opposition from the left and right to an alliance to defeat the candidate of Duartes party, PRI. Then they went and picked a candidate, Miguel Angel Yunes, who soon became roiled in illicit-wealth scandals and who has struggled in opinion polls after his sons name appeared in the Panama Papers. Like Duarte, he denies wrongdoing. Calls to Duarte and Yunes for comment were not returned. All this has only increased the popularity of Cuitlahuac Garcia, a high-school teacher who entered politics after Lopez Obrador broke from the Democratic Revolution Party, known as PRD, to form Morena. Morena is polling higher in state elections than the PRD, says Luis Carlos Ugalde, a former top electoral official who runs Integralia Consultores. Garcia, 48, said in an interview that he would investigate Duarte and others in the state government and look into concessions they granted to petrochemical maker Mexichem SAB and Brazils Odebrecht SA for any irregularities. Wearing a guayabera and jeans, Garcia is eager to show hes new to public office; hes risen from blasting political propaganda through his cars loudspeaker to becoming a federal lawmaker a year ago. With so little experience, Lopez Obradors well-known image comes in handy. At the close of Garcias campaign this week, posters showed him shoulder to shoulder with Lopez Obrador, and the biggest banner was of the former presidential candidate, not the current candidate for governor. In Veracruz, I accept that he has a great impact, Garcia said. Lopez Obrador has his doubters. The prospect of his scoring big in state elections or winning 2018 is absolutely ridiculous, said Alejandro Schtulmann, president of Mexico City-based political risk consulting firm EMPRA. He says that none of Morenas candidates for governor are polling in first place, and argues that surveys that place Lopez Obrador ahead in 2018 are based more on name recognition than his chances of winning. In fact, Lopez Obrador may be helping the PRI win in Veracruz by splitting the opposition, he said. For now, first and foremost in many voters minds is their distaste for politicians: Theyre all the same garbage, said Maria Guadalupe Sanchez, 48, a Veracruz resident. More than anything, well have to see which of the candidates is honest. SHARE In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet empire, most Western nations basked in the illusion that liberal democracy had triumphed. Many thought NATO had become an anachronism in an era of permanent European peace. Some countries freed from Kremlin control, including tiny Estonia, knew better. Only two and a half decades later, the European Union teeters and populism thrives on both sides of the Atlantic. A revanchist Russia bent on restoring past glory makes nuclear threats against members of the NATO alliance. So this is an opportune moment to listen to Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who was in Philadelphia last week to address a Baltic studies conference at the University of Pennsylvania. "Twenty-five years of Western history are over," he said bluntly. "The optimism of the 1990s has been shattered by Russia. Russia is back with 19th-century goals and 21st-century means." But, he cautioned, "We are clueless amid transformational change to which we do not know how to respond because we don't know what we want to achieve." Of course, the threats to the Europe of 1990s dreams are internal as well as external. The populist parties that are gaining strength across Europe and the appeal of Trumpism (and Bernie Sanders) here are outgrowths of the economic pain wreaked on citizens by globalization and the failure of traditional parties to respond. But, as Ilves noted, the economic travails of Western democracies present openings for a reckless Russia to meddle. Populist leaders in Europe, some openly encouraged by Russian President Vladimir Putin, are pressing for the breakup of the European Union. On June 23, the British will vote on whether to leave the E.U., and the vote looks likely to be close. Meantime, Donald Trump, talks of possibly leaving NATO, while constantly complimenting Putin. Although Ilves never mentioned Trump by name, he is clearly concerned. "East Europeans were told to get over their fears of Russia," he said, "but today Western Europe recognizes there is an ongoing war in Europe." Indeed, Russian planes conduct provocative stunts, such as recently buzzing within 30 feet of a Navy destroyer in the Baltic Sea and flying with transponders off over Baltic countries, risking a collision with civilian aircraft. And there are things that worry Ilves even more. "Today, threats to use nuclear weapons are part of the Russian discourse, with simulated nuclear attacks on Stockholm and Poland," he said. Kremlin emissaries have reportedly threatened a nuclear response if NATO moved troops into the Baltic, and last year Putin warned he might call for a nuclear alert as Russia was invading Crimea. Moscow is reportedly considering putting nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad, a small Russian territory on the Baltic Sea. Would an economically weak Russia really contemplate using such weapons? Would Putin ever consider invading a NATO member such as Estonia? The Estonian president wants to take no chances. "The thinking of Russian leaders is unpredictable," he answers. Indeed, Ilves says it took NATO members far too long to grasp the significance of Putin's invasion of Ukraine: "Changing borders in Europe has been a no-no since 1945. The last time was 1938 (when Germany invaded) the Sudetenland. (Yet) there are still countries that want to end sanctions" against Russia on account of Ukraine. Ilves believes sanctions have had "a deterring effect," and caving on them would only encourage Putin to nibble further, possibly on the Baltics. Of course, isolationists here and in Europe echo the Kremlin charge that Putin is reacting to a fear of encirclement brought on by NATO expansion to the Baltics and Eastern Europe. I t's far more useful to consider the alternative. As Ilves points out, Putin felt free to invade Ukraine precisely because it wasn't a member of NATO. What Trumpism ignores is Ilves' larger point: The West must recognize the value of a free and secure Europe, something that NATO countries took for granted during the past two decades. The threat that Russia presents is more complex than in Cold War times. Putin wants to divide and weaken NATO and the European Union and promote a new brand of managed "democracy," with himself as the leader. His nuclear-rattling may be testing the alliance's staying power. So far, NATO has held firm, and will deploy several thousand additional troops to the Baltics and Poland on a rotating basis. Key NATO countries also seem to be waking up to the need to spend more on defense. "NATO has not been this relevant for a long, long time," says the Estonian leader. "Europeans haven't been under this kind of threat since Gorbachev's time." Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Contact her at trubin@phillynews.com. SHARE The following editorial appeared in Wednesday's Corpus Christi Caller-Times: The sequence of events that got Texas roped into a lawsuit against the federal government over transgender bathroom regulation is best described with old-fashioned words like chicanery and skulduggery. To say that it just stinks, while true, borders on pun and inappropriately makes light of the serious matter of a person in power, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, sinking to the lowest level. Thanks to the Texas Tribune, we know that Paxton went looking for a school district to be his guinea-pig test case for filing the lawsuit, which accuses the federal government of overreach. The alleged overreach was the government's attempt to protect transgender people's civil rights by warning that discriminatory bathroom policies could result in forfeiture of federal education funds. ... The Tribune reported that Paxton sent staff to solicit the school district in deeply conservative Wichita Falls, where the trustees decided that they already had an adequate policy and didn't need to be Paxton's pawn. A school board member actually used that word pawn in a radio interview describing Paxton's attempt to enlist Wichita Falls ISD. Another board member, in voting down the proposal, described it as "completely a waste of time and a distraction from our school business of educating students." ... But Paxton later came up with his pawn, nearby Harrold ISD, which has 100 students, none of whom identify as transgender. Superintendent David Thweatt, who got to stand next to Paxton at the Austin news conference announcing the lawsuit, said his board adopted the policy for the "safety, security and dignity of the children." Other state capital reporters took the Texas Tribune's dot-connecting an important step further to a Paxton campaign fund-raising email seeking "$25, $50, $100, $250, $500, $1,000 or whatever you can afford" to "stand with the Texas Attorney General in his efforts to stop an out of control President." It took sick minds to have dreamed up the transgender bathroom issue as an issue in the first place. As Andrea Grimes of the Texas Observer put it: "There's a certain predilection for prurience in drawing a straight line between 'public restroom' and 'opportunity to sexually assault a woman or child.'" It takes sicker minds to exploit the issue politically. And it takes the sickest of all to try to make money off it. Republicans who received Paxton's solicitation should be offended and disgusted ... Fund-raising is a difficult prospect for an attorney general facing three felony fraud indictments. Paxton is accused of violating state securities laws by not disclosing to clients that he received compensation for the investments they made on his recommendations. He can't use campaign funds to pay his high-priced lawyers because the charges have nothing to do with politics or his duties as an elected official. Money, to him, is quite an object these days. But pursuing this lawsuit at state expense, shopping for the client and turning the case into a fund-raising opportunity are new lows even for Paxton. That this lawsuit was an embarrassment to Texas should have been evident before the connections were made to Paxton's client-shopping and donation-seeking. The people of Texas, especially Paxton's Republican supporters, should feel used and demand that a stop be put to it. SHARE The following editorial appeared in the May 22 Los Angeles Times: Some foreign companies break the rules when they bring low-paid workers into the country. American immigration law allows employees of overseas firms to enter the country for a limited period of time to do business for their employers, including overseeing installation of machinery or other specialized products. The law does not allow those employees, who are here legally on what is called a B1/B2 visa, to do the installation work itself. But a work-site accident at a Tesla Motors auto plant in Fremont, California, last year has spotlighted an uncomfortable reality: The B1/B2 visa system is subject to manipulation and fraud that perverts its intent and undercuts American businesses and workers. The accident involved a Slovenian electrician named Gregor Lesnik, whose B1/B2 visa allowed him to enter the country in March 2015 on behalf of his Slovenia-based employer, ISM Vuzem, as a "supervisor of electrical and mechanical installation" at a paint shop in a South Carolina BMW plant. Instead, Vuzem allegedly redeployed Lesnik to the Tesla plant to install an industrial heating and cooling system, something his visa did not allow him to do. While walking on the roof in May 2015, Lesnik fell through, bounced off scaffolding and other internal structures and landed three stories below on the factory floor, breaking both legs and several ribs and suffering head injuries, including a concussion. Lesnik survived and sued his employers; the San Jose Mercury News recently used the case to explore the broader problems with the visa system. The State Department issues B1/B2 visas through consular offices overseas. They cover a broad range of potential uses, including traditional tourism, but are also given to employees entering for up to six months to do work for their foreign employer. The visas can be valid for as long as 10 years, and can be used for multiple entries under the large menu of allowed purposes. The Department of Homeland Security can bar a visa holder from entering the country at the border if it's not satisfied that the stated purpose of the trip is allowed under the visa. Once the visa-holder arrives in the U.S., enforcement is the responsibility of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE officials said they investigate fraudulent uses of the visas, but usually only after getting tip from co-workers or U.S. companies who suspect a competitor of illicitly using low-paid foreign workers. According to 2013 congressional testimony, ICE received 38,000 such tips in 2012. But there's no reporting mechanism in place under which the visa holder must tell the U.S. what activities are being engaged in, nor is there a system for the U.S. company in this case, Tesla to ensure that its subcontractors are employing eligible workers. Lesnik worked for Vuzem, which was fulfilling a contract for Eisenmann, a German-based manufacturer of industrial systems that Tesla hired to oversee the plant expansion. Vuzem beat out local companies for the work because, labor leaders said, it relied on imported employees who would work for much less than Americans would. Lesnik alleged in his lawsuit that although his hourly rate was over $10 an hour, it averaged out to a little over $5 an hour, far below minimum wage, because he wasn't paid overtime for weeks that often reached 80 hours. The same work by a local employee would have cost more than $50 an hour. Tesla founder Elon Musk has denied any wrongdoing and said that his firm is auditing the contracts to see if its contractors met their wage obligations. Eisenmann has also denied the allegations. Vuzem has acknowledged hiring Lesnik but disputes his account. ICE officials declined to discuss specifics of the Tesla allegations, but acknowledged that they face hurdles in trying to ferret out visa abusers. Part of the problem is that even when subcontractors exploit visa-holders, the workers usually make more money in the U.S. than they would in their home countries, and therefore have little reason to report the violations. And workers-rights advocates say the foreign-based firms often use threats in the home country to dissuade complaints. There has to be a better way of addressing worker visa enforcement, beginning with compelling the American company at the top of the chain of contracts to take more responsibility for compliance. The City Council has issued a halt to renewals of existing permits and those in the application pipeline. The moratorium, which could begin as soon as Nov. 3, would phase out nearly all 1,300 residential short-term rentals. Oregon State University will open an on-campus dorm this fall specifically designed for students recovering from drug and alcohol addiction.The university said it believes the new housing and support center is the first of its kind in Oregon, at either a private or public institution.OSU is converting the Dixon Lodge, a former student co-op living center, into the new dorm, which it is calling The Recovery and Learning Community. OSU alumnus Tom Skoro and his wife Joan are funding the center. The cost of the donation wasn't immediately made available.John Ruyak, OSU's alcohol, drug and recovery specialist in the student health services office, said the housing and support center will provide a more supportive living environment for students in recovery. "Through a unified community, we seek to strengthen students' sobriety and support their success as academics, leaders, and community members," he said in a statement.OSU already has a Collegiate Recovery Community, where students can get services, hang out with fellow students recovering from addictions, and book private rooms to "socialize in a sober environment."But Steve Clark, a university spokesman, said separate living quarters are a necessary next step."There are students with drug and alcohol addictions who are in recovery and they're not being well-served by universities across the nation," Clark said.While not all first-year students use and abuse alcohol or drugs in the dorms, Clark said, some students "may not be as mature in an independent living arrangement."The new housing center will ideally be a mix of younger students and older non-traditional students who Clark said "have more of an experience with life."In the first year, OSU expects nine students to live in the newly configured Dixon Lounge, with up to 24 students eventually moving into the dorm.OSU is also providing scholarship opportunities for some students, Clark said, to bring down the cost of living. He said the dorms, in some cases, will be less expensive than student housing, which can cost from $5,000 to $10,000, not including food plans.Students can move in this fall, and OSU said it still has space available. When she discovered she was pregnant, the 22-year-old aspiring veterinarian started calling abortion clinics in her home state of Oklahoma. It was a short list _ there are only two, and neither could get her an appointment quickly.Unemployed, no car, and still living with her parents, Pearl thought about trying Texas, but knew the state had also recently tightened restrictions on clinics.Finally, Pearl _ who asked not to use her full name for fear of upsetting her conservative family back in Comanche County _ got her boyfriend to take her to South Wind Women's Center in Kansas, a four-hour drive north."It's ridiculous that I have to travel," Pearl said as she waited at the clinic last week to get abortion medication. "Not everyone is as strong as this. Not everyone is made of stone. It's stressful to travel all this way."The National Abortion Federation hotline referred 209 Texas patients to New Mexico last year, compared with 21 in 2013, said Vicki Saporta, the group's president and chief executive. The number of Texas patients at one Albuquerque clinic alone more than tripled, jumping from 19 to 67 last year, she said.As more states adopt more-restrictive laws and the number of clinics dwindles in the so-called "abortion desert" _ an area that stretches from Florida to New Mexico and north into the Midwest _ women are increasingly traveling across state lines to avoid long waits for appointments and escape the legal barriers in their home states.As states have embraced laws requiring waiting periods for abortion, hospital admitting privileges for abortion doctors and medical upgrades for clinics, the number of facilities where a woman can get an abortion has declined rapidly and wait times for appointments have grown longer. Longer waits can mean the difference between women taking abortion medication, generally available up to 10 weeks, and progressively more expensive surgical abortions.In Texas, the number of clinics has fallen from 41 to 19 in the last three years. In Louisiana there are four; in Arkansas three. Missouri and Mississippi have one clinic each.Roughly 49 percent of women in the South live in counties without an abortion clinic, as do 53 percent of women in the Midwest, compared with 38 percent nationwide, according to the most recent study by the Guttmacher Institute, which advocates for reproductive rights."When we see women having to travel long distance, across state lines or hours away from their home to get the care they need, it has a rippling impact," said Whitney Phillips, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, whose clinics have also recorded an increase in out-of-state clients. "They are having to arrange their work schedules, child care, travel and finances in order to see a provider. In the event they need more than one appointment, that can be crippling _ especially for lower-income women."In Texas, abortion provider Whole Woman's Health has sued to block a new law that would force about half the state's remaining clinics to close, alleging it amounts to an "undue burden" for women forced to travel long distances. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on the case this month, its first major ruling on abortion in two decades.If the high court sides with Texas, or sends the case back to the conservative U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, similar laws stayed by the courts could be enforced in Kansas, Michigan and Wisconsin, closing clinics there, too.Since the Texas law passed, women have had to drive four times farther for abortion services _ from 17 to 70 miles _ and often wait three times longer for appointments, according to studies by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project. About 10 percent of the women surveyed report having to drive at least 250 miles to reach a clinic.Because of the new laws, a clinic in Dallas started encouraging West Texas women to make appointments at its facility in Albuquerque, which had shorter waits and restrictions _ but was still about 300 miles away. Since the law passed, the number of women traveling to New Mexico for abortions has more than doubled. In Kansas, the number of women arriving from Oklahoma and Texas soared from 38 to 243. The trend is similar at clinics in Louisiana.New Mexico clinics can treat more patients because the state has not passed many of the laws Texas has, including a 20-week abortion ban passed by a dozen other states."The need has really exploded," said Joan Lamunyon Sanford, executive director of the New Mexico Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.She says many women cannot afford to fly, so they take buses instead, some traveling for days from California and the East Coast."Nobody should have to go across two or three states to get health care," said Sanford, whose volunteers provide women with transportation, childcare and housing during clinic visits.Doctors are also on the move to handle the shifting waves of patients, flying to New Mexico and Kansas to help staff clinics.Dr. Colleen McNicholas flies from St. Louis to work at the Wichita clinic, where 40 percent to 50 percent of her patients are from out of state, usually Oklahoma and Texas, occasionally Missouri.McNicholas says she has seen women sleeping in their cars in the parking lot."Either they don't want to wait or can't because of how far along they are," she said. "So they look at a map and map it out, keep trying, keep calling clinics until they find one that can take them."Dr. Willie Parker recently relocated from Illinois to Alabama to perform abortions there and in Georgia and Mississippi. Many providers in the region won't handle abortions beyond 15 weeks, he said, creating "watershed areas" where women must seek care across state lines."If they don't make the cutoff, they're coming over to Tuscaloosa," Parker said. "People are coming from everywhere."He says he has placed dilating devices in out-of-state patients for a two-day procedure only to see them drive hundreds of miles home to avoid paying for a hotel.Some out-of-state patients are no-shows, unable to handle travel costs, he said: "You have a lot of women who are staying pregnant because they can't surpass that barrier.")Anti-abortion activists say they are encouraged to see clinics close due to laws that they say protect women's safety."I do think that's a good thing. I think there should be regulations. It should be safe, like going to a hospital," said Courtney Love, 30, a self-described "sidewalk counselor" distributing anti-abortion leaflets outside the Wichita clinic. The fenced-off clinic has been a battleground in the abortion debate, drawing large crowds of protesters and closing for several years after its director, Dr. George Tiller, was fatally shot by an anti-abortion extremist.Love and other anti-abortion volunteers say they have noticed more cars with out-of-state license plates arriving at the clinic. She says she doesn't like the idea of women being forced to travel to get services, but "there's other choices for them other than abortion."She pointed to a neighboring anti-abortion counseling center."Next door there's help, people who will help with their rent and adoption," Love said.Brittany, 22, of Oklahoma City, already gave up a son to adoption last year, and says she didn't want to do that again.A heroin addict, she came to the Wichita clinic in maternity jeans for a surgical abortion at 17 weeks. She would not have been able to get there without her father, an Air Force officer in Tampa, Fla., who rented a car, booked a hotel and paid $1,300 for the procedure."I was scared I would be too far along," she said. "Now I'm scared I may have to stay overnight again and my dad may have to miss work."As Pearl prepared to return to Oklahoma, she said she realized her situation wasn't unique."I have two friends who are pregnant wondering if they can get abortions because of the laws," she said. California Voters Will Choose Between Rival Sets of Democrats Term Limits Have Helped Out Incumbents When California Democrats head to the polls to vote in primaries next Tuesday, they'll choose between moderate or more progressive Democrats. And not just in the presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.California has a blanket primary system, meaning the top two finishers in each race will proceed to the general election in November, regardless of party. Given the liberal nature of the state, that means no Republican will make the final cut in a lot of races. It's quite possible, for instance, that no Republican will make the cut in the U.S. Senate race dominated by state Attorney General Kamala Harris and Rep. Loretta Sanchez, both Democrats.The result is that in-fighting between Democrats has become more intense. In legislative races, progressives are running against moderates, whom they sometimes deride as "corporate Democrats.""I would say that 60 to 65 percent of the state legislative districts are unwinnable by a Republican, unless the Democrat got caught in a huge scandal," said Joshua Grossman, president of Progressive Kick, a super PAC headquartered in Oakland that supports liberal candidates. "Given that, the corporate interests have obviously but cleverly put their money in Democratic races."Oil companies such as Chevron and Valero, along with other corporate groups, have put some $2 million behind state Rep. Cheryl Brown of San Bernardino, who helped defeat a legislative proposal last year to cut fossil fuel use by cars and trucks in half by 2030.Unions and environmental groups are backing her opponent, workers compensation attorney Eloise Gomez Reyes, dubbing Brown "Chevron Cheryl." Given California's top-two system, it's likely that the expensive battle between Brown and Reyes will continue into the fall.Independent expenditures in California legislative races have already reached a record $24 million , according to the-- well up from the $16.7 million spent by outside groups two years ago."When Arnold Schwarzenegger pushed for it, he was expecting that [the] top-two [system] would strengthen the moderate wing of the Republican Party," said Jack Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College. "Instead, it's shifted even more so the focus of California politics to the Democratic Party."Legislative term limits across the country haven't fulfilled most of the promises made by the idea's proponents. They haven't driven so-called career politicians from the legislature. Instead, they've encouraged games of musical chairs among different offices. They also haven't done much to increase the ranks of women or minorities.Term limits haven't even made life more difficult for incumbents. Maybe the reverse.An analysis by theshowed that legislators don't serve any less time in office, on average, than they did before Montana's term limits law was passed in 1992. The state has recently weakened the law, eliminating the two-year cooling off period that blocked senators and representatives from immediately running again after maxing out in both chambers.Now, they're able to serve eight years in the House, eight years in the Senate and then immediately seek to serve another eight years in the House. This year, Sen. Jim Keane is doing just that, running for his old House seat, which has conveniently been left open by term limits.The desire to wait for an empty seat is the reason term limits has made life easier for incumbents. Other candidates realize they'd be better off waiting two or four years, when they know for sure the office will be vacant."As incumbents approach their final term, they face weaker challengers and enjoy a larger incumbency advantage, suggesting potential opposition candidates strategically wait for seats opened by term limits," Steven Rogers, a St. Louis University political scientist, wrote in a paper on this dynamic. On Thursday, in the morning, at the Executive Building, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC presided at a meeting of the Executive Council. In the evening, at Government House, the Governor and Mrs Kaye de Jersey hosted a reception in support of the launch of Dr Jennifer Harrisons publication Shackled: the Female Convicts of Moreton Bay, 1826 1839 where His Excellency addressed guests. Description GIS - 03 June 2016: The Nine-Year Basic Continuous Education project, a reform plan for Mauritius learning sector, will not result in the closing down of private grant-aided secondary schools, reassured the Minister of Education and Human Resources, Tertiary Education and Scientific Research, Mrs Leela Devi Dookun-Luchoomun, yesterday in Goodlands. The Minister was speaking at the 55th anniversary celebrations of Friendship College during which a multi-sports complex was inaugurated. The secondary institution exists since 1961 and a department reserved exclusively for girls was set up in 1968. The institution which started with a small student population today boasts of an average of 575 students and 70 members of staff. According to Mrs Dookun-Luchoomun, if one or two private grant-aided secondary schools have to close down, it will certainly not be because of the reform but more because of reasons intrinsic to their own incapacity to be attractive to stakeholders. The rest, she said, will remain as Regional schools, retaining their specificity, very much like Friendship College has been able to do in so successfully serving the northern region of the island. She also stated that educators will not lose their jobs, stressing that the aim on the contrary is to consolidate educators careers and enhance their status. In this context, a Teachers Council to further teacher professionalisation and enhance their competencies level will be set up, the Minister said. For the Minister, only a well-educated human resource is at the basis of the reforms being brought into the education system of Mauritius which covers all the sub-sectors of the education namely pre-primary, primary, secondary, TVET and tertiary. It is recalled that Governments reform project for Mauritius learning sector - the Nine-Year Continuous Basic Education which has as objective to promote the holistic development of all students was presented on 20 August 2015. The aim is to offer a comprehensive basic education cycle that provides students with the foundational skills for success in all further learning leading to an empowered 2030 citizenry. The core of the reform will be the replacement of the Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) by the Primary School Achievement Certificate at the end of Grade 6 from 2017 onwards; the introduction of a National Certificate of Education at the end of Grade 9 from 2020 onwards; and the setting up of Academies which will run classes from Grades 10 to 13 and specialise in certain streams/subjects, and of Polytechnics. State and local budgets are based on general fund revenues. The cash usually comes from such primary sources as income and sales taxes, and pays for a wide swath of government services. When managers talk about balancing the budget, theyre almost always referring to balancing the spending and revenues from this repository.Reliance on the general fund as the centerpiece of fiscal management, however, has growing flaws. This is largely because the general fund is diminishing as the main source of money for governments. Data from the National Association of State Budget Officers shows a fairly steady drop in the portion the general fund makes up of the total -- 41 percent in 2014 compared with 52 percent in the early 1990s. In Virginia, the general fund made up 47 percent of the total in 2006 and only 39 percent in 2015.Some of the drop comes from an increase in bonds and, even more so, federal funds, but theres also been a slow and steady rise in the size and quantity of special funds that are earmarked for specific purposes and get little attention in the annual budget debate.The Fiscal Futures Project at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) has pinpointed a number of problems with this shift. Depending on state law, special funds may bypass the appropriations process, and unlike the general fund, money collected and unspent may be retained at years end rather than being returned to the general coffers. This makes special funds an appealing target when tough budget times hit. Lawmakers see these plush balances outside the general fund as a means to balance the budget. They may transfer or lend money from the special funds to the general fund.That leads to additional problems. It is a common tenet of responsible budget management that one-time money be used for one-time expenditures. If these funds are raided, then unless revenues are raised or expenses are cut, the government will still come up short in the next budget cycle.The movement of money between general and special funds has reduced the transparency of budgeting, says David Merriman, a professor at the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at UIC. The cloudiness of the budget picture enables political leaders to boast about a reduction of general fund spending, when spending has just been added to one or more special funds.States can also put themselves in legal peril by using funds for general purposes that are restricted to a specific use. Just after the recession ended, for example, the Wisconsin Supreme Court nixed the transfer of money from a malpractice fund into the states general fund. The state had to pay back the $200 million along with interest.New Mexicos reliance on special funds has led to a host of policy and management problems. As the state auditor pointed out in a February analysis of fund balances, New Mexico had $4.4 billion in unused balances socked away outside of the general fund at the end of fiscal year 2015. Some of that money is untouchable because of iron-clad restrictions about its use.The large amounts of unspent money raise questions about whether so much should be in funds that get so little attention. Auditors in New Mexico, for instance, found that a significant amount of money was being retained in revolving funds, which are intended as a cash-flow device for agencies and local governments. Localities are supposed to use this money and then return it so it can be used again. The practice isnt the problem, but the auditor found that some of the funds had very little lending activity, even though the state faces critical infrastructure needs for which it could be used. For example, $34 million sat unused in a revolving fund account for rural infrastructure between fiscal years 2014 and 2015. You cant justify a loan fund that had no loans out of it, says Tim Keller, New Mexicos state auditor.Keller, who was a legislator for six years before he took over last year as state auditor, spells out the real-life drawbacks of low-attention money. As a member of the legislature, he helped secure financing to build a dam in Las Vegas, N.M. I thought that fixing the dam was important and I put my political weight behind it, he says. He wasnt alone. The governor and local legislators were all taking credit for the dam, he says.But that back-patting was premature. With less visibility, money outside the general fund can go unspent, particularly when a legislative appropriation only provides partial funding as was the case for the dam. Thats because theres no one constantly monitoring it, says Sarita Nair, general counsel in the auditors office.Today, the dam is half finished, the money that was appropriated is largely unspent, the projects opponents have brought a lawsuit to stop its progress and the town still has a water crisis. You can take credit for funding something, but thats a different question than actually having it built, Keller says. GoCode Colorado Awards $25,000 Each to Three Startups Trump's Disregard for Data Incites RNC Senate Nudges OPEN Government Data Bill Forward GoCode Colorado, the states open data competition, has awarded three startups $25,000 each to develop solutions in the areas of employment, fast food delivery and energy regulation.The competition, coordinated by the Colorado Secretary of States office from February to May, brought technologists and entrepreneurs together to brainstorm and hatch business ideas around Colorados open data. After a round of service and product pitches on May 27, a panel of judges selected the startups Hively, Foodcaster and Regulation Explorer as winners.Hively, based in Colorado Springs, specializes in job matching services to pair company cultures with prospective candidates. Regulation Explorer, located in Fort Collins, assists oil and gas companies a major industry in the states economy to find approved and convenient drilling sites. And Foodcaster, based in Denver, offers a mobile app for food truck drivers to identify potential selling locations.The three startups were chosen out of a field of 35 teams and 10 finalists. Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams said the competition, now in its third year, was about cultivating an emerging community of open data advocates, something participants had embraced during the course of the contest.Teams participating in the challenge demonstrated what innovators and entrepreneurs can accomplish with open data, creativity and collaboration, Williams said in a press release . Its great to see a statewide community established around Go Code Colorado.The Republican National Committee is worried about Donald Trumps indifference toward data.The policy news sitereported that RNC leadership views their presumptive nominees lack of proficiency in campaign analytics as a potential threat to his political ambitions. Trump told the Associated Press last month he thought a dependence on data for political campaigning was overrated. He asserted that while data had some value, it ultimately did not surpass the virtues of a strong personality.The "candidate is by far the most important thing," Trump told AP, and said his data usage during the general campaign would be limited, focusing instead on rallies, television exposure and social media.He went on to credit Obamas presidential wins victories many campaign experts have marked as revolutionary in terms of data usage to the presidents character appeal to voters."Obama got the votes much more so than his data processing machine, and I think the same is true with me," Trump said.But its hard to say whether this disregard for data is more political posturing or a real belief. Trumps campaign has tried to paint the controversial business man as an anti-establishment disruptor, and feigning a disregard for analytics would go hand in hand with that persona. Either way, the RNC doesnt want to take chances, especially when Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are eagerly engaged in such data practices.RNC Chairman Reince Priebus has spoken personally with Trump about the issue, and the RNC plans to step in with a team of data experts should there be an issue.Strong bipartisan support continues to propel the OPEN (Open, Permanent, Electronic and Necessary) Government Data Act through Congress. The bill, if passed, would not only encourage agencies to publish non-classified information online, something the White House has already done in an executive order, but requires them by to do so by law.The Senates Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee unanimously approved the legislation with bipartisan support on May 25, and the bill, already in review by the House, heads to the full Senate for approval.Key stipulations in the bill will require agencies to publish their non-private or classified information in a an open, searchable and machine-readable format. The law further directs agencies to maintain an inventory of all their data, information that would feed into the U.S. open data portal on Data.gov.In a post commending the committees decision, the Sunlight Foundation said the laws passage, among other benefits, would improve government services, heighten accountability, stimulate business growth and enhance academic learning. (TNS) -- The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agencys decision to build its next western headquarters in St. Louis became final Thursday, ending a bitter bi-state battle and clearing the path for the largest federal project in city history.Robert Cardillo, the agencys director, preliminarily chose St. Louis in March as his preferred location. He has stood by that billion-dollar decision in recent months as officials from Illinois sought to reverse it in favor of a site near Scott Air Force Base.On Thursday, Cardillo filed the decision with the federal register, unceremoniously closing a two-month comment and review period.St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay greeted the news with two words: Im thrilled.Slay said he had spoken with Cardillo on Thursday, and his thoughts turned to the future.This is going to be very impactful, Slay said. Its going to be impactful for the neighborhood its in. Its going to be impactful for the surrounding area. Its going to be impactful for the entire city of St. Louis.Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, called the decision a decisive victory for St. Louis.The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will build the facility. Construction could begin in mid-2017.Slay said the NGA was looking at advanced design concepts meant to connect the facility with the surrounding area, which has been beset by poverty and decay.They dont want this to be an island, Slay said. They want this to be connected with the community.The agency has been improving its relationship with the technology industry in recent years and has prioritized efforts to attract more tech workers. Leaders also hope to partner with nearby educational institutions and incubators, such as the Cortex district in the Central West End neighborhood.In Washington, Missouri officials embraced the decision while Illinois officials blasted it. Federal officials competed for the project as the 2016 election cycle looms in the background.Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., lauded the decision. He is a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and stressed the NGAs critical mission in intelligence gathering.With todays decision, the NGA has rightly acknowledged the numerous benefits St. Louis provides to the current and future generation of intelligence professionals. Blunt said.Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., added: This is what sustained, bipartisan cooperation can look like for Missouri, and for our national security.Across the river, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., criticized the decision.I am deeply concerned about the security of the St. Louis site and I do not believe we have received acceptable answers from Director Cardillo, said Durbin. His decision today is short-sighted and ignores not only safety issues, but also legitimate concerns about cost overruns which will hurt taxpayers in the long-term.He said he supported calls by Rep. Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro, for a Government Accountability Office study into the process that was used to come to todays conclusion.Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., also said he supported a GAO investigation.This isnt the first time NGA has deliberately used bad information to make a bad decision, which is why I have asked the top government watchdog to ensure this decision is best for the warfighter and taxpayer, Kirk said in a statement.But as Missouri delegation members have pointed out, such investigations are not unusual after major decisions such as this, and Missouri politicians say they are confident any challenge will be unsuccessful.The construction of a $1.75 billion campus will be the largest federal expenditure in St. Louis history. Officials are hoping to use it to reshape an area north of downtown, but it will also force the demolition of several homes and businesses.Cardillo cited St. Louis as the most attractive site to recruit younger workers to the agency. NGA employs about 3,100 workers in St. Louis and could add employees after the move, expected in 2022 or 2023.The city will now begin the process of clearing the 99-acre site just north of the former Pruitt Igoe housing complex.Otis Williams, the citys economic development director, spent years navigating the complicated project and persuading residents to move. In one case, he agreed to physically move an elderly residents house to another neighborhood.Slay said Williams focus and determination is the reason NGA will stay in the city it has called home for more than 70 years.The effort has come with a hefty price. So far, the state has committed $131 million to the project: $95 million in tax-increment financing, a portion of which would include diverting state income tax payments of NGA employees; and $36 million in brownfield tax credits an amount higher than originally expected.The city has committed $1.5 million a year over the next 30 years, including diverting half of the 1 percent earnings tax paid by NGA workers. Currently, NGA workers pay more than $2 million in income tax to the city, and officials expect employment and payroll to grow over time.The old Arsenal complex, just south of the Anheuser-Busch brewery, has housed the agency since 1952. That site is controlled by the Air Force. Officials havent said what they will do with the campus, which is packed with historic buildings dating to the Civil War. when Darrin McGillis started as an Uber driver in Miami-Dade County, he was pretty happy. In his first two months on the job, he made almost $10,000. Even when the company cut fares nationwide, he didnt mind. He just traded in his sedan for an SUV to collect higher fares as an Uber XL driver. But McGillis feelings changed when someone on a scooter hit his car during a passenger drop-off and Uber refused to compensate McGillis for repairs. After weeks of disagreement over what the company owed, Uber directed its insurance provider to pay for the damages. Then, it deactivated his account.McGillis, not surprisingly, has changed his tune about the company. Uber doesnt care about the passengers or the drivers, he says. They care about the money. Its all about the money.McGillis isnt alone in feeling frustrated about his experience. Former Uber drivers in a handful of states have filed lawsuits over everything from unpaid business expenses to the companys practice of discouraging tips. In April, Uber agreed to pay $100 million to disgruntled drivers in California and Massachusetts who felt they were getting too little in pay and other compensation.But that settlement didnt address the companys most controversial policy -- its practice of treating its drivers as independent contractors, thus making them ineligible for most worker benefits, such as a guaranteed minimum wage, workers compensation and sick days. McGillis poses a more fundamental threat to Ubers way of doing business. Thats because he isnt suing the company for damages. Hes simply doing what most workers do when they get fired: Hes asking for unemployment benefits.According to Uber, McGillis isnt entitled to unemployment because he wasnt an employee. The company says it functions as a digital marketplace, connecting self-employed business owners (drivers) with customers (riders), while collecting a fee for making the introduction. Drivers must sign a contract that says theyre independent contractors, not employees, before they can take any passengers.Still, McGillis filed his claim, and the Florida Department of Revenue concluded that he had indeed been an employee and was due unemployment benefits. At a hearing held last year to examine the claims made by McGillis, as well as by a woman who used to drive for Uber, a supervisor from the Department of Revenue explained why both were approved for unemployment. She got paid commissions. She got paid bonuses. She did not bill. He did not bill. She indicated that they told her when and where and how -- the sequence to do the work. She had an identification badge as well. And she received training those types of things are considered to be various means of control.The Florida ruling drew national media attention because Uber has a multibillion-dollar valuation and more than 400,000 drivers across the country. If all those drivers had to be treated as employees, the aggregate costs might threaten its very business model. The company appealed the ruling and offered McGillis $5,000 to drop his claim. But McGillis made a counter offer of $8,000, and when he never heard back, he continued to pursue the unemployment compensation he believed was owed to him.The dispute remains unresolved. An appellate agency, the Department of Economic Opportunity, reversed the ruling on McGillis claim, and as of mid-May, he was awaiting a final decision by the states Third District Court of Appeal.The McGillis case is at the center of a larger national debate about the legal status of people who work in the app-based gig or sharing economy. San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and many other cities have recently passed labor laws intended to raise wages and mandate worker benefits. All these cities are seeing a growth in app-based businesses that dont classify their workers as employees. Labor advocacy groups, such as the National Employment Law Project (NELP), point out that a $15 minimum wage is far less effective when more and more people are working under business arrangements that deny them protections. If we care about wages, we need to care about people working for Uber, says Rebecca Smith, NELPs deputy director.The stakes for state and local government are high. If the workers are indeed employees, the businesses ought to be paying into state funds for workers compensation and unemployment insurance. While no one has tried to estimate the potential revenue lost to states because of the nonemployee classification, the federal government misses out on a minimum of $3 billion to $4 billion in uncollected taxes for this reason each year, according to the nonprofit Jobs with Justice.Even so, officials have been reluctant to take a hard stand against Uber, and a 2015 National League of Cities report explains why. The reports authors interviewed public officials in 11 cities about their experience dealing with sharing economy businesses. Elected leaders recognized that the businesses might be breaking local transportation laws, but they felt a pressure to maintain their citys reputation as a welcoming place for innovation. Being friendly to innovation was so critical to economic development that most cities decided they would let the companies operate illegally and figure out the regulatory details afterward.This is a challenge in a lot of jurisdictions, says Seattle City Councilmember Mike OBrien, who has sponsored legislation recognizing the labor rights of ride-sharing drivers. Theres something that is very innovative about how [Uber and Lyft] use technology and how they think about mobility. And theres something thats very old-school about how they are making billions and billions of dollars on the backs of the lowest wage workers who have the smallest voice in our political system.it drew protests from some transportation officials who worried about how existing regulations for taxis and for-hire drivers would apply to ride-sharing companies. Their concerns were mostly about traffic congestion and public safety. Would the vehicles clog busy downtown intersections? Did drivers have insurance? Could their cars pass a safety inspection? Would companies hire drivers with criminal records?But in the last year, a different set of actors has begun to weigh in: state labor commissioners. Part of the reason theyre looking at Uber is the proliferation of complaints about low pay and the companys deactivation practices. According to a study by Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist, and Jonathan Hall, Ubers director of policy research, the median hourly earnings for UberX -- people using their personal vehicles -- was below $19 across 20 major cities in October 2014. After including business expenses, such as tolls and gas, the pay would have been lower. And those numbers predate Ubers move to cut fares last year (the same cut that prompted Darrin McGillis to switch to UberXL). Smith of NELP says shes met drivers whose real hourly pay is currently closer to $3.While Uber is by far the most frequently cited villain in sharing economy labor disputes, the same kinds of lawsuits are being filed against other companies that insist their app-enabled workers arent employees. In the District of Columbia, former workers for Postmates, the app-based courier service, allege that the company is violating the districts minimum-wage law and failing to reimburse couriers for essential business expenses, such as gas and phone data. Handy, a company that connects customers to painters, plumbers and housecleaners, has faced lawsuits over the alleged misclassification of workers. In response to a similar suit last year, Instacart, a grocery shopping and delivery service, announced it would offer its shoppers -- but not its drivers -- the option of becoming part-time employees with benefits. So Uber isnt alone in using the independent-contractor model. But its sheer size has attracted more lawsuits and media attention than other such companies.So far, Ubers early success overcoming transportation regulations has not translated into success in disputes over workers rights. Last September, a state board in Alaska concluded that Ubers drivers were employees and that the company owed the state almost $78,000 in unpaid workers compensation taxes for a six-month trial run in Anchorage. Uber settled with the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development and agreed not to operate in Alaska unless it reclassifies its drivers as employees. Last summer, the California Labor Commission ruled that an Uber driver was an employee and that the company owed her about $4,100 in reimbursable business expenses, such as out-of-pocket maintenance costs. The company is appealing the ruling.With the McGillis claim and the California Labor Commission case still undecided, Uber opted to pay $100 million to settle the separate California drivers lawsuit. Under the settlement, the company agreed to revise its deactivation policy, allowing drivers to remain active while appealing their termination. Drivers will also be able to solicit tips, which Uber currently discourages. While the settlement might be seen as a concession by Uber, labor advocates expressed some disappointment that the lawsuit didnt go to trial and receive a court ruling. By settling, Uber avoided having to classify its drivers as employees with benefits.The next legal battle over the employment status of ride-sharing drivers could take place in Oregon. Last fall, Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian released an advisory opinion that he, too, considered Uber drivers to be employees, not independent contractors. Avakian said he had been fielding requests for clarification from state legislators and the Portland transportation commissioner, and wanted to signal how he would rule in future cases.The definition of an employee varies by state and industry, but in Oregon a workers status is determined by an economic realities test. Avakian listed several factors in that test, such as the degree of control exercised by the alleged employer and the extent to which the work performed is integral to the alleged employers business. While Uber drivers use their own vehicle and may accept or reject ride requests, Avakian wrote, Uber exercises a significant degree of control over the drivers actual work. Uber hires and fires its drivers, disciplines poor-performing workers and sets fares. The drivers work is not only integral but a necessary part of Ubers business, he wrote. By many measures, Avakian argued, the drivers appeared to have an employment relationship with Uber.Obviously states have a direct financial interest in reclassifying Uber drivers -- and other sharing economy workers -- as employees. It would mean an immediate boost in tax revenue. But Avakian also noted the importance of enforcing proper classification so that the Ubers of the world dont have an unfair advantage over other businesses with employees on the payroll. When a company skirts its responsibility to pay employer taxes, he says, its creating an uneven playing field for employers who do follow the rules.In all likelihood, states will arrive at different conclusions about the employment question, forcing the National Labor Relations Board and federal courts to take up the issue. When Jesse Panuccio, then director of the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, denied McGillis unemployment claim, he spent four pages explaining why he thought the California and Oregon labor commissioners were mistaken in their assessments. Uber operates not as an employer, but as a middleman or broker for transportation services, he wrote. Uber is no more an employer to drivers than is an art gallery to artists. Panuccio also gave deference to Ubers argument that McGillis had consented to being counted as an independent contractor when he was hired.Certainly if businesses are misclassifying workers for any purpose, Panuccio wrote, state and federal labor authorities should rectify those cases. But ... the real shift in our economy is that technology is allowing hundreds of thousands of people to go into business for themselves. We should not malign (or, perhaps, misclassify) that trend as worker misclassification.Uber offers a different argument for classifying their workers as independent contractors: The drivers want it. In response to a request for comment, an Uber spokesperson cited internal data showing that drivers prefer the flexibility of being their own bosses, setting their own hours and having the freedom to work for other companies. But Uber appears to be looking for compromises that concede some benefits without treating drivers as full-blown employees. In May, the company struck a five-year deal that allows drivers in New York City to form a guild affiliated with a prominent machinists union. Drivers are able to appeal deactivations, and buy discounted services, such as roadside assistance, but they still arent guaranteed a minimum wage or overtime. In a prepared statement, David Plouffe, the Uber adviser and former White House strategist, made his case for why a union-like guild was better than reclassifying drivers as employees with benefits. Theres no one-size-fits-all approach, he said, that can address the myriad different needs of the drivers using our app.how to properly classify Uber drivers, some local policymakers think theyve found a third option: allow independent contractors to bargain collectively for benefits. In December, the Seattle City Council passed legislation that allows ride-sharing drivers to form a union and participate in a bargaining process.Were trying to be innovative on behalf of workers here to give them some leverage in negotiations, says OBrien, the Seattle councilman who sponsored the legislation. Theres this race to the bottom to see how cheap you can go, often on the back of workers. I fundamentally believe that the cost of living for those workers should be borne by the people who use that [ride-sharing] system. It shouldnt be a system where the workers get paid below living wages and then the public is expected to tax ourselves to pay for affordable housing or discounted electric utilities or whatever.The Seattle law is novel in the sense that its supporters arent challenging Ubers classification of drivers as independent contractors. They dont fit neatly either as the employee or the independent contractor, OBrien says. I think its possible that we need more classes of employment, but that may be years in the making. In fact, some countries, such as Canada andGermany, already have an intermediate classification called dependent contractor for freelancers who work mostly for one business and receive some protections, but not as many as full-time employees.As with just about everything else in the debate over drivers employment status, the Seattle ordinances future is uncertain. In March, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued the city, arguing that the unionization ordinance violates federal antitrust laws. Even if the law survives the chambers challenge, it would still be at least a year before Uber and Lyft drivers could take a vote on whether they want to form a union.Despite that uncertainty, New York City Councilmember Brad Lander has already called for replicating the Seattle ordinance in other places. Independent contractors are currently excluded from most city, state and federal civil rights and workplace protections, Lander wrote in a recent brief. This can be easily remedied by cities that have such laws by extending them to cover contingent workers.The first of these efforts is already in the works. In March, California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez introduced a bill that would allow Uber drivers and other independent contractors in the gig economy to form union-like groups and bargain collectively for wages and benefits. Its considered a longshot this year, and officials in other states are waiting to see what happens with it.I think were at the beginning of this story about workers and the on-demand economy, says Mariah Montgomery, a strategist for the Partnership for Working Families, a national labor advocacy group. Its going to require the testing out of new ideas. Were wading into uncharted territory here, but its important to see whats possible. The day after the Senate passed my bill outlawing ransomware (SB 1137), https://t.co/C32Ho8r44A, my Capitol office got hit with ransomware!! Bob Hertzberg (@SenateHertzberg) June 2, 2016 A day after the state Senate approved legislation outlawing ransomware, the bill authors website was hit.In a tweet Thursday, Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, showed a screen shot of his hijacked Senate website.All of our shared drive files have been encrypted with software typically used in ransomware attacks, Hertzberg spokesman Andrew LaMar wrote in an email toSo we cannot access our shared files.The attack occurred between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, he added. Computer technicians are currently working to resolve the problem.Lawmakers on Tuesday unanimously approved legislation by Hertzberg that would make it a crime for anyone to knowingly put ransomware on a computer's system, network or data. The bill comes after a number of retailers and hospitals have fallen victim to software attacks demanding compensation to unlock their computer, device or data.In February, the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center paid a $17,000 ransom in bitcoin to restore access to its computer system. During the floor debate on Tuesday, Hertzberg said the number of attacks have skyrocketed to more than $204 million in ransomware payments in the first three months of 2016 compared to $24 million for all of last year.As we face new challenges in this technologically advancing society, our laws need to fundamentally change, Hertzberg said during the debate.Hertzberg's bill, SB 1137, would make a ransomware violation a felony, punishable by up to four years in jail and a fine of up to $10,000. The measure must now win Assembly approval. Aiming for Improvement California isnt the only state interested in vendor scorecards. Arizona is in the early stages of setting up a scorecard system to rate all types of suppliers, including IT vendors. Judy Wente, Arizonas state procurement administrator and a former Intel Corp. supply chain executive, said that in the private sector, scorecards are the norm. To come to the state and not have scorecards seems like a disconnect because suppliers and the state need to have a way to communicate with each other and gain alignment on how work is being performed, she said. Its very similar to the relationship a company has with its own employees. You have to be able to communicate with each other, and know what the baseline is and address continuous improvement. They should realize that status quo year after year just will not cut it. Wente said Arizona would have to work through the issues that the California Department of Technology did to identify how vendors would be rated, whether they have a right to appeal and how the information might be used in future procurements. I agree there is complexity, but there is also complexity in the private sector, so this is not something that should be unfamiliar to IT vendors, she said. Arizona has signaled its direction to vendors and hopes to roll out a version of its scorecard by this fall. When NASCIO surveyed its members about IT procurement in 2015, almost 50 percent had negative opinions about the process and 70 percent of vendor partners were moderately to very dissatisfied with state IT procurement processes.This February NASCIO proposed several actions states could take to improve procurements, including removing unlimited liability clauses in terms and conditions and introducing more flexible terms and conditions. One idea absent from the list is an approach being piloted in California: creating vendor performance scorecards on IT projects for use in future procurements.In June 2014, the California Department of Technology (CDT) began work on a Contractor Performance Evaluation Scorecard. A workgroup made up of staff from the State Technology Procurement Division within the Technology Department, the Department of General Services, other state departments and volunteer members of the vendor community met several times to provide input and work out the details. Pilot projects are expected to begin this year.In an in-depth interview with Public CIO, Carlos Ramos, who stepped down as CIO of California in March, described the genesis of the project and the progress to date.As the CIOs office fulfilled its responsibility to provide oversight of the states IT portfolio and projects, it started to see similar issues or factors whenever an IT project would go off the rails, Ramos said. There are many reasons why projects go bad, but one of them is a lack of performance on the part of contractors. For instance, at the time of bidding, we would work with well qualified candidates the A team, Ramos said. When it came time to start an engagement, however, we were often not getting the A team anymore. Now some of that was on us, because procurements take so darn long, but sometimes it was the contractors.Ramos said he took several steps to help state employees improve, including offering more training and oversight and holding them accountable for performance. We thought it was important to extend that accountability to our contractors, he added.Besides providing performance feedback during a large project, the scorecards also are expected to be a way for the state to take into account previous performance in future procurements, something that has been difficult to do in the past because evaluations were based on requirements built into the procurement vehicles. We had no systemic way of measuring performance and taking it into account, Ramos said. We saw that as a gap.While conceptualizing the scorecard, the workgroup decided it had to include consistent performance measures and be done in a way that the same thing is measured on each contract, reporting is done regularly and consistently, and it needs to be public.We have to give contractors the opportunity to dispute or rebut a rating that they may not agree with, Ramos explained.In addition, it was important to include vendors in the design process. We went out to the bidding community and said, We want to find a way to hold you accountable. We want to be able to rate your performance, report on it and use it the next time you bid, so help us come up with something, Ramos said. And to their credit, they did.As the state looks for pilot projects to test the scorecard on, Ramos described how it will work: Once per quarter a project manager will rate the vendor on a scale of A through F on key performance indicators aligned with scope, schedule, cost and quality as defined in the contract, and whether any shortcomings are the fault of the state or the vendor.If the vendor wants to dispute the rating, it will have the opportunity to appeal to the projects steering committee. If that committee agrees with the vendor, the rating would be changed. But if not, the rating would be confirmed and made public. This creates 360-degree accountability, Ramos said.The CDT will give state agencies flexibility in terms of how much to weigh these performance scores in future procurements. For example, one performance question is: Did the vendor deliver the scope it contracted to deliver on time? Those factors may be of different levels of importance on future procurements, said Ramos, so we are going to give folks the flexibility to weight them differently in a procurement evaluation.Despite Ramos departure from the state CIO role, the scorecard is proceeding as planned, according to Teala Schaff, a CDT spokeswoman. The CDT continues to engage its customers and the vendor community in the development of the policies and procedures of the scorecard and will continue this path forward throughout the planned pilot phase, she said. The CPES pilot will include a diverse representation of new reportable IT projects in California; however, the state has not approved any new projects for procurement. Therefore, no projects have yet been identified to participate in the pilot phase, although our commencement is expected this year.Not everyone is ready to embrace the scorecard plan Ramos admitted that many vendors have reservations about the idea.Josh Nisbet, director of government clients and markets for Deloitte, participated in workgroup sessions and supports the efforts to improve the delivery of IT projects in the state. But he expressed concern that when it comes to measuring the success of projects, they are still really only looking at vendor performance.At the end of the day, if a project is over budget or late, most of the rear-view-mirror look-back is evaluating the vendor, as opposed to measuring the performance of the overall team, which includes both the state and the vendor, he said. Those familiar with the complexity of large projects know there are a lot of moving parts and interdependencies that impact cost and schedule.Nisbets primary concern with Californias plan is that the project director is the person making the evaluation. If a vendor or consultant wants to appeal that evaluation, the process dictated by the state takes that appeal to the same governance counsel or executive body responsible for the project. Most vendors would be uncomfortable seeking an appeal from the boss of someone who gave them a bad mark; they are not going to view that process as fair and impartial, he said.Nisbet suggested the appeal process take place somewhere removed from the project. Some states that have implemented vendor performance scorecards, such as Texas, use state agencies removed from day-to-day management of the projects to evaluate and appeal vendor performance grades, infusing some third-party objectivity into the process.Gathering the right data to rate vendors in a way that would be meaningful in future procurements is very difficult, said Dean Kashiwagi, director of the Performance Based Studies Research Group at Arizona State University. (Kashiwagi developed the Best Value Performance Information Procurement System, which is designed to identify an expert vendor to handle a project and have the non-expert customer avoid micro-managing the project.) He has seen examples of public-sector entities in Europe trying to include vendor past performance as part of procurements. They never get the data valid enough to actually disqualify somebody, he said, predicting that California will also find that the approach doesnt work.Dugan Petty, a senior fellow at the Center for Digital Government and former CIO of Oregon, served on a task force that made several IT procurement recommendations to California in 2013, including the scorecard idea. He said that particularly in the area of IT procurement, past performance must be factored in somehow. Youd do it in your home. If you hired painters to paint your house three years ago and they did a horrible job, you wouldnt just give them the job the next time your house needed painting without taking that into consideration.But Petty said its important that California make it clear upfront how the ratings are going to be performed and used going forward. You also have to give vendors a chance at recourse on information you capture, he said. You cant just go behind closed doors and decide they didnt do very well on this or that element of a project, and use that against them if they ever bid again on a project.Petty, who also previously served as Alaskas chief procurement officer, said the vendors that have a strong reputation of being successful are likely to be a lot more supportive of the concept. Fly-by-night outfits that come in and low-bid things will get weeded out, he said. You are likely to get higher quality in terms of performance contractors with this in place. But the challenge is getting it set up and being inclusive and transparent in how you engage the vendors. A Brazilian outlet says there are rumours Felipe Massa is in talks with Renault about a potential switch to the French works team for 2017. With not only Jenson Button but also Daniil Kvyat linked with his seat at Williams for next year, F1 veteran Massa admitted in Monaco that with his contract expiring, the time was right to start "working on what the future holds". "I have the chance to continue in Williams, yes, but also to negotiate with other teams," Massa added. So Brazil's UOL Grande Premio said that with Renault currently fielding Kevin Magnussen alongside rookie Jolyon Palmer, the team might benefit from Massa's long experience as the sport transitions to new regulations for 2017. "He is a driver who has been at Ferrari and has the experience of rebuilding a team like Williams," said journalist Juliana Tesser. And Flavio Gomes, another correspondent, said Massa could play a role at Renault similar to the job done by the experienced Jenson Button at McLaren. "The function for some of these older drivers is to help a team develop -- to plant something that they will not harvest because they are getting close to the end of their career," he said. A third Brazilian journalist, Vitor Fazio, agreed: "I do not think Felipe will be in F1 for another two years and Renault has said itself that it will only be competitive in three." (GMM) Grown in contact with these catalysts, the bacterium Ralstonia eutropha then consumes the produced H 2 to synthesize biomass and fuels or chemical products from low CO 2 concentration in the presence of O 2 . The scalable system has a CO 2 reduction energy efficiency of ~50% when producing bacterial biomass and liquid fuel alcohols, scrubbing 180 grams of CO 2 per kWh of electricity. Coupling this hybrid device to existing photovoltaic systems would yield a CO 2 reduction energy efficiency of ~10%, exceeding that of natural photosynthetic systems, the researchers said in their paper published in the journal Science . Researchers at Harvard have created a hybrid water splittingbiosynthetic system based on a biocompatible Earth-abundant inorganic catalyst system to split water into molecular hydrogen and oxygen (H 2 and O 2 ) at low driving voltages. The research was led by Daniel Nocera, the Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy at Harvard University, and Pamela Silver, the Elliott T. and Onie H. Adams Professor of Biochemistry and Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. Dubbed bionic leaf 2.0, the new system builds on previous work by Nocera, Silver and others (earlier post), whichthough it was capable of using solar energy to make isopropanolfaced a number of challenges. Chief among those challenges, Nocera said, was the fact that the catalyst used to produce hydrogena nickel-molybdenum-zinc alloyalso created reactive oxygen species, molecules that attacked and destroyed the bacterias DNA. To avoid that problem, researchers were forced to run the system at abnormally high voltages, resulting in reduced efficiency. For this paper, we designed a new cobalt-phosphorous alloy catalyst, which we showed does not make reactive oxygen species. That allowed us to lower the voltage, and that led to a dramatic increase in efficiency. Daniel Nocera The system can now convert solar energy to biomass with 10% efficiency, Nocera said, far above the one percent seen in the fastest growing plants. This is a true artificial photosynthesis system. Before, people were using artificial photosynthesis for water-splitting, but this is a true A-to-Z system, and weve gone well over the efficiency of photosynthesis in nature. Daniel Nocera While the study shows the system can be used to generate usable fuels, its potential doesnt end there, said Silver, who is also a Founding Core Member of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. The beauty of biology is its the worlds greatest chemistbiology can do chemistry we cant do easily. In principle, we have a platform that can make any downstream carbon-based molecule. So this has the potential to be incredibly versatile. Pamela Silver In addition to increasing the efficiency, Nocera and colleagues were able to expand the portfolio of the system to include isobutanol and isopentanol. Researchers also used the system to create PHB, a bio-plastic precursor, a process first demonstrated by MIT professor Anthony Sinskey. The chemical design of the new catalyst allows it to self-healmeaning it wouldnt leech material into solution. This is the genius of Dan. These catalysts are totally biologically compatible. Pamela Silver Though there may yet be room for additional increases in efficiency, Nocera said the system is already effective enough to consider possible commercial applications but within a different model for technology translation. Its an important discoveryit says we can do better than photosynthesis. But I also want to bring this technology to the developing world as well. Daniel Nocera Working in conjunction with the First 100 Watts program at Harvard, which helped fund the research, Nocera hopes to continue developing the technology and its applications in nations such as India with the help of their scientists. If you think about it, photosynthesis is amazing. It takes sunlight, water and airand then look at a tree. Thats exactly what we did, but we do it significantly better, because we turn all that energy into a fuel. Daniel Nocera This work was supported by Office of Naval Research Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative Award (N00014-11-1-0725), Air Force Office of Scientific Research Grant (FA9550-09-1-0689), and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. The Harvard University Climate Change Solutions Fund is supporting ongoing research into the "bionic leaf" platform. The work is a direct result of the First 100 W Program established at Harvard University. Resources The device exploits graphenes phenomenally high electron mobilitya property which determines how fast an electron can travel in a material and how fast electronic devices can operate. The resulting device is the most sensitive room-temperature rectifier ever made, the researchers said. Conventional devices with similar conversion efficiencies require cryogenically low temperatures. Researchers at the University of Manchester (UK) have developed a graphene-based nano-rectifier (ballistic rectifier) that can convert waste heat to electricity. The nano-rectifier was built by a team led by Professor Aimin Song and Dr. Ernie Hill, in collaboration with a team at Shandong University (China). Professor Song and other colleagues first outlined their concept of a ballistic rectifier for the study of electron transport through semiconductor devices in a 1998 paper: Here we introduce a novel device geometry which is particularly suitable to study the effects of reduced symmetry on the nonlinear ballistic transport properties. By inserting an asymmetric scatterer into the center of a ballistic cross junction, we observe unusual nonlinear current-voltage characteristics which we show to be dominated by the symmetry properties of the scatterer. The size of the artificial scatterer is much larger than the Fermi wavelength F of the conducting electrons and comparable to their elastic mean free path l e (l e F ). We demonstrate a successful guidance of ballistic electrons to a predetermined spatial direction independent of input current direction. As a result, the device works as a ballistic rectifier with a mechanism entirely different from that of an ordinary diode. Song et al. (1998) Rectifying diodes let electrical current flow in only one direction; mainly used for power supply operation, they convert AC to DC current. Conventional rectifying diodes are based on either pn doped junction or a Schottky barrier. The built-in electric field or a threshold voltage in these devices requires an applied bias high enough to overcome the internal field and generate a significant current flow. The ballistic rectifier has no intrinsic threshold or turn-on voltage because there is no pn junction or Schottky barrier along the direction of electrical current in the device. In 2012, a team from the US, Spain and Sweden (Matthews et al.) demonstrated a thermally driven ballistic rectifier: Here we present measurements of the response to a thermal bias of a four-terminal, quasiballistic junction with a central scattering site. We find a novel transverse thermovoltage measured across isothermal contacts. Using a multiterminal scattering model extended to the weakly nonlinear voltage regime, we show that the devices response to a thermal bias can be predicted from its nonlinear response to an electric bias. Our approach forms a foundation for the discovery and understanding of advanced, nonlocal, thermoelectric phenomena that in the future may lead to novel thermoelectric device concepts. Matthews et al. (2015) The device in that experiment consisted of an InP/Ga 0.23 In 0.77 As 2DEG wafer. In 2015, Dr. Song and his colleagues reported the development a graphene-based ballistic-rectifier. Top: Schematic illustration of the different geometries of ballistic rectifiers (a) with and (b) without a triangular antidot, an artificial scatterer, at the center of device active region. The dark areas represent the etched regions. Arrows indicate the typical directions of flow of the charge carriers from S or D to L terminal. (c) The typical scanning electron microscope image (c) and atomic-force micrograph (d) of the devices with and without a triangular antidot, respectively. Singh et al. (2015) Bottom: Illustration of graphene-based ballistic rectifier. Manchester University. Click to enlarge. The Manchester team is now proposing that the graphene-based ballistic rectifier can convert waste from engine exhaust into a useable electrical current to power additional automotive features such as air conditioning and power steering, or be stored in the car battery. Graphene has exceptional properties; it possesses the longest carrier mean free path of any electronic material at room temperature. Despite this, even the most promising applications to commercialize graphene in the electronics industry do not take advantage of this property. Instead they often try to tackle the the problem that graphene has no band gap. The working principle of the ballistic rectifier means that it does not require any band gap. Meanwhile, it has a single-layered planar device structure which is perfect to take the advantage of the high electron-mobility to achieve an extremely high operating speed. Unlike conventional rectifiers or diodes, the ballistic rectifier does not have any threshold voltage either, making it perfect for energy harvest as well as microwave and infrared detection.Greg Auton, who performed most of the experiment Graphene was the worlds first two-dimensional material, isolated in 2004 at The University of Manchester; since then a whole family of other 2D materials have been discovered. The Manchester-based group is now looking to scale up the research by using large wafer-sized graphene and perform high-frequency experiments. The resulting technology can also be applied to harvesting wasted heat energy in power plants. Resources ORNL scientists Zach Sims, Michael McGuire and Orlando Rios, along with colleagues from Eck, LLNL and Ames Laboratory in Iowa, discuss the technical and economic possibilities for aluminumcerium alloys in an article in JOM , a publication of the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society. The alloys have the potential to jump-start US production of rare earth elements, the researchers suggested. Researchers at the Department of Energys Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and partners Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Eck Industries have developed aluminum-cerium (Al-Ce) alloys that are both easier to work with and more heat tolerant than existing products. The team is working as part of the Critical Materials Institute, an Energy Innovation Hub created by the US Department of Energy (DOE) and managed out of DOEs Advanced Manufacturing Office. Based at Ames, the institute works to increase the availability of rare earth metals and other materials critical for US energy security. Rare earths are a group of elements critical to electronics, alternative energy and other modern technologies. Modern windmills and hybrid autos, for example, rely on strong permanent magnets made with the rare earth elements neodymium and dysprosium. Yet there is no production occurring in North America at this time. One barrier is that cerium accounts for up to half of the rare earth content of many rare earth ores, including those in the United States, and it has been difficult for rare earth producers to find a market for all of the cerium mined. The United States most common rare earth ore contains three times more cerium than neodymium and 500 times more cerium than dysprosium. Aluminumcerium alloys could boost domestic rare earth mining by increasing the demand and, eventually, the value of cerium. We have these rare earths that we need for energy technologies, but when you go to extract rare earths, the majority is cerium and lanthanum, which have limited large-volume uses. Orlando Rios If, for example, the new alloys find a place in internal combustion engines, they could quickly transform cerium from an inconvenient byproduct of rare earth mining to a valuable product in itself. In their paper, the researchers observed that two million metric tons of aluminum are consumed annually in transportation. For every 1% of penetration into the aluminum transportation marketassuming a 12 wt.% Ce alloy2400 t of cerium would be required, with global production of Ce of about 24,000 t annually. The commercialization path in part will depend on the cost of cerium. At an alloy cost of less than $10.00/kg, there could be significant interest and adoption by the automotive industry. The high strength could result in lighter weight components and significant adoption in applications requiring good high-temperature strength. At alloy costs in the $10 to $20 range, commercialization activities would concentrate on military application, where the alloy strength could be used advantageously for lighter weight structures. At alloy costs greater than $20/kg, commercialization activity would concentrate on the commercial, general aviation, and space markets where strength and high-temperature performance would be justified by the high penalty of weight. Where high-temperature performance would normally be addressed by the conversion of aluminum to titanium, much higher prices may be justified. The evidence suggests that as much as 25% to 30% of the existing titanium market (4000 t annually) is driven by temperature performance in the 150 C to 315 C range, which is within the expected operating range of this alloy system. Sims et al. Air-cooled cylinder head cast from Al-12Ce-0.4Mg. Image credit: Carlos Jones, ORNL. Click to enlarge. Rios said components made with aluminum-cerium alloys offer several advantages over those made from existing aluminum alloys, including low cost, high castability, reduced heat-treatment requirements and exceptional high-temperature stability. Most alloys with exceptional properties are more difficult to cast, but the aluminum-cerium system has equivalent casting characteristics to the aluminum-silicon alloys. David Weiss, vice president for engineering and research and development at Eck Industries The key to the alloys high-temperature performance is a specific aluminum-cerium compound, or intermetallic, which forms inside the alloys as they are melted and cast. This intermetallic melts only at temperatures above 1093 C (2,000 F). Al-Ce alloys have the possibility of replacing heavier steel and cast-irons for use in high-temperature applications. Al-Ce alloys castable along a broad range of cerium content, which are compatible with modern casting practices, require no changes to the present foundry infrastructure. Mechanical properties are as high as 252 MPa for tensile and 128 MPa for yield strength. Although high-temperature mechanical properties are not represented here, the combination of thermodynamic properties and stability after heat-treatment suggest that Al-Ce-X alloys hold great promise for high-temperature mechanical properties. Sims et al. That heat tolerance makes aluminumcerium alloys very attractive for use in internal combustion engines, Rios noted. Tests have shown the new alloys to be stable at 300 C (572 F), a temperature that would cause traditional alloys to begin disintegrating. In addition, the stability of this intermetallic sometimes eliminates the need for heat treatments typically needed for aluminum alloys. Not only would aluminum-cerium alloys allow engines to increase fuel efficiency directly by running hotter, they may also increase fuel efficiency indirectly, by paving the way for lighter engines that use small aluminum-based components or use aluminum alloys to replace cast iron components such as cylinder blocks, transmission cases and cylinder heads. The team has already cast prototype aircraft cylinder heads in conventional sand molds. The team also cast a fully functional cylinder head for a fossil fuel-powered electric generator in 3D-printed sand molds. This first-of-a-kind demonstration led to a successful engine test performed at ORNLs National Transportation Research Center. The engine was shown to handle exhaust temperatures of more than 600 C. Three-dimensional printed molds are typically very hard to fill, but aluminumcerium alloys can completely fill the mold thanks to their exceptional castability. Zachary Sims The alloys were jointly invented by researchers at ORNL and Eck Industries. Colleagues at Eck Industries contributed expertise in aluminum casting, and LLNL researchers analyzed the aluminum-cerium castings using synchrotron source X-ray computed tomography. Resources This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate NORWALK An off-duty police officer might have prevented a tragedy Friday afternoon by stopping a knife-wielding man on a Metro-North train. Eyewitnesses said that when a Metro-North conductor warned passengers to steer clear of the man because he was acting strangely about 5 p.m., the man ripped his shirt off and began to slice away at his own chest. Terrified passengers began running to another car. Prospect police officer Anthony Ciprano headed toward the commotion, and told Hearst Connecticut Media that the man then charged at him with the knife. Ciprano pulled out his handgun, and the man got down on the floor of train car. Ciprano is a retired state trooper who works as a part-time officer in Prospect, a town outside Waterbury. "Everybody came running into my car, yelling that a guy has a knife," Ciprano said. The guy looked like he was on drugs or something. The guy was just standing there saying that he was going to do it, he was going to do it, said Anthony Fernandez of Stratford, who was in the car where the action occurred. Witnesses told Hearst Media Connecticut that passengers ran for doors at both ends of the car. The parking lot at Rowayton station was crowded with onlookers and emergency vehicles. One police officer was in tactical gear. People on a train platform watched as the man was put on a gurney and then into an ambulance. Overhead on the platform was a lighted digital sign reading, "Stay safe, be alert." Norwalk, Darien and Metropolitan Transportation Authority police responded to the scene, an MTA spokesperson said. On a recent trip to Zagreb, Croatia, I stumbled across the LEAP Summit, a conference fostering entrepreneurship in the Balkans. There were over 1,200 attendees from 26 countries represented at this initial year of the conference. Related: 4 Ways International Work Experience Helps Entrepreneurs Succeed It was an event that provided me, an American entrepreneur, a great window on to what the region is about today, following years of war in parts of a region loosed defined as Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Montenegro, mainland Greece, Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria and Albania -- and sometimes referred to as "Southeast Europe.") In fact, the Balkans are an interesting, emerging region that most people dont know much about, but that has great potential mixed with difficult challenges. Those challenges were very much on the mind of Andrej Hanzir, a graduate student at the University of Zagreb, who was the driving force behind the conference. We have some of the highest unemployment rates in all of Europe, yet many countries have a very skilled workforce and good language skills," Hanzir said at the conference. "We really need to get young people on board with the entrepreneurial mindset, because thats going to up the level of the region. Many of the countries came from socialism or communism and were part of ex-Yugoslavia just 25 short years ago, and we need to accelerate the shift to a market-driven economy. We need jobs -- and the best way to create jobs is to foster startups and small business. Thats why the conference focused on people under 35, who have grown up in this new world. Those current and potential entrepreneurs hope that their governments are paying attention, because there is much that can be done, specifically around bureaucracy and taxes. It can be expensive, for instance, to start a new legal entity in the region -- often requiring $1,000 or more (big money in the Balkans) to start a company, and weeks to months. The challenge comes into perspective when you consider that average wages in the region range from only about $500 to $1,000 a month. Paperwork can seem endless, and it also changes frequently. One positive point is that some of the countries, such as Croatia and Greece, are in the European Union, which helps open up trading opportunities and reduces at least some of the bureaucracy. A negative? Taxes, which companies pay for their employees, on top of the salaries, and which can be quite high. Related: 5 Things International Startups Should Know Before Joining a U.S. Accelerator The biggest challenge, however, is mindset. It used to be that, if you start a business and it doesnt succeed, you are labeled a failure. Yet if you succeed, you are a crook. So why even try? commented Davorin Stetner, a well-known entrepreneur in the region. Stetner heads up the Croatian Business Angel Network and also serves on the Presidential Economic Council, which advises Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovi, who's president of Croatia. Were changing that," Stetner continued, about the region's issues with mindset. "With mentoring, education, accelerators and incubators, were giving the people the tools they need to succeed. Theres just so much potential here. While area universities are churning out skilled technology workers who speak good English and German, many of them move to London, Germany or the United States after graduation to make more money. Its the challenge of the countries here to give them a reason to stay. And, in fact, some have cracked the code, quite successfully. Yellow Designs is a web and digital design company in Montenegro that has thrived by finding Western clients through outsourcing outlets like Upwork and Freelancer.com. The company offers graphic design, web design, 3D design, animation, video editing and photography. Marko Mujicic, one of the founders, remarked of his firm that, We have quality people -- college graduates, many with masters degrees -- that our clients can take advantage of, for around $10 an hour. Thats cheaper than most anywhere in the world, and our customers tell us that its much easier to communicate with us than other outsourcing theyve done. We like working with the Western companies because they know what they want -- it can be frustrating working with local companies, who dont value IT projects the same way. Yellow Designs ends up paying its people significantly more than the average Macedonian wage, which keeps them people-focused, and loyal. But that's the story of only one Balkans company: It will be interesting to see how the region shapes up over the next few years. Will area governments do more to support the startup scene? Will people start accepting the risk that comes with starting a business? Will capital facilities be able to fund the high-potentials? Related: 7 International Cities That Welcome New and Expanding Businesses Great questions to ask -- with a whole region on the line. Related: Remember the War-torn Balkans? Entrepreneurship There Is Now on the Rise. This Company Takes the Hassle out of Launching a Foreign Company in the U.S. Microsoft Sells Patents to Xiaomi, Builds 'Long-Term Partnership' Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved In todays fast paced, highly connected world, consumers are accustomed to hailing a cab with the tap of a finger, or receiving goods delivered to their door with the press of a button. As a result, we are putting new pressure on older, dare-I-say "legacy" companies to keep up with newer brands that have prioritized and redefined the customer experience from day one. Related: How Startups and Legacy Companies Can Both Cash In on Market Trends While you dont have to be the next Amazon, Zappos or Airbnb, you do have to deliver on customer expectations. And in todays world, that requires providing intuitive and frictionless customer experiences. That may seem simple in theory, but in practice it requires a complete overhaul of company culture. The brands that are on the cutting edge of customer service live and breathe customer service. Theirs is more than a business model, its a full consumer-centric culture. If you havent already, then, you should adopt that culture. It's time. Heres what you can learn from those businesses, both new and old, that are redefining company culture in order to provide best-in-breed experiences that keep up with shifting expectations. Create a culture of 'customer.' How do you take a 100-plus-year-old company and influence its culture to become customer-centric? The task may seem daunting, but its not unlike the shift in focus to re-engineering for profit in the 1980s, or the zeroing-in on revenues and soaring stock prices in the 2000s. There have been a number of shifts in business dynamics over the years and the transition toward a customer-centric culture is one thats here to stay. Start by ensuring your employees know their role in customer experience and encouraging them to go above and beyond. Build your culture around customers by empowering employees with the information and tools they need to serve customers -- share metrics, trends and feedback. Put share-of-voice data in charts and back up that data with true stories, then empower your employees to act and react. One of the largest energy companies in the U.K., E.On, uses data to bring customer experience to life. Every strategic move it makes is backed by a story of how that service impacted a customer. Then that story is supported by data on the number of customers who shared that same experience. This method allows employees to better understand customer experiences and the impact of their work -- inspiring a culture of caring and commitment. Related: Customer Care Is Your Best Marketing Strategy Meanwhile, a top bank in Montreal encourages employees to prioritize customer experience through an initiative called 1,000 Acts of Kindness. This project challenges and rewards employees for delighting customers with service that reflect the companys commitment to quality customer experiences. Since instituting 1,000 Acts of Kindness, and several other company-wide customer service initiatives, the banks personal-relationship net promoter score (NPS) is up 43 percent and small-business relationship NPS is up 25 percent. Let customers decide your future. In order to meet customer needs, you have to know what makes them tick. The good news is, your customers are more forthcoming with this information than ever before. Introspection about this data allows you to shape your business accordingly, so that you can delight those customers and adjust your strategy as consumer needs and wants change. Take Amazon, for example. Amazon is widely recognized for its ability to predict what customers might want to put into their virtual shopping carts next. Algorithms and customer analytics drive business, but it doesnt stop there. Amazons CEO, Jeff Bezos, states that, The customer-centric way is at this point a defining element of our culture. In other words, its a strategy that has shaped important company decisions. For example, Amazon carefully monitors customer sentiment for Kindle -- keeping an eye on products, services and offers by analyzing voice-of-customer data to inform product improvements, packaging updates and even the content used to support customer self-service. Similarly, GE Healthcare listens to doctors, nurses and patients, to drive its engineering road map for the medical devices it's continually improving. Most notably, this strategy has made it possible for GE Healthcare to improve the accuracy of its MRI machine by dissecting doctors' usage notes. Adjust methods of communication by audience. Last, but not least, at the heart of every customer-centric culture is communication. Customers expect constant communication, but they want it through the channel they prefer. Its the 21st century -- snail mail may still suit some of your customers, but it wont work for everyone. According to a 2015 TSAI study, millennials strongly prefer self-services and social support over direct connection with your business, while baby boomers still prefer direct email and calls, and Gen X members take varying approaches depending on their current situations. Thats why public utility company Con Edison recently partnered with Opower to better assess residential energy use and improve communications with customers through digital channels. Its a move that allows this company, founded in 1823, to stay on the cutting edge and compete with new companies born in the digital era. These days, every company has its own unique culture. From ping pong in the break room to trivia nights on Tuesdays, each business environment has its own vibe, and thats a great thing. Related: Technology Trends That Will Radically Change The Face Of Customer Care Still, no matter what your own culture looks like on the outside, it should be grounded in care and compassion for your customers. That's a big secret to success. Related: Leverage the Undeniable Power of Video Marketing on All Platforms Video Marketing: How to Stretch Your Dollars 3 Ways to Make Captivating Videos Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved Dont get in the way of this mans inalienable right to a Big Mac. Photo: Tim Boyle/2011 Bloomberg A legally blind man in Louisiana is suing McDonalds because he says the chains drive-through policy discriminates against people who cant see. Scott Magee, a 35-year-old New Orleans resident, contends that not only do Mickey Ds drive-throughs lack any meaningful accommodation for the blind (like Braille, an audio interface, and whatnot) and therefore violate the Americans With Disabilities Act, but that employees have also laughed at him when hes approached the window on foot during so-called late-night hours, that period when main dining rooms close and customers must order at drive-throughs. Magees lawyer maintains that, at least in his legal opinion, ordering from the late-night McDonalds menu is a quintessentially American activity that should not be denied to someone because of their disability. Late-night revelers craving drunk food, and even the occasional naive horse-drawn-carriage rider wandering out of last century, have discovered their local McDonalds onerous policy of not serving Big Macs or fries unless the customers butt is firmly placed in a car seat. Magees proposed class-action lawsuit offers a glimmer of hope, though its probably worth noting he has a brother, Emmett, whos also blind and used the same lawyer to sue Coca-Cola for touch-screen vending machines that he claimed cant be used by blind people. A judge threw that case out. [USAT, Chicago Tribune] Bring on the apples. Photo: Craig Warga/Bloomberg via Getty Images Unusually cold weather threatened the Northeasts fruit supply this spring, but at least apple farmers finally have something to smile about. New York governor Andrew Cuomos office announced last week an investment of $56,874 to support the development and testing of apples for the production of hard cider, which some have predicted for a while will be the next big drinking trend. Cuomo has been on a bit of a boozy tear lately, just recently throwing his support behind drinking while brunching before noon, and this sounds like good news for the local industry. Cider makers are actively seeking apple varieties that produce more characterful ciders, Cider Guide writer Eric West says, so this funding could have a significant long-term impact on New Yorks cider industry. The funding will go to the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, a facility in the upstate town of Geneva thats been diddling with local flora since shortly after it was established in 1880. The funding was announced as part of a $1.1 million package of projects promoting agriculture in the state. According to Gregory Michael Peck, Ph.D., an apple researcher affiliated with the station, the research will increase both the yield and quality of hard-cider apples in New York. It could be a sign of a broader commitment to fermented apple juice. The governors office has been vocal about promoting cideries in the state Cuomo used the word in his 2016 State of the State Address seeing opportunities for economic growth in the burgeoning sector, which also includes wineries and craft brews. Cider-friendly politicians attribute their support to the economic benefits of the beverage. New York is the second-largest apple producer in the country, so its primed to take advantage of the increased popularity of the drink, which consumers have made the fastest-growing adult beverage in the world. We have to overhaul the prohibition-era SLA laws that are way overdue and are an obstacle to growth and we have to do it this year, he said during his address. The governor, who added cider to the name of his third Wine, Beer, Spirits and Cider Summit last October, has also supported extending a tax credit to cider-makers, wineries, and distilleries that so far has only existed for small craft-beer-makers. Meanwhile, Democratic senators Chuck Schumer and Patrick Leahy have also jumped on the cider wagon. In 2015, the two sponsored the CIDER Act, which passed that December and raised the bar for the beverages allowable alcohol content. How about a Frozen toy? Photo: Carlos Osorio/Toronto Star via Getty Images For the uninitiated, Kinder eggs are candies that are illegal in America for silly reasons, but beloved basically everywhere else because theyre an obviously winning combo of half chocolate, half toy surprise. Generally, the toy is a festive collectible or Disney tie-in requiring assembly, but a 5-year-old kid in Ireland last week scored what looks to be the first official Breaking Badthemed toy when he opened a Kinder egg he found in the hedges.Being young boys, he and his brother assumed the rogue candy was all theirs, but they apparently lost interest once they discovered the surprise inside sucked, even for Kinder: a little baggie of white crystalline powder? (Theres no doubt prizes are getting downright dinky nowadays just ask Cracker Jack.) Authorities say the boys surrendered the candy to Dad, who gave it to authorities. The contents of the bag, which was found inside a toy egg, is believed to be methamphetamine, police said, after running some tests. This incident just reminds us that criminals have no regard whatsoever for the safety of local residents, and I am thankful that this child had the sense to speak to an adult about what he discovered. Kinder fanatics like Piers Morgan may need to consider this yet another setback to their dreams of lawfully consuming the candies in the U.S. REMINDER: Kinder Eggs are banned in U.S. on safety grounds. But 2300+ different types of gun are legally available. pic.twitter.com/pwFmEteF7Z Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) June 2, 2016 [Telegraph] 2 Dope Queens is so freaking funny. Photo: Melissa Hom We already picked the best venues to see comedy for these comedy boom times, and now its time for the best comedy shows. Specifically, the list is focusing on permanent, recurring shows, be they of the stand-up, improv, sketch, or late-night variety. The Absolute Best 1. 2 Dope Queens The Bell House, 149 Seventh St., nr. Second Ave., Gowanus; 718-643-6510 When you walk into the best comedy show in a city, the excitement smacks you in the face. Its a buzz, a temperature, a smell, a vibe of people in the exact right place at the exact right time. Its the result of hosts, lineup, audience, venue, intangibles. When I went to the Meltdown in L.A. last year, when it was considered the best comedy show in the country, it had that vibe. And when Ive been to 2 Dope Queens, the vibe is there as well. 2DQ, hosted by The Daily Shows Jessica Williams and stand-up and Vulture contributor Phoebe Robinson, is constructed like most stand-up showcases: The host talks up front and in between sets of other comedians doing stand-up (though 2DQ is particularly open to storytelling). The biggest difference here, however, is Williams and Robinson, and the crowd comes because of them. The two are so freaking funny together as they conversationally discuss their lives, pop culture, politics, and whatever comes up, and the crowd laughs and laughs. My favorite phenomenon is that some audience members talk back, not necessarily to be heard by the comedians, but to feel like they are part of a conversation. Audience members feel like they are part of the show, and they are. Twice monthly (days vary), 8 p.m.; $12 2. Punderdome 3000 Littlefield, 622 Degraw St., nr. Fourth Ave., Gowanus; 718-855-3388 Jo Firestone creates so many delightful, peculiar shows in New York it borders on a compulsion. (Full disclosure: Firestone and I are friendly; she appeared in a play I wrote last summer.) Still, the crown jewel in her lineup is Punderdome 3000, the monthly pun contest/sensation she hosts with her dad, Fred. Though the focus of the show is the compunitors, the star is Jo and her hilarious, awkward reactions to her father. Tuesdays (monthly), 8 p.m.; $8-$10 3. Night Train With Wyatt Cenac Littlefield, 622 Degraw St., nr. Fourth Ave., Gowanus; 718-855-3388 TV shows are made out of live shows for a reason. Which is why it came as no surprise when NBCs comedy streaming site, Seeso, announced that a filmed version of Night Train will be premiering there at the end of June. Night Train is arguably the best curated stand-up show in the city. And Cenacs laid-back yet vital hosting is reason enough to come back every week. Mondays (weekly), 8 p.m.; $5-$8 4. Whiplash Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, 307 W. 26th St., nr. Eighth Ave.; 212-366-9176 Yall like drop-ins? Whiplash, a venerable institution in the scene for seven years now, is your place to see comedys highest echelon do a set while theyre in town. Chris Rock, Louis C.K., Amy Schumer, and Judd Apatow have all performed here. Adding to the mystique is that they dont announce a lineup ahead of time. Still, even if there isnt a surprise guest, Whiplash tends to boast a very high caliber of stand-ups, and its hosted by one of New Yorks most enjoyable up-and-comers, Aparna Nancherla. Also, you cant beat the price. Mondays (weekly), 11 p.m.; free 5. The Holy Fuck Comedy Hour Annoyance Theatre, 367 Bedford Ave., at S. 5th St., Williamsburg; 718-569-7810 Barely a year old, the New York branch of the Annoyance Theatre is still making its name in New Yorks UCB-dominated sketch and improv scene. But, for my money (which in this case is $0, as the show is free), Holy Fuck is the most exciting sketch show in the city. The show was brought over from the original Annoyance in Chicago and offers the theaters style of maximalist sketch comedy. Loud and character-focused, Holy Fuck will make you laugh until you scream, or at least scream until you laugh. Thursdays (weekly), 10:30 p.m.; free 6. Cage Match Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, 307 W. 26th St., nr. Eighth Ave.; 212-366-9176 If you want to see the best improv team in the city, go to the Stepfathers. If you want to see famous people improvise, go to ASSSSCAT 3000. If you want to go to the best improv show in the city, go to Cage Match. The difference is the audience. Where the latter finds itself with a lot of young drunks and tourists (respectively), Cage Match, which pits two of the best improv teams in the city against each other each week, is a show for improv fans and budding performers. The audience is a collaborator here, shaping the direction scenes go in. The audience is the difference. Thursdays (weekly), 11 p.m.; $5 7. The Roastmasters NYC/Roast Battle The Stand NYC, 239 Third Ave., at 20th St.; 212-677-2600 (Roastmasters NYC) New York Comedy Club, 241 E. 24th St., nr. Second Ave.; 212-696-5233 (Roast Battle) Roast Battle, the hybrid of a rap battle and a roast, is a sensation at L.A.s Comedy Store, with some audience members listening from the hallway outside. New York has two versions of the show, each created by someone with ties to the original. They both have positives and negatives and the comedians I spoke to are split over which they prefer. Still, while neither matches the originals fervor and quality (they especially lack L.A.s devoted fanbase), the shows are particularly fun, albeit not for the faint of heart (read: mean). Roastmasters: Tuesdays (biweekly), 10:15 p.m.; free; Roast Battle: Thursdays (biweekly), 10 p.m.; $10 8. Employee of the Month Joes Pub, 425 Lafayette St., nr. Astor Pl.; 212-539-8500 The problem with the talk in most talk shows is that the people arent really talking theyre reciting the predetermined beats of a promotional conversation. Host Catie Lazarus gets people to talk because thats all theyre there to do. Patti LuPone will talk about getting crabs, Broad Citys Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer will talk about whether comedians should date comedians, Jon Hamm will talk about his big penis (or at least laugh at a joke about it). David Simon will talk, and hell also play guitar (sadly, he plays the blues and not a cover of the band Wire). Its a nice time. Monthly (days vary); $20 to $30 9. Sweet The Slipper Room, 167 Orchard St., nr. Stanton St.; 212-253-7246 Created and hosted by Tonight Show warm-up comedian Seth Herzog, Sweet has been a mainstay of the New York comedy scene for over a decade. Consistently solid lineups and crowds help, as does the nontraditional yet very classy venue. But what keeps people coming is the clubhouse atmosphere, with Herzog doing bits with special guests (Justin Long on my last visit) and his mom. Tuesdays (weekly), 9 p.m.; $5 to $7 10. The Dan + Joe + Charles Show The Shanty, 79 Richardson St., nr. Lorimer St., Williamsburg; 718-412-0874 Are you a comedy lover who also loves barrels and silvery alcohol-making contraptions? Well, do I have a show for you! The Dan + Joe + Charles Show takes place in a functioning gin distillery, which produces a fine product that you can purchase in cocktail form in the adjacent bar. Also, the titular Dan, Joe, and Charles (Licata, Pera, and Gould) are talented weirdos (you mightve seen Pera kill on Late Night recently) who put together a very good stand-up show. Tuesdays (weekly), 8 p.m.; free 11. Good for You Cantina Royal, 58 N. 3rd St., nr. Wythe Ave., Williamsburg; 347-763-2938 When I asked a young person for comedy-show suggestions, she told me about Good for You. I checked it out, and it was, in fact, good for me. Operating in Williamsburg, in the back of what used to be Monkey Town (everything in Williamsburg used to be something), it features an impressive lineup and particularly enthusiastic crowd. Its a show on the rise! First Saturday of every month, 9 p.m.; free Getting cozy at duckduck. Photo: Camilo Fuentealba For six weeks, the editors of New York Magazine and Grub Street are publishing a series of definitive lists that declare the absolute best versions of 101 things to eat, drink, and do. Here are the best hookup bars spots where you might head for some fun, flirtatious entanglement, or at least a bar-stool make-out session. The Absolute Best 1. duckduck 161 Montrose Ave., nr. Graham Ave., Bushwick; 347-799-1449 Specifically, duckduck on Friday and Saturday nights, when the 20-something hordes pile into this ten-year-old dive-ish bar so closely that even on winter nights youll want to take a break for gulps of fresh air out on the sidewalk. While on other nights the scene is a relatively laid-back neighborhood bar, weekends find rowdy dance-offs here to 90s hits (Ginuwines Pony, anyone?). Pick up a dancing (well, grinding) partner, and bring him or her with you on one such break, because theres no hope of a make-out sesh within the bar. Note that duckducks a couple of blocks from several much-more-subdued bars (the Graham, Featherweight), where you might head after youre finished dancing to drink a cooldown cocktail and, say, learn your new friends name. 2. Night of Joy 667 Lorimer, at Meeker St., Williamsburg; 718-388-8693 This little living-room-like bar (with a Christmas-light-bedecked rooftop) has a pretty, Victorian feel about it, decent drink prices ($6 cocktails at happy hour), and a casual atmosphere. Also, everyones hand is on their neighbors thigh. Theres plenty of couches and perfect spots for two, and unlike its neighboring sin-den (you know the one: Union Pool), you can meet someone here and not have to disclose where you met with a knowing giggle. 3. Raines Law Room 48 W. 17th St., nr. Sixth Ave.; no phone This cocktail bar has private couches with curtains and a buzzer to call your waitress a little on the nose, maybe, but it works. Its a good deal more highbrow than the first two on this list, and your check will reflect that, but at least youll have your dignity. Raines makes very good drinks and is a very pretty bar and is, for what its worth, very near to hotels like the Dream. 4. Brooklyn Ice House 318 Van Brunt St., nr. Pioneer St., Red Hook; 718-222-1865 This place is particularly winning on a night when its warm enough to sit outside for a bit in Ice Houses relaxed and large backyard. Grab a $5 beer-and-shot special at the bar, place an order for food, and head out back. Choose someone from the groups of friends (lots of locals and servers from nearby restaurants), ask them to light your Parliament, and the rest will probably be history. The types of people who find you attractive even as you eat in-the-bag Frito chili pie are probably good people, right? 5. Lovers of Today 132 E. 7th St., nr. Ave A; 212-420-9517 You might at first guess this bar is a little past its time; it opened in 2010, when food blogs deemed it a speakeasy. But you really shouldnt discount it especially for its 2 a.m.-to-4 a.m. $7-cocktail happy hour. Drop by around then and snuggle up at one of the booths, or in the little back nook, or out on the teensy below-ground patio. There are candles; its low-lit; and the booths are black tufted leather. If you can get past the name, the place is a very good make-out venue. 6. The Woods 48 S. 4th St., nr. Wythe Ave., Williamsburg; 718-782-4955 Head to the Woods late at night and youre pretty much guaranteed to find a crowd of 23-year-olds looking to not take the L train back to their own shared Bushwick apartments (and instead to take a Lyft to another 23-year-olds shared apartment, but maybe in Ridgewood, or Crown Heights). No one is saying the Woods is super-classy, but it is fun. Today Huawei has started sending out media invites for a "virtual launch" that will be taking place on June 20. At that point, the Chinese company's Honor sub-brand will be unveiling a new and "exciting" product in Europe. This will apparently be "fast, robust, and affordable", as you can see from the invite pictured below. What isn't very clear is whether this event will be used by Honor to launch an entirely new smartphone, say the recently rumored Honor 8, or just mark the European arrival of one that's already out in China (we're thinking of the Honor V8 here). Since the words "in Europe" are used in the invite we assume it's the latter, but we'll have to wait and see. Source In a recent episode of "Tennessee Crossroads," legendary country musician Ronnie McDowell explained the stories behind his prolific creative passions, and details a lesser known hobby that has people talking - painting.Click here to watch Ronnie's segment and learn how his artwork fits into the bigger picture. McDowell, known best across the country for his hit tracks like "Older Women" and "It's Only Make Believe," is currently touring in support of his latest venture - his autobiography entitled "Bringing It To You Personally," which tells the incredible true stories of his career, including the life-changing moment he dazzled the world with his heartfelt and self-penned tribute song, "The King Is Gone," in honor of Elvis Presley's death. But when he's not performing for his legion of fans, he's busy creating works of art for them. "The creative forces all intertwine - the songwriting, the art, the singing, the entertaining. To me, they all kind of just play together," McDowell said. Since his early years, Ronnie has always had an affinity and talent for painting. Over the years, he has amassed a number of fans solely for his artistic sensibilities, and continues to split his time creating new works of art. In fact, his work has grown so popular that, in 2015, it attracted the attention of a particularly magical organization. Ronnie then signed a 5-year contract to create works of art for iconic Disney characters. For more information on Ronnie's book, which includes more than 100 photos and personal stories about his friendships with everyone from George Jones to tourmate Conway Twitty, visitronniemcdowellbook.com. Follow Ronnie McDowell on Facebookand Twitter. RONNIE MCDOWELL ON TOUR: June 03 The Palace Theater - Crossville, Tenn. June 10 CMA Fest - Nashville, Tenn. June 10 Armour - Red Boiling Springs, Tenn. June 11 Armour - Red Boiling Springs, Tenn. June 18 Boot City Opry - Terre Haute, Ind. June 24 Downtown Square - Franklin, Ky. July 15 Canadian Bluemoon Festival - Barriere, British Columbia Canada July 18 Corporate Event July 23 Independence County Fair - Batesville, Ark. Aug. 12 Corporate Event Aug. 13 The Corinth Civic Center Coliseum Theater. - Corinth, Miss. Aug. 14 Crowne Plaza Memphis East - Memphis, Tenn. Aug. 23 Davis Middle School Auditorium - Hillsdale, Mich. Aug. 24 Comstock High School Auditorium - Kalamazoo, Mich. Aug. 25 Gaylord High School Auditorium - Gaylord, Mich. Aug. 27 Poinsettia County Fair - Harrisburg, Ark. Sept. 24 Corporate Event Oct. 07 Shiawassee Performing Arts Center - Owosso, Mich. Oct. 08 Howell High School Auditorium - Howell, Mich. Oct. 09 St. Johns High School Auditorium - St. Johns, Mich. Oct. 15 Ross Country Jamboree - Scottsburg, Ind. Oct. 23 Hard Rock Cafe - Memphis, Tenn. Nov. 05 Festival - Black Rock, Ark. Tags : ronnie mcdowell tennessee crossroads ronnie mcdowell news Harlow is a former New Town in Essex with a population of 86,000. Located in the upper Stort Valley, it was built in the decades after the Second World War to ease overcrowding and London and provide homes for people bombed out during the Blitz. It includes Britain's first pedestrian precinct and first modern residential tower block, The Lawn. Old Harlow, the historic part of the town, was mentioned in the Domesday Book. David and Victoria Beckham's former home, Rowneybury House, nicknamed 'Beckingham Palace', is nearby. 11:52, 25 OCT 2022 By Jessica Isaacs | [email protected] Photos by Ken Ketchie. Youve heard of the farm-to-table movement, but how about farm-to-bar? Theres a brand new tavern at one of your favorite High Country spots, and theyre bringing the best in fresh local ingredients to your next cocktail! A quick drive from Boone will bring you to the Linville community, where youll find a delightful little place known as the Old Hampton Store, which was first built in 1920. Today, current owners Abigail and Steve Sheets have invested countless hours and a lot of money into improving the historic general store and surrounding buildings, which now house a classic North Carolina barbecue restaurant, a trading post, an art gallery, an antique store and, new this summer, a tavern. The store is a very nice environment where someone can do a little bit of everything, said Morgan Hockaday, head bartender and bar manager. The tavern is a wonderful addition. Were using all local craft beers from breweries in North Carolina, especially in Banner Elk, Boone and Plumtree. Were really, really strong in supporting the local community. Hockaday will also be introducing what she calls a farm-to-bar style cocktail menu, which will incorporate fresh, organic ingredients from nearby farms. Ready to try one? Head to the store this weekend for the taverns grand opening on Saturday and Hockaday will have one ready for you. Shell be introducing some signature drinks, like a jalapeno watermelon cocktail, and local bluegrass group WD40 will be serving up some tunes. Whether youre new to the Old Hampton Store or not, theres no better way to kick off your summer than a Saturday at its brand new tavern. While youre there, sit for a spell in the restaurant or out on the lawn to enjoy its famous smoky barbecue recipe; satisfy your sweet tooth at the candy barrels; swing by the adjoining gallery to shop top-quality crafts and artwork. This place will give you a taste of the local North Carolina mountains, Hockaday said. Its not just a cocktail, a beer, or a glass of wine. Its a taste of what life in the High Country has to offer. Whet your whistle at the Old Hampton Store this weekend. Youll be glad you did! The store is located at 77 Ruffin St. in Linville. For more information, stop by, give them a call at 828-733-5213 or follow the store on Facebook. The Old Hampton Store hours on Saturday, June 4: The General Store: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. The Barbecue Restaurant: 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. The Tavern: 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Share this: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Pocket The Government announced yesterday that it is prepared to introduce income tax concessions worth 315515 million euros in order to compensate for the increases in the social security contributions of wage earners set forth in the so-called competitiveness pact. The Taxpayers' Association of Finland (TAF) has expressed its satisfaction with the tax incentives unveiled by the Government on Thursday. Teemu Lehtinen, the chief executive at the TAF, estimates in a press release that the incentives will at least fend off the erosion of purchasing power caused by the notable tax hikes planned for 2017. The press release also indicates that the incentives could contribute towards reducing the effective tax burden of wage earners despite the ongoing efforts to bring down unit labour costs. The tax rate of an average earner with monthly earnings of 3,295 euros would decline by 0.3 percentage points from 31.1 per cent to 30.8 per cent, if the competitiveness pact is implemented and its coverage is at least 90 per cent, TAF says in the press release. The purchasing power of net wages would in this best-case scenario improve moderately in 2017. The purchasing power of a middle-income wage earner would rise by 0.2 per cent [] [or] 60 euros next year. If, on the other hand, the coverage is below 85 per cent, the tax burden of wage earners would remain largely unchanged and purchasing power deteriorate moderately, adds TAF. The Taxpayers' Association of Finland points out that its estimates are based on previously announced tax measures, the measures laid out in the competitiveness pact, the tax concessions drawn up to offset them, and the projection that income levels will rise by 0.8 and consumer prices by 1.0 per cent in 2017. Lehtinen points out that the competitiveness pact is set to increase the burden of taxpayers also after next year. TAF consequently urges policy-makers to draw up measures to compensate for the tax hikes planned for 20182020 in order to encourage economic growth. The Government reminds in its press release that a sufficient coverage and the successful conclusion of the union-specific collective bargaining talks scheduled for next year would allow it to introduce tax concessions worth a total of one billion euros by the end of the electoral term. One of the objectives laid out in the government programme is that income taxation will not rise in any income category in 20182019. The Government has every reason to prevent tax increases also in the final years of its term in office in order to fend off the erosion of purchasing power under the conditions of the much called-for wage moderation, says Lehtinen. Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Martti Kainulainen Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi An 82-year-old woman has received a suspended sentence for claiming over 200,000 in social welfare payments using the name of a dead woman. Mary Cullen began using the name of her partners deceased wife in 1987 at his suggestion. Over the years she claimed job seekers payments, rent and fuel allowances, pre-retirement payments and, most recently, pension payments. Cullen, of Portland Row, Dublin, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to 30 sample counts of falsely claiming social welfare, using false instruments and possession of false instruments between 1987 and 2015 in Dublin. The amounts received ranged from 52.80 in 1987 to 242.90 in 2009. The total amount falsely claimed over 28 years was 206,028.18 Cullens defence was making a plea in mitigation when Judge Martin Nolan interrupted and said: How can I send an 82-year-old woman to jail? Its as simple as that. Isnt that the only point in the case? Judge Nolan said it was a reprehensible offence and Cullen should be ashamed of herself, but that he couldnt in good conscience jail an 82-year-old. Cullen had a hard life and was a hard worker, the judge said, noting that she had worked as an office cleaner until last year. He said he didnt believe the Court of Appeal would overturn a suspended sentence if the Director of Public Prosecutions got a rush of blood to the head and decided to appeal it as too lenient. Judge Nolan imposed a three-year suspended sentence and noted that if Cullen was 20 years younger she would probably be facing prison. The Department of Social Protection has reduced Cullens pension payments by 35 a week since the theft was discovered. Suspicions Garda Enda Connolly said he was asked by the Department of Social Protection to investigate suspicions that Cullen was claiming payments under the name Mary Rose Hart. He conducted surveillance at the GPO where he saw Cullen enter and claim her pension under her own name. The next day he watched her claim payments in North Strand Post Office under the name of Mary Rose Hart. When Gda Connolly later called to her house she invited him in and said: Im glad its all over, I will tell the truth. She said her partners wife had died from cancer in the UK in the Eighties, and he suggested Cullen use the deceased womans identity to claim payments here. Cullen said her husband was violent and had a drink problem and she gave the extra money to him. When her partner died in 2006. she began giving money to a close relative to help him pay off his drug debts, she said. Defence counsel Luigi Rea, BL said Cullen was originally from Limerick and had lived in the UK and Canada before returning to Ireland in 1968. She had worked as a cleaner since then. Eoin Berkeley damaged the pillars of the Central Bank A young man has admitted defacing the pillars of the Central Bank in Dublin with graffiti. Eoin Berkeley (22) also had a box-cutting knife for his "own protection" when gardai arrested him for a separate incident. Berkeley was told he could avoid a jail sentence if he carried out community service. Judge Michael Walsh adjourned the case for a suitability report. He recommended 180 hours of community service instead of a six-month sentence if the report is positive. Berkeley, of Hamptonwood Way, Finglas, admitted criminal damage to the marble plinth and granite pillars of the Central Bank building in Temple Bar last April 12. Dublin District Court heard the incident happened at 10.30pm and it cost 100 to remove the graffiti. Berkeley also admitted separate charges of possession of a knife, a small amount of cocaine and a public order offence. Gardai were called last January 27 when it was alleged that drinks had been spiked at a bar on Harcourt Street. Abusing When officers arrived and spoke to Berkeley he became aggress- ive towards them, refused to desist from his behaviour and was arrested. He was taken to Kevin Street Garda Station, where a knife with a box-cutting blade was found on him. He said he had it for his own protection. Last March 17, gardai saw Berkeley in an altercation with another person on Suffolk Street. When told to move on, he walked to Grafton Street where he began verbally abusing passers-by. When again told to move he became aggressive to gardai and was again arrested. He had a small bag of cocaine on him when searched. A garda said the accused was also intoxicated as a result of taking cocaine. He had eight previous convictions. "He is getting something of a reputation," the judge said. Berkeley had had difficulties with drug and alcohol abuse, said his solicitor, Tony Collier. He had attended a psychologist and was now making "good progress". "And parallel to all this, he has continued to offend," the judge said. Judge Walsh ordered the community service report on the weapons charge and adjourned all cases to next month. Text messages reportedly exchanged between Amber Heard and Johnny Depp's assistant have spoken of further alleged assaults by the actor - including one where he "kicked her". The text messages were allegedly sent between Heard and Depp's assistant, Stephen Deuters. The messages claim to be from May 2014 and appear to show previous instances of alleged violence before the couple were married. The text exchange begins with a message from 'Stephen', who is apologising on behalf of a man purported to be Depp. "Think he's just texted you. He's incredibly apologetic and knows that he has done wrong," Stephen's text allegedly says. "He wants to get better now. He's been very explicit about that this morning. Feel like we're at a critical juncture." Stephen allegedly reiterates that the man purported to be Depp cannot remember what had occurred. "He was appalled," the message continues. "When I told him he kicked you, he cried. It was disgusting. And he knows it." Position Heard reportedly responded by saying that Depp had "done this many times before. Tokyo, the island, London (remember that?!), and I always stay. Always believe he's going to get better... And then every three or so month [sic], I'm in the exact same position." Meanwhile, new leaked pictures also show alleged abuse at the hands of Depp. Images picture close-ups of Heard (30) with bruising around her eyes and a bloody lip following an alleged instance of domestic violence inflicted by her estranged husband (52). They will appear on the front cover of People Magazine's June issue, which goes on sale in the US today. According to the magazine, the images are from an alleged incident of abuse which took place in December 2015. In Heard's court filing accusing Depp of domestic violence, she states: "There was one severe incident in December 2015 when I truly feared for my life." Heard filed for divorce from Depp on May 23, citing irreconcilable differences. She later appeared in court on May 27, with a bruise visible on her face, alleging Depp threw an iPhone at her face and a month before "grabbed [her] by the hair and violently shoved [her] to the floor". Depp's lawyer, Laura Wasser, responded by claiming Heard's application for a restraining order was prompted by unfavourable media coverage that she had been subject to and an attempt to "secure a premature financial resolution". County GOP central committee chairman to leave after Election Day Jerry DeWolf, Washington County GOP Central Committee chairman, says he's leaving the group after the election to spend more time with family. This domain has expired. If you owned this domain, contact your domain registration service provider for further assistance. If you need help identifying your provider, visit https://www.tucowsdomains.com/ Former Chhattisgarh CM Ajit Jogis decision to quit the Congress may be driven by his own ambitions but many of his colleagues also see in it a manifestation of the fraying nerves in the grand old party. Buffeted by a series of electoral setbacks, Congressmen are responding in different ways. While Digvijaya Singh favours a surgery and Jogi explores options outside the party, most others seem to be grasping at straws. Their clamour for Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhis elevation betrays their frustration over the stasis that seems to have gripped the party. They want an end to the prevailing uncertainty. But the malaise afflicting the party runs deeper than the mere uncertainty about the future of individual leaders in a new set up. Till 1980s, 80 per cent (of the electorate) voted for the party and 20 per cent for individual candidates. Its the other way round now, said a senior Congress leader. Many party veterans HT spoke to echo similar views. Personality cult still plays a big role in Indian politics but a national leaders popularity is no longer the decisive factor in elections. We need to identify our candidates for Lok Sabha and assemblies right away and ask them to start reaching out to people. Hope this process starts after Rahul takes over, said an AICC functionary. If he has to be elevated, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) can meet any day and do so. But if he chooses to be elected and not nominated, the party will have to start preparations for organizational elections by the year end. In September last year, the CWC had decided to defer the elections and gave one years extension to party president Sonia Gandhi. There is suspense about the timing of his elevation, but few know the Congress vice-presidents mind on it. We have to start a fresh innings. We should learn from the BJP and be a risk-taker, said a Congress MP. In 2002, the BJP decided to send then union minister Vasundhara Raje to head the Rajasthan unit of the party, ignoring strong reservations of towering leader Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. She has led the BJP to power twice so far. In 2001, the party chose Narendra Modi as the chief minister of Gujarat. The rest is history. The BJP continues to take risks and groom untested leaders such as Sarbananad Sonowal in Assam and Devendra Fadnavis in Maharashtra. At the five-hour Doordarshan programme to mark the NDA governments second anniversary, the faces projected from different states comprised Fadnavis, minister Yunus Khan from Rajasthan and Nitin Patel, also a minister, from Gujarat. We have to invest in young leaders at different levels in states and work on a long-term strategy. Modi government is floundering big time but we have to be there for the people to look at us as The Alternative, said another Congress leader. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON An Ahmedabad courts verdict convicting 24 people, 11 of them for murder, in the 2002 Gulberg Society massacre once again highlights the perennial problem of delayed justice in India. There were 66 accused in the incident that had left 69 people including former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri dead during one of the worst communal violence in the country. Like other Gujarat riots cases, this case often dominated front pages of newspapers and prime time TV news bulletins with political parties attempting to take mileage out of it. To take 14 years to decide a case that was under constant public scrutiny is a clear cut case of delayed justice. Much of this delay was due to a stay on trial by the Supreme Court that took seven years to decide whether to hand over the Gujarat riots cases to the CBI. In pictures: Gulberg society post-2002 Gujarat riots Despite this unjustifiable delay, the Gujarat riots cases are perhaps among the better handled cases by the Indian judiciary which has mostly failed to deliver timely justice to riot victims. A former Gujarat minister Maya Kodnani -- was convicted and sentenced to 28 year in jail in connection with the massacre of 97 people at the Naroda Patiya village during the riots. This is the society where former Congress MP Ehsan Jaffri was killed in the post Godhra riots. (Manoj Patil /Hindustan Times) Cases relating to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, in which more than 3,000 people were killed, are still hanging fire in Delhi courts while the alleged perpetrators roam free. The CBIs flip-flop on key accused only made things worse for the victims who continue to wait for justice. Twenty-eight years after 350 people were killed in the 1987 Hashimpura (Meerut) riots allegedly by Provincial Armed Constabulary personnel of Uttar Pradesh, a Delhi court acquitted all the accused in March 2015. The appeal against the acquittal is hanging fire in the Delhi high court. Cases relating to the 1989 Bhagalpur riots that claimed 1,000 lives could see the light of the day only after 18 years. The Srikrishna Commission report on the 1993 Bombay riots with a death toll of 1,800 is yet to be implemented. Also Read | 24 including VHP leader convicted in Gulberg case: 10 things to know Out of close to 200 cases registered in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, four have already resulted in acquittals while trial in on in 175 cases. Some are said to be still under investigation. The only exception was a June 2010 verdict by an Odisha court that sentenced BJP MLA Manoj Pradhan to seven years rigorous imprisonment for his involvement in the 2008 Kandhamal riots case. It was the first major communal riots case in which the verdict came in just two years, thanks to the states decision to hand it over to a fast track court. Former chief justice of India KG Balakrishnan said: Its a sad situation. Delay in criminal cases affects the prosecution. It affects the accused. But there are several contributory factors. Sometimes the parties themselves are responsible for it. Due to inordinate delay in deciding criminal cases jails are getting overcrowded. In India 63 per cent of the jail inmates are undertrials. Jails are meant for convicts and not undertrials. Courts, prosecution and accused - all are responsible. Asked how the situation can be remedied, justice Balakrishnan - a former chairman of the National Human Rights Commission - said: Courts should not give unnecessary adjournments. They should be strict and alive to the demands of justice. There is a pattern in the way riot cases are handled by state governments, irrespective of the ideology of the party in power. Attempts to bury it begin almost immediately with the setting up of a commission of inquiry, which would take years, and the government tries to use it as an excuse for not taking any action against the culprits, knowing the criminal probe was independent of it. File photo of Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad. (Manoj Patil/Hindustan Times) The fact that communal riot cases involving deaths of thousands of innocent people are not decided for decades speaks volumes about our judicial system. Courts that often take suo motu cognizance of media reports and issue directions to bureaucrats and police officers on not so important issues, never find it appropriate to intervene in riot cases to ensure speedy justice. Who knows it better that the learned judges of the Supreme Court and high courts that inordinate delay in deciding a criminal case can be fatal to justice. In the process, people lose faith in the system. Also Read | Not satisfied with Gulberg massacre verdict, fight will continue: Zakia Jafri But the problem can be overcome by handing over riots cases to special investigation teams (SITs) and fast track courts for probe and trial. Riots case trials should be conducted on a day-to-day basis. After all, even the accused has a fundamental right to speedy trial. Delay in delivering justice to riot victims only erodes peoples faith in the judiciary and benefits the criminals who often get benefit of doubt; in so many years, many of the witnesses may die and evidence destroyed. Both the convicts and victims in the Gulberg Society case have said they will challenge the verdict in higher courts. It is likely to take many more years before the case reaches its logical conclusion. Its time to act fast. The newest controversy to erupt over free speech is Tanmay Bhats tasteless spoof of two of Indias most famous icons, Lata Mangeshkar and Sachin Tendulkar. Coincidentally, I became acquainted with the standup comic only the previous week when I watched a video of him raging against those who claim not to be feminists. At that time, Bhat emerged as a sort of hero for liberals. Since I count myself as one, I found myself nodding in agreement though I thought at some point the video began to drag how long can you sustain a rant and switched off. This presumably is what all those self-professed grievously offended should have done when Bhat used Snapchats face-swap feature for an imaginary and derogatory conversation between the two Bharat Ratnas. Instead, weve had days of outrage and chest-thumping on social media and primetime television, police inquiries being ordered, and politicians blowing off steam. Read | NYT piece on Mangeshkar: Get over it and let the singer trill on Much of the reaction can be attributed to the compulsions of both the elections (hence the politicians rage) and TRPs (hence the medias outrage). Somewhere along the way, the drama spilled over into farce, particularly after a Mumbai tabloid declared, mistakenly, that Bhats girlfriend was the daughter of Congress spokesman Sanjay Jha since, quite elementary, they share the same last name. Despite the digressions, the Bhat controversy raises a larger issue, especially since it blew up just days after the Supreme Court on Friday, May 13 refused to decriminalise defamation, reigniting the debate on the rights of the individual to protect her reputation versus the rights of society to free expression. The judgment has been seen by most liberals as a disappointing blot on free speech particularly by a court that has seen a fair bit of activism. Read | Why is the wretched boy walking free: Asks Om Puri after Tanmays video Cracking a bad joke is not against the law; it is bad taste at the most, said Congressman Shashi Tharoor in a Facebook post. Upholding freedom of speech includes defending the right of people to say things you dont agree with or that you find obnoxious. The party was not so magnanimous when the Karnataka police registered a case against alleged BJP and Hindu Jagaran Vedike activists for bursting crackers to celebrate the death of Jnanpith award winning writer UR Ananthamurthy in August 2014. But when has either side, Right or Left, been consistent in its stand? The liberal equivocation on free speech has in large measure contributed to what we now calling the chilling effect, though rigor mortis might be the more accurate description, on free speech. It was the liberals who supported the ban on The Satanic Verses. And it was the liberal position that the publication by Charlie Hebdo of cartoons satirising the Prophet Mohammad was plain wrong. Read | Stop spewing hate on behalf of Sachin, Lata: Sonam supports Tanmay Bhat The limits of free speech are under question even in the West where liberals have been implementing bans on campuses by speakers they consider to be unsavoury and where this past week it was revealed that wrestler Hulk Hogans legal battle against Gawker was secretly funded by Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel in an apparent revenge move for being outed for being gay. The failure of the Supreme Court to recognise just how damaging criminal defamation is to free speech is only the latest in a series of assaults. Add to this our traditional liberal ambivalence, our own cultural self-censorship norms in treating so-called icons with unflinching deference. Surely a national icon must be above someones silly spoof. And surely all this exhausting huffing and puffing only fans the flames of publicity. The point about free speech that has been reiterated more than once is that it necessarily includes the right to cause offence. Its ironic that we continue to be offended by films and spoofs and books, and in public discourse measure our response not in terms of absolute principle but on a case-by-case basis. Is it any wonder then that we have reached where we have? Perhaps its time to say: Offended? No matter. Ignore and move on. Or perhaps its already simply too late. namita.bhandare@gmail.com Twitter:@namitabhandare The views expressed are personal SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON National School of Dramas (NSD) Repertory Company is back with its annual Summer Theatre Festival in the capital, a seasonal staple now in its 41st year. For New Delhis busy, harried residents, this is welcome respite in the blazing heat. The ongoing season offers inspired contradictions, fresh creations and crowd-pleasing favourites. The audience will get to witness the best of the Repertory Company. Read: Playwright Mahesh Dattani on dance, drama and failed dreams The five productions in the festival that began on Wednesday are by five different directors, and give a taste of divergent styles and forms. The popular play Tajmahal ka Tender is a take on prevalent corruption and red tapeism in the society. (Courtesy National School of Drama) The aim was to bring variety, says NSD director Waman Kendre. There are some old classics, and some new productions like Aadha Chand, Vidyottama, and Ghazab Teri Adaa which was performed last year. We revived Ghasiram Kotwal, as it is a long-running play. Tajmahal ka Tender, on the other hand, is back by great public demand, he says. Read: Through the English lens: Vintage travel photographs of India that was The Repertory has, over the years, performed over 183 plays by 93 playwrights and worked with 92 directors. It has come a long way since 1964-65 when it started with only four actors. Since 1974-75, the closing of our session in summer has been marked with plays that have been performed during the year, some older ones and popular ones, says Suresh Sharma, chief of NSD Repertory Company. It [festival] has been an annual tradition of NSD. Adhaa Chand is a reflection on real and the virtual, where professional almost subjugates the personal. (Courtesy National School of Drama) The festival opened with Tajmahal ka Tender, directed by Chittaranjan Tripathy. Written around two decades back, Ajay Shuklas satire still holds relevance with its take on corruption, red tapeism and babudom and begins when Emperor Shah Jahan invites CPWD engineer Guptaji to construct Taj Mahal. Another political satire in the list, Ghasiram Kotwals first Hindi production was staged by the theatre group Abhiyan in October 1973. Rajinder Nath, who has directed the play for the festival, believes that revivals are risky, but worth taking. Written by playwright Vijay Tendulkar, the historical drama portrays power politics and a common mans search for his identity. The classic, Ghasiram Kotwal, is a historical satire that centres on power politics and a mans search for identity. (Courtesy National School of Drama) Then there is Ghazab Teri Adaa by Kendre, which marks the centenary of World War I and is a comment on why we [read men] go to wars. As a creative institution we thought to portray the evil of war, says Kendre, who came across an anti-war comedy called Lysistrata by Greek playwright Aristophanes, when he was an NSD student and was intrigued by its plot. The plot revolves around a woman who, in order to end the Peloponnesian war, convinces Greek women to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands until peace is negotiated. The idea has been in my mind for the last 30 years, and when the academy asked me to work on a play, it came back again. We have tried it in a different way, with an Indian context, says Kendre. Vidyottama, a fictional play on the wife of Kalidas, reassesses history with a gender perspective. (Courtesy National School of Drama) Mohan Maharishis Vidyottama narrates the story of poet Kalidasas wife who rejects a luxurious life. Meanwhile, Aadha Chand is a reflection on the real and the virtual, on how the professional almost subjugates the personal, to a point where identities are altered. In terms of subject range, Sharma says, since their performances throughout the year are not limited to metros alone, but travel to smaller towns across the country, a balance is struck when it comes to the content. The objective is to create a play that appeals to both big as well as small town audience. Whats on: 2016 Summer Theatre Festival Where: Kamani Auditorium, 1, Copernicus Marg Plays: Tajmahal ka Tender; 7 pm; till June 4 Additional show: 3.30 pm, June 4 Aadha Chand; 7 pm; June 5 to 7 Additional show: 3.30 pm, June 5 Vidyottama; 7 pm; June 8 to 10 Ghazab Teri Adaa; 7 pm; June 11 and 12 Additional show: 3.30 pm, June 11 and 12 Ghasiram Kotwal; 7 pm; June 13 to 15 Tickets priced at Rs.350, Rs.200, Rs.100 and Rs.50 are being sold at National School of Drama, 1, Bhagwandas Road. Call: 23031102 SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON In the summer of 2015, theatre director KS Rajendran was looking for a play for the participants of his workshop to perform. I wanted an Indian-English play, not a foreign one, he says. And he chose Mahesh Dattanis Dance Like A Man. The same cast will be staging the play again at the Shri Ram Centre of Performing Arts this Sunday. Written in 1989, Dance Like A Man revolves around the complex relationship, passions, and ambitions of Jairaj Parekh and his wife Ratna, and Jairajs manipulative father Amrutlal. The text is very dense and Dattani uses the main characters and their dreams and relationships to look at the history of Bharatnatyam and the stigma attached to performing artists, says Rajendran. In an email interaction with Hindustan Times, Dattani explains what is the enduring appeal of the play. You had written Dance like a Man in the 1980s and the story is set in an even earlier time. Do you think the subject of the stigma attached to a man who wants to dance is relevant today? Yes. I believe the subject is still relevant. Perhaps a small section of our society is open to the idea of professional male dancers. But by and large it is still considered unmanly, although dance requires an athletes stamina and muscularity, along with rhythm and grace. But the play is really a metaphor about finding the balance within. Like all internal conflicts, they can never be irrelevant. If you were writing Dance Like A Man today, is there anything that you would write differently? Yes. I feel audiences are very judgemental about the female character Ratna. They do not question the man. The play is about the price they both pay for pursuing their passion. Also, I would treat the character of Amrutlal more sympathetically. After all, he is only interested in the welfare of his son. However, this might just take away from the purity of the story so I would let it be! A scene from the play Dance like a Man For theatre directors and actors, what according to you is the enduring appeal of this play? For actors, there is a lot of meat on the table. The sub-text and undercurrents between the four protagonists are open to several interpretations. A director can offer subtle interpretations of the father-son, man-woman, society-individual and mother-daughter relationships. The permutations are many. A good director will be selective on what he or she wishes to focus on. Various forms of social dancing are very popular in India today, and even among men. But are classical dancers, especially men, viewed differently? Our classical dances are not social dances. They are incomplete without the rasa created between performer and spectator. Most of the repertoire of our classical dance has been written for the Nayika (Heroine), so a male dancer must empathise with the lasya (grace) aspect of it as much as the tandava (physically forceful). Dance Like A Man has also been made into a film. Which is the medium that you prefer, and why? I think the film puts the dance in focus better than the play. It is a treat to watch a dancer in close-up, a privilege you can never have in the theatre unless it is a very intimate space. Sobhana has done a marvellous job of creating the character of Ratna through her dance. Whereas Lillete Dubey who plays Ratna on stage has depicted the psychological realm of Ratna through her feelings and emotions. Both are valid. Is there a dearth of English theatre content written in India? And is whats available mostly romantic comedies? Do we have an audience for serious theatre? No longer. There are plenty of talented young writers today. What we lack are directors with the ability to recognise new talent in writing. Of course we have an audience for serious theatre. Dance like a Man has proved it. It is the longest running Indian-English play. Lillete Dubeys production has been playing it for over fifteen years. Whats on: Dance like a Man When: 7.30 pm; June 5 Where: Shri Ram Centre for Performing Arts, Mandi House, 4 Safdar Hashmi Marg Call: 23714307 Tickets available at the venue and bookmyshow.com Also Read: NSDs summer theatre festival offers bouquet of old favourites and fresh productions SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON This weekend, the citys masons unlock their doors for one day only, allowing a peek into one of the oldest fraternities in the world. The Grand District Lodge of Western India of the Freemasons will open their headquarters to guided tours, to reveal some mysteries and clear misconceptions of the secret society. The open house will feature guided tours of the building every hour, and lectures on the masonic temple and the rituals of the freemasons. The masonic temple is a room in the building, where the masons in the city meet once a month to practice their rituals. Sunday marks 120 years since the foundation stone of the masonic temple was laid, back in 1897. In all these years, we have never opened the temple to non-members (they have opened it a few times before, last year on June 7th), says P Venkatraman, deputy district grandmaster and the person spearheading the event. The temple room has a majestic pipe organ and copies of holy books such as the Gita, the Bible and the Quran. Visitors can learn more about the masonic rituals and the symbolism behind various aspects of the building. For instance, there is an all-seeing eye in the building that symbolises that God is always watching. Hanging from the ceiling is the alphabet G, which denotes that no matter where you are, god is above you, says Venkratamaran. The temple room in the building is where the masons get together once a month. It has a majestic pipe organ and copies of holy books such as the Gita, the Bible and the Quran. The freemasons believe in a supreme being, but consider themselves more spiritual than religious. Mumbai has about 5,000 masons, some of whom will be conducting the guided tours on Sunday. Aditya Roy Kapur recently finished shooting for the Tamil remake of OK Kanmani (2015). He not only enjoyed working on the film and hanging out with co-star Shraddha Kapoor, but he also loved the fact that he got to ride a bike throughout the movie, as it was a character requirement. The actor was thrilled, as he really enjoys riding a bike in real life too. Read: See pics: Aditya Roy Kapur, Shraddha Kapoor wrap up Ok Jaanu shoot A source says, Aditya has been riding bikes for such a long time. Now he wants to go on a long bike ride or a road trip soon. Whenever he gets a day off, he takes his bike out for a ride. He even rides it around Mumbai, after midnight whenever possible. He has often been spotted riding his bike around Bandra at night. The actor also bought a new bike recently. He loves taking care of it, and makes it a point to clean it himself, adds the source. Apparently, the actor is also looking to take up mountain biking in the near future. Read: Id love to do crossover work: Aditya Roy Kapur Whether youre a shopkeeper, a government employee, a businessman or a celebrity if you live or have lived in Delhi, you know what its water shortage problems are like. While we all know water is a precious resource, sadly, we only realise its value when its scarce. The recent water crisis that Delhi faced is still fresh in everyones mind. Has to be. Some areas went without adequate supply for as long as 20 days. If we reflect on our daily water usage, were all guilty of wasting some water. Shutting the running tap while brushing teeth, taking a bath out of a bucket and not a shower, and cleaning cars with a wet cloth are simple steps in the right direction. Here, celebs with a Dilli connect give more such tips, and share what is it that they do to save water. Pulkit Samrat Actor Pulkit Samrat is against concretising every bit of land available, as it affects the water table. A lot of it has to do with our careless attitude. Why would you wash your car with portable water, that too everyday? You can easily use waste water from your RO system to do that. And thats just one example. Install a small rainwater harvesting system. It does not take much. Stop concretising every bit of land available. It affects the water table adversely. I remember when I was younger, I could easily smell rain, since there was a lot of natural soil around. MCD (Municipal Corporation of Delhi), stop making pavements everywhere. You are ruining the water table, and you are definitely blocking the sweet scent of rain! All I am going to say is, if we dont have enough water, it will be difficult to make beer too. Now thats a bummer, isnt it? Manish Paul Actor Manish Paul asks his car washer to clean the car with a wet cloth instead of using a bucket of water. (Waseem Gashroo/HT) I keep telling everyone to save water. People need to keep a check on their taps because that is a huge way of saving water. Also people fill water bottles when they go out anywhere and then throw whatever amount is left. I myself try and do as much as I can at home to ensure that water is not wasted. For instance, I ask my car washer to clean the car with a wet cloth instead of using a bucket of water. If he does have to use water, I ask him to use as little as possible. Read: Water crisis acute in Gurgaon, Huda blames power cuts in Basai plant Esha Gupta Actor Esha Gupta says we are lucky that we have water and should save it for those who dont. (Aalok Soni/HT Photo) The condition that many of our states are in when it comes to water shortage is saddening. We have to start saving water little by little as every effort matters. People should have a bath from a bucket or take a very quick shower so that too much water isnt wasted. Also, do not leave the taps running when youre brushing your teeth. When you go out for meals at a food joint, dont leave behind any water bottles or water in your glasses. Finish all of it. We are lucky that we have water and should save it for those who dont. Read: DLF residents protest against water and power crises Neesha Singh Actor Neesha Singh recommends using the waste RO water to water plants. I feel very strongly about water conservation, so much so that I have never taken a shower. I always have a bath out of a bucket. The amount of water one can save just by this is phenomenal. I also dont use tap water to brush my teeth. I take water in a tumbler and brush my teeth using that. Also, people should use their taps at slow speeds. For watering plants, I recommend you use the waste RO water. It is anyway good for plants as RO removes all the minerals and vitamins from the water. Another thing that I recommend is that when youre washing dishes, soak them and rinse them out in a tub full of water instead of wasting tap water. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON How about making a journey laden with poetry leaving behind all your hassles, this Sunday? A poetry session in association with Rapid MetroRail Gurgaon and Youth For Heritage Foundation is being held this Sunday, June 5. The session will begin from Sikanderpur Metro station at 11 am and will go on for three hours. When asked about how this idea came into being, Tauseef Ahmed, from Youth For Heritage Foundation, says, We wanted to intertwine poetry with heritage. Poetry is a medium through which you can spread awareness too. We invite everyone to come and recite their poetry. The session will be conducted on a moving metro. This is the first time such an initiative has been taken. With Poets Collective, we conduct a session every month at restaurants and different monuments in the city. We were doing our regular events in Delhi which had few regulars from Gurgaon. They used to ask us to host a poetry event in the city. Read: Its all about getting poetic Read: From pubs to art galleries, how poetry is getting cool again The participants must board a special train from Sikanderpur Metro Station of Rapid Metro line. Each participant will have to collect a special entry token for Rs.100 from the counter. The same will be returned while leaving the station. Saumya Kulshreshtha, from Poets Collective, a group of poetry lovers that was formed in December 2014, says, We are a group of poetry lovers. More than a reciting platform, wed like to make it a listening platform. And when we hear each other out, it makes us so much more evolved as people. You understand each other struggles, what makes people happy. Its going to a be great and a fun session. We are very excited. Everyone can bring their choice of poetry to recite. Well try and intersperse the poetry of experienced poets with the newcomers. CATCH IT LIVE What: Poetry Session on Rapid Metro When: June 5 Timings: 10:30 to 2pm Nearest metro station: Sikanderpur metro station on the Yellow Line SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has sacked the flight safety chief of Air Pegasus from his post and suspended five pilots after a safety audit of the Bangalore-based regional carrier revealed serious safety violations. The airline has been warned of strict action in case of any future violations, the regulator said. The DGCA safety audit, first reported by HT on May 13, threw up serious findings related to flight safety. It was noticed that some of its pilots violated norms as flights operated by them descended at a very high rate even when close to the ground. In one case, a flight landing in Trivandrum would have overshot the runway had the runway length not been close to 11,000 feet. The pilots should have done a go-around in that case but instead continued with the approach, said a DGCA official. Read: Air Pegasus on regulators radar for sleepy pilots The audit was carried out in the last week of April. There was violation of flight duty time limitations (the maximum hours that crew can work), deficient training and violations regarding training. We have removed the airlines flight safety head and suspended five pilots including one expat, said an official. Exhausted pilots being forced to work is a sensitive issue with regulators worldwide, and has been blamed for several fatal air crashes such as the Colgan Air crash in February 2009, and a more recent one to West Asia for which the official report has not yet been released. Decor Aviation-promoted Air Pegasus operates to 16 sectors with Bangalore as its hub, and has a fleet of three ATR 72 aircraft. It launched operations in April last year. We have already taken corrective measures and submitted an action taken report to the DGCA, said Air Pegasus Managing Director Shyson Thomas. Read: Blow to DGCA: Three more flight inspectors quit regulator SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON During a time when Indias growth story, backed by infrastructural development, is being discussed across the globe, lending issues once again have plagued the sector. According to sources, infrastructure majors are deterred from participating in the new projects. Companies such as Lanco, Gammon Infrastructure Projects Ltd, GMR, GVK, and Jaypee, among others, have voiced their lending concerns at the recent meetings held between the industry leaders and the government, sources said. In the last two months, we have informed the government at various stakeholder meetings that the developers are unable to get access to funding, which is putting us away from participating in (new) projects. We have been told that the government will take up this issue with banks soon, said a senior board member of an infrastructure company on condition of anonymity. Senior managers and directors of other infrastructure firms, who did not wish to be identified, confirmed about the lending issues and the on-going talks with the government to HT. In order to get the projects going, the Centre has been trying hard to revive the key infrastructure sector by giving an extra push. Finance minister Arun Jaitley, too, at the recent Future of Asia conference, organised by the Japanese media corporation, Nikkei, said that New Delhi needs immediate investments of at least $1 trillion to build roads, ports, airports and power stations, as it seeks to expand economy. He added that the government is hoping that the private companies will contribute half of this amount. Industry leaders, however, say that though the government is expecting the private sector to invest, but financing issues have become the biggest challenge for them. Banks have become very cagey when it comes to infrastructure lending. Infrastructure loans have dried up in the recent past. Over and above the earlier issues such as stressed balance sheets, which the companies are addressing via strategic debt restructuring, new issues of project valuations and risks, are now becoming a concern too. If the trend continues, it will lead to another lull in the infrastructure sector, which started showing some recovery Talks are on with the government, said Vinayak Chatterjee, chairman, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) national task force for infrastructure, and chairman of consulting firm Feedback Ventures. Analysts say that the new avenues of funding, which could bridge the funding gap such as National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF), and Infrastructure investment trusts, or InvITs, too are taking time leading to further delays. Banks are becoming very cautious in lending to the infrastructure sector. Given that India now has to maintain the growth momentum, it is important to note that the government alone will not be funding entire infrastructure development. Thus, banks will have to lend to the private sector, which will push these companies to get back in the construction mode. Noting that a lot of these companies have leveraged balance sheets, and banks are also not in a healthy position, the new avenues such as NIIF and InvITs are the only options, which the government should now take seriously without any delay, said Vishwas Udgirkar, senior director at consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt Ltd. The NIIF is the countrys first sovereign wealth fund, which would invest in greenfield, brownfield and commercially -viable stalled projects, and will be set up with an initial corpus of Rs 40,000 crore. InvIT are financial instruments that companies can use to raise funds for their projects. Japans transport ministry raided small-car maker Suzukis headquarters on Friday, in the wake of its shock admission that it used improper fuel-testing methods for years, affecting millions of cars. Officials descended on the companys base in Hamamatsu city, around 250 kilometres (155 miles) southwest of Tokyo, saying they were hunting for documents linked to the under-fire emissions and fuel-economy testing. We are raiding Suzukis headquarters to confirm the information that the company supplied to the ministry, an official in charge of automotive safety told AFP. The agency also raided the office of rival Mitsubishi Motors after its shock revelation in April that it had cheated on fuel-efficiency tests for decades. Suzuki, which was for years led by its 86-year-old chairman Osamu Suzuki -- a direct descendant of the companys founding family -- has admitted to using a testing method not approved by Japanese regulators. But it has repeatedly insisted it had not meant to deceive drivers. The company said in a statement it will fully cooperate with the transport ministry, but declined to speculate on what sort of financial penalties it could face. Well just have to wait and see, a company spokesman told AFP. Instead, the company claimed this week the problem was linked to scaling back resources earmarked for testing in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which set off the world financial crisis. After the Lehman shock the increased workload of developing new models and engines led Suzuki to be unable to allocate sufficient manpower for the (approved) test, it said Tuesday. In addition, (we) failed to invest in necessary infrastructure... as well as to make efforts to improve testing technology. Suzukis Tokyo-listed shares dropped 0.92% to 2,829.5 yen by lunch break on Friday, following reports of the raid. The company has confirmed that 26 vehicle models were involved, about half produced for other automakers, since it started using the unapproved testing in 2010. More than two million cars, all sold in Japan, were affected, it said. The Suzuki revelations come during a tough time for the global industry. Japans transport ministry ordered all domestic automakers to probe their own compliance with government testing methods following Mitsubishis revelations that it manipulated fuel-economy data. Germanys Volkswagen, meanwhile, is struggling to drive past a worldwide emissions cheating scandal, while Tokyo-based auto parts giant Takata has been hit by lawsuits and regulatory probes over claims it hid deadly airbag flaws linked to at least 13 deaths and scores of injuries globally. Two years ago there were questions over whether Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi could get a visa to enter the United States. Next week he visits Washington as one of President Barack Obamas closest international partners. Obama invited Modi for one of the last big visits by a world leader before his term ends in January. Although the trip wont feature a lavish state dinner, the Indian leader will address both houses of Congress, considered a rare honour. This will be their seventh meeting since Modi became prime minister in May 2014, an impressive tally for a U.S. president and a leader who is not a formal ally, said Ashley Tellis at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. The personal relationship between the president and the prime minister ... is really one of the unanticipated surprises of the past two years, said Tellis, an expert on India. The developing relationship is seen as an Obama foreign policy success. Washington views India as an important part of its rebalance to Asia and as a counterweight to China. The two countries are finalising agreements that would make it possible for their militaries to cooperate more closely, and for U.S. defence manufacturers to both sell and make high-tech weaponry in India. A deal on logistics would govern issues such as how the two countries account for costs of military exercises. Another involves encrypted communications and geospatial data transfer. A history of colonial rule followed by decades of non-alignment has, however, made New Delhi wary of an embrace by the more powerful United States, which has overtaken Russia as Indias top arms supplier. It is neither a strategic partnership nor an alliance, said Nitin Gokhale, founder of defence portal Bharat Shakti. It can be a long-term arrangement, but to call it a strategic partnership would be premature. There are frustrations, too, on the U.S. side. The two countries reached a civil nuclear agreement in 2005, but it has yet to yield any contracts for U.S.-based companies. Only now is Westinghouse, a unit of Japans Toshiba, approaching the finish line on a deal to build six reactors in India. GETTING TO KNOW YOU The visit gives Modi a chance to network with U.S. lawmakers who may feature in a Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton administration but, as it coincides with the California primary, he is not expected to meet either. Modi is generally popular with U.S. lawmakers, who extended his invitation to address Congress. But they criticise what they see as lingering unfriendliness to U.S. firms and a stifling bureaucracy, and question New Delhis record on human rights. The economic engagement between our two countries should increase and it should be more accessible for U.S. companies, Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a telephone interview. Obama and Modi are expected to discuss Indias desire to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 48-member club of nuclear trading nations. India was shut out for decades because of its weapons programme, and the civil nuclear agreement with the United States gave it access to foreign suppliers without giving up its arms. Obama administration officials have said they backed Indias desire to join the group, but the idea faces resistance among some on Capitol Hill, as well as from China, an ally of Indias arch-rival Pakistan. Existing NSG guidelines were established to guard against nuclear proliferation, and we should not create exceptions for particular countries, Corker said. There is lingering concern in Washington over Modis handling of communal riots in 2002 that killed at least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, in Gujarat. Modi was chief minister of the state at the time and, though a court-ordered inquiry found insufficient evidence to prosecute him, the issue prevented him from getting a U.S. visa for years. Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, raised human rights on a visit to New Delhi this week, saying the two largest democracies had special obligations to set the highest standards. Congress Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission has scheduled a hearing on India for June 7, the day Modi arrives in Washington and the day before his address to the combined House of Representatives and Senate. He leaves the United States on June 8. Corker promised to asked Modi about Indias record on human trafficking, which he brought up recently in an emotional Senate hearing with Obama administration officials. The country we believe has 12-14 million slaves, which is close to half the number we believe exists worldwide, Corker said. Its obviously a very significant issue and when hes here, its one I certainly plan to raise. MUMBAI: With public sector banks missing the target of opening the number of ATMs as mandated by the government, white label ATM (WLA) manufacturers are smelling an opportunity to outsource ATMs at lower costs. WLAs are non-banking entities that own, set up and operate automated teller machines (ATMs) for banks. Those owned by banks are called brown label ATMs. Around 27 state-owned banks installed a total of 13,935 cashdispensing machines in 2015-16, against the targetted 15,249. From a banks point of view, it makes no sense to do a brown label ATM, since it is not its core function, said Sanjeev Patel, CEO, Tata Comm Payment Solutions. India had 199,000 ATMs as of March 31, 2016, against 181,000 in March 2015, growing just 9.7%, according to the RBI. We cannot run an ATM if we are not paid enough for other banks customers using our ATM, a public sector bank executive said. The interchange fee what one bank pays for its customer for using another banks ATM is Rs 15 for cash transactions and Rs 5 for non-cash transactions. Unless we have more transactions to help raise usage, or remove the restrictions on the number of transactions per bank ATM, WLA is not a sustainable business model, said K Srinivas, MD and CEO, BTI Payments. Tata Communications Payment Solutions, Prizm Payment Services, Muthoot Finance, Vakrangee, BTI Payments, Srei Infra Finance and RiddiSiddhi Bullions were authorised by the RBI to set up WLAs. Tatas have set up 8,000 ATMs, while BTI Payments has opened 3,800 ATMs. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON NEW DELHI: The Banks Board Bureau and the government is looking to give an extension to Arundhati Bhattacharya, who completes her three-year tenure as chairman of the countrys largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI), in September. Bhattacharya is the first woman chairperson of SBI in the banks 200-year history. The bank is going through a crucial phase, and is gearing up to take over its subsidiaries and the Bharatiya Mahila Bank. Bhattacharya, who has been the driving force behind the banks expansion in the last three years, is likely to stay at the helm for a few more months to ensure a smooth transition, sources said. A final decision would be taken only after two months, based on a thorough assessment of the situation. However, no outsider will be brought in to head the bank, an official source who did not wish to be identified told HT. Extension (of Bhattacharya) will be considered..there is no decision on the issue as yet and only preliminary talks have been held, the source added. She has been dynamic in her performance and has managed things very well, especially at a time when the industry is going through a tough phase with non-performing assets (NPAs) surging to alarming levels. In February, during the announcement of the banks third-quarter results, Bhattacharya had signalled that she would continue to head SBI. Dont worry, I am here to stay, she had said then. Bhattacharya is known for being vocal against wilful defaulters, including Vijay Mallya, promoter of the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines. She will bag a respectable and responsible position even after her innings with SBI, said the source quoted above. Last week, SBI reported a 66% fall in net profit to Rs1,264 crore during the January-March quarter of 2015-16, against Rs3,742 crore in the same period of the previous fiscal, as surging NPAs loans that do not yield returns weighed on the countrys largest bank. Anshula Kant, chief financial officer (CFO), SBI, Dinesh Khara, MD and CEO, SBI Mutual Fund, and PK Gupta, MD, SBI, are also being considered for the top post at the lender. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON When history tries to understand how and why Indian secularism came to be corrupted, distorted and reduced to a mere political slogan, the beginning may be traced back to 1986 when the Rajiv Gandhi government set aside the Supreme Courts decision on alimony for a poor Muslim woman who then became a national headline Shah Bano. Under pressure from the Muslim Personal Law Board and with one eye on vote-bank politics, the Congress surrendered to the clergy and enacted a law that made it impossible for Shah Bano to receive the Rs 179 mandated by the judiciary as monthly maintenance from the husband who had divorced her. Thirty years later the debate around ending triple talaq 22 Muslim countries, including Pakistan, have done so either officially or effectively has similarly wrenched open the fault-lines in the secularism debate. As a feminist and a pluralist, I find it impossible to defend the continuation of this atavistic custom that allows instant divorce by the mere utterance of the word without allowing the women a similar right to automatic exit from her marriage. Couple this glaring inequity with the reversal of the Shah Bano judgment and it means that men can leave the (mostly poor) women they are married to, even grab custody of the children and are not obliged to pay long-term maintenance unless the court is able to provide some creative readings of the statutes. Read | Muslim advocate takes triple talaq battle to Supreme Court More disturbing is the denial of agency to Muslim women themselves. This week I met three of the four brave women who have petitioned the courts and asked for this retrograde practice to be struck down. Aafreen Rehman and Saira Banu were both divorced by speed post. Aafreen is spunky, outspoken and angry about the physical abuse she was subjected to, and determined to assert her rights; Saira talks softly, hesitantly, staring down at her feet as she describes the multiple abortions she was forced to go through by her husband and how she has not seen her two children in months. You may ask why these women are resisting talaq from such brutal men; arent they better off without them, you may wonder. But their fight is not about the desire to remain married; the protest is against gross inequality the fight is for basic dignity. One woman, who wanted her identity to be protected, told me that after her husband said Talaq Talaq Talaq to her, she was discarded not just by her husbands family and neighbours, but by her parents. When she went to seek help from the local maulvi he screamed at her for wearing kajal as a divorced woman. She asked him how he could see the kohl in her eyes but not the rage and anguish in her heart. Yet, once again, just like it was with the Shah Bano verdict three decades ago, no major party is standing up for the rights of these women in Parliament (hoping to pass the buck to the judiciary for an issue that is too much of a political hot potato) and the clergy may yet again get to impose its veto. It is this self-imposed authority that Badar Sayeed, the third petitioner in the Supreme Court has challenged, the right of qazis or religious clerics to certify divorces. She has argued that divorce is a civil-rights issue and only courts should have jurisdiction to adjudicate them. Read | Over 50,000 Muslims sign petition to ban un-Quranic practice of triple talaq As a petition endorsed by 50,000 Muslim women and men shows there is a rising peoples movement within the community to get rid of triple talaq. The Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), a group at the forefront of this campaign for equality, surveyed almost 5,000 women. The results were categorical; 78% of those polled had been divorced via triple talaq, and more than 90% wanted the practice banned. There has also been a conspicuous silence among lawmakers around the most abused practice of Nikaah Halala, which requires a woman to marry and have sex with another man before she can remarry a man who has divorced her thrice. Since many clerics club a single declaration of Talaq Talaq Talaq as three divorces, Halala can be invoked. The BMMA poll found that 8% of the women interviewed had been asked to suffer this ignominy; thats more than 300 women in a small group the absolute numbers could be way higher. The campaign to end triple talaq has brought us face-to-face with the inevitable question: Can women really have equal rights without abolishing personal laws (of all faiths) and replacing them with secular laws? The idea is not to essentialise Islam or any other faith the orthodoxy of all religions and cultures is tilted against women, girls and often children. A recent India Spend study, citing the 2011 census, revealed that 12 million children in India were married under the age of 10 84% of them Hindu, 11% Muslim (65% of all married children were female). But the difference is that at least on paper (ending the actual practice could take a longer battle) you can use civil law to ban a Hindu child marriage notwithstanding a few remaining ambiguities that make it tougher to annul a marriage if it takes place between the ages of 15 and 18. In the case of triple talaq a parallel set of Sharia laws make even the legal challenge impossible. Read | Bikaner teenager raped, gets talaq from husband I concede legitimate fears among minorities about the Uniform Civil Code being more about homogenisation than equalisation, especially under pressure from hardline Hindutva groups. But just as Hindutva (as distinct from Hinduism) is to be opposed and challenged, so must the fundamentalist misogynists among Muslims. There can be no level playing field for women and girls without a Uniform Civil Code not a Hindu Code or a Muslim Code but a secular code, drawn from basic principles of personal freedom, human rights and justice. To not support such a code is to weaken the case both for feminism and secularism. Barkha Dutt is consulting editor, NDTV, and founding member, Ideas Collective The views expressed are personal SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The second day of Open Days at Delhi University North Campus was a packed house with confused students and parents wanting to clear all their queries before filling the forms online. I had some questions about calculating the best of four for admission to BSc. I have not yet registered because I wanted to get answers to my queries first, said Anupam Butola, an applicant. He had come from Gopeshwar in Uttarakhand and is living with a cousin in Delhi. Like Butola there were many students who had queries on the certificates needed for admission under the extracurricular activities (ECA) category. Upload the national certificate if you have one, otherwise upload whichever holds a higher value, said Gurpreet Singh Tuteja, Deputy Dean Students Welfare. Read more: Confused about Delhi University admissions 2016? Weve got the answers Delhi University started the online registration and Open Days from June 1. Some students also wanted to know if they could change their college after getting admission in a college. Any student can withdraw admission from a college and then take admission in another college. But you will have to give an application for admission withdrawal and your certificates will be given back. But it will take some time for the fees to be refunded to you, said Tuteja. Read more: DU admissions: No deduction for vocational subjects in BA, BCom (prog) However, this time unlike previous years there is no help desk with interns to help the students at the conference centre. Many such Open Days are scheduled till June 11. The last day of application is June 19. About 30,900 applicants registered online at the University admission portal within first six hours of the launch. About 5,600 students have already completed their registration form including online registration fee payment. The Delhi Police on Friday blew the lid off a kidney trade racket at the prestigious Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, arresting two of its secretarial staff and three touts. Aditya Singh, 24, and Shailesh Saxena, 31, are aides to a senior nephrologist, police said. Aseem Sikdar, Satya Prakash and Devashish Moulik, all in their 30s, lured needy people with money in exchange for their kidneys. A donor was paid Rs 5 lakh while the accused charged the recipient Rs 25-30 lakh. The police have detected five cases so far. Sources who did not want to be named said hospital staff were aware of the illegal trade and did not rule out the involvement of senior doctors. The touts would get donors from West Bengal, Kanpur, Delhi and Chennai and put them up in hotels here. They got each donor tested to check if he was a match for the recipient. After that, they forged documents to establish the donor was a relative of the recipient, said DCP (southeast) MS Randhawa. Read | Month-long probe unearthed racket in Delhi hospital Under the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, only a relative can donate a kidney. If a match within the family isnt found, a non-relative can be a donor provided it is proven the deal is not commercial and is on compassionate grounds. All hospitals have a system of checks to ensure the donor and recipient are related or that no sale is involved. In a statement, Apollo said the arrested staff members were secretarial staff of some doctors and not employees of the hospital. While all precautions were taken, it appears fake and forged documents were used for this racket with criminal intent. The hospital has been a victim of a well-orchestrated operation to cheat patients, it said. DCP Randhawa said a trap was set after the police received information that the gang would be coming to Apollo on Thursday (June 2) for a meeting between a donor and the relatives of a patient. We formed two teams and conducted a raid, arresting the three gang members on the spot. A case under the human organ act has been registered against them, he said. Read | Kidney kingpin involved in two similar rackets in TN and Punjab Fake voter ID cards and Aadhaar papers along with photographs were recovered from their possession. The police also seized original and electronic files, CDs and documents from the hospital. Detailed documentation and verification must be done before each transplant. Willingness of the donor, relationship with the recipient, proof of address and marriage, clearance by the hospitals internal authorisation committee is required. The whole procedure must be videographed, said Randhawa. But in this case, hospital authorities failed to verify these documents, which were fraudulently made. The men affixed photographs of donors in the forms but filled in the details of the recipients relatives. Insisting it has always ensured all due process as per law is followed, Apollo said, The hospital has an independent body with external members also for according consent for any transplant surgery. This committee goes through all documents necessary to ensure requirements under the Act are complied with. It said it was cooperating with the investigation and providing the police with required information. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON NEW DELHI: The Delhi government has sent again to the L-G a proposal to carve exclusive bus lanes on the city roads and slap steep fines of Rs 2,000 on those violating lane discipline. The Delhi governments transport department had issued a notification in March, proposing the steep fine even as it was preparing to implement round two of the odd-even road rationing scheme. Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung had returned the proposal to the government, seeking clarifications on several points. The L-G had asked the government to review the policy. It also asked the government to incorporate the views of other agencies concerned such as the PWD and law department. A Delhi government spokesperson said the government has sent back the file proposing to slap a fine of Rs 2,000 on bus lane violators with minor amendments. Minor amendments have been made to the plan after consultations with the law, public works and the transport department. The file has been sent to L-G office for clearance, an official said. The AAP government plans dedicated bus lanes on all major roads across the national capital in order to improve public transport services. The proposal also advocates Rs 2,000 fine bus drivers who will not ply in the dedicated bus lanes. The government has also chalked out detailed plans to strengthen the DTC fleet by buying more buses and engaging private firms to run public transport buses in Delhi. The development comes within days after the L-G office asked Delhi government to review its app-based bus aggregator policy. The ACB has also initiated a probe into the matter following complaints from the leader of the opposition in the Delhi Assembly, Vijender Gupta. If still not cleared by the L-Gs office, the proposal will join a list of other moves proposed by the government that are pending approval by the Centre. The Delhi government has been targeting L-G office alleging that the Delhi administrator and the BJP government at the Centre are hurting governance in the Capital by creating obstacles in implementation of new initiatives. LG n Modi Govt aggressively start creating hurdles in Del Govt, almost in every file. Modi hides behind L-G and targets us, (SIC.), Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted on Thursday. PUNE: Following serious disagreement with students, veteran actor Tom Alter resigned as head of the acting department at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). The FTII administration, while confirming the resignation of Alter, said, It is yet to be accepted. According to Brijendra Pal Singh, chairman of the FTII academic council, the students had refused to attend Alters classes as he had sought 100% attendance. The FTII students, however, accused Alter of having dictatorial ways and said that he was failing as an administrator, as a result of which they had to suffer. Sources said that on May 23, students misbehaved with Alter and they had a scuffle with him at the directors office. At that point, the actor threatened to resign. In his resignation letter sent through an email, Alter has maintained that due to other commitments, he was unable to find time for academic activities. FTII director Bhupendra Kainthola, while confirming the resignation, said, The institute is trying to persuade him to withdraw the resignation. Alter had joined the institute in November 2014, and he voluntarily decided to not take any honorarium. He was teaching students without accepting any salary. Alters resignation is the latest standpoint between the students and FTII management as the institute is again on a simmer after the academic council proposed to bring in a new syllabus, shifting to a choice-based credit system and extra measures to maintain discipline on the campus. The council has proposed that hostel facility will be allowed to be used only for the duration of the course while the proctor is to be appointed on the campus to bring in order among students. At an academic council meeting held on Wednesday, students opposed all the proposals put forth by council members. Irked by the constant opposition by students, Brijendra Pal Singh reportedly expressed his disappointment, saying he had never come across students who wanted to oppose everything. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police have argued that the accused driver in the Mercedes hit-and-run case should not be given the benefit of a juvenile since he was just four days shy of turning an adult. The teen was allegedly driving at 80-km an hour when the car hit marketing consultant Siddharth Sharma in the Civil Lines area. The police, in its charge-sheet submitted before the juvenile justice board, contended that four days would not have made any significant difference to physical or mental maturity of the accused. Therefore, he should not be allowed to take the plea that he should be tried as a juvenile, the police said. If treated as a juvenile, the accused driver would only be sent to a correction home and not a jail. Because of the calculation of biological age of 18 years, the mental capacity/ability and physical capacity/ability cannot be expected to get a drastic change towards maturity in those four days, the police said in the charge-sheet. Police said the teenager must be tried as an adult and charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder. They said the accused had been involved in similar incidents of rash driving in the past and managed to dodge legal action by either compromising or giving false representation about his identity. The officer said it proved the minor was mentally capable of understanding the consequences of his act. The police said the teenager driver did not even apply the brakes when his car hit Siddharth Sharma the victim. Police said they did not find a single skid mark at the crime spot. A separate charge-sheet is being filed against the teenagers father and the family driver, who had earlier misled the police by claiming that he was driving the car when Sharma was hit. The driver backed out after learning that Sharma had died. Father of the accused is being chargesheeted for abetment to culpable homicide. The police have submitted the details of the past cases, in which the teenager was fined for speeding. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The kidney racket unearthed by Delhi Police is not limited to the Capital but has its roots in other Indian cities and even Sri Lanka and Nepal, senior officials said. The kingpin, identified as T Rajkumar Rao, 39, continues to evade arrest even after he allegedly masterminded two similar rackets in Jalandhar and Coimbatore between 2013 and 2015. Investigators said Rao had even travelled to Sri Lanka and Nepal to find donors for his clients in India. Organ donors in these countries charged less compared to those in India. A team has been sent to Kolkata to find Rao, who belongs to Andhra Pradesh but shifted to the West Bengal capital two decades ago. His father was a banker in Kolkata. Rao was introduced to the organ racket by a woman named Shama and her aide Deepaankar in Kolkata eight to nine years ago. Police are also looking for them. Raos name surfaced in the latest racket during the interrogation of his three accomplices -- Aseem Sikdar, Devashish Moulik and Satya Prakash. The three said Rao had been managing everything -- from identifying donors to contacting his alleged aides in Apollo Hospital -- from Kolkata. Sikdar, Maulik and Ashu used to get between R1 and 2 lakh for each successful transplant. Sikdar said he came in contact with Rao in Kolkata. Rao offered him a handsome amount for donating his kidney. Sikdar was sent to a hospital in Coimbatore where his kidney was donated to Raos client. Similarly, Mauli had donated his wifes kidney to a patient at Apollo Hospital while Ashus kidneys transplant was done at a hospital in Jalandhar, the officer said. Initially, Rao and Sikdar operated the racket at Coimbatores medical college and hospital. But after it was blacklisted, the two shifted to Kolkata and remained underground for some months. Later, Rao sent Sikdar to manage their racket in Jalandhar and Delhi while he was supervising it from Kolkata, said the officer, adding they had come across 10 kidney transplant cases in Delhi. At least seven of them have been verified so far, the officer added. There is good news for students who want to study BA and BCom (Programme) at Delhi University this year. While calculating the best of four marks, students can include a vocational subject and will not face any disadvantage. Till last year, including a vocational subject in these two courses while calculating the best of four marks would have meant a 2.5% deduction for each subject. But now this means if a student has scored well in physical education, sculpture, web-designing or painting, then they can put the marks of the subject while calculating BFS along with one language and two other subjects. In case of change of stream, such as science students wanting to enroll in BA Programme, then there will be a deduction of not more than 5%. This percentage is decided by the college. Till last year, students were not allowed to include a vocational subject in calculation of BFS but now the rule has been changed, said Gurpreet Singh Tuteja, deputy dean students welfare. Read more: DU admissions 2016: Find your college on interactive map, know details But this is only true for these two courses and not for the others. For all others such as BA, BCom (Hons) courses, BFS calculation should include one language and three other academic subjects listed by the university. The list of academic subjects has been further widened this year. Legal studies, accountancy, business studies are academic subjects now. Inclusion of language in the calculation of BFS is important except for BSc (hons) in physical and life sciences. For physical science course, students need to calculate the marks of physics, chemistry and mathematics (PCM) and for life science it is physics, chemistry and biology. Further, there are courses for which the university has imposed other conditions like for BCom and economics (Hons) it is important for students to have studied mathematics. Read more: Entrance tests, important dates: All about Delhi University admissions Including mathematics marks in the BFS is not mandatory. Business mathematics will be treated as equivalent to Mathematics for admission to BCom (Hons)/ BCom only. However, Mathematics marks have to be added to the BFS if a candidate wants to study mathematics, statistics, computer science (Hons). There are 55 courses offered by the Delhi University. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON NEW DELHI: A 40-year-old Ola cab driver was arrested on Thursday for allegedly sexually harassing and misbehaving with an additional sessions judge (ASJ) at north Delhis Kamla Nagar market. The crime took place on Tuesday but the judge filed a complaint on Wednesday, the police said. Madhur Verma, deputy commissioner of police (north), said the driver, Sandeep Kumar, was arrested from Gurgaon after an FIR was registered on the judges complaint at the Roop Nagar police station. We had been asking the cab driver to join the probe but he was not appearing before the investigating officer. On Thursday, we conducted a raid and arrested him from Gurgaon, said Verma. In the complaint, a senior police officer said, the ASJ told the police that she had booked an Ola cab through the companys mobile application to reach home after work. Sandeep Kumar picked up the judge from the court. The Ola driver picked up the judge to drop her home. The judge alleged that during the journey she asked the driver to stop at Kamla Nagar as she had some personal work there. An argument broke out between them when the cab driver turned down her request. Soon, the cabbie started misbehaving with the judge and shouted on her. He also made some obscene gestures in front of her before throwing her belongings out of the car, said the officer, quoting the complaint by the judge. On the basis of the complaint, a case under 354 A (sexual harassment), 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) and 427 (causing damage to property) of the IPC was registered against Sandeep, said DCP Verma. Ola couldnt be reached for a comment despite attempts. PATNA: Azharuddim Beg alias Laddan Mian, the prime suspect and conspirator in the killing of Siwan journalist Rajdeo Ranjan, surrendered to police on Thursday morning. Laddan, who had been eluding capture since the murder on May 13, was forced to surrender as police sealed district borders and intensified their manhunt, said Saurabh Kumar Sah, Siwan superintendent of police. Police had been conducting raids across several districts in Bihar and neighbouring UP to catch Laddan. When they produce him in court, police intend on pleading for a 15-day remand to interrogate Laddan and corroborate evidence. Police arrested five people less than a week ago, including one Rohit Kumar, who they claimed confessed to carrying out the murder of Ranjan. Senior journalist Ranjan was shot dead last month near the Siwan railway station. The 42-year-old was the bureau chief of Hindi daily Hindustan, a sister concern of Hindustan Times. Lad dan, who had been released from Siwan jail 15 days before Ranjans murder, fled from Siwan with his family just two hours after the crime. He is considered to be a close aide of former Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP, Mohammad Shahabuddin, who is currently serving a life sentence for the abduction and murder of two people in 2004. Sah said police had on Wednesday attached properties of Laddan, leading to three of his sisters moving the chief judicial magistrate court, claiming they had joint claim to the two houses owned by him. Their argument needs to be heard before passing of any order, Laddans family lawyer said, presenting a copy of the land registration as evidence. The court accepted the petition of Laddans sisters and sought a report from the circle officer in this regard, putting the attachment orders in abeyance. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON NEWDELHI: Popular taxi aggregators like Uber and Ola may soon have to go by fixed fares spelling the end of surge pricing with the government planning to bring them under the ambit of the motor vehicles Act. The app-based cab-booking services run in a grey area without government checks. Popular for their heavy discounts and easy availability, their practice of surge pricing increasing fares when demand outstrips supply has, however, come in for criticism. The road transport ministry is working on a proposal to bring taxi aggregators within the regulatory framework of the MV Act under a new category intermediaries. A ministry official said, Intermediaries will cover service providers like Uber and Ola that do not have their own vehicle fleets but function in the online market space by linking driver/ owner with customer for a fee. Bringing taxi aggregators under the regulatory framework will mean they wont get to arbitrarily fix fares. They will have to follow the rules framed for them under the MV Act. They will have to abide by fares prescribed by respective states, which can fix an upper cap beyond which the aggregator cannot charge, another official said. The aggregators can continue to offer discounts but within this limit. Since the taxis and other automobile aggregation policy needs the states to be on board, a group of eight state transport ministers will consider and take a final call on it on June12-13 in Dharmasala. This group was constituted in February to recommend ways to strengthen public transport and review the MV Act. Terming the cab services intermediaries will also bring them under the purview of the Information Technology Act, 2000, where intermediary means any person who on behalf of another person receives, stores or transmits that record or provides any service with respect to that record. Furthermore, the ministry has proposed making city permits mandatory for taxis within the aggregator system, the fee for which will be fixed by the Centre. Right now, they only need all India tourist permits (AITP). Cabs that run on city permits must have a fare meter not a requirement under AITP rules. Once the cabs get city permits, they will have to follow the rules framed by the state governments, including on a fare cap and fare meter. They will also have to follow a dress code, said an official. In the absence of regulations, the road ministry can at best frame guidelines for taxi aggregators and the states are free to accept or reject them. Last year, Maharashtra and Delhi attempted to regulate these cab services, without success. The Capitals AAP government got Uber and Ola to drop surge pricing during the odd-even fortnight in April this year, after receiving numerous complaints from residents. But the pricing mechanism was back as soon as the road restrictions were lifted. Recently, Karnataka framed the On Demand Transportation Technology Aggregator Rules, 2016. But this, too, has been challenged in the high court by city-based cab aggregator Helion Technologies. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The seven-year-old misses her best friend. Sitting on the floor between two doors, unmindful of the sweltering tar, she listens to the conversation of her elders with a straight face, trying to piece together words. By now she knows that her friend was abducted and beaten up but she can discern that there was more to it. In the hope to get her answers this time, she pulls her mothers duppatta, yet again, and asks, Where is she? Why is everyone asking for her? Her mother answers, Nothing. I told you she got fever. She is in the hospital and would be back soon. The last she met her best friend was on Saturday morning when she went to pick her up for tuition. She saw her friend lying on the bed, bleeding, and her mother crying by her side. The eight-year-girl, who was allegedly abducted when she sleeping outside her house, was assaulted and raped by a youth who also tried to throttle her to death.The girl, however, used her presence of mind and pretended to be dead. She held her breath for over two minutes till the youth presumed her to be dead and fled the spot. She then limped back to her house. I was told that she was not well. She has fever but I know someone beat her up because she was bleeding. Why did she not talk to me then? she says, pushing away the mosquitoes buzzing around her face. It has been five days she has not seen her friend and panics the moment electricity goes off. She has not slept since she has heard of the incident. She does not eat and has also stopped going for her tuition. She does not step out to play and refuses to go to the shop nearby. God knows what she keeps thinking sitting at the door. At night, she does not let us switch off the lights and does not even take two steps to get a glass of water. The incident has shocked her, the mother of the seven-year-old says. She knows that she was abducted from outside the house by a man who put his hand in her throat and even beat her up, the mother says. She had been asking about her but when she returned home, she refused to go to see her. I do not know what is going on in her head, her mother wonders. No one sleeps outdoors now The phool wali gali is now forbidden for the residents of Mubarakpur village in Kirari. It is the place where the juvenile allegedly took the eight-year-old girl and raped her. With no streetlights, no police presence, none of the women, who makes bouquets and delivers there, wants to take the risk to go to the area. There are men sitting in these plots drinking and even doing drugs. They pass lewd comments at women. We have complained to the police about the problem but no one comes to this area. Once they even started hurling stones at a woman when all locals gathered and shooed them away. There is no police here. We are the lawmakers and the lawbreakers, an old woman quips. The rape has alerted other parents who now do not let their children roam around in the area. No one sleeps outside now. If power goes off, we remain indoors. It is better to stay awake than to get abducted and raped. When we asked police to post a constable in the area so that we can sleep in peace, they told us to not sleep outside, said a local resident. Seven lakh people, one police station For the population of over seven lakh people, mostly migrants, there is only one police station with 140 police personnel in Kirari. Local Congress leader Pratyush Kanth said, This place is a ticking time bomb. It is a huge area and acts as a safe hideout for criminals. They find it easy to settle down here and remain faceless since there is no police patrolling. A satta racket is run openly in the area and use of drugs has become rampant. There are no proper hospitals, no sanitation, no proper sewage and nothing is being done by the state. There is a need to construct a police post in the area and the intelligence bureau needs to depute a DSP rank official who would comb every street of Kirari, Kanth said. Read: 8-year-old girl pretends to be dead to escape rapist in Delhi Rituraj Govind, the Kirari MLA, agreed that there is a grave law and order problem. The law and order situation in the are is pathetic. The population of the area is 3.5 lakh and there is only one police station in Aman Vihar. How is this acceptable? There are more than a hundred unauthorized colonies here. The literacy rate is 53%. There are a lot of improvements I want to make but the police need to cooperate, Govind said. Deputy commissioner of police (outer district) Vikramjit Singh said there is a proposal to open a new police station in the area. There is definitely a need to increase police presence. We do not have sufficient staff to cover the entire area and that is the reason that we have sent a proposal to open a new police station there. The new police station would cover half of the area and take off the load on Aman Vihar police station. It is under progress, DCP Singh said. In the last six months, more than 28 cases of rape, 36 cases of molestation and 98 cases of abduction have been reported from Kirari. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The events in Mathura on Friday, during which two policemen and 22 protesters were killed (at the time of going to press), have proved once again that references to the badlands of UP are often quite justified. This time the deaths were because of a fallout of encroachment on government land by people believed to be members of a religious organisation called the Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharak Kranti Satyagrahi, which claims that it follows the teachings of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. The encroachers, when threatened with eviction in response to a court order, fired on the police, who had to retaliate. Looked at in a certain way, the incidents look eerily similar to those of Saharanpur in 2014, when a plot of land was supposed to be the reason for dispute between two communities. The saving grace then had been that the administration was quick to act and was able to minimise the casualties. But this time it was not able to gauge the possibilities of a flare-up such as this. Now it should spare no effort to ensure that such violence does not spread because encroachment is a problem in every urban area. Read: Death toll in Mathura clashes climbs to 24, over 370 nabbed: Key highlights That the local administration is most definitely to blame for events of this kind cannot be over-stressed. In fact according to preliminary reports even UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav has admitted to the fact that the administration could not guess that events would go out if hand in this manner. For example, it may be asked how the encroachers were able to acquire and accumulate arms. Second, the fact that they could muster enough courage to fire on the police gives rise to the suspicion that they have some kind of political backing, which gets woven into a pattern of illegalities. Third, why did the group think it appropriate to invoke the name of Subhas Chandra Bose? Obviously it thought this was a suitable name for it to be in step with the mood and temper of the times, when there is an attempt by the ruling dispensation to pull down some outstanding nationalist figures and replace them with some others. All said and done, the short point is that the administration, as in many other cases, had been caught flat-footed. The problem of encroachment is widespread across India, not just in UP. In the capital, there have been several instances of people encroaching on public spaces, often building temples or other houses of worship and then using that as a figleaf to justify land-grabbing. At the first sign of such violations, the authorities are duty-bound to act and evict those engaged in such activities. It was not done in the UP case with fatal consequences. Read: Mathura clashes: Dont want cash, bring my son back, dead SPs mom to Akhilesh Thousands of students have thronged the Delhi University website to apply for the 60,000 seats that are up for grabs in undergraduate courses. While this is the first time the university has made the entire UG admission process online, students are flocking to Open Days counselling sessions that are being conducted to answer admission-related doubts and queries. DU has also uploaded an animated video on YouTube to explain various steps of the admission process. But the process can be a daunting task. As you start off on this energy-sapping exercise, we at Hindustan Times asked you to tweet or send a video about any queries regarding admissions. Watch | Got questions about DU admissions 2016 for us? Tweet us @Httweets with #CampusCalling #CampusCalling Worried about #DUadmissions? Keep and tweet your queries to us. We'll answer them for you! pic.twitter.com/nokelzu0uj Hindustan Times (@htTweets) 1 June 2016 Here are answers to some frequently asked questions (FAQs) that will make it easier for you to clinch the college of your choice: 1 @htTweets #CampusCalling What is the minimum percentage to score in du's entrance xams for https://t.co/iDtWkseSkn Saket Vatsa (@SaketVatsa) 2 June 2016 There is no minimum percentage, the selection happens on the basis of merit. 2. @htTweets this time, the online form does not consist of list of colleges in which we want to apply, so are we eligible for all colleges? Achal Jain (@iamachaljain) 2 June 2016 Yes, you are eligible to apply to all the colleges. Just select the course (as many as you want). 3. @httweets In there any college in Du in which admissions are done by entrance test not by merit in UG courses. #CampusCalling (@pakkameruthi) 2 June 2016 There are courses that can be applied to on the basis of an entrance tests. Unfortunately, the application process got over on May 31. However, here is a list of the course: * Bachelor of Management Studies * BBA Financial Management and investment analysis * Bachelor of Economics * Bachelor of Elements Education * Two courses at Cluster Innovation Centre - BTech in information technology and mathematics Innovation, BA(Hons) Humanities and Social Sciences 4. Does DU offer seats to foreign students? (asked by Kaisar Moina on Facebook) Yes, theres a 5% reservation for foreign students but the application process is over. Watch | Here are some of the answers you need on DU admissions 2016 #CampusCalling You tweeted us questions on #DUadmissions 2016 & we're here with the answers! Use #CampusCalling and ask us anythinghttps://t.co/XBAHxdhrLQ Hindustan Times (@htTweets) 3 June 2016 5. I have applied for Revaluation of my English exam. Should I fill the result section with 'awaited' or 'passed' ?#CampusCalling @htTweets MAINAAK GOEL (@mainaak_goel) 2 June 2016 If you have passed your English exam and are then applying for revaluation, you can select Passed. If youve failed your English exam and are hoping to pass it after the revaluation process, please select awaited. 6. Information practice marks are included in the best 4 subjects only if youre applying for computer science honours. 7. @soumya1405 plzz tell wt about those students ts who scored only 75% ? Mandeep Yadav (@Anchormandeep) 2 June 2016 You could have opted for any of the entrance based courses, but now the application process for the management courses is over. 8. @soumya1405 @htTweets Can I get admission for ba in journalism in du with 82% because last year's cutoff was high #CampusCalling surbhi mediratta (@surbhisahaay) 2 June 2016 You will have to wait for the cut-off list which will be out on June 27. You can check last years cut-off list here and get an idea. 9. @nehagupta2918 is there any negative marking in LL.M entrance exam?? MRADUL KHARE (@MradulKhare) 2 June 2016 There is no negative marking in LLM entrance test. If you have any queries or doubts, you can tweet us at @hTtweets or shoot a video and we will tweet back with the answers! Do not forget to use the hashtag #CampusCalling. Lets do this! Videos: Shot and edited by Prerna Madan and Neha Gupta Delhi University aspirants, who didnt study in a school affiliated to the CBSE, have something to cheer about this year. The university has decided not to deduct marks from the aggregate score of applicants, who have studied subjects that have a practical component of more than 30%. Till last year DU deducted 10 marks or 2.5% from the score of these applicants. Some state boards allot 60 marks for theory and 40 for practical. Despite scoring well, students from these boards were at a disadvantage while applying to DU. University officials said marks would be adjusted accordingly in such cases. The four subjects that students choose to calculate their score must each have at least 70% theory component. If that is not the case, then the marks for theory and practical will be adjusted in a 70:30 ratio, said the university admission guidelines. Click here for full coverage Students from the science stream and those having studied vocational subjects will benefit the most by the new rule, an official said. Now marks will be calculated on pro rata basis, said officials. Last year, students from certain state boards protested on campus against the decision to cut 2.5% marks or 10 marks from subjects that did not have the theory and practical components in a ratio of 70:30. The application process started on Wednesday. Admissions are online this year. Applicants can fill forms, pay registration fee and select the college online. The first cutoff list will be out on June 27. Based on this list, the students can take admission till June 30. The second cutoff list will be out on July 1. This year the university is releasing only five cutoff lists. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON When 24-year-old Sutirtha Chakraborty graduated in business management from Aston University in Birmingham, UK in 2013, he was glad he chose this option over any other college in India. Aside from the quality of education, I chose the UK because of the global exposure that it would provide me in terms of interacting with students of different nationalities, a practical approach to education and industry-relevant exercises, he says. Unlike the Indian system that bases education on textbooks, in the UK, management education involved playing business games that would be related to economic activity in the world. Like Chakraborty, hundreds of Indian students prefer to pursue higher education abroad; often, the universitys global ranking is a deciding factor. While Indian institutes have consistently fared at the bottom of global rankings lists, last week, the country made some headway. While UK-based ratings body Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) typically rates institutes around the world, this time, it ranked countries. In the first-ever Higher Education System and Strength Rankings (HESSR) released last week, India featured at 24th position out of 50, with a score of 69 out of 100. The US, UK and Germany bagged the first three spots, with 100, 98.5 and 94 scores respectively. The ranks consider four criteria the number of institutes in the country that appear in the QS rankings; the position of these institutes in the rankings; impact of economic investment in higher education; and the countrys population. Read: What do Indian varsities need to make it to the global league? Countries such as the US and UK have flexibility, autonomy and competition in education, aspects that are completely lacking in India, says Neeraj Hatekar, head of the economics department at the University of Mumbai. In India, we even accept sub-standard teaching; also, there is little innovation in learning techniques at our colleges. According to the QS website, [HESSR represents] a new attempt to use university rankings performance alongside other metrics to assess the strengths and weaknesses of a countrys higher education environment. In doing so, it aims to assist governmental bodies charged with improving their nations higher education system to benchmark against competitor nations. It assesses higher education in 50 countries, across six continents.It is interesting to note that third-world countries such as Argentina and Brazil are above India in the overall rankings. The ranking considers only 50 countries and we cant be celebrating that we did better than another third-world country, says Amit Dasgupta, Mumbai head of SP Jain School of Global Management in Lower Parel. The essence of these rankings is to set a benchmark based on the countries that have the best education system in the world. Heres a look at what this means for Indias higher education space. Overall strength The first category, called system strength, assesses the performance of the nation in the international rankings, and each country is awarded a score based on the number of its institutes that are ranked 700 and above in the QS World University Rankings. This number is divided by the average position of those institutes in the rankings. The aim, says QS, is to give an overall indication of each countrys standing in the global tables.India has ranked 20th in this category. We still have a long way to go before we get most of our institutions in the world ranking list, says Devang Khakhar, director of Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B), which ranked 202 in the 2015 QS rankings. We need more investment in the higher education space. We largely have science and engineering institutes listed in these rankings and too few general universities. We need to work towards bettering our universities. Access to world-class education The second category relates to access to world-class institutes. Scores in this category are calculated based on the number of seats available at universities ranked within the global top 500, divided by an indicator of population size, thus representing the chance to gain a place at a world-class university for residents of the country in question. India ranks 42 in this category. Read more: Cambridge, MIT experts to help design syllabi of Indian institutions India has fewer institutes in the top 500 than many of the other countries, says Ben Sowter, head of research at QS. Therefore access to world-class institutions, according to our definition of what makes a university world-class, is affected. This definition, say experts, is the crux of this problem. Our focus is on indigenous students, while global rankings assess international diversity in the classroom, says MA Khan, registrar of Mumbai university, which ranked 701 in the 2015 rankings. But this does not mean our institutes are not of high quality. Few Indian students go abroad to study, because of financial limitations, but also because of the quality undergraduate learning they can get in India. However, even with a huge population, China is above India in this category, and experts say India should learn from Chinas educational strategies. Moreover, countries such as Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan have also fared much better than India in this category. China awards scholarships for its students to study abroad, but with the condition that they return and serve the country, says Ashok Wadia, principal of Jai Hind College, Churchgate. In India, we lose talent to other countries. Further, politics, little appreciation of talent and the lack of a conducive research environment makes it difficult for our education system to flourish. In a bid to become a super-power, China is ensuring that it invests in a workforce that can engage with different countries at various levels, says Dasgupta. So, the education sector is a huge priority. This is also why there are so many Chinese institutes in the global ranking lists. Flagship institutes In this category, QS assesses the countrys leading institute as per the global rankings. This is a normalised score, and based on the premise that the performance of a countrys leading university is an indicator of the countrys investment in building a flagship institute. India ranked 26 here. Last year, for the first time, two Indian institutes made it to the top 200 IISc Bangalore (147) and IIT-Delhi (179). However, these rankings are still low as compared to other countries. Our colleges dont prepare students to compete in a global environment. Their education and employability skills are unrelated and there is hardly any industry participation, says Hatekar of Mumbai university. In countries like the US, business houses invest in education and actively participate in forming the curriculum too. For instance, in Germany, academics sit with corporates to analyse what skills they would require in a student five years down the line, and train them accordingly, adds Dasgupta. Economic investment The final indicator aims to assess the impact of national investment in higher education, comparing each nations financial situation to its performance in the international rankings. According to QS, an indexed score is awarded for each university featured in the rankings (7 points for a university in the top 100, 6 points for 101-200, 5 points for 201-300, and so on), which is then factored against the GDP per capita for the country. While India did well in this category at the 4th place, experts say this isnt a reason to rejoice just yet. While India has problems in the Access category, it also has a very low GDP per capita due to the size of its population this is also why China comes second in this category. From a policy perspective, Singapore and Switzerland clearly face very different challenges to India and China, says Sowter of QS. This indicator is specifically designed to bring a little balance to the system and recognise that systems face diverse challenges. Typically, countries performing surprisingly high in Economic will appear predictably low in Access. On the plus side, experts in India say that this also indicates that India is adequately investing in the education space. With the amount of money we are investing, we are producing quite an admirable result in the world rankings, says Khakhar of IIT-Bombay. In India, we impart good quality education with lesser money as compared to other countries, says Khan. In that sense, we have achieved a far better ranking than many other economically stable countries in the world. However, other experts say investment in education remains an urgent need. We invest a miniscule part of the GDP in education, and most of this goes in paying salaries we need to provide world-class infrastructure and research facilities for a favourable outcome, says Hatekar. Bihars Class 12 topper in Arts, Rubi Rai, who said political science is all about cooking, will face stern action for failing to appear in a re-test on Friday, exam boards head Lalkeshwar Prasad Singh said. We are bound to take action, if possible, as per provisions to cancel her result, Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) Chairman Lalkeshwar Prasad told reporters on a day when 13 other toppers, from Arts and Science streams, did appear for the re-test. The 14 students were called for a re-test by the BSEB after Aaj Tak TV channel showed a sting in which Rubi Rai said: Prodikal (read political) science is about cooking, and Saurabh Shreshtha, a Science topper, said: Most reactive element in the periodic table is aluminium. Read more: Bihar board Inter toppers acid test begins Ruby scored 444 out of 500 marks in Arts stream and Saurabh Shreshtha 485 out of 500 in Science. Both belong to VR College in Vaishali district. All the toppers, except Rubi Rai, appeared for re-examination at the board office here, a BSEB official Hariharnath Jha said. Rubi reportedly informed the board that she is not well and unable to appear for the re-exam. The 13 other students, including four from Arts stream and nine from Science, appeared before a panel of experts and anti-corruption wing of the board which tried to find out if they are toppers for real or they had cheated their way to the top. Read more: Bihar board results and the science of miracle performers The results of Rubi and Saurabh had been put on hold following the TV sting which suggested that education in Bihar continues to be a very dubious affair with the possibility that cheating and fraud continue on a large scale. Bihar Education Minister Ashok Choudhary said action would be taken against officials found to be allowing fraud to take place. Media persons interviewing one of the Class 12 topper candidates called for reassessment in Patna. (HT Photo) The BSEB claimed this year that Class 12 exams were conducted free of cheating, citing a drastic fall in the pass percentage as the proof. Strict measures against cheating, including CCTV cameras and prohibitory orders against unlawful assembly in conducting the exams in February this year, resulted in fall in pass percentage, a board official said. Till last year, mass cheating in board exams was reported. This year it was not reported. The Gurgaon police on Friday broke its silence on the alleged encounter killing of wanted gangster Sandeep Gadoli and said it has suspended five officers, booked by the Mumbai polices special investigation team (SIT) probing the case, on May 30. The police said the action was taken despite not receiving any official intimation from Mumbai police about the involvement of the accused officers. Fridays statement by Gurgaon police assumes significance as it was its first reaction since May 27, when the SIT informed the Supreme Court that five Gurgaon police personnel have been booked in the alleged encounter. The involvement of some officers of the Gurgaon Police Crime Branch was indicated by the Mumbai police for the first time in their status report filed before the Honble Supreme Court on May 27. This was also the first time that any such information came to the notice of Gurgaon police. Balbir Singh, deputy commissioner of police (DCP), Crime, Gurgaon said in a statement on Friday evening. Even though no official intimation has been received in this regard from Mumbai Police, still the five officials of Gurgaon Crime Branch were placed under suspension on May 30, 2016, pending investigation into the said case, Singh said. The personnel named in the FIR by SIT are sub-inspector Praduman Yadav, constable Vikram Singh, head constables Pramjeet Ahlawat, Deepak and Jitendra. Besides them, Gadolis girlfriend Divya Pahuja, her mother Sonia and Manoj Binder, the brother of Gadolis rival Binder Gujjar, have also been named. The six-member SIT is camping at a hotel in Delhis Mahipalpur in connection with the probe. On the SITs allegation that the Gurgaon polices top officers were not cooperating with them, Singh claimed, Gurgaon police has been and will extend all help that may be required under law to the SIT of Mumbai police in this case. Sources said the SIT on its visit to Gurgaon had not been accorded expected cooperation by Gurgaon police. The crime branch team camped in Mumbai for almost three weeks in February 2016. The requisite evidence that was asked for has been handed over to the SIT. The witnesses of Gurgaon police have also been examined by the SIT and their statements recorded, Singh added. The Mumbai and Gurgaon police have been contesting each others claims over the authenticity of the encounter that killed Gadoli at a hotel in Andheri East of Mumbai on February 7. The Gurgaon police officials maintain that they killed him in retaliatory fire. The Mumbai police, based on the familys claim, allege that the encounter was staged. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A right turn on Basai road off the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway leads to the narrow streets of Baldev Nagar an old city locality with a lower middle-class population. At the left end of street 15-A is a three-storey house where a poster of Sai Baba greets visitors that now include the police. The Mumbai police team that is probing gangster Sandeep Gadolis alleged encounter killing is on the hunt for a missing piece in the jigsaw that is related to this house. Read more: Mumbai cops search for Gadolis girlfriend in Gurgaon House owner Ashok Pahujas daughter Divya Pahuja happens to be an accused and the sole witness of the alleged encounter killing of Gadoli. The encounter happened in a Mumbai hotel where the gangster was gunned down by a team of the Gurgaon police on February 7. Ashok, a vegetable vendor, lives here with his wife Sonia Pahuja and two daughters, Naina and Divya. For months now, this house has been drawing a lot of attention but no one in the neighbourhood wants to talk about the inhabitants. Read more: Gurgaon gangster Gadolis girlfriend named in fake encounter FIR Divya, a 19-year-old aspiring model, presumably holds the key in the Gadoli encounter case, as the Mumbai and Gurgaon police argue over the authenticity of the encounter. It is being alleged that the Gurgaon police used Divya as a honeytrap to reach Gadoli. A girl opens the front door of the house and informs that no one is home. No one is here. You can come in the evening, the girl who introduced herself as a family friend said. Ask the neighbours about the family and they will shut the doors on your face. Ashok, the father, is known as sabziwala who sets up his vegetable cart at a nearby market. Read more: Gadolis family writes to President, PMO Even as the Mumbai police special investigation team (SIT) is camping in Gurgaon to track Divya, she is seen updating her locations on her Facebook account. Divyas latest update on May 27 was about shopping with her younger sister Naina Ahuja in a south Delhi mall. Her friends remember her as someone who was desperate to be famous. She completed Class 12 from St PBN Public School in Sector 17, Gurgaon, three years ago and worked as a compere at club events in Gurgaon before allegedly meeting Gadoli. She loved getting her pictures clicked and was ready to pose. A number of times, we even clicked her pictures for free, an acquaintance, who is a Delhi-based photographer, said. Divyas Facebook wall has her pictures with celebrities, including Chunky Pandey and Pawan Chawla. Some even recall her abrupt transformation from a girl who used to wear simple clothes and roam in local markets of Gurgaon to a woman travelling in luxury cars and shopping at swanky malls. Even her Facebook profile speaks volumes of the change in her lifestyle. I have not seen someone changing so quickly. She almost looks like a model now, another acquaintance of Divya said. Divya disappeared a month ago. The Mumbai police have visited her houses in Gurgaon and Delhi thrice, but failed to track her down. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Asthma patients may soon do away with their inhalers as researchers, including one of Indian origin, have developed an integrated, wearable system that monitors a users environment, heart rate and other physical attributes with the goal of predicting and preventing asthma attacks. We have tested the system in the benchtop and on a limited number of human subjects for proof of concept demonstration and have confirmed that all of the sensors work, and that the system accurately compiles the data, said study co-author Veena Misra, professor at North Carolina State University in the US. Asthma patients currently rely on inhalers to deal with their symptoms, which can include often-debilitating asthma attacks. (Shutterstock) The system, called the Health and Environmental Tracker (HET), incorporates a host of novel sensing devices, which are incorporated into a wristband and a patch that adheres to the chest. The patch includes sensors that track a patients movement, heart rate, respiratory rate, the amount of oxygen in the blood, skin impedance and wheezing in the lungs. Read: Asthma is a chronic threat for todays youngsters, say experts The wristband focuses largely on environmental factors, monitoring volatile organic compounds and ozone in the air, as well as ambient humidity and temperature. The wristband also includes additional sensors to monitor motion, heart rate and the amount of oxygen in the blood. The system also has one non-wearable component: a spirometer, which patients breathe into several times a day to measure lung function. Read: Let asthma not stop your child from leading a normal life Data from all of these sensors is transmitted wirelessly to a computer, where custom software collects and records the data. This summer, we plan to begin testing HET in a controlled environment with subjects suffering from asthma and a control group, in order to identify which environmental and physiological variables are effective at predicting asthma attacks, Misra noted. Asthma patients currently rely on inhalers to deal with their symptoms, which can include often-debilitating asthma attacks. Our goal was to design a wearable system that could track the wellness of the subjects and in particular provide the infrastructure to predict asthma attacks, so that the users could take steps to prevent them by changing their activities or environment, principal investigator Alper Bozkurt, Assistant Professor at NC State, noted. A paper describing the work was published in the IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics. Preventing an attack could be as simple as going indoors or taking a break from an exercise routine, lead author James Dieffenderfer, PhD student in the joint biomedical engineering programme at NC State and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, explained. As Hollywood actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heards divorce becomes increasingly toxic, new claims say that the Pirates of the Caribbean star had earlier tried to smother Heard with a pillow. In an interview, a source informed that the 30-year-old actress texted her during an alleged attack last December, and the concerned friend rushed to the couples LA pad, where she claims she discovered Heard battered and bruised, reports News.com.au. Read: New images of a beaten, bruised Amber Heard emerge I got to her apartment to find her with a cut and bruised lip, a swollen eye and a chunk of hair missing from the top of her head, the friend recalled. Actress Amber Heard leaves the Superior Court of Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California, in May after obtaining a restraining order against husband Johnny Depp. (Reuters) This incident really stuck with me because she confided in me that day that she feared for her life after an intoxicated Johnny tried to suffocate her with a pillow, she added. Samantha Spector, Miss Heards lawyer, issued a statement on Tuesday saying that her client has suffered through years of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of Johnny. The pair married 15 months ago, having met in 2009 on the set of The Rum Diary. Depps lawyers have denied the domestic violence claims. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will embark on five-nation -- Afghanistan, State of Qatar, Switzerland, United States of America and Mexico -- visit beginning on Saturday, has said he is looking forward to visit Afghanistan, where he will join President Ashraf Ghani to inaugurate Afghanistan-India Friendship Dam in Herat. Looking forward to my visit to Afghanistan tomorrow. I will join President Ashraf Ghani to inaugurate Afghanistan-India Friendship Dam in Herat. It is symbol of our friendship and would usher in hope, light up homes, nourish the fertile fields of Herat and bring prosperity to the people of the region, posted the Prime Minister on Facebook. Look forward to meet my friend President Ashraf Ghani and exchange notes on regional situation and setting agenda for bilateral cooperation in the coming period, he said in a series of Facebook posts. Speaking about his visit to Qatar on 4th & 5th June at the invitation of the Emir of Qatar, the Prime Minister said, Look forward to meeting His Highness Sheikh Tamim whose landmark visit to India last year had ushered in a new momentum in our relations. I will have the honour to meet Father Emir who personally guided our relations for nearly two decades. This visit will nourish the historical bonds of friendship deeply rooted in people to people contacts, energy, trade and investment partnership. I will interact with the Indian workers at the Workers Camp and some of the members of over Six lakh Indians who have nurtured our relations through their sweat and toil. Will also speak to Qatar business leaders to realise the full potential of our trade and investment cooperation, he added. Prime Minister Modi, who arrives in Geneva in the evening of 5th June on a bilateral visit to Switzerland, said I will hold talks with President Schneider-Ammann to deepen our bilateral and multilateral cooperation. In Geneva, I will meet prominent businesspersons. Our agenda will be to expand economic and investment ties. I will meet Indian scientists working at CERN. India takes pride in their contribution to exploring new frontiers of science in the service of humanity. Read: Modi all set for US visit; Obama told PM he is inviting close leaders Talking about the next leg of his journey to the US, he said, I will be reaching Washington DC on a bilateral visit in the evening of 6th June at the invitation of President Barack Obama. In my meeting with the President on 7th June, we will seek to build upon the progress achieved in providing new vigour and momentum to our strategic partnership in diverse areas. Saying that India and the U.S. are natural partners, two vibrant democracies that celebrate their diversity and pluralism, the Prime Minister added: Strong India-USA ties benefit not only our two nations but also the entire world. The Prime Minister said he is looking forward to meeting President Pena Nieto on June 8 during his visit to Mexico - a privileged partner in the Latin American region. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has conducted searches at the south Delhi premises of an Indian-origin business associate of British national Christian Michel, an absconding accused in the Rs 3,727 crore AgustaWestland (AW) VVIP choppers deal case that the agency is probing. The businessman, who could not be contacted despite attempts, allegedly had financial transactions with Michel and they jointly set up a United Kingdom (UK)-based firm specializing in the sale of luxury goods and jewelry, according to an agency source. The agency had asked the businessman to join the probe by present himself for questioning before it last week had not complied. ED wants to understand the nature of the financial ties the businessman had with Michel since they did set up an offshore firm around the time Indias deal with the AgustaWestland for the supply of VVIP choppers was getting finalized, said the source. The businessman, who stays in the UK, had allegedly received some funds from Michel via the firm they set up. ED searched the businessmans south Delhi premises and recovered some cyber storage devices and documents after he failed to respond to its summons issued last week. There is a pending Interpol Red Corner Notice, which warrants the arrest of a subject across the globe, against Michel that was issued on pleas from the ED and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). While the ED is probing the choppers deals money-laundering aspect, the CBI is investigating allegations that bribes worth over Rs 360 crore were routed to India by AW via its middlemen including Michel. In January 2014, India scrapped the contract with AW for its alleged breach of contractual obligations related to non-hiring of middlemen. National carrier Air India (AI) has decided to allow recipients of war and peace time gallantry awards to upgrade to the business class if vacant seats are available at the time of boarding. According to Air India, the soldiers who have been bestowed with military honours such Param Vir Chakra (PVC), Maha Vir Chakra (MVC), Vir Chakra (VC), Ashok Chakra, Kirti Chakra and Shaurya Chakra, will get an upgrade to business class from economy in the aircraft from June. The decision to upgrade these recipients of various gallantry awards to a higher class is an initiative of Air India chairman and managing director Ashwani Lohani, an AI official said. The Indian Armed Forces are eligible for various military decorations, which are awarded for extraordinary bravery and courage, as well as distinguished service during times of war and peace. Domestic carriers including Air India already provides a 50% discount on basic fare on select classes on their domestic network to active military personnel and their family members travelling at their own expense. The upgrade scheme, according to Air India, can be availed on the production of identity cards at the airlines check-in counters. Maharashtras revenue minister Eknath Khadse has been in the eye of storm over allegations of corruption and misconduct. A land deal by his wife Mandakini and son-in-law Girish Chaudhary involves conflict of interest and quid pro quo. The row over the land deal could cost Khadse the revenue portfolio one of the most important departments in the coming days, said sources in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who spoke on condition of anonymity. Read: Conflict of interest alleged in Khadse land deal Here is all you need to know about Khadse *Sixty three-year-old Khadse is a prominent leader from Leva Patil, an Other Backward Class (OBC) community that has a strong influence on politics in North Maharashtra. He enjoys the support of at least a dozen BJP MLAs, mostly from north Maharashtra. *He is also part of the core committee of top BJP leaders in the state that takes decisions on crucial issues. The others in the committee include chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, state BJP president Raosaheb Danve and ministers Sudhir Mungantiwar, Vinod Tawde and Pankaja Munde. Read: Eknath Khadses family accused of undervaluing 1.21 hectare plot in Pune Land deal *Hemant Gawande, a Pune-based builder, has alleged that Mandakini Khadse and Girish Chaudhary bought 1.21 hectares of land in an industrial area Bhosari in Pune from its Kolkata-based owner Abbas Ukani for Rs 3.75 crore. It turned out that Usmani was in legal dispute with the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC), a state government body that acquires land and develops industrial estates. Usmani had refused to let MIDC acquire the land. Read:Hacker claims to have access to Dawoods call logs, seeks protection Khadses wife had bought the 1.21 hectares of land for a mere Rs 3.75 crore against the ready reckoner (RR) price of Rs 23 crore. Khadse has countered allegations of undervaluing land bought in Bhosari, but questions have been raised as to how the ready reckoner (RR) valuation used to decide stamp duty on a real estate transaction was higher than the declared value of the land. *State industries minister Subhash Desai told the media that the land was already owned by MIDC while Khadse insisted that Ukani had not accepted the compensation and as such no land transfer had taken place. It is alleged that Khadses would have earned anywhere between Rs 60 crore to Rs 90 crore had they got the compensation now as per the new land acquisition law. Why Khadse matters to Maharashtra BJP A frontline leader, Khadse was close to late Gopinath Munde. During the Sena-BJP alliance government tenure, he handled finance, irrigation and higher education departments. As BJP emerged as the main opposition party after 2009 elections, Khadse was made opposition leader in the assembly. He led the opposition attack against the Congress-NCP government during 2009 and 2014 and was seen as a top contender when BJP won in 2014 assembly elections. However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah preferred Devendra Fadnavis. *Due to his influence, Khadse was given the significant revenue portfolio as a minister along with nine other departments. He is considered as the number two in the state cabinet after CM Fadnavis. Read: Activist Damania to stage hunger strike for Khadses resignation Other allegations against Khadse Bribery case In May, anti-corruption bureau arrested Gajanan Patil, a BJP worker from Jalgaon and allegedly a close aide of the minister, for seeking a bribe of Rs 30 crore for the transfer of a plot in Thane. Khadse said he had no connection with Patil and said the plot was worth Rs 5 crore. However, the Congress has said that the ready reckoner price of the plot is Rs 226 crore. Read: Eknath Khadse ignored 2012 order to take over land Dawood calls Manish Bhangle, an ethical hacker, has alleged that seven calls were made from fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahims Karachi residence to Khadses mobile phone. Bhangale has moved court demanding a probe in the case. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had recently demanded ouster of Khadse, alleging that calls were made from Dawoods residence in Karachi to his mobile phone, a charge the minister rubbished as baseless saying the phone number was not in use for last one year. Read: BJP in no hurry to sack Khadse who brings crucial votes Irrigation contractors The minister is also accused of links with irrigation contractors. Former AAP member Anjali Damania alleged that Khadses wife and relatives were directors of a sugar factory bought by two irrigation contractors who got contracts in Tapi Valley Irrigation Development Corporation in north Maharahshtra. Khadse has refuted all the allegations and said that he has not done anything illegal. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The CBI will seek the Scotland Yards expertise to ascertain whether a single firearm was used to kill three rationalists, allegedly by a radical Hindu group opposed to their scientific dissection of faith and religion. The agency spokesperson confirmed the move on Friday. Though the countrys top investigation agency is probing only the 2013 murder of Narendra Dabholkar, the subsequent killing of Govind Pansare in Maharashtra and MM Kalburgi in Karnataka have come under agencys scanner because of the similarities in the three crimes. The rightwing Hindu outfit Sanatan Sanstha, active in the two states, has emerged as the prime suspect in the three cases. A suspected activist of the organisation was charged by Maharashtra police last year in the Pansare case. The organisation denies the charges. Used shells of 7.65 mm calibre firearm were recovered from the sites where two of the three scholars were shot dead in almost identical fashion by bike-borne assailants in the early hours. The CBI has received the Bombay high courts permission to dispatch forensic objects found in the Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare murder cases to Scotland Yard for ballistic opinion. The dispatch is being finalised, CBI spokesperson Devpreet Singh told HT. The high court handed over the Dhabolkar case to the CBI in 2014. Sources said if a link is established between the three cases, the CBI may take up the two other cases. Kalburgi murder last year prompted several writers to return the countrys highest literary awards to protest what they said was an attempt to muzzle alternate views by radical outfits under the BJP-led government at the Centre. A CBI source said the items to be sent to the Scotland Yard the British police force acknowledged as the worlds best in investigating criminal cases include spent shells recovered from the crime scenes of Dabholkar and Pansare murder. Once the Scotland Yards report is received, the CBI will submit a final ballistic report to the high court, monitoring two of the cases. Based on the findings, the agency may re-examine the Sanstha head, hypnotherapist Jayant Athavale, whose statement was recorded by CBI in February in the Dabholkar case. The suspicion is that a rightwing outfit targeted the three rationalists due to reasons including ideological, with a similar type of 7.65 mm weapon or weapons, said the source. According to the sources, two forensic analysis had confirmed the use of 7.65 mm guns to kill Dabholkar and Pansare but they differ on whether a single such gun was used and that is why the need to seek international help. Nine trekkers, mainly officials of the income tax department from New Delhi, who are stranded in a remote hamlet in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh, could not be airlifted on Friday owing to bad climatic conditions, a government official said. One helicopter was deployed in the morning to airlift the trekkers who have been stranded in Bara Bhangal village for the past two days, deputy commissioner Ritesh Chauhan told IANS over phone. He said the state-run chopper could not land in the area due to high velocity winds and bad weather. We will definitely try to evacuate them again as the weather gets normal, he said. I spoke to trekkers a day before yesterday (June 1) on the satellite phone. There is no life-threatening situation. All the trekkers have been provided medical aid, accommodation and foodstuff and all are perfect in health, he said. But the rescue teams sent to evacuate and to provide them eatables and medical help are yet to reach the spot, he added. Bara Bhangal is located at an altitude over 2,800 metre and has no road link. On foot, it is accessible through the Thamsar Pass, located at an attitude of 4,700 metre. The trekkers started their journey from Manali to Bara Bhangal last week. The helicopter during its rescue operation also took 11 villagers who were to be dropped in Bara Bhangal. They were also brought back to Palampur town as the chopper couldnt land at the spot. The trek to Bara Bhangal, part of the Dhauladhar Wildlife Sanctuary which remains cut off from the rest of the world for over six months due to heavy snow, is 65 km from the last village connected by road in Kangra district. Bara Bhangal has a population of around 400 people and during winter, most of its inhabitants migrate to Bir village in Baijnath tehsil near Palampur town, some 250 km from Shimla. The Election Commission is meeting in the national capital to take a call on a sting operation carried out in Karnataka, which purportedly shows legislators in the state being offered cash for supporting nominees of certain parties contesting the June 11 Rajya Sabha elections. This is for the first time that the EC will have to taka call on cash-for-votes before the conduct of a biennial election. Aired by a television channel late on Thursday evening, the sting operation shows politicians discussing cash incentives for voting in favour of particular candidates for elections to the Upper House. A senior EC official told Hindustan Times that the Commission has been apprised of the tapes, which has among other politicians former prime minister and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) supremo H.D. Deve Gowda, his younger son. A meeting in underway and the Commission will examine the evidence, in consultation with its legal team before announcing its decision, the official said. In 2012, the Election Commission had countermanded the Rajya Sabha elections in Jharkhand after Rs Two crore, in cash, was seized from the car of a businessman whose relative was contesting elections from the state. Former CEC SY Qureshi who was in charge when the election was countermanded in Jharkhand said there might be a technicality in the present case that no cash was paid, but the EC will take a considered view. The people in question might say they were only discussing, and no cash was paid. But the EC is equipped to take a call in such situations, he said. In the fray for a Rajya Sabha berth from Karnataka are B M Farooq of the JD(S) and K C Ramamurthy, former ministers Oscar Fernandes and Jairam Ramesh from the Congress. BJP has nominated union minister Nirmala Sitharaman from the state. Earlier, the EC deferred voting in two assembly constituencies of Tamil Nadu after it found evidence of money and incentives being used to influence voters. Fresh dates for elections in the two constituencies of Thanjavur and Aravakurichi are yet to be declared. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The office of the Pune collector had written to the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) in March 2012, asking it to take over a 1.21-hectare plot in Pune by compensating its owner Abbas Ukani. Though this information was available with his department, revenue minister Eknath Khadse did nothing to stop his wife Mandakini and son-in-law Girish Chaudhry from buying the plot from Ukani on April 28 this year. Read:Fadnavis meets PM Modi, countdown begins for Eknath Khadse? The letter, written by deputy collector of the land acquisition department in the Pune collectorate, stated that 42 years after a notification was issued under the Maharashtra Industrial Development Act, 1961, the land had not yet been acquired. It also stated that the compensation Ukani was seeking under the Land Acquisition Act, 2013, was incorrect as the notification has been issued decades ago, and that he should be compensated at the rate of Rs 6,000 an acre. An MIDC official, who did not wish to be named, said, Khadse knew that the land acquisition process had not been completed and the owner had not been compensated. Apparently, when Ukani approached him seeking compensation, instead arranging for lawful compensation, he stuck a deal to buy the land off him. He added, It is not right to claim that the acquisition process lapsed two years after the notification was issued in 1971, according to a government resolution issued in 1995, as the MID Act has no such provision. The process was still open and the landlord can be compensated through negotiations. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Paramilitary forces have been deployed in seven sensitive districts of Haryana while Section 144 of the CrPC has been enforced in eight districts in the wake of recent call of protest by All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti (AIJASS) from June 5 after the Punjab and Haryana high court stayed the reservation for the Jat community in jobs and educational institutes under the other backward caste (OBC) category. In Rohtak, the epicentre of large-scale violence which rocked the state during the Jat quota stir in February, one company of Border Security Force (BSF) and two companies of Rapid Action Force (RAF) have been deployed at the entry points. The paramilitary forces are regularly conducting flag marches in the cities and villages to restore confidence of people in the security forces, as they previously witnessed an erosion of the same. Two companies of RAF have been called in Sonepat, another district which witnessed violence in February stir in which 30 people were killed in the state. The administration here has imposed Section 144 for two months as a preventive measure. One of the two companies has been deployed at the Garhi Bindroli village where the connection of Munak canal was disrupted by mobs during the February protest, leading to a water crisis in the national capital. Haryana ADGP (law and order) Mohammad Akil, who held a meeting with police officials in Bhiwani on Thursday, said, The police force is fully prepared to deal with the protests. All necessary measures are being taken to ensure that everything remains under control. The administration has this time allotted one spot in each district where people can peacefully hold dharna. If people are found violating Section 144, strict action will be taken against them, Rohtak additional superintendent of police Himanshu Garg said. Besides the paramilitary, cops in the districts are being trained to deal with riot-like situations. The police stations are stocked up with weapons such as tear-gas shells, plastic bullets, water cannons etc and the cops in the Haryana Police are being trained in phases to use them. The civil officials are also on the toes as they have been holding meetings in villages across the state trying to dissuade the angry Jat community members not to take the path of protest once again. The Delhi high court on Friday directed Bollywood actor Rajpal Yadav to surrender before Tihar Jail by July 15 to serve out the remainder six days of the total 10-day imprisonment awarded to him in 2013 for filing a false affidavit in court. Yadav has already spent four days in jail from December 3, 2013 till December 6, 2013 after which the HC had suspended the sentence on his appeal. A bench of justice S Ravindra Bhat and Justice Deepa Sharma upheld the sentence awarded by a single judge in December 2013, saying Yadavs failure to follow procedure cannot be countenanced as despite being given adequate time to explain his conduct he resorted to falsehood. In the present case, the long history of the litigation shows that repeated undertakings were breached; when called upon to answer why action should not be taken, the appellant and his wife gave false and evasive replies; these included affirming a false affidavit, the court noted. The appellant was furnished appropriate and adequate opportunity to explain his conduct, but instead he resorted to falsehood, the court said. The contempt action was initiated against the actor for misleading the court in a recovery suit filed against him and his wife by a businessman. The single judge bench, which was hearing the recovery suit, had taken exception to the affidavit filed by Yadav on December 2, 2013 which was allegedly falsely prepared and contained forged signatures of his wife. Annoyed by the affidavit, the court had ordered that Yadav be sent to jail for 10 days for contempt and directed that his wife, who had appeared with their child before the court, be kept in the office of the Registrar General till the rising of the court. Delhi-based businessman MG Agarwal had filed a recovery suit against the actor and his wife for failing to repay a loan of Rs five crore which the Yadav had taken in 2010 to make his directorial debut film Ata Pata Laapata. Veteran actress-politician Hema Malini, who represents Mathura constituency in the Lok Sabha and was criticised for posting on social media images from a film shoot while Mathura was engulfed by violence and tension, said she will be reaching the city at the earliest. A violent confrontation between the police and encroachers caused disruption in Mathura after 24 persons, including two senior police officers, were killed in firing by encroachers. I am constantly in touch with authorities/ karyakartas in Mathura. I am on my way to Delhi and will reach Mathura at the earliest, Hema tweeted on Friday. I am constantly in touch with authorities/karyakartas in Mathura.I am on my way to Delhi and will reach Mathura at the earliest. Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) June 3, 2016 I am a very sensitive person. I am deeply pained on the Mathura incident but law and order of Uttar Pradesh is the core issue. Lets not divert, added the 67-year-old, stressing that while she will be reaching the spot soon, but the presence of Mathura police is more important than mine. On Thursday, a mob went on rampage after police took action against encroachment on a major part of a government land. The toll in the Mathura violence rose to 24 on Friday as Superintendent of Police Mukul Dwivedi and others injured in Thursdays clash between police and encroachers died of their injuries, officials said. Read: Mathura clashes: Death toll climbs to 24, BJP calls for judicial probe And during this while, Hema Malini tweeted details of how convenient it has become to commute between mainland Mumbai and Madh Island, where she was shooting for the film Ek Thi Rani. This caused Hema Malini to draw flak as many reacted negatively. The BJP MP then deleted the tweets, and expressed her concern for the situation in Mathura. BJP MP (Mathura) Hema Malini uploads shoot pictures on her Twitter even as death toll from Mathura incident rises. pic.twitter.com/CCilzxReCZ ANI (@ANI_news) June 3, 2016 Maybe Hema Malini would have gone running, leaving her film shoot,if Kent company was on fire! Vinita Deshmukh (@VinitaDeshmukh) June 3, 2016 Read: Hema Malini tweets about movie shoot a day after Mathura clashes, gets trolled While 250 people have been detained for their involvement in the Mathura violence, the city continues to be tense even as heavy police reinforcements have been deployed in the violence hit region. Twenty-one people, including an SP and an SHO, have been killed in the massive clash between police and encroachers that broke out in Mathura on Thursday even as Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav has ordered an inquiry. Warning: Some of the images below may be disturbing. A fire breaks out after clashes between police and encroachers, who were being evicted from Jawahar Bagh in Mathura. (Anant Ram/HT Photo) The violence had erupted when police were trying to evict illegal occupants, believed to be of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi, from Jawahar Bagh yesterday on the directions of the Allahabad High Court. (Anant Ram/HT Photo) In Lucknow, chief minister Akhilesh Yadav ordered a probe by the divisional commissioner of Mathura, an official spokesperson said. (Anant Ram/HT Photo) The encroachers, who have been on a protest for two years, demand cancellation of the elections of the President and Prime Minister of India. (Anant Ram/HT Photo) Some people died from police fire, but 11 deaths occurred when the gas cylinders burst and set fire to the area. (Anant Ram/HT Photo) Two bullets hit Station Officer (Farah), Santosh Yadav, who was declared dead on arrival by doctors at Niyati Hospital. (Anant Ram/HT Photo) A policeman is treated after being injured in clashes with activists, believed to be of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi, at a hospital in Mathura. (Anant Ram/HT Photo) Union minister for law and justice DV Sadananda Gowda said on Friday the fencing of the India-Bangladesh border would be completed by this year end and not a single individual be allowed to illegally cross either side. A major initiative has been taken since the last six and a half decades in fencing the border, even to the extent of constitutional amendment being made on both sides, Gowda said while interacting with journalists in Delhi. The Union minister is in Kohima since Thursday in connection with the second anniversary celebration of the BJP-led NDA government. Bangladesh infiltration will be stopped within a very short period, he said. Maintaining that safety and security of the country has been the prime concern of the government, Gowda said Prime Minister Narendra Modi held the vision that the boundaries across the country, be it with China, Pakistan or Bangladesh should be properly fenced. Reaffirming that the two major initiatives of the BJP-led NDA government under Modi is good governance and development, he said in the last two years there has been no charge of corruption, scam or scandal against the ministers. Gowday claimed that the NDA had revived 85 major stalled projects, while the government is in the process of providing electricity to 18,000 villages throughout the country. So far nearly 7,000 villages have been covered, he said. Maintaining that cooperative federalism was one of the important areas of good governance, Gowda said the Centre had adopted the policy of devolution of funds of up to 42% to the state government so that the states could plan for themselves and take forward developmental activity. Gowda said the development of the northeast has been the prime focus of the Prime Minister for which a separate ministry has also been formed. Thousands of police constables have threatened to go on leave on June 4 in Karnataka to protest against low salaries, poor working conditions and political interference. The strike was called by the Akhila Karnataka Police Mahasabha who said around 60,000 constables will go on leave on Saturday. However, Om Prakash, director general of police, said orders were issued to reject all leave applications. There will be no strike on June 4; we have written commitments from the constables, he said. Police on Tuesday arrested Shashidhar Venugopal, president of the association calling the strike. His wife said the raiding police team showed no arrest warrant. Venugopal has been booked for sedition and criminal conspiracy. However, some constables have said they would carry out the strike nevertheless. While we havent yet applied for leave, we would be doing so, even if they dont sanction it. We are all part of the struggle. But some people have been intimidated into not being part of the strike. We support the demands of the Mahasabha, said an assistant sub-inspector in Bengaluru on the condition of anonymity. As the BJP is trying to control the damage caused by allegations against revenue minister Eknath Khadse, fishermens associations have accused him of favouring the purse seine net fishing vessels that are been banned in the state. They alleged there was a deal of Rs 15 crore to tweak the rules in favour of these purse-seine net fishing vessels owners. Calling for his resignation, the fishermen rued that Khadse, who also holds the fisheries portfolio, had prepared a draft proposal to give licences to purse seine net fishing vessels, a move they describe will prove devastating for fishermen. Khadse, however, denied the allegations, saying it was a part of the plan to defame him. Read: All you need to know about Khadse and why he matters in Maharashtra BJP Damodar Tandel, president, Akhil Maharashtra Machimar Kriti Samiti, said, Despite the fact that CM Devendra Fadnavis banned the purse-seine net fishing across the state, Khadse was determined to restart it. He alleged that money was exchanged in the entire deal, which was facilitated by Gajanan Patil, an alleged aide of Khadse. Tandel also showed a video clip of the meeting held in Khadses cabin where the minister clearly tells them that he would frame rules as he wants. Purse seine nets can be spread across a 3-km radius and ensure a huge catch leaving almost nothing for fishermen using traditional means. Khadse, however, rubbished the allegations saying that state always upheld the interests of the traditional fishermen. Read: To keep Khadse or not: Fadnavis has a tough task in hand ATS summons ethical hacker Bhangale Days after initiating investigation in the alleged calls received by Khadse from don Dawood Ibrahim, the state Anti-Terrorism Squad summoned ethical hacker Manish Bhangale for recording his statement on Friday. However, after Bhangales legal team refused to record his statement citing an ongoing court petition, the ATS left summons asking him to come to its headquarters on Saturday. Twenty-four people, including a superintendent of police, were killed and hundreds injured in clashes between security forces and members of a little-known revolutionary sect armed with sophisticated weapons in Uttar Pradeshs Mathura, officials said on Friday. The violence erupted when police moved into Jawahar Bagh park on Thursday to evict some 3,000 people claiming to be followers of freedom fighter Subhash Chandra Bose. Among the dead were Mathura SP Mukul Dwivedi and Farah station house officer Santosh Yadav. Police described the leader of the squatters, Ram Vriksha Yadav, as a man with radical views. The self-styled organisation he led, Swadhin Bharat Vidhik Satyagrah, had a slew of bizarre demands including abolition of elections and the rupee. Late Friday, a Bareilly court issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Yadav and instructed police to present him by June 20. Chief minister Akhilesh Yadav admitted the government was taken aback by the amount of firepower the sect possessed. There were some lapses. Police should have gone with full preparation and after holding talks, but there was no information they had so much arms and ammunition, he told reporters. Yadav ordered the divisional commissioner to investigate the violence while the Centre sought a report from the state government. Read | Death toll in Mathura clashes rises, over 370 nabbed: Key highlights Union home minister Rajnath Singh spoke to Yadav and assured the state of all help. Police arrested more than 300 people and recovered a huge cache of arms and ammunition from the park which resembled a war zone the day after. Smoke billowed from huts allegedly burnt down by encroachers to stop police from moving in. Burnt cylinders, unwashed utensils, torn clothes lay scattered among the burnt out huts. Twenty-two of their people died, 11 of them died of burn injuries. One of the dead is a woman, UP Police chief Javeed Ahmad said in Mathura, a holy city believed to be the birthplace of Lord Krishna. WATCH: Arms & ammunition recovered from encroachers after yesterday's anti-encroachment drive in #Mathurahttps://t.co/XvQ8zSRuSY ANI (@ANI_news) June 3, 2016 Residents said the sect members had taken over the park gradually since 2014, turning it into a self-sufficient residential colony with its own vegetable gardens and grocery shops. The sect even has its own tractors to ferry rice and other goods for the families. They were mostly from Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. There were families staying in jhuggis inside the park but now there is not a single person to claim the bodies, said a police officer. The incident sparked a political blame game with the opposition attacking the government for a massive intelligence failure. The BJP demanded a judicial probe. Residents said the sect members had clashed with lawyers a couple of months ago while attempting to occupy a portion of the Juvenile Justice Board and tehsildars office building. When police resisted, two police vehicles were torched and other government vehicles damaged. Amid calls for a CBI investigation, the ruling Samajwadi Party said the state government was capable of handling the matter. It has already instituted a probe into the incident and no one responsible for the incident will be spared, senior minister and SP state in-charge Shivpal Singh Yadav said. Responding to Bahujan Samaj Party president Mayawatis demand for CM Yadav to step down, Shvipal countered: So many heinous incidents took place in her government, did she quit? The mother of superintendent of police Mukul Dwivedi, who was killed on Thursday in clashes during a drive to evict illegal occupants of a park in Uttar Pradeshs Mathura district, on Friday rejected the compensation offered by chief minister Akhilesh Yadav and said she wants her son back . Read: Death toll in Mathura clash rises to 21, two police officers among dead I dont want money. The chief minister can take Rs. 20 lakh from us, but he should bring back our son. Did they send my son to Mathura so that he gets killed? What will I do now? I have two sons, one is in Dubai. Earlier, he was in Bareilly but he was promoted to Mathura, the grieving mother told ANI. The Uttar Pradesh government has announced an ex-gratia of Rs 20 lakh each for the families of the martyred policemen. Watch | Mother of slain Mathura SP: Bring back my son <span itemprop="name" content="Watch | Mother of slain Mathura SP: Bring back my son"></span><span itemprop="description" content="Mother of deceased Mathura SP rejected the compensation offered by Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. SP Mukul Dwivedi was killed yesterday in clashes during a drive to evict illegal occupants of a park in Uttar Pradesh's Mathura district. The Uttar Pradesh Government announced an exgratia of Rs. 20 lakh each for the families of the martyred policemen."></span><span itemprop="duration" content="58"></span><span itemprop="thumbnail" content="http://cfvod.kaltura.com/p/1679921/sp/167992100/thumbnail/entry_id/1_p569auzs/version/100011/acv/151"></span><span itemprop="width" content="640"></span><span itemprop="height" content="362"></span> At least 21 people, including two cops, were killed in violent clashes between the police and illegal occupants of a land in Mathuras Jawahar Bagh area on Thursday night. Violence erupted during a police drive to evict about 3,000 people who had encroached into the Jawahar Bagh park. The squatters said they were followers of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. Pics of #Mathura SP Mukul Dwivedi who was killed in firing during police-encroachers clash in Jawahar Bagh yesterday pic.twitter.com/aYBF4BSkTc ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) June 3, 2016 Dwivedi and Yadav were among the dead while city magistrate Ram Araj Yadav was among the 100-odd injured in the agitation that lasted for almost four hours. District magistrate Rajesh Kumar said the leader of the activists, Ram Vraksha Yadav, and the security officer of the group Chandan Gaur managed to flee along with thousands of supporters. The activists used hand grenades and opened fire from automatic weapons after taking position on tree tops, he said. Given the explosions, the area was filled with smoke and several huts caught fire, Kumar said. For two years, about 280 acres of the park had been occupied by the members of the Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi in a sit-in demonstration, demanding the cancellation of the elections of the President and Prime Minister of India, replacing the existing currency with Azad Hind Fauj currency and the sale of 60 litres of diesel and 40 litres of petrol for Rs 1, among others things. WATCH: Arms & ammunition recovered from encroachers after yesterday's anti-encroachment drive in #Mathurahttps://t.co/XvQ8zSRuSY ANI (@ANI_news) June 3, 2016 Acting on a PIL, the Allahabad high court recently directed authorities to vacate the land. Uttar Pradeshs director general of police, Javed Ahmed, said that there was unprovoked firing from members of group when police attempted to remove them. He claimed that heavily armed men from the other side fired at the police and the latter had to resort to a baton charge, tear gas shelling and finally gun fire. In light of the tense situation, Ahmed said reinforcements, including senior police officers, are being sent to the area. The ruling Samajwadi Party on Friday said rioters involved in the Mathura violence were outsiders who had gathered at a park on the Uttar Pradesh governments land for a protest. They were not local people. They had come from neighbouring states of Bihar and Madhya Pradesh and had gathered at the park belonging to the state government. They were given permission to hold a peaceful protest for just two days, Uttar Pradesh public works department minister Shivpal Yadav said at a press conference. Read: Mathura clashes: Death toll climbs to 24, BJP calls for judicial probe He said the protesters had refused to vacate state government land, despite repeated pleas and warnings from the administration for three years. Yadav asserted that the administration had cut off the water and power supply to the Jawaharbagh park in order to uproot the protesters. If anyone from the police or the local administration is found guilty of not discharging his duty, he will be held accountable and will be punished, Yadav said. Read: Mathura clashes: Dont want money, bring my son back, says SPs mother to CM Thursdays violence saw 22 protesters and two police officers killed in the clash. Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav has assured strict action against the perpetrators of the violence The police have recovered a hoard of ammunition and weaponry from the protest site. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits the US on June 7-8 in the course of his five-nation tour starting on Saturday, he will be among the few close world leaders that President Barack Obama is inviting in the last year of his presidency. President Obama spoke to the Prime Minister and mentioned to him that this year he was inviting some leaders with whom he had a very close and productive working relationship to visit him in the United States, foreign secretary S Jaishankar said at a pre-departure media briefing here on Friday. This will be Modis second bilateral visit to the US after his visit in September 2014. Jaishankar said that in many ways it would be a sort of consolidation visit after Obama and Modi working on the US-India relationship in the last two years. After departing on Saturday morning, Modi will stop over in Herat in Afghanistan where he will, jointly with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, inaugurate the India-Afghan Friendship Dam, earlier known as Salma Dam that has been rebuilt with Indian aid. Originally constructed in 1976 on the Hari river basin, the Salma Dam suffered extensive damage during the civil war in Afghanistan. It was built at a cost of approximately Rs 1,700 crore, Jaishankar said. He said that three turbines on the dam will 42 MW of electricity and the water will irrigate around 75,000 hectares of land. After attending a lunch to be hosted in his honour by Ghani, Modi will leave for Doha, Qatar, where he will meet Qatari Prime Minister Abdullah Bin Nasser Bin Khalifa Al Thani on Saturday evening. He will also visit a camp of Indian workers. Qatar is home to around 630,000 expatriate Indians, many of whom are blue collar workers. Modi will become the first Indian prime minister to visit four Gulf countries after having visited the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Iran. On Sunday, he will begin his engagements in Qatar with a meeting with business leaders following which he will hold a restricted meeting with Emir of Qatar Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani. Jaishankar pointed out that trade between India and the Gulf region stood at $112 billion and two-thirds of Indias energy supplies come from that region. Bilateral trade between India and Qatar stands at $10 billion. Read: Modi goes to Washington as US partner, but not yet full ally It (Qatar) can also be a large economic partner as it has a large sovereign wealth fund, the foreign secretary said. After signing of bilateral agreements and an interaction with the Indian community, Modi will leave for Geneva, Switzerland, on Sunday evening. On June 6, the prime minister will hold a meeting with President of the Swiss Confederation Johann Schneider-Ammann and also interact with business leaders. Jaishankar said that Switzerland was Indias fifth largest trade partner and the 11th largest investor in India. The country is strong in the areas of renewable energy and vocational education. After concluding his engagements in Switzerland, Modi will leave for Washington on June 6 where he will meet heads of think tanks. On June 7, he will be hosted for lunch by President Obama at the White House after which he will attend a business meeting. The highlight of Modis US visit will be his address to a joint sitting of the US Congress on June 8. Today, the Congress is very much at the heart of our relationship with the United States, Jaishankar said. It has been very supportive of India, he said. After attending a lunch and a reception at the US Congress and an Indian community reception, Modi will depart for Mexico City on June 8 afternoon where he will hold a meeting with President Enrique Pena Nieto. This will be the first prime ministerial bilateral visit from India to Mexico in 30 years after then prime minister Rajiv Gandhis visit in 1986. Manmohan Singh visited Mexico in 2012 to attend the G20 Summit. Jaishankar said that two-way trade between India and Mexico stood at $6 around billion. Within Asia, India is the largest importer of crude oil from Mexico. India exports pharmaceutical products and automobile parts to Mexico. We expect the focus of the discussions will be on bilateral cooperation, specially bilateral economic cooperation, Jaishankar said. After attending a dinner that will be hosted for him by President Pena Nieto, Modi will leave for India on June 8. NIA chief Sharad Kumars remark that so far there is no hand of Pakistan government or its agency in helping Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) carry out the Pathankot attack has triggered a sparring between India and Pakistan with New Delhi saying that the involvement of Pakistans nationals is an accepted fact. Even as the NIA backtracked on Kumars statement, Islamabad touted his remarks to claim vindication of its long standing position in this regard. The row started over a written interview given by Kumar to a television channel in which he had said,No. So far, no evidence to show that Pakistan government or Pakistani government agency was helping Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) or Masood Azhar or his aides carry out Pathankot attack. Later the NIA issued a statement saying the observation attributed to DG NIA in regard to Pathankot investigations are strongly refuted. It said his statement has been misquoted. The External Affairs Minister today said the DG NIA has already issued a clarification and it put out the governments position that the involvement of Pakistans nationals in the Pathankot Air Base attack is an accepted fact. I would remind you that investigations are ongoing. Foreign Secretary had conveyed to his Pakistani counterpart when they met in New Delhi in April that it was time for review of progress in investigation in the attack after return of Pakistans Joint Investigation Team (JIT), which had gathered all evidence that it had wanted when it visited India, External Affairs spokesperson said in a statement. He said enough information has also been provided to Pakistani authorities through two Letters Rogatory to conduct investigation in Pakistan so that all those associated in Pakistan with planning, support and execution of the attack are brought to justice. At this stage, we await further response and information from Pakistan. It would be injudicious to speculate in this situation, he said. At the Congress briefing, partys chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala made a scathing attack on the government accusing it of weakening Indias fight against terrorism nationally and internationally with the NIA director giving clean chit to Pakistan and its agencies. The NIA on Friday filed a charge sheet in a case pertaining to banned terror outfit IS outlining the modus oprandi of a 23-year-old alleged operative in identifying, radicalising, recruiting and sending Indians to join the terrorists in Syria and Iraq. The probe report, filed before district judge Amar Nath, refers in detail to the role of accused Naser Packeer who was working as a web and graphics designer in Dubai. The National Investigation Agency, which has arrayed over 22 persons as witnesses, has also made his father Packeer Mohammad a prosecution witness. In furtherance to its larger conspiracy under its leadership, members of terror groups Islamic State (IS) or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL)..., in connivance with a few resident, and non-resident Indians have been indulging in identification, redicalization, recruitment, training and finally transfer of Indian youths to countries like Syria, Lybia, Iraq for terror acts. For that purpose, members of the above terror groups have been using different channels/services available on internet, telephone and one to one meeting, the charge sheet said. The sources said that the charge sheet, which was filed in court during an in-chamber proceeding, alleged that Naser, who hails from Tamil Nadu and was arrested in December last year, was involved in a conspiracy to recruit Muslim youths in India to join IS and shift them to Iraq and Syria to carry out terror attacks and wage war in India. The charge sheet further said that the accused, who did B Tech from a Chennai college before leaving for Dubai in 2014, used several internet based websites including Twitter, WhatsApp and Youtube to spread the base of terror organisation in India and the world. It also said that the assistance of USA through Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty and internet giants like Google and Twitter was sought in the investigation against the accused. Union minister Kiren Rijiju refused on Friday to give a clean chit to the Pakistani official establishment in connection with the terror attack on the Pathankot Indian Air Force base, saying investigations were still on. There is no question of a clean chit or any clarification. Investigation is on, the Union minister of state for home told reporters, a day after National Investigating Agency chief Sharad Kumar reportedly said so far there was no hand of the Pakistan government or its agencies in helping JeM carry out the Pathankot attack. Asked about the NIA chiefs comments, Rijiju said nothing conclusive had come out on whether any group part of the Pakistan government was involved in the attack. Read: NIA chiefs remark denying Pak govts hand in Pathankot attack sparks row Even as the NIA backtracked on Kumars statement, on its part, Islamabad touted his remarks to claim vindication of its long-standing position in this regard. The whole row started over a written interview purportedly given by Kumar to a television channel in which he had said no. So far, no evidence to show that Pakistan government or Pakistani government agency was helping Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) or Masood Azhar or his aides carry out Pathankot attack. Later, the NIA issued a statement saying the observation attributed to the director general of the NIA are strongly refuted. It said his statement was misquoted. The external affairs minister reacted to the controversy, saying the Kumar had already issued a clarification and it put out the governments position that the involvement of Pakistans nationals in the Pathankot Air Base attack is an accepted fact. A response from Pakistan on Letters Rogatory seeking information and interrogation of Jaish-e-Mohammed terror group chief Maulana Masood Azhar and his brother Abdul Rauf in connection with the Pathankot air base strike is awaited, the NIA chief said on Thursday night, even as it probed the role of other state actors in the attack. NIA director general Sharad Kumar said that the role of the Jaish chief and his brother, besides two other handlers, has been established and all the evidence have been shared with Pakistan. We are still awaiting a response from them, Kumar said, adding two Letters Rogatories and several reminders to Islamabad remain unanswered. Asked whether NIA has given a clean chit to Pakistani agencies, including ISI, in the matter, Kumar said the case is still under investigations. We have not given any clean chit to anyone. We are examining the role of other players which include state actors who might have been involved in the conspiracy behind the attack. He, however, did not elaborate on the state actors. He denied media reports that quoted him as saying that a clean chit has been given to Pakistani agencies in the Pathankot attack case. Four terrorists were killed when they carried out a suicide attack on the strategic Indian Air Force base in Pathankot during the intervening night of January one and two. Seven security personnel were also killed during the 80-hour-long gunbattle. A day after violent clashes broke out in Mathura, killing 24 people, police are on the look-out for Ram Vriksha Yadav, the alleged mastermind behind the conflict. Trouble started on Thursday when police tried to evict close to 3,000 people from Jawahar Bagh park, two years after they had occupied the park in a prolonged sit-in, led by Yadav. Police claimed they were fired upon, unprovoked, by the squatters and said they later found a cache of arms and spent bullets from AK-47 rifles. According to sources, Yadav and the security officer of the group, Chandan Gaur, fled with thousands of supporters amid the chaos. Read:Death toll in Mathura clash rises to 21, two police officers among dead Belonging to Raipur Baghpur village in Ghazipur, Yadav was associated with the Doordarshi party floated by spiritual leader Baba Jai Gurudev in 1980 in Ahmedabad. He contested the general election as the Doordarshi partys candidate from the Ghazipur parliamentary constituency around two decades ago. He also contested assembly elections on the same ticket. However, Baba Jai Gurudev severed ties with him a few years before his death in 2012. Baba received complaints against him and six others sometime in the mid 1990s. He was told not to put on sack clothes and all ties with him were severed. Since then, Yadav started wearing a white kurta and dhoti, said a local, who did not wish to be identified. Allegedly a reserved person with a short-temper, Yadav left the village two years ago. His house in Matia Mohalla is in a dilapidated state. Locals said Yadav moved to Mathura with his wife and a married son when he left. Yadav is a farmer. He usually remains reticent. He talks less. He left the village two years ago and was living in Mathura since then. I have no idea what he was doing in Mathura. He has two sons and two daughters, said Shivnarayan, the village head. His impression of Yadav was that he did not like anyone interfering in any decisions he took. Read:Mathura clashes: Dont want cash, bring my son back, dead SPs mom to Akhilesh SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Congress is banking on the support of the ruling Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) to ensure victory of senior leader Kapil Sibal to the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh. Elections for 11 Rajya Sabha seats and 13 Vidhan Parishad seats will be held on June 11. None of the candidates in the fray withdrew their nominations on Friday, the last day. Sources said that the Congress with 29 MLAs require another five votes to ensure Sibals victory. Party leaders are hopeful that the SP and BSP, the two parties it had supported in last years Vidhan Parishad elections, will return the gesture by backing Sibal. Though the SP had earlier promised to support Sibal, BSP chief Mayawati is yet to announce her plans. She is likely to announce her decision on June 4 when she is scheduled to meet the press. The SP, which has 229 votes, will also need nine additional votes for its seventh candidate. Sources said the party was largely banking on RLD support and leaders of the two parties had met a few days back. However, RLD leader Choudhary Ajit Singh has remained non-committal till now. The BJP which has 41 MLAs require an additional 27 votes to win their gamble of backing independent candidate Preeti Mahapatra, whose candidature has surprised many in the state. Sources said it could prove to be tough ask unless the party manages to wean votes of other major parties. The strength of smaller parties -- minus the Lok Dal and independents -- is 16. The BJP will have no other option but to indulge in horse-trading or else its nominees will meet the same fate as was meted out to the partys second nominee in the 2015 Vidhan Parishad elections, said senior Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP Pramod Tiwari. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The violence in Uttar Pradeshs Mathura that left 24 people dead exposed again the Samajwadi Party governments biggest weakness in the assembly polls early next year: The states dismal law-and-order situation. Opposition parties clamoured to attack the Akhilesh Yadav government with the BJP alleging the group of squatters in Mathuras Jawahar Bagh who allegedly shot dead two senior police officers had the protection of the ruling party. But the SP cautioned against playing politics with the issue. BSP supremo Mayawati demanded the resignation of the SP government and demanded a judicial inquiry, holding the state administration responsible for the unfortunate and painful incident. After the Mathura incident, everybody in UP is talking about Behenjis shahshan (Mayawatis rule). When she was at the helm, all these criminals who enjoy political patronage had gone into hiding, a senior BSP leader told HT on the phone from Lucknow. The Congress reaction was guarded with chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala asking the SP government to address the situation and asserting that it was not the time to score political brownie points. The Congress is still undecided whether it will contest the state elections alone or with a partner. The clashes erupted in the heart of Mathura late on Thursday when a police team reached Jawahar Bagh to remove squatters from the Swadhin Bharat Vidhik Satyagrah following a court order. But the 3,000-odd encroachers allegedly opened fire on the police, sparking off violence in which a superintendent of police was killed and over 100 people injured. The incident came on top of a string of low-intensity riots across the state and the mob lynching of Mohammad Ikhlaq last year over rumours that he slaughtered a calf incidents that have given opposition parties ammunition to attack the SP government as being lax on law-and-order. Clashes broke out after police tried to evict encroachers from Jawahar Bagh park in Mathura on Thursday. (PTI Photo) The sharpest attack came from the BJP that is hoping to replicate its bumper Lok Sabha electoral success it won 71 of the states 80 seats -- in the assembly polls. The main conspirator in the case has full protection of the Samajwadi Party. Policemen were sent with their hands tied and this is why two of them died, said national secretary Shrikant Sharma in Mathura, alleging lawlessness in the state. He was referring to alleged links between the squatting cults chief Ram Vriksha Yadav and the ruling party. Read: Mathura clashes: Death toll climbs to 24, BJP calls for judicial probe Ram Vriksha Yadav was a disciple of religious leader Jai Gurudev who was said to be close to the SP but the duo fell out before the spiritual gurus death. Sharma termed the killing of policemen as height of anarchy and said criminals were highly-motivated because of their protection by the ruling party the reason for about 900 cases of attacks on police personnel under the SP rule. But ruling party sources denied any links with Ram Vriksha Yadav with senior Uttar Pradesh minister Shivpal Singh Yadav saying there should be no politics over the deaths. The police were attacked at the recce stage itself. Officials had spoken to them (encroachers) and given the several warnings, but they stoked violence. It is a serious incident and I have briefed the Union home minister, said chief minister Akhilesh Yadav. The Congress also denounced the BJPs attack, saying it was more important to ensure peace than play politics over the dead. The BJP should remember that instead of playing politics over dead, the important thing is to ensure peace is restored, that people who have occupied government land are punished, murderers are brought to book and Akhilesh government wakes up from its slumber and takes decisive action, said Surjewala. Read: Hema Malini, rapped over tweets, to reach Mathura at earliest Realising the spread and importance of yoga world over, the Indian government has decided to include attending a short term yoga programme in the list of permissible activities under the tourist and e-tourist visas, an official statement said on Thursday. A Union Home Ministry release also said it has been decided to include attending a short term yoga programme and short duration medical treatment under Indian systems of medicine in the list of permissible activities under e-Tourist Visa. At present, a tourist visa is granted to a foreigner whose sole objective of visiting India is recreation, sight seeing and casual visit to meet friends or relatives. Similarly, e-Tourist Visa is granted to a foreigner whose sole objective of visiting India is recreation, sight seeing, casual visit to meet friends or relatives, a short duration medical treatment or casual business visit. All Indian Missions abroad and Foreigners Regional Registration Officers (FRROs)/ Foreigners Registration Officers (FROs) in the country have been accordingly requested to take action as per the new norms, the release said. The Centre cut down the number of NGOs registered to receive foreign funding by one-fourth in the last one year, shortening the list to 33,500. But it is technology, not ideology, that is driving the crackdown. More than 10,000 NGOs lost their licence for not filing their annual declaration of money received under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) 2010. Lawyers Collective, which lost its FCRA registration this week is an exception to this pattern. Like Greenpeace India, it came under the governments scanner after it spoke out against the government or its policies. Read | Indira Jaisings NGO Lawyers Collective suspended for 6 months The 2010 FCRA law requires NGOs to declare how much money they have received from abroad each year. The tax returns need to be submitted even if no money has been received in a particular year. Many of these NGOs didnt file their returns but managed to retain their registration as the ministry was never too sure if its own records were in order. For instance, when the ministry first tried to purge NGOs that hadnt filed their returns in 2005-2006, they were left red-faced as hundreds of NGOs turned up with proof that the government had goofed up. After that incident, a group of young officers at the ministry were tasked to put their house in order. Read | Revamped foreign funding rules ask NGOs to vow not to hurt India The first step was to computerise its operations and create an e-database of registered NGOs. If an NGO filed its returns, it was to reflect in this database. Though not a perfect system, it was a precursor to the online registration system made mandatory last year, requiring NGOs to file returns online. After the new government came in, the ministry again sent out notices to over 10,000 NGOs. Only 229 NGOs responded. The ministry decided to spare them till it examined their representation and cancelled the registration of the rest. A ministry official said the exercise to scrub the list of registered NGOs will continue. Of the remaining 33,000 entities registered under the FCRA, official said there were another 10,000 that had not been filing their returns and will face action. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Taking on the critics of his proposal to rechristen Akbar Road as Maharana Pratap Road, Union Minister V K Singh has said the country has to decide if it has to be proud of those who enslaved it or those who fought the enslavers. Though the government has virtually rejected his recommendation, he has written a Facebook post saying the country has to discard divide and rule and appeasement policies if it has to move forward. Drawing a parallel between Mughal kings and the British, he said the latter ruled India like the Muslim kingdom and took a dig at his detractors, saying memorials should be built for Robert Clive and Lord Dalhousie as well going by their logic. I want to say this if we are giving so much importance to Mughals, then by this logic we should build memorials for Robert Clive and Lord Dalhousie too as they were very talented administrators who ruled us in the same way as the Mughals, Singh said. After I batted for Maharana Pratap, I received a big shock... Our self-proclaimed intellectuals said Akbar is a big name in our history and we should not speak against him. ...We will have to decide that who we should be proud of; those who enslaved us or those who fought them. We do not want to give importance to Begum Hazrat Mahal, ignore the pathan general of Maharana Pratap and do not name our prominent roads after the great martyr Bhagat Singh, the former Army chief said. Calling Maharana Pratap a great soul, Singh said he united 36 communities but the history hailed (Akbar) as a great man. He killed 25,000 people, including women, children and the elderly in Mewar. He also said people feel hesitant in paying homage to those who laid down their lives for the nation and its people as it may hurt the feelings of some fake patriots. Singh also rejected the assertion of many historians that Akbar along with Ashok were two great kings, saying Akbar was called so because his name literally meant great. If people continue to give importance to those who enslaved them, then our slave mentality will never disappear, he said. If the country has to move forward, then it will have to adopt policies that take it ahead instead of letting it stuck in the rut where it has been for the last 60 years, he said. Singh had written a letter last month to Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu, asking him to name Akbar Road after Maharana Pratap. With his proposal inviting sharp reactions from opposition, Naidu said it was not on the governments agenda. Bolpur A district court awarded life imprisonment to a PhD student of Visva Bharati University, Safikul Islam, for raping a minor, who was a student of a school under the same university in 2014. The court also directed payment of compensation of Rs 5 lakh to the victim from the state fund. Islam hails from Dadpur area of Sirajganj district in Bangladesh and has been studying here on a student visa. The victim too belongs to the same district. The judge, while pronouncing the judgment, said: The gravity of the offence is high. There is no scope of leniency in awarding punishment. The incident came to light on December 6, 2014, when a Class 12 student of Patha Bhavan the secondary and higher secondary school of Visva Bharati lodged a complaint with the police, alleging that she was repeatedly raped and blackmailed by a research scholar of the varsity for five months. The police arrested the accused on the same day. Two laptops, where several pictures of the girl were stored, were also seized. Narayan Rane, former chief minister, Ramraje Naik Nimbalkar, the chairman of the legislative council, Dhananjay Munde, the opposition leader of the council, and seven others were elected unopposed to the Upper House of the state legislature after two candidates withdrew their nominations on Friday, the last day for pulling out from the race. The withdrawals of Prasad Lad and Manoj Kotak, both from the Bharatiya Janaya Party (BJP), from the contest on Friday left only ten candidates for as many seats. The biennial election was to be held on June 10. Lad was the sixth candidate fielded by the BJP for the 10-seat elections while BJPs Kotak filed his nomination as an Independent candidate. The other candidates who are to be elected unopposed include BJPs Surjitsingh Thakur, Pravin Darekar, RN Singh, Shiv Senas Subhash Desai, Diwakar Roate, Sadabhau Khot (Swabhimani Shetkari Sangh) and Vinayak Mete (Shiv Sangram). The BJP will gain the most in the biennial election as its tally will increase to 18 from 13 (at present). However, the NCP still holds the majority with 27 members. The selection of candidates has also led to discontent in the BJP as of the five candidates, only one is from the party. Two candidates Khot and Mete are from smaller allies of the BJP while other two Darekar and Singh are outsiders, who are facing various allegations. Darekar left the MNS while Singh was a close aide of former minister Kripashankar Singh who is facing allegations of irregularities. It is the candidature given to Darekar and Singh that has irked many workers in the BJP. Vivekanand Gupta, secretary of BJPs Mumbai wing, has openly revolted against Darekar as the latter is accused of an alleged embezzlement of funds of Mumbai District Central Cooperative Bank Limited as chairman. The election has also paved the way for Ranes comeback. What was meant to be a weekend getaway for three IIT students turned into an international nightmare when the Italian police detained the trio for 10 hours. After a day full of atrocities, we were in a state of mental trauma. All the other people held were Pakistanis and Africans, and so it clearly seemed to us an act of racial profiling, said Akshit Goyal, a second year computer science student at the Indian Institute of Technology - Delhi (IIT-D). Goyal, with his friends Deepak Bhatt from IIT-D and Uday Kusupati from IIT-Bombay, is on a two-month internship in France at the Inria Sophia Antipolis, a European research body. Three days ago, the friends decided to spend the weekend in Italy and were travelling between Venice and Antibes when the police detained them illegally for 10 hours with no reason. The incident came to light on May 30, 10 hours after the students were pulled aside at the Ventimiglia railway station in Italy. There were around 20-25 police officers who were checking passports, so we readily showed our passports and were let off. But immediately another police officer sought our passports and asked us to stay back with a group of 10 people, said Goyal. Read more: MEA bails out three IIT students held in Italy Despite reiterating to the officers that they had all the necessary documents, the students were taken to another room where they were asked to submit all their belongings and were not allowed to use their mobile phones. We had a medical checkup done. Our finger prints and photographs were taken and despite repeated requests to put us through someone who can speak in English, we were only told no problem, while things just got worse, he said. Authorities remained uncommunicative, and the three were suddenly packed onto a bus and driven to Genoa city, three hours away. To their surprise, they were taken directly to the airport and after thorough physical frisking put on a plane to Bari, a fact the students found out only afterwards. Once in Bari, while the other passengers were being questioned for lack of documents, the students got a chance to get in touch with their families back in India. We found out that the police was planning to keep us in camp for the night, so we immediately contacted Akshits sister and asked her to contact the Indian Embassy in Italy about this incident, said Kusupati. In an hour, police officials returned the passports, apologised for the mistake and allowed them to continue their trip. Though unwilling to term the incident as racist, Goyal said it was an attack on a persons dignity and blatant disrespect towards self-identity. After being picked up at the Ventimiglia railway station at 8:30 am on May 30, they returned to Rome at 7 am on May 31 using their own money. The students have since written about their ordeal to the Indian Embassy in Italy. Though they have not yet decided about pressing charges against the Italian police, they have decided to start an online campaign and reach out to authorities through their letter. While this experience has left me petrified, I still believe I was really lucky to have a family at ease with usage of internet and quick in response to connect with the right authorities, including the Indian Embassy, our professors and friends, etc. What concerns me is that many students studying in premier institutes come from rural backgrounds and limited resources. What happens to them in such cases? said one of the students. Though they were not treated harshly and given food and water regularly, the possibility of being convicted in a foreign land without family or friends around had terrified them. While Im sure this was not intentional, we cant ignore the fact that the police were wrong on their part as well. We just dont want anyone else to go through the same ordeal, said Kusupati. The trio is back in France and plan on continuing to travel through Europe. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON MUMBAI: The families of artist Hema Upadhyay and her lawyer Haresh Bhambani, on Thursday demanded t he transfer of Mumbai police commissioner DD Padsalgikar after the murder investigation was handed over to the Ghatkopar unit of crime branch. Both the families have written to the director general of police, Praveen Dixit, and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis but have got no response to their pleas. What compelled the commissioner to transfer the case? The Kandivli police were conducting proper investigations and both the families were satisfied, said Vinod Gangwal, advocate of Hemas family adding that, What is the commissioners motive in doing so? We demand his transfer so he cannot influence the investigation. The families said they deserve an explanation for the transfer in probe. Addressing a press conference with lawyers Gangwal and Kaushik Mhatre, Bhambanis daughter Anita said, We were not told about the transfer nor were we given an explanation. We deserve justice. Our lives are never going to be the same again. Mhatre said, No one from the families have requested for a change in the investigating agency then why was the decision taken? We will file a writ-petition in the Bombay high court opposing the transfer on Monday. Gangwal further claimed that Chintans friends were aware about the transfer on the same day and hinted at a dangerous nexus between some policemen and Chintans friends. On May 18, when the case was transferred, one of Chintans friends went to Kandivli police station and told officers, Now, we are relaxed. The case is not in your hands anymore. At the same time, two of his friends were at Ghatkopar unit of the crime branch. How were they aware that the case would be transferred there? Gangwal asked. A day after high-level meetings in New Delhi and speculation about stern action against state revenue minister Eknath Khadse over the various controversies he is embroiled in, the BJP leadership has reportedly deferred its decision on the matter for at least a few days. The minister, who has been at an undisclosed location, gave a video statement to IBN-Lokmat on Friday evening, rubbishing the allegations and terming it as a conspiracy against him. In the video, Khadse insisted he was busy preparing for a few major decisions to be taken in the cabinet meeting scheduled for next Tuesday. On Thursday, in a meeting that lasted around 25 minutes in New Delhi, PM Narendra Modi reportedly told CM Devendra Fadnavis to wait for a few days before initiating any action against Khadse. The party is treading cautiously on the issue as it wants to avoid any adverse implications of any action against Khadse. It has not taken any action against ministers such as Sushma Sawaraj or CMs of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, or Maharashtra ministers Pankaja Munde and Vinod Tawde, all of whom have faced allegations of wrongdoing. Further, Khadse enjoys support in north Maharashtra and is also a prominent OBC leader in the state. Sources said Fadnavis is in favour of action against Khadse, but wants the central leadership to do so. Otherwise, it is likely to be misconceived as action against an OBC leader by Fadnavis, who is a Brahmin. On the other hand, the party leadership wants the decision to be taken at the state level, a BJP leader said, on condition of anonymity. But, Modi wants the decision to be deferred for a few days and be taken only during or after the national executive of the party, which is scheduled to take place on June 12 and 13. In the meanwhile, the party also plans to expand the state cabinet and the minister may be stripped of important portfolios such as revenue and excise, if he isnt dropped from the cabinet. Incidentally, Modi is leaving on a five-day foreign tour on Saturday. Before the meeting with Modi, Fadnavis submitted a factual report on the land deal controversy to the partys national president Amit Shah at the BJP office in Delhi. The report is based on the documents submitted to Fadnavis by Khadse earlier this week. In an indication that the action against Khadse may not be extreme, state BJP chief Raosaheb Danve on Friday said: It would not be proper to claim that the report submitted by Fadnavis to Shah on Thursday goes against Khadse. It could even turn out to be in his favour. The allegations leveled against the minister are baseless and the party stands by him, Danve said in Jalna, adding that the party was firmly backing Khadse. In Mumbai, housing minister and senior BJP leader Prakash Mehta, too, said the party stood by Khadse. In the backdrop of speculation over his resignation, Khadse released a video statement on Friday evening. Speculations are rife on my absence from the media glare for two days, but let me clarify that I am busy with officers from agriculture department to take major decisions in the cabinet meeting. The decisions are related to the distribution of seeds and fertilizers for the kharip season, releasing the land in the possession of the government for technical reasons to the farmers and cloud seeding, among others. As the agriculture minister, my top priority is the welfare of farmers and I have been in constant touch with the chief minister, discussing the decisions, he said. He reiterated that the allegations leveled against him were baseless and with the intention of maligning his image. Political observers claimed the minister tried to emphasise that he was still part of the government and unfazed by the speculation over his resignation. Meanwhile, he reportedly tried to meet RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat to garner support, but did not get any response, said sources. Khadse has been facing allegations of purchasing a government plot at Bhosari in Pune by misusing his official position for the sake of earning money through government compensation. Khadse is also facing flak for allegedly receiving calls from underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. Earlier last month, Gajanan Patil an alleged aide of the revenue minister, was caught by the anti-corruption bureau asking for a bribe from a person for a land allotment decision by the revenue department. KOLKATA: Had Leslie John Binns, a UK ex-serviceman who lost an eye in an IED explosion in the battlefield, climbed Mount Everest in the last week of May, his name would have been added to the list of 5,000-odd mountaineers who scaled the worlds highest peak since the first ascent by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. But by abandoning his journey barely 450 metres before the summit to save the life of Indian mountaineer Sunita Hazra the first Bengali mother to scale the height barely a few hours ago Binns has attained the status of a hero for his sacrifice. Binns pulled Hazra down to safety on May 22, the day he was supposed to scale the peak. Incredible. Rescuing two & cutting his dream of reaching the summit. Selfless & incredibly brave man. The mountain isnt going anywhere, I hope he gets another crack at her soon, Adrian Cunliffe, who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro last year, said on social media. Congratulatory messages poured in on the Facebook page of his wife, Lindsey Empringham, as well. Sometimes the peak is not the summit. This man from Yorkshire reached higher than the top of Mount Everest, a place that is taller than any pinnacle of sporting achievement. He is the only member of a team who could not make it. Yet, he shall remain one of the greatest that went on the trail. Because he showed humanity, compassion and conscience. Leslie, you are a role model to every mountaineer in the world, wrote Subhojit Roy, another Bengali mountaineer. Talking to a TV channel from Kathmandu on Wednesday, Binns admitted to having mixed feelings. Of course I felt sad because I could not climb the summit. But I am happy that I saved a life, he said. A thankful Hazra said, I owe my life to him. I could return home to see my child. What else can I say? C Michael Fairman, who worked for the US Marines, described how Binns saved the woman. On his summit attempt, just shy of the balcony, a young Indian lady had slipped on her descent and fell, landing at the anchor next to Les. She had been in distress due to depletion and supposedly no replenishment of her oxygen, and now she was injured from the fall. Les without hesitation aborted his summit bid to assist and help her down, he wrote. Binns changed out her oxygen bottle and did everything he could to try and get her legs under her and get her moving. Frustrated as people continued to walk by uninterested in assisting, Les clipped her into him and began dragging her down. He helped another mountaineer on his way and eventually got Hazra to his tent where he made efforts to keep her warm and save her life. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON ROHTAK/NEW DELHI: Paramilitary forces have been deployed in seven sensitive districts of Haryana, while Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) has been enforced in eight as a preventive measure in the wake of recent calls given by the Jat community to resume protests from June 5. The decision came after the Punjab and Haryana HC stayed their reservation in jobs and educational institutes under the OBC category. In Rohtak, the epicentre of large-scale violence that rocked the state during the quota stir in February and led to the deaths of 30 people, a company of Border Security Force (BSF) and two companies of Rapid Action Force (RAF) have been deployed at entry points. The paramilitary is regularly conducting flag marches in the cities and villages. Two more companies of RAF have been called in Sonepat district. The administration has also imposed Section144for two months as a preventive measure. One of the two companies has been deployed at Garhi Bindroli village where the connection of Munak Canal was disrupted by mobs during the previous protest, leading to a water crisis in the national capital. The steps are being taken even as All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti (AIJASS) chief Yashpal Malik on Thursday said they have decided not to obstruct roads and railway tracks during their indefinite stir. Haryana ADGP (law and order) Mohammad Akil, who held a meeting with police officials in Bhiwani, said, The police force is fully prepared to deal with the protests. All necessary measures are being taken to ensure everything remains under control. The administration has allotted one spot in the district where people can peacefully sit on dharna. If people are found violating Section 144, strict action will be taken against them, Rohtak additional superintendent of police, Himanshu Garg, said. Besides paramilitary, cops in the districts are being trained to deal with riot-like situations. The police stations are stocked with tear-gas shells, plastic bullets and water cannons and police personnel are being trained to use the same. The administration is also holding meetings in villages across the state, trying to dissuade angry community members from adopting violent means of protest again. KHATTAR MEETS SHAH Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Thursday said his government will not allow peace to be disturbed as he met BJP chief Amit Shah here to deliberate on the sensitive issue of Jat quota. Union minister Sanjeev Balyan, a Jat leader from western UP roped in by the party to hold talks with community leaders, insisted that the state government was doing everything possible to restore the Jat quota, which has been stayed by the Punjab and Haryana HC. QUOTA AGITATION FACE IS AN UNLIKELY CASTE WARRIOR CHANDIGARH: All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti (AIJASS) president Yashpal Malik has always been an unlikely caste warrior in Haryana. Though aggressive and articulate, he is an outsider. But that hasnt stopped the real-estate developer from Uttar Pradesh from being in the forefront of the agitation of the Jat community for quota in the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category. While some other Jat leaders have preferred to take the legal route after the law passed by the state government to give quota to the community was stayed by the Punjab and Haryana HC, Malik has threatened to renew his protest in the state from June 5. He has a twin agenda to keep up the pressure on the Khattar government on the reservation issue as well as prevent action against people, whom his group calls innocent youths, booked by the state police for the violence during the February stir. Malik has been holding talks with state and central ministers, but has shown no signs of relenting on his protest plans so far. He knows the electoral compulsions of the BJP in keeping the politically-influential Jat community in good humour in view of forthcoming assembly elections in UP. Malik got involved with the quota cause more than a decade ago. I and two other people, Ajit Singh and Harpat Singh, set up AIJASS in Bhiwani in 2007-08 to fight for reservation for the community. When Malik, who was secretary of Akhil Bharatiya Jat Sabha, showed interest, we made him president in September 2009. But there were problems as he kept vacillating throughout. We parted ways in Narwana in December 2011, Jat leader Hawa Singh Sangwan, who also has his own separate AIJASS in Haryana, said. The differences among the AIJASS leaders during the 2011 agitation led to the split. Malik slowly started consolidating his position in some districts. His manoeuvring skills, ability to raise resources and contacts with UP leaders have helped him expand his base. NEW DELHI: India on Thursday joined a global regime to control proliferation of ballistic missiles but the move would not have any impact on national security as well as the missile programme of the country. The decision came ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to the US from June 7 and the plenary of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) this week. India has been seeking US support in getting members to various export-control regimes such as the NSG and MTCR (Missile Technology Control Regime). External affairs ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said India has joined the Hague Code of Conduct (HCoC) against Ballistic Missile Proliferation by notifying the HCoC Central Contact in Vienna through diplomatic channels. The HCoC is a voluntary, legally non-binding international confidence building and transparency measure that seeks to prevent the proliferation of ballistic missiles that are capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction. When asked if the decision will effectively mean that country has to shelve its Agni missile programme, he said, Our national security interest will not be impacted in any manner, whatsoever, by joining HCoC. He said India joining the Code signals our readiness to further strengthen global non-proliferation objectives. Asked about Indias bid to become member of nuclear control regimes, Swarup said, As far as MTCR is concerned, our application is on track and well-received and we expect that process of Indias membership would be completed soon. Following an armed robbery on the night of May 23 when six car-borne robbers had abducted and robbed a truck laden with cigarettes worth nearly Rs6 crore at Bhojpur, the Ghaziabad police on Thursday arrested one person and also recovered cigarette cartons worth Rs3.42 crore from his possession. The accused was identified as Anil Karira, who hails from Agra. He had received the robbed material for further sales from the gang of six robbers. Following the incident, we roped in local intelligence and electronic surveillance. We came to know that Karira was selling branded cigarettes in Agra at a low price and had sizeable stock with him. He was arrested from Bhojpur in Ghaziabad after he arrived to pick up some more stock, said Rakesh Kumar Pandey, superintendent of police. On the night of May 23, six men in a Tata Safari overtook the truck, which was coming from Saharanpur to a companys stockyard at Dasna in Ghaziabad. The robbery took place near Bhojpur in Ghaziabad. Following the abduction, the truck was taken towards Mathura and driver Raj Singh was injected with a sedative. Nearly 8-10 hours after the incident, the unconscious driver and the empty truck was recovered from Jait area in Mathura. The accused had unloaded all the 665 cartons and taken them away in mini trucks. A sizeable amount of stock was handed to Karira for further sales. He was supposed to hand over the proceedings to the robbers, Pandey said. According to the police, the gang had full information about the truck. A carton values around Rs90,000 in the market. We recovered 380 cartons worth nearly Rs3.42 crore. We suspect that the remaining stock was transported to some other persons in Mumbai. Our teams have got vital clues from Karira and the robbers will be nabbed soon. We suspect that the gang hails from outside Ghaziabad district, Pandey said. Following the arrest, the police also included Section 412 (dishonestly receiving property stolen in the commission of a dacoity) of the IPC in their FIR. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Residents of Uttar Pradesh, including Noida and Ghaziabad, will continue to experience frequent and long power cuts as the state is not buying adequate power to bridge the gap between the demand and supply, said Piyush Goyal, minister of state with independent charge for power, coal, new and renewable energy. Goyal was at the NTPC Power Management Institute in Noida to attend an event organised for the release a coffee table book on biodiversity conservation The Good Earth. My achievement in the past two years is that there has been no power deficit in our country and we have surplus power to supply to all states. We are selling power for `3.70 per unit to Uttar Pradesh. In Odisha we are selling power for `2.52. Earlier, the Centre used to sell it for `10 per unit. But what can I do if UP does not buy power, said Goyal. He said since the NDA government came to power two years ago, his ministry has revived 46,000-MW stalled power projects across the country to ensure that all states get adequate power supply. Goyal said his governments target is to provide electricity to each home, especially to farmers, by 2019. In Noida, 800 MW is available against a demand of 1,000 MW. Because of the deficit of 200 MW, consumers have to face power cuts up to four hours. In many Greater Noida areas, consumers face power cuts up to eight hours. Upset over the long power cuts, women in Greater Noida on Friday protested against officials of the Noida Power Corporation Limited (NPCL) that supplies power to that area. Officials say that there is no gap between demand and supply. Then why are we facing long power cuts, said Vikas Bhati, a resident of Greater Noidas Kasna area. UPPCL said there is no power crisis in the state as they have adequate supply of power to meet the demand in each city, including Noida and Greater Noida. Power cuts take place because of other reasons, including faults in transmission network. We had 1,6500 MW during the peak summer season this year when the temperature touched 46 degrees in Uttar Pradesh. There is no gap in the demand and supply. Uttar Pradesh needs 16,500 MW during the peak summer, said AP Mishra, managing director, UPPCL. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON As many as 750 biogas plants were set up in the district under the Central governments National Biogas and Manure Management Programme (NGMMP) during the past five years. The Punjab Energy Development Agency (PEDA), that looks after the renewable energy resources in Jalandhar, informed that the number has been quite satisfactory, but more is needed to be done. Supinder Singh, district manager, PEDA, however, said they the number is strikingly less than that of Sangrur district that has recorded around 1,0001,500 biogas plant installations per year. Officials said that Sangrur records the largest number of plants in the state while Nakodar and Shahkot are two places in the Doaba region where many villagers are coming forward for biogas plants. Supinder said that there was still lack of awareness among the people on how they can convert animal waste into fuel for various purposes. He said that the district office annually receives around 150 applications of biogas plants in their houses. Not many villagers in the district have come forward for setting up biogas plant, but some people in the region, who have been utilising biogas as fuel, have been more enthusiastic. Jassa Singh, a farmer, based in Loharan village in the district who has set up a biogas plant at his house some three years ago, said that they have been using biogas in their kitchen for the past three years, and have not bought even a single LPG cylinder since then. I set up a biogas pant of six cubic meters three years ago and my family of four has been using the gas for cooking while we use its residual for agricultural purposes. Officials said that the capacity of the plant ranges from 1 to 6 cubic meter while villagers usually set up the plant whose capacity ranges between 4 to 6 cubic metres. Supinder said that the cost of installing a biogas plant ranges from `21,000 to Rs 25,000. It is to be mentioned that the government also provides a subsidy of `9,000 for every biogas plant. For building a biogas plant, one has to first apply for the same at PEDA after which the government department guides them to get their plant set up by the government-approved workers, also known as masons. PEDA officials informed government-approved self-employed workers are being provided training from at Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana. Officials said in the beginning, a plant takes 40 days to prepare the gas after which the process is quite faster. The process gets accelerated during summers due to high temperature, said an official. A farmer in the district said that from 30-40 kg of dung, a reasonable amount of gas is produced that can be used for cooking three meals of a fourmember family. Demanding that the rape case against former Gorkha village sarpanch Kulwinder Singh be dropped, many pro-Akali panchayats on Thursday resolved to oppose the farmers agitation starting on Friday to see the accused behind bars and the victim released. The sarpanches and panches led by Panchayat Union president Jodhbir Singh assembled at a gurdwara here to announce a parallel protest to stop Kisan Sangharsh Committee from uttering foul words against the former sarpanch. Two days after the rape case was registered, the victim (18), who is from Kuharka village, was arrested in an old murder case against her father and brother. Accused Kulwinder is associated with the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD). Angered over police inaction against him, farmers had protested outside the Sadar police station here last week. Now they plan to sit outside the office of the Tarn Taran senior superintendent of police for indefinite period. The local Akali leaders are also mobilising panchayats and other organisations to take them on. The parallel agitations threaten to cause tension and confrontation. Kisan Sangharsh Committee general secretary Sawinder Singh Chautala said the parallel protest didnt bother his organisation, as everybody has the right to protest in a democracy. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON With the admission process for all undergraduate courses in the city government colleges entering day 2 on Thursday, BCom has emerged as the most sought-after course with the number of applicants exceeding total seats by over 300%. As many as 1,310 students have registered online against total 280 BCom seats (140 each) at SCD (Satish Chander Dhawan) College and GCG College, respectively. As many as 691 students had applied for BCom at the SCD till day two of the admission process, while total 619 students had applied at the GCG. Since the last date to apply for the course is June 15 (GCG) and June 25 (SCD), the number of students applying for the course is likely to shoot up multiple times. Eying admissions in reputed MBA colleges, or a bright banking career, after completing BCom, many students are choosing the stream, and the trend has picked up a pace in the past couple of years. Next in the line are bachelors in BBA and BCA courses. On day two of the admission, a total of 3,200 students registered online against equal number of seats at the SCD College. For 40 BBA seats, as many as 242 students have already applied at the college, while for the BCA course total 148 students have applied for against 40 seats so far. Talking to HT, Dharam Singh Sandhu, SCD College principal, said, Around 3,200 students registered online till 2pm on the Day 2. Catching up with the trend, students applying in BCom are way more in number than other courses. We request students to read all the instructions carefully on our college website before applying for a particular course. Meanwhile, the situation is no different in other colleges. Mohinder Kaur Grewal, GCG principal, said, Like every year, most students are applying for admission in BCom; the applicants for the course are increasing every year. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Punjab leader of opposition Charanjit Singh Channi on Friday demanded an emergency session of the Vidhan Sabha to discuss the deteriorating law-and-order situation in the state. Criminals roam free under the patronage of politicians and police. Every day businessmen, preachers, politicians, and industrialists are being murdered or kidnapped. The chief minister and the deputy CM should call an emergency session, Channi claimed in his statement issued here. He asked state cabinet minister Bikram Singh Majithia to withdraw his Thursdays remarks about Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi (that his elevation as Congress president would sink the party). The Congress under Rahul Gandhi is going to teach the Akalis, Majithia in particular, a lesson in the 2017 Punjab assembly elections, he said. Majithia was made minister over senior Akali leaders because he is brother-in-law of deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal. He needs to only walk incognito in Amritsar to know peoples true opinion of him, said Channi. A four-day training session for the Punjab cadres of the Communist Party of India (CPI) started here on Friday, but there remains utter lack of clarity on the role of the CPI, and the larger Left, in the assembly polls due in the state early next year. We will see how we can keep the secular democratic front intact against both the communal parties, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the BJP, said Joginder Dayal, the only one from Punjab in the 31-member national executive of the CPI. Dayal has prepared fresh lessons to be taught at the party school session; but, when asked pointedly about the CPIs probable tie-up for the Punjab elections, Yes, (Punjab Congress chief) Capt Amarinder Singh was keen (for a tie-up), but as you know our partys decisions are taken at the central level. The CPIs national executive meets in Delhi on May 28-29 to review the recent poll results in five states. He added that the Left was in a dilemma after the West Bengal results when it comes to a tie-up with the Congress in Punjab now. Dilemma over AAP Dayal added, Options for the CPI are open for talks with the AAP in Punjab, but the partys another senior leader, Bant Brar, said, AAP is no alternative in Punjab. Brar said that the survival of the identity of the Left in Punjab was now in question, with no clear picture in sight for the Punjab elections. CPI Punjab unit secretary Hardev Arshi had his own version: The main contest is between the AAP and Congress... There are still eight months to go (to the elections), we will see when the time comes. On the sidelines of the party school, where district unit chiefs were in attendance too, cadres quietly had lunch before the lessons began, murmuring over the political scenario across the state. Two office-bearers each from Nawanshahar and Amritsar told HT, in condition of anonymity, that the buzz on the AAPs upsurge in Punjab has caught the attention of the youth in Leftist forces too. Our cadres do ask us about the strategy for the elections, but we have only one answer: Decision comes from the central leadership, said a senior CPI leader from Amritsar, also on the condition of anonymity. 4 parties divided over Cong However, most others on the Left too, including Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM), the largest Leftist party, remain undecided. The CPM that led the Lefts alliance with Congress in West Bengal would decide on its strategy for the Punjab elections after its three-day central committee meeting in Delhi scheduled from June 18, said CPM state secretary Charan Singh Virdi. Our standard line is to strengthen the Left democratic front in Punjab, and all the four factions of the Left in Punjab would meet for electoral talks in the latter half of July, Virdi told HT over the phone. CPI (Marxist Leninist)-Liberation state secretariat member Bhagwant Samaon said that in case the CPI and CPM tied up with the Congress, his party and the group called CPM-Punjab led by Mangat Ram Pasla would stand against both the Congress and the ruling Akali-BJP combine. All four (Left) parties had decided to campaign against the capitalist and feudal approach of both the Congress and the SAD-BJP. Therefore, a tie-up with the Congress is not possible, Samaon said. You have seen what has happened in West Bengal, he added. Pasla, when contacted, endorsed Samaons assertions that any alliance with the Congress will not be accepted. About the school Meanwhile, at the CPI session at the Peoples Convention Centre here, lessons in basic Left ideology would be taught. I will be addressing the cadres about Punjabs social, political and economic situation and the proposals that the CPI could come out with for economic restructuring, Dayal said. Then there will be a session on Marxism and the Marxist philosophy to be addressed by central leaders as well. Recent moves *The last time a Left party had its presence in the Punjab Vidhan Sabha was 2002-07, after two of its candidates won as it had an alliance with the Congress. However, both later joined the Congress. *In the last assembly elections, in 2012, the erstwhile Peoples Party of Punjab (PPP) of Manpreet Badal (since merged with Congress) had an alliance with the CPI and seat adjustment; with CPM; all of them drew a blank. *In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Manpreet Badal was supported by Left factions as a Congress candidate. He lost. CPI and CPM had a seat-sharing adjustment for the remaining 12 seats, but all their candidates had to forfeit security deposits. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON While Sikh preacher Ranjit Singh Dhadrianwale has moved the Punjab and Haryana court for a CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) inquiry into the May 17 murderous attack on him, Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal has claimed police investigation to be fair and said you cant arrest anyone on just allegation. Speaking here on Friday and referring to Dhadrianwale and Damdami Taksal Sikh seminary head Harnam Singh Dhumma, whom the preacher believes to be behind the attack, the deputy CM said: It is a fight between two individuals. The government is keen to deliver justice instead of striking a compromise between both. Dhadrianwale had hinted that Dhumma might be behind the attack that killed preachers aide Bhupinder Singh. On the sidelines of laying the foundation stone of a 150-megawatt (MW) solar-energy plant at Vanwala village on Friday, Sukhbir, accompanied by cabinet minister Bikram Singh Majithia, said being a virtual parliament of Sikhs, Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) has the duty to broker peace between both parties. On Dhadrianwales seeking a CBI inquiry, Sukhbir said: Its the victims right but next theyd demand Americas FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) to look into the case. Drug test for aspiring cops With different surveys and political parties coming up with different figures related to drug abuse in Punjab, the state government will challenge them by conducting substance-abuse test in the recently advertised police recruitment. We will make the test results public for everyone to see the actual picture. The department has received more than 57,000 applications in two days and it expects another more than 2.5 lakh. We have ordered drug-test kits worth `3 crore, said Sukhbir, adding: The test is going to challenge the parties that are defaming the state by claiming that 70% of its youth are on drugs. Solar energy in 2,000 villages by next year Cabinet minister Bikram Singh Majithia said by 2017, 2,000 villages would have solar energy and the Centre would honour Punjab on June 7 for installing maximum rooftop solar-power units. Earlier, he inaugurated a 28-MW solar-energy plant worth Rs 201 crore at Killianwali and laid the foundation stone of 150-MW Azure Power project at Muktsars Vanwala village. Radicals meet deputy CM The Sikh organisations that had organised a radical Sarbat Khalsa (Sikh congregation) met deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal at his Badal village house on Friday to seek permission to gather at the Akal Takht, highest temporal seat of the faith, in Amritsar on the 32nd anniversary of Operation Bluestar on June 6. They want both Dhian Singh Mand, interim Akal Takht jathedar of the radicals, and the SGPC-appointed jathedar to address the gathering. The deputy CM has asked us to wait till Saturday, said a member of the Sikh delegation. Sukhbir said he had made it clear to them to maintain peace at all costs. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The water level of Sukhna Lake continues to decrease with the rise in temperature. The level is now lower than 1,157 feet, but the Chandigarh administration remains unfazed with the receding mark. The ideal benchmark is of 1,163 feet. The authorities are looking forward to the monsoons to work out a strategy to tackle the drying up of the lake. The administration last year had even come up with an action plan to tackle the issue of decreasing water level. But this year the authorities are hardly bothered and no committee has been constituted to come up with suggestions. Earlier, the Chandigarh administration used to get de-silting done but it hardly helped to improve the water situation. From last two years the level at the lake is going down. Read: Its back! Heat wave returns in Punjab, Haryana; max temp rises IN 2012, SUKHNA HAD DRIED UP If the Chandigarh administration continues to depend upon good monsoons for increasing water level then the situation can get worse similar to one seen in 2012. This year the drying up of lake has started from the regulator end. In fact, the departments of UT administration are passing the buck on each other and not acting in this direction. The Sukhna Lake maintenance has been done for many years by Forest and Wild Life Department and now the Chandigarh engineering department is also being held responsible for it. About three years back Sukhna conservation panel was constituted, but no meeting has been conducted ever since. Punjab technical education minister and senior BJP leader Madan Mohan Mittal has asked the directorate of his department to regularise certain contractual employees of Beant College of Engineering and Technology in Gurdaspur who were indicted as illegal appointees in an inquiry conducted earlier. These 17 contractual employees, including teaching and non-teaching staff, were indicted in a departmental inquiry conducted in July 2014. In fact, deputy director Hari Dass Sekhri, who forwarded the file concerned with the said employees, was part of the inquiry panel that had indicted them. That inquiry panel was headed by Dr Arvind of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Mohali (SAS Nagar). The appointments came under the scanner in October 2009 after the state vigilance bureau (VB) caught the then college registrar Inderpal Singh while he was accepting bribe of `90,000 allegedly for helping regularise these employees. Inderpal was convicted in January 2015 and eventually lost his job. The vigilance bureau then conducted an inquiry and found the appointments of these employees as illegal in its final report in 2013. The departmental inquiry also indicted them a year later. However, some of them moved the Punjab and Haryana high court and got a stay on their removal from jobs. Till date, the college has not submitted details pertaining to their appointment procedures in the high court. The probe reports name nine teaching faculty members assistant professors Mohit Marwaha (information technology), Preet Kamal Singh (mechanical engineering), Sandeep Kaur (computer science), Baljinder Singh (IT), Lovejit Kaur (applied chemistry), Rishi Tuli (applied maths), Deepak Kalia (computers) and Vishan Mahajan (management), and Pritpal Singh (director, physical education) and eight others, including medical officer Dr Navneet Walia, computer operator Amandeep Kaur, maintenance engineer Kashmir Singh, and lab assistants Sandeep Mahajan, Sukhwinder Singh, Ranbir Singh and Sukhjinder Singh. It was on Tuesday that the college principal, Om Pal Singh, received the ministers communique through department deputy director Sekhri in which Mittal dictated: Please examine and report their cases within five days and send the detailed status through e-mail. When asked about what prompted him for it, Mittal told Hindustan Times, Several employees appointed on contract in different institutions had sent their representations for getting regular jobs; so I have simply forwarded many such cases to my officers to scrutinise, case by case. He acknowledged his communique sent to the Gurdaspur college. But he maintained that he was not in the know about the background of the employees there: I will find out. All cases will be dealt with on merit. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Two unidentified assailants gunned down a money changer near the Company Bagh Chowk in full public view on Friday even as a flag march was being conducted by police nearby. The deceased identified as Anil Kumar Billa, a resident of Shaheed Udham Singh Nagar, was a Congress worker also owned a garment showroom on the old GT road near the civil hospital. Police said the killing could be a result of some dispute over money. The enforcement directorate had last year conducted a raid on Billas premises after reports of alleged hawala transactions. According to police, the assailants were known to Billa. The money changer was on way to his showroom in his Toyota Fortuner (PB-08 BW 8006) and as he reached the Allahabad Bank near the Company Bagh Chowk one of the attackers stepped into the vehicle. The duo had an argument following which the attacker fired two shots at Billa from his .312 bore revolver and hurriedly escaped. The city police were holding a flag march from BMC Chowk to Namdev Chowk at that time. Billa was rushed by cops to the civil hospital where he was declared dead by doctors. Jalandhar police commissioner Arpit Shukla said the duo had a scuffle in the car. The first bullet hit Billas temple. The second one pierced his neck, said Shukla, adding that police have vital leads in the case. Billas father Rajinder Kumar said the family didnt have enmity with anyone. The body was handed over to the family after autopsy. Earlier, local MP Santokh Singh Chaudhary along with several Congress leaders reached the civil hospital and condemned the killing. Billas brother Sunil is also a Congress worker. Body of the deceased being taken out of the civil hospital in Jalandhar on Friday. (Pardeep Pandit/HT Photo) Capt flays killing Chandigarh: Punjab Congress chief on Friday flayed the killing of partys worker in Jalandhar. In a statement here, Amarinder told the family members of the deceased that he (Capt) will ensure that justice was done and the culprits were punished. Forensic team looking for fingerprints of the culprits on the car. (Pardeep Pandit/HT Photo) Flaying the Punjab government, he said lawlessness prevails in the state where criminals were having a free run. Protesting against the state government for regularisation of their jobs, the contract-based nurses and ancillary staff of Rajindra Hospital and Government TB Hospital, on Thursday, locked the OPD of Rajindra Hospital. As part of their indefinite protest, the nurses and paramedical staff have called to close the OPD services. The protesters claimed that they would not open the doors of OPC till their demands were not met. Meanwhile, authorities of Rajindra Hospital were trying to manage the staff from other nursing colleges and said they would try to open OPD on Friday. The indefinite strike of nurses and paramedical staff entered into the second day on Thursday. The protesters raised slogans against the state government and spent days and nights on protest site outside the Rajindra Hospital OPD. Rajesh Kumar, general secretary, Nurses and Ancillary Staff Union, said, We have observed the attitude of the state government and our regularisation is being delayed deliberately. Now we have decided to close the OPD services and locked the doors of the OPD. We will not allow the OPD to be opened on Friday. The protest will continue till the written assurance by the Punjab government. We received call from the health secretary office for a talk, but we refused because we have already attended so many meetings. It is wastage of time. We want regularization of our jobs. The chief minister is only authority who can allow such orders, he added. Besides, the services in emergency, ortho, medicine, operation theatre, radio therapy, gynecology wards and labour room were also affected on the second day of strike. The staff nurses have to perform duties for at least 19 hours along with nursing students, but our age cannot allow us do such long duties. Although some staff has been called from Sangrur who are experienced, they are not friendly with new place and it takes time to attend to patients, said a staff nurse on the condition of anonymity. Meanwhile, the authorities of Rajindra Hospital assured to handle the situation and claimed that the OPD services would continue on Friday. We are trying to manage the staff from nursing college. Doctors have also been deployed in every department and patients will be provided OPD services on Friday, said, medical superintendent Bhupinder Singh Brar. Fifteen years after it was established, the vulture-breeding centre at Pinjore released a pair of the birds to the wild for the first time. The historic release of two Himalayan Griffon vultures was carried out from Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre by Union minister of state for environment Prakash Javadekar and Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, who termed it ghar wapsi (homecoming). The centre had been fostering these two vultures for 10 years, and found them fit for release now, also because Himalayan Griffon is not an endangered species. Though the vultures were yet to actually leave the centre even after being released, centre authorities said the assimilation would happen soon enough. The centre, spread over five acres, has a total of 214 vultures of four species 76 Oriental White-Backed, 29 Slender-Billed, 107 Long-Billed and the two Himalayan Griffon vultures that are now released. No other centre houses such a large number of vultures anywhere in the world. A vulture flies out of the box at Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre, Pinjore, near Panchkula on Friday. (Sant Arora/HT Photo) Released, but still around For the release, a goat carcass was placed in the open while Khattar and Javadekar pulled up the lids of the vulture enclosures. But the birds did not fly out of the centre premises; and in fact flew back from the exit gates. Neither did they touch the goat carcass. Yet, Dr Vibhu Prakash, principal scientist, Bombay Natural History Society, who heads the centre, said, This is perfect; I am happy. He reasoned that the vultures would take time to leave: Soon, wild vultures will come here and these two will join them. They did not come today because of the rush of people. I want the two to stay around for some time, actually. They are suspicious of the open world as of now, he added. Next up: The endangered species He added that the two were wing-tagged and rings were put on their feet for identification. We have to monitor their behaviour; see if they can fly long distances, get food on their own, and adjust to wild conditions, he said. Food would continue to be provided for these birds for at least a year. These birds were put in the pre-release aviary on November 13, 2015, and fed on whole goat carcasses with skin to make them used to what they would encounter in the wild. Wild vultures were also attracted close to the aviary by putting out carcasses; and a number of Himalayan, Cinereous and White-Backed vultures visited, leading to interaction among the wild and captive birds. A vulture just before its release, at Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre, Pinjore, near Panchkula on Friday. (Sant Arora/HT Photo) After looking at the success of the release of Himalayan Griffons, we will release the endangered species in the wild in the next five to six months. They would be satellite-tagged. We had applied through the telecommunications department for that for these birds too, but the permission did not come. We will now apply through the government, said Dr Prakash. Next on the exit list are the White-Backed species. Also, the environment minister handed over 10 captive-bred vultures that have siblings at the Pinjore centre, to authorities of the Van Vihar National Park, Madhya Pradesh, as part of genetic management of captive populations. Javadekar said the central government was committed to providing scientific and financial support to conservation programmes across the country. Vulture population had crashed in the country due to veterinary use of the drug diclofenac, a pain killer. Vultures died after they fed on carcasses of animals that had the drug in their body. The central government banned diclofenac for veterinary use in 2006. Earlier report: Pinjore Jatayu centre to free 2 vultures Need more money Talking to HT, Dr Vibhu Prakash, who has been taking care of the centre for the last 15 years, said fund shortage remained a concern. The government just provided the land and gives administrative support. All these years, we have been running it with the help of donations from NGOs, he said. He added that food alone for vultures costs Rs 1 crore spent on goat carcasses. After working for 15 years, we got Rs 99 lakh from the central government; and the Haryana government provided Rs 26 lakh. It should be totally government-funded, he said. The funding for the centre, which has a staff of around 15, has largely come from international agencies such as the Darwin Initiative for the Survival of Species, the UK government fund, and The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, UK. POINT BY POINT The two Himalayan Griffons before being released into the wild, at the breeding centre in Pinjore near Panchkula on Friday (Sant Arora/HT Photo) Know the centre: Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre at Pinjore (Haryana), spread over five acres, has 214 vultures of four species 76 Oriental White-Backed, 29 Slender-Billed, 107 Long-Billed and the two Himalayan Griffon that were released on Friday but would continue to be fed for while here. No other centre houses such a large number of vultures anywhere in the world. Why the centre: It has been working on battling against the downslide in population of vultures. Vulture population had crashed in India due to veterinary use of diclofenac, a pain killer. Vultures died after they fed on carcasses of animals that had the drug in their body. It was banned in 2006. How serious: According to information provided at the Pinjore centre, population of two of Indias commonest vultures has declined by 90 % during the last decade. The Indian White-Backed and Long-Billed vultures were once regarded as very common in India, but now they are listed as critically endangered by BirdLife International, UK. Whats the fuss: The release of the two vultures on Friday marks the conclusion of 10-year breeding, and is the first such release from this centre. Successful release and assimilation of the birds is the final success of the centre. Why Himalayan Griffon: This species is not endangered, thus the two birds have been released first to know response. Later, the endangered species would follow. Also read I Thriving Morni vultures bring cheer to wildlife conservationist Mansa police have booked a SAD sarpanch Surat Singh along with his son and brother for attacking a CPI (ML) leader in Mansa on Thursday morning. Mazdoor Mukti Morcha Punjab chief Bhagwant Samao was attacked by the sarpanch and his accomplices when he was holding a meeting with the MGNREGA workers at Borawal village. I was discussing some issues with the labourers, the sarpanch accompanied with his son and brother came and started arguing with me. They asked us with whose permission I have got into the village to meet these villagers, said Samao who was admitted to civil hospital in the morning after being attacked by sharp weapon. CPI (ML) senior leader Sukhdarshan Natt has criticised the brutal action of the sarpanch and has threatened to conduct a rally in Borawal village on Friday. They didnt care or even considered that female labourers were there and they were attacked upon. He claimed that the sarpanch and his son were irked over the issue that during morning working hours, the MGNREGA labourers were being held up for a meeting. Bhagwant Samao and his party has been holding rallies for the last 15 days demanding residential plots for the labourers. His meeting with the MGNREGA labourers in Borawal village irked the sarpanch as they thought he (Samao) was instigating the labourers to rebel against them, the police said. The police have booked Surat Singh (sarpanch), Gurpreet Singh (sarpanchs son) and Tara Singh (sarpanchs brother) under sections 323, 506, 148/149 of the IPC and section 3/4 of SC/ST act. The accused were reported to be absconding. for the last couple of months Mazdoor Mukti morcha leader Bhagwant samao was holding a protest in Mansa where details of labourers were being collected as they were demanding residential plots as promised by the state government during 2012 assembly elections. on thursday Samao had visited Borawal village to meet the MGNREGA labourers to collect their personal details during which he was attacked upon by the sarpanch, his son and his younger brother. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Chief minister Parkash Singh Badal was on Friday left embarrassed when an ardasia(one who offers prayers) at the Golden Temple refused to honour him with a siropa. The ardasia, identified as Balbir Singh, had on January 20 denied siropa to deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal --- who heads the Shiromani Akali Dal which controls the Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Commitee that manages gurdwara affairs. After Fridays incident, the SGPC was quick crack whip and transfer Balbir Singh to a Ludhiana gurdwara. Sources said around 11 am, when Badal was inside the sanctum sanctorum, Golden Temple manager Sulkhan Singh asked Balbir Singh to give siropa to the CM. The ardasia paid no heed to him and instead handed over a patasa (prasad) to the chief minister. SGPC officials said it was perhaps for the first time that octogenarian Badal had been meted out such a treatment inside the Golden Temple in his long political career. Over the years, the SGPC has refrained from honouring Congress chief ministers of the state inside the sanctum sanctorum on the grounds that they were not baptised Sikhs or true Sikhs. Even non-Sikh prominent personalities such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi have been honoured inside the sanctum sanctorum. Former PM Manmohan Singh received the siropa inside the sanctum sanctorum when he was the prime minister. SGPC additional secretary Daljit Singh Bedi said gurdwara panel chief Avtar Singh Makkar has taken strong note of the incident and ordered immediate transfer of Balbir Singh to an SGPC-run gurdwara in Macchiwara in Ludhiana district. Another ardasiaGurcharan Singh was also transferred after being charged with dereliction of duty as he had left the gurdwara 10 minutes before the scheduled time. Balbir Singh had taken his position inside the sanctum sanctorum when Badal was there. The SGPC chief has also ordered an inquiry into the incident , Bedi added. Hurt over inaction in sacrilege incidents: Ardasia Balbir Singh, on his part, said: Like most Sikhs, my religious sentiments have been hurt over sacrilege incidents across Punjab, sadly, not even a single person involved in these incidents has been punished. Siropa: A mark of honour Siropa, a piece of saffron cloth (around 1.25 metre), holds great value in Sikhism and is offered to dignitaries at a religious place or function. A siropa being offered inside the sanctum sanctorum of the Golden Temple is considered a great honour. Badal and his son Sukhbir are at the helm of affairs in Punjab. Their party, the SAD controls the SGPC ---the body that manages gurdwara affairs. Both father-son duo is routinely honoured with siropas at functions. A day after over 50 members of the Punjab Parents Association were booked for obstructing the Amritsar deputy commissioners official vehicle, the city police on Thursday said they would start identifying them with the help of CCTV footage. Members of the Punjab Parent Association said they have asked DC Varun Roojam to take back the charges as this will not suppress their agitation. Cases have been registered at the local Civil Lines police station against 50 unidentified parents besides MK Sharma and Ranjit Kumar Bobby, who are spearheading the agitation, under sections 353, 341, 186, 147 and 149 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). After identifying the rest, we will start the investigation. We carried out raids to trace MK Sharma and Bobby but they are absconding, additional deputy commissioner (ADCP II) Gaurav Garg said. The cases were registered after a formal complaint was given by sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) Rajesh Sharma. PARENTS GIVE WEEKS ULTIMATUM TO DC We are not scared of the charges pressed against us. MK Sharma has met education minister Daljit Singh Cheema who has assured that the regulatory body will be formed within 10 days. The Amritsar DC has been asked to withdraw the charges within a week as this is not a way to suppress the parents voice. This terrorising business wont work with us, said Sanjay Goyal, a parent. Other representatives of PPA said agitations would start again if even after the assurance regulatory authority is not implemented. When contacted, DC Varun Roojam said, From the first day I have been listening to them. We have been organising meetings in this regard. We constituted teams to visit the schools. Everything was going in the right direction but some elements defeated the purpose by blocking the roads, my vehicle and threatening the administration. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Amidst all buzz over Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Chandigarh on the International Yoga Day on June 21, teachers of the citys government schools are unhappy as they would have to sacrifice their summer vacations to ensure a good show on the grand day. Although, it is being described as voluntary practice, teachers are being sent reminders about attendance on WhatsApp on a daily basis by the department officials. With as many as 6,400 school students, who are being trained for the final show, 5,800 will be doing yoga with the PM at the Capital Complex. While private schools have refused to be a part of the event, the UT Administration is doing everything possible to ensure full strength from government schools, be it in the form of teachers or students. However, the teachers who had been earlier protesting over the issue, feel as though this has taken away their right to spend their summer vacations as per their plans. Although, as per orders of education secretary Sarvjit Singh of April 29, the teachers, who have been imparted training by representatives of the Isha Foundation, were asked to come on voluntary basis. However, teachers say that isnt the case. We have been time and again told verbally that lecturers would be required to monitor the situation during the training camp till June 21, said president, UT Cadre Educational Employees Union, Swarn Singh Kamboj. Even though teachers have been given duty on a rotational basis, various teachers feel it doesnt leave them with the option to travel or plan their vacations till the Yoga Day. Commerce lecturer from Government Model High School, Dhanas, Swarn Singh Kamboj, said, Since there is no head in our school, there is complete confusion. On one day, there are some instructions given to us, on another, we are told to do something else. While there are no written orders, we cannot say no to such duties which means we have to be in the city till June 21. Another teacher from the same school said, It is an honour to have the PM visiting the city, but teachers should be spared from being put on duty during holidays. On the other hand, a teacher from a government school, Ram Darbar, told the HT, It is easy to say that we are being put on duty on a rotational basis, but then most of us have also been assigned duties on June 5 for the examination for clerks and stenographers, implying we cannot plan our holidays. However, NCC in-charge at Government Model School, Sector 37, Pardeep Kumar, has a different story to tell. I was assigned duty at Government School, Sector 40, where there were no participants. Whom do I train? It is ironical that those who want to do duty cannot, while those who dont wish, are being forced to do it! The department should look into this. An NSS programming officer from a local government school, requesting anonymity, said, We are regularly sent reminders on WhatsAap by our NSS head and even cluster heads regarding attendance and to send photographs of yoga training sessions. So, while it is being called voluntary on the one hand, there is pressure to ensure attendance on the other. Education secretary Sarvjit Singh said, We have been reiterating that the practice sessions is voluntary. I dont think being put on duty for one day can hamper holiday plans. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Tamil actor and director Balu Anand suffered a massive heart attack and died in his house in Coimbatore on Friday, family sources said. The 62-year-old Anand, who has acted in some 100 films and directed a few Tamil movies, complained of chest pain at his house in Kalampalayam and was immediately, rushed to a nearby private hospital. However, he died on the way, hospital officials said. Read: Tamil actor R Senthil upset over death rumours, files police complaint Read: Charges against actor Suriya dropped Anand worked in a number of films including Sathyaraj-starrrer Annanagar First Street and Vijayakant-starrer Nane Raja Naane Mantri. He is survived by his wife, son and daughter, sources said. ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop Telugu actor Allu Arjuns latest film Sarrainodu has turned out to be a blockbuster and the actor is all set to celebrate its success with a well-deserved family holiday in Turkey. It will be a week-long trip with his family. Turkey has always been on his mind and he finally made time to visit the place. He leaves over the weekend, said a source close to the actor. Upon his return, Arjun will commence work on his yet-untitled Telugu-Tamil project with filmmaker Linguswamy. Meanwhile, Sarrainodu, which was dubbed in released in Malayalam as Yodhavu last week, is raking in the moolah at the ticket window. Read: Allu Arjun keen on a cameo in Chiranjeevis 150th film Read: Sarrainodu BO | Allu Arjuns film makes Rs 72 crore in its first week Reportedly, the film minted around Rs 5 crore in its first week in Kerala. ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop Actor Daniel Craig is heading to the small screen for the TV adaptation of Jonathan Franzens hit novel Purity. The Spectre star will lead the cast in the project for US network Showtime, where bosses have picked up the show for a straight-to-series order, featuring 20 episodes, reported Guardian online. Read: Goodbye James Bond. Daniel Craig signs Steven Soderbergh film The British actor will portray German businessman Andreas Wolf, who finds himself drawn to young intern Pip in the thrilling drama, which is described as a story of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder. Craig will also serve as executive producer alongside Scott Rudin and Todd Field, who will also direct. Jonathan Franzens Purity is an epic American novel that pulses with the energy of a psychological thriller..., said Showtime President and CEO David Nevins. Read: Daniel Craig is finally, definitely not playing James Bond again His gripping and timely story has attracted a powerhouse team - Todd Field, Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, David Hare, along with Franzen himself, and the brilliant Daniel Craig who is perfectly cast as the charismatic, mysterious Andreas Wolf. Put it all together and PURITY promises to be the kind of taut, long-form, serialized storytelling that is the best of premium television, and is precisely what we at Showtime aspire to deliver. Follow @htshowbiz for more The Islamic State terror group remained the greatest threat globally in 2015, maintaining a formidable force in Iraq and Syria, including a large number of foreign terrorist fighters, a US report said on Thursday. IS capacity and territorial control in Iraq and Syria reached a high point in spring 2015, but began to erode over the second half of 2015, the state department said in its annual Country Reports on Terrorism 2015. IS did not have a significant battlefield victory in Iraq and Syria after May. At the end of 2015, 40% of the territory IS controlled at the beginning of the year had been liberated, it said in its annual Congress-mandated report. In Syria, local forces expelled IS fighters from several key cities along the routes connecting the two IS strongholds of Raqqa and Mosul, and reclaimed about 11% of the territory IS once controlled. These losses demonstrated the power of coordinated government action to mobilize against and confront terrorism, it said. Despite this, IS remained the greatest threat globally, maintaining a formidable force in Iraq and Syria, including a large number of foreign terrorist fighters, it said. Noting that IS loss of territory in Iraq and Syria in 2015 diminished its availability of fund, the State Department said the terrorist organization relied heavily on extortion and the levying of taxes on local populations under its control, as well as a range of other sources, such as oil smuggling, kidnapping for ransom, looting, antiquities theft and smuggling, foreign donations, and human trafficking. Iraqi security forces and allied Popular Mobilization Forces advance during fighting against Islamic State militants in Saqlawiyah near Fallujah, Iraq, on Thursday. (AP) Coalition airstrikes targeted IS energy infrastructure -- modular refineries, petroleum storage tanks, and crude oil collection points -- as well as bulk cash storage sites. These airstrikes have significantly degraded IS ability to generate revenue. The United States led the international effort, including through the UN, to confront IS oil smuggling and its antiquities dealing, delivering additional blows to its financial infrastructure, it said. Along with IS, al-Qaeda and both groups branches increased their focus on staging mass-casualty attacks including attacks on international hotel chains in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Tunisia; other popular public locations; and the bombing of a Russian passenger plane, it added. While IS lost significant territory in Iraq and Syria during the second half of 2015, the group made gains in Libya amid the instability there. And in January, IS publicly announced the establishment of an affiliate, known as ISIL-Khorasan (ISIL-K), in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it said. At years end, the group had focused the majority of its attacks against Afghan government and civilian targets, although the group has also claimed a small number of attacks in Pakistans settled areas. ISIL-K gained a small foothold in southern Nangarhar province in Afghanistan, but was significantly challenged by the Afghan government, Coalition Forces, and the Taliban, and had little support among the regions population, the State Department said. Protesters who oppose Donald Trump scuffled with his supporters as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee held a rally in California, with fistfights erupting and one supporter hit with an egg. Hundreds of demonstrators blocked a police van and then entered the parking area of the San Jose Convention Center where the event took place, insulting Trump supporters in their cars and attacking those leaving the rally. A dozen or more people were punched, the Los Angeles Times reported, saying at least one person was hit with an egg. ABC News reported that some protesters surrounded the car of a presumed Trump supporter as it left the convention center garage, shaking the car and smashing its tail light. Crowds had earlier chanted No hate in our state and carried signs that read Dump Trump as they marched near the convention centre. One protester was seen burning an American flag and some supporters were spat on. Several fistfights erupted but were quickly broken up. Police were out in force, at one point forming a line to allow Trump supporters access to the rally and prevent clashes that have erupted at a number of the real estate magnates events in recent weeks. Trump was last in the San Jose area in April, when he spoke at the California Republican Party convention where protesters blocked access to the venue, forcing him to use the back door. Last week, dozens of protesters were arrested in San Diego after a campaign appearance by Trump, who has angered many with his rhetoric against Hispanics, women, Muslims and others. Demonstrations at a Trump rally in New Mexico last month also turned violent as protestors overran barricades and clashed with police in riot gear. (AFP) AJR Hillary Clinton has managed to garner support from the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community, which includes Indian Americans, as she ventures to California aiming to snatch the Democratic presidential nomination from rival Bernie Sanders next week. California has a large Asian-American population. It has the largest Indian-American population outside the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Asian Americans growing influence and political power is poised to play a major role in this crucial election. Secretary Clinton has meaningfully engaged with our community and she has strongly advocated for issues of importance to AAPI families, ranging from environmental justice to gun control, Dilawar Syed, co-founder and vice chairman of Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) Victory Fund, said. We repudiate the racial, ethnic and religious prejudices espoused by the presumptive Republican nominee. By mobilising the AAPI electorate across the state on June 7th, we will ensure Secretary Clintons victory in California, he said. Presidential candidates must do more than pay lip service to get the support of the AAPI community, Shekar Narasimhan, chairman of AAPI Victory Fund said in a release. He added that the Victory Fund will also ensure that Clinton acts on her promises when she is elected as the next US President. Clintons campaign is the first to include an AAPI outreach director to specifically target our community and she has also shown her support for the community by both hosting and attending events in Washington and Los Angeles, Tung Nguyen, co-founder of AAPI Victory Fund said. He said this unprecedented level of outreach will continue to resonate with the community, especially on shared policies and priorities. Authorities in Libya and Greece said on Friday they had found more than 100 bodies after two boats carrying migrants to Europe capsized in the Mediterranean Sea. Libya Navy spokesman Col Ayoub Gassim told The Associated Press that at least 104 bodies were pulled out of waters near the western city of Zwara but the expected death toll is likely to be higher since such boats usually carry up to 125 people. He said the Libyan coast guard found the empty boat on Thursday and it was possible the vessel capsized on Wednesday. Gassim blamed Europe for doing nothing but counting bodies to stop the illegal migration from Libya. Greek authorities said they had recovered four bodies and rescued 340 people from a migrant boat that capsized south of the island of Crete. At least 700 people were on board the 25-30 meter (82-98 foot) boat, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said. The information we have on the number of people on board the vessel is still unclear - weve heard that there were 400 or 500 people on board, but we cannot confirm that number, Greek coast guard spokesman Nikos Lagadianos said. The coast guard said the vessel, which resembled a large fishing boat, was located half-sunk about 75 nautical miles south of Crete in international waters, and within Egypts search and rescue area of operation. Greece sent two patrol vessels, a military airplane and three helicopters, while five passing ships also participated in the rescue operation. The Greek coast guard said the operation was continuing to locate any potentially missing passengers from the boat. It was not immediately clear where the boats passengers were from, or where the vessel had set off from or was heading to. This was the second migrant boat found in the same area of the southern Aegean Sea since last week, indicating people smugglers may be forging a possible new route. The discovery of the bodies off the Libyan and Greek coasts were the latest in a string of tragedies that have claimed more than 1,000 lives as desperate migrants embark on treacherous sea journeys seeking a better life in Europe. Migrant smugglers have opted for more dangerous routes after a March agreement between the European Union and Turkey to stem the flow of refugees. The short crossing from the Turkish coast to Greek islands was the preferred route for migrants heading to Europe until Balkan countries closed their borders. Under the deal with Turkey, those arriving on Greek islands from March 20 onwards face deportation back to Turkey unless they successfully apply for asylum in Greece, a financially troubled country few migrants or refugees want to stay in. The deal has led to a dramatic decrease in the number of people arriving on Greek islands from Turkey. The coast guard said it and European border patrol agency Frontex had rescued 164 people in four separate incidents on Thursday off the islands of Lesbos and Chios. As passions rise over the June 23 European Union referendum, Prime Minister David Cameron was savaged by a restive audience when he appeared for a live TV session to make the case for Britain remaining in the EU. Clearly on the backfoot in the face of a belligerent Sky News studio audience and a tough interviewer on Thursday night, Cameron repeated what many called scaremongering as part of Project Fear to highlight the adverse effects of Britain voting to leave the EU. After Cameron featured in the first live referendum-related session, justice secretary Michael Gove, one of the leading lights of the Vote Leave camp, was scheduled to appear on the same news channel on Friday night and admitted to being nervous. The consensus after Camerons appearance was that the session did not exactly enhance his stature or win any news converts to his pro-EU cause. Charitable commentators said he was fast coming across as Tony Blair in his last days as prime minister; others were more biting. The most severe blow during the live session was delivered by an English literature student, Soraya Bouazzaoui, who accused him of waffling about risks posed by Turkeys links with Islamic extremists. Bouazzaoui said she wanted to vote for the UK to stay in the EU but the Remain campaign had been nothing but scaremongering. As Cameron began to reel off the positive case for staying, Bouazzaoui interrupted him: Let me finish now, because Ive seen you interrupt many people beforehand. Let me finish now. I know waffling when I see it, OK? She continued, Im sorry, but you have not answered my question. How can you reassure the people who do want to vote out because I have many friends who want to vote out that we are safe from extremism when we are willing to work with a government like Turkey who want to be part of the EU? Senior Conservative leader Iain Duncan-Smith, a leading Vote Leave campaigner, accused Cameron of lying on live television on the issue of controlling migration from within the EU. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON France on Friday hosted top diplomats from the West and the Arab world to organise a peace conference by years end that will revive long-dormant Israeli-Palestinian negotiations despite slim chances of success. French President Francois Hollande urged Israel and the Palestinians to make a courageous choice for peace as he opened the conference on the conflict in Paris. The meeting is aimed at laying the ground for a full-fledged peace conference to be held by the end of the year but few believe genuine progress will be made. Neither Israel nor the Palestinians have been invited to the talks and Israel has angrily compared the French initiative to the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement to draw up the regions borders. Although US Secretary of State John Kerry is attending the conference, Washington has made it clear it believes little or nothing will be achieved. Hollande said a solution will have to come from the Middle East, but in the end it is up to the Israelis and Palestinians to make the courageous choice of peace. The discussion on the conditions of a lasting agreement between Israelis and Palestinians must take into account the whole of the region, he told representatives of some 25 countries, as well as the UN, European Union and Arab League. European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told reporters major powers have a duty to revive talks between Israel and Palestine and that the perspectives created by the Oslo accords in 1993 were at risk. The policy of settlement expansion and demolitions, violence, and incitement tells us very clearly that the perspective that Oslo opened up is seriously at risk of fading away, Mogherini told reporters. France has said it felt compelled to act because opportunities for setting up a Palestinian state alongside Israel are slipping away, while the situation in the region is deteriorating. Participants in Fridays meetings will work out details of the conference to be held at the end of the year and set up teams that will spell out economic and security incentives for Israelis and Palestinians for reaching a deal. We cannot substitute for the parties. Our initiative aims at giving them guarantees that the peace will be solid, sustainable and under international supervision, Hollande told the gathering. Besides Secretary of State Kerry, the meeting is being attended by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and representatives from the Arab League, the European Union and key Arab states. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuffed the French initiative and said a deal can only be reached in direct negotiations. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed Frances efforts, in part because it could potentially end a two-decade-old US monopoly on mediation. Palestinians have long complained that the US heavily favours Israel and cannot serve as an honest broker. The Palestinians seek to establish a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in 1967. In 2012, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly recognised a state of Palestine in these boundaries, though setting up an actual state requires a deal with Israel. For now, chances of reviving negotiations appear remote because of the lack of common ground. Unlike his predecessors, Netanyahu refuses to recognise the pre-1967 lines as a starting point for border talks, with agreed upon land swaps - the internationally backed formula for a peace deal. Abbas says theres no point going back to talks without ground rules and a timeline for a deal. Continued Israeli settlement expansion on occupied lands and several months of renewed Israeli-Palestinian violence have also undermined trust. Its not clear how the French efforts will bridge these gaps. The last high-level Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were held in 2008 between Abbas and then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Subsequent efforts to restart meaningful talks failed, most recently in 2014 when Kerry aborted a mediation mission following a year of low-level Israeli-Palestinian meetings. Abbas aides have said they want other world powers to get involved, like in last years deal on Irans nuclear program. The existing model of Israeli-Palestinian talks brokered by the US has failed because of the power gap between an occupying power and those it occupies, they have said. Dore Gold, the director general of Israels foreign ministry, predicted on Thursday that the Paris conference will completely fail and the only way to make peace is through direct talks. Israel has indicated an openness recently to some elements of an Arab peace proposal from 2002, which promised peace and recognition of Israel by the Arab and Muslim world in exchange for the creation of a Palestinian state. Gold gave no indication of any movement on that proposal. The rain-swollen River Seine in Paris reached its highest level in three decades on Friday, spilling its banks and prompting the Louvre museum to shut its doors and evacuate artworks in its basement. Parisians were urged to avoid the banks of the river which was expected to reach a peak of six metres (19 feet) on Friday, while deadly floods continued to wreak havoc elsewhere in France and Germany. In France a man on horseback died after he was swept away in a swollen river in Evry-Gregy-sur-Yerre, southeast of Paris, local authorities said on Thursday. A photo taken on Friday shows waters of the river Seine rising on the statue of the Zouave at the Alma bridge in Paris. (AFP) And in Germany, a 65-year-old man was found dead in the flood-hit town of Simbach am Inn, bringing the total death toll in the country this week to ten. Days of torrential rain have only added to the gloomy atmosphere in France, also facing a third full day of train strikes after months of protests and political turmoil. French environment minister Segolene Royal said she feared more bodies would be found as waters recede in French villages which have seen main streets turned into muddy rivers. Mohamed Amine, a tourist from Venice, watched the rising waters from a Paris bridge with amusement. I am used to having water up to my knees during the Aqua Alta, when the Italian city floods in winter, he told AFP. But people in Paris are not used to it. Some towns in central France have been hit by their worst floods in over a century, with more than 5,000 people evacuated since the weekend and around 19,000 homes without power. In Paris, officials were erecting emergency flood barriers along the Seine and a suburban train line running alongside the river was closed. Plastic boxes placed between sculptures as artworks are packed to be moved from the exhibition hall, as visitors are turned away from the entrance of the Musee de Louvre which is closed due to the unusually high water level of the nearby river Seine in Paris on Friday. (AP) The riverbanks are home to both the Louvre -- the worlds most visited museum -- and the Musee dOrsay, which was also preparing for the worst. The Musee dOrsay, a converted railway station which hosts the worlds greatest Impressionist collection, closed early on Thursday and was to move its most vulnerable works to upper floors. While the rivers swelling has so far caused little damage in Paris and is unlikely to submerge the city centre, public information boards urged those living near the Seine to clear out their basements. French firefighters on a small boat evacuate residents from a flooded area in Longjumeau, southern Paris. (REUTERS) Rescuers in the Parisian suburb of Longjumeau were paddling up streets in lifeboats, while in the town of Montargis, only the tops of cars could be seen peeking above the surface. Forecasters in both France and Germany have warned of more downpours over the next 24 hours. French President Francois Hollande said a state of natural catastrophe would be declared when the cabinet meets next Wednesday, a necessary step to trigger compensation payments. German devastation Several towns in southern Germany have been devastated by flooding. In Simbach am Inn, the force of the water swept away the entire stock of a sawmill, leaving huge stacks of splintered wood blocking roads. Helpers remove the mud from a flooded gym in Simbach am Inn, southern Germany on Thursday. (AFP) On one street, a car could be seen parked vertically against the wall of a house, pushed there by the floodwaters. Many other vehicles lay flipped over on roads blanketed by mud. Six people have been killed in the Simbach area, including three women from the same family -- a mother, grandmother and daughter -- who had been trapped in their house. Two other elderly people were also found dead in their homes. The (rise in) water was so quick that practically no residents had the time to run away, police spokesman Armin Angloher said. An aerial view taken on Thursday shows flooded city of Simbach am Inn. (AFP) The deaths bring the toll from the floods in Germany to 10, including four killed earlier this week in the southern region of Baden-Wuerttemberg. Three others are missing, a police spokesperson in Bavaria state said. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her thoughts were with the families who have been plunged into this devastation. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has admitted to smoking marijuana in the past, said on Thursday he has no plans to light up even after his government makes it legal to do so. I dont think so. Im not someone who has a history of using drugs, Trudeau said, speaking in Winnipeg in a question and answer session with the Winnipeg Free Press newspaper. I lived in Whistler (British Columbia) for a few years, surrounded by friends who did. It was never my thing. Trudeau, 44, said he does not drink much alcohol or coffee, either. Canadians are allowed to use medical marijuana with a prescription, but recreational use is illegal. The government has said it will introduce legislation to legalize recreational use in 2017. Trudeau said he wants to change the law for two reasons: to better protect young people from marijuana by providing increased control over points of sale and to take revenue away from organised crime. Letters and manuscripts of Virginia Woolf, Ted Hughes, TS Eliot, George Orwell and other 20th century literary greats have been made available free online by the British Library, giving fans, teachers and students unprecedented access to the rare documents. The documents include a letter from George Bernard Shaw in which he gives his opinion of James Joyces Ulysses (It is a revolting record of a disgusting phase of civilisation; but it is a truthful one), Orwells notebook in which he lists ideas for what would become the classic dystopic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Woolfs manuscript draft of the acclaimed Mrs Dalloway and an early travel notebook in which she begins to explore the stream of consciousness technique. The material is available on the website called Discovering Literature: 20th Century and reveals the ways in which key writers of the 20th century rejected inherited traditions and experimented with new forms and themes. The library said through the authors notebooks and first drafts, people could see their creative processes, innovation, self-doubt, rejection, rebellion and risks they took on their journey to becoming the literary greats they are known as today. Anna Lobbenberg, digital programmes manager at the library, said: Until now these treasures could only be viewed in the British Library Reading Rooms or on display in exhibitions now Discovering Literature: 20th Century will bring these items to anyone in the world with an internet connection. With these stunning documents we hope to shine a light on the extraordinary innovation demonstrated by key writers of the 20th century. From James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and T S Eliot to Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, JG Ballard, Angela Carter and Hanif Kureishi, these rebels and risk-takers were determined to find new forms to reflect the fast changing world around them. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Taiwans premier donned virtual reality goggles in parliament on Friday, to discuss the future of the islands tech industry in what looked like a debate between robots. Legislator Huang Kuo-chang of the opposition New Power Party (NPP), a former student protest leader who was also wearing the goggles, persuaded Lin Chuan to put on the chunky black headset covering his eyes. Both then discussed the challenges for Taiwans key tech industry, which is looking to virtual reality to breathe new life into the sector. With straight faces, the pair debated for five minutes wearing the futuristic visors. Huang said he wanted to highlight the difficulties ahead for Taiwan as a manufacturer for global brands. Its time for Taiwans industries to transform, and I think one of the directions is VR, he said in a question and answer session. Lin replied that his government was seeking to turn Taiwan -- which is focused on automation, Internet and artificial intelligence -- into Asias Silicon Valley. While some virtual reality goggles transport wearers into other worlds, these two had their feet firmly on the ground. All they could see was a cartoon graphic made by the NPP which said young people could hardly survive due to low salaries. Huang asked Lin to press the yes button on his goggles if he agreed, which he did. Virtual reality is the buzz industry at this weeks Computex tech fair in Taipei, with major brands including Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC displaying their headsets. Acer Inc., a leading Taiwanese PC maker, has also branched out into the field, joining forces with Swedish game studio Starbreeze to develop a high-end VR headset designed for arcades and theme parks. How to revive Taiwans sluggish economy is top of the agenda for the new Democratic Progressive Party government, which was sworn in last month. The islands top government budgeting body last week lowered its annual growth forecast to 1.06%, 0.41 percentage points lower than the previous forecast made in February. KP Sharma Oli has refused to quit as Nepals prime minister amid a fresh tug-of-war with key coalition partner the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists), which is seeking his ouster. There is pressure on me to quit from certain sections, but my shoulders havent tired yet from the burden of the post, and I am not resigning, Oli told a gathering in Kathmandu on Thursday. Oli, who heads the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), is said to be under pressure to resign to honour the terms of a gentlemens agreement he made last month with the Maoists. The parties had inked a nine-point pact and reportedly had an informal understanding that Oli would quit his post to make way for a unity government after the annual budget was passed in parliament. The premier denied any such agreement had been made. There has been no deal to hand over my post. If theres any such deal, I dare anyone to show it to me, he said. Senior members of his party, such as former prime ministers Madhav Kumar Nepal and Jhala Nath Khanal, however, contradicted Olis stance and insisted an informal deal had been finalised. Sources said the agreement was reached by the two parties after the Maoists threatened to withdraw from the coalition, which would have led to the collapse of the government. The Maoists agreed to stay after being assured that cases against their cadres for wartime human rights violations would not be pursued in court. Under the terms of the agreement, Oli reportedly was to make way for Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist-Centre) chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda to head the next government. The rift between the coalition partners is reportedly widening, with Maoist ministers staying away from a cabinet meeting on Thursday and dozens of civil servants being transferred against Olis wishes. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Students and faculty from the University of California, Los Angeles and the surrounding community will hold a second vigil on Friday to pay tribute to a professor who was gunned down in a murder-suicide committed by a former student. On Thursday, hundreds gathered to grieve the loss of engineering professor William Klug who police say was shot and killed in a small office on campus on Wednesday by Mainak Sarkar, 38, who then took his own life. It will take time to cope and overcome the sadness that has cloaked our campus, but we will do it and we will do it together, said Danny Siegel, the president of the student council at UCLA during the vigil. The base of UCLAs Bruin Bear statue on campus was covered with notes paying tribute to the well-liked professor as students completed finals and class work ahead of summer break. Read: UCLA shooter Mainak Sarkars first victim was his wife Fridays vigil will be held outside Boelter Hall where, police said, Sarkar came armed with two 9mm pistols and multiple ammunition clips to kill Klug. He also planned to kill another professor, who was off campus and unharmed. Sarkar, a former UCLA student, shot dead a woman at her home in Minnesota before he drove almost 2,000 miles (3,200 km) to the school and killed Klug, police said. Students walk past the engineering building as they leave campus after police officers conducted a search at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus after it was placed on lockdown following reports of a shooter that left two people dead in Los Angeles, California. (Reuters) Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck told reporters on Thursday that a search of Sarkars St. Paul, Minnesota, home turned up a kill list that included the name of the woman, Klugs name and the name of the other professor. Officials would not release the name of the woman. Police said they found her body at a house in the 2400 block of Pearson Parkway in Brooklyn Park near Minneapolis. A marriage license application obtained by Reuters lists a residence on that block as the home of Ashley Erin Hasti and Sarkar, who married in Minnesota in 2011. Neighbors also said Hasti lived at the home. Records do not indicate whether the couple, who appeared to have been living separately, were divorced. Read: IIT alumnus, disgruntled student: Who is UCLA gunman Mainak Sarkar? An active Facebook page belonging to a Minneapolis-area woman named Ashley Hasti shows pictures of Sarkar, but not more recently than May of 2011, about two weeks before their marriage. A page apparently belonging to him, with no public posts since 2011, still prominently displayed several photos of them together. Sarkar came from Indias eastern state of West Bengal, where he graduated in aerospace engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur in 2000, according to an ex-classmate and the universitys alumni list. Staff at his secondary school in the industrial town of Durgapur remember him as an able student who passed his exams with good results. A gunman who shot dead his former college professor in California before taking his own life also murdered his wife as he worked off a kill list, authorities and media reports said. Mainak Sarkar, 38, killed Ashley Hasti in Minnesota and then drove 2,000 miles (3,220-kilometer) to Los Angeles where he shot his former professor William Klug on Wednesday, according to police and local media. Officials in Hennepin County, in the midwestern state of Minnesota, said Hasti and Sarkar were married on June 14, 2011. It was unclear if the couple were still married at the time of their deaths. Read | UCLA shooter Mainak Sarkar had planned to kill another professor: Police Klug, 39, a father of two who taught mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), was shot in his office on campus before Sarkar turned the gun on himself, police said. A note in Sarkars backpack -- in which he asked that someone look after his cat -- led police to his home in Minnesota, where a kill list was found, Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck told reporters. He said Klug was named on the list along with another UCLA professor and the deceased woman, apparently Hasti. She was found dead of a gunshot wound at her home in the small Minnesota town of Brooklyn Park. Beck said investigators believe Sarkar killed her earlier in the week before driving to Los Angeles to continue his rampage, armed with two semi-automatic pistols and multiple rounds of ammunition. We believe he went there to kill two faculty of UCLA, Beck said. He was only able to locate one. The second member was off campus. He said Sarkar was apparently convinced Klug had stolen his computer code and given it to someone else, and seemed bent on revenge. That appears to be his motive, Beck said. We have discussed this with UCLA (which) says there is no truth to it. This was a making of his own imagination. He said investigators were trying to piece together Sarkars movements between Minnesota and Los Angeles to see if there is a trail and any other victims. Held a grudge The murder-suicide prompted a lockdown and a massive security deployment at the university, amid fears of a mass shooting. The university was shut down for the day but reopened on Thursday and a vigil was planned later in the evening to honor Klug. Students and staff affected by the shooting were offered counseling. The Los Angeles Times quote a source who was close to Klug as saying the professor had gone out of his way to help Sarkar finish his dissertation and to graduate, even though his work was subpar. In his doctoral dissertation, submitted in 2013, Sarkar thanked Klug for his help and support. Read | IIT alumnus, disgruntled student: Who is UCLA gunman Mainak Sarkar? But he apparently developed a grudge against his former mentor, and offered scathing criticism of Klug in a now-deleted blog post on March 10. William Klug, UCLA professor is not the kind of person when you think of a professor, he wrote in the post quoted by several US media. He is a very sick person. I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy... Beck said the other professor targeted by Sarkar told investigators he was aware Sarkar held a grudge but did not think it would rise to the level of homicide. Weve become immune According to his LinkedIn page, Sarkar got his masters degree from Stanford University and also studied aerospace engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, where he graduated in 2000. He apparently worked as a research assistant at the University of Texas in 2003 and then took on a job as a software developer. Read | Shooting victim Professor William Klug was developing virtual heart Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Thursday that the deadly shooting at UCLA was a reminder of how endemic gun violence had become in the United States, where readily-available firearms claim around 30,000 lives each year. When guns are so easy to get, when that violence continues to play out on our streets, we have to speak up and speak out -- have smart legislation to try to prevent that where we can, he told reporters. You can have a Ph.D. or you can be a little kid, you could be black or white, brown or Asian ... and gun violence has just become too acceptable. Weve become immune to it. Sayonara Luxton, who was born in Goa and moved to England in 1993, has taken over as the mayor of the royal borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, marking a new stage of political engagement by Indian-origin individuals in Britain. A councillor from Sunningdale in the royal borough, Luxtons new position comes days after Goa-origin Rianna DSouza became one of Britains youngest councillors after being elected to St Ives Town Council, north of London. The royal borough of Windsor and Maidenhead to the west of London includes Windsor Castle, Eton College, Legoland and Ascot Racecourse. Luxton, clad in the ceremonial attire of a mayor, said it was a great honour to become the face of the royal borough: When I left Goa 40 years ago, I could not in my wildest dreams have dreamt that I could hold such a high office. I mean look at me, the mayoral robe was not designed for my stature, but I promise you that I hold the heart and soul and I will give everything. I will be working on a special project in Her Majestys honour and further details will be released soon. Luxton moved from Goa to Dubai at the age of 21 to join other members of her family and had a successful career with Airbus Industries. She met her husband Ian in Dubai and they have four daughters. She is now serving her third term as Sunningdale councillor and served as the deputy mayor in 2015-16. In St Ives, A-level student DSouza told the media she was "shocked" when declared elected, but now has plans for road safety and street lighting in the town. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Irans supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lashed out on Friday at the US, Britain and Israel as the Islamic republics main enemies, accusing Washington of procrastinating over Tehrans landmark nuclear deal. Its the US, the evil Britain, and the damned and cancerous Zionist regime. These are the main enemies, Khamenei said in a televised speech marking the 27th anniversary of the death of his revolutionary predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The supreme leader mentioned the nuclear deal with world powers that came into force in January, and accused Washington of breaking its promises. We sat down and negotiated with the P5+1 group and even separately with the Americans over the nuclear issue, he said during a televised speech to thousands gathered at Khomeinis extravagant mausoleum in southern Tehran. The other side, the Americans, made some commitments. The Islamic republic completed its commitments but the other unfaithful side is procrastinating. Whoever trusts in the United States is committing a big mistake and will be hit with a slap by them, he added. After the nuclear deal entered into force in mid-January, some international sanctions on Iran were lifted by the United Nations, the US and the European Union. But the US and the EU have kept sanctions related to Irans missile programme, its human rights situation and support for groups like the Lebanese Hezbollah, which Washington categorises as a terrorist organisation. Khamenei said it was impossible that Iran would enter into negotiations with the US over such issues. First they enter with a smile and (soft) language but later in practice they will not do what they should do and will not keep their commitment, he said. Iran particularly accuses President Barack Obamas administration of not taking the required steps to reassure big international banks who are reluctant to do business with Iran for fear of punitive measures. More than a decade of nuclear-related sanctions hampered Tehrans economy. President Hassan Rouhani told Tehrans newly elected Parliament last week that Iran needed 30-50 billion dollar each year in foreign investment in order for it to hit its 8% growth target. Khamenei went on to emphasise the importance of a domestic resistance economy, rather than reliance on foreign investment. To think that the economic boom of the country can be merely reached through foreign investment is a mistake, he said. More important than foreign investment is activating domestic potential. We have great deal of potential still not activated. The supreme leader also said that Iran re-joining the global economy would represent a loss and defeat and accused Irans enemies of seeking to undermine Irans finances. A US court in New York has dismissed a case of torture and human rights abuses filed against Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) president Manjit Singh GK by a city-based Sikh rights group, saying it does not have jurisdiction over the case. In a court order issued in New York on Thursday, US district judge Andrew Carter in the Southern district of New York said the case initiated by Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) against GK must be dismissed as the court lacks personal and subject matter jurisdiction. Plaintiffs Harjit Singh and Janki Kaur had filed the case against GK in July last year and were being represented by the law firm of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who is the legal advisor of Sikhs for Justice. The case against GK alleged that he used torture as a tool to wrest the control of DSGMC, a top Sikh body. Harjit Singh alleged in the case that he faced death threats and torture at the orders of GK after he refused to extend support and campaign for him during 2013 elections of DSGMC. In his order, Carter said the court may not reach the merits of the claims made by the plaintiffs because it is clear from the complaint that the court lacks jurisdiction to do so. The court does not have personal jurisdiction over defendant and it is less than clear whether the court has subject matter jurisdiction over plaintiffs claims. GK told PTI over phone from India that the frivolous charges filed against him by SFJ have been proved wrong in a court of law. He accused SFJ of being habitual blackmailers, stressing that he and DSGMC stand for a united India. He said even though there may be differences with the then Indian government over getting justice in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots case, we believe in fighting for our rights under the Indian Constitution. GK stressed that he will continue to fight to bring the culprits of the 1984 riots to justice. GKs attorney Jaspreet Singh said the court order is a big win for his client and allegations by the plaintiffs Singh and Kaur that they were tortured and threatened by GK because he wanted their support in the DGSMC elections were frivolous and baseless. He said GK was not even properly served with the summons in New York. Read: DSGMC chief submits memo against Sikhs for Justice to US govt A US state department report released on Thursday said Pakistan continued to not take sufficient action against Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), and cited the slow progress of the trial of the Mumbai 2008 attacks. The Country Reports on Terrorism for 2015 called South Asia a front-line region in the battle against terrorism even as the Islamic State (IS) remained the greatest threat globally. Noting that LeT commander Zaki-ur-Rehman-Lakhvi is free on bail, though under house arrest, the report brought Pakistans patchy record on counter-terrorism under scrutiny and criticism. Islamabad has come under scathing attack in the US in recent months for its counter-terrorism efforts. Pakistan has also not taken sufficient action against other externally-focused groups such as Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), which continued to operate, train, organise, and fundraise in Pakistan, the report said. Islamabad has further failed to take sufficient steps to constrain fund-raising by affiliates or fronts of these outfits such as LeTs Jamaat-u-Dawa and Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation, it said. While Pakistan acted against terrorists that carried out attacks in its territories, such as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the report said, it did not take substantial action against the Afghan Taliban or HQN (the Haqqani Network, a faction of Afghan Taliban). Though al Qaeda was in decline in the region, the report noted its leadership continued to operate from remote locations in the region that the group has historically exploited for safe haven. It might have added safe havens in Pakistan, where al Qaedas top leader Osama bin Laden was found hiding with his family and killed by US forces five years ago in May 2011. As for Pakistans anti-terrorism courts, the report said they had limited procedures for obtaining or admitting foreign evidence and cited how Pakistan was dragging its feet in the judicial proceedings of the Mumbai attacks. The trial of seven suspects, including Lakhvi, continues eight years after the attack, the report said, pointing out many witnesses for the prosecution remaining to be called by the court. Security concerns and procedural issues resulted in a slow pace of trial proceedings. India wrapped up its trial of Ajmal Kasab, one of the 10 gunmen who survived and was arrested, in 2010, and hanged him in 2012 after Supreme Court upheld his death sentence. In the US, David Coleman Headley, the Pakistani-descent LeT operative who scouted the targets hit by the Mumbai attackers, pleaded guilty in 2010 and was awarded 35 years in 2013. A US state department report has said Pakistan has not taken sufficient action against Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), which continued to operate, train, organise and fund-raise in the country. The report, released on Thursday, also found the progress in the 2008 Mumbai attacks trial in Pakistan slow and noted that the mastermind, LeT commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, is free on bail. While the Islamic State remained the greatest threat globally, the Country Reports on Terrorism for 2015 called South Asia a front-line region in the battle against terrorism. More than 55% of all attacks took place in five countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nigeria, Justin Siberell, a state department counter-terrorism official, said while releasing the report. And 74% of all deaths due to terrorism took place in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Nigeria. Siberell hastened to add, though, these were not US government findings. Al Qaeda was in decline in the region, the report noted, but its leadership continued to operate from remote locations in the region that the group has historically exploited for safe haven. It might have added safe havens in Pakistan, where al Qaedas top leader Osama bin Laden was found hiding with his family and killed by US forces five years ago in May 2011. Pakistans patchy record on counter-terrorism, which has come under scathing attack in the US in recent months, came under further scrutiny and criticism in the report. While it acted against groups that carried out attacks within the country such as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the report said, it did not take substantial action against the Afghan Taliban or HQN (the Haqqani Network, a faction of Afghan Taliban). Pakistan has also not taken sufficient action against other externally-focused groups such as Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), which continued to operate, train, organise, and fundraise in Pakistan, it said. Islamabad had also not taken sufficient steps to constrain fund-raising by affiliates or fronts of these groups such as Jamaat-ud-Dawah and Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation. About Pakistans anti-terrorism courts, the report said they had limited procedures for obtaining or admitting foreign evidence and cited the slow progress of the Mumbai attacks trial. The trial of seven suspects, including Lakhvi, continues eight years after the assault on Indias financial hub,with the report pointedly noting many witnesses for the prosecution remaining to be called by the court. Security concerns and procedural issues resulted in a slow pace of trial proceedings, the report said. India wrapped up its trial of Ajmal Kasab, the only one of the 10 attackers who survived and was arrested, in 2010, and hanged him in 2012 after the Supreme Court upheld his death sentence. In the US, David Coleman Headley, the Pakistani-American LeT operative who scouted the targets in Mumbai, pleaded guilty in 2010 and was sentenced to 35 years in 2013. A Minnesota woman named in UCLA gunman Mainak Sarkars kill list and found dead with gunshot wounds has been identified as his estranged wife Ashley Hasti. Sarkar, a former UCLA doctoral student from India, met and married 31-year-old Hasti in California, NBC News quoted one of her relatives as saying. They separated several years ago. Sarkar killed himself after fatally shooting UCLA professor William Klug on Wednesday. His kill list named Klug, Hasti and another professor, who is safe. Police said Sarkar accused Klug, who had helped him with his dissertation and whom he had once called a mentor, of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else. He came to Los Angeles armed with two semi-automatic pistols and multiple rounds of ammunition and magazines. Police have said he was prepared to engage multiple victims. Sarkar lived in Minnesota and worked as an analyst with an engineering firm. Police found his address in a note he left behind, asking the finder to check on his cat. At his house, they found the kill list. When they checked on Hasti, they found her dead with a gunshot wound. The police have not yet said when or why she was killed. Mark Fitzgibbons, a relative of Hastis, told NBC they met in college it was not clear if it was at UCLA in California. They married in 2011, shortly after which Sarkar got his Green Card. He was a nice quiet young man, Fitzgibbons said. I dont know what happened to make him do this. I am just as shocked as everyone else. Sarkar graduated from IIT-Kharagpur in aerospace engineering and worked briefly at Infosys. In the US, he went to the University of Texas and Stanford before UCLA. Before Union forces could capture Charleston, South Carolina, they first had to take Fort Wagner, a Confederate stronghold guarding the harbors entrance. So shortly after 6:30 p.m. on July 18, 1863, Union Colonel Robert Gould Shaw readied 600 men of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment for an assault on the fort. Shaw, the 25-year-old son of Boston abolitionists, was white, as were all his officers. The regiments men were black. The 54th would spearhead a three-pronged attack aimed at capturing the necklace of heavily fortified islands that dotted Charleston harbor. If they could take Fort Wagner, the Federals would launch a major assault on nearby Fort Sumter. From there, it would only be a matter of time before Charleston fell. But capturing Fort Wagner would be no easy task. At first glance, the fort appeared to be little more than a series of irregular, low sand hills. In fact, it was much more formidable than that. A timber and sandbag foundation beneath the sand-covered hills allowed the structure to absorb artillery fire without any significant damage. The fort had 11 heavy guns mounted in fixed positions behind the parapets, while smaller wheeled cannon could be quickly repositioned where needed. Defending it were 1,300 men from the 51st and 31st North Carolina Regiments as well as several companies of South Carolina artillerymen. Fort Wagner sat in the middle of Morris Islands northern sandy peninsula. Four batteries at the islands northern tip guarded the entrance to Charleston harbor. The largest of these batteries was Battery Gregg, whose guns faced the ocean and covered the harbor mouth. South of the batteries, a deep moat with a sluice gate and three guns bounded Fort Wagner along its northern sea face. To the east lay the Atlantic Ocean, and on its western boundary were the impassable marshes of Vincents Creek. On its southern side the fort had guns and mortars for direct and flanking fire on any advancing troops. The only possible assault approach was east of the fort, along a slim stretch of sand, narrow even at low tide. Shaw and his troops would have to launch their attack on the seemingly impregnable fort from there. Colonel Shaw readied his men on the beach. Tightly wedged together, elbow to elbow, the soldiers of the 54th began their gallant rush, determined to disprove the popular belief among whites that Negroes were an inferior race, lacking the courage and intelligence of combat-ready soldiers. The onset of the Civil War set off a rush by free black men to enlist in the U.S. military, but a 1792 law barred persons of color from serving in the militia. Also, strong opposition in the North as well as a widespread prejudice that blacks were intellectually and socially inferior limited their involvement in the war to driving supply wagons, burying the battle dead, and building railroads. Yet public opinion slowly began changing. Northern morale faltered after Union forces suffered a series of military defeats, and fewer white men were willing to join the army. Pressured by this turn of events, on July 17, 1862, Congress passed a Confiscation Act that declared all slaves of rebel masters free as soon as they came into Union lines, and a Militia Act that empowered the president to employ as many persons of African descent in any military or naval service for which they may be found competent. Congress also repealed the 1792 law. On August 25, 1862, the War Department authorized Brigadier General Rufus Saxton, military governor of the Union-controlled South Carolina Sea Islands, to raise five regiments of black troops for Federal service, with white men as officers. Volunteers came forward slowly at first, but by November 7 the regiment had reached its quota and was mustered in as the 1st South Carolina Volunteer Regiment under the command of Massachusetts abolitionist Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson. A second regiment followed, led by Colonel James Montgomery. Still, President Abraham Lincoln refused to raise a large black army on political grounds. To arm the Negroes would turn 50,000 bayonets from the loyal Border States against us that were for us, he told his abolitionist critics. Black leaders continued to urge the necessity of enlisting black troops, realizing that if the black man proved his patriotism and courage on the battlefield, the nation would be morally obligated to grant him first-class citizenship. No one expressed those sentiments more eloquently than Frederick Douglass, a former slave and the nations most prominent black abolitionist. He insisted that once the black man gets upon his person the brass letters U.S., a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States. Debate continued within the Union command until January 1, 1863, when President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Having freed, by executive order, those slaves in the South, Lincoln could no longer deny the black man the opportunity to fight. Now the Civil War was being fought not only to preserve the Union, but for the freedom of all the American people, white and black. The success of the 1st and 2nd Carolina Colored Troops only reinforced that position. Higginson and Montgomery had already led their black troops on several successful raids into the interior of Georgia and Florida, and in March 1863 they captured and occupied Jacksonville. On February 13, 1863, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts introduced a bill proposing the enlistment of 300,000 colored troops. Although the bill was defeated, abolitionist governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts requested and received authorization from Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to organize a colored regiment of volunteers to serve for three years. Massachusetts had a small black population, and only 100 men volunteered during the first six weeks of recruitment. Disillusioned by the turnout, Andrew organized a committee of prominent citizens and Negro leaders to supervise the recruitment effort. Within two months the committee collected $5,000 and established a line of recruiting posts from Boston to St. Louis, resulting in the recruitment of 1,000 black men from throughout the Union who became part of the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, Colored, the first black regiment raised in the free states. Toward the end of the second recruiting month, volunteers arrived at the rate of 30 to 40 each day, and Andrew soon had enough men to form a second black regiment, the 55th Massachusetts. For the 54ths commander, Governor Andrew turned to Robert Gould Shaw, captain of the Massachusetts 2nd Infantry. Charming and handsome, Shaw came from a wealthy and socially prominent Boston abolitionist family. His parents Francis and Sarah had joined the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1838, and by 1842 Francis was working with the Boston Vigilance Committee to help runaway slaves gain their freedom. Robert entered Harvard University in 1856 but abandoned his studies during his third year and moved to New York to work in his uncles mercantile office. Shaw joined an exclusive militia regiment, the 7th New York National Guard, where he talked about what he would do if the South made trouble. Shaw did not possess the strong anti-slavery calling of his parents, but he was fiercely patriotic. When the Civil War began, he was primed to take revenge on the South. To Shaw, the South was the transgressor, and if it took the end of slavery to redeem the honor of America, then he was willing to fight for that. When the 7th disbanded, Shaw accepted a commission in the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry. During his 20 months there, Captain Shaw received a minor wound at Antietam, during the single bloodiest day of the war. When Governor Andrew asked the young captain to lead a black volunteer infantry, Shaw was hesitant. The prospect of heading a regiment of armed blacks would not be popular among the white ranks. Nor did he want to abandon the men of the 2nd Infantry. Shaw initially refused the position but changed his mind after much discussion with his parents. In a February 1863 letter to his future wife, Annie Haggerty, Shaw wrote, You know how many eminent men consider a negro army of the greatest importance to our country at this time. If it turns out to be so, how fully repaid the pioneers in the movement will be, for what they may have to go through.I feel convinced I shall never regret having taken this step, as far as I myself am concerned; for while I was undecided I felt ashamed of myself, as if I were cowardly. Shaw received a promotion to major on April 11, 1863, and attained the rank of colonel the following month. Colonel Shaw would now have to navigate the turbulent forces of discrimination that existed within the Union Army. The men of the 54th trained near Boston at Readville, under the constant scrutiny of white soldiers, many of whom believed black soldiers lacked the stomach for combat. Yet the negative perceptions seemed only to inspire a sense of unity within the ranks of the regiment and their white officers. Contrary to recruitment promises, the soldiers of the 54th were paid only $10.00 per month, $3.00 less than the white troops. Shaw had become so committed to his men that he wrote to Governor Andrew, insisting that his entire regiment, including white officers, would refuse pay until his soldiers were given the same payment as all the other Massachusetts troops. Yet Congress did not enact legislation granting equal pay to black soldiers until June 15, 1864. Shortly after the 54th was mustered into service, the Confederate Congress passed an act stating its intention to put to death, if captured, any Negro as well as white commissioned officer [who] shall command, prepare or aid Negroes in arms against the Confederate States. The directive only served to strengthen the resolve of the black soldiers. On May 18 Governor Andrew traveled to the camp to present Shaw with the regimental flags. He made the trip with 3,000 other visitors, including such prominent abolitionists as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Wendell Phillips. Douglass had a strong personal link with the 54thtwo of his sons, Lewis and Charles, had joined the unit. Andrew presented the flags to Shaw. I know not, Mr. Commander, in all human history, to any given thousand men in arms, has there been committed a work at once so proud, so precious, so full of hope and glory as the work committed to you, the governor said. Ten days later the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry marched through the streets of downtown Boston, greeted by the cheers of thousands who assembled to see them off at Battery Wharf. It was an impressive spectacle. Shaw, atop his chestnut brown horse, led the way. Close behind marched the color bearers, followed by young black soldiers, handsomely clad in their sharp, new uniforms. The dress parade gradually made its way to the wharf and boarded the De Molay bound for Port Royal Island, South Carolina. There the regiment reported to the Department of the South. Once the men arrived, however, reality set in when they were relegated to manual labor. Not until June 8, when Shaw and his men joined Colonel James Montgomery and the black troops of his 2nd South Carolina Colored Volunteers on an expedition to Georgia, did they see any action, and that was during a pointless raid on the small town of Darien. After plundering the 100 or so residences, three churches, the market-house, courthouse, and an academy, Montgomery ordered Darien set afire. Begrudgingly, Shaw directed one of his companies to torch the town. Fanned by a high wind, the flames eventually destroyed everything but a church and a few houses. Afterward, Shaw wrote to Lieutenant Colonel Charles G. Halpine, the acting adjutant general of the department, to condemn this barbarous sort of warfare. Shaw knew his complaint could result in his arrest or even court-martial, but he felt compelled to express his feelings. He later learned that Montgomery had acted in accordance with the orders of his superior officer, General David Hunter. Soon after the Darien raid, President Lincoln relieved Hunter of his command. The sacking of Darien and the manual labor his troops were compelled to do disheartened Shaw. Our whole experience, so far, has been in loading and discharging vessels, he wrote to Brigadier General George C. Strong, commander of Montgomerys brigade. Colored soldiers should be associated as much as possible with the white troops, in order that they may have other witnesses besides their own officers to what they are capable of doing. That opportunity finally arrived on the morning of July 16, 1863. Fighting alongside white troops on James Island, Shaws men acquitted themselves well in a sharp skirmish. That same night they ferried to Morris Island, where battle lines had already been drawn for the anticipated attack on Fort Wagner. Despite their exhaustion, hunger, and wet clothes, the men of the 54th were determined to fight on. When General Strong, now Shaws brigade commander, heard of the bravery of the 54th on James Island, he asked the colonel if he and his regiment would lead the attack on Fort Wagner. Shaw and his men readily agreed and prepared to lead the charge across a narrow beach obstructed by felled branches, crisscrossed wire, and a deep moatall of which were constructed to slow the attackers, making them vulnerable to enemy fire. Eight all-white units were to follow. All day long, Union artillery bombarded Fort Wagner in an effort to soften the Confederate defense and minimize the bloodshed that would inevitably follow. Late in the day Shaw arranged the 600 able-bodied men of his regiment into two wings of five companies each and moved them slowly up the beach. He assigned Company B to the right flank, using the surf as its guide. The other companies lined up on its left. At dusk, General Strong addressed Shaw and his men. Pointing to the flag bearer, he said: If this man should fall, who will pick up the flag? Shaw stepped forward. I will, he said. Addressing his troops with final words of inspiration, Shaw reminded them: The eyes of thousands will look on what you do tonight. Then, drawing his sword, the young Boston Brahmin barked: Move in quick time until within a hundred yards of the fort, then, double-quick and charge! Quickstep became double-quick, and then a full run, as Confederate riflemen on the ramparts of the fort let loose a torrent of fire upon the Union soldiers. Men fell on all sides, but those who were able continued the charge with Shaw in the lead. Company B passed through the moat to the base of the fort where canister, grenades, and small arms fire rained down on them. Surrounded by bloodshed, the 54ths commander realized that he could not retreat, and he ordered the final assault on the fort. Shaw somehow managed to reach the parapet before a Confederate bullet pierced his heart. Men fell all around me, Lewis Douglass later wrote. A shell would explode and clear a space of twenty feet, our men would close up again, but it was no use we had to retreat, which was a very hazardous undertaking. How I got out of that fight alive I cannot tell, but I am here. The intense fire mowed down the color bearers. Sergeant William Carney, a barrel-chested 23-year-old, seized the national flag and planted it upon the forts parapet. The men of the 54th fought gallantly for about an hour until Confederate guns forced them to abandon their position. Before retreating, Carney once again grasped the flag, and despite bullets in the head, chest, right arm, and leg, he returned it to Union lines. His heroism earned him the distinction of being the first of 21 black men during the war to earn the Medal of Honor. Subsequent waves of Federal troops tried for two hours to take the fort but failed, and casualties mounted by the hundreds. At the end of the assault, the Union had lost 1,515 killed, wounded or missing. Of that number, 256 were black soldiers from the 54th Massachusetts. The following morning revealed a grisly scene. The dead lay in contorted positions along the beach, their fingers and legs stiffened from rigor mortis. The soft but painful cries and moans of the dying could be heard, begging for help. A few days after the siege, a Union party under a flag of truce requested the return of Shaws body. Brigadier General Johnson Hagood, Fort Wagners new commander, reportedly answered, We buried him in the trench with his niggers. Learning of Hagoods reply, Colonel Shaws father declared, I can imagine no holier place than that in which he is, among his brave and devoted followers, nor wish for him better company. From a military standpoint, the assault on Fort Wagner proved to be a costly failure. The blame rested on the shoulders of commanding general Quincy A. Gillmore and his commander in the field, Brigadier General Truman Seymour, who had not ordered the usual preparations for such an assaultno one sent out guides to check the terrain in advance or dispatched lines of skirmishers to soften the enemy. Nor had the 54th ever practiced storming a fort. Nevertheless, the assault proved to be a turning point for black soldiers, serving to dismiss any lingering skepticism among whites about the combat readiness of African Americans. I have given the subject of arming the Negro my hearty support, General Ulysses S. Grant wrote to President Lincoln in August. They will make good soldiers and taking them from the enemy weakens him in the same proportion they strengthen us. When other Union generals remained recalcitrant, Lincoln responded swiftly. You say you will not fight to free Negroes, he said. Some of them seem to be willing to fight for you. When victory is won, there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue and clenched teeth, and steady eye and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation. I fear, however, that there will also be some white ones, unable to forget that with malignant heart and deceitful speech, they strove to hinder it. This article was written by William C. Kashatus and originally appeared in the October 2000 issue of American History magazine. For more great articles be sure to pick up your copy of American History. AFTER MORE than 80 years of journalistic investigation, the consensus among students of the Fatty Arbuckle scandal is that in acquitting the comedian of manslaughter, the jury got it right. So who, or what, killed Virginia Rappe? David Yallop, in his 1979 study The Day the Laughter Died, presents compelling evidence that the culprit was the person or persons who botched an illegal abortion. Rappe, an orphan who was raised on the mean streets of Chicago, was known to have had the operation at least five times before then. San Francisco was a common destination for out-of-town patients who wanted to have the procedure performed in anonymity. Its speculated that this was the very reason the Los Angelesbased Rappe was in the Bay Area on the fateful weekend. The evidence? The autopsy revealed a tear in the bladder, which is consistent with a poorly performed procedure. This would explain the excruciating abdominal pain she suffered at Arbuckles party. More intriguing, though, was the in-court testimony about a postmortem examination that was conducted illegally prior to notifying the coroner about Rappes death. The examination was done at a maternity hospital, where Rappe was brought when her condition was diagnosed as fatalwhich raises the question of why a woman would be brought to such a place if concerns were not pregnancy-related. Here the very organs that could have confirmed whether or not the actress had an abortion were removed and destroyed. Did hospital personnel perform this quickie postmortem as a means to cover up their own culpability in the death of a patient? There are, however, those who view proponents of the abortion angle as conspiracy buffs. Rappe may well have suffered from peritonitis, an inflammation of the abdomen that would be aggravated by consumption of alcohol. All these years after the factand after the death of all the principals involvedthe truth may never be known. In the 1920s and early 1930s, organized crime had its fingers in all sorts of rackets infiltrating unions, running gambling rings, shaking down restaurant owners, and much more. The most effective, determined, and ruthless gangsters controlled business empires. They wielded power equal to almost any politicians and amassed fortunes that rivaled those of legitimate capitalists. Some gangsters became so famous they were known by their nicknames. There was Scarface Al Capone, Charles Lucky Luciano, Waxey Gordon, Benjamin Bugsy Siegel and of course, Dutch Schultz. His real name was Arthur Flegenheimer, but he called himself Dutch Schultz because it fit better into newspaper headlines. A cold-blooded killer with a hair-trigger temper, Schultz was running his own bootlegging organization by the mid-1920s. Before long he controlled nearly all the illegal beer distribution in the Bronx, earning at least half a million dollars annually from this activity alone. Schultzs criminal activities eventually led to a federal indictment for tax evasion. The Dutchman managed to beat the rap in 1935, but New York states special prosecutor, Thomas E. Dewey, refused to let him off the hook. Publicly, the Dutchman expressed little concern. If the feds couldnt get me, Schultz said, I guess this fellow Dewey cant do much. In private, however, it was a different story. Deweys gotta go, he screamed to an associate. He has gotta be hit in the head. Prohibition created opportunities for the criminal underworld, but after it ended in 1933 mobsters merely expanded into other arenas, often with the help and protection of political and law enforcement leaders. In New York City, for instance, James Hines of the citys Tammany political machine was one of many officials who ran interference for gangsters. This Hines was a district leader who controlled other district leaders and was so powerful he could order judges and police officials around, commented Dutch Schultzs lawyer, J. Richard Dixie Davis. More than once I sat late with Hines and Dutch Schultz in a mob night club as we plotted ways by which, with the Dutchmans mob and money, Hines might extend his power over still other districts and seize absolute control of Tammany and the whole city government. By the early 1930s, several courageous prosecutors and government agents around the country had begun to chip away at the mobsters criminal empires. Among the most prominent was New York Citys Thomas E. Dewey. Born in Michigan in 1902, Dewey started his career as a Wall Street lawyer but soon gave it up to work as chief assistant to U.S. Attorney George Z. Medalie. Short in stature, dapper, with a dark moustache, irregular front teeth, and intense dark eyes, Dewey earned a reputation as a tireless investigator with an astonishing grasp of detail. One of Deweys landmark cases was the prosecution of bootlegger Irving Wexler, a.k.a. Waxey Gordon. Getting the indictment required two and a half years examining 1,000 witnesses, 200 bank accounts, and several thousand hours of grand jury examination, and tracing of the toll slips of more than 100,000 telephone calls, Dewey recounted in his autobiography. The hard work paid off. In 1933 Gordon was sentenced to 10 years in a federal penitentiary. By then Medalie had retired, and Dewey was named his successor. He was only 31, the youngest U.S. attorney ever. But it was a temporary appointment, and once President Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, named his own choice to the position in 1934, the Republican Dewey returned to private life. He did not remain there long. The following year New Yorks Governor Herbert Lehman appointed Dewey as a special prosecutor charged with breaking the hold racketeers had on Manhattans civic life. Doing business with mobs was costing New York City residents half a billion dollars a year, and something had to be done to end the extortion. Some mob-friendly politicians used their positions to stall any real investigation of the rackets, but Dewey was zealous, honest, and ambitious. We are not to waste time on the small fry, he told his subordinates. Its important people in the underworld who will be the objects of the investigation. The special prosecutor launched himself enthusiastically into the job. He found office space in the Woolworth Building, which offered plenty of exits for his informants to come and go without being easily observed. Dewey put together a crack team of lawyers, investigators, accountants, stenographers, and support staff, a fiercely loyal group that shared the chiefs willingness to work all hours of the day and night. It couldnt have been too easy to live with guys like that, recalled one staff member. They were a competitive, tough bunch and Dewey, I think, is the only man Ive ever met who could have kept that team of horses running harmoniously together. He could quell any uprising with one look, and he was tough enough himself so that nobody fooled around with him. It was a crusade, and we were all young enough to be very ardent crusaders, remembered another of Deweys lawyers. His determination and doggedness, the care with which he felt he was selecting his associates and the veil of high-level integrity that was constantly apparent throughout the investigation had a tremendous inspirational effect because we were battling the whole, organized underworld in New York City, and we were the forces of decent living. Dewey knew his crusade would earn him the enmity of the countrys most successful mobsters. Still, most of the mob leaders appeared unconcerned. Bosses such as Luciano, Louis Lepke Buchalter, and Meyer Lansky knew that officials in New York City often looked the other way when it came to organized crime. Dewey knew that too. Local officials had thrown up plenty of roadblocks during his investigation of Waxey Gordon. Still, there was one gangster who saw the special prosecutor as a threat. Despite his tough words about this Dewey fellow, Dutch Schultz was showing signs of cracking. Arthur Flegenheimer was the son of a Bronx saloonkeeper who deserted the family when the boy was 14. As his mother toiled at a series of dismal jobs to make ends meet, Arthur set off on a different course. He logged his first arrest, for burglary, at the age of 17. Once out of jail, Arthur, now calling himself Dutch Schultz after an earlier New York gangster, began moving up in the world of crime. During Prohibition Schultzs bootlegging operation made him the Beer Baron of the Bronx. He later started a $2 million-a-year restaurant shakedown business, controlled at least one labor union, and, perhaps most important of all, muscled his way to take control of the lucrative policy business in Harlem. Policy, better known as the numbers racket, was an illegal but popular gambling game. Players placed a bet on a three-digit number, with the days winner determined by chance, most often by tying it to the results of horseraces at a local or out-of-town track. Even in the poverty-stricken, Depression-era Harlem of 1931, the policy racket brought in around $35,000 a day. Nevertheless, controlling the numbers racket, even with a profit margin of up to 60 percent, was not enough for Schultz. With the invaluable help of a mathematical genius named Otto Abbadabba Berman, Schultz manipulated the winning digits so that less frequently played numbers won. The scam sent his revenues ever upward, perhaps as high as $20 million a year. To keep his operation growing, Schultz relied on people such as Abe Bo Weinberg, a hit man implicated in the killings of rivals Jack Legs Diamond and Vincent Mad Dog Coll. On the legal front, Schultz received advice from Dixie Davis, who had no problem with dallying on the wrong side of the law. I suppose you might say I was polluting the stream of justice, Davis wrote for Colliers magazine in 1939, but that was something that had been done by experts long before I came along. In that same magazine series, Davis recalled his first meeting with the Dutchman. His murderous reputation had led me to expect a ruffian, but he was not at all that way. He was a small but well-set man, with good features. The girls used to say he looked like Bing Crosby with his nose bashed in. With his mob, I was to learn, Schultz could be boisterous and noisy, and talk a rough thieves argot, but this night he was polite, well-spoken, amiable. Davis soon learned that the former Arthur Flegenheimer had big plans. Dutch Schultz was a man of vision, the lawyer wrote. I remember a time when he was reading about the Russian revolution and his eyes glistened as he told me how the Bolsheviks had taken over the gold from a government bank. Those guys are just like me, he said. Theyre just a mob. If Id been there with my mob I could have taken over, just like they did. But over here, he added sadly, the time isnt ripe yet. Schultz loved power, but he loved money even more. You can insult Arthurs girl, spit in his face, push him around, and hell laugh, said Davis. But dont steal a dollar from his accounts. If you do, youre dead. Hitman Bo Weinberg was one man who learned the hard way. Weinberg had been a loyal killer for Schultz. He had even served time for contempt of court after he refused to testify when the Dutchman was first indicted for tax evasion. Yet when Schultz heard that Weinberg had tried to horn in on his territory, he had no qualms about eliminating Bo doing the job himself, according to some accounts. Dewey was behind the tax indictment, so Dutch decided to lay low until the aggressive young prosecutor returned to private life. Once Dewey was out of the picture, Schultz managed to beat the rap. His first trial, held in Syracuse during the spring of 1935, ended in a hung jury. For the second trial, which Davis helped get moved to the small northern town of Malone, New York, the gangster embarked on a public relations blitz. He befriended the townspeople, sent gifts to hospitalized children, spent thousands on parties for Malones residents and won an acquittal from the local jurors. It will be apparent to all who have followed the evidence in this case that you have reached a verdict based not on the evidence but on some other reason, sputtered the judge, accurately enough; but Dutch Schultz was a free man again. Schultz left the courtroom in Malone that summer to find that his criminal empire was crumbling. He had never been popular among the mob leaders of New York they found him too cold, too violent, and too unpredictable and his fellow gangsters had moved in to divide his territory among them. Policy was the only major line of business that remained truly his. Schultz smarted, but he knew he was not powerful enough to take back what he had lost. Instead, he set out to try to rebuild his empire, using the numbers as a cornerstone. Then Schulz learned that Dewey had set his sights on the numbers racket, a shift in strategy that Schultz perceived as a direct threat to him. Schultz also suspected that Dewey had it in for him personally. He was right. The Dutchmans acquittal had made headlines and made the mobster Public Enemy Number One for the special prosecutors office. As Dewey wrote in his autobiography, I regarded it as a matter of primary importance to get Dutch Schultz. Schultz worried about Dewey for several days. Finally his paranoia and ruthlessness drove him to a deadly resolution. He would have Dewey killed. The decision to hit Dewey was not Schultzs alone. By 1935, the top mobsters had formed a syndicate a cartel of the underworlds most powerful criminals. Its members included Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Lepke Buchalter, Jacob Gurrah Shapiro, Frank Costello, and Vito Genovese. Protocol dictated that Schultz bring his proposal to the syndicates board of directors. Members were divided over the plan. Mobsters often killed each other, but going after Dewey would be an act of unprecedented audacity that would bring the wrath of the authorities down on the mobs. In the end, the group delayed the decision, but began to lay the groundwork by appointing Albert Anastasia to outline a scheme for a potential execution. Anastasias attention to detail had earned him the nickname the overlord of organized crime in his home borough of Brooklyn. He was also the man in charge of the syndicates death squad, an organization later tagged Murder Inc. Dewey knew his investigations might lead to personal repercussions, and he reluctantly accepted the services of at least one police bodyguard. After the syndicate meeting Dewey received several threatening telephone calls, and rumors spread that there was a $25,000 price on his head. Dewey did not back off, but he did take the news seriously, and he allowed the bodyguards to trail him closely. As he put it, ordinary hoodlums would be scared off by the detective [and] the top gangsters would be too smart to tangle with such a well-protected man. Anastasia moved carefully. He first hired a man some accounts say he did the job himself to study Deweys morning routine. The spy watched the prosecutors neighborhood in the company of a little boy who diverted suspicion by riding a velocipede, or tricycle, in front of Deweys apartment building. Apparently neither Dewey nor his escort ever thought twice about the man and his supposed son. On four consecutive mornings the doting father tailed Dewey. He learned that the special prosecutor left home each morning around 8:00 and headed to a nearby pharmacy to use the pay phone, so he wouldnt disturb his sleeping wife, and to avoid any possible taps on his home phone. While Dewey called his office from the drugstore, his security detail remained outside on the sidewalk. The plot began to fall into place. The hitman would enter the drugstore before Dewey arrived. Once the unsuspecting prosecutor was in the phone booth, the murderer would shoot him, then kill the pharmacist to eliminate the only witness. By using a silencer, the killer would ensure that the bodyguards outside would hear nothing. Once finished, the shooter would calmly walk past the guards and around the corner to a waiting getaway car. The plan appeared feasible, but Schultz made little headway with the syndicate leaders at an October meeting. Only garment-district racketeer Gurrah Shapiro sided with the Dutchman. The others believed that Deweys murder would create more problems than it would solve. We will all burn if Dewey is knocked off, said Lepke. The easier solution was the tried-and-true technique of witness intimidation. We are bombproof when all the right people are out of the way, argued Lepke. We get them out of the way now then the investigation collapses, too. Schultz himself was a factor behind the boards reluctance. Many of the mobsters thought the Dutchman was a loose cannon. The murder of Bo Weinberg, well liked and respected among underworld members, had been a black mark against Dutch. Furthermore, the other mob leaders had designs on Schultzs business interests. In the end, the syndicate refused to authorize the Dewey hit. Schultz was enraged. I still say he oughta be hit, he said. And if nobody else is gonna do it, Im gonna hit him myself. With those words, Dutch Schultz signed his own death warrant. Lepke quickly dispatched two of his best operatives, Emanuel Mendy Weiss and Charlie the Bug Workman, to take care of the problem. They did so with remarkable efficiency. On the evening of October 23, Workman and Weiss arrived at the Palace Chop House in Newark, New Jersey. Weiss stayed at the door to act as lookout, while Workman headed to the back, where an informer had told them they would find Schultz. Opening the door to the mens room, the killer saw a man at a urinal. He assumed the man was a bodyguard. Workman fired, and his victim fell to the ground. Then Workman stepped out into the back room, where he found three of Schultzs henchmen mathematical genius Abbadabba Berman and bodyguards Abe Landau and Bernard Lulu Rosenkrantz. Schultz was nowhere in sight. Methodically, Workman riddled the three gangsters with a hail of bullets as they futilely tried to shoot back. Still, Schultz was nowhere to be found and Workman began to worry until he realized that the man in the bathroom had been the Dutchman himself. Schultz did not die immediately. He lingered for 22 hours, drifting in and out of lucidity, as police questioners at the hospital urged him to name his killer. When asked, Who shot you? Schultz answered first with a vague, The Boss himself, and then changed his answer to No one. The Dutchman continued to babble incoherently for several hours. On October 25, Schultz murmured, French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone, slipped into a coma, and died. He was 33 years old. Dewey continued his crusade to loosen the mobs grip on New York City. In 1936 he sent Luciano to prison for running a prostitution ring. Elected district attorney the next year, Dewey got a conviction for Tammanys Jimmy Hines. Gurrah and Lepke soon followed. Lepke, convicted of murder, became the highest-ranking mob boss to die in the electric chair. The masterminds of the underworld had spared Deweys life, and the special prosecutor had repaid the gangsters by putting them in prison and breaking up their empires. The plan to kill Dewey finally came to light in 1941, when a mob informer tipped off authorities to Charlie Workmans role in the affair. Workman was arrested, found guilty of murder, and sent to jail. After the story came out, Dewey denied any knowledge of the plot. He had heard vague threats, nothing more. I had no idea whether those stories were true, he wrote in his autobiography. They might have been just underworld gossip. Nor did Dewey admit to any awareness of the plot when Assistant District Attorney Burt Turkus described the details to him years later. Dewey sat motionless as Turkus filled him in, his face and body language betraying no reaction and no familiarity with the details. Except, perhaps, just once. When I mentioned the baby on the velocipede, Turkus wrote afterwards in his book Murder, Inc., Deweys eyes widened a fraction. It was a barely perceptible flicker.It gave me an idea, though, that he had recalled the tot and its proud parent. Whether Dewey remembered the child or not, it is a good bet that the story of Deweys near-assassination is the only time the mob killed one of its own to protect an honest prosecutor. This article was written by Stephen Currie and originally published in December 2002 issue of American History Magazine. For more great articles, subscribe to American History magazine today! Researchers from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the University of Athens (UoA) have confirmed that what were believed to be remains of an underwater "lost city" were actually created by naturally occurring phenomenon stemming from microbes. The remains, which resemble paved floors and courtyards, were speculated to be the ruins of a long lost civilization that was destroyed by tidal waves that crashed into the Greek holiday island Zakynthos. However, the new study suggests that the remains were created by a natural geological process up to five million years ago in the Pliocene era. "The site was discovered by snorkelers and first thought to be an ancient city port, lost to the sea," said Julian Andrews of UEA and lead author of the study. "There were what superficially looked like circular column bases, and paved floors. But mysteriously no other signs of life - such as pottery." The discovery was made close to Alikanas Bay and examined by archaeologists that conducted mineralogical and chemical analyses. Afterwards, the UoA and UEA teams conducted more comprehensive analyses including microscopy, X-ray and stable isotope techniques. "We investigated the site, which is between two and five meters under water, and found that it is actually a natural geologically occurring phenomenon," Andrews said. "The disk and doughnut morphology, which looked a bit like circular column bases, is typical of mineralization at hydrocarbon seeps - seen both in modern seafloor and palaeo settings. "We found that the linear distribution of these doughnut shaped concretions is likely the result of a sub-surface fault which has not fully ruptured the surface of the sea bed," he continued. "The fault allowed gases, particularly methane, to escape from depth." Andrews suggests that microbes in the sediment drove the oxidation of methane, which they use as fuel, ultimately altering the chemistry of the sediment and creating natural cement. In the case of the remains examined in the study, the cement was dolomite, a rare occurrence in seawater. "This kind of phenomenon is quite rare in shallow waters," he said. "Most similar discoveries tend to be many hundreds and often thousands of meters deep underwater." "These features are proof of natural methane seeping out of rock from hydrocarbon reservoirs," he continued. "The same thing happens in the North Sea, and it is also similar to the effects of fracking, when humans essentially speed up or enhance the phenomena." The findings were published in the May 19 issue of the journal Marine and Petroleum Geology. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. News, events, history, and other mid-week tidbits. Tuesday, October 25, 4:30 7 p.m. Orr Area EMS Open House Brats and burgers will be served. Event includes a new ambulance tour and blood pressure screenings. For more info: 218-780-3798. Orr Fire Hall 4540 Lake St., Orr Tuesday, October 25, 12 6 p.m. Essentia Health Job Fair Talent recruiters and department managers will be on-site at Essentia Health-Virginia. Candidates from all backgrounds are encouraged to attendnurses, nursing and clinical assistants, surgery technicians, radiology technicians, respiratory therapists, human resource professionals, and those interested in environmental services or nutrition services. Essentia staff will greet candidates, conduct an initial screening and filter them to appropriate hiring managers for interviews. Select candidates will be verbally offered a position before leaving. Candidates are asked to bring a resume, but its not required. Attire is business casual. For more info: www.essentiacareers.org. 901 9th St. N., Virginia The past two years have seen the Caribbean tourism market finally shake off the last vestiges of recession symptoms. Travelers are spending, airlift is increasing and developers and their backers are investing. The Region's destinations are popular not only for those in close proximity to the islands, but also for travelers from around the world. The recent Caribbean Hotel & Resort Investment Summit (CHRIS) in Miami was characterized by close to unanimous optimism, and with good reason. However, as we have seen in this industry, market conditions can change in fewer months than it takes to develop a resort, and our industry's players tend to display "herd" behavior, with most investors reading the same reports, agreeing on which markets are currently "hot", and then flooding them with new hotel supply. Panama City was the target and/or victim of such popularity, growing quickly from a 4,000- hotel room market in 2007 to almost four times that today. As a result, it is still difficult to interest investors in the beautiful undeveloped beach destinations on Panama's Pacific and Caribbean coasts, far from Panama City. As travel to the Caribbean region has increased globally, so has interest in developing new resort projects. In the last year, numerous projects, including some $500 million-plus developments, have been announced for the region; for example, Caribbean Journal reported more than 18,000 hotel rooms, 55 new projects, and over $2 billion worth of investments into the hotel pipeline in the Dominican Republic alone. Travel Weekly noted that Royalton Luxury Resorts, of Canada's Sunwing Vacations, will be debuting four new resorts in Jamaica and St. Lucia. Barbados, St. Lucia and Antigua & Barbuda are each in the spotlight due to increased airlift r improved airport infrastructure. Several $100 million to $2 billion resort developments, such as Singulari, Pearns Point and Paradise Found have been announced in Antigua and Barbuda just as the last mega-resort of the Caribbean, Baha Mar, with its 2,000-plus hotel rooms, appears to have found a path to completion in Nassau, Bahamas. Traditional Supply and Demand Factors Both "natural" market forces and "external" forces are responsible for increasing demand to the region. First, the natural forces. Airlift has not only been expanding, but shifting from being dominated by traditional carriers to an increasing presence of "low-cost" carriers from the United States and charter airlines from Canada and Europe. As airlift is the lifeblood of island destinations, this combination of increased access as well as more accessible air fares has a significant impact on stimulating demand. Another of the natural forces stimulating demand is the improved quality of resort products in the region. The number of new hotel and resort projects, renovations and conversions (to global hotel brands) has been quite large in recent years, further fueling interest in travel to Caribbean destinations, including Cancun, Riviera Maya, and Belize on the western rim of the Caribbean. Significant new projects that include the Aman, Auberge, Capella, Four Seasons, and Park Hyatt brands continue to refresh the luxury appeal of the region. The gradual easing of travel and trade restrictions with Cuba has also sparked renewed attention on the region, and fear in several island markets that a "sleeping giant" may be awakening as a new competitor for U.S. tourism dollars. External Factors Several forces outside of the traditional supply and demand factors present both benefits and threats to the region: As Mediterranean resorts have tragically been targeted by random acts of terrorism, Europeans are increasingly seeking the relative "calm" of the Caribbean. As several of the world's emerging markets have seen renewed economic volatility after a decade of steady growth, Caribbean safe havens for Dollar- and Euro-denominated investments, whether in vacation homes or in $100 million-plus resorts, are resulting in new hotel and resort development plans that might otherwise not be executed. Antigua & Barbuda, St. Kitts & Nevis, Dominica, and Grenada all have Citizenship by Investment programs, by which vacation home purchases at varying investment levels qualify purchasers to obtain residency and local passports. The lure of visa-free travel to from 90 to 130 countries (depending on which of the four islands grants the passport) is very attractive to wealthy individuals in the Middle East, China and Russia. These are not the traditional source markets for Caribbean vacation home purchases. Many of these units will find their way to AirBnB or VRBO websites as nightly and weekly rental inventory, adding shadow inventory to these islands' hotel and resort markets. Fear of Zika virus appears to be having a negative impact on travel to the Caribbean. STR reports that operating results for the April 2016 year-to-date period compared with prior year data showed that region-wide occupancy dropped 3.0 points to 72.9%, average daily rate declined 1.4% to $268.86 and RevPAR dropped by 4.4% to $195.99. For the month of April alone, the decline was more noticeable, with a 9.1% drop in RevPAR from April of 2015 (though Easter fell in April of 2014 but in March of 2015, also negatively impacting April results). Some of the influencing factors noted above will not be long-lived. Global investors can quickly be distracted from one region or industry to others - very quickly. Resorts and hotels, however, typically have 30- to 50-year or longer lifecycles. Therefore, it is important that some of these temporary stimulants to demand not be the foundation of the feasibility of a resort's development plan. Sustainable Development Unlike Panama, whose economy has been one of the fastest growing in the hemisphere and whose tourism sector constitutes only about 10% of the nation's economic activity, many Caribbean island economies cannot "shake off" an oversupply of hotel and resort industry capacity, or wait for demand to catch up with supply. While the pending increase in tourism investment will create jobs and increase GDP, initially in construction and later in all areas of tourism infrastructure, the investment will also create even greater dependence on the economic conditions of the visitation source markets of North America and Northern Europe. Strong tourism master plans, along with efforts to diversify economic growth, can assist smaller island nations to better guide their economic destiny in the midst of larger global investment patterns. For the largest arrival hubs of the region (Cancun, Havana, Punta Cana and San Juan), everything from convention centers to the broad range of large all-inclusive hotels and master-planned resorts become part of the investment mix. However, in smaller markets, care must be taken to identify, develop and nurture selected market segments. Overbuilding and/or rapid growth in visitation can have long term impacts on small island communities. Through a combination of economics and public policy for example, Anguilla, Turks and Caicos and the British Virgin Islands have managed to attract mid-sized luxury resorts designed for pure relaxation and pristine beaches. Such resorts fit the capacity of these islands' infrastructure and also are aligned in pricing with the high cost of importing the majority of goods and services, and even labor. In another example, Bonaire, Saba, and Roatan's plans would logically be to build on the foundation of SCUBA-related visitation. The development of Aruba and Curacao over the past two decades shows how differences in airlift patterns can influence not only the pattern of tourism investment but cultural attributes as fundamental as the languages people speak. Both islands share similar geography and cultural roots. In Curacao, where less than 25% of the airlift is from the United States, and a diversity of air links exist with Northern Europe and Central and South American neighbors, local residents generally speak to each other in Papiamento, the local Creole language. In Aruba, where over two-thirds of airlift is from the Unites States, it is more common to hear local residents conversing in English. While Curacao is actively seeking increased lift from US cities, its five-year plan and advertising message are aligned to specifically target cultural travelers and culinary travelers from the U.S. rather than the mass market. Summer events include a Latin Music Festival, Blues Festival and Jazz Festival, Restaurant Week, Curacao Pride, Flavors of Curacao, etc. Conversely, the island welcomes mass-market or middle-market travelers from the Netherlands, a smaller source market whose size and culture have less potential to disrupt the local community. While Aruba may be considered more of a tourism "success" story, as it has attracted a greater number of hotels to its Palm Beach and Eagle Beach areas, it takes a bit more effort on the part of the tourist to find authentic Dutch cuisine, well-preserved historical sites or colonial architecture there. In summary, the more organization, transparency and focus (on targeted tourism market segments) with which Caribbean islands can present themselves to investors, airlines and consumers, the more they can guide the development of tourism investment and enhance the unique attributes of their local markets. Balancing the needs of jobs and economic development with preservation of local cultures within limited geography and small populations is a daunting and controversial challenge. However, as we have seen, changes in airlift and in the scale and type of tourism investment that are promoted can have unintended long term impacts on both local economies and local culture. Such planning efforts can help to screen long term investments for long term viability and for alignment with local master plan goals, rather than being based on recent, and possibly temporary, aberrations in supply or demand conditions. Therefore, it is critical that each destination in this diverse region invest in determining its positioning and messaging strategies, so that growth in the tourism industry can be aligned with the destination's unique attributes and culture. Andrew Cohan (305) 606-2898 Horwath he 188-room AC Hotel Guadalajara Mexico and the 175-room AC Hotel Queretaro Antea, opened its doors, inviting guests to experience Mexico's newest class of lifestyle hotels that cater to the creativity and passions of travelers with a millennial mindset. Both properties are owned and were developed by FibraHotel and are operated by Marriott International. AC Hotels by Marriott celebrates the beauty of classic modern designs with its European soul and Spanish roots, borne from the signature vision of renowned hotelier Antonio Catalan, who founded the brand in 1998 and grew it into one of the most well-respected hotel brands in Spain. Following its success in Europe, a joint venture was formed with Marriott International in 2011, which launched AC Hotels by Marriott globally into France, Denmark, the United States and now Mexico. These two openings mark the first hotels for the Caribbean and Latin America region. Later this year, AC Hotels plans to open hotels in Mexico City (Mexico), Panama City (Panama), Santiago (Chile) and two hotels in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in time for the summer Olympic Games. "We are thrilled to be bringing this new breed of lifestyle hotel to Mexico's dynamic neighborhoods of Queretaro and Guadalajara," explains Toni Stoeckl, Vice President Lifestyle Brands, Marriott International. "Our rapidly growing portfolio of design-led hotels illustrates Marriott International's commitment to making distinctive architecture and design affordable and accessible for creatives and entrepreneurs around the world." Based on a belief that purposeful design improves lives, AC Hotels carves away what is unnecessary, in order to provide guests with thoughtfully designed moments of beauty; moments that elevate their stay and help them focus on what is important to them. That is why at all AC Hotels guests get only what they need, without paying for what they don't. The result is sophisticated yet unpretentious style, innovative beverage and food programming and locally inspired experiences for both guests and locals. "Guadalajara and Queretaro are two of Mexico's most vibrant cities with active arts scene and energetic urban culture," said Tim Sheldon, President of the Caribbean and Latin America at Marriott International. "These hotels are both centrally located and within walking distance to their city's main tourist attractions, perfect for millennial travelers looking to experience everything the Guadalajara and Queretaro have to offer." "We are thrilled to be partnering with Marriott International to bring a new lifestyle brand to Mexico," said Simon Galante, CEO of FibraHotel. "These hotels address the Mexican travelers' desire for hotels with style and functional design, while also providing unique and authentic experiences in major cities. I have no doubt these two hotels will be a major success and set the tone for future lifestyle brands in Mexico." Signature Design AC Hotels by Marriott is designed for those creative, well-traveled, entrepreneurial spirits who are constantly on the go and who appreciate the oasis of a well-designed hotel that allows them to welcome moments of tranquility, be present and connect with others. Taking influence from its European roots, the AC Hotel Queretaro Antea and the AC Hotel Guadalajara Mexico showcase a timeless design that is modern and sleek. Guest rooms incorporate inviting grays and charcoal tones, with clean lines and elegant floors; furniture is lifted to create a sense of space, and crisp white linens are used to create a look that's both refined and elegant. Beverage and Food Programming At AC Hotels, premium touches are balanced with comfortable service. A signature element of the hotel includes an innovative beverage and food program within its AC Lounge. A twist on the traditional hotel bar, the experience includes local craft beers, specialty wines on tap, expertly made signature cocktails and a selection of tapas-style small bites. Located adjacent to the AC Lounge, the AC Kitchen serves a European-inspired Continental breakfast selection of flaky croissants, freshly-sliced artisanal LaQuercia Prosciutto, savory egg tarts, and Nespresso coffee. Additional Amenities The AC Guadalajara Mexico offers an outdoor pool deck with sweeping views of the city. And the AC Queretaro hotel has an indoor pool. Both hotels' AC Library and Lounge areas invite travelers to relax in chic surroundings, while also creating an effortless space in which to conduct a business meeting or connect with friends over cocktails. Complimentary Wi-Fi is offered for guests and locals to work, connect, explore and socialize. To facilitate frictionless service, Kallpods wireless service buttons are provided in the public and meetings spaces enabling guests to immediately request a staff member's attention. A state-of-the-art fitness center rounds out the hotels' offerings. AC Hotels by Marriott guests who are enrolled in the award-winning Marriott Rewards loyalty program are able to earn points during their hotel stays that can be redeemed for free holidays, flights, hotel rooms and merchandise, including jewelry, home furnishings, fashion and more. To learn more about AC Hotel Guadalajara Mexico, please visit: http://achotels.marriott.com/hotels/ac-hotel-guadalajara-mexico FibraHotel (BVM: FIHO12): is a Mexican trust created primarily to acquire, develop and operate business-class hotels in the limited service, selected service, full service and extended-stay segments. Its objective is to provide attractive returns to its CBFI holders, through stable cash distributions and the appreciation of its real estate assets. FibraHotel has a high quality hotel portfolio with the affiliation to different hotel brands and renowned operators, as well as geographic and segment diversification across Mexico. These characteristics as well as a seasoned management team with experience in Mexicos lodging and real estate market make FibraHotel an attractive investment vehicle. For more information, please visit our website at http://www.fibrahotel.com About Marriott International Marriott International, Inc. (NASDAQ: MAR) is based in Bethesda, Maryland, USA, and encompasses a portfolio of more than 8,100 properties under 30 leading brands spanning 139 countries and territories. Marriott operates and franchises hotels and licenses vacation ownership resorts all around the world. The company offers Marriott Bonvoy, its highly awarded travel program. Connect with us on Facebook and @MarriottIntl on Twitter and Instagram. Laura Botelho Public Relations Director, Caribbean & Latin America Marriott Cologne The B2B online booking platform for temporary housing Homelike has succesfully expanded its business to Switzerland. Homelike now offers more than 12,000 furnished apartments in 20 cities in the DACH (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) region, which can be booked entirely online. The German based property technology (PropTech) startup is currently the largest provider of temporary housing for corporate and business travellers in DACH region, starting at rental periods of one month. Expansion due to high customer demand Due to a noticeable growth in demand from its corporate customers, Homelike has expanded its portfolio to Switzerland, with main focus on Zurich, and with further expansion into the Swiss market planned for later in the year. 'We have already more than 400 corporate customers, highly interested in both an international portfolio and our entirely online booking process. Homelike is the smart alternative to a hotel room when it comes to long term stays. The real estate market in Switzerland is growing and offers great potential. After a successful expansion to Austria in December 2015, we are now planning to move into Europe's largest cities. The technical integration and the different prevailing legal norms in comparison to Germany were challenging for us in the beginning.' says Christoph Kasper, founder and CEO of Homelike. Homelike now offers a selection of 1,000 furnished apartments in Switzerland. 'Our corporate customers, who come from all industries are now able to get an overview of the entire extended stay market in all three DACH countries. They can compare prices, locations and property characteristics very easily and in a truly digital experience. That is unique.', states Dany Alexander Abul-Ella, Head of Real Estate at Homelike. 'With our self-developed Property Management System (PMS) for landlords, we make it possible to easily manage and market large portfolios of furnished apartments. Our service fee is not only in a moderate single-digit percent level, which is below market average but we also cater our clients more through a digital process. The landlord is only charged when a booking has been made successfully.' Homelike has established a market leading platform that brings the business travel and real estate industries together. This PropTech disrupts the real estate industry, especially the market for temporary housing. Homelike has established itself as a corporate housing expert and is now the largest provider in German speaking markets. The website is currently available in German and English and support for further languages are planned for later in the year. The company Homelike (www.thehomelike.com) is an online B2B platform that specializes in the brokerage of furnished apartments and corporate housing to companies and business travellers. The founders and CEOs of the company are Dustin Figge and Christoph Kasper. Homelike currently holds more than 12,000 apartments in its portfolio of furnished apartments, serviced apartments and boarding houses, which are located in 20 different cities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Homelike is constantly growing and broadening its presence in Europe. Anja Huchthausen Homelike Internet GmbH +49 221 988 611 88 Homelike BAHRAIN and MCLEAN, Va.. -- Hilton Worldwide (NYSE: HLT) today announced the signing of a management agreement with United Tower Real Estate W.L.L. to open DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Bahrain Dilmunia Island, which will be located at the Dilmunia Island project, currently under development off the coast of Bahrain. Carlos Khneisser, vice president of development, Middle East & North Africa, said, "With more than 70% of our Middle East pipeline currently under construction, Hilton's presence is growing rapidly across the region. The project at Dilmunia Island will be an outstanding addition to the Hilton portfolio in the Middle East, and further enhance Bahrain as a hugely popular destination for travellers to the region." Featuring 237 serviced apartments, DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Bahrain Dilmunia Island will offer a mix of studio, one and two bedroom apartments. Guests will be able to choose from three dining outlets including an all-day dining restaurant, a lobby cafe and a pool cafe. Leisure facilities include an outdoor swimming pool, a spa, health club and salon. For business guests, the hotel will offer four meeting rooms, a boardroom and a business center. Wellbeing and vitality are a focus at Dilmunia Island, which includes residential and shopping areas, and a health district. The mixed-use development is one of several large scale projects being built in line with Bahrain's Economic Vision 2030, a plan which aims to diversify the country's economy. Ahmed Mahmood Mohamed al Qaed, owner of United Tower Real Estate W.L.L., said, "We are pleased to have signed an agreement with Hilton Worldwide to open DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Bahrain Dilmunia Island. We look forward to welcoming guests and showcasing the property as part of Dilmunia Island, which we expect to become a major destination for locals and visitors to Bahrain." Dilmunia Island CEO, Mohammed Alsayed, said, "We are very pleased with the progress of the Dilmunia Island project which will integrate modernity, balanced life-style and well-being across the well-planned island development. With the arrival of DoubleTree, we will certainly enhance the visitor experience marking it out as one of the most prestigious projects in the region." With historic attractions such as the thousands-years old burial mounds, Qalat Al Bahrain Fort, the Al Khamis Mosque and the Arad Fort, as well as modern attractions such as shopping malls and the Formula One Grand Prix, Bahrain is a popular tourist destination for travellers within the GCC. DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Bahrain Dilmunia Island will enable easy connections to Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain's new international Airport, which is located approximately 10 kilometers from the hotel. "We are delighted to have signed a second DoubleTree property in Bahrain," said Dianna Vaughan, global head, DoubleTree by Hilton and Curio - A Collection by Hilton. "At more than 460 DoubleTree properties globally, our unique style of hospitality begins with a warm chocolate chip cookie welcome upon arrival and continues with excellent service throughout the stay." Hilton now features three properties across its Bahraini development pipeline, in its Hilton Hotels & Resorts and DoubleTree by Hilton portfolio. There are more than 67 properties currently under development in the Middle East, which will more than double the existing portfolio size over the next few years. View more news about DoubleTree by Hilton at news.doubletree.com. About Hilton Hilton (NYSE: HLT) is a leading global hospitality company with a portfolio of 18 world-class brands comprising more than 6,800 properties and more than 1 million rooms, in 122 countries and territories. Dedicated to fulfilling its founding vision to fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality, Hilton has welcomed more than 3 billion guests in its more than 100-year history, earned a top spot on the 2021 World's Best Workplaces list and been recognized as a global leader on the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices for five consecutive years. In 2021, in addition to opening more than one hotel a day, Hilton introduced several industry-leading technology enhancements to improve the guest experience, including Digital Key Share, automated complimentary room upgrades and the ability to book confirmed connecting rooms. Through the award-winning guest loyalty program Hilton Honors, the nearly 128 million members who book directly with Hilton can earn Points for hotel stays and experiences money can't buy. With the free Hilton Honors app, guests can book their stay, select their room, check in, unlock their door with a Digital Key and check out, all from their smartphone. Visit newsroom.hilton.com for more information, and connect with Hilton on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube. Astrid Egerton-Vernon Hilton Worldwide - Global +1 703 883 5696 Hilton 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 Its been a long time coming, but French Montanas Mac N Cheese 4 project is finally ready to see the light of day (kinda). On Friday, the Bad Boy rapper made the project available for pre-order on iTunes, ultimately revealing its artwork & release date in the process. Due out August 19, which is still over two months away, the follow up to last years Wave Gods will contain 14 records in total and feature the two previously heard singles Figure It Out with Kanye West & Lockjaw with Kodak Black. It will also reportedly feature guest appearances from Drake, Miguel, The LOX, and Beanie Sigel. As for the artwork, that finds French rocking a ton of gold chains, while his pet monkey, Julius Caesar, sits on his shoulder with some jewelry of his own around his neck. Peep the artwork in the gallery above and pre-order the album on iTunes. French montana The sneaker reselling market is reaching heights nobody ever thought possible and with Jordan Brand releasing a new pair of retro Js seemingly every weekend, its no wonder the reselling business is valued at over $1 BILLION and counting. Business Insider recently profiled the booming sneaker economy, taking tours through some of the biggest consignment shops like Flight Club and Stadium Goods. They also caught up with some resellers who are making a KILLING off of reselling sneakers- guys who are making six figures annually just flipping Nikes, Jordans and Yeezys. With testimonials from the brick and mortar businesses who are thriving off the sneaker culture to the hustlers on the streets who are making a living off of popular releases, this piece by Business Insider is a must watch for anyone who has ever even considered getting into the sneaker game. Item #1 The gates are open and the sun is out. Forbidden Fruit 2016 is a go and Hot Press is excited to release the lineup for this year's Speakeasy Tent. Last years Hot Press Speakeasy was one of the most eventful so far. Not to be encouraging this kind of behaviour, but one of the highlights was Fat Boy Slim himself, Norman Cook, donating his own wedding ring to one misty eyed romantic who had decided that our time with the funksoulbrother was the perfect opportunity to pop the question to his unsuspecting girlfriend. This year The Hot Press Speakeasy is back again with more public interviews, Q+As, sessions and maybe a spot of free styling! Where else would you have the chance to get up close and quite possibly personal with some of your Forbidden Fruit favourites? And, we definitely have a fine selection of festival favourites scheduled to stop by! Tonight will see UK dance legends Leftfield drop in for a chat, while on Saturday mainstagers Jungle will be over ahead of their set, and on Sunday we will be welcoming the mighty Groove Armada ahead of a busy night at both the festival and the Forbidden Fruit Nights after party in the Button Factory. See the full timetable for the Hot Press Forbidden Fruit Speakeasy below: FRIDAY 18:00 Frank Jez (DJ SET with EBAY) 19:00 Andrew Stanley Advertisement 20:00 Amaron (BEATBOX SET) 21.30 Leftfield SATURDAY 14:00 Joe Rooney 15:00 Frank Jez (SCRATCHING SHOWCASE) 16:00 Amaron and Frank Jez (MASTERSET) 17:00 VOXX Advertisement 18:00 Jungle 18:30 Kormac SUNDAY 14:30 Alison Spittle 15:00 Andruit and EBAY (DJ SET) 16:00 Gearoid Farrelly 17:00 Amaron (BEATBOX SET) Advertisement 18:15 Patrick McDonnell 19:00 Darren Emerson (ex-Underworld) 19.45 Groove Armada We all flawed, right? Pusha T asks the crowd at Forbidden Fruit before launching into M.P.A, a song in which he talks about his three vices (well leave you to find out what those letters stand for yourself). Pusha T is an electric performer, and his set at Fridays Forbidden Fruit is just that: dramatic, angry and very enjoyable. For one man to be able to command a crowd in the way he does is no easy feat, but Pusha T does it as naturally as you could imagine. Its easy to see why hes been lauded by critics since the launch of his solo career in 2011. He inhabits the stage with confidence and skill. Aggressive and powerful, Pusha T knows what hes doing. He is a veteran. As he enthusiastically tells the crowd, he is President of G.O.O.D music. While he was referring to the record label of which he was recently appointed President, theres a sense that he probably intended the double meaning. His Forbidden Fruit performance is charismatic as well as being a lot of fun. Advertisement This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Roger Enrico, who as chief executive officer of PepsiCo used a sponsorship deal with Michael Jackson to nearly pull even in the marketplace with Coca-Cola, has died. He was 71. He died on Wednesday, according to the Wall Street Journal, which didn't identify the source of its information. His death occurred while snorkeling in the Cayman Islands, where he had a residence, the Cayman Compass reported, citing local police. Before leading the Purchase, N.Y.-based company as CEO, Enrico was head of its Pepsi-Cola USA division and oversaw a marketing strategy that positioned the soft drink maker as "the choice of a new generation." The campaign, beginning in 1983, helped spook Coca-Cola Co. into changing the formula for its market-leading product. The 1985 introduction of "New Coke" is often cited as one of the great marketing blunders of all time. "After 87 years of going at it eyeball to eyeball, the other guy just blinked," Enrico wrote at the time in a memo to his staff. "Roger Enrico was, quite simply, one of the most creative marketers of his or any generation," Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo CEO said Thursday in an emailed statement. "He was a risk-taker, never afraid to challenge the status quo or make bold moves to get ahead." With PepsiCo for most of his career, Enrico got his start in 1971 as an associate brand manager for Funyuns, an onion-flavor snack, in the Frito-Lay division, according to a 1998 article in Beverage World. At different times, he led each of PepsiCo's three major units, Frito-Lay, Pepsi-Cola and restaurants, which included Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC. As PepsiCo CEO, Enrico restructured the company to focus on beverages and snacks. He spun off the restaurants into Tricon Global Restaurants, now Yum Brands, and engineered a spinoff of the bottling business in 1999. Enrico acquired Tropicana Products from Seagram Co. In 2000, he announced the $13.4 billion acquisition of Quaker Oats Co., producer of Gatorade, which was completed the following year. Roger A. Enrico was born Nov. 11, 1944, in Chisholm, Minnesota, according to Marquis Who's Who. As a teenager he worked at an independent bottling plant washing bottles and putting on labels. Later he sold pots and pans door to door, according to a 1985 profile in the Chicago Tribune. In 1965, he received a bachelor's degree in finance from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He had an early job at General Mills Inc., served in the U.S. Navy, and then returned to General Mills as assistant brand manager for Wheaties. At Frito-Lay he moved from Funyuns to Cheetos to marketing director for all the company's corn snacks. Later, as head of Pepsi-Cola, he persuaded Burger King to switch from selling Coca-Cola to Pepsi in its fast-food chain. By 1985, Pepsi led Coke in retail sales, while Coke held on to its lead with restaurant and vending-machine distribution included. Enrico was PepsiCo chief from 1996 to 2001. He was chairman of DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. from its inception as a public company in 2004 to 2012. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The Israeli government has accepted Noble Energy's plan to assemble a $5 billion natural gas project in the Mediterranean Sea called the Leviathan, one of the largest undeveloped gas fields in the world, after years of delays. The Houston company's green light comes after months of internal squabbles in the Israeli government over whether Noble Energy and its partners had too much control over Israel's natural gas market. Plans for the project faced another threat last year: Italian oil major Eni found a massive pocket of natural gas off Egypt, leaving the Israeli government with a ticking clock. "This has been going on for quite some time," said Andy Lipow, a Houston oil market analyst. Under an order from Israel's Supreme Court, the parties renegotiated the framework agreement to give future Israeli governments more flexibility to change drilling rules in later years. The original agreement required the government to lock in regulations for 10 years. The next step for Noble Energy is to secure financing and grab more contracts to sell natural gas. It also will start a bidding process to see how much the project will cost to build, and it could make its final investment decision sometime after it completes design plans for the project. The company said the Leviathan project, discovered in 2010, would provide Israel a second source of natural gas supplies and allow the nation to sell gas to surrounding countries. The project would encompass wells connected to an offshore platforms in Israel, which would initially produce 1.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day, though the output could be increased to nearly double that amount. Noble Energy, which has a 40 percent stake in Leviathan, said it has entered contracts to sell 100 million cubic feet per day of natural gas volumes in Israel, estimated to generate about $2.5 billion in revenue. "Strong momentum on the regulatory and marketing fronts represents major steps in advancing the Leviathan project toward final investment decision," said J. Keith Elliot, senior vice president for Noble Energy in the Eastern Mediterranean. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate VIENNA - OPEC countries failed Thursday to agree on measures to influence crude supplies and prices - a missed opportunity to show the resolve that for decades let them set how much consumers and industries world-wide would pay for gas, heating and related necessities. At the same time, OPEC officials argued that the cartel was alive and well, scoffing at suggestions that its authority was eroding to the point where it will soon be negligible. Secretary General Abdulla al-Badri said not to take that to mean "that OPEC is dead. OPEC will be powerful, will be strong. OPEC is alive." But the decision to make no decision appeared more an illustration of lack of unity, particularly between OPEC rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, whose deepening struggle for Mideast supremacy has for years been mirrored at oil meetings. Brent above $50 In London on Thursday, oil rose to a seven-month high, $50.04, after a U.S. crude supply decline tempered the impact of OPEC's failure to reach an agreement for a new production ceiling. Brent closed above $50 a barrel for the first time since Nov. 3. West Texas Intermediate for July delivery rose 16 cents to settle at $49.17 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Iran was second only to the Saudis inside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in terms of production before international sanctions over its nuclear program crippled sales. Now with a deal in place limiting its atomic prowess, sanctions have been lifted - and Tehran served notice even before the Vienna meeting that it intends to reach or surpass previous levels. Mehdi Hosseini, the head of Iran's oil contracts revision committee, puts pre-sanctions levels at 4.2 million barrels per day. Accepting anything less than that, Hosseini said in April, would amount to "another sanction against ourselves. It is something we cannot accept." Iran's output The latest figures from the International Energy Agency show Iran making good on its pledge, with output jumping by 300,000 barrels a day to nearly 3.6 million barrels daily in April, the highest since November 2011. One idea at the Vienna meeting that could have allowed for more Iranian production was to abandon a firm production target. OPEC countries had been considering a sliding ceiling that could shift between two benchmarks, both well above 30 million barrels a day. But Iran already put its foot down against quotas of any kind. WASHINGTON - Even as the federal government provides housing assistance for 5.5 million households, 7.2 million housing units are needed for more than 10 million extremely low-income families. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro delivered this bad news in a report last month on housing for low-income renters that is "Out of Reach," which is the name of the study. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate It sounded like a jump rope hitting wet asphalt. A two-syllable slap, then another and another in rapid succession. PuhTuh. PuhTuh. PuhTuh. Jennifer Green didn't flinch as the laser fired at her ankle. "I don't feel anything," she said, as the laser broke apart the final remnants of a small, black tattoo she'd inked on her skin a dozen years ago at the ripe old age of 21. When she'd gotten the tattoo, it seemed like a cool thing to imprint onto her life - two black semicircles, creating the logo for her favorite band, A Perfect Circle. But she hasn't listened to them in a long time. "With age, it's not really the ideal tattoo for me anymore," said Green, who drove from her home in Beaumont to Houston's Medical Center to have the final tattoo-removal treatment on a Wednesday afternoon in May. "I was all into this band when I was a kid. But now I'm 33, and I haven't listened to their music in years. It doesn't really pertain to my life anymore." So she sought out laser-removal treatment, a growing field in Houston and across the nation, as the number of people with tattoos continues to climb. "Here's an interesting stat," said Dr. Paul Friedman, director of the Dermatology & Laser Surgery Center on Fannin, as he prepared for a few shots at Green's ankle. "Thirty million people in the United States have an unwanted tattoo. That's more than the population of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and Boston combined. Isn't that unbelievable?" Not when you know that roughly 33 percent of Americans have at least one tattoo, according to a recent Harris Poll. Millennials like Green are even more likely to have a tattoo, at 47 percent. And who stops at one, anyway? Sixty-nine percent of people who've gone under the needle have at least two tattoos. As a result, 23 percent of people who've been inked say they regret getting it done, up from 14 percent in 2012. With this kind of rising demand, Friedman had to step up his game at his Houston office. In May, he purchased a new laser, which breaks up the ink at a much faster pace. "In terms of the technology, we've just gotten a quantum leap forward," he said. "It's really the first advance in the treatment of tattoos in over 20 years, utilizing what's referred to as picosecond technology." Friedman previously used a laser that pulsed at a nanosecond level - one pulse per one-billionth of a second. But picoseconds are 100 times faster, providing one pulse per one-trillionth of a second. The added speed helps break the ink into smaller particles than in the past, making it easier for the human body to eliminate the ink altogether. During the procedure, you can see colors bubbling back out of the skin. "This means removing a tattoo takes about half as many treatments as in the past, and because of the fact that we're delivering the energy so quickly, it allows us to use lower energy, so it's a quicker recovery time," Friedman said. With nanosecond technology, it's common for removal to require between five and 10 treatments, spaced out at two-month intervals. But with the move to picosecond lasers, that timeline gets cut in half, Friedman says. That's good news for Austin Parrott, who had a massive portrait of the Egyptian god Anubis inked on his left bicep for his 20th birthday two years ago. It took only three months for him to decide he no longer wanted the artwork. He scheduled his first tattoo-removal procedure with Friedman in August 2014. On an afternoon in early April, a few weeks before the picosecond machine arrived in Friedman's office, Parrott reclined on the paper-covered doctor's chair as Friedman zapped his arm repeatedly, breaking down the ink with the nanosecond laser. "With the nanosecond technology, I would say probably he'll need another four or five sessions," Friedman said. "With pico, it would be about half of that." Parrott's philosophy is simple: Whatever it takes. The now-faded picture of the dog-faced god is a reminder of a young, foolish time in his life when he cared too much about what his friends thought. "The people I was hanging around with then, they had tattoos everywhere, and they were a bunch of idiots. It's easy to get influenced by something like that," Parrott said. He wishes he'd thought about it more or waited to make the decision. And that's common. "A lot of people get caught up trying to be different," Parrott said. "But you're trying to be an individual in a world where everyone is trying to be different, so you're all doing the same thing. You're all getting tattoos. The people I was hanging around with, they all had them. They were all different - but they were exactly the same." He said he doesn't care how long it takes or how much it costs to get the tattoo removed. "We're going to get it off," he said, "because I wasn't born with it, and I can prove that you don't need this to be different." But cost can be a deterring factor. Alyx Harraway, 27, has been visiting Friedman's office to have two tattoos removed for months. She tried her first removal at a spa, when she found a deal on Groupon, but the facility didn't use any numbing agents, and she felt the entire process. Now she's plunking down $500 a session for the tattoo on her foot and another $700 for the tat on the center of her back. "I'm mortified by the one on my back, to be honest," Harraway said of the large sun, which she got when she was 17. "It's very cliche, and it means nothing to me. It's so ugly. You would look at that and then look at me or know me, and it wouldn't match up." That tattoo is covered up at work. But even when it comes to the visible tattoo on her foot, people at work don't really care, she said. "Especially with millennials, it's more acceptable now in the workplace. But I still don't think it's classy, and I want it removed," said Harraway, who works in business development. Visible tattoos aren't as taboo as they once were. Green, who works as a real estate agent, said her ankle tattoo has never drawn negative attention. Still, business is booming for Friedman and others who offer tattoo removal. "When you have more people with tattoos, you'll have more people who don't want them anymore," he said. "It's simple." Millions of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes have been at work spreading the Zika virus in South and Central America. This is not the first time a mosquito-borne virus has broken loose in the Americas. Mosquitoes and viruses have shaped the history of the Western hemisphere in surprising ways for centuries; the United States might not be an independent country without them. Before 1492, Aedes aegypti did not live in the Americas. It came from West Africa, probably on ships of the transatlantic slave trade. The mosquito gradually colonized parts of the Americas and served as the primary carrier for yellow fever and dengue, viruses that are cousins of Zika. Aedes aegypti is a fussy mosquito with a strong preference for human blood, which makes it an efficient spreader of human disease. It lays eggs in artificial water containers such as pots, cans, barrels, wells, or cisterns. This preference for human activities distinguishes it from the thousands of other mosquito species. Together these mosquitoes and their fevers decided the fate of empires. In 1697 the kingdom of Scotland attempted to establish a trading colony on the Caribbean shore of Panama. Within two years, however, some 70 percent of the Scots were dead of fever. In 1707 Scotland accepted union with England partly to pay debts incurred by the disaster. In 1763, France had just lost Canada in war to Britain and hoped to regain its position in the Americas with a new colony in what is now French Guiana. Some 11,000 hopeful souls were recruited from France and elsewhere in Europe. Like the hapless Scots, their immune systems had no previous experience of yellow fever or dengue (and in most cases, none of malaria, either). Within 18 months, 85 to 90 percent of them had died from disease. By the end of the 18th century, mosquitoes were not just intervening in imperial schemes, they were helping the Americas win their liberty. Yellow fever and malaria ravaged European armies sent to prevent revolution in what is now Haiti and Venezuela, leading to the creation of independent countries. Even the U.S. owes its independence in part to mosquitoes and malaria. In 1780, the southern colonies, which had widespread malaria, became a decisive theater in the American Revolution. British troops had almost no experience with malaria, and thus no resistance to it. American militiamen, and much of the Continental Army, had grown up in the South and faced malaria every summer. So in the summer of 1780, the British Army hosted its own malaria epidemic, which was particularly intense in the South Carolina low country. At times, half the British Army was too sick to move. In 1781, the British commander in the South, Lord Cornwallis, decided to move his army north, into the hills of Virginia, to avoid the fatal sickness which so nearly ruined the army the summer before. His superiors, however, ordered him to move to the tidewater, and so in June, Cornwallis dug in at Yorktown. In the warm months, mosquitoes (including a malaria vector species called Anopheles quadrimaculatus) started to bite, and by late summer of 1781, malaria had taken hold of his army once again. Some 51 percent of his men were too sick to conduct the counter-siege operations that Cornwallis knew were required. American and French forces penned the troops in until Cornwallis surrendered in October, which in effect decided the outcome of the American Revolution. Mosquitoes only lost their political importance after medical researchers realized that they were spreading the fevers. The first to publish the idea that Aedes aegypti could carry yellow fever was a Cuban doctor, Carlos Finlay. U.S. military doctors led by Walter Reed confirmed Finlays hypothesis. Armed with this knowledge, when the U.S. Army occupied Cuba (after 1898) and Panama (after 1903) they made life miserable for Aedes aegypti covering up water containers and putting a drop of kerosene into those without covers. Within a couple of years, mosquito control had banished yellow fever from Cuba and Panamas Canal Zone. Over the next 70 years or so, mosquito control acquired ever more weapons. Insecticides, such as DDT brought to bear in the 1940s proved deadly to all mosquitoes (and other creatures). But Aedes aegypti control proved too successful for its own good. Once the mosquito populations had fallen drastically, and the risk of yellow fever and dengue diminished, budgets were redirected away from mosquito control all over the Americas. Had the Zika virus come to the Americas in the 1930s or 1950s, its prospects would have been poor Aedes aegypti was under control. But since the 1980s Aedes aegypti has made a dramatic comeback in the Americas. While the main reason is the lapse in mosquito control, the warming climate has extended the mosquitos range. Today, Zikas chances of spreading widely among human populations via Aedes aegypti are far greater. And it will have help from Aedes albopictus, another mosquito capable of transmitting the virus, which arrived from East Asia in the 1980s. Combating Zika will require mosquito control, and the political difficulty that arouses shows a defiant aspect of the American character to which mosquitoes and malaria gave free rein. Malaria may have helped Americans win the revolution in 1780-81, but their descendants cherish their liberty and say, in effect, "don't tread on me" when told to cover water containers. Any attempt to spray pesticides in our democracy quickly excites opposition. Eventually, perhaps, a vaccine will sideline Zika, but until then these coming summers give the virus a chance to run amok and give mosquitoes another chance to make history. John R. McNeill is a professor of history at Georgetown University. His book Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914 won the 2010 Albert J. Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association. Bookmark Gray Matters. It decides the fate of empires. I live about 15 minutes away from the auto shop on Memorial Drive near Wilcrest. The same auto shop where, Sunday morning, an Army veteran armed with an AR-15 assault rifle began shooting people. Over the course of nearly an hour, he killed a customer at a car wash, and injured three bystanders and two police officers. When I got the news alert that an armed man was shooting on Memorial, my reaction was: No. How could this privileged, tree-lined neighborhood be the site of a mass shooting? There was no way that someone could be killing people at random on that street. Those headlines are for some other neighborhood. Some other part of Houston. Not my quiet part of town. My old high school is only 10 minutes away from the gas station. On Monday nights, I watch The Bachelor at my best friend's place nearby. I've been driving up and down Memorial since I got my driver's license at 16. When my dad taught me to drive, we'd slowly wind our way through the surrounding neighborhoods. It was always calm. Steve Gonzales / Houston Chronicle It was unfathomable that Memorial Drive would make the national news. But then I thought to myself, maybe that's how the parents felt at Sandy Hook. Maybe that's how the students felt at Columbine. Maybe that's how the people felt in Colorado at the movie theater. They must've thought too, "No way. This couldn't happen here not at my elementary school, at my high school, at my movie theater." I thought about the times recently that I'd driven past that auto shop. I pass it on my way to City Centre, to go to brunch, happy hour or just hang out. On Friday night, heading to an art gallery with a friend, we turned down Wilcrest, laughing and talking about the night ahead, probably singing some random song. The woman who was shot multiple times had been driving to brunch that Sunday morning. On Monday, I stopped at a red light and noticed that I was next to a gas station. I thought about how hard it must've been for the victims to escape the shooter. I thought about how they felt when they realized shots were being fired at their car. I thought about the shooter too. This 25-year-old kid. What terrible things had he seen in Afghanistan? What caused him to get to this place? According to the website Mass Shooting Tracker, since 2016 began, there have been 161 mass shootings. I've become numb to them. I think we all have become numb to them. But something happens when it's in your neighborhood. Something switches when your mind's protective cocoon is shattered. You realize the world is much smaller than you thought. You think about other people's problems. I'm trying to keep some of those raw feelings alive. That feeling of fear for the people I love. The protectiveness. The shock. The disbelief. I don't want them to fade. I want to keep caring about the innocent people who were hurt. I want to keep thinking about background checks and how we can make it harder for people who shouldn't have guns to get them. I want to keep thinking of ways we can help Army veterans. I don't want this to just be another shooting I read about in the paper. Because it wasn't. It was right down the street. It was real. Brooke Lewis (@brookelewisa) received her master's degree in journalism from Syracuse University and next week will start an internship at the Houston Chronicle. Bookmark Gray Matters. We slowly wind our way through the surrounding neighborhoods. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 2 1 of 2 twitter.com/GregAbbott_TX Show More Show Less 2 of 2 Jon Shapley/Staff Show More Show Less Continued rains and rising floodwaters from an engorged Brazos River forced state prison officials Friday to evacuate nearly 2,000 prisoners from a correctional facility in Brazoria County. Officials with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said a total of about 1,700 inmates were being evacuated from the Ramsey Unit in Rosharon, starting this morning. A former Drug Enforcement Administration agent based in McAllen pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal charge of accessing child pornography. James Patrick Burke, 39, who now lives in Massachusetts, told U.S. District Judge Alfred Bennett in Houston that he wanted to forgo his right to a jury trial, even though a growing number of defendants are challenging the evidence gathered through an FBI sting that operated through a so-called "dark website." One local defendant, a Pearland physician who worked as a pediatric oncologist at MD Anderson Cancer Center, asked a judge Wednesday to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea in the Operation Pacifier case. Burke, who served nearly 20 years in the military, told the judge he suffers from post traumatic stress disorder. He remains free on bond pending his sentencing, which the judge agreed to postpone until Oct. 20 so he can qualify for military retirement benefits. Burke admitted downloading and viewing child pornography on the internet, but said he would use forensic wiping software to delete the images, according to a written statement from U.S. Attorney Ken Magidson. The federal agent and the physician were arrested as part of a nationwide sting dubbed Operation Pacifier, in which agents seized control of a server for a dark website called Playpen. Visitors to the site were able to download and share child pornography. Federal agents kept the site running at an FBI facility in Virginia for about two weeks while they traced back links to people who visited the site. Dark websites such as Playpen operated on Tor, or The Onion Router, a software that encrypts identifying information for visitors and the hosts. A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that federal agents did not have authority to go beyond Virginia in tracing users to the site. The ruling has let to defendants in seven states questioning the evidence gathered in those cases. A former Drug Enforcement Administration agent based in McAllen pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal charge of accessing child pornography. James Patrick Burke, 39, who lives in Massachusetts, told U.S. District Judge Alfred Bennett in Houston that he wanted to forgo his right to a jury trial, even though a growing number of defendants are challenging the evidence gathered through an FBI sting on a so-called "dark website." A Pearland physician also charged in the case asked a judge Wednesday to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea in the Operation Pacifier case. Burke, who served nearly 20 years in the military, told the judge he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. He remains free on bond pending his sentencing, which the judge agreed to postpone until Oct. 20 so he can qualify for military retirement benefits. Burke admitted downloading and viewing child pornography on the internet but said he would use forensic wiping software to delete the images, according to a written statement from U.S. Attorney Ken Magidson. The federal agent and the physician were arrested as part of a nationwide sting dubbed Operation Pacifier, in which agents seized control of a server for a dark website called Playpen. Visitors to the site were able to download and share child pornography. Federal agents kept the site running at an FBI facility in Virginia for about two weeks while they traced links to people who visited the site. Dark websites such as Playpen operate on Tor, or The Onion Router, a software that encrypts identifying information for visitors and the hosts. A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that federal agents did not have authority to go beyond Virginia in tracing users to the site, raising questions about whether the evidence could be used in Texas and other states. The physician, Dennis P.M. Hughes, worked as a pediatric oncologist at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center until his arrest on the federal charges. AUSTIN - For seven months, a team of investigators in the Texas Attorney General's Office extensively scrutinized a for-profit real estate investment training program known as Trump University. The investigators went undercover to attend seminars, interviewed dozens of students and requested hundreds of documents. Ultimately, records show, they determined in May 2010 that the program had illegally engaged in false advertising, and they asked their bosses to sue unless the business agreed to pay the state $5.4 million. And then, everything stopped. Trump University decided to leave Texas, and the bosses decided not to file the lawsuit - a choice that did not sit well with at least one of the investigators. "The case was closed and all the Texas consumers were left high and dry," said John Owens, then the deputy chief of the office's consumer protection division, who retired in 2011 after 20 years at the office. "We were a little shocked," Owens added. More for you Former aide: Abbott not involved in decision to end Trump U probe The investigation - and the decision by then-Attorney General Greg Abbott's office not to sue - has drawn a surge of attention this week thanks to a California judge's order unsealing documents in a lawsuit against the controversial training program named after a businessman who is now the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee. Critics pounced on a revelation reported by the Associated Press that Abbott received donations totaling $35,000 from Trump three years after deciding not to sue - the only major donation the New York billionaire has made to a Texas politician in years. The state Democratic Party said Abbott was "on the corrupt Trump payroll." More Information Trump University called a 'scam' NEW YORK - Donald Trump's real estate school was "just a scam," New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said after Trump defended his former for-profit real estate school. Trump "bilked people out of millions of dollars," Schneiderman, a Democrat, said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "We're going to make sure he pays it back." The state's top legal official said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that Trump had been in settlement talks before Schneiderman sued in 2013 over Trump University. The talks failed. A Trump representative disputed Schneiderman's characterization of the talks. "What actually happened is they made a settlement demand which we rejected," said Alan Garten, counsel for the Trump Organization. "That's why we are litigating." Bloomberg News See More Collapse Abbott, who is now governor and has endorsed Trump, argued he did his job by using an investigation to force a bad business out of the state. "The unthinkable has happened - the media's obsession with Donald Trump is now leading them to highlight the job then-Attorney General Abbott did in protecting Texas consumers," spokesman Matt Hirsch said. The reality may be a little murkier than either side would acknowledge, according to documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle and interviews with former Attorney General's Office employees and Texas residents who attended Trump University. The probe began in the fall of 2009, apparently in response to an advertisement that Trump University had placed in the Chronicle, according to an internal memo that Attorney General's Office lawyer Rick Berlin sent to Owens and three other supervisors. "The free workshop advertisement advises you to 'Cash in on the Greatest Property Liquidation in History!' " the memo said. "The full one page ad quotes Donald Trump as saying 'I can turn anyone into a successful real estate investor, including you.' The ad further professes that you can buy real estate from banks at up to 70% below market value." 'I did feel misled' Similar ads were being placed in cities across Texas and the United States. Trump University, which got its name through a branding agreement with the businessman, opened outposts across the country, enticing potential customers with free events where staffers promised more details at three-day seminars costing $1,500 and, then, hands-on training at longer sessions costing up to $35,000. Russell Beanland, a retired parts manager for the U.S. Air Force, said he paid $1,495 to attend a three-day seminar in San Antonio and felt that he did not get his money's worth. "It didn't seem as easy as they said it was. I never did try anything out of it," said Beanland, who is now 84 and a pastor. "I did feel misled, yes." About 30 similar complaints from Texans poured into the Better Business Bureau, according to a story published earlier this year by the American Media Institute, a nonprofit watchdog. Not everybody was disappointed with the program, however. Tom Barker, 62, a small- business owner from Horseshoe Bay, said he felt satisfied with a seminar he attended in Austin and follow-up trainings he bought in Las Vegas and Florida. "I had already been doing real estate investing, but I felt like I learned more about it," said Barker, who said he was supporting Trump for president. "There are a bunch of losers out there who think they can just hit the streets and start making deals," Barker added. The Attorney General's Office did not receive any formal complaints about Trump University, records show. Nevertheless, the office approved Berlin's request for an investigation. Two months later, in January 2010, the Attorney General's Office notified Trump University it was under investigation for "possible violations of 17.46(a) and 17.46(b) of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices - Consumer Protection Act," records show. Those provisions prohibit "false, misleading, or deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of any trade or commerce." The notification letter demanded 12 categories of documents. 'Extremely strong case' Meanwhile, Berlin, Owens and others attended a seminar in Houston and interviewed about 30 Trump University students, according to a memo documenting the investigation. The investigators determined that Trump University had held 57 "free" events and enticed approximately 450 Texans to pay $1,495 each to attend a seminar, according to the memo. About 40 of those people bought a more expensive conference, and some 150 people purchased other goods or services. In total, the investigators determined that Texans had paid Trump University at least $2.6 million, according to the memo. They multiplied that number by two and added $250,000 in attorneys' fees to come up with their proposed settlement deal. A meeting to discuss a possible settlement was scheduled for May 19, 2010, records show. Berlin, Owens and others sought approval from David Morales, then the deputy attorney general for civil litigation. "It was outstanding," Owens said. "We detailed misstatements of fact they gave at their seminars. It was an extremely strong case." Owens said that the proposal made it all the way to the desk of Abbott's second-in-command, Daniel Hodge, who now serves as Abbott's chief of staff. "I think Abbott knew about it," said Owens, adding that the decision not to sue was a "political decision." The Chronicle was unable to verify that the memo reached either Hodge or Abbott. Hirsch, the Abbott spokesman, denied it, calling it completely "made-up." Hirsch said Abbott acted in the state's best interest and was not affected by the later donations, which came three years later and was a small part of a $40 million fundraising haul. "The Texas Attorney General's office investigated Trump U and its demands were met," Hirsch said. "Trump U was forced out of Texas and consumers were protected." Homicide detectives are investigating the death last week in the Harris County Jail of a woman who was previously injured during a chase with Houston police, according to the sheriff's office. It was at least the fifth death of a Harris County inmate this year, including the beating death in April of an inmate jailed for allegedly stealing a guitar. Lakeshia Dibbles, 33, died at St. Joseph's Medical Center at 8:27 p.m. May 25, less than two hours after suffering an apparent seizure and collapsing in a Harris County Jail cell. Earlier that day at 7:08 a.m., Dibbles was booked into the jail after her release from another Houston hospital, where she spent a week being treated for head trauma that took place when she stumbled and fell while being chased May 18 by the Houston Police Department, sheriff's officials said. Court records show Dibbles was arrested for allegedly stealing four bottles of baby formula, but the charges were elevated to a felony because she had two prior theft convictions. Dibbles was also charged with evading arrest by HPD. Sheriff Ron Hickman said in a written statement that jailers and medical staff responded immediately after Dibbles was seen to have a seizure and attempted to resuscitate the woman. The statement said an investigation by homicide investigators is underway, along with a inquiry by the Internal Affairs Division. The Harris County medical examiner will determine her cause of death. "At this time, we trust in the opinion of the medical professionals that determined Dibbles was eligible for release from the hospital and into HPD's custody," Hickman said. "Our internal investigation will determine whether deviations from procedure occurred, and identify areas that merit improvement." Vannetta Dibbles declined to discuss the circumstances of her daughter's death. "My daughter is a beautiful person, and she is a princess to her mother, and I want to leave it that way," Dibbles said. "All I know is my daughter was a beautiful girl, inside and out. She gave to everybody - she helped the homeless. I just want to be at peace." A Houston police department spokesman confirmed that Dibbles' death was under review. "As is customary in these incidents, once we were made aware of Ms. Lakeshia Dibbles' death, an Internal Affairs investigation into the incident was immediately ordered by Acting Chief of Police (Martha) Montalvo," according to a statement. BERLIN - Three Syrian men who entered Germany with a wave of migrants were arrested Thursday on suspicion of planning an Islamic State attack on Dusseldorf, potentially thwarting a deadly operation that appeared reminiscent of the assaults on Brussels and Paris. The suspected plot, German authorities said, involved suicide bombers, firearms and explosives - a lethal combination that has become the hallmark of a new spate of Islamist terror in Europe. A fourth man, who prosecutors said had informed French officials about the alleged plot, was being held in France. Growing threat The arrests highlighted the significant threat to Europe from Islamic State militants posing as migrants. Officials said all four Syrians entered the continent from the Middle East using the same irregular passages by land and sea - Greece via Turkey and then through the Balkans - used by hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers last year. After the attacks in Brussels and Paris, Islamic State officials have claimed that more sleeper cells were incubating in Europe. Thursday's arrests suggested such threats were not idle. The German chief prosecutor's office said in a statement that there were no immediate indications the men had started taking concrete steps to carry out the plot. But the authorities moved in Thursday - arresting the men in three German states - after details of the alleged plot were provided by the suspect in France, who first approached authorities in Paris in February. The plot, officials said, was supposed to involve two suicide bombers. Other assailants "were supposed to kill as many bystanders as possible with guns and other explosive devices," prosecutors said. Two of the men were suspected of being active members of the Islamic State; a third was believed to have at least supported the group. Investigators also suspect that one of the two Islamic State adherents had links to the radical Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra, which is known as the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaida. Revelations that the suspects had entered Germany as migrants quickly fueled the debate here over the security threat presented by a massive pool of poorly screened asylum seekers. Hundreds of thousands of would-be refugees entered Germany last year after receiving only cursory vetting in near-bankrupt Greece. Over the past six months, more than three dozen suspected militants impersonating migrants have been arrested or died while planning or carrying out terrorism. They include at least seven directly tied to the attacks in Paris and Brussels. Haphazard policy Although a tenuous deal between the European Union and Turkey has largely blocked new migrants from entering Europe via Greece, more than a million have arrived. Only a fraction, officials say, present genuine security threats. But Thursday, critics took aim at a haphazard migrant policy that was riddled with risk. Gregor Golland, a local member of parliament for Germany's Christian Democratic Union in North Rhine-Westphalia, called local leaders "naive" for insisting that "no terrorists were coming to Germany via the Balkan route" - a reference to the main land corridor used by irregular migrants last year. WASHINGTON - Part of Bernie Sanders' charm is that for all of his arm-waving jeremiads, he appears unthreatening. He's the weird old uncle in the attic. It's almost a matter of style. Who can be afraid of a candidate so irascible, grumpy, old-fashioned and unfashionable? After all, he's not going to win the nomination, so what harm can he do? A major address at the party convention? A say in the vice presidential selection? And who reads party platforms anyway? Well, platforms might not immediately affect a particular campaign. But they do express the party line, a written record of its ideological trajectory. Which is why two of Sanders' appointments to the 15-member platform committee are so stunning. Professor Cornel West not only has called the Israeli prime minister a war criminal, but openly supports the BDS movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions), the most important attempt in the world to ostracize and delegitimize Israel. West is joined on the committee by the longtime pro-Palestinian activist James Zogby. Together, reported the New York Times, they "vowed to upend what they see as the party's lopsided support of Israel." This seems a gratuitous provocation. Sanders hardly made Israel central to his campaign. He did call Israel's response in the 2014 Gaza war "disproportionate" and said "we cannot continue to be one-sided." But now Sanders seeks to permanently alter - i.e. weaken - the relationship between the Democratic Party and Israel, which has been close and supportive since Harry Truman recognized the world's only Jewish state when it declared independence in May 1948. West doesn't even pretend, as do some left-wing "peace" groups, to be opposing Israeli policy in order to save it from itself. He makes the simpler case that occupation is unconscionable oppression and that until Israel abandons it, Israel deserves to be treated like apartheid South Africa - anathematized, cut off, made to bleed morally and economically. The Sanders appointees wish to bend the Democratic platform to encourage such diminishment unless Israel redeems itself by liberating Palestine. This is an unusual argument for a Democratic platform committee, largely because it is logically and morally perverse. Israel did follow such high-minded advice in 2005: It terminated its occupation and evacuated Gaza. That earned it (temporary) praise from the West. And from the Palestinians? Not peace, not reconciliation, not normal relations but a decade of unrelenting terrorism and war. Israel is now being asked - pressured - to repeat that same disaster on the West Bank. That would bring the terror war, quite fatally, to the heart of Israel - Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ben Gurion Airport. Israel is now excoriated for declining that invitation to national suicide. It is ironic that the most successful Jewish presidential candidate ever should be pushing the anti-Israel case. But perhaps not surprising considering Sanders' ideological roots. He is old left - not the post-1960s, countercultural New Left. Why, the man honeymooned in the Soviet Union - not such fashionably cool communist paradises as Sandinista Nicaragua where Bill de Blasio went to work for the cause or Castro's Cuba where de Blasio honeymooned. (Do lefties all use the same wedding planner?) For the old left, Israel was simply an outpost of Western imperialism, Middle East division. To this day, the leftist consensus, most powerful in Europe (which remains Sanders' ideological lodestar), holds that Israeli perfidy demands purification by Western chastisement. Chastisement there will be at the Democratic platform committee. To be sure, Sanders didn't create the Democrats' drift away from Israel. It was visible at the 2012 convention with the loud resistance to recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. But Sanders is consciously abetting it. The millennials who worship him and pack his rallies haven't lived through - and don't know - the history of Israel's half-century of peace offers. They don't know of the multiple times Israel has offered to divide the land with an independent Palestinian state and been rebuffed. Sanders hasn't lifted a finger to tell them. The lovable old guy with the big crowds and no chance at the nomination is hardly taken seriously (except by Hillary Clinton, whose inability to put him away reveals daily her profound political weakness). But when he makes platform appointees that show he does take certain things seriously, like undermining the U.S.-Israeli relationship, you might want to reconsider your equanimity about the magical mystery tour. It looks like Woodstock, but there is steel inside the psychedelic glove. Charles Krauthammer's email address is letters@charleskrauthammer.com. News from the campaign trail has Latinos across America cringing. It happens every time a scene like this splashes across the news: Protesters went plumb loco outside a Donald Trump rally in Albuquerque, N.M. Waving Mexican flags, they lobbed rocks at police, set fires, pushed aside barriers and generally acted like little hooligans. The outburst was followed by the inevitable. Cable news talking heads, as they always do, wondered why the protesters were so angry. Really? The United States is veering close to electing as president a man whose version of "making America great again" includes scapegoating some of the very people who helped make the country so incredible - Latino immigrants. That's the problem. That this has to be explained. And, no, this is not an excuse for the riotous behavior of a few. Most Hispanics know such out-of-control displays of emotion will not help. Decapitating a Trump pinata might feel good - a symbolic display of cultural fury. But when it's televised, it lends credibility to Trump's innuendo that Latinos are interlopers intent on mayhem and criminality. Nothing could be further from the truth - even for those who arrive here without legal paperwork. If you want to find someone willing to literally die to become an American, find a recent Latino immigrant. Talk to the Central Americans who risked their lives to cross through countries, hoping to gain asylum in the U.S. They can tell you about yearning for the dignity and freedoms America, privileges that so many third-, fourth- or nth-generation Americans take for granted. Latinos have some of the highest rates of service in the U.S. military. They are highly entrepreneurial, creating businesses wherever they settle. In a nation that so prides itself of being created from immigrant stock, an awful lot of Americans are naive about migration. Many of Trump's supporters are unaware that their own forefathers did not arrive here with documents in hand, not like what is required now, a system that didn't even exist until recent decades. Nor did their ancestors instantly master English. Rather, they followed the same patterns of language assimilation that we observe among Latinos today. Adult immigrants rarely become proficient in English, but their children become bilingual. Following generations are monolingual - in English. The process of assimilation is a blessing and a curse. It helps bind us together as a nation: one people from many sources. But as we lose our accents and the stigma of origins in another country, we tend to lose contact with a certain historical truth: Not everybody is welcomed in America. America might admit them for their cheap labor, but if these immigrants want to get a piece of the American dream they're going to have to fight for it. When you're ignorant of what previous generations went through to become Americans, it's easy to believe the sort of isolationist screeds that Trump preaches. Following the New Mexico melee, Trump headed to the heavily Latino Anaheim, Calif., for another rally. The Los Angeles Times reported that warm-up speakers told stories about loved ones who had been murdered by immigrants not legally in the U.S. Trump followed up by leading his supporters in a chant of "Build that wall!" the Times reported. Never mind that much of border control is better managed by drones and high-tech sensors and the dull monotony of paperwork. Also ignore the fact that so many of the workers who keep California's agriculture and restaurant industry humming crossed that border at some point. Trump has a simple, effective message for the ignorant of America: Immigrants are murderers and rapists, and my wall will keep you safe from them. By the week's end, Trump had reached the threshold of enough delegates to clinch the GOP nomination. Latinos have taken notice. Reports from around the country are of an increase in Latino migrants moving from legal permanent residency to full U.S. citizenship. They are registering to vote. And many cite Trump's obnoxious anti-immigrant slogans as the impetus. Wouldn't it be rich if these new Americans proved to be the voting bloc that shut Trump out of the White House? These novice voters embody a truth: Donald Trump not only lacks presidential credentials; he fails to understand what makes America great. Latino immigrants do, and that's why so many proudly become Americans. Sanchez is an opinion-page columnist for The Kansas City Star. WASHINGTON - Paul Ryan has made very clear what he would do if he ran Washington. Donald Trump has not. That is both the opportunity and the danger that Ryan, the Speaker of the House, embraced on Thursday when he endorsed Trump for president. Ryan has spent more than a decade in Congress laying out plans to cut tax rates, including for top earners and corporations; to slash federal spending, including the near-complete elimination of federal programs outside of the military and safety-net programs such as Medicare and Social Security; and to overhaul government services for the poor, to reduce the amount spent upon them and attempt to encourage more people to work their way out of poverty. He favors free trade and has in the past supported immigration reform, though he has vowed not to bring the issue to a vote under President Barack Obama. Trump has spent the past year, as a candidate for president, laying out a few core policy proposals - and then waffling or obfuscating on large swaths of his agenda. In just one example, he has alternatively promised to pay off the entire federal debt within eight years; to refinance the debt in ways that many experts worry would undermine America's credibility with its creditors; and to take on more debt in order to increase federal spending on infrastructure. None of those positions is Ryan's position. Which one would be Trump's as president is anyone's guess. There are other areas where the men clearly disagree. Trump repeatedly promises to deport the 11 million Americans who are living here illegally; Ryan would not. Trump wants to slap tariffs on China, Mexico and other trading partners in hopes of bringing outsourced manufacturing jobs back to America, which is a direct attack on Ryan's support for lower tariffs and freer trade. Trump has promised not to touch Social Security or Medicare. His tax plan includes rate reductions for the middle class that far exceed Ryan's past proposals, and which independent analyses suggest would swell the federal budget deficit far more than Ryan's would. Ryan is betting those differences pale in comparison to the policy areas where he and Trump appear likely to find common ground. He laid out several of those in his column effectively endorsing Trump. They include rolling back federal regulations in areas such as the environment and financial services, repealing Obama's signature health care law and replacing it with a more conservative alternative and, of course, cutting taxes. The speaker also appears to be calculating that, by backing Trump now, he can increase his role in filling in the blanks - or stopping the spinning wheel - in the GOP nominee's policy agenda. (It is, of course, hard to see how much leverage Ryan really would have had if he did not endorse and Trump had won.) As researchers at the financial firm Nomura pointed out in a note to investors this week, the "issues" section of Trump's website lists only seven topics, and his plans total just 9,000 words. "In contrast," the researchers wrote, "at roughly this point during the campaign in 2000, Governor George W. Bush published a 450-page book of speeches offering detailed policy proposals on everything from education to tax reform to the environment to trade and Social Security." The researchers also note that Trump has few discernible policy advisers, particularly on economics; that he has often characterized his existing proposals as starting points for negotiation; and that his fondness for deal-making, as an end to itself, raising the uncertainty over which plans Trump would champion to the end and which he would abandon. Ryan's best hope, with his endorsement, is that he is positioning a Republican Congress to send its preferred bills - the Ryan agenda, or big chunks of it - to Trump, and that Trump would sign them. His worst fear is that Trump drives the agenda far from Ryan's blueprint, toward higher deficits, more spending, protectionist trade policies and a federal safety net that is largely unchanged from what it looks like today. House Republicans, Ryan writes in his endorsement column, are "offering a bold policy agenda, by offering a better way ahead. Donald Trump can help us make it a reality." Trump could just as easily say the opposite - he will drive the agenda, the House will help make it reality. Which seems more likely? Republicans concerns with how Latinos view their partys presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump, have been well documented at this point. This week, though, it has hit a new low: the party lost its chief spokeswoman charged with reaching out to Latino voters and Spanish language media outlets just six months before Election Day. Ruth Guerra, a Texas native, stepped down from her position with the party after about two years, according to The New York Times. She will move on to a super PAC, American Action Network, that The Times reported is expected to spend millions on congressional races this year. Guerra led an aggressive communications shop that was eager to hit Hillary Clinton and her husband, the former president, on their history with the issue of illegal immigration in the 1990s. According to a Human Rights Watch report released in April, for example, some immigration laws that President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1996 have subjected hundreds of thousands of people to arbitrary detention, fast-track deportations, and family separation. More than 20 years later, thats a far cry from what Hillary Clinton has embraced in her second attempt at the White House. The Washington Post called Clintons immigration stance a major break with Obama insofar that she pledged to halt deportations for undocumented immigrants who did not have violent criminal histories. In a year with Trump at the top of the GOP ticket, Clintons position is geared toward energizing the same Latino voters who overwhelmingly supported President Obama in 2008 and 2012, and the millions of newly eligible voters this year. There is every indication that Latino voters are flocking to Clinton. Trumps long history of controversial remarks toward Latinos in this country citizens or not have helped to drop his favorability numbers among the crucial group. Now, according to the Times report, it has become too much for one of the partys most visible faces within the Latino community. In no time, signaling how important it is to fill the job quickly, the Republican National Committee announced Guerras replacement: Helen Aguirre Ferre, a former radio host for Univision America Radio and other outlets. Most recently, she was a senior advisor to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bushs presidential campaign. I am proud to be joining the RNC at such a critical time, she said in a statement. This is one of the most important elections of our lifetime, and Im eager to make the case to the Hispanic community why Republican ideas and values are the way forward for our country after eight years of an Obama agenda which has failed all Americans. The generic statement included a glaring admission: the top Republican candidate. In one of the most important elections of our lifetime, the partys values and ideas are perhaps more important to preserve than its candidate this year. 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. 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Sometimes the account number has extra zero's in front of it, just ignore those. m February this year, the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) has cut up to 50 jobs in different departments, sources told TODAY.One source who was retrenched a couple of weeks ago said that dozens of employees were laid off from the banks wealth management, business banking and marketing units. The source was from the retail banking unit, the paper wrote.Other employees from the bank spoke of a briefing late last week.There have been cuts across the board, said a relationship manager who wished to remain anonymous. The briefing was on the merging of the private side of the bank with the entire bank and this might lead to the redundancies. The briefing was to inform us and keep us in the loop because since a few weeks ago, rumours were all over the place that our jobs were on the line.He said that it was business as usual within the bank, however he would probably have to take the responsibilities of two employees due to cost-cutting measures spurred by the economic downturn.TODAY also talked to ANZ about the latest job cuts.Like our industry peers, we continually review our business to ensure our products and services align with the needs of our customers, and allocate resources to reflect the opportunities and market environment, a spokesperson said.This is the third round of layoffs for the bank worldwide. In May, it cut 200 jobs in Melbourne, Australia while in March it closed its SME lending business and cut 100 jobs in five Asian countries including Singapore.According to the banks website, ANZ Singapore currently employs around 2,200 people across four branches. Jason Rempel A Calgary man stumbled upon a rare find when he discovered old military equipment in his backyard on Sunday. Jason Rempel was working to move an old shed, when he spotted a crumpled old bag under a haphazard pile of plywood. Advertisement "I kind of speculated that maybe they were just tossed over the fence at some point many years ago, I don't know," Rempel told The Huffington Post Alberta. "It looked like a huge bullet." When he opened it up, he was initially confused by what he saw. "I didn't really know at first glance, but after looking at them for a few moments I gathered what one of the items was it looked like a huge bullet." He added the other item seemed to be "a super heavy-duty thermos." Gut feeling What Rempel saw when he opened the lid of the "thermos" was a string tied to a spring-loaded mechanism. The inside of the object was spotless and gave off a chemical odor "almost like kerosene." "I took the duct-tape off, only to find a weird mechanism underneath that made me think twice about doing anything with it." Advertisement Not being a military-buff himself, Rempel decided the next best bet was to crowdsource an answer. He took a photo of the objects and posted it to Facebook, where friends suggested he call police. The objects in Rempel's backyard, near the pile of wood where they were found. (Photo: Jason Rempel) When police arrived, they didn't even touch the objects. They told Rempel and his girlfriend to leave their home and called in a bomb technician. At this point, many people might be a bit nervous, but not Rempel. "I was actually kind of excited at the find," Rempel said with a laugh. "I even said to the cops before we left... 'If there's even the smallest chance these things are harmless I wouldn't mind keeping them.'" Unfortunately for Rempel, "finders keepers" wasn't applicable in this case. When he was allowed back to his home, police told him the objects were dangerous and would be detonated at a safe location. Advertisement The inside of the smoke grenade. (Photo: Jason Rempel) Police told Rempel the equipment was from the Second World War something he said amazed him because the objects looked so clean and new. They also let him know he was close to setting his house on fire when he opened what turned out to be a smoke grenade. "They let us know it was a good thing we didn't open it indoors the canister gets so hot it could have caused a massive fire. The chemical I smelled under the lid is so flammable it could instantly ignite. "I'm glad I didn't go too crazy [with opening that] or our whole neighbourhood would have been smoked out." Advertisement An employee at Calgary's Military Museums confirmed to HuffPost Alberta the objects Rempel found were a smoke grenade and a 25 millimetre round, with a clip. Both are still used on Canadian Armed Forces training ranges. The base of the round. (Photo: Jason Rempel) "It is rare but possible for military hardware to be discovered like that here in Calgary," said KC Richards, communications and marketing manager for the Military Museums. Richards explained the area around southwest Calgary (near the communities of Sarcee, Signal Hill and Weaselhead Park) was used for Canadian military training before the First World War. Acadia is located in southeast Calgary, about a 20 minute drive east of the communities mentioned. "The chemical I smelled under the lid is so flammable it could instantly ignite." "I could really only speculate as to how they found their way into the city," Richards said. "We would like to note that this person did the correct thing in contacting the Calgary Police Service immediately. They have the equipment and expertise to safely dispose of these things safely." Advertisement Rempel's he's looking forward to seeing if his yard work will turn more surprises. "I'm thinking of renting a metal detector to see what else is back there, if not for any other reason that to be precautionary," he said. "If I had been digging around with my shovel, rather than my hands... it probably would have been a different story." Also on HuffPost: Rory and Dean fans might be disappointed with Netflix's "Gilmore Girls" reboot "Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life," if actor Jared Padalecki is to be trusted. Just last month the 33-year-old actor opened up about reprising his role during a fan convention for his current series "Supernatural." Advertisement Judging by his description, it sounds as if we're not going to see a lot of Rory's ex-boyfriend. "I was doing 'Supernatural,' so she basically said, 'Listen, we're going to write you a really cool scene, and if you get a day off, let us know and we will just put your scene on the schedule for that day,'" Padalecki recalled of his conversation with "Gilmore Girls" series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino. "She was like, 'Listen, it's a set that we already run and own, it's an actress that already is working every day, so let us know,'" he continued. Padalecki then went on to reveal the set details, saying that his scene was filmed at Doose's Market where his character Dean shared a kiss with lead actress Alexis Bledel's character Rory for the very first time. While it's still unknown who the female character is in Padalecki's scene, fans can only hope it's Rory. Regardless of who it is, Padalecki wants fans to know the short and sweet scene was "really nice" and gave him closure. Advertisement Also on HuffPost The Canadian dollar is at the highest it's been in a week after a U.S. jobs report showed the country's worst results since 2010. The loonie was trading at $0.77 against the U.S. dollar on Friday, after a report indicated 38,000 jobs were created in the U.S. in May, fewer than it had in almost six years, Reuters reported. Advertisement Hiring also didn't meet its projections in March or April, creating a three-month average of 116,000 jobs down from an average of 230,000 over the 12 months, reported The Associated Press. But Canada didn't exactly have positive economic news, either. Statistics Canada reports that the Great White North's trade deficit was at $2.94 billion in April less than it was in March, but it still fell short of a $2.5 billion forecast, as reported by Bloomberg. This means that export volumes, which rose 0.5 per cent, grew slower than imports, which increased by 0.8 per cent. And economists say this could drag down Canada's economic growth. Advertisement "The information we have at hand right now is a clear, sharp downside risk to the economy," Scotiabank vice-president of economics Derek Holt told the news agency. Slow growth ahead The Canadian economy is set to see slower growth in the coming months after it shot out the gate with growth of 2.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2016. Almost all that growth happened in January, before the economy contracted by 0.2 per cent in March double the rate that economists had projected. Exports had been the strongest economic driver in the first quarter, thanks to a low loonie. Oil and gas and retail were the most sluggish sectors. CIBC economist Avery Shenfeld said the accelerating declines are a "signpost of a slowdown ahead." Also on HuffPost Canadian Dollar Through History See Gallery Mangoes may be available all year round, but the sweetest fruits are in stores now. The tropical fruit comes in a wide variety of shapes, colours and sizes depending on where it's grown, but for the most part North American grocery stores carry two types: vibrant orange Ataulfo mangoes, which are very sweet, or Tommy Atkins mangoes, which are a bit more mild. Both types are imported from Mexico. Specialty grocery stores may offer other types of mangoes, including Alphonso and Kesar green mangoes from India. Green mangoes, while unripened, are still edible and popular in South Asian cuisine. Advertisement But don't buy your mangoes by colour. According to the National Mango Board the best way to choose mangoes is to give them a gentle squeeze. Mangoes soften as they ripen and release a sweet aroma, so don't be afraid to give them a squeeze and a sniff. In the slideshow below, we look at 28 mango recipes that can be prepared with fruit from your local supermarket. Just be sure to stick to the sweeter mangoes for the desserts. It's good to be Queen! Yesterday marked the 63rd anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation (she's the longest ruling monarch in U.K. history), and even though she's been Queen for a long time, we have a feeling she isn't tired of all the perks that come with the job. The Queen, who celebrates her "official summer birthday" on June 11, enjoys plenty of privileges including a staff of 1,200 people. Advertisement Some of these people include: A wardrobe department, which consists of 12 staffers who record her outfits and hats in a spreadsheet. A certified horologist who makes sure Her Majesty is always on time. A swan marker. (Did you know the Queen owns all the swans in the River Thames?) A royal astronomer, just in case the Queen has questions about the cosmos. Watch the fascinating video above to learn more about all the amazing perks the Vanity Fair cover girl enjoys. Also on HuffPost Sales volumes are starting to slacken in two of Canada's hottest real estate markets. And that could be bad news for anyone hoping to jump in and buy a home. Home sales in Vancouver have not grown in two months the city saw 4,769 transactions in May, a decline of 0.3 per cent from the previous month, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV). Monthly home sales had also dropped by 7.6 per cent in April from an all-time record of 5,173 in March. Advertisement Toronto's housing market is also showing signs of slowing down. Sales were up 6.4 per cent month-over-month in May, after rising by 43.2 per cent in April and 35.4 per cent in March, according to stats provided by the Toronto Real Estate Board. But sales in both cities are effectively flat when seasonally adjusted, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), which said only last month that the Vancouver and Toronto markets had "topped out" at historically high levels. Advertisement Slowing sales aren't necessarily good news for anyone who hopes to buy a home in these cities, CREA economist Gregory Klump told The Huffington Post Canada on Friday. He said the sales reflect a lack of supply, mainly of single-family homes and that can only lead to higher prices. Indeed, prices have only continued to grow year after year in both Vancouver and Toronto. "Single-family inventory has declined to very, very low levels in Toronto, and is approaching that in Vancouver," Klump said. Advertisement "You can't have sales continue to go up without the supply there to meet it, and that's what we're seeing." He expects to see increased sales in the areas outside those cities. "Sales outside of central Vancouver and Toronto are going gangbusters," Klump said. "And I don't see anything changing that way, except when it reaches the point when those areas too have a shortage of supply." Klump's comments come as other observers express fears about a housing correction in both cities. Scotiabank, for example, has taken its "foot off the gas" and ramped back mortgage lending in both cities amid fears of a market decline. The CEOs of both Scotiabank and National Bank have called on the federal government to boost mortgage down payment requirements in an effort to calm those markets down, Bloomberg reported Thursday. Advertisement And on the same day, BMO Capital Markets issued a chart suggesting that Vancouver could be on the edge of a bubble. Senior economist Robert Kavcic reasoned that way because the benchmark price of a home in the city has risen by 37 per cent in the past year; similar trends in Calgary and Toronto "ended poorly" in the 2006 and the 1980s, respectively, he said. Klump sees three scenarios that would cause a housing correction: Further tightening of mortgage requirements An increase in interest rates A "lasting decline in employment." The last two don't seem likely to him. But the effects of mortgage tightening have been clear in previous years. Advertisement Sales dropped dramatically in Vancouver in 2012, after the federal Conservatives changed mortgage rules to allow only 25-year amortizations, among other requirements. The federal government tightened mortgage rules again in December to require around down payments of 10 per cent on any portion of a home's price over $500,000, up to $1 million. The new rules could take until July to see their full effects. Even if prices did drop, however, the Vancouver and Toronto markets could be primed for a "soft landing," TD Bank economist Diana Petramala said last month. "The average price for a home has risen by more than $100,000 in Vancouver and Toronto over the last year," putting them increasingly out of reach for the average buyer," she wrote in a note to clients. Advertisement "As such, we expect demand to continue to spread out into their surrounding areas." A North Carolina woman was horrified to discover the body of her dead neighbour last Friday inside a deep freezer she purchased. The Goldsboro resident, who wanted to stay anonymous, told WNCN she bought the freezer from her neighbour for US$30. Advertisement She didn't open it for three weeks because the woman told her there were items inside that a church was coming to pick up. When the church didn't come, she opened it and found what she believed was the neighbour's elderly mother inside. I have a serious problem. My neighbour sold me a deep freezer. I just opened it and theres a body in there I think, she told a 911 dispatcher. "I'm glad that I was the one who was chosen to be able to find her mother so that that poor woman can rest." She told ABC 11 that she had already suspected something wasn't right, even wondering if the senior's body might be in there. "I'm glad that I was the one who was chosen to be able to find her mother so that that poor woman can rest," she said. Goldsboro police told ABC11 that 75-year-old Arma Ann Roush's body was found in the freezer May 27. Roush was last seen alive last August at the home where she lived with her daughter. She sold me her frozen mother for $30. How do you do something like that?? There were no signs of foul play, a medical examiner found, and her body was intact, according to the Goldsboro Daily News. However, detectives are investigating, and arrest warrants have been issued for 56-year-old Marcella Jean Lee, who is wanted for failing to report a death. More charges are expected. Police told WNCN they believe Roush's body was in the freezer for three weeks. The unnamed freezer buyer told the outlet she was horrified by the whole situation. She sold me her frozen mother for $30. How do you do something like that?? she said. Also on HuffPost 9 Wrongful Conviction Cases More Shocking Than 'Making A Murderer' See Gallery The father of the Japanese boy who went missing in a forest for six days has issued a heartfelt public apology. Seven-year-old Yamato Tanooka went missing on Saturday after his parents left him in a wooded area of Hokkaido as punishment for throwing rocks at cars and people. The boy was found safe on Friday by a soldier and suffered no serious health risks. Advertisement My excessive behaviour caused my son such pain and inconvenienced so many people, Takayuki Tanooka said in an emotional speech, including the people at his school to the people that helped search for him. For that I am deeply sorry. More than 180 rescuers and troops were sent to look for Yamato, who was eventually discovered at military base five kilometres from where he disappeared. The very first thing I said to my son was, I am so sorry for having caused you so much pain. Daddy is really sorry, Tanooka continued, fighting back tears. We have raised him with love. I admit what we did was excessive. I had no idea it would end up like this. I deeply regret my excessive behaviour, but I did what I thought was best for him. Advertisement The father also added, We loved him before, but I hope to give him even more attention now, News.com.au reports. Since Tanookas son made national headlines this week, many people on social media have criticized the parents for abandoning their son. Some even deemed the discipline tactic child abuse. @guardian Does Child protective services exist in #Japan? The parent's are incredibly irresponsible & their child could have died. Obi-Wan Kenobi (@SirBenKenobi) June 3, 2016 @people This was child abuse, I hope they are held accountable for this! Ashley P (@ZooMom36) June 3, 2016 He didn't go missing he was deliberately dumped by arsehole parents that should B charged with child neglect @ABC KBG (@GateKurt) June 3, 2016 Advertisement Now that the seven-year-old has been found, many are calling for the parents to be held accountable for their actions. @CNN So glad he is alive... But his parents should be punished the very same way. Fabio Deus (@fabiodeus666) June 3, 2016 @CNN I hope the parents will be charged for abandoning their child. Sherri (@sherri1373) June 3, 2016 Police are now investigating whether or not the parents will be charged with child abandonment, The Sun UK reports. Also on HuffPost Creative Discipline Tactics That Actually Work! See Gallery OleksandrKalinichenko via Getty Images Oil and gas industry - liquefied natural gas tanker LNG Last week a group of 90 scientists and climate activists sent a letter to the federal cabinet to argue against federal approval of the Pacific Northwest (PNW) Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project. The activists argue that the project would make it virtually impossible for British Columbia to meet its greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets, and that it would undermine Canada's international climate change commitments. Advertisement The B.C. minister of the environment replied by suggesting that the 90 individuals had taken a myopic view of the situation and that the 90 individuals had not taken a wide enough view of the industry. So, who is right in this exchange? Well, the answer is both -- with a huge proviso that there is some very important information the climate activists are careful not to talk about when it comes to the export of LNG: energy poverty in the developing world. Developing countries are going to get electrical power to their populations -- if not with LNG, then with coal; and if not with B.C. LNG, then with dirtier LNG from one of our competitors. According to the International Energy Agency: Globally 1.2 billion people are without access to electricity and more than 2.7 billion people are without clean cooking facilities. More than 95 per cent of these people are either in sub-Saharan African or developing Asia, and around 80 per cent are in rural areas. What are they using for energy? As detailed at Vox, in China tens of millions of rural households burn coal in their homes, and in India and Africa, the rural poor use wood or charcoal. From a human health perspective, the indoor air pollution associated with that energy poverty kills between 3.5 million and 4.3 million people each year. In response to this global tragedy, a number of Asian countries are working hard to get electricity to their poorest citizens. Because it is cheaper and faster, the go-to source of this energy has been coal. India, on its own, has approximately 455 coal power plants in their energy pipeline, with an estimated 519,396 megawatts of installed generating capacity on its way. China, meanwhile, is still piling on the coal plants even as it attempts to diversify its energy mix with renewable and nuclear energy alternatives. The major alternatives to coal are: Nuclear power, which is expensive and technically-challenging to build; Hydroelectric, which can't be built everywhere; and natural gas. Now, while natural gas is a fossil fuel, it produces approximately half the emissions of coal and has been described as a "bridge fuel" for these countries. Some activists argue that these countries should switch directly to renewables, but that is simply not a viable alternative. Renewables work well in combination with other baseline energy sources but cannot be the basis of an energy grid in a developing country, irrespective of what the 100 per cent wind, water and sunlight people try to claim. Advertisement Let's go back to the PNW LNG project. According to Environment Canada (not the proponent, but Environment Canada): The greenhouse gas intensity for the project would be 0.27 tonnes carbon dioxide per tonne of LNG produced... of the 12 worldwide projects compared, the average greenhouse gas intensity is 0.33 tonnes carbon dioxide per tonne of LNG. Doing the simple math, the PNW LNG project has an 18 per cent lower GHG intensity than our average competitor. Moreover, according to a life cycle analysis of LNG, if the British Columbia government can electrify the extraction process, then the PNW LNG project can operate at an intensity equivalent to 80 per cent of our competitors. What that means is that if consumers in Asia use British Columbian LNG, the global emissions for the LNG will be 20 per cent lower than LNG from our competitors. If this LNG replaces coal, the global benefit is even greater as it will produce less than half the emissions of a comparable coal plant. In both cases, B.C. LNG is better for the planet than the alternatives. We live in a world where all the work we do to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in B.C. can be undone with the flick of a pen in China or India. The activists argue that irrespective of the improvements in global air quality, the PNW LNG project would add between 18.5 per cent and 22.5 per cent to B.C.'s total GHG emissions, and that increase would make it virtually impossible to meet the province's GHG targets by 2030. That argument, while factual, is simply ridiculous. We live in a world where all the work we do to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in B.C. can be undone with the flick of a pen in China or India. No matter what we do, those developing countries are going to get electrical power to their populations -- if not with LNG, then with coal; and if not with B.C. LNG, then with lower-intensity (read: dirtier) LNG from one of our competitors. In both cases the end result is higher global GHG emissions than if B.C. LNG was used. Canada can be part of the global problem or part of the global solution. The 90 scientists and activists think that we should take care of our own house while ignoring the world outside our door. The B.C. government, on the other hand, has written legislation to make B.C. LNG as low-emitting as possible while working to change the accounting system to not count all the emissions from our export fuels against our provincial carbon budget. That way we can show leadership on a provincial level while also showing leadership on an international level. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook MORE ON HUFFPOST: Shutterstock man with laptop meditation and... Distractible. Energetic. Impulsive. These are some of the words often used to describe me. They're also common descriptors for well-known execs like Richard Branson, David Neeleman of Jet Blue Airways, and Ikea's Ingvar Kamprad. That's because we all have ADHD. Advertisement It might seem strange, but there's a strong link between ADHD and business ownership. One study even says people with attention deficit disorder are 300 per cent more likely to own their own business. This makes sense to me: as an entrepreneur, ADHD is my secret weapon. It means I'm always on the go and full of new ideas. On the other hand, it's no secret that I have trouble concentrating for long periods of time. So to combat distraction, I've developed some hacks that anyone can use to find optimum productivity -- whether you have ADHD or not. Focus on what you're good at. Let others do the rest. Having ADHD has given me an inherent understanding that I'm just not good at certain things -- for example, sitting through long meetings, fine-tuning tiny details, or implementing the types of specifics that turn audacious ideas into reality. I've also always wanted to make O2E Brands (the company group that includes home-service companies like 1-800-GOT-JUNK?) a household name by working with awesome people who share my long-term vision. Advertisement That's why a few years ago, I decided to accept my shortcomings and hire a COO to take 1-800-GOT-JUNK? to the next level. Erik Church operationalizes my blue-sky ideas and keeps our priorities on track. Our "two in the box" leadership style lets me focus on what I'm good at so Erik can, too. Since splitting our roles this way, we've smashed even the biggest revenue records and are growing every day. I often say he's the yin to my yang. Tip 1: Let your team focus their abilities, and do the same for yourself. By accepting your weaknesses and leveraging your strengths, you'll grow your business faster. Find out where you do your best work. Go there. Having ADHD forced me to figure out where I'm most productive, and now I don't waste time trying to focus in places that don't work for me. I don't have a desk because I prefer to plunk down wherever there's a free seat at our headquarters in Vancouver, B.C. Not only do I get a glimpse of what's happening in different departments, I can get to know different people at the office. Gone are the days when you had to be strapped to your desk to be considered a productive employee. In an age with super-flexible startup cultures and open office spaces, people have been given unprecedented freedom to move around the workplace. So use it to decide where you work best. Tip 2: Find out where you focus and plan to do you work there. Lose focus sometimes. Ideas will bloom. One of the reasons I think people with ADHD excel as entrepreneurs is because they have a million ideas floating around all the time. Yes, sometimes my mind may wander during meetings -- but some of my greatest ideas have blossomed because I'm not afraid to daydream. Advertisement In 2010, a local company offered to paint my whole house in one day. As I watched the team of painters do exactly as they promised -- on time -- I realized I was looking at my next business venture. WOW 1 DAY PAINTING emerged from that random thought, and there are now dozens of franchises around North America. Tip 3: #freeyourmind. Letting your mind wander can lead to surprising, innovative ideas. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook Stacey Newman via Getty Images American and Canadian flag flying side by side. It happens as regularly as clockwork, once every four years. And 2016 is no exception. What, the Olympics? No. What, leap year? No. What, an American election? You're getting closer. Every four years a huge chunk of the American population professes a sudden urge to move to Canada..."if that so-and-so running for the White House gets elected." Usually "that so-and-so" is a right-wing Republican. And the people professing to leave are left-wing Democrats who think they can escape to some mythical socialist paradise. Unfortunately, they are wrong. Advertisement Socialism is not paradise. Canada is not socialist. They never come. Let's face it, people don't just change countries because they have a distaste for a politician. They sit it out to do battle next time. If everyone who stomped off with an "I'll move to Canada" followed their words with actions, the U.S. would be a Democrat-free zone. Elections would be no contest. This year, it's not some right-wing Republican that has 34 per cent of Americans packing their proverbial bags in anticipation of one result or another. According to the somewhat humorous (according to me) Infographic below, nineteen percent of Americans would move to Canada if Donald Trump wins. Donald Trump, a serial flip-flopper between parties, is on a mission to prove that trailer trash doesn't have to be poor. He plays the outsider card, and has been accused of being a ringer for the Democrats. His appeal is to blue collar workers - yes, union types. He just learned that the NRA can bring him votes; that's about as right wing as he gets. Don't set up the camps for American refugees just yet. But get this. Fifteen per cent of Americans say they would move to Canada if Hillary Clinton wins. What? Who are these people and what do they think they'll find different here? The Clintons have been trying to fashion the U.S. more in Canada's mould for years. Advertisement I have a message for Americans: we have politicians here, too. Sorry, there's no escape. The predicted mass migration is not going to happen. People don't migrate just because they have a distaste for a politician. They migrate for serious reasons, such as to escape being killed in a war. Or to flee from persecution. Or to permanently raise their standard of living. According to the Infographic, the last big migration from the U.S. was by people fleeing the draft. By big, we mean 23,000. That's fewer than come each year from China. Fewer than come each year from India. Fewer than come each year from Philippines. Don't set up the camps for American refugees just yet. Besides, talk on the streets has it that if Donald Trump wins, Canadians will put up a wall along the Canada-U.S. border. They want to make him pay for it, too. Pros and cons of moving to Canada Now, a word about the pros and cons of moving to Canada, as listed in the Infographic, which obviously was put together by an American. Hockey is a pro. Check. Work-life balance, I don't see it. Everybody here has a side-hustle. It's just that in Canada the tax rates are so high that most people want you to pay them in cash. In the U.S., with lower tax rates, there is less temptation to go underground. Advertisement As for poutine, I'll be happy to ship it all to California. But it's the cons that leave me scratching my head. Canadian Conservatism is a con? I don't know, but seems to me that Canadian Conservatism falls somewhere between Democrats and Republicans. I don't hear any great groundswell of Canadian Conservatives wanting to replace Canada's mostly functional health-care system with the U.S. system, not even the partially upgraded patchwork of the Obama years. Which brings us the "National Health-care System." This is a con? Every Canadian is covered. Nobody hesitates to seek medical attention because of cost. People go for checkups, get diagnosed earlier and have a better chance of survival, as a result. Nobody gets turned away because of inadequate coverage. Canadians pay half as much for health-care as Americans. We have more doctors, more hospital beds and healthier people. And we live about two years longer than Americans. What part of that is a con? Cold Weather, yes that's a con. That's a big con. Not much we can do about that. And "Credit Score"...if you emigrate to a new country, that's just part of the landscape. Sure, the U.S. leads the world in many ways. It's a great country. But Canada has so much going for it, once you discount the snow and the poutine. Nevertheless, don't expect a lot of Americans to seek refuge in Canada during the Clinton years or during the Trump years. They'll stay where they are, in familiar settings, near family and friends. They'll continue to rip their leaders apart on Facebook. And they'll rail about how they'll move to Canada..."if that so-and-so running for the White House gets elected." I think they rather like to hear how that rolls off the tongue. Infographic published with permission of Sparefoot Blog Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook ALSO ON HUFFPOST: Jose Luis Pelaez Inc via Getty Images Doctor comforting patient in office For many people, visiting a primary care provider isn't just about receiving care for an isolated injury or illness in the moment that matters. It's about building a long-term relationship -- one that gradually unfolds and many involve working together with several other specialists to address different ailments or chronic conditions that could potentially arise over time. Yet, a new report from Health Quality Ontario shows that this ideal isn't always the case. In provinces across Canada, care coordination isn't delivered as uniformly or consistently as it could be. Among the biggest challenges facing family doctors: Connecting patients with home care and community services. Advertisement The report, Connecting the Dots for Patients, highlights many common barriers that primary care providers may face when coordinating care for their patients. It touched a chord for me; as a family doctor, I understand the stories behind the data and have experienced some of the obstacles related to care coordination cited in the report. For example, one of my patients -- a man in his 50s with multiple chronic conditions -- regularly interacts with more than eight doctors and several other health care providers. He is on 15 different medications, almost none of which I've initially prescribed, and has a steady stream of investigations at centres across the city. As his family doctor I am often his first call when he has issue. In this instance, providing care not only takes a lot of time and effort, it requires the seamless involvement of many different people to connect all the dots. Still, it's not a given that every family doctor has the time or team to support patients with these type of needs. And while there have been significant efforts made by many primary care providers and health care professionals to ensure good care coordination, this report shows there is more work to be done -- not just in Canada, but across the world. The report uses data from the 2015 Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey of Primary Care Doctors, which combined and analyzed the responses of thousands of family doctors from across Canada and 10 other counties, including Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Advertisement In Canada, there is wide variation in the percentage of family doctors who report routinely communicating with home care and community services. Just 29% of Ontario family doctors report regularly communications with case managers or home care providers also involved in their patient's care. Compare that to Saskatchewan, where 62% of family doctors report the same. In fact, Saskatchewan's percentage of family doctors is more consistent with the percentages of family doctors surveyed in other countries, such as Norway (63%), the Netherlands (56%) and the US (52%). The results are similar when we take a closer look at the ease of communications between providers. While 55% Saskatchewan family doctors report it is "easy" or "very easy" to coordinate patient care with social services or other community providers -- one of the highest percentages of the countries surveyed - Ontario and Nova Scotia family doctors report some of the lowest, at 36% and 45% respectively. The highest-rated country in this metric was Switzerland, with 74% of family doctors reporting convenience of communication with community services. Elsewhere in Canada, there are areas showing more positive results -- especially in the coordination between primary care providers, hospitals and specialists. More than half of family doctors in Ontario (71%), Alberta (63%), Saskatchewan (61%), Manitoba (58%) and Quebec (52%) report that they "always" or "often" receive notification when a patient is discharged from hospital. And 85% of family doctors across Canada say they "always" or "often" receive a report back from specialists with all the relevant health information for their patients. This puts the percentage of Canadian family doctors in this metric above family doctors in the United States (76%) and Sweden (56%). These pieces of data are important, because they provide us with stretch targets to strive toward. They show where there is room for improvement, and they provide insights into different obstacles that many primary care providers may face in their day-to-day practice. Care coordination is an essential element of patient-centred care -- and it's a role that often falls to primary care. But it takes dedicated effort on behalf of everyone in the system to improve the way we coordinate and communicate care. Ultimately, it needs to be easier to do the right thing for patients. Advertisement ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE - In this Monday, March 21, 2016, file photo, Hulk Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, left, looks on in court moments after a jury returned its decision in St. Petersburg, Fla. Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel has been secretly funding Hulk Hoganas lawsuit against Gawker Media for publishing a sex tape, according to reports in Forbes and The New York Times. (Dirk Shadd/The Tampa Bay Times via AP, Pool, File) I am not a journalist and certainly not a billionaire -- not even within close proximity even after many zeros left out -- which is why I think I can cool-headedly add some perspective to the intensely charged opinions that are circulating in the media these days. I'm talking about the Gawker case where some good media commentators are voicing their well-intentioned but misguided concerns about the violation of the free press. Advertisement You must have heard of it, unless of course you were on a cruise ship with unaffordable and sluggish Internet access, or you were someone who preferred to pick up a book rather than tuning into a cable TV network that will drive you crazy these days. (If you want to know why, look up "the great wall syndrome" on the Internet. It's a condition which is defined as "exposure to particular images and sound bytes travelling on airwaves that may strike shock and awe to your very core being, leaving you stunned." And no, it's not a reference to the wall in China. I know that for a fact because the neighbouring Mongols and other nomadic tribes did not [will not] have to pay for it). It all started when Terry Bollea a.k.a. Hulk Hogan filed a defamation suit against Gawker Media some time ago. The court recently ruled and awarded Hogan a hefty sum of $140 million, which many fear will put Gawker out of business. It was later established (by admission) that the billionaire PayPal founder Peter Thiel was paying the legal expenses for Hogan (Bollea) because he did not approve of Gawker's journalistic ethics. Gawker also had written an article about him (Thiel) which probably triggered the "vendetta," a choice of word Thiel would prefer not to use. As soon as this news came out, some media contributors and journalists unleashed a campaign expressing consternation, and at times resentment: "This is the rich controlling the agenda of the world" is how it resonated with readers. "They are now creeping into the media, targeting freedom of the press." Advertisement Dear commentators, yes, you may be saying the right things but your starting point looks amiss. One article said something to the effect that a century or more ago, it was the car manufacturing czars and the oil barons who were in charge, but now it's the techies. Those weren't the exact words but you got the idea. "These new generation of billionaires are now even smarter than their predecessors" some insinuated, because they are, well, "techies." Here is the gist (all in my words and my interpretation) of further comments that were embedded in articles about the Gawker case: "While they (techies and super rich) know how to park their money in safe havens deploying their finger print and retina scan activated encrypted passwords to avoid taxes, many give back only a small fraction of their fortunes to charities." "Or even worse, they make pledges to their own start-up charities that may be virtual just like their line of business in their digital worlds." By the way the subject of the one per cent wealthy has now become our favourite theme this year and the "forerunner" who has been addressing this subject overzealously is the second reason why I don't tune into CNN and the likes. There is a third reason too, but I couldn't figure out yet how to insert her seamlessly into this article. Back to the main topic: Dear commentators, yes, you may be saying the right things but your starting point looks amiss. There seems to be a fallacy in your logic when you criticize the involvement of a third party for supporting the plaintiffs in this legal case. The Gawker case is nothing compared to the circus grand finale that is coming soon to this continent. Why on earth would you have to make the Gawker case the centerpiece of your story if what you really want to talk about is the power of the super-rich? If highly paid powerful attorneys can influence a judge's decision and twist the verdict, then it's the "justice system" you should be talking about. Once you do so, the Gawker case would be about "how money influences the verdict," not about "how money influences the free press." You cannot dismiss the former statement by saying: "Well nobody should be surprised that it's a well-established fact that money and power can buy justice." At least I really hope that is not what you are saying. And in the improbable case (heaven forbid) if that "is" what you are actually saying, then you should reflect upon the fact that the very building blocks of our society are laid upon the foundation of law and order. Any forecasts about "the state of the union," or, particularly in this case, "the state of the press" would be rendered pointless if the very grounds we are standing upon are shaky and ready to give away, just like a sink hole under our feet. There are too many things going on. The Gawker case is nothing compared to the circus grand finale that is coming soon to this continent. I plan to disconnect myself and return to the comfort of my books in my spare time, as this will be a long summer and fall. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook ALSO ON HUFFPOST: Minister of Veterans Affairs Kent Hehr speaks with attendees at the second Veterans Affairs stakeholder summit. I want to thank Bruce Moncur for his piece, "Trudeau's Liberals Anything But Sunny Ways For Veterans," and for attending Veterans Affairs Canada's (VAC) stakeholder summit on May 9 to 10. Advertisement To date, it was the department's largest and best-attended, and he made some invaluable contributions both as a member of the greater assembly and individually when we had an opportunity to speak one-on-one during a lunch break. Bruce points out in his piece that Budget 2016 did not include all of the items in the mandate letter I received from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when I took office as minister of veterans affairs in November 2015. He's right. These frustrations are understandable after a decade of inaction on a file and a New Veterans Charter that was supposed to be a living document, but was never allowed to grow. While we do mention $5.6 billion in financial security -- including: increasing the disability award from $310,000 to $360,000 in line with recommendations from the Veterans Ombudsman; increasing the Earnings Loss Benefit from 75 per cent to 90 per cent; increasing access to the upper levels of the Permanent Impairment Allowance and renaming it the Career Impact Allowance so that its name is in better keeping with the intentions of the policy; reopening the 9 VAC offices closed under the last government; hiring enough staff to bring us to a 25-to-one case manager-veteran ratio; and increasing access to Funeral and Burial Services by increasing the estate exemption from $12,000 to $35,000 -- we do not mention future commitments like the Veterans Education Benefits or ending the marriage-after-60 clawback. Advertisement What the budget does say about many of those remaining commitments, including the pension is: "In consultation with the veterans' community, the government also understands there is a significant desire to better design veterans' financial support programs going forward -- and that the government should take the appropriate time to work with veterans to ensure programs meet the needs of those injured in the line of duty. Over the next year, the government will work with the veterans' community to examine the best way to streamline and simplify the system of financial support programs currently offered by Veterans Affairs Canada and National Defence for veterans and their families. The overall objective of this work will be to ensure that the government delivers programs and services in a way that is veterans-centric and facilitates a seamless and successful transition from military to civilian life." This came out of the very first stakeholder's summit that he and I attended just weeks out from my swearing-in. Veterans and veterans groups said it well and said clearly that we need to get this pension option right, and not to rush it. Veterans Ombudsman Guy Parent stated clearly: "I believe that the government is moving in the right direction to shape tomorrow for Canada's veterans and their families. While Budget 2016 is a promising start, we need a clear action plan and an evidence-based evaluation approach to determine what the impact of these changes will be on veterans and their families." Advertisement I'll admit there were some tense exchanges as a couple of veterans expressed their frustration with the current system of veterans' benefits and the department itself. These frustrations are understandable after a decade of inaction on a file and a New Veterans Charter that was supposed to be a living document, but was never allowed to grow. I share many of their frustrations, but felt it was important that all participants had an opportunity to voice their opinions: good or bad. As a government we need to hear them all. The second Veterans Affairs stakeholder summit drew close to 100 veteran advocates to discuss priorities and issues that affect Canada's veterans. On the second day of the summit, we held an open town hall streamed on Facebook and invited questions from the stakeholders present and those across the country, because this should be an open process by default. Advertisement I do take issue with Bruce's allegations of bullying. The summit was a safe place for stakeholders of all backgrounds to voice their concerns, and no one was at any point limited or prevented from speaking -- and that needs to be made clear. I look forward to hosting the next stakeholder summit and hope that Bruce will continue to contribute and bring a valuable insight to the table. If we are to provide better financial security and the benefits veterans need, when and where they need them, we will need his experience and expertise along with that of countless other veterans across the country. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook MORE ON HUFFPOST: Brian Snyder / Reuters The gates of a school bus yard are locked after drivers walked off the job in the morning in Boston, Massachusetts October 8, 2013. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino vowed to punish school bus drivers who walked off the job on Tuesday in a labor action the city contended was illegal, and which even the drivers' union organization condemned. Some 33,000 public and private school students were left to find alternative routes to school on Tuesday after a union representing some 700 drivers and also represented by the United Steelworkers of America Local 8751 did not show up for work. REUTERS/Brian Snyder (UNITED STATES - Tags: BUSINESS EMPLOYMENT TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY) Imagine you're back in high school and there's a bully who steals your lunch every day. Then one day after stealing your lunch, that same bully comes to you in the afternoon and hands you back half a sandwich, all the while making a big spectacle of his actions so that everyone sees what a nice guy he is. He hopes that no one has noticed him stealing your lunch this morning -- and every morning prior -- and he wants to appear as the hero, a kind soul who is just trying to help someone in need. Advertisement This is exactly how I see the recent news that the B.C. government is giving $25 million back to school boards. For the past 14 years the B.C. Liberals have been cutting funding and supports for public schools. This year alone the government asked school boards to find $25 million in "administrative cuts," last year it was $29 million. This one-time funding announcement is not what I consider to be an addition to funding, but rather a reduction in this year's cuts. On top of these yearly cuts boards also have to cover rising operational costs such as hydro and MSP, salary increases negotiated by the government and the government-implemented technology upgrades of around $24 million this year alone, none of which is covered by government funding. Advertisement So this one-time funding announcement is not what I consider to be an addition to funding, but rather a reduction in this year's cuts. The minister of education said boards are free to use this money however they see fit and suggested creating new teaching positions as an example. But since this is a one-time funding increase, how can any board in good conscience create new positions when the funding to keep them going won't be there the following year? The same goes for school closures. How can any board use this money to prevent school closures when they know next year they will be right back in the same position? Bad timing My district will be getting $593,000 (some larger districts are getting over a million, and 12 districts are getting under $100,000). That money can't prevent the two school closures this year (bringing the total to 14 in my district since 2002) considering we closed them to balance a deficit that ran over $2 million. The Vancouver school board will still face a deficit of over $20 million and the amount given to Surrey won't do much to change the overcrowding issues or the fact that 7,000 kids in their district attend school in portables. The $110,000 they are getting in the district responsible for Osoyoos will most likely not change the decision to close their only high school. Advertisement This announcement of the $25 million also comes at what many would consider to be bad timing, as most boards have already completed their consultation and made the necessary decisions to deal with this year's cuts. School closures have already been decided, pink slips have already been handed out. So why, you ask, would the government demand $25 million in cuts this year and then swoop in at the final hour to declare it was "adding" $25 million to the public education budget? Well, much like my example at the beginning, they want to appear as heroes to the public. After all there is a provincial election right around the corner, and they know that public education will be a key election issue. So they want to create feel-good stories to give the appearance that they actually care or are committed to public education. This $25 million doesn't even began to address the damage done over the past 14 years, but the government is just hoping that Joe Public only sees them as the hero and will somehow forget that they are actually responsible for the mess they are now pretending to fix. Advertisement But it might be too little, too late for Premier Christy Clark and the B.C. Liberals, as the majority of parents in this province are no longer blind to the deplorable condition of the public education system in this province. After 14 years, the funding cuts can no longer be hidden or ignored, and most of us are smart enough to realize a one-time reduction in cuts won't undo the damage. Regardless of any new feel-good announcements over the next few months, a vote for the B.C. Liberals in the next election is a vote for four more years of school closures, overcrowded classrooms and devastating funding cuts. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook More on HuffPost: Getty Images group of friends meeting in the city center. they are having fun with smart phones and walking together Millennials have grown up. The kids of the '90s have turned into the young adults of 2016. They're entering post-secondary, the workforce, and the housing market. Many millennials will dip their toes into the housing market by searching for their first apartment. The need to own a home is often displaced by the desire to be unencumbered, mobile, and to be living an urban lifestyle. Advertisement When they look for an apartment, this generation does things differently than its parents. There's no looking through the newspapers and circling potential apartment listings with a red pen (anyone remember those days?). Searching for apartments, condos and homes today all start online. Technology has reshaped the apartment search and living experience. For today's generation of rentseeker's and homebuyers, the web is almost where they live. They grew up with it and that's all they know -- blossoming from their teenage years with MSN messenger and graduating with facebook. And as TechCrunch recently reported, Apartments are the Hot New Tech Sector. Mobile Search For millennials, smartphones are extensions of their own hands -- always within reach. Smartphones and tablets are their personal computers, and these devices are portable, convenient, and easy to use. Millennials are the generation of, "is there an app for that?" and smart businesses know their answer needs to be, "yes." It's no different for the real estate sector. When a millennial starts their apartment search, they are going to start online, and will almost certainly use their mobile phone, tablet or PC. If a company or property isn't listed on a real estate website such as RentSeeker.ca, or classifieds listing site like Kijiji, landlords will be missing out on almost all prospective renters. Advertisement For real estate owners and managers, a mobile-friendly website is step one. Step two is having your properties listed on an app. An intuitive app, like RentSeeker's mobile app available on iTunes and Google Play, provides millennials a home-base from which to search for their perfect apartment. It's easy for them to login to the app as often as they want and to scroll through new listings in their target neighbourhoods and budget. With an easy-to-use app at their fingertips, millennials can be more engaged in the apartment-search process "on-the-go". Attracting Millennials with Amenities When it comes to attracting millennials to renting an apartment or condo, there's a list of amenities which millennials are searching for. This generation is social -- hello facebook and twitter -- and they want things to look "instagram-worthy". This translates into a generation that wants a trendy, updated apartment in a building with tempting amenities. When your square-footage is on the smaller side, having a social room in your building is a huge advantage. Millennials are a social bunch, and it's a bonus for them to have a space to "hang out" together. Theater rooms are also a hit with this generation. They allow renters to experience the thrill of heading out to watch a new movie on the big-screen without having to leave the building. It's the best of both worlds (especially on a freezing winter night in Toronto). Advertisement A healthy lifestyle is becoming more and more important to millennials, and they want to live somewhere that can help support their goals. Apartment and Condo buildings with gyms, yoga rooms, and pools are in high-demand. Convenience is key here, and renters want to be able to come home and unwind in their apartment building's own recreation and wellness facilities. Apartment buildings that offer mixed-use space -- such as commercial space on the ground floor -- have a leg-up on traditional residential-only buildings because they come with a walkable lifestyle. Millennials are less interested in sprawl and more interested in vibrant communities and shopping local. When their favourite coffee shop is right downstairs in their own apartment building, millennials can spend less time on commutes and more time engaging in the community. Millennials are the up-and-coming generation -- and they're already on the apartment hunt. Reach them by speaking their mobile-friendly language. Intuitive websites and apps offer them the tools they need to find their next home. DEA / R. CARNOVALINI via Getty Images ITALY - CIRCA 2016: Pian Grande with Mount Vettore in the background, Sibillini Mountains national park, Umbria, Italy. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images) Over the past few years, I have had the pleasure of visiting Southern Italy for two key moments in my life: the first being my honeymoon, where my Italian-Canadian husband introduced me to the Italy he knows, and the second being his sister's Sicilian wedding, where my entire extended family introduced me to the Italy they know. My in-laws have deep roots in the south, and now, so do I. So instead of putting together the traditional Sip, Stay, Shop travel diary, I've chosen four places in the most intense Italian sud -- an area still largely undiscovered by tourists -- that I simply have to see again. MASSERIA SUSAFA: Pulling up to the villa in the hills of central Sicily where my sister-in-law was hosting her wedding literally took my breath away. After a white-knuckle drive along a charmingly winding and washed-out dirt road, the unexpected appeared: a meticulously landscaped pine drive, leading to a steel and stone masseria, or country estate, rosemary hedgerows, and then golden wheat fields as far as the eye could see. Primarily a boutique wedding and agritourism destination for in-the-know Europeans, anyone can, and should, brave the drive to bask in the sights, smells and tastes of this 300-year-old working Italian farm. Masseriasusafa.com Advertisement OTRANTO: A whitewashed slice of Greece near the tip of Italy's stiletto, Otranto is a paradise waiting to be discovered. The coastal drive to get there--dotted with hidden swimming grottos and seafood to nourish the soul--makes the day of travel from Naples worth it alone. An ambling walk from our hotel, the Relais Valle Dell'Idro, gently guided us towards the seaside resort's impossibly romantic central promenade, filled with Italian day-trippers and sun-kissed families sharing plates of frittura mista. Flanked by a soaring medieval fortress at one end and a quintessentially Italian beach at another, time ceases to tick by in the distance between the two. Otrantohotel.com AMALFI COAST: The Amalfi Coast is hardly a secret; however, the travellers who venture beyond Rome and Naples to this dizzyingly improbable UNESCO World Heritage rarely go past the renowned towns of Sorrento and Positano. This is for two good reasons: 1) They are beautiful. And 2) Tourists are warned explicitly to not drive the hazardous Amalfi Coast road. Before she immigrated to Canada, though, my mother-in-law used to summer on the Amalfi Coast as a teen, so my husband and I have made a point of seeing it all. Listen to church bells peal out over the Piazza del Duomo in Amalfi, relax in sundrenched Praiano, buy lemons from a roadside stall in family-friendly Maiori, catch a boat to a hidden cove from the beach in wee Erchie (where we base our stays, at the Limoneto di Ercole apartments), and eat the freshest catch of the day in authentic Cetara. Then leave it all in the glowing rearview and go see the ruins of Pompeii. Limonetodiercole.com Advertisement The five things you need to know on Friday June 3, 2016 1) NO MORE MR NICE SKY Just 20 days to go folks. And after David Camerons hostile audience reception on SkyNews last night, the British public seem to be letting politicians know at first hand (and it was the PMs first real collision with the punters in this entire campaign) just how irritated they are by Project Fear. Advertisement Faisal Islam did a superb job, hammering home how the PMs net migration target conflicts directly with EU freedom of movement. But the PM too was pretty impressive, using every minute of those 10 years of doing these CameronDirect events to good effect. Treating the questioners with respect (even when they veered off down non-EU cul-de-sacs), and smoothly closing the show as if he was hosting it, proved what a pro he is at this politics business. Still, the wounds in the Tory family run deep. In the Spin Room afterwards perhaps the most striking quote was from Iain Duncan Smith, when asked by PolHome what he thought: What do you think? What do you really think? I thought Pinocchio was definitely on offer tonight. The PM has been on Good Morning Britain and when asked how hed reunite his party after June 23, he said: "That, I think, will be fine But he had a veiled threat too for those MPs who want to keep up the pressure if there is a narrow In vote: We accept the result, we accept the instructions of the British people. He said that last line twice, in case we didnt get the message: back off plotters, a win is a win. It is Michael Goves turn on SkyNews tonight. Gove has this morning confessed "I'm quite nervous ... because I've never done anything like this before. I think falling over as I arrive or leave would be a bit of a no-noI remember Ed Miliband falling off the stage." That was typical Gove, self-effacing and polite - but with a bite. Advertisement While he is adored by many Tories, many of the public still see him as a bogeyman from his years in Education (dont forget why Cameron sacked him) and may not warm to his Oxford Union debating style. Maybe its the wavering Tory audience loyal to Dave despite their doubts - that is his real target tonight. Hell try to play nicely, but will the studio audience be as hostile as Camerons? Having unleashed the hounds, Sky may have to ensure they emerge again this evening. 2) THE JUDAS HISS Jeremy Corbyns Big Speech on the EU and workers rights was a big moment in his leadership. His pledge to veto the TTIP free trade deal as it is - toughened up party policy significantly. Im told that few in the Shadow Cabinet were informed in advance about the shift, which is strange given that Corbyns leadership style is to be collaborative. Many pro-Europeans MPs were also irritated by the way their leader undermined the Treasurys warnings about a year-long recession after Brexit. But it was the audience reaction to the media yesterday, and Corbyns own reaction, that caused just as much concern among senior MPs. With some in the crowd believing that even to ask difficult questions is to be part of a media conspiracy against Labour, the hiss that greeted Laura Kuenssberg before she had asked a question revealed a nastiness that was pretty far from the kinder, gentler new politics Corbyn wants to present. He did try to shush the audience, but his smile suggested he had sympathy with their feelings about the BBC (a feeling underlined in his ViceNews documentary). Charlie Falconer was in the audience and told me afterwards that the audience conduct was appalling. He went further this morning, telling me: It was really encouraging to hear Jeremy make a passionate Labour case to remain in the European Union. That said, it was really disappointing that a minority of the crowd let themselves down by heckling a very experienced and talented journalist. It was ugly and wrong. Tom Watson, deputy Labour leader, last night tweeted this (during the Cameron SkyNews event): I feel embarrassed that @bbclaurak was hissed in the course of doing her job today. It was rude and inappropriate. Given that was hours after the event, it was a very deliberate move. Wes Streeting was just as furious, telling PolHome Labour events seemed to resemble Trump rallies where journalists are booed and hissed at for doing their job. We're meant to be a political party providing effective opposition and an alternative government, not a cult." Advertisement Of course many political leaders have loathed the media and the BBC over the years. The BBCs FoI specialist Martin Rosenbaum yesterday unearthed this gem of a memo from John Major to George Bush Snr. He claimed "the Conservative press here has been bloody" and "haven't been reporting our policy". But "the BBC has been appalling too", adding that "for what is supposed to be a public television service, it is not impartial at all". The difference is that you didnt get Tory members hissing and booing reporters or assuming that theyre a bunch of Judases betraying your cause. Today, David Miliband and Alan Johnson team up for the Labour IN campaign, to tour a new HSBC development in Birmingham. In some pro-banker rhetoric we havent seen for some time from Labour, they will say inward investment into financial services earns the UK 442 a second and creates over 189 new jobs a week and safeguarding a further 39 a week. Miliband was just on LBC ramming home 'Project Fact versus Project Fantasy'. And when asked why Corbyn hadn't been doing more to promote the EU In campaign, Miliband said: 'That's a question for him'. 3) CRIMS SCARY TALES Theres more migration woe for the PM in the Home Affairs Committee report on foreign criminals in British jails. It says the Governments failure to deport 13,000 foreign nationals (including 4,000 from the EU) would lead the public to question the point of Britain remaining a member of the EU. But that killer phrase has proved highly contentious. And it was only approved after the committee split 4-4, with the casting vote of chairman Keith Vaz deciding it should stay in the report. Chuka Umunna, who sits on the committee, was not present when the vote was taken. Is that his fault or the fault of the chairman? Advertisement Either way, Justice Minister Dom Raab has had a field day, though Umunna has denounced the Brexit attempt to seize on that line. Is this a classic attempt to scare the public about foreign rapists and muggers with misleading stats? A look at the detail is worthwhile. The two largest groups of foreign offenders in prison in England and Wales are the 983 from Poland and 764 from Ireland. The Ministry of Justice said both groups had special status and could not be sent home. No Irish prisoners, save for exceptional cases, have been sent back since a 2007 bilateral agreement - that has nothing to do with the EU. There is also a block on sending prisoners back to Poland until the end of 2016 as it has an exemption under the EU prison transfer agreement because of lack of capacity in its jails. But that latter excuse may not wash with many floating voters. And theres more trouble on migrants. The Local Government Association is warning that councils will have to slash services or put up council tax to take in child refugees. BECAUSE YOUVE READ THIS FAR Watch Hillary Clinton say thin skinned Donald Trump should never have the nuclear codes. Cameron this morning said the good news was Trump had dumped his Muslim ban (but has he?) Advertisement 4) CEILING WHACKS The Sun has a fun tale about Vote Leave having to vacate its central London offices because of a major leak. We could be out for a few days, the whole building is apparently unsafe and there is water pouring through the ceiling. One source quipped: We need a leak inquiry. The Westminster Tower office, which has hosted speeches by Boris, Michael Gove and other leading Brexiteers, could be emptied for a few days. The Remain camp cant resist the gagfest: Clearly their building is about as watertight as their economic arguments. The big question is, will they call a Polish plumber to get their heads back above water?" 5) THE BRIT REWARDS Today music executives from across the world gather in Cannes for Midem Europes largest music business conference. And guess what? Brexit is very much on the agenda. Thats because new research shows that British artists make up nearly one in every six albums sold in the EUs largest markets. And British record labels are very keen to stay in the EU, it seems. A survey of members by the BPI which holds the BRIT Awards found that 78% of its members want to Remain. When it comes to copyright and protecting music content, 90% think it is important for the UK to have influence in framing rules that govern the sale or use of British music in Europe. Advertisement Geoff Taylor, Chief Executive BPI & BRIT Awards, has blogged for HuffPost UK and points out for almost half of UK record labels, at least a quarter or more of the revenues they earn outside of the UK comes from trading in Europe. For a fifth of them, the figure rises to 75% of their revenue. A bright future for the British music industry means continuing to perform as part of a group, not going solo, he writes. Meanwhile, ticket reseller Ticketbis says Brexit would make it harder for fans and bands to see and perform gigs in Europe. A future Beatles in Hamburg breakthrough could be less likely, they seem to suggest. See, this referendum business gets everywhere If youre reading this on the web, sign-up HERE to get the WaughZone delivered to your inbox. The beach clubs of Kalkan are quiet this summer. At Yali Beach, the pristine white loungers line the freshly-painted decked terrace that looks out over the glassily-clear sea. A clutch of blue t-shirted waiters huddle at the bar, grinning with delight when customers appear. We are two of those customers, my partner Mark and I, visiting Kalkan, one of Turkey's most upmarket small resorts, for my annual trip to Turkey. We go back decades, this vast, sprawling country and I, with its towering mountains and wide, shimmering sea. I first went in 1994, when Kalkan was little more than a sleepy fishing village and the winding road from Dalaman airport snaked up over the mountains before swooping down towards the beautiful Bay of Fethiye. Advertisement There's a tunnel through the mountains now; the road is a sleek dual carriageway, and the long route to Kalkan is lined with gleaming petrol stations, new houses, and vast hoardings advertising boutiques, hotels, superstores. Tourism has bought unexpected wealth and prosperity to Turkey's glittering coast, along with hundreds of thousands of visitors - many of them returning year after year. But this summer things are different. This summer, the visitors aren't coming. "People are anxious about coming to Turkey, we know that, but in a way it is hard to understand why," says Halil Kelek, who runs the chic Courtyard Hotel, in the heart of the Kalkan's picturesque Old Town. "We're fortunate - we do have guests booked in, both first-time visitors and repeat clients - but there have been cancellations. I think people forget what a vast country Turkey is; they hear about the Syrian border, or trouble in Istanbul, and think it's all right next door." Turkey isn't new to misconceptions and negative press. When I first went, most people either raised their eyebrows and muttered Midnight Express, or mentioned the country's - admittedly extremely poor - human rights record. For many, this is still an issue today. Added to the stories about refugees sailing from Turkish beaches, President Erdogan's increasingly unpredictable policies, and the instability in the eastern region of the country and it's not difficult to see why people may feel concerned about visiting. Advertisement Yet in reality, there is nothing more to fear in Turkey's coastal resorts than anywhere else in Europe. The Syrian border lies 1,000kms from Kalkan, for example - the same distance Berlin is from London. Istanbul is 830kms away. In Kalkan - and in Kas, in Gocek and Fethiye - life is unchanged; the gulets sail out of the harbours each morning, the restaurants open their shutters, the shops polish up their ceramics and silverware and hope against hope for a sale. The problem with this kind of fear is that it affects so many people. One evening we sat on a rooftop terrace and watched the waiters at the next door restaurant spend their night looking on over empty tables. How dispiriting it must be; setting out the cutlery, lighting the candles, waiting for the first guests to appear at the top of the stairs. And then no-one arrives. In some ways, Kalkan businesses are more fortunate than other towns; there is a large expat population that has remained, bringing life to the bars and shops. Other towns do not have a similar community of residents to rely on. Of course, no-one should holiday anywhere they feel uncomfortable, but with Turkey currently being used by the media and politicians as an anti-propaganda pawn by both the EU referendum and the refugee crisis, this vast country of friendly, welcoming people, wonderful food and beautiful landscapes is somehow morphing into a no-go area. It's a tragedy, for all of those trying to run businesses in the face of such a downturn. The only positive news, as the Mayor of Fethiye said on Radio 5 Live last week, is that for those people who do decide to visit Turkey, there's never been a better time. Everyone working in tourism is doubley delighted to welcome visitors; flight prices are lower, and there are some great deals on accommodation. We had a glorious week - and the other tourists we talked to were similarly delighted that they had decided to still come. It may be flying in the face of common wisdom to say this summer is the time to visit Turkey, but that doesn't mean it's not true. Deals: Here are some of the best companies that offer holidays in the real Turkey (as opposed to the big, massmarket resorts). Advertisement It was a privilege to be a part of the audience for Bill Gates' keynote speech at the ASU GSV Summit in San Diego in April this year. Hearing his view of the future, it was hard not to feel the groundswell of optimism currently taking hold around the world. Gates still believes that technology is a force for good, opening a world of opportunity for us all. As Gates put it himself, "in terms of impact, and we hope in terms of good success stories, I put [education] at the top of the list of things that technology can and will surprise people with over the next 10 years." Advertisement He's right. At its core, education, like technology, is about unleashing potential, which became the founding principle of my company Prodigy Finance back in 2007. Struck by the obstacles facing talented students from around the world looking to study at business schools from Harvard to Oxford, Boston to Paris, it was clear to me that technology was the only way to remove these hurdles. Unsurprisingly there are a number of barriers to entry for international students looking to attend business schools, but one of the most crippling is funding. Around sixty per cent of MBA students simply would not be able to attend without accessing a loan or grant. This situation becomes even more complicated for international students. Most banks will only lend to students applying for loans in their own country of residence. The bank's risk model means that cross border lending simply doesn't compute. That means that an Indian or a Nigerian student looking to attend a prestigious institution such as Harvard Business School is going to find it impossible to convince an American bank to fund their MBA. And yet, these students have such clear potential. Advertisement Such a situation is ludicrous and, during my own MBA, I set about trying to solve the problem. Many months and many sleepless nights later, Prodigy Finance was born. We have developed a truly borderless lending model, bypassing the banking system to allow alumni and other individuals to invest directly in the potential of postgraduate students from 150 separate countries around the world. We look at people's futures, not where they happen to have been born. The benefit to the world is clear. As it stands currently only a select lucky few have access to the word's best institutions. Imagine what we could create when we open these institutions up to the whole world, creating a community of immensely talented, truly borderless individuals. The possibilities are endless. I'm proud to say we're not the only ones harnessing technology to open up education to the world. I've long admired Busuu, a social network that connects students looking to learn new languages with native speakers around the world. The platform is built on the idea that technology is at its best when it united people beyond borders. It is indicative of the changes that we could be making on a global scale. It already boasts over 60 million users speaking 12 different languages with one another. Technology, like education, works best when it shows no regard to state borders or arbitrary barriers. Bill Gates is right - we, and many like us, are already working on opening up education to the world. The next 10 years are going to be tremendously exciting. If you feel let down by the state of the EU referendum debate you're not on your own. But it turns out there's one group who are being especially locked out of the conversation: young people. There's a stark generation gap in the EU referendum debate - and it's not getting better. New BMG Research polling we've released today shows younger people are totally disengaged from the debate - just 47% of 18-24 year olds say they will definitely vote, compared to 80% of those aged 65 or older - a huge 33 percentage point gap. What's worrying is that this is up only slightly from the end of April when the respective figures were 41% and 76%. Much of this we already knew though. Advertisement Look beyond that, and there's a deeper disconnect among young people with the referendum debate. Only 16% of 18-24 year olds say they feel 'well informed' or 'very well informed' about the vote - compared to 32% of those aged 65 or older. That's a shocking divide, and we know that there's a clear link between how well clued up people feel about something and how likely they are to put their cross in the box on polling day. Worryingly, the findings about how well informed young people feel about the referendum are actually a decline on the same figures for the end of April. And the BMG Research polling for the ERS also shows that young people still aren't being reached by the campaigns: a third - 32% - of 18-24 year olds have not been contacted about the referendum at all so far, compared to just 13% of those aged 65 or older. So that's a third of our young voters who have been completely ignored. It's no wonder many don't plan to vote. Young people simply haven't been mobilised by either of the campaigns. The 33 percentage point chasm between young and old when it comes to whether they will vote bodes badly for our democracy when it comes to ensuring we have as representative a vote as possible. Advertisement With Leave and Remain close in the polls, campaigners need to be targeting those young people who have been least engaged so far. One in five 18-34 year olds are undecided - but only half of them say they'll definitely vote as things stand. A low turnout among young people isn't inevitable however, as we saw with the Scottish referendum. But they need to be inspired to get out there (starting with getting them registered to vote - the deadline is June 7th). We've decided to do something about the current state of affairs: the EU referendum debate doesn't have to be like this. We and academics have just launched a new online toolkit for the EU referendum, Better Referendum - a 'primer' for groups of people to arrange meetups and have informed debates on the EU referendum. We want everyone - but especially those currently least engaged - to have a grassroots conversation about the referendum. Today many music executives from across the world gather in Cannes for Midem - Europe's largest music business conference. They get together annually to discuss the future of the ever changing music business but this year, the question of whether Britain stays in the EU or leaves will be a hot topic - especially as British music is riding so high in Europe. Whether it's Adele's power ballads, Ed Sheeran's acoustic blend of pop, hip hop and folk, Sam Smith's contemporary soul, Mark Ronson's metro electro-funk, Iron Maiden's classic rock or our exciting grime scene, British artists have rarely been more popular outside of the UK. Our music is in people's heads and hearts, on their streaming playlists and yes, still, spinning on their turntables. Europe really matters for British music. Last year, one in four albums sold across Europe was by a British artist and, for almost half of UK record labels, at least a quarter or more of the revenues they earn outside of the UK comes from trading in Europe. In fact for a fifth of labels, this figure rises to 75% or more. The BPI promotes British music and our member labels account for over 80% of the recorded music that is purchased or streamed in the UK. When we polled them on the EU referendum, it came as no surprise that they had a clear view. Of those who expressed an opinion, 78% want the UK to remain in the EU. They fear Brexit could damage the industry's future, which would, in turn, be bad news for artists and fans. Advertisement Reducing access to European markets would be difficult for a creative business like ours - we don't want any new barriers to our artists' ability to freely travel and tour and promote their music. Nine in ten labels also believe it is essential that we do not lose British influence in framing the copyright rules that govern the use of music in Europe, which are currently under review. This EU copyright review is vitally important as it's our key opportunity to confront music's biggest digital challenges: getting video streaming platforms, such as YouTube, to pay artists fair rates for the music that helps to drive their business; and making search engines such as Google take meaningful action to tackle the online black market in music, rather than turning a blind eye. EU copyright rules are vital when we distribute British music across Europe and they determine how our artists can make a living. Our members want Britain to have a seat at the table when those rules are set because intellectual property and copyright underpins our ability to keep re-investing in new talent, which is essential if we are to sustain Britain's proud record as the second largest exporter of music in the world. The UK's achievements in music are no fluke. Alongside our super-talented musicians, we have record labels that invest 25% of their annual revenues into new music, a bigger investment in R&D than biotech or big pharma, and as much again in marketing and promotion. Advertisement But we understand that we need not only to invest, but also to make sure that young people from every kind of background get the opportunity to develop their talent. That's why every year the BRIT Awards raises funding for Croydon's world-famous BRIT School, which helps provide a free arts education to thousands of young people, including many successful artists such as Amy Winehouse, Adele, Katy B, Rizzle Kicks and most recently Ella Eyre. Our music industry not only delivers jobs, economic growth and exports, it also helps build the profile of Britain as a cultural powerhouse across the globe. UK record labels are a fine example of the opportunities that an EU digital single market offers. Almost all of them make their music commercially available across Europe. They have embraced the era of streaming and social media so that, if you include sales in the UK, a quarter of all the albums purchased in Europe last year were British. And when it comes to the EU referendum, they understand that business (and indeed politics), like music, is ultimately about collaboration. A bright future for the British music industry means continuing to perform as part of a group, not going solo. Is it me or does the squid look reproachful? I dithered a bit about the title for this recipe. Should it be squid with romesco or romesco with squid? If this was a Hollywood musical (bear with me) the sauce would be Ginger Rogers and the cephalopod would be Squid Charisse. In a fight over top billing, Ginger would probably win, no matter how long and lithe Squid's tentacles were. I speak as one who loves squid in all its forms, although my original plan (don't tell Squid) was to use octopus, but the fishmonger didn't have any. Don't ask me who Hollywood Octopus would be, probably flashy old Gene Kelly. Fred is more of a cuttlefish. But I'm wandering from the point here. Advertisement Romesco is one of the great Catalan sauces and it works really well with both squid and octopus. If you are not a fan of things with tentacles, try it instead with griddled vegetables such as fat spring onions, baby leeks or asparagus. Traditionally it's served with calcots, which are somewhere between a leek and a spring onion, so you'd be in good company. Its chief ingredients are almonds and hazelnuts, dried sweet peppers (and optionally, a chilli pepper or two) and tomatoes. In Catalunya you would use nora peppers with perhaps the addition of some guindilla chillies. Advertisement These are available from specialist stores although Colman Andrews, in his book Catalan Cuisine, suggests substituting ancho chillies with a small piece of fresh jalapeno or serrano pepper, in which case fry the fresh chilli briefly. There are probably as many recipes for romesco as there are supporters of Catalan independence and that's a lot, but the one I give here is a distillation of a number of different versions I've tried. It owes a lot in the methods used to Jose Pizarro, chef and author and all-round nice bloke, whose cookery books are well worth seeking out. Ask the fishmonger to clean the squid for you or if you're a sucker for punishment (sorry) check out one of the many online tutorials. Squid with Romesco Sauce (serves 4) Ingredients: 1 kg squid, ready prepared Olive oil Roughly chopped parsley, a handful Salt and freshly ground black pepper Lemon quarters, to serve For the romesco: 50g blanched almonds 50g hazelnuts 1 x 35g slice of bread, crusts removed 3 medium tomatoes 2 nora peppers 2 guindilla chillies 4 fat cloves of garlic, peeled A handful of parsley 1-2 tbsp sherry vinegar (or more, to taste) 2-3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil (or more, to taste) Salt, to taste Advertisement Method: Pull the stalks off the dried peppers and chillies and empty out the seeds. Soak in warm water for two hours, then scrape out the flesh with a teaspoon. Place in a food processor or mortar and pestle. To make the romesco, heat the grill to high and cook the tomatoes until the skins are blackened and the flesh cooked. Set aside to cool, then skin. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a pan and fry the almonds, hazelnuts and fried bread until golden. You can roast the nuts in a 200C oven if you prefer but as you have to fry the bread anyway, it's just one more process. Allow to cool. Add the tomatoes, nuts and bread to the food processor or mortar. Throw in the garlic and parsley and add a tablespoon of sherry vinegar. Pulse or pound until you have a chunky paste. Stir in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and salt to taste. Check and add more sherry vinegar or oil if you think it needs it. Colman Andrews says it should be "thickly liquid"; mine's usually a bit thicker than that. Set aside, covered, for the flavours to meld: it'll keep in the fridge for several days. Advertisement Cut the tentacle end off the squid and slice it in half lengthways. Cut the pouch into 50 mm rings. Put a couple of tablespoons of oil in a frying pan on a very high heat and cook the squid for a minute or two only, in batches if necessary, otherwise it'll toughen up. As the deadline for registering ahead of the EU Referendum looms, we're kicking off another National Voter Registration Drive with HOPE not hate - bigger and better than any seen before. The referendum presents a generational issue, one that those currently unregistered or never presented with any type of meaningful engagement at school will live the longest with the decision of. We risk making a decision where the most connected generation that has ever walked earth aren't able to fulfil their potential to engage. But there is still time. After 6 years of working in this space, I'm still wondering why significant changes are not in place to ensure the continuous and sustainable engagement of our youngest citizens, rather than just before key electoral decisions. Many first time voters are saying that the government's efforts to engage ahead of the referendum is too little too late. They also ask why they're not educated in school, and many feel like the government considers them only a priority when they think they'll support their preferred outcome. And when we consider the lack of engagement of young people in their own spaces, who can blame them? Advertisement We cannot afford to only attempt to engage our youngest citizens as an afterthought, and let the absence of political education continue. This is the real issue - and moving forward I hope we are able to see meaningful changes in our education system and laws so that huge voter registrations drives are a thing of the past. In the meantime - let's draw our attention to the immediate task in hand. We've confirmed and launched collaborations with Deliveroo, Uber and Tinder - to name a few, collaborations that prove that encouraging people to become active citizens can come from the most unconventional of sources. From youth clubs to community groups, faith groups to colleges, housing associations to workplaces - #TurnUp is a campaign showing that you don't have to be doing 'politics' to be political. Whilst our hope in the long term is to embed empowering political education into the day-to- day life of our nation's young citizens, laying the foundations for them to see decision-making as a benefit as well as a duty, for now we will keep pushing. Keep pushing and calling out for these practices to be put in place, and for everyone with a connection to this generation to use it for good. So share the following link on your social media - bit.ly/TurnUpEU - and inspire someone you know to #TurnUp ahead of the 7 June voter registration deadline. We quite simply have two choices - to register and take our rightful place at the table or... to continue being part of the menu. Advertisement Innovate. Collaborate. Replicate. These buzzwords have saturated the tech response to the refugee crisis over the past nine months. And yet, there's another word that is increasingly "buzzing": Duplicate. How can we foster innovation without knowing what technology tools have already been developed? How can we build on existing apps created in response to the refugee crisis, disaster relief, or other social good initiatives? Advertisement This is the driving question behind Refugee Projects, a big picture approach to collaboration and innovation for the refugee crisis. Our goal is to provide a central, searchable database for all refugee initiatives throughout Europe and the Middle East. Design based on experience in the field I first began to explore technology apps for the refugee crisis after co-founding a local solidarity group in South West France over nine months ago. We were supporting a group of almost forty Syrian refugees squatting in a nearby city and I was overwhelmed by how difficult it was to track and update donations of material items. One family needed a fridge, another needed size four diapers, another little boy had no sandals, and everyone could use regular food deliveries. The needs changed week to week, day to day. People wanted to help, they just didn't know how. The challenge of finding online tools for social good I've run a US based business from the vineyards of France for a few years now. I'm in the habit of using online tools to help me work more efficiently and quickly turned to the internet to figure out how to manage these communication needs. I came up empty. I then turned to other local solidarity groups, but there was no easy way to see what tools they were using or even who they were. Advertisement Beginning back in October there was buzz about all the apps that had been developed in response to the refugee crisis, but the ones I found were targeting refugees as end-users. I couldn't find anything geared towards people like me, volunteer coordinators on the ground. And bewilderingly, I couldn't find a centralised list of all these apps. I began to feel increasingly frustrated by the multiple tech initiatives that seemed disengaged from end-users - full of well meaning developers starting from scratch on projects that had already been launched in other cities. Joining Prosper Community As part of this research I found John Ellison, the founder of Prosper. Prosper is a global community of skilled digital workers united by a single belief: when refugees prosper, we all prosper. John and I connected immediately, and along with the rest of the team, we began to discuss how to best use our skills. We agreed that to avoid reinventing the wheel, we needed to understand the technical solutions that had already been built in response to the crisis. This was an essential first step to understanding where to best invest our resources. We designed Refugee Projects to provide a central repository of initiatives to fill this gap in knowledge. Two months later, we launched our proof of concept which now has over 2,000 projects listed. It includes everything from mobile apps for refugees to "Tea for Solidarity" to rehabbed school busses offering mobile education. Our proof of concept is still slow and clunky and runs off of Google sheets, but as far as we know it's the most comprehensive database out there. Advertisement More than a database - an entry point to action We're talking about a crisis on an epic scale here. We all need to step in and do what we can. I know that not everyone can take off time to spend a few weeks in Greece or donate 1,000 euros, but I also know everyone can do something. There's a need for translators, programmers, funders, organizers, writers, but most of all, there's a dire need for tools to maximize resources and to pool knowledge and expertise. There's so much we've already done using simple tech like a Google sheet. Imagine what you can do, what we can all do, if we work together. Only through innovation, coordination, and collaboration can we dictate an alternate ending to this story. Do you have a project related to the refugee crisis that you'd like to list or are you a digital worker interested in joining the Prosper Community? Please check us out and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Despite the fact that Obama's Labor Department cronies tampered with it, Donald Trump seized on todays weak jobs report. Paul Ryan questioned Trumps comments about a Mexican-American judge, further unifying the Republican Party. And Harry Reid is exploring legal options for filling Elizabeth Warrens Senate seat if shes elected vice president, while Scott Brown, presumably, is melting down all of his New Hampshire license plates. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Friday, June 3rd, 2016: GOP LEADERS DENOUNCING TRUMP'S ATTACK ON MEXICAN-AMERICANS - Trump's comments are distracting the country from matters of real import, such as feeling superior to the gorilla pit mom. Andrew Rafferty: "One day after endorsing Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan disavowed the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's accusations of bias against the judge in the Trump University case because of his 'Mexican heritage.' 'It's reasoning I don't relate to. I completely disagree with the thinking behind that,' Ryan said. And in an interview with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Trump should be doing more to unite Republicans. Though McConnell said he was unfamiliar with Trump's comments about the judge, he called the real estate mogul's attacks on New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez 'completely unfortunate and unnecessary.'" [NBC News] Advertisement He's seen worse: "For much of a year, Gonzalo P. Curiel, then a federal prosecutor in California, lived officially in hiding...The reason: In a secretly taped conversation inside a San Diego prison, a man accused of being a gunman for a Mexican drug cartel said that he had received permission from his superiors to have Mr. Curiel assassinated...While Judge Curiel has declined to discuss the case publicly, those who know him best say he is handling the unfriendly glare of the Trump case with the resolve that got him through his toughest days as a prosecutor." [NYT's Alan Rappeport] ICYMI: "South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said Thursday she wishes Donald Trump communicated differently because bad things result from divisive rhetoric, as evidenced by last June's massacre in Charleston. The Republican governor said divisive speech motivated Dylann Roof to gun down nine black parishioners at historic Emanuel AME Church. Police have said the white 22-year-old charged with their killings wanted to start a race war." [AP] GOP SEIZING ON LOUSY JOBS REPORT - Pretty sure an eight-year bull market is quite an accomplishment. Amanda Becker and Emily Stephenson: "Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his backers seized on a U.S. jobs report on Friday that showed the weakest hiring in more than five years, calling it evidence that the country needs to move away from Democratic economic policies. The report gave Trump his biggest opening yet to target Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on the economy, after months of mostly solid economic indicators. Trump called the Labor Department report for May, which showed the smallest gain in jobs since 2010, a 'bombshell.' The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, said it was a "sign we need to move away from failed Obama policies" that he said Clinton would stick to." [Reuters] Advertisement Does somebody keep forwarding you this newsletter? Get your own copy. It's free! Sign up here. Send tips/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to huffposthill@huffingtonpost.com. Follow us on Twitter - @HuffPostHill OBAMA COMMUTES 42 SENTENCES - Ryan Reilly and Sam Stein: "President Barack Obama will commute the sentence of 42 federal prisoners on Friday, a senior administration official told The Huffington Post. All told, Obama has now issued 348 commutations more than the amount issued by the past seven presidents combined though advocates have encouraged him to be even bolder. In addition to using the power of commutation more freely than past presidents, Obama has also focused his efforts on a certain subset of federal prisoner: people with drug offenses who face disproportionately long sentences. Among the 42 people who received commutations on Friday, nearly half (20) were serving life sentences. Of his 348 career commutations, 130 were in prison for life." [HuffPost] DEMOCRATS LOOKING TO BLOCK REPUBLICAN APPOINTEE TO WARREN'S SENATE SEAT - Just another thing Democrats have Martha Coakley to be thankful for. Matt Viser: "Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has been actively reviewing Massachusetts rules for filling a US Senate vacancy, another indication of the seriousness with which Democrats are gaming out the possibility of Elizabeth Warren joining likely presidential nominee Hillary Clintons ticket. The upshot of Reids review is that Senate Democrats may have found an avenue to block or at least narrow GOP Governor Charlie Bakers ability to name a temporary replacement and prevent the Senate from flipping to a Democratic majority if Warren were to leave the chamber. That suggests the issue is not as significant an obstacle as Reid previously feared. Pieces of the legal guidance given to Reid were shared with the Globe by a person close to Reid who is familiar with the guidance." [Boston Globe] CLINTON CAMPAIGN FEELING GOOD ABOUT DISS BATTLE - Sam Stein: "In a series of seemingly strategic leaks over the past few weeks, members of Hillary Clintons presidential campaign offered various nicknames with which they were considering tagging Donald Trump. They were unobjectionable duds: from 'Presumptuous Nominee' to 'Dangerous Donald.' The trial balloons were meant to see how the nicknames were received and whether they miraculously stuck. But they also seemed to highlight a problem vexing the Clinton camp: mainly, how to balance the need to seem presidential with the demands (perhaps enticements) of mudslinging at The Donald[Clintons top strategist, Joel] Benenson and other aides havent disguised the fact that theyre still finding the right footing as they gingerly move away from the Democratic primary. But for them, Thursdays speech showed a formula that can work." [HuffPost] So we're guessing Trump isn't going to credential us anytime soon: "Donald Trumps campaign continued to enforce its unprecedented restrictions on the press Thursday night by removing a Politico reporter from a rally in San Jose, California. Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger, who was denied entry to a Trump election night event in March, was ejected Thursday night by a Trump campaign staffer and a private security guard, according to his publication. The Trump campaign denied Schreckinger press credentials for the event, so he attended the rally with the public by obtaining a general admission ticket." [HuffPost's Michael Calderone] MILITARY AUTHORIZATION DRAMA - You could say that John McCain thinks the pesky kids on his lawn are being too quiet. John Donnelly: "The Senate Armed Services Committee voted behind closed doors last month to bar public disclosure of the cost of a major new contract to build Americas latest stealth bomber. At issue before the committee was how much the American people and potential adversaries should know about the price of one of the most expensive and important new programs in the U.S. arsenal. The 19-7 vote in favor of secrecy at the markup of the defense authorization bill was a sharp rebuke to Armed Services Chairman John McCain . The Arizona Republican had written the bill (S 2943 ) to require public disclosure of the value of the contract, which the Air Force had signed with Northrop Grumman Corp. last October to develop and build the first 21 of a planned 100 B-21 bombers. An irate McCain had lambasted Air Force generals about the secrecy at a March Armed Services subcommittee hearing . You're not serving the nation and the taxpayers if they don't know how much of their taxpayer dollars are being spent, he said." [Roll Call] BECAUSE YOU'VE READ THIS FAR - Here's a toddler with a bunny. SANDERS SADLY NOT SKYDIVING - We're still hoping for some Bulls intro music, though. "Bernie Sanders wont be skydiving or parachuting into his rally in Cloverdale, Calif., on Friday. 'The senator will not be parachuting or skydiving into the campaign rally today,' spokeswoman Symone Sanders said in a statement to The Hill. Jimmy Halliday, the president at NorCal Skydiving, had told The Press Democrat that the Sanders campaign would 'run the idea by Bernie.'" [The Hill] COMFORT FOOD - How Uber hasimpacted New York City's yellow cabs. - The world record toothpick beard. - First-person video from the world's most dangerous road. TWITTERAMA @MEPFuller: Am I wrong to think this nation will long remember which Republicans supported Donald TrumLOOK OVER THERE A KID FELL INTO THE GORILLA PIT!! @tjhansen: People like to crack jokes about Trump's hands but have you actually seen them? No. You haven't. No one has. That's how small they are. During the Cold War and beyond, Western diplomats had to constantly keep their wits about them when serving in the USSR and the Eastern bloc as they were prime targets for the KGB and respective Secret Police forces, who relied on a range of methods to get access to classified information. One of the most effective was the tried-and-true "honey traps," in which beautiful, exotic women were used to work undercover to seduce and entice to get information. These honeypots, as they were also called, were the source of frequent irritation or sometimes amusement by male diplomats but occasionally, they could result in a real breach in security, as when an admin officer at Embassy Warsaw named Irwin Scarbeck passed confidential information to Polish security to protect his Polish mistress. David M. Evans served as the Consular and Economic Officer in Warsaw from 1964-1967. He describes how during training he was repeatedly warned about avoiding Polish women. He was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy in 1996. Philippe Du Chateau served as the Assistant Information Officer in the Press and Cultural Section in Moscow from 1984-1987. He recalls an incident that occurred in 1986 when a Marine named Corporal Arnold Bracy became entangled with du Chateau's Russian nanny, was subsequently sent back to the States and indicted for espionage. He was interviewed by Kennedy beginning August 2011. Advertisement Read also the Spy who loved (to follow) me, about the Clayton Lonetree affair at Embassy Moscow, and other Moments on espionage. "Never get into an elevator with a Polish blonde" David M. Evans, Consular/Economic Officer, Warsaw, 1964-1967 EVANS: I was assigned to the German desk [at the State Department], and I think I had some sort of another course at FSI [Foreign Service Institute], prior to going to the German desk.... I had not even reported to the German Affairs Office, when I got a telephone call. The telephone caller said, "Would you like to go to Warsaw?" I said, "Would I like to go to Warsaw?" Absolutely, this was beyond my dreams. The reason was that a U.S. diplomat named Irwin Scarbeck had been arrested for espionage. He was later to be sentenced to 10 years at Ft. Leavenworth, the first U.S. diplomat to be sentenced for espionage. They needed an extra body in Warsaw. He was a GSO, General Services Officer, I would not go into his job, but I would go into the Consular Section and somebody in the Consular Section would be moved to the GSO position. I said, "When do you want me?" They said, in about six weeks. Well, at this time, I knew Russian, and Serbo-Croatian, but no Polish. So, they gave me six weeks of Polish training. My wife was very unhappy about going to Poland.... Advertisement I also went through, intensive security briefings, because the Scarbeck thing had shaken up not only Embassy Warsaw but the whole Foreign Service. This was big stuff. Scarbeck had been trapped by a Polish girl, a Polish blonde. [Ursula Discher, pictured] So, I studied Polish and prepared to go out there in six weeks. I was also told that I was the first junior officer to be sent to an Iron Curtain post without having first served in another foreign post. This was a great honor, as it were. I was given these intensive security briefings, where pictures of Polish blondes were flashed on the screen and I was shown maps of the area. They were concerned [about honeypots] all right, and I was taken aback by the intensity, almost ferociousness, of this security briefing. As I say, Polish blondes were seen as the enemy, quite clearly. I was shown pictures of typical Polish blondes they wanted you to avoid and told stories of entrapment scenarios that had happened. Of course, they told about the Scarbeck case: how he was married and the hold over him was that if he didn't give the blonde NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] secrets, she would be sent to a prison camp to be a prison prostitute. To avoid that, as he thought he was doing, and to help her, he did steal classified NATO documents, copy them, and then give them to her for her bosses. Eventually he was caught. So, that was one way.But one story, in particular, seemed relevant later. That was a story about a Warsaw elevator and an American diplomat. An American diplomat gets into an elevator in Warsaw. On the next floor, a beautiful Polish girl gets in the elevator in a trench coat. They go up another two stories and the elevator stops. There seems to be a problem with the elevator. Two people look at each other, bang for help, call for help, and in due course, they hear people coming to open the trapdoor at the top of the elevator. Advertisement The diplomat thinks, "Ah, help is here. All is well." As the trap door opens on the top of the elevator car, the blonde suddenly throws her coat off and is standing there stark naked and hurls herself on the diplomat. Whereupon the "technicians" who were coming to save them, turn out not to be technicians, but photographers, and are snapping pictures. So, the moral of that story is, never get into an elevator with a Polish blonde. I used that later to write a story that appeared in a national magazine, with an enticing cartoon of a Polish blonde in a furry coat, with a scared diplomat. That was one story. There was another story against the background of Big Red [Communism], because that was what we were dealing with, Big Red, and Big Red extended from all of Asia and Eurasia and Soviet Union, right down into Eastern Europe. Big Red was what we had to be mindful of, and be careful of. The other story was real. I won't reveal his name. An American diplomat and his wife were going to a party in Moscow, I think, and the babysitter, at the last minute, called in and said she was sick, which turned out not to be the case. As a result, the wife had to stay home with the children. He went to the party alone. There was a lot of drinking. When he didn't show up, his wife was concerned. Let's say it was Friday night, Saturday morning, when his wife woke up, and he hadn't come home. So a hue and cry was raised. Finally the embassy security people tracked down where this party had been, in some Russian apartment. Advertisement They burst in and found bottles and glasses and filth all over the place, from obviously a huge party. But no one was there except the American diplomat, stripped naked, except for his underwear, which had been taken off and put over his head. He had been given some sort of "Mickey" [a drugged concoction to knock out an unsuspecting victim] in his drinks. He subsequently left Moscow and pursued a career in another geographic area. Such were the stories. But the underlying message was: Avoid Polish blondes at all costs. "She was working for the Soviet government, reporting on us"Philippe du Chateau, Assistant Information Officer (Press and Cultural Section), Moscow, 1984-1987 DU CHATEAU: At that time, I guess it would have been in mid-1986, we were living in a very small, not very elegant, apartment, way out on Leninsky Prospect. My wife...was working for ABC News. Our time to go on home leave came and as was commonly done, we arranged for somebody to live in our apartment in order to keep the bad guys out. We knew that the Soviets were going to ferret through our stuff when we weren't there. For once I'm not being paranoid at all -- we saw the things we lost, small things, some of my daughter's clothing, pairs of shoes, that kind of thing, when we went out of town to Finland. It would be hard to spot sometimes, but you would notice these things just disappear. But the guys who came in would never be nasty, they were just light fingered when they were going through our apartment. Other embassy folk had things damaged sometimes, but perhaps they were more of a target. So one of my wife's colleagues at ABC News, he was glad to get a better place to live for the month while we were gone. So he agreed to stay in our apartment, and we left on vacation. Advertisement But then soon after we came back, a month would have passed, the guy from ABC approached my wife at work and said, "You know, the strangest thing happened to me and I didn't know what was going on, but when we moved into your apartment, we came in the front door and we heard some commotion in another room, in the bedroom, and one of your Marines came out with a young lady and said he was doing an inspection of the apartment and they left." There's some background needed here. In the years of all the increased security in the embassy, for a long time the Marines employed Soviet cooks who would come to their quarters to work. The Marines lived in the old embassy building [pictured], the same place where we all worked, but on a lower floor. Then, because of tightening security, the cooks were let go. I guess the Marines had to start cooking for themselves, or more likely they brought in cooks from Finland or the U.S. Anyhow, one of the cooks was a favorite with the Marines. She was highly recommended, the Marines loved her, she was a nice lady, we needed a nanny, my wife was working full time, and so she became our nanny, Nanny Galia. I don't remember her last name. She spoke English. She was a very, very intelligent young lady, very good with my daughter. I sincerely want to be very complimentary about her in anything I say as she was a good person and I have no reason to think she was anything else. However, she was, as we know, working for the Soviet government, reporting on us. Of course she was and we didn't mind that, we were very used to it, we knew what was going on. Working in the Soviet Union, we expected it. Who wouldn't? Unfortunately, one of the Marines, a Corporal [Arnold] Bracy, did get involved with Nanny Galia, who was a very attractive young lady. I don't recall how we knew who the Marine was in our apartment, but we did, it was Bracy. And so as soon as my wife and I learned of what was going on, we got in touch with the embassy security officer and had a little discussion in one of the secure rooms in the embassy. Advertisement Poor Bracy, I don't know what happened to him, but he was such an innocent. He was a nice guy. We really liked him, we really like Galia. This all hurt. Corporal Bracy later went on trial, I think, and maybe he did some time. They, whoever they were, they were looking for such compromising connections involving the Marine Security Guards in Moscow after the Lonetree affair earlier in the year, and we gave them one. It was a working assumption that these things were going on. Everyone was looking for spies. I have no idea what happened to Nanny Galia. Golnar and I haven't forgotten her. She was a good lady and my daughter really liked her. John B. King Jr., who has been appointed by U.S. President Barack Obama to succeed U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, speaks in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington October 2, 2015. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts Just when the current crop of presidential candidates was making Barack Obama look good, John King, the new "dog" at the federal Department of Education (FedED), pulls an Arne Duncan and attacks the opt-out movement with the same old set of tricks. FedED claims the purpose of the proposals is to give states "the clarity they need" to implement the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). But in the proposals, King and FedED aim right at the heart of the opt-out movement. They list punitive steps states must take to ensure 95% of their students take the tests or else face a cut-off of federal funds. States must assign a "comprehensive, summative rating for each school to provide a clear picture of its overall standing," report on an individual school's performance on each indicator, and take "robust action" against schools that do not test 95% of their students. Advertisement A summary of the proposed regulations is online. My support for the opt-out movement and opposition to ESSA, Common Core, and Common Core aligned high-stakes testing is laid-out in a number of my Huffington Post blogs. Ironically, the real educational issues are totally ignored by ESSA, FedED, and King. ESSA left most educational policymaking power with the states. As long as states drill and test 95% of their students, they can use whatever tests they want, grade them as they wish, provide inadequate curriculum, systematically underfund education, and bankrupt public school systems to support cronies operating for-profit charter school networks. States are supposed to intervene to improve consistently underperforming schools, but there are no guidelines or requirements for action. The only thing FedED and King seem committed to ensuring is the end of the opt-out movement. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, after reviewing the proposals, issued a statement that she was disappointed with key parts of the regulations. According to Weingarten, "Rather than listen to the outcry by parents and educators over hypertesting, the department offers specific punitive consequences for when fewer than 95 percent of students participate in tests. This doesn't solve the issue of the misuse of testing. It simply inflames the problem by suggesting punitive consequences for those who are so frustrated by the misuse and high-stakes nature of standardized testing that they want to opt their kids out." Bob Schaeffer, the public education director for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, or FairTest, accused Secretary of Education King of continuing to "promote the kind of federal overreach that led to widespread rejection of No Child Left Behind.'" Advertisement According to FedED, they are "interested in hearing even more from stakeholders" and there will be a sixty-day "public comment period" starting May 31 and ending July 31, 2016. King et al claim, "We are taking these comments very seriously, understanding that our final regulations will be stronger because of that input." As far as I can tell, responses to the regulations should be submitted on the U.S. Department of Education blog website called Homeroom. I will respond on the blog site and opt-out parents should flood it with their comments. Let them know that ESSA and the new proposal will not work because parents, teachers, and their supporters will not tolerate the high-stakes testing regime. Unfortunately, based on King and Duncan's track record of ignoring parent complaints and disparaging legitimate concerns, I do not believe they will be responsive. But there is a way to fight against the attempt to silence parental opposition to high-stakes testing. We need to flood Hillary Clinton's email, twitter, phone (646-854-1432), and website with our views. You can also write her at Hillary for America, PO Box 5256, New York, NY 10185-5256 This is a Presidential election year and Hillary needs to know how we feel. Keep messaging Hillary until she calls her friend Barack Obama in the White House and demands to know why he is ignoring her constituency and antagonizing her potential voters. Airman prepares for convoy escort mission, Mosul, Iraq The Iraqi army has finally arrived at the gates of Fallujah, a city 70 km west of Baghdad that fell to ISIS more than two years ago and was the first in a series of losses that left one-third of the country under the group's control. Since ISIS took over Fallujah in 2014, the vast majority of the population has fled. Hundreds of thousands of civilians managed to find ways out despite ISIS restrictions on movement, and they have revealed to the world the horrors they left behind. Advertisement Despite this, however, around 50,000 Iraqi civilians are estimated to be stuck in the city, alongside approximately 1,000 ISIS fighters in control. Refugees fleeing Fallujah have reported that civilians stuck there are starving to death as ISIS hostages, their bodies deployed as human shields to blunt the force of the Iraqi Army assault. This is extremely troubling news, not only because of the obviously inhumane conditions imposed upon the innocent by the Islamic State group, but also because the Iraqi Army and its allies have a poor record at protecting civilians in areas they are trying to liberate. A failure to account for innocent life in almost-entirely Sunni Fallujah could reinforce the sense of alienation and discontent among Iraqi Sunnis across the country, and make the battle to defeat ISIS and build a united Iraq harder than ever. Iraqi civilians fleeing Fallujah (AFP) It's not hard to see why. The Iraqi civil war and continued instability emerged out of the engineered chaos of the US invasion in 2003, particularly because of the sectarian quota system of governance developed under the occupying power. This system categorized Iraqis according to their religious affiliation and distributed power along those lines, in the process increasing the importance of sect and religion in a way that largely-secular Iraq had never before experienced in modern times. Advertisement The sense of discrimination and exclusion by Iraqi Sunnis contributed to ISIS' initial ability to grow its ranks and seize large swathes of the country, and a massacre in Fallujah could reignite Sunni anger across the country against the government. This is especially true given Fallujah's history under the US occupation. In the first year after the invasion, US soldiers imprisoned many and shot and killed dozens of innocent Iraqis in the city, aggravating tensions and spurring resistance. In 2004, a full-scale uprising broke out against the occupation, and in response the US nearly leveled the city, destroying 60% of its buildings and more than half of its homes. Hundreds of civilians were massacred in the US assault, and chemical weapons deployed by the US army have led to a staggering rise in birth defects among the children of those who survived. Needless to say, the destruction understandably prompted a wave of anti-American fury that helped transform localized acts of resistance into a full-blown insurgency and civil war. A US soldier stands beside a burned-out truck after an insurgent attack in Fallujah in 2003 (AP). It is not hard to imagine such a scenario repeating itself today. Even if there is little love for ISIS among the vast majority of Iraqi Sunnis, such an event would be a propaganda coup for the group and would reinforce the feeling that Iraq's government and the international community consider Sunni blood cheap. Just as the deaths of hundreds of thousands of mostly-Sunni Syrians at the hands of their government has become a tool for ISIS in promoting sectarian hatred, bloodshed in Fallujah would understandably lead to regional outcry. Advertisement Likely realizing this, influential Shia leader Ayatollah Sistani has demanded the army and militias respect the "ethics of jihad," asking them not to be "extreme" or "treacherous" and to respect the rights of civilians. Although Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi has promised to guarantee the safety of civilians in the city, he has been unable to do so in other recently-liberated areas. Statements by military officials that Shia militia leaders have been put in charge of determining if men fleeing the city are terrorists or not is leading to growing fears that abuses will go unchecked. Part of the problem is that the Iraqi army has relied on Shia militias to bolster its strength in the fight against ISIS. Arrayed alongside the army are thousands of fighters from such groups, as well as many Sunni fighters hailing from in and around Fallujah. Iran, meanwhile, is providing crucial backing, and even as it tries to present itself as a non-sectarian ally against ISIS it has thus far failed to prevent allied militias from committing atrocities. Shia militias have been repeatedly accused by Human Rights Watch of committing abuses in areas north of Baghdad. The liberation of Tikrit, for example, was followed by the looting and the destruction of the homes of many Sunni civilians. Such incidents were repeated in freed villages across the region, terrifying residents and preventing their return. They have also carried out atrocities and targeted killings against Sunni refugees who have sought safety in Baghdad. Although Iraqis of all faiths have volunteered to provide for the millions of displaced refugees, attacks by militia members have fractured the feeling of national unity triggered among many by ISIS. They have also undermined Iraqi Sunnis' faith in the government's ability to be a non-sectarian force that can protect and represent all Iraqis equally. Advertisement Street scene in Ramadi after its liberation (AFP) In Fallujah, many fear that ISIS will deploy the "scorched Earth" tactics it is famous for, fighting for every inch of territory even if it means the entire city is left in ruins. If Iraqi forces respond in turn - pummeling ISIS and in the process demolishing much of the urban landscape - then it is unclear what benefit the victory will have. Last December, the military managed to liberate the city of Ramadi but in the process destroyed nearly the entire city. Some refugees have returned, but the pyrrhic victory has left those who bravely return to their homes with almost no support or infrastructure, much less jobs and stability. If the Iraqi government cannot guarantee the safety of its own citizens and refuses to hold its forces accountable for sectarian atrocities, then what's the difference between their forces and the militant groups they are fighting? If they do not successfully minimize the bloodshed in the battle of Fallujah, this will be a question at the front of the minds of many Iraqis, and rightfully so. It is up to the Iraqi government and its allies in Tehran and Washington D.C. to decide what the future of Iraq will look like. The shape it takes will depend on the days ahead. 1. Visit A Castle, a Palace or Stately Home. Buckingham Palace. Edinburgh Castle. Chetsworth. There are more fancy places to tour than you could possibly have time for. Take a spin through the nearest grand home or castle for a taste of what life is (or was) like for royalty. Or for those who were appointed by royalty. Because queens, kings, princesses, princes, dukes and lords were not a part of American history, a peek into this part of British life and history can be equal parts fascinating and disturbing. 2. Drink Tea. Of course you have to have a cup of tea while you're in the UK, but go ahead and make it extra special by ordering a cream tea, which ensures your pot of freshly brewed tea will be accompanied by scones, jam and clotted cream. It's quite delicious. 3. Go to the Seaside. Great Britain, being an island, is surrounded by miles of fabulous coastline. Traditional seaside towns like Brighton or Whitby boast beaches complete with colored changing rooms and ice cream parlors. But I would recommend taking any opportunity to get near the coast while in Britain by choosing the scenic coastal driving routes or finding a cliff walk along the sea. Advertisement 4. Walk Along an Old Stone Wall. Dry stone walls, called such because they are held together by the way the rocks are stacked and not with any sort of concrete or mortar, line the countryside all over the UK. They are still built by farmers today, but the oldest ones (in Orkney) are dated at over 3500 years ago. A wander along an old stone wall gives you a taste of UK life outside of London, and the network of public walking paths throughout the country is one of its national treasures. Also bonus: you are sure to see some sheep. 5. Eat the National British Meal. Visit a chippy to eat the national British meal of freshly fried fish and chips. The fish is usually cod or in Scotland, haddock. The chips are thick cut fries. You can order fish and chips almost anywhere in Britain, but the best ones come from local chippers. Often they are shopfronts without seating, so part of the experience is standing on the sidewalk and burning your fingers while you attempt to consume that greasy goodness as quickly as possible. 6. Have a Think at A Stone Circle. Of course Stonehenge is the most popular one to visit, but with over 1000 stone circles in the British Isles, you could easily choose one to have all to yourself for a day. Have your own Outlander moment while you sit on a rock and try to puzzle out what took place in these circles. No one really knows. 7. Get Caught in the Rain. The idea that it's always raining in the UK is a bit of a myth perpetrated by the fact that it is overcast well over half of the time. But if you happen to visit on one of the 131 days it does rain, you can use one of the many delightful phrases the Brits have come up with to describe the fact that water is dropping from the sky. Favorites include "It's bucketing down!" or in Scotland, "It's dreach!" which is used to describe a gloomy, wet day. Advertisement 8. Go to A Pub. A pub is the best place to dry out after getting caught in the rain. In the winter, pubs are particularly cozy and in the summer months, many have outdoor seating. Ale is the drink of choice in a pub, but a Scotch whisky or a Pimm's cup would equally qualify as well-loved drinks in Britain. 9. Go to Church. Breathtakingly beautiful cathedrals are all over the United Kingdom, and many are open for tours throughout the week. However, a lovely way to visit a cathedral is to actually attend a service. Lots of them have daily services around 5pm called Evensong, which is an hour-long service that is sung by a choir. If you can't find an Evensong service, look for a musical concert or pop in at 11am on a Sunday morning. Sitting in church while singing voices echo throughout the magnificent heights enables you to experience the building as it was intended. 10. Take Your Photo in A Red Phone Box. Bright red telephone booths have graced village squares and town corners in England since the 1920s. In the eighties, a phone company that bought them tried to paint them all yellow, but the public outcry ensured that the boxes remained red. Like red post boxes and the red London double decker buses, they are a British cultural icon, so don't be shy about snapping your photo when you spot one! As a mother who has nursed three babies - all while nursing a career - I am very excited to see so much attention lately on women's issues in the workplace. I can personally attest to having nursed (or pumped) in bathrooms, cars, planes, trains, closets, and automobiles; all with varying degrees of cleanliness and (dis)comfort. (This includes three trips to NeoCon with a baby or pump in tow.) Well, rest assured, mamas... if you are still nursing, you will now have a comfortable, clean, private, secluded functional space to go this year! Mamava, creator of design solutions for nursing mamas on the go, is a first time exhibitor at NeoCon 2016. A woman owned company based in Burlington, Vermont, was founded by mom duo, Sascha Mayer and Christine Dodson. Mayer and Dodson applied their design backgrounds to craft a solution to a problem they personally experienced - finding a clean, private, and dignified space to pump. The Mamava suite is a self-contained, mobile pod with comfortable benches, a fold-down table, an electrical outlet for plugging in a breast pump, and a door that can be locked for privacy. The 4-foot by 8-foot pod is meant for individual use, but can fit more than one person, as well as mothers with babies and other children in tow. The Mamava suite embodies the spirit of Mamava's "happy breast" logo - beautifully designed to support and celebrate breastfeeding. "We're thrilled to showcase our Mamava lactation suite at NeoCon, and more importantly provide this amenity for nursing moms attending the show. It's a living and breathing example of how designing with empathy can solve real world issues. We've fully considered the emotional, physical, and biological needs of a nursing mom," Sascha Mayer, CEO and Co-Founder. Advertisement Mamava suites have been placed in airports, zoos, hospitals, schools - as well as many private businesses across the country. The suites help employers comply with the Affordable Care Act, which mandates employers provide a private location other than a bathroom for moms to express breast-milk. Mamava suites are a necessity to support nursing mothers - physically and emotionally - so that they may achieve their breastfeeding goals. Mamava suites may be branded in custom graphics, and purchased privately or through a media sponsorship program. Mamava, was incubated at Solidarity of Unbridled Labour (formerly JDK Design), a world-renowned design studio. Mamava is mama-owned, made in America, and a proud member of the B Corp community. The free Mamava app for iPhone and Android allows moms on the go to search for pumping and breastfeeding friendly locations. The Mamava Suite at NeoCon will be located at the east end of the 7th floor, 4000 aisle, and the company booth is #7-1077. FMI, please visit www.mamava.com. It's 2016. Yet, according to the International Labor organization (ILO), gender pay gaps persist around the world, including in the United States. Women's participation in the U.S. labor force climbed during the 1970s and 1980s, however, in 2010 this figure has declined to 46.7 percent and is not expected to increase by 2018 (DOL, 2011). In 2010, American women on average earned 81 percent of their male counterparts' earnings (BLS, 2010; DOL, 2011). In terms of women in leadership positions, in 2009 only 24 percent of CEOs in the US were women and they earned only 74.5 percent of male CEOs salaries (BLS, 2010 p.9). Publications such as Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In (2013) and AnneMarie Slaughter's article in the Atlantic (2012) titled, "Why Women Still Can't Have it All" have brought increased attention to many women's issues in recent years. Lean In has sold more than two million copies, and Slaughter's Atlantic article remains of one of the highest viewed blog posts in the Atlantic's history with an estimated 2.7 million + views. Slaughter followed this article in 2015 with her book Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, and Family (2015). The former focuses on encouraging women to "lean in" to their corporate careers, while the latter advocates for policy change. Both have accelerated women and the workplace conversation. Advertisement But what does all of this mean for the workplace? And how do we create female-friendly workplaces? We spoke with Ursula Mead, founder and CEO of InHerSight, a website focused on improving the workplace for women by measuring it. The driving belief behind this website is that when women share insights, collectively we can bring powerful transparency to the working world, and what needs to improve. Mead describes InHerSight as Glasssdoor.com meets Match.com for women: "Women with all different definitions of success come to InHerSight and rate the female-friendliness of their employers. We then aggregate that data into company scorecards that allow women to find companies that have what they are looking for and that also give employers valuable insight into how well they support the women who work for them." There are three main categories of data collected: 1.Career Growth, which focuses on factors like female representation in top leadership, equal opportunities for advancement, and mentorship programs 2.Personal Development, which looks at how well companies support continuous learning opportunities, a flexible work schedule, and a fulfilling social environment 3.Family Support, which captures satisfaction ratings for areas like maternity and adoptive leave, the availability of lactation rooms, etc. Advertisement To date, more than 40,000 women have rated their companies on the site or gotten matched to companies that meet their needs, and better than 8,500 companies are currently in the database. Recent demographic info says that 56 percent of their individuals are in the millennial group of 25-34, while 35 percent are 35 and older. More than 50 percent would self-identify as being mid-level in their career, and 92 percent are college educated. 40 percent are mothers. Mead says, "Our goal is to give women access to the data they need to make great employment decisions, and the more women who use our site, the more beneficial it will become. " Mead says, "We've already collected a ton of great data and have a lot of rich findings about what women want from companies, what correlates with their overall happiness, and how companies can attract and retain women." Mead continues, "When we looked at the factors that correlate with overall workplace satisfaction, we found that equal opportunities for women and men had the highest correlation with overall satisfaction. This was followed closely by a culture that is respectful, professional and unbiased, and also female representation in leadership." Surprisingly, maternity leave did not make the top of the list. This is due to the fact that overall; it affects a smaller percentage of women at any given time. They want or need these policies in a certain window of time, and that changes. One area InHerSight is starting to look at more is around leave in general, whether caring for a child or an elder (as baby boomers retire, they predict eldercare will become a bigger issue), and the culture around transitioning back to the workforce post-leave. Mead says, "We see a lot of companies that are increasing the number of weeks of maternity leave, which is awesome, but we think it's important to make sure the soft policies around those lengthy leaves are supportive as well. It's not just about the number of weeks of leave, but making sure the right support is in place when those women return: Can you reenter and feel like things are on track? Was your decision around taking extended leave respected and embraced? We like to use the example of Dell, who doesn't have a of Netflix-style unlimited maternity policy, but women are satisfied there, and that signals to us that the culture around their maternity and adoptive leave is working." But perhaps the most surprising (or not surprising at all) finding of their data is that the things women want most from their employers aren't unusual perks like on site nannies and game rooms. The top three desires are good paid time off, salary satisfaction and great coworkers. The things we see fall to the bottom of the list are sponsorship, mentorship programs and social activities. Mead expands, "The data tells us that whether women are raising a family, seeking upward mobility or striving for a better work-life balance, they are looking for companies that give them the choice, flexibility and tools to fashion their lives as they see fit. These desires line up with what men are looking for in most cases, too." Advertisement The symptoms of RSV in babies and children may look like the common cold, but there are a few additional things to watch out for, as well as ways to help prevent infection. Traveling in Madagascar will thicken your skin and earn you a very large, very cold beer at the end of your trip. There are so many sites to visit, all offerings of nature - white sand beaches up North, whales migrating along the East coast, one of the longest reefs in the world off the West coast. It's hard to decide where to go and -considering the rough roads and lack of modern infrastructure for tourism - it's even harder to get where you want to go. At the top of our list was the Avenue of the Baobabs -the (literal and figurative) roadblocks made getting there even sweeter. We arrived in Madagascar at the end of April with our route mapped out for the next three weeks. With four months of international travel under our belts, we were pretty good at planning ahead and maximizing our time in each new location. From Antananarivo (Tana for short), we would head West to the Avenue of the Baobabs, then South to Andringitra National Park for hiking, then West to Andavadoaka for scuba, and further South to Toliara for surfing. It would be a perfect taste of all ecosystems Madagascar has to offer. When we shared our plan with Sari, the owner of our hostel, she gave us a flat out, "It's not possible." The road to the Baobabs was washed out. And that's the only paved road there (we learned there is a limited number of these in the country). This barrier was a rude awakening and a taste of what to expect. We had to drop our plan and leave it more open-ended, which is about all you can do in Madagascar - hope, wait and be flexible. This is when our neatly arranged trip turned into an unplanned adventure. Advertisement So we waited and passed the time exploring Tana en foot...and two days later, once the road was patched, we were hurtling West in a taxi-brousse (shared van), crammed in with 15+ other people, luggage loosely tethered to the top, music blaring. At high speed we zoomed past flooded rice fields, up and along the edge of mountains, barely easing on the breaks through bustling villages or when faced with oncoming traffic or animals (its okay, iguana tails grow back right?). We marveled at the parents in front of us - each with a child, one of which was sick, on their laps through the entire journey. Our driver had a mission to end his fourteen-hour shift, and we were on a mission to get out of the hot van, so we were accepting of our reality in a tense, sweaty-palmed way. Although there are Baobab trees all over Madagascar, the largest grove of the largest trees is in Menabe. Unfortunately for the trees, there is a road that runs right through the grove, making them relatively easy to access for humans...I say relatively because it's still another hour-long bumpy ride from town. Morondava is the closest town to the Baobabs where travelers can find modest hotels and restaurants - it's the kickoff town for visits to the Avenue of the Baobabs, Kirindy Forest Reserve, and Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park. Travelers often visit the first two in the same day, as the Baobabs are along the road that runs to Kirindy. Malagasy is the prime language, but knowing some French will certainly help in getting around. English not so much, though we did find a few who spoke a bit. Bargaining is common in Madagascar, so few things have a set price and most prices will be jacked up especially high for the foreigners. A good part about standing out as a tourist is that opportunities seemed to present themselves. In a ten-minute walk from our hotel to the main street of Morondava, we received a handful of offers for guided outings and boat trips. From there, we were able to weigh our options and see who had the most enticing (safest sounding and reasonably priced) option. Sonny, a middle aged man with a big crooked smile, won us over with the promise of a reliable 4x4 truck and he spoke some English, so we agreed to set out early the next day. He picked us up a late because the car wouldn't start, but we still arrived just before sunrise at the Baobabs. Sunrise and sunset are the best times to capture that epic Madagascar shot, commonly seen on Pinterest "dream destination" boards and travel agency ads. April is a wonderful time to go because it's just at the end of the rainy season, so the roads are (mostly) passable, there are few other tourists to get in your shot, and the trees are green at the top. Advertisement Walking through the Baobabs is what I imagine walking along dinosaurs would feel like...they are massive and otherworldly, and next to them you feel tiny. The long, hot, bumpy journey getting there shed off our shoulders as we walked along the bases of the trees in the cool morning air. Before the sun came up, we pressed up against their smooth grey trunks, gazing up at the moon and stars through the small branches above. While this was a walking on air type of experience, there is still the reality of tons of flies (wear pants), trash strewn about, and sadly kids asking for money (expect to hand over some bills if you capture them in a photo). There are over 20 trees here, each about 30 meters high, and aged up to 800 years! While deforestation is a big problem in Madagascar, as the population grows and clears forest for farmland, the Baobabs remain. Locals consider them sacred and believe that the spirits of the deceased reside within these trees. This provides momentary relief, but the reality is that the changing environment around the trees will still ultimately impact these beauties, no matter how solid and impenetrable they may seem. There is currently no fee for visiting the Avenue of the Baobabs, but environmental groups are urging for change - a small fee can help maintain the health of the local ecosystem, while employing a few locals. We had planned to visit the Baobabs at sunrise, continue on to Kirindy (1.5 hours further) to see lemurs, then visit the grove again on the way back for sunset. But there was a worthwhile change of plans. We stopped in a small village on the way back and met a nice young couple with a sick little boy in their arms. The urgency of getting their boy to the hospital most definitely outweighed our need for sunset shots of the trees, so we all packed in and trundled back to Morondava to get them to the hospital, communicating through our guide (whose hearing and grasp of English were both questionable). Had we not bumped into them, they would have waited patiently for half the day to wave down the next taxi-brousse that swooped by. Their thankfulness for the ride did not need translation and their smiles made our day. While there isn't anything noteworthy about Morondava, it is a glimpse into life in Madagascar. It's abuzz with Malagasy people selling, buying, transporting goods in over-stuffed carts, women toting groceries and kids - the main drag is full of the energy of people living. As a tourist you get to dip into the scene for a moment, walk around, duck into markets, and take it in. Two nights is enough here plus one night in Belo sur Mer, a sun-bleached fishing village just south, will give you a look into - the quieter and even further offline - village life. Get there by pirogue or 4x4. Advertisement More likely than not, Morondava is far from where you head next. For us, it was a four-day journey by pirogue (local sailing craft) to get to our next destination further South. The many hours spent in transit to and from Morondava were worthwhile to have a morning with the Baobabs. It will be one of our most memorable sunrises and was a highlight of our time in Madagascar. Here are some tips for planning your trip to Madagascar, why you should think twice about taking a pirogue, and where to find waves. Quick Tips: Stay at Trecicogne Hotel - it was very cheap ($7 a night) and clean enough with friendly staff. The Baobab Hotel is a more upscale option, had a pool that we looked at longingly, and a good restaurant that we dined at a few times. Grab a beer at L'Oasis at night and take in the reggae vibes. Visit the Baobabs (they flower between February and March)! Reach them by taxi-brousse from town or private driver. And pirogue South to Belo sur Mer, a tiny sun-bleached fishing village for the night. Get there by taxi-brousse from Tana - this taxi-brousse ride is apparently one of the most reliable in Madagascar. Don't take photos of people without asking - it's rude and also fady (taboo). Also mind your things and leave your jewelry and nice clothes at home. Don't be afraid to bargain, even locals do. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, whose panel is responsible for vetting judicial appointments, holds a hearing shortly after President Barack Obama announced Judge Merrick Garland as his nominee to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, March 16, 2016. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., repeated his steadfast opposition to holding confirmation hearing in the Judiciary Committee in President Obamaas last months in the White House and made it clear in a speech on the floor that the GOP-led Senate will not consider President Barack Obama's nominee, Garland, but will wait until after the next president is in place. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made clear this week not only that he wants Donald Trump to be president, but that the main reason he wants Trump to be president is so that he will be the one picking Supreme Court justices. The Republican leader told radio host Hugh Hewitt that "the Supreme Court is the biggest thing the next president will deal with." He continued, "I made sure of that by making sure that this president doesn't get to pick this nominee and get them confirmed on the way out the door. But that alone, that issue alone will define much of what America is like for the next generation." According to McConnell, "That issue alone is enough to convince me to support Donald Trump." Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley also recently expressed his support for Trump selecting a Supreme Court justice to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. He told the Des Moines Register, "Based upon the type of people he'd be looking for, I think I would expect the right type of people to be nominated by him to the Supreme Court." Yesterday, Trump made clear that he applies a racial test when assessing the impartiality of judges, telling The Wall Street Journal that Judge Gonzalo Curiel should not preside over a fraud case involving his Trump University scam real estate seminars case because the federal judge has "an absolute conflict." According to Trump, Curiel's "Mexican heritage" is "an inherent conflict of interest" because "I'm building a wall." Curiel, whose parents are from Mexico, was born in Indiana. Advertisement The Barcelona Process that formed the basis of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) was launched in November 1995 by the 15 European Union members and 12 Mediterranean partners as a framework for the creation of a Mediterranean region of peace, security and shared prosperity. In 2003, the EU launched the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) to advance cooperation with countries neighboring the EU including those flanking the Mediterranean. To reinvigorate the EMP by making the process more visible in the daily lives of the people of the Mediterranean region, and to create a more balanced partnership through co-ownership, the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) was established in 2008 with six strategic priority, being business development, social and civil affairs, higher education and research, transport and urban development, water and environment and energy and climate action. All was not smooth going though, as the Arab Spring and the developments that followed led to numerous changes in the Mediterranean Basin. The emergence of new actors and their competition in the post-Arab Spring era to become more influential in the region changed the status quo. The geostrategic significance of Mediterranean increased with the increasing presence of emerging powers, and a return to power politics was witnessed in the region, leaving the EU's efforts to construct the Mediterranean in its own image out in the cold. In the period of political turmoil and homegrown violence that followed, the Mediterranean became a mass grave for many refugees who risked life and limb to travel across its waters with eyes on a more secure life in Europe. The resulting immigration/refugee crisis has become a subject of a deep debate among the EU member states who see on the horizon a mass flow of refugees from Southern and Eastern Mediterranean countries, in particular from Libya, Syria and Iraq. The migration crisis has exposed vast divisions among the countries within the EU, and terrorist attacks by the Islamic State (ISIL) has made the situation worse for the North African immigrants living in the EU member states by sparking a racist backlash against Europe's Muslims. The Euro Zone crisis and the ongoing slow economic growth that has coincided with the refugee crisis and terrorist attacks in Europe have changed the status quo in the EU member states. Increasing distrust to the mainstream parties in Europe and popular anxiety has helped fuel the rise of anti-immigration parties in Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Finland, Sweden, Cyprus, Slovakia, Italy, Germany, the UK and Hungary with a common Islamaphobic and xenophobic agenda. Advertisement Although the EU's approach to this rising anti-immigration sentiment in the EU member states is currently unclear, this newly emerging environment in the EU's neighborhood led the EU to rethink its neighborhood policy and other existing instruments and initiatives towards the region. A review of the European Neighborhood Policy in November 18, 2015 emphasized radical change in the countries surrounding the EU. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Barcelona Process on November 26, 2015, the co-presidents of the UfM, Federica Mogherini, Vice-President of the European Commission and High Representative of the European Union for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, and Nasser Judeh, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Jordan, hosted a meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the UfM member states to renew their political commitment to the development of regional cooperation. Yet, the changes in the status quo in the both sides of the Mediterranean region indicated the significance of alternative diplomacy, such as citizen diplomacy and science diplomacy, as complimentary to the official diplomacy. The Mediterranean Citizens Assembly (MCA) that was founded in 2008 to create a Mediterranean community of peoples with the shared democratic values of freedom, peace, respect for cultural diversity and environmental responsibility through dialogue among the citizens of the region was transformed into Foundation based in Valencia in 2016. The citizens that have become increasingly vital components of this initiative on both shores of the Mediterranean, and are taking an active part in many projects of the MCA Foundation, dealing with issues that range from regional food policy to the refugee issue. Increasing transactionalism between the people of these two shores became one the main themes of the Euro-Mediterranean University (EMUNI) 2016 annual conference held on May 12-13, 2016 in Barcelona and the regional event of project MERID (Horizon 2020 project funded by the EU) that addressed the role of the diaspora in intercultural dialogue, trust-building and the development of cooperation between the countries of the European Union, Southern Mediterranean and the Middle East. The potential use of the diaspora as bridges for building trust in the Euro-Mediterranean region was among the topics discussed at this meeting. Advertisement The most interesting item on the agenda was about employing science diplomacy to explore new avenues of cooperation in the region. The keynote speaker at the event, Javier Solana, the former Secretary General of NATO and former High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy of the EU, emphasized the importance of science diplomacy. To underline the potential, he gave the example of Iran's nuclear deal and two Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) connected physicists, Ernest Moniz, U.S. Energy Secretary and Ali Akbar Salehi, the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, who played key roles in the process. He stressed that it would not have been possible to resolve this political problem without scientific contribution. Another important repercussion of the new approach of the EU that was emphasized during the Review of the European neighborhood Policy issued on November 18, 2015 was that "the new ENP will seek to involve other regional actors, beyond the neighborhood, where appropriate, in addressing regional challenges", which stems from the understanding that "the neighbors of the neighbors also deserves attention" that arose during the meeting. The MERID project, which is a pilot project of the European Commission, involved Iranian and Iraqi research communities in EU funding structures, expanding the Mediterranean concept into a broader Mediterranean area to make possible "Science Diplomacy in Practice" across a much broader region. Photo Credit: Brent Stoller To send in a question, please complete this short Google form. All submissions are anonymous, even to the author. ***** PSA: I'm going on my honeymoon, so ADVICE is going on a very, very brief hiatus. The next installment will be published on Friday, June 17. I hope/expect to return to a bunch of new questions, which you can submit via this Google form. Don't forget me while I'm gone... ***** (Questions have been modified for space and clarity.) Loyalty does not seem to be prevalent in today's world when it comes to friendships, business, etc. Why do you think that is, and how can we make it better? -- Blackbird; Springfield, MO Advertisement "We use words like honor; code; LOYALTY. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline." -- Col. Nathan R. Jessup, United States Marine Corps When I read the word "loyalty," I can't help reading it in Jack Nicholson's voice. It's a Pavlovian response. That's what happens when you watch A Few Good Men every time it pops up on the channel guide. If it's on, I'm in, and I'm not going anywhere until it's over. Beyond its captivating drama, it's a movie that explores everything from right and wrong to the ghost of a dead father. And loyalty. It explores loyalty as much as any of the other stuff. Jessup sermonizes about it incessantly, and his charges justify their actions by citing an allegiance to their code: Unit -- Core -- G-d -- Country. Sir. The irony, of course, is that Jessup practices anything but what he preaches. He (indirectly) kills a Marine and covers his own ass by blaming the murder on two of his subordinates. Acting as anything but a leader, he's loyal to no one but himself. Advertisement Sadly, as you pointed out, the same can often be said about today's world. I don't like making such sweeping statements, because not everybody is Col. Jessup. I'm lucky enough to have many loyal people in my life, and you can't scroll through Facebook without coming across some feel-good story of dedication and devotion. But in too many instances, loyalty has gone the way of the dime bag of oregano (because the real stuff is now legal). Why? It's a tough question that requires tough answers, answers that I'm not smart enough to figure out or eloquently expound upon. That said, that's not going to stop me from throwing out a random, what's-he-talking-about theory. I'm sure most would ascribe our lack of loyalty to a combative culture that deifies ego and self-promotion, to a loss of values, a lack of role models and a spike in greed. And I would agree. I would also assert these factors haven't come to fruition by themselves. Loyalty is about connection, and I believe its decline has paralleled -- and is symbolized by -- the rise of the very thing that should be bringing us closer together. ***** The internet has been the defining creation/invention/advancement of my lifetime. It's created a true global community. Within a few minutes and a few clicks, I can schedule a tour guide for my trip abroad, catch up with my fifth-grade classmates and publish this post so that it appears on your computer screen. The world has never been more connected. Advertisement But as with any creation/invention/advancement, there's an upside and downside, a give and take that results in unintended consequences. I can buy anything on Amazon, which allows hackers to (potentially) capture my credit card, for instance. And when it comes to loyalty, I believe the internet has fostered two such consequences. On the surface, neither seems like a bad thing. But as Isaac Newton says, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. ***** The internet offers choice. In his standup special, Bigger and Blacker -- another 90s classic -- Chris Rock explains the Bill Clinton sex scandal with this pearl of wisdom: A man is only as faithful as his options. In other words, the more options a man has, the less loyal he becomes. And if the internet has given us anything, it's options. Lots of them. And easy access to them. New jobs, new relationships, new side pieces -- they're all available at the touch of a button, just waiting for us. We aren't loyal because we don't have to be. Granted, loyalty is a virtue, not something done out of necessity. We ideally remain loyal because it's the right thing to do, not because we have nothing else to do. Advertisement Still, there's that whole grass-is-always-greener thing, that obsession with the new and different, and the more opportunity we have to find it, the more opportunity we have to give into its temptation. The internet provides an avenue to individuality. The childhood bedroom was the precursor to the online profile. Our favorite pictures got thumbtacked to a bulletin board, and our deepest thoughts got jotted in the journal on our nightstand. And the only way anyone else experienced it was if we knew them well enough to invite them over. Not anymore. With sites like Facebook, Twitter and others, everything's gone virtual, and there are no bounds to our broadcast radius. We can log in and build our own brand, one follower and "friend" at a time. At first glance, these sites look like the large social networks that they are, platforms where people come together. But they also are a collection of one-person islands, each of which is fighting for its own piece of the sun. Don't get me wrong... there's a lot of good to this. As a writer, these outlets make it much, much easier to get noticed and build an audience, and for that I am appreciative. Advertisement But I also think that they've made narcissism more convenient. And narcissism and loyalty don't mix. This self(ie)-centric mindset has trickled down throughout the culture, making it that much easier to prioritize our own wants and needs above anything else, regardless of consequence or who might get hurt. I realize this all sounds preachy and pompous, kind of like Col. Jessup, but I swear that's not my intent. As for how we can make things better, I don't think it's that complicated. You want more loyalty in the world? Be loyal yourself. Because if we all do that enough, for long enough, it should eventually add up to a new truth that we can handle. COMING FRIDAY, JUNE 17: Love Doesn't Make Sense Need more ADVICE? Check out the most recent installments: Image source: PhotoDune According to the 2016 Small Business Technology Impact Study, small business owners should have a business website and social media involvement if they want to be successful. The study, which was conducted by Time Warner Cable Business Class, examined the ways in which consumers decide which businesses they'll choose to buy from. "It's no secret that small business owners are hungry to get a prospect's attention, while keeping their current customers coming back for more," said Chase Sagum, CMO at BestCompany. The study will be eye-opening to small business owners who take it seriously enough to ramp up their online presence to help them connect with consumers. Advertisement The 2016 Small Business Technology Impact Study Findings Small businesses need to have a solid online presence if they expect to be successful. 36% of people surveyed in the study indicated that they might choose not to do business with those small businesses that have no website. This is true for many industries. Small businesses need to be active on social media. It's crucial to respond to critical reviews to keep customers. The study found that close to one in five respondents will avoid small businesses that are unresponsive to critical comments about the business. The age of your customers should determine the ways you communicate to them online. The survey indicated that millennials typically want to know who the owner of a business is, more so than older customers. 73% of people in the 18- to 34-year-old segment want to see a business owner's photo with the company's history on its website. 63% of people 55 and older feel that the owner's photo and company's story is important. Keeping data safe plays a big factor in customer retention. A high majority of the survey respondents - 79%, in fact, - indicated that businesses need to do whatever it takes to protect the financial data of its customers. Advertisement Further complementary findings were uncovered in the 2016 Small Business Marketing Trends Report, which was conducted by Infusionsoft and Lead Pages. Some of the most noteworthy findings of this survey include: Small Businesses Still Lacking Digital Marketing Many small businesses are surprisingly lacking in digital marketing. The Marketing Trends Report found that almost 1 out of 5 small businesses had no plans to invest in digital marketing of any kind in 2016. Many of them have a hard time charting their return on investment. Almost 50% of respondents of the Small Business Marketing Trends Report indicated that they have no idea what their ROI is. 14% of the respondents said that know they aren't receiving an acceptable ROI on their digital marketing. Many have a hard time with customer follow-up. Very few of the respondents to the Small Business Marketing Trends Report keep their customers' contact information to refer to at a later date. The report also found that most small businesses do not use customer relationship management software or keep an email marketing list. Many small businesses lack effective marketing software. The Report also found that 41% of small business owners have utilized just one or two marketing software applications. Advertisement A few more noteworthy stats from the Small Business Marketing Trends Report include: Around 50% of small business owners are increasing their spending on their websites this year Around 50% of small business owners are spending more on their online marketing and advertising Around 25% of small business owners are increasing their spending on direct mail and print advertising 14% of small business owners are increasing their spending on person-to-person marketing and telemarketing While almost 60% of small businesses have a social media presence, fewer than 50% are producing other types of content for lead generation Bottom Line When I was in the Navy, I often sat on a train for 45 minutes between Yokosuka, Japan and Tokyo. The train moved at a steady clip of 68 miles per hour through the densest parts of the Kanagawa prefecture. When I got off the platform at the largest train station in the world, I paid a measly $6. A Japanese friend bragged, "You know, the reason nobody is unemployed in Japan is because we can all get to work." Here in Detroit, it's a very different story. As the Regional Transit authority is discussing a 1.2 mill tax increase for Metro Detroit residents to pay for mass transit, some remain skeptical. That's why it's important for folks to understand the major economic and generational trends in our area that restrain economic growth, all of which are tied to the lack of mass transportation. For instance, most of the entry-level jobs are in the suburbs, but most of the workers willing to take those jobs live in the city. With no viable mass transportation system, it means that thousands and thousands of Metro Detroit jobs continue to go unfilled, while thousands and thousands of workers are unemployed. Advertisement The economic cost of this dysfunction isn't just in the lack of economic efficiency, but also in state welfare benefits that are then paid out to these trapped workers. This is just one symptom of the transit dysfunction we have in Metro Detroit. With giant holes in our regional transit system, it creates tragic economic tales like Detroit's infamous "walking man." But, like I said, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Another continuing problem is the exodus of millennials from Michigan to other states. Millennials, as a group, tend to favor mass transportation over driving. The top three modes of transit favored by millennials include bicycle, rail and bus travel. Driving a car is the least favorite mode of transit, even lower than walking (gasp!) Not to mention, studies have shown that the "hot spots" for Millennials to move into always have mass transit, and many millennials surveyed said that the lack of waiting in traffic, the ability to walk and use mass transit and the ability to save money on a car were major factors in deciding to move there. Advertisement So, where are millennials going? They're heading out to Chicago and New York, which clearly shows they're not leaving us because of the weather. The lack of mass transportation is a major factor in Michigan's continued population decline. However, because of this population decline, the majority of the voters who will be deciding on this millage will be older and, generationally, less attracted to mass transportation. There is a very real divide between baby boomers and millennials on whether or not they prefer to use mass transit. Baby boomers tend to favor the freedom of a car, while millennials favor the convenience of mass transit. So, how does a millennial like me convince baby boomers to do the right thing? All I can say is, if you like your children and grandchildren living 4, 6 or 10 hours from you - reject the millage. If you want to see your kids moving back to Michigan and re-investing in the communities they grew up in, then vote yes on the millage. It's just that simple. This is a terrible, tragic situation here. If you can't trust your weed dealer not to smash you over the head with a toilet lid and rob you while you urinate in an alley during a drug deal who can you trust? What's next? Your masseuse water boarding you for taking a dump while getting a happy ending? Getting shot by your partner for smoking inside the bank you two are robbing? This world gets worse every day. There is no honor among thieves any more. However, I do have to give credit to the police who decided to charge her for admitting this happened during a drug deal. That literally adds insult to well deserved injury. We can all learn some lessons from this. Number 1, don't piss in an alley during a drug deal. Number 2, don't call the police when your drug deal goes wrong. We can only hope that Tutu was only trying to knock some sense into her. We psychiatrists are amazed to learn that people think we're telepathic, or that we're psychologists, or that we can go out for coffee, or gossip about you. To set the record straight here are ten tips. They'll also be helpful if you are considering consulting one of us. Ten things to know before you go: 1) We can't read minds. Although it would be extremely useful and make the job so much easier if we could read minds, we can't. So please try to verbalize your complaints. No, seriously, many people walk into my office, believing they just have to be there and I'll know immediately what's wrong. Sometimes it takes months to comprehend the problem, but many times I can make a diagnosis after two visits, but you must talk. 2) Psychiatrists are not psychologists, social workers, or lay therapists. Psychiatrists have medical degrees. We spent four years in medical school, then did a residency in psychiatry, and then many times did fellowships in our chosen field, i.e., psychopharmacology or child psychiatry. Because we learned how the body interacts with the mind, we can rule out physical disorders as a cause of mental illness. This is important, since a person may have a hyperactive thyroid, for example, which can trigger panic attacks, anxiety, insomnia, or anorexia. We can look at thyroid blood tests or have a patient consult an endocrinologist if we suspect the problem stems from thyroid disease. Psychologists have a Ph.D., since they have usually studied four years in a university, concentrating on a variety of therapies, e.g., CBT or behavioral therapy. Social workers often have an MSW (medical social work degree) or a CSW (clinical social work degree), which is usually a master's degree from a university. Lay therapists do not even need any degree and are not licensed by their states. Psychologists, social workers, nurses, lay therapists, and sometimes clergy all do psychotherapy with patients, but only a psychiatrist can prescribe medications and do therapy. We work together with many types of therapists, especially in hospitals and clinics. Advertisement 3) We can hospitalize you if you need it. The most common types of psychiatric hospitalizations are for suicide attempts, detoxifications from drugs or alcohol, psychotic episodes caused by mania or from schizophrenia. Most psychiatrists use hospitalization sparingly as a last resort if no other treatment will work. 4) We can't go out to coffee, or socialize outside the office, or date you. There might be rare exceptions, but we must maintain boundaries with our patients to protect them and ourselves. Many patients feel close to their doctors after revealing intimate and painful details of their lives, but our ethics require us to refrain from socializing with you. The reasons are quite complicated, but when these boundaries are violated, patients are harmed, doctors are sued and lose their licenses, and systems collapse. The rare exception might be when a psychiatrist shares some food with a severely disabled schizophrenic patient who otherwise might not be able to communicate. 5) We are available 24/7 if there is an emergency. Like most physicians, you can call us anytime if you are desperate, e.g., if you feel suicidal, have a bad reaction to a medication, or are ready to drink or drug again after a period of sobriety. Often we will just ask you to go to the closest emergency room or call 911 for an ambulance. Advertisement 6) We are still learning the causes and genetics of many mental disorders. Science is advancing rapidly, but we don't know precisely what genes are responsible for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or depression. We are getting there and the research is exciting, but we may not be able to answer your questions about your risk factors for passing these conditions on to the next generation. 7) We don't have a blood test to determine if you have schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or depression. We have to interview you and get your history clinically before we can determine what you have. 8) We are not shocked by most of what you tell us. Don't worry. Most seasoned practitioners have heard the worst stories that you can imagine. So please go ahead and reveal your stories so that we can help you. Many patients feel embarrassed by what they have to say and so they modify their narratives. By telling the truth the best you can, you can help us understand and treat you. 9) The only time we have to break your confidentiality is if you want to harm or kill someone else. We are bound by the HIPPA laws and can't reveal anything you tell us. However, if you wish to harm or kill someone, we have the duty to warn. The precedent for this started with the Tarasoff case in California, in which a young man killed his girlfriend. The psychologist treating the man warned the family, but the police who questioned the man said he was harmless. The family took it to the California Supreme Court who ruled in favor of the Tarasoffs. Since then therapists have had the duty to warn. 10)We are neither all good or all evil as portrayed in many films that show psychiatrists as Dr. Evil or Dr. Good. Movies have often shown psychiatrists like Hannibal Lecter or Dr. Caligari as completely malignant. Or we are seen as all good, like the psychiatrist who Bruce Willis played in "The Sixth Sense." Of course, we have negative and positive qualities like any other person. During psychotherapy patients project various attributes onto their doctors that should be discussed and analyzed. When you can see your psychiatrist as negative and positive, you probably are improving. Advertisement Hopefully, these 10 tips will be of use to you when you are choosing a doctor to work with. ___________________ By Rich Stolz Today, Lisette woke up and got her children ready for school. At 7, 10, and 12, her kids are bright and motivated. They aspire to be doctors, scientists and community leaders. They love their mom. This month, the Supreme Court deliberates a case that could decide the fate of Lisette's family - whether her children grow up separated from their mom, or whether their family can continue to thrive in America. Lisette is undocumented and is not authorized to live or work in the United States, despite living here for 15years, raising her family and volunteering in the community. The case of United States v. Texas, which blocked President Obama's executive actions on immigration, was heard by the Supreme Court on April 18. Collectively, these actions promise to free more than 5 million undocumented immigrants, with children who are citizens or permanent residents, just like Lisette, from the fear of having their families split apart by deportation. These families would gain the right to work hard and contribute to American society. And they would gain the dignity of knowing that they have place in America. Advertisement Lisette avidly volunteers at her kids' school. She was offered a job, but was not able to take it because of her immigration status. "With the President's executive action, I'll be able to get a work permit and do the work I love," she said. "Because I really do love it." Her husband, was an attorney in Peru and his dreams of continuing his legal career in America hinge on the Supreme Court's decision. Since its inception, America has always been seen as the land of opportunity, and it has always welcomed the contributions of immigrants. Some of America's most valuable companies were founded by immigrants, and they have contributed to nearly every element of American society. Last year, undocumented immigrants alone contributed over $11 billion in state, local and federal taxes, including almost $300 million in Washington State alone. And they have gone on to raise generations of hardworking Americans who continue our traditions of freedom, hard work and prosperity. The base of the Statue of Liberty, one of America's most enduring symbols, spells out our values clearly: "Give me your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free..." Advertisement That promise should hold as true today as it was when Emma Lazarus wrote those immortal lines. This case is about Lisette's family. It's about the millions of undocumented American families who endured hardship to find a better life for their loved ones. But on a deeper level, this case is about more than that. What hangs in the balance is nothing less than our values and character as a nation. At its core, this case is about what it means to be American. Immigrants like Lisette are American. Her children have been Americans their entire lives. Yet they feel the constant fear of being separated from one another, of being ripped away from the life they know and love. To place them in this terrifying situation betrays some of our most cherished values: family unity, compassion, freedom and dignity. As the Supreme Court decides this critical case, America has a choice to make. Will we stand by our immigrant brothers and sisters, honor the tremendous contributions they've made to our country and take a stand against the inhumane practice of splitting families apart? Or will we succumb to xenophobia, prejudice and insularity? Nearly 60 million people around the globe are displaced from their homes due to war, conflict, and persecution. That's the highest number ever on record-- one in every 122 humans on this planet. Many refugees board overcrowded dinghies to cross the Mediterranean and reach Europe. If they make it safely to shore, they are forced into slum-like camps where they wait months, if not years, for their asylum applications to be processed. The responsibility of sheltering refugees disproportionately falls upon poor countries. The UN's Refugee Agency estimates that 86% of the world's refugees are sheltered by developing countries such as Turkey, Pakistan, and Lebanon. Lebanon alone is single-handedly hosting around the same number of refugees who took shelter in all of Europe in 2015. And since this year's EU-Turkey deal, thousands have been deported to Turkey, where asylum seekers have reportedly been forced back into Syria and shot dead by border control. It is a complex and difficult situation: refugees arrive in countries already stricken by economic challenges, and the systems in place to process and integrate them are not equipped to handle so many people. There are legitimate security and integration challenges host countries must grapple with to ensure safe resettlement. And the resettlement process is made more complicated by widespread misinformation, racism, and apathy. I have followed the "refugee crisis" in Europe from my safe and distant harbor in Los Angeles for the past year. I've wondered about the humans behind the numbers, the circumstances that lead them to leave behind home and kin, and what life is like in the camps. It was with these questions in mind that I decided to volunteer at two refugee camps in Europe while leading trainings for my nonprofit this past May. ***** I spent my first stint at Ritsona, a camp about two hours north of Athens. Nearly 900 people live there-- about two thirds are Syrian, others are from Iraq and Afghanistan, others are stateless: Palestinian, Kurdish, and Yazidi. The camp is situated on an old military base; it has no running water or electricity, and residents live in tents with no flooring. Many have built stoves out of mud and dirt and tapped into a nearby power line to charge their phones. Volunteers from several non-profits distribute meals, clothing, and medical attention. The camp is overseen by the Greek military. On my first walk through camp, I was met by a young girl who, upon seeing me, broke into a sprint. She locked eyes with me, opened her arms, and leapt up to hug me as she neared. I opened my arms to embrace her, caught her mid-leap, and felt her press her heart to my chest and lay her head on my shoulder. "Hello," she said. "Hello," I said. She held on to me for a few moments as I continued to walk, and then she let go. I lowered her back on the ground and stopped. She caught my eyes again and squeezed my hand. "I am your friend," she said. I smiled. "Yes you are." She held my hand and walked with me for another minute, then ran back into the sea of tents. ***** Advertisement A few hours later I went to the warehouse to help serve meals. The lead volunteer explained how meals work: Residents are given food and water according to their family size, which is noted on their meal card. Adults get a meal, bread, and plasticware. Children get all that plus juice. If they ask for water, they get one bottle per family member. It seemed simple enough. There were dozens of people huddled outside the warehouse window, hollering and waving cards. I went to work, taking cards and distributing meals. Midway into my shift, a woman with gentle eyes and a warm smile handed me her card. It read: 2 adults, 3 children. I did the calculation: 5 meals, 5 breads, 3 juices. I placed all the items in a bag and handed it back to her. She took it from me, then pointed at the bottles of water behind me. "Wah! Please, wah!" "You want water?" She nodded her head. "Okay, one sec." I told the volunteer hunched over the distribution papers the woman's tent number. She traced her finger down the paper and found correct tent. There was already a checkmark in the box. "She asked for water?" "Yes, I think so." "Who? Which one is she?" I pointed to the woman. "You've already gotten your water. I can't give you anymore." The woman frowned and yelled something back in Arabic. The volunteer tapped the shoulder of one of our comrades. "Please tell her she's already gotten her water for the day." He said something in Arabic to the woman, and then turned back to us. "She said she used the water to cook. She says she needs another bottle for her children to drink." The lead volunteer glanced back at the dwindling piles of water bottles behind us. "I'm sorry. She's had her water for the day." ***** A few weeks later, I went to Calais, a sprawling and squalid "jungle" of tents and improvised shelters that house an estimated five to seven thousand people on the north coast of France. The situation there is dire: tents are plagued by rats, water sources contaminated by feces, and inhabitants have been diagnosed with tuberculosis, scabies, and post-traumatic stress. On my first walk through camp, I stepped over a dead rat larger than my foot. Many residents of the Jungle are caught in limbo on their way to to re-unite with friends or family in the UK: British immigration law has been called "inhumane" and "ludicrous." In order to be granted asylum in the UK, refugees must apply from within its borders. But there is no legal way to cross into the UK without a visa, which is near impossible to get. If they apply for asylum in another EU country, they will no longer be eligible in the UK. So they wait, some refugees say "like animals," in the Jungle. Advertisement I spent my first evening in Calais helping residents practice English in the camp's library. The practice sessions -- more casual chit chats than formal lessons -- were held in a big tent called "Jungle Books" that's lined with boxes full of children's books from the '80s. My first practice partner was a young man from Sudan with a soft voice and piercing gaze. We exchanged formal greetings: "Hello," "How are you?", "Were do you come from?" When I told him I'd just come from London, he smiled and said his favorite professor works at a university there. "Oh," I said, "What subject does he study?" "He researches the causes of social inequality. Why some people are very rich and some people are very poor." "That sounds interesting. What is your take on it? Why do you think social inequality exists?" "It is very complicated. Some people work very hard and have nothing. Some people do not work at all and are very rich. It is not laziness. When you have no power, no matter how hard you work you cannot be rich." ***** Later I shared laughs and travel stories with a young man from Afghanistan. He had the poshest haircut I think I've ever seen. He told me about his year learning English in Denmark, where the summer days were very long and winter days saw almost no light. We discussed our favorite cities in Italy, and I tried to explain the difference between a hipster and a cowboy. When I asked about family and his home back in Afghanistan, his smile faded and his eyes got dark. "It is very bad," he said. "My family -- they are afraid to leave." "May I ask, why did you leave?" I asked. "Because I did not want to work for Daesh (ISIS). They - what's the word? Where they hurt you if...?" "Threaten? Blackmail?" "Yes, threaten. They threaten me. They say I must fight with them or they kill me. There was no other way." He told me of being harassed by Daesh on the streets near the shop where he used to work. He told me of leaving his younger sisters behind, of crossing the sea from Libya to Italy and walking hours by moonlight to make it to "the hellhole" of Calais. He told me of being beat and locked up by French police for being outside of camp after dark. I asked him what is next for him. "I never know tomorrow. Today, I am here and you are here. Tomorrow, who knows?" ***** Seven years ago today, an Air France Airbus A330 failed to arrive in Paris after an overnight flight from Rio de Janeiro. Two hundred and twenty-eight people died. So it is a particularly poignant case of "the more things change the more they stay the same," that the airline industry is still wrestling with the issues raised by that accident and revisited repeatedly since then. The loss of EgyptAir Flight 804 over the Mediterranean is the most recent re-ignition of the conversation. On May 20th, the Airbus A320 with 66 people on board appears to have crashed in the sea and the recorders have not been found. "What is critical for us is [that] everything is done to find the black boxes," Fabrice Bregier, chief executive of Airbus told the Wall Street Journal at a meeting with journalists earlier this week. Advertisement It took two years and several million dollars to retrieve the voice and flight data recorders from Air France Flight 447, a success that the chief investigator Olivier Ferrante told me was partially attributable to "luck." That the whimsy of fate should play a lesser role in future accidents however, remains a quixotic goal. At the annual general meeting of the International Air Transport Association in Dublin, safety director Gilberto Lopez-Meyer, said the industry is examining many solutions but the two most likely are an expansion of technology that allows for the live streaming of data from an airplane in distress and an older technology, a recorder encased in an airfoil that self-ejects in a crash. It can fly, it can float and it can transmit its GPS location. So even in a case where the plane cannot be found, at least the recorders would be. In 1999, Rob Austin, an engineer with DRS, the company that makes the deployable recorder, wrote about how beneficial the product would be in an imaginary case where a plane broke up "over deep ocean where the exact location of the aircraft is difficult to track." This was 15 years before Malaysia 370 nearly duplicated the scenario he described. While ejectable recorders have been used on military and industrial aircraft for more than 30 years, use on commercial airliners remained in the discussion phase until earlier this week when Airbus announced it would install them flight recorders on all its aircraft from the narrowbody A320 to the A380 jumbo jet and all those in between. Advertisement "Unfortunately this has taken much more time than we all would like," said Blake van den Heuvel Director of Business Development at DRS Technologies, the company that makes them. He told me today about the long road from Air France 447 in 2009 to the Airbus announcement. "Air France 447 caused the phone to ring off my desk almost continuously," he said, adding that interest "ebbs and flows, timed to the major events that have taken place and there have been a number." Now ships in the Mediterranean looking for the Egyptair flight are in a race against time, trying to find the black boxes and the questions being asked of IATA's safety director are the same ones van den Heuvel got all those years ago. Along with deployable recorders, is another very different idea, not recovery of a physical recorder but the downloading somewhere on earth of triggered data from an airplane in crisis regardless of whether the airplane itself is found. And while sending flight data into the cloud is also not a new idea - a relatively tiny slice of information like it is in the transmission of ACAR's data - it is far from achievable in the short term and comes with a host of problems and "what if's" from the simple, "who owns and controls data the cloud?" to bandwidth limits for the reams of information that is captured on a modern flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. Advertisement At the afternoon round table of airline executives, all five airline bosses insisted not being able to locate EgyptAir was "disgraceful" (Emirates boss Tim Clark's word). "We've got to do a lot better than we have been doing," Clark said. "But you are the ones who have to do it," CNN's Richard Quest, the moderator interrupted. "I have not been vocal on tracking because I pride myself on our ability to do that," Clark replied before adding his airplanes report geographical position "within 10-15 minutes." At that rate, an airliner can cover one hundred fifty miles putting the airplane well into what the experts call a geographic "cone of ambiguity." In other words, while Clark may say his airline has already solved the problem should an Emirates airliner go missing while transiting a great expanse of ocean finding it could prove just as difficult as in previous accidents. As I write this post, about 4,000 new "corps members" are spreading out around the country to attend one of Teach For America's 17 "summer institutes" as their first step towards becoming classroom teachers in some of the most difficult low income rural and urban public schools in our country. TFA is a national phenomenon, now at 25 years old, with over 50,000 alumni and a crazy-low acceptance rate that rivals getting into Harvard. Yet most of the press that it gets focuses on the recruiting problems they continue to have. It's no longer, it seems, as cool to take two years out of your life to go teach. As a recent Washington Post article says, quoting a Stanford professor about their graduates getting in to TFA: it's now seen as "all about you" rather than "is that going to be best for the kids?" I get it. I'm writing a review right now of a special journal issue devoted to analyzing TFA, and some of the criticisms are harsh indeed. (I am also a TFA "insider" as one of the founding staff, so I saw the good, the bad, and the ugly up close in its first years.) Advertisement But I think much of the discussion around TFA misses a central point: that it is really difficult to attract anyone to teach for any substantial period of time in our most under-resourced low income public schools. Don't get me wrong. Teaching is an exciting and enormously important job. I have been a teacher and have worked in teacher education almost my entire adult life. All teaching is tough. There is nothing harder or scarier than being a new teacher and facing a roomful of kids twenty minutes into a lesson and knowing that you have no idea what to do next; and that they know it too. It's not pretty. But teaching in Oakland or NYC or rural New Mexico is really tough. In Oakland, for example, almost three in four teachers will leave the district within five years. In NYC, seventy percent of teachers seriously consider leaving the teaching profession every year. And that's just the teachers who filled out the survey. A huge amount of data shows that teachers leave such schools and districts because they get burned out and are deeply dissatisfied with their working conditions. This isn't a small problem. We're talking about literally hundreds of thousands of teachers across the country leaving each and every year because they just don't want to deal with the difficulties of their job. Advertisement So what if we did a thought experiment that TFA just ceased to exist...poof! What would change? Unfortunately, not much. Those four thousand classrooms would simply get filled with other new teachers, who, just like the TFA teachers, would be uncertified and new to teaching. And some classrooms won't get a permanent teacher at all. It is far too common for many urban districts to be desperately searching for literally dozens of positions just days before school opens. Many of those won't get filled and kids will walk into their first day of school with, at best, a substitute teacher welcoming them. TFA is far from perfect and it is never perfect and deeply problematic that the kids and schools in most need of additional support all too often get the least. But as the saying goes, the perfect can be the enemy of the good. TFA recruits top-notch candidates, provides five weeks of intensive summer training, and has ongoing professional development and support for these teachers across their years of teaching. Much can be debated - good and bad - about TFA's model and alternative solutions. We can propose policy alternatives such as expanding the teacher pipeline, creating additional incentives to teach in hard-to-staff schools, or foster stronger local "grow your own" teacher preparation models. But the inequities in our schooling system are deeply embedded in and influenced by historical, political, social, and economic conditions that will not change overnight. New solutions are never unanimously supported, correctly targeted, thoroughly thought through, or simple to implement. If they were, we'd have done them already. Courtesy of Tower Paddle Boards Stephan Aarstol, founder and CEO of Tower Paddle Boards, forged a deal with Mark Cuban on ABC's Shark Tank, bringing the Dallas Mavericks owner on board as an investor and strategic advisor. In exchange for $150,000, Cuban gained a 30% share of the emerging stand-up paddleboard company. At the time of Cuban's investment in 2011, Tower had $100,000 in lifetime sales. This past month, they crossed $20 million. "Stephan has done an amazing job growing Tower into a dominant industry force. He is one of my best Shark Tank investments," Cuban said. According to him, "quality, customer satisfaction, distribution and pricing" set Tower apart from its competition. Advertisement Aarstol explained the company's success: "It's all about the distribution channel. By going direct with the same practice that everybody else makes to direct consumers, we could knock $500 off the price [of paddleboards] and still be a very profitable company." Having Cuban on board as an investor and strategic advisor has given them the opportunity to grow. "They could invest in making more boards and pushing more ads that sold those boards," Cuban said. With an impressive four-year growth rate of over 2600%, Tower Paddle Boards has grown into a robust company and has received several prestigious awards. It was named the fastest growing private company in San Diego in 2014, and ranked number 239 on the 2015 INC 500 list of America's fastest growing companies. Its inflatable paddleboard was named one of the top ten innovative products of INC 500 companies. Did This Company Just Invent the Five-Hour Workday? Aarstol attributes much of his continued success to the company switching to a five-hour-workday last June, a marked difference from the 80-hour grind common in startup culture. Tower's official hours are from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. All employees in the company are on salary, so they are paid the same as they were before. By reducing the hours and rolling out 5% profit sharing at the same time, the per-hour earnings of everyone on staff nearly doubled overnight. "We are a very efficient company. So we figured, let's do an experiment. Let's actually live our brand, and get out of the office at one o'clock every day," said Aarstol. "A lot of what this does is create a constraint on time, which makes us just work faster." Advertisement The experiment is going so well that Aarstol felt compelled to share their experiment with others. His book, The Five-Hour Workday, goes on sale in July. In it, Aarstol contends that in addition to the obvious lifestyle improvement for everyone, the compressed workday actually improves operations, efficiency and profitability. Furthermore, it has made a huge impact on employee retention and acquisition. Grossing about $7 million in 2015, Tower is poised for even more explosive growth. They are on pace to pull in more than $10 million this year. On ABC's Beyond the Tank, which aired in January this year, Aarstol told Cuban that he envisions spring-boarding the company into a beach lifestyle brand, expanding the product line to skateboards, active wear, sunglasses, liquor and even resort hotels. "We're going to have 20, maybe 30, sub-brands underneath," Aarstol said on the show. "It comes down to whether they have the board business organized enough that they can continue to grow it, which they do," said Cuban in an interview. He went on to explain: "Now is the time to look at dipping their toes into lifestyle, and they also have been testing these new-wave snorkel masks that are blowing out the door. As long as they can limit the loss on failures and make big wins, they are ready to grow." Tower has already taken steps to actualize this vision. "We've since grown new business divisions under the Tower brand, such as Sunglasses By Tower and a digital magazine called Tower Life, which has grown to nearly 50,000 subscribers," said Aarstol. "We're doing something unique with our new ecommerce sunglasses company." Breathing new life into the industry, Tower takes customer service to an entirely new level by employing a unique approach. "We ship our entire store to the customer, providing a free at-home shopping experience," explained Tower Sunglasses Business Director Alexander Resnick. "Customers try out different models of sunglasses for a week, then send it back to us. We call it Shop-in-a-Box." "Our customers pay between $59 and $95 for sunglasses that our competitors charge well over $200 for," noted Aarstol. The biggest problem with e-commerce is that conversion rates are tiny. Tower hopes to change this. The process for placing an order is simple. "Samples are free, so customers go on to our website and put in a credit card. We authorize it for one dollar, so we know that it's a legit credit card. But they won't be charged. Then we will send everything to them for free." Advertisement A Greek flag waves at the top of the Greek Parliament on May 22, 2016. Greece on May 22, 2016 was set to adopt fresh cuts and tax hikes ahead of a Eurogroup meeting that is expected to unlock desperately-needed bailout funds for the debt-ridden nation. After waves of protests over a string of unpopular reforms, lawmakers from the ruling leftist party are to approve the late evening of May 22 a bill of over 7,000 pages that raises the sales tax cap and introduces a mechanism to further slash spending in case of budget overruns. / AFP / ANGELOS TZORTZINIS (Photo credit should read ANGELOS TZORTZINIS/AFP/Getty Images) Quite a few of us -- businessmen of Greek descent -- who frequently participate in international business meetings, have often realized at some point in certain of these discussions that our nationality plays negatively in the eyes of our counterparts, generating some type of negative reflex. Also, even if the investment proposals in question should attract interest on their own merit, this interest is sometimes withdrawn as soon as international investors realize that it somehow falls within the jurisdiction of the Greek state. This needs to change. After six consecutive years, Greece is now effectively identified with the term crisis. Regardless of what Athens actually looks like in the eyes of its inhabitants, for instance, it is perceived, in the minds of many, as an unsafe city, where clashes and violent incidents take place almost on a daily basis. Advertisement It is precisely this impression that we ought to overcome. Greece needs to become identified with a term other than the crisis, with one or more words that would signal recovery and reconstruction. In principle, drawing and implementing an effective national brand strategy falls within the scope of responsibility of the Greek government. The approach that our country has adopted, however, has often proven to be fragmentary -- often implementing a different campaign for tourism, another one for Greek products and yet another one for each different investment sector. We need something more comprehensive than that. Greece is in need of a new narrative -- that of recovery -- that will form the core of each of our relevant campaigns. The issue of the country's image abroad lies at the epicenter of our national interest and can significantly affect Greece's future and prospects. Nonetheless, more often than not, we make the mistake to expect everything from our governments, without us undertaking our share of responsibility. We attribute to politicians responsibilities -- and blame -- disproportionate to the positions that they hold. We often believe that the Prime Minister or even a minister are in a position to change everything while in office, overlooking the fact that problems that took years -- or even decades -- to form, or that constitute characteristics inherent to the Greek state ever since its establishment, simply cannot be resolved within a few years' time. Surely, these problems cannot be solved unless citizens undertake the initiative themselves, in accordance with their capabilities. In the Greek context, it's not just problematic policies that need to change -- it's a problematic mentality as well. After all, the individuals that manage to progress and move forward are the ones that roll up their sleeves, seek after the conditions that they desire and who, in case they do not encounter them, attempt to shape these conditions on their own accord. The same holds for successful countries. Advertisement It is common knowledge that Greece is in dire need of a new growth model, one not based on consumption and state expenditure but rather on creating an economy focused on entrepreneurship, innovation, exports and investment, both domestic as well as foreign. News that the new investment law soon to be presented by the Greek government will include long-term fixed tax rates for foreign investments over a number of years -- if confirmed -- will constitute a very significant step towards the right direction. Of course, our main problems of recent decades -- and their solutions -- are still outstanding: reduction of bureaucracy and regulatory burden, speeding up justice procedures, combatting tax evasion and corruption, instituting stable taxation etc. If we are to be victorious in our battle for recovery, the right policies are a necessary but yet inadequate condition. They should be matched by a radical change in Greece's perception abroad -- by policy makers, businesses, investors and consumers. And this can only be done through a new national narrative that would entail significant interventions on our image as a destination -- not only in terms of tourism but also in terms of investment. Specifically on tourism, the completion of the latest review to receive a loan tranche on behalf of our creditors coincided with yet another important piece of news: Greece is expected to register a new record in tourism this year, since Greek airport data indicate an increase of arrivals by 7.6 percent for the first four months of 2016, when compared to 2015. Part of this success should, of course, also be attributed to the broader geopolitical imbalances of the region of Eastern Mediterranean, specifically with regards to security concerns. In any case, recent relevant data published by The Economist showcase this positive trend for Greece. And this, despite the twin crises. However, what made the difference in the tourism data was not comprehensive planning and policy, but geopolitics. It is clear that the same cannot hold for investment. Often, countries manage to produce results disproportionate to their size, through being smart, extrovert, technologically savvy and targeted. Continuous communication is also essential. This is not achieved solely through the efforts of governments but also thanks to the most creative of citizens and businesses, who put to good use all means available to them within the globalized environment of the 21st century. Advertisement Thus, at a time when voices in Greece, asking from businesses and entrepreneurs to shoulder their share of responsibility, are proliferating, it's time for our actions to speak louder than our words. Namely, if we undertake the initiative -- on a collective or even on an individual basis - to help reverse the idea that prevails for Greece in international decision making centers, we will be offering a service, both to Greece and to the world. Suffice it for us to think in an innovative and bold fashion. And also keep close to our hearts the words of George Bernard Shaw, that "we are made wise not by the recollection of our past but by the responsibility of our future." Trade is good for the U.S. Americans benefit from purchasing inexpensive products and services from abroad as well as selling their own wares around the globe. Americans must look overseas for markets: 95 percent of the world's people and 80 percent of the world's economy are elsewhere. Unfortunately, we all will suffer if politicians make trade a scapegoat for misguided government policies which have made Americans less competitive. Much progress has been made through the World Trade Organization to free international commerce. However, global negotiations increasingly have stalled. Thus, regional pacts, such as the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, have become the new path forward. One of the most important proposed trade agreements is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an accord among nations possessing 40 percent of the world's GDP. Like most "free trade agreements," the 6000 or so page TPP offers freer rather than free trade. The countries negotiate for political advantage, which includes protecting sensitive industries and placating powerful interests. (For instance, the U.S. and Japan traded exemptions to protect their auto and agricultural sectors, respectively.) Nevertheless, overall barriers to commerce would fall. Advertisement TPP's most important members are the U.S., Japan, Australia, Canada, and Singapore. Less developed signatories include Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, and Vietnam. Other nations may join in the future. Among the most obvious candidates are India, Indonesia, South Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand. The biggest uncertainty is China. It possesses the most important economy in Asia--rapidly closing with the U.S. globally--and has been drafting free trade agreements with several of its neighbors. Nevertheless, Beijing retains significant state controls and remains reluctant to make some of the legal changes required by TPP. The pact eliminates some 18,000 tariffs (99 percent of those currently in existence), reduces non-tariff barriers (which would provide the greatest share of economic benefits), and streamlines customs procedures (which often are used to indirectly protect domestic firms). Those steps would encourage trade all around. The U.S., which already has relatively low tariffs and non-tariff restrictions, would benefit from leveling the proverbial playing field. Cutting procedural trade barriers would reinforce the work of the WTO. Economist Jeffrey Sachs praised TPP for requiring "that regulations that limit trade should be based on evidence, not on political whims or hidden protectionism." Provisions covering investor arbitration and intellectual property are a mixed bag. My Cato Institute colleague Simon Lester argued that "some are good, some are useless, and some are downright harmful." Many benefit U.S. concerns, but some new rules may trend toward the excessive and have been criticized for focusing on narrow interests. However, many complaints are misguided: some political activists criticize patents for limiting access to life-saving drugs, yet patents give firms an incentive to invest in the R&D necessary to develop the same life-saving drugs. Advertisement More dubious are measures setting labor and environmental standards, since they are difficult to enforce--even if poorer states pass legislation, they rarely back them. Moreover, such provisions, if enforced, tend to act as an indirect form of protectionism, making it harder for poor people in poor countries to compete with their wealthier neighbors. Which is why they are so popular with organized labor in America. Predicting the consequences of such a complex agreement isn't easy. Advocates make competing claims and impacts are hard to measure. Almost always the effects are less than projected. It takes a lot to give a major boost (or hit) to America's $19 trillion economy. In January the World Bank issued a report on the TPP. The Bank reported that earlier studies assessing figured a .8 to1.8 percent GDP increase for member states. The Bank's estimate was that the agreement would expand trade by 11 percent through 2030. GDP would rise an average of 1.1 percent for member states. Explained the Bank: "The benefits are likely to materialize slowly but should accelerate towards the end of the projection period." Although there would be few employment impacts, "participating advanced economy members are likely to experience a slight increase in skill premia while others benefit from a higher increase in the wages of unskilled workers." Also in January, Economists Peter A. Petri and Michael G. Plummer of Brandeis and Johns Hopkins, respectively, figured TPP would result in a 9.1 percent increase in exports through 2030. The biggest jump would come in traded services, with manufacturing next, followed by agriculture and mining. Overall there would be a .5 percent GDP increase. Perhaps 54,000 jobs a year would be affected, both lost and added in the shifts resulting from trade adjustments in both export and import industries, and competing concerns. Despite this increased "job churn," the two economists wrote, "labor will get a somewhat more than proportionate share of the gains" compared to capital. Trade impacts would be widespread. Most displaced workers would find alternative employment, but those "in specific locations, industries, or with skill shortages" might suffer. A good society seeks to help those adversely affected, but not by holding the entire economy hostage for a few. Explained Petri and Plummer: "Large or small, export and import effects reverberate through the economy and cause changes in sectoral value added and employment. These effects include indirect channels activated by the demand for intermediate goods for trade as well as demand for products and services stimulated by higher incomes under the TPP." Overall, Petri and Plummer argued: "The benefits of the TPP to the U.S. economy will greatly outweigh adjustment costs, and that economy wide price and employment consequences will be limited." Advertisement The U.S. would enjoy the largest benefits of any member, though total would be modest. Japan, Malaysia, and Vietnam also would enjoy a meaningful boost. Moreover, there would be "solid benefits for other members." This would provide a continuing incentive for other nations to join. A Tufts University study criticized the Petri/Plummer analysis and estimated a .5 percent loss for America. In turn, however, Robert Lawrence of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government defended Petri and Plummer. He contended that the original study relied on a model more appropriate to judge a trade agreement, more accurately assessed TPP, and developed more credible results. The Tufts analysis, he warned, based its estimated universal wage decline "on the authors' assumption rather than a response generated by their model." Indeed, the latter would suggest that increasing trade and capital barriers would raise employment "despite the loss of exports and curtailment of FDI inflows," a highly implausible result. Trade occurs when both sides believe they benefit. Free trade encourages people and capital to shift to more productive industries wherever located. Past trade agreements have generally benefited participating countries. According to the World Bank, NAFTA hiked GDP by one to two percent of GDP. The European Single Market, long ago predecessor to the EU, added two to three percent of GDP. These benefits are evident in the U.S. One study figured that exports accounted for about one-third of America's economic growth from 2009 through 2014. Almost twelve million jobs are directly attributable to exports. On average, these jobs pay as much as one-fifth more than other employment. Advertisement Moreover, Americans benefit from low-cost imports. Much of that advantage accrues to firms which in turn can produce more cheaply for both the domestic and foreign markets. But the greatest gains from less expensive products go to lower-income people. A study by economists Pablo D. Fajgelbaum and Amit K. Khandelwal, of UCLA and Columbia, respectively, found "a pro-poor bias of trade." They explained: "On average, the real income loss from closing off trade is 63 percent at the 10th percentile of the income distribution and 28 percent for the 90th percentile." That is, protectionism is twice has harmful for those who have the least. A study by economists Christian Broda and John Romalis, both of the University of Chicago, noted that "International trade with developing countries is an increasingly important source of inexpensive products sold to consumers." The lower prices have disproportionately advantaged those near the bottom of the income distribution. This fall in prices means that the effective "real income" of the poor actually has increased, counteracting much of the oft-cited increase in income inequality. Argued John Goodman of the Goodman Institute: "The biggest winners from free trade are in the bottom half of the income distribution. What's more, these gains are so large that if real income were measured properly, inequality in the U.S. has been falling not rising--precisely because of increased trade." Ratifying TPP also would offer important political advantages. In the name of pivoting or rebalancing toward Asia, the U.S. is increasing its military commitments and deployments. This is a bad approach: regional territorial disputes mostly concern America's allies, not Washington, and are not worth war. Indeed, the only way to encourage allied states to do more for their own defense is for the U.S. to do less. Otherwise they will continue to free, or at least cheap, ride on America forever. In contrast, stronger economic ties are in everyone's interest. Although China will continue to dominate trade in its own neighborhood, the U.S. still offers the most important marketplace for Beijing's neighbors. TPP will ensure that commerce continues to draw friendly states toward America. With China busy negotiating free trade agreements with a number of countries, Washington can ill afford to stand idle. Advertisement Even before Trump seemed headed toward the Republican Party presidential nomination, TPP's prospects were uncertain. It remains a priority for President Barack Obama, but both House and Senate GOP leaders doubt that the issue can be put to a vote before the election. Some of them pointed to previous agreements, such as that with South Korea, which took more than four years to ratify. But if left to a future administration--Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and even Hillary Clinton currently express their opposition--TPP might never be ratified. Every day Congress refuses to liberalize trade is another day of losses for U.S. consumers and producers. Petri and Plummer figured that "Delaying the launch of the TPP by even one year would represent a $77 billion permanent loss, or opportunity cost, to the U.S. economy as well as create other risks. Postponing implementation will give up gains that compound overtime and defer or foreclose new opportunities for the United States in international negotiations." AIDS awareness ribbons As the national AIDS epidemic was gaining momentum in the 1980s, I was working as an HIV pre- and post-test counselor in the Midwest. Part of my job was to support my clients as we opened the envelope containing the results of their HIV test. Back then, a positive diagnosis was considered a death sentence. I saw my HIV-positive clients deal with feelings of despair and hopelessness; for some, it led down a road of addiction and other types of compensating behavior, which can be self-destructive. Today, thanks to decades of advocacy and medical advancements in HIV treatment, we have antiretroviral medication that gives those living with HIV the chance to become virally suppressed, making it possible for HIV positive people to live longer, healthier lives and to be much less likely to transmit HIV to others. Advertisement Yet, despite these advances, in some communities there is still an HIV/AIDS epidemic. In the transgender community, it is a crisis. According to the most recent data from the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 27 percent of trans women are HIV-positive, and HIV prevalence among trans women is nearly 50 times higher than other adults. Many social disparities contribute to the disproportionately high rate of HIV in the transgender community. One of the most critical factors is lack of stable employment, largely because of workplace discrimination. Without a secure job and access to stable housing and food, transgender women may turn to sex work as their best means of survival, dramatically increasing their risk of contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted infections and the potential for being victims of violence. Among transgender women of color, there is an alarmingly high rate of violence. The Human Rights Campaign reported that in 2015 there were more transgender violence-related fatalities in the U.S. than in any other year; at least 21 transgender people died as a result of violence last year, and nearly all of them were transgender women of color. Many transgender people have experienced physical and verbal harassment, which contributes to depression, substance use, anxiety, and psychological trauma. Unstable housing is another factor; it is virtually impossible to stay in care consistently if you don't have a safe, secure place to live. Unfair and discriminatory treatment by landlords and housing authorities toward transgender people has created a housing crisis for them -- one in five has experienced homelessness and more than one in 10 have been evicted due to their gender identity. Leaving people without stable housing will inevitably lead to new HIV infections and many preventable AIDS deaths. Advertisement When it comes to quality health care, transgender individuals regularly encounter stigma, prejudice, and gaps in knowledge about transgender health. Data from the Human Rights Commission shows that 19 percent of trans women reported being refused treatment due to their gender identity, and 28 percent said they have been harassed in a doctor's office. Trans men and women who have forms of ID that do not match their gender identity may avoid care altogether because they are worried about embarrassing and insensitive comments and reactions by care practitioners or front desk staffs. Community-based organizations provide critical social supports for transgender individuals, but more resources are needed. It is essential to expand the availability of quality, culturally competent transgender health care, ensuring that providers have the training and sensitivity to address the specialized health care needs of transgender individuals and creating a safe space for them to access treatment. Care coordination is particularly beneficial for transgender people, as it ensures that care is tailored to the needs of the individual, and it provides supportive services that help people stay in treatment and improve their health. Also essential is access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) -- a treatment regimen that is over 90 percent effective in preventing HIV-negative people from becoming infected. At Amida Care, New York's largest Medicaid special needs health plan (SNP) for people living with chronic health conditions such as HIV/AIDS, approximately 7 percent of our members are transgender, and we are committed to helping our transgender members access respectful, culturally competent care. We provide transgender training for our care coordination staff, engage providers who work extensively with the transgender population, hold provider trainings on PrEP, and link members to housing options and workforce training programs. An HIV diagnosis is no longer the death sentence it was when I had to deliver the news to my clients in the mid '80s. But the strides we've made are not good enough until medical advancements and opportunities for life-saving care are made available to everyone. We can't end the AIDS epidemic without addressing the needs of the transgender community -- needs that have been largely overlooked for too long. Advertisement Health care is a right, not a privilege. As one of the groups most deeply affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the transgender community must become a main focus of our efforts to create an AIDS-free world. We can and we must do a better job of reaching this underserved community and help them access the comprehensive care they need. Too many lives are at stake. Zika is affecting people in the US, and it is just the beginning of a global crisis that is here to stay. It is more then just a virus, Zika is affecting female dignity and freedom of choice, putting at risk women's health, future family life and, in many cases, perpetuating the poverty cycle for families in developing countries. Current pro-life policies that are influenced by religious views in many South American countries do not allow abortion except for the cases of rape or a pregnancy which can cause health issues to a woman. Many of these countries today are waking up to realization of an underestimated danger of the Zika virus. A major wake up call is the fact that World Health Organization recently announced a global emergency situation in relation to Zika. Brazil's health ministry alone reported 270 cases of microcephaly, which is a birth defect in newborn children caused by Zika virus, since September. Things are getting worse rapidly as a first baby with a Zika virus-linked birth defect was born in New York City area Tuesday. The baby girl was born in New Jersey with a partially developed brain due to the virus, according to FoxNews.com. The infant's 31-year-old mom contracted the mosquito-transmitted virus while in Honduras, doctors at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey reported.In these circumstances, United Nations' representatives suggested an adoption of abortion and contraception policies in the countries where the virus is concentrated. The High Commissioner for Human Rights of UN, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, stated: "Laws and policies that restrict her access to these services must be urgently reviewed." However, Al Hussein also explained that the call of some governments for women to postpone their pregnancy might not be effective simply due to the fact that "many women and girls simply cannot exercise control over whether, when or under what circumstances they become pregnant." This makes abortion a corner stone question that is becoming increasingly controversial, building pressure on the government officials of South American countries to pay more attention to the spread of Zika. Advertisement Another concern that scientists have today is that the disease now is proved to be transmitted not only through mosquito bites but also through sexual contact, saliva and urine, which was established by the findings by Oswaldo Cruz's foundation in Brazil. Today in Brazil, one the countries where Zika virus is highly concentrated, abortions are allowed only in cases of rape, anencephaly (fetus is missing a part of a brain or skull) and when a pregnancy can cause danger to life of a woman. Recent findings make the situation even more complicated. If a woman gets infected early during pregnancy, the tests do not show Zika birth defects in fetus until after 20 weeks. After such a period the abortion is considered a late abortion, and therefore has a higher risk to cause damage to woman's health with higher costs. Today a large number of countries forbid abortion after a certain number of weeks. The pro-life basic premise is that after the brain of a fetus is formed, it should be treated as a patient, and therefore simply "erasing" the fetus cannot be viewed as the right solution. Even though the Zika issue is predicted to cause significant economic and social consequences, especially for less protected populations of developing nations in Central and South America, religious leaders do not accept the concept of abortion. Pope Francis in his recent interview with CNN on this topic fiercely opposed the idea, stating: "It is to kill someone in order to save another. This is what the Mafia does." "On the other hand, avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil," the Pope continued. Therefore, even the head of Catholic Church doesn't view the prevention of pregnancy as an act against the Christian religion. Advertisement Black Girl Magic is everywhere. It's on magazine covers, all over the web and an on-going conversation on Twitter. It's a movement. Truth is black girls rock, and we are reminded at every possible moment. Beyonce dropped a very relevant work of art with Lemonade, an album celebrating blackness, and # BlackTwitter and #BlackLivesMatter erupted. It got me thinking, we don't have a #LatinaTwitter that unites us; shoot, we don't have anything at all. There's no hashtag, no Latina Girls Rock, no digital town hall where we come together to celebrate one another or confront our societal adversaries. We just co-exist. For that reason alone, I'm jealous of the Black Girl Magic movement. I'm jealous of the sisterhood that could be - but doesn't exist - for Latinas. There are many complexities around the issue, but I have come to terms with the fact that Latinas aren't united in the same way that black women are. As an Afro-Latina, this was a hard realization. I wrapped myself in this magical movement and wore it like a cape with honor and pride. But after Beyonce's Formation and recent Lemonade album release, that cape seemed to be snatched off. I was quickly reminded that Lemonade is an ode to Black women, and I felt like that didn't mean us. For years, I've been searching for our version of Black Girl Magic. What are we doing different? I would always wonder, and I could never get the answers. Is it because we aren't our own heroes and our own cheerleaders? Is it because we truly do have different priorities in terms of raising families and being wives? Are we not as strong and powerful as we pretend to be? Or, do we simply just not care? I really struggle with this, and honestly, I don't know what the answer is. Advertisement My guess is that we let our differences define us more than our similarities empower us. Although as Hispanics speak the same language, there are still some very obvious differences as Latinas in the way we look, talk, think, eat and exist. Thus, we can end up living in silos and don't unite in the same way that African-American women do. Jamila Aisha Brown, writer and social entrepreneur at Hue, recalls how family and country of origin can create these silos unknowingly. "After colonization, the wave of nationalism that swept over the region created a nationalistic pride that many of us haven't moved beyond. Growing up I didn't really identify as Latinx or Afro-Latinx, I was Panamanian. And that's largely because that's how my family raised me. We were Panamanian, and that was a different country, different experience, different culture than other Latinxs." It was only after traveling within Latin America that she realized how similar we all really were. This realization has happened slowly. Our struggles as women of color are very similar, if not the same. I created the Melanin Magic Virtual Conference with this idea in mind. I wanted to create a place where we can unite around what it means to be a woman of color in the workplace and society, because I felt like Black Girl Magic excluded me. Why aren't we being celebrated by our own people or by other women of color? Why aren't there more images of Afro-Latinas in reference to Black Girl Magic? Recently, more and more media platforms are turning their ears and keyboards to Afro-Latinas. We are this unique mix that sometimes isn't Black enough or Latina enough, and our stories need to be told. Maybe then, the similarities will shine through and we can support one another as Latinas and as Blacks. "I've learned that Afro-Latinas have been searching for a place to discuss our identity and unique experiences." said Janel Martinez, founder of Ain't I Latina?. " While we've expected mainstream media and Spanish-language media to represent our identities, or at least show we exist, they've fallen short time after time." Advertisement This was apparent when the February Essence Magazine covers were released and shortly after, Teen Vogue's. There was such a momentum around the Black Girl Magic movement and the icons of this era, that it made me yearn even more to fit into the Black Girl Magic movement, or at least have some equivalent in Latina magic. When I explored why more brands and media weren't addressing the Latina Magic void, multicultural communications expert, Cristine Jacquez responded "To be honest, I don't think many are capitalizing on the void... it really doesn't exist outside of a few campaigns/brands. Focusing on and reaching the "mythical millennial" is what many brands are working towards, and in the process of creating campaigns or programs they'll layer in cultural, demographic and language cues, but it's not usually a bold statement or declaration, like #BlackGirlMagic." While platforms like Ain't I Latina? have served as a reminder that we need a place to tell our stories, some critics have said they are divisive to which Martinez responds, " We're reclaiming our narrative. It's telling in itself." I'm not sure where I go from here, because I quite frankly I don't know what it will take to truly galvanize Latinas. I have observed that we are so quick to judge and discredit what it means to be Latina. We have to work on not tearing down women like actress, Gina Rodriguez, who is trying to be a roles model. Can you believe she won a Golden Globe and instead of being celebrated, she was criticized for not speaking perfect Spanish? While a woman like Taraji can give Viola Davis a standing ovation when she wins an award. Again, black girls truly do rock, and they will remind you in every moment with fierce conviction and unwavering loyalty. It is small but meaningful moments like these that set the tone for the dialogue we have among ourselves and how we are viewed by others. Will we ever have our own movement or be a part of Black GIrl Magic? I'm not sure. I think there's a lot of mindset shifting that needs to take place in order for us to be able to do that. We need to feel the same bonds of sisterhood and loyalty to one another that our African-American counterparts feel. There are a lot of complexities, but I know that there is a possibility of doing it right. Cheers to you #BlackGirlMagic and Mother Beyonce for showing us what could be. Saturday, May 28th was World Hunger Day. News stories, blogs, social media, and organizations were abuzz about global hunger. Everyone agrees that in this day and age, it's unacceptable for anyone to go hungry. Awareness of global hunger is the first step in eliminating it, so this is a good thing. Some organizations celebrated gains in hunger reduction by citing statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) that claim the world has lived up to the Millennium Development Goals' promise to cut global hunger in half by 2015. Ending hunger is hard--and we need good news. But is this actually true? A closer look at the way the FAO handles hunger statistics reveals a different, and very troubling story. First of all, the FAO has shifted the goalposts... In 1996, 840 million people were hungry worldwide. Leaders from 185 countries met at the World Food Summit in Italy, where the Declaration of Rome was drafted. The Declaration promised to reduce the total number of hungry people by half to 420 million people by 2015. Advertisement 4 years later at the 2000 Millennium Summit, the Millennium Declaration diluted the commitment laid out by the Rome Declaration. Leaders at the Millennium Summit utilized a numbers game which ultimately made the hunger reduction commitment weaker and easier to reach. Instead of sticking to a commitment to reduce hunger by a certain number of people (420 million), they changed the goal to decrease the percentage of hungry people. Because of population growth, this adjustment meant ending hunger for only 296 million people. This slight of hand allowed leaders to claim quick progress on paper, when in reality the fight to end hunger was proceeding slower than anyone wanted to admit. Official hunger reduction goals were again eased when the base year was backdated from 2000 to 1990. This allowed the inclusion of China's accomplishments in the 1990s in which millions were pulled from poverty and hunger - even though China was not a part of the Millennium declaration. It also extended the period of population growth, and as a result, the proportion of people saved from hunger. This modified time frame actually increased the "acceptable" number of hungry from 420 million to 591 million. As if shifting the goal posts was not misleading enough, the FAO misrepresented the true extent of world hunger by using an inaccurate definition of hunger itself. The FAO only counts people as hungry when caloric intake is inadequate to cover minimum needs for a sedentary lifestyle for over one year. But we know most hungry people are peasant farmers engaged in demanding physical labor, and need much more than the FAO's "sedentary" minimum caloric threshold. Incredibly, people who go hungry for 11 months out of the year are not classified as hungry by the FAO. Advertisement If we measure hunger at the level of calories required for intense activity, the number of hungry people today is closer to 2.5 billion - and this does not count those suffering from serious vitamin and nutrient deficiencies, or those hungry seasonally or for months at a time (but less than a full year). This estimate is two times higher than the FAO's numbers would have us believe. Should we be celebrating success on World Hunger Day? Through the Millennium Development Goals, the FAO misrepresented the true extent of hunger. In reality, between 1.5 and 2.5 billion people lack access to adequate food--and these numbers are rising, not falling. If we're ever going to end hunger, we'd better first acknowledge how many people really go hungry in this world. The FAO's manipulation of hunger statistics into a "good news narrative" simply justifies business as usual--including 30 years of free trade agreements, land grabs, and the monopolization of land, water, and genetic resources--perpetuating a food system that leaves over a third of humanity without enough food. The California Democratic Primary is this Tuesday, June 7. Whatever "The Movement" means to you, if you care about human decency and international human rights we need a Sanders victory and a Clinton repudiation in California on June 7--and beyond. It is my view that the Israeli government, with the active support and military aid of the U.S. government is committing human rights abuses and genocide against the Palestinian people. I believe that Hillary Clinton is aggressively, willfully, and consciously aiding and abetting that genocide and must be defeated in California and at the Democratic Convention. I admire and support Senator Sanders for his courageous challenge to the American Israel Political Action Committee, his support for human rights and fair treatment for the Palestinian people, and his open challenge to Hillary Clinton on Israel and Palestine. I do not expect him to share all of my views but I do wish him well and will work for his victory. Four Reasons We Need a Sanders Victory and Clinton Defeat in California When I first began this article I planned to write an article with the above title. I planned to make four major arguments. Advertisement Bernie Sanders is courageously defending Palestinian human rights and standing up to the powerful Israeli lobby while Hillary Clinton is defending the Israeli occupation of Palestine, slandering the integrity of the Palestinian people, and calling for repression against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement Sanders, despite weakness in consciousness and content on civil rights and Black Liberation has gained the support of progressive and radical Black organizers, intellectuals, and artists--including Cornel West, Spike Lee, and Erica Garner, Eric Garner's daughter whose video in support of Bernie Sanders is one of the most moving civil rights arguments today. By contrast, Hillary and Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party establishment are super-predators against the Black Community and the Black Nation and have a long, conscious history of encouraging mass incarceration. Sanders is challenging the ideology of the U.S. as a center of counterinsurgency against Third World Countries in Iraq and Libya while Clinton has a long history as a super-hawk to the right of even President Obama. The Sanders campaign is refusing to capitulate to the Clinton machine and the Democratic Party establishment and plans to bring a real political struggle into the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia. He also has a real chance to win--and if not, to keep the pressure on Clinton and force substantial and enforceable concessions. But in my work preparing for this article and reading and re-reading the speeches and public statements of Sanders and Clinton on Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East I was so appreciative of Sanders courageous stand on Palestine and so terrorized by Hillary Clinton's bellicose, racist, white settler state rants that I wanted to make the focus of this article the life and death struggle of the Palestinian people and the great opportunity to elect Sanders and defeat Hillary Clinton. I will defer the other three arguments to a future follow-up article before Tuesday's vote. So, in this article, The Four Reasons We Need a Sanders Victory and a Clinton Defeat are Palestine, Palestine, Palestine, and Palestine. I have to assume that many of you are already heartbroken and outraged by the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and its subjugation of Palestinian people. Since the formation of the Israeli state in 1948 and the Nakba--the expulsion of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians-- there has not been a "two state solution" but an Israeli occupation and subjugation of the Palestinian people. I urge you to read my article in Counterpunch--Palestine Will Win--Solidarity from a Self-Respecting Jew that elaborates my point of view. I also urge you to read The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe a courageous history by an Israeli Jew that traces Israeli racism and settler state politics from the inception of the Zionist plan for Palestine. Advertisement The Summary of my position is simple--Bernie Sanders has stood up to the American Israel Political Action Committee, affirmed the humanity of the Palestinians, and stood up to the threats of the pro-Israeli lobby and the Black List of any candidate who challenges the criminal occupation of Palestine. By contrast, you have to listen to Hillary Clinton's demagogic and racist speech to AIPAC where she raised her voice to a false crescendo, compared herself to Golda Meier, did character assassination of the Palestinian people, attacked the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement, promised even more military aid to Israel, and promised that the U.S. and Israel would march hand and hand into the promised land with a military cadence that would make a Prussian marching band proud. I have made my assertions clear. I will quote in considerable detail below statements from the speech Bernie Sanders proposed to deliver to AIPAC and Hillary Clinton's speech to AIPAC. Then, you will make up your own mind. The Larger Frame This election follows more than 7 years of Barack Obama, one of the most hopeful in tone and reactionary in content political experiences of my and millions of others lifetimes. In many ways, the entire U.S. presidential election process is a mirage and deception. In a society where the Pentagon has a budget of almost $1 trillion, 1 Million Black people are in prison, unregulated capitalism is going berserk, people are losing their jobs, losing their homes, and losing their minds the illusion of "Vote for Me and I'll Set you Free" is just that. Since the U.S. government repressed and suppressed the mass revolutionary movements of the Two Decades of the Sixties there has not yet emerged a new unified mass revolutionary movement in which to situate a presidential election. As such, many people place all their hope in the every-four-year charade because they just have no hope about themselves or a plan to change society. While Bernie Sanders call for a revolution is often limited to a general critique of Wall Street and a white, social democratic populism his campaign has really evolved more than I had originally anticipated. While Bernie Sanders may not yet break up the banks he is creating one of the most radical, structural, and ideological challenges to the Democratic Party establishment in recent memory--and in so doing is challenging one of the two political arms of Wall Street--the mainstream Democrats and the Clinton Machine. It is in his break with the imperialist worldview of the Democrats and his courageous and consistent statements in support of Palestinian human rights and self-determination that Sanders has given his campaign its most compelling revolutionary reality. The New York State Democratic Primary and the Ritual Madness of AIPAC Pandering The New York City metropolitan area is home to the largest Jewish community outside Israel. There are 1.5 million Jews in New York City out of a population of 8 million--approximately 18 percent of the population. Every four years, the Democratic presidential contenders use the New York primary to make the most outrageous, racist, statements in support of Israel and against the Palestinian people. "If I am elected I will give the entire U.S. defense budget to Israel." "Oh yeah, I will have a first strike against un-armed Palestinians and give Israel a state of its own in New York." It is truly funny if you like genocidal settler state humor. Advertisement The assumption of course, a false and cynical one, is that Jewish voters love Israel and support or condone all of its abuses. This view is put forth aggressively by the power of AIPAC--the American Israel Political Action Committee. AIPAC and the National Rifle Association have more money and more power than God and just like the NRA, AIPAC is famous for rewarding its friends and punishing its enemies--which people on the Left need to carry out as well. In The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer and Harvard University Kennedy School of Government professor Stephen Walt write "AIPAC's success is due to its ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who challenge it. ... AIPAC makes sure that its friends get strong financial support from the myriad pro-Israel PACs. Those seen as hostile to Israel, on the other hand, can be sure that AIPAC will direct campaign contributions to their political opponents. ... The bottom line is that AIPAC, which is a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on the U.S. Congress. Open debate about U.S. policy towards Israel does not occur there, even though that policy has important consequences for the entire world. No one stands up to AIPAC we are told. Many of its bills pass unanimously in Congress--including bills condemning reports of human rights abuses by the Israeli's against the Palestinians." But over the last years people are standing up to AIPAC--just not, until Sanders, in a presidential election contest. These new developments have been encouraged by an international movement to challenge and change Israeli policy--the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement. Initiated in 2005 from appeals from the Palestinian people, its organizers explain Advertisement "On July 9 2005, a year after the International Court of Justice's historic advisory opinion on the illegality of Israel's Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), a clear majority of Palestinian civil society called upon their counterparts and people of conscience all over the world to launch broad boycotts, implement divestment initiatives, and to demand sanctions against Israel, until Palestinian rights are recognized in full compliance with international law. The campaign for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is shaped by a rights-based approach and highlights the three broad sections of the Palestinian people: the refugees, those under military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Palestinians in Israel. The call urges various forms of boycott against Israel until it meets its obligations under international law by: Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967 and dismantling the Wall; Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194." The BDS call was endorsed by over 170 Palestinian political parties, organizations, trade unions and movements. The signatories represent the refugees, Palestinians in the OPT, and Palestinian citizens of Israel." In the New York Democratic Primary Bernie Sanders, a Jew, one who had lived in a kibbutz in Israel, stood up to AIPAC, stood up to the Israeli Government, stood up to reactionary forces in the Jewish community, humanized the Palestinians, chastised Israel for its abuses, and did so with no clear electoral calculation. By contrast, Hillary Clinton allied with the most reactionary forces in the U.S. and Israel, demonized the Palestinians, justified Israel's attacks on civilians as self-defense against "terrorists," compared herself to Golda Meier, and attacked Sanders for "neutrality" and lack of support for Israel. And yet, under these circumstances, Sanders did great in New York. Hillary Clinton, who had been a two-term Senator from New York, got 58 percent of the while Sanders won a very impressive 42% of the vote and 44% of the delegates. Advertisement The Candidates in Their Own Words Bernie Sanders On not just being friend to Israel, but also to Palestinian people "To be successful, we have to be a friend not only to Israel, but to the Palestinian people, where in Gaza, they suffer from an unemployment rate of 44 percent - the highest in the world - and a poverty rate nearly equal to that. There is too much suffering in Gaza to be ignored. The road towards peace will be difficult. We all know that. I cannot tell you exactly how it will look - I do not believe anyone can - but I believe firmly that the only prospect for peace is the successful negotiation of a two-state solution." Peace will mean stopping the Israeli settlement and occupation "Peace will mean ending what amounts to the occupation of Palestinian territory, establishing mutually agreed upon borders, and pulling back settlements in the West Bank, just as Israel did in Gaza--once considered an unthinkable move on Israel's part. That's why I join much of the international community, including the U.S. State Department and European Union, in voicing my concern that Israel's recent expropriation of an additional 579 acres of land in the West Bank undermines the peace process and, ultimately, Israeli security as well. It is absurd for elements within the Netanyahu government to suggest that building more settlements in the West Bank is the appropriate response to the most recent violence. It is also not acceptable that the Netanyahu government decided to withhold hundreds of millions of Shekels in tax revenue from the Palestinians, which it is supposed to collect on their behalf." Peace will mean stopping the economic blockade and recognizing Palestinian water rights "Peace will also mean ending the economic blockade of Gaza. And it will mean a sustainable and equitable distribution of precious water resources so that Israel and Palestine can both thrive as neighbors. Right now, Israel controls 80 percent of the water reserves in the West Bank. Inadequate water supply has contributed to the degradation and desertification of Palestinian land. A lasting a peace will have to recognize Palestinians are entitled to control their own lives, and there is nothing human life needs more than water." Advertisement "Peace requires both sides to adhere to international humanitarian law. Peace will require strict adherence by both sides to the tenets of international humanitarian law. This includes Israeli ending disproportionate responses to being attacked, even though any attack on Israel is unacceptable. However, let me be very clear: I - along with many supporters of Israel - spoke out strongly against the Israeli counter attacks that killed nearly 1,500 civilians, and wounded far more. I condemned the bombing of hospitals, schools and refugee camp." Comments Sanders documents the unbearable poverty that Israel, one of the richest and most conspicuous consumption nations in the world, is imposing on the Palestinians. His use of very specific terms-- "Occupation." "Settlements" "withholding Shekels and tax revenue" "expropriating 579 acres of land in the West Bank" confiscating "precious water resources" "degradation, desertification" Israel has 80% of the water." "Violating international law. "Killed 1500 civilians, wounded far more, bombing of hospitals, schools, and refugee camps." Represent a coherent and compelling indictment of Israel as a society as well as its policies. While it is not necessarily his intent, Sanders statements reinforce the charges of many that Israeli policies represent crimes against humanity that can and must be brought in front of the United Nations. (Spoiler alert. When we get to Hillary Clinton's statements note that she explicitly promises the Israelis she will block any efforts to bring these human rights abuses to the U.N. Security Council.) His movement is not taking place in a vacuum. Even establishment Democrats are having a backlash against AIPAC and Israel as they are increasingly allied with right-wing Republicans. His views are also a reflection of many of his supporters, including organizers of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement and the growing rejection by Jewish activists of Israel's efforts to manipulate anti-Nazi sentiments to justify its own abuses of the Palestinian people. Given today's time, place, and conditions the Sanders Campaign is carrying out a revolution of values and politics on Palestine and international human rights that challenge not just Israel but the U.S. government. And from there, create space and energy to challenge U.S. racism and climate crimes and build a real climate justice revolution. Hillary Clinton in Her Own Words Clinton criticizes Sanders for "walking away" from Israel and being "dangerously wrong" about military policy "As AIPAC members, you understand that while the turmoil of the Middle East presents enormous challenge and complexity, walking away is not an option. Candidates for president who think the United States can outsource Middle East security to dictators, or that America no longer has vital national interests at stake in this region are dangerously wrong. It would be a serious mistake for the United States to abandon our responsibilities, or cede the mantle of leadership for global peace and security to anyone else." Clinton supports Israeli Hawkish Policy against Iran "As we gather here, three evolving threats -- Iran's continued aggression, a rising tide of extremism across a wide arc of instability, and the growing effort to de-legitimize Israel on the world stage -- are converging to make the U.S.-Israel alliance more indispensable than ever. The United States and Israel must be closer than ever, stronger than ever and more determined than ever to prevail against our common adversaries and to advance our shared values." Comment This is a dig at President Obama who negotiated with Iran and avoided a military showdown despite Israel's pressure to provoke a regional or even world war. It is also an obvious attack on Sanders who she accuses of "trying to de-legitimize Israel" by standing up to the Israeli government. Clinton compares herself to Golda Meier "And of course, some of us remember a woman, Golda Meier, leading Israel's government decades ago and wonder what's taking us so long in America?" Comment: Golda Meier was the prime minister of Israel from 1964 to 1969. She was known as the Iron Lady before that title was given to Margaret Thatcher. Meir's first months as Foreign Minister coincided with the Suez Crisis, which is known as the Tripartite Aggression in Arab countries. It involved an invasion of Egypt in late 1956 by Israel, followed by Britain and France. The aims were to regain Western control of the Suez Canal, remove Egyptian president Nasser, and provide a more secure western border and freedom of navigation through the Straits of Tiran for Israel. Meir was involved in planning and coordination with the French government and military prior to the start of military action. During United Nations debates about the crisis, Meir took charge of the Israeli delegation. After the fighting had started, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Nations forced the three invaders to withdraw. As a result of the conflict, the United Nations created the UNEF military peacekeeping force to police the Egyptian-Israeli border. Advertisement How sad, if transparent, that in front of AIPAC, Secretary Clinton compared herself to a war-hawk who tried to seize the Suez Canal, undermine the self-determination of Egypt, and threaten to provoke a world war. We definitely need a woman president--Elizabeth Warren and Angela Davis come to mind--but Clinton's bizarre choice of a bellicose, imperialist, female role model exposes her world view and her view of her future role as "commander in chief." Presenting the Palestinian People as Terrorists "This is especially true at a time when Israel faces brutal terrorist stabbings, shootings and vehicle attacks at home. Parents worry about letting their children walk down the street. Families live in fear. Just a few weeks ago, a young American veteran and West Point graduate named Taylor Force was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist near the Jaffa Port. These attacks must end immediately...And Palestinian leaders need to stop inciting violence, stop celebrating terrorists as martyrs and stop paying rewards to their families. Indeed, at a time of unprecedented chaos and conflict in the region, America needs an Israel strong enough to deter and defend against its enemies, strong enough to work with us to tackle shared challenges and strong enough to take bold steps in the pursuit of peace." Comment: Israel receives at least $3.5 billion in U.S. military aid and more through many secret allocations in bills. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported that between 2004 and 2011 Israel was the eighth-largest arms exporter to the world, with sales worth a total of $12.9 billion. Israel has nuclear weapons. At a time when Israel killed 1500 people in Gaza, is running an outdoor concentration camp, Hillary Clinton fosters the racist myth that Israel is under attack from Palestinians with knives. Note the horrible character assassination of Palestinians, "celebrating terrorists" "paying rewards to families." This is how the Native Americans were described who stood up to U.S. genocide, how the Vietnamese were described who stood up to U.S. genocide. And now, how the Palestinians are described standing up to Israel-U.S. supported genocide. Advertisement Clinton to expand military aid to Israel and a U.S./Israel military alliance "far into the future" "The Movement [Boycott Divestment and Sanctions] and many other human rights groups has been calling for the U.S. to cut military aid to Israel and to stop intervening in the Middle East. That's why I believe we must take our alliance to the next level. I hope a new 10-year defense memorandum of understanding is concluded as soon as possible to meet Israel's security needs far into the future. The United States should provide Israel with the most sophisticated defense technology so it can deter and stop any threats. That includes bolstering Israeli missile defenses with new systems like the Arrow Three and David's Sling. And we should work together to develop better tunnel detection, technology to prevent armed smuggling, kidnapping and terrorist attacks." Comment Does this really need a comment? Clinton leads an international campaign to attack the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement and urges Israeli and U.S. students to attack that movement. She accuses BDS of being anti-Semitic. "And it's especially important to continue fostering relationships between American and Israeli young people who may not always remember our shared past. They are the future of our relationship and we have to do more to promote that. Many of the young people here today are on the front lines of the battle to oppose the alarming boycott, divestment and sanctions movement known as BDS. Particularly at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world, especially in Europe, we must repudiate all efforts to malign, isolate and undermine Israel and the Jewish people. I've been sounding the alarm for a while now. As I wrote last year in a letter to the heads of major American Jewish organizations, we have to be united in fighting back against BDS. Many of its proponents have demonized Israeli scientists and intellectuals, even students. To all the college students who may have encountered this on campus, I hope you stay strong. Keep speaking out. Don't let anyone silence you, bully you or try to shut down debate, especially in places of learning like colleges and universities. Anti-Semitism has no place in any civilized society, not in America, not in Europe, not anywhere." Advertisement Comment: This is a clear call for repression against dissent. At Universities, students who protest Israeli policies and disrupt classes are punished and even arrested. In California and other states there are new "Anti-BDS laws" working their way through the legislature under the guise of preventing "hate speech" (and the First Amendment) and proposing to prevent groups and individuals who support BDS from having any financial dealings with the state of California. The Black List is alive and well in California. Hillary Clinton has called for the anti-BDS bills--now circulating in 20 states. I have supported BDS but have not joined. I plan to join tomorrow. Hillary goes after Bernie "America can't be neutral" and Sanders "has no business being president" "That's why I feel so strongly that America can't ever be neutral when it comes to Israel's security or survival. We can't be neutral when rockets rain down on residential neighborhoods, when civilians are stabbed in the street, when suicide bombers target the innocent. Some things aren't negotiable. And anyone who doesn't understand that has no business being our president. But at the same time, all of us must condemn actions that set back the cause of peace. Terrorism should never be encouraged or celebrated, and children should not be taught to hate in schools. That poisons the future." Everyone has to do their part by avoiding damaging actions, including with respect to settlements. Now, America has an important role to play in supporting peace efforts. And as president, I would continue the pursuit of direct negotiations. And let me be clear -- I would vigorously oppose any attempt by outside parties to impose a solution, including by the U.N. Security Council." Comment: The Palestinians are being held hostage in their own homeland. Their only hope is an international human rights movement just as the Vietnamese people and Blacks in South Africa desperately needed international support. Hillary Clinton wants to crush any allies of the people of Palestine, continue the blockade and the occupation, prevent international sanctions, and punish the BDS movement. Advertisement Hillary Invokes the White Myths of the European, U.S., and Israeli Settler States "Will we, as Americans and as Israelis, stay true to the shared democratic values that have always been at the heart of our relationship? We are both nations built by immigrants and exiles seeking to live and worship in freedom, nations built on principles of equality, tolerance and pluralism. At our best, both Israel and America are seen as a light unto the nations because of those values." Comment: Except for the Indigenous peoples, African slaves, occupied Mexicans, Vietnamese, Koreans, and Palestinians and human rights organizers all over the world. Conclusion These are exciting times. Credit both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton for putting their cards on the table. You have heard my arguments, heard the candidates in their own words. In California on June 7 and all the way to the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia July 26-28, until the presidential election on November 4 and beyond the debate between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is of enormous import on its own terms and a placeholder for a battle of worldviews inside the Democratic Party and the U.S. The Democratic establishment is trying to raise the spectre of Donald Trump to erase the spectre of Hillary Clinton. A vote for Bernie Sanders in California can "keep hope alive," show that "yes we can" and support "all power to the people." By Gregory Watson and Ben Hodgdon Gregory Watson has led numerous projects related to climate change, forestry, climate-smart agriculture, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and remittances for the Multilateral Investment Fund. He has a master's degree in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. When most people think about climate change, the first thing that comes to mind is the burning of fossil fuels for energy or transport. Rarely are forests considered. But they must be. The deal struck at the Paris climate change summit (COP 21) in December 2015 confirmed this. Forests and forestry, long a side note to larger conversations about reduction of emissions from energy supply and use, were topics of increased focus and discussion. The reason is clear: If the world is going to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, the focus cannot solely be on fossil fuels. We must also reduce emissions from the land sector--above all by stemming deforestation. Globally, the Center for International Forestry Research estimates that forests absorb 2.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year. This is about one-third of the carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels. At the same time, deforestation and land-use change accounts for nearly 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions--more than the world's entire transport sector. Advertisement The importance of forests in climate change mitigation strategies is particularly clear in Latin America and the Caribbean, where approximately 46% of land is covered by forests, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. Forests in this region act as important carbon sinks, sequestering 440 million tons of CO2 equivalents. And conversion of forests to other uses was the main source of greenhouse gas emissions between 2001 and 2010 in the region, averaging 1.9 billion tons of CO2 equivalents. At the Paris summit, countries from Latin America and the Caribbean submitted national climate action plans detailing their commitments and targets for emissions reductions. Many of these national plans include specific targets related to the protection of forests, and the sustainable use of forest resources. While there are many mechanisms available to conserve forests, one of the most promising is the development of community forest enterprises. Rainforest Alliance Local control is the best protection for forests If community forestry sounds like a "boutique" strategy, think again. Forests where local communities and indigenous people have legal or official rights sequester 37.7 billion tons of carbon. That's 29 times the annual CO2 emissions of all the passenger vehicles on the planet. Today, about one-third of tropical forests are under some form of local community control, and that share is growing. Latin America and the Caribbean is the trend's epicenter. But it's also taking hold in tropical regions of Africa and Asia. Thus, lessons from the Americas are of particular importance: Evidence demonstrates that local people protect forests best, especially when they build up enterprises based on sustainable forest management. For example, northern Guatemala has one of the highest rates of forest conversion in Latin America and the Caribbean, mainly from illegal ranching. In the 5 million acre Maya Biosphere Reserve, the largest protected area in Central America, about one-third of the area is under strict protection. Much of this area still experiences considerable deforestation, even above regional averages. But areas under community management certified by the Forest Stewardship Council for sustainable harvesting of timber and other forest products do better. Studies show those areas have near-zero deforestation, conserving about a quarter of the Reserve's forest cover, while driving local economic development. A flagship carbon project run by local communities called Guatecarbon--supported by the Rainforest Alliance and the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) of the Inter-American Development Bank Group--is nearing validation according to international standards. It is estimated that sustainable forestry will result in a net carbon benefit of 40 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent over 30 years. Advertisement What's being achieved in Guatemala is not an isolated example. Deforestation rates in community forests in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula are also effectively zero. In Brazil, indigenous lands have less than one-tenth of the deforestation of lands outside of indigenous control. In the Bolivian Amazon, indigenous lands have one-sixth of the deforestation of adjacent areas. Community forests need technical assistance, access to finance Such outcomes are remarkable. But to achieve them, community forests need to be empowered with real rights over high-value forests, and supported to build competitive, socially just enterprises. Only in this way can their operations be profitable enough to withstand the pressures driving deforestation, and allow communities to thrive. Working with the support of the MIF and other donors, the Rainforest Alliance has helped hundreds of community forests and local enterprises understand and overcome the barriers they face. Rainforest Alliance has documented many cases in Latin America and the Caribbean where community-managed forests were both profitable and sustainable. But the group also found cases where large areas of forest were lost after communities obtained title to them, for example in Nicaragua's RAAN, where forests titled to indigenous communities were not given sufficient support to stand up to the internal and external pressures to deforest. The lesson is that communities need technical assistance and, critically, access to finance to defend their land rights, establish stronger governance, and realize sustainable forest management and competitive enterprises. With appropriate tools, community forestry can be as effective, or even more effective, than public management in conserving land. Advertisement As development organizations ponder how best to support community forestry, it is clear that, in addition to technical assistance, risk-sharing products such as guarantees and medium-term financing are needed so that local financial institutions feel secure in piloting new lending products. Over time, lending facilities at the national or regional level could be developed that leverage funds from the Green Climate Fund, bilateral donors, or equity investors. The evidence shows that community forestry models make sense--it is now up to the development community to help realize their potential. Ben Hodgdon Ben Hodgdon is director of forestry for the Rainforest Alliance. Based in Richmond, Vermont, he oversees the organization's global work in forestry technical assistance, with a focus on community forests and local enterprise development. BY JON HENES "We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for is the greatest poverty." - Mother Teresa On January 16, 2016, I found myself in El Progreso, Yoro, Honduras on behalf of the Foundation for Education in Honduras (FEIH). This charity, which I co-founded with Ramiro Ocasio, builds and refurbishes schools in high need areas of rural Honduras. On that day, FEIH's vision became a reality at the ribbon cutting ceremony for its first school - Santiago Morales. I stood with the FEIH team outside of the hotel Casa Blanca, waiting to be picked up and driven to the ribbon cutting ceremony. It was morning, but the sun was hot and already shining bright, giving us an early warning of the oppressive heat to come. We sipped gray, watered down coffee, trying to fend off the exhaustion of travel. We proudly wore our matching FEIH shirts and hats. Advertisement Two pickup trucks pulled up, and we jumped in. They left the hotel driveway, kicking pebbles, and turned right onto a heavily trafficked paved road. I sat in the back left of the truck, my forehead resting against the window, closely observing the buildings, cars, and people as we drove by. It may have been the early morning heat or the anticipation of our day to come, but our usually raucous and joking group was uncharacteristically quiet. Something immediately became apparent to all of us. The further we drove away from the city center, the poorer and poorer the communities became. The paved road turned to gravel, and the gravel road turned to dirt. Dust rose up in front of us like a morning mist off a lake, only less tranquil, engulfing the pickup trucks and impeding our vision. We stopped suddenly. In front of us lay a dried out creek bed. It was the unofficial border of El Progresso and San Antonio del Sur, the community where the Santiago Morales School is located. The pickup trucks carefully maneuvered across the creek. We learned that during the rainy season, the creek fills with water and often overflows, preventing people from crossing the border by automobile. Fortunately, on January 16th, the creek was more welcoming. As we emerged from the dust, we adjusted our eyes. All around us was abject poverty. We laid witness to stray dogs and livestock roaming freely, and children without shirts and shoes gazing at our pickup trucks with curiosity and wonder. I thought about Mother Teresa's words. We were in this community - FEIH was in this community - to do more than build a school conducive for learning and to provide a safe environment for the children... FEIH was there to assure that the poverty of being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for would not exist for the children of the Santiago Morales School. Advertisement As we kept driving towards the school, we noticed the houses on the left side of the street (though it would be a stretch to call them houses). These structures were concrete walls on one side, aluminum fences on the other, and makeshift roofs above attempting to keep out the sun on hot days and the rain on rainy days. I felt a lump rise in my throat and I choked back tears. I thought about the simple things in my life, and the things I take for granted: three meals a day, the clothes on my back, a job, and the freedom to travel and see beautiful places. I wanted to get out of the pickup truck and gather the children together to hug them and tell them we would help make their lives better. No child should live in poverty. And while FEIH does not have the resources to rebuild the entire community or create a thriving economy in Honduras, we would let them know they were wanted, loved and cared for. We finally arrived at the Santiago Morales School. We remembered the pictures we saw of the school prior to construction: two broken down rooms with dirt floors, no blackboards, no desks, no fans, no electricity, no ventilation, and a roof that leaked so that when it rained, the children couldn't go to school. It housed grades one through six, but with such limited space, the children went to school in shifts - they didn't even receive a full day's worth of education. The bathrooms at the school were so dilapidated that children wouldn't use them. The girls would often stay home. The old school was not welcoming. This changed. FEIH, with the help of the El Progreso community, changed this. The new school includes six brand new classrooms with floors and beautiful desks made by local artisans. The school now has blackboards and electricity and fans and ventilation and new roofs and maps of the world. There are six new bathrooms and a playground and a water filtration system so the children can safely wash their hands and drink water. The new school is pristine, fresh, and what the children deserve - a safe and clean place conducive for learning. Photo Credit: Catherine Lojo FEIH provided the children with backpacks, school supplies, uniforms and new shoes. The children held on to these backpacks as if they were grasping life preservers after falling into the ocean unable to swim. In many ways, these backpacks are life preservers. They represent and contain the tools needed to receive a proper education. It is only with education that they can escape the poverty that has submerged them. The Santiago Morales school represents so much more than simply a roof under which to learn; it represents hope and opportunity; it represents the compassion of the volunteers, who made sure that these children were keenly aware that they were loved, wanted and cared for; it represents the reason why FEIH will continue to embark on its mission to improve not just education, but ultimately the quality of life for the children in Honduras. Advertisement When I think about why we do this, why the FEIH volunteers, most of whom had no ties to Honduras, are helping and building schools and raising funds for the children of Honduras, a quote from one of my favorite television series, The West Wing, comes to mind: "The reason we do it is because they are someone's children too." [This is the fourth in a series of five blogs that we will post on grit and what it means for poor kids.] In the first blog, we introduced the concept of grit and its importance. In the second, we placed the focus on building grit through quality early childhood education and beyond. In the third, we addressed the three essential grid-builders: communities, neighborhood schools, and families. We closed our last blog by stating that, "... the need for an innovative and comprehensive governmental intervention is more critical than ever - and, much more necessary, in our opinion, than most of the issues that have been discussed in the presidential political debates to date." Advertisement We said that because we have not saved the best for last when it comes to discussing the conditions confronting poor kids in the United States of America today. In fact, we have saved the worst. Truth be told. And, it is time for truth-telling. For some time now and especially over the past decade, the United States has been on a forced march to creating a permanent underclass. If we do not reverse that course, by concentrating first on our poor kids, and then their parents, their schools, and the neighborhoods and communities in which they live, this country and they will forever pay the price. That might seem like an exaggeration. Let's look at the facts and then judge. A special supplement of Academic Pediatrics on childhood poverty began by stating "Childhood poverty has become a persistent problem in the United States, with approximately 1 in 5 children living below the official federal poverty level and almost 1 in 2 who are poor or near poor." It went on to observe that, "The negative consequences of poverty on child health and well being are often lifelong, leading to worse health, lower developmental and educational outcomes, increased criminal behavior as adolescents, and ultimately intergenerational cycles of poverty." Advertisement Tragically, the circumstances for poor kids in the educational arena for poor kids are deteriorating. In 2016, U.S. schools are resegregating rather than desegregating. That is the sad and sorry conclusion that much be reached based upon new data released recently by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Writing for the Washington Post, Emma Brown summarizes some of the key findings from the GAO data. They include the following: The number of high-poverty schools serving primarily black and brown students more than doubled between 2001 and 2014. During the same time period, the proportion of schools segregated by race and class climbed from 9 percent to 16 percent. The minority students in segregated schools also don't have access to a full range of math and science classes and these schools are more likely to use expulsion and suspension as disciplinary tools than their less segregated counterparts. In her article, Ms. Brown reported that the Secretary of the Department of Education, John King has spoken out on the "systematic lack of investment in high needs communities and high-needs kids" and also stated "The lack of concern for poor people is deeply disturbing." According to Ms. Brown, Secretary King "said that the new GAO Report shows the need for a new regulation that would change the way schools prove they are providing adequate resources for needy students." We looked at the dramatic impact of this school segregation on academic performance and the economic sorting out of students in metropolitan areas nationally in the first blog in this series. In this blog, for purposes of illustration, let's drill down and look at just one city - Chicago. Advertisement Based upon an analysis of the 2010 Census data, Janet Smith, an associate professor of urban planning at the Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement at the University of Illinois at Chicago, found that " of the 200,000 people the city lost in the prior decade, about 130,000 were under the age of 18." Smith commented that "the vast majority of what Chicago lost is families." This occurred as the more affluent families moved out of Chicago to provide access to better schools for their children increasing the racial and economic segregation for those poor kids remaining in the city. What does this mean for those poor kids who have been left behind? On the same day that the GAO national data was released, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) CEO Forrest Claypool, because of the city's financial woes and the current budget impasse between the state and city, told some principals to expect budget cuts for the next school year of between 20 per cent and 30 percent, with the city's potential contribution going down by nearly 40 percent. CPS spokeswoman Emily Bittner said that, "The base per-pupil rate will drop from $4,088 to $2,495 if the proposed budget becomes final." This reduction will inevitably mean teacher lay-offs, larger class sizes, and reduced enrichment activities for kids "trapped" in already desperate circumstances. They come on top of Chicago's closing of nearly 50 neighborhood schools in 2014. Chicago's expenditure per students already pales in comparison to the expenditures in more affluent Illinois school districts such as Winnetka, Hinsdale and Barrington. Chicago students are not alone in being part of the financing gulf between rich and poor schools. Writing in the New York Times, Kevin Carey reports that Georgetown University scholar, Marguerite Roza found that "many districts spend up to a third less per pupil in poor schools compared to others" and that nationwide "districts with high levels of poverty receive $1,200 less per pupil from state and local sources than districts with low levels of poverty. " Along with other factors, this gulf can have life time of consequences for kids. Advertisement In 2012, the Brookings Institution released a significant study titled Pathways to Middle Class: Balancing Personal and Public Responsibilities. The study showed that children born into middle-income families have a "roughly even chance of moving up or down once they become adults." In stark contrast, "those born into rich or poor families have a high probability of remaining rich or poor as adults." This no doubt is quite a good thing for the rich kids. It is an extremely bad thing for the poor kids. Through no fault of their own, they have been sentenced to life without parole. Equality of opportunity is not on their radar screen. And, that screen is very small and in many instances not even plugged in. The poor kids enter the educational process with an economic disadvantage and the current funding and educational system for them exacerbates this disadvantage. On April 8, 2013 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the formation of a group named al-Dawla al-Islamiyya fi al-Iraq wa-al-Sham. Arabic language media took to referring to this now infamous group by the Arabic acronym Daesh. The English language media generally chose the English acronym ISIS (The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), although the State Department and the White House chose instead ISIL (The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant). This split between ISIS or ISIL reflects two different understandings of the Arabic term al-Sham. In a classical sense al-Sham can refer to "Greater Syria" or "the Levant" (an area that covers also Lebanon and sometimes Palestine and Jordan and further territories as well). However, al-Sham is also used in a modern sense to refer specifically to the country of Syria (or even the city of Damascus alone). Presumably some expert in the Obama administration who knew the classical sense of the term sent out a memo recommending ISIL over ISIS. The administration's choice - which had the advantage of avoiding any confusion with the Egyptian god ISIS, or ISIS Pharmaceuticals - caused some confusion in the general public. That confusion would only increase when, sometime around the end of 2014 (presumably after another memo), the Arabic acronym Daesh began to appear in administration statements. Indeed Daesh has now become the administration's standard title for the movement (as in the March 17, 2016 address by John Kerry: "Remarks on Daesh and Genocide"). This change had nothing to do with the way the movement refers to itself. In fact, on June 29, 2014 Abu Bakr al-Baghdad declared that the movement's territories were no longer limited to Iraq and Syria, that it was now a worldwide caliphate, and that the movement would accordingly now be called simply al-Dawla al-Islamiyya ("The Islamic State"). Some in the English media acknowledged the change and began referring to the "Islamic State" (or IS). The administration, however, stubbornly held on to ISIL (not wishing to acknowledge Baghdadi's claims of global relevance) until, that is, they dropped ISIL for Daesh. Advertisement So what explains the appearance of an Arabic acronym in English communications by an American administration? The problem was evidently the "Islamic" in "Islamic State." Both President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have repeatedly insisted that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's movement has nothing to do with Islam. In February John Kerry explained: "Daesh is in fact nothing more than a mixture of killers, of kidnappers, of criminals, of thugs, of adventurers, of smugglers and thieves." He continued by calling them apostates: "And they are also above all apostates, people who have hijacked a great religion and lie about its real meaning and lie about its purpose and deceive people in order to fight for their purposes." The description of ISIS/Daesh fighters as apostates (which Kerry later walked back) is curious. To begin with, one wonders whether it's a public officials job to decide who is a believer and who is not (or, for that matter, which religions are great and which are not). More to the point, an apostate according to standard Islamic jurisprudence is someone who has rejected either the belief in one God or the belief in Muhammad as his prophet. This ISIS/Daesh devotees have not done. Accordingly the Grand Imam of al-Azhar Ahmed al-Tayeb (recently in the news because of his meeting with Pope Francis) pointedly refused to call members of ISIS/Daesh apostates in a December 2014 statement. The Azhar statement explained the reasoning clearly: one cannot reject others' Islamic faith (an act known as takfir) because of their sins, but only because of their rejection of the faith. If sins were enough to put someone outside of the fold of Islam, al-Tayeb went on to say, then no Muslim would be safe: " if I denounce them of being un-Islamic, I fall into the same [trap] I am now condemning." Advertisement Last month at the China-Arab Cooperation Forum in Doha, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi postulated that Qatar should take part in the realization of China's Silk Road Initiatives. Considering Qatar as a key partner to promote the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) project, which Chinese President Xi Jinping initiated in 2014, Yi said that the initiative shares common cooperative opportunities with the Qatar National Vision 2030, a future development roadmap launched by Doha in 2008. To this end, China hopes to strengthen bilateral relations with Qatar in economic, political and cultural spheres. This, however, is not the first time China took a step in courting Doha to help in implementing its OBOR projects. Last year, China decided to establish a Renminbi Clearing Centre in Doha, which was the first financial institution in the Middle East to offer access to Chinese currency and foreign exchange markets. This move is crucial as one of the most important steps taken by China to abet the Silk Road Initiatives is the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which among its goals is to expand the use of Chinese currency. It should come as no surprise that China is making its way to Qatar, particularly with respect to the establishment of the Silk Road Initiatives. Despite China leading the initiatives, it is impossible for Beijing to do everything alone; international participation and contributions are needed. Therefore, it is logical for China to turn to Qatar for a significant role. Advertisement As China is thirsty for energy resources to fuel its projects, Beijing clearly sees the benefits of strengthening ties with the gas-rich Persian Gulf emirate. Indeed, in the past several years China has growingly increasingly reliant on Qatar's hydrocarbon resources. China is presently the world's largest oil importing country and the Silk Road Initiatives will require even larger amounts of energy resources for their implementation. Qatar has much potential to become a major beneficiary. In recent years, some European nations have begun to relocate their industries to China due to the low cost of workers. The Qataris could establish petroleum and petrochemical facilities in China, which will help Doha acquire the lion's share of demand and competitiveness. Moreover, China and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are at the moment undertaking negotiations for a free-trade agreement, which will likely have positive implications for both Beijing and Doha. The most important of which is that it will abolish customs duties imposed on the two sides' imports and increase their trade partnership. Throughout recent years, China has become the Gulf's largest trading partner, and their partnership continues to thrive. With Silk Road Initiatives' focus on improving transport and connectivity infrastructure, the Sino-GCC trade ties will see further growth in the future as there are prospects for expanding and speeding up the travels of commodities between China and the GCC, as well as easing energy imports. With respect to China's ambition to expand the use of its currency, Beijing hopes that through the RMB clearing centre and currency swap agreements, a growing share of its trade partnership with Qatar will be cleared in RMB. Ultimately, it also hopes that oil and energy exports can be priced in its own currency, lessening trading time and transaction cost. This would also enable Beijing to conduct business with Qatar, and other regional countries, on its own rules. Advertisement Courting Qatar would also enable China to pressure these countries to solve the security issues in the region. Undeniably, en route to Europe, the Silk Road Initiatives encompass some of the most unstable countries and regions in the world, including the Middle East - areas that Qatar has increasingly engaged in. As the projects unravel, China is apparently facing different security issues, urging Beijing to pressure relevant stakeholders to resolve their conflicts to protect its interests. Qatar, truly an enigma on the international stage, has a unique hand of cards as the world's top liquefied natural gas (LNG) producer and exporter. Situated between Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran, the uber-rich emirate sits between some of the world's most complicated geopolitical fault lines and the Middle East's brightest sectarian flashpoints. To maintain its prosperity and stability, Qatar has traditionally relied on a foreign policy strategy of pitting competing agendas of international and regional powers against each other to further Doha's own strategic interests. Yesterday, I visited a beautiful inspirational, fairly new high school in New Haven Connecticut called Amistad, an Achievement First charter school. The school design has distinguished adult figures etched throughout the exterior and interior of the school: Cesar Chavez, Mexican American labor leader and civil rights activist, who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, Barack Obama, the first African American President of the United States, Maya Angelou, an African American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist, Dr. Ben Carson, an African American retired neurosurgeon, and Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court, just to name a few. It's important also to note that Achievement First Amistad High School was ranked the third-best school in the state by U.S. News & World Report. Displayed on the front of the school in big Blue and Red letters are the words EDUCATION=FREEDOM. Yet, in the weeks leading up to May 31,2016, on the inside of Amistad High School there has been a pot brewing of everything but sentiments of freedom. According to some of the students, majority Black and brown, they see it as more like EDUCATION=CONFORMITY. Advertisement On May 31, 2016, in the third largest urban district in the state of Connecticut, a few hundred majority black and brown high school students made it known quite clearly through what has been described as a "mass walk-out" to show that "diversity matters" in public education. Their words and actions are further evidence that the youth are game changers in the conversations about Education, especially as it relates to students of color. In fact, the students made it clear that the youth voice, not only matters, but that it demands to be respected and taken seriously. As I learned more and more about this student led "boycott" through numerous calls and texts throughout the day, I, as a black parent leader, began to reflect on the role of the parent in public education. Parents are the first responders in the lives of their children to ensure their safety, education and overall well-being; that being said, the protest at Amistad this week showed me that student voice must be interwoven into all education reform efforts. We, the parents and adults have an obligation to ensure that the youth have access to the tools and supports needed to effectively advocate for themselves, especially if they are students of color who may reside in low-income neighborhoods. As I began to write this blog, I came across a piece just written this week by Raymond Ankrum, a principal who blogs at Urban EdTalk. The piece, "Keeping Scholars Engaged in Teaching and Learning", reflects so many of the same exact sentiments expressed by the scholars of Amistad High School during an evening meeting they had with Achievement First co-founder Dacia Toll and staff. The meeting was arranged in response to the protest earlier in the day so that students could personally share their concerns with the administrative decision makers of the school. If I didn't know better, I would believe that Mr. Ankrum was in the room with us! Advertisement From Mr. Ankrum's blog 1. Build authentic connections with students. Students learn from the people they know care about them. If you care, show your students by being tough on them. Be consistent with your students, and be present in their lives. Do not make assumptions about your students. Simply meet them where they are. "More recently, Dantas and Coleman's (2010) study addressed the complexity of diverse families' lives and also illustrated how miscommunication between teacher, school and families from all backgrounds can lead to teachers' own reality and perceptions being influenced by their 'uninformed assumptions' (p. 170)." 2. Just because you are qualified to teach doesn't mean that you are qualified to teach me. A four-year degree, and passing pedagogical tests do not qualify you to teach, at least in my opinion. It takes more. It takes a willingness to continuously improve, challenging yourself year in and year out. "In addition to the many challenges associated with educating students living in poverty, the teachers in these schools are generally less experienced and have much higher rates of attrition (Ingersoll, 2004)." Show your students you want to be there, and stay, "ride or die" with the students, in other words do not be afraid to overly commit to your students. 3. Find out what your students are interested in, and build your lessons around their interest. It takes very little time and/or creativity to change a word problem to reflect what's happening in the lives of students. Students should be able to take learned skills from the classroom and make that learning adaptable to real life situations. "Instructional modifications that involve individual interest necessarily involve prior knowledge--learners are likely to have high prior knowledge about their interests (Renninger et al., 2002)." 4. Have frank and honest conversations with students about high expectations. Having high expectations for students should be a classroom normality. In urban areas, some of these students have been a part of cyclical generational poverty. That cycle can end by showing students the importance of education and instilling passion into student learning. "Culturally responsive teaching offers ways to best support diverse learners in an inclusive classroom as it approaches education by looking at the whole child where students are empowered intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes (Ladson-Billings, 2009)." The bottom line for me after really listening to the many voices of these courageous youth is simple. They are the consumers of education and their voices are missing from the conversations about their education. And no, I don't mean "symbolic student involvement" - we already have that. I mean creating actual professional and curriculum development with students at the helm, I am talking engagement which, if done effectively leads to relationship building! Advertisement And by the way, this is not about Achievement first charter "bashing" as some will inevitably say; the school is definitely doing something right, it ranks 3rd in the state! How many traditional public schools, in urban communities can say that in Connecticut? We are the wealthiest state in the nation, so money is not our problem, we have a heart condition - just saying. The reality is diversity in the teaching profession is a national crisis as well as a Connecticut crisis. And it took the courage of scholars of Amistad high school in New Haven to let the adults know - this is NOT about the aspirations of ADULTS, it's about the future and the dreams of our students of color whose ability and potential dispel myths about Black youth every single day. Some quotes from the day As a Black mom, I thought it important to share with you some of the Amistad High School youth voices and other voices from the field because it was clear their actions identified with Angela Davis "I'm no longer accepting the things I cannot change...I'm changing the things I cannot accept." Messiah, Amistad 10th Grade (one of the lead organizers) People say [our protest] was a walk out, but we never walked in [the school] we began to direct students to the bleachers in the back of the school when they got off the school bus at7:25am" Advertisement Kordell, Amistad 11th Grade (one of the lead organizers) "I find the demerit system to be a strict code of conduct for scholars and its used out of context. It's the same one used in Achievement First elementary schools. I feel as we get older the demerit system should adjust. I am an articulate young man in High School and I don't want to be treated as a child. I feel the demerit system is used as a conformity tool on minority students by white officials or white administration." [As it relates to the protest] certain students were afraid to advocate for their rights when they realized there were consequences such as you can't use the bathroom in the school, we will not give you lunch or water, you cannot ride the school bus back home, however I felt that any consequence was as good as the outcome in the long run. I felt if push comes to shove they would find it in their heart to give us water. Plus, the parents helped and gave us water" Diva Carter, (Rising Senior) "This all started because we heard that one of the staff members was not given a contract for her to sign to come back next year. This angered Scholars and Parents because we all have a connection with her. So one of my friends came up with an idea to protest because we don't have diversity at all. We don't just want Black and Hispanics, we want people with Asian background, Native American backgrounds etc. We have some minority staff but these black males are only for discipline. We want these types of teachers in the classroom! Not just with skin color but with age also. Teachers come to this job fresh out of college, stay for two years then leave because they are still so young. This isn't good for our school community because if this continues to happen, who is going to write letters of recommendation for the seniors. A teacher you known for a year. No. We want to be able to build connections with our teachers. We want diversity, and we want it NOW!" Anonymous, Amistad 10th grade "When I just went into the meeting one of the board said it's hard to find an African American Teacher but the school pushes us to work hard, so why give up on finding a Black teacher, so push yourself hard to find a Black teacher" Advertisement Janya, Meriden CT 9th grade "We learned about this protest in our literature class in school as we watched CNN Kids web series and I believe students in other schools should do the same thing as these kids did to show that we as students know and understand our rights. In our middle school we only had two Black teachers, and both were males. I would like to see Black female and Hispanic teachers too" Parent and Role Model Voices from the Field "I think that the kids are speaking out loud and we need to listen to them. Diversity is a must. The school is a good school there just needs to be stability - Venetia, Mother of Diva Carter "We as parents and adults must respect what the kids are advocating for because we don't know exactly how they feel because we are not living what they are living in the classroom." Santia, Mother of an Amistad student "From the outside of the school you see the faces of our ancestors but I feel it's misleading because the leadership of the school is not representative of the community in which many of the youth live. I firmly believe there needs to be more teacher accountability not just in academics but how they interact with our children. I feel the school militarizes the youth for them to be all one way versus recognizing and embracing their differences" Greer, Mother of Tionna "It inconceivable how these students of color are harshly sanctioned for something as minute as requesting to use the restroom, which is on an individual human clock and not some school policy." Ms. Lynda, Great-grandmother of New Haven school-age children Advertisement "What those young scholars have done speaks volumes! It should be a wakeup call to all! I urge folks to let this be a reminder that students are the people directly affected by the decisions that politicians, unions and organizations make on their behalf. Their voices must be included in the discourse on education. It's critical that we stop doing "to" communities and instead act "with" them." Rashanda, New Haven Parent "What transpired at Amistad on Tuesday and me being the Alderperson of that ward, I took away from this experience, one thing. The team [administrators] makes the dream [students] work by listening to them." New Haven Alder Brenda- Foskey-Cyrus Ward 21 Smooth sailing. Once your business thrives with real customers and solid revenue, what's next? A straight line to success? Not quite. Just like on the Titanic, look out the window and you will spot icebergs, dead ahead. Tough problems which can deplete your time, energy and capital. To dig deep on this, I talked to nine small business owners and learned what they struggle with. You're about to learn how they tackle some of their biggest problems. Advertisement And guess what? Most of it boils down to three key challenges. Iceberg #1: Hiring the right team Yes, hiring is complex. First of all, what kind of person are you trying to hire? And can you see your business evolving such that your new hire will no longer be a good fit? Steve Ryan, founder of digital marketing agency RyTech, points out how the way you hire today might need to change as your business evolves. "The challenge is: do we focus on building a team for what we have now, or where we could be in a year, or in 5 years?" Say, if you hire a team of developers to build features which you later discover your customers don't care about, you're left with a team of idle and costly developers. Ouch. Advertisement It gets tougher. Even when you know who to hire, you'll need to train them. Provide teaching on how you do things in your company. Onboarding. Casey Meehan, founder of Epic Presence -- also a digital marketing agency, focused on content -- wrestled with this problem. They need good writers to create this content, but teaching them the ropes takes time. "When we get a new writer on and they're good, they just don't know all the stuff we know. And that can take months of trial and error, edits, and frustration of them not really knowing how to do some of the things that are second nature to our head writer." Sounds difficult. But perhaps with the right focus, you can avoid some of this. Ali Valdez, founder of online yoga school Sattva Yoga Online, and a top-performing former Microsoft executive, told me how you should not ignore your own skills when hiring. "My biggest mistake was, I hired people to do the work that I'm best qualified to do, instead of focusing my hiring efforts on people to fill the gaps on skills I don't have." Advertisement Smart move. Because if you discount your own capabilities, you weaken the impact you can make in your business. Which leads to the next big challenge for your small business. How can you take it to the next level when you still act as a linchpin for daily operations? Iceberg #2: Picking the right priorities Take Derek Hales, founder of Sleepopolis -- an in-depth mattress review site. People reach out to him every day to ask personalized questions about which mattress to buy. "I don't ever tell someone I'm not gonna answer their question, and I never ignore their question. As a result, my right-hand man Chris and I field a lot of questions -- usually between 50 and 80 questions per day. It definitely consumes a large amount of time." Makes sense. As a small business, you want to grow as fast as you can -- but you still have to do some grunt work. Hence, the challenge. Advertisement Andrew Wicklander, founder of yoga studio software company Tula Software, shares a different perspective. His challenge is to grow at the rate he wants and yet avoid outside investment. "For us, it's a balancing act between deploying capital that we know will bring us more customers, while also remaining profitable and running the business operationally in a healthy way." Two key words here: balancing act. And hence the dilemma: when you try to balance multiple things, prioritization gets more difficult. Michael McCurdy, cofounder of Testing Mom -- an online test prep school -- gives us a valuable lesson here. Namely, priorities are strict. "Set down priorities, and don't jump from priority to priority without finishing the first one." Yes -- this matters, because if you allow yourself to skip priorities, nothing will get done. McCurdy says: "For us, it's about prioritizing not only what will have the biggest customer impact, but also what's going to help the revenues." Advertisement Call it a shortcut to prioritization: focus on tasks which impact your customer and grow your revenues. Speaking of your customers, who are we really talking about? Iceberg #3: Serving the right customers Every new business faces a key challenge: how can you jump to where potential customers hang out and convert some of them to your company? Call it outbound lead generation. Dodd Caldwell, cofounder of digital recurring payment solution MoonClerk is hard at work on this question. Right now, he thrives off inbound leads, but reaching the next level of scale requires some outbound. Hard to do when you have many customer segments. "The blessing of having customers across industries is you can lose customers and it doesn't hurt you that much. All these people can use your service...but the problem is outbound lead generation." And once you do get some outbound leads, expect more hurdles. Because just like employees, customers also need onboarding. Advertisement On a daily basis, Nina Ivanichvili, founder of translation services provider All Language Alliance faces problems onboarding new customers. She shares an example: "Sometimes clients would ask for a Haitian Creole interpreter. And then prior to the appointment they say it'd be nice if that Creole interpreter would also originally come from Sierra Leone -- a country with a language that sounds like Creole, but which is completely different. Clients don't know what they don't know." She nailed it: customers don't know what they don't know about your industry. You have to educate them. But sometimes, you do your business zero favors if you take any customer you can get. Andres Hernandez knows this well, as cofounder of Wingman Legal Tech, a company that provides technology services to law firms. "Our biggest focus right now: finding law firms with the same philosophy that we believe in, in terms of technology. Because certain law firms are set in their ways. That's an uphill battle." Advertisement Smart move. Since everything in your business connects to customers, when you pick the wrong ones, you effectively make your business work against you. Watch out for all the above. Hire the right team, pick the right priorities, and serve the right customers. Last week I met one of my neighbors, an Orthodox Jewish woman. She asked what I do for a living, and I said I'm a rabbi. She hesitated for a moment, digesting the information, as other Orthodox neighbors have done when they first hear this (my family moved recently, so we're still meeting our new neighbors). Then she asked where, and whether it is a Reform synagogue (it is). She asked if I grew up religious, by which she meant Orthodox Jewish. Deliberately misunderstanding, I said I did, and then it was my turn to hesitate. Did I want to tell her I converted to Judaism? I would be lying if I said I grew up Jewish. I'm terrible at lying. So I clarified that my upbringing was religious, but not Jewish. "Oh," she immediately responded, "so you're not Jewish!" "Of course I'm Jewish," I said. She said, "You converted. A Reform conversion?" "Yes, and I went to the mikvah. They don't let you be a rabbi if you aren't Jewish!" She shrugged, "Well, Reform, you never know." She asked if I had ever considered Orthodoxy. I said I had, but it wasn't for me. She nodded. "Reform is easier, right?" So there it was. She wasn't trying to be mean or belittling, but to her, Reform Judaism isn't the real Judaism. There's one kind of Judaism that's authentic, as far as she's concerned, and it's hers. That's part of her belief system. Last week Rabbi Shmuel Goldin wrote an op-ed in New Jersey: The Jewish Standard addressing this issue. He makes the distinction between believing all Jewish practice is right vs. believing all Jews having a right to choose their practice, though he might vehemently disagree. Rabbi Goldin also said that just as he believes his Reform rabbi friend's practice is wrong, he is sure that his friend believes his practice is wrong. This, he says, is a way to be pluralist, and I agree with him. I do think pluralism is harder for someone who necessarily believes that if he is right, everyone else is wrong, and I respect him for finding a way to get there. Advertisement I don't tend to use the words "right" and "wrong" when it comes to this topic. I prefer the word "authentic." And I don't think Orthodox practice is wrong--I believe it's authentic Judaism, and I believe that my Reform Jewish practice is authentic. I don't believe that if I am right, you must be wrong, and recommend Rabbi Brad Hirshfield's book You Don't Have to be Wrong for Me to be Right. It stuck with me that my neighbor's assumption was that I'm Reform because it's easier. It certainly is in some ways, but that's not why I'm Reform. I like the autonomy of Reform Judaism, but as a Reform Jew I have the responsibility of learning about the ritual and ceremonial halacha that I don't consider binding, and taking on commandments that will bring more holiness to my life. (Ethical commandments are still binding on Reform Jews, which many people don't know.) I actually think that's as difficult as following the commandments in an Orthodox mold, but in a different way. In the course of the conversation with my neighbor, I mentioned events coming up in the next couple of weeks that I needed to prepare for: two b'nei mitzvah, two weddings, sermons, hospital visits. "Wow," she said, "you really do everything, don't you?" "Yes," I said. "It must be a hard job," she said. "It is," I said, "and very rewarding." It seemed to me that, while she was friendly the whole time, her respect for me increased over the course of the conversation. Advertisement Three years ago, I had a student in a class who was about to fail and saw ME as the sole barrier between him and graduation. It was a film class, and he'd been extremely vocal about all the ultra-violent films he loved watching. He had some disability on record that gave him permission to get up and leave class when "too anxious" (this happened often), and he constantly told me inappropriate things to justify his poor performance (girlfriend just gave him STD, etc.). He grew so hostile to me, and this was right after another shooting at a nearby univ, that the admin looked over his (public) facebook page after I'd expressed my concern. Not sure what they saw, but next thing I know, campus AND city police were there outside my final exam keeping eyes on him. Scared the shit out of me. He ended up legitimately passing by something like .01 of a point. Thank goodness. Otherwise, I'd honestly have been scared to know I'm on Google maps, etc. I definitely felt more scared as a woman because this guy clearly had low regard for any women and was very hostile. ... I also once had a guy come to class wearing a rubber Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta. He wouldn't take it off, either. So I just conducted class as if he weren't there, but I was freaking out (as were other students). Eventually, he got hot and removed it, then sat there with a big grin on his face. Think he was purely going for creating discomfort. I sacked him on the (big) class participation grade because he violated class community by being disruptive. 1. ExxonMobil uses private trade tribunals to challenge policies that cut into its profits. In November 2004, a Canadian government body enacted a policy requiring oil companies to allocate a portion of their revenues gained through offshore drilling in Newfoundland and Labrador -- Canada's poorest province -- toward financing local research and development. ExxonMobil didn't like this new policy because it would cut into its record profits, so in 2007 it used rules in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to sue Canada in a private trade tribunal. The lawyers, unaccountable to any domestic legal system, sided with ExxonMobil and ordered Canada to pay the oil giant $14 million in compensation for the policy. 2. ExxonMobil, through its trade associations, uses trade negotiations to strike down critical climate safeguards. ExxonMobil is a member of American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers. In 2013, that association lobbied the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to use the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations to pressure the EU to weaken a policy designed to encourage European fuel suppliers to switch from high-carbon fuels, such as those derived from tar sands, to lower-carbon fuels. As I wrote about previously, USTR heeded this advice and used the TTIP negotiations to "press the [European] Commission to take the views of stakeholders including U.S. refiners, under consideration." The EU soon did just that by rolling back the proposed policy and agreeing to fuel quality rules that ignored the additional climate emissions from tar sands oil -- just as ExxonMobil's trade association had asked for. 3.ExxonMobil lobbies for trade deals to increase exports of fossil fuels. Declassified documents reveal that ExxonMobil has colluded with the European Commission on TTIP negotiating strategies. The documents show that one of ExxonMobil's biggest objectives for the deal is to require the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to automatically approve exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the EU -- the world's third-largest LNG importer. ExxonMobil has also openly advocated for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) for similar reasons. Under the TPP, DOE would be required to automatically approve LNG exports to Japan, the world's top LNG importer. These automatic exports of LNG would facilitate increase global dependency on a fossil fuel with high climate emissions while incentivizing increased fossil fuel infrastructure and fracking. Ruins of the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria. Never in recent history has the heritage of humanity known such devastation as now in Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic. The deliberate destruction of the heritage is a war crime -- it has become a tactic of war and propaganda. Advertisement In Syria, two thirds of the Ancient City of Aleppo has been bombed out and burnt down. The sites of Dura-Europos and Apamea are being dismantled by industrial-scale trafficking in cultural property. Archaeological sites are caught in the crossfire between land troops and air forces, and used as military bases. Palmyra, inadequately protected for years, experienced absolute horror for over one year. There are a very large number of people responsible for this cultural and human chaos, and UNESCO condemns all destruction, no matter who the instigator. The main victim is the Syrian people. And in the midst of widespread impotence, it is the people of Syria who show the face of dignity and the meaning of the universal values conveyed by the heritage. I am thinking here of the work of Syria's Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums, which has taken thousands of objects into safekeeping and protects the heritage as a bastion against disintegration. Advertisement I am thinking of the activities of Syrian civil society, members of organizations such as the Association for the Protection of Syrian Archaeology (APSA), ASOR, Shirin International, the Syrian Heritage Archive Project, Heritage for Peace, and many others, who are risking their lives to document and save the country's memory and future.UNESCO is infinitely grateful, and stands alongside them. This means something other than saving stones. Syrians, like the archaeologist Khaled Al Assad, murdered in the ruins of Palmyra, remind us that we are not only flesh and blood - we also embody values to be passed on, and many have died to defend them. The heritage exemplifies the founding values of civilization without which there can be no human society. Syria is a crossroads rich with the heritage of Assyria, Greece, Rome, Persia and Islam and it shows that cultures are enhanced by mutual influence. They are not "museum pieces", but living proof of the freedom and dignity of a people. Worldwide mobilization proves that culture can serve as a common denominator for dialogue and peace, above and beyond political differences. Dozens of countries, the United States, Germany, Switzerland, China, have reinforced border controls on antiquities, which are trafficked to finance terrorism. British, Swedish and Turkish customs officers have seized suspicious objects. France and Japan provide expertise and support young researchers. The European Union, Austria, Flanders and others have contributed funding. Italy has set up a task force of experts and Carabinieri. The Russian Federation, whose action was decisive in driving out the extremists from Palmyra, is providing assistance to salvage the devastated museum. The most recent decision of UNESCO's Executive Board on the protection of the Syrian heritage was adopted unanimously. Despite the delays and the lack of resources, this mobilization represents hope, which can grow on the basis of clear principles. First, destruction of the heritage is part of the humanitarian crisis, and its safeguarding is inseparable from the protection of human lives. Second, Syria's heritage is indivisible: we cannot try to save Palmyra and abandon Aleppo to be demolished; we cannot fear for the Crac des Chevaliers and forget Mari. This world heritage is the heritage of all Syrians without distinction, and nobody may dispose of it as they please. That is why UNESCO rejects rushed or unilateral restoration projects, and calls for prudence, responsibility and respect for priorities in a country where conflict is raging. The priority is to act without delay to document and safeguard what is possible, wherever possible, as shown by the activities that have been going on for more than five years now - emergency measures, training, tons of equipment sent to professionals on the ground, and the damage assessment mission to Palmyra on 25 April last. Advertisement That we need to do more and better is clear. Nobody, including UNESCO, has any lessons to give. All that counts is the desire to work with everyone, focusing on the heritage, refusing to let it be exploited. It in this spirit that UNESCO is bringing together Syrian archaeological missions, and experts from Syria and the rest of the world, in Berlin, from 2 to 4 June 2016. The word "intimacy" has a broad range of meanings, referring to familiarity with a person, place, thing, or even a time in history. In this blog, I'll focus on intimacy in our personal relationships. Found in many varieties, Intimacy is a vital ingredient in parent-child relationships, to friendship, to the sexual and psychological intimacy of life-time mates. (Although many of us probably think first of sexual intimacy, my dictionary lists it in sixth place.) A common misconception is the belief that we have to know someone well to regard the relationship as intimate. Otto Frank, Ann Frank's father who discovered her diaries and had them published, realized how little he knew about his daughter. Here are his words, "I must say, I was very much surprised by the deep thoughts Anne had. It was quite a different Anne I had known as my daughter ... And my conclusion is, since I had been in very good terms with Anne, that most parents don't know really their children." Advertisement The antithesis of intimacy is the need to control the other. Often this barrier to intimacy stems from fear and can be explored -- in therapy or in other ways -- with positive results. Crises of intimacy offer fertile land for growth. This occurred in the K. family. When Ms. K returned to college, her husband objected; she was no longer available to cook dinner and care for their son after school. She encouraged her husband, who worked at home, to adjust. A year later, he realized that he'd benefitted. He'd learned to cook and liked it, and he deepened the bond with his son. On my visit to Japan about ten years ago, I heard about the cultural marital crisis. Husbands were retiring and expecting their wives to cater to them all day long. But the wives, accustomed to having their days free, objected. If they wanted to stay happily married, the husbands had to learn to take their wives' needs into account. As a result, the relationships became more intimate. We're complex beings, and there is always more to learn. Caring is more important than "knowing." Are we interested, receptive, curious? The element of surprise can fuel a sense of newness and add excitement when we're open to it. Advertisement Degrees of intimacy can be superimposed on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. On the basic level, we gratify creature comforts -- the physiological needs for food, water, warmth and rest. Next comes the need for safety and security. Farther up the ladder is our psychological need to belong and have friends and relationships and above that, are feelings of esteem, prestige and accomplishment. The top rung brings self-fulfillment and self-actualization with the achievement of our full potential, the ability to create in a given field of endeavor. In my blog of December 14, 2015 (Gratitude for Our Times (& a Peek into the Life & Times of Rose Kennedy), I compared Rose and Joseph Kennedy with the power couples of today. Rose lived in a patriarchal society and her husband, Joseph, dominated the family. Today's power couples, like the Gateses and the Zuckerbergs, have an equal, collaborative partnership as they work on their creative and philanthropic endeavors. In a conference room in a Denver hotel, oil and gas executives and lobbyists mingled over coffee with top state regulators at the annual Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC) business meeting in May. Arranged at a horseshoe shaped table facing the audience, the regulators began to introduce themselves and give updates on their states. When it came time for Nebraska's oil and gas commission head Bill Sydow to give his update, he showed just how uncomfortably close government and industry officials are during IOGCC meetings. During a story about having Thanksgiving dinner with two German exchange students, Sydow made an important confession: Advertisement "I'm talking about climate change and global warming and I'm not a skeptic, I'm a denier. And so I'm talking to these two kids and they're like 'What are you talking about?' They have never heard another side to the issue." It is troubling that someone responsible for protecting the people and environment of Nebraska would proudly proclaim themselves a denier of science and a denier of the most threatening impact of the industry he is supposed to regulate. Also troubling was what happened next: the updates moved on without a hitch. No gasps. No consternation or disapproval from the gathered industry representatives and regulators. In fact, it seemed that climate change science denial was right at home. The IOGCC and Climate Change Denial To understand why Sydow's comments were met with no concern whatsoever, it's important to understand a little bit about who was in the room that day. Advertisement Sydow was speaking at the business meeting of the IOGCC, a semi-governmental group made up of oil industry lobbyists and executives and state-level oil regulators. An investigation by Inside Climate News last April exposed the IOGCC as an unaccountable organ of the oil and gas industry, responsible for exempting fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act (the so called Halliburton Loophole) and generally acting as a "shadow lobby" for the industry. Like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the IOGCC creates model legislation, which government-sector IOGCC members take back to their state houses and work to pass into law. Even with IOGCC's status as an oil and gas "shadow lobby," one would think that outright denial of climate change science would be met with more scrutiny at a meeting funded by Exxon subsidiary XTO Energy. Exxon is currently under investigation in multiple states for a decades-long campaign to obscure the facts about climate change and promote exactly the kind of science denial expressed by Sydow. Giving deniers like Sydow a platform could have real legal consequences for the company. Much like the tobacco industry did with the dangers of smoking, Exxon stands accused of spending more than $30 million to support climate science denial groups, all while internally accepting that greenhouse gases released by fossil fuels were causing extreme damage to the climate. XTO was a "Gold Level" sponsor of the Denver IOGCC Business meeting. As Steve Horn of Desmog points out, IOGCC meetings have a long history of supporting and disseminating the misinformation about climate change that Exxon helped create. IOGCC actually passed a climate change denial resolution in the year 2000. Advertisement "IOGCC passed a climate change denial resolution stating that 'there is continuing scientific debate as to what the impact of increasing contributions of greenhouse gases would be on the climate,' even issuing a press release after it passed." IOGCC also hosted Bjorn Lomborg, a prominent climate change denier who has taken money from the Koch brothers, as a keynote speaker in 2002. However, times have changed for IOGCC since the days of trying to pass anti-science legislation. IOGCC's First Rule of Climate Change: Don't Talk About Climate Change Currently, when you ask IOGCC about climate change, you get a variety of tortured responses. Sometimes they parrot the Republican talking point "we're not scientists," as IOGCC spokesperson Carol Booth did when asked by Inside Climate News. Sometimes they call the police on you, as they did when Horn attempted to conduct an interview on the subject. In a letter to Desmog, IOGCC Executive Director Mike Smith said his organization "does not have a position on climate change" and is "not part of conversations on climate change." At the Denver meeting, regulators like Matt Lepore -- head of the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission -- seemed reticent to discuss a topic so controversial to the IOGCC's fossil fuel funders, telling the Boulder Weekly that the IOGCC meeting was not the proper "venue" to talk about climate change. Advertisement On Wednesday evening immediately after my husband, our dog, and I entered a restaurant's patio, a stranger asked if he could get advice from us about relationships, as he was having problems with his girlfriend. Over the next ten to fifteen minutes, we learned a bit of their history, including that together they had a child who was almost two, and that the man had ended up in the hospital on more than one occasion with broken ribs and other bones as the result of domestic violence. The Mayo Cliniccategorizes domestic violence as: Calls you names, insults you or puts you down Prevents you from going to work or school Stops you from seeing family members or friends Tries to control how you spend money, where you go or what you wear Acts jealous or possessive or constantly accuses you of being unfaithful Gets angry when drinking alcohol or using drugs Threatens you with violence or a weapon Hits, kicks, shoves, slaps, chokes or otherwise hurts you, your children or your pets Forces you to have sex or engage in sexual acts against your will Blames you for his or her violent behavior or tells you that you deserve it. Advertisement The National Domestic Violence Abuse Hotline says that men do not report or seek help for their abuse because of the following reasons: Men are socialized not to express their feelings or themselves as victims. Pervading beliefs or stereotypes about men being abusers, women being victims. The abuse of men is often treated less serious, or as a "joke". Many believe there are no resources or support available for male victims. The Mayo Clinic, too, reports , "If you seek help, you also might confront a shortage of resources for male victims of domestic violence. Health care providers and other contacts might not think to ask if your injuries were caused by domestic violence, making it harder to open up about abuse. You might fear that if you talk to someone about the abuse, you'll be accused of wrongdoing yourself. Remember, though, if you're being abused, you aren't to blame -- and help is available." Advertisement Places to Turn for Help: A close friend or a trusted relative or a clergy member. This person can support you and you begin to get professional help. Male Survivor helps survivors of male sexual assault and abuse with weekend recovery workshops and a wealth of resources, including therapist, support groups, and resources directories. Center Against Domestic Violence in New York City provides non-residential services such as counseling, advocacy, support groups, and legal assistance. Stop Abuse for Everyone (SAFE) in Austin, Texas, also provides individual counseling and support groups for male survivors of domestic violence. --- It came to me as I rode the Expo Line home after a business meeting in Santa Monica. The Expo Line is L.A. Metro's gateway drug. And, if we know what's good for us we should all keep experimenting to find our favorite rail or bus line. We should also all vote for Measure R2 in November. A gateway Metro drug and powerful ad for Measure R2 is what L.A. has in its newest line. The hard fought for Expo Line has, and will continue to capture, the imagination, and TAP fare, of existing and new Metro riders alike. Why? Because it works, is comfortable and goes where riders have always wanted to go. And with any luck it will introduce new riders to the other rail and bus lines that connect with Expo at all of the stations along the way. You already have the TAP card and the transfer is free. So why waste money on Lyft and Uber when Metro often gets you steps from your door almost as fast. Advertisement I know, I know, you hate waiting for the bus, right? So now that you are a Metro rider, get yourself a real time transit app like Citymapper or ask the guy standing there playing with his phone when the next bus is arriving. You mean I have to talk to someone? Yes, and it won't hurt a bit. Of course Expo is not Metro's first modern rail line. Metro's trains dates back over 25 years to the opening of the Blue Line from downtown Los Angeles to Long Beach. Since then the agency has added Green, Red, Purple and Gold as well as bus rapid transit (BRT) lines in Orange and Silver to its pallet. Put those lines together with Metro's extensive local and Rapid bus routes that go practically everywhere and we are talking a major regional transportation provider. Of course transit geeks and transit dependent Metro customers have known that for a long time. Still, it took a line without a color in its name to hook many native Angelenos as well as transplants on transit. Many of these riders never thought they would give Metro a try. But Expo to Santa Monica is special. Sometimes we get it right and that is what L.A. has done with this gateway Metro drug. Who doesn't like going to the Beach? And who doesn't like looking out the window at our mountains and sky while someone else drives? Those are rhetorical questions. It's only June but the push to get voters on board with Measure R2 is well underway. Last week it was Move LA's chance to turn up the gas. What the business-labor-environmental coalition does best is put up a big tent with various constituencies singing together for better transportation. Last week's conference was no exception with presenters focused on detailing the importance of securing the blessings and votes of seniors, the disabled and students. Advertisement Move LA's conference though was just the beginning. Continuing the Better Los Angeles Through Expanded Transit theme, on Friday I made my monthly pilgrimage to the Westside Urban Forum for a program entitled, "A $120 Billion Decision for L.A. County." The strong panel presented a focused discussion on what the November ballot initiative will mean for voters. Kicking things off and betraying his unbridled enthusiasm for Expo, event moderator Bill Parent, Associate Dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, said of the line, "It feels like I live in a real city," My takeaway from riding Expo a lot and participating in both of last week's events, Expo's opening demonstrates for voters that Metro can be trusted with their tax dollars. Metro has shown, again actually, that if you built it, they will ride. Measure R2 is polling well. Which makes sense as Metro is also showing steady progress on the Crenshaw Line, the Purple Line extension and the Regional Connector. The Initiative isn't perfect. I understand the need to sell the plan to both transit riders and drivers to secure the votes needed for passage but to spend so much on freeways sends a mixed message about our commitment to weaning ourselves off of the steering wheel. Advertisement On paper, the current initiative also contains just two percent for active transportation, a far cry from the desired 10 percent sought by active transportation advocates. Still, as Eric Bruins of Bruins Policy Solutions explained, the actual percentage for active transportation is around five and a half percent as some of the improvements like first mile last mile solutions bleed into one another. "You can't do a pie chart anymore as so many of the projects are interconnected." A couple of other takeaways: The County's 88 cities want to see more money for local return. Like any political deal, it's critical that everyone get something out of the initiative. Funding the Northern extension of the Crenshaw Line to Hollywood is a critical piece of our transit infrastructure puzzle. The options for the line include a route up San Vicente Blvd, Fairfax or La Brea. The fact that there is an existing Metro bus depot on San Vicente at Santa Monica is one arrow in quiver of the current mayor of West Hollywood's for the San Vicente route. Given the greater density on Fairfax and La Brea, I'd rather see it there. Metro's Chief Communications Officer Pauletta Tonilas described Metro's outreach about the Initiative, including 10 public meetings and 14 telephone townhalls, that garnered over 1,500 comments. Some 68 percent of those reached by phone support the initiative while 73 percent of those attending the public meetings support Measure R2. Panelist Steve Lantz, Transportation Director for the South Bay Cities Council of Governments stressed the importance of regional connectivity arguing for a single transfer ride from the South Bay to North Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley. He added that the north and south extensions of the Crenshaw Line are more important to the South Bay than a rail line through the Sepulveda Pass. That's a South Bay perspective. All of the panelists concurred that they are concerned about clutter on the November ballot with 18 or so statewide initiatives and lots more local ballot measures vying for votes. Advertisement Denny Zane of Move LA reiterated his concerns that the plan speaks too little to specific constituencies include seniors, the disabled, students and breathers (all of us I guess). "Who votes in greater numbers than seniors?" At that point, Bill Parent added that with marijuana legislation on the ballot a "high" student turnout can also be expected. Long Beach's going for its own one cent transportation sales tax in June is unfortunate as it could drive Long Beach voters away from Measure R2 in November. It has been a big month for transit riders in Los Angeles. Let's be sure to tout the success of the Gold and Expo Line extensions to November voters. And finally, let's stop deluding ourselves. Reports of transit's death are premature and autonomous vehicles are not going to challenge that proven model of transportation anytime soon. It's hard to believe it, but Barack Obama today is more popular than Ronald Reagan was at this juncture in his last year of office, in 1988. But will it help Hillary Clinton secure another term for the Democrats? A look at the evidence produces a surprising finding. Who Is The Most Popular Lame Duck President? Gallup released a poll at the end of May showing that Barack Obama had a 51 percent approval rating, against a 45 percent disapproval rating. It may not sound that impressive, but 2016 has been a better year for the president than 2015 and 2014, when his disapproval ratings were not only higher than his approval rating, but topped 50 percent. So his standing with the public is improving. Moreover, his numbers are slightly better than where Ronald Reagan, the darling of the Republican Party, was at the end of May of 1988. Gallup poll results for all lame duck presidents show "the Gipper" with a 48 percent approval rating, no doubt due to the lingering effects of the Iran-Contra Affair, and perceptions that the president either wasn't in charge, or knew something. Advertisement Still, both Obama and Reagan are dwarfed by the numbers Bill Clinton posted at the end of May of 2000. Hillary's husband was supported by 57 percent of the people in a Gallup poll, showing no ill effects from the Monica Lewinsky affair and subsequent impeachment hearings, even if he should have at least been censured. Even Clinton can't top where President Dwight D. Eisenhower was in his last year of office in May of 1960. The World War II hero sported a 65 percent approval rating from Gallup polls. It reminded me a of a quip from political science professor John Mueller, who claimed that in order for a president to remain popular, he or she must resign on day one, or become Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was a different story for Harry S. Truman. In May of 1952, he posted a dismal 27 percent approval rating. It would take until the 1992 election, and David McCullough's book, to rehabilitate the Missourian's image with the people. Similarly, President Lyndon B. Johnson's approval rating was an anemic 41 percent in May of 1968. Having been embarrassed in earlier primary contests by Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy, Johnson had announced he wouldn't run for another term, but that didn't seem to boost his standing with the public. And George W. Bush had a woeful 28% approval rating in late May of 2008. Graph developed by the author Do Lame Duck Presidential Approval Ratings Influence Elections? Both Truman and Johnson were unpopular for the status of the war that was going on while both were in their last year of office. George W. Bush was undone by poor management of the economy, wars and disaster relief. Their low numbers hurt their party nominees. Truman lost Adlai Stevenson many votes, the way LBJ was a drag on the ticket for Hubert H. Humphrey. George W. Bush probably cost John McCain the presidency in 2008. Advertisement But here's a strange finding. Despite their overwhelming popularity, Eisenhower and Bill Clinton failed to get their respective vice-presidents another term, though Richard Nixon in 1960 and Al Gore in 2000 came really close. Only Reagan was able to extend his coattails to help George H. W. Bush win a term. Already, Obama's improved numbers helped Hillary Clinton edge out Bernie Sanders, who has often criticized Obama for being insufficiently progressive. We'll see if Obama can duplicate Reagan's feat in November of 2016. The 69th World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva demonstrated once again the central role of the World Health Organization (WHO) in global health. Whether one focuses on WHO's global action plan on antimicrobial resistance or the international response to health emergencies like the Ebola and Zika viruses, there were countless venues for official and unofficial decisions and discussions on every health issue under the sun. One of the unique benefits of discussions during the annual Assembly that one does not get in other hubs of public health is the depth of influence and expertise, from absolutely every corner of the globe, present at WHA in Geneva. With 194 Member States, WHO is able to bring together cabinet ministers for health, senior officials, and multitudes of experts from governments in addition to health leaders and staff from nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions, the media, and the private sector. The annual gathering plays a pivotal role in establishing the global health agenda. At this WHA, which took place May 23-28, there was strong support for the reform of WHO's work in health emergency management. The new health emergencies program represents a fundamental development that complements WHO's traditional technical and normative roles with new operational capabilities for work in outbreaks and humanitarian emergencies. The new program is designed to bring speed and predictability to WHO's emergency work, using an all-hazards approach, promoting collective action, and encompassing preparedness, readiness, response, and early recovery activities. That requires money, and the Assembly agreed to increase the 2016-2017 budget by $160 million through voluntary contributions (some of which already have been pledged). Advertisement The Ebola crisis in West Africa made it clear that countries need to greatly enhance their capacities to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks. The globally accepted, fundamental framework to improve global health security is WHO's International Health Regulations (IHR). Member States supported a new, voluntary tool for objective, external evaluations of IHR implementation, and there is now an alliance of governments and nongovernmental organizations supporting the process so that countries will be able to establish prioritized plans to improve their capabilities. Coupled with other efforts, such as WHO's Contingency Fund for Emergencies and the new Pandemic Emergency Facility led by the World Bank, the effort to improve global health security is making significant progress - with much, much more to be done. It is also clear that there now is much greater recognition that health efforts must fit into broader, multi-sectoral, multi-stakeholder approaches. This was the first WHA since UN Member States approved the Sustainable Development Goals, and the role of the health sector in achieving these goals and targets - along with the need to employ a holistic approach that breaks down institutional silos - was an underlying theme throughout the week. Featured speaker Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, highlighted the linkages between health and climate change. Every WHA has a few particularly contentious issues that require extended negotiations, and this was no exception. After years of negotiations, agreement was finally reached on a framework for WHO to engage with non-state actors that is intended to avoid conflicts of interest while allowing WHO to work with many other institutions. A resolution on nutrition and guidance on the promotion of foods for infants and young children generated controversy, in part because of process and technical issues, but compromise language was accepted in the end. Advertisement Next year's Assembly will select a new WHO Director-General to succeed Dr. Margaret Chan, and this WHA took steps to increase transparency around the upcoming election. These include webcasting live, in all official languages, the candidates' forum planned for November 2016. I've always believed that Americans tend to like wines whose name they can easily pronounce, like Bolla Soave and Cloudy Bay, and shy away from those they cannot, like Chassagne-Montrachet and Forstmeister Geltz-Zilliken. But that may only begin to describe the allure of the wines of La Crema, whose aficionados have a wide range of wines to choose from under that mellifluous name, including nearly 20 different Pinot Noirs and 10 Chardonnays, along with Pinot Gris and Viognier. It's become a matter of trust, of course. If a person finds both the La Crema Pinot Noir and Chardonnay to his liking, he is likely to find others in the line intriguing, although prices range from $23 to $90. At dinner at Sea Grill restaurant in New York, I asked La Crema's winemaker, Elizabeth Grant-Douglas (below), why the winery makes so many iterations (that's the wine geek word for different bottlings of the same varietal) of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. "La Crema has built a broad reputation for its most popular wines, so people have come to trust the label," she said, "and my job is to maintain a La Crema style in all our wines--not too buttery, not too much oak, letting the fruit shine through--while discovering how our different vineyards can produce nuances." Advertisement Thus, a Green Valley Pinot Noir 2013 ($65), which comes from the coolest region of Sonoma, has "firm structure and natural balance;" Shell Ridge Pinot Noir 2012 ($50) is "brilliant, rugged, rich," deriving flavor from the "ancient sea shells in the soils of Shell Ridge;" Chardonnay Nine Barrel 2012 ($70) is "an exceptional expression of a Russian River Valley Chardonnay, made from nine of the highest quality barrels." La Crema also has holdings in other parts of California as well as in Oregon's Willamette Valley. Grant-Douglas, who grew up in Niagara Falls, Canada, and graduated from Brock University's Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture program, is expert in dealing with the vagaries of cold terroirs, even making so-called ice wine, whose grapes literally freeze on the vine. She joined La Crema as an enologist in 2001, was named Winemaker in 2010, and since 2013 has been Director of Wine making for the company. "They wanted someone who understood cold climates," she said, "and when I got to La Crema I worked the nigh shift during the harvest as the lowest man on the totem pole. They didn't hire me for my name; I think it was more for my strong back and boundless enthusiasm." Nor was she hired to make wines that were expressions of her own style. "They didn't hire me to make an `Elizabeth wine' and I wouldn't want to," she said. "Matter of fact, I believe that, if a winemaker makes a Pinot Noir or Chardonnay that shows his hand in it, that's not a good thing. Sometimes you have to wonder how much Pinot Noir is actually in some of those bottles, because they don't taste much like Pinot Noir. They taste more like Zinfandel or Syrah." One of the ways Grant-Douglas "finalizes" a wine is to take a sample bottle home with her to have with dinner, insisting, "If the wine doesn't go well with food, it's not a good wine." Advertisement The winery, which has moved around a bit over four decades, is this summer opening The La Crema Russian River Estate, spread over 260 acres of Saralee's Vineyard. Founded in 1979, later purchased by the Jess Jackson family. Despite the amount of wine La Crema produces, most are made in small-batch appellations of between 2,000 and 6,000 cases. The treatment of the newly harvested grapes is crucial to achieving a certain delicacy and the creamy texture of La Crema's wines. In the case of Saralee's Vineyard Chardonnay 2013, the grapes "are hand harvested and 100% whole cluster pressed. After one night of cold settling, they are racked in French Open barrels for fermentation, then inoculated with the house strain of malolactic culture and stirred once every three weeks to enhance richness of mouth feel. The juices are racked only once before bottling." With the Saralee's Vineyard Pinot Noir 2013, "seventy percent whole berries go into open top tank of fermentation, with juice cold-soaked for 3 to 5 days and carefully hand punched three times each day" to achieve the best extraction. The free run wine is then transferred to 100% French oak barrels, where it is aged for 10 months. Arrival - SWA@LAX, Oil on duralar, mounted on board, 6 x 8 inches Artist Mary-Austin Klein paints landscapes throughout the Southwest--both natural and man-made--that hint at the latent history of geologic features or residual effects of past human actions. An artist who likes explore, wander and camp her way through remote places, Klein records the landscape and its features with striking fidelity. John Seed Interviews Mary-Austin Klein Mary-Austin Klein How did growing up in San Bernardino and Palos Verdes shape you and your vision of California? Both locations had/have an abundance of open space and natural beauty. One with a back drop of the San Bernardino Mountains with miles of orange groves in the foreground, while the other features the Pacific Ocean with miles of sandy beaches ringing the South Bay. I was an outdoors kid, a tomboy, and through osmosis, the surrounding landscape grounded me, giving me a deep sense of place, a connectedness to the earth. In difficult teenage years, as a typical self-involved young adult, I became aware that the coastal beauty of Palos Verdes Peninsula had the power to move my mind to an elevated place. When feeling distressed, it never failed to give me solace. Advertisement Salton Sea Morning, Oil on duralar, 12 x 36 inches Tell me about your studies at Otis? Original focus was to be architectural with a degree from their Environmental Design department. After the first year I followed my true desire to move into the Fine Arts. My paintings went from small scaled to huge. I discovered that I had a wealth of stamina, competitiveness and perfectionism and poured that into all of my projects be it sculpture, video arts or painting. Moving from Palos Verdes to Mcarthur Park to attend Otis/Parsons was a huge cultural shock. It was fantastic to be forced to find beauty in the urbanity of a decrepit inner-city district of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles River was a source of many projects and I spent much of the four years at Otis documenting the concrete channel and it's epic bridges in still photography, video, charcoal drawings and oil paint. Saline Valley, Palm Spring, Oil on duralar, mounted on board, 24 x 36 inches Do you see your art as "realist" or do you deviate from what your eyes actually see? Yes, to a point. First landscape work was more idealistic, dreaming of the unspoiled California that William Wendt painted, leaving out imperfections of man's impact on the landscape. Now I am more of a realist. "Flaws" of wind turbines and developments are now often included in my compositions. How do you choose locations and images? Locations are usually chosen via an aimless wandering. The randomness of discovery creates an energy that comes through in the painting. I love serendipity, the emotional resonance that comes from exploration and chance. Choosing an image is the hardest part of my process. The tendency to be over analytical can be overwhelming at times. Deciding which image has a dynamic force, which ones bring peacefulness, things that cannot be expressed by me with words, only in paint. Advertisement California Aqueduct, Hesperia, Oil on duralar mounted on board, 13 x 13 inches What methods and materials do you use? A 1996 4 x 4 Toyota Land Cruiser customized and outfitted for remote camping in the desert. Digital camera. Once in the studio, numerous printouts, then the drawing of the chosen image. Oil paint is applied on the seductive surface of Dur-a-Lar, a modern day, archival vellum that many miniaturist use. It is smooth yet has a tooth to hold the paint without any imperfections. Tiny brushes for detail, large watercolor wash brushes for the skies. Palm Springs Sky I, Oil on duralar, mounted on board, 8 x 8 inches What attracts you to the desert? Silence, vastness of space, huge skies, the sense of scale - how small we really are on earth. I love finding beauty in the overlooked and the more remote locations. The purity of the light is in the desert regions, the colors of the Mojave and the strong mountain forms with a geometry to their erosion never fail to inspire. Nor does the power felt in the timeline of geographical events that created this desert beauty. Do you prefer to work in small scale? Mostly. Smaller works pull you into the scene, it's more intimate way of looking at art. The sense of controlling a vastness of space into a compressed frame is a much different experience compared to larger works. Interstate 10, San Gorgonio Pass, Oil and duralar, mounted on board, 6 x 8 inches What are your interests outside of art? Driving sporty cars, world travel, my new road bike, and reading a good mystery. Our English black lab is quite spoiled with walks, beach trip and joining us on our camping trips. The Stone Malone Gallery in Hollywood is running a timely art show before the California Primary on June 7th, featuring some of L.A.'s top street artists, including Shepard Fairey, Teachr, Free Humanity, Lydia Emily, The PSA Crew, and more. The art show, "Where Else But The Streets," runs through Saturday June 4th at Stone Malone Art Gallery on 7619 1/2 Melrose Ave. When the show opened this weekend, sticker fans lined up for the gift bags of exclusive collectors sticker gift bags for the first fifteen in line. The art opening was also a book release party for the new photo book Where Else But The Streets: A Street Art Dossier, which features Shepard Fairey, Banksy, Mr. Brainwash, Teachr, Free Humanity, Lydia Emily, and other L.A. political street artists. Advertisement Shepard Fairey exhibited new works along the theme of campaign finance reform. This art show originated through the film PAY 2 PLAY: Democracy's High Stakes, about how outsiders are fighting to get money out of politics. Street art is used in the film as a metaphor for taking to the streets to use your voice. This piece by Free Humanity, "LandObama," cites Lando Calrissian's infamous realization over President Obama's visage. This was originally on the streets just before Bin Laden was killed, at a time when Obama's mojo was at an all-time low. This art appears in the film PAY 2 PLAY as well as the book Where Else But The Streets. Even the right-wing street artist Sabo shares a distaste for Donald Trump. Teachr's art of his children sweeping up the pay-to-play system appears in the book. (Teachr has a solo show of his own this weekend Friday and Saturday at Fairfax High School on Melrose) Self-effacing street artist Morley is known at the Stone Malone Gallery as a popular favorite. Activist Comics, a street series from The PSA Crew, were displayed on canvas for the first time. Archival prints of photos from the book are also on display. This picture of Alec Monopoly painting Jack Nicholson in lakers colors overlooks the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Advertisement It was quite a happening turnout throughout the night, with music provided by Proper Propaganda of Radio Free Brooklyn. The Stamp Stampede was represented at the show, where partygoers could use their money as speech by stamping "NOT 2 B USED 4 BRIBING POLITICIANS" and spreading a message like street art does. During daytime hours of the show, these high schoolers were overheard discussing what the Supreme Court artwork meant, with one fellow telling his friends who the Koch Brothers and Clarence Thomas are. Photo credit: Prestonbot/Compfight Last year, I was in Cameroon (central Africa) for a series of seminars on entrepreneurship and small business. While in Yaounde -- the capital city -- my host and I made a quick stop at a boulangerie (bread and snack shop). I had bought a few snacks and was quite shocked to realize I'd been charged for the plastic shopping bag! Seriously? In my country, Nigeria, shopping bags are free! Plastic shopping bags are usually a complementary item you get from every shop, vendor, pharmacy or grocery you buy stuff from. But there I was in Yaounde, ready to pay 100 CFA Francs (about 10 US cents) for a plastic shopping bag that's supposed to be free -- at least, to my mind. Advertisement You see, while plastic shopping bags are popular around the world as a cheap and effective means of transporting small items, my findings reveal - quite surprisingly - that Africa is making more progress than others in getting rid of plastic shopping bags, and replacing them with more sustainable and environment-friendly alternatives. More African countries are banning plastic shopping bags Over 15 African countries have either banned or taxed the use of plastic shopping bags. Rwanda was one of the first countries in the world to ban plastic shopping bags. In 2004, Rwanda prohibited shops from giving away plastic bags to their customers. The Rwandan government introduced tax breaks that encourage companies to recycle, instead of manufacture, plastic bags -- thereby creating a totally new market for environment-friendly bags. Eritrea banned the use of plastic bags in 2005. Tanzania introduced a nationwide ban on plastic bags in 2006. In 2007, Uganda introduced legislation to ban the sale of lightweight plastic bags under 30m thick and taxes thicker bags at a punitive rate of 120 percent. Botswana introduced a levy on plastic bags that became effective in 2007. This led to many retailers charging a fee for plastic bags, further discouraging consumers from using them. Advertisement In January 2011, Kenya banned the manufacture and import of plastic bags. In 2013, Mauritania banned the use, manufacture, and import of plastic bags. In that country, plastic bag manufacturers could be jailed for up to a year. In South Africa, lightweight plastic bags are banned and thicker plastic bags are taxed. In April 2015, Senegal's National Assembly unanimously prohibited the production, importation, possession and use of plastic shopping bags. Cameroon, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Ethiopia and Malawi are other African countries that have limited the use, adopted or announced bans on the use of plastic shopping bags. Alas, the developed world is learning from Africa While several African countries started banning plastic bags over a decade ago, Europe and North America have only just started making serious moves to ban and reduce the use of plastic shopping bags. France In May 2015, the National Assembly of France approved a bill that would ban plastic bags in all supermarkets and stores, starting from January 1, 2016. Advertisement The European Union In April 2015, The European Parliament approved rules to clamp down on the use of flimsy plastic bags, removing the last major hurdle to pass the legislation. It would require member states to reduce the use of plastic shopping bags by some 80 percent by 2025. The United States The U.S. is seeing most bans imposed on local levels, by cities and counties. Over 100 counties and municipalities have enacted ordinances either imposing a fee on plastic bags or banning them outright. The State of California passed a law prohibiting their use in September 2014. Why are plastic shopping bags a threat to Africa, and the world? For decades, shoppers and businesses have relied on lightweight plastic bags as a strong, cheap, and effective means of transporting items. However, this popular item actually does more harm than good to humans and the environment. Here are some of the biggest reasons why countries around the world should be more serious about putting an end to the production and use of plastic nylon bags. Long-term pollution Plastic shopping bags are made from high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic. Because this substance does not biodegrade, plastic bags can last up to 1,000 years in the environment as garbage. Apart from the eyesore that waste plastic bags are, they are a common cause of clogged drainage systems, sewers, and waterways. In many cities around the world - especially in developing countries - clogged drains are major breeding grounds for mosquitoes which cause malaria; a disease that killed over half a million people last year. Advertisement Threat to livestock and wildlife According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, over 100,000 whales, seals, and turtles die every year as a result of eating, or getting trapped by, waste plastic bags which find their way to the open seas and oceans. In Mauritania (North Africa), more than 70 percent of cattle and sheep that die in the capital city, Nouakchott, die from eating plastic bags. This type of economic loss is common in many parts of Africa where livestock often graze in areas with significant waste plastic bags. Strong climate change impacts Plastic bags are made from derivatives of petroleum. As you know, petroleum-related activities are a major contributor of carbon emissions which harm the environment and continue to have global climate change impacts. If the world's demand for plastic shopping bags continues to increase, it will surely have a direct effect on the production and demand for petroleum now and in the future. This, of course, is bad news for the world's climate. Are you ready for the end of plastic shopping bags? If we really care about the earth, it's high time we started breaking our attachment to plastic shopping bags. In parts of Africa where they have been banned, shopping bags made from paper, cloth, jute, and raffia have turned out to be excellent 'earth-friendly' alternatives. Time to Honor San Francisco's Controversial Literary Son, Jack London By Jonah Raskin Just weeks after his shocking death, The San Francisco Examiner ran an article, on December 14, 1916, entitled "The Mysterious Disease that Killed Jack London." The author, Dr. William Brady, noted that, "Jack London, the most original and forceful, novelist of our day, who has just died suddenly at the age of 40, is stated to have been the victim of uremic poisoning." In fact, four doctors gathered at London's deathbed. One of them, Alan Thomson, who lived in Sonoma County not far from London's Beauty Ranch, concluded that the author died of an overdose of morphine, which he had injected into his own veins to keep his pain at bay. Thomson claimed that when he arrived on the scene he found a piece of paper on the night table that contained calculations for a lethal dose of the drug. When three other doctors including London's personal physician arrived the story promptly changed. Advertisement A few scholars have suggested there might have been a cover-up. Jack London's mysterious death has never been solved, though that hasn't prevented fans from snapping up his books and turning him into a literary god. One might say that Jack London is busting out all over and more so now than ever before. On the 100th anniversary of his death, on November 22, 1916 at the age of 40, faithful readers are celebrating his dramatic life and his best selling books, including The Call of the Wild, and The Sea-Wolf, which begins in San Francisco Bay and that features a local writer and sissy named Humphrey van Weyden who is reborn a he-man on a schooner in the Pacific. London aficionados are coming out of the woodwork every which way: from Oakland, which boasts Jack London Square, to Glen Ellen, home of the Jack London State Historic Park, and all the way up to Dawson City in the Yukon, where as a young man he prospected for gold and collected yarns he turned into stories about life and death itself. The only major place on the London map that hasn't jumped on the bandwagon is San Francisco. That's surprising since he arrived in the world, near the corner of Third Street and Brannon in a house that burned down in the 1906 earthquake and fire. London himself documented that cataclysmic event with black-and-white photos he took with an early Kodak. Advertisement He also wrote about the 1906 earthquake and fire in a riveting account entitled "The Story of an Eyewitness" that was published in Collier's magazine and that ends on a note of hope: "The bankers and business men are already set about making preparations to rebuild San Francisco." The city of San Francisco has what no other place has: a plaque that reads, "To mark the birthplace of the noted author, Jack London, January 12, 1876." The California Historical Society placed it there in 1953. On the website "Found SF," historian John Trinkl wrote that, as a "life long socialist, London would find it ironic that his birthplace is now a bank." He added, "but then his whole life is full of contradictions." London had a contradictory relationship with San Francisco. While he loved its nightlife and its restaurants, he often described it as a dark, menacing place that gave him nightmares. In turn, the city has had a complex relationship with its famous literary son. In 1901, when he first went to work for The Examiner, the paper hailed him as a "young man who has made fame for himself and California in the world of letters." London's first piece for The Examiner extolled the power of the battleship, the S.S. Oregon, which had just steamed through the Golden Gate. "Ah, yes, tomorrow, when the lion shall lie down with the lamb, we shall beat our Oregons into automobiles and electric railways; but today it were well that we look to our Oregons and see that they may be many and efficient," he wrote. Advertisement Part Bernie Sanders and part Donald Trump, Jack London called himself a socialist, but he also wanted to keep immigrants out of the United States and wrote about "The Yellow Peril," as he called it, and warned about the rising power of China and Japan and the threat to the hegemony of the U.S.A. After London's death, his body was sent by railroad from Glen Ellen to Oakland for cremation and a funeral ceremony attended by close friends and family. Then, George Sterling, the poet and lifelong friend, brought London's ashes back to Glen Ellen where they were interred in the ground, a sacred spot for readers of his books. No memorial service was held in San Francisco, the city that birthed him and that helped to shape his development as a writer. Curiously, the City by the Bay consigned London to a kind of literary limbo from which he has never entirely escaped. Unwilling to grant him unconditional love, and at the same time unable and unwilling to ignore him completely, San Francisco has held him at a distance and yet never disowned him. In an obituary published in 1917 in The Masses, the San Francisco literary luminary, Anna Strunsky, compared London to Emile Zola and described him as a genius. She also observed that, "He believed in the inferiority of certain races and talked of the Anglo-Saxon people as the salt of the earth and inclined to believe in the biological inferiority of woman to man." That perspective, which has never gone away, has counted against him. Advertisement Then, in 1937, Irving Stone, in a fictionalized biography titled Sailor on Horseback, argued that London committed suicide. To this day, scholars are still hard at work combatting Stone's allegations and arguing that London died of natural causes. The most recent biography by Earle Labor -- who has devoted his entire life and career to the rehabilitation of the author of The Call of the Wild, Martin Eden and 50 or so other books -- casts London as an American original who deserves to be included in the Pantheon of great writers. Perhaps so, but that's an uphill battle. As a Californian, a socialist and a popular writer for slick magazines, the East Coast literary elite has never accepted London as a major writer on a par with Henry James and Edith Wharton. By the time that London arrived on the scene at the end of the 1890s -- and wrote for San Francisco's premiere literary magazine, The Overland Monthly -- the city had already fallen in love with Mark Twain. Twain had fallen in love with the city by the Bay. In 1864, he noted that the San Francisco's Occidental Hotel, where he slept and ate, was "Heaven on the half shell." Oysters were Twain's not so secret vice. London never saw San Francisco as a heavenly place. After all, he was born on a back street and out-of-wedlock to a single mother who was at her wit's end when her son arrived in the world. London's biological father, William Henry Chaney, abandoned his common-law wife, Flora Wellman, after she refused to heed his command to abort the child she was carrying, and whom she named John Griffith Chaney. Advertisement One might call Jack London a "bastard son of San Francisco." A sensational account of the events that took place between Wellman and Chaney near Brannon and Third Street was published in The Chronicle on June 4, 1875. The Chronicle also carried an announcement of her son's arrival in the world on January 12, 1876, though the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed the record of his birth, along with thousands of others. When Flora married a Civil War veteran named John London, she promptly renamed her son. Before long, he dubbed himself Jack as a way to declare his independence from his stepfather. For his entire life, he published under the name Jack London and achieved fame early on with short stories about the arctic. Later, he would immortalize the tropics. He went from one extreme to the other and not surprisingly wrote, "I always was an extremist." Still, for all his ambivalence about San Francisco, London wrote some of his best work about the city's geography, history, culture and its colorful characters especially in and around the Bay itself. Tales of the Fish Patrol, published in 1905 the same year that he gave an incendiary talk titled "Revolution," celebrates the men on both sides of the law who made a living as fishermen, pirates and law enforcement officials. Perhaps the best place to begin to explore London's San Francisco would be Martin Eden, the 1909 novel about a sailor who, like London himself, becomes a famous author. Curiously, Martin Eden, the anti-hero, commits suicide by going out to sea and sinking beneath the waves. London also wrote about his own experiences in and around San Francisco in the memoir John Barleycorn, in which he recounts his bouts with the demon alcohol. In two brilliant short stories, "The Apostate," which is dark and menacing, and "South of the Slot," which is charming and upbeat, he created two memorable Bay Area characters: the boy Johnny who rebels against his mother and runs away from home; and Freddie Drummond, the Berkeley professor, who rejects his academic career and his socialite fiance, travels across the Bay, joins the revolution and runs off with a socialist. Advertisement "Old San Francisco, which is the San Francisco of only the other day, the day before the Earthquake, was divided midway by the Slot," London wrote in the opening sentence of "South of the Slot." A writer who was profoundly divided, he drew upon his own emotional and psychological divisions to make his art. Moreover, he explored the divided nature and personality of the city itself. On the 100th anniversary of his death, young readers who would like to learn about Jack London might turn to his San Francisco-inspired works. Die-hard fans might reread the books that brought them joy as youngsters. The Lyceum of Greek Women opened a new chapter in Montreal with the aim of engaging the Greek women of the Canadian metropolis in its ongoing efforts to showcase Greek traditional arts and crafts, brandish the Hellenic civilization and promote women's social issues. Traditional Greek cooking courses, embroidery lessons, knitting demonstrations, arts and crafts exhibitions, Byzantine iconography seminars and lectures by distinguished women from Quebec and Greece will be a part of the Lyceum of Greek Women of Montreal's varied activities. The inauguration ceremony of the Lyceum of Greek Women of Montreal, in cooperation with the Hellenic Community of Greater Montreal, took place last Sunday, at the Hellenic Community Centre, "Adrian Maris," in Montreal, where the guest speaker was Ms. Helene David, Minister of Culture and Communications and Higher Education of Quebec and M.N.A. for Outremont. The Lyceum Club of Greek Women (official Greek title) was founded in 1911 by the pioneer of the Greek feminist movement, Kalliroi Parren, who, through her militant literature and the pages of the "Newspaper of the Ladies," waged a battle against illiteracy among Greek women. She founded Sunday schools, evening schools and training schools through which she supported Greek women's rights to education and work. Today, the Lyceum of Greek Women preserves its dynamic presence, fighting for the promotion of Greek traditions and encouraging widespread volunteering while attempting to connect its lengthy experience in social activity and the management of cultural heritage with scientific knowledge. It organizes lessons of traditional dance, percussion, choir, painting and Greek language for Greek women who live abroad as well as for foreign women who live and work in Greece. At the same time, it holds seminars, prints publications and offers dance group performances in Greece and abroad. The activities of the Lyceum Club of Greek Women are not limited to the region of Athens but are prevalent around the entire country as the Lyceum has 51 national branches, one in every regional department of Greece, as well as 16 offices abroad, with one common aim: preserving and promoting Greece's cultural heritage. The Montreal branch will focus, primarily, on promoting the Hellenic culture at large by organizing lectures on Greek traditions and major women's issues. Lessons will be given on the classic Greek arts of embroidery, knitting, cooking and baking while exhibitions will be held at Montreal's major museums showcasing traditional Greek crafts. In addition, cultural events depicting Hellenic civilization in a most progressive way will be held, demonstrating Greek traditions among Quebec society. Other marquee evenings will be scheduled, such as the joining of the Lyceum Club of Athens' famed dancers in co-operation with Montreal's local Greek dance troupes. Right before the 2014 holiday season while in the final throes of my PhD program I was offered a job as an Assistant Professor at the College of Charleston, a mid-sized, public institution with a liberal arts focus and a beautiful campus on South Carolina's coastline. Not long after accepting the position, two major events took place in Charleston: the filmed shooting of Walter Scott, an unarmed black man by a police officer, and the now infamous killings at the Mother Emanuel Church by Dylann Roof, an individual who posed with the Confederate flag and told friends he wanted to start a "race war." While both events were significant, the latter was highly publicized in the news media. Nine people were murdered and the racial motivations of the killer were unambiguous. As I watched these tragedies unfold and worked to complete my dissertation, I thought about how these events would alter my approach to teaching Political Psychology, a course that examines the psychological underpinnings of political attitudes and behavior of the electorate. I had taught it before and the syllabus always included a paper on how exposure to the Confederate flag subconsciously moved racial thoughts to the front of one's mind, in turn affecting willingness to vote for Barack Obama (an example of a cognitive paradigm known as "priming".) Advertisement In the subsequent months I wrestled with the following question: Should I take the Confederate flag paper off the syllabus? I wasn't sure if it was necessary to throw one of the only empirical papers on this topic at the students shortly after this national debate. But could I in good conscious deny these adult students an incisive discussion of something that was national news, but was also central to understanding political psychology as it is currently studied? As I was thinking about this issue, the previous tenant's mail arrived at my new doorstep in Charleston. Sitting atop the pile was the August 2015 edition of The Atlantic, featuring the article, "The Coddling of the American Mind" by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Many of us know the argument by now: today's college student is overly protected from information that may come off as offensive. The authors argue that this practice is hindering the educational process and the ability of students to handle contentious opinions that make them uncomfortable. As an ideology researcher and follower of Haidt's work, I read the piece closely. Moreover, as someone who studied under Charles Taber, a leading expert on motivated reasoning, I took seriously the article's points about the consequences of avoiding opposing opinions. Advertisement Between the atrocities in Charleston and the points raised in The Atlantic, it felt as if conflicting societal pressures were acting upon me; race needed to be addressed this semester, but when it was, it couldn't be done in a way that prevented students from airing tendentious thoughts. This can be difficult in any class, but the murders that took place so close to our campus made this especially challenging. In the end, I made two decisions. I kept the Confederate flag study on the syllabus and decided that the course would have a stronger element of social science literacy than it had in the past. That is, the course would no longer simply present existing research; the students would now be responsible for critiquing the research presented to them so that they could fully grasp a basic tenet of social science: no study is perfect and we are required to find faults in academic papers, replicate studies and devise superior studies to see which theories can withstand scrutiny. These ideas had always been addressed in my courses previously, but now they would be intentionally emphasized. In this class environment, it would be unacceptable to deny the findings of studies simply because you didn't agree with them no matter what the findings were. Instead, the study's design and interpretation had to be critiqued appropriately. Moreover, if a study came to a particular conclusion about the role of race in politics, it would be emphasized that all studies are flawed, can be improved and need replication (again, no matter what the findings were). This would simultaneously address race in politics and encourage dissenting opinions in the form of scholarly criticism. Empirical, quantitative research is hard to grasp for many undergraduates; it is complicated and technical. The idea that researchers can randomly assign subjects to control and treatment conditions in order to draw causal claims (which race research often does) can easily be lost on students without proper explanation. However, after weeks of slowly walking through research studies, many of the students did seem to understand the difference between correlation and causation, the basics of measurement and the strengths and weaknesses of various research designs. And perhaps most surprisingly, the obvious turning point was the day we discussed the Confederate flag study that I nearly removed from the syllabus. Perhaps it was due to the personal salience of the subject, but the students clearly understood the study's design and its conclusions about how the flag affected racial thoughts implicitly; critiques and counter-critiques from students flourished. The atmosphere felt comfortable- normal even- and this is the point: critiquing the work of others, including work on race, is normal and justified in academia. The students highlighted the study's strengths and weaknesses effectively and attempted an alternative explanation for why the authors may have found some of their results. In the end, it was the best "discussion" we had that semester. Science literacy is critical, especially in our polarized climate. Our students- including those at liberal arts institutions- need to be able to formulate and assess arguments in light of empirical evidence while understanding that the results of a single study do not indicate the absolute end of a debate or "proven" state of the world. For some, this avenue is a departure from the in-depth discussions inspired by personal anecdotes, qualitative observation and normative ideas. While I maintain that these talks are imperative for exposing students to different perspectives, and would never devalue the discussions (I myself loved them as an undergrad), the point is that empiricism should supplement those talks and add another avenue for understanding the effect race (or any difficult topic) has in society. Quantitative research is not the only route to knowledge or intelligence. In comparison to the aforementioned reflective discussions, it does not teach us to feel, nor does it teach us the real, lived perspectives of individuals. However, it may have social and pedagogical benefits that have gone unappreciated. Research design and critique provides a different way to approach difficult topics, and if this type of learning eases students into an environment of diversified thought and develops their ability to confront evidence that challenges prior beliefs (whatever those beliefs are), we should think more seriously about incorporating it into our curricula. Nicholas Wolterstorff is the Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University. He is the former President of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association and the author of numerous books and articles, including Justice in Love and Lament for a Son (books mentioned below). Professor Wolterstorff recently spoke on love at the 5th annual conference for the Center for Christian Thought at Biola University. Hess: What is love? Wolterstorff: The English word 'love' and counterpart words in other languages cover a number of different phenomena. There is, for example, the love of attraction, when you say, "I just love Beethoven's late string quartets" or something like that. It's what the classical Greeks called Eros. There's the love of attachment. You're attached to this cat because it showed up one winter morning on your doorstep and you took it in. It's not the finest cat; your neighbors have a finer cat. So, it's not attraction - love of attraction is attracted to the worth of something, to the worth of the Beethoven string quartet. So, love of attachment is somehow mysterious. Advertisement There's the love of friendship. The ancient Greek word for that is phileo. There's also love as benevolence, which consists of seeking to advance the good of the other person. So, there isn't any one thing called love. I have come to think that, for any clarity on the matter, it's really important to understand what kind of love you're talking about. H: How is agape love distinct from the other types of love? W: Jesus spoke Aramaic. The New Testament is in Greek. So when the Gospel writers report what Jesus said, they take it from the Aramaic to the Greek. When Jesus gives the two love commands (Love God above all, and your neighbor as yourself), the Greek word is agape. So, it's a question of what sort of love Jesus has in mind there. There isn't really any relevant context. Jesus' interlocutors come to him in order to catch him. They say, "Master, Rabbi, what is the greatest commandment in the Torah?" Obviously, they're expecting him to say something so they can say, "Gotcha, that's not the greatest!" But, in fact, they can see that he got it right. So, the question is, what did he mean? I think that most commentators interpret Jesus as meaning benevolence. Seeking the good of the other person. H: This fits in with your ethical system, agapism. Would you briefly explain the view and compare it to another ethical system? Advertisement W: What I call agapism, and what other people call agapism, is an ethical orientation both in practice and theory. It takes its bearings from agape in the New Testament. And it's to be contrasted then with utilitarianism, which does not take its bearings from what is said about love in the New Testament, with egoism, with eudaimonism, and so forth. It's somewhat less sharply defined, I suppose, than utilitarianism and eudaimonism, since those come out of philosophical literature, whereas agapism stems from biblical literature which is not philosophically crafted, obviously. H: Would you give a specific contrast between agapism and another ethical system, say, ethical egoism? W: Agapism says seek the good of the other person in some sense and we can talk about what the good of the other person consists of. Egoism says to seek your own good and only your own good. Well, that's not quite right - seek the other good insofar as it advances your good. There's a very sharp contrast between those two. H: Regarding the love commands, I'm particularly interested in love for one's neighbor. What does Jesus mean when he says to love your neighbor as yourself? What does that look like? W: I think Jesus is assuming that we do love ourselves and that that's okay. There can be perverted forms of self-love, of course. There have been some writers in the Christian tradition (for example, the Swedish-Lutheran bishop Nygren) who think that self-love is just out, forbidden. I have no idea how they proposes to interpret "Love your neighbor as yourself." I interpret Jesus, who is quoting Leviticus, as saying, "You love yourself, right? Ok, now love your neighbor too." Just as Jesus and the Torah are saying it: just as you seek your own good, also seek the good of your neighbor. Advertisement H: But who is our neighbor? In your book Justice in Love, you talk about the view that everyone is our neighbor, all seven billion of us human beings. Isn't it physically impossible to love seven billion people as you love yourself? W: There's a wonderful book, Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson. Brian has been working on death sentence cases, and he uses the word 'proximity.' I think the neighbor is the proximate one. Whatever in-group or out-group the neighbor belongs to is the one who is near you. Sometimes we ought to seek out proximity. It's the one you find yourself engaged with, like sometimes you should reach out your engagements. So it's not the seven billion. It's someone you are in some way engaged with. H: Wouldn't that tend to be people of like mind or like group? W: No, because the explanation of the command starts with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Presumably the man in the ditch is a Jew. The Samaritans and the Jews dislike each other intensely. So it means neighbor, ignoring whether he's an in-group with respect to you or an out-group with respect to you. Forget about all that. You've been taught to hate Germans or whatever. Ignore that. If he's a person who's proximate, love him. H: But what about globalism? I can give money to an organization that's going to help someone in China or Africa. Doesn't that make everyone our proximate neighbor? W: I have two things to say about that. For one thing, I would say that those who are immediately around you - your family, your friends, the people literally in your neighborhood - have a certain sort of priority. Then beyond that it seems to me we have no choice but to set certain priorities. Advertisement H: Because of physical limitations? W: Yeah. But the people in our immediate vicinity have priority. I'm reminded of a Dickens character: Mrs. Jollybee in Bleackhouse. She is devoted to a missions cause in Africa. Her own children are starving, malnourished, they're fighting with each other, she's paying no attention to them, but she's got her eyes fixed on the poor Africans. Now that's a profoundly disordered kind of neighbor love. It's okay for her to care about the mission in Africa, but first she should take care of her own family. H: This leads directly to my next question. In the command to love your neighbor as yourself, how can you give preferential treatment to your kin, for example, when your kin is your neighbor just as much as the person living next to you is your neighbor? Is it permissible for you to give extra weight to the needs of your own children over the needs of the stranger? W: I think so. Jesus doesn't say that we shouldn't set any priorities. He never says to treat everybody absolutely equally. I don't know that I have a terribly good argument for it. But there seems to be something profoundly disordered about Mrs. Jollybee. You don't have unlimited resources. You are responsible for your family in a way that other people are not. So you start with them and move out. To listen to all the causes pleading for help in the world would be immobilizing. It would just be overwhelming. So your family and so forth have a priority. But beyond that it's okay to pick the one or two that touch your heart. However it happens, if it somehow touches your heart, if someone invites you to Honduras and the people in Honduras have really touched you, it's okay if you're not doing the same thing for Argentinians. H: That seems satisfying enough. How about Jesus' command to love our enemies? Do we view them as a neighbor? How should we treat them? Advertisement W: So the person in your proximity might be someone who's got it in for you. And Jesus' response is to love even the person who does not reciprocate your love. To love even the person who's got it in for you. Seek their good also. Seek the good of those in your proximity, of anybody who bears the image of God, of anyone who's got that kind of worth, even if he or she is your enemy. H: Do you see many Christians in our culture, specifically in the United States, carrying out these commands, or do you think this is something the Church is missing? W: I think quite a few do. So, I distinguish charity programs from justice programs. In general, Christians and other people feel far more comfortable with relief and development programs than with justice programs because they usually don't get you into conflict. When you offer to relieve the plight of the Haitians after the earthquake, no one is going to say that that's bad. Christians and other people shy away from justice organizations because they always get you into conflict with oppressors and so forth. Nevertheless, there are some superb justice organizations. I'm closely related with one of them in Honduras, the Association for a More Just Society. They aim to get the government to do what the government is supposed to do. And they produce a lot of conflict. They had one of their main attorneys shot at point blank range, so it's dangerous work. International Justice Mission focuses on people who have been trapped into slave labor, especially women and little kids, so it's another justice organization. I would say that there are a number of really admirable Christian justice and relief organizations. H: You've spoken about love and justice as though there is some sort of tension between them. Is there a tension here? Advertisement W: Traditionally, it's been thought so. If you think of agapic love as sheer gratuitous benevolence, then you'd better expect tension. If it's sheer gratuitous benevolence, then you're not going to treat the person as you do because justice requires it. So I've come to think that that's a misconception of what Jesus had in mind by agape. And the reason for thinking so is this: the question that's put to Jesus is, "Rabbi, master, what's the greatest commandment in the Torah?" It's easy to think that Jesus is sort of capturing the essence of the Old Testament law. In fact, what he's doing is quoting Leviticus 19:18, where it says, "Love your neighbor as yourself." It's also the essence of the Torah, but it's a quotation. And then when you look at the context, what you see is that Moses is giving God's law for Israel. A whole bunch of highly specific shoulds and should nots and then it concludes with "Love your neighbor as yourself." Now among these detailed shoulds and should nots are injunctions to treat your neighbor justly. So there in Leviticus, what you learn is that treating your neighbor justly is an example of love. Justice is not pitted against love. So agapic love has to be understood in such a way that it incorporates justice rather than being pitted against justice. H: You mention in Justice in Love that there is a perceived conflict between forgiveness and justice. Is there a conflict? W: My view is this: Christian Scripture teaches that in response to being wronged, it is at least sometimes appropriate to forgive, especially if the wrongdoer repents. Now an implication of that has to be that punishment is not in general required as a response to wrongdoing. If it's okay to forgive, then it cannot be unjust to forgive. So I think the view is that punishment is permitted. Maybe in some cases it's even required. But there are a lot of cases in which forgiveness is permissible, appropriate, and better. It's a mistake to suppose that punishment is always required as a response to injustice. Sometimes forgiveness is eminently appropriate and highly desirable. H: Now I want to look at the relationship between God's love and the suffering of human beings. In your book Lament for a Son, you grieve over your son who died in a climbing accident at 25. Did you question God's love for you during that time? Advertisement W: No, I didn't, but I certainly didn't understand it. So it seems to me that the biblical picture, which I accept, is that something has gone profoundly awry in God's world. There's some sort of malignant force about. Paul often speaks not so much of sin, but of the power of sin. There's some sort of force that has us in its grip, not just personal beings, but somehow nature also. So why that should be and why God doesn't just get rid of it right away, I don't know. But the biblical picture is of a sort of struggle. God will conquer, but there is a struggle. And I don't profess to understand the nature of that struggle. H: So you would even say that a death which results from natural consequences is within that struggle? W: Yeah, because it seems to me that the picture that emerges from Scripture is that God desires for each and every human being to flourish until full of years. Not just that the species flourish, but each and every human being. There's a particularity about it. But lots of people don't flourish until full of years. They flourish briefly or they live in misery until they're full of years. I can only read Scripture as saying that that's God's longing for human beings. So something went awry in the early death of my son. And I don't know how to explain that. Many people in the tradition would say, "Well, it made you a better person." I rebel against that. God doesn't use the death of my son to make Nick Wolterstorff a better person. Each and every one of us should flourish until full of years. Not just some to make others flourish. H: In your book, you discuss the role that suffering plays in loving relationships. Would you speak to that? Advertisement W: To love someone in the sense of attachment is to put yourself at risk because human beings are fragile and vulnerable. So you put yourself at risk of the other person dying and of grief following. Love has grief as its constant potential. H: Is this what you mean when you say that in commanding us to love, God invites us to suffer? W: Yeah. The Stoics took the opposite tack. They saw that love and attachment have the potential for grief, so they said, "Don't love." I think the Christian message says, "Love and live with the grief." If and when it comes. H: So that's a better way? "They still call it the White House But that's a temporary condition, too. Can you dig it, cc?"--Parliament "Chocolate City" In 1975, George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic released "Chocolate City," a song about the migration of African Americans to large metropolitan areas and the resulting white flight to the suburbs. My parents, coming of age in the 60-70s, played a lot of funk music in our house, but "Chocolate City" is, and continues to be, one of my favorite songs by George Clinton. Even in the year 2016 many of the lyrics carry a great deal of significance in regards to black culture and its continually evolving and burgeoning influence on the American psyche/culture. President Obama has presided over a massive cultural shift in the minds of African Americans and subsequently America as a whole. Barack Obama, being the first black president, is now a significant part of black culture not just as an icon, but because his blackness is legitimized by the vitriol associated with his presidency. Authenticity is a defining factor in how people perceive those in power. Seeing Obama's detractors often resort to coded language to denigrate him and seeing him the victim of obvious racial bias, fosters kinship within the black community. Almost every black person at one point or another has been the victim of racial bias. Watching the first black president weather these attacks with grace and dignity has engendered a sense of pride in the community for him and his accomplishments. Pride breeds motivation; and he tapped into that mentality to win the White House in resounding fashion in 2012. Black Americans, long standard bearers for the Democratic Party, are slowly transitioning to the often disparaged term, "Obamacrats." The bar was raised to the point that all other politicians with an interest in drawing the black vote, must come close to matching Obama's level of ability/charisma. It's one reason the current 2016 candidates struggle with attracting black voters. They simply pale in comparison to the White House's current occupant. Advertisement Barack Obama's election, when black voter turnout was higher than whites' turnout for the first time in American history, was a turning point for the black community and this nation. That a minority group had voted in greater numbers than the predominantly white electorate had never before been witnessed until then. The realization that we as a voting block, can substantively effect a change massive enough to put a black man in office not once, but twice, is empowering to us as a community. We have within our grasp the voting power to change the course of this nation. Black Americans, for instance, have made it very clear, via organizations such as Black Lives Matter and some very vocal protests concerning the continued disparity in sentencing officers for unjustified murders (Freddie Gray) that we want comprehensive criminal justice reform. If candidates do not specifically tailor their messages to their minority constituents with a timeline and a viable method to see these reforms instituted, these candidates are not going to get the votes from our community that they require, these days to win. This state of affairs has evolved from simply being a threat to being an acknowledged fact in the 2016 election. It's why Hillary Clinton has embraced the Obama legacy and is attempting to build on his successes. You don't need the bullet when you got the ballot" --Parliament "Chocolate City" Despite attempts by some prominent media outlets such as Fox News and right wing talk radio to peddle this fiction that we are a post-racial society, minorities are taking a greater role in the shaping of this country. Race has become an even more important factor in determining elections, creating laws, and changing cultural standards and expectations. People like to see themselves represented in the dominant culture. The question is no longer a case of, "how" but "when" the next charismatic minority candidate will emerge and bring his or her culture, experiences, and people to the forefront of the American consciousness. The 2016 election is less about the old white people running and more about the possibility that they may feel impelled to take on minority candidates as vice presidents in an effort to entice minorities of that particular race/culture to the polls in their favor. Advertisement Since Barack Obama's election, the role of minority candidates has been greatly explored, debated, and expounded upon by political analysts because the tone of the message changes when it comes from someone that looks like the people you are attempting to communicate with. In a way, Barack Obama has opened the doors to the notion of candidates and culture taking a more predominant role in American mainstream culture. It is not an insignificant accomplishment. So much of American culture relies on blatant attempts to co-opt certain elements of minority culture in an attempt to make our concerns and statements more palatable to white psyches: "Barack is only half black. and "All Lives Matter", et cetera are examples of this cooptation. What we are seeing is the evolving notion that minority cultures are beholden to no one but the people of that particular group. Many in this country are not particularly enthusiastic about either of the major party candidates, so many of us are looking forward to what their actions could mean for future elections. Again for many, it's less about Clinton and Trump and more about the possibility that a minority candidate will once more take center stage in 2020. Take, for instance, the Latino population which is on record as a steadily growing minority group. As their population rises, they are going to count for more and more of the potential electorate. The more you alienate them, the greater possibility you have of losing future elections. It's one reason the GOP is constantly trying to tell Trump to tone back his commentary regarding Latinos and their culture. For a political party that caters predominantly to white people, Trump's offensive speech has the potential to frustrate party efforts in future elections. It raises the specter that race may be a key element in determining the course of the country. The black community did it when they turned out in record numbers for Obama. What if the Latino population is the next locus of voter power? For politicians such as Julian Castro and Tom Perez, the elections following 2016 could prove to be defining events both for them personally and for us as a nation as the expanding Latino electorate moves to take a greater role in the political arena. The era of just old white men inhabiting the White House is now a thing of the past. The 2016 election, and open consideration of more minority candidates, has created a shift in politics and in America itself. With white people taking more of a backseat in terms of determining elections, (despite their still being the predominant population culture) it is only a matter of time before the minority cultural shift, not to mention shifting cultural demographics, completely changes the foundation of the American electorate. And we have President Barack Obama to thank for much of it. A gorilla died last week. Kimberly OConner/Viral Hog Unless you've been living under a rock (and I may want to join you under that rock), then you've probably heard about it. The internet lost its mind for five days over this single, no doubt tragic, event. But you know what else happened last week? Over 1,000 people died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea from Libya to Italy. A shooting occurred at UCLA, killing two people and shrouding the campus in fear for several hours. Nadia Sevachenko, a Ukrainian army officer who in March was convicted in a Russian court of complicity in the murder of two Russian journalists, was released in a dramatic prisoner exchange. These are just three of the dramatic headlines that occurred in the last week, yet not one of them has been discussed or shared widely online. Instead, we've been swallowed in the hysteria of Harambe's death. Advertisement Image Credit: The Associated Press I spent many months in Ukraine studying the culture and the language. I traveled the country meeting and speaking with World War II veterans, gathering up stories of survival. Countless times I sat next to men and women who had seen the worst that humanity had to offer, and not once did I detect an ounce of bitterness. Pride? Absolutely. A sense of injustice at all they experienced? Yes, there was plenty of that. There were some tears, and I felt the heat in their words as they described the vicious cruelty of those years. But those emotions were quickly replaced with a gentleness that is hard to describe. In the town of Vinnitsya, Ukraine, I met with a group of men from a local veteran's group. One by one they stood up, each wearing his uniform proudly, and they told me their stories. The last man to stand is the one who impacted me the most. Only sixteen when the Germans invaded his town, he joined the Red Army as a volunteer because of his age. Advertisement "There were many others like me," he said, his voice laced with pride. "Boys who had not even finished school, who fought like men. Many of my friends died before they saw their eighteenth birthdays." He continued, eyes moist with tears. "After the war was over, I wondered what life would have to offer me. What would I do? I was still so young, but I had aged much. It didn't take long for me to figure out, though, that I was more than just a soldier." The rest of the men nodded their heads emphatically. "There was more to me than those years on the battlefield. All of us," he gestured to his comrades, "were more than those days of war. We've gone on to lead good lives. We are fathers and grandfathers. We love our families." He leaned forward and looked at me intently, his blue eyes bright and hopeful. "Go tell the world that we were more than soldiers. Go tell the world our stories." Thirteen years after that encounter, I find myself baffled at the vitriol being displayed online. We've summed up a young mother based on one terrible moment in time. Advertisement We've judged the split second decision of the zookeepers based on a very difficult set of circumstances. We've been entirely wrapped up in dissecting a situation that cannot be changed, and which has no easy answers, and the words of this soldier keep floating through my head. "We were more than those days." All of us are more than the sum of our past decisions, more than our experiences. We're more than the split second decisions that have lasting results. We're more than a single moment in time. Does the past have consequences for the future? Of course. Not one of those soldiers would deny that their years at war had a lasting impact. A moment in time can last forever. But it doesn't have to define us. That mother is more than the moment she lost sight of her son. The zookeepers are more than the decision to pull the trigger. All of us are more than a single snapshot of time. We're all a work in progress. You, me, the Cincinnati zookeepers, the mother of the boy who fell. We're all more than a single mistake, a perceived failure, more than a split-second decision. A gorilla died last week. It was tragic. But there's more to us than the hate that followed that event. We as humans are more than the sum of the past week. We're better than this. Advertisement Maybe it's time we started acting like it. When I first heard about Tsugumi Ohba's Death Note I wasn't necessarily interested. At that point in my life my taste in anime did not extend past titles like Sailor Moon, Ah! My Goddess, and Princess Tutu, all of which are similar in their "magical girl" theme. Shonen, or boy's comics, really didn't interest me. However, when I reviewed Viz Media's release of Blanc Et Noir, I fell in love with Ohba's art style, especially the drawings for Death Note. As a result, VIZ Media sent me The Omega Edition of the Death Note series on blu-ray to review. The story of Death Note begins when Light Yagami, the son of the police chief, finds a death note, a note book that kills any person who's name is written in it, which was purposely dropped by the Shinigami (Death God), Ryuk, because he was bored. Light tests out the note's powers by writing the names of two criminals he sees on the news and once he's convinced of the note's powers, he uses it to punish known criminals. This attracts the attention of his father, the FBI, and a special correspondent known only as L. Light's entire world is turned upside down as he's consumed by the power of the note and the notion of becoming a God in a crime-free world. Though technically fantasy, it's also a gritty cop drama that has so many twists and turns that you can't miss a moment or you'll end up completely lost. Advertisement The series is equal parts, drama, fantasy, and comedy, with just enough of a love story sprinkled in to keep things interesting. After the first episode I was hooked. Not only is the art exquisite, the story is interesting and complex and the dubbing well, the dubbing is fantastic, yes; I watch my anime in English (don't judge). While a lot of translations seem strange and odd in English, Death Note's English language script, produced by Ocean Productions, is not only intriguing it's flawless. Not only does the Omega Edition contain the entire 37 episode series, it also includes over three hours of extra content, including interviews with the Japanese creators, behind-the-scenes footage with both the English and Japanese voice cast, production art, audio commentary, and more. It also includes both feature films and the original Death Note pilot, which appeared in Shonen Jump in 2003 #36. Recently, and much to the surprise of my wife and I, our just-turned-nine-year-old daughter sprouted a second head. Before I get into the details, allow me to make two disclaimers straight away: First, technically it was not a head in the conventional sense. But she did have conversations with itsome of which were quiet and subdued, others of which amounted to heated arguments requiring our direct intervention. Second, technically she did not sprout it from her body. She took it, with grateful surprise, from my own naively generous hands. It was a thoughtless giftan afterthought, in fact, subsequent to a thorough spring cleaning. Advertisement It was, of course, an old and nearly-dead (but still spritely) smartphoneandroid circa 2008. It was battered and bruised, with a frayed and stubbornly uncooperative power cord. Yet it soon sprang back to life, as when the Black Knight from The Holy Grail quipped "'Tis but a scratch!" before resuming combat with his worthy adversary. Soon our daughter and her phone were inseparable, like a child with a newborn puppy. Her excitement was palpable. But her tunnel vision soon became annoying as, distracted Macaulay Culkin's cameo in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" video, she failed to respond to simple questions or directives. (It is, apparently, hard to pack one's lunch when the height of 90s-era music video production lay at one's fingertips.) She soon became annoyed as well, as the gadgetdespite its flashy promiseresponded to her fumbling requests with about the same level of interest and reliability as a untrained mutt. Advertisement Hence the heated arguments. If I hadn't for the preceding nine years bit my tongue to hide the full range of my profane vocabulary, she would have slammed the thing down with a righteous "WTF!?" And rightfully so. As a student and teacher of media studies, I'm well aware of the McLuhan-esque concept that technologies are extensions of our bodies and minds. More recently, Nicholas Carr argues in The Shallows that the Internet is an "intellectual technology" since (at least in theory) it extends our cognitive abilities. But as Carr himself suggests, the services we use online can retrain our plastic brains in troubling ways. To dignify the likes of Instagram and Candy Crush as somehow "intellectual" is to stretch the term to its breaking point. One might as well flatter the fumbling Inspector Clouseau (or for that matter, Inspector Gadget) as "extensions of the justice system." Rather than brain enhancements, our digital appendages often resemble mutant Siamese twinsbenign and half-witted at best, brilliantly neurotic at worst. Had I unwittingly handed my daughter her own psychopathic twin? Basket Case When I was my daughter's age, I took a weekend trip to the Scranton, PA suburbs to visit family friends. Among other fineries, these folks were blessed with a VHS (or possibly Beta) video cassette player. On the weekend of our visit, the older of their two sons had rented the now-classic cult horror movie Basket Case, which we proceeded to watch with a giddiness usually reserved for the ritual unveiling of a stash of shoplifted Pez dispensers. Advertisement If you haven't seen it (and I'm not recommending that you do), allow me to summarize: Following in the path of better-known classics like Halloween, writer and director Frank Henenlotter released Basket Case in 1982. The main character, Duane Bradley, communicates telepathically with what is best described as a "mutant Siamese twin" whom he keeps hidden in a locked basket. After birth, the twins' parents had arranged to have the deformed twin forcibly separated from his more able-bodied brother. The two embark on a search through the sleaze of early-80s Manhattan to findand wreak bloody vengeance uponthe guilty doctors. In a not-so-subtle gesture toward occult symbolism, the boys' parents had presciently named the mutant twin Beliala Biblically-rooted demonic reference that appears everywhere from John Milton's Paradise Lost to Dean Koontz's Phantoms. Suffice it to say, things don't go as planned. In a climactic scene, Belial escapes and jealously pursues his brother's new-found girlfriend. Despite the film's egregious gore and violence, it was this brief and creepily sexual encounter that caused my friend's father to intervene. "Guys," he said, "this is kind of intense." Then, having fulfilled his obligations, he promptly left the room and we watched until the bloody end. We knew what the director himself knew: the film was only half horror. The other half was dark comedy. Basket Case is a satire of sorts. After all, the premise is absurd: Who would walk the streets of NYC accompanied only by an unrulyand possibly murderousappendage? Advertisement And yet, something about my daughter's relationship with her smartphone had prompted this pop-culture flashback. The New (Old) Demons As my colleague Amy Hasinoff explains, "each new communication technology is met with a lot of panic and concern." The problem, she tells me, "is that we're usually worrying about what's new and spectacular about each one, and we forget about our pre-existing social problems." Misguided panic is surely pervasive, as evidenced by a now-viral photo of phone-wielding schoolchildren who, sitting in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, appear oblivious to the presence of a Rembrandt masterpiece. (They were reading about the painting.) I've sat in faculty meetings where the specter is raised: If we separate the digital natives from their smart (and sometimes apparently smarter) digital appendages, will they seek their revenge, if only through negative end-of-semester teaching evaluations? (Answer: possibly) It's worth remembering, as Lynn Clark pointed out a while back, that horror films reflect deep-seated concerns originating in American culture's distinct brand of evangelical Protestantism: themes of evil, death, and possible salvation. Pop culture flicks sometimes reinforce these ideas, but sometimes they call them into question too. Advertisement So what can this 80s cult film tell us about the hidden psycho-mechanics of today's digital culture? On one hand, tech evangelists seem to fetishize their gadgets as if they had birthed them through hours of anguished labor. Picture Steve Jobs backstage with a team of code-savvy midwives, cheering the arrival of an iPhone he'd spawned from his own flesh before ushering him onto the stage at MacWorld 2007. It's not a difficult image to conjure. There's something to be said for the cultish ethos of Silicon Valley, and the possible neuroses its utopianism might engender. Though overstated, the French theologian Jacques Ellul raised a serious point in his scathing condemnation of scientism and techno-idolatry as "the new demons." On the other hand, as Henenlotter seems to know, the thrill of watching a film like Basket Case derives precisely from our knowledge that its premise is absurdand that many of our driving fears are ultimately baseless creations of our own imagination. That is a point that today's preachers of moral panic would do well to keep in mind. As Sherry Turkle notes, the Internet is still in its "baby stages." We need, therefore, to guide it toward a virtuous maturity. Our gadgets are not inherently demonic and, with due respect to Joni Mitchell, our children are not merely "cellphone zombies" who "babble through the shopping malls." The kids are alright, or will be, provided that we soundly reject the equally misguided cries of "tech will save us" and "tech is evil." The new demons of the digital age are not the gadgets in our hands but the old vices of tribalism and superstitious fear. When I spoke to Prof. Clark, she reminded me that responsibility works both ways: "It's ok for a parent to expect that a child will put away the phone during family meals or other activitiesas long as the parent is ready to do that, too. Kids don't like it when their parents 'babble through shopping malls,' either. And too many parents find it hard to live without their own technological appendage." For more guidance, I recommend Clark's recent book, The Parent App. As for me, I spent the morning rigging an aerial swing to a tree in the yard. As my daughter twirls and poses, she can just about hear the tunes streaming from her battered phone. Echoing through the yard, the King of Pop sings, rather insistently, "I ain't scared of nobody, Girl when the goin' gets mean." Advertisement A Syrian refugee activist with a sign carrying the words on the Statue of Liberty. (cool revolution/Flickr) You may have forgotten all about it, but the refugee crisis, especially the one in Syria, is still going on. Actually, it's getting worse. The past week has been one of the most gut-wrenching yet. About 880 refugees just died off of the coasts of Libya and Italy while trying to make their way to Europe. And the Obama administration is coming under serious fire for how they're handling their refugee policy. This is seriously important, as millions of lives are at stake, so let's take a look. Advertisement Where refugees come from and why they are escaping Syria has been undergoing a horrible civil war for years, and as if that wasn't bad enough, is now also partially occupied by ISIS, the terrorist group responsible for recent attacks in France and Belgium. Ordinary Syrians are desperate to escape both their government's brutal regime AND ISIS. That said, refugees actually come from many countries in the Middle East and Africa. They leave their homes in order to escape war (like in Libya, Iraq, and Syria) and poverty and violence (like Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Somalia). Advertisement Many refugees end up in Greece, Italy, and Turkey, although they hope to settle even further north and elsewhere, including in the US. These people are in search of safety and asylum. The 350,000 refugees currently estimated to be moving through Europe risk incredible danger--especially at sea. Way too often, they drown during the high-risk boat ride to Europe. "I hate the sea now." 4,000 Syrian refugees have drowned trying to cross to Europe since 2011. https://t.co/DLiH4WnzIq AJ+ (@ajplus) May 31, 2016 If these migrants are willing to risk everything in a terrifying, and often deadly, voyage, the situation at home must be filled with unbelievable horrors. Children are dying Last year, photographs of a little Syrian boy named Aylan Kurdi broke the internet's collective heart. He washed up on a Turkish beach after a shipwreck. His family was trying to reach the Greek island of Kos. Advertisement .. #_ pic.twitter.com/grN3UevzX0 (@Omar_Othman) September 2, 2015 The pictures of Aylan shook the world. But maybe not enough. Just this past weekend, a new photograph emerged. Like Aylan's photo, it shows the devastating effects of a refugee crisis on a helpless, innocent baby. Drowned refugee baby photo wake-up call for EU: NGO https://t.co/nu0QHKgJ2K pic.twitter.com/7HcWVVgCCT DNA (@dna) May 31, 2016 This baby was one of 25 drowned refugees that German rescuers found in the seas between Libya and Italy on Friday. The baby's ship was filled with Europe-bound refugees. When it sank, 45 people drowned--including the infant--and 135 were rescued from the sea. This week has been especially bad for refugees So far in 2016, the UN estimates that 2,510 refugees have died on the way to Europe. That's 25% more people than during the same time period last year, when 1,855 refugees died. So clearly, things are worse and deadlier for refugees. Advertisement UN: 880 refugees killed in Mediterranean shipwrecks over last weekhttps://t.co/fTXsYPp5b7 pic.twitter.com/85if1xknds Talking Points Memo (@TPM) May 31, 2016 This past week has been one of the most devastating. 880 refugees died in the Mediterranean region, in rickety boats. Why do they get into these unsafe boats? That's how desperate they are to get away from their thoroughly miserable, war-wracked, poverty-stricken lives. UN Refugee Agency spokesman William Spindler said: "At the moment [smugglers] are packing people on boats that are barely sea-worthy and many cases are not meant to make the crossing. What happens is as soon as they depart from shore they call for rescuers and then rescue services come and rescue them. It's a race against time to get there before the boats sink, in some cases it gets there too late." The smugglers know that many of their ships will sink. But refugees find themselves without options. Many of them will never see Greece, like the nameless baby in the viral photo. Some believe that this spike in deaths is happening now because smugglers are trying to make as much money as possible before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. 13 million people have been displaced by war in Syria How many people need to find a country to live in? Well, in Syria alone, millions. Like, 13 million. Advertisement It's estimated that millions of Syrians are homeless because of the war in their country. While an estimated 7 million of the displaced remain in Syria, 6 million refugees have left the country (including approximately 1 million in Europe). Those are huge numbers for a country with a population just under 23 million. America's proposal to take in 10,000 Syrians is a tiny drop in the bucket. What the US is doing Last fall, President Obama promised that the US would admit 10,000 Syrian refugees. Obama has spoken soaringly about "vulnerable" Syrian refugees. But only 2,500 have been granted asylum since then. Canada which has 1/10 the US population has welcomed 10 times more Syrian refugees in the last 8 months. https://t.co/46s5g0dDDv Jonathan Tepperman (@j_tepperman) May 31, 2016 Oh, and in the meantime, Obama's administration has also deported many Central Americans who escaped their countries' own horrors to seek refuge in the US. Advertisement Many worry that the Obama administration seems (or is?) hypocritical on this issue and risks losing its moral leadership in the world. The US is in no moral position to talk about refugees. They haven't even taken on a measly 10,000 Syrian refugees #opinionCourt Mendi (@MendiNjonjo) May 12, 2016 Refugees are a big topic in the presidential election Because of both the immigration crisis and terrorism fears, immigration is a this presidential election season. While Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has hinted that she would be more lenient about immigration than our current POTUS, Republican nominee Donald Trump became popular in large part because of his anti-immigrant rhetoric. He has vowed to not only to be strict about refugees, but to go as far as keeping every single Muslim out of the US. Police on horseback push back protesters, many of whom tell me they're angry about Trump's rhetoric on immigration. pic.twitter.com/9kyevyhIBL Jacob Rascon (@KPRC2Jacob) May 25, 2016 With all this attention, the White House's failure to keeps their promise is glaring. Obama falling behind in meager commitment to Syrian refugees; Germany by contrast shelters at least 300,000 Syrians..https://t.co/NGvm5mSHyE Alison Smale (@alison_smale) May 31, 2016 Advertisement The process to admit more refugees is speeding up Given the pace so far, admitting 7,500 new Syrian refugees by this fall seems like a tall order. But things are picking up speed. Last Monday and Tuesday alone, the State Department admitted 305 refugees. More people were admitted in two days than during all of January and February! Some believe that this is because the screening process is becoming more efficient. Others, however, have voiced safety concerns, worrying that security measures are being cut so that the US can meet its quota. And some say Christian refugees are being ignored. .@Varneyco: "A record 529 Syrian refugees have been welcomed into this country...Not a single Christian among them." pic.twitter.com/LC5nLEKsDA FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) May 26, 2016 The backlash against refugees continues to grow Many Europeans are taking a stand against allowing more refugees in to their countries. "We shouldnt keep talking about the refugee crisis, but rather the reason they became refugees" - THE JOURNEY https://t.co/SfOY4vnBT5 First Look Media (@firstlookmedia) May 28, 2016 And in the US, in addition to Trump's strong anti-immigrant platform, there are disturbing developments in the backlash against refugees. An anti-refugee hate group called the Soldiers of Odin recently popped up the US. The group started in Finland in 2015 after they saw a huge surge in refugees. Currently, around 4,000 people are linked to the group in America. While the Soldiers of Odin group has a largely online presence, they have also recently conducted live patrols in Colorado and Montana. Advertisement Anti-immigrant group members believe they are staying ahead of what they call "the immigration problem." They hope that refugees from other countries, like Syria, won't become as widespread in the US as they are in European nations. Some say #RefugeesWelcome There's a lively #RefugeesWelcome movement in the US, Canada, and across Europe. (cool revolution/Flickr) We have a responsibility to protect those fleeing persecution & violence. #RefugeesWelcome https://t.co/c2LHxi5tpe pic.twitter.com/BNLumpL7Dx Amnesty International (@amnestyusa) May 24, 2016 In spite of the refugee backlash, many people still want to help any human being trying to escape war, poverty, and hunger. Why the populist right is winning the #refugee debate - and how to stop them https://t.co/lJIAQNBW10 @MrBrendanCox pic.twitter.com/AQ3KZVecbP World Economic Forum (@wef) May 28, 2016 Advertisement We left Patan at 6:30am and headed to Chitwan National Park, which was about a five hour drive. Laxman, the cooler than cool captain we've had for the past two days, was our main man on this journey as well. Let's talk about our experience for a second though (okay, maybe a few minutes). This wasn't your typical well kept up, wide, multi lane highway. This was a one lane, unpaved, overcrowded, cliff hanging (literally) kind of road. If I didn't have grey hairs before, I sure have them now. I mean wow. Every turn was a gamble. You honk to give warning but that doesn't mean the other car speeding around the corner will slow down for you. Jennifer was so frightened in the front that she had to start knitting herself a scarf to keep her eyes and mind off what was happening. There was a ton of construction going on as well. And trust me, there really wasn't enough room for everything to be happening at once. Good thing the construction workers were all in shorts, tank tops and sandals. Happy to know they are protected should a massive landslide come falling down yet again (which is what they are working on to begin with). The drive was so bumpy at certain points I felt like one of those hula dancers you put on your dashboard that moves her hips like Shakira. To top it off, there was so much traffic. Huge buses were trying to squeeze through the tiniest openings. It reminded me in a not so comparable way of Tommy Boy - "fat guy in a little coat". You think it should fit, you want it to fit but it most likely won't fit. However, as always, I like to focus more on the positive so let's transition to the cup being half full. The scenery was beautiful. There were roaring rapids in the water below us, gigantic mountains that surrounded us everywhere we turned and tiny, underdeveloped villages that lined the cliff side. Seeing life outside the city, in a more rural aspect, is how you truly understand a culture at its best. After an exhilarating, nerve wrecking, heart racing, want to pull your hair out of your head, hope to not bite every nail off kind of ride, we finally arrived safely, in one piece at Chitwan National Park, thanks to our Formula 1 driver, Laxman. Advertisement Green Park, where we will be staying for the next two nights, has a motto of "Where Culture Meets Class". Within five minutes, we could tell this was the perfect escape. The grass was definitely greener on this side, the flowers were more colorful, the air was fresher and we were welcomed with a cold wash cloth and some fresh mango juice (which I am beyond obsessed with now). Oh and there was no electricity from 8am-6pm. We quickly learned it wasn't just a city thing, it truly was a country wide shortage. So crazy. Our rooms were right next to each other and we had adjoining balconies. Now I can yell to Jennifer through the walls versus having to walk a short distance to her house in the dark (not sure if she will love that though). We settled in, had lunch, Jennifer went swimming and then around 3:30pm, we began our tour of a Tharu Village, which was conducted on an Ox Cart. Yes, an Ox Cart. We felt like we were living in The Oregon Trail game that was a huge hit in the 90's. We literally traveled back in time and it was simply stupendous. Tharu is an ethnic group indigenous to the Terai, the southern foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal and India. The Tharu people themselves say that they are people of the forest. In Chitwan, they have lived here for hundreds of years practicing a short fallow shifting cultivation. They plant rice, mustard, corn and lentils, but also collect forest products such as wild fruits, vegetables, medicinal plants and materials to build their houses. Additionally, they hunt deer, rabbit and wild boar, and frequently go fishing in the rivers and oxbow lakes. They are recognized as an official nationality by the Government of Nepal. The majority of Tharu live in Nepal where they constitute 13.5% of the total population. Interestingly, historians consider the Tharus to be the direct descendants of Gautama Buddha. This was the most simple village I've ever seen. All of the houses were made by them, having no windows, which they believed kept out the bad demons. Advertisement The kids were ridiculously adorable with larger than life smiles and the most infectious laughter. They were the poster children for what genuine, unconditional happiness looks like (well maybe not on camera). Women would get tribal tattoos upon marriage, which distinguished them as part of the Tharu Village. Unfortunately, according to our guide Tommy, this tradition has been lost over time. But this lady had one so I captured it. Scenic beauty was taken to a whole new level here. It was so calming to be in the middle of nowhere, at this village, with endless sights to observe. An mysterious women watching after her goats... Buffalo bathing... Hanging out along the river, enjoying the perfect weather with the perfect company... Pleasant surprise of cannabis growing... Open fields of grass, flowers and village homes... The sun gracefully setting... That night we went to a Tharu cultural dance at a local auditorium, which kind of felt like a high school performance in a cheesy yet entertaining way. At the end, a peacock came out, showed us his moves and shook his tail feathers. It was extremely funny. The whole crowd bursted into laughter. Advertisement The next morning, we went on a canoe ride down the river. This was a manmade boat that was completely submersed in the water more than it wasn't. We felt like we were going to tip over at certain points. There were eight of us total. Me, Jennifer, Vinny and Tommy (our guide), a rower in the front and a rower in the back, and then a random girl from Indonesia and her guide. It sure was awesome. Peaceful, serene, tranquil, calm and quiet. I kept wanting to burst out singing "Just Around the River Bend" from Pocahontas. We saw colorful birds... Tons of crocodiles, just laying there, almost lifeless... Then we walked through the forest for a little... Next up, we visited an elephant breeding center, where a handful of Asian Elephants call home. This center was created because the elephant population was becoming endangered in Nepal. In 2008, for the second time in history, a set of twins were born here. The first time was down in Sri Lanka. Now that's pretty cool. The twins are all grown up now but there were two baby elephants present, both two months old (not related though), and it was so incredible watching the interaction between mother and child. Plus, watching the multitask use of their trunk (which has a staggering 100,000 different muscles), was neat as well. They would cover themselves in dust to ward off mosquitoes and avoid getting sunburn or scratch their backside with a bamboo stick or enjoy a refreshing shower by sucking water into their trunks and spraying it all over themselves. One random fact we learned was that having a baby elephant is a serious commitment. Elephants have a longer pregnancy than any other mammal--almost 22 months. At birth, elephants already weigh some 200 pounds and stand about three feet. tall. And we thought a nine month pregnancy with an eight pound baby was difficult? We also watched the mahouts (elephant carers) prepare kuchilis, which are elephant sweets made from molasses, salt and rice wrapped in grass. The elephants apparently eat about a hundred of these a day. Why were the elephants thrown out of the swimming pool? Because they couldn't hold their trunks up! Jennifer and I then went into "town" while Vinny had his Vinny time. It was pretty small and mostly consisted of shops filled with clothes, crafts and souvenirs. The one thing I loved was the owners didn't harass you or overwhelm you. They almost didn't even notice you were there. This was a lot more enjoyable of an experience because of it too. Advertisement Our final activity of the day was an elephant ride through Chitwan National Park. A total of 68 species of mammals, 544 species of birds, 56 species of herpetofauna and 126 species of fish have been recorded to live in the Park and it is especially renowned for its protection of One Horned Rhinoceros, Royal Bengal Tigers and Gharial Crocodiles. A funny story about this. When I was emailing with the woman at our hotel arranging for the elephant safari, I asked her if we were able to see the One Horned Rhinoceros. Her response was "fingers crushed you'll get to see them". I think she meant to say fingers crossed but the language barrier got in the way. I sure hope my fingers don't get crushed. As we walked up a wooden platform of about six stairs, we slowly and carefully boarded our elephant. It was me, Jennifer, Vinny and then a random local Nepalese guy. About five minutes into our journey, our "driver" got a phone call. In the middle of the jungle. While on an elephant. Of course he answered it, why not? This isn't the USA, talking and driving must be legal here. Then about fifteen minutes into our journey, we ended up seeing three different pairs of mamma and baby one horned rhinos. One pair was sleeping (I think we inconsiderately woke them up), one pair was eating grass and one pair was lounging in the water. Greater one-horned rhinoceros, otherwise known as Rhinoceros unicornis (and trust me, they are just as magical as a unicorn), is the largest of the three Asian rhinos, with a length of about 10 feet, height of 5.5 feet, and a weight of about 2.2 metric tons. Today there are fewer than 2,400 greater one-horned rhinos left in the wild, with the major populations in Royal Chitwan National Park in Nepal and Kaziranga National Park in India. These rhinos are so magical that they pee through their butt... The jungle was for real. There were no paved paths. We had to part through massive tree branches like Moses had to part the Red Sea. There were spider webs galore and bugs all over the place. Of course I was brushed with some kind of plant or tree or leaf that gave me a rash on my forearm, almost resembling poison oak. It wouldn't be an adventure without some kind of skin reaction to remember it by. We also saw Sabar, spotted deer, peacocks and more crocodiles along the way. It was like a zoo but way better since all the animals were in their natural habitat. Advertisement While we were crossing the river at one point, an elephant must have been thirsty because he gathered water in his trunk, poured a little in his mouth and then poured the rest on the people he was transporting. Maybe it was his way of getting back at them. At the end, we wanted to tip our driver so Jennifer handed the money to the elephant via his trunk, which then lifted it to the guy. But it startled her a little, hence the fantastic reaction of pure laughter... Chitwan National Park was an unanimous winner for all of us. From the warm hospitality at Green Park to the blast from the past Ox Cart to the cultural learning of the Tharu village to the bamboo canoe ride to the elephant safari, we were one with nature and animals for the past forty eight joyful hours. And we truly enjoyed every minute of it. Some 'Monkey Poses' You May Want to Try Have you ever been at Pashupatinath in Kathmandu, Nepal? You would not be allowed to go into all the temples unless you are a Hindu. Only Hindus are allowed to enter inside the main temple of Pashupatinath where a Shiva's Nandi bull can be seen from the rear. The Pashupatinath Temple, with its astonishing architectural beauty, stands as a symbol of faith, religion, culture and tradition. Regarded as the most sacred temple of 'Hindu Lord Shiva' in the world, Pashupatinath Temple's existence dates back to 400 A.D. This is located on the banks of the Bagmati River in Kathmandu. Thousands of pilgrims from all over the world come to pay homage to this temple, which is also known as 'The Temple of Living Beings'. This temple complex is on UNESCO World Heritage Site's list since 1979. If you are not a Hindu, you can still visit around Pashupatinath area and have fun. Monkeys around Pashupatinath are enough to entertain you. Pashupatinath area is a major habitat of monkeys in Kathmandu valley. Many old monkeys are lazy but baby monkeys are active. Advertisement Due to human contact, monkeys act like a human at Pashupatinath. They eat like a human. They walk like a human. And they sometimes behave like a human. They like to eat junk foods than their natural food. They are interested eating biscuits, noodles, and cold drinks. If you are planning to go there, don't tease monkeys. They will become aggressive. They can bite you. They steal food, shiny objects and will take things from your hand or bag. Beware! 3967 terrorist attacks took place in South Asia's four countries- Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, which is more than 33 percent of all attacks. Terrorist killed 6,737 individuals only in four South Asian countries - Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, which is more than 23 percent of total fatalities. On Thursday, the U.S. State Department released its Country reports on Terrorism. Country Reports on Terrorism is an annual report published by the United States Department of State. According to U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 is submitted in compliance with Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f (the "Act"), which requires the Department of State to provide to Congress a full and complete annual report on terrorism for those countries and groups meeting the criteria of the Act. Beginning with the report for 2004, it replaced the previously published Patterns of Global Terrorism. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) remained the greatest threat globally, maintaining a formidable force in Iraq and Syria, including a large number of foreign terrorist fighters according to the report. 11,774 terrorist attacks took place in 92 countries in 2015. South Asian countries are on frontline after Iraq among the 92 countries. Ten countries with the most terrorist attacks are Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nigeria, Egypt, Philippines, Bangladesh, Libya, and Syria. Four countries are South Asians among the ten countries. 3967 attacks took place in four South Asian countries- Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, which is more than 33 percent of all attacks. Advertisement Ten countries with the most terrorist attacks, 2015. Source: U.S. State Department. Several countries that have routinely experienced large numbers of terrorist attacks in recent years observed considerable decreases in total attacks in 2015, compared to 2014. In contrast, two South Asian countries that typically experience especially large numbers of terrorist attacks--Afghanistan (+7%) and India (+4%)--saw relatively increases in the number of total attacks in 2015. There was an increase between 2014 and 2015 in total attacks in Afghanistan, from 1594 to 1708. Likewise, There was an increase between 2014 and 2015 in total attacks in India, from 764 to 791. In 2015, there were 28,328 individuals killed by terrorists around the world according to the report. Terrorist killed 6,737 individuals only in four South Asian countries - Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, which is more than 23 percent of total fatalities. Despite a slight increase in the number of attacks in India in 2015, there were 31% fewer total deaths due to terrorist attacks, compared to 2014 according to the report. There was an overall decrease in global terrorism. Reversing trends that had been established in recent years, there was a decrease between 2014 and 2015 in total attacks, from 13,463 to 11,774, and total fatalities, from 32,727 to 28,328. In contrast, South Asian Country Afghanistan experienced a 17% increase in total deaths; however, a particularly large proportion of total deaths due to terrorist attacks in Afghanistan--more than 40%--were perpetrator deaths. In fact, an increase in perpetrator deaths in 2015 accounted for more than two-thirds (72%) of the increase in total deaths in Afghanistan. High Risk in Nepal Because of Indo-Nepal Open Border Nepal is a small mountainous country surrounded by China to the north and India to the south, east and west with the total land area of 147,181 km2. Nepal has experienced no significant acts of international terrorism yet. Although its open border with India and weak controls at the border is raising concerns that international terrorist groups could use Nepal as a transit and possible staging point. The Indo-Nepal border is open. Nepalese and Indian nationals can move freely across the border without passports or visas and can live and work in either country. People of both the countries can cross the border at any point, despite the existence of border check posts at several locations. The whole length of the border is not monitored; illegal movement of goods and people is a common feature on both sides. Criminals commit crimes in either country and cross the border to hide and escape punishment. Terrorists with illegal arms and ammunitions can cross over to Nepal easily. Advertisement According to the report, the number of people kidnapped or taken hostage in terrorist attacks in India nearly tripled in 2015, increasing to 862 from 305 in 2014. Like in Iraq, this was largely the result of attacks involving large numbers of people kidnapped or taken hostage. In 2014, there were no attacks in India in which 50 or more people were kidnapped or taken hostage, while in 2015 there were seven, all of which were attributed to Maoist extremists. India ranked highly among countries that experienced the most terrorist attacks in 2015. More than half of the terrorist attacks in India in 2015 took place in four states: Chhattisgarh (21%), Manipur (12%), Jammu and Kashmir (11%), and Jharkhand (10%). In Chhattisgarh, the number of terrorist attacks more than doubled in 2015, to 167 from 76 in 2014. In Assam--one of the states that experienced the most attacks in 2014--the number of attacks declined by nearly half from 94 in 2014 to 49 in 2015. After attacks in India, terrorists can easily sneak into Nepal. This is why; an open border with India and weak border security has increased the risk that international terrorists could use Nepal as a transit or staging point. Happy Pride Month, Ya'll! We owe so much to the brave filmmakers and entertainers of today and yesteryear for telling queer stories. They raised awareness and garnered understanding of our struggle and helped us know ourselves along the way. While some are cheesy and stereotypical, we must give them credit for increasing visibility and moving the cultural needle for the LGBT community. Here are my top five. The Broken Hearts Club (2000) Before Greg Berlanti gave us Brothers & Sisters (Man, I miss that show!), he gave us The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy about a group of gay friends living in West Hollywood. It actually won the Outstanding Film (Limited Release) award at the 2001 GLAAD Media Awards. And it has Zach Braff, Timothy Olyphant, Dean Cain and the dad from Frasier in it. This was the first "gay movie" I ever watched. I had recently come out and had no idea about anything gay. While this movie is a bit camp and a bit over the top, it's heartfelt and is a must-see for gays, especially those new to the scene. Thank you for this, Mr. Berlanti! Advertisement The Danish Girl (2015) Please tell me you all have already seen this outstanding film! It's the remarkable story inspired by the lives of artists Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener as they navigate Lili's incredible journey as a transgender pioneer. It is simply incredible -- incredibly stunning, incredibly moving, incredibly insightful and incredibly performed. Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander are simply outstanding. And the soundtrack is stellar. Philadelphia (1993) Philadelphia was one of the first mainstream, Hollywood films to acknowledge HIV/AIDS, homosexuality and homophobia. It was written by Ron Nyswaner, directed by Jonathan Demme and stars Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. Hanks is fired from his law firm for suspicion of being gay and takes the firm to court. Denzel declines to be his attorney until he sees how Hanks is treated by a jerk librarian as Hanks was researching law preparing to represent himself in court. It's a powerful and emotional film. The opening credits alone set to Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia" alone will make you reach for the tissues. Advertisement Holiday Heart (2000) Ving Rhames (yes, Ving Rhames) is a homosexual, black man who performs as a drag queen. He is fierce, compassionate and a devout Christian despite his sexuality. After his partner dies, he befriends a drug addicted, single mother named Wanda (played by Alfre Woodard) and her daughter. This is another tear-jerker. Kudos to Robert Townsend (remember his show The Parenthood?) for directing this. Pariah (2011) Is it me, or are there simply not enough coming-of-age stories for African-American lesbians? I'd like to see more films sharing their stories. Pariah is a very insightful, coming-of-age story about an African American 17-year-old lesbian grasping with her identity, while dealing with her strict parents in Brooklyn. We must praise Dee Rees for sacrificing more than we will ever know to get this story told. Bravo! A small item in The Age last week caught my attention. It was at the bottom of one of the three or four pages The Age carries every day on the Australian federal election. You can find them somewhere in the news section usually on page four, but sometimes even further back in the tabloid. "Parties Pull Back on TV Ads Before Final Push," ran the headline. The article reported that in the second week of this limited 75-day election campaign (the longest in Australian history) the Liberal party spent $96,187(AUD) and Labor $71,580(AUD) on television ads, significantly down from the first week's spending. Overall in the first two weeks, Liberals had spent $673,058(AUD) and Labor, $475,044(AUD) or $1,148,102 (AUD) total between the two parties. The National Party with the Liberals (the Coalition) spent $5000(AUD). The Greens Party spent nothing. So adding the $5000(AUD) makes the grand total $1,153,102(AUD) spent on the Australian election so far. As American experiencing my first Australian election campaign, these amounts didn't strike me as all that much. I decided to check in on how much money has been spent by the American candidates running for President in the primary election season. There is no definitive "start" of the campaign in America. A conservative estimate might suggest the American campaign for President runs 500 days. As of May 24th, the U.S. Federal Election Commission reported the following spending for each candidate. The first number below represents the money spent by the candidates, themselves. The second number is the money spent by Political Action Committees (PACs as they are known in America) for the candidate. Advertisement $millions(US) Hillary Clinton 181.6/ 38.1Bernie Sanders 207.0/ 0.1Donald Trump 56.5/ 1.0Jeb Bush 35.2/109.4Ted Cruz 80.6/ 44.6Mark Rubio 46.9/ 59.7Ben Carson 62.3/ 12.4Jim Kasich 17.7/ 25.3Others 62.1/ 88.4 If you add up all the money just spent so far (and election day is still four plus months away) by all the U.S. candidates, the total is $1,128,800,000(US) or $1,505,066,670(AUD) at the current exchange rate. This last number stretched my mobile phone calculator but as best I can figure, the Australian election has so far cost Oz 0.000007% of the U.S. election. I'll run the numbers for you another way. Spending by Australian parties so far amounts to about 5 Australian cents per person in Australia (too hard to do it with just the voting age public). It works out that the American candidates have spent more than $4.50(AUD) for every man, woman and child in the good 'ole U.S. of A. When I came up with the $1.5billion(AUD) I couldn't suppress a laugh. My wife, Denise, asked me, "What's so funny?" I wasn't sure if I should be laughing or crying. I said "Nothing," because on some level that amount of money spent on electioneering seems like such a waste to me. It is one more example of what's wrong with America. Everyone agrees -- the President, the legislature and huge majorities of the public when polled -- that this kind of money in an election really warps the process and puts special interests that can deliver the dough, far ahead of the public's influence. Advertisement Even the U.S. Congress (the main source of future presidential candidates passed the McCain-Feingold Act in 2002 to limit election spending. The legislators felt the money being solicited and spent on elections was simply a sign of an out of control arms race. You do it because if you don't, you may be perceived as having a "money gap" (think "missile gap"). Your opponent (and the press) could seize on that to demonstrate your lack of support and impending defeat at the polls. Unfortunately the unintended effect of McCain-Feingold was to shift contributions away from specific political candidates who had donation limits to the unlimited "soft-money" given to PACs. Subsequently only one vote in 2014 (the swing vote in a 5-4 decision in the U.S. Supreme Court) reinforced the infamous Citizens United decision that declared any restraint on campaign donations was an unconstitutional abridgement of the First Amendment's right to free speech. Large corporations and PACs have repeatedly used the Bill of Rights (which was meant for individuals) to create a veritable American corporatocracy. The resultant decades of disenfranchisement have led to large portions of the American electorate supporting the Presidential candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Not only is this $1.2billion(US) a waste of money but most people find living in the United States during a presidential election period decidedly more unpleasant -- unless you're directly participating in the campaign or, because of a huge number of TV advertisements, making boodles of money from it. Denise and I consider it an unplanned benefit to have been in Melbourne until the last four months of this current U.S. presidential campaign. The U.S. campaign in America is impossible to avoid. I don't watch a lot of television in either country. But I don't know the last time the New York Times did not have a front-page story about something to do with the election. If you watch TV or listen to the radio (even on non-commercial National Public Radio) it's even worse. On-line I receive messages from the Bernie Sanders campaign usually twice a day. All of it gets to be so repetitive, banal, intrusive, offensive and boring. But how does a visiting Yank describe double dissolution (too complicated to explain to my American readers) and this unprecedented, longest Australian federal election in history? Adjectives that come to mind when I consider the election Down Under are unobstrusive, invisible, unengaging, anondyne (one of my most favorite overused words) and also boring, but boring in that lovely Canadian way of being boring (meaning things work and are noncontroversial). The "What to do about the refugee problem?" is the only issue that really galvanizes some Aussies, pro and con, towards a demonstration here in Melbourne. Advertisement It helps that both main parties, the Liberals and Labor, could easily fit within the American Democratic party. As I said I'm not much of a television guy on either continent but the link to The Age article above also contains TV clips that both parties have used to promote their position in the Australian election. The Liberal gist is that "We are better managers for the economy," while Labor's stance is "We care about the average guy." But neither party is campaigning for the end of the Australian social welfare system, the essentials of which were set up by the Whitlam government forty years ago. No one here, is trying to end Medicare which covers all Australian citizens of any age -- unlike the U.S. Republican candidates, virtually all of whom had to take an anti-Obama Care pledge, in order to be taken seriously by American conservatives. The Australian commercial clips struck me as restrained and quaint. Similar stuff might have been seen on American TV before Ronald Reagan's conservatism polarized American politics. I just received my absentee ballot for the California primary election that takes place on June 7th. Denise and I immediately filled out our ballots and sent them back to California hoping that they will be received by June 10th so they will be counted. I'm a registered Democrat so my choice was between Hillary and Bernie. Trump becoming president is simultaneously inconceivable and frightening to me - frightening because I didn't think he had any chance to win the Republican nomination and I (like so many others) was wrong. Yet I think the Trump/Sanders phenomenon is the necessary corrective to begin to finally steer the American titanic (small letters) ocean liner away from the icebergs of extreme societal discontent. America does not have compulsory voting like Australia (see the Letter's "Compulsory Voting in Australia: How UnAmerican!"). But every now and then an election will come up that turns out the large self-disenfranchised voting groups. I suspect this year's American election will see many disempowered whites (especially men) come to the polls in large numbers and vote for Trump. But I also see many of the less wealthy minorities and immigrants who usually don't vote, showing up on this Election Day in November to make sure Trump doesn't become the next President of the United States. Just perhaps in a landslide win against Trump, Hillary can pick the sixty Democratic senators required to end a filibuster and actually be able to pass some meaningful legislation to correct the off course status of the American ship of state. Advertisement Nevertheless, I'm really glad to have missed so much of the American election campaign. And it's been fascinating to watch another country do it. Frankly if I'm going to be bored either way during an election campaign, I'd rather have it in that Canadian/Australian way. But I'm an American citizen and only a visitor here. So, in nine days after living in Oz for a year, I return to that home of the brave and the land of the free. I hope I don't sound too cynical. Like it or not, what happens across the Pond in the U.S. also profoundly affects Australia. I really wish, for both nations' sake, that things change for better in America. Today's Australinese for Americans: Art Bastard (2016) Cast includes: Robert Cendella Director: Victor Kanefsky (Nightmare Man, Style Wars) Genre: Documentary | Biography | Art | Humor (82 minutes) As the jazz drumbeat gives way to honking horns, arguing, shouting, sirens and babies crying, we see a montage of paintings that capture the chaos and grit of New York City, going back to the 60s. The journey of the artist, Robert (Bob) Cendella, started in the 1940s. "I always thought Mom and Dad liked you better," says Bob's sister, adding, "but I worried about how you'd get by." We see a little drawing, entitled "Flowers." It shows the irony of a couple arguing across an oversized bouquet of flowers. In the drawing, Bob's parents are arguing about moving to New York. Bob's father had had an excellent career as a writer until he was called to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He wasn't a communist, but when asked to declare as much, his response was, "None of your god-damn business." After being blacklisted and falling into poverty, life changed for the Cendellas. Bob still remembers something odd Mom said during the argument... "Bobby isn't even yours." Advertisement He might not have totally understood that comment at the time, but he internalized a lifelong sense of being an outsider. He used his artwork "as a shrink," drawing what he saw walking around... the sights, energy, reality, culture and humor... although Bob's idea of humor is always steeped in irony. As a reaction to the popularity of the Beetles, he created and sold a button with "I Like Ludwig," over a drawing of Beethoven. He sold so many that he could afford to go to the Art Student's League and study with George Grosz, the famous German social realist who had escaped the Nazis. Grosz helped Cendella take his art to a different level, incorporating politics and social commentary. "Draw what you see, not what you know." Had Cendella been the same age as Grosz, he almost certainly would have been just as famous. But Cendella began his career just as abstract expressionism was becoming all the rage. "You've missed the boat. This kind of art is over with." But it wasn't over with for Cendella. In the meantime, his Mother had a bombshell for him when he turned 21. "Your father isn't your father." "Is it Russ?" Bob guessed. Art Bastard shows us the many sides of Robert Cendella's genius, personality and passion. We see the influences of Dad (Cendella), the real father (Russ Speirs) and his spiritual father (George Grosz). We see how Cendella responded to political, societal and personal events. You may not have heard of Robert Cendella before seeing this film, but you'll easily see that he is a significant artist. And you'll wonder why his work is still easier to find on the walls of a pub than in a museum. In 1965, his Yes Art Show put him at odds with many art critics because it shined a light on the hype and influence of big money on what passes for art. Art Bastard isn't an ordinary artist biopic. It's clever and engaging... much like the artist you'll meet. Beyond that, it adds insight into the age-old question, "What is art?" Oscar Wilde once said, "People nowadays know the price of everything and the value of nothing." About what the critics like and what museums show, Robert Cendella says this: "It's not what they show; it's what they don't show." Long after today's trending artists have become passe, a Robert Cendella painting will still have a voice... and for that reason, value. Advertisement 4 popped kernels (Scale: 0-4) Robert Cendella might well be the most important artist you've never heard of by Erik Fogg I recently had the opportunity to join a panel on "The Search for a Purpose" (which you can listen to as a podcast) with Living Room Conversations, which is hosted on Coffee Party USA Radio. I was joined by a group of folks with very diverse backgrounds, political affiliations, and perspectives. It was a real joy, I learned a lot, and you should check it out. Amidst discussing our own search for purpose, we discussed how a search for purpose might be related to the election. There is I think a feeling of a lack of purpose in peoples' lives in the West. Neitzsche warned, when he said that "God is dead," that the decline of the feeling of awe towards, and devotion to, religion would lead to nihilism--a sense of meaninglessness. I think many of us turn to some form of hedonism in adventure, in enjoying oneself, being popular, collecting wealth, etc. Others turn to some form of existentialism. But none of these give someone a sense of purpose. Advertisement I also recently got to read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, which (besides being an incredible book) I believe makes a compelling case that people really do need meaning in their lives to feel complete, rather than just being comfortable or enjoying themselves. How does this relate to the election? We know it's fairly common to look to a nation or political and religious leadership for meaning. People want to look for something bigger than themselves in their search for meaning, and a nation or leader can provide this. Sometimes, it makes us great. If we think of John F Kennedy, he implored, "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." We had the Space Race. We were fighting the Soviets in an ideological battle for the minds and hearts of people across the world. America was perhaps at its best against the Nazis and Japanese Empire in World War II. The United States' sense of meaning has, in the 20th century, been wrapped up in greatness, global leadership, prosperity, and having an enemy to fight. Advertisement The United States and the West may be in their own crisis of meaning. Americans want something to stand for, and to fight for. Is it any surprise that "Make America Great Again" appeals? There is a sense that the United States is on a decline--in prestige, in leadership, in prosperity, in meaning. We don't have anything great to fight: we have grown weary and cynical of the War on Terror. We don't have Nazis or Soviets to fight any longer. Many Americans feel weak in the face of rivals abroad. Americans used to be happy to sacrifice well-being, and to devote work and energy, for what America stood for--what do we stand for now? I think the Sanders movement appeals to a sense of meaning, as well. It appeals to a sense of justice, and many young people are wildly enthusiastic about his brand of delivering that justice. There is a bad guy, and it is the wealthy. There are downtrodden masses, the working and unemployed poor. There is fury and hope. Bernie Sanders would have been Iran's top preference to become the next American president. His speeches criticizing corporations, the widening gap between rich and poor in the US, and the size of American military and its involvement around the world, were even televised on Iran's state media outlets. Sanders' foreign and Middle East policies lean towards isolationism, which would be congruent with Iran's agenda of pushing American forces out of the region, and pursuing its regional hegemonic ambitions. But currently Sanders has most likely run out of luck and lacks delegate votes to win the democratic nomination. Therefore, which candidate - Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump - would be Iranian leaders' top choice? Advertisement On the nuclear deal: The Epicenter of Middle East Tensions in Iran-Arab and Iran-Israel Relations For Iranian leaders, the first issue to examine is the candidate's view on the nuclear agreement. Although the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, publicly criticizes some aspects of the nuclear agreement and condemns the West for not fulfilling its share completely, he remains in favor of the agreement. The continuing implementation of the nuclear agreement is leading to the release of billions of dollars into Iran's treasury, increase in oil sales, rejoining the international community, the global financial system, and enhancing Iran's global legitimacy which allow Iran to more efficiently, comfortably, and freely deploy its hard and soft power in the region. Hillary Clinton has come out in favor of the nuclear agreement. In fact, during the time that she served as Secretary of State, Clinton assisted in ushering the Iranian leaders to the negotiating table. She pointed out, at the MSNBC Democratic forum, "I spent 18 months putting together the sanctions against Iran so that we could force them to the negotiating table". She is more likely to ignore Iran's defiance in other landscapes in order to sustain the nuclear deal. Advertisement In other words, Iran will be capable of continuing to hold the US hostage by the nuclear agreement and advancing its ideological, geopolitical, strategic and regional hegemonic ambitions without fear of repercussions. This will lead to further destabilization of the region, heightened tensions, more support for Assad, subsequently more radicalization and militarization or groups such as ISIS, and potentially turning into a regional conflagration. The nuclear agreement- which has empowered Iran's IRGC, its provocations as well as the nuclear deal's terms that would ensure that after the deal, Iran would be capable of enriching uranium, spinning as many centrifuges as it desires and becomes a nuclear state- has turned into the epicenter of Middle East tensions, specifically between Iran-Arab and Iran-Israel relations. The sanctions reliefs is allowing Iran to boost its support for the Syrian government and its proxies across the region which is heightening the existing tensions, in return. On the other hand, Donald Trump has rallied his campaign against Iran's nuclear agreement. watching the implementation of the nuclear deal and Iran's compliance more closely, analyzing Iran's missile activities, criticizing it in case of UN resolution violations, and standing against the nuclear agreement appear to be Trump's top priority as the billionaire's son, Eric Trump, stated on a radio show that what drove his father to run for presidency was Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. "I think, honestly, the Iran nuclear deal was one of the things that made him jump into the race...I think that was a game changer for him." As a result, when it comes to the nuclear agreement, Clinton's policy scores better with the Iranian leaders, particularly the major decision makers: Khamenei, and the hard-line military officers of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Advertisement Middle East Policy and Human Rights Violations The best candidate that Iranian leaders can wish for would be someone who does the following: not take leadership positions on issues concerning the Middle Eastern nations, envisions a minimal role in Iraq and Syria (Iran's redlines), allows Iran to take the front seat, allows tactical cooperation with Iran - assisting Tehran behind the scenes but not strategic cooperation - turns a blind eye on IRGC role in the region including in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, ignores Iran's enhancing military capacity such as ballistic missiles, and turns a blind eye on Iran's human rights violations including domestic repression, executions, imprisoning political and human rights activists, and suppressing freedom. Overwhelming majority of Iranian people desire an American president who does not ally himself/herself with the repressive government, stand with them for democratic aspirations and strongly condemn the Iranian government for human rights abuses. Iran ranks first in the world when it comes to executions per capita. But, the Iranian government, on the other hand, desires a president whose policies resemble those of President Obama. Although Clinton is slightly more hawkish in comparison to Obama, she has shown almost no deviation from Obama's foreign and Middle East policies. Iranian leaders also desire predictability in US foreign policy in order to more effectively chart their long-term agenda. Clinton's policies are mostly predictable. Clinton's "wait and see" foreign and Middle East policy would be beneficial to Iran's political establishment. She is more likely to turn a blind eye on IRGC activities, allow Iran's military to continue its activities in the region and thus allow Iran to take a leadership role. Advertisement On the other hand, since Trump is not part of the long-standing American political establishment as Clinton is, since there exists no precedence of how he will implement his foreign and Middle East policy, and since his foreign and Middle East policies are not as predictable as those of Clinton, Iran would be uncomfortable with the unpredictable aspect of Trump's policies, hence, favoring Clinton in that respect as well. Finally, although Trump appears isolationist and converges with Sanders when it comes to foreign and Middle East policies, he is, however, more critical of Iran's military role in the region, human rights violations, undemocratic character of the state, and he has argued that he is willing to put forces on the ground in the region. _______________________ Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, business advisor, US foreign policy, Iran and Middle East expert, and the president of the International American Council on the Middle East. Harvard-educated, Rafizadeh serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review and have briefed governments, politicians, NGOs and testified in courts as an expert. An American citizen, he is originally from Iran and Syria, grew up and 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, 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. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. This post first appeared on Al Arabiya. Moving to a new country is always a challenge, but moving with a child is even more daunting. From finding schools and childcare services to leisure activities and healthcare facilities, parents usually need to think twice before they relocate. Whether you are being sent abroad for work or are seeking a new adventure for yourself and your family, it is important to take the needs of your loved ones, as well as your own, into account. The most recent Expat Insider Survey identifies the top ten countries you may want to consider if moving abroad with your family. 1-Austria Thanks to the availability of childcare and education options, Austria clinches the top spot in the Family Life Index. Both factors receive positive ratings from 74% and 76% of expat parents, respectively. Moreover, the country has improved dramatically with regard to the quality of education and general family well-being, as it moved from the eleventh to the second place for both subcategories in one short year. Therefore, it is not surprising that 92% of expat parents rate Austria's quality of education favorably, compared to a global average of 65%. 2-Finland Seeking a high-quality, yet affordable education for your child? Finland ranks first out of 41 countries in the Quality of Education subcategory, with 92% of expat parents giving it a positive rating. The Nordic country also makes it to the first place for the costs of education. Altogether, 81% of expat parents agree that education is easy to afford there, nearly twice the global average of 41%. In fact, education is free from pre-primary levels to higher education. Textbooks, transportation, and meals are also either free or partly funded. Advertisement 3-Sweden Despite falling two places behind from the previous survey, Sweden still ranks first for the Cost of Childcare and Education subcategory and second for the availability of childcare and education. All in all, 71% of parents are also satisfied with the quality of education, while only 16% give it a negative rating. 4-Israel The availability of childcare, as well as the well-being of children in Israel, receives positive rankings from many respondents, 66% and 94%, respectively. In fact, no respondents rank their family life negatively, with 40% stating that they are completely satisfied with this aspect of living abroad. 5-New Zealand A large percentage of expats praise both their children's education options (83%) and their kids' well-being (90%) there. In addition to this, 91% of expats are generally satisfied with the friendliness of the locals towards families with children. In fact, expats in New Zealand don't find it hard to get used to the local culture, with 77% agreeing that they feel at home there. 6-Singapore: The tiny Southeast Asian country achieves high rankings in several subcategories, including third place for the quality of education, fourth place for family well-being, and sixth place regarding the availability of childcare and education. However, the costs of schooling seem to worry expat parents: 63% generally agree that an education in Singapore is hard to afford. Advertisement 7-Germany: About 33% of expats in Germany are completely satisfied with the options for their children's education. This is significantly higher than the global average of 22%. Moreover, Germany ranks 4th out of 41 countries for the Quality of Education subcategory, with another 34% of parents giving top ratings for this factor In addition, 39% of the respondents couldn't be happier with their children's well-being, also considerably above the global average of 26%. Other factors that contribute to the country's appealing family life include reliable travel and transportation systems, as well as high health and safety standards. 8-France: Affordable childcare and education are among the positive attributes of family life in France, with 63% and 60% of the respondents, respectively, agreeing on these points. Parents also think that options for childcare and education are relatively numerous and easily available. Despite the wide variety of schools available, 45% of the respondents choose local state schools for their children. This is 15 percentage points higher than the global average. 9-Australia: In the number one country for leisure activities worldwide, a whopping 96% of parents say they are satisfied with their children's well-being. In addition, 73% agree that education options are numerous and easy to get. The country also ranks first for family well-being: for instance, 98% of expats rate their family life in general positively 10-Luxembourg: Living in the fifth most-popular destination for expats overall, 41% of the respondents are completely satisfied with their family life in Luxembourg. Education options also receive positive ratings, with 84% of the expressing general satisfaction with this aspect. The country also ranks 8th out 41 destinations in terms of family well-being. Advertisement We dont know what you do for a living, but we do know you likely need a break. And, nearly halfway through the year, were challenging you (yes busy, overworked, financially stretched you) to #TakeABreak. During the month of June, well help you nail down how many vacation days you have at your disposal, figure out where to go, and plan a trip you can actually afford. For 30 days of travel tips, cheap flight hacks, vacation ideas and wanderlust galore, sign up for our Take A Break action plan here! Also on HuffPost: Isle of winds came first. It's always been my story, in one form or another. Hell's Teeth started out as a side project, just a bit of fun while I was working on trying to land an agent and publisher for Isle of Winds. Ironically, it was Hell's Teeth which first got me an agent, who then happened, luckily, to like Isle of Winds too. The latter was picked up for publication first, and then Hell's Teeth followed. I've had such overwhelming support and feedback for both series, that I've now ended up with two completely separate genres on my hands, but I'd rather be published and busy than not, so I'm not complaining. I also have a third project on the go, but I'm not sure yet when I'll have the time to bring that to fruition, so I'll keep quiet about that for now. As for science, I find the subject fascinating. I think as writers, we like to tinker and find out how things work, to dissect what everything breaks down into, and find out how the world works. That's all science in a nutshell, we're a curious tribe of intelligent apes. The reason I decided to include science in the Phoebe Harkness books is that I thought it would be more interesting to have something potentially plausible, like a mutated genetic experiment gone wrong, rather than just a 'zombie plague' and I wanted the 'vampires' and other creatures and beings, to be things that the human characters in the book are only barely beginning to understand. Phoebe needs to have an inquisitive nature; it helps her get into trouble, which makes for good storytelling. As someone said: When a volcano explodes, sensible people run for their lives, scientists run toward the explosion. I recently came back to New England from a visit to the Grand Canyon National Park--a trip that reaffirmed my commitment to protect this spectacular place and the surrounding area for future generations. With Roger Clark of the Grand Canyon Trust and Environment America's Bret Fanshaw as my guides, I hiked the rim from Hopi Point to the Bright Angel Trailhead, taking in breathtaking views of the colorful canyon walls, forged 17 million years ago by the Colorado River. As we took in the sights, North America's largest old growth ponderosa pine forest stood around us. We were joined by a member of the Navajo Nation working with the Grand Canyon Trust, who shared with us the importance to the surrounding tribes of the area, home to more than three thousand archeological sites dating back millennia. Advertisement Her words echoed those of Edmond Tilousi, vice chairman of the Havasupai Tribe, who told elected leaders recently: "I have lived in and around the Grand Canyon all of my life, and in later years I saw the wonders of these lands. It was then I saw the power and the spirit of God." The millions of visitors who flock to the Grand Canyon National park draws each year for hiking, rafting, camping and more, must share some of this sentiment. But the 1 million-acre park, for all its beauty, is not without scars. Not far from Hermit's Rest Overlook, we saw the remnants of Orphan Mine, once the nation's largest source of uranium. The mine is now closed, but its contamination remains: signs warned us not to drink from nearby Horn Creek. And just a few miles outside the park, we saw an old uranium mine, the Canyon mine, back in action--a huge structure and drainage pit in the midst of a landscape just as gorgeous as the park itself. Advertisement The Canyon Mine is operating on an outdated Forest Service permit from 1986, which has been rightfully challenged in court by our allies. But if the mining industry, the Koch Brothers and others have their way, this mine won't be the last. They're pushing for even more uranium extraction outside the park, which could cause more waters to suffer the same fate as Horn Creek. More mining would also threaten the Colorado River, a drinking water source for 25 million, and endanger the mule deer, the Kaibab squirrel, and other sensitive plants and animals that make the Grand Canyon area their home. So I saw firsthand the importance of a new national monument that would encompass 1.7 million acres around the park, permanently banning new uranium mines and ensuring protection for wildlife, forests, and waters for generations to come. Support for this new monument is broad and deep. Conservation champion Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) introduced legislation last fall to form the basis of the monument proposal, winning the backing of the Navajo Nation and the Hopi, Havasupai, and Hualapai tribes, along with a broad coalition of conservation groups and outdoor businesses. An Arizona poll released earlier this year found robust support for the monument across partisan and demographic lines. So Dad has joined the other [ancestors] up there. I feel that they do watch and guide, and I also feel that they join me in the hope that this story of our people can help alleviate the legacies of the fact that preponderantly the histories have been written by the winners. - Alex Haley, from the conclusion of Roots: The Saga of an American Family On the 40 anniversary of the publication of Alex Haleys landmark book Roots: The Saga of an American Family, a new television adaptation is bringing renewed attention to the story that opened so many eyes to the harsh truth about American slavery and its aftermath an aftermath that continues under new guises despite much progress. Roots 1976 publication came at a seminal moment in American history. Cities across America were hosting celebrations of the nations bicentennial and the founding creed set forth in the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Advertisement In 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded our nation and world on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that America had never fully lived up to that promise: When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds. With Roots Alex Haley provided an epic lesson in American history through the story of his American family slavery from the enslaved peoples point of view. His book spent months on the bestseller list and the original television adaptation of Roots that aired in January 1977 shattered viewing records as it gave tens of millions of people a visual, visceral experience of the true horrors of slavery. For the first time descendants of slaves, descendants of slave owners, and people of all backgrounds were sharing a common experience and understanding of Americas original sin whose after effects still radiate across our land. Acknowledging that truth together was a transformative experience. In the past year we have seen a welcome surge, prodded by new books on slavery, campus debates, and student protests, of new commitments by some universities and other institutions to confront the truth about their own histories, especially the ugly legacies of slavery and Native American genocide. Black Lives Matter protests denouncing indefensible deaths of Black youths and citizens at the hands of out of control law enforcement officials in Ferguson, Baltimore, Cleveland, New York City, Texas, and elsewhere and the shocking racist vigilante citizen killings of Trayvon Martin in Florida and the massacre of praying Black church people in South Carolina heightened the need for greater racial awareness and national action. I hope the renewed interest in Roots will spark much greater and sustained interest in an honest retelling of our history and promote new dialogue about the ways todays structural, cultural, racial and economic inequalities reflect racial seeds from our violent past of slavery and Jim Crow which still poison the soil and political discourse of our nation. Only confronting the truth about our nations profound birth defects and struggling deliberately to overcome them with open eyes, hearts, minds and deeds can make us all free. Advertisement The Childrens Defense Fund (CDF) has a special connection to Alex Haley. In 1994 CDF bought Alex Haleys 157-acre farm in Tennessee for servant leadership development, intergenerational, interfaith, and interracial dialogue and spiritual renewal. The Harlem Childrens Zone was conceptualized in Haley Farms lodge by Geoff Canada and a cadre of Black Community Crusade for Children leaders. Faith leaders gather each year for spiritual retreats, great preaching and renewal, and young leaders come to learn from elders about nonviolent strategies for seeking racial and economic justice. Gurgling creeks run through it, mountains lurk in the background, and trees rustle in the wind. And thanks to the generosity of Barnes and Noble chair Len Riggio and his wife Louise, Haley Farm has been blessed as the only place with two Maya Lin designed buildings in existence: the Langston Hughes Library, with its Maya Angelou and John Hope Franklin reading room, and the Riggio-Lynch Chapel. I have been struck by how many of the thousands of people of all ages, faiths and disciplines who have come through Haley Farms gates appreciate its beauty and say it feels like home and the communities we once experienced. It is a smoke free, drug free, alcohol free, violence free and hate free environment grounded in love and mutual respect. The largest annual gathering at Haley Farm brings together about 2,000 college-aged young people who train intensively to return to their local communities to teach about 12,000 children in CDF Freedom Schools programs designed to staunch summer learning loss, close the educational achievement gap, and empower children to make a difference in their schools, communities, nation and world. This year they will hear from leading educators, historians, childrens and young adult book authors, and faith leaders. We will discuss how to truthfully teach history to help children of all races understand our nations roots including Native American genocide, slavery, and exclusion of all women and nonpropertied men from the electoral process in our beginning years. We also will discuss how they can make a difference in closing the gaps in their communities between Americas dream and reality. Together they and all of us must help write the next chapter in our ongoing struggle to make America a more perfect union. At the dedication of Haley Farm, several hundred people of every race, faith and discipline committed to help build a movement to Leave No Child Behind and to ensure every child a healthy start, a head start, a fair start, a safe start, and a moral start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. That struggle must continue until the prophet Zechariahs vision of the city full of boys and girls playing in its streets safely and joyfully is realized all over our violence-saturated land. I thank Alex Haley for reminding African Americans and all Americans of our roots, our strengths, our struggles, our courage, our faith, and our God-given human capacity to overcome adversity. If we all work without ceasing we will overcome one day and build an America where every child is welcome and safe. Now is the time to move forward and not backwards in the quest for racial and economic justice. Now is the time for all citizens to stand up, raise our voices, and vote to ensure that Dr. Kings dream Americas dream becomes reality. (Updated at 10:20 pm EDT, 6/3/16) What an insulting campaign we have on our screens. An impenetrable cloud of character assault, aspersions, invectives and innuendo -- not to mention a Twitter crossfire fit for a schoolyard -- hangs today over a presidential election just five months away. The morning-after reviews of Hillary Clinton's frontal assault on Donald Trump depict the delivery of her diatribe as "lacerating, mauling, stinging, blistering'' and "withering'' -- an "evisceration.'' He called it simply "pathetic." And a tirade of tweets that started before her speech was even finished continues today, with Trump tweeting: "In Crooked Hillary's teleprompter speech yesterday, she made up things that I said or believe but have no basis in fact. Not honest!" No details here, of course, in a message apparently confirming the web-video Clinton is airing at her own account today, tweeting: "Donald Trump's foreign policy team: one 'very good brain' with very thin skin.'' It may take some time to assess the fallout of all this radioactive rhetoric on a contest in which the two presumptive nominees of the nation's leading political parties are perceived more unfavorably than any front-runners in either party since 1984, when CBS News starting surveying voters on this question. A solid majority of voters hold a dim view of both Clinton and Trump, and it's difficult to see how the debate underway will improve that. The candidates' words are calculated for their immediate effect on the instant cable news cycle, yet one searing day of vilification will not settle a match in which the average of the most recent public opinion polls portrays a dead heat between the two. We are in for a months-long pummelling of audible-call artillery from both camps, a punishing volley of direct hits. Advertisement At his own rally in San Jose, Trump dismissed Clinton's assault as a "sad... political speech" and characterized the candidate as a puppet of teleprompter President Barack Obama. "Yes, sir, Mr. President, sir. What would you like? What would you like me to say, sir?"' mocked Trump, in a parroting of Clinton's relationship with the White House which he attributed to Clinton's fear of indictment over her private email account as secretary of state. "Because you know why? She doesn't want to go to jail. That's why." In an interview with The New York Times during Clinton's speech, Trump called Clinton's performance "terrible" and "pathetic." He added: "I'm not thin-skinned at all. I'm the opposite of thin-skinned." Update: Trump retaliated later today with an assessment as blistering as Clinton's: "Frankly, I honestly believe -- and I really mean this -- I think that Hillary Clinton is unfit to lead our country, certainly at this time," Trump told an audience. "I think she's unfit. She doesn't have what it takes." Advertisement "I really believe I have the greatest temperament there is and the temperament that this country needs at this time,'' Trump said. "Look, let me tell you, I have a tough temperament, but we need a tough temperament. Now my temperament is totally controlled, so beautiful." Clinton, he contended, is "greedy -- -- she's greedy as hell -- and that's, I think, the reason she wants it," Trump said. "But she doesn't have the talent for the job. She's not a natural for the job." It's a question of leadership, both maintain, each insisting the other lacks what it takes to lead the most powerful nation on Earth. "Americans aren't just electing a president in November,'' Clinton said. "We're choosing our next commander-in-chief -- the person we count on to decide questions of war and peace, life and death. And like many across our country and around the world, I believe the person the Republicans have nominated for president cannot do the job.'' "Donald Trump's ideas aren't just different -- they are dangerously incoherent,'' Clinton said. "They're not even really ideas -- just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies. He is not just unprepared -- he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility.'' Advertisement "This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes -- because it's not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.'' Trump's reply in San Jose: "Hillary said, 'Oh, Donald Trump, his finger on the button.' I'm the one who didn't want to go in Iraq, folks." The essential message of Clinton's rebuke will be repeated day after day by the candidate and surrogates: Trump is downright dangerous. "We cannot put the security of our children and grandchildren in Donald Trump's hands. We cannot let him roll the dice with America.'' "Making Donald Trump our commander-in-chief would be a historic mistake. And it would fuel an ugly narrative about who we are -- that we're fearful, not confident; that we want to let others determine our future for us, instead of shaping our own destiny.'' There were probably 15 individual speeches embedded in the template she coolly delivered yesterday. The Times says the speech was "roughly 10 days in the making,'' crafted by a sizable team of wordsmiths with late-draft advice from Obama's own former chief speechwriter. Yet from the start of his own upstart claim to the Republican nomination, Trump has displayed a debilitating ability to shoot first, landing wounding salvoes without the assistance of any consultants. He already has crafted his refrain: "Crooked Hillary." Mocking his penchant for attacking rivals on Twitter during her speech, Clinton said: "I'm willing to bet he's writing a few right now:" Trump was tweeting: "Bad performance by Crooked Hillary! Reading poorly from prompter! doesn't even look presidential!" Advertisement The play on the teleprompter is reminiscent of the way Obama was mocked during his first campaign for president. This time, though, the opposition has demonstrated an uncanny talent for the impromptu remark that captures the cable chyron of the moment. It'll be telling to see who looks presidential when this nasty race is run -- whose pejoratives are more penetrating, and who actually turns out to vote. "This isn't reality television -- this is actual reality,'' Clinton said yesterday, mocking Trump's credentials as the star of television's "The Apprentice'' and deriding his foreign policy credentials as the sponsor of a Miss Universe contest in Russia. "Now imagine Donald Trump sitting in the Situation Room, making life-or-death decisions on behalf of the United States,'' said Clinton, recounting her own experience at Obama's side in the Situation Room as he made the call on Osama bin Laden. Co-authered with Judith McDaniel, who teaches law and politics at the University of Arizona and Union Institute and University. She is also a Fellow in the OpEdProject. Photo by Martha Gilliland, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro World leaders have begun to ratify the Paris agreement and it is a good thing. India just recorded an all time high temperature of 123.8 F. The U.S. and China, which together account for 38% of global carbon dioxide emissions, have announced they will sign by the end of the year. Fifty-five nations must ratify it for the agreement to take effect, a likely outcome once the U.S. and China sign. This is good news! The Paris agreement is an exciting start to global cooperation on the health of planet earth. But a big piece is still missing: a way to enforce it. Advertisement In the US, we have a model: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which was established in December 1970, seven months after the first Earth Day, in spite of the outcry that the environmental regulations imposed would cost too much to implement and, thereby, severely damage the US economy. Since 1970, the US has cleaned up its air and waterways, saved species and their habitats, protected wetlands and coastal zones, and tackled the hazardous waste buried in various landfills. Motivated by these regulations, entrepreneurs invented high tech equipment to remove pollutants, and the US Gross Domestic Product grew by 420% in constant dollars. In short, the EPA has been effective and the predictors of doom were wrong. We need an institution similar to the EPA at the planetary level. We have a model there, too: the International Criminal Court. The ICC handles war crimes and crimes against humanity, not the environment, but it can be a model. The ICC was established in 1988 and entered into force on July 1, 2002, after being ratified by 60 nations. The first person convicted by the ICC was Thomas Lubanga Dyilo from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While he no doubt committed horrific crimes himself, he was tried and convicted for crimes of "leadership," crimes like recruiting and conscripting children under the age of 15 and using them to commit war crimes. Dyilo was sentenced in 2012 and is serving 14 years in a prison in the DRC. Similarly, an International Court for Environment, while it might not put heads of state in jail, could impose sanctions. Advertisement If we start now, we can have an international environmental court by the 50thanniversary of the first Earth Day, April 2020. Many will say this is a pipedream, indicating again that the economic costs will be too high. Four years before the EPA was established, many were similarly skeptical. The results speak for themselves. Culturally, we are in a very similar moment of social support for such a move. In the US, pressure for a federal agency to protect and clean up America's environment was building throughout the 1960's, spirited by astronauts' photos of our strikingly beautiful blue planet hanging in space. These photos transformed our emotional understanding of our home, as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring demonstrated that pesticides, which accumulated in the food chain, were poisoning it. Television images of a fire on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, thick smog in Pittsburg, and dead, oil soaked birds and mammals on the beautiful beaches of Santa Barbara also changed the national discourse and opened the door for leadership. Powerful supporters emerged in Congress. In his State of the Union address in 1970, President Nixon called for a decade of environmental transformation. The EPA was established that December. Today, images of glaciers melting, disappearing coastlines, and piles of trash in the ocean have gone viral. It is common knowledge that extremes in weather patterns, including floods, droughts and storms are linked to global warming. In the United States, the first human community is being relocated as their island home sinks into the sea. 2015 was the hottest year on record, and March 2016 is the eleventh consecutive month in a row that the earth has recorded its warmest respective month on record. People are understandably concerned. The United Nations has some of the scaffolding for an environmental court now. The UN Conference on the Environment in Stockholm in 1972 established the United Nations Environment Programme, which coordinates its environmental activities and assists developing countries with environmentally sound policies. But coordinating and assisting, while helpful, lack the power to protect. Advertisement Since 1972, the UN environmental conferences have resulted in dozens of opinions, statements of concerns, and conventions, for example, the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer. In 1988, The 70th Plenary of the General Assembly passed a statement of concern noting that greenhouse gases could produce global warming with disastrous consequences for mankind. Opinions, protocols and statements of concern are useful but are not enough to protect the planet. The Paris Climate Agreement relies on peer pressure for enforcement. Countries are mandated to measure and report activities. Activities are to be made public and verified. No one yet knows how this will work. An environmental court could solve that. Democrats agree that Hillary Clinton's savage foreign policy takedown of Donald Trump was awesomely overpowering. But why? What was it that made it the high point of her political campaign? There are five reasons that the speech, which was the greatest of her political career, presages a Clinton presidency that successfully continues the legacy of the Obama administration. 1. She was talking about foreign-policy, which is her expertise. Donald Trump's foreign affairs experience is limited to three honeymoons. Advertisement 2. She was standing behind a podium, giving her a sense of personal space, a comfort zone, and power. She may believe that walking among the crowd is effective and it may be, in person. But 99% of the viewers are watching on tv, and it just doesn't translate. 3. She was not holding a microphone, which she often grabs and holds vertically. As a former stand-up comic, that's the equivalent of hearing fingernails scratched on a chalkboard while gargling with orange juice after brushing your teeth. A microphone should be held lightly, at a 30 or 45 degree angle. 4. She didn't rely on that stupid thumb emphasis that Bill always used. 5. Skilled joke writers. As terrific as the speech was, there was one problem: the way audience was miked. Sorry to be sexist about this, but Hillary still needs men in the audience so the sound of the response is more balanced. If it's just female voices laughing and mocking, it sends a message that women are with Hillary (which they are), but she needs to convince male voters of her abilities as well. The truth is, It's still effective if the only people you hear laughing are women, but in a different way. Its a sign that she has the women's vote, for sure, but it ridicules Trump in a way that is sure to get under his (thin) skin, to have women mocking and scorning him. Its a valid message because he is so needy of women's approval (why else is he always surrounded by eye candy, why does he continually trade in his trophy wives, and why did he buy the Miss Universe Pageant?) Advertisement Take a look at the speech, and watch for the things other performers will watch for when they evaluate the speech technique. Photo credit Hillary Clinton (25594267431).jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AHillary_Clinton_(25594267431).jpg By Nathania Johnson (Hillary Clinton) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons A couple of weeks ago, I was honored to be a guest on the nationally syndicated Diane Rehm show on NPR. Our topic was "Competing Political Visions for America's Coal Workers," and the lively discussion (which also included the head of the West Virginia Coal Association), focused on the uncertain future for a region long dependent on coal, as the industry declines. It's a subject that hits close to home for me. I live in West Virginia: it's my home, it's in my heart and it's the birthplace of my daughter, an 11th-generation West Virginian through my husband's side of the family. So I'm deeply committed to finding a path forward for the state and for the region. Coal mining is a proud tradition in our state and across Appalachia. Coal has powered this country for more than a century and our coal miners, their families and our region have sacrificed a great deal to ensure that America is an economic powerhouse and global leader. We owe them all a great debt for bringing us to where we are as a nation today. But the reality is, as the climate heats up and air and water pollution take their toll on public health, we are moving away from coal and ramping up clean energy. Now, make no mistake about it, we're still mining and burning a massive amount of coal in this country, and we still have a lot more work to do. Kids living near the nation's 300 remaining coal plants are still suffering from asthma attacks, mountaintop removal mining is still taking place and threatening the health of families, and polluting coal ash sites are endangering the drinking water for millions of Americans. Advertisement However, as the result of over a decade of grassroots advocacy, no new coal plants are being built in the US. Moreover, one-third of our existing coal plants are slated for retirement, and the remaining plants face unrelenting pressure from clean energy advocates and competition in the marketplace from renewable energy, which is now cheaper than coal in many places. As a result, coal is falling behind, and while lots of politicians are making empty promises to return coal to its heyday, it's just not coming back. Case in point - the most recent numbers on US power generation from the Energy Information Agency. In the month of March, something astonishing happened: renewables almost caught up with coal. That month - also one of the hottest in the planet's history - the US got 19 percent of our power from wind, solar, and hydropower (10 percent from wind and solar alone), 24 percent from coal, and 34 percent from natural gas. It's not the 100 percent clean energy future we envision, but it's still a dramatic shift, considering that coal has provided the major of our nation's power for decades. So what does that mean for places, like West Virginia, long dependent on coal? The best way to honor the sacrifices our region has made to power the nation is to create a path forward for a more diverse and resilient 21st-century economy that benefits workers across the region. We need a transition pathway with the resources and leadership to fuel new economic programs that light the way for Appalachia in the decades to come. There are key policies working their way through Washington right now that could, if they get across the finish line, enable Appalachia to get the foothold we need to create community-driven economic growth that will ensure long-term prosperity for the region. One of these critical efforts is called the Power+ Plan. Advertisement The Power+ Plan provides a pathway for future economic success in the region by focusing on economic development, job creation, education, land reclamation and the revitalization of communities impacted by a long history of coal pollution, while protecting the health care and pensions of coal workers. The Power+ Plan lays the foundations for that success by giving communities some of the tools they need to begin to thrive on their own terms. In other words, the Power+ Program will help create new jobs in more industries as the coal sector continues to decline. Our nation has navigated big economic transitions before, like the closing of military bases, that offer lessons for coal country - see the Jobs Beyond Coal manual for case studies, resources, and more. We can do the same thing in Appalachia if we act now, rather than spending all our energy in a futile attempt to turn back the clock. Think back to the last time you received a bad gift. Surely it was an awkward experience. Did you tell the gift giver the truth and risk hurting their feelings, or did you try to conceal your disappointment and return or sell the gift later? On the other hand, what about the last time you gave someone a bad gift? It's an unpleasant feeling, especially if the recipient is less than subtle. For example, what if you missed the mark on a gift for your four-year-old niece, and she then called you the worst uncle ever? That exact scenario happened to Eric Sheinkop, founder and CEO of Desirelist, and afterward he set out to build a service that would prevent such disasters in the future. Advertisement The idea is simple: a social media platform crossed with an online marketplace, a website on which people can create lists of products, experiences and expenses they would like to receive as gifts, see what their friends and family want to receive, and buy and receive those gifts through an integrated marketplace that sources products from across the web. The cherry on top is that the website integrates with your existing Facebook or Twitter accounts, or your email contact list, and allows you to see your friends' recently added desires, as well as curated picks from the Desirelist team, via a central news feed. All of these features give the team the confidence to dub their platform the "future of gift giving." Listen to Sheinkop's pitch for yourself and see what you think: New Kid on the Block Desirelist is a very young company to be making such bold claims. Sheinkop and his hand-picked team began work on the platform in early 2015, and it just entered beta in March. The company is presumably self-funded, likely due in large part to Sheinkop's success with his previous company, Music Dealers. As you may have seen in their pitch video, they are offering up to $1.5 million in convertible debt, with plans for the bulk of funding to go toward sales, marketing, automation and product development. Advertisement This is smart planning since Desirelist does not yet have any major business clients, and this appears to be the main way it will make a profit. Sheinkop claims the website is already making money through its two sources of revenue: an affiliate fee charged when a user purchases a product from an outside retailer, and a transaction fee charged when users donate money to each other as "experience" or "expense" gifts. The affiliate fee is likely the company's best source of income, so the team will need to establish strong relationships with retailers. There is also big potential for advertising, as brands could pay Desirelist to feature their products on the news feed and in curated lists. What Makes This Wish List Special? To be frank, Desirelist is simply a new iteration on an old idea. There are a number of web-based services that allow users to create and share wish lists, including Wishpot, Wishlistr, WishMindr, Wishlist.com, and even Amazon Wish List. What does Desirelist have to make it stand out from the crowd? The answer is that Desirelist is trying to sell itself as something more than a website where you can create and view wish lists. It's trying to be a social media platform on par with Facebook and Twitter, a place where people will spend a lot of time browsing the curated lists and their friends' profiles--and hopefully buying a lot of things. The website has other smart features, such as the integration of payment transfer services for monetary gifts, and the business-savvy team was wise to count paid advertising among their possible sources of income. Strong brand presence on the site could increase user engagement and bolster the company's income through both affiliate and advertising fees. Advertisement Can the Team Build Desire? In order to differentiate themselves from their competitors, the team at Desirelist needs to convince consumers and retailers why they need a Facebook for gift giving. They already have some strong arguments. Users will benefit by knowing exactly what to buy their friends and family and by letting everyone know exactly what they want to receive, thus reducing instances of bad gifting. Retailers will benefit from the elimination of processing and restocking costs for the $53 billion worth of gifts returned each year in the US alone. Brands will benefit from 1:1 relationships with their customers and new opportunities to sample products. People like giving and receiving gifts, and businesses like making money. But retailers' responsiveness to the platform will depend directly upon how popular it is, so Desirelist's most crucial objective is to acquire and retain users. The publication of an interview with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the German media has led to some sensational headlines derived from an interview that included questions on the refugee crisis in Europe. These representations, focusing on the Dalai Lama apparently warning against 'Arab domination' and Europe taking in 'too many' migrants are ultimately inconsistent with the well-known and compassionate approach of the Dalai Lama, who has been a refugee himself for more than half a century, and the longer-term perspective he seeks to convey. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate the Dalai Lama has for decades advocated tolerance, inter-religious dialogue and has rejected the concept of a clash of civilizations, calling it "false and dangerous." It is ludicrous and clearly out of context to assert that the Dalai Lama would seriously state that Germany is at risk of becoming 'Arab' as a result of the refugee crisis. Advertisement Over the years, violent conflicts across the globe have forced a staggering 60 million people from their homes, many of whom, like the Dalai Lama, have little realistic prospect of returning home. According to the UN High Commission for Refugees, the number of refugees and internally displaced people has reached its highest point since World War II. The Dalai Lama has consistently called on the international community to both provide assistance to those in imminent danger and need, and at the same time, to work to solve the violent conflicts and man made disasters that are the root causes of the humanitarian crisis. As he continues to praise the countries that act responsibly and with compassion towards refugees, including Germany, the Dalai Lama has not shied from stressing that the only long-term solutions to this crisis would be to work more effectively to solve the conflicts that are forcing people to flee from their homeland. He has consistently stressed that all of us must do everything we can to restore peace to the lands these refugees are fleeing. Every refugee yearns for the day in which he or she can go back to his or her homeland without being in danger. Helping to achieve this goal is the primary responsibility of the international community and of responsible nations. Advertisement Acknowledging this reality means in no way endorsing the idea that refugees should not be welcomed to Europe. Browse the aisles of any Whole Foods, and whether you are looking at cereals, granola, protein powder or milk, one ingredient continues to show up: hemp. Hemp is a superfood. At 11 grams of protein per ounce, hemp seeds are a fantastic replacement for animal protein. Hemp contains all 20 amino acids, including nine essential amino acids (EAAs). It is a rich source of the healthy fats, and has more essential fatty acids than flax or any other nut, seed or oil. And, as Americans have adopted healthier lifestyles, they have also consumed more hemp. In fact, the United States is now the largest consumer of hemp in the world. However, despite its popularity in the U.S., hemp is grown outside the country -- with most of the crop coming from China -- as farming communities nationwide, like those in New York's Southern Tier, continue to struggle economically. They could benefit greatly from this lucrative crop and yet, industrial hemp has been illegal to grow in the U.S. for the last 80 years because it has been grouped with the marijuana plant, based on their similarities. Thankfully, the 2014 Federal Farm Bill changed that by allowing states to setup pilot programs to grow hemp. At least 27 states have enacted industrial hemp laws in some form, including New York. Before hemp can reach its full potential, there are still three major challenges. First, by law, hemp producers must be able to consistently produce crop yields that contain less than 0.3% THC, the one psychoactive compound in the cannabis sativa plant. Second, many farmers still lack the expertise to grow hemp effectively and incorporate it into their crop rotations. And third, local law enforcement seemingly lacks information on hemp's safety, especially the fact that it cannot be used as a psychoactive drug. Advertisement My company GenCanna Global has begun to adapt the lessons we have learned over the past two years in Kentucky to jump start New York's own hemp revolution. For the past two years, we have worked in Kentucky to develop a vertically integrated model that provides quality controls and assurances of our crop's safety. We can control our crop's THC levels and have full visibility into the entire development process from seed to sale. We have worked closely with Kentucky farmers of all types, effectively crowdfarming the best ways to cultivate hemp. From former tobacco to tomato farmers, we have sourced agricultural expertise from the entire farming community to see what works well and what does not. Last fall, we successfully harvested 100 acres of hemp. Our Kentucky farmers are poised to triple that in 2016. We forged this path by working with local law enforcement at the outset. We worked closely with the Kentucky State Police's Cannabis Suppression Branch and other entities to educate them on hemp and how it differs from other plants. This approach is an extension of our values. The contemporary hemp movement we are seeing throughout the country and now here in New York is an opportunity to unlock the full potential of the hemp crop. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the industrial hemp industry may be worth as much as $1.5 billion in the United States, alone. And while States that are embracing hemp are well-positioned to capture much of this economic opportunity, the work cannot end there. Collectively, we also have a responsibility to the environment and to local communities. Advertisement As farmers become proficient in interweaving hemp into their crop rotation, numerous environmental benefits arise. Hemp requires less chemicals, uses less space and consumes less water than most other crops. Two years ago, Kentucky farmers struggled as the tobacco industry crumbled, losing 30 per cent of their income. Hemp cultivation has begun to fill that void and turn Kentucky's local economy around through job creation. Contrast this with New York's Southern Tier, which has lost 2.2 per cent of its jobs last year alone. These communities have been injured the most by struggling farming and manufacturing industries. We believe it is time to open-source what we learned in Kentucky and help regions like the Southern Tier find new sustainable engines for economic growth and social progress. Cultivating hemp in the Southern Tier would also help the state overcome many of the scaling issues it faces with its recent medical marijuana program. As of May 2nd, only 556 physicians and 3,361 patients registered for the program - in a state with 20 million residents. With exception to THC, hemp still shares similar concentrations of the plant's remaining compounds, specifically cannabidiol (CBD), which has gained popularity as a nutraceutical product. Cannabidiol has helped thousands of families treat children with epilepsy and other causes of seizures. Hemp's non-psychoactive nature makes it safer to scale production. With 7 million acres of farmland, 36,000 farms and a rich history of farming, agricultural sciences and research, New York is an ideal environment to continue the hemp industry's impact. The first time I went to a gay club there were lots of attractive guys dancing, blaring music, neon lights swirling around in all directions, and strange lurkers on the sidelines of the club waiting for their prince charming. I felt like the most awkward person in the room. No wonder so many of us feel the need to guzzle down a few beers or shots of tequila just to make it through the evening. It eases the pressure to perform and allows our nerves to calm down. Frequenting these venues never felt natural or comfortable for me. I felt like I couldn't be myself. It made me question the whole point of coming out of the closet. Advertisement I stopped going to gay clubs and my social anxiety lessened, but I still felt subtle feelings of awkwardness in other social settings. This made me realize that I had to do something about this discomfort. Yes, I'm naturally a shy gay man. But I've come to discover there are simple strategies to navigate new social situations, especially when you're not feeling very confident. Strategy #1 I used to look at people and think they were awkward just like me. One time I tried to interject into a group conversation, but the other people kept talking over me. Then I realized the power of listening. The first strategy is to use listening to your advantage. When you use all of your senses to take in the information around you, it lessens the need to speak or contribute to the conversation. Other people want to be heard, so give them the stage and just listen with your whole heart, mind, and body. Advertisement To become a strong listener, use every ounce of energy to be in the present moment and allow other people to take the time they want to speak. This can be done in person, on the phone, or even when you're simply reading an article on the Internet. Behavioral investigator, Vanessa Van Edwards, says "just like elite athletes, you need a conversational game plan." Another way to become a powerful listener is to use body language hacks to your advantage. You can tilt your head slightly to the side when you're listening to someone speak, or even put one hand under your chin while you lean slightly forward toward the other person to hear what they have to say. Try these hacks to see how listening transforms your awkwardness into social savvy. Strategy #2 Abraham Lincoln said "If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax." When I was in college, I had to do my first debate in my psychology of childhood development course. My classmates and I spent hours studying our position and supporting cases. When it came time for the debate, we nailed it. Moral of the story? Preparation is golden. Blogger and expert Lance Ekum says, "It's not always fun. In fact, sometimes the hours may seem long. And it might not feel like you're making any progress. Yet, success comes from preparation. The hours you spend preparing make for more positive, more uplifting, more successful hours in the time when it counts." Advertisement Having a back pocket full of stories and guiding questions are the best way to prepare for any social encounter, especially the social situations that have the likelihood to become awkward. Stories are like junk food for the mind. Other people want to hear these stories and hear them told when enthusiasm and active engagement. The stories I tend to keep in my back pocket include the time I got scammed at a massage parlor in Thailand, the first time I got caught smoking pot, and the time I graduated college and moved to a new city without having any money or a job lined up. I've told these stories hundreds of times and they always get a positive response from the people I tell the stories to. Good stories always have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They shouldn't be too long, anywhere between 3-7 minutes is the sweet spot. Keep your new friends engaged by using hand gestures that help you tell the story and keep your audience on the edge of their seat, dying to know more. Advertisement Always be aware of how people respond to specific parts of the story so you glean what to keep and what to eliminate the next time you tell the story. Strategy #3 Remember that quick story I told you in strategy #1 about being interrupted by other people? No one in that social setting looked me in the eye and I felt like a worthless idiot, so I left the social event without any new friends. My self esteem the following few days didn't feel all that hot. I thought that those people were ignoring me and that nobody cared about me. Then one of my mentors, Ramit Sethi (author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich), taught me that everything is a test. No matter what happens in any social situation, whether or not you make a new friend or fall flat on your face when telling a story, it's all a test at the end of the day. What exactly does that mean? There's no such thing as failure. When you fail and end up in an awkward situation, allow yourself to celebrate and honor the failure because it allowed you to become aware of what didn't work. This way, the next time you approach an awkward social situation, you can thank yourself for knowing what to do and what not to do. Navigating awkward social situations as a shy gay man doesn't have to be so difficult unless you want it to. At the end of the day, being awkward is a choice. And even though sometimes it's inevitable to feel awkward, we can do very tactical and pragmatic exercises to ease the nerves and become less anxious and stressed. Advertisement Listening, preparing, and remembering that all social encounters are a test allow you to become more self aware, confident, and proud of yourself no matter what social situation you end up walking into. Have you had an awkward social encounter recently that felt weird? Share with us in the comments and let us know which strategy you're going to use the next time you end up in a similar situation. Nancy is not my sister, not really. At least not on paper, where some people still think the concept of "real" family begins and ends. Of course they're wrong -- they're wrong today, in 2016 and they were wrong in 1974 when we met. In 1974, I was 11 and she was 16. With a speed that would rival any coup de foudre love affair Nancy became the sun of my universe. She became my sister and I became her little brother, because those were the designations by which we chose to identify our relationship. No one else seemed to get it -- not our parents, especially not her boyfriend -- but that didn't bother either of us. For the past 42 years, it never has bothered us. Advertisement Nancy and I were both living in Geneva, Switzerland with our families. My father was a Canadian diplomat; hers was an American businessman. She was a last-minute replacement babysitter, back in those days when teenage girls babysat as a matter of course, but boys rarely did. The corrals of gender were much more inflexible in those days, and rarely breached, especially by boys, for whom there was a terrible price to be paid if they tried. Writing this, I've tried to remember what first drew me to Nancy. I have an impression of being pulled inexorably into her embrace, but of course that didn't happen. Babysitters didn't embrace their charges on the first night and, God knows, 11-year olds are a cautious lot. She wore Chantilly and Miss Dior perfume and smelled wonderful. "Sparkle" is one of the most overused literary cliches in Christendom, but it's her eyes I remember. They seemed full of not only joy, but also potential. And they swept me up -- my 11-year old nerd's oddness, my vampire comic obsession, my fashion magazines, and my gothic novels. Nancy never questioned any of it. She found me delightful. I also had a secret. There was a girl living in my head, and she was me. The term "gender identity" or "transgender child" or "trans girl" was not part of any popular lexicon in those days, but even if it had been, any declaration of unorthodox gender from me would have been as unwelcome to my parents as the pale pink Cover Girl lipstick I surreptitiously applied before dashing off to meet the school bus. In truth I'd identified internally as female since earliest memory, but it was only at the threshold of adolescence that the disunity between my body and my sense of my gender began to fray and skew the edges of my world. Advertisement There is no way to overstate the oddity of a 12 or 13-year old boy in the early '70s wearing women's cologne, or makeup, to school, particularly when not an homage to David Bowie, but instead an homage to the leggy, long-haired American girls sporting the suede purses and headbands of the era, whom I idolized and with whom I identified. As there literally was no language for it, I wasn't able to tell her, but she seemed to sense my difference nonetheless. She encouraged me to write poetry, taught me to knit, introduced me to the music of Carly Simon and Janis Ian, women whose lyrics spoke to me in a way music never had. She wrote a song for me, gave me her second-hand cosmetics, loaded met up on the gothic novels I loved, and loaded me up with love. She took me shopping in downtown Geneva on the train. Perhaps we made an incongruous couple, the 12-year old boy who looked like a little German girl, and the tall, elegant American girl who spoke perfect French and caught every man's eye as she strode past. When Nancy left for college in the States, I was disconsolate. The night of her flight, I wept great, shredding gales of tears. So frightening was my keening that night that my parents talked about calling a doctor. The mourning of her absence was never as bad as it was that night, when all I could do was bleed tears into a pillowcase I'd sprinkled with Chantilly talcum powder. In 1977, I was packed off to a macho boarding school in western Canada. While my parents' official position was that my failing grades and my moodiness at home were the cause, as an adult I know they also hoped that the school would knock some of the femme out of me. It didn't, but not for lack of effort on the part of some of my peers. The bullying and violence, especially my first year, took a terrible toll. I was schooled in a level of self-hatred I hadn't previously contemplated. An aborted suicide attempt during my first year at boarding school failed, thank God, and it was never repeated because whoever I was -- boy, girl, something fluidly in-between -- my value had already been affirmed by my sister Nancy. Advertisement However much the toxic masculinity of my environment might assault and batter me at every turn in that harsh world, Nancy had made is safe to be me. Her most lasting gift to me at that age was the ability to see that even if I wasn't beautiful, or lovable, or serious enough for the expectations of the world of straight adults, I was unique and brimming over with the possibilities of a big life, and beautiful enough for her. She didn't make it to my high school graduation as we'd always planned, which was more than fine. After graduation, I went to Paris with a modeling contract. I entered college in 1982, came out as gay, because that's what I was told my plural gender identity meant. I left college early in 1984 to try to become a writer. I met my future husband that summer and when, in 1985, I married him at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, she was one of my two witnesses. In Brian, I'd found someone who, like Nancy, embraced the entirety of me, including everything I'd been taught to hate about myself. When Nancy moved to western Massachusetts, her house in the country there, with its vast, opaque silence and its view of Mount Monadnock became a place for rest and recharging. She cooked wonderful meals. She wore Miss Dior for me, bringing back a flood of memories just by turning her head. We made trips to nearby Shelburne Falls, with became another place of my heart. Nancy gave me the great gift of New England over the course of those years in the same way she'd given me so many other, similar gifts. One year, when it looked as though my marriage was at an end, her house was where I went to heal. In 2001, I wrote the opening paragraphs for an essay titled "My Life As A Girl," which was partly about her, in her upstairs study. It was subsequently published in an anthology called The Love That Dares Not Speak Its Name, and became the cornerstone essay in my collection, Other Men's Sons, which won the Randy Shilts Award for Nonfiction from the New York Publishing Triangle in 2008. Advertisement She was excited about my writing, but always quick to chide me when she saw meanness, or negativity, or judgment. I laughed it off as her being "new age," and I teased her about living so far in the woods, away from civilization. It would take me two decades to realize that she was right about everything, as usual. Love is a lighter burden than hate. Steadiness and calm on behalf of a righteous cause will always trump incoherent, generalized rage. And forgiveness really is the ultimate weapon in the face cruelty. These are important life-lessons for anyone. For queer people who pride themselves on advocating for social justice, they're absolutely essential adult qualities. Mostly though, her greatest lesson was love. She taught me that unconditional love does exist. I learned something that many LGBT children can't even conceive of -- that they're beautiful just as they are. That they're precious in ways they can't even conceive. I think of Nancy every time I see kindness, or gentleness, or protectiveness, especially towards someone who thinks he or she is fundamentally unlovable, and undeserving of love. I think of her every wedding anniversary, and I honor the fact that she's one of the reasons my husband had someone to walk down the aisle with in 1985, and make a life with. Advertisement And that she's one of the reasons I'm alive to write this tonight. Mostly, I remember Nancy, my sister, every June 3rd, on her birthday. And I know that whatever other unearned blessings have come into my life, few, if any of them can approach the gift to me that her love was, and is. HAVANA, May 1, 2016-- Cuban leader Raul Castro, center, the Second Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Jose Ramon Machado (R, center) and the First Vice President of Cuba Miguel Diaz-Canel, left center, watch the parade in Revolutionary Square in Havana, Cuba, on May 1, 2016. More the 500,000 locals and foreigners took part in Cuba's International Workers' Day parade here on Sunday, also celebrating the 90th birthday of Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. (Xinhua/Joaquin Hernandez via Getty Images) Private property will no longer be considered a capitalist disease, according to a draft document published by the ruling Communist Party to be ratified in 2017. In the Fundamental Law of the Republic, enacted a month after seizing power in January 1959, the revolutionary government recognized the existence and legitimacy of private property, but the Constitution of 1976 states that the economic system is based on the socialist property of all the people. The Constitution will be amended to legalize Raul Castro's sluggish measures, intended to deal with the economic crisis, and to establish the rules for the heirs of the historic leadership, before stepping down from State and Minister Councils in 2018. Private property will be recognized as a complement to socialist property, but an opening to individual Cubans (cuentapropistas) to increase their businesses is dubious. The government seems to favor the Non Agricultural Cooperatives. Yet the advantage of demonstrating an updated legal environment in the path to end the American embargo, and guaranties to foreigners and Cuban-Americans already investing through relatives and friends, probably were incentives to Fidel Castro's forgetfulness and Raul Castro's pragmatism. Advertisement Private property returning to Cuba became international news since the draft of the Conceptualization of the Cuban Economic and Social Model of Socialist Development was published on May 24. But earlier in April, on his report to the VII Communist Party Congress, Raul Castro had mentioned the reluctance of some delegates to recognize the existence of private property, fearing that it would be the first steps toward restoring capitalism in Cuba; the increase of cuentapropistas and their hiring of personnel had let to medium, small and micro enterprises, functioning under the legislation for an individual and his family; and limits to their property and richness would remain. Currently there are 507,342 cuentapropistas. Self-employment in 117 activities, not comprising university graduates, was permitted in 1993, as a result of the economic meltdown caused by the fall of the Soviet bloc, and in 1995 surpassed 200,000 individuals. By 2000 they had decreased to 100,000, in the process of reverting the squalid economic opening, that had been reluctantly allowed by Fidel Castro, as soon as the huge assistance from Chavez started. In 2006, Raul Castro inherited an isolated country with an economic chaos, clinging to a shaky Venezuela. Two years later the president began his reforms. In 2010, cuentapropistas expanded to 178 occupations, and family businesses could hire some workers, although laws, inspections and taxes prevented their growth. The original aim was that self-employment would relieve the government from 1.3 million unproductive employees, but fears that economic independent people would demand political rights led to a halt. Tight government control had to be assured, so Non Agricultural Cooperatives were devised. Thousands of State-owned barbershops, beauty parlors, repair shops, restaurant and cafeterias were handed over to their workers as cooperatives. They had no choice: either they accepted or lost their jobs within a month. That was the solution to unprofitable small businesses taken from their owners through the Socialist Offensive in 1968 (when private property was backed by the Fundamental Law), not firing thousands of workers, improving services and raising wages. Advertisement Moreover, fancy restaurants (paladares) and cafeterias, bakeries, ice cream parlors, houses and apartments for rent, beauty parlors, gyms, art galleries, music and theater halls, and high-quality flower, fruit and vegetable growers flourished. It is well known that Cubans on the island do not have the economic means for such investments. Cuban-Americans and foreigners actually own them with the quiet acceptance of the government. For a long time, economists, such as Oscar Espinosa Chepe, advised to stimulate their investments following China and Viet Nam experiences, and officials disdainfully answered that Cuba was neither of them. The Communist Party in the draft strongly reiterated that the defense and security of the revolution continues to be the main task, and it created a new concept: socialist civil society; the so called NGOs, such as the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. Independent civil society is labeled as an enemy led and paid by the United States and repressed. Isolation of Cubans with different opinions from visitors, especially entrepreneurs and those arriving in the framework of president Obama's people to people policy, is a principal aim. Hopefully private property will be recognized beyond the communist party's papers. Cubans living on the island have been discriminated against, while the New Investment Law is only for foreigners. The legislation must not only refer to medium, small and micro enterprises. Raul Castro promised to work hard drafting the new Constitution. In fact, it must be very clear and comprehensive with actual respect and rights for all. Miriam Leiva Independent journalist Women march during a protest against the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Wednesday, June 1, 2016. In response to the assault, Brazil's interim President Michel Temer said that Brazil will set up a specialized group to fight violence against women. (AP Photo/Andre Penner) Brazil's interim President Michel Temer has so far been a disastrous ruler in terms of women's rights. Activists have condemned many of his decisions, among them, stripping the Secretariat of Policies for Women of its ministerial status. That alone would be cause for concern, considering that the cabinet is filled with white men. But the appointment -- which is not yet official -- of former congresswoman Fatima Pelaes as head of the Secretariat has made matters even worse. Advertisement Her appointment would be quite unsettling. Fatima was a congresswoman for the state of Amapa, and is currently in charge of women's issues in the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, but her agenda is quite different from that of the feminist movement's. Fatima is radically opposed to the decriminalization or legalization of abortion -- one of the most important issues for women. In an interview with a religious website, Fatima described how her "encounter with Jesus changed her political views." Putting Fatima Pelaes in charge of women's issues would be like appointing a former torturer to head the Human Rights Committee or asking a fox to guard a henhouse. In her own words, between 1991 and 2002, "I hadn't found Jesus Christ yet, so I defended issues that go against biblical values, such as abortion, because at that time I thought that a woman was the 'owner' of her own body." The then-congresswoman also said that she considers family to be a project of God. Advertisement In the same interview, Fatima Pelaes declared: "I made a vow to glorify the name of the Lord in Congress." Fatima's positions would be controversial in any public office. It's not that she is not entitled to have a religion. But it is extremely controversial for her to openly declare that she will perform her public duties, in a secular state, according to her religious convictions. And since her new position is Secretariat of Policies for Women, things can get much, much worse. Since 2003, when the Secretariat of Policies for Women was created, we have been experiencing a period of developments rather than setbacks. Nonetheless, there has been a recent spike in opposition to the feminist agenda. The most significant force of opposition to women's rights is concentrated in religious congressmen, which have recently occupied more and more seats. Fatima Pelaes seems to have an ideological affinity with those religious congressmen. If she is appointed, it would become clear that the new president is actively working to destroy social achievements, undermine rights and silence marginalized groups. These groups are openly opposed to issues related to sexual and reproductive rights, as well as to the LGBT agenda. Putting Fatima Pelaes in charge of women's issues would be like appointing a former torturer to head the Human Rights Committee or asking a fox to guard a henhouse. Advertisement The Secretariat of Women's Policies has been headed by amazing women since its establishment in 2003. Nilceia Freire, Emilia Fernandes, Iriny Lopes, Eleonora Menicucci and Nilma Lino Gomes were all long-time activists who played important roles in advancing women's rights in the country. If Fatima is in fact appointed, it would be a scandal. Temer's government would become a huge obstacle to further advancements in the realm of women's rights. If she is appointment, it would become clear that the new president is actively working to destroy social achievements, undermine rights and silence marginalized groups. The events that have been unfolding in Brasilia over the last month are undoubtedly disastrous for women -- a terrifying disaster for that matter. To crown another week of setbacks for women's rights, on Wednesday, May 25, Minister of Education Mendonca Filho met with Brazilian actor Alexandre Frota in his office. For those who are unaware, Alexandre Frota has openly expressed shocking views about rape. God Creates Adam, Sistine Chapel, The Vatican, Michelangelo, Fresco, 1508-11. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images) As far as we know, there is no cure for death, no ingenious algorithm that can program the mysterious breath which at first gives life its form and then corrodes and withers it. It is in this breathing space between womb and tomb that we love, long and become human. Advances on the frontiers of science are now testing these limits of the human condition. By raising anew foundational questions of origins and destiny, they are, paradoxically, resurrecting the religious imagination. Advertisement Who is to say medical science should not enter the atrium between life and death as agony sets in? Why not meddle in the other end of existence, quickening? Why not pursue purity and perfection, rewrite our genetic code and reach for immortality through cloning? We stole fire from the gods. Why not the breath of life? Science has no knowledge of being. It can only report that we are a collection of cells. A bundle of nerves. An immune system. That we can't answer these questions with any convincing moral authority defines today's epochal juncture. Liberal democracy, no less a consumer society wedded to the scientific worldview, cannot offer a defense on its own terms of the person or of human dignity when faced with such questions. There is only a utilitarian reply. "Health," "longevity" or "saving a life" are the only standards. If that is what most people want, and that is what science can do, then what's the problem? Science has no knowledge of being. It can only report that we are a collection of cells. A bundle of nerves. An immune system. "Being," "the person" and "human dignity" are concepts arising instead from the religious imagination. In Islam, our body is God's trust. In the Judeo-Christian heritage the person is inviolable because he or she is a reflection of God's grace, made in God's image. Advertisement If we no longer believe in this link between the person and the sacred, as the Nobel Prize-winning poet Czeslaw Milosz has reflected, the bottom falls out of the values that underlay liberal democracy, leaving a lethal concoction of nihilism and technological prowess. Tower of Babel, 1563. (Getty) Increasingly, societies speeding toward the future are looking to traditional religion for moral and ethical guidance as they commit to their mutation in the new age of biology. Leon Kass, the "great books" scholar who headed the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005, has returned to a study of the biblical book of "Genesis" for answers about the human condition in the 21st century. In his book, "The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis," he sees genetic engineering and dreams of cloning as our contemporary equivalent to the limitless hubris of the Tower of Babel, which, in the biblical account, God struck down. Even that foremost European voice of secular reason, the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, has arrived at a similar conclusion. In a conversation with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict, Habermas asked whether, "modern democracies of necessity must draw from moral -- especially religious -- sources that they cannot themselves produce." He concludes that liberal democracies must leave a wide open space for religious expression and religious forms of life, particularly when confronting issues at the frontiers of science. In a later book, "Time of Transitions," Habermas is even clearer, saying that the West's Judeo-Christian heritage is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights and democracy -- the benchmarks of Western civilization. "To this day we have no other options," he writes. "We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter." Habermas goes on to contest "unbridled subjectivity," which he sees as clashing with, "what is really absolute; that is ... the unconditional right of every creature to be respected in its bodiliness and recognized in its otherness as an 'image of God.'" The faster the pace and the greater the scope of scientific discovery, the more the religious imagination will be stirred. In "Fides et Ratio," or "Faith and Reason," published in 1998, Pope John Paul II expressed the Catholic Church's concern: It should never be forgotten that the neglect of being inevitably leads to losing touch with objective truth and therefore with the very ground of human dignity. This in turn makes it possible to erase from the countenance of man and woman their likeness to God, and thus to lead them little by little either to a destructive will to power or to a solitude without hope. Coming out of the 20th-century traumas of Eastern Europe, the late pope rightly focused on how this erosion of the basis of human dignity paved the way for willful totalitarian rule. Ivan Illich, the philosopher and self-described archaeologist of modern certitudes, took this view one step further by placing it in the context of the 21st century technological leaps. He feared, "that the abstract secular notion of 'a life' will be sacralized, thereby making it possible that this spectral entity will progressively replace the notion of 'a person' in which the humanism of Western individualism is anchored." Illich went on to argue that "a life" defined no longer as "the miraculous sharing of God's intimacy" but as an "immune system" to be medically managed is "the most powerful idol the church has had to face in the course of its history." Just as the crumbled ground of human dignity yielded to totalitarianism in the 20th century, Illich viewed the "depersonalization" of the technological order as preparing the path to a "Brave New Biocracy" in which all are reduced to patients managed from "sperm to worm" by the medical-industrial complex, staying alive rather than living. Advertisement Ivan Illich. (Sigfrid Casals/Getty Images) Indeed, it is all too easy to see the baby boomer generation, the first thoroughly consumer generation in history, succumbing to this idolatrous embrace of mortal splendor, devoting vast sums of the GDP to the end of postponing the end as long as possible. As is already mostly the case, where once there stood churches, temples and mosques now stand hospitals and clinics. It's a juggernaut that will be hard to stop because the only moral language we have says "yes," not "no" -- though we all feel that familiar unease so prevalent in science fiction that warns of the danger of technology unleashed from a sense of the sacred. Like T.S. Eliot, we are beginning to ask ourselves, "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?" We sense an insufficiency in what we have wrought and wonder, like Eliot, if, "the cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust." Kass and Habermas are right to suggest that the new power of technology not only to change the world, but ourselves, ought to prompt an urgent search for a new moral language that can speak to our scientific leaps, a search for wisdom wherever we can find it, including in early religious and ethical texts. The more scientific discovery reveals, the more we realize it can't answer the great existential questions. Karl Jaspers, a German philosopher, was known for his study of the so-called Axial Age when all the great religions and philosophies were born around the same time over two millennia ago -- Confucianism in China, the Upanishads and Buddhism in India, Homer's Greece and the Hebrew prophets. Writing in 1949, he also doubted that our civilization was up to the spiritual challenge presented by our scientific advances. He, too, felt that, "the dissolution of modern thought has not been able to offer anything of real content out of its own origin, because the simplicity of depth does not exist in any new shape, and could hardly assert its new shape if it were to come into being, without having preserved the former content" of the Axial Age awakenings. What is certain is that the faster the pace and the greater the scope of scientific discovery, the more the religious imagination will be stirred. As French philosopher Henri Bergson wrote of our technological society in "The Two Sources of Morality and Religion," "in this disproportionately magnified body, the soul remains what it was, i.e., too small to fill it and too feeble to direct it. ... this enlarged body awaits the supplement of soul, the mechanical demands the mystical." The Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski put it in more definitive terms. "As a whole, mankind can never get rid of the need for religious self-identification," he told me in an interview at Oxford in 1991: Who am I, where did I come from, where do I fit in, why am I responsible, what does my life mean, how will I face death? Religion is a paramount aspect of human culture. Religious need cannot be excommunicated from culture by rationalist incantation. The more scientific discovery reveals, the more we realize it can't answer the great existential questions. In the end we are compelled to agree with Kolakowski's conclusion: "Man does not live by reason alone." Advertisement The ideas in this essay have appeared in different forms in the books and articles of the author. Also on WorldPost: by Emma Baccellieri If campaign contributions are any indication of broader support, members of the military are lining up behind Democrats in the presidential race, with Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) in the lead. Individuals listing their employer as the U.S. Department of Defense or one of the branches of the military have given $374,600 to Sanders, more than to any other presidential candidate. Hillary Clinton comes in second behind her Democratic rival at $247,649, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) not far behind and other failed Republican candidates following. Military support for the GOP's last man standing, Donald Trump, has been in comparatively short supply -- just $15,502. The figures include gifts from those who identified themselves as retired servicemembers. While it may seem surprising that someone who applied for conscientious objector status to avoid serving in Vietnam would be the top choice of military donors, the support for Sanders can be partially explained by demographics, Advertisement "It makes sense, if you look at the demographics of the military, that they kind of align with the demographics of those supporting Bernie Sanders," said Amy Bailey, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago who focuses on military sociology. The military skews young, with 70 percent of enlisted members under 30, and most come from working class backgrounds, she said. About 35 percent identify as people of color. A key sticking point for many service members who support Sanders over Clinton is her 2002 vote in the Senate for the war in Iraq, which Sanders voted against, said Tyson Manker, national director of the grassroots organization Veterans for Bernie. "The people that are going to be put into these life and death situations to fight an enemy, we want to know that it's not a waste," Manker said. "Bernie Sanders has shown the judgment and frankly, we trust him." Advertisement Service members have been turning their support to Democrats in increasing numbers since the start of the war. In 2002, the last full election cycle before the war began, 23 percent of military members' campaign contributions went to Democrats, according to previous research by the Center for Responsive Politics. That number has increased in every election since and now sits at 52 percent. In light of this trend, particularly the sizable military support for President Barack Obama in 2012, the current backing of Sanders and Clinton is not especially startling, said Phillip Carter, director of the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security. For many servicemembers who would typically vote Republican, the prospect of Trump as commander-in-chief raises some concerns, and that's reflected in their campaign contributions. Trump is still receiving less money than candidates who withdrew from the race months ago, such as Ben Carson and Rand Paul. The questions of what a Trump presidency would mean for overseas commitments and current alliances are serious ones for many of those in the armed services as well as retirees and DoD civilian employees, Carter said. Though Trump has not consistently offered specific foreign policy plans, he has discussed pulling U.S. troops out of NATO and suggested that nuclear weapons could be used to target terrorists in Europe. And servicemembers' concerns about Trump go beyond potential foreign policy decisions. Events such as the recent questions about the presumptive GOP nominee's donations to veterans groups have hurt his standing with them, and many of his comments about the military -- including calling Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) a "loser" for being a prisoner of war and Trump's claim that attending a military high school was equivalent to being "in the military in the true sense" -- have also rubbed them the wrong way. Advertisement As the former Broadcast Media Booker for the Democratic National Committee, I've worked alongside and across the partisan divide, on-the-record and off-, with women who dominate every day at the top of American political media. Having recently moved to a new role, the temptation to write a shoutout listicle highlighting key players in election media, many of whom you've probably never heard of, proved too much, so here it is. Without further ado, here are 32 of the most-influential women n 2016 election media, grouped by employer: CNN: Alexa Miranda, Jennifer Simpson, Allison Brennan They are the best booking team of the 2016 election cycle. Under their logistical supremacy and production leadership CNN has surged in the ratings game in 2016. This success has been buttressed by a grueling series of primetime debate and townhall broadcasts, in addition to the network's ceaseless lineup of politics coverages. All of these programming challenges are underwritten by the hustle and precision of CNN's election bookers who lock in top guests for the network day-in and day-out in morning, daytime, and prime. CNN's bookers are the industry's best with Miranda, Simpson, and Brennan leading the way. Honorable Mention: Daniella Diaz -- As a top digital producer for CNN politics, Diaz's byline tops some of the most-viral election stories in the daily media cycle, as well as news pieces other reporters aren't covering. FOX NEWS: Megyn Kelly, Megan Brown Even before her feud with Trump, The Kelly File's audience was massive. As network booker for Fox News Channel, Megan Brown's audience is technically even bigger. As Fox News Channel continues to lay their competition to waste in the ratings game, Megyn and Megan are the most-influential women in cable news. UNIVISION: Maria Elena Salinas, Ilia Calderon, Satcha Pretto, Mariana Atencio, Claudia Uceda There's no way to talk about influential women in election media without mentioning a lot of Univision talent. Latino voting is a priority for the network. In combination, these Latina news presenters make it a point to cover every aspect of 2016 election, from the granular aspects of the primary process and lawsuits aimed at Hispanic voter disenfranchisement, to translating the latest candidate dustups on the campaign trail for Univision's vast and devout Spanish-language news audience. MSNBC: Kasie Hunt, Katy Tur, Halley Jackson, Kristen Welker This politics quartet of breaking news virtuosos have thrived in MSNBC's daytime format, which relies less on talking heads and more on live reporting than their rivals. Somehow the four are consistently everywhere major political news is happening. If there was a Pulitzer Prize specifically dedicated to journalistic teamwork, these four would be the obvious winners in 2016. FOX BUSINESS: Maria Bartiromo She was the first woman to report live from the floor of the New York City Stock Exchange and has been the top money broadcaster ever since. So it's no real surprise that the politics interviews on Mornings With Maria are consistently world-class. Her Sunday Morning Futures show on Fox News Channel also delivers hard-hitting election interviews that are consistently on the level of anything you'll see on Sunday's network rivals Meet the Press, Face the Nation, State of the Union, and even Fox News Sunday. Advertisement NTN24: Diana Castaneda, Alison Vosloh Bogota-based NTN24's Washington, DC studio is small but staffed with one of Washington's great TV makeup artists. Segments are captured with top technicians and the latest robocam technology. Colombian audiences take excellence in news broadcasting seriously. Earlier this year when the network launched Poder Latino, a DC-based politics show on the U.S. election. Anchored by Castaneda and produced by Vosloh, the show provides audiences from Alaska to Patagonia a range of insights into Hispanics and the 2016 election. DNC: Lauren Dillon, Corinne Mattie As the Democratic National Committee's Research Director and Video Research Director, Dillon and Mattie are responsible for knowing everything Republican presidential candidates have done or are doing. Everything. They are the keepers of the party's opposition research. With seventeen GOP hopefuls on the debate stage last summer, Dillon and Matti had to function as both top political operatives and pioneers in information architecture. What they built and now maintain for the DNC will forever change how opposition research gets databased and deployed, not just for the Democratic Party but as the standard for future election cycles everywhere. Just as the world tried to duplicate Voter File that Obama's campaign built in 2008 election, soon others will do the same with the Oppo File that Dillon and Matti built for the 2016 election. Honorable Mention: Christina Freundlich -- The best press secretary I've ever worked with. Tenacious and detailed, she makes everyone she works with better at their job. DCCC: Christie Stephenson, Meredith Kelly, Camille Padilla In the wake of the effect Donald Trump has had on down ballot races, there are whispers all over Capitol Hill that the House of Representatives is up for grabs, that Republicans will lose their current majority. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is well-staffed to make these rumors true in November with the Stephenson, Kelly and Padilla -- Deputy Communications Director, Press Secretary, and Press Aide, respectively. A trio of the Democratic Party's best press operatives, they have the chance to make history this year. Advertisement RNC: Anna Sugg, Ruth Guerra Politics aside, the Republican National Committee has on staff this cycle the election's best dedicated TV director and the GOP's most-promising new TV spokesperson. Even before the record $2 billion in earned media that Donald Trump booked during the primary, Anna Sugg and Ruth Guerra had become a booking force in political broadcasting. Throughout the election cycle they have given Republicans an edge in bilingual political broadcasting. HILLARY CLINTON: Christina Schake, Lorella Praeli Every day that Schake and Praeli are not on political television is a missed opportunity for the campaign to deploy their narrative via the authority and grace of two of the elections most-natural and accessible TV spokespersons. In a daily media cycle saturated with the opposite narrative from the Trump and RNC booking machines, Schake and Praeli project sincerity and compassion. Moreover, Schake's credentials as a top national media operative are unassailable; while Praeli is flawless in Spanish and English. Most-imporantly, both are really great storytellers. Honorable Mention: Pao Ramos -- One of the most-accomplished millennials in political media, she's worked for the White House, Vice President Biden, and now Hillary Clinton's campaign for president. She is also a Harvard Grad of Cuban, Mexican, and American heritage with deep roots in Hispanic media, highly respected by her collaborators on the campaign trail. BERNIE SANDERS: Erika Andiola, Symone Sanders In a campaign often associated with "Bros", Erika Andiola and Symone Sanders (no familial relation to the candidate), have taken Bernie Sanders from virtually zero name recognition last summer among Latinos and black people, to being a household name for both today. Like Schake and Praeli, Andiola and Sanders are natural storytellers with tremendous broadcast media presence, but only Andiola and Sanders had to build their candidate's brand, story, and platform, from scratch across two key pillars of the Obama coalitions Democrats need to win in November. When the Democratic Party has a nominee, it would behoove her national coalition outreach teams to sit down with Erika and Symone, ask them how they did it, and take meticulous notes. DONALD TRUMP: Katrina Piersen She is generally regarded as Donald Trump's most-trusted spokesperson of 2016, which makes her one of the hardest-working women in politics. It seems there is no show in morning, daytime, or prime that Piersen doesn't regularly book to defend and promote Donald Trump's bid for the White House. The sheer amount of segments Piersen appears on is astonishing. If Donald Trump earned $2 billion in earned media during the primary, no doubt hundreds of millions of that value are attributable to the hours and hours of a-air-time Katrina Piersen earns for her boss. Advertisement Of course, this list is not all-inclusive. Who else should be listed here? Let me know in the blog comments or tweet at @HuffPostWomen. Update: Just after hitting publish on this blog post, the New York Times broke the news that the great Ruth Guerra moved on from her role at the RNC. Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe followed within the hour with a write-up of his own that included this gem: "a top Hispanic media official with the Democratic National Committee, credited Guerra for helping build a "national infrastructure" designed to attract minority voters "that it's obvious Donald Trump has no intention of deploying in that way." "Having been the Hispanic media director across the political divide from her, she was always much better at that role than I was. She was easily the top Hispanic television press operative I saw this cycle," he said. "It's a huge loss for the RNC." The relationship between the Presidents and the press has always been a complicated one. And it should be: as journalists we have the right -and more important, the duty- to make power accountable. I know that I don't have to explain this to the citizens of the country where some of the most outstanding cases for free speech have taken place. The country of the so called Watergate case -to begin with-, and of so many journalistic investigations that have created the canon of independence for many of us around the world. Among other elements, those experiences and situations have consolidated a society in the United States that understands and supports the value of free speech, free press and journalistic freedom, even with the risks that this implies. In Chile we are living now a situation where these significant values are at risk. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet (former UN Women founder and Executive Director) has decided to sue four journalists for libel. This is the first time, after the return of democracy in Chile, that a President has done something as serious as this. Of course differences with the press have existed with the five Presidents that have taken office after Pinochet dictatorship ended in 1990. But nothing like this. Advertisement Why this is happening in Chile, a democracy that has been considered solid and mature compared to their neighbor's in Latin America, and that enjoys so far Freedom of Speech and Free Press? Part of the explanation is political. President's Bachelet second mandate has the lowest approbation rates seen in decades: only 24% approves her leadership. One of the reasons might be the radicalism of her program, the amount, speed and depth of the changes she is leading simultaneously, alienating this way a great part of the center minded electorate. But another big explanation lies within her family: her son and daughter in law have created a political and personal nightmare for her. The so called "Caval case" is an ongoing investigation against Natalia Compagnon, married to her son and mother of her grandchildren, for corruption charges related to a speculative land deal that yielded millions of dollars in profit for Caval. This investigation of corruption in her inner circle, -even if she is not investigated herself- has damaged her reputation and the public trust. Unfair as this might sound, the mistakes of your family -if you are President- are part of the worst things that can be held against you, and all authorities in the world know this. Last week, Que Pasa magazine -the same one that published Caval Case for the first time- released another piece of information, both in the print magazine and in the website, a leak of a transcript of a telephone conversation of a witness that said that she might receive money if the business of her daughter in law succeeded. He also mentioned a bunch of politicians and involved them in illegal activities. Is important to say that this witness, Juan Diaz, has no credibility whatsoever and that the prosecutor said afterwards that this man knew that he was been recorded when he said this over the phone. The complaints for the lack of check and reporting of this pretty serious information arrived immediately, and two hours later, the magazine declared that the publication of this information -without further context and reporting- did not meet their editorial standards, they eliminated the article in the website and apologized. Afterwards, the print version appeared with a more extracted version of this article, -and only mentioning the President- but possibly it went to print before the apology was made. Advertisement President Bachelet -understandably- was outraged by this publication that accused her and attacked her integrity. But instead of making a solid complain, and allow the journalistic debate that begun that day to thrive, she decide to sue. It's a huge mistake in every way. Que Pasa has received the support of most of the Journalistic community and associations of Chile and of the region, including Humans Rights Watch, National Association of the Press, SIP. Because as media professionals, we can't tolerate that the complicated relationship between power and press ends up in a threat of jail time to four Chilean journalists, as the sue demands. That is unbearable. If you spend any time on the internet these days, you'll often find yourself swimming in a sea of clickbait titles (like the one above). They are rightly ridiculed, and I wanted to parody one today because I don't think this 'weird trick' will be what most of those articles say. It's more the type of thing your mother or grandmother would nag you about. So, what's the 'weird' trick? Here it is: Go to church. Regularly. If you're decidedly non-religious, or perhaps a Christian who gave up organized church some time ago, your skepticism glands will be flaring wildly right now. So, let me explain. About a month ago, Harvard School of Public Health Professor, Prof. Tyler Vanderweele, met our graduate student community at Harvard and shared some of the research he'd been working on. He's been analyzing data from 1996 to 2012 that came out of a longitudinal study of 75,000 female nurses in the US. In particular, he was researching the effect of religious service attendance on health, and the results were somewhat startling. Advertisement Nurses who attended services more than once a week were 33% less likely to die than those who never attended religious services. Interestingly, service attendance didn't decrease the likelihood of cancer or cardiovascular disease, but significantly improved survival. This was after accounting for other risk and lifestyle factors (such as smoking, obesity, and age). These results were published on May 15th here . Now, if your skepticism glands are flaring, then you'll probably have some questions. You might argue that the health benefits come from other routines - like eating well and exercising - and well-routined people also happen to be more likely to go to church. Causation generally cant be proved with this sort of data. Professor Vanderweele, however, pointed out that their data allowed them to control for a large number of the potential common causes of mortality. The controls were so thorough that the evidence for service attendance causing these health benefits seems quite strong. Maybe the qualifier 'religious' sounds superfluous. You might want to say that any commitment to a supportive community - religious or otherwise - would have these health benefits. I questioned Professor Vanderweele about this as well, and he explained that, yes, any supportive community has health benefits, but religious communities had a significantly larger effect. You might have further questions (we always have more questions with studies that doesn't match our worldview!), and if you want to message me (privately or in the comments below), I might be able to get Professor Vanderweele's responses (no promises!). Advertisement There are, of course, a number of limitations of the study. It was a study of middle-aged and older women, so results may differ for men or younger people. There werent enough participants of non-Christian religions to compare the effect of different religions services, although they were able to compare Catholics with Protestants (the health benefits were similar for each). There's still further research to be done to probe more thoroughly the medical mechanisms to describe exactly how service attendance improves mortality. None of this, however, discounts the conclusion that religious service attendance decreases the likelihood of death, at least in middle-aged and older women. In Western society, religion has become such a definitively private matter - a reality that certainly has its benefits and flaws - and this enforced privacy makes it difficult to know what to do with these conclusions. Can a doctor prescribe going to church if it's been shown to increase your chances of surviving cancer? Is this a practice a doctor simply cannot recommend because our commitment to the privacy of religion is more important than survival? Can we rightly withhold this recommendation, knowing that it significantly increases survival on account of the social sensitivity there is about religion? These are all important and challenging questions. In reality, no-one is recommending that doctors prescribe service attendance as a norm. Perhaps, however, if the doctor knows that a patient is Catholic (for example), but has ceased attending mass regularly, she could tell the patient about the known health benefits of service attendance as a light encouragement to consider this 'weird trick'. The following is a guest post from my Education Post colleague, Caroline Bermudez , a former journalist for the The Chronicle of Philanthropy who spent eight years covering the nonprofit world, with a particular focus on foundations and high net-worth giving. As a proud graduate of Chicago Public Schools, Caroline has seen firsthand the inequities and systemic failings of urban school systems. By Caroline Bermudez A recent Los Angeles Times editorial suggested that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been characterized by hubris. It has hedged big bets, hoping its efforts would succeed. It's also suffered failure and for that it's been criticized as having exercised too much influence over education policy. Yet, while the Gates Foundation does wield considerable power, it does not have the ability to control the American educational agenda. Advertisement For the most part, Gates has supported the pioneering work of others. Small schools, Common Core and teacher evaluation were not started by the Gates Foundation. Its contribution has been to bring these promising ideas within education to national scale and study whether those ideas are working. Today, all but a handful of states have raised standards, and most are actively improving their systems of evaluation. The Gates Foundation should be praised for its candor and for being one of the few major foundations to prioritize K-12 education, which is too often regarded as the poor little stepsister of higher education. This is borne out by the numbers. Three billion dollars, the figure the Times states the Gates Foundation has spent on education since 1999, seems like a hefty sum until you learn that colleges and universities received over $40 billion in charitable contributions in 2015 alone. But what the Times does not acknowledge--but is commonly embraced by the tech industry and increasingly so by philanthropy--is that failure is necessary. It is expected. It is even praised. Because it is a sign that risks are being taken, that you are not merely content to stick to the tried and true. Advertisement Only through repeated failure can big breakthroughs happen. And only through vast reserves of confidence can an entrepreneur or organization withstand the disappointment of repeated failure. Behind every success story are many more which end in failure. During my former career covering philanthropy, it was rare for any foundation, let alone a grant-maker the size of the Gates Foundation, to admit to failure. In recent years, however, the tide has shifted towards philanthropies accepting failure as an inherent part of their work. Failure, foundations now are coming to understand, is instructive, for it allows them to learn from their mistakes and improve. Prominent philanthropists from some of the largest foundations in America spoke about "failing well" to the Stanford Social Innovation Review. One funder said a dinner was given to the worst grant of the year. The purpose was not to shame the program officer or program responsible, but to learn about why the grant didn't succeed. Education is risk-averse. Take charter schools, for example. With a 25-year track record, and despite comprising many of the best schools in the nation, people are still suspicious of them. Charter schools were founded on the idea that the structure of traditional public education wasn't flexible or innovative enough to respond to the needs of low-income children. You have policies such as "last in, first out" (aka LIFO) that reward seniority instead of talent. Education does not prioritize out-of-the-box thinking. So when someone like Bill Gates, an iconic figure in a field defined by risk--someone used to failure yet equipped with the belief that his work will eventually yield fruit--ventures into education, he is seen as an interloper because he wants to devote his great fortune trying to move the intractable. Advertisement The foundation is committed to high standards, great teaching, and now, personalized learning. But its team is also humble enough to acknowledge that they underestimated how hard the work is. Rather than denigrating philanthropists, The Los Angeles Times should be thanking them for investing their dollars into a woefully underfunded field. I'm hard-pressed to think of another philanthropist who has devoted so much time and manpower to charity and brought more attention to K-12 education, an area that lags in donations compared to higher education, health care, and religion. I can think of no one else who is as bold--so bold as to have his foundation publicly acknowledge its challenges and seek to learn from them. And the Gates Foundation's efforts may yet prove to be wildly successful. Six studies have shown that the foundation's small schools program in New York resulted in significant gains for students. And despite the backlash that accompanied the Common Core, including the opt-out movement, higher standards have been widely embraced. What controversy has been drawn to the Common Core has been politically motivated with false claims of federal overreach rather than a solid understanding of what the standards actually are. What the Gates Foundation should learn is the virtue of patience. While humility and a capacity for self-reflection are important to be successful, so is a healthy degree of arrogance--the arrogance of thinking that the most ambitious and complex problems can be solved no matter how many times you fail. The Gates Foundation is to be commended for admitting its misses in its annual letters, and it should not be deterred from daring to make more. We may accrue more knowledge of what works through failing than never being brave enough to try. Advertisement U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, U.S., May 16, 2016. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein In the current election season we've seen plot twists at every turn. The primary possesses the stuff of a telenovela. Oddball caricatures pitted against each other: one, a wild white-haired savior to the people, cult thrashing in his wake. Advertisement Another, a cartoonish braggard. Face all lips, wilted cockatoo perched atop his head, pontificating about the literal and metaphorical size of his penis. The first female candidate to see serious contention--again. Widely panned by both democrats and conservatives, but possessing the requisite brass balls. Portrayed as stuffy and cynical, willing to compromise on anything as she claws her way to the top. Hillary Clinton came into the nomination battle swinging, and by many measures she's a formidable candidate. Yet she's largely hated. On the surface, many of the reasons for this pass muster. She's rich and her money doesn't smell squeaky clean. She's from a relatively newly established political family not universally loved, around which many pieces of negative news circulate. She's "lied"--or been dishonest--or pleaded the fifth over some particularly dogged inquiries. And of course, she's a woman. Just as the conversational arc around racism explores its regional implications--how in the conservative South, color differences aren't pretended away; while in the North, a kind of caricature of the reticent, jumpy white liberal dominates ("I didn't notice you were black!")--feelings around gender can also operate covertly among liberals as compared to their conservative counterparts. You're probably familiar with one of the white racial stereotypes--say, of Berkeley folk eager to deny their perception of color. There isn't a clear stereotype, though, for the sexist liberal. While we call out gender inequity in its most patent forms--in the wage gap or access to healthcare--sexism floats under the radar in the name of humor, family values, and the tired gender roles we're habituated to out of the mere fact of their ubiquity. It's is a cultural taboo we ongoingly afford ourselves, and it's relatively easy to get away with misogynistic statements unchecked. Advertisement Consider this joke Bill Maher tweeted in July 2014: "Dealing w/ Hamas is like dealing w/ a crazy woman who's trying to kill u - u can only hold her wrists so long before you have to slap her" Slate (in the linked text, above) does well covering the foundation of the joke's misogyny. I won't go into the racial semiotics of the joke as it stands, but imagine for a moment the joke's overtly racist equivalent--for example, with Maher's crosshairs focused on African Americans. The racist equivalent must also rely on violent imagery. Would it feature lynching, or a noose? Certainly, violent imagery towards blacks persists within the most bigoted corners of society, and the Obama presidency saw a detonation of racist tropes thought to be extinguished from dominant culture. While there are no shortages of racist "jokes," the mainstream--at least the liberal mainstream--has roundly agreed such commentary is wrong, even if that moral ground does not, apparently, apply to judicial rulings over the loss of black lives. Maher's outdated take on women, however, is a part of the no-no schtick promoted by liberals themselves which earns him fans. (I happen to be a fan of Maher's, though not from jokes such as this. I don't believe we can expect perfection from comics, and we know by now not to expect political correctness from Maher.) We laugh along with the audience at Maher's Real Time, but we do it through expressions of feigned horror in order to cover our asses. Laughing through gritted teeth, we affirm the charade. The jokes are cringe-worthy but funny. It's funny to degrade and deride women. It's also in line with our unconscious motives. The status of women is marked one step down from the men, and women willingly allow themselves to get kicked around so we can prove we're good sports. With the handy defense, "It's just a joke!" we're stopped from exploring the deeper implications of our lopsided cultural commentary. We want to play, too. We're feminists, but god forbid we're feminazis. It's this insidious nature of misogyny that's damning to social progress. We want women to advance in such elevated arenas as highest office, theoretically. Yet when a woman threatens to rise, we get the confusing not her. We get clear double standards. In politics as in life, we have the luxury to identify a truth when convenient, or erase it with rhetorical sleight of hand and populous desire. We can't implicate the offender when a sexist motive is felt but not pinpointed, when the motive would be perennially denied even by the camp promoting feminism. Because women are everywhere, in every society and every town, the feminist cause is in one sense, obvious, but in another, it's obscured by the normalization of discrimination across culture and geography. Misogynistic motives are coursing through our veins. But when we direct our periscope towards Hillary, it's not in the view of one chauvinist attack where we'll find it. It resides in the midst of multiple imageries--it's in the collective ambiguity where we might catch its bitter essence. If we're paying attention, these layered messages sharpen our senses. It's there we'll find the sediment of our collective unconscious: the consensus of misogyny under which we unknowingly operate. It's well within the liberal rubric just as it stagnates in the conservative domain. It's obvious in the fabric of history and popular culture. Advertisement If you saw the Saturday Night Live skit in which Larry David applies his trademark Andy Rooney-like dissent to nearly everything--never more accurately than in his parody of Bernie Sanders' annoyance at his own supporters, then I should also note that was me. "I'm great but I'm not five-posts-a-day great," David (as Sanders) nags about his supporters on SNL. "Get a life," he suggests. I was that idiot posting three, maybe four times a day. Memes, statistics, pleas. I gushed about Sanders and overshared how I "cried" when he dominated the Michigan primary in the biggest political upset in nearly thirty years. TMI is de rigeur among Bernie supporters. It describes an important part of the swell that swept us away. We're passionate about a political movement not seen stateside in many years. Finally, I thought, our country would be taken in a direction towards the plainly superior ideals of Western Europe. Socialized medicine and free education. Sensible clogs and rock-hard rye. Elated with his progress but white-knuckling the polls, I made allusions to the apocalyptic parallel universe in which Sanders isn't nominated when I proclaimed him "our only hope." It could be that he is our only hope; some scholars have already noted so. Advertisement But something polluted started leaking into the edges of my vision, something I didn't want to see until it cast a pall over everything. Increasingly, berner rhetoric felt like veiled misogyny. A photo appeared on the "Bernie Sanders is my HERO" page, one of the Sanders Facebook groups I followed. In the shot we see one white woman and three white men mugging at odd angles for the selfie. Elusively captioned: "We're going to make her non viable today!!! I can feel it!" our young subjects squeeze into view in front of a packed auditorium. One of the men could pass for Guy Fawkes if he went sandy blonde. The message was off enough to send a jolt. "We're going to make her nonviable." Her. That woman. That vaginad human persona who has the audacity to believe we would want her sitting in our Oval Office. We're going to take away her chances. We're going to stop that woman dead. We can pinpoint contempt for women in sifting through the language of the zeitgeist. As in Maher's tweet, it's both hidden and obvious. Pronouns denote what we expect, and historically, we don't expect a woman to run for office at the same rate as men. Making "her" nonviable serves up the searing reminder that there is only one "her" we're talking about, and she is out of line. We must suck the life out of her would-be viability as a candidate. Language has conveyed an acute gender imbalance for centuries. It's so ingrained, we often only notice when the routine goes amiss. To wit, it took more than four months in the fog of new parenthood to realize that few of my infant son's books contained any female characters. Sweet coming of age vignettes featured boys on fun adventures, boys learning important lessons. Boys doing the growing and transforming. Advertisement In 2011, Gender and Society published the most comprehensive study of 20th century children's literature to date. From this we learned that: Only 31% of children's books featured central female characters 36% contained a male character in the title, while just 17% contained a titular female character In the 1990s we came close to gender parity for human characters, but that decade maintained disparity for animal characters 2:1 (male to female) We soak up a number of onerous things as individuals navigating an egregiously skewed society. Before we've developed enough to become aware of our faulty thinking, we're preadapted to a world suspicious of girls. At preverbal states, we internalize that girls aren't necessary to the storyline. They aren't noteworthy. Women aren't the norm in fiction or our lived realities. We don't expect to find girls in children's books, and they're . As girls, the seeds of internalized misogyny are sown early. Language provides part of the unconscious infrastructure by which we carry our actions. We learn to disappear ourselves from narratives, to disregard female heroines. We learn to operate our lives outside the frame of the most celebrated domains. We internalize this psychological gesture before we've learned to reason, and it's steamrolled into us as we grow up. Many of us have developed tricks to work our way back in. We might sexualize ourselves. We might affect charisma. And just as we see within other discriminated groups, we exact lateral violence on each other as part of the internalized misogyny we began to absorb in our infancy. Misogyny gets culturally reinforced throughout our lifetimes, and it also reverberates internally. We judge other women over their personalities, their voices, their looks, their desirability. As a society, we apply unfair standards and we shrink the female identity because it's easier than going through the confusion and discomfort required to correct the narratives about what we expect. Historically, we know what happens to outsiders. We regard them with suspicion and hostility. When we hold power over another, we can make of their existence what we want by controlling the cultural syntax. "Her," as the interloper, ends up being not just about Clinton. It represents the whole of our attitude towards women. Women are purged from literature and minimized through institutionalized discrimination. We maintain an othered status and we live our lives unconsciously taking for granted the double-standard. Advertisement A woman in Clinton's position is faced with the impossible: to please everyone while everything about her is called into question--her appearance, her marriage, her sexual appeal. She must be both mother and monger enough to convince us she could be Putin's opponent. And she could, deftly. In the language of unconscious misogyny, I don't think berners realize what they're peddling. "Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering." - Saint Augustine The only elites and rich had an access to foreign countries before, but after the introduction of mass communication media everything has changed. With the radio, TV and the internet, the general public was able to get information from all over the world and opportunities for them outside Nepal. This immediately changed the status of those who were ambitious and willing to work hard but were not able to find opportunities within the country. This drastically increased flow of Nepalese ambitious youths to foreign countries like Japan, Australia, Europe and USA. With the changing global situation, America favored Nepal with DV lottery program and added thousands more to the increase Nepalese population in the USA. In Nepal, only the rich and aristocrats enjoyed wealth and power. Others had little or no chance to do so. Going abroad became a way to bring about a balance in that process. The economic status in Nepal today doesn't have much difference between different communities. The aristocrat families of Nepal are no more the sole owner of big houses and cars. Kathmandu residents are no more the only heirs of bank balances; the Rais and Sherpas of the mountains are multi-millionaires in the USA. Advertisement This desire for prosperity pulled a large number of populations to foreign countries, but now Nepalese abroad are competing with fellow citizens of those countries. They have pulled their entire family members and relatives abroad to help them in their businesses and obtain an education. Nowadays, the desire to compete for and live the lifestyle of Americans and Europeans is of more interest to Nepalese youths than mere poverty. The easy and cheap means to travel, the ability to speak English language easily and increasing number of well-settled Nepalese abroad make it easy for the beginners today. There are Nepalese lawyers and accountants in America and Europe to help the newcomers with immigration procedures and Nepalese communities to provide knowledge of easily settling there. Nepalese shops and restaurants are all over the world today. The global village that the world has become in the last few years makes the question of separate countries really useless except in the map. No country can do on its own and there will be increasing number of Americans and Europeans moving into Nepal and Nepalese moving elsewhere. It is just the way future is going to look like. We cannot stop the inevitable. Nepalese youths are marrying with Americans and Europeans. Either they move abroad or foreigners are moving in. Different people have different interests and motives for doing different things. Political situation and poverty has always been the major reason behind the intellectuals and talented Nepalese leaving the country. If the country was able to absorb these human resources, the emigration would never happen in such a large quantity. On the other hand, the large number of population is conditioned in such a way that Nepal is useless, America is heaven, and Europe is the future and those who go to Australia make it. This kind of conditioning since early age is happening in Nepal at this moment. Young folks are looking forward to enjoy the rest of the lives in some foreign countries where life is comfortable and secure. They are not focused on creating opportunities in their own country. Advertisement Vanity and inconsistent sizing is, unfortunately, not a unique issue: You'd be hard-pressed to find a universal size 4, 6, or 8 across various retailers found on your average mall floor plan. (Amy Schumer even spoofed that frustrating reality in a recent Inside Amy Schumer sketch.) It's not as common to encounter this issue with threads from the same retailer. But that's what one shopper says she experienced at American Eagle Outfitters, and her story has been getting a lot of attention on social media, Today reports. Missy Rogers posted an image on Facebook of two pairs of shorts she says were purchased from American Eagle, two years apart. Despite seemingly having the same waistline and width, she writes that the black style (bought back in 2014) is labeled as a size 4, while the maroon pair, spotted on the selling floor recently, is tagged as a size 10. "How is it that what was considered at size 4 is now the same dimensions of a size 10?" she asked in her post. "How small has a size 4 become?" Rogers shared an anecdote about going to an American Eagle store and trying on the maroon shorts in a size 4, as she normally has in the past. However, during this visit, she was disheartened when she couldn't fit into them and had to go up three sizes -- only to come home and compare the waist bands and realize they were essentially the same. "Once I brought the shorts home and compared, I realized that size is literally just a number," she wrote. Advertisement Rogers' fitting-room revelation (or ire) will, she hopes, bring attention to the subtle messaging -- not just at American Eagle, but in the retail industry at large -- that sizing can have on younger shoppers. "I think it's important to show that clothing size should not define your beauty. If a size 10 is what a size 4 used to be, what message are you implying to younger girls?" She concludes that size "is literally just a number printed on a tag" and that it's more important to feel confident than to obsess over a seemingly arbitrary designation. The message seems to have resonated: The post has been shared over 72,500 times in less than a week. "Although it may just be a number, we grow up under the perspective that anyone who fits in the smaller sizes is more beautiful and closer to being 'perfect' than those in the larger sizes," Rogers told Today. She poses the question: "Isn't it more important to look after the physical and mental health of the population rather than printing a random number on a tag?" This isn't the first time popular retailer is questioned for its sizing practices: J.Crew, Gap, and Banana Republic were called out by FitBay last year for this very reason, StyleCaster reported. Chad Kessler, American Eagle's global brand president, echoed Rogers' concern in a statement obtained by Refinery29. "We agree fully with Missy that women are so much more than numbers, which is why we are so strongly committed to body positivity," he wrote. "Like every retailer, we strive for consistency and clarity to help our customers make decisions. We've reached out to Missy to get her feedback on her shopping experience and look forward to engaging in a discussion around this important issue." Sizing aside, the brand has put a lot of focus on body positivity and it's not going unnoticed. Its Photoshop-free #AerieReal lingerie campaigns have been widely praised and have proven to be quite profitable for the company. (Its most recent quarterly report was strong, which is notable, considering other fashion retail companies appear to be struggling.) The retailer hit a snag in its inclusive messaging with its criticized April Fool's hoax, but has since reiterated its commitment to zero retouching. American Eagle has been at the forefront of size inclusivity as far as mass market retailers go, and inconsistent sizing remains an issue that a number of retailers deal with (and perhaps, should focus on a bit more). Advertisement For Beth Nielsen, Chief Culinary Officer and third generation co-owner of Nielsen-Massey Vanillas, giving back to her local and global community is a family affair. More than helping to run a family-owned company with a pay-it-back attitude, Beth and her brothers Matt and Craig Nielsen, and their mother Camilla, created the Nielsen-Massey Foundation with the notion of doing even more. "Our company has always done a lot for the community, it's part of our tradition to support the causes that are close to us," explained Beth in an interview. "And with the foundation we now give ten percent of all the net profits of Nielsen-Massey Vanillas to the Nielsen-Massey Foundation." The third generation, left to right: COO Matt Nielsen, CCO Beth Nielsen, and CEO Craig Nielsen (Image courtesy Beth Nielsen) Primary among the Nielsen family causes is education, with an emphasis on providing scholarships and products for culinary education, which can be so expensive today. "As a family and a company, we've been long-time supporters of The French Pastry School in Chicago, where the family was based, and we got involved in For the Love of Chocolate because it's mostly about scholarships for their students." Advertisement While all the Nielsen siblings step up to support For the Love of Chocolate, it's Beth who has donned vanilla-clad couture and strut the runway of its dessert-inspired fashion show. In 2013, her young daughter even got involved, hand-painting gum paste vanilla orchids with the family's vanilla bean paste before they were glue-gunned onto her mother's vintage gown. "She's even more of a go-getter than her mother!" exclaimed Beth. Beth Nielsen adorned in vanilla orchids hand-painted by her daughter with vanilla bean paste, at For the Love of Chocolate's fashion show (Image courtesy Beth Nielsen) The family's support of culinary education, inclusive of education in sustainable agriculture and organic farming, extends far beyond just The French Pastry School. "You could name almost any culinary school in America and you'd find that we support it at the very least with product donations," said Beth proudly. "Our support for education goes back to my father Chat's vision and his love and passion for education. It's incredibly important for us to support these organizations." Beth Nielsen modeling food fashion for charity with a vanilla bean belt and bracelet, at For the Love of Chocolate (Image courtesy Beth Nielsen) Advertisement Beth herself shares her father's passion for education, in her pre-Nielsen-Massey career days, she founded a school herself, one of her most prized achievements. Today, as CCO of the family business, she is constantly on the go traveling the country giving educational talks and demonstrations, and continuing to ensure their products are readily available to students. "My idea is that whatever it is that you're learning, you need to learn how to do it best, and that means using the best tools available. If you're studying to be a pastry chef, this means not only having the best kitchen equipment but also the best ingredients." Beth chuckled and continue on, "So why use crappy imitation vanilla? How will future chefs know how to make the best if they don't use the best products available?" The family doesn't stop with education. As a global company working in Madagascar, Mexico, Tahiti and other countries where farmers and other communities face enormous challenges, the Nielsen-Massey Foundation supports local NGOs doing work on the ground. "While the mission of our foundation has so much to do with education--supporting culinary schools and students--we also give to programs that help the underprivileged around the world, particularly in our vanilla-growing regions," explained Beth. "One example of this kind of involvement is our support of clean water programs in Madagascar. We'll also be supporting the building of schools in communities that don't have access to good education." As the Chief Culinary Officer at Nielsen-Massey Vanillas, Beth is the one who "fosters relationships with chefs and future chefs," which she said is the highlight of her responsibilities at the family-owned company. These relationships not only help the bottom line of the company, they allow Beth to recruit chefs to get involved with charitable organizations supported by the foundation. "When Angelic Organics, an amazing place that educates people on sustainability and organic farming, agreed to hold their annual fundraising dinner in Chicago instead of on their farm which is two hours outside Chicago, I was able to get some great chefs involved and we had our best year yet." Some cancers still cannot be successfully treated with chemotherapy, but a group of researchers is finding alternatives in plants, marine organisms and fungi. This group of more than 25 researchers from four continents is in the race to develop drugs that work in drug-resistant forms of cancer, and in cancers that are too advanced to respond to conventional forms of treatment. Over a decade after his initial collaboration with Robert Kiss at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium and Antonio Evidente at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy, Alexander Kornienko from Texas State University in the US, has hopes for one of the group's discoveries to enter clinical trials soon. You can follow the group and their progress in their project on ResearchGate. ResearchGate: Why are there cancers that don't respond to chemotherapy? Alexander Kornienko: There are a number of cancers that have what is known as an intrinsic resistance to chemotherapeutic agents. Usually these cancers have a dismal prognosis. This is the case for a brain cancer called glioblastoma, the most lethal type of cancer. Pancreatic cancer, melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer are other cancers that don't respond to current types of chemotherapy. The reason is that most chemotherapeutic agents today work by inducing a particular type of cell death called apoptosis. But these cancers have defects in the apoptopic machinery, which means they cannot execute this programmed cell death. Apoptosis is the best-established and most studied type of cell death. It is very important for any kind of physiological process. Our tissues undergo constant remodeling. As some cells are born, other cells must die to create space. Those that must die, die through apoptosis. Typical chemotherapeutic agents initiate this type of cell death to kill cancer cells as well. Advertisement RG: Once a tumor spreads, it's also hard to fight it with the chemotherapeutic agents we have today. Why is that? Kornienko: Cancer metastases are also resistant to chemotherapy because of their resistance to anoikis. Anoikis is apoptotic cell death that is normally initiated when a cell detaches from other cells or from the extracellular matrix. However, cancer cells that detach from the tissue to find a distant site for metastatic growth have been able to overcome anoikis and thus have gained resistance to apoptosis-inducing chemotherapy. These resistant cells will detach and migrate to other organs and grow metastases unhindered. RG: What are you doing about this? Kornienko: Our group is exploring and evaluating natural products that induce types of cell death other than apoptosis. We focus on known natural products, as well as on the exploration of new natural products that have not been previously reported. It's a dual-targeted approach from many angles. We have a number of natural products chemists who are primarily located in Italy. One of the leading scientists of our team is Antonio Evidente at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy. He provides us with natural compounds from plants and fungi. Other colleagues like Vassilios Roussis from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece provide us with natural products isolated from marine algae and Margherita Gavagnin from the CNR in Naples, Italy provides us with marine invertebrates. Most of these natural products are then evaluated by Robert Kiss' team at the Free University of Brussels where they work with cancer biologists and clinicians with particular expertise in treating brain cancer. In this team there is also a neurosurgeon, Florence Lefranc, who works with glioblastoma patients on a daily basis. My team at Texas State University modifies the structure of natural products to optimize their activity. Helen Townley at Oxford University is a specialist of nanodelivery vehicles. Advertisement "In the last decade a large number of new natural products with anticancer activities have been discovered." RG: What have you found? Kornienko: In the last decade a large number of new natural products with anticancer activities have been discovered. These natural products are isolated from plants, fungi and marine organisms, and many of them fight cancer cells through mechanisms other than apoptosis. One of these alternative types of cell deaths is autophagy, which in Greek means "self-eating." When a cell undergoes starvation and does not get enough nutrients, it will start eating itself to survive. It starts to consume its own organelles or proteins to generate energy. This is a protective response, but at a certain point when the starvation is prolonged, the cell crosses a point of no return and will start to consume vital organelles. There are ways to induce this type of cell death with small molecules. These compounds hijack the cellular pathways that start autophagy and induce prolonged autophagy. The cell is deceived by these agents and thinks there are no nutrients. Then it eventually dies. One agent that induces autophagy is temozolomide. Temozolomide is a synthetic compound and currently the only agent that prolongs the lives of patients with glioblastoma. We have found what looks like a natural alternative to temozolomide. RG: That's exciting. What's that? Kornienko: This project deals with another form of programmed cell death called paraptosis. Paraptosis is characterized by a process of cytoplasmic vacuolization, in which the number of vacuoles in a cell grows to the extreme to the point where the cell cannot recover and eventually bursts open and dies. The specific pathways of paraptosis are not as well-known as in apoptosis because it has only recently been discovered, 15 years ago. Advertisement We found that ophiobolin A, a fungal metabolite isolated from phyto-pathogenic fungi -- fungi that infect plants -- induces paraptosis, specifically in glioblastoma cells. These cells don't die from modern chemotherapy, but they die from ophiobolin A. We published a number of papers on this finding where we describe how this agent works against cancer cells in culture and in mice. We created what is called an orthotopic mouse model by injecting human glioblastoma cells into the brain of the mice. Ophiobolin A extended the life of these mice, proving that it works in the living animal. RG: What needs to happen next so you can see whether ophiobolin A also works in humans? Kornienko: There are still a number of hurdles that have to be overcome. One is that ophiobolin A is somewhat unstable. My group is working to come up with derivatives or analogues that retain this kind of cell death inducing activity but are more stable. Another challenge is making it pass the blood brain barrier, a very thick structure that protects the brain from undesired molecules. Many drugs fall at the last hurdle here, not only drugs against cancer, but also against Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. Helen Townley at the University of Oxford on our team, is working on the development of such nanovehicles which transport ophiobolin A as cargo across the blood brain barrier into the brain. RG: Which natural compound is closest to clinical trials? Kornienko: We are also working on a family of natural products that are isolated from daffodils. Daffodils have been known for their toxic properties for centuries. In fact, not just for centuries. The anticancer properties of daffodils were already known to Hippocrates. Hippocrates of Cos lived in the 4th century BC and used the extracts from daffodils (narcissus) to treat uterine cancer. More recently a number of anticancer constituents of daffodils have been isolated. Our group found that these compounds are able to induce growth inhibition in cancer cells that are resistant to apoptosis. "The anticancer properties of daffodils were already known to Hippocrates." RG: How do these compounds work exactly? Kornienko: The daffodil compounds which we investigated are called narciclasine, lycorine and haemanthamine. These agents do not induce cell death at all. They use growth inhibition; they arrest cell growth. We think that these agents work by rigidifying the actin cytoskeleton in cancer cells. Advertisement Any cell has structures that are comparable to bones and muscles, just like the human body. The bones are microtubules. The actin cytoskeleton forms the muscles. When a cancer cell migrates to form metastases it has to be able to squeeze in between other cells to make its way out of the tissue and into the blood vessel. To be able to squeeze like that, the cell has to change its shape. It uses its actin cytoskeleton -- the muscles -- to do that. The daffodil agents rigidify the actin cytoskeleton. This way the cell cannot divide and cannot migrate and, ultimately, it will die. Again, because these agents do not induce apoptosis, they are active against different types of cancer which are resistant to apoptosis, like glioblastoma and melanoma. And because cancer cells rely on the high activity of the actin cytoskeleton, these compounds leave normal cells alone. We recently published a paper about the use of narciclasine to inhibit the growth of melanoma cells in cell culture, as well as in mice. RG: What are your hopes for these compounds? Kornienko: We hope that one of these agents will work and eventually make it to human clinical trials, hopefully all the way to the regulatory approval. We're close to clinical trials with narciclasine. What we really need to do is develop nanodelivery vehicles for this agent. Narciclasine is not soluble in water, which is a challenge we need to address. If you can't dissolve it, you can't deliver it easily -- this is one of the killer issues in drug discovery. Nanovectorization of this agent should not only solve the solubility problem but also improve its delivery to the brain. Yesterday, I received a message from the Rev. Kristin Stoneking, the Executive Director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), the nation's oldest interfaith peace organization. Stoneking and members of FOR had just met with House Speaker Paul Ryan. The purpose of their meeting was to encourage Speaker Ryan to speak out against the hate language of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. They wanted him to stand up, publicly, and denounce the Islamophobia that is being spewed by Trump and to promote tolerance of refugees. (http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/06/02/3784357/paul-ryan-trump-islamophobia/) The meeting apparently went well, with Ryan promising Stoneking and Anthony Grimes, who is the Director of Campaigns and Strategy for FOR ,that he would speak out against anti-Muslim rhetoric and would visit the Muslim Community Center and Masjid in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin. The representatives of FOR were encouraged. Advertisement But hours after that meeting, Ryan went on record to endorse Trump. For the FOR reps, it felt like a slap in the face, a mockery of what had just transpired. Members of the Muslim community were also in that meeting and received the affirmation and assurance from Ryan that he understood their struggle as Muslims in this country, at this time. They all left gratified and encouraged, but felt the floor fall from under their feet as they listened to Ryan endorse Trump. Grimes was vocal about the disappointment he and the others felt. He said Ryan's endorsement would be disappointing to many and said that "actions must match words." Ryan's endorsement of Trump was indeed troubling. For a while, it seemed like Ryan had the courage to stand up against Trump, who bullies and sullies anyone who criticizes him and comes against him. It was gratifying to see Ryan stand in his own shoes, the political risk for himself he was creating notwithstanding. But at the end, politics won, politics, which shapes all government. Trump and Sanders are right when they say government is corrupt, but it is the politics which drives the process of getting people into office which makes government corrupt. At the end of the day, it is not the hearts and needs of the people which is centrally important to politics and politicians; it is the drive for power. In the quest for power, most politicians will say and do almost anything. Advertisement Plato wrote in his work, The Republic, that democracy is a system which is doomed to fail. He describes several stages of government which are "intolerable yet unavoidable." A crucial theme of his analysis of democracy is that ultimately, it does not work; it will fail. He says that in spite of the high ideal of a democracy, where everyone has, at least theoretically, equal power because everyone can vote, that ideal is fleeting at best. In time, he said, the gap between rich and poor will increase, with the rich reaching for and having the power to, claim the power. Democracy, he believed, leads to subjugation and tyranny. ( http://classicalwisdom.com/plato-and-the-disaster-of-democracy/) as the government moves toward tyranny, the people panic, they give in to fear; their anger becomes palpable, and they are likely to unite behind an individual who will bring justice, freedom and liberty to the masses. That is what is happening in America right now. For both Republicans and Democrats, there is a broad swath of people who see the demise of democracy and they are crying out for what they believe this country is supposed to be about. (That is the substance for another article). It does not matter to the people who want Trump what he says about Muslims; they are afraid, they have little money and fewer jobs. They believe that "outsiders" are stealing their country away from them and they believe Trump (or Sanders, for the Democrats) can balance the scales again, make things like they "used to be." Ryan's reluctance to endorse Trump up until now was a breath of fresh air. As the masses rally around what ultimately will be an artificial "savior" with artificial, if even possible, "solutions," it was good, encouraging to see a Republican stand up to Trump, who has clearly bullied nearly everyone into supporting him. But at the end of the day, it was politics, corrupt politics which leads to corrupt government, which won out. God only knows what Trump said to Ryan to get him to publicly endorse him, but whatever it was, it made Ryan seem disingenuous and detached from the "American people" which includes Muslims, blacks, Mexicans and so many others. Ryan showed himself to be merely a politician, not a person called to serve people. It seems that he will, as most politicians do, serve himself, and let the people eat cake. Advertisement One of the best parts, for me, of being involved with the YALI program is that I get to stay connected with the young African entrepreneurs I teach. I have to admit, that many of the women in my class impress the hell out of me with their creativity, collaboration and intent to make positive change in the world. With that in mind, I'd like to introduce you to a few of them over the next several months. I wondered how they had absorbed my Design Driven Entrepreneurship curriculum and was interested to see how they had attempted to embed design in their current ventures. First up is Daisy Karimi from Kenya. Daisy was a Mandela Fellow at Dartmouth in the summer of 2015 and she also came and spoke to my YALI Regional Learning Center class in Nairobi in the winter. Advertisement What do you do now? I am an electrical engineer by profession and I currently work as a project engineer and telecommunication and SCADA engineer at the Kenya Electricity Transmission Company where we build transmission line infrastructure. Describe your current business/future venture. I also run a solar company know as Strauss Energy that I co-founded three years ago where we manufacture and install a 2-in-1 solar integrated roofing tile. This is a roofing tile that in addition to roofing your house is able to generate electricity for use in the house. What is the main benefit for the customer with this new enterprise? Almost 60% of Kenyan households have no access to electricity from the grid. With the use of the solar integrated roofing tile, more people are now able to get access to electricity. Compared to using ordinary roofing tiles and then mounting the conventional solar panels, for an equivalent amount of energy, the user is able to reap the benefits of lower installation cost. For customers already in the national grid the solution offers an excellent backup system in case of a power cut from the utility and also cost savings from bill by using freely available solar energy. Advertisement In addition, the user can earn extra income by selling surplus energy back to the grid using the net metering tariff. The tile also provides aesthetically looking roof. Describe how you use or have used design thinking or human centered design in your work. Since we made our first prototype, feedback from the users have been very useful in redesigning the subsequent prototypes. Our initial product was too heavy and this would have required more reinforcement increasing the cost of installation. After talking to our customers we had to redesign to change the material for a lighter tile and also change the color because most customers complained that the black tile would absorb too much heat. This resulted in adopting colors similar to existing roofing tiles in order for them to easily blend in with existing tiles. Another feedback has been from customers with existing roofs and are not willing to remove the entire roof. We are now designing tiles that can interlock with existing roofing tiles in order to reduce installation time and since our tiles are premium tiles our customers are only required to buy those they require for power and use the cheaper roofing tiles in the remaining sections of the roof. How has that impacted your customers? Following the change in design of the solar roofing tile we developed a tile that is attractive and more customers agree is much simpler to install. How has that approach impacted your business team? Our team is much more appreciative of customer feedback. We were initially a team of only engineers and an architect, but we have had to bring in a team to do our marketing and customer service and everyone including the technical team is now involved in interacting with customers to get their reaction on our product. Advertisement What is the biggest challenge you see for African business to become more design oriented and customer obsessed? I would say the biggest challenge would be lack of skills and tools. Not many people know much about design driven entrepreneurship. the tools available also require training and access to technology to use. The cost of doing a proper market survey is really high. What design advice would you give to other aspiring African entrepreneurs? Too much time and resources are spent on R&D. therefore for you to be sure that whatever product that will come out of it will solve the intended problem and be accepted by the customer, its best to first spend time with the end user to get to know how they feel about it before you commit your time and money. NATO. Responsible taxpayers know that it is a mighty defensive alliance that protects us from tyranny and faraway brown people, but what does it actually do? Now that the Red Menace has been taken care of, NATO has struggled over the last twenty-odd years to redefine itself. Maybe NATO could study the Kabbalah with Madonna, who also apparently suffers from a serious lack of purpose? No, unfortunately that wouldn't sell nearly enough American fighter jets to countries that don't need them. Here is how a think tank described the expansion of NATO into central and eastern Europe in 1999: On the surface, central and eastern Europe presented a dream market for arms manufacturers...[but] a Pentagon official interviewed for this article said that weapons were not at the top of the new members' priorities--yet. ... Without an improvement in Russia-NATO relations, a military build-up in the new NATO countries would amount to pouring oil on the fires burning between Moscow and the West. Just to reiterate, this analysis was published by the Centre for World Dialogue in 1999. Could anything be more prophetic? Recently, the center-left Danish newspaper Politiken ran an article which focused on how the U.S. has conjured up threats of Russian world conquest as a means to boost arms sales to its NATO "allies" in central and eastern Europe. According to top Pentagon officials who will soon retire and work as consults for Lockheed Martin, Russia could invade Baltics literally any minute now. What does this mean? Simple: Weapons are now at the top of NATO members' priorities. Finally! Of course, it's purely coincidental that last year the Obama administration launched an ambitious arms dealing initiative which specifically targets NATO members: The U.S. government on Wednesday announced a two-year project aimed at making it easier for NATO and member countries to share costs and buy weapons as a group as they struggle to stretch scarce defense budgets. The program aims to keep U.S. foreign military sales competitive by adapting to changing business practices and being more flexible about purchaser requirements, statement said. So to return to our initial question, what exactly is it that NATO "does"? Simple: It creates imaginary threats to world stability and then peddles weapons to defend against aforementioned boogeyman threats. As Major General Smedley Butler once said, "war is a racket." And you can bet NATO is plays a leading role in this blood-soaked scam. (It's likely you've never even heard of General Butler, or his terrific pamphlet, arguably the most concise, authoritative document on the ways and means of the American war machine, which of course is why it is never taught in schools.) Here's Butler reminiscing about the War to End All Wars: It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people -- who do not profit. Richard Thomas, the actor who played John-Boy on The Waltons, tipped the scale. I returned competing literary options to their proper place, tucked the audio edition of James Swanson's Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer under my arm, and headed to the circulation desk. It was a Friday afternoon. Next week's commute was set: Richard Thomas would read to me. The story was familiar. Lincoln and Mary taking an afternoon buggy ride. The trip to Ford's Theater to see Laura Keene in Our American Cousin. John Wilkes Booth's racial hatred as motivating factor in the assassination. The shot. Booth's jump to the stage. The broken leg. Dr. Mudd. The chase. Lincoln's death at 7:22 the next morning. By week's end, the story was coming to the expected climax. John Wilkes Booth's life on the run was over. The twenty-six-year-old actor-assassin had turned a Virginia tobacco barn into a stage upon which to give his final performance. I had enjoyed Swanson's fine book, but I knew how the story ended and my mind wandered to the workday ahead -- until I half-heard an odd detail about one of the men surrounding the barn in which Booth was trapped. Advertisement What did he say? Did I hear what I think I heard? I backed up the CD a bit. Richard Thomas repeated himself: the man who killed John Wilkes Booth, Thomas "Boston" Corbett, only a few years prior to that April night had self-castrated himself as spiritual inoculation against sexual temptation. I've been interested in the Lincoln assassination since I ordered Jim Bishop's 1955 masterpiece The Day Lincoln Was Shot from my junior high's Scholastic Book Club. How had I missed this? How did I not know Boston Corbett's backstory? Corbett was born in London in 1832. His family came to America when he was a boy. In his late teens, he apprenticed with a hatter and in his early twenties took up the trade on his own. In quick succession, he married and lost both wife and baby in childbirth. Depression took hold. Corbett tried to drink it away, but the alcohol didn't help. Hoping a new environment would be the key to a happy life, he left New York City for Boston. There he got caught up in a Methodist revival and experienced conversion. He was 26. He rechristened himself Boston, an homage to the city where he met Christ. High on religion, street preaching and hard-sell proselytizing followed. He grew his hair long to imitate Jesus. He took his faith and his scriptures seriously -- and excruciatingly literally. One evening he found himself taken with wild thoughts at the sight of two "fallen women." Wrestling with how to remain holy in the midst of numerous worldly temptations, the words of Matthew's Jesus flashed through his mind: Advertisement Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire....Jesus said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. - Matthew 18:8-9, 19:11-12 Corbett dutifully took a pair of scissors, made an opening in his scrotum, cut off his testicles, and sewed himself back up. Two years later, with impending Civil War, Corbett joined the Union Army. His preaching work continued. He evangelized fellow soldiers and organized Bible study groups and prayer meetings. Discharged in 1863, he re-enlisted in 1864, was soon captured by Confederate troops, released a few months later, and promoted to sergeant. In mid-April 1865, Corbett's regiment, the 16th New York Cavalry, was ordered to track down and capture the assassin John Wilkes Booth. He was to be taken alive, per order of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Twelve days after the tragedy at Ford's Theater, Booth and his companion, twenty-three-year-old David Herold, were hold up in a tobacco barn on the Virginia property of Richard Garrett. Escape was impossible. Herold surrendered. Booth held steadfast. Negotiations continued. Sergeant Corbett offered to enter the barn and take Booth by force. The commanding officer rejected the proposal. Setting the barn ablaze made more sense. It would drive Booth into the open where he could be taken alive. Corbett positioned himself along one side of the barn. He could see Booth through a crack between the slats. The flames grew. Booth appeared agitated. Worried that he might try to fight his way out of the inferno, Corbett fired his revolver. The bullet struck Booth in the neck. Paralyzed, the assassin was quickly removed from the barn and died a few hours later. Secretary Stanton's order had been clear: Booth was to be taken alive. When Corbett's commanding officer demanded an explanation for firing on Booth, Corbett blamed God: "Providence directed me!" Advertisement Boston Corbett, the Jack Ruby of the Lincoln assassination, gained instant fame as "Lincoln's Avenger." He sat for a portrait with renowned photographer Mathew Brady (his was the Lincoln family's studio of choice) and he traveled the country preaching the gospel and retelling the story of the night Providence directed him to kill Lincoln's assassin. In the aftermath of the events of 1865, the eccentricities that characterized most of Corbett's adult life grew worse. He became erratic, occasionally dangerous. Paranoid fantasies flooded his mind. Many tried to help the famous man, to no avail. He was institutionalized. He escaped and fled to Minnesota where he disappeared from history. It's believed he died in the Great Hinckley Fire of 1894. History is full of characters like Thomas "Boston" Corbett. Eccentrics. Oddballs. Fanatics. Men and women who stumble into fame and infamy as supporting actors during great scenes of human history. Along the way, inexplicably, I had failed to make the acquaintance of this particular one. As a teacher, I use colorful characters and offbeat anecdotes to engage students. In Corbett, I definitely have a good candidate. Next time I teach the Lincoln assassination, I'll be sure to reference every gory detail in the life of the eunuch who shot and killed the man who shot and killed Lincoln. I, like most people, was disappointed after watching Snoop Dogg's video on WorldStar Hip Hop about boycotting the television remake mini-series of Roots. So I reached out to Lamin Jatta, direct descendant of Kunta Kinte, Senior Advisor and Consultant to History's Roots: Miniseries, for his response to Snoop's video and this was his reply: "Roots bring a consciousness to our mind, to our generation, and to the next generation. It is a true story, our story, and we have to tell it. I know that our story didn't begin with slavery. So Roots tells us where we began before we were enslaved--we were Kings and Queens, we were royalty, we warriors, we had knowledge, we had life, and we had joy. In the video you stated, "I don't understand America, they want to keep showing the abuse that we took." But have we learned enough about us being Kings and Queens before the time of slavery, or what life was life before it, also? Advertisement We also see a dark side to us. We betrayed ourselves by transitioning through our own people. So Roots teaches us the culture of black life and of white life at that time. It tells us the story of what happened when they captured us from Africa. My ancestors did not know what happened to our people when they were taken away. Imagine if you had your child with you for so many years, you raise them up just to have them disappear and never you find out where he or she is. Roots tells you this is what happened with facts. What Alex Haley brought back to our lives when he came back to Africa and even after he wrote Roots was an awareness and a conversation that many of us did not know. So, Snoop Dogg, you should be championing it! You should be proud of Roots because the culture behind the message in your music is poisonous compared to Roots. You use the N-word while getting high--what is that contributing to this world? If I were you Snoop, I would look back into history, Roots tells us how we came here and how we were betrayed by whites. Neither side were shown in the best light. Enslaved women were raped and killed in front of their kids while the whites who were doing this considered themselves Christians. Then came another generation of whites--whites that separated themselves as pure Christians. They were telling our ancestors, whatever they had been though, there will be another side of their pain where there will be joy again. We have to take that positive message and send it on to the next generation. That why it is important every person from every culture in this world should watch it. Advertisement For the people who don't know the history of slavery and what the white Christian's roles in it was, which was separating themselves, even knowing they we were not allowed to read or write but gave us bibles, taught us, and baptized us. This is what also set the foundation of black churches today. Now all these people who did this, I am sure have all died. So who will tell their story? Jews never separated themselves from the Holocaust, Native American's haven't separated themselves from the pain they went through in America, so we as Black Americans also must go to our past, admit that it happened and have an open dialogue about it. As the descendant of Kunta Kinte, I challenge you Snoop to reach out to me, so we can set a program based on Roots to educate your kids first, then other young black men. We need to teach our children that there is much more to black culture than what we see today in rap music; sagging our pants, using the N word, and being disrespectful to women. You will see in the movie when they ask Kunta, "Are you an "N****"?" His response is, "I am an Mandingo Warrior, I am Kunta Kinte." Advertisement FILE -- In this Monday, Jan. 4, 2016 file photo, an Iranian woman holds up a poster showing Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent opposition Saudi Shiite cleric who was executed by Saudi Arabia, in Tehran, Iran. Diplomatic tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which began with the kingdomas execution of al-Nimr and later saw attacks on Saudi diplomatic posts in the Islamic Republic, have seen countries around the world respond. On Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, President Hassan Rouhani said that Saudi Arabiaas move to sever ties with his country couldnat acover its crimea of executing al-Nimr. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File) TEHRAN, Iran -- The relationship between Iran and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries -- a political and economic union consisting of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates -- is on a dangerous trajectory and risks leading to direct confrontation. During a recent seminar in Europe, a European diplomat who has made the case to officials in Riyadh for Saudi-Iran rapprochement starkly told me that the regional situation was even comparable to pre-World War I Europe. The relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia, he said, has deteriorated to such an extent that both sides and their allies have found themselves at the precipice of a major war. For years, Iran's primary national security threats have been the United States, Israel and terrorism committed by groups such as the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the Taliban and others in their ideological vein. However, since cutting ties with Iran in January, Saudi Arabia has adopted a more overtly hostile policy towards Iran. It has also managed to convince several other GCC states and a number of countries in the Arab and Muslim world to bandwagon with it against Iran. Advertisement The relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia, a European diplomat said, has deteriorated to such an extent that both sides and their allies have found themselves at the precipice of a major war. This is an unfortunate development, as casting blame on Iran for the region's ills or seeking to ostracize Iran is not the solution to regional crises. The only path to achieving stability in the Middle East is to foster regional cooperation, which can be accomplished through a framework I outline here. Unfortunately, however, Saudi Arabia has for the time being opted for escalating tensions with Iran. The following seven points summarize Saudi Arabia's hostile approach: Making unprecedented secret overtures to Israel in an effort to coordinate their policies against Iran. Expending considerable effort and resources to persuade the GCC and Arab League to adopt anti-Iranian stances. In the past, such endeavors were only taken to mobilize Arab countries against Israel. Attempting to create a Sunni crescent against majority-Shia Iran, signified by Riyadh's efforts to bolster cooperation with Ankara and Cairo. Fostering a coalition between Arab autocracies and Israel against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Doing everything it can to prevent a reduction of hostilities between Iran and the United States and an improvement in Iran's relations with the West. Lending support to groups carrying out terrorist acts in Iran such as the Mojahedin-e Khalq, which until 2012 was on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist organizations. Attempting to stoke chaos in Iran's Sunni regions through propaganda and other means. The principal implication of these seven tactics undertaken against Iran is that Saudi Arabia has positioned itself as a significant national security threat to Iran. This has not always been the case, as both countries pursued detente in the 1990s after the Iran-Iraq War and Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, culminating in the signing of a security pact in 2001. Saudi King Salman (L) shakes hands with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani before a GCC summit in Saudi Arabia on May 31, 2016. (Saudi Press Agency/Handout) There is still much that remains unclear about Iran's relations with its neighbors across the Persian Gulf. Will the other GCC states come in lockstep with Saudi Arabia and follow its lead on Iran or not? What will be the final outcome of the tension-laden path Saudi Arabia and Iran are on now? How can these two states remove themselves from this road to conflict? What is clear is that the GCC states share a view that Iranian influence in the region threatens them and is illustrative of Iran's desire for regional hegemony. I recently attended a workshop in Doha where all the participants from the GCC states expressed concern about Iran's regional clout, which stretches from Iran to Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. However, four GCC states (Oman, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar) have expressed their concern at Saudi Arabia's approach towards Iran by not yielding to Saudi demands that they sever relations with Iran. Advertisement The GCC states share a view that Iranian influence in the region threatens them and is illustrative of Iran's desire for regional hegemony. The reality is that Saudi Arabia has its own reasons for aggrandizing the alleged threat it faces from Iran. Riyadh is enraged at the United States for changing its broader strategy towards the region, for which Iran cannot be blamed. This change in the U.S. approach was spurred in large part because of America's decreased dependence on Persian Gulf hydrocarbons and its failed interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, the United States wants its partners in the region to play more of a role in securing themselves and the region. The GCC countries, in particular Saudi Arabia, have not been happy about the developments in Afghanistan after the downfall of the Taliban regime, but they seemingly forget that the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan was precipitated by the 9/11 attacks, of which 15 of the 19 perpetrators were Saudis, and none were Iranian. Likewise, the GCC states are angry about the consequences of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime, but they avoid the fact that they supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran in 1980 while Iran condemned the 1990 Iraqi invasion of GCC member state Kuwait. Furthermore, the GCC countries should be cognizant that after the United States overthrew the Baathist Iraqi government in 2003, there was nothing it could do to prevent the majority-Shia population from playing a dominant role in Iraqi politics. Saudi Arabia was also infuriated at the Arab Spring and the popular overthrow of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali; events Iran had nothing to do with. Iran in fact condemned the attack on Libya by NATO and some GCC states, which turned an Arab country into a failed state. Advertisement U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians topple a statue of Saddam Hussein in downtown Baghdad on Wednesday April 9, 2003. (AP/Jerome Delay) The GCC is also frustrated at the strength of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, exemplified by it declaring Hezbollah a "terrorist" organization in March. Hezbollah first emerged as a group resisting Israel's invasion and occupation of Lebanon in the early 1980s. Most Arab states during that time were muted in response to Israel's aggression, while the nascent Islamic Republic provided assistance to the besieged Lebanese and helped form Hezbollah -- which expelled Israel from most Lebanese territory and has played a key role maintaining the territorial integrity of Lebanon. The Arab world today is suffering from a variety of real ailments, with deep-rooted economic and social problems taking an increasingly unsustainable toll on Arab societies and governments. Issues such as chronic unemployment, massive corruption and inept dictatorial governance are the real threats facing the Arab people. Iran has been turned into a convenient scapegoat to distract Arab nations from the domestic factors that have been plaguing their lives. Saudi Arabia is a case in point, with much reporting done on the dire political and socioeconomic situation in the country. Ultimately, the GCC and Iran playing the blame game is not a solution. For its part, Iran needs to acknowledge and take steps to alleviate the legitimate security concerns of the GCC states. Iran also needs to remember that the alternative to House of Saud in Saudi Arabia will be the "House Wahhab." On the other hand, if the GCC continues to follow Riyadh in its aggressive approach towards Iran, highlighted by the aforementioned seven points, it will set itself up for perpetual conflict with Iran. The GCC should not burn all bridges with Iran and instead the smaller states in the GCC should do everything they can to push for compromise with Iran. Furthermore, the GCC should know that an alliance with Israel against Iran could put the credibility and legitimacy of their own individual governments in jeopardy. Iran has been turned into a convenient scapegoat to distract Arab nations from the domestic factors that have been plaguing their lives. The people of Iran and the GCC states are condemned by geography to be neighbors forever. They would both benefit from living side by side in peace and harmony as opposed to viewing one another in a zero-sum manner. It also goes without saying that whether in the short or long run, the United States will withdraw from the region. At that point, the countries of the Persian Gulf will have to bear the responsibility of providing security themselves. I believe it would be wise for the GCC and Iran to establish a regional dialogue forum to commence discussions on a broad spectrum of security and cooperation in the Persian Gulf, including: Mutual understanding, cooperation; Arms control, regional conflicts, military contacts; Promotion of non-proliferation; Establishment of zone free from Weapons of Mass Destruction; Eventual conclusion of a non-aggression pact and a number of joint task forces on security, economic, cultural, scientific, environmental and humanitarian cooperation to envisage practical measures to gradually expand cooperation in the following fields. This framework will allow Iran, Iraq and the GCC states to regularly engage in sincere dialogue to address their concerns and work with each other. I am confident that Iran will earnestly support the creation of such a regional cooperation system in the Persian Gulf. Advertisement Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian is a scholar at Princeton University and a former head of the Foreign Relations Committee of Iran's National Security Council. His latest book, "Iran and the United States: An Insider's View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace" was released in May 2014. Earlier on WorldPost: The French are up in arms again. Contrary to what one might think, it is not about internal social inequalities and the immigration challenge France faces nor is it about the dangers of terror in Europe, only recently warned against by the United States. Nope. It is peace in the Middle East. "The French Initiative" to "revive" the Peace Process between Israel and the Palestinians commences on June 3rd , as Paris hosts a Middle East Summit, with the participation of many, aside from ... Israelis and Palestinians. However, in case you were hoping for an ounce of creative thinking or an "out of the box" idea to spring out of this gathering, I recommend you don't hold your breath. In a document, published by the French Foreign Ministry ahead of this one-more International Peace Conference on the Middle East, France makes it abundantly clear that "the two state solution is under increased threat particularly with regard to continued settlement activities". Same old settlements again, as if there is nothing else to discuss. Not a word about Palestinian ongoing violence against innocent Israelis taking place in Israel in recent months, and not even a slight hint at any Palestinian culpability for the current stalemate, for instance their continuous and stubborn refusal to negotiate directly with Israel. Advertisement Not a doubt we should all work to assist in bridging the gap between Israel and Palestinians. Indeed, it was Israel's Prime Minister himself, Benjamin Netanyahu, who called - yet again - only two weeks ago for the resumption of direct bilateral negotiations with the Palestinians, with no interest whatsoever from their side to do so. Why would they be interested, really, when they realize that the more they DO NOT negotiate with Israel the more pressure will amount on Israel as it is the only one described as "rejectionist"? That way they will not have to negotiate nor to even contemplate any "painful concessions". By doing so, the world itself is pushing away the prospects for a solution, while pretending - or even believing - to be doing the exact opposite. Expect the expected this week from Paris, or as columnist and former diplomat Jeffrey Robbins summarizes it beautifully in the Boston Herald: "In Paris this week, the charade proceeds as before. The Palestinian rejection of the very two-state solution they profess to seek will continue. Their rejectionism will be excused, the rejectionists coddled. Israel will be lambasted, as always. " The truth is no real progress shall ever be made without addressing the core issue which is mutual acceptance of one another and the EDUCATION for peaceful co-existence. Palestinian officials incite youngsters against Jews and Israel. Official and unofficial media outlets - TV, radio and social media - depict Israel in anti-Semitic terms and hatred of anything Jewish has become synonymous with the younger generation's view of Israel. Palestinian textbooks continue to contribute their share to this poison. IMPACT-SE, Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, a non-profit organization that monitors the content of school textbooks based on international standards of education for peace and tolerance, published a report this week after looking into the situation in Palestinian Schools (those under direct supervision by the Palestinian Authority, Israel's purported peace partner). The results are far from encouraging: no focus on peace in official Palestinian textbooks where the narrative is one of a perpetual struggle and war, through legitimizing violence while Israel exists only as an enemy, not as a partner. All this while the international community provides substantial financial support to the Palestinian Authority, funding many a time these schools and those media outlets! Where is the transparency in funding? Where is accountability? and how do we make sure that your tax money will not go towards funding hatred and bloodshed? Advertisement The first step is to look reality in the eye, not ignore it. Clearly, this is no way to build peace between people, but rather guarantee hostilities for more and more generations to come. It is time we heed the call of conscience, remove the blindfold from the world's eyes, which was put there willingly, and deal with the core issues, as tough as that maybe. E D U C A T I O N is the only way. Oh, and with all due respect to the Louvre in Paris, let's do it in Jerusalem this time. Co-authored by Sally Greenwald, MD MPH and Deborah Cohan, MD MPH Clinicians, community members, advocates, and researchers call on the FDA and ASRM to overturn the ban on sperm donation by gay men. In 1983 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a ban on sperm donation from "any men who have had sex with another man in the preceding five years" to prevent HIV transmission to a surrogate or gestational carrier. Just last year, this ban was referenced and affirmed by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), a membership organization of reproductive medicine specialists from 100 countries. The 2015 ASRM committee opinion suggests using self-reported sexual history as well as physical evidence of anal intercourse as screening practices. Since 1983, HIV science has rapidly evolved. Current HIV standard testing practices are highly sensitive, meaning it is beyond rare for an HIV diagnosis to be missed. These readily available HIV tests also substantially narrow the "window" from HIV acquisition to a confirmed positive test to a maximum of three weeks. Advertisement Standard practices for assisted reproductive technologies include routine HIV screening, among many other tests. ASRM suggests screening sperm donors for HIV within 7 days following donation and gestational carriers can request a sperm quarantine up to three months, well exceeding the window for capturing a new HIV diagnosis using conventional HIV testing. With current HIV testing practices, the FDA and ASRM bans on sperm donation from gay men and people who have anal sex is scientifically unfounded and discriminatory. It is time this unethical and outdated practice is overturned to allow gay men full access to family building opportunities. FDA and ASRM policies should catch up with the science. An online cartoon depicts a young boy confined to his standard-issue school desk and ruminating out loud, "Given the pace of technology, I say we leave math to the machines and go play outside." That is a sentiment no doubt shared by scores of boys and girls across the country counting down the days - and minutes - until they can ditch their books and bolt for the doors. Accompanying that depiction is a quote from the late Swedish minister of finance and Social Democrat Ernst Wigforss (1881-1977), who once said (roughly), "If the goal of social progress is for everyone to work at maximum capacity, we would be insane. The goal is to free mankind to maximally create. Dance, paint, sing - yes, whatever you want. Freedom!" While such freedom will reveal itself in all sorts of meaningful ways this summer, chief among them may well be the myriad of experiential learning opportunities made possible through organized camping. In fact, some 5.5 million campers attending more than 2,400 camps accredited by the American Camp Association (ACA) will benefit from getting up and getting out ... as in outside. And heretofore (read: school year) that opportunity is something that seems to be in short supply. Recent pronouncements that young people spend less time outdoors than the average prisoner does add an exclamation point to the importance of the play and summer camp movements. Or more likely a combination of both. How bad is it? According a recent survey of 12,000 parents in 10 countries, one out of two children ages 5-12 spends less time outside per day than the hour recommended for prisoners by the United Nations or the two hours of outdoor time guaranteed prisoners in the United States. Advertisement That study, which originated in the United Kingdom, spawned a campaign titled "Dirt is Good." Its introduction warns, "Leading experts have noted that the time that children have for exploratory, hands-on play - the kind where they go out and get dirty - is worryingly on the decline, and that as a result today's children risk losing out on learning essential skills that will set them up for the future." Those skills include curiosity, resilience and resourcefulness to name but a few. The antidote? Dirt is Good has partnered with Project Dirt to create "Empty Classroom Day" with a goal of transforming it into global event (known as Outdoor Classroom Day outside the UK) for learning and playing outdoors during school. They note that last year more than 600 schools around the world participated and hope that on Friday, June 17, 2016, Empty Classroom Day will be "bigger and better than ever." Such efforts mirror many more. Some of which have undoubtedly been inspired by the work of Richard Louv. Louv is a journalist and author of a pile of books that advocate reconnecting children and adults with nature. These include "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder," "The Nature Principle: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age" and, most recently, "Vitamin N: The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life - 500 Ways to Enrich the Health & Happiness of Your Family & Community." Pointedly, Louv says, "The future will belong to the nature-smart--those individuals, families, businesses, and political leaders who develop a deeper understanding of the transformative power of the natural world and who balance the virtual with the real. The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need." Advertisement In her article for the Children & Nature Network, "THE UNSAFE CHILD: Less Outdoor Play is Causing More Harm than Good," Angela Hanscom, a pediatric occupational therapist, relates the story of a third-grade class visiting the nature center she founded. The children she described as mostly "rowdy, loud and rambunctious boys" became suddenly quiet as they realized "they had the freedom to explore and build in the woods." To the contrary - and maybe to the point - an adult chaperone, upon witnessing some of the kids creating a structure comprised of branches and logs, screamed, "Put the sticks DOWN! ... Danger! Danger!" Somewhat sympathetic, Hanscom explains, "As a parent of two girls, on some level, I can empathize with that chaperone's fear. Parental instincts often naturally take over and we shout, 'be careful' or 'slow down' as we watch a child manipulate their natural environment. This is fairly normal and common ... I also know that restricting children's movement and limiting their ability to play outdoors can cause more harm than good." What is that harm? Sensory deficits that jeopardize young people's ability to grow into resilient and able-bodied adults. Hanscom cautions, "It is only when adults consistently step in and say, 'no' to everything physical the child attempts that we start to see problems in development. 'No climbing,' 'no running,' 'no playing tag,' 'no spinning,' 'no picking up sticks,' 'no getting dirty,' 'no jumping off the rocks,' 'no climbing the rocks,' we yell when children attempt any kind of risk." In fact, research suggests that there are both negative risks and positive risks - the latter being ones that inure to the benefit of the child, promoting positive youth outcomes and the reduction of negative, potentially harmful, behaviors. Advertisement In advance of the impending end of school, Jessica Lahey, a contributing writer for The Atlantic magazine, argues, "The more time children spend in structured, parent-guided activities, the worse their ability to work productively towards self-directed goals." Instead, she promotes unsupervised, unscheduled play time as one of the most important educational experiences we can bestow upon our kids. She says, "It is fertile ground; the place where children strengthen social bonds, build emotional maturity, develop cognitive skills, and shore up their physical health." Lahey links such "free play" to the critical development of "executive functioning" - replete with such traits as long-term planning, task initiation, self-regulation, organization, and the capacity to switch from one activity to another. Similar attributes have also been correlated with academic and workforce preparedness and success. Of course, so has summer camp. While the strict definitions of free play, including "unrestricted movement, activity, or interplay," or interpretations that tie it to a lack of structure or supervision may not square with the "en loco parentis" responsibilities of camps and those who work there - let alone national accreditation standards or local regulations - it is possible to have the best of both worlds. Indeed, in that combined world the needs of children to find meaning in self-definition and personal growth through "free-form" play do not preclude the health and safety prerogatives of parents who send their kids to camp. Advertisement According to ACA, the outcomes those children will experience include becoming more independent and advancing leadership skills, gaining confidence and improving self-esteem, acquiring social skills and making friends, and developing a willingness to try new things. Alas, undirected play is not the same as unsupervised play. And, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, child-driven, creative play safeguards against the effects of pressure and stress so overwhelmingly prevalent, and deleterious, among today's youth. Most of my weekends are spent doing errands, exercising, watching movies, visiting with friends and catching up on sleep. But two weeks ago, I flew to Kabul to represent the Department of State at the Third Symposium on Afghan Women's Empowerment, sponsored by the government of Afghanistan, and hosted at the Afghan Presidential Palace. It was a homecoming for me, as I served at US Embassy Kabul in 2012-13, working on women and civil society issues. My trip was also part reunion with friends, both Afghan and American, and a way for me to personally take stock of progress made and challenges still unmet. The challenges for Afghan women are well known - insecurity, lack of access to education and low literacy rates, few employment opportunities and cultural norms inhibiting women's equal role in society. Fewer people are aware of the progress made to date. Today, millions of Afghan girls are in school, the maternal mortality rate has dropped dramatically, and health care is being delivered to many more women and children. There are women Cabinet ministers (four), women parliamentarians (27 percent of the Parliament), women judges (about 10 percent of the judiciary), and women business, NGO and academic leaders. The statistics tell an important story, but there's nothing like being on the ground. During my short time in Kabul, I was struck by three things. Advertisement First, Afghan women are committed to building their own future. This was an Afghan conference, led by First Lady Rula Ghani. The 300 conference participants were from all over country, not just from urban areas--an important fact in a country where progress has been largely uneven. These women had clear views on what issues were facing them, their families and communities, and they clearly wanted to make sure their voices were heard. Whether the discussion was about women and Islam, women's political participation, the role of women in media, economic empowerment, access to health care and education, or promoting peace and security, these women were right there, with ideas, good questions for panelists, and a willingness to take on hard topics. Women said they wanted to be in places where decisions are made, whether that is in upcoming international meetings and negotiations, or in Afghan institutions. These women bring expertise and concrete proposals that can make a difference for the future of their country. Second, Afghan women see men as necessary partners in their work. This was evident across the board - from President Ghani's strong support, to the involvement of men as speakers, to the discussions of how to engage all sectors of society in these efforts. Women were clear that empowering women isn't just good for women and girls, but good for entire communities that can then work together on solutions to critical issues for the country. President Ghani reaffirmed his administration's commitment to women, noting: "It is my personal commitment and the commitment of the national unity government to activate the presence of Afghan women in all spheres." Third, investments made by the international community in Afghanistan have made a difference. I am not necessarily talking about funds, although those are important. I am talking about the investment in people and relationships, in developing ways to have meaningful conversations and interactions that show our support and respect for the work Afghans are doing. The international community has been resolute in its support of Afghan women and girls, and we need to keep those relationships going to continue to make progress. Long term commitment from the international community is paramount to continued progress for women and girls. Advertisement Suicide bombings by women are escalating. Researchers estimate more than 200 female suicide bombers have blown themselves up since 2014, according to IRIN, a non-profit news org that covers humanitarian crises. These attacks--at markets, schools and even refugee camps--have killed over 1,000 people in Nigeria and neighboring Cameroon alone. Tragically, some recent female suicide bombers are believed to have been Boko Haram captives forced to carry out attacks. The number of willing female suicide bombers is growing, however, according to The University of Chicago's Project On Security and Terrorism. Use of female suicide bombers is increasing not only among Boko Haram, but also Al Shabaab, the Taliban and ISIL. Terrorist recruiters are not ignoring women's deadly potential as suicide bombers. Neither should governments that wish to fight terrorism effectively. To do so, we must explore the economic and political underpinnings of this dangerous trend. Advertisement Financial Desperation May Be a Factor In Coerced or Committed? Boko Haram's Female Suicide Bombers, (April 19, 2016), IRIN editor Obi Anyadike writes:"The same mix of factors that has motivated male recruits--revenge for security forces excesses, money for the family, and promise of a spiritual reward in exchange for a grim, disadvantaged present--can influence women to play a more direct role." In Femme Fatale: The Rise of Female Suicide Bombers, Kathleen Turner, Army War College Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, adds that "education and better opportunities for these young women must prevail over oppression, abuse or any other reason why they might join one of these groups. Women need to know there are other options besides joining a terrorist organization." (War on the Rocks, Dec. 14, 2015) If financial desperation is a factor, we can fight back by empowering low-income Muslim women to find pathways out of poverty and subjugation. American foreign policy must also uphold women's political and economic rights globally to prevent them from being forced into terrorist activity. Female Entrepreneurs Rise in Nigeria and Kenya Entrepreneurship education--plus support for young female entrepreneurs that includes mentoring and capital--is one viable way to tackle financial need. The good news is that female entrepreneurship is on the rise in the region most plagued by female suicide bombers. Advertisement The 2015/16 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor reports that in sub-Saharan Africa "women are participating [in entrepreneurship] at equal or nearly equal rates in most of the countries we studied in this region." This is an encouraging indicator that American foreign policy should support organizations striving to bring women into this area's economy. She Leads Africa, for example, is an exciting Nigerian-based social enterprise that provides female startup entrepreneurs the education and financing to build and scale strong businesses. The organization is bringing SheHive New York to New York City June 2-5. This professional bootcamp will help young female entrepreneurs from Africa develop their business skills, and network with mentors and investors. SheLeadsAfrica founders Yasmin Belo Osagie and Afua Osei There is a flurry of female-led tech entrepreneurship in Kenya, as well, which has a large Muslim population. AkiraChix, for example, is an all-female collective of self-proclaimed "geeks" that encourages young Kenyan women to enter the burgeoning African tech industry by providing entrepreneurship, coding and programming classes. AkiraChix founders Marie Githinji, Judith Owigar, Linda Kamau and Agenal Odur have developed and marketed numerous products, including iMatch, a tool that helps NGOs connect charitable goods to local needs. AkiraChix "Geek Girl" Class Muhammad's First Wife Was Successful Entrepreneur Muslim female entrepreneurs have a proud Islamic history. The Prophet Muhammad's first wife, Khadija bint Khuwaylid was a very successful entrepreneur. Khadija's father was a successful merchant in their Quraysh tribe. Upon his death, Khadija took over the business, trading goods from Mecca to Yemen. She proved to be a gifted businesswoman, developing a larger trading business than all other Quraysh traders combined. "Islam did not rise except through Ali's sword and Khadija's wealth," a saying goes. In a 2010, Turkey's Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges chairman, Rfat Hisarckloglu proposed Khadija bint Khuwaylid as a role model for Turkish women. "As Muslims," Hisarckloglu said, "we are trying to adhere to the Prophet's tradition. If you imitate the Prophet, motivate your daughters for entrepreneurship." Helping Muslim Women Access Capital Female Muslim entrepreneurs can face crippling discrimination, however. In Turkey, women own 40 percent of small-to-medium businesses, yet only 15 percent have access to finance, according to the 2016 IFC report A Helping Hand for Turkey's Women Entrepreneurs. Banks in Turkey have ignored this market segment, even though the World Bank estimates that female entrepreneurs represent an untapped market of $4 billion. To help solve this problem, IFC has partnered with Turkish banks Abank, Fiba Banka, and Sekerbank to provide $60 million in capital to women-owned businesses in Turkey. Another organization helping female entrepreneurs access capital is Women's Microfinance Initiative, which establishes village-level "loan hubs," administered by local women in East Africa. The hubs provide capital, training and support services to poor rural women so they can develop income-producing businesses. The pioneer in providing finance so "the poorest of the poor" can start businesses is Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Grameen (which means "village bank") was founded by economist Muhammad Yunus in 1983 as a micro-credit lender. Yunus reasoned that if financial resources could be made available to poor people on reasonable terms, "these millions of small people with their millions of small pursuits can add up to create the biggest development wonder." Advertisement In 2006, Grameen Bank and Yunus shared the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for their work. Today, Grameen has 8.81 million borrowers, of whom 97 percent are women running small businesses and farms. I Create: Turning Destitute Widows Into Entrepreneurs American officials made a huge policy blunder when they cut off benefits to the widows of Iraqi soldiers after Operation Desert Storm. This plunged Iraq's war widows into extreme poverty, fueling the kind of rage and resentment that has fed recruits into ISIS and enabled it to take key Iraqi cities. In India, in contrast, I Create runs a practical grassroots entrepreneurship program focused on widows, abandoned women, and tribal women in impoverished rural areas. So far, I Create has helped more than 1400 women become entrepreneurs, chronicling just some of their stories in 101 Success Stories of I-Create Entrepreneurs. These women, in turn, have become role models for other disadvantaged women. The United States should help bring these types of programs to troubled regions to fight the development of terrorist sympathies and actions among low-income women and their relatives. UN Resolutions Should Include Economic Development for Women The United States should also back U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325, which affirms the critical role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts. This resolution calls on all parties to conflict to take special measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, particularly rape and other forms of sexual abuse. As a follow up to 1325, the Security Council has adopted Resolution 1889, which calls for strengthening women's participation in peace processes. The Security Council should also add a resolution that women must be involved in economic development decisions. Nazi antisemitic caricature advertising the 1937 exhibition, Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Julius Goldstein Cartoons have a long and storied tradition in political culture. They can provoke laughter at human foibles, deflate pompous politicians, expose corruption, or galvanize public support around a cause. Cartoons can speak truth to power. But they also can incite hatred and spread lies. In this last category fall the drawings that recently were displayed in Tehran as part of Iran's Second International Holocaust Cartoon and Caricature Contest. On May 30th the winners were announced before an audience that included governmental officials. Although Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, did not attend the ceremony, his office congratulated the organizers for an "excellent" event. Advertisement Adding further insult to injury, Tehran just announced a new cartoon contest on the "Zionist caliphate," which will promote the outrageous claim that ISIS is in cahoots with Israel. Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif's counter-claims notwithstanding, these competitions receive financial support and approval from the Iranian regime. They serve to incite hatred against Jews and against the State of Israel. What purports to be anti-Zionism here is really antisemitism. Let's start with the last year's announcement for the Holocaust cartoon competition. Its organizers publicly stated that "We Don't deny Holocaust, We are not Antisemite [sic]." This was then quickly followed by a "but." When someone begins a sentence with, "I am not an antisemite, but," what usually follows is anti-Jewish rhetoric. In this particular case, the Iranian spokesman declared that the contest aimed to address three issues: western hypocrisy about freedom of speech by denying scholars and historians the right to "consider the Holocaust;" that Palestinians are being forced to pay for the Holocaust; and that the Iranian organizers are concerned about other "Holocausts," such as "Atomic Holocaust (Holocaust in Iraq, Syria, and Gaza)." The point about freedom of speech is highly ironic since Iran ranks as one of the world's worst violators of this fundamental human right. Iranian journalists, cartoonists, and activists are routinely arrested or driven into exile when they run afoul of the regime. The state ruthlessly blocks alternative sources of information, including websites that provide accurate information about the Holocaust. Advertisement Now, let's consider some of the drawings. A number of the competitors in the Holocaust cartoon contest drew on a long and hateful lineage of antisemitic illustration, including that of Nazi propagandists. The classic stereotypes that are centuries-old and helped lay the groundwork for the Holocaust were all there: money-grubbing Jews, Jews as blood-sucking vampire bats, Jews as killers of children, Jews as malevolent string-pullers, and Jews as an alien body exploiting a native population. The submissions to this and the previous such contest speak volumes. In 2006, one prominent Iranian cartoonist depicted Orthodox Jews revolving through a mechanical counter in order to reach 6,000,000--a direct accusation that Jews today fabricate or exaggerate Holocaust victim statistics. The winner of this year's best cartoon was "Shoah Business," by the French visual polemicist, Zeon. His drawing displays a cash register, stuffed with $6,000,000 from the "sale" of the Holocaust. On top of the machine is a model of the gate to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center, where one million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered. In this case, Jews are portrayed as profiting from the Holocaust. The vitriolic nature of Zeon's cartoons has generated applause from neo-Nazis and other antisemites and legal complaints charging that his antisemitic caricatures constitute incitement to hatred. His best known works play on two vicious anti-Jewish stereotypes: the Jew as child-killer and as Satan. These two images sometimes appear as posters in European "anti-Zionist" demonstrations. It is not surprising that Zeon took home first prize for "Shoah Business." The Iranian regime consistently espouses Holocaust denial. Just this year, its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, released a video on International Holocaust Remembrance Day stating that it is unclear whether the Holocaust was a "reality" and that, even if it was a "reality," it is unclear how it happened. Not surprisingly, Khamenei helps to fund the International Holocaust Cartoon contest. Advertisement For deniers and other antisemites the Holocaust is a myth concocted by Jews as part of an elaborate plot to gain power and to stifle criticism of their alleged global machinations. Several of this year's submissions promote this conspiracy theory. Another submission that warranted special mention by the judges shows Jews with long beards and traditional black garb carving up "Holocaust" sausage for a panting Pavlovian dog responding to their cues. Why should we care about this competition? What happens in Tehran doesn't just stay in Tehran. The Iranian regime eagerly promotes these messages abroad. And these same anti-Jewish tropes and canards are helping to fuel antisemitic violence today. Not all the blame can be attributed to Tehran (sadly there are many such sources of incitement), but the cartoon contest give such views legitimacy and rewards caricaturists for spewing hatred. There is a global market for such propaganda. Recent scandals involving British Labour Party politicians, who charged that Zionists are child killers, Nazis, or the arch-conspirators behind ISIS attacks, show the pervasiveness of this type of antisemitic analogy in contemporary political and public discourse. On American college campuses today one encounters similar rhetoric and disruptive protests against Jewish-sponsored events. A few weeks ago I wrote a piece called Jesus: the First Transgender Man. It was a satirical look at how fundamentalist Christians point to the creation of Adam and Eve as definitions of what being male and female means, when arguing against the rights of transgender individuals. The backlash to the post was huge. Numerous conservative and Christian news outlets wrote about it, YouTubers with hundreds of thousands of followers lambasted it, and radio talk show hosts discussed it on air. The satire was missed by many, and the outpouring of vitriol was staggering. I expect people to object when I write provocative pieces, and I'm happy when they do because it opens the door for discussion. Many Christians don't have the opportunity to talk with followers of Christ whose views differ from their own. We tend to remain within our particular Christian ghetto, communicating with people whose views on faith are similar. So I looked forward to people's objections and the discourse that would follow. What I didn't expect was the degree and volume of absolute hatred that was projectile vomited all over the internet. Vomited by Christians; self-proclaimed followers of He who is love. Advertisement I began taking screen shots of the most outrageous posts. When the onslaught grew torrential, I posted some of the ugliness on my personal Facebook page, sharing my shock and disbelief with friends and family. Here's a small sampling, taken from Twitter, Facebook, personal message, and a variety of comment threads. Some threatened or wished violence against me: Some of the comments were just ad hominem nastiness: Some were directed toward liberals as a whole: Others advocated for violence toward the Huffington Post: Still others were anti-women, anti-Jewish, and anti-LGBTQ: To add to the horror, a transgender woman wrote to thank me for writing the piece, saying: "We trans see so little positivity these days. It can be very discouraging. My family is very religious, and there are several pastors. My cousin was sentenced to life in prison for molesting kids as a Baptist youth minister. My entire family has since said he is less of an embarrassment and abomination than I am. That is what I hear pretty consistently from evangelicals." This woman is simply trying to live out her life the way God, who doesn't make mistakes, designed her. And in doing so, she is considered by Christians to be worse than a child predator. I started writing this post on the feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The readings for the day included her Magnificat, in which she proclaims "My soul magnifies the Lord." I love this imagery; of how Mary's embracing of the Holy Spirit's gift within her allows it to multiply and blossom, of how God grows through her and is magnified. In thinking about that wonderful multiplication of Love, I couldn't help but contrast these fundamentalist-leaning Christians. They also magnify something, or someone, but that person clearly isn't Christ. Advertisement People who love me suggested that I should stop reading the vile comments, and stop posting them. One friend said that doing so was causing division within the body of Christ. But I didn't stop. The more I read, the more outraged I became. Not at the misguided extremists who sit ranting and raving behind their keyboards, but at moderate Christians. People who would never think of typing such things. These good-hearted followers of Jesus Christ speak voluminously about the sinfulness of being gay or transgender. Some of them even say LGBTQ individuals can't be Christian. And they love to proclaim: "Speaking truth in love isn't hate!" I'll bet I've heard the phrase, or variants of it, hundreds of times. Wake up, moderate Christians! Wake up and realize that not all who claim to walk in The Way are gentle. Or kind. Or moderate. Next time you are in conversation with a gay or trans person, don't just proclaim that you are confronting them with the truth of their sin as you understand it. First remember the ugliness which I captured from numerous people in numerous places around the internet. The screenshots above are just a handful of examples. Remember that this is a tiny reflection of a very large world. Then start your conversation by apologizing for the ugliness, violence, and hate that gay and trans people really do receive from the Christian community. And maybe even consider going after the deafening crowd of rage-filled voices who fling the words of the accuser, and talk to THEM about what it means to be Christian. My wife and I pray for the hearts and minds of those who spew filth in the name of Jesus Christ. We pray for those who turn away from Christianity because of it. And we pray for moderate Christians to look deeper at their God, and to recognize that He cannot be constrained to a box the size of a book. With up to 70% of women using skin lightening creams in parts of Africa, Cote d'Ivoire has led the charge in tackling skin lighteners and has banned the practise nationally. It is time for the rest of the continent to follow. Skin lighteners have become a common part of life in communities across the continent which is home to an estimated two thirds of the world's darker-skinned population. In the late 1960s, 60% of urban African women reported using skin lightener formulas. It became the fourth most commonly used household product after soap, tea and tinned milk. These days, 75% of Nigerian women and between 52% and 67% of Senegalese women use skin lightening products. A survey conducted in South Africa's administrative capital Pretoria showed that 35% of women use them. Advertisement Demand is also high in Ghana, Tanzania and Kenya where buoyant economies and advertising have targeted young women of marriageable age. There has been a marked shift in male preferences toward women with light-coloured skin emphasising the idea of "racial capital". But skin lighteners are damaging. The World Health Organisation has banned the active ingredients of skin lighteners - a chemical agent called hydroquinone and mercury - from being used in any unregulated skin products. Unregulated products have significantly higher quantities of hydroquinone and mercury than those recommended by dermatologists. Using them could lead to liver and kidney failureor hyperpigmentation, which is dark skin patches forming on the area where the product is used. There is also a risk of skin cancer because the melanin synthesis which protects the skin against ultraviolet radiation is inhibited by hydroquinone. The stereotype The word "yellowbone" has gained popularity in the US as well as countries like South Africa. It refers to a lighter-skinned black person, perpetuating the lengthy racist Eurocentric tradition which propagates negative images and aesthetics of black people and people of colour. Advertisement African descendants in America, the Caribbean and Brazil have internalised these fabricated and fictionalised images of themselves. In an American setting this is a psychological abnormality coined Post Trauma Slavery Disorder. In South Africa, it could be equated to what I have coined "Post-Apartheid Inferiority Disorder" (PAID). The most visible global symptoms include: 1) use of skin lightening or bleaching creams 2) preference for white or light-skinned friends and children 3) wearing of blond hair or blond wigs 4) internalised inferiority and a lack of self-love or veneration 5) lack of group unity and trust. The motivation for using skin lighteners is linked to colonial history. Lightening one's skin is perceived to come with increased privileges, higher social standing, better employment and increased marital prospects. This, coupled with influential marketing strategies from transnational cosmetic houses using iconic celebrities, increases the allure - primarily for women, but increasingly for men. Skin lightening is described in many different ways across the continent. In Mali and Senegal, the terms "caco" and "xeesal" are used while in Ghana, the term "nensoebenis" describes the condition of the skin after chronic skin lightener use. With its political overtones, South Africa has a distinctive history with skin lighteners. Various ethnic languages describe the practice. In isiXhosa it is known as "ukutsheyisa" which means "to chase beauty". In isiZulu it is known as "ukucreamer" meaning "applying creams on the skin". The health risks Skin lightening creams can be divided into legal products recommended by dermatologists and illegal, over-the-counter and unregulated products. Advertisement Most reputable skin lighteners are expensive. Because of this, the market is vulnerable to over-the-counter, unregulated and unsupervised use of skin lighteners. The use of these creams can result in irreversible skin damage. The majority of illegal "depigmenting" or skin lightening creams can contain between 8% to 15% of hydroquinone. The use of hydroquinone in cosmetics has been banned since 2001. Hydroquinone is used in large quantities in paints and as a photographic developing solution. Despite the laws restricting the use of hydroquinone, I found a range of different brands of skin lighteners available in pharmacies and supermarkets in the Johannesburg area. The attraction to the practise is encouraged by overt advertising and the advent and influence of social media and mobile phones with roaming apps. Although individuals have started speaking out against skin lightening, such as the Senegalese models who took a stand at the Dakar Fashion Week, governments need to take action. Regulations should ensure that the creams are safe and that illegal products are kept off the market. In addition, governments should encourage the view that being paler skinned isn't a panacea and that black is beautiful too. Advertisement As an IT professional, if you want to demand the highest salary, and work for the best companies with the best benefits, you have to stay current. Technology changes in an instant. Your ability to grow and adapt with new technology will dictate how likely you are to be promoted, or even hired from a thick stack of resumes. Don't assume that a fancy degree is enough. As Albert Einstein once wrote: "Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school." Which Conference Should You Attend? To take your education further, surround yourself with the best and brightest in your field. A conference is designed to promote fellowship and provide access to new ideas or concepts. While it can be a great opportunity, attending a conference puts a demand on your time and resources. So, here are some key factors to consider before agreeing to attend: Advertisement 1.How much does the conference cost? 2.Who are the guest speakers? 3.What kind of people will be attending? 4.Will you have the opportunity to go hands-on with new product / service demos? 5.Can your company gain some exposure through your attendance? Most employees in technical fields are able to attend at least one conference per year. Your employer should foot the bill for these. While you might not be paid to attend, your expenses should be covered. In fact, the ability to attend industry conferences should be an opportunity that's discussed in specificity with recruiters before you accept a new job. Regularly Review Conference Listing Sites According to a report compiled by Price Waterhouse Cooper, data from 2012 shows that approximately 273,700 Conventions/Conferences/Congresses took place with more than 60,960,000 members in attendance. Keeping up to date on all of the different trade shows, conferences and exhibitions in your industry is virtually impossible. Of course, the vast majority of these meetings are going to be irrelevant to your specific career; but missing out on an amazing conference because it's lost in the shuffle could hold your company and your career back. There are a few excellent sources that compile trade shows and conferences for the technology space. DNS Stuff regularly publishes a list of the "Best Tech Conferences for IT Professionals". Their listings are grouped by difference conference characteristics and attempt to shed a light on emerging events, as well as more established annual conventions. Advertisement CIO offers a more exhaustive directory of tech conferences, which they are proud to claim is searchable by various characteristics to help users find the most relevant events to their industry or career. International Accelerator, an organization dedicated to helping SME's in the tech-space thrive on a global scale, publishes an annual report on the top tech conferences for entrepreneurs. The price tag for attending a conference can be close to $2,000, but the access to industry luminaries could be priceless. MeetUp.com is a great site for finding local meetings in your community. The ability to access the best and brightest in your community is a bit limited, both in cost of attendance, and the quality of the headliners. Between the above sources, you'd be hard pressed to miss relevant a conference or meeting. Striking the right balance between local, weekend meetups and national conferences is a bit of a balancing act. But, if you can get it right, you'll find that a local network is a perfect tool to leverage when bringing back new and exciting information. Employers Need to Remember that a Tech Conference isn't an Employee Vacation Heading to a convention is fun and exciting. Sure, there are the boring seminars and ham-fisted meet and greets, but there's also the parties. The party culture that has developed at the best conventions makes the boring talks worthwhile. Sure, learning is great, but getting lit in a penthouse is way more gratifying (at least until the morning hangover). Advertisement If reports of Microsoft's after-party at their 2016 Game Developer Conference are to be believed, there's a lot of fun to be had at even the nerdiest of conventions. While it might be tempting for business leaders to look at these events as an excuse for their IT departments to hold their own revenge of the nerds on the company dime, tech conferences offer companies of all shapes and sizes the opportunity to learn, update and cut-loose. Gallup research has discovered that people who get the opportunity to continually develop are twice as likely as those on the other end of the scale to say they will spend their career with their company. Part of developing is taking advantages of opportunities to let employees experience the broader industry; learning, engaging and recharging. America's White House and State Department's planning of President Obama's visit to Hiroshima, the first ever from a serving American president since dropping the atomic bomb, must have been fraught with the anxiety of a PR company trying to contain the potential fallout it was commemorating. How to communicate repentance without stirring up the toxic sludge of appearing to accept blame for what was arguably the most brutal way to end a war in human history. While Obama courageously stood and spoke movingly on Hiroshima soil, the inscription beside him on the monument read, "rest in peace for the error shall not be repeated." Obama's carefully chosen remarks were free of possessive pronouns. He elevated contrition to an existential appeal, encompassing all of mankind, while speaking with the hooded eyes of experience. The "error" of Hiroshima (and Nagasaki) secured victory for the Allies on the Pacific front of WWII. It also eviscerated 180,000 people and, for others, it led to a lifetime of slow death from its nuclear impact. The absence of the word "apology" in Obama's speech was not an absence of compassion or a shirking of responsibility, but an effort to acknowledge the calamitous effects of the event while playing down the neurosis of victimisation between two countries with a continuing, positive relationship, 71 years later. The "error" was inextricably linked to the provocation of Pearl Harbor and subsequent horrors of suffering and sacrifice for both sides, and reflected an extreme combination of the three elements of "psychology, politics and war" which historian-philosopher Stephen Pinker defines as "astronomically unlikely". For this unlikelihood to remain astronomical, those three elements need to be perpetually diffused. Ex UN ambassador John Bolton's accusations that Obama was accepting "moral equivalence" when comparing degrees of devastation between Japan and America while describing his visit as shamefully apologetic, were unhelpful and unjustified. And Donald Trump's finger jabbing should be considered no more than a weird uncle's molestation. America's president looked into the eyes of a Hiroshima survivor, and, by embracing him, spoke volumes about conscience, both figures knowing how impossible it is to equate in words the complexity of what constitutes national self-defence with a genuine, heart-felt desire to end forever such destructive mechanisms of pursuing it. Advertisement The presence of America's president at Hiroshima's memorial was a cooling balm to the fiery rhetoric of populism and anger which is undermining the democratic process. "I am simply grateful for his visit," said Tomoko Miyoshi, 50, weeping, who lost ten relatives in the Hiroshima attack and now watched Obama on her mobile phone. The sight of Japanese survivors standing quietly to listen to the American president was humbling. But it should also serve as a reminder that our children should not have to dust off the aftermath of any of today's ongoing or emerging conflicts with the same stoic necessity as Hiroshima's grandparents. Because the "war to end all wars" (WWI), engendered others, until today's drone and proxy versions have become, once again, what military writer Karl von Clausewitz described as, "the continuation of policy by other means". In 2003, up to a million people demonstrated in the streets of London against the war in Iraq, three million in Rome, 1.5 million in Madrid and up to eight million across the world. They were ignored. It was a seminal moment in a loss of faith in the political process, and the abject betrayal of the people by their politicians. The young walked away from their governments. One could argue that in Britain it has taken a pacifist like the Labour Party shadow leader Jeremy Corbyn, to bring some of them back, 12 years later. Corbyn might be naive or unrealistic in his objectives, and downright egotistical, but so were those behind the invasion of Iraq. Advertisement Pacifism does not necessarily save lives. But what should be today's victories - the free exchange of life-enhancing ideas, services, minerals, food and environmental resources - are often still quagmired by conflict, and a medusa's head of terrorist insurgencies. It is easier to sell lethal military equipment to allies or punish enemies with drones and "here's hoping" strategies than to resolve conflicts and break down barriers. Many in the media are appalled at the derogatory remarks GOP presidential presumptive nominee Donald Trump makes against Hillary Clinton, former President Clinton, women, and many ethnic and racial groups of Americans. However, I wonder if they have seriously examined the underlying views of Trump's Republican supporters. It appears that Trump is reflecting the views of his electorate and political supporters about the rest of the American society. Perhaps we should not blame Trump for his foul, derogatory and unpresidential language against people and groups he does not like and who are critical of his views. Conceivably the blame lies with his cheering section. During the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy initiated a witch hunt for communists in the federal government and among Americans in all walks of life. It had gone unnoticed for some time by most responsible observers. But finally a courageous anchor newsman, Edward R. Murrow, in March 1954, exposed the Senator's attempt to humiliate many honorable Americans and to damage freedom of expression and activity enjoyed by all Americans. One of the most memorable statements Murrow made in support of his case against Senator McCarthy's tactics and quoted by David Sheldon of Poynter, was, "He didn't create his situation of fear, he merely exploited it--rather successfully. Cassius was right. 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.'" The same situation is applicable in Trump's presidential campaign. He is thriving on the fear, anger and suspicion of government of his supporters. Hence, it is time for them to look at themselves in the mirror, to consciously and cognitively examine who is exploiting whom. If they look carefully they may realize that Trump is not interested in their well-being but rather in his own lust for power and promotion of his brand. Advertisement Trump is also exploiting polarization of the electorate based on rumors he spreads in the news media. Experimental evidence reported by Cass R. Sunstein, in On Rumors, shows that internal group deliberations further strengthen members' belief in rumors. Trump's rumors, such as Muslims celebrated 9/11 attack on World Trade Center, Mexicans are rapists and murderers, Vince Foster may have been murdered during President Clinton's administration, Senator Cruz' father's hand in JFK assassination, and Hillary Clinton desires to repeal Second Amendment are ignored by his supporters in his quest for the presidency. Such rumors breed suspicion and even contempt against various ethnic and demographic groups and even against other presidential candidates who are supported by those groups. As psychologist Daniel Kahneman, former Nobel Laureate in Economics, states in Thinking Fast And Slow, "A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact." Mr. Trump takes pride in his skills in marketing and branding but not in policies. Policies are left for the experts. What about the media's role in Trump's campaign? Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson in Winner-Take-All Politics are of the view that news media are not helping voters by providing vital and reliable information on the candidates and their policies. "The erosion of traditional interest organizations has meant that for many voters, the media are the only regular source of political information... Even hard news consists mostly of dueling sound bites. Efforts to analyze the veracity or relevance of these claims, or place them in context, are either left to the end or left out altogether." These remarks are especially applicable to most television news. The Internet has not filled that gap either. In fact, the Internet has contributed to the speed and durability of rumors. Why have Trump supporters, and presumably responsible Republican politicians, forgotten their basic principles of Republicanism and are supporting Trump? Speaker of the House Paul Ryan emphasizes conservative principles such as "big tent," smaller government, and entitlement reform every time he gets the opportunity before the media; but even he is wavering in his principles and hinting tacit support for Trump's presidency. Is it conceivable that many of Trump's supporters secretly believe in what Trump is overtly saying, zeroing in on his supporters' inner thoughts, such as fear of immigrants, minorities, off-shoring of businesses, China's unfair trade practices and loss of respect for America in the world? According to Tax Foundation, October 2012, 60 percent of households now receive more federal transfer income than they pay in taxes. Obviously the Republican Congress has not been very faithful to its principle of small government. The Republican electorate in Southern states also does not practice its explicitly expressed concern about big government. Out of the top ten states receiving disability benefits under SSDI, seven are in the South. Trump's contemptible inflammatory language, and his vindictiveness against those who do not agree with his ever changing inconsistent policies and statements is a reflection of the cognitive dissonance of his supporters. It is time for his supporters and Republican politicians to look at themselves in the mirror and find their true self and not Trump's image. Mathur is former chair and professor of economics, and now professor emeritus, Department of Economics, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio. He resides in Ogden, Utah. (Photo: Cold Avocado Soup by Green Kitchen Stories) By Molly Gallagher for Well+Good Tomato gazpacho is so 1999. But that doesn't mean the genre's gone: We're spotting chilled soups by chefs and bloggers made with everything from strawberry and avocado to carrots with cashew cream. (Sorry, tomatoes.) So, we tapped top food bloggers who are making summer soup hot again. Their chilled blends are colorful, full of fresh summer produce, and easy to make. Go ahead, we give you permission to slurp at the table. "My mom always made a chilled carrot soup that I loved -- I remember using kitchen scissors to chop dill for it as a kid," says Lily Kunin, of the amazing blog and Instagram, Clean Food Dirty City. She eliminates dairy with her pureed version and uses cashew crema instead. Advertisement "Cool soups are great during the summer because they are light and easy for your body to digest," Kunun says, "I especially love this one because the turmeric and carrots are both anti-inflammatory." Visit Clean Food Dirty City for the recipe. (Photo: Clean Food Dirty City) To say that Andrea Bemis, the blogger behind Dishing Up the Dirt, is a pro at the farm-to-table experience would be an understatement. For starters, she runs a farm in Oregon with her husband and fills her blog with recipes made from her just-picked produce. Bemis loves chilled soups for summer because they usually don't require any cooking, like her refreshing cucumber blend, which has Greek yogurt in it -- giving it the perfect amount of protein. "This would be wonderful on a hot summer day with a simple salad and a glass of rose," she says. Visit Dishing Up the Dirt for the recipe. (Photo: Dishing Up the Dirt) Gabrielle Arnold, who whips up yummy recipes for Honest Fare and co-owns La Empanada Food Truck in Orlando, Florida, calls watermelon "nature's cotton candy." (Cute!) But don't expect this soup to be super sweet. Ingredients like lemon and avocado balance it out, she says. Visit Honest Fare for the recipe. (Photo: Honest Fare) Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign rally in Balboa Park on June 2, 2016 in San Diego, California. Clinton said rival Donald Trump's foreign policy is dangerously incoherent and labeling him unfit for office. 'He is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility,' Clinton said, cranking up the rhetoric on what is already a deeply acrimonious election. / AFP / DAVID MCNEW (Photo credit should read DAVID MCNEW/AFP/Getty Images) Yesterday, Hillary Clinton gave a foreign policy speech in San Diego that was notably flat and misleading. It's been getting decent reviews in the mainstream media for the zingers she tossed at Donald Trump. But when you listen to the speech (you can watch it here) and think about it, you realize how insipid and unoriginal it really was. Here are my thoughts on Clinton's speech: 1. The speech featured the usual American exceptionalism, the usual fear that if America withdraws from the world stage, chaos will result. There was no sense that America's wars of choice in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc. have greatly contributed to that chaos. Oh, there was also the usual boast that America has the greatest military. That's what Imperial and Nazi Germany used to boast -- until the Germans lost two world wars and smartened up. Advertisement 2. Hillary mentioned we're electing "our" next commander-in-chief. No, we're not. The president is a public servant, not "our" commander-in-chief. The president serves as the civilian commander-in-chief of the military, and the military alone. 3. Hillary mentioned the US has a "moral obligation" to defend Israel. Why is this? Sure, Israel is an American ally, but why is Israel the one country we're "morally" obligated to defend? There's only one country we're morally obligated to defend, and that's the USA, assuming our government is actually honoring the US Constitution. 4. The speech had no new ideas. It was a laundry list of neo-conservative principles about making America stronger, safer, and so on. As a friend of mine put it, "Nothing that I heard her say deviated in any way from her hawkish record of recommending bombing at every opportunity." 5. Hillary seems to have two speech-giving styles: a somewhat bored monotone and a somewhat agitated yell. A line like, "this isn't reality TV, it's reality," should have been a big applause line, but her delivery was flat and her timing was off. In this case, style and substance met as one. Advertisement Hillary Clinton reminds me of the grey leaders in the USSR before Gorbachev. She's like a Brezhnev or an Andropov. A cookie-cutter product of the system with no fresh ideas. For many people who are leery of a Trump presidency, Hillary's hawkish and colorless conformity to the Washington system is more than enough to qualify her. If she wins the presidency, she will be much like Brezhnev and Andropov, senior apparatchiks of an empire in denial of its own precipitous decline. By Christien S. Williams "Let's briefly go over how the code works. We don't want to lose our audience..." Audience? Is that really me--the kid who once feared center stage-- leading a group at Caltech with the prescription for the perfect presentation? My journey towards valuing audience and setting my own stage goes back to Dad's prodding: "Christien, go tickle the keys." That was Dad's way of saying practice the piano. The younger me preferred dreaming of inventions--a hoverboard or a version of Tony Stark's "Jarvis." Science and discovery consumed me. Piano seemed irrelevant to plans to be an innovator. However in seventh grade, piano propelled me beyond that narrow lens. "Would you be interested in playing during town meeting?" Mr. Sepkowitz, the middle school principal, startled me with this question. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I replied, "Sure." Behind my gleaming 12-year-old eyes, a voice yelled, "Don't do it!" My terrified mind raced with the thought of hitting a wrong note in the middle of a piece, and being unable to finish. Advertisement I chose a piece I knew well: Guitars of Seville, and began practicing tirelessly. Then Mr. Sepkowitz checked in about the performance: "You'll probably be playing two pieces, right?" My heart skipped a beat. I thought, I'm reluctant to play in the first place, and now --two songs? After a brief pause I replied, "Yeah, of course." I could not rely on the crutch of a familiar song. I selected Clementi's Sonata in C, Opus 36, Number 1, a more challenging piece. I practiced relentlessly after school every day. Lagotto here, with the sustain pedal; then staccato, no sustain, then lagotto again; now a crescendo; finally a ritardando. Before I knew it, performance day arrived and Mr. Sepkowitz announced, "...Christien Williams will be playing for us this morning." Descending the bleachers and sitting at the piano, I masked my anxiety. Advertisement My fingers overcame their tremors and glided across the piano, not missing a key. When I hit the final key, the crowd erupted in a standing ovation, with some in the audience even crying. I later realized that my performance transcended piano. A year later, I carried this new confidence to my interest in student government. Walking onto the stage, not to a piano stool but to a podium, I delivered my election speech --the first of many-- to become student body president. I was slightly intimidated, yet prepared. I began with my slogan: "My name is Christien Williams, and I'm here to do what's right!" The 7th-grade performance that once ignited stage fright became my catalyst to occupy podiums and preside over student government meetings. From freshman class rep to student body president, I journeyed through high school student government positions requiring me to learn from being on center stage. Soon, I married my knack for student government with my love for math and science, which helped me pursue my interests in engineering. Still a dreamer in high school, I acted on those dreams by pursuing inventions every summer. At UVA, I programmed computers to make digital images that turn geometry into art. At East Carolina University, I worked in a lab to autonomously control a robot with human thoughts. Then there was Caltech, where I was on a team of students that programmed our own version of the snake game. Through each project, I sometimes found myself drawing on those lessons from the piano and the podium. At Caltech, studying functions and loops consumed my days while I prepared for my team presentation. Emerging as the leader of my group, my leadership skills emanated in preparing our presentation. I pushed the team to focus on audience. The overwhelming nerves that preceded my 7th grade moment were absent when I presented to Caltech professors. Perhaps the biggest lesson of all, innovation cannot carry itself without communication and presentation skills. Maybe playing the piano was more than just tickling keys. Advertisement ASSOCIATED PRESS In this picture taken on March 5, 2015, a map of the United States displayed on a computer screen shows cyber attacks in real time at the headquarters of Bitdefender, a leading Romanian cyber security company, in Bucharest, Romania. Romania, the eastern European country, known more for economic disarray than technological prowess, has become one of the leading nations in Europe in the fight against hacking. The reason: the countryas own battle against Internet renegades and a legacy of computing excellence stemming from Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescuas regime. (AP Photo/Octav Ganea, Mediafax) ROMANIA OUT Banks have been hesitant to share incidents of cyber attacks and need to promptly report all cyber attacks, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said. According to an RBI note, the number, frequency and impact of cyber attacks have increased manifold recently in the financial sector, especially at banks. Advertisement RBI has asked banks to urgently roll out cyber security policies. The decision comes in the wake of a spate of recent high profile cyber attacks that targeted the global money transfer network Swift, resulting in thefts of millions of dollars from banks in Bangladesh, Vietnam and Ecuador. Banking services are rapidly moving to smartphones and digital devices leaving many banks vulnerable to such attacks. RBI has asked banks to urgently boost their current security measures and put in place formal cyber security frameworks to defend against any disruptions and attacks. According to the RBI note, banks should immediately: 1) Introduce cyber security policies that are distinct from their broader IT policies. 2) All banks must set up an SOC (Security Operations Centre), whose job would be to constantly monitor emerging cyber threats. 3) They should ensure their IT architecture is designed to facilitate the necessary security measures. Advertisement 4) Ensure customer privacy: All banks must immediately strengthen their networks and databases to ensure customer confidentiality and private information is not compromised regardless whether the banks use a third party. 5) They must also adopt a cyber crisis management plan to address various forms of electronic financial fraud such as malware, spam, e-mail phishing, spear phishing, whaling, vishing frauds, and identity frauds. 6) They must come up with cyber security preparedness indicators to regularly assess the level of cyber risk and preparedness. Banks have until the end of July to report their cyber security measures and any identified gaps to the Department of Banking Supervision. Advertisement Contact HuffPost India Also see on HuffPost: Morsa Images via Getty Images Male surgeons working in operating room at hospital The Delhi police on Thursday raided a hospital in the national capitals south-east area and arrested six people including two women for their alleged involvement in a kidney trade racket. Police raided Indraprastha Apollo Hospital after the Sarita Vihar police station house officer got a lead from his informers about the gangs presence in the hospital. Among the arrested were two staff members of the hospital who worked with its senior nephrologist. Advertisement Among six persons, three of them are middlemen, who are believed to have sold at least four kidneys so far in Delhi, and three potential donors, including two women, who were picked up from a village in North India, The Indian Express reported, quoting sources. The accused are being interrogated and possibilities of involvement of doctors and other hospital staff are being examined. According to the police, the gang, which has been operating since February, used to produce fake documents to show the hospital authorities that the potential donors were relatives of the recipient and have been managed to get five such transplants executed. The main accused, identified as Anish, was contacted by the hospital authorities from time to time on behalf of patients and he used to find donors for them. The middlemen where pocketing hefty commissions as the donors were paid only Rs three-five lakh despite the kidneys being sold to patients for Rs 25-30 lakh. Advertisement Responding to the development, Apollo Hospital said it was only "a victim of a well-orchestrated operation to cheat patients and the hospital," adding that the institution was cooperating with the police. Contact HuffPost India Also See On HuffPost: Hindustan Times via Getty Images MATHURA, INDIA - JUNE 2: A fire break out after clashes between police and encroachers, believed to be of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi, who were being evicted from Jawaharbagh on June 2, 2016 in Mathura, India. 21 people including two senior police officers died in violence that erupted during a police drive to evict about 3,000 people who had encroached into the Jawahar Bagh park. The squatters belonged to Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi group and claimed to be true followers of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose have illegally occupied public land from last two years. A cache of arms and several spent bullets of AK-47 assault rifles were seized by police from the site of the deadly clashes. (Photo by Anant Ram/Hindustan Times via Getty Images) The Akhilesh Yadav government was left firefighting after the temple town of Mathura was on edge following massive violence that claimed 24 lives. Police clashed with about 3,000 members of a little-known sect whose leaders have fled while 368 people have been arrested on Friday. Advertisement An uneasy calm prevailed today as forces from other parts of Uttar Pradesh were rushed to bring normalcy to the town where a large cache of ammunition was recovered from the members of zad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi", an outfit claiming allegiance to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, in Jawahar Bagh area. The clashes took place when police went to evict the members of the sect, which has made outlandish demands for the removal of the President and Prime Minister and replacing of the Indian currency, from a 260-acre government land encroached by them. The police action followed Allahabad High Court orders. Mukul Dwivedi, Superintendent of Police and Santosh Yadav, Station House officer, Farah, were killed in the violence that also claimed the lives of 22 members of the sect. A tweet from the official account of CM Akhilesh Yadavs office read, '@UPGovt will ensure the strictest action under law against the perpetrators in the Mathura incident. Speedy prosecution of the accused'-CM CM Office, GoUP (@CMOfficeUP) June 3, 2016 "There were some lapses. Police should have gone with full preparation and after holding talks, but there was no information that they would be having so much (arms and ammunition)," Yadav told reporters. Among the 24 killed, the two policemen were shot dead and 11 were burnt to death due to cylinder blasts. The encroachers had set on fire the huts where bombs, explosives and gas cylinders were stored, before retreating from the site, UP DGP Javed Ahmed said. In all, 22 rioters including a woman were killed. The violence led to political sparring with BJP, Congress and others attacking the government headed by Samajwadi Party while Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav ordered a probe by Divisional Commissioner of Mathura into the violence. The Centre sought a report from the state government while Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke to Yadav and extended all support. However, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju attacked the state government saying there were some lapses. I am in touch with UP CM and the culprits need to be punished.Situation now under control: HM Rajnath Singh #Mathurapic.twitter.com/E5VaTM0aNB ANI (@ANI_news) June 3, 2016 Will see the report. This shouldn't have happened, UP Govt should look into why this happened: Kiren Rijiju #Mathurapic.twitter.com/RI50z1iQcg ANI (@ANI_news) June 3, 2016 "The leaders of the sect Ram Vraksha Yadav, Chandan Gaur, Rakesh Gupta and others will be booked under the NSA Act," Ahmed told a press conference here. "We have recovered 47 guns, six rifles and 178 hand grenades from the area," the DGP said, adding "124 people have been arrested for creating disturbances. Another 196, including 116 women, have been arrested under 151 CrPC," he said. Section 151 CrPC deals with preventive arrests. Uttar Pradesh Police has made 368 arrests in connection with the violence in Mathura even as the four main accused in the clashes between police and members of a sect are absconding. (With PTI Inputs) Advertisement Contact HuffPost India Also See On HuffPost: Jim Bourg / Reuters U.S. President Barack Obama and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi (R) talk as they have coffee and tea together in the gardens of Hyderabad House in New Delhi January 25, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Bourg/File Photo NEW DELHI -- Two years ago there were questions over whether Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi could get a visa to enter the United States. Next week he visits Washington as one of President Barack Obama's closest international partners. Obama invited Modi for one of the last big visits by a world leader before his term ends in January. Although the trip won't feature a lavish state dinner, the Indian leader will address both houses of Congress, considered a rare honour. Advertisement This will be their seventh meeting since Modi became prime minister in May 2014, an impressive tally for a U.S. president and a leader who is not a formal ally, said Ashley Tellis at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "The personal relationship between the president and the prime minister ... is really one of the unanticipated surprises of the past two years," said Tellis, an expert on India. The developing relationship is seen as an Obama foreign policy success. Washington views India as an important part of its rebalance to Asia and as a counterweight to China. The two countries are finalising agreements that would make it possible for their militaries to cooperate more closely, and for U.S. defence manufacturers to both sell and make high-tech weaponry in India. Advertisement A deal on logistics would govern issues such as how the two countries account for costs of military exercises. Another involves encrypted communications and geospatial data transfer. A history of colonial rule followed by decades of non-alignment has, however, made New Delhi wary of an embrace by the more powerful United States, which has overtaken Russia as India's top arms supplier. "It is neither a strategic partnership nor an alliance," said Nitin Gokhale, founder of defence portal Bharat Shakti. "It can be a long-term arrangement, but to call it a strategic partnership would be premature." There are frustrations, too, on the U.S. side. The two countries reached a civil nuclear agreement in 2005, but it has yet to yield any contracts for U.S.-based companies. Only now is Westinghouse, a unit of Japan's Toshiba (6502.T), approaching the finish line on a deal to build six reactors in India. GETTING TO KNOW YOU The visit gives Modi a chance to network with U.S. lawmakers who may feature in a Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton administration but, as it coincides with the California primary, he is not expected to meet either. Advertisement Modi is generally popular with U.S. lawmakers, who extended his invitation to address Congress. But they criticise what they see as lingering unfriendliness to U.S. firms and a stifling bureaucracy, and question New Delhi's record on human rights. "The economic engagement between our two countries should increase and it should be more accessible for U.S. companies," Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a telephone interview. Obama and Modi are expected to discuss India's desire to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 48-member club of nuclear trading nations. India was shut out for decades because of its weapons programme, and the civil nuclear agreement with the United States gave it access to foreign suppliers without giving up its arms. Obama administration officials have said they backed India's desire to join the group, but the idea faces resistance among some on Capitol Hill, as well as from China, an ally of India's arch-rival Pakistan. Advertisement "Existing NSG guidelines were established to guard against nuclear proliferation, and we should not create exceptions for particular countries," Corker said. There is lingering concern in Washington over Modi's handling of communal riots in 2002 that killed at least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, in Gujarat. Modi was chief minister of the state at the time and, though a court-ordered inquiry found insufficient evidence to prosecute him, the issue prevented him from getting a U.S. visa for years. Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, raised human rights on a visit to New Delhi this week, saying the two largest democracies had "special obligations" to set the highest standards. Congress' Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission has scheduled a hearing on India for June 7, the day Modi arrives in Washington and the day before his address to the combined House of Representatives and Senate. He leaves the United States on June 8. Advertisement Corker promised to ask Modi about India's record on human trafficking, which he brought up recently in an emotional Senate hearing with Obama administration officials. "The country we believe has 12-14 million slaves, which is close to half the number we believe exists worldwide," Corker said. "It's obviously a very significant issue and when he's here, it's one I certainly plan to raise." Advertisement Contact HuffPost India Also see on HuffPost: ASSOCIATED PRESS Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gives a goodbye as he boards his plane at Kabul International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, Dec. 25, 2015, India donated four Mi-25 attack helicopters to Afghanistan Air Force. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul) Prime Minister Narendra Modi will leave tomorrow for his 41st foreign trip since May 2014, travelling to Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland, USA, and Mexico. Here are five things you should know: Development work at Afghanistan On Saturday, he will inaugurate the Afghanistan-India Friendship Dam (which was earlier called the Salma Dam) with Afghanistan President Dr. Ashraf Ghani in Herat province. About 1,500 engineers and workers from India and Afghanistan have built this dam at the cost of approximately 1,700 crores, and will help in irrigation and provide drinking water. Advertisement Making Qatar an economic partner Modi is the first Indian PM to visit four countries in the Gulf within the space of one year (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Qatar), according to the external affairs ministry. While India's trade with the region is $112 billion, and $10 billion with Qatar specifically. Two-thirds of our energy supply come from the Gulf. The Indian diaspora in the region is huge about eight million Indian nationals are based there, as per government estimates. Modi hopes to make Qatar an important economic partner, and he wants to encourage business leaders in Doha who he will be meeting to invest in India. Getting investors from Switzerland Switzerland is India's fifth largest trading partner, globally, and the 11th largest investor in India. The PM will meet business leaders to invest more in India, particularly in renewable energy and vocational education. Military cooperation with the USA On his second bilateral visit to the USA, PM Modi will meet President Obama on 7 June, which is the seventh time the two leaders have met since Modi was elected to power. He is expected to address the joint meeting of the US Congress, which is a rare honour. He is the fifth Indian PM to do so after Rajiv Gandhi, Narsimhan Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and Manmohan Singh. Interestingly, the US will be returning several Indian antiquities during Modi's visit. India and the USA are finalising agreements so that the two militaries can cooperate closely, Reuters reported. Modi will be meeting the US Defence Secretary. The USA recently overtook Russia as India's top arms supplier. Advertisement Building collaboration with Mexico ASSOCIATED PRESS In this March 29, 2016 photo, Ola cabs, left, waiting for customers are parked next to other cars in Kolkata, India. Aiming to wrest control of Indiaas booming taxi market, two cab-hailing smartphone apps, Uber and Ola, are promising hundreds of millions in new investments while also facing off with one another in court. (AP Photo/ Bikas Das) Taxi aggregators like Ola and Uber may soon be brought under the purview of the Motor Vehicles Act, according to the government's draft proposals to amend the law. According to a report in Hindustan Times, the road transport ministry might create a separate category for these aggregators called "intermediaries". This might mean the end of "surge pricing", which pushes up fares for these taxis when there is high demand. Advertisement They will have to follow the rules framed for them under the MV Act," an unnamed official told HT. "They will have to abide by fares prescribed by respective states, which can fix an upper cap beyond which the aggregator cannot charge." As "intermediaries", they will also come under the purview of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Eight state transport ministers will meet later this June in Dharamsala to take a "final call". If the proposals are given the green signal, it would also mean that Ola and Uber cabs will need to have fare meters as under city permits, and the drivers will have to wear a dress code. Yamini Chao via Getty Images Salesgirl showing dress to woman in supermarket An urban middle class, the kind that fuelled Chinese prosperity in the past decade, barely exists in India, according to a study by the banking firm, Goldman Sachs. The Indian "urban middle" class population people earning an average annual income of US$11,000 (Rs 7.4 lakh) is 27 million or just two percent of Indias population. This group largely comprises government employees, small business owners, and working professionals in high-tech jobs or post graduate degrees. Advertisement By contrast, the Chinese middle class comprises 150 million people, who along with its super wealthy, powered the first wave of Chinas consumer story between 2002 and 2012. According to the study, titled The Asian Consumer: India Consumer Close-Up, the Indian urban consumer class (as distinct from the urban middle class) is relatively poor, earning an average of $3,200 (Rs 2.15 lakh) annually, and falls into an urban mass category, making up a quarter of the total workforce. The report says that it will be this 130 million-strong urban mass -- which includes both educated masses in non-labour intensive jobs, blue collar workers, and migrant labourers that will propel the country's consumer growth story. Some highlights from the report: 1) In 2015, Indian urban consumers spent most of their money on eating better and packaged food (32.8 percent), followed by expenditure on a better home (21.6 per cent), and mobile connectivity (16.4 per cent) including ground transport, cars, and phones. Within the eating better category, Indians ate the most fresh food compared to peers in China, Korea, Japan and even the US. 2) India spends just eight per cent of personal consumption expenditure on having fun. By comparison, Chinese consumers spend 9 per cent on this category that includes holidays, sports, food services and other recreational activities. The study cited affordability rather than culture as the main challenge. Advertisement 3) Indias personal consumption expenditure per capita is just $1,012 (Rs 68,131), which is one-third of China's. 4) Unlike China where consumers showed an obsession with branded products for reasons such as making aspirational purchases, acquiring status symbols and wanting to have all things Western, Indian consumers showed a preference for value for money, and are far less likely to pay big premiums for brand equity. 5) 'Eating out' by urban Indian consumers is expected to increase the US$19 billion Quick Service Restaurants, or the fast food segment, will be one of the best growth stories for India, thanks to Indias youthful population and continuing urbanization. 6) Housing demand far outstrips supply in India: only three million residential units were sold in the top 15 cities from 2008 to 2015 as opposed to an estimated 46 million people who graduated from college over the same period. The study cites housing affordability as a challenge and warns that single-income urban mass households will struggle to find a mortgage. 7) With the exception of weddings where Indian consumers typically spend lavishly, spending on luxury items will remain limited. Advertisement Overall, as of December 2015, India had 440 million millennials, and 390 million Gen-Z teens and children, numbers that highlight the critical importance of job creation for the countrys youth. Contact HuffPost India Also see on HuffPost: Times Content PUNE -- Noted film and theatre personality Tom Alter has resigned from his post as head of the acting department in the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). Alter emailed his resignation, citing preoccupation with other commitments that prevented him from devoting time to the FTII assignment, the institute's director Bhupendra Kainthola told PTI. Advertisement But Kainthola added that FTII management had not accepted Alter's resignation yet. "I am trying to persuade him to withdraw his resignation," Kainthola said. According to The Indian Express, a strained relationship with the students in the acting department was also a reason behind Alter's decision to resign. Hindustan Times adds that students had refused to attend Alters classes as he had demanded 100 percent attendance. They called him "dictatorial" and said that he had "failed as an administrator". On 23 May, Alter had a heated exchange with the students at the directors office, after which he had threatened to resign. Alter joined the institute as HOD of the Acting Department in November 2014. Facebook/Mainak Sarkar On the surface, Mainak Sarkar, a 38-year-old Kolkata-born, IIT-educated, engineer seemed to be living the NRI dream. He had excellent educational qualifications, glowing recommendations from employers, and was integrating himself in the USA both on personal as well as legal fronts. Yet, Sarkar made international headlines on Thursday as the "shooter" who not only killed his partner Ashley Hasti (it is still not clear if the two were estranged), but drove 1900-odd miles from Minnesota to Los Angeles to gun down his former professor William Klug at his UCLA office. 'A brilliant student' Sarkar graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, in 2000. Mainak was a brilliant student. He remained busy with studies and did not talk or socialise much. As far as I remember, he was from Kolkata, a professor of the IIT-Kharagpur aerospace department told Hindustan Times. Advertisement Mainak Sarkar graduated from IIT Kharagpur's Department of Aerospace Engineering. (Credit: Mainak Sarkar Facebook) He worked for Infosys in Bengaluru for one year before he moved to the US on a student visa. In 2002, he worked for a year as a research assistant a the University of Texas at Arlington. In 2005, after Sarkar graduated with a Master of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University, he joined the Texas-based information technology consulting firm Lucid Technologies as a software developer. According to the people here who looked at his record, it was an uneventful time here, Stanford University spokesperson Lisa Lapin told LA Times. Advertisement This undated photo provided by the University of California, Los Angeles shows Bill Klug, a professor of mechanical engineering. (Credit: University of California, Los Angeles via AP) Later, in 2006, he returned to school at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he graduated with a PhD in mechanical engineering in 2013. Professor William S Klug was his advisor at UCLA. Sarkar's 121-page dissertation was on 'Coupled Cardiac Electrophysiology and Contraction using Finite Element'. 'Trustworthy and independent worker' Sarkar's last listed place of work is as an engineering analyst at an Ohio-based rubber company, Endurica LLC, where he worked remotely till August last year. In a recommendation posted on LinkedIn, the company's president William Mars applauded Sarkar's work: "Mainak is a steady contributor with solid technical skills in FEA and software development. I appreciate the quality of his work, and his careful approach to new problems. He has worked for Endurica in an off-site situation requiring great trust and independence, and he has performed well under those conditions." American integration According to the Department of Homeland Security database, Sarkar applied and was granted three student visas between 2001 and 2008. Advertisement A January 2008 photo of Sarkar and Hasti. (Credit: Mainak Sarkar Facebook) Around 2008, photos on Sarkar's Facebook page suggest he became friendly with Ashley Hasti, and according to reports, the two were married on 14 June, 2011 in Hennepin County. It is unclear whether they were still married when Sarkar killed Hasti. She was a student of University of Minnesota Medical School. Sarkar became a permanent resident of the USA in May 2014. 'Long Dark Tunnel' It took Sarkar seven years to complete his PhD, and he thanked his former professor William Klug for being his "mentor" in his doctoral thesis submission. Sarkar's former neighbours at the UCLA student housing he lived in this period described him as "normal and tranquil". A screenshot of Sarkar's deleted blog post on WIlliam Klug. Sarkar maintained a personal blog, which he titled 'Long Dark Tunnel'. In one blog post published in March 2016, which has since been deleted, he called Klug a "sick person". He alleged that Klug had stolen code from him and given it to another student. While LAPD officials have claimed that the motive behind Klug's murder was over "intellectual property rights", it is unclear whether they believe Sarkar killed Klug over this "stolen code". Unnamed colleagues of Klug have denied such a thing ever happened, and called Sarkar's claims in his blog post "psychotic". Advertisement In his blog, he wrote, "Your enemy is your enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust." Hutchinson firefighters responded to five fire calls over the weekend Area was under extreme fire risk due to high winds and drough condtions, but all the fires were quickly contained Sections Airports Business & Regulation Business & Regulation Capital spending Chemical Plant Connectwise Digital Disruption 5G Sustainability Downstream Energy Fossil Gas Oil giw_hydrocarbons HSE Justrite Safety Group LNG Processing Manufacturing Materials Plastics Oil Refining Operation Operations and Maintenance Petrochemicals Process Plants Renewable Fuel Cells Hydro Solar Wind Technology Transportation Vessels Categories Cables, Hoses and Accessories Catalysts and Absorbents Chemicals, Additives and Raw Materials Compressors Corrosion, Cathodic Protection, Coatings and Insulation Environmental Services and Equipment Exploration and Production Filtration and Separation Equipment Fire and Explosion Protection Systems and Materials Health, Safety and Protective Equipment Heat Transfer Equipment and Pressure Vessels Heating and Thermal Equipment Ignition and Flare Systems Instrumentation IT Hardware, Software and Support Logistics and Transportation On-site Accommodation, Cleaning and Catering Facilities Pipeline and Tank Inspection, Maintenance and Rehabilitation Pipes and Pipelines Process Plants and Equipment, Control and Automation Processing Equipment, Control and Automation Project Management, Consultancy, R&D Pumps and Pump Equipment Safety Systems and Lighting Storage, Tank Maintenance and Transport Training and Simulation Valves and Actuators EDM Still Has Room For Growth, Contrary To Predictions While there have been concerns within the industry lately that the popularity of EDM is in decline, the genre has been continuing to gain significant momentum outside of the US, suggesting it may remain one of the profitable areas of the music business. ______________________________ Guest Post by Bobby Owsinski on Music 3.0 It wasnt that long ago when it looked like electronic dance music, or EDM, might be the savior of the music business, thanks to an impressive growth rate of 54% over the course of just three years. With overall CD and download sales slowing down, and streaming paid subscribers not increasing as fast as the industry expected, EDM looked like it was the record labels shining star when it came to fertile new sales ground. The problem is, in the last year, the upswing has slowed to just 3.5%, but that doesnt mean there still isnt room for growth in the genre. According to the IMS Business Report 2016, total EDM sales went from $4.5 billion in 2012/13 to $6.9 billion in 2014/15. In the past year, that growth slowed by quite a bit, increasing by just $200 million, which has a many in the music industry thinking doom and gloom again. That outlook may be a bit premature, however, because even though the U.S. market seems to have matured, other high-potential markets are only now in the early stages of development. Cuba, South America, Vietnam, the Philippines, and China have all seen huge electronic dance music festivals and clubs launched this year alone. In fact, nine clubs out of 20 new entries into the DJ Mag Top 100 Clubs are in Asia, with four in China, and three in Jakarta. Even a club from the UAE was listed. One of the reasons for all the optimism comes from the fact that out of all genres of music (and there are a lot), electronic dance music is one of the most transportable. Since its mostly instrumental (even if theres a vocal, the lyrics often dont play a big part in song), theres no language barrier between countries as a result. This means that even when the genre has topped out in the major developed countries, growth can still continue in smaller and upstart markets, sort of like what happened with American jazz music of the 1950s and 60s. While it might seem like most of the revenue growth is coming from live events, thats not entirely true. Song streams and downloads play a significant part of the genres revenue makeup. For instance, streams increased 33% in the U.S. last year to 15 billion, although that figure is somewhat tempered by the fact that album and digital track sales and genre market share fell. In the UK, however, streaming growth grew at a faster rate than any other genre in 2015, and EDM remained in the top three formats in terms of sales there. In France, a third of the radio stations dedicated more than 10% of their output to Dance tracks in Q1 2015, showing the format is alive and well there too. In fact, Europe in general loves the genre, since figures indicate that at least 1 in 7 people have recently attended an EDM event. [Read more on Forbes] (Photo: Andymoore1980 via WikiPedia) Share on: A federal court ruled that Chubb Ltd. does not have to reimburse P.F. Chang's for costs the restaurant chain charged by its credit card processor under its cyber policy.On June 10, 2014, the restaurant chain was informed that computer hackers had managed to access the roughly 60,000 credit card numbers of its customers. The hackers also posted the numbers they stole on the Internet. On the same day, P.F. Chang's notified Federal Insurance of the breach.Prior to the incident, Federal Insurancea business unit of Chubbhad sold to Wok Holdco L.L.C. (the corporate parent of P.F. Chang's) a Cybersecurity by Chubb policy, effective Jan. 1, 2014 to Jan. 1, 2015.The policy was marketed as something that covered direct loss, legal liability, and consequential loss resulting from cyber security breaches, ruled Judge Stephen M. McNamee of the U.S. District Court in Phoenix.The ruling also detailed that P.F. Chang's and other similar merchants must enter into agreements with third parties in order to process credit card transactions; without the agreements, merchants would be unable to process the transactions. In P.F. Chang's case, it had entered into a master service agreement with Bank of America Merchant Services L.L.C.Federal has compensated the restaurant chain over $1.7 million under the cyber policy, for costs incurred consequently of the data breach.Bank of America notified P.F. Chang's that the restaurant chain was obligated to reimburse the financial institution a total of $1.9 million in relation to charges made as a result of the credit card number leaks.While the restaurant chain reimbursed Bank of America in April 2015, Federal refused coverage for the amount, reasoning that it is separate from the $1.7 million it has already paid. At this, P.F. Chang's filed suit.The Federal Court ultimately concluded that on several counts that Federal Insurance is not obligated to reimburse the charges, rationalizing that Bank of America did not suffer from P.F. Chang's data breach and therefore did not suffer a privacy injury the policy could cover.The court agrees with Federal; (Bank of America) did not sustain a privacy Injury itself, and therefore cannot maintain a valid claim for injury against Chang's, said the ruling. Virtually every nonprofit recognizes the need to carry officers and directors liability, which is a great start, said longtime account executive William Bill Zester, who has focused on the sector for the last 14 years. He said, though, that any nonprofit with employees also needs employment practices liability (EPLI).Board members usually require a nonprofit to have directors and officers liability, and they wont sit on the board without it. They recognize they have to protect their own personal financial success, but sometimes the very small nonprofits dont see the value even in purchasing a general liability policy. They dont have an office, they are volunteer-run, they dont have workers comp, there are not many exposures and they just dont see the need, he said.But there is always a need, he said, especially if they are fundraising or holding outside events. Most venues require a certificate of insurance to protect themselves. That is when the nonprofit is scrambling for a special event policy when they could have offered a certificate on an existing general liability policy they already purchased, he said. And if they have multiple events during the year it is more cost effective to have that annual general liability policy.Zester has worked for 5 agencies over 24 years, and for the last 6 years has been with a large independent agency in Ewing, New Jersey.He said smaller nonprofits often just cant afford any more insurance than is absolutely required. You are often on the edge of your seat as to whether they can make the next payment, he said.While much of Zesters business comes from large healthcare related nonprofits, he said he also writes a lot of smaller accounts including advocacy offices, land conservancies and arts councils. They are easy to write. But since they dont really have the exposures that some of the more difficult ones have, the premiums are small.He said he has been seeing a lot of employment practices liability suits over the last few years. Someone gets a pink slip and he sues the nonprofit for discrimination or wrongful termination, he said.Nonprofits all have to really concentrate on HR administration and sometimes it gets pushed to the back burner as not being that important, but you have to do due diligence. They are often too small to have a separate HR professional or department so the executive director is wearing multiple hats. If the board or organization wants someone out, they have to follow their procedures and document it. Youve got to make the case and give them a chance to turn around their behavior before you boot them out the door or you could be sued and/or receive an EEOC complaint.He said nonprofits dont just need employment liability coverage, they also need to do a better job of hiring and firing in order to avoid such problems in the first place. He said that even small nonprofits need to be concerned with writing an updated employee manual and employment application that addresses employment at will, non-harassment & non-discrimination policies and policies & procedures for addressing employee complaints. The nonprofit should enlist a competent attorney who has experience in the field of employment law draft their employee manual, he said. Joseph E. La Valla, president of Integrity Graphics, shakes hands with Mayor Richard Alcombright after cutting the ribbon. Kimberly Mulcahy, director of business development, applauds. Attendees at the open house listen to the speakers. Company Vice President Michael Hunt, left, and La Valla listen as the mayor reads off some historical points. The material on the glass outside the conference room was printed by Integrity. Josh Mendel of MCLA and Paula Labonte. PreviousNext Excelsior Owner Sees Future In Printing, North Adams Joseph E. La Valla sees growth in the printing business. NORTH ADAMS, Mass. Integrity Graphics is fulfilling a promise made a year ago: That the name "Excelsior" will remain in the city. "Since Excelsior [Printing] was a big part of the past in North Adams, I'm hoping it becomes a big part of the future of North Adams," said Joseph E. La Valla, president and CEO of Integrity Graphics, which took over the printing company in a deal almost exactly a year ago. The comments came during Excelsior's open house on Thursday evening that also saw a ribbon cutting to celebrate the company's new offices in Building One on the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts campus. The sales and service division comprised of Kimberly Mulcahy, Paula Labonte, Martha Hojnowski and Stephanie Melito moved into the renovated space last November. The second floor space was previously occupied by the Donovan & O'Connor law offices that have moved to Building 13. "We're very happy today to have our good friends from Integrity who not only have preserved something here with respect to Excelsior, but have kept the grand name here in the city of North Adams," said Mayor Richard Alcombright. "I think that's very, very important. Excelsior is as much our past as Sprague's was, as any other manufacturer in our region." The 130-year-old printing company became part of Integrity when La Valla and former owner David Crane realized they could work better together than apart. They'd gotten to know each other while serving on the board of Printing Industries of New England, a nonprofit trade association. "We weren't strong in fulfillment, he's strong in fulfillment, we were very strong in offset printing and digital printing [because] we had much more capacity," he said. "I said, 'doesn't this make sense for us to get together and do something?' and that's how it all started." Excelsior Printing and SeedPrint, the company's seed packet printing, became divisions of Integrity while Excelsior Integrated Fulfillment and the Oatmeal Studios Greeting Cards continued at the Valley Mill in Lee. Crane is chairman and CEO of Excelsior Integrated, which offers product packaging, distribution and management, and is an adviser to Integrity. The two companies "cross sell" each other's services and Excelsior Integrated is a customer of Integrity. Integrity also includes PDQ Graphics in Newport, R.I., and Colonial Printing in Warwick, R.I.; the main plant is in Windsor, Conn. Printing operations were moved out of the city, along with the jobs, but the four sales and service employees remain in North Adams, with technology keeping them linked to the other operations. "I think you can survive and grow in the print business. I don't think it will ever go away," La Valla said. "I see it in our sales and our customer base. [Printers are] starting to produce things that they had stopped producing." Excelsior, founded by the Roberts family in the 1880s, became part of Crane & Co. in 1969, heralded at the time as the joining of two formidable family businesses. It had operated in the former Norad Mill since the late 1950s. David Crane purchased the business and the building in 2005. "For many of us who grew up in the West End, many of our fathers and our mothers worked there, I had a quite a few friends who worked there during the summer," said Alcombright, thanking Crane for his investment and diversification that allowed the company to survive, and joking to La Valla, "you're still in an old mill. You can't get out of an old mill in the city of North Adams." Printing may not return, and the mayor noted manufacturing now seems to be more in the city's past than its future, but La Valla does see some room for growth for another salesperson in the office. "I'd love to get someone in here ... someone who believes in print," he said. Pittsfield Students Inducted into National Honor Society from Massachusetts Virtual School PITTSFIELD, Mass. Eric Worrick and Eric DuPont of Pittsfield were inducted into the National Honor Society (NHS) this spring as part of the first class from TEC Connections Academy Commonwealth Virtual School (TECCA), the states newest and largest full-time, tuition-free virtual public school for students in grades K-12. NHS is the nation's premier organization established to recognize outstanding high school students. More than just an honor roll, NHS serves to recognize those students who have demonstrated excellence in the areas of scholarship, leadership, service, and character. Sixteen students from the sophomore, junior and senior classes at TECCA qualified to join this new chapter of the National Honor Society. Worrick and DuPont are juniors at TECCA. Williams College History Professor Awarded Mellon Fellowship WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Williams College history professor Jessica Chapman a three-year, $240,000 New Directions Fellowship to pursue substantive and methodological training in the field of anthropology. Once that training is completed, Chapman will embark on anthropological research related to the economic and cultural significance of Kenyas running industry. Mellon New Directions Fellowships assist faculty members in the humanities who seek supplemental education outside their formal areas of study. The program enables selected scholars to work on interdisciplinary projects or on problems beyond their expertise at a level of sophistication that matches their advanced training. New Directions Fellows receive the equivalent of one academic years salary, two summers of additional support, and tuition and course fees for their programs of study. My next book project will unpack the layered significance of Kenyas running industry at the local, national, and international levels in order to shed light on the new international system that began to take shape in the late-1960s, says Chapman, whose previous research focused on the history of Vietnam. In order to illuminate new modes of economic, cultural, and political exchange between decolonized peoples and the industrialized West, I need to move beyond archival research and learn how to conduct anthropological research. Chapman also notes that she is excited to see how this development of truly interdisciplinary scholarship will change her teaching in the future. Williams College Junior Awarded Beinecke Scholarship WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. Chelsea Thomeer, a junior at Williams College, has been awarded a Beinecke Scholarship in support of her graduate education. The scholarship grants $4,000 immediately prior to entering graduate school and an additional $30,000 during graduate school. She is one of 20 students in the United States to receive the award this year. Thomeer, an English and political science major from Williamsville, N.Y., plans to pursue a Ph.D. in English literature. Next year, she will write a senior thesis exploring the ways that ideas of power and revolution are presented in early 20th century literature. Pittsfield Realtor Named State Realtor of the Year PITTSFIELD, Mass. The Realtors Commercial Alliance of Massachusetts (RCA-MA) has awarded Barb Davis-Hassan the prestigious Realtor of the Year Award. Davis-Hassan of Pittsfield and broker/owner of Barb Hassan Realty, serves as the 2016 RCA-MA president. A realtor since 1988, she has earned the Certified Commercial Investment Member designation, the Certified Real Estate Brokerage Manager designation, the Certified Residential Specialist designation, and the Graduate of the Realtor Institute designation. Davis-Hassan has been a member of the Board of Directors of the RCA-MA since 2008. She serves as a MAR state director, serves on MARs Government Affairs Committee, Diversity Task Force, PPPF Subcommittee and on their Forms Content Advisory Committee. She is a director on the Rental Housing Association of Berkshire County, is the chair and recording decretary for the DPW Study Committee for the Town of Lanesborough, and volunteers as secretary, bookkeeper, assistant church clerk, assistant treasurer, promotions ministry leader and sound booth tech team at her church, New Life Community Fellowship in Pittsfield. We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector The content you are trying to view is exclusive to our subscribers. To unlock this article: Imperial Valley News Center U.S. Hosts World's Energy Ministers to Scale Up Clean Energy and Drive Implementation of the Paris Agreement Washington, DC - President Obamas leadership has helped catalyze the largest investment in clean energy in U.S. history and has expanded that progress globally, providing the opportunity to advance low-carbon economies, create jobs, and establish entirely new industries that will drive global wealth and prosperity. We are already starting to see progress. Last year, the world set two new records global investment in renewable energy was the highest ever, and, for the first time, more than half of the worlds new electric capacity came from clean sources. In addition, by 2020, global energy efficiency investment in buildings is projected to increase from $90 billion in 2014 to over $125 billion. But we have more work to do. That is why, today, the United States is hosting global energy leaders for the first time since the Paris Agreement at the Seventh Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM7) and the inaugural Mission Innovation (MI) Ministerial in San Francisco. At the meetings, energy leaders from 23 countries and the European Union, representing 90 percent of clean energy investment and 75 percent of global carbon emissions, will take ambitious action to help implement policies and solutions to meet their countries climate and clean energy goals. In particular, these countries are meeting with the dual goal of accelerating the deployment of todays clean energy technologies through the CEM and investing in innovation for the technologies of the future through Mission Innovation. Last year, in Paris, the President and the leaders of 19 countries launched Mission Innovation, a new effort to double public investment in clean energy research and development over five years. Today, those 20 nations, and the European Union as the newest partner, are announcing their specific plans to meet that target, and committing to invest nearly $30 billion per year in public clean energy research and development by 2021. In addition, today, at the CEM, 21 countries, the European Union, nearly 60 companies and organizations, and 10 subnational governments, are also making more than $1.5 billion in commitments to accelerate the deployment of clean energy and increase energy access including towards three new, high-impact campaigns to promote corporate sourcing of renewables, commercial and industrial energy efficiency, and advanced cooling technologies. Todays actions show that the transition to a clean energy future is inevitable and every sector and every level of government is involved. This clean energy transition is reinforced by findings released today by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) that renewable energy is expected to grow substantially in the next 25 years. In fact, globally, renewable energy installations are on track to increase more than 600 percent by 2040, adding nearly 4,900 GW of wind, solar, and other sources. However, even with these changes, global temperatures are expected to continue to rise at an alarming pace. In fact, according to BNEF for the power sector to make its share of contributions toward limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius, an additional 3,000 GW of renewable energy and $2.9 trillion in investment will be required over the next 25 years. That is why todays meeting and announcements are so important, so countries can continue to work together to accelerate the transition to the clean energy economy of tomorrow in collaboration with our smartest scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. DRIVING GLOBAL INVESTMENT IN CLEAN ENERGY INNOVATION Mission Innovation: On November 30, 2015, during the first day of the Paris climate negotiations, President Obama joined 19 world leaders to launch Mission Innovation, an initiative to double public investments in clean energy research and development investment over five years. Today, at the inaugural Mission Innovation Ministerial, all 21 Mission Innovation partners, including the European Union as a new member, released their respective baseline investment and doubling plans. Collectively, these 21 partners committed to double nearly $15 billion per year in baseline funding for global public investment in clean energy research and development, reaching just under a combined total of $30 billion per year by 2021. Todays announcement exceeds the original baseline funding estimate of $10 billion per year. The Mission Innovation partners also approved an Enabling Framework and created a Steering Committee to support implementation of the initiative. The Mission Innovation partners represent well over 80 percent of global public investment in clean energy research and development. These efforts under Mission Innovation represent an unprecedented acceleration of research and development efforts for innovative clean energy technologies. In fact, earlier this year, President Obama pledged to seek to double $6.4 billion in clean energy research and development funding for Mission Innovation for the United States. Breakthrough Energy Coalition: Ministers also met with leaders of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, including Bill Gates and other investors, who are interested in pursuing investments in Mission Innovation countries, underscoring the critical link between government innovation and entrepreneurship to bring affordable clean energy technologies to market. Clean Energy Investment Initiative: The United States is continuing to show our leadership in clean energy investment. In addition to our Mission Innovation commitment, one year ago, the Obama Administration announced over $4 billion in commitments by foundations, institutional investors, and other long-term investors to scale up clean-energy innovation and climate change solutions, as part of the Clean Energy Investment Initiative. Today, additional private-sector stakeholders are making new commitments to accelerate clean energy innovation and expand investment in climate solutions: Wells Fargo is increasing support for building efficiency startups through the next round of its $10 million philanthropic Innovation Incubator (IN2) program, administered by the U.S. Department of Energys (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory; Nia Community Fund is making a new $5 million investment commitment for clean energy solutions, Additionally, Nia has partnered with Green Alpha Advisors to build broader clean-energy investment options in public markets; 12 universities, Second Nature, and Clean Energy Trust are launching Campus Cleantech Pilots, a new partnership to accelerate clean energy technology commercialization by opening universities as first-of-a-kind testing and demonstration platforms for startup; Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are announcing Bits & Watts, a research partnership to accelerate the integration of more than 50 percent renewable energy into the electricity grid; Hawaiis Energy Excelerator is building on follow-on seed investments and sharing its clean energy startup accelerator model throughout California; PRIME Coalition, which facilitates catalytic charitable investment in early-stage climate innovation ventures, is expanding with new support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, among other foundations; and Mercer Investment Consulting will undertake a new project with the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) to educate U.S. public pension fund fiduciaries about the potential legal and economic risks associated with high-carbon portfolios and their opportunities to reduce those risks; as well as a new project with Divest/Invest Philanthropy covering the landscape of investment products available to this coalition of over 140 foundations and other investors representing $12 billion in total assets that have committed at least 5 percent of their respective endowments to investing in clean energy and climate solutions. In the coming weeks, the Administration will take two new actions to further expand private-sector investment in clean energy innovation and accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy. DOEs Clean Energy Investment Center is launching a first-of-its-kind Lab Partnering Service that will facilitate direct, streamlined access for the public to the clean-energy technology expertise of the National Laboratories. The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is also publishing a draft rule to improve and permanently extend its Early Stage Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) program, focused on strengthening financing options for private funds that invest in clean energy technology companies and other early-stage, innovation-driven small businesses. SUPPORTING PARIS IMPLEMENTATION AND CLEAN ENERGY DEPLOYMENT THROUGH THE CLEAN ENERGY MINISTERIAL Today, we are announcing that in order to support the implementation of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, the Clean Energy Ministerial, an initiative that was started by the United States in 2010 and now involves 23 countries and the European Union, is launching an enhanced effort called CEM 2.0. CEM 2.0 pairs high-level political engagement of energy ministers with sustained initiatives and high-visibility clean energy technology and policy campaigns to provide a powerful combination for accelerating clean energy policy and technology deployment. To support transparency and track progress, CEM members agreed to support the International Energy Agency (IEA) in taking on the role as the Secretariat. Nine CEM members Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Japan, Norway, Sweden, the United States committed to providing start-up funding to support the first three years of the new Secretariat. Also, the European Union today announces that, in cooperation with a member state, they will host CEM9 in 2018. Today, the IEA confirmed the clean energy potential of the NDCs submitted for the Paris Agreement. Based on analysis the World Energy Outlook series, the IEA shows that full implementation by all countries of their NDCs would increase global solar generation thirty fold and wind generation seven fold, when compared with 2010. According to IEA, this level of deployment would go hand in hand with further declines in costs: by 2030, IEA anticipates the reduction in the cost of wind and solar would be more than 90 percent of that required in IEA's 450 Scenario, a 2 degree stabilization scenario. New targets and support schemes are set to increase the renewable deployment to 2030 beyond the NDCs. To set us down this path, Secretary Moniz and fellow ministers announced financial support for the CEMs Clean Energy Solutions Center and additional actions to decarbonize the power sector. The ministers also announced new campaigns in three high-impact areas corporate sourcing of renewables, commercial and industrial energy efficiency, and advanced cooling technologies that can cut global carbon emissions while driving economic growth. New commitments were also announced that will advance super-efficient lighting, transform power systems for the 21st century, improve energy access, and enhance the deployment of clean energy policy expertise. The commitments build on the more than 154 U.S. companies that have already joined the American Businesses Act on Climate pledge. Todays commitments include: Providing Technical Assistance for NDC Implementation: The Clean Energy Solutions Center offers no-cost, fast response expert assistance on clean energy policy and finance measures to countries around the world. Following the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21), the Solutions Center serves as a critical component in helping countries implement their Nationally-Determined Contributions (NDCs) and other climate and clean energy goals. In March, Australia committed $722,600 to the Clean Energy Solutions Center with a focus on the Asia Pacific region. Today, Sweden announced that it is providing $200,000 in support toward the Center, with an emphasis on support for Clean Energy Solutions Center technical assistance in Africa and the Caribbean. Decarbonizing the Power Sector: GO15, an association of 18 of the worlds largest power grid operators, commits to working with the CEM to support programs that address operational, technological and financial challenges of power grid modernization. The ClimateWorks Foundation announces a strategic alignment of their philanthropic programs with CEM programs that support power sector decarbonization in Mexico, India, China and other CEM member governments. The energy ministries of Canada, Mexico, and the United States also announced their intention to jointly carry out a North American Renewable Integration Study the single largest renewable energy integration study ever undertaken. Increasing Corporate Sourcing of Renewables: The new Corporate Sourcing of Renewables Campaign focuses on driving additional deployment of renewables across the range of CEM member countries. RE100, a global business initiative led by The Climate Group in partnership with CDP, as an action of the We Mean Business coalition, has estimated that if 1,000 of the worlds most influential businesses become 100 percent powered by renewables, they could decarbonize almost a tenth of all electricity used worldwide and cut more than 1,000Mt of CO2 every year. Already, corporate purchase of power in the United States has supported more than 8 GW of projects, up from just 0.6 GW in 2009, and globally more and more companies are seeking out clean energy. CEM member governments and partners joining the CEM campaign will work to significantly increase the number of companies powering operations with renewable energy and deploy supportive policies and resources that can help facilitate additional corporate sourcing of renewables. Today we are announcing that: Germany and Denmark are announcing that they are leading this campaign, and China, the European Union, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States are joining. International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance (REBA), RE100, World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), World Resources Institute (WRI), are also joining the initiative in order to scale corporate procurement and drive additional deployment of renewables across the range of CEM member countries. Apple commits to work with CEM countries and partners to spur the development and procurement of renewable energy within its global supply chain. Apple is working with its suppliers to install more than 4 gigawatts of new clean energy worldwide, including 2 gigawatts in China by 2020. Apples supply chain is the single biggest source of its comprehensive carbon footprint, so the company is committing to actively engage with ministers and partners in the US, China and other CEM countries to drive the transition to green manufacturing. Autodesk is announcing three milestones: 1) Powering their facilities with 100 percent renewable energy four years ahead of schedule. 2) Deepening their commitment to credible renewable energy procurement procuring energy that is additional, local and that spurs innovation. 3) Setting an internal price on carbon. These inter-related activities will accelerate progress toward Autodesks science-based greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target. Facebook announces commitments to: 1) Fund the REBA initiatives; 2) Collaborate to expand REBA internationally, 3) Work through REBA to raise awareness and help other companies navigate the complexities of PPAs; 4) Work closely with utilities to develop green tariffs; and 5) Source 50 percent of our energy from clean energy sources in 2018. Google commits to work in collaboration with national governments, renewable energy buyers and suppliers, NGOs, and others across CEM members to convene a group of stakeholders to survey the policy and regulatory structures critical to enabling corporate purchasing of renewable energy and make policy recommendations for how to further unlock corporate renewable energy demand in CEM members. Microsoft is announcing that they will power their datacenters with energy that is at least 50 percent wind, hydro and solar by 2018 and 60 percent early next decade. This is a significant given that the IT sector including Microsoft are some of the fastest growing energy users in the world, consuming as much energy as a small state and in decades to come as much as mid-size nations. Microsoft is actively working through REBA to deliver on these goals in markets around the world. In addition, Microsoft pledged they will maintain 100 percent carbon neutrality on top of this new commitment. Wells Fargo commits to purchasing renewable energy to power 100 percent of operations by 2017 with a transition to long-term agreements that fund new sources of green power by 2020. While the CEM campaign is encouraging action by companies of all sizes, it is driving the biggest, most influential companies to make a 100 percent renewable power commitment and join RE100. The companies already signed up to this initiative were recognized during the Ministerial and the following companies announced they are joining RE100 taking the total number of committed companies in RE100 to 65. Dentsu Aegis Network is committing to sourcing 100 percent renewable electricity by 2020. The company recognizes that de-coupling carbon from growth will allow it to become resilient to resource scarcity and price fluctuations delivering on carbon goals while achieving long term financial savings. Equinix has a long-term goal of using 100 percent renewable electricity with an interim goal of reaching 50 percent (against a 2015 baseline) by 2017. Interface, Inc. is committing to operate its factories on 100 percent renewable electricity by 2020. Based in the U.S., the company is already sourcing 94 percent renewable energy across its global operations. Tetra Pak is committing to powering its operations with 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030, with an interim goal to reach 80 percent by 2020. By joining RE100, Tetra Pak will benefit from expert guidance and peer-to-peer learning on renewable electricity options in different markets. TD Bank Group, the first Canadian company to join RE100, has sourced renewable electricity equivalent to 100 percent of its global operations since 2015. It also generates solar energy at 124 locations, including at its net zero energy branch in Florida. Developing Climate Smart Cooling Technologies: The new Advanced Cooling (AC) Campaign challenges governments and industry to develop and deploy at scale super-efficient, smart, climate friendly and affordable cooling technologies critical for prosperous and healthy societies furthering the goals of the Montreal Protocol. Access to cooling can improve health, productivity, economic growth, and educational outcomes. For example, improving the average efficiency of air conditioners sold in 2030 by 30 percent could reduce emissions by up to 25 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) over the lifetime of the equipment and reduce peak electricity demand by as much as 340-790 gigawatts. To help achieve this goal, today: Canada, China, India, Saudi Arabia, and United States are joining the Advanced Cooling Challenge and are committing to promote greater use of cost-effective, energy efficient air conditioning and refrigeration equipment through appliance efficiency policies and programs. The U.S. government is partnering with the Air Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI), the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), the Alliance for Responsible Atmospheric Policy, and other governments and international organizations to conduct critical research regarding the safe use of mildly flammable (A2L) and flammable (A3) refrigerants as low-global-warming-potential (low-GWP) alternatives to hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in the air conditioning and refrigeration sectors. This research will support the acceleration of updated safety standards to allow widespread use of these climate-friendly refrigerants in the United States and internationally. In support of this effort, the DOE is contributing $3 million in funding, AHRI is contributing $1 million, and ASHRAE is contributing $1.2 million. Daikin Applied is committed to developing equipment-specific demand response control solutions for our entire portfolio of HVAC products and systems. Intelligent Equipment from Daikin Applied is a cloud-enabled controls solution that forges a new path to HVAC unit efficiency. Daikin is already developing Automated Demand Response (ADR) for Intelligent Equipment, which will allow customers to maximize their energy efficiency and offset usage from peak hours, all at the unit level. Intelligent Equipment with ADR will also help utilities meet growing energy demands. Danfoss commits to speed the adoption of energy efficient equipment by providing a full array of components for low-GWP refrigerants, including deploying ejector technology which can improve the efficiency of CO2 systems by as much as 20 percent over traditional refrigerants in warm climates, and invest in a $5 million Application Development Center to help OEMs redesign traditional systems and to test them, with the aim of improving system efficiency. Goodman commits to the development of climate friendly heating and cooling systems that use low GWP refrigerants and provide high levels of energy efficient performance. Honeywell commits to increasing its production of its low-global-warming-potential (GWP) refrigerants, insulation materials, aerosols and solvents and anticipates spending nearly $900 million through 2019on research & development and new capacity to produce these next generation solutions, which have global warming potential equal to or better than carbon dioxide and at least 99.9 percent lower than the products they replace. Ingersoll Rand commits to spending $500 million by 2020 for research and development to deliver high efficiency and low GWP heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) and refrigeration solutions to global markets before 2030. SFO commits to assessing its existing cooling equipment policies and programs and install, where appropriate, super-efficient, smart, climate-friendly and affordable cooling technologies within its facilities. The Children's Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) has assembled a team of experts to help governments and industry around the world, including in India and China, to increase the energy efficiency of air conditioners in parallel with the phase down of super-polluting HFC refrigerants. CIFF is providing a grant of $12.8 million to support this work. This work will complement CIFF's comparable support over the past several years to phasing down super-pollutant HFCs and strengthening climate protection under the Montreal Protocol. The ClimateWorks Foundation commits to work with governments, industry, and other stakeholders to make cooling accessible, affordable, efficient, and climate-friendly, through a program of research, outreach and communications work. The Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD) is assembling an expert energy efficiency team to work with governments and industries around the world to improve the efficiencies of air conditioner. The IGSD team will provide policy support and technical assistance for select countries and their industries. This will help phase out super-polluting refrigerants known as HFCs, while also supporting the switch to more efficient air conditioning technologies. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) supports the challenges goals to spur breakthrough action and innovation by governments, businesses, and non-profit groups, as well as consumer awareness, to advance high-performance cooling equipment. NRDC is committed to working with government officials, community leaders, businesses, local experts, and academics across the globe including in China, India and the United States to develop and deploy an integrated approach that enables a transition to affordable, low- and high-tech space cooling solutions, such as super-efficient air conditioners, fans and cool roofs. NRDC believes these options will maximize energy savings, improve air quality, reduce greenhouse gases and heat island effects, and ensure all individuals can be cool and comfortable in their homes, businesses, and vehicles. Improving Energy Management: The new Energy Management Campaign aims to secure 50,001 global certifications to International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 50001 by 2020. ISO 50001, the global energy management system standard, has a proven framework of requirements to transform the way organizations manage energy and meet sustainable energy goals. Approximately 15,000 facilities worldwide have been certified to ISO 50001 since its launch in 2011, realizing energy improvements of 10 percent or more, often through low-cost or no-cost changes to operations. Broad implementation of ISO 50001 across commercial and industrial sectors globally could drive cumulative energy savings of approximately 62 exajoules by 2030, saving over $600 billion in energy costs and avoiding 6,500 Mt of CO2 emissions. The projected annual emissions savings in the year 2030 are equivalent to removing 215 million passenger vehicles from the road per year. A total of 15 CEM members are joining the campaign in a clear show of international support including Canada, Chile, China, Finland, Germany, the European Union, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States Government efforts announced during the CEM will be amplified by commitments made from private sector leaders and endorsements from partner organizations. The United States is announcing a new national campaign that accelerates the adoption of ISO 50001 and its national program Superior Energy Performance, to maximize energy savings in industrial, commercial, and institutional facilities. Canada will accelerate the adoption of innovative energy management systems and practices, including ISO 50001, as part of a suite of new energy efficiency certifications for the Canadian industrial sector. The North American governments of the United States, Canada and Mexico are committing to advance ISO 50001 adoption in industry by establishing a regional ISO 50001 adoption target by 2017, supported by development of joint technical approaches and assistance programs in key sectors. Finland is committing to integrate the use of energy management systems in its 2017-2025 plan for the Voluntary Energy Efficiency Agreement scheme for energy-intensive industries and annual reporting of energy savings and key elements for their scheme implementation. With 3,400 companies already certified to ISO 50001, Germany will build on its global leadership and aim to establish 500 energy efficiency networks around the country by 2020 that through peer exchange will drive further energy cost savings and greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Indonesia, to boost domestic implementation of ISO 50001, commits to have 1000 energy managers and 700 energy auditors certified by 2019. Japan will contribute to improving energy efficiency in industry and commercial sectors abroad by promoting capacity building and sharing of best practices regarding energy management systems based on ISO 50001. Mexico commits to increasing adoption of energy management systems based on ISO 50001 by establishing an innovative program (Pronasgen) which is directed towards large energy users in the industrial and commercial sectors, as well as agencies of Mexicos federal government. The Republic of Korea is committing to continuously pursue energy projects and programs to support industries to further conserve energy through energy management systems including the ISO 50001. These efforts will serve as a key to achieve national energy goals based on their Energy Master Plan. The United Arab Emirates will evaluate the role that energy management systems such as ISO 50001 can play in reinforcing a sustainable environment and economy as they develop a federal long-term energy strategy analyzing optimum scenarios for demand side management as well as energy supply. The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), through its work to promote inclusive and sustainable industrial development, commits to working with governments around the world to adopt energy management policies, and support energy management in enterprises of all sizes to improve their energy performance. Avant Garde Innovations, is committing to implement ISO 50001 in their facilities and to work with partners to promote ISO 50001 adoption; and to work with ISO 50001 certified companies to maximize their investments in clean energy technologies. The Carbon Trust is committed to helping participating countries by offering its expertise in creating the required infrastructure to enable organizations to effectively implement energy efficiency measures and encourage best practice in energy management. This includes appropriate policy levers together with an available market of skilled energy efficiency expert advisers and trusted equipment suppliers. The Climate Group commits to promote ISO 50001 as one of the many tools that companies can use to fulfil energy productivity commitments made through the EP100 campaign. ClimateWorks Foundation commits to assess and support the transferability and scaling up of ISO 50001 and related policy incentives. Cummins commits to achieving ISO 50001 certification for a total of 40 manufacturing sites by 2020. The LG Chem Ochang Plant commits to maintaining its own certification to ISO 50001 as well as providing supply chain partners with technical support to help them improve their energy and environmental performance through energy management. Pacific Gas and Electric Company, PG&E will educate its commercial and industrial customers about the ISO 150001 energy management standard as a vehicle to achieve greater energy savings and to help meet Californias commitment to double energy efficiency by 2030. Samsung Electronics will maintain ISO 50001 certification for all of its manufacturing sites worldwide as a key strategy for meeting its goal to reduce GHG emissions intensity from global facilities by 70 percent based on 2008 levels. Schneider Electric pledges to certify 150 of its facilities to ISO 50001 by 2017; and promote international best practices in energy management, ISO 50001 certification, and Superior Energy Performance to its clients. Financing Programs for Clean Energy: Today, DOE is also releasing Federal Financing Programs for Clean Energy, a resource guide to U.S. government programs that support the development of clean energy projects in the U.S. and abroad. Featuring more than thirty programs from ten agencies, the guide includes summaries and case studies of programs that can benefit private sector partners in finding capital for clean energy projects. Now in its third edition, the guide includes financing programs for both domestic and international projects. For every program listed, the guide identifies contact information to answer questions and provide additional direction. The guide includes programs from the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, State, Transportation and Treasury, along with the Environmental Protection Agency, Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and the Small Business Administration. INCREASING ACCESS TO CLEAN ENERGY AND EFFICIENT TECHNOLOGIES Through the CEMs energy access initiative the Global Lighting and Energy Access Partnership (Global LEAP) and Global Lighting Challenge (GLC) members and partners are also working to catalyze the development of commercial markets for clean energy access solutions and deploy 10 billion highly efficient Light-emitting diode (LED) lamps around the world. To help achieve these shared goals: The Government of Italy is announcing that it is providing $7.2 million in new funding to support the World Bank Groups Lighting Global program, including its groundbreaking quality assurance framework, increasing the Italian governments total support for the program to $20.75 million since its first investment at the inaugural CEM. The Governments of Canada and United Arab Emirates endorse the Global Lighting Challenge, which was launched in Paris during COP21, joining the 14 original CEM members who had participated in the Challenge launch. Power Africa announces a $1.5 million multi-year commitment to support the expansion of Global LEAP+RBF to East Africa. Global LEAP+RBF is an innovative new partnership to drive and demonstrate scale in the global off-grid appliance market. The United States is announcing the third round of the Global LEAP Awards, featuring competitions for the worlds highest quality, most cost-effective and energy efficient off-grid appliances. The 2016-17 awards will be supported by Power Africa, through the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Agency for International Developments (USAID) U.S. Global Development Lab. Cleveland Clinic is joining the GLC and so the retrofits of all their hospitals as well as any new construction will count towards the global 10 billion goal. Cleveland Clinics are committed to tracking not only the cost and emissions savings but also the health benefits of advanced energy efficient lighting options. Cleveland Clinic expects to retrofit 500,000 tubes and bulbs to LED over five years. Global LEAP, together with UKs Department for International Development, the ClimateWorks Foundation and Power for All, are convening a high-level event, EnergyAccessX, where entrepreneurs, thought leaders, technologists, designers, and policy experts will gather to discuss the role of distributed renewables in advancing universal energy access. Philips Lighting is committing to sell more than two billion energy efficient LED light bulbs by 2020. Reaching this goal is estimated to save an amount of energy equivalent to that generated by 60 medium-sized coal-fired power stations with emissions equivalent to those from 24 million cars by 2020. The company also reaffirms its pledge to make its global operations carbon neutral by 2020 and said that it expects electricity for its U.S. operations to be 100 percent from renewable sources later this year. MGM Resorts International is announcing that they are joining the GLC, building on their commitment 2014, to retrofit 1.3 million traditional light bulbs to high efficiency lamps. At this point in the initiative, MGM has already installed over 850,000 lamps, and is as such over half way towards its goal. SFO commits to installing high-efficiency and high-quality lighting products within all retrofit projects and new construction projects. Washington State is committing to require new investment in cost-effective, high-efficiency lighting by strengthening the states energy code, ensuring its utilities capture all cost-effective electricity efficiency opportunities, growing state and private sector investment in modern lighting for public buildings, and securing safe and effective LED lighting for all streets and highways in the state. Washington should be able to achieve more than 2.5 million megawatt-hours of energy efficiency improvement over the next 20 years. XPRIZE is announcing their commitment to incentivize innovation and technologies that aim to provide energy abundance for all, including off-grid populations. The development of prizes and other activities to address energy access follows the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE - a $20 million global competition over 4.5 years to address carbon emissions by incentivizing technologies that convert CO emissions into valuable everyday products like building materials and alternative fuels. The Carbon XPRIZE and future energy innovation challenges are part of XPRIZEs growing portfolio of Energy & Environment prizes and long-term vision for accelerating revolutionary energy technologies to help move the world towards a clean, abundant energy future. SUPPORTING SUBNATIONAL ACTIONS TO ACCELERATE THE TRANSITION TO CLEAN ENERGY In order to successfully transition to the clean energy economy of tomorrow, every level of government must be involved. That is why, yesterday, the State of California hosted the first Subnational Clean Energy Ministerial and next week Beijing will host the U.S. China Climate Leaders Summit. In addition, we are announcing the following actions: Expanding the Number of Subnational Governments Committing to Reduce Carbon Pollution through the Under2MOU: Yesterday, Governor Jerry Brown announced 7 new signatories to the Under2MOU - City of Budapest, Hungary, Laikipia County, Kenya, City of Portland, USA, City of Sacramento, USA, City of Santiago, Chile, Telangana, India, and Veneto, Italy. Since the effort began just over one year ago, the Under2 MOU has grown to a coalition of 135 jurisdictions representing 32 countries and six continents. Together, they represent more than 780 million people and $21 trillion in GDP, equivalent to more than a quarter of the global economy. Under the agreement, signatories commit to either reducing greenhouse gas emissions 80 to 95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 or achieving a per capita annual emission target of less than 2 metric tons by 2050. These targets allow each individual government to tailor emission reduction plans to fit regional needs. Enhancing the Pacific Coast Collaborative: Leaders from the Pacific Coast Collaborative (PCC)-a partnership between California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia-announced a new pact with mayors from Los Angeles, Oakland, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver to slash greenhouse gas emissions through new clean energy initiatives. The agreement outlines shared commitments and concrete actions to improve buildings, transportation, and waste management on the west coast. California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia also signed an updated and strengthened PCC agreement that maintains the region's commitment to account for the cost of carbon pollution and build a market for low carbon transportation fuels, while launching new collaboration to reduce short-lived climate pollutants and promote integration of the regions electricity grids. Advancing National and Subnational Innovation in Clean Energy Finance. This week, DOE hosted a finance roundtable this week to discuss green banks and green bonds, which represent growing trends for public financial institutions at both the national and subnational levels. At the roundtable, leading stakeholders made the following announcements advancing public innovations in clean energy finance: NMCP Asks Pilots "Can You Hear Me Now?" Portsmouth, Virginia - Exposure to extremely loud noise can result in permanent hearing loss. Arguably no better example of this risk is the noise levels experienced by U.S. Navy pilots. Logging thousands of hours in aircraft that bellow jet noise at incredible decibel levels, hearing protection for pilots is an imperative part of their safety equipment. Naval Medical Center Portsmouth (NMCP) and its branch clinics are helping pilots by fitting them with Communication Ear Plugs (CEPs), which are custom ear molds made from silicone that improve hearing protection and provide a way to communicate with others. "Usually when they're using the traditional hearing protection like the muffs and the foam, pilots have a hard time communicating," explained Lt. Ryan Broyles, Occupational Audiology department head. "We use soft silicone and shoot the impression into their ear so that it makes a custom-molded piece. Then the piece gets sent off to a company and they basically take all the communication devices, the electronics, and put them into the mold so that when it comes back each person has a custom-fitted mold." According to Naval Air Forces Atlantic (AIRLANT), every pilot within its area of responsibility will have triple protection for their ears by the end of 2018. This means they will have a helmet that has active noise cancellation, a noise cancelling microphone, and something in the ears that can be either the foam earplugs or the CEPs. The CEP serves as a more versatile third layer because it includes a way to electronically communicate along with hearing protection. "The pilots tend to prefer the custom ones because it's easier to block out sound and they can get the perfect fit every time," Broyles said. Non-custom earplugs currently used can be uncomfortable and must be inserted perfectly each time to provide the correct level of protection. The earmuffs can be hot, bulky and often impractical. Additionally, in order to communicate effectively while still blocking harmful noise, ordinary earplugs often do not work effectively. Because ears are unique, custom-made hearing protection can provide the perfect fit and repeatable effectiveness. "This was my first time getting the ear molds done," said Lt. j.g. Jakie Scott, from Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron (VAW) 121. "Having better coverage and a tighter seal around the ears is extremely beneficial for us." "Once you get them locked in, it stays in place," Broyle explained. "Since it is molded perfectly to the ear, it's comfortable to wear. The material used to shoot it into the ear to make the mold is a soft material, so over time, even if the wearer is moving or sweating, the mold does not work its way out of the ear." The response from CEP-fitted personnel has been encouraging so far, with calls asking if everyone in many squadrons can get CEPs. "I have yet to hear a negative review about the process or the finished product," Broyle added. High School Classmates Reunite for Promotion Washington, DC - At an intimate ceremony held in the Pentagon, Adm. Michelle Howard promoted her high school classmate, Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Jacobson, to the rank of commander Friday. Jacobson, a Core Plus facilitator at Chaplains Religious Enrichment Development Operation (CREDO) Naval District Washington and Howard, the 38th vice chief of naval operations (VCNO), were classmates at Gateway High School in Aurora, Colorado. They both graduated in 1978. "I don't know how far back we go but she was just one of those classmates I knew I wouldn't forget in Aurora," Jacobson said. He presided as chaplain for Howard's change of command ceremony as she turned over leadership of Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) 2 in 2010. Howard opened the ceremony by reading a favorite quote of Jacobson's taken from their senior year high school year book. "I can live on earth, contented to the end, if a few know my worth and proudly call me friend." "Today is all about the worth of Jeff Jacobson and all us that can proudly call him a friend," said Howard. Jacobson's daughters and father were also on hand to pin the commander with his new shoulder boards and cover. His son Caleb delivered "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost in honor of his father. "It's just an honor to see my dad be appreciated and get what he deserves," said Caleb. During the ceremony, Jacobson acknowledged his Navy and military family saying, "My military family has surrounded me on a daily basis over the years...representing friendship and epitomizing the word 'shipmate'. This promotion represents those who have given me so much in my career." On the Occasion of Sweden's National Day Washington, DC - Secretary of State John Kerry: "On behalf of President Obama and the American people, I would like to extend my warmest congratulations to the people of Sweden as you celebrate the 207th anniversary of the adoption of your constitution on June 6. "Starting with Swedens recognition of U.S. independence in 1783 and continuing through today, our countries have shared a rich history of friendship and cooperation. We have worked together to advance global security; to support international development, peacekeeping, and humanitarian aid; to promote democracy and protect human rights, including gender equality, across the globe. And we are proud of our shared leadership in responding to the current refugee crisis and assisting those displaced by conflict. "As President Obama and I reiterated with Prime Minister Lofven at the U.S.-Nordic Leaders Summit in May, the United States and Sweden will build on our close ties to advance our common vision of a more prosperous, sustainable, and secure world for ourselves and for future generations. "On this special day, I wish the citizens, families, and communities of Sweden a peaceful and rewarding year ahead." Deputy Secretary Antony Blinken's Travel to Beijing Washington, DC - Deputy Secretary Antony J. Blinken will travel to Beijing, China, on June 5-6, 2016, to lead the U.S. delegation to the 6th U.S. - China Strategic Security Dialogue (SSD) and to participate in the 8th U.S. - China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED). The Deputy Secretary will be joined at the SSD by Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs David Shear; Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance Frank Rose; State Department Coordinator for Cyber Issues Chris Painter; PACOM Deputy Commander Lieutenant General Anthony G. Crutchfield; Brigadier General John T. Quintas; and other officials. Chinas Executive Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui will host the SSD, during which senior civilian and military officials will exchange views on a range of security issues of strategic importance to both countries. After the SSD, Deputy Secretary Blinken will participate in the 8th Strategic and Economic Dialogue, co-chaired by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, alongside their Chinese counterparts, State Councilor Yang Jiechi and Vice Premier Wang Yang. The S&ED will focus on the challenges and opportunities that both countries face on a wide range of bilateral, regional, and global economic and strategic issues. Fourteen Primary Care Centres (PCCs) are to be built across Ireland following agreement of a new 70 million, 25-year loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB). This represents the EIBs first support for healthcare investment in Ireland and the first dedicated backing for primary healthcare anywhere in Europe. The new PPP-based scheme will support the shift from hospital-based healthcare to community-based care closer to patients, according to the EIB and European Commission, which released details of the scheme last week (May 25). The new long-term loan is also the first in Ireland to be backed by a guarantee under the European Fund for Strategic Investments initiative (EFSI), the heart of the Investment Plan for Europe intended to generate 315 billion of new finance across the EU. The new PCCs are to be built in the west of Ireland in Sligo, Roscommon, Mayo, Galway and Limerick City; in Waterford City, Tipperary and Wexford Town in the south-east; as well as Kildare and Dublin north City in the east. They will provide basic health services including GP surgeries, occupational therapy, social work and dietary advice. In some locations, additional services will also be provided, including mental health, dentistry and addiction services and a local ambulance base. Speaking after his attendance at the Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of the European Investment Bank in Brussels, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan, Irelands Governor at the European Investment Bank, said: This project highlights Irelands consistent ability to work with the EIB on funding critical investment in Ireland at high levels of funding and in sophisticated financing arrangements. Minister for Health Simon Harris added that the decision of the EIB to invest was a very welcome vote of confidence in our community healthcare plans. It enables us to provide 14 primary care centres in a two-year period, centres that will be of great benefit to the 14 rural and urban areas. Commenting on the move, Jonathan Taylor, European Investment Bank Vice President, said strengthening local healthcare services was crucial for improving public health and this significant new initiative would ensure more effective healthcare for thousands of people across Ireland. This represents the European Investment Banks first ever backing for healthcare investment in the Republic and builds on increased support for education, housing and transport investment in recent years. Financing from the European Investment Bank represents 49.5 per cent of the total investment cost of the new facilities. The project will be co-funded by commercial lenders Talanx Asset Management and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi. dara.gantly@imt.ie UK Train Passenger Praised for Refusing to Give Up Her First Class Seat to Old Woman 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 }} Plans to make another adaptation of classic Stephen King novel It have been circulating for so long now it was almost becoming something of a Hollywood legend. Now, after years of languishing in development hell, a casting announcement for Pennywise, the killer clown at the centre of the story, has finally been made: according to The Hollywood Reporter, Bill Skarsgard is to lead the film. Directing It will be Andy Muschietti (Mama) who has assembled a cast including rising stars Jaeden Lieberher - recently seen in Midnight Special - Finn Wolfhard and Jack Dylan Grazer. In pictures: Famous clowns Show all 9 1 /9 In pictures: Famous clowns In pictures: Famous clowns joker-heath-ledger.jpg In pictures: Famous clowns IT.jpg In pictures: Famous clowns ross-noble-stiches.jpg In pictures: Famous clowns joker-Jack-Nicholson.jpg In pictures: Famous clowns J.-G.jpg Wikipedia In pictures: Famous clowns Joseph_Grimaldi-wiki.jpg Wikipedia In pictures: Famous clowns Marks,_J.L.jpg Wikipedia/Creative Commons In pictures: Famous clowns medieval-court-jester.jpg Wikipedia In pictures: Famous clowns clown-mask.jpg Facebook The story follows a group of old friends who must club together to fend off an entity that takes the form of an evil clown. 25-year-old Swedish actor Skarsgard has previous starring in Divergent sequel Allegiant and Eli Roth's Netflix series Hemlock Grove. As you may have gathered, he is the son of Stellan and brother of former True Blood star Alexander who will next be seen in The Legend of Tarzan. The remake was originally a project being steered by Cary Fukunaga - the director behind the first season of Nic Pizzolatto's crime anthology True Detective - with The Revenant actor Will Poulter on board to don the makeup for the role of the murderous clown. Tim Curry previously played Pennywise in a horror miniseries released in 1990. 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 }} Cillian Murphy, who is currently wreaking havoc as Tommy Shelby in BBC2 drama Peaky Blinders, is an actor who has proved he can just as easily play a hero as effectively as he can a villain. This point is accentuated by a surfacing clip which shows director Christopher Nolan detailing the Irish actor's screen test for the caped crusader in 2005 film Batman Begins. In the brief clip, Murphy can be seen acting out the memorable scene in which Batman interrogates Detective Flass (Mark Boone Junior) about Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) - in the bat suit that was eventually worn by Christian Bale. Batman suit named top superhero outfit Show all 2 1 /2 Batman suit named top superhero outfit Batman suit named top superhero outfit Pg-3-batman1-ap.jpg AP Batman suit named top superhero outfit batman_1.jpg Speaking about the screen test, Nolan said: "He wasn't right for that part in the way that Christian was, but the performance was incredible and everyone took huge notice of it." "I then was able to go to the studio and ask to put him in as Crane, as Scarecrow, in Batman Begins." Bale, who returned to play the character in The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) - recently revealed that he didn't rate his performance of Bruce Wayne in Nolan's trilogy. Murphy went on to reprise the role of Crane in the final two Batman films and also worked with the filmmaker on Inception. They will reunite for a fifth time with new WWII drama Dunkirk. 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 }} Warner Bros. is working hard to rectify the stalling DC cinematic universe, put into peril after the poor reception of Batman v. Superman; efforts have largely concentrated on its highly anticipated alternative offering Suicide Squad, with the studio now steadying The Flash after the highly publicised departure of its original director Seth Grahame-Smith. Chosen as his replacement is Rick Famuyiwa (via Deadline), whose last film Dope caused a splash at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival with its electric tale of a young geek trying to survive in Inglewood, California. He's also receiving strong Emmy Awards buzz for his direction on Confirmation, the HBO drama starring Kerry Washington as Anita Hill in a dramatisation of her accusations of sexual harassment and testimony against Clarence Thomas during his Supreme Court nomination. Reports are that Warner Bros. was looking for a director who'd be able to resonate with younger viewers; specifically being compatible with the script already penned by Grahame-Smith, and based off a treatment by The LEGO Movie directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Putting all those elements together, there's a hint here that The Flash will attempt to move away from the grim, sober tones of Zack Snyder's take on the DC universe and deliver something a little more offbeat; which, all in all, is likely good news for a franchise in desperate need of new voices. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them's Ezra Miller will star as the titular hero, as The Flash hits US cinemas 16 March 2018. A UK release date yet to be announced. Sign up to Roisin OConnors free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Roisin OConnors email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Hailed as something of a figurehead for a new, emerging electronic scene in France, Fakear, born Theo Le Vigoureux, is fittingly energetic ahead of the release of his debut LP Animal. His UK label have done a fantastic job of tracking down the perfect interview setting. At the Booth Museum in Brighton, as The Great Escape festival rumbles on in the city centre, Le Vigoureux is sat at a table surrounded by cases filled with exotic bird displays; their fragile wings spread out as though in flight. Bird calls are played from speakers installed around the museum rooms and it's impossible not to be reminded of Animal's first single 'Sheer-Khan'. "I worked on this album for a long time," Le Vigoureux says. "I'd composed a few tracks but thought this wasnt me so threw everything away." Recommended Read more The Great Escape Festival 2016 review Things changed last year when the 24-year-old met his now-girlfriend, whom he describes as a "big inspiration". In three months, he had 12 brand new tracks. "I used to be very rational and closed to any notion of spiritualism," he says, speaking of the moment they met. "And seeing her I began to believe in something else, these ideas of karma and exploring other worlds. "There were many things I wanted to explain my use of the vocals as animal cries. I didnt want to use voices just to speak with. I wanted people to see human beings as the animals. The music is more from my imagination the philosophy and ideology of these countries that I really wanted to explore." Referred to as "a prodigy" by enthusiastic journalists in France, the Caen-born artist is joined in this wave of new music by producers like Stwo, Dream Koala, and Superpoze (Gabriel Legeleux), the latter of whom Le Vigoureux has known for years. French electronic music from Jean-Michel Jarre in the 70s to St Germain and Daft Punk in the early 90s has always been about breaking new ground, and Fakear, with his mini-album Sauvage making it into the Top 10 on the French LP charts, is its best and brightest new hope. Comparisons have, perhaps inevitably, been drawn between Fakear and Daft Punk, but this is perhaps more due to that excitement of someone else who could change how people view electronic music. We see electronic music as just for nightclubs music for dancing and partying and thats all. But I think were just beginning to see all the possibilities of electronic [music]. I dont party so much now Im an early bird. Thats quite unusual in a producer, I think, he grins. Enjoy unlimited access to 70 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a 30-day free trial Sign up I dont focus on the hype too much. Thats actually one of the reasons I moved from Paris, because its like youre always at work. Im not a working boy, Im lazy, he says, laughing. I want to do stuff from my bedroom. And all this hype I dont care. For me its about making music with friends. It's a level-headed approach to music earning admiration from established artists such as M.I.A, who tweeted at Le Vigoureux asking for a collaboration (it's happening). He isn't keen on Twitter, although almost as much has been made of his Facebook followers (one journalist noted 16,000 followers three years ago today its 100,000), as the music he produces. I dont care a lot about social networks," he says. "Not every fan on Facebook comes to see me live. If a venue is sold out Id see that as a sign that everythings good. But 100,000 followers on Facebook doesnt really mean anything to me." In May, actors Emma Thompson and Michael Caine were quoted as saying they were "sick" of what they called "social media actors", citing what they felt was an epidemic of casting based on social media followers, as opposed to actual talent. The situation seems to be the same, if not worse, in the music industry. "To me thats why punk or DIY bands are dying," Le Vigoureux says. "Because if you dont communicate on social networks you cant get signed. Its a shame, and its funny because the rules for different platforms are mixed up. In the US and the UK Twitter seems huge in France we dont have Twitter. Its all French people on Facebook. Twitter is boring." The reputation of modern French music - I put forward tentatively - isnt that great. He laughs a relief, as its a sensitive subject. In France an existing law requires radio stations to play at least 40 per cent of songs by French-speaking artists, which has restricted DJs to a rather limited set. Last year there was a minor rebellion as DJs boycotted the law, after culture minister Fleur Pellerin attempted to stop them from repeating more popular French artists; instead asking them to air out new material. But the number of French language albums has plummeted, and in 2015 it was reported that the music industry in France had seen a 66 per cent drop in new releases between 2003 and 2014. "Its not good at all," Le Vigoureux exclaims. "It's like France is an island for music. We have all these artists playing French music and speaking French, and its all about French artists. Thats one of the best things about electronic music when youre playing instruments and samples, you can go anywhere. "Our generation has to break this fixation on France, because were influenced by so much outside of that, and were much more connected now because of the internet. So to me theres no French electronic music any more its more like generational music." 'Silver' featuring Rae Morris, he explains, was intended as his own "pop tune" for majors, radio and, of course, for money. "And radio in France didnt take it," he says, throwing his hands up, exasperated. "They said theres not enough pop in that track. Its too complex. So they give these tracks to a DJ and he remixes it to some awful thing, and gives it back to them. Which is when I say lets cross the Channel and go to the UK. "A piece of art has to bring you to another place," he adds firmly. "And thats not into the Occidental way of life. I wanted to say that in this album. Talking about love, connections with each other. And living in France... I think the Occidental world is not the right place to say that." Youre saying that about the country with the romantic capital of the world', I point out. "Where this stereotype comes from I have no idea," he shrugs. Ironically he will play a DJ set at The Great Escape because, he claims, his own band doesnt cross the Channel. "When Im on my own its more energetic, because its straight to dancing. With the band we take our time to build an ambience. "In a live show, for me its all about energy. I think I let this rock star fantasy take hold I want to finish a live show sweating, with the crowd worked up. So mixing the spiritual themes with this energy creates a kind of trance quite a unique mood." This summer he'll set off on a tour around France in July before a date in California at the HARD Summer Music Festival. "With Major Lazer," he says, looking a little daunted for the first time. "I find them so fascinating, the Reggae influences, South American culture, dancehall. It's a fascinating cocktail. He breathes out woooah. No pressure. Animal by Fakear is out on 10 June via Counter Records; pre-order here 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 }} A black actor was offered the lead role in Doctor Who but turned it down, Steven Moffat has revealed. The BBC sci-fi dramas showrunner declined to name the person involved before the part went to Matt Smith, but reports suggest that it might have been Oscar-nominated 12 Years a Slave star Chiwetel Ejiofor. Weve tried. The part has been offered to a black actor, but for various reasons it didnt work out, Moffat told Doctor Who magazine. Should the Doctor be black? Should the Doctor be a woman? So long as the Doctor is still the Doctor, anything is possible. Before the casting of current Time Lord Peter Capaldi, there had been calls for a black actor to take on the role and, in an effort to improve diversity, mixed-race actress Pearl Mackie, whose father is from the West Indies, was cast as the Doctor's companion in April. This was a conscious decision made by Moffat because he needed to do better. I don't mean that weve done terribly - our guest casts are among the most diverse on television - but I feel as though I could have done better overall, he said. The casting of Mackie does not rule out casting a non-white actor as the next Doctor. Two non-white leads would be amazing. In fact, a lot of people would barely notice, Moffat continued. Even a black James Bond would barely raise an eyebrow nowadays. Hes still got to be an establishment killer, but a black Bond would be great - and I certainly dont think there's ever been a problem with making the Doctor black, which is why it should happen one day. Chiwetel Ejiofor is believed to have been offered the role before Matt Smith (BBC) Moffat believes there is no excuse for non-diverse casting and Doctor Who has absolutely nowhere to hide on the issue. Young people watching have to know that they have a place in the future, he said. That really matters. You have to care profoundly what childrens shows in particular say about where you're going to be. In 2013, Neil Gaiman sparked speculation when he wrote on his blog: I know one black actor who was already offered the part of the Doctor, and who turned it down. You can ask, but seeing that it was something I was told in confidence by the actor in question, you won't get an answer. Additional reporting by Press Association 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 }} BP said it agreed to pay $175 million to settle claims by US investors that its managers lied about the size of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill to prop up its stock price, removing the companys last major overhang from the disaster. The investors, who blamed BP for massive losses when the true scope of the spill was revealed, had sought as much as $2.5 billion. The settlement averts a trial that was set for July in Houston federal court. The settlement announcement Thursday came shortly after a ruling by US District Judge Keith Ellison to narrow the evidence that could have been presented to a jury. The decision, which would have benefited BP at trial, limited the management statements that investors could claim affected the stock price. BP shares plunged by more than 40 pe rcent in the weeks after the April 2010 disaster, as it became clear the company couldnt immediately contain the spill. More than 4 million barrels of oil escaped into the Gulf of Mexico during the 87 days London-based BP took to control the well. The investors lawsuit, led by the public employee pension funds of New York and Ohio, revolved around statements made shortly after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig blew up in April 2010. Those statements also were central to BPs agreement in 2012 to pay $525 million to resolve claims by the Securities and Exchange Commission that the London-based company underestimated the size of the spill to bolster stock prices. BP also pleaded guilty to a felony count of obstruction of Congress related to spill estimates. Investors saw their stock prices plummet after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, said Jennifer Freeman, a spokeswoman for the New York Comptrollers Office. This settlement helps compensate investors for their losses. Spill Costs BP has set aside $56.4 billion so far for the disaster, according to an April regulatory filing. The companys cumulative pre-tax charge to earnings doesnt show a complete picture of the companys financial hit from the spill. As part of funds paid out to stop and clean up the spill and compensate victims, BP has agreed to a series of deals with different groups harmed by the disaster. It isnt clear how much remains to be paid under all of these agreements. In 2012, BP agreed to pay $4 billion to resolve criminal charges tied to pollution violations, misleading Congress and manslaughter for the deaths of 11 rig workers killed in the initial explosion. In a separate deal that year, BP agreed to pay private property and economic-loss claims by hundreds of thousands of individuals and businesses in the five Gulf states, although it excluded whole categories of business claims by casinos, real estate developers and financial institutions. As many of these claims remain unevaluated and unpaid, BP said in April its estimate of $12.9 billion will likely be significantly higher once all private claims are processed and paid. Last year, BP settled the most expensive slice of its spill litigation by agreeing to pay $20.8 billion over the next 17 years to cover additional pollution violations, financial losses and natural resources damages suffered by state, local and national government entities. Ellison said in Thursdays ruling that investors could sue to recover for losses caused by low-ball flow rate estimates BP managers made public during the first two weeks of the spill. Company officials repeatedly estimated that 1,000 to 5,000 barrels of oil were gushing from the well daily, when internal calculations pegged the flow rate at more than 10 times higher. Ellison rejected investors theory that BP kept propping up the share price with other statements that downplayed the financial impact a longer, wider spill would have on the company, saying thats not the same thing as misrepresenting the flow rate. Biggest business scandals in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Biggest business scandals in pictures Biggest business scandals in pictures Volkswagen emissions scandal VW admitted to rigging its US emission tests so that diesel-powered cars would looks like they were emitting less nitrous oxide, which can damage the ozone layer and contribute to respiratory diseases. Around 11 million cars worldwide were affected. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Martin Shkreli and Turing Pharmaceuticals Martin Shkreli became known as the most hated man in the world after his drug company, Turing, increased the price of a 62-year-old drug that treated HIV patients by 5,000% to $750 a pill. He was charged with illegally taking stock from Retrophin, a biotechnology firm he started in 2011, and using it pay off debts from unrelated business dealings. Shkreli, who maintains he is innocent, and says there is little evidence of fraud because his investors didn't lose money. Biggest business scandals in pictures Panama Papers: Millions of leaked documents expose how worlds rich and powerful hid money - April 2016 Millions of confidential documents have been leaked from one of the worlds most secretive law firms, exposing how the rich and powerful have hidden their money. Dictators and other heads of state have been accused of laundering money, avoiding sanctions and evading tax, according to the unprecedented cache of papers that show the inner workings of the law firm Mossack Fonseca, which is based in Panama. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Google's tax avoidance Google reached a deal with the HM Revenue and Customs to pay back 130 million in so-called back-taxes that have been due since 2005. George Osborne championed the deal as a major success. But European MEPs have since called for the Chancellor to appear in front of the committee on tax rulings to explain the tax deal. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Rogue trader A French court cut the damages owed by rogue trader Jerome Kerviel from 4.9bn (4.2bn) to just 1m (860,000). The court ruled on that Kerviel was partly responsible for massive losses suffered in 2008 by his former employer Societe Generale through his reckless trades. Kerviel has consistently maintained that bosses at the French bank knew what he was doing all along. AP Biggest business scandals in pictures Barclays CEO under investigation for trying to identify whistleblower - Monday Paril 10 Authorities have launched an investigation into Barclays chief executive officer Jes Staley for trying to identify a whistleblower, the bank said on Monday. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) are both investigating Mr Staley after the bank notified them that Mr Staley had tried to identify the author of two anonymous letters, which were sent to the board and a senior executive in June 2016. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures UK to crack down on bank money laundering after reports of 65bn Russian scam, City minister says - March 2017 The Economic Secretary to the Treasury has vowed that the Government will crack down on money laundering practices, after several of the UK's biggest banks were accused of processing money from a Russian scam, believed to involve up to $80bn (65bn). Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Former HBOS bankers convicted of bribery and fraud over 245m loan scam - February 2017 Two former HBOS bankers were among six people found guilty of bribery and fraud that cost customers and shareholders hundreds of millions of pounds, the BBC reports. Lynden Scourfield, 54, a manager at HBOS, forced struggling clients to use the services of his friends David Mills, 60, and Michael Bancroft, 73. In return, the two businessmen arranged sex parties, cash and lavish gifts. On Monday, the three were convicted at Southwark Crown Court on accounts including bribery, fraud and money laundering. Mark Dobson, another manager at HBOS, Alison Mills, and John Cartwright were also convicted. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Lloyds chief apologises for damage caused by affair allegations - August 2016 Antonio Horta-Osorio, the chief executive of Lloyds Bank, has broken his silence over allegations about his private life admitting he regrets any "damage done to the group's reputation". In a message sent to the bank's 75,000 employees, the banker said that anyone can make mistakes while insisting that staff had to maintain the highest professional standards. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Christine Lagarde faces court over 340m Bernard Tapie payment - July 2016 The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, must stand trial in France over a payment of 403 million (now 340m, then 290m) to tycoon Bernard Tapie, a France's highest appeals court has ruled. The court rejected Ms Lagarde's appeal against a judge's order in December for her to stand trial over allegations of negligence in her handling of the affair. Ms Lagarde could risk a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a fine of 15,000 euros if convicted. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures HSBC senior manager arrested in FX rigging investigation at JFK airport in New York - July 2016 A senior executive at HSBC has been arrested at New York's JFK airport for his alleged involvement in a conspiracy to rig currency benchmarks, according to reports. Mark Johnson, global head of foreign exchange cash trading in London, was reportedly arrested on Tuesday. He will appear before a federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, Bloomberg said. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Former PwC employees found guilty in 'Luxleaks' tax scandal - June 2016 Two ex- PricewaterhouseCoopers staffers were found guilty in Luxembourg of stealing confidential tax files that helped unleash a global scandal over generous fiscal deals for hundreds of international companies. Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet face suspended sentences of 12 months and 9 months and were ordered to pay fines of 1,500 (1,230) and 1,000 (822) for their role in the so-called LuxLeaks scandal. Despite the minimal sentences, the ruling was described by Deltours lawyer as shocking and a terrible anomaly. The ruling puts on guard future whistle-blowers, Deltour told reporters.The LuxLeaks revelations sped beyond Luxembourg, causing European Union regulators to expand a tax-subsidy probe and propose new laws to fight corporate tax dodging, while EU lawmakers created a special committee to probe fiscal deals across the 28-nation bloc. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Goldman Sachs dealmakers lavished Libyan officials with prostitutes to win contract - June 2016 A former Goldman Sachs dealmaker trying to persuade Gadaffi-era Libya to invest $1 billion with the investment bank procured prostitutes and invited Libyan officials to lavish parties in the hope of winning the business, the High Court heard on Monday June 13.The Libyan Investment Authority sovereign wealth fund is suing Goldman Sachs for inappropriately coercing its naive staff into giving its sovereign wealth fund cash to the bank to invest in products they did not understand. The products were designed to generate big profits for Goldman, the LIA claims.Goldman denies wrongdoing and says the LIA was treated as an arms-length customer Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Former boss of BHS said his life was threatened - June 2016 Darren Topp, the former boss of BHS, has said former owner Dominic Chappell threatened to kill him when he challenged him over a 1.5 million transfer out of the business. MPs on the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee asked Mr Topp about a 1.5 million transfer Mr Chappell made from BHS to a company called BHS Sweden. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley admits paying workers below the minimum wage - June 2016 Mike Ashley admitted paying Sports Direct employees below the minimum wage at a hearing in front of MPs. The company founder said that workers were paid less than the statutory minimum because of bottlenecks at security in an admission that could result in sanctions from HMRC. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Mitsubishi admits improper fuel tests - April 2016 Mitsubishi has admitted to using false fuel methods dating back to 1991. The scale of the scandal is only just coming to light after it was revealed in April that data was falsified in the testing of four types of cars, including two Nissan cars. AP Biggest business scandals in pictures Quindell, the scandal-ridden insurance firm Quindell was once a darling of AIM but its share price fell in April 2014 when its accounting practices were attacked in a stinging research note by US short seller Gotham City. In August the group was forced to disclose that the 107 million pre-tax profit it had reported for 2013 was incorrect, and it had in fact suffered a 64million loss. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Toshiba Accounting Scandal The boss of Toshiba, the Japanese technology giant, resigned in disgrace in the wake of one of the countrys biggest ever accounting scandals. His exit came two months after the company revealed that it was investigating accounting irregularities. An independent investigatory panel said that Toshibas management had inflated its reported profits by up to 152 billion yen (780m) between 2008 and 2014. Biggest business scandals in pictures FIFA Corruption Scandal Fifa, football's world governing body, has been engulfed by claims of widespread corruption since the summer of 2015, when the US Department of Justice indicted several top executives. It has now claimed the careers of two of the most powerful men in football, Fifa President Sepp Blatter and Uefa President Michel Platini, after they were banned for eight years from all football-related activities by Fifa's ethics committee. A Swiss criminal investigation into the pair is ongoing. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Libor fraudster City trader Tom Hayes, 35, has become the first person to be convicted of rigging Libor rates following a trial at London's Southwark Crown Court. Hayes worked as a trader in yen derivatives at UBS before joining the American bank Citigroup in Tokyo. He was fired from Citigroup following an investigation into his trading methods. He returned to the UK in December 2012 and was arrested following a two-and-a-half year criminal investigation by the SFO. Getty Class Action Ellison previously allowed investors who bought ADR shares immediately after the disaster to sue as a group or class action, while spurning investors who bought before the incident. The $175 million settlement doesnt cover other securities-related claims, BP said Thursday. 2016 Bloomberg L.P 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 }} Uber, Airbnb and other sharing economy companies have received the support from the European Commission which said governments should only ban these services as a last resort. The rise of the sharing economy has raised regulation problems across Europe. A lack of understanding over how European law affects these firms means so far each country has made up its own rules when it comes to dealing with ride hailing app Uber or Airbnb, a service through which local can rent their room or home. On Thursday, the EU commission issued new guidelines warning officials to ease on the crackdowns on these companies as they have contributed about 28 billion (21.6bn) to the European Union economy in 2015, with their revenues doubling in a year. Elzbieta Bienkowska, Europe's senior official for industry and entrepreneurship, said such services were an opportunity, not a threat. You have Days Hours Minutes Seconds left to register An outright ban should only be a measure of last resort, Bienkowska said. The guidance to adopt a softer approach may prove controversial in France, where officials have placed restriction on Uber, after thousands of taxi drivers blocked roadways and burned tires calling for an end to the ride-hailing company. Meanwhile, Berlin authorities have banned tourists from renting entire apartment trough Airbnb last month. Jyrki Katainen, the senior European official for jobs and growth, said the EU needs a coherent approach if it wants to see its startups to flourish. We want to keep up, and keep Europe as open as the US for new innovative business models, at the same time as addressing the negative effects, he said. The Commission said sharing economy companies should not be subject to additional sector-specific rules such as hotel and taxi regulations - unless they own assets and set the final price. However, EU officials said these businesses had the duty to behave responsibly. Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Show all 10 1 /10 Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Taxes must be payed, consumers must be protected, social security must be guaranteed, Bienkowska said. US firms Airbnb, founded in 2008, and Uber, launched a year later have both welcomed the guidlenes. 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 gender pay gap has emerged in the amount of pocket money UK parents give to their sons and daughters, a new survey finds. Boys received almost 12 per cent more weekly pocket money compared to girls, according to the Halifaxs annual pocket money survey of more than 1,200 children and 575 parents. The gender gap grew from only 2 per cent the year before. Recommended Read more Growing gender gap in university admissions already present at age 13 In 2016, boys between eight and fifteen received an average of 6.93 per week, compared to girls who got an average of 6.16. Halifax did not ask about the gender pay gap as part of the research and the growing difference between girls and boys came as a surprise, a spokesperson told the Independent. The big increase in the pocket money pay gap doesnt bode well for the future. If were ever going to get pay equality in the workplace girls need to be empowered with the confidence to drive a hard bargain and learn to be unafraid to ask if they think they should be paid more; this needs to start at home," said Hannah Maundrell, editor in chief at Money.co.uk. "Teaching your kids the value of money and the importance of negotiation when theyre young will really set them up for success when they enter the real world," she added. On average, eight year olds receive 5.06 with 15 year olds receiving 7.85 - the highest level recorded since the onset of the financial crisis in 2007. Giles Martin, head of Halifax Savings said it is reassuring to see that the average pocket money amount has reached a nine year high. Some parents are clearly not feeling the pinch in the same way as they have done in recent years, when weekly pocket money dipped as low as 5.89, Martin said. The world's 15 most powerful women in 2015 Show all 15 1 /15 The world's 15 most powerful women in 2015 The world's 15 most powerful women in 2015 Angela Merkel - German Chancellor German Chancellor Angela Merkel has retained her number one ranking for topping this years Forbes list for the fifth consecutive year and ten times in total. The world's 15 most powerful women in 2015 Hillary Clinton - Presidential candidate, United States Clinton, who could become the worlds most powerful leader in 2016, has been featured on the list every year since it launched in 2014. The world's 15 most powerful women in 2015 Melinda Gates - Cochair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Melinda Gates has cemented her dominance in philanthropy and global development to the tune of $3.9 billion in giving in 2014 and more than $33 billion in grant payments since she founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with her husband in 2000. The world's 15 most powerful women in 2015 Janet Yellen - Chair, Federal Reserve, Washington, United States Janet Yellen made history in 2014 when she became the first female head of the Federal Reserve. The world's 15 most powerful women in 2015 Marry Barra - CEO of General Motors Mary Barra made history by becoming the first female CEO of General Motors. The world's 15 most powerful women in 2015 Christina Lagarde - Managing director, International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde is entering the last year of her first term heading the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the organisation which serves as economic advisor and backstop for 188 countries. Under Lagarde the IMF has supported efforts to increase female labor force participation as way to reduce poverty and inequality. The UK, Germany, China, France and Korea have endorsed Christine Lagarde for another term as the head of the IMF. The world's 15 most powerful women in 2015 Dilma Rousseff - President, Brazil Dilma Rousseff, who has been elected in 2010, is Brazil's first female president. The world's 15 most powerful women in 2015 Sheryl Sandberg - COO of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO and author of bestseller Lean In, joined the company in 2008 and became the first woman on its board four years later. Sandberg helped the social network go public and expand digital revenue. The world's 15 most powerful women in 2015 Susan Wojcicki - CEO of Youtube Susan Wojcicki is CEO of YouTube, the worlds most popular digital video platform used by over a billion people across the globe. She oversees YouTube's content and business operations, engineering, and product development. The world's 15 most powerful women in 2015 Michelle Obama - First lady, United States Michelle Obama, the 44th first lady of the United States has focused her attention on issues such as the support of military families, helping working women balance career and family and encouraging national service. The world's 15 most powerful women in 2015 Park Geun-hye - President, South Korea Park Geun-hye is the first female leader of a country that has the highest level of gender inequality in the developed world. In her inauguration speech, she promised to prioritise both national security and economic revitalisation. The world's 15 most powerful women in 2015 Oprah Winfrey - Actress, Director/Producer, Entrepreneur, Personality, Philanthropist Oprah Winfrey, a former queen of daytime TV has proven she can thrive without a talkshow. Her 'The Life You Want' tour sold out stadiums from Newark to Seattle in 2014. The world's 15 most powerful women in 2015 Ginni Rometty - CEO of IBM Ginni Rometty joined IBM in 1981 and later became the first woman to lead the company. The world's 15 most powerful women in 2015 Meg Whitman - CEO of Hewlett-Packard Meg Whitman is the only woman to have headed two large U.S. public companies: eBay and Hewlett-Packard.Until Marissa Mayer's arrival at Yahoo, she was the only female head of a leading Internet-based company. The world's 15 most powerful women in 2015 Indra Nooyi - CEO of PepsiCo Indra Nooyi is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo. Mrs. Nooyi leads one of the worlds largest convenient food and beverage companies, with 2008 annual revenues of more than $43 billion. Its likely itll be a few more years until we reach the dizzy heights of 8.37 in 2005 though, when we saw the highest average pocket money since our records began , she added. Despite the pocket money pay rise, 42 per cent of children still believe they should receive more cash than they do, up 1 per cent from last year. Children living in London receive the highest amount of pocket money with youngsters in East Anglia getting the least. 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 }} Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase & Co chief executive Officer warned the investment bank may have to cut jobs in the UK. if the country decides to exit the European Union in the referendum this month. A so-called Brexit vote would result in long-term uncertainty for the UK and EU economies, Dimon said in a joint address to the banks staff in Bournemouth with Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne on Friday. The bank has more than 16,000 employees across six locations in Britain, including back-office and support roles in Bournemouth, a British seaside resort 108 miles south of London. Recommended Read more Angela Merkel breaks silence to warn UK against Brexit If the UK leaves the EU, we may have no choice but to re-organize our business model here, Dimon said in prepared remarks provided to Bloomberg. Brexit could mean fewer JPMorgan jobs in the UK and more jobs in Europe. You have Days Hours Minutes Seconds left to register The UK will vote June 23 on whether to remain part of the EU. Dimon joins others who have warned Brexit would push international securities firms to move jobs or activities because some products cant be traded outside the EU without specific agreements. Stuart Gulliver of HSBC Holdings has said the lender would likely need to move 1,000 investment bankers to Paris because theyre linked to operations governed by MiFID II, the EU rules covering everything from derivatives trading to bond pricing. What Works One realistic outcome is that we lose the ability to passport our banking and trading services into Europe, Dimon said. But our clients will still need us to trade within what will then be the EU. If thats what the rules say, we will need to do what works. Dimon said in a question and answer session that some EU countries may require the bank to move jobs to the continent if Brexit occurs. The EU is one of the great human endeavors, Dimon said. JPMorgan has more than 4,000 staff in Bournemouth, making it one of the areas biggest employers. Dimon said he hasnt decided to what country the bank might move employees. My observation of the facts is that a vote to leave would be a terrible deal for the British economy, he said. 2016 Bloomberg L.P 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 }} Uber might be planning to branch out into food delivery in the UK by launching a new delivery service. The UberEat app, which is already available in 16 cities around the world, enables customers to get food from their local restaurants to be delivered directly to their door. If launched in the UK, the app would be playing catch-up with similar services such as Deliveroo which has grown in popularity over the past few months. UberEATS has been hugely popular in every city around the world we have launched it in, so the fact we are exploring the UK market shouldn't come as a surprise. "We're always looking at what other services we can bring to the market here, a spokesperson for Uber said. Uber has not officially confirmed the claims but the company has already advertised for a restaurant partnerships manager to build collaborations with the British food industry, according to Buzzfeed. The company is also reportedly recruiting cycle couriers and scooters drivers in London. The news come as the ride hailing company prepares to launch Get there with Uber, its first major advertising UK campaign, which aime to positions the company as an essential part of the transport mix. 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 Uber has faced criticism from traditional taxi services in major cities around the world including London and Paris. The company won a significant victory in the High court in October last year when a judge said that its app does not violate laws on taximeters, allowing the service to continue as usual. On Thursday the European Commission issued new guidelines warning officials to ease on the crackdown on companies such as Uber and Airbnb as they have contributed about 28 billion (21.6bn) to the EU economy in 2015, with their revenues doubling in a year. Elzbieta Bienkowska, Europe's senior official for industry and entrepreneurship, said such services were an opportunity, not a threat. Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches email Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Voices Dispatches email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A council in Yorkshire has become the first in England to reduce the length of the school summer holidays to less than five weeks. Barnsley Council is introducing a two-week break in the October half-term to balance out the change, which it said would combat learning loss starting in the 2017-18 academic year. Schools will not break up until 31 July 2018, while the rest of the country finishes almost a week earlier, and return as normal at the start of September. Many parents said they preferred the longer break in the summer, when children can play outside The lengthened half-term break will run from 24 October to 4 November. Councillor Tim Cheetham, the cabinets spokesperson for people (achieving potential), said: The main differences to this years dates from previous years the shorter summer break and a two-week break at October half-term will support educational outcomes for pupils by reducing the long summer break which can lead to learning loss. Dad wins holiday ruling It also means that holiday weeks are distributed more evenly throughout the school year. But the Barnsley Chronicle said secondary school leaders were in revolt about the decision, which sparked heated debate on its website. Some commenters pointed out that it could allow families to go away for cheaper holidays in October, while others said the month was the wrong time of year for a longer break and would disrupt childrens learning mindset. The 20 best places to raise children in the UK Show all 20 1 /20 The 20 best places to raise children in the UK The 20 best places to raise children in the UK The Orkney Islands The coast of the Orkney Islands near Bisray village Chmee2/Creative Commons The 20 best places to raise children in the UK The Shetland Islands A general view of the Shetland Islands JOHN D MCHUGH/AFP/Getty Images The 20 best places to raise children in the UK The Western Isles A man rides his bike on Harris, one of the Western Isles, also known as the Outer Hebrides Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images The 20 best places to raise children in the UK Winchester Choristers from Winchester Cathedral enjoy the artificial rink set up beside the cathedral The 20 best places to raise children in the UK Eden The Hartside Summit in the North Pennines in the district of Eden Christopher Furlong/Getty Images The 20 best places to raise children in the UK Craven A sheepdog works in Skipton, in the district of Craven Christopher Furlong/Getty Images The 20 best places to raise children in the UK Ryedale The Folk Museum in Ryedale Creative Commons/Dennis Smith The 20 best places to raise children in the UK Staffordshire Moorlands Three Shire Heads, which crosses over Cheshire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire Wikimedia Commons/Brian Jones The 20 best places to raise children in the UK Huntingdonshire St Ives in Cambridgeshire, which lies within the boundaries of Huntingdonshire snowmanradio/Creative Commons The 20 best places to raise children in the UK South Northamptonshire The village of Bradden and St.Michael's church, in south Northamptonshire Greg Fitchett/Creative Commons The 20 best places to raise children in the UK Harrogate Spring flowers adorn the front of the Crown Hotel in the Spa town of Harrogate in Yorkshire and The Humber Christopher Furlong/Getty Images The 20 best places to raise children in the UK Rutland Normanton Church in Rutland NotFromUtrecht/Creative Commons The 20 best places to raise children in the UK Warwick The West Midlands county town of Warwick David Alonso Perez/Creative Commons The 20 best places to raise children in the UK Surrey Heath St Michael's Church, Camberley, which is situated in Surrey Heath Len Willians/Creative Commons The 20 best places to raise children in the UK Chichester A view of the Cathedral in Chichester Evgeniy Podkopaev/Creative Commons The 20 best places to raise children in the UK South Lakeland Kendal, which lies in South Lakeland Mark Fosh/Creative Commons The 20 best places to raise children in the UK Richmondshire The swing bridge in Reeth in Richmondshire Kreuzschnabel/Creative Commons The 20 best places to raise children in the UK Tonbridge and Malling Ightham Mote in Tonbridge and Malling Brian Snelson/Creative Commons The 20 best places to raise children in the UK Stratford-on-Avon Straford-Upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare Christopher Furlong/Getty Images The 20 best places to raise children in the UK Aberdeenshire Westhill in Aberdeenshire, Scotland SCOTT CAMPBELL/AFP/Getty Images Children need a long summer break to allow them to be children, to play, learn to get on with each other and have a bit of fun before they go back to school for their education, one person wrote. Barnsley Council said the decision followed consultation with neighbouring local authorities in South Yorkshire, headteachers, trade unions and teachers associations. Nick Bowen, the head of Horizon Community College, said the council should reconsider and had not consulted sufficiently with schools, which he feared would struggle to recruit high-quality staff who rely on summer holidays to recharge their batteries. There is also the fact that most of the academies in the area probably won't come on board with it so everyone will have different holidays, he told The Guardian. And it will be a disaster in terms of attendance because parents who have multiple children will have to take other siblings out of school if the holidays don't match. Governors of voluntary-aided schools and academies are responsible for determining their own dates. 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 }} Academy Award-winning actor and ardent Bernie Sanders campaigner Susan Sarandon, spoke out against Hillary Clinton, saying that her presidency could prove more dangerous than Donald Trumps. In an appearance on The Young Turks, Sarandon criticised Ms Clinton on her foreign policy positions. She also conveyed that she does not take seriously Mr Trumps sensational promises to build a wall along the southern border and bar Muslim immigration into the US. I believe in a way she is more dangerous, Sarandon suggested, responding to questions about the Clinton campaign calling her Republican rival dangerous. She did not learn from Iraq, and she is an interventionist, and she has done horrible things and very callously. I dont know if she is overcompensating or what her trip is. I think well be in Iran in two seconds. She continued: Im not worried about a wall being built. [Trump] is not going to get rid of every Muslim in this country. ... I dont know what his policy is. I do know what her policies are, I do know who she is taking money from, and I do know that she is not transparent, and I do know that nobody calls her on it. Sarandon also appeared on MSNBC Thursday night deriding the lack of media coverage that is critical of Ms Clinton, calling the federal indictment of the former secretary of state inevitable. Nobodys even talking about this indictment. What happens with that? Sarandon said. Besides the trust issue of catching her in so many lies. When reminded that there has not been an indictment, Sarandon responded: No, but theres going to be. Theres going to be. I mean, its inevitable. Sarandon is campaigning on behalf of Sen Sanders ahead of Tuesdays primaries. Hillary Clinton gave her most critical speech of Mr Trump during a foreign policy address Thursday afternoon in San Diego. Clinton and Trump step up war of words In her speech, she called Mr Trump "temperamentally unfit" to be president, and said his foreign policy consisted of only "bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies". 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 }} Deepcut army barracks was a toxic and horrible environment, the father of Private Cheryl James has said following the long-awaited conclusion of an inquiry into his daughters death. Pte James, who was 18 when she was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head in 1995, had inflicted the fatal shot and intended to die, coroner Brian Barker QC told Woking Coroners Court. There can be no reasonable doubt that Ms James carried out an intended action and knew that its consequence would be death. There was no evidence Pte James was unlawfully killed, found Mr Barker at the end of the three-month inquest in which more than 100 witnesses were questioned. The coroner said Deepcut had failed in its duty of care towards young recruits. He described an understaffed and undisciplined environment where recruits were bored and army instructors saw young females as a sexual challenge. The general culture of Deepcut in 1995 was far below the standard expected. Pte James was one of four recruits who died at Deepcut barracks in Surrey over seven years between 1995 and 2002. In a dossier of around 60 allegations made in the same year of Pte Jamess death, compiled by Surrey Police and submitted to a 2006 investigation by the Ministry of Defence, an 18-year-old recruit described his time at Deepcut as hell. Deepcut army barracks in Surrey, which is currently being redeveloped in a community housing project (Jeremy Selwyn) Mr Barker attacked the haphazard provision of welfare support offered by Deepcut to young recruits such as Pte James, who died one month after her 18th birthday. And while he said it was difficult to identify the reasons behind Pte Jamess suicide, Mr Barker identified the fact she was placed alone on armed guard duty contrary to army policy as a contributing factor to her death. Lone armed guard duty had created a dangerous situation and provided the opportunity for her to take her life, he said. Speaking outside the court, Pte Jamess father Des James said: The evidence has revealed serious and profound failures in the care and supervision that ought to have been provided to her and all the other young people who joined up to the British Army with her. Deepcut was a toxic and horrible environment for a young women, and we are in no doubt that this would have had a terrible impact on those that were required to live there. Mr James said while he welcomed the findings on the environment at Deepcut, he was deeply saddened by conclusion that his daughter killed herself. Having sat through all of the evidence ourselves [] It is our opinion that [the evidence] did not lead to this verdict, he said, instead suggesting pressure from Surrey Police to reach a conclusion of suicide. Des and Doreen James, parents of Private Cheryl James, arrive at Woking Coroner's Court in Surrey (PA) The inquest had heard claims from Mark Beards, another private at Deepcut, that Pte James had been sexually assaulted at the barracks, but this was dismissed as fantasy by the coroner. Mr Barker said there was no evidence Pte James was subject to unwanted sexual harassment, abuse or bullying by any person at the barracks. He said Pte James disillusioned with the Army, and had a troubled adolescence.. Following the verdict, the Army repeated its apology to the family of Pte James and said it wants to be a beacon for equality. Brigadier John Donnelly, head of Army personal services, said the force was sorry for the care Pte James received. He said: I want to repeat the apology that I gave the coroner and to Mr and Mrs James at the start of this inquest. We are truly sorry for the low levels of supervision that we provided for the trainees at Deepcut in 1995, and for the policies that were applied to using trainees for guard duties, and that we took too long to recognise and rectify the situation. He said the Army has made profound changes since 1995 and will study the coroner's conclusions carefully. He added that the Army is committed to being a beacon of equality of opportunity. 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 Human rights organisation Liberty, who are representing the James family, released the following statement: This day has come 20 years too late. There should have been an independent police investigation right from the start. The Army should have been open about life on that camp from day one. Cheryls family and friends would have been saved 20 years of unnecessary suffering and pain and things might have changed for the better, serving the interests of the bereaved, serving soldiers and the British Army. Additional reporting by Press Association 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 paedophile who admitted to an unprecedented number of child sex offences has told an Old Bailey court he blames his "immaturity". Believed to have abused up to 200 children from poor areas of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Richard Huckle said he was "deeply remorseful" for his actions. During the sentencing, his lawyer asked for leniency and read out a statement from the 30-year-old, which said: "I am open and eager to rehabilitate from this offending behaviour. "I don't want to become a martyr to sex tourism in Malaysia. This was all my doing as a consequence of my own immaturities. "I am deeply remorseful and regretful of what has happened and will do all I can in being proactive towards rehabilitating myself." A practising Christian, he posed as an English teacher doing good deeds to gain access to children from poor Christian families. Huckle said in his letter to the court he had "completely misjudged the affections I received from these children", according to Sky News. he added that he was influenced by a "pathetic, perverted lust of those who drew me into the dark net". Huckle was arrested by the National Crime Agency when he landed at Gatwick airport en route to spend Christmas at home with his family in 2014. The Old Bailey heard he had written a paedophile manual entitled Paedophiles And Poverty: Child Lover Guide as well as a 'Pedopoints ledger' in which he detailed rapes and various sex acts. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA 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 The manual was on an encrypted space on Huckle's laptop ready for publication on the "dark web" through a hyperlink. In online discussions, he bragged: "Impoverished kids are definitely much easier to seduce than middle class Western kids." Huckle has admitted 71 child sex offences, including multiple rapes, against 23 identified children aged between six months and 12 years old. Some 22 of the charges carry discretionary life sentences. He will be sentenced on Monday. 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 }} More than 13,000 foreign criminals are awaiting deportation from the UK, including thousands of European citizens, according to a report by MPs, which warns that the failure to remove a population "the size of a small town" could undermine public confidence in the UKs EU membership. In findings that were immediately seized upon by Brexit campaigners, the Home Affairs Select Committee said that "clear inefficiencies" in the process of sending foreign national offenders (FNOs) back to fellow EU member states would lead people to "question the point of the UK remaining a member of the EU". While the pace of removals has increased in recent years, committee chair Keith Vaz, who supports a Remain vote, said that the Home Office should have done better. While the majority of FNOs in the UK are in prisons, nearly 6,000 were living in communities at the end of 2015, the report said. Of the predominant nationalities among FNOs, the top three were all EU countries: Poland, Ireland and Romania. Theresa May was "unconvincing in suggesting that remaining a member of the EU will make it easier to remove these individuals from the UK", the report said. But the Home Secretary hit back, saying that record numbers of foreign criminals were now being removed, and that our EU membership allowed vital criminal records sharing. David Cameron has described the removal of foreign criminals as "fantastically difficult" but has accepted the Governments performance could have been better. Mr Vaz said the committee agreed with the Prime Ministers assessment. "There are 13,000 foreign national offenders in the country, who could fill towns the size of Louth in Lincolnshire, Beccles in Suffolk or Berwick-upon-Tweed in Northumberland, and almost 6,000 of these are living within communities," he said. "The public would expect our membership of the EU to make it easier to deport European offenders, but this is clearly not the case, and we continue to keep thousands of these criminals at great and unnecessary expense. These failures are undermining confidence in the UKs immigration system and in the UKs EU membership." The justice minister Dominic Raab, who is campaigning for Brexit, claimed that EU laws were making it harder to deport foreign criminals. "The EU is making us less safe," he said. "It also costs UK taxpayers huge sums of money to keep these people in our prisons rather than sending them home." The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit Show all 7 1 /7 The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 22 May 2015 In his regular column in The Express Nigel Farage utilised the concerns over Putin and the EU to deliver a tongue in cheek conclusion. With friends like these, who needs enemies? PA The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 13 November 2015 UKIP MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire Mike Hookem, was one of several political figures who took no time to harness the toxic atmosphere just moments after Paris attacks to push an agenda. Cameron says were safer in the EU. Well Im in the centre of the EU and it doesnt feel very safe. Getty Images The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 19 April 2016 In an article written for The Guardian, Michael Gove attempts to bolster his argument with a highly charged metaphor in which he likens UK remaining in the EU to a hostage situation. Were voting to be hostages locked in the back of the car and driven headlong towards deeper EU integration. Rex The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 26 April 2016 In a move that is hard to decipher, let alone understand, Mike Hookem stuck it to Obama re-tweeting a UKIP advertisement that utilises a quote from the film: Love Actually to dishonour the US stance on the EU. A friend who bullies us is no longer a friend The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 10 May 2016 During a speech in London former work and pensions secretary Ian Duncan Smith said that EU migration would cause an increasing divide between people who benefit from immigration and people who couldnt not find work because of uncontrolled migration. The European Union is a force for social injustice which backs the haves rather than the have-nots. EPA The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 15 May 2016 Cartoon character Boris Johnson made the news again over controversial comments that the EU had the same goal as Hitler in trying to create a political super state. Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods. PA The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 16 May 2016 During a tour of the womens clothing manufacturer David Nieper, Boris had ample time to cook up a new metaphor, arguably eclipsing Goves in which he compares the EU to badly designed undergarments. So I just say to all those who prophecy doom and gloom for the British Business, I say their pants are on fire. Lets say knickers to the pessimists, knickers to all those who talk Britain down. Getty Images He pointed out that the Home Affairs Committee included prominent Remain campaigners such as Labours Chuka Umunna. In evidence to MPs in May, the Prime Minister said the Government was trying to speed up the process of removing foreign offenders, but said that a lack of travel documentation, unresolved asylum claims and legal representations often stood in the way. Responding to the report, Ms May said: "Foreign nationals who commit crimes here should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them. Last year we removed a record number of foreign national offenders from this country, including a record number of EU criminals. Being in the EU gives us access to criminal records sharing and prisoner transfer agreements which help us better identify people with criminal records and, allow us to send foreign criminals back to their home countries to serve their sentences." 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 }} What rights do we have by virtue of Britains membership of the European Union? They were helpfully brought together in a document called the Charter of Fundamental Rights in 2000. It lists 54 rights. These include the right to life and freedom from torture, slavery and human cloning. There is a section on rights to privacy, protection of personal data, marriage, thought, religion, expression, assembly, education, work and property. Read more of the big EU referendum questions here A third section bans discrimination, of many listed kinds, and recognises the right of people with disabilities to benefit from measures designed to ensure their independence. The fourth section includes the right to strike, to consultation at work, protection against unjustified dismissal, and to social security benefits and health care. The fifth includes the right of free movement and residence within the EU, the right to vote in European Parliament elections and the right to good administration. The sixth includes the right to legal remedy (including legal aid), to a fair trial, to the presumption of innocence, the right not to be tried twice for the same offence and protection against retrospective laws. The Charter is controversial. When it was proclaimed, Keith Vaz, the minister for Europe, said it will be no more binding than the Beano or The Sun. It was then given legal force by the Lisbon Treaty of 2009, but the UK and Polish governments insisted on a protocol saying that it did not create new rights in the UK or Poland that could be enforced by any courts. So we dont have those rights under EU law then? It is not as simple as that, or else these questions and answers would be a lot shorter. One of the arguments for leaving the EU made by Marina Wheeler QC, who happens to be married to Boris Johnson, is that the UK opt-out from the Charter is ineffective, and that the European Court of Justice the supreme court of the EU has started to use it in judgments affecting British interests. In any case, Britain is already bound by most of the rights in the Charter, because they are taken from EU law or from the European Convention on Human Rights. What has the EU ever done for us? Show all 7 1 /7 What has the EU ever done for us? What has the EU ever done for us? 1. It gives you freedom to live, work and retire anywhere in Europe As a member of the EU, UK citizens benefit from freedom of movement across the continent. Considered one of the so-called four pillars of the European Union, this freedom allows all EU citizens to live, work and travel in other member states. What has the EU ever done for us? 2. It sustains millions of jobs A report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, released in October 2015, suggested 3.1 million British jobs were linked to the UKs exports to the EU. What has the EU ever done for us? 3. Your holiday is much easier - and safer Freedom to travel is one of the most exercised benefits of EU membership, with Britons having made 31 million visits to the EU in 2014 alone. But a lot of the benefits of being an EU citizen are either taken for granted or go unnoticed. What has the EU ever done for us? 4. It means you're less likely to get ripped off Consumer protection is a key benefit of the EUs single market, and ensures members of the British public receive equal consumer rights when shopping anywhere in Europe. What has the EU ever done for us? 5. It offers greater protection from terrorists, paedophiles, people traffickers and cyber-crime Another example of a lesser-known advantage of EU membership is the benefit of cross-country coordination and cooperation in the fight against crime. What has the EU ever done for us? 6. Our businesses depend on it According to 71% of all members of the Confederation of British Influence (CBI), and 67 per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the EU has had an overall positive impact on their business. What has the EU ever done for us? 7. We have greater influence Robin Niblett, Director of think-tank Chatham House, stated in a report published last year: For a mid-sized country like the UK, which will never again be economically dominant either globally or regionally, and whose diplomatic and military resources are declining in relative terms, being a major player in a strong regional institution can offer a critical lever for international influence. Wait a minute, the European Convention on Human Rights has nothing to do with the European Union, does it? That is a piece of popular pedantry, but, again, it is no longer as simple as it was. The EU intends to become a signatory to the Convention in its own right. You might not think that would make any difference, because the UK is a signatory to the Convention too and it has written the Convention rights into UK law in the form of the Human Rights Act 1998. But the EUs own Charter of Fundamental Rights, and its intention to ratify the Convention, does mean that Convention rights could increasingly be enforced under EU law. But all these rights are good, arent they? They sound lovely. But many Convention rights have been interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights (yes, separate from the EU) in ways that their drafters did not anticipate and on questions that look as if they should be for national parliaments to decide. The ruling on the right of prisoners to vote, for example. You could say that is how human rights law should work: the House of Commons doesnt like it but is forced to respect the rights of an unpopular minority. One voter in a focus group in Leeds carried out for Lord Ashcroft on the subject of Brexit expressed it bluntly: The ability to make our own decisions, I dont see that as a positive. If you look at what goes on in the House of Commons, its disgusting. They just try to get one over on each other. We would have no appeal to the Court of Human Rights. It would mean what David Cameron says goes, and if you want to challenge that, tough shit. Hm. Prisoners still dont have the vote in the UK, do they? You should be a lawyer. That is correct. That ruling has simply been ignored by the British Government, because the European Court of Human Rights has no power of enforcement. But the more the EU and EU law are tied in to the Convention, the more its rights as interpreted by various courts will be imposed by the European Court of Justice, which does have the power to enforce its rulings on the UK. Jeremy Corbyn rubbishes George Osborne's claim that Brexit would cause recession So why does Theresa May, the Home Secretary, want to pull out of the Convention? If we could paraphrase her 25 April speech, she thinks it would be easier to deport foreign criminals if we repudiated the Convention and repealed the Human Rights Act. She wants to re-inscribe Convention rights in a British Bill of Rights in a way that would limit the scope for the UK courts to interpret them in ways that get in the way of what she sees as her job as Home Secretary. Ideally, she would like to leave the EU as well, but the economic argument and the likelihood that Scotland would break up the UK have persuaded her that we should, on balance, stay in the EU and out of the ECHR. So to get away completely from all that ghastly human rights law, Britain would have to leave the EU and the ECHR? Yet again, not so simple. If Britain left the EU, and repudiated the European Convention, and scrapped the Human Rights Act, even then some Convention rights would remain. The laws devolving power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland require the devolved authorities to respect Convention rights, so those laws would have to be rewritten. If the Scottish Parliament or Welsh or Northern Ireland Assemblies want to keep them, things would start to become awkward. What is more, as Ms May has noted, Scotland might vote in a new referendum to leave the UK altogether and rejoin the EU and readopt the Convention. Its not just human rights, though, is it? Jeremy Corbyn wants the EU to protect us against the excesses of a Conservative government, doesnt he? That is one of the arguments made by the Leader of the Opposition, yes. EU law never mind the Charter of Fundamental Rights gives rights to workers, consumers, women and others that they wouldnt necessarily have from the UK government. On the other hand, you could imagine that, if we had a Labour government, Mr Corbyn might not be so keen on the EU protecting the rights of, say, businesses and employers. EU law can also create rights that we don't expect. When the Labour Party's all-women shortlists were ruled unlawful in 1995, that was under the EU Equal Treatment Directive. The ruling was later changed by an exemption for political parties in UK legislation by the Labour government. It all depends at which level you think these decisions should be made. So what rights would we gain by leaving the EU? The big argument of the Leave side is that we would regain full national sovereignty, which means our right as a country to make our own laws and to decide who can come into the country and who cannot. But that is a huge question in itself, and will be the subject of another Q&A in the next few weeks. 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 physical copy of the Chilcot Inquirys report into the Iraq War will cost 767, it has been announced. Families of the 179 British soldiers killed in the conflict will not receive a free copy; next-of-kin will instead be given a printed summary of the findings. While the 2.6 million word report will be freely available online, relatives of military personnel who served and died in Iraq have voiced anger at the move. Roger Bacon, whose son was killed during conflict, told the Daily Telegraph newspaper the price tag was ridiculous. Where do they think the families are going to get the funds from to do that? This is big money for most people. We are not corporations or government organisations, we are ordinary people," he said. To be expected to pay that amount of money for a report that has had an enormous effect on all of us is really not on. To deal with something like this you need to have something you can hold and read. It is offensive to expect us to cough up that amount of money. The Chilcot Inquiry was set up in 2009 by then prime minister Gordon Brown to look into the build up, conduct during, and aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. Establishment figures are reportedly set to be heavily criticised in the inquirys report. The process of drawing up the final report has been beset by years of delays. The most recent substantial delay came during the so-called Maxwellisation process where people criticised in the report are given an opportunity to respond. Sir John Chilcot has been paid around 790 a day during this process; roughly the cost of the printed report to the public. A spokesperson for the inquiry said the free summary given to the families of the wars British victims would be substantial. 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 }} Boris Johnson is like Donald Trump with a thesaurus, Nick Clegg will claim, ignoring the facts and saying whatever he wants in an attempt to pull Britain out of the European Union. In his first major speech of the campaign the former Liberal Democrat leader will claim that Mr Johnson is using the referendum campaign to burnish his chances of becoming Tory leader with scant regard for the economic impact on ordinary people of a leave vote. Recommended Read more PM confronts accusations Remain campaign is founded on scaremongering And he will accuse the former London mayor, along with Michael Gove and Nigel Farage, of being careless elitists whose own privileged position will shield them from the damaging effects of Brexit. Perhaps Boris has looked across the Atlantic at the Republican presidential front-runner and decided that with enough bluster and bravado he can get away with ignoring the facts and saying whatever he wants, Mr Clegg will say. In fact, (he) and Michael Gove are probably the only people who think their job prospects might actually improve if we leave Europe. But this debate is too important for it to be decided by Boris acting like Trump with a thesaurus. It is not their livelihoods that are at stake. Mr Clegg has not, until now, played a particularly prominent role in the Remain campaign and his intervention will delight leave campaigners who hope it will alienate floating voters. Britain Stronger in Europe announces Clegg speech tomorrow, said Dominic Cummings, the campaign director of Vote Leave. Feels like they're trying to throw the referendum. Nick Clegg wants Britain to lead Europe in economic reform, security, and the environment (Charlie Forgham-Bailey) But in his speech the former Deputy Prime Minister will argue that pro-Europeans need to do more to show what British leadership in Europe will look like in the years ahead. To be ambitious for Britain we must be ambitious for Europe too, he will say. We should be looking to lead Europe in economic reform, security, and the environment. Together we can meet the big challenges that face us and the many more that will test us in the years to come. Alone we are less equipped to do so. By leading in Europe, Britain can remain one of the worlds strongest economies and most influential nations. But he will also warn of the economic consequences of a vote to leave. No one not a single authoritative economist or institution thinks the result of Brexit will be better than what we have now, and the vast majority believe it will make us poorer and economically more insecure, he will say. Brexiteers are happy to risk mass economic hardship in pursuit of an outcome they can't even describe or agree upon, whose consequences they will all be shielded from themselves. Yet they have the nerve to describe themselves as anti-elitist. They are the real, careless elitists of this referendum campaign. 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 government is not doing enough to tackle the UKs housing crisis and blaming immigrants "lets politicians off the hook", according to political journalist Owen Jones. The 31-year-old, who says he was a "floating voter" when the referendum was announced, took part in a special EU debate on BBC's Question Time last night. During the show he criticised the Conservatives for failing to address the problem of housing, saying they are building fewer houses than in any other peace time government. "I would strongly reject the idea that the housing crisis in this country was caused by immigrants or the European Union and we let politicians off the hook when we blame foreigners for the failure of governments in this country to build the housing that we desperately need," Mr Jones said. He also said he was "sick of scaremongering" on both sides of the referendum debate, adding: "We should have a reasoned debate, whether it be threats of World War Three on the one hand or Adolf Hitler and the Nazis on the other. "We have got to stop a situation where we blame people, whether they be from abroad or Brussels because all Neil Hamilton wants us to do, posing as he does and Ukip as anti-establishment, is let politicians off the hook in this country." "We are not building the housing that this country desperately needs," Mr Jones said. You have Days Hours Minutes Seconds left to register On Twitter the views among observers were divided, with some supporting Mr Jones stance on the government's failure. However, others saw immigrants as the prime reason for such high levels of demand for housing in the UK. Elsewhere, Sky News was holding its own EU debate with prime minister David Cameron, during which a student accused the Remain campaign of "scaremongering". Soraya Bouazzaoui, who is a remain voter, told Mr Cameron: "The entire campaign has been a complete shambles... I see nothing but scaremongering... everything I've seen has just made voting into the EU look worse." 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 }} A student refused to back down when she confronted David Cameron over the UK's political links with Turkey during a televised debate discussing the EU referendum. Soraya Bouazzaoui, an English Litersture student at Southampton Solent University, pushed the Prime Minister to explain why the UK should be working with the country and why the Remain campaign had been so negative. A remain voter herself, she said during the Sky News debate: "The entire campaign has been a complete shambles... I see nothing but scaremongering... everything I've seen has just made voting into the EU look worse. "We haven't even addressed the fact that Turkey wants to become ever closer union with the EU... how can you reassure us of staying in the EU and say there are no risks when there are clear risks?" Mr Cameron replied by saying he felt there was a "very positive case" to remain and to "keep the country moving forward". Ms Bouazzaoui, from Romford, interrupted him and said: "No, let me finish now because I've seen you interrupt many people before. That is not answering the question. 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 "I'm an English literature student, I know waffling when I see it." Mr Cameron responded to her questions regarding Turkey: "There is no prospect of Turkey joining the EU in decades; they applied in 1987, they have to complete 35 chapters, one has been completed so far, at this rate they'll join in the year 3,000. "There are lots of reasons to vote one way or vote the other way; Turkey is not going to join the EU anytime soon, every country, every Parliament has a veto." You have Days Hours Minutes Seconds left to register Speaking to Sky News, Ms Bouazzaoui said the Conservative Leader was "getting a taste of medicine". She added: "He's spent his entire six years being dishonest, untruthful, brushing a lot of worrying things under the rug. "I think for someone to actually, finally, call him out of it was necessary." 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 }} Labours deputy leader Tom Watson has criticised party supporters who hissed at the BBCs political editor as she questioned Jeremy Corbyn, describing them as rude and inappropriate. Laura Kuenssberg was hissed and booed at by Jeremy Corbyn supporters as she asked the Labour leader a question after his speech on the EU referendum on Thursday. Following the heckles, Ms Kuenssberg asked: For Labour voters, what do you think is more important? Defending workers rights or immigration and the impact on communities in this country? Writing on Twitter, Mr Watson condemned the jeering saying: I feel embarrassed that [Ms Kuenssberg] was hissed in the course of doing her job. It was rude and inappropriate. In reply to one Twitter user he added: Hissing is not the answer and it undermined Jeremys message. I understand people hold many views on how she does her job but... hissing at her because of those views is wrong. Other Labour MPs shared Mr Watsons views, including Wes Streeting who responded: Journalists are people doing their job. A party that stands up for workers rights should not allow to be booed and hissed at. End of. The incident comes after Mr Corbyn accused the BBC of bias and described the organisation as obsessed with trying to discredit him, in a Vice News documentary. He added: There is not one story on any election anywhere in the UK that the BBC will not spin into a problem for me. It is obsessive beyond belief. They are obsessed with trying to damage the leadership of the Labour party. After the event Ms Kuenssberg tweeted: [Mr] Corbyn also mentioned the importance of free speech in his speech just sayin. The 39-year-old Scottish journalist is no stranger to being targeted by the Labour leaders supporters. A petition calling for her to be sacked for biased coverage of the May elections was signed by more than 35,000 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 }} An injured bull elephant surprised guests and workers at a safari in Zimbabwe when he appeared to approach them for help, and then waited for five hours until a vet arrived. The huge animal which has since been named Ben was dehydrated and limping badly, and photographs show him looking inside a building, possibly for assistance. On closer inspection, workers from the Bumi Hills Foundation found the animal had two bullet holes through his left ear and a septic wound on his shoulder, believed to be the result of a failed poaching attempt. The bullet holes in Bens ears were found to be old, but the wound in his shoulder was in need of urgent attention. Unfortunately, the foundations conservation manager was away, so they arranged for a vet, Dr Richard Hoare, to fly from Harare to administer much-needed treatment to the animal. The vet, along with the team at the foundation, tranquilized the animal and cleaned out the wound. They also added a VHF tracking device to the animal so they can follow its progress. Nick Milne, Trust Manager of the foundation, said: "The nature and cause of the wound has left us all very puzzled. It is a large entry hole, approximately 4cm in diameter, perfectly round and smooth and extends approximately 10cm downwards into his shoulder joint and there are no other wounds visible on the animal at all. Wounded elephant rescue Show all 12 1 /12 Wounded elephant rescue Wounded elephant rescue Ben the elephant arrives looking for help Staff and guests at the Bumi Hills Foundation in Zimbabwe were surprised to see a wounded bull elephant seeming seeking help outside their window. Bumi Hills Foundation Wounded elephant rescue A vet arrives Vet Dr Richard Hoare flew in from Harare to treat Ben. Bumi Hills Foundation Wounded elephant rescue Getting Ben on the ground It takes 12 people to get the tranquilised animal on the ground so his wound can be treated. They also gave him a tracking collar so they can see how he is doing in the future. Bumi Hills Foundation Wounded elephant rescue Ben's gunshot wound The elephant had a septic wound which was 4cm in diameter and 10cm deep. Bumi Hills Foundation Wounded elephant rescue Looking after a tranquilised elephant The team placed a stick in Ben's trunk to make sure he could breathe. They monitored his breathing throughout the procedure. Bumi Hills Foundation Wounded elephant rescue Looking for the bullet Workers at the foundation used metal detectors to locate the bullets, however none were found. Bumi Hills Foundation Wounded elephant rescue Cleaning out the wound The vet and the safari team set about treating the wound, cleaning it out with a probe. Bumi Hills Foundation Wounded elephant rescue Cleaning out the wound A incision was created below the wound to allow fluids to drain out. Bumi Hills Foundation Wounded elephant rescue Elephants need a lot of antibiotics Dr Hoare administered a staggering 120ml of long-acting antibiotics to Ben. Bumi Hills Foundation Wounded elephant rescue In the wars The two bullet holes in Ben's ears show he has been a victim of poachers before. Bumi Hills Foundation Wounded elephant rescue Bumi Hills Foundation Helping Ben was a team effort by those at the foundation. Bumi Hills Foundation Wounded elephant rescue Ben's back on his feet A little unstable, but Ben managed to stand up a few minutes after the team were finished, and made his way tentatively back into the bush. Bumi Hills Foundation "The wound itself was approximately a month old but again this is difficult to tell exactly. The nature of the wound suggests that if caused by a bullet it was fired from an elevated position down onto the animal, not a commonly used method of shooting an animal but with our rugged terrain quite possible. "The fact that no other wounds were visible it is impossible for the bullet head to have exited the animal but nothing was picked up on the highly sensitive metal detector. "We will arrange for a mobile x-ray unit to be brought in if he requires follow up treatment which will hopefully give us a better idea of what happened." Baby elephant stuck in a drain He said the team at the foundation are keeping a close eye on the elephant, believed to be in his thirties, and are monitoring his progress. The most recent sighting of Ben suggests his wound and mobility have improved slightly, although he is still in a lot of pain. "What is positive is that he is still feeding and drinking well so all the signs suggest that despite having a long road to recovery ahead of him there is a good chance he will make it," said Mr Milne. Poaching in the area is rife, and the Bumi Hills Foundation was founded in March and works with the Bumi Hills Anti Poaching Unit to combat the problem. Mr Milne added: "The nature of the poaching has changed and now we are facing much more threatening and sophisticated armed ivory poaching gangs, very similar to and almost definitely linked to the organised gangs involved in rhino poaching in South Africa. "From data collected in aerial surveys carried out over Zimbabwe in 2001 and again in 2013 there has been an estimated decrease in elephant numbers of 75% in the Sebungwe area." The foundation has since launched the #helpben campaign to try and raise funds to cover the cost of the elephants on-going treatment. 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 bodies of more than 100 refugees have been recovered in the Mediterranean Sea after a boat capsized off the coast of Libya. Colonel Ayoub Gassim said the corpses - 75 women, six children and 36 men - were pulled from the water near the western city of Zuwara but that the expected death toll from the disaster is likely to be higher. Libyan coast guards found the vessel drifting on Thursday but believe it may have capsized the previous day with an unknown number of people on board. Number of child refugees crossing into Europe swells At least 85 bodies were found washed up on Zuwara's sandy beaches on Thursday but it was unclear whether they were from the same disaster or other sinkings. Speaking to the Associated Press, Col Gassim blamed Europe for doing nothing but counting bodies to stop migration from Libya. The country is a common launching point for smugglers sending migrant ships towards Italy, normally leaving them to drift before being picked up by rescue ships. Smugglers have taken advantage of the conflict and chaos since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with the new unity government struggling to re-gain control of parts of the country. Aid organisations said the last two weeks have been especially deadly because smugglers are using riskier tactics, bigger boats and even less-seaworthy vessels at an increasing rate with the onset of summer weather. Friday's disaster came as rescue operations continued after a separate sinking off the coast of Crete, where at least nine bodies had been recovered and more than 300 people rescued. 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. Hundreds of asylum seekers have drowned in successive disasters in the Mediterranean Sea in recent weeks amid concerns that the EU-Turkey deal seeing migrants detained on Greek islands is forcing desperate migrants to take longer and more treacherous journeys. The vast majority of arrivals are now landing in Italy after crossing the Central Mediterranean from North Africa. At least 880 migrants died last week alone and deaths are up more than a third compared to the same period last year, according to figures compiled by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). More than 2,500 migrants have died at sea in attempts to reach Europe this year, while more than 205,000 people have made the journey. David Cameron announced last week that Britain would send a warship to the Mediterranean to combat people smuggling as EU and Libyan naval operations continue. The majority of asylum seekers currently arriving in Italy are from sub-Saharan Africa, with the largest group from Nigeria, at 15 per cent, followed by Gambia, Somalia, the Ivory Coast, Eritrea, Guinea and Senegal. In Greece, 49 per cent of those to have arrived so far this year were from Syria, while a quarter were from Afghanistan, 15 per cent from Iraq and others from Pakistan and Iran. Sign up to our free fortnightly newsletter from The Independent's Race Correspondent Nadine White Sign up to our free fortnightly newsletter The Race Report 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 Race Report email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A bank clerk was sacked for saying black people should go back to Africa and making references to slavery during a rant on Facebook. Christine Mcmullen Lindgren, 57, worked at an Atlanta branch of Bank of America before her apparent unprompted public outburst on the social network on the evening of 2 June. Ms Lindgren appaered to write: I hate Facebook for this reason you f****** n******. And yes, if [you] can call each that well I can too. "F****** n***** go back to Africa. Get over your pity party. "Do something with your lives and your children's lives." It is unclear who specifically the tirade was aimed at, and shortly after the post was deleted, before Ms Lindgren's entire Facebook account went offline. Bank of America received hundreds of complaints after a user spotted the banks name in the job section of Ms Lindgrens profile page, and announced it had dismissed her a few hours later. 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 In a statement the bank said: We are aware of an unacceptable post on Facebook. The comments are reprehensible. We have completed our investigation and have terminated the employment of the individual who posted the comments. Andy Aldridge, senior vice president at Bank of America, told AJC that the bank would personally apologise to all the users who had contacted them about the post. 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 }} Recommended Read more Two US Navy jets collide off North Carolina coast A US Navy Blue Angels jet crashed during a practice run in preparation for a weekend air show in Tennessee, killing the pilot. Onlookers stood stunned across Smyrna, a town to the southeast of Nashville, as the jet careened toward the ground, erupting in a fireball and cloud of black smoke. Rutherford County fire chief Larry Farley confirmed that one person had been killed in the crash, according to The Tennessean. A US official identified the decased as Marine Capt Jeff Kuss, according to the Associated Press. Capt Jeff Kuss Blue Angels/NAVY Mr Kuss, 32, first joined the Blue Angels team in September 2014. A Colorado native, he is survived by his wife and two children. An administrator from Fort Lewis College, where Mr Kuss earned a bachelor's degree in economics, expressed sadness at the loss of their former student. Were devastated at the news at the loss of Capt. Kuss. He was a Skyhawk and we at Fort Lewis College are very proud of what he accomplished in his career, said Fort Lewis College spokesperson Mitchel Davis. And Im sure I speak for the alumni of Fort Lewis College everywhere that our thoughts are with his family and friends during this difficult time. The Navy Times says the Blue Angels are scheduled to perform 66 flight demonstrations across 34 locations in the US in 2016. The elite air acrobatics troupe is currently celebrating its 70th anniversary. Mark Wilson/Getty The last Blue Angels fighter jet crashed during a flight demonstration at a South Carolina air show in 2007. They were doing maneuvers and generally when the planes loop around they cross the runway and then turn around and basically when they turned around we saw a cloud of black smoke, an onlooker who was at the event told Reuters. Lt Cmdr Kevin J Davis, the pilot of the jet, died in the almost decade-old crash. 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 }} Everybody knows that feeling at work of getting angry with the boss. But construction worker Erick Cox became so enraged with his manager that he used a bulldozer to dump several buckets of soil on him before attacking him with a metal level. That, at least, is the allegation that has been aimed at Mr Cox by police in Orlando, Florida, who claim the attack happened after the worker became involved in an argument with his supervisor at the DeBary construction site. The site is where a new Wal-Mart store is being built. Erick Cox has been charged with battery (Facebook) In a call to the emergency services that has been released to the local media, a worker can be heard to says Please hurry somebody come out here, he just hit him with a level and is about to kill him. The dispatcher replies: He hit him with what? The caller says: A loader. Somebody tried to kill him on my job. Please send somebody out here. He ran him over and covered him up with dirt. Send somebody out there, please. The WESH 2 TV channel said Mr Cox, 32, allegedly dumped several loads on Perry Byrd, 57, after becoming involved in a heated argument. The worker - who goes by the nickname Pork Chop - also allegedly hit Mr Byrd with a six-foot aluminium level. Police said Mr Byrd suffered a four-inch gash to his head, and needed surgery. He is still being treated in hospital. Mr Cox told the officers he struck the victim to defend himself and claimed the second dumping of soil was an accident. He was arrested and charged with battery, but released on bond. The owner of the construction company said Mr Cox was no longer employed with that company 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 65-year-old grandfather from South Carolina picked up the wrong boy from school in a case of mistaken identity. Joseph Fuller went to Edisto Primary School, Orangeburg County, to pick up his grandson early but came home with the wrong child. When Mr Fuller arrived, he spotted a child who he thought was his grandson and hugged him before telling him he was there to pick him up early. Mr Fuller asked the boy if he was ready to go and the boy said yes. When asked by a teaching assistant if the man was his grandfather, the student replied, yes, according to KPLC 7 News. The boy and the man were then signed out by the schools front office. KPLC 7 reported the grandfather was on the approved list of people who can pick up students. When the couple returned home the grandmother realised the boy was not the couple's grandson. They immediately returned the child to school and the boys mother was informed. "He had a tooth missing in the front, and I know my grandson did not have a tooth missing in the front. Immediately, I brought him back to school, and I am very sorry," Mr Fuller told KPLC 7. According to a report seen by KPLC 7, the mother was concerned but relieved the situation was handled and corrected. The boys father, Darrin Pressley, reportedly blamed the school. "If they didn't bring him back my son could've been gone," he told KPLC 7. "It's gross negligence on the school's part. My thing is, you know, have a prevention so this could never happen again." After the incident the district revised the procedures for when a student is checked out of school. Now, students must verbally identify the person who is picking them up and the front desk will double check the students pick-up list for that name. 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 }} Who really knows what happened the night that Martin Duram was shot and killed in his Michigan home last spring? Perhaps, his pet parrot witnessed the killing and heard Mr Durams desperate plea to the killer. In a story that will be seized on by lovers of television detective shows, Mr Durams parents are seeking to persuade police to make use of a video of their sons pet parrot in which the rough-mouth African grey says: Dont f***king shoot. Mr Duram, 45, was shot and killed in his home in Ensley Township in what police first thought was a double-murder. Police also found his wife, Glenna, in the home with a gunshot wound to the head. They realised an hour later that she was still alive. Mr Duram's parents are concerned that police have not yet brought charges (Courtesy of family) Now, Michigan State Police reports obtained by 24 Hour News 8 under the Freedom of Information Act list the wife as a suspect, suggesting she tried to pull off a murder-suicide. She has since recovered from her injury and has denied shooting her husband, according to those documents. I know for a fact I didnt kill my husband, police quoted her as saying. Mr Durams parents told Wood TV that they are frustrated that nobody has been charged in the death and that the police investigation is still ongoing. They also want the police to use the parrot, named Bud, as a witness That bird picks up everything and anything, and its got the filthiest mouth around, said Mr Durams mother Lillian. The murder took place in Ensley Township, Michigan (Wood TV) The bird, they said, mimicked both Mr Durham and his wife. The video shows the bird, clinging to the outside of a cage, changing voices, almost as if it were arguing. I personally think he was there and he remembers it and he was saying it, said Mr Durams father, Charles. Newaygo County Prosecutor Robert Springstead said hes aware the couple had a bird that talked but that he had not seen the video. The owner of Casa La Parrot in Grand Rapids said its not unusual for African grey parrots to mimic male and female voices. In my mind, its something that hes heard, definitely heard before. And if its fresh in his mind, he might even say it more now, she said. 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 }} Alexandria M. Vera, an eighth-grade English teacher at Stovall Middle School in Houston, allegedly told police in April that the relationship she had with one of her students started through messages on Instagram -- and had evolved into a great love. On Wednesday, two months after the police investigation began and nearly eight months after 24-year-old Vera allegedly started having sex with the eighth-grader, authorities issued a warrant for her arrest on a felony charge of continuous sexual abuse of a child. The student is under the age of 14. Vera turned herself in at a suburban jail in Montgomery County and later was released on $100,000 bond, reported the Associated Press. Court documents filed last week in a Harris County District Court offer a detailed look into Vera's account of their alleged relationship, which she purpotedly told police was not only approved but celebrated by the boy's parents. It wasn't until April, when Stovall principal Elsa Wright got a tip about Vera, that the school district's police department began investigating. The English teacher allegedly admitted to both the principal and a police officer that she'd been having an ongoing relationship with the boy for months, court documents show. The bizarre and layered saga began nearly a year ago, Vera told police, when she met the boy during summer school in 2015. She said at first he was ruder, asking for her Instagram account name and sending her a follow request after she refused to provide it or accept his invitation, according to court records. But their interactions picked up in the Autumn, when the regular school year began and the boy was assigned to one of her eighth-grade English classes. Vera described for police a period of flirting that she claims she initially resisted, until the month of September. The teacher said she became worried when the boy didn't show up to class, so she sent him a message on Instagram and reminded him to turn in an upcoming assignment. He replied, according to court documents, and asked for her phone number. Then the boy asked his teacher if they could hang out. She said yes. Vera drove the boy around in her car, she told police, and they kissed. The next day, when the boy's parents weren't home, she returned and the two had sex for the first time, the documents claim. After that, the sexual encounters occurred almost daily, Vera purpotedly told police. "She stated that she and the Complainant had sex on almost a daily basis at her home and that they love each other," police wrote in the documents. In January, Vera said she discovered the boy had gotten her pregnant. When the couple told the boy's family, according to the teacher, they were ecstatic and supportive. His parents had known about the relationship since October, Vera told police, when they came to the school for an open house. Afterward, she was invited back to their home and introduced to the family as the boy's girlfriend, documents say. They were "accepting of the relationship," Vera told police, and she was welcomed to family gatherings thereafter. Things began to deteriorate in February, when an unannounced visit and questioning from Child Protective Services about the relationship spooked her. Vera denied the relationship and the pregnancy at the time, documents say, then chose to abort the baby. She did, however, hand over her cellphone and gave police permission to search it. Police said they found "many messages" between the boy and his teacher, confirming much of the story Vera had revealed. In a separate interview, the boy also admitted to the sexual relationship, police said. The Harris County District Attorney's Office told ABC 13 News that the parents could be charged with failure to report child abuse if they did indeed know about the relationship. The boy's mother is being investigated by Child Protective Services, the TV station reported. The Aldine Independent School District issued the following statement: "Aldine ISD has been made aware that charges have been filed against a former Stovall Middle School teacher involved in inappropriate behavior with a male student. When the allegation was made in April, the teacher was immediately removed from the school and placed on administrative leave. Aldine ISD Police investigated the incident and turned their findings over to the Harris County District Attorney's Office. The safety and security of Aldine ISD's students and staff remains a priority of the school district." Wearing a Golden State Warriors T-shirt, Vera was captured on video leaving the jail Wednesday. When asked about the allegations, she told reporters she had a lawyer and did not want to comment. Parents told various local media outlets they were appalled and shocked by the news. "When you send your kid to the school, you think everything will be safe for them," Gerson Bonilla told KPRC 2 Houston. "But I think this is something that is serious that needs to be investigated." One student told ABC 13 News that there was chatter among the student body about "suspicious behavior" between Vera and the boy, and that once he saw him grab the teacher's butt. Another parent, Mary Claycomb, told the TV station she just couldn't believe the teacher would do this. "I have chills because of this," she said. Copyright: Washington Post 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 }} Five soldiers are dead and four more missing after their military vehicle overturned, as rapid floodwaters continue to tear through central Texas. The vehicle, which was carrying 12 soldiers all stationed at the Fort Hood military base, became stuck in a low-water crossing before it was swept away late Thursday morning. Three soldiers were rescued, the Dallas Morning News reported. Recommended Read more Pilot killed after Blue Angels jet crashes in Tennessee Officials said they found the survivors later in the afternoon, and located the deceased Thursday evening. A Fort Hood spokesperson said the area had been hit with two days of torrential rainfall when the vehicle was swept off the road. Officials are conducting aerial and ground searches, using canine teams and water rescue boats. The identities of the soldiers have not been released. The missing soldiers belong to the 3rd Battalion, 16th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Armoured Brigade Combat Team, and the 1st Cavalry Division. Severe Floods Savage Houston - 7 Dead, Thousands Rescued We are deeply saddened by the loss of several Troopers and continue search operations, Maj Gen John C Thomson III, the 1st Cavalry Division commander, said in a statement. Your thoughts and prayers are greatly appreciated during this difficult time as we care for the Families, loved ones, and fellow Soldiers of those impacted by this tragedy. God Bless the First Team. Texas Gov Greg Abbott offered his condolences and support to the base. Texas stands ready to provide any assistance to Fort Hood as they deal with this tragedy, Mr Abbott said. The brave men and women stationed at Fort Hood and across our country put their lives on the line every day, and be it through rescue operations or on the battlefield, Texas will forever remain grateful for their sacrifices. 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 }} Violence once again marred the US presidential election last night, as protesters clashed with supporters of Donald Trump outside the presumptive Republican nominees latest rally in San Jose, California. What began as a peaceful protest rapidly became heated once Mr Trump arrived to deliver his stump speech, and several scuffles and violent incidents were caught on video as Trump supporters exited the rally. One woman was cornered by anti-Trump protesters outside the venue and faced a fusillade of eggs and bottles. Another man was punched in the head and left bleeding as he left the rally carrying a Trump sign. Police in riot gear reportedly held back from intervening for some time, until finally stepping in to push back protesters and making several arrests. It was not the first time one of Mr Trump's California campaign stops has ended with public disorder. Representatives of both Democratic candidates quickly denounced the unrest. John Podesta, the chair of Hillary Clintons campaign, tweeted that Violence against supporters of any candidate has no place in this election. Bernie Sanderss spokesman Mike Casca wrote: We cannot stop Trumps violent rhetoric with violence only peaceful protest in a voting booth can do that. The California presidential primaries take place next Tuesday, 7 June, the final day of the 2016 primary season. Mr Trump is now running unopposed for the Republican nomination, but Ms Clinton and Mr Sanders are still locked in a tight battle for the Golden State. 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 seven-year-old Japanese boy has been found alive in bear-infested woods, six days after being left there by his parents as punishment for bad behaviour. Yamato Tanooka was made to get out the car driven by his parents in woods on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido on May 28. However, on returning to the spot a few minutes later, his parents found that he was no longer there. The young boy was eventually found by a soldier inside a building at a military base near the town of Shikabe, 2.5 miles from where he was left. Yamato told the soldier who discovered him that he had spent several days at the army base after wandering alone in the forest. Other than suffering from dehydration for which he was put on an intravenous drip, doctors found the seven-year-old had only a few minor scratches to his arms and feet. Yamato's parents had initially said the boy had got lost before eventually admitting briefly abandoning him for being naughty. Takayuki Tanooka, father of 7-year-old boy Yamato Tanooka who went missing (Reuters) More than 180 people were involved in the search for the young boy, including troops. The remote area where he was abandoned is home to brown bears. His father, Takayuki Tanooka, told reporters: "We have raised him with love all along. I really didn't think it would come to that, we went too far. Brown bears are reputed to be common in the mountainous forests of Hokkaido, Japan (Getty) "I thought we were doing it for my son's own good. I told him I was so sorry for causing him such pain." Mr Tanooka also apologised to those involved in the search attempts: "I deeply apologise to people at his school, people in the rescue operation, and everybody for causing them trouble." The parents reportedly told police they had punished the boy for throwing rocks at people and cars while playing at a river earlier in the day. 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 }} When Briar McQueen was approached by an elderly woman in a cafe while breastfeeding her eight-week-old son, she thought she was about to be told to cover up. But the mother from New Zealand was surprised and delighted when the stranger offered her words of kindness instead. The woman also cut up Ms McQueens food for her as she continued to feed her son, so she could eat it before it went cold. Today was the first time I went out for breakfast alone with my eight week old son, Ms McQueen wrote in a Facebook post, which went viral and has now been liked more than 300,000 times. I had just received my breakfast and hot chocolate when Jaxon started crying wanting his booby so of course I fed him, after a few minutes this older lady walked up to me. I was scared, thinking she was gonna tell me to put my boob away, instead she starts cutting up my breakfast for me and said, what a good mama you are, we can't have your food getting cold can we. Ms McQueen said she was nearly moved to tears by the random act of kindness. I honestly could have cried [...] loveliest lady ever, she wrote. Thousands of social media users shared and commented on the post, with some describing times when they had been criticised for breastfeeding in public. Love this, wrote a Facebook user called Bekie Murray. I got tutted at by an older couple once in a costa for feeding my son. I was also alone and felt awful. Another user, called Nicola DCosta, wrote: I'm still angry about the old bag who stomped out of a coffee shop where I was discreetly breastfeeding my daughter saying I was disgusting and had put her off her morning coffee three years ago. A YouGov survey found that more than 75% of people in the UK believe breastfeeding is acceptable in public. Breastfeeding in public controversies Show all 11 1 /11 Breastfeeding in public controversies Breastfeeding in public controversies A woman has sparked a heated debate among parents after she revealed that she breastfeeds both her and her friend's son. Jessica Colletti, from Pennsylvania, said nursing Charlie Interrante's son seemed like the natural thing to do because she was already breastfeeding her son. Colletti told the Mama Bean parenting blog that she asked permission to nurse Interrantes son when she began looking after him, after they met at a photoshoot for new mothers. Interrante agreed as her son had not taken to formula milk Breastfeeding in public controversies New Hampshire State Rep. Josh Moore said on Facebook that men should be allowed to grab the nipples of breastfeeding mothers if the law banning women exposing their breasts did not pass Breastfeeding in public controversies When Gemma Colley's photo of her son with fake tan on his fake after she breastfeed him went viral, she also saw that no parent is alone when they make a silly mistake. Over 100,000 people liked and 40,000 people shared Ms Colleys photo of her sons sleepy face with fake tan encircling his mouth and nose, after she posted it to the Unmumsy Mum Facebook page Breastfeeding in public controversies A candid image of a mother breastfeeding her young child while using the toilet has divided parents online, as some argue its an honest depiction of parenthood, while others have labelled it disgusting Breastfeeding in public controversies The exclusive Claridges hotel has been widely criticised for asking a woman to cover herself with a ridiculous shroud while breastfeeding her three-month-old daughter. Lousie Burns said she burst into tears when staff members at the five-star venue asked her to cover herself and her baby with an oversized napkin in order to avoid causing offence to other guests Breastfeeding in public controversies An Australian cafe has been praised for sticking up for a breastfeeding mother after a customer told her to cover up. Jessica-Anne Allen, owner of Cheese and Biscuits Cafe in Queensland, Australia, has described how she was approached by a male customer in the cafe to complain that he was upset by a woman in the coffee shop breastfeeding her child nearby. The customer asked the cafe owner, 29, to tell the mother to cover up. When Mrs Allen refused to do so, he took matters into his own hands and challenged the woman himself. Staff at the cafe then asked the man to leave Breastfeeding in public controversies A woman who claimed a Primark security guard had forcibly removed her child while she was breastfeeding has admitted to perverting the course of justice. Caroline Starmer sparked a series of headlines after claiming on Facebook that a store guard had taken her nine-month-old daughter Paige away from her. The mother from Leicester then repeated her claims in a number of interviews, before Primark denied the incident and handed CCTV over to the police to show there was no evidence to support the allegations. Appearing in Leicester Crown Court, she admitted the charge of perverting the course of justice by not telling the truth Breastfeeding in public controversies Pope Francis has become an unlikely advocate for public breastfeeding, by encouraging mothers to feed their babies in the Sistine Chapel. During a ceremony in Vatican City on Sunday, the Pope baptised 32 babies and told their mothers: If they are hungry, mothers, feed them, without thinking twice, because they are the most important people here Breastfeeding in public controversies Facebook has changed its community guidelines to allow users to post photos of breastfeeding. The change comes as the wide-ranging #FreeTheNipple online campaign has built pace in its attack against guidelines used by social media websites to regulate nudity from photos of breastfeeding to topless photos post by singer Rihannas on her now defunct Instagram account. Facebooks Community Standards, which outline what users are allowed to post, never included a outright ban on photos of breastfeeding Breastfeeding in public controversies The manager of a public swimming pool at the Lux Park centre in Liskeardhas been forced to apologise after he told a mother to stop breastfeeding her son by the waterside. 23-year-old Rebecaa Hough of Torpoint, Cornwall, was feeding 10-month-old Max a few steps from the main pool, when the manager told her to carry on in the changing rooms in case the infant was sick into the water. She was also told that she should not to return for half an hour to ensure the milk was fully digested Breastfeeding in public controversies A Conservative MP has claimed allowing women to breastfeed in the House of Commons chamber would expose politicians to tabloid ridicule. Sir Simon Burns, a former transport minister, spoke on what he called a controversial subject in a debate in making Westminster more family-friendly In December 2014, Nigel Farage caused controversy by saying women should not be openly ostentatious while breastfeeding. This was after a woman was asked to cover herself with a shroud while breastfeeding her three-month-old daughter at Claridges hotel in central London. Subsequently, a mass breastfeeding protest was held outside the high-end venue. 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 supposed ancient ruins of a lost city underwater are actually mineral formations created by a rare geological phenomenon, according to scientists. Researchers from the University of East Anglia (UEA) found that the structures discovered off the Greek island of Zakynthos in June 2013 were in fact formed by methane gas leaking through rocks. The study dismissed claims the formations are left-over products of a mythological civilisation as had been suggested by Greek diver Pavlos Voutos, the man who discovered them. The disk and doughnut-shaped mineral structures were formed by the natural cementation of sediments on the seafloor around five million years ago. Bacteria fed on methane as it seeped through the seabed, triggering a chemical chain reaction which in turn created the mineral disks which were initially thought to be the bases of huge marble columns. The area was first examined by the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of Greece, before marine scientists from the University of Athens were called on to lend their expertise. The structures were formed by methane gas leaking through over many years (University of East Anglia) Professor Julian Andrews from UEA, who authored the study, told The Independent: Its not common to see dolomite, which these columns are made of, forming in water, although it has occurred before. Once Professor Michael Stamatakis from Athens University had gained samples from the site he sent them to me and we were able to analyse precisely what they were. This kind of thing tends to happen where you get significant amounts of methane seeping from oil reservoirs beneath the seabed, similar to a site I worked on in Scotland back in the 1980s. Its not particularly common, but its not something we havent seen or experienced before. It is however quite rare to find something like this in shallow waters. Cargo of ancient shipwreck found in Caesarea The site was discovered between 2-5 metres beneath the sea surface and examinations are continuing. Initial studies failed to reveal the reason why the structures had been formed and the international research team was created so further inquiries could be carried out. 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 After hearing of the scientific explanation behind the mysterious formations, discoverer Voutos continued to insist they were created by a lost civilisation. He wrote on his Facebook page: I dont like my intelligence to be belittled. I want serious answers from serious scientists. I am very worried about the future of this mysterious place. 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 }} More than 180 terror suspects with alleged links to extremist groups in Syria are being investigated in Germany after the discovery of an Isis plot to attack one of its largest cities. A spokesperson for the justice ministry in Berlin said the federal prosecutor was conducting 120 investigations into more than 180 suspects and defendants in connection with the Syrian civil war for their membership or support of a terrorist organisation. Three men have been arrested this week for allegedly plotting an attack in Dusseldorf after being deployed by Isis leaders in Syria. The men were reportedly deployed from the Isis territories in Syria by the group's leaders (AP) A fourth member of the cell confessed to authorities in France, saying they were planning to launch suicide bombings in central Dusseldorf and then shoot has many people as possible, in a similar format to the Paris attacks. Local media reports said the Syrian suspects were detained at accommodation for asylum seekers in North Rhine-Westphalia, Brandenburg and Baden-Wurttemberg, fuelling concerns about the possibility of extremists slipping into the country undetected. Rainer Wendt, head of the German Police Trade Union, cautioned against casting suspicion on more than one million asylum seekers who have arrived in Germany during the refugee crisis. The past year has seen anti-immigration parties enjoy unprecedented success in local elections, thousands of people join anti-refugee marches across the country, arson attacks on migrant accomodation and the emergence of vigilante groups. We know since the attacks of Paris and Brussels that the Islamic State wants to influence the migration debate in Europe and to whip up sentiment against refugees, he told Reuters. This is part of their strategy. We must not fall into their trap. Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Show all 13 1 /13 Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Women protest against sexism outside Cologne Cathedral on 5 January after the assaults Oliver Berg/EPA Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Women protest against sexism in Cologne following the rash of sex attacks on New Year's Eve Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police initially failed to mention the assaults in report the following morning EPA Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police officers patrol in front of the main station of Cologne, Germany AP Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks German far-right supporters demonstrate at Cologne`s train station (Reuters) Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Supporters of anti-immigration right-wing movement Pegida in Cologne, Germany, January 9, 2016. Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police used pepper spray to control supporters of Pegida, Hogesa (Hooligans against Salafists) and other right-wing populist groups as they protested against the New Year's Eve sex attacks on 9 January, 2016 in Cologne, Germany Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police use a water cannon during a protest march by supporters of anti-immigration right-wing movement Pegida in Cologne, Germany, January 9, 2016 Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police use pepper spray against supporters of anti-immigration right-wing movement Pegida, in Cologne, Germany, January 9, 2016. Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Artist Mira Moire protests naked in Cologne against the mass sex attacks on New Year's Eve AP Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks A demonstrator holds a sign in German that reads 'No violence against women' during a demonstration in the wake of the sexual assaults on New Year's Eve, outside the cathedeal in Cologne, Germany, 09 January 2016. EPA Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Counter demonstrators hold up a sign reading "Against sexism, against racism" as they protest against a demonstration of the islamophobic movement PEGIDA at the train station in Cologne, Germany, on January 9, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Demonstration by a womens group on Saturday (AP) AP The federal prosecutors office said three of the suspects journeyed into Europe from Syria via Turkey and Greece the dominant refugee route for those arriving in Germany but a spokesperson said he was unable to confirm their legal status when The Independent asked if they had lodged asylum applications. Recommended Read more Refugee crisis sparks record year for political violence in Germany A spokesperson for the German interior ministry said it was too early to make a fundamental reassessment about the seriousness of the threat but that the national security alert remained high. Johannes Dimroth said there 499 potential Islamist extremists under observation in Germany but did not give further information on their nationalities. The four suspects, Hamza C, Mahood B, Abd Arahman AK and Saleh A remain in custody. 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 Seine has risen to its highest level in decades following several days of torrential rain in Paris and elsewhere in north-east France. The rapidly swelling river has caused the Louvre to close for the first time since the Second World War, with reserve pieces evacuated from the museums cellars. And the risk of widespread flooding in the city is feared, should the water levels keep rising. Flood warnings in Paris as the Seine rises Show all 10 1 /10 Flood warnings in Paris as the Seine rises Flood warnings in Paris as the Seine rises The swelling banks of the river Seine have caused the Orsay Museum to close Getty Images / Xavier Laine Flood warnings in Paris as the Seine rises High waters next to Notre-Dame cathedral Getty Images Flood warnings in Paris as the Seine rises Houseboats moored near the Pont Alexandre III bridge following heavy rainfalls Getty Images Flood warnings in Paris as the Seine rises The rise in water has been twice as fast as the city's planning models predicted, based on statistics from 1910 REUTERS Flood warnings in Paris as the Seine rises Padlocks clipped by lovers in front of the 'Ile de la Cite' flooded by the River Seine in central Paris REUTERS Flood warnings in Paris as the Seine rises A man uses a footbridge as he leaves his houseboat moored near the Eiffel tower REUTERS Flood warnings in Paris as the Seine rises The waters of the Seine River flow out of its banks at the tip of the Ile Saint Louis REUTERS Flood warnings in Paris as the Seine rises People stand on the Pont de l'Alma as they look at the Zouave statue covered by the rising waters from the Seine River after days of rainy weather in Paris REUTERS Flood warnings in Paris as the Seine rises View of the flooded river-side of the River Seine near the Bir-Hakeim bridge in Paris REUTERS Flood warnings in Paris as the Seine rises The Eiffel tower in Paris, France, after days of almost non-stop rain caused flooding in the country REUTERS It could take one or two weeks for it to return to normal, said the Paris town hall, according to Le Figaro. President Francois Hollande said natural disaster status would be applied to large swathes of France if the floods, which have already caused 20,000 people to evacuate their homes, were to worsen. Recommended Read more Paris faces anxious wait as River Seine continues to rise The environment ministry predicted that the Seine could peak at 6.5 metres during Frday night which would be its highest level since 1951. More than 40 different parks and public spaces in Paris have been closed to the public due to the flooding, along with riverside bars and restaurants and a section of the suburban railway. The Musee d'Orsay has also closed to prevent damage to its artworks. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} At least nine migrants have drowned after a boat thought to be carrying hundreds of refugees has capsized in the Mediterranean Sea. Around 340 people were rescued, with nine bodies recovered, but others were feared to remain missing south of the Greek island of Crete. The number of people in distress could be counted in the hundreds, a spokeswoman for the coastguard told the AFP news agency. Refugees and migrants sit on the ground upon their arrival by boat a boat on Crete on May 31 (AFP/Getty Images) People are in the water, boats crossing the area have thrown lifebuoys and are moving to save the migrants. The coast guard said the 80ft vessel, believed to be a fishing boat, was found sinking by a passing ship around 75 nautical miles south of land on Friday. Greece sent two patrol boats, a military plane and three helicopters to the area, while five ships that had been sailing nearby were participating in the rescue operation. It was not immediately clear where the smuggling vessel had launched from, with Turkey, Egypt and Libya among the most likely possibilities. It was believed to be heading for mainland Greece or Italy. The coast guard said 242 survivors were being taken to Italy on a merchant ship, while others were being transported to Egypt, Turkey and Malta. A boat previously intercepted off the coast of Crete on 27 May was carrying 65 refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan, controlled by people smugglers from Ukraine and Egypt. 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. Hundreds of asylum seekers have drowned in successive disasters in the Mediterranean Sea in recent weeks amid concerns that the EU-Turkey deal seeing migrants detained on Greek islands would force desperate migrants to take longer and more treacherous journeys. Recommended Read more More than 100 bodies recovered after refugee boat capsizes The deal and Nato patrols have resulted in a dramatic decrease in the number of people crossing the Aegean Sea, where four boats carrying 164 people were intercepted off the islands of Lesbos and Chios on Thursday. The vast majority of arrivals are now landing in Italy after crossing the Central Mediterranean from North Africa. At least 880 migrants died last week alone and deaths are up more than a third compared to the same period last year, according to figures compiled by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) More than 2,500 migrants have died at sea in attempts to reach Europe this year, while more than 205,000 people have made the journey. 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 }} Voters in Switzerland are preparing to vote on proposals ton introduce a universal basic income in a referendum on Sunday. The initiative's founders suggest each adult should receive 2,500 francs (1,800) a month, with children receiveing 625 francs (450) a month until they reach 18. However, the latest polls show 72 per cent of the public are likely to vote against the proposal in a move encouraged by the Swiss government and nearly all of the country's political parties. Authorities estimate the 25 billion francs needed to cover the amount of payment proposed would require huge spending cuts. 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 Sunday's vote will be to decide whether to support the principle of the new measure, rather than to immediately implement it. Gabriel Barta of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) told The Local it could take up to ten years to debate, finance and implement the measure. Mr Barta said universal basic income (UBI) would remove people from the demanding process of having to prove their lack of income to receive benefits. He said: "These people are not actually being guaranteed a life of dignity in the way the constitution says. "We need a basic income to allow each person to be his or her own entrepreneur, to choose what work he or she does." Switzerland: World's biggest poster unfurled in Geneva supporting basic income However, critics have attacked the initiative as "a Marxist dream". "If you pay people to do nothing, they will do nothing," Charles Wyplosz, economics professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute, told AFP, according to The Local. The idea of basic income is becoming increasingly popular over the world, with pilot schemes under consideration by the government of Finland and Canada. Last month, a poll found two thirds of the British public support a universal basic income. 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 }} An ambulance driver moved a knife closer to a disarmed Palestinian mans body after he was shot dead by an Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) soldier, a court has heard. Investigators presented footage appearing to show the weapon being kicked towards the Abdel Fattah al-Sharif moments after he was shot in the head by Sergeant Elor Azaria at his trial in Jaffa. The knife can be seen several metres away from the corpse, far out of reach, as blood runs down the road following the killing on 24 March. Israeli soldiers attend the body of Abed al-Fatah al-Sharif, who was shot and killed by a soldier while laying wounded on the ground in Hebron (AP) After the weapon, thought to have been used in an attack on an Israeli soldier, is run over by an ambulance the man holding the camera appears to kick it towards Mr al-Sharif. A military police investigator told the court the man responsible was Ofer Ohana, a leader in Hebrons settler community, the Jerusalem Post reported. Also a Magen David Adom ambulance driver, separate footage before the shooting appears to record him shouting the dog is moving, referring to Mr Sharif. Another video shows him standing next to far-right activist Baruch Marzel and shaking hands with Azaria as soldiers remove the body. Breaking the Silence, a group of former IDF soldiers who oppose the occupation of the Palestinian territories, said Mr Ohana was infamous in Hebron and published footage showing him facing off with activists and calling an extremist who killed 29 Palestinians in the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre a saint. Military prosecutors took a statement from Mr Ohana and confiscated his phone after filing a warrant request in court, Haaretz reported. The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Show all 10 1 /10 The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Medics evacuate a wounded man from the scene of an attack in Jerusalem. A Palestinian rammed a vehicle into a bus stop then got out and started stabbing people before he was shot dead AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Israeli ZAKA emergency response members carry the body of an Israeli at the scene of a shooting attack in Jerusalem. A pair of Palestinian men boarded a bus in Jerusalem and began shooting and stabbing passengers, while another assailant rammed a car into a bus station before stabbing bystanders, in near-simultaneous attacks that escalated a month long wave of violence AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Getty Images The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinians throw molotov cocktail during clashes with Israeli troops near Ramallah, West Bank. Recent days have seen a series of stabbing attacks in Israel and the West Bank that have wounded several Israelis AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Women cry during the funeral of Palestinian teenager Ahmad Sharaka, 13, who was shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes at a checkpoint near Ramallah, at the family house in the Palestinian West Bank refugee camp of Jalazoun, Ramallah AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies A wounded Palestinian boy and his father hold hands at a hospital after their house was brought down by an Israeli air strike in Gaza Reuters The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinians look on after a protester is shot by Israelis soldiers during clashes at the Howara checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus EPA The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies A lawyer wearing his official robes kicks a tear gas canister back toward Israeli soldiers during a demonstration by scores of Palestinian lawyers called for by the Palestinian Bar Association in solidarity with protesters at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, near Ramallah, West Bank AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Undercover Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian in Ramallah Reuters The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinian youth burn tyres during clashes with Israeli soldiers close to the Jewish settlement of Bet El, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, after Israel barred Palestinians from Jerusalem's Old City as tensions mounted following attacks that killed two Israelis and wounded a child Azaria denies manslaughter at Jaffa Military Court, saying he killed Mr al-Sharif because he believed he could be wearing an explosive vest. Recommended Read more Palestinian sent death threats after filming soldier shooting man dead The 21-year-old and his friend Ramzi al-Kasrawi had attacked an IDF soldier, who was not seriously injured, during a wave of stabbings in the West Bank and Israel. They were both shot by soldiers, with al-Kasrawi dying instantly, but Mr al-Sharif survived the initial bullet and lay incapacitated in the road. IDF forces, medics and settlers bustled around him seemingly unconcerned until Azaria suddenly shouted stand back and shot him in the head at close range. Imad Abu Shamsiyya, who took the original footage after hearing gunshots at home nearby, said he believed Mr al-Sharif was not a risk. There was no danger and Abdel was on the ground nobody reacted, he told The Independent. Nobody did anything because they were Palestinians. A protest in support of the soldier who was filmed shooting a Palestinian man dead in front of the Israeli Army Justice court in Kiryat Malakhi on March 29, 2016 (AFP/Getty Images) The shooting has generated international condemnation as well as fierce debate in Israel, seeing numerous protests in support of the soldier and human rights groups rally against Palestinian deaths. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, urged soldiers to behave with composure, while his defence minister Moshe Yaalon said a loss of control must not be allowed. Amnesty International was one of countless human rights organisations to demand action, calling any shooting of an incapacitated person a potential war crime, regardless of their previous actions. The incident came amid a wave of violence in Israel and the West Bank that started in October last year, which has seen Palestinians kill 28 Israelis and two Americans and around 200 Palestinians killed by security forces. The IDF has said the majority of those shot dead were carrying out or attempting attacks but opponents have called the killings, including those of children and teenagers, disproportionate. 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 }} Iran is the main state sponsor of terrorism, according to the US State Department's annual survey of worldwide terrorism. The Islamic republic "remained the foremost state sponsor of terrorism in 2015, providing a range of support, including financial, training, and equipment, to groups around the world," the report said. It went on to highlight the group's support for Lebanon's Hezbollah, Palestinian groups such as Hamas and the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. 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 reaching an agreement on its nuclear programme and the partial end of sanctions in 2015, the report says Iran has continued to use the Quds Force of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to implement its foreign policy goals. Speaking after the report's release, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Tehran had no intention of cooperating on regional issues with its main enemies the United States and "evil" Britain. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader (EPA) In a speech broadcast live on state TV, Ayatollah Khamenei accused Washington of not being committed to the nuclear deal reached between Iran and six major powers. "America has continued its enmity towards Iran since [the 1979 Islamic] revolution... It is a huge mistake to trust evil Britain and the Great Satan [the United States]," the Ayatollah said. "We will not cooperate with America over the regional crisis," he said, adding: "Their aims in the region are 180 degrees opposed to Iran's." US and GCC agree on bid to block Iran arms smuggling The terror report also included Syria and Sudan as state sponsors of terrorism. Cuba was removed from the list last year in an effort to restore diplomatic ties between the two countries. The report also labelled Isis, also known as Isil, "the greatest threat globally". Although the group has lost territory in Iraq and Syria, its fighters have carried out deadly attacks in France, Turkey and Lebanon. Justin Siberell, the department's acting coordinator for counterterrorism, told reporters: "The international community made important progress in degrading terrorist safe havens in particular, a sizeable reduction in the amount of territory held by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or Isil, in Iraq and Syria, as well as the finances and foreign terrorist fighters available to it. "At the same time, however, instability in key regions of the world, along with weak or nonexistent governance, sectarian conflict, and porous borders continue to provide terrorist groups like Isil the opportunity to extend their reach, terrorise civilians, and attract and mobilise new recruits." Undated propaganda video capture shows ISIS fighters riding through a town in Anbar Province, Iraq (Rex Features) However, the report noted a 13 per cent decline in the number of terrorist attacks around the world, the first decrease since 2012. There were 11,774 attacks in 2015, resulting in 28,328 deaths, compared with 13,463 attacks in 2014 which killed 32,727 people, according to statistics compiled by the University of Maryland. 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 }} An ultra-orthodox Jewish leader has reportedly banned girls aged five and older in some areas of Israel from riding bicycles - claiming it is immodest. The rabbi of the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Nahloat distributed the stringent decree to his followers in synagogues across the area. He had said young girls riding bicycles could cause serious damage to their modesty and that bicycle seats caused young girls to sit in a way men found provocative, according to the Arutz Sheva 7 website. The ruling said: We inform parents that they are obligated to forbid their daughters from age five and up from acting in this illegitimate way. Those affected by the ruling are members of the ultra-orthodox Haredi branch of Judaism. In December ultra-orthodox rabbis requested women in Israeli city Bnei Brak refrain from studying in higher education, according to Yeshida World News website. Israeli women beat lonely path on campaign trail They claimed institutions which teach secular subjects presented a real danger, and that girls and women should not study. Haredi leaders have also attempted to effectively ban the internet from their communities, even declaring smartphones non-kosher. The countries with anti-women laws Show all 5 1 /5 The countries with anti-women laws The countries with anti-women laws The countries with anti-women laws The countries with anti-women laws The countries with anti-women laws The countries with anti-women laws However, studies suggest this interdict has had little effect, with ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel using the internet just as much as anyone else, according to the 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 }} The United Nations has blacklisted the Saudi-Arabia led coalition for killing and maiming thousands of children in Yemen. Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary-General, said intensive bombardment had taken a devastating toll on the civilian population as a civil war continues to rage between the Yemeni government, Houthi rebels, al-Qaeda and Isis. Saudi Arabia launched its intervention in support of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi against the Iran-backed Houthis and their allies, who control the capital Sanaa and swathes of territory, in March last year. UN: Six children are killed in Yemen every day It has since gained support from Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain for the air campaign. In his annual report on children in armed conflict, Mr Ban said the UN had recorded a six-fold increase in the number of children killed and maimed in 2015 compared to the previous year. Out of almost 2,000 child casualties and fatalities in 2014, 60 per cent - 510 deaths and 667 injuries were attributed to the Saudi-led coalition, a fifth to Houthis and others to ground fighting and extremist attacks. Grave violations against children increased dramatically as a result of the escalating conflict, Mr Ban said. In Yemen, owing to the very large number of violations attributed to the two parties, the Houthis/Ansar Allah and the Saudi Arabia-led coalition are listed for killing and maiming and attacks on schools and hospitals. MPs have raised urgent concerns about continuing British arms sales to Saudi Arabia during the conflict, while the Ministry of Defence is urgently investigating evidence of the coalition's use of British-made cluster bombs. Amnesty International activists protesting against UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia, outside Parliament earlier this year (Getty) The British Government says it supports the coalitions military intervention to deter aggression by the Houthisallow for the return of the legitimate Yemeni Government but would raise concerns over violations of international law with Saudi Arabia. The UN recorded an increase in the recruitment of child soldiers, mostly by Houthis, more than 100 attacks on schools and hospitals, with 48 per cent attributed to the Saudi-led coalition, and the denial of humanitarian assistance as hundreds of thousands of children remain at risk of starvation. The Houthis, Hadi forces and pro-government militia have been on the UN blacklist for several years and are considered "persistent perpetrators", as is al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but the Saudi Arabia-led coalition was included for the first time. Leila Zerrougui, the UN Special Representative for children and armed conflict, said air campaigns were worsening some wars. In several situations of conflict, aerial operations contributed to creating complex environments in which large numbers of children were killed and maimed, she said. State-allied armed groups and militia have also increasingly been used to fight in support of Government forces, in some cases recruiting and using children. Fighters loyal to Yemen's President Hadi in Aden in 2016 (Getty Images) The UN list includes groups that engage in the recruitment and use of children, sexual violence against children, the killing and maiming of children, attacks on schools and/or hospitals and attacks or threats of attacks against protected personnel, and the abduction of children. Recommended Read more Starving child shows terrible consequences of Yemen war Along with warring parties in Yemen, the UN inserted new listings for armed groups in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Iraq, Mali, Burma, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Colombia, Nigeria and the Philippines. Government forces in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Myanmar, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria were also named on the blacklist. Situations of concern were also recorded in India, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan and Thailand. A sports hall destroyed by Saudi-led air strikes in Sanaa (Getty) Mr Ban urged the UNs 193 member states to ensure engagement in hostilities and responses to threats to peace and security comply with international law, protecting civilians and children. It is unacceptable that the failure to do so has resulted in numerous violations of children's rights, he said. Kirsty McNeill, Director of Advocacy and Campaigns at Save the Children, said it was the first time an international military coalition had been put on the list of shame. The UK government must re-evaluate its diplomatic and military support to the Saudi Arabia led-coalition, she added. The UK must now urgently suspend arms exports to Saudi Arabia while they risk being used in Yemen in violation of international law and throw its weight behind calls by the UNHCR, the Commons International Development Committee and Save the Children to back an international, impartial investigation into alleged violations by all sides. Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond in Riyadh last October (Getty Images) The damning report followed the Foreign Secretarys trip to Saudi Arabia on Sunday, where he had promised to put Yemen high on the agenda. Speaking ahead of the visit, Mr Hammond said Britain co-operated with Gulf states on shared threats, adding: Allowing the (Yemen) state to collapse is simply not an option. Britain is continuing to work together with all parties to support a comprehensive political solution to the conflict. The Foreign Office has issued no information on the results of his trip but in an interview with Sky News Arabia, Mr Hammond said he had met the UN Special Envoy for Yemen to discuss the peace process. More than a month of talks between enemy factions in Kuwait have repeatedly faltered amid continued fighting and bombardment. A spokesperson for the Foreign Office said: The UK supports the Saudi Arabian-led coalitions military intervention, which came at the request of the legitimate President Hadi, to deter aggression by the Houthis and forces loyal to the former president Saleh, and allow for the return of the legitimate Yemeni Government. We are aware of reports of alleged violations of International Humanitarian Law by actors in the conflict and take these very seriously. We regularly raise the importance of compliance with IHL with the Saudi Arabian Government and other members of the military coalition. 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 }} Theresa May and the Home Office are to become the centre of a full inquiry for the way the department treated international students in the UK in the wake of the TOEIC exam cheating scandal. The Home Affairs Committee - which oversees Home Office policy and expenditure - published a damning report on Friday which says the departments actions of removing tens of thousands of students from the country appear to have been a knee-jerk reaction to a TV documentary. The Committee highlights in the report: It is extraordinary the Home Office has carried out no independent investigation itself of the allegations of fraud in relation to English language testing and, instead, has relied on evidence from ETS, one of its approved providers and a party under criminal investigation. The scandal came to light in February 2014 after BBCs Panorama uncovered a practice of fraudulent activity at two London language centres run by Educational Testing Service (ETS) - one of the worlds largest language examiners and a Home Office-approved test provider for three years. 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 Shortly after, Mrs May had come under fire for using the incidents at the two schools to incriminate all overseas students who sat the test in the UK, and for relying too heavily on the information in the programme and from ETS. To date, the Committee says more than 28,000 refusal and removal decisions have been made, and that over 4,600 people have been removed from the UK. The Indian Workers Association has estimated 70 per cent of those affected are of Indian nationality. Around 100 privately-operated further education colleges have also had their licences suspended or revoked. Oliver Robbins, Second Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, told the Committee the ETS case shows widespread, deep, and very troublesome deception of the immigration rules. However, he added: The Home Office is convinced its response has been both immediate and proportionate to the risks highlighted. The Committee, though, says a recent judgement of the Upper Tribunal on the operation of the testing system raises serious questions about the conduct of the Home Office. The report continues: The Home Office appears to have accepted at face value, and continues to accept, claims of widespread fraud from ETS - a company that was part of the problem, had already been discredited, and is subject to criminal investigation. This is deeply troubling, particularly given an expert witness has raised serious questions over the reliability and accuracy of ETSs analysis and first did so well over a year ago. On the whole, the Committee has described how critics of the process argue the response of the Home Office has been overly-aggressive, adding: Some students [have been] detained during dawn raids and deported without the opportunity to sort out their belongings. In many cases, it has been based on insufficient evidence of wrongdoing, leading to many innocent people being caught up by the Departments sweeping action. Those affected have not been granted the opportunity to review and contest the evidence against them. Announcing plans to undertake a full inquiry into the matter, the Home Office has been ordered to set out the process for out-of-country appeals, the steps which will be taken to ensure a fair hearing, and whether this will include appellants being given access to the evidence against them. Recommended Read more The value of international students goes far beyond fees The Committee is also insisting ETS give evidence, something they have failed to do in court. The Home Office has said it intends to fully co-operate with the inquiry, including providing full responses to the issues which have been identified, and expert evidence on the reliability and accuracy of ETSs analysis. The National Union of Students (NUS) has welcomed the Committees demands, having made similar ones in April, and said it was pleased to see a positive step in ensuring justice for the students affected. Mostafa Rajaai, NUS international students officer, said: This whole debacle is indicative of the Home Offices wider aggressive approach to international students and other migrants in the UK. Im pleased the Committee is taking the treatment of international students seriously. Clearly, the Home Office does not. International students contribute billions of pounds to British society, enable home students to benefit from diverse classrooms, and bring wider cultural benefits to this country. It is only right they are treated with fairness and respect while studying here. 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 I've just returned from a three-month holiday in Indochina. I flew with the Indian airline Jet Airways from Heathrow to Saigon via Mumbai. While away I got an email from the agent saying Jet Airways had cancelled my return flight, and was offering me a flight one day either side of my original flight or a refund of the return part of my ticket. As the other flights were at much less convenient times and not the day I wanted to return I asked how much the refund would be? I was told it would be 58, obviously not enough to buy a new ticket, so I reluctantly opted for the least-rubbish flight one day before my original flight. I've written to the airline, which has refused to give me any compensation for the inconvenience they caused. Is there anything I can do? Edward Wallis A The agent should have fought your corner, for example asking Jet Airways to re-book on a rival airline so you could get back when you were supposed to. Were Jet Airways an EU airline, it would have been obliged to do this. As things stand, if you can demonstrate actual financial loss - as opposed to loss of enjoyment - you could conceivably claim under the Montreal Convention. But I fear that could be a wasted battle. Im afraid all I can suggest is that you vow to buy and fly with different companies in future. Sorry I cant be more optimistic. Every day, our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles a readers question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder 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 }} One hundred years ago, on 5 June 1916, the British field marshall, Lord Kitchener, drowned off Orkneys Scapa Flow, near Marwick Head. His ship, HMS Hampshire, had been struck by a German U-boat mine; of the 655 crewmen, only 12 survived. A superstar of the Victorian age, Kitchener is perhaps best known for the iconic Your Country Needs YOU recruitment poster that featured his capped, moustached face and pointing finger. Three years after his death, in the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles, an entire German fleet was scuttled in Scapa Flow. Most of the 74 ships were salvaged, but a handful remain intact about 100 feet below the surface. Ive signed up for a three-day dry suit wreck diving course with Scapa Scuba, culminating in dives to two 500-foot German cruisers: SMS Coln and SMS Karlsruhe. Scapa Flow is the best wreck diving site in Europe. But before I can visit this vast, underwater museum, I must first learn how to dive in a dry suit. One of the Churchill Barriers (Edmund Vallance) My training begins in the shallow waters of the Churchill Barriers, a collection of sunken block ships intended to protect Orkneys harbour from attack. Im joined by two fellow dry suit rookies, and two dive instructors: Jack and Rob. In Orkney, diving in a wet suit is a short cut to hyperthermia, so we pull on sweatshirts, leggings, and woolen socks, before struggling into our thick, neoprene suits. Securing weight belts, inflatable vests, and air tanks, we waddle towards the shore like a gang of sub aqua Michelin men. My dry suit takes some getting used to. Slipping through the floating seaweed like a booze-addled astronaut, Im finding it hard to control my descent into the green, primordial soup. Primordial gazpacho might be more accurate, in fact this soup is served at a chilly 9C. Getting used to the dry suits (Edmund Vallance) The rain falls hard from a steely sky as I step out onto the beach. Releasing my weight belt, I stagger towards the van, exhausted to the point of despair. I hadnt banked on all this hard work; its a far cry from my last wet suit dive in the Bahamas. The second days training goes more smoothly. The sky is clear and perfectly blue. On the drive to the barriers, I see Neolithic standing stones by the side of the road, and seals sunning themselves by a glassy lagoon. The lack of horizontal rain has buoyed my mood, and the first dive feels more controlled than any of yesterdays attempts. We swim 20 metres from the beach to The Empire Seaman, a 2,000-ton steamer standing in eight meters of water. The slanting sun lights up her hull with an eerie, amber glow. On our way back to the dive shop, Jack fills us in on some local history. Winston Churchill had ordered the barriers to be built in 1939, after HMS Royal Oak was torpedoed by a German U-boat while anchored at Scapa Flow. 833 seamen died that night, many of them boys of 16 or 17 years old. The next day, before setting out to dive the German cruisers, I make the mistake of searching Scapa Flow diving fatalities online. I wish I hadnt; they happen roughly once a year. Swallowing my fear as best I can, I suit up and step off the side of the fishing boat, following Jack down the anchor line towards SMS Coln. Our descent is quick, and at 27 metres the steel hull is outlined through the greyish gloom. Lying on its side like a monstrous whale, the wrecks port side is matted with anemones and dead mans fingers (not literally, Im relieved to say). A crab glares at me from the conning tower as I squint through the port holes into what was once the officers accommodation. After a break for lunch (sweet tea and soggy sandwiches have never tasted so good) we jump into the water again, and descend towards SMS Karlsruhe. The wreck is shallower, with less current, and better visibility. Prickly starfish cling to the flanks, and solemn-looking groupers hover above us in the filtering sunlight. The wreck of the SMS Karlsruhe (Kieran Hatton) (KIERAN HATTON) SMS Karlsruhe is 155 meters long: floating over her rusting hull feels like peering over the side of a skyscraper. As I follow Jack through an overarching girder, I come to a shuddering halt, and find that I am unable to move. My suit has snagged on a jagged piece of steel, and I float like a frozen flounder as Jack slowly and calmly disentangles me from the wreckage. I am oddly unruffled for the remainder of the dive. It is only when I get to the surface that I feel a surge of adrenalin and Im not afraid to admit it an icy finger of terror at the back of my throat. Floating 30 metres above the gargantuan cruiser, I think of the men who died on HMS Hampshire, on HMS Royal Oak, and on the German ships at The Battle of Jutland, in which 8,645 British and German troops perished in a single day. I picture them swallowing seawater; sinking in the murk and the mud; clawing at the currents in silent terror. For what? For the King? For the Kaiser? The battle was inconclusive. Neither side won. What a terrible waste of human life, it seems to me. The following morning, I visit the summer exhibition at The Stromness Museum: The loss of HMS Hampshire and the death of Lord Kitchener. A glass case contains a naval badge crew members sent home to their wives and girlfriends; a vinyl disc entitled Piano Playtime No.1; and the framed, faded photograph of a wide-eyed child: Frank Potter, Boy 1st Class, Age 17, lost at sea on HMS Hampshire, June 5th, 1916. Kitchener Memorial (Edmund Vallance) The Kitchener Memorial Tower the site of the sinking of HMS Hampshire is my last port of call. From this high vantage point, I can see the Norse stronghold, Brough of Bursay, to the north, and the ghostly outline of the Scottish mainland to the south. The cliffs at Marwick Head plunge directly into the water. Its obvious why so few survived. Up here the air is clean and cold like gulps of oxygen from a scuba tank and the melancholy beauty of the landscape is undeniable. Looking across at Kitcheners stone tower, I feel a sudden rush of joy. I am alive, after all: here on the pinnacle of an ancient island, far above the thundering sea. Travel essentials Getting there The writer travelled with easyjet (0843 104 5000; easyjet.com), which flies from Gatwick to Edinburgh from 127 return. Kirkwall is served from Edinburgh by Flybe (0871 700 2000; flybe.com). Return flights start at 230. Staying there Edmund Vallance stayed at The Ferry Inn in Stromness (01856 850280; ferryinn.com). Double rooms start at 95 including breakfast. Diving there Scapa Scuba (01856 851218; scapascuba.co.uk) offers wreck-diving packages for divers of all levels. The writer completed a one-day PADI dry suit course (185); one day of guided shore dives at Churchill barriers (140); and one day of wreck dives in Scapa Flow (160). Prices include equipment hire, PADI Dry suit manual, PADI certification, transport, boat fees and guide. PADI Advanced Open Water or equivalent is required before wreck-diving in Scapa Flow. For dives over 30 metres, divers must first attain their PADI Deep Water certificate. More information visitorkney.com 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 EU referendum is of huge importance for the future of the Commonwealth, and Commonwealth citizens resident in the UK can vote even if they are not UK nationals. So have the two sides targeted Commonwealth voters effectively? I am an Australian-born UK citizen who has lived and worked in a variety of Commonwealth countries. including the UK, Pakistan and even Rwanda a non-colony Commonwealth nation. I like to think I have a good handle on Commonwealth thinking. The Brexit arguments fall into three broad categories: one emotional, one regarding trade and prosperity, and one relating to the Commonwealths future. That Britain should rule Britain for the British people is a valid argument. Commonwealth countries understand the emotional desire to rule ones own land. After all, that is why India left the Empire, and Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Kenya and so on. But one must be aware of the cost and risks of such a departure. The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit Show all 7 1 /7 The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 22 May 2015 In his regular column in The Express Nigel Farage utilised the concerns over Putin and the EU to deliver a tongue in cheek conclusion. With friends like these, who needs enemies? PA The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 13 November 2015 UKIP MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire Mike Hookem, was one of several political figures who took no time to harness the toxic atmosphere just moments after Paris attacks to push an agenda. Cameron says were safer in the EU. Well Im in the centre of the EU and it doesnt feel very safe. Getty Images The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 19 April 2016 In an article written for The Guardian, Michael Gove attempts to bolster his argument with a highly charged metaphor in which he likens UK remaining in the EU to a hostage situation. Were voting to be hostages locked in the back of the car and driven headlong towards deeper EU integration. Rex The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 26 April 2016 In a move that is hard to decipher, let alone understand, Mike Hookem stuck it to Obama re-tweeting a UKIP advertisement that utilises a quote from the film: Love Actually to dishonour the US stance on the EU. A friend who bullies us is no longer a friend The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 10 May 2016 During a speech in London former work and pensions secretary Ian Duncan Smith said that EU migration would cause an increasing divide between people who benefit from immigration and people who couldnt not find work because of uncontrolled migration. The European Union is a force for social injustice which backs the haves rather than the have-nots. EPA The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 15 May 2016 Cartoon character Boris Johnson made the news again over controversial comments that the EU had the same goal as Hitler in trying to create a political super state. Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods. PA The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 16 May 2016 During a tour of the womens clothing manufacturer David Nieper, Boris had ample time to cook up a new metaphor, arguably eclipsing Goves in which he compares the EU to badly designed undergarments. So I just say to all those who prophecy doom and gloom for the British Business, I say their pants are on fire. Lets say knickers to the pessimists, knickers to all those who talk Britain down. Getty Images The Brexit campaign argues that if the UK leaves Europe it will be able to negotiate trade treaties with the EU on the same conditions as currently exist, and will negotiate better and faster trade treaties with non-EU countries. You have Days Hours Minutes Seconds left to register The French and the Germans would like the EU to stick together. If there is no visible and significant cost to departure, the whole EU will be at risk. Can Germany and France afford to send a signal to the rest of Europe that you can leave the club and still get the benefits? How will the UK negotiate a deal with this mindset? Some in the Brexit campaign say Britain can replace its junior role in Europe with its leadership role in the Commonwealth. The problem with that argument is that there is no vacant leadership position to fill. While Britain is a member of the Commonwealth, she no longer leads the Commonwealth and many post-colonial countries would not welcome anything other than the continuation of equal partnership. Moreover, Britains role in the Commonwealth is now in part linked to her membership of the EU; Britain is a great entry point for trade with the entire continent. Britain speaks the same language as the Commonwealth, has a similar legal system and culture, but it also acts as the front door to Europe. Brexit would lead to Scottish independence vote 'within two years', Alex Salmond warns If Britain leaves the EU, she is no longer that front door. She is outside of Europe, like some Commonwealth countries, and even behind Australia, Canada and New Zealand with their soon-to-be EU trade deals. So where is the new front door? The Brexit campaign may say there is no risk of Commonwealth businesses fleeing to the continent as, language and legal differences in Frankfurt and Paris will keep Commonwealth businesses in London. But, in this, Brexiteers ignore a bigger threat than Paris or Frankfurt Dublin. The Irish speak English, have a similar legal system and cultural roots throughout the Commonwealth, and have a government keen to encourage business to shift there. Could Dublin provide post exit risk for London, larger than continental countries? Or Scotland, if they vote to leave post-EU Britain and re-join Europe of their own accord? There is an alternative to exit: leadership in Europe. Rather than complain that Britain is 'dictated to' by Europe, why not have a second innings at leading? Make Europe a test match, not a game of 20-20. Have one last go at shaping Europe in the way Britain would like, rather than heading off, retired and hurt. Remaining is reversible; exiting is not. Fear not, though. Brexit Britain would find one last place to rub shoulders with her Commonwealth cousins the back of the non-EU queue at European airports, while our Scottish and Irish friends breeze through in the fast queue to grab their bags at the carousel. We can still meet them at the hotel late, after their business deals are done. Is the risk worth it? Andrew MacLeod is a visiting professor in the Policy Institute at Kings College London 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 }} Morning all. This week started with the unspeakably grim story about Liam Fee, the two-year old who died of a ruptured heart in 2014. He was abused by his mother and civil partner to such a degree that he had more than 30 injuries, including a fractured upper arm and thigh, which were inflicted on him over months and months of depravity. They were charged with murder on Tuesday. The story naturally raised comparisons with the scandal of Baby P, Peter Connelly, the 17-month old who died in London in 2007 after similarly vile abuse. Then as now, the instinctive response of many people in my profession was: Why was this allowed to happen?. And from that question it is a very short journey to the condemnation of social services for failing to intervene. Ive recently become a father. My son was two months old yesterday. Parenthood adds a new dimension to the revulsion and horror such stories bring. But I couldnt help feeling an older concern this week, at the swiftness with which we condemn social workers for not doing more. Social workers have the hardest jobs of any public servants, or professionals, in Britain today. Caught between the worlds of criminal prosecution, education, and local administration, they do emotionally exhausting and usually thankless work, inviting public opprobrium whenever an awful case hits the news but getting virtually no public plaudits for all the remarkable work they do saving and improving lives. The desperate life and awful death of Liam Fee may strike some people as a tale of our times, and others as an indication of why social services arent doing a good enough job. The former may have some merit, but the latter doesnt; and the sooner we stop blaming social workers for the depravity visited on some children in the confines of their appalling homes, the sooner well actually be able to help these kids in a meaningful manner. The other subject dominating the news is, of course, the EU referendum. Being The Independent, were trying to cover it in a grown up way with our daily series The Big EU Question. Today our man in Paris, John Lichfield, looks at what release from EU laws would mean for Britain. My sense is that while the result is too close to call, there is a growing sense of doom and desperation in camp Cameron. The Prime Minister faces a huge challenge to his authority even if he wins. And its quite possible that even if denied victory in the referendum, Ukip and Nigel Farage will enjoy a surge in support. After all, losing the referendum on Scottish independence was the second best thing that ever happened to that party, who are now rampant in Westminster. Theres a clear lesson in all this, which is that referendums tend not to solve the problems they were intended to neutralise, and instead create new problems altogether. Finally, today sees the return of one of the most popular features from the Saturday magazine in the old days of print: Get the Picture. Im useless at these quizzes, but enjoy failing and then failing better at them. You can have a go yourself in our magazine section. I hope you enjoy that, and the rest of todays edition. Happy Saturday. 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 }} We are gripped by the politics of fear. The scaremongering began in January when a US academic reckoned the current wave of immigration would lead to social problems if men outnumbered women and upset the normal balance between the sexes in Europe. Official statistics show that two thirds of migrants registered in Greece and Italy in 2015 were male, one fifth were under 18, and half had travelled alone. Of the young, 90 per cent were boys, and the images of boat-people we see on the news each day show men vastly outnumbering women and babies. Dr Valerie Hudson, of the University of Texas, asserted that crime increases and rape and sexual harassment are more common in places where men outnumber women. She raised concerns for Sweden, which has accepted more immigrants per capita of the population than any other European country there are now 123 boys to every 100 girls aged 17. Migrants return to Turkey Certainly, some migrants find it hard to adapt to western culture. On New Years Eve in Cologne, a group of male immigrants were accused of sexually assaulting women, and 100 complaints were made to the police. The dubious thesis that single men arriving in unfamiliar environments will lead to women feeling vulnerable and at risk on their own streets is just one of many current fearful scenarios. Whats the reality? By last January, Kent County Council had seen a 30 per cent rise in the number of unaccompanied migrants (mostly boys) claiming asylum. There are now more than 1,500 in care a financial burden, but hardly a number likely to cause social unrest. But facts like these dont stop the Brexiteers from unrolling a new doom-laden scenario every day. Those who want us to stay in Europe do exactly the same, citing economic disaster. No wonder voters stumble around in a fog. I know one thing: fear never brought out the best in any society. I write this in Kent, looking onto a windy, muddy shore, empty in the unseasonal weather. Out in the distance, a lone wind-surfer battles the waves. Or maybe hes a refugee, seeking a safe landing spot? Its ironic that a boat-load of Albanians were discovered off Dymchurch last week, because the coast of Kent has been a prime landing spot for smuggled goods, from people to booze to fags to drugs, ever since Dickens days. Ive walked miles in his footsteps, from the bleak muddy foreshore of Egypt Bay facing Canvey Island, around the River Swale, past Reculver and revitalised Margate, to Broadstairs, Ramsgate and Deal. En route, there are plenty of abandoned skiffs and rotting dinghies; the other day I spotted an abandoned caravan floating on a raft near Conyer. Kent has long been the destination for thousands of perfectly legal EEA (European Economic Area) migrants. Without them, our fruit and vegetable farms would go bust. Polytunnels filled with strawberries would rot and asparagus would sit in the ground. Bagged salads, exotic leaves and herbs all come from Kent packed using EU labourers, for a wage local workers shun. Every day, cheery groups of migrant workers walk past my window en route to the supermarkets and pubs in Whitstable. They seek bargains in Tesco, arriving in minibuses from the mobile homes and campsites where they live for months in all weathers. 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe Show all 21 1 /21 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe Portugal drinks more wine than France Tindo - Fotolia 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe Young Italians, by some distance, are the most likely to live at home with their parents 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe Britain is on course to overtake Germany as Europes most populated country 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe Greek workers work the longest hours in the EU 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe Estonia has, per capita, more drug-related deaths than anyone else 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe The fastest download speeds are to be found in Romania 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe Slovenia, Malta and Poland have the smallest gender pay gaps 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe France hates its leader more than other European countries 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe Eastern and Western Europe are very divided on the issue of gay marriage 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe Germany has the most millionaires 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe Everyone likes Christmas, apart from France 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe Germany accepts by far the most asylum applications 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe The UK and France have some of the most positive views of Muslim people 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe Europe's largest Muslim population is in Germany 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe Danes are the most trusting Europeans, and Cypriots the least 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe Finland has the worst economy in the EU 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe Italy has cut back its military spending more than any other major European Nato member 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe Everyone is sad about the refugee crisis 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe People in Spain are also the most likely to live in flats (Brits are most likely to live in houses) 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe Spain is the most likely to feel neighbourly 21 maps and charts which will challenge perceptions of Europe Luxembourg is home to the highest proportion of foreign nationals With the EU vote looming, Kent has been targeted by the Brexiteers, and locals are now in full paranoia mode. A group of 17 African asylum seekers were found in a lorry park on an industrial estate in Ashford this week, and there are reports of drivers discovering stowaways in car boots on the M20 and the A2. The notion that we can hold back the unprecedented wave of economic migrants and asylum seekers with a points-based immigration system, barbed wire or a few patrol boats is simplistic. The boat that pitched up in Dymchurch to pick up the 19 Albanians, when their original vessel started to sink, was bought for just 3,000 on eBay, and there are plenty of people who will pick up desperate migrants and charge them 8,000 each for the trip. The police disbanded its dedicated marine unit in 2014, and we currently have just three Border force vessels patrolling 7,700 miles of British coastline. The English Channel is the busiest shipping route in the world, and crossing in a small craft is hazardous. But the route is short, compared to 190 miles from Africa to Italy. As the summer progresses, people living near the Kent, Essex and Sussex coast can expect to see more abandoned boats with discarded lifejackets on board. The only way to control immigration is by combining forces with other countries within the EU and deciding on a common strategy. Going it alone is utterly doomed. 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 }} One thing we've learned from the previous weeks examples of stunning, top class parenting, both in Cincinnati and the bear-infested Hokkaido region of Japan, is that several people who are able to reproduce really should use a condom. At this point, modern parlance requires me to add the commonplace flimsy get-out mantra, And I dont like to judge though in my case this is nothing but a bare-faced lie. Petty mistakes I shrug off in an Oh life! manner, but just say youre the type of odious simpleton who cant have a nice day out at a zoo without one of the gorillas being assassinated a tale which becomes more Roald Dahls The Twits with each telling or a family jaunt without 200 earnest rake-wielding locals searching for your childs bear drool-festooned carcass. Pull up a chair, I will judge in amounts bounteous enough for everyone. The fact that these two news stories have danced around the top of the internet news tidbit section on a worldwide scale for seven days now proves to me that Im not alone. Cincinnati Zoo Gorilla death: 911 call from parents released Clearly, I have greater fire in the judgmental belly as I am a non-parent. A child-free woman. It makes me archly level-headed about children. So do the 56 solid hours sleep I have each week, which grants me squirrellish clarity of thought. Im child-free because I was always fully aware that kids have the potential to be such snot-encrusted, stone-throwing little shits. And that one day a red haze could descend leading me to be number two, after Taylor Swifts love life, in the global click-news agenda. And like many child-free people I adore animals, including gorillas and bears. If Yamato Tanooka had fallen into the clutches of a bear it would have been permissible, I suppose, to blast the bears head off too for acting precisely like a bear in a notorious bear-infested region. This makes me sort of judgmental about where people like Yamato Tanookas parents take day trips. But let me enjoy my moment of wild bosom-shifting and eye-rolling. There are seldom few plaudits for people who choose not to have babies, and by default can visit National Trust houses without a SWAT team needing to take out the peacocks, or anyone needing to strangle a particularly lively rabbit. Because there are no Clintons cards moments for people like us. No touchy-feely day with iced cakes, breakfast in bed and an accompanying cloying social media avalanche. I have been toying with the idea of starting a Happy Child-Free Top Tax Bracket Day specifically for people like myself who give fist over fist of cash to the tax-man to pay for schools, child support and accident and emergency services clogged up by a cacophony of tiny twerps drinking Toilet Duck and pushing Crayola Twistable into the darkest crevices of their ear canals three or four times a week. Missing Japanese boy found My new feast day for the child-free will be a chance for people who know which end of a condom is which and other folk who are aware that the morning-after pill works for 72 hours to gather together, in restaurants with non-wipeable menus, and talk judgmentally about things like the Cincinnati gorilla homicide and why it would have been tragic, but not exactly the end of the world, if the gorilla had lived another day. I must remind you that poor minding-his-own-damn-business Harambe was shot just a fortnight after two 20-year-old male and female lions at a Chilean zoo were blasted to death after a suicidal soul leaped into the cage, aiming to offer himself up as a giant Whiskas Kibble. Instead of honoring the mans wishes namely, to die in the same manner as one of those decapitated voles Im left frequently as gifts behind the sofa by my tabby the zoo-keepers shot them dead. When a toddler fell into a zoo enclosure 20 years ago, he was saved by a gorilla Im sure Im not meant to be judgmental about this either, as the man patently had mental health issues, but if weve reached the nadir endgames era of mankinds self-importance which says that the second human life enters a captive wild animals territory and faces danger, then the ethical thing is to blast the beasts head off, well then it is time to give up on zoos. Close them all. They are untenable and unworkable. We humans beings are clearly too important, too precious and far too sacred as entities to ever be culpable or even fleetingly responsible for our actions. Women like Michelle Gregg, the mother of the boy who fell into Harambes cage, shouldnt even be permitted to look at pictures of wild animals on Google Images lest it encourage them to go within 100 miles of an animal park causing carnage humans like her will never be classed as "responsible for". But she was responsible. On behalf of Harambe and all of you too afraid to look bad Im more than happy to judge. 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 }} Last night the Prime Minister faced his first television debate on the EU referendum and met with some furious opposition. While he appeared composed throughout, there were times Cameron seemed to be feeling the heat - for example, when he called the interviewer glib on several occasions after being accused of a classic Cameron fear campaign. On the back of polls that make for uncomfortable reading for Remain campaigners, the Prime Minister needed to recapture the debate last night. Unfortunately, he didnt. Cameron was strong in replying to the initial questions but Skys political editor Faisal Islam did a brilliant job in holding him to task. David Cameron has to defend Mayoral Election scaremongering It was a furious audience who stole the night. Audience members broke ranks and refused to follow the agreed rota of questioning; many even refused to wait for a microphone to berate the Prime Minister. An English Literature student lashed out at Cameron and told him, I know waffling when I see it as he stalled over questions about Turkeys potential EU membership and its record on human rights. Other members of the audience furiously shook their heads and jeered when Cameron repeatedly claimed there would be no risk in staying in the union. Watching the programme last night, I was forced to ask myself this question: do people just hate David Cameron too much? Its hard to believe that this man won a general election a year ago with overwhelming support from the public and his own party. During this referendum, there has been an outcry of revulsion, as well as shocking claims from his own party members that they want to stab him in the front so [they] can see the expression on his face. Once an easy throwaway line to win a general election, Cameron is now facing the reality of the EU referendum and it seems his ambition to be Prime Minister could end up his downfall. The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit Show all 7 1 /7 The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 22 May 2015 In his regular column in The Express Nigel Farage utilised the concerns over Putin and the EU to deliver a tongue in cheek conclusion. With friends like these, who needs enemies? PA The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 13 November 2015 UKIP MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire Mike Hookem, was one of several political figures who took no time to harness the toxic atmosphere just moments after Paris attacks to push an agenda. Cameron says were safer in the EU. Well Im in the centre of the EU and it doesnt feel very safe. Getty Images The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 19 April 2016 In an article written for The Guardian, Michael Gove attempts to bolster his argument with a highly charged metaphor in which he likens UK remaining in the EU to a hostage situation. Were voting to be hostages locked in the back of the car and driven headlong towards deeper EU integration. Rex The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 26 April 2016 In a move that is hard to decipher, let alone understand, Mike Hookem stuck it to Obama re-tweeting a UKIP advertisement that utilises a quote from the film: Love Actually to dishonour the US stance on the EU. A friend who bullies us is no longer a friend The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 10 May 2016 During a speech in London former work and pensions secretary Ian Duncan Smith said that EU migration would cause an increasing divide between people who benefit from immigration and people who couldnt not find work because of uncontrolled migration. The European Union is a force for social injustice which backs the haves rather than the have-nots. EPA The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 15 May 2016 Cartoon character Boris Johnson made the news again over controversial comments that the EU had the same goal as Hitler in trying to create a political super state. Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods. PA The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 16 May 2016 During a tour of the womens clothing manufacturer David Nieper, Boris had ample time to cook up a new metaphor, arguably eclipsing Goves in which he compares the EU to badly designed undergarments. So I just say to all those who prophecy doom and gloom for the British Business, I say their pants are on fire. Lets say knickers to the pessimists, knickers to all those who talk Britain down. Getty Images The voters who need to come out to support the Remain side 6 in 10 young people, Labour voters, trade union supporters do not trust the Conservatives and overwhelmingly do not like Cameron. Many are now speaking openly about voting Out merely in order to send a message or punish him for the perceived crimes of his time in power. How can these same people possibly be enthusiastic about going to vote on the 23rd June alongside a Prime Minister who they believe has lied to them and stands for issues they are diametrically opposed to? An audience member summed up this feeling last night when he accused Cameron of hypocrisy over his decision to share a platform with Sadiq Khan just weeks after labelling him a security threat. If last nights audience is truly representative, it will be of serious concern to the Remain camp. Leave voters seem more enthused than ever, but those leaning towards Remain are put off by Camerons rhetoric. This was made most clear when Faisal Islam asked the Prime Minister, What comes first, World War Three or the global Brexit recession? The laughter from the audience made clear that people are sick and tired of the scaremongering from all sides. The Prime Minister is fast becoming a laughingstock. You have Days Hours Minutes Seconds left to register Cameron needs to change the frame of the debate as we head into the final weeks of campaigning. When he asked the camera whether we could look our children or grandchildren in the eye after we roll the dice on their futures, I became more confident that we will continue to sleepwalk towards Brexit. And while Jeremy Corbyns own side claim that he isnt doing enough in the campaign indeed yesterday Tim Roache, the head of the GMB union, urged Corbyn to be bolder and braver hes at least avoiding the outright disgust many voters have reserved for the PM. In talking about TTIP, protecting the NHS, security in work and the environment, Corbyn is playing to his own voters and giving them something to vote for. If only Cameron could do the same. 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 }} If we leave the European Union and Spain invades Gibraltar, what will you do then? That was one of the questions Michael Gove didn't answer. He didn't really need to. He could just say, It's not going to happen and because it is a hypothetical question no one can really contradict him. So he had, as predicted, an easier night than David Cameron. If we left the EU, he would be able to save the Port Talbot steel works, make it easier for young people to get on the housing ladder (although he shied away from saying house prices would be lower), Scotland would stay in the UK, VAT on fuel would be cut, the NHS would be restored to its glory and poverty would be abolished. It was this last, the transformation of neocon Thatcherite turned Blairite Gove into socialist Michael, more left-wing than equivocating sellout Corbyn, that offered some of the most striking sound bites of the evening. "You're on the side of the elite," he told Faisal Islam, "I am on the side of the people." Islam fought back by addressing him as "Lord High Chancellor", which was too comic opera for such a serious interview on a serious subject, and Red Mike warned him rather pompously not to "skate over the misery" of the working poor. He described the EU as a jobs-destroying machine, and attacked JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs as banks that had "done very nicely thankyou" out of it "a market rigged in favour of the rich and biased against the poor". Gove is a brilliant debater, but he knows it, and he could not suppress a grin each time he felt he had outsmarted Islam in the interview section of the programme. It wasn't a wholly persuasive performance, and he didn't get the better of Islam as often as he seemed to think he did. Islam was quick to pick him up on his dishonest claim that high unemployment in Spain and Greece was an argument for Britain to leave the EU. "We're not in the euro," Islam pointed out. Gove was also wrong to pretend, in answer to another soft-ish question from the audience, that if he could stop Poles coming to the UK he would be able to allow more people from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Caribbean to come. If the Leave campaign is to get net immigration below 100,000 a year, that would mean cutting all categories of immigration from everywhere, and Gove knows it. It was a disciplined, well-prepared performance. The messages were clear: take back control; on the side of the people against the elite; Britain can be great again. But it was undermined by a suspicion that the new "Red Mike" persona was an act constructed for the purposes of debate. BP agreed on Thursday to pay $175m to shareholders who brought a class-action lawsuit that accused the oil company of misleading them by understating the severity of the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP said the claims will be paid during 2016-2017. However, the company said in a statement this settlement does not resolve other securities-related litigation in connection with the spill. In 2014, US District Judge Keith Ellison in Houston said investors who bought BP's American depositary shares soon after the explosion could pursue claims as a group that BP publicly "lowballed" the oil flow rate, and that the share price "did not reflect the magnitude of the disaster facing the company." In separate legal action, US Judge Carl Barbier in April 2016 granted final approval to the company's civil settlement over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill after it reached a deal in July 2015 to pay up to $18.7bn in penalties to the US government and five states. The rig explosion on April 20, 2010, the worst offshore oil disaster in US history, killed 11 workers and spewed millions of barrels of oil onto the shorelines of several states for nearly three months. David Cameron was accused of "waffling" by a young student who put him on the spot during a live television debate on the EU referendum. Soraya Bouazzaoui, 22, tore into the Prime Minister over his insistence that accession to the European Union for Turkey was not on the cards. The Muslim, who is studying English literature. said she had intended to vote Remain in the June 23 referendum, but had been put off by the In campaign, which she described as "a complete shambles". "I've seen nothing but scaremongering, I've seen no valid facts, I've seen no pros and cons," said Ms Bouazzaoui during the Sky debate. "Everything I've seen has made voting In to the EU look worse. "We haven't even addressed the fact that Turkey want to become in ever-closer union with the EU when they are under such heavy accusation by the entire Middle East for funding Isis. "How can you reassure us of staying in the EU and saying there are no risks, when there are clear risks, especially when it comes to Isis, especially when you have turned away so many refugees from the fear of having extremists? "And you are willing to work with the Turkish government who have a brawl in their parliament just two weeks ago." As Mr Cameron tried to assure her that he was making a positive case for remaining in the EU, she cut him off, saying: "That's not answering my question. Let me finish now, because I've seen you interrupt many people before. Let me finish. "I'm an English literature student, I know waffling when I see it, OK. I'm sorry, but you're not answering my question - how can you reassure people who want to vote Out that we are safe from extremism when we are willing to work with a government like Turkey who want to be part of the EU when they are under heavy accusation?" Miss Bouazzaoui, whose family is originally from Morocco, is from Romford in Essex and studies at Southampton Solent University. She is understood to be a pro-Palestine campaigner and her Facebook page shows a love of comic books and the usual student nights out. Mr Cameron told her: "There is no prospect of Turkey joining the EU in decades. They applied in 1987, they have to complete 35 chapters. One has been completed so far. At this rate they will join in the year 3000. "There are lots of reasons to vote one way or vote the other way. Turkey is not going to join the EU any time soon - every country, every parliament, has a veto. There are lots of things to worry about in this referendum campaign. I absolutely think that is not a prospect, it's not going to happen." Speaking to Sky after the debate, Miss Bouazzaoui hit back at social media claims that she had been rude, saying she had given the Prime Minister a "taste of his own medicine". She added: "He has spent his entire six years being dishonest, untruthful, brushing a lot of worrying things under the rug, and I think for someone to actually finally call him out on it was necessary." Professor Peter Shirlow, Irish ambassador to Britain Dan Mulhall, vice chancellor Janet Beer, Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan and Grainne Mellon, Irish4Europe, at the University of Liverpool. Below, Boris Johnson Photo: McCoy Wynne Boris Johnson during a visit to Farmhouse Biscuits in Nelson, Lancashire, where he was campaigning on behalf of the Vote Leave EU campaign Boris Johnson was campaigning in the north of England this week, media and groupies in tow, spewing forth claims about hardening the UK's border and rallying pro-Brexiteers across the region. Not too far away, another politician was engaging in a rather more subtle rallying campaign. Hot on the heels of the Taoiseach's visit to the Mayo GAA game in London at the weekend, Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan was courting the Irish expat vote in Liverpool and Manchester. The Minister is quick to say he's not campaigning, lest he be accused of interference, and that Ireland is simply a neighbour offering friendly advice. The decision on June 23 on whether Britain should abandon its EU membership is one for UK voters. True. But make no mistake. The Government is campaigning in Britain, but in a much quieter, low key fashion. And there's nothing wrong with that. As John McGrane, the head of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce said in Manchester yesterday, Ireland and Britain are joined economically at the hip. The connections, politically, culturally and economically are so deeply embedded, it's almost impossible to believe that if the British vote to pull out, Ireland will not be hit. Hence the diplomatic push by the Government. Jobs Minister Mary Mitchell O'Connor is in Leeds next week, while Paschal Donohoe is expected to travel to Scotland and Newcastle. Another visit from the Taoiseach is also expected. All backed up by a strategic push from officials at the Irish Embassy in London, and at the Departments of Taoiseach and Foreign Affairs in Dublin. These visits target the sizeable Irish communities and business connections in the respective regions. Site visits to Irish businesses are also included, to highlight the considerable trade links between the two islands. Minister Flanagan attended a panel discussion at the University of Liverpool's Institute of Irish Studies on Wednesday, along with shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn, Irish-born British Labour MP Conor McGinn, and Irish4Europe co-chair Grainne Mellon, highlighting how a UK remaining in the EU enjoys almost complete consensus in Ireland. He spoke at the Irish Heritage Centre in Manchester on Wednesday night and to an intimate, business-focused audience at a British Irish Chamber gathering in the city yesterday, where representatives from some small businesses were present, along with executives from companies like AIB and Grant Thornton. The Irish4Europe campaign is engaged in a similar offensive to encourage Irish people in the UK to register to vote before Tuesday's deadline. And it's managed to get Bob Geldof on board, with the rocker-turned campaigner appearing in a get-out-the-vote video. Absent from the events over recent days have been a pro-Brexit voice, for obvious reasons perhaps, although it would make for a much livelier and more balanced discussion. In the case of the University of Liverpool, however, out campaigners have been invited, but apparently refused to come. Whether these efforts have an impact amid all the noise remain to be seen, because the numbers attending the events are far from huge. And the Irish dimension has been getting little, if any, attention in the wider debate, although the Minister was interviewed both by ITV and BBC regional during his visit. It may also be, in some instances, a case of preaching to the converted. But try they must. With the polls near deadlocked, and with only three weeks to go, every little helps. Comment The Revenue is examining what customs controls would be necessary in the event of a Brexit, including how many officers will be needed for the border. With the crunch vote on the United Kingdoms membership of the EU now less than three weeks away, Revenue is analysing of what a Leave vote would mean for the customs operations on the border as part of the governments contingency planning. The government hopes that the British public will decide to stay in the EU and Ministers are travelling to the UK to encourage the diaspora and Irish citizens registered to vote to support the 'Remain' campaign. However, several departments and agencies are involved in planning for contingencies that may arise the event of a Brexit. Taoiseach Enda Kenny has previously warned there could be a return to border controls with the north. Independent.ie understands that the number of customs officers that may have to be deployed to the border is being examined by Revenue. The example of the border between Norway which is outside the EU and Sweden one of the 28 members is also being looked at as part of the contingency planning. Both countries are part of the Schengen free-travel area with random checks by customs officers of documentation and goods. Such a model if possible in the Irish case - would avoid barriers at the border, allowing traffic to remain free flowing. A UK vote to leave would be followed by two years of negotiations between London and Brussels, during which Irish officials will emphasise the particular issues facing this country including Northern Ireland, and the economic and trade impact. Among the key areas of concern for Departments drawing up contingency plans are trade, market volatility and the North. There is currently 1.2bn worth of trade between Ireland and Britain every week and any barriers to this poses a major risk to the economy. There are warnings that a Leave vote could see Sterling weaken by between 10pc and 15pc which has implications for Irish businesses exporting to the UK as well as British tourists coming here. In terms of the North, the EU currently provides significant funding to the six counties and it has had a role in securing the peace process, with north-south co-operation helped by both jurisdictions being members of the European club. A Government spokesman said: "We have a defined framework of action in place for both outcomes following the upcoming referendum in the UK. "We continue to actively express the view through all channels available to us that Britain remaining in the EU is in Ireland's and Europe's best interest. "But we must be and are prepared for both outcomes." Several ministers, including the Taoiseach will be travelling to cities like Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool and Leads ahead of the June 23 vote. They are to engage with Irish communities to ensure theyre aware of the governments preference for a Remain vote, while being respectful of the fact that the referendum is a decision for the UK. It is understood that Mr Kenny will make a statement reaffirming Ireland's commitment to the EU regardless of the outcome of the British referendum when the result is known on June 24. THE deep economic connections between the UK and Ireland are often taken for granted, the head of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce has warned. At an event organised by the Chamber in Manchester yesterday, John McGrane said trade won't cease between the UK and Ireland in the event of a vote to pull out of the EU on June 23. But he claimed that trading relationship will be worth less and will be smaller. "We often take for granted that we are joined at the economic hip," Mr McGrane said at the event, attended by Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan. "This isn't about alarmism. We're all grown up enough to know that the world won't stop [if a Brexit occurs], but less business will be done that could be done the more we put a barrier in the way of trade. "What we don't want is that somebody, in the aftermath of walking over this cliff, if that's what happens, begins to realise we have created so many impediments." It comes as a poll shows that small businesses in Britain are divided on whether Britain should leave the EU, but the majority believe voters will opt to remain. Mr Flanagan told the small, business-focused audience at the Chamber event that Irish connections in Manchester run deep. "By the mid 1800s, 10pc of the population was Irish and today the annual Manchester Irish Festival is the largest in the UK and one of the biggest in the world," the minister said. "Our business connections are very strong with major Irish-owned companies such as CRH, Jurys Inns, Glanbia, Kerry Foods and the ABP Food Group investing in the area." The engagement was the final one in a two-day visit to Liverpool and Manchester that included addresses at the University of Liverpool and the Irish Heritage Centre in Manchester, in a push to encourage Irish people living in the UK to vote in the referendum. There were no pro-Brexit voices at the events, which included warnings that some form of border would be reintroduced between Northern Ireland and the Republic if a Brexit occurs. The leave campaign disagrees, claiming that the border will remain open. A day after leave campaigners suggested a post Brexit Britain would impose a points system for immigration, Mr Flanagan suggested to the Irish Independent that this could pose problems for other EU countries. "A situation where one of the islands would be subject to the common travel area and the other not, could well prove problematic," he said. AGRICULTURE Minister Michael Creed hit out at the lack of a "functioning competitive banking market" as he launched a 55m interest free cashflow support scheme for Glanbia's dairy and tillage farmers. Mr Creed said he would be meeting the heads of the pillar banks in the coming weeks to urge them to "display forbearance as they deal with individual farmers". "Cash flow and the cost of credit to the farming community is not what it should be," the Minister said. "We do not have an effective functioning competitive banking market," said Mr Creed. He added that he hoped the move by Glanbia Co-op to offer farmers the ability to drawdown cash flow support when milk or grain prices dip below 'triggers' would help increase competition. Mr Creed said he hoped the pillar banks would act as the cost of credit was too high compared with other European countries. The Minister said there was "no silver bullet that we can fire to resolve" the price volatility with farming produce but they were looking at a whole series of initiatives. Glanbia's group managing director, Siobhan Talbot ,said the Glanbia Advance Payment (GAP) Scheme running until December 2020 was about sustaining suppliers "through the low part of cycles" as the dairy and grain markets were cyclical. The Glanbia Co-op has raised 100m by issuing a five year exchangeable bond linked to a pledge of 4.3 million Glanbia plc shares. This scheme will allow dairy farmers a voluntary advance of a maximum of 2 cent per litre (c/l) in a month where the base milk price paid by Glanbia Ingredients Ireland (GII) falls below 24c/l. The price repayment will be triggered when the base price moves above 30c/l or alternatively in 2020. Advance payment on grain is set at 20/tonne when prices reach certain levels. Henry Corbally, Glanbia Co-op chairman, said the volatility dairy farmers were experiencing has brought "great problems and hardships" for cashflow on family farms. Mr Corbally said 1,000 farmers have already attended workshops on applying to their 100m MilkFlex loan scheme launched earlier this year. New Irish export business has expanded in May despite the looming decision Britons are facing about the future of their European membership, new figures have shown. According to the latest Investec Services Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI), a number of panellists reported they had secured orders from new clients. The PMI shows new exports expanded at a stronger pace in May while the overall headline PMI increased to 61.7, up from April's 59.8 reading. The latest reading also outlines that businesses are continuing to hire staff to help deal with increasing client demand as business outstanding remains in positive territory. Investec Ireland chief economist Philip O'Sullivan said the services industry remained upbeat on the outlook with sentiment staying very much in positive territory. "All in all, this is a very positive report, which is just the tonic after a downbeat Manufacturing PMI release earlier this week. In any event, we expect to see stronger readings from both PMIs later this year, assuming our base case that UK voters choose to remain in the EU comes to pass. "On the margin side, Input Prices continued to increase at a marked pace during May, with higher staff, fuel and insurance costs blamed for this. Firms were, however, able to defray at least a portion of this by hiking average prices charged once again in May. Helped by higher volumes, the Profitability index improved to its highest level in four months," he said. Transport Minister Shane Ross has blasted US authorities for the delay in granting Norwegian Air International (NAI) a permit that would enable it to fly between Cork and Boston. NAI, a subsidiary of Norwegian Air Shuttle, has spent the past two years trying to secure the licence. "As the global debate continues on the further liberalisation of international aviation, it is apparent that there are interests on both sides of the Atlantic that would like to reverse the process," Mr Ross told global aviation executives at the International Air Transport Association (IATA) annual general meeting in Dublin yesterday. "It is unfortunate that Norwegian... appears to have fallen victim to this wider global debate," he said. "The airline is already providing new routes at low cost between places on both sides of the Atlantic that have never had transatlantic services before." NAI has established a base in Dublin, where it employs close to 100 people, and also has aircraft registered here. It had intended to start flights between Cork and Boston this summer, and between Cork and New York next year. It is also interested in starting a route from Shannon to the US. The subsidiary wants to use Ireland as a base so it can fly between Europe and the US under the Open Skies agreement that allows airlines from the EU and the US unfettered access to each other's territories. But intense political and union opposition to NAI's plans has delayed a decision on its permit. Mr Ross said NAI had been unable to launch its service from Cork and that it's "extremely frustrating" that it has not been able to do so yet. He said the delay is "not in the interests of the many people in the Cork and Boston regions". Opponents to NAI claim it is using Ireland as a base to circumvent more stringent employment law in Norway. The airline has consistently denied such claims. The US Department of Transportation recently indicated that it intends to grant the permit to NAI. But that decision has to receive final approval from executive branches of the US government. There's no timeline on when that decision has to be made. The chief executive of the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA), Eamonn Brennan, said this week that he's concerned that a decision on a permit could be pushed out to later in the year. The US presidential election could delay the process. Both democratic presidential nominee hopefuls, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, have said they're opposed to NAI's plans. Cork Airport managing director Niall MacCarthy yesterday welcomed Mr Ross's comments. Here are the main business stories from this morning's papers: Irish Independent * The credit union at the centre of a fraud allegation had fake loans and two sets of deposit books. Rush Credit Union is now under investigation by the gardai and forensic accountants appointed by the board of Rush Credit Union, on the advice of the Central Bank. * The European Central Bank says it can't investigate high variable mortgage rates in Ireland because it is beyond its mandate. All 11 of Ireland's members of the European Parliament, led by Fine Gael MEP Brian Hayes, lent their signatures to a letter imploring ECB chief Mario Draghi to examine our high variable mortgage rates. * The Fitzgerald family, who control some of the country's best known pubs, have booked a dividend windfall of 66.45m. The dividend for the family follows a restructuring of the Louis Fitzgerald-led business. The Irish Times * Ireland's tax take in the first five months of the year was 770m ahead of expectations according to the latest figures from the exchequer. The State collected 18.8bn, representing an increase of 1.5bn on the same period last year. * Irish consumers are facing up to the prospect of an 18pc increase in their price of broadband as Eir plans to raise prices for wholesale customers from 19.50 to 23. According to a report in The Irish Times, Eir rents space on its network to the likes of Vodafone, Sky, and BT. * Glanbia has set up a new 55m advanced payment scheme, which offers suppliers cashflow support in the midst of a period when both grain and milk prices are low. Glanbia is looking to ease the hit that farmers are shouldering from the downturn in commodity prices. Irish Examiner * The number of people on JobBridge only amounted to 5pc of the overall number of workers participating in all State-funded training programmes. The latest figures on employment from the Central Statistics Office shows that only a small portion of the 77,885 people in State-funded training programmes are in JobBridge. * The Fitzgerald family, who control some of the country's best known pubs, have booked a dividend windfall of 66.45m. The dividend for the family follows a restructuring of the Louis Fitzgerald-led business. * The German chancellor has weighed into the Brexit debate warning that the UK would lose influence and become isolated if it were to leave the EU. Angela Merkel said that trade and the single market should act as major reasons for the UK to stay within the EU. Datalex CEO, Aidan Brogan, pictured in Dublin with one of the company's WTA Awards. Travel software company Datalex is to create 100 new jobs in Ireland over the next year and a half as part of a major recruitment drive. The Dublin-based company is adding the roles at its newly-renovated offices in East Point Business Park in Dublin. A further 100 positions will be created at its global office locations. The Irish-listed firm designs technology that enables a travel marketplace of over one billion shoppers worldwide. Datalex chief executive Aidan Brogan said it was an "exciting time of growth" for the business. "In response to the significant global demand for our digital commerce platform, we are looking for the very best talent to deliver the next evolution of digital travel commerce. "We are actively recruiting globally and throughout Ireland for highly skilled senior software developers, architects, analysts, project managers and many other roles." Goodbody analyst Jack Diskin said the expansion is a sign of the firm's positive outlook on the market. "This is to be driven by a shifting industry trend where an expanding number of airlines increasingly prioritise customer engagement and direct distribution as core to their distribution strategies," Mr Diskin said. The expansion comes off the back of a strong 2015 for the company. Profits at Datalex increased to $4.2m (3.76m) last year, up 13pc. The company said its positive year was down to adding new customers that included JetBlue Airways and Beibu Gulf, its third Chinese customer. In 2015 Datalex posted revenue of $46.6m while its operating costs increased by 9pc to $42.6m. The owners of a city centre apartment made more than 79,000 in the space of a year after converting it into an Airbnb-style holiday let. The practice of turning homes into tourist accommodation is a phenomenon that has been increasing, even in the face of the serious housing emergency in Dublin. But now a decision by Dublin City Council to limit such activity is set to have major implications for property owners who have been putting up entire homes or apartments on Airbnb and other holiday letting sites every year. Residents of Temple Bar in Dublin have scored a major victory after a ruling that an apartment put up for rent on Airbnb has to have planning permission for commercial use. Members of Temple Bar Residents Association have been campaigning against the large-scale conversion of residential apartments into holiday flats in their area. They claim that the huge number of flats on Airbnb and other holiday sites is affecting the atmosphere of the neighbourhood and exacerbating the city's housing shortage. Expand Close AirBnb Photo: Getty / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp AirBnb Photo: Getty Temple Bar residents recently wrote to Dublin City Council seeking to have it clarified whether a property in the area, that is let almost constantly as a short-term holiday apartment, needed planning permission for commercial use. Boast In an advertisement selling the apartment earlier this year, the sellers boasted that the flat was rented over 90pc of the time on Airbnb - and earned a staggering 79,000 in rent last year. The property was up for sale for more than 400,000 - significantly higher than similar properties in the area, which go for about 270,000. Dublin City Council has just responded to the residents, giving the crucial verdict that the development is not exempt from regulations to obtain planning permission. Frank McDonald, chairman of the Temple Bar Residents Association, said last night: "We warmly welcome this ruling and presume it will be followed up by enforcement action. "It sends out a clear message to others in the burgeoning but unregulated Airbnb sector that planning permission is needed for conversion to holiday lets," he said. McDonald said it was a bizarre situation that Dublin's local authorities spend 25m per year on hotel accommodation for homeless families while up to 2,000 homes are given over to holiday use. Authorities in Berlin and in other European cities have taken action amid fears that holiday rental sites reduce the number of homes available for long-term residents and push up rents. Declan O'Brien, secretary of the Temple Bar group, says there is a need for clampdown in Dublin, similar to that in Berlin. According to the website Insideairbnb.com, 1,682 whole apartments or houses in Dublin are currently listed on Airbnb. Airbnb did not respond to a request for comment. Housing Minister Simon Coveney has conceded that his action plan for housing is not likely to be launched within the first 100 days of government as promised. Mr Coveney made the admission at the Dail's Housing and Homelessness committee. The Programme for Government includes a commitment to publish the plan within the first 100 days - which is mid-August. Mr Coveney said a more likely launch date would be the end of that month or into September. He said the plan would include "a proactive and aggressive work programme to implement it and ensure it works". He said it could be released at the end of July "before everybody heads off on holidays", but that was "not the kind of momentum we want the project to generate". Meanwhile, Mr Coveney said he accepted there were no longer 230,000 vacant homes in the country. The figure - highlighted by the Housing Agency in recent weeks - comes from the 2011 Census. Mr Coveney said up-to-date statistics would be available towards the end of this month. He said even if there were just 100,000 vacant properties left, a "decent proportion" could be used for social housing. He said buying such properties would be a "much quicker process than building". AAA-PBP's Ruth Coppinger said the number of social housing units built should be higher than the 10pc threshold required by law. She said that with 100,000 people on the housing list, "we would need to build one million houses". Mr Coveney said the Part V law she was referring to sets out 10pc as a minimum but said "many developments go beyond that". He mentioned the Glass Bottle site in Dublin where there were plans to build as many as 3,000 units and said he hoped the number of social housing units there would be "way more" than 10pc. Fine Gael's Fergus O'Dowd said various State agencies had land banks and raised the example of Gormanstown army camp in Co Meath which has 200 acres and is on a motorway and rail line. He suggested such areas could be used for housing. Mr Coveney said he would "look at it" and added that Irish Rail also has land banks in good locations but the transport company would have to be compensated for their use. The Communications Minister says the government is to seek more "aggressive" rollout timelines for a million Irish people living without broadband as a short list of rural broadband providers is drawn up. The move could open the door to the National Broadband Plan being completed before the heavily-criticised 2022 date that has been reaffirmed by the new government. Denis Naughten also said that the government is ready to intervene in rural planning processes to improve mobile phone reception around the country. "We're going in to negotiate the most aggressive timeline that's physically possible," said Mr Naughten of the upcoming contract. "That means bodies on the ground and trucks on the ground addressing 100,000km of roads. My neck is on the line here politically. I need to be able to guarantee broadband and coverage to people." The Communications Minister was speaking as five companies prepare to find out which ones will be in the final shakeup for a 25-year National Broadband Plan contract to provide connectivity to over 500,000 rural homes and businesses. The companies bidding to make the shortlist are Eir, Enet, Imagine, Gigabit Fibre and Siro, the joint venture between Vodafone and the ESB. Eir and Siro are regarded as frontrunners for the project, which promises fibre-speed broadband to every Irish rural home and business at the same prices as city broadband customers. Gigabit Fibre, co-founded by former O2 Ireland boss Danuta Gray, is regarded as a dark horse for the project, with a number of powerful global telecoms and financial companies behind it. Winner The winner of the 25-year contract, which could be worth over 300m to the successful bidder, is due to be announced a year from now. But big decisions remain on ownership of the rural network after the contract finishes. Communications Minister Denis Naughten (pictured) is understood to favour the network reverting to public ownership. "Anyone who looks at what I have said on this before will know how I feel," he said. Other government politicians have also expressed a preference for public ownership of the network, citing long term infrastructure difficulties caused by the privatisation of Eircom in 1999. But operators say that taking the rural network back into public ownership could prove to be an expensive cost to the state in the long run. They also say that it might prove less attractive to invest in the short to medium term. The decision is expected to go to Cabinet soon. Meanwhile, the Communications Minister says that there is to be a new effort to improve mobile phone reception in rural areas through fresh efforts at overcoming planning logjams. "Mobile phone coverage is a huge, huge problem around the country," said Mr Naughten. "There are big issues that operators face in relation to access in different counties. Development contribution charges for mobile masts, for example, can vary from 20,000 per mast to zero. "We need to get a consistency across the country in relation to that. That's as important for the rollout of rural broadband as it is for mobile phone coverage. We expect to make progress in advance of next June." Mr Naughten said that he is to meet commissioners of the telecoms regulator, Comreg, later this month to discuss the issue. Brothers Micheal and Diarmuid Kelly run the family oyster business from their hometown of Kilcolgan in Co Galway. Kelly's Oysters was first set up by their father Michael 60 years ago. The business has grown and now employs 10 people and transports oysters to 16 countries around the world. While broadband is vital to the business, Diarmuid admits their current service could be a lot better. "It works to a degree down at the office but it's still less than 2mb. It's not great but at least we have something. "We work with both sides of the world from Canada to Malaysia and Singapore and as such we have to be available 24 hours. "At the office we have less than 2mb but at home I have less than 1mb. It makes it next to impossible to do any work from home. Download "We export a lot and if I need to download order forms or health certification and certification of origin forms to send on it takes too long at present," he said. Despite working around the clock trading with different time zones, Diarmuid must return to his office for all work issues. "I live a mile up the road which might seem like a short journey, but if you have to get up at 4am or 5am in the morning to provide something for the Dubai market it's frustrating having to drive to the office. "It makes it very difficult if you could do it from home it would make things much much easier. The work-life balance is the problem." he said. Kilcolgan is due to be included in the national fibre broadband rollout, but Diarmuid fears the high speed connection will only cover the main street. "On our small road alone there are 10 businesses all with the same problem. "If they do bring fibre cabling to Kilcolgan it must work for all the businesses," he added. 'I'm considering moving business to Manchester' Businessman Adam Coleman has battled with poor broadband service since setting up his cloud-based software company in Lahinch Co Clare in 2007. The company, HR Locker, now has 10 employees. However, the poor broadband left Mr Coleman seriously considering moving part of the business to Manchester. "Things are going well but our broadband is really poor," said Mr Coleman (pictured). "We want to expand and that includes taking on two or three more people but we had to assess where we put those jobs." Mr Coleman said it was impossible for businesses to plan without proper broadband. "Mazlow's Hierarchy of Needs puts air, water and food as our most basic essentials - I believe in the modern day for any business, broadband is there as well," he said. Mr Coleman also has an option on a temporary office in Manchester and was considering situation the new jobs over there. "The broadband is atrocious and it has got worse. "We develop software that is then hosted in the cloud, up links are very important for us but it could take hours. Expand Close Adam Coleman, CEO of HR Locker (Picture: Liam Burke) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Adam Coleman, CEO of HR Locker (Picture: Liam Burke) "Recently one of our guys had to drive to Ennis to get a decent connection to upload the software," he added. Before making a final decision on the jobs, he contacted a range of politicians and a broadband provider seeking the latest information on when Lahinch may secure fibre broadband. Serious "We were told it would go live by end of June so we've decided to hold out until the end of June and keep the jobs in Ireland." Mr Coleman said the Government must start taking the needs of rural businesses seriously instead of forcing businesses to move to larger towns and cities. "Why shouldn't we be able to stay in Lahinch. If the Government is serious about helping rural areas they have to tackle this. "They should be incentivising companies keeping jobs in small towns and keeping them going," he added. Elon Musk, the billionaire boss of Tesla and SpaceX, has said that humans need to become cyborgs to avoid becoming house cats for vastly more intelligent robots. Musk said that as artificial intelligence advances, people will need to augment their brain power with digital technology to prevent them becoming irrelevant. He backed the idea of a neural lace a new electronic layer of the brain that would allow us to instantly access online information and greatly improve cognitive powers by tapping into artificial intelligence. Under any rate of advancement in AI we will be left behind by a lot. The benign situation with ultra-intelligent AI is that we would be so far below in intelligence wed be like a pet, or a house cat. I dont love the idea of being a house cat, he said at San Franciscos Code Conference. The solution that seems maybe the best one is to have an AI layer. A third digital layer that could work symbiotically [with your brain]. Scientists have already begun work on a neural lace, successfully testing the concept with mice by injecting them with a device. They believe it could be used for monitoring the brain to fight diseases, or to improve cognitive power. Musk, who made billions from PayPal and has ambitions to colonise Mars, said he did not know of a particular company working on neural lace, but that he was tempted to invest in the technology himself. Somebodys gotta do it, Im not saying I will. If somebody doesnt do it then I think I should probably do it, he said. Musk said the scenario in which humans are turned into pets was the optimistic one, and that the true consequences of artificial intelligence could be much worse. Last year he launched a $1bn fund into research on saving humanity from AI, and has joined Professor Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates in warning about the dangers. He also updated attendees on the progress of the Tesla Model 3, the company's first mass-market electric vehicle, saying the design will be finished in six weeks. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Photo: Reuters IRISH shares fell marginally yesterday, as the ECB left rates unchanged and oil cartel Opec failed to agree a cap on production, prompting traders to broadly hold on to their holding in Irish firms. By the close in Dublin the ISEQ Overall Index had fallen 0.2pc, or 12.73 points, to close at 6,423.01. The index fell sharply on opening before slowly recovering throughout the day, only for trade to fall away again towards the end of the session. Aryzta continued to struggle, shedding 2.35pc to close at 35.99. The speciality baker has lost over a fifth of its value since March and was hurt again on Tuesday by a poor trading statement. Hostelworld fell 3.95pc to 2.34. The lightly traded company's shares fell for the first time since its 30pc drop last week. Travel technology company Datalex slipped 1.66pc to 3.55. The firm said it will create 100 jobs in Dublin over the next 18 months. IRES Reit dipped 0.85pc to close at 1.16. The biggest residential landlord in the country is known to be on the lookout for more acquisitions in the Dublin area. ECB President Mario Draghi's actions, or lack of them, prompted a similar trading day across Europe. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index added less than 0.1pc. The FTSE 100 slid 0.1pc, while the CAC 40 in Paris fell 0.2pc. The Dax Index in Frankfurt gained 0.03pc. "We know it's extremely difficult for Opec to reach any kind of agreement because the countries don't have the same agendas," said Pierre Mouton at Notz Stucki in Geneva. "Maybe they would have done something if oil prices were at $40 or below. With oil near $50, there is less incentive. The ECB decision did not come as a surprise - nothing was really expected as of today." This Tipperary granny is only further proving the fact that the premier county is the home of sporting greats. North Tipp native Sean O'Meara shot this video of his 89-year-old granny Mary O'Meara whacking a ball into a wheelie bin, but possibly not all is as it seems. Since Sean posted the video last week, it's been viewed more than 13,000 times and shared by close to 100 people, which his granny finds hilarious. "She thinks it's very funny," Sean told Independent.ie. Expand Expand Previous Next Close / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp "She never even questioned what we were doing it for. She's always up for a bit of craic." Granny O'Meara turns 90 this August. The two young females, Gita (pictured) and Gira, arrived from Helsinki Zoo in Finland and go on public display from tomorrow. Photo: Darragh Kane The Rebel County has a new King. Fota Wildlife Park in east Cork now expects 'big cat fever' to copper-fasten its status as Ireland's fastest-expanding visitor attraction with a new pride of Asian lions set to prove the stars of an exciting 6m Asian Sanctuary. The park, Ireland's seventh most popular tourist attraction, this year hopes to attract almost 500,000 visitors with a surge in tourist numbers expected thanks to the arrival of the Asian lions. The two young females, Gita and Gira, arrived from Helsinki Zoo in Finland and go on public display from tomorrow. The duo are sisters and are two and a half years old. An adult male Asian lion is due to arrive later this summer from a Spanish zoo and Fota will commence an ambitious breeding programme in their state-of-the-art lion paddock and den. Fota director, Sean McKeown, said there are just 400 Asian lions left in a single area of India. "This will be a very important breeding programme and we are delighted to add lions to the animals here at Fota," he said. Mr McKeown pointed out that 50pc of Fota's visitors are now tourists with the park helping deliver a 150m local economic boost. More than 10m has been invested by Fota in redevelopment since 2010. The number of syringes discovered on beaches in Dublin could be significantly higher, but not all councils keep records (Stock photo) Major concerns have been raised after the discovery of used syringes on a busy beach in Dublin. The needles were discovered at the picturesque Seapoint beach near Monkstown village in South Dublin. A spokeswoman for the Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown Council confirmed to the Irish Independent that one of the beach foremen collected three syringes on Wednesday at 6pm, after being contacted by a beach user. "The beaches are inspected and cleaned seven days a week," the spokeswoman said. "When such an incident is reported, it is acted upon immediately." The number of syringes discovered on beaches in Dublin could be significantly higher, but not all councils keep records. A spokesman for Fingal County Council last night said they "would not keep any records of this nature." Tony Duffin of the Ana Liffey Drug Project emphasised the huge risks involved when users are injecting drugs in public. "Obviously we are concerned," he told the Irish Independent. "They are at risk of overdosing and increasing the risk of virus. It is disappointing to hear that injecting has reached those parts of Dublin and the beaches. They are at risk of overdose and increasing the risk of virus. When the sun comes out, people enjoy the weather people are drinking in the public domain, people are using drugs in the public domainit's something that will needs to be addressed." The luxury Dromoland Castle hotel in Co Clare THE financial manager of Dromoland Castle Hotel has launched a High Court action to prevent her purported dismissal. Orla Horgan claims she is being made "a scapegoat for fraud at the hotel" due to suspicious transactions carried out by another employee in the finance department which she has nothing to do with. Last month Ms Horgan, of Station Road, Askeaton, Co Limerick, was informed she is to be dismissed from her position on July 1 next. She now seeks an injunction preventing her employer Dromoland Castle Holdings Ltd from terminating her employment. Oisin Quinn SC, for Ms Horgan, said the purported dismissal is unlawful and her employer is not entitled to proceed in this way. His client feared the decision could do irreparable harm to her reputation. Since 2006 Ms Horgan has had responsibility for the accounting functions at the Newmarket-on-Fergus, Co Clare, hotel. She fulfils a similar role in respect of the Inn at Dromoland hotel and had previously worked on the accounts at Castlemartyr Resort Hotel. Mr Justice Paul Gilligan granted Ms Horgan's lawyers permission to serve the proceedings at short notice on the defendant. The case returns next week. ILP's former finance director Peter Fitzpatrick (63) of Convent Lane, Portmarnock, Dublin has been found not guilty of conspiracy to defraud the public in 2008. Mr Fitzpatrick was one of four former executives from Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Life & Permanent (ILP) alleged to have conspired to mislead investors about the true health of Anglo. All four men have been on trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court since last January. It was the longest running criminal trial in the State's history. They all pleaded not guilty to conspiring together and with others to mislead investors by setting up a 7.2 billion circular transaction scheme between March 1st and September 30th, 2008 to bolster Anglo's balance sheet. Read More On Wednesday the jury convicted Anglo's former head of capital markets, John Bowe (52) and the bank's then finance director, Willie McAteer (65) who were accused of conspiring to mislead investors, depositors and lenders about the true health of Anglo. They have been remanded on bail pending sentence until July 25th next. The jury are still deliberating over the case of Denis Casey (56), from Raheny, Dublin. The jury in the trial of two former executives from Irish Life & Permanent (ILP) accused of conspiracy to defraud were told this morning it can return a majority verdict. The eleven jurors had been deliberating for 44 hours and 26 minutes over the course of eleven days when Judge Martin Nolan told them this morning they can return a verdict on which ten of them agree. Up to now they could only return unanimous verdicts. John Bowe (52) from Glasnevin, Dublin and Willie McAteer (65) of Greenrath, Tipperary Town, Co. Tipperary, Denis Casey (56), from Raheny, Dublin and Peter Fitzpatrick (63) of Convent Lane, Portmarnock, Dublin all pleaded not guilty to conspiring together and with others to mislead investors by setting up a 7.2 billion circular transaction scheme between March 1 and September 30, 2008 to bolster Anglo's balance sheet. Today is day 86 of the trial which is the longest criminal trial in the State's history. The prosecution case was that the four men were involved in a setting up a circular scheme of billion euro transactions where Anglo lent money to ILP and ILP sent the money back, via their assurance firm Irish Life Assurance, to Anglo. The scheme was designed so that the deposits came from the assurance company and would be treated as customer deposits, which are considered a better measure of a bank's strength than inter-bank loans. The 7.2 billion deposit was later accounted for in Anglo's preliminary results on December 3rd 2008 as part of Anglo's customer deposits figure. The prosecution say that the entire objective of the scheme was to mislead anybody reading Anglo's accounts by artificially inflating the customer deposits number from 44bn to 51bn, a difference of 16%. Lawyers for the Anglo defendants have argued that the deposits were real deposits and were accounted for correctly on Anglo's balance sheet and so no fraud was carried out. Lawyers defending the former ILP executives say their clients had no control over how Anglo would account for the deposits and that their clients had no intention to mislead the public. The State opened the case by telling the jury that there was no commercial substance to the September 2008 transactions and their only purpose was to deceive. They take a vast amount of time and trouble and they amount to one large candy floss whose only conceivable purpose is to bolster up and artificially inflate the Anglo customer deposit. That is manifestly dishonest and was done with dishonest intent, Paul OHiggins SC alleged. As a result of the credit crunch that had seen the fall of financial institutions across the world, including Northern Rock in 2007 and Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers in March and September 2008, it had become more difficult for banks to get funding. Competition for corporate or customer deposits was fierce and were increasingly viewed by the market as a measure of public confidence in a bank. On March 17 the share price in Anglo had fallen by a substantial amount and this day became dubbed the St Patrick's Day massacre. The half year end for the bank was coming up on March 30, counsel said and the bank would have to report to the markets. Matt Cullen, senior manager of Anglo's Treasury Department in 2008, had the dubious honour of being the first witness in the trial. He said that in March 2008 a decision was taken by the executive directors that the bank should show a strong corporate number to the market, meaning to increase their corporate funding. He was told to approach ILP and ultimately a back to back transaction was set up where Anglo placed 750m with ILP and the ILP Group would give us back a corporate deposit from Irish Life Assurance Corporate, the non-banking entity owned and managed by ILP. He said it had to come from this entity so that it would show up as a corporate deposit as opposed to a inter-banking loan. The court heard that non-banking deposits, from the likes of life assurance and pension funds, had a greater value than inter-bank loans from the point of view of the markets and investors looking at a bank's state of health. The transfer was short term to cover the month end, he said and testified that the bank's then Chief Financial Officer Matt Moran and CEO David Drumm knew about the transaction. He said that when the transaction was explained to Mr Drumm he said: That's not an issue, no problem. In June a reciprocal deal took place where Anglo transferred 3bn to ILP and ILP transferred a portfolio of home mortgages to Anglo. The trial heard that over the summer a list of about 50 funding initiatives was drawn up with the objective of getting corporate funding into the bank. By the end of September most of these had fallen away and the ILP/Anglo deal was one of three left. Matt Cullen testified: As funding initiatives fell away David Drumm turned to me and asked me would I ask Irish Life would they do six or seven billion in September. He said he rang his opposite number in ILP, David Gantly, and put the request to him. He said Mr Gantly came back to him and said that his finance director Peter Fitzpatrick said ILP would do it if Anglo did the same for Irish Life in December at their year end. Mr Cullen said: I spoke to Willie McAteer and David Drumm. I relayed that message back to them. They said 'absolutely no problem, go back and tell David Gantly we will do that'. Mr Cullen told Mr Bowe that he spoke to David Gantly and told him the figure for the September interbank loans could now be higher than the previously agreed three billion euro. He relayed a conversation with Mr Gantly to Mr Bowe in which the ILP dealer said that increasing the interbank deposit from three to five would not be a problem "Because, as they see it, you might be well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, Mr Cullen told Mr Bowe. The jury heard evidence from that the two ILP accused insisted that they wanted any deposits to Anglo from ILP to be secured against cash collateral from Anglo. An accounting expert witness, Mark Hunt, testified for the prosecution that this has implications for the accounting treatment of the deal in that because there is no risk to the depositor the deposits to Anglo must be netted off against the inter-bank loans from Anglo and therefore shown as zero on the balance sheet. Mr Gantly testified during the trial that he was uncomfortable with the transaction because "it was non-standard". He added: However this was being reported, obviously that was being reported to the Regulator, I was also very conscious of the Green Jersey Agenda and banks being asked what they needed to do and to help each other in what was extreme circumstances. The 7.2bn deal was 6.7bn in excess of Anglos own credit limit with ILP of 500m and this meant the transactions needed to be signed off. Tony O'Hanlon, a senior manager, refused to sign off on the deal because he couldn't rationalise approving that excess which he said was totally out of proportion. Mr McAteer, in his role as chief risk officer, and Mike Nurse, who at the time was head of treasury risk and Mr O'Hanlon's boss, did sign off on the excess which allowed the deal to proceed. In a call on September 29 Mr Bowe told Drumm and Mr McAteer about the 6bn fix with Permo , explaining that what happens is the money goes round in a circle. He said: Whats happening is we give the money to them and the dance here is we actually get it back in time and thats becoming very very tough to do. During this conference call Mr McAteer said well keep going for the moment anyway. Matt Moran also testified that he was in David Drumm's office on September 30th when Mr Bowe arrived in and informed the Chief Executive that the ILP transactions were over and suggested that Mr Drumm ring Denis Casey to thank him. After the deal was executed Claire Taylor, who was the bank's regulator at the Financial Regulator's office, contacted Anglo on October 1 to discuss the deposits, which would appear on each banks account in the Central Bank, Ciaran McArdle, a dealer with Anglo's Group Trading department, told her: It's trying to manipulate our balance sheet for our financial year end. We have boosted our customer funding number. It's not a real number. On the same day Ciaran Cunningham, a senior accountant with Anglo, advised traders in the bank's Treasury section about how they could treat the deals. The jury heard that Mr Cunningham told them: "I think it'd be our preference to show them grossed, to be honest". Settling the transactions gross would mean the 7.2bn in short term deposits from ILP could be included in the bank's balance sheet figure for customer deposits, which is what ultimately happened. Mr Cunningham told the traders: "The risk is if we do settle them net, we could be forced to net them in the accounts. That'd be a bit of a disaster." He told Una Ni Raifeartaigh SC, prosecuting, that by "disaster" he was referring to the fact that the intention of the transactions was balance sheet management and that netting them would have failed to achieve this. Later that month Mr Bowe told Mary Elizabeth Donoghue in the Financial Regulators office: Call it balance sheet dressing or window dressing or anything...our motive was not about liquidity. Ms Donoghue suggested: So itd look like an asset manager had placed money with yourselves and Mr Bowe replied, Exactly. At a meeting of the banks audit committee on November 18th, 2008 Colin Golden, Anglos head of group finance in 2008, read a briefing note detailing the ILP deal to the committee and said that the transactions bolstered customer deposits. Donal OConnor, a non-executive director and member of the audit committee who had dialed in from Australia, asked was this window dressing? and Mr McAteer answered using the words balance sheet management. The audit committee ultimately approved the treatment of the deals in Anglos balance sheet as customer deposits and Anglos auditors Ernst&Young signed off on these accounts. The balance sheet was published on December 3 as part of Anglos preliminary results and with no explanatory note to show that 7.2bn of the deposits were linked to the same value in loans to ILP. The back to back deals began to emerge in media reports the following February and as a result ILP released a press statement disputing the way that Anglos had treated the deposits in their accounts. Anglos accounts were later re-issued with a note linking the deal together. Mr Casey stepped down as Group CEO in February 2009. He told gardai that after his resignation three phone-calls were made to change the accounting treatment of the transactions in ILP records to show it as a non-collateralised transaction. The first of these, he said, were from Matt Moran. Another call was made from Donal O'Connor, who had succeeded Sean FitzPatrick as chairman. He said these requests were rejected and following that, the Secretary General of the Department of Finance Kevin Cardiff contacted ILP enquiring about the accounting treatment for the transaction and concluding that it was a 'spat' which should be sorted out between ILP and Anglo. Early on in the trial the jury heard evidence of Anglo management discussing disguising short terms loans of 750m from Irish Life and Permanent and keeping them tight as a duck's arse, the trial of former banking executives has heard. Mr Bowe told a conference call with Anglo executives in March 2008, when a similar type of transaction was being discussed in relation to the bank's half-year figures, that the only issue they had to think about was from a regulatory point of view. He said: And the regulator is more or less saying,look, I'm not looking. In another call on March 27 Matt Cullen, a former director of treasury at Anglo and his counterpart in ILP, David Gantly, discussed the details of the March transactions. Mr Bowe was also on this call. Mr Gantly told Mr Cullen: You put the stuff into us and we put it straight back through our other boys. You just need an overnight transaction through month-end, correct. The court heard the other boys referred to Irish Life Assurance. Mr Gantly said he was purposely not using names because, he said, the walls have ears in this climate. He later suggested it would be better to break the 750m figure into smaller transactions because it might look better to disguise it, somewhat, you know?. Mr Gantly added later on the same call: I can vouch for my own people...you have to be tight as a duck's arse here. The jury in the trial of two former executives from Irish Life & Permanent (ILP) accused of conspiracy to defraud has been told it can return a majority verdict. The eleven jurors had been deliberating for 44 hours and 26 minutes over the course of eleven days when Judge Martin Nolan told them this morning they can return a verdict on which ten of them agree. Up to now they could only return unanimous verdicts. On Wednesday the jury convicted Anglo's former head of capital markets, John Bowe (52) and the bank's then finance director, Willie McAteer (65) who were accused of conspiring to mislead investors, depositors and lenders about the true health of Anglo. They have been remanded on bail pending sentence until July 25th next. The jury have yet to return verdicts in the case of former chief executive of Irish Life & Permanent (ILP) Denis Casey (56) and his finance director in 2008, Peter Fitzpatrick (63). John Bowe (52) from Glasnevin, Dublin and Willie McAteer (65) of Greenrath, Tipperary Town, Co. Tipperary, Denis Casey (56), from Raheny, Dublin and Peter Fitzpatrick (63) of Convent Lane, Portmarnock, Dublin all pleaded not guilty to conspiring together and with others to mislead investors by setting up a 7.2 billion circular transaction scheme between March 1 and September 30, 2008 to bolster Anglo's balance sheet. Today is day 86 of the trial which is the longest criminal trial in the State's history. A man has appeared in court after an aggravated burglary where two women were threatened with a knife. Gardai are investigating the incident which took place on Highfield Avenue, College Road, Cork shortly before midnight on Thursday. A garda spokesman said: "At approximately 11.50pm on Thursday night a man knocked on the door of a house. "He burst into the house armed with a knife and threatened the two females (early 20s) who were in the house at the time. "Both women were threatened with the knife but were uninjured. He left the house with a small sum of money, handbags and phones." The man left the scene on foot and a description of the suspect was circulated and gardai arrested a man in his early 30s a short distance away. He was taken to Togher Garda Station where he was detained under Section 4 Criminal Justice Act, 1984. He was charged in relation to the incident and appeared before Cork District Court this afternoon and was remanded in custody. Sinn Fein TD John Brady and his wife, Gayle Ui Bhradaigh pictured leaving the Four Courts after the opening day of a High Court action Sinn Fein TD John Brady and his wife Gayle say Wicklow County Council is completely wrong in its insistence that an attic conversion they carried out at their council home was in breach of building regulations. The High Court is hearing a challenge by the couple to the council's bid to evict them because they did not get permission to retain the 2004 work to put an extra bedroom in their home at Kilbride Grove, Bray. The council claims it was a fire risk but the Brady's lawyer, Cormac O'Dulachain SC, said the claim the work was in breach of regulations was "100 per cent wrong". Mr Brady says he is being specifically targeted because of his criticism of the council and his involvement in a homeless protest which led to a sit-in at Bray Town Hall. The council strongly denies it has carried out a vendetta against him. The Bradys want declarations from the court that the council's decision is irrational, unreasonable, disproportionate, and in breach of their constitutional and European Convention rights. The case continues. A man who was hallucinating and believed he was fighting off demons when he pulled a syringe on gardai has been sentenced to five years in prison. When gardai came across Trevor Curtis (35) in a lane way in Dublin city centre he was screaming into the air f**k off, don't come near me. Curtis, of no fixed abode, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of a syringe to threaten injury or intimidate another on Bedford Lane, Temple Bar, Dublin on April 14, 2014. He also pleaded guilty to the robbery of a betting shop on Wicklow Street, Dublin on October 27, 2014. Judge Martin Nolan imposed sentences totalling five years and suspended the final year. He also backdated the sentence to 2014 when Curtis went into custody. The court heard that during the first offence after injecting himself with the head shop drug Snowblow Curtis believed he was being attacked by demons and was fighting them off. Garda Paul Gray agreed with Leona Frawley BL, defending, that this tallied with what he saw on the night. He testified that when he arrived in the lane, he saw Curtis with a syringe in his hand. He told Curtis to drop the syringe but Curtis began waving it around aggressively and the garda then pepper sprayed Curtis. Curtis has 43 previous convictions including three for this same offence. He was also previously jailed for a Dublin robbery and received a suspended sentence at Longford Circuit Court for robbery. During the robbery in 2014 Curtis jumped over the counter of the shop and pointed a syringe at the pregnant woman working there, the court heard. He told her: I won't hurt you, just give me the money. She handed over 355 in cash and he fled, telling her: Sorry love, I'm an addict, I need it. Curtis had made no attempt to cover his face or hide his identity during the robbery. He was on bail when he committed the robbery. The chair of Stormont's Justice Committee is being sued for damages after allegedly breaching the rights of a teenager he named as being linked to antisocial behaviour in a Co Antrim village and town. North Antrim DUP MLA Paul Frew is at the centre of a case brought before a court in Coleraine yesterday. The hearing was told that after an increase of reports of trouble in Broughshane, Mr Frew named the 14-year-old girl - who for legal reasons cannot be identified - on Facebook. The girl's father, who also cannot be named in order to protect his daughter's identity, told the court he was amazed that somebody in Mr Frew's position of authority would names of teenagers on social media linking them to antisocial behaviour. The incidents in question are said to extend beyond Broughshane and into Ballymena's Harryville area, where the politician alleged a door belonging to him was kicked in. Mr Frew watched on from the public gallery as the case was adjourned until a date in July, when it is expected that the Stormont Justice Committee chairman's arguments will be outlined. Barrister Julie Ellison, acting for the girl, claimed Mr Frew published names he said were involved in antisocial behaviour in the village on his Facebook page and on a Broughshane community page. She added that he had alleged that her client was involved in "specific incidents" and added that the politician had been in touch with the girl via private messages on Facebook. The chairman of the Justice Committee is alleged to have made the comments earlier this year, before he took up the job at Stormont. Ms Ellison said Mr Frew was in a position of considerable authority as an MLA and had inappropriately dealt with the issue. She alleged the publication of the names "heightened the difficulty" because his posts then led to comments from others that she claimed could "incite members of the community, particularly to vigilante activity". The barrister said the action was being taken against Mr Frew over the teenager's right to be protected from harassment and the politician's alleged misuse of her private information. Mr Frew's defence lawyer, Gary McHugh, said that while the plaintiff's claim was for 5,000 for personal injury, there was no evidence of any injury. The girl's father said his daughter had been "branded" by the MLA's actions as being part of the "Broughshane Hoods". He claimed the teenager was now constantly nervous and said: "People are making comments as she walks along the street, and people are giving her dirty looks". The father also described how collecting his daughter when she gets off the school bus was now a trying occasion. "It has nearly branded us as a family as something we are not through the actions of this man," he told the court. He said he was alerted his daughter had been named on social media in February this year, after which he took screen grabs of the alleged posts, one of which is said to feature Mr Frew mentioning an incident in which the door of a property belonging to him was "kicked off" its hinges. Reference was also made to an alleged message from the politician in which it was claimed he said he had given chase, had caught those involved and had a "list of the culprits". Ms Ellison said her client's alleged involvement in antisocial behaviour was not the point, rather that the defendant should not have taken "matters into his own hands" by allegedly publishing the girl's name on a public forum and claiming she was involved in a criminal offence. In the witness box, the girl's father told the court that he could not believe "that somebody in this man's position could name my child to so many people and have no evidence". He added that after he heard his daughter had been named, he went to the police and sought legal advice. The court was told a message from Mr Frew on social media said he had followed a number of people on several occasions and at times would Have been "within a metre of them, without them knowing". Afterwards, the father said he was shocked that someone in Mr Frew's position would allegedly follow youngsters. The hearing was told that after the girl's name was allegedly published, other people referred to "naming and shaming" those involved and made comments after dealing with the children, which made the girl's father fear for her safety. Among the comments made by individuals other than Mr Frew were ones suggesting "beating the s***" out of the offenders, taking people out and "teaching them some manners", "hanging them from the trees" and getting the QRF involved. The father said he took QRF to mean Quick Reaction Force and believed it could have a link to paramilitary groups. The court also heard how the father was concerned that Mr Frew contacted his daughter via private message. He said the police had never spoken to her in relation to the antisocial behaviour and that she was now unfairly labelled. Cross-examined by Mr Frew's barrister, the father was asked if he accepted that the defendant had made no comment about how youths should be dealt with. He replied: "I accept that, but at no stage did he counteract that." Barrister Mr McHugh said Mr Frew had information he was referring to the police. The lawyer claimed there had been a series of incidents, stretching as far back as the previous Halloween, of young people in Broughshane indulging in antisocial behaviour, including knocking doors and spreading food carry-outs over properties. When the barrister asked what the reference to the QRF had to do with Mr Frew, the girl's father said the politician had been engaging in a Facebook conversation about it. Mr McHugh also claimed it was never his client's intention to meet the girl one-on-one. he argued that the claim by the plaintiff centred on getting money for damages by alleging Mr Frew was harassing her, yet the private messages were initiated by her. The girl's father accepted she started the messages, but not the original Facebook posts. Before the case was adjourned, a police officer told the court that while there had been a "noticeable spike" in antisocial behaviour in Broughshane and Harryville, it had since reduced significantly. Any move to introduce a student loan scheme, linked to higher college fees, will require cross-party support, according to Education Minister Richard Bruton. The minister said yesterday that Fine Gael was open to the idea of an income-contingent loan scheme, but "now it was clearly for everyone to discuss". Mr Bruton acknowledged that the third-level system needed more investment "and we need to get more out of it for people who come from disadvantaged areas, but we need to find more resources." A State-backed loan scheme is one of three options presented in a paper on future funding on higher education, drawn up by an expert group chaired by Peter Cassells, former general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trades Unions (Ictu). It would bring to an end to the current practice of paying fees up front, but student groups have raised concerns that a loan system - where graduates repay the cost of college once they hit a certain income - would facilitate stealth increases. The current student contribution is 3,000 a year. According to the Cassells report, higher education needs an additional 1bn a year on top of its current funding level of 1.7bn, and the question is who should pay that. All three options set out in the report would involve increased Exchequer funding, but a student loan scheme would reduce the extra required from the State. The Cassells report will be referred to an Oireachtas committee for discussion before any decisions are taken. Taoiseach Enda Kenny has come under fire for "affronting" people in Northern Ireland for comments he made while urging people to vote Remain in the Brexit referendum. Mr Kenny, while visiting London, said Ireland and Northern Ireland would be most adversely affected in the event of a Brexit vote. This letter writer, Sheila Ward, objects to how Mr Kenny named Northern Ireland as distinct from Ireland. She outlines her thoughts here in a letter to the Belfast Telegraph: "Enda Kenny, while encouraging the Irish community in Britain to vote to remain in the EU, is quoted in the media as follows: "Ireland and the north would be most adversely affected". Does the Taoiseach not realise that the Republic of Ireland alone does not comprise Ireland? As a northerner living in the Republic, I feel affronted that Mr Kenny classifies me as having come from another country, especially in this year of 1916 commemoration. If he continues in this vein, he'll soon be talking about "Londonderry" and "mainland Britain". Political leaders should take care to refer to the 26-county portion of this island as the "Republic of Ireland". Also, the 2014/15 edition of the Eircom telephone directory has a headline which reads: "Direct Dialling Codes Within Ireland and Northern Ireland". What a shame that we are still tipping our forelocks. Is it any wonder northern nationalists feel abandoned by Dublin?" SHEILA WARD Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan The cystic fibrosis drug which has been rejected as "too expensive" should cost around 30,000 per patient annually - not the 160,000 demanded by its manufacturer, it has been claimed. Dr Michael Barry, head of the centre which acts as watchdog for the cost-effectiveness of new medicines, believes it will be possible to negotiate down the price of the drug Orkambi. He insisted that the drug - which around 500 people with cystic fibrosis are pleading with the HSE to fund - was currently too expensive. It would cost roughly 400m over the course of five years - two thirds of the cost of building the new national children's hospital. Health Minister Simon Harris yesterday pledged that price talks would continue with the drug's makers, Vertex. He said people with cystic fibrosis who are on the drug and responding to it will continue to receive the medication. "For patients on the drugs today - and I heard some patients are very concerned about the future provision of it - they will continue to receive that drug while the assessment goes on," he said. Jillian McNulty, who has cystic fibrosis, said the drug, which she has been taking for three years, had transformed her life and reduced her hospital admissions. Dr Barry said the evidence is that it gives modest improvement in breathing tests and cuts hospital admissions, along with the need for antibiotics. Mr Harris said he hopes to set up a new system to drive down the costs of our national drugs bill. "We spent 1.7bn last year providing drugs. When you take out the cost of staffing, it's one of the single biggest costs in our health service," he said. "I want to talk to European health ministers later this month on this. I want to look at what we can do on a European-wide basis. "I want to talk to them about what other countries do. We need to learn from each other on this." The State is also facing huge bills for new cancer drugs - including Pembrolizumab, which costs around 70,000 annually per patient and has been recommended for approval by the HSE drugs group. Meanwhile, the minister said he noted developments in Northern Ireland in relation to the lifting of the ban on gay men giving blood. He said the board of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service will consider a report from its medical advisory committee at its June board meeting. It will submit its recommendation on this issue to the Department following this meeting, he added. Growing numbers of older people have no choice but to enter nursing homes because of a lack of home help and other supports to allow them remain in their own family houses, a new report warned today. It is estimated that more than half of older people could remain in their own homes instead of going into long term care if more home support services were available. It exposes serious problems in Irelands home care services. The service is disorganised, fragmented and underfunded, the report jointly produced by the Irish Association of Social Workers, Age Action, the Alzheimer Society of Ireland and the School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice in UCD. Dr Sarah Donnelly, of the School of Social Policy in UCD, and one of the authors of the report, warned: Home care in Ireland is in crisis. Acute hospitals and nursing homes are being prioritised over the kinds of community services that enable older people to stay home. Waiting lists for home helps and home care packages are growing. Community care is grossly underfunded and people are simply not getting the care they need. This means more people in acute hospitals who dont need to be there. It means more people in nursing homes who dont need to be there. John Brennan, of the Irish Association of Social Workers, said: All of the evidence and the feedback from the social workers that spoke to us confirm that older people, including those with dementia, want to stay at home as long as possible. Many of these people could be at home, where they want to be, where their families want them to be and where Government policy says they should be, but we are simply not providing the supports they need. The social workers we spoke with estimated that more than half of the older people they work with who have gone into nursing homes or are on the waiting lists for a place could be at home if the supports were there. The report also highlights that each of the nine Community Health Organisations (CHOs) has its own system for providing home care services and its own criteria for deciding what older people are entitled to. You might be able to get a home help in one place but be refused ten miles down the road because youre the other side of line on a HSE map, even though your circumstances are exactly the same, said Dr Emer Begley, Advocacy Officer with the Alzheimer Society of Ireland, explained Another issue is in some areas older people have to be in receipt of a medical card to access community-based support services while in other areas they dont. Even when older people can get home help services, many home helps are not allowed help with simple domestic tasks such as cooking and have very little time to spend with their clients. Family carers were identified as key providers of care to older people. However, social workers reported that routinely older people were less likely to get services where family members are providing care. Geography, not need, is deciding who gets home care in Ireland. Colette Kelleher, CEO of The Alzheimer Society of Ireland, added: As 63pc of people with dementia live in the community, home care is a vital support. The majority of people with dementia receive care through older person's services and it is clear from our research that their preference for receiving care and support in their home and community is not being realised. The present social care approach has not been resourced adequately to meet the individual needs of older people. The authors of the report are calling for immediate investment and reform of community care services and for the Government to implement a fair and equitable way of allocating care and support services underpinned by legislation. Dr Marita OBrien, Policy Officer with Age Action, said: It has been Government policy since the 1960s to support older people to stay at home as long as possible but this simply isnt happening. Right now, the priority must be increased investment in community care services and putting in place a transparent, nationwide, system to provide home care. This requires ring-fenced, centralised, annual budgets. Need, not your address, should be used to allocate care services. But if, as a society, we are serious about supporting people to stay at home, with their families, in their communities, we need to go further. The Government should start examining how we can bring in a right to community care for all older people in this country. People have a right to a nursing home bed; its time they had a right to stay home. Commenting on the report, Tadhg Daly, chief executive of Nursing Homes Ireland said he has long called for a range of support services most appropriate to their needs of older people and ones that will address their individual needs. This includes a range of support services that include home care packages, meals-on-wheels, independent and assisted living, nursing home care. He was disappointed that the interpretation of the report is as if it is pitching nursing home care against home care. It is not an either/or. There shouldnt be a polarisation of one or the other in the discussion and debate surrounding older person; they are both part of the continuum of care required. Given that only 4pc of older people avail of nursing home care, polarisation is a misrepresentation. We agree with the comments of Health Minister Simon Harris last week that treating the majority of patients in the community rather than in hospitals is the fundamental building block for the future of the health service. Nursing home care and the other wide ranging health services that provide specialist supports to older persons have a central and critical role to fulfil in meeting such an objective. The State is fighting compensation claims by children who developed an incurable sleeping disorder after getting the swine flu jab, the Irish Independent has learned. This is despite a Government-commissioned report saying the Pandemrix jab left susceptible children at 14 times greater risk of developing the condition. It said other "unspecified factors" may also have played a role. The first legal stage of the cases will come before the High Court next week when an order for discovery of documents from the Department of Health and the vaccine manufacturer GlaxoSmithcline (GSK) will be sought. Solicitor Michael Boylan of Augustus Cullen Law, who represents 60 of the children, revealed yesterday that he is shocked the State is denying liability and fighting the families. It is denying it owes a duty of care to the children who received the vaccine. "They are denying everything and putting us on proof of everything. Denying a duty of care is very radical." Mr Boylan said the Irish expert group found a 14-fold increase in the incidence of narcolepsy among children vaccinated, compared to those who did not get the jab. The untested vaccine was rushed out during global panic over the swine flu pandemic in the winter of 2009 and 2010. The pandemic turned out to be much milder than feared but parents were strongly urged by senior medical officers in the Department of Health and public health experts to have children, who were a risk group for the virus, vaccinated. However, some 80 children who received the vaccine went on to develop the sleeping disorder narcolepsy. The rare disorder causes people to feel drowsy or to suffer spontaneous 'sleep attacks'. They can sometimes experience loss of muscle power and fall. This can be triggered by stimulus like laughter. All of the young people, many of whom are now teenagers or young adults, are on medication to stay awake during the day or sleep at night. Mr Boylan said the children allege negligence by the State and GSK in the circumstances where they were administered an untested vaccine and/or that the vaccine was a defective product. Parents were not made aware of the fact that it was untested, he added. At the time the vaccine was issued, GSK got the then government to grant the drugs giant indemnity from any potential compensation claims. Mr Boylan said: "Other countries like Switzerland, America, Poland and Australia would not give a licence to the vaccine. "They were afraid it was not fully tested." He said boosters were included in the vaccine, which increase the body's immune response to the jab. "It is not clear why the manufacturing process for the vaccine in Quebec in Canada, where no cases of narcolepsy followed, was different to that of the drugs plant in Dresden." Children in several other countries have been compensated; some through no-fault vaccine redress schemes. In the Netherlands, some children have got payouts of nearly 1m and the sums demanded here are likely to be in seven figures, he added. "If you look at the public health leaflets at the time they state 'it stops with you.' "People were made to feel they had a civic duty to get the vaccine to stop the plague." He said the health effects are devastating for many of the children. Most also have cataplexy, in which they "collapse like a puppet" and have suffered accidents like falls down stairs or crashes through glass panes in showers. Mairead Hilliard, whose son Alex (11) developed narcolepsy after the jab, said yesterday the condition has left the young people on life-long medication and at risk of never meeting their full potential. The compensation is needed because of the debilitating effect it has on their ability to live a normal life, she said. They are all growing up now and some are students who find they are fighting the illness all the time, and there is no cure for it, she added. Dubliner Ibrahim Halawa has spoken of how he witnesses torture every day inside an Egyptian prison. In a letter smuggled out of the jail, he wrote about "men covered in honey and tied to trees so they are attacked by insects". Two other brutal methods used are electrocution and assault with machine guns. Mr Halawa (20) has been imprisoned in the North African country for almost three years since he was arrested during political protests while on holidays in Cairo with his sisters. He is currently awaiting trial and a potential death penalty. In the letter, Mr Halawa describes the physical and sexual torture of inmates in the Wadi el-Natrun prison. He said fellow inmates are forced to watch each other endure torture methods that include being beaten with plastic pipes, electrocuted, assaulted with machine guns and put on 'the sweeper' - a torture method that involves tying inmates to a plank and leaving them to hang as if they are on a spit. According to the letter, published in UK newspaper 'The Times', men are also covered in honey and tied to trees so they are attacked by insects. Mr Halawa wrote: "They crucify men. They hold a man's arm against the curb and you hear it break when they kick it." He said he wakes up every day to the "screams of prisoners being tortured". In a letter to his family last month, the former Dublin schoolboy said the 1,000 days he had spent in prison had felt like 1,000 years. He told of how other prisoners had taken their own lives. "One thousand days with 1,000 different stories. Sadly not the type of joy, laughter and smiles. But rather the type full of suffering, pain, torture, tears, abuse, suicide and death," he wrote. Mr Halawa's sisters are calling for more assertive action to free their brother. Amnesty International's director Colm O'Gorman said the organisation conducted a review of the prosecution evidence and concluded that Mr Halawa could not have committed the crimes with which he has been charged. His mass trial has been delayed 13 times and is now due to take place on June 29. The Department of Foreign Affairs said every effort was being made to secure his release. Figures show that in the past 10 years, there have been more than 130 gangland murders which have not been solved (Stock pictures) More than 240 murders committed by criminal gangs in Ireland remain unsolved, according to new figures. A report by RTE's 'Prime Time' last night examined the worrying figures which haunt the families of victims of crime on a daily basis. The figures show that in the past 10 years, there have been more than 130 gangland murders which have not been solved. Worryingly, from 1980 to the present day, the killers responsible for 240 murders have never been caught and brought to justice. In November 2010, cousins Mark Noonan and Glen Murphy joined the catalogue of murder victims after they were shot dead at a filling station at the Clearwater Shopping Centre in Finglas, Dublin. They were murdered by members of a Dublin gang who then fled across the border. Despite a large-scale garda investigation, nobody has been charged with the brutal murder. Mark's mother Geraldine told 'Prime Time' that the failure of the State to catch the killers responsible for her son's murder has added to her unspeakable grief. "They went to the shop that night like anybody else to get a DVD and a packet of cigarettes," said Geraldine. "Mark had a little girl, she was only nine months old. "Our lads are now lying in a grave and the killers are still out, walking and living," the heartbroken mother added. A decline in fuel costs, more airline capacity and more intense competition have prompted carriers to cut prices. Photo: PA Airline passengers are set for a new era of cheaper travel, with fares across Europe and the globe continuing to fall. A decline in fuel costs, more airline capacity and more intense competition have prompted carriers to cut prices. Now, flyers are reaping the benefits. The outgoing director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Tony Tyler, told an audience of global aviation executives in Dublin yesterday that the organisation expects global airlines to make combined profits this year of $39.4bn (35.3bn). But he added that the amount of profit, or yield, they generate will fall 7pc in 2016. That yield decline reflects a fall in average ticket prices. Past month, Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary said that he expected average fares at the airline to decline by 7pc over the summer, and by 12pc during the winter. That's because cheaper oil has allowed rivals to cut their prices in an attempt to compete with carriers such as Ryanair. There's also strong competition on the transatlantic market, which is putting some downward pressure on fares. The fall in air fares also comes as Ryanair confirmed it's slashing baggage costs for customers. It has been streamlining baggage charges as part of its 'Always Getting Better' customer service improvement programme. Ryanair said that on flights with a duration of under two hours, checked baggage fees for a 15kg case will be cut by 50pc from 30 to 15. On flights lasting under three hours, those baggage fees will drop by 17pc to 25. On flights of over three hours, baggage fees won't be changed. Bags weighing up to 20kg will also see price cuts, although not as sharp as the lighter baggage. The airline said the lower prices will benefit 92pc of its flyers. A spokesman added: "Ryanair customers can look forward to more improvements as part of Year Three of our 'Always Getting Better' programme - which includes even lower fares, more new routes, new digital features and new cabin interiors." Some airlines habitually hike baggage fees at the start of the summer season. Fianna Fail tourism spokesman, Robert Troy, warned: "These increases in air travel costs will act as a disincentive for people who are planning to travel to Ireland. Ultimately, it will put unnecessary pressure on job creation in the tourism sector. "There's no justification for the increase in fees and it seems airlines are just attempting to take advantage of the busy summer tourism season." After a meeting with the Taoiseach yesterday, Social Democrat TD Catherine Murphy said she was pleased that some progress is being made on the issue (Picture: Courtpix) New laws are expected to be brought before the Dail ahead of the summer recess to restart the stalled investigation into transactions by the former Anglo Irish Bank. Taoiseach Enda Kenny has indicated to Opposition TDs that the Cabinet will next Wednesday discuss how to kick-start the Cregan Commission of Investigation into IBRC. One likely outcome is that efforts will be made to separate out a probe into the sale of contracting firm Siteserv, which is the most high-profile transaction under scrutiny. The Commission was set up almost a year ago to investigate 38 transactions involving write-offs worth more than 10m. It was established following a series of allegations made in the Dail, but there was particular disquiet over the Siteserv deal. It was acquired by businessman Denis O'Brien's Millington company with a write-off of 110m. A subsidiary of Siteserv called GMC/Sierra went on to win a valuable contract installing meters for Irish Water. However, the inquiry stalled after its sole member, Mr Justice Brian Cregan, highlighted problems around legal confidentiality, privilege and obtaining information from the Stock Exchange. After a meeting with the Taoiseach yesterday, Social Democrat TD Catherine Murphy said she was pleased that some progress is being made on the issue. She said Mr Kenny had given assurances that the Siteserv element of the investigation would be "addressed promptly". He told Ms Murphy and the leaders of Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail that the Government is prepared to amend the Commission's terms of reference to allow for a modular approach. Mr Justice Brian Cregan, who is heading the inquiry, has indicated that if the amendments are made and the legislation enacted, he will be in a position to report on Siteserv within a 12- to 18-month timeframe. "It's not the ideal situation to put the other transactions on the back burner but I do believe that if we can agree a meaningful investigation into the Siteserv transaction it will go a long way to showing us if the culture within IBRC was the best it could have been in relation to the way in which transactions were conducted," Ms Murphy said. "I am also pleased to hear that the proposed new legislation will contain amendments to the Stock Exchange Act, which has proven itself to be deficient." Ms Murphy said that this was the first Commission of Investigation to deal with banking issues. "Given the financial issues in Ireland over the last few years, it is unlikely that this will be the last time we require a Commission into banking matters and therefore it is vital that we get the infrastructure right from the outset," she said. A solicitor acting for the largest ever lotto jackpot win in Sligo of 8.24 million says the person had presented the ticket several weeks ago but the National Lottery wouldn't pay out The National Lottery still hasnt handed over an 8.2m jackpot just hours before the deadline is due to expire. A person came forward to claim the prize from the March 5 draw but lotto operator Premier Lotteries Ireland still hasnt paid out. The 90-day deadline for payment is due to expire this evening. Earlier this week a spokesperson for the National Lottery told the Irish Mail: "The National Lottery at all times works to ensure due process in our claims procedure, in accordance with our statutory and regulatory obligations. Read More As has always been the case, the National Lottery never comments on the specifics of individual claims to protect the privacy of the claimant. "In line with our normal policy, we will update once this prize money has been collected. Expand Close Matt Lyons, Ann-Marie Porter and Marcus Lyons outside Matt Lyons shop. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Matt Lyons, Ann-Marie Porter and Marcus Lyons outside Matt Lyons shop. "Players have 90 days from the draw date within which to claim their prize." The problem is believed to revolve around the operators rules on ticket validation. Winning ticket must be intact and can't be "mutilated, altered, illegible, incomplete or tampered with in any manner," according to the lotto. Athlone based lawyer Tony McLynn told RTE News a number of weeks ago: "Everybodys happy now. The matter has been resolved, and the PLI [Premier Lotteries Ireland], the licence operator, has confirmed that appropriate interest along with the principal, will be paid in due course. So its a good outcome, everybodys happy. He added that the winnings hadn't been transferred but that "the logistics of that just have to be sorted out, but thats in hand". Tony added about the cause of the delay: There was a matter of clarification sought and that was resolved. The Lotto haven't commented on any of the lawyer's statements. Speaking on behalf of his client, Tony McGlynn said despite the excitement of the win the delay of the 8.24million payment had been difficult to accept. He added: It has been [stressful]. Read More "You take it in the context the excitement of winning and the expectation theyre going to have their money fairly quickly and then for whatever reason theres a delay and they had concerns themselves from their point of view as to why there was a delay and maybe questioning the bona fides of the operator. The 'winning ticket' was sold by Matt Lyons in his shop in Sligo town on the day of the draw. The winning numbers were 2, 8, 16, 24, 33, 42 with a bonus number of 47. Normally under Lottery rules, a winner has 90 days to collect their prize. This would give any winner of the March 5 draw until June 3, which is tomorrow, to claim the money. It was the second jackpot prize to be sold by Matt Lyons at his XL shop and newsagents in Stephen Street in Sligo. A 4M winning ticket was sold here in 2009. They say lightning doesnt strike twice but it has here, says Matts son Alan. Were probably the most famous shop in Ireland at this stage with the ongoing dispute over the 8M ticket. So more people have been popping in to do the lotto than ever before. It has certainly been good for business. But he adds: It would be good for the whole thing to be settled. Personally I hope it is a syndicate so a few people get a share in it. That is also the view of customers buying lotto tickets this week. Financial adviser Eamonn Brennan, who works for Irish Life, was doing his usual numbers in the shop this week. The rumours have been hilarious, especially the one where somebody wanted paid out in cash, said Eamonn. Of course its all nonsense and Im sure this will all be sorted out eventually. If it was me, Id share it out with family and friends. With my job Id certainly know how to look after 8M. Shop regulars Andy Dodd and his wife Regina also popped in for a QuickPick. It would be lovely to win that sort of money, says Andy, a pharmaceutical rep. I certainly wouldnt be engaging the services of a solicitor in Athlone. Id be off on my holidays. Bernie Wynne adds: Its the talk of the town and I think at this stage everyone in the town has won the money if you were to believe any of the rumours, which I dont. It appears not everyone is that bothered. TK Max shop assistant Rachel Feeney (20) says: I dont do the lottery and I havent heard that much talk about it. Maybe some people have mentioned it but I just switch off. The National Lottery says it is still engaging with the ticket holder and will make an announcement only when the jackpot is paid out. The 90-day rule only applies to making a claim to a prize and there is no time limit on a pay-out, it said. Sources laughed off suggestions that the winner is a builder who owes money to the banks or that he wants paid in cash. An Irishman has reportedly been stabbed to death in Turkey. Local media said the man (64) was knifed once at a holiday apartment in the resort of Bodrum on the south-west coast. Saatbasihaber.com is reporting that the man travelled to the region 20 days ago and was staying on Tevfik Street. His body was discovered at 2pm on Friday after neighbours raised the alarm. A bloodied knife was reportedly found in the hallway outside of the apartment where the man had been staying. Police in the country have launched an investigation into the suspicious death. A spokesperson for the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed that they were offering consular assistance to the man's family. One source told independent.ie that the man is believed to be retired and originally from Dublin. Bodrum is a popular holiday resort with Irish tourists and attracts thousands of travellers each year. A total of 31 Irish people lost their lives in Turkey in the seven years from 2009 to 2015. A priest in Galway has stepped aside from active ministry in his parish pending an investigation into the safety of a child. It is understood the enquiry began following a report to garda in recent weeks. In a statement, Galway Diocese said the priest voluntarily stood aside pending the outcome of the investigation accords with diocesan policy in such matters. It is understood those in parish have been informed of the investigation. A woman has been arrested after cannabis worth 94,000 was seized during a raid by the Revenue Commissioners. As part of a joint operation between Revenues Customs Service, Garda Drugs & Organised Crime Bureau and Gardai from Drugs Unit in Galway a search took place at a house in Knocknacarra in Galway. Approximately 4.7kgs of herbal cannabis with an estimated street value of around 94,000 was seized. The drugs had originated in Cotonou, Benin in West Africa and were concealed in dried fish. A 36 year old Irish woman was arrested at the scene and is being held at Galway Garda Station. A spokesperson for Revenue said the investigation is on-going. Garda Superintendent Karl Franz Heller and Garda Commissioner Noirin OSullivan during the Bloom Festival at the Phoenix Park, Dublin, yesterday. Photo: Gareth Chaney A Fine Gael TD has broken ranks with the party after he claimed he had no confidence in Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan. Wexford deputy Michael D'Arcy has said communities across the country, in particular Dublin's north inner city, are being "failed" by Ms O'Sullivan. The Fine Gael backbencher said that Ms O'Sullivan has had almost two years at the top of the force and yet morale is in "crisis" and that communities are being "left behind". He also hit out at her decision to appoint four new assistant commissioners just weeks before responsibility for such promotions switches to the new independent Policing Authority. Mr D'Arcy also raised questions over the appointment of Ms O'Sullivan's husband, Jim McGowan, to the post of chief superintendent just weeks before the new authority took over such responsibility. Mr McGowan was among dozens of gardai who went through the official interview process. The decision by Mr D'Arcy to express his lack of confidence in Commissioner O'Sullivan will cause concern within Fine Gael ranks. Privately, other Fine Gael TDs say they too have reservations about the commissioner's performance. However, Mr D'Arcy is the first TD to go public. There is also major disquiet within the party over how Tanaiste and Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald is handing the gangland crisis. Mr D'Arcy issued the rebuke at the Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting. He also claimed that the party and the Garda were failing what he described as the "underclasses". Other TDs present say they disagreed wholeheartedly with the use of the term by Mr D'Arcy. But the Wexford TD says the term applies to "people who have no hope that society will give them any leg-up or opportunity". Mr D'Arcy also strongly attacked his party's treatment of families living in working class estates. He said this was illustrated by the level of despondency within Dublin's north inner city in relation to the Government's response to the recent gangland murders. "I am not prepared to abandon citizens and allow them to fall into social deprivation," Mr D'Arcy is said to have told the meeting. He is also understood to have said that if there had not been seven recent gangland murders, the issue of social deprivation would not be being discussed by the party. Carlow/Kilkenny TD Pat Deering, who is running for the position of chairman of the parliamentary party, told the meeting that there was a "north inner city" in every county in the country. Mr Deering also said the issue of suicide among young people was becoming an "epidemic". A special operation set up to target the country's most prolific burglary gangs is facing a desperate funding shortfall as Garda management instead scrambles to tackle the escalating gangland crisis. It has also emerged that not a single new detective has been appointed in Dublin since 2009, despite the fact the capital is under siege from gangland criminals. The Irish Independent understands that the 5m committed by the Government as part of 'Operation Thor' has run dry - and no new resources have been announced. Operation Thor was launched amid much fanfare last November as part of efforts to tackle the rural crime epidemic. The money ringfenced at the time was reportedly used to fund additional patrols, overtime and checkpoints to keep rural communities safe. However, senior gardai have criticised the operation, which they say was a publicity stunt. Well-placed sources told the Irish Independent that the success of the scheme was "exaggerated" and "inflated". They said that the force did not provide real statistics to back up the claims rural burglaries were declining. However, revelations that the special budget for Operation Thor has run out will heap further pressure on Tanaiste and Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald and Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan. Sources have revealed that senior gardai warned the minister prior to the launch of Operation Thor that the funding would only last until March. But it has emerged no additional money has been ringfenced. Senior gardai are also angered over repeated denials by the Government and the Garda Commissioner that the force is being starved of resources. Ms Fitzgerald is also being criticised by some of her own TDs, who believe she is struggling to get a grip on the crime epidemic. However, a spokesman for the minister insisted that there had been no funding cuts. "The Tanaiste and the Taoiseach have made clear that An Garda Siochana will continue to be provided with the necessary resources to provide high-visibility policing and to tackle serious criminality. "These resources are being availed of on an ongoing basis to give effect to a range of intensive operations - including Operation Thor. "There has been no reduction in resources," the spokesman told the Irish Independent. The two leading justice opposition spokespersons, Fianna Fail's Jim O'Callaghan and Sinn Fein's Jonathan O'Brien, have both expressed deep concern that money is being diverted from other parts of the Garda budget to address the gangland crisis. However, Ms Fitzgerald has insisted this is not the case. The revelations surrounding funding come after Ms O'Sullivan insisted that there is an "adequate" level of investment to introduce the necessary changes in An Garda Siochana. She also said she is working to ensure members of the force can report allegations of malpractice in a proper environment. Investment Ms O'Sullivan added that she acted "immediately" in response to the findings of the O'Higgins Commission, which looked into allegations of garda malpractice. "We now have the opportunity to put those measures in place because we do have the investment," Ms O'Sullivan told RTE yesterday. She added that An Garda Siochana has "lots of things to change". "One of them is our approach to people who want to have a different voice and who have a different voice and who want to bring things to our attention. "I have said from day one that dissent is not disloyalty." Donald Trump, pictured at Shannon Airport in 2014, is to visit Ireland again later this month MINISTER for Disabilities Finian McGrath has criticised the idea that government ministers would refuse to meet US Presidential hopeful Donald Trump when he visits Ireland later this month. Mr McGrath emphasised that while he does not agree with all of Mr Trumps political views, he likened the idea of shunning the US businessman to modern day political correctness. Expand Close Donald Trump, pictured at Shannon Airport in 2014, is to visit Ireland again later this month / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Donald Trump, pictured at Shannon Airport in 2014, is to visit Ireland again later this month I dont believe in the business of not talking to people. I would defend anyones right to free speech, particularly those whom I dont agree with, Mr McGrath told Independent.ie. Two other Cabinet members, Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar and Agriculture Minister Michael Creed, have said they would be willing to meet with Mr Trump when he visits his resort in Doonbeg, Co Clare. Read More At an event in Dublin City during the week, Mr Varadkar hit out at some of Mr Trumps previous remarks as "sexist" and "misogynistic". He was speaking after Taoiseach Enda Kenny labelled some of the US businessman's speeches as "racist" and dangerous". But Mr Varadkar told Independent.ie today that that he would repeat his criticisms of Mr Trump during a face to face meeting. I meet people I disagree with all the time. Id also say what I said to his face, Mr Varadkar added. And a spokesman for Mr Creed said: The Minister understands that Mr Trump is visiting in a private capacity. Minister Creed is willing to meet with visitors if requested to discuss potential trade opportunities for the Irish Agri-Food sector. Finance Minister Michael Noonan, who greeted Mr Trump at the end of a red carpet at Shannon AIrport ahead of his previous visit, refused to comment. The minister has nothing to say about Mr Trump's travel plans., his spokesman said. At around lunchtime, the office of An Taoiseach circulated the Governments official response in relation to the prospect of meeting Trump. Mr Trump, like every tourist, will be more than welcome to Ireland and we hope he has a pleasant stay,the response said. A similar response was given by Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan. However, there is protests planned to coincide with the visit due to Mr Trumps remarks about Mexicans, women and Muslims. People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett launched a stinging attack on Mr Trump today, who he described as a dangerous and vile racist, a warmonger and sexist. Mr Boyd Barrett told RTEs Today with Sean ORourke that he and his colleagues will be holding a protest during the visit. Speaking on the same programme, Fianna Fail TD Darragh OBrien said the visit should be shunned. If I can't stand up against someone who accuses a whole race of mexicans as robbers and murderers its important we stand up against that. Within the Co Clare constituency, the view towards the visit is mixed. Fianna Fail TD Timmy Dooley said he has no problem meeting Mr Trump to discuss his investment but insisted that he completely disagrees with some of his political view.s Newly elected TD for Clare Dr Michael Harty said: I would welcome his visit. I dont have a problem with it. He has developed a fantastic resort in Doonbeg. Dr Harty added that he does not agree with some of Mr Trumps political views either. A government minister says he has told his constituents to reject offers of council properties if they don't feel the area is suitable. European Affairs Minister Dara Murphy surprised party colleagues after admitting that he has urged families to turn down offers of homes during visits to his clinic. Mr Murphy emphasised that he is visited by families who do not want to accept the offer of a home because they are concerned about living beside people engaged in criminality and drug dealing. And he told the Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting that if offers of homes are made in certain estates in his Cork North Central constituency, he will advise applicants to reject the properties. Mr Murphy did not respond to requests for comment yesterday. He made the controversial remarks during a lengthy debate at the Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting. The Irish Independent previously revealed that up to 40pc of families on the social housing list have turned down properties in the past 12 months. The former Environment Minister Alan Kelly had considered tightening the rules surrounding the refusal of properties. Reasons for refusals vary from not wanting to live beside a particular family to the area not having adequate facilities. There has been another escape at the countrys only youth detention centre, where staff are involved in industrial action. A teenager absconded from Unit 9 of the Oberstown campus in Lusk, north Dublin, before climbing onto the roof of a building. He was later recaptured. The incident, which occurred on Wednesday night, is the most recent in a series of escapes at the detention centre. Fianna Fail spokeswoman for Children and Youth Affairs Anne Rabbitte said that the response to Oberstown staffs security concerns were slapdash and inadequate. The ministers response to the work stoppage this week by staff has been slapdash and inadequate. Its astonishing that the minister has stated there is no basis for industrial action. This is despite the fact that the dedicated and hard-working staff have genuine fears for their safety, and those of the children in their care, the Galway TD said. (Wednesday) was a typical case in point, wherein a detainee escaped and the facility was put on lockdown. Last summer, similar major security concerns arose following the escape of three young detainees. Little has been done since to rectify this growing problem, Ms Rabbitte added. Read More A spokesperson for childrens minister Katherine Zappone said the department do not comment on operational issues at the Oberstown Campus. Last July, security at the facility (inset) was put under scrutiny when four young offenders escaped from the campus. One of the teens was subsequently involved in a vicious attack on the Luas tramline in Dublin, and another taunted gardai with a series of social media posts while on the run. All of the youths were eventually returned to the campus at different periods. Oberstown staff members claim that 3,000 sick days were taken last year as a result of 65 attacks on them. Minister Zappone has said that staff are fully supported where incidents have to be investigated by the Garda authorities. This is the moment that three men were caught on CCTV breaking into a house and trying to steal a car in Shankhill in the early hours of yesterday morning. The three men were chased by the owner of the house and fled empty-handed in a Mercedes after breaking into the house in the Shanganagh Cliffs area. Three lads in what looks to be a Mercedes with tinted out windows (were) going around trying to take cars, said local politician Vinny Duran-Kearns. The guards were here and took a cigarette that one of them was smoking. They went for an Audi up the road and a Hyundai (but) they had no luck as when they got in the door the owner of the house asked who it was and they all ran out the door, he wrote on Facebook. They were not good at what they were doing as it seems one or two of them had no gloves on, he added. Local politician Carrie Smyth said that car theft is a huge problem in the area. Its happening all the time. Houses are being broken into in Killiney and Shankhill and cars are taken. Were encouraging people to turn on their alarms at night time to stop the robberies, she said. Gardai in Shankhill were called to the scene at 4am and are investigating the incident. This video was released just weeks after fitness instructor Jennifer Shannon posted a video of her BMW 520 being stolen from the driveway of her home in the Manorfields Estate, Clonee, Dublin 15. The keyless car was broken into and her car was stolen in less than three minutes. There's a new trend for "owning" your issues these days, particularly when it comes to weight, and it's disturbing me. The latest example occurred this week, when Junior Health Minister, Marcella Corcoran Kennedy, announced that she was obese in a debate on the formation of a new strategy for the health service. While describing how one in four children are obese and more than half of adults are overweight, the Offaly TD revealed that this particular issue was something she was going to "have to look into my heart about." "I used to think I was curvaceous but now I'm told I'm actually obese so I'd better do something about it," she said. You'd have to feel sorry for Marcella, because she appeared to be issuing an apologetic pre-emptive strike against the inevitable approbation that was bound to ensue. After all, when a woman carrying extra weight is tasked with addressing obesity on behalf of the entire nation, you just know that outraged critics and trolls are poised to pound their keyboards in a storm of fat-shaming invective. Expand Close Happy as I am: Andrea Smith. Photo: Gerry Mooney. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Happy as I am: Andrea Smith. Photo: Gerry Mooney. It was almost as if the minister was pleading with the critics not to judge her as harshly as she "deserved," because she had committed the cardinal sin of being overweight and not filled with self-loathing. After all, by saying she was curvaceous - a word that suggests womanliness, sex appeal and softness - she was also hinting at a happy acceptance of herself, and as we know, fat woman are simply not allowed to accept themselves. Not when they're clogging up the health service that she and Minister Simon Harris are now responsible for, with their fuzzed-up arteries, high blood pressure and diabetic complications. Expand Close Louise McSharry at The Ray Darcy Show, where she addressed 'fat-shaming' / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Louise McSharry at The Ray Darcy Show, where she addressed 'fat-shaming' Read More That's how the story goes anyway in every discussion, debate and general analysis of the topic. Those disgraceful fatties, shoving cream cakes in their gobs and costing us a fortune, we tut. Funnily enough, I'm a middle-aged fat woman who hasn't cost the health service a single cent to date, unlike many of my slimline friends, but that's not a story that fits the usual tired old narrative. So like Marcella, is it a wiser approach to don sackcloth and ashes and 'fess up to your own weaknesses when it comes to weight, rather than waiting for the coals of shame to be liberally heaped on your head? Expand Close Louise McSharry at The Ray Darcy Show, where she addressed 'fat-shaming' / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Louise McSharry at The Ray Darcy Show, where she addressed 'fat-shaming' I don't recall former health ministers Mary Harney or James Reilly publicly owning their weight issues in the Dail, even though media commentators were quick to point out the perceived incongruity between their ample waistlines and job of health promotion. I also don't remember it being a topic back then that exercised us quite as much as nation, if you'll excuse the pun - far more than our propensity for drinking, taking drugs, smoking and fighting in the streets, all of which surely place just as much strain on the health service. Was 2fm broadcaster Louise McSharry also getting a volley in ahead of the enemy by naming her autobiography, 'Fat Chance: My Life in Ups, Downs and Crisp Sandwiches', or was she doing it with an eye to sales, given the public's insatiable appetite for weight-related topics? After all, the talented and successful McSharry has come through Hodgkin's Lymphoma and a troubled childhood living in Chicago with her alcoholic mother. Yet most of the commentary around her book centred on the issue of her struggle with weight and opinions on fat-shaming, but even when she mounted an intelligent defence on the subject, it still provided a springboard for general attacks on fat people. "For every size 18, articulate woman in her 30s who is content in her own skin, eats carefully and takes exercise, there is a multiple number of bloated, obese parents, whose waddle down to the chipper for their dinner will be their only exercise, before they slump back down for an evening of TV, grease and booze," wrote Michael O'Doherty in the Herald, adding that obesity-related illnesses were costing the State a fortune. Bloated, waddle, slump, grease, booze. All words designed to evoke disgust and revulsion, the default reaction to people who are fat and are therefore considered repugnant and offensive to our sight. You see, unlike excess weight, most other vices and dubious practices are not something we wear physically, which is why they are easier to hide. Those who indulge in them frequently escape censure and judgement because you can't immediately pinpoint their presence visually. No other vice generates quite as much hostility as obesity, even though it only affects the health and welfare of the person in question. By contrast, other people's drinking, drug-taking and smoking affect the rest of us in all kinds of ways. As a society, we're blighted by cancer caused by inhaling second-hand smoke, innocent deaths caused by drink-driving and fighting, and robberies and gangland warfare fuelled by drug addiction, yet we reserve our greatest levels of approbation for the obese members who visually offend us. In her book 'Shrill', writer Lindy West says that as a fat woman, her body is "lampooned and associated with moral failure." She also suggests that the size of each person's body is their own business, and campaigns against the notion that the shape of your body dictates the worth of your being. "But if people are going to be mean to me and make fun of me anyway, why not take control of the narrative and say something?" she says. "If you let those people silence you, then you can't advocate for yourself. And you can't make your life better. And you can't own your own life." Maybe instead of being cowed into apologising for her body, our new junior minister for health could take a leaf out of Lindy's book. She could strike a blow for all the overweight adults out there by echoing the writer's contention that everybody has a right to exist in whatever shape or form they choose without being insulted or reviled. Now that would be a worthwhile health reform. Rural communities are consistently experiencing speeds of less than 1Mbs during peak usage times, while their urban counterparts are capable of receiving 360Mbs in some areas. This 300-fold gap is having a negative impact on the life and economy of rural Ireland. High-speed broadband is as essential as electricity for many businesses. Email, video calls and cloud storage are all used on a daily basis in some industries. IT/engineering businesses can require the download of large files regularly. In some extreme cases, it is quicker to drive significant distances into urban centres to download these files, before returning home to use them. Such a disadvantage would in itself be enough to prevent anyone from considering setting up many types of business in a rural community, hindering our rural economy. But our concerns are not merely centred on commercial imperatives. The social life of rural Ireland is also severely affected by the country's poor broadband infrastructure. Use of social media and video streaming is becoming more prevalent in parts of the country where it is possible. It is considered a given in most urban places. But both require high internet speeds. People working for companies that offer the chance to operate from home are not able to do so in rural areas. This is a direct consequence of having to live with poor broadband connections. This, along with a lack of investment in other rural infrastructure has a serious social cost. It is a contributing factor in rural-urban migration. The Commission for the Economic Development of Rural Areas (CEDRA) report in 2014 called for the delivery of broadband speeds of at least 30Mbs to all rural areas by the end of 2015, while the current National Broadband Plan (NBP) plans to start providing this speed only later this year. Not only have previous governments not acted on the recommendations of the CEDRA report, the NBP targets are not ambitious enough. Average internet speeds are increasing exponentially. If the current global growth continues at the same rate, rural Ireland will again be left lagging behind our global counterparts within the next five years. A long-sighted goal of 100Mbs must be set to ensure the digital divide between rural and urban Ireland does not increase any further. Lack of availability of broadband services in rural areas is something I hear about as president of Macra na Feirme regularly in my travels across the country serving the membership. From my own experience, availability of fast, efficient broadband is vital for the running of a successful farm business. Tasks traditionally carried out on paper are now carried out online. This has improved efficiency and expedited the registration process on the farm. Practical examples include registration of calves and this year farmers were encouraged by the Department of Agriculture to complete their basic payments applications online. The option to complete such tasks bring efficiency in the running of the farm and speed up processing times. However, broadband is crucial to performing the tasks successfully. Sean Wallace, who is a member of Donoughmore Macra na Feirme and sits on the Macra na Feirme National Council representing the Muskerry region in Co Cork, works as an information system engineer with a qualification from UCC in computer science. Sean also has first-hand practical experience of when poor broadband has posed a problem for him. When completing his final project, Sean worked on some elements of the project from home. As his degree was in computer science, it involved the need to download substantial files. Because of this it was quicker for Sean to undertake a 25-minute journey to Cork City to download the files on campus and return home to complete his work than it would have been to attempt to download them at home. There just practical examples of the need to prioritise investment in broadband infrastructure so that young rural people and young farmers can run successful businesses in rural areas. Enterprise is the lifeblood of rural Ireland and young people are energetic, educated and would love the opportunity to live and work in rural Ireland but poor broadband infrastructure is limiting this potential enterprising entrepreneurial spirit. Macra na Feirme understands that broadband technology is improving all the time. The challenge faced by the Government in its rollout is that the technology is changing at a faster pace than the infrastructure is being rolled out. Access to markets, suppliers and services by rural businesses is dependant on high-speed broadband. Business in rural areas face enough challenges and obstacles and poor broadband connectivity due to lack of investment and prioritisation by policy makers is not acceptable and Macra na Feirme will continue to lobby for the roll out of a high-speed broadband across the country. Sean Finan is national president of Macra There's a belief that some good always comes out of a crisis - but what happens if the crisis won't end? For more than three years now the Department of Justice has been staggering from emergency to emergency, only calming the waters on one to be hit with the next. During his period as Minister for Justice and Defence, Alan Shatter appeared to revel in the controversy at times. He took the hard decisions in relation to closing garda stations and fending off criticisms about cutbacks alongside every other minister in the era of austerity. But that was the easy stuff compared with the gathering storms of bugging allegations at the Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission's offices and penalty points scandals. It was May 2013 when he went on 'Prime Time' and decided he'd had enough of Mick Wallace's moralising over whistleblowers and alleged dodgy practices by some gardai. Mr Shatter breached data protection law and revealed to the country that the Wexford TD was once spotted on his phone while driving but not given penalty points by a garda. At the end of the month he faced a motion of no confidence in the Dail but the arithmetic at the time meant he survived easily and the Taoiseach back him. But Mr Shatter then became the first Justice Minister in history not to be invited to address the Garda Representation Association's annual conference. In some quarters he became dubbed the 'minister for self-defence' as 2,500 tapes emerged from garda stations and Commissioner Martin Callinan handed in his resignation. Eventually, having survived a second motion of no confidence, Mr Shatter fell on his sword in May 2014. The keys of the department were tossed to Frances Fitzgerald, who was delighted to be given the chance to clean up an almighty mess. But two years later the chaos is even worse. The legacy of all the issues above are still hanging over the department, but now problems that affect ordinary people as they go about their lives are also on the agenda. Rural crime dominated the headlines last summer as the impact of those austerity cuts finally came home to roost. And since Christmas the emergence of a new incarnation of gangland has seen terror find its way onto the streets of Dublin. While historical tapes and celebrities getting penalty points wiped stoke conversation at water coolers, burglars and gunmen install real fear in people. It seems now that despite a Commission of Investigation, the whistleblower controversy won't go away. The Garda Commissioner is promising reform but comes from the old culture. Budgets for rural crime look under threat. And the gangland threat is only become more fierce. It's more likely the next crisis is around the corner than a solution to the existing ones. The argument for the creation of 'super credit unions' has been made for some time, with the Department of Finance and the Central Bank being among its leading advocates (Stock picture) It has been said that watching mergers in business is a little like observing dinosaurs mating. But the very reason businesses do so is to avoid the fate of the now extinct giant reptiles. In managing change, you must be prepared to leave something behind in order to go forward. This is the juncture at which many Irish credit unions now find themselves, and the very success of the organisations has made it inevitable that sooner or later some hard choices would have to be made. The argument for the creation of 'super credit unions' has been made for some time, with the Department of Finance and the Central Bank being among its leading advocates. Understandably, smaller credit unions are hesitant about yielding their independence. They do not wish to bow to the inevitability of professional managers and the potential loss of the personal touch in scaling up. The truth is that no lending institution, from the highest to the humblest, could be shielded from the shockwaves of the financial crash. The priorities must now be security, and insulating, as far as possible, against risk. Thus there is a new maze of laws and restrictions that must be negotiated. Credit unions are not immune; if mergers are required to protect the interests of members and help secure their future, then so be it. They cannot afford to turn their backs on modernity and all its guises, which comes with electronic payments and debit cards. The banks are breathing down their necks in the race for business. The era of the local credit union may be short-lived - there were 383 last year, there is expected to be only 280 by the end of this year. It is always necessary to turn a page to begin a new chapter. For credit unions that may mean letting go of the past, in order to embrace the future. Harris must seek better deal on drugs for patients The enthusiasm new Health Minister Simon Harris brings to his task is infectious, but he will be judged not by what he hopes to do but by what he actually does. Much of what he says is sensible and achievable, if given the resources and the cooperation required to complete the radical overhaul envisaged. That is, of course, a big if. Many of his predecessors found to their cost that there was no room for thinking big within the limitations of the department. Yesterday, Mr Harris said he would discuss with his European colleagues the prospect of jointly purchasing new drugs to cut costs. His comments were on the back of the furore over news that the cystic fibrosis drug Orkambi had been judged uneconomic by the National Centre for Pharmaeconomics (NCPE), the body which examines the economic case for new drugs. At an estimated 158,000 a year per patient, the cost seems prohibitive, but Mr Harris believes there is room for negotiation. He said: This process is not over. It will continue as a priority. Professor Michael Barry, head of the NCPE, said he too was hopeful there would be a successful outcome from talks with the drug maker, Vertex. As Mr Berry said: We dont put a price on life, but we believe the manufacturers got the price wrong here. If there is any room for manoeuvre, surely it must be taken. As Mr Harris acknowledged, with a new generation of hugely expensive cancer drugs shortly to become available, the problem presented by Orkambi is likely to reoccur. The stakes are high, but one can think of no better start for Mr Harris than securing a better deal for patients. Ursuline College student, Aoife Gallagher joined over 100 Transition Year students from across the country last Saturday to celebrate her graduation from St. Patrick's Mental Health Services Walk In My Shoes Transition Year Programme. Aoife was also the winner of the 'Mental Health Matters' caption competition, winning a top of the range tablet. St Patrick's Walk In My Shoes invited students from all over Ireland to take part in a week long placement hosted by the Adolescent Mental Health team at St. Patrick's University Hospital. To date almost 500 students have taken part in the programme which is currently in its sixth year. The programme aims to educate young people about mental health issues and to breakdown the stigma associated with mental illness. All participants will return to their schools as ambassadors for mental wellbeing and share their new understanding of positive mental health by preparing and giving a presentation to their classmates on their return to school. Sarah Surgenor, Head of Communications and Fundraising at St. Patrick's said: "Integration of mental health awareness and education plays a significant role in combating stigma in schools and communities. The interest in this programme is increasing every year, demonstrating a positive attitude towards teaching students about mental health." Paul Gilligan, CEO at St. Patrick's said, "With 75% of all mental health difficulties beginning before the age of 24, it's crucial students learn how to manage their mental health and access available supports from an early age. Each year 100 students complete this course and return to their communities with a healthier attitude towards mental health difficulties." Guest Speaker for the ceremony and TV Personality Alan Shortt said "This programme goes above and beyond to reach out to young people and I am delighted to be part of this award ceremony. These students are a credit to their schools and are well equipped to become mental health champions in their communities." The lead role in Doctor Who has previously been offered to a black actor, showrunner Steven Moffat has revealed. Moffat, who is to step down from his top role at the BBC drama at the end of next year's series, did not say who the actor was. He told Doctor Who Magazine: "We've tried. The part has been offered to a black actor. But for various reasons, it didn't work out." Moffat added: "I certainly don't think there's ever been a problem with making the Doctor black, which is why it should happen one day... "Should the Doctor be black? Should the Doctor be a woman? So long as the Doctor is still the Doctor, anything is possible." Before the casting of current Time Lord Peter Capaldi, there had been calls for a black actor to take on the role. Mixed-race actress Pearl Mackie, whose father is from the West Indies, was cast as the Doctor's companion in April. Moffat said: "We decided that the new companion was going to be non-white, and that was an absolute decision, because we need to do better on that. We just have to. "I don't mean that we've done terribly - our guest casts are among the most diverse on television - but I feel as though I could have done better overall." The casting of Mackie does not rule out casting a non-white actor as the next Doctor, Moffat explained. Video of the Day He said: "Two non-white leads would be amazing. In fact, a lot of people would barely notice. "Even a black James Bond would barely raise an eyebrow nowadays. He's still got to be an establishment killer, but a black Bond would be great - and I certainly don't think there's ever been a problem with making the Doctor black, which is why it should happen one day." Moffat said there was no excuse for non-diverse casting. "Sometimes the nature of a particular show - historical dramas, for instance - makes diversity more of a challenge, but Doctor Who has absolutely nowhere to hide on this," he said. "Young people watching have to know that they have a place in the future. That really matters. You have to care profoundly what children's shows in particular say about where you're going to be." In 2013, Neil Gaiman sparked speculation when he wrote on his blog: "I know one black actor who was already offered the part of the Doctor, and who turned it down. "You can ask, but seeing that it was something I was told in confidence by the actor in question, you won't get an answer." Maria Walsh pictured at The P and G Beauty Luminescence Event at The Radisson Hotel Golden Lane,Dublin. Picture: Brian McEvoy Former Rose of Tralee Maria Walsh has spoken of the challenges of dating as a gay woman in Ireland. Ireland is home to a number of gay bars, but they tend to be filled with gay men, leaving lesbian or bisexual women with fewer choices for a night out. With a wedding and events planning business set to launch in July, Maria said shes more focused on work than dating. Im still single, Im very much immersing myself in the business side so Im not quite taking care of my personal life at the moment, she told Independent.ie. Expand Close Maria Walsh at the VIP Style Awards. Pic: Damien Eagers / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Maria Walsh at the VIP Style Awards. Pic: Damien Eagers Although the same-sex marriage referendum has normalised the LGBT community and made people feel really proud to be gay, there is still a notable lack of female-focused nights out. It is not balanced. Whether its that lesbians arent out on the scene as much or we just dont like being out in clubs and bars, it is really hard to find a lesbian bar. You have the George, but thats predominantly gay men. Its not just in Ireland, it was like that in Philadelphia too, very gay men-focused versus gay women, which I dont understand. Thats a business opportunity! Read more: Expand Close Former Rose of Tralee Maria Walsh / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Former Rose of Tralee Maria Walsh While she lamented the dearth of lesbian bars, Maria admitted: Im a bit of a loser when it comes to going out anyway, I cant even tell you the last time I went out. Maria is just back from a six-day trip to Ghana with the childrens rights charity Plan International, where homosexuality is still illegal. Video of the Day It was part of our security briefing. Any homosexual activity is banned in the country, and lesbianism was called out, she said. When we were celebrating the one-year anniversary of the marriage referendum, I was in Ghana, and it really made me think, we have so much more work to do on the global front. President Barack Obama, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and First Lady Michelle Obama talks with Prince George at Kensington Palace. Photo: Pete de Souza Royal portrait by US photographer Annie Liebovitz shows Queen Elizabeth with her two grandchildren, James, Viscount Severn (left) and Lady Louise (second left) and her five great-grandchildren Mia Tindall (holding handbag), Savannah Philipps (third right), Isla Phillips (right), Prince George (second right) and Princess Charlotte (centre) in the Green Drawing room at Windsor Castle Photo: AFP PHOTO / 2016 ANNIE LIEBOVITZ Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge arrive to greet guests attending a garden party at Buckingham Palace on May 24, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Dan Kitwood - WPA Pool/Getty Images) Princess Charlotte poses for a photograph taken by her mother Kate Middleton, who is to appearon the cover of Vogue, inset, for its June centenary issue. Photo: Reuters Prince George stands on foam blocks during a Royal Mail photoshoot for a stamp sheet to mark the 90th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II. The sheet features four generations of the Royal family, from left, the Prince of Wales, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince George and the Duke of Cambridge, and the picture was taken in the summer of 2015 in the White Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace. Photo: Ranald Mackechnie/Royal Mail/PA Wire Princess Charlotte is captured in this portrait taken by her mother Kate and released by the British royal family this week. Getty Images The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with their children, Princess Charlotte and Prince George, enjoy a short private break skiing in the French Alps. Picture: John Stillwell/PA Wire Kate Middleton and Prince William are reportedly planning on expanding their family as they want their children to grow up close in age. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge welcomed Prince George in July 2013 and Princess Charlotte in May 2015 and according to friends, they'd like to add another to their brood sooner rather than later. In a profile by Vanity Fair, sources told the publication, They want at least three kids and for them to be close in age. The couple are based in their country estate Amner Hall and travel to their apartment at Kensington Palace for overnight stays and royal business in London, but intend on living there until they are called up to duty. Expand Close Princess Charlotte poses for a photograph taken by her mother Kate Middleton, who is to appearon the cover of Vogue, inset, for its June centenary issue. Photo: Reuters / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Princess Charlotte poses for a photograph taken by her mother Kate Middleton, who is to appearon the cover of Vogue, inset, for its June centenary issue. Photo: Reuters "Its no secret that William doesnt like the media intrusion into his life, and in the country he can escape, a family friend told the mag. The Queen and the Prince of Wales have given their blessing for William to live this life, and William is very grateful. Its enabling him and Kate to raise their family in a way thats as close to ordinary as they can get. William doesnt want George and Charlotte going through some of the experiences he went through growing up. Everything he does regarding his family is very deliberate. Read More Little George recently enrolled at Westacre Montessori nursery in Norfolk, where he goes three days a week, indicating they are planning a longer stay in the countryside. Expand Close The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge during a visit to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, at the Royal Hospital Chelsea / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge during a visit to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, at the Royal Hospital Chelsea Johnny Depp once attempted to smother his wife, Amber Heard, with a pillow, a friend of the actress has claimed, as the couple's divorce becomes increasingly venomous. Miss Heard (30) filed for divorce from Mr Depp (52, below) on May 23. She has accused him of domestic violence and appeared outside court sporting what seemed to be a large bruise on her face, and has taken out a restraining order. Now a friend of Miss Heard has told The New York Post that the Oscar-nominated actor attacked her in December, resulting in the friend receiving a desperate text message calling for her help. "I got to her apartment to find her with a cut and bruised lip, a swollen eye and a chunk of hair missing from the top of her head," the friend recalled. "This incident really stuck with me, because she confided in me that day that she feared for her life after an intoxicated Johnny tried to suffocate her with a pillow." The friend told the paper that Mr Depp was frequently violent. "I have personally witnessed the aftermath of Johnny Depp's violent and abusive behaviour towards her on many occasions," the confidante said. Samantha Spector, Miss Heard's lawyer, issued a statement yesterday saying that her client "has suffered through years of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of Johnny". The pair married 15 months ago, having met in 2009 on the set of The Rum Diary. Ms Spector rubbished Mr Depp's friends' insistence that it was, in fact, Miss Heard who was violent towards her husband. Video of the Day "In domestic violence cases, it is not unusual for the perpetrator's playbook to include miscasting the victim as the villain," said Ms Spector. "In reality, Amber acted no differently than many victims of domestic violence, who think first of the harm that might come to the abuser, rather than the abuse they have already suffered. "Amber can no longer endure the relentless attacks and outright lies launched against her character in the court of public opinion. "Hopefully, Johnny will get the help that he so desperately needs." Mr Depp's lawyers have denied the domestic violence claims, and his representatives did not respond to requests for comments last night. Heard has already claimed that Depp argued with her on April 21 after showing up at the end of her 30th birthday party "inebriated and high", grabbed her by the hair and "violently shoved" her to the floor. She also said he threw a mobile phone at her, "striking my cheek and eye with great force" during an altercation on May 21 - when he "began obsessing about something that was untrue". Los Angeles police have said they responded to that incident, but found no evidence of a crime. Irish actress Caitriona Balfe posing during a photocall for the film "Money Monster" at the 69th Cannes Film Festival Caitriona Balfe during 8th Annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show - Runway at The New York State Armory in New York City, New York, United States. (Photo by KMazur/WireImage) Caitriona Balfe during 8th Annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show - Runway at The New York State Armory in New York City, New York, United States. Photo: KMazur/WireImage Irish actress Caitriona Balfe poses on May 12, 2016 as she arrives for the screening of the film "Money Monster" at the 69th Cannes Film Festival Caitriona Balfe during 8th Annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show - Runway at The New York State Armory in New York City, New York, United States. Photo: KMazur/WireImage Irish actress Caitriona Balfe has opened up about her days as a model and her experience walking in the Victorias Secret Fashion Show. Speaking on Conan OBrien's chat show last weekend, the Outlander star cringed as she was shown a photo from the 2002 lingerie show. Something like that was so weird for me because it was like, the Brazilian bombshell, and I dont know, Im just not like that. I mean, I was the whitest girl on the stage! she laughed. The Monaghan native confessed that she had tried to add a bronzed glow with not one but two spray tans, to no avail. Expand Close Caitriona Balfe during 8th Annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show - Runway at The New York State Armory in New York City, New York, United States. (Photo by KMazur/WireImage) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Caitriona Balfe during 8th Annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show - Runway at The New York State Armory in New York City, New York, United States. (Photo by KMazur/WireImage) I had gone and I had gotten a spray tan and I went and showed them, and they were just like, Can you go get another one? And then I came back with my second spray tan and I was still the whitest girl on the stage. She is now enjoying success as the lead actress in the US time-travelling romance epic Outlander, which has just been renewed for two more seasons. However, Balfe said she was still grateful for her early modelling career. Expand Close Actress Caitriona Balfe attends the 73rd Annual Golden Globe Awards held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in January in Beverly Hills, California. Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Actress Caitriona Balfe attends the 73rd Annual Golden Globe Awards held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in January in Beverly Hills, California. Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images It was fun for a while, I got to travel the world and I got to experience life a in a away most people dont get to, she said. A total of 117 bodies have been pulled from the sea off Libya's shores after a smuggling boat carrying mainly African migrants sank in the Mediterranean. Elsewhere, a separate massive search-and-rescue operation in the open sea saved 340 people and recovered nine bodies. The two sinkings were the latest deadly disasters for refugees and migrants hoping to find better lives in Europe, and came in addition to the more than 1,000 people who drowned since May 25 while attempting the perilous, lengthy journey across the sea from North Africa to Europe's southern shores. As traffickers take advantage of the improving weather, officials say it is impossible to know how many unseaworthy boats are being launching every day from Libya to Europe - and how many never reach their target. A host of naval operations in the southern Mediterranean, coordinated by Italy, have been stretched just responding to the disasters they do hear about. In Libya, at least 117 bodies - 75 women, six children and 36 men - were pulled from the waters near the western city of Zwara, Mohammed al-Mosrati, a spokesman for Libya's Red Crescent, said. All but a few were from African countries. The death toll is expected to rise. No life jackets were seen on Red Cross photos of the bodies. Authorities are uncertain when or how the people died. Libyan coast guards found an empty boat drifting on Thursday, Libyan navy Colonel Ayoub Gassim said, adding it was possible the vessel had capsized a day earlier. Mr Al-Mosrati of the Red Crescent said the bodies were not "decomposed and therefore have drowned within the past 48 hours". He said the boat that was found might have been the one carrying the victims. But strong winds and currents can push bodies from one place to the other, he said, making it difficult for authorities to determine where the tragedy occurred. Colonel Gassim blamed Europe for "doing nothing but counting bodies" in efforts to stop the massive illegal migration from Libya. The situation in Libya has been particularly chaotic since the ouster and killing of the country's long-time autocratic ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. The country has been split into rival governments and parliaments where each is supported by a loose set of militias and tribes. Smuggling gangs have taken advantage of the chaos to send waves of overcrowded boats toward Europe. Aid officials said the last two weeks have been especially deadly because smugglers are using riskier tactics, bigger boats and even less-seaworthy vessels than before. Frederico Soda, who heads International Organisation for Migration's Mediterranean office in Rome, said the increase in those making the deadly crossing was due "in part, to better weather, and in part to the use of bigger wooden boats that can carry more people than the rubber boats" used last year. William Spindler, a spokesman for the UN refugee agency, noted new and far riskier tactics being used by traffickers. He said until last week he had never heard of smugglers using an overloaded boat carrying hundreds of people to tow another vessel packed with hundreds more that lacked an engine. The second boat capsized on May 26, drowning what his agency estimated was around 550 migrants. Another migrant boat sank elsewhere in the Mediterranean on Friday, with Greek authorities saying 340 people were rescued and nine bodies recovered in a massive search-and-rescue operation involving Greek helicopters, aircraft, patrol boats and passing merchant ships. Greece's coast guard said the roughly 25-metre vessel, which resembled a large fishing boat, had been carrying an undetermined number of people when it was located half-sunk about 75 nautical miles south of Crete in international waters. It was not immediately clear where the boat was from, who it carried, or where it was trying to go. Most survivors were picked up by the Norwegian-flagged Clipper Hebe tanker and were being transported to the Sicilian port of Augusta in Italy. Others were to be taken to Egypt and Malta. The coast guard said the operation was continuing to search for any potentially missing passengers. "The information we have on the number of people on board the vessel is still unclear - we've heard that there were 400 or 500 people on board, but we cannot confirm that number," coast guard spokesman Nikos Lagadianos said. "There is a huge rescue effort under way." Mr Lagadianos said it would be "very difficult" for divers to reach the wreck any time soon. "A few hours ago, only the tip of the ship's mast was sticking out of the water. Now it's considered to have sunk," he said. The short Aegean Sea crossing from the Turkish coast to Greek islands was the preferred sea route for migrants heading to Europe until Balkan countries closed their borders in March and the European Union reached an agreement with Turkey to send arriving migrants back. The deal has led to a dramatic decrease in the number of people landing on Greek islands from Turkey. The Greek coast guard said it and European border patrol agency Frontex had rescued 164 people in four separate incidents on Thursday off the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios. Before the EU-Turkey migrant deal, thousands would arrive each day. Many have speculated that the EU migrant deal could prompt Syrians and others to try the more dangerous Libya-to-Italy route, but authorities have seen no signs yet that any big shift is happening. Hillary Clinton has unveiled what will be a key plank of her presidential election campaign - warning that the world will be "less safe" if Donald Trump becomes president. In a major speech on foreign policy, Ms Clinton unleashed a scathing attack, accusing Mr Trump of being "dangerous and unfit to be president". She lambasted the billionaire for undermining relationships with European allies, supporting nuclear proliferation, and being too friendly to North Korea. Advisers to Ms Clinton said it was the start of a sustained attack in which the former secretary of state would contrast her international experience with her rival's lack of it. In his "America First" foreign policy, Mr Trump has criticised Nato as obsolete and too costly for the United States, suggested Japan and North Korea should have nuclear weapons, pledged to ban foreign Muslims from the United States and said he would sit down with Kim Jong-un. Jake Sullivan, Ms Clinton's foreign policy adviser, said she was determined to "rebuke a litany of dangerous policies that Trump has espoused, ranging from nuclear proliferation to endorsing war crimes, from denouncing Nato to banning Muslims". Expand Close Donald Trump / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Donald Trump Mr Sullivan added: "It is not just about Republican versus Democrat. "Donald Trump is unlike any presidential nominee we've seen in modern times and he is fundamentally unfit for the job." Meanwhile, the top elected Republican, Paul Ryan, ended a long period of soul-searching and endorsed Trump for president last night, a step toward unifying party loyalists behind the divisive candidate. Mr Ryan, the House of Representatives speaker, had been a high-profile hold-out against supporting Trump for the November 8 presidential election out of concern about the presumptive Republican nominee's bellicose rhetoric and his break with party orthodoxy on issues including trade and immigration ( Daily Telegraph, London) Migrants and refugees arrive at Psalidi near Kos Town, Kos, Greece Amnesty International has urged the European Union to halt plans to return asylum-seekers to Turkey. A 35-page briefing by t he London-based rights group said the EU-Turkey deal to curb irregular migration was "illegal" and "reckless". Turkey is hosting three million refugees, including 2.75 million Syrians, and expected to receive more as part of the deal. Under the agreement, irregular migrants who arrived to the Greek islands from Turkey after March 20 will be sent back to Turkey. The EU, in turn, will resettle one Syrian refugee from Turkey to the bloc for each Syrian that Greece returns to Turkey. Turkey also stands to receive up to six billion euros (4.6bn), visa-free travel and fast track negotiations on EU accession. But Amnesty says the deal is unlawful because asylum-seekers do not access "effective protection" in Turkey. It says Turkey lacks the capacity to process asylum applications and falls short on key criteria to be deemed a "safe third country". John Dalhuisen, Amnesty's director for Europe and Central Asia, said: "In its relentless efforts to prevent irregular migrants to Europe, the EU has wilfully misrepresented what is actually happening on the ground in Turkey." Turkey, the group says, does not accord full refugee status, and most refugees do not receive government support. Amnesty also repeated its assertion that Syrians in Turkey are at risk of being forcibly sent back to their war-torn nation. Turkish officials have rejected previous Amnesty reports on the issue of forced returns. Visitors gather in front of the entrance of the Musee de Louvre which is closed and tourists being turned away, due to the unusually high water level of the nearby river Seine in Paris.(AP Photo/Markus Schreiber) Curators at the Louvre in Paris are scrambling to protect art from the museum's priceless collection as flood waters continue to rise in the French capital. The swollen Seine River kept rising on Friday, with officials saying it was at its highest level in nearly 35 years and expected to peak later on in the day. Nearly a week of heavy rain has led to serious flooding across a swathe of Europe, where 14 people have died and more are missing. Although the rain has tapered off in some areas, flood waters are still climbing over river banks. Flooding blocked roads in the French capital and several Paris railway stations were shut. While the Louvre's most famous painting, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, was safe on an upper floor, officials said about 250,000 artworks were located in flood-risk areas, mostly in basement storerooms. The art is being moved upstairs as officials take precautionary measures to keep it safe. The Orsay museum, on the left bank of the Seine, was also closed on Friday to prepare for possible flooding. A spokeswoman at the Louvre said the museum had not taken such precautions in its modern history - since its 1993 renovation at least Expand Close A fireman pulls a woman and her dog to shore by a row of houseboats on the River Seine in Paris (AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A fireman pulls a woman and her dog to shore by a row of houseboats on the River Seine in Paris (AP) Disappointed tourists were being turned away from the museum. Elsewhere in Europe, authorities were counting the cost of the floods as they waded through muddy streets and waterlogged homes. Read More German authorities said the body of a 65-year-old man was found overnight in the town of Simbach am Inn, bringing the country's death toll to 10. France's Interior Ministry also reported the death of a 74-year-old man who fell from his horse and drowned in a river in the Seine-et-Marne region east of Paris, the second death in France. In eastern Romania, two people died and 200 people were evacuated from their homes as floods swept the area, including one man who was knocked off his bicycle by a torrent of water in the eastern village of Ruginesti. Several other people in Europe were missing on Friday, including a Belgian beekeeper who was swept away by the current while trying to save his hives from rising waters in the eastern village of Harsin. The foul weather has compounded the travel disruptions in France, which is already dealing with the fallout from weeks of strikes and other industrial actions by workers upset over the government's proposed labour reforms. French rail company SNCF said the strikes had led to the cancellation of some 40% of the country's high-speed trains. In addition, French energy company Enedis said more than 20,000 customers are without power to the east and south of Paris. Outside the Louvre, tourists expressed understanding over the museum's closure. "It's good that they are evacuating the paintings. It's a shame that we couldn't see them today, but it's right that they do these things," said Carlos Santiago, who was visiting from Mexico. The German parliament has approved a resolution declaring that the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War I was a "genocide". Turkey responded by withdrawing its ambassador to Germany "for consultations". Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the resolution would seriously affect relations between the two countries. In a news conference in Nairobi, broadcast live on Turkish television, Mr Erdogan said that after the return of the country's ambassador to Germany the government would discuss what steps Ankara would take in response. Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their people died in the atrocities of 1915. Turkey says the toll was much lower and rejects the term "genocide". The timing is awkward, as the EU needs Turkey to help stem the migrant influx. Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus called the move a "historic mistake". Armenia's Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said it was a "valuable contribution" to the "international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian genocide." More than 20 nations, including France and Russia, as well as Pope Francis, have recognised the 1915 killings as genocide. Turkey denies that there was a systematic campaign to slaughter Christian Armenians as an ethnic group during World War I. It also points out that many Turkish civilians died in the turmoil during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was not in the Bundestag (lower house) for the vote. Her Christian Democrats (CDU), their coalition partners the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens all supported the resolution, and the vote in favour was overwhelming. German MPs came under pressure from Turks in the run-up to the vote, including threatening and abusive e-mails, German ARD news reports. Mr Erdogan had phoned Ms Merkel, warning her that ties would suffer "if (Germany) falls into such a game". The resolution uses the word "genocide" in the headline and text. It also says Germany- at the time an ally of the Ottomans - bears some guilt for doing nothing to stop the killings. Under a deal struck in March, Turkey agreed to take back migrants - including Syrians - arriving on the Greek islands, in return for EU aid and a pledge to give Turks visa-free travel to most of Europe. German-Turkish relations were also strained this year by the case of comedian Jan Boehmermann, whose obscene poem about Mr Erdogan prompted a criminal complaint from the Turkish leader. Last month a court in Hamburg ruled that Boehmermann's poem was satire, but banned him from repeating the sexual references in it, deeming them unacceptable. Germany plans to repeal a clause in the constitution prohibiting insults that target foreign leaders - the clause invoked by Turkey in the complaint. The feet of the Zouave statue on the Pont de l'Alma are covered by the rising waters from the Seine River after days of rainy weather in Paris A man leaves his houseboat on a dinghy during flooding on the banks of the Seine River after days of almost non-stop rain caused flooding in the country A man uses a footbridge as he leaves his houseboat moored near the Eiffel tower during flooding on the banks of the Seine River in Paris A man sits in a dinghy as he makes his way towards a houseboat along the banks of the Seine River in Paris, France, after days of almost non-stop rain caused flooding in the country The Louvre began evacuating artworks from its underground vaults yesterday for the first time since the Second World War as the River Seine began to burst its banks amid severe floods in France and Germany. At least five people were killed in the flooding that has been described as the worst some areas have seen in a century. Towns have been evacuated, while rescue teams raced to reach thousands stranded by the rising waters. In Paris, riverside walkways were submerged and emergency flood barriers erected along the banks of the swollen Seine. Authorities shut down one of the city's underground rail lines, while the Louvre closed its doors and called for volunteers to help move its treasures to upper floors. The Musee d'Orsay, across the Seine from the Louvre, quickly followed suit. France and other European countries have been pummelled for days by an exceptional deluge, and there is little respite in sight with more heavy rain forecast for the coming days. Expand Close A man uses a footbridge as he leaves his houseboat moored near the Eiffel tower during flooding on the banks of the Seine River in Paris / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A man uses a footbridge as he leaves his houseboat moored near the Eiffel tower during flooding on the banks of the Seine River in Paris In the German state of Bavaria, the bodies of five people have been found and another four are missing. The dead included a grandmother, mother and daughter from one family, who were found in a flooded house. The body of a man was found in another house, while an 80-year-old woman died in a neighbouring village. The Seine's waters have risen to 14ft and are expected to reach 18ft by the weekend. ( Daily Telegraph, London) A fireman pulls a woman and her dog to shore by a row of houseboats on the River Seine in Paris (AP) The swollen Seine River continues to rise, spilling into Paris streets and forcing one landmark after another to shut down as it surged to its highest levels in nearly 35 years. Across the French capital, museums, parks and cemeteries are being closed as the city braces for possible evacuations. The Seine is expected to peak in Paris later on Friday at about 5 metres above normal. Authorities shut the Louvre museum, the national library, the Orsay museum and the Grand Palais, Paris' striking glass-and-steel topped exhibition centre. "We evaluate the situation for all the (cultural) buildings nearly hour-by-hour," said culture minister Audrey Azouley, speaking to journalists outside the world-famous Louvre. "We don't know yet the evolution of the level of the Seine River in Paris." At the Louvre, home to Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, curators were scrambling to move some 250,000 artworks from basement storage areas at risk of flooding to safer areas upstairs. Nearly a week of heavy rain has led to serious flooding across a swathe of Europe, leaving 15 people dead and others missing. Although the rain has tapered off in some areas, flood waters are still climbing. Traffic in the French capital ground to a halt as flooding blocked roads and several Paris railway stations shut down. Basements and homes in the capital's affluent 16th district began to flood on Friday afternoon as the river kept rising, and authorities were preparing possible evacuations in a park and islands on Paris's western edge. In addition to the Louvre, the Orsay museum, home to a renowned collection of impressionist art on the left bank of the Seine, was also closed on Friday to prepare for possible flooding. The Grand Palais, which draws 2.5 million visitors a year, was also shut down. The closures are highly unusual. The Louvre said the museum had not taken such precautions in its modern history - since its 1993 renovation at the very least. Disappointed tourists were being turned away. Elsewhere in Europe, authorities are counting the cost of the floods as they waded through muddy streets and waterlogged homes. German authorities said the body of a 65-year-old man was found overnight in the town of Simbach am Inn, bringing the country's death toll over recent days to 10. France's Interior Ministry also reported the death of a 74-year-old man who fell from his horse and drowned in a river in the Seine-et-Marne region east of Paris, the second death in France. In eastern Romania, two people died and 200 people were evacuated from their homes as floods swept the area, including one man who was ripped from his bicycle by a torrent of water in the eastern village of Ruginesti. In Belgium, rescue workers found the body of a bee keeper who was swept away by rising waters while trying to protect his hives in the village of Harsin. The German Insurance Association estimates this week's flooding has caused some 450 million euro (351 million) in damage in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg alone. The foul weather has added to the major travel disruptions France is already experiencing, after weeks of strikes and other industrial actions by workers upset over the government's proposed labour reforms. French rail company SNCF said the strikes had led to the cancellation of some 40% of the country's high-speed trains. In addition, French energy company Enedis said more than 20,000 customers are without power to the east and south of Paris because of flooding. Outside the Louvre, tourists expressed understanding at the museum's closure. "It's good that they are evacuating the paintings. It is a shame that we couldn't see them today, but it's right that they do these things," said Carlos Santiago, visiting from Mexico. Paris is measuring river levels using an unusual method called the Austerlitz scale. It involves comparing the surface level with an underwater sensor slightly below the surface at the Austerlitz Bridge, said regional environment director Jerome Goellner. In normal times, the river level is between 1 metre and 2 metres on the Austerlitz scale, he said, a system used out of historical habit so one flood could be compared to another. But a piece of litter trapped in the sensor led authorities to undercount the rise of the Seine earlier this week, he said. The Seine has so far risen about 4.5 metres from its typical position following days of heavy rain. Mr Goellner said it is not possible to put a precise time on the peak but "we're near the maximum". Norman Davis SHARE Jesus makes the difference I've met some very interesting people in my life, and probably you have also. I'm not talking about those to whom you might have been introduced through social media, parties, or even church, but those who you happen to stumble upon by what appeared to be a mistake or chance. The way they dress, talk and walk causes you to take off your Sean John jeans and put on some cuffed, Alfani, full-cut slacks. You hang up your Capri pants and put on your Donna Karan. Because of the impact such a person makes on your life, you stop speaking "slanguage" and begin to speak an identifiable language called English. You stop slumping or slouching and instead throw your shoulders back, lift your head up and work your swagger. No longer do you walk like you're trotting. You sway and pivot with grace and poise. But I want to serve notice on every born-again child of God that we should not be the impacted, but the ones making the impact. Why? Because Jesus makes the difference. I'm reminded of a story my wife shared with me about how before she moved down here from Chicago, she went to receive government assistance. The worker assigned to her sat at her desk and prophesied to my wife everything she is experiencing down here right now. That worker recognized that Jesus makes the difference. Even at the workplace, she made an impact on my wife's life. The worker was willing to allow the Holy Spirit to use her. Just as that woman affected my wife's life, we as born-again believers should have some kind of impact on those around us. Your presence alone should change the atmosphere in a room if you believe the word of God. ("Christ in you, the hope of glory." Colossians 1:27.) That means that Jesus is in you, not just with but in you. So he is everywhere you go. Everywhere he went, he made an impact. Jesus attended a wedding, and when the wine ran out he turned water into wine. In the midst of a hurricane he walked on water and rescued his disciples. Jesus makes the difference. When an angry mob of men wanted to stone a woman who had been caught committing adultery, Jesus turned those men into murmuring mice. Jesus makes the difference. A woman who bled for 12 long years stopped bleeding instantly just by touching the robe of Jesus. A man had a son just as crazy and confused as some of you. Because of contact with Jesus, that son became just as sound and sane as some of us. Because Jesus, the son of the living God, has taken up residence inside you, the Jesus in you should make a difference and an impact everywhere you go. Why? Because Jesus makes the difference. This Jesus took two fish and five loaves of bread from a little boy's lunch and fed more than 5,000 people. Because the fish and bread were placed in the hands of Jesus, the leftovers filled 12 baskets. The boy got back more than he gave. Jesus makes the difference. He can take our not enough and turn it into our more than enough when you place it in his hands. Jesus makes the difference. Some of you feel that all hope is lost; that you have nothing more to live for. You feel rejected, downtrodden and alone. Why not ask Jesus to come into your heart? Ask him to forgive you and repent of your sins. Receive the love of God in your heart, and you too will know that Jesus makes the difference. Norman Davis serves as an elder for High Calling Ministries International in Anderson and is a former contributing writer to a Christian publication based in New Jersey. Poll: Vote for the Week 9 AIM football athlete of the week Vote here for the Week 9 Anderson-Independent Mail high school football athlete of the week. SHARE By Nikie Mayo of the Independent Mail PENDLETON Tensions between the Anderson County Sheriff's Office and the 10th Judicial Circuit Solicitor's Office took center stage briefly Thursday during a forum for three candidates seeking to become the area's top prosecutor. The 10th Judicial Circuit covers Anderson and Oconee counties, and three Republicans are competing for the job. Wilson Burr, the former chief public defender in Oconee County, was the first candidate to speak about issues between law enforcement officers and the solicitor's office. He said he spoke with Anderson County Sheriff John Skipper and that the sheriff was "very open" about tension between the two offices. "He said: 'I don't know if it's my fault or theirs, but we just don't communicate,'" Burr recounted. "I love cops," Burr said, before adding that a communication problem "won't happen" if he is elected. Candidate Rame Campbell, a former assistant solicitor who recently resigned, acknowledged that there had been tension between Skipper and Solicitor Chrissy Adams. Campbell said of all solicitor candidates, he had the best working relationships with deputies and other officers. "I don't care who the sheriff is," Campbell said. "I care who is the head of the Criminal Investigations Division and who is head of forensics at the Sheriff's Office. There are people under the sheriff who we work with day in and day out, and when you talk to somebody, you build trust. If we see problems with cases and we have a good relationship with law enforcement, we can teach them, we can train them, so those problems don't happen again." David Wagner, a deputy solicitor who leads the Oconee office, said he doesn't see the same kinds of problems in that county. "When I hear tension, I'm assuming you're talking about Anderson, because I work in Oconee and work really well with the Oconee County Sheriff's Office," Wagner said. "We know we are on the same team. I would work to establish a rapport with the officers in Anderson County and work shoulder to shoulder with them." Burr, Campbell and Wagner shared their thoughts on the tensions during a forum hosted by the League of Women Voters of the Clemson Area. The forum was held at the Pendleton branch of the Anderson County Library. Skipper did not attend, because he was at a candidate forum himself at Tri-County Technical College's campus in Anderson. The three solicitor candidates will compete in the June 14 Republican primary. The winner faces no Democratic opposition in the November general election. Adams is not seeking re-election because of an ongoing battle with cancer. Wagner said he has more experience trying cases than anyone else in the circuit and that he would be ready to run the solicitor's office "on Day 1." Burr said he resigned as public defender because he was frustrated by the outcomes of multiple cases and "mistakes" made by the solicitor's office. He said he didn't want to be negative about Campbell or Wagner, but then he called them part of "Team Adams" and said they sought her permission to run for office. Campbell said he is running for office to restore residents' confidence in the solicitor's office. He said he will work to build stronger relationships with coroners, defense attorneys, judges and others. Follow Nikie Mayo on Twitter @NikieMayo SHARE June 6 is a "fly the flag" day for all who can remember the majesty and tragedy of the Normandy Invasion. That was the day when almost 200,000 soldiers, about half of them American, stormed Normandy Beach on the northern coast of France in the greatest amphibious assault in the history of warfare. Before that date the United States and its allies were fighting an uphill battle from the deserts of northern Africa to the beaches of Dunkirk. England had been under siege from the air by German rockets. Ships at sea were constantly harassed by U-boat attacks as Germany attempted to sever the supply lines that supported our troops. It was an unusual family in the United States that did not have a member in service somewhere overseas. More than 3 million of our men and women were in uniform, and those who weren't were working to support the war effort. Every resource, every bit of brain power, every emotion was devoted to winning the war because defeat, bowing to the Nazi war machine, was simply unthinkable. Dwight Eisenhower was our European Theatre of Operations general. He was in that role not because he was a master battle tactician but, instead, because he was a genius at the logistics of supplying the war machine. Perhaps more importantly, he was highly skilled at handling the massive egos of our allies Joseph Stalin of Russia, Winston Churchill of England, Charles De Gaulle of France and the top generals, Montgomery of England and Patton of the U.S., whose capabilities on the battlefield were so important to ultimate victory. Eisenhower's calm voice and soft-handed approach were exactly what was needed. He was able to guide all the personalities into a unified fighting force that could take on the Axis powers who had conquered northern Africa and most of Europe by the mid-1940s. Planning for the invasion had begun a full two years before. But the actual date was decided by, wouldn't you know it, the weather. Altogether, more than 9,000 ships and 340,000 men and women were involved in the assault. Within seven days more than 425,000 were dead, wounded, or missing from both sides. The cemeteries of Normandy remind us of their sacrifice. The Normandy Invasion was the "watershed" event of World War II. Before June 6, 1944, the U.S. and its allies were in a defensive struggle. After the successful beach head on the northern coast of France, all our forces were in an attack mode, with every thrust focused on shutting down the Nazi war machine and gaining unconditional surrender. June 6 is a fly the flag day. Let's show our colors that day to honor that great occasion. Anderson resident Mark Hopkins is a former president of three colleges, including what is now Anderson University. He writes columns for the Independent Mail and Gatehouse News Service. He can be reached at presnet@presnet.net. By Melissa Cyrill The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi marked its two year anniversary on May 26 of this year. Given its overwhelming mandate in the 2014 general elections, the Modi government has been held to a high standard. A bounty of electoral promises has also resulted in big expectations, particularly, in the domain of economic and institutional reform, infrastructural growth, business competitiveness, and foreign policy. Mid-Term Appraisal India is considered a bright spot on the global map today, growing at a steady 7.5 percent, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Jumping twelve spots higher, the country managed a 130th rank in the World Banks Ease of Doing Business index in 2015. India also surpassed China in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI), with a record FDI of US$ 51 billion last year. A genuine competitiveness has also been fostered between the states as the government tracks each states ease of doing business by ranking. Rounding up a healthy macroeconomic picture is the state of Indias current and fiscal account deficits, which are under check, having benefited from low crude oil prices. However, it is the countrys microeconomic status that gives some cause for worry with flat private investment figures, negligible bank lending, declining corporate growth and earnings, and slow pace of consumer demand and job creation. Nevertheless, a series of ambitious economic programs have been launched by the NDA government, which will take time to fructify. At this juncture, they have critically helped change the investment outlook of India. Below is an assessment of some key economic programs and legislation introduced by the NDA government: Make in India This is the NDA governments flagship program, designed to regain foreign investor confidence and boost domestic manufacturing and industrial production. Aside from relaxing the FDI policy in 25 focus sectors, the ease of doing business has improved through faster clearances and transparency for permits and financing. Prime Minister Modi has also traveled to several countries in order to showcase the countrys investment opportunities. In May, the Union cabinet approved the first ever national capital goods policy to incentivize domestic production of manufacturing equipment and increase their exports. The policy is of importance as the indigenous development of heavy industry is integral to the success of the Make in India program. Further, while FDI has increased, weak infrastructure continues to hurt Indias chances at establishing itself in the global supply chain. Inefficient rail networks, declining factory access to electricity, fragmented land and labor markets, and difficulties in land acquisition are some of the key challenges facing the governments economic growth objectives. Digital India India is the second largest exporter of information and communication technology (ICT) goods, but has the largest offline population in the world, with nearly a billion Indians without access to the internet. The Digital India campaign seeks to bridge this digital divide by promoting greater internet penetration, e-governance facilities, and fair distribution of digital technologies. Some notable e-governance measures include the feedback mechanism initiated through www.mygov.in, CPGRAMS, which is a mobile application to redress grievances relating to public works agencies, and DigiLocker, a digital document storage facility for Indian citizens. All government agencies are now required to provide their contact details online and social media (Twitter and Facebook) is used to deliver information directly from the government to citizens. Modi has also sought to rope in major Silicon Valley corporations like Microsoft, Google, and Facebook to enable faster and deeper internet penetration in India. Ultimately, the Digital India campaign aims to create broadband highways of 600,000 km across the country, but this is still very much a work in progress. Startup India A host of incentives have been unveiled by the government to promote the growth of startups in India to improve job creation and entrepreneurship. Incentives announced under the Startup India Action Plan include regulatory and tax benefits for three years, capital gains tax exemption, access to funds from the governments US$ 1.5 billion (Rs 10,000 crores) corpus, reduction in patent registration fees by 80 percent, simpler entry and exit norms, protection of intellectual property rights (IPR), and facilities to promote entrepreneurship among women and SC/ST communities. 100 Smart Cities This is an urban renewal and retrofitting program by the government that aims to develop the infrastructure of 100 cities, making them citizen friendly and sustainable. The Ministry of Urban Development kick-started the program by short listing 20 cities in January, followed by 13 more cities announced in May via a competitive selection process. The total proposed investment for the 33 cities, through federal and state governments and private funding, comes to US$ 12.02 billion (Rs 80,789 crore). The program has opened up a myriad of prospects for investment in the infrastructure sector. A three day conference on Indias Smart City Mission is currently underway in Berlin, Germany. RELATED: India Budget 2016: Business Elements Key Legislative and Regulatory Developments Bankruptcy Regulation: The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 was passed on May 11 after incorporating changes proposed by different political parties in a joint parliamentary committee. The new law reduces the insolvency resolution period to a maximum of nine months and creates a new category of insolvency professionals. The legislation is a significant achievement as it ensures the faster recovery of debt by creditors, disqualifies bankrupt individuals from occupying public office, and establishes a database of serial defaulters. Real Estate Regulation: The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 came into force on May 1, introducing much needed transparency in the sector. Home-buyers are now assured of time bound execution of projects and the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) will provide necessary oversight. Rules for e-Commerce and IPR Policy: New rules for e-commerce provide an official definition of the online marketplace and give clarity to the governments FDI policy in both the business to business and business to consumer segments. They also outline clear sourcing norms and prohibit e-commerce firms from making pricing interventions. Given the rapid growth of technology in the retail sector and Indias vast consumer market, these rules are timely, and level the playing field between online and traditional retailers. More needs to be done, however, as the ambiguity of Indias tax laws coupled with delays in business clarifications by tax authorities are costly for e-commerce firms. The government announced a new National Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy on May 12, subsequently publishing the Patents (Amendment) Rules on May 16. Most importantly, both the Policy and Rules acknowledge IPRs to be marketable financial assets and incentivize innovation and entrepreneurship by providing legal measures in case of copyright violation and infringement. Observations The NDA governments economic report card reads positively for two years, but only when focusing on the big picture. Significant challenges remain on the ground, especially in the domain of institutional reform and failures in the agriculture sector. The widening rift with the opposition Congress party has also delayed key legislation such as the Goods and Service Tax bill, land acquisition and labor reforms. In addition, the government has alienated various sections of Indian society through both direct and indirect support for intolerant campaigns, which can easily prove to be its undoing. What is noteworthy is how India has grown despite the global economic slowdown, but implementation of the governments flagship reforms will hold key to how long this growth lasts. About Us Asia Briefing Ltd. is a subsidiary of Dezan Shira & Associates. Dezan Shira is a specialist foreign direct investment practice, providing corporate establishment, business advisory, tax advisory and compliance, accounting, payroll, due diligence and financial review services to multinationals investing in China, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam, Singapore and the rest of ASEAN. For further information, please email india@dezshira.com or visit www.dezshira.com. Stay up to date with the latest business and investment trends in Asia by subscribing to our complimentary update service featuring news, commentary and regulatory insight. Managing Your Accounting and Bookkeeping in India In this issue of India Briefing Magazine, we spotlight three issues that financial management teams for India should monitor. Firstly, we examine the new Indian Accounting Standards (Ind-AS) system, which is expected to be a boon for foreign companies in India. We then highlight common filing dates for most companies with operations in India, and lastly examine procedures and regulations for remitting profits from India. Using Indias Free Trade & Double Tax Agreements In this issue of India Briefing magazine, we take a look at the bilateral and multilateral trade agreements that India currently has in place and highlight the deals that are still in negotiation. We analyze the countrys double tax agreements, and conclude by discussing how foreign businesses can establish a presence in Singapore to access both the Indian and ASEAN markets. Passage to India: Selling to Indias Consumer Market In this issue of India Briefing magazine, we outline the fundamentals of Indias import policies and procedures, as well as provide an introduction to engaging in direct and indirect export, acquiring an Indian company, selling to the government and establishing a local presence in the form of a liaison office, branch office, or wholly owned subsidiary. We conclude by taking a closer look at the strategic potential of joint ventures and the advantages they can provide companies at all stages of market entry and expansion. The ICICI Prudential Life Insurance has picked arrangers for an initial public offering of as much as Rs.6,000 crore ($892 million), people familiar with the matter said, in what could be Indias biggest first-time share sale in six years. (FC) BMW India Financial Services announced a tie up with ICICI Lombard General Insurance to offer motor insurance for BMW customers. (BS) Dah Sing Financial Holdings Ltd. shares climbed the most in almost six weeks after the Hong Kong banking group agreed to sell its life-insurance operations to Fujian Thai Hot Investment Co. for HK$10.6 billion ($1.4 billion). (bloomberg.com) AXIS Capital Holdings Limited announced that Matt LoPiccolo has joined AXIS Insurance as U.S. Distribution Manager. (businesswire.com) Liberty Mutual is pleased to announce three senior appointments to its Commercial Insurance operating unit. (businesswire.com) Aspen Insurance, the insurance segment of Bermuda-based Aspen Insurance Holdings Ltd., has announced the appointment of Erik Armellino as international head of Onshore Energy & Construction. (insurancejournal.com) Individual sponsors who fail to provide health insurance for themselves, their employees and dependants by the June 30 deadline set by Dubai Health Authority will not face fines this year. A grace period of six months has been offered by DHA as it plans to enforce the final stage of its mandatory health insurance scheme for all residents. (thenational.ae) The Union Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley will hold a quarterly performance review meeting with the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of public sector banks (PSBs) and financial institutions on Monday, 6th June, 2016 in the national capital. During the one day-meeting, the Finance Minister would review the overall performance of PSBs, during the financial year 2015-16, as well as with regard to the flow of credit to agriculture, insurance and MSE sectors among others. The Finance Minister will also review the progress and performance of the new initiatives of the present Government including Stand Up India, MUDRA, Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY), Pradhan Mantri Surkasha Bima Yojana (PMSBY) and Atal Pension Yojana among others. Besides it, issues relating to housing loan, medium and small enterprises credit, financial inclusion and literacy etc are also likely to be discussed in the review meeting. Jaitley will also review the performance of PSBs with regard to the new projects and proposals, stalled projects and possible remedial measures among others. Along with the CEOs of PSBs and FIs, the meeting will also be attended by Shri Jayant Sinha, Minister of State for Finance and Ms. Anjuly Chib Duggal, Secretary, Department of Financial Services and senior officers of the Ministry of Finance among others. Financial year 2015-16 more or less ended on a subdued note for India Inc., due to a bunch of negative factors such as global economic slowdown, weakening rupee against the US dollar, slumping domestic demands, harsh scrutiny by overseas regulators and a poor monsoon. The 30 Sensex companies are no exception to be hit hard on profitability front. Data shows that 11 of Sensex firms reported a combined net loss of Rs.33,905 crore as against 16 heavyweights posting a combined net profit of Rs.23,525 crore in FY16. Besides, remaining three companies witnessed dramatic turnaround during the year.Among the Sensex pack, the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries led from the front with highest net profit in absolute term at Rs.4,698 crore; while Hero MotoCorp, the worlds largest two-wheeler manufacturer, reported a net profit of Rs.746 crore - growing at a rate of 31%.Sector-wise banking, pharma and automobile carry maximum weightage in the benchmark index and these three sectors too bore the brunt during the year. The Indian banking sector struggled to avert the rising NPAs; while the pharmaceutical industry faced regulatory actions by the US and EU regulators. The automobile sector found on a receiving end with slowing demand and re-call issues.Furthermore, strong US dollar helped the IT giants to put up an impressive show; while lower crude oil price resulted into better earnings for refiner like Reliance Industries. However, huge investments in various projects took a toll on the profitability of state-run oil & gas major ONGC. In addition, upsurge in coal production assisted the countrys largest coal miner, Coal India, to report significant growth in yearly net profit.The US has been the most sought after market for Indian pharma companies and F&16 saw the USFDA issuing Warning Letters and drug re-calls by Indian companies, which ultimately dented the growth of Indian drug makers in the US markets. Companies attracting USFDAs ire in FY16 included Indias top two drug makers, Sun Pharma and Dr. Reddys Laboratories along with Zydus Cadila, Wockhardt, among others. Dr. Reddys FY16 net profit declined by 19% or Rs.324 crore to Rs.1,355 crore; while the billionaire Dilip Sanghavi-led Sun Pharma narrowed its net loss by Rs.401 crore to Rs.1,073 crore in the period. However, Lupin and Ciplas net profit rose by Rs.488 crore and Rs.217 crore to Rs.2,885 crore and Rs.1,398 crore respectively. According to ICRA, the harsh US FDA scrutiny and slowing economy in the US are expected to take a toll on Indian drug companies.Notwithstanding the falling demand, automobile companies in the Sensex pack delivered impressive FY16 numbers. Hero MotoCorps FY16 net profit spurted by 31% or Rs.746 crore to Rs.31,32 crore; Bajaj Auto saw its net profit jumping by 30% or Rs.838 crore to Rs.3,652 crore; Maruti Suzukis FY16 net profit soared by 23% or Rs.860 crore to Rs.4,571 crore. On the other hand, riding high on zooming sales of JLR, Tata Motors back in profit zone with Rs.234 crore of net profit as against a net loss of Rs.4,739 crore in FY15. However, Mahindra and Mahindras net profit squeezed by 5% to Rs.3,167 crore.Out of as many as 40 banks listed on the BSE, majority of the public sector banks (PSBs) witnessed massive losses in FY16 due to mounting NPAs and declining credit growth. State Bank of India (SBI), Indias largest lender, suffered a major setback with its net profit tumbled by a whopping 68% or Rs.21,115 crore to Rs. Rs.9951 crore; while the countrys largest private sector bank, ICICI Bank, saw its net profit plunging by 13% or Rs.1,449 crore to Rs.9,726 crore in FY16. Among the Sensex-30, HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs.12,296 crore growing at 20% or Rs.2,080 crore; while Axis Bank saw its net profit for the year 2015-16 moving higher by 12% to Rs.8,224 crore.Among other notable gainers in the Sensex pack, Adani Ports & SEZs net profit rose by 31% to Rs.2,842 crore, Infosys (Rs.15,786 at 30%), Asian Paints (Rs.1,597 crore at 20%), TCS (Rs.22,882 crore at Rs.19%), HDFC (Rs.7,093 crore at 18%), L&T (Rs.5,311 at 5%), and ITC (Rs. 9,845 crore at 2%).On the flip side, Wipro posted a net loss of Rs.94 crore, NTPC (-Rs.48 crore), HUL (-Rs.23 crore), ONGC (-Rs.1,729 crore), Tata Steel (-Rs.1,538 crore), GAIL (-Rs.740 crore), and Bharti Airtel (-Rs.5,635 crore). The state-run Bharat Heavy Electricals posted a net loss of Rs.913 crore as against net profit of Rs.1,419 crore in FY15. 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. Tata Steel is planning to striking a deal with the UK government to keep its British steelworks rather than sell it off, according to reports. Tata Steel Ltd ended at Rs. 338.65, down by Rs. 2 or 0.59% from its previous closing of Rs. 340.65 on the BSE. The scrip opened at Rs. 342.25 and touched a high and low of Rs. 348.25 and Rs. 336.55 respectively. A total of 9802109(NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 33084.45 crore. The BSE group 'A' stock of face value Rs. 10 touched a 52 week high of Rs. 364.15 on 21-Apr-2016 and a 52 week low of Rs. 200 on 29-Sep-2015. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 342 and Rs. 320.45 respectively. The promoters holding in the company stood at 31.35 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 39.88 % and 28.77 % respectively. The stock traded above its 50 DMA. Report says that the company is in talks to clinch a loan worth nearly 1 billion pounds and a restructuring of the British Pension Scheme. BPCL: BPCL has announced that it has received shareholder nod to increase FII Investment Limit to 49%.HUL: HUL has announced new appointment to Management Committee. Food & Refreshments Biz will now be organised into two Separate Businesses of Food & Refreshments.ONGC: Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd is planning to invest Rs.4,000 crore to develop its four coal bed methane (CBM) gas blocks, according to reports.Yes Bank: Yes Bank is likely to raise USD1bn from overseas investors in the current financial year as it has recently got government approval for increasing foreign investment to 74%.Kwality: The company is planning to invest Rs.5 bn for expansion, said it has successfully come out of a branding-related legal dispute after Graviss holding withdrew its case on May 31.M&M: M&M has launched its second fully-electric passenger car - e-Verito with prices starting at 9.50 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi) for the D2 variant, going up to 10 lakh for the range-topping D6 trim.NMDC: NMDC has announced that a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Company will be held on June 07, 2016, inter alia, to consider the proposal for Buy Back of the fully paid-up equity shares of the Company of face value of Rs. 1 each.Power Finance Corporation: PFC has announced that it has acquired stake in Shree Maheshwar Hydel Power Corp.Oricon Enterprises: Oricon Enterprises has entered into a Joint Development Agreement with Tapir Realty Developers Ltd., a subsidiary of IndiaBulls Real Estate Ltd. for development of its 7810 sq. mtrs. Plot in Mumbai.Wipro: Wipro announced that it has open sourced its big data product, Big Data Ready Enterprise (BDRE), which makes big data technology adoption simpler and faster by optimizing big data workloads under an integrated unified framework.Reliance Infrastructure Ltd: Reliance Energy, the Mumbai Distribution Arm of Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. has recorded 1,856 mw on June 1, 2016, beating the last years peak recorded at 1,839 mw on October 14, 2015.Rajesh Exports: Rajesh Exports is eyeing $150-170mn acquisition in Dubai to expand refining capacity and increase margins, according to reports.MOIL: Moil Ltd has informed BSE that a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Company will be held on June 7 to consider the proposal for Buyback of the fully paid-up equity shares of the Company.TVS Motor Company: Adding a new chapter to its iconic brand: TVS XL, TVS Motor Company today announced the launch of its new four stroke TVS XL 100 in Himachal Pradesh.Reliance Energy: Reliance Energy, the Mumbai Distribution Arm of Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. has recorded 1,856 mw on June 1, 2016, beating the last years peak recorded at 1,839 mw on October 14, 2015.Career Point: The Company has invested Rs. 1.40 crore in its wholly owned subsidiary 'Career Point Institute of Skill Development Pvt. Ltd.' by subscribing 14 Lac equity shares of Rs. 10/- each at a price of Rs. 10/- per equity share.Shree Pushkar Chemicals & Fertilisers Ltd: The company announced Commission of the additional capacity of Vinyl Sulphone as on May 31, 2016.Navkar Corporation Ltd: Navkar Corporation has received contract for operation and management of KRILs Container Freight Station (CFS)/ICD and Handling of Container Trains at Hazira Terminal, Gujarat.Asian Granito India: The company launched new product 1000x1000mm Jumbo Double Charge Vitrified Tiles and 800x800mm Imperio Double Charge Vitrified TilesSatkar Finlease: Satkar Finlease to consider issue of equity shares on preferential basisBank of Maharashtra: The bank has decided to raise capital through FPO/Rights issue/QIP etc., upto Rs.1,000 crore, subject to the necessary approvals. HE Dr. Mohammed Bin Saleh Al-Sada, Qatar's Minister of Energy has given the speech at the OPEC Conference. "Since we last met in Vienna on December 4, 2015, we have seen further volatility in the global oil market. The OPEC Reference Basket fell from around $38 per barrel in December 2015 to a low of just over $22 per barrel in mid-January 2016, before a steady climb saw the price rise above $40 per barrel by the end of April and then climb further in May. These recent price developments are welcome; particularly, with one eye on the industrys future investment requirements. Global exploration and production spending fell by around 20 per cent last year, and a further 15 per cent drop is anticipated this year. This is a major concern for an industry that generally sees investments increasing year on year to sustain production. It is important to keep in mind the link between the marginal cost of production, the oil price and investments. Todays meeting will review the developments of the past six months, and analyze the outlook for the remainder of 2016. With regard to global economic growth, the story remains somewhat patchy. While the estimated 2016 growth of 3.1 per cent is higher than that of 2015, it has been revised down slightly since our December meeting. World oil demand this year remains healthy, with growth of over 1.2 million barrels per day. The majority of this will come from non-OECD countries, but OECD countries are also expected to see some growth in every quarter this year. From the supply perspective, in the first half of this year, we have seen a further downward revision to the 2016 outlook for non-OPEC supply. We now anticipate a contraction of 740,000 barrels per day this year. This is more than 2 million barrels per day lower than the growth of 2015. This trend stems mainly from reduced cashflows, investment cutbacks and the deferral or cancellation of projects. It is evident that these developments point to a more balanced market in the second half of this year, with demand for OPEC crude averaging around 32.5 million barrels per day during this period. The overall demand increase year-on-year for OPEC crude is around 1.8 million barrels per day. However, we do need to appreciate that stock levels remain high. The five-year average for OECD commercial stocks is currently at a surplus of around 360 million barrels. It is important that we take note of this figure on a downward trend. A more stable and balanced market will be beneficial to all. 1. Shah Rukh Khan might be Apple's Indian brand ambassador soon! tribune If certain reports are to be believed, SRK is all set to become the Indian brand ambassador for Apple soon. According to Apple Insider, the announcement will be made when Apple launches new iPhones in India later this year. 2. Virat Kohli dropped off Anushka Sharma at the airport and the duo looked super cute together! Virat Kohli played the perfect boyfriend when he recently came to drop Anushka Sharma off at the airport recently. Anushka was supposed to fly out to Budapest, and the two spent some time together in Mumbai, before he dropped her off for her flight. And they looked super cute together! 3. Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone are off to a vacation at an undisclosed location. According to the latest reports, the duo are off to a vacation to an undisclosed location to spend some quality time together. According to a source, ''Deepika returned to the country on Wednesday night after filming a special number for 'Raabta' in Budapest. Ranveer's shoot of 'Befikre' in Paris too is expected to wrap up soon. The two thought it would be a good idea to go for a vacation together." 4. Tanmay Bhat's song deleted from 'Shorgul' after his recent Snapchat controversy. Looks like Tanmay would rather have to pay a huge price for mocking Sachin Tendulkar and Lata Mangeshkar on Snapchat. Turns out that he had penned a song for the upcoming film Shorgul, and it has been dropped from the film in light of recent events. According to reports, Tanmay had written a song called Pehle Aap, sung by Daler Mehndi in the upcoming film Shorgul, which stars Jimmy Sheirgill and Ashutosh Rana. But now, the makers of the film have decided to axe the song from the film owing to his recent Snapchat controversy. 5. Shahid Kapoor's latest track from Udta Punjab sounds super cool! Shahid Kapoor looks unstoppable in this new track from Udta Punjab called 'Ud-daa Punjab'. It really sounds like National Award winning music director Amit Trivedi is at his best, yet again! Oh, and don't you miss the video - Shahid's rockstar avatar will sweep you off your feet in this one! ht Deepika Padukone had recently returned to Mumbai, after finishing the shoot for her Hollywood debut xXx opposite Vin Diesel. The actress had been busy in the movie's shooting since February, and now that she has wrapped up the shooting, she's back in the country. Meanwhile her beau Ranveer Singh was recently in Paris shooting for Aditya Chopra's Befikre. While the duo met a while back, when Deepika was in the country for her friend's marriage, that was for a really brief while. So it's natural that both of them would want to spend some time together. According to the latest reports, the duo are off to a vacation to an undisclosed location to spend some quality time together. According to a source, ''Deepika returned to the country on Wednesday night after filming a special number for 'Raabta' in Budapest. Ranveer's shoot of 'Befikre' in Paris too is expected to wrap up soon. The two thought it would be a good idea to go for a vacation together." Sources are also claiming that it's going to be a short trip, considering both the actors will have to resume work soon after. Well, we just hope we get to see them on the big screen soon. Because they're just so adorable together! tumblr Nidhi Mahajan, an Indian contestant of MasterChef Australia made judges cry when she was eliminated from the show, after touching their feet as a mark of respect. Tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/masterchef 30-year-old Mahajan, a call centre worker, originally from Chandigarh, was asked to leave the competition after her stir-fried cauliflower dish with potato bhajis failed to meet the mark. twitter.com/masterchefau Ten But right before she left the show, she asked whether she could touch the feet of judges Matt Preston, Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris. "Can I touch your feet out of respect because this is our culture,' she said adding, 'The people whom you think as your teachers, you bow to them in respect." Watch this proud moment here: twitter Virat Kohli played the perfect boyfriend when he recently came to drop Anushka Sharma off at the airport recently. Anushka was supposed to fly out to Budapest, and the two spent some time together in Mumbai, before he dropped her off for her flight. And they looked super cute together! Their parting hug is giving us major relationship goals! Don't they look adorable together? instagram instagram instagram twitter twitter twitter twitter A while back all was not well between the two, and they were even taking a break from the relationship. But looks like it's back to paradise and their fans also couldn't be happier seeing them together. Another power couple in the making for sure! After a video of the Bihar school topper being absolutely clueless about their subjects went viral, the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) has asked them to appear for a retest. Screengrab The board has called all 14 toppers from arts, science and commerce streams for 'a small re-examination' on June 3 to ascertain whether they actually scored what has come out on their mark lists. The video of Ruby Ray who scored 91 out of 100 in political science had tuned out to be a huge embarrassment to the education department after she appeared totally clueless on her subject. She couldn't even pronounce political science properly and ended up calling it "Prodigal Science" and explained that the subject was about cooking food. For science topper Saurav Shreshtha, aluminium was the most active metal, and he had no idea about sodium and electrons. Aaj Tak These had raised serious questions on the credibility of the exams. After the video went viral, the state government had also ordered a probe into the matter. BCCL Bihar is no stranger to mass exam-cheating. A couple of years ago a video of parents and friends climbing school walls to hand cheat-chits to students who were appearing in the exams had exposed the amount of fraud happening in exams in the state. Remember Chennai-born rapper Sofia Ashraf who took an undisguised jab at Hindustan Lever Limited for dumping toxic mercury in its Kodaikanal plant in Tamil Nadu last year in her rap battle Kodaikanal Won't? The rapper has come back with yet another toxic rap battle titled DOW Vs. Bhopal in which she is demanding justice for the victims of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. On December 3, 1984, 40 tonnes of toxic MIC leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, killing around 25,000 people and leaving more than 5,00,000 injured. googglet Last year Sofia's hit forced Hindustan Unilever Ltd to settle the mercury poisoning dispute with her widely viewed Kodaikanal Wont rap number. jhatkaa ALSO READ: Former Employees Fought For 15 Years For Hindustan Unilever To Fix The Mercury Pollution in Kodaikanal, And They Won! Highlighting the Petition, she has mentioned that it needs 77,572 signatures by June 14, 2016 to get a response from the White House! At the end of the video, Ashraf says, "If there is one petition you will sign this year, let it be this one!" India is getting ready to make it easier for Bangladesh and Pakistani Hindus to get easy Indian citizenship. Between 2,000 to 5,000 Pakistani Hindus take refuge in India every year fleeing religious victimisation and violence in Pakistan. The fate of the Hindus in Bangladesh is similar. AP Who all does it impact? The proposed changes in the Citizenship Act, 1955, will give a legal path to the refugees to remain in India and claim citizenship, and redeem them from being termed "illegal immigrants". As per the proposed amendments, December 31, 2014 will be designated as the cut-off date for refugees to be eligible to apply for citizenship. The fees for registration as citizens of India has also been reduced from Rs 15,000 to as low as Rs 100. Even though the cut-off date has been set, those whom's legal stay in India has ended as their documents expired will be allowed to remain in the country. However these will be applicable only for those from the minority community who fled their countries to escape religious persecution and not to those seeking economic migration. The differentiation between those seeking refuge to escape political and religious persecution on one hand and those migrating for economic reasons is in accord with international norms and definition of who is a refugee. Global Hinduism Despite this, India has always welcomed Hindu and Sikh refugees fleeing Pakistan and Bangladesh, because of the shared heritage. According to Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, an MP of Pakistan's ruling Muslim League, 5,000 Hindus migrate from Pakistan to India every year. It is estimated that close to 5,000 Hindus migrate from Pakistan to India every year. Refugees from Pakistan mostly land up in Rajasthan, but lately many of them travel to a rural settlement called Bijwasan on the outskirts of Delhi. bharatdefencekavach/ Representational Image The government's move will benefit nearly 2 lakh Hindus from Pakistan and Bangladesh who often complain they are treated as "second-class citizens" and are vulnerable to violence. During the 2014 elections the BJP and Narendra Modi had promised citizenship to Hindu refugees from Pakistan and Bangladesh. BJP's ideological parent, the RSS had demanded India to be made "natural home of Hindus of all sorts". narendramodi.in The government had recently allowed Hindu and Sikh refugees from Pakistan to acquire documents including Aadhar Card and Driving License. Even though the exact number of minority refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan living in India is not known. Rough official estimates suggest there could be about 2 lakh such people, mostly Hindus and Sikhs. Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati has asked her cadres to "search for the cook" who prepared the food for Bharatiya Janta Party national president Amit Shah when he dined with Dalits during his visit to Jogiyapur village in Varanasi two days ago. bccl Party sources said Mayawati believes the cook was not a Dalit but someone from the upper caste. Party zonal coordinator, Dr Ram Kumar Kureel confirmed the directives have been received and they will soon find out who prepared food for Shah during his visit to the village. bccl Kureel claimed that though 250 people came along with Shah, only 50 had lunch which shows the casteist mindset of the saffron brass. He said "The rest did not eat with Dalits. Moreover, the place where lunch was served is dominated by members of Bind community which belongs to most backward class and not Dalits. Shah brought a few Dalits along, sat with them and had lunch just to send out a political message" A senior BSP leader maintained it's a tragedy that sharing a meal with Dalits had become a ploy to lap up Dalit votes especially during the election time. A BSP functionary said "This only means they want to make Dalits keep feeling oppressed" bccl Mayawati had attacked the BJP chief saying dining with Dalits was mere "drama" and a gimmick played in the (assembly) election year. She had in fact pointed out that when Shah had lunch with Dalits, a statue of BSP founder and Dalit leader Kanshiram was vandalised in BJP ruled Harayana. The BSP chief is consistently being outsmarted by the BJP in an endeavor to reach out to Dalits. Last month, a BJP leader was attacked in Uttarakhand when he tried to take along Dalits to a temple where entry of the oppressed class is reportedly restricted. Sardar Jan Mohammed Khilji is 46 years old, has three wives and fathers 35 children; yet hes looking out for a fourth wife who can help his cause of having at least a 100 children. A medical technician by profession, Khilji believes that having as many children as possible is his religious duty and he wont stop until the goal is achieved. Often it becomes difficult for people to manage with many members in the family, especially the wives. BCCL But Khilji doesnt face any issues because he seldom forgets or mixes up his childrens names. His wives too live in harmony which is always a tough thing to achieve. Khilji manages his time so well that he takes turns to attend family events with his children and their respective mothers and avoids all sorts of possible confrontations between members of the family. Human right activists warn that the polygamy system of marriage causes women and their children to suffer a lot. Pakistani men are allowed to take four wives, although to do so, they must seek permission from the first wife and an arbitration council. Khilji didnt allow AFP to talk to any of his wives, but he spoke from his five bedroom mud house in Balochistans Quetta. BCCL It remains rare for men to take multiple wives in the country, but when polygamy does take place, studies have shown it can result in depression and despair among wives, while children often struggle to know their father, said Rafia Zakaria, a womens rights activist. The Koran, she explains to AFP, dictates that multiple wives may be taken only if the husband is capable of doing justice with them. BCCL Well, perfect justice is impossible, and for this reason polygamy is never a good situation, said Zakaria, who campaigns against the practice. Someone always suffers and almost always it is the women and children, Rafia tells AFP. Mohammed Bilal Kasi, a lawyer in Quetta who deals with polygamous marriages said: We lawyers are well aware of social problems surrounding polygamy. Women and children undergo mental agony due to these affairs. BCCL The tension can lead to serious legal disputes over property and rights after the fathers death, he said. Though Khilji denied access to speak to any of his wives, AFP managed to speak to one of his daughters. A large family is like Allah bestowing a case of mangoes, said the 15-year-old Shagufta Nasreen, Khiljis eldest child. Living up to the proverb of like father like son, Khiljis son, 13-year-old Mohammed Esa wants to have even more than 100 children. Khilji is a self proclaimed medical technician and also runs an unregulated clinic where he treats people for minor ailments such as headaches. He charges patients roughly around Rs 250 ($2.30) per patient while providing his services to the poor for free. He also runs a seminary for 400 students including his four sons from the money he receives as donations. Khilji lives in an area which lacks even basic amenities like tap water and sewage and the monthly expenses of his family is around Rs 120,000, ten times higher than the expenses of a average Pakistani family. Yet he claimed that he never faced any sort of financial issues but refused to explain the sources of his income apart from his clinic. Khilji believes that as his children grow, their needs would also expand, but even if government doesnt help him, God certainly will. Doses of dry fruits, milk and meat along with reciting the Holy Koran and praying five times a day, Khilji believes, are among the reasons behind his never ending libido. His eldest child is 15 years old whereas the youngest is just a couple of weeks old. He is an obedient son as well and all his marriages are arranged by his parents. I married the first one when I was 26 years old, and the next year wedded the other two within a gap of five months, he said. However, now Khilji seeks to go hi-tech as his next marriage could be arranged via Facebook. Since he is being covered by Pakistani media and has become quite popular, he says that he is receiving a slew of marriage proposals via social media. A large poster on the wall at Khiljis house carries the symbol he used when he contested elections for provincial office in 2013: a double bed, which, he told AFP, denotes special pleasure and meaning in my life. That time at least, his ambition fell short: he garnered 980 votes, not nearly enough to win. Justin Trudeau said Thursday that even though he himself doesn't enjoy smoking, he will still support his government in making marijuana legal in Canada. The Prime Minister admitted to smoking marijuana in the past but also added that he didn't enjoy it. "It was never my thing." Reuters While participating in a Q&A with Winnipeg Free Press newspaper, Trudeau said, "I don't think so. I'm not someone who has a history of using drugs. I lived in Whistler (British Columbia) for a few years, surrounded by friends who did." The 44-year-old premier also doesn't enjoy drinking coffee or alcohol. nbcnews Canada, that allows for using medical marijuana with a prescription, is yet to take a stand on its recreational use. The government is looking towards legalising marijuana for recreational use in 2017. What Trudeau wants for his nation is this: to increase control over points of sale in order to safeguard the young from excessive use, and to cut off the revenue arm of organized crime. If you are reading this at your workstation, stop. Take a break, pour yourself some hot coffee and enjoy the read. A report in Forbes magazine says that Indian youth put in the longest work shifts (48-50 hours a week) compared to the youth from other countries in the world. "A young adult aged between 18 and 34 will work an average of 52 hours every week in India while in China, Mexico and Singapore, an average shift amounts to an intense 48 hours," the report says. ALSO READ: 9 Scientific Facts That Prove Travelling Is The Solution To All Your Problems The study, carried out by the Manpower Group, says, Indian Millennials claim the longest working week and Australians the shortest on average 52 and 41 hours a week respectively. It adds, Seventy-three percent report working more than 40 hours a week, and nearly a quarter work over 50 hours. The study, however, does not go on to say whether these long hours actually help in increasing productivity. Several researchers have reacted to the study by saying that it is a cruel twist of fate that people who regularly put in more hours work of work can often end up less productive than staff members who head home at 5 pm every day. Giphy The study further states that Millennial workplace priorities vary. Working with great people is important to 91% in Brazil, yet to only 55% in Japan. Retirement policies matter to 39% of Japanese and half of Australians, in contrast with more than 85% of Indians. There is also the matter of purpose, the study suggests. Eight in 10 Millennials in Mexico, India and Brazil say working for employers who are socially responsible and aligned to their values is important. In Germany, the Netherlands and Norway its six in 10. A majority of Millennials everywhere say purpose is a priority. ALSO READ: 11 Places You Must Visit In India If A Long Walk Is What You Fancy BCCL And it seems to end with THE end. "Japans 37 per cent of Millennials said they expected to work till they died, followed by China 18 per cent, Greece 15 per cent, Canada, India and Singapore 14 per cent each, Italy, Netherlands, UK and USA 12 per cent each, Australia 11 per cent, Brazil 10 per cent, Germany and Norway 9 per cent each, France and Mexico 8 per cent each, and Spain just 3 per cent." So if you are not among the 14 percent Indians who wish to die at their workstation, make a choice and head out for that much-deserved vacation! BCCL The bad blood between him and his research guide at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), William Klug, led Indian PhD student Mainak Sarkar to shoot him dead, police have said. AFP Sarkar, an IIT Kharagpur alumnus, had shot dead his professor and a woman at her apartment on Wednesday before killing himself. The 38-year-old PhD student was doing his research under Klug, who was only a year older than Sarkar, and was an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. AFP Their academic relationship which began on a warm note turned sour recently. On his blog, Sarker had accused Klug of stealing his code and favoring another student. "Your enemy is your enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust. Stay away from this sick guy." On March 10, in another blog, Sarkar further wrote... "William Klug, UCLA professor is not the kind of person when you think of a professor. He is a very sick person. I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy." However Klug's friends rejected the claims and said it was "absolutely untrue" and "psychotic." AFP According to some reports the Indian student had plans to kill another professor from the same department, but he was away from the campus at the time when Sarkar reached the campus armed with two 9 mm pistols and multiple ammunition clips. AFP Even though officials have not revealed the identity of the woman Sarkar shot dead, she is rumored to be Ashley Erin Hasti, an American woman whom he married in 2011. The duo were reportedly living separately. The story of King Tutankhamun, the former teenage pharaoh of Egypt has always been the most fascinating among all the ancient stories from Egypt, mainly because of the aura of mystery which always surrounded him. History.com Now researchers have added another twist in the mystery. The young Pharaoh had an 'alien' dagger. The iron blade of a dagger, which was discovered in the folds of the wrapping around the mummified boy king probably came from a fallen meteorite, researchers have said. USA Today Using X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, Italian and Egyptian experts found that the blade's composition of iron, nickel and cobalt was an approximate match for a meteorite that landed in northern Egypt. They also note that such ironwork was rare in ancient Egypt. History.com The result "strongly suggests an extraterrestrial origin" for the blade, according to their results published this week in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science. The finding could add to secrets unlocked from an ancient tomb that is still a source of global fascination almost a century after its discovery by the English archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922. The dagger which was studied upon was among the two of its kind found in 1925. AFP The researchers note that the discovery provides further insight into ancient Egyptian descriptions of iron some 100 years after King Tuts death, where the mineral is described as iron of the sky. Were excited to announce that indmin.com is now part of fastmarkets.com. A new look and an improved experience means you can still stay ahead of this fast-moving market with price data, news and market intelligence right here on Fastmarkets. Discover more than 2000 prices, news and analysis in primary and secondary metals markets. We cover base metals, industrial minerals, ores and alloys, steel, scrap and steel raw materials. If you already have a Fastmarkets account, youll still have uninterrupted access to your markets by logging in with your current details. Russian Ground Operation in Syria 'Under Discussion' Kremlin insider tells Al Jazeera that Moscow is considering sending special forces to fight against Syrian rebel groups. By Zeina Khodr June 03, 2016 " Information Clearing House" - " Al Jazeera " - Moscow - Russian President Vladimir Putin may deploy special operations forces on the ground in Syria, a former official has told Al Jazeera, a move that might be made to ensure "a decisive victory". It has been more than eight months since Russia intervened in the Syrian conflict, and at the time Putin said there were no plans to participate in ground operations - but he also said "for now". Putin is reportedly discussing with military commanders the possibility of deploying combat troops on the battlefield. "This is under discussion, there are plans for this," Andrei Fyodorov, a former deputy minister for foreign affairs, told Al Jazeera. The reinforcements could be special forces or volunteer soldiers who are willing to fight alongside the Syrian army and its allies. "This is a delicate issue for our military. There are serious doubts that any participation by Russia on the ground would be favourable. [Rather it could] complicate the negotiation process and lead to further disagreements with the US," Fyodorov explained. But there are those in political and military circles who believe this deployment is needed. Russian firepower prevented the collapse of the Syrian government last year. Damascus was struggling to repel rebel advances on several fronts. The Kremlin wanted to tip the balance in favour of its ally enough to allow it to benefit at the negotiating table. But the battle lines did not change and peace talks led nowhere. Neither side was willing to compromise nor strong enough to impose a settlement. "From the Russian point of view, [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad should control 70 percent of Syria, and that way you can hold elections and they would be favourable for Assad. That is why the issue of ground operations is becoming more actual," said Fyodorov. Over recent weeks, Russia's role on the Syrian battlefield was noticeably reduced as Moscow wanted to give a chance to political talks. That message was clear when Russia did not provide close air power to the Syrian government and its allies in their military campaign in Aleppo in early May. But on May 22, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported the first Russian air strikes in Aleppo province since the US-Russian brokered a cessation of hostilities deal in February. The Russian defence ministry has said it recently intensified strikes against al-Nusra Front in Aleppo and Idlib provinces, and said that the conflict would only escalate after blaming Washington's refusal to join efforts in the fight against what it called "terrorism". "Russia has little choice. It can't allow itself to lose Aleppo. This would deprive it of a trump card. This would enable the other side to regain the initiative and [force Russia] to accept conditions not favourable for Assad," Sergey Strokan, a political analyst, told Al Jazeera. There are Russian voices within the government and military pushing for the ground operation. Russia's intervention in Syria has been costly - billions of dollars have already been spent, and the country is suffering from an economic crisis. The Kremlin never wanted a permanent war, and it can't just pull out of a conflict that has brought it back into the international arena. That is why some analysts suggest a "Stalingrad" in Syria is what the Syrian government and its allies need - a final battle to decisively end the war. And that would require ground troops. June 03, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " - In two weeks, the highly-orchestrated rightwing impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, viewed by many Brazilians as a coup, has been beleaguered by a combination of incompetence by the Temer government and a series of leaked audio files implicating key cabinet ministers in their plotting of the impeachment as a means to derail a far-reaching corruption probe. The facade of Michel Temers legitimacy unraveled just days into his administration, when Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo released an audio recording and transcript of a conversation between the countrys Planning Minister, Romero Juca, and oil executive Sergio Machado, discussing how to put Temer into office to stop the bleeding from the so-called Car Wash Investigation into petroleum giant Petrobras. At the time, Juca also served as the president of the Brazilian Democratic Movement, the same political party of the chief participants in the impeachment, Temer, Senate leader Renan Calheiros, and disgraced former lower-house leader Eduardo Cunha. Juca stepped down from office immediately following the release of the news story. On Monday, it was Fabiano Silveira who became the second official to resign his post in the Temer Administration, after a second leaked recording exposed Brazils Transparency Minister, who is tasked with combating corruption, offering advice to Calheiros on how to undermine the Car Wash corruption probe, in which he, along with most of the country's high-ranking government officials, is implicated. In the two weeks that Temers transition government has held power, it has moved to unravel the countrys social welfare state, eliminating the minister of culture, and has moved to replace regional commitments and the BRICS alliance with renewed deregulated system of trade with the United States. Temer, to many Brazilians is systematically reversing 13 years of policies advanced by the Workers Party. With the once vibrant South American economic powerhouse reeling under a neoliberal agenda, Loud & Clears Brian Becker sat down on Wednesday with Aline C. Piva and Juliana Moraes, of the group Brazilian Expats for Democracy, to discuss what might happen next. "Brazilians have taken to the streets," said Piva. "When Michel Temer first assumed control of the government he started a rollback of the social policies that have been in effect for a decade and a half in Brazil. He cut back social programs and he extinguished the minister of culture. In less than one week he rolled back 13 years of social achievement." The current administration is evidently corrupt, but what about Dilma Rousseff? "There are no investigations under Dilma Rousseffs name for corruption, and there is nothing that would show that she is a corrupt politician," explained Moraes. "What we are seeing is that the people who are looking to oust her actually have dirty records. The current interim president is supposed to be somebody who is unelectable. He has dirty records, which mean corruption charges against him, so for the next eight years he is not supposed to even be in office." She also explained that the recent release of audio files exposing Romero Jucas coup plot and Fabiano Silveiras plans to undermine the corruption probe have led to cries for Temer to go, with many protesters labeling him "Golpista" for "coup leader." Was this coup orchestrated to force US-backed neoliberal economics on Brazil? "Absolutely," said Piva. "The first day of Temers administration made clear that the neoliberal agenda is back in place in Brazilian politics." The activist explained that Temers administration has moved to revoke or offset existing commitments in Latin America, the developing world, and with Russia and China in favor of a push toward US-centric bilateral trade deregulation. "Jose Serra, the new minister of foreign affairs, in his first speech, made very clear that Brazil is going to roll back the policies that led to more independence in the region," said Piva. Moraes took a stronger line, comparing the present situation to the US-backed 1964 Brazilian military coup, noting similar involvement in the proceedings by the US ambassador. "Now we have Liliana Ayalde, the current ambassador to Brazil and the former ambassador to Paraguay in 2008 to 2011, when there was a coup there, who is writing op-ed in the right-wing newspaper O Globo about how Brazil is an essential market for American corporations, a must-play for US business." Trump or Clinton? If the U.S. election comes down to Hillary Clinton v. Donald Trump, the American people will have to decide between two candidates who could risk the future of the planet, albeit for very different reasons. By Robert Parry June 03, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Consortium News " - Hillary Clinton made a strong case for why handing the nuclear codes over to a President Donald Trump would be a scary idea, but there may be equal or even greater reason to fear turning them over to her. In perhaps the most likely area where nuclear war could break out along Russias borders Clinton comes across as the more belligerent of the two. In Clintons world view, President Vladimir Putin, who has been elected multiple times and has approval ratings around 80 percent, is nothing more than a dictator who is engaged in aggression that threatens NATO following the U.S.-backed regime change in Ukraine. Moscow has taken aggressive military action in Ukraine, right on NATOs doorstep, she declared. But stop for a second and think about what Clinton said: she sees Russia responding to an unconstitutional coup in Ukraine which installed a virulently anti-Russian regime on Russias border as Moscow acting aggressively on NATOs doorstep. Thats the same NATO, whose job it was to protect Western Europe from the Soviet Union, that following the Soviet Unions collapse added country after country right up to Russias border. In other words, NATO muscled its way into Russias face and has announced plans to incorporate Ukraine as well, but when Russia reacts, its the one doing the provoking. Clintons neoconservative interpretation of whats happening in Eastern Europe is so upside-down and inside-out that it could ultimately become the flashpoint for a nuclear war between Russia and the West. While she sees Russia as the aggressor against NATO, the Russians see NATO moving troops up to its borders and watch the deployment of anti-ballistic-missile systems in Romania and Poland, thus making a first-strike nuclear attack against Russia more feasible. Russia has made clear that it views these military deployments, just kilometers from major Russian cities, as an existential threat. In response, Russia is raising its alert levels and upgrading its strategic forces. Yet, Hillary Clinton believes the Russians have no reason to fear NATOs military encirclement and no right to resist U.S.-supported coups in countries on Russias periphery. It is just such a contradiction of viewpoints that can turn a spark into an uncontrollable inferno. What might happen, for instance, if Ukraines nationalist and even neo-Nazi militias, which wield increasing power over the corrupt and indecisive regime in Kiev, received modern weaponry from a tough-talking Clinton-45 administration and launched an offensive to exterminate ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine and to reclaim Crimea, where 96 percent of the voters opted to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia? A President Hillary Clinton would have talked herself into a position of supporting this liberation of Russian-occupied territory and her clever propagandists would surely present this heroic struggle as a war of good against evil, much as they justified bloody U.S. invasions of Iraq and Libya which Clinton supported as U.S. senator and Secretary of State, respectively. What if the Ukrainian forces then fired missiles striking Russias naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea, killing some of the 20,000 Russian troops stationed there and inflicting damage on Russias Black Sea fleet? What if Kremlin hardliners finally got their way and unleashed the Russian army to launch a real invasion of Ukraine, crushing its military, rumbling through to Kiev and accomplishing their own regime change? How would President Hillary Clinton respond? Would she put herself in the shoes of Russias leaders and search for some way to de-escalate or would she get high-and-mighty and escalate the crisis by activating NATO military forces to counter this Russian aggression? Given what we know about Clintons tough-talking persona, the odds are good that she would opt for an escalation and that could set the stage for nuclear war, possibly starting because the Russians would fear the imminence of a NATO first strike, made more possible by those ABM bases in Romania and Poland. Clintons Non-Nuclear Wars There are other areas in the world where a President Hillary Clinton would likely go to war albeit at a sub-nuclear level. During the campaign, she has made clear that she intends to invade Syria once she takes office, although she frames her invasions as humanitarian gestures, such as creating safe zones and no-fly zones. In other words, although she condemns Russian aggression, she advocates aggressive war herself, seemingly incapable of recognizing her hypocrisies and only grudgingly acknowledging her mistakes, such as her support for the invasion of Iraq. So, on Thursday, even as she made strong points about Trumps mismatched temperament for becoming Commander-in-Chief, she flashed a harsh temperament of her own that also was unsettling, although in a different way. Trump shoots from the lip and has a thin skin, while Clinton is tightly wound and also has a thin skin. Trump lets his emotions run wild while Clinton is excessively controlled. Trump engages in raucous give-and-take with his critics; Clinton tries to hide her decision-making (and emails) from her critics. Its hard to say which set of behaviors is more dangerous. One can imagine Trump having free-form or chaotic diplomatic encounters with allies and adversaries alike, while Clinton would plot and scheme, insisting on cooperation from allies and demanding capitulation from adversaries. Clinton sprinkled her speech denouncing Trump with gratuitous insults aimed at Putin and undiplomatic slaps at Russia, such as, If Donald gets his way, theyll be celebrating in the Kremlin. We cannot let that happen. In short, there is reason to fear the election of either of these candidates, one because of his unpredictability and the other because of her rigidity. How, one might wonder, did the two major political parties reach this juncture, putting two arguably unfit personalities within reach of the nuclear codes? [For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.coms Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a Neocon and Would a Clinton Win Mean More Wars? ] Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, Americas Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ). Is the UKs Iraq Inquiry Set to Savage Tony Blair? By Felicity Arbuthnot June 03, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " DV " - In spite of all the scepticism regarding the long delayed UK Iraq Inquiry into the illegal invasion of Iraq, with predictions (including by myself) that it would be a whitewash of the enormity of the lies which led to the near destruction of Iraq, to the presence of ISIS and to probably over a million deaths, The Sunday Times (May 22nd, 2016) is predicting an absolutely brutal verdict on those involved. The paper claims that former Prime Minister Tony Blair, his then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Sir Richard Dearlove, former Head of British Secret Intelligence (MI6) are among those who face serious damage to their reputations. Not before time, many will surely be thinking. The Inquiry, which sat from November 24th, 2009 until February 2nd, 2011, is finally to be published on July 6th, approaching five and a half years since its conclusion. Speculation is that publication of the findings are being further delayed until after the June 23rd British referendum on whether to remain in the European Union. Tony Blair is campaigning on his pal Prime Minister David Camerons remain in ticket. Confirmation of his murderous misleadings before the referendum would further discredit all he had to say and seriously damage, if not detonate, the in campaign. Anyone reading The Sunday Times piece might well take the view that with or without the published Report, Blair speaking on either side would be tantamount to inviting total destruction of the cause. For instance: A senior source who has discussed the Report with two of its authors has revealed that Blair wont be let off the hook over claims that he offered British military support to George W Bush a year before the 2003 invasion. Jack Straw as Blairs Foreign Secretary at the time, and senior Generals, are also said to be subject of some of the harshest criticism for the UKs disastrous stewardship of the southern port city of Basra and much of the south, post-invasion. The Report will say that we really did make a mess of the aftermath. Those sent in by Blairs Foreign Office under Straw were inexperienced, did not quite know what they were doing and: All the things the British had been saying about how much better we were at dealing with post-conflict resolution than the American came very badly unstuck. In fact, misjudgement was such that they had to be rescued by the Americans. The Report, according to a knowledgeable former Minister, will be Absolutely brutal for Straw it will damage the reputation of Richard Dearlove and Tony Blair amongst others. General Mike Jackson, former head of the army, named Darth Vader by his men, who vowed to leave Iraq better than he found it, and General Sir Nicholas Houghton, Chief of the Defence Staff and senior officer in Iraq, 2005-2006, are also believed to be in the firing line, with Houghton said to have consulted his lawyers. Houghtons objections to criticisms of his roles are alleged to have contributed to delays in the Inquirys publication. Houghton became Chief of Joint Operations in 2006. In 2008 the Iraqi military requested US rather than British assistance to retake Iraqs second city of Basra from the militia, three months after UK forces had withdrawn from the city. On September 3rd, 2007 the 550 British forces, hunkered down in one of Saddam Husseins former palaces, had fled the city to the relative safety of Basra airport some miles away. In recent years, Sir Nicholas has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for the UK bombing Syria. The Sunday Times also cites the Reports criticism of the gloss with which Blairs officials adorned intelligence regarding Saddam Husseins non-existent weapons of mass destruction and (Blairs) claim that they could be unleashed in forty five minutes. Sir Richard Dearlove and others senior in MI6 will be criticized for failing to prevent such fairy stories. The newspapers source also said there will be questions raised: about the (US-UK) special relationship (since) diplomats in Washington, including the then Ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer, were not plugged in and were bounced along behind the Americans At home, the Cabinet did not have the full picture of what was going on before the invasion (due to) Blairs informal sofa style of government. Further, incredibly: officials were not present to take notes when Blairs inner circle were making key decision, leading to predicted criticism of former Cabinet Secretary Lord Turnbull and senior Civil Servants. Former International Development Secretary, Clare Short, has told friends she will be attacked. Ms Short, of course, stated that she had stayed on in her job as she wanted her Department to be involved in rebuilding Iraq after the invasion. No thought of resigning earlier, rather than at the last minute in protest at the whole shameful Blair-Bush intended supreme international crime, that of a war of aggression. The Chairman of the Inquiry, Sir John Chilcot, is said to be personally exercised by the failures of proper constitutional government. Indeed. Whilst Blair and Straw declined to comment to The Sunday Times, Allies of Blair say it is significant that he has not apologized for lying to the public, because they believe Chilcot will not find that he did. Given the mountains of evidence and hard facts already in the public domain, they must surely be the only people on the planet to hold such a view. As for Chilcot, we await the July 6th with the palest glimmer of hope that at last some justice might be seen to be done and that Blair and all responsible for the ongoing Hiroshima level tragedy that is the whole of battered, bereaved, bleeding, irradiated Iraq might find that there is finally at least the beginning of the basis for legal redress. As this is finished, it transpires Tony Blair has been speaking today at an event in central London organized by the Centre on Religion and Geopolitics. He made it clear he would be unapologetic for his role in taking Britain to war in 2003, reports the BBC. As General Taguba was told by a Pentagon colleague when preparing his report on Abu Ghraibs horrors of the dead and maimed for whom Blair bears such integral responsibility: They are only Iraqis, a view Blair clearly shares. Charles Anthony Lynton Blair is beyond all shame. However, no matter how widely the guilt is spread, he was Captain of the No 10 Downing Street ship, author of key lies integral to the gargantuan crime and tragedy and thus should shoulder commensurate blame. Is the UKs Iraq Inquiry Set to Savage Tony Blair? Part 2 of a 2 Part Series By Felicity Arbuthnot With the publication date of the Chilcot Inquiry into the illegal invasion of Iraq just weeks away (July 6th) reportedly set to savage former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair he has made a rare return to the UK and gone in to manic diversionary tactic overdrive. It seems no radio, television news or current affairs programme is without Blair giving his opinion on the upcoming UK referendum on whether to stay in the European Union, making near libelous comments on the current courteous, dignified, non-warmongering leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn (who was implacably against Blairs foreign interventions.) He has waded into the economy, Africa, faith, God and, of course, is cheerleading for invading Syria and reinvading Iraq. He had been Prime Minister for a mere twenty three months when he signaled his preference for bloody interventionism. Speaking at the Chicago Economic Club on April 22nd, 1999, he said: Many of our problems have been caused by two dangerous and ruthless men Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic Instead of enjoying its oil wealth Iraq has been reduced to poverty, with political life stultified The Balkans, of course, was already being pulverized: On its fiftieth birthday, NATO must prevail he said. Perhaps he was facing his and the US worst nightmare that with the Berlin Wall gone, the Cold War ended and European and Russian citizens rejoicing, NATO no longer had a raison detre. Dont give peace a chance. As for Iraqs poverty, prior to the paralyzing US-UK driven UN embargo imposed on Hiroshima Day 1990, Iraqs money had been poured for thirty-years into infrastructure, free high quality health services, UN Award winning free education, clean water, reliable electricity, telecommunications near all comprehensively destroyed by a thirty four nation onslaught (January 17th 1991-February 28th, 1991.) Iraq was then left, unable to independently import the nations needs, rebuild, repair. With towering inventiveness, imagination and determination the country rose from the ashes, but beneath the surface, the infrastructure was near terminal for want of imported parts. Blair ignored both impressive achievements, the embargos silent infanticide, genocide and ecocide and the Billion $ rip-off which was the shameful so called UN Oil for Food deal. The UN Sanctions Committee was headed by Blairs envoy Carne Ross, who subsequently formed an organization called Independent Diplomat, which currently states it is working with the moderate head chopping, organ eating, pyromaniac Syrian opposition to now overthrow that countrys President. However, Blairs Chicago speech demonstrates how long he had been determined to back the US in the illegal overthrow of the leader of a sovereign nation. His address was just eleven months after the US had passed The Iraq Liberation Act ( May 1998) which determined: it should be the policy of the United States to seek to remove the Saddam Hussein regime from power in Iraq and to replace it with a democratic government. Perhaps with Chilcots findings looming, Blairs duplicities might finally come home to roost, hence the frenzied diversionary tactics. They are not going well. Michael Burleigh, in an eviscerating piece in the Daily Mail, headed: Why I despise conman Blairs grubby attempt to spin away Chilcot truths writes: Chilcot will be a defining moment in our recent history It will show how the art of lying has become central to the British way of government with facts proving malleable and the Civil Service degraded into partisanship. Having dragged the perma-tanned multi-millionaire become pantomime villain through the depths of media mud he concludes: But the lessons to be learned from Iraq must include how a preachy conman debased our entire system of government. Also in the Mail, Quentin Letts (Enter Saint Tony, as tanned as the top of an egg flanand looking every one of his 63 years ) refers to an event at which Blair was speaking and from which Letts and other journalists were barred: By the way, yesterdays event was co-organized by Mr Blairs Faith Foundation which seeks to promote stable societies. And if they wont make themselves stable well jolly well have to drop bombs and parachutists on them and invade them with tanks and battalions of Western troops and basically kill them. All. Thatll calm them down, just you see. Blair was also: shrivelled by scandals and pointlessness However: Mr Blair hinted that he may collaborate with Sir John Major and Gordon Brown on a joint pro-Brussels platform. There was a place for former Prime Ministers, he insisted. Did he mean The Hague? Chris Nineham writing in The Guardian has reminded that: The parody of Blair as US poodle diminishes his role in history. He chafed at Bill Clintons hesitancy to bomb Serbia in 1999 and secretly reassured the Bush administration that it would not be alone in the illegal pursuit of regime change in Iraq in April 2002. It should be an encouragement to progressives that Blairs combination of aggression overseas, pro-market policies at home and deception in general has made him a pariah. Ninehams reference to the commitment to Bush re Iraq related to the memo by Colin Powell to George W. Bush briefing him ahead of Blairs visit to Bush at his Crawford, Texas ranch, April 5-7th, 2002. A paragraph confirms that: On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary. He is convinced on two points: that the threat is real; and success against Saddam will yield more regional success The threat, of course, was a fantasy followed up by a pack of lies and the result has been a regional blood bath. It is set to get worse for Blair. On June 6th a drama, Reg, is to be shown on BBC 2, the real life story of Reg Keys and his wife Sally whose soldier son, Lance Corporal Tom Keys (20) was killed in Iraq with five colleagues. In 2005 Reg Keys, a paramedic and paramedic trainer, ran against Tony Blair in his Sedgefield, Co Durham constituency in the general election with the aim of drawing attention to Blairs Iraq duplicities. On election night with all the candidates gathered after the count, which, of course, Blair won, Keys gave a withering, blistering speech reducing the winner and his wife to standing white faced, clench lipped and frozen. As the candidates finally parted Blair refused to shake Keys hand. Truth clearly hurts. Regs wife Sally never recovered from the loss of Tom and died in 2011, aged fifty seven. Their agony mirrors the losses of other families from a war built on untruths in the UK and unendingly, ongoing, in Iraq. Anna Maxwell Martin who plays Sally Keys has commented: I think this absolutely hammers home the personal nature for some people and I hope it really highlights Tony Blair to be the gruesome crook that he is. Actor Tim Roth plays Reg Keys and said that he hopes the drama forces Blair to apologise and: Ive always felt Blair should be hauled off in handcuffs and put in Wormwood Scrubs (prison). I think hes profited from the death of Regs son and the Iraq war. I have nothing but contempt for him. In September former MP George Galloway is to screen a documentary. It is called The Killings of Tony Blair. Meanwhile The Iraq Families Action Group intend to use the findings of the Chilcot Inquiry to sue Tony Blair, his former Ministers and Generals, on behalf of the 179 British soldiers killed. They intend to seek unlimited damages. The former leader of the Scottish National Party, MP Alex Salmond, seems set to revive a group of politicians formed with a view to taking legal action against Blair back in 2004. Salmond has said that he believed the: best route would be to use the International Criminal Court because the Prosecutor is able to initiate action on his or her own behalf on presentation of a body of evidence, which Chilcot would provide. However, he says he is open to any legal avenue which could have the desired outcome. Meanwhile, Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, interviewed on BBCs Newsnight stated: We went into a war that was catastrophic, that was illegal, that cost us a lot of money, that lost a lot of lives, and the consequences are still played out with migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, refugees all over the region. Asked if he would like to see Blair put on trial he replied: I want to see all those that committed war crimes tried for it, and those that made the decisions that went with it. Yet total denial seems to have again struck the former Prime Minister so central to tragedies beyond comprehension, which have affected millions between the embargo, war and the murderous chaos of the aftermath spread far and wide. Speaking on the BBCs Andrew Marr Show on Sunday May 29th, he intimated that if the Inquiry finds he committed to the invasion before he told Parliament and the public, he might refuse to accept the verdict. He has surely not forgotten his commitment mentioned in General Colin Powells early 2002 communication with George Bush, quoted above? Ironically, the Centre for Religion and Geopolitics founded by Tony Blair has just published its latest Report on extremism (no reflection, of course, that it does not get much more extreme than enjoining a Crusade as declared by George W. Bush.) The Centre writes: Our data shows that over the past three months, the same countries repeatedly suffered high levels of extremism. With no hint of irony they include Iraq and Afghanistan in which Blairs Britain was integral to attacking and destabilizing. Then Syria, Yemen, Pakistan in which the US and UK have meddled, murdered, damaged and disrupted. In Libya ISIS has continued to gain strength, they note. The same Libya whose leader Blair kissed (a Judas kiss if ever there was one) who resultantly disarmed, was welcomed back into the community of nations and was destroyed by that same community. It can only be hoped that Chilcot throws the book at this despicable human being and all involved in Iraqs tragedy. Whatever the findings it could never be sufficient. Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist with special knowledge of Iraq. Author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of Baghdad in the Great City series for World Almanac books, she has also been Senior Researcher for two Award winning documentaries on Iraq, John Pilger's Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq and Denis Halliday Returns for RTE (Ireland.) There is No U.S. War Against ISIS; Instead, Obama is Protecting His Assets Two years ago, President Obama said he had no strategy to combat the Islamic State. The U.S. is still not waging war against ISIS or jihadists of any brand in Syria. The international iihadist network is a U.S. imperial asset. The general aim of the Obama administrations jihadist policy, now deeply in crisis, is to preserve the Islamic State as a fighting force for deployment under another brand name, under new top leadership. By Glen Ford June 03, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " BAR " - The U.S. claim that it is waging a global war on terror is the biggest lie of the 21st century, a mega-fiction on the same historical scale of evil as Hitlers claim that he was defending Germany from an assault by world Jewry, or that the trans-Atlantic slave trade was a Christianizing mission. In reality, the U.S. is the birth mother and chief nurturer of the global jihadist network a truth recognized by most of the worlds people, including the 82 percent of Syrians that believe the U.S. created the Islamic State. (Even 62 percent of Syrians in Islamic State-controlled regions believe this to be true.) Only exceptionalism-addled Americans and colonial-minded Europeans give Washingtons insane cover story the slightest credibility. However, it is dangerous in the extreme for any country to state the fact clearly: that it is the United States that has inflicted Islamic jihadist terror on the world. Once the charade has been abandoned; once there is no longer the international pretense that Washington is not the Mother Of All Terror, what kind of dialogue is possible with the crazed and desperate perpetrator? What do you do with a superpower criminal, once you have accused him of such unspeakable evil? President Vladimir Putin came closest last November, after Russia unleashed a devastating bombing and missile campaign against the Islamic States industrial scale infrastructure in Syria facilities and transportation systems that the U.S. had left virtually untouched since Obamas phony declaration of war against ISIS in September of 2014. The Islamic State had operated a gigantic oil sales and delivery enterprise with impunity, right under the eyes of American bombers. Ive shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products, said Putin. The motorcade of refueling vehicles stretched for dozens of kilometers, so that from a height of 4,000 to 5,000 meters they stretch beyond the horizon. Russian bombers destroyed hundreds of the oil tankers within a week, and cruise missiles launched from Russian ships on the Caspian Sea knocked out vital ISIS command-and-control sites. Putins derision of U.S. military actions against ISIS shamed and embarrassed Barack Obama before the world an affront that only a fellow nuclear superpower would dare. Yet, even the Russian president chose his words carefully, understanding that deployment of jihadists has become central to U.S. imperial policy, and cannot be directly confronted without risks that could be fatal to the planet. Simply put, Washington has no substitute for the jihadists, who have been a tool of U.S. policy since the last days of President Jimmy Carters administration. Thats why, in August of 2014, President Obama admitted We dont have a strategy yet to deal with ISIS. It had been thirteen years since 9/11, but none of the U.S./Saudi-sponsored jihadists had ever gone off the reservation, spitting on the hands that fed them, attacking the al-Qaida fighters (al-Nusra) that are the real force behind so-called moderate anti-Assad rebels, and threatening to overthrow the Saudi and other Persian Gulf monarchies. Obama had no strategy to combat ISIS, because the U.S. had no strategy to fight jihadists of any brand in Syria, since all the other terrorists worked for the U.S. and its allies. Obama is still not waging a war against the Islamic State certainly not on a superpower scale, and not nearly as vigorously as did the far smaller Russian forces before their partial withdrawal in March of this year. The New York Times last week published an article that was half apology, half critical of the U.S. air campaign in ISIS territory. The Americans blamed their lackadaisical air campaign on poor intelligence, clumsy targeting, inexperienced planners, staffing shortages, internal rivalries and this from a nation that has caused the deaths of 20 to 30 million people since World War Two fear of causing civilian casualties. However, the Pentagon now claims to have hit its stride, and is concentrating on blowing up the Islamic States money, targeting cash storage sites, resulting in reductions in salaries of about 50 percent for ISIS troops. The U.S. military says it has destroyed about 400 ISIS oil tankers. (The Russians claim to have destroyed a total of 2,000.) As a counterpoint, the Times quoted David A. Deptula, a retired three-star Air Force general who planned air campaigns in Afghanistan in 2001 and in the Persian Gulf in 1991. He called the current U.S. air campaign against the Islamic State symbolic and anemic when considered relative to previous operations. The U.S. has averaged 14.5 air strikes a day in the combined Syrian and Iraqi theaters of war, with a peak of 17 a day in April. Thats far lower than NATOs 50 strikes a day against Libya in 2011, 85 strikes a day against Afghanistan in 2001, and 800 a day in Iraq in 2003. Its way below Russias 55 Syrian strikes a day 9,000 total strikes over a five and a half month period by an air force a fraction of the size of the 750 U.S. aircraft stationed in the region (not counting planes on aircraft carriers, or cruise missiles). The numbers tell the tale: the U.S. is not carrying on a serious war against ISIS troop formations, which remain aggressive, mobile and effective in Syria. The Pentagons claim that fear of inflicting civilian casualties should be dismissed outright, coming from an agency that has killed between 1.3 million and 2 million people since 9/11, according to a 2015 study by Physicians for Social Responsibility. American excuses concerning poor intelligence, clumsy targeting, inexperienced planners, staffing shortages, and internal rivalries might even contain some kernels of truth, since one would expect gaps in gathering intelligence and targeting information on jihadists that were considered U.S. assets, not enemies. And, there is no question that internal rivalries do abound in the U.S. war machine, with CIA-sponsored jihadists attacking Pentagon-sponsored jihadists in Syria the point being, the U.S. backs a wide range of jihadists that have conflicts with one another. The U.S. plays up the killing of Islamic State leaders and the blowing up of money caches. This is consistent with what appears to be the general aim of the Obama administrations jihadist policy, now deeply in crisis: to preserve the Islamic State as a fighting force for deployment under another brand name, under new top leadership. The Islamic State went rogue, by the Americans definition, when it began pursuing its own mission, two years ago. Even so, the U.S. mainly targeted top ISIS leaders for elimination, allowing the main body of fighters, estimated at around 30,000, to not only remain intact, but to be constantly resupplied and to carry on a vast oil business, mainly with NATO ally Turkey. (The U.S. has also been quite publicly protecting the al-Qaida affiliate in Syria, al-Nusra, from Russian bombing, despite U.S. co-sponsorship of a UN resolution calling for international war against al-Nusra.) To a military man like retired general Deptula, this looks like a symbolic and anemic campaign. Its actually a desperate effort to balance U.S. interests in preserving ISIS as a American military asset, while also maintaining the Mother Of All Lies, that the U.S. is engaged in a global war on terror, rather than acting as the headquarters of terror in world. To maintain that tattered fiction, at least in the bubble of the home country, requires the maintenance of a massive and constant psychological operations apparatus. Its called the corporate news media. BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com. See also - US asks Russia to not hit Nusra Front in Syria: Moscow : Russia's foreign minister says Washington has asked Moscow not to target the al-Qaida's branch in Syria, the Nusra Front, for fear of hitting the moderate opposition. There are still a few good step moms but in general, step moms are known to be Satans deputy. The could totally beat the hell of you for being alive. INFORMATION NIGERIA brings 10 photos youll totally get of you grew up with a typical Nigerian step mom. 1.How she gives her kids food 2.But how she gives yours 3. How she deals with you when you act up 4. But how she deals with her kids 5.When your dad says buy the kids clothes; what she gets you 6.What she gets her kids 7.How you spend your free time OR OR 8.But how her kids spend theirs 9.Your first reaction when daddy says he has to travel to the village Im dead. 10. And when you finally have to go the university and be free In what should no longer come as a surprise to Nigerians, President Muhammadu Buhari has reportedly canceled his scheduled trip to Dakar, Senegal for the 49th Extra-Ordinary Summit of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The president, who was supposed to depart Abuja last night for Dakar to attend the one day summit slated for today, Friday, reportedly sent Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to represent him at the regional meeting. In less than two weeks, President Buhari has canceled highly publicized official trips to Lagos, Cross River, Rivers and now Senegal. It was learnt that the president, who has been accused of globetrotting in his first year in office, followed advice by his handlers to shelve the Dakar trip so as not to give those who argue that he only prefers to embark on foreign trips while sending the vice president to represent him at local fora, further reason to justify their argument. As at the time of publishing this report, the Presidency was yet to give an official response to the claim that Mr. Buhari canceled his scheduled trip to Dakar. A former Commander of the Military Joint Task Force in the Niger Delta codenamed Operation Pulo Shield and current Chief of Logistics, Defence Headquarters, Maj.-Gen. Emmanuel Atewe, has been arraigned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on an 11-count charge bordering on conspiracy, abuse of office and money laundering to the tune of N8.5billion. The former JTF Commander was arraigned before Justice Saliu Saidu of the Federal High Court sitting in Lagos alongside the immediate past Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA, Patrick Akpobolokemi. Also arraigned along with the former NIMASA boss and Atewe were Kime Engozu and Josephine Otuga. This is the sixth time the EFCC would file different charges against Akpobolokemi for alleged fraud perpetrated during his time as head of NIMASA. According to the prosecution, NIMASA, under the disgraced former DG, approved billions of naira to several military personnel, who were purportedly engaged to patrol the creeks to prevent pipeline vandalism and illegal bunkering. The funds, it said, ended in private accounts through fraudulent means. The EFCC said the defendants conspired among themselves to defraud NIMASA of N8.5billion using six companies Jagan Limited, Jagan Trading Company Limited, Jagan Global Services Limited, Al-Nald Limited, Paper Warehouse Limited, Eastpoint Integrated Services Limited and De-Newlink Integrated Services Limited. The accused persons pleaded not guilty to the charge. Prosecution counsel, Rotimi Oyedepo, told the court that he was ready for trial with his witnesses and pleaded for accelerated hearing. Counsel to the first accused, Mathew Bukar, however, prayed the court to grant his client (Mr. Akpobolokemi) bail, as he had earlier been granted bail by judges in the other cases where he is currently standing trial. Counsel to the third and fourth accused, U.B.E Innaji also urged the court to exercise its discretion to grant bail in the favour of his clients. However, the court rejected Mike Ozekhome, counsel to the second accuseds (General Atewe) prayer to grant his client bail on self-recognition. After considering the bail applications, Justice Saidu granted bail to Akpobokelemi on the terms earlier given by courts where he is currently standing trial on corruption charges. The second, third and fourth accused were also granted bail in the sum of N100 million each, two sureties, one of whom must be a senior civil servant of the rank of Deputy Director. The other must be a relative who must have a property in Victoria Island, Ikoyi, or Lekki areas of Lagos. The judge remanded the accused persons pending when they perfect the terms of their bail. He, thereafter adjourned the case to June 24, 2016 for commencement of trial. British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Paul Arkwright, has cautioned the federal government against the use of military option as a measure to tackle the resurgence of militancy and other criminality in the Niger Delta region. British High Commissioner said this in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, shortly after his courtesy visit to the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo. He advocated for dialogue as part of a comprehensive approach that should be adopted by the Nigerian government to address the situation, adding that force alone may not bring about a lasting solution to the Niger Delta issue. The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), in its latest attack, today blew up Shells exportline in Forcados, Delta State, one of three new attacks in the Niger Delta region the group claimed to have perpetrated. The federal government, tired of the incessant attacks, had responded by deploying troops to the area, but the attacks have continued. Dettol, a global leader in the health and hygiene from the stable of RB (Reckitt Benckiser), partnered with the Nigerian Medical Association during her week-long annual national medical conference held in Sokoto State, with participants advocating improved healthcare service delivery for Nigerians. The 56th NMA Annual Conference, which was held recently pulled a large number of stakeholders, including doctors, other healthcare practitioners, the academia, top government functionaries and key influencers, who expressed a consensus on the need to improve healthcare delivery in the country. Nigeria losses about N455 billion annually which is about 1.3% of her GDP due to poor hygiene practices, this productivity loss is majorly from the household and affects the living standard of the people. Poor hygiene conditions gives room for infections which results in sickness and diseases leading to valuable loss of productive time and other resources. Infections are easily transmitted through contact with infected persons or surfaces, and if not properly checked can lead to disease outbreak. Therefore, the chain of infection should be broken with reliable antiseptic liquid as early as possible to ensure that families and loved ones are protected from germs that cause a number of illnesses. Dr. R. Oladele a Clinical Microbiologist, at the LUTH during her presentation titled Breaking the Chain of Infection stated that in order to achieve an infection free country, the promotion of personal hygiene practices such as regular hand washing could not be over-emphasized. Other practices like cough etiquette, vaccinations, infection control and prevention programs all play critical roles in reaching this goal of an infection free society. She further stated that regular disinfection of topical and environmental surfaces with antiseptics and disinfectants is an effective approach and also to clean and decontaminate all equipment after use. Dettol, which is a leading antiseptic liquid and proven to be 10X better than other antiseptic liquid in the market, is useful in breaking the chain of infection when regularly used at home, offices, schools and hospitals. Dettol antiseptic liquid is the number one Antiseptic and disinfectant brand in use extensively in homes, offices, hospitals and other health care facilities for a variety of topical and hard-surface applications. In particular, they are an essential part of infection control practices and aid in the prevention infections at home and in the hospitals. Dettol has been in partnership with the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) for over 20 years and it is the only antiseptic liquid endorsed by the NMA. Dettol on its part will continue to ensure that it supports Nigerians to live healthier and happier lives, by providing maximum protection for the family against over 100 illness causing germs. The British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Paul Arkwright, has called for a carrot and stick approach to the resurgence of militancy in the oil rich Niger Delta region. The Niger Delta Avengers have been attacking oil platforms and installations in the last few weeks despite the heavy militarization of the area by the federal government. Speaking yesterday in an interview with newsmen in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital shortly after his visit to the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo, the Envoy said government needs to adopt a more comprehensive approach to address agitation in the Niger Delta region as force alone may not be the solution. He said with adequate engagement of stakeholders, various investments and business interests in the affected areas would be secured. Mr. Arkwright said: We are talking to Nigerian authorities about that, we need to have what we call a comprehensive approach to this, in other words we need to have dialogue and we need to engage the communities down there. We need to understand the grievances of the people down there, we need to ensure the environmental damage is cleaned up. He, however, backed proactive action against acts of criminality in the Niger Delta especially when businesses and livelihoods are under threat. We need to protect the investment there, not just British companies, international companies but Nigerian companies as well. When there is criminal activity, (it) is right that the government should take proactive action against that criminal activity, we strongly support them but we dont think military solution alone is the final solution to handle issues in Niger Delta and to handle Boko Haram in the North. So we need comprehensive approach and that is what we have been talking to the Nigerian government about, the High Commissioner explained. On ongoing anti-corruption war, Arkwright said the British Government would do everything possible to repatriate stolen money stashed in his country to Nigeria. Towards this end, he noted that President Muhammadu Buhari had a meaningful discussion with the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, during the recent anti-corruption summit in London. He said: The United Kingdom is doing everything that it can to ensure that those funds are returned to Nigeria. We have no intention of keeping the monies, we want it to go back to Nigeria. The British High Commissions Political Counselor, Ben Llewellyn-Jones and former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Dr Emeka Anyaoku, were on the High Commissioners entourage. A South African police officer who works for a special child protection unit never imagined that one day her own child would be brutally murdered and dumped in a river by her disgruntled ex-lover. On June 1, an emotional Sergeant Nancy Lesenya, of Mzombani near Mokopane in Limpopo, spoke of her pain. Lesenyas ex-lover Jimmy Makhubela appeared in the Mokerong Magistrates Court on Monday on charges of kidnapping. Police are now expected to add a murder charge to the docket after Makhubela allegedly pointed out where the body was dumped. Makhubela apparently argued with Lesenya a day before the nine-year-old boy went missing. Lesenyas son Katlego is a third child to be killed in Limpopo in the past four days, as SA marks National Child Protection Week. Police spokeswoman Colonel Ronel Otto yesterday said two other suspects were arrested in connection with the kidnapping and murder of two five-year-old girls. Otto said the naked bodies of friends Lekwelo Masola and Nthabiseng Motlaphema were found hanging from a tree near Ribone village in Gilead three days ago. Speaking to Sowetan yesterday, Lesenya said she spent days worried about her son after he disappeared on May 21. The officer, who has worked for the family violence, child protection and sexual unit for the past nine years, said she never thought her child would one day be a victim of crime. I never thought this would ever happen to me. I couldnt eat. I kept waiting by the stoep hoping that hed come home. When he left the house he was wearing a vest, so I kept wondering whether he was warm, Lesenya said. She said her youngest child has also been asking about her brothers whereabouts. Its been hard because she keeps asking me, where is Katli?' Lesenya said she went looking for her child when it started getting late and he wasnt home. She said another child who was playing with Katlego in the street helped to identify the car that allegedly picked him up. When I realised who it was, I thought he would bring him back. I used to trust him with the children and even ask him to pick them up from school when I was working far away, Lesenya said. But Katlego never came home until his body was discovered by members of the police search and rescue team on Monday . Otto said Katlegos body was found after the suspect pointed out the area . Otto said he allegedly threw the body from a bridge into a shallow river. She said a postmortem would be conducted to determine the cause of death while investigations continued. Lesenya said she found comfort in that she would be able to bury her son. I have found closure. A dead body is better than not knowing what happened. The childs father Medupe Lesenya, who is a soldier, clutched an orange cloth while wiping tears from his eyes. He recalled how he rushed from Johannesburg to Mokopane after being told his son was missing. Medupe said he felt that the police did not do enough to search for his son. I kept asking how far they were with my childs case. They failed my child. They only started looking when they heard the story being aired on the radio. Colonel Ronel Otto said it was not true. We have been working with the mother of the child since he went missing. She said the police had followed up every lead that came through. Yesterday, burnt tyres near the family home told of sleepless nights spent by concerned neighbours helping with the search for Katlego, a pupil at Mokopane Primary School. Source: Sowetan Live/South African Police The Federal Government has waded into the ongoing retrenchment in Banks, Insurance and financial institutions in the country, calling for a suspension of the mass purging in the sector. Within the last one week, Diamond and Ecobank Nigeria have sacked 200 and 1,040 members of staff respectively amid an economic crisis. Another leading bank, First Bank, a subsidiary of FBN Holdings, also revealed plans to reduce its workforce by 1,000 staff. But the Federal Government on Friday directed a suspension of the retrenchment exercises pending the outcome of conciliatory meetings in the industry. The Minister of Labour, Senator Chris Ngige, made the governments position known in a statement he personally signed and issued to journalists in Abuja. The statement reads in part: Following spate of petitions and complaints from stakeholders in the banking, insurance and financial institutions, I hereby direct the suspension of the on-going retrenchment pending the outcome of the conciliatory meetings in the industry. This is as a result of the apprehension by my office of the various disputes in the sector in accordance and in compliance with the provisions of the labour laws of Nigeria. Mr. Ngige noted that the decision was further hinged on the fact that the continued retrenchment and redundancy by the sector were jeopardising the outcome of the reconciliatory and mediatory processes undertaken by the ministry. In this wise, all the retrenchments and redundancies done in the last four months and all proposed ones should be put on hold. Pending the outcome of the proposed stakeholders summit for the banking, insurance and financial institutions employers and employees, slated for the first week of July 2, he said. The statement, however, called on all parties in the interest of industrial peace and harmony, to maintain the status-quo ante-belum. (NAN) The Federal government of Nigeria yesterday yesterday announced that Post UTME exams would no longer be held in Nigerian Universities. Nigerian universities adopted the Post Unified Teritary Matriculation Examination after several of them claimed that the UTME exams were a poor metric for admitting students based on the widespread malpractice associated with the exam. SEE ALSO: JAMB bill passes second reading The announcement was made by the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu at the 2016 combined policy meeting on admissions to Universities, Polytechnics and other higher institutions in Nigeria. The Federal Government has argued that Post UTME exercises reflect a lack of confidence in the exam body JAMB and also disclosed that 180 has been agreed on as the cut off mark for university admission. Mallam Adamu Adamu said, Our universities shouldnt be conducting another examination; if they have any complaint against JAMB, they should come to the Ministry of Education and we will look into it. If JAMB is qualified to conduct the computer-based test and they are conducting the test, then there should be no need for students to sit another examination to get admission As far as I am concerned JAMB has built a level of confidence in terms of conducting the UTME. A situation where universities go and conduct other examinations is unnecessary. The Federal Government yesterday warned Nigerians against intake of some poisonous food items, which it said arose from wrong habit of processing and preserving them. Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Audu Ogbeh said this, yesterday at a one-day public hearing on food security bills organised by the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development. Many of the cows being moved from one place to the other by herdsmen are already infected with tuberculosis but our practice of boiling meat very well here has been the saving grace for people not being infected with the deadly disease, he said. Smuggled frozen chicken preserved with formalin, which is also used for preservation of dead bodies, have been potent poison being consumed by Nigerians with attendant serious health challenges in the land. The minister also cited the example of beans and grains preservation with too much pesticides by farmers and sellers as another dangerous food poison that had killed many Nigerians and still killing unsuspecting buyers and consumers. He noted that wrong application of fertiliser by farmers on their farmland has also led to poisonous consumption of food items. Unknowingly to many of the farmers, there is specific fertiliser for specific crops in specific state in line with soil texture, he explained. Former President Goodluck Jonathan, who returned to Nigeria last night, left his country home in Otuoke before the news of his return filtered into Bayelsa, SaharaReporters sources have confirmed. Reports of his return from foreign lands seemed to authenticate a reported statement from him denying our story that he was in exile in Ivory Coast, but it is unclear why he departed abruptly. By Thursday afternoon when some of his kinsmen thronged his Otuoke home, he had slipped out, and they were all told that the former President had left for Port Harcourt. At the premises, some security men were seen turning visitors back. He just left for Port Harcourt en route Abuja; the aircraft just left, one of them was overheard telling visitors at about 2.30 pm local time on Thursday. Kinsmen of the former president habitually throng his residence to felicitate with him and solicit financial support whenever he is in town. Our sources have not identified his presence either in Port Harcourt or Abuja. A political analyst suggested that those destinations may have been publicized to throw interested parties off his scent. It would be recalled that in his last letter to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Mr. Jonathan expressed his intention to launch his foundation this summer. Source: SaharaReporters A mammoth crowd made up of Market women, children, students, religious leaders, friends, family members, activists and the media gathered at the 8 Araronmi Street, Oshodi yesterday (Thursday June 2nd 2016) for the wake of Late Mrs. Roseline Sougie whose throat was allegedly slit by the husband Mr. Jafaru Sougie on Friday May 27th 2016. The wake started with praise and worship, bible reading, word of exhortation, officiated by seven(7) Pastors, then a short biography of the murdered mother of four(4) born on 7th November 1970 had her primary and secondary schools at Ugbekpe Ekperi in Edo State. She started her own business and became very successful until her death. The Elder brother of the murdered mother of five, Mr. Abraham Shaibu who attested to life and times of her younger sister late Roseline Sougie said she was the mother for eight of her younger ones and her five children, she was very religious and dedicated to her family even after several attempt on her life by her husband who eventually killed her, she did not contemplate separation from her husband, she firmly believes the late sister will get justice. Four of the children except Collins the first child who was still on campus were all present at the wake keep. Richmond the second son said seven days without my mum has been like seven days without food or water, unconsciously I call mummy but realizing later that mummy has died, leaves me almost completely lifeless, mummy all of us will miss you because you were the only one taking care of us and love us so much sleep on at the bosom of the Lord. The President of Women Arise, Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin who was shown round the house and bed where late Roseline Sougie was killed with the blood but dried on the whole bed sheet, with part of the mattress burnt, still heartbroken express her heartfelt condolence, told the whole gathering that anyone experiencing domestic violence should call the numbers she gave, can also take a peace break and that the murdered mother of five that was killed in cold blood will get justice. she advised that the children left behind the siblings, well wishers and Women Arise must ensure they get the best education and well taken care of too. Finally, Not yet good night Roseline Sougie, until the person that killed her in cold blood is brought to book to serve as deterrence. More photos.. L-R: Third son of Late Mrs. Roseline, Paul Sougie; Sister of Late Roseline, Ms. Philomina shaibu; First daughter of Late Mrs. Roseline, Abigel Sougie; President Women Arise, Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin; 2nd daughter of Late Mrs. Roseline, Happiness Sougie; Brother of Late Mrs. Roseline, Mr. Abraham Shaibu & 2nd son of Late Mrs. Roseline, Richmond Sougie as Women Arise Demands Justice at The Wake of Woman Allegedly Murdered by Husband, Jafaru Sougie Thursday June 3rd 2016, Oshodi, Lagos. L-R Sister of Late Roseline, Ms. Philomina shaibu; President Women Arise, Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin & Brother of Late Mrs. Roseline, Mr. Abraham Shaibu as Women Arise Demands Justice at The Wake of Woman Allegedly Murdered by Husband, Jafaru Sougie Thursday June 3rd 2016, Oshodi, Lagos. L-R: Third son of Late Mrs. Roseline, Paul Sougie; Sister of Late Roseline, Ms. Philomina shaibu; First daughter of Late Mrs. Roseline, Abigel Sougie; President Women Arise, Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin; 2nd daughter of Late Mrs. Roseline, Happiness Sougie; Brother of Late Mrs. Roseline, Mr. Abraham Shaibu & 2nd son of Late Mrs. Roseline, Richmond Sougie as Women Arise Demands Justice at The Wake of Woman Allegedly Murdered by Husband, Jafaru Sougie Thursday June 3rd 2016, Oshodi, Lagos. President, Women Arise, Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin, arriving Araronmi Oshodi for the wake keep of the murdered mother of five, late Roseline Sougie. Solomon Shaibu, younger brother and the younger sister of the late Roseline Sougie welcoming, President, Women Arise, Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin, to the apartment of their late sister. At the bedroom of the late Murdered mother of five, late Roseline Sougie The bed where the murdered mother of five lifeless body was found. At the wake of late Mrs. Roseline Sougie Former President Goodluck Jonathan has met with his predecessor, President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. The duo met on Friday at the presidents official residence. The meeting came on the heels of heightened media speculations that the Buhari-led federal government was planning on arresting Mr. Jonathan over alleged massive corruption during his tenure. It also came at a time a group known as Assembly of Concerned Niger Delta People urged Buhari to appoint Jonathan as his special envoy to the Niger Delta, to stem the rising tide of militancy and destruction of oil and gas installations in the oil-rich region. However, details of the meeting were unknown as it was held away from the prying eyes of journalists. There was also no official statement concerning the meeting by the two leaders. The All Progressives Congress, APC, Kaduna State chapter, on Friday said it had no faction and declared total support to the State Governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai. The party was reacting to Thursdays formation of a splinter group APC Akida by some of its leaders led by Senator Shehu Sani, Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed and Tom Maiyashi among others. The convener of APC Akida, Mr. Maiyashi, who addressed a press conference in Kaduna yesterday, said the group will serve as a platform for members of the APC to work for the progress of the party in the state. We believe in playing responsible and constructive roles because the government appears to have shut out basic involvement of citizens in governance, he said adding We came on board because our party structures do not exist or function in a manner prescribed by our partys constitution. It does not protect the interests of our members, and one of our key goals is to help reestablish party structure at all levels. But addressing a news conference on Friday in Kaduna to mark the first year of APC-led government in the state, the partys acting publicity secretary, Salisu Wusono, warned disloyal party members to desist from operating an illegal and unrecognized group or face sanctions. Wusono said the party was proud of the achievements of Mr. El-Rufai, which include free school feeding of 1.5 million pupils every day, adding that the APC was looking forward to the commissioning of 255 modernised primary health centres, one in each ward of the state. The party also commended the governor for employing 2,503 youths into Kaduna State Traffic and Environmental Law Enforcement Agency, KASTELEA. As a party, the Kaduna State APC stands united behind Governor Nasir El-Rufai, in delivering service for our people. Our party was elected to lead change and bring development, not to pander to the ego of people. Those who think that nothing can be right if they are not the drivers and condemn laudable initiatives just because they are not treated as masters should reconsider their conduct, he said. The party spokesman continued, The APC Kaduna State cannot be factionalised. We will not tolerate indiscipline. We have given people enough time to adjust to the reality that they are not in a position to hold the party or the process of change to ransom just because of their personal interests. Some people lost their bid to occupy the office of chairman; others were soundly defeated in the gubernatorial primaries. Despite this, the party tried to carry them along. But they stood aloof during the campaigns, some even went as far as cooperating with the PDP. We heard that a group of persons sat with a suspended senator to announce an illegal and unrecognized group. They are hereby warned to desist. The member representing Bichi Federal Constituency of Kano State in the House of Representatives, Ahmed Garba Bichi, has said that the feud between Governor Abdullahi Ganduje and his predecessor, Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso, would soon be over. Kwankwaso and Ganduje, who was his deputy and longtime ally, fell out shortly after the latter succeeded him as governor. The political disagreement between the two frontline politicians reached a crescendo when the governor, members of the State House of Assembly and local government chairmen in the state dumped the red cap, symbol of the Kwankwasiyya movement and pitched their tent with Mr. Ganduje. But Bichi maintained that the All Progressives Congress (APC) and other party chieftains were currently working to reconcile the camps of the feuding politicians. The lawmaker noted that meetings of the partys chieftains were held both in Abuja and Kano to settle the dispute between Ganduje and his former boss. He said: The fight shows that we are all still together as a family. They say, in my native (Hausa) language, that despite their closeness, the teeth and tongue sometimes fight. We are bound to have disagreements and misunderstanding in politics, but what is important is that at the end of the day, we resolve those issues and the APC in Kano would come out stronger. The Niger Delta Avengers, Thursday condemned the killing of military personnel in the area, promising families of the deceased soldiers that those responsible for the heinous act would be brought to book. The militant group, which has claimed responsibility for renewed hostilities in the Niger-Delta region, said its vow to cripple oil production in the country, does not involve killing soldiers. The group was reacting to Wednesdays attack on a military houseboat in Ejere, a creek in Warri South Local Government Area of Delta State that left at least two soldiers and five others dead. There were speculations the NDA carried out the attack on the eve of President Muhammadu Buharis botched visit to Rivers State to launch the clean-up of Ogoni land and other Niger Delta communities in line with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report. But the militant group in a statement signed by its spokesman, Mudoch Agbinibo, condemned all acts of violence against military and civilians, declaring the days of killing and kidnapping over. Killing of sleeping soldiers is not our style, the Avengers said in an update posted on its website. We promise the world that in this process of liberating our people, not a single blood of Nigeria soldiers will be wasted despite the provocation. Our war is on oil installations not to take innocent lives. The statement assured the families of the affected soldiers that we will bring the culprits to book. Furthermore, the Avengers issued a stern warning to other freedom fighters in the region to follow its steps of ensuring that no innocent person would be killed in the course of its agitation. This message is going to all groups parading themselves as freedom fighters. You can fight for your people without killing innocent souls NDA have proved it. We were able to drop Nigeria oil production from 2 million barrels (per day) to just 800,000 barrels without killing a soul. We are warning every group to follow our footsteps. The top echelon of the Nigerian military has ruled out negotiations with the Niger Delta Avengers, NDA, warning the militant group to desist from all acts of economic sabotage. The NDA has continued to carry out bombing of oil and gas installations in the region, a development that has seen Nigerias oil production tumble from 2.2 million barrels a day to less than a million barrels. The federal government has been urged by various stakeholders to dialogue with the Avengers instead of using military action, an option that usually results in collateral damage. The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Gen. Gabriel Olonisakin, who ruled out dialogue, said the military was disposed to asserting its authority and upholding the nations dignity. Gen. Olonisakin stated this at the inauguration of the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) newly acquired 10 highly-militarised Honker Scorpion vehicles. The defence chief, who insisted that the military will not tolerate any threat to the stability of the nation, reminded those perpetrating violence in the Niger Delta and other parts of the country that the countrys defence architecture was very much in place. This is just as he advised the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to seek better ways of airing their grievances. There are better ways to air their grievances than the way they go about it. The right way is to get necessary permit and protest. If they are violent, we will not take it lightly with them. The vehicles being commissioned were procured specifically for the purpose of enhancing security of the air assets within the area of their deployment. The equipment are certainly geared towards raising and maintaining the capability of the regiment troops as they contribute to our collective efforts to address the various security challenges confronting our nation. I must commend the Chief of Air Staff (CAS), Air Marshal Sadiq Abubakar, for this strategic initiative of providing troops with adequate equipment and for undertaking numerous other projects which culminate into actualising his vision for the NAF. I will like to say that I am very impressed with the CAS achievements within the short period of assumption of office. The procurement of these Honker Airfield Defence vehicles is a testimony of the importance the NAF attaches to protection of its critical assets and force protection, he said. The inauguration of the Honker Vehicles was witnessed by the Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Abubakar and Air Officer Commanding (AOC), Logistics Command, Air Vice Marshal Sani Ahmed among others. Governor of Delta State, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, has called on the Niger Delta Avengers and other militant groups blowing up oil and gas installations in the state to have a rethink, saying their actions are affecting the state negatively. The governor made the call during the commissioning ceremony of Jeddo/Ughoton road in Okpe local government area of the state on Thursday as part of activities to mark his first anniversary in office. The Avengers, who are demanding a sovereign nation of the Niger Delta people, have in the last one week attacked oil facilities operated by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SDPC), Chevron, Agip and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, all in Delta State. The attacks, according to the group, are part of its campaign to bring Nigerias oil production output to zero. In his reaction to the use of Delta State as the Launchpad for attacks by the militants, Governor Okowa said: The pipeline vandalism that is going on is very bad for Delta State, we are suffering from pollution, our communities are affected, and we are the greatest losers; our communities are impacted negatively. I want to appeal to our brothers who are involved in one way or the other in these vandalism to stop, we cannot destroy ourselves in order to make a point, there are more civil ways of channeling grievances which we should apply than vandalizing pipelines and endangering our people, he pleaded. Commissioning the road, Okowa said the Orodje of Okpe, HRM Orhue I, drew his attention to the deplorable state of the road and commended the contractor for the speedy delivery of the project. In a brief remark, Orodje of Okpe congratulated Deltans for having a listening governor, disclosing that only a phone call attracted Governor Okowa to construct the road, which also leads to the community where the Commissioner for Works, Chief James Augoye hails from. Our governor is a listening governor; we want to thank him, Okpe people deserve to say thank you because only one phone call to you and this road was done, he asserted. Ugandas National Assembly speaker, Rebecca Kadaga has caused controversy and sparked sharp criticism after she was spotted last weekend visiting a shrine in her rural home to thank ancestors for her re-election. According to SDE, Ugandan men are calling for her sack, while an MP and her fierce critic threatening her with a curse of death for engaging in an ungodly act. Traditionally, the speakers who came before Kadaga were all men, and were allowed to serve two terms. But Kadaga is not a man, so after she completed her first five-year term, and having done a wonderful job that earned her the respect and the speakership in the house, her party wanted to replace her with a man. The fight for her to secure her partys nomination was tough and nasty. The party has an overwhelming majority in the House, so whoever it endorses, automatically becomes speaker. Kadaga found herself in the fight of her life, as her Deputy Mr Jacob Oulanya seemed to enjoy the backing of the powers that be in the party. Eventually Rebecca seemed set to wallop Jacob and the party relented and endorsed her. After taking oath to steer Parliament for the next five years, the relieved and jubilant Rebecca headed home to her ancestral lands of Busoga to pay homage to her ancestors spirits. Television cameras followed her and caught her, walking through stones up a hill to visit the gods in some cave. While many criticized the Speakers action, her supporters have come to her defense. They say shes being single out because shes a woman. According to them, its tough being a woman in Africa, and extremely harsh if you are to head one of the branches of government. When six years earlier, the then Vice President Gilbert Bukenya was photographed entering a traditional shrine (minus shoes of course) the men thought it was hilarious. But in her own case, its a taboo. Source: SDE The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has warned that the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, risks not participating in the forthcoming governorship election in Edo State if it does not put its house in order. READ ALSO: PDP Board Of Trustees Denies Sacking Makarfi The main opposition party is presently enmeshed in an internal crisis occasioned by the leadership tussle between its sacked national chairman, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff and the Senator Ahmed Makarfi-led Caretaker Committee appointed by the partys governors and other major stakeholders pending when another national convention is organized to elect substantive members of its national working committee. The leadership tussle between the two factions in the party is presently a subject of litigation as Mr. Sheriff rejected his removal in the May 21 national convention of the PDP in Port Harcourt, Rivers State insisting that he was still the national chairman of the party. The disagreement over who is the authentic national chairman and recourse to legal battle by the contending forces led to the closure of the partys national secretariat in Abuja by the Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, until Wednesday when members of the Board of Trustees took over the running of the party. Reacting to the development on Ray Power FM Radio Station programme Political Platform on Thursday in Abuja, INECs Deputy Director for Public affairs, Nick Dazang, said the PDP may not take part in the September 10 Edo governorship polls if the leadership crisis was not resolved soon. The INEC official explained that in line with the timetable and the schedule of the governorship election unfolded by the commission, parties participating in the election were expected to hold their primary elections between June 2 and July 4 to pick their candidates. I expect that a very responsible party, a formidable party for that matter like the PDP will put its acts together in time for it particularly to collect the forms for those that will conduct the elections in Edo and Ondo and also to conduct the primaries that will lead up to who will now be their standard bearer for Edo governorship election to be conducted on Saturday 10 September, Mr. Dazang said. He added that The primaries are supposed to take place between 2nd June and 4th July. So, we expect that between now and then the PDP should be able to resolve some of these issues in the interest of that election. When asked if, in line with the provisions of the Electoral Act, the Markarfi-led Caretaker Committee was competent to conduct primaries with a view to selecting the partys candidate for the election, the official was not forthcoming, choosing to be diplomatic in his choice of words. According to him, INEC always encourage the parties to sort themselves amicably rather than resorting to the court. Stressing that the electoral umpire did not have the luxury of time, Mr. Dazang advised the disputing groups not to resort to court to resolve their differences because such would be time consuming. He said, In this instance when we are pressed for time if the parties in the dispute resort to court, it is going to take long it before the issues are resolved and they collect these forms. So we advise that they resolve some of these issues in good time to collect the forms so that they can hold the primaries and the candidates that will contest under their platform can emerge. They have between now and 4th July to do that. We normally encourage them. We have a department that relates particularly with the political parties to ensure the processes we laid out and articulated in the timetable and schedule of activities are strictly and religiously followed and we expect them to that. A socio-political group, Assembly of Concerned Niger Delta People, has called on President Muhammaudu Buhari to appoint his predecessor, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, as special envoy to Niger Delta. The group made the call in a statement issued by its National Coordinator, Eperemor Governor, on Thursday in Benin, Edo State. According to the ACNDP, the appointment of Mr. Jonathan, an Ijaw from Bayelsa State, will help reduce tension in the Niger Delta occasioned by the resumption of hostilities by the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), which has been responsible for the blowing-up of oil installations in the region. In proposing the appointment of the former president as a special envoy, the group said as an indigene of the Niger Delta and former Bayelsa State Governor, Jonathan would help to bridge the gap between the region and the Federal Government. Mr. Governor, however, condemned the spate of pipeline bombings by the Avengers, adding that their actions were not only affecting the nation economically, it is causing environmental degradation. He reminded the NDA that while the country was suffering the effect of their activities, the environment of the region they claimed to represent, was also being destroyed in the process. The national coordinator of the ACNDP, therefore, urged members of the militant group to channel their grievances to appropriate authorities rather than destroying the country`s commonwealth. Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti has made mockery of President Muhammadu Buharis last minute decision to cancel his trip to Rivers State on Thursday, saying it proves the president, a retired Major-General, is fainthearted and not as brave as he portrays himself. SEE ALSO: Presidency Denies Canceled Ogoni Trip The president was scheduled to be in Rivers to flag off the clean-up of Ogoni land yesterday but had to cancel with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo representing him at the epoch event. Twenty four hours to the botched visit, the Niger Delta Avengers had issued a warning to Mr. Buhari, advising him to stay away from the region if he cherished his life. SEE ALSO: Vice President Inaugurates Clean up of Ogoni land There was no official explanation for the cancellation of the presidents visit just as it cannot be said with certainty that the threat by the Avengers informed the decision. But Mr. Fayose reasoned the fear of the militants was the reason behind the last-minute change of mind by Mr. Buhari to flag off the clean-up of Ogoni land. According to the Ekiti State governor, the decision to stay away from the event was a demonstration that the president had surrendered to the superior powers of the militants. He, therefore, called on the president to dialogue with the Niger Delta Militants, especially the Niger Delta Avengers, so as to end hostilities in the oil rich region and save Nigerias economy from imminent collapse instead of sounding tough. According to a statement issued by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose wondered why the president was not always interested in visiting States in the country as against his penchant for overseas trips, adding that it was time that Buhari stopped acting like a foreign president. He said it was obvious that the presidents approach to civil unrests of any kind under the government was causing more security problems in the country, adding: The president cannot afford to continue to talk tough on issues that dialogue can resolve. He continued: Now that the President has surrendered to the threat and intimidation of the Niger Delta Avengers, he should emulate late President Umaru Musa YarAdua by having a roundtable talks with the Niger Delta Militants. By not going to Ogoni today, because of threat from the NDA, our president has shown that he is actually afraid of the militants and the best thing to do in a situation like this is to dialogue with the militants so as to save Nigeria economy from imminent collapse. It also shows that the Presidents ability to secure Nigeria and its people is suspect because if the President could succumb to threat from militants and abandon his official function for his deputy, ordinary Nigerians should seek help elsewhere. The President should therefore save Nigeria the agony of military misadventure in the Niger Delta by holding dialogue with the militants with a view to resolving their grievances. Fayose also reiterated that the Niger Delta region as at today is still the golden goose laying the golden egg on which all other regions are surviving, stressing that Diversification as good as it sounds, takes time. We need to appreciate these regions as our only source of income. The Senate has summoned Executive Secretary, Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI, Waziri Adio, to appear before it to explain what he knows about an allegedly missing N1 trillion oil revenue said to have been mismanaged between 2005 and 2013 by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), which was reflected in the audit report presented to the Senate President by the NEITI boss last Monday. The resolution of the Senate followed a motion by Senator Tijjani Yahaya Kaura (Zamfara North), entitled The Urgent Need for the Senate to Look into the NEITI 2013 Oil, Gas and Solid Minerals Audit Report. The federation realised N33.86 billion from solid minerals sector in 2013 as contained in the 2013 solid minerals audit report of NEITI. $3.8 billion and N358.3 billion stand as outstanding revenues from NNPC and its subsidiaries in 2013, Kaura noted. These outstanding payments were dues from unpaid consideration from divested oil mining leases from NNPC to NPDC and cash call refunds by National Petroleum Investment and Management Services, NAPIMS. The Senate is disturbed that between 2005 to 2013, $12.9 billion paid by the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas, NLNG, to NNPC was not remitted to the federation account, he said. In his remarks, Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, said the report and findings were too enormous for the Senate. I am aware of the report and what I discovered was a huge loss, which has to be deliberated upon. So the Executive Secretary has to come and submit the report officially, Saraki said. The Senate said the NEITI boss would formally present the report before the Senate at plenary. A Pakistani teen, Maria Sadaqat has died after a group of men set her on fire because of a rejected marriage proposal. The 19-year-old, who lived outside the Pakistani capital in Dewal, had burns on 85% of her body when she was admitted to the hospital in the Capital, Islamabad on Sunday after a group of men attack her in front of her home. The deceased, who was a teacher at a private school in the village, died Wednesday. Her uncle said that her brutal death came after she rejected a proposal to marry the owner of the schools nephew. Abdul Basit added that the potential match was a divorcee twice her age and said that his niece had resigned from her job because of harassment from the principal, according to The Hindu. Before she died, Sadaqat gave a statement saying that the principal was among the men who tortured her, covered her in gas and burned her alive. Pakistans Human Rights Commission has said almost 1,100 women were killed in honor killings last year alone. Police say they have made one arrest in the attack on Sadaqat. The Nigerian Army on Thursday said one soldier paid the supreme sacrifice when troops of the 112 Battalion on patrol from Mafa to Dikwa in Borno State, ran into an ambush by Boko Haram insurgents in Ajiri village. The Army in a statement by Major NC Agwu, said although the insurgents were successfully cleared from the ambush, an officer and three soldiers sustained injuries in the encounter. One member of the Civilian JTF accompanying the patrol team, was also injured. Also yesterday, troops of 202 Battalion of 21 Brigade in Operation LAFIYA DOLE, ambushed Boko Haram elements and killed three, while one was arrested at Sabsawa-Boarding road and BOCOBS-Ngurusoye road between June 1 and 2. The statement said the captured Boko Haram terrorist, Umar Mustapha, who claimed to have come from Sabsawa, has been handed over to the Brigade Headquarters for further interrogation and processing. In a related development, troops have continued with their clearance operations of the remnants of Boko Haram terrorists within the Sambisa forest. The troops killed eight Boko Haram terrorists and recovered arms and ammunitions at the ambush site. The recovered items include, 1 Rocket Propel Grenade (RPG), AK-47 Rifles, 2 Rocket Propel Grenade bomb, 3 AK-47 Rifle Magazine and 120 rounds of 7.62mm ammunition. The troops also discovered 3 Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) concealed by the edge of the road which were safely detonated by the Explosive Ordnance Device (EOD) team. The Nigerian Army said it has killed 10 Boko Haram fighters in Borno State. A statement issued by the acting Director of Army Public Relations, Col. Sani Usman says that a soldier was killed while three others sustained injuries during the encounter with the terrorists. According to Colonel Usman, troops arrested one terrorist who had since been handed over to the Brigade Headquarters for further interrogation and processing. Qatar-based news network Al Jazeeras report referring to Africa as a country sparked ridicule and criticism on Twitter yesterday night. How to Rob Africa: Billions disappear from the country every year, whos responsible: the Aljazeera report said. The news network later apologized and made a correction. See some of the comments below. President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday received in audience at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, a delegation of Bishops of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) led by the Primate of the church, Archbishop Nicholas Okoh. The clerics visit came shortly after ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo also departed the Presidential Villa, where he met behind closed doors with President Buhari. Archbishop Okoh, who spoke to State House Correspondents at the end of the meeting, said that they came to discuss the state of the nation with the president. We told him many things. We are all looking for solution to issues of the herdsmen, issue of vandalism, security in one way or the other because the people are asking us and we want to have explanation for the people whom we lead, he said. Asked what Mr. Buharis disposition was on the issues they raised during the visit, the Primate said: very favourable. He gave us detailed explanations of what he is doing to ensure that these things are solved. So we have hope, we have a message for our people. Okoh opined that President Buhari spent his first year in office clearing the stable and was optimistic that things will improve in the country over the next one year. We believe that so far its been okay because of the difficulties of the times and between now and the next one year we are looking forward to something more direct now, something that will get to the people easily. So far, for the first year he is trying to clear the table, prepare the place and make the work move forward. We look forward to a better 2016-2017 budget .You can see that with the long delay in budget, with the issue of padding, we were not able to begin easily. So the next one we know will be better. That is why we are taking it that way. Its okay for now but it could be better, he added. Fresh facts emerged yesterday as to the main reason why former President Goodluck Jonathans cousin, Robert Azibaola; his former SSA on Domestic Matters, Waripamowei Dudafa; and former NSA, Sambo Dasuki, are still being held by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC. The trio were at various times arrested over alleged involvement in massive corruption under the Jonathan administration but their continued detention despite calls for their release, has been traced to security concerns. A source familiar with the case said their continued detention might have more to do with national security than financial misappropriation. Sources said the heightened insecurity and resurgence of militancy in the oil-rich Niger Delta by the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) may have been traced to some of the sympathizers of the Jonathan government. The source, who said government is yet to conclude investigation into the involvement of some of the ex-presidents allies and sympathizers, however, vowed that no lead will be left unattended. The rate at which this issue of Avengers is going, we are looking beyond the surface of the so-called conditions rolled out by the avengers. Right now, there are feelers that some top officials of the past administration actually instigated the ongoing crisis in the Niger Delta region. That is why we are not bothered about the blackmail that is going on that we are holding people illegally or refusing to allow suspects access to medicals. This is because even though we are yet to conclude investigation, there could be more to this matter at hand. A mob of irate youths in Wambai market, Kano have beheaded a trader following a heated religious argument after they claim that she blasphemed the Prophet Mohammed. The incident occurred on Thursday evening when the woman who was with her husband at the time of the incident was accused of blasphemy and reports indicate that the mob also intended to kill him before Policemen arrived on the scene. The identity of the woman has not been disclosed but a senior Police official confirmed the incident. At about 4 30 pm, there was a disagreement between the murdered woman and some traders bordering on religion. The woman was said to have blasphemed Prophet Mohammed, which did not go down well with the mob. No suspects have been arrested by the Police at the time of writing this report. Kano has gained notoriety over the years for its susceptibility to religious skirmishes and Thursdays incident highlights just how it takes very little to bring the old demons back. Less than a week after four persons, including a 24-year-old trader were killed in religious violence that broke out in Pandogari, Rafi Local Government Area of Niger State, a woman trader has been beheaded by angry Muslims youths in Kano over allegations that she blasphemed Prophet Muhammad. The victim, whose identity was not disclosed but said to be of Igbo extraction, was accused of blasphemy during a religious argument at the popular Wambai market on Thursday evening. The woman, who deals in plastic wares at the local market, was reportedly in company of her husband when she was attacked by the angry youths and beheaded. But for the intervention of the police, the same fate could have befallen the husband, who witnessed the unfortunate murder of his wife by the youths. Contacted, the Public Relations Officer of the Kano Police Command, DSP Musa Magaji, confirmed the incident. He said At about 4 30 pm, there was a disagreement between the murdered woman and some traders bordering on religion. The woman was said to have blasphemed Prophet Mohammed, which did not go down well with the mob. Like living in a police state much? The FBI is pushing on multiple fronts to greatly expand its surveillance powers and exempt that spying from constitutional safeguards and privacy rules. Many in Congress are only too happy to help. With a treasure trove of digital information tantalizingly within reach, the FBI doesn't want to be slowed down by inconveniences like Fourth Amendment protections. So frustrated is FBI chief James Comey by constitutional limits that he told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the FBI's difficulty in getting its hands on Americans' online communications resulted from a "typo" in the law that should be changed. He may get his wish. [ Read 'em and weep: 5 ways your ISP is screwing you | Cut to the key news in technology trends and IT breakthroughs with the InfoWorld Daily newsletter, our summary of the top tech happenings. ] That pesky Fourth Amendment Comey's campaign against encryption may have stalled, but his push to expand the agency's use of warrantless searches got a couple of assists recently. The FBI uses an extraordinary search procedure known as National Security Letters (NSLs) to obtain Americans' bank and phone records without a court order. NSLs not only compel companies to provide the information, they come with gag orders that forbid companies from disclosing the requests. Talk about a process ripe for abuse. Various aspects of NSLs have been ruled unconstitutional, but still they persist. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and other civil rights groups have fought for years to spread awareness about the boom in NSL searches and push for greater accountability and oversight of the process. "NSLs have a sordid history. They've been abused in a number of ways, including ... targeting of journalists," Andrew Crocker, staff attorney for the EFF, told The Intercept. But the Senate Intelligence Committee last week passed a bill that would expand their reach. A provision in the 2017 Intelligence Authorization Act would allow the FBI to use NSLs to obtain "electronic communication transactional records" -- one of those deliciously vague terms that could include email subject lines and metadata, Web browsing histories, and more. The lone dissenting committee vote against the bill came from Oregon Senator Ron Wyden. The bill's NSL provision "takes a hatchet to important protections for Americans' liberty," Wyden said after the vote. "This bill would mean more government surveillance of Americans, less due process, and less independent oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies. Worse, neither the intelligence agencies nor the bill's sponsors have shown any evidence that these changes would do anything to make Americans more secure." You say reform, I say surveillance Meanwhile, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn has inserted a similar NSL-expansion provision into -- ironically -- a bill aimed at amending the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to incorporate more protections for electronic communications. When the law was written in 1986, few people used email or cloud computing, and such communications were considered "abandoned" after 180 days. The Email Privacy Act would require the government to obtain warrants before forcing tech companies to turn over these older emails stored in the cloud. The House of Representatives passed a companion bill by a unanimous vote, but this and other amendments to the Senate bill seem intended to act as a poison pill to prevent reform of the ECPA. "If [the NSL provision] is added to ECPA, it'll kill the bill," Gabe Rottman, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology's freedom, security, and technology project, told The Intercept. "If it passes independently, it'll create a gaping loophole. Either way, it's a big problem and a massive expansion of government surveillance authority." Party like it's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" The prospect of Big Brother pawing through all of our electronic activities has understandably made many a tad paranoid. But as Joseph Heller said, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you." A recent study from Oxford University found that Edward Snowden's revelations about government surveillance has had a "chilling effect" on Americans' Internet habits, including a 20 percent decline in page views on Wikipedia articles related to terrorism. "This is measuring regular people who are being spooked by the idea of government surveillance online," researcher Jon Penney told the Washington Post. "You want to have informed citizens. If people are spooked or deterred from learning about important policy matters like terrorism and national security, this is a real threat to proper democratic debate." Desirable or not, it's possible to change our online habits to avoid government surveillance. Changing our biometric markers? Not so much (sorry, writers of "Face/Off"). And since 2008 the FBI has assembled a massive database of Americans' biometric information called Next Generation Identification (NGI), which has more than 100 million individual records that include fingerprints, facial recognition, iris scans, and palm prints from 52 million-plus people. All of this data was collected not only during arrests, but from millions of Americans for noncriminal reasons like background checks and state licensing requirements. As the EFF notes, some states require your prints if you want to be a dentist, accountant, teacher, geologist, realtor, lawyer, or even an optometrist. And all jobs with the federal government -- not only those with security clearances -- require a fingerprint check, even part-time food service workers, student interns, and maintenance workers, as well as everyone who has served in any capacity in the military. "While federal officials and law enforcement hail the NGI program as a futuristic way to track terrorists and criminals, others have been notably less enthusiastic," International Business Times reports. "In the name of security and public safety, many advocates say the U.S. government is increasing its surveillance, through programs like NGI, on everyday citizens who have done nothing wrong." Building the Eye of Sauron Now the FBI wants to exempt this creepy collection of personal data from the federal Privacy Act, which guarantees basic protections such as allowing individuals to view their own records -- even though, as Breitbart notes, there have been complaints about the database's accuracy, with false positives generated 20 percent of the time. "If you have no ability to access the record the FBI has on you, even when you're not part of an investigation or under investigation, and lo and behold inaccurate information forms a 'pattern of activity' that then subjects you to [be] the focus of the FBI, then that's a problem," noted Jeramie Scott of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a digital civil liberties group. The idea of the FBI "someday creating an automated facial recognition system that could pluck the faces of suspects from a blizzard of real-time media inputs is both exhilarating and disturbing," Breitbart writes. "No matter what law enforcement says today about restraining its use of such technology, the temptation to create that automated real-time video-scanning Eye of Sauron will increase as the tech grows more powerful." And more dangerous, depending on its application. According to the EFF, the FBI has indicated that it wants to use NGI to track people's movements to and from "critical events" like political rallies and to identify people in "public datasets" -- which could have a chilling effect on free speech and other First Amendment-protected activities. The FBI's proposal is only open for comment until June 6, although the EFF, ACLU, and other groups have sent a letter to the FBI demanding more time to respond. Cattle Fade on Tuesday Barchart - Tue Oct 25, 4:42PM CDT Live cattle futures stalled the rally on Tuesday with the front months having pulled back 17 to 82 cents. October, which expires next Monday, saw a 7 cent gain to $151.67. The weekly FCE auction saw no... LEV22 : 151.675s (+0.05%) LEZ22 : 153.300s (-0.54%) LEG23 : 156.700s (-0.18%) GFV22 : 176.600s (+0.53%) GFX22 : 177.925s (-0.68%) Hogs Firm Up for Close Barchart - Tue Oct 25, 4:42PM CDT Lean hog futures bounced back in the afternoon to close the day +$1 off the lows and 5 to 52 cents in the black. The Feb contract remains a $2.25 premium to spot December. The USDA National Average Base... HEZ22 : 88.450s (+0.60%) HEJ23 : 93.950s (+0.05%) KMZ22 : 97.525s (-0.23%) Cotton Futures Bounce Back Barchart - Tue Oct 25, 4:42PM CDT Turnaround Tuesday action pushed cotton futures back up by 78 to 234 points. December printed a wide 304 point range on the day, from -8 points to +296. The Cotlook A index was 175 points stronger on... CTZ22 : 78.47s (+3.07%) CTH23 : 77.94s (+2.90%) CTK23 : 77.16s (+2.13%) Wheat Markets Fade on Tuesday Barchart - Tue Oct 25, 4:42PM CDT The domestic wheat complex pulled back some on Tuesday, with CBT futures ending the day fractionally to 4 cents weaker. Dec SRW is now at a 16c loss for the week. KC futures closed with front month losses... ZWZ22 : 836-6 (+0.24%) ZWH23 : 856-2 (+0.23%) ZWPAES.CM : 7.6818 (-0.67%) KEZ22 : 936-0 (+0.16%) KEPAWS.CM : 8.9275 (-0.38%) MWZ22 : 954-6 (+0.26%) Beans Bounce on Meal Strength Barchart - Tue Oct 25, 4:42PM CDT Soy futures ended the Tuesday session higher. For beans and meal that was a turnaround from Mondays weakness, as Nov beans are now a 13 1/2 cent loss for the week and Dec meal is $2.30 in the red. Soy... XSX22 : 5,433s (-1.75%) KOF23 : 4,146 (+0.46%) ZSX22 : 1382-4 (unch) ZSPAUS.CM : 13.3595 (+0.67%) ZSF23 : 1392-6 (unch) ZSH23 : 1401-0 (unch) Corn Markets Gain on Tuesday Barchart - Tue Oct 25, 4:42PM CDT Turnaround Tuesday corn gains bounced the market back up by 3 1/4 to 4 3/4 cents. The March contract stayed 7 cents under the $7 mark at the days high, and remains a 6 cent carry from Dec. Dalian Corn... XVF23 : 2,862s (-0.69%) ZCZ22 : 685-0 (-0.18%) ZCPAUS.CM : 6.7636 (+0.75%) ZCH23 : 690-6 (-0.22%) ZCK23 : 690-4 (-0.22%) Livestock Report Walsh Trading - Tue Oct 25, 4:28PM CDT Cattle Markets pullback Billions of women and girls get their periods every month. For some of us, its little more than a bothersome time filled with fatigue, food cravings and cramping. For otherswomen and girls in poor countriesit can mean being ostracized to a shack until their periods end, missing school, contracting reproductive diseases, and even violence. A U.N. study found that one out of three girls knew nothing about menstruation prior to getting it. That same study showed that 48 percent of girls in Iran and around 10 percent of those in India believe that menstruation is a disease. If those findings arent alarming enough, on MH Day 2015, The Guardians Ellie Mae OHagan reported that in India, 70 percent of all reproductive diseases are a result of poor menstrual hygiene. Other studies have documented just how much school girls miss because they can't properly manage their menstruation, and how this challenge can also hold them back at the workplace as well as limiting their mobility in countries without adequate restrooms for females. A simple truth is that it's hard to empower girls and women, a goal that many funders have lately embraced, without making big strides in menstrual hygiene management (MHM). Yet there's not as much money and attention focused on this area you might think. We keep waiting for that to change, with more funders grabbing an opportunity to work a vital but neglected issue. Related: Menstruation Holds Back Millions of Poor Women. Does This Outfit Have a Solution? In 2014, WASH United mounted a global campaign to bring menstruation in the global health and developing spotlight by initiating a Menstrual Hygiene Day (MH Day). Last week, NGOs, government agencies, the private sector, the media and individuals observed the third MH Day, which is less of a celebration and more of a global moment to build awareness about the critical role that good MHM "plays in helping women & girls reach their full potential. In 2015, 127 organizations announced MH Day events in over 30 countries. The MH Day Alliance now has over 400 partners and this years MH Day resulted in 180 events around the world. Still, despite signs of growing momentum, menstruation remains one the back-burner as a global health and development challenge. Surely, there are a number of contributing factors as to why this is so. For starters, even the most pragmatic global health and development experts can get a little bit uncomfortable whenever the conversation turns to periods. What's more, this issue is often seen as a niche concern (as opposed to one that affects 2 billion women every month), and tends to fall through the funding and policy cracks. Lisa Schechtman, director of policy and advocacy at WaterAid America once wrote on Gates Foundations Impatient Optimists blog, says, Menstrual hygiene management (MHM) rarely appears in donor strategies, national government policies or advocacy agendas. On a good day, it might be a component of national sexuality education curriculum, but this presumes kids are going to school and are able to get this information. Schechtman also asks, If we get menstrual hygiene right, what else will have changed in the process? The short answer is everythingfrom improving gender parity to breaking generational cycles of poverty. Not everyone is ignoring the problem, as evidenced by the increased number of MH Day partners each year. Additionally, there are some funders who totally get it. Among them is the Caterpillar Foundation, which concentrates its funding on the root causes of global poverty. Since 2010, the foundation has distributed over $30 million in support for female empowerment, WASH, microfinance, and energy programs. The foundation ties menstrual hygiene into its WASH and women and girls empowerment funding. Michele Sullivan, president of the foundation, noted in an interview with IP that menstruation can effectively prevent young girls from attending school due to the lack of access to bathrooms. And we dont have to tell you that the less education a girl receives, the higher her likelihood to marry early and get pregnant at a young age. Pregnancy is among the leading causes of death worldwide for girls ages 15 to 19. The Gates Foundation is also taking on the menstrual hygiene on a few different fronts. While this isnt a major funding focus for Gates, it has invested close to $3 million over the past few years in a variety of related projects ranging from the development of a reusable, self-decontaminating sanitary pad to developing and improved understanding of menstrual management to inform WASH planning in developing countries. The U.K.-based Waterloo Foundation is another big player in this field, awarding grants ranging from $80,000 to $160,000 in support of projects that specifically seek to address menstrual hygiene management. Longtime grantee WaterAid is currently receiving a generous 300,000 per year of unrestricted funds toward a number of intiatives to lead the way in harder to fund WASH elements, such as menstrual hygiene. While there are big outfits like WASH United, WaterAid, and Plan International leading the charge, there are some smaller groups that are punching well above their weight in this space as well. Last year, the Nairobi-based ZanaAfrica, secured a $1 million investment from Grand Challenges Canada in support of its transition from pilot to proof-of-concept. The nonprofit, founded by Harvard grad Megan White Mukuria, is on a mission to keep Kenyan girls in school with a three-pronged approach: delivering reproductive health education, advocating for widespread, systematic change though policymaking, and delivering sanitary pads. Another nonprofit thats leading the charge in the field is Sustainable Health Enterprises or SHE. Established by Elizabeth Scharpf and a small team of MIT students, SHE is providing access to affordable menstrual pads for women in Africa. Scharpf stumbled upon the period problem while working for the World Bank in 2008. While in Mozambique, Scharpf learned that at one factory, around 20 percent of employees regularly missed work to the tune of up to 30 days per year. According to SHEs website, the main reason behind the lost work days was because pads cost more than a days wages. SHE is a social venture that helps local women jumpstart social businesses that produce and distribute affordable menstrual pads made from materials that are sourced locally. SHE also provides training to community health workers on the companys decentralized distribution system as well as training regarding how to educate girls and boys about puberty and menstrual hygiene. On the policy front, SHE is advocating for government leaders to waive the value-added tax on sanitary pads. With the help of partners like the Segal Family Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, and the United Nations Childrens Fund, the company continues to build the blueprint to take its approach to scale globally. AFRIpads is another social enterprise that is working to break down barriers built by menstruation. The group is on a mission to empower women and girls through business, innovation, and opportunity. Similar to SHE, AFRIpads manufactures affordable and reusable sanitary pads locally. The companys menstrual kits are then distributed to women and girls around the world. This simple kit keeps women and girls in school, prevents them from missing work, and gives them the ability to engage in their normal daily routines and responsibilities. When it comes to menstruation in developing countries, there are more than a few barriers to change beyond gaining access to health education and sanitary pads. There are also long-held traditions and beliefs, which may be among the most difficult to change. But they need to. We all know by now that when you hold girls and women back from progress, you hold the world back. Taube Philanthropies recently gave $15 million gift Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Israel. The Bay Area charity and its founder, Giving Pledge signatory, Tad Taube, are known for supporting Jewish organizations around the world. Taube Philanthropies' latest gift, though, is its largest ever to a Jewish organization. How did Hebrew Union College and Taube link up for this groundbreaking gift and what broader lessons can be taken from this collaboration? To unravel the story, I recently spoke with Tad Taube and Rabbi Aaron Panken, HUC-JIR President. First I should mention that Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion traces its roots all the way back to 1875. The institution has campuses in Los Angeles, Cincinnati, New York, and Jerusalem and has been supported by donors we've profiled like billionaireMichael Milken and Goldman Sachs veteran Stephen Friedman. Tad Taube himself has also backed HUC-JIR. Taube's latest gift embraces the idea that Jewish values are under siege and need to be protected. An arm of Taube Philanthropies, the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture, was established in 2003 for this very reason and is particularly interested in advancing "the reform of Jewish institutions, which have often become disconnected from the people they serve." Hebrew Union College also has a reform mission and is focused on training the next generation of Reform rabbis, cantors, educators, and nonprofit leaders. Rabbi Aaron Panken tells me that one of the great challenges and opportunities for the state of Israel right now is to foster a more open and pluralistic understanding of Judaism. For instance, there's a major conversation going on in certain circles about the Western Wall or Kotel, a sacred space, and Hebrew Union College is very much in the thick of this discussion. To give you an idea of the kinds of transformations that are taking place, 20 to 30 years ago, Panken tells me there were only a few reform congregations in Israel. Now there are more than 60. Hebrew Union College educates reform rabbis who go out into the broader community to make change. We often write about the importance of a donor and an organization's vision aligning, and it's apparent that both Taube and HUC-JIR are committed to supporting and advancing Reform Judaism in Israel and beyond. This $15 million gift is evidence of that. Personal ties also play a role here. Consider Rabbi David Ellenson, chancellor emeritus of Hebrew Union College. Ellenson once said that "no Jewish community has survived without a strong institution of higher Jewish learning at its core." Taube told me that he has a close relationship with Ellenson and was a motivating factor to an extent. The late Richard J. Scheuer, chairman emeritus of the board of governors of HUC-JIR was also good friends with some of Tad Taube's relatives. Scheuer was a pioneering figure in the expansion and building process of Hebrew Union College's nascent Jerusalem campus decades ago. Taube Philanthropies' $15 million gift will update, enhance and beautify the Jerusalem campus. A component of the gift involves a collaboration between Hebrew Union College and Taube Philanthropies with a special emphasis on the Jewish community in Poland. Taube's connection to Poland is critical to understanding his giving. Born in Poland, Taube fled the nation in 1931 and arrived in the United States in the summer of 1939, just weeks before the outbreak of World War II. Through the Jewish Heritage Initiative in Poland, Taube Philanthropies aims to "nurture the revival of Jewish life in Poland, further awareness of this resurgence among Jews and non-Jews, and foster positive interest in Poland and Polish Jews among Jews worldwide." Right now, Rabbi Aaron Panken tells me that there's a tentative plan to take the Hebrew Union College board to Poland to visit the Museum of the History of Polish Jews and other important sites. As time goes by, the hope is that students and faculty will work together to continue to develop the Jewish community in Poland. Ultimately, Taube's gift to Hebrew Union College is a strong example of a donor and an organization linking up to execute a strong shared vision. Panken hopes that Taube's gift will bolster Hebrew Union College's commitment to connecting North America and Israel. Tsais assertions of sovereignty and calls for new ties in Asia draw threats from Beijing, which regards Taiwan as part of one China. After eight years of increasingly close relations between China and Taiwan, political tensions are rising across the Taiwan Strait following the entry into power of a new president, Tsai Ing-wen, who is determined to assert the islands sovereignty. Tsai, Taiwans first female president, led the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to a sweeping election victory in January by promising to reduce the territorys economic dependence on China and protect its democracy, themes she reiterated in her inaugural address last month. Once again, the people of Taiwan have shown the world through our actions that we, as a free and democratic people, are committed to the defense of our freedom and democracy as a way of life, she said. The president also promised to bid farewell to our past overreliance on a single market and revitalize the economy by strengthening ties with countries across Asia and around the world. The day after her speech, Beijing fired a diplomatic warning shot: Unless Tsai recognizes the so-called 1992 Consensus, under which both sides admit they are part of one China, without specifying exactly what that means, Beijing will cease direct communications with Taipei. That threat followed a May 16 report in Cankao Xiaoxi, a Communist Party publication, saying the Peoples Liberation Army had recently drafted plans for a military takeover of Taiwan, which split from China in 1949 after Communist rebels led by Mao Zedong seized power in Beijing and forced the routed Kuomintang to flee across the Taiwan Strait. Markets so far seem to be taking the heated rhetoric in stride. The Taiwan Capitalization Weighted Stock index had gained 5 percent since the May 20 inauguration, as of June 2, and 10 percent since her election on January 16. Mainland stocks have traded mostly sideways over the period, with the CSI 300 composite index up just 1.6 percent since January 16. Tsai offered some conciliatory words in her inauguration speech, acknowledging that Chinese and Taiwanese officials had met in 1992 to seek common ground and promising to honor the existing political foundation. But in outlining her plans for forging new trade relationships, the president referred several times to Taiwan as a country, a notion that Beijing adamantly rejects. Tsai has built her career around an assertion of Taiwans distinctive identity and frequent criticism of the Communist Party of China and its authoritarian rule. A former law professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei, she authored a policy proposal called the two state theory, arguing that the Republic of China, as Taiwan is formally known, is a sovereign state separate from the Peoples Republic of China. The policy was embraced in 1999 by former president Lee Teng-hui. Tsais stance represents a dramatic break from the policies of her predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou. During eight years in office, Ma and his Kuomintang party focused on improving relations with Beijing. The government established regular direct flights between the two territories, which opened the door for thousands of investors and millions of tourists to come to Taiwan from the mainland. But those policies angered many working-class people, who felt they were not getting a fair share of the economic benefits generated by closer ties with China. Many Taiwanese, particularly young voters, thought President Ma tried too hard to please Beijing, says Chu Ya-hu, a retired Taiwanese army general and director of the chairmans office of the Core Pacific Group, a conglomerate that owns petrochemical refineries and real estate in both Taiwan and China. Some thought he focused too much on signing trade agreements, and not enough on criticizing Beijing. Many Taiwanese are proud of their democratic system and freedom of speech and feel that the Kuomintang should have been more critical of Communist Party rule on the mainland, says Jeffrey Ko, chairman of Taipei-based magazine publisher DK International Media Group. To strengthen the economy, Tsai vowed in her speech to reinforce Taiwans global and regional connections, and actively participate in multilateral and bilateral economic cooperation as well as free trade negotiations including the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. But some analysts are skeptical that the government can forge new trade and investment ties in Asia at a time of rising tensions with Beijing. The problem with that strategy is that China already has a free-trade agreement framework with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and will impose many diplomatic roadblocks for Taiwan in the region, says Ko. China has been moving aggressively against Taiwan since the January elections, which also saw the DPP win a strong majority in parliament. In recent months Beijing has used its diplomatic clout to have more than 100 Taiwanese arrested on various charges in Kenya, the Philippines and Malaysia and then sent to China for trial, effectively enforcing its claim to be the sole legitimate Chinese government. On March 17 Gambia established diplomatic relations with the Peoples Republic of China after having cut ties with Taipei, leaving only 20 nations that formally recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state. These moves stand in sharp contrast to the cordial ties between Beijing and Taipei under the Kuomintang government. China is now ramping up diplomatic tactics again, and Tsai and Taiwan will face similar bullying abroad for years to come, says Ko. A weak economy and close trade links with the mainland leave Tsai vulnerable to pressure from Beijing, analysts say. The countrys gross domestic product expanded by only 0.65 percent in 2015, the worst showing since the recession year of 2009, and the government is predicting growth will edge up only slightly this year, to just over 1 percent. Unemployment stands at slightly less than 4 percent, the highest in two years. Taiwan is bearing the brunt of the slowdown in Chinas growth rate. China is the countrys biggest trading partner, and many Taiwanese manufacturers have extensive operations there. Taiwans largest electronics company Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., perhaps better known by its trading name, Foxconn Technology Group employs more than 500,000 workers at 12 factories in China that assemble many products for Apple. The economy will remain vulnerable to negative shocks to confidence related to changes, perceived or real, to Taiwans relationships with China, says Marie Diron, a Singapore-based senior vice president in Moodys Investors Services Sovereign Risk Group. Such confidence shocks from periodic increases in tensions also could hamper foreign direct investment. Diron predicts Taiwans economy will grow by just over 1 percent this year and by less than 2 percent in 2017. Life for Taiwanese businesses will become more difficult on the mainland, says publisher Ko. Many already are facing challenges of rising labor and material costs. Now they may face increasing political risk. Nicholas Consonery, director of Asia at political risk consulting firm Eurasia Group in Washington, predicts Tsai will have a difficult time managing relations with China, given the stark differences over sovereignty. My sense is, Chinese President Xi Jinping is willing within certain boundaries to find a way to manage a stable relationship with Taiwan, he says. That is in their interest as well. China may have some patience with Tsai at the beginning, but it will not be infinite. So it means we need to watch very carefully. One thing Tsai has on her side is the U.S. Washington is obligated by the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 to sell Taiwan defensive weapons, and possibly provide military aid at the discretion of the president and Congress to help it ward off aggression from China. Taiwan has traditionally been one of the largest foreign buyers of U.S. weapons, purchasing nearly $28 billion of military hardware in the past decade. In a gesture of support for the Tsai administration, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on May 19 proposing that Congress authorize the Defense Department to invite Taiwans armed forces to join the U.S.-led Rim of the Pacific exercises that are held every two years. Tsai has visited Washington frequently and has an excellent command of English, having obtained a masters degree in law from Cornell University and doctorate in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science. President Tsai knows very well that she cannot count on the U.S. to come to Taiwans rescue against a mainland invasion, says a Taiwanese businessman with substantial investments in China, who asked not to be identified by name for fear of retribution in either Taiwan or China. But she will be doing her best to swing Taipeis diplomatic initiative away from Beijing and toward Washington. Taipeis new orientation entails increased risk for Taiwan, China and the U.S. President Tsai can ill afford to make a miscalculation. The time may soon come for carbon footprinting to step aside. If it does, its likely to give way to more dynamic portfolio analytics tools that better meet the challenges presented by increasingly complex energy and carbon regulations. At least thats the hope of Simone Ruiz-Vergote, head of climate policy and advisory at Allianz Climate Solutions (ACS), a subsidiary of German insurance giant Allianz. Carbon footprinting just tells you how a company performs at a given time, says Frankfurt-based Ruiz-Vergote of the metric derived by calculating carbon emissions associated with a stock portfolio. But that company might be very well placed to move into low-carbon areas, or reduce its carbon footprint, or change its energy consumption. The carbon footprint measure of a portfolio would miss the subtleties between two companies poised to respond very differently if carbon regulation were put in place or if energy demands were to change significantly or even between businesses whose jurisdictions subject them to much different energy requirements or carbon restraints. Still, carbon footprinting has become the go-to method for investors trying to quantify their portfolios carbon risk. For example, when the Principles for Responsible Investment launched the Montreal Carbon Pledge in September 2014, the United Nationsled investor network urged asset owners to commit to measuring and disclosing their investment portfolios carbon footprints annually. The fossil fuel divestment movement, which has gained momentum in recent years, thanks to a push by Bill McKibbens activist group 350.org, encourages institutions to divest from oil and gas companies, focusing on the 200 names whose reserves have the biggest carbon footprint. Besides offering insurance to and advice on financing for renewable energy projects, Munich-headquartered ACS is an incubator for Allianz projects related to climate change. As carbon footprinting won converts and the calls for fossil fuel divestment grew louder, Ruiz-Vergote and her team longed for tools that could bring more nuance to the carbon risk calculation. We were saying, We cant simply divest all assets from areas that are carbon-intensive, she recalls. Because thats a huge part of the economy. ACS wanted a model that could account for a companys capacity to evolve with environmental regulation, thereby taking a view on future carbon risk exposure. So in 2014 the firm joined forces with 435 billion ($493 billion) asset manager Allianz Global Investors, the German branch of the World Wildlife Fund and Hamburg-based research outfit CO-Firm to develop such a tool. In the first phase of pilot testing, the group trained its carbon risk assessment model on the dairy and cement industries in Germany, California and Chinas Guangdong province. It found big differences in the impact that regulations like resource taxes and a price on carbon could have by 2020. For example, the model showed that for portland cement, the worlds most popular type of cement, such rules would lead to a margin loss of 72 percent for producers in Germany, 16 percent for those in California and 8 percent for those in Guangdong. Last month, with support from the University of Cambridges Institute for Sustainability Leadership, a network of pension funds, insurers and asset managers called the Investment Leaders Group released a report documenting the carbon risk assessment models next pilot phase. The report focuses on findings across three sectors: electrical utilities, oil refining and natural gas production in the Canadian province of Alberta, Spain and the U.K. Its results show how widely different sectors and geographies fates might diverge as regulation tightens. Within utilities, for instance, modeling based on rules that will probably take effect by 2020 projected a 3 percent loss among businesses in Alberta and an 84 percent profit boost for those in Spain. Companies fuel mixes especially the integration of renewables and regional differences in expected regulation explain the gap. Meanwhile, regulatory changes might affect two companies in the same country very differently: In its projections, the report slashed one Spanish utilitys profit margin by 74 percent and increased that of a compatriot by nearly 300 percent. Andrew Mason, an Edinburgh-based responsible-investment analyst at Standard Life Investments and a member of the Investment Leaders Group, acknowledges that expanding the dynamic carbon risk assessment model is an ambitious project. Now that the report has been released, Mason hopes that other asset management firms and analysts on the buy and sell sides will comment on the methodology and help to improve it, so it can be scaled up and made widely available. Governments demanding that investors reveal carbon risk are starting to seek more subtlety than straight carbon footprinting can provide. Last August France became the first country to introduce mandatory climate-related disclosure for institutional investors, and part of its new law will require investors to report on how their portfolios are exposed to regulatory risks associated with a shift to a low-carbon economy. Stanislas Dupre consulted on the legislation as founder and director of the 2 Investing Initiative, a Paris-based think tank devoted to aligning the financial sector with the goal of preventing the earth from warming an additional 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Backward-looking carbon footprinting wont cut it as far as the new rules are concerned, Dupre says. Obviously carbon footprinting doesnt allow for a proper risk assessment, so it doesnt really help in complying with the law, he explains, adding that his team and the French government will favor the type of approach modeled by Allianz and the Investment Leaders Group. ACSs Ruiz-Vergote predicts that regulation like Frances will push more carbon risk assessmenttype tools to market. Carbon footprinting is basically housekeeping; everyone does it, she says. Those companies that want to gain a competitive edge will use carbon risk tools. Understand your travel insurance policy: Insurance providers have staff available to answer any questions related to policies. Know your health and consult a health care provider if you have any questions. Know your trip: How long will you be gone? Are you a snowbird? Will you be travelling many times during the year? Do you plan to scuba dive? Some policies will be more suitable for you than others. Forty-year-old BC native David Connelly travelled to Thailand to reconcile with his father who moved there 15 years ago and it was a storybook trip until tragedy struck.On May 4, while riding a scooter through Phuket, Connelly was run over by a dump truck and was found on the brink of death by the roadside. He suffered from multiple fractures including the spine, pelvis, and ribs; punctured lungs, torn muscles, and internal bleeding. To make things worse, he was uninsured.Connelly has recently been moved out of the ICU, and is set to be released in a few days. While his recovery has been described as miraculous, he and his family face hospital and air ambulance bills approaching $170,000. A GoFundMe campaign has raised over $60,000 to help with the expenses, but the Connelly family still needs to come up with the remainder. If Connelly had travel insurance, then he and his family couldve had lowered, or even totally avoided, out-of-pocket costs.According to Will McAleer, vice-president of the Travel Health Insurance Association of Canada, young adults under age 55 are the most prone to leaving the country uninsured.You get some of the folks who think, Well, hey, nothings going to happen to me or they just dont realize the risk, he said. Many simply forget to buy insurance and once theyve stepped on their flight or crossed the border, its too late.McAleer also added that there have been cases where Canadians with Code Blue health emergencies in the US ended up paying hospital bills amounting around $10,000 per hour, when they could have taken out a travel insurance policy that costs only $2 or $3 per day.The Travel Health Insurance Association of Canada offered the following tips for travellers to make sure they are properly insured: A man who chose the rocky road to profit is now paying the price of his insurance fraud scam with a suspended jail sentence.Barry Mark Sandmann, of Strood in Kent, used a Mr Whippy ice cream van to stage separate fake accidents around the UK, Insurance Age reported.It began with him reversing his uninsured van into another van, following which he took out an insurance policy with Allianz after the collision and lied about the time of the accident.He tried another ruse two months later reporting that hed been in a collision with an ice cream van in Strood.A forged estimate for the repairs to the ice cream van was sent to Allianz for more than $50,000, but when the ice cream van was inspected, specialists recognised it as the same as one they had inspected just months before in another part of the country.NFU Mutual had paid out $32,000 by cheque to a Burnley address for that case, although the accident had happened in Bristol.Allianz got the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department (IFED) involved where detectives discovered the NFU Mutual cheque was cashed by somebody using a false Irish driving licence as ID.An alert was issued, and a further case came to light involving the same Mr Whippy van, and a different insurance company Covea Insurance.When detectives compared images of the ice cream van taken by all three insurers, the damage was the same, the stock in the van was the same and the mileage shown on the odometer was identical.It was found Sandmann had lied about being involved in the accident with an ice cream van in Kent to allow others to make fraudulent claims.Detective Constable Paula Doyle, from the IFED, who investigated the case, said: In the space of two months, Sandmann not only tried to take out a policy to cover him for an accident that had already happened, but then tried to facilitate a crash for cash scam so that others could profit.Thanks to the good relationships and information sharing between IFED and the insurance industry, what first appeared to be an isolated incident has been uncovered as an organised scam and were determined to try and identify and bring all those involved to justice.Sandmann pleaded guilty at Londons Old Bailey to conspiracy to defraud and fraud by false representation. He was sentenced this week to 12 months imprisonment (suspended for two years), ordered to carry out 180 hours of unpaid work and to pay a $400 victim surcharge and was given a 12 month supervision requirement.But some felt Sandmann had received too soft a serve.Allianz fraud manager Mihir Pandya said: The courts must support the insurance industry by handing down tough sentences to help the industry win the battle against the fraudsters, so we are disappointed that Mr Sandmann was treated so leniently.The criminal minority must be left in no doubt that cheating on insurance is a serious crime and not a victimless opportunity to make some money.City of London Police said the three separate claims, had they been paid out in full, would have left insurers footing a bill for hundreds and thousands. Better data for better underwriting The power of data is a frequent topic of conversation in insurance. Brad French, managing director of SLE Worldwide Australia, spoke to Insurance Business about his organisations new underwriting system, and the benefits its data capture capabilities are delivering the business and its partners. Church Mutual Insurance Company, a Merrill, Wisconsin-based insurer of religious organizations, announced that it has completed on June 1 its acquisition of School Boards Insurance Company of Pennsylvania Inc. (SBIC) and School Claims Services (SCS). SBIC and SCS were previously owned by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA). The acquisition allows SBIC, SCS and Church Mutual to deepen their financial strength, expertise and commitments to their communities, Church Mutual said in the announcement. Church Mutual had announced in October 2015 its intent to acquire SBIC and SCS, both based in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, to expand its reach in the public schools market. SBIC writes specifically tailored types of coverage including property, general liability, boiler and machinery, commercial auto, errors and omissions (school leaders legal liability), excess liability and workers compensation to meet the needs of its Pennsylvania public schools policyholder base. SCS provides third-party claims administration and risk management services, as well as employee benefits programs and marketing. Joining with a national insurance company licensed in all 50 states gives SBIC and SCS the opportunity to expand beyond Pennsylvania, mitigating the geographic concentration risk for their customers and the company. The acquisition also allows Church Mutual to diversify its holdings and continue to grow and PSBA to concentrate on its mission of providing tools, training and advocacy to its elected school board membership. Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Pennsylvania A group representing 5,000 Uber Technologies Inc drivers in New York City filed a lawsuit on Thursday accusing the ride-share company of depriving drivers of various employment protections by misclassifying them as independent contractors. The proposed class action lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance on behalf of 10 drivers is the latest to claim Uber drivers should be considered employees entitled to minimum wage, overtime pay and reimbursements for expenses. Uber spokesman Matthew Wing said in a statement that the lawsuit was a thinly veiled stunt and criticized the Taxi Workers Alliance for suing on behalf of Uber drivers and not its other members. The group said it filed a separate complaint on Thursday with the National Labor Relations Board claiming arbitration agreements Uber drivers signed illegally prohibit them from bringing class action claims. The Taxi Workers Alliance criticized a recent deal between Uber and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union to create an independent drivers guild for the companys New York drivers, highlighting a sharp divide among labor groups grappling with the rise of the gig economy. The groups lawsuit said Uber expanded aggressively in New York beginning in 2011 by promising drivers decent wages. Instead, the group said, most of the drivers pay went toward car payments, maintenance and surcharges from the company. Uber, through its practices and broken promises, severely harmed the thousands of drivers they recruited and have contributed greatly to a race to the bottom,' the lawsuit said. It alleges violations of state and federal employment laws. Taxi trade groups have opposed Ubers rapid expansion and said the company should be required to fingerprint drivers and make cars accessible to people with disabilities, as required of taxi companies. In April, Uber agreed to settle a major class action lawsuit that also claimed drivers were actually employees, brought on behalf of 385,000 drivers in California and Massachusetts for up to $100 million. A federal judge in San Francisco was scheduled to hold a hearing on Thursday on whether to approve the settlement, which has drawn about three dozen objections. At least eight similar cases are pending in seven states including New York and Texas, and four others have been sent to arbitration, where drivers can bring only individual claims. The case is New York Taxi Workers Alliance v. Uber Technologies Inc, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, number 1:16-cv-04098. Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Chris Reese Related: Topics Lawsuits New York Personal Auto Contractors JLT Re, the reinsurance broking and consultancy, has appointed Francesca Marc-Antonio as global head of Client Relationship Management. This new role will see Marc-Antonio become a member of the JLT Re Global Executive Committee, working closely with her senior colleagues to coordinate relationships and service offerings with JLT Res global and national clients. Marc-Antonio will join JLT Re as soon as she has completed her contractual obligations with Swiss Re and will be based in the New York office reporting to Mike Reynolds, global CEO of JLT Re (part of the Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group plc). At Swiss Re she was senior vice president, head of US P&C Broker Marketing and head of the Global Broker Group. In that role, she was responsible for fostering the ongoing strategic development and monitoring of Swiss Res relationships and growth with global brokers. Prior to joining Swiss Re in 2000, Marc-Antonio worked at a number of global brokers, most recently Guy Carpenter. Francesca brings a different perspective to our business combined with an excellent market reputation and a dynamic focus on creating the right opportunities and responding to changing client needs, commented Reynolds. Marc-Antonio said, This is an exciting new opportunity, and I am enthused by the team at JLT Re and its proposition. I look forward to supporting deep client relationships so we can offer the right services in a way that helps clients meet their business objectives. Source: JLT Re Topics Swiss Re Swiss Re Corporate Solutions expands its cyber offering with the launch of CyberSolutions UK, a market-specific, primary insurance product. This cyber risk protection solution provides tailored coverage to mid-sized and large companies, enabling them to defend themselves against increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks, said the company in a statement. CyberSolutions UK combines comprehensive insurance with risk mitigation and remediation services, the company said, noting that the product helps companies become more resilient by managing their exposure to cyber risks. As British companies become more aware of cyber threats, they want more advanced insurance offerings, says Marc Davis, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions head for the UK, Ireland, the Middle East and North Africa. Through our collaboration with recognized experts, CyberSolutions UK provides market-leading, integrated cyber protection. The products preventive services, provided by IBM, include cyber security training and optional annual IT security testing, noted the company. CyberSolutions UK provides clients access to a dedicated data-breach response network available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The team comprises Swiss Re Corporate Solutions legal, forensics and communications partners. In the event of a cyber attack, the network interacts seamlessly with Swiss Re Corporate Solutions claims team. In addition to CyberSolutions UK primary solution, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions said it will continue to offer excess coverage. Source: Swiss Re Corporate Solutions Topics Cyber New Markets Swiss Re Brexit poses a grave threat to Londons insurance jobs and businesses, according to the International Underwriting Association of London (IUA), Lloyds, and Richard Brindle, group chief executive officer of Fidelis. In a position paper published today, these market leaders warned of the following dangers of Brexit, if the UK public votes to exit the European Union on June 23: Job losses are highly likely among the 34,000 people employed directly in the citys commercial insurance sector Further job losses are likely among the tens of thousands indirectly employed Underwriting companies are already making contingency plans to move elsewhere if Britain votes to leave the EU Foreign capital is likely to leave for more trade friendly jurisdictions. The paper highlights the fact that insurance companies that stay in the UK, following a vote to leave the European Union, will continue to be subject to EU regulatory standards, but will not have any say in how they are formed. Those companies also will be forced to re-arrange cross-border insurance trade deals with almost all significant continental markets, the paper explained. Brexit campaigners have often said that trade with the EU is a one-way affair for Britain, and that Europe is a declining market for the UK, the paper said, emphasizing, however, that this is not true for the London market, which sells insurance throughout the 28 member states. Roughly 16 percent of the markets business comes from EU countries other than Britain, about 9.6 billion [$13.9 billion] in total, and that EU business is growing, the paper said. Indeed, business written by member companies of the IUA was up 29.2 percent between 2010 and 2014, yielding top-line income of 2.7 billion ($3.9 billion) in 2014, it continued. Our EU membership allows the London market to sell insurance freely to 443 million non-British people who live in the EU. That business will only increase as they thrive unless it is choked off, and diverted to competing insurance hubs and other EU member states in a post-Brexit Europe, according to the market paper. EU members grants the London market a single point of access to the EU, as well as a single regulatory regime, the paper said. It allows insurance companies from elsewhere in Europe to invest in the London market freely, and they have done so to the tune of billions of pounds, it added. Companies considering an investment in insurance see London as a gateway to Europe, but Brexit would certainly encourage them to look elsewhere. Feedback from our members clearly shows that the benefits of EU membership are highly valued and the possibility of these advantages disappearing is of grave concern, said Dave Matcham, chief executive of the IUA. An IUA member survey shows at least six firms would reconsider the legal status of their London operations in the event of a leave vote, though there may be others. Passporting rights within the single market are particularly important, ensuring that firms are not obliged to maintain expensive capital holdings in each of the EU member states in which they operate, Matcham noted. Lloyds firmly believes that to remain part of the EU is in the best interests of the Lloyds market and of the wider London insurance market, which contributes 12 billion [$17.3 billion] to the UK economy and employs over 34,000 people in London alone, commented Inga Beale, chief executive of Lloyds. London has centuries of insurance history, and remains the worlds leading insurance market, largely because it is outward-facing, said Brindle at Fidelis. It attracts foreign investment because companies in Britain can access the EU and the global market through a single operation, he added. Brexit would jeopardise our leading position, and bring no advantage from any perspective, whether regulatory, economically or for our reputation. Its highly likely that if we were starting a business post a Brexit vote, we would be headquartered elsewhere in the EU, Brindle went on to say. Source: IUA, Lloyds and Fidelis Topics Trends Legislation Europe Lloyd's Leadership London A company spokeswoman says UnitedHealthcare is pulling out of the Affordable Care Act insurance marketplace in Illinois. Maria Gordon Shydlo of UnitedHealthcare says the company will not offer individual exchange plans in the state in 2017. The company previously told investors it had planned to drastically cut its presence on the exchanges after expanding into 34 states for 2016. Illinois members will have coverage through the end of the year. UnitedHealthcare sold plans in 27 Illinois counties on the Get Covered Illinois insurance exchange. The companys Harken Health subsidiary will continue to sell health plans on the Illinois marketplace for 2017. Buying a plan on the marketplace is the only way consumers who qualify can get federal subsidies to help with the cost under the nations health care law. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Illinois Wall Street and business lobbying groups have teamed up to fight the Obama administrations new rules for U.S. brokers managing retirement accounts, saying the regulations include a deliberately unworkable fiduciary standard. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce joined groups including the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and the Insured Retirement Institute in filing the lawsuit Wednesday in Dallas federal court against the Department of Labor and Secretary Thomas Perez. The industry organizations allege that the department, which created the rules, encroached on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissions territory and overstepped boundaries for regulating broker-dealers that were established by Congress. The Labor Department released whats known as the fiduciary duty rule in April, with administration officials saying it will help protect millions of savers from conflicted investment advice that costs the public $17 billion annually. The White House has said the tougher standard will eliminate hidden incentives that cause brokers to push investment products with high fees and commissions. The industry argues that the rule will hurt less-affluent investors because firms facing steeper compliance costs will drop smaller accounts. Advisers Shackled The rule will shackle Main Street financial advisers with extensive new requirements and constant liability, forcing them to limit the options and guidance they provide to retirement savers, the groups said Thursday in a statement. This lawsuit is necessary to prevent the Labor Department from exceeding the authority that was assigned to it by Congress. Financial firms have fought the new regulation for six years. As a result, lawsuits were widely expected and Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation to block the rule from taking effect. While both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate have passed the measure, President Barack Obama has said he plans to veto the bill if it reaches his desk. This lawsuit seeks to vindicate their desire to put their own interests ahead of their clients best interests, Perez said in a statement. This rule-making was one of the most deliberate, open regulatory processes in recent memory. A related suit was filed in a Washington federal court Thursday by the National Association for Fixed Annuities, which is seeking an order blocking the new measures from taking effect as scheduled next year. Changed Course The Labor Department abruptly changed course when it decided fixed-indexed annuities should also be subject to the stricter standards required of variable annuities, the Washington-based association said in court papers. Calling the new rule unworkable too, NAFAs lawyers said that if its allowed to take effect in its present form, jobs will be lost, careers will be altered, firms will close and vast resources will be invested in what will likely prove to be an unnecessary effort to comply with a rule that should not be allowed to stand. Better Markets, a group formed after the 2008 financial crisis to lobby for financial reform, is supporting the new measure. If Wall Street really cared about Main Street it would already act in clients best interest, rather than secretly pocketing tens of billions of dollars from hardworking Americans, Better Markets President Dennis Kelleher said. The cases are Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America v. Perez, 16-cv-1476, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas (Dallas) and National Association for Fixed Annuities v. Perez, 16-cv-1035, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington). Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Topics Lawsuits USA Legislation Agencies Washington Uber Technologies Inc. may have to return to the bargaining table to show just how badly it wants to avoid a jury trial with drivers demanding to be treated as employees. The worlds largest rideshare company faced off in court Thursday with critics who say its getting off too easily in a proposed $100 million deal with 385,000 current and former drivers in California and Massachusetts that would leave its workforce classified as independent contractors. Most of the objections that have piled up over six weeks fault the drivers lawyer, saying she folded on the lawsuits core purpose so she could collect a $25 million fee for herself. Uber, whose $62.5 billion valuation makes it the biggest sharing-economy company, agreed as part of the deal to let drivers solicit tips and allot payouts based on the miles theyve driven. The fate of the deal rests with U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco, who spoke at the outset of a hearing of the elephant in the room a broad provision in the settlement releasing the company from liability for violations of labor laws. The judge voiced concern that approving the accord would preclude claims over minimum wage, overtime and workers compensation from being pursued in other active cases. Hijacked Claims I dont want to use too pejorative a term, the judge said before asking whether the settlement has hijacked or stolen claims from other lawsuits. And on top of that, given virtually no value? Isnt that troubling? The hearing ended with the judge saying he will issue a ruling later. Shannon Liss-Riordan, the drivers lawyer, told the judge a company such as Uber will only come to the table if they can get global peace. She said she made a strategic decision to focus on mileage reimbursement and tips claims because they were most likely to succeed. As the case gained momentum, copycat pile-on cases were filed, throwing every claim under the sun into the mix, Liss-Riordan said. My practice has been not to pursue kitchen-sink type complaints, she said. Arms Length Ted Boutrous, a lawyer for Uber, told Chen that negotiations leading to the settlement were conducted at arms length, and that even during mediation sessions the company maintained an adversarial relationship with Liss-Riordan. Without all the releases included in the accord, theres no incentive for Uber to settle, Boutrous said. It would be like getting nowhere because there are all these other claims stemming from the core dispute over whether the drivers are employees or contractors. Drivers who dont agree with the settlement can opt out out and go it alone, he said. Some lawyers for objecting drivers have accused Liss-Riordan and Uber of colluding to reach a deal that serves only their interests, while others say the settlement would improperly release the company from claims in 16 other lawsuits. Hallmarks of Collusion The proposed settlement seeks the release of dozens of claims never pled, investigated, nor considered by Ms. Liss-Riordan, and bears the hallmarks of collusion, according to a court filing on behalf of 16 drivers in seven lawsuits. Liss-Riordan has said criticisms from other lawyers, particularly those who dont specialize in labor law, are uninformed and that some of those attorneys are just trying to muscle in on fees for themselves. Before Thursdays hearing, the judge revealed other concerns about the deal, including whether signs saying drivers accept tips could lead to lower customer ratings and, as a result, deactivation by Uber. Chen also ordered Liss-Riordan to justify her 25 percent share of the deal by detailing the hours worked by her and her staff. Legal experts say Uber will only agree to a settlement that maintains the contractor status of drivers, signaling that workers elsewhere in the sharing economy face a steep hurdle trying to get courts to reclassify them as employees. Private Arbitration Thats because many such companies rely on agreements requiring workers to resolve disputes in private arbitration, and forbidding them from joining class-actions. Ubers revised driver contracts, revised last year, have already allowed it to smother similar challenges in Arizona, Ohio, Florida and Maryland, with federal judges in those states upholding its arbitration agreements this year. Uber was sued Thursday by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance over claims that it misclassifies drivers as contractors. The group, which represents more than 5,000 drivers, filed its complaint in Manhattan federal court. Ubers agreement with Liss-Riordan calls for an initial payout of $84 million. An additional payout of $16 million would follow if Uber goes public and its valuation increases. The ride-hailing companys latest infusion of cash a record $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabias sovereign wealth fund means Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick has the finances to continue avoiding a listing of his company any time soon. Earlier Thursday, a different judge in the same courthouse put off deciding whether to approve Lyft Inc.s $27 million settlement with its California drivers, who also sued to be treated as employees. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in April rejected an earlier $12.5 million offer, saying it shortchanged drivers in light of the companys rapid growth. This time around, the judge asked for more information about Lyfts exposure in a related lawsuit over tips for drivers and whether its appropriate for a settlement to include a broad release from liability for those claims. The Uber case is OConnor v. Uber Technologies Inc., 13-cv-03826, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco). The Lyft case is Cotter v. Lyft Inc., 13-cv-04065, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco). Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Topics Lawsuits California USA Claims Personal Auto Contractors A bill awaiting Gov. Mary Fallins signature would authorize Oklahoma district attorneys and law enforcement agencies to contract for the use of cameras and automated license plate readers to enforce the states compulsory insurance law. The bill recently passed the state House of Representatives on a 52-39 vote, its final step before going to the governor, The Oklahoman reported. Rep. Earl Sears, R-Bartlesville, said during debate on the House floor that there are 650,000 uninsured motorists driving in Oklahoma. He said they create a financial risk and danger for insured drivers. Lets send a message, Sears said. If youre going to drive in Oklahoma, youve got to have insurance. Rep. Lewis Moore, R-Arcadia, and Rep. Richard Morrissette, D-Oklahoma City, argued against the measure, saying the bill is an expansion of police state powers. One provision would allow car license plates to be photographed for prosecution purposes not only on public roads, but also on any private road, street, alley or lane which provides access to one or more single-family or multifamily dwellings, Morrissette noted. I dont like the concept of this, Moore said. I would encourage us to seek a better remedy that doesnt require more spying on people with these cameras. Under the bill, Oklahoma district attorneys would be authorized to send out letters to offenders, offering to enter into deferred prosecution agreements if the offenders agree to pay a fee, said Rep. Ken Walker, R-Tulsa, who supports the bill. The fine would be $169, which weve determined to be a whole lot less than somebody would pay if they were caught by the police and have to go through the system and potentially get their tag and their car taken away, Walker said. This is actually a win for everybody, including the person that doesnt have insurance. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Personal Auto Oklahoma A teenage driver accused in a lawsuit of causing a collision in Georgia while using the Snapchat apps speed filter is now facing criminal charges. News outlets report a Clayton County judge signed arrest warrants Wednesday for 19-year-old Christal McGee, charging her with felony serious injury by vehicle, among other charges, following the conclusion of a police investigation. Clayton County Solicitor Tasha Mosley says McGee was speeding on a rainy road in September, when she crashed into driver Wentworth Maynard, who spent weeks in a coma and suffered brain damage. Maynard and his wife filed a lawsuit in April against McGee and Snapchat, saying the apps filter tempted McGee to speed. Citing court records, WSB-TV reports McGee admitted going 90 mph, but denied using Snapchat at the time of the crash. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits Fraud Georgia The owner of a construction company in Pascagoula has been sentenced to five years in prison for conspiring to set fire to his business. The Sun Herald reports a judge also fined 53-year-old Michael Eugene Slater and ordered him to pay $7,500 in restitution. Slater had pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy to commit arson at his company, M.E. Slater Construction. He was arrested along with Michael Schaffran in the December 2014 fire that caused $175,000 in damage to the business. Schaffran, who pleaded guilty to second-degree arson and conspiracy to commit arson, is serving a 15-year prison sentence. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Mississippi Getting insurers to rid themselves of investments in fossil fuels, creating products to deal with climate change and helping the world better understand risk, were among the topics on Wednesday at a summit on the insurance industry and climate change. The conference, Break in the Ice: Climate Risk and the Insurance Industry, was held at the University of Washington. State and local businesses, representatives from the insurance industry, legislators, government representatives, academics, and environmental and consumer advocates attended or spoke at the half-day conference attended by several hundred people. Washington Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler and the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group staged the conference to raise awareness among insurers of the need to consider climate risks when providing insurance products to customers. "I hope we're really thoughtful about the defunding effort," XL's McGavick said. "We need to be really thoughtful about it." There were also numerous calls for insurers to manage their investment portfolios with climate change in mind. Getting insurers to divest from coal and other fossil fuels has been a hot topic lately. California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones earlier this year asked all insurance companies doing business in California to voluntarily divest from their investments in thermal coal. That followed a move by Henri de Castries, chairman and CEO of French insurer AXA, who announced in May 2015 that the company was ridding itself of investments in companies most exposed to coal-related activities. Kreidler lately has expressed concern that insurers could have assets stranded if fossil fuel investments suddenly plummet, a scenario that might be pushed in part by the agreement between 200 hundred countries in Paris last year, the United Nations Climate Change Conference. As an insurance regulator, you want to be absolutely sure insurers portfolios arent in jeopardy in some fashion, Kreidler said during the conference. Insurers View The idea of regulators pressuring insurers out of certain investments has been opposed by insurance groups including the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, which has argued the industry should be allowed to make its own judgement on what investments to make. One of those arguing against requiring insurers to divest from fossil fuels is Mike McGavick, CEO of XL Group, and chairman of the Geneva Association, an international think tank for the insurance industry. McGavick is considered proactive for his efforts to raise awareness of climate risks the insurance industry faces. However, last year Insurance Journals sister publication, Carrier Management, quoted him while speaking during a session at the Global Insurance Forum of the International Insurance Society that the idea that were going to divest in carbon is nonsense. McGavick at the time argued that its too large a part of the economy and reinsurers would be failing our shareholders if we werent investing in a prudent way. He restated his position at the conference on Wednesday, using the word defunding in place of the more popular term, divestment. I hope were really thoughtful about the defunding effort, McGavick said. We need to be really thoughtful about it. He was at the conference to give a talk titled Reflections on global insurers and reinsurers in response to the Paris Call to Action. He clarified his remarks in follow-up questions saying that a wholesale departure from fossil fuel investments is not a good idea because he expects the private sector to play an important role in reaching the carbon reduction goals laid out in the Paris agreement. Many big energy providers, most of which are on the target lists of those calling for divestiture, are contributing to scientific efforts to create innovations that will provide greener energy. McGavick also argued that natural gas providers, many of which are also on the lists of those calling for divestments, have helped reduce carbon emissions. Material Risk Alex Bernhardt, a principal with consulting firm Mercer, talked about the increased dangers of investing in carbon-based activities and revisited a report his firm released last year, Investing in a Time of Climate Change, that looks at climate change estimates representing 2, 3 and 4 degrees Celsius warming scenarios. The report shows the average annual returns from the coal sub-sector could fall by between 18 percent and 74 percent over the next 35 years and between 26 percent and 138 percent over the next 10 years. We think climate change is a material risk which all investors need to pay attention to, Bernhardt said. Bernhardt was also involved with a report out in late May from Ceres, a Boston, Mass.-based nonprofit group that advocates for sustainability leadership. This report said that the top U.S. insurers have nearly half-a-trillion dollars invested the fossil fuel energy and the electric and gas utility sectors. That Ceres report urged state insurance regulators and board members of these companies to help move them out of such investments. The 200 countries that came together to sign the Paris agreement last year sent a clear signal about the intent to reduce carbon emissions, said Stephen Scofield, director of financial industry solutions in North America for the South Pole Group, an international company that specializes in reducing greenhouse gases. Thats a very, very strong signal to the business community, and to the investment community, he added. Underinsured Risks Alex Kaplan, senior vice president in global partnerships with Swiss Re, participated in a reinsurer panel at the conference. Because Swiss Re insures risk globally, climate change is very important to us, Kaplan said. He expressed concern theres a massive accumulation of risks in exposed areas, citing massive building booms in places like Shanghai, where insurance penetration is low, and the large number of high-dollar homes going up around bodies of water in the U.S. In the U.S., the federal government frequently ends up footing the bill when catastrophe strikes these risky, often underinsured, areas, he said. Since 2005, U.S. taxpayers have spent $300 billion helping communities recover from extreme weather and fire alone, according to Kaplan, who said the solution is that these people are going to have to own their risk. Risk-based Pricing McGavick in his talk said the insurance industry needs to be able to price to reflect risk, which is hard to do with the government subsidies like those in the National Flood Insurance Program, which is billions of dollars in debt. Critics of the program have complained that it subsidizes flood-prone areas like Florida, where the risk of flooding is high, at the expense of other states. Were not sending the signal that causes the right economic behavior, McGavick said. A joint statement was sent out by several insurer groups on Wednesday in response to the conference. The statement was attributed to the American Insurance Association, the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, the Northwest Insurance Council and the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America. The property/casualty insurance industry is committed to helping policyholders and communities in every region to prepare, prevent and recover from damage caused by extreme weather, the statement reads. Insurers share the concerns about reducing the economic impacts of recurring extreme weather. Insurers also have an acute interest in reducing damage to homes, businesses and communities. The statement outlines efforts by insurers to work with policyholders to encourage mitigation, as well as partnerships with local, state and national firefighting and emergency management organizations. It further outlines goals to identify better ways to prepare for and recover from extreme weather events, which include encouraging states and communities to adopt stricter land use measures and strong building codes, supporting and research and incentives (tax credits, loans, grants) to promote loss mitigation, sharing science-based information to better inform decision-making and undertaking evaluations of risks related to climate activity. The last goal on the list includes vigorous risk management discipline across insurer investment portfolios, which includes enterprise risk management and stress-test analyses to properly assess the risk of all invested assets. Related: Topics Carriers Energy Washington Reinsurance Oil Gas Climate Change Market Risk Strategies Co. has acquired employee benefits firm OakBridge Advisors in Newport Beach, Calif. Founders Edward Kirkwood and Lawrence Hartley their staff will continue serving their current client base. They will work with Risk Strategies other California offices in Irvine, Glendale, San Francisco and Sacramento. Risk Strategies is an insurance broker that offers risk management advice and insurance placement for property/casualty, healthcare and employee benefits risks. Topics Mergers & Acquisitions California Lyft Inc. may have more work to do to win court approval of a settlement with 163,000 California drivers who sued to be treated as employees. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco on Thursday indicated hes hesitant to approve a deal that would pay the drivers $27 million and leave them classified as independent contractors. He ruled in April that an initial $12.5 million offer would shortchange drivers in light of the companys surging revenue. The judge asked for more information about the companys exposure in a related lawsuit over tips for drivers and whether its appropriate for a settlement to include a broad release from liability for those claims. Shouldnt we have an understanding of what the release covers and what it doesnt? Chhabria asked lawyers. At the end of the hearing, the judge said hell try to rule soon on the approval request. Along with its larger rival Uber Technologies Inc., Lyft is trying to avoid a trial over drivers claims seeking the pay and benefits of employees. Later on Thursday in the same courthouse, Uber is set to ask a different judge for preliminary approval of a similar $100 million settlement with its drivers. While a lawyer for Lyft told the judge that the amount at stake is tiny in the separate case over tips, Chhabria said hed like to see calculations. He also said the claims in the case filed this month, which involves tips during prime-time periods when drivers are in high demand, may be too late to consider in the main suit that was filed three years ago. If Chhabria approves the Lyft accord, current and former California drivers will be told they can claim their share of the payout, object to the deal or opt out, before a final settlement hearing. Chhabria rejected the earlier settlement after concluding that the payout for drivers didnt account for the companys skyrocketing growth through the middle of February. The judge figured that, if the drivers won at trial, the actual value of the reimbursement they sought for mileage and expenses was at least $126 million, and that other potential claims might make the case worth about $170 million. The overall average payout under the revised accord is $141.98, with about 88,000 drivers who worked less than 30 hours collecting no more than $42 each and about 80 who drove for more than 2,000 hours receiving $5,556 or more, according to a court filing. The drivers also negotiated for provisions that protect them against arbitrary deactivation and cover fees for arbitration proceedings over disputes. The case is Cotter v. Lyft Inc., 13-cv-04065, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco). Related: Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Topics California Legislation Personal Auto EPIC Insurance Brokers & Consultants has named Eric Leventhal a vice president in its employee benefits consulting practice. Leventhal will be based in San Francisco and report to John Connell, president of employee benefits for California. He has 30 years of employee benefits experience. He was previously an area vice president at Gallagher Benefit Services in San Francisco. He has also held benefits consulting positions at Frank Crystal & Co., ABD Insurance and Financial Services and Towers Perrin. EPIC is a retail property/casualty and employee benefits insurance brokerage and consulting firm. Topics California (Bloomberg) -- Business groups from the U.S. and around the world protested planned cybersecurity rules for the insurance industry in China in a letter to the head of the nations insurance regulator. The draft regulations may create obstacles to international trade, according to the June 1 letter to Xiang Junbo, chairman of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, which was seen by Bloomberg News. The signatories are more than two dozen organizations including the American Chamber of Commerce in China, the American Council of Life Insurers and the American Insurance Association. Technology companies are represented and the groups span Japan, Canada, the U.K and Europe. China has the right to implement measures necessary for the maintenance of cybersecurity, but we believe that the provisions go far beyond what is necessary, the letter says. It responds to planned rules covering areas such as data flows and cryptography, citing cases of disproportionate burdens on foreign-invested insurers and discrimination against foreign technology suppliers. 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. What Is a Payday Loan? A payday loan is a type of short-term borrowing where a lender will extend high-interest credit based on your income. Its principal is typically a portion of your next paycheck. Payday loans charge high interest rates for short-term immediate credit. They are also called cash advance loans or check advance loans. Key Takeaways Payday loans are short-term, very-high-interest loans available to consumers. Payday loans are typically based on how much you earn, and you usually have to provide a pay stub when applying for one. Payday loans are not available in all states. Sixteen statesArizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginiaplus the District of Columbia outlaw payday loans of any kind. A number of laws have been put in place over the years to regulate the high fees and interest rates with payday loans. 1:37 Click Play to Learn All About Payday Loans Using Payday Loans Payday loans charge borrowers high levels of interest and do not require any collateral, making them a type of unsecured personal loan. These loans may be considered predatory lending, as they have extremely high interest, dont consider a borrowers ability to repay, and have hidden provisions that charge borrowers added fees. As a result, they can create a debt trap for consumers. If youre considering a payday loan, then you may want to look first at safer personal loan alternatives. How Do Payday Loans Work? Payday loan providers will normally require you to show proof of your incomeusually your pay stubs from your employer. They will then lend you a portion of the money that you will be paid. You will have to pay the loan back within a short time, generally 30 days or less. Payday lenders take on a lot of risk, because they dont check your ability to pay back the loan. Because of this, they normally charge very high interest rates for payday loans, and they may also charge high fees if you miss your repayments. This can be dangerous for borrowers, because it can mean that youll need to borrow more money to cover the cost of the first loan. How Do I Get a Payday Loan? Payday loan providers are typically small credit merchants with physical stores that allow on-site credit applications and approval. Some payday loan services also may be available through online lenders. To complete a payday loan application, you must normally provide pay stubs from your employer that show your current level of income. Payday lenders often base their loan principal on a percentage of the borrowers predicted short-term income. Many also use a borrowers wages as collateral. Lenders generally do not conduct a full credit check or consider your ability to repay the loan. In the United States, as of 2021, 16 states and the District of Columbia have banned payday loans. What Are Payday Loan Interest Rates? Payday lenders charge very high levels of interest: as much as 780% in annual percentage rate (APR), with an average loan running at nearly 400%. Most states have usury laws that limit interest charges to anywhere from 5% to 30%. However, payday lenders fall under exemptions that allow for their high interest. As these loans qualify for many state lending loopholes, borrowers should beware. Regulations on these loans are governed by the individual states, with 16 statesArizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginiaplus the District of Columbia outlawing payday loans of any kind. In California, for example, a payday lender can charge a 14-day APR of 460% for a $100 loan. Finance charges on these loans also are a significant factor to consider, as the average fee is $15 per $100 of loan. Although the federal Truth in Lending Act requires payday lenders to disclose their finance charges, many people overlook the costs. Most loans are for 30 days or less and help borrowers to meet short-term liabilities. Loan amounts are usually from $100 to $1,000, with $500 being common. The loans usually can be rolled over for additional finance charges, and many borrowersas high as 80% of themend up as repeat customers. A number of court cases have been filed against payday lenders, as lending laws have been enacted since the 2008 financial crisis to create a more transparent and fair lending market for consumers. If youre considering taking out a payday loan, then a personal loan calculator can be a vital tool for determining what kind of interest rate you can afford. Are Payday Loans Legal? Efforts to regulate payday lenders were proposed in 2016 under the Obama administration and put in place in 2017, when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), under then-Director Richard Cordray, passed rules to protect consumers from what Cordray referred to as debt traps. The rules included a mandatory underwriting provision requiring lenders to assess a borrowers ability to repay a loan and still meet everyday living expenses before the loan is made. The rules also required lenders to provide written notice before trying to collect from a borrowers bank account and further required that after two unsuccessful attempts to debit an account, the lender could not try again without the permission of the borrower. These rules were first proposed in 2016 and will become mandatory on June 13, 2022, as per CFPB Acting Director Dave Uejio. In February 2019, the CFPBthen under the Trump administration and Director Kathleen L. Kraningerissued proposed rules to revoke the mandatory underwriting provision and delay implementation of the 2017 rules. In June 2019, the CFPB issued a final rule delaying the August 2019 compliance date, and on July 7, 2020, it issued a final rule revoking the mandatory underwriting provision but leaving in place the limitation of repeated attempts by payday lenders to collect from a borrowers bank account. Under the Biden administration, the new leadership at the CFPB established stricter rules for payday lending, which become mandatory on June 13, 2022. Are payday loans fixed or variable? Payday loans are usually meant to be paid off in one lump-sum payment when you get your paycheck. Because of this, the interest rate on these loans is fixed. In fact, many payday lenders dont even express their charges as an interest rate, but they instead charge a fixed flat fee that can be anywhere from $10 to $30 per $100 borrowed. Is a payday loan secured or unsecured? Most payday loans are unsecured. This means that you do not have to give the lender any collateral or borrow against a valuable item as you do in a pawn shop. Instead, the lender will normally ask you for permission to electronically take money from your bank, credit union, or prepaid card account. Alternatively, the lender may ask you to write a check for the repayment amount, which the lender will cash when the loan is due. Under federal law, lenders cannot condition a payday loan on obtaining an authorization from the consumer for preauthorized (recurring) electronic fund transfers. How long do payday loans stay in the system? The records of traditional loans may be kept for six to 10 years by credit bureausthe companies that calculate credit scores, which in turn may affect your ability to borrow money in the future. Payday lenders do not usually report to the credit bureaus, even in case of overdue repayments. But the payday loan may be filed once it is passed to the collectors after the lender sells the debts. If you repay your payday loan on time, then your credit score shouldnt be affected. On the other hand, if you default on your loan and your debt is placed in the hands of a collection agency, then you will see a dip in your score. Can payday loan debt be forgiven? In practice, its very rare for payday loan debt to be written off. This is because payday lenders make significant sums from the interest that they charge on these loans. This means that you should try and pay off payday loans as soon as you possibly can. If you cant pay back a payday loan, the account may be sent to a collection agency, which will pursue you for the money and interest that you owe. This is not only unpleasant but also can add money to your overall debtand it will damage your credit. Can you get a payday loan without a bank account? Yes. Having a bank account isnt universally required to borrow money, but lenders that dont require it generally charge high interest rates. This includes many payday lenders. Payday lenders may ask for a bank account, but sometimes a prepaid card account may be enough to qualify. Because these loans cost so much and may be difficult to repay, its almost always best to avoid them. If you cant pay back the loan promptly, fees can add up, leading to a debt trap thats hard to get out of. Because of this, you should only take out a payday loan if you are absolutely sure that you can pay it back. The Bottom Line Payday loans are designed to cover short-term expenses, and they can be taken out without collateral or even a bank account. The catch is that these loans charge very high fees and interest rates. Borrowers should beware of these loans. They may be considered predatory lending, as they have extremely high interest, dont consider a borrowers ability to repay, and have hidden provisions that charge borrowers added fees. As a result, they can create a debt trap for consumers. If youre considering a payday loan, then you may want to first take a look at safer personal loan alternatives. News / Local by Stephen Jakes Harare Residents Trust has claimed that City of Harare Acting Communications Officer Michael Chideme got really very excited when he said the City of Harare was not going back on the issue of prepaid water meters.The trust said maybe he was not aware of exactly what he was saying when he did."The fact of the matter is that the City of Harare has announced that they are undertaking a pilot project, at 2000 households voluntarily accepting the prepaid water meters in six suburbs, and will have their results after a period of six months," said the trust. "It is ironic that Chideme claims that they are not going back, yet the City of Harare says it is a pilot project. This is the evidence that the HRT always sought to confirm that the prepaid water meters agenda is being driven mostly by municipal employees who stand to benefit more in terms of revenues to settle their salaries arrears, while neglecting service delivery."The trust said the City of Harare, despite being run by the democratic movement, is continuously acting in an undemocratic manner by ignoring and trying to rise above the citizens' demands."The HRT recently submitted a petition, signed by plus 2 000 residents, rejecting the prepaid water meters, and the Acting Mayor has assured the residents that the petition would be tabled in the next Full Council meeting where the Councillors would make a policy position. The protests against the introduction of the prepaid water meters will escalated if the council continues to behave in the manner that they are projecting to the public. Residents should not cooperate with a council that has overly excited officials who violate residents' interests," said the trust.The HRT said it is closely watching developments and has already put in place an alternative campaign that will force the council to listen."At current rates of photocopying documents of US$1 for 50 copies,the residents are prepared to fund the massive awareness campaign that is aimed at urging residents to stop paying their bills totally until the Council begins a genuine progress of dialogue, and seeking the buy in of citizens in their projects. If it is just six months, the municipal employees will end up going for longer periods without being paid, and ultimately the council would be forced to consider further job cuts to match revenue inflows," said the trust."Given the above possibility, Chideme, stop being excited and undermining democracy and good governance in the City of Harare by issuing statements that are of a public relations nature, trying to convince yourself that the city is not concerned with the opinions of residents," said the trust. Many people don't know this, but Monaco is a sovereign country and is the smallest nation outside of Vatican City. The national language is French, which is probably why it's often mistaken as a part of France. Located in the Meditteranean near Italy, it's just hours away from some of the major cities in Europe. The nation boasts a beautiful environment and high quality of life, not to mention superior cultural, educational, and medical programs. And there's another plus to living in this sunny locale: its very favorable tax laws. Many people choose to call this principality home because it's a high-profile tax haven. The country's personal and business tax laws and policies are relatively lax compared to many other nations. In this article, we highlight some of the tax advantages of living in Monaco. Key Takeaways Monaco is considered a tax haven because of its tax laws and policies. Individuals must show proof of accommodation for a year and be self-sufficient to be considered a resident of Monaco. Monaco does not collect personal income tax or capital gains taxes. There are no property taxes in Monaco, but rental properties are taxed at 1% of the annual rent plus other applicable charges. Monaco eliminated taxes on dividends paid by local companies and does not charge a general corporate income tax. Personal Income Tax Avoidance Since 1869, Monaco has not levied a personal income tax on its residents. Individuals must intend to stay longer than three months a year to be considered a resident. Considering the strategic location of Monaco, which is easily accessible by airplane, boat, or train, it is very common for residents to work and even live in other countries in Europe. For example, nonresidents are allowed a 90-day stay in the United Kingdom. Many business people who reside in Monaco work in the U.K. without surpassing the 90-day limit. This, in turn, makes them subject to Monaco tax laws so any income earned in the U.K. avoids taxation in that country. But there is a catch. Many countries in Europe consider this tax evasion and try to impede it. For instance, French nationals residing in Monaco are subject to French income taxes, unless they became residents of Monaco before 1957. Monaco isn't part of the European Union (EU). Capital Gains and Wealth Tax A capital gain occurs when the value of a capital asset increases from its original purchase price when it is sold. Capital gains can be realized on any type of assets, such as stocks and other investments. Most countries impose a tax on capital gains, including the United States. But residents of Monaco do not pay capital gains taxes. Similarly, Monaco also does not levy any net wealth taxes. Wealth taxes are charged on the net fair market value of someone's assets. It is charged on a taxpayer's assets less their liabilities. This tax is also called a capital tax or equity tax. These rules don't apply to current or prior French residents. These individuals may be subject to some amount of taxation. Nevertheless, French citizens who transfer their residence or domicile to Monaco will have their worldwide property subject to France's net wealth tax. Property Tax The real estate market in Monaco is open to residents and foreign investors alike. There are no restrictions on foreign ownership and it's fairly easy to buy or rent in the country. Keep in mind that buying or renting real estate is an important part of establishing residency in the country. According to the rules, you must own or rent a property for at least a year in order to become a resident. If you own property in Monaco, it's important to note that there are no property taxes in the principality. But that doesn't apply to rentals. In fact, rental properties are taxed at 1% of the annual rent plus other applicable charges. You will have to pay taxes if you sell your property. This tax is levied at a rate of 33.3% on any profits earned on the sale of real estate. However, losses on the sale of real estate can be carried forward for up to five years to offset any gains on other sales. Business Taxation Anyone who intends to operate a business must first apply for a permit. This includes anyone who intends to operate as a company, trade, sole proprietorship, or freelancer. Paperwork must be filed with the Welcome Office. The business owner must have a solid professional reputation and qualifications and must demonstrate the promise of stable business activity through a business plan. Individuals must also understand the country's business tax rules. There isn't a general corporate income tax in Monaco. But Monaco has a treaty with France that allows profits of certain business activities to be taxed. Companies must demonstrate that 75% or more of their profits are generated domestically. Companies whose profits exceed 25% from outside of Monaco are taxed at a rate of 33.33%. There are certain rules that apply to businesses that operate within the principality. For instance: Monaco eliminated dividend taxes in 1963 for shares in local companies. This policy greatly increased the amount of foreign investment in the principality, as did the large availability of data privacy. This policy greatly increased the amount of foreign investment in the principality, as did the large availability of data privacy. The profits of Monaco-based companies are taxed if they engage in selling the licensing of trademarks, patents, manufacturing processes, or artistic copyrights. Privacy Monaco is known for its financial and professional secrecy laws. This means it maintains a high degree of data privacy within its banking system, including the existence of wealth management and bank accounts and any related information like account balances and activity. Failure to abide by these standards results in punishment as per the Monegasque Penal Code. Keep in mind, though that Monaco is signing transparency agreements with other countries of late. Despite this, the government does have measures in place to counter money laundering and terrorist financing. The first anti-money laundering (AML) law was established in 1993 and continues to be amended as international standards change. This activity is monitored by the country's Financial Action Task Force. Monaco is known for financial secrecy but is increasing its efforts for transparency agreements with other countries. Tax Havens Around the World Monaco isn't the only country in the world that attracts new residents and businesses because of its status as a tax haven. There are others that offer similar or other tax-based incentives, notably: Switzerland: Although banks can no longer operate anonymously, the country still registers high on the global privacy list because of its financial privacy laws. It continues to offer the wealthy a place to store their money and keep it there. Although banks can no longer operate anonymously, the country still registers high on the global privacy list because of its financial privacy laws. It continues to offer the wealthy a place to store their money and keep it there. The Cayman Islands: This island nation doesn't have a corporate tax. As such, it allows companies to set up subsidiaries to protect some or all of their income from taxation. Investors aren't required to pay taxes on dividends or interest earned on investments and the privacy laws are some of the strictest in the world. This island nation doesn't have a corporate tax. As such, it allows companies to set up subsidiaries to protect some or all of their income from taxation. Investors aren't required to pay taxes on dividends or interest earned on investments and the privacy laws are some of the strictest in the world. Panama: Companies incorporated in Panama that conduct offshore business aren't subject to many forms of taxation, including corporate, withholding, income, and capital gains taxes. And there are very favorable privacy laws that shield offshore corporations, trusts, and foundations. How Does Monaco Make Money? Monaco is a popular tourist destination because of its climate and casino. As such, the country relies heavily on the tourism industry to generate revenue. It also charges a value-added tax (VAT) of 20%, stamp duties on documents, and a 33.33% tax on corporations whose profits exceed 25% from offshore sources. What Is the Cost of Living in Monaco? The general cost of living in Monaco for a single individual is just over $1,400. This figure doesn't include accommodations and is about 47% higher than the United States. Renting a one-bedroom apartment in the city center costs about $5,500 while one outside the city is $3,600. The cost of rent is about 440% higher in Monaco than it is in the United States. Is Monte Carlo a Tax Haven? Monte Carlo is an administrative area of Monaco. As such, it is considered a tax haven because of its favorable laws. For instance, individual residents aren't taxed on personal income. The area also has a business-friendly tax structure because it only taxes profits on companies that earn 25% or more of their profits from overseas sources. They are charged at a rate of 33.33%. The Bottom Line Monaco has long been considered a tax haven because of its favorable personal and corporate tax rules. The country does not tax individuals on their income and corporations must make at least 75% of their profits within the country in order to be tax-exempt. If you're thinking of moving because of these reasons, you must show proof of accommodation and show that you're able to sustain your lifestyle. And as with any major life change, make sure you do your research before you take the plunge. 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 (NASDAQ: MULN) Announces the I-GO, New Urban Commercial Electric Delivery Vehicle Available Now for European Markets BREA, Calif. - October 24, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), an emerging electric vehicle ("EV") manufacturer, announces today it has secured exclusive sales, distribution and branding rights to the new compact urban delivery electric vehicle, the I-GO, which is fully EU Standard homologated and certified for sale in select European Markets. 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 June is upon us which means we all have - or should have - Fathers Day on our minds! June 19th is the date you don't want to forget. The Irish Workshop is a new site based out of Dublin that promotes the work of nearly 100 Irish makers, artists and craftspeople. Theyve put together some pretty special Fathers Day gifts ideas: Looking for your local Irish store in North America? Check here! 1. For the Ireland-loving Dad Irish jewellery studio, Terrible Beauty, have designed sterling silver cufflinks that are deeply etched with the Irish Proclamation of Independence or one of its seven signatories. An ideal gift to commemorate 1916 and Ireland's centenary. 2. For the Guinness-loving Dad This pint is a word collage of what makes us Irish, what makes us unique and what springs to mind out of the blue when were living overseas. From freckles to fish & chips, and tayto to red lemonade, The Word Bird from Co.Wicklow has created the perfect pint. 3. For the style-loving Dad Designer Brendan Joseph has seen his star rise in Ireland of late. Your Dad will look like a star in one of Brendans handwoven silk scarves that are inspired by colours and textures of Ireland designs include Howth Head, Daylight in Dublin and Wicklow Mountains. 4. For the music-loving Dad Dublin artist Vincent Keeling has captured in portrait some of Ireland's most talented musicians - Christy Moore, Luke Kelly, Phil Lynott, Shane McGowan, Rory Gallagher, Sinead O'Connor and Van Morrison. 5. For the history-loving Dad Your Dad can wrap himself up in history with this replica of a blanket that was specially commissioned for Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins to mark his appointment to Commander in Chief of the newly established Irish Army in 1922. Foxford Woollen Mills in Co.Mayo made the blanket for Collins in back in 1922 and have re-released the design this year. Remember, all these gifts are being shipped from Ireland so get shopping now if you want to be Dads favorite on June 19th! Visit the Fathers Day section of The Irish Workshop now. Looking for your local Irish store in North America? Look here! Internet giant Amazon is adding hundreds of new jobs to its Irish task-force because of the amazing talent available in Ireland, the company said this week. Amazon, the largest Internet-based retailer in the U.S. headquartered in Seattle, is creating 500 jobs in Ireland over the next two years to add to the 1,700 already working at locations in Dublin and Cork. Jeff Caselden, Amazon Irelands general manager, claimed the decision to further invest in Ireland was due to the countrys diverse technical skills base and the creative culture. He said that favorable corporate tax was not the biggest priority when choosing to do business in Ireland. First and foremost I would say the access to the talent that were able to get in this country. Irelands got a very creative culture and were also a member of the European Union so there's a large talent pool we can pull from here, Caselden said. Secondly, the infrastructure that we have in the country is very suitable for what we need to do. Connectivity is very important to us. The trans-Atlantic cables that connect North America and Europe terminate here in Ireland. Theres good access to renewable energy. The announcement was welcomed by Minister of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Mary Mitchell OConnor, who said the jobs were very high end, well paid. She also said the government is on track to create 60,000 jobs this year. Bronx Supreme Court Justice Alexander W. Hunter will bring clarity to the leadership of the New York City St. Patricks Day parade by June 25, after hearing oral arguments last Thursday morning in the civil case that former Parade and Celebration Committee Chairman John Dunleavy brought against current board chairman Dr. John Lahey alleging an illegal takeover of the parade board last June. Hunter said he would rule within 30 days after Dunleavys attorney Francis X. Young and Laheys counsel Mitch Mandell presented vastly different takes on the controversy that has engulfed the parade for the past year. Young argued that Dunleavy provided 23 years of selfless service to the parade, was ousted at an illegal board meeting last June because of Laheys desire to corporatize and monetize the parade, and far from stealing money using the parades American Express card, Dunleavy actually saved the march millions of dollars because the cash-strapped U.S. Department of Defense willingly covered $700,000 in annual travel expenses incurred by military participants in the parade due to their outstanding relationship with Dunleavy. Mandell said Dunleavys case, filed last October with various motions since that time, has no basis in fact because parade bylaws were never broken, and that Dunleavy has repeatedly failed to justify his expenditures using parade funds including multiple charges for the male enhancement pill Triverex that were subject to an investigation by the New York State Attorney Generals office. After Hunter began the session by asking, What is this all about?, Young outlined Dunleavys case against Lahey, president of Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, a parade grand marshal in 1997, and a long-time member of the parades board. The crux of the case, Young said, rests in the June 30, 2015 board meeting called by Lahey while Dunleavy was in Ireland. The participants voted to elect Lahey to chairman of the board and add three additional members even though, Young said, they were reassured that Dunleavys position and duties as parade chairman wouldnt change. The meeting, Young said, went against existing bylaws and was illegally called because only two people are allowed to call a meeting of the board under the bylaws Dunleavy and board member John OConnor. Were claiming that the bylaws were broken in a big and bad way, Young said, alleging that Lahey called the meeting because Dunleavy was negotiating with the WPIX network to broadcast the 2016 parade for free a change that would jeopardize the parades long-standing deal with WNBC, which provided live coverage at a price of $400,000 annually, with the parade covering costs and earning income through advertising sponsorships. Frank Comerford, an executive at WNBCs parent NBCUniversal, grand marshal of the parade in 2012 and a board member, is also named in the lawsuit as a defendant by Dunleavy, who initially brought Comerford into the parade fold but was angered when the networks LGBT group, OUT@NBCUniversal, became the first gay group to march in the parade in 2015. He [Dunleavy] went out to find someone to [broadcast] cheaper, said Young. He found WPIX who would do it for free Within a week Dr. Lahey went to the Irish newspapers in New York City and proclaimed that Mr. Dunleavy was out and he was in. With that, WPIX backed off becausethey said, now were confused, we were about to enter a contract, we see Mr. Dunleavy has been sidelined. Mandell refuted Youngs take on WPIXs position on the parade, pointing out that a network executive provided a sworn affidavit stating that they had not made a final offer to broadcast the parade. Mandell also disputed Dunleavys timeline of events with regard to WPIX. Dunleavys former assistant Carla Chadwick, he pointed out, submitted an affidavit in August [stating] WPIX had no interestplaintiff alleges in September that Dunleavy went to the board and said he had a great final offer from WPIX. Dunleavys charge that Lahey and Comerford are colluding to keep the parade on WNBC is also bogus, Mandell said, given Comerfords long-time membership of the board. Mr. Comerfordhas been on the board for 20 years and NBC broadcast the parade for 20 years without any kind of suggestion [of conflict], Mandell said It should have been made 20 years ago. Young said that after Lahey pulled off [his] coup and claimed leadership of the parade board, he alleged to the Attorney Generals office that Dunleavy, Chadwick and Mike Cassels, a former member of the board who was removed last September after he double-billed the parade for expenses (and paid back the disputed $1,752.86), had stolen parade money. These were very, very serious charges. They were frivolous charges, Young said. As part of [Laheys] way to consolidate power he was using the media. That wasnt enough. He went to the Attorney General. Young says he offered the Attorney Generals office the chance to depose Dunleavy, Cassels and Chadwick, because they are being held out in the community as thieves, he added. Months of investigation went by and nothing happened. Eventually the day before St. Patricks Day the Attorney General announced there was nothing to the allegations Dr. Lahey had made. Mandell strongly disagreed. When Mr. Dunleavy was asked to supply support for various charges that were incurredhe provided no such support. [The board] determined that they had to be reported to protect themselves, especially under the new rules for not for profits, and so they did that. The Attorney Generals office and I spoke to the director of the Charities Bureau said that because the board has taken the action it took in respect to Mr. Dunleavy it took away his ability to use the Amex card, and removed him from the ability to spend money on behalf of the corporation they decided not to investigate. The Attorney Generals office doesnt ever vindicate. They walk away. Mandell said there is a very clear reason why the Attorney General wouldnt absolve Dunleavy, given the nature of expenses incurred on the parade account one category is trips taken by Mr. Dunleavy, Mr. Cassels and Ms. Chadwick, and the other is that Mr. Dunleavy used the corporations Amex card to buy male enhancement drugs, Mandell stated. It is highly unlikely and I dont pretend to speak for the Attorney Generals office but it is highly unlikely with those charges on the corporate card, that the Attorney Generals office actually came out and vindicated Mr. Dunleavy. They did nothing of the sort. Young did not address the male enhancement pill expenditures last year the parades auditors discovered that Dunleavys made five charges of $42.94 each on the parades Amex card in 2012 and 2013 for the enhancement supplement Triverex but argued that many of the bills incurred by Dunleavy, Cassels and Chadwick stemmed from visits to Washington, D.C. to meet with members of the U.S. military who march in the parade. They were invited down there by the joint chiefs of staff, the four star general every year to visit the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and it became a wonderful relationship to the point where all three branches of the military would come up to the parade every year because of the work of these three people who were accused of going down there and spending this money, said Young in justifying the five-figure travel expenses incurred. He added that the trips taken by Dunleavy, Cassels and Chadwick were cheap at the price, given information he learned about the U.S. government which could have charged the parade millions in expenses. The parade was supposed to reimburse the government $700,000 a year for transportation and lodging, and the government was so thrilled with the way John Dunleavy ran the parade that they waived that, Young said of the Department of Defense, which operates under tightening budget constraints each year. The U.S. military command, Young added, is so inflamed by what John Lahey did to John Dunleavy, what he did to Carla Chadwick, what he did to Mike Cassels, they did not come up, to the parade this year. The percentage of people who came up was minimal, Young said. There was a reviewing stand on Fifth Avenue that is reserved for the military and it was basically emptyas long as Dr. Lahey remains chairman, those people are not coming back. The nearly 40 minute hearing on Thursday was attended by Dunleavy and a number of supporters, including John Tully, the attorney who was elected last November to serve with Dunleavys blessing as the new chairman of the boards Parade and Celebration Committee, and John Manning, who has led the efforts on behalf of the parades affiliated organizations to ensure their continued representation. Also at the hearing were Chadwick and Cassels, who Young referred to as a fifth generation parade volunteer who he wants to get back on the board. Young said the parade management is out of control and that Dunleavy and his blue collar supporters are begging the court to take some action to get this parade back to where it was before. He also alleged that Lahey is attempting to stack the board with favorable members with his recent offer to the parades main affiliates of board membership. Mandell pointed out that this years parade was popularly considered by many to be the greatest St. Patricks Day parade in history, the largest participation in historyit was the first parade that allowed two gay groups to march. It was the first parade in a very long time that the mayor of New York marched, he said. Mandell added that Dunleavy, a strident opponent of gay groups taking part in the parade, would essentially bring the parade back in time to a day where gay, lesbian, transgendered and bisexual groups were forbidden from marchingthat would be the end result. Paul Ryans half-hearted endorsement of Donald Trump reminded me of being asked whether you wanted to be hanged or poisoned as a way of leaving the world. Ryan, like so many other leading Republicans, is furiously hedging his bets, damning The Donald with faint praise yet trying to give him a tepid endorsement to keep enough of the Trump camp happy. Irish American Ryan is among the smartest politicians I have ever met, a man who probably could have had the Republican nomination this year if he'd wanted and would probably have won the White House given the obvious weakness of Hillary Clinton. Instead, a wolf in wolfs clothing arrived in the person of Trump to upset the apple tart, as an Irish Prime Minister one time gloriously put it. No question Ryan avoided the enthusiastic endorsement as much as he could. If the following sentences look like an all-out endorsement then I suggest you see your eye surgeon or enroll in Trump University. Its no secret that he and I have our differences, Ryan said. I wont pretend otherwise. And when I feel the need to, Ill continue to speak my mind. But the reality is, on the issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground than disagreement. There are more caveats there than in a lawyers brief. Ryan is doing what many leading Republicans are doing and, as in High Noon, running for the hills while protesting they will help Gary Cooper save the town. Read more: Enda Kenny changes course, calls Trumps comments racist and dangerous Top of that list are Ohio's governor and Republican senator who are currently stammering about whether they will be in Cleveland when the convention is on. Governor John Kasich and Senator Rob Portman look like they are refusing to attend the Republican convention in their own city. What kind of backing is that? The excuses of others are many and varied. I can watch it on television, said Senator Lindsey Graham. I have a tough race, says Senator McCain. We're just waiting for the luminary who will announce his dog ate his airline ticket. All of which is dreadfully unfair on Trump. After all he won over 13 million votes with much more to come in states like California and New Jersey and he deserves the full backing of the party he has so spectacularly grabbed hold of. Ryan had stated that he believes the party platform will be acceptable to all shades of opinion within the party, i.e: white males and females. The color will be provided by Black and Hispanic entertainers no doubt. Why they might even have a Muslim selling kebabs in the aisles. Don't blame Trump. This is on Ryan and Company who never had the foresight to see Trump racing through a gap as wide as the Great Canyon amid the partys core support. They were way too late to stop him. So man up Paul Ryan and accept Trump as the nominee and pin your colors to your party's standard bearer. No more of this wishy-washy Democratic Party like stuff where endorsement statements have the weight of a no-decision. Read more: Americas broken contract between the elite and everyone else Trump should issue a battle cry that those who follow him fully have to sign on the dotted line. The senators and such heading for the hills who refuse to do so should be cast into the badlands where they belong. The party will rise or fall on Donald Trump's campaign mastery, which so far is focused on Republicans' key issues such as border control, Mexican rapists, corrupt Hispanic judges etc. And don't forget transgendered bathrooms, an issue of extraordinary importance to billions round the world, putting the Middle East wars in the shade. Let the Trump march begin with Ryan and company in the phalanx. Peadar Kearney, the man who wrote The Soldiers Song, which was translated into Irish and became the Irish national anthem, had to sue the State for royalties in the 1920s because his application for a military pension had failed and he was living in poverty. Kearney, a veteran of the 1916 Easter Rising, had written the song, with arrangements by Patrick Heeney, for nationalistic-minded young men because he was not happy with the music hall fare they would sing when on route marches, says Prof Colbert Kearney of UCC. Prof Kearney is Peadar Kearney's grandson. The Irish Times reports that Kearney was sent by Tom Clarke to oversee the Howth gun-running in July 1914. During the the 1916 Easter Rising Kearney fought at Jacobs Mills under Thomas McDonagh, but his 1924 application for a military pension was rejected. Consequently, he found himself in dire circumstances. In October 1926, almost two years after his application, Peadar was awarded a pension of 30 a year, backdated to October 1, 1924. This less than 2,000 today would have been a very useful supplement to an income, but as a painter in poor health he was lucky to work half the year. Although the Free State government had decided not to nominate a national anthem, in the mid-1920s, "The Soldiers Song" was adopted by the army for use on special occasions and President of the Executive WT Cosgrave was against replacing it. Despite this and despite 'A Soldiers Song' being played from 1926 onwards at the end of programs on national radio and from 1931 onwards at the end of cinema programs, Peadar received no royalties, said Prof Kearney, emeritus professor of English Literature at UCC. He was forced, together with Michael Heeney whose late brother Patrick had composed the music to sue the government and it was de Valeras 1932 Fianna Fail government that gave the song statutory status in 1932 and bought the copyright, paying each of them 490. Kearney died in 1942 at the age of 58. In 2006, a handwritten draft of his song sold for 760,000. How would Kearney have reacted if he knew? His grandson says: Given he had to sue the state for royalties, Id say he would have looked on it with a wry irony he might even have penned a verse about it!" News / Local by Stephen Jakes Harare Residents Trust has claimed that it has established that when suspended Harare Mayor Bernard Manyenyeni proceeded to offer James Mushore the position of town clerk the other candidates who were interviewed for the same post were kept guessing what was their performance in the interviews."As the HRT continuous on its path to expose all the challenges and opportunities in the recruitment of a new Town Clerk, information that we have now gathered is that while the Mayor of Harare, Councillor Manyenyeni proceeded to offer Mushore the position of Town Clerk, the other two candidates Jacob Kudzayi Mutisi and Godfrey Pasipanodya who came second and third respectively during the interview process, have no idea how they performed during the process besides reading the results announced in the media," said the trust."The two are waiting to be invited by the Local Government Board in order to complete the recruitment process for the Town Clerk. The HRT is expecting that the City of Harare should submit the names of the three candidates who scored the highest during the interview process, including Mr James Mushore to the Local Government Board to complete the recruitment process."The trust said the recruitment of the Town Clerk, the Chamber Secretary, heads of departments and their deputies, are guided in terms of Sections 131, 132, 133 and 134 of the Urban Councils Act (Chapter 29.15), which, which has the backing of the Constitution in terms of Section 265 (1) (a), (b), (c) and (d)."All local government institutions should not work in isolation with each other. As the matter intensifies, and Town House does not have a substantive Town Clerk, the HRT, on behalf of its constituents, can no longer wait for long for the City Council to make a determination, on this matter, and will have to act on the advice of legal advisors," said the trust."The HRT is pursuing this matter, and ensure that the position of Town Clerk is not politicised to the extent that politicians hold the citizens at ransom while service delivery continues to plummet. We also urge the three candidates Mushore, Mutisi and Pasipanodya to de4mand that the process be completed fairly and transparently as required in terms of the law to end the confusion engulfing Town House."The trust said Christopher Mbanga, Acting Mayor insists that Mrs Josephine Ncube, who is the Chamber Secretary, is the Acting Town Clerk (Herald, 2 June 2016, Mushore torches storm at Town House)."Similarly, Saviour Kasukuwere, the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing is on record saying the Government was not against Mushore's appointment, but he must be subjected to the necessary vetting processes in compliance with the Urban Councils Act," said the trust."We rescinded their decision in the first instance which related to the illegal hiring of the Town Clerk. The status quo remains. Mushore has no business at Town House," Kasukuwere said.One of the candidates said: "Why is the Mayor unwilling to send the names of the top three candidates as required by the law to the Local Government Board? We are prepared to be subjected to the scrutiny of the Local Government Board, because any one of us can be appointed as Town Clerk," Update 6.29pm: The jury in the longest-running criminal trial in the States history has gone home for the long weekend and will resume its deliberations on Tuesday. Irish Life & Permanents former CEO Denis Casey is the only man left in the dock on a conspiracy to defraud charge. Update 4pm: Former banker Peter Fitzpatrick is now a free man after found not guilty of conspiracy to defraud. There were gasps from the public gallery when the foreman said the jurors had found Mr Fitzpatrick not guilty after almost 47 hours of deliberations. Peter Fitzpatrick The former finance director of Irish Life & Permanent, who was sitting beside his co-accused Denis Casey, the banks former CEO, said something under his breath before patting his former boss on the leg. He left the court house without stopping to speak to the media only to say that he was relieved with the jurys decision. The jury is continuing its deliberations in relation to Mr Casey. Update 2.56pm: Former Irish Life & Permanent banker Peter Fitzpatrick has been found not guilty of conspiracy to defraud. He was one of four men accused of engaging in a dishonest scheme to mislead the public about Anglo Irish Banks health in 2008. Former Anglo executives Willie McAteer and John Bowe were found guilty of the same charge on Wednesday. The jury acquitted Mr Fitzpatrick after almost 47 hours of deliberations. The jury has resumed its deliberations in relation to his former CEO Denis Casey. Update 11.57am: The jury in a conspiracy to defraud trial has been told the court will accept majority verdicts in relation to two former Irish Life & Permanent bankers. Just after 11.40am, Judge Martin Nolan told them the court would accept majority verdicts in relation to Irish Life & Permanents former CEO Denis Casey and its former finance director Peter Fitzpatrick. They are accused of taking part in a dishonest scheme to mislead the public about the strength of Anglo Irish Banks corporate deposits in 2008 through a series of transactions amounting to 7.2bn. An enlarged jury of 15 was sworn in to hear this trial back in January. 13 heard all of the evidence, but only 12 were sent out to consider verdicts. A female juror became unwell last week so the deliberations have continued with just 11. Update 11.46am: The sentence hearing of two former Anglo Irish Bank executives found guilty of conspiring to defraud has been set for July 25. Willie McAteer and John Bowe were convicted of taking part in a dishonest scheme aimed at misleading the public about Anglos health in 2008. John Bowe and Willie McAteer Earlier: Two former Anglo Irish Bank executives are due back in court this morning after they were convicted of conspiring to defraud earlier this week. Meanwhile, the jurors will resume their deliberations in relation to two former Irish Life & Permanent executives charged with the same offence. The financial markets were in turmoil in 2008 and Anglo Irish Bank was struggling to secure funding. Between March and September 2008, its then finance director Willie McAteer and head of capital markets John Bowe engaged in a dishonest scheme which ultimately misled investors and depositors about the strength of its corporate deposits. They were convicted on Wednesday and remanded on continuing bail until today, when a sentence hearing date is likely to be set. Former Irish Life & Permanent executives Denis Casey and Peter Fitzpatrick authorised 7.2bn in so-called back-to-back transactions with Anglo but say they expected Anglo to account for them properly. The jury is approaching its 45th hour of deliberations and will return to Dublin Circuit Criminal Court at 10am. A man has been arrested in Dublin in connection with an alleged fraud on an Italian man. Gardai say more than 300,000 was involved in the transaction. The Italian man is based in Italy. A seven-year-old Japanese boy has been found, nearly a week after his parents left him in a forest as punishment for misbehaving. His father has apologised to rescuers who have been looking for the boy - Yamato Tanooka - for six days. His father said he was sorry for what he called his "excessive behaviour", and that it caused such pain to his son. The little boy was found by a soldier during a military drill, and is said by police to be in relatively good health. Yamato, pictured before he went missing. The tearful father promised to make a better job of raising him. Yamato was found unharmed in an army training ground hut this morning, following a massive search by police and troops on Hokkaido. The case sparked a nationwide debate about parental discipline after Yamato's parents said they made him get out of their car on Saturday as punishment for throwing rocks at people and cars while playing at a river earlier in the day. His parents said they returned several minutes later, but he had vanished, in an area where bears are known to live, on Japan's northernmost main island. The boy was found by a soldier in a military drill area about three miles from where he disappeared and identified himself as Yamato, police said. A member of the self-defence forces shows the mattress which seven-year-old Yamato was using insidide a building in a military drill area in Shikabe town, on the northernmost main island of Hokkaido. Picture: AP Yamato told police he had been in the drill area for several days after walking alone in the forest. Appearing outside the hospital where the boy was taken after he was found, his father Takayuki Tanooka said: "We have raised him with love all along. "I really didn't think it would come to that. We went too far. I thought we were doing it for my son's own good." Asked what he had told his son, Mr Tanooka, fighting back tears, said: "I told him I was so sorry for causing him such pain." The boy suffered some dehydration and was getting an intravenous drip, but besides some minor scratches on his arms and feet, no serious risks to his health were found, a doctor who had examined him told Kyodo News. Ms Merkel cited trade and the single market as key reasons for the UK to stay in the 28-nation bloc, backing the economic arguments put forward by British prime minister David Cameron and supported by bodies such as the IMF. Campaigners for leaving argue that the UK can continue doing business freely with the EU and reach favourable free-trade deals with the rest of the world once out of the bloc. For those coming from the outside, and weve had lots of negotiations with third-party countries, we would never make the same compromises, or achieve the same good results, for states that dont take on the responsibility and costs of the single market, Ms Merkel said at a news conference in Berlin yesterday. One nation alone will never be able to achieve such good results. Ms Merkel risks a British backlash as she adds her support for staying in to that of US president Barack Obama and other world leaders. Mr Cameron is attempting to regain the initiative after polls in recent days suggested a swing to the Leave campaign, which has moved its focus to cutting immigration. Its in all of our interest, but also in British interests, to say that were putting all of our weight into a negotiation as part of the EU, Ms Merkel said, referring to efforts to forge trade agreements. The result of such co-operative action will be qualitatively better for the people in the UK than if that happens from the outside. Unemployment has been gradually receding in Spain since a recession ended nearly three years ago, but many jobseekers are still struggling to find work, fuelling frustrations among voters. Spain returns to the ballot box on June 26 after an inconclusive December election stripped Mr Rajoys centre-right Peoples Party (PP) of its absolute majority. Opinions polls show the vote could produce another political stalemate, forcing parties to once again try and form a coalition. The number of Spaniards registering as unemployed last month fell by 3% from April, dipping below the 4m threshold for the first time in six years to 3.89m, data from the labour ministry showed yesterday. Nearly 120,000 fewer people signed on as jobless, the biggest drop for a month of May on record. Job creation, meanwhile, progressed at a slightly slower pace than a year ago but was still strong, growing by over 1% from an already solid April. One in six jobs was in hotels and restaurants. Spains dysfunctional labour market played a major role in Decembers political upset, as support for upstart parties advocating stronger workers rights or an overhaul of job contracts fragmented the vote. Mass lay-offs during a six-year downturn left Spain with the second-highest unemployment rate in Europe. Though it has fallen sharply since 2013 it still stands at 21% of the workforce. News / National by Freeman Razemba and Innocent Ruwende Namibian Minister of Information and Communication Technology Mr Tjekero Tweya has hailed President Mugabe's education policy, saying that it has managed to keep Zimbabwe afloat despite economic challenges.Speaking after touring Zimpapers and ZBC, Mr Tweya urged Zimbabweans to capitalise on their education to fight the economic challenges."One thing that President Mugabe did is that he invested in education for all Zimbabweans. That is a strategic thing and I think it is his life time commitment," said Mr Tweya."Believe me, I have been around sometime. Had it not been for that (education) Zimbabwe with all these challenges would have not been where it is today. This is why we still have three to four million Zimbabweans out there," he said.He said some of the successful small to medium enterprises in Namibia were owned by Zimbabweans."The education that you have, you must capitalise on it."Minister Tweya also urged African governments to make information accessible to their citizens to enable them to make informed decisions, saying that they needed to know what the governments they voted into power were doing."If they are not happy after five years, they will make the same informed decision. But if they do not have access to information in terms of the government programme, it will be difficult for them to judge the performance of the governments they have voted into power," he said."Therefore, we must do everything we can to make that information accessible to them," he said.Minister Tweya first toured Herald House in the Harare CBD before he went to Natprint and Star FM. At Herald House, he was briefed about the history of Zimpapers by the group chief executive Mr Pikirayi Deketeke.Mr Deketeke gave a brief summary of the 12 newspapers, two magazines, two radio stations and a television station owned by the stable.He said in the past newspaper companies were not allowed by law to venture into electronic media.He said after the laws were changed, Zimpapers was the first to own a commercial radio, Star FM."We have done well and we are seeing a lot of opportunity in the electronic media. We have looked for opportunities and we will continue looking for opportunities," he said.The Deputy Minister for Information, Communication and Technology and Courier Services Win Mlambo said he was delighted by Mr Tweya's visit as this would strengthen relations between the two countries."We don't have the same set up here as in Namibia, but we explore certain areas that we feel we might work together. We are very certain that we can work together and we will work together in a number of areas," he said. While crude prices dipped after yesterdays meeting, there was little of the rancor that punctuated last Decembers summit. The group was also able to appoint a new secretary-general Nigerias Mohammed Barkindo something it could not agree on last year. All members see the same market fundamentals and have been highly co-operative, new Saudi oil minister Khalid Al-Falih told reporters in Vienna. Irans Bijan Namdar Zanganeh reported very good unity, while his Nigerian counterpart said relations had improved substantially and even Venezuela a strong supporter of freezing output said the meeting was very positive. Saudi Arabia had floated the idea of restoring a group production ceiling, though members decided it was not necessary now. Opec needs more time to come up with an output cap, outgoing secretary-general Abdalla El-Badri said after the meeting, adding that it is hard to find a target when Iranian production is rising and significant Libyan volumes are halted. There was far less animosity between players who did not see eye-to-eye the last few meetings, said Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at consultant Energy Aspects. The fact the group managed to elect a new secretary- general after many failed attempts also points towards a small measure of co-operation. Yet divisions remain. While Saudi Arabia had shown willingness to mend divisions with cash-strapped members demanding a new group ceiling, Iran said it would only support individual country quotas that would be difficult to agree in a single meeting. Iran rejected any cap on output as it restores volumes after sanctions were lifted in January. The countrys refusal to participate in a production freeze proposed earlier this year prompted Saudi Arabia to block a deal between Opec and Russia in April. Although Opec regularly ignores its own output targets, and there was no suggestion anyone would cut production yesterday, even a token gesture could have helped to boost prices. Brent crude dropped as much as 1.8% and was down 0.4% at $49.54 a barrel late trading. Yesterdays summit follows a recovery in oil to almost $50 a barrel after depressed prices took their toll on supplies. That suggests Opecs decision to maintain output amid a global glut is paying off, with higher-cost producers cutting back. The CSO figures from its Live Register publication show that JobBridge accounted for only 4,015, or 5%, of all the 77,885 people participating in all State-funded training programmes in April. The so-called activation programmes are designed to help people from slipping into long-term unemployment and tackle the huge level of long-term unemployment that still scars the country following the construction and economic collapse eight years ago. The 77,885 people on the activation programmes are not counted as unemployed and therefore do not show up in the countrys official 7.8% rate of unemployment. Amid high economic growth, the Irish unemployment rate has fallen, but still remains at an elevated level compared with many eurozone countries. The official unemployment rate would be higher if the large numbers on activation programmes were counted as people seeking work. Mr Varadkar has said that the JobBridge scheme, which was designed to help people get experience during the worst of the economic slump, will be replaced in September. Under the terms of the JobBridge scheme, participants retain social welfare payments and receive an additional weekly payment of 52. However, the latest CSO Live Register figures show the 4,015 participants on JobBridge is dwarfed by most other activation programmes. In April, there were 21,641 people on Back to Education courses; 22,938 people on Community Employment Schemes; 11,996 people on Back to Work payments; and 6,802 people on Fas and Solas full-time training schemes. The total number participating in all the activation programmes had fallen to 77,885 in April from 79,906 participants in March, and was also down from the 88,398 people on the programmes in April 2015. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation Development said earlier this week that the Government should prioritise reducing unemployment through activation programmes as a way of spreading the benefits of increased prosperity across society. A study of almost 140 senior IT decisionmakers in Irish businesses showed that six in 10 businesses do not understand the regulations governing the transfer of users data between the EU and US. Safe Harbour is the arrangement that set down rules for the transfer of data to the US. It was put in place in 2000 but subsequently invalidated by the European Court of Justice in October 2015. The ruling has particular relevance to Ireland given the number of US multinational tech companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google based here. Some 60% of respondents to the research undertaken by data centre company Equinix claim not to understand the regulations that are currently in place. The figure rises to 80% for overseas companies with operations in Ireland. Earlier this week, the waters were muddied even further when the European Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli criticised Safe Harbours replacement. The newly established Privacy Shield pact agreed between the EU and US in February was described as not robust enough by Mr Buttarelli. Under the agreement, the US was to give written commitments that EU citizens data would not be subject to mass surveillance while the US was also to establish an ombudsman to handle complaints. I appreciate the efforts made to develop a solution to replace Safe Harbour, but the Privacy Shield as it stands is not robust enough to withstand future legal scrutiny, Mr Buttarelli said, adding that significant improvements would be needed. Despite the confusion over data transfer regulations, Irish data-protection laws are seen as strong and are increasingly acting a pull-factor for multinationals. According to Equinix Ireland managing director, Maurice Mortell: Ireland is continuing to showcase itself as a prime location to host data and our data protection laws are adding to that story. The exchequer figures for the first five months of the year continue to show it takes in much more in taxes than anticipated when Finance Minister Michael Noonan delivered his budget late last year. Tax receipts surged to 18.83bn, up 1.55bn, or 9%, in the year, as the exchequer took in 774m, or 4.3%, more in revenues than it anticipated for the first five months to the end of May. With Vat receipts continuing to underperform, the Department of Finance also cautioned a significant portion of the bounty was due to one-off payments in corporation tax. Corporation tax revenues for a second year are outperforming by a huge amountby 484m, while Vat payments rose during the May Vat payments month and making up some ground after a worrying underperformance earlier this year. Vat receipts were up 5.5% in the year to 6bn, but still lag by 2 percentage points the amount the exchequer had anticipated the taxes would provide. The returns were robust and strong, said a Department of Finance spokesman, though the huge outperformance in corporate tax receipts were bolstered by over 200m in overpayments. Firms are likely to seek refunds later in the year. On the flip side of Government finances, the expenditure figures showed net overall spending, at over 16bn, was 100m less than anticipated at this stage of the year. The Department of Health was the only one of 16 spending departments to have overspent its budget, by 113m. David McNamara, an economist at Davy Stockbrokers, said the Government was likely to beat its too conservative budget deficit target this year, even as income tax and Vat receipts were not as strong as could have been hoped. Income taxes raised 7.44bn by the end of May, up 5.7% in the year, but exactly on target. Corporate taxes totalled almost 1.67bn up by more than 9% from last year, and 484m, or a huge 41%, more than anticipated. Following the surge in GDP growth of 7.8% last year, the Organisation for Cooperation and Development earlier this week projected the Irish economy would grow 5% this year and by 3.4% in 2017. However, the growth in factory output slowed dramatically in May, according to the Investec Ireland survey of purchasing managers published on Wednesday, as sterling weighed on Irish exports. That may be a herald of more difficult times ahead, particularly if the UK were to vote the leave the EU on June 23. Alan McQuaid, chief economist at Merrion Capital, said more good news should be delivered later today when S&P Global Ratings the new name for Standard & Poors announces whether it has upgraded credit rating for Ireland. Irelands strategy in recent years has been to underpromise and overdeliver on the budgetary front, one which has been very successful in helping bring Irish government bond yields down to record-low levels, said Mr McQuaid. As long as the minority government sticks to this strategy then market funding costs should remain low. And recently, it decided that pesky US shale oil drillers should be killed off by driving oil prices lower. Now, Saudis sovereign wealth fund is investing $3.5bn (3.1bn) in Uber Technologies. The taxi-hailing apps strategy will have resonated with Riyadhs policymakers: Annihilate the competition by slashing prices. Why else would Uber need all that cash? Following a succession of gargantuan funding rounds, Uber has more than $11bn in cash and convertible debt. But in theory Uber is an asset-light business. Unlike Tesla, say, it does not need factories. Uber drivers bring their own vehicles to the party, even if the company helps finance many of them. However, having lots of money allows Uber to do lots of marketing and, importantly, to subsidise cheap fares and seize market share. A price war in China is costing Uber more than $1bn a year, the company has conceded. Of course, Saudis Prince Alwaleed Bin Talals investment fund has also plowed at least $100m into Lyft, Ubers ride-sharing rival. So the kingdom can not be accused of not sharing the love. Still, thats chump change compared to the Saudi Public Investment Funds backing of Uber. Being a monopoly is the holy grail of Silicon Valley start-ups (tech investor Peter Thiel thinks competition is for losers). Ubers $62.5bn valuation, propped up by the Saudi investment, only begins to make sense if you think it will ultimately become one. The trouble is, much like Saudis oil strategy which has arguably done more long-term harm to Opec than to the prospects of North American shale Ubers bid for monopoly status will probably fail. Uber is already facing fierce competition from Lyft in the US, from MyTaxi in Germany, from Apple-backed Didi Chuxing in China, and from Ola in India. Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has confirmed that, in the first three months of this year, 2,325 people have been committed to jail for the non-payment of fines. The rate of people being committed to prison for the non-payment of fines this year is only marginally slower than 2015, when 9,883 people were jailed across the 12 month period. The numbers jailed in 2015 represented a 10% increase on the 8,979 in 2014. That was, in turn, an increase on the 8,121 jailed in 2013. However, the vast majority of those committed to prison for the non-payment of fines were only being brought to a prison for a few hours or less before being released. This was highlighted by Independent TDs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly, who were brought by gardai to Limerick prison last December for a few hours for the non-payment of fines totalling 4,000 for breaching the perimeter at Shannon airport before being released again. Independent TDs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly The cost of transporting the two to jail and processing them at the prison was put at an estimated 8,000, excluding the cost of investigating the offences and prosecuting the case over two days at Ennis District Court. Recently, Judge Patrick Duran, who imposed the fine on the two, expressed his frustration with the system when dealing with a woman convicted of two public order offences after being found drunk by gardai. All I can do is impose a fine, he said. At Kilrush District Court last month, Judge Durcan said: If she doesnt pay the fine? What happens is this: She is conveyed to Limerick Prison by State car as many others are and she goes and has afternoon tea with the governor, as other people have done in the past. She will then be released and sent home. In her written Dail reply to Sinn Fein TD Jonathan OBrien, Ms Fitzgerald said: The Fines (Payment and Recovery) Act 2014 was commenced on January 11, 2016. Sinn Fein TD Jonathan OBrien The new approach to the payment of fines means that various provisions including payment by instalment and attachment of earnings will take effect in stages during 2016. The sequencing of the different payment options indicates that it will be a full year before a clear picture emerges as to the operation and effect of the new system, the impact it has on the volume of court business, as well as on the roles of other agencies including the Probation Service. While the Courts Service is compiling statistics, there is limited data available at this early stage; the figures do however indicate that the take up of the option to pay a fine by instalments is working well and continues to rise. Figures compiled by RTEs Prime Time programme showed that, in the past 10 years, there have been more than 130 gangland murders which have not been solved, and, from 1980 to the present day, the killers in 240 such murders were never caught. The programme, broadcast last night, featured a number of relatives who told of how the thought of their loved ones killers still being on the loose added to their grief. News / National by Patrick Chitumba VICE President Emmerson Mnangagwa has urged Zimbabweans to embrace bond notes that will be introduced in October.Addressing Zanu-PF supporters gathered at Sino Cement Company in Gweru yesterday, Mnangagwa said the bond notes would boost internal trade, stop the externalisation of funds and ease the cash crunch.The VP, who is on a two-day tour of manufacturing industries in the Midlands province, said the bond notes were also aimed at reviving the economy.He said as the currencies of countries in the region were depreciating in value, everyone was chasing after the United States dollar, thereby empting them from Zimbabwe."We want our economy to get out of the doldrums. We have been under the illegally imposed sanctions for the past 16 years which affected productivity leading to the closure of companies. As a result, we ended up dumping our Zimbabwe dollar for the multi-currency regime. But because we don't print the US dollar, all Sadc countries don't have the US dollar and they are coming to raid Zimbabwe. Even those who trade in tomatoes come here and get the US dollar. If we sell anything in Zambia, we get kwachas, in Botswana its pulas and that has resulted in a shortage of the US dollar in the economy," VP Mnangagwa said."In February 2009, we had the US dollar, Euro and the Pound but as time progressed, US dollar gained value and everyone now wants the US dollar."VP Mnangagwa said a bond note would have the same value as the US dollar."So the government with a $200 million facility is introducing bond notes. They will be equivalent or backed by the $200m loan facility. So if they start circulating, they won't be stolen or externalised since the notes don't work outside the country. The bond notes will have the same value as the US dollar. They will be banked in the same account as the US dollar. So the coming bonds notes should be embraced by all Zimbabweans as they will benefit everyone," said the VP.He said it was high time Zimbabweans work together and accept that solutions for economic recovery will come from within.VP Mnangagwa said the economy was on the recovery path and some companies such as Sino-Zimbabwe Cement Company were now operating at about 70 percent capacity utilisation while Bata Shoe Company was at 85 percent."We also have Unki Mine that is investing $120 million in a new smelter. We have other investments coming into the country and we are in the right direction," he said. The Central Bank yesterday confirmed the board of Rush Credit Union Limited has appointed an external firm of accountants to carry out an independent financial review on its behalf. The Central Bank is aware that the review is taking place and is working with the credit union. Members should continue to use the credit unions services as normal, a statement read. The Irish League of Credit Unions said members of the Rush Credit Union should be assured it is fully insured to deal with such matters. The credit union has identified an issue, a spokesperson said. As the matter is currently being investigated we cannot comment in any great detail other than to say that the credit union is working extremely hard to ensure that this matter is dealt with swiftly. The credit union has written directly to members on this issue. We would like to reassure members that no credit union funds will be affected by the incident and that the credit union is fully insured to deal with such matters. Operations at Rush Credit Union have not been disrupted and members can do business with the credit union in the usual way. Rush Credit Union said it appointed Grant Thornton to carry out an independent review last February following the identification by the board of a transaction requiring examination. It added: The external review process is nearly complete and a report is being prepared for the board. The Central Bank and the Garda Siochana were informed of the situation some time ago. Limerick is marketed as the Riverside City and the local tourism industry has warned that the closure to boats will hit visitor numbers. Waterways Ireland issued a marine notice on April 25 that the river, from Limerick City to Parteen Weir, was closed to navigation, due to infrastructural deficiencies caused by winter storms and flooding. It does not have the money for the remedial work. Waterways Ireland said the floating breakwater at the entrance to the Abbey River, in Limerick, is no longer in place to protect vessels from striking the fixed weir. Also, strong currents and eddies are making navigation dangerous. A safety inspection of other, damaged floating pontoons, further upstream, is to be carried out when water levels and flows permit. Users have been advised to stay clear, until a further marine notice is issued. Remedial works have yet to take place and the waterway will remain closed to all marine traffic during the peak summer season. Sailing clubs wishing to access the Shannon may miss completions and events around the west coast, as they cannot pass through the closed stretch. A major plan to boost marine tourism on the Shannon, and in Limerick, was launched last year by then Education Minister, Jan OSullivan. The plans, drafted by Limerick marine enthusiasts to benefit local tourism, heritage and education, were submitted to Waterways Ireland. Boatman Pat Lysaght said: Limerick is effectively landlocked and, until these issues are rectified, we will continue to lose out. Calling for Minister ODonovan to immediately intervene, Cllr Emmett OBrien said the closure of the waterway means that no boats can sail from Limerick City to Killaloe. He said: This may have a serious impact on local tourism and is contrary to all lip service being paid to Limerick being a riverside city. We need a clear and accurate response from Waterways Ireland, and Limerick City and County Council, as to why this has occurred, and our local minister for state for tourism must intervene to ensure this navigation route does not remain closed. This follows its recommendation that the drug not be funded by the HSE at its current annual cost of 159,000 per patient. However, Jillian McNulty, a CF campaigner who has been taking the drug for three years as part of a trial, says the health service would actually save money by funding the drug, even at the current cost. They are saying it is too expensive but last year, while on Orkambi, I did not have a single hospital admission whereas before being put on it my life revolved around hospitals, said Ms McNulty. At one stage, I was on an intravenous antibiotic at home for two weeks at a cost of 24,000. Without Orkambi, I could be in hospital for a minimum of six weeks every few months and taking three or four IV antbiotics. It does not take a genius to work out that putting me on Orkambi actually saved the HSE money. Michael Barry, head of the NCP, said yesterday he is hopeful that the HSE will be successful in its negotiations with Vertex Pharmaceuticals, the company that manufactures the drug, to significantly cut its cost. Prof Barry said the NCPE has a good track record in talks with drugs companies. We dont put a price on life, but we believe the manufacturers got the price wrong here, he said. The price is too high; we need a five-fold reduction. The NCPE said the drug would cost around 400,000 over five years, at the current price. As a result, it advised that the HSE should not cover the drug under State schemes and that the price would have be lower than 30,000 a year, per patient, to be cost-effective. Philip Watt, CEO of Cystic Fibrosis Ireland, said CF patients in Ireland were dismayed by the ruling from the NCPE and he urged the Government to clarify that it will enter negotiations with Vertex to bring about a major price reduction. Cystic Fibrosis Ireland welcomed the fact that the positive health impact of Orkambi is recognised by the NCPE. We support a fairer deal for this drug but it will be a travesty if this drug is not provided to our patients or if there is a significant delay in providing this drug, said Mr Watt. Ms McNulty said that Orkambi, which targets the cause of CF, had transformed her life and reduced greatly her hospital admissions. For the past three years, Ms McNulty, from Longford, has been attending the research centre at St Vincents Hospital in Dublin where the drug trial is conducted. It allows me to live as normal a life is possible, she said. However, with just five weeks supply of the Orkambi in her possession, she is worried she may no longer have access to it. Even the research centre doesnt seem to know if I and others on the trial will still be able to get Orkambi. We are in a limbo situation. It allows me to live a more normal life Life for Jillian McNulty, a cystic fibrosis (CF) survivor, has revolved around hospitals for the past nine years when she became very ill as a result of the hereditary condition. Jillian McNulty: Had spent up to nine months per year in hospital. Her brother Derek died from CF at the age of five, before she was born, but even though she also had the disease, it did not affect her until well into adulthood: I only started to get really ill at the age of 31, she says. Up to then, I was pretty healthy which is unusual for someone with CF. 2005 was Jillians annus horribilis. She was made redundant from her job at a radio station in Longford, having worked there for 12 years. Within weeks, CF struck with a vengeance. Imagine living your life knowing that, no matter how well you look after yourself, no matter how compliant you are, that the disease that lives inside your body is slowly but surely killing you, she says. Imagine waking up at night almost drowning in your own blood thats spouting from your lungs or imagine waking up choking and coughing so hard you almost black out. From then until starting a trial of the groundbreaking drug Okambi, she would spend at least six weeks in hospital every few months, on intravenous antibiotics. Overall, she spent up to nine months in hospital every year. Okambi transformed her life and reduced her hospital admissions. My lung functions had dropped from 59% to 39% the day that I started taking Okambi, says Jillian. It doesnt work for everyone but it did for me and it allows me to live a more normal life. Jillian, from Longford, has been taking the drug for three years as part of a trial at St Vincents Hospital research centre and she has no doubt that Okambi can be a lifesaver for some people with CF. I started on Okambi in July 2013, she says. Within a few days, I could sense small things changing. My body temperature started to drop. There were other differences, too. Before taking it, on hot days my body would produce salt on my hands and face. It was awful, like sand. But that has all gone now, even when I go out running, which I love. The big changes came after about six months when Jillian began to feel well again and last year, for the first time in eight years, she didnt have a single hospital admission: That was incredible. But she has not been so lucky of late as she contracted a double dose of swine flu and influenza A. Her 40th birthday, on May 3 of this year, was spent in St Vincents Hospital and she recalls the bitter-sweet celebration. I woke up physically drained, exhausted and weak but emotionally I was extremely happy as I had defied the odds, she says. I had shown CF what I thought of it by reaching 40 years old. The staff here in St Vincents were amazing, they decorated my room in birthday banners, balloons and my favourite colour pink. The nurses and staff barged in singing happy birthday to me with a fabulous birthday cake. She has since recovered but is worried she may no longer have access to Okambi. The decision not to fund it was a bitter blow. I am devastated that my life and the lives of up to 60% of CF patients in Ireland means so little, says Jillian. While a report of experts who considered the options for the past two years is about to be published, he said he is committed more immediately to improving access for students from disadvantaged backgrounds and making better use of existing funding. The warnings by higher education bosses that the quality of what institutions do is diminishing due to financial shortfalls has again been reflected in the most recent international rankings. Since 2007, the total funding for the average student has fallen more than one fifth by about 10,000 a year, even though most students now pay fees of 3,000 each up from 1,500 in 2011 unless they qualify for a grant. The report of the group chaired by Peter Cassells, which consulted widely before coming up with a range of funding proposals, is to be the deliberated by the Oireachtas education committee. The minister sees this plan, set out in the programme for government, as the best approach in the current political climate. But he acknowledges the problems that need to be resolved. Its a bit like health, the Government is going to need a framework for the long term, said Mr Bruton. But that doesnt mean we cant do things in the short term within the higher education arena to seek to deliver improvements, while still needing to reach a longer term consensus about funding models. Although he has not hinted whether he prefers a bigger increase in public funding for the sector, or higher fees for students in return for the increased earning potential for college graduates, he did refer to one of the known options set out by the Cassells report. In the past Fine Gael has not been opposed to a loan model but thats now clearly open for everyone to discuss, he said. The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) and some political parties strongly oppose this model, in use in other countries, saying even delaying fee repayments after graduates start working is a deterrent to participation by some groups. Mr Bruton accepted past moves to find a way of funding higher education have failed due to political opposition.However, he hopes consensus can be built. Its one of the things that a number of the parties in the Dail have said they are up for, to have that long-term look, he told reporters yesterday. And in a minority situation every party comes to the table with equal value, I think thats the merit of this. It isnt that everything I say will be assumed to be wrong on the other side, nor vice-versa, we have to get away from that sort of politics. Mr Bruton said he would be seeking new investment in the sector from fellow ministers at the Cabinet. However, in addition to TDs and senators, he will also seek talks with employers about what contribution they can make. The French woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has claimed she came to Ireland to protect her son. However, French authorities say she is wanted for child abduction and for failing to deliver the boy to his father, who is entitled to joint custody. The boy is now 17 years old. At the High Court yesterday, the womans legal representative Michael Lynn SC told Justice Aileen Donnelly that the boy came to Ireland willingly and that although there may be a court order regarding custody in France, this should have no bearing on the boys right to travel with his mother. Mr Harris said he wants all EU countries to join together in future negotiations with drug companies to prevent a repeat of the Orkambi drug crisis. The HSE and Government said it will not provide the vital cystic fibrosis drug to hundreds of patients whose lives are at risk, due to the 158,000-per-person cost, but Mr Harris said people receiving the medication now will continue to do so as negotiations continue. Pat ODwyer, 52, of 2 Wolfetone Place, Thurles, Co Tipperary, pleaded guilty to a charge of extortion where he demanded 10,000. ODwyer sent his sister-in-law three cards containing letters and naked pictures of a woman in various positions and he told her in what was an entirely made-up claim that her husband was having an affair with the woman featured in the sexually explicit pictures. ODwyer told his sister-in-law that he had a phial of her husbands semen and a pair of his boxer shorts which he would send her when he got 10,000 in cash. Ray Boland said the accused was, according to medical reports, suffering from paranoia, if not psychosis, at the time of the crime, possibly as a result of a series of tragedies in his life that occurred around the same time seven years ago. Judge David Riordan said the victim impact statement made for harrowing reading. Detective Sergeant Sean Leahy said the first letter sent anonymously by ODwyer arrived at the business address of his sister-in-law, Ria Burgoyne in Midleton, Co Cork, on October 9 last. It was contained in a large Valentine-type card in a large red envelope. The handwritten letter gave details of sexual activities which he claimed were going on between her husband and the naked woman in the photographs. A second letter sent soon afterwards and in the same handwriting and with numerous spelling errors contained a demand for 10,000 in exchange for a phial of her husbands semen, which was allegedly frozen, and a pair of his boxer shorts. A third letter gave details of where to drop the money at a shed not far from the injured partys home in Whitegate. Gardai set up surveillance there. A man arrived in the shed; gardai moved in; he ran but he was caught and arrested. It was Pat ODwyer and he was wearing a sock over one of his hands which he later said was to keep his fingerprints off the money. As for why ODwyer came up with what his barrister Ray Boland agreed was a bizarre and disturbing plan, there was a skewed logic where he blamed his sister-in-law for the failure of his marriage to her sister. He thought that if he destroyed her marriage then his own wife might return to him because any difficulties in their marriage would then pale by comparison to those of the injured party. Ms Burgoyne who was in Cork Circuit Criminal Court supported by her husband, wept as she began to read her victim impact statement. Judge Riordan read the report privately instead and commented that it made for harrowing reading. Mr Boland asked for an adjournment of sentencing until next Thursday, June 9, for a more extensive psychiatric report to be prepared, which was agreed. Mr Boland said that seven years ago a son of the accused died. Both his parents also died around that time and his business was burnt out. He went on to suffer paranoia and might have had a psychotic disorder. ODwyer had practised as an energy therapist from a premises in Thurles and one of his clients was a sex addict. The accused got the idea for the blackmail while listening to the patient talking about sex addiction. Mr Tyndall is head of the Office of the Ombudsman, the place to address complaints if you feel you have been unfairly treated by a public body. Last year, the office received a total of 3,641 complaints from the public, which was up 3% compared with 2014. There is a reluctance to complain in Ireland. I contrast a piece of work that was done in England about health complaints, where staff within the health service, who were complaining, were advantaged in their treatment. Whereas there is a strong public perception in Ireland that if you complain youll be disadvantaged in your treatment. Thats a cultural difference, said Mr Tyndall yesterday at the launch of his offices annual report. He stated that the public need to know that they are allowed complain and that they know where to bring their grievances. First of all, we have to make it clear to people that theyre welcome to complain. One of the things were doing with the HSE is trying to get the you said, we did-type poster visible across the health service, so there is evidence both to members of the public and to staff that complaining brings about change. We want people to see what difference it can make to complain. While there was a 3% increase in complaints to his office last year, there had been an increase of 11% in 2014 compared with 2013. Before a member of the public can bring a complaint to the Office of the Ombudsman they must have taken all reasonable steps to resolve the matter with the public body at hand. The civil service accounted for the greatest number of complaints in 2015, with 38.4% of cases. Local authorities accounted for 27.6% of complaint cases, and the HSE and Tusla accounted for 17.4% of cases. Mr Tyndall said these figures are consistent with the volume of interactions that these bodies have with service users. In August 2015, private nursing homes came under the remit of the office. Mr Tyndall said that they all worked alongside his office in establishing a system for complaints. His office is in the process of setting up an online portal for complaints against public bodies. CASE ONE: Leaving Cert student with Aspergers denied a reader A number of Leaving Certificate students, that were denied assistance during their State exams, appealed successfully to the Office of the Ombudsman. In one case, a student with Aspergers syndrome was refused a reading assistant in order to sit his Leaving Certificate. In order to obtain a reader, the student must meet certain criteria. The student, when having his reading ability assessed, was asked to read from the wrong paper. He was sitting three higher-level subjects but was asked to read from ordinary-level English sample papers. A file from the State Examinations Commission (SEC)showed that the school had asked the student to read from ordinary level English sample papers. This assessment did not provide a true reflection of the students reading difficulties. The Ombudsman asked the commission to have the student reassessed at the correct level. As a result of the assessment, the student was found to meet the criteria to qualify for a reader for his Leaving Certificate exams, said the Ombudsman. In another case relating to the Leaving Certificate, a female student had a writing disability and was initially refused access to a word processor in order to complete her exams. In this case, she was only granted assistance four days before the start of her exams. A mother complained that her daughters application under RACE (Reasonable Accommodations for the Examinations Certificate Scheme) to use a word processor during her Leaving Certificate examinations. The student had a developmental co-ordination disorder which made it difficult for her to write by hand for long periods of time. During the Ombudsmans examination, the mother said that her daughter had scoliosis but that she had not informed the commission. The ombudsman contacted the commission to explain the situation and submitted extra medical evidence. The SEC immediately reviewed her application and the daughter was granted approval to use a word processor, said the Ombudsman. CASE TWO: Grandmother gets 28k in backdated guardian pay A grandmother, rearing her grandchild, received 28,000 in backdated guardian payments after the Department of Social Protection had initially refused her application. The woman complained to the Office of the Ombudsman that the Department of Social Protection had refused her application for guardian payment. The grandmother was seeking payment for her granddaughter, whom she is rearing in the absence of the childs parents. When the Department of Social Protection had refused to make the payment, the grandmother brought her case to the Social Welfare Appeals Office. This office upheld the decision not to make the payment. The department and the appeals office explained that their decisions were based on the fact that they were not satisfied that the grandchild had been completely abandoned by her parents, said the Ombudsman. Under current regulations, a child has to be abandoned by both parents, in order for a third party to receive the guardian payment. The Ombudsman asked the appeals office to go over key points of evidence. A number of officials of the Department of Social Protection, who had dealt directly with the grandmother, were interviewed. These officials had found her case credible. File documents, including statements from the childs mother and grandmother, were also reassessed. The Social Welfare Appeals Office, having reassessed the file, revised its earlier decision not to make the payment. As a result, the grandmother received arrears backdated to when she had initially applied for the payment in 2011. The amount totalled 28,616. The civil service, which includes the Department of Social Protection, was the largest source of complaints for the Office of the Ombudsman last year. However, the Ombudsman pointed out that this is down to the nature of the work carried out there as opposed to a reflection of work practices. It is more so consistent with the volume of interactions that the body has with its service users. CASE THREE: Dog fined after being wrongly accused of bite attack A Cork dog owner had a fine quashed after his dog was accused of attacking a person, because the council did not carry out an investigation. It was a dog wrongly accused of biting and the dog was not entitled to a fair trial, it had no right to an appeal. So we stepped in and the dog owner was reprieved, said the ombudsman Peter Tyndall yesterday. A dog owner had been fined by Cork County Council based solely on an allegation, that his dog had attacked a third party. The dog owner was in the process of contesting the fine in the district court when he simultaneously contacted the Office of the Ombudsman. The man stated that Cork County Council had fined him without having properly established the facts of the case. Furthermore, there was no appeals process open to him. What the Office of the Ombudsman discovered was that the council had a policy of fining dog owners when they received written statements about their dogs. These statements were not investigated, but accepted as fact. The ombudsman considered this approach unfair and asked Cork County Council to review its canine fine policy. The council conducted its own internal review and changed its policy as a result. Now, when a verbal or written complaint is received relating to a dog incident, the dog warden will make contact with both the pet owner and the complainant in order to investigate the matter. In this particular incident, Cork County Council dropped its case against the dog owner and he was awarded costs. Local authorities are the second largest source of complaints for the Office of the Ombudsman. There were 1,006 complaints to the office last year, made in relation to local authorities. Aside from Dublin City Council, which accounted for 134 of the complaints, the next highest source was Cork County Council. A total of 78 complaints relating to Cork County Council were made to the ombudsman and 61 were filed for Cork City Council. The nine men and three women of the jury return to courtroom 2 at Cork Circuit Criminal Court after an hour of deliberation to tell Judge Gerard OBrien they had reached a unanimous verdict of not guilty on both charges. Two past pupils from the 1970s and 1980s spoke yesterday in favour of the priest, who was on trial on two charges of indecently assaulting a pupil in the sickbay of the school. One past pupil whose marriage ceremony was later performed by the priest said yesterday: The school was a goldfish bowl. If there was a sniff of any inappropriate behaviour it would have gotten out. A student from the 1970s said: He was very much part of our set-up. He was involved in collecting stamps for charity, he was always involved in things like that. I got on fine with him. He was passionate about teaching. He would drive you hard. He was a good teacher. He said the priest sometimes rewarded success in one area of school activity or another with a trip away for the winners. He recalled one in a caravan in Co Galway. Both former pupils and another one called by the defence the previous day said the defendant had never done anything of an indecent nature to them. Tom Creed, defending, asked one about his reaction to the claim that the priest had assaulted a boy at the school. I was astonished, said the ex-pupil. I would find it very hard to believe. I was very close to him. He looked after us, he was close to us, he was good to us. The complainant testified the alleged indecent assaults occurred when he was 13 or 14. He said one of the disputed incidents occurred the day before he was eventually hospitalised for an appendix operation and he said he was in severe pain at the time. The complainant said the first incident occurred when he was ill with chest and stomach problems and he said the defendant felt his testicles and penis for 12 to 15 seconds. He said that, the following year, he was very sick and it was the day before he went on to have surgery on his appendix. He said the priest put his hand on his forehead and his other hand on his testicles and penis. I felt sick mentally and physically. I was in quite a lot of pain. I was unable to speak, he said. The department had instructed schools to compile information on students as part of the primary online database the records of which were originally planned to be kept for 30 years. The department had warned parents that if they decided to opt out of the scheme, it may have funding and teacher allocation implications for your school. Solicitor Simon McGarr, who has aired concerns over the length of time the primary online database seeks to hold onto pupils information, has sought documents relating to his complaint from the Data Protection Commission and the Department under the Freedom of Information Act. A letter from an official at the department to the Data Protection Commission shows the department will now not threaten schools with a loss of funding if parents decline to comply with the primary online database. However, the letter also states that schools will not be informed of this change until the start of the new school year in September. The department feels that allowing partial records to be created is a fair compromise for parents with such objections, as it protects the anonymity of the pupil while ensuring that school data is accurate for funding purposes, the February letter said. Mr McGarr said that, as a result of the failure to communicate this U-turn to schools across the country, parents may mistakenly believe they have little choice but to fully co-operate with the primary online database initiative. Furthermore, he said he believes the independence of the commission has come into question because the minutes of meetings between it and the department show the Data Protection Commission is the body advising the department on the development of the database, and the authority responsible for investigating complaints against it. Mr McGarr is to forward the documents he has received under freedom of information to the European Commission. Yesterday, he told the Irish Examiner that he hopes to have filed his complaint with the European Commission by the end of next week. In a statement, the Data Protection Commission said that it can advise service providers as well as independently investigate complaints. The office has an engaged, pro-active approach to regulation, consulting with both public and private sector organisations, said the Office of the Data Protection Commission. Rather than simply watching for transgressions, the team interacts with service providers at the inception of a product, service, policy or business initiative, meaning we can assess compliance with data protection legislation at this early stage and seek the best result for the user or customer. The office, of course, remains free to independently investigate any complaint involving a possible contravention of the Acts, whether involving a data controller or processor who has previously sought guidance or not. The Department of Education did not respond to queries from the Irish Examiner at time of going to press. News / National by Happiness Zengeni and Golden Sibanda ZIMBABWE has landed a top post at the Pan-African housing finance institution, Shelter Afrique and will automatically host the next annual general meeting.Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Minister Saviour Kasukuwere was elected first vice president of Africa's only housing finance institution, Shelter Afrique, and will deputise Nigeria's housing minister Babatunde Fashoula. Tanzania will hold the second vice president's post. The elections were held during the financial institution's 35th annual general meeting currently taking place in Abuja, Nigeria. The meetings were held under the theme "Housing Africa's Low Income Urban Population".Speaking soon after his election Minister Kasukuwere told the Harare Bureau the country had landed the top post in recognition of the government's sterling work in proving housing for its people."It's an honour that has been bestowed on our country in recognising the efforts that the government is making to achieve housing for all."Africa is appreciative of what Zimbabwe is doing and hosting the next AGM will be good for our country. Shelter Afrique has been supporting Zimbabwe in accessing lines of credit for housing developments," he said.The AGM is set to be held in the resort town of Victoria Falls next year.Shelter Afrique is credited for being the only pan-African institution that exclusively supported the development of housing and real estate sector in Africa.A number of local financial institutions have received housing finance lines of credit support from the pan-African financier and these include CBZ Bank, CABS and BancABC.Minister Kasukuwere said the country would also increase its shareholding in the institution."We are also set to increase our shareholding in Shelter Afrique to ensure that Zimbabwe can benefit more from the funding opportunities that it makes available," he added.The housing finance institution is backed by 44 African countries and two development finance institutions; African Development Bank and African Reinsurance Corporation. Kenneth Parker, with an address at a flat at Charlemount Terrace, Wellington Road, Cork, was jailed for three years yesterday with the third year suspended. Parker pleaded guilty to a charge of assault causing harm to Garda Alan Mooney on December 23, 2014. Parker, 46, has a previous conviction for manslaughter for which he got a 10-year sentence in 2006, backdated to 2004. He also had 12 convictions for assaulting gardai. Sergeant Tom McCarthy said Parker had convictions from Wales including one for assaulting a police officer. Sgt McCarthy said Garda Mooney and his colleague Garda Mary Jane Somers were on duty on Wellington Road that day when they encountered Parker in a heated argument with another man. Parkers partner was also present and when she intervened, Parker tried to punch her. Garda Mooney tried to arrest Parker and attempted to put handcuffs on him and had to deploy pepper-spray in so doing. Garda Mooney attempted to move Kenneth Parker. As he did so, Kenneth Parker put his metal prosthetic limb behind him and hit him in the ribs. Garda Mooney fell back and injured his back. Judge David Riordan said: He landed this flying kick with his prosthetic leg on the guards chest. This exacerbated a previous back injury which the garda sustained on duty in 2011, and he was out of work until March 2015, returned to work, but had to go on sick leave again due to the injuries last October until the present, and he is still awaiting surgery on his back. Brendan Kelly, defending, asked for as much leniency as possible and said Parker suffered a lot of pain and discomfort arising out of his own prosthesis. The plan to deal with the housing crisis was due to be published within 100 days but will be delayed, because the deadline falls during the August break, when the Dail will be out of session. Despite calling the housing shortage an emergency at the Oireachtas Housing Committee, Mr Coveney confirmed that it will be September before the plan will be launched. He said that one of the problems around the 100-day target is that it lands right in the middle of August. For obvious reasons, that poses a problem because many people are not focused on work in the middle of August, he said. I suspect that some of the people at this table will be but many others will not be. In reality, we will end up publishing our plan at the end of August and moving into September with a really proactive and aggressive work programme to implement it and ensure it works. That is the likely timing at this stage. Mr Coveney went on to say that it could be possible to launch the plan in July, but he said he feared nothing would happen as the political system and civil service would be on their summer holidays. It will lead to it being launched immediately after the 100 days are up and then selling it, he said. We could launch it at the end of July before everybody heads off on holidays but that is not the kind of momentum we want the project to generate. Mr Coveney said that the housing crisis has escalated to the point where it is now an emergency in Dublin and Cork. I am firmly of the view that the position can only be described as an emergency situation in our key urban centres particularly in Dublin and Cork, he said. Fianna Fails housing spokesman, Barry Cowen, said that Mr Coveneys comments were extremely disappointing given his own admission that the housing situation is an emergency. Fianna Fails housing spokesman, Barry Cowen Speaking to the Irish Examiner, Mr Cowen said: He should be up all night bringing forward legislation to remove the road blocks that exist when it comes to building houses. If we could do it for the banks, we can do it for this. Mr Cowen said that the time has come for an Independent Housing Authority to be established to resolve the crisis. He said such an authority would need to be properly resourced and would need to have the necessary powers to implement change quickly. Sinn Fein TD for Dublin Mid-West, Eoin O Broin, called on Mr Coveney to increase the supply of social and affordable housing. The social housing strategy that Minister Coveney has inherited from his predecessor will not address the underlying causes of the crisis, he said. Sinn Fein TD for Dublin Mid-West, Eoin O Broin The strategy depends on the private sector to deliver 80% of the social housing units over the next six years. This simply wont work. Pat Doyle, chief executive of the Father Peter McVerry Trust, said every day of a delay means another family are put at risk of becoming homeless. However, he said that he and the trust will be keeping their powder dry in terms of reaction until they see the detail of the plan. We want the plan to take in recommendations from the Housing Committee, so it is a delay of two weeks but we will wait to see the plan to make our judgement, Mr Doyle told the Sunday Independent. Mr Coveney has said that 46m will be spent on hotels for families who do not have a home in 2016, up from 25m last year. The latest Focus Ireland Figures revealed that 366 families and 731 children have become homeless in Dublin in the first four months of 2016. Gita and Gira have just arrived in Fota after a journey across six countries from Helsinki in Finland. A male Asian lion from a Spanish Zoo is due to join the two females at Fota later this summer to hopefully start a new pride. Gita and Gira will be homed in the parks newest addition the Asian Sanctuary which is already home to a number of critically endangered species including both the Sumatran tiger, Indian rhino, Francois langur, and Visayan warty pigs. Compared to their African cousins, Asian lions have shaggier coats, with a longer tassel on the end of the tail and longer tufts of hair on the elbows. The mane of the Asian lion is generally shorter than that of the African lion, so the ears are always visible. Asian lions are, in general, slightly smaller than African lions. The Asiatic lion once roamed across the Middle East and Asia, from Greece to Bangladesh, However, by the early 1900s, the species had been hunted to the brink of extinction. Today, an estimated 500 Asiatic lions exist in the wild, living in the Indian state of Gujarat, Western India. The species is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Director of Fota Wildlife Park, Sean McKeown, said the park is committed to the conservation of the species and that in the long-term it hopes to contribute to the captive breeding programme: Protecting the remaining Asiatic lions in the wild is crucial to enable the population to grow and ensure the future survival of this irreplaceable species. Check out our new arrivals to the park https://t.co/JQqtzcP17y pic.twitter.com/yzPiBiWkHi Fota Wildlife Park (@fotawildlife) June 2, 2016 The Asian lions will be visible to visitors at the Asian Sanctuary in Fota Wildlife Park from tomorrow. Mary Cullen began using the name of her partners deceased wife in 1987 at the suggestion of her partner. Over the years, she claimed job seekers payments, rent and fuel allowances, pre-retirement payments and, most recently, pension payments. Cullen, of Portland Row, Dublin, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to 30 sample counts of falsely claiming social welfare, using false instruments, and possession of false instruments between 1987 and 2015 in Dublin. The amounts received ranged from Irl52.80 in 1987 to 242.90 in 2009. The total amount falsely claimed over 28 years was 206,028.18 Cullens defence was making a plea in mitigation and citing case law when Judge Martin Nolan interrupted and said: How can I send an 82-year-old woman to jail? Its as simple as that. Isnt that the only point in the case? Judge Nolan said it was a reprehensible offence and Cullen should be ashamed of herself but that he could not in good conscience jail an 82-year-old. Cullen had had a hard life and was a hard worker, the judge said, noting that she had worked as an office cleaner until last year. He said he did not believe the Court of Appeal would overturn a suspended sentence if the Director of Public Prosecutions got a rush of blood to the head and decided to appeal it as too lenient. Judge Nolan imposed a three-year suspended sentence and noted that, if Cullen was 20 years younger, she would probably be facing prison. The Department of Social Protection has reduced Cullens pension payments by 35 a week since the theft was discovered. Garda Enda Connolly said he was asked last year by the Department of Social Protection to investigate suspicions that Cullen was claiming payments under the name Mary Rose Hart. He conducted surveillance at the GPO where he saw Cullen enter and claim her pension under her own name. The next day, he watched her claim payments in North Strand Post Office as Mary Rose Hart. Agata Pracz, aged 39,of Swords, Co Dublin, pleaded guilty to dishonestly inducing Yumi Takekoshi to hand over 8,990 on July 15, 2014 by promising her access to a container filled with cash. Garda Enda Ledwith previously told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court that Ms Takekoshi, a 58-year-old Tokyo woman, was contacted through social media site LinkedIn by a woman purporting to a be a two-star US general based in Dublin Airport. The general told Ms Takekoshi a container filled with currency to the value of $10.5m (6.8m) was at a bonded warehouse in Dublin and that she would give Ms Takekoshi access to it for the sum of 8,990. Ms Takekoshi flew to Dublin on July 15, 2014, where she met a woman claiming to be a UN diplomat named Sandra Daly. That woman was actually the accused, Gda Ledwith said. Pracz took Ms Takekoshi to a bar in Dublin Airport and took the money from her before promising to call her with details of the container full of cash, the court heard. However, Ms Takekoshi became suspicious after the meeting and took a taxi to the Japanese embassy, which contacted the gardai. Pracz, a Polish national, was arrested on the M1 motorway some days after this incident after gardai recognised her car from Dublin airport CCTV footage. She claimed she met a man named James of Nigerian or Ghanaian background in a pub who organised the deal with Ms Takekoshi and she was just the cash collector, Gda Ledwith said. She said she got involved in the scam after she got into financial difficulties. When gardai searched Praczs home, they recovered just over 4,000 and a laptop. Gda Ledwith said Pracz claimed she had tried to get in touch with James but could not so she spent the other half of the money on paying off her debts. The court heard Pracz has lived in Ireland since 2006 and has no previous convictions in the country. She has three convictions for fraud-related offences in Poland. Sentencing Pracz yesterday, Judge Patrick McCartan said he had difficulty accepting the case in its entirety. All of the evidence suggests she is a different person than what was presented to me on the evidence, he said. The judge said he believed Pracz was the recipient of 100% of the money. But I have to accept the evidence as its presented, the judge said, noting that Pracz had fully repaid the money taken from Ms Takekoshi. Director of Huawei, Richard Yu, told the Wall Street Journal that the company plans to release a Google Daydream compatible handset this autumn. The company previously indicated that it would support the platform, and in fact the Nexus 6P does for development purposes, but gave no indication as to when it will reach the general consumer. Googles set of specifications for smartphones indicate that Huaweis upcoming handset will feature a powerful processor, a range of sensors, and a high-density screen. Thats not much to go on, but at least its a sign that Huawei has another premium handset in the pipeline. Taoiseach Enda Kenny may be right to brand comments by US presidential contender Donald Trump racist and dangerous, but, as the tycoon changes his stance with dizzying speed, its worth recalling some of his comments and whether they will help or hinder him as his battles to woo voters and move from the Republican base to the national stage. His incendiary comments have become so frequent that we tend to forget some others that have also become part and parcel of the candidates image. On June 16, 2015, I was in New York to hear Trump launch his presidential campaign with this infamous remark about Mexican immigrants: Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. It set the stage for what was to come. [media=youtube]https://youtu.be/Jqn3V8EJVPg/media] On November 24, 2015, he mocked New York Times investigative reporter Serge Kovaleski by mimicking his disability on stage at a South Carolina rally. On December 7, 2015, he called for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. On February 6, 2016, on fighting terrorism, he said: I would bring back waterboarding and Id bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding. On August, 6, 2015, at the first Republican debate, he lashed out at reporter Megyn Kelly but didnt contradict her when she reminded him hed called women fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals. On March 30, 2016, he said women who have an abortion should face some form of punishment. Also on March 30, 2016, he refused to rule out using nuclear weapons against Europe, telling MSNBC: Im not taking cards off the table. The full exchange about nuclear weapons went like this with reporter Chris Matthews: CM: How about Europe? We wont use in Europe? DT: Im not going to take it off the table for anybody. CM: Youre going to use it in Europe? DT: No! I dont think so. But CM: Just say it, say Im not going to use a nuclear weapon in Europe. DT: I am not taking cards off the table. Some politicians in the US and around the world have reacted with a degree of apprehension, even fear, to such comments, especially coming from a candidate for the most powerful office in the world who has neither political experience nor diplomatic skills. British prime minister David Cameron, for example, has called Trumps comments divisive, stupid. and wrong. US president Barack Obama said in recent days that leaders are right to be rattled by Trump because of his ignorance of world affairs. But others, such as Russian leader Vladimir Putin and some close to the North Korean regime havent been that upset by Trump. And, in a way, they may be right because, as the Taoiseach also pointed out, Americans have another choice in their November election. The question is which candidate are they likely to opt to send to the White House. If one follows the sums in the key battleground states, its unlikely to be Trump, because the political mathematics favour presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton It goes like this. The popular vote in the US translates into a certain number of electoral college votes from each state in the November election. There are 540 such electoral votes. If Clinton were to take all of the states that Obama won in 2012, as well as North Carolina, which he also won in 2008, it would put her over the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Shed net 285 to Trumps 253, according to a New York Times tally. It also shows, however, that if Trump were to improve his margin by 10 percentage points he could win. But he faces a big challenge to achieve this. While he has won a huge following in the nominating race among voters in the Republican base, winning the general elation will be an altogether different story. Unless he can somehow broaden his appeal among independent voters and among those whom hes alienated, such as Hispanics and women, hell have the fight of his life on his hands to win. It would also be a grave mistake, however, to underestimate Trumps desire to close this deal. Hes already trying to soften his tone to attract the Republican establishment and now says many of his earlier positions and comments were merely suggestions. And, of course, hes busy doing this while Clinton is still fighting off a major challenge for the Democratic nomination from Bernie Sanders, though that should end in Clintons favour in next Tuesdays last major primaries. Bernie Sanders In the meantime, if Trump continues to moderate his image and his policies he could have a real chance of boosting his base support and coming with reach of the White House. And Kenny might yet have to get used to the notion of President Trump warts and all! CYSTIC fibrosis sufferers must be dismayed that supply of a drug which they believe could transform their lives has been dismissed on the grounds of cost-effectiveness. How horrible to be the ones to make that decision. That task fell to our National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics (NCPE), which decided against Orkambi, though it has been hailed as a wonder drug. However, this might not be the toughest decision the NCPE has made. Supplying the drug over a five-year period to around 500 people who have CF would have cost 392m, roughly the equivalent of two thirds of the price of our new national childrens hospital. To put it another, equally emotive way, it is roughly the amount of money needed to run Temple St Childrens Hospital each year. Cystic Fibrosis Ireland has described Orkambi, which has been approved by the European Medicines Agency, as a game-changer that would extend the lives of sufferers. However, the NCPE recommended that Orkambi should not be funded at the submitted price of 160,000 per patient per year. That price is outrageously expensive, and a massive try-on by its manufacturers, Vertex. While the NCPE said it did recognise the health benefits provided by the drug, it is not convinced by important aspects of the clinical trial evidence presented by Vertex. CF is such a horrible disease that it is hard not to feel anything but sympathy for those who suffer from it. But these Orkambi-like dilemmas are going to become a regular feature of our lives. Orkambi is an indication of far bigger challenges facing us, in terms of new breakthrough drugs that are about to hit the market. In the three years from 2010, 20 super-expensive new drugs were assessed by the NCPE, but that number shot up to 60 from 2014 to 2015. This year, so far, the figure is 38. The pharmaceutical industry is hitting a particularly rich vein with new, eye-wateringly expensive drugs for treating conditions such as cancer and cholesterol. We face major ethical and budgetary dilemmas about just how much we will spend on new drugs for individual patients, particularly given that we have a health service in a constant budgetary crisis. There are lots of competing interests here, not just the powerful drug companies. Individual doctors, who specialise in particular areas of medicine, will understandably advocate on behalf of their patients, and nowhere do we see this more than with cancer doctors. Professor Michael Barry, head of the NCPE, believes this approach is understandable, but not sustainable. Many of the new cancer, life-saving drugs are nowhere near as efficacious as claimed, he said. The new cancer drugs, in many instances, offer marginal benefits.Oncologists and clinicians, in general, are slow to recognise the modest benefits presented by many drugs. This does not fit with the modern narrative around medicine, and particularly around cancer treatment, of almost daily, miraculous new developments and how we need to be availing of all of them. But the cancer doctors are not going to worry, for instance, about the cardiac patients, and how much money is left over for their treatment and drugs. It also comes down to what sort of a public relations machine surrounds a particular disease and the fear factor associated with it. For instance, as an adult female you are conditioned to be far more concerned about the successes in breast-cancer research than on the cardiac front. In truth, Prof Barry says and he has been with the NCPE for 18 years very few drugs are actual game-changers, despite what we are told. One area of success is the treatment of Hepatitis C: a drug that costs between 50,000 and 100,000 per course cures about 70% of patients. Last year, we said yes to every one of those, Prof Barry said. They also said yes, this week, to Pembrolizumab, known as Pembro, recommending to the Minister for Health that it be covered under the State drug scheme for treatment of skin cancer. It is pricey, with a budget impact of 60m, over five years, but that is six times less expensive than Orkambi. Prof Barry said that while medical students today are taught about the cost-effectiveness of prescribing certain drugs, previous generations of doctors are used to looking at whether the drug is safe and effective, and not at the cost benefits. Up to now, we have had a fairly good track record in making new drugs available to patients who need them. However, we are already in the space of not being able to afford the standard of care we have come to expect; this will even be the case for a proven game-changer drug, if it is priced way too high. The new Health Minster, Simon Harris, appealed to the manufacturer of Pembro, MSD, and to Bristol Myers Squibb, which makes a second drug, Nivolumab (also for cancer treatment), to show some compassion by making the drugs available free, while the Government decides whether or not to approve them. But appealing to the better nature of the pharmaceutical industry is hardly sustainable, or realistic. Equally, Minister Harris is right in saying that it is utterly daft that politicians, such as him and the Cabinet, decide who, if anyone, gets these drugs. The pharmaceutical industry provides drugs that help millions of people worldwide everyday. It also puts pots of money into developing drugs that never make it past the research stage. But it must realise that it is in danger of pricing itself out of the market, with these new, uber-expensive drugs, which even better-off countries will be unable to afford. Ultimately, if it continues as is, the industry wont be able to afford to develop new drugs and we wont benefit from them when we get sick. If they are extra-greedy now, they are bound to pay later. This debate, on which drugs to approve, is being had in countries all over Europe, at present. Maybe we need to work out a deal, whereby the companies are paid by actual patient results, but that would require a proper system of monitoring. There is a backdrop to all of this. It is the ongoing failure of the HSE and the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association to reach agreement on general drug-pricing and supply. The HSE is looking to significantly reduce how much it has to pay for medicines. Relations between the two sides are not good, and this plays into the circumstances of the controversy surrounding the so-called game-changer drugs. There have been suggestions of a special fund being set up in the future. The problem is that to satisfy everyone it would have to be a fund that never runs out, and that is simply not going to happen. Setting realistic boundaries is going to be very tough. Seven-year-old Nour has a T-shirt which says I love shopping, but there are no shops here in Skaramagas refugee camp west of Athens, where she lives. She is one of the 600 children now living in this brand new camp of mobile homes. Many of the 2,800 now living here came from the evacuated E3 terminal building in the port of Piraeus. They were promised a brave new world in the best camp in Greece and indeed, there is a sorry collection of tents outside the gate, full of people hoping to get into the mobile homes when Skaramagas is finally expanded to accommodate 3,500. And yes, it must feel great to step into one of those two-roomed white plastic air-conditioned tubs after living in a tent for several months. But Skaramagas is in some ways even more depressing than the pitched camps. Its an old shipping port in the middle of nowhere surrounded by barbed wire fences. There isnt a blade of grass. Theres a series of creepy industrial buildings overlooking the lines of fridge-like mobile homes, and though its on the sea, the huge ships and industrial plants which dominate the scene make the water look uninviting. Thirty-something Rafa, from Idlib in Syria, which has just been savagely bombed by forces loyal to Assad, says Skaramagas is worse than Piraeus. Greek volunteers fought for this accommodation but there is no proper community area and people shelter from the heat in their individual fridges. The mobiles have a permanent look and the fear lingers that the refugees will be stuck here for a long time. Rafa is here with her husband Abdullah, 46, and their four children, Mustafa, 17, Mutea, 14, seven-year-old Nour and Jean-Anne, who is six. This is at least a camp you can leave and Abdullah has secured a job in a sweet factory at 20 a day which involves a four-hour commute each way. We want to work, he keeps saying. Nour with her twin girls, six-year-old son, teenage brother in the background, and refugee interpreter Amjad. The family would love to come to Ireland and shake their heads in disbelief when I tell them that Irish families have offered to open their homes to Syrians with the same grace that they have opened their mobile home to me. There is no move on their relocation application because they believe there were already six of them and they put their application in with another family of three making a large group which is at the bottom of the list. Abdullah shakes his head in despair. Getting as far as this fridge in this industrial port cost him 15,000 and he thinks it was all a mistake. But at least theyre together. Twenty-something Syrian Nour is here with twin girls of 18 months, a six-year-old boy, and a teenaged brother but her husband is in Germany and due to an official mix-up about his marriage status she could be looking at two years in her fridge. She doesnt know. No-one knows the process, says a Greek volunteer, Bilena. She has arrived to help refugees make applications online only to be told by a refugee that the application process had changed that day. There is no information, no-one has internet Meanwhile, between the fridges, there are signs of life which refuse to be extinguished. There is tinned food for sale under a couple of make-shift awnings. Under a canopy of UNHCR survival sacks theres a cafe on the seafront run by a couple of gorgeous Iraqis. I took out my bulging wallet to buy chips but they absolutely refused to take any money. Suitably humbled, I sat on a plastic stool eating my chips and looking out to sea and could almost imagine I was on my holidays in Mykonos. A child plays in Skaramagas. The mobile homes have a permanent look and the fear is that the refugees will be here for a long time Ahmed, 33, and a carpenter from Deralzour, Syria, who supported the Free Syrian Army and fled first the Assad regime and then Isis, who caught up with him in Raqqa, has made a shaded verandah out of UNHCR sacks, with patio furniture made from pallets. As we sit drinking tea he has everyone laughing when he describes being made to drive the refugee boat from Istanbul to Lesbos although he had never even driven a bus and he cant swim. It was so foggy that he couldnt see the shore and he landed by accident: I dead and then I alive again. His mother-in-law smiles along but then she turns serious and it is explained to me that her husband only lasted 20 days in Turkey before he died of a heart attack. Shes so in love with him, they explain. She says shed rather die in Syria with him than be here without him. During the 911 recordings of Saturdays incident, which ended when the 17-year-old western lowland gorilla called Harambe was shot dead by zoo staff, the boys mother is heard pleading for help while repeatedly shouting at her son: Be calm! The mother, Michelle Gregg, a daycare worker, tells the dispatcher: Hes dragging my son! I cant watch this!, after the child dropped about 5m into the zoos Gorilla World exhibit. Minutes later, the zoos dangerous animal response team killed the gorilla. Since then, there have been numerous questions about how the boy got past the barriers around the exhibit. Police are investigating the actions of the childs parents and US government inspectors are planning their own review of the zoo. The boys family did not comment on the police investigation, but released a statement saying he continued to do well. They also thanked the zoo for protecting his life. His mother said in the 911 call that her son had fallen into the exhibit and a gorilla was standing over him. The dispatcher told her that responders were on their way, and the caller yelled four times: Be calm! A record of police calls shows nine minutes passed between the first emergency call about the boy falling into the enclosure and when the child was safe. The zoo has an open viewing area that was among the first of its kind and is now common in many zoos around the US. The zoo says it will look at whether it needs to reinforce the barriers, even though it considers the enclosure more secure than what is required. The breach, zoo director Thane Maynard said, was the first time a visitor had entered its Gorilla World exhibit, which opened in 1978. A federal inspection less than two months ago found no problems with the exhibit. On Wednesday, the boys family said he is still doing well, they continued to praise God and were also thankful to the zoo for their actions taken to protect our child. While they have been blamed for the gorillas death by some on social media, the family expressed appreciation for those offering support. The statement said some people had offered money, which they say they will not accept. If anyone wishes to make a gift, we recommend a donation to the Cincinnati Zoo in Harambes name, said the statement released through publicist Gail Myers. News / National by Staff Reporter THE Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions has called on the Zanu-PF government to step down and call for fresh elections instead of introducing bond coins.In a statement, the ZCTU secretary General Japhet Moyo said introducing bond coins was not a panacea to the economic challenges the country is facing."Introduction of bond notes by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) as a solution to the current debilitating cash shortage will not in any way help Zimbabweans as the cash crisis is a symptom of a more complex and bigger problem. The major problem is well known to everyone that the country is not producing and industry is on its knees.""Zimbabwe has become a supermarket economy depending on huge imports hence the current frightening trade deficit. This is where the leaders of our country should be focusing on. The ZCTU implores on the country's leadership, if they are decent and have conscience, to call it a day and call for national elections to give the country a fresh impetus. This is the only way we can move forward as a country," he said.He said it was unfortunate that the government chose to focus on peripheral issues instead of addressing the root causes of the country's economic woes."Unfortunately, they have skewed priorities and think printing pseudo dollars is the solution. In fact, the introduction of the bond notes will worsen the plight of workers as more and more companies will sink due to failure to access real money to rejuvenate their operations.""The bond notes will not work as Zimbabweans have lost confidence in the government's ability to revive the economy as well as the ability of the RBZ to rise to the occasion under the current crisis. With the nasty experiences of the bearer cheques era, Zimbabweans have lost trust in the RBZ that wiped out their life time savings. It seems the current RBZ chefs are repeating the same measure that were employed before and failed to work," said Moyo.He said the government needs to that they have failed to revive the industry as well as run the country and let those who are able to do so to take over. Richard Cushworth, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, and his Salvadoran wife Mercedes Casanellas tracked down their son Moses after realising the baby they had been taking care of was not theirs. However, the couple told the BBC they still have no idea how the swap happened. Ms Casanellas was suspicious when she noticed the newborns features differed from those of the boy doctors gave her the day after she gave birth by emergency Caesarean in May 2015. She thought the second babys skin was darker. After returning to their home in Dallas, Texas, Ms Casanellas took a DNA test which said there was a 0% chance she could be the mother of the baby she had been given. The couple feared their child could have been sold to human traffickers and returned to El Salvador to make an appeal on local TV to find their son. Their son was found after authorities ordered other new mothers have their babies DNA tested. Describing the birth, Ms Casanellas said she saw her son only briefly after he was born. He was just passed by me and I gave him a kiss and then he was taken to the nursery and that was the last time I saw him, she said. The next day, nurses brought her a baby and insisted it was hers, despite her immediate doubts. My first impression was this is not the same baby I saw last night, she said. She said she fell to the floor involuntarily when she got the DNA test results. Describing how she felt at that moment, she said: The pain, the thought that the baby I had been nursing, taking care of, loving, that he was not mine. And then I had another thought, which was Where is my baby? Mr Cushworth told the BBC: I just accepted it as my child. Now I look back at the pictures around the time we came to Dallas when he was three months old, and Im shocked that I never suspected, because you can see that its just obviously not my child if you look at some of the pictures. I dont know how I didnt ask myself. You just dont think about these things. Who thinks about these things? I think we were in love with the baby. Even when I did the DNA tests, I thought I was betraying him. That was the feeling I had Im betraying my son but I cannot live with this. The UK ambassador to El Salvador, Bernhard Garside, told the BBC how he helped the Cushworths get their baby returned. Once we established that this had been an elementary swap of children and were able to quickly get the biological child back to both parents, that was a big sigh of relief for me and the team, said Mr Garside. The way things are done here is that babies have their feet printed a bit like fingerprinting when they are born, and that was a key piece of evidence for both of the babies identities that were involved in this case. Unfortunately, neither of those footprints taken at the time of the birth were conclusive the fact that the police could not conclusively identify either of the babies and say they were the right babies but they had been swapped. I asked the judge in this case to consider the evidence given through DNA, which she did take into account and it played a crucial part. Mr Garside said the authorities have concluded their investigations and found there was no criminal element involved in any of this and it was simply a mistake. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was hit by a surface-to-air missile on July 17, 2014, at the height of fighting in the Ukraine conflict. The lawyer for the families, Thomas Philip, says Malaysia Airlines was negligent for failing to conduct an adequate risk assessment and for charting a course which flew through a known conflict zone, posing an unreasonable risk to those on board. He said that the families contend the airline was in breach of contract for failing to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the flight crew. They failed to fulfil these duties, resulting in catastrophic loss of life, said Mr Philip. The families are seeking general damages for loss of support and services, damages for pain, suffering, and stress, among others, he added. One of the relatives, Chong Seng See, said his sister flight stewardess Chong Yee Pheng worked for the airline for more than 18 years. The families of all the victims of MH17 deserve to be treated with humanity, compassion and respect. I hope [the airline] will do right by them, he said in a statement. A Dutch investigation determined last year that the aircraft was shot down by a Russian-made missile fired from pro-Russia rebel territory, but did not say who fired it. Families of seven passengers from Australia, New Zealand, and Malaysia sued Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, last month over their alleged involvement in the incident. They filed the lawsuits in the European Court of Human Rights seeking damages of $10m (8.9m) per passenger. Meanwhile, a decision on how airlines should track planes in distress could be made by the end of the year, aviation trade body the International Air Transport Association has announced. Aircraft that enter service from January 2021 must be equipped with a way of quickly recovering flight recorder data. The importance of this was demonstrated by the loss of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 over the Indian Ocean with 239 people on board in March 2014. Its main wreckage and black boxes have still not been found. The flight recorders of the EgyptAir plane which crashed on May 19 have also not been recovered, although French investigators said signals have been detected from one of them. The motion, which was put forward by chancellor Angela Merkels governing coalition of right and left and the opposition Greens, passed with support from all the parties in parliament. In a show of hands, there was one abstention and one vote against. The vote heightened tensions between Germany and Turkey at a time when Ankara is playing a key role in stemming the flow of refugees to Europe. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this decision will seriously impact Turkish-German relations. Speaking during a visit to Kenya, Mr Erdogan said recalling the ambassador for consultations was a first step and that the Turkish government would consider further steps to be taken in response to the vote. Turkish prime minister Binali Yildirim called the German decision a historic error. Mr Yildirim said that Turkish people take pride in in their past and that there is no event in our past that would cause us to bow down our heads in embarrassment. Armenias foreign minister welcomed the vote. Historians estimate that up to 1.5m Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of the First World War, an event viewed by many scholars as the 20th centurys first genocide. Turkey denies that the killings that started in 1915 were genocide and contends the dead were victims of civil war and unrest. Ankara also insists the death toll has been inflated. Ms Merkel was not present for yesterdays vote, with officials citing scheduling reasons. Her foreign minister, who, like Ms Merkel, backed the motion, was on a trip to Latin America. Opening yesterdays debate, parliament speaker Norbert Lammert acknowledged that addressing historical events can be painful. Amy El-Keria died after tying a scarf around her neck while receiving treatment at the Priory, which runs mental health services as part of a contract with the NHS in Britain. The teenager, who had told staff on the day she died that she wished to end her life, was found in her room at The Priory Hospital Ticehurst House in East Sussex in November 2012. Delivering findings that are highly critical of the Priory, a jury in Horsham said she died of unintended consequences of a deliberate act, contributed to by neglect. It ruled that staff failed to dial 999 quickly enough, failed to call a doctor promptly, and were not trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The response of staff was so inadequate that the jury agreed there was a possibility Amy may have lived if she had received proper care. It said staffing levels were not adequate, and a lack of one-to-one time caused or contributed to Amys death in a significant way. Amy, who had a complex range of problems and mental health diagnoses, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Tourettes, oppositional defiant disorder, gender identity dysphoria and conduct disorder, was moved to the Priory in August 2012 after being asked to leave her specialist boarding school, High Close in Berkshire. The inquest heard that, while at school, she had drawn a picture of herself hanging and had written underneath: If only this could happen, but I havent got the guts. Sylvia Tang, Priory group medical director, said: We would like to offer an unreserved apology and our heartfelt sympathies to Amys family. Following the incident, we undertook an extensive investigation and strength-ened a number of our procedures at the hospital. Richard Huckle, aged 30, has admitted an unprecedented number of child sex offences and faces multiple life sentences at the Old Bailey. He masqueraded as a devout Christian and English teacher to gain access to up to 200 children as young as six months old from poor Christian communities in Kuala Lumpur over a period of nine years. The freelance photographer, from Ashford in Kent, began the abuse on a gap year to south east Asia at the age of 19. He went on to post a stream pictures and video of himself raping his young victims which were shared on the dark web. He even set up a crowd- funding enterprise inviting other paedophiles to pay Bitcoins for access to images and was in the process of publishing a paedophiles guide to abusing children in poverty-stricken areas. In discussions online, he bragged: Impoverished kids are definitely much easier to seduce than middle class Western kids. Acting on information, Huckle was arrested by the National Crime Agency when he touched down at Gatwick airport en route to spend Christmas at home with his family in 2014. Prosecutor Brian ONeill said Huckles computer equipment was seized and he was bailed on condition he return to his parents home. Officers had also searched the home of Huckles parents. He refused to answer officers questions, but the next day his mother asked him about the allegations and he admitted he had sex with children aged between three and 13. Mr ONeill said: His mother was both extremely upset and extremely angry. She and his father called the police and asked them to take their son away. Both have made witness statements in support of this prosecution. Huckle refused to give officers passwords to his encrypted computer, but they were still able to uncover more than 20,000 indecent images of children. As well as the draft of Huckles paedophile manual, they found a Pedopoints ledger in which he awarded himself marks for acts of depravity with children. A total of 191 children were mentioned in Huckles scorecard. Officers were unable to crack the passwords to more encrypted files on Huckles laptop. Sergeant Jon Harris belted out Gloria Gaynors I Will Survive in full uniform to cheers from drinkers at Glasgows Waterloo Bar. Sgt Harris was called to the Argyle St pub on Wednesday following reports of an assault. A 23-year-old man was arrested. Sgt Harris agreed to take to the stage and a senior officer praised him for helping defuse any simmering tensions. Money laundering Britain: A wipe-clean fiver will stand the test of time, just like Winston Churchill, whose face adorns the banknote, the governor of the Bank of England said. Unveiling the design for the 5 at Chirchills birthplace yesterday, Mark Carney paid tribute to the wartime prime ministers bulldog spirit and his part in British history. He said: This spirit is just one, only one, of his many contributions that the Bank commemorates with the new fiver. New emojis US: Seventy-two new emojis have been approved to be added to the rapidly expanding icon-based language. On the list of new designs is rolling on the floor laughing or ROFL as the kids used to call it, a runny-nose face, two fist bumps, a black heart, and everyones favourite superfood, avocado. At the centre of the playful-looking icons is actually an approval system run by the Unicode Consortium. This group reviews and approves designs for emojis, adding them to the standard list and then making them available to app developers to add to their own libraries. Sex bomb US: A Pittsburgh man who robbed a bank with a fake bomb made out of phone wires, duct tape, and a sex toy has been sentenced to up to three years in prison. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports an Allegheny County judge sentenced 36-year-old Aaron Stein on Tuesday after rejecting requests for leniency, including house arrest. The judge said he could not tell the community Steins case warranted only house arrest. Stein pleaded guilty in March. He said he robbed the PNC Bank in Crafton last June because he was desperate after losing $9,000 he had invested to pay for his approaching honeymoon. Kayak journey New Zealand: Stuart Cleary set out in late 2014 to paddle solo from Australia to New Zealand. But in the end, it was his homemade kayak that completed the journey on its own. Just hours into the trip, Clearys kayak started taking on water, and he was forced to abandon the vessel before being rescued at sea. Eighteen months later, the kayak has washed up on a New Zealand beach close to where Cleary had intended to arrive. Nathan Marshall said he was taking his dogs for a run on Muriwai Beach on Wednesday when he found the barnacle-encrusted kayak. He was hesitant to look inside, worried he would find a body. Cleary said he would travel to New Zealand to have a look but, this time, hell take a plane. Alligator attack US: A Florida man who threw an alligator through a drive-thru window was sentenced to a year of probation after throwing himself at the mercy of the court. Joshua James, 24, told the judge he is sorry he threw the alligator through the window at a Wendys last October. He said he found the 1.2m gator by the side of the road and meant to play a prank on a friend at the restaurant. James was initially charged with offences including assault with a deadly weapon. But no one was hurt by the gator, which was captured and returned to the wild. The Palm Beach Post reports that James entered an open plea on two misdemeanors. Rare beast Scotland: One of the worlds rarest spiders has been brought into captivity at a British zoo in an attempt to save it from extinction. Keepers at Bristol Zoo have brought 25 juvenile Desertas wolf spiders from the Desertas islands, near Madeira, Portugal, to breed. It is believed to be the first time the endangered spider, which is only found on the islands, has been in a UK zoo. These impressive-looking black and white spiders can grow up to 12cm in size, with a body size of 4cm alone. Spiky sculpture US: A prickly steel-and-nails sculpture of a porcupine and its baby has replaced a statue that was stolen from an airport in Maine, US. And, as a security measure, the new porcupines at the Portland International Jetport are firmly affixed to a large granite slab. A woman from nearby Pownal donated the new porcupines to replace a statue reported missing in April. Police do not know who stole the original sculpture, which was part of an installation of steel woodland creatures by New York artist Wendy Klemperer. A scheme aimed at improving child protection had not been put in place in terms of the legislation for murdered toddler Liam Fee, the Scottish government has said. The two-year-old died after being subjected to a catalogue of abuse and neglect at the hands of his mother Rachel Trelfa, 31, and her partner Nyomi Fee, 29, who are now facing life in prison. Liam was found dead in his home in March 2014. The family had lived in Fife, where the named person scheme which will appoint a guardian for every child in the country has been piloted. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon refused to say on Wednesday if a named person had been appointed in Liams case. However, John Swinney, Scotlands new education secretary and Ms Sturgeons deputy, said: Fife Council have indicated that Liam Fee did not have a named person in terms of the legislation that parliament has put in place. He told BBC Radio Scotland that while a number of local authorities have been making progress towards some form of named person scheme, the legislation which ensures the named person has the ability to ensure that all public authorities are working together on a childs behalf, was not in place. He added: In Fife, there was a contact point for every child within the system, as Fife Council have explained, but what is crucial about the named person, and this is the key point in this discussion, is that the named person brings with them... the ability to require other public authorities and public bodies to work with them to resolve the issues that are at stake. That is a crucial difference and as Fife Council have indicated, that was not in place for Liam Fee as is provided for in the legislation. He was speaking as Jackie Brock, chief executive of the charity Children in Scotland, said she cannot understand why concerns about Liams welfare had not been listened to after they were raised by his childminder and staff at a nursery he attended. Ms Brock, who has led a review into how to protect vulnerable youngsters from abuse, said there had not yet been full blown implementation of the recommendations she made. She told BBC Radio Scotlands Good Morning Scotland programme: My report found that the child protection system was basically sound but there were a number of actions that could have been taken forward. When asked if those had been taken forward, she added: I think in certain areas there are aspects being looked at, but overall there isnt a full blown implementation of my report. Asia Philippine Rebels to Discuss Peace Talks with New Government Philippine communist rebels say that long-stalled peace talks could be resumed with the government of President-elect Rodrigo Duterte as early as July. MANILA Philippine communist rebels said Thursday that long-stalled peace talks could be resumed with the government of incoming President Rodrigo Duterte as early as July, and that they will demand an end to the US military presence in the country. Rebel negotiator Fidel Agcaoili told a rare news conference in Manila that the demand is non-negotiable. He said government and rebel negotiators are preparing to meet in Europe this month to discuss the resumption of talks, which have been stalled for years. Duterte, who takes office June 30, has offered two Cabinet posts to allies of the rebels, who in turn have freed kidnapped policemen to encourage the resumption of talks. We have always stood on the basis of principled self-respect and national sovereignty, Agcaoili said. We cannot allow the presence of US military bases here. The rebels, he said, would also negotiate an end to two Philippine security pacts with the United States, including the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement, which allowed American forces to return to the Philippines for large-scale combat exercises nearly a decade after the closure of sprawling US military bases in the country. Another pact, the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, grants American forces, warships and fighter jets access to five Philippine military camps. The accords have helped the US reassert its presence in Asia, which dovetails with Philippine hopes for American help in countering Chinas increasingly assertive claims to areas of the South China Sea also claimed by the Philippines. Agcaoili said the rebels demands also include a land reform program that would free farmers from decades of poverty and a national industrialization effort that is not dependent on Western governments or multinational corporations. Duterte said earlier this week that he will chart an independent foreign policy for the Philippines and will not be dependent on the United States, the countrys longtime treaty ally. In another sign of rapport between Duterte and the rebels, Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Maria Sison said in a video conference with Manila-based journalists on Thursday that he will return to the Philippines soon to meet Duterte, his former political science student at a local university. Sison, 77, was detained during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos but was freed by then President Corazon Aquino after Marcos 1986 ouster. Sison later went into self-exile with other rebel leaders in the Netherlands. Duterte, who has described himself as left-leaning, is still unfolding, Agcaoili said. The fact is, there is ground for guarded optimism, Agcaoili said. The rebels have been fighting for a Marxist state since 1969 in one of Asias longest-running insurgencies. They have accused successive Philippine administrations of subservience to US interests and failing to ease poverty. Their numbers have dwindled to a few thousand amid battle setbacks, surrenders and factionalism, although they remain the countrys foremost security concern. Norwegian-brokered peace talks stalled early in outgoing President Benigno Aquino IIIs six-year term because of a dispute over the release of several rebels. Burma Former Spokesman Slams Critics for Trivial Coffee Shop Controversy Ex-President Thein Seins former spokesperson slams his old bosss critics for focusing too much on what, to him, is a trivial coffee shop controversy. RANGOON Ex-President Thein Seins former spokesperson slammed his old bosss critics for focusing too much on what, to him, is a trivial coffee shop controversy. While he is no longer an official mouthpiece for the government, Ye Htut, who was formerly information minister, on Thursday voluntarily defended the heated ownership of a new coffee shop in Naypyidaw, Golden Farm, rumored to be owned by Burmas former head of state. Ye Htut said that even if the coffee shop belongs to Thein Sein, it is a matter that has not warranted the vitriol it has received, given that other people in the country, particularly some senior military officials, have for decades made their riches by conducting business under their childrens names, securing government tenders and engaging in land grabs. Criticizing U Thein Seins ownership of a coffee shop is like chasing rabbits instead of hunting elephants, Ye Htut said during a sideline interview at a press conference in Naypyidaw held to discuss the recent implication that Thein Sein has misused funds. The former spokesmans comments came after pictures of the coffee shop were widely circulated among Burmese Facebook users, many of who claimed that it was owned by Thein Sein because of its location in a compound where Burmas ex-president owns a private farm. Ye Htut believes that Thein Sein has faced more personal attacks since he stepped down from the presidency in March and once again assumed chairmanship of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), citing the coffee shop controversy as an example. Throughout [Thein Seins] careerfrom regional commander [in the military] to secretary of the former military regime to prime minister to presidenthis three children have never carried out business by using their fathers power. Despite his clean record, news like this is spreading about him. I think this is political assassination against him, Ye Htut said. A source close to Thein Sein said the coffee shop is run by a local confectionary chain located on the former Presidents land. Burma Logging Ban Requires a Strong Government Hand, Say Environmentalists As the governments policies on battling Burmas severe deforestation come into focus, concerns have been raised over implementation. The Burmese governments proposed logging ban must be matched with robust implementation, stressed environmentalists, following the announcement from the Minister of Resources and Environmental Conservation Ohn Win that a nationwide ban would be in full effect before the end of Burmas fiscal year, in April 2017. Ohn Win said during Thursdays session of the Upper House of Parliament that the government is planning to completely suspend logging, in order to stem Burmas rapid rate of deforestation. The ministry would also impose a ban on teak industry in areas without young teak growth. Environmentalist Win Myo Thu, director of EcoDev, deemed the ministrys plan agreeable, saying it was merely expected for the government to take action in a context where over 1.5 million hectares have been lost over a decade. However, Win Myo Thu said an additional plan to monitor teak regeneration would be needed. In the absence of strong enforcement policies, the logging ban would be political dressing up, he said. Since 2014, Burma has restricted logging according to an annual quota. Log exports were suspended from April the same year. Burma currently has 29 million hectares of forest, amounting to 43 percent of the landmass, according to ministry figures in 2015. Win Myo Thu added that the natural regeneration of Burmas teak forests would not be so easy in the midst of so much human interference, which extends beyond logging to local livelihood pursuits, such as firewood collection, bamboo shoot harvesting and gold panning. In Thursdays Upper House parliamentary session, lawmaker Khin Swe Lwinrepresenting Chin State Constituency 9asked if logging would be halted in Chin States Kanpetlet Township. Khin Swe Lwin stressed the devastation wrought by the torrential rains brought by Cyclone Komen in late July and early August last year: villages on the banks of Mone River tributaries were underwater, with substantial loss of farmland. In response, the minister Ohn Win described a plan to plant 50 acres of teak this rainy season [which commonly runs between late May and early October] in Kanpetlet Township. The locals would also be permitted to grow and administer 273 acres of forest. According to the plan, the ministry would then document the forest resources of the area before any logging activities could resume. The Burma Timber Enterprise would be charged with preserving the remaining forest. In the torrential rains of July and August last year, severe flooding occurred across 12 of Burmas 14 states and divisions, affecting thousands of people, many of whomincluding those in Chin Statehave to yet to recover from the losses to their livelihood. Widespread deforestation in Burma in recent years was blamed for much of the flooding. News / National by Fungai Lupande Former MDC-T MP Timothy Mubhawu allegedly struck his wife with a machete accusing her of having an extra-marital affair with Pastor Manson Munava Mpofu.The wife, Molleen Elizabeth, sustained injuries and was treated at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals.Mubhawu (52) of number 17 Donbrook, Acturus in Harare appeared before Harare magistrate Ms Nomsa Sabarauta facing physical abuse charges in contravention of the Domestic Violence Act.Mubhawu was remanded to June 20 for his trial on $100 bail.Prosecuting, Mrs Devotion Nyagano alleged that on May 15 this year around 9pm, Mubhawu had a dispute with his wife over infidelity.It is alleged that Mubhawu accused his wife of cheating with Pastor Mpofu.He dragged his wife into the bedroom and struck her with a machete on the knee and shoulder.Molleen was cut on her right palm while trying to block the machete.She reported the matter to police leading to the arrest of Mubhawu.She was referred to Parirenyatwa Hospital for treatment and her medical affidavit will be produced in court as exhibit. Burma New Ma Ba Tha School Teaches Children to Protect Race and Religion Nationalist Buddhist monks have opened a school in Rangoon that teaches students to become decent citizens who protect race and religion. RANGOON Buddhist monks of the ultra-nationalist Association for the Protection of Race and Religion (Ma Ba Tha) opened a private high school on the outskirts of Rangoon this week, where they said they would provide free education for children and teach them to protect race and religion. Mahaw Thadar High School in Rangoons Hlegu Township has enrolled around 150 children for Grade 9 and will accept more students for Grades 10 and 11 next year, said Ashin Panya Vara, the monk who founded the school. I expect these school children will become decent citizens of our country and will protect and safeguard our race and religion, he told Myanmar Now in an interview at the new facility. Ashin Panya Vara said the teaching would follow the standard high school curriculum, but also include religious and literary programs taught by monks that would build childrens morals and Buddhist devotion. At the schools opening on Wednesday, the monk gave a one-hour speech to children and staff on morality and code of conduct as citizens. The influential Ma Ba Tha movement and several associated nationalist organizations have been accused of spreading hate speech and fanning communal violence against Burmas Muslim minority in recent years, with claims that Islam is threatening Buddhism. The group recently held protests to demand that the new National League for Democracy (NLD) government implement harsh government policies towards the stateless Rohingya Muslim minority in Arakan State and that foreign embassies refrain from using the term Rohingya. Asked whether these views would be impressed upon the young minds of the students, Ashin Panya Vara, one of the Ma Ba Tha leaders, said, We will not make any comment on other religions, but will talk about the knowledge of our own religion. Headmaster Hla Tun, who oversees eight teachers, was also evasive when asked about the teaching of Ma Ba Thas divisive message. I just consider the development of talented children, rather than political or nationalist inspirations, he said. Although the monks from Ma Ba Tha set up the school, we are responsible for both teaching and administrative roles. The school is not intended only for religious motivation, the headmaster said. Cho Thar Khaing, a 25-year-old primary school teacher from Thanbyuzayat Township in Mon State, added, The monks are better at fostering nationalist inspiration. Children need this mindset from childhood. The new school bears the name of the young Buddha-to-be, Mahaw Thadar, and was built on 5 acres of land. It features a brand new, five-floor building and two extensions where students receive free meals and lodging. It is registered as a private high school without enrollment fees and outstanding students will be supported as they continue to higher education. We had a dream to contribute to the education sector of the country long before, but we could only establish it this school year, said Ashin Panya Vara. An agricultural resources company named Maha Myaing donated the land, and the buildings were paid for by the gold mining company Amyotha Kyipwa Toetat Yay, or National Prosperity Company, which has financed many of Ma Ba Thas activities. Khin Htay Kyi, 46, a mother from Mandalay Divisions Yamethin Township, said she had enrolled her son because the monks could give him a good foundation for his future. I want my child to have a successful life through religious practices and nationalist inspiration, she said. Her son Thu Htet Oo, 13, said he was happy to be at the school and rolled off its mantra: I want to become a citizen who can protect and safeguard his race and religion. Ma Ba Tha has risen to prominence in recent years, amid an opening of the Burmese public sphere brought about by political reforms, and received support from the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) for a controversial package of four Race and Religion laws last year, which are seen as discriminatory against Muslims. In turn, the monks called on voters to support the USDP in the November elections, which failed to resonate with the public. This story originally appeared on Myanmar Now. Burma Upper House Passes Bill Repealing Overnight Guest Registration The parliamentary move amends a law requiring overnight guests to register with authorities, a rule previously used to oppress past governments opponents. RANGOON A bill amending and repealing provisions of Burmas colonial-era Ward or Village Tract Administration Lawwhich required citizens to register overnight guestswas approved in the Upper House of Parliament on Friday. A bill submitted to the Upper House of Parliament by the Bill Committee in early May revoking all sections of the original law referring to overnight guest registration was tabled by elected parliamentarians and military-appointees in the chamber. Originating in 1907, modified by the military-controlled Ministry of Home Affairs in 2012 and most recently updated in January 2016, the law requires citizens to inform local government officials when guests spend the night in their homes, regardless of how long the stay is. The new bill has removed articles 13(g) and 17 from the original law, which demand that citizens report overnight guests or get penalized for disobeying. Military lawmakers had claimed in previous sessions that revoking these provisions would jeopardize the countrys national security, while National League for Democracy (NLD) lawmakers argued the new bill was drafted in line with democratic norms. Some civil society organizations, however, recommended maintaining the guest-reporting requirement in some remote areas of the country due to weak law enforcement. Nonetheless, at Fridays parliamentary session, Speaker Mahn Win Khaing Than oversaw a secret ballot from all lawmakers passed as per recommendations from the bill committee. Dr. Myat Nyarna Soe, secretary of the Upper House Bill Committee, said that the revocation of some provisions from the original law was the decision of the Upper House of Parliament and will still need to pass the lower chamber. The Upper House decided to approve the bill based on consensus in the chamber, he said. Now, the bill still needs to pass the lower chamber. Tin Myint, permanent secretary of the Home Affairs Ministry, told The Irrawaddy on Friday the ministry will respect any decision of the Union Parliament, saying the it has the right to decide how laws are written since it is the legislative branch of the government. Our ministry drafted the law for the sake of the country, he said. But we have to accept the decision of the parliamentarians who think certain sections [of the law] are no longer appropriate. Burma USDP to Sue Newspapers Over Gems Corruption Story Burmas former ruling party has signaled it will take legal action against two Burmese papers for defaming the party and former President Thein Sein. RANGOON The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), has said it will sue two Burmese weekly newspapersthe Myanmar Herald and the Messengeralong with other individuals, for defaming former President Thein Sein and the USDP in their coverage of the alleged embezzlement of 93 million euros (US$103.9 million) from an account linked to the Myanmar Gems Traders Association. The military-backed USDP controlled the previous government under President Thein Sein, who still chairs the party, and was delivered a crushing defeat by the National League for Democracy in the November election. As reported previously by The Irrawaddy, on Thursday 81 members of the gem-trading association held a press conference in Rangoon, calling on the Ministry of Resources and Environmental Conservation and the managing director of the state-run Myanmar Gems Enterprise to address the so-far unexplained loss of 93 million. It has been alleged that 1 million (over US$1.1 million) was given to Thein Seinalthough former Minister of Mines Myint Aung has claimed that this sum was donated to the Myanmar Art Center, a nonprofit in Rangoon, and put toward construction costs. The Union Daily, a newspaper which also serves as the mouthpiece of the USDP, on Friday cited a May 28 report from the Myanmar Herald, which contained the following language [translated here]: [members of] the Myanmar Gems Traders Association demanded a probe into former president Thein Sein and his associates misappropriation of over $80 million from the associations funds. The Union Daily claimed that the Myanmar Herald had wrongly reported that Thein Sein and his former cabinet members worked hand in glove with officials from the gems-trading association to embezzle the money, with a reported US$7 million given to the Myanmar Art Center, an institution which is entirely unconnected to the gems-trading association. The story is designed to blacken the reputation of ex-president Thein Sein and mislead the people, the Union Daily report said. This not only defames Thein Sein, who is the chairman of the USDP, but also tarnishes the image of the USDP, which is undergoing a reform process to achieve future [electoral] victory. The Union Daily report said that the USDP would take legal action against the Myanmar Herald Journal, which featured the misleading reporting, the Messenger Journal, which published its own story based on the Myanmar Heralds reporting, and Kyaw Kyaw Oo, an executive committee member of the gems-trading association, for filing an incorrect complaint without strong evidence, and others [not specified] who were behind the allegations. An investigation team under the state-owned Myanmar Gems Enterprise began looking into the apparent discrepancy in late May. The complainants from the association, including Kyaw Kyaw Oo, have also requested the Legal Issues and Special Cases Committee, led by former acting USDP chairman Shwe Mann, to investigate. The Irrawaddy attempted to contact each of the USDPs three spokespersons, but none could be reached for comment. Information Minister Pe Myint to Speak at Myanmar Summit 2016 Pe Myint will give a keynote interview on Burmas developing policy priorities at The Economists second-annual Myanmar Summit. RANGOON Information Minister Pe Myint will give an opening keynote interview on Burmas developing policy priorities at The Economists second-annual Myanmar Summit. The event, which will take place at Sedona Hotel Yangon on June 16, will assemble Burmas decision-makers, advocates, entrepreneurs and investors to discuss how the countrys newly minted leaders intend to generate and sustain economic growth, wealth and prosperity for a nation that has only recently overcome half a century of isolation. According to the summit agenda, questions to be fielded by Pe Myint and other speakers will explore profitable and sustainable economic policy and development, as well as capacity-building strategies for Burmas new government, particularly regarding policymaking and administrative practices. Soe Tun, chairman of the Myanmar Automobile Manufacturers and Distributors Association, said that Burma has yet to create concrete economic policy priorities, adding that the country will need to cooperate broadly with people from international organizations, non-profit groups, civil society organizations and businesses, in order to spur long-lasting change in the country. Were all keeping a watch on this economic policy, Soe Tun told The Irrawaddy. The Economist launched its inaugural Myanmar Summit, a part of its country summit series, in 2015, to better address the outcomes and implications of Burmas historic November election. From Aung Sans Driver to Centenarian, a Long and Winding Road Reaches Its End In this story published in 2015, the man who drove Aung San during the historic Panglong Conference reflects on his life in politics, prison and retirement. In 1947, Gen. Aung San, State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyis father, arrived in Panglong, Shan State on a bold mission to bring together Burmas major ethnic groups in the face of colonial Britain. There, he won the ethnic peoples trust by promising autonomy and even the right to secede. In the decades of civil war that followed the military coup in 1962, the Panglong Agreement would be remembered as a rare moment of unity, one which Suu Kyi aims to replicate this summer with the 21st Century Panglong Conference. On Friday, U Khan, the man who drove Gen. Aung San during the first conference, died at the age of 101, giving The Irrawaddy an opportunity to republish this wide-ranging profile of him from last year. TAUNGGYI, Shan State Sitting at his home in Taunggyi, 100-year-old U Khan is still proud of what he did for Gen. Aung San, the father of Burmas independence, in February 1947. Nearly 70 years ago, U Khan drove Bogyoke (General) Aung San along a narrow, steep and snaking road that stretched 100 km from Taunggyi to Panglong, where the national hero and ethnic leaders from Shan, Kachin and Chin states signed the historic Panglong Agreement as part of efforts to speed up Burmas return to independence from British colonial rule. Unsurprisingly, none of the leaders who signed that agreement is alive today. Aung San was the first of them to die, assassinated as he was on July 19, 1947, just six months before the country gained its independence. Born in 1915, the same year as Aung San, U Khan remains in good enough health that he can still be seen driving occasionally in his hometown of Taunggyi, where he was born to a migrant Muslim father and a Shan mother. U Khan still considers himself a devout Muslim. He remembers the past clearly, including the small part that he played in history, and is happy to show guests old photos hung on the walls of his house. I drove him [Aung San] to Panglong, he told me, pointing to a photo of Aung San receiving a bouquet from a young local woman in Taunggyi, U Khan himself pictured sitting behind the steering wheel of a Jeep just before setting off for Panglong. When they arrived at Panglong but before signing the agreement on Feb. 12, U Khan recalled Aung San telling the gathered ethnic leaders, You can separate your states from Burma after 10 years if you are not satisfied with [this agreement]. U Khan said: Ethnic leaders, including the Saopha of Yawngwhe [who would become Burmas first president after independence in 1948], responded to Bogyoke Aung San by saying, Lets not talk of secession at the moment; we are just about to sign for a union. Feb. 12 has since been recognized annually as Union Day and the historic Panglong Agreement remains a rallying point for Burmas ethnic minorities, with its guarantee of full autonomy for ethnic regions never realized and still sought to this day. Common Interests U Khan and Aung San had become acquainted thanks to their common interests in politics and their countrys struggle for independence. Bogyoke Aung San was involved in the nationwide independence struggle, while we were involved in political activities here in our Shan State, U Khan said. I worked with U Tin E for the Shan State Peoples Freedom League. The late Tin E, who was one year U Khans junior, was one of a handful of prominent Shan leaders who managed to convince many Shan to support Aung Sans Panglong plan to expedite independence from Britain, which was seeking a show of unity before agreeing to relinquish the whole of Burma. In 1952, four years after the country had ridded itself of the yoke of colonialism, U Khan was elected as the first mayor of Taunggyi, the capital of southern Shan State. Four years later, he was re-elected to a second term and was also appointed chairman of the Taunggyi Municipal Committee. As mayor in the 1950s, U Khan received domestic and foreign dignitaries during his time in office. Other photos on the walls of his home capture the centenarian with Burmas President U Ba Oo and visiting Chinese President Liu Shaoqi, both of whom paid visits to Taunggyi. The premiers Kyaw Nyein and Ba Swe were also among his acquaintances at the time. While serving as mayor, he was also a successful businessman, running movie theaters and a construction company that operated in Taunggyi and other towns in southern Shan State. However, doomsday came for him on March 2, 1962, when the late dictator Gen. Ne Win staged a coup, ousting from power the civilian government led by Prime Minister U Nu. Indeed, that fateful Friday was a dark turning point not just for U Khan, but also for the entire country. In the wee hours of March 2, Ne Wins troops began surrounding the homes of cabinet members as well as ethnic leaders, most of whom were Shan princes, known as saophas, in Rangoon and across Shan State. The soldiers arrested the entire cabinet, including the then incumbent President Mahn Win Maung (an ethnic Karen), U Nu and the rest of the government ministers. In Shan State, almost all of the 25 Shan saophas who were members of the regional Nationalities Parliament and another 25 members of the Peoples Parliament were arrested along with other politicians. Burmas former first president and the incumbent chairman of the chamber of nationalities, the saopha of Yaunghwe Sao Shwe Thaike, was among the purged Shan princes, having also been apprehended at his residence in Rangoon. During the arrest, one of his teenage sons was killed. Ne Wins regime said he died as guards at the saophas residence exchanged fire with the soldiers attempting to arrest Sao Shwe Thaike. It was reportedly the only casualty of an otherwise bloodless coup. Ne Wins takeover destroyed the union spirit that had been forged by Aung San and the ethnic leaders at Panglong, with the Burman-dominated military junta entrenching distrust between the countrys ethnic majority and its many ethnic minorities. Without question, it dealt a devastating blow to hopes of ending Burmas civil war, which by that time had entered into its second decade. Come With Us for a While U Khan was also among those arrested. I was sent to Inseins annex jail, U Khan told me, referring to a compound within Insein Prison, a penitentiary in Rangoon that has housed thousands of political prisoners since the 1962 coup. Sao Shwe Thaike and other politicians were also kept at Insein, where U Khan told me he still cant forget one morning in November 1962. Around 7 am, Sao Shwe Thaike shouted to us, How are you guys?, while he was taking a walk to work out in the prison compound, U Khan recalled. At around 11:00 am, he died. We had no idea why. He was poisoned, one of my friends, seated next to us, interrupted. U Khan responded: I know, I know. Not good to talk about it. The former president was believed to have been killed while in detention. After having spent six years in the countrys biggest prison, U Khan was finally released without facing any charges. Though he was no longer behind bars, he wasnt truly free. Authorities did not allow U Khan to return to Taunggyi, instead forcing him to remain in Rangoon where they could better keep an eye on him and his activities. He was placed under this city arrest for four more years. They [authorities] just told me to come with them for a while, U Khan recalled of the moment in 1962 when he was rousted from his home. That for a while meant 10 years in detention. Some businesses belonging to U Khan were confiscated by Ne Wins Revolutionary Council, including two cinemas, as the government nationalized commerce across the country in the name of the Burmese Way to Socialism. At one of those locations, you can see Innwa Bank today, he said, perhaps adding insult to injury for the man, given that Innwa Bank was founded by the Myanmar Economic Corporation, a conglomerate owned by the military. U Khan has never received any form of compensation for the businesses he lost. After his release, he went back into the construction business in Taunggyi, but chose to remain outside the civic arena. I didnt return to politics, he said. And though his past woes are attributable to a dictatorship that has ostensibly ceded power, Ne Win and his military successors still cast a shadow. I shouldnt have talked a lot to you, he told me as our conversation neared its end. If I talk a lot, I am afraid that I might be invited to prison again. Then, when asked whether he thought the current reformist government was as bad as the previous regime, he answered immediately: I didnt say its bad. Its good. He continued: Dont write anything bad of the government. I dont say bad things about the government. The government is really good. I asked a general question about Taunggyi and he replied in a similar vein. Everything is good. Yes, its good. Dont write anything against the government. Just say everything is good. This government is also very good. At this point U Khans son jumped into our conversation: He no longer dares to say anything critical. One of the reasons, his son explained, is that U Khan was again detained for a few days when a nationwide pro-democracy uprising rocked the country in 1988, despite his having steered clear of politics for decades. More than a half century after his arrest, I can feel that the 100-year-old still lives in fear. Though he is no longer willing to engage in politics, it hasnt dampened his interest in the subject, nor caused him to shy away from visible affiliations with the countrys opposition. One photo hanging on the chimney in his living room shows U Khan with Tin Oo, a former commander-in-chief and founding member of the National League for Democracy (NLD), Burmas largest opposition party led by Aung San Suu Kyi. He [Tin Oo] visited my house in recent months. Daw Suu [Aung San Suu Kyi] is very good and smart. I am not a politician but am interested in politics, U Khan said. I want to see Burma as a good country. Whatever the past, U Khan said life at his ripe old age is peaceful and filled with contentment. He still goes to the office most days after morning prayers, though he no longer handles the business responsibilities and simply enjoys meeting up with his friends to shoot the breeze. Sometimes I am still driving, but I dont have a drivers license anymore, U Khan said. The licensing department, his son said, stopped issuing him a drivers license after deeming him too old to get behind the wheel. But he is quite impatient if I drive, said his son with a laugh, leading one to wonder what kind of harrowing road trip the apparent lead-foot may have embarked on with Bogyoke so many years ago. News / National by Fungai Lupande FORMER Ethiopian Ambassador to Zimbabwe Mr Asrat Wolde was run over by a motorist who reportedly was admiring prostitutes while driving, a court heard on Wednesday.The motorist, Gilbert Mutandagari (50), pleaded not guilty to a culpable homicide charge when he appeared before Harare magistrate Ms Nomsa Sabarauta.He is on $100 bail.The tragedy occurred along Third Street on March 1 this year.In his defence, Mutandagari said he did not cause the death of Wolde.He insisted he did not drive negligently."The deceased, who appeared lost, suddenly crossed the road in front of my vehicle and was hit by the front headlamp and fell," he said.But the first State witness Douglas Chipiringu blamed Mutandagari telling the court he was admiring prostitutes and lost control of his vehicle which veered off the road and killed the former envoy."I wanted to cross Third Street going West; so I crossed the first lane and waited for the other lane to clear since cars were travelling at high speed," narrated Chipiringu."I saw a pedestrian walking on the left edge of the road going North. He was alone with a leather backpack."There were a number of girls, about six to seven, on the left side of the road some seated and some standing."I saw a motorist looking at these girls at the same time his vehicle moving diagonally to where the pedestrian was. The next thing I heard was a bang of his car hitting the pedestrian."Mutandagari is a holder of a class two driver's licence.Prosecuting, Devotion Gwashavanhu Nyagano alleged that on March 1 this year around 4.40pm Mutandagari was driving a Toyota Hilux registration number ADV 6815 along Third Street going North.Wolde was walking along the same road on the left side.Mutandagari allegedly drove his vehicle towards the edge of the road where Wolde was and knocked him down.Wolde sustained head injuries and was rushed to Parirenyatwa Group of Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.Mrs Nyagano alleged that Mutandagari failed to keep a proper lookout of the road ahead, failed to hoot and stop or act reasonably when an accident seemed imminent. Friday, June 3rd, 2016 (3:12 pm) - Score 5,098 The national telecoms regulator has today produced an updated study of 4G based Mobile Broadband speeds in central London, which specifically looks at the performance impact of the latest Category 4 vs 6 (LTE-Advanced) networks. Once again EE wins the speed crown, but Vodafone are catching up. The new report should be taken as a separate addition to the original Smartphone Cities study from March 2016 (full results summary), which looked at a number of other cities in the United Kingdom and only made use of the much older Category 4 based Samsung Galaxy S5 phone. By comparison the latest update only examined central London, but it also harnessed the much more recent Category 6 LTE-Advanced capable Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+ (model SM-G928F). This is the latest 4G standard and can cope with data speeds of up to 200-300Mbps (Megabits per second), which is something that only EE and Vodafone are deploying in big urban areas (the others have yet to clarify their plans). The biggest performance leap is largely achieved through the use of Carrier Aggregation, which allows an operator to harness multiple spectrum bands (e.g. 800MHz, 1800MHz and 2.6GHz) at the same time. Apparently this phase of additional testing was carried over a five day period in March 2016. The initial 4km radius used in the main testing was also replaced with a smaller 2km radius in central London (still within the original area). In addition, the centre for this was moved from Charing Cross station to Ofcoms head office in Riverside House for logistical reasons. Broadly speaking its no surprise to find that the two most mature operators (at least in terms of 4G LTE-Advanced coverage) EE and Vodafone both come out on top for both download and upload speeds; although EE are clearly the most dominant and also delivered almost symmetrical performance. An EE Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk: The great speeds that our customers are getting is down to the investment that weve made in adding more capacity to our network. These Cat 6 devices, which include big-selling smartphones like the iPhone 6s and the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S7, on the EE network are giving customers an amazing internet experience fast data, great response times, and incredible reliability. And well keep investing in more capacity across the UK to make sure customers on the EE network are always getting the fastest mobile speeds. By comparison Three UK and O2 are left to languish further behind, although thats hardly surprising given Three UKs distinct lack of spectrum and O2s debt-ridden parent that could be holding back vital capacity investment. Right now only EE really has the spectrum / capacity to deliver a Cat 6 boost, but the reality of shared capacity between users is that you dont get much over Cat 4. On the upside all of the mobile network operators showed a similar and quite noticeable improvement in latency, which is good for online video game fans, VoIP, VPN and smoother browsing. Never the less this was only a very small snapshot of performance in one particular area and the methodology was different from Ofcoms previous update, which highlights some of the challenges when testing rapidly evolving mobile platforms. News / National by Freeman Razemba THE Zimbabwe National Army has denied recent allegations by Patson Dzamara that the Military Intelligence is behind the disappearance of his brother, journalist-cum-opposition activist, Itai Dzamara.In a statement, director army public relations Lieutenant Colonel Alphios Makotore said the claims by Patson were false."The Zimbabwe National Army totally denies any involvement in the disappearance of Itai Dzamara. The claims by Itai Dzamara's brother are totally false and a figment of his own imagination."The Army Intelligence does not take orders from any political party. Patson's claims are just meant to seek media attention and mislead members of the public," he said.This comes after Patson released a picture, purportedly of Itai in detention, claiming that "incontestable evidence" proved that he was taken by the Military Intelligence.Patson made the claims on Monday during a media conference held in Harare.In July last year, police offered a reward of $10,000 to anyone with information on the whereabouts of Itai as investigations into his disappearance intensified.Itai went missing on March 9 last year in Glen View 7, Harare.Police had been submitting fortnightly updates on investigations into the disappearance of Itai to the High Court and working closely with human rights lawyers, in compliance with a court order issued in March last year.According to the police, Itai was allegedly abducted by three male adults who entered the barbershop where he had gone to have a haircut and advised him that he was under arrest for stock theft.The barbershop is owned by one Wellington Deketeke.Some opposition parties have been trying to profit from the alleged disappearance in the hope of triggering what it called a Zimbabwe "Arab Spring", to unconstitutionally unseat the Zanu-PF government.The Arab Spring refers to the wave of demonstrations and protests, riots, and Western-sponsored wars in the Arab world that began on December 18, 2010 in Tunisia after the self-immolation of a vendor, Mohamed Bouzizi, culminating in the overthrow of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.Analysts have been accusing Western countries of using the alleged disappearance of Itai to prop up the fortunes of opposition political parties ahead of the 2018 harmonised elections.Information at hand also indicates that the West had planned to pour in resources into the civil society and arms of government such as the judiciary in a bid to weaken the control of the ruling Zanu-PF.Last year, the government summoned the French ambassador Laurent Delahousse after he pulled a shocker by proposing a toast to Itai, accusing officials of abducting him.Sources said Delahousse said in his disappearance, the former journalist had become a "symbol and he would not let him down". Ford has launched new Focus and Fiesta models that will cater to drivers with sporty taste and the Michigan-based automaker is looking to sell them to European consumers. The new sport-themed hatchbacks are referred to as the ST-Line editions of the Fiesta and Focus models, and these new vehicles are built with fuel efficiency in mind, as per Auto Express. The new ST-Line models come with a familiar body styling, sporty suspension and interiors, distinct wheels and a variety of engine options. For the Fiesta ST-Line, the engine options comprise one diesel option and a couple of EcoBoost petrol engines, such as the 1.0-liter, three-cylinder EcoBoost unit and the 1.5-liter 94bhp TDCi engine. On the other hand, the Focus ST-Line has two diesel options and a couple of EcoBoot petrol engines. The diesel engine could either be a 1.5-liter or a 2.0-liter. Speaking of the Ford Focus and Fiesta ST-Line models, Ford Europe marketing & sales VP Reolant de Waard told Car Scoops: "With our new ST-Line range even more customers can experience sporty style and driving dynamics inspired by our most exciting Ford Performance line-up ever, that includes models such as the Focus RS, new Fiesta ST200 and Ford GT supercar." Waard also admitted that the American carmaker is expecting to sell 40,000 units of their Ford Performance vehicles in Europe. The Ford Fiesta St-Line, which comes with three-door and five-door variants, costs 15,645 (USD$22,542). Meanwhile, the Ford Focus ST-Line, which is available five-door and estate variants, costs 20,595 (USD$29,674). Waard is confident that customers will love the new Fiesta and Focus ST-Line editions because they are fun-to-drive and offer great performance despite their affordable pricing. Not only that, Waard also said that the wide range of petrol and diesel engine options will also be a great selling point for the two new cars. At the ReCode's Code Conference on Wednesday, June 1, the Tesla and SpaceX Chief Elon Musk announced his ambitious timetable to send humans on Mars by 2024. According to The Verge, Elon Musk has plans of landing people on Mars within the next decade. The SpaceX CEO said he hopes sending people to Mars as early as 2024, with a landing scheduled for 2025. He also expressed his desire to eventually travel on the Red Planet himself. Earlier this year, in April, SpaceX announced its plans for an uncrewed mission to Mars by the year 2018. The mission would have the purpose to test out ways to land on the Red Planet. For the foreseeable future, Musk said SpaceX would not stop transporting cargo, and even people to Mars. Musk did not go into concrete details about his Mars colonization plans. He only explained that starting a colony would involve sending a lot of hardware and a lot of people. Musk added that in September, at the International Astronautical Congress in Mexico, he will reveal the full extent of his Mars colonization ideas. The event is an annual meeting of major leaders in the space industry. Given that NASA does not plan on sending people to Mars until at least the 2030s, Musk's timetable of human exploration on Mars within the next 10 years is an extremely ambitious schedule. But later in the talk, Musk explained that even if this is an ambitious deadline, he thinks it is possible to achieve. According to Popular Mechanics, Musk not only confirmed his plan to send a manned spacecraft to Mars as early as 2024 but also has talked about living on Mars, the AI and the future. He even adventured into politics and discussed hypothetical forms of government on the Red Planet, highlighting the idea that people on Mars should vote for everything themselves. To Musk, a representative democracy like America's would not be the ideal strategy for Martian governance. Musk would rather see a direct democracy where the people themselves vote on the issues, instead of electing representatives to stand for the people in the House and the Senate and vote on their behalf. At Computex 2016, AMD has revealed its Radeon RX Series of VR-capable graphics solutions, starting at just $199. According to Thurrott, Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO, said in a prepared statement that the company entered 2016 with a growing momentum for AMD's technologies and a great product lineup. AMD is decided to firmly re-establish itself "as a high-performance design leader." In this context, AMD has announced in Taipei, at Computex, its Radeon RX 480 graphics card that will come with a price tag of only $199 for the 4GB model. The RX 480 will start shipping in about a month, and it will be the cheapest graphics card capable of handling virtual reality (VR). Raja Koduri, AMD senior vice president and chief architect, said in a prepared statement that the Radeon RX series provide graphics cards that will help turn VR into a "technology with transformational relevance to consumers." Besides the RX 480 unveiled at Computex, the Radeon RX series also comprises the RX 490 card. AMD did not reveal yet the details about the flagship graphics card, the Radeon RX 490. However, several specialized websites published the card's rumored specs. The Radeon RX 490 marks an entry of AMD's Polaris 10 GPU, the flagship of the Polaris family. The website wccftech.com goes in details about the features and specs of the upcoming cutting-edge RX 490, based on a SiSoft Sandra benchmark spotted online. According to the leaked specs on wccftech.com, AMD Polaris 10 powered RX 490 will come with a 256 bit bus, 8GB VRAM and 2304 GCN 4.0 cores. Another specialized website, videocardz.com, gives people different specs. According to it, the Radeon RX 490 will come with a 4096 bit bus, 16GB HBM2 VRAM and 4096 GCN cores. The video card will work at a base clock speed of 1.2GHz and will provide a computer power of 9.830 GFLOPS. The AMD Radeon RX 490 is expected to launch in Q4 2016. Consumers will have to wait until the official release of the new flagship graphics card in order to know which of the rumored specs prove to be true. Is Google stalking its users? The tech giant confirms it has years of recorded conversations archived in its database. Users wary of technology now have more fodder for conspiracy theories. Users have reason to be wary of any activity using Google, especially Google Voice. Aside from documenting browsing behaviour and preference, it appears its voice features have been keeping records of conversations for years without users' knowledge. Google Sees Everything Independent UK reports that Google has indeed archived recordings of conversations, users can easily access and even delete these from the database. It implies Google is discreetly listening in on these correspondences, though. Google apparently keeps the records to maximize applications' search features, improving language recognition and providing better search results. Fortunately, the archived data is compiled in a portal accessible to users. The portal was introduced June last year, and has been archiving users' voice recordings ever since. The portal also presents users with a history of every page visited using or involving any of Google's products and apps. Users Unaware of the Surveillance The main issue users have with Google's surveillance system is that they were informed of the feature. Though it seems logical that any service with a search feature requires a record of previous activity, it's apparent Google was not upfront in informing users of this, especially with voice recordings sensitive and private in nature. The portal is a double-edged sword, serving as an online diary of sorts that documents online history. Users might be overwhelmed by the amount of data collected about them, though. This may even seem insidious to many users, depending on how intimate the recordings were. There's detailed information on the recordings, including the app used to record the data, and any text transcription Google managed to glean. Fortunately, users who feel violated have the option to delete the recordings, selectively or entirely. Archives of audio recordings and browsing history are accessible with a Google account. A DNA India report also recommends users to disable the virtual assistant and voice search if they don't want Google to stop recording their activity online. Saudi Arabia has made a name for itself in being very strict with what women can and cannot do. Driving cars, for instance, could be the basis for flogging if you are a woman. Is there a conflict of interest then that Uber just received a $3.5 billion check from Saudi Arabia? The investment is from the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund. Uber currently values itself at $62.5 billion, and CEO Travis Kalanick said that Saudi's check was a vote of confidence in our business. The fact that females cannot drive has made women a lucrative demographic for Uber in Saudi Arabia. Over there, secure transportation is a problem and women actually have trouble keeping jobs because of this. Huffington Post reported that even hired drivers are not the solution. A teacher named Amal B. told Al Bawaba that Every time I get in the car with my driver, I feel scared because of the way he drives. Another teacher named Soad Al-Harbi has a similar sentiment. Im scared he will get angry and stop driving me to work. As women, we need drivers and we have to put up with all the trouble they cause us, she said. Considering that it would probably be a while before female drivers could freely drive around the country, Uber's services in the Middle Eastern country would be a valuable conveniece for females. Until women can drive, a spokesperson said, Uber is there to provide a valuable service. Forbes noted that Uber has continued to surprise everyone by the simple fact that it continues to raise larger and larger sums of money. This has made them avoid going to public markets which have been the bane of tech companies. It also means that there is very little incentive for the company to back off competition with Lyft, Didi and the rest of ride-sharing services overseas. Since it was founded in 2010, Uber has already raised more than $12.5 billion. It also currently has an impressive $11 billion on its balance sheet. Uber recently took an undisclosed investment from Toyota and raised over $2 billion from Tiger Global Management, T. Rowe Price, and private wealth clients from Morgan Stanley and Bank of America. The forking of ownCloud, an open-source file syncing and sharing software company, to create a new company Nextcloud, has led to the former having its funds cut off in the US. Its German operations are not affected. Nextcloud was announced on Thursday, Berlin time, by Frank Karlitschek, one of the founders of ownCloud, who resigned last week. His resignation appears to have been sparked by disagreement over the direction ownCloud was taking, with claims that the community's needs were being placed second and the direction sought by investors taking precedence. Karlitschek has joined with Niels Mache, the owner of Spreedbox, a company that has a thriving video conferencing business. Most of the team that worked at ownCloud appears to have gone over to Nextcloud along with Karlitschek. In a media release issued by Nextcloud, Mache said: "Together with Frank Karlitschek we will disrupt the global market for file access and collaboration. Nextcloud is in the best position to deliver unparalleled long term support and services to customers from existing file access and secure communication markets, pushing innovation and capabilities to the next level." The release said Nextcloud would offer "a comprehensive replacement and privacy-aware alternative for existing cloud services for enterprise use and with long term, enterprise grade support". Nextcloud will feature a secure fully federated universal file access and communication platform. "It integrates with the innovative secure Spreed.ME communication platform and will be available for download as well as for purchase with the international award winning Spreedbox cloud communicator." Forking of open source projects is no oddity, with recent examples being those of LibreOffice and MariaDB. The first stable Nextcloud release will be made in early July, serving as a drop-in replacement for ownCloud, to provide customers and users with a means to upgrade to Nextcloud. Along with the engineers who have moved over, Nextcloud has also employed Jos Poortvliet, the former community manager at SUSE Linux and ownCloud. Poortvliet told iTWire that "the new company is kickstarted as a healthy business: the Spreed part is booming and the ownCloud part is starting up. The combination is Nextcloud and we'll integrate the two products." He said almost all developers had left for Nextcloud. There were three founders of ownCloud: Holger Dyroff, Markus Rex and Karlitschek. Of them, Dyroff and Rex remain at ownCloud. In a media release, ownCloud said: "One of Franks criticisms concerned the need to strengthen the community. In this regard, we have been working on the creation of the ownCloud Foundation, the formation of which we announced earlier this week. "Unfortunately, the announcement has consequences for ownCloud, based in Lexington, MA. Our main lenders in the US have cancelled our credit. Following American law, we are forced to close the doors of ownCloud with immediate effect and terminate the contracts of eight employees. The ownCloud GmbH is not directly affected by this and the growth of the ownCloud Foundation will remain a key priority. "ownCloud will continue to deliver software and maintenance to our future and existing customer base. Support, consulting and professional services continue to be available. Product improvements will continue to be our focus as we deliver on our vision of 'Universal File Access'. We are prepared to face any form of legitimate competition, because we are convinced of the quality of ownCloud." OKI has released a neon toner plus white, A4 laser that is going to revolutionise short-run garment, packaging, signage, and personalisation. The OKI Pro6410 NeonColour enables super bright, eye-catching fluorescent designs on light or dark coloured paper stock or transfer media. It opens up new creativity in garment and product decoration, personalisation, packaging and proofing, point-of-sale and in-store signage and education. The Pro6410 NeonColour unleashes the creative and commercial potential of print houses and graphic arts businesses, said Antonio Leone, marketing manager, OKI Data ANZ. Its another OKI first, bringing graphics to life with bursts of fluorescent colour across a vast array of media. Its also a demonstration of OKIs commitment to innovation, opening up new channels for revenue generation that our dealers and their customers can benefit from." The printer uses cyan, magenta and yellow neon toner and has a swappable white and black toner that allows it to print solid whites or print over other colours. It will print on A4 media up to 250gsm and in banner lengths of up to 1.32m. Product specification/features High definition LED print engine Colour speed: 8ppm (transparency mode), 34ppm (plain paper) Resolution: 1200x600dpi Processor speed: 533Mhz RAM: 256MB to 768MB Language: PS3 Input: USB or 10/100 Ethernet Host: PC or Mac Paper input: (Main Tray + MPT): 300 + 100 (optional tray 2 and 3 as well) Max paper weight: 220gsm Tray, 250gsm MPT Max paper size: A4 Dimensions/Weight (HxWxD): 340 x 435 x 546mm x 26KG Time to first page: 9 seconds Toner life (colour/white): 6,000/4,000 pages Warranty: 3 years upon registration Some uses News / National by Staff Reporter The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) has filed aT complaint with the International Labour Organisation ( ILO) to intervene in the pay dispute between the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) and its 6,000 workers who are on strikeover non-payment of salaries for over 15 months.The ZCTU wants the ILO to intervene in talks with government, which wholly owns the parastatal to pay the salaries.In a letter to the ILO last month, ZCTU told ILO that the crisis at NRZ was caused by "misplaced priorities (and) both government and management incompetence to turn around the parastatal.""We are kindly seeking for your office's intervention by engaging our government to ensure that these workers are paid their full wages for the entire period they are owed and that the government must ensure that none of the workers on strike are subjected to victimisation, disciplinary action or dismissal for a legitimate action which the government invited or caused.""The government must not invoke its law to deal with the striking workers which law is inconsistent wi th the Cons t i tut ion of Zimbabwe and principles of Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise, 1948 (No. 87) to which it is a party. The government must also ensure that trade union subscriptions are remitted to allow these organisations to function properly," said the ZCTU secretary general, Japhet Moyo in a letter to ILO.NRZ workers went on strike on March 29, say NRZ owes a total $87,5 million in unpaid salaries from January 2015 to March this year. Workers have rejected an offer by NRZ to pay part of their salaries for January this year, prompting the company to file for a show cause order to declare the action illegal."The dispute is of nonpayment of wages for the period January 2015 to March 2016, a period of 15 months. The company owes about $87,5 million in salary arrears. On 29 March 2016 the workers engaged on a strike to force the employer to pay their salaries which are overdue.""This failure to pay salaries has also affected the trade unions in terms of subscriptions not remitted to the unions. The unions are now incapacitated to conduct their activities. Following the strike, management have invoked the law by approaching the Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare to issue a show cause order whose effect is to terminate a legitimate strike and may haveconsequences of dismissing employees who have a legitimate cause," said Moyo.Moyo requested the ILO to approach government and demand full payment of salaries to NRZ workers saying the ILO must also demand that workers do not become victimised for undertaking the industrial action."The government must not invoke its law to deal with the striking workers, which law is inconsistent with the Constitution of Zimbabwe and principles of freedom of association and protection of the rights to organise, to which it is a party. Thegovernment must also ensure trade union subscriptions are remitted to allow these organisations to function properly," Moyo said.Recently, the company paid workers in grades A1-B2 80 pe r c ent of their January 2015wages and those in B3- C2 were paid between $17S.00- $300-00 for January 2015. The company owes about $82 million dollars in salary arrears.The Government is alleging that the NRZ is facing viability challenges but we are of the view that the problem is of misplaced priorities and of both government and management incompetence to turn around the parastatal.On 29 March 2016 the workers engaged on strike to force the employer to pay their salaries which are overdue. This failure to pay salaries has also affected the trade unions in terms of subscriptions not remitted to the unions. The Unions are now incapacitated to conduct their activities.Following the strike , management have invoked the law by approaching the Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Prisca Mupfumira to issue a show cause order whose effect is to terminate a legitimate strike and may have consequences of dismissing employees who have a legitimate cause.The NRZ dragged its workers to court for refusing to return to work even after an ultimatum from the minister of labour. Mupfumira had ordered the disgruntled NRZ employees to return to work pending the determination of the matter.In its application the NRZ management said the strike was illegal arguing that the workers had failed to give the mandatory 14 days' notice of intention to engage in collective job action.In their heads of arguments, the workers, represented by Munyaradzi Gwisai, said the collective job action was a spontaneous action in response to an immediate occupational hazard which was a threat to their safety, health and human dignity. They also argued that the strike was guaranteed under section 65 (3) of the constitution."It's only through such action that the workers' fundamental rights under the Labour Act and their basic human rights under the constitution may be defended. The workers therefore aver that their actions are lawful and within the parameters of the Labour Act and in terms of the constitution," argued Gwisai.He said cited conditions created by NRZ management's failure to pay its workers as well as the continued use of obsolete equipment for its day-to-day operations created an occupational hazard which does not require workers to give notice to strike."The employer's actions have reduced workers to beggars and destitute and resulted in hunger, mental stress and making it impossible for them to physically and mentally carry out their jobs. Microsoft this week filed another lawsuit in federal court accusing unidentified individuals with stealing its software by illegally activating more than 1,000 copies of Windows 7, Vista and 8, and Office 2010 and 2013. The suit, filed with a Seattle court on Wednesday, was the latest in a string of cases opened by the Redmond, Wash. company in an effort to quash piracy. "Microsoft's cyberforensics have identified over one thousand product activations originating from IP address 66.51.73.111 ('the IP Address'), which is presently assigned to Earthlink Inc., and which, on information and belief, is being used by the Defendants in furtherance of the unlawful conduct alleged herein," Microsoft's lawyers wrote in the complaint. Like many other software vendors, Microsoft uses a product key -- in its case, a 25-character alphanumeric string -- to lock a license to a device. Keys are a core component of Microsoft's anti-piracy technology. The product keys used to activate the bootleg Windows and Office had been stolen from the company's supply chain, used more times than legal or were activated outside their intended geographic region, Microsoft claimed. "On information and belief, Defendants have been and continue to be involved in installing counterfeit and infringing copies of Microsoft's software and/or related components," the company charged. Microsoft has not identified the culprits, but simply tagged them as "John Doe" 1 through 10. This week's lawsuit was similar to many others, including one filed in March asking permission to subpoena Comcast to name the subscriber at an IP address Microsoft said was the origin of thousands of product activation requests. In a related filing, Microsoft noted that the June 1 lawsuit was linked to 10 other cases it had filed since November 2014, all alleging that pirates were or had illegally activated the company's software. Now at 11, the case list will be handled by a single judge. Microsoft discovered the large number of activations through what it described as "cyberforensics," which the latest complaint defined as "investigative methods that leverage state-of-the-art technology to detect software piracy." But it's almost certain that Microsoft wasn't forced to deploy some unusual technology to sniff out the alleged pirates in this, or any of the other, cases. "As part of its cyberforensic methods, Microsoft analyzes activation data voluntarily provided by users when they activate Microsoft software, including the IP address from which a given product is activated," the lawsuit stated. In other words, Microsoft tallies the number of activations traced to each IP address, much like a web server log can be mined for the IP addresses that request pages. Most likely, Microsoft has a trigger point at which it deems the number of over-the-web activation requests as potential piracy. Microsoft said as much in the complaint. "Cyberforensics allows Microsoft to analyze billions of activations of Microsoft software and identify activation patterns and characteristics that make it more likely than not that the IP address associated with the activations is an address through which pirated software is being activated," the company stated. The alleged thieves who used the same IP address to activate more than a 1,000 copies of Windows and Office were no smarter than a bank robber who uses the same get-away car to hold up a dozen banks. Microsoft asked the federal judge to enjoin the defendants from continuing their piracy, and for restitution of all ill-gotten gains. News / National by Staff Reporter The country's sole food and beverages manufacturer, Cairns Holdings' have offered a voluntary retrenchment package to its employees.It was reported that the company plans to reduce its workforce by 50 percent from the current 524.The company offered a package at 2 weeks' salary for every year served as service pay, notice payment of 3 months' salary and applications for the terminal dues were opened since February this year.''Management has been encouraging workers to tender applications for the package since February. They claimed that the firm is over staffed. However, many workers were not forthcoming because we felt the package is not attractive especially on service pay,'' said one of the workers who decided not to be named.Inside managerial sources revealed that about 15 employees who had served long at Mutare Factory applied for the package whilst over 90 workers across the firm's branches nationwide had shown interest.'' I can confirm that a total of 93 workers across our branches countrywide applied for the packages. However, no application have been endorsed yet because the arrangement is that management reserves the right to approve an application,'' said one of the sources.Some of the company ' s workers ' representatives claimed that the retrenchment was not necessary alleging that it merely targeted unwanted long serving and permanent employees in a move they viewed as intentions of introducing Labour Market Flexibility by their management.''The real motive of our investor is to do away with employees employed on permanent basis.The claim by management that the company is overstaffed at this point in time is a gross misrepresentation of reality just to score their goal. The company wants and has since started hiring and firing labour. Currently, at most branches there are more contract workers employed monthly because production had overwhelmed the few permanent employees,''said one of the representatives who requested anonymity for fear of victimisation. At Mutare Fruit and Vegetable Plant the workers said there are 74 permanent employees whilst contract workers employed on monthly basis are 95.They reported that production at the plant had surged so much that there were 2 shifts for day and night revealing that they have been also working overtime on daily basis.When contacted for a comment, the company's Human Resource Manager, Tendai Muzadzi said he was not allowed by the company policy to respond to the press.Cairns recently commissioned a $280 000 baked beans plant in Mutare which was imported from China.The firm in the past months also resuscitated an out growers programme by re-engaging contract farmers countrywide as it reported that there was an increase in demand for the raw materials at the company. News / National by Staff reporter Acting President Phelekezela Mphoko has suggested that Matabeleland people are cowards as they are afraid to voice out their concerns.Mphoko was engaging villagers in the Gwayi area of Matabeleland North on Wednesday when he toured the Gwayi-Shangani Dam site.He was asked why companies from outside the region are importing labour at their expense.He said "Everybody must be empowered in this country and that is how we can solve conflicts and reconcile our people."Companies should consider local people first when employing personnel for national projects. Unless if it's an area that needs technical expertise, otherwise all general work and other menial tasks should be given to locals," he said."You're aware that I'm also the Minister of National Healing and Reconciliation. Make sure that next time we come here there are no complaints of this nature."Our Government offices are there to deal with such issues but the problem is that you (villagers) are afraid to approach your leaders and tell them your problems."Meanwhile, contractors for the Gwayi-Shangani Dam project in Matabeleland North have long abandoned the multimillion dollar project, Acting President Phelekezela Mphoko wad told on Wednesday.Mphoko was on a tour of the province this week.No activity has been taking place for past three years, due to lack of funding.Close to $90 million is required to complete the project, which is part of a solution to Bulawayo's perennial water problems and robust agricultural development in the province.Engineers in charge of the project told the Mphoko and senior government officials that nothing was happening on the ground as there was no money."Currently the project is on suspension due to lack of funding. The contractor stopped working citing funding constraints and we hope money will be found for it to resume," said one of the engineers during a briefing.It also emerged that the government owed the contractor close to $18 million for the preliminary works that had been done since commencement of the project in 2012.In shock VP Mphoko retorted "So at the moment there's nothing taking place here?" to which the engineer replied "Yes".The State Procurement Board awarded the Chinese firm tender to do the project in November 2012.According to the engineers, the contractor immediately moved to site by mobilising equipment, created access roads, erected requisite structures and machinery installations, which were seen by VP Mphoko."The contractor has done concrete excavations, which were completed in December 2012 but could not proceed further because of funds. He had to stop operations five months later in May 2013," said the engineer. News / National by Stephen Jakes Mthwakazi Republic party has accused the ruling Zanu PF for confusing democracy to dictatorship and injustice.In a statement the MRP Youth Secretary General Kandaba Cornelius Luphahla said as Mthwakazi Republic Party they believe that a nation is a nation because of peace and justice enjoyed by its people.He said this is also one and the same thing with what democratic countries are like."Surprisingly, in Zimbabwe the term democratic is defined as autocratic or dictatorship which far from each other. This is seen for example through what is being done by the Zanu PF government to Mthwakazi as the nation on its own. Firstly, Zanu PF is forcing us as Mthwakazi to be under its satanic rule and not to rule ourselves as a free and independent nation. They are doing because they want to loot our wealth and take it to their own places leaving us suffering," he said."Mthwakazi people are living in fear because if they are are trying to fight against this oppressive Zimbabwean government to gain their freedom they are being persecuted by the Zanu PF agents which are the CIOs. This is so surprising because according to the law, CIOs are state security agents which that are there to sense enemies from outside the country but today Zanu PF has changed this and now CIOs are persecuting people inside."He said as Mthwakazi Republic Party we don't know whether these persecuted people are now foreigners."Also for us as Mthwakazians they don't have to persecute us because its our right to fight for peace and justice in our life since we are in a democratic nation. Two weeks back Zanu PF and its followers where marching in Harare celebrating its failure to run the country and also its poverty and corruption. This is more than funny because you can not waste money and your energy through marching or compensating the marcher whilst people are dying of hunger and are still waiting for those 2,2 million jobs promised by Zanu PF and its propagandists," Luphahla said."Ironically, some people are trying to run away from the truth saying people were happy about the march whilst its clear that people were there because they knew that they can get something to eat since are hungry."Luphahla said the bad part of this Zanu PF and its 1979 satanic grand plan is that our Mthwakazians fathers and mothers died for this country to get rid of this nonsense."Today it seems like they fought for Shonas to be independent whilst Mthwakazians are suffering, because from 1980 until today we are still butchered by the Shonas and its Zanu PF government. Meanwhile MRP is encouraged by the news of the conviction of former Chadian dictator. Hissene Habre's historic conviction sends a strong message to African dictators that one day they will be held accountable for their crimes especially Mugabe and his regime for the 1982 to 87 genocide. It was in did a historic event for international Justice," he said."As Mthwakazi Republic Party we are here to save our Mthwakazi people from the jaws of this Shonalised satanic autocratic Zanu PF rule." Email Links to our top local news stories of the day, Monday through Saturday. News / National by Staff reporter Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa yesterday took advantage of a two day business visit organized by the CZI and addressed mini-Zanu PF rallies at Sino-Zimbabwe Cement Company and Bata Shoe Company in Gweru.Mnangagwa is on a two day visit to firms in Gweru and Kwekwe where he is getting briefings from the CZI Midlands chamber on the state of industries in the region.After a business briefings at Sino Zimbabwe, the Zanu PF Midlands godfather went on to address a group of Zanu PF supporters gathered outside the cement factory. LONDON Sitting on the sun-dappled terrace of the House of Lords, watching the Thames flow, Lord Nigel Lawson explains that the June 23 referendum, which he hopes will withdraw Britain from the European Union, was never supposed to happen. It is, he says, the fulfillment of a promise Prime Minister David Cameron expected to be prevented from keeping. Going into the 2014 general election, Cameron, heading a coalition government with Liberal Democrats, placated anti-EU Conservatives by promising a referendum on the EU membership. He expected that another close election would leave him again heading a coalition, and that he would be able to say, truthfully, that his pro-EU Liberal Democrat partners would block a referendum. But his Conservative Party won a large parliamentary majority, inconveniently liberating Cameron from the constraints of a coalition and leaving him with an awkward promise to keep. Full of years, 84 of them, and fight, Lawson has spent 42 years on the Thames embankment, as a member of both houses. He is impatient with the proposition that it is progress to transfer to supra-national institutions decision-making that belongs in Britains Parliament. When Britain votes on whether to withdraw from the EU, it will be deciding for or against the constraints of deepening involvement with a political entity born from cultural despair about Europes past and complacency about a European future of diminishing social dynamism and political democracy. Britain will consciously choose between alternative national destinies that Americans are less consciously choosing between by their smaller choices that cumulatively subordinate them to a vast, opaque and unaccountable administrative state. Cameron says leaving the EU is unnecessary because Britain has rejected membership in the eurozone currency and is not bound by the EUs open borders policy. Advocates of Brexit reply that if the common currency and open borders, both crucial attributes of the EU, are defects, why remain? Cameron says leaving the EU would be imprudent for security reasons. Wielding the fallacy of the false alternative, he says those who favor leaving the EU favor going it alone and isolationism. They respond that Britain out of the EU would remain Europes foremost military power. When Cameron recalls war in the Balkans and genocide on our continent in Srebrenica, Leave advocates note that the EU had nothing to do with suppressing this, which fell to NATO and especially the United States, neither of which would be diminished by Britain leaving the EU. Cameron invokes the serried rows of white headstones on British graves in military cemeteries on the continent as a silent testament to the price that this country has paid to help restore peace and order in Europe. Historian Andrew Roberts tartly responds that the British war dead fought for British independence and sovereignty, not for European unification. The Remain camp correctly says that Britain is richer and more rationally governed than when European unification began. The Leave camp, however, correctly responds that this is largely in spite of the EU it is because of decisions made by British governments, particularly Margaret Thatchers, in what is becoming a shrinking sphere of national autonomy. In 1988, Thatcher said: We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels. Stressing Britains European credentials, she also said our maps still trace the straight lines of the roads the Romans built. But todays Leavers, who carry the torch of Thatcherism, do not favor straight lines drawn by foreigners. They prefer G.K. Chestertons celebration of spontaneous, unplanned cultural particularities: Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode, The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road. In politics, sensibility is prior to and inseparable from philosophy. The referendum will record, among other things, the strength of the revulsion many people here feel about a multiculturalism that celebrates every permutation of identity except that of nationality. This is a trans-Atlantic revulsion. What Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an Irish-American and Anglophile, called the liberal expectancy is the belief that the rise of reason and science would mean the waning of pre-modern forces such as religion, ethnicity and even nationality, which would be regarded as an anachronistic tribalism. British voters, who may be as weary as many Americans are of constantly being told that they cannot turn back the clock, and that historys centralizing ratchet has clicked irreversibly too many times, might soon say otherwise. Today Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 51F. Winds light and variable. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 51F. Winds light and variable. Tomorrow Chance of a morning shower. Sunshine along with some cloudy intervals. High 72F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. SHARE By , A South African union plans to appeal against a decision to clear Anheuser-Busch InBev NV's takeover of fellow brewer SABMiller Plc next week, citing concerns that participants in an employee share-program aren't being fairly compensated. The Food and Allied Workers Union believes the program should be wound up and participants paid the same as SABMiller shareholders stand to make from the $106 billion acquisition, General Secretary Katishi Masemola said by phone on Friday. "We're going to the Tribunal to argue our case," Masemola said. "If the Tribunal doesn't take our argument seriously, we will appeal to the Competition Appeal Court." The takeover was cleared by South Africa's Competition Commission after AB InBev agreed to sell SABMiller's $577 million stake in wine and spirits maker Distell Group Ltd., protect jobs and set up a fund to support the local beer industry. The union appealed to the commission, which then didn't address the labor group's argument when recommending the deal to the Competition Tribunal on Wednesday, Masemola said. An initial hearing is scheduled for June 7, with a full hearing to be scheduled for a later date. The objection could delay the completion of AB InBev's combination with SABMiller, which would create the world's largest brewer. The Leuven, Belgium-based maker of Stella Artois and Budweiser has been seeking regulatory approval around the world for the acquisition and is poised to gain approval from the U.S. Justice Department, people familiar with the matter said this week. A key date in the process is Aug. 12, when London-based SABMiller is scheduled to pay its dividend. AB InBev will receive the payout if the deal is completed by then. "It still looks tight, but because of the agreement with the government there is the potential to clear the deal by that date," Mike Davies, founder of the political advisory company Kigoda Consulting, said by phone. There's uncertainty surrounding the date of the Competition Tribunal's full hearing, but after that the organization has a limit of 10 business days to publish a decision, he said. The union is prepared to take its case as far as South Africa's Constitutional Court, the highest in the country, Masemola said. Evelyn Ramos was sentenced to three years in prison, minus 255 days already served, in the 2015 fatal stabbing of Juan Teutor. Credit: Milwaukee County Sheriff's Dept SHARE Hector Rodriguez Jr. Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office By of the A woman who fatally stabbed a family member she suspected of molesting her daughter and who had molested her years earlier was sentenced Friday to three years in prison. Evelyn Ramos, 40, was charged last fall along with her son with driving to the family member's apartment in the 2200 block of W. Wisconsin Ave., confronting and then beating him. When he confessed to the girl's most recent allegations, Ramos grabbed a knife and inflicted three superficial arm wounds before stabbing Juan Teutor, 52, once in the side, the fatal wound. She pleaded guilty in April to felony murder, and faced up to almost 12 years in prison. Ramos must also serve four years of supervised release and will get credit for the 255 days she's been in jail since the crime. Ramos' attorney had recommended a two-year prison term, and the prosecution asked only for a prison sentence, with the length left to the judge. Her son, Hector E. Rodriguez Jr., 21, pleaded guilty in April to a reduced charge of substantial battery and was sentenced Thursday to time served, 172 days. Ramos told the judge that she had taken her son and a 16-year-old boy with her to confront Teutor in September, after her teenage daughter said he had touched every part of her body. "When your daughter stands before you trembling, crying, barely able to get the words out," Ramos said, trailing off. "God help me, I tried," not to react, she said. "I regret it. It was not my place to do what I did, but I had to protect my baby and at the moment I felt it was all I could do." She should have called the police, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Conen told her. Not only did she involve two young people, who now have records, she prevented police from ever investigating other relatives' claims of sexual assault by Teutor. While he believes Ramos, who had no prior record, presents no danger to the community, he said prison was called for to remind others the community will not tolerate vigilante justice. "Justice is not revenge," he said. Family members who spoke on behalf of both Teutor and Ramos talked about the huge rift the death has caused in the family. He urged them all to move on and begin healing. He called Ramos "a good person who made a horrible choice in a fit of rage. This has to be put in context." House Speaker Paul Ryan says that he will vote for Donald Trump for president. Credit: Getty Images In William Shakespeare's Othello, Cassio warns of the dangers of alcohol, saying he "would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains." Evidently Speaker of the House Paul Ryan drank too much Trump Vodka on Thursday, as The Donald absconded with Ryan's reputation as one of the few remaining conservatives of principle. Ryan ended his holdout and finally endorsed Donald Trump for president, citing the need for party "unity" going into the fall election. Perhaps this endorsement was inevitable but it was jarring to see the sellout executed for free. Trump today is just as unfit to hold public office as he was when Ryan announced his pyrite protest. Perhaps Trump is the master negotiator he claims to be he actually made Ryan tear down the wall between them, and Republicans are ultimately going to pay for it. During Ryan's holdout, Trump made no progress toward the goals Ryan said he needed to see from the presumptive GOP nominee in fact, just in the past week, Trump has floated discredited conspiracy theories about former Clinton adviser Vince Foster's death and attacked the ethnicity of a judge overseeing the Trump University case. Are these what pushed Ryan toward capitulation? Now Ryan becomes like San Francisco Giants fans who cheered on Barry Bonds during his desecration of America's pastime. Normally sane fans defended Bonds simply because he wore the right color jersey. Now that Trump is wearing the Republican jersey one that still has the price tag on it, incidentally conscious conservatives are losing their minds defending someone who is uniquely unqualified to lead the nation. If there existed an organization called "People Named Donald Trump," Trump wouldn't be cognitively stable enough to serve as its president. And there will be a long-term price to pay. Any time Ryan stands before reporters detailing his positive agenda steeped in conservative principles, the podium should feature a giant asterisk that is, House Republicans believe in the pillars of conservatism right up until the point when a puzzlingly hirsute man-baby decides to mock women, minorities and the handicapped. When Ryan espouses political civility, ask him about his endorsement of America's most prominent Obama birther. We now know that no person exists who is so disgusting that he is below Republican appeasement. In fact, it is this complete lack of political conviction that is driving people away from conventional politicians and toward a bottom-feeding vulgarian such as Donald Trump. We all know the stereotype of the typical politician who believes in issues only as deeply as it allows him or her to further their career; Trump, on the other hand, seems authentic he has convictions, even if they are about items of national security such as whether certain women truly can ever be "10s." But now Republicans are hoping that supporting Trump is like breaking the speed limit if everyone does it, nobody will ultimately get busted. Sure, Republicans may say their ultimate goal is to stop Hillary Clinton, but to replace her with what? A Hillary Clinton donor who opposes reforming Social Security and has publicly waxed poetic about single-payer health care? As president, Trump is just as likely to hold a news conference to sell Trump Tangy Barbecue Sauce as he is to announce a plan to rein in government. And exactly what was the ultimate purpose of Ryan's several-week non-endorsement period? Why were we glued to our televisions as cameras buzzed around the Ryan-Trump summit a few weeks ago as if a high-level hostage negotiation was taking place? (Especially when we now know Ryan was the hostage all along?) Ryan's holdout wasn't even long enough to earn him credit in the footnotes of future history books he'll earn plaudits for delaying his Trump endorsement in the same way an arsonist will get credit for waiting three weeks to burn down a library out of respect for the Dewey Decimal System. In 1984, George Orwell writes that in his dystopia, "Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull." Conservatives were hoping Ryan would continue to own his own gray matter in the Era of Trump, but that dream has been incinerated Trump is now the proud owner of the Republican Party's great minds. Let's just hope he kept the receipt so he can return them to their rightful owners after his November decimation. Christian Schneider is a Journal Sentinel columnist and blogger. Email cschneider@jrn.com. Twitter: @Schneider_CM Gov. Scott Walker speaks at the Invest in America! summit at the Chamber of Commerce in April in Washington, D.C. Credit: TNS SHARE "We go above and beyond what is required by the law when it comes to public records requests to make sure we are being as open and transparent as possible for our citizens," Gov. Scott Walker said in a statement in March about an executive order aimed at improving state agency responses to public records requests. Great executive order; too bad Walker didn't believe that it applied to his own office. At the time, he was still withholding emails that showed he was well aware of proposed language in last year's budget that would have dropped the long-standing Wisconsin Idea from the mission statements of state universities. He kept those emails hidden for more than a year, arguing first that the sweeping changes to the mission statement were a drafting error (not true), and then that those records were "deliberative" in nature and could be kept from the public so officials could feel free to have candid conversations about their policy ideas. The Center for Media and Democracy and The Progressive magazine took Walker to court, arguing that state law did not allow such an exemption. A Dane County court agreed and ordered the release of the 82 pages of emails Walker was keeping under wraps. There is no doubt that it was the right ruling. Trying to put a happy face on things, Walker spokesman Tom Evenson issued a statement saying the governor decided to release the records May 27 because he "is committed to openness and transparency in government." Well, no. The governor released the documents because the judge told him to and because the governor realized that appealing the decision probably would be futile. Had Walker really believed in going "above and beyond what is required by the law," he would have released the documents a long time ago. In her 22-page opinion, Circuit Judge Amy Smith wrote that what Walker's team defined as drafts was "overly broad and could conceal records from the public relating to any and all deliberations made by public employees, which is inconsistent with the long-standing principles of Wisconsin's Open Records Law." In other words, Walker's argument served the interests of officials trying to hide what they're doing from the public. It was in the same vein as his and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos' attempt to gut the open records laws last summer. Walker backed off the changes to the mission statement soon after they were made, just as he and Vos backed off the changes in the open records law, no doubt encouraged by the public outrage that met both proposals. Changing the mission statement was a terrible idea and a disservice to Wisconsin's academic tradition of excellence and the search for truth. Trying to change the open records law and trying to create an exemption for his emails also was a terrible idea and a slap at Wisconsin's tradition of open and transparent government. March's executive order may be a welcome sign that Walker has learned important lessons from last summer's debacle. But that will be easier to believe when we see it consistently applied to all state offices, including his own. Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump signs autographs following a campaign rally on Thursday in San Jose, Calif. Credit: Getty Images House Speaker Paul Ryan kissed the proverbial ring last week, giving his official endorsement to Donald Trump. There's a lot of crow being consumed by prominent Republicans who spent the last year decrying the Trump candidacy only to be faced with the inevitability of him winning the nomination. This is just the way things go in politics, of course, and the GOP always has been especially adept at coming together to march lockstep in support of the party. Trump's candidacy is different, though, and I had thought extreme enough to finally cause a real rift in the ranks, one that would result in a refusal to endorse by people such as the speaker of the House. Supporting someone with blatantly fascist leanings should not be an inevitability, and I thought perhaps would be a good time for a party to re-evaluate its core principles and methods. But here we are. It's a little fascinating to look back and realize that some of the most powerful anti-Trump arguments have been made by people who have since either openly or tacitly endorsed him. Sen. Lindsey Graham, for instance, told his party they should tell Trump to "go to hell," calling him a "race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot" and even "the ISIL man of the year." Now the South Carolina Republican is reportedly urging big-money donors to back him. So how didwe get here, where Trump now becomes one of the two major choices on the ballot in November? Where Trump will get a Secret Service detail while on campaign? Where Trump will get a classified intelligence briefing from national security officials? I don't know about you, but the idea that a guy who gets his "facts" from supermarket tabloids and makes rabidly anti-democratic calls for things such as barring Muslims from entering the country is just one vote away from becoming commander-in-chief of the largest military in the world is more than a little unsettling. It may seem far-fetched and alarmist to some to say that Trump even has a chance of winning the presidency. After all, the ongoing demographic shifts in this country would seem to favor candidates who appeal more to a younger, more racially diverse, and heavily female-driven electorate. That's definitely not Trump, who consistently polls very low with women and minorities (Hillary Clinton destroyed him in a recent Quinnipiac poll, with a 54-30 lead among women, a whopping 93-4 among black voters and 65-18 among Latino voters). To dismiss his chances entirely, though, would be both foolhardy and dangerous, and would be demonstrative of what helped get us into this mess in the first place: dismissal of the very real fears and issues that many Trump supporters (and the tea party movement that paved the way) hold dear, and dismissal of the very real potential for electoral shenanigans thanks to gerrymandering, restrictive voter ID laws and examples such as what happened in Florida in 2000 with a sympathetic Republican governor in charge. To the former point, one of the biggest stumbling blocks of the Democratic Party and many progressives has been an often patronizing view of the everyday people on whose behalf we claim to fight, and a misunderstanding or outright dismissive view of the currents of fear and resentment that shape much of U.S. politics at the moment. When it comes down to it, I do believe that even those people with whom I would disagree on many or even most issues would agree that a person such as Trump with seemingly no grasp on the basic workings of a democracy and a willingness to say or do anything simply to gain power does not belong anywhere near the White House. It may not feel good to those folks to vote for Clinton instead, but at least she won't operate the federal government like a casino. At least there will be a country to fight for once the next election rolls around. I'll sum this up with a quote from Ivan Hernandez on Twitter: "[I] would vote for Hillary as I am a one issue voter and that issue is not opening the seventh seal and ushering in the apocalypse." Hyperbolic? Maybe. Maybe not: "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose voters." Trump's words, not mine. Surely we can do better than that. Emily Mills is a freelance writer who lives in Madison. Twitter: @millbot; Email: emily.mills@outlook.com News / National by Staff reporter Deputy Mines minister Fred Moyo has been accused of concealing a fatal accident at his mine, delaying the rescue for two months,Daily News reported Friday.Four illegal miners have been found dead, trapped under his Four Stampers Mine in Chegutu.Chief Ngezi, under whose jurisdiction the mine lies, told the Daily News yesterday that he and his people had begun excavating the minister's mine after realising that several people had been trapped underground.It was feared more miners were trapped in dark tunnels far below the ground, in one of the worst mine disasters to hit Chegutu in recent years.Rescue teams were struggling desperately to reach the trapped miners metres from the entrance of the mine shaft, while other villagers rushed to the scene from neighbouring areas to bolster the rescue effort."Our people have been saying that there are people trapped there and when we approached ... Moyo, he was reluctant to have the case investigated, maybe because he felt that his name would be dragged into the mud," Chief Ngezi said."But because of pressure from my people, we had to do it on our own and today (Thursday) we have managed to exhume one of the bodies and we have since alerted the police."He said while Moyo was not doing any extraction at the mine, he had his people and equipment there, while illegal miners would sneak in to mine.Moyo yesterday said: "Mine fatalities are dealt with by government inspectors in the province. Let the Mashonaland West government engineer respond to your questions."Chief Ngezi alleged further efforts by him and his people to engage Moyo's nephews Edgar Mashange and Maribha Zhou, a former colonel in the Zimbabwe National Army, were met with insults."They did not listen to us when we told them there were people trapped underground. They did not even respect me as a chief as they insulted me each time I phoned them until I gave up."I later gave in to pressure from my people and we decided to seek help from Zimplats who gave us diesel and machinery to carry out the exhumation exercise that is currently underway." House Speaker Paul Ryan said he hopes his endorsement of Republican Donald Trump and next weeks unveiling of a wide-ranging conservative agenda will be a turning point in the 2016 race. Credit: Associated Press By of the House Speaker Paul Ryan says he hopes his endorsement of Donald Trump and next week's unveiling of a wide-ranging conservative agenda will be a turning point in the 2016 race. But in the same interview, just one day after he endorsed Trump, Ryan disavowed the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's accusations of bias against a judge because of his "Mexican heritage." "We shouldn't be speaking to fellow citizens in ways that divide us," Ryan told the Journal Sentinel on Friday. "I think the comments about the Mexican-American judge are not called for, and I don't even understand the line of thinking behind it." Ryan has been working to shift the 2016 presidential race away from a personality contest to one focused on ideas. Those efforts have so far been unsuccessful, but the Janesville Republican is hoping the new GOP agenda, dubbed "A Better Way," will change that. "Yes, this has been more of a personality contest election. Until now, that is, as far as we're concerned," Ryan said. "We believe we being House Republicans we believe we can add some substance to this conversation." Last month, Ryan made it clear he was not ready to endorse Trump, saying the real estate mogul first needed to unify the GOP and show a commitment to conservative principles. Ryan said Thursday's endorsement of Trump came after a month of meetings and discussions with Trump and his team "to make sure that Donald and his staff understood where we were going on substance." "I wanted to make sure that our nominee, someone I did not know and someone that's new to governing and principles and policies and politics, was comfortable with where we are going," Ryan said. "And that was important to me. That we actually have an understanding of one another, and an understanding of the critical principles that animate conservatives that we think are necessary to put the country back on track." Ryan said that during those meetings, he also spoke with Trump about shifting the tone of his campaign. "We spoke specifically about the need to change tone, to have a campaign that we can all be proud of. That Republicans can be proud of, and that we can go out and win converts," Ryan said. "And it starts with principle, and continues with policies, and ends with tone and appeal." Ryan added that he won't refrain from speaking out when Trump says things he disagrees with or finds offensive, adding that the two have spoken about Trump's call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States. "Yes, I will continue to speak out if need be. I hope it's not necessary," Ryan said. "Yes, I am concerned." Ryan also sharply criticized Trump's recent comments about a federal judge presiding over a lawsuit filed by former students of Trump University, whom he called a "hater" and pointed out his Mexican heritage. At a rally last week, Trump reportedly said the judge, Gonzalo Curiel, "happens to be, we believe, Mexican," and suggested he was biased because of Trump's calls to build a wall along the United States-Mexico border to prevent illegal immigration. Trump repeated those comments in an interview this week. "I'm building the wall, I'm building the wall," Trump said. "I have a Mexican judge. He's of Mexican heritage. He should have recused himself, not only for that, for other things." Ryan criticized Trump's comments, pointing out that the judge is "a guy from Indiana." "That to me is something that makes it harder to unify and have an inclusive campaign that's inspiring," he said. "And we're going to continue working on that." Ryan announced his endorsement of Trump, and vowed to vote for the New York mogul in the fall, in an opinion piece in his hometown newspaper, the Janesville Gazette. He faces a primary challenge from Paul Nehlen, a Delavan businessman and first-time candidate. "This campaign's mission to unseat Paul Ryan has not changed as a result of his tepid change in course on the Republican presidential nominee," Nehlen said in a statement. "We are pressing forward in our efforts to provide real representation to the people of this district." Scot Ross of the liberal One Wisconsin Now said, "Paul Ryan doesn't get to split the baby; you endorse Trump and you endorse the sexism, the racism and his dangerous views on foreign policy. Paul Ryan can't have it both ways and what may unite a fractured Republican Party will divide the country more than ever." SHARE By of the Madison Gov. Scott Walker announced the appointments of the last two members of the newly created state Elections Commission on Friday, rounding out the six-person panel tasked with taking up some of the duties of the Government Accountability Board. Republican lawmakers voted last year to shut down the accountability board and replace it with two new entities made up of equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats. Legislators contended the accountability board was biased against them because it assisted with an investigation into whether the governor's campaign illegally worked with conservative groups. The state Supreme Court ended that probe last year on free speech grounds. Republicans and Democrats each selected nominees for the new Elections Commission, with Democrats selecting Julie Glancey, who served as Sheboygan County clerk for 18 years. Republicans nominated Beverly Gill, currently the election inspector for the Town of Burlington. Walker has now appointed both. The Elections Commission also includes Don Millis, Ann Jacobs, Steve King, and Mark Thomsen. It will take over the duties of the accountability board on June 30. 'It was intentional': Prosecution tells jury in closing arguments given in Darrell Brooks trial Jurors will soon begin deliberating in the trial of Darrell Brooks Jr., accused in the 2021 Waukesha Christmas Parade attack that killed six and injured dozens more. Antonius Van Putten looks over the erosion of the bluff in the backyard of his home on Rosalind Ave. in Mount Pleasant in Racine County. Credit: Michael Sears SHARE By of the Wisconsin Emergency Management has scheduled a June 7 public information meeting to discuss Lake Michigan bluff erosion problems with Village of Mount Pleasant residents and local officials. About a dozen homes in the village are at risk of collapsing into the lake as shoreline bluffs wash away from a combination of heavy rains, waves and high lake levels, officials said. Federal and state agency representatives attending the meeting will discuss options for protecting shoreline properties from erosion. The meeting will be from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday in the auditorium at Village Hall, 8811 Campus Drive. "The state is very concerned about the erosion occurring along Lake Michigan and we want to provide whatever assistance we can," Emergency Management Administrator Brian Satula said. In addition to Emergency Management, the state Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Wisconsin Coastal Management Program and UW Sea Grant Institute will send representatives to the meeting. Reddit Email 0 Shares By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | Iraqi Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi said Thursday that his troops were in position to move into the city of Fallujah from the south, after advances made during the past two days, but that he would slow down the assault for fear of civilians trapped in the city. The Iraqi military and its Shiite militia auxiliaries have met with fierce resistance by Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) fighters holding the city, which fell to them in January 2014. Estimates of non-combatants still inside the city range from 20,000 to 50,000 and there is fear they will be caught in the crossfire or hit in artillery barrages or aerial bombardment. Daesh has more or less kidnapped them and is making it very difficult for those in the city center under their watchful eye to flee. Yet Russia Today reports that Iraqi forces are continuing a steady advance on the city from all four directions, especially from the south, where they have taken Apple Bridge. They unfurled an Iraqi flag over the bridge. Iraqi Sunni lawmakers have criticized the participation in the campaign of Shiite militias, given that Falluja is a bastion of Sunni Islam, and they have also been scathing about the planning role assumed by Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, head of the the special forces or Jerusalem Brigade (Quds Brigade) of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards corps. Iran is alarmed that Daesh considers Shiite Muslims to be apostates who renounced true Islam (this is not true). Daesh is therefore a strategic danger to Iran, which is why that country has played such a forward-leaning role in the Fallujah campaign. - Related video: CCTV: Iraqis continue operations to take back Fallujah Reddit Email 0 Shares By Fiona Rose-Greenland | (The Conversation) | For excavators archaeologists, but also looters like the [so-called] Islamic State, or ISIL the opportunity for discovery in modern Iraq and Syria is dazzling. The countries lie within the Fertile Crescent, a broad swath of land stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to the Zagros Mountains and the Persian Gulf that gave rise to some of the earliest complex societies. The human settlement record begins around 9000 B.C., which means, among other things, that the soil is rich with artifacts. Syria alone has 4,500 surveyed and published archaeological sites, and scholars estimate that there are many more. Everyone seems to agree that ISIL is digging up and selling archaeological artifacts to make money. But no one seems to agree on how much money its actually making from its illegal antiquities trade: amounts have ranged from US$4 million to $7 billion. Despite a number of challenges, my University of Chicago research team known as MANTIS (Modeling the Antiquities Trade in Iraq and Syria) has worked to outline the framework of ISILs antiquities trade as well as accurately estimate how much cash ISIL and other insurgent groups are making from the endeavor. An interdisciplinary project comprising archaeologists and social scientists, MANTIS has created a new data set drawn from past excavation publications and auction sales reports. Using these data, we are building a revenue estimate tool that will give us a better idea of what the trade is worth. From the ground to the auction house We began with the goal of measuring profit. What we now understand is that specifying the process or the means by which ISIL unearths, moves and sells antiquities is just as important as measuring the profit. Antiquities are looted and trafficked all over the world, and the specific mechanisms and structures differ according to cultural and political context. In the Islamic State, the antiquities pipeline seems to involve three basic steps: a dig permit is secured from ISIL authorities, unearthed artifacts are evaluated (possibly by officials with the Antiquities Division of the Islamic States Department of Natural Resources) and artifacts are moved out of the Islamic State into the international market (including but not limited to Turkey). At some point in the process, ISIL imposes a tax on the salable antiquities, widely reported as 20 percent. There are several details yet to be specified in this pipeline, but it provides a basic picture of the flow of goods. Studying this process gives us important insights that can be shared with policymakers who are trying to cut off terrorist finance sources and protect culturally significant objects. For example, we know that artifact hunters have been illegally excavating Syrian and Iraqi archaeology sites for decades. Archaeological looting is a longstanding practice embedded in local economic and tribal arrangements. Defeating ISIL will not guarantee the end of archaeological looting; rather, in the absence of economic alternatives, looting will remain in place as a source of revenue for the next regime that rolls through. Studying the process also reveals the problem of politics at both regional and international levels. On the regional level, ISIL has competition from other insurgent groups that are looting artifacts. On the international level, uneven efforts to change cultural policies or enforce existing ones reveal disagreements about how archaeological materials should be regulated by the state and the private market. These disputes have simmered for years, and the ISIL crisis intensifies them. Mistrust among scholars, museum professionals and participants in the legal antiquities trade blocks cooperation on data sharing that might advance our knowledge. Projecting profit Nonetheless, profit remains an important topic of study. Thus far, a stable estimate of the trade continues to elude us because there are so many unknowns. Unknowns are a familiar problem for anyone studying a black market. Participants in illegal trading and smuggling keep a low profile, and data sets have to be built using diverse sources of evidence, including interviews, police records and customs seizures. The work that goes into this type of data compilation is complicated, sensitive and sometimes dangerous (this is certainly the case in Iraq and Syria right now). Studying the ISIL antiquities trade has a further set of challenges that predate the conflict: We dont have reliable quantitative data on the legal antiquities trade from the region, never mind the illegal trade. We dont know what was in the ground when ISIL started digging. We dont have established revenue estimate methodologies for this type of good. Still, we have been able to get a better handle on figuring out how much money ISIL has earned. For example, we project gross market value that can then be broken down into discrete money flows. One way to think of gross market value is the hammer price at auction. Not every artifact ends up in an online or physical house auction like Bonhams, Christies and Sothebys, but enough of them do that its a reasonable starting point. From the gross market value we can hypothetically apportion out proceeds to at least three stakeholders: looters, ISIL and dealers. ISIL seems to be involved in the earliest stages of the pipeline, suggesting a slim percentage of the overall profit. Because there are specialized skills involved in international smuggling, it is unlikely that the same person who loots physically moves the artifacts out of Syria or Iraq and into the foreign marketplace. Successful smuggling, like successful looting, requires its own social network. What all of these caveats and complications boil down to is that ISIL is likely to have earned several million dollars in profit since launching its looting program. Thats a far cry from $7 billion, but its still enough money to carry out devastating attacks on civilians in Europe and closer to home. The November 2015 Paris attacks, which left 130 innocent people dead, are estimated to have cost no more than $10,000. The allure of numbers that awe And yet, patchy data and methodological challenges do not fully explain why $7 billion fell to $4 million in public discussions about the ISIL antiquities trade. Whats really going on here, I think, can be explained in two ways. First, there is an overactive collective imagination about how much art is actually worth. Its an understandable proclivity. We hear all the time about astronomical prices paid at auction for contemporary artworks or rare masterpieces. Moreover, antiquities are imbued with mystique. They are treasure, hidden away in the ancient soil and waiting to be rediscovered. This, in turn, motivates governments and other groups opposed to the Islamic State to describe their actions in attention-grabbing terms. Its a lot easier to call for action against a $7 billion crime than a $4 million one. While market mystique and over-the-top plot lines are fine for Hollywood films and adventure novels, its no way to understand terrorist finance, and without that understanding we are unlikely to arrive at genuine and lasting solutions. Fiona Rose-Greenland, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Chicago This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. - Related video added by Juan Cole: CCTV America from last Winter: Black market for antiquities partly funding ISIL Reddit Email 0 Shares by JOSEPH RICHARD PREVILLE and JULIE POUCHER HARBIN | ( ISLAMiCommentary) | Column By the Book with Joseph Preville How did the rise of nation-states in the 20th century doom religious diversity and pluralism in the Middle East? And, can pluralism be recovered to heal and transform the Middle East? Veteran journalist Nicolas Pelham considers these questions in his thought-provoking new book, Holy Lands: Reviving Pluralism in the Middle East (Columbia Global Reports, 2016). Nicolas Pelham is a Middle East correspondent for The Economist and a writer on Arab Afairs for The New York Review Books. For more than twenty years, he has covered the tumultuous events and ideological currents of the Middle East. In addition to The Economist, Pelham has reported on the region for the BBC, the Financial Times, and Middle East Times. Pelham is the author of two books: A New Muslim Order (2008) and, with Peter Mansfield, A History of the Middle East (2010). Pelham writes that his new book is born of the gnawing question of how a region that for half a millennium was a global exemplar of pluralism and religious harmony has become the least tolerant and stable place on the planet. He looks at the causes of the Middle Easts descent into a fractured league of embattled states with exclusivist claims over land and borders. Nicolas Pelham discusses his new book in this interview. You write that your career as a writer and journalist in the Middle East, beginning in the 1990s was born of the thrill of the regions diversity. What do you mean by that and how did you get started as a writer and journalist specializing in the Middle East? Nicolas Pelham Nicolas Pelham From the outside Westerners are raised to conceive of the region as the other. The first we learn about its peoples are in our history books through the prism of the Crusades. We study the Middle East as a place of war and conflict, where the present, as relayed in news bulletins, only confirms the past. And yet on the ground, the region I first experienced was so very different. In Damascus, where I learned Arabic, there was no one other just a kaleidoscope of cosmopolitan cultures and sects whose various believers rubbed shoulders in what was seemingly a time-honoured natural order. I was there just as the iron curtain was falling and sweeping aside such autocratic rulers as Nicolae Ceausescu. There were many predictions of what would happen to Syria. The notion that the regions sects might tear each other apart seemed the most fanciful. A couple of years later I was back in Cairo trying to fund my way through a course at Cairo University law faculty. Within days I found myself side-tracked into working for a local English-language paper, the Middle East Times, and law college fell by the wayside. Al-Jihad and al-Gamaa al-Islamiya were just beginning to launch their first low-level insurgency how innocent the occasional pot-shot at Copts or western tourists seems in comparison to todays bloodied times. But it was a foretaste of the religious wars that were set to sweep the region. One reviewer called your book a sound, accessible argument for why returning to the mixed-faith communities living among each other in the Ottoman model might just save the Middle East. Explain how the Ottoman millet system diverse religious communities living side-by-side in shared spaces with collective management worked and how it promoted religious pluralism. In hindsight, the Ottoman ability to manage a vast empire extending from the gates of Vienna to the tip of Arabia and from the Atlas mountains to Bahrain seems a phenomenal feat. They had no electronic communications to span the region, and in much of their Empire Muslims were ruling over a Christian majority. And yet for six centuries the Ottomans governed and maintained a remarkably stable, harmonious and prosperous common market that could not be more at odds with todays turmoil. They did so by delegating power to religious leaders and to government their respective millets or religious nations. From their seat in Istanbul, Caliphs, patriarchs and chief rabbis ruled their flocks, maintaining order through their own religious courts and raising taxes. But while they ruled over people, they did not rule over land. They governed holy communities, not holy lands. Religious communities shared the same neighborhoods, the same market places, and often given their own overlapping religious traditions the same holy places. And because their religious authority spanned the breadth of the Empire itself, the outlook of the multiple faiths was remarkably universal, inclusive and pluralist. Many would argue that its too late to go back to the Ottoman model, with several non-Muslim communities having been driven far from their homes starting with the post-World War I formation of nation-states and subsequent unmixing. More recently, a once-thriving Jewish community in Iraq, for example, has all but disappeared and the Christian communities in Iraq and Syria have been displaced by war. What makes you think its possible to return to the way it was during the Ottoman period? There have been repeated attempts over the past hundred years to carve up the Ottoman Empire into sectarian homelands, but all have failed to resolve conflicts their proponents claimed they would. To the contrary, experiments with partition be they a Jewish homeland, a Shiastan or ISIS- manufactured Sunnistan have displaced tens of millions and only served to deepen and distend the regions multiple sectarian conflicts. Often the dislocation seems only to add to the overlap. Jewish communities from Baghdad and across the region were uprooted from one Muslim part of the region and replanted in another. Even today much of, perhaps the majority of, Israels territory the Galilee and the Negev remains majority Muslim. Sunnis fleeing Aleppos siege gravitated to the Mediterranean coast, which Alawites consider their stronghold. Hundreds of thousands of Sunnis from Anbar and Nineveh provinces have sought refuge in Baghdad and southern Iraq undermining the aspirations of those politicians and militia commanders who sought a Shiastan. Moreover, even if somehow the regions religious communities could magically congeal into separate enclaves it is questionable whether the region would find peace. The grievances of those dispossessed by partition will remain unaddressed. And the record suggests that turning universal religious communities into land-cults only heightens their xenophobic, chauvinistic tendencies, increases their fear of existential threats and propels them into conflict with their neighbors. But inclusivity drawing on past values is not only a prerequisite for resolving conflicts. The economic imperative is also a driver. If the regions leaders are really to transform their realms from rentier states into sustainable and productive economies they will need to trade with and ultimately live with their neighbors, whatever their sect. Finally, across the region sectarian leaders are struggling to maintain popular support for their narratives. The number of Iraqis voting for anti-sectarian parties is increasing exponentially by millions of voters with each election. Not least because it has failed to deliver, factionalism is losing its appeal in much of the region. Would a re-drawing of post-World War I borders, as some have suggested, facilitate more mixed communities or further segregate them? What would you advocate? Ultimately, it matters less what the borders are than what the policies are holding sway within them. If the Middle Easts many states were led by rulers who ensured religious and sectarian pluralism; divvied up posts and budgets, resources, and development land equitably amongst representatives of all faiths; and ensured equal rights for family reunification and access and movement across and within their borders to all sects, their societies would be more far harmonious. But the record suggests that the smaller the territory the harder such pluralism is to achieve. In Holy Lands, I explain how for all their differences, each of the multiple experiments to carve out separate sectarian homelands in the region has exposed the same traits an ingathering of the adherents of the dominant sect and an expulsion of other sects; a re-landscaping of territory to enhance the historical sites of the dominant sect and erase or rename those of other sects; and the propagation of a primordial myth which depicts the sectarian state as a revival of lost ancient purity and grandeur and salvation from the history of persecution and dispossession that followed. Such fearful, suspicious ideologies lend themselves to the maintenance of security states which, for their very internal cohesion, seeks to enhance external threats and animosities rather than resolve them. At the same time, sectarian states remain fiercely protective, and tightly guard their borders. In the short-to-medium term, perhaps the most that can be hoped for is that driven by economic necessity they can be encouraged to establish trade ties and facilitate cross-border access and movement. Ultimately conflict resolution will come through a muddying of boundaries not through greater partition. External powers working for conflict resolution should also do more to heed and include religious leaders. Not only do they wield vast popular mandates which can be deployed either to sanction agreements or spoil them, but they have inherited traditions which, honed over centuries, have a track-record of preserving an inter-faith modus vivendi. Unlike Christendom in Europe which annihilated its sects, Islam preserved them. Indeed that is why so many ancient indigenous sects survive to this day. Above all, religious leaders can be highly effective in propounding the message that the current bloodletting is not a historical aberration but a betrayal of the religious values of tolerance and inclusivity the region has upheld for centuries. Finally I would pay greater attention to Saudi Arabia. Outside the kingdom is often vilified as a cauldron of religious troubles which frequently boils and bubbles beyond its borders. Yet for all the Wahhabi command of public space, the kingdom has preserved much of its diverse religious mix. If the kingdom could project its reach less by sponsoring one sect against others, but engaging all the multiple sects with which it maintains relations internally, the region would be a happier place. Are you hopeful that Jews and Muslims can live together again in peace in Israel/Palestine as they did before the Balfour Declaration? In Holy Lands I write about the city of Safed which used to be a thriving medieval staging post between Damascus and the Mediterranean and is now a dead-end in the Upper Galilee. Until 1948, Safed conformed to the regional norm, that is to say it was a city shared by Muslims and Jews, and was particularly well-known for the medieval mystical and erotic verse of its Jewish and Muslim poets. In 1948 all that disappeared. The mayor proudly showed me the home-made mortar gun that chased the towns Muslim Palestinians away and still stands on a plinth in the towns central plaza. But though the mayor calls it a miracle, three generations on it has still left his all-Jewish town feeling half empty. Successive mayors have made various attempts to fill it. They have turned mosques into art galleries, and renamed vacated neighborhoods Artists or Breslev quarters hoping to attract Bohemian, ultra-orthodox and young Diaspora Jews to the town. Only when these fell short of the mark did the mayor reach out to the surrounding Palestinian villages of the Galilee and open vocational colleges for their youth. Today thousands of Israeli Palestinians fill its streets, and something of the spirit of Safed is coming back. Problems and animosities abound particularly when Israels leaders launch offensives on the occupied territories. The mayor will still not sanction the opening of the delightful Mamluk Red mosque. But ultimately, Israels own zoning restrictions on over-crowded and under-resourced Palestinian towns in Israel are pushing Palestinians to upgrade their living conditions in parts of the country Israel hitherto treated as exclusively Jewish. That mixing is fostering a new and interesting dynamic which one day might start to challenge modern divides. What advice would you give to aspiring writers and journalists who wish to focus on the Middle East? Hold true to the Prophets aphorism, ultimately the pen is mightier than the sword. Joseph Richard Preville is Assistant Professor of English at Alfaisal University/Prince Sultan College for Business in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Tikkun, The Jerusalem Post, Muscat Daily, Saudi Gazette, and World Religion News. He is also a regular contributor to ISLAMiCommentary. Julie Poucher Harbin is Editor of ISLAMiCommentary. Via ISLAMiCommentary TORONTO, ON --(Marketwired - June 02, 2016) - Primero Mining Corp. ("Primero" or the "Company") (TSX: P) (NYSE: PPP) announced today that it has issued a Notice of Intent to submit a claim to international arbitration against the Government of Mexico, pursuant to Article 1119 of the North American Free Trade Agreement ("NAFTA"). Primero's Notice of Intent under NAFTA highlights improper actions taken by the Mexican tax authority, the Servicio de Administracion Tributaria ("SAT"). These actions have the intent of revoking legal rights previously granted to Primero and upon which Primero relied to expand its investment in Mexico. Primero is a publicly-listed Canadian company with significant investments in Mexico, including its flagship San Dimas gold-silver mine located in Durango, Mexico. The mine employs approximately 1,100 local workers and has been repeatedly awarded Clean Industry certification by PROFEPA, Mexico's Environmental Protection agency. The Company also holds a 100% interest in the Cerro del Gallo gold-silver-copper development project located in Guanajuato, Mexico, and the Ventanas exploration property located 32 kilometres south of the San Dimas mine. At each of these sites, Primero has proven itself to be a responsible corporate citizen, having recently been recognized as an "Empresa Socialmente Responsable" or "Socially Responsible Company" by the Mexican Centre for Philanthropy (CEMEFI) for the fifth consecutive year. The actions of the SAT have been neither fair nor equitable. The Company believes that the SAT's actions are discriminatory against Primero as a foreign investor. As a consequence, Primero believes the Government of Mexico has failed to uphold the core values of NAFTA, including its obligation to protect Primero's foreign investment under NAFTA Chapter 11, and therefore the Company is entitled to full compensation. Primero has resorted to utilizing international arbitration proceedings to ensure that Mexico's commitments under NAFTA are upheld. About Primero Primero Mining Corp. is a Canadian-based precious metals producer that owns 100% of the San Dimas gold-silver mine and the Cerro del Gallo gold-silver-copper development project in Mexico and 100% of the Black Fox mine and adjoining properties in the Township of Black RiverMatheson near Timmins, Ontario, Canada. Primero offers immediate exposure to un-hedged, below average cash cost gold production with a substantial resource base in politically stable jurisdictions. The Company is focused on becoming a leading intermediate gold producer by building a portfolio of high quality, low cost precious metals assets in the Americas. Primero's website is www.primeromining.com. CAUTIONARY STATEMENT ON FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION This news release contains "forward-looking statements", within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities legislation, concerning the business and operations of Primero Mining Corp. and its consolidated subsidiaries (collectively, "Primero" or the "Company"). All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. Generally, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "if approved", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", "believes", "in order to" or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "are anticipated", "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will require", "will allow", "will enhance" or "will include" or similar statements or the negative connotation thereof. Forward-looking information is also identifiable in statements of currently occurring matters which will continue in future, such as "is updating", "is working" or "is also assessing" or other statements that may be stated in the present tense and are not historical facts or words with future implication such as "opportunity", "promising". Forward-looking statements in this news release include, but are not limited to statements regarding the APA and the Company's ability to defend its validity, the Company's ability to pay taxes in Mexico on realized silver prices; the Company's intent to submit a NAFTA claim to international arbitration against the Government of Mexico; and the Company's intentions to become an intermediate gold producer. The assumptions made by the Company in preparing the forward-looking information contained in this news release, which may prove to be incorrect, include, but are not limited to: the expectations and beliefs of management; the specific assumptions set forth above in this news release; assumptions regarding the discriminatory nature of the actions of the SAT against the Company; assumptions regarding the failure of the Mexican Government to uphold the core values of NAFTA and to protect the Company's foreign investment in Mexico; that there are no material variations in the current tax and regulatory environment or the basis for the calculation of the Company's income tax (including as a result of the current challenge to the advance pricing agreement). Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Primero to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including: the Company's ability to obtain full compensation from the Mexican Government; the Company may not be able to become an intermediate gold producer by building a portfolio of high quality, low cost precious metals assets in the Americas. Certain of these factors are discussed in greater detail in Primero's registration statement on Form 40-F on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and its most recent Annual Information Form on file with the Canadian provincial securities regulatory authorities and available at www.sedar.com. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements. In addition, although Primero has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and accordingly are subject to change after such date. Forward-looking statements are provided for the purpose of providing information about management's current expectations and plans and allowing investors and others to get a better understanding of our operating environment. Primero does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that are included in this document, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. News / National by Staff reporter UNITED KINGDOM - A 45-year-old Zimbabwean man based in Leeds, Washington Chogugudza, has been arrested by British police on allegations that he raped his 17-year-old daughter over a period of time.According to Nehanda Radio Chogugudza, a respected church elder in the community, was arrested by police last week Wednesday. According to his Facebook profile, Chogugudza says he is a Pastor at Showers of Mercy Ministries International.An administrator for the church, Orden Makiwa, however disowned Chogugudza, saying he last came to the church 3 years ago and never held any leadership position with them.The publication understands that Chogugudza is pleading not guilty, a shocking audio recording exposes how he tried to blackmail his daughter into sleeping with him. On one occasion he tried to sleep with her when they were preparing to go to church.One minute into the tape she pleads with him "I don't want to do it today."On 6 minutes she tells him "Daddy stop it.""We can talk without holding" she is again heard telling him 7 minutes into the tape."We have already been through this but not today.""Can you not hold me then, I don't feel comfortable.""Daddy no, I don't want to do this, why can't you do it with mama (mum), stop it, Daddy stop it, I don't feel comfortable with this though, you are supposed to be my dad."The man is shockingly heard begging "only for 2 minutes."When the girl stands her ground he then says "You have made your point sisterso dhiri rapera ka (the deal is off), we are going to do normal things, no special favours."He threatens he will not buy his daughter a vehicle worth 5,000 as promised to her. He tells the daughter her refusal to sleep with him will actually save him from spending 5,000. The girl can be heard in the audio pleading "Not today daddy, not today."After a few more minutes, he again tries to force himself on her. The girl is heard fighting him off while shouting "daddy stop it, I don't like it, daddy stop it.""Hope we are not going to fall out," Chogugudza asks his daughter as he for the third time tries to force himself on her. The girl again tells him "NO, I don't like it."Not much else is known about Chogugudza except that he went to Chaplin High School in Gweru and then Mkoba Teachers College in the same city. He later relocated to the UK. The woman he was staying with is the daughter's step mother.Chogugudza remains in police custody. He appeared in court last week and was denied bail. Vancouver, BC (FSCwire) - CKR Carbon Corporation. (CKR or the Company) (TSX-V: CKR) (CB8FRANKFURT) (CBULF USA) is pleased to announce the results of assays on approximately 160 kilograms of samples sent to TEA-Lab (previously Lilof Enterprises) of Swakopmund, Namibia. The average grade of 59.40% Cg (Carbon as graphite) for the graphite samples resulted from only screening of material from the Aukam dumps. Average grades of flake graphite deposits typically range from 1.5% to 25% Cg. Assay Results Total results of all assays from 7 samples ranging in weight from 20 kg to 30kg show a range of 55.64% Cg (carbon as graphite) to 63.87% Cg with an average of 59.40% Cg (See results below). While these samples were selected from a larger 1.6 tonne sample of the dumps, they are not considered representative of the mineralization on the property as a whole. Sample Number Carbon as Graphite (%) 1975 57.50 1980 63.87 2015 55.64 2075 58.66 2080 58.75 2225 60.86 2345 60.49 Average 59.40 These samples were taken from a 1.6 tonne sample shipped as part of our commitments under a Letter of Intent with a vertically integrated graphite producer (See news release dated March 16, 2016) and are believed to be representative of that larger sample. The grade of these samples exceeds our expectations based on previous assays of screened bulk samples from the Aukam dumps that averaged 42% Cg said Dr. Roger Moss, Chief Executive Officer of CKR Carbon. We expect the 1.6 tonne sample to respond well to processing and look forward to the results of the test. Assays were performed at TEA-Lab of Swakopmund. Samples were crushed by hammer and jaw crusher to <5mm and split before milling sub-samples to < 200 microns followed by thermo-gravimetric analysis. The technical content of this news release was approved by Roger Moss, Ph.D., P.Geo a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. About the Aukam Project CKR has an option to acquire up to 73% in the Aukam graphite project by meeting certain milestones and making cash payments. The project is located on 34,082.15 hectares in southern Namibia close to the port city of Luderitz. The property hosts three underground adits which were mined periodically between 1940 and 1974. Five dumps from the historical mining occur on the property and 73 samples from the lower three dumps were assayed and averaged 42% Cg. CKR is planning a bulk sampling program at Aukam, and has a letter of intent to sell the graphitic material produced during the program. CKR also intends to put the historical mine back into production and is working on an application for a mining license. The company maintains high safety and environmental standards and has a comprehensive strategy of social engagement. About CKR Carbon Corporation CKR Carbon Corporation is focused on high quality, natural graphite suitable for use in lithium-ion batteries, graphite foil and other value-added high growth technology applications. We only select projects requiring low capital and a short time to market. The company is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol CKR and has 33.2 million shares outstanding. For more information: visit the website at www.ckrcarbon.com or contact: Roger Moss, CEO, +1 416-704-8291 E-mail inquiries: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. For graphite product enquiries: Arno Brand, Boswell Projects, +1 416-561-4095 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 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. FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: This news release contains forward-looking statements, which relate to future events or future performance and reflect managements current expectations and assumptions. Such forward-looking statements reflect managements current beliefs and are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company. Investors are cautioned that these forward looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ materially from those expected. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and, except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements and by those made in our filings with SEDAR in Canada (available atwww.sedar.com). [JURIST] BP [official website] stated [press release] Thursday that it has agreed to pay $175 million to shareholders in a securities class action suit against the company relating back to the 2010 BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Shareholders claimed the company misled them on the extent of the damages arising from the spill. The statement made clear that this settlement does not resolve other securities-related litigation in connection with the same incident. A separate settlement between BP and the Department of Justice [JURIST report] for $20 billion was approved earlier this year, in April. That settlement represented penalties relating to the Clean Water Act and general natural resource damage. The April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill has had far-reaching and catastrophic environmental and human impacts [JURIST backgrounder]. Last year the US government appealed a federal court ruling [JURIST report] that reduced the potential liability BP faces under the Clean Water Act in relation to the 2010 spill. In February of last year District Court Judge Carl Barbier of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana rejected a motion [JURIST report] by BP to reduce the civil fine payable under the Clean Water Act. BPs appeal sought to reduce the fine per barrel from the $4,300 proposed by the US government to $3,000 per barrel. In December 2014 the US Supreme Court declined [JURIST report] to review a settlement with BP resulting from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. In August 2014 a federal district court in Louisiana ruled [JURIST report] that BP was grossly negligent and bears a majority of the blame for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. The German Parliament [official website] approved a resolution [text, PDF, in German] Thursday recognizing the mass killings of ethnic Armenians by Turks during the Ottoman Empire a century ago as genocide, prompting an angry backlash and the immediate recall of the Turkish ambassador. The resolution, calling for commemoration of the genocide of Armenian and other Christian minorities in the years 1915 and 1916, passed with support from all parties in the parliament. Turkey framed Germanys move as an attempt to come to terms with its own violent history in connection with the Jewish holocaust. Although German Chancellor Angela Merkel [official website] sought to calm the tensions by highlighting the friendship between the two nations, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan [BBC profile] stated that this development is sure to strain relations between the two countries. Although some fear that this latest move by Germany may upset the EUs efforts to win Turkish support in stemming the flow of refugees to Europe, others predict that the vote is unlikely to prompt Turkey to make any drastic moves. One historian noted that a significant feud with Germany at this point would be extraordinarily costly for Turkey, given its current political instability and diplomatic isolation. This vote in Bundestag comes more than a year after the approval of a resolution in Germanys parliament declaring the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces during World War I a genocide. Germany had previously been reluctant to term the mass killings as genocide due to fear of straining trade relations between the two countries, but that changed when German President Joachim Gauck [official website], condemned the killings as genocide in 2015. In recent years Armenian nationals have fought with the international community to recognize the killing of 1.5 million Armenian citizens as genocide [JURIST news archive]. Turkey has long disputed the numbers, alleging the killings were a result of a civil war that took place after the collapse of the Ottoman empire. In October 2015 the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) [official website] ruled [judgment; press release, PDF] that Switzerland was wrong to prosecute former Turkish politician Dogu Perincek for denying that the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire in 1915 was genocide. In 2009 Turkey and Armenia signed [JURIST report] a landmark accord in Switzerland to normalize relations between the two countries and open up borders. In 2010 a spokesperson for the US State Department stated that the Obama administration opposed a vote [JURIST report] before the House of Representatives on a resolution [HR 252 materials] branding the World War I-era killings of Armenians by Turkish forces as genocide. In September 2014 the Parliament of Greece ratified a bill that criminalizes the denial of the Armenian Genocide [JURIST report]. [JURIST] Guantanamo Bay detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi [NYT materials] appeared before a secret government tribunal on Thursday, seeking to be released from his detention. Slahi, who was one of only two Guantanamo prisoners to endure a Rumsfeld approved special interrogation plan, sat before the secretive government panel made up of representatives of various government agencies, including the Homeland Security and Justice departments, hoping to be released to another country [Al Jazeera report]. Two anonymous military officers working at Guantanamo described Slahi as one of the most compliant detainees and stated that he has begun to puruse[] a new direction in life. Despite being ordered to be released by a US district judge in 2010, Slahi has remained [WSJ report] at the Guantanamo facility following a government appeal in federal court. Slahi was arrested in 2001 and moved to Guantanamo in August of the following year on claims that he was a member of al Qaeda in the early 1990s and had helped recruit and assist in their terror operations, including facilitat[ing] the travel of future 9/11 operational coordinator Ramzi Binalshibh and two future 9/11 hijackers to Chechnya via Afghanistan in 1999. There are currently 80 detainees remaining at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. In February US President Barack Obama delivered a plan to Congress to close Guantanamo [JURIST report]. Last month the Department of Defense (DOD) announced the transfer [JURIST report] of nine Yemeni Guantanamo detainees to Saudi Arabia. Earlier in April the DOD announced the transfer [JURIST report] of two Guantanamo detainees to Senegal. Guatemalan Attorney General Thelma Aldana on Thursday accused [video, in Spanish] former president Otto Perez Molina and ex-vice president Roxana Baldetti of taking nearly 130 million dollars in bribes beginning in 2011. Aldana and the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) [official website] presented allegations [press release, in Spanish] of illicit campaign finance, illegal association, passive bribery and money laundering. CICIG said Perez Molina and Baldetti are may have used most of the money to fund their own lavish lifestyles [Reuters report]. The accusations are the most recent in a string of bribery charges being levied against the former president. The charges also implicate other powerful politicians and business operators. Aldana ordered an estimated 50 people to be arrested in connection with the crimes. In April Aldana accused Perez Molina of accepting part of a $25 million bribe while in office. In December Perez Molina was charged [JURIST report] by prosecutors, suspected of illicit association, customs fraud and bribery. Perez Molina was jailed [JURIST report] pending investigation in September following an indictment over corruption charges. Also in September Perez Molina sent [JURIST report] a letter [El Periodico materials, in Spanish] to both the Guatemalan congress and reporters announcing his resignation and his intention to stand before justice. The day before his resignation, Perez Molina was stripped of his presidential immunity [JURIST report] in a unanimous vote by congress. After Perez Molina announced [JURIST report] in August that he had no plans to resign, Guatemalas Supreme Court approved [JURIST report] prosecutors requests to impeach the president. The Gujarat High Court [official website] in Ahmedabad, India, convicted 24 individuals on Thursday of murder and other charges related to the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in the state of Gujarat in which hundreds of Muslims were killed. The riots, which occurred during the reign of current Prime Minister Narendra Modi [official website] as the Chief Minister of the state, resulted in the deaths of more than 1,000 individuals, most of whom were Muslims, making this Indias worst outbreak of religious violence since the anti-Sikh riots in 1984. The Gujarat riots came a day after 60 Hindu pilgrims were killed in a train blaze. A court convicted 31 people years later of arson in connection with that incident. According to S.M. Vohra, a lawyer representing more than three dozen riot victims, 11 of the 24 were convicted of murder while the rest were convicted of lesser charges, which will not be made public until sentencing on Monday. The court acquitted [Reuters report] 36 other defendants who had been on trial since 2009 while four of the accused died during the trial. Accusations against Modi that he did not do enough to stop the rioting continue to haunt him to this day, although the prime minister has so far denied any wrongdoing. As recently as September 2014, Modi was sued [JURIST report] by the American Justice Center, on behalf of unnamed survivors of violence in India, who claimed [complaint, PDF] that he failed to stop the riots. A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York [official website] dismissed the lawsuit [JURIST report] last year, agreeing with the US State Department [official website] that Modi is entitled to immunity from lawsuits in US courts. Modi was elected [Guardian report] prime minister in May 2014 with a landslide victory. The election of the Hindu nationalist and 282 members of his conservative Bharatiya Janata Party [official website] was called historic, as no party has won by such a margin since 1984. [JURIST] In his report [report, PDF] issued Thursday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon [official website] expressed shock at the increasing number of children recruited and killed in armed conflicts in several countries, including Afghanistan, Yemen, Iran and South Sudan. Ban asked that those countries contributing to the 2,829 child casualties in armed conflicts during 2015 take steps to end the recruitment, killing, kidnapping, and sexual abuse of youth in armed conflicts. He also stated that those who do choose to continue these violations, will find themselves under scrutiny by the United Nations. Most notably among those groups listed in Bans black-list are the Saudi Arabia-led coalition and Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen, as well as SPLA, South Sudans government forces, and the Civilian Join Task Force in Nigeria. These groups are a few of the nine governments and fifty-one armed groups that were noted recruiting and killing children in armed conflicts. A key goal of Bans was to encourage countries responding to armed groups with children to implement mitigation tactics so as to protect children. These measures would include requiring countries to not use weapons with wide-reaching damage in areas that are highly populated. Children have been at-risk groups in various conflicts worldwide. In March, the Myanmar government released 46 underage and child recruits from the military [JURIST report] as part of a UN joint action plan made in 2012. In February UN envoy Leila Zerrougui reported [JURIST report] that children worldwide continued to face human rights violations in 2015, particularly in Middle Eastern and African countries. Also in February, Human Rights Watch declared [JURIST report] that hostiles in eastern Ukraine had damaged or destroyed hundreds of schools, many of which were being used for military purposes. Furthermore, UN human rights experts in Nigeria urged [JURIST report] the government to guarantee the safety of areas liberated from Boko Haram. Also earlier this month, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad Al Hussein, expressed [JURIST report] utmost alarm at the worsening situation in Syria and said that parties were constantly sinking to new depths attacking women, children, the sick and the elderly. In August, the UN reported [JURIST report] that the number of women and children being hurt or killed in Afghanistans war against the Taliban have risen by 23 and 13 percent, respectively. [JURIST] UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon [official website] stated there have been 269 verified human rights violations in the Central African Republic (CAR) during his report [text, PDF] to the UN Security Council [official website] earlier this week. According to the report, circulated Wednesday, there have been more than 900 citizens affected. The report did not give a detailed account of how many of these rights violations were related to unlawful and unprovoked arrest, gender and sexual violence, or cruel treatment, but Ban did state, 18 incidents of human rights violations and abuse related to allegations of witchcraft affecting mainly women and children were documented [Al Jazeera report]. Among the factors increasing turmoil surrounding human rights in the CAR are torture, sexual violence, appropriation and destruction of land, and unwarranted and extended detention of citizens. The report went on to say that human rights remain[] of grave concern, particularly as a result of continuing Boko Haram attacks in Cameroon and Chad, as well as abuses perpetrated by armed elements in the Central African Republic. This report comes at a time of relative peace, after a visit by Pope Francis earlier last year, in an otherwise tumultuous [AP report] portion of the world. Violence has persisted in the CAR since the predominately Muslim-based Seleka rebels ousted former president Francois Bozize [BBC profile] in March 2013. More than 400,000 people remain displaced due to the violent overthrow, with over a half million more people seeking refuge in other countries. In November UNICEF [official website] called for [press release] aid to approximately 1.2 million children distressed by conflict [JURIST report] in the CAR. In January of last year members of a UN investigatory commission reported that crimes against humanity have been widely committed by all parties to the conflict in the CAR, prompting the commission to call for the establishment of an international court [JURIST report] to objectively investigate and prosecute crimes. Earlier that month the UN published a report stating that violent acts committed in the CAR constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity [JURIST report], but not genocide. Despite this finding, members of the international community maintain that there is much work to be done [JURIST op-ed] in the nation. In 2014 the International Criminal Court [official website] opened a second investigation [JURIST report] into CAR war crimes. News / National by Thobekile Zhou Mozambique's Afonso Dhlakama Renamo forces reportedly attacked a health facility in Mt Selinda killing three Zimbabweans.Reports indicate that a group of bandits entered Zimbabwe seeking medication.They reportedly killed three people.The Zimbabwe Military Police informants said the attack occurred atMt Selinda High School around 7pm Wednesday" and shot down 3 teachers taking some students into captivity."Some of the students fled to the forest" "Informants has it that he was on a mission to rob the hospital and collect medicine for his soldiers. Witnesses say many nurses were forced to leave their families and join the regime".Dhlakama who has been holed up in the forests of central Mozambique on Wednesday claimed the military had staged a fresh attack against his base.Dhlakama claimed the army had deployed 12 armoured vehicles and troops that he said included "mercenaries" from Angola, China, Tanzania and Zimbabwe near his mountainous base. 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 Tyrrells, the private equity-backed UK crisp maker, has enjoyed robust growth in recent years and, through exports, steadily built a business outside its domestic market. However, the company, under CEO David Milner, has started to use M&A to boost its international operations. Last month, Tyrrells snapped up Aroma Snacks, a German supplier of organic crisps. In the first part of a two-part interview, Milner tells Dean Best why Tyrrells moved for Aroma Snacks. M&A has become an important tool for Tyrrells. The private-equity backed UK crisp maker has, according to CEO David Milner, been lucky enough to grow at about 30% a year for the last six years, on the back of expansion at home and a growing international business, built on exports to over 30 countries from its domestic plants. However, Milner, who first invested in Tyrrells six years ago, says the company had started to consider how it could maintain that rate of growth, or even speed up, and decided acquisitions was a way of doing so. We got to a point where we were doing nicely but most small companies, when you grow, its good to start with and then you kind of flatten out and become less exciting. My thought was: How do I continue to accelerate or continue this level of growth? Well, those markets where our exports work very well so why dont we look if we can find a business there that we like, thats a good fit with Tyrrells and [where] we can then produce Tyrrells in the market for that market? Milner says. Milner is speaking to just-food in the week Tyrrells made its second acquisition in nine months. On 16 May, Tyrrells announced it had bought Aroma Snacks, a German supplier of organic crisps. It followed a deal made last August, when Tyrrells snapped up Australian organic snacks business Yarra Valley Snack Foods. The purchase of Yarra Valley gave Tyrrells its first manufacturing site outside the its domestic market and the move for Aroma Snacks has provided the UK firm with its first plant in continental Europe. Weve been lucky enough to grow about 30% a year, every year for six years and this year is actually 35%, Milner says. One of the problems with that is you run out of capacity all the time. We make all our own crisps, we dont co-manufacture anything. What [the Aroma Snacks acquisition] provides us with is an opportunity to expand their existing factory and produce European crisps in Germany. The privately-owned Aroma Snacks is based in the town of Amtzell in the south-western German state of Baden-Wurttemberg. Tyrrells plans to use its plant to support its business in Europe. Three of Tyrrells five largest markets outside the UK are in Europe France, Germany and Switzerland. Milner says Germany is Tyrrells fastest-growing market in Europe and is catching up with France, a market that represented the companys first foray onto the continent. Its not as big yet, Milner says. Probably about EUR10m in sales of Tyrrells, so its a very attractive market. Were completely nationwide, in the big supermarkets, which there are Edeka and Rewe, as well as Kaufland, which are department stores and were pretty much in all of those. Beyond France, Germany and Switzerland, Tyrrells has a presence in the Netherlands and Italy and has fledgling businesses in Iberia and Scandinavia, where Milner describes the company as there but not well established. Milner believes the acquisition of Aroma Snacks will help Tyrrells grow in its current suite of European markets, with Jochen Krumm, the German firms owner, staying on as managing director of the groups wider European business. We think itll help enormously. Despite me feeling quite chuffed that weve grown 30% a year, were still a relatively small business and we have limited resources. Having people based over in Germany, you get more people, more expertise. Jochen Krumm is German, hes worked in the UK and he loves what were doing with Tyrrells. Whilst weve bought his business, he wants to stay on. Hes staying on as the managing director of the European business. I think hell be better. He has one advantage over me, I can only speak English. Hes multilingual and hes a tremendous, proper European businessman. Aroma Snacks has a presence in markets east of Germany from which Tyrrells could benefit, Milner explains. He says there could be an opportunity to launch Tyrrells crisps in more European markets, though there is not yet a firm idea of when the brand could be rolled out further. We have no business in the east of Europe. Were not in Romania, Hungary, any of those countries and he [Krumm] is. Were hoping with his expertise there to build our business. Obviously were much bigger than he is in the rest of Europe but thats where hes got a strength so well be hoping he can teach us a thing or two there, Milner says. I would think wed be hoping to [launch the Tyrrells brand in the region] next year. Beyond supporting Tyrrells existing business in Europe and providing the company with a platform for potential geographic expansion, there is another critical reason why the UK business moved for Aroma Snacks the German firms status as a supplier of organic crisps. Tyrrells two recent acquisitions are signs of the companys bid to participate in what Milner calls the better-for-you part of the crisps category. I love the fact they are premium like we are but theyre also in the better-for-you camp because theyre organic so that was a really motivating part of it, Milner says. Yarra Valley Snacks were Australias number one organic crisp and this is Germanys number one organic crisp. Its definitely strategically where we want to be. We want to be in premium and we want to be in better-for-you and organic is a great better-for-you stroke premium category or sector of the category. Germany is a market with a well-established organic food sector and one which withstood the recent economic downturn in Europe, unlike in, say, the UK. Sales of organic food and drink in Germany rose 11.1% to EUR8.62bn in 2015, according to the Bund Okologische Lebensmittelwirtschaft, the umbrella association of agricultural producers, processors and distributors of organic food in Germany. Could owning organic brands boost the companys margins? Milner instead sees Tyrrells moves in organic as a means of differentiating the companys portfolio from its competitors. I wouldnt say were hoping to make a higher level of margin than we do in our regular business but what I said before is you dont want to be making what everybody else makes. If youre just making a standard product then it ultimately comes down to price even if youve got a brand on it. If its not different and better, it comes down to price, he says. In markets like Germany and France where demand for organic food also remains robust and growing there are strong specialist channels. That said, the data from the Bund Okologische Lebensmittelwirtschaft indicates Germanys mainstream retailers already account for the majority of organic food and drink sales in the country. The association says sales to the organic food trade rose 10% last year to EUR2.71bn. However, sales made through conventional grocers increased by 13.2%. Germanys mainstream retailers account for over half the sales of organic food and drink, the association says. Nevertheless, Milner believes there is an opportunity to grow Aroma Snacks and its Lisas brand with Germanys conventional retailers. Milner believes Germanys mainstream retailers are starting to build a more significant presence in the sector, providing an opportunity for growth for the Aroma Snacks business, which he says has national listings for some retailers but is stronger in the south due to its base in that part of Germany. My view is, as bio becomes bigger and supermarkets look to growth, theyre not going to stand by and let these other stores have all the organic business, Milner reflects. Check back next week for the second part of just-foods interview with Milner in which he discusses Tyrrells plans for the UK market and its broader growth strategy. News / National by Stephen Jakes A political analyst Pedzisai Ruhanya has challenged the Zimbabweans to tell War Veterans Chairman Christopher Mutsvangwa that war which he is talking about now ended before independence in 1979.This was after the former War Veterans minister declared that the next in the row to succeed President Robert Mugabe is Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa and if not blood will be shed."What blood, whose blood and for what Chris Mutsvangwa? Can someone tell Mutsvangwa and his paratroopers/war vets that the war ended in 1979. This macho, political honcho and vampire behavior should have limits. Zimbabwe is for every citizen not them alone," Ruhanya said.Endless war is escalating in the ruling Zanu PF between the G40 faction believed to be aligned to first lady Grace Mugabe and the Lacoste faction aligned to Mnangagwa. News / National by Staff Reporter Officials at the Registrar General's offices have been urged to add value by making the processing of birth certificates and identity cards easier and friendlier.The call came out during a stakeholders meeting between Makokoba residents and the Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Obedingwa Mguni.Organised by the member of parliament for Makokoba constituency, Retired Colonel Tshinga Dube, the meeting sought to hear concerns faced by residents in the acquisition of national identity particulars.Home Affairs Deputy Minister Mguni castigated corruption and called for the setting up of a client service charter in the Registrar General's office.He also urged officials to desist from making the process of getting identity particulars impossible to unknowing residents.Retired Colonel Dube highlighted the importance of the meeting in addressing the day to day challenges faced by residents.Lack of identity particulars was highlighted as one of the major causes for children to fail to enrol at schools, with others struggling to get any formal employment.The lack of identity documents has also led to the inability to track down some wanted criminals due to the fact that they will not be in any national database.Residents were, however, reminded that getting identity documents was a constitutional right that they had to exercise without unnecessary difficulties. News / Regional by Nqobile Tshili THE Bulawayo City Council has recommended the appointment of Sikhangele Zhou as the city's substantive Town Clerk. Councillors resolved to recommend the appointment of Zhou during a special meeting held in council chambers on Wednesday night.The gathering was convened after the scheduled full council meeting that was held earlier on the same day.The Chronicle understands that the appointment of Zhou, who has been the acting Town Clerk since the death of Middleton Nyoni in September last year, now awaits ratification by the Local Government Board (LGB) following the resolution.The LGB has the final say on the appointment and will conduct its own interviews with the successful candidate.The decision by councillors to give Zhou, the current Chamber Secretary, the top council job raises eyebrows as sources said she came third in interviews for the position.City fathers were yesterday mum on the latest development.Deputy Mayor Gift Banda declined to comment on the matter and referred inquiries to Mayor Councillor Martin Moyo.The city's public relations officer, Bongiwe Ngwenya, also referred the matter to the mayor, but his mobile phone went unanswered.A person who answered the phone at the mayor's residence said he was not at home last night.Zhou professed ignorance on her alleged appointment."I'm hearing this from you. I haven't received any letter confirming that. I don't even attend meetings where such issues are discussed," she said.A source said Zhou came third in interviews, but councillors had decided that she takes over the top job.The BCC had shortlisted four candidates for the post of town clerk. These are Victoria Falls Town Clerk Christopher Dube, former Tsholotsho Rural District Council chief executive officer, Ronnie Dube, Acting Town Clerk, Zhou and Hwange Colliery finance manager Gift Sibanda.Said the source: "She (Zhou) came third in the interviews but councillors agreed that she should take up the position. Victoria Falls Town Clerk Christopher Dube came out tops in the interviews while Ronnie Dube came second. Councillors opted for Zhou because they said she was up to the task."The general purposes committee members, the Mayor and his Deputy, had selected Dube from Victoria Falls for the job. But other councillors said Zhou was the right person for the council's top post. They argued that council had achieved a lot under her leadership so they felt it wasn't okay to disturb a working system. The councillors said after all Dube is coming from a smaller town and might not be able to shoulder bigger responsibilities." Opinion / Columnist \Events in Zimbabwe's political space are fast becoming interesting, lately.If one were to look at the mainstream and social media, they would be presented with a range of characters that have cropped up, whether for celebrity or notoriety.Out of this, one comes up with a number of critical observations that speak to the social, economic and political questions of the day.The biggest observation, perhaps, is that Zimbabwe has entered the age of "lone ranger" or "knight rider" political activists that are crowding the political arena.How this has come about can be explained in a number of ways and it also has to be explained whether these are fads or revolutions.ContextIt will be critical to look at Zimbabwean politics and the current matrix.The country is a multi-party democracy with, at the last count, around 30 registered political parties that are free to contest for office.In fact, just this week, five political parties formed a convention dubbed "Coalition of Democrats".The figures and their respective parties were as follows: Simba Makoni and Mavambo Kusile Dawn (MKD); Elton Mangoma (Renewal Democrats of Zimbabwe); Welshman Ncube (MDC); Farai Mbira (Zimbabweans United for Democracy); and Gilbert Dzikiti (Democratic Assembly for Restoration and Empowerment).These are considered "smaller" parties and there are even more in the field in that league of minnows.Another minnow, Tendai Biti's Progressive Democrats of Zimbabwe, felt it did not quite belong and snubbed the coalition at the 11th hour.The main opposition, MDC-T party led by Morgan Tsvangirai, is considered by many the face of the opposition and brags, justifiably, about numbers that have come close to upsetting the ruling Zanu-PF.For the past 16 years, Tsvangirai himself has been considered the "face of democratic struggle" in Zimbabwe.Now a new player, former Vice-President and struggle stalwart Joice Mujuru has entered the political field with her Zimbabwe Patriotic Front.All these political parties and characters have been seeking to defeat President Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF and in less than two years, there is going to be a big contest by way of harmonised local government, parliamentary and presidential elections.Blow of 2013Many observers see the battle of Zimbabwe's soul being between Zanu-PF and MDC-T.Mujuru and her newly formed ZPF are just going to season the battle that has already existed for 16 years now.That is what is being understood, in the short term.And the role of the new entrants is largely framed around how much they can eat into Zanu-PF's electoral base, never mind how people like Edgar Tekere, Dumiso Dabengwa and Simba Makoni have never in the past achieved much.It is a fact of life that Joice Mujuru is not the brightest pebble.So, the battle shall continue to be about Zanu-PF and MDC-T and what is interesting is that Zanu-PF, even considered weak by its revolutionary standards, is today way too strong for the main opposition.The politics of street mobilisation that played out this year alone have settled that as Zanu-PF held a resounding Million Man March a fortnight ago, garnering hundreds of thousands of people where the MDC-T managed only a few thousand a few months back.But in 2013, Zanu-PF delivered a big blow to the MDC-T when it wallopped the opposition in national election, sweeping more than two thirds majority in Parliament while President Mugabe flogged Tsvangirai by 61 percent of the total vote and Tsvangirai managed a paltry 34 percent.The party went on to split into three giving us leaders of political parties in Biti and Mangoma.The pacification of the MDC-T as an opposition was complete.Many serious pundits know that the success of the opposition to upstage Zanu-PF in this fragmented state is close to nothing.Even Zanu-PF can afford moments of infighting and other tomfoolery, including complacency.Enter lone-ranger, knight-rider typesMany in the opposition have been dismayed by their party's failure to capture power.This has led to growing apathy and disillusionment.But it has also given us individuals that think that what the opposition has failed, they can achieve.Perhaps having watched a lot of television featuring American "heroes" who went on solo efforts to correct social "injustices" and lately the so-called Arab Spring, the lone rangers and knight riders of political activism in Zimbabwe have sought to take over the space formerly occupied by the main opposition.It perhaps started with one Itai Dzamara, a known MDC-T activist and journalist who supported the party in the run up to that 2013 defeat.For those that followed carefully, just after the defeat of the MDC-T Dzamara started expressing disillusionment with organised politics and fell just short of condemning Tsvangirai and the party.He came up with his Occupy Unity Square Movement which was supposed to rally people in protest against President Mugabe, calling for his resignation ironically after resoundingly winning the elections.Predictably, the "movement" failed and Dzamara cut a lone figure in Africa Unity Square in Harare where he never at any point gathered more than six people and later tried to ensconce with the MDC-T.The thing was a failure, roundly ridiculed even by fellow opposition supporters.Then Dzamara "disappeared".While his solo demonstrations were close to fruitless, a lot of political capital has been gleaned by the opposition which tried to cast his "disappearance" as a rallying point for a revolution, holding numerous political rallies disguised as prayer meetings and eventually staging a march on March 9, the anniversary of the so-called disappearance, which again was hoped to spark a nationwide uprising.It didn't, and the Dzamara issue threatened to die forever.Only, it hasn't quite.Rather, it has given us his brother Patson who in the ostensible fight against the disappearance of his brother appears rooted for his own glory, having been a lacklustre publisher of dozens of "motivational" books.He is giving us another version of the lone ranger Itai, only where Itai appeared genuine whatever his cause this sibling of his smells all egotistical, having been given perfect publicity coattails of Itai to ride on.There have been other individuals of different hues who have sporadically bubbled onto recognizable space.These include the so-called "Kariba Pastor" Patrick Phillip Mugadza who had a solo demonstration at the Zanu-PF Annual People's Conference in Victoria Falls last year.There is also another pastor Ancellimo Magaya who has attempted to reunite the opposition.Yet another pastor Evan Mawarire hogged the limelight in recent weeks with his #ThisFlag campaign, which appears to have fizzled out now.The common denominator in all this is that these are all opposition guys and they have been failed by their gods. Opinion / Columnist In the aftermath of the well-subscribed Zanu PF Million Man March, it appears the opposition is scurrying in fear and are fearfully fumbling to patch up a coalition they think would be formidable enough to face the insurmountable revolutionary party of President Robert Mugabe.Although the initial response by opposition parties sounded lame and pathetic when they dismissed the overly attended march as stage-managed and a congregation of the 'unemployed and the unwise', reality eventually sunk as the false bravado evaporated, leaving them running around to form some coalition.Now we hear that some minion opposition parties have signed a coalition document called the Coalition of Democrats (CODE).Even the self-described Big Brother of opposition politics, the MDC-T and its rival, the ZimPF, who had conceitedly discounted participating in coalition talks, have now conceded that the coalition route is the only way forward.Talking to the Dailynews this week, officials from the two parties exasperatingly agreed that a coalition of opposition parties is the only way to 'retire President Robert Mugabe."It is now coming out clear that all opposition parties were ruffled by the overwhelming success of the Zanu PF march such that they are convinced that on their own they cannot stand up against Zanu PF in an election, hence the frenzied efforts to tie up a coalition.The hundreds of thousands of supporters who attended the march in Harare were proof enough to opposition parties that Zanu PF is unshakeable and ever popular.The opposition is shaking in its boots and is in a quandary.However, the opposition parties easily forgets that the so-called coalition may not be the panacea to winning elections against Zanu PF as they are inherently hamstrung by administrative and ideological deficiencies that make them unelectable.None of them have functional political structures as they are continually embroiled in leadership strife.As for the MDC-T, the party has never known any stability since its inception as power hungry senior officials are always on each other's throat, seeking to elbow each other out of leadership positions.Due to such squabbling, the party has so far divided into other political smithereens namely, People Democratic Party (PDP), Renewal Democratic Party of Zimbabwe (RDPZ), Professor Welshman Ncube's MDC, MDC-M, National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) and many other innumerable but inconsequential political parties.Worse still, the MDC-T is still struck by a leadership paralysis arising from Morgan Tsvangirai's infamous administrative bungling and intellectual dearth.As a leader, Tsvangirai has been a source of conflict due to his propensity to personalize the party as vouched by the party's nomenclature, MDC-T Tsvangirai, which is accompanied by a personalised logo ingrained with Tsvangirai's unashamed portrait.The branding of that party is all centred on Tsvangirai, with his name, face and palm translated into party symbols.No other party has such personalized name and logo except for the MDC-T.More so, Tsvangirai has been tinkering with his party's constitution so as to extend his regretful mandate as party President against the will of other members of the party, some of whom chose to jump the ship.This is how selfish and big-headed Tsvangirai is, a flaw that is antagonistic to the team-playing spirit sought in forming a political coalition.With such a selfish and bigoted frame, how would he work with other parties in a coalition without promoting his selfish ends? That coalition would be unworkable and doomed.Similar structural defects also afflict the Zimbabwe People First (ZimPF) party, which is embarrassingly failing to come up with discernible structures months after its overly hyped entrance into politics.Party officials are also embroiled in leadership squabbles as power hungry politicians such as Didymus Mutasa, Sylvester Nguni and Bright Matonga are plotting and scheming to worm themselves up the echelons of power.The chaos in ZimPF has reportedly forced its leader, Joice Mujuru, to call for a crisis meeting with senior members of her party.Surely, which other opposition party would in its right senses want to go to bed with a party deep in a crisis such as the ZimPF?Worse still, which people would vote for a coalition of limping and body-bandaged political parties with no ideological vision or administrative strength to face Zanu PF?Saddled with a heap of administrative logjams and massive ideological deficiencies, a coalition of these opposition parties would be a cumulative coalition of political cluelessness and a nullity in electoral sense.In their current unappealing state, the opposition cannot move Zanu PF an inch from power whether they unite into a national coalition or a global one.They should put their houses in order first before they dream of a coalition.---------------Indrah Zvenyika Opinion / Columnist "An economy that continually imports and fail to export will die". This statement proffered by a Zimbabwean economist Kipson Gundani, is all but too true. The current Zimbabwe economic malaise can be attributable to this disproportion among other things. As early as 2005, the former Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono decried the adverse impact imports were having on the country and came up with a conceptual framework on the "Buy Zimbabwe Campaign" with the aim of creating "a platform for economic turnaround based on the realignment of consumption patterns with the economy's productive capacities". This was after the realisation that "contemporary evidence shows that no meaningful industrialisation strategy can occur without promoting local products".Some 10 years later after the mooting of this noble idea by the central bank and the subsequent launch of the "Buy Zimbabwe campaign" in 2011, we are still going around in circles resultantly with the trade deficit continuing to widen with recent 2015 statistics standing at $3 billion dollars where trade figures showed that exports amounted to $2,5bn against $5,5bn imports. We cannot continue with business as usual mentality as the country's over-reliance on imports has been identified as one of the contributors of the current liquidity crunch. Industrialists and economists have always advised that we need to keep money inside the country by all means possible to avert the liquidity crisis and massive company closures in the absence of Foreign Direct Investment to boost industry. In Shona we have a saying "wakarumwa nechekuchera" a situation which aptly describe our situation. We cannot relax as a heavily importing country and expect a change in our fortunes.Government is doing all in its power to address the anomaly among other things the proposed domestic procurement index which will require retailers to cut imports and increase local product purchases. This in itself is not enough but it's a start. Zimbabwe have been hailed for coming up with excellent policies which have failed on implementation. Maybe we need to really examine our modus operandi as a country if we are ever going to move forward. This is after the Minister of Industry and Commerce, Mike Bimha said "I do not think we are doing enough as Government. A lot of directives and policy measures have been put in place, but for various reasons, this has not been followed through". The minister's honest is recommended but the fact still remains something got to give. We could start with the proposed procurement legislation which the minister even admitted does not exist, "Right now, we do not have a single and strong legislation for local procurement, though we have reference in some pieces of legislation to address this issue." The need for legislation can never been over-emphasised. South Africa who have managed to promote their local products by their "Proudly South African campaign" which have a 75 percent local procurement accord which explains their success. The United States of America enacted the Buy America Act of 1933 to certify that the government preferred procurement of local products. We have both regional and global example of success were the governments took the initiative to promote local products, a move which has seen these countries change their economic fortunes. For example in 1997 Thailand was faced with an economic crisis which encouraged the government to introduce the Buy Thailand campaign as part of a seven-step program to assist in curbing unemployment and boost the local economy.Reports also show that government is doing everything possible to revive the economy amongst them efforts to resuscitate industry which includes Cotton Pricing Model, Cotton to Clothing Value Chain, Industrial Development Fund, Leather and Leather Product Strategy, and National Competitiveness Bill among others. Of major concern like what the minister said we don't follow through on matters. Right now we are talking of how the clothing industry has died because of "mabhero" or second hand clothes, the government banned these as of September 1, 2015, but nothing has been done to effectively deal with the problem. The second hand clothes market is still thriving with impunity. As much as we have sympathy with those whose livelihoods depend on "mabhero", the effects this has had on the economy is inestimable. Is it not time to bite the bullet and enforce the ban if we have any hope of reviving our clothing industry.Commendation should be given to the Buy Zimbabwe which was launched in 2011 with the sole objective of raising awareness and the profile of home-grown goods and services. It also seeks to lobby Government to enact laws and policies that support local producers and connecting local producers to retailers, consumers and other relevant stakeholders. Buy Zimbabwe efforts through its annual Buy Zimbabwe Awards should be applauded. The Buy Zimbabwe Awards honours outstanding local companies and individuals that have demonstrated resilience and commitment in job creation and reducing the import bill. Resources should be availed to Buy Zimbabwe as their efforts so far has assisted in government in promoting local products.It is very saddening to note that some Zimbabweans continue to import non-essentials or finished products whilst shunning local products which to writer's personal opinion are below standards in comparison to Zimbabwean products. The benefits that can be accrued to consuming Zimbabwean products are immeasurable. Any laws that promote locally produced products will increase industrial capacity utilisation which in 2015 had dropped to 34,3% from 36,5% in 2014. One of the reasons identified was low local demand, an anomaly that can addressed by introducing the procurement accord and ensuring it is adhered to. The high demand for local products, will also translate in high employment levels as consumption of locally produced commodities creates demand for local labour resources and immensely contribute towards the reduction of the unemployment rate which currently stand at astronomically levels. Many have heard how Zimbabweans bemoan of "zhing-zhong" a term used to refer to low quality products which have floodedour markets over the years. Locally produced products which are certified by Standards Association of Zimbabwe (SAZ) will never short-change consumers on quality as had been done by some of the imports in the country.As the country leans to towards local products, it is also pertinent that government and the financial sector continue to resuscitate ailing companies through the Distressed and Marginalised Areas Fund (Dimaf). Dimaf was launched in 2011 as a $40 million fund to re-capacitate ailing companies in the country's second largest city Bulawayo and other cities. As at March 2016, a sum of $29,5 million is alleged to have been disbursed from the fund benefiting approximately 51 companies. Recently, Turnall Holdings secured a $1million from Dimaf to improve its working capital levels. This is the kind of news we yearn for as a nation and not to hear companies folding and workers losing their livelihoods.As much as Zimbabwe's economy is driven by market forces, some of our challenges have been linked to "too open economy". We need to protect our own and the only way we can achieve that is to reduce the import bill and increase our exports. This is achievable if we protect our industries and consume our products. Local is lekker.-----------------Susan Chipanga Opinion / Columnist Who owns the people?If not checked Zimbabweans are on the precipice of finalizing putting together the recipe of a permanent dictatorship regardless of which political party gets in power. The unfortunate part is, it is not being put together by Zanu PF alone.Today in Zimbabwe it is a shame that new political players are dismissed with derision. For standing up to offer a clear vision, selfless patriots have been savagely attacked by supporters, who in their political shortsightedness view it as a crime to offer oneself to civil service. Frequently you hear the usual hollow drumbeat of 'oh go away. You don't have people'.Are people owned?What stops a ZimFirster today from leaving the party to join MDC T or Mavambo or better still what stops the reverse from happening? The answer is absolutely nothing. Case in point, I was once MDC T and today I am not, and there are hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans who are like me. It's normal feature whether it's in a quasi democracy like ours or true democracy. The reason why voters are able to switch parties is because NO ONE OWNS THE PEOPLE. It's as simple as that. Voter political mobility is the hallmark of a democracy. As a matter of fact, in politics a party or political leader cannot afford to mess up or offer failed strategies and expect voters to turn a blind eye or reward him:her at the polls.Anyways, every Zimbabwean has the right to approach the electorate and offer an alternative path to a prosperous Zimbabwe without fear of a backlash from supporters of parties purporting to fight for democracy.in addition, every Zimbabwean has right to chose a political party which resonates with their aspirations without fear of persecution. Attacking new political players has a long lasting negative effect in that it creates a dictatorship normalcy in Zimbabwe. Let's not bank on previouses (our Shona English) to measure performance in future election years. Every election cycle is new.Matakadya kare hanyaradze mwana goes a common Shona idiom (no one feeds on yesteryear stories). So in every election cycle all political players start as equals and their election ground game is the only measure to separate boys from men.Picture this:If Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were Zimbabweans they would probably have been savagely attacked by Obama supporters who in their zeal would be clamoring for an Obama chete chete Presidency. When Bernie started his campaign he had no people but only a vision for the US nation. He was not derided for not having people . Instead Americans were keen to hear where he stands on issues that matter to them.The American electorate enabled him to expound his ideals. He sold his vision and today he has followers and slugging it out with Hilary for the right to be the nominee for there party. That's how democracy works. Elections in the US are in November this and the right as opportune time for both Bernie and Hilary to have people behind them. Switch to Zimbabwe situation. Elections in Zimbabwe will be held in 2018 unless something drastic happens. In 2016 there is NO big party or small party. In 2016 all political parties have an equal chance to the electorate .The established parties of course have starting advantage of being known entities but then it is also a disadvantage because all their weaknesses and stains are also of public knowledge. There is ample time for a party with big on brains, a vision a sound ground game to be known . Next time you hear the 'We have people' or 'you don't have people' mantra know that they need a 101 class on how democracy works. Tell them that in 2016, a non election year, a political party with multitudes of followers is like a man with a bag of maize seeds in a drought year!For any political party worth its salt 2016 is the year of planning. Careful planning, in particular, focusing on avoiding the same mistakes from past similar endeavors, unpacking the dictatorship strategies and installing a campaign ready to dobattle come 2018. AND that's where ZimFirst comes in.If ever there people who are owned by a political party (for example those on Zanu PF gravy train) the number don't exceed 2 million. Therefore, are 10 million men, women and children out there wait to hear alternative voices. Trump started with a Trump idea, Ted Cruz started with Ted Cruz, Hilary started with Hilary presidential exploratory committee. None of these people when launched their campaigns in 2015.They all knew one key need, that they needed to put up a campaign structure to help build a support base in preparation primary season and eventually the national Campaign.That's how democracy works folks. ZimFirst is focused on walking on its roadmap which is very clear and we confident that Zimbabweans will refuse to be owned by anybody or political party. Tisu Anhu (Proudly ZimFirsters) will continue to build the numbers brick by brick. BECAUSE no one owns the people. Numbers count in 2018 and these numbers will flock to the party that is capable SAN FRANCISCOToday, NakedSword Originals' releases a new series called Fuck You I'm Infamous. The tongue-in-cheek title of the movie comes after NakedSword Original's recent release of Fuck Me I'm Famous, earlier this year. Directed by NakedSword's mr. Pam, Fuck You I'm Infamous features interviews with these infamous bad boys and digs deeper into their scandals and public dramas, bringing these notorious bad boys of porn to life. The first scene is full of animalistic chemistry and lots of hardcore action from Falcon Exclusive Ryan Rose and Draven Torres. Rose, who just won Performer of the Year at the 2016 Grabbys, is no stranger to controversy and can surely be described as infamous steaming from his past volatile public relationships, his current Twitter wars, party-boy antics, and over-the-top Amazon wish lists. mr. Pam paired Ryan with sexy fetish star Draven Torres who takes pride in his bad-boy reputation as one of the filthiest pups on the circuit. The two bad boys go at it like dogs until they both shoot their loads, proving that there truly is no rest for the wicked. NakedSword director mr. Pam said of the scene, "These two are an unlikely pair and Ryan is known to be a relentless top but I think he might have met his match with Draven. I have been wanting to shoot Draven for years and I knew he could perform and also bring out something in Ryan, and boy, did he! No matter what Ryan gave him he kept asking for more." She went on to say, "After this shoot Ryan is officially one of my favorite models to film. These guys might be bad, but boy, can they throw down! I realized that I definitely have a thing for bad boys after watching the trailer for my own moviebut, I mean, who doesn't, really?" This article originally appeared in the June 2016 issue of AVN magazine. Click here to see a digital edition of the magazine. Pictured: Greg Clayman; photo courtesy Flirt4Free. On June 4, 1996, the first iteration of whats today known as Flirt4Free was launched in a small, nondescript commercial office building located in a suburb just south of Boston, Massachusetts. According to Flirt4Free President/CEO Gregory Clayman, The company was founded by a small group of entrepreneurs with diverse backgrounds ranging from technology to insurance and financial sales. The initial group shared a common vision that still exists today, which was to create and operate the best live adult video chat platform possible, while maintaining a focus on quality and business ethics. From 96 to 98 the company grew to approximately 15 employees that worked 24/7 in its attempt to achieve this goal. By 1998, we began to gain a foothold in the marketplace and decided that if we wanted to continue to grow, prosper and build key relationships, we needed to head out west. The decision to evolve the business even while it was already doing well and pursue new advantages from any distance are hallmarks of the Flirt4Free brands success, according to Clayman, and can be traced back to the decision to move west long before many people even knew the internet existed. In late 98 we landed in sunny Southern California and chose Westlake Village for the home of our new headquarters, Clayman continued. Within two years we were already outgrowing our office space at that time and knew once again it was time to relocate to a larger facility that would accommodate our growth and new goals. Our next move was just a few miles east to the Calabasas Technology Center, where we stayed for over a decade and began to lay down our roots as a company that was here to stay. It was in Calabasas where we really began to build and solidify relationships with companies and individualsfrom across the San Fernando Valley, and around the globe. We will forever be grateful to all the individuals, affiliates, broadcasters, studios, etc., whom we currently work with or had the pleasure of working with over the past 20 years, as theres no doubt that without them and their support, Flirt4Free would not be what it is today. Bringing the history up to day, Clayman said, In 2014 it was time for another move, and this time we knew we needed to relocate to a facility that was not only commensurate with our existing goals and staff, but more importantly with our future goals and growth plans. In June of 2014, we landed in Westlake Village, California, which is currently the global headquarters of VS Media, Inc., the parent company of Flirt4Free.com. Looking at the Flirt4Free of today, Clayman points out the modern brand is the result of 20 years of design re-engineering, relationship building, staying true to our core competency, lots of hard work and planning. In addition, weve always placed a strong emphasis on listening to the needs and wants of our customers, affiliates and broadcasters in an attempt to accommodate and implement procedures and features to meet their needs and goals as well as ours. VS Media, Inc., the corporation behind Flirt4Free, now has a staff of approximately 80 full-time employees and growing, while everyone still shares the original goal and vision of creating and maintaining the best live adult video chat experience possible while focusing on doing the right thing and being ethical as we believe there are no shortcuts to success. The resulting success of this undertaking is obvious to everyone. Flirt4Free has entertained millions of customers throughout the years and maintains independent relationships with thousands of affiliates and broadcasters from around the world, Clayman said with pride. To date weve paid out in excess of $100 million in commissions to affiliates and broadcasters, including studios as well as training centers. Given that Flirt4Free was an industry pioneer, and is now an industry leader, we have helped to foster a community environment whereas everyone from the corporate headquarters to the affiliates, studios, broadcasters and training centers feel connected to something special. Thats why, for most, working with Flirt4Free is more than just a job; its a way of life. So, what can everyone learn from one of the most venerable brands that the online adult industry has ever produced? There are so many lessons weve learned from both our successes and failures over the years, answered Clayman. From those lessons we have created a checklist of sorts that helps guide our brands and will hopefully be helpful to others who aspire to do even better. Stay true to our core competency. Do the right thing and be ethical. Foster and cherish relationships with those who share similar goals and values. Dont plan on luck, as luck and opportunity come from hard work. Plan the best you can for the future but stay flexible for the unexpected. Get out and see people. Nothing is better than face-to-face interaction. Dont be afraid to try new things and implement new ideas. Slow and steady wins the race. Staying true to those values is a major reason why the future of Flirt4Free now looks as bright and prosperous as the companys lengthy and successful past. We plan on continuing to expand our corporate infrastructure as we take Flirt4Free to the next level, Clayman said excitedly. Keep your eyes out for many new and exciting features as we continue to implement the multitude of plans we have in the works. However, at this juncture, while celebrating our second decade in adult online, its most important that we take the time to thank all those whove helped and supported Flirt4Free throughout the past 20 years. Your support keeps us motivated and challenges us, day in and day out, to continue providing the best live video chat platform possible. ELWOOD Three men charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree assault because of their victims race were bound over to Gosper County District Court Wednesday. Billy Rios, a resident of Lakeside Trailer Court near Johnson Lake, allegedly was beaten with a metal object, fists and feet the night of July 28. Rios was treated at Tri-County Hospital for a skull fracture, a right eye socket fracture, a stab wound to the back of the neck, facial injuries and bruises to his lower body. Charged are Matthew Hansen, 21, of Canon City, Colo., and brothers Anthony Hilderbrand, 26, and Jeremiah Hilderbrand, 28, both of 7 North Cove at Johnson Lake. Banners associated with the Peckerwoods, a white supremacy or Aryan Nation organization, hung inside the house, according to evidence entered Wednesday. If convicted, the three men could face three to 50 years in prison on the Class ID felony. The defendants said they were urged by Alicia Heggestad, Rios live-in girlfriend, to take care of Rios, Gosper County Sheriff Dennis Ocken testified. She claimed Rios had beaten her and five children who lived with the couple. Ocken said relatives removed the five children from the Rios-Heggestad home. Heggestad is Matthew Hansens sister. Hansen waived his preliminary hearing and was returned to Hall County where he is waiting to face unrelated charges in Adams County. Court-appointed attorneys for the Hilderbrands, Kevin Urbom of Arapahoe and Tana Fye of Holdrege, contested the charges before Gosper County Judge Carlton Clark. Ocken and Deputy Sheriff Craig Ward testified the Hilderbrands said in interviews that the incident began with a drinking party at the North Cove cabin. From there, the trio went to Rios trailer while Heggestad remained at the cabin. Jeremiah Hilderbrand said he entered the trailer to be with the five children. Anthony Hilderbrand allegedly grabbed Rios and took him to the ground. He and Hansen allegedly beat Rios. Photographs in evidence show blood on the porch. The three defendants also were initially charged with misdemeanor of theft by unlawful taking. That charge was dismissed. Heggestad was arrested but was released when Gosper County Attorney Todd Wilson said he lacked sufficient evidence for prosecution. Bond for the Hilderbrands was reduced to $3,000 cash. They are being held at the Dawson County Jail in Lexington. email to: BLAIR, Neb. Six years after Dana College abruptly closed, there are signs of new life and hope for the future. Construction crews are replacing roofs, installing sturdier windows and making other repairs to spruce up the buildings battered by a devastating hailstorm two years ago. And the propertys owner, well-known Omaha developer Frank Krejci, said hes willing to donate it if the right development comes along, such as a civic use by the city or county. I can be very generous, he said. Krejci, who bought the property three years ago for $3.5 million, has fielded a number of inquiries for developing the shuttered campus, including transforming parts of it into apartments and restaurants, or restoring it back to an institution of higher learning. But the City of Blair is being cautious. Even if the property were donated, the city would have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to mow the grass, move the snow and pay utilities, City Administrator Rod Storm said. Current utility and maintenance bills cost about $250,000 annually, Krejci said. The question becomes, how much can a community of 8,000 (people) afford? Storm said. It seems that most people including city officials and Krejci, who bought the property for Midland Universitys expansion would like to see the property be a college campus again, but they worry about its feasibility. Dana College closed in 2010 after an accreditation body refused to approve its sale to for-profit investors, leaving more than 500 students without a school and dozens of professors without jobs. The loss was a blow to the community just north of Omaha that counted on the student population to fill part-time jobs at fast-food restaurants and to live in rental housing. The campus has served a number of purposes since then, including being a refuge for people displaced by the Missouri River flooding in 2011, but has largely remained vacant. Three years ago, in 2013, Midland announced its intention to reopen it and took control of the campus through a lease agreement. Midland had absorbed more than 300 students from Dana when then-university President Ben Sasse offered to match scholarships and provide free housing. But Sasse stepped down at the end of 2014 to serve as a U.S. senator for Nebraska. Earlier this year, Midland announced its decision to instead focus on its Fremont campus and expanding into Omaha. Midland is still seeking to acquire a permanent campus in Omaha and is eyeing properties in midtown and west Omaha, particularly the West Dodge corridor, said Nate Neufind, the universitys vice president for communications. In the next couple of weeks, Blair officials will send out literature on the property to universities and colleges across the country. Im really anxious that we can get something done up there, Mayor Jim Realph said. Id really like to still see that be an educational area, but Im kind of resigned to the fact that may not happen. The campus was considered to house a new library in Blair, but Midland still had control of it during that time. A different location was selected for the $5.2 million library project, funded half by the Blair Public Library Foundation and half by the city. Construction started earlier this spring. Other uses floated for the campus have yet to materialize, including a renewable energy institute founded by Allen Baer of Vermont. Baer and Krejci havent come to an agreement on price. Baer said in April that the Dana campus was a candidate for the Renewable Nations Institute but said he also was looking elsewhere in the greater Omaha area. The Dana property isnt listed for sale, Krejci said, because any sale would hinge upon how the property would be used. Im open and receptive, said Krejci, who turns 91 next month. His other current projects include a single-family housing development in the Elkhorn area and a 31,000-acre ranch in Wyoming. Last year, the Washington County Assessors Office valued 14 properties that make up the Dana campus at $3.7 million. The value is down slightly to $3.5 million this year, according to the Assessors Office. Regular maintenance and renovations should help keep the propertys value up, said Bobby McKinnis, a project manager for McKinnis Inc. who has overseen millions of dollars worth of work paid for with insurance money. Asbestos-laden tiles and torn-out carpet have been removed, and leaky roofs, discolored ceiling tiles and stained walls from the hailstorm have been repaired. McKinnis, a Blair native who has been on the project for a year, said the community is ready to move forward, though the campus grounds are still used by many residents. His company, along with Dana alumni, is organizing a cleanup day on June 25 to pick up sticks and manicure overgrown trees, in part to help boost community morale. On a hot afternoon earlier this week, a handful of people walked through the grounds. One woman walked her dog through campus. Another woman ran laps on the track. Theres a lot of potential, McKinnis said. I walk in, and I see gorgeous buildings. LINCOLN A member of the Nebraska State Board of Education wants to push back against the Obama administrations guidance on how schools should accommodate transgender students. Pat McPherson wants the board to adopt a resolution declaring the guidance on the use of restrooms and other facilities as federal overreach. His resolution would urge school district officials to get input from teachers and parents and use their best discretion before deciding whether to comply. The resolution, which is drawing criticism from the ACLU of Nebraska, was scheduled for a vote today at the boards meeting. Im going to ask them to take a vote on it, McPherson said. If they dont like it, they can vote me down. Board President Rachel Wise said she would rather see the resolution sent to a committee for further study. The board should do our own due diligence and examine the legal issues before adopting the resolution, she said. I think its important we dont overreact or overreach as weve seen on the federal level, Wise said. Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson, making a rare appearance before the state board Thursday, said he believes that the federal guidance is unlawful because it changes federal rules without prior notice or allowing public comment. Education Commissioner Matt Blomstedt invited him to speak about the guidance. The guidance contends that the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination, also encompasses discrimination based on gender identity. Under the guidance, issued jointly May 13 by the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice, schools are advised to accommodate students based on their gender identity. Gender identity, according to the guidance, refers to a persons internal sense of gender. The guidance also says that students do not need a medical diagnosis or treatment to prove their gender identity. A school may provide separate restrooms and locker rooms for boys and girls, the guidance says, but schools must allow transgender students access to such facilities consistent with their gender identity. The administration made it clear that schools that fail to comply could lose federal funding. Blomstedt said he did not have a dollar estimate of the potential loss of funding statewide if districts did not comply. A board member estimated that it could be $400 million. Typically, the federal government would get involved if a discrimination complaint were filed against a school district, but the federal government could also initiate its own investigation, Blomstedt said. Peterson stopped short of calling on schools to reject the federal guidance. He said his office cant give districts legal advice. He said the guidance, by not requiring students to provide medical evidence of transitioning to the opposite sex, puts school districts in a very difficult position. Peterson said his office has not made a final determination on whether Nebraska would join other states in a Texas lawsuit challenging the guidance or whether Nebraska would file a legal challenge of its own. On May 25, 11 states or state officials, including Texas and Oklahoma, sued the U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Secretary of Education John King, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other federal offices and officials over the guidance. In the lawsuit, the states contend that the federal government has a duty to enforce the law of the land, and not rewrite it by administrative fiat. Peterson said the guidance doesnt consider the effect that the policy could have on children whove been victims of sexual assault. Amy Miller, attorney for the ACLU of Nebraska, urged the board to reject McPhersons resolution. She dismissed as meritless the arguments that preventing transgender peoples access to restrooms and locker rooms corresponding with their gender identity is about safety. In a letter to be submitted to the board, Miller described the resolution as a cavalier effort to make local taxpayers pay the price tag for a state officials political agenda, and should be squarely rejected. The Departments of Justice and Education have made it a priority to intervene in school districts that fail to treat transgender students appropriately, she wrote. The risk of losing federal funding, she wrote, is not an idle threat. Like most Americans watching the endless reality TV presidential campaign of Donald Trump, Ive discovered the secret to Trumps success on the campaign stump. It has nothing to do at all with sterling qualifications, superior grasp of national security issues or stunning displays of logic. If he has those things, hes chosen not to showcase them. Rather, it has to do with Trumps attacks on his opponents unworthiness as human beings. Trump undermines public faith in his opponents worth. He is a master of using schoolyard taunts to convince the public that his able opponents are no-accounts. Thats all he has. Trump has but a single arrow in his quiver. So far, he hasnt needed more. Convincing voters that every single opponent is no good is working for him. The question is: Will it keep on working? Youve noticed it, havent you? For instance, when Trump learned from Fox News host Sean Hannity that The Washington Post has 20 reporters checking his background, he attacked the Posts owner, Jeff Bezos, a Fortune 500 businessman, builder of Amazon.com and space pioneer, as seeking to avoid taxes. Bezos is using The Post for power so that the politicians in Washington dont tax Amazon like they should be taxed, Trump shot back. But Amazon doesnt own the Post, and in any case the company is on record as favoring online taxes, if only because they would tend to deter competitors. As he does every time, Trump worked to shift the publics attention. He took the focus away from the newspaper that uncovered Watergate, and put it on Bezos. The media generally just reported Trumps counter-charge, minus the truth. Trump did the same thing after it came out that he had not paid veterans charities money he owed them nearly six months after holding the fundraising event. Thats a valid point. Did Trump really raise $6 million? If he did, why was it taking so long to write the checks? Does he keep his promises? Trump rubs out his opponents one by one as lowlifes, despite often astounding accomplishments on their parts. Yet this is deadly poison for democracy and for the public accountability of a man who wants his finger on the nuclear button. Speaking of that, when he learned Hillary Clinton was to make a major speech about his ignorance of national security issues, Trump preemptively attacked her. He mocked her 2008 commercial about a 3 a.m. phone call, saying she slept through the call. The reality is that Clinton, as secretary of state, got more than her share of urgent, national security phone calls and acted on them. She lies, Trump said. Thats Trumps stock defense when the truth catches up to him to call the messenger a liar or disgusting. Trump attempts to turn attention away from his being untrustworthy by saying that Clinton is the one who is lying. A fair amount of Trumps business success comes from leasing his brand name. But his own product, Trump University, appears to be a failure. Lawsuits were filed against Trump for defrauding students, some of whom drained retirement accounts to pay fees close to $35,000. CBS reported that one sales technique (which Trump approved) was specifically aimed at parents who didnt have enough money to feed their children. We learned these things because a federal judge unsealed records in the case. The fraud charges, incidentally, were brought three years ago by the attorney general for New York, long before Trump announced his campaign for president. Smearing, assailing, denigrating or simply assassinating his opponents honesty or looks or gender, or height or ethnicity this alone has paved Trumps path to the GOP nomination. But is it the path to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.? Donna Brazile is a senior Democratic strategist, a political commentator and contributor to CNN and ABC News. LOS ANGELES, CA This week, Layla Sin is in Hungary shooting a series of feature movies for Penthouse. While shell be back to her homeland soon, later this month she will head to Israel for a series of events with the Penthouse team. Hungary is incredibly beautiful, Sin said. I am so lucky to have the opportunity to see the world like this and to do it with this incredible Penthouse team. Were going to be shooting three feature movies directed by Stuart Canterbury while Im there, she continued. Ive studied all the scripts and they are going to be a lot of fun. In one, my character is named Honeypot. Youll need to watch it to see why (or maybe not). They are all going to be great, and I cant wait for everyone to have the opportunity to enjoy them. Look for new DVDs starring Sin, including Seduction (Penthouse), which features a scene with Jenna Sativa, and Hot & Horny Sorority Girls, which has a Sin/Jessa Rhodes scene. NEW YORK, NY Natalia Starr features at Sapphire NYC Saturday, June 25. The Polish Penthouse Pet returns to her American hometown of New York City to entertain fans in The Big Apple. She will also be available for autographs, photographs, and lap dances between her feature sets. Live shows are my passion, and Im so excited to be performing at Sapphires this month, says Starr. Sapphires is a gorgeous club, and New York City fans and friends are the best! Get ready to party, because I plan on delivering the fun! Sapphire NYC is located at 333 East 60th St, NYC, NY, between 1st and 2nd Avenues. For more information, including VIP reservations, visit NYSapphire.com or call 212-421-3600. VAN NUYS, Calif.Officials from The Rabbit Company announced for as long as the Pink Ribbon Rabbit is produced, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to benefit breast cancer research. The money will be donated to The Eileen Stein Jacoby Fund, a volunteer-based organization that supports Breast Cancer Research by organizing community-based fundraising events and donating the proceeds to research scientists engaged in the fight against this deadly disease. We are completely honored to be assisting the Eileen Stein Jacoby Fund in their breast cancer cause, said Chaney Cox, brand manager. With our lifetime donation commitment, our goal is to really make an impact on breast cancer research Founded in the year 2000 by Cheryl Stein Herman and her family in honor and memory of her sister, the Eileen Stein Jacoby Fund places a special emphasis on involving the young people of our community. Many of The Eileen Stein Jacoby fundraising events are organized and led by students. By participating in such important fund raising events, these students learn invaluable life lessons about responsibility, organization, teamwork, and leadership. For additional information on the Rabbit Company and to see all of their products, visit TheRabbitCompany.com or call (844)-RABBIT-1. 54 Shares Share In the dark lecture room, I watched the neurologists shadow flicker across the only source of light a projection of the New York City subway map. He pointed at Times Square station. If the subway system were a brainstem, then Times Square would be the pons, transporting vital signals like breathing, speaking, and swallowing. He likened the stations abrupt destruction to a stroke producing locked-in syndrome. Writer Jean-Dominique Bauby describes the condition in his memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Paralyzed from head to toe, the patient, his mind intact, is imprisoned inside his own body, unable to speak or move. In my case, blinking my left eyelid is my only means of communication. Turning toward his medical student audience, the neurologist asked, Would you choose to live or die if you had locked-in syndrome? If youd rather live, raise your hand. As I pondered his question, my thoughts drifted to a case unfurling on the national stage. Julianna Snow, a 5-year-old girl with a severe form of the neurodegenerative disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth syndrome, was asked a similar question by her mother and neurologist Michelle Moon, MD. Julianna chose heaven over hospital. I glanced around the crowded room. I was the only one with my hand raised. While Im not afraid of death, Im troubled by the bias about what constitutes a life worth living. A 2015 study on locked-in syndrome showed that medical providers and families underestimate quality of life and inappropriately advocate for less aggressive care. However, those with locked-in syndrome often live for decades with a comparable quality of life to nondisabled people and most do not demand euthanasia. Access to devices like tubes for breathing and feeding, wheelchairs, and computer voice prosthetics enhance autonomy and quality of life. This counters the pervasive bias that a disabled life is a life of suffering, a life not worth living. Suffering is universal and certainly not limited to those with disabilities. People arent as disabled by their condition as they are by the world they inhabit. While the United States Social Security Administration defines disability as inability to engage in any substantial gainful activity [due to] medically determinable physical or mental impairment(s), its access that defines disability. Im not considered disabled or glasses-bound even though my uncorrected vision is abysmal beyond two feet. But someone who uses a wheelchair, like Julianna, is considered disabled or wheelchair-bound. If corrective lenses didnt exist, would I be disabled? If every vehicle and building were wheelchair-accessible, would wheelchair users be able? Instead of viewing disability as something to eliminate, we should appreciate it as a normal part of the human experience which adds valuable perspective. In doing so, we can focus on the real civil rights issue of accessibility and create a better world for everyone regardless of disability. Rather than view people with disabilities as defective, we should recognize our world as defective. Of noninstitutionalized adults, 12.6 percent reported a disability and 28.2 percent live below poverty. People with disabilities face significantly more obstacles in daily life. Over time, theyve been withheld medical care, forced to live in state institutions with inhumane conditions, excluded from public education, denied jobs, prevented from voting, and involuntarily sterilized. Given these inequities, the fight for assisted suicide is incomplete because it creates the illusion of choice. How can one truly choose death when one doesnt have access to existing resources that allow for a dignified life? The right to die and right to live are both important struggles for autonomy. But for people with disabilities, there can be no autonomy without the right to live with assistance. In Juliannas case, these biases could have fatal consequences. As CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen and People Magazine senior writer Nicole Weisensee Egan portray it: Youre Julianna, a 5-year-old girl dying from an incurable, degenerative neuromuscular disease that robbed you of the ability to walk, eat or even breathe. You hate lengthy and torturous stay[s] in the hospital where youre subject to painful medical interventions. If you survive another cold, doctors say youll be sedated on a respirator with very little quality of life. Your parents say hospitals may help you get better and let you spend more time with [family]. They say heaven means youll be able to run and play and eat and meet God, who loves you very much. Now, lets reframe it: Youre Julianna, a 5-year-old girl living with progressive neuromuscular disease. Like other chronic, incurable diseases such as diabetes or asthma, you can manage symptoms with medical interventions. Some, like nasotracheal suctioning, are unpleasant. Eventually, you may need a quick procedure to cut a small hole in your neck so a respirator can breathe for you. These planned tracheostomies have been shown to improve physical health and performance of activities of daily living. Many people with tracheostomies talk and eat some like Sarah Glerup even sing competitively on The X-Factor. Given the choice, would you rather live or die? Would you choose heaven over hospital? I ask these questions not to pass judgment, but to challenge our thinking about disability. Of course, these questions arent simply thought experiments theyre peoples lives. I cant imagine how it must feel to be in such a difficult position. Dr. Moons decision to put her daughters experience on the national stage is bold, and more of these stories should be shared. Dr. Moon touched on a critical point when she told People that one of the reasons were continuing to share our story is to make the world a safer place for parents who care for and love terminally ill children. But its not enough. We need to make the world a safer place for people with disabilities by elevating their voices, which are seldom heard in mainstream media. Dear Julianna, a Neuromuscular Disabilities United letter-writing campaign, breaks that silence. President Emily Wolinsky, who has spinal muscular atrophy, said that while Dear Julianna was inspired by Julianna, its purpose is broader: To educate about life with a neuromuscular disability (NMD), and to showcase thousands of individuals with NMD living happy and wonderful lives. To protect the Snows, Wolinsky, 38, declines letters that reference the family or pass judgment on their decision. Contributors have written about thriving despite dire prognoses; adapting to disease progression; experiencing interventions like nasotracheal suctioning, surgery, tracheostomies, respirators, and catheters; even marriage, pregnancy, and childbirth. If anything, Drs. Moon and Wolinsky agree that life with a disability can be profoundly isolating for caregivers and people with disabilities alike. But it doesnt have to be that way. We need not be the only ones with our hands raised in a dark room. Christy Duan is a medical student and can be reached at her self-titled site, Christy Duan. This article originally appeared in MedPage Today. Image credit: Shutterstock.com 933 Shares Share I love you, she said as I was leaving the room. Although I was stunned for a second or two, I wasnt really surprised. She and I had gotten along famously from the beginning of our 15 minutes together. She didnt love me in the way a patient with borderline personality disorder loves her enabling prescriber. She loved me because I was there, I was experienced, I was kind, and I respected her. She was a sweet, smart, middle-aged black lady with diabetes who had let an abscess brew a few days too long before coming in. We chatted and joked, learning about each other as I took care of her problem. She was the charming but stoic type of patient I good-naturedly chide for not coming in sooner, yet secretly enjoy caring for, because those patients always remind me of my own mother. My mom would giggle and laugh, sometimes be downright mischievous, and never took herself too seriously. She had the expected toughness of a woman who grew up on a farm in Appalachian Virginia and had lost her parents at a young age. She used to tell me the story of how she secretly and gingerly carried around a broken arm for a few weeks because she was too afraid to tell her parents how she got it (she fell while swinging on vines in the woods near the farm, despite the fact that her mother had told her many times not to). In classic Mustard family fashion, she almost made it to the doctor before succumbing to a massive MI. Her doctors appointment was set for the next day to discuss a few days of fatigue, nausea, and indigestion. So it goes. My moms brother, Uncle Tom, is a retired Episcopal priest. Ive never met someone who understands the human condition like he does. Ive seen him make widows and widowers belly laugh during the funerals of their spouses. He (like all of us) has experienced loss, joy, sorrow, health, illness, victory, and disappointment in varying measure. To know him is to understand that for him, solemn tears of grief and the raucous laughter brought by fond memories can, and frequently do, occur simultaneously. He is fully aware of his own inevitable death, but he is able to love and laugh and play and dream. He doesnt celebrate in spite of his own mortality he celebrates because of it. While he is my shining example, he isnt alone by any stretch. Other human illustrations of this paradox are so exceedingly common that they actually serve to dampen its uniqueness and impact. We all know that no one gets out of here alive, yet we can still laugh, love, and enjoy life. That is the tragic, but beautiful, human condition. Im a better doctor than any computer. I dont say this with hubris or braggadocio. In America, the past couple of decades have seen doctors relinquish control of their own decision-making to an astonishing degree. We allowed certain data to be deemed important and valuable just because others can easily collect and tabulate them on a spreadsheet. Next, we let these data be used as weapons against us. We chase meaningless metrics, are reminded incessantly about core measures, and live in fear that someone may write a negative online review about us or submit a poor satisfaction survey. These are not issues which should be day-to-day concerns for physicians, and yet they are. A patient with a distal radius fracture has to get pain medication within a certain time, or I am a bad doctor. The next patient with an injured wrist ultimately is found to have a scaphoid fracture. Since it wasnt a long bone fracture, I furiously chased the clock and metric (while attending to many other ill and injured patients) in vain. That case wont count in determining whether I am a good doctor or not. There may be no more oxymoronic term in all of health care than quality metric. The absurd has become so common that there is no longer any pushback to absurdity. We allow ourselves to be vilified in the media (sometimes by one of our own this is you, Dr. Sanjay Gupta) as our role and trade are relentlessly devalued. Doctors own the lions share of responsibility for creating the opioid epidemic. Doctors are sexually abusing patients. Doctors are committing Medicare fraud because they are greedy. Doctors are killing thousands of patients per day due to medical errors. Weve been pummeled so furiously, we are now on the ropes with our gloves down, lacking the will, energy, or even anger to rally and fight back. My fellow doctors, do not forget that what we do is useful, valuable, and honorable. Physicians are the lynchpin of the entire health care system. A computer algorithm cannot interpret the subtleties of the exam room. It cant detect when patients are minimizing, denying, exaggerating, or fabricating symptoms. It cant detect the patients grimace when I mash on her right lower quadrant, even though she tells me it doesnt hurt. A computer is not a substitute for years of experience and training it is an adjunct to years of experience and training. More importantly, a computer has no concept of the human condition. It cant approach a patient with love, an understanding smile, or genuine concern. Read the book Cure (and its compelling data) by Jo Marchant if you dont think these human qualities are crucial for healing. They unequivocally are. Im a better doctor than a computer for the exact same reason that many think I am inferior to it I am human. I love you, my patient said. My eyes met hers. I love you, I replied. I meant it as much as she did. Keith Pochick is an emergency physician. Image credit: Shutterstock.com VAN NUYS, Calif.The Rabbit Company has teamed with Dr. Emily Morses popular podcast Sex With Emily in an effort to expand brand awareness. 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Well known within the industry, Emily is host of the Sexual Health Expo, and can regularly be seen as a guest expert on major television networks and publications like Glamour and Mens Health. The Rabbit Companys motto is Rabbit vibrators are our specialty and pleasure is our promise. Offering styles like the Beaded Rabbit, Come Hither Rabbit, Pocket Rabbit and other favorites, The Rabbit Company has something for everyone. All Rabbit Company vibrators are ergonomically designed for precise stimulation and feature seamless and body-safe designs made from smooth, soft, hypoallergenic silicone. For additional information on the Rabbit Company and to meet the whole family, visit TheRabbitCompany.com or call (844)-RABBIT-1. For more information on Emily Morse or the Sex with Emily podcast, visit SexWithEmily.com or email [email protected] Jovia is lying on a mattress on the ground of her one room house in a slum area of Kampala, the capital of Uganda. Weak and emaciated she is clearly in her last weeks of life. She has cervical cancer and full blown HIV/AIDS, but despite her illness she smiles as she holds my hand. I find it hard to hold back the tears. It is early January and I am on one of my first home care visits with Hospice Africa Uganda, a charity whose mission is to bring peace and comfort to people dying from cancer, HIV AIDS and other serious illness. A journalist and media consultant from Goresbridge, Co. Kilkenny, I have no medical experience whatsoever. So I find the visit really tough. Jovia is 29 , a single mother of a 14-year-old daughter. At one stage she had a better life. She becomes animated as she tells me she was trained as a cook and before she got ill had regular work. She was first diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and later cancer. Most of her family abandoned her and the father of her daughter Sharon has not been on the scene in a long time. As with so ill people in Uganda Jovia could not afford health treatment, which is not free. The country has a haphazard, chaotic health system. To walk through the national referral hospital in Kampala is a shocking experience. Patients are queuing up to be treated, lying on grass outdoors in the baking heat and in corridors inside the overcrowded buildings that make up the sprawling campus. Broken beyond repair Last month it was announced that Ugandas only radiotherapy machine is broken beyond repair and it will take at least a year for a replacement. And that is only if the Government honours its commitment to replace it. This means the 17,000 people who receive radiotherapy treatment in this East African country every year have nowhere to turn, unless they have the money to travel abroad for treatment. Hospice Africa Uganda was alerted to Jovias case last year and the care which she received from the dedicated clinical team transformed her situation. The oral liquid morphine they prescribed controlled her pain, and she was made comfortable. Other needs were also looked after. Some money for food. And she received spitirual gudiance also. I visited Jovia a total of four times since January and learned that she was a bright, intelligent and loving woman. I was able to help her with some amounts of money thanks to the kind donations from people in Ireland who contributed to a fund I started. Her big concern was getting her daughter education after she died. After I posted an appeal on my Facebook page an Irish family came forward to help. Jovia passed away peacefully at her home on April 27th. It was amazing that given how ill and weak she was that she battled so long. Happily she died comfortably and in a peace. The home care team visited her the day before she passed away and before they left she requested Mango fruit. At that stage she was not able to eat much. That visit I made to Jovia in January seems like a life time ago now. Since then I have met many other Jovias, desparately poor people with terminal illness who are crying out for help and support. I initially signed up as a volunteer with Hospice Africa Uganda for one month, to help with communications and fund raising. Almost five months later I find I am still here, drawn to the inspiring work of this incredible charity. The experience has proven life changing. I often pinch myself that I am acutally here. This was never in my grand plan. At 52 years, with my two chldren reared, this was the last place I expected to be. Yes life takes the most unexpected twists. Things happen that are out of our control. I first leared about palliative care and the hospice movement in 2013 when I did work with the Irish Hospice Foundation (IHF). And that is how I met the person who I hold responsible for my being here in Africa, .81-year-old Nobel Peace Prize nominee Dr. Anne Merriman. This inspirational powerhouse of a women is internationally renowned for bringing pallliative care to Africa. Born in Liverpool she joined the Medical Missionaries of Mary in Co. Louth in the 1950s and went to medical school in UCD and qualified as a doctor. After spending time working in Nigeria, Britain and Singapore she set up Hospice Africa Uganda in 1993. By this time she had left the MMM order but has maintained her strong faith and misisonary zeal. She has also kept strong links with Ireland. Hospice Africa Ireland supports the work and the Irish people have been very generous over the years. Hospice Africa Uganda cares for around 1,800 patients a month at its three centres in Uganda Kampala, Mbarara and Hoima. All of its services are outreach and care is delivered in peoples homes. HAU is also educating doctors and nurses from many other African countries in palliaitve care at the Institute of Hospice and Palliative Care at its headquarters in Kampala. Spreading the knowledge is how Dr. Anne sees palliative care reaching all corners of Africa. Underdeveloped Health care in Uganda is very undeveloped and only those with money will get treatment. Five per cent of people who get cancer will not any treatment. HAU is only reaching about ten per cent of people in need. With treatment and cure for cancer and Aids and other serious illness at such a low rate, palliative and end of life care is all important. Oral liquid morphine is key to helping HAU staff provide peace and dignity to desparately ill people in their last weeks and days. My first few weeks in Uganda were quite a culture shock. All the travel I had done in the past in my job as a journalist, which included two years as Asia correspondent of the Irish Times during which I covered the War against terror in Pakistan and Afghanistan, did not prepare me for Kampala, its dry heat, dusty pot-holed roads and chaotic traffic, the poverty, and the warmth of the people. Full of Fun and Love In my first three months I stayed with Dr. Anne whose house is full of fun and love. Happy chaos! She has 10 dogs, 6 cats and her extended family, the three girls who work for her (all unmarried mothers) and their gorgeous kids. I have become godmother to one of them, three-yer-old Pearl. I have come to truly realise the meaning of palliative care and hospice. In Ireland when we hear of hospice we think of a building where people go to die. Here hospice is a philosophy where the sick are cared for loved ones and helped to die in comfort and peace and digniy at home. After one month I knew I was not ready to come home. I decided to stay until May. And I have now extended further to September. Come then who knows? The pull of Africa is proving very strong. I do miss home, my kids (aged 24 and 26) and my family including my mother, Kitty in Goresbridge and my four brothers and sisters most who are living in the Kilkenny area. But what is one year in a lifetime. A year which has put a lot of things into perspective for me. A year in which I am seeing a completely different side to life. A year in which I realise how lucky I am and people in Ireland are. Note: Since December I have raised 25,000 for HAU. I have set a target to raise another 20,000 before I come home. My online donation account (the money goes directly to Hospice Africa Ireland, a board which fundraises for HAU) is at: https://give.everydayhero.com/ie/miriam-2 Every little helps and thanks for your support. People who have earned a defined-benefit pension seem to be in an enviable position -- retiring with the promise of a steady income stream for life. But it's not so enviable if the promised benefits don't show up. And an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor is finding that many retirees aren't getting the benefits they've earned. Since last summer, the Labor Department has opened investigations into more than four dozen large pension plans, with eye-opening results: Some do a very poor job keeping track of retired participants and paying benefits when they're owed. In some cases, plans don't even have the names or ages of many of their participants. Sloppy recordkeeping isn't the only factor separating retirees from their pensions. Corporate mergers, spinoffs and bankruptcies can make it tough for retirees to track down and claim pensions from employers they left years ago. And when pensions are transferred from one administrator to another, or turned over to an insurance company, participant information may be garbled or lost completely. Subscribe to Kiplingers Personal Finance Be a smarter, better informed investor. Save up to 74% Sign up for Kiplingers Free E-Newsletters Profit and prosper with the best of Kiplingers expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more - straight to your e-mail. Profit and prosper with the best of Kiplingers expert advice - straight to your e-mail. Sign up That puts a heavy burden on plan members to maintain employment records, plan documents, tax returns and other paperwork that can help prove they're eligible for a pension -- and to be proactive about claiming benefits when the time comes. "There isn't a lot of initiative on the part of plans to pay benefits when they're due," says Jeanne Medeiros, director of the Pension Action Center, a research and advocacy group at the University of Massachusetts Boston. "It's largely up to the participant to come forward and find the plan." Kenneth Rowland, 68, is just now collecting the pension he was owed at 65. Rowland, who lives in Hull, Mass., earned the pension during his employment in the 1980s with the yellow-pages division of the telephone company Nynex. He did receive a letter from Nynex documenting the pension he had earned . . . in 1992, but nothing after that. When he started trying to claim his benefits in 2013, the telecom industry had changed completely, and Nynex was long gone. Rowland contacted the Pension Action Center, and a pension counselor finally tracked his pension down at Verizon Communications. That was a surprise to Rowland, who had never worked for Verizon -- but Nynex had merged with Bell Atlantic, which later acquired GTE and became Verizon. The whole process of finding the pension, he says, was "an obstacle course." A Verizon spokesman says that the company has procedures to try to contact participants before they turn 65. It's not just a few retirees who are slipping through the cracks. Plans the government has examined so far owe more than $500 million to retirees. One plan had thousands of "missing" participants age 65 and older, but the Labor Department was able to find 70% of those people using basic online search tools. "It's a very big problem," a Labor official says, adding that some trustees have "lost sight of this very basic duty" to provide earned benefits to participants. Keeping Track of a Pension If you have earned a pension, keep your individual benefit statements as well as the summary plan description, which outlines the requirements for earning benefits. Maintain records of your employment history, including W-2 forms and pay stubs. And hold on to all of your old tax returns. When it comes time to claim your benefits, the plan might say that it has already paid you a distribution -- and you'll need your old tax returns to prove whether or not that's accurate. If you leave a job before the plan's retirement age, verify that you have a vested benefit and get the plan's most recent summary plan description, which will determine the benefits you receive in retirement. Update the plan on any changes in your address, phone number, name or marital status. "If a person has terminated employment and is no longer at the address of record, the easiest thing for the plan to do is nothing," says John Turner, director of the Pension Policy Center, a research and consulting group in Washington, D.C. Periodically check your former employer's website, watching for mergers, buyouts or bankruptcies. "One of the main reasons that participants lose track of plans is corporate restructuring," says Jane Smith, policy analyst at the Pension Rights Center. If your plan is terminating, make sure you know who will be administering the plan. If the plan is sufficiently funded, an insurance company will take over payment of the benefits -- and if not, the plan will likely be turned over to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. If you've lost track of a pension, go to www.pensionhelp.org (opens in new tab) to find pension counseling projects funded by the U.S. Administration on Aging. Check an old W-2 to find your former company's employer identification number (EIN), which can help track down the company. Watch out for a "notice of potential private pension benefits," which the Social Security Administration sends as a reminder to people who have earned a private pension. A pension counselor can also help you request this notice from Social Security. Although the information may be out of date, "it's very helpful in terms of evidence you were vested," Medeiros says. Search for plans that have been turned over to the PBGC at www.pbgc.gov/wr (opens in new tab). You can also click "find an unclaimed pension" at this site to find out if your name is on the PBGC's list of missing participants. If you've been omitted from your plan's records, you must document your work history and eligibility for the benefit. If you don't have W-2s and other employment documentation, you can request a Social Security earnings statement using Form SSA-7050, for $136. After spending years tracking down his pension, William Ross Berggren finally got his monthly benefit along with retroactive benefits and interest. Berggren, 82, earned the pension from his work at Citizens Savings and Loan in San Francisco in the 1970s and 1980s. By the time he tried to claim benefits in 2010, the bank had been acquired, and he couldn't locate his pension. Berggren turned to the Western States Pension Assistance Project, which tracked down his pension in a surprising place: the Ford Motor Company. Citizens had become First Nationwide, which was later bought by Ford. Collecting the pension "was a very significant win, even though it wasn't a lot of money," Berggren says. "I've realized as a retired person that oftentimes I need to be my own advocate." A Ford spokeswoman says that the company "has a process in place to find pension participants" when participants are required to start taking distributions. BROOMFIELD, Colo.Award-winning distributor Eldorado Trading Co. is now carrying fellow Colorado-based company tyes.by.tara. The manufacturer designs, creates and markets intimate accessories that celebrate the woman within. "This is a very exciting partnership for tyes.by.tara, said Tara Christine Stravinsky, tyes.by.tara founder, Eldorado's experience and presence within the industry makes this an ideal partnership to expand the reach of the tyes.by.tara brand to a broad range of retailers." tyes.by.tara was founded with a spark of inspiration from a naughty school girl Halloween costume necktie in 2008 by graduate student Tara Christine Stravinsky. After years of product development and research, this award-winning company now offers several categories of sensually sweet jewelry, accessories and intimates designed to help women explore, embrace and celebrate their femininity. The collection is designed with the vision to help women explore, embrace and celebrate their femininity. This vision is clear throughout the collection with the appearance of delicate bows, flirty ruffles and feminine chains. The collection consists of wrist cuffs, garters, nipple clamps, pasties, collars and body harness sets. The collections designs are a great addition to the Eldorado lineup. With its chic and feminine designs, it offers customers an unthreatening option to traditional BDSM products. tyes.by.tara would be a perfect collection to stock for BDSM beginners, said Crystal Garcia, Eldorado buyer. For more information on the products from tyes.by.tara Eldorado stocks, call (800) 525-0848, email [email protected] or visit Eldorado.net. (Kitco News) - After suffering through a four-year bear market, the once-cash starved mining sector is seeing capital inflows. McEwen Mining is a prime example of a mining company that is reaping the benefits of lower production costs, higher gold prices and higher production improving its balance sheet. The company held its Annual General meeting May 31, with the company highlighting its balance sheet growth since the start of the year. As of May 27, the company saw its cash holdings rise to $33.26 million, up from $25.87 million as of Dec. 31 2015. The companys gold and silver stockpiles increased to $21.51 million, up from $5.07 million in December and its investment in junior minors has increased to $1.93 million, up from $1.03 million. Since December 2014, the company has seen its cash reserves increase by 168%, its gold and silver inventory increase 341%, and its investments increase by 78%. In an interview with Kitco News, Rob McEwen, CEO of McEwen said that the company doesnt have any purchasing plans on the books this year; however, he added that you can never say never if they find a project with the right price. I think now would be a good time to buy but you have to find the right price. I wouldnt want to buy something that is overvalued, he said. McEwen said the companys general plan is to continue to accumulate capital, which he explained will be needed in 2017. We are planning to start construction of our Gold Bar project in the first quarter of 2017. The capex costs are expected to be around $60 million and we expect to be able to internally fund at least two-third of the construction costs, he said. According to the companys feasibility study for its Gold Bar property in central Nevada, construction is expected be finished by 2018. The mine is expected to produce 65,000 ounces of gold per year with estimated per ounce cash costs of $728. Another benefit of the companys increase in cash holdings is that McEwen got a raise. After working for almost 10 years without a salary I have been given a raise to $1 a year, he said. I guess with a 169% increase in cash reserves, the board felt comfortable to pay me something. By Neils Christensen of Kitco News; nchristensen@kitco.com Follow @Neils_C (Kitco News) - Market professionals and retail investors are both bullish on gold for next week, according to the latest results of the Kitco News Wall Street vs. Main Street gold survey. Wall Street Bullish Bearish Neutral VS Main Street Bullish Bearish Neutral Twenty-one analysts and traders took part in a survey for market professionals. Twelve, or 57%, said they were bullish. Four, or 19%, were bearish, while another five, or 24%, were neutral. A key factor that seemed to turn sentiment among Wall Street professionals who had leaned bearish the prior couple of weeks -- was the sharply lower-than-expected rise of 38,000 in May nonfarm payrolls reported on Friday. In fact, four survey participants upgraded their views after the report. The data nearly removed market expectations for a Federal Reserve rate hike this month, after fears of monetary tightening had weighed down the yellow metal the last couple of weeks. Meanwhile, this weeks Kitcos online survey received 643 votes. A total of 326 respondents, or 51%, said they were bullish for the week ahead, while 234, or 36%, were bearish. The neutral votes totaled 83, or 13%. In last weeks survey, 51% of retail investors were bullish, while the largest chunk of market professionals 45% -- were bearish. In overnight screen trading early Friday, Comex August gold at one point was $7.60 lower for the week, but that changed dramatically after the data. As of 11:30 a.m. EDT, August gold was higher by $26.20, or 2.2%, for the week to $1,242.90 an ounce. Phil Flynn, senior market analyst with at Price Futures Group, is among those who look for gold to maintain its upward momentum after the U.S. jobs report. The jobs numbers were so pathetic that the odds of a June interest-rate increase are off of the table, Flynn said. He later added, The Fed will have no choice other than to stand pat. Daniel Pavilonis, senior commodities broker with RJO Futures, also looks for further gains fueled by the data, commenting that theres a flight to quality with all of the turmoil in the U.S. He then added, I think rates will continue to go negative in Europe. In theory, if you dont want to keep money in the bank, whats the best asset to put your money into? It would be gold. George Gero, managing director with RBC Wealth Management, also looks for gold to be up slightly amid the uncertainty ahead of a U.K. vote later this month on exiting the European Union. Bullish, added Mark Leibovit, chief market strategist with VR Trader. Seasonal low due. Gold has corrected $100 an ounce from its peak. Bitcoin rallying. Something is 'rotten in Denmark' with the central bankers, as usual. Still, some look for the yellow metal to back down from Fridays sharp rally. I dont think the jobs report will stop the Fed from raising rates so any reaction today will be muted and I am still looking for the gold market to weaken, said Robert Tebbutt, partner at Amour Asset Risk Management. By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com Follow @KitcoNewsNOW (Kitco News) - The U.S. labor market lost significant momentum last month; however, economists have been anticipating a skewed number because of the strike from Verizon workers. Friday, the U.S. Labor Department said 38,000 jobs were created in May, massively below consensus forecasts, which were calling for 159,000 jobs. Not only was the headline data significantly weaker than expected, but data in March and April were revised lower. March employment data was revised to 186,000 jobs from 208,000; Aprils data was revised down to 123,000 from 160,000. This is the lowest employment gains the U.S. economy has seen since fall 2010. Economists were expecting the Verizon labor dispute to cut about 35,000 jobs in last months payrolls. While Verizon employees went back to work Wednesday, they were considered unemployed in April because they did not receive a salary. Looking at some of the highlights of the report, the manufacturing sector lost 10,000 jobs last month with 7,000 losses in machinery and 3,000 jobs gone in future and related products. The mining sector also continues to shed jobs, losing 10,000 in May, of those 6,000 jobs were lost in the sectors support activities. In total mining has shed 207,000 jobs since its peak in 2014. The unemployment rate fell to 4.7%, down from 5.0 reported in March. Economists were expecting to see a slight drop to 4.9%. However, the rise in the unemployment rate was the result of a decrease in the participation rate to 62.6%. The only bright spot in the report was the fact that wages saw a modest increase. Average hourly earnings increased by 5 cents last months to $25.59. On an annual basis average wages have increased 2.5%, in line with expectations. According to some economist the weaker than expected data will push back expectations for a Federal Reserve rate hike later this month. Gold is seeing a major benefit as a result of the shifting expectations. In initial reaction August Comex gold futures rallied $22.2 hitting a high at $1,238.60 an ounce. The Fed won't want to hike in two weeks after this report and July suddenly seems far less likely than the 50/50 probability in markets, said Adam Button, currency analyst at Forexlive.com. This isn't a good time to buy US dollar dips. Avery Shenfeld, senior economist at CIBC World Markets described the disappointing employment report as shocking. The jobs data were much more than just about a telecom strike, with the goods sector dropping 36K and temporary help also weak on the service side. We still see Q2 growth as decent, but we'll need a few more months of improved economic indicators to get the Fed back on the rate hike plan, he said. By Neils Christensen of Kitco News; nchristensen@kitco.com Follow @Neils_C SHARE D'On "Dee" Colleen White of Seabeck April 11, 1953 to May 18, 2016 Veteran D'On "Dee" Colleen White passed away on May 18, 2016 in Seabeck, Washington. Dee was born on April 11, 1953 to Kenley and Shirley White in Bremerton. She attended Star of the Sea School and graduated from West High School. Dee went on to serve honorably in the Navy. She returned to Bremerton and was a graduate of the PSNS apprenticeship program in the sheet metal shop, and eventually retired as a progressman. Dee's memory will live on with her parents; brother, Daniel; and many nieces and nephews. Services were held at Forest Lawn Cemetery. Please visit www.lewischapel.com to view an online memorial and guest book. SHARE Roger J. Freeman of Port Orchard March 15, 1925 to May 30, 2016 Veteran Roger was born in Hoquiam, Washington on March 15, 1925. He joined the Navy and served on the USS Liscome Bay during World War II. His ship was sunk by a Japanese torpedo on Nov. 24, 1943. Roger was one of the few who survived. He met his wife, Vera Slate, after his service in the Navy. They moved to Chicago where he finished his electrical training, and eventually returned to the Pacific Northwest, residing in Bremerton. It was here they raised their four children, Norman, Mike, Garry and Janet. Roger was an avid fisherman, hiker, hunter and general outdoorsman. He passed away on May 30, 2016, leaving behind his four children, 11 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. The family will gather to honor Roger at the Hoh River where they often fished, hunted and camped, in August. The Rock Not Ruling Out A Presidential Run Trending News: The Rock Might Run For President Why Is This Important? Because he might be able to raise a "People's Eyebrow," but can he raise the necessary funds for a presidential run? Long Story Short Watch out America, because the "People's Champ" might decide to take a run at public office. World leaders like Vladimir Putin better watch out for an out-of-nowhere "Rock Bottom" at international meetings. Long Story Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is one busy man. He's starring in reboots of Jumanji and Baywatch; he's signed on to be the first ever superheroes, "Doc" Savage; he's got big plans to make his character Hobbs even more badass in the Fast and Furious franchise; and he's come up with a couple successful products a gym bag and an alarm clock app in his free time (he wakes up at 4 a.m. so he's got more 'free time' than the average person). Doing so much, staying super fit and striving for more is extremely demanding could the Rock be preparing himself for the most demanding job of all? Speaking to British GQ, The Rock said he hasn't ruled out a run at political office, or even the White House. "I'll be honest, I haven't ruled politics out. I'm not being coy when I say that, but at the moment I am not sure. I can't deny that the thought of being governor, the thought of being president, is alluring. And beyond that, it would be an opportunity to make a real impact on people's lives on a global scale. But there are a lot of other things I want to do first." In terms of which party he'd run for, the Rock is a registered Republican, but also claims to be "good buddies" with President Obama and first-man hopeful Bill Clinton. If a billionaire reality show buffoon can lead his party into an election, why can't the Rock? He's got the name power and he can always "Rock Bottom" a congressman or senator if they don't want to vote his way. I, for one, can smell what the Rock is cooking. Own The Conversation Ask The Big Question Will the Rock be the first wrestler in the White House? Disrupt Your Feed Rock the vote. Drop This Fact The Rock isn't the first former wrestler to take a run at political office. Jesse Ventura served as governor of Minnesota from 1999-2003. SHARE By Connie Ogle, Miami Herald (TNS) The characters in Chris Cleave's novels are well acquainted with suffering. The grieving widow in "Incendiary" who lost her husband and child to a terrorist's bomb, the two women in "Little Bee" (one a Nigerian orphan, the other an unfaithful British wife) bound by a horrifying act, the competitive and troubled Olympic cyclists in "Gold" they are all intimately familiar with loss and perseverance. Cleave's latest novel which is wonderful, not surprisingly continues to explore human endurance in all its many facets, this time during World War II. Like most Brits, Cleave had family in that fight: a grandfather stationed on Malta during its siege and two grandmothers in London, one an ambulance driver and the other a teacher. Written with wit and grace, "Everyone Brave is Forgiven" is inspired by their lives and letters, their deprivations and their resilience. World War II is the ultimate romantic war, at least if you watch the old movies, and accordingly, Cleave shapes "Everyone Brave is Forgiven" around a painful love triangle. In this novel, romance is imperfect, love fickle. Courage doesn't guarantee a happy ending, and even a mostly good heart can be blind to ugly truths. At first, the characters tend to be droll and cavalier about what's about to happen; when the story opens in 1939, they are yet unable to imagine the terrible ravages of the Blitz to come. They are of a class not given to histrionics. Young Mary North, well-bred, independent and determined to be part of "this dreaded and wonderful thing," signs up to volunteer as soon as war is declared, "in case her mother said no." Mary dreams of some sort of glory but is drafted into a less-than-glamorous profession teaching (most of the male teachers have enlisted). Her fate grows even less exciting when she learns her students will be sent to the countryside for safety (and she's not allowed to go with them). In her quest to find a new teaching post, Mary enlists the help of Tom Shaw, who's running one of London's school districts. Tom tries to put her off but falls for her almost immediately (he also wangles a small class of misfits for her to instruct). At 23, he has no plans to fight "[O]ne isn't being unpatriotic by declining to rush off like a schoolboy to fire popguns at the Germans," he says casually to his flatmate Alistair Heath. Alistair, though, has different ideas he has signed up. As he endures shame, abuse and exhaustion during training in rural England, Tom and Mary fall in love. Later, on leave, Alistair joins the couple for lunch, his intended date Mary's tart-tongued friend Hilda. But he can't take his eyes off Mary, who returns the favor. Cleave has fun with his characters' default reserve and understated humor. Mary and Hilda joke about being ravished by German invaders. Tom imagines that having faith in a lover requires great courage, though "one did not get a medal for letting go a woman's hand on a gray Saturday morning in the middle of a European war." When Alistair's troop flees the chaos of Dunkirk, they pick up a downed airman in the Channel and the following ensues: "After a while Alistair said, 'How was the water?' "Brisk, said the RAF man. "How was France?" "Crowded." But as the Blitz intensifies and Alistair is sent to Malta to withstand the Axis siege, Everyone Brave is Forgiven grows darker, and tragedies mount (one brutal scene involving a German pilot who ejects over Malta and is caught by angry villagers will haunt you for a good long time). Cleave, who never writes simplistic stories, refuses any heroic flag-waving and shines a light on an unpleasant side of Britain during the war years: the vicious racism that's every bit as insidious as German anti-Semitism. "Everyone Brave is Forgiven" asks hard questions with no easy answers, reminding us of the price we pay every day just for being human. photos by matt ward/special to go knoxville Caroline Culwell, left, and LeighAnna Morris on a recent night at Old City Wine Bar. SHARE A view of the wine cellar area at the Old City Wine Bar. By Matt Ward, Special to Go Knoxville I love parking on the bridge on South Gay Street. The soft glow and blink of the JFG sign illuminates the continuously improving streets below. I love the awkward pause that cars give you when you stop turning the wheel and back into your parking space as required. I even love the tremendous rail yard that stretches as far as the eye can see to the east. Heading to the Old City from the parking on the bridge leaves you with a small dilemma of whether to take the stairs down to the street level or proceed down Jackson Avenue itself. Personally I enjoy going down the stairs so I can look to the right and see the underneath side of the buildings that leads to the underground part of Knoxville. The streetscape continues to change on Jackson Avenue. The Jackson Avenue Terminal was a rough-looking, partially occupied structure just a few short years ago. It is now renovated and seems ready for occupation. Across the street, Jackson Avenue Market continues to thrive. It should, as it has carryout beer and soft drinks and amazing sandwiches and hot dogs. Not too much farther down where Remedy Coffee used to be is Awaken Coffee with its terrific gathering place in the back. Across the street and a little farther down is a new series of condos called The Daniel. Beside The Daniel is Old City Wine Bar. This is another project from the Boyd family. This time son Thomas Boyd strikes out on his own with this venture. It is directly behind Boyd's Jig and Reel, an exceptionally successful Scottish-themed bar that used to be Manhattan's back in the day. The Boyds are also responsible for Patrick Sullivan's not becoming another dance club. They renovated it fully, with meticulous attention to detail and leased the space to be a high-end eatery called Lonesome Dove, which will open sometime in 2016. The Old City Wine Bar opened in 2015. The bar focuses on the classier patrons of the Old City. It's 21 and up and does not really appeal to the dance-club crowd. They aren't big on Jaeger shots or cheap draft beer. They are, however, big on flavor. The bar itself is not very large. When you walk in the front door you are met by seats in front of you and to the left. To the right is the bar. The decor is modern and beautiful. The menu is mouth-watering. The focus is on small and large plates. Items that sounded exceptionally good included stuffed banana peppers, smoked salmon sliders, meat and cheese plates, flat breads and Peruvian ceviche. Nice. Dylan was behind the bar. He directed me to Sadie Daniels, the manager for my specific questions about the bar. Sadie explained the events written on a board next to the bar. The second Monday of each month the bar has what it calls Monday Funday. On this day they pair wines with small plates. They do four courses of different small plate/wine pairings. Every Thursday they also hold a wine class that is open to the public. This seems like it would be a great idea for new servers who sell a lot of wine at their jobs. Said also showed me the downstairs area, which serves as a wine cellar and private room perfect for smaller gatherings of about 20 people or so. I drank a water and scoured over the immense wine list while I daydreamed on the future of the Old City. History is important. However, the history of the Old City in Knoxville is a rough one. Once a place of gambling, prostitution and other sinful activity, now the Old City is a haven for drunken dance clubbers, punk rock music fans, artists, beer lovers, coffee lovers and upscale condo-living urbanites. We should be grateful for the Boyd family's contribution to the development of this historic area. They get it. --- Old City Wine Bar Address: 108 W Jackson Ave. Hours: 4-11 p.m. Monday -Thursday; 4-midnight Friday-Saturday Phone: 865-851-7676 Website: www.oldcitywinebar.com Smoking indoors: no Wifi: yes FBI's case hinges on ruling By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel The fate of the FBI's entire case against the man accused as mastermind of a series of terroristic bank extortions in at least four states now rests with a federal judge. After a daylong hearing in U.S. District Court in Knoxville on Thursday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Clifford Shirley summed up the high-stakes ruling he now faces in the case of Michael Benanti, a Pennsylvania man deemed by federal authorities in East Tennessee as one of the most dangerous suspects they have encountered in recent years. "If I find the (first) search warrant bad, all these others are bad," Shirley noted. The 43-year-old Benanti is charged in a 23-count indictment accusing him of crimes in four states, including kidnappings, carjackings, bank robbery and extortions. The FBI also has said agents suspect him of murder in the death of his girlfriend, although he has not yet been charged. All the charges arise from an alleged plot with fellow defendant Brian Witham to kidnap bank executives and their families and force those executives to essentially rob their own financial institutions so Benanti could funnel money back into a business Prisoner Assistant, which claimed to help ease former prison inmates' transition back into society from which prosecutors say he was stealing. One of those kidnappings occurred in Knoxville, one in Oak Ridge and one in Elizabethton, Tenn. Testimony from FBI Agent Jeff Blanton on Thursday suggested Benanti was plotting another hostage-taking bank extortion bid in West Knoxville when a high-speed chase in September on Interstate 40 in North Carolina near the Tennessee border almost led to his capture and foiled the plot. The FBI didn't know Benanti's name, much less whether he was involved in any kidnappings, when a North Carolina State Highway Patrol trooper slapped handcuffs on him after a second chase on Interstate 26 in November. That arrest netted from Benanti's hand a list of future extortion victims and a bag of gear that could be used to surveil them, according to records. The note and bag later played a key role in the FBI's search warrant application for a Maggie Valley, N.C., cabin where agents found more evidence. That warrant application, in turn, served as the basis for more searches, which generated even more evidence. Benanti's attorneys, Robert Kurtz and Richard Gaines, on Thursday challenged the legality of Benanti's arrest and the search warrants. Because each is connected, if Shirley strikes down any part of the warrants, the entirety of the FBI's case falls. Witham, who fled from the I-26 chase only to be apprehended later, already has admitted to the plot, but prosecutors cannot rely on his testimony alone. Kurtz and Gaines argue the FBI acted on a hunch that two men who fled from North Carolina troopers in September were tied to the extortions and were the same men seen leaving a Maggie Valley cabin in a vehicle with stolen plates in November. Reynolds arrested the passenger, who turned out to be Benanti. "There is no evidence Mr. Benanti had done anything illegal" when arrested, Kurtz argued. Prosecutor Steve Cook countered Reynolds had cause to believe Benanti was the same man involved in the September chase in a stolen vehicle, noting similarities between Benanti's description and the man in that chase. Gaines argued the FBI had no cause to believe Benanti was tied to the bank extortions since the kidnappers in those cases wore masks and gloves, leaving no clues behind. That, he said, meant the search warrant failed to establish necessary probable cause. Assistant U.S. Attorney David Lewen called the note in Benanti's hand more than enough proof. The judge didn't say when he might rule. SHARE Feng Yun Liu Feng Qin Liu By Don Jacobs of the Knoxville News Sentinel Two Seymour women face felony charges of impersonating licensed professionals after they gave massages to undercover vice officers with the Knox County Sheriff's Office, records state. Undercover officers conducted the operation about 12:30 p.m. Wednesday at China Foot Reflexology, 7505 Chapman Highway, according to records. The investigation of unlicensed massage parlors resulted in charges of impersonating a licensed professional against Feng Qin Liu, 46, and Feng Yun Liu, 39. Both listed their address as Smoky Crossing Way in Seymour, according to records. Both women have bonded out of the Roger D. Wilson Detention Facility. Records show an undercover detective received "a full body massage" for 75 minutes from Feng Qin Liu. When finished, the detective was told to pay Feng Yun Liu $50 in cash for the hour massage and another $20 in cash for "the extra 15 minutes." Yun Liu also "requested a tip for" Qin Liu, so the detective paid another $10 in cash, according to records. Another undercover detective was the recipient of an hour-long "full body massage" from Yun Liu, records show. He paid her $50 in cash and another $20 in cash as a tip. After the undercover detectives left the business, other officers entered to check whether the two women were properly licensed. Neither woman, records state, had "the appropriate license to perform massage issued by the state of Tennessee regulatory massage board." Officers took the women to jail rather than cite them to court because the charge is a felony. SHARE Gerald Lynn Brummett, 37, of Clinton, one of two people charged with the burglary of Whirlwind, the abandoned mansion that was built for banker Jake Butcher. The other person charged is Knoxville resident Mechelle Lynn Parton, 38. (Anderson County Sheriff's Office) Mechelle Lynn Parton, 38, one of two people charged with the burglary of Whirlwind, the abandoned mansion that was built for banker Jake Butcher. The other person charged is Gerald Lynn Brummett, 37. (Anderson County Sheriff's Office) An undated photograph of Whirlwind, the former mansion of banker Jake Butcher. (NEWS SENTINEL ARCHIVE) By Bob Fowler of the Knoxville News Sentinel CLINTON Two suspects picked the wrong morning and location for a burglary, a law enforcement official said. They were nabbed by an Anderson County Sheriff's Department SWAT team inside Whirlwind, the huge abandoned mansion that was built for disgraced former banker Jake Butcher and his wife. The SWAT team uses the property for its monthly training, according to a news release. "I guess you could say they picked the wrong house that day," Anderson County Chief Deputy Mark Lucas said in a news release Thursday. Accused of breaking into the home early May 26 and preparing to steal items, including appliances, are Gerald Lynn Brummett, 37, of Clinton, and Knoxville resident Mechelle Lynn Parton, 38. Now free on bonds, they are both charged with aggravated burglary, felony theft, and possession of burglary tools. Parton was also charged with possession of methamphetamine. The suspects were arrested at the 25,000-square-foot mansion on Whirlwind Point off Old Emory Road about 7:30 a.m. The bank that owns the property allows the SWAT team to practice there, the chief deputy said. The suspects had parked an SUV in a garage on the property, which overlooks Melton Hill Lake, and had broken into the house, according to the news release. Whirlwind, completed in 1974, had 40 rooms and was the home of Butcher and his wife, Sonya. Butcher was convicted of bank fraud in 1985 and received a 20-year prison sentence but only served seven years. The house has been abandoned for years and has fallen into a state of extreme disrepair. Brummett has a lengthy criminal history and as a juvenile was charged, along with another teenager, with the ambush shooting in April 1993 of an Anderson County deputy at the old Shinliver School near Clinton. The deputy was shot in an arm with a shotgun, Lucas said. He also was convicted in 2003 of second-degree murder in the 2001 stabbing death of a Caryville woman whose body was found off New River Highway in the Laurel Grove community. SHARE M. David Riden of rural McMinn County is a Trump delegate (FACEBOOK) By Richard Locker of the Knoxville News Sentinel NASHVILLE A Donald Trump delegate to the Republican National Convention from East Tennessee was also a delegate to a "Continental Congress of 2009" that advocated replacing the Department of Homeland Security with citizen militias, and told a national publication that U.S. leaders who violate the Constitution should be killed. The Trump campaign approved M. David Riden of rural McMinn County as one of its delegates, and voters in East Tennessee's Third Congressional District elected him as a Trump-committed delegate, and his wife Perry Riden as an alternate, in the state's March 1 Republican presidential primary. Barring any last-minute change in plans, the Ridens will be among the Tennessee delegation to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, July 18-21. Gov. Bill Haslam will be a Marco Rubio delegate at the convention, although Rubio withdrew after the Tennessee primary. Asked to comment on Riden's views, Haslam's press secretary, David Smith, would only say, "The governor has a strict policy against elected officials being assassinated." Riden's views attracted the interest of the national liberal magazine Mother Jones, which published an article on its website Thursday linking him to the murky world of far-right militias and "patriot" groups. Riden did not return repeated calls and emails from the News Sentinel for comment, but the Mother Jones article reported that he discussed his views in an interview with the magazine. The article quotes Riden as saying that U.S. leaders who violate the Constitution may have to be done away with: "The polite word is 'eliminated.' The harsh word is 'killed,'" Riden reportedly told Mother Jones. And he said all three branches of the federal government are "way off from the Constitution right now." Tennessee Republican leaders appeared to be distancing themselves from the delegate they'll be sitting with on the floor of Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena next month. "If true, those views are not reflective in any way of the Tennessee Republican Party. We advocate for reforms by electing smart, principled conservatives and our record proves that. We would refer you to the Trump campaign for any additional information regarding individuals serving as their delegates," TNGOP Chairman Ryan Haynes of Knoxville said in a statement. Neither the Trump campaign's state director, Darren Morris, nor Hope Hicks, the national campaign spokeswoman, replied to phone calls and emails Thursday seeking comment on Riden. Riden's Facebook page, which was last updated on March 1, the day of the Tennessee primary, contains entries about his candidacy for election as a Trump delegate and noted that he would be casting his own ballot at the Claxton fire hall in Riceville. A Feb. 26 post said he had received supporting emails from outside the Third District and said "please continue praying for us (especially on Super Tuesday, March 1st voting state wide) as we enter this new endeavor of trying to save this great country given to us from our Founding Fathers through Gods' Blessings. Thank you, David & Perry Riden." The Facebook page says he studied nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee Knoxville and indicated he had worked at General Electric in King of Prussia, Pa. UT confirmed that it awarded Riden a bachelor of science degree in nuclear engineering in 1974. The Mother Jones article says Riden told it that he is not a militia member but keeps in touch with a militia group based in Tennessee. The magazine quoted Riden as saying this regarding the Second Amendment: "There's only one reason why the founding father put the Second Amendment If the federal government were to follow the path of all other governments, at some point it will turn to tyranny against the people. and at that point, when it stops to upheld and abide by the Constitution and we're talking about the Supreme Court, Congress and the executive branch, all three are way off the away from the Constitution right now the people have the right to assemble, bear arms, go to Washington D.C. or wherever necessary, and go into military battle against the government and replace those in government with individuals that will uphold the Constitution. "The Constitution should remain, but the people that are abusing it should be, the polite word is eliminated. The harsh word is killed. And they're killed by American citizens with weapons. And if people have tanks, assault weapons, if they have bombs they need to have the weaponry necessary to be able to overthrow the federal government," he said, according to the magazine. Riden's name and signature are also affixed to the bottom of a 61-page "Articles of Freedom," produced by the little-noticed "Continental Congress of 2009," by "delegates" from 48 states who convened at St. Charles, Ill., Nov. 11-21, 2009. The document contained 15 "articles," each addressing according to the gathering's organizers in a promotional YouTube video "a different violation of the Constitution and each with remedial instructions to the federal and state governments" as well as "civic actions for the people." Among other things, the document declares that income taxes are unconstitutional and advises citizens, "after steps of self-defense are in place," to withhold income tax from the government. Another civic action, for example, encourages citizens to meet with their local sheriffs to establish "constitutional militias." Another urges people to "use nontraceable forms of currency (i.e. prepaid credit cards) and nontraceable technology (i.e. prepaid cellular phones)" to protect their privacy. Related: Lawsuit Riden and others filed against the federal government and former President George. W. Bush. SHARE In this July 13, 2015, file photo, Robert Doggart arrives at the back entrance of the Joel Solomon Federal Building for his arraignment hearing in Chattanooga. (John Rawlston/Chattanooga Times Free Press via AP, File) By Zack Peterson, Chattanooga Times Free Press A federal magistrate judge on Friday said the Tennessee man accused of planning an assault on a small Muslim community in New York is mentally competent to stand trial. U.S. District Magistrate Judge Susan K. Lee set an Aug. 8 trial date for Robert Doggart, a resident of Signal Mountain in Sequatchie County who authorities say spent months gathering weapons and plotting an assault on a Muslim community called Islamberg in Hancock, N.Y. Doggart, who appeared in a sling, pleaded not guilty to all the charges. In May, after prosecutors re-presented his case, a grand jury indicted Doggart on four counts. The 64-year-old now faces charges of solicitation to commit arson, committing a civil rights violation, and threat in interstate commerce. Continue reading at the Chattanooga Times Free Press, a News Sentinel partner. Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero and her husband, Gene Monaco, greet Paul James, executive director of Ijams Nature Center, as he arrived at a budget luncheon at Zoo Knoxville on Wednesday, April 27, 2016. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL) Kudos to Mayor Madeline Rogero. Seriously. Knoxville's mayor deserves praise for practical policy. Her decision to engage a third-party evaluator of development projects asking for tax incentives is good government. And good politics. As reported this week in the News Sentinel, a group seeking to renovate the Pryor Brown parking garage in downtown Knoxville seeks tax-increment financing, or TIF, to help offset the costs of turning a dilapidated property into an income-producing asset. Income as in profit for the developers. Income as in tax revenue for the city and the county. "This is a tremendous building in terms of its history and its story, and it's just uniquely and authentically Knoxville," developer Rick Dover told the News Sentinel. "While it has its challenges, it's a great location." So it has been with other properties developed with help of government. To date, 27 projects in Knoxville have used tax-increment financing, which enables developers to borrow less. The city forgoes current tax collections for the potential bigger payoffs down the road when the properties are worth much more and thus generate significantly more tax revenue. Fire Street Lofts, the Daylight Building and the former J.C. Penney location all have benefited from TIFs. The biggest bump will, if projections are correct, come with Regas Square, which could go from a valuation of $198,700 to a future value of more than $33 million. At the risk of sounding Trumpian, that would be a huge return. According to data from Rogero's office, the 27 projects were worth about $12 million before their TIFs. After the TIFs and redevelopment, those projects could be worth more than $258 million, or 20 times as much. The city's tax take would go from $388,000 to almost $2 million, while the county's property tax collections would increase from $348,000 to almost $1.7 million. Big bucks are at stake. As such, Rogero et al. needed a third party to crunch numbers and bring objectivity. By permitting the Knoxville Community Development Corporation to contract with MuniCap Inc., "a Maryland-based company that specializes in public financing and real estate development," Rogero and KCDC get advice from a disinterested party to help the city understand how to best structure TIF deals. By getting objectivity, the mayor and the city put a buffer between the politicos and the developers, forcing developers to justify their numbers while preventing the small cadre of well-connected real estate movers and shakers from glad-handing their way into sweetheart deals. Some including yours truly, in times past have called these sorts of deals corporate welfare. But the dynamism of downtown is proof positive TIFs can be a win-win-win. A win for developers by making margins to get marginal projects done. A win for the city and county by getting blighted properties back on the tax rolls at exponentially greater values. And a win for taxpayers who sacrifice some now to get big tax payoffs down the road while getting a more robust center city now. So bravo, mayor. Good job. And good governance. SHARE The controversy over leaked legislative emails might be a tempest in a teapot to some, but it goes to the heart of open government and reflects some legislators' disdain for dealing openly with the issues before them. State Rep. Susan Lynn, R-Mount Juliet, said she was shocked, shocked as Claude Rains' character said in "Casablanca" that an email discussion among legislators was leaked and that the email discussion about the leaks also was leaked. She said the leaks were a betrayal of the state Republican Party. On the contrary, the double disclosure might serve notice that the public's business is best served by openness at the moment, not weeks later when the emails are shaped into public policy. The email discussion centered on whether to advocate for a special session in response to President Barack Obama's recent guidelines that direct public schools to allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity. The Tennessean story about the emails showed a wide-ranging discussion of whether to call a special session to pass a resolution or a law in response to the president's directive. In her email, Lynn said the directive was little more than an attempt to "jerk us around." Lynn sponsored and later withdrew the bill in the recent legislative session that would require students to use the restroom corresponding to the gender on their birth certificate. North Carolina passed such a law. Tennessee last week became one of 11 states suing the federal government over the issue. Lynn wanted the name of the person who leaked the content of the emails to the press. State Rep. Kevin Brooks, R-Cleveland, said he agreed with Lynn and even suggested asking the state attorney general to help determine the source of the leaks. On the other side, state Rep. Rick Womick, R-Rockvale, said that any information lawmakers issue, whether verbal or written, should be expected to be made public. Womick said lawmakers should have the courage to stand behind their comments "rather than whine about who released them." Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, said trying to ascertain the source of a leak is akin to restricting access to information "about what government is doing." The email flap is not only a legislative issue. Gov. Bill Haslam acknowledged last week what he called an "inadvertent slip" in messages routed through his personal email system and that of his former campaign officials. A Nashville television station obtained the emails through a public records request. The released emails include discussions of the state budget process, a state tax policy proposal and an exchange with Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero about a dispute between the city and the state Department of Transportation over the James White Parkway. Despite its many benefits, the digital age often presents opportunities to dodge public scrutiny, and public officials often are too tempted to take advantage of it. Nevertheless, the solution is the same for both the executive and the legislative branches: The emails they send and receive are public records based on their content, not whether the officials use public or private servers. SHARE The Oak Ridge Board of Education is no better than many other government agencies. It practices the root of all evil by not allowing citizens to speak about issues affecting the citizens of Oak Ridge. Why must communities deny citizens the right to speak before the local school board? Just imagine the precedent the school board set for the next generation when it denied a student and her parents the right to speak about the cutting of an art teacher from its school system. Oak Ridge is supposed to have an excellent school system, but actions often speak louder than words. That family has rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. As a taxpayer who has no children, I realize how unethical the school board in Oak Ridge is. We as a nation are not Communist Russia, whose dictator could deny citizens their rights. As a practicing artist, I have acquired skills not in Oak Ridge's vocabulary. A narrow-minded society asks whether you'd rather have an artist, a mathematician or a scientist. Each requires different skill sets. A person has to look closely to realize how unethical many of the governing citizens are. They use words that are not to be respected because many people leave Oak Ridge, and years later their garbage that was infused into our society and the same actions get repeated for future generations to perpetuate. Lee Roy Gilliam, Oak Ridge SHARE The article "KPD focusing on hiring minorities" raised some red flags and a few questions about logic. Knoxville Police Chief David Rausch said, "A top focus has been identifying talented minority candidates early in their careers, mentoring them and helping them see there is a path to the top." Any clear thinking non-minority officer under Rausch's command should be wondering, "Why am I not being mentored? Why am I not being shown a path to the top?" Having spent 13 years in the military, I can assure Rausch that favoritism is the quickest way to lose the loyalty of those under your command. Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero said, "It (diversity) is particularly important in the police department because they are out there every day. Walking the streets, riding bikes. They interact with the community more regularly, probably, than the rest of us." City Councilman Dan Brown said, "It's just something that would be good for the community, especially within the African-American community and especially for young people to see these officers at work. Sometimes it may help in diffusing a potential explosive situation." These quotes seem to suggest that minority officers can do a more effective job policing minority communities. Would these recruits be assigned to work exclusively in black communities where they would be especially effective, according to Brown, or would they be assigned to majority neighborhoods where they would be less effective? You can see where logic begins to fall apart. Rogero said that they are "focused on encouraging more diversity among the department's top ranks." What does encouraging mean in the context of that sentence, and to whom is it directed? I thought this was the sort of hiring practice our society has been trying to avoid for the last 60 years. My reaction to the article is: "White males need not apply." Tom Davis, Friendsville Darwin letter recovered by FBI and returned to the Smithsonian A letter by Charles Darwin that was stolen more than 30 years ago was recovered by the FBIs Art Crime Team and returned to the Smithsonian on May 26, 2016. A handwritten letter by Charles Darwin that was stolen from the Smithsonian Institution Archives more than three decades ago was recovered by FBI special agents and returned last week to the care of the Smithsonian. The letter, written in 1875 by the British naturalist and geologist best known for his theory of evolution, was stolen in the mid-1970s from a collection of correspondence and documents relating to the history of North American geology. The FBI received a tip about the letter earlier this year, and special agents on the Bureaus Art Crime Team recovered the artifact. There are no criminal charges pending in the case because the statute of limitations has expired. Thanks to a tip from a member of the public, we were able to return this artifact to the care of the Smithsonian Archives, said Paul Abbate, assistant director in charge of the FBIs Washington Field Office. On May 26, he turned the letter over to Anne Van Camp, director of the Smithsonian Archives. Its a privilege, Abbate said in a statement, to return a piece of the history of science and exploration in the United States to the American people. The letter, written to American geologist Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, was part of the George Perkins Merrill Papers. Merrill was head curator of the Department of Geology in the early 1900s at what is now the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Smithsonian conservators worked closely with FBI art crime experts to authenticate the Darwin letter, which went missing before it was cataloged in the Smithsonian Archives. Smithsonian experts were able to compare the letter to another one in their collection that Darwin wrote to Hayden. This is an important event, as this type of crime is not easily detected, and it demonstrates how seriously the FBI regards our cultural heritage, Van Camp said. The fact that the recovered letter is datedMay 2, 1875adds a measure of context and value to the collection, Smithsonian officials said. Front and back of the letter written by Charles Darwin to Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden on May 2, 1875. In the letter, Charles Darwin wrote to Hayden to thank him for sending two geological field studies of the American West, including the region that became Yellowstone National Park. The text of the letter reads as follows: May 2nd Dear Sir, I am much obliged to you for your kindness & for the honour which you have done me in sending your Geological Report of the Yellowstone River & your Preliminary Field Report on the Colorado & New Mexico. I had heard of your Geological researches on the Colorado & was anxious to see the conclusions at which you had arrived, & I am therefore especially obliged to you for having sent me your works. With much respect & my best thanks, I remain, yours faithfully Charles Darwin FBI Special Agent Martin Licciardo was a supervisor on the case and worked closely with Art Crime Team agents, who are trained in art and cultural property crime investigations. Members of the team are assigned to geographic areas around the country, including one at the Washington Field Office. The fact that were able to take a piece of history thats so valuable to our generation and the fact that it can be on display for future generations to enjoy in the hands of its rightful ownerand not in some location where it shouldnt have beenits pretty amazing, Licciardo said. Published June 3, 2016 Samsung SDS, a key IT unit of Samsung Group, is considering splitting its logistics business and merging it with Samsung C&T, the group's fashion and trading arm, industry sources said Friday. Samsung, South Korea's top family-controlled conglomerate, will likely announce a plan next week to split off Samsung SDI's global logistics division and combine it with Samsung C&T's trading segment, they said. The merger would help Samsung C&T form a competitive business portfolio and thus create synergy for its global logistics business, according to the sources. Samsung, however, said it can't confirm the rumored merger. Samsung C&T, which was formed through a merger between Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries last year, acts as Samsung's de facto holding firm. The merger was part of the group's efforts to streamline its ownership structure through big shakeups of its affiliates. The sources also said Samsung may transfer the IT solutions service division of Samsung SDS to Samsung C&T. Market watchers said Samsung may push for the split of Samsung SDS' business segments as part of an overall group plan to reorganize its ownership structure. Samsung Electronics, the group's flagship, holds the largest stake in Samsung SDS at 22.6 percent, followed by Samsung C&T with 17.1 percent. Lee Jae-yong, the group's heir apparent, owns the third-highest at 9.2 percent interest, with his sisters Bu-jin and Seo-hyun having 3.9 percent each. Speculation has been swirling that Samsung SDS, in which the owner family has a 17-percent stake, may play a critical role in the group's ownership revamp. In February, market rumors arose that Samsung was pushing to sell a controlling stake in Cheil Worldwide Inc., an in-house advertizing agency, to French ad giant Publicis Groupe. Their talks are known to have fallen through recently due to differences over specific conditions. Samsung has been offloading a handful of its businesses in an apparent bid to focus on its mainstay businesses and clear the way for the management succession from Lee Kun-hee to his son Jae-yong. The elder Lee, who serves as the de facto head of the group, is recovering from a heart attack he suffered in May 2014. Last year, Samsung also sold some of its chemical businesses to Lotte Group, including Samsung SDI's chemical arm along with Samsung Fine Chemicals and Samsung BP Chemicals. Earlier, it unloaded four other defense and chemical units. (Yonhap) By Choi Sung-jin In the run-up to the U.S. presidential election, Washington is gradually raising its trade pressure on Korea, directly and indirectly. U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce Stefan Selig visited Korea in January to call for the elimination of regulations for the implementation of the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement. In March, the Congress said it would determine whether to endorse Korea's bid to join the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement based on Seoul's faithful fulfillment of the bilateral FTA. On Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert publicly urged Seoul to remove regulations, in an exceptional move by a diplomatic mission chief. Experts said, however, not all these U.S. demands should be regarded as "trade pressure." In many cases, the U.S. officials are finding fault with Korean rules and practices for no obvious reasons, but it is also true the Seoul government maintains some regulations that do not agree with global standards, they said. The U.S. embassy in Seoul has mainly taken issue with five trade areas since April, and even trade officials and businesspeople are at odds with one another over whether these are trade pressure or calls for regulatory reforms. For starters, the U.S. officials seem to misunderstand Korean regulations on car seat widths and the space between each seat, the experts said. Ambassador Lippert also criticized them Wednesday saying: "Korea is the only country in the world that stipulates car seats' width." Actually, this is not true, as the United Nations, Japan - and the United States stipulate car seat widths for safety reasons. According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the Japanese government approves a seat if its width is 38 centimeters or more and the U.S. regards each 35-cm section as a seat if the total width is less than 140 cm. The U.N. also recognizes the space with 40 cm or wider as a seat as far as vans with 10 seats or more are concerned. The Korean government recognizes only space with 40 cm or more as a seat, which is a little stricter than the U.S., but it is not the only country with such a regulation. Industry executives say the U.S. envoy made the remark because of auto insurance. Already, Korea is supposed to import up to 25,000 U.S. cars a year unaffected by rules on seat width and space between seats, according to the bilateral free trade agreement. Last year, the nation imported 17,501 U.S. cars, meaning U.S. automakers have no problems at all exporting their cars to Korea, regardless of seat size. Problems can occur after they are sold. If a five-seater U.S. passenger car gets into an accident, passengers taking certain seats could be excluded from insurance cover, they say. In addition, the U.S. and the U.N. are now in a tug-of-war to preempt industrial standards over the rules on car seat width and space between seats, trying to hold the advantageous position by taking Korea, a global auto industry power, to each side. "There are few reasons we should follow the U.S. standard," a ministry official said. "We are weighing the merits and demerits of both systems before making a final decision." Also controversial is whether to ease regulations on the transfer of personal information abroad. According to the current laws on protecting personal data, one has to get consent of the person to send his or her personal information overseas, in what is regarded as one of the strongest means of protecting personal information in the world. The United States, however, allows the circulation of personal information before the fact but has a strong basis of punishment after the fact, and regards the Korean system as a forestalling, anachronistic regulation at a time when global IT firms are creating diverse business models based on the analysis of big data using personal information. The Korean government shares such thinking. The Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs recently decided to allow foreign nations or businesses with "internal protection systems" to bring out personal data. "Chances are high the government will permit only the EU, equipped with a high-level protection system and U.S. businesses that have joined the EU's privacy shield' treaty, to take personal data out of this country," said an official at the Korea Internet and Security Agency. There are other regulations U.S. officials misunderstand. A case in point is the U.S. accusation that the Korean government makes it mandatory to install backup servers when establishing cloud computing systems in the public sector, incurring additional costs. But an official at the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning said: "Their criticism is self-contradictory because the U.S. government is making exactly the same demand." The ministry plans to maintain the rule. But it is considering dividing public organizations into two those that deal with important information related to national security and personal protection, and other, ordinary agencies and ease regulations on the latter by no longer requiring the installation of backup servers. The two governments are opposed to each other most sharply over regulations on the sending of spatial data abroad. According to the Wall Street Journal last month, Google said the Korean government was impeding innovation by banning the transfer of spatial data abroad, making it difficult for the global search engine to provide 3D navigation data for motorists and other services. Government officials here say they will allow Google to move spatial data overseas if it erases security-sensitive parts, but the U.S. company wants to bring out the data with no strings attached. Among the five points of contention between the two governments, they have agreed on one: Seoul would abolish the regulation that makes aircraft repair records public. Since the Sewol ferry's sinking, the Korean government has obligated all airplanes visiting Korean airports to make public their certificate of airworthiness as well as records on repairs and maintenance. "This is the regulation only Korea has maintained," said a government official. "It could cause unnecessary misunderstanding because frequent repairs of aircraft have little to do with their performance." Foreign airlines have complained that governmental approvals indicate they passed safety standards, and making public such repair information was tantamount to a breach of their business secrets. Genesis brand head Manfred Fitzgerald, right, poses with Luc Donckerwolke, head of the design center for the brand during an unveiling event of the G80 sedan at the 2016 Busan International Motor Show, Thursday. / Courtesy of Hyundai Motor By Jhoo Dong-chan Genesis, the luxury division of the nation's largest automaker, Hyundai Motor, unveiled two versions of the brand's second model, the G80 and G80 Sport, during a media day at the 2016 Busan International Motor Show, Thursday. Following the brand's first sedan model, the EQ900, the G80 is a face-lifted version of the existing second-generation Genesis DH, with an enhanced high-tech safety system and gentrified design. "Since its brand launch last year, Genesis has expanded its presence in the global luxury sedan market with the EQ900's successful sales in such a short period," the brand's directing manager, Manfred Fitzgerald, a former director of brand and design at Lamborghini, said during the unveiling. "With the model's differentiated design, Genesis will offer a new standard in the global luxury sedan market." The G80 models are expected to be available in Korea soon with Lambda 3.3L Turbo GDi and 3.8L GDi V-6 engines mated with eight-speed automatic transmissions. The G80 Sport model, which is expected to be available here later this year, mounts a twin-turbo, 3.3-liter V6 unit that can produce a maximum 370 horsepower and 52 kg-m of torque. It will have a public fuel efficiency test soon, and pricing information will be given shortly, an official said. The G80 has dark chrome garnish on its front, with an extended bumper on an enlarged radiator grille. The model has 18-inch wheels while the rear bumper has chrome moldings. Genesis' newly installed Adaptive Full-LED Headlamps provide a wider range of illumination at night as they change direction with the vehicle's cornering. Hyundai Motor created the Genesis brand last November to compete in the global luxury vehicle market. Along with the brand launch, Genesis introduced the EQ900, or G90, in overseas markets. A Genesis official said the G80 model will extend its presence in the mid-luxury market, competing against the German BMW 5 series and Mercedes Benz E-Class. By Yoon Ja-young The United States is pressuring Korea over trade issues amid increasing calls for protectionism there ahead of the presidential election. U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew had a bilateral meeting with Strategy and Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho, Friday, on his first visit here since his inauguration in 2013. The meeting drew the spotlight as it is rare for a U.S. treasury secretary to visit Korea for a bilateral meeting. Ahead of the meeting, Lew said the global economic recovery is being delayed, and there are risks for the economies of the two countries. He added that the two had promised to strengthen dialogue to enhance mutual understanding on macroeconomic conditions as well as overall policies, ranging from fiscal and monetary to foreign exchange. Analysts say his visit reflects increasing pressure from the United States over trade issues. His visit came several days after U.S. Ambassador to Korea Mark Lippert called on the government to fully implement the free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States, by opening its legal services market and accelerating deregulation. This also drew attention as the remarks were made at an open lecture where ranking government officials were in attendance. The U.S. Department of Treasury also included Korea on its monitoring list for foreign exchange policies, suspecting it of intervening in the foreign exchange market to control the value of its currency. Pointing out Korea's "significant bilateral trade surplus with the United States and a material current account surplus," the department estimated that Korean authorities intervened during the second half of 2015 through March 2016. The United States also opposed the reappointment of Chang Seung-wha, the only Korean judge in the appellate body of the WTO dispute settlement system. It has been customary for the judges to be reappointed after their four-year-term. While it states that Chang, a lawyer and professor at Seoul National University, has gone beyond interpreting the law to creating it, market watchers point out that Washington is not happy with some decisions he has made as a judge that were seen as disadvantageous to the United States. The move is drawing criticism that the United States is trying to fill in the appellate body with its supporters. Lew also had a meeting with the Bank of Korea (BOK) Governor Lee Ju-yeol the same day. While the central bank refused to confirm what was discussed at the closed meeting, analysts speculate that they may have talked about the BOK's role in the foreign exchange market. Ahead of the bilateral meeting, Lew also said that North Korea will be one of the key issues to be discussed. He said Korea and the United States will continue cooperation over the North Korea issue, making coordinated efforts. Lew noted that global coordination was essential to pressure North Korea regarding its nuclear development and missile threats. U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, right, speaks at a meeting with Korea's Strategy and Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho, at the Government Complex in downtown Seoul, Friday. / Korea Times photo by Bae Woo-han By Yoon Ja-young The United States is pressuring Korea over trade issues amid increasing calls for protectionism there ahead of the presidential election. U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew had a bilateral meeting with Strategy and Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho, Friday, on his first visit here since his inauguration in 2013. The meeting drew the spotlight as it is rare for a U.S. treasury secretary to visit Korea for a bilateral meeting. Ahead of the meeting, Lew said the global economic recovery is being delayed, and there are risks for the economies of the two countries. He added that the two had promised to strengthen dialogue to enhance mutual understanding on macroeconomic conditions as well as overall policies, ranging from fiscal and monetary to foreign exchange. Analysts say his visit reflects increasing pressure from the United States on trade issues. His visit came several days after U.S. Ambassador to Korea Mark Lippert called on the government to fully implement the free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States, by opening its legal services market and accelerating deregulation. This also drew attention as the remarks were made at an open lecture where ranking government officials were in attendance. The U.S. Department of Treasury also included Korea on its monitoring list for foreign exchange policies, suspecting it of intervening in the foreign exchange market to control the value of its currency. Pointing out Korea's "significant bilateral trade surplus with the United States and a material current account surplus," the department estimated that Korean authorities intervened during the second half of 2015 through March 2016. The United States also opposed the reappointment of Chang Seung-wha, the only Korean judge in the appellate body of the WTO dispute settlement system. It has been customary for the judges to be reappointed after their four-year-term. While it stated that Chang, a lawyer and professor at Seoul National University, has gone beyond interpreting the law to creating it, market watchers point out that Washington is not happy with some decisions he has made as a judge that were seen as disadvantageous to the United States. The move is drawing criticism that the United States is trying to fill the appellate body with its supporters. Lew also had a meeting with Bank of Korea (BOK) Governor Lee Ju-yeol the same day. While the central bank refused to confirm what was discussed at the closed meeting, analysts speculate that they may have talked about the BOK's role in the foreign exchange market. North Korea was also a key issue discussed at the bilateral meeting. While highly evaluating South Korea's countermeasures against North Korea such as the shutdown of the Gaeseong Industrial Complex and banning entry of ships that have travelled through the North, Lew said Seoul and Washington should continue close cooperation since the reclusive regime is continuing with its nuclear development and missile launches. By Daniel Kim Daniel Kim Just a few years ago, using a fingerprint to sign on to your phone seemed futuristic. Today, it's everywhere and is just the beginning of how biometrics will be woven into our lives. Biometrics is a method of digital identity verification that scans a person's physical characteristics such as a fingerprint, iris, face, or voice. The field of biometrics presents both enormous promise as well as challenges. The promise includes new applications that can increase convenience, safety, and business opportunities. The challenges include finding the technology to manage this huge volume and variety of data as well as privacy and security concerns. The world's largest biometric database One of the most ambitious biometrics initiatives is the Aadhaar project building an identity verification database of India's 1.2 billion residents. For the disadvantaged in India, the inability to prove one's identity is one of the biggest barriers that prevent people from accessing benefits and subsidies. Since very few residents have any type of paper identification, it's difficult for the government to ensure that welfare benefits go directly to the right person. The world's largest biometric database will provide every resident with a unique identification number that can be used to access a variety of services and benefits such as food coupons, cooking gas, checking accounts, loans, insurance, pensions, and property deeds. The project's goal was to enroll a million people per day, taking four years to enroll the entire population. The biometric database includes an iris scan, digital fingerprints, a digital photo, and a text-based description for each resident. Residents use fingerprints or iris scans for authentication. The system processes over a hundred million identity verifications each day, and can verify a person's identity within 200 milliseconds. Using biometrics to fight crime Biometric technologies are also being used to help fight crime. While fingerprints have been used in law enforcement for decades, there is increased investment in facial recognition technologies by the military, casinos, and law enforcement. And some retailers are starting to use facial recognition to identify known shoplifters in their stores or to prevent them from even entering their stores. Tracking human emotions in their shopping experiences Some retailers are also experimenting with facial recognition to gain insight about the customer's shopping experience. A recent survey of British retailers revealed that more than 1 in 4 are using facial recognition technologies in their stores. A third of the respondents object to stores collecting data on them and 24 percent believe it's useful for their shopping experience. Younger shoppers are more likely to find it beneficial to improve their shopping experience. Facial recognition that focuses on reading emotions rather than a specific person's identity is also being used in business. The Bank of New Zealand is using facial recognition software to gauge customer reactions to various financial scenarios, such as a person's reaction to having to buy a last-minute plane ticket to attend a wedding. Consumers who agree to be filmed through a webcam hear financial scenarios while the software captures their muscle movements to decode their micro-expressions. The feedback allows consumers to be more aware about how their emotions may be guiding their financial decisions. The system can capture subtle responses much faster than a human can. Focus groups are also using facial recognition software. Customer response is often emotional rather than rational, and companies often try to appeal to emotions instead of product features. Marketers can watch how people react viscerally to products, and use that feedback to make decisions about product features and branding. While the focus group is a controlled experience, it's how people are responding in real time that makes the difference. Fortunately, there's a way to analyze faces without a bunch of people having to sit in front of screens all day. Big data makes it possible to process the faces, reading the emotions of customers and generating insights for product or service development. Giving your face to Facebook Facial recognition technology is getting increasingly sophisticated. The large sample sizes that big data offers for companies like Facebook and Google is enabling them to build more accurate facial recognition algorithms. Facebook can recognize faces about 97 percent of the time already, building on its vast network of users. Facebook is also working on a system that can identify people if they can't see their faces through other identifiers like hair, posture, body or clothing. This system is 83 percent accurate at identifying people without seeing their faces. Google has built similarly powerful capabilities into its Google Photos search technology. It can already identify pictures of someone when their faces are not fully visible. This technology is currently available and free. However Google has chosen to not connect pictures with a person's identity. With more mobile phone owners capable of recording good quality video, the next big step will be video facial recognition. It's not that much of a stretch, since a video is simply a string of lots of still images. Let the people decide As with any data collection, privacy is a big concern. Biometric technology developers and organizations that use these technologies need to ensure that the public educated and that their customers are given the opportunity to opt out if they want to. While people in a focus group can consent to having their likenesses used, what about people in stores? Companies wanting to use facial recognition technologies should take care to inform their customers and anonymize personal data. While many young people relish being recognized wherever they go, many other people still prefer their anonymity. Daniel Kim is country manager of MapR Technologies Korea Cover of "The Age of Rumors" by Misa Matsuda / Courtesy of Chungrim Publishing Company Book explores the nature of rumors and how to deal with them By Yun Suh-young Everyone has experienced hearing a rumor about them that was so nonsensical that it wasn't even funny. Then why do rumors spread and why does incorrect information spread rampantly? The answer is in the book "The Age of Rumors," written by Misa Matsuda, a professor at Chuo University in Japan. It delves into the topic of rumor, discussing its evolution in history and how it has influenced people throughout the world. Matsuda views rumor in a multidimensional way, examining its positive role as well as the negative. Sometimes rumors can be a means of reaching the best survival solution during a natural disaster when information is restricted, while at other times rumors categorized as "urban myth" trying to create fear among the public can simply be a nuisance in maintaining social order. Unconfirmed information spread as rumors can cause huge economic loss. Incorrect rumors like "such and such bank will be bankrupt within few days," which were not ill-intentioned but simply arose out of one person's fear, have spread many times in Japan and have caused some banks to go bankrupt. Then there's the more personal rumor, "gossip," which is usually about a person or situation. Gossip can start without ill-intention and simply from the desire to know about, to speak to, or to connect with other people. Matsuda says gossip serves three functions _ the acquiring of information, confirming and forming collective standards, and entertaining. Matsuda claims that to understand rumors, we must understand human relationships, because rumors are spread through the human network. People tend to feel friendliness or appreciation through a friend or an acquaintance sharing "exclusive" information. Rumors, therefore, serve to strengthen relationships between people, says Matsuda. As a result, when a person hears a rumor from a close acquaintance, it is difficult to deny the incorrectness of it, because denying it can be considered disrespectful to the counterpart's kind effort in sharing the information. The incorrectness of rumors results from distortion of information in the process of delivery from person to person. Complicated information is simplified and some parts are emphasized more than others. At times, the story flows in a radical direction, depending on the prejudice of the person telling the story. People tend to tell a story reflecting on their own experiences, interests or prejudices. People do not remember exactly as they saw, but squeeze out memory through mixing language, culture and knowledge that is already in their head. Memories are collective and can be edited at all times. This is why the final information that reaches the counterpart turns into a completely different story from the original. In the age of the Internet, media plays a big role in spreading rumors because at times they publish rumors in the form of news, without investigating the truth. So how are we to deal with rumors? If you're a news consumer, pay careful attention to the logic of the news that is spreading and carry reasonable suspicion about the information. If you're the one embroiled in it, Matsuda says it is not enough simply to clarify the truth. To wipe out rumor, there is a need to weaken the story or the mythical elements in the story that people want to believe. Because, in the end, people don't really care if the rumor is true or not, they're just attracted to the story. The fact a rumor spreads is a reflection that people are interested in that person, says the author. That said, look at the people around you and you might be able to trace the evidence of a rumor. Boxes of mackerel piled up during an auction at Garak Market, southeastern Seoul, Monday. The price of mackerel has plunged since the government's announcement last week that frying mackerel at home creates a highly harmful level of fine dust particulates. / Yonhap Fishermen dispute links between cooking and pollution By Kim Se-jeong The family of Lee Kyung-soon, 51, a Seoul resident, loves mackerel. For her son, she used to grill the fish three times a week. Even now when her son is in the military, she still grills it at least once a week. But now she thinks twice before buying the fish. "After the news last week, I am not sure if grilling fish at home is safe," Lee said. The news refers to the Ministry of Environment's May 23 report that frying mackerel was the worst indoor cause of housing air pollution, generating a harmful level of fine dust particulates when cooked without proper ventilation. Lee is one of a growing number of consumers driving the price of the fish down in markets. At Garak Market in southeastern Seoul, Monday, a 10-kilogram box of small mackerel was auctioned off at 12,000 won, down from 40,000 won a week earlier. Fishermen have expressed their frustration to the ministry. Simon Anholt By Park Si-soo South Korea ranked 31st in the "Good Country" index, up from 47th a year earlier, index developer Simon Anholt, an honorary professor at Britain's University of East Anglia, said Friday. Sweden ranked top out of 163 countries, followed by Denmark, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Germany. The Good Country Index, developed in 2014, is a league table based on 35 indicators obtained from sources including the United Nations and the World Bank. By categories, Korea was 30th in the "Contributions to Global Science & Technology" category; 40th in "Contributions to Global Culture"; 92nd in "Contributions to International Peace and Security"; 29th in "Contributions to World Order"; 83rd in "Contributions to Planet & Climate"; 72nd in "Contributions to Global Prosperity and Equality"; and 28th in "Contributions to Global Health and Wellbeing." The South Korean government said Friday it will toughen restrictions on old diesel vehicles and coal-fired thermal power plants to address public health concerns over fine dust. Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn said the government plans to limit the entry of old diesel-powered vehicles into the Seoul metropolitan area and shut down coal-powered electric power generation plants that have been in operation for more than 40 years to improve air quality. The remark came ahead of a meeting with top officials from state agencies, including the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, and the Ministry of Environment. Amid calls that state actions aimed at fine-dust emissions should not interfere with people's livelihoods, Hwang said the government will provide subsidies to small barbecue eateries so they can take steps like setting up filtered vents to reduce the amount of dust particles released into the atmosphere, rather than just putting the restrictions in place. The prime minister added that South Korea will also expand ties with neighboring countries considering the geographical position of the Korean Peninsula enables fine dust to come in from abroad. "Through such measures, we will lower the amount of fine dust in the air to meet the levels of major European cities in 10 years," Hwang said. Fine dust refers to particles that are smaller than 10 micrometers and have been known to cause various respiratory problems while also affecting the body's immune system. South Korea's ruling Saenuri Party earlier expressed concerns over speculation that the government is considering measures to regulate barbecue shops and increase the price of diesel fuel without getting feedback from the general public. The latest decision falls shy of raising diesel prices and the levying of so-called environmental improving charges that have been advocated by some ministries. It, however, rolls back benefits provided by the government to diesel cars, which could trigger public backlash. (Yonhap) Thirty-one Thai women have been caught working without proper visas at massage parlors in Busan. /Courtesy of Twitter By Kim Da-hee A group of Thai women have been caught working without proper visas at massage parlors in Busan, the immigration office said Friday. The women will be deported soon, the office said. Their five employers were also apprehended. According to the Busan Immigration Office, the Korean massage parlor operators illegally hired 31 Thai women to provide services for about four months from early this year. Meanwhile, the immigration office plans to widen its investigation, believing there could be more massage parlors running with illegally hired foreigners. By Chung Hyun-chae A living Zika virus was detected in a Zika patient's sperm for the first time in Korea. A research team led by Oh Myoung-don, professor in the division of infectious diseases of the Department of Internal Medicine at Seoul National University Hospital, said Friday that for the first time in Korea they have isolated a live Zika virus from a patient's semen. The team collected the patient's semen on the seventh day of his illness. The patient developed symptoms of the Zika virus including fever and muscular pain after returning from Brazil in March. The research team published a paper showing such results in the July issue of the Journal of Korean Medical Science. "Given that we isolated the virus alive, we can say for sure that the virus is transmissible through sex, not just through a mosquito bite and blood transfusion," the research team said. It was in Tahiti, the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, where the Zika virus was detected and isolated from a patient's sperm in 2013 for the first time in the world. The problem is that experts have yet to figure out how long it takes exactly for the virus to get into the semen, how long the virus can live in the sperm and what the rate of infection through sexual contact is. So far, the cases in which the patients contracted the virus through sexual contact have been reported in nine nations including the United States, France, Italy, Canada and Argentina. "Men who plan to travel abroad during summer vacation, especially to infected areas, should be extra careful when having sex after returning home," Oh said. Cars emit exhaust gases on a road in Yeouido, Seoul, Friday. Environment Minister Yoon Seong-kyu announced measures to reduce Korea's fine dust level, including replacing all diesel buses in the country with natural gas-powered ones and shutting down old coal-fired power plants. / Yonhap By Jung Min-ho The government will replace all diesel buses in Korea with natural gas-powered ones and shut down old coal-fired power plants as part of its measures to fight fine dust, Environment Minister Yoon Seong-kyu said Friday. An increasing number of compressed natural gas buses will steadily take the place of diesel buses, although Yoon did not specify when the process will be completed. Moreover, the government will increase the number of fuel stations for cars powered by electricity, hydrogen or hybrid engines to 3,100 (electricity and hydrogen combined) from the current 347 by 2020. By doing so, it aims to boost the total number of so-called green cars on the nation's roads to 1.5 million from 174,000 over four years. The government will shut down 10 coal-fired power plants that are old and in poor condition. For the remaining 43 coal power plants and the 11 under construction, it will set up stricter rules for operation and maintenance. The administration came up with the measures based on a report from the National Institute of Environmental Research that diesel cars and coal-fired power plants are two of the leading causes of fine dust. By Rachel Lee President Park Geun-hye received an honorary doctorate from University Pierre and Marie Curie, a prestigious French university, for her contributions in improving bilateral ties, Friday. The French university, also known as University of Paris VI, is a leading research institution founded in 1971 that encompasses all major sciences including chemistry, physics, electronics and computer science. This is the first time that the French university conferred an honorary degree on a foreign head of state. Park arrived in Paris, Wednesday, on a four-day tour. "University of Paris VI awarded a doctorate to President Park for her visions and accomplishments in developing new growth engines through creative economy and cultural prosperity," said Kim Kyou-hyun, senior presidential secretary for foreign affairs. Creative economy and cultural prosperity are two of Park's policy buzz words. The president, who read electronic engineering at Sogang University in Seoul, studied at the University Grenoble Alpes in Grenoble, southeastern France, for about six months in 1974. The award ceremony took place at the Paris-Sorbonne University, Friday. President Park's trip to France came as the two nations mark the 130th anniversary of establishing diplomatic ties this year. Park is set to meet with French President, Francois Hollande, Friday, to boost further economic ties, cooperation in sanctions against North Korea and discuss international issues, including climate change. This is the fourth meeting between the two leaders. This the first state visit to France by a South Korean president in 16 years. The Republic of South Korea can be very proud of the fact that it has risen from 47th position to 31st in my new study, the Good Country Index (see By Simon AnholtThe Republic of South Korea can be very proud of the fact that it has risen from 47th position to 31st in my new study, the Good Country Index (see www.good.country ). The idea of the Good Country Index is pretty simple: to measure what each country on earth contributes to the common good of humanity, and what it takes away. Using a wide range of data from the U.N. and other international organisations, we've given each country a balance-sheet to show at a glance whether it's a net creditor to mankind, a burden on the planet, or something in between. Did the world really need yet another index? After all, there are hundreds of surveys being published today which rank countries on various criteria. Yet almost all of them measure country performance in isolation: whether it's economic growth, stability, justice, transparency, good governance, productivity, democracy, freedom, or even happiness, it's always measured per country. The Good Country Index is different: it tries to measure the global impacts of policies and behaviours, what they contribute to the "global commons", and what they take away. This forms a truer and more realistic global balance-sheet than one which carries on pretending that each country sits on its own private planet. The concept of the "Good Country" is all about encouraging populations and their governments to be more outward looking, and to consider the international consequences of their national behaviour. It's important to explain that I am not making any moral judgments about countries by publishing this index. What I mean by a Good Country is something much simpler: it's a country that contributes to the greater good. My colleagues and I have used 35 reliable datasets which track the way that most countries on earth behave: there are five of these in each of seven categories, covering the big issues like education, science, war and peace, trade, culture, health, censorship, the environment, freedom, etc. Most of these datasets are produced by the United Nations and other international agencies, and a few by NGOs and other organisations. From left are Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, and Republican candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Experts say the result of the U.S. presidential election is expected to be another variable in Seoul and Washington's ongoing talks on the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery on the Korean Peninsula due to slightly different positions between the parties on the issue. / Graphic by Cho Sang-won By Jun Ji-hye The U.S. presidential election slated for November is expected to affect ongoing talks between Seoul and Washington on the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery on the Korean Peninsula, according to experts. Korean and U.S. experts say Washington apparently believes the THAAD battery deployment is necessary to expand American influence in Northeast Asia, and this belief will remain regardless of which party is elected. However, they say a Republican administration is more likely to pressure South Korea to buy the batteries and to conduct further missile defense deployments. Experts added that the republican administration could provoke protests against THAAD deployment here, and consequently, hamper the allies' discussion on the deployment. Seoul and Washington officially announced their decision to discuss the THAAD deployment on Feb. 7, when the North launched a long-range rocket, in violation of the existing United Nations (U.N.) sanctions. The allies then began their working-level talks on March 4 to iron out details of the deployment, such as the shared costs, possible locations and potential safety, health and environmental risks. According to the Ministry of National Defense, operating one THAAD unit would cost some 1.5 trillion won ($1.2 billion). A ministry official said if the deployment proceeds, South Korea would take charge of the site and other infrastructure, while the United States would bear the costs of the deployment and operation. Terence Roehrig, professor at the U.S. Naval War College, said it is unlikely that the U.S. will give up the development and deployment of a ballistic missile defense system in Asia, regardless of the future administration. "THAAD will remain a piece of that effort," he said. Lee Il-woo, a senior researcher at the Korea Defense Network, echoed the view, saying Republicans and Democrats share the ultimate goal of promoting the national interest, and one of Washington's most significant missions is to hold a dominant position in the hegemonic competition with China. "The deployment of the THAAD battery on the Korean Peninsula is an important condition to win such competition," Lee said. "So, the country's position that the THAAD is necessary on Korean soil would not change regardless of which party is elected." However, Lee noted that if the Republican Party were elected, the country would be highly likely to pressure Seoul to share more of the THAAD deployment expenses, or to purchase the batteries. Lee cited that the party's leading candidate, Donald Trump, has repeatedly said even though South Korea is a wealthy country, it continues to rely on the United States for its defense without giving the latter anything in return. By Doug Bandow NATO's foreign ministers met recently to assess current security threats. Alas, the gathering illustrated how NATO has become an expensive burden for America, reducing U.S. and European security. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was birthed during the Cold War. America's defense shield allowed the war-ravaged states of Western Europe to recover economically and politically. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact NATO's raison d'etre simply disappeared. For a time alliance supporters worried about the organization's future. But the alliance soon reinvented itself as a sort of Welcome Wagon for Moscow's former republics and satellites. Hence the inclusion of the largely indefensible Baltic States, which are attractive as friends but irrelevant to the safety of anyone else in NATO. Newly invited Montenegro is noteworthy mostly for its reputation: high-level corruption and influential criminal networks. The world's greatest military alliance, created to hold back the Soviet hordes under Joseph Stalin, has become a social club for tiny nations of no consequence. The alliance also took on responsibility for "out-of-area" activities, including policing conflicts with no obvious security relevance to Europe. The Yugoslavian civil war was tragic, but with all parties guilty of atrocities the Balkans was a humanitarian, not security concern for the West. While the initial action against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan was justified (though of minimal interest to Europe), nearly 15 years of attempted nation-building squandered thousands of lives and vast quantities of cash. European countries also participated in America's debacle in Iraq. The intervention in Libya created chaos, loosed weapons, and empowered the Islamic State. On his recent visit to Washington NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg talked about the ongoing work of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Afghanistan, Africa, Georgia, Iraq, Kosovo, Libya, Middle East, and North Africa. NATO is helping interdict migrant ships in the Mediterranean. Worse, though, the alliance has turned back to its more traditional anti- Soviet role as it courts war with nuclear-armed Russia. At the latest meeting, said Stoltenberg, NATO discussed how "to adapt to a more assertive Russia." Poland and the Baltic States are demanding allied, effectively meaning American, garrisons. The U.S. already intends to add an armored brigade combat team, of more than 4000 troops, plus 2000 tanks and other vehicles, to America's current European deployment of about 62,000. The administration requested $3.4 billion from Congress for the "European Reassurance Initiative." But this isn't nearly enough in the view of some analysts. Why this move back toward the Cold War? Vladimir Putin is a nasty fellow. But that doesn't make him likely to attack America or Europe. Putin could have overrun Georgia in 2008. He could have annexed eastern Ukraine, if not the entire country. If Moscow didn't conquer these territories, why would it attack a NATO member? In fact, Putin has made no move against the Baltic States, the most vulnerable alliance members, despite their frantic fears. How would Putin benefit trying to rule, say, a hostile Ukraine? Seizing the Baltics would result in catastrophe as well. Russia has behaved badly, but Moscow believes the West has consistently ignored Russia's interests. Moscow's fears might seem irrational in Washington, but Putin has responded to the West's expansion of NATO, dismantlement of Serbia, and support for a street revolution against a friendly president in Ukraine. If aggression is not likely, intimidation still is a reality. That policy reflects Putin's ruthlessness, but is no casus belli, especially for America. Where are the rest of the Europeans? When NATO was created Western Europe was a wreck. Today the GDP and population of united Europe is greater than those of America and a multiple of those of Russia. Yet Putin's confrontational behavior has not resulted in much practical response, other than an upsurge in requests for U.S. action. Indeed, Europe's collective military expenditures last year dropped further, though at least by a smaller percentage than in previous years. America devotes $1865 per person to the military. Norway comes in a distant second at $1343. The UK is third at $851. A dozen European NATO members spend less than $300 per person. Unfortunately, few of NATO's critics go far enough. For instance, Donald Trump wants the Europeans to pay more. But the only way to get them to make a more meaningful military contribution is to turn responsibility for their defense over to them. Washington should stop taking care of them. Europe needs to be defended. But the continent no longer requires America's protection. Washington should allow the Europeans to defend themselves. Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of "Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire (Xulon)." A U.S. senator proposed Thursday that next year's defense budget bill include calls for deployment of the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea to beef up defense against growing nuclear and missile threats from North Korea. Sen. Cory Gardner, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific, made the proposal in an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, citing "an imminent and growing threat" from the North. "It is the sense of Congress ... that the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile defense system would effectively complement and significantly strengthen the existing missile defense capabilities of the United States on the Korean Peninsula," the proposed amendment said. It also said that THAAD is "a limited defensive system that does not represent a threat to any of the neighbors" of South Korea, a statement apparently designed to counter China's claims that the system can be used offensively. The amendment welcomes ongoing talks between Seoul and Washington about the issue and calls for considering deployment "as a sovereign choice" of South Korea and "a bilateral decision of the alliance" to protect against the growing ballistic missile threat from the North. T-50A trainer jet / Courtesy of KAI By Yi Whan-woo South Korea's indigenous T-50A trainer jet has completed its first test flight successfully, its developer Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) said Friday. The successful test bodes well for the firm's bid to sell the T-50A an upgraded version of the T-50 Golden Eagle to the United States, which is seeking to upgrade its trainer fleet. KAI said the jet took off from Sacheon, South Gyeongsang Province, where the T50-As are being manufactured. A KAI pilot accompanied by another pilot from Lockheed Martin flew the jet for about 50 minutes while officials from the two companies plus the Ministry of Defense, the Air Force and the Defense Acquisition Program Administration were on hand watching. A KAI official said the T-50A is the only jet that succeeded in test flights among probable candidates for the U.S. project to upgrade its trainer fleet. The U.S. Air Force is expected to issue notice of its bid by the end of this year and sign a contract in 2017. "The successful flight is expected to boost our marketing for the T-50A abroad," a KAI official said on condition of anonymity. "We believe a possible choice of the T-50A by the U.S. Air Force will contribute to the security alliance between South Korea and the U.S. while helping us take a lead in the jet trainer and light combat air craft industries." KAI said it will promote the T-50A with Lockheed Martin in the U.S. beginning in the second half of this year. It is an upgraded version of the T-50, a supersonic, light combat jet which was developed in 2006. A single, large-area display (LAD) as well as an assimilated-training program were mounted on the plane. The T-50A's competitors include the M-346 from Italy and the Hawk-128 from the United Kingdom. Korea remains hesitant about early negotiations By Yi Whan-woo The United States is apparently increasing pressure on South Korea to accelerate the ongoing talks on deploying a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery here. The allies are offering different stories about whether their defense ministers will discuss the missile system during a meeting in Singapore today. On Friday, South Korea's defense ministry denied U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter's claim a day earlier that he will discuss the THAAD issue when he meets Defense Minister Han Min-koo on the sidelines of the 15th Asia Security Summit in Singapore. "There is no plan for discussions between the two defense ministers in Singapore," a ministry spokesman said. "Related discussions on THAAD have been underway between working-level officials of Seoul and Washington and they'll make their conclusions public when their discussions are over." "The two governments will consider these before finalizing whether to have a THAAD system on South Korean soil, and the two sides are fully aware of this procedure," the spokesman said. Carter reportedly said Thursday that the THAAD issue will be included among topics during his talks with the South Korean minister. Another senior U.S. defense official was even quoted by U.S. media as saying that the two countries will have a "public announcement" soon about the deployment of a THAAD unit. Analysts speculated that South Korea and the U.S. are at odds over talks between their defense ministers because the two allies have different security concerns on China's role on the Korean Peninsula. South Korea on Friday expressed strong regret over North Korea's threat that it could take military action if Seoul does not accept Pyongyang's proposal for inter-Korean dialogue. The North Korean committee on inter-Korean affairs pressed South Korea Thursday to accept the proposal by the North's leader Kim Jong-un to hold military talks, warning that it will respond with a "merciless physical option" if Seoul refuses to do so. The South Korean government has rejected the North's offer as a propaganda ploy, calling on Pyongyang to take sincere steps toward denuclearization. South Korea's unification ministry said that the North's threat only demonstrates that its offer for dialogue is nothing more than a bogus peace proposal which lacks sincerity. "North Korea again threatens to take merciless physical action against us. We express stronger regret over the North's move," Jeong Joon-hee, spokesman at the ministry, said at a regular press briefing. "The government will firmly keep its stance that denuclearization is a top priority when it comes to resuming inter-Korean dialogue," he said. The North's leader proposed holding military talks with Seoul in a bid to defuse tension on the divided peninsula at the congress of the ruling Workers' Party held in early May. Experts said that Pyongyang's charm offensive appears aimed at breaking the united front for tougher international sanctions against the communist country. The U.N. Security Council slapped its strongest sanctions to date on North Korea in March for its fourth nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch in the following month. (Yonhap) By Kang Hyun-kyung Feeling duped by British company Reckitt Benckiser, which claimed that its humidifier disinfectants were safe to use, consumers are becoming increasingly suspicious about the safety of other everyday products, including toothpaste, shampoo and skin care products. Yoo Hyun-jung, a professor of consumer studies at Chungbuk National University in the mid-western city of Cheongju, said the public's chemophobia, or fear of chemical products, may continue for quite some time and spread to other products, such as mosquito repellents. "As summer approaches, some are saying the safety of mosquito repellents needs to be thoroughly examined because of their chemical ingredients," she said. "Considering that those ingredients are strong enough to kill insects, I am suspicious if they are really safe for humans. I think there should be further efforts to test the safety of mosquito repellents on sale because many people are going to use them during the summer." Taking advantage of the public's lack of knowledge about the chemicals used in household products, Reckitt Benckiser sold its humidifier disinfectant containing dangerous chemical ingredients for a decade until 2011, when the health ministry ordered a recall of the disinfectant. But by then, the company's self-serving practices had already caused the deaths of over 100 Koreans, mostly those who had weak immune systems such as children and pregnant women, and had caused respiratory damages in hundreds of others. And the fear from this incident has spilled over to other everyday products. A survey of 500 people conducted by Consumers Korea between May 18 and 24 revealed that the distrust of consumers in products made with chemical ingredients has grown following the humidifier disinfectant scandal. Nearly 70 percent of them said they have replaced or plan to replace the products they currently use with those made with natural ingredients. Some experts have suggested educating customers to raise their awareness of chemical ingredients and prevent product safety incidents. According to them, consumers are the real influencers when it comes to product quality and safety because they can boycott certain products that don't meet safe standards and thus can make or break businesses. In America, Professor Yoo said, there were some exemplary cases of the power of educating the public, in which influential writers were able to change the direction of society through their groundbreaking publications. She cited Upton Sinclair's novel "The Jungle" (1906) and Rachel Carson's book on environmental science "The Silent Spring" (1962), among others, as examples of publications that played a significant role in raising U.S. consumers' awareness of toxic chemicals and food safety. "These publications not only helped raise the awareness of ordinary citizens about hazardous chemicals and food safety but also led to the necessary legislation to regulate them," she said. In The Jungle, journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair portrayed the exploitation and harsh conditions faced by immigrants in the United States, as well as the unsanitary practices in the country's meatpacking industry. The book inspired a public outcry for reforming the industry's sanitation practices and ultimately paved the way for the Meat Inspection Act. In The Silent Spring, ecologist Rachel Carson described the dangers to humans and the ecosystem of the indiscriminate use of DDT and pesticides in agriculture. The book, which became an instant bestseller following its release, led to the banning of DDT production and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Chemist Kang Dong-ho sympathizes with concerned consumers, saying their worries about the safety of household products containing chemical ingredients are not groundless. Kang, who previously worked at a research laboratory run by a Korean cosmetics company, which he declined to name, said parabens, which are used as preservatives, and surfactants, are the two most harmful ingredients used by some cosmetics brands. "It would be okay if consumers use such products only once or twice. But the impact of their long-term use of cosmetics made with such ingredients remains uncertain," he said. Since October 2008, cosmetic companies have been required to state all ingredients used in their products on product container labels for the purpose of consumer information. However, some experts are skeptical that posting all of the ingredients in a product on the label may not help consumers choose safe products because many don't understand the technical terms. For example, the toxic ingredients in Reckitt Benckiser's humidifier disinfectant Oxy Ssack Ssack are PHMG, PGH, CMI and MIT, which, according to a chemist who declined to be named, are not even familiar to chemical science graduates. She remarked that scientists and those who have broad and deep knowledge about chemistry may be needed to better educate consumers. "There should be a handful of experts who are familiar with the ingredients and their possible impact on humans. These are people who studied chemistry when they were in college and who have years of experience in dealing with those ingredients," she said. The dangers of humidifier disinfectants were first reported in 2011. The country's Food and Drug Administration performed a three-month investigation into the products on sale following the deaths of several infants and pregnant women in Seoul from unspecified respiratory damages. The agency found that two ingredients, PHMG and PGH, are responsible for causing respiratory damages in humans. Following the release of the investigation's findings, six brands of humidifier disinfectants, including Oxy Ssack Ssack, as well as shampoo and wet tissue brands that used those ingredients were recalled. Afterward, Reckitt Benckiser bribed two toxic chemicals experts, a Seoul National University professor identified only by his last name, Cho, and a Hoseo University professor, to produce empirical studies that counter the FDA findings. The prosecution is investigating the British company and the two Korean experts about this. The incident came three years after the contaminated milk scandal in China in 2008, in which over 50,000 people were reported to have suffered kidney damage after drinking milk or other drinks containing the toxic chemical melamine. No Korean victims were reported. A year later, however, the country was plagued by yet another scandal baby powder containing either talc or asbestos. Professor Yoo said the nation, it seemed, did not learn from its past experiences, which was perhaps why such scandals were repeated. She also said the public outcry against product safety incidents, in addition to the resulting legislation, were not enough to end the repetition. "Consumers become angry once such incidents occurred. Activists protest to pressure the government to take adequate measures, but the legislation is not strong enough to prevent further catastrophes," she said. Jung Ji-yeon, the secretary general of the Seoul-based nonprofit The Voices for Consumers, called on the government to strengthen safety controls. "We've found that chemical ingredients that are banned in European countries are still used in some products here. Our safety standards are lower than those of the European states," she said. Jung said businesses are the key players to strengthening safety controls, and thus, the government needs to encourage them to play by the rules. "It's hard for ordinary citizens who have limited understanding of chemical ingredients to distinguish safe products from harmful ones," she said. A series of subway accidents has once again triggered public indignation over Korea's widespread negligence toward safety. In an explosion at a construction site in Namyangju Wednesday, four workers were killed and 10 others injured. All 14 were employed by Maeil ENC, a subcontractor of POSCO Engineering & Construction, the prime contractor. Police investigating Wednesday's explosion and collapse of the subway construction site raided the offices of five companies involved in the project Friday. Authorities should conduct a thorough investigation to uncover whether there were any violations of safety regulations and illegal subcontracting practices. These kinds of accidents have continued to take place, showing that Korea lags far behind advanced countries in upholding safety regulations. They also show that Korea's disregard for safety has not improved two years since the Sewol ferry sinking that took more than 300 lives. In the aftermath of the maritime tragedy, President Park Geun-hye established a ministry of public safety. Despite such efforts, many people still feel that post-Sewol Korea is not safer. A recent report showed that 25,132 people were injured at construction sites last year and among them, 493 workers died. Just this year alone, there have been 14 accidents related to trains and airplanes that could have resulted in serious injury. The Namyangju accident comes only weeks after Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn hosted a meeting on policies to reduce accidents at construction sites with the relevant ministries, showing that the government's safety-first policies have not been effective. The subway incident in Namyangju came on the heels of another accident at Guui Station in eastern Seoul, where a 19-year-old mechanic died after being hit by an arriving train while repairing a safety door. He was employed by Eunseong PSD, a subcontractor for Seoul Metro that operates the subway. The accident highlighted the need for protection for workers at subcontractors. According to the Ministry of Employment and Labor, deaths of subcontractor workers accounted for 40.2 percent of the total worksite deaths from industrial accidents last year, up from 37.7 percent in 2012. Out of seven people who died at construction sites of Hyundai Heavy Industries this year, five were subcontractor workers. Government, corporate sector need to update strategies The latest Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy data showed a continued fall in exports despite some signs of stabilization in May. Korea's exports stood at $39.78 billion last month, down 6 percent from the same period a year ago and marking a decline for the 17th consecutive month. The year-on-year monthly export fall rate in May marked the slowest this year. Although the declining pace slowed last month, experts believe that it is difficult to see this as a sign of easing in the chronic export slump. The record-breaking losing streak in exports is worrisome because it is not a temporary phenomenon and is the result of a combination of a wide range of factors at home and abroad. As Korea is heavily dependent on exports for growth, the corporate sector and the government have some serious work to do to revitalize them. They need to update their strategies with effective responses to the factors that are causing the downward trend. The main reason for the lackluster exports is slowing growth in China, which accounts for a quarter of Korea's exports, and the industrial sophistication of Korea's largest export market. Exports to China fell 9.1 percent last month. The latest data show that Korea's conventional export strengths are losing their competitiveness. Exports of nine key items including ships, general machinery, auto parts, semiconductors, cars and wireless devices all fell. Diversification of exports is the key to overcoming the slump. Now is the time for Korean companies to develop new products that transcend existing flagship exports. Korean companies are lacking the kind of innovative drive found in Chinese and other major rivals in developing new growth engines. Recently, it was reported that Shanghai-based automaker SAIC is partnering with Alibaba for connected cars, an inevitable trend in the auto industry. The Korean corporate sector should take note of the SAIC-Alibaba venture, an industrial fusion for new products that is missing among Korea's top conglomerates. Korea has global leaders in IT and automobiles and they should work together to create synergy in manufacturing products that can capture the Chinese market. During a recent meeting with business leaders, President Park Geun-hye said, 'Excellent products, services or systems built on innovative ideas will attract attention everywhere." With this spirit, Korean companies need to develop new products that can create demand in China. President Park has pledged to change Korea's heavy dependence on conglomerates for exports; and so the government needs to promote exports from small- and mid-sized firms. Another reason for Korea's export slump is the increasing labor costs combined with falling prices. The President's economic team needs to come up with policies to improve labor market flexibility and adaptability to a changing global environment. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said he expects the issue of the THAAD missile defense system to come up when he meets with his South Korean counterpart in Singapore later this week. Carter made the remark en route to the Southeast Asian nation for the annual "Shangri-La Dialogue" meeting of regional defense ministers set to open Friday. Carter is scheduled to meet one-on-one with South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo on its sidelines. "I will see my colleague, Defense Minister Han. I'm sure that topic will come up," Carter told reporters in response to a question whether he will discuss THAAD during the trip, according to a transcript provided by the Defense Department. "It's not something we need to discuss much, because ... the plans are moving forward. This is an alliance decision, a decision of the United States and the Republic of Korea, which is about protecting us both from a North Korean missile attack," he said. "It's an alliance decision, a decision we took together. The implementation of it will be a series of decisions that we take together, and it's for our own protection against North Korea, and everybody should understand that," Carter said. South Korea and the U.S. have been in talks about the potential deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system in South Korea in an effort to better defend against growing missile threats from the North. China has strongly opposed the possible THAAD deployment, claiming the system, especially its radar, could be used against it, despite repeated U.S. assurances that it is only aimed at defending against threats from North Korea. A senior U.S. defense official was quoted by Reuters as saying that there are still "a lot of technical issues to get through" in the talks, but added, "we will have a public announcement soon." "We are in the process of continuing our discussions on deployment and we will have an announcement when we're ready," the official was quoted as saying, speaking on condition of anonymity. It was not clear whether the remarks mean the sides are close to a decision on deployment. Comment from Pentagon officials was not immediately available. Meanwhile, Carter said that the North's latest missile test, even though it failed, is "provocative" and "destabilizing." "It's contrary to the United Nations Security Council resolutions, which call on North Korea not to carry out such ballistic missile activities," he said. "Whatever the outcome ... everybody else in the region, and for that matter, most of the world continues to be concerned about North Korean missile activity." (Yonhap) By Kim Ji-myung "One morning, father told me to go and pay attention to the situation at the American army office and see if there is a job opening," says Prof. Yoo Chong-ho in his three-volume memoir. He was just 16 and temporarily staying in the city of Cheongju with his family, having fled some 66 kilometers from his less-safe hometown of Chungju, both in the central part of the Korean Peninsula. The American soldiers were stationed at Cheongju, which was the northernmost supply center with a railway connection for the American military. The first day he roamed around the middle-school building, at the time used by the American army, and saw many idle children and students. If any of them moved closer to peep inside, a soldier would shout "Get away!" After a few weeks, it was rumored that the American army was recruiting laborers. He went to the office again. He was the only boy among the aged adults. He collected all his courage and approached a middle-aged man, who yielded some sort of charisma. "Hello. I want to work," he said in English. The American soldier examined him with interest. "I want to work," Yoo repeated. But after that, the boy could not understand what this gentleman was saying to him. Later, a Korean explained to Yoo that the soldier had said "Nine o'clock, tomorrow morning" many times. Thus began the new life of Yoo as a janitor for the American soldiers stationed in Cheongju in 1951. War made everybody jobless no class for his father to teach, no school for Yoo to attend. But his memoir surprises me with his steel-trap memory, such as the name plaques of his first workplace Noncommissioned Warrant Officer J.M. Parson, Technical Sergeant D. Hale, etc. He remembers that his first task on the first day of work was nailing to the wall a poster with a photo of Gen. Douglas MacArthur with "Invincible United Nations Soldiers" in the print below the picture. He says this is how he learned the difficult word, "invincible," in this unlikely chaotic environment. He was not an ordinary young boy. He was known as a genius in town. Before the war, as an elementary student, he saved pocket money to buy a literary magazine. He knew who was who in Korea in the intellectual and artistic world. At one point, his supervising American officer said, "Education is marvelous," and, "He is different from other boys," regarding Yoo's attitude and competence. His school was closed for 15 months in June 1950, after the outbreak of the Korean War until September 1951. In this chaotic period, the classes at the school were arranged by rough standards and he found himself in the second grade of high school. His narratives are straightforward in real names and positions then and later. In the changing hands of military rulers, his relatives, including his father, had to cooperate with the Communists during their occupation. He maintains a calm and objective observation throughout the book. Without criticism, he remembers many teachers, including a novice teacher, Mr. Chung, who began teaching English to the second-graders. He called students "Mr. Somebody," not out of courtesy, but from total ignorance about the job of a teacher. While reading "What I Saw in America" by Andre Maurois, from the "Living English Reader" in the class, there is a scene in which a New York taxi driver could recognize that the music from the radio was Brahms' Symphony No. 3. The author said: "American civilization is no longer a dollar civilization." The teacher thought it was about denying the worth of one dollar. If anyone wonders why English has become a powerful tool in Korea, Prof. Yoo's memoir is the best way to get a very realistic understanding of the historical circumstances. The first memoir, "My Times Around Liberation," covers 1940-1949, including 1945, when the American Military Government began administration after Korea's liberation. Then two books, "Memoir: My 1950" and "That Winter and Fall" 1951, carry detailed narration of his experiences of family survival through the harsh period of starvation, dying and killing during wartime. Not quoted much here, but the memoir elaborates about the complicated positions between the ideologically confronted camps in that tragic period. What was his life like after the war? Yoo studied in the English Literature Department, Seoul National University, and New York State University. He also was a professor at Chungju National University of Education and Yonsei University. Yoo has been a leading literary critic since the late 1950s, with many literary awards, and the chairmanship of the Academy of Art of Korea, 2013-2015. So why did he bother to explain his hard times in such great detail? "The past is a foreign country," wrote Yoo in his preface. "It is difficult for people to imagine those periods during which they had not lived. Our imagination is fundamentally limited as it is grounded on our experiences and present situation." Not many societies have undergone such radical and compressed changes as Korea has. I agree with Prof. Yoo in that human beings are bound by their instilled preconceptions, subjective judgment, education, information and rumors. Imagination is often slanted, at best. Yoo says he wrote for the younger generations who must have difficulty in imagining those never-seen times. The writer is the chairwoman of the Korea Heritage Education Institute (K*Heritage). Her email address is Heritagekorea21@gmail.com. Richard Bushman By Kim Ji-soo It's not often that Professor Richard Bushman, a noted historian of 19th century America and a scholar of the Latter-Day Saints, would stand to talk earnestly about his faith in front of Korean students. Bushman, 84, is a professor emeritus at Columbia University and author of such books as "Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling," a biography of the founder of Mormonism. He was in Korea for the first time to attend the 2016 Religion Conference held in Seoul May 27-28. After giving a presentation and fielding questions from Sogang University students, Bushman sat down for an interview, during which he offered some insights into the divide between the North and the South in the United States, and about businessman and U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump. "I think very few university faculty members would back Trump. Many would think he is a disaster ... I don't think his word can be trusted. I think he is a survivor and deal-maker, and he will say anything to keep the deal going," he said. Bushman added that it will be hard to predict what Trump will do because he will say one thing one day and repudiate it the next. "I don't think he represents serious policy." "My real concern about Trump is .... He is the strongman who promises he will make everything right, like a hero in our movies," Bushman expanded. "(He is) the man with many guns, with a lot of muscle, with a knockout punch. Whoever is in trouble, he will straighten them out, probably using force," he said. Bushman is also concerned about how far Trump can go with such a stance, or how effectively the system of American checks and balances can contain him. "What I don't like is when I see him cozying up to the military. That scares me," he said. For the moment, the professor said he is disgusted, but he would be really scared if Trump follows with strongman tactics, such as Putin's. Having studied the North and South divide in 19th century America, he said countries are generally divided into two. For the United States, the division was based on the deep moral issues of race and slavery, but for the two Koreas, the division may well be about political issues first, then economic issues second. He admitted that he is not sure how deeply the Communist ideology has penetrated North Korea. However, when told about North Korea's tendency for punishment through guilt-by-association, he said the tendency for people to identify with power even if such power can hurt, may hinder the establishment of a stable democratic society. He stressed the value of coexistence among religions, which he believes can promote peace by recognizing others' respective religions. "When we are able to open up to each other about our points of differences, when we are able to talk in-depth about our differences, we can become friends." How do we do that? "That is scary, and it will be a long process," he said. An overview of Alibaba headquarters in Hangzhou, in China's Zhejiang Province. / Courtesy of Alibaba By Lee Min-hyung Alibaba Group is raising its profile here in a slow, yet unconventional way, as its business strategy is far from that of other companies whose primary goal is to maximize profit. China's largest e-commerce company was not well known to Korean customers before it surprised the world in 2014 with its record-breaking initial public offering at the New York Stock Exchange. In the same year, the company made its first noteworthy appearance here, with Chairman Jack Ma visiting Seoul to meet President Park Geun-hye to discuss business collaboration with Korean companies. Alibaba and its key affiliates have since formed partnerships with local companies in what critics say is a move to diversify its revenue streams, as other overseas information and communication technology (ICT) giants have done. But revenue generation has not been the core of its business and partnerships, given its two-year operations here. The company, instead, has focused on building an environment in which small Korean companies can sell things abroad. This is in line with its corporate vision: Making transactions easier anywhere. The Alibaba founder identified the need to build such an environment in China when he established the firm in 1999. He said he wants to apply the same philosophy to other countries, including Korea. "Alibaba does not have any plans to directly open an online shopping platform in Korea, as our ultimate goal is to become a company helping other firms to benefit from e-commerce," he said last year when celebrating the launch of the Korea Pavilion on its business-to-customer (B2C) retail site, Tmall. The Korea Pavilion was Alibaba's first official country pavilion on its website, selling genuine Korean products to Chinese customers. He then dispelled concerns that the company may become a potential threat to local e-commerce operators. The Alibaba chief made it clear that Alibaba hopes to become a "facilitator" to help Korea's e-commerce grow, allowing small companies to sell their products to Chinese customers. All of its partnerships in Korea have so far come under this corporate motto. Major collaborations include the Korea Exemplary Food Exhibition project, for which the nation's Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and 1688.com, Alibaba's business-to-business (B2B) online trading site in China, joined hands. This was in October 2014, in the e-commerce giant's bid to introduce Korean food to the Chinese B2B market. In May, its cloud-computing affiliate, Alibaba Cloud, partnered with two Korean firms SK C&C and Bankware Global. During the announcement, Alibaba allowed its two local partners to announce their visions through the collaboration. This symbiotic corporate management policy is part of Alibaba's efforts to make the company last for more than 100 years, which will cross three centuries, according to the Alibaba chief. Company to hold board meeting on June 7 By Kim Yoo-chul Samsung SDS, the information technology and system integration unit of Samsung, said Friday that it plans to spin off some of its businesses in what officials say is a move to expand Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong's influence on the group. "Samsung SDS is considering spinning off business units," the affiliate stated in a filing at the Korea Exchange (KRX), the country's main bourse. Local media reports said the company had planned to separate its logistics process outsourcing and IT systems services. Samsung C&T could then acquire the logistics business, while the IT services unit would be acquired by Samsung Electronics. However, the filing said no specific timetable has been decided on so far this will be take place at a board meeting early next week. Sources directly involved said the meeting will be held June 7. "For the time being, Samsung SDS isn't considering selling business units after the split. We will notify the exchange about further updates, if any, immediately," the filing stated. In a separate filing to the KRX, Samsung C&T said it has no plans to acquire the system integration unit, while Samsung Electronics said expectations that it will acquire the logistics division were "untrue." "If you want to sell or acquire businesses, then you need buyers. Samsung SDS is drawing the big picture about what type of changes will be beneficial to shareholders and the company itself. The scope of changes could be bigger than expected. But the principle in such moves will be decided at the board meeting," a high-ranking source told The Korea Times. Samsung SDS operates four main businesses logistics, ICT, business systems and infrastructure; however, the firm's future is questionable because of its reliance on Samsung affiliates. Lee Jae-yong's grip on Samsung Friday's announcements by the three Samsung affiliates on a single issue are considered rare because the Samsung Corporate Strategy Office, the group control tower, earlier denied the possibilities that Samsung SDS may be spun off. "As a power shift is under way led by Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong, talks about a merger between Samsung Electronics and Samsung SDS have continued despite previous denials," said the unnamed official. "Something is happening inside key Samsung affiliates with shareholders paying keen attention." Vice Chairman Lee holds a 9.2 percent stake in Samsung SDS with Hotel Shilla CEO Lee Boo-jin and Samsung C&T President Lee Seo-hyun each holding 3.9 percent. Samsung Electronics is the top shareholder of Samsung SDS with 22.6 percent, followed by Samsung C&T with 17.1 percent, meaning Samsung SDS is heavily dependent upon its revenue sources from its top two shareholders. As Vice Chairman Lee seeks profitability by combining business divisions and selling unprofitable units, the continued moves by Samsung to realign business units could strengthen the family's grip on the conglomerate, helping investors in Samsung SDS. Lee's plan is to expand his influence on the group's electronics units. Samsung C&T controls the entire group holding 19.34 percent stake in Samsung Life Insurance and a 4.1 percent stake in Samsung Electronics; and Lee is its top shareholder. Samsung SDS stocks briefly soared to over 400,000 won per share on expectations of a merger with Samsung Electronics, months ago; however, they lost momentum because of the filing. On a related note, the share price of the holding arm of Samsung C&T was also fell to a 52-week low for the same reason. "The question on if, when and how Samsung Electronics could be used by the Lee family management to clean up the complicated ownership structure as depicted is by no mean fully answered yet," said Bernstein Research. By Kim Yoo-chul SK Telecom has clashed with its two chief local rivals KT and LG Uplus in a local court over an issue involving its proposed takeover of CJ HelloVision (CJH), the country's top cable operator. In the first hearing held in the Seoul Southern Court, legal representatives of SK Telecom said the 1:0.475 swap and exchange ratio between CJH shares and SK Broadband shares, owned by SK Telecom, was fixed based on related local law. But representatives of LG Uplus and KT, both of which oppose the SK Telecom-initiated plan, claimed that the merger may limit consumer choice and hurt the interests of their clients, saying the ratio was unfair. CJH was taken to court by minority shareholders. Some of them were employees at LG Uplus and KT who owned CJH stock. The amount of investment by the plaintiffs in CJH was unknown. "The value of CJH was severely undervalued, while shares of SK Broadband were overvalued," LG Uplus said. "That cost a lot to CJH shareholders." SK Telecom purchased a 100 percent stake in SK Broadband in March last year, setting 4,170 won as the price for each SK Broadband share; however, LG said the purchase price was up to 5,085 won per SK Broadband share when it announced its plan to buy CJH. "But SK valued each CJH share at 10,680 won, which was far below given the current market value," LG said, adding the deal, if materialized, will benefit SK Telecom more. KT said it was also seeking nullification of the deal. But the company said it has no official comment about the proposed takeover by SK. More than 97 percent of CJH shareholders voted in favor of SK Telecom's plan. The deal will see SK Telecom acquire an initial 30 percent stake in CJH from local conglomerate CJ O Shopping for 500 billion won, before purchasing an additional 23.9 percent through put-and-call option agreements. The total value of the transaction is expected to reach around 1 trillion won. Because the deal is a combination between the nation's leading mobile carrier and pay-TV operator, Korea's top antitrust regulator has been reviewing the merger plan. SK Telecom is urging the telecom ministry and the Fair Trade Commission to approve the deal so it can better compete with global rivals in the content business, while LG Uplus has teamed with KT to oppose the suggestion. SK Telecom set media as the main business of the merged entity and will shape the company into the leading next-generation media platform by offering diverse innovative and ground-breaking services based on cable TV-IPTV hybrid business models. Through the business reorganization, the two parties expect to generate synergies in content sourcing and international sales by integrating SK Telecom's strength in platform and CJ's strength in content. Senior North Korean official Ri Su-yong (left) talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Chinese People's Assembly Hall in Beijing on June 1. / Korea Times file By Kim Da-hee Chinese authorities have urged its news media outlets to stop criticizing North Korea. The move follows Chinese leader Xi Jinping's meeting with top North Korean official Ri Su-yong Wednesday, during which they agreed to improve strained ties. According to Japan's Sankei Shimbun, China's media regulator recently told outlets not to sensationalize North Korean issues and to highlight the long-running friendship between the two countries. China's state-run news agency Xinhua did not mention nuclear-related issues in reports of the meeting between Xi and Ri. The Global Times, an English daily under the control of the influential People's Daily newspaper, ran an opinion piece Thursday titled "China-North Korea friendship key to peninsula peace." "Many international forces are inciting confrontation between the two and trying to make their divergences into the main source of conflict in Northeast Asia," it wrote. "Ri's visit shows that both China and North Korea are rationally keeping away from this trap." The paper said the U.S.-driven deployment of the THAAD missile system on the Korean Peninsula would be a direct threat to China's national security. The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary Read more This article appears in the June 3, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. The Anglo-Saudi Terror Machine Behind 9/11 Stands Fully Exposed by Jeffrey Steinberg [PDF version of this article] May 26Lyndon LaRouche issued a statement today that should resonate in Manhattan, on Capitol Hill, and around the world. He presented the essential truth about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, at a moment when global attention has been finally directed at the actual criminals behind the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil in history: A total injustice has been perpetuated from the beginning until now. The person who created the injustice has no right to contest anything now. The case is clear, LaRouche declared. The point is that the Saudis and the British both committed a major crime against the citizens of the United States. When a nations people has been betrayed by their own government on an issue built into the Constitution, an issue of Constitutional rights, such an issue is itself inherently a crime. The people of the nation have suffered a manifest crime against them. Theres no basis for any support for what these criminals did; they dont have any standing. Theyre claiming that they have a standing within the injury that they created. LaRouche was referring to the efforts by paid representatives of the Saudi Royal Family to continue to block the full release of evidence of their involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Over the past weeks, as pressure has mounted for the release of the 28 page chapter from the original Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, and for passage of a clean JASTA (Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act) bill, which would reinstate the Saudi Monarchy as defendants in a long-standing law suit by survivors and family members of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the Saudis have unleashed a flood of cash and an army of lobbyists to spread disinformation and kill the efforts at achieving some measure of justice 15 years after the attacks that killed 2,977 innocent people. Their efforts, aimed at protecting both the Saudi and British Monarchies from the full weight of prosecution for their role in the 9/11 massacre, however, have met with significant backlasheven among a small number of Members of Congress who have at long last started to ask the right questions and draw the appropriate conclusions. An Exceptional Hearing On May 24, a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tex.), convened a hearing on the role of Saudi Arabia in the 9/11 attacks and other acts of jihadist terrorism. Three members of the panel, Reps. Brad Sherman (D-Cal.), Dana Rohrabacher (R-Cal.) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.), broke the longstanding public taboo and went directly at the combined roles of the British and Saudi Monarchies in orchestrating the attacks on New York City and the Pentagon. In a tense question and answer exchange with witness Karen Elliot House, Rep. Perry pressed for an explanation for why the United States was not doing more to force the Saudis to abandon their support for terrorism, through their bankrolling of Wahhabi schools and mosques around the world that have become breeding grounds for terrorist indoctrination and recruitment. House noted that when the original Saudi King wanted to invade and conquer Iraq, the British opposed the move, and the King ultimately had to go to war with some of his own supporters to fulfill the British demands. House admitted that the United States could certainly exert such pressure on the Saudis, but did not. The mere mention of the historic British control over the Saudis in a public hearing on Capitol Hill was dramatic. While Executive Intelligence Review has been in the forefront of documenting the Anglo-Saudi jihad machine, dating back to the scores of exposes of the role of Londonistan as the hub of world terrorism, where terrorists of all stripes have been given immunity and financial backing under the direct protection of the British Crown, the Anglo-Saudi relationship has been otherwise covered up and protected by a bodyguard of lies. Former Sen. Bob Graham, who chaired the original Joint Inquiry and has been a driving force behind the expose of the Saudi Monarchys hand in 9/11, had to resort to a fictional account of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, in order to fully spell out the London-Riyadh connection, which he did spell out accurately in his novel, Keys to the Kingdom. Al-Yamamah Revisited At the heart of the modern British Crown control over the Saudi Wahhabi terror apparatus is the Al-Yamamah deal, which was personally negotiated in 1985 between Margaret Thatcher and Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, the son of the late Saudi Minister of Defense, who was for more than 20 years the Saudi Ambassador in Washington. Bandar and Thatcher used the cover of an oil-for-weapons barter deal to build up a string of offshore black funds that bankrolled the rise of Al-Qaeda, dating back to the final years of the Afghanistan War against the Soviet Union, and funded wars and coups all over the Third World for more than 30 years. When the Guardian newspaper broke a corruption and kickback scandal around the Al-Yamamah deal in 2007, the British Serious Fraud Office opened an inquiry. The moment that the inquiry began to touch on the offshore secret accounts (in the initial instance, the Swiss accounts of Wafic Said, a top Al-Yamamah money launderer) at the real heart of Al-Yamamah, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair shut down the SFO investigation, invoking British national security. In his own authorized biography, The Prince, Bandar boasted that the British and Saudi Monarchies had a special relationship, based on the ability of the two royal families to operate with absolute impunityabove the law. Bandars finders fee for the creation of the Anglo-Saudi Al-Yamamah terror program was at minimum $2 billion. At the time that Bandar and his wife Princess Haifa were pouring money into the accounts of the Saudi intelligence officers working with the first two 9/11 terrorists to arrive in the United States, Al-Yamamah payoffs were being wired into their personal account at Riggs National Bank in Washington, originating in British Ministry of Defence accounts at the Bank of England. The Saudi Royals Knew in Advance Returning to the May 24 House hearings, Rohrabacher issued an impassioned opening statement, in which he asked: How many have to die before the truth about 9/11 comes out? This hearing, he declared, is long overdue, and we must stop intentionally ignoring who financed the attacks. It is clear, he declared, that the Saudi Royals were up to their eyeballs, warning that we will not recover from the consequences of 9/11 unless we let the American people know. At one point, after four witnesses delivered their opening statements, Rohrabacher resumed his attacks. He reported that four months before the 9/11 attacks took place, he had received information personally from a top Taliban official whom he had known from the time of the Afghan mujahideen war against the Soviet Army, that a major attack on U.S. soil was coming. Rohrabacher told the hearing participants that he had passed that information along to the relevant Executive Branch agencies and later to the Joint Inquiry and 9/11 Commission staffs. He then polled the panel of witnesses, asking them if they believed that the Saudi Royal Family had to have had advance knowledge of the pending 9/11 attacks. Two of the four witnesses, former Congressman, Ambassador and 9/11 Commissioner Tim Roemer (D-Ind.) and Saudi expert Simon Henderson both raised their hands (panelists Karen Elliot House and Daniel Byman did not). Both Sherman and Rohrabacher pounded the witnesses about the Saudi sponsorship of madrasas and so-called charities that spread Wahhabism around the globe, in almost all instances, creating the recruitment pool for jihadist terrorist groups. At one point, Rohrabacher told the hearing that one estimate is that the Saudis have spent tens or hundreds of billions of dollars spreading Wahhabism around the world. Sherman added that it is time to come clean. You cannot say that the Saudis dont support terrorism. The FBI Protection Racket In early May, Rep. Sherman, in an interview with The Hill, had also blasted the Federal Bureau of Investigation for playing a pivotal role in covering up the crimes of the Saudis. Sherman cited an incident in 2011, when FBI agents detained former Sen. Bob Graham and his wife at Dulles International Airport and warned him to back off from his investigation into 9/11. Sherman was furious at the action, telling The Hill that the FBI took a former senator, a former governor, grabbed him in an airport, hustled him into a room with armed force to try to intimidate him into taking different positions on issues of public policy and important national policy, and the fact that he wasnt intimidated because he was calm doesnt show that they werent trying to intimidate him. The FBI protection of the Anglo-Saudi terror machinery has been a constant, long before the incident with Sen. Graham and his wife. In Sarasota, Fla., the FBI withheld over 80,000 pages of vital evidence about a prominent Saudi businessman with strong ties to the Royal Family, who hosted three of the 9/11 hijackers, including ringleader Mohammed Atta, at his residence in a gated community. In the case of the Prince Bandar-funded hijackers in San Diego, Cal., for months they lived in the home of an FBI informant. That information, too was suppressed by top FBI officials, including then-Director Robert Mueller. Muellers predecessor, Louis Freeh, retired from the Bureau and was hired to represent Prince Bandarin the U.S. and British investigations into the Al-Yamamah deal. The Saudi-British master criminals must be punished, but, more important, deprived of the power to ever again commit such atrocities. The U.S. government officials who have covered up for them must be purged and placed on trial. This article appears in the June 3, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. CREATIVITY AND PROGRESS An Exchange between Xi Jinping and Lyndon LaRouche by William Jones [PDF version of this article] May 29A lengthy speech given earlier this year by Chinese President Xi Jinping was reprinted in the government paper, Peoples Daily on May 5. When economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche was briefed on its contents, he made a direct and pointed response on the issue of creativity. The Peoples Daily article had only been superficially covered in the Western media, which seemed to fixate on President Xis comments that Chinas call for supply-side reform had nothing in common with what was designated by that term in the U.S. economic debate during the 1980s. But the speech had much more profound implications, which our Western media totally failed to notice. The speech was a lengthy elaboration by the Chinese President directed in particular to the cadre of the Chinese Communist Party, concerning the situation facing China today, a situation, as he pointed out, that is without precedent in the history of that nation. He also indicated that the reform and opening up policy initiated by Deng Xiaoping, which has allowed China to again take its place as a major economic power in the world, is itself at a new and untested stage of development. President Xi also indicated that the way forward will be arduous and filled with difficulties. He gave a broad historical overview of the development of China during the last four decades, commenting briefly on the disastrous leftist shift in the 1960s, which led to the Cultural Revolution, that 10-year calamity as he called it, which set the economy back many years from the progress that had been made since the founding of the Peoples Republic in 1949. With the reform and opening up, China had achieved enormous success in bringing the country into the situation where it has now become the second largest economy in the world and one of the most important engines of the world economy, bringing millions of its own people out of poverty in the process. The collapse of the international export market has, however, placed China in a new situation, in which it must adopt new attitudes and new policies to confront the new normal of the world economy. In this new normal, Xi explained, many of the industries that have been the motor of the Chinese economy will disappear or shift to a higher level of technology and productivity. Other industries will have to be developed that correspond with the growing needs of the country and the world. But the underlying dynamic force of the economy, President Xi argues, must now be situated in a process of making significant breakthroughs in science and technological innovation. President Xi on Creativity In one key section of his speech, President Xi expands on this notion. Since the Sixteenth Century, mankind entered into an unprecedented period of scientific creativity, Xi writes. In the course of a few hundred years, mankind achieved creative results which went far beyond anything that had been achieved in the previous thousands of years. Particularly since the Eighteenth Century, the world has experienced several scientific revolutions, more recently with developments in physics, the development of the steam engine and mechanical devices, electric power, the development of mass transport, the theory of relativity and quantum theory, an understanding of the electron, and the development of information technology. With these developments the world has experienced several scientific revolutions, such as mechanization, electrification, automation and informationization. And each of these profoundly changed the face and the pattern of human development. Institute of Plasma Physics CAS Institute of Plasma Physics CAS Some countries, he noted, grasped the opportunity of the scientific revolution to put their economies into the fast lane, with England becoming the chief beneficiary of the first industrial revolution, placing it in the role of a world leader. The second industrial revolution was grabbed by the United States, which soon replaced Great Britains role in the world economy. The Chinese people, Xi noted, are also a creative people and once played the foremost role in science and technology, particularly in the areas of astronomy, mathematics, agronomy, geography, and medicine, and gave the world those three great inventions: gunpowder, the art of printing, and the compass. Some data show, Xi said, that prior to the Sixteenth Century, among the 300 most important items of invention and discovery, 173 came from China, far exceeding those of Europe. For a long time our country played a leading role. Our thought, our social system, our economy, and our scientific achievements radiated strongly in our periphery and played a leading role there. And then in more recent years our country gradually lost its lead and plunged into backwardness. A major reason for this is that we lost the initiative several times in the scientific and industrial revolutions around us. What this means for the present, Xi said, is that China must grasp the opportunity to move forward and moving forward means keeping on the cusp of creative innovation. Only those who move ahead in innovating can maintain the ability to determine their own development, Xi said. He noted that we are facing another revolution in scientific and industrial development. While China has emerged as the number two economic power, that power is still quite fragile and facing major hurdles. For this reason, he urged a heightened awareness of the pitfalls ahead, noting that there is no clear roadmap, but that only a spirit of creativity and innovation on the part of the scientific elites and of the party cadre will allow China to move ahead in these uncertain circumstances. Bringing forth new ideas is a complex process of social engineering, he said, involving every section of the economy. To strengthen the development of creativity and innovation, you must insist on a holistic point of view, and seek to grasp the crucial elements, using the most important areas and key segments in order to create a breakthrough in the overall situation. The emphasis on creativity and innovation has become a clarion call for Chinas economy. It indicates that only through breakthroughs in science and technology can China overcome its present bottlenecks and begin to raise the rest of its population to the standard of living now achieved by most of those concentrated in the urban core of the country. With that in mind Xi urged the party cadre to increase their vigilance and commitment to the well-being of the people. Here also he called for creative solutions on the part of the party cadre to overcome the obstacles they find along the way. He underlined the need for a more intensive study of philosophy and the social sciences. While he underlined the role of Marxism and dialectical thought to these party members, he also referenced the importance of the Confucian values in formulating policy. He again noted that his anti-corruption campaign was initiated precisely in order to enhance the moral and social commitment of the party cadre, who are to serve as models for the type of social consciousness that he hopes to achieve in society as a whole, and he said the program was not some sort of American-style House of Cards manipulation, as it has been generally described by the Western media. Lyndon LaRouche Responds Lyndon LaRouche, while noting the importance of the orientation raised by the Chinese President, insisted that what was said was not sufficient. Where does reality lie? LaRouche asked. Where does the reality of the human being, the human population, where does the destiny of mankind lie? The essence of the thing, and everybody who has made this particular mistake, has always paid a big price for it, if they were even able to survive. Because the question of what human values are, lies not in popular ideas. Not at all! It lies in something which is the un-popular idea. You know, when you say the parents are proud of their children, or things like that, this sort of thing, this may have an inkling of some useful function; but the idea of it as a policy for people is wrong. It does not work. And we have not really grappled with this thing, we didnt want to grapple with it. Most people did not want to grapple with it! The point is, the secret of the future generation lies in a layer of society which did not play a role in what we call education today, and behavior today. Because it is the mind of the individual human, not as an educated individual as such, but it has to be the education within the person which enables that person to see beyond popular opinion. What does that mean? You say, well, look at the Twentieth Century, and most people dont realize how they were taken in, by the Twentieth Century: Why? Because the great geniuses were never heard, or almost never heard. Because the genius is one who is not developed to follow a certain pattern; the genius is someone who stands outside all notions of popular opinion, like Einstein. Einstein is a prototype of what the future mankind, as an individual, represents. Other people dont. The objective is not to try to produce new children, made in the image of their parents. That is not the image, that is not the truth! Thats the ugly truth, which is not the truth. The point is, that Einstein one century after his death, has been noted for creativity. How did this work? How could Einstein, having no period of life from the time of his own actual death, how did he suddenly become a source of true creativity of a new generation? How! By being like Einstein; they do not base themselves on practicality. They base themselves on being free of the achievements of their families. If you want to succeed, dont adopt your parents habits. And the future of mankind lies precisely in that policy. Because people collect ideas, trades, impulses, habits, all these kinds of things. And they all say Ahh! I want to imitate this guy. I want to imitate this guy! I want to imitate this guy. I dont want to imitate this guy, I want to imitate somebody else. And that is how mankind degenerates, by trying to find a practical model, to recommend to all people in the organization, whatever the organization is, and that is how the 20th century was created, by the evil Bertrand Russell. CC/Informiguel Carreno Later in the discussion, LaRouche elaborated on this point with regard to the space program: What Im talking about is the fact that mankind is not limited to mankind. That when people are landing on the Moon, such as is going to be done, what are you going to do? Youre going to develop a Moon, but you dont know where the center lies, you dont know where the center is located. So therefore, youre going to rely upon something which has nothing in direct representation to what youre going to do on that Moon. Now, the same thing came up earlier in the development of the whole system, and therefore you dont do it, you dont do it because you have to look for something which is something that you have never defined. And youre going to find a solution, experimentally youre going to find a solution, for something which has never been defined. And thats what the whole Moon program is, for the space program. Its a copy in effect, of exactly what the original space program was, as an experimental program. In other words what youre getting, coming up from the Moon program, implicitly, will be something which has never happened, to any body known to mankind. It will be a different kind of body. And its implicit, because when you get this idea of how youre going to define the pattern of functioning, you dont know! Right, as of now, you dont know what will work. And what they will dolike the earlier founders of the program did, the same thingtheyre going to have to find out something that they didnt know, and bring something that they had not known into play, and to verify that that thing does play. The future of mankind lies with the person, whom the popular opinion rejects. And the reason for his success is hes right. And thats the model of man that we have to develop. This is the new model of man, who has, with some copies from the past as models, the ability to reject popular opinion. And reject it by throwing it in the garbage pail. And then throwing the garbage pail away, itself. The future of mankind lies with a human being who is not so stupid as to copy what is already being done. And that is my slogan, and it has been my slogan for most of my life. Practically all of my life. No, thats where the big problem is in society today, the culture of society. The idea of trying to take a standard model of progress is absolutely nonsense. Its absolutely dangerous. And thats where this organization often makes its most prominent mistakes, by trying to develop and produce a standard model. We have to think more clearly than we have been thinking in some recent times. We have to realize that we are going into what seems to be the unknown, and you have to accept the unknown, accept it on a basis of its justice. But dont try to do something which you can copy from something else. Youve got to find something that other people havent discovered yet. . . . And the key thing I would re-emphasize is, always make sure that you rely on something that you didnt believe before. Thats what makes it work. Our best generals always did that. They never did what popular opinion demanded. If youre practical, youre stupid, thats the general conclusion that comes out of that. LaRouches urgent intervention on the matter of creativity is particularly relevant for China at its present stage of development. As President Xi Jinping is clearly aware, the way forward for China is totally dependent on how quickly it can master the scientific problems facing it today. The future of energy, for instance, is in the long term, totally dependent on how quickly mankind can master the use of thermonuclear fusion power. And the source of that mastery is ultimately dependent on how quickly it can develop and nurture those individuals who will become tomorrows Einsteins or Vernadskys. In that respect, the charge by Lyndon LaRouche, the worlds premier economist, to always make sure that you rely on something that you didnt believe before, can only serve as crucial food for thought for Chinese thinkers who are today grappling with that problem. This article appears in the June 3, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. EDITORIAL War with China by Summer? [PDF version of this article] May 30With Congress out of session until next week, and while Americans take time out to commemorate those who died in military service in past wars, some leading American and leading Chinese officials alike fear that war between the two nations is likely by Summer. The more astute know that if this is allowed to happen, it will quickly become a broader, multilateral nuclear exchange which will be, as a LaRouche PAC video put it, Unsurvivable. The most recent big step towards war was computer-nerd Defense Secretary Ashton Carters long, highly-provocative May 27 commencement address to the U.S. Naval Academy. He told the cadets that he was going to focus his remarks on the Asia-Pacific, because it would define many of their future careers. He singled out the destroyer USS Lassen, which deliberately intruded in Chinese territorial waters last October, and he promised that we will continue to fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows. He accused China of expansive and unprecedented actions in the South China Sea, pressing excessive maritime claims contrary to international law. . . . Whats new and unique to this region is the assertion of claims, dredging, land reclamation, and militarization of features by several claimants but overwhelmingly by China. . . . Chinas cyber-actors have violated the spirit of the Internetnot to mention the lawto perpetrate large-scale intellectual property theft from American companies. Instead of working toward what [they call] win-win cooperation that Beijing publicly says it wants, China sometimes plays by its own rules, undercutting those principles. A model like that is out of step with where the region wants to go, and its counterproductiveits far from a win-win. The result is that Chinas actions could erect a Great Wall of self-isolation, as countries across the regionallies, partners and the unalignedare voicing concerns publicly and privately, at the highest levels, in regional meetings, and global fora. Carter went on to threaten China with superior U.S. weapons systems: the F-35 (which doesnt work), the P-8, cutting-edge stealth destroyers, and numerous others. DoD maintains world-leading capabilities because we have made incomparable investments over decades,. . . It will take decades more for anyone to build the kind of military capability the United States possesses today. This strength is not simply about dollar figuresits also about harnessing those dollars to a tremendous innovative and technological culture that only the United States has, and doing so to develop revolutionary technologies. Carters speech resembled a Hitler-style threatening rant, threatening war, and with about the truth-content of one of Hitlers tirades. The Chinese have responded. Global Times, a newspaper owned by the Communist Party of Chinas Peoples Daily, published an unsigned editorial today which said, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter Friday issued another sharp rebuke of Chinas actions in the South China Sea by warning Beijing that it is on a path to build a great wall of self-isolation. He said the Pentagons best weapons, including stealthy F-35 fighters, P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, and the newest surface warfare ships, will be deployed to the Pacific theater. . . The nature of Sino-U.S. relations will to a large extent determine the state of international relations in the Twenty-first Century. By pointing the finger at China with a bluffing posture, senior U.S. officials are eroding the foundation of peace in the Asia-Pacific. On the contrary, China has been stressing resolving disputes peacefully. Maintaining peace in the South China Sea is the common wish of all regional stakeholders. . . . Carters words have been the most threatening China has heard since the end of the Cold War. They confirm some Chinese peoples worries about the worst-case scenario in the Sino-U.S. relationship, in which Washington may translate its intention to counter China into real actions. The Pentagon may be willing to see confrontation between China and the United States. But the United States cannot overawe China by wielding a military stick. The Peoples Liberation Army can offset the U.S. advantage of equipment in the South China Sea with its size and proximity, and we are confident about countering the threat from the United States. Although a military contention will be harmful to China, we cannot retreat in the face of U.S. coercion. China must accelerate its pace to build modern defense capabilities. It should let the United States know that if it launches military attacks targeting China in the South China Sea, the United States will suffer unbearable consequences. China must enhance its ability to deter the United States and increase the U.S. strategic risks of military threat against China. [emphasis added] Now you too have joined the number of those who know this, and you have taken on, willy-nilly, the inescapable responsibility which accompanies that knowledge. Get it out everywhere for a startbut thats only the beginning. Ask yourself what Lyndon LaRouche would do. The end of the story is this: Colin Firth and Jude Law up on the big screen, in 1930s grays, arguing about words on a page. The beginning was four decades ago, when A. Scott Berg was a student at Princeton wanting to write about literary editor Maxwell Perkins (or go back 45 years earlier, to Perkins heyday). The middle the important part of the story, just coming to fruition is the 15-year collaboration between Berg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, and screenwriter John Logan, who has been nominated for three Oscars, penned two James Bond films, and authored the Tony award-winning play Red. Their work together and longtime friendship bears no small resemblance to that of the subjects of their film Genius, which opens June 10. Firth plays Perkins, an editor at Scribners who shepherded the writing and careers of 20th century greats F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe. Although the others are legendary now, Law stars as Wolfe, the one least remembered by todays readers. A bestselling author during the Depression, Wolfe was once considered an American Dostoevsky or Dickens, a novelist whose ambition and scope meant to embody a whole nation. He was also famously undisciplined, turning in manuscripts in overflowing crates; his books came into being only with his editors perceptive eye, and steady, patient hand. Advertisement The working relationship of the two men is at the center of the film directed by Michael Grandage, which includes Laura Linney as Perkins wife and Nicole Kidman as Aline Bernstein, a married woman having an affair with Wolfe. Literary fans will appreciate brief appearances by a down-on-his luck Fitzgerald (Guy Pearce) and blustery Hemingway (Dominic West). I sat down with Logan and Berg to learn about Wolfe, Perkins, their process and Genius. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Berg: The book Max Perkins: Editor of Genius was published in 1978, and almost from the beginning, there had been movie interest. Over the years, it has been optioned, attempted; actors have associated themselves with it; the odd director has come and gone, and then I met John. Logan: I read the book in the mid-80s, and I thought it was amazing. I was a starving playwright in Chicago when I met Scott. There are a hundred stories you could tell from Scotts book, but I immediately saw a dramatic potential with those two characters, Tom and Max. It was a very personal story about fathers and sons and mentors and proteges, and what it is to learn a craft. I was learning my craft as a playwright, so it struck me very deeply. But I thought it should be a movie. I was just getting into movies, and I was very eager to meet Scott, and indeed have been thick friends since our first meeting. Eventually, and I dont remember even how I said it to you, I talked about wanting to buy it. Berg: He said, I have an idea I dont want to option your book; I want to buy it. Because if I option the book, were going to go to a studio, therell be studio executives telling us what it should be. Ill be happy to take notes from you, but I would like ownership of this material to make a film out of it. Logan: I had a very simple story I felt was important to tell and protect. It was very delicate in a way. Delicacy, as you know, doesnt always survive the cut and thrust of moviemaking. And from a business point of view, I just felt it was going to be a difficult trick, and was going to take time. The only way to do that with leisure and confidence was to own the material flat out. But it was a wooing! And he asked the fateful question, Have you read any Thomas Wolfe? To which I had to honestly reply, no. The discussion stopped for an entire summer where I read all of the Thomas Wolfe novels. Berg: From the moment it became his and its his property from the moment that happened, I said, read the book one more time, and throw it away. Youre the screenwriter. Write the screenplay. Logan: I knew, even as a very neophyte screenwriter the only screenplay Id done at that point was Any Given Sunday I knew it was the worlds worst pitch. Berg: Yeah! Thats true. [laughs] Logan: To walk into any studio and say, Ive got a great movie for you. Im thinking a summer opening; and its about a book editor in 1930. Its about editing books. And they look at you with that glazed look and say get out. Berg: And wait! He edits Thomas Wolfe. Oh, who? Bonfire? [Bonfire of the Vanities was written by the similarly named author of a later generation, Tom Wolfe.] Logan: No, the one you havent heard of. Berg: The one your father might have read. When Thomas Wolfe was published Look Homeward Angel in 1929, Of Time and the River in 1935 people reviewed him and talked about him as if he were Dostoevsky. I mean, this was The Great American Novelist. Logan: The tragedy is, I think, Thomas Wolfe is forgotten and I think its because hes not taught. Hes fallen off the curriculum. Berg: Thats correct. Logan: Scott once said to me, Read the first five pages of Look Homeward, Angel. If you like it, keep reading, because thats what youre going to get for thousands of pages. If you dont like it, stop now. Berg: The important thing was not just getting through Thomas Wolfe, which was tough, but that Thomas Wolfe had an impact on him. He understood Wolfe, he felt Wolfe. I knew that was going to translate into the movie. The conversation John and I were having so often paralleled what ended up in the movie, what was going on between Max and Tom. Logan: Every single draft of the screenplay we would take apart. I would live in dread, of the dinners wed have. Id either come here to the Tower Bar or to Orso and hed have the script with his notes in it, and we would go through it page by page, sometimes sentence by sentence. And it was exciting, it was thrilling, it was devastating. Because I was cocksure Id just signed to write Gladiator. I was pretty good, you know? Ive written 14 plays. Ive been on the West End in London. But Scott was relentless and brutal and correct. We fought joyously about some things and we fought seriously about some things. It was very painful at times, I think, for me. Berg: Yeah, for me too. Logan: But weve come through it just so proud of the work that weve both done. And any -- honestly, from my heart, and I would say this even if Scott werent here, perhaps more easily if he werent here, Genius owes itself to Scott in two ways. First of all, obviously, he wrote the book. And the screenplay of which I am so inordinately proud would never have come to be the thing it is without Scotts constant, steady and relentless work with me. Berg: Gosh, let the record show, the biographer is blushing. And thank you, that was really nice to hear. To me the most interesting thing that came out of what John was just saying is, that we were having the same fights Max and Tom were, and they were not personal; they were about the words. It was about making the work better. Berg and Logan, who also produced the film, spent 15 years working on Genius. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times ) Logan: Talking to Michael Grandage about how the heck do we shoot this movie, how do we present this physically, we talked about words on pages, the tactile feel of typewriter keys and actual words and red pencils. Scott said to me once, theres nothing more boring than watching a writer write unless that writer is Thomas Wolfe, writing on top of his fridge, 25 words a page, which he did, then flung it to the floor behind him. Berg: I dont think theres ever been a more visual writer. Its action painting. Logan: Hes the Pollock of writers. Berg: He didnt even reread them! Put them in a crate, bring in the crate. Logan: For a writer reading that this is the best story. Its unbelievable, its funny, its entertaining, its insane what those two men went through. Berg: They used to refer to whatever manuscript it was usually Of Time and the River as Moby-Dick. I mean not the book but the whale! [laughter] They were working on this whale. How do you capture this thing? How do you deal with this beast? Logan: I see Thomas Wolfe as one of those great flamboyant Shakespearean characters that I love to pieces. Ive never Im just not drawn to small people, small characters. To have a character that large is like red meat to me. In a way I think Max Perkins is just as large, because his eccentricities were so marked and so unique. A man of regular habits to an insane degree, who always wore the hat [the same hat, even indoors] and took the same train every single day, a methodical man who runs against a tempest, a whirlwind of a human being. I think Thomas Wolfe was savage. Its like Cocteau about Piaf: the sacred monster. I think he was a sacred monster. Berg: John immediately got who Thomas Wolfe was. And if you get Wolfe, then it says everything about your character and your sense of drama and romance. Beyond that, I knew John had the chops to cover these people. These are really rich characters, and theyre deep. Theyre wildly articulate, each of them in a very different way. And I think what John jumped on was, this is an immediately dramatic situation between Max Perkins, the laconic Yankee, introverted, and Thomas Wolfe, this loudmouth drunken extrovert from the South well, you put those two people at a table, they cant agree on anything. Logan: We always talked about it like a love story, like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. When Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers meet, shes hard-bitten and hes a sleek aristocrat, or vice versa, and through that magic comes an amazing dance. And thats what Max Perkins and Thomas Wolfe were, and thats the way we always talked about it, as a dance or a love story. And boy did we talk about it. Berg: We did we did. They shared this love of books, literature, of words. Logan: You know what it is really arduous to make art. It is work. It doesnt magically happen. Those writers who say, oh you know I wait and inspiration strikes, and magically a perfect sonnet will come. Im like, youre lying. Thats not how Wordsworth wrote, thats not how Keats wrote, thats not how anyone worked. Genius is about people actually making art; the movie manages, I think, to make it visceral, the nuts and bolts of making a book. And it is hard. When Scott talks about the parallel, I think its very accurate. Because it was hard to make the screenplay, and it was hard to make the movie, and it was hard to make Look Homeward, Angel. Berg: Thats ultimately what the movie is about; is the high price people pay in creating a work of art. It doesnt matter if its a book, a painting, whatever. You see one marriage virtually fall apart; you see another relationship actually come apart, just because two guys want to make a book together. Logan: And you see how the incendiary act of creating that book even burned their relationship out. Berg: There is a price behind every movie, every book. There are people who actually worked on this. John, I think, succeeded in the screenplay in a couple of areas especially. But one of which, and this I remember talking about at dinner, I remember, when I said throw away the book, I said, this has got to work if we dont know their names. Forget that their names are Thomas Wolfe, Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway forget that. Does the inherent drama of these stories still play? And if thats the case, then it still works dramatically. Logan: Im always drawn to heartbreak and to tragedy. And you look at the relationship between them where they invested so deeply in one another, like a proper love story, but the very thing that made their lives so wonderful, the work they did together, is the thing that finally tore them apart. And the savagery that Thomas Wolfe enacted upon Perkins is heartbreaking. The fact that Thomas Wolfe in the final stroke of his life, practically the final pencil stroke of his life, tried to atone for the pain he had caused, I thought was just appealed to every dramatist bone in me. There was no question in my mind that that was the tragic story, the great story. Berg: I dont think I flinched once at something that got compromised. Was Thomas Wolfe in fact much taller than Jude Law? Yes, he was. But as John argued, whats the essence of Thomas Wolfe? Was it just that he was a tall guy? Or was it that there was this beast inside and that there was this wild man, and heres poor Max Perkins who has to tame the beast? Thats the essence of it. And Colin Firth Colin Firth is somebody I had fantasized about playing this part for years; he just walked out of the book. He is Max Perkins in so many ways to me. The way he looks, the way he talks, the way he acts. Logan: Whats so amazing when you read Perkins letters the wit and kindness and fun they had. They fought they could get in titanic fights but they would laugh and theyd have martinis, too many martinis. Berg: They loved each other. Logan: They loved each other. They enjoyed the making of the book. Berg: They really did. Logan: Look Homeward, Angel was a huge hit. But even if it hadnt been, they would have loved every its like Scott and I. I love every second weve spent working on this movie. Whether people hate it or love it, whether it opens in a day and then disappears, I will cherish the dinners we had, and the time of making something earnestly and with heart and with humor that we care about. Kellogg is Book Editor of the L.A. Times. John Elzie Parnell was a really super father-in-law and I miss him almost as much as my own father. He was left a widower for more years than he deserved, but that is how life works sometimes. He was always very even-tempered, and I never personally saw him angry. He was a family man from infancy forward, having virtually never known his mother. He was raised in the warm cocoon of loving family members, "adopted", by an older sister, Jewell, who raised him in the family home. His father re-married and the new wife also accepted Johnie as though he were her own son. "Johnie" (as they spelled it in his family) had several older siblings besides Jewell, and all became successful contributors to their own respective worlds. They had a strong church-centered up-bringing that kept them on the "straight and narrow" path... But times in Alabama and the entire U.S. were not the best, as it was the Depression era. Even so, Johnie was "upwardly moblle", doing well in school with his goal set on the University of Alabama, from which he received a degree in engineering. He made many friends while at Tuscaloosa, some of whom became friends for life. After Graduation he soon married Elizabeth Heacock of Talladega who came from an old family which traced back to Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Her uncle, Dr. Joe Heacock, was a long-time, and well-known, physician in Birmingham, living to be 104 years of age or thereabouts. Johnie now had a new wife and an engineering degree - but no local jobs were open for the family-loving Johnie. He was therefore practically forced to take a job in eastern North Carolina, "on the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp" - and that is where my wife, Patricia (Pat) and twin brother, Jerry, were born. Their first child, John Jr., had been born at Anniston, before leaving Alabama for North Carolina. Johnie fell in love with the eastern part of that state, enjoying his job which involved making frequent boat trips onto Albemarle Sound to record depth-readings. Here he remained for several years. But it was now war-time and there was a better-paying government job open in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to which place he moved his family. Oak Ridge was, of course, one of several places in the country where the first atomic bomb was cobbled together. Secrecy was extremely tight, and the workers had zero knowledge of what they were actually working on, or how their work fit into an overall project. I am certain that Johnie did his job well, while not caring for the pervasive aura of extreme secrecy. He was yearning to be closer to his roots in Alabama all the while and kept one ear open for any "lead" that would get him closer to home. Work at Oak Ridge concluded when the first atomic bomb was dropped in 1945 and Johnie was out of work. He applied to a large paper mill at Crossett, Arkansas, where the family moved again - this time with two new twin boys in tow - Ronald and Donald. The years spent at Crossett were probably the happiest to date for the Parnell family. His family was complete now, they thought - except that the youngest child, a daughter, Dana, had not yet arrived. (Dana was born years later in Chattanooga but heard so much talk about the family's time in Crossett that she actually believed as a child that she had been there with them!) I have personally gotten to visit each place that the Parnell family lived, and found Crossett to have a definite charm to it - despite its being a"company town". Crossett Paper Company was later acquired by Georgia-Pacific Corporation. My wife still has one good friend from her Crossett days , but now in California, who remains in touch. Johnie got wind of a new DuPont plant opening in Chattanooga, however, and put in his application. A job in Chattanooga would bring him closer yet to his Alabama family. He was still young enough that he could work a full retirement if he moved soon again. So in 1952 he was accepted here at DuPont in Chattanooga. Due to school considerations he came alone to Chattanooga, finding a large house on Redding Road in Red Bank; it could accommodate the entire household, and was near both schools and public transportation. He wrote back to Crossett in glowing terms about it, as It could not have suited better. When both Elizabeth and Johnie died - and all the children had gone - two gentlemen purchased the property and made a "show place" out of it. Johnie and Elizabeth enjoyed many years of family ties with their Alabama kin: the brothers and sisters who had nurtured Johnie along as a half-orphan, starting him on the successful path he followed throughout life. The dear sister who considered him her special charge - my wife's Aunt Jewell - never ceased to love him and look over him. It is true that she - already in her nineties - refused to die until Johnie had gone first. Aunt Jewell P. Lee was a long-time dedicated and much-loved teacher at the Alabama School for the Deaf and Blind at Talladega. Her husband died very young and she never re-married to leave children. Johnie had been her one and only "little boy". Besides Johnie's actual brothers and sisters he also had half-brothers and sisters. All were equal in importance to him, and he made no distinctions among them. His job at DuPont included daily rounds throughout the entire plant so that he came to know a great many of his co-workers by name - and through his church it was the same. He could rarely leave home without greeting or being greeted by friends and acquaintances. One special friend from DuPont who shared his interest in amateur photography was Zygmunt ("Zig") Zimny. Mr. Zimny played a major role of assistance in helping Johnie move about in later life. John Parnell, Sr., was a generous man who never forgot birthdays, Valentines, Easters, etc, and sent more greeting cards and small gifts for all occasions than any man I have ever known. He had beautiful calligraphic handwriting and a kind word for everyone. He also had a keen interest in family history, finding Chattanooga an excellent place in which to advance those researches. Where would I be today if he had not brought his family, including my future wife, Pat Parnell, to Chattanooga? (Chester Martin is a native Chattanoogan who is a talented painter as well as local historian. He and his wife, Pat, live in Brainerd. Mr. Martin can be reached at cymppm@comcast.net ) The bill of particulars against Linda Katehi, the suspended chancellor of UC Davis, certainly is eye-opening. As set forth in a letter from University of California President Janet Napolitano, Katehis offenses include nepotism, the spending of $175,000 to scrub from the Internet references to the 2011 pepper-spraying of student protesters by a campus cop and the misuse of student fee revenues as alleged by an unidentified whistle-blower. But what should have disturbed Napolitano more was something that didnt appear on her list at all: Katehis membership on the boards of two businesses whose corporate interests arguably conflict with those of her university. Advertisement These are DeVry Education Group, a chain of for-profit schools that not only functions as a competitor to public higher education but is under federal investigation on allegations of deceptive advertising about job and income prospects for its graduates; and John Wiley & Sons, a textbook publisher. The prestige of the private sector now requires imitation by the public sector. Its almost as if were intimidated. UC Santa Barbara literature professor Christopher Newfield After the disclosures of the board memberships caused an uproar and before she was suspended by Napolitano, Katehi resigned from the DeVry board and said she would donate to charity $200,000 in Wiley stock she had received as a director. Corporate board memberships by UC administrators have been a sensitive topic ever since 2006, when Marye Anne Fox, then the chancellor of UC San Diego, was reported to be holding down seven paid directorships or committee seats. Her defense was that the universitys profile is enhanced by board service by top administrators. The UC Regents later restricted administrators to three for-profit board seats and the issue went away until now. But Katehis activities point to a disturbing trend in higher education, especially among public institutions such as UC: Universities are getting cozier with businesses and industrialists, and less discerning about the pitfalls of these relationships, which include accepting donations with strings attached. Whats worse is that universities are adopting the corporate model of profit and loss as though theyre businesses themselves. Students already are losing out. Theyre not only saddled with an increasing share of the direct costs of their education, but are offered a narrower curriculum as universities cut back on supposedly unprofitable humanities and social science courses in favor of science, engineering and technology programs expected to attract profitable grants and offer the prospects of great riches from patentable inventions. In one of the most extreme examples, the State University of New York at Albany moved in 2010 to ax its French, Italian, Russian and classics programs. That left the institution looking like a glorified vocational school for engineers and research scientists. But the issues swirling around Katehi, a Greek-born engineer, have exposed the same rift within UC Davis, where members of the science and engineering faculties defend her as an effective supporter of diversity in science and technical education, and members of the humanities faculty tend to see her as an avatar of the privatization of the public university, as three dozen humanities faculty members put it in a letter to the Davis Enterprise newspaper. These developments, however, are based on fundamental misconceptions of the purpose and the economics of higher education. For most of the post-World War II period, it was well understood that universities, whether public or private, operated under a model distinct from business. That began to shift in the 1980s and 1990s as American culture became fixated on the virtues of private enterprise, says Christopher Newfield, a literature professor at UC Santa Barbara and a leading critic of the corporatization of academia. Until then, the private sector wasnt the model for the public sector, Newfield told me. But the prestige of the private sector now requires imitation by the public sector. Its almost as if were intimidated. Adding to the pressure is a massive defunding of public higher education by state governments, says Hank Reichman, an emeritus professor of history at Cal State East Bay who writes frequently for the blog of the American Association of University Professors. In California, per student spending from the states general fund has fallen since 1980 by 43% at the California State University system and 54.7% at UC. Administrators scurrying to replace these lost resources have turned to what appear to be promising sources scientific research grants and patent royalties. But the idea that these programs are the key to sustainable budgets is mythical. At some institutions, patent income looks like a big number, but its seldom more than a tiny fraction of total needs. UC patent royalty and fee income averaged about $104.5 million annually from fiscal 2011 through 2014; it soared to $177.2 million in fiscal 2015 thanks largely to the licensing of a single prostate cancer drug, Xtandi, developed at UCLA. But $43.4 million of that sum was distributed to the inventors; the net income flowing to UC amounted to a paltry one-half of 1% of the systems total operating budget of $27 billion. Science and engineering programs are heavily funded by outside grants, but the traditional patrons government and industry have been stepping away from the plate. A 2014 survey by the Council on Governmental Relations, an association of research universities, found that federal spending on university R&D had fallen to 59.5% of the total in 2012, the lowest share since 1956, before the Soviet Unions Sputnik launch spurred a massive increase in U.S. scientific research. Contributions from state and local governments and industry had fallen by roughly two-thirds. The burden of costs in higher education has been shifting to students: At UC, tuition and fees now cover 46.3% of the budget, according to the California Budget Project, up from 18.9% in 1998. These trends have pushed universities into questionable deals with donors. Last year, UC Irvine accepted the first installment of a $6-million gift from the Dharma Civilization Foundation for four endowed chairs in Hindu studies, before faculty members raised an alarm about the political agenda of the foundation. UCI ultimately rejected the entire donation. Arizona State in 2014 specified that applicants for a post at its new Center for Political Thought and Leadership display a focus on the relations between free-market institutions and political liberty in modern history, which came suspiciously close to the mindset of the Koch family, which had contributed $1.3 million in seed money for the center. Whats really at stake in the corporatization of academia is the traditional role the university as a repository of culture and training ground for open inquiry. The obvious risk, says Michael Meranze, a professor of history at UCLA who shares a blog on academic issues with Newfield, is that academic research gets done to advance the interests of outside corporations, rather than guided by the logic of the universitys mission. MORE FROM MICHAEL HILTZIK Obamas call for expanding Social Security could be a game-changer Heres why its so difficult to solve soaring drug prices Forbes cuts estimated wealth of billionaire Theranos founder to $0 Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com. Return to Michael Hiltziks blog. The congregation of Middle Valley Church of God will host a Pastor and Family Appreciation Day on Sunday at 10:30 a.m. The church will honor the ministry of Pastor Mitch McClure and his family. McClure has served the congregation and community since September of 1997 in a variety of ways, establishing multiple community ministries. The special speaker for the Pastor and Family Appreciation Day is J. David Stephens, assistant international overseer of the Church of God. A meal will follow the service in the church Family Life Center. All are invited to participate in this special event to honor Pastor McClure and his family. Middle Valley Church of God is at 1703 Thrasher Pike in Hixson. Sometimes, I just come here and stare at all the pretty boys, says Emilia Clarke. Shes standing in the middle of Gjusta, a bakery-slash-deli-slash-juice-bar in Venice that may also secretly serve as the national headquarters for Jesus impersonators. OK, truth be told, this is, like, a poser-y kind of place to go, I think, she says, looking around at all the well-coiffed beards and Birkenstocks. Everyones pretty, and everyones looking at each other, but the food is so good that I just cannot help it. Everyone is looking at each other, and especially at Clarke, even though theyre trying not to make it obvious. She insists that without the blond wig she wears as Daenerys Targaryen/Khaleesi/the Mother of Dragons on Game of Thrones, fans barely recognize her. But as she waits by the counter for a salad made of four zillion types of lettuce, it seems most of the patrons know who she is. Advertisement Maybe its all the ads that have been running on television lately for her new film, Me Before You, which is out this weekend. In the movie, based on Jojo Moyes bestselling novel, the actress plays Louisa Clark, a small-town girl in desperate search of a job to help support her working-class family. The only gig she can find is one no one wants: working as a caretaker for a wealthy young man who was recently paralyzed after being hit by a car. Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin in a scene from Me Before You. (Alex Bailey/Warner Bros. Entertainment via AP ) Though Louisa has an, uh, eccentric wardrobe -- shes obsessed with floral-patterned high heels and bumble-bee-striped tights -- she looks a lot more like Clarke than Daenerys does. For one, the character is a brunet, as the 29-year-old is off-screen. And she certainly would never stand stark naked in front of a crowd of onlookers as a building burned to the ground behind her. Indeed, the filmmakers initially had trouble envisioning Clarke as anyone other than the fearless queen she plays on Game of Thrones. Shed only appeared in one major studio release prior to Me Before You: Terminator Genisys, last years reboot of the Arnold Schwarzenegger franchise, in which she starred as Sarah Connor. Frankly, I was a little bit skeptical, admits Moyes, who helped director Thea Sharrock sift through more than 300 actresses for the part. Like, the Mother of Dragons? How is that gonna work? But during her audition, Clarke took off her coat and accidentally knocked over a bottle of water -- behavior that seemed totally in line with the clumsy Louisa. She got down on all fours and started apologizing profusely, embodying Louisas klutzy nature, recalls Sharrock. Its amazing that shes had the part of Game of Thrones for so long, but I think fans of the show are going to be really surprised by her range in this movie. It feels like when people first saw Pretty Woman, when Julia Roberts just popped and came to life and you went, God, where did she come from? The movie was a personally transformative experience for Clarke too. Unlike Thrones, which is filmed abroad in remote locations like Malta and Croatia, Me Before You was shot mostly in England. She was able to go home every night to her apartment in Hampstead. (She only recently purchased a place here in Venice, where she has been spending about her half of her time when she isnt working.) But she also identified with Louisa in a way she never has with her more iconic character. I just felt so much that someone had written me down -- that a part of myself was written in a book, she says. She wants to be happy. Shes got this innocence that I -- after six ... years in this industry -- Ive lost. What Ive managed to go through within this industry has, I think, given me a maturity at a speed which I wouldnt have normally had. I was forced to grow up and take responsibility for myself, because whatever mistakes you make? You cant be putting nothing on no one. You have to be cool with the choices youre making. If Hollywood has jaded Clarke, she does a good job of hiding it. When she arrives at Gjusta -- in heels, mind you, even though she walked from her house -- you can almost imagine Taylor Swifts Welcome to New York playing in the background. Youd have to substitute Venice for New York, of course, but still -- she appears to have the boundless energy and optimism of someone finding herself as an adult for the first time. She knows a few people at the cafe -- the barista, one of the many dudes who looks like Jesus -- and already seems like a local. It just seems like the sea breeze and the attitude here blows away the haze of anxiety that looms over L.A., she says, straddling a bench and cupping some coffee with an intricate foam design. Even out here by the ocean, though, shes not entirely immune to industry pressure. Shes struggled, for instance, to feel comfortable with her body -- particularly with a role on Thrones that requires her to show it off so frequently. As a teenager, sometimes she worried about her weight so much that she wouldnt go out with her friends for fear they might call her fat. I feel like so many women in this business dont speak truthfully about what they put in their body, says Clarke. She puts on a Valley Girl affect: Theyre, like, I eat pizza all the time and I dont work out! Its, like, no. Youre a twig. Youve got a[n] ... eating disorder and youre not talking about it. And thats annoying. For me, she continues, I got to a point where I was, like, wait a second. I, Emilia, care more about the size of someones brain than the size of their ass. So why should I care if someone is looking at me and judging the size of my bum over my brain? If you work hard enough and youre not a [jerk], people will hire you for your talent over the fact that youre, like, super skinny. Still, Clarke acknowledges shes still learning how to speak up for herself in the business world. On set, she says, its not her tendency to demand a latte -- instead, shes the one profusely thanking the production assistant for retrieving her drink. Im not saying this, like, Arent I brilliant? she insists. Because there are moments when you need to step up and be, like, Embrace your reality, dude. You got to this place; now you need to start acting like it or people will walk all over you. Shes also still trying to work out how to navigate the jump from television to film. Sometimes, she frets to her agent that shes worried she doesnt have a strategic game plan -- that it seems like were kind of just going with it. Ultimately, however, shes been advised to continue choosing roles on gut instinct. Thats what I did with Terminator, she says. I was, like, You are offering me a part playing Sarah Connor? Who the [hell] turns that down? And everyones, like, Um, everyone would turn that down because its too much pressure. And Im, like, its my innocence and optimism again! There I go, just thinking I can do it all! As for Me Before You, Clarke believes she gravitated toward the project because deep down shes a hopeless romantic. As much as I would like to hide it, she says. I mean, what am I hiding it under? Absolutely nothing! I think I hide it and everyones, like, No, Emilia, its pretty obvious. By now, youve probably figured out that Louisa falls for the guy shes taking care of, who is played by The Hunger Games Sam Claflin. Theres just one problem: Before he meets Louisa, Claflins character has decided that in six months time he plans to take his own life rather than suffer through it. Like many readers of Moyes novel, Clarke was initially perplexed as to how a man could still consider killing himself when hes fallen so deeply in love. She understands the desire to believe that true love conquers all. Recently, she was watching last years live-action adaptation of Cinderella, and she started thinking about how Disney screws us over. Weve been brought up with these fairy stories and Disney being, like, happily ever after, so we look for that magic when were adults, she says. We look for it in yoga or, If I hold this crystal, its going to make me feel better. We do that even in this modern day and age, where Netflix and chill is the only choice. Pause: Clarke has Netflixed and chilled? Oh, honey, she says, shaking her head. I cant get on no Internet [dating] site! Im not going to be, like, Daenerys is ready! Swipe right, people! Everything that Im doing right now is because I feel like doing it. Its pretty dope. I think that when you sit there waiting for someone or something, youll wake up and be, like, Oh, I didnt live a life. If you just get out there and say yes to stuff, then even if you dont get a boyfriend, youll get a friend or a great meal. Or bankloads of beards for your brain. amy.kaufman@latimes.com Follow me on Twitter @AmyKinLA Teletubbies (Nick Jr., weekdays). The Teletubbies, Po, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Tinky Winky, are back or perhaps its we who are back. Theyve doubtless been busy in Teletubbyland the whole time, eating toast and Tubby custard, going outside and going inside, not growing an inch or increasing their vocabulary a whit since 2001, when the original series went out of production after four years and 365 episodes. The show, which hails from the U.K., was revived there last year the brand is now controlled by the Canadian DHX Media, which also owns Yo Gabba Gabba!, but is still produced out of England and has now reached the States. PBS was its previous domestic port of call; now it comes in by way of Nick Jr. (Older episodes will air on Nicks video subscription service, Noggin.) Like all the best childrens television, it does not require the company of a child for you to watch it without shame. (It always had an unironic adult following.) For any somehow unfamiliar with this global phenomenon, the Teletubbies are four pear-shaped toddler-creatures, differing slightly in size and greatly in color, each with a screen built into its stomach and an individually shaped antennae coming from its head: As their name suggests, they are not only on television, but part television. (Because this is 2016, the screens are now touch screens.) They live in a green world where it is usually time to play, unless it is time to eat. Advertisement To the extent that Dipsy and Tinky Winky are played by men and Po and La La by women, they have gender, which is not particularly important or even apparent, but which did lead to a brief kerfuffle back in the 20th century when Tinky Winky, who carries a handbag, sometimes wears a tutu and is purple, was accused of advancing a Homosexual Agenda; the late American evangelist Jerry Falwell was especially disturbed by that possibility. (Tinky Winky is simply a sweet, technological baby with a magic bag, said the BBC, clarifying.) Subsequently, of course, he became a gay icon. What made the show radical in its time, besides its defining a new target market the pre-pre-school set, a demographic whose age was still measured in months was its simplicity, its slowness, stillness, its seeming lack of content, its numinous earthiness and original otherworldiness. With its baby-faced sun looking down upon Teletubbyland; the periscope-shaped, sprinkler-headed voice trumpets that wake the Teletubbies and send them to bed and in between regulate their day (Jim Broadbent is one of the voices in the new version); its real rabbits; its twice-played video interludes (repeated to cries of Again! Again!) and use of repetition, it is a childrens show as Samuel Beckett might have written it, in a good mood. Eh-oh, Vladimir! Eh-oh, Estragon! Although it is dangerous to mess with perfection, reviving the series for a high-definition, widescreen world does makes sense, and it is substantially the same Teletubbies as before. The environment and action are marginally noisier the giggling hardly stops, an unfortunate tic of contemporary young-childrens programming. (It must test well.) There have been some minor cosmetic upgrades: The Tubbies dome home, which, then as now, feels like an unattributed work by Bruce Goff, has been brightened (its palette is pure 1970s the Banana Splits would feel right at home) and the Noo-noo, a sort of sentient vacuum cleaner, has been turned from blue to orange. There are some new gadgets a Tubby Phone (voiced by Jane Horrocks), and the Tubby Custard Ride, a sort of train with twirly bits. They have gotten some new furniture. This will matter to old viewers, of course, more than new ones. Sadly the Teletubbies no longer gambol in the actual outdoors, having traded the variable light and often cloudy skies of Warwickshire for the reliable brightness of a digital landscape. This is nothing the barely-verbal-yet set will be bothered by, though Im willing to believe, or hope, that on some pre-self-conscious level they can tell the difference. I understand the practical and even the aesthetic advantages of computer graphics and thank goodness the Teletubbies themselves have not been converted to CGI -- but why replace the actual world with the virtual one, whats real with what only seems to be? Knowing the difference, and caring about it, may pay some benefits down the line, when robots get the vote and declare nature obsolete. I am a little sad, too, that (unless I missed it) Po no longer speaks any Cantonese and that the rabbits seem to have retreated into the opening credits. But Tinky Winky still carries a handbag, haters, and is still played by a man in a big purple suit. So were good. robert.lloyd@latimes.com On Twitter @LATimesTVLloyd The stream of gleaming, customized hot rods making their way through Hollywood on Wednesday night made for quite a sight to commemorate the opening of this years L.A. Film Festival. Though the main hub for this years festival will be a venue in Culver City, the opening night event was held in Hollywood, with those cars cruising by the Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard to celebrate the film Lowriders, which is set amid the car culture and street art scenes of Los Angeles. The spirit of the evening was one of inclusion, warmth and optimism. This year the festival has increased its efforts to diversify its programming: Of 42 world premieres, 43% of the films are directed by women and 38% by people of color. Before Lowriders, Josh Welsh, president of Film Independent, who produced the festival, introduced Los Angeles City Council member Mitch OFarrell, who represents the 13th district. Advertisement The industry belongs here. This is home for films and television shows and commercials, said OFarrell, noting efforts to bring both productions and events like LAFF back to Hollywood. OFarrell, in turn, brought out festival director Stephanie Allain. Tonight is really special, said Allain. We saw this film. We got so excited to bring it here. Its so Los Angeles, its so diverse, its so culturally rich. Allain then introduced the films producers Brian Grazer and Jason Blum. Grazer, an Academy Award winner for A Beautiful Mind, said that Lowriders was personal to him and that he felt the initial impulse for it while he was making the Eminem film 8 Mile, which brought up memories of Grazers upbringing in the San Fernando Valley and the car club culture he saw around him at Chatsworth High School. Blum, best known for low-budget horror films such as the Purge or Insidious franchises but also an Oscar nominee for Whiplash, brought up the films Peruvian-born director Ricardo de Montreuil, whose movie I love, but whose last name I still cant pronounce. So, Ricardo, you can take it from here. De Montreuil introduced some of the cast members in the audience, including Eva Longoria, Melissa Benoist, Gabriel Chavarria, Theo Rossi, Tony Revolori and Yvette Monreal. We really tried to capture the low-rider culture, and Im very happy and proud to have the community support us, De Montreuil. Were excited to finally show our film to you guys. Though told with a modern visual style and contemporary soundtrack, the films story played like something of a throwback melodrama, with its story of a father and sons in conflict and a tension between tradition and independence. (The screenplay is credited to Cheo Hodari Coker and Elgin James.) In the film, a young L.A. street artist named Danny (Chavarria) is helping his father (Demian Bichir) prepare for a low-rider car contest when the arrival of his older brother (Rossi), fresh out of prison, brings old conflicts back to the fore. Benoist, currently known as TVs Supergirl, plays the storys romantic interest, a young photographer in punkish plaid and fishnets who wants to pull Danny into a more conventional art-world milieu. Longoria plays the current partner of Bichirs character, bringing in the contemporary nuances of multigenerational blended families. Though Bichir was not at Wednesday nights opening, the L.A. Film Fest has previously been a good-luck charm for the actor. The film A Better Life, for which Bichir would be nominated for an Oscar for lead actor, premiered at the festival in 2011. A party after the screening was held just a few blocks away at the restaurant Beso, owned by Longoria. The festival will wrap with its closing night screening in Culver City on June 9 with the local premiere of Jonas Cuarons Desierto. Mark.Olsen@latimes.com Follow on Twitter: @IndieFocus The Tennessee Department of Agricultures Pick Tennessee mobile app now offers followers an easy way to feed their love of local foods. Users can search for restaurants committed to serving ingredients sourced from the area, and access GPS mapping to the establishments. "This latest mobile app option is a result of the new Pick Tennessee Farm and Restaurant Alliance. Buyers for restaurants often find it difficult to increase local food options on menus. The Farm and Restaurant Alliance is connecting chefs with farmers, increasing choices for customers who want to know that what went into their meal came from nearby. Meeting that demand will also build farm incomes and support the states flourishing local foods movement," officials said. Tennessee chefs and restaurateurs who pioneered the states prominence in authentic regional cuisine are enthusiastic proponents. Chef Tandy Wilson of Nashvilles City House used produce from one of his favorite Middle Tennessee suppliers, Delvin Farms, to cook for about 150 guests at a Pick Tennessee farm-to-table dinner in 2014. Chef Wilson was recently named the 2016 James Beard Best Chef in the Southeast. National publication Travel + Leisure Magazine has recognized 212 Market Restaurant in Chattanooga as the best farm-to-table restaurant in Tennessee for 2016. The restaurants chef, Susan Moses, was on the advisory board to form the alliance. During development of the alliance, farmer-to-chef workshops were held in several cities across the state. Area farmers and food service professionals came together to meet, hear about each sectors issues and challenges, and learn to do successful business together. Chefs and farmers who participated took educational materials and workbooks back to kitchens and farms. Farmers and chefs can go to www.PickTnProducts.org and click on About Us to apply for membership in the alliance. For a list of member restaurants, download the Pick Tennessee mobile app or visit www.PickTnProducts.org. A Minnesota woman who was killed by UCLA gunman Mainak Sarkar was studying to become a doctor before her life was cut short much too soon by her estranged husband, according to the victims sister. On Thursday evening, Sarkars former sister-in-law wrote on Facebook that she was in a state of shock, following the discovery of her sisters body just hours earlier in Brooklyn Park, Minn. My sister, Ashley Hasti, was the smartest, coolest and funniest person I knew, wrote sister Alex Hasti. She could do anything she dreamed of, whether it was studying abroad in four different countries, acting in school plays, trying stand up comedy improv, and becoming a doctor. Advertisement The post has since been deleted. The Hennepin County medical examiner on Friday identified 31-year-old Ashley Hasti as the woman whom Sarkar killed before he drove to Los Angeles and gunned down UCLA professor William Klug in his office Wednesday, sparking a campus-wide lockdown. She was found dead at 1:25 a.m. Thursday. She died of multiple gunshot wounds, according to a statement from the medical examiners office. Because this was an unwitnessed death, a more accurate date and time of death cannot be determined, the medical examiner said. Investigators say Ashley Hasti appeared to have been dead for a couple of days before the discovery of a kill list led them to Hastis home. Describing her sister as fearless, Alex Hasti said her sister drew inspiration from internist and media personality Dr. Drew Pinsky for her journey in the medical field. Unfortunately, she wont get to see that last dream come true, she wrote. Full Coverage: Shooting at UCLA >> Ashley Hasti, who enrolled at University of Minnesota Medical School in 2012, had married Sarkar a year earlier. It is unclear when the pair separated or whether they were divorced. Her great-aunt, Charlane Bertsch, 81, told the Los Angeles Times that Ashley Hasti had finally found her niche in medical school and that her heart was happy with that. Bertsch said it took Hasti a few years to finally figure out what she wanted to study. Ashley Hasti and Sarkar were students in California together, she said. Although she never met Sarkar, Bertsch said Ashley Hasti and her husband never seemed that committed and had only lived together for possibly a year. In conversations on Facebook or over the phone, Ashley Hasti never really brought him up, her great-aunt said. Bertsch didnt think there was any bad blood between the couple. He did his thing. She did hers, she said. Erin Anderson met Ashley Hasti while taking improv classes at the Brave New Workshop, a comedy theater in Minneapolis that holds workshops and performances. Anderson said Ashley Hasti struggled with confidence and was scared to hit the stage, like everyone taking improv classes. But eventually, she learned to overcome her fears and would be full of energy. She was so friendly and loved by everyone for her positive outlook and somewhat oddball personality, she said. Id for sure label her a nerd because she was just so curious about everything and hungry to learn. She was a little socially awkward, but never shy or worried about it. Anderson never met Sarkar, but she said everyone knew Ashley Hasti was married. I didnt see him come to any shows or drop her at class, she said. She said Ashley Hasti didnt talk about Sarkar much. I think I remember her being excited to move into the Brooklyn Park home [that was her parents] with him since they werent living together for a long time, Anderson said. Ashley Hastis split-level home home in the Twin City suburb stood empty Friday morning. The police tape that stretched across the front lawn a day earlier was gone, as were investigators. A small black grill could be seen in the grassy front yard and three wood panels on the front door were dislodged. Her neighbors said they were still reeling from the news. I was very surprised, said Gordy Aune, who sometimes spoke with Ashley Hasti and her father during neighborhood watch events. You dont expect this. Aune said the death had also sparked some soul-searching among residents. People wonder if anyone couldve helped, he said. Another neighbor, Terry Andrew, recalled seeing Sarkar at the house over the last two years, but said he never spoke with him. You never wouldve known he was capable of shooting someone, Andrew said. Nothing odd stood out about him. 1 / 39 A memorial left at The Bruin on the UCLA campus Friday morning. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 39 UCLA students write and post notes on the bear on UCLAs Bruin Walk on Thursday, a day after the deadly shooting on campus. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 39 UCLA student Mai Que Vo, left, comforts India McFarlane, who was crying as students wrote notes to be placed on the Bruin Walk bear Thursday, a day after the deadly shooting of an engineering professor on campus. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 39 Flowers were left at the door of the Engineering IV Building on Thursday morning. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 39 Smashed doors can be seen on the fourth floor of the UCLA engineering building where Wednesdays murder-suicide took place. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 39 The word clear written on a wall near smashed doors on the fourth floor of the Engineering Building. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 39 UCLA students walk past the Engineering Building Thursday morning where engineering professor William Klug was killed. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 39 Charles Kawczynski, a doctoral mechanical engineering student, talks on June 2 about the shooting at UCLA as he stands in front of damaged doors on the fourth floor of the Engineering Building, where the slaying of a professor occurred. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 39 A UCLA police officer works June 2 on the fourth floor of the Engineering Building, where a professor and former doctoral student were killed in a murder-suicide. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 39 Police escort people at UCLA after a lockdown was lifted following a shooting on campus. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 39 Students return to campus Wednesday after a shooting at UCLA. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 12 / 39 UCLA Gabriela Romero calls her mother telling her not to worry after a shooting on campus Wednesday. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 13 / 39 Police respond to the UCLA campus after a shooting Wednesday. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 14 / 39 Hundreds of UCLA students leave the UCLA campus after the lockdown was called off after two people were shot on campus. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 15 / 39 UCLA students evacuate the campus. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 16 / 39 Police search the UCLA campus after a shooting Wednesday. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 17 / 39 A police officer searches the UCLA campus after a shooting on Wednesday. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 18 / 39 Police search the UCLA campus after a shooting Wednesday. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 19 / 39 SWAT officers Eddie Roca, right, and P.J. Rudolf rest after responding to a shooting at UCLA. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 20 / 39 People gather in a campus building after a shooting at UCLA. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 21 / 39 UCLA students evacuate the campus after a shooting Wednesday. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 22 / 39 Police officers check and evacuate students after a shooting on the UCLA campus on Wednesday. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 23 / 39 Police officers check evacuees after a shooting on the UCLA campus on Wednesday. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 24 / 39 Police officers evacuate students after a shooting on the UCLA campus on Wednesday. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 25 / 39 UCLA students are evacuated from the Mathmatics building after a shooting on campus. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 26 / 39 Police officers check students after a shooting at UCLA on Wednesday. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 27 / 39 People evacuate the UCLA campus. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 28 / 39 Police officers respond to a shooting at UCLA on Wednesday. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 29 / 39 People are frisked at the scene of a shooting at UCLA on Wednesday morning. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 30 / 39 Police officers questions a students after a shooting at UCLA on Wednesday morning. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 31 / 39 Police officers respond to a shooting at UCLA on Wednesday morning. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 32 / 39 Police rush to the scene of a shooting at UCLA on Wednesday morning. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 33 / 39 The scene at UCLA on Wednesday morning, where a shooting was reported. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 34 / 39 Police officers in tactical gear at the scene of a shooting at UCLA on Wednesday morning. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 35 / 39 People evacuate the UCLA campus after a shooting on Wednesday. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 36 / 39 Police officers respond to a shooting at UCLA on Wednesday morning. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 37 / 39 A ladder hangs out a window after a shooting at UCLA on Wednesday morning. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 38 / 39 Police officers in tactical gear at the scene of a shooting at UCLA on Wednesday morning. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 39 / 39 Police officers deploy at the scene of a shooting at UCLA on Wednesday morning. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) At the time of shootings, Sarkar lived in a small, three-story apartment building in St. Paul. Another tenant there, Todd Sorenson, said he didnt speak with Sarkar much -- their only encounters were less than friendly. Sarkar would tell him not to smoke cigarettes out of the window below his, Sorenson said. The last time they spoke was a year ago, he said, when he slammed the door in Sarkars face. Word of Sarkars killing rampage scared Sorenson: It really freaked me out. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, search efforts continued Friday for Sarkars 2003 Nissan Sentra with the Minnesota license plate 720 KTW. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said the car may contain evidence and other clues to help them establish a motive and put some pieces together in this case. So far there is nothing to suggest Sarkar, 38, committed other crimes during his trip, Beck said, but detectives are working with authorities in various states to see if there is a trail. Anyone who finds the car is asked to call authorities immediately and stay away from it. Detectives dont think Sarkar was in Los Angeles for more than a couple of days before walking onto the UCLA campus Wednesday. Armed with two semiautomatic guns, additional magazines and a backpack, Sarkar stormed into Klugs fourth-floor office in Engineering Building 4 and fired multiple rounds at him. After killing the 39-year-old father of two, Sarkar turned the gun on himself. At the scene, detectives found a note, asking someone to check on his cat, named Kitty. That led investigators to his home in Minnesota, where they found a list of three names. Both Klug and Ashley Hasti were on the list, as well as a second UCLA professor. Authorities did not name the other professor, but did say he was unharmed. In recent months, Sarkar had lashed out at Klug, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, in online postings. On March 10, Sarkar called Klug a very sick person who could not be trusted. I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy, he wrote on his blog. He made me really sick. Your enemy is your enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust. He posted Klugs photo. Sarkar had accused Klug of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else, according to police. Beck said detectives discussed the theft allegation with UCLA officials and found it to be without merit. This was a making of his own imagination, he said of Sarkar. Times staff writers Richard Winton, Teresa Watanabe and Matt Hamilton contributed to this report. MORE ON THE UCLA SHOOTING: Slain UCLA professor William Klug, father of two, praised as great man by students How students coped during UCLA lockdown Editorial: Just a murder-suicide in a small UCLA office. And so America shrugs For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter. UPDATES: 1:44 p.m.: This article was updated with information from the Hennepin County medical examiner. 11:54 a.m.: This article was updated with comments from friends and relatives of Ashley Hasti. This article was originally published at 9:53 a.m. Dr. Nancy LaBine, dean of Health and Wellness and director of Nursing, advised a group of Allied Health majors during a New Student Advising and Registration Session at Cleveland State on Thursday. First-time students, who are seeking a degree or a certificate, must participate in the New Student Online Orientation process and attend a NSAR session in order to register for the fall semester. These sessions are held prior to each fall and spring semester and are designed to familiarize students with the services, resources, and programs available at CSCC. During these sessions, students will be able to register for classes, speak to an advisor and tour the campus. Violence by protesters at a Donald Trump rally in San Jose on Thursday night has sparked criticism of the demonstrators and the reaction to them. The San Jose police officers union condemned the violence and called on bystanders to provide any video of the incident to investigators. "I'm disgusted by the violent attacks yesterday that have no place in our society or our political process," said Paul Kelly, president of the San Jose Police Officers' Assn. Meanwhile, San Joses police chief told the San Jose Mercury News that there were not enough officers on hand during the event. He said there were about 250 officers and more than 400 protesters. "Obviously, in hindsight, it wasn't enough," Chief Eddie Garcia told the paper. Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, has been dogged by protesters during appearances in California in recent weeks. Dozens were arrested during protests in Costa Mesa and Anaheim. Protesters in Burlingame temporarily stymied Trump from entering a hotel for a speech. But the situation in San Jose was more extreme. 738700565442629633 738564126335762432 Some Trump supporters leaving the candidate's rally were targeted by anti-Trump demonstrators, some of whom threw punches and eggs. A dozen or more people were hit, and car windows were broken, authorities said. Pro-Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. At least one woman was pelted with an egg. 738791603733733376 738762252581494784 Mayor Sam Liccardo, a Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter, criticized Trump for coming to cities and igniting problems that local police departments had to deal with. "At some point, Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign," Liccardo told the Associated Press. 738668552392085505 The San Jose Mercury News, in an editorial, criticized the protests. Protesters fell into Donald Trump's trap with their response to his campaign tactics Thursday. It was not one of San Jose's finer moments. Violence has no place in American politics, the paper wrote. ALSO Study: Angelenos are donating less money to charities 'Glee' star Mark Salling to surrender and be arraigned on federal child porn charges Man accused of trying to kill his mother with a hammer UPDATES: 2:10 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from the San Jose police chief. 1:39 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from the San Jose police officers union. This article was originally published at 12:34 p.m. The bodies of four more soldiers have been recovered at Ft. Hood, bringing to nine the number of service members killed when a military truck overturned in a rain-swollen creek at the sprawling base, authorities said. The death total had stood at five early Friday, but late in the day Maj. Gen. John Uberti announced that searchers had recovered the bodies of four missing soldiers downstream from where their vehicle overturned Thursday. The three surviving soldiers have been released from the hospital and rejoined their families, Uberti said. Advertisement Clearly, this tragedy extends well beyond Ft. Hood, Uberti said at a briefing. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Officials did not identify the nine soldiers who died in the incident, citing Army policy that requires them to wait 24 hours after the soldiers families have been notified. More than 170 searchers participated in the effort, Uberti said. They aided the search, he said, because part of our warrior ethos is I will never leave a fallen comrade. In November, four soldiers were killed at Ft. Hood when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed during a routine training mission in a remote area of the post. The bodies of four more soldiers have been recovered at Ft. Hood, bringing to nine the number of service members killed when a military truck overturned. Ft. Hood has been the scene of two mass shootings. Two years ago, Army Spc. Ivan Lopez opened fire, killing three in addition to himself. And in 2009, Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan attacked fellow troops preparing to deploy to Afghanistan, killing 13 and injuring more than 30. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. I still hear about families being on edge because of all thats happened, said Lauren, Campbell, 27, whose soldier husband has served at Ft. Hood for eight years, deploying from here to Iraq and South Korea. As she waited outside the posts main gate with her two sons and soldiers recently returned from deployments, Campbell said she has been following news of the latest tragedy on social media. Its hard because you know some of them have families, she said of the dead and missing. You expect things to happen overseas. You dont expect things to happen stateside. The soldiers were training in a wooded area along Owl Creek about a dozen miles north of the main post in an 11-ton Light Medium Tactical Vehicle, a flatbed truck with a walled bed used to carry troops. They were off road, on a tank trail, traversing a low-water crossing when they overturned about 11 a.m., according to Ft. Hood spokesman Tyler Broadway. Anywhere theres a low-water crossing, it usually floods, Broadway said, and though the tactical vehicle is equipped for tough terrain, he added, you cant underestimate what water can do. Broadway noted that while officials were closing roads on post at the time of the incident due to flooding, were not going to shut down training because its raining. The soldiers were from 3rd Battalion, 16th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division. Bob Sneed, 70, an Army veteran stationed at Ft. Hood until he retired as a first sergeant in 1997, said the soldiers may have started training before the weather soured, which happened quickly on Thursday. Sometimes you have soldiers out in the training area when it starts raining, he said. Sometimes they continue training despite the weather. It just depends on the situation, he said as he stood outside the main gate, noting many believe the old saying: If its not raining, its not training. Sneed said he had never experienced a rollover, but had seen other vehicles damaged after incidents in which soldiers were injured. When he served in an aviation unit in the 1990s, he recalled, a helicopter had a weather-related accident during training that killed two soldiers. When they went out, it wasnt foggy. When they came back it was, and they hit a guy wire, he said. Sneed said he hopes Army officials investigating the training incident at Owl Creek look at what could be done differently. Any time theres an accident, you have to look at what can be done better, he said. NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >> Gen. Robert Abrams, commander of U.S. Army Forces, called the accident a profound tragedy and said the Armys investigation would help better understand the circumstances and how to avoid this as we go forward. A special Army team from Ft. Rucker was expected to arrive late Friday from Alabama to investigate the incident, Ft. Hood spokesman Chris Haug said. The goal is to prevent accidents like this from happening in the future, he said, adding that soldiers are our most valuable asset, and we are doing everything we can to protect them. The three survivors will not be allowed to speak publicly until after the investigation, Haug said. It has been 16 years since the last fatal low-water crossing accident at the base. One soldier died in that incident. The accident follows a series of deadly training accidents across the armed services in recent months. The worst came in January, when 12 Marines were killed after two helicopters collided during a nighttime training mission off the coast of Hawaii. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) said in a statement Friday that the recent accidents including this weeks crashes of an Air Force Thunderbird in Colorado and a Navy Blue Angels aircraft in Tennessee, which killed Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss are cause for concern. Speaking in Singapore on Friday, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that the weeks accidents were the result of safety issues in training. We are going to make sure that we learn lessons, Carter said. ALSO Who gives money to Bernie Sanders? About 1 in every $4 came from people who arent working David Lazarus: Lesson 1 at Trump University: The hard sell Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in a tight race in California as the campaign batters her popularity UPDATES: 6:37 p.m.: This article has been updated with comments from Ft. Hood spokesman Chris Haug. 6:04 p.m.: This article had been updated to reflect that the death toll has been updated to nine. 4:30 p.m.: This article has been updated throughout with additional information and quotes from John Uberti, Lauren Campbell, Bob Sneed, Robert Abrams and Ash Carter. This article was originally published at 12:19 p.m. Roughly 20 members of the Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors will attend an interactive class where they will learn practical safety tips and self-defense techniques in order to safeguard themselves from potential predators. The course will be led by safety experts Jim Hogwood and Jon Fish from the National Self-Defense Agency. The class will be held on Friday from noon-4 p.m. at the Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors location on 2963 Amnicola Hwy. "Every day, real estate agents put themselves at risk by interacting with strangers in isolated situations. Open houses sometimes put agents in vulnerable positions, and have recently resulted in unspeakable crimes and fatalities. It is important to arm Realtors with the knowledge and skills needed to ward off an attacker," officials said. When Hillary Clinton parachuted into Los Angeles recently, some of the well-heeled donors who swarmed her brought unsolicited campaign advice, while others brought ambitions of White House appointments. Susie Tompkins Buell brought a bag of dry-roasted chickpeas. It was fitting that Buell, a wealthy San Franciscan who ranks near the top of the sprawling national network of Clinton benefactors, was obsessing about the candidates nourishment. Few people in the orbit of the Clintons have done more for their care and feeding than this 73-year-old fixture of Bay Area philanthropy and salon society who wanted nothing to do with politics she didnt even vote until a chance meeting with Bill Clinton well into her adult life. Buell not only has become a fundraising powerhouse since then. She has also become Hillary Clintons soul mate. Theirs is among a handful of friendships that have been key to fueling the candidates ambitions, providing emotional and financial sustenance. It reflects the uncanny Clinton ability to build and maintain unyielding loyalty from the people positioned to help them the most even people, like Buell, who have no business interests or political aspirations the couple might advance. In many cases, the bonds have only solidified through the stresses of scandal, electoral disappointment and Democratic Party rivalries that the Clintons have powered through. Advertisement See the most-read stories this hour >> The network has been most valuable in California, where Hillary Clinton is raising more cash than anyplace else. How Susie Tompkins Buell became a hub of that operation is a uniquely California story. Buell never thought she would be rich. She was but a 21-year-old who had chosen work as a keno runner in Tahoe over college when she randomly stopped by the roadside to pick up Doug Tompkins, a hitchhiking beach bum who, like Buell, had an unexpected mastery of entrepreneurship and getting in front of trends. The two eventually married and together built a fortune and a cultish following around the clothing lines they created: North Face and Esprit. But it wasnt until they divorced and Buell found herself at a retreat at the Esalen Institute that she got curious about the Clintons. Buzz about Bill Clinton at that Big Sur haven of mindfulness intrigued Buell. It was 1991, and the fledgling presidential candidate had inspired one of the speakers at the event, New Urbanist architect and thinker Peter Calthorpe, with his ideas on building and strengthening community, a topic of interest to Buell. Susie Tompkins Buell, poses with a poster she designed supporting Hillary Clinton for president at her penthouse apartment. (David Butow / For the Times ) So on a whim, and with a stroke of luck in timing, she dropped in at an event for Clinton while passing through Sacramento on her way home from Tahoe. She quickly found herself at the head table. The conversation was memorable. I told him I was getting divorced and how I had worked with my husband all these years, Buell said. He really wanted to know what it was like, and he started talking about Hillary and how she was nervous that night because she was giving a speech at Wellesley, her alma mater. They talked about the crushing poverty Clinton had seen on the campaign trail, Buell recalled, and how much people were relying on government. I really wanted a president who would look out for them. She decided at that moment it should be Clinton. The next day, she wrote him a $100,000 check. But the Clinton campaign was confused. Such large gifts usually come with requests for face time with the candidate or, at the very least, donor perks like ticket packages to the party convention and star-studded fundraising events. Election 2016 | Live coverage on Trail Guide | Track the delegate race | Sign up for the newsletter They asked me what I wanted, she said. I remember saying, I want him to be president. I had no idea about how the money part of this worked. Indeed, the only candidate who had ever received a cent from her before then was Mark Buell, the man who is now her husband and who long ago unsuccessfully ran for county supervisor. He got $500. The donation to Clinton might have been a one-off but for the relationship that bloomed when Hillary Clinton approached Buell to personally thank her. The women clicked immediately, and Buell grew more enamored when she saw Clinton deliver an impassioned Mothers Day address at Glide Memorial Church, a hotbed of leftist activism in San Franciscos Tenderloin district. I was attracted to Bill Clinton, but as soon as I met Hillary, it was much deeper for me, she said. Buell hasnt stopped giving to the Clintons since. More than $15 million has made its way from Buells bank account to the campaigns and causes of the Clintons. Untold millions more have been raised by her, often at her gorgeous Pacific Heights penthouse apartment, a mandatory stop on the fundraising circuit for prominent liberals. The menu that iconic chef Alice Waters prepared when Bill Clinton dropped by in March 1996 is framed in the kitchen. I cant even count the number of events I have been to at the house, said Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who first got to know Buell years ago, when he ran a wine shop and was good friends with her daughter. It is a perfect venue overlooking the bay. There is an austerity to it. It is an opulent building, an opulent view. But the space itself is austere. The rooms are sparsely but carefully appointed. Pieces worth more than a small condominium share rooms with stylish items plucked from far-flung flea markets. Every window has a panoramic view. It is a perfect backdrop to focus less on the surroundings and more on the occasion, Newsom said. The occasion is almost always political activism. The environment, womens rights, childrens rights, equality, all of this, said Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, ticking off in an interview the causes she has been involved in with Buell. Susie comes through. She doesnt say, Put my name down, and take a back seat. As Buell got entrenched in politics, her relationship with Hillary Clinton began to move beyond it. Clinton writes in one of her books about a conversation between the two while the then-first lady was under siege by Congress amid its investigation into her Whitewater real estate investment. My free-spirited friend Susie Buell said she didnt follow all the dramas going on back in Washington, but she did have something to say to me: Bless your heart. That was all I needed to hear, Clinton wrote. Much later, Clinton showed up at Buells apartment to meet her dying brother, a prominent surgeon who was staying with Buell while undergoing painful cancer treatments. Most people would say, I am sorry I never met your brother, or send their best. She just goes right into it, Buell said. She wasnt taking advantage of him. They laughed. It was just sweet. It was one of the tenderest times in my life. Her comfort with the situation was very moving. Buell said she regrets how few people see that side of Clinton. I remember once saying to her: Cant you just be yourself, Hillary? Buell said. When there are not cameras around, she really lets it fly. She said, You know what happens? They will get a moment of me expressing something and then say, There she goes again, the crazy. Experience has trained her to be so cautious. But Clinton also sees a side of Buell that many candidates never get to see: the one that doesnt talk politics. I dont want to be one more thing she has to think about, Buell said. She knows who I am, she knows how I feel. We dont talk shop. She doesnt need one more person to say, What do you think about the Benghazi report? This is the same donor who showed up at a high-stakes fundraiser for President Obama near the end of his first term and told him to knock off the small talk when he began to genuflect. Then she launched into a scold about his failure to get a landmark climate change bill through Congress. We dont talk shop, Susie Tompkins Buell says of her friendship with Hillary Clinton. (David Butow / For the Times ) Newsom, who says Buell holds your feet to the fire when candidates get her support, let out a knowing chuckle when asked about her reluctance to push Clinton. As Buell and other climate activists fought for years to kill the Keystone XL pipeline, candidates who did not stand with them were getting an earful from her. Except Clinton, who stayed neutral through most of the battle. They have a deep friendship, and that transcends politics in many respects, he said. She has a loyalty to the Clintons that is extraordinary, and it is unbreakable. Its not that Buell is star-struck. She is constantly in the company of celebrity. Meryl Streep gushed in an email about Buells open, welcoming mien. Waters happened to text while Buell was talking with a displaced former California reporter, and at Buells behest, recommended where in Washington to dine. Bill Clinton emailed to say, Susie has been my friend for almost 25 years, and express gratitude for her constant love and support for Hillary. And Gloria Steinem has also been Buells friend for years. She recalled in an interview coming to speak about feminism to Esprit employees in the 1980s, long before it was fashionable for big companies to try to raise the consciousness of their workforce. Buells then-husband vetoed her plans to advertise in the fledgling Ms. magazine, so Buell sidestepped him by writing a check to subsidize subscriptions for universities. She is a self-educated person in the best sense, Steinem said. Buell stopped selling clothing long ago, but she never stopped marketing her brand. Lately, she has been working on her Badass for President project, a more hipster-oriented line of Clinton campaign memorabilia than the less-daring goods sold in the campaign store. A mock-up poster in her office has the logo emblazoned over a black-and-white photo of young Hillary Clinton in stylish 60s attire and a coffeehouse conversation pose. The fundraising events she holds are among the fastest-selling tickets in the city especially when they are at her apartment in the penthouse of a landmark red-tile-roof building on a Pacific Heights hilltop where the views are dreamlike and the history is rich. Buell says she was one of the lonely Democrats in the old-money-heavy building when she held her first fundraiser for Bill Clinton there. She had to quickly patch together a bunch of linens to cover the picture windows that the presidents detail warned would be a security risk. Clinton joked that it was better to be looking at the linens than shattered glass. The Secret Service once got stuck in the utility elevator there for an hour after too many of the agents piled in. They know their way around better now. There are at least three other big Democratic donors in the building now, and sometimes they team up to hold multifloor events. Obama once joked that he had been through so many times he was starting to feel like a resident. Buell expects that she and her neighbors soon will be holding another multitiered event in the building for Hillary Clinton soon. The haul from such events is in the millions of dollars. It works great, she said. As long as the Secret Service is clear that they cant all pile into the utility elevator at once. And whats next for Buell if Clinton wins? Probably more of the same, she said. I am absolutely not interested in getting appointed to something, she said. I have the perfect life. evan.halper@latimes.com follow me: @evanhalper MORE FROM POLITICS Who gives money to Bernie Sanders? About 1 in every $4 came from people who arent working Donald Trump gets crash course in policy to face off against Hillary Clinton Its going to be a big, fat, beautiful wall!: Trumps words make his California climb an even steeper trek The Tennessee Department of Transportation will conduct quarterly testing and maintenance on the Market Street Bridge on Sunday, during which time the bridge will be closed to through traffic. From 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., the bridge will be closed to traffic as the testing is performed. Additionally, while the bridge is closed, TDOT crews will also be pressure washing one or both of the concrete counterweights. If they are unable to complete cleaning both of the counterweights, they will finish the work during the next quarterly inspection. This work is weather dependent. Should inclement weather or unforeseen circumstances delay the inspection, it will be rescheduled to take place at a later date. Drivers are advised to use the Olgiati Bridge or the Veterans Bridge as alternate routes while the Market Street Bridge is closed. Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Loretta Sanchezs chances of surviving past Tuesdays primary rely heavily on just a few pockets of California voters, a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll found. Latino voters strongly prefer the Orange County congresswoman, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, over Democratic front-runner Kamala Harris. Sanchez and Harris are statistically tied among voters who support Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders. 3:45 p.m.: A previous version of this article contained errors in the figures related to Sen. Bernie Sanders supporters, those related to Harris support and in the numbers of people who arent closely following the Senate race. Advertisement Still, Harris has maintained her perch atop the field of 34 candidates in the race to succeed the retiring Barbara Boxer, and the state attorney general is practically a lock to be on the ballot in November. The survey found 28% of registered voters in California supported Harris, compared with 20% for Sanchez. Harris support is even stronger among Californians most likely to vote in Tuesdays primary, with 34% favoring her compared with 14% for Sanchez. Detailed poll results >> Sanchez remains firmly in the No. 2 position, but not far enough ahead of Republicans George Duf Sundheim or Tom Del Beccaro to rest comfortably. The survey also found that most of Sanchezs supporters were not strongly in her camp, making it easier for them to be lured away in the final days of the race. That, combined with the fact that roughly a quarter of California voters are undecided and most of them Republicans, provides her GOP challengers with an outside chance to prevail. Her support is still somewhat weak and is likely dependent on turnout, said Ben Winston of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, the Democratic half of the team of polling firms that conducted the USC/L.A. Times poll. Under Californias top-two primary rules, every voter will receive a ballot with all 34 Senate candidates and can choose only one. The two candidates who receive the most votes, regardless of party affiliation, will advance to the November general election. Republican political consultant Mike Madrid expects Sanchez will do well enough Tuesday to win a ticket to the Nov. 8 election, setting up the highest profile intra-Democratic Party political battle since California starting using top-two primaries in 2012. Madrid said the best thing going for Sanchez in the primary is the lack of a consensus Republican candidate. Del Beccaro and Sundheim, Bay Area attorneys who both served as chairmen of the California Republican Party, each had 6% support among registered voters, the poll found. Republican Ron Unz, who championed a 1998 initiative to end bilingual education in California, was backed by just 4%. All three Republicans remain largely unknown to California voters and have failed to raise enough campaign money to change that before Tuesday, Madrid said. The survey found just nominal differences in support for Sundheim and Del Beccaro among tea party loyalists and establishment GOP voters. Nine other Republicans also are on the ballot, which increases the chances of seeing a splintered GOP electorate. The Republican votes are going to be all over the place, Madrid said. Harris, who won two statewide campaigns for state attorney general, emerged as the clear front-runner almost immediately after jumping into the Senate race in January 2015. She has been by far the most successful fundraiser, collecting just over $11 million twice the amount raised by all 33 of her opponents combined. Harris also has become the clear favorite of the Democratic establishment, receiving endorsements by the California Democratic Party and Gov. Jerry Brown. Among likely Senate primary voters, Harris was supported by 56% of Democrats, 44% of self-described moderates and 57% of Hillary Clinton general election supporters, the survey found. She also leads in Los Angeles County, the Bay Area, the coast and the Central Valley. State Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris smiles and claps as Gov. Jerry Brown endorses her for the U.S. Senate. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press ) Latinos who account for an estimated 4.1 million registered voters in California continued to be Sanchezs strongest base of support. The poll found that the congresswoman was backed by 43% of Latino registered voters, compared with 16% for Harris and single digits for the top GOP contenders. Sanchezs advantage remains solid even within the narrower field of Latinos likely to vote on Tuesday, with 41% support compared with 20% for Harris. Sanchez also was statistically even with Harris among voters who favor Sanders, the Democratic senator from Vermont whose battle for the Democratic nomination has energized anti-establishment voters nationwide. Among likely voters for Sanders, 31% backed Sanchez compared with 34% for Harris which is within the polls margin of error. Sanchez also holds an edge among voters aged 18 to 29, and among voters who earned at most a high school diploma. Brad Jerger, a freelance graphic artist from Oakland who took part in the poll, is among the Sanders supporters who is also backing Sanchez. She won him over because she seems more supportive of a universal healthcare system than Harris, and hes strongly in favor of replacing the Affordable Care Act with a single-payer healthcare model. She seems like she is aligned more with Bernie Sanders, the 34-year-old Democrat said. Im still deciding. I have my ballot. But I havent finished it yet. Democrat Maeve Richard of Palo Alto, who also took part in the survey, said she loves Bernie but is supporting Harris in the Senate race. Election 2016 | California politics news feed | Sign up for the newsletter What I really like is who she represents. I happen to be African American and I happen to be female. And I think thats what initially attracted me, said Richard, 60, who heads the career center at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She is respected and seasoned and capable. Harris is the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica, and has said her mother raised her and her sister, Maya, to be proud African American women. Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC, expects Sanchezs performance in the June primary to get a lift by the backlash against presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and the wave of Californians who registered to vote as a result. The base of Sanchezs support, Latinos and young people, are those Californians who are most likely to be opposed to Trump and his message on immigration, Schnur said. If these voters do turn out on election day, its going to be mostly for anti-Trump purposes. Among the 27% of registered voters who said they remained undecided about the Senate contest and are not following the race closely, 38% blamed the nations wild presidential race for gobbling up most of their political interest. About a quarter said they simply didnt have the time to follow the Senate race. A narrow majority of those polled said they favored Californias top-two primary system, versus the traditional general election matchup between a Democrat and a Republican. Democrats and independent voters also supported the top-two primaries, while a majority of Republicans preferred the old way. The USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll canvassed 1,500 registered state voters by telephone from May 19 to 31. The margin of sampling error overall is 2.9 percentage points. phil.willon@latimes.com Twitter: @philwillon ALSO: These California mega-donors havent given a penny in the U.S. Senate race Sanchez no-show at UFW convention is missed opportunity for Californias U.S. Senate race Detailed poll results Californias next senator could be a Latina. Will her past mistakes get in the way? For California voters, picking a U.S. Senate candidate could be like throwing darts at a dart board Kamala Harris is focus of Californias final U.S. Senate debate before primary Updates on California politics About 30 Costa Mesa residents showed up to the Neighborhood Community Center on Thursday night to learn about the citys proposed switch to a district-based council election system. The meeting also was a chance for residents to share their thoughts on how to carve the city into voting districts. David Ely, a consultant with Compass Demographics, has been retained to aid in the process. The City Council voted in April to seek voter approval to adopt a system that would split the city into voting areas. Each area would elect a council member to represent it. Currently, the five council members are elected by voters citywide. Costa Mesa resident Greg Ridge said moving to districts would be a great thing. I think it will empower a lot of neighborhoods to have local leaders who represent them, he said after the meeting. Resident Jessica Bravo said that as a Latina, she feels there have definitely been issues where our voices havent been heard. I think [voting districts] would be a great opportunity for a lot of our community thats been underrepresented, she said. Attorney Kevin Shenkman of the Malibu law firm Shenkman & Hughes threatened to sue Costa Mesa if it didnt scrap its current system, alleging it violates the California Voting Rights Act of 2001 by diluting the power of the citys Latino residents to influence council elections. As of the 2010 Census, Latinos made up about 36% of the citys population. Thursdays meeting was meant to ensure the process is transparent, that everybodys opinion is respected and heard and that [they] understand the districts are put together with some stringent criteria, said Yesenia Arias, project manager with Arellano Associates, another consultant retained by the city. Perhaps the most important factor in drawing districts is that they be similar in the number of inhabitants, according to Ely. Another consideration is whether its possible to draw a district in Costa Mesa in which the majority of constituents are Latinos. Ely said that appears doable. Districts also should take into account communities of interest, or areas of the city that share similar concerns or passions, Ely said. Poring over printed maps of the city, people at the meeting Thursday marked areas that could fall under that category, such as the Eastside. Another community meeting on the voting district process will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at Halecrest Park, 3107 Killybrooke Lane. Other meetings will be at 7 p.m. June 15 at St. Joachim Catholic Church, 1964 Orange Ave., and 10 a.m. June 18 at the Balearic Community Center, 1975 Balearic Drive. For more information or to RSVP, email districtelections@costamesaca.gov or call the city clerks office at (714) 754-5225. Ely has produced a handful of sample voting district maps that are available on the citys website, costamesaca.gov. Three of the samples have five voting districts, while one has seven. The City Council will hold two public hearings this summer to discuss voting districts. Council members eventually will choose a specific voting map to include in a ballot measure. Costa Mesa residents will vote in November on whether to switch to districts. If they dont OK the change, the city could be exposed to further litigation, officials said. If districts are approved, they would be used for council elections beginning in 2018. luke.money@latimes.com Twitter: @LukeMMoney Senator David Perdue announced Friday mobile office hours for the month of June. Mobile office hours are opportunities for Georgians to meet with Senator Perdues staff members in various locations across the state.Serving Georgians is one of my top priorities, said Senator Perdue. My team and I want to help all Georgians that may not otherwise be able to visit our Atlanta office location. We have field representatives based in each region of the state, and we are excited for the opportunity to extend the reach of our constituent services in the coming months.See Senator Perdues June mobile office hours and locations below.To reach the constituent services team, call the Atlanta office at 404-865-0087 or find the field representative in your area here.Northwest GeorgiaWednesday, June 1510 a.m.-2 p.m.Dade County Commissioners Meeting Room71 Case Ave.Trenton, Ga. 30752Central Savannah River AreaWednesday, June 2210 a.m.-noonAugusta Vet Center2050 Walton Way #100Augusta, Ga. 30904Southwest GeorgiaThursday, June 2310 a.m.-1 p.m.South Georgia Regional Library?Nix Room300 Woodrow Wilson Dr.Valdosta, Ga. 31602Southeast GeorgiaMonday, June 2710 a.m-1 p.m.The Pate Building3rd Floor Conference Room1725 Reynolds St.Brunswick, Ga. 31520 All material is subject to strictly enforced copyright terms & conditions and cannot be repurposed or reproduced. 19882022 Latin American Financial Publications Inc. New Mexico will be among a handful of primary states voting next Tuesday, and one of the leading non-partisan Latino organizations predict Latinos will have a high turnout come the general election in November. One in Three Are Latino Voters According to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund, one of every three registered voters in New Mexico is Hispanic. Based on voter files in April, most of New Mexico's Latino registered voters are Democrats, at 59 percent, while a healthy 39 percent are Republican. But in regards to Latino Democrats, their turnout will be key in the Democratic Party's primary race between Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, especially as with the Democratic National Convention taking place next month. Looking into the General Election But for this November, more than 320,000 Latinos are expected to vote, which is an increase of five-percentage points from the 2012 presidential election when 306,000 Latinos casted their ballot. "In the last four presidential elections, New Mexico has seen some of the closest contests in the nation," said NALEO Educational Fund Executive Director Arturo Vargas. "Election 2016 will be no different, with New Mexico Hispanic voters ready to play a vital role in electing the next individual to hold the highest office in the land." NALEO noted that New Mexico has become a battleground state in 2000 and 2004 elections, which saw Democrats win by less than 1-percentage point. But 2016 could be different as the state is governed by Latina Republican Susana Martinez, the first-ever Latina governor in U.S. history, and while considering Donald Trump's rhetoric about Latinos and the governor. During a campaign rally in New Mexico in late May, Trump criticized Martinez, who was absent from his event. Trump accused her of allowing Syrian refugees into New Mexico and blamed her for the state's unemployment rate. "We have to get your governor and get going. She's got to do a better job, O.K.? Your governor has got to do a better job," Trump said. On June 2, Trump's tune may have changed. During an interview with The New Mexican, Trump said he does respect and likes Martinez. __ For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com. The board of directors of the Partnership for Families, Children and Adults announces the appointment of Pam Ladd as chief executive officer.Ms. Ladd joined the partnership in September of 2015 as COO and interim CEO. In her role as COO, Ms. Ladd focused on community relations and new business development. In addition, as interim CEO, Ms. Ladd led the Partnership through organizational changes to better align the agency with the strategic plan developed by the board which includes the broadening of community relations, identification of growth opportunities which meet the changing needs of the community and strengthening of Partnerships position as a leader in providing services.Ive had the opportunity to work with Pam over the last 10 months and am convinced there is no better leader for Partnership today, said Carol Mastey, Partnership board chair.Pam has demonstrated the energy and passion to make Partnership great. Finding a CEO who could lead the organization was a challenge we took very seriously. All those we considered have the intellect, integrity, and charisma required for the position. Pam stood apart as a leader with an extraordinary ability to connect vision, people and ideas to drive strategy and execution. The Board is confident that Pams diverse and broad experience in community leadership and entrepreneurism as well as her passion for leading high performing teams will continue Partnerships success in responding to the evolving needs of the community.Ms. Ladd joins Partnership with a strong background in community relations and operations. She was an assistant vice president at UNUM Provident, started and ran her own business for many years, and served on the Chattanooga City Council. Pam also provided interim executive leadership to the Womens Fund of Chattanooga during their CEO search. Ms. Ladd received the UnBought and UnBossed award in 2013 and is a Chattanooga Woman of Distinction. Local fans of mysteries and thrillers are invited to participate in Dalton States Summer of Mystery featuring a series of book talks by librarians and faculty members and culminating with a murder mystery at the library. The events take place at Roberts Library on campus and are free and open the public. Times vary, but all programs take place in room 235 on the librarys second floor. The summer reading program is designed to encourage students and others to continue in a pattern of learning during the summer months, said Interim Library Director Melissa Whitesell. We choose themes that have a broad interest, yet complement our various academic programs at the College. This year's theme, A Summer of Mystery, appeals to those who simply want to enjoy a good beach read but also ties in with courses such as criminal justice, psychology, biology, and chemistry. Were proud to open our summer reading program to the community, and we welcome all who loves books and who love learning. The series kicks off Monday, June 6 with a book talk on Dead Until Dark: A True Blood Discussion led by Librarian Barbara Jones. The book, Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris, is the first in a series that inspired the TV series True Blood. The program begins at 12 p.m. On Thursday, June 9, Dr. Leslie Harrelson, associate professor of English, will discuss the book Mystic River by Dennis LeHane. The program will begin at 12:30 p.m. Writing is always about what it means to be alive; reading can be a way to create the tools to be human better, said Harrelson. Mystic River does both. The reason mysteries are laboratories for ideas and one liners is that the mystery makes explicit what most of us try to avoid. Everything is about life or death. Everything is about the details. And here, in the safety of this novel, you have the reassurance that in the endall things will have meaning. Perhaps you will even discover some element that will make the mystery of your own life seem closer to a resolution. Laura Tolliver, a library staff member, will present a program on Taking the Mystery Out of Self Defense on Tuesday, June 14. Tolliver, who holds a third degree black belt in Goju Ryu, will be joined by David Gambrell in the program in which participants will learn how to stay aware of their surroundings as well as tips and tools for self-defense. The program will begin at noon. Dr. Jennifer Randall, associate professor of English, will speak on Poe the Pro: Using Psychological Rhetoric to Get Away with Murder at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, June 15. What is it that makes author Edgar Allan Poe so timeless and fascinating, and how does he so effortlessly get away with and receive societys approval and admirationfor the immortal acts and murders in his stories? Randall asks. She will speak on Poes use of narrator and reader psychology to build suspense and intrigue but also how and why his stories really are the standard for murder mysteries and detective stories alike. Societys fascination with murderers and serial killers can be directly linked to Poes insights into the human mind, Randall says. Local author Jodi McDaniel Lowery will speak on her true crime book Eula: The First Woman in Georgia to be Sentenced to the Electric Chair. The program will be Wednesday, June 22 at 12:30 p.m. According to Lowery, Eula used her female wit and wiles to persuade men to do her bidding. She was accused of bootlegging, robbery, conspiracy, bigamy, running a house of prostitution, and murder all before she was 25 years old. Governor Hardman personally involved himself in Eulas murder case, and newspapers across America printed stories about her exploits and legal entanglements. Amateur Sleuthing: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is the title of a program by librarians Amy Burger and Betsy Whitley at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 28. With the communication potential and 24/7 availability of the Internet, it has become easier than ever for civilians to try their hands at tying up loose ends of mysteries, solving cold crime cases, and finding answers to questions that have persisted for years, they say. The two will lead a discussion on the role of laypeople in investigations, including cases that have been solved by amateurs, those that remain unsolved, and some that have gone wildly wrong. The highlight of the summer series will be Thursday, June 30 at 5 p.m. when Roberts Library hosts Murder Mystery @ the Library. A body has been found in the library under mysterious circumstances, Whitesell said. Students, faculty, staff, and community members are invited to assist librarians, detectives, and crime scene investigators determine who is responsible. The series ends Thursday, July 7 when Whitesell leads a Book Talk on The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Mark Haddons heartrending and humorous portrait of an autistic young mans attempt to resolve a mystery involving a neighborhood dog. Yet in the minds of his family, teachers, and neighbors, it is the boy himself who is the mystery. For more information about the summer reading program, contact Roberts Library at 706-272-4575. To celebrate Men's Health Month, the 100 Black Men of Chattanooga's in partnership with Blue Cross Blue Shield Community Trust and the Tennessee Men's Health Network will host its 21st Annual Free Men's Health Screenings. The screenings will be held The screenings will be held on Tuesday, June 7 @ Boynton Terrace, Wednesday, June 8 @ Southside Health Center and Thursday, June 9 @ Dodson Ave. Health Center 14. The times each evening are 5:30-7:30 p.m. "Originally started out to focus on prostate cancer, the screenings has evolved to include blood pressure, body mass index, HIV, dental, vision, foot care and much more with an emphasis on preventative health. No insurance is necessary to participate" says Erskine Oglesby, President of the 100 Black Men of Chattanooga. Follow-up services if needed will be provided by Dodson Avenue and Southside Community Health Centers. There will also be food and door prizes each evening with a TV Raffle at the end of the screenings. You need not have be present to win the TV but must have participated in the screenings on one of the evenings. All are invited to take advantage of these free screenings. For more information and to register contact Erskine Oglesby @ 423-821-6700. Residents at Morning Pointe of Chattanooga at Shallowford released more than 30 balloons to honor 60 veterans that have passed away. The assisted living residents honored husbands, brothers, uncles, sons and friends who each served their country during the ceremony. As part of the Life Enrichment Program, Morning Pointe residents participate in annual observances to show reverence and respect to the Armed Forces in their own special way. Hamilton County Commissioner Marty Haynes, and the Republican nominee for Assessor of Property, announced Friday that he has received the public endorsement of Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger.The best choice for our next Assessor of Property could not be more clear, which is why I am honored to endorse Marty Haynes in this race, said County Mayor Jim Coppinger. Marty is a proven conservative leader that is known for bringing a business approach to our county government that delivers accountability and transparency.Marty Haynes continues to be a trusted steward with your tax dollars and has stood firm making fiscally responsible budget decisions to prevent tax increases."With 30-plus years of private business experience, Commissioner Haynes works for the largest foundry supply house in North America where he manages an annual budget of more than $4 million and works with more than 500 clients across the region. Commissioner Haynes has also used his extensive business background to make government better for you while serving on the Hamilton County Commission since 2012, where he has always voted for a balanced budget without increasing property taxes and established a process where taxpayers can have online access to the discretionary spending for each district.Both Bill Bennett, the retiring incumbent, and his predecessor, Claude Ramsey, were elected to the Assessors Office following successful business careers and serving on the Hamilton County Commission. In private business and on the County Commission, Marty has demonstrated his ability to be an effective leader that we can trust with modernizing the Assessors Office. Hamilton County residents can rest assured that property assessments will remain fair and accurate for the most valuable investment most anyone has their private property.The Assessor of Property is responsible for setting the appraised value on each parcel of land in Hamilton County. This administrative position operates according to strict guidelines and regulations established by state law overseeing a $3.5 million budget and managing 40 employees who are responsible for assessing every piece of property and parcel in Hamilton County that is owned by homeowners, property owners, realtors and developers."Mayor Coppinger is a strong leader who has been a role model for elected officials at all levels of government, said Commissioner Haynes. I am proud and humbled that he has chosen to endorse me in this election. His fresh vision and track record of accomplishments has served our county well for many years, and I am committed to doing the same by moving the Assessors Office forward into the future and working to ensure all taxpayers are treated fairly and have an equitable appeals process.The Early Voting period for this election begins Friday, July 15, and runs through Saturday, July 30, with Election Day being on Thursday, Aug. 4. Seventy new homeless emergency accommodation places are on the way for County Kildare by the end of July, it has been revealed. Kildare County Council (KCC) has faced an avalanche of requests for housing as more and more families come under pressure due to rising rents and unrealistic mortgage repayments. With approximately 6,800 people on the housing list, Cllr Joanne Pender (Ind) asked officials at the recent Kildare Newbridge Municipal District meeting for a report on the Peter McVerry out of hours homeless service and homeless accommodation units in the Kildare/Newbridge area. It was revealed that, from September to December 2015, there were 43 calls to the out of hours information and advice line, with two families, six males and two females accommodated. During the first four months of this year, the phoneline received 40 calls, while four families and 14 males were accommodated. In addition the council made 20 placements into emergency accommodation in the area during that period. Cllr Morgan McCabe (Ind) asked the council to arrange for the rental of properties due to the number of landlords refusing to take council tenants. He said he knew of one person who was turned down by 15 landlords. He pointed out it was illegal to refuse someone on the basis that they were are on rent subsidy, but in theory it was still happening. Cllr Joanne Pender said; we really have become letting agents as well as councillors. She said unless the person looking for a home has work references and previous landlord references, they are being refused by landlords. The whole idea is to help people who are not working. I would like to see the council engage with landlords and rent a few houses, she added. She also called for more emergency accommodation places and said B&Bs were not suitable as they had no cooking or washing facilities. She said she knew of one family who was in a B&B for four months. Cllr Suzanne Doyle (FF) said HAP (Housing Assistance Payment Scheme where the council pays the landlord the rent, and the tenant pays the council their portion) was a big improvement, but the council needed to show landlords the advantages of HAP and give support to tenants who go out and live in the private community. She pointed out landlords were guaranteed long-term leasing options. The council said its housing department has signed 219 properties so far this year to HAP and has not experienced any noticeable difficulty with landlord engagement in respect of the scheme. It said it was continuing to enter into contracts with private landlords under the Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS where tenants receive a capped rent supplement and the council pay the rest to the landlord) and is working with a number of approved bodies in respect of the Social Housing Leasing Initiative with both private landlords and other property owners. KCC Director of Services Tadhg McDonnell said the council does lease properties on long-term leases and engages with housing agencies. In the next five/six years, one third of housing for people on the housing waiting list will come from the local authority, or an approved housing body, but two thirds will be through private market/landlords, he said. He said the Peter McVerry Trust had made an application to the Department and they would be expanding the number of beds near their current property. He said the three people employed from Focus Ireland, The Simon Community and the Peter McVerry Trust since last August were working hard and Threshold advocacy was now available in Kildare. The director of services said the extra 70 beds would be provided by the end of July, and at this stage he declinedto give any further details as to their location. He said the advantages of landlords signing up to HAP was that the owners get 92% to 80% of the market value rent, but the council takes the responsibility for the maintenance of the property from the landlord. It came this morning and Ive sent it straight in. The arguments about trivial matters such as whether well be 2% better or worse off for a few years are dismaying in their triviality. Even the major medium term issues such as defeating neoliberal economics, fighting for fair trade rather than free trade are not the ones to focus on. The urgent major issues are climate change, biodiversity, population growth. If we cant deal with these there is no hope for social prosperity or justice for defeating Beveridges five giants: squalor, ignorance, want, idleness, and disease. The idea that we can tackle these major issues by `taking back control of our country is laughable. We need to share our sovereignty with the rest of humanity. The unique selling point of the EU is that it extends democracy beyond national borders. Of course its democracy is not perfect, but for what is pretty much a first in democratic international cooperation its pretty good. Its better than what we have in the UK in many respects, with our disproportional adversarial system and unelected House of Lords. And the cost is modest. Of UK tax expenditure, about 1.5 % each go to the European Union (net of the rebate) and to Overseas Aid; for comparison, about 5% each go to Defence and Debt Interest. There are many things wrong with the way the European Union works, but starting again is not an option; we do not have the time. We should be getting stuck in and making it work as the Liberal Democrats have done through the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe for many years. It is dismaying that success in our European elections goes to the anti-EU parties rather than those that want to engage with and improve the EU. There are also many things that have gone right with the EU: freedom of movement, workers rights, environmental protection. [Perhaps if we renamed all those regulations that Brexiteers love to hate `green tape people would understand that most of them are good for us?] At the emotional level, we need to get beyond narrow nationalism. John Muir wrote his address in his first field journal as `Earth-planet, Universe. We need our local and national identities, but we also need to recognise that we are citizens of a wider world. So Ive voted to remain, and I hope you will too. * Denis Mollison is Chair of Liberal Democrats for Electoral Reform, and has been a member of the party since joining the SDP in 1981. Here, he writes in a personal capacity. I never expected to come anywhere near the top of the ballot for private members bills. My record for the Lib Dem raffle over thirty odd years is less than five or six wins. And I came third! That means I have second reading next Friday (10th June). My bill calls for arms brokers to be registered and a fit and proper test applied to would be brokers. At present there are few restrictions so you or I could set up as a broker. In the US they are regulated. Save the Children and Amnesty International are supporting us. Save the Children said: Our Yemen work in Parliament has mainly focused on humanitarian access and the credible reports of breaches of international and human rights law. Whilst we recognise the positive impact that the Governments humanitarian response and interventions have made, we remain concerned that the Governments current support for Saudi Arabia-led military action is undermining the protection of civilians and is inconsistent with its support to the humanitarian response. We believe more robust action is needed to ensure that existing standards and norms are upheld by all parties to the conflict, in line with Government commitments under the new National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review, and to ensure full compliance by the UK with legal obligations under national and international law relating to the sale of arms. Amnesty International added: Irresponsible arms brokers have been implicated in the transfer of arms to conflict and human rights crisis zones around the world. Currently, UK law does not require those seeking to engage in the brokering and trafficking of conventional arms to register with national authorities, despite the fact that a register of arms brokers would be an invaluable tool enabling better enforcement of existing controls. This Bill reflects growing international commitments to enhance controls over arms brokers by establishing a registration requirement based on a fit-and-proper person test to ensure that those with convictions for serious offences, including export control violations cannot engage in arms brokering. We have also set up an online petition. You can sign it here. This is a situation that is easy to resolve. The US has a register of brokers, so should we. Second reading takes place on Friday. I have a meeting with the minister on Tuesday. A large number of signatures on the petition would be huge boost to the debate and more power to my elbow. Please share the link with your networks. * Baroness Judith Jolly has been a Liberal Democrat peer since 2011, and previously served as Health Spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords from 2017 to 2020. Imagine if he had not just his Twitter account at his disposal when hes angry, but Americas entire arsenal. Hillary Clinton has found her voice with a major speech on foreign policy in San Diego. The speech is substantive, going through key issues one by one and quoting Donald Trumps ideas, of which she says, powerfully: Donald Trumps ideas arent just different they are dangerously incoherent. Theyre not even really ideas just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies. Time have the full transcript and here is the video: * Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings. Every day seems to bring new crushing evidence of the immense strain facing the NHS and social care. Missed key targets have become the norm rather than the exception; A&E is bearing the brunt of cuts to preventive and community services; and few were surprised when NHS trusts recently revealed a record deficit of 2.45 billion. After hearing anecdotal accounts of ambulances queueing up outside A&E departments due to a lack of available beds in my own county of Norfolk, I decided to investigate the true scale of the problem across the whole country by submitting Freedom of Information requests to each Ambulance Trust in England. What I discovered was far more shocking than I had feared. More than 10,000 patients were stuck in an ambulance for more than two hours waiting to be handed over to hospital staff last year a staggering four-fold increase over just three years. The number of people having to endure waits of more than an hour before being admitted has almost trebled in the same period. In total, almost 400,000 hours were wasted in the last year alone due to handover delays of more than 15 minutes, the national target for getting patients out of the ambulance and into the care of A&E staff. Thats equivalent to 16,554 days of patients waiting in limbo while ambulance crews and vehicles are unnecessarily tied up, unable to respond to new emergency calls. These figures are disastrous and totally unacceptable. The situation has rapidly deteriorated over the last three years, and is only going to get worse. Behind every statistic is a person in need of acute hospital care, and they are being failed by a system brought to its knees by a desperate lack of resources. It is hard to imagine just how traumatic it must be for a patient, having been rushed to A&E in urgent need of treatment, to then be left waiting for hours for the care they need. In a country as wealthy as Britain, it is unthinkable that anyone should have to wait outside an A&E department for more than 9 hours before being admitted. Yet that is the reality we find ourselves in. Its an appalling reflection of the state of our health service. The Conservative Government cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the existential challenge facing acute hospitals and the health and care system more widely and pin its hopes on herculean efficiency targets as a substitute for proper investment. Its time for the Treasury to decide whether its ideological austerity agenda can possibly justify the growing risk to patient safety in the NHS. Simon Stevens has started to concede that the NHS needs more funding than the Tories have committed to. That much is clear. However, if the Health Secretary really wants to prove he is serious about championing patient safety and safeguarding our health and care services for future generations, he must bring together a Commission of independent and cross-party experts to design a new, long term financial settlement for the NHS and social care system. The Government and the Labour frontbench have so far resisted these calls, but these figures highlight yet again how urgently such a Commission is needed. We are sleep-walking towards a severe crash in both the NHS and our social care services. Unless the Government wakes up to the scale of the challenge and grasps the nettle once and for all, it is patients who will continue to suffer. There can be no moral defence for that. * Norman Lamb is MP for North Norfolk and was Liberal Democrat Minister of State at the Department of Health until May 2015. He now chairs the Science and Technology Select Committee Britain has attracted the worlds top companies to invest here, creating jobs, on the basis of access to the European single market. Thats what Vince Cable told an audience in Bristol earlier this week. Far from being an invention of straight-banana obsessed bureaucrats, the EU represents a British vision of an open Europe, he added. Here is his speech in full. It is great to be here in Bristol celebrating the best in British manufacturing with the leaders of our top manufacturing companies. Manufacturing still provides half of our exports, three quarters of scientific innovation and two and a half million relatively well paid jobs in the UK. There is a big cloud on the horizon: the dangerous void if the UK decides to exit the EU. Today we have powerful testimony from the respected and independent research body; the Centre of Economic and Business Research. They remind us that the manufacturing sector depends heavily on the EU Single Market and that 950,000 of those jobs are linked to EU trade directly or through the supply chain. Leaving the EU puts many of those jobs at risk. Some of the leading Brexit campaigners admit frankly that the loss of manufacturing is part of what they call the price worth paying. One of the few leading UK economists to depart from the overwhelming professional consensus in favour of Remain is Professor Minford who says that if we left the EU it seems likely that we would mostly eliminate manufacturing. And looking forward, I see that the CEBR believe 100,000 new jobs could be created in the sector. But not if we leave and youll hear shortly from leading industrialists why they believe leaving would have a negative impact on investment and job creation in UK manufacturing. My own views were heavily influenced by having served for five years in Cabinet, responsible for business, trade and industry. The crux of my argument is the Single Market. It was negotiated in the 1980s by a British government. The Single Market was not invented by Brussels bureaucrats, let alone Hitler and Napoleon. It represented a British vision of an Open Europe: free trade in goods and services, free movement of capital, free movement of labour. Not just clearing away tariffs but establishing common, recognised standards. The juvenile caricatures flowing from the pens of Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and others the straight bananas, square strawberries and smaller condoms arent just silly and fabricated; they miss the essential point that the Single Market reduces administrative barriers to trade. Any manufacturer knows that it is costly and inefficient to reproduce 28 versions of the same widget. I saw the process of integration at work as Secretary of State. When I talked to Siemens about their new investment making turbines for offshore wind in Hull they saw themselves as a European company operating within the Single Market. When I talked to car companies about where they would build their next model- Nissan, General motors/Vauxhall, BMW/Mini, JLR or Ford making engines-a critical concern was their ability to be able to trade freely within the Single Market on common technical standards. Our thriving aerospace industry, which is hosting us today at GKN, a key Tier 1 supplier- relies heavily on European supply chains, and the Single Market. Airbus, a key part of the sector, is a European collaboration and I would fear for the UKs civil aviation manufacture if the UK left. One of Britains real achievements has been to attract the worlds best companies to produce here on the back of access to the Single Market. The Brexiteers want to break that link: divorce. Divorce can work out but usually it is messy, nasty and costly. The same here Now you might say: what about small business? But many small companies are in the supply chains of big companies. Bristol is a booming city because of the many small companies which supply big companies like this one. You might respond that trade in cars and aerospace is all well and good, but our economy is 80% services. The are however very porous boundaries between manufacturing and services. Crucial to the success of manufacturing is good software, design, advertising and other creative industries. The EU helps these industries by eliminating non-tariff barriers. So it means an engineer or an architect can get off the plane in Munich or Madrid The next stage of development of the Single Market aims to bring down the remaining barriers to trade in services, energy and digital. We are sometimes told by the Brexiteers that if we left the EU we could have a bonfire of EU red tape. But there isnt much left to burn. The evidence suggests that Britain has some of the least regulated product and labour markets in the world. And, of course, some regulation is essential to protect the environment, to protect consumers and to protect workers. And if we left but wanted to sell into the Single Market, we would be forced to abide by the rules of the Single Market while having no say over those rules. There is no future standing on the side-lines looking in we need to be in the room when theyre discussed fighting for British interests and shaping the rules. A CHRONIC drug addict has been jailed for three years for robbing a wheelchair-bound man less than six months after she received a suspended prison sentence. Belinda OSullivan, aged 25, who has an address at McGarry House, Alphonsus Street admitted robbing 80 from the now 26-year-old at Lord Edward Street on May 25, 2014. During a sentencing hearing earlier this year, Judge Tom ODonnell was told the victim, who suffers from cerebral palsy, was struck in the face by the defendant who took a bag containing cash, which was resting on his lap. Detective Garda Niall Fitzgerald said the incident happened at Edward Street at around 5.25pm on a Sunday and that gardai were alerted a short time later by a passerby who rendered assistance to the victim. Prior to the robbery, Ms OSullivan and another woman approached the man and offered to tie his shoe lace for him. Limerick Circuit Court was told the man subsequently told specially-trained gardai he believed his attacker felt he was an easy target because of his disability. Imposing sentence, this Wednesday, Judge ODonnell noted OSullivan has more than 100 previous convictions many of which are linked to her chronic drug addiction. He described her actions as cowardly and despicable adding: I can only hope she stooped so low because of the depth of her addiction. Having entered her guilty plea last October, OSullivan failed to appear in court for a sentencing hearing last month and has been in custody since a bench warrant for her arrest was executed by gardai on May 6. The judge noted there is a high risk of OSullivan re-offending and he commented that she had been given a substantial chance by the court in December 2013 but didnt take it. He said her admissions and guilty plea were mitigating factors in the case as is the chaotic lifestyle which she leads. Judge ODonnell imposed a three-year prison sentence saying he hopes she avails of the various services which are available in prison. In the circumstances, he said he was not making any order in relation to the suspended prison sentences, which were live at the time of the offence. A theft charge relating to an incident at a hair salon in the city centre on July 2, 2014 was taken into consideration with the robbery charge. 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. STAFF at the Tic Toc nursery at the Westbury centre are staging a sit in in a bid to get their redundancy dues. It comes after they claim the company owner told staff that he would not be able to pay them. Tic Tics branch in Westbury closed this Friday morning, with the loss of ten jobs. Its outlets in Newcastle West and the Riverpoint complex in the city centre also closed bringing the total number of jobs lost to around 40. However, Minister of State Patrick ODonovan says after talks with Tic Tics owners and the lenders in question, he has secured a commitment that the Newcastle West branch, at Killeline, would reopen on Tuesday with a new operator at the helm. But it remains unclear what will happen with the other two branches. Rose ODonnell, who has worked at the Westbury centre Tic Toc branch the last nine years, says staff will remain in the complex for as long as it takes to secure commitments from the owner. Ten staff are present, supported by ten parents. We are very disappointed, we really and truly are. All we want is what we are owed. We have been told we will not be getting redundancy [by the owner]. What we are told we will get is the statutory settlement from the government. What we are owed is two weeks wages, and holiday pay, she said. The Westbury creche cared for around 70 children, while it is understood some 70 families are affected by the closure in Newcastle West. Parents of children attending the creches were "shocked" this Friday morning to find that the facilities are to close when they turned up with their children. Staff member Rachel Quinlivan from Westbury said: "I was in shock. I did not receive any letter, or any phone call to say the creche was being closed this morning. We are just all devastated. I am here five years. This is my livelihood. I'm getting married next week, and things are just all over the place now. But it's the parents I really feel sorry for". A letter was sent to parents on Wednesday but some said they had not received any notice and were stunned. Meanwhile, there were reports that the letter was sent to just four staff members. The letter says that since the property crash, the Bank of Scotland were always very supportive of the business, but last year the debt relating to the properties and business was sold to an international fund. This fund does not have a mandate to support the business in the future and last Friday they informed us that they were not able to fund the business in the very difficult summer period. We have completed a review of the future income and unfortunately, even though numbers of children are going up with the the introduction of the extended pre-school year, the income is projected to go down. The local market does not have a need for full time Creche places, which makes the Creche unviable. The letter says that funds allowing, we intend to pay this weeks salary on Friday and you will be entitled to holiday pay and a redundancy payment. A WOMAN who arranged to meet a Limerickman via the internet and have sex with his dog died after the alleged activity, Limerick Circuit Court has heard. In what is the first case of its kind in recent Irish history, the local man appeared before the court charged with buggery with a German shepherd in a house in Patrickswell, County Limerick, four years ago. Sean McDonnell, 58, who has now moved out of Limerick to an undisclosed location due to publicity surrounding the case, appeared visibly upset in court as details of the case emerged. The former bus-driver, who has no previous convictions, pleaded guilty this September to the offence under section 61 of the Offences Against The Person Act 1861. Judge Carroll Moran heard that a number of text messages had been sent between the defendant and a woman identified only in court as XY, who died after having sexual activity with the dog belonging to Mr McDonnell on October 7, 2008, in Laurel Park, Patrickswell. One of the messages from the defendant to the woman said that he was looking forward to her enjoying her fantasy, after her text saying: I cant believe Im actually going to do this. Just think nice, naughty thoughts and all will be Okay, wrote McDonnell to her around 3pm on the day of the offence, as he gave her directions to his house. Denis Vaughan Buckley, senior prosecution counsel, told the court that there was a prior arrangement between them to come to McDonnells house after they communicated on an internet site, and gardai said they were satisfied an act of bestiality occurred. It was suggested to the defendant by the deceased that she had an allergy to dogs, however the prosecution said there was no medical evidence of this allergy. The defendant, a father of three, called the emergency services at 18.36, and when the ambulance and paramedics arrived at 18.50 they found the 43-year-old woman in an unusual state of dress, with an unusual opening in the area of her pants. Isobel Kennedy, SC, for the defence, said there was no effort made to alter her state of dress or interfere with her in any way before the paramedics arrived. Ms Kennedy said her client has lost his job directly as a result of the publicity in this case and has suffered enormously. This has put both families under enormous trauma, stress and anxiety, she said. She pointed out that the act would never have come to light, except that she passed away. She said the death should not be relevant in terms of sentencing, as it was not an intended consequence of that particular activity. The court heard he also contacted his GP twice as he realised she was in distress, her colour had turned blue, and then she collapsed as a result of contact with the dog. She was removed to the Mid-Western Regional Hospital and was pronounced dead at 20.20 hours by Dr Aine Moran. Staff at the hospital alerted gardai to the incident. A post-mortem examination was conducted by the State pathologist, Dr Marie Cassidy, and the cause of death remains undetermined. Swabs were taken from the deceased and no human semen was found. Further analysis by the International Society for Animal Genetics found that the samples taken from the deceased and Mr McDonnells dog, MacKenzie, were a match. Mr McDonnell went voluntarily to Roxboro Road garda station on the night in question, and on April 8, 2009, his home was searched. He accepted ownership of the dog, and it was the only dog present. The dog was placed in the pound in Limerick city, but after this incident the dog became very sexually aroused and started foaming at the mouth whenever a female entered the kennels, the prosecution said. It was later put down. Three computers were seized by gardai two belonging to XY and one belonging to Mr McDonnell which showed extensive activity in pornographic and bestiality sites. An analysis of the defendants computer showed thousands of hits on such sites, with over 3,000 comments made by the accused. He was arrested on July 20, 2009, and interviewed on eight separate occasions. Asked by gardai if he encouraged this act, he replied: I intimated that it may take place, but wasnt willing to go there. Gardai said he was being economical with some parts of the truth. He was charged on June 30, 2011, and made no reply after caution.Another woman, named only in court as AZ, confirmed that the deceased had discussions with her about having sexual relations with a dog. However, she was not asked to testify in court after a guilty plea was entered. The defendant faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Letters in support of the accused from his current employers, daughter and ex-wife were handed into the court. The case has been adjourned to Friday, December 14 to allow the judge consider his verdict. Mr McDonnell has been remanded on continuing bail until that date. Apr 27, 2021, 12 PM Donald Sundman of Mystic Stamp Co., left, presents an oversized check for $50,000 to Keelin O'Neill of Northern Ireland, who had inherited the recovered McCoy Jenny Invert stamp from his grandfather. In 2014, Mystic had offered a reward of $50,000 each fo Scott English, executive director of the American Philatelic Society, holds aloft a card containing the 1918 Jenny Invert airmail error stamp that was once part of the McCoy block of four that was stolen in 1955. The stamp was recovered in early April and By Denise McCarty The media came out in force to record the historic handover of a United States 1918 24 Jenny Invert airmail error stamp that had been missing for more than 60 years before being recovered in early April. Once part of the famed McCoy block of four stolen in 1955, the recovered stamp is position 76 in the original pane of 100 stamps that show the Curtiss Jenny biplane flying upside down. The clicking of the cameras echoed through the lobby of the Javits Center in New York City during the ceremony on the afternoon of Thursday, June 2, in front of a version of the Curtiss Jenny biplane that is pictured on the famous 1918 Jenny invert stamp. Connect with Linns Stamp News: Sign up for our newsletter Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter The stamp was being presented to the American Philatelic Research Library, which is considered to be the stamps owner. Scott English, administrator of the American Philatelic Research Library and executive director of the American Philatelic Society, presided over the event. Also speaking at the ceremony were Keelin ONeill, who had inherited the stamp from his grandfather; Roger Brody, president of the APRL; Preet Bharara, United States attorney general of the southern district of New York; Diego Rodriguez, assistant director in charge of the New York field office of the FBI; and Larry Lyons, executive director of the Philatelic Foundation. Rodriquez provided the facts behind what had been a cold case for the FBI: More than 60 years ago, a block of four of the most famous ever stamps in philatelic history, the Inverted Jenny, belonging to collector Ethel McCoy were stolen from an exhibition in Norfolk, Va. There were no witnesses, no suspects and very little evidence to pursue. The thieves were never apprehended. Over the six decades since the heist, two of the four stamps have been recovered. Thanks to the integrity of reputable dealers and collectors and investigations by the FBI. Ending the ceremony was the presentation of an oversized check for $50,000 to ONeil from Donald Sundman of Mystic Stamp Co. In 2014, Mystic had offered a reward of $50,000 each for the recovery of the remaining two Inverted Jenny stamps from the McCoy block of four. The reward from Mystic had been set to expire on Saturday, June 4, the final day of the show, according to Sundman. He commented on the remaining stamp from the block, asking, I wonder if the other stamp will show up by Saturday? But, if it does not, Sundman has extended the reward for the other stamp to the end of 2016. He said, I am hoping that this publicity will bring the fourth stamp forward. Before the check presentation, English took questions from the press. One reporter asked if there was any way to trace if the recovered stamp had been stolen. It was a 60-some-year journey that got us here today, English said, and so the reality is that it is probably going to take us some time to figure out the rest of that. I am sure that the FBI is going to assist us in any way that they can. He added, Stamp collectors are certainly going to know what the rest of the story is. Following the theft of the block in 1955, it would take more than 20 years before the first McCoy Jenny Invert (position 75) was recovered in 1977. Four years later, in 1981, the position-65 stamp was recovered. The FBI played a prominent role in the recovery of both stamps. This leaves only the top-right Jenny Invert from the McCoy block, position 66, unaccounted for. Learn more about the famed Jenny Invert stamps: The story behind the Jenny Invert from McCoy block recovered in New York Siegel unwraps Inverted Jenny website filled with research and data Recovered Jenny Invert from McCoy block was found in Northern Ireland Apr 30, 2021, 12 AM Said to be one of only two known covers with this hooded-circle Registered/Ascension postmark, this 1898 registered cover from Ascension was hammered down for $12,360 by Spink in London in late April. A 7-shilling, 6-penny St. Helena stamp with an elusive plate flaw that makes the mast appear broken in the Badge of the Colony design brought $22,960 at Spinks April sale. A very rare illustrated envelope (one of two known) in exceptionally fine condition, depicting Queen Victoria and consort Prince Albert with their infant, realized $19,400 at the Spink sale in London in April. By Matthew Healey, New York Correspondent Spink, in London, held their springtime Collectors Series sale on April 26-28. An 1898 registered cover sent from the island outpost of Ascension, in the south Atlantic, comprised a Great Britain 2-penny registered envelope uprated with a Queen Victoria 2d stamp of the 1887 Jubilee series (Scott 114). Said to be one of just two covers (plus an off-cover stamp) known with that type of hooded-circle Registered/ Ascension postmark, it fetched the equivalent of $12,360. Connect with Linns Stamp News: Sign up for our newsletter Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter A 7-shilling, 6-penny St. Helena stamp from the 1922-1927 Badge of the Colony issue, with an elusive plate flaw in which the ships main mast seems to be severed (variety of Scott 92; listed in the Stanley Gibbons catalog as 111da), was offered in fine mint condition. It sold for $22,960. An intricately illustrated envelope in exceptionally fine condition, depicting Queen Victoria and consort Prince Albert with their infant in her arms, was franked with a Penny Red (Scott 3) tied by a Maltese cross cancel and addressed to one Lady Dunfermline. Considered a rarity among the highly desirable genre of Victorian illustrated envelopes, the cover was said to be one of just two known of this type, unlisted by one of the main reference works on 19th-century pictorial envelopes. It sold for $19,400. Related Articles: Newly discovered Vin Fiz cover increases total to nine; Spink to offer it during Nov. 18-19 New York auction Line-engraved British classics in Spink auction Spink auction in London offers Commonwealth, more Twitter Reacted Very, Uh, Strongly To #Tronc By Rachel Cromidas in News on Jun 2, 2016 10:47PM We may have already reached peak tronc. "Tronc," is the Tribune Publishing company's new brand and possible answer to our darkest fears about the future of journalism. It's also been the laughing stock of the media-centric internet, since around 2 p.m. when mentions of the peculiar onomatopoeia started to skyrocket. On Thursday, heads of Tribune Publishing informed employees that the company, which split from the Tribune Company last year and publishes the Chicago Tribune and the LA Times, would hence forth be known as tronc. All lowercase, like the kids with their hip tech startups do it. Market Watch brings us a graph of tronc's meteoric rise to power: Somehow, tronc stands for "Tribune online content," and its rebranding will go into effect later this month. Tronc and its Nickelodeon-inspired lowercase logo were soon trending on Twitter, and spawning meme after meme in tribute to its ability to shuck off its old-media brand, while somehow remaining always-already passA. The hot takes are a-coming, we're counting on it, but in the meantime we'll satisfy ourselves basking in the brand's swift meme-ification: 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. Chicago Police Twitter Catches Flak For Sharing '60s-Era Baton Photo By Rachel Cromidas in News on Jun 3, 2016 7:55PM In an attempt to participate in Throwback Thursday with a bit if misplaced nostalgia, the Chicago Police Department Tweeted a photo of a 1968 police helmet and billy cluband promptly caught flack for it. "CPD Presents: #throwbackthursday Chicago Police helmet & billy-club circa 1968," the Tweet, which appears to have since been deleted, read. Several Twitter users replied to the Tweet with photos of '60s-era police officers beating citizens with wooden batons like that one. Some photos show people who have been beaten bloody during protests that took place during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, as well as other historic instances of police brutality. "There is nothing nostalgic about your history of brutality," one user replied. "Delete your Twitter," another wrote. We reached out to the Chicago Police Department for comment and will update if we hear back. Newly-Released Files Show Chicago Police Officers Punching, Choking, Shooting Citizens By aaroncynic in News on Jun 3, 2016 5:31PM Mounted Chicago police officer on the night of the Ferguson verdict. Photo via Bryan Haynes. The city has released hundreds of files, including audio and video, on Chicago police shootings, in what its touting as an unprecedented move toward transparency Friday morning. "The policy we are implementing today is a major step forward to promote transparency, and it makes us one of the leading cities in America to guarantee timely public access to this breadth of information involving sensitive police incidents," said Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a statement. "It is important to remember the thousands of hard-working men and women who quietly do dangerous and difficult work to keep us safe each and every day." The trove of data on times that Chicago police officers discharged their guns comes half a year after the release of a harrowing video showing a cop fatally shoot black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times. The video release fueled citywide pushes for more transparency from the Chicago Police Department and prompted a federal Department of Justice investigation into CPD. It also prompted the firing of ex-police chief Garry McCarthy. The 101 files can be accessed in a new data portal shared online by the Independent Police Review Authority Friday morning. The IPRA, the organization tasked with reviewing incidents in which police shot someone and other possible incidents of police misconduct, was overhauled late last year on the heels of the outcry over McDonald's shooting. Many believe that Chicago police officers, members of the police union and City Hall employees attempted to cover up the disturbing October 2014 shooting, which would explain why the cop who shot McDonald was not charged for murder until over a year after the fact. The majority of the files are of "firearms incidents," according to the data portal. In addition, there are 25 "incidents in police custody," two of "other use of force" and none listed under "taser discharge." The files contain either audio, video, or police reports of various incidents or a mixture of information. Some of the video was captured by police dashboard cameras, pod cameras and in some cases, from bystanders and inside stations. Video from one "other use of force" case shows a handcuffed man being led into a hospital room with a bed. A few seconds in, the officer leading him inside pushes him towards a wall, punches him in the face and pushes him onto the bed, and appearing to hit him a few more times. A lawsuit filed by the victim says that the officers involved violated his constitutional rights through the use of excessive force and the "code of silence." According to the Chicago Tribune, court documents allege that the practices of the police department allowed the man to suffer injuries because "defendants had good reason to believe that their misconduct would not be revealed or reported by fellow officers or their supervisors, that their false, incomplete, and misleading reports would go unchallenged by these supervisors and fellow officers, from the police Superintendents, Police Board, and Directors of IPRA on down, and that they were immune from disciplinary action, thereby protecting them from the consequences of their unconstitutional conduct." The second "other use of force" incident shows a man conversing with an officer standing near a desk in a station. After the man paces back and forth a bit, the officer reaches out and grabs his throat and pushes him towards a wall. He then begins to choke him and try to force him towards the ground. A second officer behind the desk casually walks over and appears to attempt to help the first bring the man back to his feet. The victim is then led away. In both cases, no other informationbe it audio or incident reportsis currently available on the IPRA portal. City officials told the Tribune that up to half of the 100-some cases are still under IPRA investigation. Some of the material is "sensitive," officials warned, because they show graphic images of Chicagoans being beaten or shot by police. Overall, the data dump is part of a new push by the city to release information on police misconduct investigations to the public in a more timely manner. In the future, police will have 60 days to make shooting videos available online. The Fraternal Order of Police was more than a little unhappy with the information dump. Politico wrote this morning that in an email to members, FOP president Dean Angelo said that a meeting between the union, PBPA and SEIU turned more than "contentious" and called the release "irresponsible." Angelo added: It is our hope that the Department, the City and IPRA consider our advice and add audio as well as an explanation of what the video shows. It is sad when, with all the talk about transparency and communication, they decide to operate in this manner. Vic Mensa Is Making His Powerful New Mixtape Free... If You Promise To Vote By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 3, 2016 6:10PM Vic Mensa We're still waiting patiently for Vic Mensa's proper debut, but the 22-year-old South Sider just release a new mixtape to hold us over until then. The seven track There's Alot Going On is an incredibly solid and self-assured effort, displaying Mensa's acuity at deft tempo shifts and verbal acrobatics. There's also a definite political bent to the release, and Mensa has partnered with Respect My Vote to allow anyone who pledges to hit up their local polling place in November to download the mixtape for free. Underage or not a citizen? Then you can still download it for free if you "pledge to work for positive change in my community and encourage as many eligible voters I know to vote." Of particular note, the mixtape includes "16 Shots," a song Mensa debuted live following the release of the disturbing Laquan McDonald shooting video. And if you download it there's a personal note from Mensa, a calling of arms of sorts, that's well worth reading. We found this passage to be rather compelling: The world is at a turning point. There are a lot of things going on that we have to either change, or die, to put it poetically. The cars we drive, the food we eat, the phones and computers youre reading this on, are all literally killing that big blue earth we see in photos taken from the stars. And down on the ground weve got a lot of problems of our own, but I dont have to tell you that. I will anyway. With the eyes of the world at our fingertips, injustices everywhere have been given the worlds stage within minutes of action. A cop shoots an unarmed black man in the back of the head in Oakland, and people will be protesting it in New York an hour later. But protests arent going to bring Oscar Grant back to life. or LaQuan McDonald. or Mike Brown. or Tamir Rice. Nothing we say or do can reverse the poison in the brains of the kids who drank lead from their kitchen sink in Flint, Michigan. Those damages cannot be taken back. But they can be stopped from happening again. What Im asking you is not to give a fuck about me, my music, or my story. What Im asking of you is to give a fuck about US. Us as a people. Us as ONE. As human beings who laugh, cry, sing, bleed and dream. Stream the album below, and if you're ready to promise you'll vote in November, download it for free before July 4. It's known to Zhengzhou locals as the "Leaning Tower of Pisa". Similar to its namesake, a Song Dynasty tower (960-1279) in the Central China Henan province capital has leaned 40 centimeters, gaining the attention of archaeologists. The leaning tower at the Shousheng Temple in Zhengzhou, the capital of Central Chinas Henan province. [File photo] The tower belongs to the Shousheng Temple in Ranjia village, Zhongmu county in Zhengzhou. As a provincial-protected cultural relic site, the temple is famous for its twin towers. The towers are 20 meters apart. The east tower has four layers and stands at 18 meters. It's western - and leaning partner is thirty meters high, with seven layers.. The temple's 80-year-old watchman Ran Xiaoshui is increasing concerned about the inclining west tower and is afraid it falls apart someday. He said the west tower was still leaning and needed renovation. But after investigating the site, ancient architecture experts said the tower had stood for more than 1000 years and the geological structure under the tower was stable. It won't collapse for a short while. Leaning tower restoration is proving difficult across the world and the tower's renovation would need long-term observation and more feasible schemes, according to experts from the Institute of Cultural Relics and Architecture Protection in Henan. Flamboyant Maratus bubo, one of seven new species of peacock spider recently described in Australia, striking a pose. They're fuzzy. They're colorful. And they wave their legs in the air like they just don't care. They're peacock spiders, a group of tiny arachnids that are small in stature but giants in the charisma department, best known for their brilliant colors and energetic courtship "dances" much like the showy, fan-tailed peacocks that inspired the spiders' name. And scientists recently described seven new peacock spider species so let the spider dance party commence! [In Photos: 7 New Species of Peacock Spider] Researchers found the newly described species all of which were in the genus Maratus in Western Australia and South Australia, bringing the total number of known Maratus species to 48. The spiders in this genus measure on average about 0.16 to 0.20 inches (4 to 5 millimeters) in length, with females a bit larger than the males. Females that belong to this genus tend to be dappled in different shades of brown. But it's the males' dramatic coloration that catches the eye and prompts biologists to assign them whimsical nicknames like "Sparklemuffin," which was bestowed upon a peacock spider species described in 2015. Colors and patterns are displayed on the males' abdomens, frequently on a "fan" a flat structure that is lifted up toward the female during the male's courtship performance. [6 Colorful Peacock Spiders Caught On Video] A Maratus vespa male (right) performs his signature courtship "dance" for a female (left). (Image credit: Jurgen Otto) In one of the newfound species, Maratus bubo, males bear a particularly striking pattern, in dazzling shades of red and blue. According to study author Jurgen Otto, the pattern reminded him and co-author David Hill of an owl's face, inspiring them to name the species "bubo," after the genus for horned owls. Another new species, Maratus tessellatus, isn't as colorful as its cousins, but performs incredibly fast "footwork" during its courtship dance. Otto noted in a photo description of M. tessellatus that the spider does not elevate its abdomen as many of its kin do, which could explain its reliance on speedy leg moves to make an impression on interested females. Several of the new species M. bubo, M. lobatus and M. tessellatus were originally spotted years earlier by wildlife photographer and insect educator David Knowles, who contacted Otto about the unusual sightings. Knowles' descriptions and images led Otto and Hill to locate and ultimately describe the spiders. Otto, a mite biologist and spider enthusiast, told Live Science that his fascination with spiders began in childhood. But it wasn't until he moved to Sydney and happened upon his first peacock spider "just hopping in my path" in 2005 that he developed an all-consuming interest in the group. He currently keeps hundreds of them in various life stages in his home for scientific observation and photography. Otto admitted that he used to maintain a pile of leaves on the dining room table to use as a photographic setting for the spiders, but eventually had to move it after his wife complained. "I do nothing else," he said. "All my spare time is devoted to the spiders." A juvenile Maratus albus, in the second instar stage. Study author Jurgen Otto described juveniles of this species as "amongst the most photogenic." He was not wrong. (Image credit: Jurgen Otto) Zooming in And much of that time is spent photographing them typically from a distance of less than an inch with a special macro lens that magnifies his tiny subjects up to five times. The spiders, Otto said, seem oblivious to the camera. They tend to ignore him or jump on his lens. "I often lose them," he said. "Sometimes I spend as much time looking for the spiders as I do photographing them." Otto estimated that over the years he has shot hundreds of thousands of photos of peacock spiders, a small fraction of which he posts to Flickr albums. That might sound excessive, but Otto explained that when you're dealing with animals that have never been seen before, it's imperative to record "all the aspects" of both males and females their body parts and postures from every angle and in multiple positions. For Otto, that means capturing as many images of the living animals as possible. "When they're preserved in alcohol, they change color," Otto told Live Science. "Having the photos shows how they look when they're alive." Ironically, Otto has never seen some of the peacock spiders' true colors he is partially colorblind. But while he may not be able to perceive the full range of hues that decorate the spiders' bodies, he hopes that his images and video can help convey their unique charm to others especially those who may not find spiders charming at all. "I've heard people say, 'I hate spiders, but I love these!'" Otto said. "If people turned from arachnophobes into arachnophiles, that would be my greatest achievement." The findings were published online May 22 in the journal Peckhamia. Original article on Live Science. If you want a nice view of the moon, instead of squinting into the night sky or cursing tall buildings, you could soon gaze at an expertly crafted model of the stunning celestial object. And this version is small enough sit atop your coffee table. The lunar globe, dubbed MOON, bills itself as the most accurate of its kind. Its makers used NASA data to re-create the moon's many craters, including Petavius and Copernicus, at 1/20,000,000th the original size. The mini moon comes with a ring of LED lights that revolve around the globe and illuminate the face of the moon as seen from Earth. MOON also reveals the far side (sometimes referred to as the "dark side") of the moon, which faces away from Earth. This mysterious lunar region is even more pockmarked with craters than the Earth-facing side is, said Oscar Lhermitte, creator of MOON. "Its quite stunning," he said. [Top 10 Amazing Moon Facts] The road to building MOON began four years ago, Lhermitte, a French industrial designer based in London, told Live Science. He was inspired to create MOON after he saw high-resolution photos captured by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which has been in orbit around the moon for almost seven years. The LRO probe collects information on the lunar environment, maps day and night temperatures, and snaps high-resolution images of the moon. Lhermitte reached out to the German Aerospace Center's Institute of Planetary Research, which worked on the LRO mission, and obtained access to the institute's extensive database of 2D lunar photos. In order to transfer the 2D, black-and-white photos onto a 3D globe, Lhermitte converted the images into "digital terrain models," he said. The models assigned values of elevation for shades of grey; for instance, anything that was 100 percent white would be designated as the lowest point and anything that was 100 percent black would be designated as the highest point. Varying shades between black and white then correlated to varying elevations, which gave rise to a topographic, bumpy surface, Lhermitte said. The ring of LED lights revolves around the globe and replicates the sun's light in space. (Image credit: MOON) Once the 3D data was ready to be imprinted on the globe, Lhermitte had to export the unusually dense file (typical 3D printing jobs are about 1 megabyte, but this 3D printing job was about 4 gigabytes), he said. And he had to hope his computer wouldn't crash, Lhermitte said. He printed a full model of the moon using an industrial nylon (a white, robust plastic) 3D printer; this model is now the master, or the model from which subsequent molds are made. The master's outer layer is 0.004 inches (0.1 millimeters) thick. Each globe is made with hard polyurethane resin, a common casting material, and pigmented to reflect the moon's greyish color. Since people "only recognize craters when the light shines on them," Lhermitte said, MOON also comes with a rotating light source controlled by a mini, internal computer. Lhermitte's colleagues, Alex Du Preez and Peter Krige, designed the computer to include an algorithm that calculates the path of the moon around the sun for the next 100 years. The computer also contains a clock that will sync itself with the accurate time and phase of the moon once plugged in, Lhermitte said. As a nod to lunar enthusiasts, "The MOON's clock has the same memory capacity (64 kilobytes) as the computers used for [the] Apollo 11" mission in 1969, he added. Lhermitte said he hopes to see his creation used in school classrooms, science museums and observatories in the near future. He is currently creating two sizes of MOON; one model is smaller and contains the revolving light source and the other is larger and does not come with a light source. The smaller model is 1/20,000,000th the moon's original size and measures 6.8 inches (17 centimeters) across, and the larger model is 1/11,500,000th the moon's original size and measures 11.8 inches (30 cm) across. The project raised more than $210,000 through a crowdfunded Kickstarter campaign, well beyond the original stated goal of $36,201. The project is now available for pre-order through Kickstarter, with the smaller version (which includes lights) currently selling for about $870 and the larger version (which lacks the ring of LED lights) currently going for $800. Both versions of the lunar globe will begin shipping pre-orders in November. Original article on Live Science. Yong zi is the name for the exquisite chess pieces made in Yongchang (now Baoshan) in Yunnan province. The craft has a 500-year history. According to the records of Xu Xiake, a Chinese geologist from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Yunnan was described as the very place to produce chess pieces and Yongchangs were the best. However, production stalled due to wars in the area in the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Some of the craft techniques were lost during this period. At present, a factory in Baoshan can produce high quality chess pieces after years of study in the traditional crafts. Yongchang chess pieces are made from a blend of Baoshan red agate, Huanglong jade, jadeite and amber. The craft of making Yongchang chess pieces has been listed as the provincial intangible cultural heritage in Yunnan. A new exhibition at the Library of Congress, "America Reads," will celebrate the publics choice of 65 books by American authors that had a profound effect on American life. "America Reads" will open Thursday, June 16, in the Southwest Gallery on the second floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C. The exhibition is free and open to the public through Dec. 31, 2016, Monday through Saturday, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The exhibition will feature some of the rarest and most interesting editions in the Librarys collections. Many volumes are from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division and are seldom on public view. Also included in the exhibition is a video featuring six Pulitzer Prize winners, including Jennifer Egan and Rita Dove, who discuss the books that they think shaped America. Of the 65 books in "America Reads," 40 were chosen directly by the public. An additional 25 titles were chosen by the public from a list created for the 2012 Library of Congress exhibition "Books That Shaped America." "Books That Shaped America" was a popular exhibition that featured 88 books chosen by Library curators as being representative of the breadth and influence of books by American writers, from the countrys founding to the present. The titles were not intended to be a list of the "best" American books. Rather, the Library curators selected 88 books by American authors that they believed had a profound effect on American life. While the 2012 exhibition was on display, the Library of Congress urged members of the public to name other books that shaped America and to tell the Library which of the 88 books on the list were most important to them. Thousands of readers responded. "America Reads" will display the results, featuring the titles most named. Once again, the volumes featured in the "America Reads" exhibition do not necessarily represent the best in American letters, nor do they speak to the diversity of our nation and the books it produces. In other words, the selections are not definitive or all-encompassing. But as with the 2012 exhibition, "America Reads" is intended to jump-start new conversations about the most influential books written in America and what they mean to people. This exhibition is made possible through generous support from Newmans Own Foundation and the Library of Congress Third Century Fund. "America Reads"The 40 New Titles Chosen by the Public Ayn Rand, "The Fountainhead" Kurt Vonnegut, "Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Childrens Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death" Laura Ingalls Wilder, "Little House in the Big Woods" Joseph Smith, "The Book of Mormon" Willa Cather, "My Antonia" Alex Haley, "Roots: The Saga of an American Family" Ayn Rand, "Anthem" Alice Walker, "The Color Purple" John Steinbeck, "Of Mice and Men" John Steinbeck, "East of Eden" Sylvia Plath, "The Bell Jar" Tim OBrien, "The Things They Carried" Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, "All the Presidents Men" Arthur Miller, "Death of a Salesman" Arthur Miller, "The Crucible" Ernest Hemingway, "The Old Man and the Sea" Ken Kesey, "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream" Ernest Hemingway, "The Sun Also Rises" John F. Kennedy, "Profiles in Courage" Stephen King, "The Stand" Larry McMurtry, "Lonesome Dove" Judy Blume, "Are You There God? Its Me, Margaret" Howard Zinn, "A Peoples History of the United States" James Fenimore Cooper, "The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757" Robert A. Heinlein, "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" Wilson Rawls, "Where the Red Fern Grows" Madeleine LEngle, "A Wrinkle in Time" Frank Herbert, "Dune" Thomas Pynchon, "Gravitys Rainbow" Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" Kate Chopin, "The Awakening" Shel Silverstein, "The Giving Tree" Milton Friedman, "Capitalism and Freedom" Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, "Free to Choose: A Personal Statement" Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature" Napoleon Hill, "Think and Grow Rich" John Kennedy Toole, "A Confederacy of Dunces" Robert Penn Warren, "All the Kings Men" Robert M. Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values" "America Reads"The Publics Top 25 Choices from the Original 2012 List Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged" Harper Lee, "To Kill a Mockingbird" Mark Twain, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" Thomas Paine, "Common Sense" Harriet Beecher Stowe, "Uncle Toms Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly" The Federalist: "A Collection of Essays, Written in Favour of the New Constitution" Upton Sinclair, "The Jungle" J. D. Salinger, "The Catcher in the Rye" John Steinbeck, "The Grapes of Wrath" Alcoholics Anonymous: "The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism" Ray Bradbury, "Fahrenheit 451" F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby" Louisa May Alcott, "Little Women, or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy" Margaret Mitchell, "Gone With the Wind" Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss), "The Cat in the Hat" Rachel Carson, "Silent Spring" Henry David Thoreau, "Walden; or, Life in the Woods" Jack Kerouac, "On the Road" Betty Friedan, "The Feminine Mystique" L. Frank Baum, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" Herman Melville, "Moby-Dick; or, the Whale" Dale Carnegie, "How to Win Friends and Influence People" Joseph Heller, "Catch-22" Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass" Benjamin Spock, "Baby and Child Care" The Library of Congress, the largest library in the world, holds more than 162 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its website at loc.gov. Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn, who are considered the "fathers of the internet," will join Dame Wendy Hall and other scholars and practitioners of internet and digital studies for a symposium on the challenges of preserving the contents of the web, on June 16 at the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress. The day-long symposium, "Saving the Web: The Ethics and Challenges of Preserving Whats on the Internet," will take place from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursday, June 16, in Room 119 on the first floor of the Librarys Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C. The event is free and open to the public. The conference is hosted by Dame Wendy Hall, professor of computer science at the University of Southampton, who currently holds the 2016 Kluge Chair in Technology and Society. As Kluge Chair, Hall has been in residence at the Library for three months researching the social, economic, and technical dimensions of the web. She has also met extensively with Library personnel and the larger Washington policymaking community to discuss web-archiving strategies. According to Hall, preserving the contents of the web is an increasingly vital activity for governments, libraries and universities. The web is a massive global information system, and yet significant amounts of its contents disappear daily. The average web page remains online for barely 100 days. The symposium brings together experts in fields of computer science, information science, behavioral science, archives, media studies, communications and more to discuss major issues surrounding web preservation, the future potential of web archives to researchers and scholars, and the challenges in web archiving. In addition to Hall, Cerf, and Kahn, speakers scheduled to appear include Jefferson Bailey of the Internet Archive; Ramesh Jain of the University of California, Irvine; Lee Rainie, of the Pew Research Center; James Hendler of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; and Katy Borner of Indiana University Bloomington. Participants from a two-day "datathon" organized by Matthew Weber of Rutgers University and hosted by the Library earlier that week will also present their findings from working with the Librarys digital collections, including data from the 2000, 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. A full schedule of speakers is available. The Kluge Chair in Technology and Society is a distinguished senior research position in residence at the Library. Its holder, appointed by the Librarian of Congress, conducts research focusing on the impact of fast-changing technology on human societies, using the rapidly growing digital online resources of the Library, in addition to science and technology reports and documentation worldwide. Through a generous endowment from John W. Kluge, the Library of Congress established the Kluge Center in 2000 to bring together the world's best thinkers to stimulate and energize one another, to distill wisdom from the Library's rich resources, and to interact with policymakers in Washington. For more information, visit loc.gov/kluge/. The Library of Congress, the largest library in the world, holds more than 162 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its website at loc.gov. You are here: Home The Chinese navy will participate in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) multinational naval exercises, said Liang Yang, the navy spokesperson, on Thursday. Attending the drill will be a missile destroyer, a missile frigate, a supply ship, a hospital ship, a submarine rescue vessel and two helicopters. As previously agreed by the Chinese and U.S. navies, China will take part in a series of exercises, including damage control and submarine rescue, said Liang. Sports events and exchanges will be held between the two sides, Liang added. Naval forces from China will join a U.S. warship in the west Pacific in mid-June and then sail to Pearl Harbor in formation. In 2014, the Chinese navy participated in RIMPAC multinational naval exercises for the first time. School & Education, Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: June 03 2016 Harborfields High School students recently joined forces with the Booster Club and the PTA Councils Health & Welfare Committee, to raise funds to benefit the LI Chapter of the Special Olympics. (Left to right): John Valente, Harborfields High School Athletic Director; Rebecca Strickland, Special Olympics New York - Long Island Region; Deb Stolba Chairperson of the Harborfields Booster Club; and Rachel Spencer, Chairperson of the Harborfields PTA Council Health & Welfare Committee. Greenlawn, NY - June 2, 2016 - Harborfields High School students recently joined forces with the Booster Club and the PTA Councils Health & Welfare Committee, to raise funds to benefit the Long Island Chapter of the Special Olympics. Working together, they were able to raise more than $1,700 for the cause by selling customized Special Olympics bracelets and collecting donations from community sponsors and local businesses! The Special Olympics goes far beyond just sports, helping to brighten the lives of the competing athletes by fostering important life skills, self-confidence, and friendship, said Suffolk County Legislator William R. Spencer, M.D. I commend and thank all the students and parent leaders who helped to coordinate this effort. Currently over 6,200 Long Island athletes are training and competing in the Special Olympics. Harborfields donation will go toward helping to prepare and send 4 local athletes to competitions this year! Harborfields School District should be extremely proud of the dedication and time they put into raising funds for our Long Island Special Olympics Athletes. With some struggles along the way, with conflicting fundraiser dates and last minute forced cancellations, they didnt let it stop them. said Rebecca Strickland, Associate Director of Development at the Long Island Chapter of the Special Olympics. We are so thankful and proud of their determination to make a difference in the lives of our athletes! Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases By Don Miller Published: June 03 2016 Organization given 4-star by national rating agency for strong financial health and commitment to accountability and transparency; cited for 95.9% of expenses going to programs and services. One prevailing and a significant factor in determining the four-star designation is that 95.9% of Island Harvest Food Banks annual expenses go directly to programs and services that assist more than 316,000 Long Islanders who struggle with hunger. Hauppauge, NY - June 2, 2016 - Citing a strict adherence to best practices, demonstration of strong financial health, and an ongoing commitment to accountability and transparency, Charity Navigator, the nations leading charity evaluator, has designated Island Harvest Food Bank a four-star charity for the third year in a row, according to Randi Shubin Dresner, president and CEO, of the Hauppauge-based hunger-relief organization. One prevailing and a significant factor in determining the four-star designation is that 95.9% of Island Harvest Food Banks annual expenses go directly to programs and services that assist more than 316,000 Long Islanders who struggle with hunger. According to Charity Navigator, seven out of 10 charities evaluated spend at least 75% of their budget on the programs and services, and nine out of 10 spend at least 65%. A statement on Charity Navigators website says that those spending less than a third of their budget on program expenses are simply not living up to their missions. In a letter notifying Island Harvest Food Bank of the four-star designation, Michael Thatcher, president and CEO of Charity Navigator wrote, Island Harvest outperforms most other charities in America. He added, This exceptional designation from Charity Navigator sets Island Harvest apart from its peers and demonstrates to the public its trustworthiness. Charity Navigators four-star evaluation for three straight years is a validation of Island Harvest Food Banks ongoing dedication to fulfilling our mission to end hunger and reduce food waste on Long Island in an efficient, fiscally responsible manner, said Shubin Dresner. Our financial and in-kind donors support of what we do is based solely on trust and Charity Navigators four-star rating help assure that the trust they place in us is being met. Charity Navigators objective is to provide donors with information necessary to gain greater confidence in the organizations they support. In all, just 14% of all organizations evaluated by Charity Navigator receive at least three consecutive four-star designations, its highest rating. The rating agency estimates that in 2015 it influenced approximately $10 billion in charitable gifts. Charity Navigators report for Island Harvest Food Bank can be found here. About Hunger on Long Island Hunger is a state in which people do not get enough food to provide the nutrients for active and healthy lives. It can result from the recurrent lack of access to food. More than 316,000 Long Islanders face the risk of hunger every day, according to Island Harvest Food Bank and Feeding America, a national hunger-relief organization. Those facing hunger include adults (often working two jobs), seniors and veterans. Unable to make ends meet, they (and their children) are often forced to go without food. Approximately 70,000 individuals seek food assistance in Nassau and Suffolk counties each week through soup kitchens, food pantries and other feeding programs served by Island Harvest Food Bank. About Island Harvest Food Bank Island Harvest Food Bank is a leading hunger-relief organization that provides food and other resources to people in need. Always treating those it helps with dignity and respect, its goal is to end hunger and reduce food waste on Long Island through efficient food collection and distribution; enhanced hunger-awareness and nutrition-education programs; job training; and direct services targeted at children, senior citizens, veterans and others at risk. Approximately 96 cents of every dollar donated to Island Harvest Food Bank goes to programs that support more than 316,000 Long Islanders. Island Harvest Food Bank is a lead agency in the regions emergency-response preparedness for food and product distribution, and is a member of Feeding America, the nations leading domestic hunger-relief organization. More information can be found at www.islandharvest.org. Family & Parenting, Local News, Travel & Local Attractions, Health & Wellness, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: June 03 2016 New York State Assembly voted with overwhelming support for lactation accommodations in New York State airports. Albany, NY - June 2, 2016 - New York State Assembly voted with overwhelming support for lactation accommodations in New York State airports. The legislation sponsored by Assembly Member Michaelle Solages (D-Elmont) would require airports to provide a nursing space for breastfeeding mothers behind the security screening area equipped with a chair and an electrical outlet away from public view. While traveling with my infant son, I noticed many places lacked a designated, non-bathroom space for nursing or pumping. Many times I would have to pump in a bathroom, stated Assemblymember Solages. There are many laws that would require employers to provide their staff with a private place to pump breast milk other than a bathroom. However, in New York State there is no such requirement for airports or other public spaces. By providing permanent public accommodations, this bill would make New York's airports a more friendly environment for nursing mothers. Amenities would include adequate seating, electrical outlets, and these spots would be separate from public restrooms. The benefits of breastfeeding are well-documented. By providing a designated, non-bathroom space for travelers and airline staff, we will encourage new mothers to breastfeed and work to perpetuate healthy parenting practices, said Assemblymember Solages. Lactation Rooms in public buildings will help to make breastfeeding easier for many families. Mothers who are separated from their babies will be able to more easily express milk in a clean, private place. While breastfeeding in public is a protected civil right which should be encouraged, it is not always easy to do, stated Dr.Susan Vierczhalek, Chair of the New York State Breastfeeding Coalition. Women who feel more comfortable breastfeeding in a private place or whose infants become distracted when feeding will also benefit. This is a great practical way to help normalize and support breastfeeding in todays world. Traveling with a baby can be stressful enough; New Yorks mothers shouldnt also have to worry about finding a sanitary and private place to nurse their child, said Senator Tim Kennedy. As our families across New York State grow and expand, so too does the number of mothers nationwide who are choosing to nurse their newborns, and we need to make sure were providing the proper support for them as once they leave the hospital. Through this legislation, were simply making sure that our mothers across the state have access to the accommodations they deserve, which is why its so important that my colleagues in the Senate act quickly and decisively. Senator Tim Kennedy (D-Buffalo) is calling on his colleagues in the Senate to follow the Assembly and bring the Senate bill S7713 to the floor for a full vote. To date the the bill sits in the Senate Transportation Committee, and is expected to move through the Rules Committee and on to the floor. Lactation Accommodation in Airports Act is a massive step forward in the process to reforming various public areas to accommodate the needs of expecting women across the state. This proposal would go into effect by January 2017. Bill A07989 now heads to the New York State Senate for consideration. Click here to review Bill A7989. Others, Local News, Local Experts, Business & Finance, National & World News By Chris Boyle Published: June 03 2016 New rules affect salaried employees overtime eligibility for workers nationwide - how will these changes effect Long Island businesses? Dawn Davidson Drantch, an Alcott HR consultant, and active NAPEO Member, and Louis Basso is President and CEO of Alcott HR, and Leadership Council Chair of the New York State Leadership Council, say down with LongIsland.com to discuss the US Dept. of Labor's drastic updates to its the Overtime Regulations. There has always been a major distinction between salaried and hourly employment, each with its advantages and disadvantages as it pertains to access to overtime compensation. The recent Overtime Regulations update issued by the United States Department of Labor (DOL), narrows the gap between these two distinctions - salaried workers who are paid below $913 a week will be entitled to compensation for working overtime - a major jump from the $455 a week threshold that had been in place for decades. For workers, this seems like a win, however many business owners argue that the ruling places undue stress upon businesses that are already faced with hardship in todays difficult economic climate. On May 18th of this year, President Barack Obama announced the DOL's newly updated Overtime Eligibility Regulations, which alter the Fair Labor Standards Act, and raise the minimum salary to have access to overtime pay for executive, administrative and professional employees (both blue and white collar) to $913 a week (up from $455 a week). This change will enable an additional four million full-time, salaried workers to receive overtime compensation when they have worked additional hours on top of their standard work week. The change goes into effect on December 1st, 2016, and the DOL has also called for an indexing of the Salaried Worker Threshold to account for potential cost of living increases every three years. Unsurprisingly, the ruling has sent ripples throughout the business world on both sides of the equation. To truly comprehend the scope of the changes in store for both employers and employees come December 1st, we spoke to two experts in the field for their thoughts on these new Overtime Eligibility Regulations, and what these changes mean for the millions of salaried workers who stand to be affected by the changes come December. Louis Basso is President and CEO of Alcott HR, a professional employer organization (PEO) he co-founded in 1987. Alcott HR is a one-stop shop for all of a business human resources (HR) related needs, and has been recognized by Crains New York Business List of Top 150 Private Companies on numerous occassions. Basso is very active in the PEO industry, and works with organizations representing small businesses - he is the Leadership Council Chair of the New York State Leadership Council of the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations (NAPEO). According to Basso, previous regulations in place governing overtime eligibility status for businesses were already fair; in addition, he said, many employers were already going above and beyond to be fair to their salaried workers, making these new regulations not only unnecessary, but redundant. The vast majority of businesses were doing the right thing; paying for overtime for their nonexempt employees, and compensating their exempt employees in different ways as part of their compensation packages, he said. These businesses understand that their employees are their most valuable asset and to keep good people, you need to do the right thing. For those businesses that were not being fair to their employees, the previous regulations may not have been strong enough, but overall, I believe the vast majority of businesses are doing the right thing. Basso noted that this change in overtime eligibility status for salaried employees comes at an already hard time for employers, considering the fact that other measures aimed at increasing worker compensation and protection have recently passed as well. This new regulation, combined with the new minimum wage, the passage of a new disability law in New York State, and the financial increases incurred through the Affordable Care Act has made it very challenging for businesses, he said. It is a triple whammy which represents cost impacts triple to four times the cost of living. I think there were other options available such as making sure people were properly classified as exempt or nonexempt. The rules were in place and just needed better enforcement. Not everyone thinks that this update is uncalled for - Dawn Davidson Drantch, who began her career at the United States DOL's Civil Rights Division in Washington DC, later joining a Long Island a human resources and employment law firm, thinks that the increase was overdue for employees living in areas with a high cost of living. In 2005, she joined Alcott HR, where she advises on legislation, laws, rules and regulations, as well as employee relations issues, and is is a regular source for media regarding issues in the workplace. Drantch is active in NAPEO as a member of its Board of Directors, Legal Advisory Council, Health Care Task Force and State and Federal Government Affairs Committees. Drantch feels that this change in overtime eligibility status for salaried employees is a good thing for those struggling to make ends meet, although she does not deny that it fails to take into varied living conditions nationwide or the hardships its impending implementation will mean for businesses. In this part of the county, where it is difficult to live on $23,000 a year, perhaps we were overdue to look at this rule, but there may have been a way to phase in the changes in order to make it easier for businesses to comply, she said. However, the rule is not indexed for regions across the country, where different economic conditions and costs of living vary greatly. In other parts of the country, many managers make salaries that are under the new salary threshold of $47,456 for exempt employees. Businesses now have some important decisions to make about their staffing and budgets. Drantch outlined the specifics of the Overtime Eligibility Regulations, and said that they will force businesses to make some hard choices once December 1st rolls around; ultimately, she said, the new measures may have unintended negative consequences for employees. Previously, the federal regulations said that salaried employees making $455 a week or more were exempt from overtime pay. Now, the minimum salary is set at $913 a week, or $47,476 annually for executive, administrative and professional employees. That means anyone earning less now must be paid overtime. The new rule automatically entitles 35% of full-time salaried worker to overtime pay based on their salary, she said. This will cause some employers to raise some employee salaries over the $47,456 minimum, which could cause other employees to question why they arent getting a raise, creating morale issues. On the other side, some employers may elect to pay formerly salaried employees on an hourly basis instead, requiring these workers to clock in and keep track of their time which they have not previously been required to do. Basso also feels that the new law does not take numerous factors into consideration, and could lead to issues affecting peoples jobs that were unintended by its passing. I think that the government could have taken more gradual measures and again, I believe the rules were in place and that the vast majority of businesses were doing the right thing. For the minority that wasnt, expanded enforcement measures may have been less onerous than these changes applied unilaterally, he said. While the new overtime rules may have been well intended, there may be unintended consequences in terms of peoples jobs, how much money they end up making. We will have to wait and see as businesses look at their particular situation and make the necessary changes to comply with the law and still keep their businesses operating efficiently and profitably. For those businesses that do not adhere to the new regulations, or are simply unaware of their passing, Drantch notes that the Department of Labor will be keeping an eye out to ensure compliance from employers. The Department of Labor has different enforcement initiatives. It tends to target different industries each year. Typically, the DOL looks at industries where there are a lot of lower paid, lower skilled, blue collar workers, she said. The new rule applies to all workers blue collar and white collar. Unfortunately, a large number of business owners do not stay abreast of changing regulations or they simply dont know, and regulations like this one, which the DOL has been speaking about for a while now, can be very difficult for them. Regardless of the challenges both to employers who are fighting to keep afloat, and employees who are trying to pay their bills there is a light at the end of the tunnel, according to Basso. Its going to take additional work and perseverance in order for the economy to turn the corner; when it does, he said, things will be better for us all. Its not 2007, but we are getting there. It is definitely getting better for businesses, he said. Unemployment is going down, small business are starting to add more people. While its not the firmest footing for business, we can be cautiously optimistic. Local News, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: June 03 2016 Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano swore in a new class of 154 Nassau County Police Recruits at Police Headquarters in Mineola. Mineola, NY - June 2, 2016 - Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano swore in a new class of 154 Nassau County Police Recruits at Police Headquarters in Mineola. The recruits will undertake 7 months of rigorous training that will prepare them to patrol the streets of Nassau County. Just two days ago, County Executive Mangano and Acting Police Commissioner Thomas Krumpter presented certificates of completion to 185 police graduates that had successfully completed their Police Academy training, which was the largest class of graduates in over 20 years. You are here: Home Beijing's education authority on Friday launched an investigation into a synthetic racetrack at an elementary school that was emitting excessive amounts of poisonous substances. Dozens of students at the Baiyunlu campus of Beijing No.2 Experimental School in Xicheng District suffered from nosebleeds, dizzy spells and coughs, after running on the track last month. Tests on the track this week, nine months after it was put into use, showed excessive amounts of benzene substances and formaldehyde. The Xicheng education commission has ordered that the track be covered in a protective coating, and promised to track down those responsible. There will be a thorough investigation of facilities in several other schools. Medical staff will be despatched to the school to provide treatment and support for students. Similar cases have occurred in Jiangsu, Guangdong and other provinces. The Ministry of Education said it has clear requirements for installation of synthetic racetracks in schools. However, the requirements have not been fully implemented in some areas. Wang Dinghua, an official in charge of elementary education with the ministry, said lax supervision is the major reason for such incidents. 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 Located in northeastern China, adjacent to Beijing, Tianjin is a rapidly developing municipality and has so far served as the venue for many important and widely attended forums, such as the World Economic Forum. About 300 of the 500 companies on the Fortune Global list had set up sub-companies there by the end of 2010, turning the area into a base for advanced industry, financial reform, and innovation. Apart from its beautiful city scenery, Tianjin boasts numerous historical and cultural spots, including the Tianjin Ancient Culture Street, the Century Clock, the Drum Tower and the Xikai Catholic Church. With the city's surging economy, people's living conditions there have been improving as well. [China.org.cn] 1 2 3 4 Next Flash A Chinese member of a United Nations mission in Mali was killed and four other Chinese peacekeepers were injured in a mortar or rocket attack, China's Embassy in Mali said Wednesday. The Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) said Tuesday in a statement that "this evening at approximately 20:45 pm, the MINUSMA camp in the Water Tower neighborhood of Gao was the target of an attack by mortars or rockets." Previous reports said one blue helmet was killed and three blue helmets were grievously wounded, while more than 10 members of MINUSMA including civilians were lightly wounded and have received the necessary medical care, it said. The statement said part of container houses were destroyed during the attack and property damage is under evaluation. The MINUSMA has dispatched helicopters to carry out air guarding and a rapid reaction force to patrol in the city. The State Department issued its annual Country Reports on Terrorism yesterday, and while the document was couched in diplomatic language, it identified significant areas in which counterterrorism efforts by Americas Gulf allies are coming up short. Indeed, Foggy Bottom implicitly or explicitly flagged Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait for failing to stamp out terrorist finance within their borders. Of the three, only Saudi Arabia was commended for taking serious and effective efforts against terror funding. Yet in the same paragraph, the report questioned how effective those efforts have been, confirming that actors in Saudi Arabia continue to fundraise for regional al-Qaida affiliates, even if such activity now happens illicitly and in secret. The report particularly noted violent extremist fundraising from Saudi sources over social media as well as efforts to exploit the hajj and umrah pilgrimages for moving cash couriers to finance terrorism. The reports Saudi section also cited the kingdom over religious incitement. For example, it said official Saudi textbooks still contained derogatory and intolerant references to Shiite Muslims and to non-Muslims. (Riyadh had assured US officials the offending passages would be completely excised by 2014 and before that, by 2008 but the new report concluded that the promised revision of the Saudi curriculum still has not been completely implemented.) The report also acknowledged that several privately-funded Saudi television stations continue to broadcast sectarian hatred and intolerance. For example, when a Saudi minister tried to revoke the license of such a channel in the wake of a 2014 bombing by the Islamic State, then-King Abdullah relieved him of duty within hours. Also that year, Washingtons top official for combating terrorist finance identified Qatar and Kuwait as permissive jurisdictions for terrorist fundraising. While Foggy Bottoms report noted measures that both states have taken since then, it stopped short of rolling back such criticism. Instead, the State Department declared that individuals and entities in both countries continued to serve as a source of financial support to terrorist groups, particularly regional al-Qaida affiliates such as the Nusrah Front in the case of Qatar. As for Kuwait, the report similarly noted that the regime had not taken action last year against a Kuwaiti national under UN sanctions on charges of financing the Nusrah Front. To Qatars credit, the new report indicates that Doha has made efforts to prosecute certain terror financiers, closely echoing language attributed to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew earlier this year. However, this repetition of careful, couched language suggests that Qatar may not have actually pressed charges against any of these individuals, let alone arrested or convicted them. In fact, the report reveals that Qatar froze the assets and imposed travel bans on Abd al-Latif al-Kawari and Sad al-Kabi, two Qatari citizens sanctioned by the UN in Sept. 2015 on charges of fundraising for al Qaeda or its Syrian branch. However, States report does not say whether either Qatari has been arrested, a striking omission given that an American official reportedly complained last year that Qatar has not arrested either Kabi or Kawari. President Obama has delivered mixed messages on the Gulf states role in the fight against terror, praising their cooperation at an April summit in Riyadh shortly after suggesting that some of them were counterterrorism free riders in an interview with the Atlantic. Unfortunately, the State Department seems to confirm that several Gulf states still have quite a distance to go. David Andrew Weinberg is the Anti-Defamation Leagues Washington Director for International Affairs. 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. Table of US Foreign Assistance to Pakistan from the US Department of States Country Reports on Terrorism 2015. The US Department of State said Pakistan did not take substantial action against the Afghan Taliban or HQN [Haqqani Network] and has done little to deter home-grown jihadist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. The US government continues to provide nearly $800 million in financial aid despite Pakistans historical and continuing support for jihadist groups that are actively fighting US troops in Afghanistan and plotting terrorist attacks across the globe. The Department of State noted Pakistans unwillingness to deal with its preferred jihadist groups in the newly released Country Reports on Terrorism 2015. Afghanistan, in particular, continued to experience aggressive and coordinated attacks by the Afghan Taliban, including the Haqqani Network (HQN), and other insurgent and terrorist groups, the State report says. A number of these attacks were planned and launched from safe havens in Pakistan. After noting the military and government target jihadist groups such as the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan that continue to launch deadly attacks against the state and civilian institutions, State says that Pakistan has done little to deal with jihadist groups fighting in Afghanistan. Pakistan did not take substantial action against the Afghan Taliban or HQN, or substantially limit their ability to threaten US interests in Afghanistan, State notes. Pakistan has also not taken sufficient action against other externally-focused groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), which continued to operate, train, organize, and fundraise in Pakistan, State continues. Additionally, while Pakistan reportedly banned media coverage of US- and UN-designated terrorist organizations such as Jamaat-u-Dawa (JuD) and the Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FiF), both of which are aliases of Lashkar-e-Taiba the government did not otherwise constrain those groups fundraising activities. Hafiz Saeed, the leader of LeT/JuD/FiF, who is also a UN-designated terrorist was able to make frequent public appearances in support of the organizations objectives, without Pakistan raising a finger to stop him. Also, State points out the slow pace of trial proceedings for the accused in the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, which was plotted and executed from Pakistan. Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, Lashkar-e-Taibas operational planner of the deadly Mumbai assault, has been freed from detention. Lakhvi was released from prison on bail in April 2015 and the Government of Pakistan reports he remained under house arrest at the end of 2015, State reports. However, Pakistan has placed other terrorist leaders, such as Hafiz Saeed, under house arrest in the past, but this has done nothing to constrain their activities. Despite States criticism of Pakistan, the department said the country remained a critical counterterrorism partner in 2015. Additionally, State says that Pakistan continues to receive large sums of Foreign Assistance. While the amount of aid has decreased over the past three years, US continues to give Pakistan hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Pakistan received $1.237 billion in total foreign assistance in 2013 (including $280 million in military aid), $853 million in 2014 ($270 million in military aid), and $787 million in 2015 ($265 million in military aid). Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal. Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here. The US military announced three previously undisclosed airstrikes that targeted al al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in southern Yemen over the past four months and killed 11 AQAP operatives. US Central Command, or CENTCOM, issued a statement announcing four counterterrorism strikes in the Yemeni provinces of Hadramout and Shabwa between Feb. 3 and May 19. The Feb. 3 strike killed six AQAP operatives in Shabwa, CENTCOM noted. This strike was previously recorded by The Long War Journal. Jihadists on social media claimed that Jalal Balaidi, who is also known as Hamza al Zinjibari, was killed in the attack. Six AQAP fighters were initially reported killed in the strike, which CENTCOM confirmed. [See LWJ report, Senior AQAP commander reportedly killed in US drone strike in Yemen. The second strike, in Hadramawt on Feb. 29, killed three al Qaeda operatives. The third strike, on March 30 in Azzan in Shabwa, killed three more AQAP fighters. The fourth strike, on May 19 again in Shabwa, killed four more AQAP operatives. CENTCOM indicated that strikes against AQAP would continue as the group remains a significant threat to the region, the United States and beyond and is using Yemen as a base of operations for local and global attacks. Al Qaedas presence has a destabilizing effect on Yemen, and it is using the unrest in Yemen to provide a haven from which to plan future attacks against our allies as well as the US and its interests. The US will not relent in its mission to degrade, disrupt and destroy al Qaeda and its remnants. We remain committed to defeating AQAP and denying it safe haven regardless of its location. Strikes conducted by the US in Yemen continue to diminish AQAPs presence in the region, CENTCOM concluded. CENTCOMs statement is at odds with President Barack Obamas official policy of using drone and conventional airstrikes only as a last resort. In his 2014 speech at West Point, President Barack Obama said that the US would launch airstrikes only when we face a continuing, imminent threat from terrorist groups. However CENTCOMs statement indicates the airstrikes are part of the effort to degrade, disrupt and destroy al Qaeda. According to CENTCOM, the US has launched nine airstrikes against AQAP in Yemen this year. However, The Long War Journal has recorded 18 airstrikes in 2016. The discrepancy may be due to the fact that CENTCOM may not have released all of its data. It is also possible that the CIA instead executed some of the airstrikes. The US has ramped up strikes in Yemen this year after reducing the number from its peak of 41 in 2012, when AQAP controlled significant territory in the south. The operations were halved (26 in 2013, 23 each in 2014 and 2015) until AQAP went back on the offensive and took control of large areas in southern Yemen beginning by the end of 2015. Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal. Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here. Flash China will not give certain countries the satisfaction of tricking it into the trap of the South China Sea arbitration, Chinese Ambassador to South Africa, Tian Xuejun, said on Thursday. In an article carried by Independent Media's nationwide newspaper The Star, Tian reveals the fallacy of the arbitration and reiterates the legitimacy of China's decision of neither participating in nor accepting the arbitration. The ambassador elaborates on the practicability and effectiveness of the China-proposed settlement of disputes through peaceful negotiation and voices China's consistent and clear commitment to peace, stability and prosperity in the South China Sea region. The daily Pretoria News also published this article, titled "China Will Not Fall into the Trap of South China Sea Arbitration." Recently, the arbitration case around the dispute between China and the Philippines over the South China Sea has caught certain media attention around the world. "With its seeming relevance to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and international arbitration, many would be easily misled to view this issue as a matter of law, without giving much thought to the political aspect of the issue: What is the Philippines really up to? Who has really staged the whole political provocation? " the ambassador writes. As a responsible member of the international community, China is strongly committed to the integrity and seriousness of the Convention and always opposes any attempt on political gains through the abuse or distortion of the Convention, says the ambassador. The "disputed" Nansha Islands have long been part of the Chinese territory, which is not only supported by numerous historical evidence since ancient times, but also by the many international treaties from modern times. The heart of the South China Sea issue is the territorial dispute and the resulting maritime delimitation dispute caused by the Philippines' and some others' illegal seizure of China's Nansha Islands. "What the Philippines really wants from this arbitration is to legitimize these unlawful seizures of the Chinese territory, despite the great lengths it has gone to make it look otherwise," the ambassador notes. People who are familiar with the Convention should know that territorial issues are beyond the purview of the Convention, he says. As for the maritime delimitation, in pursuant to Article 298 of the Convention, China made an exclusion declaration in 2006, thereby lawfully excluding itself from any compulsory dispute settlement procedure by a third-party. Apart from China, over 30 other countries, including Britain and France, have made the same exclusion declaration. In this connection, the compulsory dispute settlement procedure of the Convention does not apply to the dispute between China and the Philippines, which is therefore beyond the jurisdiction of the international arbitration tribunal, Tian says. "It has always been China's consistent policy that we do not participate in or accept the so-called arbitration, because with the arbitration itself being illegal, any decision that comes out of the process must be void," he stresses. People who are familiar with the Convention are also aware that when it comes to dispute settlement, the provisions of the Convention are not solely about arbitration, but also attach equal importance to negotiations, stressing the need to respect contracting parties' independent choice for dispute settlement, Tian says. In the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) signed between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), it is explicitly declared that the parties concerned should undertake to resolve their disputes by consultations and negotiations. This principle has also been reaffirmed in multiple bilateral instruments including joint statement between the governments of China and the Philippines. "Unfortunately, of all the claims that the Philippines submitted to the arbitration tribunal, including the question of whether there is dispute over the interpretation and applicability of the Convention, none has been through serious consultation with China. Such behavior of the Philippines not only breached the agreement to resolve dispute through consultation as provided for in the DOC and bilateral instruments between the two countries, it also violated the principle that arbitration must be based on mutual consent," the ambassador writes. He refutes the argument that China is such a big country that the Philippines is simply too small to stand up to in bilateral negotiation to settle territorial and maritime dispute. "Such narrative against China is clearly a result of conventional bias towards large countries. The fact is, through friendly consultation and negotiation, China has already completed border demarcation with 12 of its 14 land neighbors, accounting for some 90 percent of the total land boundary," the ambassador says. Through friendly negotiations, China and Vietnam have also delimited their maritime boundary in the Beibu Gulf. Large numbers of past practices suggest that bilateral negotiation has its unique strength in resolving such complicated and sensitive issues as territorial sovereignty and maritime boundary delimitation, as it would fully reflect the independent will and sovereign equality of the countries concerned, thereby ensuring the negotiated result will enjoy better public acceptance and more effective implementation, writes Tian. "China always believes that the disputes in the South China Sea should be resolved through negotiation, managed through rules and mechanisms, and eased by joint development," the ambassador says. Over years, based on these principles, China and ASEAN countries have together upheld peace and stability in the South China Sea, and there has never been any problem of security or freedom of navigation in the region. Yet a certain country outside the region, in an effort to rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific, keeps on playing up the South China Sea issue, excitingly roots for the Philippines and others to scale-up and complicate the situation, and repeatedly deploys warships to the region for the so-called "freedom of navigation operation", gravely escalating the tensions and complexity of the regional environment, the ambassador points out. "Such manipulative moves to pursue one's own gains at the expense of others' interests and welfare is highly alarming," he notes. "In our efforts to advance the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, China has enjoyed tremendous support from many ASEAN member countries and countries beyond the region. China is willing to join efforts with all parties to make the South China Sea truly a sea of peace, cooperation, and prosperity," the ambassador concludes. Denmark famously has a very low birth rate at 1.7 births per woman in 2014, according to World Bank Data . This has a knock-on effect for the rest of the country, the Danish welfare system and public services. A 2015 ad lead by a Danish travel company is being touted as the reason behind Denmarks upcoming baby boom. So, how did they combat this issue? By releasing a string of TV campaigns nationally the following year to encourage the Danish to begin making babies again. The Do It For Mom campaign by Spies Travel is especially funny asking mums to send their kids on an active holiday in order to get them to you know! If they wont do it for Denmark, theyll definitely do it for mom, the ad jokes, alongside clips of a forlorn, grey-haired mum, looking longingly into the distance, desperate for a grandbaby. Its a funny concept - one we reckon some wannabe grandparents will appreciate - so its no surprise that this particular vid has been viewed over 7.8 million times. But it is a surprise that the campaigns seem to have worked! According to The Local, a Danish newspaper, 1,200 more babies will be born in the summer of 2016 than in the previous year. This figure comes from research done by another Danish title, Politiken. Okay, so theres no physical proof that the campaigns are actually responsible, but the timings do add up. Copenhagens Deputy Health Minister, Ninna Thomsen, told TV2 News: "You probably cant ascribe the increase in births to our campaign, but its definitely a feather in our cap if the campaign has had a positive effect." She also revealed that the campaigns "certainly resulted in people getting plenty of fertility advice". Regardless, its good news for Denmark all around. Their birth rate sees a small increase, and a few eager mums finally get to be grandparents! LOL ? Read more The great Gold Rush Music Festival returns to the township of Waihi, with the first nuggets of gold dropping for the highly anticipated return of the 2023 festival. Jack Hodgins Founders Award for Fiction 2016 Winner: J. R. McConvey The University of Victoria, on behalf of The Malahat Review, is pleased to announce that this years recipient of the Jack Hodgins Founders Award for Fiction is J. R. McConvey for his short story, "Home Range," which appeared in the Malahat's Autumn 2015 issue (192). McConveys story was chosen for this award by Marina Endicott. Established in honour of the celebrated Victoria novelists contribution to Canadian letters and to the University of Victoria, the Jack Hodgins Founders Award for Fiction recognizes the excellence of The Malahat Reviews contributors by awarding a prize of $1000 to the author of the best short story or novella to have appeared in the magazine during the previous calendar year. The winner, selected by an outside judge, is announced prior to the publication of The Malahat Reviews Spring issue. Of McConveys story, Endicott says: "'Home Range' is tense and believable. A bereaved single father, Kyle is caught between conscience and cowardice when he stumbles on human trafficking. Uncomfortable, uncompromising writing turns a too-bright porch-light on Kyles failures and his uneasy, exhausted grit when he finds himself in a hard corner." J. R. McConvey is a writer based in Toronto. His e-book, The Last Ham, was published by House of Anansi Digital. He won second prize in the 2015 Bristol Short Story contest, and has published fiction in The Malahat Review, Joyland, Event, The Dalhousie Review, and The Puritan. His poetry has appeared in carte blanche, filling Station, and the Carbon Culture Review, and he participated in the 2013 Pulitzer Remix Project, creating found poems from Herman Wouks novel, The Caine Mutiny. He regularly reviews books for the Globe and Mail, creates digital things for SESQUI, and exists on the web at jrmcconvey.com and on Twitter @jrmcconvey. Marina Endicott came to fiction late, after a career in theatre. Her latest novel, Close to Hugh, was long-listed for the Giller Prize and named one of CBCs Best Books of 2015. Her second, The Little Shadows, was long-listed for the Giller and short-listed for the Governor Generals award. Her first novel, Good to a Fault, a finalist for the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize, was a CBC Canada Reads book and won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, Canada/Caribbean. She teaches creative writing at the Banff Centre for the Arts, U of Ts Summer School of Creative Writing, and the University of Alberta. For more information about the Jack Hodgins Founders Award for Fiction and how you may support it through a donation, please email The Malahat Review. Read an interview with J. R. McConvey about his winning story. Previous Jack Hodgins Founders' Award Winners Flash The head of the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) Mahamat Saleh Annadif on Thursday visited the Chinese contingent based in the northern Malian town of Gao, after a terrorist attack that left one of them dead. "We lost the first Chinese soldier in Mali. We condole with the families of the victim. However, we have a very difficult mission and we should continue. We should learn the lessons from the attack. To do this, we must use all the experience we have acquired, including during this tragedy," Annadif said when he addressed the Chinese contingent. "We are here to tell you that we are together, to express our solidarity, to appreciate your resilience and courage and to inform you that we shall work day and night to guarantee your safety and security," the MINUSMA boss added. MINUSMA said in a statement that besides the Chinese soldier who was killed, two other soldiers with serious injuries were evacuated to Dakar, Senegal. Annadif reiterated the "determination of the UN force to continue with efforts to restore lasting peace and reconciliation in Mali." Speakers from Meta, Finnegan, Equifax and the LOT Network said it was important to use data, get involved and reach out more to improve diversity and inclusion Malaysia's Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas) and Japanese oil company JX Nippon Oil & Energy (JX NOE) have signed an agreement for the sale and purchase of equity in Petronas LNG 9 Sdn Bhd (PL9SB), say local media. Under the agreement, JX NOE will acquire a 10% stake in PL9SB, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Petronas, owns the ninth LNG liquefaction train within the Petronas LNG Complex in Bintulu, Sarawak, Malaysia. The unit is developing and will run the ninth liquefaction train at the Petronas LNG complex in Bintulu, Sarawak. The train, with a production capacity of 3.6 million tonnes of LNG per year, is expected to begin commercial operations in the first quarter of 2017, the companies said on Friday. The LNG will be sold through a Petronas subsidiary to local power companies as well as to gas companies in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. JX Nippon Oil plans to team with Petronas to market to other Southeast Asian countries as well. The Japanese company hopes to earn more than 100 billion yen over the life of the contract, which runs until 2037. Petronas said with the addition of the state-of-the-art liquefaction plant owned by PL9SB, the Petronas LNG Complex would have the capacity to produce about 30 million tonnes per annum to further cement Petronas position as a leading and reliable LNG supplier. In May, 2015, Svitzer Salvage, a part of the Maersk Group, and Titan Salvage, under the Crowley Group, merged to form Ardent. Now the salvage industrys new kid on the block celebrates its first birthday. The merger , which fused Svitzer Salvages strengths in emergency preparedness and response with Titans large project specialization, has developed a more robust service offering for the worldwide salvage industry. Ardent has become a leading services company with an extensive network, offering innovative solutions to the shipping and offshore industries. The integration of the two companies has gone well, and the merger targets have been achieved, said Ardent CEO, Peter Pietka In its first year, Ardent has won and executed more than 50 contracts with a strong safety performance and no loss-time incidents, the company said. One year ago, we set off with our business plans, and today we are pleased that the merger has progressed in line with these plans, Pietka said, although the market has been weaker than expected. The current markets in the shipping and offshore sectors have affected our margins. Pietka added. So the multifaceted company now looks to diversify. Looking from a different perspective, the current oil and gas market provides us with a large opportunity to focus on offshore decommissioning, Pietka said. With the amount of knowledge and diversity between our partners and staff, and with a successful integration behind us, we look forward to the exciting years ahead. Freight rates for transporting containers from ports in Asia to Northern Europe rose 5.7 percent to $761 per 20-foot container (TEU) in the week ended on Friday, a source with access to data from the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index told Reuters. It was the second consecutive week with rising freight rates. In the week to Friday, container freight rates fell 3.2 percent from Asia to ports in the Mediterranean, rose 8.1 percent to ports on the U.S. West Coast and was up 3.9 percent to ports on the U.S. East Coast. Maersk Line, the global market leader with a market share of around 15 percent and part of Danish shipping and oil group A.P. Moller-Maersk, said in May its profit in the first quarter fell 95 percent from a year earlier to $37 million due to weak demand and record low freight rates. Maersk transports around one fifth of all containers shipped from Asia to Europe. Reporting by Ole Mikkelsen Pilots in the Port of Brisbane, one of Australias fastest growing container ports, are using the word unmatched when describing the performance of new navigational equipment from electronic navigation specialist Simrad, a brand within the Navico group. Installed during the recent refit of the pilot boat Amity, the equipment installations include an NSS12 evo2, 12-inch chart-plotter and multifunction display with GPS positioning, supported by a Simrad GS25 GPS antenna, as well as the recently-launched Simrad Halo 3ft Radar operating with the latest Pulse Compression technology. She is the latest of three pilot vessels owned and operated by Brisbane Marine Pilots in Brisbane River. All are now operating the Halo radar system. Meanwhile, a fourth vessel fitted with the Halo radar system is operating out of Mooloolaba port. Speaking for the Brisbane Marine Pilots authority, Senior Coxswain Neal Higgs explained the decision to install Simrads latest solid-state Pulse Compression technology and positioning system rather than the high-powered fixed frequency magnetron systems used in traditional radar. We are seeing a range of benefits from the new Halo Pulse Compression technology, Coxswain said. As pilots, one of the most important advantages is the simultaneous display of close and long-range targets. Its like having two open scanners combined in one. The super-clear display has no clutter and unmatched target resolution. This latest technology provides us with invaluable support in the safe navigation of ships in Brisbanes busy port approaches and terminal areas. Jose Herrero, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of Navico Commercial Division outlined some of the benefits of Halo Pulse Compression systems. The Simrad Halo Pulse Compression radar offers the most powerful signal processing capability, he explained, which gives unmatched and simultaneous short- and long-range detection and definition. The solid-state technology requires no warm-up time and is therefore instantly available and, unlike magnetron-based radar systems, there is no damaging radiation requiring systems to be turned off as pilots embark and leave the vessel. Disclosing that the Pulse Compression technology has taken more than 10 years and at least $15 million to develop, Jose lists a range of other positive features of the installation on board Amity. These include bright easy-to-use screens, dual cartography support from both Navionics and C-map, and instant updates available online. The Commercial Marine Division is receiving a stream of enquiries for Halo, chart-plotting and other navigation aids from both the commercial and leisure boat sectors. In the short term, Brisbane pilots and several other workboat vessels working within the port are likely to have similar Simrad installations soon. This diverse market holds huge potential for us, Herrero said, and is specifically targeting the fantastic opportunities in the light commercial space where the technology we have developed is directly relevant in many ferry, fishing, patrol and inshore workboat sectors. It is also the latest must-have for leisure craft operators, he added. This is great because one, our technology is way ahead of the competition and two, our service and after-sales support teams are second to none, with truly global reach. Meanwhile Simrad Halo radar has also been chosen for an entirely new pilot boat currently under construction at Brisbane-based Norman R. Wright and Sons for Darwin Port Pilot Service. The family-owned firm builds a range of commercial and leisure vessels up to 120 feet in length and 120 metric tons in weight. Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. (HHI) struck a $400 million worth deal to build two liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers for SK Shipping Co., a Korean shipowner. According to the sources, the vessel can carry 180,000 cubic meters of LNG. The vessels will be delivered starting in the first half of 2019, the sources said. Meanwhile, a press release from the French LNG containment specialist GTT said that it has received an order for two new LNGCs (Liquefied Natural Gas Carriers) for HHI. The vessels will be built at Hyundai's shipyard in Ulsan for SK Shipping. Delivery is scheduled in 2019. The vessels, designed according to the new IGC standards published in 2016, will be equipped with GTT's Mark III Flex membrane technology. Mark III Flex is particularly well-suited for the highly efficient XDF propulsion system installed on SK Shipping's LNG carriers, as the technology offers a high level of insulation performance. "GTT is very pleased to continue our collaboration with HHI. This new contract demonstrates HHI's confidence in GTT technologies which already equip some fifty LNG carriers in service built by the shipyard", said Philippe Berterottiere, Chairman and CEO of GTT. SK Shipping has been using vessels equipped with GTT membranes for some time, and we are very committed to this excellent partnership." Mark III Flex technology is a proven solution, with more than 60 LNG carriers ordered worldwide since 2011, 34 of which are in service. GTT continues to develop its Mark range, particularly through improvements in design and the use of components that are more and more efficient. This development allows GTT to offer insulation solutions that provide ever-increasing performance adapted to the requirements of the latest vessel propulsion systems, which are more fuel efficient, as well as new projects that require greater resistance to liquid motion, particularly for multi-gas applications, or partially filled tanks (FSRU, FLNG, etc.). Frontline Ltd. ("Frontline"), today announces the formation of Suezmax Chartering, a commercial joint venture with Diamond S. Shipping LLC and Euronav NV. The aim of the joint venture is to create a single point of contact for cargo owners to access a large fleet of 43 modern Suezmax vessels, traded operated on the spot market. Frontline will contribute 22 vessels to the joint venture, including 14 vessels on the water and 8 newbuildings as they are delivered. A larger fleet will provide more flexibility and more options for cargo owners and also reduce voyage related expenses by optimizing vessel selection based on proximity to cargoes, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions as a direct consequence of using less fuel for ballasting movements. Suezmax Chartering will operate from the existing offices of Frontline, Diamond S and Euronav. Robert Hvide Macleod, CEO of Frontline Management said: "I look forward to working with Diamond S. and Euronav on this important venture. We share the common goal of providing safe, timely and high quality service to our customers." 1785 - The order is given to sell the last ship remaining in the Continental Navy, the frigate Alliance. No other Navy ships are authorized until 1794. 1898 - During the Spanish-American War, the 8-man volunteer crew from USS Merrimac are taken as prisoners of war by the Spanish following a courageous attempt to sink the collier to obstruct navigation. For their extraordinary heroism during this operation, the men are awarded the Medal of Honor. 1942 - The Japanese start a two-day attack at Dutch Harbor, Aleutian Islands, Alaska, in an attempt to distract America from the Midway Island invasion. During the two-day invasion, 43 Americans die. 1949 - Midshipman Wesley A. Brown becomes the first African-American to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy. 1966 - Gemini 9 is launched. Gemini 9 is piloted by Lt. Cmdr. Eugene A. Cernan. The mission includes 45 orbits over 3 days. Recovery is by USS Wasp (CVS 18). (Source: Naval History and Heritage Command, Communication and Outreach Division) Hundreds of migrants were rescued from a sinking ship on Friday in a massive operation in the southern Mediterranean off the island of Crete, the Greek coastguard said, but four bodies were also recovered. Greek search and rescue teams were dispatched to the area, about 75 nautical miles off southern Crete in territory which falls under Egypt's jurisdiction. In total, 340 people were rescued by midday, Greek authorities said. There was no immediate information on the nationalities of the migrants or on the victims. Greek media said the wooden boat the migrants were sailing in started taking in water. It was not immediately clear where the boat had sailed from. "From some scattered accounts we have heard (from those rescued) they set off from the African coastline," coastguard spokesman Nikos Lagkadianos told Reuters. It was too early to determine how many people had been on the vessel, he said. Hundreds of thousands of mainly Syrian refugees crossed the short but precarious sea corridor to Greece from Turkey last year in small inflatable boats, but that route was effectively sealed after an EU-Turkey clampdown in March. Now, warm weather and calmer seas in the Mediterranean have led to a surge in recent weeks in the number of people trying to cross to Italy from Libya, where people-smugglers operate with relative impunity. Boats on this much longer journey risk being blown off course to islands such as Crete. Friday's incident was the third in a week involving migrant rescues or landings on the island. Reporting by George Georgiopoulos and Angeliki Koutantou The Worldwide Ferry Safety Associations conference on Ferry Safety and Technology, underway today, has featured sessions on Vessels & Landings, Marine Weather, and Training Challenges and Innovative Solutions. The panel on Training, moderated by Captain Jim DeSimone from the New York City Department of Transportation, included talks by Murray Goldberg (Marine Learning Systems) and Bill Anderson, Jr. from the Seattle-based Pacific Marine Institute (PMI). Goldberg spoke about success at BC Ferries in implementing an e-Learning program. According to Goldberg, research across many industries has shown that a combination of e-Learning, combined with a personal touch, is a far superior mode of training. In the case of BC Ferries, its three-stage SailSafe program developed from scratch because the maritime business has generally been late to the e-learning party Goldberg suggests that ancillary benefits (for example- reduced injuries, and increased timeliness) are accrued, beyond the primary benefit of safety. Seperately, Mr. Anderson described MITAGs highly successful Navigation Skills Assessment Program (NSAP), which provides objective assessments of deck officers capabilities, and also explained that a comparable program is now being developed for engine room officers. He highlighted efforts in the Ferry sector of the market, where a simulation could be built for a specific vessel in specific area. He mentioned work for the Staten Island Ferry (which is headed up by Captain DeSimone), and for Victoria, BC, where operational guidelines were created for vessels that would be operating in the area. Unlike many other simulation training operators, MITAGS actually builds the models rather than taking the models provided by the simulator vendor. Anderson urged the industry to think about simulations and training holistically, rather than in a stove-piped manner. The latter method is largely driving by regulation. But, he asks, is this the best way to drive safety? The Worldwide Ferry Safety Associations conference on Ferry Safety and Technology continues tomorrow at the historic Pier A Harbor House in downtown Manhattan. As in 2015, the conference has brought together ferry operators, city planners, vessel designers, and weather experts, and many more members of the world's maritime community. With an expanded program of panels and hands-on demonstrations over two days, with speakers from around the globe, it is already being hailed as a success. It is not too late to attend. Student rates are available. You can register by clicking: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-2016-ferry-safety-and-technology-conference-tickets-19731270762 The latest generation of car carrier arrived recently. The sun doesnt just shine over the ship, it also contributes to generating energy for it as Drive Green Highway has high efficiency solar panels. Drive Green Highway is the worlds biggest ship adapted for solar energy. She is almost 200 meters long, 38 meters wide and is operated by the Japanese shipping company K Line. The ship has the capacity to load 7,500 cars. When she recently visited Copenhagen Malmo Port (CMP), just over 1,400 cars were unloaded in Malmo. We work continuously to ensure capacity and maintain CMPs position as a leading car port. It is therefore important that we can receive the latest generation of car carrier, which is a few meters wider than its predecessor, said Bjorn Larsson, Terminal Manager at CMP. CMPs facilities are ideal for receiving this type of really large car carrier, for example, in terms of depth of water, quays and all the services required. The ships are called Pure Car Truck Carrier (PCTC) and they are getting bigger all the time. The fact that Drive Green Highway is wider means that she can load about another 1,000 cars. The piloting restrictions have changed here in Malmo during the last year. That is also a prerequisite in enabling us to receive these larger ships and being able to grow together with the customer, Larsson said. On board Drive Green Highway is the worlds most advanced system for solar energy. More than 900 high efficiency solar panels have been installed and they can supply 150 kW. This sets a new standard within shipping. No other ship can generate as much energy from the sun. The energy from the solar panels is used to power all LED lighting on board. The large number of panels have been produced specifically to cope with conditions in the warm and salty sea environment. Receiving this type of environmentally compatible ship feels especially positive, Bjorn Larsson emphasizes. We are keen to work together with customers to make shipping more environmentally friendly, both through direct measures and through more long-term initiatives. K Lines is one of Japans largest shipping companies and launched Drive Green Highway in February. She is the first in a series of ships that K Line calls the Drive Green Project. What these ships have in common is that they have a lower environmental impact, for example, lower emissions of sulphur- and nitrogen oxides, as well as of carbon dioxide. A skipper and his crew have been rescued from a life raft after their yacht - The Miracle - caught fire off the coast of Shetland, Scotland. According to a BBC report, nine people have been rescued after a yacht caught fire off Shetland. Coastguards were alerted to the incident, about 50 miles south west of Shetland, at about 09:20. Dramatic video footage, filmed from a coastguard helicopter, showed the blaze taking hold on board the stricken boat. But appropriately, given the name of their ship, the sailors miraculously emerged unscathed from the inferno. All nine on board the unnamed yacht had abandoned the vessel and were picked up from their liferaft by an oil support vessel. It was then heading to Scalloway Harbour. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency has confirmed that all nine people on The Miracle have been safely accounted for after the support vessel picked them up from a life raft after they abandoned their sailing vessel. The British Red Cross said it was on hand to help the crew. A unique program of three specialist events for the sub IMO / sub 24 meter professional sector is being held back to back at the Grand Harbor in Southampton, U.K. this October. The fast moving workshop style program brings together an international group of experts armed with the latest knowledge to identify problems that affect the maritime sector worldwide and highlight potential solutions. Next Generation SHOCK MITIGATION Workshop on October 25, 2016 focuses on shock mitigation solutions. Attendees include professional and military organizations, boat builders, equipment manufacturers, service providers and classification societies. Next Generation HIGH SPEED CRAFT Workshop on October 26, 2016 focuses on RIBs and high speed craft. Topics are relevant to workboats, pilot boats, patrol boats, search and rescue, survey vessels, superyacht tenders and the emerging market for unmanned surface vessels. Next Generation HYBRID MARINE POWER Workshop on October 27, 2016 focuses on innovative power and propulsion. The objective is to identify efficiency by all means. Hybrid concepts are modular and scalable which are also relevant to offshore supply vessels, patrol vessels and superyachts. Workshop organizer John Haynes said, Next Generation events are dynamic and relevant, with plenty of long breaks to encourage networking and knowledge sharing. We focus on viable innovation and using peoples time effectively. We also know that having the right people onboard is essential and there is no substitute for meeting the experts face to face when asking the hard questions. You should simply drop everything and be here if you have a burning problem or a great solution. SKYDEX Technologies is lead sponsor of the workshop days. Based in the U.S., the company is a global leader in impact mitigation and cushioning solutions with technology installed in more than 20,000 military vehicles and 6,000 marine craft. SKYDEX CEO and President James Taylor said, Our proprietary technology is engineered to excel in the harshest and most demanding conditions. We are pleased to support this unique event that enables us to launch new products that are relevant to maritime professionals in Europe and worldwide. The one day workshops are being held at the Grand Harbour Hotel overlooking the port of Southampton. Supporters of the event include Lloyds Register, UK Maritime Pilots Association, Shipbuilders & Shiprepairers Association and Southampton Solent University. Haynes added, Boat builders and specialist component manufacturers now recognize that they need to work together to develop next generation systems that fit the rapidly changing requirements of modern fleets. The unique knowledge gained from these workshop sessions will help to shape long term decisions that lead to improvements for in-service systems and procurement of next generation vessels. 30-40 Mid-East VLCC cargoes still to be contracted for June; Posidonia shipping event next week in Greece may dampen activity. Freight rates for very large crude carriers (VLCCs) could rise next week as charterers complete their June loading programme, although activity may be muted due to a key shipping event in Greece, ship brokers said. "There is potential for charter rates to firm further. There are plenty of ships but there are enough charters for owners to hold the line," said a Singapore-based supertanker broker on Friday. Charters for 30-40 VLCC Middle East cargoes have still to be fixed for loading in the last 10 days of June, the broker said. These are expected to be contracted by June 15 when the first Saudi Arabian cargoes for July loading are expected to be released, the broker added. But the Posidonia maritime event in Greece next week, which will attract thousands of shipping executives, could dampen activity. Daily VLCC earnings rose to around $47,500 on Thursday for a voyage from the Middle East to Japan, rebounding from the previous week and continuing the trend of volatile peaks and troughs, chartering data on the Reuters Eikon terminal showed. "Owners are getting about $50,000 a day so they are not hurting," the Singapore broker said. Norwegian tanker owner Frontline estimated that the average cash break-even of a VLCC is $22,500 a day this year. "These rates are the daily rates that our vessels have to earn to cover their budgeted operating costs and dry dock, estimated interest expense, hire, instalment on loans and general and administration expenses, Frontline chief financial officer Inger Klemp said in an earnings call on May 31. That came as Frontline chief executive Robert MacLeod saw strong demand for tankers going forward, partly due to increased U.S. imports. "Current U.S. production leaves the U.S. short (of) about 7 million barrels per day," MacLeod said in the same earnings call. Rates from West Africa to China have also risen after the force majeure in most Nigerian ports was been repealed, Norwegian ship broker Fearnley said in a note on Wednesday. "Although charterers tried to move carefully under the radar, the market turned around to owners' favour. The momentum has definitely turned into owners' favour. They have all the intention to push numbers further up," the Fearnley note said. VLCC rates from the Middle East to Japan rose to about 64 on the Worldscale measure on Thursday, the highest since May 18, up from around W52.25 a week earlier. Rates for VLCCs from West Africa to China climbed to about W64.25 on Thursday, up from W55.50 the same day last week. That's the highest since May 17. Rates for an 80,000-dwt Aframax tanker from Southeast Asia to East Coast Australia climbed to about W93.50 on Thursday compared with W89 last week on stronger cargo volumes, a Singapore-based Aframax broker said. Reporting by Keith Wallis Three of the maritime industrys most respected global professional bodies have announced their commitment to Septembers Maritime Academic Conference and Expo in Dubai, demonstrating the priority they are giving to regional education and training needs. The Nautical Institute, the Institute of Marine Engineering Science and Technology and the Royal Institution of Naval Architects have confirmed participation in MARACAD - which will be staged September 20th21st September at Dubai World Trade Centre, UAE. His Excellency Dr. Abdullah bin Mohammed Belhaif Al Nuaimi, the UAE Minister of Public Works Chairman of The Federal Transport Authority Land and Maritime, said that MARACAD offered a vital opportunity for regional and global academies, institutes and wider maritime interests focusing on the human element to work towards common goals. MARACAD has evolved into a permanent strategic platform enabling the exchange of information, ideas and opinions on the human resources which are the fundamental pillars pushing the advancement of the maritime sectors growth both locally and regionally, the Minister said. The event is expected to expand the horizons of maritime education and training. The high caliber conference program will include a contribution from Captain John Lloyd, Chief Operating Officer, The Nautical Institute, focusing on the need to further develop the industrys Dynamic Positioning Operator (DP) qualification for consistency. The opportunity to utilize DP for a wider range of vessels has created both an opportunity and a challenge for the maritime sector as it seeks to recognize experience gained while ensuring the application of these skills is tailored to specific operational requirements, he said. MARACAD offers an ideal opportunity to raise awareness on the continuing work The Nautical Institute is doing to advance standards in emergent specialist sectors. Organized by Cham Events, MARACAD attracts strong support from within the region, with Dubai Maritime City Authority confirming that it will act as event sponsor for the second time, as part of its Investing in the Human Element strategy. Amer Ali, CEO of Dubai Maritime City Authority, said: Dubai Maritime City Authority is keen on sponsoring the Maritime Academic Conference and Expo, because investment in human resources is one of the most prominent priorities that DMCA seeks to achieve. The conference will shed light on how to unite the efforts of all those who are involved in the maritime industry, in order to prepare young generation for maritime jobs in the near future, and to develop the industry to attract and encourage talent and competence. The conference will also seek to put an end to the traditional methods used in Maritime education and training, utilizing creative ideas to promote change and new innovative technologies. The event emphasizes the importance of strengthening the educational infrastructure and building effective strategic partnerships with academic institutions in the region." Construction of a new series of trawler-seiner pr. SK-3101R has been commenced at the Shipyard Yantar (Kaliningrad). Project SK-3101R was designed by Skipskompetanse, Norway. The trawler is intended for fishery using bottom and pelagic trawls, bottom net and seiner net. The caught fish will be stored in six sea-water cooled cargo tanks (RSW type) of 800 cubic meters in capacity. The storage technology will enable the take to be kept fresh for seven days. Main particulars length overall: 50.6 m breadth: 12 m depth: 10 m main engine output: approximately 2,200 kW gross tonnage: 1,140 deadweight: 1,260 t RS class notation: KM(*) Ice3 AUT1 fishing vessel. Launching of a lead ship is scheduled for June, 2017. The complete series will be delivered to the customer in 2018. The fishing fleet amounts to one third of the total number of ships flying the flag of the Russian Federation and classed by the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping (RS). As of June 1, 2016, more than 1,100 fishing vessels are registered by RS. Euronav, Diamond S Shipping and Frontline join in Suezmax Chartering Joint Venture Euronav NV has formed a commercial joint venture with Diamond S Management LLC and Frontline Ltd. with the aim of creating a single point of contact for cargo owners to access a fleet of 43 Suezmax vessels, including newbuildings, operated on the spot market. The joint venture, which will be named Suezmax Chartering, will commence operation June 2 from the existing offices of Euronav, Diamond S and Frontline Management AS. A larger fleet will provide more flexibility and more options for cargo owners, reduce voyage related expenses through optimization of voyages and thereby reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a direct consequence of using less fuel for cargo movements, Euronav said in announcing the joint venture. All three companies management share a similar vision in bringing greater transparency to what is a highly fragmented industrial structure, said Euronav CEO Paddy Rodgers, commenting on the new marketing venture. U.K.-based Meercat Workboats has sold a custom built monohull workboat to Briggs Marine. The vessel (Hull no. 28) is 15.5m LOA, and 6m beam. Fabrication is well under way at Meercats Portchester facility in Portsmouth, Hampshire, with Briggs Marine to take to delivery later this year. The workboat has been configured to facilitate a deck cargo capacity of 20 metric tons and a liquid cargo capacity of sum 2 x 10,000 liters; with 2 x Doosan main engines and a BETA Marine 21kVA generator. This sale represents the second Meercat built for Briggs Marine and the sixth Meercat built by the business since Burgess Marine acquired Meercat Workboats in September 2014. It is also the first vessel built under Jamie Lewiss new tenure as the companys Managing Director. Jamie took over at the beginning of the month to coincide with Jason Coltman stepping down. Its been a real pleasure to work with Briggs Marine throughout the sale process, Lewis said. Theyve chosen a fantastic specification and Im sure that the vessel we prove not only to be fit-for-purpose in its immediate role but moreover in its future supporting the ever expanding Briggs business. Shes proven and reliable and we look forward to a timely handover. Nicholas Warren, the Managing Director of Burgess Marine, added, Briggs are exactly the sort of customer that we want to be working with. We work with them very well in our core ship repair business and as we continue to develop our national network our desire remains to support clients with a genuinely national reach, Warren continued. The likes of Briggs Marine, Svitzer, Serco and the network of Dredgers are so, so important to our extended business and its a real honor to be building one of these key customers a new workboat. Silver Bullion Perfect Storm Brewing in the Market Silver bullion is seeing a perfect storm brewing in the physical market according to an article replete with some recent videos about the silver market by Rory Hall of the precious metals website, The Daily Coin. From the Daily Coin: Silver has been money longer than gold. Silver is called the peoples money, while gold is called the money of kings. In the U.S., silver was an integral part of our monetary system until 1964 when it was gradually removed from coins. This change has not slowed the depletion of above ground silver stocks, nor has it changed the volume of silver being used, on a global scale, for everything from computers, TVs, cell phones, bombs and solar panels to name but a few. Silver is vital manufacturing material in todays world and, as stated, is money. This is to say nothing of the investment demand that has exploded over the course of the past ten years. Investment demand for silver coins and bars has never been higher. The U.S. Mint, Royal Canadian Mint and Perth Mint all set new records for silver in 2015. All three of these mints are on pace for another new record in 2016. Physical silver is in high demand for every purpose in which it can be used. Lets review some of what we know to be absolute facts regarding physical silver in 2015-2016 and beyond. China and India both have massive solar energy programs for each country which requires, literally, tons of silver China alone will produce over 100GW (gigawatts) of solar power by 2020 (they are currently way ahead of this deadline and may increase the amount of solar power they produce) this will power some 300 million homes (100 million U.S. equivalent) Morocco has plans to energize over 1 million households with solar power by 2018 As noted in the following interviews with Jeff Brown, China Rising, China has been importing raw silver dora bars as well as silver ore/concentrates. This means China will take all the physical silver available in whatever form is readily available. This is to say nothing of the fact that China mines approximately 100 million ounces of silver annually on her own soil!! That is massive demand for a single item. Solar Energy Drives Silver Demand in China Unlocking the Secrets to Chinas Silver Demand If we look at the mining industry, which is how silver comes to market, we see an industry that has been abused, unloved and drained of capital inflows for the past 3-5 years. Without mining companies digging silver out of the ground silver will be completely depleted and we will only be left with above ground inventory. This will never happen, but the mining industry is a capital intensive industry and without new inflows of capital, either from the sale of their product, at a profit, or investment capital, mines begin struggling and, in a lot of cases, will slow down or shut down the operation very quickly. This has been the case over the past several years. China is buying, outright, or acquiring controlling shares of mines around the world primarily gold mines, but probably silver mines as well First Majestic, a primary silver mining company was recently contacted by a large technologies manufacturer to directly purchase silver from the source U.S. Mint has, not only sold out 100% of their stock on three different occasions in the last three years, but have been rationing sales of American Silver Eagles since June 2015 with no sign of change for the near future U.S. Mint has set new all time sales records of American Silver Eagles for the past three straight and is on pace for another all time sales record in 2016 (personally I believe the U.S. Mint will manage their inventory and avoid a new record in 2016) Royal Canadian Mint has set new all time sales records for Silver Maple Leafs for the past two consecutive years and is currently on pace to three-peat Royal Canadian Mint (RCM), like the U.S. Mint has struggled over the past two years to keep up with demand. RCM, like the USMint sold out of product and had to shut down operations until they could produce enough product to reopen. RCM was completely sold out of 10 oz. silver bars between June 2015 and February 2016 due to a lack of product to produce the bars! Perth Mint, in Australia, set a new all time sales record in 2015 and is on pace to repeat in 2016 The interview below, with CEO, First Majestic, Keith Neumeyer was recorded on April 24, 2016. Keith, while not naming the company, explains how his silver mining company was contacted regarding a direct line of silver for one of the large technology manufacturers. Silver, More Rare Than the Market Understands As you can see owning physical silver may be to your advantage. While the most popular silver coins in the world are setting new sales records, entire nations are implementing silver dependent energy sources (solar) and the companies that can actually deliver the raw material are slowing or shutting down; this makes for a perfect storm in the silver market. One last thing. On January 28, 2016 the silver futures market and the silver spot market (this is where the exchange rate (price) of silver is set) experienced a glitch. The market shut down for approximately 15 minutes while the market makers were attempting to sort out an anomaly that had occurred. The glitch was an $0.80 difference in the future contract price and the spot price of silver. This was a failure of epic portions by the people controlling the silver market. Just a few weeks later, Deutsche Bank, was found to have rigged both the silver and gold markets and within 24 hours of this unprecedented decision there were two civil class-action lawsuits brought against Deutsche Bank totaling over $1 billion. Bill Murphy: All about the Physical Market The bullion banking cabal is in trouble. The physical silver market is on fire with demand. Physical silver supply is strained. The storm grows stronger by the day. Got silver coins and bars? Read the article on the Daily Coin here We recently re released our comprehensive silver interview with Jan Skoyles in which we discuss many of the key fundamentals alluded to by Rory Hall. Nothing has changed and arguably the fundamentals are even more bullish today than they were then. The Get Real Silver interview with the astute Jan Skoyles looks at why silver is set to soar again and the vital importance of owning physical silver coins (now VAT free in UK and EU) and silver bars. It can be watched here: GoldCore: Why Silver Bullion Is Set To Soar This update can be found on the GoldCore blog here. Mark O'Byrne IRL 63 FITZWILLIAM SQUARE DUBLIN 2 E info@goldcore.com UK NO. 1 CORNHILL LONDON 2 EC3V 3ND IRL +353 (0)1 632 5010 UK +44 (0)203 086 9200 US +1 (302)635 1160 W http://www.goldcore.com/uk/ WINNERS MoneyMate and Investor Magazine Financial Analysts 2006 Disclaimer: The information in this document has been obtained from sources, which we believe to be reliable. We cannot guarantee its accuracy or completeness. It does not constitute a solicitation for the purchase or sale of any investment. Any person acting on the information contained in this document does so at their own risk. Recommendations in this document may not be suitable for all investors. Individual circumstances should be considered before a decision to invest is taken. Investors should note the following: Past experience is not necessarily a guide to future performance. The value of investments may fall or rise against investors' interests. Income levels from investments may fluctuate. Changes in exchange rates may have an adverse effect on the value of, or income from, investments denominated in foreign currencies. GoldCore Limited, trading as GoldCore is a Multi-Agency Intermediary regulated by the Irish Financial Regulator. GoldCore is committed to complying with the requirements of the Data Protection Act. This means that in the provision of our services, appropriate personal information is processed and kept securely. It also means that we will never sell your details to a third party. The information you provide will remain confidential and may be used for the provision of related services. Such information may be disclosed in confidence to agents or service providers, regulatory bodies and group companies. You have the right to ask for a copy of certain information held by us in our records in return for payment of a small fee. You also have the right to require us to correct any inaccuracies in your information. The details you are being asked to supply may be used to provide you with information about other products and services either from GoldCore or other group companies or to provide services which any member of the group has arranged for you with a third party. If you do not wish to receive such contact, please write to the Marketing Manager GoldCore, 63 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin 2 marking the envelope 'data protection' 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. The New College Institute wants to form a more extensive partnership with Longwood University as part of charting a course for its future. Nothing firm has been proposed yet. Officials do not rule out NCI eventually becoming a branch campus of Longwood or something similar. But in recent discussions with the university, that idea has not been brought up, said Leanna Blevins, the institutes chief academic officer and acting executive director. Were at the point now where were just talking, NCI board chairwoman Gracie Agnew said. Longwood is our strongest partner right now. Among six degree programs now being provided at NCI, four are Longwoods. They include bachelors degrees in social work, elementary and middle school education and a masters degree in counseling. Longwood also oversees the institutes reading specialist academic endorsement certificate program. NCIs board recently put Blevins in charge of the effort to chart a future choice. Longwood was our first academic partner, Blevins said. Theyve remained an excellent partner for the past decade. It makes sense to explore a stronger affiliation with them. Matthew McWilliams, the universitys communications and media relations director, said Longwood is eager to be helpful however we can and to see NCI thrive, adding that Longwood and NCI have been good partners for several years. \Longwood President W. Taylor Reveley IV was traveling on Thursday and could not be reached for comment. The Harvest Foundation, which funds NCI along with the state, also has taken part in the talks with Longwood, but foundation President Allyson Rothrock said she did not know where the discussions stand. NCI, in uptown Martinsville, offers local access to bachelors and masters degree programs of universities statewide, including Longwood. The degrees conferred generally are ones in which it has been determined that professionals in those fields are in high demand in Southern Virginia. The institute also offers training and professional development programs responsive to needs of industries and other businesses in the region. NCI was founded in 2006 with a mission of making higher education easier and cheaper to obtain for residents of the region. Studies indicated that Southern Virginia, the only region of the state without a public university, had the fewest adults with degrees. Danville has the private Averett University, but private colleges typically are more expensive than public ones, officials have said. During the past 10 years, 368 people have earned degrees through NCI. Hundreds more have earned certificates or other academic credentials. Longwood, which is in Farmville, provides more than 100 degree and study programs and has approximately 5,000 students from more than 25 states and 20 nations, according to its website. Del. Danny Marshall, R-Danville and a member of NCIs board, noted the institutes discussions with Longwood during the Martinsville-Henry County Chamber of Commerces annual Post-Legislative Breakfast at the Virginia Museum of Natural History on Thursday. He said he knew little about what the talks have involved. NCIs board has not yet had any presentation by Longwood, Marshall said. He and Agnew said they hope that a presentation can be made, or at least a discussion of what Longwood is interested in doing for NCI can be held, during a board meeting sometime this summer. A stronger relationship with Longwood could give NCI the name recognition it needs to attract more students, and perhaps ones from outside the area, according to Agnew. State Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County and also an NCI board member, expressed concern that if NCI eventually becomes a branch campus or something similar, it could become just like every other college and university in Virginia. We need to make sure that NCI grows and prospers, Stanley said. He indicated he thinks the best way to do that is for NCI to continue to maintain some type of uniqueness among Virginias higher education institutions. We want to be creative, said Agnew, the former principal of Magna Vista High School, but we want to offer things of substance (and) things we need for the community to grow and prosper. She did not know how soon a more extensive partnership with Longwood may come to fruition. Planning will take quite a bit of time, Agnew said. NCI has been without an executive director since William Wampler retired from state service last July. Wampler, who represented the Bristol area in the state Senate from 1988 to 2011, was hired to lead NCI after he decided not to seek re-election. Officials have said that as a lawmaker, he strongly supported establishing the institute. Agnew said the search for a new executive director basically is on hold until it can be determined how Longwood will be involved with NCI in the future. Theres more than just horsing around happening at Tackfully Teamed Riding Academy in Henry. At 10 on Saturday morning, founder Susan Warren will host a dedication of a new building, Barrys Bungalow, in memory of rider Barry Hussey, better known to some at the stables as The Singing Cowboy. Hussey passed away six years ago due to a brain tumor, but his memory lives on at the riding center where he took his life by the reigns and got in the saddle after a surgical mishap in 1997 left him partially paralyzed. Mary Carol Hussey, Barry Husseys widow, said that she and her husband spent one year in a rehabilitation center in Louisiana before returning to the Martinsville area. Although they found resources for typical therapies following a brain injury, like physical therapy, a friend told the Husseys about Tackfully Teamed. The husband and wife duo decided to give the organization which helps riders with skills like strength, balance, speech, motor skills, and other similar areas a try. My husband was in a wheelchair and he hated it. He loved being on a horse. It gave him freedom, Mary Carol Hussey said. Lydia Pegram, Tackfully Teameds administrative assistant, board of directors member and rider, said that other riders expressed the same sentiments. Pregram said that one rider, whose mobility was limited to a walker and wheelchair, expressed love for walking while on horseback. The horse allowed the rider to go where a wheelchair would not go through the woods. One of the best things about Tackfully Teamed, Pegram, who has muscular dystrophy, said, is the mobility and freedom that riders receive when a horse becomes an extension of their body. Pegram said that her doctor was amazed with my balance after she stated riding at Tackfully Teamed in 2006. Other individuals have also received positive results since experiencing equine therapy. Sara Peters, the mother of rider Jasmine Peters, said that her daughters direction-following and balance skills have improved since riding at Tackfully Teamed. A lot of people with Down Syndrome walk with a wide gait, Peters said. A horses gait helps. Peters explained that her daughter and daughters friend who also takes lessons, Ashton Bryant, do not walk with the gait that is oftentimes synonymous with Down Syndrome because the way the horse walks prompts their bodies to move without restrictions. Peters said that Tackfully Teameds program focuses on what her daughter can accomplish. Sara and Jasmine Peters decided to have Jasmines birthday party at Tackfully Teamed. Sara Peters said that it was a positive experience because her daughter loves crowds and audiences. Having a party surrounded by both human and equine friends, Jasmine was in her element. Most things, she cant do what her friends can, Sara Peters said. This is opposite. Jasmine Peters said that riding horses make her feel happy and makes me laugh. Peters friend, Ashton Bryant, enjoyed looking at scenery while riding, especially flowers. Ashton Bryants sister, Allyson Bryant, and father, Dee Bryant, said they saw a difference in Ashton when in the saddle. Shes a different person when she gets on a horse, Dee Bryant said. Shes happier, Allyson Bryant said. However, due to Down Syndrome and Autism, it is not often easy to find activities that interest Ashton Bryant. Its hard to find things that she enjoys, Dee Bryant said. Riding horses at Tackfully Teamed is a positive activity that Ashton Bryant likes. Routine is big for her, Dee Bryant said, She enjoys doing it every week. For children, whether they have learning difficulties or not, cancelling a fun activity due to bad weather can be a disappointing experience. Thanks to a generous donation by an individual who wished to remain anonymous and the Martinsville Area Community Foundation, Tackfully Teamed will no longer be fully dependent on the weather for riders to have an enjoyable experience. Barrys Bungalow will host a number of different types of activities in which riders can participate if their day with the horses gets cancelled due to inclement weather. The building radiates Barry Husseys positive attitude about not giving up, even when times were hard. He did not let it get him down. He took each day to the fullest he could take it, Mary Carol Hussey said. Even near the end of his life, when his mobility and speech were limited, Mary Carol Hussey said that her husband had two favorite sayings: Amen and I love you. Susan Warren strives to see people with disabilities shine in ways they didnt think that they could. With the addition of Barrys Bungalow, Tackfully Teamed Riding Academy will now be able to host guests come rain or shine. All are invited to Barrys Bungalows dedication ceremony this Saturday, June 4, at 10am. Dedication speakers include Susan Warren, Mary Carol Hussey, John Heiss, and Rudy Johnson. Following the ceremony, refreshments will be served and a Disney on Horseback show, featuring Tackfully Teamed riders, will take place. Amie Pickeral reports for the Martinsville Bulletin. She can be reached at amie.pickeral@martinsvillebulletin.com It will be five more months before Kandy Burnett has her day in court. For the second time, a court hearing for Burnett, vice chair of the Patrick County School Board, was continued Wednesday in Surry District Court, because analysis of a blood sample has not been completed. Burnett is charged in North Carolina with misdemeanor driving while impaired. Judge Charles Neaves Jr. rescheduled the hearing for Nov. 10. According to an arrest report for the Mount Airy Police Department, Burnett, 38, of 1198 E. Fork Road, Ararat, Virginia, was charged in connection with an incident on Feb. 25. She was charged at 4:17 p.m. at New Market Crossing. According to online information, New Market Crossing is a shopping center at the intersection of Independence Boulevard and West Pine Street. The arrest report, by Officer H.D. Wilburn, says Burnett was encountered during a traffic stop. After a brief investigation she was placed under arrest for (driving while impaired). She submitted to a blood draw with Surry EMS. Burnett was not present in court Wednesday and was represented by her lawyer. Burnett told the Enterprise newspaper previously that she was not driving impaired but was taking her regular medication for seizures and an antibiotic for an inner-ear infection. She also said that she had delivered a eulogy at her close first cousins funeral, became very upset during the burial. She said she looked at her car clock at 3:58 p.m., almost time to take her seizure medication, and she took her medicine and started driving through town. After being pulled over, when asked if she was on medication, she told officers what she was taking and showed them the medicine, Burnett told the Enterprise. She said she was asked to step outside her vehicle and told to perform an eye coordination test and to walk a straight line in the parking lot. She said she was wearing high heels. Burnett previously declined to comment to the Bulletin. Burnett represents the Dan River District on the Patrick County School Board. North Carolinas impaired driving law says: A person commits the offense of impaired driving if he drives any vehicle upon any highway, any street, or any public vehicular area within this State: (1) While under the influence of an impairing substance; or (2) After having consumed sufficient alcohol that he has, at any relevant time after the driving, an alcohol concentration of 0.08 or more. The results of a chemical analysis shall be deemed sufficient evidence to prove a persons alcohol concentration; or (3) With any amount of a Schedule I controlled substance or its metabolites in his blood or urine. It also says: A person who has submitted to a chemical analysis of a blood sample may use the result in rebuttal as evidence that the person did not have, at a relevant time after driving, an alcohol concentration of 0.08 or more; and Defense Precluded. - The fact that a person charged with violating this section is or has been legally entitled to use alcohol or a drug is not a defense to a charge under this section. Paul Collins reports for the Martinsville Bulletin. He can be reached at paul.collins@martinsvillebulletin.com. According to Governor Terry McAuliffe, many Virginia schools are not making the grade. Our high schools dont work the way they should any more. They were built for the Industrial Revolution, Washington Post journalist Moriah Balingit reports McAuliffe said in May. With rigorous coursework designed to prepare students for college, pupils focused on entering the workforce after high school are not always given the opportunities they need to succeed. However, with programs like Warrior Tech and upcoming Bengal Tech in Henry County and Vo Tech in Pittsylvania County, schools in the neighboring areas appear to be ahead of the vocationally based trend focus on project-based learning occurring in education. In May, Henry County Public Schools hosted a screening of One Potato Productions documentary, Most Likely to Succeed. After the film, which covered both the history and potential future of the American educational system, Monica Hatchett, Dr. Jared Cotton, Jamese Black, John Gibbs, Frankeeta Tatum, and Brandon Hampton held a panel discussion on how Warrior Tech and Bengal Tech strive to meet the needs of students who choose to learn outside of a typical classroom setting. Hatchett described the hands-on learning experience as a utopia for education. Magna Vista High School principal Jamese Black said that students in Warrior Tech want to think outside the box. Black said, Theyre not forced to do things; they want to learn them. Programs like Warrior Tech, upcoming Bengal Tech and Vo Tech offer students the opportunity to have an educational experience outside of the classroom in a trade that interests them. Pupils learn tasks that will help them enter the workforce with or without a college education. Programs like those soon offered in both high schools in Henry County and currently offered in one facility used by all four high schools in Pittsylvania County teach students to rely on skills as well as smarts. 2011 Tunstall High School graduate Shanon Burke completed nursing coursework at Pittsylvania County Career and Technical Center, commonly known to students as Vo Tech. The experience made it possible for the alumna to enter the workforce in her chosen career field shortly after graduation. Burke said that her time at Vo Tech taught her everything I needed to know as far as being a CNA. There were so many job opportunities after I got out of the class because taking the class at Vo Tech, I learned so much and I received all the licenses and certifications I needed to get the job. Burke took her Certified Nursing Assistant Examination during her junior year of high school. With requirements of being eighteen years of age and a high school graduate to work in most facilities, Burke waited one year before applying to area nursing homes. As soon as I turned eighteen, I got the job, Burke said. Even though the class is designed to help students enter the workforce, Burke said that the skills she learned at Vo Tech also helped her in her personal life. I was always the shy one everywhere I went, but being around the other county school students, you got to know them and actually start working as a team, Burke said. Burke has been successful in her career path and has worked in both Pittsylvania County and Danville City facilities since graduating from high school. Students who choose to learn a trade while also completing other required areas for a high school diploma oftentimes have an impressive track record when it comes to grades. Jamese Black said that Warrior Tech students oftentimes scored higher on their Standards of Learning tests than those who chose to take all customary coursework classes. The scores could be related to learning while having a hands-on experience instead of sitting through a day of lectures on various subjects. Learning in Warrior Tech occurs on an automatic basis, Black said, specifically noting a broadened vocabulary. Like Warrior Tech Academy, Pittsylvania County Career and Technical Center teaches a variety of hands-on subjects. Tunstall alumna Stacy Jackson decided to try her hand at cooking when she was in high school. With a course from Vo Tech highlighting culinary arts, Jackson learned about meal preparation skills and operating a business. I took culinary arts. It made me want to own my own restaurant, Jackson said. Jackson expressed passion for what she says is a God-given talent. I feel in love with the art and how much love the art puts inside my heart and other peoples heart. When they taste the food, they just fall in love because so much love was put into it. Gerald Garrett, Jacksons culinary arts teacher, had an impact on both her life and her skill. His love for the art was so wonderful. He had his own restaurant, and hearing the stories about it, knowing how he did it, and how it all played out wont nothing but God, Jackson said. While in high school, Jackson won an award at a district culinary competition and was able to compete in a state competition. In the future, she plans to use the experiences she gleaned from Vo Tech to open her own restaurant. From the kitchen to the salon, Vo Tech offers an expansive list of skill-based courses. Tunstall graduate Molly Scearce learned about cosmetology while at Vo Tech. Giving the student a work-like environment in which to practice her trade provided Scearce with a unique classroom setting. Designed as a two-year program, Scearce completed hands-on learning by testing her skills first on manikins and then on real people. After passing her state board test, Scearce started looking for employment. It took me about three or four weeks to find a job in my field after graduating with my cosmetology license, Scearce said. Being able to work in a salon-like setting helped Scearce learn skills that made her workplace-ready. Mingling with other students from different schools really helped me to learn to work with others because they are people that you have never met and you have to learn ways to resolve conflict or workplace problems in a positive and professional way, Scearce said. Currently a stylist at Rejuvenation Salon and Spa in Danville, Scearce is one of many students who have found success through a Vo Tech program. Jamese Black said, It has become an important need to create project-based learning. In an effort to reshape education, programs like Warrior Tech, upcoming Bengal Tech, and Vo Tech expand high school students available options following graduation. Vo Tech was one of the best opportunities I had in school because it actually taught me something. I was actually well-prepared to enter the work field after high school because I didnt have to go to college to get my degree, Shanon Burke said. Amie Pickeral reports for the Bulletin. She can be reached at amie.pickeral@martinsvillebulletin.com Almost 5,000 felons have registered to vote in Virginia a little more than a month after Gov. Terry McAuliffe restored their civil rights by an executive action that is now under legal challenge by General Assembly Republicans. Elections Commissioner Edgardo Cortes said Tuesday that 4,935 ex-offenders had registered since McAuliffe signed the restoration order on April 22. The total represents an increase of about 1,000 voters registered since last week. Local registrars and the secretary of the commonwealth are working to verify that the order restored the rights of thousands of felons who have applied to vote in advance of the June 14 primary election in newly drawn congressional districts. The deadline to register for the primary was Monday, but Virginians who applied by the deadline but are awaiting verification will be added to the voting rolls once the state confirms their rights have been restored under the order. An overwhelming majority of those who have applied to register have verified their rights have been restored, but some have been rejected because they have not completed supervised probation under their convictions. General Assembly Republicans, led by House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, and Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr., R-James City, have filed suit before the Virginia Supreme Court to overturn McAuliffes order, which they contend is unconstitutional. Howell and Norment are among six plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which they filed Monday. The plaintiffs filed a motion Tuesday for the court to consider the case in special session and decide it by Aug. 25. That would be before the traditional Labor Day push in a presidential election that could see record voter turnout. They requested an expedited briefing for the court to hear the case during the session that begins June 6. Unless the court decides the issue before Aug. 25, the case would be pushed into the session that begins in September and the governors order could permit thousands of constitutionally ineligible felons to vote in the November election, thus diluting petitioners votes and casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election, the petition states. Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond Law School, said the Supreme Court is not obliged to accept the case or expedite its hearing. I think its all in the discretion of the court, he said. Im not sure how the justices will feel about the substance of it or the procedure of it. The court and the Republican leaders who brought the suit also face the potential political repercussions of taking away the right of ex-offenders to vote. Anytime you disenfranchise people, I think thats a political problem, Tobias said. TODAYS WORD is demagogue (dem-uh-gog). Example: Heres the background: Tennessees finances are a mess. The state is facing a shortfall of some $310 millionbut legislators remember what happened last year when they considered imposing the first income tax on wages. Goaded by talk-radio demagogues, hundreds of citizens surrounded the Statehouse in a near riot. Editor & Publisher, 4 Feb. 2002 THURSDAYS WORD was exemplary (ig-zem-pluh-ree). It means serving as a desirable model; representing the best of its kind: perfect, ideal; or (of a punishment) serving as a warning or deterrent. Example: Members of the community who have demonstrated exemplary public service will be honored at the ceremony. The folks at the Virginia Museum of Natural History in Martinsville are excited that the museum is publishing The Geology of Virginia, the first comprehensive review of Virginias geology published in over a century. According to a release from the museum, the 538 page book describes in depth the geological features and history of the Commonwealth, with detailed information about all regions of the Commonwealth. Pre-orders for the publication that will be sold exclusively at the museum store and through its online store, are now being accepted through the museums website at www.vmnh.net, with print copies for $35 to be available July 1. This historic publication will be a must-have on the book-shelves of all those fascinated with Virginia and its rich geologic features and history, said Dr. Joe B. Keiper, executive director of VMNH. Virginia encompasses five distinct geologic provinces and contains a rich variety of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks that range in age from 2.5 billion years ago to the present. The Commonwealth also has a wealth of distinctive landforms and active processes that continue to modify its surface. Few states can match Virginias geologic diversity, according to Dr. .Jim Beard, curator of earth sciences at the museum. The Geology of Virginia represents the combined efforts of more than 40 geoscience professionals and covers all aspects of regional, historical, economic, and hazards geology, said Dr. Beard, who also serves as director of research and collections at the museum. This book provides a baseline for future work and will be a standard reference for geologists for decades to come, Beard said. The Geology of Virginia is the 18th installment of the VMNHs Special Publications series, which includes contributions from museum scientists and researchers throught the U.S. that range in content from handbooks, bibliographic catalogs and checklists, and edited volumes of symposium proceeding. Its Friday, and time to check the Daily Calendar for happenings locally over the weekend, most of which have been expanded on in this column this week. To coincide with the Scripps National Spelling Bee finals, Google released the top misspelled word in each state. By using search queries that began with the how to spell, Google determined which words people in each state have the most trouble spelling. Desert, maintenance, vacuum, cancelled, gray and pneumonia were among the most commonly misspelled words. The Stroller found it interesting. Some of the misspelled words we see often, especially the words desert and dessert. Example: The dinner will include chicken, vegetables, (desert) and drink. People in Arizona and New Hampshire struggled with the word diarrhea, while people in Massachusetts often looked up how to spell Massachusetts. Nevadans were unsure of the word cousin. Note Virginia: cancelled was the most searched word. The full list provided by time.com/4349629/common-misspelled-words-state-google/ is as follows: Alabama tongue; Alaska Hawaii; Arizona diarrhea; Arkansas leprechaun; California desert; Colorado beautiful; Connecticut desert; Delaware neighbor; Florida tomorrow; Georgia appreciate; Hawaii boutineer; Idaho desert; Illinois appreciate; Indiana desert; Iowa maintenance; Kansas schedule; Kentucky maintenance; Louisiana definitely; Maine vacuum; Maryland cancelled; Massachusetts Massachusetts; Michigan gray; Minnesota broccoli; Mississippi sergeant; Missouri pneumonia; Montana vacuum; Nebraska guarantee; Nevada cousin; New Hampshire diarrhea; New Jersey February; New Mexico neighbor; New York beautiful; North Carolina pneumonia; North Dakota attitude; Ohio banana; Oklahoma gray; Oregon definitely; Pennsylvania cancelled; Rhode Island, cancelled; Utah leprechaun; Vermont possible; Virginia cancelled; Washington pneumonia; West Virginia giraffe; Wisconsin vacuum; Wyoming ornery. The Spencer-Penn Centre will be offering Beginning Guitar Camp, starting June 21. Classes will continue from 6:30-7:30 p.m. on June 28 and July 19 and 26. Page Cobbler will be the instructor. The beginner guitar camp is for students, ages 8 and up, who are interested in learning the basics to playing the guitar. The cost is $25 for SP members, and $30 for non-member. Some guitars will be available at the classes for students to use. Call 957-5757 to register. Me,Myself, and Him is the subject. Using I instead of me when referring to themselves. This scenario could very well be the Strollers great niece, who refers to herself asMe Katie. The following story is about Jimmy who had trouble figuring out when to use I instead of me. Then one day, while creating a sentence in front of the first-grade class, Jimmy haltingly said, I I I shut the door. Realizing that he was right, he jumped up and down and shouted, Me did it! In Defence of Marxism is committed to safeguarding your privacy. 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The Middle East and the Sykes-Picot Treaty: A Poisonous Legacy The frontiers of the Arab world today are the product of a secret plan drawn in pencil on a map of the Levant in May, 1916, in a deal struck between British and French imperialism at the height of the First World War. Worked out 100 years ago, the Sykes-Picot agreement is now synonymous with imperial deceit, cynicism and treachery. The authors of this notorious document were Sir Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot, appointed by the British and French governments respectively to decide how to carve up the Ottoman Empire after the War. Hovering in the background was the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Sazonov, anxious to ensure that Constantinople would be handed over to Russia as part of the deal. During the War, Britain made different offers to different countries. The French, the Arabs and the Jews were all promised things that the British imperialists had no intention of giving them. Arab historian, George Antonius, called this document the product of greed allied to suspicion and so leading to stupidity. It was a messy solution that prepared the way for future disaster. The Turks had miscalculated badly when they entered the war on the side of Germany and the Central Powers. Now their lands were up for grabs. The only question was: who would grab what? Like rival gangs the bandits of the Entente were already arguing over how to split up the goods of the man they planned to murder. But there was a slight problem. Their intended victim was not yet dead. At the time, the war was not going well for the Allies. The Gallipoli adventure launched on the initiative of Winston Churchill ended in disaster. In January 1916, while a ferocious battle was being fought in Verdun, the British had been forced into an ignominious withdrawal. A few months later the British were about to suffer a humiliating defeat in Mesopotamia. Oil Even at this early stage the presence of oil was a decisive factor in the calculations of imperialism. What was the right of self-determination when compared to this black gold? Before 1914, Britain already controlled large parts of what is today called Iraq, bribing the local sheikhs to obtain influence, such as in the case of the Sultan of Kuwait. The importance of this was to secure the Shatt Al-Arab, the name given to the point where the waters of the Euphrates and Tigris are joined. This was a key port for British Indian trade. The construction of the Anglo-Persian oil pipeline that ran along the banks of the river made it even more important for Britain to secure the region. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was the company that kept the Royal Navy supplied with oil, a fundamental strategic consideration. Just before the outbreak of war the British government had secured a controlling interest in the company. The vast profits thus obtained rivalled those of the Suez Canal Company. There was money in oil. And there was blood also. All this was ultimately related to the British control of India. In theory, British interests in Mesopotamia were protected by the British forces in India. But, in reality, the latter were not sufficient. The attention of the Foreign Office in London was drawn to the possibility of provoking an Arab uprising against the Turks. The Arabs suffered oppression under Turkish rule and many were restive. The politicians in London saw in this an opportunity. They imagined that, if the Turks could be driven out of Basra, the Arabs would be inclined to rise against them and support the British in their war against the Ottoman oppressors. But in practice this turned out to be a mirage. In the words of one British military historian: British policy was not free from an unpleasing Machiavellianism for, while the Arabs were urged to throw off Turkish allegiance, no pledge was given against their ultimate return to the vengeance of their ferocious masters. (A History of the Great War, pp. 339-40.) The author adds, as if to excuse himself: Doubtless, however, our action was regarded as a fair counter to Turko-German intrigues in India, for which Mesopotamia was regarded as a useful base. March on to Baghdad! Percy Cox 1916A British force composed partly of Indian troops was sent into Mesopotamia. The Political Officer of this expedition, Sir Percy Cox, was considered to be a great expert on the region. He argued enthusiastically in favour of marching on Baghdad. There would be little or no opposition, he thought. But he thought wrong. The military planners had left out of account several factors, one of the most important being the climate: one of the most unforgiving and extreme in the world. The British and Indian forces suffered the torments of heat and thirst, plagued by flies and struck down by diseases. Later, they suffered from the cold. The field hospitals were, to say the least, inadequate, and an increasing number of soldiers were beginning to fall. Wounded men were spending up to two weeks on boats before reaching any kind of hospital. This was a warning of the horrors yet to come. Sir John Nixon, Commander of the British forces in Mesopotamia, was unmoved by any of these little local difficulties. It is hard to say whether his conduct was the product of naivety or megalomania. Cromwell once said: No man goes so far as he who knows not wither he is going. Overcome by his irrepressible optimism, Nixon only seemed to know one word of command, and that word was Advance! Appetite comes with eating, and the British were getting greedy. At first things appeared to go well. By late September 1915, Nixons forward divisional commander, Sir Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend, had already occupied the Mesopotamian province of Basra, including the town of Kut al-Amara. From there, they attempted to move up the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers toward Baghdad. General Townshend seems to have been a very vain and arrogant man, his ego having been inflated by some military successes against tribal guerrillas in northern India. Like Nixon he was absurdly self-confident. That self-confidence cost many lives. He was reckless, taking ridiculous risks while neglecting the most elementary precautions. The end result was catastrophe. The easy victory in Basra filled the British with a fatal sense of complacency. But all too often in war the ability of advancing leaves out of account the desirability of so doing. In the end, the Arab population did not turn out to be as friendly to the British as the men in London had hoped. Often, the Turkish forces were backed by huge numbers of Arabs, who also began sabotaging the oil pipelines. For these actions, the local population were subjected to a severe chastisement by their British saviours. From a military point of view, the occupation of Baghdad did not make any sense. To carry out such an operation successfully would have required a very large number of troops and huge amounts of supplies, river transport, field hospitals and artillery. Instead of this, the British force consisted of only 12,000 men, who were sent marching through desert country with no roads and inadequate supplies. But Sir John pressed on regardless. The Sixth (Poona) Division advanced upriver, leaving a very thinly stretched supply line of hundreds of miles behind them. Nixon deceived himself and deceived the British government with his bragging tone. He told Chamberlain: I am confident that I can beat Nur-ud-Din and occupy Baghdad without any addition to my present force. In London, the Cabinet hummed and hawed, wrote memos and then wrote other memos, and finally, swayed by the confident assurances of the men on the ground, they decided to send reinforcements to the invading force (Kitchener voted against). The vast majority of the British Empires forces in this campaign were recruited from India. But the British authorities in India were becoming increasingly alarmed by the deteriorating situation on the turbulent north-western frontier with Afghanistan. They were also beginning to be concerned at the success of the very efficient and tenacious German agents, who were increasingly active in Tehran. It was feared that Persia might enter the war on Germanys side at any moment. The Government of India reluctantly decided to try to scrape together some reinforcements. But it was a case of too little and too late. What they did not know in London or New Delhi was that this tiny force of 12,000 veterans was about to walk into a trap. In late November, at Ctesiphon (or Selman Pak), sixteen miles outside Baghdad, they collided with an army of 20,000 Turks. The catastrophe of Kut The battle was fought with great ferocity and casualties were high on both sides. Being outnumbered by the Turks two-to-one, Townshends troops were rebuffed, with the loss of 4,500 men. The Turks lost about twice that number, but Townshend was in far worse shape than them, having lost forty per cent of his infantry and half his British officers. A ragged and dispirited army began the retreat back to Kut al-Amara. On 5 December, Turkish and German troops began to lay siege to that city. In the beginning, the seriousness of their position had not yet penetrated the thick skull of Sir Charles Townshend. In the officers mess they dined almost as well as in the exclusive clubs for gentlemen in London. They drank toasts to King and Country in champagne and consumed quantities of excellent whiskey. Nobody saw the terrible end that was staring them in the face. Convinced that they would soon be relieved, they saw no reason to worry. But heavy winter rains had swollen the Tigris River, making it difficult to manoeuvre troops along its banks. Consequently, the anticipated relief force did not appear. Townshend sent whinging, at times hysterical, demands for help. The British attempted to break the Turkish siege four times during the winter, only to be driven back. Townshend made no effort to support the relief efforts by organising a sortie from the besieged city, but merely remained passive. The number of casualties suffered by the relieving forces was around 23,000 almost twice the strength of the entire remaining forces inside Kut. As the siege dragged on, food became scarce. Sickness began to strike down on the men who were weakened by exhaustion and hunger. The situation was even worse for Indian soldiers, who were forbidden by their religion to eat horse meat. Morale sank along with dwindling supplies. Emir Faisal son of Sharif Hussein ibn Ali along with Lt. Colonel T.E. Lawrence - early 1918 - Photo: Public DomainNow desperate, Townshend pleaded with the British government to negotiate a grubby deal with the Ottomans. They attempted to buy off the enemy with a huge bribe. A team of officers (including the notorious Lawrence of Arabia) was sent secretly, offering 2 million (the equivalent of 122,300,000 in 2016), promising they would not fight the Ottomans again, in exchange for Townshends troops. The Turkish leader Enver Pasha contemptuously turned this offer down. Although reinforcements were not so far from the city, instead of waiting, Townshend suddenly surrendered on 29 April, 1916. The general and his 13,000 men were taken prisoner. This was the single largest surrender of troops in British history and it dealt a shattering blow to British prestige. British historian James Morris has described the loss of Kut as the most abject capitulation in Britains military history. Townshend and most of the other British commanders involved in the failure to relieve Kut were removed from their command. But they got off lightly compared to the grisly fate of the men under them. C.R.M.F Cruttwell writes: Townshend [went] into an honourable and almost luxurious interment, the officers into endurable prison camps. The men were herded like animals across the desert, flogged, kicked, raped, tortured and murdered. Though the Germans gave them tokens of humanity and kindness almost wherever they met them, more than two-thirds of the British rank and file were dead before the war ended. Halil, the Turkish commander, had cynically promised that they would be the honoured guests of his government. The relieving force had suffered 23,000 casualties. Mainly composed of young barely trained troops, it had nobly endured every kind of avoidable and unavoidable hardship and suffering. (A History of the Great War, pp. 348-9.) The class divisions in society persist even in prisoner of war camps. Betrayal of the Arabs When Turkey entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, London immediately declared Egypt a British protectorate. The people of Egypt merely exchanged one imperial master for another. Naturally, their opinion on the matter was never consulted. During the war, British agents worked tirelessly to whip up an Arab revolt against the Turks. The exploits of one of these agents, T.E. Lawrence, was made famous in the film Lawrence of Arabia, which presents these activities in a most flattering light. In fact, this was part of a cynical plan to use the Arabs against the Turks, winning over the tribal chiefs and sheikhs by a mixture of vague promises of territorial expansion for the future and very tangible monetary bribes for the present. The men in London believed they had scored a great success in persuading Emir and Sharif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali, to proclaim a rebellion against the Ottoman rule. In fact, this action, which he took with great reluctance, was not the result of British diplomacy, but the fact that he had discovered a German plot to get rid of him. Without this bit of encouragement, his preference would have been to continue the easier and highly profitable policy of accepting generous bribes from both sides. The revolt in the Hejaz was declared in June 1916. Displaying his usual good business sense, Hussein had already pocketed 50,000 from the Turks to finance a campaign against the British and a further substantial down payment from the British to finance a campaign against the Turks. His commitment to Arab nationalism was, in fact, only a fig leaf to cover his own territorial ambitions a fact that was not lost on the British. David Hogarth, the head of the Arab Bureau in the Foreign Office, commented acidly: It is obvious that the king regards Arab Unity as synonymous with his own kingship. The revolt of the Hejaz, despite its glorification in the film Lawrence of Arabia, was of a mainly fictitious character. The British spent about 11 million to subsidise it. That would be 1 billion in modern money. But they did not get much of a return on their investment. Hogarth was forced to admit: That the Hejaz Bedouins were simply guerrillas, and not of good quality at that, had been amply demonstrated even in the early stages; and it was never in doubt that they would not attack nor withstand Turkish regulars. (Quoted in Fromkin, D., A Peace to End All Peace, p. 223.) If London did not get a good return on their investment, Hussein got even less for his. The right of self-determination of small nations is merely the small change of imperialist diplomacy. Subsequent events showed that Britain regarded Arab Unity as synonymous with rule from London. The Arabs had been led to expect a great Hashemite kingdom ruled from Damascus. Instead they were handed a few puny little kingdoms, mainly consisting of deserts. The Hashemites were unceremoniously evicted from Syria by the French. They also lost their ancestral fief of the Hejaz, with the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. This was handed over to the British stooge Abdel Aziz bin Saud, a chieftain from the Nejd, who founded Saudi Arabia in cahoots with his Wahhabi religious zealots, the authentic fathers of todays fundamentalists. One branch of the Hashemites went on to rule Iraq. Another branch still survives in the Hashemite Kingdom, Jordan (which was then called Transjordan), sliced off from Palestine by the British. The Sykes-Picot deal Secret diplomacy is not the exception but the rule in dealings between imperialist powers. This is entirely logical, since the purpose of diplomacy is to deceive both the enemy and public opinion about ones real intentions and disguise the most sordid interests with honeyed phrases about humanitarian missions, preserving peace, defending democracy and upholding the rights of small nations. Diplomacy is both politics and war by other means. It is cynicism raised to the level of a work of art. The military setbacks in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia did not for one moment interrupt the normal workings of civilised diplomacy. Hidden from the public view, the Allied robbers busied themselves with the noble and lucrative task of dividing up the spoils. Even before the First World War, Egypt, North Africa and stretches of the Arabian Gulf had already been divided up as colonies or protectorates of the European imperialist powers. Now the latter could finish the job. In late 1915 and early 1916, a young British politician, Sir Mark Sykes, chief adviser to the Asquith government on the Near East; and a French lawyer-turned-diplomat, Francois Georges-Picot were haggling the terms of a secret deal to carve up the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire like two men arguing over the price of herrings in a market place. Haggling is a complicated business. It consists essentially in a conflict of wits that has for its aim to deceive, mislead and cheat the other party into accepting a deal that is essentially contrary to his or her interests. It is like a game of chess or, more correctly, poker. Only the stakes tend to be far higher, and the danger to the loser comparably higher. Sykes actually had a high regard for the cultured Turkish rulers of the Ottoman Empire. By contrast, he held the Arabs, whom the British were attempting to rouse against the Turkish yoke, in complete contempt. He described the town Arabs as cowardly, vicious yet despicable, while the Bedouin Arabs were rapacious greedy animals. Here we can hear the authentic voice of imperialism, in which contempt for the lower classes becomes mingled with overt racism. By contrast, Sykes admiration for the Turks is the expression of a kind of upper-class solidarity. The representative of British imperialism had no problem identifying with the Turkish overlords who had enslaved millions of Arabs, just as the British ruling class has enslaved millions of Indians and Africans. Slaves deserve to be slaves and rulers are destined to be rulers. Naturally, Sykes good opinion of the men in Constantinople did not prevent him from preparing to rob them of all their land and assets. Solidarity between robbers can only be stretched so far Between the French- and British-ruled blocs, large, mostly desert areas were apportioned to the two powers respective spheres of influence. Later, in 1917, Italian claims were added, but they arrived too late at the table of the victors, after the main course had been served, and got only the left-overs. A poisonous legacy The only aim of the negotiations was the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. At one point, there was the possibility of reaching a deal with the Turks that satisfied both the British and Russians. But the French put a stop to that. They demanded not only control of Syria but of Turkey itself. In the end, it was agreed that Russia would get Constantinople, the territories adjacent to the Bosporus strait (thus giving Russia the sea passages from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean) and four provinces near the Russian borders in east Anatolia (including Armenia). The British would get Basra and southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and the French would get a slice in the middle, including Lebanon, Syria and Cilicia (in modern-day Turkey). Palestine would be an international territory whatever that might mean. Italy was given control of Turkeys southwest and Greece was allocated control of Turkeys western coasts. But as always, the final result would be decided not by a scrap of paper but by the unpredictable fortunes of war, and, in the end, the Greek Army was defeated by the new Turkish state. The result was the barbaric expulsion of the Greek population of Asia Minor, which generated feelings of mutual hatred and fear between Greeks and Turks that has poisoned relations between the peoples for generations. In the same way the bloody conflict between Arabs and Jews can be traced back to these dirty deals of the First World War. During the war, Britain had promised Palestine to both the Arabs and the Jews. In the end, neither got what they wanted. Even while Britain was negotiating with Hussein bin Ali, the foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, wrote a letter to Baron Walter Rothschild, a close friend of Zionist movement leader Chaim Weizmann, promising to establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine (2 November, 1917). The standpoint of imperialism was clearly expressed by the British Prime Minister Lloyd George in a secret session of the House of Commons on 10 May 1917, when he shocked the House by his bluntness: The Prime Minister intended to deny France the position that Sir Mark Sykes had promised her in the post-war Middle East, and took the view that the Sykes-Picot agreement was unimportant; that physical possession was all that mattered. Regarding Palestine, he told the British ambassador to France in April 1917 that the French would be obliged to accept a fait accompli. We shall be there by conquest and shall remain. (Fromkin, F., op. cit. p. 267, my emphasis, AW.) One could not wish for a clearer exposure of the brutal reality of imperialist politics and diplomacy: might is right; what we have we hold. It was expressed far more eloquently long ago by Heraclitus when he said: War is father of all and king of all; and some he manifested as gods, some as men; some he made slaves, some free As Lloyd George had predicted, Palestine was pocketed by Britain, along with a huge slice of the former Arab territories of the Ottoman Empire. France got most of what was left. Mosul was at first apportioned to France, but finally was handed over to Britain, which joined it to the future Iraq. The Jews got a slice of Palestine, but not the Jewish homeland that the British had promised them. As for the unfortunate Kurds, who aspired to a state for themselves, their claims were completely ignored and they were split up between four countries (Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran). To keep the French quiet, Syria was handed over to them. They also had effective control of Greater Lebanon, although it was nominally in the hands of the Maronite Christians. Given the complex mixture of faiths and ethnic groups in that small country, that was a recipe for future instability and chaos. After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks found a copy of the Sykes-Picot agreement in the government archives. Leon Trotsky published a copy of the agreement in Izvestia on 24 November, 1917, exposing the real plans of the great powers to carve up the Ottoman Empire. Lenin called it the agreement of colonial thieves. There is not a lot one could add to that accurate and succinct definition. The consequences of all this are still with us today. By dividing this most volatile region into artificial states cutting across through ethnic and religious boundaries, the Sykes-Picot agreement guaranteed a future plagued by wars and conflicts. The crimes of imperialism have left a poisonous legacy, which has reduced the most promising parts of the Middle East to a pile of smoking ruins. In the words of the Roman writer Tacitus: They have created a wilderness and they call it peace. The number of U.S. citizenship applications is rising, with a big increase in Massachusetts this year. The Boston Globe reports that from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, 2015, there were 6,141 applications. The next period, covering Jan. 1 to March 31, 2016, saw 7,994 applications, a 30 percent increase. Nationally, the increase was 34 percent. Is Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who has denigrated Mexicans and called for a U.S. travel ban on Muslims, a key factor in the increases? "People are terrified," Eva Millona, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, an advocacy group, told the newspaper. To apply for naturalization, as the process is known, you have to be at least 18 years old and a permanent resident for at least five years, or at least three years if you've been married to a U.S. citizen. You can also apply if you've honorably served in the U.S. military. The process also involves a $680 fee and tests. At the end, new citizens take an oath of allegiance at naturalization ceremonies. According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a a May ceremony in Lawrence included 41 citizenship candidates from Australia, Brazil, Cambodia, Cameroon, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ghana, India, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Jordan, Liberia, Nigeria, Norway, Romania, Ukraine, U.K. and Venezuela. For Massachusetts residents, the last day to register to vote for the state primary is Friday, Aug. 19. The state primary is on a Thursday this year, Sept. 8. The general election is Tuesday, Nov. 8. The last day to register to vote in that election is Oct. 19. Ania Camargo.jpg Ania Camargo of Mothers Out Front speaking Thursday at Trinity Church in Springfield (Suzanne McLaughlin/The Republican) SPRINGFIELD -- Residents attending a forum Thursday were urged to support legislation intended to hold utilities more accountable for gas leaks. The event happened just hours after a gas line rupture temporarily closed a downtown street. Ania Camargo, part of a group campaigning to fix Boston's leaky gas pipes, spoke Thursday at Trinity United Methodist Church at a forum hosted by Arise for Social Justice and the Springfield Climate Justice Coalition. A separate forum was held in Northampton to consider the issue of unrepaired gas leaks. Columbia Gas is the natural gas supplier for both communities. In fliers, the sponsors of the forums said gas leaks cost ratepayers money, harm the environment and can cause public health and safety problems. The sponsors said there are more than 500 ongoing gas leaks in Springfield and 91 documented leaks in Northampton, citing data from the state Department of Public Utilities. Columbia Gas, in a seven-page response letter to the forum organizers, said the company and its parent corporation, NiSource, "have a proven commitment" to address the issue of gas leaks under the federal Natural Gas STAR Methane Challenge program and in complying with state regulations. A Columbia Gas spokeswoman said the "vast majority of leaks are Grade 3," which the Columbia letter describes as "non-hazardous to persons or property at the time of detection" and are re-evaluated every 12 months, while more serious leaks are addressed within time limits set by state regulations. Jesse Lederman, an environmental organizer with Arise for Social Justice, said he hopes there is the beginning of "a productive working relationship" with Columbia Gas. Camargo said the group she volunteers with, Mothers Out Front, is a grassroots movement that was started in the Boston area and now has 5,000 members in Massachusetts, New York and Virginia. Camargo said methane from natural gas leaks contributes to the trapping of heat in the environment and adds to global warming. She said there are gas leaks at wells, processing plants and compressor stations. "Methane aggravates asthma and kills trees in their roots," Camargo said. Camargo said electricity is a better source of energy than natural gas because the electric companies can buy from renewable sources, such as wind and solar. She urged Springfield residents to support two bills pending before the state Legislature. A resolution supporting the bills will be discussed by the Springfield City Council Monday night at 7 at City Hall. Residents should go to City Hall in support of the bills, she said. The first bill would prevent utility companies from including costs from escaped gas in their rates, which passes the costs onto customers. A second bill would require the gas company to fix any gas leaks resulting from damage caused, for example, during repairs on underground water lines. That's just what happened Thursday morning on Worthington Street. Springfield Water and Sewer Commission workers were repairing a water line when they ruptured a gas line, which was subsequently shut off, according to fire department spokesman Dennis Leger. Traffic was blocked in both directions on Worthington near Summit Street while gas line repairs were completed. The spot was about a quarter-mile up the road from the 2012 gas main explosion near Dwight and Worthington that destroyed or damaged several buildings. The forum sponsors said they sent letters to Columbia Gas CEO Stephen Bryant last month asking for information regarding the volume of gas being lost, and the cost to ratepayers. Lederman said a "lengthy response" from Bryant is being analyzed. Both Lederman and a spokeswoman for Columbia Gas said the sides are interested in meeting on the gas leak issues. Columbia Gas of Massachusetts has replaced 200 miles of cast iron and bare steel pipe in its gas line system over the past five years statewide, and will replace over 230 additional miles of priority pipes over the next five years, Bryant said. The work of the past five years has reduced methane emissions by approximately 33 million cubic feet, he said. Reporters Patrick Johnson and George Graham contributed to this story. CHICOPEE Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss, who died in a F/A-18 fighter jet crash on Thursday, had visited Westover Air Reserve Base shortly after joining the Blue Angels in 2014. Kuss had joined the elite acrobatics team in 2014 and accumulated more than 1,400 flight hours before the fatal crash in Smyrna, Tennessee. On Dec. 17, 2014, Kuss, along with fellow Blue Angels Capt. Corrie Mays, flew to the Chicopee base to scout out the terrain and logistics for the May 2015 performance there by the Navy air team. The pair flew around the air show airspace, visited the tower and met with base officials to make notes about the terrain and go over logistical details. The Navy said in a news release on Thursday that Kuss was beginning to take off during an afternoon practice session when the crash happened. Five other F/A-18 jets landed safely moments after the crash. Kuss was the only casualty and no civilians on the ground were hurt. BOSTON - A man from Dorchester was convicted of a number of charges on Thursday, after he attempted to kill a man he suspected of acting as a federal witness. Jaquan Casanova 24, was convicted of tampering with a witness by attempting to kill him, as well as of lying to a federal agent about his involvement in a sex trafficking operation. The witness Darian Thomson was shot in the head by Casanova in 2013, after Casanova became convinced that Thomson was giving information to federal law enforcement officials about the sex and drug trafficking organization he was a member of. The organization was headed by a man named Raymond Jeffreys, who ordered the "hit" on Thomson. Roughly a month before he was shot, Thomson had been indicted on unrelated federal sex trafficking charges in New Jersey. In April, Thomson was released from custody and traveled back to Boston. It was at that point that Casanova made an attempt on his life. Jeffreys and a number of people within his organization believed that Thomson had been released on the condition that he give information on the group's criminal activities to federal law enforcement. In May, Jeffreys was sentenced to 30 years in prison, after he pleaded guilty to sex trafficking, tampering with a witness by attempting to kill him, and making a false statement to a federal agent. Casanova could receive a sentence of up to 30 years in prison, five years of supervised release, and a fine of $250,000. His sentencing is scheduled for September 14. Last week, Simms Fishing Products https://www.simmsfishing.com/ became the first Montana company to receive the U.S. presidents "E" Award for exporting success. Simms was among 123 companies across the country to receive the award, which honors companies contributing to U.S. exports, at a May 16 ceremony in Washington, D.C. "Over the last 25 plus years, we have made a concerted effort to find the best international partners to help us build our brand internationally," Diane Bristol, senior director for employee and community engagement, said in a release. "We have a deep appreciation for the relationships weve built and the efforts theyve made to represent us." By Lewis Kendall Chronicle Staff Writer Full Story: http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/economy/simms-wins-national-award/article_e7f66ea2-f0ab-5e51-9422-c33a8d9fa085.html As the largest private equity firm in the world, the Blackstone Group understands firsthand what it takes to keep a big company nimble. "We must have sent out 500 letters that said, were in business; let us represent you. But nobody hired us. This was a very depressing moment." Full Story: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/whats-behind-blackstones-investment-success/?utm_source=kw_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2016-06-02 Interpreting employment stats among young people can be tricky. No one expects employment rates among teens or people in their early 20s to reach those of prime-age workers. These are prime years for what economists call "investing in human capital," an activity most people would describe as "going to school." Martha Ross Full Story: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/the-avenue/posts/2016/06/01-declines-in-youth-employment-ross Did you know that nine out of ten people will leave a mobile website if they cant find what theyre looking for right away? Now, think about your businesss site. Does it perform quickly on both laptops and smartphones? If not, youre probably losing customers while the pages slowly load. But if youre not sure how to make it run more smoothly, dont worry were here to help. Today were introducing an easy way to measure your sites performance across devicesfrom mobile to desktopand give you a list of specific fixes that can help your business connect more quickly with people online. Full Story: https://googleandyourbusiness.blogspot.com/2016/06/test-your-site-with-google-and-see-how.html Les membres du cabinet ont pris note de la promulgation de la Maritime Zones (Economic Activities) (Amendment) Regulations 2022, Social Contribution and Social Benefits (Industrial Injuries) Regulations 2022, de la fermeture de certaines routes pendant la soiree dans le cadre de la ligne Rose-Hill/Reduit du metro. 1. Cabinet has agreed to the promulgation of the Maritime Zones (Economic Activities) (Amendment) Regulations 2022. Any activity involving the use of marine renewable energy would be prescribed in the list of economic activities under the Maritime Zones (Economic Activities) Regulations. The terms deep sea water energy conservation and production technologies would be replaced by technologies for energy conversion and production from marine renewable energy resources. This would allow an activity that uses proven innovative technologies and contribute to energy conversion using thermal and other properties of the sea water as well as production of energy from tides, waves, winds and currents. 2. Cabinet has taken note that the Social Contribution and Social Benefits (Industrial Injuries) Regulations 2022 would be promulgated. The Regulations would provide for: (a) the employee and/or employer, including self-employed individuals, to furnish to the National Pensions Officer, information and relevant documents, related to industrial injuries sustained and circumstances of these injuries; (b) the terms and conditions to effect payment of benefits; and (c) the rates of benefits payable in respect of: (i) expenses incurred transport, first aid required; (ii) Constant Personal Attendance Allowance; (iii) Dependents Benefit; and (iv) other benefits incurred medical, surgical attendances, physiotherapy. The Regulations shall be deemed to have come into operation as from 01 September 2020 and on 01 September 2021 insofar as it relates to a self-employed person. 3. Cabinet has taken note of the performance of the Export-Oriented Enterprises (EOE) Sector over the period January to March 2022, as compared to the corresponding period in 2021. With regard to the performance of the EOE sector over the year 2021, EOE exports stood at around Rs42.66 billion, as compared to some Rs37.29 billion in 2020. Currently, over the period January to March 2022, EOE exports revolved at around Rs10.93 billion, as compared to some Rs9.38 billion during the corresponding period in 2021. 4. Cabinet has taken note that a Ministerial Committee chaired by the Prime Minister has been set up to look into the development of a High-Tech Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Industry in Mauritius. The Committee would address all technical and regulatory issues. 5. Cabinet has agreed to the draft Schedule of Commitments of Mauritius in the context of the ongoing Trade in Services negotiations under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). The AfCFTA Council of Ministers agreed in January 2022 to extend the deadline to complete the negotiations in the five priority sectors, namely business services, communication services, financial services, transport services and tourism services to 30 June 2022. Mauritius has scheduled commitments in new sub-sectors including Legal Services, Taxation Services, Medical and Dental Services. The draft Schedule of Commitments would be verified by the AfCFTA Secretariat prior to submission to the 9th meeting of the AfCFTA Council of Ministers scheduled on 01 and 02 July 2022. 6. Cabinet has agreed to Mauritius adhering to the Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The aims of the Declaration are to ensure an open and transparent environment for international investment and to encourage the positive contribution multinational enterprises can make to economic, social and environmental progress. The benefits for Mauritius to adhere to the Declaration include the following: (a) improved transparency of its investment regimes, which would give comfort to both domestic and foreign investors; (b) entitlement to participate along with other adherent countries and the European Commission in the work of the OECD Investment Committee; (c) taking advantage of the OECD diagnosis and benchmarking exercises in the course of the review process of the investment climate of Mauritius; and (d) improved access to global supply chains. 7. Cabinet has taken note that Mauritius would host the 27th Session of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission during the second week of May 2023. 8. Cabinet has taken note that the forthcoming joint re-evaluation of the Mauritius Accreditation Service (MAURITAS) by the African Accreditation Cooperation and the Southern African Development Community Cooperation in Accreditation would be carried out from 13 to 17 June 2022 in Mauritius. The first evaluation exercise was carried out in May 2018 and enabled MAURITAS to achieve international recognition by becoming a signatory member of the Multilateral Recognition Arrangement of the International Accreditation Forum and of the Mutual Recognition Arrangement of the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation in October 2018. The exercise would be conducted in the presence of international organisations such as the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation and the International Accreditation Forum which are the two supreme authorities in accreditation at the global level. 9. Cabinet has taken note of actions being taken with regard to the implementation of a Strategy and Action Plan for a New Solid Waste Management and Resource Recovery system in Mauritius, following the feasibility study funded by the Agence Francaise de Developpement. The Strategy includes, among others, the setting-up of source segregation of wastes and the setting-up of the regional composting plants and sorting units to be carried out on a Public-Private Partnership basis. A Request For Proposal is expected to be launched in September 2022 to invite potential project proponents to submit their bids for the setting-up and operation of composting plants and sorting units in the Western and Northern regions of Mauritius on a Design-Build-Own-Operate basis. 10. Cabinet has taken note that in the context of the Metro Express Project Phase 3 from Rose Hill to Reduit, major construction works would be undertaken near the Ebene Recreational Park Roundabout. Consequently, a traffic diversion scheme would be put in place as follows: (a) the Rose Hill Trianon Road (A14) would be closed daily, at night, from 19 30 hours to 05 00 hours; and (b) the existing Roundabout near Ebene Recreational Park would be replaced by a cross junction with traffic lights. The works are expected to start as from Monday 06 June 2022 and would last for six months. The necessary traffic signs would be set up to inform and guide road users. 11. Cabinet has taken note of the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic prevailing across the world. Some 533.6 million cases have been reported globally, of which 504.6 million persons have been successfully treated. With regard to Mauritius, as at 01 June 2022, there were 158 active cases of COVID-19, out of which 13 were admitted at the New ENT Hospital. Over the period 26 May to 01 June 2022, one death was attributed to COVID-19. Cabinet has also taken note of progress in the COVID-19 Vaccination Programme, including the administration of the booster dose and paediatric dose in the Republic of Mauritius. 12. Cabinet has taken note that three suspected cases of Monkeypox had been recorded on 01 June 2022. The swabs have been sent to South Africa for testing purposes. Protocols have been worked out in respect of entry at the Airport and the Port as well as for treatment of cases of Monkeypox. Regulations would be made to declare Monkeypox as a notifiable disease. 13. Cabinet has taken note of the outcome of two workshops organised and delivered by the Human Rights Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and International Trade in collaboration with the Commonwealth Secretariat from 23 May to 26 May 2022. The workshops were on Human Rights and Youth Engagement and Business and Human Rights, respectively. Both workshops were facilitated by Dr Shavana Haythornthwaite, Human Rights Adviser and Head of the Human Rights Unit of the Commonwealth Secretariat. 14. Cabinet has taken note of the outcome of the recent mission of the Minister of Financial Services and Good Governance to Ghana where he participated in the 2022 Annual Meetings of the Boards of Governors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group. The Minister participated in various meetings including the Boards of Governors, the Southern Africa Group 1 Constituency, the SADC Ministers with the AfDB President, the Senior management of the AfDB and bilaterals. The 2022 Annual Meetings were attended by over 2,000 participants. The theme of the 2022 Annual Meetings was Achieving Climate Resilience and a Just Energy Transition for Africa, and was aligned with preparations for the United Nations global climate summit (COP27), scheduled to be held in November 2022. Mauritius has been appointed in the subsidiary organs of the Board of Governors, namely the Joint Steering Committee and the Governors Consultative Committee, and would chair the Constituency meetings. The Minister of Financial Services and Good Governance met the Vice-President as well as the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning of Ghana and discussed ongoing cooperation between the two countries. Partager et informez vous aussi...... 0 shares Share Tweet LinkedIn Articles similaires 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 Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, June 3, 2016 How can organisations that have the veneer of being smart let themselves down by being so foolish? It's a question that probably vexed us all at times, but it's particularly true of email marketing. The average consumer can probably give the brands they patronise a fair bit of slack in display, social and native because they understand these are general platforms where companies usually pass on fairly general messages. The point of the communication may well be cleverly predicated on some other behaviour -- but typically, the message is a general one that could apply to anyone else exhibiting the same behaviour at a similar point in the purchase funnel. Email is different, however -- and that's why it must really step up to the plate. Email is the original channel through which customers continue to use to hear more about what a company has to offer. In turn, those companies have attempted to get better at personalising communications around behaviours and data to ensure that, perhaps weekly, opportunity to get noticed in an inbox is more likely to appeal. That's what makes it all the more galling when the facade peals away and you realise that big brands are not going the extra mile. My prime example right now has to be Ryanair, the budget European airline that has gone to great lengths to point out that it is becoming nicer and more in touch with its customers. You'll probably have noticed that means dialling down how many interviews its controversial founder does, but let's leave that observation there for now. So Ryanair claims it has gotten to know its customers better, but yet here's the rub. Sitting in my inbox is a call to action addressed to my booking reference number. OK -- so that's not great, when they know my name, but it's not the end of the world. It surely means their invitation for me to buy parking at the airport will be based around that booking reference? Well, no. Not only does the email not know who I am, but despite knowing my booking reference, when I click on the button to buy the parking, you can guess where it takes me. Despite knowing me and my reference numbers and the subject header asking whether I want to book car parking for my Bristol Airport travels, I get taken to a bland, general car parking page where I need to add all my dates and details as if I were coming to the page cold. Here's the irony. Airports would kill for the information the airlines have. They struggle with the perception that they are data rich when actually it is the airlines holding all the booking information. That's what makes it all the more perplexing that airlines -- and it isn't only Ryanair -- choose to not act on that data. Or rather, they use email to act on the data they have but not to improve the customer experience. They knew my booking reference, why not have a pre-populated form ready to be submitted? Why not offer that form in the email, even, with a "submit" button right there in the first point of communication? Email personalisation is nothing unless it makes the next part of the customer journey that little bit easier. Instead, it just frustrates as brands go from pretending to know someone to turning their backs on them at the very moment they choose to take their engagement deeper. by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, June 2, 2016 It has been said before and it will be said many times again -- if what is happening in ad blocking, and particularly mobile ad blocking, is not prompting your brand to consider how it makes its name known to potential customers, then it really should. Next month, Three, still smarting from EU regulators blocking it from taking over O2, will start a week-long trial of the Shine ad-blocking system it recently announced a partnership with. The mobile phone network has gone so far as to say that four pounds in every ten spent by its customers goes to advertising. Quite how advertising can equate to nearly half of all mobile traffic is for them to back up. It sounds incredibly high, doesn't it? Anyway, in the middle of next month, customers will be able to sign up to have ads blocked at carrier level and the advertising world will await the response. If significant numbers sign up and the experience is positive for users, then it's hard to imagine they will want to go back. If Three customers do not miss the ads and really do find that their data allowance goes further, then it's likely the trial will be rolled out, and it's also likely people on other networks will have their heads turned by ad-blocking extensions that claim to keep mobile content cleaner, faster and less data-intense. advertisement advertisement Mark these words. There is only one way this goes. If you are a brand marketer or an advertising agency executive, ask yourself this: do you really think anyone is going to lament their decision and wonder where all the ads have gone? It's unlikely, isn't it. So, the only way forward is a two-pronged approach. The first part is to get mobile ads seen, and this task is publisher-centric. Responsible publishers must ensure that a minimum number of non-intrusive spots are offered and those using ad-blocking are asked to "white list" the site or disable their technology altogether to see content that has been financed on the basis of advertising support. The second -- the one that lies more squarely in marketers' hands -- is to look beyond digital. The growth in video, native and social evident in the latest IAB figures shows that spend was up around 50% in 2015 compared to 2014 on these channels, whereas display was up 25% (albeit, of a vastly higher number). So the message is getting through that advertiser messages have to be expressed in the content window rather than in the tiny boxes surrounding it. This column was originally published in the London Blog on May 26, 2016. by Tobi Elkin , Staff Writer @tobielkin, June 3, 2016 Why does so much content marketing fall flat? Rohin Dhar, Founder and CEO of Priceonomics believes its because so many brands publish way too much self-promotional content, whether in the form of blog posts, studies/research or other formats. Dhar, speaking on Thursday at NewsCreds Think Content, said data can help tell a compelling story and more brands should lean on data. So how do you turn data into content or content marketing? Dhar offered an example of a chart with data that told a story about bookings at Trump-owned hotels since Donald Trump became a presidential candidate. The data showed that his candidacy hurt bookings, which had plummeted 59% since Trump joined the presidential race. The chart went viral. One chart told an entire story by just using the data, he said. Journalist and public relations reps love these kinds of stories, Dhar said. Data can be turned into interesting stories, but the data has to be valued by people. advertisement advertisement And Dhar claimed that writing about datainterpreting it, comparing and contrasting it and creating a story around itis the less-time-consuming activity compared to the intricacies of official data analytics. Dhar showed a slide of a map that revealed which regions of the U.S. clicked on the most ads. Not surprisingly, Silicon Valley people hardly ever click on ads, while people in Alabama click on the most ads. Rankings and maps are great sources for content marketing. Creating a data story around a trend is a great way to generate content marketing that people will care aboutand, perhaps more importantly, that journalists and influencers will write about. Dhar cited Reddit, Hacker, Digg, Metafilter and Product Hunt as great sources for virality. A roundup vehicle like NextDraft is another good source. At his company, Dhar considers a hit a piece of content marketing that generates at least 5,000 views and 5,000 mentions. Otherwise, its a failure, he said. The takeaway: Make content based on your companys data, make it newsworthy, and have a plan on where and how it should be distributed. by Aaron Baar , June 2, 2016 Come November, there may be a lot of Americans thinking about moving to Canada, but perhaps they would like to pay a visit first. Air Canada has launched a new digital marketing campaign encouraging U.S. citizens to Test Drive Canada this summer before they make a hasty big move. As with past U.S. election campaigns, every four years we see the phenomenon of Americans musing about moving to Canada, Peter Fitzpatrick, a representative for the airline, tells Marketing Daily. With recent stories about interest south of the border in Canada, we recognized it was an opening for all these and the idea took a lot of work but came together fairly quickly, in a few weeks. The effort, from J. Walter Thompson Canada, is targeted at travelers in five U.S. markets. The effort includes pre-roll video showing the increasing number (well over a million and counting) of Americans searching, How can I move to Canada? Its very flattering, and we certainly have the room, an airline agent says of the interest. But before you sell your house and book a one-way ticket, maybe it makes sense to check us out first. She encourages people to book a long weekend to visit, see one of the sights and try out the metric system. advertisement advertisement We thought we would have a little fun in a tongue-in-cheek, creative way using typically understated Canadian humour, Fitzpatrick says via e-mail. We are always looking for opportunities to launch innovative campaigns, particularly if we can combine conventional and social media as well as other platforms to raise interest. The five markets Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. were selected based on the airlines network and schedule, Fitzpatrick says. Throughout the campaign, Air Canada will monitor social media conversations and respond to U.S. residents with messages and targeted videos. by Tanya Gazdik , June 3, 2016 Mazda North American Operations is launching advertising for the all-new 2016 Mazda CX-9, currently arriving at dealers. The campaign focuses on the details of the three-row SUV and explains how they add up to a craftsmanship and quality that matter to those who care about driving, because Driving Matters. The Mazda CX-9 is a significant shift in the product Mazda is producing and brings the premium feeling to a level never before experienced when inside a Mazda, says Russell Wager, vice president of marketing, Mazda North American Operations. The customer for the Mazda CX-9 are consumers who are passionate about cars and driving, Wager tells Marketing Daily. They value the way the car looks, drives and responds to their inputs. They want a product that is better, not the most popular. They are discerning buyers with high quality and overall performance expectations. advertisement advertisement Mazda launched a 30-second TV spot over Memorial Day weekend and has begun to roll-out additional support through social media and national online advertising. Print will follow later this month. Additional support will come through traditional and digital out of home plans. Mazda will also produce content stories discussing why the Mazda CX-9 is the best-driving 3-row SUV on the market and the various details that go into building an excellent driving car. These stories will be told by way of video, articles and posts and will be housed in the CX-9 Content Hub on Inside Mazda. The all-new Mazda CX-9 is a significant model launch and our investment on the marketing campaign is enough to support it and similar to those we have made in recent years to launch the Mazda3 and Mazda6, Wager says, declining to reveal the specific dollar amount of the campaign. The company is using more upscale media and content to reach potential customers and are targeting families that need a three-row CUV. We are focused on showcasing the design, craftsmanship and driving experience of the CX-9 to separate us from the utilitarian CUVs that only focus on family functionality, Wager says. We have all the family functionality, but the true concept and benefit of the CX-9 is in the details of craftsmanship and best-in-class driving experience. h by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, June 2, 2016 Like everyone else, I have mixed feelings about Peter Thiel (a Trump delegate, really???) trying to sue Gawker out of business. While I like salacious gossip as much as the next guy, Gawker has published some seriously trashy stories that have harmed people and families, largely due to Nick Denton's loose definitions of "appropriate" and "newsworthy." There is a long history of media appealing to the prurient interests of readers, from British tabloids to our own Star and National Enquirer. What else are Peopleand TMZ than snarky trash dressed up for the prom? Many others besides Thiel (who was openly gay at the time) have been outed in the press. Snaps of celebrities caught half-dressed are routine "news" on many Web sites (and often, tabloids). Does that mean if you are a public figure, anything you do, say or try to hide, is fair game because somebody, somewhere can make a buck revealing it? Seems to be the case. In spite of the fact that Thiel supports the Committee to Protect Journalists, which promotes the right of journalists to report the news freely without fear of reprisal, most mainstream journalists have lined up shoulder to shoulder against the notion that it is OK for a multibillionaire to sue the press. I guess it is OK to be OWNED by a billionaire that assures your job security, as long as he/she doesn't sue one of your sister press institutions. advertisement advertisement Until relatively recently, the mainstream press in this country had an astronomical amount of power, especially when they were making enough money to fend off pressure from advertisers and other power brokers. They willingly hid the "secrets" of powerful people on whom they relied for news," such as John Kennedy's numerous affairs. It seemed as if you could get a pass from being exposed if you were an important source of news. But what if you weren't? What if you were the "little guy" who got covered unfairly by mistake, or inference or omission? Happened all the time. I recall being at a conference where a small-business owner had a totally legitimate gripe about the way the Washington Post had covered his company. But ever-the-bully Ben Bradlee, then executive editor, smacked him down with, "You just dont understand how the press works!" And that was always the prevailing attitude toward those who thought the press had made a mistake. Readers were considered the unwashed masses, with lower intelligence levels and a faulty understanding of how "journalism" was practiced. There was little sympathy for how badly subjects of inaccurate (or opinionated) coverage were injured by it. Staff or retainer lawyers easily withstood legal action because they nearly always had deeper pockets than their accusers. When "corrections" were made, they were buried in a section of the paper that no one read, and were never featured as prominently as the story that caused the hurt. Over the years, this arrogance generated a fair amount of resentment toward the press. Public opinion always ranked it among the least-trusted of all American institutions. Various scandals, such as reporters discovered to be making up quotes, didn't help. While I suspect that prior to the Hulk Hogan lawsuit, awareness of Gawker by the general population was pretty low, trying to align themselves with the principles of "journalism" has not generated much populist sympathy for Denton and company. Lots of people are happy to see "the press" get kicked in the cojones. The only ones seemingly terrified by this turn of events are journalists themselves. Karma. by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, June 3, 2016 Negativity has taken center stage this election cycle. Hatred, bigotry, dishonesty, chauvinism, racism -- just some of the terms commentators have discussed for months. While many voters have been galvanized by deep opposition to both leading candidates from the rival parties, the cynical tone, pervasive throughout the primaries, may turn off a significant number of general election voters. Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, who made a point of not running any negative ads during his election campaigns, spoke with John Dickerson of Face the Nation about the effect media negativity could have on voter turnout. The example I always use in business, companies that are arch-rivals, that hate each other, like Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Coke doesnt do attack ads against Pepsi because theyd work. Pepsis sales would go down. Pepsi would have no choice but to counterattack Coke. You depress sales in the entire product category of soft drinks, says Hickenlooper. advertisement advertisement Framed by this example, the Governor continued: What were doing is were depressing the product category of democracy. And especially young people just tune out. We do that at our own peril. We let that happen at our own risk. A recent research report by the Ohio Media Project supports Gov. Hickenloopers view of negative advertisings suppressive effect on voting. Particularly addressing super PAC ads, the report explained that negative spots are designed to suppress voter turnout as much as they are to persuade voters to support one candidate over another. The research showed that Independents were most susceptible to being swayed by negative advertising, adding that especially with moderate voters, you get a demobilization effect, where they just kind of turn off: This is a nasty campaign, I just want to stay home. Bad news for the Hillary Clinton campaign, not so bad for Donald Trump. The Nation published a piece in early May titled Voter Suppression Is The Only Way Donald Trump Can Win. Ari Berman explained: Unless theres an unexpected turnaround in his terrible numbers among non-white and young voters, theres only one way Trump can win the general election: by massively suppressing Democratic voters or hoping they dont show up on Election Day. by Thom Forbes @tforbes, June 3, 2016 Roger Enrico, the former Pepsi marketing chief, chairman and CEO who famously and accurately claimed in a newspaper ad and subsequent book that hed made Coca-Cola blink after 87 years of warfare died while snorkeling off Grand Cayman Wednesday. He was 71. He was best known for turning Pepsi-Cola into a pop-culture leader through groundbreaking sponsorship deals with Michael Jackson, Madonna and Michael J. Fox, writes Mike Esterl for the Wall Street Journal. The advertising blitz and Pepsi Challenge taste test helped trigger one of the biggest blunders in marketing history in 1985, when a worried Coca-Cola Co. launched New Coke but quickly reversed itself after Coke drinkers rebelled. Enrico retired as PepsiCo CEO in 2001 and as chairman in 2003. He then served as chairman of Dreamworks Animation from 2004 to 2012. He also was on the board of A.H. Belo, the Dallas-based media company, from 1995 through 2007. advertisement advertisement The son of a factory worker in Chisolm, Minn., Enrico won a full scholarship to Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. After graduating, he went to work for General Mills back in Minnesota before joining the Navy and serving in Vietnam at the height of the war. He joined Frito Lay as a brand manager for its Funyuns onion snack in 1971. Several years and a few international assignments later, Enrico was put in charge of Pepsi-Cola marketing and dubbed the Cola King, according to a remembrance on PepsiCo Live. His marketing prowess could not be denied. In 1983, Enrico was the architect behind the Choice for a New Generation Campaign with Michael Jackson. Indeed, he personally conducted negotiations with Michael Jackson, Allen Rosenshine, the former chairman and CEO of BBDO, tells the New York Times Danielle Ivory. The celebrity-laden, youth-oriented 'Pepsi Generation' advertising blitz was paired with the Pepsi Challenge, which featured people doing a blind taste test of Pepsi and Coke and usually choosing Pepsi as tastier. Together, the campaigns helped bolster the companys market share, Ivory continues. That development led its chief rival to develop the infamous New Coke, and Enrico later wrote a book about the experience called The Other Guy Blinked: How Pepsi Won the Cola Wars, writes Patrick Coffee for Adweek. He was promoted to CEO of PepsiCo Beverages in 1987 and held that position until 1991 before moving into food, becoming CEO of Frito-Lay and leading Pepsi's restaurant division which at the time included Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC. But, as the WSJs Esterl reminds us, the book title proved premature. Pepsi-Cola failed to supplant Coke, which regained market share in the following years, and today Pepsi remains a distant No. 2. Enrico's accomplishments include leading the company through a restructuring that emphasized snacks and beverages. In 1997 he spun off PepsiCo's restaurant division as an independent public company, creating what is now Yum Brands. Under his leadership the company acquired Tropicana in 1998 and The Quaker Oats Co., including Gatorade, in 2000, writesAd Ages E.J. Schultz. We have lost one of the true legends of our company and our industry, PepsiCo chairwoman and CEO Indra K. Nooyi said in a statement. Roger Enrico was, quite simply, one of the most creative marketers of his or any generation. Roger was not only an innovative marketer and inspirational leader but a true friend who challenged us all to compete harder and think bigger, said Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent in a statement. After retiring as Pepsi CEO, Enrico moved to Dallas where he was a civic leader, powerful advocate for corporate diversity, and the quietest, biggest philanthropist, according to sources cited in Joe Simnachers obituary for the Dallas Morning News. Enrico also served on the boards of the United Negro College Fund, the Dallas Symphony Association, the National Geographic Society, the Environmental Defense Fund and the American Film Institute. Enrico was a regular visitor to the Cayman Islands and used to own a home at Cayman Kai, reports James Whittaker in the Cayman Compass. He apparently encountered difficulties while snorkeling close to the Stingray City Sandbar in the North Sound. He received CPR from people on a private boat who call 911 about 2 p.m. Wednesday but was pronounced dead at the Cayman Islands Hospital just after 3 p.m. His wife, Rosemary, son Aaron, and three grandchildren survive Enrico. Services are pending. Time Inc. believes in the power of breakfast. The company has launched Extra Crispy,a new digital editorial brand dedicated to the culture surrounding breakfast and brunch. Extra Crispy is the second original brand from Time Inc.s The Foundry, the Brooklyn-based "creative lab" that houses native advertising and sponsored content teams. It also develops digital platforms for the company. Their first original brand, The Drive, debuted in September 2015. The Foundry is all about identifying emerging audiences and platforms. Extra Crispy allows us to experiment with inherently shareable contentfrom coffee obsessions to Cronuts and the viral food phenomenon of today, stated Matt Bean, SVP of editorial innovation at Time Inc. advertisement advertisement According to Time Inc., breakfast order sales in America topped $52 billion in 2015, up 30% from 2009. Extra Crispy features recipes, how-tos and reporting on cultural trends, news and first-person stories with influencers and celebrities. According to Nieman Lab, the site will feature eight to 10 pieces of content per day. The launch sponsor for Extra Crispy is Arla Foods, a Danish dairy company. Extra Crispy is also invested in live experiences. The brand is a media sponsor of the upcoming coffee festival CoffeeCon, which will take place in Brooklyn on Saturday, June 4. Extra Crispy will host an espresso class in its offices as part of the festival. "Were thinking about breakfast as not only the most important meal of the day, but also as a new cultural stronghold. Extra Crispy is all about exploring that intersection, stated Meredith Turits, senior strategist of brand development at The Foundry. Turits is directing the launch of the brand. She joined Time Inc. in November 2015 and is responsible for editorial, product and strategy for the brand. Turits was a founding editor of Bustle and a former online editor at Glamour. Weve learned a lot about where millennial readers like to engage with niche content, and the formats with which they like to engage, Turits told Nieman Lab. Video is a priority for Extra Crispy, as well as creating tailored content for each social platform. by Sarah Mahoney @mahoney_sarah, June 3, 2016 Its been a busy week for retailers looking to crack their last mile problem the steps that put goods ordered online in shoppers hands without devouring profits. Wal-Mart Corp. is about to announce to shareholders that it will test grocery delivery using Uber and Lyft. Target, which is still experimenting with Instacart for grocery deliveries, says it is ditching its extensive pilot with Curbside. And Kroger says its expanding ClickList, adding stores in Houston to its burgeoning experiment. Its messy, says Paul Weitzel, VP, Willard Bishop, a retailing consultancy that has studied online grocery shopping extensively. But its inevitable. The first movers are winning, and theres an advantage to being one of the first to successfully get e-commerce orders into shoppers' hands. Stores that do it well are reporting incremental gains of up to 30% when shoppers use them for both physical and online shopping. But its still not profitable. advertisement advertisement In Walmarts new test, customers order groceries online, and Walmart associates compile their order, then request a driver from either Uber or Lyft, all for the normal $7-10 delivery charge online. (Walmart, not the customer, pays the driver.) It says it will pilot the idea in Denver and one other market. Its been testing Deliv, another service, for online orders for Sams Club since March. For Kroger, the expansion of ClickList, a service exclusive to the Cincinnati-based chain, means people can shop online and pick the order up curbside at 22 locations in Houston. To get consumers to try it, it is waiving the $4.95 fee for the first three orders. Kroger has been testing online shopping since November, 2014, In its announcement, it says this rollout comes from overwhelmingly positive feedback. We are certain this online shopping service will offer young families, seniors, disabled customers and other shoppers an easier and more convenient way to grocery shop. But test results for Targets Curbside program must not have been so rosy. While a spokesman tells Marketing Daily that the Minneapolis-based retailer is continuing its grocery-delivery tests with Instacart in Chicago, Minneapolis, and San Francisco, he confirms it has pulled the plug on its partnership with Curbside. That program had been testing in more than 120 stores around the country. Target is still actively expanding its Cartwheel and Order Pickup. And Walgreens canned its in-store pickup program early this year. Everyone is still in test mode, says Weitzel. My guess is that Target found Curbside wasnt generating enough incremental gains for them, and theyre just taking a pause. A big part of the profitability problem, he says, is the construction of stores themselves. Americas 35,000-plus supermarkets are built to make it easier for humans who browse an entire store, not online shoppers clicking on a much smaller universe of items. Inventory needs to be managed differently. Produce, meat, dairy and frozen foods pose their own logistical challenges. Retailers are going to have to rethink store design, layout, flow and distribution. But it is simply the price of poker these days. As consumers move toward omni-channel shopping, stores are going to have to do it to stay competitive. And even if profits arent there yet, he says the news really is rosy for retailers. Stores are reporting that online orders are growing fast, even doubling. And while thats off a small base, its an area stores have a real advantage over Amazon, which cant handle refrigerated items as well as grocery stores can. by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, June 3, 2016 The Internet put a lot of travel agents out of work and sometimes I miss them. But streaming video has given a whole new way for travelers to seek and find. And in theory, it is easy to book airlines and hotels online, and it should be easier for consumers to check out a vacations selling points. Its a wildly uneven task as you may be learning,and half the fun definitely is not in getting there. Its not just the number of places a traveler can look for advice and bookings, but as a new report from the SpotX video monetization platform points out, as the proliferation of devices has grown, consumers now take a longer and more multi-screen journey from initial awareness, through research, and eventually to booking or making a purchase. Yes, to take a vacation it takes a journey. The travel business is a tricky transition phase, it seems. While the industry splits its ad spending just about evenly between desktop (51% or $2.47 billion) and mobile (49%, $2.38 billion), SpotX acknowledges that smartphone viewing is where the consumers are going. advertisement advertisement But thats true only up to a crucial point, because studies show that today the buying/booking still happens online and likely on a larger screen at home (desktop/laptop). That may change with millennials. Using digital video has proven very successful in converting a travel planner into a travel buyer, SpotX says. At phases of the purchase process--one is called dreaming--mobile has a big role. Now the trick is taking that mobile vacationer from that portable screen to the laptop or desktop for the purchase without losing them. The report says travel advertisers can still look to tie a consumers viewing of an ad on their mobile device to an eventual booking on their desktop at home. Leveraging first, second, and third party data within the ad buying process, travel advertisers are able to recognize consumers across screens as they move along their customer journey from dreaming, to researching, to booking. Advertising destinations or package planners usually dont have a lot of dough to spend, but they have to be mindful of those platforms. Images of a lush countryside or beach have to look as good on a small screen as a big one; on some platforms, vacation pitches will be wordless. How can you say What-a-great-affordable-time! with video and graphics alone? And though the SpotX report doesnt mention it, TripAdvisor members and I will: Travel and vacation advertising is usually several degrees from being truthful, which is why you may live your whole life without having that super-duper trip of a lifetime. I love the idea Marriott had last year to give its guests at 17 properties, all in the Caribbean or otherwise in Latin America, GoPro cameras to use while they were there, then sharing their video on its special TravelBrilliantly.com Website. In a sea of travel themed stock images of pina coladas and cheesy tourists in tropical beaches, Marriott Hotels needed to stand out in social media among millennials in Latin America, Marriotts Website explained. We had to do this in a way where users would identify themselves with amazing and original content, all while creating a lift and shift of Marriotts brand perception in the region. pj@mediapost.com by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, June 3, 2016 A recent Supreme Court decision involving the online data broker Spokeo entitles Google to prevail in a battle over email privacy, the company argues in new court papers. Google makes the argument in response to allegations that the company violates federal and state privacy laws by scanning emails in order to surround them with ads. San Francisco resident Dan Matera, who says he doesn't have a Gmail account, said in a lawsuit filed last year that Google illegally "intercepts" email messages. Matera says he is forced to communicate with Gmail users due to the "ubiquity of Gmail." Google's terms of service currently disclose that it analyzes the contents of email messages for features including "tailored advertising." But Matera says that as a non-Gmail user, he never agreed to those terms. advertisement advertisement Google previously persuaded U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose to postpone the case pending the Supreme Court's decision in a case involving Spokeo. That matter stemmed from a 2010 lawsuit by Virginia resident Thomas Robins, who alleged the company violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act by posting incorrect information about him, including that he was in his 50s, married with children, and employed in a professional or technical field. The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires credit reporting agencies to take steps to ensure the information they provide to potential employers is accurate. Spokeo asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that Robins shouldn't be able to proceed without showing that he was injured by any errors. The Supreme Court ruled last month that Robins can only proceed in federal court if he can show that Spokeo's errors caused him a "concrete" injury. Google now says it's entitled to dismissal of Matera's case, arguing that he can't show a concrete injury. "Plaintiff does not allege, for example, that the alleged violations led to the disclosure of his confidential information to third parties, or that he suffered any other purported harm from the alleged 'interceptions' of his emails," Google writes in papers filed with Koh on Wednesday. For his part, Matera argues that he should be able to proceed with the case. "The privacy intrusion inherent in the interception of email content is not some violation of a mere procedural requirement intended to prevent some downstream or consequential injury, but rather is the injury itself," he argues. Before the Supreme Court ruled in the Spokeo matter, Google resolved a separate lawsuit stemming from its email scans after unsuccessfully arguing that consumers consented to the scans. Yahoo, also recently agreed to resolve a battle over email scans. That settlement, which isn't yet final, requires Yahoo to add new language to its privacy policy, and to make some technical changes to the way it scans emails, but doesn't require the company to otherwise change its ad-targeting efforts. The agreement doesn't call for Yahoo to pay monetary damages to Web users whose privacy allegedly was violated, but provides for payments of up to $4 million to the attorneys who brought the case. New research suggests that a drug already approved for the treatment of metabolic acidosis where the body has too much acid could be repurposed and used to treat airway disease in patients with cystic fibrosis. The drug showed enhanced ability to kill bacteria in the airways of pigs and mucus samples from human patients with cystic fibrosis. Share on Pinterest The researchers speculate that an aerosol version of Tham and hypertonic saline might be an effective treatment for helping clear mucus and infection in the airways of CF patients. Joseph Zabner, a professor of internal medicine, together with other researchers from the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City describe their findings in a paper published in the journal JCI Insight. Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a progressive, genetic disease that damages the internal organs, especially the lungs and the gut. In people with CF, a faulty gene called CFTR causes a build-up of thick mucus on the surfaces of tissue for example the lining of airways and the digestive tract. In the lungs, as the mucus accumulates, it clogs up the airways, causing breathing problems. It also traps bacteria and gives rise to infections, extensive lung damage, and eventually respiratory failure. The mucus build-up is a result of a problem with transporting ions in and out of cells, which causes the affected tissue surfaces to become too acidic. In the lungs, if the airway surface liquid (ASL) becomes too acidic, it is less able to defend against bacteria and other pathogens. For their study, the researchers investigated the effect of a drug called tromethamine (which they refer to as Tham) on the acidity of the ASL and its ability to kill bacteria. In the United States, Tham is currently approved in injectable form as a treatment for metabolic acidosis, a condition where the body either becomes too acidic or the kidneys are not able to remove enough acid from the body. BBC religion editor, a Muslim, says ISIS is certainly 'Islamic' 03 June, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , | LONDON (Christian Examiner) The head of the BBC's religious programming division has claimed it is wrong to see the Islamic State (ISIS) as anything other than "Islamic." Professor Aaqil Ahmed, a Muslim himself and the first Muslim to lead the broadcaster's religious division, told an audience at the Lapidomedia Center for Religious Literacy in Journalism in London that the only reasonable explanation for the rise of ISIS is that it is based on a form of Islam. "I hear so many people say ISIS has nothing to do with Islam of course it has," Ahmed said. "They are not preaching Judaism. It might be wrong but what they are saying is an ideology based on some form of Islamic doctrine. They are Muslims." Ahmed was responding to the use of the phrase "so-called Islamic State" by journalists who want to distance Islam from the radical group's actions, which include the genocide of Christians in Iraq and Syria and the killing of other Muslims who do not share their ideology. Those facts on the ground are what have led President Barack Obama to say on multiple occasions that ISIS is not a representation of Islam. He began using that line of reasoning in 2014 when ISIS began to make significant gains in Iraq and Syria and began to broadcast the beheadings of western journalists. "No religion condones the killing of innocents," Obama said in an address from the White House. "And the vast majority of [ISIS's] victims have been Muslim. And [ISIS] is certainly not a state. It was formerly al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq, and has taken advantage of sectarian strife and Syria's civil war to gain territory on both sides of the Iraq-Syrian border. It is recognized by no government, nor by the people it subjugates. [ISIS] is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way." Ahmed, though he wasn't addressing President Obama's comments, said the Islamic character of ISIS is "a fact and we have to get our head around some very uncomfortable things." "That is where the difficulty comes in for many journalists because the vast majority of Muslims won't agree with them [ISIS]," Ahmed said. Ahmed is a professor of practice at Middlesex University. A new study from The Australian National University (ANU) has found a global boom in the sale of infant and baby formula, especially in China and Southeast Asia, raising concerns about the health of millions of mothers and their babies. Lead researcher Dr Phillip Baker said the study suggested governments around the world needed to do more to control marketing of baby formula and to ensure work policies gave women a choice to breastfeed their children. Growth in formula sales was most rapid in East Asia, particularly China, Indonesia and Vietnam, where millions of mothers are entering the workforce as the countries industrialise. "What we are talking about is potentially the largest shift in infant and young child nutrition on record," said Dr Baker, from the RegNet School of Regulation and Global Governance at ANU. The World Health Organization recommends infants are exclusively breastfed up to six months of age, with ongoing breastfeeding for up to two years of age and beyond, to ensure they get the best start in life. "Paid employment is a very good thing for families, especially those living on the bread line. The problem is that without paid parental leave or family friendly workplaces breastfeeding can be very difficult or even impossible," Dr Baker said. "Without supportive workplace policies and regulations in place, formula feeding is often the only choice available to parents in many countries. "Competition among companies selling formula is also reaching fever pitch. We estimate that the industry's global marketing spend exceeded $US4.48 billion in 2014, a figure comparable with the World Health Organization's annual budget. "The decision to breast feed or formula feed should be an informed choice made in dialogue with a health professional, not by the marketing of a formula company." The research examined the growth in formula sales worldwide. It found sales grew by 41 per cent from 5.5 kilograms to 7.8 kilograms per infant/child between 2008 and 2013, a figure predicted to increase to 10.8 kilograms by 2018. This global sales boom applies not only to infant formula for infants aged up 0-6 months but also to follow-up formulas for children aged 7-12 months and toddlers aged 13-36 months, which can displace ongoing breastfeeding. Dr Baker said formula-fed children experience poorer health and developmental outcomes than breastfed children, with increased risks of pneumonia, diarrhoea, obesity and type-2 diabetes, ear infections and asthma. "Marketing by these companies powerfully shapes what parents consider best for their babies by portraying formula as a symbol of modernity, as comparable or superior to breast-milk and formula feeding," Dr Baker said. Dr Baker said he hoped that this study would encourage debate and discussion about the need for stronger regulation of the marketing of these products." "Ultimately the health of mums and kids is at risk and governments need to do more," he said. The research has been published in the Public Health Nutrition journal. Article: Global trends and patterns of commercial milk-based formula sales: is an unprecedented infant and young child feeding transition underway? Phillip Baker, Julie Smith, Libby Salmon, Sharon Friel, George Kent, Alessandro Iellamo, JP Dadhich and Mary J Renfrew, Public Health Nutrition, doi: 10.1017/S1368980016001117, published online 23 May 2016. Injecting modified, human, adult stem cells directly into the brains of chronic stroke patients proved not only safe but effective in restoring motor function, according to the findings of a small clinical trial led by Stanford University School of Medicine investigators. The patients, all of whom had suffered their first and only stroke between six months and three years before receiving the injections, remained conscious under light anesthesia throughout the procedure, which involved drilling a small hole through their skulls; the next day they all went home. Although more than three-quarters of them suffered from transient headaches afterward - probably due to the surgical procedure and the physical constraints employed to ensure its precision - there were no side effects attributable to the stem cells themselves, and no life-threatening adverse effects linked to the procedure used to administer them. The promising results set the stage for an expanded trial of the procedure now getting underway. They also call for new thinking regarding the permanence of brain damage, said Gary Steinberg, MD, PhD, professor and chair of neurosurgery. 'Clinically meaningful' results "This was just a single trial, and a small one," cautioned Steinberg, who led the 18-patient trial and conducted 12 of the procedures himself. (The rest were performed at the University of Pittsburgh.) "It was designed primarily to test the procedure's safety. But patients improved by several standard measures, and their improvement was not only statistically significant, but clinically meaningful. Their ability to move around has recovered visibly. That's unprecedented. At six months out from a stroke, you don't expect to see any further recovery." The trial's results are detailed in a paper to be published online in Stroke. Steinberg, who has more than 15 years' worth of experience in work with stem cell therapies for neurological indications, is the paper's lead and senior author. Some 800,000 people suffer a stroke each year in the United States alone. About 85 percent of all strokes are ischemic: They occur when a clot forms in a blood vessel supplying blood to part of the brain, with subsequent intensive damage to the affected area. The specific loss of function incurred depends on exactly where within the brain the stroke occurs, and on its magnitude. Although approved therapies for ischemic stroke exist, to be effective they must be applied within a few hours of the event - a time frame that often is exceeded by the amount of time it takes for a stroke patient to arrive at a treatment center. Disabling effects of stroke Consequently, only a small fraction of patients benefit from treatment during the stroke's acute phase. The great majority of survivors end up with enduring disabilities. Some lost functionality often returns, but it's typically limited. And the prevailing consensus among neurologists is that virtually all recovery that's going to occur comes within the first six months after the stroke. "There are close to 7 million chronic stroke patients in the United States," Steinberg said. "If this treatment really works for that huge population, it has great potential." For the trial, the investigators screened 379 patients and selected 18, whose average age was 61. For most patients, at least a full year had passed since their stroke - well past the time when further recovery might be hoped for. In each case, the stroke had taken place beneath the brain's outermost layer, or cortex, and had severely affected motor function. "Some patients couldn't walk," Steinberg said. "Others couldn't move their arm." Into these patients' brains the neurosurgeons injected so-called SB623 cells - mesenchymal stem cells derived from the bone marrow of two donors and then modified to beneficially alter the cells' ability to restore neurologic function. No immune rejection Mesenchymal stem cells are the naturally occurring precursors of muscle, fat, bone and tendon tissues. In preclinical studies, though, they've not been found to cause problems by differentiating into unwanted tissues or forming tumors. Easily harvested from bone marrow, they appear to trigger no strong immune reaction in recipients even when they come from an unrelated donor. In fact, they may actively suppress the immune system. For this trial, unlike the great majority of transplantation procedures, the stem cell recipients received no immunosuppressant drugs. During the procedure, patients' heads were held in fixed positions while a hole was drilled through their skulls to allow for the injection of SB623 cells, accomplished with a syringe, into a number of spots at the periphery of the stroke-damaged area, which varied from patient to patient. Afterward, patients were monitored via blood tests, clinical evaluations and brain imaging. Interestingly, the implanted stem cells themselves do not appear to survive very long in the brain. Preclinical studies have shown that these cells begin to disappear about one month after the procedure and are gone by two months. Yet, patients showed significant recovery by a number of measures within a month's time, and they continued improving for several months afterward, sustaining these improvements at six and 12 months after surgery. Steinberg said it's likely that factors secreted by the mesenchymal cells during their early postoperative presence near the stroke site stimulates lasting regeneration or reactivation of nearby nervous tissue. No relevant blood abnormalities were observed. Some patients experienced transient nausea and vomiting, and 78 percent had temporary headaches related to the transplant procedure. Motor-function improvements Substantial improvements were seen in patients' scores on several widely accepted metrics of stroke recovery. Perhaps most notably, there was an overall 11.4-point improvement on the motor-function component of the Fugl-Meyer test, which specifically gauges patients' movement deficits. "This wasn't just, 'They couldn't move their thumb, and now they can.' Patients who were in wheelchairs are walking now," said Steinberg, who is the Bernard and Ronni Lacroute-William Randolph Hearst Professor in Neurosurgery and Neurosciences. "We know these cells don't survive for more than a month or so in the brain," he added. "Yet we see that patients' recovery is sustained for greater than one year and, in some cases now, more than two years." Importantly, the stroke patients' postoperative improvement was independent of their age or their condition's severity at the onset of the trial. "Older people tend not to respond to treatment as well, but here we see 70-year-olds recovering substantially," Steinberg said. "This could revolutionize our concept of what happens after not only stroke, but traumatic brain injury and even neurodegenerative disorders. The notion was that once the brain is injured, it doesn't recover - you're stuck with it. But if we can figure out how to jump-start these damaged brain circuits, we can change the whole effect. "We thought those brain circuits were dead. And we've learned that they're not." A new randomized, double-blinded multicenter phase-2b trial aiming to enroll 156 chronic stroke patients is now actively recruiting patients. Steinberg is the principal investigator of that trial. For more information, please contact Kara Richardson at kjr9@stanford.edu, (650) 736-6171, or Maria Coburn, mcoburn@stanford.edu, (650) 736-9551. The SB623 cells were provided by SanBio Inc., a biotechnology company based in Mountain View, California. SanBio also funded and helped in designing the trial, but did not participate in its execution. Stanford's Department of Neurosurgery also supported the work. New approach that repairs liver from within may be more efficient than cell transplants. Advances in stem cell research have made it possible to convert patients' skin cells into heart cells, kidney cells, liver cells and more in the lab dish, giving researchers hope that one day such cells could replace organ transplantation for patients with organ failure. But successfully grafting these cells into patients' failing organs remains a major clinical challenge. Now a team of researchers led by UC San Francisco scientists has demonstrated in mice that it is possible to generate healthy new liver cells within the organ itself, making engraftment unnecessary. What's more, they did it by converting the very cells that drive liver disease, thereby reducing liver damage and improving liver function at the same time. The technique takes advantage of a viral gene delivery technology that has gone through early validation in patients for liver-directed gene therapies, suggesting it could be readily translated into a therapy for patients with liver disease, said Holger Willenbring, MD, PhD, a professor of surgery at UCSF and senior author of the new study, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell. "Part of why this works is that the liver is a naturally regenerative organ, so it can deal with new cells very well. What we see is that the converted cells are not only functionally integrated in the liver tissue, but also divide and expand, leading to patches of new liver tissue," said Willenbring, who is also associate director of the Liver Center at UCSF and a member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research. Share on Pinterest UCSF researchers have learned to generate healthy new liver cells (dark green, right side) within the livers of living mice by converting the very cells that drive liver disease (red, left side), thereby reducing liver damage and improving liver function at the same time Image Credit: Willenbring lab / UCSF More than 600,000 patients in the United States alone suffer from end-stage liver disease, or cirrhosis. The only available cure is liver transplantation, but the shortage of donor livers means only 6,000 patients benefit from this therapy each year in the U.S., and more than 35,000 patients die. The new approach specifically targets liver fibrosis, the progressive scarring of the liver that is a primary driver of liver disease. Fibrosis develops when liver cells called hepatocytes can't regenerate fast enough to keep up with damage caused by toxins such as alcohol or diseases such as hepatitis C or fatty liver disease. Cells called myofibroblasts fill in gaps left by dying hepatocytes with scar-like fibrotic tissue. It's a bit like patching a flat tire: at first the patches help maintain the liver's structural integrity, but eventually a liver that is more patches than functional tissue starts to fail. Fibrotic liver disease has a slow fuse, but leads to catastrophic failure: someone who contracts hepatitis C at age 25 may feel just fine for decades, then suddenly at age 50 start experiencing the fatigue, faintness, nausea, bruising, diarrhea and jaundice that indicate the onset of end-stage liver disease. The reason is that the liver can adapt as long as at least 20 percent of it is functional, Willenbring says, but once it dips below that critical threshold, patients are often dead within two years. "Liver fibrosis is not rare," Willenbring said. "It's actually the end stage of many chronic liver diseases. Obesity, for instance, can lead to fatty liver disease, which is predicted to become the number one cause of liver fibrosis in the next 10 years." Technique reduces liver damage, increases liver function in mice Willenbring has dedicated his career to using stem cell biology to generate new hepatocytes (for instance, from a patient's own skin) that could be used in place of transplants to treat liver failure. Ironically, however, just as he and his lab have come closer to achieving this dream, Willenbring has had to grapple with the realization that this cell therapy approach may fail to reach the majority of patients with liver failure because the tangle of fibrosis itself impairs the successful engraftment of transplanted cells. So over the past five years, Willenbring and his team - in close collaboration with the laboratory of Dirk Grimm, PhD at Heidelberg University Hospital in Germany - have embarked on a different approach: converting fibrosis-causing myofibroblasts into healthy new hepatocytes within the liver itself. Previous research had identified a cocktail of gene-regulating proteins that can convert other cell types into hepatocytes, but the team needed a way to deliver these instructions to myofibroblasts. After several years of work, the team identified a subtype of adeno-associated virus (AAV) that could specifically infect myofibroblasts. The researchers focused on AAV because it has been shown to be safe and effective in early human gene therapy trials, e.g., for therapy of the bleeding disorder hemophilia B. The team showed in mice with liver disease that viruses packed with the cell fate-changing cocktail indeed infected myofibroblasts and converted them into functional hepatocytes. The number of new cells was relatively small - less than one percent of all hepatocytes in the treated mice - but this was sufficient to reduce fibrosis and improve liver function. The viral approach was also effective in converting human myofibroblasts in a dish into working hepatocytes, but more work is certainly needed to prepare this approach for use in human patients, the researchers say. In particular, the lab is working to package the treatment into a single virus, reducing potential side effects and streamlining clinical development. The team is also working to make the viruses more specific to myofibroblasts - in the current paper muscle cells and some cells of the immune system were also infected, though without converting them into liver cells or obviously impacting their function. The new results suggest that in the fibrotic liver this approach could produce a more efficient and stable improvement of liver function than cell transplant approaches, Willenbring said, adding that once the viral packaging is optimized, such a treatment could be done cheaply at a broad range of medical facilities, not just in the specialized research hospitals where stem-cell transplants could be conducted. Willenbring is the first to acknowledge that the new technique is not a replacement for the current standard of care in liver disease: "A liver transplant is still the best cure," Willenbring said. "This is more of a patch. But if it can boost liver function by just a couple percent, that can hopefully keep patients' liver function over that critical threshold, and that could translate to decades more of life." Major funders of the work include the US National Institutes of Health (R21 AA022158), a Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft postdoctoral fellowship, a Wallonie-Bruxelles International World postdoctoral fellowship, and the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine training program in stem cell research at UCSF. The authors declare no competing financial interests. Advertisement The study appears online inOver a three-year period, researchers looked at 87 introductory biology exams taught by 26 instructors at a public research university and they included over 4800 students in the analysis. Due to the large scale of the study, the researchers were able to collect exams in which test characteristics spanned a breadth of possibilities.Sara Brownell, an assistant professor with the school and senior author of the study, said there is a national movement to create biology tests that are more cognitively challenging, as these types of tests can improve students' conceptual understanding of biology; however, doing so may harm the very students they are trying to help."We do not recommend lowering the bar. But, we may need to reassess how we are teaching introductory biology to meet these expectations on exams," shared Brownell. "We do want to test at these higher cognitive levels, but we don't want to increase the performance gaps between male and female students, as well as between lower and higher socioeconomic status students."Brownell recommends using active learning practices to help close the gap, including clickers, classroom discussion and other tools known to enhance student learning and help students perform better on critical thinking questions. In addition, she said more studies are needed to better understand the phenomenon.If student academic ability is the same, why does a gap emerge when the students take more challenging exams that test critical thinking? "That's the million dollar question," said Wright, who completed the study while a post-doctoral researcher in Brownell's lab. "We think psychological factors such as stereotype threat, which can impact cognitive load, or students having growth or fixed mindsets, may be at play. Regardless, we know we need more information before we can say anything conclusive about why this is occurring. We want to increase students' knowledge of biology, but we don't want to create another problem in the process."Source: Eurekalert Forms of Child Abuse Advertisement Over-criticizing a child and developing a sense of low self-esteem by humiliating or using foul language. Creating fear in the child's mind in the name of discipline. Using verbal threats. Isolating the child. ...recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable right of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world..." Child marriage is a violation of human rights, but is all too common http://data.unicef.org/child-protection/child-marriage.html Issue of Child Abuse https://www.childhelp.org/child-abuse/ http://www.internationalcap.org/abuse_statistics.html http://www.un.org/en/events/childvictimday/ http://www.unric.org/en/latest-un-buzz/27571-international-day-of-innocent-children-victims-of-aggression-4-june In order to prevent child abuse, it is important to understand it.In a survey, 10.6% adults admitted to being emotionally abused in childhood.When a caregiver or a parent harms a child, it either causes emotional damage or hampers the emotional development of the child. This action qualifies as emotional abuse.It may be caused by:Emotional abuse is not only meted out by family members. In a research conducted by WHO, 20-65% of school going children have reported being bullied. The most common of child abuse, emotional abuse manifests physically as development delays, speech problems, bed-wetting and weight loss/gain. The psychological ramifications may be lifelong and result in anxiety, aggressive nature, anti-social behavior and may even lead a child towards suicide.Any physical harm or injury caused to a child constitutes physical abuse. A staggering 28% adults report being physically abused as a child. A caregiver indulging in harsh disciplinary behavior by hitting, slapping, shoving or whipping a child may not only injure the child but also scar him for life, physically as well as emotionally. It may inculcate a feeling of insecurity and self-destructive attitude in the child. Physical abuse is also prevalent in schools in many countries around the world where corporal punishment is not considered illegal.Another common form of physical abuse is child labor. According to International Labor Organization (ILO), 5.7 million children across the globe are still into forced child labor. Most of them work in conditions that are unsafe and deleterious to health. Child labor deprives children of the right to education and a happy childhood. Poverty is the main reason behind child labor.An unfortunate and disturbing form of physical abuse is the recruitment of child soldiers. Around the world, about 2,50,000 children are involved in armed conflicts. Children below 18 years, some of them as young as 7 years of age, are misguided, coerced, threatened or abducted for enrollment into rebel groups and terrorist outfits as spies, suicide bombers, fighters or sex slaves. So many young lives are nipped in the bud due to this extreme form of physical violence.When a child is subjected to sexual acts by an adult or an older child, sexual abuse is said to occur. Inappropriate sexual talk, display of sexual organs, forcing a child to strip, sexual act, child prostitution and child pornography are the different ways children are sexually abused. Research shows that up to 36% of girls and 29% boys have suffered sexual abuse in childhood . According to ILO, 1.8 million children are victims of child prostitution and pornography around the world. Around 1 million children fall prey to human trafficking annually and are transported across borders for illegal sex trade.The horrendous acts lead to physical torture and injury and have long term psychological damage on the victim.Even child marriage is a form of sexual abuse and is still prevalent in many parts of the world. According to UNICE's global database of 2015, 1 in 4 women were married before the age of 18 years world-wide and South Asia had the highest rates of child marriage.Children are incapable of taking care of themselves and require an adult or a parent to supervise and ensure their wellbeing. Neglecting the physical and emotional requirements of a child or failing to provide the required medical and educational resources also amount to abuse. Exposing the child or leaving the child in potentially dangerous situations, neglecting the hygiene of the child, deserting the child or not offering food to a child is physical neglect. Not offering love, emotional support and indifference towards child's developing anti-social or delinquent behavior constitute emotional neglect. Not allowing a child access to appropriate care due to any reason or not following the doctor's advice regarding the child's treatment is medical neglect. Educational neglect refers to keeping the child away from school for prolonged periods of time or not sending the child to school at all.A common form of child abuse, this one is difficult to gauge and determine.June is the day when United Nations and other organizations express solidarity in their endeavor to eliminate child abuse in all its forms from the world, without any exception. Owing to the efforts of these bodies, a lot of international attention is being focused on the Convention on the Rights of the Child and implementation of its recommendations.The Preamble of CRC rightfully states:Source: Medindia Advertisement "We can see the physical health effects of tobacco smoking in this study, but we don't see similar effects for cannabis smoking," said Madeline Meier, an assistant professor of psychology at Arizona State University who conducted the study with colleagues at Duke University, King's College in the UK and the University of Otago in New Zealand.While study participants who had used marijuana to some degree over the last 20 years showed an increase in periodontal disease from age 26 to 38, they did not differ from non-users on any of the other physical health measures. To measure cannabis use, they asked study subjects to self-report their use at ages 18, 21, 26, 32 and 38.The study's statistical analysis found that the decline in periodontal health in pot smokers was not explained by tobacco smoking, alcohol abuse or less tooth brushing and flossing. The lack of physical health problems among cannabis users also was not attributable to their having had better health to begin with or to living healthier lifestyles."We don't want people to think, 'Hey, marijuana can't hurt me,' because other studies on this same sample of New Zealanders have shown that marijuana use is associated with increased risk of psychotic illness, IQ decline and downward socioeconomic mobility," Meier said."What we're seeing is that cannabis may be harmful in some respects, but possibly not in every way," said study co-author Avshalom Caspi, the Edward M. Arnett Professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke. "We need to recognize that heavy recreational cannabis use does have some adverse consequences, but overall damage to physical health is not apparent in this study.""Physicians should certainly explain to their patients that long-term marijuana use can put them at risk for losing some teeth," said Terrie Moffitt, the Nannerl O. Keohane University Professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke and co-director of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, from which these data were gathered.Source: Eurekalert 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. Advertisement In 2006, Massachusetts passed legislation aimed at preventing SBS/AHT-including a mandate to provide education about SBS/AHT. Dr. Rideout surveyed nurses at Massachusetts birthing hospitals and birthing centers about barriers to and facilitators of efforts to educate new parents about SBS/AHT.On analysis of responses from nearly 200 nurses, language was a key barrier to providing education about SBS/AHT. A lack of informational brochures in different languages and the unavailability of translators contributed to the difficulties of communicating with non-English-speaking parents/caregivers.Nurses whose hospitals provided brochures in different languages were three times more likely to say they 'always' carried out the SBS/AHT educational guidelines. Nurses who were able to provide SBS/AHT education for non-English-speaking parents were five times more likely to consistently provide verbal education about strategies for soothing a crying infant.An atmosphere of 'supportive leadership' at the hospital was identified as the major facilitator of implementing the SBS/AHT educational guidelines. Nurses at hospitals with supportive leadership were eight times more likely to say they 'always' documented SBS/AHT education in the medical records.Education is critical to preventing infant injuries and deaths due to SBS/AHT. Parents and caregivers need to learn how to handle the inconsolable crying that sometimes occurs in infants, as well as their own frustration and stress.While the new study has limitations including a low survey response rate, the findings help to identify key factors that help and hinder recommended education on preventing SBS/AHT for parents/caregivers of newborns. Dr. Rideout highlights the need for hospital leadership to support nurses in meeting the need for education-with special attention to providing educational materials and overcoming language barriers. She concludes, "It is important that funding for this public policy be supported so that needed resources and education are available to nurses to ensure that the SBS/AHT guidelines are implemented."Source: Newswise Sudden death occurs within one hour of the onset of symptoms in an otherwise asymptomatic child. Though sudden death in children is a rare entity, it traumatizes not just the family but also the community. Sudden death in children may occur due to various causes, but it is mostly due to an underlying cardiovascular pathology. Sudden cardiac death is seen more often in males than females. The risk of sudden cardiac death increases as does the age. The main cause of the sudden cardiac death in children is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy except in Italy where it is mostly due to arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC). Eighty-two percent of sudden cardiac deaths are evidenced during physical exertion in competitions or while training. In babies <1yr of age, sudden death is called sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), which is a different entity. In children >1yr of age, sudden death may occur due to either cardiac or non-cardiac causes. Non-Cardiac Causes Advertisement Road traffic accidents, fall, choking/aspiration, poisoning, epilepsy, stroke, drowning, etc. Cardiac Causes Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy(HCM): It is the disease caused due to thickening of the muscular layer of the heart. It is a familial (hereditary) disorder and autosomal dominant in inheritance. The mechanism behind sudden cardiac arrest in this condition is due to the abnormal electrical activity of the lower heart chamber. An arrest can be the first manifestation in the patient. An implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD)which monitors the electrical rhythm of the heart as well as delivers a therapeutic shock when the heart escapes out of the rhythm is a treatment option. It is the disease caused due to thickening of the muscular layer of the heart. It is a familial (hereditary) disorder and autosomal dominant in inheritance. The mechanism behind sudden cardiac arrest in this condition is due to the abnormal electrical activity of the lower heart chamber. An arrest can be the first manifestation in the patient. An implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD)which monitors the electrical rhythm of the heart as well as delivers a therapeutic shock when the heart escapes out of the rhythm is a treatment option. Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM): It is a heart muscle disease involving the dilatation of the left ventricle of the heart. Dilated cardiomyopathy is due to inflammation of heart muscle layer (myocarditis), ischemic (restriction of blood supply) injury, toxins or hereditary. Implantable cardioverter defibrillator and heart transplantation are the treatment options. Commotio Cordis: Sudden cardiac arrest due to blunt injury to the anterior chest wall in children, without any pre-existing cardiac illness is called commotio cordis. It usually happens in athletes. Administration of the cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)and defibrillation on time helps in saving life. Sudden cardiac arrest due to blunt injury to the anterior chest wall in children, without any pre-existing cardiac illness is called commotio cordis. It usually happens in athletes. Administration of the cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)and defibrillation on time helps in saving life. Coronary Anomalies: Anomalous (faulty) origin of the coronary arteries which supply the heart causes sudden arrest on exertion. It manifests if the anomaly results in the compression of the coronary artery. Surgical correction is the treatment. Anomalous (faulty) origin of the coronary arteries which supply the heart causes sudden arrest on exertion. It manifests if the anomaly results in the compression of the coronary artery. Surgical correction is the treatment. Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia/Cardiomyopathy (ARVC): It is a disease of the muscle layer of the right lower heart chamber. The disease progresses through 4 phases. Presentation of the disease could be arrhythmias (heart rhythm abnormality), heart failure or a sudden death. The treatment depends on the phase of the disease and the presentation. Marfan Syndrome: It is a disorder involving the connective tissue and follows an autosomal dominant pattern of inheritance. Dilatation of the root of the aorta (the blood vessel which carries away the pure oxygenated blood from the heart to the body organs) is seen in Marfan syndrome, which can result in a sudden death. Screening the patients with Marfan syndrome with the help of transthoracic echocardiogram is essential to prevent sudden death. Beta blockers and surgical correction of the aorta are the treatment options depending upon the extent of aortic root dilatation. Kawasaki Disease: It is a disease in children involving the blood vessels due to an inflammatory process. It can cause coronary artery lesions and result in death. To prevent the lesions, patients with Kawasaki disease should be treated with IV gamma globulins and aspirin during the initial period of fever. Surgical correction of the coronary lesion is the treatment. Takayasu Arteritis: It is a disease which involves blood vessels through an inflammatory process. Coronary arterial involvement in these patients can result in sudden death. Ion Channelopathies: Ion channels are the pores present on the cell membrane which help in the transfer of ions (like sodium, calcium, potassium, etc.) between the cell interior and cell exterior. The conditions involving the ion channels are collectively called ion channelopathies. Brugada syndrome (It is a heart ion channel disorder leading to heart rhythm disturbances), long QT syndrome (a familial disorder which causes heart rhythm disturbances due to cardiac ion channel mutation), short QT syndrome (a disorder due to heart ion channel mutation) and catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia (a disorder due to the mutation of calcium ion channel in the heart). All of these are the genetically inherited ion channelopathies which cause arrhythmias (heart rhythm disturbances) and may result in sudden death. Some patients present with cardiac arrest as the first symptom and some with recurrent syncope. Hence, in patients with recurrent syncope, screening for history and ECG are encouraged. Treatment with an ICD (Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator) or antiarrhythmic as per the need can prevent the cardiac arrest. Congenital Heart Diseases: These can lead to sudden death due to arrhythmias, emboli (freely moving foreign material in the blood vessel like a blood clot), etc. Most of the children have alarming symptoms like syncope (temporary loss of consciousness), near syncope, seizure/fit, lightheadedness, fatigue, chest pain, palpitations (feeling fast heartbeats)and shortness of breath. History: If a child has warning symptoms or has a history of sudden death in the family, further clinical assessment and investigations are required. It is precautionary to undergo preparticipation evaluation among athletes. If a child has warning symptoms or has a history of sudden death in the family, further clinical assessment and investigations are required. It is precautionary to undergo preparticipation evaluation among athletes. Electrocardiogram: Electrocardiogram (ECG)is an important investigation which can detect the rhythm disturbances associated with the underlying cardiac conditions. Echocardiogram : It useful in diagnosing and monitoring the heart function in patients with heart pathology like hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, dilated cardiomyopathy, aortic dilation in Marfan Syndrome and aneurysms of coronaries in Kawasaki Disease, ventricular dimensions in arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (rare disease of the heart muscle). : It useful in diagnosing and monitoring the heart function in patients with heart pathology like hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, dilated cardiomyopathy, aortic dilation in Marfan Syndrome and aneurysms of coronaries in Kawasaki Disease, ventricular dimensions in arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (rare disease of the heart muscle). Genetic Testing: In the case of sudden death in a family, with an autopsy (post-mortem examination) showing no positive results, genetic analysis will play an important role to detect the cause and hence help to take precautions among family members. In the case of sudden death in a family, with an autopsy (post-mortem examination) showing no positive results, genetic analysis will play an important role to detect the cause and hence help to take precautions among family members. CT Scan /MRI: These radiological imaging techniques help to detect the coronary artery lesions in Kawasaki Disease, Takayasu arteritis. Advertisement Considering the patient health condition and the disease presentation, the appropriate treatment should be administered. Antiarrhythmic Drugs: These are the drugs which help to treat the heart rhythm disturbances. Beta blockers are the drugs of choice in Long QT Syndrome but if symptoms recur on beta blocker treatment, an ICD is indicated. Beta blockers are used in patients with catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia (heart rhythm problems). Amiodarone, beta-blockers, sotalol, etc. are useful to treat non-life-threatening arrhythmias in patients with arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy. These are the drugs which help to treat the heart rhythm disturbances. Beta blockers are the drugs of choice in Long QT Syndrome but if symptoms recur on beta blocker treatment, an ICD is indicated. Beta blockers are used in patients with catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia (heart rhythm problems). Amiodarone, beta-blockers, sotalol, etc. are useful to treat non-life-threatening arrhythmias in patients with arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy. Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD): It helps to prevent fatal arrhythmia-related sudden death. In patients with ion channelopathies, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy ICD is essential. It helps to prevent fatal arrhythmia-related sudden death. In patients with ion channelopathies, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy ICD is essential. Angioplasty: It is indicated in the case of stenotic (narrowed) or aneurysmal (dilatational) coronary artery lesions. Cardiac Ablation: Ablation is required in the case of life-threatening arrhythmias in arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy. Treatment of Sudden Arrest Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, public availability of Automatic External Defibrillator (AED) help in immediate defibrillation and increase the chance of survival. Preparticipation Evaluation Among Athletes Sudden death in children is precipitated by physical exertion, so preparticipation evaluation of participants in competitions is necessary. It involves taking history regarding the warning symptoms and family history of sudden deaths. Physical examination involves blood pressure (BP) measurement, checking the pulses, heart auscultation and assessment of Marfan syndrome. Electrocardiogram and echocardiogram are not included in routine.. In patients suspicious to have the heart problem, further testing and avoiding strenuous activity are essential. Screening Children with a Family History of Sudden Cardiac Death Screening children with a family history of sudden cardiac death offers an opportunity to diagnose the pre-symptomatic disease, and helps in the prevention of sudden death by treating appropriately. Automatic External Defibrillator (AED) Availability: Automatic external defibrillatoris a devicewhich is used to shock the heart in case of sudden cardiac arrest. The availability of automatic external defibrillator (AED) in public places and high school, aids in early defibrillation of the heart and hence saves many lives. Defibrillation is a common treatment in which an electronic device gives an electric shock to the heart. School Calls Sheriff to Stop 7-Year-Old from Handing Out Bible Verses PALMDALE, Calif., June 3, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- Liberty Counsel has demanded that Desert Rose Elementary School correct an outrageous violation of a first grader's constitutional rights. The situation started with an encouraging note and Bible verse from mom Christina Zavala, tucked into a packed lunch for her little boy ("C"). The seven-year-old boy read the note and verse, and showed them to his friends during lunch time at school. Mrs. Zavala's daily note for her son soon turned into an expectation by the other children during lunch, who excitedly begged C for copies of the notes, which grew to include short stories from the Bible to provide context for the verses. However, when one little girl said "teacher - this is the most beautiful story I've ever seen," "separation of church and state" was the response, and the notes were banned from lunchtime distribution. C was told that the school gate was the only location at which he could give the Bible verses to his friends, and only after the bell rang. On April 19, 2016, Mrs. Zavala wrote the school to correct its misinformation, but the only response was that C was reprimanded again, in front of the whole class, and again told to stop talking about religion or sharing his mother's notes. C returned home in tears. The Zavalas and C complied with the school gate directive, and soon, as many as 15 fellow students looked forward to the after-school Bible notes. However, on May 9, 2016, Principal Melanie Pagliaro approached Mr. Zavala at that location, and demanded that C only hand out the notes on a public sidewalk, far from the exit, off school property. The family immediately complied. Later that day, however, a Los Angeles Deputy Sheriff knocked at the door of C's home, demanding that C's note sharing cease altogether because "someone might be offended." C's family then asked Liberty Counsel to help protect their child's constitutional freedoms. "This is a clear, gross violation of the rights of a child," said Horatio "Harry" Mihet, Esq., Vice President of Legal Affairs & Chief Litigation Counsel of Liberty Counsel. "Students do not check their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate," he added. "If students are permitted to pass out Valentine or birthday cards at school, or to talk about Superman and Captain America at lunch, they cannot be prohibited from sharing Bible verses and discussing their faith during their free, non-instructional time," Mihet said. That the school district enlisted a police officer to intimidate C and his family makes this case even more outrageous. "I would expect something like this to happen in Communist Romania, where I went to elementary school, but cops don't bully 7-year-olds who want to talk about Jesus in the Land of the Free," Mihet concluded. Liberty Counsel is an international nonprofit, litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family since 1989, by providing pro bono assistance and representation on these and related topics. On May 27, 2016, Dr. Elham Manea, a Yemeni liberal activist residing in Switzerland, reported on her Twitter and Facebook accounts that, at the House of Religions in Bern, a woman had led a mixed congregation of men and women in Friday prayers. The prayer was led by Halima Gosai Hussain, who is the chair in Britain of a project called the Inclusive Mosque Initiative (IMI). After the prayers, Elham Manea herself delivered the Friday sermon. The call to prayer was also performed by a woman. In addition, the service included musical interludes, another feature that is not a part of mainstream Islam. The Friday prayer led by a woman at the House of Religions in Bern (images: Facebook.com/elham.manea.5) In the sermon she delivered after the prayer, Dr. Manea called upon Muslim men and women to reject the claims of Muslim clerics that a woman may not serve as prayer leader and that men and women may not pray side by side in mosques. She also urged the women not to wait passively for change to come but to demand it and bring it about themselves. The news of a Friday service led by a woman and accompanied by music caused a furor on social media. Many responders harshly criticized Manea and the others who participated in the service, accusing them of heresy and showering them with curses and invective. In response to these attacks, Manea posted an article on the Al-Hiwar website and on her Facebook page in which she repeated what she had said in the Friday sermon and stressed that all she and the other participants had done was pray to Allah. It should be noted that this is the not the first time a woman has led Friday prayers at a mosque. On February 12 this year, it was reported that Danish-born Muslim activist Sherin Khankan had opened the Miriam Mosque in Copenhagen, which offers Friday services led by women and for women only. Khankan said that she sought to challenge the patriarchal character that dominates Islam's religious institutions - just as it dominates other religions - and stressed that the responses of Copenhagen's Muslims to the opening of the mosque were positive and that criticism was "mild."[1] The first woman-led prayers were held over a decade ago, on March 18, 2005, when Dr. Amina Wadud, an American Muslim of Indian origin who is professor of Islamic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, led a service for a mixed congregation in New York. The Friday prayers were held at a church in New York City, after several mosques had refused to host it, due to threats by extremists. The call to prayer was also performed by a woman, who in addition to setting this precedent did so with her head uncovered. The service was attended by some 100 men and women. The main organizer of the event was Asra Nomani, an Indian-born Muslim author. The organizers stated that their aim was to set the question of equal rights for women and men on the Muslim agenda, and stressed that women were entitled to be spiritual leaders in Islam. A week later, Friday prayers were again led by a woman, this time in Boston, by an American Muslim named Nakia Jackson. Also during this week, Asra Nomani herself led a mixed congregation in prayers at Brandeis University, and stated that she would continue to organize similar women-led prayers throughout the U.S.[2] Dr. Manea In Her Sermon: Women Should Pray In Mosques Just Like Men; They Must Demand Change Today The following are translated excerpts from Dr. Elham Manea's May 27 sermon at the mosque in Bern: "Let me start with the story of Frieda Hirschi from Switzerland; At 17, she learned the profession of dressmaker - a good profession, respectable, and suitable for a girl her age. At that time, it was expected of women, whether in church or at community meetings, to be silent. They had to submit to the patriarchal order. Had she told her community that one day she would study theology and become a pastor - that she would have her own church and religious community - they would have told her: 'You are dreaming of the moon - and women do not fly to the moon.' "Well - Pastor Frieda Hirschi dared to dream, and today she is sitting with us in this gathering. A woman leading a community in a church. She did fly to the moon! "Likewise, we are told now that a woman cannot serve as an imam at communal [i.e. mixed-gender] prayers. We are told that the jurists - all male - agreed that a woman cannot lead a prayer, let alone a Friday prayer. 'There is a consensus,' they say, basing their consensus on a tradition attributed to the Prophet: 'A people led by a woman will not prosper.' This tradition, by the way, is considered weak, that is, [the Prophet] might not have said it after all. However, weak traditions miraculously become hard truths when they concern women. "We are also told, 'This is not an appropriate time to raise such trivial issues. There are more urgent and serious issues that must be addressed. Let us not raise issues that lead to discord - we need to be united!' "I understand that change is difficult. If you are used to doing the same thing for centuries, of course it will be difficult to change these ways. I also understand that change frightens us... But I am tired. I am tired of waiting, hoping that one day we will change. For change can only come if we demand it. Change can only come if we claim our rights. "The time has come to challenge our assumptions about women's role in a house of God and in society. Where, how, and when a woman is asked to pray mirror her social status in her community! A mosque in which you only see men praying is a mirror of a patriarchal society where men control the public space... Therefore, a woman demanding to pray in the same space where men are praying is not demanding something trivial. She is demanding a change in that social order, and of her place in it. What is absurd is that in the 70s, here in Bern, women and men used to pray together in the only mosque that was available then... But money began flowing from the Gulf, and the extremist Wahhabi interpretation [of Islam] began to prevail, and step by step the mosque changed, until one day a wall was erected separating men from women. Then, we prayed together; now we are told it is not possible! "The time for change is now, not tomorrow, not in a month, not in a year. Now! The time for change is today. "We are calling for it respectfully; we are calling for it in a message of love to our religion and our community, and of love for the universal principle of equality. Because when I pray, I pray as a human being, not as a female. I stand alongside another human being, not a man, and we pray together as equals before God - a God without gender, a God of equality. "My dear men and women, we too are flying to the moon..."[3] Dr. Elham Manea delivering the sermon in Bern (image: Facebook.com/elham.manea.5) Dr. Manea In Response To The Attacks: What Have We Done That You Curse Us And Accuse Us Of Heresy? As stated, the news of the event sparked scathing responses on social media against the participants and especially against Manea herself, including curses and accusations of heresy. Manea responded to these attacks in an article she posted on the Al-Hiwar website. She wrote: "What have we done? I ask you, both men and women: by Allah, where do all these anger, curses, threats and hurtful words come from? Just what have we done?... "By Allah, I love you even though you are cursing me, because I understand that your responses are motivated by [your] fear for our religion. You think that we want to harm our religion. Yes, this is our religion just as it is yours. And that is why I ask you to listen to me, without fear and without doubting my intentions... "[All we did was] pray to Allah the Almighty. We kneeled before Allah in submission, both men and women. We were believing men and women. That is all we did. We listened to spiritual oud music played by a musician who is not part of this initiative. It is important that you know that, so [nobody] harms him just for being present in that hall. Spiritual oud music is steeped in anguish and longing for Allah... That is all we did. We prayed, human beings together, praying to Allah, the God of equality and love, and our prayer was led by a woman, who is [also] a human being. A human being and not [the embodiment of] shameful sexuality... We did this as part of the Inclusive Mosque Initiative. This initiative has started to spread because it is human in its essence. Because all we demand is to pray in the mosque before Allah, alongside the men. All we demand is for woman to find her place in the mosque, in the same place where the man prays. "In the 1970s we [Muslims] used to do this in Malaysia, Mali and Switzerland. We used to pray together. But the wave of religious extremism that reached us from the heart of the [Saudi] Al-Najd region wiped out our religious practices and the role music played in them. This is extremism that tells us that a woman is not a human being, but is [the embodiment of] shameful sexuality, merchandise [to be used] for pleasure, and who may be married off at the age of nine. This is extremism that tells us that music, our cultural heritage, the oud and its spirituality, are evil things and part of devil-worship. This is extremism that tells us to hate, exclude [the other] and oppose pluralism in faith. This is an extremism that has turned the archaic approach of religious scholars into an idol that we worship instead of Allah. The religious scholars' approach has become an idol, but I am not an idolater. The religious scholars' approach has become an idol, but I worship Allah... "We do not want to be excluded [from Islam]. We respect all paths leading to Allah and respect the mosques that exist in our societies. All we ask of you is to accept the fact that we too have a right [to a place] in the mosque... "What have we done that you exclude us from the fold of Allah's religion? We prayed to Allah the Almighty and kneeled before Him... That is all we did."[4] Endnotes: MEMRI's Russian Media Studies Project (RMSP) was launched in January 2016 with the primary goal of exploring Russia-West relations and Russia's involvement in the Middle East in support of the "resistance camp" (i.e. Iran, Syria and Hizbullah). Russia's attempt to reclaim a great-power status has in fact contributed to increasing conflict between Russia and the U.S. and NATO. With tensions between Russia and the West on the rise, understanding Russia has becoming vital. Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev wrote in the New York Times (August 2, 2015) that "in the heady days of the Cold War, Americans tended to view Soviet decisions making as a black box: you know what goes in, you know what comes out, but you are clueless about what is happening inside. Soviet policy was thus believed to be both enigmatic and strategic." The MEMRI RMSP is aimed precisely at informing the U.S. and Europe about what is happening inside the "black box," so as to make Russian policy clear and not enigmatic to Western decision makers and public opinion. You can review the first five months (January-May 2016) of the MEMRI RMSP's output by downloading the following two booklets: To download this booklet, click here. The first booklet provides a table of contents for all MEMRI RMSP output during January- May 2016. The table covers the following topics: The Russian leadership's political outlook, Russia's relations with the U.S., NATO and the EU, Russia's military involvement in Syria, Russia's relations with Iran and Turkey, Russian national security and defense policy, Russia's domestic and economic policy, Central Asia, and Russia's relations with its religious minorities. To download this booklet, click here. The second booklet provides a table of contents for all MEMRI RMSP reports focusing on Russia-NATO relations from January to May 2016. The booklet is an overview of the emerging conflict between Russia and NATO, ahead of NATO's July 2016 Warsaw summit. The booklet is subdivided into the following topics: NATO's enlargement, NATO's ballistic missile defense system in Europe, Russia's diplomatic and military response to NATO's military presence in Eastern Europe, the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) and anti-NATO propaganda in Russia. You can view previous and current RMSP reports on the MEMRI Russian Media Studies Project website. You can also follow the MEMRI RMSP on Facebook and Twitter To subscribe to the MEMRI Russian Media Project, click here. The following are some of this week's reports from the MEMRI Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM) Project, which translates and analyzes content from sources monitored around the clock, among them the most important jihadi websites and blogs. (To view these reports in full, you must be a paying member of the JTTM; for membership information, send an email to [email protected] with "Membership" in the subject line.) Note to media and government: For a full copy of these reports, send an email with the title of the report in the subject line to [email protected]. Please include your name, title, and organization in your email. Exclusive: Alarabiya Website: ISIS Is Developing Chemical Weapons, Testing Them On Prisoners According to a report on Al-Arabiya's Arabic website, ISIS is developing chemical weapons and testing them on prisoners. Citing "security elements associated with Syrian opposition groups," the report states that the experiments are conducted by a unit comprising mainly of French, Tunisian and Libyan ISIS fighters, and mainly on prisoners condemned to death. Most of the experiments were carried out in the town of Al-Shadadi in Syria's Al-Hasakah district before it was captured by Kurdish and SDF forces. The report claims further that ISIS still maintains stores of chemicals in the town of Markadah and in Deir Al-Zor. EXCLUSIVE: In Video Posted Posthumously On Facebook, American ISIS Fighter In Libya Threatens President Obama On May 31, 2016, a Western ISIS fighter in Libya posted, on his Facebook page, a video of himself with his recently fallen friend. He had first posted the news of his friend's death three days previously, on May 28; in that post, he included a screenshot of the last text he had sent his friend, possibly revealing the American fighter's actual identity. The video, posted on May 31, shows the two fighters side-by-side; also in the video, Al Amriki threatens President Obama. EXCLUSIVE: ISIS Video Denounces Muslims Seeking Refuge In Germany, Urges Them To Return To Islamic State - And Showcases German Suicide Bomber On June 2, 2016, the Islamic State's (ISIS) Al-Khayr province in Syria released a video focusing on Germany and on the wave of Muslim refugees and immigrants who have flocked to it in the past year. The video features the story of a young Syrian Muslim who traveled to Germany in search of a better life, only to return later to ISIS-controlled territory after being faced with what the video describes as Germany's "bitter reality." It also features a German ISIS fighter who carried out a suicide attack against Kurdish forces in Syria. EXCLUSIVE: ISIS Mourns Sudanese Jihadi Mohammad Makkawi, Who Was Wanted By The U.S., And Condemns Al-Shabab For Killing Him On May 31, 2016, the Islamic State (ISIS) published an article in its weekly newspaper Al-Naba' mourning the death of Mohammad Makkawi, a Sudanese jihadi who is wanted by the U.S. for his involvement in the 2008 assassination of John Granville, a U.S diplomat in Khartoum, Sudan. EXCLUSIVE: West African ISIS Fighters In Libya Call On Muslims In Their Home Countries To Join The Islamic State On May 29, 2016, ISIS's Tripoli province in Libya published a 15-minute video titled "From Humiliation to Glory," which features five West African ISIS fighters calling on their countrymen to carry out the duty of hijra and join the ranks of the Islamic State. The fighters speak in their native tongues and cite Koranic verses justifying the act of hijra (immigration to ISIS territory). Some of the fighters are also fluent in English, which they speak with an African accent. The final part of the video documents ISIS's intense combat against the Fajr Libya (Libyan Dawn) militias in the area of Sirt, including the use of car bombs driven by suicide attackers. EXCLUSIVE: German ISIS Fighter Claims To Sell Alleged Yazidi Slaves On Facebook On May 20, 2016, a German ISIS fighter advertised two alleged Yazidi slaves for sale on his Facebook page. Users commented on the photos, asked questions, or made derogatory remarks about the women, but the posts were quickly taken down EXCLUSIVE: Self-Proclaimed American ISIS Fighter On Telegram Encourages Followers To Carry Out Lone-Wolf Attacks Instead Of Immigrating To Islamic State On May 31, 2016, an American who claims to be an ISIS fighter posted, on his Telegram account, a message encouraging his followers to carry out lone-wolf attacks, as opposed to immigrating to the Islamic State, which fighters have frequently called for doing in the past. EXCLUSIVE: Pro-ISIS Group Threatens Citizens Of Spanish-Speaking Countries: We Will Kill You Wherever You Are Unless You Stop Fighting Muslims On May 30, 2016 the "Al-Wafa Foundation," a pro-ISIS activist group, posted "A Message to the People of Spain and to the Spanish-Speaking Countries," which threatens these countries and their citizens with terror attacks unless they stop fighting the Muslims and occupying Muslim land. ISIS Threatens To Behead 'Cross Worshippers,' Vows To Destroy U.S, Russia And Their Allies On May 28, 2016, the media office of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Raqqah, Syria, released a video threatening to behead "worshippers of the cross" and vowing to destroy the U.S, Russia and their allies. The video, titled "Die in Your Rage," was posted on the leading ISIS-affiliated online jihadi forum Shumoukh Al-Islam, and also showed beheading of three men accused of spying for the "alliance of the crusaders." ISIS Video Presents Itself As Victim Of Global Alliance Of Infidels, Reaffirms Its Will To Fight This Alliance To The End On May 30, 2016, the Islamic State (ISIS) Al-Hayat Media Center released a three-minute video titled "The Religion of Kufr [unbelief] Is One." The video aims to show that ISIS is the victim of a united global alliance aiming to destroy Islam, of which ISIS is the true leader. The video was distributed in English and Arabic, via official ISIS Twitter and Telegram channels, and hosted on several webhosting platforms such as Archive.org, YouTube, and Sendvid.com. Malaysian ISIS Fighter Shares Intimate Photos, Propaganda On Facebook Malaysian ISIS fighter is active on Facebook, and shares intimate snapshots of life in the Islamic State on his page. He also circulates various ISIS and jihadi propaganda pieces. It appears that he is in Syria with his wife and children. His photos suggests that he is the city of Al-Tabaqa, west of Al-Raqqa, and that he fights alongside other Malaysian fighters. ISIS Releases Desktop Version Of Its App For Teaching Children Arabic Alphabet The Islamic State (ISIS) has released a desktop version of the app it recently released for teaching children the Arabic alphabet. The desktop program appears to operate just like as its Android counterpart, allowing children to learn the Arabic alphabet, trace letters on the screen, and identify letters, among other things. Al-Qaeda Branches Publish Joint Eulogy For Taliban Leader Mansour On May 29, 2016, three Al-Qaeda branches - Jabhat Al-Nusra (JN), Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) - published a joint statement on their Twitter accounts and Telegram channels eulogizing Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who was killed recently in a U.S. airstrike. The statement lauds Mansour for his role in fighting jihad and continuing the heritage of his predecessor, Mullah Omar. It gives no indication as to the future of the relationship between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and to the question of whether the groups aligned with the former will pledge allegiance to the new Taliban leader. TTP Expresses Condolences Over Killing Of Mullah Mansoor, Vows To 'Turn Pakistan Into A Fort Of Islam Through The Establishment Of The Islamic System' The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is believed to be operating from a hideout somewhere in Afghanistan, has issued a statement in Urdu on Wordpress.com offering condolences over the death of Afghan Taliban Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, who was recently killed in a U.S. drone strike in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan. Updated 11:30 p.m. ET. Five soldiers were killed and four others were missing Thursday when their light truck overturned in a rain-swollen creek at Fort Hood, Texas. Three other soldiers on the truck were pulled from the water near the overturned vehicle at the sprawling Army post and were reported in stable condition while they were transported from the Coryell Memorial Healthcare System in Gatesville, Texas, to the Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center on Fort Hood, the Fort Hood Public Affairs office said in a statement. The four missing soldiers were from the 3rd Battalion, 16th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division. The search continues for them, according to an updated statement from the base. The bodies of the three soldiers were recovered from waters downstream from where their Light Medium Tactical Vehicle overturned at the Owl Creek Tactical low-water crossing and East Range Road on Fort Hood, the statement said. Fort Hood emergency personnel were the first to arrive at the scene in response to a "swift-water rescue call" at about 11:20 a.m. local time, the statement said. Other first responders from the Fort Hood Directorate of Emergency Services and local and state agencies have now joined the search for the six missing soldiers with a combination of aircraft, canine search teams, heavy ground equipment, and swift-water rescue watercraft. The accident occurred as parts of Texas were still recovering from heavy rainfall and bracing for new storms that could dump up to 10 inches of rain and worsen flooding in rivers and other waterways that already have risen to record levels. High water reportedly covered roadways and highways throughout the Fort Hood area Thursday. -- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com. The U.S. Army has quietly canceled its Light Reconnaissance Vehicle program and decided instead to equip cavalry scout units with the more general-purpose Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. Maneuver leaders have been discussing the need for a Light Reconnaissance Vehicle since 2012 at Fort Benning, the home of the Maneuver Center of Excellence. Scouts need a specialized vehicle with enough firepower to destroy enemy recon formations, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, director of Army Capabilities Integration Center and deputy commanding general of Futures at Training and Doctrine Command, told an audience at the 2015 Maneuver Conference at Benning. The LRV would also allow scout units to provide security for light infantry on an approach march in ground mobility vehicles, McMaster said at the time. The Army held a two-week vehicle assessment at Benning in August involving six companies as part of a platform demonstration to evaluate prototypes from industry. But the Army has now effectively canceled the LRV program without notice, and decided instead to equip scout units in infantry brigade combat teams with the service's long-awaited Humvee replacement -- the JLTV, according to an industry source who requested anonymity to speak freely about the issue to a reporter. Military.com contacted the Army and received the following response by email: "Light Reconnaissance Vehicle is not currently an Army program. The Army is fielding the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle to replace the Scout HMMWVs in IBCTs with potential sensor and/or lethality upgrades," said Army spokesman Troy Rolan Sr. The Army awarded Oshkosh Corp., a $6.7 billion contract last fall to build the first 17,000 production models of the JLTV. Both the Army and Marine Corps plan to buy a total of nearly 55,000 of the combat vehicles, including 49,100 for the Army and 5,500 for the Corps, to replace about a third of the Humvee fleets. Lockheed Martin protested the award to Oshkosh but withdrew it in February after the release of a Pentagon test report that shows that Oshkosh's JLTV was far more reliable than its competitors, as measured by the average number of miles between failures. Oshkosh's JLTV prototype had a reliability level almost three times higher than the requirement for the Army and Marine Corps. In addition, it was more than five times more reliable than Lockheed's and 13 times more reliable than AM General's. Despite its reliability, Army maneuver officials are not convinced that JLTV will satisfy every mission. The U.S. Army's 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division will jump into Poland on June 6 with 10 lightweight, all-terrain vehicles made by Polaris Defense. The operation is a test of the 82nd's ability to bolster NATO's eastern flank against Russian aggression in a hurry. The four-seater Polaris ATVs are still a "pilot program" for the 82nd but are intended to give the paratroopers more mobility once they hit the ground. U.S. Special Operations Command in 2013 awarded a contract for a similar but separate program to buy about 1,300 so-called Ground Mobility Vehicles, or GMVs. General Dynamics Corp. won the award with its Flyer Advanced Light Strike Vehicle, designed to carry seven passengers, weigh less than 7,000 pounds unloaded and be internally transported by a number of aircraft. The Army has been talking for some time now about equipping infantry brigade combat teams with mobile protected firepower platforms that can ensure freedom of movement for infantry in close contact with the enemy and can do so in forcible entry operations. The service issued a Sources Sought document for the Light Reconnaissance Vehicle Platform Performance Demonstration in January 2015. It stated that the vehicle must carry six soldiers, with a total payload 2,100 pounds. The vehicle must not exceed 11,669 pounds so it can be carried internally or sling-loaded by a CH-47 Chinook helicopter. The vehicle must be capable of mounting a weapon system, such as a 30mm cannon, which can engage targets accurately at a range of at least 1,000 meters, according to the sources sought document. Rheinmetall Defense showed up at the platform demonstration August with its Weasel, light-armored vehicle. The tiny tracked vehicle is capable of a road speed of about 43 mph and can fit inside a CH-47 helicopter and a C-130 aircraft. It can be equipped with a remote weapon station and features light armor that can protect against 7.62mm ammunition and shell fragments. It's unclear what the demonstration showed, but in a follow up email the Army spokesman stressed LRV is not moving forward. "The LRV is not a program," Rolan said. "JLTV is the Army program that will provide the needed capability." --Brendan McGarry contributed to this story. --Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com. Despite Flipping in Surf 4 Times in a Year, Marines Say New ACV Is the Future of Amphibious Warfare Some Marine veterans familiar with the vehicle and its operations have worried about the reliability of the ACV. Dozens of veterans groups -- large and small, nationally known and not-so-well known -- are receiving more than $5 million in donations from presidential candidate Donald Trump. AMVETS, the Disabled American Veterans Charitable Trust and the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation all received sizable checks -- with MCLEA getting $1.1 million. And spokesmen for the groups all said they are grateful for the money. Joe Chenelly, executive director of AMVETS, said Trump's $75,000 donation, "will provide substantial support to continue our mission and proud history of assisting veterans and their families." Edmond Boran, president of the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, told The Journal News of New York that the million-dollar donation "will really help raise our public profile." Boran, a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War said, said it's not the first time Trump donated to MC-LEF. "Donald Trump has been a consistent supporter for years, and that's what's important to us," he told the paper. "He's been a longtime supporter of veterans and law enforcement in general." But one veterans' organization that picked up a $75,000 donation has a history of questionable fundraising and spending practices, with several charity watchdog groups panning it for how little it spends on veterans. Foundation for American Veterans, based in West Bloomfield, Michigan, has just one star out of four from Great Nonprofits, which draws its ratings from the public, and has an F rating from CharityWatch, which monitors and rates charities. CharityWatch analyst Stephanie Kalivas said FAV got the failing grade because it spent only 10 percent of its cash budget on programs. The organization also faulted FAV on its fundraising -- spending $85 for every $100 raised. "Top-rated charities will spend $25 or less to raise $100 in funds and 75 percent or more of their cash budget on programs," Kalivas told Military.com on Friday. Charity Navigator, another charity monitoring site, does not rate FAV because the organization is not a 501(c)(3) public charity and so does not meet the group's requirements for review. Trump, a billionaire real estate mogul and reality TV celebrity, grudgingly released a list of veteran organizations that benefited from funds he raised in January during a May 31 press conference. "This [money] is going to phenomenal groups," Trump said during his press conference, where he said the media "should be ashamed of themselves" for demanding he identify the groups he donated to. "Instead of being like, 'Thank you very much, Mr. Trump,' or 'Trump did a good job,' everyone said, 'Who got it? Who got it? Who got it?' " he said. "And you make me look very bad." Trump also defended the time he took to identify the groups, saying all had to be vetted first. Military.com asked the Trump campaign whether those vetting the groups were campaign staff or people hired from outside, but received no reply. According to The Associated Press, Trump issued the first $1 million donation from his personal account on May 23 after a Washington Post interview where he was questioned about the funds. The AP also reported that "the biggest batch" of donations went out about May 24, following the Post story. Joe Davis, national spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said that whatever amount was raised and donated "did make a difference to the groups that were the beneficiaries." VFW was not among the groups, but Davis said the attention should be on the good done by the donations. "Properly taking care of veterans, service members and their families belongs to no political party or ideology. It is what is required when a nation sends her men and women to war," he said. CORRECTION: In earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the amounts that "top rated" charities spend for every $100 raised, and reported that Charity Navigator gave Foundation for American Veterans "zero stars" without explaining that the organization did not meet the requirements to be rated by Charity Navigator. -- Bryant Jordan can be reached at Bryant.jordan@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at@BryantJordan. 2016 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 LTZ Z71 2016 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 LTZ Z71 (Courtesy image/GM) DETROIT - If you're in the market for a new Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck June could be the month to check out dealer inventories. Automotive News reports that Chevy sent a message to dealers this week announcing pretty big incentives on some Silverado Crew Cab models, including 0 percent financing for 60 months and up to $8,250 cash back and rebates. The Chevy Silverado Crew Cab has a base price of $35,645. Chevy is also reportedly offering 20 percent off the sticker price on high-trim-level Impala, Sonic and Spark models through June 15. A message seeking comment was left with a Chevy spokesman Friday morning. The move comes after GM posted an 18 percent sales decline in May, including a 13 percent drop in retail sales. Chevy U.S. chief Brian Sweeney said in his letter to dealers, informing them of the June incentives, that GM "did not deliver the result" it had planned for in May, Automotive News reports. GM said Wednesday its May results were hit in part by production impacted at Fairfax, Lordstown and Spring Hill by the Japanese earthquakes. There were also two fewer selling days in May. The Silverado C/K pickups are GM's best-selling vehicles in terms of volume. Last month, sales of the Silverado-C/K pickups fell 13 percent to 45,035 units, while sales of all Chevrolet-brand vehicles dropped 19 percent to 169,331 units. At the same time, the Silverado's rivals, the Ford F-150 and Dodge Ram pickups, did not appear to struggle quite as mightily. F-Series trucks posted a gain of 9 percent to 67,412 units, while Ram pickups dipped 3 percent to 38,833 units. Related: Auto sales slow in May, but record year still in sight David Muller is the automotive and business reporter for MLive Media Group in Detroit. Email him at dmuller@mlive.com, follow him on Twitter or find him on Facebook. Snyder_mackinac Gov. Rick Snyder speaking about Detroit schools to media at the Mackinac Policy Conference on June 3, 2016. This story was updated at 3:40 p.m. June 3 to add the statement from the Detroit school coalition. The most vocal advocate for school-age children in Detroit gives high - but not perfect - marks to the late-night vote on Thursday, June 2, to send $617 million to the district to eliminate debt in the Detroit Public School and launch a new district. "I give this a solid 8 out of 10," said John Rakolta Jr., CEO of Walbridge and passionate spokesman for the Coalition for Detroit Schoolchildren. "We can make it work." That reaction seems to be similar to other viewpoints circulating in official circles, including Gov. Rick Snyder, who spoke to the issue on Friday morning at the Mackinac Policy Conference. "The key pieces, in my view ... are paying the historic debt back," said Snyder. That allows reinvestment into the education instead of paying structured debt, he emphasized to reporters. About $60-65 million would be freed up next year under the plan. "These are big numbers," Snyder said. "... That's a significant investment." The plan includes: * $467 million to pay off DPS' operating debt. * $150 million to launch a new, debt-free district. * Creation of an advisory board of public and public charter representatives to explore best locations for new public charter schools. * A school board election in November. * A financial advisory commission. The House voted 55-53 Thursday on the negotiated compromise plan, which now heads to the state Senate. Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof, R-West Olive, "needs to talk over the details with his caucus members. He think this latest plan is a realistic compromise between the House and Senate proposals," said his spokesperson Amber McCann, in a statement sent Friday morning. Snyder indicated Friday that he would not veto the bills, instead saying he's "continuing to support the bipartisan package." Missing from the support for the vote were House Democrats and eight Republicans. "While the new plan sends more dollars to the district, it fails to put in place the reforms needed to ensure DPS will recover from its financial crisis, making it likely that DPS will be in the same situation a year or two down the road," according to a statement released Friday by the House Democrats. Most discussion on the plan centered on a Detroit Education Commission, which was supported by Gov. Rick Snyder, the state Senate, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and Democratic leaders as they sought the DEC to provide oversight for public and public charter location and performance. From an earlier MLive.com story: In place of the DEC, the House plan creates an "advisory board" that is made up of traditional and charter school representatives to report on where in Detroit schools are most needed. It would also study the potential for a transportation plan for the district. With the approved plan, the advisory board instead of the DEC "doesn't have teeth right now," Rakolta said. However, it does allow more information to flow to parents about whether the schools they choose for their children are performing to state standards. It's an issue in a city where, according to Rakolta's data, nearly 19,000 K-8 students attend 40 schools with less than 5 percent 4th grade reading proficiency. Nine are charters. As the advisory panel gets up to speed, it's "going to be able to shine a light on performance of every single school in Detroit," Rakolta said. Snyder said he still supports a DEC in Detroit, noting that he was a supporter from the beginning of discussions for a plan to restore viability to Detroit schools. "I'm going to continue to advocate for that," Snyder said. Snyder said the most important next steps are setting up the school board and hiring a permanent superintendent. The district, since early this year, is under control of Steven Rhodes, an emergency manager, and interim Superintendent Alycia Meriweather. It's been under state emergency management since 2009. Local control has been an issue in the district during that entire time, as debt grew and student performance ebbed. Electing a new school board is one of the victories in the approved plan, Rakolta said. "We got the school board back," he said. "Not 18 months from now. In November." UPDATE: Bill Hanson, chief of staff for the Coalition for Detroit Schoolchildren, said that Rakolta's reaction was his own and not the official views of the leadership of the coalition. He also praised Rakolta's efforts to lobby participants at the Mackinac Policy Conference for support of the Senate version of the bill. "Coalition co-chairs have not yet had the chance to meet to analyze and argue about all aspects of what the House - on strict party lines and late at night - rammed through yesterday. We will issue an official statement by Monday morning. I'm confident our statement will applaud the progress made on resolving DPS debt and returning the district to local control. I'm also confident that the Coalition will decry the lack of a fully empowered Detroit Education Commission, the assault on Detroit teachers, as well as the apparent accountability advantages the House legislation creates for charter schools." Paula Gardner covers Michigan business for MLive.com. She can be reached by email or follow her on Twitter. MACKINAC ISLAND, MI -- Mackinac Island is home to horses, fudge and a wonderland of seersucker suits, at least during the annual Mackinac Policy Conference. "As America's Summer Place I think wearing a seersucker suit is an appropriate choice," said Dan Musser III, president of the Grand Hotel, who sported one himself this week. The fabric was popularized in New Orleans, where its lightweight quality won it popularity with laborers. According to Nola.com, the name "seersucker" comes from a Farsi phrase meaning "milk and sugar," a nod to the fabric's alternating smooth and rough stripes. The Detroit Regional Chamber's annual conference draws Michigan's political and business elite, who bring along with them a fair amount of seersucker. The political portion isn't straying far from its peers in Washington, D.C., where the U.S. Senate celebrates National Seersucker Day. Emily Lawler is a Capitol reporter on MLive's statewide Impact Team. You can reach her at elawler@mlive.com, subscribe to her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter: @emilyjanelawler. MACKINAC ISLAND, MI -- There's a simple reason the U.S. is in the midst of such a crazy election, political columnist Ron Fournier told Mackinac Policy Conference attendees Thursday -- the country and world is in a time of unprecedented change, and institutions aren't changing fast enough. Fournier, a Detroit native who writes for the National Journal in Washington, D.C., connected the rise of political candidates like presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders to the coming of age of the millennial generation, the group he sees as the major change agent moving forward. When it comes to politics, Fournier said Trump is likely "just the beginning" of a radical shift in institutional structure. He said disaffected supporters of Trump or Sanders would return in future elections if the candidate they want is not chosen. "Until we have fundamental, structural change, until we fix things from the bottom up and revive our institution, we're going to continually have this political unrest," he said. Much of that unrest comes from millennials, Fournier said, a generation he said is pragmatic, but also optimistic despite hardships in paying for higher education, finding well-paying jobs after school and other economic challenges. Young people are globally connected and embrace change through consensus building, he said, meaning they are less connected to any particular political ideology or institution and place value in buying products and working for companies that "authentically a part of something bigger than themselves." Many of those in the "young, electronically armed populace with a purpose" are in Michigan, helping restore Detroit to a greater city than it's been in the past. "I think Detroit's best days are still ahead of us," he said. At the conference, Fournier announced plans to return to Detroit from Washington, D.C. after the 2016 presidential election concludes to be a part of the changes happening in within the city. Lauren Gibbons is a political reporter on MLive's Impact team. She can be reached at lgibbon2@mlive.com. LYONS, MI - Every morning, Susan Craft, superintendent of the village's public works department, nervously checks the Lyons Dam over which the Grand River has flowed for nearly 160 years. "Our fingers and toes are crossed," says Craft of the 9-foot dam that is showing signs of failure, particularly on its western edge, where the water is eroding into the sandy bank outside of the dam's concrete abutment wall. High water could wash away the three trees that are holding the bank in place. If the trees wash out, the river will flow freely around the dam, washing out a 60-foot embankment. A washout could threaten a nearby home that sits 45 feet from the river's edge as well as the only bridge that carries traffic over the Grand River between Portland and Ionia. Losing the bridge would split the 800-resident community in half, denying fire and police protection to west side residents, according to Village Council member Max Darling. The bridge also carries water, sewer, natural gas and power lines for the village. "This could happen with little warning," according to an emergency order by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MEDQ), which has ordered the village of 800 residents to shore up the west side of the dam as soon as possible. The Lyons Dam is in "imminent danger of failing," the MDEQ report concluded. The dam's concrete spillway also is deteriorating as water seeps through the concrete barrier that was last upgraded in the 1930s. Originally built in 1857 to power a flour mill, the dam has been an albatross for this community since 1959, when Consumers Energy abandoned a hydro-electric plant it had operated since 1913 and sold it to the village for $1. Over the years, a fish ladder has been installed the dam, the only one left on the Grand River between Consumers Energy's Webber Dam - four miles upstream - and the Sixth Street Dam in downtown Grand Rapids, which also is being considered for removal. Meanwhile, the village has maintained wooden floodgates that once controlled water flow into a mill pond and 900-foot channel that sent water to a power generating house that has long been abandoned. Mindful of the dam's weakened state, the village has lined up nearly $2 million in state and federal grants to shore up the abutment and remove the dam, thereby eliminating the threat to the embankment. But the village cannot move equipment into place until the river settles down for the summer. The current is still too swift and the river too deep from spring rains and runoff for them to build a ford across the river and access the embankment, Craft says. Craft says they hope to get into the river and built the ford by early July, when the river is usually at its lowest. But a heavy rainfall that raises the water flow on Michigan's longest river could prove disastrous, she says. The plan is to shore up the west bank with rocks and create an embankment that will protect the sandy bluff from erosion. Then they can remove the dam and allow the river to flow freely through the community on its way to Grand Rapids and Lake Michigan. The village had hoped to remove the dam more than 10 years ago, when they had lined up federal funds for the project. But those funds dried up in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina hit the southern U.S., Proctor said. In 2009, a California investor offered to buy the dam and restore its hydro-electric generator. But the offer died and the dam continued to deteriorate as the village tried to line up grant funding for removal. Last year, state officials began relocating an endangered mussel species that was found below the dam in preparation for the dam's removal. The snuffbox mussel was added to the federal endangered list in 2012 and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had to approve the relocation plans before work could begin on removing the dam. After years of suspense over its future and its dangers, Village President Jack Proctor says life without the old dam will be a relief for everyone. "It's pretty, but it hasn't been taken care of in 50 or 60 years." Jim Harger covers business for Mlive Media Group. Email him at jharger@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter or Facebook or Google+. 79458636.JPG In this Kalamazoo Gazette fle photo from July 1, 1999, A.J. Weber, of South Haven, is shown handing a cone to a customer at Sherman's Dairy Bar in South Haven. The business will celebrate its 100th anniversary on June 11 by selling one-scoop cones for 100 cent each. (Kalamazoo Gazette File) SOUTH HAVEN, MI - If you've got 100 pennies you can have an ice cream cone Saturday, June 11, at Sherman Ice Cream in South Haven. The business is celebrating its 100th anniversary with a Customer Appreciation Day, selling one-scoop cones for $1 from 1 to 4 p.m. that day at the Sherman Dairy Bar, 1601 Phoenix St. in South Haven. There will also be a raffle drawing for 20 free half-gallons of ice cream (which represents 100 scoops). "We're a tradition," said Bob Eisenman, owner of Sherman Ice Cream. "People have been coming to see us for years and, not being egotistical, when many of them think of South Haven, they think of Sherman's Ice Cream." He said he appreciates that. The 100 cents for a one-scoop cone -- which normally costs $3.40 -- is to thank patrons of a business that already gets thousands of visitors on Saturdays during the fair-weather months. "That's the whole point of the deal next Saturday -- the fact that it's a customer appreciation," Eisenman said. "We couldn't exist for 100 years without customer loyalty." "Sherman the Cow" will be on hand and youngsters will be able to have photos taken with the Blue Moo and Baby Blue cows. Commemorative T-shirts and souvenirs will also be available for sale. And Chef Len, of American Char in Zeeland, will sell savory barbeque pork street tacos. Sherman Ice Cream traces its roots back to 1916 when the Sherman family began delivering milk house to house. The company started making ice cream in the late 1940s and continues to make more than 50 flavors at the plant in South Haven. Eisenman started with the business 32 years ago as sales manager. He and his wife bought the dairy business about 25 years ago. The Sherman Dairy Bar employs about 30 seasonal, part-time workers. About eight others work in its manufacturing, wholesale and distribution plant. Sherman's ice cream parlor has been at its present location since about 1958, Eisenman said. It sells more vanilla than any other flavor, he said, but aside from that, its biggest selling flavor is chocolate chip cookie dough. "I'm partial to a couple or three (flavors) -- peanut butter cup and cherry amaretto," Eisenman said. MLive writer Al Jones may be contacted at ajones5@mlive.com. Follow me on Twitter at ajones5_al This Account has been suspended. The Yangon Stock Exchange issued a warning against market manipulation this week, after a series of large orders were placed for shares in Myanmar Thilawa SEZ Holdings (MTSH) only to be cancelled just minutes before the matching time. MTSH became the second company to list on Myanmars new bourse on May 23, and its share price had risen from K40,000 to K59,000 as of yesterdays close. First Myanmar Investment became the first YSX-listed company in late March. The YSX warning published on June 1 did not specify which firms shares the cancelled orders were for, but two capital market sources that asked to remain anonymous said they were bids for MTSH shares, and had originated from one securities firm. The caution notice warned traders against placing relatively large orders and then cancelling them without giving other investors time to react. This could mislead investors and qualify as market manipulation, the announcement said. According to Myanmars Securities Exchange Law, market manipulation is punishable by up to 10 years in jail and potentially a fine. Kensuke Yazu, an adviser at the YSX, said that bid orders had been placed and then cancelled some three to five minutes before the matching time on several occasions during the first three days of this week. It was unclear whether the bids came from one investor or a group, and if the intention had been to manipulate the market, he added. Placing and cancelling orders is known in financial markets as spoofing, and is used by traders to manipulate prices for their own gain. Mr Yazu did not know whether the cancelled YSX bids constituted spoofing or not, but said that the YSX had held discussions with the brokers concerned and asked them to explain to clients that such actions were not allowed. Rudi Rolles, managing director at KBZ SC Securities, said the cancelled bids were not made through his firm but had clearly been designed to mislead the market. Had the cancellation happened just once it would not be an issue, but the orders were placed and cancelled a few days in a row, he said. Shares change hands on the YSX twice daily at 11am and 1pm, when buy and sell orders are matched. Based on the collated orders the YSX determines a share price that allows the largest number of shares to be traded. Securities companies and the YSX provide screens that show current buy and sell orders and the estimated matching price based on those orders. This allows investors placing orders through securities firms to see how their bids or offers affect the estimated matching price for the next trading session. The large Thilawa bids raised the estimated matching price that other investors were shown. Because YSX investors must place orders with securities firms either in person at the branch or over the phone, when the MTSH bids were cancelled investors would have had no time to react to the change in the estimated matching price, said Mr Yazu. He declined to comment on the size of the cancelled bids, but because trading volumes are low at present an order for some 5000 shares might be enough to affect the estimated matching price, he said. Just over 4500 MTSH shares were traded yesterday, and the highest daily trading volume for that firm so far this week was 12,764 shares on May 31. In the first week after FMI listed, daily trading volumes hit 200,000. The YSX warning on relatively large orders was aimed at bids and offers large enough to alter the estimated matching price if removed, Mr Yazu said. The larger the total order book, the larger orders will have to be to affect the matching price. Specifying the minimum amount of time investors cancelling bids should give their peers to react was difficult, but less than five minutes was unacceptable, Mr Yazu said. Mr Rolles said that brokers and securities firms had to be vigilant against such behaviour, and that it was positive that this issue had been picked up. The onus is on us to educate clients and tell them we are not in a position to process such orders, he said. Five months after a fire gutted one of the largest markets in Yangon the building remains empty and the government has yet to give support to shopkeepers, despite a pledge by the former president to contribute to the cost of repairs. A disastrous fire the second in six years destroyed more than 1630 shops in Mingalar Market in early January, with stock in many more shops damaged by water when firefighters battled to extinguish the blaze. President U Thein Sein visited the market shortly after the fire and committed to providing temporary space for shop owners. The design for a fireproof permanent market would then be drawn up by the Myanmar Engineering Society, he said. The society has since assessed the safety of the Mingalar Market building and deemed it structurally sound, but the new government has not made any commitment to help to fund reconstruction, shopkeepers said. For months, shop owners have been unsure whether to look for new locations and start afresh or to hold out for the promised government-led plan. They continue to squabble over whether to patch up the damage and renovate the market or start over and build a new complex nearby. In a vote arranged earlier this week by the Mingalar Market Management Committee, a majority of shopkeepers favoured building a new market. Ma Darli Myint, who sells batik longyis, said, People voted to build a new market, but the committee says this is just one step to a solution. Some former shopkeepers sell their goods on the street outside the market, while others are renting space in a nearby car park. Ma Pann Ei, who sells textiles, said retailers need a new market as soon as possible, as the rental rates for temporary space are too high to be sustainable. The car park is not suitable for the rainy season, she said. Ma May Zin Moe who sells consumer goods said she secured a spot in the car park, but customers did not come. So we rented space in front of the [nearby] Shwe Mingalar Market, but it is very difficult when it rains. KBZ Gateway has teamed up with Asia Satellite Telecommunications (AsiaSat) and satellite service provider Hughes Network Systems to boost nationwide telecoms coverage and provide businesses and people with connectivity from high above the earth. AsiaSat is KBZs partner in the sky, while US-based Hughes delivered the companys new ground station in Bago, antennas and other technology, according to KBZ Gateway CEO Stephane Lamoureux. KBZ will use capacity on two AsiaSat satellites to run high-speed data networks across the country for government, business and consumer clients, the company said. The network can push 100 mega- bits per second, much faster than competitors, according to Mr La- moureux. It should get even speedier later, on a third AsiaSat satellite, due for take-off later this year or early in 2017. Download speed in Myanmar averaged 5Mbps in mid-2015, compared with speeds in Singapore at 131.84Mbps, according to Oxford Business Group. KBZ is targeting a variety of users for its networks, officials said. We will offer very secure network services with Hughes technology for banking and insurance, said KBZ Gateway managing director U Naing Tun Kyaw. We will build a satellite network to connect the country, and provide services for airlines, hotels and government. The company would also support telecoms operators, he added. Myanmars newly liberalised communications sector has meant the explosion of mobile connectivity, with operators turning on thousands of towers and laying thousands of kilometres of fibre. But you cant put fibre everywhere plus its costly and fragile, said Mr Lamoureux. VSAT not so much unless the satellite gets hit, and that doesnt happen, he said, referring to very-small-aperture-terminal technology, part of the system behind KBZs network. Satellites can help the internet arrive in hard-to-reach areas. Last year, Telenors roll-out in Rakhine State was hampered due to flooding and fibre delays, but the company had turned on 18 sites that relied on satellite connectivity, said a press release from October 2015. On the KBZ side, if a user of the firms satellite-based network logs on to Facebook say from Shan State their journey to the internet starts from a nearby antenna whose signal is sent to the AsiaSat satellite in the sky, back down to the companys ground station in Bago, and onto the web, via fibre through one of Myanmars internet operators, such as MPT, Mr Lamoureux said. Satellite is always going to be around, he added, providing the United States as an example of a country using VSAT every day. You get out of the main cities and thats it, youre on VSAT. Beyond helping businesses, KBZ wants to back Myanmars bid to reduce the countrys digital divide. Were going to look at how to use [telecom operators] capabilities and stretch them, said Mr La- moureux. We want to bring VSAT connectivity to the outskirts, and once we get there, try and bring the big players with us ... We want to help them extend their reach. The KBZ Group subsidiary also intends to set up its own international gateway in the future, which the company said will help connect Myanmar to the rest of the world. Camera-toting visitors to Myanmar typically focus on the most overtly picturesque subjects, such as golden pagodas, Buddha statues and ethnic minorities posing in traditional dress. German photographer Hans-Christian Schink has a different approach: to scratch below the surface and capture images that show places where everyday life happens. There are so many cliches, especially in the Western world, how people look at Myanmar in a way that doesnt have much to do with reality, he told The Myanmar Times. Western people very often see Myanmar as a place of traditional quiet living and people peacefully following their religion. But I think its not really true. But I also didnt want to prove the opposite. Im not a journalist or a war photographer. Im more interested in things that are in a way obvious but also have an underlying meaning. During four trips to Myanmar from 2013 to 2015, Schink travelled around the country photographing subjects that caught his attention. About 20 of these images will be on display at the Goethe Villa in Yangon from June 4 to 20. One topic of interest for Schink was town scenes free from the burden of famous landmarks for example, empty streets winding between unremarkable houses that could be located just about anywhere in Myanmar. Im working with a large-format camera so these are very carefully chosen locations. They are not done in the moment, he said. I usually dont have a fixed concept in mind so I dont look for specific places. I do a bit of research on the internet to get an idea of which places might be of interest to me. But then I have to do the reality check just walking or driving around and then suddenly finding something which fits with my inner image. Other photos in the series are meant to show how religious building and symbols are present within the rural landscape and the important role these places play in the social structure. A few images do include recognisable religious landmarks in places like Bagan or Bago, but even these differ from the usual tourist-promotion fare. I tried to show the Buddha images in a little different way, Schink said. I usually wait for an overcast sky and undramatic light, which is no shadows, no blue skies, no sun so, very neutral light. I tried to capture images that are a little different from what you can find in the coffee-table books. Hans-Christian Schinks photographs can be seen from June 4 to 20 at the Goethe Villa (8 Ko Min Ko Chin Road, Bahan township), which is open daily from 11am to 7pm. The opening ceremony for the exhibition is on June 4 at 6:30pm. Schink will also present an overview of his body of work at Goethe Villa on June 14 at 7pm. The states top Buddhist authority has said it will rein in the activities of hard-line nationalist monks participating in the Committee for the Protection of Nationality and Religion also known as Ma Ba Tha. Some of Ma Ba Thas ideas are aligned partially with those of Mahana [the Sangha] because they are under our guidance. But some Ma Ba Tha members are intense on religion and race and go against the committees stance, said State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee general secretary U Sandi Marbhivamsa. The general secretary said Ma Ba Tha should obey guidelines set by the committee. Some Ma Ba Tha members are fiercely against Muslims and dont follow the former leaders guidance. Actually they do not represent the whole committee, U Sandi said. No action has yet been taken against any Ma Ba Tha members because of weak implementation of the regulations, according to the monk, who said authorities can take action against monks breaking the law. The Sanghas announcement was made on the same day that Ma Ba Tha leaders sent letters of support to nationalist protesters in Mawlamyine in Mon State, who staged a demonstration yesterday against the use of the term Rohingya to refer to a Muslim group living mainly in Rakhine State. People gathered on Strand Road in Mawlamyine where they demonstrated by holding posters saying Against Rohingya. We are protesting to show the new government that we are against the use of the term Rohingya instead of Bengali, said protest leader Ko Than Zaw. He said the protest had been organised by nationalists who were not from a particular group or party, and estimated nearly 1000 people participated in the demonstration. The members of the new government must know that they cannot accept the Rohingya. If they do, they will be breaching the citizenship act, Ko Than Zaw said. Since the US embassy used the disputed term in a statement to express condolences to the victims of a boat-sinking incident on April 19 off the coast of Sittwe, protests have been taking place around the country. Protests have since been held in Yangon, Mandalay, Pathein and Taunggyi. Yesterdays was the sixth such demonstration. Letters of support were sent to the protesters by Ma Ba Tha chair U Tilawka and nationalist monk U Wirathu, as well as by the Patriotic Myanmar Monk Union and the Myanmar Nationalist Network from Yangon. A New Union-level committee established for Rakhine State began groundwork on June 1 when it visited IDP camps and held a meeting with community leaders. Six out of 27 members on the Rakhine State Peace, Stability and Development Committee visited displacement camps in Myebon township and Sittwe. They also met with local residents. The delegation included Chief Minister U Nyi Pu, Minister for the State Counsellors Office U Kyaw Tint Swe, the deputy minister for border affairs, and the ministers for labour, immigration and population, and social welfare, relief and resettlement. According to the residents who attended a meeting with the committee, the high-ranking officials promised development and funds for the state but refrained from sharing detailed agendas. They did not address questions about how the committee plans to create stability in the state. U Aung Htay, a leader of the Rakhine State Youth Network, said he did not understand why the committee was needed, as the state had its own government to deal with such issues. It is a monopolisation of power and it seems to undermine the capabilities of the state government, he said. The youth leader was apprehensive about welcoming a promised K70 billion budget for development in Rakhine and the establishment of a migrant resource centre, fearing it would be used to help people whom he referred to as illegal immigrants. The centres are reportedly being opened to help workers, including the large number of Rakhine migrant labourers. According to the Rakhine State information department, the committee members visited Kyaukphyu township yesterday and met with both Muslim and Buddhist communities. The committee went to IDP camps to observe the real situation and they have a plan to try for a national verification process, said an official of the Rakhine State information department who asked not to be named. Daw Aye Nu Sein, vice chair of the Arakan National Party, said the labour and immigration minister explained the national verification process. She added that it could help development of the state, provided it is conducted in accordance with the 1982 citizenship law. The main issue, she said, was to verify the citizenship status of Muslims who self-identify as Rohingya. If we can do that, it may reduce international pressure and improve state stability, she said. Ma Wai Wai Nu, a rights activist, said it remains to be seen how the committee will approach its difficult tasks. I think development without restoring basic rights for the Rohingya will be a recipe for apartheid. Any development plans that dont include restoring fundamental rights of livelihood, movement, healthcare, and citizenship to the Rohingya will only harden divisions in Rakhine [State], she said. According to an official from the State Counsellors Office, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had previously held a long meeting with the Rakhine State chief minister and various ministers on how to handle the situation in Rakhine State. Logging in Chin State is to be banned for the rest of the year, says the environment minister. U Ohn Win, Union minister for natural resources and environmental conservation, told Amyotha Hluttaw yesterday that he was preparing to prohibit logging for the remainder of the 2016-2017 fiscal year. The minister said 50 acres (20 hectares) of teak plantation would be created in Kyauk Sit Toeche forest reserve 3, in Chin States Kanpetlet township during the current rainy season. Chin State constituency 9 MP Daw Khin Swe Lwin told the house that logging had been taking place in the forest reserves of Yin Kwel and Kyat Mout hills, as well as outside the townships reserves. She asked whether there was any plan to stop logging in the township or, if not, whether logging could be managed more transparently so that local residents could more effectively protect the environment. In accordance with the 10-year logging plan that covers the period 2016-26, timber production will be reduced below the level of annual production of Mindat district, which includes Kanpetlet township. A list of forestry resources will be compiled before logging resumes. The districts annual timber production is 650 timber plants and 26,630 hardwood plants. The minister said that to prevent forest depletion and maintain forestry standards, the logging of teak would be prohibited in the area of no new generation, while 273 acres of community-based forest would be established in the state. Henceforth, logging would be carried out by traditional cutting methods, and officials from the state-owned timber enterprise have assumed responsibility for protecting the remaining forests from further depletion. Translation by Khine Thazin Han About 90 detained Myanmar workers living in camps in Malaysia are expected to come home on June 19, according to a civil society organisation. The Malaysia-based Kepong Free Funeral Services said the first workers are being assisted to return in time for State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyis 71st birthday in the second week of June. The organisation is working with the Myanmar embassy for the citizenship verification process. Thousands of Myanmar migrant workers spend months or even years in detention camps in Malaysia waiting for the government to confirm their citizenship status. Now we received some donations to send them home and we can send back about 90 people when the embassy approves, said U San Win, chair of Kepong Free Funeral Services. The exact number of Myanmar migrant workers detained in the camps is unknown to the organisation. We have not received any detailed list from the immigration department of the Myanmar embassy, even though we requested for the list to be confirmed, said U San Win. According to the Myanmar embassy in Malaysia, almost 2000 Myanmar migrant workers are detained in camps, with over 300 already having served their sentences but unable to return home because they have no money. An official from the Myanmar embassy in Malaysia said the embassy will urgently repatriate 135 women, children and elderly citizens who have spent a prolonged period in detention. Ko Kyaw Zin, an embassy official who is helping the migrant workers, said the embassy has promised to support meals, security and clothes for the detained Myanmar migrant workers and that the Kepong Free Funeral Services will pay for airfare. The organisation, together with the embassy, is trying to reach a deal for travel fees with airlines so that more workers can be sent home on the limited budget. We are trying to get more donor funding and special airfare prices so that we can help more detained Myanmar migrant workers, said Ko Kyaw Zin. At the end of April, the Free Funeral Services Society helped 34 detained Myanmar citizens return home. But shortly afterward, the group was blocked from entering the detention centres and was told to get a letter of permission from the embassy, which was requested but not provided. A Factory's management has agreed to accept the decision to be made by a township-level tribunal concerning workers demands to change their employment status. More than 40 of the workers are demanding to be reclassified as permanent staff instead of casual day workers so that they can receive leave entitlement and other benefits. Shwe Li Nan bag factory managers say they have the support of the majority of their 100 workers in the dispute. Protesting workers say the factory in Thit Cho Kone village, Patheingyi township, Mandalay Region, has breached an agreement it made with them. Manager U Thet Lwin says they had already agreed to work and signed contracts accordingly, but wanted to change their status after daily production fell following a shortage of raw materials. The problems began when production went down. The workers had requested day-worker status although they had signed an employment contract. We arranged to pay them the government minimum daily wage of K3600. But then they asked to be reassigned as permanent staff so they could receive a regular salary even though production was down. We cant work on that basis, he said, adding that the workers productivity had fallen below the standard agreed in a 2015 labour-management accord. translation by San Layy Peaceful coexistence is under threat from lack of education, low living standards and illegal immigration, a leading Buddhist cleric has said. U Nyanisara, also known as Sitagu Sayadaw, said the government should adopt policies suited to the specific economic and social context of Myanmar. I support peaceful coexistence with all people, but poor education, low standards of living and cross-border illegal immigration represent a challenge to this, he said. Sitagu Sayadaw said that while modern technology and rapidly changing social conditions could represent a challenge for the preservation of Buddhism, such developments could also help young people and monks achieve their ambitions. Warning that religion was on the wane in countries like Britain and the United States, Sitagu Sayadaw added that religious extremism could endanger communities in the Middle East. It was necessary to preserve Myanmars own religion, he said. The cleric made his remarks at a meeting with Lowell Dean Skar, a professor at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, on May 30, according to a statement released subsequently. He said the Sitagu International Buddhist Missionary Association was pursuing its missionary work in collaboration with three universities, 32 hospitals and a number of schools. The former ministers for mines and information yesterday shot back against allegations that senior members of the previous government had embezzled nearly US$100 million from a gems fund. The Ministry of Mines launched an investigation last week following a complaint over the vanished sum. The Gems and Jewellery Entrepeneurs Association alleged an account containing 93 million euros ($104 million) was drained, and reportedly left with just over 7 million euros ($8 million) when the new administration took over at the end of March. The gems association, which alleges the account was pooled from a 1 percent tax on official gems sales, has demanded to know where the money has gone, and who used it. Former mines minister U Myint Aung yesterday said the answer is obvious, and devoid of corruption. The money was used for environmental conservation and regional development projects, he said. The official complaint filed last month implicates a litany of Union Solidarity and Development Party officials, including former president U Thein Sein and ex-minister for the Presidents Office U Soe Thein, according to U Kyaw Kyaw Oo, an executive member of the entrepreneur association. U Kyaw Kyaw Oo said yesterday at a press conference in Yangon that U Thein Sein had taken 7 million euros and U Soe Thein 5 million euros [$5.6 million] from the fund meant to stage gem emporiums. The sums were specified in euros because jade and precious stones are officially bought and sold in Myanmar in euros, in part to get around US sanctions. I heard some people say this issue is meant to damage the image of the Union Solidarity and Development Party and the ex-president. That is wrong. We have no such intention, U Kyaw Kyaw Oo said. At a separate press conference in Nay Pyi Taw, also held yesterday, the ex-mines minister defended his former bosses. He did not dispute the involvement of U Thein Sein and U Soe Thein, but instead insisted there was no misuse. I came here to explain, as I believe I have a responsibility to help clarify the issue as a personal favour. No one urged me to do so, he told media assembled at Nay Pyi Taws Gem Training Center. In the complaint letter there are accusations that the money went missing because of graft. There was no graft, U Myint Aung added. U Myint Aung acknowledged that projects under U Thein Sein and U Soe Theins management had used a combined 12 million euros, but said the gems body signed off on the development initiatives as corporate social responsibility projects. Myanmars precious gems industry has long been rife with controversy and claims of impropriety. The huge revenue-generating jade trade alone has been estimated to be worth some $31 billion per year, with watchdog group Global Witness reporting that most of the illicit profit lines the pockets of the military elite. The disputed fund was started under the military regime in 2006 with the aim of financing gem markets. The former minister said the fund was also an effort to fuel regional development and environmental conservation since the precious stones are a natural resource that belong to the public. When I started my position at the ministry, the fund had just 5.4 million euros. Over time, I added more than 38 million euros, he said. By the time the account was transferred [to the new government] on March 31, just over 7 million euros was left in the account and that was what was transferred, he said. He listed several projects financed by the gems fund, including the 2 million euro Shwe Kyaw Bin market opened by President U Thein Sein in 2013 and the Gems Trading Center and Gems Training Center intended to develop end-product enterprises to increase the quality and value of exports. CSR donations were transferred to launch a department of fine art within the culture ministry, and 1 million euros was earmarked from the gems fund to support buildings for artists and joint ventures for entrepreneurs in the gems and jewellery trade, he said. Individual contributions from the entrepreneurs were pooled into an account specifically meant for public projects, an initiative approved at the 52nd meeting of the Myanmar Gems Emporium Central Committee in May last year, U Myint Aung said. Of the 6 million euro CSR fund, 2 million euros was pegged for projects around the Lone Khin-Hpakant gemstone tract and 1 million euros each for the Mohnyin gemstone tract, the Hkamti gemstone tract, the Mogok gemstone tract and the Mong Shu gemstone tract. A budget list circulated at yesterdays press conference tallied K200 million that had been donated for flood aid in Hpakant and K100 million for education in the township, as well as K200 million for a backhoe in cases of natural disaster in Mogok. Mani Yadanar Hall was upgraded and then CCTVs were installed for K180 million. For all the expenditures, the Myanmar Gems and Jewellery Entrepreneur Association was presented a proposal and the committee approved it, the ex-minister said. The gemstones are public resources, so [profit from their sale] should be used for regional development as well as environmental conservation, U Myint Aung said. While the ex-minister is not on the tribunal team, his former staffers have been tasked with carrying out the probe. But gems association head U Kyaw Kyaw Oo said that due to the three tribunal members ties with the former administration, their pending conclusion and dismissal of corruption allegations cannot be expected to be transparent. We believe their report wont achieve 100 percent justice because the tribunal is comprised of retired military officials. We cannot accept the investigation results of the tribunal, he said. The gems official pressed the new government to establish a fair investigative body comprising the Union Office of the Auditor General, parliamentarians, lawyers, engineers, conservation experts and members of the gem association. U Kyaw Kyaw Oo said he was alerted to the alleged top-level embezzlement scheme by whistle-blowers among the USDP and former civil servants close to the ex-president. He added that he is not afraid of being sued by the accused and will not back down until the truth about the cash is revealed. But U Ye Htut, former spokesperson for the president, yesterday accused the gem entrepreneur of launching a politically bent smear campaign. The complaint was filed to the Legal Affairs and Special Cases Assessment Commission, which includes most of the expelled USDP members. So we need to consider if there is a political root cause here that extends beyond the affairs of the [gems entrepreneur] association, he said. U Ye Htut urged the assembled members of the media not to believe dispersions cast about his colleague then-president U Thein Sein. I can guarantee the reputation of U Thein Sein, he said, and recommended the gems entrepreneurs sort out the case among their own association. Translation by Thiri Min Htun A Bid to define the term political prisoner would violate the constitution, parliament heard yesterday. Rakhine State MP U Pe Than, from Myebon township, proposed to the Pyithu Hluttaw that parliament define such terms as political offence and political prisoner. He told MPs, many of whom are actual former political prisoners, that politicians had sometimes been treated like criminals. Establishing an official definition of the terms could help protect them. Politicians try to steer the country in the right direction. Some were once victims of hate crimes, and we dont want that to happen again. A government definition could solve the problem, he said. However, home affairs deputy minister Major General Aung Soe said it would be unsuitable under the constitution for the terms to be defined in law. Under section 374, everyone has an equal right to protection of the law. It would be against the constitution if we brought back the system of classifying prisoners, he said. U Pe Than disagreed. Giving rights to politicians is not a violation of the constitution, he said. The National League for Democracy, which had campaigned under the slogan Time for a Change, should introduce a definition of the two terms as a contribution to preserving politicians dignity and protecting their rights, said U Pe Than. U Khine Maung Yi, a former Pyithu Hluttaw representative from Ahlone township, Yangon Region, said, The term political prisoner is officially used, so why cant parliament define it? When a politician is arrested and charged with defamation for criticising the government, thats a political offence. Its time the government fixed this. U Pe Than questioned whether Maj Gen Aung Soes reply represented the view of the government and, if not, called on the government to respond. The deputy minister said he was speaking with the approval of the Union minister for home affairs, but he would invite the minister to come to parliament and answer for himself. Im speaking up for politicians dignity and their rights, U Pe Than told reporters later, adding that the same question had been put to the last parliament, and the Ministry of Home Affairs had given the same answer. Translation by Zar Zar Soe Standing on the BTS as it made its way through central Bangkok earlier this week, I witnessed a truly uncomfortable scenario play out. Two very young women boarded the carriage I was travelling in. The one who ended up facing me was wearing a crop top and had a stomach that was unusually pink. Her feet bare were similarly lurid. As I stood there idly hoping her smoked salmon hue was the consequence of some debauched night of revelry involving food colouring and was nothing to do with carcinogenic sun overexposure, a man in the carriage, apparently an expat, decided he had the right to comment on the girls appearance. Both women had plaits and feathers in their hair; both were wearing leggings, crop tops, flowing floor-length over-shirts and broad handmade leather belts of the sort you might find on fairytale hero and boasted impressive false eyelashes. They looked different but not outrageously so, and not in a way that could cause any offence, particularly in a cosmopolitan metropolis like Bangkok. The conversion went something like this: Sleazy middle-aged man (old enough to be their father): What happened to your shoes? Very polite young Canadian woman: It is a lifestyle choice. She immediately turned away, but he laughed condescendingly and then persisted in attempting to engage them conversation. He asked them where they were staying (which they wisely ignored). Asked their country of origin. Shared his opinion on their nation. Then started singing O Canada before urging them to sing for him, which they politely refused to do. All the while, he was making personal observations about them to his male travelling companions, combining whispers with other comments we could all hear. The moment he started on them my hackles rose. Had either of the girls shown the slightest sign of distress Id have taken him on in an instant for being a sleazy, arrogant scumbag who had no right to objectify them in the way he was doing. (At least I like to think I would have.) But the young women seemed so in control and dealt with him so courteously I felt ashamed of my overprotective instincts. I wondered if it was part of their lifestyle too, that they were polite even to outrageous creeps. Either way, they were clearly far more composed and able to handle such situations than Id have been at their age. Or so I thought. It was only after he had left the train that they grimaced and asked each other in a bemused fashion why he had behaved like that. Their discomfort and unhappiness over what had just happened was obvious. And I suddenly felt very sad and angry with the man in question, of course, though he was a pathetic, if vile, individual who had just made a public spectacle of his own inadequacies. Mostly, though, my sadness and anger were directed at those who claim sexism is no longer an issue for women from developed nations, and who in doing so deny and invalidate the everyday experiences of women who are degraded and humiliated simply for being women. I remembered so many times when I was the age of those girls and I was made to feel uncomfortable in my femininity that a man, a stranger, felt he had the right to make comments or treat me in a degrading fashion, to make himself feel powerful. It still happens sometimes, and I still feel horrible about it inside and then berate myself because I think I should be old enough and tough enough not to care any more, or for not taking on such people directly. It is easy to get defensive on others behalf, but so much harder when it is happening to you. Thats exactly why such men enjoy the power play involved. What happened to those girls does not sit up there with the dramatic horrors of rape, brutality and explicit suppression I have too many occasions to write about in this column. Instead it was an example of the slow drip of misogyny and sexism that every woman I know has faced particularly those who sometimes do things that make them stand out. Those young women on the BTS seemed offensive to that man because they were women who dared to do their own thing. He felt the need to put them in their place because of that. There is no easy answer ending to such scenarios. I am not into handing the power for womens rights over to men as promoted by movements like He for She. But we all have a duty to call people out when they are being bullies, regardless of what gender their victims are. And when men see their friends indulging in that kind of nasty degrading treatment they should simply tell them to stop being nasty degrading people. As for women, we shouldnt have to change ourselves just because some men are disgusting. We do, however, need to let some of the politeness go. Cultures place different emphasis on politeness, and Canadians are notorious for it sometimes to the bemusement of this particular straight-talking Scot. But there is a deeper phenomenon, one that has a particularly powerful hold in Myanmar, though it is found pretty much everywhere and is ingrained from an early age. It teaches girls and young women they must be polite, and keep their thoughts to themselves. That speaking out is pushy and inappropriate, and will get you noticed in the wrong way. This is incredibly destructive. It holds women back in their chosen fields, and it makes them vulnerable to exactly the kind of verbal harassment those women on the BTS suffered. Maintaining dignified behaviour is one thing, but that man did not deserve their politeness. He also did not deserve their kindness in wondering about his motivation in behaving toward them the way he did. It was obvious: He wanted to degrade them. Kindness is another positive quality that girls and young women are encouraged to display, but again it should not be maintained at the expense of their own right to be treated with respect. Eventually the young women on the train decided to turn what had happened into a joke, pertinently observing, Of course he would get off at Nana in reference to a district of Bangkok notorious for sleaze. Humour is a useful tool. But sexist bullying and misogyny wherever it occurs is not a joke, and we must ensure that girls and young women grow up with the tools to deal with it. We must teach them that they dont always have to be polite and kind, and they have a right to speak their minds particularly to sexist bullies. The scale and severity of human rights violations in Kachin State is one of the worst in Myanmar, a lawyer told the International Commission of Jurists during a meeting in Myitkyina last month. Illegal large-scale land grabbing, harassment of landowners by government and business officials, and a lack of access to justice were the central complaints heard by the ICJ during the discussions with human rights defenders and civil society groups in Kachin State. Senior state-level judicial officials signalled increased readiness to discuss ways to improve the effectiveness and independence of the courts. Yet meaningful reform also requires revising laws to bring them in line with international human rights standards, respecting judicial independence by government officials, and securing corporate legal compliance through consistent application of the law and access to fair and effective judicial review. The conflict in Kachin State and northern Shan State, where over 100,000 people remain displaced since fighting between the government and ethnic armed groups re-started in 2011, is partly fuelled by the abundant natural resources. Eighty percent of Myanmars mining operations are located in Kachin State and neighbouring Sagaing Region. Timber, rubies and gold are plentiful. A report by international watchdog Global Witness estimated the value of illegal jade mining at around US$31 billion in 2014 alone. Yet hazardous mining practises are rampant while law enforcement is haphazard. Last November, the jade-rich town of Hpakant made global headlines when over 100 itinerant miners died in a landslide of mine waste. Mining continues to be notoriously unregulated, leading to another accident this week, with a dozen more killed and many more reported missing after a downpour triggered the collapse of a massive slag heap. At the same time, villagers near Uru Creek in Hpakant were protesting for the shutdown of a gold-mining operation, citing the dumping of waste, erosion of the riverbanks and obstruction of water flow. The ICJ viewed photos taken in a jade-rich area of Mohnyin township, to Myitkyinas southwest, purporting to show arson attacks on the homes of farmers. Their lawyers say a local company mobilised thugs to attack property and physically assault farmers for refusing to vacate land earmarked for mining operations. Local pro bono lawyers are putting together a case against the company, alleging it confiscated land in violation of Myanmar law and is responsible for the harassment of the farmers. The ICJ has provided lawyers in the area with training on strategic litigation for corporate abuse of human rights. In the Hukawng Valley toward Myanmars northwest border, farmers are facing loss of livelihoods due to agribusiness initiated by a Yangon-based conglomerate. Local activists told the ICJ that the courts have been reluctant to hear community allegations of forced displacement and intimidation by government and company officials. They understand the company has received permissions at the Union level, but say that the actual activities do not comply with the laws, which are in any event not enforced. Farmers allege that local police have threatened them with prosecution if they continue agricultural activities in the contested area. Myanmars system for land regulation consists of overlapping laws that seek to prioritise investment but fail to protect the rights of all land users. Rules governing acquisition of land exist, but are rarely followed. Insecure tenure rights, corruption and lack of enforcement means that farmers can find their land arbitrarily classified as virgin or vacant and then reallocated to companies or state enterprises. For the local people, secure access to land is fundamental to the realisation of a range of internationally recognised human rights, including to an adequate standard of living, food and water, housing and health. These rights are enshrined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, signed by Myanmar in 2015 but yet to be ratified or practised in the country. The government has a duty to create a legal framework consisting of land acquisition laws that are compatible with international human rights standards, and to enforce regulations that require environmental and social impact assessments. State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has stated that land reform would be a top priority for the National League for Democracy government. Amendments to laws should be guided by principles of public participation and international human rights standards, including the United Nations basic principles and guidelines on development-based evictions and displacement, and the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure. The law must also create a process for public purpose land acquisition based on the UN guidelines on evictions and displacement which ensures transparency and accountability in the process, and requires that all such acquisitions be demonstrably justified. The framework should also be consistent with the National Land Use Policy finalised last year following consultations with farmer networks and civil society groups. It should affirm the duty of companies to comply with laws and respect human rights. This is required to enable just and effective remedies for those affected by development projects. As seen in Kachin State, the approval of investments without requisite checks and legal safeguards, along with substandard enforcement mechanisms, undermines democratic processes and human rights norms. In Kachin State, as elsewhere, bold farmers and lawyers are challenging unjust laws and the arbitrary implementation of laws that violate human rights. Many see these cases as unwinnable due to executive and administrative control over judges and prosecutors, in breach of international standards on the independence of the judiciary and the role of prosecutors. But these cases do highlight issues with the content and application of law, with the aim of promoting regulatory change for public good. At the moment, lawlessness and impunity continue to enable human rights abuses and environmental damage. Land grabbing results in human rights violations. Local and foreign companies can, and do, flout domestic and international law without penalty. And authorities are too often complicit in crimes while courts are used to intimidate and silence victims. Strengthening the rule of law will be critical for enabling human rights and democracy in Kachin State. Vani Sathisan and Sean Bain are the Yangon-based international legal adviser and legal consultant, respectively, for the International Commission of Jurists. Mary Meekers report on Internet trends is always enlightening and helps shape our discussions. As usual, I will not be the one to give you a snappy summary, but a deep concern. Its a stunning statement to say that when it comes to Internet users, we are no longer number two, behind China, but number three, behind India as well. Think about the recent issues Apple had to deal with in regards to sourcing with Indian companies to open their retail stores.\ We were first and we came up with great products, and now the question is: will we soon be nowhere in overall strategies? Already Africa is doing amazing things in ecommerce and China is high volume but less innovation. Alacatel-Lucent was French, but now is Nokia, which is a nice way of saying the wagons were circled because Huawei impacted pricing. All of this is coming to a point, and that point is to strategize about India. India has become the focus for outsourced services. Companies like Infosys, Tata and Tech Mahindra are our brain trusts. More importantly, we have a history of having offices in India. Currently, there are more than 100,000 employees of major US firms based in India. Now, the reason I am on this rant is because I consider the biggest concern right now to be one of standards. China, which has often been accused of patent infringing, has some mobile standards and patents of their own. With Huawei penetrating the market, particularly in the rest of the world, and Snowdens revelations offering evidence that U.S. technology may also include spy ware, price still drives competition. Indias role as a cost savings outsourcer should also be viewed as a place to provide a platform for the standards the U.S. supports. In theory this is a great alliance, but India is feeling its growing power and could very well become the battle ground for 5G standards. Edited by Ken Briodagh Sorry, we can't find the content you're looking for at this URL. Tunis (AFP) - Tunisia's President Beji Caid Essebsi said he would support a government of national unity, as long as it included Nobel Prize winning groups the UGTT union and UTICA. Any change of government would require the decommission of the current government, then negotiations between all the groups involved, including political parties, unions and employers. Essid was already forced into a broad reshuffle in January, when the country witnessed its worst violence since the Arab spring uprisings of 2011 that toppled president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The economy has also been hit by several jihadists attacks, including one in June when 38 tourists were killed when gunmen stormed a beach resort. The incident has scared visitors away from its vital tourism industry. Essebsi did not rule out the idea of a new prime minister to replace Habib Essid, who local media has speculated was about to depart after only a year and a half in the job. "From what I have seen (of the current government), the bad points outweigh the positives, which has prompted me to... agree to look at a proposal to create a national unity government," he said in an interview broadcast on public television channel Wataniya 1. He said any government would have to include the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) and the Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA), which were part of a group of bodies that won the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize. The National Dialogue Quartet, made up of four civil society groups, helped save Tunisia's transition to democracy at a sensitive moment in 2013 when the process was in danger of collapsing because of widespread social unrest. But speaking several hours before the president, the secretary general of the UGTT, Houcine Abassi, seemed to rule out his union from any unity government. "We cannot take part," he told radio Mosaique FM. The UGTT remains "the force that unites all the institutions and the place of refuge for a whole spectrum of opinions". Tunisia's current government is composed of four groups including the party Essebsi founded in 2012, Nidaa Tounes, and the Islamist Ennahda party. Fighting terrorism, corruption and unemployment, as well as addressing regional disparities, would likely remain the priorities for any new government. "The failure of Mr Essid's government is that he did not confess to the people the situation in which he found the country," Essebsi said. 03.06.2016 LISTEN Folks, I have all along maintained that whatever happened to make Alfred Agbesi Woyome the beneficiary of the huge judgement debt paid to him reflects the colossal weaknesses of our state institutions. In several opinion pieces on the matter, I made it clear that some kind of "piracy" occurred to exploit the state. Although insulted by sympathizers of Woyome and all those public officials connected with the fraud (Betty Mould Iddrissu, Barton Oduro, and the officials at the Ministry of Finance, among others), I haven't changed my stance. I still maintain that something basically wrong happened to dupe the state. Punishing all those involved has remained a huge burden despite the clear judgement given by all the courts that dealt with the matter. Why it is so is not in question or doubt. It is all because no one is being honest to the truth behind the deal. And the state institutions aren't faithfully pursuing the matter because they are not designed to do so. In fact, this particular theft of public funds disguised as judgement debt payment is a huge blot on these institutions and the officials in charge of them at the time and now. We have heard Woyome condemn the current Attorney-General and Minister of Justice as a beneficiary of his kind of largesse. She hasn't reacted. How can we trust her to do the right thing when so soiled? Yet, her office has made a half-hearted attempt to retrieve the state's pound of flesh from Woyome only for him to do what has now shot him into a whole new level in the debacle. he is reported to have physically prevented officials of the Ministry of Justice and the Attorney-General's department and the Lands Commission from valuing his house at Kpehe, preparatory to having it confiscated and sold to defray the 51 million Cedis paid to him as judgement debt. (See http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Drama-as-Woyome-stops-officials-from-valuing-his-Kpehe-residence-444301). By going this way, Woyome has taken the matter to a new level of audacity. What next for the state to do? Is anybody being truthful and committed here? How come that no proper measures were taken to ensure that the valuation exercise was done successfully? Is it just a face-saving manouevre that is designed to deceive us? There must be a lot seriously wrong here that the government must set right. No matter what happens, this Woyome scandal has a huge negative impact on it and the earlier it does the right thing to settle it, the better chances are that it can claw back lost goodwill as far as public rhetoric on corruption is concerned. The undeniable fact is that all the noise being made by the political opponents about corruption---and the gossipping fingers being pointed at the government---can be traced to instances of this sort, not to mention the seemingly failed SADA and GYEEDA/SUBAH projects, which the political opponents are quick to point to as instances of the Mahama-led administration's agenda of "create, loot, and share". What more does the government need to wake it up? I still maintain that the circumstances surrounding this Woyome matter are despicable and only a conscientious effort to serve the interests of the state will reflect positively on the NDC administration. In critical times, serious and conscionable action should be taken to reassure the citizens that no one can tamper with the national coffers and get away with the windfall, unscathed. Even if the principal characters whose acts of omission or commission facilitated Woyome's fleecing of the state are not in focus, nothing prevents the state from doing everything possible to retrieve the stolen money from Woyome. What he has done so far only complicates his own problems. He is not stronger than the state and its institutions and must be dealt the blow that he deserves. Anything short of that casts a huge slur on the NDC administration and demoralizes Ghanaians. It ends up hurting our national coffers all the more. Woyome's desperate action to prevent his house's being valued is laughable. The lesson he needs to learn must be taught him now!! I shall return The Nurses and Midwifery Council has said it is willing to register the three students of the Mampong Nurses and Midwifery Training School who were prevented from registering and sitting for their licensing examination, because they were pregnant. The Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), ordered the Council to register all affected pregnant students in the upcoming external licensing examination in August, after renowned Human Rights Lawyer, Francis Xavier-Sosu, filed a petition praying it to intervene. But speaking to Citi News, the Head of Public Relations at the Nurses and Midwifery Council, Nana Boateng Agyeman, stated that the Council has no policy barring pregnant students from partaking in the external licensing examinations. I would want to set the record straight that council has no policy with regards to candidates writing examination whilst they are pregnant so this directive is quite unfortunate. Mr. Agyeman explained further that the school and not the Council prevented the three students from registering for the examination. We did not say we are not going to register the students for the licensing examination. It is the school that prevented them and it might be that their institutional policy is to prevent students who are pregnant from licensing examinations. Council ready to register the three nurses Despite the period for the registration of the licensing examination elapsing, the Council has indicated it will give special attention to the three nurses and register them. We will register them even though the registration for the licensing examination is over. We will treat this issue as a matter of urgency and register them. By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana Businessman Alfred Agbesi Woyome on Thursday prevented officials of the Attorney General's department and the Lands Commission from having access to his Kpehe residence for valuation. The state is attempting to retrieve some 51 million paid to him as judgment debt in 2009 and 2010. The move is part of a directive from the Supreme Court to retrieve monies illegally paid to him. But Woyome resisted the move, saying the planned valuation was illegal. Addressing the media on Thursday, Woyome said: This is an illegality because there is a process which I showed them which the AG is aware of since March. My lawyer wrote to them today because the AG wrote and said there was no process and they attacked the process which they know about so I am wondering why they want this media drama. I am not going to stand here for such things again. It will not happen again so I am serving notice. You should understand that I have had enough of this, five years is enough.I will not be provoked because I know this media thing. I still maintain that what I did by going to court was right and I encourage every Ghanaian to do that. Do not be afraid of anything he added Facts of the case Alfred Woyome was paid 51 million for helping Ghana raise funds to construct stadia for purposes of hosting the CAN 2008 Nations Cup. However an Auditor General's report released in 2010 said the amount was paid illegally to the NDC financier. The report triggered nationwide controversy with critics accusing government of misappropriating funds. Officials of the New Patriotic Party who were in government during the CAN 2008 tournament said Woyome did no work to be paid that whopping sum of money. The then Attorney General Joe Ghartey said Woyome was contracted to help in raising money for the construction works but he failed to meet the deadline. He said the NPP government had no choice than to abrogate the contract with Woyome. When the NPP left office in 2009, Alfred Woyome proceeded to court claiming his contract was illegally terminated and was demanding a judgment debt well over 2 million cedis. The government failed to defend the state. Rather the then Attorney General under the late Mills administration Betty Mould Iddrisu is said to have negotiated with Woyome for him to reduce his demand on government. He did and requested for 51 million cedis instead. The government went to court with a consent judgement. The court accepted and asked the AG to pay in three tranches of 17 million cedis to the plaintiff. The court was however emphatic that only the first tranche be paid until after the trial. The court again asked Woyome to present an undertaking that in the event he loses he would refund the first tranche of 17 million cedis but if wins the state will pay the two other tranches left. Betty Mould Iddrisu however decided to pay all the three tranches. Her Deputy Ebo Barton Oduro later publicly defended the payment to Woyome. Martin Amidu In 2010 Martin Amidu was appointed Attorney General to replace Betty Mould Iddrisu who was sent to the Education Ministry. That appointment and revelations in the 2010 Audit report changed the dynamics of the Woyome scandal. Amidu had Woyome arrested and charged for causing financial loss to the state. Two others, including Nerquaye Tetteh, the chief state attorney were also arrested. Whilst prosecuting the case, Martin Amidu was sacked from government under mysterious circumstances with Marietta Brew Hammond appointed to take his place. Civil Case Martin Amidu however proceeded to the Supreme Court as a private citizen and managed to secure a judgement for the state to retrieve the millions of cedis paid illegally to Waterville. But the judges stayed a verdict on the case Amidu brought before them because the matter was pending before the High Court. He later went on a review and had the court rule in his favour. Woyome was asked to refund the 51 million cedis to the state. By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana Follow @EfeAnsah 03.06.2016 LISTEN The Minority in Parliament has said it supports efforts to revamp the Komenda Sugar Factory. It, however, said there were challenges that could militate against the smooth running of the company which the government, in its bid to score political points, had failed to keep in mind. Problems Presenting a tall list of problems that, in the Minority's opinion would negatively affect operations of the company, the MP for Wenchi, Prof. George Gyan-Baffour, said the siting of the factory close to the sea could lead to expensive maintenance cost on the iron and steel components of the plant due to the salty sea breeze. 'This happened to the old plant and maintenance exacted a huge toll on the profitability of the factory. In those times, the plant had to be shut down every year to allow for the extraction of corroded matter from steel pipes. The factory ought to have been located a bit further from the coastline,' he said. Another issue, in his view, was the diversion of farm lands from the production of multi crop to the mono crop of sugarcane. That, he said, presented the possibility of insecurity in the area, especially given the fact that the new factory was 25 per cent bigger than the old. 'President Mahama, at the inauguration of the revamped factory, said the government was in the process of developing a new national sugar policy. It is a typical John Mahama-led government case of placing the cart before the horse,' he said. Polluted rivers According to Prof Gyan-Baffour, sugarcane farming, as well as the process of producing sugar, was water dependent, adding that reliance on the galamsey-polluted Pra and Offin rivers would challenge the survival of the factory, as the mercury-poisoned water might contaminate the end product. Again, he said, adequate irrigation of outgrower farms would determine the yield per acre, the sustenance of the interest of the farmers and hence the profitability and life of the factory. 'The primary canal to feed the farms with irrigation water from the Pra River has long collapsed. It has not yet been rehabilitated. How are the farms going to be irrigated? If the yield should fall or if world sugar price should fall, farmers would require financial protection to keep the industry working. 'In this regard, the start-off offer price of GH60 per tonne is too low to sustain the interest of farmers in the business. These are early days yet but we need to get the basics right at this early outset,' he added. Prof Gyan-Baffour said insufficient or irregular supply of sugarcane from the outgrower farms could jeopardise the capacity of the factory to engage in uninterrupted production. Harvesting cane Turning the spotlight on sugarcane harvesting, he said the industry practice was to burn the cane on site before cutting and transporting to the factory. In these days of rampant destructive bushfires, he said, it was important to take steps to protect the communities from the overspill of bushfire and also from toxic smoke that might blow towards the settlements. "In this regard, there is the need to provide fire tenders in the communities of production. These have not been done or perhaps not even thought of, yet it was found worthy to rush and inaugurate the project,' he said. Management The Wenchi MP noted that one of the reasons which led to the collapse of the Asutsuare and the Komenda factories in the past was bad management and wondered what efforts had been put in place to ensure that that did not happen again. He said the government needed to clarify the situation and ensure that good management was in place by, if possible, bringing in private sector partners to manage the entity. Power He said although the plan was that the factory should produce about 80 per cent of its own power, currently it was going to rely on the national grid. He noted that at this time of acute shortage of power and high electricity bills, 'tariffs will soon bite unless some arrangement on subsidy is made to cushion the factory'. Prof. Gyan-Baffour acknowledged the fact that the factory would provide excellent employment for Ghanaians but wondered whether Ghanaians should be happy about it when, 48 hours after the inauguration, it had emerged that the factory would shut down for six months and resume operations after that. "When the euphoria for reviving the Komenda factory has died down, when the political blitz has abated, when the razzle-dazzle of the Komenda Sugar Factory has departed, Ghanaians will realise that it is not yet time to celebrate; it is not yet Uhuru. President John Dramani Mahama ought to have given serious thought to these matters before doing what he did last Monday," he added. 03.06.2016 LISTEN What started as a big joke suddenly became a reality. In a desperate bid to stop the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari the heat of the 2015 presidential election, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, the Ekiti state Governor, did the unthinkable. He single-handedly placed an obituary of a living person on the front pages of The Punch and The Sun (January 19, 2015). What was his reason for this: Will you allow history to repeat itself? Enough of State burials. These he told Nigerians who listened to him eagerly. Suffice to say that many political analysts described the advert as one of the lowest moments in the run-up to the election. Trust Prophet Fayose he did his utmost to make his prophesies come to pass. He told us all that Buhari had advance stage cancer, even coming up with a medical report from Ahmadu Bello Teaching Hospital (I meant the one in Ikare, not ABUTH please)! Let us spare the Fayoses infantile theatrics for a while. Recently, a group that calls itself the Niger-Delta Avengers (NDA), threatened to assassinate President Buhari if he goes on with his intention of going to Rivers state on official visit on Thursday 2 June, 2015. An NDA member reportedly issued a threat to the President on his visit to the volatile region. In a phone monitored on the pirate Radio Biafra, the militants say the president will be signing his death warrant by visiting Ogoniland as scheduled. If the President is visiting the land with a history of oil spills to assess the extent of damage(s) done by multinational oil companies in the region, it still baffles rational minds to know those who really wish the president dead! I happened to be one of the people who wished the President will call the bluffs of these so-called militants who threatened to assassinate him should he attempt to visit the region. I was so disappointed to know that the president will later shelve his plans to attend the official launch of the cleanup of Ogoniland. The reason for my disappointed steams from the fact that, as Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces, the President should not be seen to be cowardly. This was the reason some of us supported him in the first instance. Is there any part of the federation that the President cannot visit? Can the so-called Avengers be more powerful than the Nigerian Army? What becomes of the morale of hardworking soldiers under the Joint Task Force (JTF) fighting the militants when his C-in-C is too afraid of assassination threats from a ragtag group? That also reminds us, why the president made the visit a public announcement when he could have appeared unannounced? Let us take the argument of these groups that they are indeed fighting a course on behalf of their offended ethnic groups. Let us assume for the sake of analysis that the NDA wants to right the wrongs meted out on them by the Federal Government in the past. To whose benefit really is the cleanup of Ogoniland when it is finally done? On getting the news of the cancelled Buharis visit to Ogoni, a colleague of mine quickly, in a desperate attempt to attract my attention, told me how he wished to disappoint me with the piece of news having barely resumed work that day. Buhari shouldnt be afraid of these Niger-Delta Avengers because they are smaller than Boko Haram. Buhari should have gone to launch the cleanup. I had to agree with him. While agreeing with him, I thought about the what the headlines will be in the online media. Coward President Buhari Succumbs to Niger-Delta Militants will be a good one on an anti-Buhari media platform. Is is just about the president not honouring his own visit, or is he just being bullied or misadvised? I remember sometimes last year when late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwes son, Chukwuma, was to be buried. The drama was so sensational that, just for some people to justify their arguments of Buhari hating Igbos, they wont mind insulting the late son of the Zik of Africa even in death just because of his friendship with the President. He was buried, Buhari did not attend the ceremony and they were happy! To these ones, as long as Buhari has no footings in the South East, the party can continue. On the assassination threats coming from the Avengers is really nothing new. If Buhari had attended the event, the worst that would have happened would have been some pockets of protests here and there just to show the world how unpopular Buharis administration is. Their own problem is that they see it as a taboo that a Fulani man (a tribe they told the world hates them) is the one to commence the cleaning up of the oil spills in Biafra land a feat our son could not achieve in several years in power. Does it surprise anyone that as Buhari was planning to launch Ogonilands cleanup brought our son back home from his hiding spot? Earlier this year, the fiery Enugu Catholic priest and Founder, Adoration Ministry, Rev. Fr. Ejike Mbaka, alleged that there were plans by unnamed people to assassinate President Muhammadu Buhari. According to the clergyman, many people were plotting to kill the President because of what he described as his campaign against corruption, saying, I am not a sycophant, but I want to tell you that so far, God is happy and he, who God has blessed, no one can curse. Many people are planning to kill Buhari there are many plans on how to eliminate his life so that corruption will continue, so that embezzlement will continue. When Mbaka made this statement, the so-called NDA that threatened to assassinate Buhari was still in incubation. They were waiting to see whether some of their paymasters, like Sambo Dasuki will be granted a leave to travel abroad for medical treatments or granted bail on his present corruption charges. The question some of us ask ourselves is whether Dasuki comes from Niger-Delta that these ones are avenging! The forces that has been battling the president before his elections are not giving up the fight as one may have thought. For these once, they will prefer a dead man occupying Aso Rock than for Buhari to withdraw from them their daily bread! Olalekan Waheed Adigun is a political risk analyst and independent political strategist. Email: [email protected], [email protected] Follow me on twitter @adgorwell. 03.06.2016 LISTEN The tension in the Niger Delta and indeed Nigeria must not be allowed to escalate further. This is time for dialogue. Let all parties agree to sit at the table and resolve those issues considered hitherto to be no go areas. Across party,religious and ethnic lines we can make concessions for peace. We can work it out. There is no need to war and fight over what can be easily resolved across the table. The Creator of the world has given us resources to exploit and guidelines to do it peacefully. If we have forgotten,it is only our greed that makes this place no longer a paradise on earth. There us no reason for government not to understand that people of Nigeria belong to diverse cultures and traditions to make them all different in viewpoints. What benefits one at a time may harm the other. This is why there is plurality and democracy to structure society into harmony and peace. Any government that fails to allow dissent and opposing views will not engender harmony in a group setting. To avoid such leadership attaining power,rules and regulations were enshrined in a constitution for which a leader is made to swear on assumption of office. The idea is to protect harmony in diversity. The rules must be followed. To ensure that it is obeyed,campaigns are made to be long and rigorous for political contenders. Gates for the position are placed high enough to select only qualified people. Then campaigns are tests for capability which must end in debates. Debates further give the electorate chance to see the attitude of their aspiring leaders to issues . But where an ingenious way is discovered to elude these steps during campaign a country may end up electing a wrong person and the stage is set for disaster.Disaster comes from governance mistakes which accumulate dissensions until it becomes uncontrollable.But we can check the trend at every point so that it does not escalate. Now is not the time to stick too much to right.we can bend backwards everyone and allow peace to reign while getting our heart desires. To the leadership of Nigeria at this point I say that your governance mistakes has got us this far. This is the time to backpedal and sit down for dialogue. No need to pull out federal might because the purpose of this might is the good of all not the good of few for then it is no longer federal! To the agitators, understand that there is always another way to achieve the same thing not just the way you think. Let everyone sit down to explore other ways to peace. Remember peace has no alternative. Whenever civilized Africans speak of world or international standard, you can bet your house it is not about origination out of mother Continent. Like political economy, it has to emulate Europe and lately the Americas. It strikes like a bunch of needles under your seat when men and women of timber and caliber with their children talk about their civilized environment outside ours. They do justify the tag of jungle unlike democracy with any fault, is the best. Luckily, our young people are coming out of this trance, though not fast enough because they revert back to privileged upbringing once in a while. The consequences lead to the rejection of Africas natural beauty. In fairness to the western world, they have produced some very dark models with short cut or Afro hair that has become appealing to certain segments of business. Lupita Amondi Nyong'o, the Kenya that won an Oscar stirred a debate whether she would have been chosen for that role in the first place, if the Director was not a West Indians son. Well, if the Director had been African American, African or White we may be looking at someone with a different complexion and straight hair. Every one of them could be forgiven because of their sense of beauty, but how do we explain the choice of Africans beauty or political economy? Lupita was chosen for a role, not as Miss World or Ms. Africa. A lady was chosen recently with almost the same attribute as Lupita Nyongo. The review from some of her fellow Africans was so crude, if they were white, one would label them racists. There was a study years ago about black and white dolls that was repeated on CNN recently about the preference of dolls by black kids. Sadly the choice of white dolls has not changed much. Lola Abeni Adeoye won Miss Nigeria USA 2016/2017 as a proactive pride for motherland beauty. Unfortunately some of her people at home that have been brained washed beyond redemption were surprised that Nigerians in the United States could be so gullible in their choice of beauty. A few of the comments were so pungent; one would think they were coming from gorillas dangling from NPA Building in Marina. This lady is so natural and beautiful, you would think she was specially made in heaven. It was so refreshing to see a proud, confident dark lady and well-endowed with short hair. Any more descriptive words may be sexist, suffice to say this is a beautiful lady. What these few people with bleached mentality were looking for was different from attributes those that crowned her were looking at. Since it was far away in America, its a refreshing choice and display of pride. Colo-mentality did not start suddenly, it took time. It is very disturbing though that many of our ladies do not feel comfortable with their own hair anymore. A lady told us how she snapped out of nonsense. One weekend she could not get a hairdresser and had a very important occasion the following morning. It was then she realized that her inferiority complex had gone out of whack or mind completely. She was scared and could not go out with her natural hair! People may be happy with a great deal of support and encouraging environment but the little discouragement or tiny distraction is what we must fight, so that it does not knock us down. There is no reason to be bogged down with snide little remarks out of abundant praises but our minds sometimes fall into that small crack. The fact is, as in this case, it says more about those who reject their own images in front of a mirror than the beauty they were looking at. While growing up, we used to give equal praises to dark and natural light complexions ladies. Nollywood pioneer, Hubert Ogunde sang praises of the dark and light skin. There were cases where we made fun of Fanta face Coca-Cola body. So were those suspected to come from the union of African mothers and sailors around coastal areas. Fortunately, our African world was advanced enough to realize these were not albinos. Even if they were, albinos were respected equally at home and in schools. There were some innuendos that they were even smarter. Unfortunately, we have since gone backwards. Most of the high complexion actresses get roles today because some Africans think they were prettier not necessarily for their skills. Mind you, these girls are our own daughters, sisters and wives. Some are products of 80s when beggars from Niger and North Africa flooded Lagos. Their brothers with light skins do not get any special treatment. In no way should the darker ones get special treatment either, with their chosen skills and professions. There is beauty in every color. Ours must not be undermined. Bleaching and using Brazilian or Indian hair to be beautiful portray a deeper problem that cannot be cured in the short term. It brings long term problems and disappointment when skin cosmetics fade away as we aged. Some of the girls have accepted the long term medical damage it can cost for their short term gains, no matter how little. We do not know which is more embarrassing, recognizing a light skin that used to be dark or reintroducing yourselves. It is worse for the men pursuing light skin ladies. We do not know which is natural or bleached. By the time you are hooked, most live with it and the babies coming out as dark as the mothers natural skin color. The joke about those who believe in supernatural when they are jilted by ladies with Brazilian or Indian hair, is to take a piece of the hair to Voodoo man. Those affected or struck down by Voodoo would be running from Indian or Brazil crying for a cure in Africa! We cannot lay all the blames on fair skin on women because they do it out of demands from men. There are men that are seen frequently in clubs where foreigners patronize. If they cannot marry light skin foreigners, they settle for the next best thing: bleached or natural fair skin lady. It shows our obsession and the rejection of self. So when they see a natural beauty in an African lady, they doubt their own image, claiming she not pretty. Pity! Luckily, most of African populations outside the big cities are still very much into their natural culture and beauty. They retain their festivals, traditional ceremonies and meaningful ways of life in the choice of women and styles that matters. Their hair-styles are still admired and copied. Indeed, the city people still appreciate the tradition wedding ceremonies before their English or American weddings. They are the aberration. African beauty refuses to die! http://www.punchng.com/hair-style-may-cause-hair-loss-study/ 03.06.2016 LISTEN As a matter of fact, various forms of electoral fraud persist in both advanced and emerging democracies. Ironically, electoral fraudsters often organised their villainous acts in different ways. For instance, the favoured candidates share of the votes can be increased through various illegal means, whereas the opponents share of the votes is suppressed using a number of sophisticated means. The series look at how election stealers can suppress or steal votes in a myriad of ways. The ravenous ways may include purging and/or caging of voter lists, as well as spoiling, ejecting, blocking, rejecting, "computerization," tossing, and stuffing of ballots(over voting). In no particular order, I will deconstruct the aforementioned rigging machinations in the weeks ahead. Stuffing (Over Voting) Stuffing boxes with phony ballots, and cheating with the counting behind the scenes, are the old-fashioned ways of rigging elections. Yet in contemporary elections, the evil act is still deployed by some fraudsters. For, if that is not the case, how come election officials would issue say 150 ballots and ended up with 170 at the end of voting? How do we classify such irregularity? Is that stuffing of ballots or influx of foreign materials? Either way, for me, such act is criminal and squeamish. Thus it is befuddling to many discerning Ghanaians that such abominable act should be given a nod of affirmation. In his 2013 election petition judgment, Justice Atuguba made some debatable observations including the definition of over-voting which was one of the claims brought up by the petitioners. The first is where the number of those who voted at a polling station exceeds the number of voters contained in the relevant polling station register. The second situation is where the number of ballots in the ballot book exceeds the number of ballot papers issued to the relevant polling station. Pondering over these two categories closely, I would think that the second category of over voting is rather an instance of ballot-stuffing as testified by Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the presiding judge delineated in his 48-page opinion. Yes, I assent to the fact that ballot stuffing does exist, but the big question is: would such squeamish plot not amount to over voting, going by Asiedu Nketsias unconventional definition of over voting? It will be recalled that Asiedu Nketsia infamously referred to over voting as the influx of foreign materials in the ballot box. How Bizarre? And, is ballot stuffing not a criminal offence? To be quite honest, I will forever be in puzzled countenance with anyone who acknowledges ballot stuffing as a mere tort, considering the surreptitious and ravenous approach by the suspects. Whats more, Dr Afari-Gyan admitted under cross examination that over voting may also occur in the event of the votes in the ballot box exceeding the number of verified voters. This, for me, is a poignant definition of over voting. For it would be easier to fish out the phony votes or stuffed ballot papers (Apologies to Justice Atuguba). In fact, there are attestations to substantiate the rigging of elections. The election body, in conjunction with the incumbency, may clandestinely increase the votes of the incumbent government through ballot stuffing; caging of the voters list; bizarre rejection of the opponents share of the votes; placing old and least reliable Biometric Verification Machines in the opponents precincts or strongholds. In 2013 for instance, a Councillor from Manchester in United Kingdom disowned his daughter who was his opponent in local council elections. The daughter, who represented the Labour Party, came victorious in the county council elections. However, her father who was the incumbent and the representative of the UK Independent Party uncovered electoral malpractices and subsequently reported the matter to the police. Her father found out that she had registered four voters from another country in her home address. Unsurprisingly, the Labour Party subsequently dismissed her. In another development, prior to the Scottish referendum, several Scottish newspapers reported that children as young as three to eleven years old were being handed with ballot cards. The newspapers alleged that the parents of the innocent children reported the cases to the authorities. I shall return, until then, the watchword is VIGILANCE. K. Badu, UK. References: Goodman, A. (2012), The Silenced Majority: The Stories of Uprising Did Chavez Pick Steal the Election in Venezuela? (www.gregpalast.com) Billionaires and Ballot Bandits (www.gregpalast.com). 03.06.2016 LISTEN Of all the most absurd stories, nothing can measure up to the inanity of the one bearing the heading, "USAID and WACD: Ghana to become Narco-State id Akufo-Addo Elected". In the first place, there is no such report emanating from the archives of USAID. This is a forgery by all means. We condemn the disgusting attack on Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP. Let us say that no political party is responsible for the acts of its individuals. WACD distances itself from the warping of the report to make it seem biased against Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP. Now, let me state, unreservedly, that the very conduct of the NDC goons that are behind this false fabrication is insidious, and smacks of Machiavellianism and gross contempt towards Ghanaians. The nation is in uproar over recurring fuel price hikes, unbearable electricity tariffs that were soon discovered to be the design of John Mahama and his group of bandits, failed NHIS, failed school feeding programme, failed promises of the President, failed NDC policies, continual embezzlement of the national coffers, unpragmatic governance, totalitarianism, cronyism, narcissism, government overspending, vote buying; and the list of NDC atrocities continues infinitely. The NDC has committed a grave crime by forging a statement purportedly issued by the USAID and an adulterated one released by WACD. This would have a debilitating effect on the integrity of the USAID and the US Embassy if steps were not taken to secure their names. How they can allow the criminals in the NDC to use them as puppets in their smear campaign against the honourable flag bearer of the NPP, Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo, beats my imagination. Fellow Ghanaians, the instances of cocaine peddling by the NDC are endless. Of recent memory was the Ayele Ametefe cocaine scandal involving 12.5 kgs of cocaine. According to media reports, this woman, who was given a diplomatic passport by the big guns at the presidency, was the mistress and concubine of many powerful men in government. For this reason she had unfettered access to all that she desired. To the extent that she was brought the cocaine while on board the aircraft in Accra cements that assertion. She got busted in the UK while still on board. The Ghanaian Embassy was soon fumbling trying to secure a deal for her. To the extent that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Madam Hannah Tetteh, came to her defense in the media seemed to confirm the involvement of the government in Ayele Ametefe's cocaine deal. Her property was said to be seized by the government and her accounts frozen, but that was just a hoax. They are in safe keeping until she returns to Ghana via a prisoner exchange programme hurriedly signed by the John Mahama administration to ensure her extradition to Ghana where she will have her freedom as before. What a prodigal gal of the Presidency! Before then, many cases of such narcotics peddling by NDC financiers caused media agitations that soon quelled down. This is why John Mahama always insults Ghanaians by claiming that they have short memories. An incident, allegedly, occured on board British Airways Flight BA 078 upon arrival at Heathrow airport, last week, when Allotey Jacobs was accosted by four Police Officers on suspicion of money laundering and narcotics trafficking. The British High Commissioner hastened to deny the claims like usual. That created a vicious tug-of-war between Ghanaian citizens and Mr Jon Benjamin. The nation has not slept over this story, although the ominous sounds of silence are beginning to disturb the serenity of the Country. Very soon, the bottom of this case would be unearthed. An NDC former Security official at the Kotoka International Airport was arrested in America in 2013 with loads of narcotics. These are the financiers of the NDC, a political party that assumed 29 of the 59 years of independence. Their regimes were riddled with inefficiency, theft, crime, drug deals, and money laundering to the detriment of the nation. It is only under the rule of John Mahama that deals in cocaine and other hard drugs have proliferated openly without shame. By the way, reliable sources from within the NDC suggest that the President's best friend (name withheld) at Adjiriganor in East-Legon, a suburb of Accra, is the biggest drug baron in Ghana, who supported and funded John Mahama in his vice-presidential and Presidential campaigns. Is it not obfuscating at this time that such a slur be made falsely on Honourable Nana Akufo-Addo by the NDC just to score cheap political points, albeit evanescent? #USAID #USEMBASSY #ITISCLEARJOHNMAHAMAWILLFALLNOMATTERWHAT 03.06.2016 LISTEN In October 2015, several African websites published articles claiming Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump described Africans as lazy. They reported that Trump made the comments in a speaking event in Indiana; and this caused a major uneasiness among the African community in America and across the continent. Many have called for Trump not to be voted into the White House because by this remark, he has displayed his dislike for the continent, and if voted into power, his foreign policy will neither be favourable nor in the best interest of Africa. This allegation was later found to be false, as there were no evidence supporting this rumour. Two websites in America, Inquistr and Snopes, published articles showing there are no video or official transcripts of Trump in Indiana on the day he allegedly made those comments. Inquistr for one stated that no major news outlet covered any story on a Trump-speaking event in Indiana on October 25, which indicates that the comments were fabricated. Having conceded that such comments were false, yet one has to stop and wonder: Would statements describing Africans to be lazy be a true reflection on Africans, as we have just celebrated the occasion of African Union (AU) Day? To further ask: Could Trump (assuming he were to make such statements) be drawing his remarks from experience, an encounter or observation he may have made among Africans in America or across the continent at large? On this subject of laziness, the Bible teaches two signs of a lazy man: he gives excuses, and he loves sleep. Africans generally have an attitudinal problem towards work. We love giving excuses for neither working nor showing up for work. Just think of encounters with some of our artisans: masons, carpenters, steel benders, plumbers, painters and the like. Such reveal the depth of this canker. After taking on an engagement, they are full of excuses for not showing up to work or for coming late. This problem is not only endemic among our artisans but among regular office workers across the continent. Sadly, people have to be forced and supervised before they work and give off their best. We have a large number of unemployed youths across the continent, and if one were to ask them why they are idle and not doing anything with their lives, they will probably give excuses about the unavailability of jobs. In all sincerity, this attitude depicts laziness, and it is only lazy people who give excuses for not doing anything. Africa to a large extent is the only continent which has a significant numbers of idle people in the name of no jobs. Right on our shores, we have strong and energetic young people wasting their lives away idle and sitting at home and on the streets of cities across the continent doing nothing. These are people with talents and gifts which could be harnessed, refined and deployed at the marketplace of work, but many of them are simply unwilling to yield. In most workplaces and offices on the continent, one could very likely see men and women who having reported to work are nevertheless idle, doing nothing. In fact, they spend working hours doing politics, receiving personal calls, shopping, conducting personal business, or reading national dailies. In several countries across the continent, religious activities are organised and held during weekdays and working hours, and one can find those who are supposed to be at work working, rather at such programmes seeking special prayers. Indeed, many have replaced work with religious activities, and some even close their shops and offices to honour such programmes. It is a worrying and discomforting spectacle to note that in numerous workplaces and offices across the continent, there are those who report to work but instead of working, sleep! Yes, our people love excessive sleep and can sleep for the greater part of the day. In a way, it is only in Africa that you can find people sleeping more and working less whereas in other parts of the world, they work more and sleep less. However, if the masses ought to face the jarring music that would jolt them from their stupor and indolence to meaningful avocations and economic progress, there must equally be a call for the celebration of the few who appear as outliers on the continent. These are the few who in spite of the inviting ease with which they could join the masses are nevertheless actuated to lend themselves to tireless effort, ceaseless industry, astounding versatility and dauntless persistence and perseverance, and thereby place their best strengths and innate gifts on the altar of meaningful and beneficial activities as they work towards a better continent. Without doubt, these hard working men and women across the length and breadth of the continent, striving so hard to build the economy of their respective countries, must receive lofty plaudits, high encomiums and pleasant approbations even as we have just marked another AU Day. Despite the grim prognosis that we are confronted by on a daily basis, it is refreshing and irresistible to cheer and celebrate the few who stand tall and have earned their indelible names and places on our scrolls of honour; men and women from the African soil who have risen to take positions in international organizations as heads for which they delivered and performed excellently, and did not (as lazy souls) shirk on the job. Indeed, one such shining example is Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, an illustrious son of Ghana. While that is a drop of good fortune in our rather unenviable chalice from which we continue to drink as a continent, and one that calls us to rise up and fix such pressing issues, as we endeavour to transform the not one, but the many proverbial Mensahs scattered like Harmattan dust and haze on a humid January day; we must hope with bated breath that those who are in a place of good fortune and favour will do all in their power to lead and spearhead the gallant transformation of our beloved continent. As a needed and salutary bluntness suggests, it is our laziness as a people that makes us continue to reach for the fading coat-tails of other advanced nations. However, if we would fix this issue as well as our desire and love for sleep and instead offer ourselves and channel all our inner and outer powers to a better and brighter continent, then our needed and pleasant change will soon break upon us. As a final suggestion, we must turn to an inspired prophet and sage who several centuries ago intimated divine direction to a people very much in need of change, saying, If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land. Are we as a continent equally willing? Will we obey such a lucid call for us to jettison our indolent proclivities and bestir ourselves to hard work and tireless and persistent effort needed to change this lagging continent? Angelina K. Morrison & Charles Anyomi 03.06.2016 LISTEN To all Ghanaians all over the world, and especially those living in Ghana, I salute you. You are all dear to me for the fact of being Ghanaians, irrespective of your political and religious persuasions. Ghanaians are understandably very obedient and lenient. However, some opportunists among us may be tempted to take our general leniency to be our weakness, if not our stupidity. The fear of abuse of our leniency and hospitality is what we must be aware of, and guide against, during these turbulent months leading on to the conduction of election 2016 which is probably scheduled for 7th November 2016. Fellow Ghanaians, as prayerful as most of you are, making supplications to God to come to your aid in times of difficulty, are you able to tell when your prayers are answered? God answers prayers in diverse ways. Some answers come out clearly for all to see. Some answers come out shrouded, only to take the deft person to unravel it. To the daft person, it will be a herculean task deciphering whether or not the answer to his/her supplication to God lies in the seeming puzzle unfolding before their very eyes. Many a Ghanaian has been suffering unbearable economic or financial hardships in the present day Ghana under the President Mahama/Arthur Amissah NDC-led government. It is only a few people that are enjoying better days under President Mahamas Ghana. This is undeniable fact, if only Ghanaians will be honest with themselves to tell the truth to shame the devil. God, today, Friday 3rd June 2016, is revealing to you through this publication that He has answered your supplications to Him about having a better Ghana where corruption will either be minimised or become the thing of the past. The practice of selective justice, abuse of power by those in authority, insatiably selfish pursuit and acquisition of fraudulent wealth will cease because the laws will work to bring about the prevalence of justice and then peace. How has God answered the prayers of the suffering Ghanaian masses, one may ask? He has given you the chance to live to exercise your franchise during election 2016. It is how intelligently you exercise your vote that you will have had your prayers for liberation from bad governance to a better one answered. Have you not been suffering under the presidency of His Excellency John Dramani Mahama? Do you or your children have jobs let alone, having decent jobs? Are almost all our new graduates come out of the higher institutions of learning not going without jobs? Is joblessness not conspicuously written across the forehead of many a Ghanaian? Have many people not had their businesses collapsed owing to dumsor (erratic power supply or complete power outages)? Is armed robbery not the order of the day to make many Ghanaians feel insecure in their own homes? Election 2016 is your chance. It is the absolute answer from God to your wailing and yearning for a change for the better to end your current but continuous deplorable conditions of living under President Mahama. Will you allow an opportunist, to come and feed you with sentimental tribal lies, telling you that you belong to a land demarcation termed The World Bank of a particular political party, to get your votes for free? As they come to you saying, for example, the Volta region is the World Bank of the NDC, and you coming from the Volta region get easily persuaded or carried away by that simplistic argument to fall into their snare, then you would not have been able to unravel that shrouded answer from God to you. While those who tribally play on your sentiments do enjoy, mostly through corruption and illegal amassing of wealth, you the unsuspecting poor Ghanaian continue to suffer the worst form of financial constraints ever seen in the history of Ghana. You and I, by exercising our God-endowed intelligence and wisdom, without allowing anyone to fool us, will readily realise how God has offered us the chance on a silver platter to liberate ourselves from needless socio-politico-economic sufferings. Why should Ashanti region become the World Bank of NPP? Have I ever heard anyone say Ashanti region is the World Bank of NPP? No, I only hear them say the stronghold of NPP. Anyway, such terms as the stronghold or World Bank should not be allowed to fool anyone. My Ghanaian compatriots, please let us vote to effect a change in the governance of Ghana for the better. We must have had enough of the ongoing economic hardship scarily baring its Dracula fangs (teeth) at majority of Ghanaians. If you find it hard to understand that God has already answered our supplications, and that it is only waiting to physically materialise on 7th November 2016, the Election Day, please come to hear me when I mount electioneering campaign platforms to deliver my messages of hope according as God has granted me permission. Rockson Adofo The inauguration of the Komenda Sugar Factory in the central region seems to have attracted the attention of all Ghanaians at a time the unemployment rate in the country has shot beyond measure. And there are expectations that it could serve as a platform for job creation for many Ghanaians. It is estimated that the factory has the potential to generate direct and indirect employment to over 7000 people. Though we share the excitement of the people, we want to caution all to be circumspect with the joy and high expectations since there are myriad of challenges confronting the project even at the initial stage. The success of the project will largely depend upon the plans the government put in place to effectively confront these challenges. There is therefore the need for expectation management to avoid disappointment when the unexpected happens. Ghanaians have seen the establishment of similar factories and companies by government, which have either been left to collapse or are facing serious operational challenges. Companies like the Pwalugu Tamato Factory, the Juapong Textiles and the meat factory in Bolgatanga have all had their share of mismanagement that has led to their collapse. It will be recalled that in 2006, under the reign of former President John Agyekum Kufuor, the factories were revamped, but could not operate to full capacity due to the failure of the current government to assist the authorities with funds to retool and pay staff salaries. As regards the Komenda Sugar Factory, we have to bear in mind that the factory is designed to produce its own electric power, but that can only happen when it is able to utilise at least 80% of its capacity. And as it stands now, it will not be able to generate enough electricity to feed itself and therefore has to rely on the national grid, which is expensive and can cripple its finances. Besides, the cost of electric power supply in the non-production maintenance season of the factory will be a major challenge to the cost of production. We agree with the Minority in Parliament that these are critical issues that should engage the attention of government even as we strive for self-sufficiency in sugar, other than the needless propaganda to create to create the impression that the Mahama government has done what no other government had done before in the past. Now, all it is very worrying that all indications point to the fact that government rushed to commission the factory at a time the required arrangement had not been put in place for actual take-off of production. More importantly, one wonders what could have informed the decision by government to commission the factory at a time no clear-cut scheme had been put in place for the supply of raw materials to feed the factory. Could the absence of raw materials be the reason for the closure of the factory for maintenance just a few days after the commissioning? Could that also be the reason we are being made to believe that production will only take place six months in a year to allow a six-month period of maintenance, as supposedly prescribed by the manufacturers of the production machines? There are fears in many quarters that the Komenda Sugar Factory could be an impending disaster. The government has a duty to prove the skeptics wrong. Athens (AFP) - The bodies of more than 100 migrants have washed up on a Libyan beach as a new migrant boat tragedy unfolded in the Mediterranean south of Greece on Friday. Desperate rescue efforts were under way off the Greek island of Crete where at least 340 people were saved after a vessel believed to have left Africa with hundreds of migrants on board capsized. The Libyan navy said meanwhile it had found the bodies of at least 104 migrants on the shore in the western Libyan town of Zwara, warning that the toll could rise. "The number of bodies retrieved Thursday evening was 104 but the toll is expected to rise since an average boat carries 115-125 passengers," said Libyan navy spokesman Colonel Ayoub Qassem. The names and nationalities of the drowned migrants, whose bodies were found on Thursday, were not yet known. In Greece, efforts were under way to find hundreds believed missing after a migrant boat capsized off the island of Crete. Greece's coastguard has already recovered four bodies. Coastguard spokesman Nikos Lagadianos said at least 340 people had been rescued, and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said the vessel "is believed to have left Africa with at least 700 migrants on board". Among the survivors, over 240 are on route to Italy, 75 to Egypt, 16 to Turkey and seven to Malta, the coastguard said. The Friday sinking marked the second migrant vessel found in that area of the southern Aegean Sea since last week, indicating that people smugglers may be forging a new route to avoid NATO ships. - 'Hundreds in distress' - A Greek coastguard spokeswoman told AFP a major rescue operation was underway, including four ships that were passing through the area, in clear but windy conditions about 75 nautical miles south of Crete. "The number of people in distress could be counted in the hundreds," she said. It was not immediately clear where exactly the boat had left from or where it was headed, or the nationalities of those on board. The coastguard spokeswoman said a passing ship spotted the sinking vessel off Crete. The coastguard rushed two patrol boats, a plane and a helicopter to the scene. About half of the 25-metre-long boat was completely underwater, the spokeswoman said. The deaths are the first in Greek waters since April, as a controversial March deal between the EU and Turkey designed to halt the flow of migrants using the popular Aegean route has led to a sharp drop in arrivals. Nevertheless, some 204,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe since January, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday. More than 2,500 people have died trying to make the perilous journey this year -- the vast majority of them on crossings between Libya and Italy -- as Europe battles its worst migration crisis since World War II. - A new route? - The most recent deadly incident in the Aegean dates back to early April when four women and a child drowned off the island of Samos. Greek tourist islands in the Aegean witnessed the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people crossing in flimsy boats from nearby Turkey last year, many of them refugees fleeing the war in Syria. But the number of people using that route has reduced to a trickle after the EU-Turkey deal, under which migrants landing on the islands can be sent back to Turkey, as well as the deployment of NATO ships in the Aegean. The IOM said its observations supported the theory of a possible new migrant route, reporting a "surge of new arrivals to Greece further south, on sea lanes connecting North Africa to the island of Crete." On May 27, the Greek coastguard intercepted a boat off Crete carrying 65 Syrians, Afghans and Pakistanis, under the control of two suspected people traffickers -- a Ukrainian and an Egyptian. The coastguard did not indicate if that boat, which the migrants said had left from Turkey, was heading for Italy or whether the smugglers had chosen the route through the southern Aegean to reach Greece by avoiding NATO ships deployed further north and east. The NATO deployment is aimed at cutting off the Aegean route previously used by hundreds of thousands of people fleeing poverty and conflict in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The Catholic Church in Ghana has pledged to intensify its charity work in the country through the Caritas Ghana brand it launched yesterday at the International Press Centre in Accra. Most Rev. Gabriel A. A. Mante, President of Caritas Ghana, lighting a candle to symbolise the official launch of the new body, prayed that the light would symbolise the recreation and serve as a reminder of the Churchs commitment to shed sunshine on the darkness in governance, ineptitude in public services and opacity in public policies. The Bishop noted that with the launch, the Church was taking her achievement to another level by establishing legal and institutional framework for her service of charity. By adopting the Caritas as a global and credible brand, the Ghana Bishops Conference has taken steps to protect the Caritas trade and service mark in Ghana, which is now a legally recognised organisation for the Catholic Church in Ghana. The prelate, who is Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Jasikan, stated that the launch of Caritas Ghana, introduces significant changes in standard and quality of the social services that the Church has rendered to humanity over the years, in areas of health, education, livelihoods, relief and incomes. Mr. Samuel Zan Akologo, Executive Secretary of Caritas Ghana, noted that the occasion was to unveil the Catholic Churchs plans, structure and framework to respond more vigorously and zealously the challenges of Ghanas development and public policy making, in the context of our faith conviction. He said by formalising its existence in Ghana, the Catholic Church signals to Government of Ghana and Development Partners, her readiness to domesticate and replicate the benefits of mutually rewarding partnership in the context of Ghanas development needs. According to the Executive Secretary and head of the Department of Human Development at the National Catholic Secretariat, the event was about partnership building and networking in the spirit of promoting effective development cooperation. This means the Church is adding and contributing to civil society activism in Ghana. It also means extending the opportunities and possibilities of existing cooperation for development to Ghana through Caritas, he added. Caritas Ghana, with the general theme and slogan: Good Works; Generosity, Sharing, has among other objectives the promotion of effective institutional structures and functioning of the churchs service of charity at National, Diocesan and Parish levels. It will also promote the Catholic Churchs Socio-pastoral work as a means of expressing the Gospel message and the social doctrine of the Church to the world, and equally contribute to the enhancement of dignity of the human person; especially the poor and the marginalised. This will be attained through their direct empowerment and representation where they are excluded. Caritas Ghana is also poised to consolidate the successes of the Catholic Churchs mission of charity and undertake social action research as a means to improve social-service delivery in the country. In a welcome address, Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Abbey-Quaye, Assistant Secretary General of the National Catholic Secretariat in Accra, explained that Caritas Ghana will be a new and innovative way by which the Church in Ghana will carry out the mission of service to charity. He stated that the new body will help people appreciate the remarkable work done by the Church and those yet to be done in terms of provision of social services to address the needs of the poor. The Chairperson of the launch, Barrister Elizabeth Anderson-Yebuah, expressed the hope that Caritas Ghana will continue to support the cause of development. Very Rev. Nicholas Afriyie, Secretary General of the National Catholic Secretariat, and staff as well as representatives from Catholic Relief Service, STAR-Ghana, UNHCR, European Union and the Spokesperson of the National Chief Imam were in attendance. Lagos (AFP) - Shell's Nigerian subsidiary said on Friday it was investigating a claim by the militant group the Niger Delta Avengers that it had struck another pipeline in the restive oil-producing south. "We are investigating reports of an attack on our pipeline in the western Niger delta," Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) spokesman Precious Okolobo told AFP, without elaborating. The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), blamed for a wave of bombings on Nigeria's oil infrastructure since the beginning of the year, earlier claimed responsibility for the attack. "At 3:00 am today (0200 GMT Friday), @NDAvengers blow up the SPDC Forcados 48" export line," it said on its Twitter account. The attack was carried out because Shell had refused to heed earlier warnings not to repair the pipeline, which was damaged in February, it added. The NDA, which says it is seeking a fairer share of Nigeria's oil wealth for the Niger delta people, has asked oil majors to leave the region. It has also attacked facilities operated by US firm Chevron, Italy's Eni and the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). The army said on Thursday that six people, including two soldiers, were killed when militants attacked a boat belonging to the NNPC in the region, but the NDA denied involvement. The deadly attack happened at about 5:50 pm (1650 GMT) on Wednesday in the Warri area of Delta state, which has seen a spate of attacks recently. That followed two claimed NDA attacks on two supply pipelines in Bayelsa state on Wednesday and a warning it would bring oil production to a standstill in Nigeria unless its demands were met. The upsurge in violence has seen Nigeria's oil production fall to 1.4 million barrels per day -- well below the budgeted for 2.2 million bpd. The Avengers are believed to have sympathy for a former oil rebel leader who commanded militants in the region in the 2000s and who is now wanted on money laundering and corruption charges. The Nigerian military has deployed gunboats and fighter jets to the creeks and swamps of the delta in search of the militants. 03.06.2016 LISTEN A GNA feature by our News Team Accra, June 3, GNA - Floods have become a regular annual occurrence in Accra, and are therefore not strange at all to the residents of Ghana's capital city. With the onset of rains every year they have to contend with the discomfort, destruction and loss that come along with flooding caused by torrential rainfall. However, the disaster that hit the city on June 3, 2015 was unprecedented. Not even the oldest resident could tell when a thing like that had ever been seen in recent memory. A combination of extreme floods caused by several hours of heavy rain, and an explosion at a sales point of the Ghana Oil Company (Goil) at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle claimed about 200 lives and displaced thousands of residents. Places that were most affected included the low-lying areas along the Odaw River channel, including parts of Kwame Nkrumah Circle, Avenor and Alajo. Also to be recalled were dramatic scenes in which strong flood waters swept cars and trucks into open storm drains that run through Nima and Kokomlemle suburbs. An official explanation by the Ghana National Fire Service at the time said preliminary investigation had indicated that flood waters may have sank into underground fuel storage tanks and displaced some fuel which got ignited by open fire which had broken out a few meters from the fuel station; then the flames burned in a trail along the spilt fuel back to the storage tanks to cause the explosion. Certainly, the June 3 disaster is one tragedy residents of Accra and the nation as a whole will continue to remember for quite some time. As part of its coverage of the first anniversary of the disaster, the Ghana News Agency (GNA) visited some of the affected areas and interacted with residents not only about their lives, but also about the lessons that could be drawn from the tragedy that visited the city a year ago. A very striking, emotional spectacle can be seen at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle where the twin fire and flood disaster was most devastating. Residents there have put up a banner with the pictures of the some of their deceased neighbours and traders who lost their lives and a phone number for donation to the only known survivor whom all refer to as 'Mr Lee'. Most of the drivers have put up posters with the pictures of their late colleagues pasted on their vehicles in commemoration of the anniversary of their deaths, which falls today, Friday, June 3, 2016. An unknown artist has also created a replica scene of that fateful night with the figure of a man, made from white plastic rubbers, carrying a black body, representing the charred remains of those burnt in the fire. Some residents and traders at the Circle who spoke to the GNA blamed the ongoing construction of the Interchange for the severe floods. According to them, the construction works had blocked the waterways thus causing the extreme flooding on the night of the disaster. Alex, who sells Bibles and other Christian literature close to the Ghana Commercial Bank, not very far from the afore-mentioned Goil filling station, said prior to the start of work on the interchange, there had never been floods of the magnitude witnessed on June 3. 'I have sold on these streets since 1991, from Orion Cinema to Neoplan Station and now at the Commercial Bank, there had never been such severe floods at Circle, but immediately this project began, the floods started', he said, and urged the engineers of Qieroz Galvao, the Brazilian company executing the project, to construct adequate drains and gutters to allow rain water to flow through easily. Alex bemoaned the incident, which claimed lives, some of whom he knew personally. 'The only survivor, Mr Lee is my in-law. His condition was pathetic,' he stated. 'Have they even given them the money they were promised? Where did that money go?' he quizzed. Another resident who wished to remain anonymous, said government should demolish the interchange as it was the cause of the problems. 'Tell President Mahama to demolish the overhead, it is the cause of all the deaths.' However, Moses Annor, a Jack hammer operator at the construction site, disagreed with the assertion that the construction had been a major cause of the flooding, arguing that the de-silting of the Odaw River and drains around the area prior to the floods had rather helped the water to recede. The Manager of the Shell filling station, located beside the Vienna City, who also wished to remain anonymous said the severity of the flood on that night was caused by the burst of two big pipes in the area. He said prior to the rains, the Goil filling station had been discharging fuel but had to stop when it started raining, as required by law. However, they forgot to close their valve, allowing the water to get into the underground storage tanks, thereby displacing the oil and pushing it to the surface to mix with the flood waters. He alleged the fire was started at the market behind the Commercial Bank and spread through the areas towards the filling station, attracted by the floating fuel. 'It worsened when it reached some Indomie sellers who were using gas cylinders which exploded from the fire and then got to the half emptied fuel tanker at the station', he explained. He said Ghanaians were quick to blame government for such disasters, although they were the cause of the problems with their behaviour, such as indiscriminate littering which clogs the drains and prevents the rain water from flowing out. A driver who plies the Circle-Accra route said most of the drivers usually parked at the Goil fuel station to wait out the rain, but did not know something like that will happen on that fateful day. He said most of them thought the fuel leakage was from the Shell station opposite the Goil and rather took shelter at the latter, hence the huge casualties. He said although they still worked there, they were more careful now, especially whenever it started to rain. 'We are all careful. This is where we eat so we cannot say we won't work there again because people died there. It is painful because we worked with most of the mates who died.' Madam Afia Serwaa, a trader at the Neoplan station near Circle said the flood waters filled the room where she kept the second hand towels, locally made slippers and other wares she normally sells, destroying them along with a fridge which she used to sell iced water. Grace Frimpomaa, an elderly woman who said she had been selling in the Circle vicinity since 1979, and had taken care of her two children and some siblings with the proceeds from the business, also lost most of her wares in the flood including rice, soap and other commodities. She had only been able to restart her business from the money her children gave to her. Joyce Pokua, who was also affected said she no longer bought their wares in bulk as she feared they may lose it again when it floods. Sellers at the Odawna market bemoaned the tragic incident on June 3, saying that sales at the market had dropped since then. They said the news of dead bodies found in the area deterred most buyers from buying the food they sold at the market. The traders said they lost all their wares in the flood, as they always left them at the market at the close of day for the lack of storage space. At the Kaneshie Market, another area that was severely hit by the June 3 disaster, traders have appealed to the Government and the city authorities to find ways of controlling the floods that are likely hit the city in the coming of the rains. Some traders including Madam Cynthia Larkai who expressed their concerns, said they had not seen the city authorities doing anything concrete to avert any flooding should it happen again this year. Mrs Esther Asamoah-Williams, a cloth dealer, said because the Government as the biggest authority with all the technology and the resources at its disposal, should rise up to the challenge and resolve the problem which was well beyond any individual's effort. 'We do not want be given loans to buy wares when they are destroyed by floods only to lose them again the next year when it rains and have to go for another loan we will struggle to repay', said one trader. The GNA observed that most of the traders at both the Kaneshie and Odawna markets had put measures in place to safeguard their wares, including the building of platforms to place their goods. Some had also raised the walls at the entrance to their shops to prevent rainwater from getting in. Throughout these interactions, one dominant theme that ran through was the almost certain anticipation by residents that there would be a recurrence of another flood disaster, and that they stood the risk of losing their property again in this year's rainy season. Celestina Alormatu a trader at Odawna, said the market still flooded when it rained because the wall around the big gutter behind the Ghana Commercial Bank was broken down to allow vehicles swept into it in the wake of the June 3 flood to be removed and had not been rebuilt since. This allowed the rain water to spill over into the market, flooding it. The other curious observation is that almost all the residents the GNA spoke to admitted even if tacitly, that they contributed to the perennial flooding that has become everyone's nightmare. Beyond that they are also aware of what they should do to avert such calamities - keeping the gutters clean, and refraining from leaving the silt and rubbish beside the gutters after scooping them out, as this debris would be swept back into the gutter to obstruct water flow and thereby cause flooding eventually. But then, the question as to how the residents have often failed to act on this knowledge to save themselves remains a mystery that requires deeper scientific study, perhaps. GNA A deputy Finance Minister, Cassiel Ato Forson, has taken a swipe at the NPP running mate Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, describing him as a desperate politician interested in misinforming Ghanaians. Mr Forson is therefore urging the former deputy governor of the Bank of Ghana to make the effort to research into Ghanas Income Tax Laws. According to him, Bawumia has consistently distorted facts as a result of sheer ignorance of basic economic and finance concepts. The Deputy Finance Minister was reacting to a promise by Dr Bawumia that the NPP administration under Nana Akufo-Addo, will immediately abolish taxes on pensions introduced by government. The government is imposing taxes on everything conceivable in their desperation for revenue. If not for protest the government imposed taxes on condoms and imposed taxes on cutlasses. Today they are imposing taxes in Pensions and allowances. Anything even if they think they can impose taxes on the air we breathe today, they will do so. ..We are going to scrap them in 2017, Bawumia told a gathering of students in the Volta region. However, Forson noted that Bawumia has been misled by media reports that skewed Finance Minister, Seth Terkpers response to a question about taxes on pensions and allowances. I have heard Mahamudu Bawumia as usual going round doing his usual ignorant propaganda that a Nana Addo administration will abolish the Pensions Act (2015). Bawumia is clearly exaggerating, Forson told host of OKAY FM Morning Show, Kwame Etikisie. He should rather read the Income Tax Law. I am throwing a challenge to him to show me which part of the act states that pensions are being taxed, he stressed. He said the Mahama administration is not heartless to introduce any new tax that will burden the masses and most especially the aged unlike the NPP which has a track record of imposing taxes that made lives unbearable for ordinary Ghanaians for which reason they were voted out of power in 2008. In case Dr Bawumia has forgotten, let me remind him of what they did on December 4 2008, just three days to the general elections. The NPP whose economic team was led by this same Bawumia who doubled as the running mate to Nana Addo introduced the National Pensions Act 766 section 112 (5) of 2008 that rather imposed tax on voluntary pensioners who took their accumulated funds before 10 years. This was clearly an illegality. And this was in 2008 just three days to general elections. This happened when he was running mate and a member of the NPPs economic management team. I can state with all the authority I can muster that, an NDC government will not tax pensioners, the President has spoken and it is final. Bawumia says NDC ministers dont read, he should rather do so by updating himself on the income tax act of 2015, he emphasized. He noted that the new Income Tax Laws exempt pensioners because pensions in this country are not taxable. On the allowances of workers, the deputy finance minister said the only thing the new tax seeks to do is to broaden the net and make the whole thing tax friendlier, adding that those allowances have already been in existence since year 2000 and all the Finance Ministry is seeking to do is not to tax new allowances because that is not the position of the ministry. Accra Mayor, Alfred Oko Vanderpuije has revealed that 108 families which were affected in the June 3 flood and fire disaster have received compensation from government. Speaking at a memorial service to commemorate the incident, the Mayor said a lot of lessons have been learnt from the disaster and a lot has been done to avert a recurrence. He said 108 families have been taken care of. We are a people who care and recognizing and noticing that members of our families were affected, we put into action a plan to identify our dead brothers and sisters. He indicated that the remaining families will also be compensated once they have been identified. A victim of the disaster receiving treatment Also, 15 affected persons who were disfigured as a result of the disaster have been identified and government support has been paid to them. All who were hospitalized had their medical bills paid by government, more individuals will be acknowledged and their support will be paid to them he added. Wednesday, June 3, 2015 will be remembered as one of the worst days in the life of Ghanaians. At least 153 pedestrians, motorists, shop attendants, food vendors, hairdressers, and many others lost their lives in a combined fire and flooding disaster at the Goil filling station at Kwame Nkrumah circle in Accra. Properties worth millions of Ghana cedis were destroyed in the inferno following an explosion at the filling station. Dr Vanderpuije said government is not resting on its oars, but is doing everything possible to ensure that all drains in and around the capital, Accra are desilted. It is important to note that after June 3, 420,000 metric tonnes of silt has been dredged out of the Korle Lagoon. That represents about 45 percent of the work that needs to be done in the Korle Lagoon and the Odaw river. That work is constantly ongoing. We have three dredgers sitting in the Korle and the Odaw river constantly working, 24/7. He added that massive clean up exercises have taken place and will continue throughout Circle, Abossey Okai and Kaneshie areas. Recommendations of the Goil Fire Investigative Committee, he indicated, are being seriously implemented along with fire safety education programmes to educate residents and motorists on how to handle fire. Constant ongoing desilting of minor drains throughout the city of Accra and other areas will continue to ensure that indeed June 3 has come to be a thing of the past, he noted. Zwara (Libya) (AFP) - The bodies of at least 117 migrants trying to reach Europe, many of them women, have washed up on a beach in the Libyan town of Zwara, the Red Crescent said Friday. "So far, 117 bodies have been found, 70 percent of them women and six children," Khames el-Boussefi, spokesman for the Libyan Red Crescent in the western town, told AFP. "We are going out again to search around Zwara and nearby beaches," he said. Earlier, Libyan navy spokesman Colonel Ayoub Qassem gave a similar count of bodies retrieved since Thursday evening, cautioning it was likely to rise since an average boat carries 115-125 passengers. People smugglers have exploited the chaos gripping Libya since the 2011 uprising that overthrew dictator Moamer Kadhafi to traffic migrants across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. It is a lucrative business for the smugglers who cram migrants into boats that are small and unsafe for the perilous journey to Italy just 300 kilometres (190 miles) from Libya's shores. Thousands of migrants try each year to make the crossing, but many drown when their boats founder. Qassem said that migrant boats leaving from western Libya usually set off from the port cities of Sabratha and Zwara, with passengers who are mostly African or Arabs, many of them from Morocco. The identities of the bodies found on Thursday were not yet known. Qassem said it was not clear if the victims had been on three boats that capsized last week off the Libyan shores. Survivors and the United Nations had said at the time that almost 700 migrants, including 40 children, who were on those boats had drowned. Some 204,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe since January, the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday. More than 2,500 people have died trying to make the crossing this year -- the vast majority of them between Libya and Italy -- as Europe battles its worst migration crisis since World War II. Qassem criticised the failure of the international community to deal with the problem. The global community limits itself to "counting bodies and issuing statements", he said. The Zwara municipality also regretted what it called "the strange silence of all those in charge", including Libyan government officials and NGOs. A statement on its Facebook page said Zwara "lacks all the means necessary to deal with such a problem". The Kwame Nkrumah Circle was packed with high-borns and low-borns who had gathered at the site where at least 152 Ghanaians perished in a flood and fire disaster last year June 3. Media networks camped there for morning shows and live reports. Photo: Multimedia's Mamavi Aboagye and Roland Walker had a public studio where survivors could walk in and tell their stories. Virtually every step you take around the area, you would be standing on a spot of morbid stories of horror. 'This is where that man died', a young man, Kwame, pointed at the side of the road. 'That is where the rice seller, Emelia was found', he continued his google map memory of the exact locations of tragedies. He pointed to a one-storey building next to the Goil fuel station where nearly an entire nuclear family was charred minutes after the gas explosion. He said an adrenaline-filled old woman in her 70's jumped from the building to save her life. She landed safely. Much much younger men jumped the same building and broke their legs. Some are paralysed today, Kwame explained the great horror of that night. Photo: An old woman jumped from this building He said a loud cry pierced through the smoke and the fire moments after the explosion as people screamed out their souls in a frightening anticipation of certain death. Within a minute, all the screams died down completely. They were charred and gone, he said. When fuel mixes with water, you feel a burning sensation in it. So even before fire danced on the waters, those swimming through were already feeling the heat. A man swam from one end of the flood heading to safety on the other end. He almost made it. He died. Photo: A Nigerian man got his arms severely burnt while he tried to rescue a little boy who was crying while fire ravaged his body. Although he managed to rescue the boy, he fears the boy may have died. He was too burnt. The Nigerian never saw the boy again. And so when the choir sang the popular hymn 'What are friend we have in Jesus', at the Rev. Ernest Bruce Memorial Methodist Church at Adabraka where a one-year memorial was being held, some families broke down. The church was one congregational pack of pastors, politicians, pressmen as well as men and women from the general public gathered to commemorate the deeply tragic disaster of flood and fire in the capital Accra. The President sat quietly through the service. He didn't give a speech. Perhaps a mental decision had been made that silence is golden. But it was not golden in the view of the several camera and microphones of the media whose expectations of a soundbite were severely dashed. After the church service ended with an offertory, the congregation streamed out of the church heading to the actual site of the disaster - the Goil fuel station. It was a wreath-laying ceremony. The Ga Traditional Council laid one and re-emphasized a warning that the gods have been angry and are still angry after 12 months since the tragedy. The Mayor of Accra, Alfred Oko Vanderpuije also laid a wreath. All eyes were on him throughout the ceremony. Many questioning eyes. The President laid a wreath on on behalf of the republic. All through the program, you would hear pastors, politicians and pressmen say 'never again'. A look at the gutters and drainages around the Kwame Nkrumah Circle however appeared to be saying ' you got to be kidding'. It was a day to remember how bits and pieces of indiscipline had punished us with 152 fatalities on June 3, 2015. After the service was over, the site where people were charred became one huge dancing ground as highlife music pounded the environment close to the GCB Tower. Like a pendulum, the mournful mood swung into merry mode. The partying was eruptive as the gas explosion on June 3,2015. The once tearful people became one happy people. They danced on the site where the stench of death was heaviest. Pastor Mensa Otabil has observed that Africans dance too much. When a child is born we dance, when we are getting married, we dance, when somebody dies too, we dance. Ghana? So when will we stop dancing and start thinking? Burkina is proud, declare the billboards along the capital Ouagadougous major thoroughfares. When they were first put up in December 2015 to mark the election of a new government, many citizens were not only proud, but also hopeful that they could at last start building the new Burkina Faso they had long imagined. The country had been through a lot. An authoritarian regime that had been in place for more than a quarter of a century was finally ousted in October 2014 in what the Burkinabe call the popular insurrection. The fire-blackened ruins of the old National Assembly building still stand in the city centre as a stark reminder of the public fury that forced then-president Blaise Compaore to flee to neighbouring Cote dIvoire. The subsequent year of transition was a troubled one, with important reforms but also missteps, punctuated by a failed coup attempt in September by Compaores notorious presidential guard. When elections were finally held in November 2015, they were greeted with relief. Observers certified them as the most open and democratic ever in the country. They also brought in the first elected civilian leader in nearly 50 years, President Roch Marc Christian Kabore. Hearing his pledges to fight corruption, pursue further democratic reforms and tackle poverty and hunger, many believed that things would at last begin to improve. But then came an unexpected attack on 15 January this year by fighters loyal to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, who had infiltrated the capital from across Burkina Fasos northern borders. More than 30 people, foreigners and Burkinabe, were slaughtered in the heart of the city. It was by far the worst terrorist assault the country had experienced. Once the initial shock lifted, a somber mood remained. Popular hopes did not vanish, but there was a sober realization that the road ahead would not, after all, be straight. Striking a balance When President Kabore was inaugurated at the end of December, peoples hopes were pinned on tangible improvements: lower living costs, expanded schooling and health care, jobs, prosecution of the corrupt, greater social and political justice. In his first speeches, the president focused mainly on how he would meet those expectations. Before his cabinet ministers were even sworn in, however, the terrorist attack made security a clear priority for both government officials and ordinary citizens. Yet strengthening security would not mean minimizing or postponing other goals for the population. In a French television interview, Mr. Kabore outlined the path ahead. If we do not ensure that there is development, hope and work for young people, then the ground on which terrorists operatepoverty and miserywill remain, he said. So it is important that while struggling for security, we must also work for the development of our country. And he pledged, as development efforts continue, security is being reinforced. Reforms are ongoing to restructure the army following the dissolution of the presidential guard regiment that tried to seize power last September. Not only should the reforms ensure that the military stays out of politics, as the president told his generals in early February, but they should lead to better coordination, an upgrading of arms and equipment and specialized antiterrorist training for security forces. Ouagadougou and the other main cities are on high alert, with armed checkpoints at key facilities, roads and hotels, night patrols, video surveillance and so on. France and the United States whose special forces joined Burkinabe units against the terrorists in January have pledged more assistance. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, during an early March visit, assured the Burkinabe of the international organizations firm support. The stakes are high, said Mr. Ban. The country is on the path of prosperity and long-term reforms, including that of the security sector. Safeguarding the country must not be left solely to those in uniform, says Herve Ouattara, a leader of one of the movements that helped topple Mr. Compaore. Burkinabe are organizing themselves in their arrondissements [districts] to watch what is going on and expose anyone working with the [jihadist] fronts from the north, he told Africa Renewal in Ouagadougou. Security in our country is not for the army alone, but for everyone. A struggling people Meanwhile the populations economic and social needs remain daunting. In 2014, according to recent estimates by the National Institute of Statistics, just over 40% of all Burkinabe lived in poverty, a rate that reached 70% in the arid north. That was better than the 46.7% registered nationally five years earlier, but still leaves the country one of the poorest on the continent. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that this year some 660,000 Burkinabe will need food aid and that half a million of the countrys children will continue to suffer from acute malnutrition. Although a slightly better cereal harvest than last years is anticipated, the government still expects that a third of Burkina Fasos 45 provinces will experience deficits, and is budgeting about US$52 million to assist the food insecure. In a policy speech to parliament on 5 February, Prime Minister Paul Kaba Thieba focused on a new social contract with the people. Besides improved security, it is to include resolute action to combat corruption (and thus conserve scarce state resources), measures to stimulate economic growth and investment, the introduction of universal medical insurance, and the construction of hundreds of new primary health clinics, secondary schools and teacher training colleges. The government will begin implementing a new mining code, adopted last year as required by the World Bank, for the release of $100 million in budget support for the West African country. It abolishes a previous 10% tax break on mining company profits and obliges firms to pay into a local development fund. In a country known mainly for cotton and livestock exports a decade ago, gold mining is now the biggest economic sector, producing more than 36 metric tonnes in 2014 and earning $1.6 billion in foreign sales that year. But the previous governments rapid mining push also brought major problems, including water contamination and persistent social conflicts around mining sites. The new code is intended to strengthen environmental safeguards, ensure higher revenues for the state and oblige companies to invest much more in local health, education and other community facilities. Monitoring officeholders The ouster of Burkina Fasos former leader and the successful November elections stirred expectations that the new authorities would not only conduct themselves with greater integrity and openness, but also support more democratic reforms. Yet activists are aware that Mr. Kabore and several of his closest colleagues long served in the old government before joining the movement for democracy. While acknowledging the authorities repeated promises to govern differently, many remain cautious and watchful. We are not giving them any honeymoon, says Ismael Diallo, spokesperson of the Front for the Reinforcement of Citizenship, one of the countrys main civil society coalitions. We have to be vigilant. Just a day earlier, Mr. Diallo said a number of civil society groups plan to launch a Presimetre (president meter), online, to periodically track how well the president fulfills his promises. When it is operational, the results will be available to everyone on the web (www.presimetre.bf). The activists sent a delegation to inform Mr. Kabore about the initiative. He said he likes the idea, Mr. Diallo laughed. But even if he doesnt like it, we will do it. Womens rights will be one area under scrutiny. While gender equality is protected under Burkina Fasos constitution and law, in practice, female genital mutilation, forced and early marriage and domestic violence are widespread, says Amnesty International. Decisions about pregnancy and marriage are often taken by male family members. As a result only 17% of women in Burkina Faso use contraception and more than 2,000 die in childbirth every year, according to Amnesty International. Despite an increase in women voters in November, only 12 women were among the 127 deputies elected to the National Assembly half the number chosen in the last parliamentary election, in 2012. The political parties generally met the official quota of 30% female candidates, but tended to rank them lower on their slates, so few were actually elected. To partially address parliaments gender imbalance, Prime Minister Thieba named seven women to his 29-member cabinet, including Finance Minister Rosine Coulibaly, a former UN Development Programme resident representative in Benin. Mr. Kabore has promised that in areas where the government develops new land for farming, between 25% and 30% will be allocated to women. Marie Madeleine Somda, a womens activist who served as a deputy in the interim transitional parliament last year, is disappointed but still optimistic about the future because women, especially young women, are beginning to become engaged, she told Africa Renewal, adding, They are starting to see that if they themselves dont do politics, politics will just be done to them. More generally, Ms. Somda is pleased to see the emergence of a generation of youth who are conscious, active, determined. Youth are becoming more and more responsible. They see themselves as a force able to take their place among decision makers. Africa Renewal 03.06.2016 LISTEN Is terrorism becoming the dominant mode of conflict in Africa? This is a question many are asking following the recent surge in terror attacks across Africa. Since January about a dozen African countries, including Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, COte divoire and Somalia, have suffered terror attacks in which thousands of civilians have been killed. The attacks at the beginning of the year in Burkina Faso, in which 30 people died, reveal a new pattern in that the attackers without any apparent base or network of support in the country, and with no clear strategic local goals came from elsewhere and targeted distinct tourist attractions with no known connection to either government or the military. The groups perpetrating these attacks are embryonic: their only definable characteristic is that they profess extremist Islamic tendencies. For this reason they respect neither political nor geographical boundaries; and, except perhaps for Al-Shabaab militants in Somalia, the attackers do not articulate clear local political goals. From what societal wellspring does this deadly militancy arise? And how is Africa tackling it? Now a key security threat In the 1990s, terror attacks in Africa were somewhat episodic and limited to relatively well-defined local contexts (in Algeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Uganda, for example). But now the emergence of groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria (with its regional reach), and the spread of Somalias Al-Shabaab attacks into Kenya and Uganda, have made terrorism a key security threat in Africa. According to research by veteran African security analyst Jakkie Cilliers, head of the Institute of Security Studies, about 37% of the 39,286 violence-related fatalities recorded in Africa in 2014 occurred in Nigeria, mainly as a result of attacks by Boko Haram. This is followed closely by the percentage of such fatalities related to attacks by Al-Shabaab in Somalia. In 2014, for example, Boko Haram killed 6,664 people mostly civilians in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad, not to mention the kidnapping of hundreds of people, including the 250 girl students of Chibok over a year ago. Thats more than the 6,073 deaths attributed to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In all, Boko Haram has killed more than 15,000 people and displaced more than 2.1 million Nigerians since it began its extremist activities a few years ago. Mr. Cillierss research shows that largely due to terrorist activities, armed-conflict incidents in Africa rose from 40% of the global total in 2013 to 52% in 2014. This is despite the fact that Africa has barely 16% of the worlds population. Africa currently hosts several terrorist groups that are affiliated with or influenced by Al-Qaeda. They operate across the vast expanse of the Sahel in Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria, as well as in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Somalia, Mali and Kenya. The deadly attacks on the Radisson Blu Hotel in Malis capital, Bamako, on 20 November 2015, which killed 22 people, including two attackers, and an eerily similar attack on the Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, on 15 January this year, which killed 30, have been claimed by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). African armies fight back Nigeria has spent billions of dollars and dedicated tens of thousands of troops to fight Boko Haram, as have other African countries, with significant outside support. These efforts have blunted the power of these groups. Since the election of President Muhammadu Buhari in Nigeria in March 2015, Boko Haram appears to have been pushed out of large swaths of territory it once occupiedbut the militants remain active in Nigeria and surrounding countries. In eastern Africa powerful armies from Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda are confronting Al-Shabaab in Somalia and Kenya. The presence of regional troops operating under the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) has prevented Al-Shabaab from taking over the country. Except for the failed bombing of a Daallo Airlines flight departing Mogadishu earlier this year, the group has lately been unable to carry out any serious attacks on the neighbouring countries. Who is a terrorist? Within the African Union, discussions about what constitutes a terrorist group are highly contentious. Countries in western and eastern Africa that are directly affected by such attacks are more ready to label militant groups as terrorists; southern African countries whose liberation struggles against white domination were routinely described as terrorist are invariably wary of the term. After all, they argue, even Nelson Mandela was once described by major Western powers as a terrorist. As a result the African Union has adopted a fairly convoluted definition of terrorism, describing it merely by implication. Armed struggles waged by people in accordance with the principles of international law for their liberation or self-determination, including armed struggle against colonialism, occupation, aggression and domination by foreign forces shall not be considered as terrorism, it states. The burden is therefore to determine the causes, determinants and course of each violent action or manifestation of extremism. Some experts assert that some terrorist acts are due to some unresolved local issues. Most of the attacks may be terroristic, but are the militants therefore terrorist groups by the oblique definition of the African Union? These experts believe it might be better to isolate each groups distinct social roots what it draws upon and what makes it persist amid the powerful forces ranged against it. Boko Haram started as a local rebellion in northern Nigeria and for many years remained so. It has roots in the widespread resentment of economic and social dereliction and official neglect in the largely impoverished northern half of Nigeria. The election of Mr. Buhari, a northerner, has undermined the groups appeal, which is partly why it has lost territory. Counterstrokes In West Africa the recent reorganization of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) by Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Chad and Benin to tackle Boko Haram offered immense hope in many quarters. The force was set up in 1994 by the Nigerian government to checkmate banditry activities and to facilitate free movement along its northern border. But an early setback for the force came in January 2015, when Boko Haram fighters overran its headquarters at Baga, Nigeria. After that the MNJTF headquarters was moved to NDjamena, Chad, and troops were increased. A new concept of operations, under the supervision of the Lake Chad Basin Commission, was also recently agreed upon, and in October 2015 the United States deployed 300 Special Forces personnel to Cameroon to help in the surveillance of Boko Haram and to support the MNJTF. News reports also suggest that US president Barack Obama might be considering increasing counterinsurgency activities against the Islamic State in Libya. Meanwhile the UN Security Council continues its support for AMISOM as well as for the African-dominated UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA)both of them combating militant activities. Militant attacks, including against peacekeepers, continue in both countries. Security Council resolution 2231 of July 2015 urged the African Union to undertake a structured and targeted reconfiguration of AMISOM to boost its efficiency, in particular by strengthening command and control structures, and enhancing cross-sector operations. All that notwithstanding, the 12 November 2015 UN report on the UN Integrated Strategy for the Sahel paints a grim picture, noting that terrorist groups have intensified asymmetric attacks in the north and have even moved southwards with attacks in the centre too, including in the Malian capital, Bamako, at the border with Burkina Faso and Mauritania, as well as in the south at the border region with Cote dIvoire. Despite an increase in terrorist activities, many believe that Africa should still celebrate the end of major warsin Angola, Cote dIvoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and elsewhere. The efforts by African governments and their armies, with international support, to defeat terrorism should ensure the important achievement of ending many wars is not undercut. Africa Renewal 03.06.2016 LISTEN The campaign for effective partnership and participation in education delivery is in progress. Every individual, agency or organisation is being billed to join hands so as to give off the best of educational services to the Ghanaian child. Quality education service delivery is, in fact, a shared task and it shall remain so. As the Ministry of Education and Ghana Education Service (GES) act as architects, supervisors and engineers of educational policies and programmes, stakeholders, including parents and guardians also direct, boost and assist in the implementation of the policies, programmes and projects towards meeting our national goals and aspirations. The benefits of proper education are enormous for parents and government alone to enjoy and since stakeholders like local and traditional authorities and non-state actors also need them, there is the need for all of us to get on board to produce them. Just recently, I produced the article, Effective partnership for quality education: USAID Learning in focus. But now, the focus is on Ahmadiyya Muslim Mission and quality education. The Director-General of GES, Mr. Jacob Kor, has just returned from Wa after participating in the 10th Annual Conference of Heads and Managers of Ahmadiyya Educational Institutions of Ghana (CHAMAEIG). The invitation was to have him speak on Quality teaching and learning outcomes in pre-tertiary institutions in Ghana: the role of faith-based institutions which he did honour. The six-day Conference, which took place on the campus of the Nusrat Jahan College of Education, also had in attendance Alhaji Maulanaa Noor-Mohammed Bin Salih, the Ameer and Missionary in charge of Ahmadiyya Muslim Mission (Ghana) himself as the chairman; chief of Guli and member of Council of State, Naa Seidu Braimah; Upper West Regional Minister Aminu Amidu Sulemana; Dimbie Mumuni Issah, acting General Manager of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Mission Education Unit in Ghana, among others. At the Conference, Mr. Kor once again lauded religious bodies, including Ahmadiyya Muslim Mission when he said, GES, and for that matter the Government of Ghana, does not only see religious bodies, including the Ahmadiyya Muslim Mission of Ghana, as a stakeholder but also as a kingpin in the task of providing quality education to the Ghanaian child. ...as we meet today to assess our performance and to strategise for the future as an association, let us be mindful of the fact that GES and Government cannot do it all alone and so the need for bodies like you to continue to join hands in order to improve the educational standards, he added. The Ahmadiyya Mission was introduced into Gold Coast in 1921 and by 1923, the first Ahmadiyya Primary School had been opened at Saltpond in Central Region. Few years after 1923, a lot of primary and middle schools were opened in all over the country by which time the Mission had also set up the Ahmadiyya Educational Unit to oversee the establishment and management of its schools, including senior high and tertiary institutions. The main aim of the Ahmadiyya Education Unit, according to Mr. Dimbie Issah, is to provide quality academic, spiritual and moral training to members and Ghanaian children with special focus on persons living in deprived rural communities. The Mission has been credited with the establishment of renowned schools and colleges like T.I. Ahmadiyya Muslim senior high schools in Kumasi, Asante-Mampong and Potsin and the Nusrat Jahan Ahmadiyya College of Education. The Mission prides itself for having provided school education to personalities like Adansi-Asokwa Member of Parliament K.T. Hammond, former Director-General of GES Michael Nsowah, Appeal Court Justice Kweku Gyan, former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana Rt. Rev. Dr. Sam Prempeh and the late Vice-Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Teachnology Professor Kwesi Andam. On its future plans, the Missions Education Unit, through Mr. Dimbie Issah, informs that, A Strategic Plan is being designed through the SWAT analysis. The Unit would continue to contribute towards the rapid development of quality accessible and affordable education in Ghana by expanding the educational facilities and programmes. For example, the Unit plans to increase the number of senior high schools especially, and to establish a unique university in the nearest future. Resource Mobilisation-human and material-are also being specially catered for in the five-year Strategic Plan. May Allah continue to bless Ahmadiyya Muslim Mission and gives it the strength for more wonderful contributions to the development of our nations education! The writer is an educationist and Public Relations Officer of GES. E-mail: [email protected] There was a major celebration in Accra on Tuesday night. A cross section of Ghanaian society gathered to mark the fiftieth birthday of Ivor Kobina Greenstreet, Flagbearer of the Convention People's Party. As the Chairman of the CPP mentioned in his charged celebratory remarks, this year also marks fifty years of the ousting of Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah. This was, therefore, a Fifty, Fifty anniversary. He spoke of his joy at reaching half a century and gave thanks to the almighty and all those who had supported him in his life's journey. Veering into politics he stated that the rejuvenation of the CPP represented a departure from the politics of the past. He said Ghanaians had become disappointed with politicians. That the national campaign message of the CPP represented a New Covenant (Apam Fofro) with the people of Ghana. That CPP stood for hope, justice, progress, truth, discipline and loyalty to offering opportunity to the people of Ghana. The celebration showed the rallying power of Ivor Greenstreet. People across the political divide as well as academia were present at the celebration. There was a powerful delegation from Ivor Greenstreet's Ga Mashie family, Professors and other academics from his Legon family including dynamic priests from the Christ Anglican Church of Legon. There was also, of course, a big delegation from his party, his legal profession colleagues, the People's with Disability Community and more. It was a joy to see people like Professors Agyeman Badu Akosa, Akilagpa Sawyer, Sam Woode freely interacting with younger ones like Kwasi Pratt, Kwabena Bomfeh (Kabila), Mr. herbert De Graft Johnson, son of former Vice President, Lawyer Ekow Hayfron Benjamin and others. The serious Ghanaian musicians Ben Jerry Telfer and Okyerema Kontoh provided soothing music on Kora and Kete drum. There were of course many speeches but the talk of the night was the eulogy of Ivor's mother Professor Miranda Greenstreet. She, of course, as she made clear, as a lead Domestic Observer of Ghanaian elections she would remain committed to that course. Above all, however, she is a mother and she is very obviously justly proud of her son's present position as Flagbearer. She told a riveting story about when she was pregnant with Ivor. Nkrumah had just been overthrown. She was ordered into detention by the coup makers. Her crime was that she was on the lead staff of the Institute of Adult Education which organises the famous New Year School. The staff of the Institute of Adult Education were ordered into Police detention because it was deemed that the New Year School had become pro-Nkrumah. Of course, the People's Educational Association, a Civil Society organisation which was engendered by the Institute of Adult Education, as the leading political historian Dennis Austin reminds us, was very broadly pro-CPP. In her easy, powerful delivery befitting the worthy Professor that she is, Professor Miranda Greenstreet said that she refused to report to the Police. She refused because she strongly believed that it was an infringement on her academic freedom. The passion with which she conveyed this point on Tuesday night underlined the fact that indeed the acorn does not fall too far away from the tree. When it was time for her son Ivor Kobina Greenstreet to speak, the controlled fire and logic of his speech showed that he is indeed the son of Ga Mashie and indeed of the Professor. We attempted to send a notification to your email address but we were unable to verify that you provided a valid email address. 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Otherwise, you may click here to disable notifications and hide this message. you are here: current-affairs-trends Nita Ambani nominated to International Olympic Committee The Switzerland-based IOC is the supreme authority of the Olympic Movement and is responsible for holding of the summer and winter Olympics and Paralympics. business Stocks that should be on your radar Some of the stocks that should be on your radar are: UPL, PI Industries, Bayer CropScience, Kaveri Seed Company, Rallis India, Dhanuka Agritech, Insecticides India, Idea Cellular, Power Finance Corporation, NMDC, Dr Reddys Laboratories, Castrol India, TVS Motor Company, Hindustan Unilever. business Bull's Eye: Buy Tata Global, UPL, Wockhardt, Voltas, Divis Lab Manish Sharma of derivativetradingresearch.com is of the view that one may buy Tata Global with a target of Rs 128. business Remain invested in ONGC, says Gaurang Shah Gaurang Shah of Geojit BNP Paribas is of the view that one may remain invested in ONGC. June 03, 2016 Open Thread 2016-20 News & views ... Posted by b on June 3, 2016 at 18:33 UTC | Permalink Comments next page My wife and I attended Mayor Steve Tates State of the City address Feb. 25. I was disappointed to see the low turnout of residents at this very important event. The speech was very long on vague, lofty goals and very short on budgetary specifics related to these goals. That opinion aside, what really irked me were a couple of statements noted in the handout flyer distributed to the attendees: The City is committed to engaging the community and being responsible stewards of public resources and one of the ongoing priorities is Preserving and cultivating public trust. In my opinion, there have been many questionable misuses and squandering of public resources, with a great number involving the myriad of wasteful downtown projects. (The $3.6 million Third Street Promenade comes to mind along with the recent $200,000 Spider.) But one of the most flagrant, if not at least questionable spending decisions, involve the compensation package and perks given to our City Manager. As reported by the Morgan Hill Times July 17, 2014, the City Council not only gave Steve Rymer a 3-percent raise after only one year of service, but they also voted July 2 of that year to give him a 30-year, $900,000 home purchase loan at 3 percent interest with no points or other mortgage fees that average homebuyers pay. Mayor Steve Tate justified this decision because we could provide incentives in terms of his longevity here in Morgan Hill. I think a $200,000-plus salary with generous municipal benefits would provide more than a bit of incentive to quite a number of qualified, experienced city managers. Then, even more outrageously, after four closed session meetings, the City Council on March 18, 2015 announced and approved giving the City Manager a $110,000 home improvement loan at a below market rate of 5 percent, in addition to a $3,200 per year raise. City resident Doug Muirhead justifiably voiced concerns regarding this at the sparsely attended council meeting, but it was a done deal regardless. More recently, as reported by the Morgan Hill Times, an additional $10,800 raise was approved 4-0 by the City Council in its March 2 meeting. Mayor Tate was absent. This all could be seen as blatant cronyism, if not at least excessive misuse of public funds. Besides, how is someone earning $228,000 per year not able to manage securing a $900,000 mortgage from a private lender? My purpose is not to disparage Mr. Rymer or his work, but to point out that without public input, those we entrust with our hard-earned money often spend it very unwisely. Our streets are in disrepair, our water and waste infrastructures are soon to be overburdened and our quality of life in this town will suffer. This is not the time to be spending excessively on questionable artwork, pop-up parks or extravagant public payrolls. Its disheartening that more Morgan Hill residents dont get involved in city affairs unless it affects their immediate neighborhood, but city planning and spending affects us all eventually. Other than city officials and employees, there were maybe a handful of residents that attended the meeting in addition to a couple of dozen high school students there getting their civics certificates. The citys outreach program is weak at best. These important issues should be announced to all residents by either citywide mailings or methods other than the Nextdoor or City of Morgan Hill websites, which I doubt many people visit, or short blurbs in the local paper. I encourage Morgan Hill citizens to make an effort to get involved and come see and hear how their city operates and spends their resources before making their choices for city officials in the November 2016 election. Ask for specifics and dont just accept lofty platitudes. Its your money theyll be spending. Zenon Komarczyk Morgan Hill The dramatic pace of advancement that has brought the advent of automation and big data has revolutionized just about every industry, and an innovative commercial property player appears to be preparing to take the next big step for the real estate segment. The Toronto-based firm Altus Group Ltd., which formerly operated as a commercial real estate consultancy for Canadian clients, has reorganized itself into Altus Analytics in a bid to establish an international standard for commercial real estate portfolio management. Companies are looking at investing in real estate on a global basis, and thats a phenomenon that is going on at a time when there really isnt a good solution to managing real estate on a global basis, Altus CEO Robert Courteau told Susan Smith of The Globe and Mail. Altus Analytics would be designed to facilitate attribution analysis, which would show how various asset types are doing in different areas. The system would also allow clients to monitor their properties quarterly performance, especially when compared to industry averages. Its fairly sophisticated and were first to market with that ability. Nobody else can provide that level of detail, Courteau stated. The executive noted that such a platform would permit greater transparency and efficiency for large institutions like banks and pension funds, which are now introducing themselves as new players in the global real estate sector. We dont want to just be a service provider, we dont want to be just a software provider and we dont want to be just a data provider. We want to have an information platform where the CEO has the tools, data and software to be able to manage portfolios globally, he explained. One big bank has suggested raising the minimum down payment for mortgages to 10%. Brokers weigh in.Cranking up the requirements on homes priced under $500,000 would have zero impact on average home prices, zero impact on the market as a whole, but a devastating impact on a few hundred, perhaps even a few thousand families and individuals across the country who cannot access gifted funds, who have scrimped and saved to get to 5% - only to have the goalposts moved and to what end? Dustan Woodhouse , a broker with Dominion Lending Centres , Canadian Mortgage Experts, said. To protect those dastardly savers from driving up prices of sub 500K properties?The comment came in response to National Bank of Canada Chief Executive Officer Louis Vachons claim that 10% minimum mortgage requirements could help cool spiking housing prices.For the longest time, we had minimum 10 percent cash down and we had 25-year maximum amortization and that worked very well," Vachon, told Bloomberg. I think over a period of time thats where we need to gravitate back to."However, Woodhouse argues such measures would cool a part of the market that doesnt need it. That being targeted by first-time buyers.[First-time buyers] are the ones who want their hands around the lowest rung on the homeownership ladder, Woodhouse told MortgageBrokerNews.ca, in reference to homes costing less than $500,000. And they want to raise that ladder?Some may argue Vachon, a big bank executive, is out-of-touch with just how difficult it is for some to break into the market as a first-time buyer. That extra 10% could delay homeownership for years for certain people.However, not all brokers believe raising the minimum to 10% would have a major impact.Most clients that come up with 5% can come up with 10%, Iain MacFadyen, a broker with Dominion Lending Centres in British Columbia told MortgageBrokerNews.ca.However, MacFadyen did acknowledge that first-time buyers would be the most affected. Local hula group inspires global connections When the pandemic ushered everyone indoors, Moorpark resident and longtime dancer Lisa Rauschenberger decided to get people back outsidesocially distanced, of course. She began to hold weekly hula lessons at... Teens face high stakes in the Oval Office A press room befitting Americas commander in chief was set up inside the Reagan Library in Simi Valley. Journalists and others gathered inside. Ladies and gentlemen, I need you all... Tigers soon to prowl in new enclosure The brand-new Bengal tiger exhibit at Americas Teaching Zoo at Moorpark College is nearly complete, and some other animals hangouts are getting a makeover, too. Mara Rodriguez, zoo development coordinator,... City engineers revealed at a recent Midland City Council meeting that the No. 1 intersection for automobile wrecks is at Fairgrounds Road and the Loop 250 south service road. Relief is on the way. The Texas Department of Transportations Odessa District and the Permian Basin Metropolitan Planning Organization announced Thursday at a public meeting construction of an overpass at the intersection has funding and that construction will begin next year. Right now, (the overpass) is scheduled for May 2017 for letting, which is when we open bids, TxDOT Odessa District public relations officer Gene Powell told the Reporter-Telegram ahead of the meeting. Powell shared the planned project schedule: We open bids about around the 8th or 9th of the month, and at the end of the month, the commissioner approves the project. It takes about a month to sign the contract, and then the contractors have anywhere from three months, four months, five months to buy materials, schedule their work and get started. So we expect construction to begin in fall of 2017, and it will take about 16 months to be built. While TxDOT approves the letting, Permian Basin MPOs public policy board must approve any project within its bounds like this because it involves federal money. The Permian MPO is a regional agency mandated under federal law to conduct a cooperative, continuous and comprehensive transportation planning process, according to its website. The agency plans and commits funds for the construction of transportation improvements across multiple transportation modes. For the MPO, the overpass at Fairgrounds is its No. 1 priority. Permian Basin MPO Executive Director Cameron Walker told the Reporter-Telegram before the meeting that funding was approved through the states Unified Transportation Program in 2015 and that paying for the project was made possible by using two years worth of allotments. We are allowed to combine a couple years worth of funding, Walker said. The Fairgrounds Road overpass is a combination of Fiscal Year 2016 and 2017 funding because its a high-ticket item. The overpass is slated to cost $13.646 million. Permian Basin MPOs share is $7.841 million from its 2016 Proposition 1 allocation, $7.841 million from its projected 2017 Proposition 1 allocation and $1.7 million from the TxDOT Odessa Districts Category 11 Discretionary Fund. Work on the intersection will begin 0.7 of a mile west of Fairgrounds and end 1 mile east near County Road 1160 (known as Todd Drive). The location of the current Fairgrounds exit ramps will remain, and the overpass will have a height of 17 feet. The fully developed portion of Loop 250 meets the unfinished portion west of Fairgrounds road. Finishing the loop all the way to its eastern terminus at Interstate 20 is an ongoing project. A future step after Fairgrounds likely will be converting the portion of the loop that crosses CR 1150 (known as Elkins Road) and CR 60 into a curvilinear overpass, which is planned for 2021, Walker said. Meeting attendees asked about whether an intersection at CR 1160, which is between Fairgrounds and CR 1150, is in the works. Walker told the Reporter-Telegram after the meeting that this intersection is not currently one of its projects but that it could be in the future. Walker said things can change with with the right funding and the right timing and the right board. TxDOT, Permian Basin MPO and residents all said they want Loop 250 to finished in its entirety. Finishing the loop and other projects are, in part, dependent on Proposition 1 funding, which, according to TxDOT, is funded by a portion of oil and gas tax revenues that go into the State Highway Fund. Texas voters passed measure passed Nov. 4, 2014, when oil prices were still high. At this point, we dont know what were going get in terms of funding for FY 2018, 2019 and 2020, Walker said. It all comes back around to what happens with Proposition 1. If oil and gas rise and theres more money going back to the state of Texas through tax collections, then theres more money available for transportation projects, whether youre in Dallas or youre here. *** If you would like to give TxDOT your comments about this project, email Robert Ornelas at robert.ornelas@txdot.gov or call him at 432-332-0501. You can also mail him at: Robert Ornelas, P.E. Texas Department of Transportation 3901 E. Highway 80 Odessa, TX 79761 The public comment period ends June 16. An epic oilfield slowdown has done more than trigger layoffs and budget cuts in petroleum-dependent communities. Its also eating into the mailbox money of royalty owners monthly checks to account for oil and gas production on their property. If theres any silver lining for those folks in these cloudy times, its this: Their property tax bills should also plummet. After all, lower oil prices make for less-valuable minerals. But some advocates for royalty owners are wondering whether many local governments are assigning values that are too high. In particular, they are raising questions about the methodology of a private firm Fort Worth-based Pritchard and Abbott that roughly half of Texas counties, including Midland County, contract with to appraise property, which includes land and minerals. If its not properly addressed, we have the potential to hurt a lot of elderly people and people on fixed incomes that are just trying to, you know, add support to their retirement, said Tricia Davis, president of the Texas Royalty Council, which advocates for Texans with mineral interests. The group flagged the issue on its website this month, encouraging royalty owners in certain counties to contact Pritchard and Abbott and potentially protest their appraisals. The 90-year-old firm stands by its methods, and its representatives suggest that critics are circulating incomplete information about its practices. They are misinformed. They do not have the complete story, said Rodney Kret, who oversees mineral valuation at Pritchard and Abbott. In some cases, the firm's forecasts could result in lower bills than taxpayers might otherwise receive, he added. Its not clear who is correct. The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, which advises local governments on tax issues, would not comment on the firms methods. Texas law allows concerned property owners to appeal to independent appraisal review boards if they cant sort out issues with their assessors. Kret said hes seen only a couple of letters in recent days from property owners concerned about royalty appraisals on their land. A math question The dispute involves one piece of the complicated and sometimes inexact method of appraising a property owners oil and gas wealth: estimating future income from the oil and gas waiting to be tapped. The Texas Property Code says the appraisal method must use the average price of the oil or gas from the interest for the preceding calendar year. That's calculated by dividing the sum of the monthly average prices for which oil and gas from the interest was selling during each month of the preceding calendar year by 12. The key question in this dispute is whether assessors must use actual prices at which oil and gas from a particular lease was sold a task easier said than done. Or can they do their best to approximate those prices? Pritchard and Abbott has chosen the second option, typically starting by plugging in the price of West Texas Intermediate crude, which it then adjusts for other factors. Damien Larson, a partner with the Richmond-based tax consulting firm Myska and Vandervoort, wrote last week on the Texas Royalty Councils website that West Texas prices can range $2 to $12 per barrel higher than what a royalty owner actually received, potentially leading to higher-than-proper valuations. For those royalty owners who have an interest in a county that is represented by Pritchard & Abbott, there is a direct concern that you are getting over-appraised, at times significantly, wrote Larson, who did not respond to requests to comment for this article. But Kret said the critique relies on incomplete information, and he chalks up the sudden interest in his firms decades-old practice to the fact that operators and royalty owners are really scratching for every dime right now. While Pritchard and Abbott assessors typically start with the West Texas reference price, they also adjust for a host of factors that would apply to specific conditions. That includes the general location of a lease, the quality and gravity of the crude (a measure related to density) produced and whos buying it. The results, Kret said, are fair and uniform forecasts across the state. It could be a dollar less, or a dollar more. In our business, we never hear about the ones that are a dollar more than what we use, he said. The letter of the law? Regardless of whether the forecasts benefit property owners, some tax experts say Pritchard and Abbott is failing to follow the letter of the law. If the text of the law appears to clearly say, This is how you do it, and you choose not to use that approach, under what authority are you doing it? said Charles Williams, president of Wardlaw Appraisal Group, a San Antonio firm that provides services to 12 Texas counties. Does the Legislature not know what its talking about? Williams said his firm subscribes to a service that pulls sales data on each lease from the Texas comptrollers website, translating it to a friendlier format. His number crunchers then recalculate the prices to account for production. But Pritchard and Abbott handles things differently. Relying on state data can prove troublesome, Kret says. Sometimes revenue data from the comptroller's office doesn't match production data kept by the Texas Railroad Commission. So you have to, we think, try to understand the market in each state, and not just rely blindly on data that could be faulty. Kret said. The Reporter-Telegram contributed to this report. The eyes of West Texas oil and gas producers were upon Vienna this week as members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries held their June meeting. As expected, OPEC members decided to not take action, allowing members to produce to the limits of their capabilities. Crude prices remained stable after the announcement, but Permian Basin producers know OPECs actions or lack thereof set the trends and they have to adjust. Permian Basin producers will need to continue the discipline of cost efficiency and highgrading assets, Douglas Robison, partner and president of ExL Petroleum, told the Reporter-Telegram in an email. He said indications are the Permian is surviving, and efficient operators are more than weathering the storm. The Permian Basin has some of the most economic acreage in the country, with many producers earning best-in-class returns despite lower commodity prices, said Travis Stice, president and chief executive officer of Diamondback Energy, by email. While OPECs non-action means that we could continue to see lower oil prices, producers such as Diamondback have cut costs to preserve returns. Our leading-edge all-in well costs have decreased approximately 35 percent since the peak in 2014 by a combination of service cost concessions and efficiency improvement, Stice said. Additionally, the industry has continued to improve recoveries through refined drilling and completion methods and an improved understanding of horizontal targets within the basin. In a volatile commodity price environment, it is important to retain flexibility in capital decisions. Diamondback can quickly slow down drilling and completion activity should market conditions deteriorate or quickly add additional rigs and completion crews to work through our backlog of drilled but uncompleted wells when commodity prices improve. Said Robison, World oil prices are primarily being driven by OPEC policy and the Saudis are setting OPEC policy. The Sauds are weathering the low price environment better than a number of other OPEC members. These other members are pressuring a revision of current OPEC policy to allow production cuts. I believe it is too early to predict a crack in the current OPEC policy, but pressure is increasing. Steve Pruett, president and chief executive officer of Elevation Resources, offered a more downbeat assessment of the cartel, saying in an email, OPEC is consistently ineffective and irrelevant, irrespective of who represents the Saudis in OPEC. The oil price meltdown caused by OPECs inability to act is rooted in the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran due to the religious conflict between Sunnis and Shiites, which is worse than the U.S. divide between Democrats and Republicans, he said. What that inability to act means for Permian Basin producers and the industry as a whole is that the oil market will continue to be driven by the global oil supply/demand balance, which is ultimately measured by global oil inventories and heavily influenced by U.S. oil inventories, since the U.S. has more oil storage capacity than any other nation, Pruett said. What this means for U.S. oil producers and mineral owners is that the petroleum markets lack conviction and will continue to have volatility and price weakness until such time as a shortage of supplies compared to demand becomes evident in the inventory levels and is sustained, he said. Thus, the upstream investment climate, and the restoration of the rig count and employment in the Permian Basin, remains tenuous at best. For his part, J. Ross Craft, founder, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Approach Resources, said by email that he saw something different in the OPEC meeting. The OPEC meeting, although no agreement was announced, did offer a new tone from the Saudi energy minister as well as the other energy ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The hard line approach the Saudis used during the last two meetings was absent. The Saudis/OPEC President even went so far as to say Iran has the sovereign right to try and return to pre-sanction production levels. To read between the lines, the Iranians basically told the Saudis to pound camel dung concerning universal GCC production ceilings at current post sanction levels. The new Saudi energy minister did some badly needed damage control with the other members of OPEC as a result of their hard line stance at the Doha meeting, Craft said. During the meeting it was stated that they need prices to raise further in order to facilitate investments in the energy sector. With oil trading at $50 and the recently revised IEA demand projections for 2015 up 1 million barrels per day, as well as OPECs inability to significantly grow production, I am sure they are thinking no action is better than admitting they made a mistake by voluntarily imposing lower production ceilings. They know their production will decline without capital. This decline is their way of reducing production levels without reducing production levels. Plus they know their supply numbers were overstated for the last 12 months, probably intentionally in hopes of scaring the other non-OPEC producers, he said in the email. At the end of the day they know supply numbers were overstated and demand was understated. They also deeply understand that they are being hurt as much as U.S. producers by the last 18 months of low energy prices. They understand that their artificially inflated production numbers, under inflated global demand numbers and declining production will bail them out without needing to optically reduce output and or admit fault and lose political clout. They also understand that Iran will not play by the Saudis rules, thus their comment about Irans sovereign rights. I will bet a hamburger if prices start to decline back into the low $40 range, they will react with voluntary production cuts, Craft said. Although U.S. inventories have declined, reporting a 5 million barrel drawdown over the past month, they remain 58 million barrels, or 12 percent above year-ago levels, Pruett said. Oil supply disruptions in Canada, Nigeria and Venezuela have improved market sentiment, but there remains approximately 1 billion barrels of excess oil in storage globally, he said. West Texas Intermediate oil prices have been unable to close above $50 per barrel this year, which is proving to be a resistance level and a bearish short term indicator, Pruett said. We are far from being out of the woods but at least we now have a working chain saw! Craft said. "If it requires removing all cabinet ... Summerville High School and Connections Visual and Performing Arts Academy will hold their Graduation Ceremony for the Class of 2016. Diana Harford, Principal for Connections Academy was Fridays KVML Newsmaker of the Day. The Class of 2016 will graduate tonight @ 8 PM at Thorsted Field. This evenings ceremony will conclude with a fireworks show. Harford urges the public to arrive early as the parking spots and seats will fill up quickly. There will be shuttle service from the Westside parking lot beginning at 6:30 PM and the shuttle will transport people back to the Westside parking lot after the ceremony. During the Summer, Harford will have a few weeks off to recharge and then prepare for the new school season beginning Wednesday August 24th. Harford will return as the Principle for both Connections and Summerville High School. Connections is a Charter School that shares the campus with Summerville Public High School. Any student from seventh through the twelfth grade is eligible to apply to attend regardless of where they live in Tuolumne County. A Charter School is a public high school that is funded by attendance, just like every other public school. Connections Academy students are public school students. According to Harford, this type of shared and integrated campus experience is so rare that there may only be two or three other high schools in the state of California with a similar situation. Earlier this week, Cassina High School held their graduation ceremony on Wednesday evening. The 2016 class Sonora Wildcats graduated last night. Brett Harte, Tioga and Don Pedro High will hold their graduation ceremonies both tonight and tomorrow. The Newsmaker of the Day is heard every weekday morning on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 AM. The Russell Home for Atypical Children in Orlando is in jeopardy of shutting down. Russell Home opened in 1951 to help people with disabilities Changes in state licenses affects Russell Home's license The home may have to change or shut down now The state is threatening to remove the children and adults diagnosed with a range of physical and mental disabilities over the need for a license. Last Fall, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration received a complaint that the facility was operating without a license. An investigation began, and no violations were found. But then the Russell Home was sent a letter. They would start charging us $1,000 dollars a day and coming and starting to weed our children and adults out, said Russell Home administrator Betty Turner. The Russell Home was established in 1951 with a license. For 67 years community donations funded the facility. Most recently $1.8 million was raised to build an expansion. But over the last few decades a lot has changed in how the state regulates special care. The problem is that the private non-profit doesnt fall into a typical category. We are both child and adult care, Turner said. This is their home for a lifetime. Theyve been here some of them since there were two years old. We want them to continue to have a home for a lifetime. In an effort to save the Russell Home, the facility applied for a license to be a group home with the Agency for Persons with Disabilities. But right now, they still dont qualify for that classification. A group home is limited to 15 people. Yet, 25 people live at the Russell Home, and a dozen more come and go for daycare. Governor Scott is the only one who can change this, Turner said. Tweak it so we can fit into a criteria that the state recommends, because we cant get rid of our kids. This is their home for a lifetime. The Agency for Persons with Disabilities says they are reviewing the Russell Homes application and will make a site visit. If all criteria are met, they say the licensing process could still take several months. It was a chance for voters to get up close and personal with candidates running for Sen. Marco Rubio's coveted Senate seat. 4 of 5 Republican Senate candidates met for a forum in Boca Raton Most of the candidates decried the current political system Candidates up for election in August 30 primary The conservative group America First hosted the Future Florida U.S. Senate Event in Boca Raton Thursday. Lt. Governor Carlos Lopez-Cantera, U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis of Ponte Vedra Beach, businessman Todd Wilcox and U.S Rep. David Jolly of Dunedin made their respective cases to a room full of voters. A fifth candidate, businessman Carlos Beruff, was unable to attend. Rubio's decision to leave the Senate means this election is critical, not only for the balance of power within the Florida delegation, but also for the balance of power in the U.S. Senate. Each candidate got 10-20 minutes to talk about how they would represent the state in the Senate. Lopez-Cantera described himself as a "Florida Republican and not a Washington, D.C., Republican," saying he and Gov. Scott had teamed up to cut taxes and bring jobs to the state. "When we say we are going to do something, we deliver," Lopez-Cantera said. "It's not about red-meat rhetoric; it's about results." DeSantis, a leading tea party member of the Florida Congressional delegation, decried "crony capitalism" in Washington and pledged for term limits for those in Congress. Wilcox also called for term limits, and wanted to ban lawmakers from becoming lobbyists for life. He said he would bring "real world experience" as a former Green Beret, CIA officer and businessman to the Senate. Jolly, a fifth generation Floridian and son of a preacher, however, spoke of his experience in Congress as a plus. He says a senator should have a vision for governing and not just rhetoric. Jolly gained national attention recently when he was featured on CBS' 60 Minutes promoting the "Stop Act," a bill he's championing that would prohibit members of Congress from directly soliciting campaign contributions. The Republican winner of the August 30 primary will go against the chosen Democratic candidate, either Rep. Alan Grayson or Rep. Patrick Murphy, in the November general election. Meanwhile some Republicans are pushing to get Sen. Marco Rubio to enter the race. The senator has been insistent that his time in Washington is done, but top Republicans have tried to get Rubio to change is mind. Information from the Associated Press was used in this report. The mother of four who drove her van into the ocean off Daytona Beach with her children inside was arrested again this week, this time in Orange County. Wilkerson arrested in 2014 for driving her van into the ocean with her kids inside Wilkerson arrested Thursday, accused of violating terms of her release Ebony Wilkerson will soon be on her way back to Volusia County to face charges that she did not comply with her plea agreement, which paved the way for her conditional release. Wilkerson faced a judge in Orange County following her arrest Wednesday. She will be held on no bond until she is transferred to Volusia County. In 2014, Wilkerson drove her van into the ocean. Her three children were pulled out of the van by lifeguards after she walked away when the van began to submerge. Wilkerson was pregnant at the time. Wilkerson pled not guilty by reason of insanity on three charges of child neglect and endangerment. Under a plea agreement, she was eventually placed in the Lake Wales mental facility under orders she stay on her medication. Last week, Wilkerson went before a judge asking to see her children. That request was denied. Then this week, State's Attorney, R.J. Larizza signed an order that Wilkerson be re-arrested when doctors say she stopped taking her medication, experiencing psychotic episodes to the point she had to be transferred to an Orange County hospital. It was there the mother of four was arrested. The sheriff's office says they do not comment on when a high profile inmate will be transferred, but deputies have 72 hours from the time the order was issued to pick her up. The judge in Orange County told Wilkerson that if Volusia County deputies do not pick her up by Friday, she will have to spend the weekend in Orange County. Ebony Wilkerson drove her van into the Atlantic Ocean in 2014, trying to killer herself and her children. She pled not guilty by reason of insanity and was eventually placed in a mental facility. A hawk is recovering at Animis Foundation, an animal sanctuary in Ocala, after rescuers say the bird was shot with a pellet rifle. Red-shouldered hawk shot out of tree last month Hawk and babies rescued and taken to Animis Foundation Hawk may not fly again The red-shouldered hawk was found on the ground last month at Lillian Bryant Park. Rescuers say a family who lives nearby saw two young men shoot the hawk out of a tree, leaving its two young babies stranded high up in a nest. Authorities were called out and utility crews had to use a bucket truck to get to the chicks. Rescuers say they will fully recover, but the hawk may not. "Hopefully, we're keeping our fingers crossed that she'll be able to fly again and if not, we're hoping that we can find a home in a raptor facility where she can live out her life, said Mark Quadrozzi with the Animis Foundation. Ocala police say there have been no arrests. The Leesburg community came together Thursday to remember four young sisters who were killed on Memorial Day in a crash on I-95. 4 sisters were killed on Memorial Day in a crash on I-95 The girls were not wearing seatbelts A vigil Thursday honored the girls in Leesburg The toddler in that crash is lucky to be alive after he was ejected from the car and landed on the other side of a barrier wall. The other six family members in that car survived as well. Pictures of four girls, between the ages of 10 and 15, were hung high above the church pews. Amunya Cruz, Nadia Cruz, Niashia Cruz and Jasmine Cruz were not wearing seatbelts and died from their injuries in that crash. Hundreds of family and friends filled the church with song, prayer and messages of hope. One person read a quote from Jasmines school work. If I could send a message to the whole world, I would tell them that they should pray every day so that they can live," they read. There were prayers and there were tears. Outside of the church, the familys reverend spoke on their behalf. I met them personally myself when I went to their house," Rev. Primes McGirt said. "I just think that we should remember them as loving young ladies. As the vigil came to an end, dozens of pink and purple balloons were released into the sky to celebrate the girls they knew. The family says they will have a wake for the four Cruz sisters this Saturday. Orlando Police officers are learning how to use a new nasal spray with the idea that it will save the lives of those overdosing on drugs. Narcan, also known as Naloxone, is a nasal spray Drug helps to counteract the effects of an opioid overdose All Orlando Police officers will carry a dose Starting June 15, all Orlando Police officers from their drug enforcement squad to school resource officers will have a special medication called Narcan. "Our goal is to save lives, and that is what this is for," Deputy Chief Robert Anzueto said. The lifesaving spray, also known as Naloxone, works to reverse the unresponsiveness caused by an opioid overdose. Police say the nasal spray acts in minutes but isnt an overdose cure. The spray only helps to keep the person alive for about an hour until they can get to a hospital for serious treatment of their overdose. During the past 17 months, the City of Orlando has had 64 deaths from opioid overdoses -- more than 54 percent of those opioid overdoses from heroin. OPD officials say some of those deaths may have been prevented, because in many cases, their officers are the first on scene. This drug, if we would have gotten it in time to those victims, we could have saved their lives, Anzueto said. With that hope, OPD used $30,600 in drug forfeiture funds to purchase 816 doses of Narcan, which is enough to allow each officer in the field to carry one. The Orange County Sheriffs Office is also working with the county on getting Narcan to their deputies on the streets as well. Access to the drug only recently increased because Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill allowing pharmacies to sell the medication without a prescription. The Orlando Police Department used drug forfeiture funds to buy more than 800 doses of Narcan. (Bailey Myers, staff) The Orlando Police Department says that a vehicle crashed into the Tuscany Bay Apartments during the early morning hours Friday. The vehicle crashed into the apartment building located at 2535 South Semoran Blvd. Neighbors say a young woman was driving the white BMW and smashed it into the apartment complex around 4 a.m. No one was hurt, police say, but it did wake up the neighbors who heard the loud bang and their lights went out. The vehicle crashed into a utility shed where all the power meters are located. Police said that the building had to be evacuated and the power turned off so the vehicle could be towed away, which was taken away just after 6 a.m. Code Enforcement has been contacted to evaluate the damage of the building. Charges are pending, but police said the driver is not suspected of being impaired. The driver was not harmed in the accident, officials said. (Jerry Hume, Staff) BERLIN Rachel Prior is on a mission to spread awareness about mental health. It affects everyone in some way, she said. The Goodwin College student is organizing the first Mental Health Walk in Berlin. Because May is recognized as Mental Health Month, the event will be held in May 2017. She is considering two locations, Pistol Creek or the Berlin Fairgrounds. We need to let people know that its OK not to be OK, said Prior. Originally from Newington, the Berlin resident has had a passion for the mental health field since she was a teen and hopes to become a psychologist. The idea for a walk started as a school assignment and grew. I watched a lot of videos on these different walks and wondered if there were any mental health walks, she said. Prior found few in her own area. She decided to create a walk with the support of Mental Health Connecticut (MHC), a non-profit organization in West Hartford. Suzi K. Craig, MHC senior director of Advocacy & Development, was thrilled to see Prior take the initiative. Its really important, especially for the younger generation to really take up this work, she said. Priors event is a year away but she has already started promoting it on social media and in other ways. The college student handed out flyers around town before Memorial Day events, as well as spreading the word at the Veterans Hospital in Newington where she volunteers. Its awesome for her to have that commitment and passion, said MHC Executive Assistant Jacquilyn Davis. Priors efforts to change the way that people view mental health, coincide with recent bills and government action. Recently, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy spoke at a community event in Plainville about a mental health bill that he supports. Our bill requires insurance companies to cover more treatments, he said, It starts to marry together the physical health system and the mental health system, creating one system to treat people. Craig says that MHC has also been working on legislative reform. We have a long way to go, but finally theres research out there, she said. Davis will be in Washington next week for the Mental Health America conference. Weve come a long way, especially in Connecticut, Davis said, But in terms of the stigma, I think we still have a long way to go. Albany State Court of Appeals judges heard arguments for two cases Thursday that have the potential to redefine parenthood. Each case considered an unmarried same-sex couple who, before separating, decided to raise a child. In each case, the non-biological mother did not adopt the child, and following the couple's separation, the biological mother opposed visitation by her former partner. The state's highest court must decide whether these former partners each of whom visited the children initially after separation can receive partial custody or visitation. Attorneys representing the non-biological mothers, who are not being named because the cases involve a child, said Thursday their clients were recognized as parents, socially and by their children. They spoke to the need to revisit the term "parent" as held by the 1991 case Alison D. v. Virginia M. In that case, the court's majority said Virginia M. was not a parent of the biological son of Alison D., though they had lived together and the child had Virginia M.'s last name. "My client is firmly in this child's life from the second this child was born, and since the ex-partner became pregnant with the child," said Susan Sommer, national director of constitutional litigation of New York-based Lambda Legal in arguments representing Brooke S.B. Brooke sought joint custody and visitation in Chautauqua County Family Court, supported by the child's attorney. Family Court denied the petition, a decision affirmed by the Appellate Division. A Manhattan appellant attorney for the child said Brooke and Elizabeth had birth announcements and a baptism for the boy, who is now 6 years old. "These are things that tell the community who the parents are, who the child belongs to and who's raising the child," said Eric Wrubel, the attorney, of Warshaw Burstein LLP. Since the Alison D. decision, Sommer said, the state has embraced same-sex relationships. New York legalized same-sex marriage in 2011. "We are light years away," she said. In arguments, she proposed that a person be recognized as a parent if a child's legally recognized parent consents to the formation of a parent-child bond, and if the person takes on the role of parenthood, including taking financial responsibility for the child. "It would be the best possible outcome for him," said Brooke, standing outside the Court of Appeals on Thursday. Sherry Bjork, a Frewsburg attorney representing Elizabeth, said lawmakers, not the courts, should decide what constitutes a parent. Legally, people can become parents through biological birth or adoption, she said, neither of which happened in this case. But Associate Judge Jenny Rivera said the state has evolved since that definition was affirmed 25 years ago. A relationship between two women, Rivera said, "is not treated as somehow inferior. They are on equal footing now ... why not treat them the same and find a rule that makes sense?" Given the judges' questions on Thursday afternoon, Wrubel said, he is "quite hopeful" that they will overturn the Alison D. ruling. lellis@timesunion.com 518-454-5018 @lindsayaellis This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The green rush will soon be taking off in Texas. Beginning next year, operations licensed under the states Compassionate Use Program will be able to grow, process or dispense a non-intoxicating strain of marijuana specifically for patients with intractable epilepsy. Entrepreneurs already smell opportunities to make money and help patients, although issuance of the first state licenses could be more than a year away. Theres a whole other industry that is being birthed in this country, just like what happened with the dot-com boom, said Texas Cannabis CEO Patrick Moran, who hopes that his company will be among the first licensed by the Texas Department of Public Safety. I think its once in a lifetime. A law approved by the Texas Legislature and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott last year opened the door to what will be the states first legal marijuana industry. That law stipulates the marijuana prescribed to epilepsy patients must be low in THC or tetrahydrocannabinol the psychoactive component that gives users a high when they smoke traditional marijuana. But it must be high in cannabidiol or CBD a compound found in the marijuana plant that is believed to have therapeutic benefits for some medical conditions. To get a prescription, patients must be suffering from epileptic seizures that cant be controlled by traditional medication. Each prescription will have to be approved by two physicians who devote a significant portion of their clinical practices to epilepsy. Patients wont be allowed to smoke this form of marijuana, but can ingest it or perhaps absorb it through their skin. The most commonly discussed format is CBD oil. Entrepreneurs like Moran, whos planning on converting an unused cotton gin in Gunter into a cannabis dispensary, are forecasting a statewide industry that generates anywhere from $100 million to $900 million annually. pohare@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Roaches, mold and food spoiled with odor are just a few cringe-worthy violations cited in this weeks random health inspections. From downtown to Stone Oak, 28 restaurants were slapped with a score of 89 or below enough to make this weeks dirty list. Prominent names include Stone Oaks Bar Louie, located at 22610 US 281 N., which was cited for dirty food contact surfaces, and Mahncke Parks Tomatillos Cafe y Cantina, located at 3210 Broadway, which received demerits for gnats in the bar area. But one notable downtown hangout was cited for the worst of them all: live German cockroaches. Moses Rose's Hide Out, located at 516 E. Houston St., received demerits after an inspector found roaches throughout the establishment and spoiled mushrooms. Other vomit-inducing violations this week include moldy onions, cross contamination hazards and green rat poison placed freely all over the establishment. To make the Express-News' list of dirtiest restaurants, an establishment must earn a score of 89 or below or anything less than an "A" during a random city inspection. Get all the highlights from this week's dirtiest restaurant list in the slideshow above. RELATED: San Antonio restaurant inspections: The worst reports from last week The San Antonio Express-News examines hundreds of restaurant inspections each week conducted by the San Antonio Food and Environmental Health Services division to bring you the eateries with scores of 89 or below. Restaurants are graded on a 100-point system, where 100 is a perfect score, and demerits are based upon the number of violations found during a regular food establishment inspection. There are three categories of demerits and each are assigned a demerit score of 3, 2 or 1 points, according to the health division. Scores and demerits listed are only representative of the state of the restaurant at the time of inspection and are surveyed at random. rsalinas@mysa.com Twitter: @RebeccaLSalinas Here is the full list of establishments on this week's list, see slideshow for information from the reports: Albany Here's what you need to know about daylight saving this fall A bill that would limit the amount of narcotics prescribed for acute pain is making its way through the state Assembly after quick passage in the Senate. A statewide medical group opposed to its passage urged doctors this week to voice their opposition to the bill, which would prohibit doctors from prescribing more than five days' worth of hydrocodone, oxycodone or other opioid painkillers when a patient has had an injury, operation or other episode of acute pain. It applies only to patients who are using opioids for the first time and does not impose the same limits on patients with chronic pain. The proposal comes as the state, as well as the nation, faces an epidemic of opioid abuse. The director of the White House Office of Drug Control Policy, Michael Botticelli, was in Albany on Thursday leading a forum aimed at addressing the crisis. The heroin epidemic is a direct effect of addiction to prescription narcotics that have been prescribed legally, Botticelli said. The state proposal to limit opioid prescriptions to five days is one of the 48 recommendations issued last month by a state Joint Senate Task Force on Heroin and Opioid Addiction. John McDonald, D-Cohoes, is the bill's sponsor in the Assembly. That house's Codes Committee is expected to take up the issue next week. "We want to cut the serpent off at the head," McDonald said. "If we can limit the unnecessary oversupply of opioids, I think we are doing the public a service." The Medical Society of the State of New York opposes the measure as an inappropriate encroachment of government on the practice of medicine. The medical group sent an email alert this week urging doctors to call their legislators to oppose the legislation, which it said establishes an "arbitrary standard" that prevents doctors from exercising their own best judgment on behalf of patients. "A physician's clinical judgment in addressing the unique needs of the individual patient should always prevail to ensure that patients receive the most appropriate and effective medication in a timely manner," the medical society stated. One area pain specialist, who has advised state and national medical groups on opioid abuse, said that while the bill is a "thorn in the side of prescribers," it attempts to balance the need to treat acute pain with an understanding of the disastrous consequences that can result from opioid abuse. "This is an attempt to maximize safety and minimize harm," said Dr. Charles Argoff of Albany Medical Center. Argoff stressed that the bill would not prevent doctors from prescribing more painkillers if a patient used up a five-day supply and still needed pain medication. McDonald noted that a five-day supply can be as much as 60 pills. Patients prescribed more than that often leaved unused pills in their medicine cabinets, where they are accessible to others in the house, including children and teens. "I call it a five-day bill, but in reality, it's also the 60-pill bill," McDonald said. chughes@timesunion.com 518-454-5417 @hughesclaire This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Albany National "drug czar" Michael Botticelli was on home turf in the Capital Region Thursday, making a pitch for President Barack Obama's $1.1 billion proposal to address the heroin and opioid epidemic. Botticelli, a native of Troy and graduate of Siena College who is director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, was here to lead a forum on the opioid crisis at Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. The forum included a panel of local experts and those affected by opioid abuse, as well as elected leaders. It was hosted by U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam. In official remarks before the panel got underway, the main agenda of Botticelli and elected leaders was to urge increased investment in programs to prevent and treat addiction. "State and federal proposals to address the epidemic will not be enough without more funding for treatment," Botticelli said. Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is leading a Heroin and Opioid Abuse Task Force established by the governor last month, recalled a bipartisan effort in Congress in the 1980s that led to $1.6 billion in spending in 1986 to address the crack cocaine crisis. That would equate to $3.6 billion in today's dollars, she said. "There are solutions out there," Hochul said. "But it takes political will and it takes money to happen." The president's spending proposal, unveiled in February, would add $920 million for states to expand access to medications to help wean addicts off heroin and opioids. It also includes plans to attack the epidemic at each stage, including stemming heroin production in Mexico, limiting prescriptions of painkillers and increasing supplies of naloxone, known by the brand name Narcan, to reverse fatal overdoses. It is intended to address a growing crisis that has been felt throughout the Capital Region, the state and the nation. In 2014, 129 Americans died every day from drug overdoses, Botticelli said. Data from the first half of 2015 show that number increased to 140 a day. Preliminary federal data released Wednesday show the death rate in America overall rose in 2015 for the first time in 10 years. "Drug overdose deaths are playing a leading role," Botticelli said. Botticelli said this crisis is different than the heroin epidemic that devastated some American communities in the 1970s. For one thing, it's worse. "This is one of the worst public health epidemics that we have ever seen," he said. "This is not just a drug issue. This is an issue that affects all of us." For another, it is rooted in the abuse of highly addictive prescription painkillers that have been legally prescribed. Four out of five heroin users found their way to the illicit drug after getting hooked on prescriptions. Botticelli, a recovering alcoholic himself, said his goal is to ensure that every person who wants treatment can access it. "People should not have to wait seven months," he said to a lecture hall of more than 100 people, who applauded at the line. "Can you imagine if we did that to someone who had a heart attack?" The forum was touted as a way to share best practices for addressing the epidemic. Botticelli facilitated a discussion with a panel of local experts, including Dolores Cimini of the University at Albany Counseling Center; Davia Collington of the Troy Drug-Free Community Coalition; Chief Deputy Kerry Thompson of the Albany County Sheriff's Office; Kate Gruhle, the parent of two children, aged 26 and 28, who are former opioid users; and Amanda Shpigler, a former drug user. He also praised New York for taking the lead in addressing the heroin and opioid epidemic through several state initiatives. They include expanding access to naloxone, passing "Good Samaritan" laws that protect people who report an overdose and enhancing the state's prescription drug monitoring program. chughes@timesunion.com 518-454-5417 @hughesclaire The border crossing to Canada in Rouses Point will be closed to commercial traffic and oversided vehicles while construction is completed over the next few weeks, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said. The restrictions will start on Monday and last approximately two weeks, customs officials said. Minneapolis Ashley Hasti, who was married to Mainak Sarkar in 2011, was found dead in her Minneapolis-area home Thursday morning. The discovery followed the Wednesday fatal shooting of a professor on the UCLA campus by Sarkar. Hasti's name was among those found on a note titled "Kill list" found in the St. Paul apartment of Mainak Sarkar, the Minnesota man who fatally shot William Klug at UCLA before taking his own life. Hennepin County Vital Records confirms that Hasti, was married to Sarkar on June 14, 2011. No more is known about the legal status of the marriage. Police arrived at the home in the 2400 block of Pearson Parkway in Brooklyn Park shortly after 12:30 a.m. Thursday at the request of Los Angeles police, said Deputy Chief Mark Bruley. A woman was found inside dead from a gunshot wound, Bruley said. Bruley said police were called for the welfare check because the woman who lived there was on the hit list they suspect was created by the UCLA shooter, Sarkar, 38. "What I can tell you is we believe she was deceased prior to the UCLA shooting Wednesday, but because it is so early in investigation the timing (of her death) we don't know at this point," the deputy chief said. Bruley did not reveal the victim's name, but a neighbor said a police detective visited about 6:30 a.m. with questions about the home where Hasti's body was found. "He made it clear that it wasn't something that we need to be concerned about concerning our safety," said Holly Olson, who knew little about Hasti, who was in her early 30s. At the time of her death, Hasti was enrolled for the summer term in the University of Minnesota Medical School, a university spokesman said. She's been enrolled in the med school continuously since 2012. In 2008, she received a bachelor's degree from the university in Asian languages and literature, the spokesman said. Police in St. Paul said they searched an apartment in the 1000 block of Agate Street that records show is associated with Sarkar, and authorities in Los Angeles confirmed that the "kill list" was found in that residence. A St. Paul police report shows that the search went from 4 p.m. Wednesday to about 1 a.m. Thursday. At a midday news conference, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said Sarkar left two notes: one at the murder-suicide scene that instructed the finder to check on his cat. The note also referenced his other potential victim, a professor who was off campus at the time of the shooting. "Detectives believe that he went there to kill two faculty from UCLA, but he was only able to locate one," Beck said. An "Inverted Jenny," a 1918 stamp stolen in 1955 featuring an airplane printed upside-down valued at about $1 million, was handed over to the American Philatelic Research Library's president Roger Brody by the New York City FBI during the World Stamp Show on Thursday in New York. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The family of the late Tejano star Emilio Navaira has been pulled into a political battle it never asked for and didnt create. Harlandale Independent School Board trustee Tomas Uresti is pushing to have Vestal Elementary renamed to honor Navaira, who passed away two weeks ago at the age of 53. Navaira attended Vestal and gave his first public performance there. The proposal drew sharp criticism Wednesday night at a Harlandale School Board meeting, both from trustees and community members. Board president David Abundis accused Uresti of disrespecting his colleagues by attempting to speak for the board, a charge which Uresti vehemently denied. Political consultant Gina Castaneda, whose brother sang in the Terrell Wells Middle School choir with Navaira more than 40 years ago, suggested that Uresti was trying to use Navairas name to boost Urestis campaign for Texas House District 118. She added that it was too soon for the board to consider such a move. We should never do something this major, in any type of government, based on emotion, she said. Another issue at play is particularly sensitive: a 2008 accident in which an intoxicated Navaira drove his tour bus into traffic barrels on a Houston freeway, a crash that nearly killed him and injured six of his bandmates. Navairas younger brother, and former bandmate, Raul Navaira, spoke at Wednesdays school-board meeting, and pointed to his brothers history of charitable giving and his love for his old school district. If it (the name change) happens, it happens, the younger Navaira said during a break in the meeting. If it doesnt, we still love Harlandale. ggarcia@express-news.net Twitter: @gilgamesh470 This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The presence of a San Antonio teen, which made "it impossible not to smile," will be missed during her high school's graduation after she died last year of leukemia. With her family's persistence, Adriana Rodriguez will still be able to receive her diploma from Robert E. Lee High School. RELATED: Alamo Heights High School student, National Merit Scholar passes away days before graduation Rodriguez, 17, passed away last September, while her classmates settled into their senior year of high school without her. The beloved student's final year of her high school career would have been filled with the involvements in the campus' Peer Assisted Leadership Skills group and with the cheerleading squad, which she had been a member of since her freshman year, according to a mySA.com obituary. Her family requested a posthumous diploma in the teen's honor to mark her accomplishments and impact she left during her short time. RELATED: Texas teens line street to grace classmate's funeral procession with this moving tribute The North East Independent School District told mySA.com on Thursday the ask was initially denied because Rodriguez was believed to be a junior student and would not meet the criteria for the state law allowing deceased students to receive a posthumous diploma. Upon further review and a persistence from the Rodriguez family, NEISD concluded the teen was actually a senior when she died and would therefore be able to receive her recognition. Executive Communication Director Aubrey Chancellor added that Rodriguez's sister will cross the stage in her honor during the June 4 ceremony at the Freeman Coliseum. RELATED: Friends remember Judson student, graduate killed in apparent murder-suicide According to Rodriguez's obituary, she decided months before her death she would pursue a career in pediatric oncology as a nurse. "Adriana was a beautiful soul inside and out, her energy and big personality made it impossible not to smile in her presence," NEISD shared with mySA.com. "Adriana's spirit and story was as inspiration and she will always be remembered for the light she brought to the world around her." mmendoza@mysa.com Twitter: @MaddySkye This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A former DEA agent who resided in McAllen, Texas is facing up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine after entering a guilty plea to one count of access with intent to view child pornography Thursday, according to a U.S. Attorney's Office news release. RELATED: Arrested man tells FBI agents of soiled-diaper fetish James Patrick Burke, 39, pleaded guilty after investigators discovered he was accessing files from a website known for child pornography. Law enforcement officials obtained a search warrant for Burke's home last August and he admitted to downloading and viewing child pornography on his laptop and desktop computer. Burke told officials he used a forensic wiping software to delete the images and videos he downloaded, according to the news release. RELATED: Affidavit: San Antonio mother fools child molester into meeting at hotel where police are waiting After a forensic examination of Burke's computers, officials found more than 2,700 images of children under the age of 12, bondage and acts of violence, according to the release. Some images are of victims previously identified through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. RELATED: Teacher accused of sex with teen student turns herself in Officials also found remnants of movie titles relating to child pornography. Burke will be sentenced Oct. 20, 2016 and will remain on bond pending until then, according to the news release. kbradshaw@express-news.net Twitter: @kbrad5 This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The White House released new details Thursday to help prevent the transmission of the Zika virus as members of Congress were urged to alert local officials about the significant public health threat posed by the virus. Obama administration officials are seeking $1.9 billion in emergency funds for ongoing domestic and international efforts to fight the spread of the virus. They released a web site to provide local health providers information about the disease: www.cdc.gov/zika In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, the secretary of Health and Human Services urged lawmakers to reach out to local public health officials to provide information about the Zika virus. Zika is a significant public health threat, said Secretary Sylvia Burwell. Burwell said congressional approval of the emergency funding would help with measures like mosquito control, identifying vaccine candidates and providing clinical trials. As of May 20, Burwell said there were 1,400 laboratory-confirmed cases of Zika in the United States and its territories. There have been seven cases in San Antonio as of May 26, among 40 in the state, according to the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District. San Antonio officials will be briefed Friday on the issue by the Centers for Disease Control, according to a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes, who will take part in the briefing. Among those being briefed are Dr. Vincent Nathan, Metro Health interim director, other Metro Health officials and Erik Walsh, deputy city manager. Texans are at a heightened risk for Zika given our climate and recent heavy flooding, said U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio. Taking preventative measures now, before a crisis hits, is absolutely essential. The Zika virus usually causes mild symptoms, but poses special risks to pregnant women and unborn babies. The virus is suspected of causing severe birth defects in areas where the virus is more prevalent, like South America. Metro Health reminds residents to frequently remove standing water from containers inside and outside their homes, including buckets, birdbaths, vases, pet bowls, tires, trash cans and swimming pool covers. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A Rowlett man is being held on a $3,000,000 bond for capital murder after paying two convicted sex offenders to kill his fiance, according to media reports. Ioannis Makris, 39, was indicted Thursday by a Dallas County grand jury for the death of Laura Grillo, 37, according to county records. Jesus Trevino, 31, was charged with capital murder for remuneration and James Villeda, 30, who is in police custody for a probation violation, will be charged in Grillo's death next week, according to county records. Grillo was found shot in the head in her home Nov. 13, the Dallas Morning News reported Thursday. RELATED: Murder case unfolds as man is arrested following shooting Police told the Dallas Morning News that Trevino shot Grillo and Villeda was the getaway driver. Makris and Grillo owned a home-remodeling business that employed Trevino and Villeda, both convicted sex offenders. Rowlett Police did not immediately respond to an open records request. RELATED: Former Bexar deputy not guilty of murder Makris posted on Facebook after Grillo's death saying," I miss you and love you. I know you are in a better place. No more struggle for you," adding in another post, "She was my everything, and no I don't know who would do something like that to her." In February, Makris said he was shocked that Trevino, one of his groomsmen, might be connected to his fiance's death, according to the Dallas Morning News. RELATED: Man arrested in April shooting initially found passed out in car Trevino was arrested April 1 in Florida for failing to register as a sex offender. In 2008, Trevino was convicted of sexual assault of a child and was deported to Mexico in 2010, after his release from prison. He is being held Dallas County Jail where he also faces a charge of failing to register as a sex offender and has a hold for illegally re-entering the country from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to county records. He is being held on a total of $3,125,000 in bonds. Villeda is being held on a $100,000 bond for failing to register as a sex offender, according to county records. kbradshaw@express-news.net Twitter: @kbrad5 This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A pedicab driver in Austin helped authorities arrest an 18-year-old man who allegedly sexually assaulted an unconscious woman on a bench at the Federal Courthouse in late May, according to media reports. Said S. Yarow was booked into the Travis County Jail on Thursday on a sexual assault charge, according to online jail records. RELATED: Waco man accused of trafficking minors, sexually assaulting them at his home Camera footage from the May 19 incident shows two men at Guadalupe and Fourth streets carrying the woman to a bench, where one of the men, believed to be Yarow, stayed to sexually assault the woman, according to the Austin American-Statesman. The Austin newspaper reports the pedicab driver, Luis Palos, approached the two as the alleged assault was taking place. Palos determined the woman was unconscious at the time, and offered the two a ride. At one point during the ride, Yarow allegedly fled the scene. Palos followed Yarow, even asking others to help in chasing him down, but they couldnt keep up with him. Yarow allegedly lost them at Shoal Creek. Police officers later found Yarows wallet in the creek, which included his ID, according to the Statesman. RELATED: Ex-Stanford swimmer to serve 6 months in unconscious womans rape The pedicab driver later identified Yarow as the suspect in a photo lineup. KXAN reports the woman was taken to the hospital, where she admitted to taking numerous cough medicine pills, consuming alcohol and smoking marijuana earlier that day. She said she remembered going to Sixth Street, but could not remember anything from when she arrived on Sixth Street until she woke up at the hospital. Officers at the hospital showed her a photo of Yarow, who she said she did not recall meeting or giving consent to for sexual activity, according to the Statesman. RELATED: Lawyer: Texas teen recorded rape, fatal attack on girlfriend The Travis County District Clerk did not immediately respond to requests for documents pertaining to Yarows arrest. twhite@mysa.com Twitter: @tylerlwhite SAN ANTONIO Police are searching for a suspect who shot a man outside of a strip club on the Northeast Side on Friday morning. According to the San Antonio Police Department, a witness called police to Ricks Cabaret, 5419 Brewster Street, around 2:45 a.m. after seeing the gunman fire at the victim in a parking lot across the street. SAN ANTONIO A man died Thursday night and another was critically injured after a gunman opened fire on the pair outside of a bar on the Southwest Side. San Antonio Police Department investigators said the victims had been involved in an argument at the Country Gold Ballroom in the 7400 block of Old Pearsall Road around 11:30 p.m. when they decided to take it outside. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A Waco man was arrested Wednesday for allegedly getting two young boys drunk and sexually assaulting them at his residence last year, according to media reports. Clyde Alexis Vanterpool, 56, was charged with a first-degree felony of trafficking of persons. RELATED: Texas superintendent: Math teachers alleged sexual abuse is schools worst type of nightmare' The two boys, who were under the age of 17, made an outcry of sexual assault on Dec. 10, The Waco Tribune-Herald reports. Investigators learned the boys had ran away from their homes and went to Cameron Park, where they met Vanterpool. The suspect allegedly offered to buy them cigarettes, prompting them to get in a car with him. He then took them back to his residence in the 5600 block of Hawthorne Drive. Vanterpool then allegedly got the boys drunk and sexually assaulted both of them, according to KWTX. The boys fell unconscious during their time at Vanterpools home. When they woke up, they asked the suspect to take them back to the park. RELATED: Former McAllen DEA agent pleads guilty to having 2,700 images of child porn This is the kind of person that you dont want as your neighbor, Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton told the Waco newspaper. We dont want him in our community to prey on two young people like this. Vanterpool was charged with trafficking of persons instead of a sexual assault charge because he took the victims from Cameron Park to his home, and back again, according to the Waco Tribune-Herald. The media reports regarding Vanterpool dont detail why it took more than six months to formally charge him. RELATED: Award-winning Judson ISD teacher charged with indecency with child The Waco Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for a copy of the court documents regarding his arrest. twhite@mysa.com Twitter: @tylerlwhite Posted on 06/03/2016, 2:11 pm, by mySteinbach Steinbach window manufacturer Loewen, has entered into an agreement to acquire the business of La Loma Windows and Doors, based in Tucson, Arizona. The La Loma acquisition will be a complementary addition to our current portfolio of Loewen products manufactured in Steinbach, President and Chief Executive Officer Al Babiuk said. We will be maintaining the operations in Tucson, with the very skilled and dedicated staff there. Founded over 100 years ago, Loewen is known for custom wood and aluminium clad wood windows and doors for the premium residential and light-commercial housing markets in Canada, the United States, the Caribbean, and Mexico. Loewens fenestration products are distributed through a network of corporate stores and independent dealers who work with architects, designers, custom builders and homeowners to develop customized solutions for their unique building projects. Clyde Loewen, Senior Vice-President of Product and Marketing said. This acquisition will expand our offering of unique, custom architectural solutions for the premium segment of the window and door market. La Loma (founded in 2004) is a manufacturer of highly customized wood and steel window and door products, known for their distinctive craftsmanship and unique traditional and contemporary styles. TOKYO Lawson, the second largest convenience store chain in Japan, has expressed interest in expanding its holdings to the United States, The Japan News reports. Lawson is especially looking at American convenience store chains. The company aims to increase its number of international locations by around a quarter within 12 months. In the United States where the market is mature, mergers and acquisitions are a simple and straightforward way for us to expand, which would also allow us to buy time to boost the number of shops, said Sadanobu Takemasu, the new president and COO of Lawson. While Lawson doesnt have any deals cooking, the company is open to moving quickly if opportunities arise. Takemasu also said Lawson would be increasing its presence in Southeast Asia. Currently, Lawson has 12,500 units in Japan and 793 in other countries, with an aim to bump that to 1,000 stores by February 2017. 7-Eleven, FamilyMart and Lawson have all begun to focus on overseas locations while continuing to battle for the Japanese consumer at home. Lawson enjoys a 5.3% market share of Japans grocery retail sales, according to Euromonitor International. In Japan, I want to focus resources on the existing businesses to strengthen them, Takemasu said. So Im not considering adding new businesses to our Japan portfolio through mergers and acquisitions for now. Yves here. This post is useful because, if nothing else, it clears up a lot of disinformation coming from the Clinton camp and others about the standard for criminal liability for mishandling defense information. It does not have to be classified and the prosecutor does not have to prove intent. By Gaius Publius, a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius, Tumblr and Facebook. Originally published at at Down With Tyranny. GP article here ve been writing for weeks that there are two aspects to the Clinton secret server issue the way the server was handled, and the content of the messages it contained. Regarding the way the server was handled, almost everything needed to determine criminal liability is already in the public record and has been for a while. So here are three data points, just three. They line up perfectly so the main idea is easy to grasp. (Consider this the first in a series, The Clinton Server Story for Progressives. If events move too quickly, it will be the last, as everyone from Time to the Washington Post will be telling you whats what and you wont need me at all.) The servers email system was apparently unencrypted for the first two months of use when Clinton was Secretary of State. This means that email going to and from the server was unencrypted during transmission. Messages were sent and received in plain text. This is the Washington Post from last March (my emphasis): The server was nothing remarkable, the kind of system often used by small businesses, according to people familiar with its configuration at the end of her tenure. It consisted of two off-the-shelf server computers. Both were equipped with antivirus software. They were linked by cable to a local Internet service provider. A firewall was used as protection against hackers. Few could have known it, but the email system operated in those first two months without the standard encryption generally used on the Internet to protect communication, according to an independent analysis that Venafi Inc., a cybersecurity firm that specializes in the encryption process, took upon itself to publish on its website after the scandal broke. Not until March 29, 2009 two months after Clinton began using it did the server receive a digital certificate that protected communication over the Internet through encryption, according to Venafis analysis. It is unknown whether the system had some other way to encrypt the email traffic at the time. Without encryption a process that scrambles communication for anyone without the correct key email, attachments and passwords are transmitted in plain text. That means that anyone could have accessed it. Anyone, Kevin Bocek, vice president of threat intelligence at Venafi, told The Post. The system had other features that made it vulnerable to talented hackers, including a software program that enabled users to log on directly from the World Wide Web. Four computer-security specialists interviewed by The Post said that such a system could be made reasonably secure but that it would need constant monitoring by people trained to look for irregularities in the servers logs. For data of this sensitivity . . . we would need at a minimum a small team to do monitoring and hardening, said Jason Fossen, a computer-security specialist at the SANS Institute, which provides cybersecurity training around the world. The man Clinton has said maintained and monitored her server was Bryan Pagliano, who had worked as the technology chief for her political action committee and her presidential campaign. It is not clear whether he had any help. Pagliano had also provided computer services to the Clinton family. In 2008, he received more than $5,000 for that work, according to financial disclosure statements he filed with the government. The Post article is much longer and contains a great deal of information. If this subject interests you, I encourage you to click through. I hope you noticed the name Bryan Pagliano above. Hes among the key people the FBI are talking to. In March, Pagliano was granted immunity in exchange for information. Pagliano is also the subject of a Judicial Watch FOIA request, and hes on the Judicial Watch deposition list. (For more on Pagliano, see below.) Your first takeaway Unless there was encryption employed by Clintons private email service that no one knows about, email communications to and from it were readable as plain text. Certainly not deliberately so, but a fact nonetheless. The above-mentioned Bryan Pagliano has announced hes taking the fifth in his Judicial Watch deposition. Hes going to refuse to speak when deposed. The Hill: Clinton IT aide to plead Fifth in email case The man believed to have set up and maintained Hillary Clintons private email server will assert his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refuse to answer questions as part of an open records lawsuit against the State Department. Bryan Pagliano will decline to answer questions from Judicial Watch, the conservative legal watchdog group, during a deposition scheduled for Monday, his lawyers wrote in a court filing on Wednesday afternoon. The move forecloses the possibility that Pagliano would break his months of silence about the server issue, even as scrutiny has intensified on his role. Paglianos lawyers told Judicial Watch more than a week ago that he would not be answering any questions, they claimed in their filing on Wednesday, and asked that it drop its subpoena. The organization refused. Taking the fifth is an admission of guilt of something (who knows what?), but its an absolute protection from prosecution by evidence from his own mouth. (The ability to take the fifth, by the way, is important its our protection against evidence produced by torture. Still, its damning, not just of Pagliano, but of that whole crew.) Your second takeaway Pagliano thinks he can be prosecuted for something if he speaks about the Clinton email server in his FOIA deposition. Check the first story above to review what he can speak about. There will perhaps be political consequences from this. Will there be legal consequences? Keep reading. One of the laws that may have been broken is 18 U.S. Code 793 Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information. Note first that the information listed below doesnt require a formal classified designation to be relevant, and second, that intent is not necessary to trigger the laws penalties. Gross negligence is sufficient. Again, my emphasis below: (f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both. (g) If two or more persons conspire to violate any of the foregoing provisions of this section, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy. Your third takeaway Unless this law doesnt apply for some other reason, it seems perfectly applicable for the reasons noted above. All sorts of State Department business and communications could be considered relating to the national defense, including simple travel itineraries of top officials, such as President Obamas. Gross negligence in allowing such documents to be lost or stolen is, under this law, a criminal act subject to fines, imprisonment, or both. If the server was hacked, broken into, the above law appears to apply. Was This Law Actually Broken? Were documents related to the national defense in fact stolen from Clintons home-brew server through negligence? I think thats the piece we dont know. Will we ever find out? Thats the other piece we dont know. Still, these data points have been on my mind since I discovered them. (By the way, the list of laws that may have been broken, not to mention State Department practices and guidelines ignored, is proffered to be long, at least according to the Internet. Ive seen a list, and this is just one item on it. Its also the one I find least controvertible, since the meaning of classified is a mine field, depending on how each law is written, and this law isnt limited to classified material. I dont envy the FBI in sorting through all this.) Im not saying Clinton committed a crime; Im not a lawyer, just a political observer. But as an observer, I do observe these data points, and suspect that theyre related. And again, this is all from the public record, and every piece but the middle one has been there, out in the open, for a while. Stay tuned. This may be nothing or not-nothing. But if it turns into something, youll at least have heard about it. Yves here. You have a LOT of links today because there were SO MANY election links, and I still wanted to do a reasonable job of covering the other bases. Baby elephant which saved a British schoolgirl from tsunami has been found Thai PBS (furzy) Is it time to rethink the lab mouse? St. Louis scientists say yes St. Louis Public Radio Dogs were domesticated not once, but twice in different parts of the world, research shows PhysOrg (Chuck L) Existential Therapy from the Universe: Physicist Sean Carroll on How Poetic Naturalism Illuminates Our Human Search for Meaning Brain Pickings (Chuck L) The world is about to install 700 million air conditioners. Heres what that means for the climate Washington Post. I once stayed in a friends apartment in NYC on some hot days and his a/c died. I found that sleeping with the Vornado (very powerful fans for their size) close to me was cooler than having the a/c on, and I would assume used less energy. But there still was an energy cost. Scotland Bans Fracking, Forever OilPrice Internet Boom Times Are Over, Says Mary Meekers Influential Report Bloomberg (resilc) Sketchy genetic algorithms are the worst Cathy ONeil Samsung: Dont install Windows 10. REALLY The Register (furzy) Noncoding RNA molecules found to create micropeptides SOTT (Wat) I Had to Leave the U.S. to Stop Pretending to Be an Extrovert Salon Negative-yield debt breaks $10tn level for first time Financial Times. Madness. THE QUALITY OF EUROPEAN UNION JUSTICE HOW TO DISMISS ROSNEFTS CHALLENGE TO THE LEGALITY OF SANCTIONS John Helmer Refugee Crisis Greek detention centre burns in riot between Afghans and Pakistanis euronews (furzy) Netherlands Is the Tax Haven of Choice for Global Arms Dealers teleSUR (guurst) France is protesting against Europe Defend Democracy Paris floodwaters set to peak as more rain forecast BBC Brexit? Syraqiatan Reuters U.N. adds Saudi coalition to blacklist for killing children in Yemen euronews (furzy) Imperial Collapse Watch Trade Traitors Jeremy Corbyn: I Would Kill TTIP Common Dreams (furzy) 2016 Thanks to Activism And Sanders, Obama Changes Course on Social Security Common Dreams (furzy) The Occupy movement has grown up and looks to inflict real pain on big banks Washington Post. Im dubious, given that Trumka of AFL-CIO is involved. Wonder if this is to suck the air supply out of the Sanders activists who also intend to target down-ticket races in 2018. As a long-standing observer of the political scene told me, Never trust the American labor movement meaning the leadership. SEIU Endorses Single Payer (Kevin C) Getting federal stimulus money turned blue U.S. counties bluer, and red counties redder. How can that be? Washington Post (furzy) Lunch with the FT: James Baker Financial Times. If nothing else, read penultimate paragraph. Corruption Fed Federal Reserve to toughen stress tests for big US banks Financial Times. This claim is bullshit: Fed governor Jerome Powell said the central banks move which is likely to take effect in the 2018 stress tests would make big banks fully internalise the risk they pose to the economy. Andrew Haldane demonstrated in his 2010 Bank of England paper, The $100 Billion Question, which weve cited repeatedly, that banks cannot begin to pay for the damage they do to innocent bystanders via periodic crises. And Haldane argued that the implication was that they needed to be prohibited from doing crisis-inducing things. UC paid billions in fees to hedge funds that only mirrored stock market San Francisco Business Times New Payday-Loan Rules Wont Stop Predatory Lenders Dave Dayen, Intercept Jamie Dimon says theres stress in the auto-loan market but theres a problem with that Business Insider. Notice the argument does not obviate Dimons point. Evidence of hidden protectionism in the US in the Great Recession VoxEU Shocking Downturn in New York ISM, Chicago ISM Merely Pathetic Michael Shedlock Billionaire Steve Schwarzman just went off on the Dodd-Frank Act Business Insider. After his firm was fined $39 million under Dodd Frank, which is couch lint for him (particularly since Blackstone is public and I cant imagine the fine had any impact on the share price). A tsunami is about to overwhelm the debt market Business Insider Class Warfare Antidote du jour. Chet G sent several fine butterfly photos. This one is a painted lady: See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here. Dentin nanostructures - a super-natural phenomenon (Nanowerk News) Dentin is one of the most durable biological materials in the human body. Researchers from Charite Universitatsmedizin Berlin were able to show that the reason for this can be traced to its nanostructures and specifically to the interactions between the organic and inorganic components. Measurements performed at BESSYII, the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin's synchrotron radiation source, showed that it is the mechanical coupling between the collagen protein fibers and mineral nanoparticles which renders dentin capable of withstanding extreme forces. Results from this research have been recently published in the journal Chemistry of Materials ("Water-Mediated Collagen and Mineral Nanoparticle Interactions Guide Functional Deformation of Human Tooth Dentin"). Dentin's biological structure: tubules and mineral nanoparticles embedded in a network of collagen fibers. ()Image: Jean-Baptiste Forien, Charite Universitatsmedizin Berlin) In humans, teeth come into contact almost 5,000 times per day under normal use. In spite of this, and although we often use large forces during mastication, it is surprisingly rare for healthy teeth to break. It is widely accepted that the design of teeth makes teeth tough, where an inner core, known as dentin, supports the outer hard enamel cap. The secret to the marked toughness lies in the structural details. Dentin is a bone-like substance, which is composed of mineral nanoparticles, collagen and water. While both enamel and dentine are composed of the same mineral called carbonated hydroxyapatite (cHAP), dentin represents a complex nanocomposite material. It consists of inorganic cHAP nanoparticles embedded in an organic matrix of collagen protein fibers. A group of researchers, led by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Forien and Dr. Paul Zaslansky from Charite's Julius Wolff Institute, had previously shown that residual stress in dentin contributes to the high load-bearing capacity of this biological structure. Compression stress found within the material can explain why damage or cracks in enamel do not extend catastrophically into the dentin bulk. As part of the new findings, Dr. Zaslansky's team used samples of human teeth to measure how nanoparticles and collagen fibers interact under humidity-driven stress. It was the first time we succeeded in precisely determining not only the lattice parameters of the cHAP crystals contained within the nanoparticles, but also the spatially-varying size of the nanoparticles themselves. This also allowed us to establish the degree of stress they are generally able to withstand, says Zaslansky. In order to gain insights into the performance of the nanostructures involved, the researchers used both laboratory experiments and measurements obtained using the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin's synchrotron radiation source BESSY II, a device that produces radiation frequencies ranging from terahertz to hard X-rays. As part of their experiments, the researchers increased the compressive stress inside the dentin samples. The samples were also dried by heating them to 125C. This resulted in the collagen fibers shrinking, leading to huge stress being exerted on the nanoparticles. The ability to withstand forces of up to 300 MPa is equivalent to the yield strength of construction grade steel, and is comparable to 15 times the pressure exerted during mastication of hard food, which usually remains well below 20 MPa. Heat treatment did not lead to the destruction of the protein fibers, suggesting that the mineral nanoparticles also have a protective effect on collagen. Analysis of the data also showed a gradual reduction in the size of the cHAP crystal lattices as one moves deeper into the tooth. Tissue found near the dental pulp, which is formed during the later stages of tooth development, contains mineral particles that are made up of smaller cell units, explains Zaslansky. The nanoparticle length shows the same trend, with the mineral platelets situated near bone on the outer parts of the root measuring approximately 36 nm in length, while those found near the pulp are smaller, only 25 nm long. Such a design could be used as a model system for new materials development, for example when designing novel dental restoration materials. Dentin's morphology is considerably more complex than we expected. Enamel is very strong, but also brittle. In contrast, the organic fibers found in dentin appear to exert exactly the right pressure on the mineral nanoparticles that is required to increase the material's repetitive, cyclic load-bearing capacity, argue the scientists. At least, this is the case as long as the tooth remains intact. Bacteria that cause dental decay soften and dissolve the mineral, and produce enzymes that destroy collagen fibers. Teeth become more fragile as a result and can then break more easily. The findings of this study are also of interest to practicing dentists. First injectable nanoparticle generator could radically transform metastatic breast cancer treatment (Nanowerk News) A team of investigators from Houston Methodist Research Institute may have transformed the treatment of metastatic triple negative breast cancer by creating the first drug to successfully eliminate lung metastases in mice. This landmark study appears in Nature Biotechnology ("Biomimetic proteolipid vesicles for targeting inflamed tissues"). The majority of cancer deaths are due to metastases to the lung and liver, yet there is no cure. Existing cancer drugs provide limited benefit due to their inability to overcome biological barriers in the body and reach the cancer cells in sufficient concentrations. Houston Methodist nanotechnology and cancer researchers have solved this problem by developing a drug that generates nanoparticles inside the lung metastases in mice. In this study, 50 percent of the mice treated with the drug had no trace of metastatic disease after eight months. Thats equivalent to about 24 years of long-term survival following metastatic disease for humans. Due to the bodys own defense mechanisms, most cancer drugs are absorbed into healthy tissue causing negative side effects, and only a fraction of the administered drug actually reaches the tumor, making it less effective, said Mauro Ferrari, Ph.D, president and CEO of the Houston Methodist Research Institute. This new treatment strategy enables sequential passage of the biological barriers to transport the killing agent into the heart of the cancer. The active drug is only released inside the nucleus of the metastatic disease cell, avoiding the multidrug resistance mechanism of the cancer cells. This strategy effectively kills the tumor and provides significant therapeutic benefit in all mice, including long-term survival in half of the animals. Watch a video with Mauro Ferrari This finding comes 20 years after Ferrari started his work in nanomedicine. Ferrari and Haifa Shen, M.D., Ph.D., are co-senior authors on the paper, which describes the action of the injectable nanoparticle generator (iNPG), and how a complex method of transporting a nano-version of a standard chemotherapy drug led to never before seen results in mice models with triple negative breast cancer that had metastasized to the lungs. This may sound like science fiction, like weve penetrated and destroyed the Death Star, but what we discovered is transformational. We invented a method that actually makes the nanoparticles inside the cancer and releases the drug particles at the site of the cellular nucleus. With this injectable nanoparticle generator, we were able to do what standard chemotherapy drugs, vaccines, radiation, and other nanoparticles have all failed to do, said Ferrari. Houston Methodist has developed good manufacturing practices (GMP) for this drug and plans to fast-track the research to obtain FDA-approval and begin safety and efficacy studies in humans in 2017. I would never want to overpromise to the thousands of cancer patients looking for a cure, but the data is astounding, said Ferrari, senior associate dean and professor of medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine. Were talking about changing the landscape of curing metastatic disease, so its no longer a death sentence. The Houston Methodist team used doxorubicin, a cancer therapeutic that has been used for decades but has adverse side effects to the heart and is not an effective treatment against metastatic disease. In this study, doxorubicin was packaged within the injectable nanoparticle generator that is made up of many components. Shen, a senior member of the department of nanomedicine at Houston Methodist Research Institute, explains that each component has a specific and essential role in the drug delivery process. The first component is the nanoporous silicon material that naturally degrades in the body. The second component is a polymer made up of multiple strands that contain doxorubicin. Once inside the tumor, the silicon material degrades, releasing the strands. Due to natural thermodynamic forces, these strands curl-up to form nanoparticles that are taken up by the cancer cells. Once inside the cancer cells, the acidic pH close to the nucleus causes the drug to be released from the nanoparticles. Inside the nucleus, the active drug acts to kill the cell. If this research bears out in humans and we see even a fraction of this survival time, we are still talking about dramatically extending life for many years. Thats essentially providing a nanotechnology to cure cancer in a patient population that is now being told there is none, said Ferrari, who holds the Ernest Cockrell Jr. Presidential Distinguished Chair and is considered one of the founders of nanomedicine and oncophysics (physics of mass transport within a cancer lesion). A developer has unveiled detailed plans for a luxury modern-urban high-rise tower near downtown Naples with an exclusive private rooftop sky club. The project will be built at U.S. 41 and Davis Boulevard. The developer is Trio Southern Holdings LLC. The project is called Trio. (Submitted rendering) SHARE A developer has unveiled detailed plans for a luxury modern-urban high-rise tower near downtown Naples with an exclusive private rooftop sky club. The project will be built at U.S. 41 and Davis Boulevard. The developer is Trio Southern Holdings LLC. The project is called Trio. (Submitted rendering) A developer has unveiled detailed plans for a luxury modern-urban high-rise tower near downtown Naples with an exclusive private rooftop sky club. The project will be built at U.S. 41 and Davis Boulevard. The developer is Trio Southern Holdings LLC. The project is called Trio. (Submitted rendering) A developer has unveiled detailed plans for a luxury modern-urban high-rise tower near downtown Naples with an exclusive private rooftop sky club. The project will be built at U.S. 41 and Davis Boulevard. The developer is Trio Southern Holdings LLC. The project is called Trio. (Submitted rendering) A developer has unveiled detailed plans for a luxury modern-urban high-rise tower near downtown Naples with an exclusive private rooftop sky club. The project will be built at U.S. 41 and Davis Boulevard. The developer is Trio Southern Holdings LLC. The project is called Trio. (Submitted rendering) By Laura Layden of the Naples Daily News A developer has unveiled detailed plans for a luxury modern urban high-rise near downtown Naples with an exclusive private rooftop sky club. The nine-story building, simply called Trio, will have 12 extended-stay hotel rooms and 24 residential condominiums overtop shops and restaurants. The sleek concrete and glass tower will be built at the corner of U.S. 41 and Davis Boulevard, just outside the Naples city limits, in the Gateway Triangle, long targeted for redevelopment. The name of the project comes from the pizza-slice shape of its land. The developer, fittingly going by the name Trio Southern Holdings LLC, released the condominiums for sale this week, selling one of the penthouses almost immediately. Prices range from $850,000 for a one-bedroom with a den to $2.69 million for a larger three-bedroom penthouse. "We have 85 people on a list to meet with us. We only have 23 units left to sell. It's not a lot," said David Bartley Sr., owner of Bartley Realty LLLP, the project's exclusive broker. The first business, Yoga Loft, a high-end yoga studio, has reserved one of five commercial spots on the bottom floor. The tower will stand out as the tallest in the area, stretching skyward to 112 feet. If it was in the city it couldn't be taller than 42 feet. One of the tower's more unique features will be its sky club, modeled after rooftop lounges in larger, more cosmopolitan cities such as Miami and New York, said Morgan Fry, with Bartley Realty. "It's not going to be open to the public. It's going to be a members-only sky club. It's going to be the first one in Southwest Florida, let alone Naples," Fry said. Bartley and Fry did some traveling to help the developer come up with the right aura for the building, making several trips to Miami for inspiration. "Obviously we can't bring Miami to Naples," Fry said. "It wouldn't work." The developer is confident the sky club, named Club IX (for the ninth floor), will thrive. Spanning 8,000 square feet, the nautical-themed club will include three mineral pools, poolside cabanas, water fountains and custom lighting to help set the mood. "They have a lot in the works up there," Fry said. For residents, club membership will be mandatory, and it will be free for the first year. Hotel guests will pay a resort fee that will include use of the club. Pricing details are still being ironed out. The developer is still awaiting site development plan approval from Collier County. Final approval is expected by August. A rezoning is not required. "We couldn't be happier really. The county has responded very well," Bartley said. Construction is expected to start in October, with a 14-month build-out. The project could be completed by December 2017. The project has been in the works for about a year. Its official launch has people talking. "It's something new coming to Naples. People like new. People like uniqueness. People like exclusivity, and this is exactly what this building offers," Fry said. The extended-stay hotel rooms, ranging from 700 to 1,200 square feet and including full kitchens, will be on the second floor of the tower. Guests will be able to stay for up to 30 days. The condominiums, ranging from 1,600 to 2,600 square feet, will be on the remaining floors, from the third to the eighth. There will be four residences on each floor with luxury finishes that will include marble in the bathrooms, white oak flooring and quartz countertops. With nothing taller in front of Trio, which will face west, it will offer unobstructed views of Naples Bay, the Gulf of Mexico, Gulfshore Boulevard and downtown Naples. The project will also have a resort-style pool and spa in an outdoor plaza. Residents will have private parking garages and elevators. Other amenities will include a valet, Wi-Fi, a business center and state-of-the-art fitness studios. There will be "custom scenting" in the lobby, giving residents and visitors a unique sensory experience. The project will replace a one-story building that for many years was home to Union Motors, an auto body and rim shop, which has relocated. Tony Fortino, the developer, with offices in Naples and New Jersey, has 25 years of construction and development experience. While he's built other commercial and residential projects, Trio would be his largest and his first in Collier County. Word about the project was spread on social media Wednesday through Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and the response has been very positive, Fortino said. "People love the look," he said. "It will truly be a catalyst project that will ignite that area of East Naples. So I think it will really be a tremendous project that is needed." SHARE "Chef Laura" Owen samples a chardonnay. "The Glory of the Grape" will offer food and wine pairings, in a chamber of commerce fundraiser June 5 at CJ's on the Bay. Lance Shearer/Eagle Correspondent "The Glory of the Grape" will offer food and wine pairings, in a chamber of commerce fundraiser June 5 at CJ's on the Bay. Lance Shearer/Eagle Correspondent Canada Goose (Branta canadensis) Leading Rest of Flock on Migration South Against a Sunset - Grand Bend, Ontario, Canada 1. This weekend: Glory of the Grape Glasses will be filled. And emptied. That much can be stated with confidence about the upcoming "Glory of the Grape," the Marco Island Chamber of Commerce fundraiser dedicated to matters oenological, to be held at 6 p.m., Sunday, June 5 at CJ's on the Bay, 740 North Collier Boulevard, Marco Island. We have some idea of the wines that will be in those glasses being filled and emptied, although Chef Laura Owen of CJ's is giving herself a good deal of latitude on the choosing. In fact, "latitude" is the theme for this year's Glory of the Grape. While previous "Glories" have focused on wines from a particular region, or featured showdowns between countries, the bottles at this year's event are limited only by a broad geographical belt belts, actually spanning the globe. "This year, it's latitudes. Anything from 42 to 49 degrees latitude," said Owen. "That takes in Oregon, Washington, New York State, Spain, France, Austria and Germany" most of the great wine-producing regions of the world. And that's just the northern hemisphere. Throw in the southern latitudes, and you include New Zealand and Chile. So the sky's the limit. What we don't know is what foods will be paired with the wines, although Owen, along with Curt and Jacquie Koon, have winnowed the wine list down to about 12 or 13 wines from 40 or so that were originally presented by their wine purveyors, sampled and considered. 2. Tuesday: Everglades City School exhibit The Museum of the Everglades will exhibit the artwork by children of the Everglades City School. Located in the small town of Everglades City and under the guidance of their art teacher Mr. Tribble, these talented students of all ages create some of the most amazing pieces of work. The exhibit will be displayed from June 1 through Aug. 31. An artist reception sponsored by the Friends of the Museum of the Everglades will take place at 4 p.m., Tuesday, June 7. Information: 239-695-0008 or colliermuseums.com/exhibits. 3. Tuesday: Animal migrations Whales do it. Birds do it. Even Sea turtles do it. In fact, every year some of the Earth's most incredible creatures take to the road, often traveling thousands of miles, to find resources that are not available within a single area on a year-round basis. From 7 until 9 p.m., Tuesday, June 7, naturalist Robert McConville will describe some of the world's greatest animal migrations. Take, for example, the adult sea turtles. In the spring and summer, these turtles migrate hundreds, even thousands of miles to Florida to mate and nest. The female of the species comes ashore at night to lay her eggs, on the very same beach where she herself was first hatched. Manatee migration, on the other hand, is regulated by the animal's core body temperature. A drop in water temperature, below 68 degrees, for any length of time and the manatee risks death. Movement to any one of Florida's many freshwater springs, with a constant temperature of around 72 degrees year round, offers a safe haven for this endangered species. The McConville lecture is brought to you by the Marco Island Historical Society. It is free to members of the Society and $5 for nonmembers; all are invited to attend. Rose History Auditorium is located at 180 S. Heathwood Drive. Information, call 239-389-6447 or visit theMIHS.org. Murky waters from Lake Okeechobee discharges stain the St. Lucie River on Feb. 11 near Palm City and Stuart. Leah Voss/Treasure Coast Newspapers SHARE Lance Shearer/Eagle Correspondent 1. More discharges from Lake Okeechobee this weekend as rainy weather continues Lake Okeechobee releases are being amped up this weekend to help federal and state agencies prepare for the coming tropical season that starts Wednesday. Recent rains caused the lake to rise about 9 inches, and now the surface of the lake is more than 14 feet above sea level. Federal protocols say the lake should be kept between 12.5 feet to 15.5 feet above sea level to protect lives and farming operations south of Okeechobee. Lake levels were 14.38 feet above sea level Thursday, according to South Florida Water Management District records. More rain is expected this weekend. "It's stopped the recession (of lake water) that we've seen since March, but it's totally reversed the trend and the lake is going back up," said Army Corps of Engineers spokesman John Campbell. "We are now back where we were about a month ago." Releases will be 4,000 cubic feet per second starting Friday at the W.P. Franklin Lock and Dam on the Caloosahatchee River. Recent release levels have been 1,650 cubic feet per second. Record rains in January caused the lake to swell during the dry season, an oddity driven by a strong El Nino weather pattern. El Nino tends to bring wetter, slightly cooler winters to Southwest Florida. El Nino also suppresses tropical storm and hurricane development in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, but that layer of protection has disappeared in recent weeks, according to various weather forecasting outlets. Chad Gillis, The News-Press 2. Monday: City Council to take up wastewater; community center Monday night, the Marco Island City Council plans to discuss continued efforts to improve the city's wastewater system. In 2008, the city adopted an ordinance to prevent further damage to the system, but recently found that the damage is continuing due to "the failure of commercial customers to use traps, interceptors or separators to prevent the discharge of excessive grease and oil into the public wastewater system," according to the written resolution. The resolution asks council to adopt a new ordinance "providing for the annual permitting process of obtaining a grease discharge permit." The council also plans to move forward with the construction of a community center of up to 16,000 square feet at Mackle Park. Last month, the city received eight bids, the lowest for $2,713,405 from R.E. Crawford Construction, LLC. The council plans to discuss going forward with the bid Monday night. Also at the meeting, the council will also hear an update from Florida State Rep. Matt Hudson regarding the 2016 legislative session and its impact on Marco Island. The council will meet at 5:30 p.m., June 6, in the council chambers located at 51 Bald Eagle Drive. Ashley Collins/Staff 3. FDA issues new guidelines on salt, pressuring food industry The Obama administration is pressuring the food industry to make foods from breads to sliced turkey less salty, proposing long-awaited sodium guidelines in an effort to prevent thousands of deaths each year from heart disease and stroke. The guidelines released Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration are voluntary, so food companies won't be required to comply, and it could be a year or more before they are final. But the idea is to persuade companies and restaurants many of which have already lowered sodium levels in their products to take a more consistent approach. It's the first time the government has recommended such limits. Sodium content already is included on existing food labels, but the government has not set specific sodium recommendations. The guidelines suggest limits for about 150 categories of foods, from cereals to pizzas and sandwiches. There are two-year and 10-year goals. Health officials from the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said overwhelming scientific evidence shows that blood pressure increases when sodium intake increases, increasing the chances of heart disease and stroke. FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said that many people may not be conscious of how much sodium they are eating until they get sick. Palladio Trattoria is now open in the former space of Fabio and Anthony's trattorias along U.S. 41 just north of the Collier-Lee county line in Bonita Springs. (Tim Aten/Daily News staff) SHARE By Anne Reed and Annabelle Tometich, The News-Press Bonita Springs now hosts a small slice of Northern Italy. Chef Emanuela Calcara opened Palladio Trattoria on May 13 after moving to Southwest Florida after 16 years in California. "I wanted to be closer to my family," Calcara explained. Calcara was born in Maryland and grew up in Vicenza in Northern Italy. She completed her culinary training at Le Cordon Bleu in Los Angeles, where she cooked for well-known chefs and celebrities. The menu at Palladio Trattoria is heavily influenced by Calcara's Italian roots. Dishes include penne San Danielle, pasticcio alla veneta, osso bucco Milanese and house-made gnocchi. "One of my favorites that was almost a challenge to put on the menu is fegato alla Veneziana," Calcara explained. The dish is calf liver and onions served over creamy polenta and popular in the region where Calcara was raised. "People love it or hate it, but surprisingly people have loved it so far." Palladio Trattoria is located at 28340 Trails Edge Blvd. in Bonita Springs. Hours are 4-10 p.m. every day; to make a reservation, call 947-2202 and visit palladiotrattoria.com for additional information. SHARE Isabel Gonzalez, a baker, puts finishing touches on donuts Wednesday, June 1, 2016 at Peace, Love and Little Donuts in Naples, Fla. Friday marks National Donut Day a holiday created by the Salvation Army to honor members who handed out donuts to U.S. soldiers during World War I. It's been recognized annually since 1938. (Corey Perrine/Staff) Kara Barefoot, owner/baker, left and Isabel Gonzalez, a baker, are shown in portrait Wednesday, June 1, 2016 at Peace, Love and Little Donuts in Naples, Fla. Friday marks National Donut Day a holiday created by the Salvation Army to honor members who handed out donuts to U.S. soldiers during World War I. It's been recognized annually since 1938. (Corey Perrine/Staff) Kara Barefoot, owner/baker, puts the final touch on a lemon curd donut Wednesday, June 1, 2016 at Peace, Love and Little Donuts in Naples, Fla. Friday marks National Donut Day a holiday created by the Salvation Army to honor members who handed out donuts to U.S. soldiers during World War I. It's been recognized annually since 1938. (Corey Perrine/Staff) Isabel Gonzalez, a baker, pours cream for Steve Collins o Birmingham, England Wednesday, June 1, 2016 at Peace, Love and Little Donuts in Naples, Fla. Friday marks National Donut Day a holiday created by the Salvation Army to honor members who handed out donuts to U.S. soldiers during World War I. It's been recognized annually since 1938. (Corey Perrine/Staff) Related Photos National Donut Day By Kristine Gill of the Naples Daily News Lovers of fried dough and sprinkles, rejoice! The best day of the year is here. It is a day celebrated on the first Friday of every June. It is a day that makes the end of the work week that much better. It is National Doughnut Day and you can sweeten the deal in Naples with a free pastry from Peace, Love and Little Donuts all day today. "The Salvation Army used to bring doughnuts to soldiers in Europe on National Doughtnut Day," said Kara Barefoot, owner of the shop at 3106 U.S. 41 N. "So it's not like the random days we celebrate now It has a history." Barefoot and her three kids were regulars at Peace, Love and Little Donuts when they learned their beloved breakfast spot was skipping town. Located inside the former BP gas station at U.S. 41 North and Mooring Line Drive, the shop was forced to close and make way for a Chase Bank two years ago. Barefoot said the owner had plans to sell the place to someone who was taking it out of Naples. Bummed at the prospect of losing a local business not to mention all those donuts Barefoot quit her job at a software company and bought the place. "Now I run it," she said from the shop where donuts with 40 different topping combinations are made daily. You can buy coffee too, and enjoy your treat inside the establishment where everything from doughnut T-shirts to stationery is available for purchase. All donuts at the shop are baked fresh daily. They start with a basic cake donut, about half the size of a regular donut. Then they're topped with everything from sprinkles to bacon and sometimes even infused with coffee. There are flavors like birthday cake, apple pie and French toast. The plain donuts with glaze or icing cost $1 and the fancy ones cost $1.50, tax included. Get a dozen of the simpler toppings for $11 or try a dozen funky ones for $16. If you aren't sure where to start, try these flavors Barefoot recommends: Coffee cake: Barefoot's favorite creation since she took over, this doughnut channels the flavors of its pastry brother by combining mocha frosting and a brown sugar and cinnamon streusel topping. Pair with coffee and call it a meal. Key lime pie: When the Keys just aren't close enough. Cream cheese filling tops this doughnut, which then gets dipped in a lemon lime frosting. It's coated with a graham cracker crust and key lime zest on top. Maple bacon: These guys are dipped in maple frosting then topped with a generous amount of real bacon pieces. "It's not gross," Barefoot insists. "It really does taste like pancakes, syrup and bacon." Lemon curd: Simply but fruity, and ripe for summer, Barefoot says. These doughnuts have a dollop of lemon curd and a sprinkling of powdered sugar. Cannoli: More like a cannoli sandwich. Doughnuts are sliced in half then pressed back together with that rich cannoli filing and a rim of chocolate chips. SHARE Meadowlark By Joanna Fitzgerald A magnificent frigatebird and an eastern meadowlark were among the 100 animals admitted to the von Arx Wildlife Hospital at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida this past week. Other admissions include a black skimmer, three red-bellied woodpeckers, a gopher tortoise, a Florida box turtle and a Virginia opossum. The magnificent frigatebird was rescued 12 miles offshore of Marco Island when it was spotted floating in the water entangled in fishing line and hooks. Frigatebirds rarely, if ever, land on the water. Their feathers are not waterproof; if a frigatebird's feathers get saturated it will drown. An officer with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission brought the bird to the von Arx Wildlife Hospital for care. The frigate was a young bird in good health; it was very active when it arrived at the wildlife hospital and tried to defend itself by biting and flapping its wings. The bird had small puncture wounds on its left wing and right leg from the fishing hooks. The frigatebird was placed in the intensive care area at the hospital after receiving a full exam as well as an anti-inflammatory and pain medication. Staff monitored the frigatebird for several days. With no sign of infection at the puncture sites the bird was cleared for release. Young frigatebirds can stay with their mother for up to a year so it was important to get it back to the vicinity where it was rescued. Although we were unable to release the bird out at sea, we did return the frigatebird to Marco Island. Although it is unknown how the frigatebird became entangled in fishing line, there are two likely possibilities: the bird became entangled in discarded line while roosting or the bird flew too close to an angler and got snared in the line. If you participate in angling activities please retrieve any line that becomes entangled in nearby vegetation if you miscast. Leaving line in the environment after miscasting can be fatal if an bird becomes entangled. If you accidentally snag a bird while fishing, do not cut the line. Reel the bird in carefully but quickly. A bird struggling against a taut line may cause the line to break and allow the bird to fly off entangled in the hook and line. Once the bird is reeled, in cover its head with a towel to help calm the bird. If the hook is not deeply embedded, gently push the hook through until the barb is exposed. Clip the barb and back the hook out. Step away and allow the bird time to get its bearings and fly off. If the hook is deeply embedded or if the hook has been ingested, contain the bird and bring it to the wildlife hospital for immediate medical attention. The eastern meadowlark was also rescued from drowning after it was seen struggling in a pond in Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. The fledgling meadowlark was still learning to fly when it had the misfortune of ending up in the water. The meadowlark arrived at the hospital alert and vocalizing in the transport box. Eastern meadowlarks are a very rare admission to the wildlife hospital. This is only the fourth meadowlark ever admitted to the von Arx Wildlife Hospital with the last one being admitted in 2009. The young meadowlark received a full exam. The fledgling had clear lung sounds which indicated it hadn't inhaled any water while struggling in the pond. The meadowlark was placed in an animal intensive care unit in the nursery and began to eat insects offered by staff. The meadowlark will be raised at the hospital until it is flying well and able to fend for itself. Recent Releases Sixteen northern mockingbirds, a Florida softshell turtle, six blue jays, a cooper's hawk, five eastern cottontails, two eastern screech owls, a Florida box turtle, two mourning doves, 10 mottled ducks, an ovenbird, a purple martin and a ruddy turnstone were released this past week. Wildlife Hospital Baby Shower During the spring and summer months the wildlife hospital will treat hundreds of baby animals including various birds, mammals, and even reptiles. We are reaching out and asking community members to bring a gift item or gift basket from our wish list to our Wildlife Hospital Baby Shower on Saturday June 4 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Donations will help provide these wild babies with the best possible care. Donations can be dropped off at our nature center, where we will be offering one free admission to those that donate. You will have chances throughout the day to take a peek in our nursery viewing window to see our wildlife staff at work. You can also enter to win a chance to join wildlife rehabilitation staff on an animal release or baby bird re-nesting, which is a very special opportunity. Our wish list and event details can be found on our website at www.conservancy.org/babyshower. Thank you for your support! Opportunities to Help Please visit the Conservancy website at www.conservancy.org to view all of the amazing volunteer opportunities at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. Your volunteer time, memberships and donations are vital in helping us continue our work to protect Southwest Florida's water, land, wildlife and future. Joanna Fitzgerald is director of the von Arx Wildlife Hospital at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. Call 239-262-2273 or see conservancy.org. SHARE By Daily News Staff An East Naples man was arrested after he pointed a gun at his son because the boy would not wake up to go to school, according to the Collier County Sheriff's Office. Jorge Godoy, 52, of the 1700 block of Wild Pines Court, was arrested Thursday on a felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill. Godoy was getting his children ready for school May 6 and became frustrated that his son was taking his time waking up, according to an arrest report. Godoy told his son to hurry up and sprayed water on him. Godoy then pointed a handgun at the boy, according to the report, and threatened to kill him. The man then pointed the gun at himself and told his son to shoot him, officials said. The boy's sister saw her father point the gun at her brother, the report states. The boy told his school teacher about the incident, and the teacher called the children's mother and the Florida Department of Children and Families. Godoy denied pointing a gun at his son and told deputies his ex-wife was making false allegations and turning their children against him. A polygraph test conducted in late May showed Godoy was deceptive when he was asked about pointing the gun at his son. District School Board of Collier County. (Carolina Hidalgo/Staff) SHARE By Melhor Leonor of the Naples Daily News Negotiations between Collier County school district officials and representatives of the local teachers union are underway, with proposals that span from salaries to working conditions. District officials have proposed increasing teachers' pay through the district's salary schedule at all levels of experience. The district had rejected a proposal by the Collier County Education Association, the teachers union, to increase teachers' salaries under a three-year agreement. Collier County Public Schools Human Resources Director Ian Dean, who is leading negotiations for the district, said the district won't consider the proposal because it can't commit to a three-year agreement. "We only receive revenue from the state on an annual basis. The state doesn't provide funding on a three-year basis, so that's not something we can agree to," Dean said. Dean said the district's proposal would increase the starting salary for teachers, a way to attract more qualified applicants to Collier's public schools. Dean said a starting salary of $41,720 for teachers with bachelor's degrees $1,320 more than the current figure would place Collier as the district with the second-highest starting salary in the state. The starting salary for teachers with master's degrees would increase to $44,600 from $43,100. District officials hope the offer will reduce the number of applicants who reject jobs with the district because of the high cost of living in Collier County. The increase would trickle down to each step in the schedule, which accounts for years of teaching experience. Although a higher starting salary would be welcome news, the three-year union proposal could go a long way in attracting highly qualified teachers, said Jonathan Tuttle, executive director of the union. "Another thing that will attract them is some sense of security and stability," Tuttle said. School district and union representatives also are considering teachers' working conditions. Tuttle said the most significant of the union's proposals is more job security. That would go a long way in attracting the most qualified teachers, he said. Five years have elapsed since Florida legislators did away with tenure by eliminating continuing contracts for teachers. Collier union officials now are proposing the district automatically renew the contracts of teachers rated as effective and highly effective in the classroom, according to criteria for assessing Florida teachers. In addition, union officials want to see such teachers receive pay increases per the agreed-upon salary schedule automatically. Increases now depend on contract negotiations every summer. "We're trying to find some security for annual-contract teachers," Tuttle said. "Right now, a teacher can be non-renewed for no reason at all. "What we are trying to do is give these guys a little sense of security," he said. "If they do well in the classroom, they'll be renewed." The union also has proposed changes regarding time demands on teachers. Proposals to give teachers more time to determine grades would: exempt teachers from meetings during the week before the due date for interim grades; release students early the day before teachers have to submit interim grades. The union also is asking for teachers to be compensated for time attending some events and meetings outside their contracted time, and that their curriculum planning time not be in the presence of students. School district and union officials are still far from an agreement. A few summer meetings are scheduled. The next bargaining session is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at the union's headquarters, 6710 Lone Oak Blvd. By Maryann Batlle of the Naples Daily News Editor's note: The Naples Daily News continues its long-standing tradition of presenting the community's "Graduates of Distinction." One student from each area school is selected by school staff. There is no right-brain, left-brain split for Samantha Coury. At 17, Coury has excelled in the Florida Gulf Coast University chemistry lab as a researcher and on the school's orchestra as a violinist. One skill informs the other, she said. "There's patterns that are similar," Coury said. "You have to apply the same type of processes in your mind to that equation that you would to a new (music) piece that you are sight reading." She does not realize that she makes her mastery of high-level subjects sound as effortless as learning the lyrics of a catchy pop song. She avoids anointing herself with superpowers that would be unavailable to other teenagers. Instead, Coury credits her hard work for making her stand out at Estero High School. After her sophomore year there, she enrolled in college-level classes at FGCU. That choice came with some sacrifice. She missed her senior prom, a slight disappointment, Coury admits. But her maturity and stick-to-it-ness got her into Yale University, where she plans to continue her study of chemistry. Her long-term goal is to obtain a dual medical degree and a Ph.D. so she can treat patients and work toward discovering health-related treatments through research. She names Gregory Boyce, an assistant professor of organic chemistry at FGCU, as her greatest mentor. She worked on graduate-level research under his supervision about 20 hours a week. Coury was adept at independent study, he said. She is a deep thinker whom he trusted to train students at least five years older than her. "She is the type of student you only get one of in a lifetime," Boyce said. "She is beyond competent, and I believe she will be hugely successful." Coury's biggest concern about moving to Connecticut is how she, a Florida native, will fare during the winter months. Homesickness she has a strategy for. She has created a slideshow with 300 pictures of her chihuahua-mix, Friday, to click through on her computer when she misses him. And she intends to FaceTime with her parents and younger sister when she feels homesick. She's ready for this new adventure, Coury said. "I know this is a step I need to grow." Lorenzo Walker senior Ciara Hammons at Lorenzo Walker Technical High School in Naples on Wednesday, June 1, 2016. Hammons' area of study is culinary arts and commercial baking and she is graduating third in her class. She plans to attend the Culinary Institute of America in New York starting June 20. (Dorothy Edwards/Staff) SHARE Lorenzo Walker senior Darchelle Excellent at Lorenzo Walker Technical High School in Naples on Wednesday, June 1, 2016. Excellent's area of study is practical nursing and she is graduating first in her class. She plans to attend the University of Florida in the fall and study nursing. (Dorothy Edwards/Staff) Lorenzo Walker senior Allyson Zamora at Lorenzo Walker Technical High School in Naples on Wednesday, June 1, 2016. Zamora's area of study is network support services and she is graduating second in her class. She plans to attend the University of Florida in the fall and study computer science. (Dorothy Edwards/Staff) By Melhor Leonor of the Naples Daily News Four years, two degrees and multiple certifications was the challenge posed to a 15-year-old Darchelle Excellent during her freshman year of high school at Lorenzo Walker Technical. With little foresight but much ambition, Darchelle accepted, as did her classmates Allyson Zamora and Ciara Hammons. Three years later on the day of their high school graduation the girls will collect their diplomas as the school's top three students according to their grade-point averages, but with much more to show for their four years at Lorenzo Walker. Multiple certifications rendered the group ready for careers well before their high school diploma was signed. When they step up to ceremoniously collect it at Lorenzo's commencement, it won't be the first time each dons a cap and gown. "When we got to the (Florida SouthWestern State College) commencement, they said, 'OK, guys, you should know the drill from your high school graduation,'" said Ciara, who graduated from FSW with an associate's degree in general studies last month alongside Darchelle and Allyson. At the ceremony, the girls watched other students carefully to understand what would await them on the stage. "Shake hands with your right and grab the diploma with your left. Shake with your right and grab with your left," Allyson said. Their trajectory through secondary education is a microcosm if an outstanding one of the changes taking place in high schools across the country, where a diploma no longer means "college ready" and a course load sprinkled with advanced classes no longer demarks a school's top students. Abby Lambly, head academic counselor at Lorenzo Walker Technical High School, knows this. Standing inside the sunny atrium that merges the high school and technical school into a one-of-its-kind institution in Collier County, Lambly can't help but brag. It's not only that the students she mentors have high grade-point averages and scores of advanced classes, but that they've achieved such feats while completing intense technical programs. Every year, Lorenzo Walker Technical High School and College outpours graduates who are ready for entry-level jobs in fields like nursing, cosmetology, the culinary arts and drafting. Program completion comes with preparation for certifications that enable graduates to be considered for jobs in those fields. Students who attend Lorenzo Walker are required to enroll in both high school and college-level classes. In the pool of freshmen four years ago, Lambly saw opportunity for more. "Lorenzo Walker is already a place where kids are enrolled in two schools and I decided to do a little experiment. I said, let's try something. Let's see if they qualify for dual enrollment and see if they can complete their associate's degree," Lambly said. "At the time, I was not really aware of what happens, how you get an associate's degree. But I wanted to take them to take the most advantage of what dual enrollment offers, which is to give them a head start." Lambley began to work with FSW and the students, polling their interests and career goals. Allyson said Lambly helped them choose classes and even researched which professors would be the best fit. "I threw it out to six kids, and three of them finished. Coincidentally graduating first, second and third in their class," Lambly said. Darchelle, Lorenzo's valedictorian, boasts a grade-point average of 6.07. She's graduating from Lorenzo's competitive nursing program and will head to the University of Florida this month to continue her career in nursing. When asked about the last four years, Darchelle says they included a lot of driving between Lorenzo and FSW, and many long days of reading and studying for a heavy course load. "Your college professors expect you to read a lot in one week. And with three other classes, that was a lot. Review sheets, essays Those were my nights." But when Darchelle starts at the University of Florida, she'll be ahead of her peers by two years and already familiar with the demands of college life. "I'm very ambitious so I wanted to take that challenge. It was pretty hard at times. But I pushed through," Darchelle said. When the work became overwhelming, Darchelle said she pulled strength from her parents, Rachel and Emanuel, who immigrated from Haiti shortly before Darchelle was born. "They have always said, 'You can't give up any opportunities because if you were in Haiti right now, you wouldn't have these opportunities. Don't forget this is why we came here,'" Darchelle said. "That's been my motivation for me. We've had financial problems, and I don't want that for the future. And I want to give back to them for helping me." Ciara, who graduated from Lorenzo's Commercial Foods and Culinary Arts program, will be heading to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, which boasts alumni like Anthony Bourdain. Ciara said that thanks to her associate's degree, she'll be able to cut the length of the program by a year, and will carry a course load that is significantly lighter than that of her peers allowing her more time to focus. Allyson, who graduated from Lorenzo's Computer Systems and Information Technology program, will head to the University of Florida, like Darchelle. She hopes to study computer science maybe biomedical engineering but is giving herself the freedom to explore, something that she proudly earned by earning her associate's early. "What I'm most proud of is that by senior year, we had the courseload of an average college student, and we had technical area on top of that," Allyson said. She says that if she were to go back in time, she would accept the challenge again. Thought at first she was a little hesitant, she says her dad coaxed her into taking it on something she thanks him for. "If you could, please add in there that my mom was a great source of support," she added. FILE - In this Sept. 14, 2009, file photo, women are concealed from view by Planned Parenthood volunteers as they enter the Planned Parenthood of Collier County in Naples, Fla. (David Albers/Staff) SHARE By Liz Freeman of the Naples Daily News A new Florida law targeting Planned Parenthood could force the closing of an Immokalee clinic and result in cancer and infections going undetected among needy women, according to a lawsuit filed this week. Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida filed the complaint in federal court in Tallahassee against the state for taking steps to defund Planned Parenthood and other clinics that perform abortions. The new law, which takes effect July 1, prohibits public money from going to abortion clinics for a variety of non-abortion related health services, like family planning and cancer screenings. Many Planned Parenthood clinics provide preventive services under contract around the state, according to the complaint. The new law also mandates the state to review medical records of at least half of all women in Florida who receive abortions. The lawsuit says that is an unprecedented invasion of patient privacy. The definition of trimester as it relates to abortion also will change July 1 and leave physicians and abortion clinics vulnerable to disciplinary action, according to the complaint. "Let's call this what it is: an attack on people who already have the least access to care, all in the name of politics," Barbara Zdravecky, president and chief executive officer of the regional Planned Parenthood, said in a statement. "We will do everything in our power to protect access to care for the Floridians who rely on us." Gov. Rick Scott's office is reviewing the lawsuit and had no further comment Friday, spokeswoman Jackie Schutz said. From a national perspective, the Florida lawsuit is the 16th that the women's health organization has filed to protect access to services. Twenty-four states have imposed measures to defund Planned Parenthood affiliates. The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid in April sent letters to Florida and other states warning that it is unlawful to block federal money to state Medicaid programs that Planned Parenthood receives for preventative care. Planned Parenthood's lawsuit filed Thursday focuses only on potential losses of federal grant dollars sent to the Florida Department of Health to administer. It does not address if the state tries to prohibit state Medicaid dollars for health screenings. State law already prohibits using Medicaid for elective abortions. If the new Florida law takes effect, thousands of low-income women in Collier County will lose access to cancer screenings, tests for sexually transmitted diseases and birth control services, according to the lawsuit. That's because a contract between the local Planned Parenthood and the Florida Department of Health in Collier for cancer screenings and family planning will have to halt. The contract uses federal dollars through the Title 10 program. The agreement has been in effect since 1995 and 5,800 women in Naples and Immokalee have been served. Planned Parenthood's center in Immokalee served nearly 650 women last year. In addition, Planned Parenthood would no longer receives $13,000 in a state grant to provide vasectomies to men in Fort Myers, Sarasota, Lakeland and Orlando. Combined dollar losses to the Southwest Florida and Orlando affiliates would come to $211,000, according to the lawsuit. Planned Parenthood affiliates in South Florida and the Treasure Coast, which joined the complaint, would lose $300,000. The new law also will require the state Agency for Health Care Administration to review annually at least 50 percent of the medical records of women who receive abortions. Statewide, there were more than 71,000 abortions in 2015, the complaint says. "The inspection requirement is both unprecedented and unwarranted: no other health care facilities in Florida are subject to such invasive inspections, and there is no health or safety rationale for imposing the inspection requirement on abortion providers, and abortion providers alone," the complaint says. The third part of the state law under fire from Planned Parenthood involves how the state changed its definition of trimester to be based on weeks of gestation. Planned Parenthood says that is not consistent with accepted medical practice. As a result, Planned Parenthood can no longer perform abortions for women whose pregnancies fall within the "12th week of gestation" under the new definition. Those abortions would be considered second trimester abortions. Planned Parenthood clinics in Naples, Fort Myers and elsewhere are limited to first trimester abortions. Changing the definition of trimester to impose restrictions came after the state last summer cited clinics in Naples, Fort Myers and St. Petersburg for performing second trimester abortions. The state health care agency used a different interpretation of first and second trimester to cite the clinics. Planned Parenthood fought back and ultimately the state dropped the citations. British comedian Russell Howard (right) and his mother, Ninette, take a tour of downtown Naples with Mayor Bill Barnett. (Courtesy City of Naples) By Joseph Cranney of the Naples Daily News The email came to Mayor Bill Barnett's inbox on May 6. A British film crew was putting together a new travel series for Comedy Central in the United Kingdom. The series stars Russell Howard, a British comedian, and his mom. As part of their trip to the U.S., they wanted to visit Naples and meet the mayor. Barnett's first thought: Is this legit? "We get all kinds of strange requests and emails," Barnett said. The email checked out, and on Friday, Barnett met Howard and his mom, Ninette, at City Hall and Barnett gave them a brief tour of downtown. They walked to the Starbucks on Fifth Avenue South to get a cup of tea for Ninette. Howard said he had read the results of a recent poll and wanted to come here to find out the answer to a question: What makes Naples one of the happiest and healthiest places to live in the country? In February, a Gallup poll named Naples and its surrounding area the community in the U.S. with the highest well-being. Howard and his crew, who declined to speak to the Daily News, planned to travel around Naples on Friday to ask residents the question. They asked Barnett what about Naples makes him happy. His answer? His wife. His dog. And living in Naples for 43 years. "The question would be better as, what would make me unhappy?" Barnett said. On Saturday at sunset, Barnett will read a proclamation at the Naples Pier and give each of the Howards a key to the city and a pier plank. Barnett said the travel show would be "good PR" for the city. "Lets hope it is anyway," he said. In his office Friday, Barnett played a clip of Howard's stand-up. Howard starts to talk about a prank he played on his mom, in which he took her phone and replaced the old listings in her contacts with celebrity names. "This is great," Barnett says. The bit continues, and Howard explains the moment when his mom received her first phone call after the prank was done. "Hello, Barack," she said, answering the phone. Barnett laughs, a short cackle. "Heh, heh, heh." SHARE A Florida Power & Light drone used to survey damage sits on display during a demonstration in the Naples Daily News parking lot on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in North Naples. FPL visited several cities on the west coast of Florida to display the new technology and remind citizens to prepare and have a hurricane plan. (David Albers/Staff) Florida Power & Light spokeswoman Florencia Contesse showcases onboard technology inside a new mobile command center during a demonstration in the Naples Daily News parking lot on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in North Naples. FPL visited several cities on the west coast of Florida to display the new technology and remind citizens to prepare and have a hurricane plan. (David Albers/Staff) Florida Power & Light spokeswoman Florencia Contesse showcases onboard technology inside a new mobile command center during a demonstration in the Naples Daily News parking lot on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in North Naples. FPL visited several cities on the west coast of Florida to display the new technology and remind citizens to prepare and have a hurricane plan. (David Albers/Staff) A Florida Power & Light remote-controlled substation robot sits on display during a demonstration in the Naples Daily News parking lot on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in North Naples. FPL visited several cities on the west coast of Florida to display the new technology and remind citizens to prepare and have a hurricane plan. (David Albers/Staff) Related Photos PHOTOS: FPL displays new hurricane technology Related Coverage Hurricane 2016: Hurricane technology offers more accurate info on storms By Laura Layden of the Naples Daily News Florida Power & Light Co. is looking a little more futuristic these days. The utility, with 4.8 million customers in 35 counties, is testing out robots and drones to improve its response to power outages. As part of a roadshow to bring awareness to the new technologies, Florencia Contesse, a senior communications specialist for FPL, brought some of them to the Naples Daily News parking lot Thursday. The small, boxy remote-controlled robot, with two cameras that look like eyes, is always a hit with audiences, especially kids, she said. The robot has primarily been designed to work in remote substations so it can keep an eye on FPL's equipment and help assess damage when those stations are hit by storms. "Substations aren't staffed all the time," Contesse said. Using a robot can also be a safer way of making damage assessments when roads are blocked or under water. FPL has tested an amphibious robot that can even work in flooded substations. The substations are important because they are what takes the power down to the street so it can be sent to homes and businesses. Contesse arrived in FPL's Mobile Command Center, which the company usually only deploys when there are big storms or other major events. The truck is designed to improve coordination with first-responders in the field, and it's a way to meet with customers face-to-face in their time of need. The truck includes access to a computerized system for checking power outages meter by meter in a disaster area, giving FPL and its repair crews more accurate and timely information to help restore electricity to customers faster. A tool developed by its engineers allows FPL workers to ping every smart meter it has installed to see if a home or business has power, rather than relying on calls from unhappy customers. "It's instant, and it has really created a lot of efficiencies," Contesse said. The command center truck has cameras on top to help repair crews better assess damage nearby. Onboard is a charging station with 12 outlets, which is set up outside so customers without power can re-energize their phones, tablets and other digital devices. The charging station also has a hot spot customers can use to check and send emails and browse the web so they can "go on about their lives as usual," Contesse said. FPL has four of the mobile command trucks, which run on biodiesel, supporting the company's commitment to clean energy. A few months ago, FPL sent two of the trucks to Miami-Dade County to help restore power after several tornadoes hit. "They were really a great success with our customers," Contesse said of the trucks. The trucks, equipped with their own sound systems, are also used for media and employee briefings, which are held under their foldout awnings. There are hopes of expanding the fleet, Contesse said. As for drones, FPL has used them to inspect poles and electrical lines to see if they need to be fixed or replaced. They can also help assess damage after a storm, taking the place of helicopters and bucket trucks. As better models of drones come out, FPL continues to experiment with newer ones. "We're constantly experimenting and seeing what the best products are out there to work for our restoration process," Contesse said. FPL has also deployed thousands of intelligent devices and smart switches to improve the performance of its electric system throughout the state. FPL is visiting several cities on the west coast of Florida not just to display its new technology, but to remind residents to prepare and plan ahead with hurricane season, which started Wednesday. With so many people moving to Florida, many don't know how to get ready for storm season. An emergency plan should include evacuation routes, special medical needs, important phone numbers and supplies. Trees should be trimmed, and pictures or videos should be taken of homes and businesses, inside and out, before season begins. "It's not top of mind for many folks because we haven't had a hurricane in a long time," Contesse said. "We don't want people to be complacent." By the Numbers When its upgrades are finished in Collier County this year, FPL will have: Upgraded and strengthened 18 main power lines. Inspected 52,960 power poles for strength. Cleared tree limbs and vegetation along 5,050 miles of power lines. Installed smart grid technology including 23 automated switches on main power lines and 838 automated switches on smaller power lines serving neighborhoods. Inspected 162 main power lines. RELATED: SHARE Legislators who rejected Gov. Rick Scott's request for $250 million in Enterprise Florida incentive funds for 2016-17 may point to recent revelations about personnel contracts as evidence they made the right call. However, bad administrative decisions don't mean a concept itself is flawed. A potentially successful business can fail if placed in the hands of managers exercising bad judgment. Same thing with Enterprise Florida. No question, newly revealed decisions that smack of cronyism made under departing Enterprise Florida President and CEO Bill Johnson give the state's public-private business development agency a black eye. Daily News readers recently learned: -- One of Johnson's former colleagues received a $60,000 no-bid contract and parlayed that into a $215,000-a-year position. That hiring was done without interviews, a job description or oversight from the agency's governing board. -- Another former colleague likewise wasn't vetted before landing a $135,000-a-year job, also with a possible annual $26,000 bonus. -- A part-time speech writer worked under a $158,000 contract. -- Rubbing salt into taxpayers' wounds, Johnson received $132,500 severance half his salary for stepping down in what was described as a mutual agreement. The Miami Herald reported that's in addition to some $1 million in retirement benefits. Taxpayer money It's understandable why Southwest Florida taxpayers would be upset. After all, what has Enterprise Florida done for us lately? Plenty, actually. Rewind three years to the initial announcement by Scott and Enterprise Florida's then- CEO Gray Swoope that Hertz was relocating to this state from New Jersey, forecasting 700 jobs and a $68 million capital investment. Lee and Collier counties have benefited from the newly opened corporate headquarters in Estero. Recently, Enterprise Florida brought to Collier economic development leaders a company planning a $63.3 million capital investment and 560 new well-paying jobs over several years. County leaders are offering $1.1 million in incentives but the foundation of the deal is $5 million-plus from Enterprise Florida. It may be one of the last deals the agency can transact with its depleting incentive fund. Try, try again Swearing off all business incentives in the future would be a mistake for Floridians. There is intense competition among states to lure new employers. The argument that Florida can better attract companies by improving its education system and transportation network is admirable, yet idealistic. By when? How many companies considering relocation in a surging economy will go by the wayside in the meantime? We applaud Scott's focus on recruiting companies to move from other states and his recent announcement of streamlining Enterprise Florida's staff. The agency, started 20 years ago, was intended to be equally supported by taxpayers and the private sector. It's lopsided now 90 percent funded by taxpayers. An agency makeover is prudent before Scott asks lawmakers again for the incentive money. After all, a few bad administrative decisions don't make it a bad idea. SHARE Donna MacTavish, Naples Kindness Think our young people are spoiled, selfish, and have too much attitude? Meet Katie who works at Tijuana Flats in Naples. I watched her one day recently as she greeted an older gentleman whose first statement was, "I forgot my hearing aids today." He was also unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the ordering process, which is supposed to take place at the counter. Katie, as gentle as an angel, guided him to a booth, took his order there where he was comfortable, patiently outlining and explaining his options no matter how long it took. She then walked his payment back to the counter and returned with his change, smiling throughout the whole transaction. Think about how differently this could have gone. But this gracious young lady went way out of her way to make lunch a pleasant experience for a stranger. Good job Katie! SHARE John Wernette, Naples Bill Johnson Thanks to your excellent investigative reporting regarding Bill Johnson's boondoggle behavior as the president of Enterprise Florida, it can be safely concluded that the "old boys network" is alive and well. Johnson's outrageous monetary gifts to his cronies deserves nothing less than being forced to leave his post, which he has so badly misused I trust that he was deservedly fired. And I hope that he will not receive any further bonus charity from Florida, since he has already been so generously rewarded. It is far past time to stop throwing money down the drain in the name of "job creation" if this is what it gets you. SHARE Dave Trecker By Dave Trecker, Pelican Bay The environmentalists are off-base again. And the editorial writers and most of the politicians. The focus on Lake Okeechobee is misdirected. Hand-wringing about excess rainfall, arguments about dike stability, and continual whining about land purchase miss the real point. The real point is pollution. If the waters in and around Lake Okeechobee were pristine clean, there would be no issue. But they're not clean. They're highly polluted with agricultural waste and fertilizer runoff. They're loaded with nutrients soluble forms of nitrogen and phosphorus that trigger algal blooms, choke off oxygen and kill marine life. That's the real problem. U.S. Rep. Curt Clawson, R-Bonita Springs, wants to use federal money to shore up the Herbert Hoover Dike and buy land to the east in Palm Beach County. That's certainly worthwhile. Environmentalists of all stripes (count me among them) want Tallahassee to free Amendment 1 money to buy sugar land to clean up discharges to the south. That too is worthwhile. Diverting clean water to the Everglades is everyone's goal. But the problem is more complicated. Heavy pollution is coming from the Kissimmee area to the north as well. That too must be addressed. Will Washington or Tallahassee ante up the billions needed to purchase all of this land? Not a chance. Then there's the question of timing. At a recent political forum, state Rep. Matt Hudson, a candidate for the Senate District 28 seat, said that even if government money were used to buy all available land around Lake Okeechobee, cleanup and redirection of flow to the south would take 20 years. The real answer, the only practical answer, is to stop pollution in the first place. Or at least take steps to lessen it. New information shows the problem is worse than originally thought. In addition to creating huge dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, phosphorus- and nitrogen-laden runoff is fouling large portions of Lake Erie. And it goes well beyond that. The Environmental Protection Agency reports high phosphorus levels are contaminating lakes and streams all across the country including much of Florida. In Pelican Bay, our upland lakes are loaded with nutrients. The problem is widespread. I just returned from Hawaii where nutrient runoff is triggering algae buildup in large portions of Oahu. And the story gets worse. The nutrients don't go away. Chemical & Engineering News quotes scientists: "Over the years, a lake accrues a vast store of phosphorus, nitrogen and carbon that can cycle from sediment to algal blooms and back again." Algae is bound in sediment at the bottom of lakes sediment that releases the stored nutrients in the spring, driving yet another year's algal blooms, a vicious cycle. What's the answer? Don't make it worse. Impose strict water-quality standards that limit nutrient levels. Not site-specific standards, but statewide limits tough numerical specs. And enforce the regulations. Florida's Department of Environmental Protection can do this and must. Spending billions on land purchase and remediation is cost-prohibitive and almost certainly won't happen. But enforceable regulations can happen. Conservancy of Southwest Florida head Rob Moher got it right in a recent Daily News guest commentary: "Put meaningful regulatory reform in place for stopping pollution loading at its source." That applies to sugar lands, cattle ranches and residential areas alike. No one is crazy about more government regulations. But in this case it's justified. And it's the only practical solution. __ A chemist and retired executive of Pfizer, Trecker serves on a number of local boards. New York's State Assembly has passed legislation that seeks to address problems related to preforeclosure vacant and abandoned properties. The bill, titled the New York State Abandoned Property Relief Act of 2016, passed on a 116-22 vote May 24. The legislation was drafted in coordination with New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and was sponsored by Assemblymember Helene Weinstein. The bill would expand lenders' and servicers' existing duties to maintain vacant residential properties before they enter into foreclosure. The bill also would require periodic inspections to determine whether delinquent properties have been vacated or abandoned. Also as part of the bill, the attorney general's office would be charged with creating and supervising a statewide registry for abandoned residential property and a toll-free hotline for residents to report the existence of such properties. The attorney general also must notify Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when properties are added to the registry. The legislation also aims to address the frequency with which homeowners vacate properties before they need to by requiring lenders and servicers to provide written notification to borrowers when they fall three months delinquent that they can remain on the property until ordered to leave by a court. A similar bill is currently in committee in the New York State Senate in the Upper Chamber of the State's Legislature. Already though, industry leaders have begun to sound the alarms over the potential ill effects the legislation would have if it became law. "Lenders doing business in the state of New York should be very concerned about this legislation," Zahras Jafri, president of the Empire State Mortgage Bankers Association, said in a written statement Friday. "It is very probable that many lenders will leave the state, due to the legal risk and financial burden that will be placed on them when properties become vacant and abandoned." The legislation comes on the heels of an agreement between New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and 11 banks, mortgage companies and credit unions in May 2015 to adopt a set of best practices related to combating the adverse effects these vacant and abandoned, or zombie, properties have on neighborhoods and housing markets. Similarly, localities across the state have taken matters into their own hands. The town council in Hempstead, a town located on Long Island, unanimously approved a measure that would require banks and lenders to put down a $25,000 deposit when properties go into foreclosure to pay for their maintenance, Long Island-based publication Newsday reported. That town law was voted on the same day as the Assembly vote. The Assembly's legislation included provisions to create a division of the State Supreme Court devoted to foreclosure actions on vacant and abandoned properties. In general, the foreclosure process in New York is one of the longest in the country. On average, a foreclosure takes 1,061 days to go from the first public notice to being complete, according to data from RealtyTrac for the first quarter of 2016. The nationwide average is 625 New York only falls behind Hawaii and New Jersey for its foreclosure timeline. Increased loan production during the spring home buying season had nonbank mortgage lenders stepping up their hiring in April. Employment at independent mortgage banking and brokerage firms jumped by 2,900 jobs in April, and hiring in March was revised upward by 700 full-time employees, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Overall, employment in the nonbank mortgage and brokerage sector rose to 301,400 in April, from 298,500 in March. A year ago, that figure stood at 287,900 following annual adjustments to 2015 totals made earlier this year. "With the higher production, there has been a push to hire more loan officers," said Joel Kan, an associate vice president for industry surveys and forecasts at the Mortgage Bankers Association. "The loan officer workforce has been getting older," Kan said in an interview Thursday. And there is more competition to hire and retain young LOs. Meanwhile, purchase mortgage activity is "definitely healthier than it has been in the last year or two," Kan said. "We have seen it 10% to 15% higher than last year in April and May." Economists at Wells Fargo Securities are expecting 2016 will be a "break-out year" for new home sales. They estimate new home sales will hit 810,000 this year, up nearly 12% from 2015, according to a WFS June 1 report. However, builders are struggling to keep up with demand. "Sales of new homes where construction has not yet started rose to a cycle-high of 209,000 in April, and are up 31% over the past year. The pickup reflects the exceptionally low inventory of completed new homes available for sale," the WFS report says. The WFS report also expects more millennials will be moving to the suburbs this year which would boost home sales. "We continue to believe 2016 will be the year that the affordability mitigation to the suburbs and the lower-cost housing markets will make its return." Meanwhile, the BLS reported Friday that the U.S. economy created just 38,000 jobs in May, which is much lower than expected despite a strike by nearly 34,000 Verizon communication workers. There is a one-month lag in BLS reporting of mortgage industry jobs data. Ironically, the unemployment rate fell to 4.7% in May from 5% in April. BLS also revised down its April jobs report to 123,000 new hires from 160,000 as originally reported last month. "This was an unqualified dud of a jobs report with the weakest month of job gains since 2010," said National Association of Federal Credit Unions chief economist Curt Long. "The unemployment rate fell, but for the wrong reason as labor force participation declined for the second consecutive month. As for the Fed, this likely puts an end to the hopes of a rate hike in June, and will probably shift market expectations to September," he said in a statement issued Friday. Scott Anderson at Bank of the West also expects the Fed will delay a rate hike. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.7%, which is the "lowest level since November 2007, but that was due to a drop in the labor force and not really good news. The U.S. labor force contracted by 458,000 in May, and the labor force participation rate slipped two-tenths to 62.6%," Anderson said in a June 3 statement. "We are pushing out our forecast for the next rate hike from the Fed to the September FOMC meeting from July. The Fed will likely need to see a convincing rebound in job growth in the next few months to give the green light to move again," Anderson said. NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow previewed the agenda of the NATO Summit in Warsaw, outlined the next steps in the Alliances adaptation and discussed NATOs future at the Wrocaw Global Forum on Friday (3 June 2016). The Warsaw Summit is shaping up as one of the most consequential in NATOs history. We have to step up to meet security challenges from the East and the South, Ambassador Vershbow said in front of an audience of policy-makers and entrepreneurs. To respond, NATO has to be a full-spectrum alliance more than ever before. We have a 360-degree approach, he said. He elaborated on NATOs plans for the Warsaw Summit: from strengthening defence and deterrence, through projecting stability by working with partners, to sharpening the Alliances toolbox to deal with hybrid threats. He pointed at cooperation between NATO and the European Union as an area where the Summit will deliver a substantial step ahead. Because none of us alone has all the tools to tackle the complex challenges we face, Ambassador Vershbow explained. At Warsaw, you will see a strong display of Alliance unity and a commitment to concrete steps to strengthen the security of our 28 Allies and the partners along our periphery, Ambassador Vershbow concluded. He participated in a panel on NATOs Future and the Warsaw Summit, alongside other high-level speakers from Poland and the US. Polands Secretary of State and Head of the National Security Bureau Pawe Soloch presented the views of the host nation ahead of the Warsaw Summit. US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller, Deputy Commanding General of the 4th Infantry Division of the US Army Brig. General James J. Mingus and The Hon. Joe Manchin of the US Senate spoke about the US commitment to transatlantic security and presented their own analysis of the security challenges that NATO has to tackle. Defence expenditure, cooperation with partners, the need for transparency and predictability in military relations and Russias more assertive behavior were among the issues raised at the panel. The Wrocaw Global Forum is a leading transatlantic conference in Poland, which brings together leading figures from government, business, media and civil society. 11,000 stores and counting refuse to sell GMO salmon GMO salmon could put entire wild salmon population at risk (NaturalNews) When genetically modified salmon became the very first GMO animal to get the go-ahead from the FDA for sale in the U.S., the reception was generally chilly, with a majority of consumers unwilling to take a chance eating something that has absolutely no established safety record.Now Canada is getting in on the act, with health authorities in that country recently approving the sale of the controversial GMO fish there. While the FDA has now instituted a ban on the import of GM salmon until specific labeling guidelines can be put in place, Canada will have no such requirement, which means it could end up being the first country where this fish is sold.Governments might be on board, but consumers and retailers are largely shunning what many are terming " frankenfish ." An impressive number of food retailers nearly 80 so far and counting have vowed not to sell GMO salmon in their stores For example, Albertsons Companies, which owns Albertsons, ACME, Shaw's, Vons and Safeway, has announced that its stores will not sell it. Senior Vice President Jonathan Mayes said: "Albertsons Companies and its family of stores, have no plans to carry GE salmon. The seafood products we offer will continue to be selected consistent with our Responsible Seafood Policy and our partnership with FishWise."Joining Albertsons Companies are big-name retailers such as Costco, Target, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's and Kroger. In total, these chains account for more than 11,000 stores. The only remaining big grocery chains that have yet to state their official position on the subject are Walmart and Publix. Restaurant chains such as Legal Sea Foods and Red Lobster have also said they won't sell GMO salmon . These are all businesses that are concerned with maximizing profits, so their refusal to sell the fish can only mean that they do not expect there to be any demand for this "food."This is a reflection of the general sentiment regarding genetically engineered salmon. An unprecedented number of people nearly 2 million filed public comments in opposition to the approval of GMO salmon by the FDA. According to a poll by Pew Research, 57 percent of American adults think GMO foods are "generally unsafe." People are growing increasingly concerned about the content of their foods, which is why there is such a high demand for books like Mike Adams' Food Forensics , which reveals the hidden toxins in common foods.The genetically engineered salmon, which is produced by AquaBounty Technologies and is known as AquAdvantage, is based on farmed Atlantic salmon with genes from Pacific Chinook salmon and another type of fish called eelpout added. This was done with the intent of causing the fish to make unusually high levels of growth hormone, allowing it to grow up to six times faster than its unmodified counterpart.Documents from the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans called into question the safety and viability of the fish. The paper notes that GM salmon is more susceptible to disease-causing bacteria such as. They also show that it does not actually grow faster than unmodified salmon.In addition, there are concerns that the genetically modified fish could eventually escape and interact with native species, compromising the genetic vitality and health of the world's wild salmon populations. When this happens, there will be no way to reverse the effects.The situation is only likely to get worse, with two different types of GMO pork currently in development, along with two types of genetically engineered cows. If the AquAdvantage salmon fiasco is anything to go by, these foods could also end up gaining FDA approval, but the real question is: Will anyone end up buying it? Boston Globe attacks American values (NaturalNews) Mounting research suggests that human consumption of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) poses innumerable risks, including a proclivity for food allergies, nutritional deficiencies, sex hormone disruption, immune-suppression, cancer and general toxicity. Agriculture reliant on GM crops and their associated pesticides generates environmental risks as well, including soil degradation, water pollution and significant harm to wildlife and essential plants.Based on the aforementioned risks to humans and the environment, it is absolutely imperative that Americans have the right to know whether or not their food contains ingredients that have been genetically altered to contain foreign DNA. However, thewould beg to differ.In March, thepublished a despicable editorial waging an all-out assault on GMO-labeling and its supporters, which constitutes 89 percent of Americans . The piece, which is suspiciously missing author information, claims that GMO-labeling is "an impractical and potentially burdensome solution that will cause unwarranted alarm and needless expense."Yes, you read that correctly. Thebelieves that America's call for clearly labeled foods is impractical and a burden to poison-pushing, multi-million dollar food companies which by the way, haveproblem spending money on meaningless "all-natural" labels attached to items such as Lays potato chips.Not only does thediscount citizens' quest for better health while favoring profit-driven corporations, but it actually encourages lawmakers to vote against the needs and wants of their constituents.Referring to Massachusetts's recent proposal to establish GMO-labeling , thesays simply: "Lawmakers should reject the bill." Consumers interested in purchasing non-GMO foods can already do so, it adds, downplaying the need for all genetically modified foods to be labeled.But what about people who cannot afford food that's Non-GMO Project Verified or USDA certified organic? After all, such products are significantly more expensive than conventionally processed foods.Theseems to be insinuating that individuals of lower socioeconomic status do not reserve the right to know whether or not their food contains highly controversial ingredients products that have been rejected by numerous governments around the world due to their potential toxicity.Audaciously, thesays that GMO-labels are misleading and will do nothing but confuse customers. Hmm. ... Sound familiar? If you've followed this debate closely you are probably aware that this is one of Monsanto'stalking points.A Monsanto website addressing the growing demand for GMO-labeling links to a statement by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) explaining "why mandatory labeling could create confusion for consumers."AAAS of course, is a mouthpiece for Monsanto, as well as other major biotech companies.A quick Google search using the keywords "AAAS" and "Monsanto" retrieves some pretty telling headlines, including a Grist.org story entitled "Is a major science group stumping for Monsanto?" aarticle entitled "Is AAAS Serving Science or Monsanto?" and a US Right to Know article entitled "Who's Behind the Attacks on US Right to Know?"You get the picture.Theattack on GMO-labeling steals another Monsanto talking point when it falsely reports that there is a lack of scientific evidence distinguishing GMOs from non-GMOs. Not only is this untrue, but it is a downright lie.Several studies have indicated that organic food is significantly more nutritious than conventional. In fact, thejust released a study this year concluding that organic dairy and meat contain 50 percent more omega-3 fatty acids versus conventional."Omega-3s are linked to reductions in cardiovascular disease, improved neurological development and function, and better immune function," wrote the study authors.How thefails to consider that a distinguishable trait between GM foods and non-GM foods is beyond me. But the truth is, they know the truth, and are simply concealing it from you because they sold their souls to powerful industries long ago.Unfortunately, thepiece is one of many callous attacks on consumer rights, financed in full by the very industry seeking to destroy public health under the disturbing guise of humanitarianism. Nonetheless, their efforts have failed to stop the health food movement currently sweeping the globe. Juno is NASA's Jupiter-bound spacecraft which is expected to reach Jupiter's orbit in July this year. Due to its proximity to the target planet, Juno was able to beam back tons of information about Jupiter. With only less than 100 days to reach the target, scientists are anticipating more data from the spacecraft. Currently, Juno just crossed the gravitational boundary of the Sun and Jupiter and had already entered the Jupiter's realm. #Jupiter is now in the gravitational driver's seat, and I'm not looking back. 38 days to go! https://t.co/mdAjyc1j3x pic.twitter.com/P2zPOQrIFJ NASA's Juno Mission (@NASAJuno) May 27, 2016 Juno was launched in 2011 and ever since, the spacecraft is being pulled by three forces within the Solar System, from the Earth, Sun and Jupiter. But today, Juno crossed the other boundaries and entered into Jupiter's gravitational pull. "As of tomorrow (May 28), and for the rest of the mission, we project Jupiter's gravity will dominate as the trajectory-perturbing effects by other celestial bodies are reduced to insignificant roles, said Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager in a press release. The main goal for launching Juno is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. Up until today, there is a lack of detailed study regarding the planetary core, magnetic field, water measure and the ammonia content of the planet. To complete its mission, Juno is also equipped with a color camera called JunoCam, which is an interactive camera where people can actually get involved in the imaging process. "This is really the public's camera. We are hoping students and whole classrooms will get involved and join our team," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator said in a statement. Juno will enter the orbit of Jupiter and will then circumnavigate the planet for 37 times which is about 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) above the planet. The first Jupiter mission was performed by Galileo, a nuclear-powered spacecraft, according to a report by Space.com. Juno, unlike Galileo, uses solar energy. The flybys will provide NASA scientists with data about the planet's auroras so they can study its origin, structure and atmosphere. The missing Japanese boy abandoned by his parents has been found alive, officials said. Seven-year-old Yamato Tanooka was found in the military barracks near Shikabe town in the northern part of Hokkaido, a few distances from where he was left by his family on Saturday. According to a report from BBC, Tanooka's parents had confirmed the boy's identity. The search teams, which included the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF), have been extensively searching the forest, which is home to a species of wild bears, for almost a week. However, they were unable to locate the missing boy. But on Friday, at around 7:00 am, military personnel found Tanooka in a one-story wooden hut on a military exercise area located in the town of Shikabe, which is about 5 km away from where he was last seen, or roughly 7 km when traversing the forest paths. According to a news agency in Japan, the SDF official was on a drill when he found the boy, who was curled up in the mattress and had no prominent external injuries. The boy introduced himself as Yamato Tanooka, the official said. In a report published in The Guardian, the boy told the police that he had walked to the hut within the military area and taken shelter there on Saturday night, the same day he went missing. He is said to have had access to water, although he had no food. According to an SDF spokesperson, the boy appeared to be in good health, but he was sent to the hospital via medical helicopter. In an interview with local news, the boy's father Takayuki Tanooka said he had apologized to his son as soon as they were reunited in the hospital in the city of Hakodate. Tanooka's parents initially told police that the boy got lost while picking vegetables in the forest. They later admitted to leaving the boy in the woods as a punishment for misbehaving. When they returned for him shortly afterwards, he had disappeared. Tanooka's father told local media that he was "very sorry" for the child and "for causing trouble for many people." According to local officials, Tanooka's parents could face charges for negligence. Over 180 rescuers had been searching for Tanooka in the past week, with the Japanese military finally joining the search on Wednesday after days of fruitless searching. A Buddhist monk was detained by Thai authorities after being caught smuggling tiger parts from the so-called Tiger Temple. Operators of the Tiger Temple, formally known as the Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua temple in Kanchanaburi province, has long been accused of wildlife trafficking and animal abuse, to which they consistently deny any wrongdoing. But on Thursday, Thai police has intercepted a monk and two other men leaving the temple in Western Thailand on board a pick-up truck. Among those confiscated by the authorities were two full-length tiger skins, around 700 charms made of tiger parts, and 10 tiger fangs. "This confiscation shows hat the temple is likely involved in illegal tiger trade. They are clearly violating the law in selling, distributing of transferring the protected animals or their parts," Teunchai Noochdumrong, director of the wildlife conservation office, told BBC. According to a report from NBC News, investigators also found 20 glass jars containing baby tigers and tiger organs in the temple "laboratory," which reinforces accusations that operators of the temple are involved in making folk medicine. Tiger parts are known to be used in traditional Chinese medicine, which has grown into a multi-million dollar business that is said to be the reason behind depleting tiger population in Asia. The temple located west of Bangkok has been a popular tourist destination and tiger sanctuary, where visitors pose for photos with the animals. But it was recently tied to mounting allegations of animal abuse and illicit wildlife trafficking. Animal activists and former temple workers also reported animal abuse and said that the tigers were being confined in small concrete cages. On Monday, authorities raided the temple and confiscated 137 living tigers, which were taken to a government wildlife sanctuary. On Wednesday, wildlife authorities found 40 dead tiger cubs in the freezer inside the temple. It is suspected that the frozen carcasses were being preserved for the medicines. DNA of the tiger cub carcasses will be tested to see if they are related to the other tigers at the site. Thai wildlife officials said they will press charges against the temple. Neighbors of a man suspected of shooting two Fremont police officers are shocked, but not surprised by the violence. Gerald Villabrille's neighbors in San Jose's Willow Glen neighborhood said he was a ticking time bomb who should have been kept under wraps. Police on Thursday said Villabrille died after he barricaded himself inside of a burning home in Fremont. His death came after an overnight standoff with Alameda County Sheriff's deputies and Fremont police. "It's very unfortunate," neighbor John Bloomenstock said. "Feel sorry for them. I'm sorry to say, but one less crook to worry about." Neighbors said they saw a lot of police activity at Villabrille's home. Sources tell NBC Bay Area Villabrille was recently on mandatory supervised probation. He served time in prison for drugs and weapon convictions. Neighbors said it was in prison that Villabrille married his wife, whose family lives in the Willow Glen home. Neighbors said they are sorry for the police community, but relieved they can finally have their street back. In a final push to raise support ahead of California's June 7 primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders will stop by UC Berkeley Friday for a press-only meeting to discuss economic and trade issues. Robert Reich, former US Secretary of Labor under the Clinton administration and professor at UC Berkeley, will join Sanders for the talk, which is scheduled to start at 5 p.m. Reich has been a staunch supporter of the Vermont senator throughout the primary campaign, often tweeting and blogging about the candidate. He has said that Sanders is "the best candidate for the system we need." Reich has, however, expressed plans to support Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton should she clinch the nomination. According to the professor, a Donald Trump presidency would be ultimately disastrous. "Trump has revealed himself to be a narcissistic, xenophobic, hatemonger who, if elected, would legitimize bigotry, appoint Supreme Court justices with terrible values, and have direct access to the button that could set off a nuclear war," he wrote in a Facebook post. All three presidential candidates have been barnstorming in the Bay Area over the last few weeks. Clinton has held several organizing events in San Francisco and Oakland with prominent Bay Area Democrats, while Sanders drew a crowd of more than 20,000 during an event at an Oakland church on Monday. Meanwhile, Trump has also pulled large numbers -- and a large number of protesters -- at his Bay Area rallies. Likely Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump claimed to be good friends with Mayor Rahm Emanuels brother, Ari, during an interview with the Hollywood Reporter released Wednesday. Hes a very good friend of mine, Trump said during the interview. He calls me a lot. I call him a lot and we talk. Hes very political. Even though hes not political, hes political. He gets it, he added. Emanuel is the co-CEO of the powerful William Morris Endeavor talent agency. He also served as the inspiration for Jeremy Pivens role as agent Ari Gold on the popular HBO series "Entourage." During his Hollywood Reporter interview, Trump also claimed that Emanuel agreed to produce a celebratory film for the Julys Republican National Convention in Cleveland. In April, Variety reported that Trump was represented by WME when his reality show The Apprentice was being created. Emanuels agency, however, told the Chicago Tribune Wednesday that they had no plans to work on the convention. Coincidentally, Mayor Emanuel compared Gov. Bruce Rauner to Trump Thursday as the governor toured the state pushing a stopgap education plan. Right now schools across Illinois need a leader, and instead Bruce Rauner is following the Donald Trump playbook of demonizing one group of people for his political advantage, Emanuel said in a statement. Emanuel opposes the measure, instead voicing support for the school funding plan laid out in House Speaker Mike Madigans failed budget proposal. Activists gathered in a sea of orange in Hyde Park on Thursday for the second annual Party for Peace to help raise awareness of gun violence. Chicagoans came out to partake in the nationwide movement and to remember the victims on what would have been Hadiya Pendletons 19th birthday. Hadiya became a victim of gun violence in 2013, and her birthday now marks National Gun Violence Awareness Day. We can't celebrate the way that we would have, but we can try to make the best of what it is, said Hadiyas mother Cleo Pendleton. Today is a beautiful day. Today is a happy day. And that's the way we want to keep it. We want to keep a smile on our faces. Not a tear, her father Nate Pendleton added. I think it's so important to do this because every life we lose to gun violence everyday is a terrible tragedy, said Jason Rzepka of the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety. Nortasha Stingley attended the event in honor of her daughter, Mariss Boyd-Stingley, who also died in 2013. It's an epidemic. And with an epidemic it spreads rampant, Stingley said. So we've got to come up with solutions and things of that nature. The group listened to music and survivors shared their stories, all wearing orange to support the nationwide movement started by Hadiyas closest friends. I think she would love it, said Hadiyas best friend Nza-ari Khepra. I think Hadiya would be down for a party like this, and this is her 19th birthday, so I hope in some way she's here celebrating with us. Catholic Charities has a nearly-100 year history in Illinois, running more than 160 sites that provide food and home care services to some of the states most vulnerable citizens. But because Gov. Bruce Rauner and lawmakers have failed yet again to pass a state budget, the non-profit agency is in crisis and its future hangs in the balance. We've done as much as we can, said Monsignor Michael Boland. I don't want to close services to seniors and children. Those two areas being affected by state impasse" Catholic Charities has been able to operate through the 11-month impasse thanks to extra fundraising and by cutting costs. But the majority of the organization's budget comes from state contracts, and without any state funding, cuts may be inevitable. 80 percent of our clients have dementia, so we are totally responsible for them and we just want to make sure they get that care, their families don't need to worry, said Pamela White of the Accolade Day Care Center in Oak Park, a site run by Catholic Charities. Half the clients that come here would have to find a caregiver, some of them can't afford it and they'd have to find other means and that's hard for some of the caregivers, White added. Catholic Charities serves more than 1 million children, veterans, and seniors in Illinois. 90-year-old Willie Beasley has dementia, and is one of the clients of Accolade Day Care Center who would be impacted by a shutdown. She gets up and she runs for the bus. She enjoys every minute, said Beasleys daughter and caregiver Ann Rainey. They have a problem getting her home some days because she doesn't want to come home because she's enjoying herself so much here." Rainey says that at 71 years old, she cant take care of her mother all by herself, and the center has been life-changing for their family. "The more we talk about it, the more anxiety it creates in our clients and that's what bothers me, Boland said. "We will continue to try to provide service as long as we can but we're not sure how long that can be. We're hoping we can get through August, hopefully by then some sort of resolution, he added. But it is unlikely the state will see a balanced budget until after the November elections. Catholic Charities says without help until then, its programs could be even more harshly impacted. What started with one NBC5 Responds viewer complaint about peeling furniture has now skyrocketed to more than 500 complaints and the recovery of just more than $125,000 for viewers. Since the day of our first report, NBC 5 Responds has received complaints almost every day about bonded leather furniture bought at retailers in and around Chicago, and has helped recover just north of $125,000 for viewers who say their furniture failed them. For Karen Figgins, it started on the couch, then the recliner, and she says it spread like wildfire. Within six to eight weeks it was coming off in sheets, Figgins told NBC 5 Responds. The Elgin woman bought a three-piece bonded leather furniture set for $2,400 from The RoomPlace in 2012. A little more than a year later, she says she called the retailer to complain, but was unable to get help. I got nowhere withThe RoomPlace. Once I saw your story, I was like, ok, Im going to jump on that bandwagon, Figgins said. Leather experts tell NBC 5 Responds a collective cry for help is long overdue, calling bonded leather deceptive, at best, adding that bonded leather is not durable enough to be used for furniture at all. Upholsterers added it is impossible to fix. "They told me it was going to be more durable than regular leather, so it wouldn't scratch, wouldn't puncture," Figgins recalled. The Leather Industries of America trade group accuses some retailers of misleading consumers by not disclosing that bonded leather is not real leather, and that it is made up of leather scraps, fiber and plastic bonding material. The industry group says it all comes from China and is subject to few U.S. rules. Federal guidelines say bonded leather products must disclose the percentage of leather and non-leather substances used. That information is supposed to be stamped on or attached to the product by label. While there is no minimum required, the leather industry tells NBC 5 Responds some of its testing, done for higher end stores, shows bonded leather is 15-20% leather scraps, by weight. By comparison, European standards call for a minimum of 50% leather fiber. "Instead of saying look, we now realize it's defective and not as durable as we thought it was, at least come clean about it, Figgins said. Despite the fact Figgins did not have an extended warranty, The RoomPlace agreed to give her $1,000 in store credit. The retailer says according to its records,the first it heard of Figgins troubles was from NBC5 Responds. In a statement, The RoomPlace thanked NBC 5 Responds for bringing these issues to the retailers attention, adding that they are committed to customer service and satisfaction. After our first report aired, The RoomPlace said a multi-stage process improvement plan was launched in partnership with its extended warranty provider, and said it includes Customer Service management teams reviewing customer claims and denials to ensure a proper response. On Thursday, the retailer went a step further. We work to offer a range of products, styles and price points to meet our customers needs and budgets. Part of our assortment includes bonded leather products which provide a cost effective alternative to genuine leather furniture, the RoomPlace said in a statement. What we have learned from your recent stories, is that we can provide even more information to our customers during the sale process. Beginning this month we will begin providing a brochure to customers explaining the best way to care for blended leather merchandise to extend the useful life of this product. Other retailers including Darvin Furniture, Ashley Furniture and Value City have also responded to some of the complaints shared with them by NBC5 Responds viewers, offering store credit, gift cards and exchanges. The retailers all tell NBC5 Responds they are evaluating each and every claim individually, as well as talking to manufacturers about the quality of bonded leather products in general. An 18-year-old man has been charged with murder in connection with the attempted robbery on Lake Shore Drive that ultimately led to a woman's death. Semaj Waters was charged with attempted armed robbery, mob action and felony murder in the death of 32-year-old Pamela Johnson, who was fatally hit by a car while trying to run for help during the attempted robbery on Lake Shore Drive over the weekend. No others had been charged as of Friday afternoon, but authorities said an investigation remains ongoing. Multiple people believed to be involved in the attempted robbery turned themselves in to police for questioning earlier this week. Police said Johnson and a man were walking near 600 Lake Shore Drive in the citys Gold Coast neighborhood just before 2 a.m. Sunday when a group of men displayed a gun and tried to rob them. The couple was chased onto Lake Shore Drive as they ran for help, but both were hit by a pickup truck in the southbound lanes of the roadway. Johnson was killed and her 43-year-old boyfriend was hospitalized. The suspects were described as being between the ages of 18 and 25. Surveillance photos were released Monday and more photos released Tuesday. Several young men started turning themselves in after relatives spotted them in the photos. Police said the attack may have involved up to eight men. Were asking parents to step up and theyre stepping up, community activist Andrew Holmes said. Everybody has to come together to be on the same page. Everything must stop in this city and if we dont put our foot down and help them, itll keep going on like a revolving door. Anyone who recognizes the suspects in the photos is being asked to call Area Central detectives at (312) 747-8380. Those looking to make anonymous tips can also call (800) 883-5587. Ohio Jewish Rabbis React to State Expert Offering 'Christian Understanding' of Abortion Law Legal action from the Jewish community has begun in Florida, Indiana and Kentucky. By Madeline Fening Oct 25, 2022 In a battle that has long ebbed between science and religion, Republicans in Ohio have begun using explicitly Christian rationale to try and limit abortion care access for everyone in the state. During an Oct. 7 hearing in a Hamilton County Court, Judge Christian Jenkins ruled to indefinitely block the state of Ohios six-week abortion ban... As many as 100 ISIS fighters who returned to Belgium from Syria may be planning terror attacks, according to a top Belgian official who spoke to NBC News. Deputy Prime Minister Jan Jambon said 300 fighters from Belgium have gone to Syria, and 200 have returned. He said half of those who returned could be used to counter the jihadi narrative among other recruits, and advise them from joining the terror group. There is concern that the other 100 could return with specific missions directed by ISIS, putting European officials are on high alert for any plots, Jambon said. But Jambon pointed out that said he wasnt aware of any imminent plot like the twin bombings that killed 32 people in Brussels in March. More than 2,000 students and faculty members gathered at UCLA Thursday night to remember a beloved professor who was shot and killed by a former student in a murder-suicide on campus. A massive crowd gathered for the candlelight vigil in Bruin Plaza, where the base of the mascot statue was covered with flowers and colored notes paying tribute to William Klug. The 39-year-old engineering professor was shot in a campus office Wednesday by Mainak Sarkar, who then turned the gun on himself. Sarkar, 38, claimed Klug had stolen his computer code and given it to another student. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said Sarkar was mentally unstable and the theft was all in his mind. Days before the murder-suicide, Sarkar also shot and killed a woman in Minnesota. The victim's uncle has identified her as Sarkar's estranged wife, Ashely Hasti, a medical student at the University of Minnesota. The motive behind Hasti's killing is unknown, but her grandmother told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that Hasti and Sarkar "just didn't get along." Jean Johnson said the two split a year after their marriage in 2011 but didn't get a divorce because Hasti couldn't afford it. Klug and Hasti were named on a "kill list" found at Sarkar's home in Minneapolis, along with a second UCLA professor whose name has not been released, authorities said. At the vigil Thursday, students and colleagues remembered Klug as a compassionate professor who motivated and inspired his students. "He's really the reason why I went back to school after six years of being out. He's so inspirational," said Elaine Karaelias. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti spoke at the vigil to comfort those in mourning. "I know that UCLA will not only survive, it will thrive. Stay open to the world. Don't cower, don't be afraid," Garcetti said. Klug's wife, Mary Elise Klug, released a statement through UCLA Thursday thanking the community for its outpouring of support. "This is an indescribable loss. Bill was so much more than my soulmate. I will miss him every day for the rest of my life. Knowing that so many others share our familys sorrow has provided a measure of comfort," she said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. The fire at 86 Pettit Drive in Meriden that took a womans life early Friday morning appears to be cooking related and there were no working smoke detectors in the house, according to the fire chief. Firefighters responded to the single-family house around 3:30 a.m. after receiving reports of heavy fire and pulled the woman from a back bedroom. She was then rushed to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead, fire officials said. The woman and her husband were home when the fire started and he was able to get out of the house. He and the neighbors fought desperately to get the woman out. "I yelled at him not to go back inside," Debbie Leaverton, of Meriden, said. "I started banging on the windows on the house, but it was quiet inside. There was no, no sound." Fire Chief Kenneth Morgan said the couple had been cooking the night before and contents of the stove caught fire, then fire spread through the house. Neighbors also reported hearing an explosion before seeing flames and officials believe a propane tank on the back deck might have been the source of the explosion. "We were all in shock. I still cant believe," Leaverton said of the fire that killed her neighbor. Last weekend, Margarette Mady, of Norwich, was celebrating with loved ones at a baby shower held in her honor. She was expecting a baby girl next month. On Thursday, emergency crews found the 37-year-old suffering from several stab wounds in her burning home on Thursday and her husband is set to face a judge on Friday to answer to murder and first-degree arson charges. The fire broke out in a bedroom of 283-285 Franklin St. at 10:49 a.m. on Thursday, officials said, and authorities found the 37-year-old woman with severe burns and several stab wounds when they responded. She was unconscious and police said she was pronounced dead at the scene. Around the same time, her husband, Patrick Antoine, 39, turned himself in to police and told officers he had stabbed his wife to death and then set their apartment ablaze, Norwich Police said. Relatives on Friday said the couple had been together for around five years and married in Haiti. Neighbors and friends said Mady, the mother of a son and daughter, was friendly and an active Jehovahs Witness who went to church when she could. They described Antoine as quiet, but friendly, and police said there was no history of domestic violence calls to the house. Antoine is being charged with murder and first-degree arson and bond was set at $1 million. Seven children with special needs from across Connecticut were gifted brand new ride-on cars on Friday at Plainville High School. The ride-on cars were designed to fit their specific mobility needs through a program called Go Baby Go. The program began at the University of Delaware and expanded to include Central Connecticut State University. This week, CCSU students joined students from Plainville High School and Plainville Middle School to outfit the cars. "It is definitely an unbelievable experience. It is so moving to see our kids collaborate together and you know it is kids working for and with kids," Mark Chase, the technology education teacher at Plainville High School, said. Each car was customized for each child and the modifications included changes to the switches, steering and adding extra support from the childs neck or body. Ethan Slappy, a 19-month-old from East Hartford, was one of the recipients and his mother, Margaret Slappy, helped him test drive the car. "That was beautiful, that was good, saw him excited, pushing. That will be a good thing for him to move from one spot to another," she said. Students said they enjoyed customizing the cars and watching the children drive them. For me, to help a kid who does not have the ability to walk, it is really touching. It is a very heartfelt event, Kyle Marquez, a junior at Plainville High School, said. Next year, teachers at Plainville School District plan to raise the money to purchase the cars and continue helping children with special needs. A man shot four times while trying to help a woman in the parking lot of a Maryland mall said the gunman smiled before shooting him and killing his friend. Carl Unger was one of three people shot on May 6 at Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda. Unger survived, but his friend Malcom Winffel did not. Unger said he vividly remembers the gunman's expression. "He looked dead at us and was smiling before he started shooting," Unger said. Eulalio Tordil, a 62-year-old federal security officer from Adelphi, was indicted Thursday in the shooting. Tordil is accused of killing another victim hours later outside a Giant grocery store and fatally shooting his estranged wife the day before at the school where she worked. Gladys Tordil, a chemistry teacher in Prince George's County, had obtained a protective order against her husband. Police believe the shootings at the mall and grocery store were likely botched carjackings. Unger said he was at the mall to have lunch with Winffel when the two heard a woman scream for help in the parking lot. "She ran between us and then he just started shooting," Unger said. "I know he got me like four times." Unger was shot in his foot, leg, back and shoulder, where one bullet remains. "I thought I was dead. I thought, 'Well, it's over now,'" he recalled. The woman was shot in the shoulder and survived. Winffel, 45, of Boyds, was killed. After two weeks in a hospital, Unger is home recovering with the help of his family. He said it will take months for him to fully recover. Tordil faces eight charges in Montgomery County: two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, and four counts of using a hand gun in the commission of a crime of violence. He could serve life in prison if convicted. Tordil, a federal security officer employed by the Federal Protective Service, was put on administrative duties in March after a protective order was issued against him when his wife said he had threatened to harm her if she left him. Police said they spoke with Tordil after his arrest and "would not describe him as being remorseful." Zoo designers already use architectural elements to try to keep children from going over railings into exhibits, but the breach at the Cincinnati Zoo's gorilla enclosure over the weekend has prompted experts to look at whether changes are needed. Today's designs leave 4 feet between a railing and a moat so that anyone falling from the railing will not land in the moat. Railings themselves sometimes have uneven pickets to make it difficult for anyone to sit on top of them. "That 4-foot space, thats come about over time because there have been so many incidents of parents setting a child on the railing," said Patrick Janikowski, a principal of PJA Architects and Landscape Architects, a Seattle-based firm specializing in zoo design. "I don't want to say its designed for stupidity, but that's the reason that that is designed that way, as a secondary precaution against falling into the moat," he said. The latest tragedy, in which a 17-year-old, 450-pound western lowland gorilla named Harambe was killed after a boy got into its enclosure, has driven the Cincinnati Zoo and zoo designers to consider changes in animal exhibits. "Every time something likes this happens, there's a re-evaluation and a re-look to make sure each facility is up to speed," said Nevin Lash of Ursa International, an Atlanta-based design company. "We're always trying to keep it exciting but safe," he said. The 3-year-old boy climbed over a fence and fell more than 10 feet into the moat surrounding the gorillas enclosure over the weekend, NBC News reported. Harambe was shot after he grabbed the child, a decision zoo officials are defending in the face of outrage from animal rights groups and others. Zoo officials said the endangered gorilla was so large it could have hurt the child even without intending to. The Cincinnati Zoo has insisted that the Gorilla World exhibit, the first "bar-less" outdoor gorilla habitat in the country when it opened in 1978, is safe. The zoo's director, Thane Maynard, told The Associated Press the breach was the first. The Cincinnati enclosure is now the industry standard, its open design common in zoos across the country, with exhibits protected by a combination of glass, netting and moats, designers say. For example, Zoo Atlanta, which has the nation's largest gorilla collection, has several outdoor viewing spots designed to give visitors the feeling of being close though they are separated by a series of safety barriers, the AP found. The Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington has an indoor area with glass walls and an outdoor habitat surrounded by barriers made of glass panes, metal and metal frames filled in with mesh. Metal railings and large planters also stand between the viewing area. But gorillas at the Columbus Zoo are in two enclosed areas behind glass and mesh. The approach is an exception to the open enclosure in Cincinnati, a spokeswoman, Patty Peters, told the AP. George Houthoff, the CEO and co-owner of Houthoff Zoo Design in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, urged zoos to evaluate the safety of their exhibits through the eyes of a child. "Small kids just like to climb," he said. "Sometimes barriers can be taken in seconds." Zoos could inspect each other's exhibits for safety, he said. Zoo directors should ask their staff members whether they think an exhibit is unsafe. Have they ever seen a near miss? Use the experience of the zookeepers, he said. Even relatively peaceful species can turn aggressive when their territory is invaded suddenly, he warned, not just big cats or crocodiles. Think about the risks also of falling or drowning, he said. "Even if nothing happens for years and years, an exhibit can still be unsafe, especially for small children," he said. PJA Architects designs railings with vertical pickets of different lengths so parents cannot set their children on the top railing and adults cannot sit on them. Still a child likely could climb over it, Janikowski said. "If they can grab the pickets and pull themselves up, if it's an energetic child," he said. "I would think that because they're vertical, they can't get a foothold anywhere except at the bottom rail. You can still get over it but I think it's a lot of effort. That's why we use it." Janikowski said that the firm would review the design but doubted it would be changed. "We think our railings have been tested over time," he said. This was not the first time a child has gotten into an exhibit. A 5-year-old fell into a gorilla enclosure at the Jersey Zoo in the United Kingdom 30 years ago, knocking himself unconscious. A male gorilla, Jambo, stroked his back until zoo keepers were able to get to the boy. Ten years later, another 3-year-old boy fell into the gorilla enclosure at the Brookfield Zoo near Chicago. That time a female gorilla, Binti Jua, picked the child up and carried him to safety. A 2-year-old boy fell into a cheetah exhibit at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo in April 2015 after his mother allegedly dangled him over a railing. The parents rescued the child. And another 2-year-old was killed by African dogs after, zoo officials charged, his mother lifted him up onto a 4-foot-tall wooden railing to get a better view. He fell into the exhibit and was attacked. The parents sued the zoo and later settled. The zoos are inspected regularly by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums on average once a year by the Department of Agriculture, though more frequently if there is a complaint, and every five years by the association for accreditation. The federal Animal Welfare Act says zoos must have barriers in place between enclosures for gorillas and other primates and the public, but the specifics are performance-based, said a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Tanya Espinosa. "That means that they are deemed to be adequate if they work, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which enforces the Animal Welfare Act, has broad discretion into how to administer them," she said. The Cincinnati Zoo has been accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums without interruption since 1978, most recently in 2014, said a spokesman, Rob Vernon. Its standards are also performance-based, but if a state or municipality has regulations related to exhibiting animals, those also must be met, he said. Its Accreditation Commission will first consider whatever changes the Cincinnati Zoo makes before deciding whether more needs to be done, he said. He said he did not know of an instance where a zoo made no changes after an accident. The enclosure should now be looked at through "the lens of a 3-year-old," he said. Designers rely on the International Building Code, which specifies railing heights depending on the drop on the other side and other requirements. As zoos have evolved from cages for the animals, the animals have gotten healthier and stronger, Janikowski said. Enclosures have gotten larger, moats larger and heights of railings higher, he said. Lash, with Atlanta-based Ursa International, said that some zoos were moving toward glass-enclosed viewing areas, which are extremely safe. "But we also like to have the big open views," he said. "Youre standing at the same level or even lower than the animals are and that requires these moats. And theyre very popular in design as long as its all safe. We work to make that happen because no one wants what happened the other day." When the all-time single-season rushing leader of the Dallas Cowboys speaks, and youre a running back who has just been drafted by the Cowboys, it makes sense that youd listen. And thats apparently just what Ezekiel Elliott did when DeMarco Murray offered up some advice shortly after draft day. Murrays advice for Elliott? To shadow veteran tight end Jason Witten, and more or less do what he does, both on and off the field. According to Charean Williams of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Elliott has taken that advice to heart. My impressions been good, Witten said of Elliott. I think hes humble. Its only been two weeks, and we havent even put the pads on to understand that. Obviously, he seems to embrace the expectations they have for him. He wants to get it right. He wants to do things the right way. Thatll come. That relationship will come with him. When Murray was in Dallas, he and Witten were workout partners, and Murray was never shy in heaping praise on his friend. As this offseason has shown, the fact that Murray is a Tennessee Titan now hasnt changed that. I appreciate DeMarco saying those kind words, Witten said. We had a great run together. But DeMarco earned that to the year that he had. Zekes very talented. You can see that. And he works at it. I think that excites me a lot as a veteran player to see a young guy come in and have high expectations but also to want to surround himself with the right guys and do it the right way. Ive been impressed with that so far. Lawmakers are calling for more help from the United States Border Patrol after an NBC 5 investigation uncovered new records showing the Border Patrol is sometimes slow to respond to border incursions. In an interview, U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, Chairman of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, said he believes the Border Patrol should do more to coordinate with Texas security forces deployed to the border, including the Texas National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety troopers. We should be working federal, state and local together to help get operations control of that border. We dont have that right now, said McCaul. McCauls comments come after an NBC 5 investigation discovered documents showing Border Patrol agents did not respond sometimes in cases where Texas troops called the Border Patrol for help. In other cases, the Border Patrol arrived too late to make an arrest. The Texas National Guard records were obtained through an open records request. As part of Operation Strong Safety, guard troops have been stationed along the border as observers for nearly two years. McCaul also expressed concern about a letter written by U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske to U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-TX, last year. In that letter, Kerlikowske said the Border Patrol declined participation in the state of Texas border mission. Thats not the way its supposed to work, said McCaul. Meanwhile, in the Rio Grande Valley there are new concerns that it could be a long hot summer on the Texas-Mexico border. Some security officials fear another wave of Central American immigrants similar to 2013, when families and unaccompanied children poured across the border, taxing the Border Patrols resources. Last week, the Border Patrol staged a major media event designed to discourage Central Americans from making the dangerous border crossing this summer. The event included a mock rescue staged for the cameras in Brooks County. More than 60 illegal immigrants have been found dead in Brooks County since the fall, many from dehydration and the elements. One of the things that we're very much focused on highlighting is the dangers the smugglers expose the people to, said Chief Manuel Padilla, of the Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol Sector. Some state lawmakers are also expressing frustration with the current border situation. We want to be effective and productive, said Texas State Sen. Don Huffines, R-Dallas. Huffines believes Texas deserves better cooperation from the feds, especially with the state spending millions on a mission thats typically a federal responsibility. Its the job of the federal government and theyre not doing their job and they havent been doing their job, said Huffines. Were hoping the numbers will come down, but Im very concerned were going to see the same problem we saw before, said Congressman McCaul. McCaul told NBC 5 Investigates he will push the Border Patrols leadership to better coordinate with Texas officials, and McCaul suggested he might use congressional hearings to highlight the states concerns. We can call witnesses from the guard and DPS about this and hopefully they will be willing to testify before the American people about this, said McCaul. The Border Patrol did not respond to questions for this story. In the past the agency has said the rough terrain along the border can sometimes slow responses when the National Guard calls for help. The agency has said it values its relationships with the Texas National Guard and DPS. For more than a month NBC 5 Investigates has requested an interview with Customs and Border Protection Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske. In an e-mail a CBP spokesperson said the agency is working to facilitate an interview, but it was not clear if the interview would be with Kerlikowske or another Border Patrol official. When NBC 5 Investigates visited the Rio Grande Valley this spring, the team observed Border Patrol agents and Texas National Guard troops trying to help each other on the ground level. Federal and state officials also work out of a joint command center in the region. But at the top levels, the Border Patrol and the state of Texas have no formal memorandum of understanding or concept of operation agreement to cooperate nearly two years into the states border mission. Jon Wittman, a spokesman for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, said the Texas National Guard and DPS are collaborating with the U.S. Border Patrol. But Wittman criticized the Obama administration for providing a lack of resources to the Border Patrol. Dallas firefighters have suspended their search for a person who was reported missing in flash flooding Thursday afternoon. Someone was reported to have been swept downstream in Bachman Creek, near Walnut Hill. Dallas firefighters told NBC 5 a witness reported having a hand on the victim, but he slipped away and was swept into the rain-swollen creek. The area where the 911 call was placed has several homeless camps along the water's edge and in the trees that line the creek. Dallas Fire-Rescue spent hours walking the shoreline. "So we're going to walk to where the first reports of the person in the water are," explained one firefighter, as he hiked along the creek's edge. "And we're going to work our way back, see what we can see." The creek was filled with debris that could catch and trap a victim. Firefighters also used boats in the search, which was called off at about 6:30 p.m. with no sign of anyone in the water. "It's a very tough operation despite the extensive training that our members do on things like this every day," said Jason Evans, Public Information Officer for Dallas Fire Rescue. If the water recedes enough, search teams will be back Friday to look along the shoreline again. A federal judge says a Utah contractor used nearly 200 children from a polygamous sect as unpaid workers during a 2012 pecan harvest. U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell sided with federal labor lawyers who said kids as young as 6 worked long hours with few breaks during the harvest about 300 miles south of Salt Lake City. She decided Wednesday to hold Paragon Contractors in contempt of court. Prosecutors contend the company has deep ties to the sect led by Warren Jeffs and used 1,400 unpaid workers, including 175 children. Labor lawyers are asking for sanctions and back pay. Lawyers for the contractor had argued that families were volunteering to pick up fallen nuts for the needy and children looked forward to the break from home-schooling. Jeffs is serving a life sentence in Texas for sexually assaulting girls he considered brides. Rowlett police said a 38-year-old man hired two sex offenders to kill the woman he was just a week away from marrying. Ioannis "John" Makris was indicted Thursday by a Dallas County grand jury on a charge of capital murder for remuneration. Rowlett police Lt. David Nabors told The Dallas Morning News that Makris hired 30-year-old Jesus Trevino to shoot his fiancee 37-year-old Laura Grillo. The second offender acted as the getaway driver. Trevino and the other man are in custody. Makris Grillo operated a home-remodeling business that employed the two Trevino and the other offender. Grillo, a mother of three, was found dead in her home in November. She and Makris were both Rowlett police volunteers. Online jail records did not indicate an attorney for Makris to speak on his behalf. Palestine police said a 37-year-old woman that had been reported kidnapped Thursday was not taken against her will. Natalie Pipkin was supposed to pick up her 6-month-old child who was staying with relatives Thursday, but her family told police she didn't arrive. After trying to call several times, Pipkin answered and told them she and her ex-boyfriend, 28-year-old Christopher Calhoun, were driving to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Calhoun has a previous arrest for aggravated kidnapping in 2015 and is considered to be dangerous, according to authorities. Police said they found Pipkin and Calhoun at about 2 a.m. Friday and determined that Pipkin had not been kidnapped. No further details have been released. A Blue Angels F/A-18 fighter jet crashed Thursday near Nashville, Tennessee, killing the pilot just days before a weekend air show performance, officials said. Harry Gill, the town manager in Smyrna just outside Nashville, said Thursday that the pilot was the only casualty and no civilians on the ground were hurt. The Navy said in a news release that the pilot was beginning to take off during an afternoon practice session when the crash happened. Five other F/A-18 jets landed safely moments after the crash. A Navy official told NBC News the crash took place around 3 p.m. CT near Smyrna and that no parachute was deployed. "My thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of the Blue Angels after this tragic loss. I know that the Navy and Marine Corps Team is with me. We will investigate this accident fully and do all we can to prevent similar incidents in the future," Adm. John Richardson, the Navy's top officer, said in a Facebook post. This is the second crash of the day for the military's elite fighter jet performance teams. A member of the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds crashed in Colorado following a flyover for the Air Force Academy graduation where President Barack Obama spoke. That pilot ejected safely into a field. The Blue Angels will not participate in the weekend air show, the Navy said in a news release. The Great Tennessee Air Show will go on as scheduled, though, Smyrna airport Executive Director John Black said in a news release. "After close consultation with the Blue Angels, regulatory officials and the performers, we have made the decision to carry on with this weekend's show," Black said. In Smyrna, retired teacher Brenda Lewis and her 21-year-old grandson had spent much of the day in her backyard near the airport watching the Blue Angels fly overhead. She's seen them many times before. "But this afternoon, something made me really want to watch them," she said. "They looked like they were having such a good time playing up there." She went inside to bake a chocolate pie when she heard a loud boom. She didn't think too much of it at first because the airport is just on the other side of her tree line and she's used to loud noises. Then she heard sirens and went around the corner. She saw the smoke rising and police cars arriving. She went inside because she didn't want to see any more. "I'm always so fascinated by them, the anticipation of it all," she said of their airshow. "Then something tragic like this happens. My heart is just broken." Phil Dennis, a manger at Auto Masters of Smyrna nearby, was standing on the business' back deck with another employee watching the planes practice above. "I'm still shaken up about it," he said, hours after watching the plane go down. Dennis grew up going to the airshows. His first love was aviation, he said, and when he was a kid his mother used to take him to see the planes. Now a father himself, he planned to take his own children, ages 5 and 6, to the show on Saturday morning. He watched one plane coming out of a loop and look like it was flying too fast toward the ground. It disappeared behind a tree line, and he said his heart stopped. He said he could hear the engines roaring; then all he heard was silence. "I was so worried. I thought maybe he'd have time to recover," Dennis said. "But he didn't." A massive fireball erupted from behind the trees. "I felt it down my spine," he said. "It shocked me, I paused for a minute and questioned whether it really happened. I thought it can't be real." House Speaker Paul Ryan endorsed Donald Trump's bid for president on Thursday, bringing an end to the extraordinary public split between the GOP's presumptive White House nominee and the nation's top Republican in office. "I had friends wishing I wouldn't support him. I had friends wishing I would," Ryan said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press. "I really didn't feel any pressure, other than my goal is to make sure that were unified so that we're at full strength in the fall so we can win the election." Ryan's announcement, made in a newspaper column published in his Wisconsin hometown, marks a significant step for a Republican Party trying to come together ahead of a general election matchup against likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. And Ryan made clear he had Clinton on his mind when he decided to join the ranks of Republicans who have slowly come around to backing Trump, the brash billionaire few expected to emerge as the party's nominee when the campaign began in earnest last year. "This to me is about saving the country and preventing a third progressive, liberal term, which is what a Clinton presidency would do," Ryan said. Trump celebrated the endorsement on his favorite venue, Twitter. "So great to have the endorsement and support of Paul Ryan," Trump wrote. "We will both be working very hard to Make America Great Again!" There are still some GOP leaders who say they won't support Trump, including 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who tapped Ryan as his running mate four years ago. A day earlier, Romney signaled that he'd support a possible third-party candidate instead of the presumptive Republican nominee. Ryan himself acknowledged that he continues to have concerns Trump's combative style, but said after a series of conversations with Trump, he's confident he and the House Republicans he leads as speaker will be able to work with him as president on their agenda. "We obviously have a different kind of style and tone. That's very clear. Anyone who knows anything about us knows that," Ryan said. "But what really, ultimately matters is how best can we make sure these principles and policies get enacted in 2017." As the GOP's so-called "Never Trump" movement struggled to identify a viable alternative, many believed it was only a matter of time before Ryan fell in line. The endorsement, he said, was not the product of any deal with the billionaire developer, but a decision based on "an understanding of our mutually agreed upon principles." Ryan said he specifically wanted to go over Trump's approach to executive power, judicial appointments and his position on abortion. "Those conversations took some time," he said, adding: "I feel much more comfortable that he's in the same page with us. Most importantly, it is obvious that Hillary Clinton is not." Ryan ended a weeks-long standoff with Trump minutes before the interview by outlining his support for the New York billionaire in a column published online by The Janesville Gazette. He had shocked the political world last month by refusing to endorse Trump once the real estate mogul became the last major Republican presidential contender still in the race. The pair spoke privately in a series of Washington meetings last month and their staffs' stayed in touch. Ryan said he made the decision to formally endorse Trump earlier in the week. "I wasn't just going to sign up sight unseen without even having a conversation or knowing what direction, because he had only mentioned a few policies in the primary," Ryan said. "I wanted to basically make sure that (we agreed) on the big issues of the day, on really important principles." Major differences remain, however. And conservative leaders across the country continue to have deep reservations about Trump's devotion to Republican principles and his temperament. In particular, Ryan has embraced major changes to Medicare and Social Security as his signature issue on Capitol Hill. Most Republicans in Congress have followed Ryan's plan to reduce the cost of the popular programs that are contributing to the national debt. Trump has repeatedly promised not to touch the popular programs, echoing a position more commonly adopted by Democrats. The two also break on immigration. Trump wants to deport more than 11 million immigrants in the country illegally in addition to imposing a temporary ban on Muslims from entering the U.S. Ryan opposes both policies. "It's no secret that he and I have our differences. I won't pretend otherwise," Ryan wrote in The Janesville Gazette column. "And when I feel the need to, I'll continue to speak my mind." Ryan's announcement was released as Clinton was delivering a foreign policy speech excoriating Trump's approach. Electing Trump, she said, would be "a historic mistake." Governor Greg Abbott was in North Texas Thursday, getting briefed in Hood County about flooding. Hood County has been declared a disaster after heavy rains the past few days. A municipality must be declared a disaster in order to be considered for Federal Emergency Management Agency funds. Abbott said it will take a few days to assess all of the damage, which determines the amount of federal funding. Abbott spoke to reporters after meeting with emergency responders. He reminded people to stay safe, using the words turn around, dont drown. He also had a message for people whose homes were in danger because of flood waters. If water is rising and you are concerned about your property, remember this...and that is your life is far more valuable than your property," said Abbott. "If you are told by a local official to evacuate, heed that warning." There is an online medical site that claims they can reduce the cost of common surgical procedures, things like hip and knee replacements. They do it by letting doctors bid against each other to get your business. Think of it as Priceline for surgery. It is for those with high deductibles, or health plans that deny certain surgeries. It is saving some people thousands of dollars. You can't tell by watching, but a few years ago Perry Hunt, a construction consultant working on this future parking garage in Hollywood, could barely walk due to a bad hip. "I was eating Advil like candy," he said. Hunt's doctor said a hip replacement was the only cure. Surgery was scheduled. "This was a go. I mean I was crippled and couldn't move and I was looking forward to this and I got this phone call." The call was devastating. Three days before surgery, Hunt learned his insurance refused to pay because of the cost -- $100,000 for the hospital alone. "So if you add in the doctor, anesthesiologist, and anything else, the actual hip piece that gets installed in the body, I'm assuming it would have been well over $100,000. Hunt canceled his surgery and began searching the internet for a solution. He discovered an online company called MediBid. "We are kind of the match.com of health care," said Ralph Webber, the MediBid CEO. Webber said the idea is to connect patients with doctors. Here's how it works. Patients pay a small fee, describe their condition, then doctors bid, just like an auction, posting how much they will charge for the procedure. "It was a match made in heaven as far as I'm concerned," Hunt said. Hunt was living in Texas at the time and said the bids started rolling in right away. "I got two bids out of the Houston area that were right in the neighborhood of $15,000 apiece," he said. "I knew right then and there this was going to happen. It was going to get done." After researching the doctors who bid for his hip replacement, Hunt picked a surgeon and paid $21,000 for everything. It was a fraction of the cost quoted to his insurance company. "The bureaucracy is what is costing so much money, not the actual care," Dr. Peter Leport, a surgeon. Laport gets some of his patients through MediBid. He said people with high deductibles need to shop around. "I can do a hernia on a cash basis much cheaper than what their deductible is," he said. MediBid is not intended to replace your existing insurance. It is an alternative that could save you money if you have a high deductible policy, or if your insurance refuses to pay. Doctors bid based on their costs, instead of a price that is negotiated with insurance companies. Those rates can be twice as much in some instances. Beyond MedBid, you can also compare surgical costs on multiple sites and apps. "I've been pain free for two and a half years now," Hunt said. "It's amazing." Hunt is back to climbing around construction sites. He says you need to do your homework and check out the doctor, but for him, it is well worth it. A bear found dead near a freeway north of Los Angeles had its paws and gallbladder removed in what appears to be a gruesome case of crime of opportunity. The black bear, found near the 14 Freeway near Sand Canyon Road east of Santa Clarita in Canyon Country, was likely struck earlier this week by a vehicle before the parts were removed, said Andrew Hughan, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The bear was found with a gash in its abdomen and the paws appeared to have been sawed or chopped off. The gallbladder, particularly the bear's bile, is of black-market value for poachers because it is used in some types of medicines. The bear's paws are considered by some to be a delicacy. "There were no signs of a gunshot, broken legs or hip -- this was a crime of opportunity," Hughan told the Los Angeles Times. "We are very confident it was hit by a car. This desecration of the body was done afterward." The bear is believed to have be about 2 years old and around 150 pounds. The department has a hotline at 888-334-2258 to report poaching, which can involve hunting and fishing out of season, violating take limits and the illegal commercialization of wildlife. Callers can remain anonymous. In 1982, the department began recommended regulatory and legislative changes to reduce black bear poaching. There are signs that California's black bear population is on the rise in recent years, including sightings in areas where they were not reported 50 years ago, such as the Central Coast and Southern California mountain ranges, according to the department. Between 25,000 and 35,000 black bears roam 52,000 square miles in California. Much wry commentary has been made in recent years regarding the baroque ways in which we order our coffee, from the half-cafs and extra foams to the requests for a single pump of caramel or sprinkle of salt. And while this is all true -- we do have a knack for piling plenty of requests onto a humble cup of joe -- there are other treats with tons of individual twists. Look to the doughnut, for instance, which can have a hole in the middle or not, frosting or not, jelly or not, cream or not. It can be twisty, like a cruller, or flaky, like a croissant. It can be a million other things, too, or just about. And National Doughnut Day loves upon 'em all, no preferences cited, no favorites played. The sticky-finger-est of food holidays falls on Friday, June 3, and while your local shop may not be giving away freebies, they'll likely have an affordable fritter or bear claw you can enjoy. Doughnuts are truly one of the most old-school goodies, the kind of edible that can be procured with just the change in your pocket, or almost. Ready to find your favorite? Head to... Randy's Donuts: It's a Southern California icon, and one worth stopping at whether you're on your way to LAX or not. But if you happen to be in the neighborhood between 6 a.m. and noon on June 3, swing by the stand for your freebie. There's a raffle, too. Bob's Coffee & Doughnuts: It's not all that unusual to see a firefighter or police officer stopping by the Original Farmers Market for a midday coffee, and the beloved doughnut shop at the historic landmark wants to show its thanks to LAFD, LAPD, and armed services members. In uniform on June 3? Ask for your gratis doughnut. The Donut Man: Are you obsessed with this Glendora destination, and its disc-shaped, oh-so-delightful donuts, the ones filled with raspberry (that's actual raspberry)? You're in luck: They're only one dollar on Friday, June 3, so swing by for some start-the-weekend yum. Dunkin' Donuts, is going the free route on June 3, but free with a beverage purchase. Since the Massachusetts-born breakfast favorite is loved for its coffee, consider buying a cup to snag your sweet. Oh, and that freebie? It's the classic donut. Krispy Kreme's June 3 plans also involve a free doughnut, as in one doughnut per person, so if you want the famous straight-from-the-South treats for your whole crew, show with your whole crew to make sure they, too, can score their toothsome sinker. Plan Check: You'll need to show with cash for this one, but it is mighty quirky. Turn up at any of the three Plan Check restaurants and check out a trio of breakfast items that'll stay on the menu all day long in honor of National Doughnut Day. Fried Chicken & Crullers and Breakfast Donuts (they're full of cereal milk) are pure National Doughnut Day on a plate. Police on Friday released surveillance images of a man accused of robbing a Baskin-Robbins ice cream store in Whittier last month using a semi-automatic handgun. The robbery occurred in the 15200 block of Whittier Boulevard around 1:30 p.m. on May 27, according to the Whittier Police Department. Police said a man in his 20s entered the store, walked behind the front counter, and pulled out a black semi-automatic handgun. He then ordered an employee to hand over money from the cash register, police said. Surveillance images captured the man, described as 5-foot-9 and weighing about 170 pounds. He was last seen wearing a v-neck shirt, grey pants, white shoes and a grey Oakley hat. He has an unknown tattoo on his left inner bicep. Police were also searching for the man's car, described as a black newer model two-door Honda Accord with tinted windows. Authorities did not disclose how much money was taken. Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective J. Bolanos at 562-567-9281. Neighbors were shocked Thursday night to learn they were living next to a UCLA student who went on a cross-country rampage, shooting his former wife in Minnesota and then his professor on the campus of UCLA before turning the gun on himself. Many living in the apartment in Minnesota that Mainak Sarkar lived in were in disbelief. "You wanna think you live in a safe environment for your children and next thing you know you have some whack job down the street going across the country to kill somebody," said Rachel Kubes, a neighbor. Albert Thomas said he saw Sarkar packing boxes like he was moving out. "I seen him moving all these boxes into his car, like the day before, like he was moving," said Thomas. Police said it appears Sarkar first killed Ashley Hasti, his estranged wife, a medical student, in her Minnesota home and then drove to Los Angeles with an arsenal of weapons - in a car police have yet to find. "He had multiple magazines of ammunition," said LAPD Chief Charlie Beck. "He was certainly prepared to engage multiple victims with the ordinance that he had at his disposal." The news comes as hundreds of students gathered at UCLA to remember a professor. The crowd gathered for a vigil Thursday night in Bruin Plaza, where the base of the bear mascot statue was covered with colored notes paying tribute to William Krug, 39. Sarkar claimed Klug had stolen his computer code. Beck said Sarkar was mentally unstable and the theft was all in his mind. Authorities said days before the shooting, Sarkar shot and killed his estranged wife in Minnesota. A vigil to mourn the loss of a UCLA professor who was killed by a former student in a murder-suicide on campus was held at the engineering school Friday evening. The vigil, organized by the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, was held at 4 p.m. on the steps of Boelter Hall on the Court of Sciences, the university announced. William Klug, a 39-year-old engineering professor, was shot in a campus office Wednesday by Mainak Sarkar, who then turned the gun on himself. Sarkar, 38, claimed Klug had stolen his computer code and given it to another student. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said Sarkar was mentally unstable and the theft was all in his mind. More than 2,000 students and faculty members gathered for a candlelight vigil at the Bruin Plaza Thursday night to remember Klug. Students and colleagues described Klug as a compassionate professor who motivated and inspired his students. "He's really the reason why I went back to school after six years of being out. He's so inspirational," said Elaine Karaelias. Days before the murder-suicide, Sarkar is also suspected of shooting and killing his estranged wife, Ashely Hasti, a medical student at the University of Minnesota, police said. The motive behind Hasti's killing is unknown. Klug and Hasti were named on a "kill list" found at Sarkar's home in Minneapolis, along with a second UCLA professor whose name has not been released, authorities said. Klug's wife, Mary Elise Klug, released a statement through UCLA Thursday thanking the community for its outpouring of support. "This is an indescribable loss. Bill was so much more than my soulmate. I will miss him every day for the rest of my life. Knowing that so many others share our family's sorrow has provided a measure of comfort," she said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. A Clearwater man convicted of murdering his girlfriend and their infant son in 2010 was sentenced to death on both counts of first-degree murder. The Tampa Bay Times reports that 41-year-old Craig Wall said, ``Woohoo,'' when Pinellas County Circuit Judge Philip Federico sentenced him on Friday. Wall and Laura Taft had a baby, and while under Wall's care, the boy went into cardiac arrest and died. Wall was arrested for violating a domestic violence injunction. Three days after getting out of jail, Wall crashed through a sliding-glass door of Taft's apartment and stabbed her to death. Last February, Wall pleaded guilty to killing Taft and no contest to killing their child. He has said several times in court in the past several months that he wants the death penalty. Have your favorite businesses been naughty or nice this year? Consumer Reports has issued its sixth annual "Naughty & Nice" list for 2015, ranking the "not-so-friendly and consumer-friendly policies" of companies where you spend your hard-earned dollars. The list is based on input from Consumer Reports experts, and according to a company press release, is "neither an endorsement nor criticism of an overall company." "This year, we took companies to the woodshed for gouging, annoying fees, and sneaky marketing practices," the company explained in a news release posted online Monday. "Conversely, we lauded others for transparency, generosity, and stand-up behavior that improves and enhances health, safety, and the overall quality of life." Nice List: Brinkmann Home Depot California Health Insurance Exchange Chipotle Mexican Grill Panera Bread CVS Dish Network Dr. Martens JetBlue Nomorobo Procter & Gamble PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) Southwest Target Naughty List: Allegiant Air Citibank Citizens Bank Costco FedEx and UPS LifeLock Sprint Verizon Toms of Maine Turing Pharmaceuticals Volkswagen Whole Foods For a detailed list and more information about each business, visit ConsumerReports.org. The median cost for a wedding is about $15,000, according to the industrys Wedding Report. But many people shell out much more. Consumer Reports found plenty of ways to cut costs without sacrificing your celebration. One great way to save is to schedule the wedding for any day but Saturday night. Or go for January or February. Those are often the cheapest months. Dont let vendors charge more just because its a wedding. Consumer Reports secret shoppers found a good percentage of businesses do just that. In its calls, Consumer Reports found photographers and limo services often charged more for weddings. But when asked, some businesses suggested lower-priced alternatives. And Consumer Reports says it always pays to negotiate for everything. Some other ways to save: Limit the entree choices. Limit the hours of the open bar. Consider serving only beer and wine. Send the photographer home an hour early. A lot of guests will have left by then. Let your florist pick flowers that are in season. Theyll be the least expensive. When it comes to planning a wedding, you may hate the thought of reading the fine print. But Consumer Reports says to check every contract carefully. It found that some caterers included a built-in tip as high as 26 percent, and one charged a fee of $7 per person to cut a cake brought in from the outside. Complete Ratings and recommendations on all kinds of products, including appliances, cars & trucks, and electronic gear, are available on Consumer Reports website. Subscribe to ConsumerReports.org. The brother and sister of a missing Doral mother spoke out Thursday, as the search continues for their loved one and her daughter. Family members arrived Wednesday from Colombia to help search for 43-year-old Liliana Moreno and 8-year-old Daniela Moreno. Lilian's brother, Eduardo, is worried sick, "I need my family. I need my sister. I need my niece." Liliana and Daniela vanished from their Doral apartment a few days ago, leaving behind the mother's car, keys and purse. Romy Nicolaidis was with Liliana Saturday night and is bewildered over her friend's disappearance, "That is the thing that is driving me crazy, that we don't know anything yet, but the police are working on it." Police have been searching for the missing pair, spending several hours at a warehouse in Medley Wednesday, where the girl's father operates a business. Investigators towed away a blue dumpster, possibly containing evidence. Friends and relatives have made a cafe at a gas station their organizing spot. A flyer is already posted there and their plan is to plaster the Doral area with many more. "She is like the best friend you can have. She never has a problem with anybody. She is caring," Nicolaidis said. "At this moment I feel sad. I need some information that can help me to find them," Eduardo expressed. The family has enlisted the help of the Missing Children Global Network, which is helping print the flyers and push for information. Even Daniela's elementary school friends are involved. "I pray every night for her to come back. She's friendly, nice to all the kids, good student, she didn't get in trouble," said Victoria Cortez, Daniela's classmate. Daniela's father has not been involved in her life, and only recently reconnected. Police said there are no suspects in this case, and they have not determined whether a crime has been committed, but said the circumstances are suspicious. If you know anything about the whereabouts of Liliana and Daniela, call police immediately. Every call. Every Tip. Answered. Thats the promise of NBC 6 Responds. NBC 6 is expanding its commitment to viewers with NBC 6 Responds a new consumer unit dedicated to investigating consumer complaints in South Florida. Investigative reporters Alina Machado and Myriam Masihy will hear your story and help you get the results you deserve. Up to this point, the NBC 6 Investigators have produced a lot of stories about consumer problems but havent been able to respond to every single request for help theyve received. Now producers at the Consumer Investigative Center will respond to every call and every email. The concept is modeled after the wildly successful Telemundo Responde on Telemundo 51. The Consumer Investigative Center is staffed with producers who will respond to each call and work with you to collect what will be needed to work toward a resolution. Selena Hernandez is one of our producers at the Consumer Investigative Center and people in South Florida with complaints will likely be talking to her first. "When you talk to me, thats the first thing that Im going to ask for whats your documentation because were in the business of facts," said Hernandez. Keep in mind were not attorneys and we dont provide legal advice. We also cant get involved in certain situations, including criminal matters and custody disputes. While we cant guarantee a resolution, our promise to you is simple every call and email will get a response. You can reach the NBC Consumer Investigative Unit by calling 305-954-NBC-6RESPONDS. You can also visit NBC6.com and look under the "Investigations" tab. Once on the Responds page, click on "Submit Tips," fill out the form and send us your complaint. Alarming revelations about a South Florida politician who apparently took his own life. Police indicate he also had child pornography on his cellphone. Opa-locka Commissioner Terance Pinder died early last week after police said he ran his vehicle into a tree, just outside the airport, before he was to turn himself in on bribery charges. A search warrant NBC 6 examined shows police, during their bribery investigation, stumbled across images that caused the lead detective to immediately take action. Judge Christina Miranda granted a search warrant for Pinder's cellphone and inside was reportedly child pornography. The investigator wrote: "...While conducting a forensic examination, for evidence related to bribery, Det. Arias observed images of suspected child pornography. A female minor below the age of 13 engaging in oral sex. A female under 5, and female under 10, were also seen in the cellphone images." Some of the other pictures found are too graphic to describe. "I think it's very sad. I met him a few times. He seemed nice to me. It's sad what happened," said Darla Johnson, Opa-locka employee. The documents show, within hours of the forensic expert from Miami Beach Police finding the images, the lead detective was asking Judge Miranda for another search warrant. This one for Pinder's Opa-locka apartment. The investigators wanted to see what was in his computer, CDs and flash drives, anything that also may contain child pornography. The judge allowed them to go on the search. These search warrants were executed back in March and that's when the material was located in his cellphone. It's unclear whether Pinder was aware police found this material on his phone or whether he knew detectives were trying to see what, if anything else along these lines, he may have had. Two men have been arrested in connection with the violent carjacking of a Catholic priest steps from the front door of his church on Staten Island, police said Friday. Kerry Pack, 39, of North Burgher Avenue on Staten Island, and Antwine Lucas, 44, of Gates Avenue in Brooklyn, are accused of punching the Rev. Marc Roselli in the face and stealing his wallet and keys before piling into his Ford Fusion and driving away, investigators said. The priest suffered a black eye, but was able to say Mass that afternoon at his church, St. Mary of the Assumption. The two suspects abandoned the car a few blocks from the church. Pack and Lucas were each charged with two counts of robbery and one count of criminal possession of stolen property. The was no information available on whether they have retained lawyers who could comment on the charges. Michelle Obama praised the diverse graduates of the city's oldest public institution of higher learning and took a mild swipe at Donald Trump as she delivered the last commencement address of her tenure as U.S. first lady on Friday. "I really want you all to know that there is a reason why, of all of the colleges and universities in this country, I chose this particular school in this particular city for this special moment," Obama told the graduates of the City College of New York. Noting that students at the 169-year-old college come from 150 countries and speak more than 100 languages, she said, "You represent just about every possible background - every color and culture, every faith and walk of life." Obama, the wife of Democratic President Barack Obama, told the graduates that "with your glorious diversity, with your remarkable accomplishments and your deep commitment to your communities, you all embody the very purpose of this school's founding." She made a thinly veiled reference to Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, by saying "some folks" don't value the diversity that City College embodies. "They seem to view our diversity as a threat to be contained rather than as a resource to be tapped," Obama said. "They tell us to be afraid of those who are different, to be suspicious of those with whom we disagree. "They act as if name-calling is an acceptable substitute for thoughtful debate, as if anger and intolerance should be our default state rather than the optimism and openness that have always been the engine of our progress." Trump has promised to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, proposed banning Muslims from entering the U.S. and said it's risky to take in Syrian refugees because terrorists could be among them. Obama added that "here in America, we don't give in to our fears. We don't build up walls to keep people out because we know that our greatness has always depended on contributions from people who were born elsewhere but sought out this country and made it their home." City College, founded as the Free Academy of the City of New York in 1847, gained a reputation as the poor man's Harvard in the 1930s, when it educated a generation of Jewish intellectuals who were shut out of elite private colleges. City College alumni include 10 Nobel Prize winners and many renowned authors, scientists, business leaders and artists. More than 40 percent of City College's current students are first-generation college students and half are from low-income households. More than 3,000 graduates and their families cheered the first lady's speech under drizzly skies at the City College campus in Harlem. Class salutatorian Orruba Almansouri exemplified one of the issues Obama has championed, the education of girls. Almansouri, a Yemeni immigrant, said it was only after daily debates with her father that she was allowed to attend college, which no girl in her family had done before. "I fought to be allowed to pursue an education, for the right to be here," Almansouri said. She said that following her example, several of her female cousins are now pursuing higher education. Two men stole a priest's car and wallet after punching him in the face Thursday morning in front of his church on Staten Island. The two men are seen in a surveillance video calmly walking along Castleton Avenue to the front of St. Mary of the Assumption church where the priest had just parked his Ford Fusion. One man pulls out a gun and the other punches the priest. The men took the priest's car keys and wallet and then sped away. "He's fine, physically," said the Rev. Mark Hallinan of the priest, whose identity hasn't been disclosed. Despite having a black eye, the injured priest celebrated Mass at noon. "I think that makes him feel more comfortable and more at ease," said Hallinan, pastor of the church. The two carjackers abandoned the priest's car a few blocks away. "I would say the smartest thing they could do right now is surrender," Hallinan said. A box of Play-Doh meant to be a birthday present for a New York City woman's grandchildren contained a priceless valuable: someone's wedding ring. Pat Reilly of Breezy Point, Queens said her 4- and 6-year-old grandkids couldn't wait to get their hands on the present. But when they opened the box sealed with Scotch tape, they were surprised to find what appeared to be a wedding band. "She lifted it out and said, 'Here it is Grandma, what is this?'" said Reilly. That was a month and a half ago, and since then Reilly has been on a mission to find the ring's rightful owner. "I know how I feel when I lose a ring. My hands feel empty," said Reilly. "Plus the history of the ring. If it is a wedding ring, a wedding band, it belongs to somebody. It's part of their life." Reilly called Hasbro and explained what she found. The company asked her to send it to their office. "I said, 'I don't really want to send a ring to sit in an office,'" she said. With no real answers, Reilly is hanging onto the ring -- and hanging onto hope that she'll find the person who lost the treasure. "I want a comfort level that it goes to the right person," she said. "That's all." The ring is a simple band, inscribed with the number 990-7. Reilly hopes someone contacts Hasbro with information. What to Know Nine soldiers have been confirmed dead after the crash. The victims' identities have not been released pending notification of next of kin. Three soldiers rescued after the crash have been released from the hospital and are with their families. Fort Hood officials confirmed that the bodies of the four soldiers who remained missing after their truck was swept away in flooding Thursday have been recovered. "I'm sad to report that we recovered our four missing soldiers," Fort Hood Deputy Commanding General Maj. Gen. John Uberti said Friday evening. "Tragically, all four of those soldiers are deceased, and we've lost in this incident nine of our great soldiers. We continue to care for the families and friends of our fallen comrades." The nine soldiers died after a military vehicle was swept away by fast-moving flood waters Thursday at the Texas fort. Their identities will be released after their families have been notified, Army officials said. "Our focus now is on notifying the next of kin and caring for our soldiers who have lost one of their teammates," Uberti said. Maj. Gen. John Uberti, deputy commanding general at Fort Hood, says all four remaining missing soldiers have been found dead after a military vehicle overturned Thursday at a flooded crossing. The death toll is now nine. Three of the soldiers were found dead shortly after a Light Medium Tactical Vehicle overturned at about 11:30 a.m. at the Owl Creek Tactical low-water crossing and East Range Road during a training exercise. Two more bodies were found late Thursday night, according to a Fort Hood statement.[[381775161,R]] Four more bodies were recovered Friday, according to Uberti. Three soldiers rescued after the crash are in stable condition at Carl R. Darnell Army Medical Center and could be released Friday, according to Uberti. Fort Hood spokesman John Miller said the low-water crossing of the creek was flooded by two days of intermittent heavy rains when the swift water swept the truck from the road. U.S. Army officials say five soldiers have now been confirmed dead, while four remain missing and three others were rescued and hospitalized, after their vehicle overturned in floodwaters at Fort Hood. Aerial and ground crews searched the 20-mile creek that winds through heavily wooded terrain on the northern fringe of the sprawling Army base. Army aircraft, canine search teams, swift-water rescue watercraft and heavy trucks were being used. Officials said Friday morning that Fort Hood commanders were in the process of closing roads on the sprawling Central Texas Army post when the truck overturned. In a statement Thursday, Maj. Gen. John C. Thomson III, 1st Cavalry Division Commanding General, said "The 1st Cavalry Division is grieving after a training accident at Fort Hood during flash flooding this morning. We are deeply saddened by the loss of several Troopers and continue search operations." Friday morning Uberti thanked first responders from both the post and local and state agencies who were continuing the search for the missing soldiers. The deaths of Fort Hood soldiers after their vehicle overturned in a flooded water crossing Thursday has had an emotional impact on the Central Texas Army post. "Our priority has been since the first report of this incident, and continues to be, the search for our four missing teammates," Uberti said Friday. "And while that remains our priority ... my command sergeant major, and the entire leadership team, is focused on making sure we're providing the support and counseling for the families, friends and soldiers as we work through the notification and grieving process." U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-TX, expressed his condolences in a tweet Thursday afternoon. Sad news from #FHTX; flooding claims lives of soldiers with search on for others Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) June 2, 2016 Gov. Greg Abbott released the following statement Thursday: "Our thoughts and prayers go out to the soldiers, their families and the Fort Hood community, and continue to be with those still unaccounted for. Texas stands ready to provide any assistance to Fort Hood as they deal with this tragedy." Three members of a prominent suburban Chicago family are dead after a double murder-suicide at their vacation home in Las Vegas, according to police. Art Wulf, 69, and Jan Morgan-Wulf, 66, both of Northbrook, were found dead at their vacation home with multiple gunshot and stab wounds on Wednesday morning, authorities confirmed. Their 36-year-old son Aaron Wulf killed the two and was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. Art was a semi-retired attorney who also previously served on the District 225 School Board. Jan was a former Chicago Public Schools speech language pathologist who also previously worked as a real estate agent. The couple had three other adult children. Aaron was a self-described photo-journalist and an aspiring actor, whose IMDb acting credits list two small parts on "Monk" and "Girlfriends," both from 2004. The Las Vegas Police Department confirmed the authenticity of a 585-page manifesto and video that Aaron left before shooting and stabbing his parents, then killing himself. Titled "The Worst Nightmare in History, the manifesto blames his parents for a lifetime of physical and psychological abuse starting at the age of 5. He also claimed that he was sexually abused by a teacher in Chicago, and that his father did nothing. "And in the cruelest of outcomes, when I told you my teacher, who molested me in high school for several years, you did nothing to help me as well. You didn't care!" the manifesto reads. "This is a case of an extremely deranged individual that was not in touch with reality to some degree, and wanted to commit this heinous grisly crime, said Sgt. Jeff Clark of the Las Vegas Police Department. But the reaction to this heinous crime in their quiet Northbrook neighborhood was one of disbelief. I can't believe this would happen. Im so sorry for the family, I can't imagine what theyre going through, said neighbor and family friend David Carroll. They were private family, seemed like a nice couple. Their kids were great, especially the sons. We enjoyed having them next to us. I'm completely devastated and very, very upset, added friend and neighbor Bonnie Miller. Cuba and the United States are discussing a possible exchange of prisoners, according to U.S. officials who spoke to NBC News. The discussions are in the early stages, and are part of an effort by the two countries toward normalizing their diplomatic relations. The State Department didnt discuss specifics. Ana Montes, who was convicted of spying for the Cuban government while working for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency was one of the names floated by Cuban leaders, the officials said. Montes, who became the top Cuban analyst and passed on classified information to Cuban handlers, was sentenced to 25 years and is to be released in 2023. U.S. officials say theyre interested in getting back Americans who sought refuge in Cuba from U.S. persecution, including Joanne Chesimard, who escaped a New Jersey prison in 1979, where she was serving a life sentence for killing a state trooper by shooting him with his own gun at a traffic stop. A 24-year-old pre-kindergarten teacher's lifeless body was tied to a cinder block and dropped into a Chester County, Pennsylvania, pond over the Memorial Day holiday, county prosecutors said Thursday. Ryan Stevyn Benjamin's body was discovered in the pond, part of Pigeon Creek, at 488 Porters Mill Road in Pottstown on May 30. District Attorney Tom Hogan released her identity Thursday afternoon after she was named by loved ones who recognized her physical features, a tattoo and jewelry, he said. DNA and dental records also matched, the county coroner said. A native of Rochester, New York, Benjamin taught pre-school at Warwick Childcare in Pottstown and was a certified teacher. She is a graduate of Juniata College in central Pennsylvania. Family friend Cheryl Cutillo said Benjamin was an animal lover who came to the area after getting a job at the Malvern School last summer. The young woman was living with Cutillo until she found her own place. "She had a boyfriend, but they had broken up, but they were in the same circle of friends. I mean it was a bunch of friends," Cutillo said. A father and son-in-law spotted Benjamin's body in the pond -- popular for swimming and fishing -- just after 11 a.m. on Memorial Day. It appears Benjamin was dead before being dumped in the water. Investigators did not find any signs of blunt force trauma, gunshots or strangulation. There was no water in her lungs. Hogan has asked anyone who had contact with her over the Memorial Day weekend to reach out to police. "The person who dumped Ryan's body in the water knows what they did and knows that the police are closing in," Hogan said in a statement. "Every moment that this person stays on the run makes it look worse. This individual should come in to authorities now." A tiny kitten tossed from a moving car in North Texas is recovering after a school bus driver rushed to his rescue. Sherry Gill said she was at the wheel of a Little Elm ISD school bus when she saw a kitten being thrown from a car window on the State Route 720 bridge. Gill and the students on her bus were horrified. She dropped them off safely at school, then drove back to the bridge in her own car, according to Gill. She found one kitten that did not survive, then spotted another little one on the shoulder of the road and edged up to grab him. "When I went to grab, he backed up and when he backed, he went into the water," she explained. "It was a very long drop and I looked over and he was swimming." She rushed down the bank, and with the help of some nearby fishermen, was able to pull the kitten out of the lake, where he'd huddled on some rocks. By Thursday afternoon, the kitten was a little skittish but physically fine. "He toughed it out and he had a tough day, but we've got a toughie," said Gill. "He might have crawled right into mom's heart," she added. She hopes there will be consequences for the person responsible for what she calls animal cruelty. "There's so many other ways to find a home for a cat," said Gill. "They're to be taken care of. They're part of God's creatures." Gill said she couldn't see who was throwing the kittens, or get a description of the car, but someone else may have. Gill reported the incident to the Little Elm police. Anyone with information should call the department at 972-377-5548. Donald Trump said the federal judge presiding over a lawsuit brought by former Trump University students has an "absolute conflict" in handling the case because he is "of Mexican heritage." The presumptive Republican presidential nominee told The Wall Street Journal, in an interview in Friday's edition, that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel has "an inherent conflict of interest" because Trump is "building a wall," a reference to Trump's proposal to build a wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico. House Speaker Paul Ryan disavowed Trump's comments on Curiel. Ryan told WISN's "Up Front with Vicki McKenna" on Friday that the comment was "out of left field," NBC News reported. "It's reasoning I don't relate to. I completely disagree with the thinking behind that," Ryan said. A pharmacy tech shot and killed a shotgun-toting robber wearing a Halloween mask inside a Bucks County pharmacy Friday morning. The masked suspect entered the Pennsbury Pharmacy on New Falls Road in Levittown, Pennsylvania around 10 a.m. armed with a shotgun as his getaway driver waited in a van outside, said Falls Township Police. "Something like a Freddy Krueger mask, like a scary-person mask," said Falls Township Lt. Henry Ward. The clerk saw the would-be thief -- later identified by the Bucks County District Attorney's Office as Willie Bozarth, 33, of Sewell, New Jersey -- coming on surveillance video and grabbed his handgun, said police. The clerk warned Bozarth numerous times to stop or he would shoot, when Bozarth jumped the counter, the clerk opened fire, said police. Officers arrived within a couple of minutes before the alleged getaway driver even realized his accomplice had been gunned down, said investigators. Police said the driver's minivan was reported stolen out of New Jersey. No word yet on if any charges could be filed. Police said that store clerks have a right to be armed if they have the proper paperwork for the firearm. Besides the shotgun, the would-be robbers had zip ties and may have planned on tying up the clerk, said police. The Coast Guard rescued three men after their boat sank in the Cape May Inlet, sending eleven fuel drums into the water. The 40-foot vessel began sinking Wednesday night. The men were not wearing lifejackets when they were pulled from the water within minutes of the emergency call. No one was injured. The Coast Guard has recovered six of the fuel drums. The vessel is submerged in the inlet. The car a man drove from Minnesota to Los Angeles, where he gunned down his former professor at UCLA, has been found a few miles from the school, two days after the murder-suicide, police said. Mainak Sarkar's 2003 gray Nissan Sentra with a Minnesota license plate was found parked in the 11300 block of Washington Place in Culver City, the Los Angeles Police Department said Friday. The area between Sepulveda Boulevard and Bledsoe Avenue was sealed off and a bomb squad was called in to check out the car. The Washington Boulevard off-ramp of the 405 Freeway was also closed to traffic. Police found gasoline cans in the car, which did not appear nefarious, along with a handgun, according to Capt. William P. Hayes. Police found no financial records from his trip, so it is believed he used cash to make the drive, officials said. He was in Denver on May 31. Investigators said the shooter traveled from Minnesota to Los Angeles to carry out the killing of his former professor, William Klug, before turning the gun on himself. The car may contain evidence to help unravel the case. Sarkar was armed with two semiautomatic pistols, multiple magazines and several rounds of ammunition on Wednesday when he shot and killed Klug in an engineering building, police said. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said the guns had apparently been purchased legally in Minnesota. Sarkar, a former UCLA doctoral student, believed Klug had stolen his computer code, law enforcement sources told NBC News. Sarkar is also believed to be responsible for the shooting death of his wife in Minnesota, though his involvement has yet to be confirmed by police there. A "kill list" found in the shooter's home in Saint Paul also named a second UCLA professor, who was later found safe. Refresh this page for updates on this developing story A gunman shot by a Secret Service agent outside the White House last month told an officer, "I came here to shoot people," according to charging documents filed Friday. Jesse Olivieri, 31, of Ashland, Pennsylvania, was charged Friday with resisting or impeding certain officers or employees with a dangerous weapon, a federal offense carrying a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Witnesses reported gunfire in the 1600 block of E Street NW about 3:05 p.m. May 20, according to the affidavit. One witness walking in the 1600 block of Constitution Avenue NW saw Olivieri sitting in a parked Toyota Camry, then heard a pop and turned to see Olivieri holding a silver handgun with a long barrel. Olivieri was him walk quickly through the grass toward the White House. A short time later, Secret Service officers saw Olivieri, holding the gun openly, pass through the security gate near the White House's southwest grounds in the 1600 block of E Street NW and walk toward the security gate near E Street and South Place NW, the affidavit said. He refused repeated orders to stop and drop the weapon before a Secret Service agent shot him once. Before he was taken to George Washington University Hospital, a Secret Service officer asked him why he went to the White House. "I came here to shoot people," he replied. A loaded .22-caliber semiautomatic handgun was taken from Olivieri, the affidavit said. A spent .22-caliber shell casing was found near the Camry on Constitution Avenue, and more ammunition was found in the car. The shooting occurred within view of tourists outside the White House, near sidewalks crowded with families, school groups and government workers. The White House was on lockdown for about an hour after the incident. President Barack Obama was not at the White House at the time, but Vice President Joe Biden was inside the building, administration officials said. Olivieri remains hospitalized. As many as two dozen students at a South Los Angeles high school were affected by pepper spray Thursday after a police officer used it to break up a trio of lunchtime fights, officials said. A couple of "spontaneous altercations" between female students broke out near the main office at Fremont Senior High School shortly before 11:30 a.m., said Los Angeles School Police Chief Steven Zipperman in a news release. An officer responded and, in an effort to end the fight quickly, resorted to using pepper spray but the cloud of irritant reached other students as well, Zipperman said. The number of students affected differed between the fire department, police, school and classmates. "It burned like hell. My face was burning, my eyes was I can't really describe it, it was horrible," said 18-year-old Divine Herron, a student caught in the pepper spray crossfire when he was pushed into the officer. "He turned around and he started pepper spraying me directly in my eyes and he wouldn't stop," said Herron, still rubbing his eyes as he walked out of school with his mother. Other students described a chaotic scene. "I just seen all the kids running and all the kids were screaming out loud because they got pepper sprayed," student Mike Santos said. In all, about 25 students were exposed to the mist, but only one was targeted, police said. "There was a breeze and they got an over-spray," School Police Sgt. Julie Spry said. Most of the patients complained of minor eye irritation and two suffered minor injuries from the altercation, the Los Angeles Fire Department said. No one was taken to the hospital and no arrests were made. Zipperman said parents were notified and the school resumed normal operations. The officer's decision to use pepper spray will be reviewed, Zipperman said. Nyree Arabian contributed to this report. Two men and two women wanted in connection to a homicide in Burlington, Vermont were arrested in Ocean Beach Thursday, San Diego Police Department (SDPD) confirmed. Erik Averill and Jordan Paul, both 21, Myia Barber, 22, and Allison Gee, 25, were wanted for second degree murder charges. According to the Burlington Police Department, they were wanted in the beating death of a transgender man. Amos Beede, 38, was allegedly assaulted on May 22 at a homeless encampment. Burlington Police reported Beede had sustained facial fractures, a subdural hematoma and several broken ribs. He died on May 29 in the hospital. Burlington Police said Averill, Paul, Barber and Gee were spotted in Roswell, New Mexico. Local, state and federal law enforcement agencies had been working together to track down the whereabouts of all four suspects. SDPD said the Burlington Police Department contacted officers to follow up on information about the location of the suspects. Averill, Paul, Barber and Gee were arrested on Voltaire Street near W. Point Loma Boulevard in the Dog Beach area. All four were booked into jail on murder warrants issued by Burlington Police Department. The ACLU is now stepping forward to gather information on the heated protests that followed last Fridays Donald Trump rally outside of the San Diego Convention Center. The ACLU has submitted a public records request to the city of San Diego: In response to the communitys objections about the San Diego Police Departments unprecedented show of force. Among the questions the group is asking: How many officers were used and what specific law enforcement agencies and special units, including plainclothes officers participated in responding to the protests? How much did it cost and who paid for it? How did SDPD prepare for the protest what was the protocol and did it deviate from standard SDPD protocol in any way? Its really about understanding what led to this really unprecedented use of militarized force in Barrio Logan, a residential neighborhood. And so, we want to get as much information to paint a complete picture, said Christie Hill, senior policy strategist with the ACLU San Diego and Imperial county offices. Even though members of at least one protest group said they would not stay in barricaded free speech zones set up by police, the ACLU also wants to know who decided to remove the barriers that separated the protesters. Why wasnt the division maintained between the anti-Trump protesters and Trump supporters, said Hill. Why were they so close together at that point? On Tuesday, leaders of several community groups also characterized police action as a show of excessive force. But some members of the community also expressed support of the police action. Police declared an unlawful assembly after protesters on both sides engaged in heated shouting matches. There were several fist fights. Some protesters threw plastic water bottles. Other protesters used pepper spray. Others held up vulgar signs and shouted profanity. There were children present that suffered the trauma of seeing their neighborhood under attack. And so I think depending on who you talk to, some members in the Barrio Logan community might not agree that no one was hurt that day." The ACLU also is asking for the number of arrests, even though San Diego Police have already released the names and ages of the 33 people arrested. In response to the ACLUs action, the San Diego Police Department released this statement: "We are proud of the professionalism, restraint and patience displayed by the officers and deputies involved during Mr. Trump's visit to San Diego. They provided a safe environment to allow for the freedom of speech. The Police Departments decision to declare an unlawful assembly came as a result of violent behavior and unlawful acts within the crowd of protesters. As with all Public Records Act requests, we will provide the appropriate documentation once it becomes available. Most of the items, including overall cost, are in the process of being compiled. Weve already made available the arrest log associated with the event. A spokesperson for San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer was not available for an interview, and deferred all comments to the police department. Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders visited San Diego again Sunday for another rally, this time at Qualcomm Stadium. "Freedom is never given to people, people have to struggle and fight for their freedom," Sanders told a large crowd of supporters in the stadium parking lot. During his speech Sanders criticized presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump over his statements about women and minorities and his stance on issues like climate change and raising the minimum wage. He also pointed out the differences between his campaign and Hillary Clinton's, reminding voters he does not have a Super Pac. He also said he and Clinton have different views on raising the minimum wage and ending fracking. He railed against "billionaires buying elections," having a "rigged economy" and the "broken criminal justice system." Instead of building jail after jail he said he wants "to build school after school." "We need to have the best educated workforce in the world," he said. He said the cost of college should not stop anyone from getting an education and he believes college should be tuition free. Enough is enough!! Says #BernieSanders. Students are tired of leaving school thousand of dollars in debt #NBC7 pic.twitter.com/q0mYAlqX9A Omari Fleming (@OmariNBCSD) June 6, 2016 Sanders explained he would pay for free tuition by "imposing a tax on Wall Street speculation." "When we come together as one people there isn't anything we cannot accomplish," Sanders told supporters Sunday. Our job is to unite families not divide families," Sanders said while talking about immigration reform explaining he would push for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. He called California's primary on Tuesday "the most important primary of the entire nominating process," and said if turnout was high he believed his campaign would win. The rally included appearances by celebrities like George Lopez and Shailene Woodley, as well as Nahko and Medicine for the People, Michael Mowgli & The Altruists and Joel Rafael. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, Kendrick Sampson and Dr. Cornel West also joined in support of Sanders. The U.S. Senator has already visited San Diego several times, including a two-day trip two weeks ago, when he rallied in National City on May 21 and in Vista on May 22. Even if you don't #FeelTheBern, gotta feel Sander's Rally music selection. "Give the People What They Want" #NBC7 pic.twitter.com/3h7znFpift Omari Fleming (@OmariNBCSD) June 5, 2016 Comedian and actor George Lopez joined Sanders at his National City rally, while Divergent actress Shailene Woodley introduced Sanders at his Vista event. Sanders trip to San Diego comes within two days of the June 7 California Primary. In recent weeks, Sanders' rivals have visited San Diego too, including Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton also rallied on behalf of Hillary Clinton's campaign in San Diego on May 21. The Childrens Park in downtown San Diego is described by Google as a place "where ducks swim," but the childrens play area has been riddled with crime and homelessness for years. San Diego police reports show officers responded to the Children's Park more than 400 times in a two-year period for crimes including prostitution, vandalism and drug possession. In February San Diego City Councilman Todd Gloria said the problems had to do with the physical layout of the park such as grassy mounds that homeless people sleep near. City memos show that 24 trees were removed from the park to increase visibility from the street for law enforcement. Several mounds were also removed. He and others say the mounds contributed to crime in the park. City officials are hoping the redesign will reduce crime and discourage homeless people from sleeping in the park. "In the beginning it was very beautiful with the mounds, downtown resident Sara Beveridge said. The big huge mounds and it was all grassy, it was beautiful! But I think the intention was to keep the homeless from sleeping in the park because of the mounds, but then they started to remove the mounds, and the homeless are still here anyway." Gloria says one of the roadblocks to making these changes earlier was funding. NBC 7 plans to check back to see if the redesign has any impact on crime at the park. San Diego is ripe for new dining destinations. This week, Eater San Diego shares details on some new spots, including a peek at Del Mars new wine and craft beer hub, a new North Park brewpub and word on a Bay Area tapas bars expansion to San Diego. Craft Beer & Wine Bar Plus Bottle Shop Opens in Del Mar This weekend bring the launch of a new wine and beer destination, Tasting Room Del Mar, an indoor/outdoor space that features craft beer taps, a boutique wine list and menu of seasonally-inspired plates. The concept also includes a retail bottle shop selling wine and beer. North Park Brewpub Announces Restaurant Partner The long-awaited North Park Beer Co. will debut this summer on University Avenue with its in-house eatery run by Mastiff Sausage Company, a popular local food truck. Mastiff will expand its food offerings for the brewpub, offering everything from beer snacks and larger entrees to vegan and vegetarian-friendly dishes. Bay Area Tapas Bar Plans Rancho Santa Fe Expansion Founded in Berkeley, California, in 1998 when it opened adjacent to legendary restaurant Chez Panisse, Cesar tapas bar plans to expand to Rancho Santa Fe this summer. The tapas spot will bring its Spanish-inspired, small bites menu showcasing local ingredients. More Craft Beer & Coffee for Liberty Station The buzz is brewing at Liberty Station. This time its Moniker General, a new lifestyle hub that includes a coffee bar and beer tasting room from Miramar's 32 North Brewing Company. Operated by local design firm Moniker Group, the space also houses a retail store featuring apparel, home goods and more. The Hottest Restaurants in San Diego Right Now Updated monthly, Eater's Heatmap is a round-up of the buzziest restaurants in town, from celebrity chef projects to new eateries with exciting menu offerings. June's edition of the Heatmap includes two recent additions to the food scene: the latest outpost from a popular local concept and a refresh of a neighborhood favorite. Candice Woo is the founding editor of Eater San Diego, a leading source for news about San Diegos restaurant and bar scene. Keep up with the latest Eater San Diego content via Facebook or Twitter, and sign up for Eater San Diegos newsletter here. Two young men were arrested Thursday in connection with a series of eight armed robberies targeting pedestrians in uptown San Diego neighborhoods, investigators confirmed. San Diego Police Department (SDPD) Capt. Mike Hastings said suspects Hamza Hagi, 22, and Feysal Salad, 21, were arrested for robbing multiple pedestrians at gunpoint in North Park, Normal Heights and University Heights. The robberies all took place between May 9 to May 27, Hastings said. "The suspects produced a handgun and threatened the victims as they demanded the victims property," he explained. According to detectives, eight pedestrians were robbed during that time period. The violent series was top-of-mind for the police department and Hastings said a hybrid team of detectives was formed to investigate the cases in depth. In one case, detectives were able to identify a vehicle linked to the robbery suspects. That car was spotted by SDPD officers just before 1 a.m. Thursday in the 4900 block of University Avenue. An officer pulled the vehicle over and four men inside including Hagi and Salad were detained. While searching the suspects car, officers discovered evidence linked to the robbery series, including stolen property. Hagi and Salad were both taken into custody and booked into San Diego Central Jail on multiple charges of armed robbery and conspiracy. The SDPD said the other two men inside the car were questioned by officers but ultimately released. Hastings said the cases of Hagi and Salad have been turned over to the San Diego County District Attorney's office. Both suspects are scheduled to appear in court on Monday. Further details of the crimes of which theyre accused are expected to be released in court at that time. Hastings said the ages of victims targeted in this series of armed robberies span "across the board." The suspects would usually steal purses or cell phones from their victims. In some cases, Hastings said the suspects stole more "eccentric things," but the captain said those details would come out during court proceedings next week. Hastings said several similar armed robbery cases are still under investigation and police are working to determine if those cases are tied into this crime series. "We believe the community can rest asssured that the suspects are in custody at this time," added Hastings. San Diego County Waterfront Park was doused in orange on Thursday for the Wear Orange Walk to commemorate National Gun Violence Awareness Day. "Blaze orange"-- what hunters often wear in the woods-- is fast becoming the recognized color of those advocating an end to gun violence. The idea for the color was inspired by Nza-Ari Khepra, a high school student in Chicago who had encouraged her friends to wear orange in honor of classmate Hadiya Pendleton's death. Pendleton was shot and killed just one week after performing in President Obama's second inauguration. Seventy-five people, some directly affected by gun violence, and others angry over mass killings reported nationwide, marched around Waterfront Park. They demanded action be taken to reduce the violence. What should be done though is at the center of great debate. The message from demonstrators seemed clear and in one voice, but the solution to stopping gun violence is not as obvious. Christine Evans' son Brandon Lee Evans was robbed, shot, and killed in Golden Gate park eight years ago. She wants guns out of the hands of criminals. It's hard for me to go on. I look at life different. I hold on to my other two children close to me, Evans said. Will Barton is confined to a wheelchair after being shot three times in the head and neck by a convicted felon who thought he was someone else. It is the mental health care and the focus on the mental health care of the person that is acting out in his life and being violent, Barton said. Congressman Scott Peters, from district 52, was sad to report no significant gun legislation passed during his tenure. Congressman Peters says requiring background checks for buyers at gun shows and online is an easy fix. That is a wide open loophole. 90 percent of Americans think closing that loophole would be a smart thing. 80 some percent of gun owners agree, he said. Several streets away from the demonstration, NBC 7 met with a second generation gunsmith, firearms dealer, and marksman John Rippo. Teaching people to be functional with it, I think that is a better American solution, Rippo said. Rippo is a second amendment advocate who says the solution requires a cultural change, not a change in the law. We don't need to make movies that glorify gun violence. We don't need to make movies and video games that glorify death and killing, Rippo said. NBC 7 June 2 is recognized as gun violence awareness day nation-wide. But rally organizers want gun violence awareness in conversations every day. Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense is the group that organized Thursday's demonstration. Members point out they are not against gun owners but are advocates for safety measures that better protect the public. A former Destiny's Child band member was arrested on Thursday for public intoxication and possession of marijuana. Officials tell E! News Farrah Franklin who was a member of the girl group for five months in 1999 was taken into custody after getting into an argument with a male friend outside a gym in DeKalb County, Georgia, around 3 a.m. When officers arrived, they noticed an odor of alcohol, and determined Franklin was intoxicated due to her slurred speech and bloodshot eyes. After her arrest, police found marijuana and charged her with possession as well. She was released from custody Thursday after paying $630, according to jail records, which did not indicate if she had an attorney. On Wednesday, ahead of the arrest, Franklin shared a video of herself on her Instagram account, revealing that she "gave in" and finally downloaded Snapchat. Meanwhile, this is not the first time Franklin has been in trouble with the law. In 2014, she found herself behind bars for disorderly conduct in South Carolina after she was reportedly found sleeping in the yard of a local person's house. Mug Shot Mania Destiny's Child's Bootylicious Turns 15 What to Know The FBI's Art Crime Team is a specialized unit of agents formed and trained to combat a rising number of art fraud and theft cases. FBI supervisory special agent Martin Licciardo said art theft and art fraud cases often involve international transactions and buyers. The unit also has conducted investigations into stolen historical artifacts and ancient relics looted from historic sites. The FBI has recovered at least 2,650 missing pieces of art or historical artifacts, many of which were stolen, since 2004, according to a review by the News4 I-Team. The cases were managed by the agencys Art Crime Team, a specialized unit of agents formed and trained to combat a rising number of art fraud and theft cases. Cases reviewed by the I-Team include the recent recovery of a stolen historic letter authored by Charles Darwin in the 1870s. The letter was stolen in the 1970s from the Smithsonian Archives in Washington, D.C., according to FBI special agent Marc Hess. After receiving a tip about the letters whereabouts, agents recovered the document and returned it to Smithsonian managers May 26. It is an important part of our heritage, Hess said. It may not be worth a lot monetarily, but its worth a lot to scholars. U.S. Justice Department records reviewed by the I-Team also detail an $11 million art theft scheme for which a California businessman was convicted last year. Luke Brugnara accepted but refused to pay for five crates filled with prized art pieces, including by Picasso, Luks and Degas, FBI investigators said. FBI investigators released copies of text messages sent by Brugnara to an art dealer, claiming the pieces were a gift, not a purchase. One of the five crates, including a $3 million Degas sculpture, remains missing, FBI investigators told the I-Team. Brugnara is serving his sentence in a federal prison. In another recent case investigated by the FBI Art Crime Team, a classic Renoir painting was recovered and returned to the Baltimore Museum of Art. The painting was stolen more than 60 years ago, according to FBI reports, then recovered in 2014 from a woman who said she purchased it in recent years at a flea market in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. FBI supervisory special agent Martin Licciardo said art theft and art fraud cases often involve international transactions and buyers. There is a vast network of middlemen, international brokers and looters, Licciardo said. The FBI maintains an online database of stolen art and historical items. According to the FBI, (Listed) objects must be uniquely identifiable and have historical or artistic significance. This includes fine arts, decorative arts, antiquities, Asian art, Islamic art, Native American art, ethnographic objects, archaeological material, textiles, books and manuscripts, clocks and watches, coins, stamps, musical instruments, and scientific instruments. The Art Crime Units closed cases include the recovery of a diverse series of other well-known pieces of art. FBI records list Children with a Cart, a 1778 painting from Francisco de Goya stolen while being transported from Ohio to the Guggenheim Museum in New York. They also list a Rembrandt self-portrait from 1630. It was recovered in a sting operation in Denmark, according to the FBI. The unit also has conducted investigations into stolen historical artifacts and ancient relics looted from historic sites. It can be anything from a 2,000-year-old plate to a painting painted 100 years ago, Licciardo said. Reported by Scott MacFarlane, produced by Rick Yarborough, and shot and edited by Steve Jones and Michael O'Regan. With major Metro repairs set to start Saturday, 11 Virginia lawmakers say they would block any new funding devoted to the work. Eleven members of the Virginia House of Delegates signed a letter sent to WMATA Chairman Jack Evans on Wednesday. The delegates said they will not support any "new dedicated funding stream or tax increases" to fund the repairs expected to cost $60 million. "We cannot in good conscience ask Virginia taxpayers to bail out years of mismanagement, negligence and wasteful spending," the letter reads. The signatories include House Majority Caucus Chairman Timothy Hugo, House Majority Whip Jackson Miller, Del. David Albo and Del. James LeMunyon. 11 VA state lawmakers from NOVA "emphatically & unequivocally" oppose dedicated revenue or tax increase for @wmata pic.twitter.com/OI02ziR0rN Mark Segraves (@SegravesNBC4) June 3, 2016 Evans called the letter "ludicrous." "The fact of the matter is, Metro has a $300 million operating shortfall, an $18 billion capital shortfall and a $2.5 billion unfunded pension liability. And we have to address it some way," the chairman said. The letter comes just days after Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe threatened to withhold funding from Metro if safety did not improve. "You can threaten all you want," Evans said. "I say to the political leaders of the jurisdictions, my advice would be, get on board and be supportive. Threats are idle. They mean nothing to me." A 16-year-old boy was killed in Gaithersburg, Maryland, Thursday, when he fell into a roadway while riding his bike, and a SUV struck him, police say. Montgomery County police said Santos Escobar-Villatoro, of Gaithersburg, was riding his bicycle northbound on the sidewalk next to the southbound lanes of South Frederick Avenue, when he struck a commercial sign on the sidewalk and fell into the road. A 2004 Toyota Highlander then struck Santos. About 2:30 p.m., police and fire and rescue responded to the scene at South Frederick Avenue and Fulks Corner Avenue. Police said Santos died from his injuries at the scene. Santos was a freshman at Gaithersburg High School, and he was struck right around the corner from the school. In a letter sent home to parents, the school principal described Santos as a hard-working student that had a love for history. The driver of the Toyota Highlander has been identified as Atiana Shalis Sarkis, 18, of Pennsylvania. Sarkis was not injured, police said. The city attorney said if a business is found responsible for placing the sign on the sidewalk, it could face a $1,000 fine. Investigators are asking anyone who witnessed the crash to contact the Collision Reconstruction Unit at (240) 773-6620. Callers may remain anonymous. A GoFundMe page was established to raise funds to assist the Escobar-Villatoro family with the mounting funeral costs. What to Know Andrew Schmuhl's wife asserted her Fifth Amendment right and declined to answer questions about her husband's medical condition. The doctor who treated him at the Fort Belvoir pain clinic before his arrest said Schmuhl's pain affected his quality of life. Prosecutors believe Schmuhl was duping doctors, lying about his physical condition to get powerful drugs. The attorney accused of carrying out a savage attack on a Virginia couple watched his wife take the witness stand in a Fairfax County courtroom Thursday. Andrew Schmuhl's defense team began putting together its case, hoping to convince jurors Schmuhl was so heavily medicated that he was impaired when he staged the November 2014 attack on Leo Fisher and his wife, Sue Duncan, in their McLean home. Fisher is a partner in an Arlington law firm that fired Schmuhl's wife, Alecia, two weeks prior to the attack. Andrew Schmuhls defense team was dealt a blow this week when the judge ruled they cannot use what's known as an involuntary intoxication defense to try to clear their client. But Thursday they turned to doctors -- and Alecia Schmuhl -- to turn the spotlight on the possible effects of the many medications Schmuhl was taking for back pain and other ailments. Police dashcam video showed he struggled to answer questions as police quizzed him about medications. His lawyers hoped to ask his wife about his medical condition, but once on the stand, she asserted her Fifth Amendment right and declined to answer questions. Defense attorneys say she was the mastermind behind the near fatal attack on Fisher and Duncan, bent on revenge after being fired. Alecia Schmuhl will be tried separately in the fall. She and her husband did not make eye contact in court Thursday. Jurors did hear about Andrew Schmuhl's medical issues from the doctor who treated him at the Fort Belvoir pain clinic before his arrest. Schmuhl, a former military lawyer, was taking more than a dozen prescription drugs to combat back pain and other ailments, including several powerful opioids. "He was spending most of his time in bed, the doctor said. He couldn't take part in the daily pleasures of life. His quality of life was pretty bad." But prosecutors believe Schmuhl was duping doctors, lying about his physical condition to get powerful drugs, and they offered a photo of Schmuhl helping re-roof a house two weeks before the attack as proof. Other doctors testified Schmuhl was in grave condition when he was taken to the emergency room just after his arrest. Dr. Bell Grima said she had to give him the opioid overdose drug Narcan to revive him when his heart rate slowed and he passed out. When jurors return Monday, they will see texts sent between the couple before the attack. The one-time chauffeur for former District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray is due in court as a judge considers whether to let him back out of his guilty plea. Mark Long pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge related to the illegal, $660,000 slush fund that helped Gray get elected in 2010. Court documents show Long was paid with illicit funds to serve as Gray's driver. He has since argued that he was poorly represented and shouldn't face a longer prison sentence than the architects of the campaign-finance conspiracy. A judge will consider his motion during a hearing on Friday. Gray, a Democrat, was not charged after the lengthy probe of his 2010 campaign. He lost his bid for re-election in 2014 and is now running for the D.C. Council. A case of "possible human trafficking" at a Saudi diplomatic compound in Virginia is under investigation, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed to News4. Homeland Security Special-Agent-in-Charge John Torres, who is leading the probe, said Fairfax County Police responded to a tip Tuesday night citing a possible case of modern slavery. U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement/Homeland Security Investigations were called to a home in the 6000 block of Orris Street in McLean and -- in the words of a source familiar with the investigation -- "rescued" two women. One woman reportedly tried to flee by squeezing through a gap in the front gate as it was closing. "In this particular case, what we ended up doing is setting up an arranged time to meet some people. They met us at that time and we took them out of that situation," Torres said. It's not clear if the women, whom sources say are from the Philippines, called investigators to the home themselves or if someone else did. The women are now in protective custody. We ultimately took those potential victims out of that situation, Torres said. Theyre safe now, being interviewed by our agents and victim witness coordinators. The investigation is in its very early stages and complicated by the possibility that some of those involved may have diplomatic immunity, said a State Department spokesperson. A 2008 U.S. Government Accountability Office report notes that in previous cases, "...The accused foreign diplomats held full diplomatic immunity and this could not be prosecuted in U.S. courts." Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) said Saudi Arabia has been faulted in the past for abuse of a special visa program that allows foreign diplomats to bring household workers into the United States. "They bring them in; they work them seven days a week; they take their passports away," Wolf said. The compound -- with three security gates, a guard shack and security staff on foot patrol -- is owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, according to Fairfax County real estate records. A man outside the gates who said he works for the embassy told News4 the homeowner was at the embassy Wednesday, and vehicles driven in and out of the gates had diplomatic license plates. The U.S. State Department is aware of this matter, said spokesperson Patrick Ventrell. Diplomatic security is aware of the matter, and were working with the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, specifically Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Follow Jackie Bensen on Twitter at @jackiebensen A Virginia high school student allegedly recorded other male students in a school bathroom, according to police. Phatsakorn Pongpasit, 20, of Fairfax, was arrested Tuesday and charged with possession of child pornography and unlawful creation of image of another, Fairfax police said Friday. Pongpasit is a senior at Fairfax High School, where a school resource officer received a complaint from school administration that Pongpoasit secretly recorded other students in bathroom stalls Thursday, police said. A student reported the incident to school staff Thursday morning, according to a letter sent to parents of Fairfax High School students. "There was a complaint from a student that had believed he was filmed while he was using the restroom or attempting to change in the restroom stall," Fairfax Police Sgt. Natalie Hinesley said. Cases like this are becoming more common, police said. Teens take and send inappropriate images of each other with their phones, not realizing that in most cases, it's a crime. "So we've tried to get the word out, teaching within the schools to let the students know that most of these offenses are felony offenses," Heinsley said. "Our security and administrative teams responded immediately and their outstanding investigative work confirmed the students report," the letter read. "As the incident involved a violation of the law as well as school rules, we notified the police. While we do not generally discuss individual students or their decision making, the violating student is of adult age and the police department reports crimes committed by adults." Pongpoasit was released from jail Friday morning, according to the sheriff's office. He is scheduled to appear in court Aug. 16. Courtesy of families Editors Note: Go here for an update on the verdict in the victims families wrongful death lawsuit, and here for an exclusive interview with one victims parents. What to Know Nina Brekelmans, 25, and Michael McLoughlin, 24, died a year ago after a fire broke out near Dupont Circle, on Riggs Place NW. D.C. officials found that the house where they rented rooms had not been inspected and was not licensed for rental. Cities across the country grapple with how to detect potentially dangerous illegal apartments, experts say. The fire that sent flames shooting through the roof of a three-story rowhouse near Dupont Circle started on the first floor. An electrical short sparked in the landlords living room, and the blaze raced upward in the historic house. Stay informed about local news and weather in the D.C. area. Get the NBC4 Washington app for iOS or Android and pick your alerts. Four people were inside. Nina Brekelmans awoke in the burning building and called 911, according to a lawsuit filed by her family. Firefighters arrived minutes later, but by the time they were able to reach her and her housemate Michael McLoughlin, it was too late. Brekelmans, 25, and McLoughlin, 24, were killed by the blaze June 3, 2015 at 1610 Riggs Place NW, where they each rented rooms. 1610 Riggs Place NW on June 1, 2016. Two people died in a fire there June 3, 2015 in apartments D.C. officials say were unlicensed. The housemates were trapped on the third floor of the house because there was no fire escape and the windows were painted shut, according to $10 million lawsuits their families each have filed against the father and son who owned and managed the building. In court filings, Len Salas and his father, Max Salas, each denied that negligence contributed to the deaths. The alleged fire hazards in the house were not found by housing inspectors because the Salases rented out the units illegally, without verifying that the apartments met safety codes, according to the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, which administers housing inspections. D.C. has a system to find and correct dangerous safety violations in apartments registered with the city. But illegal apartments often go unnoticed until a tragedy occurs. In the District, the detection of potentially hazardous illegal apartments depends on renters to know their rights and neighbors to report anything suspicious, DCRA's director said. The same thing happens in cities across the country, experts say. Since January 2013, the owners of at least 46 D.C. properties have been ticketed for operating housing without certificates of occupancy. But D.C. officials believe the true number of illegal apartments is higher. If the owner of a property on the books as a single-family house rents out unsafe apartments or rooms, odds are slim that the illegal housing will be discovered, DCRA director Melinda Bolling said. We wouldnt know, she said. We look to our [Advisory Neighborhood Commissions], citizens and the tenants themselves to be proactive to let us know about properties. We get information from those parties and we do compliance checks. The Smell of Smoke When the fire broke out on Riggs Place, Brekelmans had just earned a master's degree from Georgetown University. She was preparing to fly to Jordan to research female runners, combining two passions of the Arabic speaker who ran every day, friends said. McLoughlin, who had degrees in finance and economics from the University of Maryland, was launching his career and had impressed his bosses at an insurance company with his energy and intellect, they told The Washington Post. The housemates each paid about $1,500 a month for furnished rooms with separate kitchenettes, and a shared bathroom, the tenant who lived in the basement apartment of the house told the Post. He was out of town on business when the fire occurred. Max Salas, 63, was in his bedroom on the second floor of the red brick rowhouse when he smelled smoke, he told fire investigators, according to a copy of the fire departments incident report obtained by NBC Washington. He opened his bedroom door and realized the smoke was coming from the first floor. He walked downstairs and saw the couch in his living room was on fire, and ran into the kitchen for a bucket of water, but the fire was spreading, the report says. An image from cellphone video of the fire at 1610 Riggs Place NW on June 3, 2015 Salas ran back upstairs and tried to enter a second-floor bedroom where his grandson was sleeping, but the door was locked. He banged on the door until he was able to wake him and closed the door behind him, the report says. He tried to go upstairs to the third floor to warn Brekelmans and McLoughlin, according to the report. But the flames and smoke were spreading too fast. Salas and his grandson jumped through a second-floor window. Brekelmans awoke and called 911 at about 2:30 a.m., the lawsuit filed by her family says. Firefighters arrived less than four minutes later, the fire departments incident report says, but she and McLoughlin could not be saved. They were pronounced dead at about 6:15 a.m., the lawsuits filed by the victims families say. Salas, his grandson and three firefighters were injured but survived. Investigators determined the fire started accidentally. In the wreckage of the Salas living room on the first floor, where the blaze was determined to have started, officials found an electrical plug with a damaged prong, an ungrounded two-prong extension cord and an oil-filled space heater, the investigation report says. A D.C. firefighter hauls debris out of 1610 Riggs Place NW on June 3, 2015. A month after the fire, DCRA fined Salas and his son $6,000 because they failed to obtain a license to rent rooms or apartments, which would have included proof of an inspection, the regulatory department said. Brekelmans familys lawyer, Patrick Regan, argued that if the house had been inspected, Brekelmans and McLoughlin would have been able to escape. The tragedy is, had the landlord gone through the required steps to get a permit, every single violation [alleged in the lawsuit] that led to the deaths of these two young people would have been caught, he said. These two young people would have been able to get out safely. The fire damage to the house was so extensive that inspectors were not able to determine if any code violations were present, DCRA spokesman Matt Orlins said. What we saw was a shell at that point, he said. In court filings, Max and Len Salas each denied that they failed to maintain the building or meet safety standards. Len Salas lawyer, Michael Forster, said he could not comment on the circumstances of the fire and that Len Salas father, Max Salas, was responsible for the house. Max Salas took full responsibility in handling every aspect of acquiring licenses, maintaining and renting the property, Forster said in an email. To operate legally, the property needed an inspection and a certificate of occupancy for a two-unit rental property, DCRA found. The property did not have that inspection or license, according to the department. Len Salas bought the house in 2007, according to D.C. property records and tax assessment records. Max Salas accepted rent checks, the basement tenant, John Mecham, told The Washington Post. Max Salas lawyer did not respond to multiple inquiries. The 1600 block of Riggs Place NW, June 1, 2016 Finding Illegal Apartments Is a Cat and Mouse Game DCRA data shows property owners in nearly every corner of the District have operated apartments, rooming houses and bed-and-breakfasts without getting official confirmation that conditions are safe. D.C. apartments are inspected on three occasions: when a property owner applies for a license to rent, when DCRA workers perform periodic inspections of legal apartments and when inspections are requested. But when property owners rent illegally, the apartments arent checked, Bolling, the DCRA director, said. When a property doesnt have a license and were not told about it, thats where problems can arise, she said. Some illegal apartments are found by DCRAs housing investigations unit, whose techniques include inspecting properties after seeing suspicious Craigslist ads. But, most units without certificates of occupancy are found after DCRA receives a tip from a tenant or neighbor who suspects something is not right, Orlins, the departments spokesman, said. In cities across the country, illegal apartments often are not found until its too late, said Robert Neale, a vice president of the International Code Council, which publishes safety codes adopted by states and government agencies nationwide. Typically local fire services dont do any inspection of single-family homes or duplexes, he said. They typically only find illegal apartments when theres a tragedy. Privacy concerns block inspectors from checking every single-family home for hazards, said Robert Solomon, a manager at the National Fire Protection Association, which also sets safety standards. Its the mans home is his castle provision, he said. Finding illegal apartments vexes many fire departments and city governments, Solomon said. It really is like a cat-and-mouse game, he said. In 2015, DCRA inspected 21,004 housing units. The majority of the homes, 47%, were inspected as part of the periodic, proactive inspection program, which requires that every five years a percentage of the units in a multi-unit building is inspected, depending on the total number of units. About a third of total inspections last year were complaint-based, and about 12 percent occurred because the property owner applied for a license. Infractions were found in 644 units about 3 percent. If a violation, such as insufficient exits, poses an immediate danger to residents, a property owner is ordered to correct the issue right away, Orlins said. If the owner fails to do so, DCRA can shut down the building, fix the problem and bill the owner for the cost. When illegal apartments are found, DCRA often opts to work with property owners to bring the units into compliance with the law, Bolling said. What we're trying to do is maintain, preserve and increase affordable housing, she said. When we find someone who is operating outside of the law, we work to bring them inside, versus [shutting] it down ... We can work with you." Fines for operating housing without proper permits may be waived. But, existing infractions will stand, Orlins said. Renters often are not aware of what they are entitled to, and in a tight rental market they can find themselves forced to accept homes that are illegal or hazardous, said Beth Mellen Harrison, a supervising attorney in the Legal Aid Society's housing unit. There may be properties where tenants accept quite dangerous conditions because they dont have anywhere else to go, she said. About half of the approximately 500 housing cases the Legal Aid Society handles in D.C. every year for low-income clients involve homes with unsafe exits, such as basement apartments with windows too small for a person to crawl out of if a fire breaks out. In one case, a residents front door could only be unlocked from the outside. They had to call somebody to get them out, Harrison said. ANC commissioner Michael Upright, who represents the leafy neighborhood where the Riggs Place fire occurred, said he worries there are unsafe and illegal apartments in the area. I do feel there are others out there just like this that we just don't know about, he said. We Dont Want Anybody Else to Die After the deadly fire on Riggs Place, Georgetown University where Brekelmans earned her masters degree handed over students off-campus addresses to DCRA inspectors, Bolling said. On Aug. 15, 2015, inspectors performed safety checks on student apartments. DCRA initiates many inspections, but one of the regulatory departments most important roles is to educate renters about when they should ask for inspections themselves, the director said. DCRA regularly meets with universities and social service organizations to help inform residents of their rights, Bolling said. Georgetown graduate Jay Tedino has taken educating renters about safety into his own hands. After his friend was killed in a fire, the 33-year-old has spent the past decade trying to prevent young people from dying in rental properties they did not realize were dangerous. Tedino felt a familiar pain when he heard about Brekelmans and McLoughlins deaths. His friend Daniel Rigby died in a house fire in 2004, days before he would have turned 22. Daniel Rigby Rigby died Oct. 17, 2004 when a fire broke out at 3318 Prospect St., a block north of busy M Street. He would have graduated with the Georgetown class of 2005. Inspectors later found metal bars welded to the window frames, a lack of required smoke detectors and blocked exit doors, according to news reports. Two years after Rigby died, Tedino helped found Friends of Rigby, a nonprofit organization that educates college students about fire hazards and raises more than $10,000 per year to pass out smoke detectors, fire extinguishers and more. Friends of Rigby co-founder Jay Tedino holds a T-shirt from a race run in memory of Daniel Rigby, who died in a D.C. house fire in 2004. He wears a shirt from a 5K held in March in honor of Nina Brekelmans, who died in a D.C. house fire in 2015. As Rigby enjoyed his senior year in college, he likely didn't consider whether the house he shared with five roommates was safe, Tedino said. "We were at the age when you think you're invincible," he said. The night before the fire, Rigby and Tedino, who went to high school together in New Jersey, watched the New York Yankees advance in the playoffs. They celebrated a 19-8 win against the Boston Red Sox until about midnight, and then Tedino went to sleep in his house down the block. Tedino awoke to pounding on his door. "There's a fire at 3318 and Danny's MIA," Tedinos friends told him. Hours later, Rigby was confirmed to have died in the basement of his house. On a bitterly cold Saturday morning in April, Tedino and about 20 Georgetown students walked in the rain to off-campus student apartments. Teams of volunteers knocked on the doors of houses where they said students can expect to pay about $1,500 per room. They rattled off 15 questions on a safety survey. Friends of Rigby volunteer Tara Flanagan, 21, administers a fire safety survey on April 9, 2016 to Georgetown University senior William Paolella, 22. Armed with iPads, they asked students how many smoke detectors and fire extinguishers they had, when the devices were last tested, whether any extension cords were used and if they knew when DCRA last performed inspections. If the students needed any equipment, Friends of Rigby passed it out. As Tedino walked door to door, he told students the supplies were free but asked them to "pay it forward" by participating in the group's annual gala and 5K race. After hours on the streets, Friends of Rigby had spoken with residents of 370 properties and handed out 40 smoke and carbon dioxide detectors. If Friends of Rigby can get just 10% of the students that volunteers speak with to improve the safety of their homes, the group will be a success, Tedino said. "We don't want anybody else to die," he said. The group is working with the Red Cross now to set dates to go door-to-door in D.C. and New Jersey this fall, when college students move in to new apartments. Friends of Rigby volunteers, on April 9, 2016, knock on the door of 3318 Prospect St. NW, where Georgetown University student Daniel Rigby was killed in a house fire in 2004. No one was home. Carrying a stack of smoke detectors as he surveyed the historic rowhouses of Prospect Street, Tedino was struck by the difference between the neat exteriors of the million-dollar homes and the fire hazards he knew might lurk inside. "They look OK from the outside, but it's what's inside that's scary," he said. A man has been charged in the 1993 stabbing death of a woman in Washington after he was linked to the crime through a DNA match. District of Columbia police announced Thursday that 48-year-old Therion Bryant of Parkville, Maryland, was arrested by a fugitive task force. Bryant has been charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of 25-year-old Charlene Johnson. He's been ordered held without bond. Court documents show Bryant was linked to the slaying through a DNA match in 2014. The documents show police interviewed him and he denied involvement. After a subsequent DNA match in 2016, police charged him in a warrant. The documents show that after his arrest, Bryant admitted having sex with Johnson but still denied killing her. Bryant's public defender, Jacqueline Cadman, declined to comment. Prince William County police are searching for a 14-year-old boy who didn't come home from school Wednesday. Naseem Isiah Roulack left his home on Madrigal Drive in Woodbridge at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, but he never returned home after school. Based on information they received Tuesday, police believe Roulack may be in need of assistance. Roulack is 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighs 160 pounds. He has black hair, brown eyes and a scar on his upper left arm. He was last seen wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt. Anyone with information on Roulack's whereabouts is asked to call police. A high-level Defense Department official has been placed on administrative leave following his arrest for stealing license plates in a dispute over a neighborhood parking permit, the Pentagon said Thursday. Bryan Whitman, a civilian leader in the Pentagon's public affairs office, is on leave pending a legal review by human resources officials and has had his security clearance suspended. The review will include questions about his ongoing access to classified information, according to U.S. officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Whitman was charged with three counts of theft for stealing license plates from a car belonging to a neighbor's nanny and leaving a threatening note. The charges, which came to light Wednesday, stunned Pentagon officials and co-workers and raised questions about a potential Defense Department investigation. Whitman has a security clearance, and under Defense Department regulations, he is required to notify officials if he is arrested. He did not respond to a request for comment, and it's unclear if he ever formally reported the arrest to any security officials. According to U.S. officials, top Pentagon leaders didn't learn about the problem until they were contacted Wednesday by The Washington Post, which was first to report the arrest. A former member of the Army's special forces, Whitman is the principal deputy assistant secretary for public affairs and had been overseeing the Pentagon's community relations office. In an agreement reached with the Superior Court in Washington, the charges against him will be dropped if he pays $1,000 in restitution, does 32 hours of community service at a local food bank, stays away from the neighbors and the nanny and doesn't get into trouble for 10 months. The dispute began April 4, when Whitman allegedly put a note on a car belonging to the nanny, which was parked in his neighborhood on Capitol Hill. ``I know you are misusing this visitor pass to park here daily. If you do not stop I will report it, have your car towed and the resident who provided this to you will have his privileges taken away,'' the note on her white Lexus said, according to the police report. Two days later, both of her license plates were taken. The family she works for replaced the plates and two days later the rear license plate was taken. The family then mounted a camera outside that covered the street and sidewalk, and on April 21 the rear plate was taken again, but this time they had it on video. The Associated Press is not identifying the nanny or the family who were the apparent victims of the theft. Terry Owens, a spokesman for the District Department of Transportation, said it's legal for nannies or babysitters to use visitor parking passes at any time. According to the police report, officers reviewed the video _ which showed a man moving around the nanny's car and crouched down at the rear of the vehicle _ and then went to Whitman's house in late April with a warrant. The report said that, when asked about the license plates, Whitman went to his car and retrieved them and turned them over to the police. Whitman was charged on May 5, and on Tuesday he reached a deferred prosecution agreement with the court for the restitution and community service. The FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives assisted police with a massive home raid in a quiet Virginia neighborhood, startling neighbors who woke up to flashing police lights early Friday morning. The ordeal began about 5 a.m. at a home off of Appletree Drive Northeast in Leesburg, neighbors said. They described an intense scene where police shined spotlights into the home to ensure no one escaped while several people filed out of the home with their hands up. "It was like 'Straight Outta Compton,'" one neighbor said. "It's just like the movie, like, literally." The adults in the home were forced to raise their shirts as they exited so police could check for weapons. "It was extremely scary only because we were not expecting such a thing," said Zee Ahmed, who has lived across the street from the home for 10 years. "This was a very friendly, family-oriented neighborhood." Some people from the home were detained at the time of the raid, and police are interviewing "several subjects," according to Leesburg Police Lt. Jeff Dube. A crime scene vehicle packed with evidence remained outside the home hours after the investigation began, but police have yet to reveal for what they were searching, though the raid involved members of the police gang unit. Around the home, heavily armed police and federal agents in tactical gear kept an eye on the neighborhood for those who might approach the home. Details about the case remain sparse, because police "don't want to jeopardize the ongoing nature of this investigation," Dube said. Appletree Drive was blocked Friday evening. Ahmed told News4 the mother who lives in the home is a sweet person, but she didn't recognize the others escorted out. A former Somali colonel who is facing accusations of war crimes in his native country worked as a security guard at Dulles International Airport until recently. Yusuf Abdi Ali, who now lives in Alexandria, has been accused of torturing and publicly executing people in Somali. Ali was placed on administrative leave from Dulles after a recent CNN investigation highlighting an alleged brutal and violent past. He was not a TSA agent, but he did patrol in the TSA-secured part of the airport. NBC4 has covered the accusations against Ali several times before, dating back to 1998. Eighteen years later, those questions are still being raised of the former colonel, most recently in a federal civil suit. A victim alleges that in 1987, "he was beaten, tortured, shot, and ultimately left for dead at the direction of Yusuf Ali...." But in February, the federal court said it didn't have jurisdiction to rule. Ali's attorney, Joseph Peter Drennan, told News4, "Ali is entitled to immunity as an official, or former official of the Somali government." Ali left Somalia before the country's regime collapsed. In reviewing past reporting, NBC4 found video of him working as a security guard in Canada in the early 1990s. The court said Ali moved to Canada in 1990, but that Canada deported Ali two years later "for serious human rights abuses." At that point, he came to the United States. "The United States began deportation proceedings soon thereafter, but Ali voluntarily left the country in 1994. For reasons not explained in the record, Ali returned to the United States in December 1996 and now resides in Alexandria, Virginia," the court found. A CNN investigation found he most recently worked as a security guard at Dulles Airport, contracted out to a third party. "My observation is that it's an unfortunate effort, I think, to sensationalize the fact that he works at Dulles Airport," Drennan said. "So what?" The Metropolitan Airports Authority says the private security contractor, Master Security, properly vetted Ali. Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) called the situation troubling. "It was very troubling and it causes a lot of questions to be asked about what type of vetting was done," she said. Comstock now wants an in-person briefing from agencies involved. "If indeed he did slip through the cracks, how did that happen?" she said. Most puzzling to her is his return to the United States. "I am certainly troubled that somebody that Canada said couldn't stay there then is able to come here," she said. Drennan said Ali is in the United States legally. "He has legal status here in the United States," he said. Drennan said Ali's case has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. A 26-year-old robbery suspect has been charged with murder after police say he shot a woman who threatened to turn him in to police after she saw his picture on the news. Sonya Smith, 55, was found dead inside the bedroom of her Smithsburg, Maryland, home Thursday. Her family told police they had not heard from her in two days. Investigators believe Anthony Minnick got into an argument with Smith at her home Tuesday evening after she told Minnick she saw his picture featured in a news report about two armed robberies that had been committed that day. When she threatened to call police, Minnick allegedly shot Smith and stole several items from her home. Maryland State Police say Minnick was taken into police custody in connection with the robberies the day before Smith's body was found. When police searched his vehicle, they found a loaded .22 caliber rifle, sound system components stolen from the Smith's home, and Smith's cellphone. Police say Minnick was an acquaintance of Smith's boyfriend and frequently visited her home. He has been charged with first degree murder, second degree murder, first degree assault and theft over $1,000. A $25,000 oil painting stolen from a Suffield home has been recovered, according to police, and the owner has decided not to pursue criminal charges. The painting, which is signed by the artist, was the only thing stolen from the home during the burglary on Saturday, May 21, according to police. The 1910 Henry Farny painting "Evening" depicts a teepee by the water and the worth is estimated at $25,000 but what gives it true value for the current owner is that his wife, who recently passed away, adored it. "The painting was always special in my wife's mind, so the specialness of the painting comes in my wife's memory," the owner of the painting said after he realized it was stolen. The owner, who did not want his name revealed, spoke to NBC Connecticut on the phone and said the oil painting has been in his wife's family for generations. They knew the artist before he became well-known. Farny was born in France in 1847, moved to the United States at a young age, became captivated by Native Americans and captured their lives in paint. The artwork is meant to go to the owner's daughter. "I walked up to my bedroom and looked at the wall and said, 'It's missing,'" the owner said soon after reporting it stolen. "The big concern is to get it back before it starts swapping hands," Suffield Police Detective Justin Fuller said last month. The owner registered the piece with The Art Loss to prevent it from being sold. Authorities said the homeowner was in the process of moving and it appears the home had been left unlocked. "I didn't protect myself. I didn't think about the consequences. The house is open. People walk in and out. You know, I was way too trusting," the owner said. The artwork was found on Thursday and police said the case is now closed. A Quincy, Massachusetts, man has been indicted for allegedly creating multiple fake online profiles of women from across the state on an adult website and asking others to kidnap, rape and assault them and their children. Thomas Sheehan, 46, was indicted Thursday on three counts of solicitation to commit rape, two counts of solicitation to commit rape of a child, five counts of solicitation to commit kidnapping and two counts of wanton or reckless behavior creating a risk of serious bodily injury or sexual abuse to a child, according to the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office. Police allege that Sheehan impersonated three different women on an adult website and communicated with people on the site who expressed an interest in stalking, raping, kidnapping and torturing the women and their children at his request. The website has not been named, and the online profiles he created have since been taken down. "The defendant allegedly put the lives of multiple women and their children at risk by using a website and a phony profile to commit acts of violence," Attorney General Maura Healey said in a statement announcing the indictment. The attorney general's office began its investigation after the case was referred by the offices of the Norfolk and Essex district attorneys. Sheehan was originally arrested in January after an investigation revealed that he had allegedly impersonated a Groveland woman and posted photos of her and her children. "This was a deeply disturbing case that could have had tragic results," Deputy Groveland Police Chief Jeffrey Gillen said. Sheehan is being held on $50,000 cash bail and is scheduled to be arraigned in Norfolk Superior Court at a later date. A Franklin County, Massachusetts, man has been sentenced to five years behind bars for causing a fatal traffic accident in Shelburne last fall. Wyatt Pease was also sentenced Thursday to five years of probation after pleading guilty in Franklin Superior Court to charges including involuntary manslaughter, vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of an accident. Authorities say the 20-year-old Pease rear-ended a vehicle on Route 2 last October driven by 51-year-old Sarah Sessions of Heath. The impact pushed her vehicle into the oncoming traffic where she was struck by a minivan. Sessions was pronounced dead at the hospital. Pease then drove away from the scene, but was apprehended later at his home. Authorities say he had been drinking before the crash. Pease's lawyer said his client recognized he was at fault. A 20-year-old man from Woolwich, Maine, has been missing for over a week now, according to police. According to WCSH, police said Benjamin Fisher was last seen on May 23 at a home on Ward Road. He was scheduled to work at a Brunswick Staples earlier that day, but did not show up. Fisher requires regular attention due to a medical condition. Police believe Fisher may be headed to Portland, Maine. Fisher last sent a text on May 24, but his phone has now been switched off. He was possibly seen on Wednesday, June 1, at a shaw's in Bath. He does not have a driver's license or car. Anyone with more information is requested to contact the Sagadahoc County Sheriff's office at 207-443-9711. A New Hampshire man wanted on child rape charges is in police custody after being tracked down by U.S. Marshals. Joseph MacDonald, 26, of Manchester, was wanted by Raymond police on three counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault of a child under 13 years old. MacDonald also had three outstanding arrest warrants from Carroll County and Wolfeboro police for drugs and weapon possession. Investigators said U.S. Marshals followed MacDonald to a home on Market Street, where he lived with another woman and her two children, and arrested him after he came outside. MacDonald is being processed and is currently in the custody of Raymond police. Member agencies from the New Hampshire Joint Fugitive Task Force, along with deputies from the U.S. Marshals Office and other area sheriff offices, assisted in arresting McDonald. It is unclear when he will be in court or if he has an attorney. A Norwich man accused of stabbing his pregnant wife to death before lighting their apartment on fire said he believed the woman was a Voodoo priestess who was casing spells on him, according to police documents. Patrick Antoine, 39, turned himself in to police at 10:49 a.m. on Thursday and told officers he had stabbed his wife to death and then set their apartment ablaze, Norwich Police said. He appeared in court on Friday. Officials found an unresponsive 8-months-pregnant Margarette Mady, 37, with severe burns and several stab wounds at 283-285 Franklin Street, police said. According to police court documents, Antoine and Mady were in a verbal argument the morning of the murder and fire. When Mady walked out of the kitchen, Antoine said he grabbed a wooden handle steak knife and put it in his pajama pocket, documents said. Antoine told police he thought his wife was a Voodoo priestess who had cast several spells on him over the last couple of years. The suspect also said his wife had told him he'd be dead by July as a sacrifice prior to her child being born. Police said that Antoine did not believe Mady was pregnant with his child. As the argument continued, the victim allegedly pushed Antoine and he began stabbing her in the head, face and feet repeatedly, court documents said. After stabbing his wife multiple times, Antoine used a Bic lighter to light curtains in several room of the apartment on fire, according to police documents. Antoine, covered in blood, turned himself into Norwich Police at 10:49 a.m., around the same time crews were dispatched to their apartment on Franklin Street for the fire. "My wife is dead," Antoine allegedly told police. "I killed my wife." Mady, who family members said was expecting her third child, was found unconscious in the burning home and police said she was pronounced dead at the scene at 11:10 am. Mady was pregnant with her third child, a baby girl and the other two children were not home during the incident. Antoine is being charged with murder and first-degree arson and bond was set at $1 million. There's been no charges against Antoine for the death of the fetus. According to the state, the killing of an unborn child is not murder under Connecticut's statutes. There was no attorney listed for Antoine. A GoFundMe page has been set up by the victim's family to pay for funeral expenses. Ken Buffa contributed to this report. Police are investigating a report that a 9-year-old was hit by a vehicle while getting off a school bus Friday in Boston. The child was reported to have suffered a minor shoulder injury after being struck in the 1300 block of Boylston Street. There was no immediate word about whether the child was transported. No information was available about the driver involved. Stay with necn as this story develops. Vermont State Police are searching for a 58-year-old Winooski man who went missing in Wallingford Thursday evening while riding a scooter. Police say Jeffrey Castonguay was riding with a motorcyclist on Route 140 around 6 p.m. The motorcyclist turned onto Route 7, but Castonguay kept going forward. The Motorcyclist could not locate Castonguay. Police say he has numerous health issues and that there is concern for his safety. Anyone with information is asked to call police at 802-773-9101. Crews have continued to search for a man witnesses say went overboard while kayaking Friday. The victim, and a friend who was in a separate canoe, were on Silver Lake in Halifax Friday afternoon. Officials responded around 1:30 p.m. to the report that the man had gone missing. Responders searched the lake until Friday night, when the Plymouth County Technical Rescue Team said it had been called off until morning. Crews resumed searching Saturday to no avail. The search will be back on Sunday morning. "The victim showed some signs of distress," said Halifax Police Chief Ted Broderick. "His buddy came right over, responded to him, but by the time he got there, he was already underwater and couldn't be found." Broderick said the victim's friend got to shore, where he notified the nearby water treatment plant in Brockton. Dozens of Plymouth County dive team members assisted Halifax Fire in the search. Six boats were on the water and the Massachusetts State Police Air Wing was also on the scene. The victim's name has not been released, as the family has not yet been notified by officials. Police did say, however, that the victim's friends had told his loved ones what had happened. The friend who was on the lake with the victim, who is also not being identified, says that there had been no drinking or drug use, and that the two were not horsing around. Authorities in Ashland, Massachusetts, are urging residents, especially those with dogs, to be on the lookout for coyotes. Animal control officers received two reports on Wednesday of coyote attacks on small dogs in the area of Voyagers Lane and Hawthorne Road. Both attacks occurred during daytime hours. The dogs were reportedly unleashed at the time and attempted to chase the coyote. People are being asked to call 911 immediately if they see any coyotes. A vigil will be held next week for the transgender man who was beat to death in a homeless encampment in Burlington, Vermont, last month. According to the Pride Center of Vermont, the vigil for Amos Beede will be held on June 8 at 6 p.m. at Perkins Pier. Beede was attacked on May 23 and died on May 28 of complications from blunt force trauma to his brain. Police initially said they were investigating whether Beede's gender identity contributed to his death, but there was no mention of that Thursday. Four people were arrested in connection with his death in San Diego, California, early Friday morning. The suspects in his killing are identified as Erik Averill, Jordon Paul, Myia Barber and Allison Gee. A GoFundMe page has been set up on behalf of Beede to help pay for the funeral and related expenses. The Texas Advanced Computer Center (TACC) has received $30 million in U.S. funding for a new supercomputer that will roughly double the performance of its existing 9-petaflop supercomputer. The new system, named Stampede 2 after its predecessor, is being funded by the National Science Foundation. It will be available for scientific research by June 1, 2017. The Texas supercomputing center occupies a unique niche. The U.S. government owns the nation's largest and most powerful supercomputers. The national leader is Titan, a Cray XK7 Opteron-based system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, running at a peak performance of about 27 petaflops. + ALSO: Need a supercomputer? This guy builds 'em himself + But TACC operates one of the nation's largest academic supercomputers, which went into production on Jan. 7, 2013. The original Stampede system ranked 10th on the latest Top 500 supercomputing list, released last November. The largest academic system is the IBM Blue Waters system at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), University of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It is capable of 13.5 petaflops peak performance, but is not ranked on the Top 500 list. NCSA made a decision several years ago not to submit data to the Top 500, because of problems it has with the benchmarking system, Linpack, used to evaluate performance. Regarding Stampede II, "we anticipate it will be the biggest machine in a U.S. university by next year," said Dan Stanzione, executive director of TACC. Similar to its predecessor, Stampede 2 will use Dell servers and Intel chips. While work on Stampede 2 begins, the TACC is now upgrading Stampede -- adding 500 Knights Landing-based Xeon Phi systems, which can have up to 72 cores. With the Knights Landing chip addition, the aggregate performance of Stampede will theoretically be above 10 petaflops. However, the upgrade will be used to help start migrating applications to the new system. It won't be running jobs across the entire Stampede system. Stampede 2 will incorporate some of the latest memory advances, including the upcoming 3D XPoint non-volatile memory technology, about 1,000 times faster than NAND flash. There is considerable demand for HPC time from scientists. Although Stampede has run seven million jobs representing the work of some 10,000 researchers, the center still fields five times as many requests for time on the system as it can deliver, said Stanzione. The new machine will help meet this research backlog, said Stanzione. "We know the demand is out there," he said. Stampede 2 will mean higher resolutions and more accurate modeling for large runs. But smaller jobs, depending on how well they use memory and processing power, will completed more quickly. The node count between Stampede and Stampede 2 will be roughly the same, around 6,000 nodes. And while officials aren't sure of the final core count of the Intel processors, TACC is expecting each one-socket node to be capable of about 3 teraflops each. TACC held a dedication today for its newly expanded building, a $20 million, 38,000 square-foot complex. The new building is needed to meet the growing demand for HPC across a wide range of disciplines. "The more things in science that use advanced computing, the bigger our mission gets," said Stanzione. This story, "Texas goes big with 18-petaflop supercomputer" was originally published by Computerworld . Youve recently graduated and now its time to start applying to jobs -- but what skills and experience should you highlight on your resume? To help you decide, CompTIA released the results of its 2016 IT Industry Outlook report, which surveyed 673 IT industry companies in the U.S., Canada and the U.K., and found that millennials have certain skills businesses are clamoring for in the coming year. Recent grads have grown up in an age of evolving technologies, particularly the Internet Age. Theyve not only developed a unique way of problem solving and critical thinking, but they are also acutely aware of new technologies that may increase operational efficiency in a business, says Gene Richardson, COO of Experts Exchanges. Take advantage of the millennial edge Millennials are quickly becoming the largest generation in the workforce as baby boomers hit retirement age. The composition of the workforce is changing, and changing fast. In 2012 Baby Boomers accounted for 44 percent of the total workforce; Gen X, 21 percent; and millennials, 35 percent. By 2022, Millennials will make up the majority of the workforce at 52 percent, followed by Baby Boomers at 26 percent and Gen Xers at 19 percent, says Todd Thibodeaux, president and CEO of CompTIA. Thats great news for the bulk of recent graduates, who typically fall into the millennial category -- and for all the bad press this age group gets, it turns out your generation might also give you a leg up in hiring. Thats because millennials are considered digital natives, meaning, theyve grown up with technology for most of their lives, and are assumed to have a deeper, more inherent understanding of how it works. [ Related story: IT career roadmap: Technology evangelist ] Ultimately, what the data suggests is that your millennial status will help, rather than hurt, your chances of getting hired for technological jobs. Especially when it comes to roles where youll need to have a thumb on the pulse of emerging technology. Whether youre skilled in security, analytics, hardware or software, youll want to emphasize the fact that you have an eye on whats coming down the road, and how businesses should prepare for new technology, according to the study. Born for digital transformation Companies are recognizing digital transformation takes more than just technological knowledge. It requires a fundamental understanding of emerging tech, business acumen and agility. Just as the approach to technology has dual parts of operations and strategy, workers need a dual set of kills. Both technical skills and business skills are needed to turn a companys vision into reality through technology, says Thibodaux. What that means for recent graduates is that youll want to emphasize all of your experience with technology, but highlight your soft skills as well. CompTIA identified five key skills that businesses are looking for to help expedite digital transformation, and surprisingly, few of them had to do with hardware or software. Of those polled, 39 percent of companies cited analytical skills as well as innovation and problem-solving, 37 percent also listed flexibility, 34 percent included project management in that list and 31 percent point to teamwork. And as a recent graduate, thats good news -- employers arent expecting you to have hardware or software experience under your belt, but rather, a slew of soft skills that prove youre up for the challenge of digital transformation. [ Related story: 5 open source skills in high demand ] Having grown up as digital natives, these candidates have a more intuitive ability to adapt to new technologies and troubleshoot issues when they enter the workforce. Their learning curve is much smaller, providing them an excellent opportunity to make an impact quickly, says Richardson. Security needs are everywhere Along with digital transformation, businesses are staring to zero in on improving security as data breaches become more prevalent in the business world. In fact, the role of cybersecurity analyst experienced the most growth out of any other IT role, according to CompTIAs research. And businesses have shifted their view of security -- its no longer narrowly defined in the traditional sense of firewalls and antivirus, but rather, a broad suite of tools and safeguards designed to combat the ever-expanding universe of security threats, according to the study. Even if the IT role you have your eye on doesnt focus on security, security will still be a part of your job, so its important to emphasize any relevant skills. When I interview a candidate, I am interested in knowing if the candidate knows why security is important, how the candidate may apply different types of security to different types of data -- such as login password security versus PII (personally identifiable information) and if there are ways to have different types of access rights depending on your role in the company, says Richardson. If youre trying to get into an IT role with a security focus, youll also want to ensure that you demonstrate a take-charge attitude around security, according to the study. Businesses want someone who understands security in a deeper way than firewalls and anti-virus. Security is now more about compliance, data privacy, getting ahead of hackers and hiring someone who can help other non-tech executives understand intricate technology. Employers are also looking towards the future, with an eye on emerging trends like IoT, artificial intelligence, autonomous cars and drones, which loom large as regulatory bodies have a number of thorny issues to work through, according to CompTIAs data. [ Related story: How to find undervalued tech talent ] Employees who can demonstrate that they have even a rudimentary understanding of how to conduct business safely and securely in a digital environment will have a leg up on those who dont. That means things like understanding how to create a secure password, recognize a phishing email or securely access a public Wi-Fi network, according to Thibodeaux. More real world experience than you think For recent grads, it might feel frustrating when hiring managers expect you to have real-world experience right out of college. You might scroll through entry level jobs that require a year or two of experience -- but dont let it get you down, it doesnt always mean experience in a business setting. Rather, you can pull from any experience you might have to emphasize your background. Consider what volunteer work, or extracurricular work that [youve] done to demonstrate that [you] have the skills to meaningfully contribute to a project that helps the company fulfill its business goals, says Thibodeaux. [ Related story: How to find undervalued tech talent ] Any relevant projects you completed in school, even if it was for a class, can apply to your real world experience. The same goes for any summer jobs or internships -- but if you cant apply those, try creating a digital portfolio to demonstrate your work, or even taking on a new project personally in your downtime to demonstrate your skills. Whatever you do, it will show a hiring manager that youre invested in the career No matter how intelligent and educated a recent grad is, the one thing that usually sets him or her back is the lack of real-world experience. Beyond the resume, grads should aim to demonstrate their knowledge in the context of the real world. Having a great online portfolio, whether through a personal website or presence in an online tech community, will set candidates apart from the average graduate, says Richardson. This story, "How millennial tech grads should tailor their resumes" was originally published by CIO . This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices. Click here to subscribe. In a nod to the benefits of containers, the financial services giant Goldman Sachs Group has announced it's in the midst of a year-long project to move 90% of its software into containers. The shift involves some 5,000 applications as well as the firm's software infrastructure. As reported in The Wall Street Journal, Don Duet, the co-head of Goldman Sachs' technology division, says this move will create a better software environment for his company. The staff of more than 8,000 software developers can focus on creating new products and tools, while the runtime process is automated, thus reducing labor and infrastructure costs. In addition, the use of containers will create standards for packaging and distributing different kinds of software. I should note that Goldman Sachs has a financial investment in Docker Inc., the dominant player in the container space today. Thus if the investment firm's migration to Docker containers proves to be successful, the company expects to win on two fronts: a better software development process, and a return on its investment if Docker's fortunes rise. While Goldman Sachs jumps headlong into containers, many other companies, including some very large enterprises like BNY Mellon, are testing the waters with projects of their own. They are taking a cautious approach because there are some inherent weaknesses in the security aspects of containers. Container companies like Docker and CoreOS are improving the security tools they include with their development kits, but there is still room for improvement as far as security is concerned. There are several security challenges with containers, mostly unrelated, that can be more difficult to address than when youre dealing with traditional software environments. One issue a container environment can have 20x to 30x the number of items to track compared to a virtual machine implementation. Moreover, containers are ephemeral in the sense that they may be short-lived. They could be run, do what they do, stop and then disappear. All of this creates an environment that requires tight supervision. Another aspect is containers run on a shared kernel in Linux. It's ironic that the very thing that makes containers so useful is also the cause of many of the security issues. Because they run on a shared kernel, they actually rely on the host OS to provide some of the essential security services, and this creates two issues. One is that Linux wasn't created with this sort of multi-tenancy situation in mind; it has just been adapted for containers. The other is there are variations in the releases and distributions of Linux, resulting in different levels of security coming from the host OS. A third security factor stems from one of the very things that makes containers so great: the very rapid pace of development. In a traditional application development environment, software updates might come out two or three times a year. With containers, updates are practically continuous. This necessitates having strict controls in place from the developer all the way through runtime. One company out to address these issues is Aqua Security (formerly Scalock) launched in May by long-time security industry veterans. The companys Aqua Container Security Platform manages the software development process in one continuum, from development through staging and into the runtime and production stages. The ultimate goal is to protect containers when they are running in production. Everything that Aqua does along the way is designed to serve that goal. The Aqua platform, which can run completely on premises or in the cloud, has two main components. The Aqua Console is the management piece that manages the system settings. It integrates with registries where images are pulled from; with Active Directory and LDAP for user authentication and identity management; and with continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) tools to manage things throughout the lifecycle. On the backend, the console integrates with SIEM solutions so event logs can be pulled into a central console. The Aqua Console also manages the Aqua Agents, which are the other major component of the platform. The Aqua Agents are themselves privileged containers that get installed on the hosts that are to be protected. One agent gets installed for every container engine. The Aqua container forces policy onto other containers and reports back to the console on all the activity. The Aqua Console and agents are complemented by Aqua's Container Cyber Intelligence service, which is basically research used to update and map the various vulnerabilities that pertain to the containers. Aqua implements that research into its automated policy for up to date protection. These components are said to form a multi-layered security model. The first layers of protection include image assurance, and user authentication and authorization. Aqua gains visibility into every image in the public and private registries as well as the containers that run in production. They are scanned for known vulnerabilities and malware using static and dynamic scans, and then Aqua turns that into a policy that is enforced throughout the stages of continuous integration. Unapproved images are prevented from running. The Aqua Agent enforces granular access controls at the container level and by user role. This determines which users can access which containers, and what those users can do. Aqua also enforces policies on containers to control what a container is and isn't permitted to do, and what kinds of things trigger alerts or preventive measures. Another layer of security involves host hardening. Aqua adds value by restricting and enforcing namespaces, access to root, and access to system calls that aren't needed for the container environment. Beyond that is container activity lockdown, in which Aqua applies the least privilege principle to container access to the OS and network resources. Since containers on the same host aren't aware of each other, Aqua enforces runtime parameters to ensure that containers remain isolated and cannot stop each other from running. On top of that, Aqua provides intrusion prevention/detection capabilities. The system monitors for malicious behavior of the containers. There is a layer of automated learning and a layer of behavioral policy that looks at what a container is trying to do. If this activity is considered malicious or is doing something to abuse host resources for example, taking more memory or CPU than it is supposed to then Aqua can act on that. There are some behaviors that are considered malicious regardless of the policy set for the container. There are no normal circumstances under which a container would do these things, so the container can be stopped. Aqua also prevents privilege escalation attempts. In building this security solution, Aqua focused on runtime protection, so everything this system does along the way enables and enforces that. There is also a high degree of automation, both in terms of policy creation and the ability to integrate with the DevOps process to trigger various events along the way in an automated fashion. Containers are one of the hottest trends in data center technology right now, and security must be integrated into the entire process. COLUMBUS Downtown businesses got a little makeover Thursday evening thanks to a few amateur artists. Volunteers with Relay for Life of Platte County rolled up their sleeves as they took turns painting more than 40 windows. Its really just to raise awareness to get customers to ask questions, said Robbin Cutsor, a volunteer with the event. Purple ribbons, representing cancer awareness, and words of inspiration were carefully painted on each of the volunteering businesses free of charge. This is the first year Columbus has participated in this specific Relay for Life event, which leads up to American Cancer Society's National Cancer Survivor Day on Sunday. The paintings will stay on the downtown windows until the Relay for Life event June 24-25 at Pawnee Park's Memorial Stadium. COLUMBUS Growth at St. Anthony Elementary School led to a groundbreaking for a new parish center. Since the school expanded to an all-day kindergarten program and began offering preschool more than a decade ago, space has gotten tight. The old convent attached to the school has been used as the parish center for St. Anthony Catholic Church. Some of that facility now houses the kindergarten and preschool programs, leaving little room for meetings and a gathering area for church members. The idea of building a new parish center has been knocked around for a while, said St. Anthony Pastor Fr. Del Lape. When a parishioner left her estate to the church, the idea became a reality. The discussion has been on the plate for quite some time. When we received this estate as a gift to us and our parish, we thought wed go ahead and build something, Lape said. That donation came from Connie Peterson, a member of St. Anthony who passed away last year. Her sister, Patti Loeffler, said Peterson wanted to give back and expressed that her donation be used to benefit St. Anthony Church. Her intentions were to build something, fix something or buy something that the church would need, Loeffler said. Loeffler, who lives in Yankton, South Dakota, was on hand Wednesday for a groundbreaking and ground blessing ceremony for the new parish center that will be built south of the parking lot and the churchs parish office. Peterson was born and raised in Columbus and was an elementary school teacher. Loeffler said her sister had a big heart and would be excited about the project. The building will be 50 feet by 60 feet and hold up to 90-100 people at a time, Lape said. It will serve multiple purposes, including providing space for committee meetings, community gatherings held outside the social hall located in the school and storage. Construction should be completed by the fall and will be done by local contractors and volunteers. The old parish center will be used by the school, which is just west of the church. The local and state health departments are teaming up to offer resources to help homeowners detect what is known as the silent killer. Radon, a naturally occurring radioactive gas, earns that label because it is invisible and odorless and is the top cause of lung cancer among nonsmokers. In hopes of preventing cancer caused by radon exposure, East Central District Health Department and the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services Comprehensive Cancer Control Program are partnering to raise awareness about the gas that can seep into homes. Radon comes from the natural decaying process of uranium found in nearly all soils, rocks and water. It moves up through the ground and into buildings through cracks, gaps and holes. Once in a home or building, radon can remained trapped and build up. When radon-filled air is inhaled, it can cause lung cancer. One in 15 American homes contains high levels of radon, which causes more than 21,000 deaths per year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The only way to detect radon in a home or business is through testing. Long-term and short-term radon test kits are available. The short-term test is placed in a building for three to six days, while the long-term tests are there for an extended period of time. The tests determine the radon level. If the level is too high, there are ways to bring it down. Licensed mitigators can help lower radon levels. It is recommended that the level of radon be lower than 4 picocuries per liter (pCi/L). Some radon kits are sold at hardware stores. ECDHD has short-term kits available for free at its office in Columbus, as well as the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension offices in Albion, Schuyler and Fullerton. Average radon results in the districts coverage area, which includes Platte, Boone, Colfax and Nance counties, have been higher than the recommended levels. For more information about radon and testing kits, call ECDHD at 402-563-9656. Who is The Daily News Athlete of the Week? Here are the 7 nominees. high-school Champaign, IL (61820) Today Showers this evening, becoming a steady rain overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Locally heavy rainfall possible.. Tonight Showers this evening, becoming a steady rain overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Locally heavy rainfall possible. Harlequin ichthyosis (HI) is a rare, congenital skin condition. HI affects the skin over almost the whole body of an infant, and carries a high risk of neonatal death due to severe and life-threatening infection. The incidence of HI is about one in every 500,000 people. Both males and females are affected equally. Teenager Suffering From Rare Harlequin Syndrome Play Genetics of HI HI is caused by a mutation of the ABCA12 gene. This gene helps to direct the production of the ABCA12 protein involved in transporting fats within the epidermis, which is essential for normal skin synthesis. Various mutations in ABCA12 can occur, some of which can shut down the manufacturing of this protein, whereas others can induce the production of an abnormal form of the protein. HI is inherited in an autosomal recessive fashion, which means that individuals with HI have two copies of the mutated genes; one inherited from each parent. If two people with the mutation have a child, there is a 25% chance that the child will be affected. Parents of children with HI are carriers of the mutated gene and show no sign of the disease, as they have one normal copy which compensates for the defective one. Signs and symptoms The skin is the largest organ of the body. Normal skin acts as a waterproof and protective, but highly flexible barrier between the body and the environment. The skin helps to regulate many of the body's functions and is responsible for the sense of touch. Taken together, the normal properties of the skin are challenged in HI. Image Credit: Anton Nalivayko / Shutterstock.com In HI, premature birth is common. The infant is born encased in extremely thick skin that forms into large plates rather like armor, instead of a continuous sheet of thin and pliable skin. This appearance is due to the presence of an abnormally hard thickened integument, which is severely cracked or fissured. The cracks are so deep that it can even expose subcutaneous tissues. Genetics & Genomics eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today An infant with HI faces life-threatening risks associated with preterm birth, as well as those due to the presence of numerous and deep skin fissures that result in the loss of the regulatory and protective functions of the skin. For these reasons, the infant is usually placed in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) immediately after birth. Complications of HI External deformities A child with HI typically exhibits an appearance that is distorted by the rigid skin. In fact, some infants may have no apparent external ears, or deformed ears, because the abnormal skin draws them tightly inwards. The eyes and the eyelids are often affected in various ways. In some, the eyelids cannot close properly. In others the swollen eyelids obscure the eye area. The mucous membranes of the eyes may be permanently exposed (ectropion) due to such anomalies, leading to the development of dry eyes. Some neonates may have the eclabium, which is the red oral mucosa of the eye, exposed because the taut skin draws the lips outwards in a fixed grimace. The hands and feet may be smaller than usual, with restricted mobility of fingers and toes. Breathing Individuals with HI often suffer from respiratory problems or even respiratory failure. This is due to the restriction of chest movement by the tight thick skin. Eating Infants born with this condition may have to be fed with a tube through the nose in early neonatal life, as their ability to suck and swallow is restricted. Dehydration The deeply fissured skin causes the loss of excessive amounts of salt and water, which may result in severe dehydration. This in turn affects the regulation of body temperature and may induce hypothermia. Infection Life-threatening infections may set in within the early days of life due to the entry of pathogens through the disrupted skin barrier. Diagnosis and treatment HI is diagnosed by the characteristic skin findings at birth or in infancy. In milder cases, it may resemble other diseases such as eczema. HI can sometimes be diagnosed in utero by a 3D-ultrasonography. Neonates require a moist environment with careful handling in an isolated incubator at birth. The skin should be kept soft by constant application of petrolatum-based creams. Older children should be treated with long daily baths with bath oils added to the water. Lubricant ointments are required. Keratolytics are also used to peel off and reduce the thickness of the skin due to the excessive growth of the superficial stratum corneum. This will increase the softness and suppleness of the skin. Oral retinoids are useful in severe cases; however, their use should be monitored. The thick plates of skin gradually peel off over several weeks. The skin appears very red and shiny from the peeling. Physiotherapy benefits some patients who suffer from restricted mobility. Other treatments may be needed; for instance, counseling can help patients cope with the psychological challenges of the disease. Other important aspects of HI treatment include the prevention of infection, dehydration and drying out of the cornea. When required, the skin may have to be incised to allow proper circulation and thoracic movement. References Genetics Home Reference from the US National Library of Medicine: http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/harlequin-ichthyosis National Organization for Rare Diseases: http://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/ichthyosis-harlequin-type/ Orphanet: http://www.orpha.net/consor/cgi-bin/OC_Exp.php?Expert=457 Ichthyosis Support Group: https://www.ichthyosis.org.uk/ Further Reading By Eleanor McDermid Research suggests that prompt surgical intervention may maximise the chances of patients with early-onset Type 2 diabetes achieving remission. The study, published just over a week after the endorsement of metabolic surgery by multiple diabetes societies, shows significantly greater weight loss and higher rates of Type 2 diabetes remission in patients diagnosed when younger than 40 years than in those who were older at diagnosis. And there was a strong association between shorter duration of diabetes and likelihood of remission, particularly among patients with early-onset diabetes, report Wei-Jei Lee (Min-Sheng General Hospital, Taoyuan City, Taiwan) and colleagues. This was despite the two groups overall having a similar duration of diabetes, at 3.7 years in the 339 patients with early-onset diabetes and 3.8 years in the 219 patients with late-onset diabetes. Early-onset patients had significantly poorer glycaemic control at baseline, yet remission rates (glycated haemoglobin <6.0%) were 56.9% versus 50.2% after 1 year, and 65.3% versus 54.2% after 5 years. However, this indicates a substantial proportion of patients with recurrent diabetes, which commentators David Harris and Ali Tavakkoli, from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, describe as "an Achilles heel of bariatric surgery". "Thus, identifying markers of long-term [Type 2 diabetes] remission is, and will continue to be, an area of heavy interest in the field", they write in JAMA Surgery. At 1 year after surgery, average body mass index had decreased by 11.6 kg/m2 in the early-onset group and 9.1 kg/m2 in the late-onset group, which was a significant difference. The improvements were retained in the 72 and 48 patients from the early- and late-onset groups, respectively, who had 5-year follow-up data. Harris and Tavakkoli note that 5 years of follow-up is rare after bariatric surgery, making the data "valuable to the field", despite the proportion of patients lost to follow-up. Duration of diabetes was strongly related to the proportion of weight lost at both 1 and 5 years after surgery in the early-onset group, and to diabetes remission rates at both timepoints in early-onset patients, but only at 1 year after surgery in the late-onset group. The highest remission rate was observed among early-onset patients whose diabetes had been diagnosed less than a year before surgery, at 91.3% after 1 year, falling to 79.4% at 5 years. The corresponding rates among those with diabetes of more than 10 years' duration were 25.0% and 12.5%. The commentators conclude that there "appears to be an amassing body of data" to support early surgery for obese patients with Type 2 diabetes. "This not only has the potential to reduce their long-term need for multiple medications but also has the potential to significantly mitigate their risks of health complications compounded over their lifetime", they say. Licensed from medwireNews with permission from Springer Healthcare Ltd. Springer Healthcare Ltd. All rights reserved. Neither of these parties endorse or recommend any commercial products, services, or equipment. A study led by biomedical researchers at Indiana University has found evidence that an enzyme known as NMNAT2 may help protect against the debilitating effects of certain degenerative brain diseases, including Alzheimer's. The research was led by Hui-Chen Lu, the Gill Professor in the Linda and Jack Gill Center for Biomolecular Science and the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, a part of the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences. First author Yousuf Ali, an IU research scientist, and three other members of Lu's lab conducted the work in collaboration with researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rush University, University of Texas and Harvard University. The results appear today in the journal PLOS Biology. "This study found that NMNAT2, or nicotinamide mononucleotide adenylyl transferase 2, is a key neuronal maintenance factor," Lu said. "It exerts both an enzyme function to protect neurons from stress caused by over-excitation, and a 'chaperone' function, shown for the first time in this study, to combat the misfolded proteins encountered by the brain during aging." Many neurodegenerative disorders are caused by accumulation of proteins in the brain. These conditions, called proteinopathies, occur when proteins "misfold," causing them to grow "sticky" and clump up in the brain in a form often referred to as "plaques," or "tangles." As a molecular chaperone, NMNAT2 binds to misfolded proteins to prevent or repair the errors that cause these clumps. Common proteinopathies are Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases, as well as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. More than 6 million Americans suffer from degenerative brain diseases, with Alzheimer's disease alone recently estimated to have been a factor in the death of over 500,000 people in the U.S. in 2010. By examining NMNAT2 levels in brains donated by more than 500 elderly people whose cognitive function was tested annually before death -- starting with the year of their enrollment in a clinical study established in 1997 -- Lu and colleagues found higher levels of NMNAT2 in people who had greater resistance to cognitive decline. People with lower NMNAT2 were more likely to suffer from dementia, suggesting that the protein helps preserve neurons related to learning and memory. Lu's team tested this hypothesis in mice whose brains were damaged by high levels of Tau, a toxic protein that correlates with disease progression. They found that increasing the level of NMNAT2 in the hippocampus, a brain region important for learning and memory, significantly lowered levels of Tau. "Maintaining neuronal health is key to preventing neurodegeneration and dementia," Lu said. "This is a fresh look at neurodegenerative disorders," Ali added. The power of statistics using large and comprehensive human data sets allowed the team to form a testable hypothesis and then examine it in preclinical animal models to demonstrate causal relationships. "Such studies are only possible through multidisciplinary team efforts, and we are extremely grateful for our wonderful collaborators and funding support," said Lu, who credits the contributions of colleagues including Hugo Bellen and Joshua Shulman at Baylor, David Bennett at Rush and Philip L. De Jager at MIT. "A detailed knowledge of how NMNAT2 maintains neuronal integrity and its role in neuroprotection is critical not only for understanding normal brain function but also for providing necessary insights to assist in the development of new drugs," Lu said. Source: Indiana University Simon Fraser University researchers hope that a brain vital-sign test becomes as routine during a doctor's check-up as taking a blood pressure or heart rate measurement. SFU researchers, led by professor Ryan D'Arcy with partners from the Mayo Clinic, Sheba Medical Centre in Israel and local high-tech company HealthTech Connex Inc., are developing a more accessible means to monitor brain health. In a recent article published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, the team introduces the world's first advancement in physiology-based brain vital signs. Their discovery makes it possible to translate complex brainwaves into objective, practical and deployable brain vital signs, using longstanding brainwave technologies that have existed for nearly a century. HealthTech Connex Inc. is currently developing the NeuroCatchTM platform to enable the highest quality recordings of the brain's vital signs. "The brain vital-sign framework described in Frontiers in Neuroscience represents the first step towards an easy way to monitor brain health," says D'Arcy. "Potential applications are in concussion, brain injury, stroke, dementia and other devastating brain diseases and disorders." Vital sign measures are often used in clinics, hospitals and other care centres to assess the performance of various body systems. Scientists in D'Arcy's NeuroTech Lab, based in Surrey Memorial Hospital, have now developed a simple way to measure brain health over time by using non-invasive electrodes to track the brain's electrical activity for key brain functions--in other words, the brain's vital signs. Researchers found that it is possible to monitor brain performance during auditory sensation, and basic attention and cognitive processing. "We know brainwaves provide an objective physiological measurement of brain functions," says D'Arcy, SFU's BC Leadership Chair in Medical Technologies. "We've been working for the last 20 years to solve the major gap in terms of utilizing this for a rapid and accessible vital sign for brain function." Traditionally, brain function has been assessed only after trauma or disease has occurred and has relied heavily on subjective, behaviour-based assessments. "However, tracking our brain's vital signs is critically important for establishing a baseline for a person's objective brain activity," he adds, noting that in the event of injury or disease, it then becomes possible to evaluate if brain function changes, and whether treatments are effective. "We describe the world's first physiology-driven brain vital-sign measure allowing us to quantify brain vitality over time," says Sujoy Ghosh Hajra, A PhD student working with D'Arcy and the paper's lead author. In the paper, researchers describe how their framework translates complex brainwave science into clinically accessible information and demonstrates successful measurement of brain vital signs in both younger and older adults. Their method identified age-related brain function changes that were not evident using traditional measures. The paper has had significant hits--more than 1,000 views globally--which Ghosh Hajra says is a testament to the urgent need to quantify brain vitality. Advances in stem cell research have made it possible to convert patients' skin cells into heart cells, kidney cells, liver cells and more in the lab dish, giving researchers hope that one day such cells could replace organ transplantation for patients with organ failure. But successfully grafting these cells into patients' failing organs remains a major clinical challenge. Now a team of researchers led by UC San Francisco scientists has demonstrated in mice that it is possible to generate healthy new liver cells within the organ itself, making engraftment unnecessary. What's more, they did it by converting the very cells that drive liver disease, thereby reducing liver damage and improving liver function at the same time. The technique takes advantage of a viral gene delivery technology that has gone through early validation in patients for liver-directed gene therapies, suggesting it could be readily translated into a therapy for patients with liver disease, said Holger Willenbring, MD, PhD, a professor of surgery at UCSF and senior author of the new study, published June 2, 2016 in the journal Cell Stem Cell. "Part of why this works is that the liver is a naturally regenerative organ, so it can deal with new cells very well. What we see is that the converted cells are not only functionally integrated in the liver tissue, but also divide and expand, leading to patches of new liver tissue," said Willenbring, who is also associate director of the Liver Center at UCSF and a member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research. More than 600,000 patients in the United States alone suffer from end-stage liver disease, or cirrhosis. The only available cure is liver transplantation, but the shortage of donor livers means only 6,000 patients benefit from this therapy each year in the U.S., and more than 35,000 patients die. The new approach specifically targets liver fibrosis, the progressive scarring of the liver that is a primary driver of liver disease. Fibrosis develops when liver cells called hepatocytes can't regenerate fast enough to keep up with damage caused by toxins such as alcohol or diseases such as hepatitis C or fatty liver disease. Cells called myofibroblasts fill in gaps left by dying hepatocytes with scar-like fibrotic tissue. It's a bit like patching a flat tire: at first the patches help maintain the liver's structural integrity, but eventually a liver that is more patches than functional tissue starts to fail. Fibrotic liver disease has a slow fuse, but leads to catastrophic failure: someone who contracts hepatitis C at age 25 may feel just fine for decades, then suddenly at age 50 start experiencing the fatigue, faintness, nausea, bruising, diarrhea and jaundice that indicate the onset of end-stage liver disease. The reason is that the liver can adapt as long as at least 20 percent of it is functional, Willenbring says, but once it dips below that critical threshold, patients are often dead within two years. "Liver fibrosis is not rare," Willenbring said. "It's actually the end stage of many chronic liver diseases. Obesity, for instance, can lead to fatty liver disease, which is predicted to become the number one cause of liver fibrosis in the next 10 years." Technique reduces liver damage, increases liver function in mice Willenbring has dedicated his career to using stem cell biology to generate new hepatocytes (for instance, from a patient's own skin) that could be used in place of transplants to treat liver failure. Ironically, however, just as he and his lab have come closer to achieving this dream, Willenbring has had to grapple with the realization that this cell therapy approach may fail to reach the majority of patients with liver failure because the tangle of fibrosis itself impairs the successful engraftment of transplanted cells. So over the past five years, Willenbring and his team in close collaboration with the laboratory of Dirk Grimm, PhD at Heidelberg University Hospital in Germany have embarked on a different approach: converting fibrosis-causing myofibroblasts into healthy new hepatocytes within the liver itself. Previous research had identified a cocktail of gene-regulating proteins that can convert other cell types into hepatocytes, but the team needed a way to deliver these instructions to myofibroblasts. After several years of work, the team identified a subtype of adeno-associated virus (AAV) that could specifically infect myofibroblasts. The researchers focused on AAV because it has been shown to be safe and effective in early human gene therapy trials, e.g., for therapy of the bleeding disorder hemophilia B. The team showed in mice with liver disease that viruses packed with the cell fate-changing cocktail indeed infected myofibroblasts and converted them into functional hepatocytes. The number of new cells was relatively small - less than one percent of all hepatocytes in the treated mice - but this was sufficient to reduce fibrosis and improve liver function. The viral approach was also effective in converting human myofibroblasts in a dish into working hepatocytes, but more work is certainly needed to prepare this approach for use in human patients, the researchers say. In particular, the lab is working to package the treatment into a single virus, reducing potential side effects and streamlining clinical development. The team is also working to make the viruses more specific to myofibroblasts - in the current paper muscle cells and some cells of the immune system were also infected, though without converting them into liver cells or obviously impacting their function. The new results suggest that in the fibrotic liver this approach could produce a more efficient and stable improvement of liver function than cell transplant approaches, Willenbring said, adding that once the viral packaging is optimized, such a treatment could be done cheaply at a broad range of medical facilities, not just in the specialized research hospitals where stem-cell transplants could be conducted. Willenbring is the first to acknowledge that the new technique is not a replacement for the current standard of care in liver disease: "A liver transplant is still the best cure," Willenbring said. "This is more of a patch. But if it can boost liver function by just a couple percent, that can hopefully keep patients' liver function over that critical threshold, and that could translate to decades more of life." Bollywood actor Om Puri has expressed apprehensions about Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's leadership. The actor said if Rahul became the Congress president, then Indians would be left with no choice but to vote for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the next election as well. "We don't have any choice left other than sitting in Modiji's lap. Sonia Gandhi thinks of making her son the prime minister. Look at his (Rahul) age, his experience, see what he says. Are we fools?" Puri said. Rahul is all set to be crowned as Congress president. Sources said Rahul's ascension as Congress president would be accompanied by an overhaul of party structures to populate them with younger people. Older party functionaries will be asked to step down and make way for a new order. While some Congress leaders have time and again spoken in favour of a rejig, there are many who want current party chief Sonia to continue. According to sources, senior leaders of Rajiv Gandhi's era are likely to be phased out which has sparked tensions between the two camps. New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate on Friday raided the premises of businessman Suraj Prakash Mehra in connection with the probe into the AgustaWestland chopper scam. ED raided his premises after he failed to appear before the agency on summons issued against him. Mehra was allegedly in touch with middleman Christian Michel and Danish national Christine Spliid when India was finalising the deal with Agusta for purchase of 12 choppers to ferry VVIPs. According to documents, Mehra's twin children are partners with Spliid and Michel in UK-based company Beetle Nut Home Ltd. ED had also summoned the nephew of Mehra, Karan Sethi, and questioned him at length. According to sources, Mehra recently opened a restaurant in the United Kingdom and visited India in the month of February to attend the engagement ceremony of his daughter Sonya Mehra. The constables however have applied for a casual leave on Saturday. The state government has also invoked the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) to break the strike. At least 15,000 police constables in Karnataka are showing no signs of backing down from their decision to go in for an unprecedented mass strike on Saturday protest against what they call inhuman working conditions.The state government has however declared it illegal and ordered officers not to approve casual leave and also asked state government doctors not to issue medical certificates to anyone.On Wednesday, the police barged into the house of Shashidhar, president of Karnataka State Police Welfare Association and sent him to jail for 15 days.Karnataka Director General of Police (DGP) Omprakash said "police cant go on a strike. No man in uniform can form union and boycott work. We are aware of their grievances. The chief minister himself has promised to address them. The police association itself is illegal. Shashidhar is a dismissed constable. I am sure there will be no strike on Saturday. It will be like any other day for the police department".The Police Association has submitted a list of demands to the government through the DGP, who is the head of police force.Some of their demands include increase in salary on par with neighbouring states like Telangana, fixed working hours, end to exploitation by superior officers, new wage board, time bound promotion, better housing, scrapping of orderly system, medical facilities and better more allowance.Asked about the demands the DGP said "We are working on it. Some of their demands have already been fulfilled. Rest will be done in a phased manner. No regimental force can go on a strike and it will never be tolerated".Under ESMA, constables who dont report to work on Saturday can be dismissed from the job.Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah said We are sympathetic towards their demands. But, under no circumstances, strike will be tolerated or allowed. Men and women in uniform cant do this whatever may be their demand and grievance.Karnataka has over 73,000 police constables. More than 25,000 posts are vacant and the state is planning to recruit 15,000 constables this year. At least 19 people including Mathura Superintendent of Police (SP) Mukul Dwivedi were killed in clashes during an anti-encroachment drive in the city on Thursday evening. Station House Officer Santosh Kumar and a constable are among those killed in firing by the encroachers while several others have been injured. The clashes broke out when police tried to evict Swadheen Bharat Andolan activists who were illegally occupying land in Jawahar Bagh in Mathura. IG (Law and Order) HR Sharma said around 3,000 encroachers pelted stones and later opened fire at the police team trying to evict them. The police force had gone to the area following an order of the Allahabad High Court. In retaliation, the police too opened fire and used tear gas to disperse the crowd. More than 200 people have been detained following the violence. "We wanted to give notice to people and ask them to vacate the area which has been encroached but the protesters did not pay heed to it and started firing at us," ADG (law and order) Daljeet Singh Choudhary said. "The activists used not only hand grenades but also opened fire from automatic weapons after taking position at tree tops. The area was filled with smoke due to blast of hand grenades and LPG cylinders following which several huts caught fire," DM Rajesh Kumar said. UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has ordered a probe into the incident. He expressed grief over the incident and announced an ex-gratia of Rs 20 lakh to the family of the killed policemen. He also directed the Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) to rush to the spot with extra force to bring the situation under control. Over two years ago, the Swadhin Bharat Andolan activists, had occupied hundreds of acres of land of Jawahar Bagh on the pretext of 'dharna'. Their demands included "cancellation" of election of the President and Prime Minister of India, replacement of existing currency with 'Azad Hind Fauj' currency, sale of diesel at the rate of 60 litres for one rupee and petrol at the rate of 40 litres for Re 1. The violence in Mathura is allegedly linked to the dispute between supporters of a so-called spiritual guru Jai Gurudev whose empire is estimated to be worth over Rs 12,000 crore. Jai Gurudev's massive and opulent ashrams are situated on the Mathura-Delhi highway and in Etawah in Uttar Pradesh. His empire allegedly includes land worth Rs 4000 crore, a massive fleet of cars including several Mercedes and Plymouths worth over Rs 150 crore, and more than Rs 100 crore in banks deposits. Sources say the daily offerings made by his supporters at the ashrams are around Rs 10-12 lakh. Gurudevs original name was Tulsidas Maharaj and he reportedly died in 2012. Over two years ago, Gurudevs supporters occupied hundreds of acres of land of Jawahar Bagh in Mathura on the pretext of a dharna (protest). The supporters belonging to a splinter group, known as Swadheen Bharat Andolan, clashed with the police on Thursday when the force tried to evict them from Jawahar Bagh resulting in the death of 19 people including two police officers. UP Police IG (Law and Order) HR Sharma said around 3,000 encroachers pelted stones and later opened fire at the police team. They also allegedly used grenades and automatic weapons to attack the police force. Police have recovered a huge cache of arms from the area. The police action came following an order by the Allahabad High Court to clear the area. Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and his younger brother Shivpal Singh Yadav are also said to be his supporters. New Delhi/Washington: Two years ago there were questions over whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi could get a visa to enter the United States. Next week, he visits Washington as one of President Barack Obama's closest international partners. Obama invited Modi for one of the last big visits by a world leader before his term ends in January. Although the trip won't feature a lavish state dinner, the PM will address both houses of Congress, considered a rare honour. This will be their seventh meeting since Modi became the Prime Minister in May 2014, an impressive tally for a US President and a leader who is not a formal ally, said Ashley Tellis at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "The personal relationship between the president and the PM is really one of the unanticipated surprises of the past two years," said Tellis, an expert on India. The developing relationship is seen as an Obama foreign policy success. US views India as an important part of its rebalance to Asia and as a counterweight to China. The two countries are finalising agreements that would make it possible for their militaries to cooperate more closely, and for US defence manufacturers to both sell and make high-tech weaponry in India. A deal on logistics would govern issues such as how the two countries account for costs of military exercises. Another involves encrypted communications and geospatial data transfer. "It is neither a strategic partnership nor an alliance. It can be a long-term arrangement, but to call it a strategic partnership would be premature," founder of defence portal Bharat Shakti Nitin Gokhale said. There are frustrations, too, on the US side. The two countries reached a civil nuclear agreement in 2005, but it has yet to yield any contracts for US-based companies. Only now is Westinghouse, a unit of Japan's Toshiba, approaching the finish line on a deal to build six reactors in India. GETTING TO KNOW YOU The visit gives Modi a chance to network with US lawmakers who may feature in a Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton administration but, as it coincides with the California primary, he is not expected to meet either. Modi is generally popular with US lawmakers, who extended his invitation to address Congress. But they criticise what they see as lingering unfriendliness to US firms and a stifling bureaucracy, and question India's record on human rights. "The economic engagement between our two countries should increase and it should be more accessible for US companies," Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a telephone interview. Obama and Modi are expected to discuss India's desire to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 48-member club of nuclear trading nations. India was shut out for decades because of its weapons programme, and the civil nuclear agreement with the United States gave it access to foreign suppliers without giving up its arms. Obama administration officials have said they backed India's desire to join the group, but the idea faces resistance among some on Capitol Hill, as well as from China. "Existing NSG guidelines were established to guard against nuclear proliferation, and we should not create exceptions for particular countries," Corker said. There is lingering concern in Washington over Modi's handling of communal riots in 2002 that killed at least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, in Gujarat. Modi was chief minister of the state at the time and, though a court-ordered inquiry found insufficient evidence to prosecute him, the issue prevented him from getting a US visa for years. Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, raised human rights on a visit to New Delhi this week, saying the two largest democracies had "special obligations" to set the highest standards. Congress' Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission has scheduled a hearing on India for June 7, the day Modi arrives in Washington and the day before his address to the combined House of Representatives and Senate. He leaves the United States on June 8. Corker promised to asked Modi about India's record on human trafficking, which he brought up recently in an emotional Senate hearing with Obama administration officials. "The country we believe has 12-14 million slaves, which is close to half the number we believe exists worldwide," Corker said. "It's obviously a very significant issue and when he's here, it's one I certainly plan to raise." New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday filed its first charge sheet against an alleged ISIS operative Naser Packeer for recruiting youths to join the outfit and for conspiring to commit terror acts. The probe agency filed the charge sheet in the Delhi court of District Judge Amar Nath. In December 2015, Packeer was arrested after it was found that he was involved in a conspiracy to recruit Muslim youths in India for ISIS in Iraq and in Syria. The youths were also asked to carry out terror attacks in India. According to sources, in its charge sheet filed before the court during an in-chamber proceedings, the agency said, "Accused Naser had used the web-based social media platforms and joined a number of chat groups and had connected with his associates within and outside India." "Naser, along with others, was involved in a conspiracy to recruit Muslim youths in India to join ISIS to wage war in India," the charge sheet said. The next hearing was fixed on June 9 and the court extended the judicial custody of the accused till that date. The agency had filed an FIR in the matter on December 9 last year against unknown persons on inputs received from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). On October 5, 2015, Naser was apprehended by Sudani authorities for concealing his identity and trying to join ISIS in Syria. On December 10, 2015, he was deported to India. JavaScript is disabled on your browser. CORDIS website requires JavaScript enabled in order to work properly. Please enable JavaScript. Is the Pakistani state involved in the Pathankot terror attacks? While the Director General National Investigation Agency (NIA) Sharad Kumar had in an interview to CNN News18 claimed that so far there is no evidence to show Pakistan's role in Pathankot attacks, the Ministry of External Affairs says the neighbouring country is behind the strike.Kumars interview has also forced the NIA into a damage control mode. In a statement released to the media on Friday, the NIA said, "The observations attributed to DG NIA on the CNN-NEWS 18 channel today as regards Pathankot investigations and Samjhauta case investigation are strongly refuted."However, when CNN-News18 confronted the NIA with the exact transcript of the interview, it issued a correction. There is a correction. The above message maybe re-read as follows. The observations of DG, NIA as regards the role of Pakistan govt/agencies has been misquoted," the agency said.The NIA DG had in own handwriting stated that 'so far' there is no evidence against government of Pakistan so far.On the other hand the MEA, too, claims that there is ample proof of Pakistani state involvement in fomenting and facilitating terror attacks against India, including the January 2016 strike at the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot."The involvement of Pakistans nationals in the Pathankot Air Base attack is an accepted fact. I would remind you that investigations are ongoing. Foreign Secretary had conveyed to his Pakistani counterpart when they met in New Delhi in April that it was time for review of progress in investigation in the attack after return of Pakistans JIT. Enough information has also been provided to Pakistani authorities through two Letters. At this stage, we await further response and information from Pakistan," the MEA in a statement said.The DG's statement had also been a shot in the arm for Pakistan which claimed its stand has been vindicated. "The statement of the DG NIA, government of India vindicated Pakistan position on the issue," Pakistan spokesperson Nazeer Zakaria said.Meanwhile, opposition parties have been quick to attack the Narendra Modi government for giving Pakistan a clean chit."India is suffering at the cost of Pakistan-sponsored terror for decades now known at international platform, challenging the sovereignty of our country. Giving a clean chit to Pakistan for Pathankot has weakened India's battle against terrorism nationally and internationally. Successive statements from Modi has put us on a backfoot. Going for birthday and marriage to Pakistan, to let the JIT visit India. The same JIT went to Pakistan and accused Indian government. Now NIA chief has made a preposterous statement," Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said.Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal also attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and accused him of bowing down to Pakistan. "No other PM in the history of independent India knelt before Pak like this," he tweeted. New Delhi: The world's second largest army is battling fire-power issues for the past many years. Unavailability of modern equipment and compulsion to use vintage or obsolete war machines has left the Indian Army in a fix. Every arm including the infantry and air defence or artillery is facing shortage of equipments and ammunition, which has emerged as a critical area of concern. Non procurement of artillery guns is not the only problem for the Army. Compounding the shortage is a series of accidents in ordinance factories as well as ammunition depots in last 15 years in which ammunition worth crores of rupees have been lost. Several officers, jawans and civilians have also lost their lives in the fire accidents. The fire accident at Central Ammunition Depot (CAD) Pulgaon, Army's mother ammunition depot, is one of the biggest incidents in the recent past. Nineteen people including two officers were killed in the blaze. While the blaze at India's largest ammunition storage spread over 7,000 acres has been doused, but several burning questions remain. Ordnance Factory Board is the main supplier of ammunition to the Army. However, their functioning has always faced some tough questions, both in terms of efficiency and quality. A recent performance audit done by Comptroller Auditor General on Armys ammunition management categorically highlighted serious issues pertaining to the ammunition supplied by the ordnance factories. CAG report on the 2008-2013 period noted that even the products accepted by Quality Assurance were not found up to the mark and due to persistent quality problems, ammunition worth Rs 1,618 crore is lying rejected in depots. Ammunition worth Rs 814 crore was declared unserviceable within its shelf life due to poor quality. Safety record of ordnance factories and depots, as frequent accidents show, is also not good. When any ammunition meets with an accident, the Army impose a ban on the use of that particular lot. Such ammunition is kept segregated till its further sentencing. The CAG audit observed that ammunition worth Rs 3,578 crore was awaiting sentencing. Moreover, ammunition worth Rs 2,109 crore was lying in repairable major condition awaiting repairs. The ammunition shortage is also often credited to inadequate supply by ordnance factories. In order to build up ammunition stock level up to Minimum Accepted Risk Levels and to provide enough lead time to OFB for procurement of raw material and streamlining the production, the Defence Ministry placed a five year Roll on Indent on OFB in January 2010. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence in its recent report tabled in Parliament in May 2016 noted that despite taking OFB onboard for the order placement procedure, it failed to supply the targeted quantity, with shortfalls ranging up to 73% of the total types of ammunition. Unavailability of adequate ammunition has brought down war reserve stores to alarmingly low levels. During the last six years, the average reserve for around 45% critically important ammunition has been less than 10 days. The issue was highlighted by the CAG report on Armys ammunition management in 2015. The CAD Pulgaon incident calls for a serious review of ammunition management in the country. Storage of reliable ammunition is extremely important to keep the Army fighting fit and battle ready. Modi is likely to seek support of Switzerland and Mexico for India's membership of the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group as both these countries are key members of the elite group. The issue is likely to figure during Modi's meeting with Obama in Washington. We are in touch with the Swiss government under the DTAA (Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement) mandate and we have had some discussions on this and we have a few planned in the near future. We have received support from the Swiss authorities on exchange of information on tax data between the two countries. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday will leave for a five-nation visit to Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland, the US and Mexico during which the focus will be to broaden India's trade, energy and security cooperation with them and inject a new momentum in ties.During his talks with the leadership of Switzerland, the Prime Minister is also likely to raise the issue of black money stashed by Indians in Swiss banks.The Prime Minister will first travel to Afghanistan where he will inaugurate the Afghan-India Friendship Dam, earlier known as Salma Dam, in Herat province, along with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Both the leaders will also hold talks on a range of issues including current situation in Afghanistan.From Afghanistan, Modi will travel to energy-rich Qatar on Saturday itself and from there he will leave for a two day visit to Switzerland on Sunday.Asked at a press briefing on PM's visit whether the issue of black money will be raised by Modi during his talks with Swiss leaders, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said both the countries are in touch on the issue."We do hope to engage as early as possible in the automatic exchange of information with Switzerland and this has been conveyed to Swiss tax authorities," he said.On India's bid for NSG membership, Jaishankar said India has been eyeing membership of the premier group for many, many years and that it has made "lot of progress" on that."I think we have made lot of progress and that has led us to formally apply for the NSG membership some days ago. We are engaged with all NSG members regarding this issue and Switzerland is definitely an important member and definitely, I would expect it to come up," he said.India has formally applied for membership of the NSG on May 12. Srinagar: At least three Border Security Force soldiers were killed and seven others injured on Friday when terrorists fired at their convoy in Bijbehera area of Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district. "Its an unfortunate incident. The BSF convoy was attacked on the national highway by terrorists who fired at it from the by-lanes near Bijbehara," Director General of Jammu and Kashmir Police K Rajendra said. BSF Director General KK Sharma is rushing to the spot to take stock of the situation. The BSF convoy comprising 23 vehicles was coming from Jammu to Srinagar ferrying jawans who were returning to join their duties after their leave. Additional forces have been rushed to the area which has been cordoned off by CRPF and Rashtriya Rifles. The attack comes 10 days after the Hizbul Mujahideen had killed three policemen in two separate incidents in Srinagar city. They had threatened to carry out similar attacks. BSF convoys have often been the target of terrorist groups. Last year in August, a BSF convoy was attacked by Lashker-e-Toiba terrorists at Udhampur in which two of its personnel and a terrorist were killed. Another terrorist Mohammed Naveed was captured alive after the terror strike. (With inputs from PTI) Trivikram SrinivasSamantha, Nithiin, Nadhiya, Naresh, Praveen, Hari Teja, Rao Ramesh, Ajay, Anupama ParameshwaranOur movies are usually made from the point of view of the male star. And when a story travels along with a female star, we think that the makers have done an awesome job. Its not that big a deal actually. Its just another way of telling. Sekhar Kammulas Anand starts off with a girls introduction (young Roopa jokes around with her family members). The movie takes its own time to paint the pains and happiness of the couple (Kamalinee Mukherjee and Raja). The laughs and cries in Anands romantic platform feel genuine, whereas A Aa feels like an improv play gone wrong.In A Aa, and in Anand, theres a death in the family that plays a nasty role in separating the leading actors families, and in bringing them back together. Trivikrams films are built on the death of his characters. Mahesh Babu goes to Nassers house as Pardhu in Athadu (because Rajiv Kanakala is shot dead). Pawan Kalyan loses his parents in Jalsa, and his mother in Attarintiki Daredi. The fathers of the male leads in S/O Satyamurthy, and in A Aa are seen more via flashbacks (in case youre still wondering: the fathers die, too). Do you see a pattern? Theres more. Trivikrams characters go out of this manmade world either due to accident or poverty (also another name for suicide). Natural death doesnt seem to fascinate the filmmaker.Anasuya Ramalingam (Samantha) has a bucket load of expressions. Theres a sad Samantha, a happy Samantha, a curious Samantha, a nervous Samantha, a funny Samantha, a stupid Samantha, and so on. Likewise there are some expressions packed in her face that make us chuckle. Anasuyas dear dad (Naresh) calls her kukkapilla. Did Trivikram give Samanthas character that name after observing her actions or did Samantha observe a puppys behavior for real? As far as getting a puppys face right, Samantha has done a wonderful job. Nithiin, as a hurt young man, looks neat in his role.Samantha, daughter of a rich businesswoman and an advocate, goes to Nithiins village to learn about herself. She has previously failed in making a mark in the fields of music, dance, acting, and business. When her mother (Nadhiya) questions her, Naresh in a supportive tone tells his wife that shell make a good wife. She doesnt learn the basics of how to become a good wife in a village. She realizes that theres life outside her bungalow. And thats probably enough for her to make decisions on her own. But a protective mother like Nadhiya wont allow that to happen. She wants the best to go to her daughter.Nithiin stays true to his character-brief. He looks empty-hearted when hes sad, and when he gets mad, you dont to want to be near him (hell break the doors of your car). Many unnecessary portions steal the thunder of A Aa. Why should the climax have an action scene? Yes. It is enjoyable to an extent. Still, it doesnt make any sense. The same goes for the songs. Mickey J Meyers music is colorful like Samanthas puppy-face. Yet they are not required. Yellipoke Shyamala is great as a standalone track but what is it doing in the film?The romantic comedy tilts toward comedy. Even then, the situations provided for comedy are not up to the mark. Hari Teja and Praveen bring the roof partially down with their one-liners. Thats the problem. The roofs dont fall down like they did in Bhale Bhale Magadivoy (a rom-com that mixes both the elements well).Rao Ramesh does a great job again. His dialogue delivery is perfect. If he says an ugly line, hes a bad man, and if he says a funny line, hes a comedian. Everybody cant do that. Nagavalli (Anupama Parameshwaran) is a grey-brained girl. A four-year-old kid is hiding in her soul. I couldnt take her slyness seriously. The methods she uses to get close to Nithiin are not popular; they are stale. So, the reasons to dislike Nagavalli are inadequate.Samantha may have found a new side to her through A Aa. However, Trivikrams A Aa is somewhere between Okay and Uh, Okay only.2.5 out of 5 Allahabad: BJP may decide to declare its chief ministerial candidate for the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls at its national executive meeting to be held next week. "A decision may be taken at the national executive meeting on June 12-13 as to whether or not the party will be going to the UP assembly polls with a chief ministerial candidate," party's national vice-president Om Prakash Mathur said. "Initially the plan was to fight the elections on the plank of the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. However, the option of declaring a CM candidate has also been kept open," he added. Mathur, who is also in-charge of party affairs in UP, said "BJP is keen to repeat in 2017 its handsome performance during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections when we contested 78 out of 80 seats in the state and won 71. Assembly polls in UP will obviously be the main focus of the two-day meeting though other issues concerning the party will also be discussed". He, however, declined to comment when asked about names of leaders that might be doing round for the party's chief ministerial candidate. The BJP national vice-president was here to take stock of preparations for the national executive meeting, which will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party president Amit Shah, party Chief Ministers and others. Chennai: Distribution of sweets, welfare assistance and blood donation by party workers were among the highlights of celebrations of the 93rd birthday of DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi on Friday. On the occasion, Karunanidhi, who was state chief minister five times, paid floral tributes at the memorials of DMK founder leader C N Annadurai and rationalist leader E V Ramasamy Periyar here. Karunanidhi planted a sapling at his CIT colony residence and later a cake was cut in the presence of his family members, including his son and DMK Treasurer M K Stalin. His daughter and Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi greeted him on the occasion. Party leaders like Duraimurugan and T R Baalu also went to his residence and wished him. DMK West District unit has announced a mega public meeting to be held at the YMCA grounds in Chennai in the evening which will be addressed by Karunanidhi. Karunanidhi, in his birthday message, urged party cadres to continue to work for the welfare of Tamil Nadu. Recalling the "sacrifices" of his party for Tamil language, culture and the people, he said, "Let us work untiringly, I invite you with love." Karunanidhi was Tamil Nadu Chief Minister five times between 1969-71, 1971-76, 1989-91, 1996-2001 and 2006-11. Even though DMK lost the recent state assembly polls, it has emerged as a strong opposition, winning 89 seats. Karunanidhi himself won from his native Tiruvarur, defeating AIADMK candidate R Pannerselvam by clocking the highest victory margin of 68,366 votes. Party headquarters 'Anna Arivalayam' was decked up for the event and has been glittering with decorative lamps since Wednesday night. DMK treasurer M K Stalin had appealed to party functionaries yesterday to engage themselves in welfare activities like organising blood donation camps and planting saplings. DMK district units celebrated his birthday by giving away sweets, welfare assistance like text and notebooks to school students and food and clothes to the poor. Pleasure to launch a book based on the NRI day held at Agra with Indian Ambassadors who are from UP. pic.twitter.com/dCtA209EJm Akhilesh Yadav (@yadavakhilesh) June 2, 2016 But Akhilesh Yadav was busy selling his vision for the state. In the last few months big screens on the Noida expressway and radio spots centered around the vision of a yuva chief minister have come up -- all as a part of the media blitzkrieg with the crucial Uttar Pradesh elections just a few months. The Mathura incident is a case of illegal occupation of land by goons under the garb of a spiritual organisation and they were patronised by a powerful person in the ruling party. The land was under illegal occupation for the last four years. Western UP will continue to be the most volatile place where we will see the most extreme campaign, rampant breakdown of law and order and the increase of existing hostilities between the communities," she says. Mayawati is hoping to make a comeback primarily on the law and order issue. She will watch the aftermath and impact of the Mathura violence closely. It was a perfect photo-opportunity on June 2 for the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister in the esteemed company of not one but nine ambassadors of India to countries such as Poland, Iran, Brunei, Joradan, Bulgaria etc.Nearly 400 kms from UP's capital Lucknow, the holy city of Mathura was burning and 24 people had died including two police officers. Over 40 others were injured in clashes during a drive to evict the illegal occupants of a land.The self-publicity is important and the UP shining campaign too but as a Samajwadi Party leader, who didnt wish to be identified, says, "Bina monsoon ki barsaat mein to Akhilesh expose ho ja rahe hain, jab monsoon aayega to kya hoga (Akhilesh is getting exposed when there is no scrutiny. What will happen when elections come)."He was hinting at the complete failure of the young Yadav in controlling a minor incident in Mathura and letting it flare up when there could be more challenges coming up on the law and order front in the run up to the elections.Journalist Sharat Pradhan who tracks UP very closely says it reflects poorly on Akhileshs control on unabated crime and poor law and order situation in the state.Officers in Lucknow highlight that after struggling initially Akhilesh may have managed to send this message in the last three years that he is very much in control of his government and that his father and uncles arent really holding the strings of the show.But the Mathura episode has raised serious questions over the supposed generational shift in the Samajwadi Party, given the association the perpetrators allegedly have with a veteran leader of older generation.With 106 assembly seats Western Uttar Pradesh is one conundrum that analysts often find most difficult to solve before every election in Uttar Pradesh.Saba Naqvi, an independent journalist, foresees the Mathura incident an offshoot of what will play out in western UP at multiple levels in the run up to the 2017 polls.As the opposition quotes statistics of the state governments failure on the law and order front, experts are drawing comparisons between Nitish Kumar and Akhilesh Yadav. They add that there were law and order challenges that Nitish Kumar was confronted with in the run up to Bihar elections but he clocked a 24X7 campaign to ensure the narrative of development wasn't hijacked.Instances are also sighted of repeated clashes between Muslims and Hindus in Mulayam Singh Yadavs constituency of Azamgarh over minor arguments in the last few months."There has already been speculation about large-scale communal violence in the run up to the polls leading to polarisation of voters which could benefit both the BJP and SP. Although there was no Hindu-Muslim angle to the Mathura violence, the fact that followers of a Hindu religious guru had accumulated such a vast dump of sophisticated weapons inside the Ashram has disturbing portents," says BSP supremo Mayawatis biographer Ajoy Bose.The BSP had won 29 seats in Western UP in 2012 and sources close to Mayawati say that she is hoping that if the elections remain centered on the issues of governance and are not vitiated by a communal angle then Akhileshs dismal track record on the law and order front could make her emerge as the elephant in UPs battle-room. Review: Lenovo ZUK Z1 is Made For Cyanogen OS Lovers Jun 03, 2016 01:44 PM IST iVideos iVideos Share Lenovo ZUK Z1 the first smartphone to come from Lenovos new sub-brand ZUK - made its entry into the Indian smartphone market recently. Along with reigniting the debate over the use of Cyanogen OS, the phone is also set to compete against a host of already popular brands churning out affordable devices like the recently launched Motorola Moto G4 and Xiaomi Redmi Note 3.We got to play with the Lenovo ZUK Z1 and here's our take on the Rs 13,499-priced smartphone.Read the full review here Washington: The Indian-American gunman who shot dead his former college professor in California had also murdered his wife and planned to kill another faculty member, police said. Local news reports said Mainak Sarkar, 38, had killed his wife Ashley Hasti at her Minnesota home, before driving to Los Angeles. According to CBS Minneapolis, they were married in 2011. Sarkar shot his former professor William Klug, 39, multiple times at a small office in the Engineering Building of the University of California Los Angeles on Wednesday, before turning the gun on himself. Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck said Sarkar had plans to kill another UCLA faculty member, but could not do so as he was not able to find him. The faculty member, whose name was not revealed by police, is safe. "We believe that he went to kill two faculty from UCLA. He was only able to locate one," Beck said yesterday. He said police found an extra box of ammunition in his Minnesota home. According to the LAPD chief, Sarkar arrived at the UCLA campus "heavily armed". "He had a backpack, two semiautomatic pistols and extra magazines. It looks like he was certainly prepared to engage multiple victims," Beck told reporters. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is assisting the Los Angeles Police Department in its investigation. In a blog post, Sarkar, an IIT Kharagpur graduate, had accused Klug of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else. "William Klug, UCLA professor is not the kind of person when you think of a professor. He is a very sick person," Sarkar wrote. "I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy. He made me really sick. Your enemy is your enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust." Local media quoted several university officials and students as saying that Sarkar's allegation was not true. "UCLA says there is no truth to this," Beck told reporters in response to a question. Klug graduated from Westmont in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science in engineering physics, completed a master's degree at UCLA and a doctorate at CalTech. He was an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA. "We're deeply saddened by this tragic news and send our condolences to his wife, Mary Elise, also a Westmont graduate, and their family," UCLA President Gayle D Beebe said. "Dr Klug was an excellent student at Westmont who conducted student research with two professors during his college years," Beebe said. Washington: In a globalised economy, it is not possible to stop trading goods and services with other nations, President Barack Obama said on Friday in an apparent dig at presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. "As we navigate this complex world, America cannot shirk the mantle of leadership. We can't be isolationists. It's not possible in this globalised, interconnected world," Obama said in his commencement address to the Air Force Academy. "In these uncertain times, it's tempting, sometimes, to pull back, to try to wash our hands of conflicts that seem intractable, let other countries fend for themselves. But history teaches us, from Pearl Harbor to 9/11, that oceans alone cannot protect us. Hateful ideologies can spark terror, from Boston to San Bernardino," he added. "In a global economy, it's not possible to stop trading goods and services with other countries. Weak public health systems on the other side of the world allow diseases to develop that end up reaching our shores. So, we cannot turn inward; we cannot give into isolationism," he said. "That's a false comfort. Allowing problems to fester over there makes us less secure here. So, as Americans, we have to keep leading and working with others to build the security and prosperity and justice we want in the world. By the way, one of the most effective ways to lead and work with others is through treaties that advance our interests," he said. Obama said lately, there has been a mindset in Congress that just about any international treaty is somehow a violation of American sovereignty, and so the Senate almost never approves treaties any more. "So, if we're truly concerned about China's actions in the South China Sea, for example, the Senate should help strengthen our case by approving the Law of the Sea Convention, as our military leaders have urged," Obama said. He said as powerful as US military is, Americans have to remember that many of the threats to their security cannot be solved by military force alone. "We've got to draw on every tool, all elements of our national power. When we invest in the development that promotes education and opportunity around the globe, it can make conflicts and military interventions less likely later," he said. Even as the US is well-positioned to lead the world, it is facing a major threat from terrorist groups. "We face serious threats. Terrorist networks slaughter the innocent and plot attacks against our nation," he said. "Civil wars, like in Iraq, tear countries apart and create humanitarian catastrophes and havens for terrorists. Russian aggression against Ukraine. Disputes in the South China Sea. These are testing an international order that we built, where the sovereignty of nations is respected and all nations abide by the same rules," Obama said. "Nuclear weapons, as in South Korea and the specter of nuclear terrorism still threatens us all," he added. Washington: Terrorist safe havens not only continue to exist in the tribal areas of Pakistan, but also militants are able to openly raise funds from heavily populated areas, the US said alleging that Islamabad is not taking action against terror groups like Haqqani network and Lashkar-e-Taiba. As a result, Pakistan-based terrorist groups continue to conduct terrorist attacks inside India and Afghanistan, the State Department said in its annual 'Country Reports on Terrorism 2015', which is mandated by Congress. "In 2015, an assortment of terrorist groups, to include the Haqqani Network, attempted to hide in or operate from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, a mountainous region along Pakistans northwest border with Afghanistan," the State Department said. It said some UN-designated terrorist groups, such as Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) affiliates Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation, were able to raise funds and hold rallies in Pakistan. LeT and JuD leader, Hafiz Saeed, who is also a UN-designated terrorist, was able to make frequent public appearances in support of the organization's objectives, which were covered by the Pakistani media, for much of the year. "In September, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Agency prohibited media coverage of LeT and affiliated groups, although the groups continued to recruit and operate around the country. Despite JuD and FiF's proscription under UN sanctions regimes, the Pakistani government affirmed in December that neither organization was banned in Pakistan," the State Department said. India, the State Department said continued to experience terrorist attacks, including operations launched by Maoist insurgents and transnational groups based in Pakistan. Indian authorities continued to blame Pakistan for cross-border attacks in Jammu and Kashmir. In July, India experienced a terrorist attack in Gurdaspur, Punjab; the first in Punjab state since the 1990s, the report said. Over the course of 2015, the Indian government sought to deepen counterterrorism cooperation with the US. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi continued to prioritize counterterrorism cooperation during Obama's visit to India in January and Modi's visit to Washington in September. The Indian government closely monitored the domestic threat from IS and other terrorist organisations, it said. The State Department said Pakistan is slow in taking action against 2008 Mumbai attack perpetrators. JuD leader, Hafiz Saeed, an UN-designated terrorist, make frequent public appearances in Pakistan. A birds eye view of Irans capital Tehran speaks a lot about how it seeks to find its place in the 21st century; cradled between snow peaked mountains, streets lined with luscious greens, and flyovers screaming with pride as the Iranian flags gyrate in the wind.Prior to 1947, Iran and India were immediate neighbors and that is how my grandfather remembers it. I cant help but think that this is perhaps the trip my grandfather owed to a country whose language he had mastered and a culture he had grown to appreciate.As I navigate the city through borrowed nostalgia, I am dealing with multiple identities of Iran.My grandfathers Persia Pariah state is now under an authoritarian Islamic regime and the new Iran is brimming with energy as underground Tehran.The hoardings across the city arent displaying cheap advertisements but art masterpieces from Vincent Van Gogh to Goya, Rembrandt to Japanese artist Hokusais great wave of Kanagawa.The choice of the beautification element by the Tehran municipality makes me wonder if it is a reflection of the new Iran, one that is desperate to get out of its isolation and join the world and its economy after the U.S. lifted partial sanctions in January 2016.Despite years of sanctions Tehran isnt in a dilapidated state. The buildings of the Iranian capital arent crumbling but stand tall.Every few kilometers cranes can be spotted busy in constructing a modern Tehran. The edifices are painted thoughtfully in the brown colour of the mud as if recreating the hues of ancient Iran.Nevertheless, the financial loss Iran has had to bear since the imposition of the sanctions cannot be undermined.Our driver Yakoob conveys stories of financial desperation and lights up while talking about the US-Iran truce.Even though partial sanctions have been lifted, Iranian officials tell us nothing on the ground has changed.Dr Marandis vehement defence of the IRG aside, other reformist intellectuals we spoke to had no doubt that a part of the money would go to the IRG.In 1953, the Shah backed by the Americans overthrew Irans first democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. The secular shah tried to modernize an entire society immersed into Islamic ways.While Tehran we are told was hailed as the regions Paris under Shah, he was seen as a puppet of the Americans selling energy resources to them for cheap, in turn looting the Iranians.The revolution of 1979 was mainly owing to the fear of Islamic values being obliterated and also to protest the U.S.' control over their economy and future through Shah. All of which lead to the return of the cleric Ayatollah Khomeini.The Ayatollahs are omnipresent in todays Tehran. Painted on the walls of the city, hanging in photographs in hotel lobbies, offices, ice cream parlours, you find him everywhere.Not only does he head the armed forces, but also appoints officials to state bodies, including the judiciary and the state media.At the domestic front, the rise of the clergy meant suppression of the women, with the ban on hijab reversed with immediate effect. Self-entitled men of the moral police komiteh too harassed women by imposing their own version of Islam.In 1979, the revolution year, Iran under Khomeini had done the diplomatic unthinkable. In one of the darkest episodes in international relations, the top cleric gave a mortifying call Death for America after which the Iranian Revolutionary Guard took the 60 Americans hostage inside Irans U.S. embassy for over a year.The liberals soon regretted supporting the revolution but before they could raise their voice, Saddam Hussains Iraq started showering bombs on Iran, even killing Iranian soldiers with sarin and mustard gas.Iranians were left with no option but to stand united behind the regime of the day - Ayatollah Khomeinis mullahs.The patriotic martyrs decorate Tehrans walls even today, though many were given a high dose of religious fervour, just to be fed as fodder to Saddams cannons. US support for Saddam further escalated the tensions between the Iranians and the Americans to a different level.Internally, the crackdown on dissent gained Iran the status of a pariah state.Akbar Ganji, a famous journalist was jailed for investigating the link of high officials in the government to the murders of authors infamously described as chain of murders in Iran.From the prison he wrote a manifesto calling for the end of a theocratic Iran and its replacement with a democratic state.Another intellectual and advisor to the reformist President Khatami, Saeed Laylaz, was arrested in 2009 as part of a crack down on Iranians protesting against Ahmadinejad alleging election fraud.Professor Laylaz supported the opposition leader Musawi and gave 20 odd lectures in the Tehran University in his support.Even though he was released from the prison, the professor is still cautious and thinks it is Khameneis power broking skills that are keeping him safe from the hard liners who intend on executing him.Iran at the moment is divided between conservatives and reformists; not just in economics but also in the social space.Whats clear is that the Iranian youth is restless.In the city of scarves I stop by at a local scarf shop, while paying I ask, would you take a visa card? He replied, Not yet, but soon, they [the govt] said soon.22 years old, English speaking Ahmad is a university graduate without a job and is forced to drive a taxi he rents.His view of America is directly opposite to that of our regular driver Ali, he says America is a great country. why I ask, and he answers because of the freedom, economy. Iran government not think like that, but I think different from my government.I cant say how many more young men and women await economic and social assimilation with the world. What I can see is the stark difference between the Persian and Arab social space.It isnt the Tehran of the 80s or 90s. There is hope and energy in the air, the young are fashionable, assertive and willing to overcoming obstacles, one step at a time.Irans underground Tehran in the second part of Inside Iran.[[INSIDE IRAN: THE SHOW WILL AIR THIS WEEKEND ON CNN NEWS 18]][[Anchal Vohra is the Foreign Affairs Editor and Senior Presenter with CNN news 18]] Lagos: Six people were killed when terrorists attacked a boat belonging to Nigeria's state-run oil firm, the army has said, in the latest violence to hit the country's increasingly restive oil-producing region. The Niger Delta Avengers group, which has been attacking pipelines and facilities since early 2016, denied involvement but claimed a separate strike and vowed to bring crude output to a halt. The deadly attack on the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) boat happened at about 5:50 pm (local time) on Wednesday in the Warri area of Delta state, which has seen a spate of attacks recently. "During the deliberate attack two soldiers were killed, one wounded, one soldier missing while four civilian staff attached to the house boat were shot dead," army spokesman Captain Jonah Unuakhalu said in a statement on Thursday. No specific group was mentioned as being responsible and Unuakhalu said only "suspected terrorists... disguised as ordinary commuters" in five speedboats carried out the attack. But the Niger Delta Avengers quickly said it was not involved. "Killing of sleeping soldiers is not our style," it said in an email. "We promise the world that in this process of liberating our people, not a single blood of Nigeria soldiers will be wasted despite the provocation... "Our war is on oil installations not to take innocent lives," it said. The group earlier this week, however, warned it would step up its campaign with violence against facilities and personnel. "To the international oil companies and indigenous oil companies, it's going to be bloody this time around," it said in an email and a statement on its website on Monday. The group, whose targets have included oil majors such as Shell, Chevron, Eni and the NNPC, earlier claimed another attack. "At about 2:00 am today @NDAvengers blew up the Ogboinbiri to Tebidaba and Clough Creek to Tebidaba Crude Oil pipelines in Bayelsa State," according to its Twitter account. "This is in line with our promise to all international oil companies and indigenous oil companies that Nigeria oil production will be zero," it added. Nigeria's defence spokesman Rabe Abubakar confirmed the attack without giving further details, but said they were aware of those behind the group. "We know what they are doing," he said, indicating that several arrests made in May had led to fresh intelligence. United Nations: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has expressed shock at the escalating recruitment and killing of children in conflicts in 2016 especially in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia and South Sudan. The UN chief's annual report on children and armed conflict released on Thursday said the scale and increasing severity of grave violations included continuing large-scale abduction of children and aerial attacks by some governments and international coalitions which killed and maimed many youngsters. Ban called on all parties to conflicts to immediately end violations against children and take measures to prevent the recruitment, killing, abduction and sexual abuse of children caught in conflicts. He warned that combatants who violate children's rights. "Will find themselves under scrutiny by the United Nations" and stressed that accountability remains a key priority. The UN Security Council took the first major step to prevent the victimization of young people in war zones in 2005 by approving a resolution to identify governments and armed groups that recruit child soldiers. In 2009, the council voted to name and shame countries and insurgent groups engaged in conflicts that lead to children being killed, maimed and raped. Last June, the council voted unanimously to name and shame governments and armed groups that abduct children. Yesterday's report names nine government security forces and 51 armed groups that committed grave violations against children last year. New additions to the list include the Saudi Arabia-led coalition and Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen for killing and maiming children and attacking schools and hospitals, and South Sudan's government forces known as the SPLA for carrying out more than 100 incidents of sexual violence against children. The Civilian Joint Task Force in Nigeria, who are local residents fighting Boko Haram extremists, was listed for recruiting and using children, with more than 50 verified cases in 2015, and Raia Mutomboki 5, a large rebel group in eastern Congo, was listed for recruiting, using and engaging in sexual violence against children. In response to last year's council resolution, the report for the first time lists six armed groups for abducting children al-Shabab militants in Somalia, Nigeria's Boko Haram, the Lord's Resistance Army in Central African Republic and Congo, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and South Sudan's SPLA. The report said children were disproportionately affected by the intensifying conflict in Afghanistan, which recorded the highest number of child casualties in 2015 since the UN began documenting civilian deaths and injuries in 2009. The UN said it verified 1,306 incidents resulting in 2,829 child casualties 733 killed and 2,096 injured. The casualties included 42 per cent attributed to armed groups including the Taliban, 23 per cent to Afghan forces and pro-government militias, and 55 to international forces, mainly from airstrikes, the report said. Area farmers, forest landowners, and other agricultural and conservation organizations are invited to a meeting of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Local Working Group from 10 a.m. to noon June 15 at the Rustburg USDA Service Center conference room, 163 Kabler Lane, Rustburg. The meeting is open to the public and will offer residents an opportunity to determine con-servation activities of greatest interest to landowners. The Natural Resource Conservation Service is asking for opinions on what areas to target for technical and financial assistance available under the Farm Bill. For more information, contact Don Yancey at (434) 332-6640, ext. 104. Ashlie Walter A Blue Angels pilot who died when his F/A-18 fighter jet crashed near Nashville, Tennessee, had wanted to fly since he was a child, relatives said. A U.S. official identified the pilot killed Thursday as Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. "It's hard to put into words right now, but it's beautiful that a person can live and die engaged in their life's pursuits," said his grandfather, Dolph Kuss, reached at his home in Durango, Colorado. "This was his dream since he was a child, to be an aviator, a flier." He choked back tears and said he was struggling to gather his thoughts. "It's hard to celebrate someone's life in this way," he said. "It is certainly a shock. Everything in life has its dangers, I guess." Kuss was married with two young children, his grandfather said. It was the second fighter jet crash of the day for the military's elite fighter jet performance teams. A member of the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds crashed in Colorado after a flyover for the Air Force Academy graduation where President Barack Obama spoke. That pilot ejected safely into a field. The Blue Angels performed in Lynchburg last month as part of the two-day Lynchburg Regional Airshow. Harry Gill, the town manager in Smyrna just outside Nashville, said Thursday that the Blue Angels pilot was the only casualty and no civilians on the ground were hurt. The Navy said in a news release that the pilot was beginning to take off during an afternoon practice session for a weekend air show performance when the crash happened. Five other F/A-18 jets landed safely moments after the crash. "My thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of the Blue Angels after this tragic loss. I know that the Navy and Marine Corps Team is with me. We will investigate this accident fully and do all we can to prevent similar incidents in the future," Adm. John Richardson, the Navy's top officer, said in a Facebook post. The team is based at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida. According to his official Blue Angels biography, Kuss joined the elite aerobatics team in 2014 and accumulated more than 1,400 flight hours. He was a native of Durango and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marines in 2006. He had previously served in Afghanistan before joining the Blue Angels. Kuss' hometown newspaper, The Durango Herald, reported when Kuss was named to the Blue Angels team that he was a 2002 Durango High School graduate and 2006 graduate of Fort Lewis College, where he studied economics. The newspaper said he had been "enamored of jets since he was a toddler," learned to fly in Durango and soloed in a Cessna 152 when he was 15. "He still hadn't gotten a driver's license," his mother, Janet Kuss, told the newspaper then. "His favorite toys were jets, and he wanted to be a Blue Angel since forever." In a video the U.S. Navy posted to its YouTube channel, Kuss stood in his flight suit in front of a line of Blue Angels planes and answered a question from a fan about how to become a pilot. "I started flying when I was a young kid," he said. "I always had a love for it, worked really hard through school, went to college and eventually got into the military. I wanted to fly the fastest, meanest thing I could. And that's why I'm here today, because I was fortunate enough to get to fly the F-18 Hornet. It's been a great experience every time I strap into it." The Blue Angels will not participate, but the Great Tennessee Air Show will go on as scheduled, Smyrna airport Executive Director John Black said in a news release. "After close consultation with the Blue Angels, regulatory officials and the performers, we have made the decision to carry on with this weekend's show," Black said. Thomas Bucher, 32, of Smyrna, lives about 2,000 feet from the crash site and was outside doing yard work Thursday afternoon. He had noticed the jets practicing near the airport. "That particular Blue Angel, I saw him doing some barrel rolls looked like in the air," he said "He was flying awful low, I thought, and he kind of got below the tree line over there. And it looked like he was on his belly going down, and that's the end of it." After the plane went below the tree line, Bucher said he saw a cloud of smoke come up over the tree line. "I was hoping that he had ejected from his seat, but with him being that low ... My dad is in aviation; I knew there was no way he could have ejected from that height and survived." LONDON Sitting on the sun-dappled terrace of the House of Lords, watching the Thames flow, Lord Nigel Lawson explains that the June 23 referendum, which he hopes will withdraw Britain from the European Union, was never supposed to happen. It is, he says, the fulfillment of a promise Prime Minister David Cameron expected to be prevented from keeping. Going into the 2014 general election, Cameron, heading a coalition government with Liberal Democrats, placated anti-EU Conservatives by promising a referendum on the EU membership. He expected that another close election would leave him again heading a coalition, and that he would be able to say, truthfully, that his pro-EU Liberal Democrat partners would block a referendum. But his Conservative Party won a large parliamentary majority, inconveniently liberating Cameron from the constraints of a coalition and leaving him with an awkward promise to keep. Full of years, 84 of them, and fight, Lawson has spent 42 years on the Thames embankment, as a member of both houses. He is impatient with the proposition that it is progress to transfer to supra-national institutions decision-making that belongs in Britains Parliament. When Britain votes on whether to withdraw from the EU, it will be deciding for or against the constraints of deepening involvement with a political entity born from cultural despair about Europes past and complacency about a European future of diminishing social dynamism and political democracy. Britain will consciously choose between alternative national destinies that Americans are less consciously choosing between by their smaller choices that cumulatively subordinate them to a vast, opaque and unaccountable administrative state. Cameron says leaving the EU is unnecessary because Britain has rejected membership in the eurozone currency and is not bound by the EUs open borders policy. Advocates of Brexit reply that if the common currency and open borders, both crucial attributes of the EU, are defects, why remain? Cameron says leaving the EU would be imprudent for security reasons. Wielding the fallacy of the false alternative, he says those who favor leaving the EU favor going it alone and isolationism. They respond that Britain out of the EU would remain Europes foremost military power. When Cameron recalls war in the Balkans and genocide on our continent in Srebrenica, Leave advocates note that the EU had nothing to do with suppressing this, which fell to NATO and especially the United States, neither of which would be diminished by Britain leaving the EU. Cameron invokes the serried rows of white headstones on British graves in military cemeteries on the continent as a silent testament to the price that this country has paid to help restore peace and order in Europe. Historian Andrew Roberts tartly responds that the British war dead fought for British independence and sovereignty, not for European unification. The Remain camp correctly says that Britain is richer and more rationally governed than when European unification began. The Leave camp, however, correctly responds that this is largely in spite of the EU it is because of decisions made by British governments, particularly Margaret Thatchers, in what is becoming a shrinking sphere of national autonomy. In 1988, Thatcher said: We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels. Stressing Britains European credentials, she also said our maps still trace the straight lines of the roads the Romans built. But todays Leavers, who carry the torch of Thatcherism, do not favor straight lines drawn by foreigners. They prefer G.K. Chestertons celebration of spontaneous, unplanned cultural particularities: Before the Romans came to Rye or out to Severn strode, The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road. In politics, sensibility is prior to and inseparable from philosophy. The referendum will record, among other things, the strength of the revulsion many people here feel about a multiculturalism that celebrates every permutation of identity except that of nationality. This is a trans-Atlantic revulsion. What Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an Irish-American and Anglophile, called the liberal expectancy is the belief that the rise of reason and science would mean the waning of pre-modern forces such as religion, ethnicity and even nationality, which would be regarded as an anachronistic tribalism. British voters, who may be as weary as many Americans are of constantly being told that they cannot turn back the clock, and that historys centralizing ratchet has clicked irreversibly too many times, might soon say otherwise. Will is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post. Email him at georgewill@washpost.com. GamesRadar+ is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Heres why you can trust us. Who is Cassie Lang - the comic history of the new Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania teen hero Cassie Lang is the daughter of Ant-Man - but she's got a superhero legacy all her own as both Stature and Stinger Trinis head to Haiti for CSA conference The conference takes place in Port-au-Prince from June 6 to 11 and includes panel discussions, research presentations, literary readings and performances relating to the Caribbean and its diaspora. The 2016 theme, Caribbean Global Movements: People, Ideas, Arts, Culture & Economic Sustainability, focuses on reinforcing Caribbean cultural integration and the multidisciplinary approach to the Caribbean intellectual tradition. Additionally, the conference seeks to have a much-needed conversation about the vital contributions of Haiti to the region and the world, according to the CSA conference announcement. Although the conference has been hosted in more than 20 countries, this is the first year it will be held in Haiti. According to CSA president Dr Carole Boyce-Davies, a combination of desire unfilled and weak infrastructure has kept the conference from reaching this destination. She said the response to this years call for papers was positive, however. I think that Haiti is on everybodys radar now. And we are pleased to open the gate to the intellectual community if you will. Just as Carifesta was held in Haiti last year, we are bringing the entire body of Caribbean intellectuals to Haiti and by these means saying that Haiti has contributed and continues to contribute to the definition of the Caribbean, she told the Newsday via email. There are many additions to the conference programme this year including an art exhibit, fashion show and education policy day, which is supported through a grant from the Kellogg Foundation. The idea was to showcase and support Haitian industry of all kinds, not just add a fashion show. In other words, we couldnt just go to Haiti without having been informed by a range of ideas, added Boyce-Davies who is an author and professor of Africana and English at Cornell University. The education policy day Boyce-Davies brainchild includes a plenary, six workshops and will bring 300 Haitian teachers and university students to the conference. There will also be a book drive to support a school - LEcole Mixte de Deleard. Dr Kavita Singh, a Trinidadian professor of English at University of Houston, applauded these and other CSA initiatives that make a commitment to the communities visited by the organisation. It is important as Caribbean Studies scholars that we dont reproduce the tourist dynamics that reduce our Caribbean homes to cultural commodities, Singh told the Newsday in an email. Carrying on tradition Hosting this conference in Haiti is one of many milestones for the CSA an independent, professional organisation founded in 1974 by 300 Caribbeanists. At the time of its founding, most CSA members were based at universities outside of the region, but felt the need to organise themselves around the promotion of Caribbean Studies. For the CSA, the Caribbean is defined not only by the islands in the archipelago, but also Central America and the Caribbean coast of South America. In the past 41 years the organisation has grown to more than 1,100 members and has received grants from the Ford Foundation towards the development of graduate studies in the field. Boyce-Davies viewed this mentoring role of the CSA as particularly important. There is a vibrant new generation of young scholars who see this field as relevant as any other [while] the founders would have struggled with making sure their work was taken seriously, she said. Singh described the CSA as Christmas for Caribbeanist scholars. This is the third CSA conference Singh will be attending. She said the CSA sets itself apart from other Caribbean- focused conferences by being interdisciplinary and multi-lingual. This years conference will be translated not only into French and Spanish, but also Haitian Creole. (At the CSA) you get to listen to so much new, interesting, and thought-provoking work in your field, something that its hard to reproduce in other discipline-specific conferences. AG moving on child marriage law He said while Cabinet did not discuss this matter yesterday, the AG has been moving with the drafts people on legislation to have this done as expeditiously as possible. Reminding reporters that Al-Rawi spent nearly three hours speaking on this issue on Wednesday, Young reiterated, He is moving the legislation which has to go through a process before it comes to Cabinet. The minister added, We are aware as a Government of the general consensus with respect to the age in relation to child marriages. On Wednesday, Al-Rawi said there were 548 child marriages over the last decade. The AG also reported that 764 teen abortions were conducted on girls between the ages of 13 and 19 at the countrys public hospitals between 2011 and 2015. There is a Marriage Amendment Bill listed on the Governments legislative agenda for the 2019-2020 period but Al-Rawi said it will be brought forward. Carmona, Ibrahim to meet on Las Alturas Newsday understands the purpose of the meeting will be to facilitate talks over the issue of whether the inquiry should be given more time to complete its work, which is expected to involve the submission of a report on the partially-demolished State housing project in Morvant. The inquiry ended in April but it is also understood it is yet to submit a final report. Once completed, the report will have to be submitted to the President who is to forward it to Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, who would also be expected to table the document at Cabinet. The inquiry raised questions over Udecott and the Housing Development Corporations oversight and management of the housing project. It also heard evidence suggesting breaches of professional standards as well as possible criminal offences. However, one party to the inquiry, China Jiangsu International Corporation, has launched legal action against the inquiry, arguing that it could not be made a party to the proceedings. The inquiry was due to come to an end in June 2015. This was later extended by Carmona to March, by way of a notice dated February this year. It is understood a further extension was granted to July. The other members of the inquiry are Dr Myron Wing-Sang Chin and Anthony Farrell. In granting the extension in February, a notice from Presidents House cited vast evidence and the likelihood of further witnesses testifying. Former Udecott chairman Calder Hart had been asked to testify but declined. Recall of Sleep Apnea Device Is Not Going Well Fairbanks, AK (99707) Today Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 17F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 17F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph. Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif seems to be recovering well as he took a brief walk with the help of doctors in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) on Thursday and also talked to his family, reports said. He ate a light meal for the first time after he underwent an open heart surgery on Tuesday. All good wishes to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for his speedy recovery, PM Modi said in a message which was sent along with the flowers. Earlier on May 30, Modi had received a call from Sharif just before the latter was wheeled in for his open-heart surgery in a hospital in the UK. PM @narendramodi receives phone call from PM Nawaz Sharif just before Pak PM is wheeled in for surgery. Wishes him a speedy recovery, the spokesperson of the Ministry External Affairs Ministry Vikas Swarup had tweeted. Modi had also extended best wishes to Sharif via his Twitter handle: My best wishes to PM Nawaz Sharif Sahab for his open heart surgery on Tuesday. And for his speedy recovery & good health, Modi tweeted. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Singapore: Jet Airways is likely to resume its Mumbai-Shanghai flights which were suspended in January 2009 due to economic reasons, a senior official has said. We are seriously evaluating re-starting flights to Shanghai, said Colin Neubronner, Senior Vice President for Sales & Marketing at Jet Airways. There is a possibility we may recommence direct flights between Mumbai and Shanghai, he told PTI here yesterday. Jet Airways flew Mumbai-Shanghai-San Francisco from June 2008 to January 2009 but stopped due to economic reasons. Jet Airways is also looking at flights from a number of Indian cities to Singapore, starting with Bangalore from early next year. The plan also includes a Mumbai-Tehran flight. Jet Airways recently started flying to Amsterdam, a new gateway to Europe. We are doing extremely well on this route, he said. The airlines is also planning to start new flights within the current financial year ending March 2017. Jet Airways has 630 daily flights, 130 on international routes. It carried 22.5 million passengers in the last fiscal year ended March 2016, seven million of which were on international flights. New Delhi: Three IIT students were detained by Italian police in North Italys Ventimiglia town on Monday during checking for illegal immigrants but were released hours later following the intervention of the Indian mission in Rome. Akshit Goyal and Deepak Bhatt, from IIT Delhi and Uday Kusupati from IIT Bombay were visiting Italy as tourists and carrying valid passports with Schengen visas. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said Italian authorities have admitted it was a mistake on their part to detain the three as their documents were in order. He said Indian Mission has taken up the issue with the Italian authorities strongly. After they were detained at Ventimiglia railway station, the three IITians were flown along with other detainees to Bari, a town almost a 1000 km away in south of Italy. Swarup said the Indian Mission in Rome, after coming to know of the incident from a relative of Akshit, swung into action and contacted Italys Ministry of Interior Affairs and police authorities in Ventimiglia. After around 10 hours, the three students were released. The students were first brought to Indian Embassy in Rome on May 31 and then the mission made arrangements for their onward journey to Nice in France the same day where they are enrolled for an internship programme at a university, Swarup said. The embassy has strongly raised the issues with the Italian authorities and is in touch with them to ensure that adequate steps are taken to ensure that such unfortunate incidents involving Indian nationals do not recur, he said. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The Centre today sought a report from the Uttar Pradesh government even as Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke to UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav after 24 people, including an SP and an SHO, were killed in a massive clash between the police and encroachers in Mathura. In a communication, the Home Ministry asked the state government to provide a detailed factual report as early as possible on the incident that took place yesterday. The incident occurred when the police were trying to evict illegal occupants, believed to be of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi, from Jawahar Bagh on the directions of the Allahabad High Court. Singh has already spoken to Yadav and reviewed the situation in Mathura. I have also assured him of all possible help from the Centre, Singh said. The Home Minister expressed his anguish over the loss of lives in Mathura. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Melbourne: From well-known spa centres to cafeterias across Australia, the unique Indian chai culture is gradually picking up through an innovative business venture launched here by a young India-born lawyer-cum-entrepreneur. Uppma Virdi who runs her business under the name Chai Walli, name used for a female chai vendor in India, said her authentic tea products from India were gaining popularity in Australia with her client lists of over 80 outlets so Far which is increasing every day. Virdi was recently invited to host a workshop at the inaugural Tea festival of Melbourne last week where she explained the participants how tea in India has its own process of being made and that there was an art involved in its making. My aim is to make Australians aware how Indian Chai culture is different to rest of the world and there are different ways we brew chai back home with so many flavours like cardamom, cloves and ayurvedic ingredients, Virdi said adding that Indians drink more chai than water. Virdi, born in Chandigarh said her tea selling skills come from her grandfather who was a natural medicine doctor with a background in Ayurveda. I learned from him how to balance spices, how to have spices seasonally like I sell chai for summer which has different spices as compared to chai for winters, she said. Her business invloves wholesale of Indian tea mixed with different spices across Australia to range of outlets including cafes, supermarkets, ice cream parlours, beauty companies and doughnut outlets.She also has an online service where one can also order Indian chai kettles, small chai glasses and strainers. For all the Latest Lifestyle News, Food News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Washington: The Indian-American gunman who shot dead his former college professor in California had also murdered his wife and planned to kill another faculty member, police said. Local news reports said Mainak Sarkar, 38, had killed his wife Ashley Hasti at her Minnesota home, before driving to Los Angeles. According to CBS Minneapolis, they were married in 2011. Sarkar shot his former professor William Klug, 39, multiple times at a small office in the Engineering Building of the University of California Los Angeles on Wednesday, before turning the gun on himself. Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck said Sarkar had plans to kill another UCLA faculty member, but could not do so as he was not able to find him. The faculty member, whose name was not revealed by police, is safe. We believe that he went to kill two faculty from UCLA. He was only able to locate one, Beck said yesterday. He said police found an extra box of ammunition in his Minnesota home. According to the LAPD chief, Sarkar arrived at the UCLA campus heavily armed. He had a backpack, two semiautomatic pistols and extra magazines. It looks like he was certainly prepared to engage multiple victims, Beck told reporters. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is assisting the Los Angeles Police Department in its investigation. In a blog post, Sarkar, an IIT Kharagpur graduate, had accused Klug of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else. William Klug, UCLA professor is not the kind of person when you think of a professor. He is a very sick person, Sarkar wrote. I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy. He made me really sick. Your enemy is your enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust. Local media quoted several university officials and students as saying that Sarkars allegation was not true. UCLA says there is no truth to this, Beck told reporters in response to a question. Klug graduated from Westmont in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science in engineering physics, completed a masters degree at UCLA and a doctorate at CalTech. He was an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA. Were deeply saddened by this tragic news and send our condolences to his wife, Mary Elise, also a Westmont graduate, and their family, UCLA President Gayle D Beebe said. Dr Klug was an excellent student at Westmont who conducted student research with two professors during his college years, Beebe said. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) today filed its first charge sheet against an alleged ISIS operative before a Special Court for purported offences of conspiracy to commit terror acts and recruiting youths to join the outfit. The agency filed the charge sheet before District Judge Amar Nath against Naser Packeer, who was arrested in December last year, alleging he was involved in a conspiracy to recruit Muslim youths in India to join ISIS and shift them to Iraq and Syria to carry out terror attacks and wage war in middle-eastern countries and in India. According to sources, in its charge sheet filed before the court during in-chamber proceedings, the agency said, Accused Naser had used the web-based social media platforms and joined a number of chat groups and had connected with his associates within and outside India. He (Naser), along with other associates, was involved in a conspiracy to recruit Muslim youths in India to join ISIS, transfer them to Iraq and Syria to commit terror attacks and wage war in the middle-eastern countries as well as in India, the charge sheet said. The court has now fixed June 9 for considering the charge sheet filed by the NIA and extended the judicial custody of the accused till that date. The agency had filed an FIR in the matter on December 9 last year against unknown persons on inputs received from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). On October 5, 2015, Naser was apprehended by Sudani authorities for concealing his identity and trying to join ISIS in Syria. Later, he was deported to India on December 10, 2015. The charge sheet has been filed for the alleged offences punishable under sections of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC). For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Mathura: When Mathura was burning in flames, Bharatiya Janata Party's Hema Malini was busy posting pictures on social media. A news agency reported on Friday that Hema Malini, an MP from Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, uploaded shoot pictures of hers on Twitter just hours after her Parliamentary constituency was hit by violence. Mathura is facing the heat following an anti-encroachment drive by the police. BJP MP (Mathura) Hema Malini uploads shoot pictures on her Twitter even as death toll from Mathura incident rises. pic.twitter.com/CCilzxReCZ ANI (@ANI_news) June 3, 2016 Moments after the news started trending on the social platforms. Hema Malini chose to delete her tweets and came up another one dedicated to Mathura violence. I just came bk frm Mathura & got the news of the violence tht has taken place there in which policemen have lost their lives. Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) June 3, 2016 So so upset by ths news frm a place which is so dear to me Will go there again if my presence is required.My heart goes out to the bereaved Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) June 3, 2016 Nearly, 24 people have been killed, including two senior police officials, in clashes between cops and encroachers following an anti-encroachment drive at Jawaharbagh. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Paris: The rain-swollen River Seine in Paris reached its highest level in three decades today, spilling its banks and prompting the Louvre museum to shut its doors and evacuate artworks in its basement. Parisians were urged to avoid the banks of the river which was expected to reach a peak of six metres (19 feet) today, while deadly floods continued to wreak havoc elsewhere in France and Germany. In France a man on horseback died after he was swept away in a swollen river in Evry-Gregy-sur-Yerre, southeast of Paris, local authorities said yesterday. And in Germany, a 65-year-old man was found dead in the flood-hit town of Simbach am Inn, bringing the total death toll in the country this week to ten. Days of torrential rain have only added to the gloomy atmosphere in France, also facing a third full day of train strikes after months of protests and political turmoil. French Environment Minister Segolene Royal said she feared more bodies would be found as waters recede in French villages which have seen main streets turned into muddy rivers. Mohamed Amine, a tourist from Venice, watched the rising waters from a Paris bridge with amusement. I am used to having water up to my knees during the Aqua Alta, when the Italian city floods in winter, he told AFP. But people in Paris are not used to it. Some towns in central France have been hit by their worst floods in over a century, with more than 5,000 people evacuated since the weekend and around 19,000 homes without power. In Paris, officials were erecting emergency flood barriers along the Seine and a suburban train line running alongside the river was closed. The riverbanks are home to both the Louvrethe worlds most visited museumand the Musee dOrsay, which was also preparing for the worst. The Musee dOrsay, a converted railway station which hosts the worlds greatest Impressionist collection, closed early Thursday and was to move its most vulnerable works to upper floors. While the rivers swelling has so far caused little damage in Paris and is unlikely to submerge the city centre, public information boards urged those living near the Seine to clear out their basements. Rescuers in the Parisian suburb of Longjumeau were paddling up streets in lifeboats, while in the town of Montargis, only the tops of cars could be seen peeking above the surface. Forecasters in both France and Germany have warned of more downpours over the next 24 hours. French President Francois Hollande said a state of natural catastrophe would be declared when the cabinet meets next Wednesday, a necessary step to trigger compensation payments. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Shimla: Nine trekkers from Delhi, stranded in remote Bara Bhangal area of Kangra district, could not be rescued today as inclement weather did not allow helicopter sorties. A chopper was sent to the area in the morning but it could not land due to strong winds and bad weather and returned, Deputy Commissioner of Kangra Ritesh Chauhan said. More sorties were not possible as wind velocity was much more in the afternoon and attempts would be made to rescue the trekkers tomorrow, he said. The trekkers, who had gone missing in the high hills, were tracked through satellite phone yesterday and shifted to rest house in Bara Bhangal but could not be airlifted as the chopper could not land due to bad weather. The trekkers are stranded for past two days and we would make fresh bid tomorrow to airlift them, subject to weather conditions, Chauhan said. The DC said that all the trekkers are safe and he had spoken to them through satellite phone. Located at an altitude of 2,800 metres in Dhauladhar mountain ranges, Bara Bhangal is one of the favourite places for foreign and Indian trekkers. The standard trekkers had reached Bara Bhangal through Manali-Bara Bhangal route. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Washington: Pakistan has not taken sufficient action against terror groups like LeT and JeM, blamed for attacks in India, the US has said while noting that these outfits continue to operate, train, organise and fundraise in that country. The State Department in its annual Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 report said that the Pakistani military and security forces undertook operations against groups that conducted attacks within Pakistan such as Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), but did not take action against externally-focused terror groups. It said some UN-designated terrorist groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) affiliates Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FiF) were able to raise funds and hold rallies in Pakistan. Pakistan did not take substantial action against the Afghan Taliban or Haqqani, or substantially limit their ability to threaten US interests in Afghanistan, although Pakistan supported efforts to bring both groups into an Afghan-led peace process. Pakistan has also not taken sufficient action against other externally-focused groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), which continued to operate, train, organize, and fundraise in Pakistan, it said. LeT and JuD leader Hafiz Saeed, who is also a UN-designated terrorist, was able to make frequent public appearances in support of the organizations objectives, which were covered by the Pakistani media. In September, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Agency prohibited media coverage of LeT and affiliated groups, although the groups continued to recruit and operate around the country. Despite JuD and FiFs proscription under UN sanctions regimes, the Pakistani government affirmed in December that neither organisation was banned in Pakistan, the State Department said. India, the State Department said continued to experience terrorist attacks, including operations launched by Maoist insurgents and transnational groups based in Pakistan. Indian authorities continued to blame Pakistan for cross-border attacks in Jammu and Kashmir, it said. In July, India experienced a terrorist attack in Gurdaspur, Punjab; the first in the state since the 1990s, the report said. Over the course of 2015, the Indian government sought to deepen counter-terrorism cooperation with the US. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi continued to prioritise counter-terrorism cooperation during Obamas visit to India in January and Modis visit to Washington in September. The Indian government closely monitored the domestic threat from the IS and other terrorist organisations, it said. The State Department said Pakistan was also slow in taking action against 2008 Mumbai attack perpetrators. The trial of seven suspects accused in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack was ongoing at years end, with many witnesses for the prosecution remaining to be called by the court. Security concerns and procedural issues resulted in a slow pace of trial proceedings. In December 2014, the court granted bail to the lead defendant, alleged Mumbai attack planner and LeT operational commander Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi. Lakhvi was released from prison on bail in April 2015 and the Government of Pakistan reports he remained under house arrest at the end of 2015, the report said. According to the State Department, money transfer systems persisted throughout much of Pakistan, especially along the countrys long border with Afghanistan and may be abused by drug traffickers and terrorist financiers operating in the cross-border area. While Pakistani authorities did report having frozen assets of UN-designated entities during 2015, the amount was unclear. The US government was not informed of any successful terrorism financing prosecutions in 2015. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: In his second visit to Afghanistan in less than six months, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today arrived here on a short trip to inaugurate a dam, a showpiece infrastructure project by India in the strategically important Herat province neighbouring Iran. The Prime Minister will also hold talks with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on the current situation in the country and the peace process besides other bilateral and regional issues. The Afghan-India Friendship Dam, earlier known as Salma dam, in western Herat district is built at a cost of over Rs 1,700 crore under Indias development partnership with Afghanistan. The dam on the river Chist-e-Sharif will irrigate 75,000 hectares of land and generate 42 MW of power. It is symbol of our friendship and would usher in hope, light up homes, nourish the fertile fields of Herat and bring prosperity to the people of the region, the Prime Minister said yesterday. The Herat province lies on the ancient trade routes of the Middle East, Central and South Asia. Roads from Herat to Iran, Turkmenistan, and other parts of Afghanistan are considered strategically important. Last month, India, Iran and Afghanistan signed an agreement to set up a trade and transport corridor with Chabahar in Iran as the hub. Over 1,500 Indian and Afghan engineers were involved in construction of the dam for several years in difficult condition. Afghanistan is Modis first stop as part of his five-nation tour which will also take him to Qatar, Switzerland, the US and Mexico. Modi had visited Kabul on December 25 last year during which he had inaugurated a swanky Parliament complex that was built by India at a cost of USD 90 million. India has a strategic partnership with Afghanistan and is implementing projects worth USD 2 billion to help rebuild the countrys infrastructure. India has been supporting an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned, broad-based and inclusive process of peace and reconciliation, and advocating the need for a sustained and long-term commitment to Afghanistan by the international community. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi : Karnataka government today said it was not expecting any mass leave protest by constabulary tomorrow, as most of them have withdrawn their leave applications. In most of the districts, the leave applications submitted by the constabulary, have been withdrawn by them, Home Minister G Parameshwara told reporters. ...Where ever they have not withdrawn, there the leave applications have been rejected, he said. He said that according to information, there would not be any strike tomorrow. After appeals made by me and Chief Minister that police is a disciplined department and all their demands will be considered, they have decided to withdraw their leave application and not to go on protest, he said. Protesting against the alleged harassment of lower rung police personnel by senior officials, lesser pay and no proper leave, constabulary have threatened to go on mass leave on June 4. Requesting police personnel not to get instigated, Prameshwara said attempts are being made by outsiders to destabilise police department... few involved in this are suspended and retired officials, with personal agenda. We are all members of Police family, so I once again request them not to pay heed to others and not to go on strike, he said. Ahead of the threatened en mass leave protest, police had yesterday announced that the head of the association spearheading the stir has been arrested. The arrest of Akhila Karnataka Police Maha Sangha President V Shashidhar from his residence came a day after government brought police and related services under the Essential Services Maintenance Act. Parmeshwara said most of the demands made by the constabulary including issuing of smart cards, weekly offs, efficient residential or quarters facilities are being met. The government was also considering demand of giving money to them along with their salary, instead of providing ration. Noting that vacancies are being filled up to bring down the work load, he said 16,000 backlog what was there from 2008-2013, we have filled up 14,000 constables in three years after coming to power, and more 3,000 are in the process. Along with this we have got permission from finance department to make 15,000 recruitment in the next two years. There is also a proposal to recruit as and when vacancy arises, he said. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Mumbai: Rich tributes were today paid to the former Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde on his second death anniversary. The BJP leader died in a road accident in Delhi two years ago. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis described him as a leader of the backward classes, who throughout his life worked for their upliftment. Gopinath Munde was truly a leader of the backward classes. He could understand their difficulties well because he himself came up by working at the grassroot level, Fadnavis said, paying homage to the departed leader at the BJP office here. He did immense work for people grappling with difficulties in rural areas. The state government is working hard to fulfil his dreams, Fadnavis added. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said the BJP-Shiv Sena combine could come to power in the state for the first time in 1995 due to the mobilisation of masses by Munde. Gopinath Munde played a very big role in the development of BJP in Maharashtra. He undertook a mass mobilisation programme of Sangharsh Yatra because of which the BJP-Shiv Sena could come to power, he said. Gadkari also said it was Mundes dream to rid farmers of economic problems and making their lives better would be a true tribute to him. At the time of his death in an accident at the age of 64, Munde, an MP from Beed in Maharashtra, was Union Minister of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Drinking Water and Sanitation in the newly elected Narendra Modi-led Government. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Jammu: Questioning Pakistans stand on Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today asked whether the militant attack on the BSF convoy in Bijbehara was the way to show its love for the people. First Pathankot airbase attack and then these type of incidents, Pakistan must think over it, if you (Pakistan) love the people of Kashmir, then this is not the way to express it, Mehbooba Mufti said during a function. Had there been a retaliatory fire (from BSF), how many innocent civilians would have lost their lives in todays attack, she said. While condemning the attack in which three BSF personnel were killed, the CM said that had the BSF retaliated to the attack, a Handawara like situation would have emerged in Bijbehara. What did they get by killing the BSF personnel who come to do their duty in the valley? There were civilians in the area, children, old aged, had the BSF retaliated how many civilians casualties would have taken place? she said. She said that common people in Kashmir do not support such type of attacks. People might have supported all this post 1987 elections but they do not support it any longer, she said. She said that Pakistan should think over this as such type of incidents wont give anything to it and the common people were bearing the brunt. Not only people get killed but the economy also suffers. My father Mufti Mohammed Sayeed toiled to bring tourists to Kashmir but such type of attacks also deter tourists from visiting the Valley, she said. Targeting the separatists for opposing the setting up of colonies for retired soldiers and Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley, she said that even when her government has made it clear that no Sainik colony would come up in Kashmir, separatists were giving strike calls. Mehbooba also said that the situation was not conducive to settling the Kashmiri Pandits back to their native villages in the valley. We cannot ask the Kashmiri Pandits to return to their villages, they need a place to live for sometime in the Valley from where they can later return to their villages. Even the leaders and party workers who are Muslims and have security guards are staying in guest houses. They are unable to live in their villages how can the Kashmiri Pandits be asked to go and live in villages, she said. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Chandigarh: After being re-elected to the Rajya Sabha, Senior Congress leader Ambika Soni today said the party will decide when the time was right to pass on the baton to Rahul Gandhi. The fact that Rahul Gandhi has to be the president of the Congress party was a decision which the party entirely with its consent and concurrence took in January 2013 when it had unanimously elected him as the vice-president. You become Vice-President, so that one day in future you will take over as the President. Which day that will be, the party, its leadership, Rahul ji and Sonia ji themselves will take a call, Soni said. The veteran Congress leader was replying to the recent remarks of Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh suggesting Rahul Gandhi to take over as Congress President. She, however, described the current Congress president as a catalytic force who united various factions within the party and said the leadership baton will be passed on when the time was right. Sonia Gandhi has really been a catalytic force in Congress party, she has united different factions and successfully gave them a direction. Without her, we would have never been able to form UPA-I, UPA-II and governments in so many states. So, whether we acknowledge that publicly or as every Congress worker always pays a silent tribute to her work, that is universal, said Soni. When asked if senior leaders would want Sonia to continue as the partys President, Soni, who is also chairperson of Congress Campaign Committee for the upcoming Punjab Assembly elections in 2017, said, look, its not a question of anyone coming in because we dont want her to continue. Congressmen would like to have all of them (the Gandhi family) in the party in one position or the other. On the suggestion of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra entering into active politics, Soni said these suggestions have been there for a very very long time. They have to take the final decision. They are thinking individuals, educated, born into Congress family. Priyanka Gandhi and Mr Vadra will take a call, it is the family who takes the call. We cannot force them. But definitely, Congress workers wants her to join, she said. As far as their Congress-mukt Bharat is concerned or Amit Shah dreaming that such a thing would happen, let me tell you they faced defeat in Uttarakhand. They went to every extent including violate constitutional provisions, demolish and denigrate democratic institutions. From Uttarakhand thing, BJP should learn a lesson, she said. On being re-elected to Rajya Sabha, Soni said, I am feeling that I have got six years more to work for Punjab. I was not hoping that I would get a re-nomination since I had also been appointed in Campaign Committee (as Chairperson) for upcoming Punjab assembly elections. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Four people will be inducted into the Appalachian Trail Hall of Fame at this years banquet being held tonight, kicking off a weekend of activities that mark the sixth anniversary of the trail museum. The banquet will be held at Allenberry Resort Inn and Playhouse in Monroe Township, beginning with a reception at 6 p.m. and music by Randy Windtalker Motz. Guest speaker will be Cindy Adams Dunn, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. New Hall of Fame members Maurice J. Forrester Jr., of Williamsport, Horace Kephart, of Bryson City, N.C., Larry Luxenberg, of New City, N.Y., and Henry Arch Nichols, of Ashville, N.C., will be honored for their contributions. The celebration will continue from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday with the opening of a new childrens area on the lower level of the museum, which is located in Pine Grove Furnace State Park. Museum manager Joe Harold said the event will include a ribbon-cutting, childrens activities, refreshments and music. Its the first major expansion of the museum, Harold said. Our plans are to eventually expand the second floor. ... We describe the museum now as past, present and future. Harold said the main floor of the museum, which houses the Hall of Fame, honors the past. The new childrens area in the basement looks to the future, and the second floor is dedicated to the present with information about the modern-day hiking culture that is basically built around the trail itself. With the addition of this years inductees, the Hall of Fame will expand to 28 individuals who have made a significant and positive contribution to the trail, according to Harold. He said some Hall of Fame members are hikers, while others work behind the scenes. They are listed on the organizations website as well as in a display at the museum. The first Hall of Fame class, inducted in 2011, includes Earl Shaffer, Benton MacKaye and Myron Avery. Harold said Shaffer is credited with being the first through-hiker, completing the Maine-to-Georgia route in four or five months in 1948. He continued to work with the trail for the rest of his life, giving his expertise to other hikers and helping to build shelters, Harold said. Benton MacKaye was an outdoorsman, Harold said. He had a forestry degree, and he came up with the idea to create a trail from Maine to Georgia along the Appalachian Mountain range. Myron Avery was a lawyer in the U.S. Navy, and he was the driving force to actually get the trail made. One of this years inductees, Luxenberg, led the effort to establish the Hall of Fame museum. Harold said interest is growing in the Appalachian Trail. More and more people are trying to hike it, he said. Every year, 2,500 to 3,000 people start in George in the spring and head to Maine. Less than 1,000 succeed. He said a smaller number of people start the trail in Maine and hike south, but the number of successful hikers remains the same. About 25 to 30 percent of those who start actually finish, he said. For more information about the Appalachian Trail, or to purchase tickets to the banquet, visit atmuseum.org. Lester Shearer was killed in combat in Italy on March 24, 1945 during World War II. He was just 29 years old. On Thursday, over 70 years later and just days after Memorial Day, Shearer was finally honored for his sacrifice at the Carlisle VFW Post 477 during a visit from State Representative Lou Barletta. Barletta presented Shearers son, Gary Shearer with a Combat Infantryman Badge (CIB) and a Purple Heart, both earned posthumously by Shearer. Gary Shearer was two years old at the time of his fathers death. Many of Lester Shearers military records were likely lost in a 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center in Overland, Missouri, which destroyed U.S. Army records spanning from 1912 to 1959, but Barlettas office was able to secure the medals after working with the National Archives and Personal Records Office to prove Lester Shearers services. It is so fitting that we present these (medals) to (Gary Shearer) today, just coming off of Memorial Day, Barletta said. We have that day because of (Shearers) father, because of war heroes that didnt come home and fought for the freedoms that we have. Gary Shearer said his brother-in-law initially contacted Barlettas office about locating any remaining records. My brother-in-law pursued it for a Christmas present, Gary Shearer said. (Barlettas) office did all the work and was able to find (my father) and dug him out of the records, which was good because some of the records were lost. Lester Shearer had been serving with the 11th Armored Infantry Battalion, 1st Armored Division at the time of his death. He is buried at the American Cemetery in Florence, Italy. To paraphrase General Patton, it is one thing to mourn our military dead, but it is better to thank God that such heroes lived in the first place, Barletta said. Presenting these medals is but a small way we can honor his memory, for we owe him and his fellow American heroes a debt we cannot ever fully repay. I dont have many words about it, Gary Shearer said. It feels great. It definitely feels really good. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate On Saturday and Sunday mornings, the line outside The Bagel Store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn wraps around the block. Rain, 60 mph winds, below-zero temperatures: nothing drives these bagel enthusiasts away from the corner of S 4th street and Bedford Avenue. What are they waiting for? The rainbow bagel, of course. There's apparently only one place in #Brooklyn to get #bagels at 1:30 pm on a Saturday. A photo posted by Chris (@brooklynchristopher) on Apr 2, 2016 at 10:36am PDT This past fall, social media discovered the rainbow bagel, which owner and head baker Scott Rossillo has been making for years. Since the explosion of Instagram photos of the neon bagel began, everyone from Business Insider to the Washington Post to reality TV star Jonathan Cheban has covered the #rainbowbagel craze. What they might not know is that the rainbow bagel was actually invented here in Fairfield County according to John Riina, owner of Village Bagel in Fairfield, Westport and Stamford. Riina says he invented the rainbow bagel back in 1995 after he and his partner read an article about a baker who had created a colorful cake for Easter. The two approached their baker to see if they could do something similar with bagels. The result was, he claims, the first rainbow bagel. "I've heard people in New York say they started it," Riina said. "Clearly, I know we started it." We're all about that rainbow bagel trend. From @village_bagels in Fairfield, Stamford, and Westport, CT. Regram via @julesdenby #CTEATS A photo posted by CT Eats Out (@cteatsout) on Apr 9, 2016 at 6:24am PDT It's true that his rainbow bagel has been popular for some time nowand among "celebrity" customers. Back in 2011, Village Bagel had a visit from some Sesame Street characters. "The big thing was to see if Cookie Monster would eat a bagel. He dida rainbow one, of course," Village bagel told Hearst. But Riina isn't bitter about the Brooklyn shop getting all the glory; he says it's rewarding to see other bakers inspired by his creation. He is especially proud to see that Stew Leonard's has created a rainbow bagel as well. The trend has also been good for business. "We sell out constantly; sometimes we can't keep up with it," Riina said. "A lot of customers say their kids only want the rainbow bagel." Village Bagel's rainbow bagel is made by "cross cutting" dough. It's more basic than the Bagel Store's, which twists the dough and uses more colors, Riina said. The Bagel Store also uses "funfetti" cream cheese that tastes like cake frosting on their rainbow bagels, while Village Bagel sticks to regular cream cheese. This may be a good move. Williamsburg resident Jacki Maynard said the funfetti cream cheese is good, but so sweet she couldn't finish the whole bagel. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate NEWTOWN A steady stream of activists, some wielding signs and all clad in orange, stretched the entire length of the steep Main Street hill Thursday evening as they neared the end of a 2-mile march aimed at raising awareness about gun violence. The march, which culminated with a rally at Edmond Town Hall, was part of the second annual National Gun Violence Awareness Day in which people across the country were encouraged to wear orange. Today is about recognizing that we have a gun violence problem, said Abbey Clements, a teacher who survived the December 2012 Sandy Hook massacre and one of about 10 speakers at the rally. We will not accept or ignore an issue that affects so many across the country. Today is about showing the national strength of our movement. The color theme was sparked by the random killing of a Chicago teenager who was shot one week after a dancing performance at President Barack Obamas second inauguration. The color matches what hunters wear in the woods to protect themselves from being accidentally shot. While many have called for federal legislation such as universal background checks for all gun purchasers or bans on the sale of certain fire arms, the measures have not passed Congress. Newtown First Selectman Pat Llodra encouraged the crowd of more than 150 to continue fighting, saying that eventually their message will be heard. I dream of a time when gun violence is not so present in our lives, Llodra said. I believe that people with good will, who stand together such as we, over time, with persistence of effort, can indeed change peoples minds. The march, which began at Newtowns Fairfield Hills campus, grew substantially from last years rally, several participants said. Along the way, cars were heard honking to show support for the activists, some of whom carried signs that read We can end gun violence, and Make America Safe Again, a play on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trumps campaign slogan. Another sign read, My right to feel safe outweighs your right to own a killing tool. Many of the marchers live in Newtown, which has become an epicenter of the anti-gun violence movement since Adam Lanza killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012. Po Murray, who chairs the Newtown Action Alliance that helped organize the rally, said that over 100,000 Americans have been killed by guns, with another 250,000 injured, since the Sandy Hook shootings more than three years ago. We are moving forward, Murray said. But we are not moving on. We refuse to do so. Terri Greenfield, a former paraprofessional who worked at Sandy Hook Elementary School but was not there on the day of the shooting, said Thursdays the event was important to draw attention to gun violence. Theres way too many gun deaths, Greenfield said. I have nothing against guns that are owned properly and have the proper controls, but we really have to try to crack down in some way. We cant sit back and do nothing anymore. New Canaan resident Carole Clarkson, who made the trek with her daughter Jennifer Killin, a Newtown resident, said it was important to distinguish between legal and safe gun ownership and those who intend to harm others. One of our problems is, we need to get the message out, because it is interpreted that were trying to get all guns banned, Clarkson said. We understand there is a hunting ritual. We really want to have guns registered and eliminate weapons such as AK-47s. Other event organizers included Connecticut Against Gun Violence, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, Sandy Hook Promise, Greenwich Council Against Gun Violence and the Brady Campaign. Later in the evening, many participants attended a screening at AMC Danbury Loews of the new gun-violence documentary, Under the Gun, made by Katie Couric and Stephanie Soechtig. A panel discussion was expected to follow the screening, with producer Kristen Lazure, Mark and Jackie Barden, who lost their son, Daniel, in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, and other members of Sandy Hook promise. awolff@newstimes.com; 203-731-3333; @awolffster In The Brand Mapping Strategy, branding and marketing strategist Karen Tiber Leland shares her hard-earned insights, proven strategies, and best practices for creating a brand by design -- instead of by default -- to help you gain greater influence within your industry and become a thought leader in your field. In this edited excerpt, Leland explains the importance of creating a website that supports your brand. The first step to becoming a thought leader is to develop a strong foundation on which you can build your brand. It requires defining, articulating, and declaring your brand and then translating that into places where people can effectively engage with your business. The problem is that I have seen far too many people haphazardly rush into building buzz for their brand, only to drive traffic back to a website and/or social media sites that dont hit the mark. Have you ever heard the expression If I had a dollar for every time ... ? Well, heres my version. If I had a dollar for every time a businessperson has complained to me about the countless hours (and enormous amount of money) theyve spent on building a website that wasnt quite right, Id be retired in Hawaii watching the waves, a fruity drink in my hand. Building a website before determining the specifics of your brand message is always a mistake. Your brand is what drives the website design -- not the other way around. In my experience, many business people (especially entrepreneurs and small-business owners) grossly underestimate the impact and importance of their websites. I can tell you with absolute certainty that the quality of your website is critical to your customers, potential customers, and even members of the media. Heres a story that illustrates this point. The Disappointed Journalist I recently had a conversation with a reporter from a major media outlet who was lamenting the lack of usable sources for stories. I often get referred to an expert who I think would be a good interviewee for a piece Im writing, she told me. But when I go to their website, its so badly written, designed, or simply unprofessional that I cant risk using them. If I quote them as an expert and a reader goes to their website and sees how poorly executed it is, that calls into question their credibility and, as a result, reflects badly on me, she explained. It looks like I didnt do my research and find a top-notch person to interview. Personally, I found that fascinating -- but not surprising. It was interesting that a credible expert cant be used because of their websites perceived lack of credibility. I wish I could say this was an unusual event in my line of work, but in fact its a common occurrence. The fact is, the quality of your website matters. There are hundreds of large and small decisions that impact how well a website reflects a businesss brand and marketing orientation. Below is a very brief glance at just a few elements that I feel pack the biggest punch. And while they may seem obvious, every day I see websites that miss the mark on these basic items. 1. Color and design Specific colors and types of design (fonts, layouts, etc.) go in and out of fashion. What might have been considered modern a year ago seems dated today. The quintessential example is the 1980s top dog of color -- mauve. At one time, it was the new black, found on everything from logos to living room walls. Today, mauve is mostly considered an old-fashioned hue -- something your granny might wear. One infographic from Kissmetrics highlighted various research on the impact of color and design on online branding and buying, including the following points: Color increases brand recognition by 80 percent. 42 percent of shoppers base their opinion of a website on overall design alone. 52 percent of shoppers didnt return to a website because of overall aesthetics. 93 percent of consumers place visual appearance and color above other factors when shopping. Its statistics like these that leave me shaking my head in wonder when a business owner tells me, I just left that stuff up to my web guy. While many web developers have a terrific feel for what looks good, its still critical for clients to think through the brand messages that certain colors, fonts, layouts, and other design elements evoke. 2. Speedy navigation Lets face it: People have no patience. According to one survey by Kissmetrics, websites with a mere one-second delay in page response time can see a 7 percent reduction in conversions. The bottom line is, your visitors wont wade through a website that doesnt easily and quickly take them to where they want to go. 3. Contact and social media above the fold If youve ever had to search a site for a companys contact information or social media connections, you know how irritating it can be. Branding best practice is to place your contact information and social media buttons (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) above the fold (toward the top of the page), so they can be seen as soon as someone lands on your site without scrolling down. 4. Calls to action One of the main functions of your website is to encourage visitors to engage and interact with your company. Go beyond the passive Contact us and Friend me on Facebook to offer people an active and immediate call to action with such offers as: Sign up for a newsletter Take a quiz Download an audio or video file Fill out a poll or survey Make a comment Pose a question Sign up for a webinar or teleclass Download an ebook or white paper Make an appointment for a complimentary consultation One important benefit of a call to action is that it captures contact information and helps you build a list of potential customers and interested individuals -- at least those who want to be captured. Some marketers call this an ethical bribe: Ill give you something for free (ebook, webinar, audio file, etc.), and in exchange, you give me your email address and permission to periodically contact you with information and offers. 5. Responsive design We live in a world of screens -- big and small. According to the Pew Research Center, 64 percent of American adults now own a smartphone of some kind, and one in five conduct most of their online browsing on their mobile phones. Day by day, the number of devices, platforms, and browsers that need to work with your site grows, writes Jeffrey Veen, design partner at True Ventures in San Francisco. Responsive web design represents a fundamental shift in how well build websites for the decade to come. That, as it turns out, is an understatement. In one survey from Google, 67 percent of users reported they were more likely to make a purchase from a site thats mobile-friendly, and 52 percent said theyd be less likely to engage with a business if the mobile experience wasnt up to par. In the mobile era, designing a well-branded website means making sure your pages also work well and look great on a tablet, smartphone, and any other platforms that may come to pass. Related: Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved Like many of his fellow Vietnam War servicemen, Roger Rule came from a family with a rich military tradition. I guess you could say (I joined the military) because our family has a background in the service, Rule said. My dad and my two uncles were all in the service. One of my uncles was part of Merrills Marauders in India. They sent several thousand into India and only 143 came back. He was one of them. My other uncle was injured badly in the Pacific and wore those wounds for a long time. Rule began to learn about the Navy at a young age through a scouts-like program. One of the things that (led to me joining the military) was being a scout, Rule said. My dad had gotten me into a Navy league-type thing and I went with him to that. It was like Cub Scouts but you learned about the Navy. Rule, who grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, later became licensed to teach standard and advanced first aid courses with the American Red Cross during high school. He decided to join the Navy in 1967, becoming a hospital corpsman. A chief caught wind of (what I was doing) and said You have to come in (to the Navy) and become a corpsman. Long story short, thats exactly what happened. I became corpsman. They sent me down to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina for survival training. Rule was eventually sent into Vietnam in June 1968 with the 22nd Seabees out of Gulfport, Mississippi. You got a real introduction into being (in Vietnam) because we got off of the airplane at 8 at night and it was like going into a fish bowl, Rule said. It was so humid and hot when we got there. Tour Rule spent much of his tour traveling between several different locations in Vietnam. We landed in Da Nang, and I was there for about a week and then I was moved up north with a smaller unit, and we went to a camp called Phu Bia, Rule said. We were there for a while and then we went to Hue, and we were there for a pretty good bit. Then we moved all the way to Dong Ha at the DMZ. That was interesting. When I was at these places, one of the things they wanted us to do was develop a rapport with the South Vietnamese people, Rule added. I went on a number of (medical assignments) where Id go to local villages and do things like deliver babies and give shots of penicillin. Though Rules responsibilities were not commonly set amidst the main fighting of the war, they proved at times to be just as horrifying. On one hand it was sort of fulfilling to help people, but on the other hand it was (the) most ungodly thing I had ever seen, Rule said. You got to see what war really does to people. It was not good. Occasionally, however, the violence of the war crossed Rules path directly. Some of the corpsman and medics over there were in extremely bad situations, Rule said. There were some bad firefights, and I was fortunate that I was not in a lot of those, but were there firefights? Yes. We probably had the worst firefight at the DMZ, shortly after (President Lyndon B. Johnson) announced a bombing halt of North Vietnam. We thought they wouldnt come across. It was terrible. During his medical assignments, Rule said he occasionally developed a strong connection to the people he was aiding. When I was in Hue, I got to meet some nuns that had an orphanage there, and there was a little boy (and) I got attached to him, Rule said. I wanted to bring him home but there was no way that could happen. I cant even put that into words. It was different in each area. Education In December 1968, Rule was one of 12 soldiers of various skillsets, who were recruited to join an education initiative in Saigon the brainchild of Vice Admiral Elmo Zumwalt. At the time, Rule had been serving a dual role as both corpsman and radio operator. My CO told me, You should go, it is a great opportunity, Rule said. So they put me on a helicopter and I got down to Da Nang and then got on a jet and flew down to Saigon. What they did is they recruited around 12 of us and each person did something different. Rule was tasked with teaching English and hospital corpsman fundamentals to the South Vietnamese. I explained to them what to do if someone got hurt (or) if someone got shot, Rule said. I showed them how to do CPR. I basically taught basic first aid. It wasnt until later that Rule learned of a chilling detail surrounding him joining Zumwalts program. The sergeant of arms in Saigon said to me one day over some drinks, Do you know why the old man up (at the DMZ) was so eager to get rid of you? I said, No. I thought I was doing a pretty good job. He said back, You were doing a great job; that was the problem. There was a bounty out on your head because you were a corpsman and a radioman. That wasnt totally unusual, Rule added. They always wanted to take radiomen out more than corpsman, but they somehow found out I was doing both. Rule returned from Vietnam in March 1969. He said he struggled at first with re-acclimating to normal life. I smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, Rule said. My nerves were shot. But he credited his family with helping him get back on track. My mom and I took a trip to California by car and as we were pulling out the driveway, she told me to get rid of my cigarettes because I was going to quit smoking, Rule said. It was a very interesting trip, let me tell you. I did wind up quitting. Rule went on to hold a sales management position with a wholesale district for 26 years. Today, he resides in Enola, where he works part-time with Capital Automotive Refinishing. I would say that all the experiences I have had, both in Vietnam and when I came back (have) made me a well-rounded individual, Rule said. As you get older and you look back, you cant say woulda-shoulda-coulda. For the most part, I can say that I have had a good life. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Contributed / Danbury Police Department Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Contributed / Danbury Police Department Show More Show Less 3 of 3 DANBURY The owners of a local bonding company were themselves held on bail this week after police said they misappropriated funds from a client. Dameisha Moore, who owns Moore Bail Bonds, and her husband and business partner, Michael Baptiste, were arrested on a warrant Thursday morning stemming from a January 2015 complaint against their company, which is located at 4 Moss Ave. across the street from the state Superior Court. A Danbury entrepreneur who bilked money out of investors to pay for travel to Nantucket and shopping at Louis Vuitton could face new charges after one of his victims told a federal judge that he paid her money not to testify. At a sentencing hearing Wednesday in federal court in Hartford, U.S. District Judge Vanessa L. Bryant asked the prosecuting and defense attorneys to investigate the claims, which could result in charges of obstruction of justice. The defendant, 22-year-old Alexander Bergen, already faces up to 10 years in jail, a fine of more than $500,000 and an order of restitution. He pleaded guilty last August to one count of interstate transportation of money obtained by fraud, but his sentencing has been delayed several times and was postponed again this week after the new allegations surfaced. The former Bethel resident operated CT Wholesale, an online business he launched in 2012 to buy electronic equipment and other products at low prices and resell them at higher ones. In 2013, he began seeking investors, promising big profits on their shares, according to court records. Promising profit margins you have never seen before, he told about 10 investors he would use their money solely to buy products for resale and that they would later get back their principal with a profit, authorities said. But Bergen spent much of the money to pay his personal credit card bills, including expenses for fine dining, travel and shopping at high-end retail stores, court documents show. Bergen collected more than $300,000 from those investors, but returned less than $40,000 to them, court records show. Collectively, investors lost about $286,000. At Wednesdays hearing, one victim said Bergen paid her amounts between $200 and $800 three times after he was arrested, asking her not to testify against him. The woman, a Redding resident, said he stopped paying her when his attorney told him it was an admission of guilt. That victim said Bergen ruined her life. Ive been drowning in debt, she said. Ive been having to have the state and the town help me pay my bills because of him. I trusted him, the woman added. I thought he was my friend. I watched him buy $14,000 snakeskin coats for his girlfriend and take trips to London on my money so that he could shop at Burberry. Meantime, Im home trying to pay my bills. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael McGarry, who described Bergen as a predatory white-collar offender, asked the judge Wednesday to sentence him to 24 to 30 months in prison. A long prison term is needed to deter other entrepreneurs from defrauding investors in the same way, McGarry said. They need to know... that when you lie to people and take their money, there are real consequences, he said. This is not something where you say, Oh well, they were young and foolish, thats OK, because thats not OK. Bergens attorney said his client should be credited for admitting he made a mistake. There is no doubt that he committed a serious offense, Attorney David Keenan said in his pre-sentencing memorandum, noting that Bergen used investors money to fund a profligate lifestyle that included vacations to Nantucket and Europe, shopping sprees at Louis Vuitton and Burberry, and the purchase of electronic goods and other personal items. Keenan asked the judge not to send his client to jail, citing Bergens immaturity and personal issues including a tough upbringing and a speech impediment; his potential vulnerability in prison; his lack of criminal history; and low risk of recidivism. Bergen expressed regret in a letter he wrote to the judge. Theres not a day that has gone by that I havent thought about the people who I have caused harm to, he said. I never thought that Id be the person to inflict this much pain and anguish on the people who surrounded me. I want nothing more than the victims to know how deeply sorry I am for my actions, Bergen continued. I care about every single person that is on the victim list. They were my friends. noliveira@newstimes.com, 203-731-3411, @olivnelson On a difficult day for the U.S. military, a Blue Angels F/A-18 fighter jet crashed Thursday near Nashville, Tennessee, killing the pilot just days before a weekend air show performance, officials said. Also, in rain-soaked Texas, at least three soldiers were killed and six were missing after an Army truck was washed from a low-water crossing and overturned Thursday in a rain-swollen creek at Fort Hood, the Texas Army post said. And, a jet piloted by a member of the Thunderbirds, the U.S. Air Forces elite performance team, crashed just after flying over the U.S. Air Force Academys graduation in Colorado, which was attended by President Barack Obama. But the pilot of that jet ejected. A U.S. official said the Blue Angels pilot was Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. According to his official Blue Angels biography, Kuss joined the elite acrobatics team in 2014 and accumulated more than 1,400 flight hours. The Navy said in a news release that the pilot was beginning to take off during an afternoon practice session when the crash happened. Five other F/A-18 jets landed safely moments after the crash. Kuss was a native of Durango, Colorado, and was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant in the Marines in 2006. He had previously served in Afghanistan before joining the Blue Angels. In Smyrna, retired teacher Brenda Lewis and her 21-year-old grandson had spent much of the day in her backyard near the airport watching the Blue Angels fly overhead. Shes seen them many times before. But this afternoon, something made me really want to watch them, she said. They looked like they were having such a good time playing up there. She went inside to bake a chocolate pie when she heard a loud boom. She didnt think too much of it at first because the airport is just on the other side of her tree line and shes used to loud noises. Then she heard sirens and went around the corner. She saw the smoke rising and police cars arriving. She went inside because she didnt want to see any more. Im always so fascinated by them, the anticipation of it all, she said of their airshow. Then something tragic like this happens. My heart is just broken. Army aircraft, canine search teams, swift-water rescue watercraft and heavy trucks were being used in the search for the six missing soldiers in Texas. The Army did not release the names of the dead because it was still notifying relatives. Fort Hood spokesman John Miller said the low-water crossing of the creek was flooded by two days of intermittent heavy rains when the swift water swept the truck, called a Light Medium Tactical Vehicle, from the road. The Air Force identified the Thunderbirds pilot as Maj. Alex Turner, of Chelmsford, Massachusetts. He has more than 270 combat hours over Libya and Iraq. News of the crash broke while Obamas motorcade was returning to Peterson Air Force Base for his flight back to Washington. Turner ejected about 15 miles south of the Air Force Academy near Peterson, where Air Force One was waiting to take off. He later met with Obama. SAN FRANCISCO, CA, June 3, 2016 /CNW/ - In support of the objectives of the 7th Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) and inaugural Mission Innovation Ministerial in San Francisco, the Honourable Jim Carr, Canada's Minister of Natural Resources, Pedro Joaquin Coldwell, Mexico's Secretary of Energy, and Dr. Ernest Moniz, United States' Secretary of Energy, reviewed their cooperative efforts underway to foster sustainable energy development, address climate change, and encourage economic growth. The Clean Energy Ministerial and first official Mission Innovation Ministerial come just over one hundred days after Secretary Moniz, Minister Carr, and Secretary Joaquin Coldwell met in Winnipeg and signed the Memorandum of Understanding Concerning Climate Change and Energy Collaboration. The meetings in San Francisco provide an opportunity to recognize the collective progress made to date by our three countries in advancing our mutual clean energy and climate objectives, including: Accelerating investments in clean energy research and development by announcing each of our countries' plans for doubling these investments over the next five years, as part of the Mission Innovation initiative. Identifying shared North American priorities for collaboration on clean energy innovation technologies. Advancing North American economic competitiveness by recruiting companies to implement the ISO 50001 standard to improve energy efficiency in industry. As part of CEM's Energy Management Campaign our countries will provide companies with the tools and training resources to facilitate implementation of the standard. Launching the North American Renewable Integration Study to better understand the planning and operational impacts of integrating growing renewable energy sources, such as solar, hydro and wind, into our electricity grids. Further advancing clean energy, energy innovation, and the shift towards a low-carbon economy by continuing their support for the CEM Clean Energy Solutions Center (including RETScreen services, a multi-language software used globally to evaluate energy costs, savings, and emissions), and the CEM7 Technology Showcase. This work by Mexico, the United States and Canada will also support the upcoming North American Leaders' Summit in Ottawa on June 29. The three countries share a common vision of accelerating clean energy development to address climate change and energy security. Working together to advance clean growth by building on North America's strengths as a global energy leader is essential as we transition towards a low carbon economy. Quotes "I am pleased to see our three countries continue to make progress following the North American Energy Ministers Meeting hosted in Winnipeg in early February. Our work to advance a continental approach to energy collaboration is an essential building block as Canada prepares to host the North American Leaders' Summit in Ottawa." Jim Carr Canada's Minister of Natural Resources "We are enthusiastic to see how the progress in our trilateral energy cooperation translates into specific actions and results within the context of the CEM7 and Mission Innovation ministerial meetings in San Francisco, as key global mechanisms for the implementation of our clean energy and sustainability objectives. Mexico has highly benefited from CEM's renewed platform since we hosted the ministerial in Merida last year, as part of the implementation of our energy reform and commitment for expanding clean technologies." Pedro Joaquin Coldwell Mexico's Secretary of Energy "Trilateral energy cooperation between the United States, Canada, and Mexico is crucial to advancing our energy security and growing low-carbon economies," said U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. "Today's announcement by the North American energy ministers demonstrates our collective support for CEM7 and Mission Innovation as tools to implement our countries' commitments made in Paris to combat climate change by developing and deploying clean energy technologies." Dr. Ernest Moniz United States Secretary of Energy Related Products Backgrounders: North American Collaboration RETScreen Software ISO50001 standards Associated Links SOURCE Natural Resources Canada Image with caption: "Mexican Secretary of Energy, Pedro Joaquin Coldwell, U.S. Secretary of Energy, Dr. Ernest Moniz, and Canadas Minister of Natural Resources, Jim Carr, meet during the Clean Energy Ministerial in San Francisco on June 1, 2016, to discuss progress on North American energy collaboration. (CNW Group/Natural Resources Canada)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160603_C8563_PHOTO_EN_705884.jpg For further information: Canada: Laurel Munroe, Director of Communications, Office of the Minister of Natural Resources, 343-292-6837; Media Relations, Natural Resources Canada, Ottawa, 343-292-6100; Mexico: Victor Aviles Castro, Director General of Social Communication, Mexican Ministry of Energy, [email protected], +5250006000 ext. 1016; Mariana Leon Ochoa, Press Office, Mexican Ministry of Energy, [email protected], +5250006000 ext. 2020; United States: Andrew Gumbiner, Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Energy, 202-586-4940 SAN FRANCISCO, June 2, 2016 /CNW/ - Investments in clean energy and emission-reducing research and development are essential to growing the economy and protecting the environment as we transition to a low-carbon future. As such, Canada's Minister of Natural Resources, the Honourable Jim Carr, says Canada will double its funding for clean energy and clean technology research and development, increasing from $387 million in 2014-2015 to $775 million by 2020. Minister Carr made the announcement today during the inaugural Mission Innovation Ministerial in San Francisco. The Government of Canada joined Mission Innovation in November 2015 with 20 other nations and the European Union as part of a global effort to accelerate clean energy innovation with the goal of making clean energy widely affordable. Minister Carr and energy ministers from around the world held the Mission Innovation meeting while gathered for the 7th Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM). At the CEM, Minister Carr outlined several Canadian initiatives addressing climate change, such as government support for schools and hospitals to adopt higher-efficiency lighting, and encouraging the adoption of more climate-friendly cooling products. The CEM's CleanTech Solutions Showcase, held alongside the government meetings, promoted six Canadian companies to potential customers and investors. The Government of Canada hosted a complementary Canada Cleantech Showcase with an additional 17 Canadian companies seeking international sales and investment. For Minister Carr, Mexican Secretary of Energy Pedro Joaquin Coldwell and U.S. Secretary of Energy Dr. Ernest Moniz, the CEM marks the first 100 days since signing the Memorandum of Understanding concerning Climate Change and Energy Collaboration in Winnipeg. The ministers used the occasion to measure progress against work plan objectives and to discuss advancing clean energy action ahead of the upcoming North American Leaders' Summit in Ottawa at the end of June. Quotes "Homegrown emission-reducing and clean energy technologies play an increasingly important role in Canada's economic growth as we support the global transition to a low-carbon economy. Government and private sector investments in clean energy and technology research and development will help us meet our climate change objectives, increase Canada's competitiveness and support employment opportunities across the country. The progress we are already making on global clean energy cooperation in making clean energy affordable bodes well for the future as we advance common energy, environment and economic goals." Jim Carr, Canada's Minister of Natural Resources Related Products Mission Innovation in Canada Clean Energy Ministerial joint news release Mission Innovation joint news release Follow us on Twitter: Natural Resources Canada: @NRCan (http://twitter.com/nrcan) NRCan's news releases and backgrounders are available at www.news.gc.ca. SOURCE Natural Resources Canada For further information: Laurel Munroe, Director of Communications, Office of the Minister, Natural Resources Canada, 343-292-6837; Or Media Relations, Natural Resources Canada, Ottawa, 343-292-6100 SAINT-LAURENT, QC, June 3, 2016 /CNW Telbec/ - Together with employees, community partners, and the support of Robert Dumas and Sun Life Financial Quebec, McKesson Canada is pleased to announce they've raised $92,800 for Leucan in support of children living with cancer across Quebec. On June 3 at its head office in Saint-Laurent, Quebec, McKesson Canada held its sixth annual Leucan Shaved Head Challenge, presented by PROXIM supporting Leucan. For this year's edition, McKesson Canada invited key partner Robert Dumas, President of Sun Life Financial Quebec, and his employees to participate in the Challenge. The Leucan Shaved Head Challenge is a fundraiser where participants "put a price on their heads" and invite friends, colleagues, and loved ones to donate as they shave their heads in support of Leucan. "Today was a good hair day at McKesson Canada. The success of this fundraiser is a true testament to the commitment of our team members to go above and beyond to help those in our communities in need of support," said Alain Champagne, President, McKesson Canada. "We're incredibly proud that our team members committed to this effort and shaved their heads, both in support of Leucan and in solidarity with children battling this disease across the province." McKesson Canada held other head-shaving events at its offices in Markham and Mississauga, Ontario. A total of 20 McKesson Canada employees shaved their heads to support Leucan in Quebec and other childhood cancer charities across Canada. "Last year, I had the privilege of being the honorary chair for The Leucan Experience Gala and was inspired by the fighting spirit of the many young people and their families," said Robert Dumas, President, Sun Life Financial, Quebec. "I then made a commitment to Alain Champagne that I'd participate in this year's Shaved Head Challenge! I've kept my promise. I'm very proud that the young spokespeople have inspired our team and that we're on board for the 2016 edition." McKesson Canada and its retail banner pharmacy PROXIM have been supporters of Leucan since 2010. Collectively, the companies have contributed over $700,000 to help Leucan's important work. About McKesson Canada Founded over 100 years ago, our company is dedicated to the delivery of vital medication, medical supplies and the development of information technologies that enable the health industry to offer patients better and safer care. Our solutions enable pharmacies, manufacturers, hospitals and other health care institutions to reach out to the millions of patients they treat daily, while contributing to the quality and safety of care in Canada. About Leucan For more than 35 years, Leucan has been supporting cancer-stricken children and their families from the day of diagnosis through every stage of the disease. As a loyal ally of hundreds of families and thousands of members across Quebec, the Association provides specific and personalized services delivered by a qualified team with a cutting edge expertise. Leucan also funds clinical research and the Leucan Information Centre. With its many offices, Leucan is present throughout Quebec. About Sun Life Financial Sun Life Financial is a leading international financial services organization providing a diverse range of protection and wealth products and services to individuals and corporate customers. Sun Life Financial has operations in a number of markets worldwide, including Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, India, China, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and Bermuda. As of December 31, 2015, the Sun Life Financial group of companies had total assets under management of $891 billion. For more information please visit www.sunlife.com. SOURCE MCKESSON CANADA Image with caption: "Alain Champagne, President of McKesson Canada, Robert Dumas, President of Sun Life Financial Quebec, employees, partners and supporters raise $92,800 for Leucan in support of children fighting cancer in Quebec. (CNW Group/MCKESSON CANADA)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160603_C4643_PHOTO_EN_705752.jpg For further information: Media Contact: Elizabeth Huart, Public Affairs, McKesson Canada, 514-832-2587, [email protected] OTTAWA, June 2, 2016 /CNW/ - Today, the Honourable Carolyn Bennett, Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs, made the following statement: "Today marks the anniversary of an historic event for all Canadians. In June 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its 94 Calls to Action, aimed at redressing the legacy of residential schools and advancing the process of reconciliation in Canada. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Final Report is a monumental achievement, and has laid a foundation on which all Canadians can build to advance the journey of reconciliation. This work is testament to the courage former students and their families showed in sharing their stories about the Indian Residential School system, a dark and tragic chapter in this country's history. Senator Murray Sinclair is indeed correct, when he said that, "progress needs to be constant." Our government is committed to working in full partnership with Indigenous peoples to build a national framework to further ongoing reconciliation. Since coming into office, we have launched an inquiry into the unacceptable rates of missing and murdered Indigenous women, become an unqualified supporter of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and we are working to fully implement Jordan's Principle. Budget 2016 makes historic investments to begin to close the gap in quality of life for Indigenous people. These investments will better support the wellbeing of children and families on-reserve; to improve the quality of education for First Nations children; and to urgently address housing needs on reserve. Reconciliation has to be about all Canadians. From coast to coast to coast, Canadians are embarking on the journey of reconciliation and developing responses to the Calls to Action. From teachers and students, to municipalities, provinces and territories, Canadians are taking leadership to support reconciliation. June is National Aboriginal History Month, and on June 21st we celebrate the 20th anniversary of National Aboriginal Day. As part of these celebrations, I'm hoping all Canadians will join me in also making the month of June Indigenous Book Club month. Let us use the momentum and energy from this year's celebration to continue to learn more about the unique culture, heritage, and the past and present contributions of Indigenous peoples to Canada. I believe that together, as we move forward into Canada's next 150 years, our shared efforts will make a better, stronger Canada." This statement is also available on the Internet at www.aandc.gc.ca . You can subscribe to receive our news releases and speeches via RSS feeds or e-mail. For more information or to subscribe, visit www.aandc.gc.ca/subscriptions. Stay Connected Follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Flickr. SOURCE Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada For further information: Sabrina Williams, Press Secretary, Office of the Honourable Carolyn Bennett, 819-997-0002; Media Relations, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, 819-953-1160 TORONTO, June 2, 2016 /CNW/ - Park Lawn Company Limited (CSE:PRL) ("The Company") today announced its financial results for the three-month period ending March 31, 2016 ("Q1") showing earnings of $4.47 per share. On January 6, 2016 the Company completed an agreement with Mattamy for the development of the Company's property at 57 Linelle Street, Toronto, Ontario. As a consequence, the statements of operations report a pre-income tax net gain from the sale to Mattamy of $5,806,496, for the three-month period ended March 31, 2016, and an after tax income for the quarter of $5,059,485 or $4.47 per share. The parties entered into an agreement for the development of the Company's property at 57 Linelle Street, Toronto. Mattamy has acquired an 80% interest in this land for $8.2 million. 30% of the purchase price was paid upon closing with an additional 10% payable in 120 days. For the balance of 60%, the Company has taken a vendor take back a mortgage for up to three years. The Company has retained a 20% interest in the land and has entered into a co-ownership agreement with Mattamy. The co-owners' agreement contemplates the development of the land for low-rise residential development. The Company and Mattamy will divide profits from the development and sale of the land held for development with the Company receiving 20% and Mattamy 80%. About Park Lawn In addition to its continued involvement in the development of the 57 Linelle Street site, Park Lawn Company Limited holds a Promissory Note in the amount of $5,096,498 issued by Park Lawn Corporation, a vendor take back mortgage of $4,920,000, and owns the house and land located at 53 Linelle Street, Toronto, Ontario. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE Park Lawn Company Limited For further information: Frank Mills, President, or Larry Boland, Vice President and Treasurer, Park Lawn Company Limited, Tel: (647) 933-9079, Fax: (416) 512-6076 TORONTO, June 3, 2016 /CNW/ - Patients Canada is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization dedicated to reflecting and amplifying the voice of patients concerning priorities that matter to them. Patients Canada applauds Minister Hoskins' vision of a more seamless health care system that is more responsive to patients. "Patients Canada will take a wait and see approach regarding the claims being made about benefits to patients as a result of the proposed legislation", says Michael Decter, Board Chair of Patients Canada. "While we applaud the intentions behind this transformation and its ambitious goals, we are unable to see how a major restructuring of boards and more bureaucratic management and oversight of health providers and health organizations will result in more responsive, effective, compassionate delivery of health care services to patients." Patients Canada believes that the health care system needs a huge change in culture whereby the patient is actually the focus not just of what is done but how it is done around patient, not just system priorities. For example, having a prescription faxed to a pharmacy that is closed is not helpful, nor is having hospital appointments being sent by mail. It is not convenient for patients to have to communicate with the health system by phones that they cannot get through on or fax machines they do not have, when email is available. The manner in which test results are handled leads to tremendous anxiety for patients and this needs to be addressed. In short, delivery level processes must be redesigned around patients' preferences and convenience and not that of providers or bureaucracies. Patients Canada believes that it is essential that providers and health organizations can remain focused on patient care. We hope that restructuring of this magnitude does not take focus away from that care as providers and bureaucracies conquer new learning curves to carry out functions they never did before. We are disappointed that CCAC nurses will be transferred from the CCAC to LHINs. Patients Canada believes that patient care should be delivered by providers who are working within health care organizations not bureaucracies. The Minister has acknowledged that these changes will take years to implement. Patients Canada welcomes the engagement of patients at more decision making levels as the system is reformed and looks forward to working with Minister Hoskins to fully implement these provisions. It is extremely important to patients that Minister Hoskins succeeds in these very worthy goals. SOURCE Patients Canada For further information: Media contact: Christina Spencer, Communications, Patients Canada, [email protected], (416) 900-2975. @PatientsCanada. MISSISSAUGA, ON, June 3, 2016 /CNW/ - June is Ricoh's EcoAction month. This year marks the 11th anniversary of the Ricoh Global Eco Action initiative. Under this initiative, Ricoh has implemented a broad spectrum of common global activities as well as local initiatives tailored to suit the distinct features of each area, thereby inspiring a greater number of people to join in the global eco action. During the action period, a wide range of stakeholders from employee groups, their family members and friends, local communities, residents and business partners will participate in a variety of planned activities that share a common commitment to the environment. To kick off EcoAction month, Ricoh Canada has partnered with the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup and will be cleaning up the shorelines, lakes, ponds and parks across Canada on June 3rd. Through this partnership, Ricoh has already succeeded in diverting over 3,600 pounds of litter. The Ricoh Eco Action campaign has cleanups scheduled in 21 communities across Canada. "Thanks to the efforts of Ricoh employees, thousands of pieces of litter and debris will be removed from Canadian shorelines before they can enter our waterways and cause harm. The positive impact is immediate," said Kate Le Souef, manager of the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup. "Ricoh's EcoAction month demonstrates how organizations can take the lead in caring for our environment." Ricoh's EcoAction initiative is just one of many ongoing campaigns the company is involved in to help make consideration for the environment a central element of how the company, and its employees, go about their daily tasks. About the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup The Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, presented by Loblaw Companies Limited, is one of the largest direct action conservation programs in Canada. A conservation initiative of the Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Centre and WWF-Canada, the Shoreline Cleanup aims to promote understanding of shoreline litter issues by engaging Canadians to rehabilitate shoreline areas through cleanups. For further information, please visit http://www.shorelinecleanup.ca/ | About Ricoh | Ricoh is a global technology company that has been transforming the way people work for more than 80 years. Under its corporate tagline imagine. change. Ricoh continues to empower companies and individuals with services and technologies that inspire innovation, enhance sustainability and boost business growth. These include document management systems, IT services, production print solutions, digital cameras, and industrial systems. Headquartered in Tokyo, Ricoh Group operates in over 190 countries. In the financial year ending March 2015, Ricoh Group had worldwide sales of 2,231 billion yen (approx. 18.5 billion USD). For further information, please visit www.ricoh.com 2016 RICOH CANADA INC. All rights reserved. All referenced product names are the trademarks of their respective companies. SOURCE Ricoh Canada Inc. For further information: Dan Newman, Ricoh Canada, Phone 905-795-5788, [email protected] MONTREAL, June 3, 2016 /CNW Telbec/ - In anticipation of Canadian Forces Day on Sunday June 5th, VIA Rail Canada (VIA Rail) announced its intention to continue passenger rail's over a century of support for our nation's military and attract more Canadian Forces members and veterans into its ranks. This initiative will be done by introducing a new leave policy for employees who serve in the military reserves and through renewed efforts to help veterans join Canada's intercity passenger rail company. "VIA Rail has a long and proud tradition of supporting members of the military and veterans communities and their families," said the Honourable Marc Garneau, Minister of Transport. "This is yet another initiative that clearly demonstrates VIA Rail's commitment to serve and support the men and women in uniform who selflessly serve Canada, both at home and abroad." "Remembrance means not only thinking about the commitment and the ultimate sacrifice made by our members of the military past and present - but also acting on it," said the President and CEO of VIA Rail, Yves Desjardins-Siciliano. "Veterans can make a definite contribution to the future of VIA Rail since they can bring their technical and leadership skills as well as discipline and commitment to serving Canadians." VIA Rail Canada is already working with partners such as Canada Company's Military Employment Transition (MET) Program and the Commissionaire's MISSION EMPLOI which both help former Canadian military members make the transition to civilian life. "This is great news for Canadian veterans. I applaud VIA Rail Canada for leading the way for other Canadian Corporations and the Rail Industry to support Veterans by providing them outstanding employment opportunities," said the Honourable Kent Hehr, Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence. "By helping military members make the transition to civilian employment, VIA Rail is affirming that Canada's men and women in uniform are well-trained and accomplished individuals with the skills and experience to be a real asset to any organization." In addition to its partnerships with veteran-hiring groups, VIA Rail's has a specifically designed webpage for members of the military and veterans communities: career.viarail.ca/en/why-choose-us/veterans-program. VIA Rail also supports members of the Defence community through partnerships with the Royal Canadian Legions' National Poppy Campaign, True Patriot Love and the Army Run. In addition, a 25% reduction on the best available fare is offered to members of the Canadian Forces, as well as veterans and their families. Since 2010, over 150,000 military personnel have taken advantage of this offer and travelled on VIA Rail trains. About VIA Rail Canada As Canada's national rail passenger service, VIA Rail ( viarail.ca ) and its 2,600 employees are mandated to provide safe, efficient and economical passenger transportation service, in both official languages of our country. VIA Rail operates intercity, regional and transcontinental trains linking over 400 communities across Canada, and safely transports nearly four million passengers annually. The Corporation was awarded seven Safety Awards by the Railway Association of Canada over the last eight years. For more information, visit: www.viarail.ca/en/about-via-rail. Stay connected with VIA Rail Twitter @VIA_Rail Facebook viarailcanada Instagram @viarailcanada Evolution Blog SOURCE VIA Rail Canada Inc. For further information: Mylene Belanger, Advisor, Public Relations, VIA Rail Canada, 514 871-6309, 1 877 393-8787, [email protected], [email protected] It was like something from a Hollywood movie, but it was real. At about 3:30 p.m. on Dec. 23, a computer in an electricity distribution center in western Ukraine seemed to take on a life of its own. While a helpless worker watched, the cursor on the screen moved by itself and clicked on a box that opened a series of circuit breakers a move that would take the entire power station offline. When a dialogue box appeared asking for confirmation of the command, the ghostly cursor moved again and completed the action. Reaching frantically for the mouse, the worker tried to abort what was happening, but the computer was being controlled from elsewhere. In all, about 30 substations were taken out of commission and 225,000 customers were suddenly cut off from the power supply. It marked what is believed to be the worlds first successful cyber-attack on a nations power grid. What happened is ominous because it reminded us that we should not believe ourselves immune to such an attack, even in the United States. A cyberattack on the power grid could leave millions of residents and key physical locations without power for an extended period of time. It is a discouraging fact that unlike every other hazard we are likely to face, from hurricanes to earthquakes and chemical attacks to space weather, there is no specific planning scenario to help state and local governments prepare for an extensive blackout. This prompts a blizzard of questions: How long will the power be out? How many people will be impacted? What backups need to be in place to protect our citizens? With this in mind, I hosted an April hearing on the consequences of a massive, coordinated attack on the electrical grid, in my role as chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructures Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management. We asked our witnesses from the Department of Energy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security to provide the realistic timeframe for which we should be prepared for the power to be out. FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate was clear, saying, Planning needs to be measured in weeks. The other witnesses agreed. As a former mayor of my hometown of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, I know that localities will be on the front lines during a widespread, lengthy outage and will be tasked with handling much of the response. While our subcommittee witnesses tried to assure us that there were numerous efforts underway to help prepare state and local governments for the unthinkable, the mayors and local elected officials I frequently talk to feel they do not have all the information they need to prepare for such a catastrophe. We must be ready to deal with disruptions in telecommunications, water and waste treatment, healthcare delivery, financial services and transportation. There is no question that good communication is vital during the reaction to a disaster, but it is also critical when crafting a response strategy in advance. Since I believe that all disasters are local events, it is important that we tie in localities with states and the federal government so that the greatest coordination can be achieved. All levels of government must cooperate and anticipate all types of disasters. The FBI and the Homeland Security Department are hosting briefings for local governments, law enforcement, and energy companies to discuss and develop strategies for mitigating risk and providing better defense. In addition, I have been meeting with the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the Edison Electric Institute, the American Public Power Association and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. These national organizations have committed to identify initiatives that cut across all levels of government and create plans we can put in the hands of officials at the state and local levels. Some pre-planning has already been undertaken, such as exercises conducted by NERC and PPL one of the largest electric utilities in the nation. At our hearing, PPL President and CEO Bill Spence told of regular internal exercises and external drills with other utilities to practice their responses to various disaster scenarios. By extending this training by linking up state and local officials to the utilities, relationships will be formed, information will be shared, and efforts will be maximized. If the goal of terrorists is to collapse our economy, then shutting down our electrical grid is where they would start. Most troubling is the possibility that a cyberattack would be accompanied by a physical terrorist attack, a scenario that promises true havoc, panic and loss of life. The great challenge is that the threat continues to evolve, which only means that we are forced to evolve with it and be prepared for it. U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta represents Pennsylvanias 11th District The All Progressive Congress, APC, Kaduna State has reiterated that it cannot be factionalized and would not tolerate indiscipline among i... The All Progressive Congress, APC, Kaduna State has reiterated that it cannot be factionalized and would not tolerate indiscipline among its party members in the state.Addressing newsmen in Kaduna on Friday, the state Publicity Secretary of the party, Alhaji Salisu Tanko Wusono said, We have given people enough time to adjust to the reality that they are not in a position to hold the party or the process of change to ransom just because of their personal interests.In Kaduna State, Malam Nasiru Ahmed El-Rufai is making strides that are obvious even to the malicious. We pray Allah to strengthen our leaders, preserve their health and enhance them in the service of the people.APC in Kaduna State is very proud of the successes recorded by Malam El-Rufai and his government. How can we not be pleased with a man who is using the APC manifesto as his guide in government? The achievements in the education sector are happening because the APC manifesto recognises education as a proprity and our APC governor is implementing that manifesto faithfully.The school feeding programme is improving the nutrition of our 1.5 million primary school pupils who are fed every school day. This programme which aims to provide assist in the physical and mental development of our children is also creating jobs for the women are working as vendors and cooks.The Kaduna APC welcomes the steps taken to recruit more teachers and to support current teachers to upgrade their skills. We register with utmost delight our appreciation to Malam Nasiru El-Rufai for the decision to allow teachers to reach Grade level 17 without having to abandon the noble professoon of teaching.The APC government has energised the Kaduna economy with contracts for school renovations, provision of boreholes, supply of furniture and the sewing of free uniforms for secondary school students. We are seeing township roads, solar street lights and work to dualise some roads. The prudent displayed in achieving saving of N1.1 billipn on the Kawo road project is especially commendable.The APC also notes and appreciates the impressive steps taken to move Zaria water project forward. We welcome the rehabilitation of waterworks across the state, and the revival of irrigation projects. We salute Malam El-Rufai for the fertilizer feat, and we look forward to further improvements to the agricultural sector.The APC Kaduna wishes to commend the government for delivering on its promise of free healthcare for infants and pregnant women. We welcome the prizes and awards won by the health care workers in Kaduna. We are looking forward to the commissioning of the 255 modernised Primary Health Centres, one in each ward of our state.Our party is very happy to note the job creation efforts and the initiatives to foster employment paths for our youths. We welcome the injection of 2,503 young people into KASTELEA, and we congratulate the government for KADSTEP, the Kaduna Start-up entrepreneurship programme, which is providing educated youth a chance for business training and access to funds.It would be recalled that another group of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Kaduna State under the auspices of APC AKIDA emerged with Senator Shehu Sani, Isah Ashiru, Dr Hakeem Baba Ahmed, among others as advisory council members.The state executive committee of the APC AKIDA has Tom Mataimaki Maiyasje as convener and Alhaji Ibrahim Yaro as deputy convener and others.Addreessing newsmen in Kaduna on Thursday, MrTom Maiyashe said, We exist because our party structures do not exist or function in a manner prescribed by our party constitution or in the interest of our members and one of our key goals is to help to re-establish party structures at all levels.We exist because our party has been deliberately hijacked and incapacitated, and our members are deprived of a major asset to exercise their rights to be served by a party which put this government in power. Turkish champions Besiktas will present another bid for Nigeria international Umar Aminu after an initial 5 million Euros offer was rejected.Besiktas initial bid for the player was turned down by Osmanlispor, but it is now understood the 'Black and Whites' will return with a much improved bid.Former Flying Eagles star Aminu scored eight goals for Osmanlispor this past season and had an all-round impressive debut season for the club, which has now prompted bids from one of Turkey's biggest clubs."He (Aminu) has been informed Besiktas will make a second bid for him, but nothing is confirmed yet," a source close to the player revealed.The 21-year-old striker's impressive season also earned him a debut with the Super Eagles in the 1-1 draw with Egypt in an Africa Cup of Nations qualifier in March, and he has gone on to play three more times for the former African champions. Nineteen thermal plants in Nigeria have been shut down after militants knocked out the Forcados export pipeline last February, and the Esc... Nineteen thermal plants in Nigeria have been shut down after militants knocked out the Forcados export pipeline last February, and the Escravos- Lagos link early May, leaving the country to depend on only four gas-powered generators.This, according to Bloomberg yesterday, signalled a looming nationwide blackout if nothing is done to address the renewed attacks on gas installations. All but four of the countrys 23 gas-powered generators have been shut down, the news agency reported.Quoting the Chief Executive Officer of Egbin power plant, Dallas Peavey Jr., Bloomberg reported that the shortage of gas supply is a big threat to the plants plan to double power generation.Egbin is Nigerias largest power facility whose output has fallen to less than 10 per cent of its 1,320-megawatt capacity. For all the plants, theres no gas, Peavey said, adding, Were sitting idle here.Until the violence ends and the gas supplies resume, Peavey has shelved plans to double Egbins output. We cant double the capacity if we cant find the fuel, he said.Meanwhile, the Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu told reporters yesterday in Vienna that the Forcados pipeline will reopen in July. Spokesman for Royal Dutch Shell Plc., Precious Okolobo, had earlier said that repairs were continuing on Forcados. There has been a world outcry against a recent Chinese advert by a Shanghai-based Leishang cosmetics. There has been a world outcry against a recent Chinese advert by a Shanghai-based Leishang cosmetics.In the video, a paint-splattered black man confidently approaches a young Chinese woman, only to have detergent placed in his mouth and his body shoved into a washing machine for a thorough rinsing. Once the wash cycle is done, out pops a pristine young Chinese man, as clean as can be.Many people have interpreted the advert as disparaging to the black race.In response to the criticisms, the cosmetics company responded that people were rather too sensitive to the ad.A spokesperson for Leishang, the company that owns Qiaobi, told the state-run Chinese newspaper Global Times Friday the company "meant nothing but to promote the product, and ... never thought about the issue of racism," and that "the foreign media might have been too sensitive.""We express regret that the ad should have caused a controversy. But we will not shun responsibility for controversial content," the company said. "We express our apology for the harm caused to the African people because of the spread of the ad and the over-amplification by the media. We sincerely hope the public and the media will not over-read it."See it for yourself: U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump says his likely opponent, Mrs Hillary Clinton, should be imprisoned for using a private email se... U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump says his likely opponent, Mrs Hillary Clinton, should be imprisoned for using a private email server during her term as secretary of state.I will say this, Hillary Clinton has got to go to jail, Trump said at a campaign stop in San Jose, California.Folks, honestly, shes guilty as hell, Trump added, saying if he is elected president he will direct his attorney general to investigate Clinton over her use of the private server.Earlier Thursday, Clinton gave a foreign policy speech in which she said Trump was temperamentally unfit to be president.She said that it would be dangerous to entrust him with the countrys nuclear codes. Veteran Journalist Dele Momodu has finally come out to address Davidos comment on social media from last week in an interview with Joy TV Ghana.Now the publisher has come out to address the issue among others including how those concerning Sophie Momodu.Heres an excerpt of the clip:You can skip to the 7: 22 mark to get the full gist:Watch it here! There was a mild drama at the Senate's plenary Thursday when the Wife of a leader of the All Progressives Congress(APC), Senator Olure... There was a mild drama at the Senate's plenary Thursday when the Wife of a leader of the All Progressives Congress(APC), Senator Oluremi Tinubu accused the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, of demoting her.Tinubu, (APC, Lagos Central) who chairs Senate Committee on Women Affairs challenged Saraki for placing Senator Andy Uba higher than her during the adoption of votes and proceedings.Both Mrs. Tinubu and Saraki are second timers at the Upper Chamber. They have been at the Red Chamber since 2011.Saraki had at the commencement of Thursday's sitting asked Senator Uba (PDP, Anambra South) to move the motion for the adoption of votes and proceedings of Wednesday in line with the tradition.He also asked Senator Tinubu to second it, but when she stood up, she protested it, saying " I will second it grudgingly, I won't thank you for demoting me, God is here."I was a better Senator than him even when we were at the seventh Senate but I will second the votes and proceedings," she said, and general laughter rented the floor. The Federal Government on Friday directed banks, insurance and financial institutions to suspend the ongoing retrenchment in the sector. The Federal Government on Friday directed banks, insurance and financial institutions to suspend the ongoing retrenchment in the sector.The Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, stated this in a statement in Abuja.Following spate of petitions and complaints from stakeholders in the banking, insurance and financial institutions, I hereby direct the suspension of the ongoing retrenchment pending the outcome of the conciliatory meetings in the industry.This is as a result of the apprehension by my office on the various disputes in the sector in accordance and in compliance with the provisions of the labour laws of Nigeria, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) quoted the minister as saying in the statement.The statement said the decision was predicated on the fact that the continued retrenchment and redundancy by the sector had been jeopardising the outcome of the reconciliatory and mediatory processes undertaken by the ministry.In this wise, all the retrenchments and redundancies done in the last four months and all proposed ones should be put on hold, it added. Manchester United made a world-record bid for Bayern Munich's forward Thomas Muller last summer, according to chief executive Karl-Heinz Rummenigge.Manchester United were repeatedly linked with a move for Muller in the British press, and Rummenigge admits an offer was put in by the club, who were managed by Louis van Gaal at the time.But speaking to German publication Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Rummenigge said the offer was not considered for one second."We had a mad offer from Manchester United last year, which was not a topic for one second. We could have secured a world-record transfer fee."Thomas Muller came out of (the youth academy). (He is) born near Munich, formed here, the hero of the fans." The British High Commissioner to Nigeria, His Exellency, Paul Arkwright, yesterday, in Abeokuta Ogun state capital cautioned the Federal G... The British High Commissioner to Nigeria, His Exellency, Paul Arkwright, yesterday, in Abeokuta Ogun state capital cautioned the Federal Government over military option as a measure to tackle the resurgence of militancy and other criminality in the Oil rich Niger Delta region.The High British High Commissioner stated this during an interview in Abeokuta, the Ogun state capital, shortly after his courtesy visit to the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo.Arkwright who arrived the Ake Palace at 11am was accompanied by political Counsellor, Ben Llewellyn-Jones, and former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, and Dr Emeka Anyioku, also advocated for dialogue as part of a comprehensive approach that should be adopted by Nigerian government to address the situation, adding that force alone may not bring about a lasting solution to the Niger Delta issue.Niger Delta Avengers(NDA), an armed militant group, and other violent youth organisations have been launching violent attacks on oil and gas facilities in the Niger Delta area.This action has forced the Federal Government to respond by deploying troops to the areas creeks to stop the alleged destruction of national economic assets and spate of sabotage being perpetrated there by the regions restive youths.While speaking with newsmen, Arkwright said though, there is the need to protect the investments, not just the British companies and international companies operating there, but also Nigerian companies from acts of criminality going on in the region, the military should tread softly. He noted that the Britain is already talking to Nigerian government and its authorities on need to take a comprehensive approach and not to rely solely on military option as solution to the Niger Delta militants.According to him, it is important that the Nigerian government explore ways to engage the communities in the area, understand the grievances of the people and also ensured that the environmental damage is cleaned up. He also suggested that same option should be applied to conclude the fight against Boko haram terrorists in the North East of the country as being canvassed ever since by Britain.We need to protect the investment there, not just British companies, international companies but Nigerian companies as well.We are talking to Nigerian authorities about that, we need to have what we called a comprehensive approach to this, in other words we need to have dialogue and we need to engage the communities down there.We need to understand the grievances of the people down there, we need to ensure the environmental damage is cleaned up.We need to protect the investment there, not just British companies, international companies but Nigerian companies as well.When there is criminal activity, (it) is right that the government should take proactive action against that criminal activity, we strongly support them but we dont think military solution alone is the final solution to handle issues in Niger Delta.And to handle Boko Haram in the North, so we need comprehensive approach and that is what we have been talking to the Nigerian government about.I was very encouragedto hear Hon Minister Ike Chukwu say about the need for dialogue and we are certainly looking to see what we can do to help in dialogue and bring peaceful outcome to what you say is economic threat to this country.While speaking on the looted fund stashed in British banks, the British High Commissioner assured that Britain is committed to her intention to return all looted funds from Nigeria back to the country. He said his country would follow the rule of law and also wait for the judiciary to take a decision on the matter before the loots could be re directed to Nigeria, its rightful place.He said: President Mohammadu Buhari make the same point when he was in London for Anti Corruption summit which my Prime Minister setup we need international action to fight corruption.We need all the looted funds around the world, including United Kingdom to return to rightful place which is Nigeria, United Kingdom is doing everything we can to ensure that those funds are return to Nigeria.We have no interest, no intention of keeping the money, we want it to go back to Nigeria, full stop.The issues is that you will understand that United Kingdom just like Nigeria, is a country which respect the rule of law.We have independent judicial process, that judicial process need to run it course and we are doing what we can to help accelerate the return of the funds, if there are delays and issues surrounding that, these are delays related to judicial process. And have nothing to do with political will of the British government which my Prime Minister has made it clear and as i have said in the past Umited Kingdom wishes that the funds is return as soon as possible.Meanwhile, the Alake and Paramount ruler of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo has called for the resuscitation of the British Council Library in his domain as part of contribution of the United Kingdom educational development in the area.The traditional ruler recalled that the Library which has been in the town, has contributed immensely to the reading and learning culture among the young and the old. He however, lamented that the extinction of the library had brought education development backwards.He said We want to request that as you go back, the British Council Library be restored so that the young one can learn more about the world.The monarch recalled that there had been an aged long relationship between Egba and the British, which was dated back to 1843, through Henry Townsend, who brought a new Bible in 1904, after the first one got burnt. It was that period that we Treaty of Friendship by Egba United Government.Oba Adedotun added in 1906, the British facilitated Electricity supply into Egba and it also included four key areas of monarchical form of government, education (western), military and cultural link.During the military, we have some friends including France, British who gave us the wherewithal and logistic supports to win the battle in 1830. In education, you allowed us to produce the first medical doctor and engineer. The House of Representatives said on Thursday that it was in support of any action taken so far by the Federal Government to contain the... The House of Representatives said on Thursday that it was in support of any action taken so far by the Federal Government to contain the rising attacks on oil pipelines in the Niger Delta by the Niger Delta Avengers.Attacks on oil installations lately have reportedly resulted in a drop of daily crude oil production output from 2.2 million barrels to less than 1.5mbpd.The government responded to the development by deploying soldiers in the Niger Delta creeks in a bid to quell the attacks.Speaking on the development at the National Assembly on Thursday, the Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Mr. Abdulrazak Namdas, said the House was in support of the governments actions.Namdas applauded the role of the military in all the flashpoints of the country like the North-East, where men and equipment had been deployed to bring escalating security situations under control.On the Avengers, he stated, We are very comfortable with what the Federal Government is doing.We will support the government to go ahead with what they are doing. We hope very soon, this issue will be resolved.Namdas hinted that the House Committee on Defence had also concluded a tour of the Niger Delta to assess the security situation of the area, adding that the committee would soon submit a report on its findings to the House.The attacks had also been partly blamed for the decline in electricity supply in the country, owing to disruption of gas installations that power generation plants.But in plenary, the House summoned the Minister of Power/Works/Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN), to appear before lawmakers to explain why the power situation had worsened in recent times.The House also summoned power generation companies, distribution companies, the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company and other stakeholders in the power sector to give their perspectives on the matter.A member from Edo State, Mr. Johnson Agbonayinma, while moving a motion on the subject, recalled that as of 2015, power generation stood around 4,000 megawatts.Agbonayinma, who expressed concern that investors were relocating from the country due to poor power supply, added that he could not understand why generation was now below 1,500 megawatts in a post-privatisation era.The Minister of Power, Gencos, Discos and all the other stakeholders; they should come and explain what is happening, he stated.The motion was endorsed in a majority voice vote at the session, which was presided over by the Speaker, Mr. Yakubu Dogara.In a separate resolution, the House mandated the Committees on Human Rights, National Security and Intelligence to investigate the May 30 clash between security forces and members of the Independent People of Biafra in Onitsha, Anambra State.The House observed that unarmed civilians were killed during the clash, advising the Federal Government to adopt a more efficient mechanism for engagement with all aggrieved elements that threaten our homeland security and the territorial integrity of our sovereignty.It was the Deputy Minority Leader of the House, Mr. Chukwuka Onyeama, who moved a motion on the killings under matters of urgent public importance.Onyeama hails from Ogbaru Federal Constituency of the state, which is on the bank of the River Niger close to Onitsha.Part of the motion read, The House is concerned that in spite of the outcry, investigations and wide condemnation of this trend, there seems to be no cessation of same.Aware that the rights to freedom of association, expression and peaceful assembly are enshrined in the constitution of our great country, Nigeria;Further aware that the rule of law and respect for rights of citizens are cardinal ingredients for the survival of our democracy and consolidation on our democratic gains. The United States has identified dialogue as a possible way of resolving the renewed militant attacks on oil installations in Nigerias Ni... The United States has identified dialogue as a possible way of resolving the renewed militant attacks on oil installations in Nigerias Niger Delta region.The Spokesman of the Embassy of the United States in Nigeria, Sean McIntosh, told Channels Television that America remains one of the nations partners and will continue to support Nigeria in the fight against terror.Mr McIntosh believes Nigeria needs to bring all parties to the table for dialogue in battling the terrible attacks on the nations infrastructure.The President of the Ijaw Youth Council, Udengs Eradiri, on Thursday also advised the Buhari-led administration to sit up and address the issues behind the Niger Delta militants attacks instead of using military might.He urged President Muhammadu Buhari to wake up to the challenges of the people and not pay attention to people advising him that the attacks can be handled. Watford chief executive Scott Duxbury has declared that the club will not listen to offers for the sought-after duo of Odion Ighalo and Troy Deeney this summer.The pair scored 28 of Watford's 40 goals this outgoing season but Duxbury was quick to add that they will only consider selling the duo if they agitated for a move.We have no desire to sell Troy or Odion, Duxbury told WD Sport.If a situation arises where the player wants to go, are we going to lose sleep? No, because well always find an alternative who can move the team forward."But we have no desire to sell Troy or Odion. And I dont think we will.Deeney scored 15 goals and laid on seven for Ighalo while the later bagged 17 in all competitions.Nigeria striker Ighalo is expected to report back in England on July 3 and could play his first pre-season game for Watford against Woking on Sunday July 10. Dr. R Seetharaman conferred with 2016 Green Economy Visionary Award Published: June 2, 2016 Dr. R Seetharaman, Group CEO of Doha Bank, has been honoured with the 2016 Green Economy Visionary Award. He has been awarded with this award for his contribution in environment-friendly activities and thereby promoting green economy for nearly two decades. The award was bestowed upon him by Mohammed Jarrah Al-Sabah, Chairman of Union of Arab Banks at the 2016 Union of Arab Banks (UAB) International Banking Summit held in Rome. About Dr. R Seetharaman In 2015, business magazine Forbes had ranked Seetharaman sixth in the Forbes Top Indian Leaders in the Arab World 2015 list. R Seetharaman is a recipient of multiple doctorates, first in Global Governance from the European University (2013) and the second in Green Banking and Sustainability from Sri Sri University (2015). He also has received an honorary degree (Doctorate of Laws) from the Washington College. He was named CEO of Doha Bank in September 2007. Since then, he has overseen the banks expansion from its base in Qatar to the UAE, India, Singapore and China and other countries. Doha Bank was incorporated in 1978 and commenced its banking business including its International Banking services in Doha, Qatar in March 1979. Month: Current Affairs - June, 2016 Topics: Awards Banking Doha Bank Persons in News Latest E-Books India, US ink MoU for exchange of information on terror database Published: June 3, 2016 India and United States (US) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to join the global terror database maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) of US. Under this MoU, both sides will give each other access to terrorism screening information through designated contact points, subject to domestic laws and regulations. The real time exchange of intelligence on terror would enhance the counter terrorism cooperation between India and the US TSC is a multi-agency organisation administered by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) which consolidates several terrorist watch lists maintained by different US government agencies into single terrorist database on terror suspects. It has details of 11,000 terror suspects on its database, including nationality, photos, finger prints (if any), date of birth and passport number. So far US has finalised such agreements with 30 countries. Comment By signing this MoU, India has formally entered into the US Homeland Security Presidential Directive-6 (HSPD-6). It will enable India to access unclassified biographic information of known and suspected terrorists maintained by the US on a reciprocal basis. Background The proposal in this regard was initially made by the US in 2012, but had made little progress due to objections raised by Indian security agencies. The Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) had opposed giving the US unhindered access to the database of terror suspects in India. Month: Current Affairs - June, 2016 Topics: India-US National security Terrorism Latest E-Books DEAR HARRIETTE: In the fall, I had a fling. It lasted only a few days until he went back to Philadelphia. Now he's moved back to my city to be closer to his family. During our time apart, we didn't speak, but I held out hope that this summer, we would rekindle what we had. I was stunned when at a get-together of old friends, he brought his new girlfriend to meet everyone. It's like he doesn't even remember the fall! I thought there could've been something, and I didn't date so I could wait for him. I want to talk to his new girlfriend. I feel like if she knew our past, she would take a step back with him. I would never try to wreck his relationship; I would simply explain what happened between us and how I thought we'd be together. My friends think I'm crazy, but I think this is just crazy enough to work. Should I contact her? -- Speaking the Truth, Newark, New Jersey DEAR SPEAKING THE TRUTH: You should not contact this woman. What you need to do is to accept the truth. Sadly, you wished that your fling were the start of a relationship, even though nothing occurred to lead you to believe that. Since you were not in contact with this man after your romantic interlude, you had no concrete reason to believe that he would suddenly step back into your life if he ever came back to town. I'm sorry, but your hopes were delusional. Do not get in between him and his girlfriend. That would be unkind to her and confusing to him. You can enjoy the memories that you had with this man, but be clear that they remain in the past. You are not part of his present. DEAR HARRIETTE: One of my favorite nights of the month is having a night out with my boys. We go to a bar to watch sports, go bowling and get competitive or get together during the day to be active. I always come home in a better mood after seeing my buddies. We're all busy, but we carve out a day once a month to hang out. Recently, I feel like my wife has been trying to butt in on boys' night. She asks a lot of questions about what we do and what we say to each other, almost like she doesn't trust the story that I am telling her. She also asked if any other wives come to these and expressed interest in coming to check out what we are up to. I obviously love my wife. I just like to have alone time with my boys. She says she wouldn't bother us -- she just wants to sit in and see what it's like. I want to let her down easy while easing her suspicion about our completely normal boys' nights. What can I say so she stops trying to attend? -- Boy's Night Out, Dallas DEAR BOYS' NIGHT OUT: Invite the boys to your home once for boys' night. Tell them in advance that she is concerned and needs to see for herself how you all enjoy each other's company. Create ground rules. She can support the gathering but not participate, including not staying in the room all night. That should squash her fears. DEAR HARRIETTE: I am a younger widow. I married my husband when I was in my 20s and he was in his 50s. After 34 years of love, he passed away. This was a few years ago. Originally, I was not looking for much and was not sure I could ever be happy again without my husband. Now, I find myself lonely. I have my friends, but they are all in happy marriages or in long-term relationships following divorces. Our children are all out of the house, but I just don't see many good things on my horizon. To top it off, the family dog is now about to pass, and I will be the only one left in a four-bedroom home. I feel apprehensive about trying to find someone new in my life. I don't even think I would want to date again. I would just like to meet some new people and have activity in my life. My friends act as though I am unavailable for love and fun, so they don't invite me to events. I am tired of feeling so alone, but I don't know where to turn. How can I find a group of people like me in this technological age? -- The In-Between, Pikesville, Maryland DEAR THE IN-BETWEEN: You have a few choices to consider. Start with selling your house and moving into an apartment building. You could downsize and buy a condo or co-op and be in closer proximity to other people in a more manageable home. Take a class that puts you in the company of other like-minded people. You can also consider checking out dating websites for mature people. Even if you don't find a soul mate, you could have fun meeting new people. What you don't want to do is feel stuck in awkward connections with old friends who aren't sure how to include you. Expand your horizons! DEAR HARRIETTE: I got my tonsils taken out about a week ago. I am 24 and live alone, but I went back home so my parents could take care of me post-op. I am not supposed to smoke or drink for two weeks following the operation. Well, I messed up and smoked. I needed to go to the doctor because of the complications, and I asked the doctor to omit the reason for the complications from my parents. Needless to say, they're incredibly curious and haven't let it go. They're afraid I could have more complications. I am not afraid of my parents since I am an independent adult with a job, but I just want to shield them from my not-so-family-friendly hobbies. Should I wait for this to fizz out, or come clean? -- Smokey the Bear, Denver DEAR SMOKEY THE BEAR: You may be independent, but you are not making wise decisions for yourself. I'm sure you already know, but smoking is one of the worst things you can do to your body. That you couldn't resist when you were healing should tell you that it is a habit that you need to examine seriously. Telling your parents is not necessary. It will make them worry -- for good reason. If you are unwilling to try to stop smoking, shielding them may be for the better. But I would suggest that you consider this health scare a wakeup call for you. Get help to stop smoking. Ask your doctor for help. Lifestylist and author Harriette Cole is president and creative director of Harriette Cole Media. You can send questions to askharriette@harriettecole.com or c/o Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106 2 people shot on Josephine St. in separate crimes, one of them a robbery, NOPD says 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. In favor of General Dodge monument The article in The Daily Nonpareil on May 29 about General Dodge was very enlightening. Why such a mover and shaker in national, state and local history doesnt have a monument marking his contributions is something that should be corrected. Show some Bluffs pride! The fire in the firebox of the locomotive for this project went cold nearly a century ago. It appears that all the steam blew off in the whistle. We need to light a new fire under the General Dodge Memorial Commission locomotive and get a new head of steam up and get this train moving down the line. The citizens of Council Bluffs should give this project the high ball signal. David Young, Council Bluffs In praise of Bayliss Park The city of Council Bluffs is not a small town or large city. Its an average size and has grown in the last five years. Council Bluffs has the charm of a smaller town. A good example of this is Bayliss Park. A fountain decorates the park. There are places to sit in the park, and you can also have picnics. In the summer, its an ideal setting for weddings. Bayliss has activities all year concerts, moves and a carnival during Pride Week. On Veterans Day, too, there is a parade. A 15-minute drive away is the Lake Manawa area. You need not go to Omaha because Manawa has every kind of store you require. If a person doesnt drive, there are city buses to take. Council Bluffs has friendly people, and, if you are from out of state, the locals will surely help. Marie Moncato, Council Bluffs Ideas on Bluffs streets The streets, roads, highways and interstates are my classroom for drivers education. The beginning drivers depend on the signs and lines to be their guides. The Iowa DOT and City of Council Bluffs do a tremendous job. My students and I would like to make some suggestions to add a few more: 1. All double turn lanes need to have a painted tracking line to keep drivers in their correct lanes, such as: 16th Street and West Broadway East Kanesville Boulevard and North Broadway McPherson and North avenues South Seventh Street and West Kanesville Boulevard South Expressway and 32nd Avenue South Expressway and 30th Avenue Interstate 29 exit and Ninth Avenue Interstate 80 exit and Madison Avenue Interstate 29/80 exit and South 24th Street 2. Add speed limits signs to: Southbound on South Expressway viaduct (35 mph) Northbound on South Expressway just north of Interstate 29/80 (45 mph) Southbound on North 16th Street between avenues F and G (35 mph) 3. Add a stop line and second stop sign to the three-way stop on Marketplace Drive near Culvers. 4. Add a light-up light that says no right turn at 16th Street and West Broadway by Burger King when the opposite side has two active left turn lanes. 5. Add a left turn arrow on eastbound West Broadway for traffic heading north on North 25th Street. 6. Add arrows for a straight and turn lane on Willow Avenue in both directions at South Sixth Street. Currently, there is one painted arrow to indicate a turn lane. 7. Add an end school zone sign west of Wilson Middle School at North 22nd Street and Avenue G. 8. Add a crosswalk and stop lines to the four-way stop at South 25th Street and Second Avenue next to Thomas Jefferson High School. 9. Add crosswalk lines and stop lines to all parking lot exits at Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Kirn and Wilson. Ed Kermoade, Council Bluffs Thoughts on the Black Angel There has been some interesting news about mapping the Black Angel in Council Bluffs for posterity. Daniel Chester French is a world-class sculptor. The Black Angel is a spectacular example of his work. It ties in so beautifully with the Dodge family, legend and the city of Council Bluffs. The Angel sits on Lafayette Avenue with a commanding view of the Golden Spike and the railroad history of Council Bluffs. The National Park Service redid and updated this treasure in 1984, more than 30 years ago. I am asking the Bluffs Arts Council and the powers that be at the Iowa West Foundation to consider this, though it may have to be done in several steps: Lets make the Black Angel and the Dodge House a tour bus destination stop. Lets update and the area surrounding the Black Angel fresh and new with new lights and a water attraction like French intended it to be. Here comes the expensive and hard part: modern restrooms and a place to park and turn around a tour bus. This art lover thinks the prestige and economic gains from this project warrant taking a long look at it. Dick Jones, Council Bluffs A show of support for Dan Dawson I would like to take a moment and express my overwhelming support for Dan Dawson. Dan and I served together during a deployment to Afghanistan a few years ago. I have always known Dan to be open-minded, honest and forthright in all aspects of his life. Dan understands the sacrifice made by our current service members and veterans and will continue to look out for their needs. Professionally, Dan has become successful by working hard, diversifying his assignments and continuing his education. Additionally, he promotes guidance and mentoring to his peers and subordinates. On a personal level, Dan cares for everyone, not just his close friends. He is a father and husband who provides leadership and wisdom to his family to ensure their success. Dans knowledge, experience and discernment will provide the citizens of Iowa Senate District 8 with a leader they deserve. There is no doubt that he will carry these attributes with him when he is elected. Zachary Wiles, Lakewood, Ohio National Rugby League respects and honours the Traditional Custodians of the land and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and future. We acknowledge the stories, traditions and living cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples on the lands we meet, gather and play on. The Melbourne Storm will be boosted by the inclusion of at least one of their Origin stars on Saturday night, as Cameron Smith looks likely to back up against the Panthers. Cameron Smith and Cooper Cronk both had a say in Queensland's 6-4 win over New South Wales in Origin I on Wednesday night and while Craig Bellamy is expecting his captain to take the field on Saturday, he's still unsure as to whether Cooper Cronk has recovered from an ankle injury suffered during Queensland's training camp. "Cameron's come back and he looks like he's moving OK, so we'll see how he trains later today," Bellamy said. "Unfortunately Cooper's got caught up in the fog this morning and he's just arrived, so he's just getting assessed at the moment. Until we get the report from the doctor and we get the OK, only then will we go and have a look at him out on the field. "They are always keen to back up, they pride themselves on playing for their club after they play Origin, but it'd be hard to imagine Cooper playing to be quite honest. "He'd be keen to play, and if he thinks he is right to play he'll be very persuasive, but I'll be going more on the doctor than what Cooper says." There's good news on the injury front for the Storm as they're set to welcome back three outside backs this weekend in a bid to bolster their low backline depth. Young Tonumaipea, Richie Kennar and Curtis Scott will all play this weekend, but Bellamy is yet to determine if they play first grade or come back through their feeder clubs on the Sunshine Coast. "We've got Young coming back this week and Richie is as well, and young Curtis Scott is back, so we've got three outside backs playing again," Bellamy said. "None of those guys have played for a while, so we'll see how the Origin boys pull up first, but we might use Young tomorrow night. "It'll be good to see them all play this weekend, and hopefully they can put a bit of pressure on those playing first grade so we can have some real competition there." Melbourne will host Penrith on Saturday night at AAMI Park and while the Storm have a good record in previous years against the Panthers, Bellamy is taking nothing for granted. "They're pretty predictable, but they're hard to handle. They do a lot of offloading and a lot of changing direction in their attacks, so if you don't defend well you're going to be in trouble," Bellamy said. "They've got some really good players now, they've got guys that offload the ball a whole heap, so we'll have to be on our game." The United States remained fourth internationally in steel production after losing its third-place spot to India in 2014. America made 78.8 million tons of steel last year, a fraction of the 803.8 million tons the world-leading China produced last year, the World Steel Association noted in its 2016 edition of World Steel in Figures. In 2015, concern over excess capacity once again increased, World Steel Association General Director Edwin Basson said. Restructuring is not new; it is an ongoing process as old as the industry itself, and it requires appropriate industrial policy developed by governments in cooperation with industry. Barriers to exit as well as social and environmental impacts need to be addressed and planned for. In todays economic context, it is ever more crucial that policies promote a level playing field to ensure that steel companies in one region are not put at a disadvantage with steelmakers from other regions, or in relation to competing materials, World Steel Associations Basson said. Japan was second internationally with 105.2 million tons produced in 2015, while India made 89.4 million tons. Russia came in fifth with 70.9 million tons. ArcelorMittal, which has extensive operations in Northwest Indiana, was by far the worlds leading steelmaker by volume after making 97.1 million tons last year. The next largest steelmakers were Chinas Hesteel Group, which produced 47.7 million tons, and Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal Corp., which made 46.3 million tons. The World Steel Association represents 150 steel producers around the world, including nine of the ten largest steelmakers, though some analysts have said its numbers are under-reported. To see the full report, visit worldsteel.org. LAPORTE A woman held responsible for the hanging death of a 5-year old boy in Michigan City was hoping to avoid prison, but when sentenced to time behind bars launched a threatening verbal assault at the dead childs mother. Erica Merriweather was sentenced to three years in prison Wednesday in LaPorte Circuit Court for Class C felony reckless homicide. With the courtroom buzzing, she turned toward the mother, Anita Leflore, and loudly told her, Youre a stupid (expletive). You better watch whats coming. May God have mercy on you, Leflore replied from the seating area behind a partition. Judge Tom Alevizos banged his gavel and threatened to increase Merriweathers sentence, saying her outburst indicated a lack of remorse for the boys death. Tempers quickly calmed down, but Merriweather, over sobs and wailing, begged for the court to believe that she isnt as bad a person as she was made out to be during the proceedings. Merriweather then shut her eyes and became so silent and motionless that Alevizos asked if he should call for a medic. After he was told she was physically fine, Merriweather was handcuffed and taken to the LaPorte County Jail where shell stay until a prison bed opens. Merriweather and Stephanie Johnson were employees of Tricias Playhouse where Amareon Williams was hanged in June 2014 by a jump rope left on top of a piece of outdoor playground equipment. Somehow, the rope got around his neck and he was hanged while going down a slide. Merriweather and Johnson were inside tending to younger children while Amareon and three older children were in the playground unsupervised. Johnson also was convicted of reckless homicide and in September received four years probation. The owner, Tricia Calvin, could face up to a 50-year sentence if convicted of Class A felony neglect of a dependent. Shes scheduled for trial Nov. 7. According to court documents, Calvin said she shouldnt be held responsible because the day before the boys death she informed Leflore she must provide a schedule outlining the days of the week her children were coming and without one her kids would not be accepted. Calvin said Leflore the next day dropped off her kids anyway and she wasnt there when the boy died. EAST CHICAGO A man who asked an NICTD Transit Police officer to drive him home Wednesday instead got a ride to the Lake County Jail after the officer found 29 hypodermic needles and suspected heroin on him, an official said. Luis Mercardo-Gonzalez, 25, of Hammond, approached Officer Ricardo Garcia at the East Chicago South Shore Station about 1:30 a.m. and asked to use the officer's cellphone to call for a ride home, Police Chief Robert Byrd said. When Mercardo-Gonzalez got no answer, he asked the officer for a ride. The officer agreed to transport him in a goodwill gesture, Byrd said. Policy requires an officer to pat down any passengers before letting them in a police car for officer safety. Mercardo-Gonzalez agreed to the pat down, and the officer found 29 used hypodermic syringes, one of which contained a cloudy liquid substance, and three foil packets filled with suspected heroin, Byrd said. Mercardo-Gonzalez was charged Thursday with possession of a controlled substance and possession of hypodermic syringes, police said. MICHIGAN CITY A man has been formally charged with attempted murder in connection with Tuesdays shooting in the 1100 block of Providence Street near Trail Creek, police said. Chavez Garrett whose age and last known address were not immediately available Thursday is accused of pulling the trigger in the shooting of 20-year-old Dionte Peterson, according to a Michigan City Police Department news release. Peterson was found by police about 3 p.m. Tuesday with a gunshot wound to the head. He told police he was shot while driving down the street. Garrett is charged with attempted murder, aggravated battery, pointing of a firearm, battery and carrying a handgun without a license. Garrett was initially brought in as a person of interest Tuesday but it was learned later through the investigation that the two men got into an argument that day, during which Garrett punched Peterson, the release states. As Peterson drove away, Garrett pulled out a gun and fired rounds into the back car window, police said. Bond is set at $100,000 cash only. A judge has granted immunity to a reluctant witness in the domestic violence case against Lake County Councilman Jamal Washington. Special Prosecuting Attorney Stanley Levco requested and received permission from Porter Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Thode to offer immunity to one of the two women Washington is accused of assaulting last year during an alleged domestic dispute at Washingtons Merrillville home. Levco said Thursday the woman, identified in court records as a co-worker who lived with the Washington family, didnt want to testify in the case. He said the immunity grant should encourage the woman to answer questions about Washington by granting her immunity from future prosecution for incriminating statements she may make. The woman isnt accused of any wrongdoing. Levco said she is a victim in this case. Paul Stracci, who represents Washington, couldnt be reached Thursday for comment. Washington, 42, is accused of assaulting his wife and the other woman Dec. 3. According to the probable cause affidavit, the women told police it wasnt the first time Washington abused them. His daughters were home when the alleged assault took place. His wife is seeking to dissolve their marriage. He also is accused of violating a court order to stay away from his family in December 2015 and again this April. The charges of strangulation, domestic battery and invasion of privacy carry a maximum penalty of more than two years imprisonment. Washington is pleading not guilty and awaiting trial, which is now scheduled to begin Aug. 25. A judge and prosecutor from outside Lake County were appointed to the case because Washington, who is free on bond, serves on the Lake County Council, which oversees the budgets of the Lake County courts and prosecutors office. Washington, a Merrillville Democrat, was elected last year as the 3rd District Lake County councilman. He represents Garys Miller and East Side neighborhoods, the town of Merrillville and scattered precincts in Schererville and Griffith. Washington has declined to comment on the allegations against him, but has apologized to his constituents and political supporters. Many people associate early childhood development with the important efforts afoot to push public preschool programs. While its clear pre-K instruction enhances childrens educational success later in life, guarding the health of children before theyre born is just as important. Thats what makes a national program now being offered by a Gary clinic so noteworthy. Community HealthNet in Gary recently began offering the Baby & Me Tobacco Free program, aimed at encouraging pregnant moms to kick the smoking habit. Despite widespread public knowledge and expert warnings regarding the hazards of smoking, far too many Hoosiers continue with the habit. The nonprofit Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reports about a quarter of all adults in the state still smoke. The number climbs to 26 percent of Lake County adults. And its only slightly better in Porter County and LaPorte counties, where an estimated 22 percent and 25 percent of adults smoke respectively, according to the foundation. Meanwhile, weve all heard of the link between smoking and premature birth, birth defects, low birth weight and other development problems associated with tobacco use during pregnancy. In Lake County, about 10 percent of all children are born with low birth weights an enhanced health risk factor these children suffer right out of the gate. That figure drops to 6 percent in the nations top-performing states for childrens health indicators, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reports. Any programs that can improve such woeful local trends should be brought to bear. Baby & Me Tobacco Free issues $25 diaper vouchers to pregnant women for every month they stay tobacco free. Nationwide, the program reports about two-thirds of moms enrolled in the program quit smoking, and state health officials contend Baby & Me Tobacco Free is a sound way to decrease Indianas high infant mortality rate. Programs such as this should spread like wildfire through our communities and make an excellent complement to other important early childhood development initiatives. As our most precious resources, children represent everything our society will one day become. They all deserve a healthy start and healthy parents who can guide them into adulthood. Police are searching for two men they say punched and robbed a Staten Island priest outside his church. This surveillance video shows the men cops are looking for. The incident happened around 5:30 Thursday morning outside St. Mary's of the Assumption on Castleton Avenue in Port Richmond. Investigators say Father Marc Roseli parked his car outside the church when two men walked up and punched him. They say one of them displayed a gun. The men allegedly snatched Roseli's wallet and keys, then took off in his Ford Fusion. Police later found the priest's car a few blocks away. Meantime, the pastor of the church says Roseli is staying positive. "You wake up at five o'clock in the morning to have a gun pointed in your face and somebody punches you in the face not the great way to start your day but he's been a trooper throughout the day," said Rev. Marc Hallinan. "I asked another priest to come over and cover the noon mass for him but he asked that priest to step aside and just to go ahead to do the mass himself. "So he's trying to stay in his groove, stay in his routine, I think that's probably the best thing for him." Here's another look at the two men police are looking for. They say the priest was dressed in plain clothes at the time of the robbery. If you have any information for police, you're asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). Yesterday, Governor Andrew Cuomo teed off on Mayor Bill de Blasio, demanding he apologize for what he called false and reckless accusations against state officials. But today the mayor dug in even deeper. Our Bobby Cuza has the story. The question of who leaked a confidential report from the state Board of Elections damaging to Mayor de Blasio was settled this week. A state probe traced the leak to a Republican appointee at the board, seemingly refuting any notion that Cuomo appointee and lead investigator Risa Sugarman was responsible. But Thursday Mayor de Blasio refused to back down "There is a pattern here," he said, noting its still unclear how a Daily News reporter was tipped off to the existence of the report. And he again noted Sugarmans long ties to Cuomo, suggesting she unfairly singled him out for investigation. "Why did a certain reporter know of this confidential memo?" the mayor asked. "Why was it written by a particular person with a particular history and therefore fair to assume a potential bias? Why did it only identify one player in a situation where there were many?" As to the governors demand a day earlier de Blasio said its not going to happen, and noted Cuomo has at times been allied with state Senate Republicans. "The lines between Democrats and Republicans often blur in Albany," de Blasio said. In response, a Cuomo spokesman issued a statement that said in part: "This routine is officially ridiculous. The Mayor of the City of New York shouldn't accuse career public servants of impropriety with no facts or basis. But for weeks, despite actual facts to the contrary, he continues his own reality of the grand conspiracy theory against him." As to the various ongoing investigations into his fundraising, de Blasio said hes comfortable with the truth, and that the facts will bear out his team did the right thing. He also said he thinks most New Yorkers aren't concerned about the political drama between him and the governor. "I think its very interesting to people in the political class," the mayor said. "I think its thoroughly uninteresting to everyday New Yorkers." Meanwhile, on a different front in their ongoing feud, Cuomo announced a number of homelessness initiatives Thursday that will subject existing city shelters to strict new regulations and he appointed former deputy mayor Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, who left City Hall unexpectedly last year, to a new task force. A man is facing charges after police say he shot a teen girl in Brooklyn. Investigators had been searching for Taariq Stephens, 24, for allegedly killing 16-year-old Shemel Mercurius Tuesday night. Stephens is charged with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon. Authorities say the surveillance video (seen in the video above) shows Stephens taking an elevator inside the apartment building in East Flatbush on Tuesday. Police said Stephens got off and forced his way into this apartment. They say he then shot and killed Mercurius with this sub-machine gun. "I knew her since middle school and we both went to the same middle school and back when she knew me at Murrow she was like oh I know you, you're that crazy kid back at Whitman and that was like one of the most funniest memories that I knew so it's kind of sad," said one classmate. "If it was someone I knew I would be really devastated to lose a friend especially at such a young age like she was one year younger than me, it hurts to know that someone that young lost a life," said another. Officials said Mecurius was babysitting at the time. Police originally thought the two had a romantic relationship, but now say that was not the case. "We don't think it was a romantic relationship," said NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce. "However, he does get in there. He does know her, we think about two weeks prior." A GoFundMe page has been set up to help the teen's family cover her funeral expenses and set up a scholarship in her name. Prosecutors indicted two nurses Thursday who allegedly neglected a severely disabled patient as he lay bleeding on the floor. It happened in October of 2014 at the Peninsula Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Far Rockaway. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says a 51-year-old patient fell and suffered a head wound. Schneiderman says this surveillance video shows the nurses doing nothing to help the disabled man as he crawled on the floor bleeding for about ten minutes. A Certified Nurse Aide eventually dragged the patient back to his room. Prosecutors say about 25 minutes later, the man crawled out of his room with blood still running down his head. They claim the nurses continued to ignore him and he was never treated until paramedics arrived 20 minutes later. Both nurses, 34-year-old Funmilola Taiwo and 39-year-old Esohe Agbonkpolor, were indicted Thursday. They face a felony charge of endangering the welfare of an incompetent or physically disabled person. Taiwo was also charged with falsifying business records. The Certified Nurse Aide who dragged the patient already pled guilty to neglect. Michelle Obama got political in her final commencement address as First Lady. Speaking at City College, she launched a not-so-veiled attack against the likely Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump. "We dont build up walls to keep people out because we know that our greatness has always depended on contributions from people who were born elsewhere but sought out this country and made it their home," Obama said. She did not mention Trump by name, but her target was clear. Trump has made building a wall on the Mexican border a pillar of his campaign. Obama also appeared to take aim at his vow to "make America great again," saying it is diversity that helps make America special right now. "Here in America, we dont let our differences tear us apart." Obama said. "Not here. Because we know that our greatness comes when we appreciate each others strengths, when we learn from each other, when we lean on each other." It seemed no coincidence the First Lady chose City College for her anti-Trump Attack. The school has long been a gateway for immigrants. It is a melting pot, with students from 150 countries who speak 100 languages, all learning together. The First Lady singled out the immigrants, children of immigrants, single parents and risk takers in the Class of 2016, including the salutatorian, the first woman in her family to attend college. "Daddy I'm standing here today with the First Lady of the United States of America, so hold your head high and proud," said salutatorian Andoni Mourdoukoutas. "You allowed me to push." And while the commencement was a time for celebration some used it as a backdrop to address issues faced by City College and the CUNY system. "We keep getting budget cuts, we have no contract now for almost 6 years," said Alan Feigenberg, chair of the CUNY professors union. Faculty worry this burden could fall on students here who depend on a low cost education. The First Lady addressed those issues as well stressing the importance of funding public universities. So future generations of graduates like these can continue to seek the American Dream. A geriatric psychiatrist hired by Sumner M. Redstone has concluded that the ailing mogul had the legal mental capacity to oust two longtime confidants from the trust that will control his $40 billion media empire after he dies or is declared incompetent. In excerpts from a report released late Thursday based on two examinations over the last two weeks, the psychiatrist, Dr. James E. Spar, said the 93-year-old Mr. Redstone indicated that he no longer trusted Philippe P. Dauman, the chief executive of Viacom, and George S. Abrams, a longtime Viacom director. I asked Mr. Redstone why he was removing Mr. Dauman as trustee and director, and he said, Hes done a bad job running Viacom, Dr. Spar said in the statement. I asked the same question about Mr. Abrams, and Mr. Redstone said, Hes not listening to me. Two weeks ago, Mr. Redstone unexpectedly removed Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams from the trust and the board of National Amusements, the private theater chain company through which Mr. Redstone controls his $40 billion media empire. The moves were viewed as a precursor to the ultimate ousting of Mr. Dauman as chairman and chief executive of Viacom. Sam Sifton emails readers of Cooking seven days a week to talk about food and suggest recipes. That email also appears here. To receive it in your inbox, register here. Good morning. Therell be no trip to the bodega tomorrow morning for a watery iced coffee, no toasted bagel slippery with industrial butter product. No crowded subway, either, no lemming-like walk down a Midtown side street to the air-conditioned chill of the newsroom lobby, no sad desk lunch, no exhausted trek south after the train to the long wait for the bus that never comes, no abandonment of the plan to make Mark Bittmans recipe for stir-fried chicken and ketchup in favor of a quicker bowl of granola and yogurt and the start of the new season of Peaky Blinders. No, its a day off for me, and perhaps for you too, and if you can set up this dead-simple recipe for cold-brewed iced coffee tonight on the kitchen counter, next to a good-size vat of this recipe for sourdough waffle batter, by morning both will be ready to help you greet the weekend in style. Zach Both was living in Boston and working as an art director for a 3D printing start-up when the road beckoned. He felt restless behind a desk. He had wanted to be a filmmaker since age 9. He knew he needed to take a creative risk. Then he watched a video of Alex Honnold, the free-solo rock climber, who lives in a customized van and travels from mountain to mountain. Mr. Both, 23, decided to embark on what he called a cool creative roadshow: traveling the country and collaborating with local artists on short films. In late 2014, he paid $3,900 for a white 2003 Chevrolet Express van with 200,000 miles. With a Dwell-inspired sense of design and help from his father, he made it a rad home on wheels. Scientists raised the possibility that the Zika virus can be transmitted by oral sex perhaps even by kissing on Friday in a letter to The New England Journal of Medicine describing one such case in France. A single incident may seem trivial. But until early this year, there was only one known instance of sexual transmission of the Zika virus a 2008 case in which a mosquito researcher just back from Africa infected his wife in Colorado. Now scientists believe that sexual transmission is an important driver of the Zika epidemic in the Americas. Cases have been reported in 10 countries where no mosquitoes carry the virus, including France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and New Zealand. In the French case, a 46-year-old man returned to Paris from Rio de Janeiro on Feb. 10, shortly after experiencing Zika symptoms in Brazil fever, headache and a rash that had just ended when he reached France. To be honest, I probably wasnt their best choice. I had never covered the C.I.A. or the F.B.I.; Id spent much of my career at The Times covering the medical industry and public health issues. But I told Dave and Ira that I would be willing to review his files and records. So, after traveling to Florida to get permission from Bobs wife, Christine, I flew down to Dave McGees law firm in Pensacola, Fla., where a journalistic fantasy awaited. Image An undated photo of Robert Levinson. Credit... Christine Levinson, via Associated Press On a desk in a conference room sat ten cardboard boxes crammed with files that were a mix of Bobs work for the C.I.A. and for corporate clients. Every folder was a fragment from a little-glimpsed shadow world where information serves as currency and the lines between the good guys and the bad guys are often blurry. One file recounted, for example, how a big donor to Hillary Clintons New York Senate campaign was looking to get his prison time on a fraud charge reduced in exchange for information about the leader of Hezbollah, the Lebanese terror group. In another file, an emissary offered the services of the president of Kazakhstan as an informant for the United States government if the Justice Department unfroze the politicians Swiss bank account, which was allegedly stuffed with bribes paid to him by multinational companies. Meanwhile, Daves paralegal, Sonya Dobbs, had figured out the passwords to Bobs email accounts and was printing out hundreds of messages, including many from the investigators handler at an analytical unit inside the C.I.A. I had planned to spend two days in Pensacola. When I finally left nearly a week later my head was spinning. I had gotten a glimpse into Bobs life, and it was clear to me that C.I.A. analysts had encouraged him to collect intelligence about Iran, a country about which he knew little. There was nothing to show that they had ordered him to go there or even knew beforehand that he had decided to take that risk. Still, there were tantalizing clues. For example, in a memo written not long before his disappearance on Kish Island, he told his C.I.A. handlers that he planned to meet in Dubai or on an island nearby with a source who had information about a corrupt Iranian leader. I spent months reconstructing Bobs path to Kish and was stunned and dismayed to learn that many of the people I spoke with hadnt been contacted by the F.B.I. As a condition of reviewing Bobs files, I had also promised his wife and Dave not to do anything to jeopardize his safety. I liked to flatter myself by thinking that my reporting about medical products, like a flawed heart device, helped people. Now I felt that one wrong step or one inadvertent remark could bring serious harm to someone. Government officials continued to insist that Bob had gone to Kish to investigate cigarette counterfeiting. As journalists, we instinctively want to tell the truth. But the tiny circle of people at The Times who knew the truth about Bob agreed that identifying him as a C.I.A. consultant could seal his fate or complicate efforts to free him. As a result, we did not challenge the governments cover story or report on certain events related to his case about which we became aware, such as a secret 2008 internal C.I.A. investigation that led the ouster of three agency analysts, including Bobs handler. By then, an international manhunt for the missing man had begun, and some of those recruited by Bobs friends or the F.B.I. a collection of colorful characters that included arms dealers, Russian oligarchs and con men also entered my life. Some of my editors were also losing patience with my obsession over a story that couldnt be published; they started suggesting that it might be wise for me to find other outlets for my energies. I began casting around for medical stories and found an important one. Times Insider delivers behind-the-scenes insights from The New York Times. Below are highlights from radio and television interviews featuring Times reporters and video producers. Ron Nixon, a Washington correspondent for The Times, joined WHYY Radios Radio Times to discuss summer travel, long security lines at airports and the effectiveness of the Transportation Security Administration: This is a long and complicated problem that started some time ago, and there are a number of factors that resulted in losing screeners. The other problem, though, was that the T.S.A. came up with this expedited screening program called Pre-Check: People would sign up to get fingerprinted so they know who you are coming into the airport. And that works fairly well. The issue there was that they thought more people would sign up for Pre-Check than actually signed up. They started to reduce on their own the number of screeners. Jonathan Martin, a national politics reporter for The Times, joined CNNs Reliable Sources to discuss his recent article, As Donald Trump Pushes Conspiracy Theories, Right-Wing Media Gets Its Wish: I think that if you follow politics closely, you know that what has happened in recent decades is that a constellation of conservative media forces talk radio, the internet (notably Drudge) and a few other sorts of media outlets have effectively become a wing of the Republican Party and have been very powerful in pushing negative information into mainstream media. There is a sort of food chain an ecosystem where party operatives would feed information to right-wing media outlets, and then once it was posted on the web somewhere, or on talk radio or on FOX News, then those same operatives would get it in the [mainstream] media. Jackie Calmes, a national correspondent for The Times, joined PBS NewsHour to discuss her reporting on the effects of drug testing on employees as the unemployment rate drops across the country: Its across the board, but its clearly a bigger problem in jobs for unskilled or low-skilled people. But not exclusively. And its interesting. I hadnt realized the extent to which drug testing had become all but ubiquitous in our American labor market for all jobs from, you know, low-skilled and blue collar to higher-skilled and white collar. Its become a fact of life in the last 20 years. Kathleen Lingo, executive producer for The Timess Op-Docs video series, joined NY1s The New York Times Close Up to discuss the 200th Op-Doc, an Errol Morris film titled Demon in the Freezer, about stocks of the smallpox virus that have been preserved for research purposes: He played the role of press analyst and critic, offering clipped replies and a knowing smirk in response to questions about politics, motivation and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. For a combative but contained 17 minutes, Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday offered terse answers to an abundance of questions from reporters, mostly dealing with the fallout from overlapping federal and state investigations into his administration, in a performance that in recent weeks has become a kind of house style for his embattled mayoralty. Seated at a blue table, the mayor restated the mantra that his administration would eventually be found to have done everything appropriately. He laid out dots but no names referring to a particular reporter at one point, a state official with a particular employment history at another and asked reporters to connect them, arguing by insinuation that they would lead back to Mr. Cuomo, a fellow Democrat. A lot of good questions to follow up on there, Mr. de Blasio said, suggesting as he has for weeks that an investigatory report from the State Board of Elections highly critical of his fund-raising on behalf of Democrats in the State Senate had been leaked by those close to the governor to damage him. In the eyes of his lawyer, Reza Zarrab, a wealthy gold trader from Turkey, was a prominent businessman and philanthropist who stood accused of ill-founded charges in Manhattan, and was certainly no threat to flee. But prosecutors in the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, had a different opinion of Mr. Zarrab, arguing that he posed an extraordinary risk of flight. The opposing views were on display on Thursday during a bail hearing in Federal District Court that was unusual for its magnitude and curiosity factor, especially in Turkey. Mr. Zarrabs lawyer has asked that his client be released from pretrial detention on a $50 million bond, secured by $10 million in cash, with the condition that Mr. Zarrab remain in his apartment with 24-hour armed guards and GPS monitoring at his own expense. A federal investigation into corruption in Suffolk County, N.Y., law enforcement has expanded, as the Justice Department examines at least a half-dozen cases to determine whether political considerations influenced decisions made by the Suffolk district attorneys office, according to two people in law enforcement and three who have been questioned by the Justice Department. Though few aspects of the investigation have become public, it has already upended politics in the Long Island county and led to public denunciations among erstwhile Democratic allies. Last month, Steve Bellone, the county executive, called for the district attorney, Thomas J. Spota, to step down, saying that he headed a criminal enterprise. Mr. Spota quickly lashed back at Mr. Bellone and said that there were other reasons he wants me out of office, suggesting that Mr. Bellone would prefer a less zealous prosecutor in office. The half-dozen cases that are now part of the investigation, which began in 2013 and has already claimed a county police chief, were all handled by Mr. Spotas top anticorruption prosecutor, Christopher McPartland. The highest-profile case being scrutinized involves Mr. McPartlands investigation of a former county executive. Other cases include Mr. McPartlands decision to order surveillance of the county press secretary and two lengthy wiretap investigations, which involved eavesdropping on a detective and a politically connected lawyer. The New York Times identified the cases through interviews with two law enforcement officials and three people who have been questioned by the Justice Department or are aware of subpoenas. The five people spoke on the condition of anonymity either because they were not authorized to speak publicly about an active inquiry or because they feared the district attorneys office would retaliate against them. I RECENTLY gave a talk at the state prison in San Quentin, Calif. At the event, a former inmate said, I dont understand why over the 18-year period of my incarceration, over $900,000 was paid to keep me in prison. But when I was paroled, I was given $200 and told good luck. Hes right. For our economy to succeed, we need to equip every American to be effective in the national work force. But the more than 600,000 people who leave prison every year are not getting the support they need. That fails them and fails the economy for all of us. To prepare for my talk at San Quentin, I spoke with some of the people incarcerated there. I was trying to understand what I had to offer them in a speech and I discovered how much they had to offer me. They are individuals with a whole range of strengths, weaknesses and, yes, contributions still to make. And while theres been a rightful focus on ending mass incarceration, there has been little public discussion of how we reintegrate this growing population. Criminal justice reform is not just about being fair to the individuals who will be most directly affected, but its also about doing whats right for our nations well-being. A 2009 study estimated that the official poverty rate would have declined by 10 percent for the years 1980 until 2004 had it not been for our incarceration policies. And while there hasnt been a large-scale study of the economic effects of criminal-justice reform, most experts in the field agree that preparing people for life after prison is a critically important public investment that would alleviate poverty and increase worker productivity. New research estimates that at least 3,000 deaths attributable to smoking in the United States could be averted in the first five years when the new labeling goes into effect. But the Food and Drug Administration already has a wealth of evidence to justify its implementation of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, the 2009 law that requires the agency to deliver the new labels. And no court ruling has removed the F.D.A.s obligation to devise such warnings. One recent study found that labels with graphic images worked better than ones with text warnings only, by giving people a more memorable and negative view of smoking. Another study of young people between the ages of 18 and 30 found that the labels made them more fearful of the health effects of smoking and more wary about taking up the habit. Research conducted around the F.D.A.s announcement found that graphic labels improved peoples recall of the warning and health risks of smoking. As a recent voting member of the F.D.A.s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, I reached out to Mitch Zeller, the director of the agencys Center for Tobacco Products, to ask why the new labeling still hadnt seen the light of day. Mr. Zeller told me that the center was doing research to develop new warning labels that conformed with the 2009 law. This kind of research can take time, he said, and it is important to accumulate the best evidence for the proposed warnings. Mr. Zeller could not provide specifics on a timeline for implementation. It was less than a decade ago that American tobacco companies were found liable for covering up the health risks from smoking. The delay over labeling has once again made the United States an outlier in the global effort to address this pressing public health need. Nearly 80 countries around the world from Bangladesh and Canada to Egypt and Pakistan have embraced graphic labels and the resounding research behind them. Some, like Australia and Britain, have gone further still and forced companies to remove their branding, and display only stark images on their packaging. In the United States, though, the tobacco companies are still winning, while the people who continue to smoke are losing out. As are the children who will take up smoking. And as are those among us who will lose a parent, a sibling or a child to tobacco-caused disease. More than 50 years after the surgeon generals report on Smoking and Health laid bare the dangers of smoking, America is still beholden to Big Tobacco. This industry has bullied us enough. The Food and Drug Administration has deferred action for too long, and must meet the tobacco companies with the same vigor, audacity and urgency that the industry has employed so effectively for decades. The F.D.A. must uphold its mandate and deliver the kind of public health service that the law requires and that America deserves. In April, The Times opened a window onto human trafficking at Georgetown. Last month, Rachel Swarns and Sona Patel followed up with interviews with some of the descendants. The family histories some recounted showed that slavery is nearer to the present, in both time and impact, than many Americans suspect. Charles Hill, 74, recalled growing up in a family that remained pious despite the fate that the Jesuits had visited upon his ancestors: My father always told me that we came out of Maryland, and that the name of the slave ship was Jackson. But thats all he would tell us. After Mr. Hill heard of the Georgetown story, he said: That was why my father wouldnt tell us. He didnt want to disturb our Catholic faith. The news had a grim resonance for Sandra Green Thomas, 54, who had once lived near the Georgetown campus and visited it regularly without knowing of the slavery connection. She learned that her great-great-grandmother had given birth five months before she was forced onto a ship bound from Washington to New Orleans. That means she was pregnant or just giving birth when she was sold, she said. When I realized that, my heart just broke for her. She added: Theres a lot of hand-wringing, a lot of, Oh my goodness, that was terrible. What can we possibly do? But theres a lot Georgetown can do. The most obvious beginning is some sort of formal acknowledgment and apology from Georgetown officials to the descendants. Some 100 million vehicles with defective Takata airbags have been recalled around the world, about 60 million of them in the United States, which make it the largest auto recall in history. On Thursday, several companies, including General Motors and Ford, recalled an additional four million cars with those airbags, which have been linked to at least 13 deaths worldwide and more than 100 injuries. Yet even now, four automakers Fiat Chrysler, Toyota, Volkswagen and Mitsubishi are selling new cars that contain the faulty airbags, according to a new report by the Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee. And Fiat Chrysler and Toyota have refused to disclose which of their models contain the devices. This is completely unacceptable. At the very least, consumers need to be warned that their new cars will eventually have to be recalled for repairs, which is a huge inconvenience. These faulty devices are still in use because Takata, which had about 22 percent of the airbag market last year, and other manufacturers are struggling to produce enough of the devices that inflate airbags to meet demand for both the recall and new cars. In what has become an almost annual exercise, Turkey has thrown a fit because someone has spoken the truth about its dark past. This time, it has pulled its ambassador from Berlin and threatened dire consequences over a resolution, passed overwhelmingly by the German Parliament on Thursday, declaring that the century-old massacre of Ottoman Armenians was a genocide. That is what Turkey does every time a foreign government dares to challenge its discredited claim that the Armenians perished in the cruel fog of World War I, and not in a premeditated attempt to eradicate a people. Germanys claims to the contrary, Turkish legislators huffed in a statement, are based on biased, distorted and various subjective political motives. No, it was a genocide, the first of the 20th century. Historians have established beyond reasonable doubt that as many as 1.5 million Armenians were deliberately killed or sent on death marches in 1915-16 by the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, fearful that they and other Christian minorities could side with Russia in the war. For Armenians, millions of whom were left scattered around the world, gaining recognition that the slaughter was a genocide a deliberate atrocity, and not collateral damage has been a long and passionate national mission, which has resulted in formal recognition by more than 20 countries. The Armenians are fully justified in their quest for a historical reckoning. But the more the world has recognized that, the more aggressively Turkey has stormed and shouted. A couple of years ago, when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was still a relatively broad-minded prime minister, he seemed prepared to take a more conciliatory stance on the Armenian issue. It never happened, and the increasingly autocratic Mr. Erdogan warned Germanys chancellor, Angela Merkel, in advance that relations with Germany bilateral, diplomatic, economic, trade, political and military would be damaged by the resolution. Nine scientists have won this years Kavli Prizes for work that detected the echoes of colliding black holes, revealed how adaptable the nervous system is, and created a technique for sculpting structures on the nanoscale. The announcement was made on Thursday by the Norwegian Academy of Science Letters in Oslo, and was live-streamed to a watching party in New York as a part of the World Science Festival. The three prizes, each worth $1 million and split among the recipients, are awarded in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience every two years. They are named for Fred Kavli, a Norwegian-American inventor, businessman and philanthropist who started the awards in 2008 and died in 2013. The astrophysics prize went to Rainer Weiss from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ronald W.P. Drever from the California Institute of Technology and Kip S. Thorne, also from Caltech, for directly detecting gravitational waves. While using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in September of last year, they observed wiggles in space-time that were first theorized by Albert Einstein in 1916, opening a new window on the universe. The real credit for this goes to the whole LIGO team, said Dr. Thorne, who attended the viewing party in New York with Dr. Weiss. I wouldnt be here without the people who started it, and it would not have succeeded without this team of a thousand people who made it happen. An hour with the celebrity facialist Joanna Czech defies all modern convention. Just when you begin to expect a blast of hot steam to open your pores, shell firmly wipe you down with a swab soaked with ice-cold toner. You think you need a soothing lotion to even your skin out, maybe calm it down? She knows better: a prickly, slightly stinging solution is just the thing. And instead of delicately applying masks and creams, she uses her whole (petite) body to essentially force them into your epidermis at times politely, yet firmly, slapping them into your face. And so it comes as little surprise that the massage and application techniques she created for La Mer, as the brands global skin-care adviser, arent designed for a light touch. A lot has been written about face massage, and the benefits of sculpting the muscles as you would the rest of your body. And the Polish-born, Dallas-based aesthetician is obsessed: She even found clients to come in to her spa religiously, every other day, for 12 back-to-back deep-tissue face massages. Im always saying, you know, choosing the right product is like nutrition thats 70 percent. And those little tricks of application, thats your workout, your lifestyle thats 30 percent. (Czech has a knack for making you feel a little silly for not getting this. I mean, when you work out, what do you do? shell ask. Do you work out your skin? No. You work out your muscles, and then you are in great shape and then you put on body moisturizer, right?) Her favorite method is not the fanciest, and is easy enough to do at home: what she calls a press/release technique, using deep-tissue-level pressure to tone the faces muscles. Fittingly, she uses the technique especially when applying toner, which is her first step in a skin-care regimen. I like starting with the toner always that first hydrating moment, its very important. People still forget about the toner and very mistakenly they still use it as a second step of cleansing. What toners really do: They sort of bring balance back to your skin, so they prepare your skin and create healthier PH of the skin, so then automatically your skin absorbs everything so much more easily. Her press/release method is like the one that devoted users of the cult, cool-girl Vintners Daughter serum have grown to love, similarly called a push/press technique. The difference is that the folks at Vintners Daughter suggest practicing it after cleansing and toning, with serum-coated hands, so that the 30 seconds of repeatedly pressing the entire face, neck and decolletage will help the skin better absorb the potent, all-natural blend. The Long Home, William Gay Gay is an unabashed disciple of Cormac McCarthy, and this is the first book by him, a reclusive man who had old Tennessee pumping in his veins. Youth versus experience, love versus hate, this is a distinctly Southern tale of a honkey tonk, murder, young lovers and retribution. Image James Franco Credit... Larry Busacca/Getty Images for the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival Jesus Son, Denis Johnson A slim book of interconnected stories following a hapless drug addict. Humorous, dark and moving, with prose that surprises with its drug-fueled imagery. The Sellout, Paul Beatty This book killed me. Funny, poignant, outrageous and deep as hell. Beatty talks about all the hard stuff of race with great skill and humor. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner On the surface its the simple story of a family going to bury their mother; underneath it is a roiling tale of desperation, love and struggle. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz Everyone knows Junot Diaz is the man. This book is hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure; pop cultural and political. Just a great read. Five soldiers were killed and four were missing after a truck overturned Thursday during a routine training mission at the Fort Hood military post in Texas, the Army said. Three other soldiers were rescued from water near the vehicle and were listed in stable condition. They were taken to a medical center on the post, according to a statement. Chris Haug, a spokesman for Fort Hood, said that floodwaters from recent rains were believed to have overturned the truck, a Light Medium Tactical Vehicle, while the soldiers were using a low water crossing, but that the episode would be investigated. Mr. Haug said the soldiers were on a mission that they do every day, and driving on a normal dirt road that was not known to be a problem. MIDWEST Illinois: Case Against Officer Will Be Reassigned A special prosecutor will handle the case of a white Chicago police officer who shot a black teenager, a judge said Thursday, while civil rights lawyers pressed for a broader investigation into whether other officers attempted a cover-up. A dashboard camera video of the October 2014 killing of Laquan McDonald, 17, showed Officer Jason Van Dyke, firing 16 shots into Mr. McDonalds body even after he crumpled to the ground. Judge Vincent Gaughan said that he would search for an outside prosecutor after the Cook County states attorney, Anita Alvarez, asked last month to step aside. She lost a March primary election under criticism of her handling of the case. (AP) SOUTH Tennessee: Children Wont Be Charged in Bullying A prosecutor said on Thursday that he would dismiss charges against elementary school students who were taken to a juvenile facility some in handcuffs in view of parents. The police in Murfreesboro arrested four children at Hobgood Elementary School in April and took them away, saying they took part in off-campus bullying. Six other children were named in juvenile court petitions. Parents and community leaders protested, and the Rutherford County prosecutor, Jennings Jones, said Thursday that he would drop the charges. He would not say why. (AP) Mohammed Abdelaziz, the longtime leader of a movement to create an independent state for the indigenous people of Western Sahara, died on Tuesday. He was 68. The movement, known as the Polisario Front, said Mr. Abdelaziz died after a long illness. The Polisario Front was formed in the early 1970s by a group of Sahrawis, nomadic Berber and Arab tribesmen, in opposition to Spains colonial presence in Western Sahara. When Spain withdrew from the region in 1975, the Sahrawis fought attempts by both Mauritania and Morocco to claim the territory. For four decades, Mr. Abdelaziz served as secretary general of the Polisario Front and as president of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, its government in exile, based in a refugee settlement at Tindouf in neighboring Algeria. Born in 1948 in the town of Smara, which currently lies in the Moroccan-held part of Western Sahara, Mr. Abdelaziz joined the Polisario Front movement as a student and was elected to its political bureau at its founding congress in 1973. Belgiums interior minister, who nearly resigned after the Brussels bombings by Islamic State militants more than two months ago, met with New York police officials and counterterrorism specialists on Thursday in what he described as a useful visit. The minister, Jan Jambon, who is also a deputy prime minister and overseer of Belgiums police forces, expressed admiration for the New York Police Departments intelligence-gathering, its technology and the bomb-sniffing dogs in its counterterrorism unit. Mr. Jambon and John J. Miller, the deputy police commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, said at a news conference that the ministers visit was part of a growing collaboration. In difficult times, one knows their friends, Mr. Jambon said, drawing parallels between the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, in the United States and the March 22 bombings at the Brussels airport and subway. LONDON He was accused of hypocrisy, scaremongering and a failing common among politicians worldwide waffling. Yet Prime Minister David Cameron kept his cool under pressure on Thursday as he appealed to Britons to remain in the European Union during the first major television forum before the countrys referendum on whether to stay. During the hourlong broadcast on Sky News, Mr. Cameron was pressed repeatedly by an interviewer over the high levels of immigration into Britain. After that came a combative town-hall-style session with an audience of voters. And while it might not prove a decisive moment for the June 23 referendum, the debate could energize a campaign that has shown relatively few signs of igniting public interest. Dressed in a black T-shirt and cheap cloth shoes, he speaks just a notch above a whisper. As workers made last-minute tweaks to the gallery lighting, Mr. Ai was transfixed by the wall of photos he took during his New York years: images of the 1988 riots in Tompkins Square Park; a snapshot of Allen Ginsberg urinating; and numerous portraits of a reed-thin and naked Mr. Ai posing like the Venus de Milo. No one was interested in showing the work of a Chinese artist back then, he said, shaking his head, and turning to a wall of photographs documenting Warhols 1982 trip to China. Even as Mr. Ai revels in his newfound freedom, he is mindful that the life of an exiled dissident has its drawbacks. Living in Europe, he said, has diminished his voice as a human rights advocate in China. Unlike most persecuted activists who have been given the chance to leave, Mr. Ai refuses to seek asylum. Next week, he will return to Beijing for a visit, a journey that fills him with trepidation. Mr. Ai says he wants to see family and friends, but he also wants to demonstrate to the Chinese authorities that he has not abandoned his homeland. Things there are dreadful right now, he said, referring to the unremitting government crackdown that has jailed pro-democracy activists, human rights lawyers and journalists, some of them his friends. But he seemed somewhat conflicted about his role an exiled government critic or someone who willingly, and perhaps foolishly, steps back into the dragons maw. Its not honest for a real Chinese fighter to be outside, he mused. Youre just throwing stones. Feed the Beast was adapted from a Danish series by the writer and producer Clyde Phillips, who has a track record in cable drama that favors emotional and narrative extremes and absurdist touches he was a showrunner of Showtimes Dexter and Nurse Jackie. His new show has a Frankensteins monster quality. Its nominally about Tommy and his chef best friend, Dion (Jim Sturgess), trying to restart the Bronx restaurant they had created with Tommys wife. This allows for a certain amount of prettily photographed chopping and sauteing at one point Mr. Sturgess is forced to say, A good chef always listens to his pans. and solemn, apparently unintentionally hilarious wine talk. But the show isnt really set in the New York restaurant world, and judging it for its depiction of cooking or the food business would be completely beside the point. While it drives the plot, the restaurant is a garnish for the more prominent, and equally unconvincing, parts of the story: Dions involvement with a gourmandising Polish mobster (Michael Gladis) and Tommys attempt to break out of his funk, be a competent single father and relate to his own dad (John Doman). Where Feed the Beast really lives is inside a magical-realist cable-drama bubble, where nothing magical happens, but you still dont quite buy anything you see. Dions nemesis, the wiseguy Patrick Woijchik, is a dapper, finicky figure out of a Damon Runyon story who somehow carries a huge pair of pliers in his suit, for the extraction of teeth from debtors. Tommys unrepentantly racist father (nicely played by Mr. Doman, of The Wire), is a paraplegic whos lifted in and out of chairs and cars by a silent woman in a jumpsuit. Mr. Phillipss least authentic creation is Dion, who seems to have been sketched out following a quick skim of Kitchen Confidential. Hes first seen in prison, where he whips up gourmet meals for the guards, is told hes being released, does cocaine and has sex with his lawyer, all before leaving the building. He could be an amusing parody of the bad-boy chef if we werent supposed to take him so seriously. In a recent series of articles, The New York Times explored how corporations are increasingly forcing their customers, clients and employees through little-read provisions in seemingly innocuous contracts to use an opaque system of arbitration to settle financial and other disputes. The result has been to deprive many millions of Americans of what they thought was a constitutional right to use the judicial system, as imperfect as it may be, to try to right injustices, perceived or real. Forced arbitration may be the single-largest and rarely explored theft of legal rights visited on the American public, without either its knowledge or its choice. Wall Street is one of many industries that benefits from the use of forced arbitration, requiring its employees and its customers into arbitration whenever a financial dispute arises. Most people who work on Wall Street or who have brokerage accounts with a Wall Street firm in other words, millions of people do not realize that by signing their employment or brokerage agreements, they have agreed in advance to settle financial disputes with the firm in arbitration, not in court. Adding to this deeply flawed and unfair system is the inconvenient fact that most Wall Street arbitrations fall under the auspices of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the financial industrys self-regulatory organization. The regulator, known as Finra, owes its existence to the Wall Street firms that sit on its board of governors and generate much of its nearly $1.5 billion in annual revenue. Another hedge fund that was caught up in the federal governments crackdown on insider trading is getting back money it forfeited to authorities in the course of the investigation. Federal prosecutors have agreed to return $6 million that Diamondback Capital Management forfeited as part of a nonprosecution agreement, according to a court filing on Friday. The decision by federal prosecutors to return the money is a rare event, but it represents more fallout from a landmark appeals court ruling that resulted in the dismissal of a number of insider trading convictions, including the conviction of a former portfolio manager at Diamondback. The court filing by prosecutors working for Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, does not specifically refer to the appellate ruling but notes there have been subsequent legal developments to the signing of the nonprosecution agreement in January 2012. To do that, Mr. Narayanamurthy said, it was important to conduct the study, in partnership with the California Public Utilities Commission and its program manager, Itron, in real homes with people using them the way they normally would. But they also needed to have groups of homes clustered on individual transformers to allow them to compare the results with the traditional method of providing power. With that information, they can determine the value for homeowners and grid system operators of adding features like solar panels, heat pumps and, in some cases, battery storage. They found a willing collaborator in Meritage, a leading builder of energy-efficient homes, and are expanding the test program to additional subdivisions in Southern California, the Central Valley and the Bay Area. For buyers, part of the appeal of a home built to be zero-energy is that they do not have to change their behavior to save energy. At Meritage, the company insulates every house with spray foam, sharply reducing the amount of heating and cooling needed, and allowing smaller or fewer units to be installed. Making the homes even more efficient are dual-pane windows that help retain or keep out heat (depending on the need), LED lighting and advanced water heaters that work by funneling heat from the ambient air into the water. All of the test homes have SunPower rooftop solar systems, which are among the most efficient on the market. And because they were designed along with the houses, the arrays can be oriented for maximum production. Half of the test homes also have energy storage systems with LG batteries and Eguana inverters, which help manage the flow of electricity between the solar installation, home and grid, to allow researchers to test and compare how much value they add. The houses come equipped with A. O. Smith water heaters that can be remotely controlled and Trane smart thermostats that can manage all the equipment and can connect to cameras and security systems. PARIS No role is hard for me. Its never hard. Isabelle Huppert was talking about her reputation for being fearless and why she had no qualms about starring in Paul Verhoevens latest film, Elle, in which she plays a woman who is violently and repeatedly raped by a masked man and then engages her assailant in a game of cat and mouse. In the film, her character, Michele Leblanc, a Parisian video game company executive and the recently divorced daughter of a convicted serial killer, is strangely drawn to her attacker, even after she unmasks him. The third rape is the most mysterious, Ms. Huppert said. Obviously something happens during that rape. Its almost like a love scene. Almost. That almost and the films unsettling mix of violence and comedy set off a heated conversation at the Cannes Film Festival last month, though Elle drew glowing reviews from American and European critics alike. Shown in competition on the last day of the festival, it left prizeless this years jury was deeply at odds with critics but is already one of its most talked-about films. The raves and conversation continued when the film opened in France last Saturday. But the debate over whether the film is a statement of feminist empowerment or masochism or whether Mr. Verhoeven has forged a new genre: screwball sadomasochism? is bound to continue when Sony Pictures Classics releases the film in the United States in November. Even Mr. Stackowitzs longtime girlfriend, Cindy Derby, said she had no inkling of his history. He never told anybody, said Ms. Derby, 61, a house cleaner. Im glad I didnt know because then I would have always worried. I didnt have to worry for 21 years. It wasnt any of my business. Mr. Stackowitzs life took a decidedly wrong turn in 1966, when he was convicted of robbery by force in Georgia, where he had gone on a road trip. Court records show that, from crime to sentencing, the entire case lasted less than two weeks. Ms. Derby said she was a 10-year-old schoolgirl in Sherman when Mr. Stackowitz was arrested in Georgia. An indictment accused him and two other men of unlawfully, wrongfully, fraudulently and violently stealing $9 from a man, as well as the keys to his truck. The victim, now 91 and still living in Georgia, did not respond to an interview request. On Aug. 22, 1968, Mr. Stackowitz escaped from what was once known as the Carroll County Convict Barracks, a project built as part of the New Deal that is now a dilapidated storehouse for the countys Public Works Department. The words Carroll County are painted in red near the roof, but the doors are rusted, and the paint on the prison bars is peeling and cracked. Mr. Stackowitz, who agreed to be photographed but declined an interview request, has told reporters that he had access to a vehicle as part of his work duties at the prison, where he repaired buses nearby. One morning I just got in the truck and drove myself away, he told The Hartford Courant in a videotaped interview. I got on a plane and I was back in Connecticut before they even knew I was gone. SYDNEY POOR little Pistol and Boo. The fate of the dogs that the actor Johnny Depp and his wife, the actress Amber Heard, flew undeclared into Australia last year, thereby inciting a diplomatic incident, seems uncertain now that their owners have separated. Back in Los Angeles, Ms. Heard, who has also accused Mr. Depp of assaulting her, applied for custody of Pistol; it is unclear what will happen to Boo. A further, unforeseen consequence of the smuggling of these teacup Yorkshire terriers via private jet is its possible impact on our approaching national election. Mr. Depps public row with the deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, over the countrys biosecurity laws could even end up oiling the path for the conservative government to retain power. In the verbal jousting between the politician and the actor, it is the politician who has been winning, ridiculing Mr. Depps air of entitlement. At first, it was all just funny. The dogs were so small, their names so improbable, the likelihood of their posing a threat to our wildlife so implausible that we laughed, hard. But we stopped when it became clear that Mr. Depps behavior stemmed from two obnoxious attitudes: First, that our far-off countrys rules about importing animals were ridiculous; and second, that he should be exempted from the scrutiny mere mortals faced. Mr. Depp is hardly alone in wanting to travel with animals, and flying a pet across borders is often fraught. Happily for those flying from Australia to the United States, no quarantine is required. When my family brought our chocolate Labrador, Hugo, to New York, the worst of it was that he arrived in a deep fog of jet lag. To the Editor: I read with interest David Brookss column on campus radicalism, which focused on my college, Oberlin, while defining a larger national challenge (Inside Student Radicalism, May 27). As Mr. Brooks points out, many in our country are frustrated by what they perceive as inattention or neglect. This is perhaps most evident in our national political discourse, but certainly also pronounced in campus microcosms across the country. What we at educational institutions must do is twofold: listen and respond to the real concerns, while educating our students and maintaining our academic standards. In these discussions with students, faculty, staff and our boards, we must be willing to insist on our principles and our core mission while we work to improve our institutions during what is undeniably a period of significant national change. This process may at times be messy, and at times will necessitate disagreement. But by engaging in this dialogue, we not only strengthen our educational institutions, but also create a model that may strengthen our democracy, our civic discourse and our country. I am proud to lead an institution that has been at the forefront of this critical work since 1833. Just a few years ago, Crispr was a cipher something that sounded to most ears like a device for keeping lettuce fresh. Today, Crispr-Cas9 is widely known as a powerful way to edit genes. Scientists are deploying it in promising experiments, and a number of companies are already using it to develop drugs to treat conditions ranging from cancer to sickle-cell anemia. Yet there is still a lot of misunderstanding around it. Crispr describes a series of DNA sequences discovered in microbes, part of a system to defend against attacking viruses. Microbes make thousands of forms of Crispr, most of which are just starting to be investigated by scientists. If they can be harnessed, some may bring changes to medicine that we can barely imagine. On Thursday, in the journal Science, researchers demonstrated just how much is left to discover. They found that an ordinary mouth bacterium makes a form of Crispr that breaks apart not DNA, but RNA the molecular messenger used by cells to turn genes into proteins. If scientists can get this process to work in human cells, they may open up a new front in gene engineering, gaining the ability to precisely adjust the proteins in cells, for instance, or to target cancer cells. Time to move on. That is the explanation Tony Fadell, a former star executive at Apple known for his aggressive management style, offers for his departure from Nest, a maker of digital versions of household staples like thermostats and smoke detectors that he helped found and sold to Google. Alphabet, Googles parent company, announced on Friday that Mr. Fadell was leaving Nest after leading it for six years, including the last two under the ownership of Google, which bought it for $3.2 billion in 2014. His departure comes after months of controversy regarding his leadership. Mr. Fadell, the company said, will become an adviser to Alphabet and to its chief executive, Larry Page. In a recent interview in his Palo Alto office, Mr. Fadell, 47, talked about his career. At Apple, he led the engineering team that created the iPod digital music player and worked on the first three versions of the iPhone. In 2010 he founded Nest with Matt Rogers, a young Apple engineer. CHICAGO Chicago officials on Friday released hundreds of videos and other investigative materials from 101 cases in which police officers fired their weapons or otherwise used force against civilians a remarkable turnaround for an administration that fought last year not to release a video showing an officer fatally shooting a teenager as he lay sprawled on the ground. Some of the Police Departments critics hailed the release by Chicagos Independent Police Review Authority, which investigates claims of misconduct and excessive force, as a watershed moment for a city whose police and political culture have a long history of secrecy and obfuscation. Chicago officials refused to release a video showing Officer Jason Van Dyke, who is white, shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was black, 16 times, until a judges order forced the city to make it public last November, more than a year later. Officer Van Dyke was charged with murder. This is a significant step towards transparency in Chicago, said Craig B. Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor who directs a civil rights and police accountability project at the law school. Weve had decades of the code of silence and a lack of police accountability and institutional denial. The real test is, what does the new normal look like going forward? But he noted that the city had changed its practices only under tremendous pressure, and argued that the change did not go far enough, still allowing too much time to pass before evidence is released. The suspects two men and two women were arrested Thursday night at Dog Beach in San Diego, a gathering place for the homeless. The police in at least three states joined forces to find them, partly with the help of technology that reads license plates and that tracks phones, officials said. Image Amos Beede They fled Vermont after the attack and ended up in Roswell, N.M., where one of them had relatives, the police said. There, one suspect, Erik Averill, 21, was briefly taken into police custody after being accused of assaulting his partner, Myia Barber, 22, who is also a suspect in the fatal beating. But Mr. Averill was released, and the four continued their journey to California. The police identified the other two suspects as Allison Gee, 25, and Jordan Paul, 21. The four are being held in California on warrants accusing them of second-degree murder, Chief del Pozo said. It was not immediately clear when they would be sent to Vermont to face the charges. The chief said the beating started over a dispute in the homeless camp; someone smeared feces on a tent from the south side of the encampment, and Mr. Beede was believed to have reacted by dumping urine in a north-side tent, the chief said. Mr. Beede, 38, was not homeless. He had an apartment in Milton, but he was staying with friends at the encampment over the weekend because the local bus was not running, the police said. REDDING, Calif. In a speech in which he promoted the backing of Chinese-Americans in Los Angeles and called protesters at a rally in San Jose thugs, Donald J. Trump on Friday sought to project support from African-Americans for his campaign on a single man in the audience. Mr. Trump, at a rally here, began speaking about a previous rally in Arizona in which a black supporter was arrested after punching a protester. We had a case where we had an African-American guy who is a fan of mine, Mr. Trump said of an event in Arizona in March. In fact I want to find out whats going on with him. As his voice trailed off, Mr. Trump noticed a man in the crowd. Oh look at my African-American over here, Mr. Trump said. Are you the greatest? Do you know what Im talking about? Hes led the way, to be honest with you, he said in January on Meet the Press, referring to Mr. Obamas program to spare millions of immigrants in the country unlawfully from deportation. But Im going to use them much better, and theyre going to serve a much better purpose than what hes done. But Mr. Post said there was a difference between Mr. Obamas view of executive power and that of Mr. Trump. Whatever you think of Obamas position on immigration, he is willing to submit to the courts, he said. There is no suggestion that he will disobey if the courts rule against him. Several law professors said they were less sure about Mr. Trump, citing the actions of another populist, President Andrew Jackson, who refused to enforce an 1832 Supreme Court decision arising from a clash between Georgia and the Cherokee Nation. I can easily see a situation in which he would take the Andrew Jackson line, Professor Epstein said, referring to a probably apocryphal comment attributed to Jackson about Chief Justice John Marshall: John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it. There are other precedents, said John C. Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who took an expansive view of executive power as a lawyer in the Bush administration. The only two other presidents I can think of who were so hostile to judges on an individual level and to the judiciary as a whole would be Thomas Jefferson and Franklin Roosevelt, he said. Both of those presidents chafed at what they saw as excessive judicial power. But they werent doing it because they had cases before those judges as individuals, Professor Yoo said. They had legitimate separation-of-powers fights between the presidency and the judiciary. Trump is lashing out because he has a lawsuit in a private capacity, which is much more disturbing. Other legal scholars said they were worried about Mr. Trumps commitment to the First Amendment. He has taken particular aim at The Washington Post and its owner, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. WASHINGTON Speaker Paul D. Ryan delivered his partys weekly address on Friday a rarity giving a peek at the House Republican agenda that he and his colleagues will begin to roll out next week. That agenda was originally supposed to counter Donald J. Trump, whose views often stand apart from the partys policy traditions. But now that Mr. Ryan has officially endorsed his partys presumptive nominee, he says that his policy ideas will magically become Mr. Trumps, and that the nominee will help advertise them this fall and eventually promulgate them from the White House. The six policy task forces in the House will release their prescriptions one at a time over a course of Fridays this summer, under the broad title A Better Way. But perhaps it should be called A Bedeviled Way. Despite Mr. Ryans efforts to take some control, however, here are four reasons Mr. Trump, not the House speaker, is far more likely to set the Republican agenda this summer at his partys convention and into the fall campaign. The government is not here to deny there is a possibility of torture, Mr. Curiel told a federal judge. But the forum for those allegations to be aired is the government of Mexico. The Arellano-Felix cartel kept Mr. Curiel in its sights. One of the suspected gunmen, according to court filings, was recorded in prison saying he had requested and received permission from the leaders of the Arellano cartel to have Curiel murdered, forcing Mr. Curiel to live for a while under guard. He and Mr. Vega, whose father also was Mexican, met regularly with their counterparts across the border. Mr. Vega said their ability to speak Spanish and their Mexican roots were helpful, ultimately leading to the first extradition of a suspected Mexican drug kingpin to the United States in 2001. Judge Curiel was appointed to the bench in San Diego in 2007 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. President Obama nominated him to the federal bench in late 2011, and he was confirmed by the Senate the following year. Judge Curiel, whose parents are deceased, is married to a probation official and has a young daughter. For his family, the attacks on their heritage have not gone unnoticed. Raul Curiel said that Mr. Trump was ignorant for calling his brother Mexican, noting that they were born in the United States. He said that he speaks to his brother regularly and that the most frustrating part of the Trump episode were the questions about his professionalism. Trump called him a hater, and regardless of whether he is or not, that has nothing to do with how hes doing his job, Raul Curiel said. Mr. Trump and his supporters have said that Judge Curiel is treating him unfairly in the case, in which some former students of Trump University claim they paid thousands of dollars for worthless real estate classes. Mr. Trumps supporters have pointed to Judge Curiels affiliation with La Raza Lawyers of California, a Latino bar association that Mr. Trump asserts is an advocacy group, and to his appointment by Mr. Obama as evidence of a conflict of interest. Hillary Clintons campaign chairman, John Podesta, condemned political violence of any kind after clashes between supporters of Donald J. Trump and protesters during the presumptive Republican presidential nominees rally in San Jose, Calif., on Thursday night. Mr. Podesta posted a video on Twitter that appeared to show a Trump supporter being beaten by protesters outside of the event. The footage also showed supporters of Mr. Trump being chased by protesters as a Make America Great Again hat was set on fire. Violence against supporters of any candidate has no place in this election, Mr. Podesta wrote. The ugly scene is the latest example of the anger that is bubbling over in a volatile year for American politics. Mr. Trumps trip to California in late April was marred when several of his supporters were bloodied by protesters and, in March, one of his rallies in Chicago was canceled after protesters flooded the streets. While Mr. Trump has said he does not condone violence of any kind, his campaign made little effort to condemn it. Everytown was founded in 2014 by Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, who put in $50 million of his own money in an effort to form a group that could rival the National Rifle Association. Erika Soto Lamb, a spokeswoman, said that the group did not speak for Mr. Bloomberg, who has not made an endorsement since deciding against a third-party run earlier this year but who has been highly critical of Mr. Trump. Ms. Lamb said she could not comment on Mr. Bloombergs intentions. In addition to the endorsement, Everytown pledged to help Mrs. Clintons campaign get out the vote in Californias primary on Tuesday, the spokeswoman said, hosting phone banks and door-to-door campaigns that would start over the weekend. The group also claimed credit for Mrs. Clintons wardrobe on Thursday, as she wore an orange shirt during her foreign policy speech as part of the groups Wear Orange awareness campaign. Though it said it had no plans at the moment to begin advertising campaigns, it has done so in support of candidates and ballot initiatives. Gun control has played a large role in the campaign so far, and Mrs. Clinton has frequently addressed the issue, seeking to draw clear distinctions between her positions and those of Mr. Sanders. Mr. Trump, for his part, has accused Mrs. Clinton of wanting to abolish the Second Amendment. Mrs. Clinton has also run numerous ads on the subject. Before the New York and Connecticut primaries, the campaign ran one that featured the daughter of the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School, who was killed in the mass shooting there in 2012. No one is fighting harder to reform our gun laws than Hillary Clinton, the daughter said in the ad. Before the Iowa primary, Mrs. Clinton ran a broadcast ad speaking directly to the camera saying, Either we stand with the gun lobby or we join the president and stand up to them, an unnamed jab at Mr. Sanders. On the campaign trail, she took her attacks further, saying Mr. Sanders had voted with the N.R.A. and against some gun control bills. WASHINGTON Hillary Clinton on Thursday delivered her most robust attack yet on her likely Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, declaring him temperamentally unfit to be commander in chief. But although her campaign had described the speech as a major foreign policy address, Mrs. Clinton spent more time ridiculing and dismantling Mr. Trumps statements than she did elucidating her positions. Here are a few key issues she did not discuss. No-fly zone in Syria In October 2015, Mrs. Clinton told a Boston television station, I personally would be advocating now for a no-fly zone and humanitarian corridors to try to stop the carnage on the ground and from the air. She repeated that call during a Democratic debate two months later. But President Obama has resisted such a move. The Pentagon is also leery: Military commanders warn that it would require substantial numbers of American ground forces and invite a deadly confrontation with the Syrians and the Russians. She has not fleshed out the proposal since then. How to handle Vladimir V. Putin Last fall, Mrs. Clinton said, I am in the category of people who wanted to do more in response to the annexation of Crimea and the continuing destabilizing of Ukraine. Her aides said she supported a proposal to funnel defensive weapons, like Javelin antitank missiles, to Ukrainian troops. Mr. Obama argued that this would escalate a showdown with Russia one that Mr. Putin would inevitably win, given Ukraines proximity, and its greater strategic value, to Russia. On Thursday, Mrs. Clinton made no mention of steps she would take to counter Mr. Putins aggression, saying only that she had gone toe to toe with Moscow as secretary of state. What to do about Libya Mrs. Clinton played a pivotal role in persuading Mr. Obama to take part in the 2011 NATO air campaign that toppled Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. She has expressed no regrets about the intervention, even after Libya fell into chaos and four Americans were killed in the attack on a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi. Her aides attribute the countrys woes to the unwillingness of its new leaders to accept a peacekeeping force. But Mrs. Clinton has said little about how the United States can help put Libya back together, other than calling for patient engagement. On Thursday, she left Libya off the list of knotty issues she and Mr. Obama had confronted. Army teams and emergency crews on Friday recovered the bodies of four soldiers who were missing after a truck overturned a day earlier during a training mission near Fort Hood in central Texas, an official said. The bodies of five other soldiers were found on Thursday. Three soldiers were rescued. Maj. Gen. John Uberti, the bases deputy commanding general, said on Friday morning that the accident was a tragic loss and that the Army was making the search a priority. The three who were rescued were in stable condition in a hospital and could be discharged later on Friday, he added. General Uberti provided no further details about the soldiers or the accident, which occurred in an area that had been inundated with heavy rain over the last week. MINNEAPOLIS Three Somali-American friends were found guilty on Friday of federal charges that they tried to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State, a plan that prosecutors said unfolded through propaganda videos and social media exchanges, and while they played basketball and paintball. The verdicts against the three men Guled Omar, 21; Abdirahman Daud, 22; and Mohamed Farah, 22 came after an emotional 17-day trial in which onetime friends from Minnesotas large Somali community testified against one another, family members squabbled in the hallways and spectators were occasionally ejected from the courtroom. On Friday, the three defendants who had all pleaded not guilty sat impassively in dark suits as a court clerk began to read a litany of guilty verdicts, the most serious being conspiracy to commit murder overseas. They were also convicted of conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization. The sobs of family members broke the silence. One woman, weeping, rushed from the courtroom, and others used their colorful head scarves to wipe their eyes and cover their faces. As the three men were led from the courtroom, Mr. Farah waved to the relatives and supporters in the gallery. Beijing can be a pretty informal place. People walk outside in their pajamas, and when its hot some men lift up their shirts to expose their bellies. Even President Xi Jinping dresses down, usually in his trademark dark windbreaker. The authorities have determined that one place in Chinas capital has gotten far too casual: the marriage registration office. Some people wear sleeveless shirts and shorts, or slippers, to register their marriages, Han Mingxi, head of the wedding registry office for the Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau, told Beijing Daily, the official newspaper of the citys Communist Party committee. You see them and can immediately tell their attitude toward the marriage registry is too casual. This can easily create all sorts of problems. China has seen an increasing divorce rate in recent years, a phenomenon that has been especially pronounced in Beijing. While the number of couples marrying each year from 2011 to 2014 remained constant around 170,000, the number divorcing over those years climbed to 56,000 from 33,000, according to the Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau. BEIJING Anyone who spends any time online in China knows surfing the internet is like wading through quicksand. That is especially true when browsing websites not hosted on a Chinese server. This week, an online report published in China Daily, a state-run, English-language newspaper, said that China, the worlds second-largest economy, ranked an abysmal 91st in the world in internet speed, with the average broadband connection scored at a mere 9.46 megabits per second, or Mbps. There are nearly 200 countries in the world. The report ranked the top five countries in internet speed as South Korea, Sweden, Norway, Japan and the Netherlands. The average broadband speed in South Korea was reported as 26.7 Mbps. In Sweden, it was 19.1 Mbps. The data was part of a broader report that was aimed at boasting of Chinas internet connectivity, under the title Evolution of the Internet in China. The report listed as its sources the China Internet Network Information Center, an agency under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology; the website of Peoples Daily, the Communist Party newspaper; the Broadband Development Alliance, a research group; and Akamai Technologies, a content delivery network and cloud services provider based in Cambridge, Mass. HONG KONG Every June 4 for the past 26 years, tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents have gathered for a candlelight vigil in Victoria Park to commemorate those who were killed in the Chinese militarys suppression of the 1989 democracy protests in Beijing. Activists from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong student leaders and politicians have shared the stage to declare their solidarity in a continuing struggle for political change in China. Not this year. The largest student union in Hong Kong has said that it will no longer participate in the commemoration as local young people increasingly focus on first achieving greater democracy and autonomy for their city, with some even calling for independence from China. Ahead of the anniversary of the crackdown on Saturday, politicians and students here were asked about the growing fissures within the democracy movement in the semiautonomous Chinese territory and how it should move forward. Here are some of their answers. Irans top leader said Friday that trusting or cooperating with the United States would be a big mistake, an assertion that seemed to rule out any greater collaboration despite the nuclear deal reached nearly a year ago. The statement by the leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made in a nationally televised speech, was the latest in a series of signals that Irans senior leadership was not likely to allow any easing of hostility toward the United States. We have many small and big enemies, the ayatollah said, according to translated accounts of his speech in the Iranian media, noting that the worst are the United States, Britain and Israel, which he described as the damned and cancerous Zionist regime. The backdrop for Mr. Khameneis speech was the 27th anniversary of the death of his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic revolution that overthrew the Western-backed shah of Iran in 1979. TOKYO A 7-year-old Japanese boy who disappeared nearly a week ago after his parents left him on the side of a mountain road to discipline him was found unharmed on Friday, the Japanese authorities said. The boy, Yamato Tanooka, wandered onto a military base about three miles from where he was left on Saturday on the northern island of Hokkaido. He was found early Friday morning by soldiers on a training exercise, exhausted but apparently uninjured, the local police said. The boys parents have faced harsh public criticism over the case, which has been covered intensively by the Japanese news media since his disappearance. Im full of gratitude. From now on, Im going to take better care of him as he grows up, Yamatos father, Takayuki Tanooka, 44, said in comments on NHK, the national broadcaster. Some 200 police officers and volunteer rescue workers had been searching for the boy. BEIJING Chinese banks that do business with North Korea stand to lose several billion dollars in the wake of new United States Treasury Department sanctions on all such foreign institutions, analysts said on Friday. The new sanctions were announced days before a visit to Beijing by Secretary of the Treasury Jacob J. Lew and Secretary of State John Kerry for an annual meeting on economic and security issues that starts on Monday and whose agenda this year includes North Korea. The Chinese banks most affected by the sanctions will be comparatively small regional ones that facilitate the bulk of North Koreas business in China, the analysts said. Major banks in China suspended their North Korean accounts in 2013 after the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, criticized a nuclear test conducted by the North that year, the analysts said. The Bank of China, for example, which has been expanding its operations in the United States and did not want its American business tainted by cooperation with North Korea, closed the account of North Koreas most important financial institution, the Foreign Trade Bank, in May 2013. But in the months since revealing its initiative in January, France had already tempered its ambitions and its policy positions amid a change in its foreign policy leadership. The French foreign minister at the time of the initial proposal, Laurent Fabius, had said in January that France would unilaterally recognize Palestine as an independent state if the effort failed. Mr. Fabius has since been replaced by Jean-Marc Ayrault and is no longer pushing for unilateral recognition of an independent Palestinian state. The meeting on Friday, which lasted only about three hours, amounted to little more than an extended photo opportunity, a way for France to show that it was still committed to a peace process in the Middle East. In a statement issued after the conference, the participants said that they had reaffirmed their commitment to a two-state solution, and expressed alarm about the situation on the ground, in particular continued acts of violence and ongoing settlement activity. The participants underscored that the status quo is not sustainable, the statement said. The statement called for fully ending the Israeli occupation that began in 1967, language that differed from that typically used by the United States in its diplomacy around the conflict. But the conference produced few concrete measures to be taken in the near future. Instead, French officials said, the meeting was the first step toward fostering a positive environment for the Israelis and the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table. The French said they would coordinate discussions and help organize another international conference by the end of the year, this time with the Israelis and the Palestinians. The goal isnt to force the parties to negotiate, Mr. Ayrault said at a news conference after the meeting. But we are not doomed to do nothing, doomed to stay sit idly by as observers, simply expressing regrets. Israel and the Palestinians have expressed strong disagreements about the French initiative. The Palestinians, who have spoken of the need to internationalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, have welcomed it. LONDON At least four migrants died and around 340 were rescued on Friday, after a boat bound for Italy capsized in the Mediterranean off the island of Crete, officials and humanitarian agencies said, in the latest tragedy at sea as refugees try desperately to reach Europe. The Greek Shipping Ministry said that two Coast Guard vessels and three helicopters had been sent to scour the area for more survivors. More than 1,000 migrants may have died trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe over a recent eight-day period, the International Organization for Migration reported on Tuesday, and the deaths on Friday, which occurred about 75 nautical miles south of Crete, add to the toll of refugees suffering. The migration organization said that the capsized boat was believed to have been carrying 700 people and was thought to have left from Egypt. Greek officials said the boat had overturned in international waters that were under Egypts authority. That the United States would have dealings with such an unpopular figure has dismayed many Moldovans, particularly those who share Washingtons desire to steer the country out of Russias orbit and toward the West. Image Mr. Plahotniuc, Moldovas most-feared figure, is a nominally pro-Western tycoon with a reputation so toxic that even his political friends usually try to keep their distance in public. Credit... Dumitru Doru/European Pressphoto Agency We were all in shock when that photograph first appeared, said Natalia Morari, the host of a political talk show who has firsthand experience of Mr. Plahotniucs methods. She said she was threatened by one of the businessmans associates early this year with a smear campaign featuring a sex tape illegally filmed in her own bedroom. The threat followed her shows extensive coverage of anti-government protests fired largely by rage at Mr. Plahotniuc (pla-hoot-NOOK). Nobody considers Plahotniuc pro-European. He is pro-Plahotniuc and pro-corruption, Ms. Morari said. While accounts of his current power and past sins were perhaps exaggerated, she said, many genuinely pro-Western Moldovans viewed the Washington meeting as a betrayal. Whether Washington really does support Mr. Plahotniuc is a matter of feverish debate and a question at the heart of Americas strategy in its neo-Cold War struggle with Moscow over former Soviet lands. Put simply, it is this: Should the West, eager to keep Russia and its proxies at bay, turn to people like Mr. Plahotniuc for help? Asked what had transpired at the meeting and whether receiving Mr. Plahotniuc had played into the hands of pro-Russian forces, John Kirby, a State Department spokesman in Washington said that the businessman had been received as a member of a delegation led by Moldovas deputy prime minister. Ms. Nuland, he added, had reiterated Washingtons support for Moldovas democratic and economic development, and underscored the need to fight corruption, including within the government. PARIS Heavy rains in France lifted the Seine on Friday to its highest levels since 1982, threatening Pariss cultural institutions and soaking the French countryside east of the capital. The Seine has continued to swell since the river burst its banks on Wednesday, raising alarms throughout the city. As of 10 p.m. on Friday, its waters had reached 20 feet. The river was expected to crest on Saturday morning at up to 21.3 feet, and to remain at high levels throughout the weekend, the French Environment Ministry said in a statement. In legal circles, this is known as the settlor/fiduciary doctrine. And federal courts have ruled in favor of plan sponsors who have changed the terms of their programs in ways that some lawyers say are inconsistent with the fiduciary standard. Benefit plans offered to employees of Kodak are an example. In its materials, Kodak outlines numerous procedures a participant must follow to bring a legal action against the plan. These include a requirement that all suits be filed in federal court near Kodaks headquarters in Rochester, unless the plan administrator agrees to a different forum. Lawsuits must also be filed within 90 days of a claims being denied, and if litigants lose a case, they must pay all the Kodak plans fees and expenses incurred defending against the suit. Asked about these restrictions, Louise Kehoe, a Kodak spokeswoman, provided the following statement: By giving employees a streamlined administrative process and directing any matters that cannot be resolved internally to the Federal District Court in Rochester, Kodak promotes consistent, affordable handling of any issues that arise. Likewise, in keeping with a widespread practice recently affirmed by the Supreme Court, Kodak has established and publicized clear deadlines for claimants with questions or concerns to take action, to ensure that matters can be resolved while records are available and memories are fresh. Law firms have also begun advising plan sponsors on how to protect themselves against lawsuits involving their benefit programs. When designing Erisa plans, limiting liability is an important priority, stated a March 2015 report from the law firm Proskauer Rose to its clients. Fortunately, plan sponsors have certain tools at their disposal that can potentially reduce the risk of being sued, or being liable if a suit is brought. Among the tools described in the article are those employed by Kodak, including shortening the time a participant has to bring a suit and specifying the forum in which legal action can be brought. It was great and a really fun project, but my husband and I share this similar trait where once weve made or built something, we no longer have any interest in it, Ms. Gilbert said. So once we got that building renovated and the business was sort of running itself, she continued, he very sheepishly came to me and said, I dont really feel like doing this Two Buttons thing anymore. And around the same time, right after we had finished renovating this big house in Frenchtown, I very sheepishly said to him, I dont really want to live here anymore. Ms. Gilbert and Mr. Nunes have since bought and renovated a smaller house in Frenchtown. Were good at creating, but were not good at sustaining things, she said. And we always let the other person have an out. Ms. Gilbert may be willing to give her husband an out, but letting herself off the hook is another matter. Her followers on social media learned as much last year when, in an effort to practice what she preaches in Big Magic, she sang a karaoke rendition of the Bonnie Tyler chestnut Total Eclipse of the Heart at the Diamond Horseshoe nightclub in Manhattan. The idea was for Ms. Gilbert to face her fear of singing in public. A day later, Donald J. Trump showed up at the same place. His supporters, mostly older whites, clashed outside with protesters, mostly younger Latinos. All the Trump rally appeared to do was unleash a spasm of airborne hatred. Sanders, by contrast, made his point about the great economic disparity in American life. His rallies in California nearly two dozen in all have drawn the expected crowds: young white Bernie bros in man buns, aging lefties in mildly subversive T-shirts but also a fair amount of Hispanics and curious political neophytes. So, mission accomplished, yes? The Bern has been felt, the establishment rattled. Voters are decrying a rigged economy run by 1-percenters. Time to go back to Vermont, resuming the virtual anonymity that has characterized his quarter-century in Congress. Not so fast. The Bernistas and the candidate himself may be on something of a late-stage kamikaze mission. The 74-year-old senator is predicting a win here on Tuesday, and with it enough momentum to sway unpledged delegates at what he says will be a messy convention in Philadelphia. That the math is overwhelmingly against him, or that hes now on a reckless venture, does not seem to matter. As Stephen Colbert noted, Sanders promised to campaign in all 50 states 51 if you count the state of denial. The fear among other Democrats is that the Bernie-or-bust crowd will bring Hillary Clinton down, either by leaving her badly weakened or by not voting at all in the fall. One poll in May showed that 20 percent of Sanders supporters would actually vote for Trump. A coffee table isnt just a place to put down your coffee or put up your feet. Its like the campfire of the home, said Francis DHaene, the principal of DApostrophe Design. Thats why its important to find the right one. Its usually in the center of the room, Mr. DHaene said, so its one of the most noticeable pieces of furniture. And people sit around it to have conversations. Whether hes designing apartments in Manhattan, houses in the Hamptons or boutiques for fashion designers like Jill Stuart and Rick Owens, Mr. DHaene, 50, favors clean-lined spaces. I dont like the word minimal, but we want to be simple, he said. Its modern and contemporary, but with a warm feeling. That means including just enough sculptural furniture to make those spaces inviting so every piece counts, particularly the coffee table. Before you buy a new one, he suggests asking yourself a few questions: How does the height compare to that of the seats around it? It should be at seating height or a little lower, Mr. DHaene said. William Norwich, a former Vogue editor and New York Post society gossip columnist, has a sense of humor about his symbiotic relationship with the One Percent. On a table in the living room of his one-bedroom apartment in the East 60s, he has a vintage manual typewriter that was a long-ago gift from Sandy Hill, then Sandy Hill Pittman, a fixture on the uptown social circuit in the 1980s who infamously climbed Mount Everest in 1996 during a blizzard that claimed eight lives. In the roller, he keeps the note she typed: To Billy, Happy Birthday!!!!!! This year, give yourself a gift ... write something for LOVE ... not money ... on this. Mr. Norwich, who is now 61, was nonplused when he received it. I didnt know whether to laugh or cry, he said. Only rich people tell working stiffs like me to do something for love, not money. Bless her heart. She meant well. That benevolent nature permeates his novel My Mrs. Brown, a contemporary fairytale recently published by Simon & Schuster, about a genteel widow from a small town in rural New England who lives an unremarkable life, without excess or luxury. When she volunteers to inventory the estate of the local grande dame, Mrs. Brown becomes besotted with a simple black $7,000 suit dress by Oscar de la Renta. Though its beyond her means, she becomes determined to own the same dress, which she believes connotes authority, civility and respectability. Travelers to Yosemite National Park in California have new accommodations to consider booking with the June 15 opening of Rush Creek Lodge, which claims to be the first resort to open in the Yosemite region in more than 25 years. Situated a half-mile outside the park on 20 wooded acres, the property has 143 rooms ranging from 400 to 625 square feet; all have sitting areas and spacious decks, most with sunset views. Other amenities include a large salt water pool; two hot tubs, one for families and another for adults; a childrens zip line; a farm-to-table restaurant with a wood-fired oven; and a main lodge with a fireplace, game room and an indoor tree house. In addition to its proximity to the park, the resort has a team of recreation specialists who can arrange for activities within Yosemite like guided and self-guided hikes, bike rides, excursions to swimming holes and fly-fishing trips to the Tuolumne Meadows area. Prices from $215 a night for two people. SHIVANI VORA The Great Recession had a major effect on the labor supply numbers, but over the long haul we can discern some patterns among gender and age groups. Note, first, that if Keynes had been talking just about older people, he would have been closer to the mark, because older people do work much less than they did decades ago. Certainly, they work much less than younger people. According to one estimate, men over the age of 65 spend almost 43 percent more time on recreation than do men of prime working age. Over all, older men spend far more time than younger ones on reading, watching television and taking cruises, among other fun activities. Fewer than 20 percent of men over 65 are in the work force today. We tend to take this for granted, but its a radical contrast with 1880, when that figure was about 75 percent. In short, most older people already enjoy a much better deal than Keynes had predicted for the entire work force. The 1930 Keynes essay Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren didnt even mention retirement, perhaps because he was accustomed to a world in which so many people worked until they died or were seriously disabled. Teenagers are also ahead of Keyness workplace predictions. Several decades ago, about 55 percent of teenagers had jobs, but lately only about 35 percent do. In addition, service sector jobs have been replacing jobs involving manual labor. While enormous disparities exist among teenagers of different races and income groups, over all, life has gotten easier for them. A crucially important cohort is working less, too, though not as little as Keynes expected. In 2014, about 12 percent of American men ages 25 to 54 neither had jobs nor were looking for work, compared with about 8 percent in 1994. With a healthier job market, more of those men would probably be working. If people in all of these groups are working less, then someone must be working more. The answer, overwhelmingly, is women, who have taken on an Atlaslike role in supporting American economic growth. Lorena Alvarez had a dream as a college graduate in the late 1990s to join the Peace Corps. She did and became part of the first group of volunteers sent to South Africa as that country emerged from the legacy of apartheid. Alvarez, an Anaheim native, has new dreams that hark back to South Africa. One is to someday retire in the rural village of Moime where her youthful idealism blossomed into a life of committed action. But settling in South Africa must wait. At 47, Alvarez figures she has 15 years to go before retirement. A single mom, her oldest daughter will be off to college this year; her youngest is in grade school. The other dream shows how much the country that tugs at her heart continues to pull at her rolled-up sleeves. Alvarez visited the country last summer for the first time in 18 years and came back compelled to again try to make a difference. She is engaged in a project to build a preschool for about 50 children in Moime who have no place to spend their days other than inside a garage with bare concrete floor and walls or under a mango tree. The makeshift preschool is the best that Amelia Maake, the South African woman whom Alvarez lived with while in the Peace Corps, can provide. Maake is in her early 60s. As much as South Africa has progressed since her volunteer mission, it saddened Alvarez to see how little had changed in rural areas like Moime especially for schoolchildren. A lifelong educator who has taught in Orange and Los Angeles counties, Alvarez serves as a special education teacher at El Sol Science & Arts Academy charter school in Santa Ana. Her Peace Corps work was in Moimes schools. What really broke my heart, she says of the conditions she found in Moime, was my host mother caring for children, many orphans, out of her garage and calling it a preschool. PEACE CORPS 1 Alvarez launched a GoFundMe campaign in August called One School for South Africa. She has raised about half the $10,000 needed to build a simple two-classroom building with a kitchen, a small office and outhouses. In April, she made another trip to Moime to deliver $5,000 and break ground for the preschool in a field across from Maakes property. Once its built, she says, the South African government will finance the schools operation. Her girls, Julianna Alvarez-Dennard, 17, and Maria Alvarez, 10, are helping with the fundraising. The family created homemade postcards to let friends and acquaintances know about the GoFundMe campaign. The girls have traveled extensively with Alvarez, including the August trip to South Africa. Through efforts at their school campuses and other outreach, they helped collect 300 pounds of donated books and other supplies to give away on their various stops. (Alvarez and her girls packed the donations in their check-in luggage, bringing with them only carry-on bags for personal items.) Alvarez hopes to finish the fundraising and return to Moime for the preschool to open July 18, the birthday of former South African President Nelson Mandela. Mandelas birthday is celebrated as a day of service in South Africa, similar to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in the U.S. A leader revered around the world, Mandela died in 2013. After spending 27 years in prison for his anti-apartheid activism, Mandela was a few years into his historic term as South Africas first elected black chief executive when Alvarez arrived in May 1997 with the Peace Corps. She was 28 and a graduate student from Columbia Universitys Teachers College in New York when she joined 33 other volunteers who made up the Peace Corps 1 contingent to South Africa an ethnically diverse group at Mandelas insistence. Orange County Register readers might recall that Alvarez wrote a periodic Letter from South Africa that was published in the papers Anaheim community edition. She wrote before leaving: I kept thinking about how amazing Mandela is and the hope that he gave such a divided country; and how lucky I am to be able to be part of this exciting part of history Me, Lorena Alvarez from Anaheim! I feel like I am about to walk right into the middle of a history book. Alvarez had already blazed a trail in her family: The daughter of immigrants, she became the first among 20 aunts and uncles and 75 cousins to graduate from college. She put herself through school. Her parents held traditional expectations of her: marry and raise a family. But Alvarez had the soul of an educator and the wanderlust of a world traveler. At 17, she persuaded her father, a construction worker, to help her attend a year abroad in France after she graduated from Loara High. He made it happen, she says of her father, adding that he initially thought she was going to say she was pregnant when she sat him down to ask about going to France. Her first child wouldnt come along until years later. MADE IN SOUTH AFRICA For her Peace Corps mission, Alvarez landed alone in Moime, a village of 2,000 in the northern province of Limpopo, a five-hour drive from Johannesburg: Dirt roads. No running water. Minimal phone service. She worked in three elementary schools made from cinder block, with tin roofs. Up to 100 kids might cram into 30 chairs in a classroom, surrounding the instructor. Alvarezs work included staff development, engaging parents in their childrens schooling with recognition programs, training volunteers, and nurturing partnerships with community members. People in Orange County who followed her Letter from South Africa donated boxes and boxes of childrens books for the schools. Then Alvarez did get pregnant from a relationship with another Peace Corps volunteer. She kept it secret for six months. Once she could hide it no longer, Alvarez was sent home. Two days after her return to Anaheim, she signed a contract to teach second grade at a year-round school. Theres a photograph of Julianna at a few months old: She wears a T-shirt that reads Made in South Africa. Now she has a bracelet with the same words. It was Juliannas idea to visit the country last year. Her parents who didnt marry and dont get along now always spoke fondly of their time there in the Peace Corps. She felt that connection. Julianna marveled at the gratitude South Africans showed for the smallest of kindnesses. She views the poverty in the townships and rural villages as the worst shes ever seen, including in Mexico. I was in tears, Julianna says of those preschoolers in Moime. I was shocked. While theyve traveled extensively, Julianna and her sister Maria live in a modest home in Anaheim with their mother. Still, Maria says of visiting South Africa, It made me realize how much we have and how much we take for granted. Both girls express a desire to someday join the Peace Corps. (And Maria, a fourth-grader, has even bigger plans afterward: to become president of the U.S.) I think I can do right things for this country, says Maria, a debater and a dancer. For now, the Alvarez family focuses on doing a right thing for 50 South African children. Even if its just that one school in the middle of nowhere, Lorena Alvarez says, we saw it and we want to make a difference. Contact the writer: 714-796-7793 or twalker@ocregister.com Cheyanne Spencer, an advanced placement 3D art student at Huntington Beach High School, had her piece okami accepted for the annual National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts K-12 art show in Kansas City, where it received an artistic merit award. The council picks 150 works from the approximately 1,400 submitted each year for its show. Name: Cheyanne Spencer School: Huntington Beach High School Grade:12 Hometown: Huntington Beach What mediums do you work in? Clay, found object How did you get involved in art? I was always kind of involved with art. As a kid I grew up in Los Angeles seeing a lot of color and art; I would attempt to re-create it all. What is your favorite work of art? Who is your favorite artist? My favorite work of art is The Elephants by Salvador Dali, who is my favorite artist. Who have been your influences? Did you have a mentor? If so, how did they help you? My influences were mostly these very dark Tim Burton and 80s horror movie sequences. I didnt quite start exposing myself to art until my junior year at Huntington Beach High School. That was when my teacher, Mr. Garrett Stryker, helped me develop my more creative side. What inspires you? Seeing people do what they love. That smile on their face looking at those priceless reactions to their work is what inspires me. Other than art, are you involved in any other activities? If yes, what are they? I am involved in an emergency medical technician class through Coastline ROP and also I am a Newport Beach Fire Explorer. What do you get out of making art? I get that feeling of accomplishment, and seeing peoples faces when they see my art makes me laugh and smile at the same time. Art makes me forget about all the stress of tests and upcoming adult life. It makes me focused and stress free. How do the arts figure into your long-term goals? Art made me realize that I dont have to hold all the stress inside. With my goals of becoming a firefighter, I know the stress will be difficult, and I have art to save me from that. What is the best advice you have received? Never stop trying. Its very cliche, but its the only advice that has ever worked for me. Do you have any other thoughts about being an artist that you would like to share with us? No matter what you want to do in life, just remember art is always there to help and advance you. No criminal charges will be filed in the March 9 courthouse brawl between an Orange County District Attorneys investigator and a defense lawyer who won a victory in the countys jailhouse informant controversy, state prosecutors said Thursday. State Attorney General Kamala Harris office concluded it was unclear whether either investigator Dillon Alley or Orange attorney James Crawford was criminally at fault in the bloody fight in a court hallway. The state investigated the incident because the involvement of a local District Attorneys Office investigator created a conflict for that office. Both parties tell a different story about how the fight started, and both have two to three witnesses who fully corroborate their version of events, Senior Assistant Attorney General Julie L. Garland wrote in a letter Thursday to Crawfords attorney. Because of the conflicting evidence it is not clear what party was the initial aggressor. The fight was not captured by the courts surveillance camera, the letter said. Related: Read Harris letter about the investigation We support the Attorney Generals decision to clear the OCDA investigator involved in the courthouse altercation. We will continue our own review of the facts, including any new information we receive from the AG, to fully determine what happened on that date, the office of District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said in a statement. The letter ends a nearly three-month investigation and was issued on the same day that the Register published a story in which former state Attorney General John Van de Kamp said the probe was taking too much time. The investigation included nearly a dozen follow-up interviews as well as a review of medical records, surveillance video and witness declarations, the letter said. The altercation, to some, was indicative of the heated feelings on both sides of the two-year-controversy over whether prosecutors and police in Orange County improperly used jailhouse informants to get confessions and withheld evidence from defense attorneys. Using snitches is legal, except when the target is represented by an attorney and has been formally charged. At least six murder and attempted murder cases have unraveled in the snitch crisis, resulting in overturned convictions, reduced penalties and dropped charges. Crawford was fresh from winning a new trial for a man twice convicted in the double murder of a pregnant woman when he says he was attacked from behind by Alley. Crawford and Alley had exchanged expletives about the informant controversy when Alley slammed Crawfords face into a wood bench outside Superior Court Department 40 in Santa Ana and pummeled his head, Crawford said. Crawford that day released photos of his injured face and bloody eye. Witnesses for Alley agreed both men traded words angrily, but said Crawford took the first swing at the DAs investigator and was to blame for the escalating tension. TUSTIN Police are searching for a man who they say wore a shower cap while he robbed a bank at gunpoint Thursday morning. The man robbed a U.S. Bank branch in the 13400 block of Newport Avenue in Tustin shortly before 11:30 a.m., said Sgt. Andy Birozy of the Tustin Police Department. As the teller was reading the note, the suspect produced a black handgun, he said. The man left the bank with cash and is at large. He is described as a black man standing 5-feet-8 to 5-feet, 10-inches tall, weighing 165 to 190 pounds. At the time of the crime, he was wearing a black shower cap, prescription thick-rimmed glasses, a black shirt, dark pants and black shoes. Anyone with information about the suspect is asked to call Detective Ryan Newton at 714-573-3249 or 714-573-3225. Contact the writer: 714-796-7865 or afausto@ocregister.com CAPISTRANO BEACH Jon Aasted was among the last people to cross over Coast Highway on the crumbling Capistrano Surfside Inn bridge before demolition crews hired by the county tore it down. The Sacramento resident walked over the bridge Wednesday night to watch the sunset on the beach. When he looked out the window of his hotel Thursday morning, he was shocked to see three large excavators lined up along the south side of the 90-foot bridge, plowing 10,000-pound hydraulic hammers into it. Crews from San Pedro-based National Demolition began work at 7 a.m. The excavators worked rhythmically, piercing the concrete-and-steel bridge with tens of thousands of punctures from the center to the ends. The hammers broke out small chunks of concrete along the bridge for an hour. As they neared the ends, the middle of the bridge began to sag. Then in an instant, about 9 a.m., it plunged to the highway. Left standing was the second part of the 31-year-old bridge that stretches over railroad tracks to the sand at Doheny State Beach. It seemed like it was really old, said Aasted, who was in Orange County for a job interview at Saddleback College. Im glad to have been part of a little bit of history. The county closed Coast Highway from Palisades Drive to Doheny Park Road until 7 p.m. Thursday for demolition work and cleanup. Locals who came to the beach to walk or jog said the work snarled traffic in nearby towns and on I-5. The demolition was completed safely and without incident, Shannon Widor, a spokesman with OC Public Works, said Thursday afternoon. County officials said they decided to tear down the bridge eroded and rusting from decades of marine air because the cost of its repair was too high. Building a new bridge to include both spans would have cost an estimated $8million to $10 million, Widor said. The bridge was built in 1985 by the Capistrano Surfside Inn developer to promote tourism and easier beach access before Dana Point was incorporated. When the city incorporated, the county retained ownership. Officials initially estimated that the end of the bridges useful life would come later this year, but safety concerns prompted the county to have an engineer re-evaluate it, and he recommended that the bridge be demolished quickly. In May, the California Coastal Commission approved the countys emergency request for demolition. On Wednesday, crews painted a crosswalk and installed a temporary traffic signal across Coast Highway so visitors could get to the beach and local businesses. A permanent traffic signal and pedestrian crossing will come later, Widor said. But Elaine Kilday of San Juan Capistrano said she wants to see a permanent traffic light put in immediately and she is not alone. Some who live in the area or come there to walk or jog on the beach have expressed concerns about the 50-mph speed limit on the highway and motorists distracted by beach activity. They point to an incident in 2006, when two San Clemente women were struck by a car while jogging on the highway not far from the bridge. Dana Point paid the women $49 million in a settlement in November 2007 among the largest in the countys history. The women were paralyzed in the accident. People driving there dont pay attention to pedestrians; theyre looking at the waves, Kilday said. People think theyre safe in a crosswalk, but theyre not. Its a dangerous situation. Patricia Southern, who has worked the front desk of the Capistrano Beach Inn for 16 years, agreed with Kilday that crossing the highway is unsafe. But she said putting a traffic signal there will add to the heavy congestion in the area. I dont think we need another light, she said. Theyre ruining this place. For now, the remaining part of the bridge that spans the railroad tracks to the beach will be shored up, Widor said. Contact the writer: 714-796-2254 or eritchie@ocregister.com or Twitter:@lagunaini BEIJING Commemorations were held in Taiwan and elsewhere Friday ahead of the 27th anniversary of Chinas bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests centered on Beijings Tiananmen Square, while the government in China, where the incident remains a taboo topic, said it had long ago turned the page on the political turmoil. Former student leader Wuer Kaixi was joined by lawmakers at Taiwans legislature on Friday to mark the June 4, 1989, military assault that left hundreds, possibly thousands, dead. Taiwans democratic politics and open society have long served as a counterpoint to Chinas authoritarian one-party system, which permits no discussion of the crackdown or memorials for the victims. Wuer said the Chinese government continues to prevent him from returning to China and bars his elderly parents from traveling to meet him and their grandson outside the country. This is what a so-called great nation has done to me, Wuer told participants in the gathering outside Taiwans parliament. We are facing a nasty and brutal China. Wuer fled China after the crackdown, in which he was named the second most wanted among the student leaders. Unable to return home, he married a Taiwanese woman and settled on the island in 1996. Earlier this year he ran an unsuccessful campaign for a seat in the legislature. With the anniversary looming, security in China has been tightened and victims family members have been placed under additional restrictions. At least half a dozen people have reportedly been detained for attempting to commemorate the events, although a small group wearing T-shirts condemning the crackdown converged on the square on Sunday, among them former house painter Qi Zhiyong, who had both of his legs amputated after being shot by martial law troops early on June 4, 1989. In Washington, D.C., the State Department called for a full public accounting of those killed, detained, or missing and for an end to censorship of discussions about the events of June 4, 1989, as well as an end to harassment and detention of those who wish to peacefully commemorate the anniversary. In a statement, it also urged the Chinese government to respect the rights and freedoms of all its citizens. Asked about the anniversary, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China had long ago reached a clear conclusion about the political turmoil at the end of 1980s and other related issues. Chinas explosive economic growth in the years that followed proves that the path of socialism with Chinese characters we chose to follow is in line with the fundamental interests of the Chinese people, and it represents a wish shared by them all, Hua told reporters at a daily news briefing. Another former student leader, Wang Dan, told a commemorative event in Tokyo that Chinas post-crackdown development proves it isnt necessarily true that economic growth will eventually lead to democracy. Wang, now a professor in Taiwan, said holding such memorials was about more than just remembering the 1989 events. Its a gesture to show your political position, he said. Its a gesture to fight against the view of the Communist Party. The county of Oranges female public employees earn on average 27 percent less than its male workers, making its gender pay gap the worst among four large California counties studied in a state audit released this week. The report, published Tuesday by the California State Auditor, found that Orange Countys top-paying public positions were overwhelmingly held by men, and most lower-level positions were filled by women. That discrepancy, along with a small pay advantage held by men over their female counterparts in similar positions, combined to create the countys large wage gap. County spokeswoman Jean Pasco said Thursday that officials will review the audits findings and develop ways to better track and measure the countys workforce composition so it can address the gender wage disparity. Even though women made up 55 percent of full-time county employees last year, they made up just 30 percent of the 3,025 workers who earned more than $140,000 per year in total compensation, the audit found. Similarly, 60 percent of female county workers earned less than $100,000 annually and 68 percent of male employees earned more than that amount. Achieving greater levels of pay equality depends not only on men and women earning equal amounts in the same classification; it also requires men and women to occupy equally both lower and more highly compensated positions, the report states. The gap between male and female county workers wages has widened slightly in recent years. In 2011, female county employees made an average of 25.5 percent less than male workers. The audit found similar results of large pay gaps between male and female employees and a widening of those discrepancies in recent years in Los Angeles, Fresno and Santa Clara counties. Santa Clara County has the lowest imbalance of the four, with women earning an average of 12 percent less than men. In all four counties, the report also discovered women more often were hired at their jobs minimum salary and that those pay disparities were magnified when workers received raises based on a percentage of their salaries. Three of the counties studied, including Orange, kept no records documenting the reasoning behind hiring decisions, making it impossible for the auditors to determine whether counties were using valid job-related criteria when deciding whether to employ particular male or female candidates. The audit found no evidence of direct discrimination in any of the counties studied. County Supervisor Todd Spitzer said after the audits release that he asked CEO Frank Kim to look at that issue specifically to determine whether this is a historical issue based on educational or experience factors or if we truly have a disparate promotional or hiring issue that we need to address. Holding a position should always be on merit irrespective of gender or any other personal distinguishing factor, Spitzer said. More than 40 percent of Orange Countys jobs paying over $200,000 per year belong to high-ranking members of the Orange County Sheriffs Department, according to the report, and large gender disparities in those roles contributed significantly to the countys overall wage gap. Of the countys 551 deputy sheriff II positions, which average total compensation of $210,000 annually, 9 percent were women at the time the audit was conducted. That imbalance is problematic, said Ariane Hegewisch, program director of employment and earnings at the Institute for Womens Policy Research in Washington, D.C. Hegewisch said occupational gender segregation a term used to describe the difference in jobs men and women hold or apply for is one of the leading causes of public sector gender wage gaps and that the disparity between male and female public safety workers is a major factor. She said law enforcement and fire agencies generally need to do a better job of actively encouraging women to apply for positions. I do not know the circumstances in Orange County, but you need to be proactive on those issues. You cant just say We wont discriminate, Hegewisch said. Orange County Sheriffs Department spokesman Lt. Mark Stichter said the sheriffs academy has seen growth in the number of women who enter, called the departments command staff well-balanced, and pointed out that the countys top law enforcement position is held by a woman. Sheriff Sandra Hutchens earned total compensation of $400,214 in 2015. Jennifer Muir, general manager of the Orange County Employees Association, the countys employee union, said she was unsurprised by the report because it is supported by what female employees see on the ground. This jolting report supported by the real-life experiences of women in predominately female job classifications that our culture still wrongly considers less valuable demonstrates there is much more work to be done, Muir wrote in an email. From April 2011 to June 2015, four female Orange County employees filed gender discrimination complaints relating to promotions, the audit said. The county determined all four were unsubstantiated. Contact the writer: 714-796-7960 or jgraham@ocregister.com SANTA ANA Two men and a woman have admitted to being involved in a $580 million healthcare scheme, joining six other defendants in cooperating with authorities investigating illegal kickbacks, according to filings unsealed this week in federal court. Michael Drobot Jr., 44, of Newport Beach, Michael E. Barri, 48, of San Clemente and Linda Martin, 66, of Clovis are the latest healthcare workers and administrators to plead guilty to conspiracy and illegal kickback charges as part of a massive scheme centered around Pacific Hospital in Long Beach. Federal prosecutors allege that dozens of doctors, chiropractors and others were paid millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to refer patients to Pacific Hospital. The patients underwent spinal surgeries, which authorities say had inflated billings of $580 million submitted to federal and state workers compensation systems over eight years. Michael Drobot Sr., a Corona Del Mar resident and former CEO of Pacific Hospital, has said he paid kickbacks to doctors, as well as bribing state Sen. Ron Calderon. Drobot Sr., facing lawsuits from dozens of people who allege he sold them substandard spinal screws, is cooperating with the federal prosecution of Calderon. On March 4, Drobot Jr. pleaded guilty to the conspiracy and illegal kickback charges. As part of his plea deal, he admitted to personally soliciting and acting as a liaison to doctors and chiropractors involved in the scheme. Also pleading guilty to similar charges in recent months were Barri, former owner and operator of the Santa Ana-based Tri-Star Medical Group and Jojaso Management Co., and Martin, a former marketer for Pacific Hospital. Barri admitted to receiving $158,555 in illegal kickbacks, while Martin acknowledged recruiting medical professionals into the scheme. Drobot Jr. faces up to 10 years in federal prison, while Barri and Martin face up to five years behind bars. Five other people, including two doctors, have been charged as part of the federal investigation, which authorities have dubbed Operation Spinal Cap. Contact the writer: semery@ocregister.com COTO DE CAZA A fire burned about 20 acres Friday in the gated community of Coto De Caza. The blaze that lasted about three hours was contained around 2:15 p.m. said Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Larry Kurtz. Firefighters were reinforcing the perimeter around the fire late Friday afternoon and putting out hot spots. The fire was expected to be completely out by late Friday night, Kurtz said. OCFA firefighters will remain at the location overnight to make sure the fire doesnt restart, he added. Seventy OCFA firefighters were called to battle the blaze. They were joined by three water-dropping helicopters; two from OCFA and one from the Orange County Sheriffs Department. We try to put a lot of firepower and resources on these things as soon as possible so they dont grow out of hand, Kurtz said. Were happy to report that no homes were damaged and no civilians were injured. Four firefighters suffered minor, non-life threatening injuries. They were transported to hospitals for evaluation, Kurtz said. No additional information on their condition was immediately released. The vegetation fire originated near a large residential property on a street named Tortoise Shell. The cause remains under investigation. A fixed-wing air tanker from Cal Fire had been circling the area but was called off before dropping its flame retardant because commanders on the ground determined the situation was under control. No evacuation orders were issued. Two miles away, teachers kept students at Wagon Wheel Elementary School inside classrooms until smoke from the fire cleared, said Ryan Burris, a Capistrano Unified School District spokesman. Staff Writer Scott Schwebke contributed to this report. Re: Gomez for county Board of Education [Opinion, May 29]: Youve got to be kidding! Rebecca Gomez over Robert Hammond for Orange County Board of Education? Never! That would be a terrible mistake. Robert Hammond, a man of great character, is super-qualified to continue the great work of watching the education of students and keeping a watch over Common Core. Dorothy Sheldon Tustin What Mr. Hammond said about gays might be inexcusable but supporting someone who will do nothing but support the unions is excusable? Being a tool of the unions is OK because no ones feelings get hurt. Is this how you will now vet candidates in the future? You guys are starting to sound like a bunch of whiny liberals, more consumed with what someone said versus what they do and accomplish. I applaud your optimism on Ms. Gomez, but you are dreaming in color if you think she will suddenly be open minded. When has the union ever endorsed someone who wasnt in its pocket? Your best call was to endorse no one. Bud Carbonaro Lake Forest I was pleased to see your endorsement of Beckie Gomez. I have known and worked with Beckie in her many facets of community service. When I found out she was a candidate for the O.C. Board of Education, my first thought was, that is exactly where Beckie belongs. She understands education from many different perspectives, and her heart is for the students. She is a very hard worker and quite humble. You wont learn all she has to offer or knows about from Beckie herself. But those who know her and work with her can testify to her professionalism and effective leadership. Above all, she will give every issue a fair hearing. Her votes will reflect her careful consideration of all sides of the issue. I think such an approach is rare these days. Her presence on the board would be a breath of fresh air. Her service on the Tustin City Council has prepared her well for the O.C. Board of Education. I encourage all voters in O.C. Board of Education, District 1, to vote for Beckie Gomez. Julie Chay Tustin I have noticed that when someone is called out for a statement or action that is insulting or smacks of prejudice, the current fashion is to sneer political correctness Defenders of Mr Hammonds insult to gay Americans wrote the Register that he used a Biblical term. Allow me to say that there are a number of terms and expressions in the Bible that you wouldnt want your family called. It has become reflex to lash out at anything one who objects to poor behavior with the mantra that we are being politically correct, and to define PC as being over vigilant. How about we just stop the name calling and the classification of entire groups of people with a single judgement loaded expression? And stop defending indefensible behavior? Elise Power Garden Grove I can think of no other person I would rather see on the Orange County Board of Education overseeing the wellbeing of students of every color, creed, and sexual orientation than Robert Hammond. I have frequently attended meetings of the OCBE over the last three years. During this last year, I have watched Board President Hammond chair often difficult and contentious meetings with calm professionalism. Mr. Hammond and the board often hear from minority groups. He is consistently kind, polite, and fair. Mr. Hammond is clearly a proponent of parental rights and parental choice. No where is this more evident than in his careful attention to the testimony of parents, students, teachers, and administrators representing charter schools during the appeals process. This appeals process is one of the most important responsibilities of the OCBE, and Mr. Hammond has been a vital part of that process. Finally, Mr. Hammond has demonstrated great courage in his strong and consistent opposition to Common Core. He was instrumental in advocating for the holding of two forums featuring a total of sixteen speakers exploring the pros and cons of Common Core. Hundreds of parents and members of the community attended these meetings. As a teacher in the public schools, a taxpayer, and concerned citizen, I support the candidacy of Robert Hammond and urge others to do so as well. Linda Cone Yorba Linda What a coup it was for Beckie Gomez to get the endorsement over Robert Hammond, President of the Orange County Board of Education, not because of anything she has done, rather because we have become a politically correct society afraid of words. George Orwell warned us the further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those that speak it. This has become commonplace today where we find accurate words described as hateful as to scrub them from our vocabulary, minds and history. How shallow and intellectually dishonest. What should have been a blistering news item on the front page of the local section was how David Boyd premeditated the assassinations of both Ken Williams and Robert Hammonds character with a vicious parody flyer that was sent to a local liberal blog. David Boyd was caught only when the Microsoft Word documents properties were checked and he was listed as the author, exposing that the anonymous email had come from Mr. Boyds computer. Yet, the editors of the Orange County Register choose to use his claims as the basis for an editorial to slander a good man simply because of a word they have deemed inexcusable. So much for liberty! Had Boyd thrown a Molotov cocktail through Hammonds front window it would have done less damage and hurt fewer people. Apparently attempting to murder the reputations of good men is not only less offensive, its quite acceptable. David S. Whitley Irvine WASHINGTON Part of Bernie Sanders charm is that, for all of his arm-waving jeremiads, he appears unthreatening. Hes the weird old uncle in the attic, Larry Davids crazy Bernie. Its almost a matter of style. Who can be afraid of a candidate so irascible, grumpy, old-fashioned and unfashionable? After all, hes not going to win the nomination, so what harm can he do? A major address at the party convention? A say in the vice presidential selection? And who reads party platforms anyway? Well, platforms may not immediately affect a particular campaign. But they do express, quite literally, the party line, a written record of its ideological trajectory. Which is why two of Sanders appointments to the 15-member platform committee are so stunning. Professor Cornel West not only has called the Israeli prime minister a war criminal but openly supports the BDS movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions), the most important attempt in the world to ostracize and delegitimize Israel. West is joined on the committee by the longtime pro-Palestinian activist James Zogby. Together, reported the New York Times, they vowed to upend what they see as the partys lopsided support of Israel. This seems a gratuitous provocation. Sanders hardly made Israel central to his campaign. He did call Israels response in the 2014 Gaza war disproportionate and said we cannot continue to be one-sided. But now Sanders seeks to permanently alter i.e., weaken the relationship between the Democratic Party and Israel. West doesnt even pretend, as do some left-wing peace groups, to be opposing Israeli policy in order to save it from itself. He makes the simpler case that occupation is unconscionable oppression and that until Israel abandons it, Israel deserves to be treated like apartheid South Africa anathematized, cut off, made to bleed morally and economically. This is an unusual argument for a Democratic platform committee, largely because it is logically and morally perverse. Israel did, in fact, follow such high-minded advice in 2005: It terminated its occupation and evacuated Gaza. That earned it (temporary) praise from the West. And from the Palestinians? Not peace, not reconciliation, not normal relations but a decade of unrelenting terrorism and war. Israel is now being asked pressured to repeat that same disaster on the West Bank. That would bring the terror war, quite fatally, to the very heart of Israel Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ben Gurion Airport. Israel is now excoriated for declining that invitation to national suicide. It is ironic that the most successful Jewish presidential candidate ever should be pushing the anti-Israel case. But perhaps not surprising considering Sanders ideological roots. He is old Left not the post-1960s, countercultural New Left. Why, the man honeymooned in the Soviet Union not such fashionably cool communist paradises as Castros Cuba, where Bill de Blasio honeymooned. For the old Left, Israel was simply an outpost of Western imperialism, Middle East division. To this day, the leftist consensus, most powerful in Europe, holds that Israeli perfidy demands purification by Western chastisement. To be sure, Sanders didnt create the Democrats drift away from Israel. It was already visible at the 2012 convention. But Sanders is consciously abetting it. The millennials who worship him and pack his rallies havent lived through and dont know the history of Israels half-century of peace offers. They dont know of the multiple times Israel has offered to divide the land with an independent Palestinian state and been rebuffed. Sanders hasnt lifted a finger to tell them. The lovable old guy with the big crowds and no chance at the nomination is hardly taken seriously (except by Hillary Clinton, whose inability to put him away reveals daily her profound political weakness). But when he makes platform appointees that show he does take certain things quite seriously, like undermining the U.S.-Israeli relationship, you might reconsider your equanimity about the magical mystery tour. It looks like Woodstock, but there is steel inside the psychedelic glove. CAMP PENDLETON Lt. Gen. David Berger, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force on the base, was nominated Thursday to become the next commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific, the Pentagon announced. The announcement was made by Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, who said in a statement that Berger has been appointed to succeed Lt. Gen. John Toolan. Berger, 55, oversees Camp Pendletons largest tenant the Marine Corps premier crisis response force, with about 40,000 Marines and sailors. He took the command in July, 2014, coming from the Twentynine Palms Marine Air Ground Combat Center, where he served as commanding general. His previous assignments include chief of staff for KFOR Headquarters in Pristina, Kosovo. He commanded the Regimental Combat Team 8 in Fallujah, Iraq, and deployed to Afghanistan in 2012 as the commanding general of 1st Marine Division in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Berger was commissioned in 1981. He earned his bachelors degree from Tulane University and his masters degree in public policy and military science from Johns Hopkins University. He is married and has four sons. Two are in the Marine Corps, one enlisted and one officer. If approved by the Senate, Berger would take over for Toolan, who became the commanding general of Marine Forces, Pacific, in August 2014. Toolan plans to retire after serving in the Marine Corps for 40 years. Berger and Toolans careers have crossed before. In 2005, Berger led Marines during some of the most deadly fighting during the Iraq war in the second battle of Fallujah. Toolan led Marines in the first battle of Fallujah the year prior. Contact the writer: 714-796-2254 or eritchie@ocregister.com or Twitter:@lagunaini LAGUNA NIGUEL About halfway through the memorial ceremony for recently deceased City Councilman Jerry McCloskey, it suddenly became okay to clap in chuch. With permission from church pastors, Mayor Laurie Davies asked the 500 mourners at Laguna Niguel Presbyterian Church to stand when she called out groups and organizations that they knew McCloskey from. She started with his wife, Marilyn, his daughters and grandchildren and classmates from UC Berkeley, and the handful of people standing began to clap, breaking the silence with a light echo throughout the chapel. Then she got to city staff, elected officials and people who had served with McCloskey on committees or commissions, and this got half of the group up and clapping. By the time she finished with smaller groups like the Laguna Niguel Wine Club, all 500 people were standing, filling the chapel with applause. We want to be loud enough so Jerry can hear us up in heaven, Davies said. Thursdays memorial for McCloskey celebrated his life as a devoted family man, longtime community volunteer and a city councilman since 2012, serving a one-year term as mayor in 2015. McCloskey volunteered with many local organizations, including but not limited to the Laguna Niguel Military Support Foundation, American Legion Post 281, the Laguna Niguel Rotary Club, the Laguna Niguel Lions Club and the Laguna Niguel Historical Society, and all were represented in the pews Thursday. Marilyn McCloskey, Jerry McCloskeys wife of more than 50 years, said she knew the church would be filled with people whose lives her husband had touched, but she hadnt expected the huge outpouring of emotion. Ive received lots of cards, flowers and phone calls since last week, but it was nice to see everyone gathered in Jerrys honor, Marilyn McCloskey said. No one had expected McCloskey, 79, to die when he went May 20 to have his pacemaker replaced, but an infection set in and eventually took McCloskeys life. McCloskeys granddaughter, Julia McCloskey, said she always knew she could depend on her grandfather to lend an ear when she needed to talk. Speaking at the memorial, the Saddleback College student said that he told her he was proud of her the day he went in to the hospital. Grandpa, Im proud of you, too, she said through tears, rousing another round of applause in support of the mourning granddaughter. After graduating from UC Berkeley, McCloskey had served in the U.S. Navy, rising to the rank of lieutenant, so sailors from Camp Pendleton presented the family with a ceremonial American flag after the memorial. Attendees were invited to the El Niguel Country Club after the memorial to greet the McCloskey family. Marilyn McCloskey warmly greeted sympathetic guests, but she couldnt help but shed tears when thinking about how much she would miss her husband. He was my best friend, Marilyn McCloskey said. We used to talk about everything, and now hes gone. Contact the writer: 949-667-1933, cyee@ocregister.com and @ChrisMYee on Twitter Irvine voters will be asked to consider Measure E, a whopping $319 million school facilities bond, but we feel that approving the bonds would be imprudent. Bond funding is a very expensive way to finance infrastructure projects. In this case, the debt service would nearly double the total cost of the measure, to $622 million. As noted in the ballot argument against the measure, the Irvine Unified School District is the seventh-largest school district debt issuer in the state, with nearly $937 million in debt issued from 2005-14, according to State Treasurer John Chiangs Task Force on Bond Accountability. That is much greater than the debts of many districts with far more students. Irvine residents have already demonstrated their commitment to funding quality education through the additional $5 million a year the city contributes to local school programs, which is highly unusual for a municipality. This does not include $12 million from Measure BB, passed in 2012, the $4 million a year raised by the Irvine Public Schools Foundation or the $20 million pledged over a 10-year period by the Irvine Company. Newer isnt always better, and Measure E is excessively costly and unnecessary, as demonstrated by the outstanding performance of IUSDs students, who have apparently not been affected much by those 30-year-old classrooms. Finally, voters must also be mindful that a statewide school facilities bond costing $9 billion ($17.6 billion with interest) will appear on the November ballot, which could saddle taxpayers with even more school bond debt. Vote No on Measure E. The makers of Almost Holy make it clear with no care for subtlety what they think about their vigilante central figure, Ukrainian pastor Gennadiy Mokhnenko. The highly stylized opening credits have the look and sound of a Batman sequel, with quick-moving images and an electronic score hammering home the urgency of what youre about to see. Director Steve Hoover favors full frames that are mostly out of focus, making sure the charismatic Mokhnenko always remains in sharp relief. But this documentary isnt about heroes and villains, or determining right and wrong. Its about hope in the face of hopelessness, and what drives a man to keep trying to change the seemingly unchangeable. Its not a sin to tell a one-sided story, Hoover seems to be arguing, when there is no other side. Mokhnenko runs the Pilgrim, an orphanage near Kiev that takes in drug-addicted children, and finds help for older citizens being victimized by the addiction trade. Hes not afraid to bust down doors, threaten physical violence or use his thousands of supporters to loudly shame a corrupt pharmacy he believes is selling opiates without a prescription. Hoover establishes the stark situation in riveting early scenes, including one featuring a young drug user, near death with infections, being used as an example to other boys some who raise their even younger hands to admit the writhing boy has sold them drugs. For Mokhnenko, who seeks cameras and crowds shamelessly, even a suffering boy must be used for maximum motivational effect. But it also become clear that Mokhnenkos tendency to romanticize his position seems to be a matter of self-motivation as much as ego. I dont need permission to do good deeds, he says, and it doesnt sound like bragging as much as the pastor psyching himself up to keep plodding forward. This theory is solidified in the films final third, when Ukraines conflict with Russia heats up, and Mokhnenko doubles down on his commitment to the community. Mokhnenko rarely lets his guard down around the documentary crews, who shadowed him for years; like a non-profit Dr. Phil, he may just default to capitalizing on any nearby camera for the sake of his work. The pastors explanation of circumstances surrounding his own alcoholic parents is an exception. (It was like hell, because I love them. I need them, he says, in a heartbreaking matter-of-fact tone. But this tragedy destroy everything.) Perhaps the moral implications of Mokhnenkos beliefs should have been explored more. There are far too many scenes of him talking of his methods, without scrutiny, presented alongside the good works of an animated crocodile hero on local Ukrainian television. These edits and some lingering and beautiful cinematography by John Pope (executive producer Terrence Malicks influence is felt) often give the picture a dreamlike quality. But his questionable methods, and the questionable decisions by the filmmakers, are far outweighed by the needs of Kievs citizens. There are scenes when its easy to believe that Mokhnenko is losing his faith in God. But he never loses faith in his fellow man. And those inspirational moments alone make this film worth seeing. FREMONT The body of a man accused of wounding two California police officers has been found inside a home that caught fire after police tear-gassed the place in an effort to force him out of the residence, officials said Thursday. Fremont police said it was not immediately known if Gerald Villabrille Jr., 44, died from the fire or gunshot wounds suffered during the initial shooting. Police said Villabrille lived in San Jose and had a criminal record, but declined to provide further details. No one else was injured in the fire at the Fremont home. The mans body was found Thursday morning after an overnight standoff that started when the suspect shot the locks off a door to a vacant home and barricaded himself inside overnight, Fremont police spokeswoman Geneva Bosques said. The officers from the Fremont Police Department were shot Wednesday afternoon after a traffic stop turned violent, prompting a manhunt that involved a house-to- house search that lasted well into the night, Alameda County Sheriffs Office Sgt. Ray Kelly said. Fremont is about 40 miles south of San Francisco. One officer remains in critical condition. The second officer is in stable condition, Bosques said. Their names have not been released. The incident started when the suspect backed into an officers patrol car and a person inside the white pickup truck fired shots that injured the officer. The shooter and another suspect then ran away, Kelly said. Shortly after that officers from several law enforcement agencies flooded the area and searching got underway. A while later, a Fremont police officer with about 10 years of service with the department was wounded in a shootout with the suspect, officials said. Following the shooting, investigators had ordered residents of the blue-collar neighborhood to remain in their homes and to call police about anything suspicious. Police helicopters were deployed and police dogs used in searching yard-by-yard and door-to-door. A missing man from Canada has not been missing at all. Hes vagabonding, said Josh Chandler, a private investigator from Orange Countys Justice Solutions Group. Hes OK. Hes stable. Hes got a tent. Hes made the decision that he doesnt want to go home. Ryan Robichaud, 24, left his home in Ontario, Canada, in January, launching a frantic search by his mother, Tracy. She tracked him to Boston, then to Huntington Beach, where she visited in April, hoping to convince her son to go home. She didnt find him. She was concerned because her son had been in a car accident and suffered a head injury. He was treated and released from a hospital, but she feared he wasnt thinking straight. Robichaud turned up Thursday in Palm Springs. He was sleeping in a tent behind a church. Chandler, working pro bono, drove to Palm Springs and met with Robichaud twice, offering him a place to stay in Orange County or to help him get home to Canada. He was within his right mind, Chandler said. He was healthy. Hes not afraid of anything. Hes on his own free will. Chandler said Robichaud called his mother Thursday afternoon. He promised to keep phone contact with her as he continues his travels in the United States. His mother, Tracy Beeso-Robichaud, did not return repeated calls for comment. Robichaud mentioned that he may want to go to Arizona next. Later Thursday afternoon, Chandler met with Robichaud again. This time at an apartment complex where he was staying with friends. He was playing with people in the pool, Chandler said. Tracy had launched an online fundraising effort to buy plane tickets for her trip to Southern California. In our opinion, we dont believe its a scam, Chandler said. I believe the family was doing its best to locate Ryan as quickly as possible. Contact the writer: The St. Paul man who carried out a murder-suicide at UCLA left a kill list at his home and that led authorities to a womans body in Brooklyn Park, Minn., authorities said. Mainak Sarkar, 38, drove to Los Angeles from Minnesota with two semi-automatic guns and killed Professor William Klug before killing himself Wednesday, according to Los Angeles authorities. When law enforcement officials searched Sarkars North End home in St. Paul, they found a kill list with the names of Klug, another UCLA professor and a woman. The woman was found Thursday, shot dead in her Brooklyn Park home. The other professor is safe. MINNESOTA VICTIM IDENTIFIED The woman was identified Thursday as Ashley Hasti by a neighbor in Brooklyn Park who asked not to be identified. A 31-year-old woman with that name is listed as living at the house. Records indicate Sarkar also previously resided at the Brooklyn Park house. Hennepin County records state that Hasti was married to Sarkar on June 14, 2011. Whether they were still married is unknown. Sarkars dispute with Klug appears to be tied to Sarkar thinking the professor released intellectual property that harmed him, according to L.A. authorities. Sarkar shot Klug on the fourth floor of the Engineering IV building on the UCLA campus and then took his own life. A semi-automatic gun was found there as well as a note telling those who found him to care for his cat back in Minnesota, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. At a press conference Thursday, Brooklyn Park Police Deputy Chief Mark Bruley said officials believe the woman found dead in the Brooklyn Park home was killed before the UCLA shooting took place. They believe she died from a gunshot wound. Police discovered her body after authorities in California asked them to do a welfare check at the residence. St. Paul officers executed a search at an apartment at 1052 Agate St. on Wednesday at 8:45 p.m. at the request of another law enforcement agency, said Steve Linders, a St. Paul police spokesman. HASTIS BACKGROUND Ashley Hasti enrolled in the University of Minnesotas Medical School in 2012, according to University officials. Hasti was slated to attend classes during this summers term. Hasti graduated from the Us undergraduate program in 2008 with a degree in Asian languages and literature. She graduated from a post baccalaureate pre-medical program at Scripps College in Claremont, Calif. in 2010, according to a spokesman with the school. Hasti also previously attended school at North Hennepin Community College in Brooklyn Park. A spokesman there said she was enrolled as a part-time student from 2003 to 2006 and again from 2011 to 2012. Neighbors on the 2400 block of Pearson Parkway described the Hasti family as friendly but quiet people who kept to themselves. One neighbor said the daughter lived by herself at the house, and the father, Wayne Hasti, lived in another location. Another said she just saw the father at the house. I didnt know she was living there, said neighbor Holly Olson. Its so sad. I wish we couldve prevented it, said a woman who lives across the street from the family who asked not to be identified. None of the neighbors seemed to know anything about Sarkar. Gordy Aune Jr., a neighborhood watch block captain on Pearson Parkway, said Wayne Hastis wife died two or three years ago, and that Wayne and Ashley were the only ones living at the house. They have had visitors, Aune said. But he said he does not know if Sarkar was at the house. Aune said Wayne Hasti owned more than one property and split his time between places. SARKARS BACKGROUND Sarkar is listed on a UCLA website as a member the Klug Research Group in Computational Biomechanics at UCLA, according to a Klug Research Group publication. A blog post written in March by someone identifying himself as Sarkar said he had personal differences with Klug. He cleverly stole all my code and gave it (to) another student, the post says. He made me really sick. The blog continues: Your enemy is your enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust. Stay away from this sick guy. Los Angeles law enforcement officials said UCLA officials said it was all in Sarkars imagination. Sarkar, who graduated from UCLA in 2013, had also graduated from Stanford University. Prior to Stanford, he was a 2000 graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur with a degree in aerospace engineering, according to the Hindustan Times. Mainak was a brilliant student. He remained busy with studies and did not talk or socialise much. As far as I remember, he was from Kolkata, a professor of the aerospace department of IIT-Kharagpur told the Hindustan Times. The professor was not authorized to speak to the media. According to his online profile, Sarkar worked for Infosys in Bengaluru from 2000 to 2001 before heading to the United States, according to the Hindustan Times. Minnesota court records show he had traffic and parking offenses, but nothing criminal. A parking citation from Apple Valley in November and a case from 2006 indicated Sarkar listed an Agate Street apartment in St. Paul as his address. Seatbelt and parking violations from 2014 showed a Minneapolis address for Sarkar. Sarkar worked as a engineering analyst for Endurica LLC based out of Ohio for less than two years until he left in August of 2014, according to an employee with the company. Sarkars name was listed on a mailbox at the St. Paul apartment building on Agate Street. Its very scary, said a woman whose boyfriend lives across the hall when she heard Thursday about Sarkars alleged role in the UCLA and Brooklyn Park shootings. The woman, who would only identify herself as Stacy, said she had noticed Sarkar in the building in the last month and last saw him about a week ago. He was headed to his apartment, she said hi to him and he nodded his head. CAMPUS MOURNS Meanwhile, the UCLA campus reopened Thursday, offering counseling to distressed students and faculty. Wednesdays shooting prompted a two-hour lockdown on the campus. Klug was a father of two and associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. He was recalled by current and former students has leading classes that were fairly difficult, yet rewarding. Andy Lachtman, an online student in Arlington, Va., called Klug a great teacher and an inspiration, according to the Daily Breeze of Torrance. A memorial fund had raised more than $33,000 as of Thursday for Klugs family. The Associated Press contributed to this report. The car that UCLA shooter Mainak Sarkar drove to California to carry out a killing spree was found Friday in Culver City in the Los Angeles area as police in two states continued to work together to understand his motive, Culver City Police confirmed. Sarkar drove to California in a gray 2003 Nissan Sentra, which has Minnesota license plates, to kill two UCLA professors. But before that, he had broken into his wifes Minnesota home where she was later found dead, police there said Friday. Sarkar, 38, was legally married to Ashley Hasti, 31, but the two were separated for some time and were living in different locations, according to a statement from the Brooklyn Park Police Department, which serves a suburb northwest of Minneapolis. Officers did locate a broken window where it is believed Mr. Sarkar had entered the home of Hasti to commit the crime, Brooklyn Park Police said. Officers said there were no previous police calls related to Hasti or Sarkar. Sarkar, who graduated from UCLA in 2013, had created a kill list, in his Minnesota home, which included the names of professor William S. Klug, a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor who was fatally shot Wednesday, and Hasti. Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck said this week that Sarkar had filled a backpack with two handguns and multiple ammunition magazines and drove to Los Angeles to carry out the shooting. Sarkar killed Klug Wednesday morning on the fourth floor of the Engineering IV building and then took his own life, police said. A semi-automatic gun was found at the scene as well as a note on Sarkars body requesting that those who found him care for his cat back in Minnesota. We did a thorough investigation of Sarkars residence in Minnesota and found extra ammunition, Beck said Thursday in an appearance on KTLA (Channel 5). Beck said the kill list also included the name of another professor, who police did not identify. Sarkar intended to kill the second UCLA professor on Wednesday, but when he got to the campus, he was only able to locate one, Beck added. The third name led officers to a Minnesota home, where Hasti was found dead of a gunshot wound. Sarkar and Hasti were married in 2011, according to the Twin Cities Pioneer Press. The homicide investigation continues at this time in coordination with the Los Angeles Police Department, according to the Brooklyn Park Police statement. While all preliminary evidence suggests that Mr. Sarkar is the suspect, there is significant physical evidence that is being analyzed to assist in confirming his involvement. It is expected to take several weeks for results of this evidence to be available. Staff reporters Larry Altman and Dakota Smith contributed to this story. Its the anti- anti-Trump crowd. Dozens of supporters are waiting outside a conference center in Westminster, waiting to see Hillary Clinton and, so far, not an egg has been tossed or a pinata decapitated in effigy. Unlike rallys for Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, which sparked clashes involving Trump supporters and anti-Trump protesters, the mood outside the Westminster Rose Center where Clinton is slated to speak at 1:45 p.m. is tame. Dressed head to toe in navy colored Hillary 4 president gear, Helen Evers brought a life size cardboard cut-out of Clinton that she received last month as a birthday present. I desperately want to meet her, said Evers, 70, of Costa Mesa, as she wore socks that had HILLARY on it. Shes the best thing we got going for us. Debra McKee, 53, and her family came from Aliso Viejo to hear Clinton. She arrived at 9 a.m. and was among the first ones in line. I feel like this is my election. Ive been waiting for a female president, McKee said as she carried a sign that read Today is my birthday and all I want is a picture with the next POTUS. The hastily scheduled event, which figures to host about 500 people, comes with polls showing the Democratic side of the California presidential primary virtually tied even as the national math shows Clinton to be a lock for the nomination. After she speaks at the Rose Center (1410 All American Way, Westminster), shell speak at a private get-together at Crave restaurant in Santa Ana and separate stops in Culver City and San Bernardino. Westminster police have called in additional officers to support Secret Service security efforts during the Rose Center event, Westminster Police spokesman Sgt. Eddie Esqueda said. There will be road closures around the event beginning at 11 a.m. until 3 p.m., Esqueda said. All American Way will be closed to vehicle traffic between Westminster Boulevard and 13th Street. 15th Street will also be closed at All American Way, Esqueda said. In Santa Ana, 4th Street will be closed between Ross Street and Birch Street from noon to 5 p.m., Santa Ana Police spokesman Cpl. Anthony Bertagna said. Santa Ana police will also be making additional officers available to support Secret Service security efforts and traffic enforcement. The appearances announced late Thursday night come as Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders are neck and neck, each with about 43 percent of registered voters in recent polls. But the appearances in California arent totally about numbers or even the primary itself. National media attention in California is becoming a key factor in the national race. On Thursday, Clinton used a foreign policy speech in San Diego to specifically target GOP front runner Donald Trump, saying his contradictory and changing foreign policy positions are reasons why he should not be making decisions in the Oval Office. Its unclear what topics Clinton will cover in Orange County today. Contact the writer: 714-796-7802 or jsudock@ocregister.com Hillary Clinton gave a speech on national security in San Diego on Thursday, but it just as easily could have been a verbal declaration of war on Donald Trump. I believe the person the Republicans have nominated for president cannot do the job, Clinton said. Donald Trumps ideas arent just different, they are dangerously incoherent. Theyre not even really ideas. Just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies. Donald Trump isnt just unprepared, he is temperamentally unfit. The Democratic presidential front-runner, who is still locked in a fight for delegates with Bernie Sanders, didnt mention her rival for the partys nomination in her 35-minute speech at San Diegos The Prado in Balboa Park. Trump, however, got a shellacking. This is not a man who should ever have the nuclear codes, she said, adding, Because its not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin. Clinton used the speech to display her easy command of the history and context of American foreign policy and her fluency with the main themes likely to matter to voters this year: terrorism, Russian ambitions, Chinese and North Korean military expansion, Mideast turbulence. She dismissed Trump statements on subjects such as the NATO alliance and threats from Russia and North Korea. She played Trumps assertions about climate change for laughs. But mostly, Clinton presented a sort of courtroom closing argument for why Trump should not be the leader of the worlds largest military and caretaker of an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Often, she did so with biting sarcasm. Clinton also sneered at Trumps Twitter habit, correctly predicting that he would use the social-media platform to attack her during her speech. We all know the tools Donald Trump brings to the table: bragging, mocking, composing nasty tweets, she said. Im willing to bet hes writing a few right now. As she spoke, Trump was firing off a series of tweets, including this one: Bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton! Reading poorly from the teleprompter! She doesnt even look presidential! Clinton invoked Trumps own words as her main weapon to demonstrate his unfitness for the job. Its a likely preview of how she will use what backers think is her best offensive weapon against Trump his tendency to say and do things that look unpresidential. One by one, Clinton recited a long list of Trumps statements on foreign policy issues. Her campaign followed up afterward by blasting out more than three dozen distinct Trump quotations that Clinton had alluded to, with the subject line: Trump Literally Said All Those Things. He has said he doesnt have to listen to our generals and ambassadors, because he has quote a very good brain, Clinton said. He has said, I know more about the ISIS than the generals believe me. You know what, I dont believe him, she added. Those are the words, my friends, of someone who doesnt understand America or the world, and theyre the words of someone who would lead us in the wrong direction. Clinton also did something that Trumps Republican opponents had largely failed to do during their brutal primary season: She took on Trumps portrayal of the United States as a country in decline, countering his campaign phrase, Make America Great Again. America is great just like weve always been, Clinton declared. We can be greater still. Clinton is settling into California for five straight days ahead of the states primary on Tuesday. As the Democratic primary has been heating up in the state, Sanders has been here for weeks holding rallies as part of an ambitious plan to reach 200,000 voters through live events. The Vermont senator remains a long shot to win the nomination, however, as he trails Clinton by 767 delegates, according to the political tracking website Real Clear Politics. Even if only pledged delegates are counted, he still trails by 268. The Washington Post contributed to this report. Gov. Jerry Browns signature on the bill to increase Californias minimum wage will benefit many working Californians and slow the continuing trend of economic inequality. The minimum wage will gradually rise to $15 an hour over a six-year period. The current $10-an-hour wage will increase by 50 cents on Jan. 1. This is actually less than increases within the past two years. On July 1, 2014, the state minimum was raised to $9 an hour. This past January, the minimum wage was raised to $10 an hour. Whenever a minimum wage increase is considered, there are usually claims that a minimum wage increase could lead to a loss of jobs. What might be displayed on a theoretical graph bears no relationship to what affects working families in the real world. Heres the question minimum wage opponents need to answer: Where were the layoffs when Californias minimum wage was increased during the past two years? In June 2014, Californias unemployment rate was 7.5 percent. What effect did the minimum wage increase have? How many jobs were lost? The unemployment rate went down to 7.1 percent for December. Doesnt seem like a loss there. In December 2015, the state unemployment rate was 5.8 percent. Did the next minimum wage increase generate an increase in unemployment? Not at all. The unemployment rate of February 2016 stands at 5.5 percent. The idea from minimum wage opponents is that labor is a simple matter of supply and demand. High turnover at places like McDonalds and Wal-Mart show these companies might be able to hire people at minimum wage, but they have difficulty retaining people at low wages. What happens when one state raises the minimum wage and a neighboring state doesnt? Theory would have us believe that jobs would relocate to the state which doesnt raise its minimum wage. In fact, this doesnt happen. Princeton University economists David Card and Andrew Krueger conducted a study when New Jersey raised its minimum wage from $4.25 per hour to $5.05 an hour in 1992. The rate of $4.25 per hour stayed the same in Pennsylvania. The study covered fast-food places in both states. The finding was that, in New Jersey, employment actually increased when compared to Pennsylvania. In terms of actual value, the current minimum wage of $10 an hour is equal to, or slightly less than, the minimum wage of $1.60 an hour in 1969 dollars. Todays workers are more productive than their 1969 counterparts. The cash register and other modern machines require greater skill. Workers at fast-food restaurants often switch from a customer at the counter to someone at the drive-through window instantly. Skills required and possessed by unionized construction work increase at an even faster pace. The minimum wage increase will allow millions of Californians the chance to earn a fair wage. It will especially help people currently working 20-35 hours. Employers often schedule workers for less than 35 hours and avoid providing benefits which were common 35 years ago. A great nation such as the United States certainly can afford to pay people a wage that keeps people out of poverty. I applaud Gov. Brown and the state legislators for taking a positive action affecting millions of Californians. Laurie Stalnaker is the executive secretary-treasurer of the Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. IRVINE The appearance of a controversial speaker at UC Irvine turned into a de facto Donald Trump rally complete with Build that wall! chants and verbal clashes. About 400 supporters of a controversial conservative celebrity who came to campus to speak Thursday evening verbally clashed with about 50 student protesters. The protesters and supporters of provocative media personality Milo Yiannopoulos remained largely peaceful, though there were several minor physical altercations and campus police with riot helmets had to stop a multi-person brawl after a supporter used the N-word to describe an African American protester. I dont think this adds value, said Aketzalli Moralez, 19, a sophomore studying psychology and criminology, of the heightened passions, though she opposes Trump. We are a divided campus now. Members of the UCI College Republicans brought Yiannopoulos, an editor for conservative website Breitbart, to campus because they said they wanted to create a dialogue that goes beyond the politically correct messages more widely accepted on college campuses. Yiannopoulos is a gay man who says being gay was a choice and that he doesnt believe in lesbians. The title of his Thursday night appearance: Social Justice is Cancer. About 6:15 p.m, 45 minutes before Yiannopoulos was set to speak, a group of protesters showed up with signs promoting feminism and multiculturalism, among other issues. They chanted against Israel, police violence and presumptive GOP presidential nominee Trump. Conservatives are under attack at campuses like UCI, said Ariana Rowlands, the clubs president. Last week, I was having an argument with somebody and they were talking about immigration and he was calling me white, Rowlands, 19, said prior to the event. He said: You cant have an opinion on this. I am half-Mexican. Does that count for something? He said, I ex-communicate you from the Mexican community. He was calling me mayonnaise and white. Yiannopoulos, on a tour of college campuses, riles people up with his appearances. On Tuesday, protesters at first UCLA blocked attendees from his talk, which was cut early because of a bomb threat, according Breitbart news site At DePaul University in Chicago May 24, a group of students stormed his talk and university security stood by without pulling away the protesters, leading Yiannopoulos to march the students to the schools administration building. Other campus talks have led to disruptions with students chanting slogans and smearing fake blood on their faces. Concern over security prompted Orange Countys conservative Lincoln Club to hire four private security guards for the event. Earlier this week, representatives from the Lincoln Club and UCI Republicans met with campus administrators, an attorney and the head of the UCI police department, said Richard Albrecht, chairman of the Lincoln Club Student Outreach Committee. On Thursday, the Yiannopoulos supporters wore pro-Trump hats and chanted many of his popular slogans, such as Build that wall! Some even tried to give the protesters pacifiers a symbolic gesture against what the College Republicans said are attempts to stifle conservative thought on college campuses. We want to hold a peaceful event that promotes dialogue, said Peter Van Voorhis, vice president of the College Republicans. We believe in unlimited free speech. After Yiannopoulos began speaking in the 200-seat room in the social sciences building, the remaining 200 or so supporters began chanting USA! and tried to provoke the protesters. Still, with police creating a barrier between the groups, the two sides remained mostly peaceful throughout. Inside, meanwhile, Yiannopoulos took on the Black Lives Matter movement, feminism, illegal immigration and what he said is a lack of aggressive policing in cities like Chicago. Dressed in his version of a police uniform sleeveless dark blue polyester shirt, with an open collar and a fake badge he also defended Trump, suggesting hes a natural and obvious candidate for gays. Asked about how to reveal one is a Trump supporter, Yiannopoulos said its easy to come out as gay. But (say) Mom, Im a Trump supporter. Oh God. Westhampton Beach trustees last night refused to provide a copy of the agreement with the East End Eruv Assn. that would give EEEA permanent permission to post religious symbols on 46 utility poles. Weshampton Beach Mayor Maria Moore Although Approve Litigation Settlement had been on web postings of the agenda without further explanation, the only one of 16 items not explained, a printed agenda handed out last night had a nine-paragraph description of the agreement. It said the trustees are authorized to sign the attached settlement agreement after it has been executed by all plaintiffs of their respective authorized representatives, in order to bring and end to the subject litigation. However, no settlement agreement was attached. WHB has not replied to a Freedom of Information request faxed to it May 26 and hand-delivered to the Mayors office May 27. Mayor Maria Moore told this reporter that the settlement will not be revealed until it has been signed by the trustees. She did not know when that will be. This writer, a homeowner and taxpayer in WHB as well as a registered voter, urged Moore and the other trustees not to sign any agreement until it is made public via the WHB website and provided to this website as a PDF. To do otherwise, we told her, would put her and the trustees of violating their oath of office to serve the people of WHB. Agreement Is Irrational One of the paragraphs provided at the last minute to residents says: Whereas, the proposed settlement agreement expressly provides that it does not create or recognize a religious boundary, nor does it constitute a proclamation, lease or designation of any such religious boundary That statement is false. An eruv is a boundary created by Orthodox Jews to establish a district that gives believers certain rights they would otherwise not have. The validity of any agreement signed by the trustees could be invalidated by a court, lawyers told this writer. Physical markers are supposed to be attached to utility poles and other natural boundaries such as rivers, fences and railroads are sometimes called into play. The general public may not know of the religious significance of the markers but believers do. It is of profound importance to them. Believers will not move into an area unless there is a physical eruv approved of by local authorities. Moore an Ally of Eruv Supporters Moore has shown herself to be an ally of eruv supporters in numerous ways. She has never called a town hall so citizens can discuss the matter although she indicated last year she might do so after citizens complained for a half hour at one trustee meeting that they were not being fully informed about eruv litigation. If she and the trustees had been even-handed about the issue, they would have posted on the WHB website the 18-page essay that Yeshiva University Law Prof. Marci Hamilton wrote for WHB in 2008 that shows that eruvim are unconstitutional. Numerous other items attacking the claim that eruvim are unconstitutional are also missing from the Eruv Litigation part of the WHB site. Last entry is a legal notice dated June 30, 2015. Supreme Court Nixed Permanent Displays The Supreme Court, in McCreary County vs. ACLU of Kentucky, ruled in 2005 that permanent religious symbols of any type are not allowed on public property. Seasonal displays are allowed. Justice David Souter, writing for the majority, emphasized the principle of government neutrality among religious, and between religion in general and non-religious beliefs. Religion is not supposed to cause political divisiveness and exclusion, he wrote, which is just what is going on it WHB. That decision should be on the WHB website. Former Mayor Conrad Teller has estimated that 95% of residents do not want an eruv. Neither Teller nor Mayor Moore ever conducted any type of poll on the issue. Six trustees won election to WHB by stating their opposition to eruvimJoan Levan, Toni-Jo Birk, Hank Tucker, Sue Farrell, Brian Tymann and Rob Rubio. The last two were elected in 2015 on the promise that they would never sign any agreement allowing an eruv in WHB. McCreary Decision Told to WHB Board This writer, allowed only five minutes to address the board last night, used them to describe the McCreary decision and ask the trustees to abide by it. A chilling example of what could happen to beaches in Westhampton is shown by the continued closing of a city pool in Brooklyn for a total of 6.5 hours on four days a week to mollify Orthodox Jews. An attempt by the Parks Dept. to end the women only hours at the Metropolitan Pool at 261 Bedford ave., Williamsburg, as of June 11 brought howls from Dov Hikind, New York Assemblyman, who noted that Orthodox rules demand separation of the sexes. Kingscountypolitics.com, noting that Hasidic Jews are a key constituency of Mayor Bill de Blasio, said the Parks Dept. did an about-face on its decision, saying the new summer schedule was posted in error and that separate-gender swimming hours remain in effect. Theres no doubt ultra-Orthodox Jews control the government of Westhampton Beach and the closing of Rogers Beach and other beaches to satisfy the rule for separation of the sexes is not far-fetched. Women occupy a distinctly inferior position in the Orthodox religion. For instance, they sit in the balcony of an ultra-Orthodox Synagogue when services are conducted. Only men are allowed on the main floor. The position of women is not unlike the position of women in Muslim religions. Radiation Danger in Library Told We squeezed in at the end of our five minutes the fact that we have found high levels of pulsed, microwave radiation in the library. We aimed our remarks at Tom Moore, president of the Westhampton Free Library board, who is the husband of Mayor Maria Moore. Using an Acoustimeter, we found high levels in the childrens area on the second floor on the second floor and peak levels of six volts per meter and 2,500 micro-watts per square meter in the room used by the library board and a bridge group that meets Tuesday. We visited the room last Tuesday when it was filled with 64 bridge players, most of them senior citizens. Seniors and children are especially susceptible to harm by pulsed radiation. Library staff get the most radiation because they are there five days a week for 7-8 hours a day. The Library of Paris, biggest in France, eliminated all Wi-Fi in 2008 mainly on complaints by the staff. We found no area of the library to register in the safe zone of the Acoustimeter. Bioinitiative.org used to recommend 1,000 as a permissible level for continued radiation but now says it only allows .1 of radiation. This writer spent four hours with about 60 Wi-Fi and pulsed radiation health advocates at a conference in New York May 22. Anyone who downloads some of their research will be convinced of the dangers of radiation from cellphones, cordless telephones, computers, high-powered routers that Comcast, Cablevision and other companies are forcing subscribers to take, the more than 6,000 cellphone towers dotting the U.S., and plans by Google and others to float hundreds of thousands of Wi-Fi-emitting balloons worldwide plus Wi-Fi satellites. AT&T wants to eliminate landlines throughout the U.S. and convert its entire system to wireless. Everything Wireless is the slogan of the CTIA which represents the industry. Offer Made to Library Director Waskiewicz We have offered to walk through the library with director Danielle Waskiewicz and show her the readings on the Acoustimeter. There has been no response thus far. The Ashland, Mass. library has purchased an Acoustimeter which it lends out to patrons so they can measure the radiation in their own homes. One who did so was Cecelia Doucette, who made a 22-minute video of what she found in her home. It is an excellent lesson in the radiation perils in the average home. She was able to shut down some of the radiation sources. The OECD Observer online archive takes you on a journey through half a century of public policy and world progress. Since November 1962, the OECDs experts and leading guests offer insights on the questions facing our member countries with concise and authoritative analysis, and provide our audiences with an excellent opportunity to understand policy debates and consider solutions. Each edition of the OECD Observer reports on a core theme of the OECDs on-going work, from economics and society through governance, finance, and the environment, and articles are bolstered by tables and graphs. Loading... OilVoice will be with you shortly...